#Title

A personal quest to explore the core essence of ‘Bengaliness’
ESSAY
NIRA RAHMAN
As an academic, I find the discussions around positionality and intersectionality fascinating. I enjoy delving into questions around ‘sense of self’, how our identity is constructed, how language and culture shape our thoughts, learning styles and ability as well as how we interpret the world around us. These questions seem significant for my academic work around education design and developing pedagogical practices in higher education. While exploring and examining how diverse students and migrants represent their ‘sense of self’ in academic and social settings, I started to ponder about my ‘sense of self’ and how other Bengalis around me represent their Bengali identity.
I started questioning who or what is the ‘Bengali’, beyond our history, emotion, and heightened sense of self. What defines us? What are our defining moments? What makes us who we are? Realising ‘Bangaliyana’ is still at the very centre of my identity even after living away from Bangladesh for more than 20 years, I started to contemplate what is ‘Bangaliyana’ or what lies at the core of that ‘Bengaliness’. Is it just a thousand years of our shared yet turbulent history? Or is it just our intense and melodramatic emotions? Or is it our heightened sense of self and healthy(!) ego?
In my maiden literary work, Bangalir Ontormohol , published by Baatighar, I tried to find the answers to these and related questions. As a Bengali myself, I tried to interpret and examine the sense of ‘Bengaliness’ (Bangaliyana) in the 21st century context through the prism of philosophical, social, cultural, historic, linguistic, global perspectives Bengalis consciously (or unconsciously) define themselves by. In my book, I explore and explain the Bangali culture, language, community, attitudes and values in its entirety. What does it mean to be ‘Bangali’? How do the actions and experiences of our ancestors inform our actions and experiences in the present? How does our language express and betray who we are? Through this book, I want to take my readers on a journey to explore, reflect, and contemplate our identity now, and what it means for our future.
What does the title Bangalir Ontormohol mean? The word Ontormohol was word-smithed and evolved from the word Ondormohol which means intimate and personal space of the house. So, if we consider the ‘Bangali’ sense of self (i.e. ‘Bengaliness’) as a whole domain, in this book I tried to capture the intricate, intimate, enchanting and exquisite aspects of ‘Bengaliness’. This book, which is a compilation of 10 essays, explores with readers the core aspects of ‘Bengaliness’ that we proudly term as ‘Bangaliyana’. I aim to take my readers for an exploration to the intimate and personal space of ‘Bengaliness’ through the different chapters of this book. Hence, the word Ondormohol transformed to Ontormohol as Ontor, meaning ‘heart’, keeps the concept of core essence attached to the domain of ‘Bengaliness’. The title brings a greater nuance using a rather unusual Bangla word to express the concept of inner space.
To define ‘Bengaliness’ or who we are in the 21st century, I tried to delve deep using my own positionality and intersectionality into language, culture, history, literature, philosophy, social mores and even the gastronomic tradition of the Bengalis. Bengalis in the 21st century who are now globalised claim to be internationalised, yet are in fact very traditional and conventional with their deep-rooted heightened sense of self. Hence, we are often confused and often mystified with our identity and positionality. It often seems from time to time, we are unable to define ‘who we are’ and ‘what makes us “us”’.
Through different chapters of the book, I used my own experiences and journey to define, explore, and analyse various perspectives and aspects around what it means to be a Bengali, in terms of both the singular and the community identity. I used common jargons, proverbs, and colloquial terminologies of Bangla as resources for social analysis to understand the psyche, disposition and socio-cultural inclination of the Bengalis of the 21st century.
This book also talks about the Bengali diaspora and their positionality and the construct of their intersectionality in their adopted homelands. It too included the discussion around the unique aspects of globalised Bengali identity and the juxtaposition of deep-rooted Bengali identity with intersectionality of global citizenship. Using my personal anecdotes, I also showcase music as an innate component to describe and define the sense of self and intersectional identities of Bengali migrants. Bengali cuisine and delicacies being vital to any Bengali, in this book I included a chapter where the idea of ‘Bengaliness’ was portrayed through the enthusiasm and evolution around Bengali cuisine and gastronomy! I also dealt with the social constructs around gender and its contradictory nature around philosophical, spiritual beliefs with common social displays and actions in different chapters.
The various examples I used in each chapter to engage the reader in comprehending the sense of ever evolving ‘Bengaliness’ could be described as bewildering, ambiguous, or enigmatic. However, all of these contradictions, confusions and inconsistencies contribute to and encapsulate the resilient spirit and eternal core essence of ‘Bengaliness’: Bangalir Ontormohol .
Read an extended version of this article on The Daily Star website and on Star Books & Literature’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages.
Dr Nira (Nirupoma) Rahman is an academic at the Arts Teaching Innovation in the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. She also regularly writes for Australian and Bangladeshi (in both English and Bangla) media on various topics that connect her academic interests to her personal insights around culture, language and identity.