Dhurjati Chanda, Editor, Ebang, Kolkata
Malay Roychoudhury ( Photo by Sandip Kumar )
Malay: See, compared to European languages, Bengali prose is quite recent. Mathi Likhito Susamachar ( Gospels of St Mathew ) was published in 1800. Sixty five years after that, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay‘s novel Durgeshnandini was published. Third stage in prose arrived in 1914 when Pramatha Choudhury started publishing the periodical Sabujpatra ; that would mean a three year old kid. Compared to this the Jews Had their Old Testament in ancient times. The Apology of Socretes by Plato, Poetics by Aristotle, and Confessions by Saint Augustine appeared in 3rd century BC. Six hundred years before Pramatha Choudhury, Decameron was written by Boccaccio. The Praise of Folly was written by Desiderius Erasmus ; Castiglione had written The Book of the Courier. Think of Rabelais who wrote Gargatuan Pantagruel four hundred years before Rabindranath Tagore was born ; Autobiographical Prose was written by Benvenuto Cellini, Don Quixote was written by Miguel De Cervantes. How many names of European prose writers do you want me to refer to ? Pascal in 17th century, Voltaire and Rousseau in 18th. Obviously the appearance of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Balzac, Flaubert, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekov, Henry James in 19th century was a foregone conclusion. The prose writers who came after them in Europe revolutionized sentence structures, construction of words, diction, expressive inventions. To name a few : James Joyce, Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, Frantz Kafka, Marcel Proust, D.H.Lawrence, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and William Falkner. The labour and love invested by Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie in their prose is evident if you leaf through just a few pages of their books. Can you imagine as to which height the language and expressive medium has reached in their society as a result of their contributions ? Compare the rich prose used for conveying news by reporters of CNN and BBC with our Doordarshan, Ananda (ABP), ETV, Akash, Chobbish Ghanta, Kolkata TV etc. Right from the war zone or accident site the extempore prose the Westerners are using is far more developed than even the written news of our Broadcasters. Read the pages of TIME, Newsweek and London newspapers alongside Ananda Bazar Patrika, Ganashakti of Kolkata. Compare the lectures of illiterate President George Bush with our erudite Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya ; you will find even in prose Bush is wealthy. It is the writer who has to take up the job of nurturing Bengali prose. The foremost duty of a Bengali fiction writer is to develop the language and make it rich. Well crafted stories may be narrated by any grandmother. The question is not of converting language into Arts. The issue is of loving your mother tongue, local and geographical, and respecting it.
Dhurjati: Concurrently, you have had to talk about writers’ honesty on several occasions. In the present Indian context, West Bengal in particular, don’t you think ‘morality’ or ‘de-morality’ are just hollow words ?
Malay: The word honesty is so all pervasive in gambit, that virtue, morality, ethics, commitment etc—- every value system come within its purview. Actually, for the weak-kneed bengali, it is very difficult to disregard the values of life emanating out of the power structure of society. I had analyzed the present society of West Bengal in 2001 issue of Khanan magazine of Nagpur ; the essay is titled Postmodern Times and the Fall of Bengalies. It was to be included in the Little Magazine Digest, but the editor of the Digest Mr Jyotirmoy Das panicked and rejected it. You may go through the essay in Khanan. I do not know how we are going to get out of the hell that the people of West Bengali have got themselves trapped in post colonial logjam. The putrefaction is much deeper than immorality and dishonesty. Most of the poets, writers, critics— not only in the case of servants of media, but in Little Magazine world as well, lack self-confidence and self-respect, and are chicken-hearted , greedy and brazen faced. They don’t love the place called West Bengal. Sunil Gangopadhyay, wants the name of West Bengal changed to Bangla, but would not like the name of East Bengal Football Club changed to Football Club of Bengalies.
Dhurjati: “You can’t carry your flag of honesty to places where millions of Rupees are spent on fireworks by individuals in one single night during Diwali festival, lecherous lasses collect gold biscuits in day-night performance.” You had, in an interview to Arunesh Ghosh, said these words. The word ‘honesty’ is very relevant here. To a postmodern thinker, does honesty of the day entail death of modernity ?
Malay: Are you attacking Arunesh Ghosh ? In that case he has to answer this question. It is true, he is simultaneously writing in DESH, associating himself with Marxist Communist Party in power, trying to prove himself a participant in the Hungryalist movement, has declared himself to be an anti-establishment writer, etc. Don’t you think such a character signals the end of modernity ? Arunesh Ghosh is a present day Bengali, a member of the dreaded School Teacher Gang of the ruling party. However, his brandishment is visibly palpable at the micro level. Of late he has been found to have opposed the present power brokers of West Bengal. His modernist ideals might have withered away, but what about the dead end where the philosophy of idealism itself has reached ? LTTE, Jaish-e-Mohammad, ULFA, HUJI, Al Qaida, NLFT, LET, Hizbul Mujahideen etc are all fluttering some sort of flags of idealism to kill human beings. Modernity died at that juncture. And thus the relevance of local narratives. hordes of border-crossing ungrateful Bengalies have destroyed the ‘local’ society and culture of North West Bengal by grinding it under the steamroller of the grand narrative. Arunesh Ghosh is obviously pained and guilt stricken as he is one of those border-crossing Bengalies who have decimated the Coch, Mech and Rajbanshi people.
In reply to second part of your question, I’d like to say that one may be a modern person ; but just because the structure of his writings is postmodern, you need not label him as postmodern. Local narratives may term him as Dalit, Subaltern, Green Peacenik, Environmentalist, Feminist, Anti Global etc., or he may be part of any other micro level protest ; here their honesty is unchallangeable. It is mainly because of their honest intent that so many Public Interest Litigations are being filed in various High Courts and Supreme Court.
Dhurjati: What is the explanation of morality and moralization in the Uttaradhunika or Adhunantika perspective ?
Malay: These days I prefer to use the word Postmodern in place of Uttaradhunika or Adhunantika. Linguist Dr Prabal Dasgupta had coined the synonym Adhunantika in the Indian perspective ; that is because some pro-establishment poets such as Anjan Sen, Amitava Gupta etc. had launched a poetry movement named Uttaradhunika. The idea of literary movements itself is a relic of modernism. As was Hungryalist movement. All literary movements have been conceived on the assumption of the Grand Narrative of Time and human civilization as linear. In modernist prescription one could predict the march of history. Which means the structure of present and future are known beforehand. One may conceive of theories. Postmodernity is an open-ended space. It can not predict the future. However, it analyzes the present and identifies the features. It surpasses the author to examine his texts. If you deconstruct their discourse, you will be able to make out as to why these people turned out in to great frauds who took refuge in the Grand Narrative. People who once bragged about social commitment, today we have come to know that they had forcibly occupied other people’s lands, which they are selling now to promoters-builders. Through their Grand Narrative traps they catch voters. This is whu postmodernists are giving importance to local narratives. Postmodern ethics is : “Small is Better than Big”. Microforms or microlevel systems, disciplines, relations, face negligible erosions, if confronted. That is why they are better than macroform systems. Macrolevel moralities were imposed by Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Pinochet, Franco, Idi Amin, Yahya Khan, etc.
Dhurjati: If ‘Establishment’ is a modernist epithet, what is the postmodern or Adhunantika flip side?
Malay: No, no. A word can not be modernist or postmodernist, that way. The idea within an epithet can be confronted from modernist or postmodernist view. Modernists, I am talking of West Bengal, who are embeded in governmental Grand Narrative, have been labeling Ananda Bazar Patrika corporate house as Establishment. Whichever government is installed at the Centre in Delhi, they call it Step Mother Establishment. That is an epistemic fraud. Ganashakti newspaper and the local government secretariat are limbs of the same power structure. The Bengali Marxists do not have faith in the governmental Grand Narrative though ! In the postmodernist perspective when you talk of local narratives, all suzernities are ‘Establishment’. Patriarchy is establishment to Feminists. For Subaltern writers the State Award Committees lorded over by upper caste writers are establishment. Some son of the soil of West Bengal, ie., the original inhabitants, unlike East Pakistani refugees, had told me last year that the Bangla and Sahitya Academies have been captured by those erstwhile refugees who have converted them into Hindu East Bengali Establishment. Muslim writers consider these Award Committees as Hindu Establishment.
Dhurjati: I consider your poetry collection Shoytaner Mukh ( Face of The Devil ), wherein some of the poems were stamped CANCELLED, as postmodern or Adhunantika. Would you yourself call it modern ?
Malay: Oh ! I find you remember it. The day the book was released, it created much turmoil at the Kolkata Coffee House ! Publisher Sunil Gangopadhyay had gone to Iowa, USA to learn how to write poems., and the Krittibas group was headed by stop-gap leader Saratkumar Mukhopadhyay. I do not have a copy of the book. I am unable to recall the poems which were branded CANCELLED. The rubber stamp was used at that time to cancel gilt-edged bonds. I guess it may be explained this way : “the pages which were marked CANCELLED could be construed postmodern in the sense that their beginning and exit points got a visual structure of being wide-open.” Anyway, it has become one of watershed legend of the Hungryalist movement. The event was an iconoclastic venture which in retrospect now appears to be one of the ultimate triumph of modernism, that artistic game in which life was put at stake and the rules of which required such brazen acts of impudence to be legitimized by manifestoes.
Dhurjati: Today the market culture is the superordinate ruler ; consumerism is victorious. What is the postmodern explanation ?
Malay: This exactly is the condition which people are terming as end of modernism, or the Postmodern Condition in India. In such a situation the market is the superordinate discourse to which corporate media literature of potboiler writers is relativised, and in which it finds meaning and justification. Just as dot-pens and injection syringes have now become disposable, so are poetry books, novels, films, compact discs, DVDs, songs, paintings, etc. In today’s West Bengal, there is an intensification of awareness of incoherence, along with the decline in the need for order. It reveals an equivocality about the meanings and relations of things, matched by willingness to live with uncertainty to tolerate the contemporary West Bengali world seen as random and multiple and even incongruent.
Dhurjati: A creative person’s life long struggle is not for amassing money or wealth. It is rather a desire for recognition which spurs him. How far is it applicable to you ?
Malay: Who told you only poets and writers are creative persons ? Doctors, farmers, labourers, engineers, hawkers, shopkeepers, cooks, train drivers, miners, pilots are all creative persons. Otherwise the Homo Sapiens who once emerged from Africa would not have danced on the surface of moon. The human being in a collective is very complex. He keeps on breaking barriers and enhancing frontiers. That is how we got high yielding Taichung paddy, Operation Flood, Borlaug’s wheat, cloning, heart transplant, Save Narmada River Movement etc. I am similar to such collective humans. Paradigm shift takes place because of the work of ‘thinking’ of some people. As a result his work or thought comes down to everybody’s notice and benefit.
( Translated from Bengali by Indrajit Bhattacharya )
Dhurjati Chanda
Malay Roychoudhoudhury
Bapi Chakrabarty, Editor, Durer Kheya, Kanpur
Malay Roychoudhury
Malay: Critics did identify me that way about 30-40 years earlier ; that is because the Hungryalist movement was started by me. Now that a number of titles of mine have been published, I presume I am not branded that way anymore. This aspect has not at all been raised by Dr Tapodhir Bhattacharya, Satyajit Bandopadhyay, Udayan Ghosh, Barin Ghoshal, Ajit Ray, Zahirul Hassan, Samir Sengupta and others who have discussed my fictions and poems in2001 in the collection of articles edited by Murshid A.M. Since you reside far away from Kolkata, you appear to live in that past glory. I would prefer that whatever I have written be discussed in a panorama. I don’t want evaluation of my identity.
Bapi: I think your personality has got mixed up with your Hungryalist image, and as a result the creative genius of poet and prose architect Malay Roychoudhury has been submerged beneath it. In the Hungry Sakkhatkarmala interview collection of yours edited by Ajit Ray, all the fifteen interviewers have repeated the same boring questions about the Hungry Generation movement. Ahabkal magazine edited by Ratan Biswas, which was published during 2002 Kolkata Book Fair, exclusively on your work, has glorified your Hungryalist image. How would you react to it ?
Malay: Modernist critics, as an easier way to enter a text, used to concentrate on the author’s person. And they were elated if they could catch hold of an image. It is just a colonial remnant; an analytical tool imposed by Europe. In traditional Indian literature, the authors were never given importance. Nobody has any idea of the identity and image of Krittibas Ojha and Bharatchandra. British imperialism had imported community-neutral image of the individual. After the Britishers departed, modernity has started disappearing in our postcolonial life. The critics who are still suffering from European canons of modernity are the persons who concentrate their focus on the writer rather than what he has written. The canon of hoisting the image was placed at the centre-stage of epistemic world of European imperialism. Nevertheless, some critics do claim that I have started surpassing my writings. I do not have any role in it.
Bapi: Your birth, childhood, youth, education etc everything have happened in Patna. Your childhood was spent in the Imlitala slum of Bakharganj. Comparison of your origin is impossible with the middle class non-resident writers such as Bibhutibhushan, Sharadindu, Bonoful, Satinath and Subodh Ghosh. With that sort of background how did you emerge as one of the foremost writer of Bengali literature ?
Malay: Other writers write for money, fame, honour, domination, awards etc. My literary activity has been an effort of an Outsider who endeavours to enter into West Bengali culture, in view of the fact that I belong to the family of one of the original inhabitants of Kolkata city, ie., the Sabarna Roychoudhurys. Ahabkal magazine has published my ancestral tree since 9th century. I do not think any other Bengali writer has had to bear such burden of being associated with his own culture. Apart from this, my education at Catholic Christian and Brahmo Samaj schools has been inspirational for me.
Bapi: Are movements necessary for literature ?
Malay: Hungryalism has been the only worthwhile movement in Bengali literature. Obviously, there must have been socio-political reasons. Sociologists would be in a better position to explain as to why it erupted. In the post-colonial period, no other movement is possible. The reason is the speed of consumerist society. Thus the question of necessity of literary movements in future is absurd in West Bengal.
Bapi: Such a movement in Bengali literature was not launched either from Kolkata or any place in West Bengali. It started from outside Bengal ; from Bihar.
Malay: That is because of the desire for entering West Bengali culture ; a desire to dredge the filth out of its cultural river, and recreate the streaming flow ; to kick the butts of vulgar refugee-esque literary guardians. The residents of West Bengal of that time, ie., 1960s, were not even aware of their self-imposed lethargy, inactivity, inertia, disease. Since I was born and brought up outside of West Bengal, things were quite clear to me
.
Bapi: You have termed yourself a Cultural Bastard. Kindly explain it.
Malay: Go through the two explanations which Bishwajit Sen and Ajit Ray gave on the subject. Bengalies who live outside West Bengal, gradually get transformed into cultural bastards. The same has happened with me. Bishwajit and Ajit have discussed the social, political and literary dimensions of the issue. But I have presented the matter in a wider perspective. In our Roychoudhury family, Mughal and Pathan cultures intruded during my ancestor Panchanan, who was a military commander in Humayun and Akbar’s cavalry. Panchanan’s grandson Jia, who became known as the famous sage Kamadeva Brahmachari, tried to combine the values of Vaishnava and Shakta sects, by worshiping Shyama Rai and Kali at family level. His son Lakshmikanta, when he was advisor to Maharaja Pratapaditya, was imbibed in Portugese culture. I have studied in Catholic school and Brahmo school. The childhood locality of Imlitala had homes of low caste families, at that time called Untouchables. The locality of adolescence was crowded with conservative destitute Sunni Muslims. If one has to deconstruct my text he will have to go through these layers.
Bapi: What is your opinion about today’s Bengali literature ? Is it really unthinkabe to launch a literary movement any more ?
Malay: Other than my own writings I am not bothered about anything else these days. Not only in literature, no movement is possible in any other field. In other areas some pressure may be created, such as in Save Narmada River or Tribal Rights. However, the consumerist media impact in case of market literature is so all-pervasive that no movement can change the speed in life and living.
( Translated from Bengali by Indrajit Bhattacharya )
Bapi Chakrabarty ( on left )
Subhankar Das, Editor, Graffiti, Kolkata
Malay Roychoudhury
Subhankar: The Hungry Generation literary movement was launched by you in November 1961 with the publication of a manifesto on poetry in English from Patna, where you were residing at that point of time and nobody could believe that a Bihar-based Bengali can have any say about Bengali literature. During the course of the movement you got arrested, lost your job, dragged around town by the Police with a rope on your waist. How far is it true ? Do you still feel the relevance of the movement still exists ? If not, why ?
Malay: Everything is recorded in the trial papers which may be retrieved from the records of Bankshal Court, Kolkata. The case number etc are also available in various publications. Why don’t you make a little effort and spend a few silver to get certified copies of these papers to enable yourself to get enlightened about the facts. The Hungryalist movement has changed the course of Bengali literature once for all. We definitely created a rupture in terms of time, discourse, experience, narrative diction and breath-span of poetic lines. The lecturer of Assam University who is writing his dissertation for a Doctorate on the subject, gleefully informed that Bengali academicians are even today scared to utter the word Hungryalism. Well, I guess that speaks a lot.
Subhankar: I need a little more explanation on the word Behari — the causes behind the rejection etc., lost your job, dragged around town by the police with manila rope on your waist— do yo still remember that day ? I need the story of that day. Can you elaborate a little— rupture in terms of time, discourse, experience, narrative diction and breath-span of poetic lines.
Malay: I don’t want to recall those days ; it gives me pain in my present loneliness. I want to forgive everybody. There is a rupture, in Bengali we call it Bidar. Look around you and you will get the answer. Manila ropes were not there in our time. Ropes were made of coconut husks. I don’t think you will fathom the diasporic plurality of a Behari Bengali, or a cultural bastard.
Subhankar: Keeping in mind the Hungryalist movement made big difference in the attitude of Bangla literary scene, don’t you think any kind of movement finally aspires for a kind of regimentation, closed groups where the freedom of the authors needs to be sacrificed to keep the movement going ? Please share your experience.
Malay: Arrey yaar, don’t think in terms of your knowledge of the movements in Western literature. Hungryalist movement did not have a centre of power, high command or polit bureau. Any one and everyone were free to join the movement just by declaring himself that he was a Hungryalist. In fact some of the later Hungryalists are not known to me even today ! Participants were free to publish their own broadsides, pamphlets, booklets, magazines etc. The movement was not confined to Kolkata only. As you have just said, I was from Patna, Subimal Basak was from Patna as well. Pradip Choudhuri was from Tripura. Subo Acharya was from Bishnupur. Anil Karanjai was from Benaras. The little Magazine Library & Research Centre at Kolkata is having an archive, you may like to check out.
Subhankar: What initiated you to leave the literary hub Kolkata to live a life of a recluse in Mumba?
Malay: I sold off my Kolkata flat, gifted entire collection of books, gramophone records, discs, cassettes etc to friends and readers and donated all furniture in my neighbourhood. I felt very sad about Kolkata. As you know, once upon a time Kolkata belonged to our clan. I found it just leaching. Not that I wanted to come to Mumbai. I would have preferred to go anywhere. I came to Mumbai because I have a one-room flat in this city.
Subhankar: Why you found Kolkata is now just leaching and nothing more ?
Malay: I just stopped myself from uttering the expression The City of Lechers. I had experienced the city some sixty years back ; it was completely different . Ask anyone of my age , anyone who is not a part of the present power nexus.
Subhankar: Do you still feel like an Outsider after all these 49 years ?
Malay: Oh, yes. I am The Outsider.
( Copyright Subhankar Das )
Subhankar Das
Alexander Jorgensen ( Part 1 of Interview )
Malay Roychoudhury
Alex: In what ways were you successful in “undoing the done for world” and start afresh from chaos?
Malay: Success is a strange word as far as arts and literature are concerned. Are the cave paintings, Aztec sculptures, pyramid engravings successful ? We do not know their views. The Hungry Generation movement was definitely successful in undoing the colonial canons.
Alex: If you could name a few artists who inspired you, who would they be ?
Malay: I would name two illiterate persons : Shivnandan Kahar, a man who knew Ramayana, the epic written by poet Tulasidas, by heart ; and Ramkhilawan Singh Dabar, who could recite couplets from the works of poet saints Kabir, Rahim and Dadu. They were our family servants at Patna. They quoted from these poets in order to reprimand us during our childhood.
Alex: In one sentence, what would you like to say to those who might argue that Hungry Generation poets were, well, reckless ?
Malay: They have not read us, otherwise they would have known that the human brain is Divine. our books are published by small presses , and the reader generally has to contact us for a copy of any publication.
Alex: We have many examples of individuals who have had a difficult time “balancing” the requirements of family and art. How important has “family” been to you as an artist ?
Malay: very important. Without a supportive family a writer can not have structured peaceful schedule.
Alex: If you were to die tomorrow, would be happy with the contribution to the arts and the world that you have made ?
Malay: Happiness emanates from the process of involvement in writing. I don’t think that a writer is much bothered about immortality, especially a Hindu, who burn their dead, and do not have the culture of writing epitaphs.
Alex: Any regrets ?
Malay: Yes. I should have inculcated the habit of maintaining daily diary right from the school days. My experiences are extensive and varied. Unfortunately I am unable to recall the important incidents which impacted me.
Alex: What type of things do you find yourself working on these days ?
Malay: An M Phil student, Swati Banerjee, was preparing her thesis on comparative study of my poetry and Ginsberg’s. I had to search out material for her. for the present, Prof Bishnu Chandra Dey of Assam University, who is preparing his Ph D thesis on the Hungryalist movement, is seeking my help in locating references. This has kept me busy for sometime.
Alex: Where do you go for inspiration ?
Malay: Inspiration comes from within a writer. It is an up-wailing precess in your psyche.
Alex: In terms of expression, the saying “what needs to be said” and how that might be articulated, what do you think about the use of multimedia and technology in the arts nowadays ?
Malay: They have vastly widened our sense of wonder. One now has unlimited spark-ways to venture into the unknown.
Alex: To someone looking to learn more about the Hungry Generation movement, where would you recommend they start ?
Malay: Not much is readily available in English. My Selected Poems were published twenty years back. During the sixties several little magazines in the UK and US brought out special Hungry Generation issues. Those magazines may be traced from archives of the editors maintained in Universities. If Black Robert Journal is interested I would make available xerox of a couple of informative essays.
Alexander Jorgensen
( Copyright Alexander Jorgensen. Reprinted from Black Robert Journal, 1999 issue )
Alexander Jorgensen ( Part 2 of Interview )
Malay Roychoudhury’s interview by Nayanima Basu
Roychoudhury’s experimental work entitled “Prachanda Baidyutik Chhutar” ( “Stark Electric Jesus” ) , a deeply personal and confessional poem penned in 1963 and first published in 1964, created enormous controversy with its publication. It led to both public and private condemnation of its author and, due to the ensuing scandal, which included his prosecution and ostracization at the hands of peers, Roychoudhury refused to write again. It was not until 1983, following the death of his mother, that he would return to his writing.
First introduced to Malay Roychoudhury on a visit to Kolkata in 2007, I have found his discussions and correspondenses to be vibrant, thoughtful, frank, and often filled with levity. Uniquely engaging, he has offered opinions on everything from contemporary visual poetry ( vispo ) to politics. “An interview with Malay Roychoudhury : Part One”, appears at http://www.blackrobertjournal.blogspot.com )
Alex: You have said that Hungryalists were not “reckless”. Would you admit, however, that some members would later become self-serving ? My question relates to the idea that we become less idealistic as we grow older. Is idealism important ? How does it fit into your life ?
Malay: I am not sure whether the 19th Century concepts of “self” , “ego” and “idealism” retain their original definitions in our 21st Century world. How do you explain these concepts in the perspective of what is being called Islamic Terrorist Human Bomb ? He definitely has what we presume to be “self”, “ego” and surely “idealism!” Otherwise why should he come to India to kill Hindu, Cristian, Jew, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist infidels ? Marx, Sartre, Freud and even Darwin would have experienced a vertigo of ontological nightmares if confronted with the present world scenario . “Idealism”, thus, is a term applicable to situations in time and space. I remain idealistic in the original Hungryalist sense of being honest . Idealism does not wane with age ; it gets continuously redefined . It definitely becomes difficult to remain a social being in West Bengal with Humanitarian Honesty as an ideal.
The Hungryalists were not self-serving, since they wrote very little during the movement, and published lesser, as nobody liked to publish them. But after name and fame , a few Hungryalists did become self-serving, whom I avoid, and who obviously despise me. The problem is that when the discourse is narrowed down to ART , ego becomes relevant. The superordinate discourse is the market today, and ego functions as a conveyance.
Alex: While in Kolkata, I witnessed what I interpreted at the time to be “poetry guilds;” my feeling was that these communities were involved in the construction of an “intentional poetry of political allegiance,” with attention paid to a particular style of writing. Would you say this is true ? if so, then would this be a byproduct of the Hungryalist Movement ? What are your thoughts ?
Malay: No. Groupism evolved in mid-1950s with Krittibas and Shatabhisha poetry magazines, which claimed and behaved in a fashion as if only they had the power of definition, distinction and evaluation of literary discourses. Krittibas ultimately got inducted into the business house called Ananda Bazar Patrika ( leftists dub it as “Establishment”). The Hungryalists were treated as untouchables by these groups, though Hungryalism as a movement was in a continuous flux, somewhat like the Surrealists. Hungryalists made attempts to wrest that power and dismantle Groupism. What you call Guilds ( may be we can call them poetry cartels ) evolved in Kolkata ( not throughout West Bengal ) after the Naxalite political upheaval. Naxalites had to form secret hitmen groups. Nowadays , poetry Guilds are formed around a couple of poets who can afford to publish a regular poetry magazine. These are magazine oriented groups, and do not have an agenda. I guess most of these poets come from refugee families of erstwhile East Pakistan who wanted to legitimize themselves by re-rooting in West Bengal through a periodical based literary group. They should not be taken seriously.
Alex: Was Tagore the worst thing to ever happen to Bengali poetry ? To Poetry ?
Malay: Rabindranath Tagore‘s ( the Shakespeare of Bengali literature ) poems are now confined to academia. Academicians use him as a ladder in the cultural circuit of West Bengal, which unfortunately lacks in “Icons.” As a Bengali cultural icon, he can not be wished away. It is not his poems, but his songs which works as an impediment, the result of which has meant that Bengali music in post-independent India has failed to catch up with the world ( only now we have a singer poet in Kabir Suman ). His songs are being sung even in funerals ! Nevertheless, written Bengali diction had emerged out of the Tagore family. You can’t blame them. Had the British started their Empire from Dhaka in Bangladesh, the Bengali literary diction would have been different. Authors in Bangladesh, such as Bratya Raisu, Jewel Mazhar and Ebadur Rahman, write in their diction ; literary diction in Bangladesh is therefore changing. I would like to mention that one of the Hungryalists, Subimal Basak had written his novel CHHATAMATHA in this diction in 1965, for which he was castigated by academicians. Today, in West Bengal, Tagore is just a show piece to be flaunted, especially by middle class gentry. His Shantiniketan has been ruined by the Leftists.
Alex: Tell us about your typical day. Now, I hear you are currently putting together a daily diary. How often do you meet visiting writers and artists ? How do your wife and son assist you with your many appointments ?
Malay: I get up early, quite early, and spend a couple of hours on the Internet, as no charges are levied till 8AM. Do some yoga thereafter as advised by the physiotherapist. Have a frugal breakfast of oatmeal with vegetables while browsing through two Bengali and English newspapers. Till 1PM, I read a magazine or a book, while taking notes in my brain. I simultaneously read several books and magazines ( that is why I refrain from reviewing books ). I dislike visitors till 3PM. From 3 to 4PM, I do some freehand exercises and sit at the PC to attend to my blogs ; nowadays I concentrate on Bengali sites where I interact with young readers. As often as possible, I avoid visitors ; I have found that most of the visitors are not well-read ( the Leftist government abolished English teaching in schools in 1980s ), and it is a sheer waste of time. It is also irritating, a few obstinate readers insist on visiting me, though I do not know why. They come from remote places and I can’t drive them away like poet Buddhadeva Basu who had shut his doors the moment I uttered my name. I was born in 1939 and at this age I love to be left alone in my silence. Due to my bad health, my wife quite often intervenes ( so that I do not lapse into bronchial bouts of coughing ) if the visitor wants me to go on talking. Visitors are entertained upto 7PM, when I sit with my drinks and start brooding about the next day’s blog ( where I write the drafts and block public visibility till finalization ). My son is very busy now with an Australian firm. Since attending to my blogs, I don’t write daily diary, and have destroyed whatever I had written earlier .
Alex: What words of advice might you offer if asked to serve in the role of a mentor ?
Malay: No. No. I don’t want the role of a mentor bestowed on me. Each person should introspect and chalk out his own path.
Alex: How important have your exchanges with other writers been ? What did you gain from Allen Ginsberg ? What did Ginsberg gain from his time spent with you ? In terms of cross-cultural challenges, did you find that there were any present during this period of mutual exchange ?
Malay: Yes. That was the case till 1980s when I interacted with any or all writers. I gained a lot from the visiting authors, as varied as from Daisy Aldan to Dhumil to Kamal Chakraborty. The most important has been the visit of Professor Howard McCord of Washington State University ( later Bowling Green ) , who published my controversial poem Stark Electric Jesus with an introduction in a booklet form, and made me known in North and South America and Europe during the 1960s. It is thanks to him that this poem gets reprinted almost every year ( I do not have any copyright of any text of mine ; they are owned by my readers ). He sent me books written by US and European authors about whom I had only heard.
Allen Ginsberg visited me at a time when I was dithering in non-religious atheism. He reinforced my pagan heritage of worshiping water, light, fire, air and other gods of nature. I can’t claim that I contributed to his thinking, though, perhaps in changing the notion that there can not be only one God ; there has to be innumerable gods for innumerable human spreads out in order to be eclectic, tolerant and resilient. Three fishes with one head, which he used as his logo, was pointed out by me from Emperor Akbar’s grave floor — the Emperor who himself wrote a religious treatise to unite all the religions of India.
Ginsberg used to talk to my mother in sign language. My father was terribly angry with him as Ginsberg was interested in taking photographs of beggars, lepers, mutilated, half-naked poor Indians. After I saw his Indian Journals, I was very much upset to see those photographs highlighted.
I spent a few months with non-literary hippies in Varanasi, Patna and Nepal. That was quite an experience with women and drugs. Hippies were fascinated that Allen Ginsberg had visited me.
Alex: Tell me about the technology you employ in sharing your work and ideas with others ? I know you have a blog ?
Malay: Other than using the desktop PC for net surfing, writing blogs and visiting network sites, I don’t have access to any other technology. No blackberry, IPod, IPhone or other gadgets. I wish I was young and used the gadgets that keep on coming. In case of the desktop PC, I am also a novice. I have to request my son to lend a helping hand to sort out things when I find myself stuck. But the internet really places my work far and wide ; people pick up my work and spread it among themselves. In most cases, I come to know after quite sometime, even a year. It is a pleasant feeling
.
Alex: If you could walk a mile in whatever circumstance, where where would you choose to do it ? What would be your last meal ?
Malay: I would go to the bank of river Ganges, at the place where I had kissed my Nepali classmate Bhuvanmohini Rana. My first and memorable kiss. I do not know where she is now. Must have become old or might have died ; she was two years older than me. I would sit at the same spot at the same time of autumn evening to revisit her tenderness.
My last meal will be a hot chicken tanduri and a few pegs of single malt.
( Copyright Alexander Jorgensen. Reprinted from the Chekoslovak-based GRASP magazine, May 2010 issue )
Alexander Jorgensen
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