বাঙালির ঐতিহ্যে ও চিন্তাভাবনায় শান্তিনিকেতনের উপস্থিতি এক বাস্তব ঘটনা। কিন্তু আজকের শান্তিনিকেতন আর সেই ঐতিহ্যের শান্তিনিকেতনের মধ্যে কতখানি আছে ‘মিথ’ আর কোথায় দাঁড়িয়ে বাস্তব, তার এক অনুসন্ধান রয়েছে এই বইয়ে। ঐতিহ্যের হাত ধরেই কীভাবে একজন ‘বহিরাগত’ ধীরে ধীরে শান্তিনিকেতনের সংস্কৃতির সঙ্গে মিশে হয়ে ওঠেন ‘আত্মার আত্মীয়’; পণ্য ও ভোগের সর্বগ্রাসী আধুনিকতার বাইরে যে অন্য এক শান্তিনিকেতন আজও আছে, পরিবেশ ও প্রকৃতিকে বাঁচিয়ে রেখে ছোট্ট সেই শান্তিনিকেতন যে অনেক ঝড়ঝাপটা সামলে তবু যথার্থ অর্থেই ‘বিশ্বভারতী’— পাঠককে সেই পর্যটনের ভিতর টেনে নিয়ে গিয়ে এই বইয়ের লেখাগুলি মনের পরতে পরতে ছড়িয়ে দেয় আনন্দ ও জিজ্ঞাসা। বইটির সার্থকতা শুধু নামেই নয়, রয়েছে মননে। English Translation The proposed book is a collection of essays in Bangla, written with a tongue-in-cheek, belletrist style, about the cultural practices of Santiniketan. An important agenda of the book is to portray Santiniketan as a chronotope which is one of its kind as far as the Bengali people are concerned. Since the time Rabindranath Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram with an experimental school in 1901, the place has gradually emerged as the chief centre of the initiation and refinement of a number of cultural practices that the western-educated, bilingual Bengali upper and middle-class selves identified with, and with an ever-increasing poignancy. The ashram in Santiniketan gradually appeared as the epitome of 'Bangaliyana'-a mentalité as well as a fine art of living for the bhadraloks of Kolkata, a city which was the quintessential centre of colonial modernity. However, one will surely miss the mark if one tries to study Santiniketan and 'Santiniketani' culture in the form of a synchronic stasis that may be labelled as 'Tagore's Santiniketan'. The diachronic changes that the place witnessed during the last half century or so are simply phenomenal. As journeying between Kolkata to Santiniketan has gradually become much easier, some important characterological changes have taken place in the Santiniketan-chronotope itself. The places has witnessed a real estate boom as affluent Bengalis from Kolkata and elsewhere, in search of 'quality living', have begun to buy lands and build plush bungalows near the ashram. Improved transport system also became instrumental in transforming the ashram into one of the most favourite weekend destinations for 'touristy' Bengalis. This has subsequently brought about sweeping changes in the local economy on one hand and, on the other, wreaked havoc with the social fabric of the place and the fragile eco-systems of rivers and water-bodies, forestry, and the culture of tribal villages located nearby. So, if one were to trace the changes that are taking place in the present-day 'glocal' ('global/local') Santiniketan, one would find materials fit for a social scientist to delve deep into the internal dynamics of societal changes discernible between the 'real' and the 'hyperreal' Santiniketan. This book aims at presenting the changing faces of contemporary Bengali culture with the life in Santiniketan serving as a major trope. Santiniketan will also serve as an important cultural index in the book for understanding the nature of the self-fashioning of the Bengali people in the twenty-first century. But, as a counter-point to the overarching theme of the book, a couple of essays of the book will have focus on the contours of the metropolitan culture in Kolkata. This would hopefully bring the unique kind of dialectics involving the country and the city-Santiniketan and Kolkata-in sharper focus.
দীপঙ্কর রায় (জন্ম: ১৯৭০) বিশ্বভারতী, শান্তিনিকেতনের ইংরেজি সাহিত্যের অধ্যাপক, ‘রবীন্দ্রনাথের উপন্যাসে স্বদেশভাবনা’ বিষয়ে যাদবপুর বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় থেকে ডক্টরাল ডিগ্রি প্রাপক, রবীন্দ্র-প্রবন্ধ ও সাম্প্রতিক বাংলা কবিতার অনুবাদক, বাংলা শিশু ও কিশোর সাহিত্যের ইংরেজি সংকলনের সম্পাদক এবং ইনট্যাক্, শান্তিনিকেতন-এর সক্রিয় সদস্য।English Translation Dipankar Roy has been teaching in the Department of English, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, since 2003. He has a doctoral degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His book on Rabindranath Tagore's fictions, In Tagore's Own Country, came out in 2015. He is one of the contributors to Towards Tagore, the 150th Birth Anniversary Commemorative Volume, published by Visva-Bharati. His writings on Tagore can also be accessed in e-journals like Rupkatha and Muse India. Apart from Tagore, his essays on subjects ranging from Bengal Renaissance to Rudyard Kipling's Kim, from R. K. Narayan's Malgudi Days to Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's Aranyak have been published in reputed national/ international journals and books. He is the recipient of the Isaac Sequeira Memorial Award for writing on Amitav Ghosh's novel The Hungry Tide.
