On Bhasa Diwas Thought I It Otherwise Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Thought I of my identity
And mixing,
The languages I spoke
Which I learnt and missed,
Angika into the rural homes,
Hindi into the streets,
English as an international language,
But missed
When I got displaced, dislocated,
Met after years,
Remembered as the residues of meaning,
Given to thought and reflection,
Leisurely thinking,
Gave I thoughts to Hindi profs.
Forbidding to speak in English,
‘May I come in, sir? ' even
As for ‘Kya main ander yaa shakata hun, mahashay? ',
But I questioning them through my complaint to father,
Did they not Richards in M.A. Hindi,
Objected to Sahityalankaras from Vidyapeeths
Sidetracking M.As. from being headmasters,
Lost jhumjurs,
Remembered I Vidyapati
Being taught in Bengali too
In Bengali script,
Existence of Vikramshila
At Kahalgaon of Angika speakers,
Nalanda Univ. in the midst
Of Magadhi-speakers,
Related I going down the memory lanes
Revisiting and restitching
Reminiscences and reflections,
Romantic Angika songs, Bhojpuri folk theatres,
Hiuen Tsang's visit,
Sikkkimese land and people,
Especially Danny's roles,
Bengali comic Kesto Mukherjee's pidgin-Hindi,
Thought I of giving nod as for
Teaching through Scottish dialect
In the local schools of Scotland
For small-small children,
Father Camille Bulcke's Ramkatha Ka Itihaas,
The award of the degree to him
And his headship of Sanskrit and Hindi deptts. of the college
Brothers separated and reared by
Two different region relatives,
But speaking two languages
Not so intelligible to each other,
On coming to know from truck drivers
About the South,
I enquired them with curiosity
At the post-office
With regard to their tongue,
I mean Telegu,
Military personnel telling about
The impregnable exotic Northeast
And its dense jungles,
Far flung Nagaland and the feuds
And rebellions
Kamrupa Kamakhya
And I corroborating as for the intrinsic bond
Which but unifies us into a whole
Taking me to regional studies,
Gandhi studies,
Shahid Minar, art and architecture
And these in miniature, replica
And so many things that come to
On the mind's plane
With a trail of imagery,
Thoughts and ideas.

While speaking on Bhasa Diwas,
What should I,
Before you
My friends, boys and girls
After offering petals to the martyrs,
Language martyrs,
Seeing the replica of Shahid Minar
In thermocol,
You, the audience
Whose mother tongue if Bengali,
How can this man who knows it not Bengali
In the sense that he can understand,
But cannot write in it,
Can read,
I cannot about language movements
And the bifurcation of areas
On the basis of linguistic groups
But can assure you about
My happiness in seeing
P.V.Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh as P.Ms.
Other than general politico nomenclature,
And outside the orbit of Bihar and U.P. axis,
The Punjabi tongue I used to hear so closely
As my next-door neighbour's speech,
Bengali I used to falter in as for tonal effects,
Marwari and Sindhi were the others
Coming to my ears,
Santali used to come through drum beats
Beaten in the forest homes and hamlets
Dotting the hills,
But I used to hear about Onam, Pongal and so on
From my father
While taking lessons in geography.

On Bhasa Diwas
My mind gets lifted to Rudyard Kipling's Gunga Din,
Hindustani pidgin-English,
English of military barracks,
British bungalows
Where the sahib, bibi and gulam played the cards,
I thought of George Orwell's nondescript house
In Bihar's Champaran,
Suryakant Tripathy Nirala's birth-place
At Mahishadal,
But nobody aware of,
Bhikshuk, Bharat Ki Vidhwa, Waha Todati Patthar poems,
Subhadra Kumari Chauhan's Veero Ka Kaisa Ho Vasant,
Makhanlal Chaturvedi's Pushpa Ki Abhilasha,
Sanskrit line, Janani janmabhunischa jariyashi,
Urdu lines so eulogizing, like Brooke's The Soldier
‘ Shahidoke mazaro par lagengei har varash melei,
Vatan pe maraneiwallon ka baaki hoga yahi nisha',
Wah kya baat hai! ,
What a thing! ,
Sometimes it wanders unto Mithila and beyond,
Darjeeling, Kalimpong
While talking with the fellow from there
I wanting to know the ending,
Dhupguri, Moynaguri, Siliguri,
Sometimes taking time to talk with
The rugged Nepali hinga-seller
Telling of Viratnagar, Kathmandu
And I lost in thinking of Buddha's birthplace,
I also meeting the security staff of hotels
From far-off Nepal,
My mind also remembers it
When Mahadevi Varma was given an award
And a replica of Saraswati
Which she received from Margaret Thatcher's hands
Who was on a visit to India then
And Indira Gandhi had been the Prime Minister,
How could Vinoba Bhave come and ask for lands
In visiting the different parts of the country
As for Bhoodan movement?

In being unknown to the three R's in Bengali
Felt I myself an unpadh, an illiterate,
An uneducated person
Learning in an adult education centre
During the night-time
Or a labour school girl
Which saw I, met I
Reading after the household work
into the other man's house,
A rural, mud-house-girl,
Felt i like a man
Getting his or her letter dictated,
Thought I of
Ek Unpadh Ke Naam,
In The Name of An Uneducated One, caption
As my post-card or letter-writing,
Side by side felt i pride
In taking the name of Kamraj,
How did a South Indian serve Bausi, Bhagalpur
Through his love of Gandhian Hindi
After founding Mandar Hindi Vidyapeeth?