
Report by :
Prabhat Ghosh # Agartala
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Bengali to English Translation & bold notes in 2nd brackets { explanations } by :
Nirupam Banerjee, INDIA
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IS JEEP-PHOBIA PREVIOUS LIFE'S MEMORY, THE IMAGINATION ARISING AROUND THE 'MEMOCARIATE' CHILD
18 June : No, not this child is ‘Mukul’. Nay, not even the child speaks of any Fort made of Gold so much so that any wicked ‘Vabananda” would chase him up .
{ The first two sentences have been decorated under the literary influence of the Bengali movie named “SONAR KELLA” by the Bengali film-director late Satyajit Ray . The name of the movie means “Fort made of Gold” and 'Mukul’ was a child in the movie who seemed to remember his previous life in such a fort in Rajasthan , India and 'Vabananda’ was a villain character who took Mukul from West Bengal to distant Rajasthan in the search of treasures in such a fort . }
Not even the child has had any pleasant memory , the only negative emotion being a phobia about a particular type of Jeep . Furthermore , the child doesn’t even allow his father to ride the Jeep , saying : “Go by bus or other vehicle , they fall in accident less .” In the Santirbazar area in the outskirt of Udaipur , the headquarter town of the South Tripura District , the ‘imagination about a previous life’ is now arising about a four year old child named ‘Arindam Banik’ and shortly ‘Lakhai’.
It’s this incident that has again surfaced the question of reincarnation to explain the children who remember previous lives . The Conventional Psychologists , however , radically deviate from the belief of the many general people . Being a Psychiatrist , Dr. Dhirendranath Nandi has opined : “I and my colleagues had heard many such events . But afterwards through various experiments , including even hypnosis , the question of reincarnation appeared to be ill-founded . These children tell these stories after listening to other people’s other stories or by simply exercising imagination . And what’s most unfortunate is that there arises so much so fanatism that such cases are getting on enlarged . Further due to this , it’s not even unnatural that the corresponding child would later on become a mental patient .”
Dr. A . K . Nath , a Psychiatrist in Agartala , has said : “There can never be any ‘Jatiswar’. { It’s a Bengali word meaning : ‘Person who remembers previous life / lives .’ } Quite often , parents and neighbors use to tell about such accidents . And that triumphs over the child’s mind . Later on , people earn some money by projecting the child as God or God-like human .”
Arindam’s parents and grandmother ( mother of father ) have pushed forward the message that while siting on in the father’s lap , the child has repeatedly described a village a few kilometers away , mentioning also where he used to park the Jeep . And it has sparked into them the idea of all this memory coming from Arindam’s own previous life .
Arindam’s father Susanta Banik , a vendor of aroma-sticks for worship { ‘Dhup’, as they call it in Bengali language } has informed that two months ago he was going to the headquarter town with his son , the Jeep being the most convenient vehicle to reach there , and that while entering it the small child has resisted , saying that he would never enter the Jeep as it often falls into accident . The father added : “With such a tiny child uttering out the word ‘accident’, I became suddenly puzzled . After repeatedly asking my son back home that night , he replied : ‘I know that particular Jeep falls into accident . I myself fell into this.’ Next he told about a village in which he claimed that he used to live in and there roamed about red cows in the fields and there was a temple of Mahadev .” { Lord Mahadev is a personality in Hindu Mythology who is worshipped in many places in India by the Hindus . }
There hasn’t been any crowd in Lakhai’s home in the Santirbazar area of Agartala to see the ‘Jatiswar’. Taking in the lap the child , who was having a big circular patch of ‘kajal’ { a black paint used in India to decorate the face } in the forehead , wearing a chequered shirt and ash-colored half-pant , his father has informed that the accident the child speaks of did happen in the Potichhori area , a place in between Agartala and Santirbazar . And he adds that ‘the previous personality’ as recurringly mentioned in the child’s statements had lived in Debdaru village .
Such a village , however , does exist four kilometers away . A resident of that village , Kartik Sarkar has opined that the space behind his home was used for parking a Jeep . That vehicle is now absent . But he couldn’t tell about its any accident . Another resident , an old woman named Hormohini Ghosh however has announced : “7-8 years ago , a Jeep did fall into accident near Potichhori on the Santirbazar-Agartala road . It carried two persons . One died , and where the other had gone to isn’t known to me .”
The Jeep too had gone untraced after the accident . The name of the Jeep-owner is Swapan De who has his home at Sarsima , a village adjacent to the Bangladesh-frontier in the Bilonia area . He didn’t want to speak at all anything about the vehicle . But his elder sister Suniti De has revealed : “The accident really did happen . The driver of the Jeep , Arup Chakraborty got injured . He received compensation , afterwards he was said to have gone to Bangladesh . As far as his assistant in the Jeep was concerned , no one knows the person’s name . Whether any of the two died in the accident isn’t known to anyone .”
All this voluminous information however doesn’t give rise to any significant interest among the Banik-couple . Not attempting to earn money by showing their child , they’re now rather thinking about whether or not any harm takes place to this only descendant of their family .
THE END
NOTE:- The Newspaper was the popular Bengali distillate "Anandabazar Patrika" based in Kolkata, West Bengal, another province (in India) where the Bengali language is followed. And the report occurred there on the Sunday, the 19th June 2005.
In the Google Map below is indicated the position of Agartala.

The Paper-cutting @ Sunday the 19 June 2005 [Photo © Prabhat Ghosh, Agartala]