“Probasi Bangali”…or. .. A term which has recently been incarnated in neon and glows, as it has become one of the finest ingredients of self marketing strategies…. Staying few grass fields away from Bengal may be in Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam or thousands of miles away in New York, London and Berlin comes under the same flavor of probasis…..
- One will be amazed to see that these so called the society cream (how come? If they are not attached to the society at all) putting up funds and associations to reassess their attachments in a glamorous way…. How artificial can one be???
- They would say they miss the parar more cha adda (local tea cafes), whereas these days a lot of youth doesn’t actually brush the caffeine turf moreover they might not know the taste even……
- Just as they move away from Bengal, suddenly the Kolkata streets becomes crowdy and full of chaos and somehow Bengal doesn’t know how to handle traffic even if they are living in as busy cities like Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore where office time vehicles find it hard to move an inch…..
- I was wondering that in the city they lived for some 30 years has suddenly been clutched with the worst weather and becomes impossible to survive without an AC (just in case if they plan a trip back)…..
- And you will notice a common term while conversing with them “your city….. my city” even if they might have just landed for a day or two in foreign or even planning to relocate….
- They would claim that they are advance as they can hear all Bengali songs in CDs and DVDs whereas all of them are more or less manufactured and marketed here itself or even bought out here (Advancement huh!!!) and also organizing Biswa Banga Sangeet Sammelan I never came around to understand as to why they need to organize such music festivals and manifest they love for Bengali music and how they miss it… Since when reading ebooks over black and white letter imprinted on fibres from woodpulp accounted for advancement……..
- They would invariably miss fish even if they don’t know the names and how does it taste…
- You would come across quite a few probashis who would talk about Tagore, Bamkim, Tarashankar….. Without knowing what they actually say as they find it hard to read a single line in Bengali….
- And of course you can easily spot them in the high priced restaurants offering Bengali cuisine… without the basic ingredients and taste missing (mind it…. The names of dishes are maintained with high values)……
- And of course you will surely find a huge number of Bengali’s changing their names to adjust to the foreign standards( Madhusudan Nandy changed to Mod Nandi) for easy pronouncing……
- I came across one such probashi who doesn’t like to eat dishes which are dark in colour…. With all my potential used I failed to make him understand that eating bright coloured dishes will not make his skin fairer as he is very hard to spot where there is no sun…..
They still complain about the shortcomings of Bengal without actually giving a thought for a solution…. What is use of teaching them culture and values with such high cost when they are to serve some other country, buy cars, flats and complain about Bengal being backward….. Hypocrisy has sneaked into them to such extent that some of them even finds it livelier to deny their roots and likes to call themselves as NRI ‘s rather Indian….. I wonder where would any of these land up finally???
