A tribute to Bob Dylan
This year an American finally received the Nobel Prize in Literature, Bob Dylan, a singer and activist. I am very happy and excited because he is a true friend of the people of my native Bangladesh. Bangladeshi people are also rejoicing.
When we were at war against Pakistan in 1971, there was a concert in Madison Square Garden in New York City for Bangladeshi refugees in India. Dylan, along with Beatle George Harrison and Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar sang Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” at that concert.
“Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly, before they’re forever banned.”
Indeed, we need to ban those flying cannon balls to save the innocent children, women and men around the world.
Ironically, U.S. government didn’t support the people of Bangladesh then, but the people of America did. The concert raised a quarter million dollars; over time that number grew to $12 million.
As George Harrison once said, “… musicians and people are more humane than politicians.”
A little more than 100 years ago, another great poet received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was Rabindranath Tagore. He produced thousands of literary works, including poems, novels, short stories, essays, dramas, travelogues paintings, drawings and, yes, thousands of songs.
Millions of people around the world still listen to Tagore songs. He is the only poet in the world, whose lyrics become national anthem for two countries. Here is one of his poems written 100 years ago:
Mind Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Jiben Roy
Columbus
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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