When the 60-year old wife of the poor cobbler Ramchandra Ruidas was crying in unbearable pain and lying untreated in home since 3 months following fracture of hip and the self-declared guardians of Hindus looking the other way, in came Samiul Haque and his co-religious people of two West Bengal villages of Murshidabad district --- Ghanashyampur and Purba Debidaspur.
Despite being poor, they donated as much as possible and managed to collect an amount of Rs.35000/- and admitted Shankari in a hospital located in the district town of Baharampore. And Samiul donated the greatest treasure of mankind which is not only a rare "commodity", but not duly available even by paying loads and loads of money also --- INVALUABLE BLOOD --- OUR LIFELINE.
This is Bengal --- of mine, ours, Rabindranath Tagore (whose Nikhilesh had religiously protested against the atrocities on poor Muslim subjects by the "Swadeshi" brigade for selling foreign-made goods ), Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (who had felt the pain of the hapless farmers like Hashem Seikh), Saratchandra Chattopadhyay (whose compassionate pen cried on the plight of Gafoors and Aminas), Kazi Nazrul Islam (who composed devotional songs on Goddess Kali), Lalan Fakir ( who wondered what is the "look" of caste or community) and of Suman Chattopadhyay-Kabir Suman (merged in the same body) who desires to have hope on Aadab and Namashkar, hope on the music of Aazaan and conch shells at the end of the day and long for the Archanas and Ayeshas to reside side by side.
Yes, the great minds of this land have always cried for humanity by getting rid of all silly religious chauvinism and bigotry. Not surprising when Amartya Sen recollects how the Muslim kings of Bengal patronised the translation of Ramayana and Mahabharata!
By forsaking preparation for the feast and Eid-related celebrations, when Fazlur Rahman and his friends rush to the accident site (involving Kanchenjunga Express in Choto Nirmaljote village, Darjeeling district) to take charge of the situation - - extricating the bodies and the injured passengers from the mangled coaches, collecting the luggage and protecting it from loot until police force and Railway officials arrive and thereafter assisting the administration by staying back till late afternoon bringing water and providing first aid whatever possible; when a "mere" casual employee of Arambagh subdivisional hospital, Hooghly district - - Syed Ashik Hossain - - shells out Rs.28000/- from his own personal savings, purchase clothes and distribute it among 57 persons on Eid-eve (at the height of the pandemic in 2020) with the beneficiaries including few Imams, physically-challenged individuals and most strikingly 37 Hindu priests also (after getting perturbed on witnessing loss of income of the Hindu priests as temples were closed following Lockdown) so as to gift them something as Eid is a festival of joy and he wished to see all the people happy in that area; when senior citizen Roymoni Das of Bardhaman religiously ensures iftaar meals and early morning Sehri meal for her temporary tenants --- two Kashmiri shawl traders getting stranded due to 2020 lockdown; when Partha Sarathi Basu
(Barasat, North 24 Parganas) engages in a fast from dawn to sunset during the entire month of Ramadan (the ancestral family of whom nurtures a mosque - - found forsaken in the middle of the land purchased in 1964 - - with much love) with the shrine (named after Shah Amanat, an 18th-century ascetic in Chittagong) acting as happy pilgrimage and place of worship for people of all religions; when an iftar gathering (Shibpur, Howrah district) witnesses foods getting arranged by the Hindu women with the fruits chopped through bnotis (iron blades) which are used by the ladies during preparation of Lakshmi Puja bhog at their homes --- not only does Allah bless these selfless souls throughout their lives; Bengal India and Humanity also wins the day by enjoying the last laugh!
Amidst the harvest of rampant communalism and intolerance worldwide with the merchants of hatred simply breathing down the neck of pre-poll Bengal so as to "Occupy" it by hook or by crook; we cannot afford to fail the likes of Fazlur Rahman, Syed Ashik Hossain, Roymoni Das, Basu family and the ladies of Shibpur who all provide us immense oxygen of hope that perhaps the force of disintegration will ultimately fail to destroy the embedded humanity within us.
Let this shared living be the only antidote to the marauding juggernaut of communal polarisation. Let the crude devils going all-out to divide humanity in terms of man-made religion, be exterminated from the soil of Bengal and India for ever.