« কনস্ট্যান্স গার্নেট : ভাষান্তরের নেপথ্যে | Home | A modern epic »
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche……..
By Subhamay Ray | April 27, 2008
Jyoti Bhusan Chaki’s (*) emaciated frame, his devotion to the cause of learning, his simplicity and moral virtue are tempting to draw an immediate parallel with Geoffrey Chaucer’s Clerk of Oxenford…
And he nas nat right fat, I undertake,
But looked holwe and therto soberly.
[And he too was not fat, that I take,
But he looked emaciated, moreover, abstemiously.]
But his shrinking figure hardly betrayed the eternal flow of knowledge and love of learning that moved in all directions in his mind.
A teacher to his core, an honest and sincere linguist who was mostly self-taught, a grammarian of exceptional calibre and remarkable foresight, a translator of merit whose horizon spread over several languages, his true worth and abilities remained largely unknown to the world of knowledge for a long time. Living most of his life in the last century, JBC was one of those remaining men of letters who wore their scholarships very lightly on their sleeves and worked away from the glare of the public eye. A humble man, in his simplicity, humility and honesty, he followed the best traditions of scholarship in Bengal. Referring to the onus that was thrust upon him when his publisher asked him to write a Bengali grammar, JBC said: “Even when the desire to travel beyond the cordon becomes paramount, the Puranic fear of transgressing the limits remains. Yet I accepted the offer. The fruit that is attainable only by the tallest of the species prompts the dwarf to raise his arms as far as he can.” His demise will leave a vacuum hard to fill.
JBC was an austere devotee in the realm of knowledge. Even towards the end of his life when consumerist greed and selfish pursuits in every sphere of life were bringing catastrophic changes all around him, he refused to lose hope. He looked behind and tried to rejuvenate his sinking soul with the eternal vigour of life that he found in the lives of the great Bengalis of the past - Rammohun, Vidyasagar, Rabindranath, Vivekananda. When he was accused of his proclivity towards Sanskrit grammar in writing his own Bengali grammar, he remarked: “It is true that I held the cloth-end of Sanskrit so as not to deviate from its path, but I held it as a child holds onto the borders of her mother’s cloth.”
As a citizen of Calcutta, JBC was witness to many path-breaking events in the cultural and political sphere that happened after 1937, the year he first came to this city at the age of 12. Those events formed a collage in the backdrop of his mind — the consequences of the Second World War and how it affected life in this city, the famine, the refugee camps, the sheer struggle for existence of thousands of displaced families. He described how in those days he lived in a single room with his seven brothers, three sisters, his mother and wife. He reminisced about his association with the bookshops of College Street, the old books on the railings of Presidency College, the small eateries and tea shops in that locality and the endless adda (discussion) sessions there that provided nourishment and sustenance to his mind.
Grammar is popularly viewed as a dry subject. In his book on Bengali grammar, JBC enlivens the discussion so often with his humorous comments and tongue-in-cheek observations. In one place he refers to the use of the Bengali word matra (মাত্রা) as a translation of the English “dimension” and says: “Give a dimension to (or a new dimension to) something is a nice English idiom. But, it seems, we can’t sleep at night unless we can add a ‘new dimension’ to everything! If a sentence in the editorial has ‘new dimension’ in it, and if it is a Friday’s newspaper, then you’ll find new dimensions in the music critic’s column, in the art critic’s forum, in the drama critic’s write-up as well as in the dialogues and the stage direction of the play he has reviewed! What are the possible advantages of such a usage? You never have to know and write about the true nature of the new dimension. You are merely using a stunt while adding that new dimension and leave it there!”
JBC believed in the ancient model of purity in the study of languages. Yet he was cautious and didn’t lose sight of the fact that new trends are inevitable. He says: “Sometimes I think that I am only portraying the past as golden in my mind and have lost the inclination to accept the new. But new words will be created and they will demand entry into the fold of the language. Who will stem that tide? Dr. Jonson’s remark comes to mind: Tongues, like Governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration.”
Like the image of the grammarian immortalized by Robert Browning in his poetry, perhaps JBC spent many nights bending deeper over his books and refused to rest. His sacred thirst is unmistakable. That for long he remained nameless, was nothing to him and perhaps he will confront us again, continue with his unfinished works and assure us that he will live near us forever. Perhaps he will illuminate our faces with:
What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever.
===============================================
* Jyoti Bhusan Chaki (1926 - 2008), teacher, linguist, writer, translator and grammarian, wrote innumerable essays and his Bengali book on the meaning of words named Bagartha Koutuki(বাগর্থ কৌতুকী) as well as the modern Bengali grammar entitled Bangla Bhashar Byakaran (বাংলা ভাষার ব্যাকরণ) will make him immortal. He was a teacher in a Kolkata school for more than forty years. He knew many languages including Sanskrit, Pali, French, Greek, German, Urdu and Arabic. He wrote a Bengali book on the literature of the Urdu language, translated Kalidasa (Sanskrit), Ramcharit Manas (Hindi) and the poems of Kaifi Azmi (Urdu). He was working on a multilingual dictionary involving Bengali, English and Urdu and was honoured by the Sahitya Akademi and Jadavpur University, the latter having conferred upon him an honorary D. Litt. degree.
Topics: In Memorium |