Volume 25: Issue 4 : September 2000
[Selected articles have been presented online.]
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Current Issue:Vol. 26-1
[Selected articles have been presented online.]

President’s Report & Proposals for 2000 General Body Meeting

At the 1999 General Body Meeting, the Year 2000 Executive Committee was asked to complete the following:
1) Present a concrete, workable, and quantifiable BAGC building proposal and
2) Secure Chicago as a future host site for the North American Bengali Conference
Status: The Special Fund Committee consisting of the current President, Treasurer, Secretary, and current Special Fund members after reviewing past feasibility studies, investment options, available land, leasing, and building sites have developed the following proposal and enthusiastically present it for General Body consideration.
“The Bengal Club” Proposal
Objective: Purchase a facility that can support the concept of a “Bengal Club”.
Scope: The building will only be big enough to support a gathering place or clubhouse that is in a centralized location in the Chicagoland area. The purchase should be of an existing building/structure and will be modified to have a meeting room, small kitchen, and restrooms. Due to cost restrictions, the facility will not have an auditorium or dining facilities. The site will have a common and adjoining parking lot in a non-residential zone.
Purpose of the Bengal Club: The following items are not meant to be an exhaustive list:
§ Meetings including executive committee, special general body meetings, special Bengali interest groups such as literary, music, investment, etc.
§ Centralized Library
§ Sporting Events including carom, bridge, table tennis, etc.
§ Rehearsals for any upcoming performances
§ Rental for private parties like birthdays, annaprasan, showers, etc.
§ Small musical performances
§ Bengali classes for children as well as classes in music, dance, cooking, etc.
§ General place for adda, card playing, gathering, etc.
§ Venue for youth and young adults
§ Storage for BAGC supplies and equipment
§ Display/storage of Saraswati and Durga pratimas
Location Parameters:
§ East of Route 59
§ West of Harlem
§ South of I-90
§ North of 95th Street
§ Financial Scope:
§ Purchase Price: no more than $300,000 (land/site, facility/structure, renovations)
§ Monthly Maintenance: $500/ month or $6000/year (costs to include property insurance, utilities, phone line). No cost for staffing assumed, as members of community will oversee, maintain, and run the Bengal Club
§ Pledges of $220,000 would be needed to secure purchase and the yearly operating budget would need to generate an incremental $4500 (other $1500 would be generated from the savings of storage fees) in revenues (via advertising and/or increase in event or membership rates) to support maintenance costs.

Action Plan:
The Special Fund committee would be responsible to solicit volunteers and appoint a Bengal Club Committee to bring this plan to completion over a 2-3 year time horizon. The Special Fund committee will be responsible to the General Body for reporting the progress and overseeing the execution plan as approved by the General Body.

North-American Bengali Conference
Status: After several telephone discussions, meeting with the CAB at the 2000 NABC, and two written requests, we have some tentative indication that the earliest Chicago can host the next NABC will in 2004. The CAB is currently undergoing significant change in its leadership but in talking to several of its more senior and “unofficial” leaders, there is strong interest in the CAB choosing Chicago as a future NABC site.
Proposal: The Executive Committee suggests that at the 2000 General Body meeting a NABC chairperson be elected by the General Body to continue discussions with the CAB and be the overall leader in assembling a NABC committee to host and run the NABC program whenever Chicago is chosen as the host site. By way of this proposal I would ask any potential NABC chairperson nominees to contact me to submit their name for election consideration at the upcoming 2000 General Body meeting. I ask the membership to consider these proposals carefully and bring questions and raise issues at the 2000 General Body meeting. How-ever, I would ask that if folks have legitimate concerns, they express them in a constructive manner and offer viable alternative courses of action. Thank you for your con-sideration of these proposals, and my thanks to those who contributed their time to putting these proposals together.

President’s Message by Anindita Mukherjee

Puja is around the corner! We’re plan-ning what to wear, taking out all the new clothes, making sure everything and every-one is coordinated. A time to see old friends, catch up with those that are acquaintances, maybe even meet someone that has tie to a family member back home. It is a time for nostalgia as we celebrate our heritage and culture, and ask blessings for ourselves and our family members from Maa Durga.

Now take a moment and step back and remember that our youth are not as close to what puja is and what significance it has for all of us. Take a moment and explain what they will see, what they should experience, how it is important to their lives. Too many times, our youth don’t know what to do at these functions and have no one to ask. They are curious and interested, so teach them. This is a time to come together as Bengalis as we celebrate through religion, music, song and dance. Make the connection for your children, help them get interested. Once they know the meaning of what they are supposed to be doing, their connection to who they are and where they come from will come alive, so they can carry on our traditions in the future. My best to everyone in the community and I hope everyone enjoys the upcoming festivities.

Announcements

Piali and Aninda Roy were blessed by the arrival of a second son, Sanjay, born on September 4th.

Call for Nominations

The Nomination Committee consisting of: Anindita Mukherjee (Chair-man and 2000 BAGC President), Durga Banerji, Subhas Bose, Rina Das, Dipak Dutta solicits nominations for the positions of: President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Members-At-Large for the 2001 BAGC Executive Committee.

Nominations have to be supported by five members. Please find the nomination form on our website or call a Nomination Committee member to receive the form by mail. Submit forms by October 21, 2000.

Your BAGC Directory

In an effort to publish accurate information in the BAGC telephone directory available during Kali Puja, the postal address label in this issue contains your information as we have it. Please let us know of any errors or exclusions.

Your email address will be used for exchang-ing messages with-in the BAGC elec-tronic community and any kind of flash news update. You may also wish to update us with the birth-date of your children to better assist you in organizing events for your children including cultural participation and educational topics.

If you are willing to volunteer for the community in anyway, let us know to be added in the new Services Index. The cost to participate is none for not-for-profit services. Businesses will have a nominal flat fee.

The highly visible half/full advertisement pages in the directory will still continue. Advertisements will be indexed in the new Advertiser Index. Rates: ½ page $100, full-page $200, inside cover $350, back $500.

Please identify yourself with your name while sending email.
Contact: Abhijit Datta datta@rocketmail.com or
(630) 736 2445

Saratchandra Chattopadhya by Ananta Ghosh

Saratchandra (1876-1938) was a story-teller like whom Bengal and the rest of India had not seen upto his time. From the moment his first story, ‘Elder Sister’ (Barodidi), came out in ‘Bharati’ – one of the most prestigious magazines of that time – he was bestowed a place in the heart of all his readers, not just the literary connoisseurs. In this context, Rabindranath wrote, “…His acceptance in the heart of all readers was not born from a mere thrill of amazement, but from a sincere love for the writer… The spontaneous success that he achieved from the very beginning of his literary pursuit, made many of us (contemporary writers) jealous of him.” Reading the Italian translation of his ‘Sreekanto – First Part’, Romain Rolland complimented him as a first-class novelist. Today, after more than a century after his birth, he is still the most widely read and popular writer in the Bengali language. At the root of his appeal was his simple, easy to understand prose and the down-to-earth content of his stories.

Saratchandra was born at Devanandapur, a village about 25 miles north of Calcutta. Due to extreme poverty, he had to live the early part of his life in his maternal uncle’s house in Bhagalpur, Bihar. He wrote about his early life, “My childhood and youth passed through such deep poverty that I could not go for higher education… The only things that I inherited from my father were a deep sense of love for literature and an inclination for a restless life. The latter drove me from place to place during most of my youth. I wandered all over India.” His literary bent of mind, poverty and nomadic life gave him the opportunity to see a variety of people at close range. His compassionate observation found accurate expression in depicting the mental agony, sorrows and sufferings of rural people with whom he was familiar from childhood. His writings served to mirror the complexities of the rural Bengal of his times.

Saratchandra started writing short stories at age 17. After the death of his father in 1902, he came to Calcutta to make a living. Unable to get a job, he left for Rangoon, Burma in 1903. After a few years, he settled in a stable job there. Through all these hardships, he never stopped writing except his first years in Rangoon. In 1916, he returned to Calcutta and started his career as a full-time writer. He was the first Bengali writer to make a successful career of writing.

Bhagalpur, Rangoon and Calcutta form three distinct backdrops for his literary projects. From Bhagalpur he wrote such pieces as ‘Kashinath’, ‘Baradidi’, and ‘Devdas’; these were later published in regular magazines in Calcutta while he was in Rangoon. Along with those, newer writings like, ‘Ramer-Sumati’, ‘Bindur Chhele’, ‘Palli Samaj’, ‘Datta’, ‘Sreekanto’, ‘Pather Dabi’, etc, were added from Rangoon. The political-romantic novel ‘Pather Dabi’ was banned by the British Government for its writer’s sympathy for the terrorist movement in Bengal and other parts of India. This ban made the book tremendously popular. From 1916 onward, he wrote ‘Sesh Prasna’, ‘Sreekanto-Part 4’, and ‘Bipradas’. Starting with his first novel, each of his novels gained immediate popularity. Nearly no other Bengali author received such a response from the literary public, who called him endearingly ‘Amar Kathasilpi’, immortal writer.

To compare Saratchandra to his contemporaries, Rabindranath and Bankimchandra, one has to look at their respective readership. Bankimchandra, the first Bengali novelist, used a classical style with mostly historical themes, appealing to the intelligentia. Rabindranath addressed a much broader subject matter in his body of work; however, his command of the language presenting lofty ideas through subtle technique appealed most to readers trained in literature. Saratchandra, in contrast, described everyday life through ordinary language. This gave him a populist following that still surpasses all other Bengali novelists to this day.

Art and Appreciation
by Indrani Mondal

Most all humans are bound by the need for approval or at least acceptance. The parents’ approval is very important for every child just as the teacher’s approval is for the student. As we mature this requirement grows and expresses itself in many forms.

In the life of a creative artist this need for approval plays a key role in his creative expressions. Profess-ionally the arts often have to satisfy government and or commercial requirements to qualify for grants to stay alive. Apart from the ethicality and justification of such survival tactics, on a smaller and more rudimentary level audience approval too often shapes the character and tone of an artist’s creative expression.

There are two divergent views on this issue. Some say that audience approval should determine the form and content of an artist’s expression. Others hold the opposite view that creative expression should be independent of mass approval. The controversy we are discussing here is really the age-old dilemma of subjectivity or objectivity of art. Is art subjective or objective -- dependent on or independent of a subject’s reaction?

Let us try to examine each of these views. According to the first view every creative expression should keep in mind what is acceptable at a particular time and conform with it. What this means is, supposing I am a creative artist, I can only paint, write, sing, play or perform what my audience likes or is expected to like.

The problem with this view is that mass approval often restricts art, by making it time and place dependent. So it loses its true form. Loss of artistic integrity almost invariably leads to loss of spontaneity and experimentation thereby inhibiting creative growth. This is often called the death of art.

According to the second view what is created is not bound by mass approval but is entirely dependent on the creator’s artistic jurisdiction (if one may use that word). What this means is, supposing I am a creative artist, I can only paint, write, sing, play or perform what I think and feel, unconditioned by others’ likes and dislikes.

The problem with this view is that in the absence of some kind of guideline, creative expression can degenerate into the artist’s whim or fancy. It can also generate an arrogant, pseudo-intellectual elite. This too can be called the death of art.

Both the aforementioned views have their merits however. Audience approval helps bring structure and direction to creative expression. On the other hand, creative independence gives freedom of expression and contributes to the birth of new creative styles.

Thus in order to answer the question, “What should my art be like?”, one could attempt to bring together the merits of both aforementioned views. That is to say, one’s creation should be suitable (what the artist thinks is suitable, not what they think) for the audience and should have the width and vision to generate newer forms of expression. That is to say, art may be bound, but the limit and extent of this bondage are to be determined entirely by the creative artist.

Last but not least, it is important to note that in this controversy, one often tends to overlook the role of the subject whose approval or acceptance holds the key to the debate. Just as democracy fails when the masses are illiterate or misinformed so also creative art can never get the status it deserves unless the subject, the audience, the masses realize that they too have an obligation to fulfill. When exposed to new creative expressions instead of perfunctorily discarding them as unfamiliar, their attitude should be upbeat, to nurture budding creative styles through positive criticism and encouragement. Elast-icity of approval and acceptance, i.e. human bondage, can go a long way in removing artistic stagnation and making creative art the dynamic process it is meant to be.

BAGC Members Emeritus
Members over the age of 70 who have been members of BAGC for the past 15 years are eligible for Emeritus status. If you or someone you know qualifies, please notify the Committee immediately so that we may include their name in the Membership Directory.

Amendment Proposals
Proposed amendments to the BAGC Constitution must be received by Durga Puja to be considered this year.

Membership Deadline
Please pay by Puja to be included in the Directory!!