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First there were web pages, but web pages, particularly those written in static HTML, became too time-intensive to update. That's why I quit updating the static HTML on my website.

Next came blogs. Blogs, such as Mera Bharat Mahan, were much easier to update than traditional web pages.

But what if one wants to post and share occasional items of interest that don't need a lot of explanatory text? That's where social software, such as Facebook and Twitter, comes in handy.

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Bengali patas

Last Thursday, my husband and I went to an extraordinarily well-attended talk on and exhibit of Bengali patas at the Gandhi Memorial Center in Washington, DC. Patas, a Bengali folk art form, are hand-painted scrolls that illustrate stories.

Patuas roam from village to village to tell stories as they unroll the scrolls vertically (story panels go from top to bottom). Sadly, they are too often regarded as beggars (to understand, read this analogous story about kalamkari artists). The art of pata is local to the districts of Midnapore and Birbhum.

For us, no trip to India is complete without a visit to Birbhum, the home of Tagore's Shantinekitan, but this was our first exposure to pata. We are more accustomed to seeing batiks and terracotta objects in the stalls on the road between Shantiketan and Bolpur, the nearest train station.


Panel of a Bengali pat
Jetayu tells Ram about Sita's abduction

Many of the traditional Bengali patas cover episodes from the Ramayana. Natural disasters, such as floods, cyclones, and even the freak tornado are also covered. More recently, pats address social issues such as the status of women and AIDS: in fact, NGOs have commissioned patuas to create patas on social issues.

The pats that were exhibited at the Gandhi Memorial Center belong to Dr. Geraldine Forbes, a professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego. Dr. Forbes has traveled through Bengali villages collecting patas for 30 years.

INDIA'S BISMARCK: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

Cover of INDIA'S BISMARCK: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

I received an email from Indus Source, a book publisher in Mumbai, alerting me to the publication of INDIA'S BISMARCK: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, in response to my article The Assertive Indian.

INDIA'S BISMARCK covers Sardar Patel's career as a satyagrahi, creator of the Indian Administration Service (IAS), and Congress Party boss. Given their strong wills, it should not be surprising that Sardar Patel clashed with Netaji when Netaji presided over Congress, my article on The Assertive Indian notwithstanding.

The most important part of INDIA'S BISMARCK covers Sardar Patel's leadership as Unifier of India. He used Indian troops to compel accession of Junagadh (in Gujarat) and Hyderabad. His lasting achievement was the accession of 560 princely states to form the geographic whole that is India.

Westerners know about Gandhi and Nehru, but don't know about Sardar Patel. While the widely read Freedom at Midnight discusses Sardar Patel, his leadership as Unifier of India gets short shrift and ultimately, he is treated almost as an afterthought in the epilogue (Sardar Patel died in 1950, only three years after Independence). Even many Indians might not be familiar with Sardar Patel's accomplishments. I recommend INDIA'S BISMARCK to these reader audiences.

You may purchase INDIA'S BISMARCK on Amazon.com.

Being the Bahu of Bengal is no longer a joke

I chose the screen name Bahu of Bengal as a joke. I extended that joke with a reference to Amitabh Bachchan, who worked as a shipping agent in Calcutta before he went into movies and met and married Jaya Bhaduri.

True, I am married to a Bengali and I have a loving relationship with my husband’s parents, who still live in Kolkata, so there’s the sentimental attachment. I realized that calling myself the Bahu of Bengal was something other than a joke when I reacted to this story about Muslims taking over a historic terracotta mandir in Bangladesh to build a madrassa.


Terracotta temple in Birgonj, Dinajpur, Bangladesh

We had visited this mandir (which is similar to those in Bishnupur, Bankura District, West Bengal) when we traveled to Bangladesh to see where my father-in-law was born and grew up. I was indignant and shocked to learn that this mandir has been appropriated to serve as a madrassa. These stories hit home when there's a personal connection.

Auroville

As Sri Aurobindo went deeper and deeper in the spiritual life, he turned over operation of his ashram to The Mother née Mirra Alfassa.

Some years after Sri Aurobindo's mahasamadhi in 1950, The Mother had a vision for a utopian community to bring people from all over the world together for spiritual evolution. This was the beginning of Auroville.

An unpaved road lined with shops that cater to "counterculture" types leads to Auroville. On the day we visited, it was pouring, and the road was gutted. When we ventured out of the car, red clay mud clung to our shoes.

The centerpiece of Auroville is the Matrimandir, a dome-shaped building with a golden exterior. One can go inside the Matirmandir to meditate only at certain hours of the day, and then, only with permission. In fact, one can view the exterior of the Matrimandir only at particular hours of the day.


Matrimandir, Auroville

No flowers, incense, or images are allowed in the Matrimandir. If meditation is withdrawal from sense-objects, the Matrimandir enables it!