Sonnet 'September on Jessore Road' and Jessore Road history

Jessore Road. Not simply a road name. Like the Grand Trunk Road or GT Road built by Sher Shah Suri, this street is a demonstration of history. The street begins from Shyambazar in Kolkata, India goes through Barasat, Bangaon, Petrapole, Benapole, and finishes in Jessore in the Khulna region of Bangladesh.

As per history, Kali Poddar, around the zamindar of Jessore, assembled this street from Jessore to Shyambazar in 1840. Also, planted Raintrees on the two roadsides. His goal was for his mom and different lovers to go on a journey to Shaktipith Kalighat with the goal that the exhaustion of the long excursion would be cut off in the cool shade of the trees. At present, the Dumdum-Barasat segment of Jessore Road has a place with National Highway No. 12 and the Barasat-Petrapole area to National Highway No. 112. What's more, entering through Benapole, the part up to Benapole-Jessore has a place with N-706 of Bangladesh.

Jessore Road likewise assumed a significant function in the freedom battle of Bangladesh in 1971. A great many East Pakistanis fled to the obscure city of Kolkata on this street to spare their lives and the respect of their girls from Razakars and West Pakistani fighters. At that time traveling via vehicle or train was an extravagance for them. They looked for asylum in India by walking. In 1971, numerous passed on Jessore Road as they couldn't bear the agony of strolling.

Artist Allen Ginsberg came to India in 1971. Also, around then, the artist's heart was captivated by the photos of thousands of evacuees strolling along Jessore Road. He portrayed a contacting sonnet of 152 lines, 'September on Jessore Road'. Bounce Dylan conveyed the tune to the world with the song in that Ginsberg sonnet. Furthermore, the enduring of incalculable guiltless individuals on a road in Southeast Asia arrives at all over the world. Behind this was the commitment of the late sitar player Pandit Ravi Shankar. Ravi Shankar was a companion of George Harrison, a previous individual from the Beatles. He disclosed to Harrison the predicament of the destitute in East Pakistan at that point. At that point on August 1, 1971, Harrison, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Star, and numerous others coordinated a show in Madison Square, New York to help those exiles. It was there that Dylan epitomized Ginsberg's verse in his own melodies. The coordinators gave the cash to UNICEF for the advancement of outcasts in India.

Benapole is situated on Jessore Road on the Bangladesh outskirt. The nation's second-biggest land port was dispatched here in 1978. Indeed, even today, products from the two nations are imported and traded through this Benapole by means of Jessore Road. In 2018, the public authority needed to chop down many trees on the two sides of Duleen's Jessore Road to Petrapole to make it four-path. In any case, preservationists and neighborhood occupants went to court to restrict the public authority's turn. In the end, with the mediation of the pinnacle court, the Ponta trees of Kali Poddar, the zamindar of Jessore, was spared. Which he once planted to dispense with the street work of the sponsors. Which later offered coolness to the war-torn, terrified, destitute evacuees. Which actually projects a shadow over the current age.

The September on Jessore Road

Millions of babies watching the skies

Bellies swollen, with big round eyes

On Jessore Road -long bamboo huts

No place 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^[7]

Millions of souls nineteen seventy one

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 field s through rain flood ruts

Dung cakes on tree trunks, plastic roof huts

Mother squats weeping and 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 ‘Maiya' cry'

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

September Jessore Road rickshaw

50,000 souls in one camp I saw

Rows of bamboo huts in the flood

Open drains, and wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food can't get past

American Angel machine please come fast!

Where is Ambassador Bunker today?

Are his Helios machines gunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of US Aid?

Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade

Where is America's Air Force of Light?

Bombing North Laos all day all night

Where are the President's Armies of Gold

Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?

Bringing us medicine food and relief?

Napalming North Vietnam 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?

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 American brain.