A Bong will always be a Bong

 

I have known Rajib and of him ever since he started his professional life as a journalist and then of him when he decided to say adieu to his profession as a scribe and instead preferred to sit opposite the table as a senior communication professional.

So I thought. Then came covid and another hue from his plume was revealed! And Mi Dios! How! This lad whom I knew as a wordsmith in reality turned out to be a skilled connector of dots as well! His preferred alphabet was not the one that divines words but strokes that create images. Images of everyday life. The ones that define us and we think so little of them. In his sketches, they come alive and remind us how precious they are.

Let us take a step back to the covid and quarantine days. It was a global lockdown. The whole world looked so bleak. Death was apparently the only news that merited a place in the headlines and news blogs were actually the recounters of the spread of covid. During that time many decided to share their passions with their friends and talents were discovered. And Rajiv was no exception. Suddenly, his LinkedIn posts mutated into sketches depicting his reflections on those bleak everyday life yet managed to extract a smile. And his sagacious corporate utterances took a back seat. Now, he has taken another step forward with his newly revealed skill set.

No. He is no Mario Miranda. At least not yet. But his book Bangaliyana skillfully marries his sketches with deft stitching of words to present us with an oeuvre of his emotions about being a Bengali yet not being one. Because he missed a few important stuff as he was a prabashi (expat Bengali)! In fact, the whole story in his book is founded upon those missed steps and his wonderment about them.

This book is straight out of his heart. So truly that my wife, brought up in Delhi, grabbed the book as Amazon delivered it and read through it in one sitting! I could see her smiling as she raced through the book. It wasn’t difficult for her to relate to those frustrations about saying something that was a statement and finding the cousins laughing. The realization that her pronunciations marked her out as a prabashi still haunts her despite having spent 37 years with a pure Bengali in khaas Kolkata! And Rajib endorses her angst.

This book is not just a prabashi talking to another prabashi. This book will also resonate with a pure-bred bong as it did with me. It keeps reminding you that a tiger never changes its stripes. Or, better still, a bong will always be bong – macher jhol bhaat or no maacher jhol bhaat! Point to note, the spelling of his name gives him away as a prabashi. He spells his name as Rajiv and not Rajib as a Kolkata-bred Bong like me might. 

A disclaimer. He was the one I asked to conceptualise and execute the logo of Content Crankers and he, as expected, hit the nail on its head. There was no space for disagreement.