 So you want to go to the beginning of your slideshow? Yeah. Yeah. So how do I do that? But why is all this showing? Even my zoom is showing. Anna, can you come over here? I don't... the zoom should not be... We'll do this later, we'll do this. Let us stop sharing, so your screen is there. We'll hide the controls later on your slideshow. No, but why didn't you share the screen already? Why? Because then you've been a status monitor. Oh, it doesn't matter. Yes, yes. Go ahead. It's like we share everything. Okay. Good afternoon, everybody, and it's okay. I can... So, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this very special Thursday colloquium. And we are very pleased to have Monsunmi Homik with us today at the Homimava Center. As you all know that she's visiting TFR this week, and there are a number of programs that are lined up. She is conducting a workshop, a panel discussion, and a concert also. This morning she had a session at TFR, and now she's here. And we, first of all, thank her very much for making time to visit us here at HBCSE. We would have loved a longer interaction, but I think even this is great. So, welcome. Now, Monsunmi Homik would not need any introduction in front of the Bengali audience. But since we are in a different corner of our vast country, so let me say a few words to introduce today's speaker. So, Monsunmi was born in a family in north of Bengal that had roots in east Bengal. And she grew up in Shilom, and later went to Santini Ketel for her studies. She did her graduation and post-graduation in English from the Department of English in Jathapur University. And recently she has submitted her thesis, a doctoral thesis on the wax cylinder recordings of Arnold Big from Bengal at Jathapur University in Kolkata. And to most of us, Monsunmi is primarily a singer par excellence. And she's a singer of eminence. She sings her own songs, which she writes and composes herself, and also Bengali folk songs. Her songs deal with the struggles of the common people, both in their daily mundane life, as well as the emotional strife with him. And reflect a very deep empathy, especially for the not so fortunate among us. That is the hallmark of her music. And for people of my generation, she was among a galaxy of stars, of singers who broke new ground in Bengal in the decade of 1990s, and left a very deep impression on many of us. So we actually grew up with her songs and songs of some other singers of that same time. And apart from her achievements in writing and performing music, she's a multifaceted personality. She has an illustrious career as a researcher, as an activist, as a writer and editor. She collaborates with artists and scholars across disciplines and languages. Monsunmi is the primary caregiver or caretaker, you may say, of the traveling archive, field recordings, and field notes from Bengal, co-created with sound recorders Sukhanta Madhunda. And tomorrow in the asset colloquium at TFR, she will be talking about the story of this archive, how we made it. And she has published numerous essays in both Bengali and English journals. She is based in Kolkata, but travels widely between India, Bangladesh, and UK. And her work is largely centered on the question of what and where home is. And she is deeply attached to Bangladesh, which has been an abiding interest in her life, I think. And her concert theme is also this year for Bangladesh. And she composed music for the Bengali movie Mati Moina, the claybird, directed by Parik Mushun, which won the Critics Prize at Khan Music Festival in 2002, and the best music at Karahan Festival Karachi in 2003. And I now invite Monsunmi to deliver her talk today on what the road has been teaching me. And I'm told that she spontaneously breaks into singing during her talks, and we expect the same today that she would enchant us with her wonderful music. Thank you very much for inviting me here. It's a real privilege to be in the midst of people who are so intellectually engaged and in disciplines which are quite removed from mine, I imagine. But then maybe not so removed, because finally we are all engaging with life and the universe in different ways. And it's really, it's very special for me to have come to Bombay at this time for many reasons. I began to interact with Bhashwati who is sitting here and Jay Kumar Radhakrishnan in November last year. And then it just took all this time, almost six months for us to arrive at this. Meanwhile a lot has happened to our social and political and personal lives. So in a way just being by the sea is healing for me. And it's, I think it's really fortunate that I could be here at this time. So I say, I go into such details to say all this because what I'll be talking about is when I say what the road has been teaching me. Because I think the primary thing that the road teaches, if we want to listen, is if it can teach us some amount of empathy and compassion, then that is the best lesson that we can have from the road. And I'd really like to talk today about empathy and compassion. So here I'll start by showing you a little slide of a man. This is, you can see the angle, it's a top angle. So I am on the third floor of the building and this man. This is the street below my house in Calcutta. And his name is Bhaktudash. He's a singer. And Bhaktudash used to come, has been coming to my street. I have known him for from 2009. So the first time we recorded him for the Traveling Archive, which is a sort of shared platform of listening to music and songs and stories from across Bengal and from other places. And not just our research, it also goes into bringing in the research of other people. So it becomes a shared platform that way to where we bring in other researchers into our listening experience. So Bhaktudash would come into the street and he would come, I live in a blind lane. So he would, and in South Calcutta, it is very close to Jalapur University where I live. So he would come into the street and you would hear him long before you saw him. Because such was the power of his voice, that you could hear him and his cry. You heard him. So the road has also taught me to actually some amount of discernment it's given me. So I have learned to also be able to recognize some of the sounds. Because listening is, just because we have a pair of ears doesn't mean listening is a given. Listening is something that we also need to learn. We need to teach ourselves how to listen. So I think what the road has been teaching me is something of the art and craft of listening and the politics of listening. So Bhaktudash, when he would come into the street, kind of knew from his sound because I've traveled. And if only if you travel, you begin to hear the sounds of other people, the vastness of, you know, and the variety of sounds, you don't. If you live in a small confined world, then you do not learn to listen to the range of sounds that encapsulate you, that surround you. You don't get to listen to them. Bhaktudash used to come and I knew from his sound that this was a man. And he carried that history of his journey in his voice. You can hear that. So I knew from listening to him that this man comes from East Bengal. If not him himself, but maybe his parents. They're generous. So you can hear that migration in his voice. You can hear just from it. You don't have to hear. It's not because you hear the dialect. It's just in the sound. It's in the quality of the sound, in the projection of the voice that you hear that. And you would hear it only if you know that sound. So because you know that sound, and here I suppose I'm talking, I'm telling you things that are very similar to the way you experience things in your research. That you recognize something, a phenomenon. You recognize it. Only when you have actually, there's a preparation that goes behind that recognition. And this is a preparation that has gone before I could recognize who Bhaktudash was. So Bhaktudash comes in. And so he would come in. And so this is a recording, the recording that I am going to play now is from 2019, 2019. And this is the last time that I heard him. So he would come to the street and then by now we've become friends. So he would, he comes to the bottom of my house and then sort of starts singing. And he knows that I'm going to appear at the, I'll come into the balcony and then we'll talk. I might not even go down. Sometimes he would come upstairs and then we, in the early days we would even record him. But then later what happened was he would, it's just he will come, I'll come out, you know. And the money is not the big thing, you know, but he'd also bring me little presents. So he brings me some, he's been to Assam on some pilgrimage. And so he'll bring me some Rudraksha, you know, so, or some flowers. And he'd say, Ma, this is for you. So he, that's how he would talk. So Bhaktudash, but in the way I've seen him over the last, over 19, so 10 years. I'm talking about 10 years now. So 10 years that I've seen him. I've seen him also aging. I've also seen him in a state of, in a state of loss of some kind. And I think the loss that I've seen him in his appearance, in his voice, in the way he tunes his instrument, I've seen it all. And I've heard it as well. And in that, I've actually seen a time that is going through, that's going through loss. You see, it's not just the story of Bhaktudash that I hear when I see him going through these nine years. It is also him and he becomes, he becomes symbolic of his time. So this song, this is very rough and it's not very pleasant to listen to. So if I play it, should I stop? Should I stop? You can't hear? On Zoom? It's not on Zoom? Right? Should I play again? Very faintly. I'll, I'll, I'll increase the volume then. Alright, let's mute your mic and use that and see if it works. There's my mic. That's certainly not. Shred screen again. So I'm muting this. It's coming. Did you do that? Completely out of tune. Completely, he's completely out of tune. His whole presence is completely out of tune, actually. And he can't tune himself now. You can see that. And over the years, he's kind of lost something. He's unable to tune himself. And he's a musician and he's, he's a musician, very good one. So how come this has happened? So Bhaktadash, you see, and he's so haggard, you can see how haggard he is. You know, his clothes, he's unwashed. He wouldn't be like this. He'd come oiled properly. And so I'll just, I can't admit anybody. So I'm just gone. Oh, what's going on? Okay, so this was, but this was about five years ago. And you can see him here and you'll see the difference. You'll hear the difference. So we've been recording him over this whole entire period. You can see the difference. And it's five years. And you can see how neat he is and how beautifully he's singing. And his instrument is in complete, you know, it's in tune and he knows what he's doing. Here, there he doesn't seem to have much control over what he is doing. And then this was him when he came to my house for the first time. And you see, this is what's happened. I have gone back actually. I've gone back from what he became to what he was. But if I now go back, go forward, the point is that from 2019, I've not seen him. And he has not come. So then we had the lockdown. Then the streets and I would miss him. And I was hoping that he would after the lockdown, because the trains, he comes by the train. So he comes from a border place. So I was hoping that he would come back because if he got the first chance, he would come back. And then when the streets started filling up again and people started to move along the streets. And people started to come into the neighborhood. Bhakti Daj did not come. And I waited for him and I waited for him. And I thought he would come, but he did not come. So in his absence, I know, I kind of know what has happened. But I can't be sure because I don't have an address for him. So I'll probably now maybe at some point, I'll actually take all these various recordings with me and I'll go on the train and I'll go looking for him, probably not find him. But he came from the road, but he came to my home. So this talk, I want to actually focus on this road, the road in front of my house. So the road hasn't changed and the sound of the road and how it actually talks about not just the seasons, but about history, about distress of people, about absences and about presence. How it does so many things. And how we learn to listen to this road. I might be the only person on the street actually listening to it so keenly, so closely. But this is, I'm listening to the road right in front of my house because I have listened to other roads. The lessons that I drew from my travels along other roads, that's what I bring to my home. And therefore I listen to the road right in front of my home with a certain acuteness, a certain keenness and with a certain ear for detail, hearing and missing certain sounds. So during, so Bhaktadaj did not come back. But in this time, after the lockdown, so we started to have all kinds of sounds coming in. One of the things that we kept hearing was the call of vendors. So, and I'm sure in every city this happened, the streets filled up with the, you know, the vegetable seller and the fruit seller and the fish seller, egg seller, all sorts of things people were bringing to our homes because we were not leaving. So people were bringing to our homes, all sorts of things. So in the middle of all this, this man, when nobody is leaving the house, no one can leave the house. I hear this cry. So he's the umbrella repairer. Chhata, he says. He's come to repair Sharabin Chhata, he's saying. So the irony is that nobody can leave the house. It doesn't matter whether it rains or it, if there is sun or, you know, we don't need the umbrella. But this is the only skill this man has. And in some ways he has to, this is the only thing he's able to do. So what will he do now? So he brings his cry to the street and nobody comes out. No one comes out with the umbrellas or with their bags, you know, to get their zips repaired or whatever. You know, that's what he's able to do. So these cries for me then become, because during the lockdown, what happened was that we lost so much of our bearings. And so many people lost, you know, their ways of supporting themselves, their economic base. And people will, it became a crisis of food. It became a crisis of, and then over that we had the cyclones. So all of these things that happened, for me, these cries, the man is crying for, you know, Shobji, Shobji, Shobji, or he's saying, Shara Bin Chhata, or he's saying, Machh Nebe Machh, or Deem Ache, Hashid Deem, Murgi Deem. And I can almost hear the kind of cries that we heard. We know that the streets filled up with during the time of the famine in 1943. So there used to be people coming on the streets, people, hungry people, and they came and, you know, in hordes they came. And they would cry for rice, they would cry for, actually, for starch. So they would cry for starch even, you know. So they came with these emaciated bodies, almost like skeletons walking along the street. And they would cry. So when there was this song by Horipodakushari from 1943, and it was a famine song, and this is just before partition. So, and the famine played a big role also in partition, I think, you know, because people were so completely disenchanted with the way things were. They realized that nobody cared for them, the Zamindars didn't care for them. And they hoped, and because the large numbers of people, the peasantry were largely Muslim, and they felt that they felt let down by the masters, those who had, those who could have supported them. So this is a song which went, it's an IPTA song. It's an Indian People's Theatre Association song. So, no, I don't, but I would have something later to share. No, no, no, let's go. Yes, so stop share. And we'll come back to it later. Okay. You're all right now? So, the song went like this, that it's the time, in this time of death, why are we dividing ourselves? Why are we sort of, you know, fighting amongst ourselves? Because, and Shonar Bangla, Hullo Shashan, so Golden Bengal is turning into a burning cart. So, So, nothing is moving. So, there the maji is, there's no boat that is on the waters. There's no plow in the fields. There's nobody, there's nothing that is possible because it's only death all around. And then the last verse goes, As long as there is some time, you know, in our hands. So, famine is coming again. Somebody comes to your door and cries, Ma, give me a little starch, give me a little pan, so that you won't be able to bear that sound. So be careful. Stop fighting amongst yourselves. This is obviously the time when the Hindus and Muslims are fighting amongst themselves. We are heading towards partition. And this is when the song comes and comes to us. Somehow when I hear this Chhata cry, or when I hear the cry of the vegetable seller, they're not crying for rice, they're not crying for starch anymore. But if we don't buy their products, if we don't buy their wares, then they're going to be starving in quite the same way. Things have changed and haven't changed so much either. So this is something that I think I, as a, it's not just because I'm a singer, but I think it is, it's just life that has taught me to try and listen to these things in a certain way. And then bring that into my work. So there was, this was the, can I go back to sharing? So, no, I'll go to the next one. So, which steps? There you go. Zoom is down there. So should I just do share screen? Yeah, yeah. So there are the ways that I have been trying to teach myself to listen. I'm not doing it on my own. I'm not doing something very unique, but I'm also learning from my teachers. And one of them is someone called Peter Kiyozak, whom I met in 2006. He is, he calls himself a sonic journalist. And Peter is a lot older than us. He lives in Berlin now. He is British, but he lives in Berlin now. And he has been, he has a project which is called the favorite sounds project. So he maps places by collecting, you know, by learning about the favorite sounds of the people of that place. So he records those sounds. He asks someone, so he might ask you, what is your favorite sound of this place? And you might tell, tell, tell about a bell or the canteen or somebody or the, you know, the clank of the utensils. You might say, that is my favorite sound. So he'll record that. And then he'll put it on the site, on his map. And that becomes the map of this place, you know, through sound you begin to listen to the place. So Peter does these things. And then he also does, so this, this he's been working on sounds from dangerous places. That's one of his other projects. And he, so he went to Chernobyl. And I thought this would, this was quite, it makes sense for us to talk about such places now. So he worked in Ukraine. He worked in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and in the Caspian oil fields in Azerbaijan. In that entire region he's worked and he's actually gone to these places where there have been environmental or industrial disaster. And what happens to the place? How does that place change? And how does it change sonically? So he says that dangerous places can be both sonically and visually compelling, even beautiful and atmospheric. There is often an extreme dichotomy between an aesthetic response and knowledge of the danger. Whether it is pollution, social injustice, military or geopolitical. The project asks, what can we learn by listening to the sounds of dangerous places? So I'll play you a recording. This is a recording of the cuckoo. It's called the cuckoo and the radiometer. So this is a recording that was made in Chernobyl. So this is what happens in this is that because even after Chernobyl has happened, there's still radiation there. So if you go about with a radiometer, it beeps and you can read the level of radiation. But at the same time, there are certain birds that have left this place and certain birds which have come back, you see, because they're of the desertion of the place. So the cuckoo has come back and is actually found its home in the nests that other birds have left. So the ground has been taken over by other vegetation. So he says about this piece. He says, besides the Ferris wheel, he also recorded the Ferris wheel in the handheld radiometer bleeps at around 250. How do you, what do you say? Micronome. R-O-E-N. Okay. Whatever. You know it. Higher than normal. And the, and the cuckoo calls are in the background. It is an ironic juxtaposition of sounds as both allude to sudden eviction. Cuckoos pirate other birds nests ejecting the eggs and chicks and radiation forces the evacuation of all the Pripyat residents. In Ukrainian folklore, the cuckoos call counts the years of one's life. So this is Peter's recording. So that's how the recording goes. And so he just walks around the place and he records. But this, this, just this little recording, it tells such a deep and such a, such a poignant story about not just about Peter's art practice. But about, about this time. And so, yeah. Well, I, that I can't tell you. That too. But then, yeah, I think there are more details. I think there are details there. I think, I think, I think we can find answers to that here. But we'll go to that a little later. Okay. I think, I think he, he knows more than me. And so he's written something about that. So there is this very beautiful. The reason why I try to listen in this particular way is also because of one of the other teachers, one another teacher of mine whom I don't know personally, but who's writing. I really love to read. He is Les Bach. He's a sociologist. And he talks about sociological listening. He writes about what does it mean to listen. And he says that, you know, deep and immersed listening. But when you listen to something, but how do you tell that story? What you've listened to? How do you tell the story of what you've heard? And their imagination plays a role. So you not only listen, but it is about thick descriptions produced through deep sociological listening are ones that theorize as they describe and describe as they theorize. This is what he says. And he says this, he gives a very interesting example. Listening is not necessarily just only through our ears because we listen also through what we see. So he talks about this image in this book. As you can see, we can again stop sharing. So this image is this woman, you know, you can see that she has a score written here of a song. So she's tattooed. She's got a score written there. And there is a story of this woman. Why was this photograph? So she doesn't, there is no sound, but you can listen to the sound if you know the story of this woman. So what her name is Donna. So Donna lives in West Norwood, South London. And she had the tattoo done to commemorate her goddaughter Lyric, who died of brain cancer at Christmas in 1997. Donna kept a vigil beside Lyric's bed along the baby's parents. Isn't she lovely? Was a lullaby that they had sung to Lyric before her illness. And they also comforted her with it in hospital. Donna chose to have the tattoo on the inside of her arms because that is the portrait. She turns the notes inside of her arms because that is where she held Lyric. So she had Lyric like that. And that's why she's written, she's got the tattoo done there. That is where she held Lyric before she died. I guess I hug my tattoos, she says. She said, in the portrait, she turns the notes and melody outward and shows them to us. The tattooist's needle perforated inside and out. This is the thick description, imaginative telling of the story. The tattooist's needle perforated inside and out. And the price of these indelible lines was a physical pain that is befitting, given the grief and loss that inspired them. Donna's look contains a strong presence. Both frail and inviolable. So this is again an image that we learn to listen to. And this is also the kind of thing that I've been, this is the kind of thing that I've been trying to teach myself as I go along the road. Because there is this very beautiful story. So there is this, this is a book, if nobody speaks of remarkable things. So what are the remarkable things? Is Bhaktadasha a remarkable thing? I mean, it is really up to us to consider what is remarkable and what is not remarkable. It is really to us to think what is remarkable. So just a cuckoo's call, just a radiometer bleeping becomes a remarkable thing. And so in this story there is a man who tried to save his wife when she caught fire and so his hands are ruined. He couldn't save her. They have a daughter. So he's telling his daughter. He says, my daughter. And all the love he has is wrapped up in the tone of his voice when he says those two words. He says, my daughter, you must look with both your eyes and listen with both your ears. He says, this is a very big world and there are many, many things you could miss if you are not careful. He says, there are remarkable things all the time right in front of us, but our eyes have like the clouds of the sun and our lives are paler and poorer if we do not see them for what they are. He says, if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable? So this is something that I think we could try and go back with is if we don't talk about remarkable things, then if none of us talk about these remarkable things, then they are remarkable, but we have to make them remarkable by talking about them. So I think I'll just end by playing another recording to you. So this is an interesting thing. This is a place that had been to. It's in Wales and there was a dam here. Again, something that speaks to us, you cannot hear the sound but it's speaking to us. So this is called Kofioc Thwerin. That's the pronunciation Kofioc Thwerin. So it means I remember Thwerin. Thwerin was this place and there was a dam that was built in 1957 and it drowned the entire place and it also drowned the chapel. And it drowned everything. And so we went on the walls. This became also this is a battle between England and Wales. And so this became a moment for Welsh nationalism. So Kofioc Thwerin became a slogan for them. And when they said Kofioc Thwerin, what were they saying? Remember Thwerin. Remember what? Remember that there was a place called Thwerin. Remember that this place was drowned because people built a dam. Remember that the dam was unnecessary. Remember that there was a chapel and in which was buried the dead. And remember that this dam actually drowned also the dead. So the myth goes like this that when there is the water kind of dries up, you can see the spire of the church. But it might or might not be true. But the myth is this that because the church symbolizes also the dead, so you can actually see the dead when the water dries up. So these are two. And I found this I thought this image of the dead bird that I was there with a friend. She's a poet and we were recording sounds of water. And I thought that this this image of the dead bird was kind of it symbolized this whole slogan of Kofioc Thwerin. And I think that is what we remind these remarkable things that we see and the remarkable things that are all around us. But we talk about them by talking about them, they become remarkable. And we learn our lessons from them. So when we say Kofioc Thwerin or when we hear the cry of the vendor on the street and or when we do not hear the call of Hock the Dush. We are actually commenting on remarkable things, I think. So we can stop the share. Sometimes that remarkable thing is for as an individual. You don't really know that whether when you are sharing such type of memory other people or other listener life or not. But let me give you an example. In my family also when I am sharing something with my daughter. They just said that that was your past. That was your time whatever you case. We don't have any problem. I suppose to learn from that. So suffer from that. So in that cases what as an individual which you think you would like to suggest that whether we are supposed to share such type of remarkable memories or not. And the things which you discussed are because again from a rural background very common things I experienced in my life. I don't know what to share. And what are the implications in teaching learning process where we are working in school education. I could answer this by actually telling you about a workshop that I did recently. I was in Dubai and I was with a group of artists. And this was this was part of an exhibition. So we the traveling archive was our project was part of this exhibition. And so this project was it had traveled from Berlin to Dubai and it was showing there. And so there was a workshop that I conducted and it was called the sounds of memory. And we were 15 to 15 16 of us. And the idea was that we would talk about home because everybody came from a different place. All of us artists or scholars or people even people who live there Dubai is such a transient place you know people come and go. And so there were all these people. So there and there was a range of people. So there was a scholar from Princeton. There was the man who looks after the gallery. So that kind of the woman who serves tea. So that kind of range of people participated in in the workshop. And we were all talking about things which seemed remarkable to us as individuals. But there was a universality to it. You know when we talked about these things it's I was telling my story you were telling yours. But there was something which connected us and the connection was so extraordinary that day. And there was someone from Syria talking when so the story became not just about the Syrian artists father's death but it became also about war and displacement. So there was this Moroccan girl who came and she was she lives in Italy now she lives in Milan. And she was talking about her father and how he as a migrant laborer he worked in Italy and would come home. And the day he came home how the songs that he played on the radio and how they waited for that sound. There's a very personal story that she was a very young girl. She would be in her twenties. So between her and me there's a 30 year age gap. But there were people also older than me. But we all talked and so we were talking about things from the past which the young wouldn't should not have been interested in. But they were interested. And when we shared our story the young were interested when the young shared their story we were interested. So somehow we sort of built that confidence and that shared space amongst ourselves where we could share. And talk about not just our individual remarkable things but something far bigger. And we were talking about this time we were talking about wars and displacement and you know and home and memories. So I think with students especially I would say it really works if they can talk about things they remember and things which and if you tell them about things that. You remember things which moved you or hurt you with our children that children always have that kind of a thing with us. You know they are very dismissive of us. So but maybe someone else's child might not be dismissive of you. So forget our children you know let them be. The point how we communicate that is also important. The way we share our experiences. Yeah. That is also important. Of course. How you explain. Clearly. No but I think you know I won't agree with you here because I think we are all actually unique storytellers. But we don't realize that. We all have our stories to tell and we can tell our own stories only in the way that we know the story. Firstly I think the task of the listener is very important that we must also be willing to listen. And if we are willing to listen then I think the story is that your story and if I'm willing to you might have your hesitation. You might be fumbling for words. So what you know let me still listen to you because you will tell your story in a way that I do not know. I'm going to be listening to sounds that are very unique to you and I can hear now even in the way you're talking. I mean I am talking in a particular way. I come from and I'm carrying my own journey with me in my voice. So I formulate what I say, my speech, my diction, my pronunciation. Everything is sort of you know it's processed in a certain way. You come from another space and you bring and the richness of it. I do not have it. You have it and it's unique to you. So I think we all should it's not at all a question of who is a better storyteller. We are all actually if given the chance we all could break into story and sound. All of us and we all have our I think very unique stories to tell and listen to. It's very difficult to say how do we align, how do we train ourselves to become better storytellers, better communicators. I'm sure there are ways and those who work in communication know about these things. But I think one thing that definitely works is when we listen to others. It's through our listening that we learn to communicate. Because if we listen to others then we know how that person is communicating. And we learn to listen to that person and then we respond. I think listening is very important, something that we don't do often. Because we are so lost in ourselves and so full of ourselves. And we think that our voices are so sustained and important that we don't listen to others. And this is a very political thing that I'm saying. I mean our parents do the list here. So yeah people don't listen. Ministers don't listen to others. Leaders don't listen to others. Often teachers don't listen to students. And that's something that as teachers it's really important I think that we listen to others. And like universal character of everybody. In Maharashtra there are many singers on the street. Do you know Kadovaikhara? No I don't. One lady called Kadovaikhara. She is a street singer in Aurangabad. But now people living here in Maharashtra. They may not be a hero in the singer. Now she is singing in the studio. And she has produced many CDs and many musics. She was also a street singer. And many, many people are on WhatsApp also. We see that with these street singers they have come up. It is only because of the listeners that they knew the true value of that singer. That is why they brought them up. There is no contradiction between what you are saying and what I am saying. I don't think there is any contradiction at all. What I am saying is about the question of empathy and compassion. With which I will listen to you and you will listen to me. I am not universalizing anything. What I am trying to say is we as humans tend to be really very full of ourselves. We are so full of ego and we tend to be very full of ourselves. It is a barrier or assumption that everything what we see on the faces of the people is good thing or has a good thing. It is not like that. If you really want to study or read the faces of any person you have to go to the root of and then kind of... That is true. That is certainly true. But the real personality of that person. People are not expressive in two sense at all and showing also. Everything for 30 rupees. 30 rupees nowadays... So when I was a child I used to meet with the workers. Now the children, they go to the kitchen. But it has not entirely replaced. At least not in Bengal. Because both... It is not like the sabziwala will come and shout. But there is this thing also that has started. So they play some music and then they might also... They might have some recorded music and then they will get somebody like a radio voice to say what is there. And then they say things like in Bengal they say So you cannot have a hug and so there is... Why don't you just come and take a look? So those kinds of things are also sort of that is part of the recorded track. So they do play those recorded tracks. But it is not all about the recorded track. There are also these real people who are coming to the street and singing and singing. And of course the other thing technology has entered in a different kind of way. So the people when they ask to buy old things now they will say laptop, they will say what they say... UPS, then they will say... So old mobile phones. So now they ask for that. So old mobile phones. Now they ask for those things. So earlier the guy who would ask for newspaper. In fact the other thing is that newspaper, the man who used to buy newspaper there is no newspaper to sell anymore. Hardly units, not like the same as before where in every household people had the newspaper and so end of the month they sold me a newspaper. So that has also changed. This is a question from the beginning. The final sense towards these things or observing things. For example, when I leave you to go to a teacher in New Zealand for drawing, that you first use the company and then you start drawing. But now what happens is that... If the children are here first going to school they are supposed to draw something in the half an hour for a while. So this time that they begin going to work and that's the kind of... I mean at this time it's a little bit... that is not helping us to develop the kind of... Yeah, of course. Yeah, but if you are... if you recognize this as a problem then you do something about it. So if you identify the problem then in your work, in your professional life, in your interaction with students, in your interaction with young people you do something about it. If you recognize that as a problem if you want to sensitize the child, the student and if you want to inculcate empathy and compassion in the student then clearly pace is very important and so we have to pace ourselves differently. If we are only going to go with the pace that is demanded of you then there is no point in us sitting today and having this discussion today. So again we are actually doing something that is where we are trying to break the cycle I think. So I think that it's up to us also. It's not just... we can't complain about the time because especially you all are so young so I think it's really up to you all to change how we look at time. We've run a lot, I think it's enough. We don't need to do any more running anymore. Now we can slow down a bit, I think. You wanted to say something? I don't know, like you... whether you can... who is authoritative here? Yeah, yeah, they must. They won't. That's true. But some will... I suppose some will, most won't. It's not a very happy situation. Mostly people won't. There's one observation and one question on the Zoom thing. I'm going to read it from here with the hope that your mic picks it up and I don't because otherwise I've been transcribing the questions as people have been speaking. So, Alla Craig says that, I am listening to your presentation from an area very close to Jadavpur University and you should be very close to your home. From the song that you sang from Kipta to the Chernobyl cuckoo is there a common thread that can also be found, learned and applied to say the current war in Ukraine or any other upheavals like the Bengal famine? Oh my God, that's a very big question. I'll have to do another presentation for it and even that won't cover. I suppose the thread was there in what I said and I don't think there is... I could actually talk about another thread now. I think the threads, I mean at least I thought I was threading things as I was going along. So there was... I suppose the thread is one of displacement and endangerment and search for safety. I think those are the three common threads which run through all the stories that I was talking about. Another one is a comment from Karan Ketok who says a remarkable talk and performance. It is important to record and share sounds and sights but these days for us privileged people too many times we just scroll through, see, listen, read, like, forward, scroll, scroll, scroll. Not enough, we have to try harder to question, analyze, compare, understand and work for the unnoticed, change the world in better ways. Thank you. Okay, one question. So you said that when you listen to sounds and so you can find something in them based on your background, on what you have listened on the road and throughout your life and each of us perhaps have that and of course. So this reminded me then of your song Amidya Dekhi Tumidha Dapunya Amidya Tumidha Tumidha Tumidha So first my request is if you can sing a few lines of that song. I would also say I have many requests and these are those who have not heard this. This is one of my favorite songs of the authors and so I request and then my question is that so are you talking of the same thing here that what I see, whether you see the same thing what I listen to, what I hear, do you hear the same thing? This is a very good translation of your wonderful words but first if you can sing and then... Okay, yeah but it's not just about what I listen do you hear, what I hear. It's also about do I hear what you hear? It's both ways. Do I hear what you hear and do you hear what I hear? And we don't. I hear something, you hear something but then the plurality of our listening the possibility of that plurality is what I was trying to I was thinking about you know of our listening and our seeing, the plurality and plurality is what something that we are this time is sort of forgetting that the possibility of the plural because everything is becoming mono lingual, religious, this, that, everything you know we must all look the same, be the same and yeah so that's the kind of not just in India but across everywhere so I think that is what I wrote this many years ago but I think there were beginnings of ideas there so so not just deki but also what I think and what I hear I see a swarm of heads and I say black and you say see the kite in the sky see the black winged kite so the kite that floats in the sky so you see slogans and you say red and I say so the rung on flowers are red so the evening sky is also red so many reds, so many ways of seeing red so in that there is the promise that or at least a pledge that I will try although I did not see what you saw and I did not hear what you heard I will try and I think that is the pledge yeah I wanted you to listen to me now that's why I wrote I grew up near Assam I grew up in Shillam two certain samis came connected so the reality is you have seen everyone knows the details about them but then they just connected the samis which are around you whether that be the street below your house or a green light going away and even having things and trips around you so what made you choose the medium of your communication it could have been the other way all of us you know the details of the things that are you are trying to help us see but we have already different forms of love, pleasure and love but usually we are certain we are more than any other but what made you choose the medium I don't think it was it was fixed it formed itself you see it was it's amorphous it takes its shape as I go along the journey so it's not like I had decided that this is what I would do of course I have worked as an artist as a singer, as a songwriter but also somebody who is deeply politically concerned about this time as also someone who tries to be in resistance movements in activism, rights it connects with children as a mother so there's many ways that have shaped me or shaped this where I am standing now it wasn't like it was all decided from before so it's something that slowly it's happened and because you see I think this is my way of performing actually this is my performance so because I was I have found the kind of performance that most of the times artists do that is not my path it's not for me to be on that road it's not I can't be on that road if I could then I I would be in a different place but I chose this because I had no other choice I was compelled to be like this because it's not for me to become regularly to a ring performing artist with a band travelling sing the same songs over and over making quite a lot of money and all of those things they were not working through an agent I don't know so many things that people do but it wasn't really for me to do those things it wasn't my way so because of that and also because you see I have not not been able to be part of institutions or the industry I find that difficult as well so I've had to make certain choices and the choices also meant that I had to give up certain things the comfort of certain material comforts and securities etc those are not also part of my life but I don't mind that it's alright I've been good so far and I'm well looked after by all of you so it's alright it works for me but it's not something that I had decided from before I am surprised that I'm standing here now it's shaped slowly there's something organic to it and also something unknown before that I think he wanted to ask something I had hoped it would make people think but I don't think it made people think I had hoped I had really hoped you know at least would make people take a step back and think but we were just dying to go back to where we were and I think so I don't think some must have thought and some also found products to make to which would sell better in these times of crisis so also the people people cashed in on other people's insecurities and fears so that kind of thinking people did very well but other than that to really think step back think about what it means to be not so noisy what it means to be and sound is not just sound sound signifies something else it's a way of life and we were dying to go back to that way of life and I suppose it's normal for us it's too scary not to go back to that life I think you know so that's what we've done at least to my mind that's how I've seen that the absence of planes in the sky my god that was so scary but then you could see more stars so but we still wanted the planes to come back to our lives I think yeah yeah yeah I was thinking you know how the sound would be like like I so yeah this is my question but sound we were recording there's a Welsh poet with whom I was travelling and then she came to India and then we went travelling along the tista so we went along the tista right from Sikkim we went down and we were again looking at a dammed river and how the sound changes and what the memory of sound is for the people who remember the undammed river and then the pre-dammed river and then how the sound changes and all of that we were recording all of those things so we built a whole collection of sounds of different kinds of water and Sophie my friend she works with also these microphones which work underwater so she records the sounds of water and actually there was a nuclear power plant very near on the ocean where we went in Wales and so this is a French commission and so this power plant that has been decommissioned now but still it takes a long time for it to end and so the environment and the changes to the environment and all of that so we were recording all those things so different aspects and so the dammed was one story that we were recording Thank you We can continue the discussions but after Anup speaks if you explain to us how to end it on a musical note so if you can sing a couple of lines from any song of your choice or I can choose one which is of course one of your most famous songs you can sing a few lines of that to end with but after Anup speaks you should end on a musical note I was actually going to ask her that so far she has definitely I don't know if you have come to Mumbai before but even on this trip you may have come before but post lockdown Mumbai or whatever you have traveled from the road from the airport to PIFR certainly and today from PIFR to FPCSE and I was going to ask you these journeys in Mumbai what song does it bring to you these roads that you've seen what is the song that these roads have told you but anyway you can also sing whatever Anup said but let me say just thank you this has been our first in-person first day talk after 2 years almost right and thank you so much it was refreshingly different is what I would say than the lectures we are used to it was thought provoking it was you know really we listened is what I would say and hopefully we have learned how to listen some more thank you and I hope we will all go back feeling a little bit charged up with the fact that we need to keep our eyes and ears open to what is happening around us so thanks again let's continue over tea of course but before that I think we should end on a musical note so you told me what song so I wrote a song quite recently and it comes out of a line that I work with some musician friends for the last 20 years we have been working they are in London because I have a base there I live there and so my friend Ali he is a composer he is very good multi-instrumentalist and he has a little boy who is 7 now and now Ali said that his son has been writing songs so he said so he sent me a recording of this one line it's a one line song which goes the wind is calling for the day the wind is calling for the day the wind is calling for the day it goes like that then he says that's all daddy so what's this song called oh it's called the wind is calling for the day so then I said that's a beautiful line and I am stealing it from Marolster so I stole the line and within half an hour something inspired me to write the song and I recorded the song and sent it to Ali Ali said this is quick work you know so it's called Amar kachhe, amar kachhe Shishop kotha jomai bhukhe rtape