Probashe Bangaliana - Banani Sarker
Monon Mukur Selected Article Probashe Bangaliana Me with My Roots Banani Sarker With the word ‘probash’ (exile/abroad), I always hear a sorrowful tune. I do not know—whether that tune is the flute left behind in the fields, or the beckoning of the setting sun on the endless green horizon. In this foreign land I am always searching for that flute, that gentle sunlight, that whispering breeze. My childhood days passed in a remote village at the bottom of a wetland, where I went by boat to distant fields to gather water lilies in the month of Asharh, hung clusters of kadamba flowers on the window, soaked in heavy rains on the excuse of having a taro leaf on my head, and swam from pond to pond saying, “Oh, I slipped into the mud!” Since everyone in the family had a close connection with the soil, not only the Ramadan (Month of Fasting) and winter vacations, but even if we got two or four days’ break, we would go home. And so I grew up along with the maddening joy and restl...