Today is the Bengali New Years day. It is not held on every April 13, because it goes by the lunar calendar. Vagaries of celestial bodies mean that my mother, who passed away on April 15 morning last year, on the Bengali New Year's day, has two more days to live as it were in the year since her passage. This year it was Winko's turn, but he just missed the New Year's day. He perhaps could have made it but it was better for his own sake that he didn't. I also wish that mother suffered fewer days the agony that she endured last. I miss Winko's silent paws as he paced behind me, up and down the room, as I am given to do often, and he so followed. A shadow. Funny. I miss my mother's distant look on the empty balcony, waiting for April nor'wester to break against the sky. Winko's paws, strangely soft, as soft as mother's hands on my forehead a distant memory. Kisses that I would disown when grown were to be sought again from a mouth with a hanging tongue. Selfless devotion? Yes, that. Dog and mother. That is why this pain in April.
1 comment:
The Bengali secular calendar is completely solar: and, the difference with the Gregorian calendar that one notices is primarily because the latter is not solar, in fact not even astronomical; it is merely conventional, calibrated to match astronomical reality, but only on average. In fact, the Bengali new years is not Apr 13, but either Apr 14 or 15 nowadays (I check with the panjikas regularly: See http://tanmoy.tripod.com/bengcal.html). That `nowadays' because the astronomical reality to which the Gregorian calendar is calibrated is the tropical year, whereas the Bengali calendar follows a pretty accurate theory of the siderial year. This difference is tiny: a day every 72 years, and most people do not notice it.
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