সোমবার, ৩০ এপ্রিল, ২০১৮

Subimal Basak's story DURUKSHI LANE

Subimal Basak's story DURUKSHI LANE - THE FINAL ART ( Translation of 'Durukkhi Goli - Sholo Kala' )

Autumn has passed, it is winter's end-- Durukshi Lane's condition has deteriorated. From the appearance of the shop it does not appear once it was full of customers. At present it is literally Dark Moon-- shop is not opened, just a little dusting. Short pray to god. Radio is on, news from dailies -- no way out. In Parliament, only discussions arguments, counter arguments-- external affairs, economy, internal condition of the country, discussion thereon. Same picture everyday, this way or that way, Nehru, Krishna Menon, Morarji Desai. Actually what is happening , workers can not make out head or tail of the issue. Other businesses are more or less going on, during war whatever dread was there---prices of rice lentils oil had increased, higher, at present calm. No money in pocket, moreover prices of essentials are quite high. Can't think of way out of the mess, totally bewildered.

Though war has stopped, crisis is not yet over. Emergency period. Deep crisis in goldsmith's trade, sword hanging from above. Discussions take place in Sitaram's shop as well, long after evening, a shawl over shoulder. From Chinese war to backwards Freedom struggle. Partition of country, refugees, culture-rituals-- everything destroyed. Invention of atomic bomb has made powerful countries spread their claws. Has development taken place in any race by partition of the country ? Internal feud for capturing power. Such discussions. Heads dance beneath dim lamps, sounds of hookah pipe.

In such a gathering, during an evening, 9th January 1963, Dangerous news broadcast from radio. Dangerously dangerous-- in a hoarse voice radio declares--Parliament has passed the Ordinance just now :
                                GOLD CONTROL
The news spreads like wild fire in winter night. Next day in news papers, Bengali Hindi English, headlines in bold big letters-- GOLD CONTROL. Ordinance issued, Bill passed. Mister Vaidya, Haripada Roy, Ramchandra Johri, Badri Prasad, Parvaticharan-- Patna District Gold and Silver Workers Society's members are moving around. The issue has to be clearly understood. Condition of goldsmiths had reached a low from the time of Gold Bond Scheme, Gold Control will devastate Shop-owners and Lenders as well. If lenders are in dire strait, there is no way out for workers. 

Government notification has been issued, from now on each shop will have to maintain record of each deal. Is it possible to run business of gold without maintain records ? Rules of the trade, details of dealings. There are three types of gold. 24 carat hard gold, 22 carat guinea gold and 14 carat mixed gold.Form Government's mint 22 carat gold is the rule. Workers have to maintain record of use and make of hundred grams gold. This has been notified by Government under Shops & Establishment Act. Inspectors may visit any time from their office. Maintenance of record is essential for all goldsmiths, otherwise cafes filed and fines imposed. Books, bill-receipt-inquiry. Difficult to run a business by opening a goldsmith shop. Purchaser's name, weight of gold, for what purpose--these are also supposed to be recorded ! Which truthful honest customer will order for work after all these difficulties ? Bills used to be given earlier also, but they were hand written. not on approved format. 

Being pulled from both sides--- no way to escape.

It did not take many days-- everything became upside down within seven days. With workers drowning owners and lenders faced difficulties in business. Badriprasad brought news, shops are closed in the city, many have closed and shifted to other business. Younger ones have started selling cakes in glass boxes, some have started carpentry, some have started learning driving of motor cars, some are helpers of masons. Epidemic all around. Devastating condition.

Arya Jewelers has bifurcated their shop for selling papers from other half. Reams of paper, paper boards, exercise book, pencils, etc. Stationary shop. Parvaticharan looks after them. Gold shop in other half. Hopes that days will change one day.

M K Roy's old shop has maintained half and started medicine shop in other half.

Raj Rajeshwari Jewelers has completely changed in to Raj Rajeshwari Sweet Shop. Front showcases contain various types of utensils containing sweets instead of gold jewelery. Beni oversees work. Narayan Pal spends time in his bed at home, most of the time is spent thinking of olden days. Cries intermittently. Neela soothes her Dad with her hand on his head, she sits by his side. She herself is pregnant, may have to be hospitalised any day any time. Mona Ghosh has stopped sitting at Braja's shop with sweetmeat items, sweet curd, sour curd.

Ramjivan Dutta has gone back to Bardhaman after observing the situation for few days. Will look after cultivation land crops. Dutta Company has pulled down their board. Have sold off seat stools weighing scale show case instruments. 

Wazed Ali Bux, his son Dalilur has also gone back to Bardhaman. Where gold work itself is closed, where is the question of polish ? Really, what benefit is there in glazing burned face ? 

One day Ramkanai along with Krishna statue has gone back to Ara taking along Sarvamangala, his son Subal and daughter. Probably would open some shop there.  

Haripada Ray has started grocery shop in one portion. Has done no other work other than goldcraft  in his life, does not have knowledge about other business,but what is the way out ? Living has become very difficult. From gold shop to grocery shop-- what else than downfall ! Will the customers of Jewelery shop be seen in these shops ? Hole sale items arrive from city, he deposits money in advance. Goods are supplied. At the time of taking down goods, Haripada Ray might be shouting around, but his heart weeps.

Gobinda Saha has opened workshop near Mahendru-- iron bucket, pans, spades, iron rods, window etc are manufactured. Elder son Gokul looks after these activities. It is heard he will open a cloth shop for his second son. They do not seem to have much problem.

Lenders of gold shops loiter around, one day meeting with that minister, the other day discussion with another minister. Empty results from such meetings ; Badray Prasad waves his head, no way has been found out. At Sitaram's house people gather during evening, discussions are carried on. He says, we do not find any political party taking interest in this problem, do they not have any role to mitigate ?

They are busy with detailed discussion about China-India war. Looking the other way. Doubtful whether they are bothered about goldcraft workers.

Suddenly atmosphere becomes tense.

Condition of ordinary workers is pitiable. Young boys, workers, have suddenly disappeared from Durukshi Lane. Two three days passes away, their absence is noticed-- hey, we do not see Goura, has joined somewhere or what ? Has Nitai left this place ? Young workers wherever they could-- they have joined. Gopal goes to various places but does not get work. Nobody dares. Majaffarpur, Samastipur, Chhapra. Once had had worked for them, but the owners have refused immediately after meeting him. Let some days pass. Meeting family expenses has become very difficult. Owners push a few bank notes in his hand. A rich man from Majaffarpur, owner of a cinema hall at Patna, allows Gopal's son in law Balaram to sell snacks in cinema hall. At least would not die hungry. Balaram's problem gets settled-- what about the old man and his wife's night and day ? Purnalakshmi weeps morning and evening. At a biscuit factory in Sabjibagh makes two kilo sugar powder for which he is paid-- eight annas or half rupee. Had begged for a work and got it. Is it possible to work physically at this age ? Father looks after Khagen's tobacco shop. Gets food. What else could he do! Most of the time he is out of senses with folded hands on his knees.

Makhan Babu's son had entered gold work, after arrangement with Badya Babu, has no work now. So, back to tailoring business. He is a worker at his father's shop now, tailor's job.

Other young men are helper of lorry truck in New Market, shabby with dirt, with the driver right from morning, in New Market there is Swadeshi Sweetmeat Shop, sweets are served in plates on tables. Some spread mattresses on footpath in front of B N College and sell children dresses, some with vegetables in Nayatola-- brought at whole sale price from Musallahpur market, here they sell in retail. Gold colouring expert Pranballabh, joins a Marathi painter's shop for drawing on walls as well as painting signboards. Climbs up on bamboo scaffold and applies brush strokes on walls.

People do not have time to talk to each other, when they meet in Durukshi Lane, just how are you ? One who is asked points towards sky indicating fate. In Durukkhi Lane morning arrives as usual, sounds of weeping, but no sign of billowing smoke from ovens. Even children seem to be aware of the situation, suddenly their sixth sense has become sharp. They know, when rice lentil oil comes from the market ovens will be lighted. Govardhan has difficulty in moving around, has erected a wooden room at Muradpur for selling tea.  Bhogi has taken Jabra's two baby daughters. What work they would be given, only he knows, at least they would not die of hunger. Radharaman carries towels on his bac and ferries in Patna's lanes, in Bengali areas, shouts, towels are for sale, towels ! Botha's son has stopped jumping around, face and eyes have shrunk, goes out with a bag on his shoulder-- snacks, peanuts for sale. At Gandhi maidan.

Nandadulal was on way back on Station Road, had gone to Secretariat Office to inquire about progress, now that war has stopped, postwar condition. When walking on Patna Junction Road, applies sudden break to his cycle-- find Sribas ! At a Punjabi fried food shop--- samosa, ghugni, potato chop etc. Small wooden tables and chairs-- Sribas serves water in glass tumblers, places plates on tables. Would you think of it ? Used to sit on goldsmith's mat, that arse is now being rubbed on wooden stool. It is not sure how long he will stay there. 

Brajagopal has left home, with his wife and daughter. House rent is due, no work at hand, food is not available--- has left Durukshi Lane. Where he has gone, no one knows, has not informed any one. Even Nakuleshwar does not know. If inquired, says, I do not know, came at night and took twentyfive rupees loan. Required for something. Other friends, who used to gather for playing cards, are no more seen in Durukshi Lane-- they also are not aware of his whereabouts. 

Brick and mortar shop, medicine shop, job of servants-- even that would do. Some work must be done, one can't sit idle. How can one run his family without money !

It is visible from the entrance of Durikshi Lane-- peoples gathering, crowd. Niranjan Babu's courtyard, there the gathering is more. Lungi, shirt, shawl. Many people are returning, anxiety on face, uneasy behaviour. What has happened ? What has happened ?

--Cal a rickshaw. Take him to hospital. Shouts all around. 

--Has drunk acid.

--What ? Who ?

Many persons at the entrance door, some inside in portico, whisper, controled voices. Ramhari's body is lying in portico, a mattress beneath him, body covered with torn lungi, burn marks on mouth and cheeks. Rickshaw is waiting outside. Someone waived his hand-- go. Not required. Raises his hand upwards to stir the air-- he is no more. Everything is finished.

Ramhari's wife falls down on the floor, with two hands she embraces the man, a few women go forward and separate her from him. Acid drops on face, howling cry, distorted voice. Wobbles on the floor as if someone is beating her with a broomstick. Where have you left me all alone dear, o o o o o. Oh God. Hair disheveled. Four children around her, father, look at us, at least once. Elder daughter soothes her father feet with care, does it with his hands, pulls his hair. Dad, Dad, dear Dad, open your eyes and look at us. They cry loudly.

Hearing at the Lane entrance Nandadulal comes running.

--Who knew he would do such a thing. There is scarcity and hunger in all families. Bits of last gold has gone, even nose ring. Yesterday night he had sold to a Bihari person and brought a little money. Today he went to market, food were cooked, all sat together to eat. Who knew that in that bag he has brought a bottle of acid from market.

--You had planned everything in advance, that is why you ate with every member of family. Oh oh oh. Had I known, I would not have slept outside. Such good food after a long time. My eyes were drooping in sleep. Applied coconut oil on head after so many days.

Ramhari bolts his room to take rest. Wife wanted to know a few times-- why did you purchase so many food items ? You could have done afterwards. But you could not wait. Oh oh oh. Faints.

This took place at three. Oh oh. The moment acid went into mouth, topsy turvy body, could not gulp entirely. Starts burning, shouts, howls, oh mother, oh father, I am going going. Himself somehow opens the door and comes out. Falters at door frame. Wife, children around him, Ramhari falls down on the portico and takes rounds on floor. Like fish out of water. Waxing flesh out of mouth-- driblets, black-maroon, now visible on the cloth mattress beneath. Ramhari stays still, in peace with himself.

Nandadulal's eyes bulge out due to constant crying. Such an unexpected scene, oh, how heart rending, as if he has lost his ability to move. Raises his eyes listening to Ramhari's wife's distressed wailing--- to whom have you left me here ? Nandadulal's power to see becomes unbearable, blurred to further blurred, seated around Ramhari his wife sons and daughters in the descending darkness of the portico, helpless, anxious, brooding, faces of people gathered have turned in to black stone. Nandadulal closes his eyes. His consciousness suddenly gives him a sharp jerk and disturbs him to the core. What is this signal for ? The heart beats violently in his breast. A long sigh sneaks out and spreads in to the dreadful surroundings.

( This is the last chapter of Subimal Basak's acclaimed novel DURUKSHI LANE on the plight of goldcraft workers and gold bullion businessmen during the ill conceived Gold Control order of the then Government which destroyed hundreds of families in India at that time )

Subo Acharya's poem

Subo Acharya's poem POETRY HAS DISAPPEARED FROM HUMAN WORLD ( Translation of 'Manusher Prithibi Thekey Kobita Shesh Hoye Gechhe')

I am walking at empty city's midnight
                                     distant exile invites me
                                            like human birth or occult skeleton
darkness near sea streams where death will wipe you out oneday
we were once in love
                  all worldly loves are destroyed in some black hole--
extinct earth's poetry, Khalasitola's evening and my love's evening
my chastised running around on empty   (in dreams) this is my simple life, my non existing howls drowns in blood--
poetry also gets the taste of blood today, four corners tremble in sighs
some people are scared of my existence, some bow their head and walk away--
my blood filled shrieks of pain wither away in my chest--
no shrieks move the world, like human beings
my love has died longtime back, pain for love,
blood oozes in driblets from heart due to love's absence, empty heart, you
                           drink wine looking at the dazzle of midnight, whatever you do
there is nothing like angelic life-- obsessed fear from this small life

Or living in deep bloody empty hole.
Mankind's fearful tread in this 1968 takes me to indifference--
Why there is so much blood blood blood in my life ?
Who am I-- who I am in this bewildered life
standing erect like a divine shriek-- poetry's inner
thoughts of non morbidity emanates from cruelty--
how far have I come away from mankind
                             today I feel like going back--

বুধবার, ২৫ এপ্রিল, ২০১৮

Poems of Malay Roychoudhury

Chicken Roast
Puff your plume in anger and fight, cock,
delight the owner of knife
smear sting with pollen and flap your wings.
As I said: Twist the arms and keep them bent
Roll the rug and come down the terrace after disturbed sleep
Shoe boots ….rifle….whirring bullets….shrieks
The aged undertrial in the next cell weeps and wants to go home
Liberate me ... let me go... let me go home.
On its egg in the throne the gallinule doses
Asphyxiate in dark... fight back, cock, die and fight, shout with the dumb.
Glass splinters on tongue….breast muscles quiver
Fishes open their gills and en fog water
A piece of finger wrapped in pink paper
With eyes covered someone wails in the jail house I cant make out if man or woman.
Keep this eyelash on left hand palm…blow off with your breath
Fanout snake-hood in mist .... Cobra’s abdomen shivers in the hiss of femme urination.
Deport to crematorium stuffing blood-oozing nose .....in cotton wool
Shoes brickbats and torn pantaloons en litter the streets
I smear my feet with the wave picked up from a stormy sea
That is the alphabet I drew on for letters.
(Translation of ‘Murgir Roast)1988

 
Counter-Man
Circumcision made me apostate
I thumped thighs and turned Tartar
The king will go and evil eves raped
Just as tutored Nadir Shah
I’d kiss the sword and leap in air
On galloping mare a burning torch
I proceed towards falling outposts
The metropolis burns
A naked priest elopes with Shiva’s phallus.
(Translation of ‘Palta Manush’) 1985

 
Preparation
Who claims I am ruined? Since I’M without fangs and claws?
Are they necessary? How do you forget the knife
plunged in abdomen up to the hilt? Green cardamom leaves
for the buck, art of hatred and anger
and of war, gagged and tied Santhal woman pink of lungs shattered
by a restless dagger?
Pride of sword pulled back from heart? I don’t have
Songs or music. Only shrieks, when mouth is opened
Wordless odor of the jungle; corner of kin and sin-sanyas;
didn’t pray for a tongue to take back the groans
power to gnash and bear it, fearless gunpowder bleats:
stupidity is the sole faith---maimed generosity---
I leap on the gambling table, knife in my teeth ...Encircle me
rush in from tea and coffee plateaux
in your gumboots of pleasant wages
The way Jarasandha’s genital is bisected and diamonds glow
Skill of beating up is the only wisdom
In misery I play the burglar’s stick like a flute
Brittle affection of the wax-skin apple
She-ants undress their wings . ....before copulating
I thump my thighs with alternate shrieks: vacate the universe
get out you omni competent
conch shell in scratching monkey-hand
lotus and mace and discus-blade Let there be salt rebellion of your own saline sweat
along the gunpowder let the flint run towards explosion
Marketeers of words daubed in darkness
In the midnight filled with young dog’s grief
In the sick noon of a grasshopper sunk in insecticide
I reappear to exhibit the charm of stiletto.
(Translation of ‘Prastuti’) 1985

 
Motorbike
I am on mobike Yezdi Yamaha
When flanked by horizon gallop backwards through sand blizzard
tinsel clouds explode at my feet without helmet
and speed-split air at eighty
in midsummer' s moon
each sound-cart recedes
onrushing lorries flee in a flash
no time to brood but Yes
accident expected anytime
may even turn into a junk-heap in a drought-nursed field.
(Translation of ‘Motor Cycle) 1986

 
Repeat Uhuru
Hood-covered face, hands tied
at the back. On the alter plank
breeze frozen in bitter hangman’s odour
who computes time? Doctor Cop Judge Warden or None?
I unfurl myself in the dungeon cloud
where salt-sweating history of dirt is tamed
the rope quivers fast at first
weak jerks thereafter calm , with dumbness of bowl
wherein birds and butchers repeat their fall
I revive my rise
The rising is singular. Non other than the monster of words
whose feet adore the ruined universe
I don’t face the gallows every time to keep alive
a dynasty of those who are spawned for death.
(Translation of ‘Aarekbar Uhuru’) 1986

 
Humanology
I am ready to be mugged O deadly bat come
Tear off my clothes, bomb the walls of my home
Press trigger on my temple and beat up in jail
Push me off a running train, intern and trail
I am a seismic yantra alive to glimpse the nuke clash
A heathen mule spermed by blue-phallus stallion.
(Translation of ‘Monuhyatantra’) 1986

 
The Light
I get a thud-kick in pitch dark thick on belly and tumble
Hands tied at the back on damp floor shack to humble
Lights flash on face eyes blind in case I spin
Then lights go off a boot or two rough on chin
I feel blood drips and snail down the lips in trickle
The glare blinks on and off and on and off in ripple
A hot metal rod scalds hard breast broad to snip flesh warm
The lights hem in piercing thin a ruthless swarm
Red eyes get shut in blinding rut my vision erode
Final blackout in grisly rout in elliptic node
I prepare my grit to encounter the hit as a fightback code.
(Translation of ‘Aalo’)1985


Classic Fraud
Classic fraud get down from palanquin
I’ve quit the job of a slave
A chopper now seethes from waist up to shin
It’s not a free kitchen to be in the queue with an enamel tin
O virgin money come crisp and rave
Green-frock butterfly in the unemployed’s land
Swoosh and jingle in a parachute. And
Cops keep a watch and censor my letters
Heavenly boss---how long in fetters
I’ll spring up on all fours and snip your neck
Climb the corn shack and wave
Henna-dyed hair on a hay-staired deck. Well!
Classic fraud come down on your own or face hell.
(Translation of ‘Dhrupadi Jochchor’)1986


Objectivity
Regaining consciousness in a trickle
Hands and feet tied and mouth gagged on a railroad track
The silent whole
Shirt and trousers daubed in dew
Whining crickets drone
A rural gloom studded with night-chilled stars
Can’t shout as mouth is wool of spew
Ribs and shinbone smitten---not possible to move
Stiff stone chips bite at back
How beautiful is the world and peace everywhere all round calm
A pinhead light is rushing on the route piercing the one-eyed dark.
(Translation of ‘Pratyaksha’)1986


House Arrest
I kick the door planks and reveal a midnight yell
Whoever’s home I’ll break it open.
Take care of your deity, your woman, gold and slaves
False documents, Henceforth the hearth is mine
Throw off your things on the road when day breaks.
Summer from corn, coconut shadow from doormat,
afternoon clouds from clothes
Affection from jewels and hunger from dinner utensils
Kick them all out through the main entrance as a token.
Not arrested now as there are many more in line.
(Translation of ‘ Baridakhal’) 1986


Dilemma
While returning I’m hemmed in. By six or seven. All
Have weapons. I knew it when I came
Something bad was going to happen. But framed
My mind that first attack would not be from my call.
A mugger holds the shirt-collar and blurts: Want a dame?
Why here? Mama and not in chawl?
I keep my cool, teeth on teeth. Right then a blow on chin
Feel the hot blood lather.
A jerk and I sit down. In my socks I spin.
A stainless knife beams in halogen shadow
Rama inscribed on one side and Kali on other.
The crowd disperses. Power in the name of gods
Not known to all. Why are men jinn
Why don’t they love the lover? The six or seven encircling me
Withdraw mysteriously.
(Translation of ‘ Dotana’) 1986


Uncle Chapter
Yudhishthira
Hey you Pandava Chap Yudhishthira
Climb down from your multi storied flat and come in the lane
Brihg Krishna Bhima Nakula and other lackeys
Daggers hockey sticks soda water-bottles and iron chains
Tell Draupadi to have a glimpse from the sill
I’m weaponless alone
Dhrishtadumna Duryodhana not with me
I donated my forefinger at your behest when I was young
Your victory-cry will now be ripped open
Unchain the bitch of mahaprasthana and fight me
I’ll fight left-handed yet won’t budge
Call me mugger and call me lumpen
I’ll fall on the footpath with frothing lips
Speeding mules will emboss their hooves on my back
You’ll flay my navel with broken blade
Press cigarette butts on my arse
Bludgeon my ribs with a wool=covered mace
But I’ll show you
I’ll rap my feet on the ground and put a halo around the earth.
(Translation of ‘Meshomashay Parba’)1986


Existence
Midnight knock at the pin drop door.
You have to replace a dead undertrial.
Shall I put on a shirt? Gulp a few morsels?
Slip off through the terrace?
Door-planks shatter and wall plaster flakes
Masked men enter and enflank
“What’s the name of that squint-eyed guy
Where’s he hiding?
Speak up, or come with us !”
I choke in terror: Sir, yesterday at sunrise
He was lynched by a mob.
(Translation of ‘Astitwa’) 1985


Throne of the Weevil
O antsucker tongue of the shy mammal
delighted in one-horned matrimony
terrestrial aqua and aerial
host-beast of the smuggler moll
ruminant antelope
earth roamer water-cat the perfumed bitch
ate up the sonorous black hole and established
a slave kingdom in this ditch.
(Translation of ‘Ghunpokar Singhasan’) 1986


From ‘Jakham’
Awning ablaze with toxic fire above me
I lie watching the winged blue of this crawling sky
putting down the crushing anger of my suffering
I cross exam my nocturne doubts
pushing a gramophone needle over the lines of my palm
I scan the prophecy
armature on the left turned slag long ago
now eye flesh twitching in the smoke of malay’s burning skeleton
dismantled tempests sweep by at 99mph
uniform queues of wrist wathched zombies tattle trade cyclic seine
a swinging bat threatened me in this black dungeon
800,000 doorless jamb stare for eternity over the liquid meadow
16 division ravens whirl around my torso for 25 years
my bones reel clutching my raw wounds
my peeled flesh blood
flaying my skin I uncover arrogant frescoes of my trap
ageless sabotage inside the body
patrolling darkness in the hemoglobin
I’m deciding what to do with me now
I’ve inherited emergent vengeance polished for 6000 years
tugging at man’s insensibility scraping old plaster of my skin
fingernails look magnanimous after the meal
people are returning home on tortoise back
failing to search out my heart in my body
man training man the fair-spoken codes of war & hospitality
gathering fallen limbs from the torso we’ve to retreat to
I lie lazily closing both eyelids wrapped in sun flakes
coked reeks conspiring in my veins turned loose
ohh
from the vapour of brain’s angry kernel
technicoloured nitrocellulose oozes over dreamlined retina
letters of sympathy heaped against half closed futureless door
my black muscles rust
equally true corpses of geniuses & fool... slime simultaneously into earth
each woman is waiting with a conversion chart in her desolate womb
Gandhi & Attila’s equichemical blood
streams through my same veins
nothing happens to me... nothing will happen to this earth either
neither could I practice usury like the rest of mankind
nor shoot dice made of human bones
seeds floating in air try to slouch roots
into my unfertile sweatbeads
I dreamt of my failure in Bumghang’s apple orchard
I couldn’t choose the luxurious comfort of an insect
sleeping in the cushioned kitchen of a corn’s kernel
I’ve been spitting inside my body for the last 25 years
scraping off from mirror’s knave mercury self-savior imprints of my violent face
each & all having a certificate from the burning-ghat doctor
for their performance of duty until last breath
2000 hounds released from out of my skull
haunting me for 25yrs
sniffing the alleys trod by women I advance toward their
amateur abode
my heart-lump split open in terror
when I looked at footprints on dark pavement
sounds of dripping sand have evoked my skin pores
my spine burnt smoke billow through chimneys of skin
ants drag flesh copses through moth made clay veins
damn barefoot amid sea gulf I proceed
to sullen den of vultures
I’ve experienced magic simultaneously of food
concealing envious tints of blood & pus
perverse sugarcane brain sucks
liquid philanthropic dirt out of earth
my Dirt my Love my Blood
clouds drift by like pieces of discarded bloodseained cloth
I now recall Bluegirl’s sick left tit….
Vibrating with heart’s feeble flutter
Life’s whacklings are to be endured until death
with a dumb tongue
a blazing mantle hangs in place of my heart machine
plus-minus signs and compasses with broken needles
stream through my arteries
rifle’s dazzling nozzle & diesel-roller sleep
in iron-ore of earth
and stored deep down in zink’s brain
newspapers’ Yes & newspaper’s No
my feet do not realize
I’m controlling their speed & direction
I’m not sure if I’ll have to become unworldly
paying excise with an untransferable woman
I gloomed all through the winter forging my own signature
was born not wanting to be born
now without unlacing my shoes
I want to plunge into the glow less dark
everybody is making arrangements for Tomorrow
shoes are having sympathetic polish this evening
only for Tomorrow
yet even circular roads get hold of man’s legs
one day or the other
lusting for limbs 303 greased cartouches
stashed in new pineboxes rush up to frontiers of countries
2510 years after Buddha sprawled on Gandhi-lawn
model-’65 leftover shoes & umbrellas of cop & non-cop clashes
in the warehouse of cocaine & counterfeit money
Indian & Chinese citizens mirth together in ecstasy
I had lifted a 5-paise coin from a blind beggar’s palm
I had looted benevolent money of hearse-corpses
Out of parched groin
crossed death-panic on a boat not knowing how to swim
I may be censored I can not be disregarded
(Translation of ‘Jakham’)1965

Malay Roychoudhury, My Dad by Anushree Prashant

Malay Roy Choudhury, My Dad-----Anushree Prashant

It is almost as if I can see him growing up. Feel his desperation and his need for independence. His solitary soul forcing him to try to break away, repeatedly, unsuccessfully from all the ties that bound him. The responsibility and the love for his family, and his writing, like stretched elastic, playing a tug-o-war amongst themselves.
My grandfather was no mean storyteller, but the most enjoyment I got was from hearing about Bapi’s escapades. Thakuma, my grandmother, felt, understood and forgave his spirit, loved him and was always afraid for him. I could always sense it in her voice. And at the same time, I believe, she felt an inordinate amount of pride at his repeated jaunts; when she would be scared to death fearing the worst, and also, hoping that this time round his desire for freedom would have been satiated.
I remember the quiet pride in my grandfather’s voice, as he would reminisce about Bapi, on the quiet evenings and weekends when he would teach me the rudiments of photography in the darkroom, after school hours, interspersed with terse directions. And then in the bright light outside, he would talk angrily about how Bapi gave Thakuma a scare when he was seventeen. He had hitched a ride atop a truck to Assam, with a large number of smelly goats for company, and had disappeared without a trace for three whole weeks and they knew nothing about his whereabouts. He never said he had been worried, but always, that Thakuma had been.
I can see Bapi, ten year old, with his pockets full of pebbles and dead decaying frogs, rats and chicks, he might have collected for the pleasure of doing so, and then as soon forgot about them. I can still see the amusement in Thakuma’s eyes, as she recalled to me, about the discovery of the decaying remains. I never saw the disgust that might have been more natural on her part when she had to wash the smell out from those clothes.
Dadu, my grandfather, was proud that his younger son had the intellect to choose Rural Development and Agricultural Banking as his career, and had not joined him in the family business. I wonder if he ever felt the lack of not having either of his two sons join. But he never showed it. Seen through the hazy pupils of my grandparent’s eyes, Bapi assumed almost mammoth proportions. And he became the idol. I wished to emulate.
My story-time was in the afternoons after lunch or at night, when I would sit patiently for Dadu or Thakuma to slowly talk their eternal ‘paan’ (betel leaf). The stories were many and varied, from the ‘Panchatantra’ to the ‘Mahabharata’, from Sukumar Ray’s nonsense verse to those they created themselves as the story progressed. But my most favourite ones were about the antics and escapades of my father.
About the time, when as a small child Bapi had been befriended by a Muslim bangle maker, and would get home coloured bangle pieces of glass in his pockets for a week till he had hurt himself enough while unloading them on my unsuspecting Thakuma, or probably because he had tired of the pastime. Or about the time when, he was sent out to buy a bottle of mustard oil, he found the chore suddenly becoming fun, as the shop keeper fished out a dead rat from the can of oil before filling his bottle. He recounted it with such glee, I wonder the feelings that this news might have evoked in my grandparents at the time, whether they had already consumed the oil or it was awaiting consumption. Knowing Bapi, I am sure he would have told, after they had consumed it, just to see whether one felt any after-effects of consuming poisoned oil.
Bapi recalled the poverty of his childhood days with a fair amount of nostalgia, always with a far away look in his eyes, which never showed any sorrow, but instead a lot of joy at the incidents he remembered of those times and which he took a delight in sharing with us. He always recounted the ones when he had either evoked laughter or even when he had been able to enjoy himself, never the ones that might let us have a taste of the grim realities of those times. In his way, he could rouse within us a feeling of delight, as yet unsurpassed by any storyteller I have met since then.
I was very young, when once he said, in answer to a comment made by a relative, with complete disinterest, that no one has a right to claim as inheritance, that one has not worked hard and sweated for. Looking back, it seems to me that I grew up that day, in that single moment and learnt to hold my head that much higher. Today when I recollect those words, I do so with the knowledge and the pride that he sincerely followed what he preached even unconsciously.
But he nevertheless was hurt, when he learnt that our near-relative, took away everything. He never felt bad about the loss of the monetary value of the property. But that, even his inheritance of memories within those walls were broken down to accommodate the dowry from newest addition to the family. And he and his beloved parents, like just so much dust, were swept away and washed out even from the minds of the nephews and niece who he had cherished and loved as his own kin. I would like to claim that he recovered from this utter disillusionment, but in truth that would be a falsity.
As far back as I can, I remember the far away look in his eyes, when he would be lost to everything around him; when people around him assumed the form of furniture, when their conversation was like the transistor radio, blasting away ephemeral and vacuous messages; when he would look through the person opposite him with his unseeing eyes, all the while concentrating on capturing that elusive thought whirling around in his mind like a transitory snowflake.
I also remember the time when he would come to pick me up from school, standing in the shade of an accommodating tree, be completely lost in his own world. He would come to with a jerk, when I tugged at his shirt, and would sheepishly ask me how long I had been standing there. My brother and I always recollect those moments with great happiness, as I could chat with my friends for that extra bit of time, and my brother could play the fool to his heart’s content, and Bapi would not come to know, till we reminded him of our existence.
But our mother must have found this trait particularly wearying and hard to comprehend. Sometimes she would get irritated, and then my brother and I would gang up against her and have a lot of fun pulling her leg. And sometimes she would feel sad and lonely; at those times we would try to cheer her up and amuse her, and try to take her mind away from the thoughts within.
Our mother always came across as ambitious, never for herself, but for her husband and children. She could never understand the moods and vagaries, eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of Bapi, and always had to explain them to herself, giving improbable and plausible reasons for his maverick behavior. Mummy has taken a long time to understand Bapi, almost her entire married life. That too she only did so through trying to understand me. I am quite like Bapi.
He let me run free, as he himself wanted to be, away from all tries and trammels of civilization but never could be. I read his poems when still in the process of learning my Bengali alphabet. I formed words and images slowly in my mind, and read his much acclaimed poems of Medhar Batanukul Ghungoor, and felt the thrill of immediately being transported to higher echelons, among the clouds. I learnt all about visual and sound poetry from reading Bapi’s works. His metaphors and picturesque imagery still enthralls me. He could bring to life the most common phenomena, with so much zest. Each word pieced together with utmost care, placed carefully on the tracery of his work; almost like pointillism. And they would turn out to be unique masterpieces.
I grew up under his shade, but never under his shadow, as , with apt timely criticism he would immediately drive me to better my work, be it in academics or otherwise. One harsh word and I would try to supersede my own goals and surpass his expectations of me. I always looked at myself through Bapi’s eyes, trying as hard as I could to win his approval and be a person of merit. Always racing to run ahead of his ambitions for me, striving, but never quite succeeding. But it has made me stronger, built in me a spine of stainless steel, able to bear sorrows, and joy with equanimity.
I am thankful to him for being the way he always has been, and hope he continues to inspire me and be there always, for me.
(Reprinted from Malay Roychoudhury Compendium (2001) edited by Murshid A.M. and Arabinda Pradhan. Anushree Prashant lives in Holland with her husband and two daughters.)


শনিবার, ১৪ এপ্রিল, ২০১৮

The Rebel Poets Of 1960’s Bengal
There is a certain kind of magnetic attraction that literary figures of the past hold over young struggling writers of today. We often look to their work, their lives and lifestyles for inspiration, adopting their methods and styles into our own experimentations with finding our own writer’s voice. We look to the past movements and revolutions that have created the literary landscape of today. Nothing seems to pull a writer in more than the Beat generation in 1950’s America. Young, scruffy anti-establishment writers living life on their own terms and rejecting dominant societal rules has a kind of attraction that makes you fantasize about travelling across cities with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, with the sun shining on your face – there’s definitely someone playing the harmonica – living the ideal hippie writer’s life you’ve imagined through romanticised notion of the Beats.
But once you wake up to the reality of adulthood and working, these images slowly start to change. Depending on the kind of writer you want to be you still strive to change the world with your words, create worlds of wonder, magic and whimsy, or even trigger entire revolutions. While we may all not end up being these ideal selves we’re created in our minds, there was a literary movement in India itself, our own Beat generation, in a way, that changed the way Bengali literature was received, read and written in the 1960’s.

The Hungryalist Movement was founded by what is referred to as the Hungryalist quartet by Dr Uttam Das in his dissertation ‘Hungry Shruti and Shastravirodhi Andolan’ – Malay Roychoudhury and his elder brother Samir Roychoudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay and Debi Roy, alias of Haradhon Dhara. These mavericks of the avant-garde shook an unsuspecting Calcutta’s (as it was named at the time) literary and cultural world and became a real force to reckon with. Members grew in number as more and more poets and writers came into the folds of this new generation of writers, resulting in one of the most historically and culturally significant trials of the Indian literary world.
                                                        
                               Candle light photo of Malay Roychoudhury by Subimal Basak

The Hungryalist movement picked its name from Geoffrey Chaucer’s phrase “the sowre hungry tyme”. “When a civilisation falls, people tend to eat every thing that comes their way,” said Malay Roychoudhury in an interview with Nayanima Basu. “Today when I look at West Bengal, the Hungryalist premonition appears prophetic.”

The 1960s was host to a generation of disaffected youth in post-partition Bengal. They voiced their anger and sense of displacement by creating literature that challenged the pre-existing colonial perspectives and traditional readings of Bangla writings to make reader’s question how Indian literature is perceived and received. As Prof. S Mudgal explains, “The central theme of the movement was Oswald Spengler’s idea of History, that an ailing culture feeds on cultural elements brought from outside. These writers felt that Bengali culture had reached its zenith and was now living on alien food.”

The Hungry generation was more than just a group of angry young men. At the time, Bengali literature was, for lack of a better word, limited and inaccessible for most people. The Hungryalists wanted more – they wanted a new language, a new literary space that was open, accessible and representative of all Bengalis, not just limited to an elite few. “Their entire position was extremely iconoclastic. To break whatever was held sacrosanct till then, including the way n which they wrote poetry and the way in which they lived their lives,” said Ipshita Chanda, professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, to the BBC. Their frustration was shared with not just other poets, she explains, but with an entire generation of over-educated people who felt they had no future.
The Hungryalist quartet grew in number and was soon joined over the years with writings by renowned Bengali voices such as Subimal Basak, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Saileswar Ghose, Basudeb Dasgupta, Tridib Mitra, Subhas Ghose, Falguni Ray and Arunesh Ghose, to name a few. These were young writers who came from humble backgrounds and meagre means, and the political and social climate of the time only made their voices louder.
Source: Hungryalist Photos      
Source: Hungryalist Photos

This was a difficult time in the region’s history. Thousands were displaced and forced to migrate following partition, with no money and no place to go – no place they belonged to. There was rampant poverty, food shortages and homelessness, but this immediate reality would never find its way into the writings and literature of the time – into the living rooms of the elite who lived sheltered lives in the comfort of their homes. The Hungryalists were very aware of this reality, and carried these people’s stories, their histories through words into the limelight in their pamphlets/bulletins.
The movement broke all conventions of writing – they were different in form, in content and rhythm from the traditional, ‘elitist’ works that dominated the literary sphere. These used language that was polite, cultured and ‘civilised’ and the Hungryalist’s disruption came into this space with a sense of pure anarchy. While they viewed Tagore’s language as ‘vegetarian’, their’s focused on being streetwise and colloquial, for the people, raw and relatable – the “language of life” that was viewed by the rest as vulgar and obscene.

As Malay Roychoudhury explained, they identified themselves as a part of the post-colonial period that disconnected itself from colonial canons. They published their work through single-sheet pamphlets that they would then distribute in coffee houses, colleges, and offices. While their anti-establishment antics may have carved for them a special place in the heart of Allen Ginsberg, who the Roychoudhurys met during his trip to India in the 60s, it definitely wasn’t for everyone, especially dominant Bengali society. Criticising society meant a harsh critique of politics and those in power. As Nayanima Basu writes, “The administration’s ire towards the Hungryalists reached its peak when the poets started a campaign to personally deliver paper masks of jokers, monsters, gods, cartoon characters and animals to Bengali politicians, bureaucrats, newspaper editors and other powerful people. The slogan was, ‘Please remove your mask’.”
Source: Hungryalist Photos
Source: Hungryalist Photos

Arrest warrants for eleven of the movement’s poets were issued, and Malay Roychoudhury, viewed as the face and leader of this bunch of troublemakers, was arrested on September 2, 1964. His poem ‘Prachanda Boidyutik Chhutar’ (translated as ‘Stark Electric Jesus’) didn’t sit well with the good Bengali people of civilised society, and he was charged with conspiracy against the state and literary obscenity. The trial went on for 35 months, he explains, during which he spent a month in jail. While many of the Hungry poets slowly began to break away from the movement during this time – many lost their jobs, faced regular police raids and some ventured into different fields altogether – Malay Roychoudhury received tremendous support from other friends and family, even from writers and poets abroad who read of the news in a Time magazine editorial, such as Octavio Paz, Ernesto Cardenal, and Allen Ginsberg, who even wrote a letter in his support.

The charges were subsequently dropped by the High Court of Calcutta, but in the mean time the Hungry generation seemed to have dwindled to a handful of people. “Some of them carried the news to Europe and I started getting translated for the little magazines there,” said Malay Roychoudhury. “My poems were read at New York’s St Mark’s Church to raise funds to help me. It would have been impossible to fight the case up to the High Court without this help. I was poor, all my friends who were part of the movement deserted me, I lost my job with the Reserve Bank of India during the case, my grandmother died hearing the news of my imprisonment, and thus, I stopped writing.” But the spirit of the movement still lives on in the hearts and works of the Roychoudhurys and many other writers of the time, even if they separated themselves from the group.

The Hungryalists left an indelible impact on not just Bengali literature, but that of India. The Hungry generation are remembered as literary heroes, however romanticised our notions may be. These were writers that were hungry for a new voice and found themselves in a storm of politics and bold, brave words that stood as a declaration for a change, one that they themselves put into motion.

Read Nayanima Basu’s interview with Malay Roychoudhury and listen to BBC’s podcast about the Hungry Generation

বৃহস্পতিবার, ১২ এপ্রিল, ২০১৮

Malay Roychoudhury talks about Bengali Short Story and its History

 

Western canons, emanating out of anti-nature episteme, had far-reaching consequences on native Bangla life/world. Academicians such as Srikumar Bandhapadhya, Sashibhushan Dasgupta, Narayan Gangapadhya, Sisirkumar Das, Narendranath Chakraborty, Upendranath Gangapadhya, Haraprasad Mitra, Jagadish Bhattacharya and Bhudeb Choudhury have generally ignored native folk, tribal and indigenous Bangla grassroot discourses, but studded their books and articles with such alien signifiers as Iliad, Odyssey, Walter Scott, Henry James, Somerset Maugham, Virgil, Dante, Boccaccio, Voltaire, Ralph Fox, Richard Burton, H.D. Bates, Elizabeth Bowden, Brander Matthews, Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, Van Wyck Brooks, Ernst Rhys, Dawson Scott, T. Seltyer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Balzac, D.L. Thomas, A. Symons, Samuel Johnson, L.B. William and even Encyclopedia Britannica, in order to enforce their arguments to create a stasis each for novel and short story. It was only after the emergence of academics of the new school of subaltern studies in 1982 that the short story broke out of universalism and talked of power not as homogenous and split, but as universally distributed in different ways, in different sites, among different social groupings.The values that the definitions of stasis sustained are worth deconstruction. Here are a few (italics mine): 'The novel deals with the individual, it is the epic of the struggle of the individual against society, against nature, and it could only develop in a society where the balance between man and society was lost, where man was at war with his fellows or with nature' (Ralph Fox). 'The short story fulfills the three unities of the French classical drama; it shows one action, in one place, on one day.

A short story deals with a single character, a single event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single situation' (Brander Matthews). 'The short story is an emphatically personal exposition. What one searches for and what one enjoys in a story is a special distillation, a unique sensibility which has recognised and selected at once a subject that, above all other subjects, is of value to the writer's temperament and to his alonehis counterpart, his perfect opportunity to project himself' (Sean O'Faolain). 'Short story is an impressionistic prose tale, a short, effective, single blow, a moment of atmosphere, glimpse of a climactic incident' (Fred Lewis Pattie). 'A short story usually presents the crisis of a single problem,' (Webster's Dictionary and Encyclopedia). 'A short story must contain one and only one informing idea, and that this idea must be worked out to its logical conclusion with absolute singleness of method' (Hudson). 'Brevity and natural limitation give the short story a precision as an Art, beside which the art of the novel seem rambling and formless. Standing as a single crystalline episode or experience, the short story bears, perhaps, the same relation to the novel as a single parable to the whole gospel' (John Cournos). 'The imagination of the savage and the child are partly of the same power and quality. They float in a world of wonder in which the wildest wishes become realities and the most impossible fancies wear the look of truth, especially when they are given form and substance by the art of the storyteller' (Masterpiece of Short Stories). 'If the novel is the record of the emotions of an individual soul, influenced by and influencing some other soul, one cannot have the novel until some notion of individuality has come to the world' (Stoddard). 'A short story is a short work of prose fiction, which typically either sets up and resolves a single narrative point or depicts a mood of an atmosphere' (The Wordsworth Encyclopedia).
The above Occidental abstractions were accepted and given the garb of Oriental abstractions, despite the fact that the indigenous society had no such concepts as individuality, Art, masterpiece, single linearity, opposition to nature, etc. Academic insistence and critical acclaim forced Bangla short stories to have design, purpose, bounded form, totalization, originality, unilinear, monocentric, metaphysics, determinacy, etc. The author of the short story, in order to get canonised in Bangla literature, had to produce a work of art that knew no other rules but its own, aspire to and transform the crude contingency of worldly relations into purified aesthetic forms. The claim for universality had to be inherent in the text, although it had to be a highly specialised discourse called short story. Authors who were canonized post-Sabujpatra and up to Kallol (1932) are Dhurijati Prasad Mukhopadhya (1894-1961), Nareshchandra Sengupta (1883-1964) Manindralal Basu (1897-1986), Dineshchanra Das (1888-1941), Gokul Nag (1894-1925), Achintya Kumar Sengupta (1903-1975), Premendra Mitra (1904-1988), Buddhadeva Basu (1908-1974), Shailajananda Mukhopadhya (1901-1976), Tarashankar Bandapadhya (1898-1972), Saroj Kumar Roychoudhuri (1903-1972), Manik Bandapadhya (1908-1956), Annadashankar Ray (1904), Banaphool (1899-1979), and Bibhuti Bhushan Bandapadhya (1894-1950). Obviously, modernist critics have identified some of them as major, great, original, etc. However, literature till then had not been commodified and integrated into post-Independence Five-Year-Plan capitalism and bureaucratic culture.

The Occidental definitions were succinctly Orientalised in these words by Narayan Gangapadhya in his book Sahitya Chhotogolpo (1957): 'Short story is an impression-born prose fiction whose one single message achieves totality through crisis of unity of a certain occurrence or a certain circumstance or a certain mentality.' He characterized short story in three categories, i.e. Occurrence-centric, Character-centric and Essence-centric. These centres were further classified in twelve categories for the benefit of modernist critics: philosophical, social problem, questions or relations between man and woman, psychological, romantic, protagonist-based, allegorical, satirical, poetic, idealistic or political, supernatural, and strange.
Bhudeb Choudhury had in his Bangla Sahityer Chhotogolpo o Golpokar (1962) highlighted the following essential ingredients of a short story: a) at every moment, at every juncture, in endlessly spread, mysteriously complex modern lifesite lay unfathomable secret depths. A total reflection of this may be encountered at a single point of deeply absorbed fullness of life; b) second ingredient of short story is the densely close perceptive raptness of the author-artist---his meditative self-absorption in ongoing life. A single moment of total life should be reflectable in the mirror of that serene consciousness; c) thirdly, what is required is suggestiveness of the composition. A location, an emphasis, or emotion of special moment of a life which transcends life/world of all countries and times; d) in these ingredients specialties lies the incomparable specificity of short story. A story whose climax does not reveal complete perception of the moment of rootsource of the life-ocean, even if the story is brief in size, it is not a short story; it may be a tale, fable, parable or whatever. Therefore, in the creation of suggestiveness of eternal life within limited life's climactic moment lies the form-style of short story.

Though the target readers of the articulations of Bangla academicians were graduate and postgraduate students as well as their teachers, the academic framework provoked authors to aim to abstract the world through structures of imaginative control to enable them to establish a position of detachment (nirlipta) from which they could survey the field of appearances, claim to have privileged perspective of absolute truth as a universalizing tool for accusing others of error. Content of the story was given much more importance by academicians rather than construction of the language. They were oblivious of the fact that languages of European fiction were several centuries old.
Unfortunately none of the academicians discussed the semantic, semiotic, syntactic, lexical, dictional etc. attributes of short story, and neither did they correlate the text with the ethnic and social structures. There were several Bangla linguists but no language philosopher such as, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), or Theodore Adorno (1903-69); forget about our own Sanskrit language-sages of yore, namely, Anandavardhana (AD 850), Bhartihari (AD 450), or Bhoja (AD 1000). Pramatha Choudhuri pulled up the language structure from antiquity to modern, but modernist Bangla literature remained within the strict confines of metropolitan, sophisticated, elite-friendly language. The modernist academicians created and fabricated a pattern and went on excluding all those who did not fit into their scheme of things. They tried their best to impose a monocentric order. To them the world was an object of willed action, raw material for short story, guided and given form by the authors' designs. Meaning and design had become one. The world itself had inconsequential meaning for them because they were artists (shilpi). They imposed sense and purpose. The process went on as authors emerged on the pages of Parichoi(1931), Kallol (1932) to post-Partition diasporic platform Notun Reeti (1958), the kingdom of indigenous gods and goddesses as Nature got blurred; sarthakata or significance and effectiveness could be traced when nature was de-animated in the text. The modern assumption of the world as chaos endowed the authors with a compulsion to make order solid, obligatory and reliably founded. A short story had to be confined within ordered form, within restricted time-space, to be certified as a short story. Chaos meant contingency and therefore modernists thought that chaos was the enemy of canons, of Art. Precolonial versified fictions and hagiographs were found to represent raw human condition (people were not constructed as individuals with the tools of Enlightenment), and therefore, contingent. Those premodern texts were found uncanonable, as they were disorderly, open-ended, irrational, spontaneous and nature-centric. Reviving the premodern, precolonial ethos and ethnos became a felt need for a large number of fresh authors who could realize that the modernist epistemic violence made man devoid of meanings. They realized that the Notun Reeti breed of post-Partition modernist fiction writers had become order suppliers of consumer products. Nevertheless, Notun Reeti and its fellow travellers did invent the technique of fiction writing in the language of the customers. This brand of modernist authors started producing twenty sleazy novels and a hundred short stories each year during Durga puja alone to mop up the bonuses of white-collar labourers. Partition was a devastating blow to the social and cultural values of ethnic West Bengal. The influx of refugees still continues, though now in driblets. In this erosion of values, and superimposition of a post-Partition diaspora on the ethnic life of West Bengal, lay the seeds of indigenous postmodern Bangla fiction.

Premodern Kalikshetra to Postmodern Kolkata
Like in any other language, Bangla literary modernism had its own contradiction between radical disruption of form and traditionalism of content and ideology, as were exhibited on the pages of such periodicals bulletins as Kalikalam (1926), Parichoi (1931), Kallol (1932), Chhotogolpo Notun Reeti (1958), Hungry Andolon (1961), Shastravirodhi (1966), mouthpiece Ei Dashok and Neem Sahitya (1967). Epistemic and ontological modernism had, however, arrived in Bangla literature first on the pages of Bangadarshan (1872) edited by Bankimchandra Chattapadhya (1838-1894) who had already written first ever Bangla prose fiction Durgeshnandini (1865). However, Bangla prose got its real semantic, semiotic and syntactic breakthrough on the pages of Sabujpatra (1914) edited by Pramatha Choudhuri (1868-1946). But the rise, youth and putrefaction of Parichoi properly maps literary modernism as well as birth of cultural grace, and its ultimate degeneration and cultural disgrace.

Notun Reeti was the last bastion of metropolitan upper-caste dominated quasi-Occidental canons. In fact, fiction, including adventure stories for children, continued to be written by them in the image of the colonial genre, where White Man's Africa was Indianized in imagination to enable children of well-to-do families have Bangla indigenous feel of H. Rider Haggard, G.A. Henty or Henry Morton Stanley. Colonial adventure stories have spawned a new genre of Hindu religious adventure stories wherein the protagonist or author visits supposedly inaccessible pilgrim places, a strange metamorphosis of the colonial discourse in which fiction writer Avadhoot specialised and wrote innumerable volumes. Satya Guhu in his history of contemporary Bangla literature Ekaler Godyo Podyo Andoloner Dalil (1970) has stated that all Notun Reeti authors were anthologized in Ei Dashaker Golpo (1960) by Bimal Dar. The short story writers included in that anthology were all upper caste youth, with the majority of them being highest-category Brahmins: Ajay Dasgupta, Amalendu Chakraborty, Dibyendu Palit, Dipendra Nath Bandhapadhya, Mati Nandi, Jashodajiban Bhattacharya, Ratan Bhattacharya, Shankar Chattapadhya, Shirshendu Mukhopadhya, Shyamol Gangapadhya, Sandipan Chattapadhya, Somnath Bhattacharya and Samarjit Bandhapadhya. Some of them charted an unprecedented course of prolific writing, having written 400 novels and 5000 short stories, apart from duplicating Rider Haggard in equal number of books for children. Despite the command over their craft, the immediate postcolonial authors named above failed to produce texts comparable to those of Ben Okri, Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ngugi wa Thiong' O, Elechi Amadi, Ayi Kwei Armah, J. M. Coetzee, Wole Soyinka, Jamaica Kincaid and Neil Bissoondath. But then, Ngugi wa Thiong'O took six years to write Petals of Blood; Salman Rushdie took the same period to write Midnight's Children and Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things. There are other factors in the make-up of the authorial self as well. Firstly, the Indian polity had been co-opted into the colonial power structure through inauguration of Provincial Autonomy and formation of native ministry way back in 1936, a decade before Independence. Secondly, the refugee writers knew nothing about and had no experience of indigenous rural West Bengal, the inexplicable panorama so vividly displayed by Bibhuti Bhushan Bandhapadhya (1894-1950) and Tarashankar Bandhapadhya (1898-1971). Fiction writer Shyamol Gangapadhya did purchase farmland and lived village-life for a feel of the ethnicity but was not accepted into the weave of the place by the locals.

Managed, written, defined and canonised within urban middle class values, Parichoi, Kollol, Pragati, etc. periodicals identified themselves with the Occidental canons and discourse whereas Notun Reeti adopted a mode of counter-identification by staying within the governing structure of above ideas, with a mix of Soviet discourse in case of some authors, but by nativising the terms. They combined aesthetic self-consciousness and formalist experimentation. The left-sympathisers among them tried to combine what they thought was social realism, though according to the Soviet definition social realism meant a dialectical interpretation of reality and its criterion in light of the needs and aims of an evolving socialist society. However, gradually lucre became their main driving force. For most of them lucre became the best mode to reroot them on the soil of West Bengal. The Neem Sahitya, Hungryalist and the Shastravirodhi literary movements attempted to go beyond the structure of oppositions and sanctioned negations of the discourse through disidentification. They located themselves in essentially adversarial relations to the prevalent aesthetic realism. Thereafter the post-Naxalite little magazine explosion-activated extrication of the discourse, as a result of which aesthetic realism completely collapsed; there was gradual deconstruction and dissolution of high and subaltern cultural distinction. This became more pronounced in films. Evacuation of commitment pervaded all spheres of Bangla life/world, and protean postmodern cultural politics emerged. So much so that an erstwhile Naxalite started fleecing Marwari businessmen at the Income Tax Office to bring out special issues of his periodical in order to honour a couple of left-leaning poets.

The vernacular news dailies which started newspaper literature (Narayan Gangapadhya had termed it magazinist literature) are actually Bangla tabloids which thrive on front page sensationalisations of rape, murder, collective lynching, kidnapping, gang wars, elite brothels, etc., as if these are the only events taking place in West Bengal. No comparison can be made with English news dailies. The readerships are poles apart. Each vernacular daily has its own collegium of captive geniuses, and mainly their books are reviewed and hoisted on manipulated bestseller lists. Such bestsellers are declared to be landmarks--an imperial concept to grab other peoples' lands. There are authors who write Leninist stories on the pages of the Communist Party newspaper, and Mills & Boon stories on the pages of consumerist dailies. Krittibas (1953), which started as a parallel poetry magazine to Notun Reeti fiction, produced frighteningly money-spinning potboiler fiction writers, outsmarting the Harold Robinses. Jyotirmoy Datta, the ultra-rightist member of Krittibas, teamed up with ultra-leftist revolutionary Azizul Haque in order to bring out a tabloid. Amid this funniest of cultural intramurality, some authors emerged as ex-Naxalites who reportedly were anti-Naxal informers of the Police establishment!

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মঙ্গলবার, ১০ এপ্রিল, ২০১৮

Farzana Versay : The Hungryalist Movement


Street Messiahs 

 


Space is being occupied. What does that space stand for? What does its occupation convey? There are questions being asked about how non-violence can sustain such protest when it is sought to be quashed even in America. Can people from disparate cities with different needs find a common ground besides the one they sit in?

Robert J. Shapiro, former U.S. Under-Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, wrote: “For the United States it means a middle-class warfare. When middle-class Americans turn to Washington, they see the resounding success of the government’s efforts to stabilise the financial markets – where the top 1% derive most of their wealth. The rich are back to becoming even richer. That’s the way America has operated for at least the last generation. What grates on middle-class Americans this time is that they’ve been getting poorer. And Washington has done little to stabilise the market from which they derive most of their wealth, which is housing.”

Would the middle-class be enthusiastic about the homeless? Can such protests be equalisers? Shapiro demystifies the American fairytale when he says, “There is little controversy among economists that the fabled US ‘land of opportunity’ has become one of the world’s most unequal societies. Using the standard measure (the ‘Gini Coefficient’), America now ranks 93rd in the world in terms of economic equality. That puts us behind places such as Iran, Russia and China.”

Thomas Friedman, after attending a literary festival in India, concluded: “What has brought millions of Indians into the streets to support the India Against Corruption movement and what seems to have triggered not only the Occupy Wall Street movement but also initiatives like Americanselect.org — a centrist group planning to use the Internet to nominate an independent presidential candidate — is a sense that both countries have democratically elected governments that are so beholden to special interests that they can no longer deliver reform. Therefore, they both need shock therapy from outside.”

The comparison does not quite work. India, the upstart Big Brother, is trying to clean up the system. It appears to be more organised. But when dissent is systematised it is in danger of a limited transition. Or, rather, a transmigration of sole interests. The “outside” is rarely the philosophical outsider anymore.  It might be noted that recently when the Mumbai stock exchange at Dalal Street attempted to mimic OWS, it fizzled out within hours. As for shock therapy, was that not the ‘change’ mantra? Does change alter fossilised political dynamics?
* * *
“Sir, yesterday sunrise. He was lynched by a mob.” The poet would not sit in a colour-coordinated rally, or fast, or give a call to fill up the prisons.  He would not get a stamp of approval from the big powers. He was not a neo-Gandhi, yet they called him a violent Gandhian.

Remonstration then was not prefixed with words like “peaceful”. They did not give interviews to news channels or have the support of industrialists. They would spit out with disgust at the very thought. Real expectoration. As the world witnesses India playing to the gallery to fight corruption and prop up the ‘humble’ hero Anna Hazare, I think about the time when dissent was not pretence. Honest protest fuels creativity; it does not live off sound bytes. The current people’s movement is creatively hollow, inspired to protect money garbed as hope.

“I think man has harmed society by first theorising and then putting it to practice. Take the Dandi March, theorise it and start marching again. Everybody knows it is a farce. Culture cannot be theorised; it has to evolve.” These are words from 20 years ago. I was in a middle-class home in Mumbai’s suburbs to meet the pivot of the Hungryalist Movement, Malay Roy Chowdhury, the man who wrote lines that belched out rancid breath from genuinely hungry stomachs.

There was no dichotomy as the smell and sounds of cooking oil spluttering reached us in the modest living room – a sofa, chair, dining table. Was there a dining table? This man did not do the forests of the tribals, wrote no tomes, no sedititious words as precious as Swarovski lisped through elocution English. He did not smile benignly as meetings were disrupted by rightwing groups that throw pamphlets in the air like tinsel on Christmas tree Christs. There was no rightwing enemy then. Just as there was no rubbing of shoulders with the powerful. Everything was the Other.

He could have become a Naxalite and packed bombs with a dynamite cause. He could have packaged himself as an idealist with a full head and sore feet and pole-vaulted his way into the land of the never-say-die dead. He didn’t. He continued to write verse about blood, gore, the nether regions, the lesser regions. But he also worked in a bank. And he was not hungry anymore, even though his past was tied up with the entrails of impotent anger. A past whose hypodermic needle was rusting, but was a reminder of those high, high days, the withdrawal symptoms, the cold turkey.

Around the time when the 50s were being buried, and Allan Ginsberg was shedding his clothes to become a benchmark of sorts, a group of young men in Kolkata (Calcutta then) who wrote poetry in Bengali and rubbed their hands in the mud, formed the Hungryalist Movement. It shocked the lyrically-sanctioned lethargy. The Hungries were about a counter-gluttony culture, but the name had a deeper meaning meshing Chaucer’s “the sower hungry times” from the Canterbury Tales and Spengler’s theory that every culture is a wheel that goes up on its own but on its way down degenerates and starts eating up other cultures. “1 saw this as the hungry element. A realism based on hunger for a culture, by a culture,” said Malay.

Hungryalist poetry was considered hysterical, but then it was striving for complete freedom even from the technicalities of poetry. So it was that he wrote, “I’ll kick all Arts in the back and go away.” It wasn’t vacuous bravado. The group got involved in what appeared as bizarre activities. They wanted to do away with politesse; the fart and barf were publicly emanated. Even Time magazine in its issue of November 20, 1964, could not help commenting, “To let loose a creative furore the Hungries last summer sent every leading Calcutta citizen — from police commissioner to wealthy spinsters — engraved, four-letter worded invitations for a topless bathing suit contest.” It might seem that the motive was to strip hypocrisy. Malay, however, recalls it differently. “None of us thought of protesting, of trying to improve society, but our writings were like that We got branded as anti-establishment and that was the first good thing that happened to Bengali poetry!”

But not too good for him. The whole lot of them were arrested for conspiracy against the state, against society, for corrupting minors, and Malay had a special charge against him — for obscenity. While the others were released, some of them even testified against him. He had to wait for the High Court to acquit him. It could cause a flutter in the household of anyone. Malay, then single, went through the ache of watching his father stand by him helplessly as the police broke open his mother’s steel trunk. His parents had never been to school. “All of us in the Hungry Movement were first-generation literates, from the lower income group.” Discovery of culture came by eating what others spread before him. Hereditary link went back to a grandfather who painted kings and queens.
That other grandfather of every Bengali did not influence him at all. “You cannot think of us in terms of Tagore because he was a billionaire… Our ethos and empathies were completely different not only from Tagore but from the later poets. When we came, we brought things from ourselves. which were different from both Bengali culture and western culture. So we were not immediately acceptable.” For all its rawness, the poetry bled purposefully: “Spread out your matrix. Give me peace.”

Was it fear of the self more than a fight that they knew would never be finished? “Today the images and words are violent, reflecting the situation, things which are not acceptable to human decency. But, yes, there was a tendency at that time to please the reader. But when we started we began questioning ourselves: why should we please the reader, why not shock him? He’ll remember you.”
The authorities then could also have seen a devious purpose — political uprising — in all that the Hungries wrote. A literary critic had said of Malay that even his love poems were political.
“Everything in life can be interpreted in every way. See. You may not be a believer in god, but your sense of fear, your longing for something could be interpreted as a belief. Some critics are more inclined to interpret things for political purposes. Anyway, nobody does anything internationally apolitical.” Yet, he did not call himself political, living in the “cloaked melon” of an ideology. “We were cultural outsiders. We brought to Calcutta certain things that we got from outside.”

The Hungryalist Movement was not to set up something on the fringes. but to fight for a place within the culture that was nibbling away at anything that met its gaze. Therefore, the sidetracking was not exactly palatable. He was not invited to official functions. “I missed out on a large audience. After I was convicted all my friends left me. It became very difficult to get my poems printed and I also gave up writing. Meanwhile, I did not think of literature at all and kept busy playing with my children.” The revolution had come full circle. The man who used to roam the interiors of the country, staying with farmers and sleeping on the hard floor when “living was more important than poetry”, found it increasingly difficult to do so. He realised that he had to guzzle bottled fizz because drinking tap water gave him an upset stomach.

It was the candour of someone who had experienced “Million glasspanes are breaking in my cortex”. What changed? Ennui? Apprehension?  “The establishment made me like that – now I feel I am a confused man.” It was a confusion generated by what was between the lines, “The third person influencing you without allowing you to think. It is impossible to decide after a point what should he done within the structure itself.”

Did the comfort of a suburban home and time spent with family bring a sense of peace or was there regret? “A lot of my friends became Naxalites but I did not join them because that sort of revolution was not acceptable to me. As for the establishment, it is also part of culture and its degeneration.” In the process of growing are painful moments when you have to shed a few things, disown others. Do you swallow the venom? Was Hungryalism still relevant to him? “I know I have changed, my poems have changed. Now it will be a fraud to call myself a revolutionary.”

There are people walking down the streets, sitting around campfires. People remember the flaky words of quivering voices, immortalised by cocooned dissent. Malay did not take that road and preferred to ask in a poem, “Shall I put on the shirt? Gulp few morsels? Slip off through the terrace?”
Rebellion is a robot now as the system and the counter-system peek into dark crannies and pull out those who can be taken in. Malay’s words seem apt, “The metropolis burn/ A naked priest elopes with Shiva’s phallus.”

Take your pick. Today’s mutiny will not leave you empty-handed.
Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer. She can be reached athe
http://www.farzana-versey.blogspot.com/
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