Sanchayan Ghosh : The Roofmakers and Hungryalists

Sanchayan Ghosh

Labour Reconciled, an installation by Sanchayan Ghosh, juxtaposes two practices, one of them being physical labour. The slow death of roof-making in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, which involves men and women beating and firming rooftops, has made obsolete the practice of chaad petanor gaan, or roof-beating songs sung by the labourers.

The second aspect of Labour Reconciled is literary revolution, specifically the literature produced by the Hungry generation of Calcutta in the 1960s. The Hungryalist movement consisted of poets, writers and essayists who sought to provoke and challenge preconceived middle-class morals. The vast amount of literature produced by the Hungry generation, barring a few works, never found its place in the Bengali literary firmament, as it was perceived as anti-establishment.

Labour Reconciled by Sanchayan Ghosh. Image credit: Experimenter.

On one side of the wall, as part of Labour Reconciled, there are mortar slabs made by Birbhum’s roofmakers. The room includes photographs of these roofmakers, a first edition of the first volume of Khudarto, a journal produced by the Hungry generation, two editions of Labour Law Journal from 1978 and 1982, audio recordings (made by Ghosh) of the roofmakers singing songs, and an audio recording of a recitation of Hungryalist poet Malay Roy Chowdhury’s Bengali poem Jokhom (Wound).

“When I went to Birbhum to record the songs, I realised most of the roofmakers couldn’t recall the songs because they had stopped making roofs like that,” Ghosh said. “So, I got them to work on a friend’s almost-finished roof and that way they began singing again.” His intention, Ghosh says, was to investigate the meaning of art and labour in the context of two lost traditions.
The most arresting part of the installation lies above the mortar slabs. It is a black board on which glows, through small light-emitting diodes, the first four lines of Jokhom: 

“Chadowaye agoon lagiye / Tar neeche shuye akasher udonto neel dekchi akhon, dukkho koshter shunani multubi rekhe / Aami amar somosto sondeho ke jera kore nichchi.”
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-examine my nocturnal doubts.

Labour Reconciled by Sanchayan Ghosh. Image credit: Experimenter.