this thread is for all the memoirs of 71. personally ei muhurtey ami Allen Ginsberg er \"September In Jessore Road\" kobita ti post korchchi. porey \"Concert For Bangladesh\" er gaan gulor lyric post korbo. ahobaan janai shobaike kichchuna kichchu post korar jnno....chchobi poster ja ichcha.....
this post is dedicated to all the people around the world who helped us in dire times.....
September in Jessore Road--Allen Ginsberg.
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go
One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad
Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone
Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan
Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts
Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don\'t talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise
Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there
on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother\'s eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry
Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek
No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.
On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue cried mister Please
Identity card torn up on the floor
Husband still waits at the camp office door
Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won\'t give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play our death curse
Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line They play hungry tricks
Breaking the line and jumping in front
Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage
Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage
Why are these infants massed in this place
Laughing in play & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread
The man in the bread door Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer? \"No more bread today\"
Thousands of Children at once scream \"Hooray!\"
Run home to tents where elders await
Messenger children with bread from the state
No bread more today! & and no place to squat
Painful baby, sick shit he has got.
Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep
Refugee camps in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked on mother\'s thin laps
Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die
September Jessore Road rickshaw
50,000 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food
Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?
Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok\'s green shade.
Where is America\'s Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?
Where are the President\'s Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?
Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road\'s children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?
Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul\'d lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!
Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for Love we don\'t know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious of America brain
How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare--
Cries in the mud by the thatch\'d house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve in their mother\'s arms curled.
Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?
What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night\'s table on bone & roast pork?
How many millions of beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams--
Finish the war in your breast with a sigh
Come tast the tears in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara on planet TV
How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast the children they\'ve killed?
How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes in illusory pain?
How many families hollow eyed lost?
How many grandmothers turning to ghost?
How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers make no more sound?
How many fathers in woe
How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat?
How many uncles with swollen sick feet?
Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go
New York, November 14-16, 1971
oshadharon bhaiya...
i m searching for sm too...
pailei upload korbo...
this is what Ustad Ravi Shankar said before he started the famous \"Concert For Bangladesh\". this was the openning statement of the concert;
The written appeal;
Almost a quarter of a century ago, in August of 1947, the state of Pakistan was born following the departure of the British from the Indian subcontinent. It was a most unusual nation, carved out of Muslim dominated areas of India. It consisted of two wings, West Pakistan and East Pakistan (Bangla Desh), separated by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory.
Racially, linguistically and culturally the two Pakistans were poles apart. Tensions between the two wings developed almost immediately. Political, military, and economic power was concentrated in Urdu-speaking West Pakistan, while Bengali-speaking Bangla Desh was relegated to a subordinate position in spite if the fact that it contained more than half of Pakistan\'s total population. Dictatorial rule by West Pakistan army officers generated discontent in both wings of Pakistan. Bangla Desh demands for a more equal treatment were consistently disregarded.
In March of 1969, General Yahya Khan assumed power in Pakistan with the professed aim of ending the dictatorship and introducing Democracy. In the first free election ever held in the history of Pakistan, in December 1970, the Awami (People\'s) League of Bangla Desh won an overwhelming victory. It emerged as the largest party in all of Pakistan, entitling it to from Pakistan\'s first Democratic government. Yahya Khan and the West Pakistani leadership, however, were unwilling to permit a power shift to Bangla Desh, or even a more equitable distribution of power.
The results of the election were consequently disregarded and in March, 1971, a deliberate reign of terror was unleashed on Bangla Desh to eliminate opposition to West Pakistani domination and to drastically reduce the size of the population of Bangla Desh. An estimated one million East Bengalis were murdered and up to the present time approximately ten million terror stricken East Bengalis have sought refuge in neighboring India. This is undoubtedly the greatest atrocity since Hitler\'s extermination of the Jews.
Even when they escaped to India, the refugees are threatened by many perils; starvation, lack of sanitation, housing and most notably - cholera. When the first crowds crossed the border, doctors innoculated them against cholera, but now the East Bengalis are swarming into India in such great numbers that they cannot all be immunized. It takes so long to use syringes and there just isn\'t enough money for innocluation guns. The government has put the cost of caring for the refugees at a minimum of one million dollars a day and it could go much higher. Although chartered planes arrive daily bringing shipments of food, hospital equipment and medicines, India still has only received barely one-tenth of the amount of foreign aid that it needs to care for the millions suffering.
For all the disheartening statistics, however, the medical service is performing impressively. Although thousands of escapees, mostly children, have already died of cholera, those afflicted can usually be saved by replenishing the body fluids through intravenous injections or drinking large doses of solution of salts, baking soda and glucose. But the flood of escapees is just too great, and the monies just too little, for all to be saved. Even in a world jaded by war and atrocity, suffering on that scale still comes as a sickening shock. Despite the squalor of their existence the East Bengalis endure with a minimum of complaint.
Unfortunately, it is expected that with the cessation of the monsoon rains a new wave of refugees, numbering at least five million, will enter India. This will immeasurably aggravate the refugee problem. It must be clearly understood that India itself is an impoverished nation hardly able to feed its own growing population and will be unable to cope with the influx of refugees unless she receives all-out support of the rest of civilized mankind.
RAVI SHANKAR
Introduction by Ustad Ravi Shankar;
To me the whole feeling of Bangla Desh has been quite a personal one, because I happen to be a Bengali. This whole issue since last March is something of such a different nature and my feelings as it happened, apart from the sympathy I have because I am a Bengali, apart from being directly involved because such huge numbers of people were migrating into India . . . they were running for their lives and so many were killed, including my distant relatives, many friends, including Muslim friends, and even people from the family of my Guru; their homes burned, completely destroyed.
\"So for me there was great anguish and suffering for a number of months since March and it came to such an emotional pitch. This was a period near the end of June when George came to California to help in making an album from the soundtrack of the film RAGA. I was very disturbed and wanted to do something for the people of Bangla Desh. I talked with people from many different organizations in the United States and in Europe who wanted me to give a benefit performance. But I thought of doing something on a very large scale that might bring in a lot of money and also, you know, awareness. So I though I would ask George, even if he could not take part himself, if he could advise me, ask other artists about it, write or talk about it - something. Then maybe we could do a big function where we could raise 25 or 50 thousand dollars. So, when I talked with him, he was impressed by my sincerity, and I gave him lots to read and explained the situation. And it was not only what I said, as an Indian, a Bengali. When he read so many things from so many countries; France, Germany, England, Norway, and the American press, which was giving such good coverage of what was happening to millions of people, suffering so much - he was very deeply moved and said he would be glad to help in the planning - even to participate.
\"Things started moving very fast. George called Ringo in Spain where he was working in a film, and he talked to Leon Russell and all of these wonderful musicians from the west coast and east coast who came to play. And he contacted Mr. Klein, who has taken care of the business and administration. Everyone has shown such deep concern. And, of course, Bob Dylan, as luck would have it, was so wonderful to take part in this cause. In a period of only four or five weeks all of this was done. To conceive, plan and execute in such short time must be setting a record in the history of world entertainment - thanks to all of these participants.
\"And now I heel a great joy. With George\'s single, \"Bangla Desh,\" my single, the film that has been made of the concert, the album coming out and whatever the gate monies from this concert . . . it will all add up to a substantial amount. Though, when you think of the amount being spent on almost eight million refugees, and so many of them children, of course it is like a drop in the ocean. Maybe it will take care of them for only two or three days. But that is not the point. The main issue - beyond the sum of money we can raise - is that we feel that all the young people who came to the concerts (maybe 40 or 50 thousand of them) they were made aware of something very few of them felt or knew clearly -about Bangla Desh and what has happened to cause such distress.
\"It is like trying to ignite - to pass on the responsibilities as much as possible to everyone else. I think this aim has been achieved.\"*
this is the starting instrumental by Ustad Ravi Shankar...
SITAR & SAROD DUET
DADRA TAL - 6 Beats
TEENTAL - 16 Beats
Ravi Shankar, Sitar -Ali Akbar Khan, Sarod
Alla Rakah - Tabla
Kamala Chakravarty - Tamboura
Song: BanglaDesh
Duration: 3.04
Track No.: 2-9
Composer: George Harrison
Vocals: George Harrison
Year: 1971
________________________________________
Lyrics:
My friend came to me, with sadness in his eyes
He told me that he wanted help
Before his country dies
Although I couldn\'t feel the pain, I knew I had to try
Now I\'m asking all of you
To help us save some lives
Bangla Desh, Bangla Desh
Where so many people are dying fast
And it sure looks like a mess
I\'ve never seen such distress
Now won\'t you lend your hand and understand
Relieve the people of Bangla Desh
Bangla Desh, Bangla Desh
Such a great disaster - I don\'t understand
But it sure looks like a mess
I\'ve never known such distress
Now please don\'t turn away, I want to hear you say
Relieve the people of Bangla Desh
Relieve Bangla Desh
Bangla Desh, Bangla Desh
Now it may seem so far from where we all are
It\'s something we can\'t neglect
It\'s something I can\'t neglect
Now won\'t you give some bread to get the starving fed
We\'ve got to relieve Bangla Desh
Relieve the people of Bangla Desh
We\'ve got to relieve Bangla Desh
Relieve the people of Bangla Desh
________________________________________
Instruments & additional info.:
vocal - George Harrison
saxophone - Jim Horn