English Learning

MESSIAH OF THE HUMBLE By Shyamal Roy Beggars are a faceless entity in India, their presence only distinguishable by a whining voice or a sleeve plucked by a grimy hand. One hardly takes a second look at them. But not Shyam Bandopadhyay of Salika, Howrah. To him they are very much part of the society and, therefore, have the right to be so identified. It is not surprising, that beggars are his subject to an unending study. An accounts clerk with the Calcutta State Transport Corporation, ‘Bhikhari Shyam,’- as he is better known, is the founder of the unique organization, perhaps the only one of its kind in the world- the Beggars’ Research Bureau. For the past 20 years, he has been collecting statistics on these hapless people in Calcutta and Howrah and 30,000 individual case histories, that he claims to have chronicled so far, reveal some hitherto unkown facts about beggars. The data reveals that for the vast majority of people who vote our leaders into power, the only means of livelihoo...

  Casabianca  The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but he had fled; The flame, that lit the battle's wreck, Shone round him o'er the dead. Yet beautiful and bright he stood, As born to rule the storm; A creature of heroic blood; A proud though childlike form! The flames rolled on he would not go,  Without his father's word; That father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard. He called aloud: 'Say, 'father! Say If yet my task be done?' He knew not that the chieftain lay Unconscious of his son. 'Speak, father!' once again he cried, 'If I may yet be gone! And' but the booming shots replied, And fast the flames rolled on. Upon his brow he felt their breath, And in his waving hair, And looked from that lone post of death, In still, yet brave despair. And shouted but once more aloud, 'And father! Must I stay?' While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud, The wreathing fires made way: They caught the flag on high  And str...

Mallika  Don't call my daughter Mallika, Call her by any other name ..... Don't call my daughter Mallika It only increases my pain.... And brings to my mind  Things long forgot The years pass by so fast  And yet a whiff of the summer skies Brings Mallika's name to my heart. Perhaps you'll smile at a story  That begins-so ordinarily .... It began the day Sanat Da brought his child bride home And we all flocked around to see. Mallika was a child bride-innocence still touched her face, And yet beside her husband-she was a veritable image of grace. Sanat Da's body was twisted, He had never been able to walk He lay on a bed on the verandah of his house And wrote and read. Teaching the village kids Whenever the mood took him And sometimes gazing-just gazing at the blue skies. The palm trees, the fleecy clouds .... Sometimes just tormented by thought. Mallika's parents were desperately poor And they had eleven more mouths to feed. They would have married Mallika off to...