Do something for great sons of our town, give pride to the people of their heritage

Sharing pleasant experiences 1-Glasgow airport Poet Burn’s Birthday 2: Chief of Municipality about Gujarati Poet Kavi DalapatRaam DahyaaBhaai.

Glasgow Airport

By chance, it so happened that the day I reached Glasgow, capital of Scotland, it happened to be Birthday of British (Scottish) poet Robert Burn. As I was alighting from flight, every passenger was greeted by a pleasant official and each were presented with 1- a well-bound book containing collection of poems by Burn 2- celebration program schedules at various locations in city on that day. 3- Pamphlets from restaurants that offered celebratory dinner with poet’s favorite dish, haggis. 4- Small bottle of scotch. Scotland is proud of her son, who had died nearly 250 years ago and whose poems evoke Scottish nationalism.

Certainly worthy of copying similar thing in our country with our heroes.

(As for haggis, I being a vegetarian did not taste that dish however my friends and others to who I spoke, told me that it is not a tasteful dish and no one likes it and yet no one missed the tradition of cooking/eating that dish on Burn’s b’day. It speaks volumes of their pride in their poet. (Haggis is an old-fashioned almost tasteless dish of boiled beef)

 

Wadhawan City

My ancestral home town is Wadhawan city. A great poet, DalapatRaam DahyaaBhaai Kavi was born here in 1877. Hardly any Gujarati would have missed his poems during their childhood. However, until recently, hardly any knew in the city that their city had produced such a great man. There was no square, no road, nothing named after him. Nothing to remind people of their great heritage. During my one-day-visit to my home town about a decade ago, when I was on an annual vacation from my overseas job, I went to the office of the municipality. However,as it was past office hours, it was already closed. I had a very little time before my flight back. Hence, I decided to go direct to the home of the chief. She was a BJP corporator. I was surprised, she looked an ordinary looking lady. She invited me in her home and listened to my suggestion. Upon reaching my home overseas, I wrote a letter thanking her and repeating my view, ‘do something for great son of our town, give pride to the people of their heritage’. I was not expecting much, however, I was glad to see that they did act upon suggestion and named a new garden, very next to my old primary school, after my favorite poet’s name.

I recall this experience very fondly, although, I forget the name of that corporator, who, I was told,  was chief of the municipality.