In every country whenever a poet departed from the beaten path and searched for a new one, older traditionalists became very angry and tried to create problems for him. Many poets had to face humiliation and abuse for such new ventures. Very often they have had to face punishments for their works. They had to fight through their life to establish themselves. In this connection one specially remembers modern French poet Charles Baudelaire. He was kept at a distance by traditionalists during his lifetime. It is obvious that the leading light of Hungry Generation literary movement would face such attacks during his creative time. For this poet Malay Roychoudhury was even put up in lock-up and sentenced by court.
Picking up the word Hungry from British poet Geoffrey Chaucer's line "In The Sowre Hungry Tyme" the magazine he started publishing from November 1961 was named "Hungry Generation". The meaning behind the word is simply "Hunger". Hunger, which is humane, for the body and for the human existence. And the word also declares its battle cry against the rotten values of the Establishment. Rejecting the ideological penumbra of romanticism Malay Roychoudhury searched for a new path of self-discovery which would bring out Bengali Poetry from the shackles of puritanical Bengali literary society. He wanted to place Bengali poetry in the domain of organic world, sexuality and human body's hunger for whatever it remains famished. He wanted that Bengali Poetry should face the questions of life. With wild hunger for life he wanted to change the course of Bengali poetry. Actually, this is the "mantra" of the Hungry Generation literary movement. This is clear from the very first manifesto of Hungry Generation written by Malay Roychoudhury.
"The game of calling rhymed prose to be Poetry must end now. The days of creating poetry by dipping one's pen in cerebral cortex after burning cigarettes and table lamp has ended once for all. Now poems should be written like the creativeness of orgasms. And thus when one is consciously bewildered after meteoric sex or drinking poison or drowning in water one is able to create poetry. The War Cry against Art is the first stipulation. One may write rhymed prose while cogitating, pursuing capriciously, but it is impossible to write poems by adopting that process. Whether the text is bursting with meanings or is musical with series of sounds, unless it has the power to satiate the hunger of one's violent intense throbbing innerself and outerself, poetry becomes characterless lke a virgin, cuntless or cockless like a lover, or growthless like a God."
He has attempted to place poetry within the confines of material life and soulful life with such words as "innerself" and "outerself" which would have the power to satiate hunger for both. I think Malay Roychoudhury has thus depicted the crisis of existence with an aura of light in his poem 'Stark Electric Jesus' :
Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the back and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, a million glass-panes are breaking in my cortex
Here we may very well realize the devastating pressure of experience of his youth that has cornered Malay Roychoudhury in his crisis of existence ; that is why he is expressing his agony by using the image of his burning blazing skin, and is informing Shubha that he will give up literature after kicking all Arts. However, life's mystery does not allow him to run away from the crisis of his existence ; and is requesting her to allow him into the watermelon fire. In this yearning on one side we find poet Malay Roychoudhury's momentary liberation from the crisis of existence as well as desire for instant liberation from pain and distress. This pain and distress is of a hungry heart, body and existence.
One should remember that the Fifties decade of Bengali Poetry ( Malay Roychoudhury belongs to Sixties decade ) had created an epoch of barren literature ( being mostly commercial ). I am telling this because the works of the Fifties poets were mostly the chewing the chewed Romanticism of earlier period. They could not create a literary watershed like the poets of Thirties or Forties. In fact most of the poets of Fifties decade have just carried on the previous techniques and forms and could not usher in a new voice like the socially conscious poets of the Forties who suffered from the pain and agony of their time. The Fifties poets, mostly, could not contribute to the direction of an enlightened community-life which emanates out of experience. The hollow world civilization, with time, had lost its essential core, had thrown thoughts and consciousness of human beings into anarchic residence, was shoving them into crisis after crisis of existence, this truth became clear to Malay Roychoudhury, and that is why, through the Hungry Generation literary movement, facing directly the questions of life, he was able to set fire to the den of Establishment academicians, and sought liberty from the beaten track literary values. He wanted liberty for literature, liberty for all human creativity. Otherwise why would he write in the poem :
I know Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain's contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
He is not talking of drowning in sexuality. Poet Malay Roychoudhury's ambition is not limited by unhealthy haze of agony of his time and space. He wants to achieve completeness of life after expressing the truth of humane love-breakup-rebellion of hunger for body and soul, a completeness of all human endeavours. We get the message from these lines of his poem:
Mother why did'nt you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's arse
But nothing pleases me nothing sound well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I have forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In the sun-coloured bladder of Poetry
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
Break open the rib-cages of all festivals
Draw and elevate Shubha into my hunger
Malay Roychoudhury wants to stand in front of the rotten world, get himself delinked from it, and face the real beauty of the truth of human endeavour. That is why he is able to declare without any concealment "I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to Muse". And in the next breath when he says, "In the sun-coloured bladder of Poetry/I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me/I'll destroy and shatter everything"--- then we are able to understand that he does not want to be incarcerated in the maternity home of traditional poetical values. He wants do destroy the beaten track traditional path of yore. By writing the line "Break open the rib-cages of all festivals" Malay Roychoudhury has attacked and criticized the sham rituals of traditional poetry-reading festivals of Calcutta. Since women have been the image of Poetry to the poets, has enriched the poets, Malay Roychoudhury has desired Shubha for his creative endeavours. In the declaration "Draw and elevate Shubha into my hunger", he has expressed his commitments to human creativity. The reason I am arguing for this point is that in his self-mirror he wants to make love with poetry in the same way as one would do with a woman. He will not follow any traditional beaten track. Let creativity grow in poet's mind-honing beauty within the rules framed by him, within his time frame, self respect and the questions that emanate within.
Poet Malay Roychoudhury has targeted irony toward those poets who borrow from British poetry as well as values set by academicians. He has critiqued those Orientalist Bengali academicians who do not look back into their own culture and are always humming Hegelian Helenic tunes. In fact he has rightly identified the rot creeping into the Establishment poets of Calcutta which has become their religion. And that is why we find a sort of helplessness in Malay Roychoudhury's voice, and at the same time he has not back tracked in shaming them---
Calcutta seems to be a procession of wet and slippery vagina today
But I do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of shedding the last drops after urination
Haven't had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn usage of condoms while lying on Nandita's bosom
The poem 'Stark Electric Jesus' is a successful document of beauty of poet Malay Roychoudhury's realization of wonder in self questioning of his own crisis of existence reflected in his own mirror. The reason why I am arguing this point is that Malay Roychoudhury through his successive self questioning has tried to find out a new way, sometimes within self restraint and sometimes through erotic expressions. Here is an example of his erotic trespass:
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya's fresh Chinarose matrix
Like glass splinter sweat beads on pubic mane
It is necessary for me to argue a point here. Erotic trespass can never be termed as obscene and such expressions can never attract the penal law to charge a poet of obscenity in literature. All honest poets have visualized poetry as the body of women, his Muse. In Bengali Vaishnava poetry the body of women have appeared quite frequently for presenting the beauty of love. Since the vagina is the door for taking birth, Malay Roychoudhury's desire to ask for healthy vagina represents his creative genuineness. The word copulation (Bengali word used by him is Dharshan ) has appeared for a few times in the poem. We have to identify the word with the putrefaction and rot of Bengali society. The expression which has been used umpteen times in traditional vocabulary of a descending civilization, has been set in its natural place by Malay Roychoudhury.
If we dissect the poem Stark Electric Jesus from start to end like a surgeon --- then what we find is that of a young poet's wild shriek revealed in self-examination and self-infusion as well as a poet's helpless crises of existence.
Since Malay Roychoudhury has felt that only through Art will he be able to achieve liberty and deliverance we find within himself he is facing conflicts and strife. That is why poet Malay Roychoudhury is compelled to declare --"I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to Muse", and at the same time he could not restrain himself while declaring --"Today it seems there is nothing so treacherous as Women & Art."
Abjuring artificial imaginary arena Malay Roychoudhury wants to discover truth by facing agony and pain of life in the sweat drenched blood splattered words picked up from the real world. Poetry may not appear as a Goddess to him, she will present herself in the mirror of time as the FEMALE who has suffered the pangs of existence like him. That is why we find that he is presenting Shubha as a symbol of the FEMALE in thoughts and coition. The excellence of the poem 'Stark Electric Jesus' is what I have discussed just now. He wants to take back poetry from deadly helplessness to deep satisfaction of fulfillment. He is not going to swim in coloured streams of luxury of imagination.That he has made clear while declaring that he wants to go back to his mother's womb and thereafter lick and taste the whole existence. Shubha is none but poet Malay Roychoudhury's Goddess of experience -- the container of Art. Malay Roychoudhury has desired to bring back poetry to human life, in reality, in truth.
While ending this discussion it would be worthwhile to say that if one looks into the poetry of Seventies one would find that what Malay Roychoudhury, the doyen of Hungry Generation movement has done, is that he has shattered the barriers stipulated by traditional binary opposites of obscenity and morality and allowed Bengali poetry to grow up like an adult. Specially we may mention Seventy's famous poet Joy Goswami's "Dashachakra" poem where he has written---
Mother Saraswati herself threw away book and Veena and stopped me on the road
She did not wear anything, completely naked only her thin nails were polished
Inserted in my eyes, Oh I'm dying I'm dying, while dying what did I see Bhutum I would tell
While staring I am becoming God myself calling my mother calling my father
calling all my ancestors come come come
Slashing daughter in front of father son in front of mother
Don't we get the example of direct influence of Hungry Generation on Joy Goswami ? We find the influence of Hungry Generation literature in several poets and authors of Seventies and thereafter ; we may very well claim that the Hungry Generation movement was quite successful in various ways. Without doubt it may be said that the mantra the Seventies poets got was from the Hungry Generation movement. Here lies the achievement of Malay Roychoudhury, the doyen of Hungry Generation literary movement. He has successfully relayed the baton to the next generations. 'Stark Electric Jesus' is really a successful and significant poem, be it in use of simile, selection of words we have to appreciate poet Malay Roychoudhury's command over craft. Especially one remembers two expressions,"Healthy spirit of Aleyas fresh Chinarose matrix" and "Sweat beads like glass splinters." Words such as 'water melon fire', 'saffron', 'sun-coloured bladder', 'silvery uterus', 'green mattress', 'sun-striked', 'in the clitoris', 'of labia majora', 'hypnotic', 'pubic wig' etc have made the poem quite meaningful, in the same way they have erected a plinth of faith. In every which way this is an appreciable poem in the history of Bengali literature, and has become the flag bearer of the Hungry Generation literary movement. The real value of the poem lies here.
[This poem was originally written in Bengali in 1963 with the title 'Prachando Baidyutik Chhutar' and was published in City Lights Journal edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti after its translation by the author with the help of Prof Howard McCord and Carl Weissner. It was later polished by Prof P. Lal when the poem was included in 'Selected Poems' published by 'Writers Workshop', Calcutta in 1989]
( Published in 'Swapna literary periodical' in 2008, 15th year, Volume One. Editor Prof Bishnu Chandra Dey, HOD, Bengali, Nabin Chandra College )
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