Hungryalism and Srjit Mukherji's film 'Baishey Srabon'

Unmitigated Agonies and Unheard voices: Exploration of Madness in Srijit Mukherji’s Baishey Shrabon and Jatishwar

September 5, 2015 | By Subham Dutta

In  Baishe Srabon Srjit Mukherjee reflects on ‘mad’ characters and how they are treated by the society at large – for its use and desertion.

The mad poet (played by director Goutam Ghosh) in Baishe Srabon

Srijit Mukherji has been one of the most prominent contemporary film makers of Tollywood in recent years. Placing himself against the contradictory trends of Commercial and Art Cinema, he has tried to create a seamless fusion between them and has quite successfully been able to do so in films like Autograph, Baishe Shrabon, Jatiswar or Chotuskone. Srijit’s films happen to be a refreshing break from the banal platitudes of commercial films; however they seldom tend to go overboard with lofty, esoteric messages.

The themes and motifs that Srijit’s films explore, despite not being unfamiliar to Bengali Cinephiles, carve a niche substantially because of the manner they are dealt with. Despite the occasional forays into the world of death, gloom and depression they barely recreate a Sen or a Ghatak on screen.  Be the use of cinematic mis-en-scene or the delicate use of songs or the use of camera, Srijit always keeps the populist veneer intact through a unique stylization of the cinematic narrative. His penchant for excessive stylization helps him in getting a wider audience, across different age groups, predominantly the youth, nevertheless at times it becomes grossly superfluous and grates on one’s nerves.

A critical appraisal of Mukherji’s films, however, unfolds some common thematic aspects. Madness is a motif, Mukherji, has frequently dwelt on in his films. After Foucault it is well known that the idea of madness is a discursive construct. Deviation from the socially disciplined discourses tags one with the charge of madness. Srijit’s films obviously delve deeper into its exploration of madness to reveal how the identities of the so called mad characters are structured by the politics of power.

Prosenjit as Prabir in Baishe Srabon

If we look at Baishe Srabon Srijit’s most commercially successful film, Srijit ventures into a completely unexplored territory through his references to Hungryalist Poetry. Hungryalism was famous for its iconoclastic worldview, informed by its deep-rooted anguish and rebellion against the conventional system.  ‘Hungry Generation’ is one of the lost and least acknowledged poetic traditions in the realm of Bengali poetry ushered by Malay Roy Chowdhury, Shakti Chattapadhyay , Sandipan Chatterjee, Binoy Majumdar and others.

Firstly Srijit’s success lies in rescuing it from the Bengali cultural amnesia. The cinematic narrative becomes intertexual with reference to Nibaran Chakrabarty from Tagore’s Shesher Kabita.  Nibaran is projected as a deranged poet with the delusional worldview. Metaphorically, however, Nibaran’s narrative seems to explore the politics of mainstream Bengali Neo-Romantic poetry in suppressing the voices of dissent emerging from the margin. Hungry Realism’s obsession with crudity and vulgarity, moving away from the mushy sentimental narrative of Bengali Romantic poetry, was perhaps too scathing for the Bengali readers to endure.

Simultaneously, another narrative shows Prabir Roy Chowdhury, an ex police officer as one of the victims of the system.  Prabir’s attempt to rise above the administrative loopholes makes him a victim of the system; he is suspended from the job being indicted with the charge of ‘madness’. Prabir’s resistance to be in complicity with the corrupt logic of the system tags levels him with the charge of madness to ostracize him from the system. But the twist comes when a series of murderers in Kolkata leaves the Police Force utterly confounded. They are forced to seek resort to the fertile brain of Prabir again to resolve these problems.

The narrative of a mad poet and a mad Police officer move together and coincide at a crucial juncture from where the film takes its climactic turn. The conversation between Prabir Roy Chowdhury and Nibaran Chakrabarty clearly explores the perversions of power and shows how they remain integrally embedded within the system. Their attitude to go against the grain whether it is through writing poetry against the popular stream or refusal to be in complicity with the corrupt bureaucratic system represents a form of transgression beyond the socially disciplined discourses. Baishey Srabon thereby very pertinently calls into the question the idea of madness and explores it to be ideologically governed.

The trope of madness is quite adroitly used in Srijit’s Jatishwar as well which is also one of his most critically acclaimed films. However its commercial success didn’t touch the height of Baishe Shrabon. Baishe Shrabon being a whodunit is made up of a series of interconnected cues, in which Bengali poetry plays a salient role. Though Srijit brilliantly arranges the plot with reference to the poetry of the ‘Hungry’ poets, the main narrative revolves around the search for the murderer as in a perfect whodunit. The way Prabir searches information about the poets on Google, it becomes pretty apparent that they are nothing more than forgotten faces in Bengali poetry. Though these references almost resuscitate an alternative poetic tradition through a popular medium, the reference to Bengali poetry remains tangential to the main narrative. It only provides the main plot its contours without coming in contact with it.

Anil Karanjai : Book review by Hartman de Souza

Hartman de Souza

At the outset, let me just say that Roads Across the Earth: On the Life, Times and Art of Anil Karanjai – Juliet Reynolds’ long, brilliant essay and indeed, the essays by nine men who knew Anil – completes a circle for many others who knew the man in flesh and blood, who felt his passion, and indeed, were stunned by his work. The senior writer and historian, Sumanta Banerjee, Anil’s close friend who has a short but poignant essay in the book, echoes many of us:

Anil Karanjai was not a celebrity among India‘s elite art circles and their patrons. He hated to woo them, and continued to paint in his own style till the end of his life, defying market demands. But he occupies a special niche in the hearts of many people whose voices remain unheard in the babble of the cocktail parties.

Roads Across The Earth : On The Life, Times And Art Of Anil Karanjai
Edited by Juliet Reynolds
Three Essays Collective, 2018

At one level – a very important level – Juliet establishes herself as a thoroughly rooted, extremely articulate – often fiery – but consistently left-of-centre ‘art critic/historian’ who has earned the right to sit at the welcoming table. Those alas, for whom writing about art has now become a word-game, a sophisticated kind of scrabble with the accompanying moolah that’s charged by an art gallery or dealer or event manager or whatever – will take to their heels! This book will go like an arrow to their hearts, just straight-ahead writing without frills.

There are four historians of art (joining forces with Anil) who seriously messed with Reynold’s head – Ernst Fischer, Walter Benjamin, Max Raphael and John Berger: with Berger the youngest, the pivot around which Juliet unfurls the life and times of Anil Karanjai and then situates his larger oeuvre.  
Given that music was rich in Benares, Juliet duly documents and explains Anil’s thirst for music. Hindustani classical music moved him. I do remember talking to him about his time in New York, and here too, he followed his heart, his sojourns taking him to the bars in Harlem, and jazz, people’s music. 

Juliet divides her essay into seven parts, and probably Anil will smile in agreement and tell us that this is also the Rupak tal, the tal that is heard in every dive in North India – a people’s tal you could say.  In these seven sections, she covers 50 years counterpointing a man she knew better than most to the unfolding histories around him. 

Fine arts students at college and university will welcome an important book on art history they can understand, given the pervading obfuscation in this field. Juliet is matter of fact, pacey, yet unyielding and tough. The Indian art market is demystified, and neither is Juliet even the slightest bit overawed taking on the leftists. Typically, she spares no none! 

From the 1960s, the book picks up pace, documenting the formation of the anti-establishment school of the ‘Hungry Generation’ better known as Hungryalists. They were men – artists, poets, musicians – who let it be said, would today have invited the khaki shirts.

Not that they didn’t. Juliet, somewhat sadly, mentions Anil’s drawings and paintings destroyed by the police. Not many people know that the beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, lived with the Hungryalists, probably learning from them far more than they learnt from him. The Hungryalists were important, and nothing has ever been written about this period in such depth.  

With that period setting the tone, Juliet deftly weaves into her narrative the parallel art histories which did not, not have an impact on Anil – Benares, Calcutta, Bombay, Chennai, and Delhi. People whose names we have heard all make an appearance, all are situated, placed.  

Of course, there are enough in the queue to say that people like Juliet and all that she represents have outlived their utility. They are just old school art historians trapped in an outdated ideological zoo. Sure, ideology may have been killed, but dialectics lives on and Juliet knows that. 

Everything depends on whom you read when you want to learn about an artist living in a particular time, and what that history did to that artist – as much as what the artist did to that history he lived in.
Anil lived though, and was part of a very interesting period in Delhi for instance. There is never any doubt – anywhere in the book – where his heart lay.    

Much to the annoyance of the art world’s panjandrums, the Saturday Art Fair enjoyed considerable success, not commercially, but in its popular appeal. Frequented by a wide public from all walks of life, it was well covered by the press; poets and writers would also participate, occasionally organising readings. In addition to weekly exhibitions and on-the-spot sketching and painting, there were frequent performances by street theatre groups, generally of the Left; one of the most regular of these was Jana Natya Manch, the group lead by the talented Marxist activist, Safdar Hashmi, later murdered by mobsters of the Congress Party while performing a play on the outskirts of Delhi.  

There are descriptions of Anil’s paintings that will catch your throat, but there are also barbed comments about artists and art critics that should duly be read – if only to see a point of view they may not have engaged with enough. 

If one was looking at ‘context’ – Anil’s favourite word perhaps – then given the way things are panning out to silence those speaking from the left even as I write this, you could very well see Anil as a ‘proto-Urban Naxal’.  There is irony when you read:

At the time when Anil Karanjai was making his mark in the Indian capital, the Naxalite movement was still in progress. Its brutal suppression by the government of West Bengal and that of Indira Gandhi at the centre had not yet succeeded in extinguishing its fires. The artist was one of many who continued to support the movement, not just as a sympathiser but as cultural activist.  He offered shelter to comrades on the run and helped the party propagate its slogans in such a way that they could evade being caught. Living in a fashionable part of the city and being married to an American provided good cover to him and the cadres. Moreover, as a rising star in art circles he was afforded protection even while he openly professed his ideology. Yet, he declined to sacrifice art on the altar of politics. He was passionate about his chosen profession and he relished being part of the scene onto  which it had carried him.

Awakening of Offensive Conscience, 1970. Courtesy: Lalit Kala Akademi

In the final analysis, given Anil’s love for music, the nine men who join in with very well chosen archival contributions, are excellent backing musicians to a very competent singer who sees the night out. 

We are taken “back to the dissidence and colour of the 1960s, a decade unparalleled in politico-cultural history both international and Indian”. The Bengali poets, Malay Roychoudhury and Subimal Basak – and now an Egyptologist but then a full-fledged ‘hippie’, Edward Loring – give valuable insight to a time in Benares, when politics gave equal space to marijuana, and boundaries – all boundaries – were not just questioned but stretched till they frayed. 

Mangalesh Dabral, Hindi poet and journalist, brings in the early 1970s, with Anil in Delhi  – which gives us a different view of the city and indeed, the role played by radical Hindi-speaking intellectuals, poets and writers; and Ross Beatty Jr., a musician, musicologist and writer, who catches Anil in the two painful but revealing years he spent in the US. 

Suneet Chopra, art critic, an activist with the mainstream left – and now often its spokesperson on TV – has a long essay moving from the influences on Anil of the Bengal famine of the 1940s, to the radical movements and protests in the 1960s and early 70s, and mainstream Indian politics up till the century ended. Suneet however, does not stop there. As Juliet notes, Chopra is “the sole critic to have noted the influence of Indian classical music on Karanjai”, one who saw “the emotional resonance in his landscapes”; one who recognised Anil in the role of ‘the artist as healer’, as one whose work offered hope to those who struggle, to people “worn down and torn to shreds by exploitation”.
You cannot stop a smile when you read Juliet writing: “Given the general disinclination of leftists to acknowledge value in such art, Chopra’s is a highly significant analysis”. Now one hopes that the rest of the Left reads it.

We see Anil out of the 1990s with a short piece by art critic, curator and painter Santo Dutta that appeared in the catalogue of Anil’s retrospective exhibition at the Vadhera Gallery, New Delhi, September 1990. The historian and writer Sumanta Banerjee’s essay, A Friend In Remembrance, is one only he could write. Although you wish it was a little longer, if only because Banerjee is yet another Leftist unafraid of critically calling out his own.

There is also an excellent piece, a Sunday morning read over coffee, by Pramod Ganapatye, painter and museologist, well worth reading  twice:
“What is art in your eyes?” Ganapatye asks Anil when they meet in 1988, and Anil answers:

“Art is something that makes a person more sensitive, makes him dream, liberates him from the terror and tension of reality. The role of art is to liberate. In my view, art has two faces. One face looks towards society while the other looks inward. The artist’s own art makes him traverse the distance between the unconscious and the conscious, it forces him to think.”

Steps in the garden, 1986.

§

I only found out in 2015, after Juliet got in touch with me over Facebook, that Anil had died in March 2001. That was sad. Even worse though, in 20o5, when the frenzy of illegally mining ore in Goa was just shifting gears to move into greater greed, Anil’s paintings visited me.

These were the paintings he started in his studio in Jor Bagh, inspired by images he captured in Lodhi Gardens on his morning walks; that he changed, as only he could, in his head and then on a frame. I saw two of  those paintings take their first shape, emerge out of nothing. Much later I saw the exhibition – Images of Silence – when it opened in Delhi, the last time I met Anil and Juliet. 

In 2005, I was sitting on the side of a hill in Goa, in a monsoon drizzle, lit by rays of sunlight breaking through clouds slowly shredding in the breeze and contemplating the majesty of the Western Ghats breaking on my small state’s south-eastern borders. 

Because, behind my back, not even 20 km as a bird flies, were the foothills of these same Western Ghats, acres and acres of hill and forests being destroyed and laid bare by Goa’s rogue mining companies excavating for ore, licking their lips like they were looking for  bloodied flesh.

Fiery landscape, 1999.

In front of me, myriad shades and textures of green and blue, as if the colour of earth and mud had disappeared from life. It brought tears. When I was writing my book on the mining greed, Anil’s paintings came back again, forcing me to contemplation, to see again.

I willingly credit Anil with one paragraph from the book, written thinking of him. As if to tell him I did manage to understood the images of silence that were to haunt him till his death – and even though I could be actually describing one of his paintings, not sitting on a hill contemplating the reality of ecocide:

Some 20 kilometres south-east of Maina and Cawrem by road, the dark cloud-framed the dark cloud-framed ghats beyond Sulcorna are the mothers of the pre-historic hills one of which I sat on. It is a chastening sight. All the more so if you sit alone, a chill in the air, and like the hills around you, feel under threat. They are bathed in a luminescence that looks and sometime feels like water. Let your imagination run a little more and the hills begin like pre-historic animals sleeping on their bellies. In the misted silence, you sense how the lives of the forests and hills and wildlife and indigenous peoples are intertwined with the almost divine presence of water. In that Age of Greed, one would have thought it was the  beginning of a surrealistic film if only it wasn’t so real.

Anil’s paintings gave me hope that the earth would speak back through people who saw her as reverentially as he did. What would he say if he knew that in 2012, the Shah Commission put the amount looted in Goa by way of illegal mining at some Rs 35,000 crore?
Yes, I grieve that he is not here.

Imagine that he changed his gaze from the Western Ghats I was watching from the side of a hill, looked behind me at the lacerated iron ore mines – a bleeding, burning, reddish-orange expanse of waste, surrounded by dust-stained forest just beginning to lose their greenness as they wait their turn to die – and began to paint. 

In her short but pithy archival essay on Anil’s painting, The Door of Kusma – perhaps his only angry painting of his Lodi Garden phase – Juliet puts it very aptly:

A large part of our knowledge about the world comes from seeing. The visual arts are intended to clarify our vision, to help us see the world with greater sensitivity, directness and immediacy.  An artwork should reveal to the spectator that which is neglected, elusive or obscure, even as it retains its sense of magic and mystery.
An image like The Door of Kusma achieves this end.  Within the limits of a single, silent frame, an entire human story is told with all its social, economic and psychological implications.  

The Door of Kusma, 1984. Courtesy: National Gallery of Modern Art

It is time this book on Anil came out. In November 2009, The New York Times‘ art critic, Benjamin Genocchio reviewed a small exhibition titled Indian Art After Independence: Selected Works from the Collections of Virginia and Ravi Akhoury and Shelley and Donald Rubin. The small exhibition was curated into four interrelated  themes. 

The first section, Genocchio writes, was titled “Rethinking the Past,” and looked at the “way in which artists amalgamated the old and new, either turning to established painting traditions, like Mughal miniatures, or traditional media, including gouache, to comment on contemporary life. In the better cases, artists did not merely copy past styles, media or subjects, but transformed them into something new”.

A solitary painting by Anil opens that section, and Genocchio writes: “In Untitled (1969), Anil Karanjai (1940-2001) drew on a tradition in central Indian painting and Bengali temple decoration of depicting closely entwined bodies with erotic or religious overtones. In this case, though, he transformed the figures into grasping, fighting monsters to symbolize the challenges the new nation faced in the post-independence era, especially the constant threat of sectarian violence”.

Boar Rock-1, 1999.

True, but what would he write were he to see Anil’s earth-centred paintings? 

Hartman de Souza cooks for his family and occasionally writes. He is the author of Eat Dust: Mining and Greed in India.

Malay Roychoudhury refuses Sahitya Akademi Award

This is the refusal letter Malay Roychoudhury wrote to Sahitya Akademi refusing the Award.
                                                                                                                           Naktala, Kolkata - 47                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                   April 30, 2004
Prof K. Sachidanandan
Secretary,
Sahitya Akademi
Rabindra Bhavan
35 Ferozeshah Road,
New Delhi

Dear Sir,
Thanks for your telegram dated 30.4.2004 conveying that my translation work of Dharmaveer Bharati's 'Suryer Saptam Aswa' has been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize.

I am constrained to refuse this award. As a matter of principle I do not accept literary and cultural prizes, awards, lotteries, grants, donations, windfalls etc. They deprave sanity.

My decision to refuse the award is in no way to affront late Dharmaveer Bharati, who was a great admirer of  my work, and had supported me during my literary ordeals in 1960's when most of the Bengali intelligentia had conspired against the Hungryalist movement. Your magazine, the 'Indian Literature' itself, had never bothered to write about this movement.
Sincerely
Malay Roychoudhury

Malay Roychoudhury interviewed by Nickie Shobeiry for Expose.com

Malay Roychoudhury revealed: Part I

Malay Roychoudhury is a writer whose rebellious literary past has been well-documented and continues to be researched today. He has had many fascinating experiences, including being a founding member of The Hungry Generation. The BBC have covered the story of this group. 

Below, Nickie Shobeiry talks to Malay about his life and works.

By

Arts & Lit

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Sep 1, 2015

You grew up in Patna. What was your childhood like, and how do you think it has affected the person you are today?

I was born in a Bengali Brahmin family in 1939, and grew up in Patna in a slum area called Imlitala. Imlitala means ‘below the tamarind tree’. Ours was the only brick-mortar house, and the area all around were hay-hutments of people who at that time were called ‘untouchables’. There were also a few families belonging to pauper Muslims who fled from Lucknow after the city was captured by East India Company. Our family did not have any problems with those ‘untouchables’ and poor Muslims.

During childhood, we were free to enter any house while playing hide-and-seek. We were even allowed to enter the local mosque and the Imam did not object. My photographer/artist Dad was the only earning member looking after a joint, extended family of twenty – my uncles, aunts and cousin brother-sisters resided in the same house. I used to visit the Muslim families for purchasing duck eggs, and they would send us a complete goat leg during Eid. Later my elder uncle got a minion job as Keeper of Paintings and Sculptures at the Patna Museum. During holidays, I would sit on his bicycle and visit the museum for free and roamed around, which contributed a lot to my formative days.

Those who were called ‘untouchables’ did not have any fixed earnings, and we knew they resorted to pick-pocketing, thievery, dacoity etc for a living. There used to be Imlitala Feast where they could lay their hands on something big, and we used to share the community food. Country liquor drinks and palm toddy were in plenty during these feasts, in which I also started sharing from about five-six years age. When the police arrived to arrest anyone, the local dogs used to bark and signal the persons concerned to flee, jumping over tiles of the hutments and disappear into the mango orchard behind.

They used to grow cannabis plants in their courtyard as these were not banned at that time. Obviously we started smoking with them in our teens. Our parents were not that strict to keep us away from the locality we lived in, though there was a limit drawn and that was to sit for our studies in the morning and evening, and show good results in school. In the evening we studied by kerosene lamps, all brothers and sisters together. There was a real horror during our studies in the evening when the people used to kill a leg-tied pig, thrown into a pit and killed with hot iron rods to have its flesh for cooking. The crying yell of the pig was nerve shattering. Being Brahmin we were barred from eating pork, but me and my brother did manage to eat it in the gathering of thieves.
There was no tap for drinking water in our house, and me and my elder brother had to fill up buckets of water from the locality tap. Sometimes we visited the Ganges river to take a bath.

Allen Ginsberg had visited our Dariapur house.

Dad constructed a house in an area of Patna called Dariapur, and as we were reaching adolescence, he wanted us to move out of the almost free-sex Imlitala locality. My first sexual encounter did happen in Imlitala when once I went to purchase eggs from a Muslim family, and there I was virtually raped by the fifteen-year old elder daughter of the house. I was ten and did not know much about sex before that experience. Her name was Kulsum and she loved to recite poems of Ghalib and Faiz. Being from a Brahmin family, beef eating was prohibited for us. I enjoyed the Mughlai beef preparation at their house – she used to lick my lips to clean the trace and smell.

My elder brother Samir was sent to Kolkata, and I was admitted to a Brahmo Samaj Seminary. Samir used to bring Bengali poetry books and novels whenever he arrived from Kolkata. I became sort of a book worm. At the seminary, I developed a crush for the girl-librarian named Namita, who used to suggest novels, short-story books and poetry collections for me. She contributed a lot in making me a writer. I have recorded Kulsum and Namita in my novel, ‘Rahuketu’.

Imlitala has made me an eclectic thinker, morally daring and of tolerant disposition. I think I am ready to accept all Indian social contradictions as natural. I have become broad-minded because of the complex nature of the Imlitala society.
Allen Ginsberg had visited our Dariapur house.

You have now written over forty books. Is there a piece of work (book or otherwise) that is particularly close to your heart? If so, which one and why?

The poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’, as well as my experimental novel ‘Nakhadanta’, are close to my heart. Lest I forget, the poem in Bengali is titled ‘Prachanda Baidyutik Chhutar’. With ‘Stark Electric Jesus’, I felt I achieved what I intended to do in Bengali poetry, by completely redefining the contemporary form and speed of a poem prevailing during the Sixties. I shall talk about the poem later. ‘Nakhadanta’ is divided in seven parts, on the line of Indian epic poem ‘Ramayana’, and I have tried with the technique of stories within a story on the line of the epic poem ‘Mahabharata’. The stories are about jute farmers and jute mills in West Bengal which are being gradually decimated from the industrial scene due to machinations of political party bigwigs, speculators and jute black marketeers. I had researched and collected actual data of mills and farmer plights/suicides by visiting various villages in West Bengal. Some critics call it postmodern, though I had no such intention while writing Nakhadanta. ‘Nakha’ means fingernail, and ‘Danta’ means teeth.

Oh I’ll die I’ll die I’ll die My skin is in blazing furore

from: ‘Stark Electric Jesus’

The Hungry Generation (termed ‘Hungryalism’) revolutionized the Bengali language. Did you imagine that this would happen, on the scale that it has, when the movement first began?

To be frank I did not, and neither did any other founding members of the literary movement ever think that it would reach shores of other languages, and become a topic of academic and media interest. When it started, we were attacked by the print media, and serious literary periodicals made fun of the movement. Posters drawn by Anil Karanjai and Subimal Basak were ripped out of the wall of Kolkata Coffee Houses by other literary groups. Members of a group named ‘Krittibas’ encircled Subimal Basak in front of coffeehouse one evening, and resorted to a fisticuff, resulting into a sort of gang war. Some aged intellectuals and editors secretly wrote letters against us to the Police Commissioner which was later revealed to us by the Commissioner himself.

You might have read that we did not publish regular periodicals for about three years, and published and freely distributed a one-page manifesto/bulletin in Kolkata colleges, newspaper offices and coffeehouses until 1963. The Police Commissioner of Kolkata who interrogated Samir and I sarcastically asked us if we were selling tooth powder through handbills, or if we were engaged in serious literary activities.

The movement gathered steam in 1963-64 when about 35 participants, including painters, joined. In fact, we did not approach the BBC or the Wesleyan University, the University of Ohio, the Gutenberg University or for that matter any of the Indian Universities. The PhD and MPhil that students are writing about us are doing it of their own accord. In most cases, the researchers do not approach us at all, and collect material from The Little Magazine Library and Research Centre at Kolkata. I gather that the movement had a great impact in Bangladesh where Bengali is the national language. My poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ is being debated since 2008 on a website of Dhaka.

Could you give an example in the way that the Bengali language has changed due to the movement ?

Prior to our movement all novels and stories used to be close ended. Poems used to have a centre identified by the title, and street lingo was not used to compose sentences. Slangs were never used, foul language was a taboo and novels were mostly European in construct, and in the sense that the entire narrative was built around a so-called hero. Compound sentences were avoided, short stories always had a whip-crack ending, the concept of ‘The Outsider’ was not touched upon, and lower-caste writers were completely absent in literary periodicals (Subimal Basak, Debi Roy, Abani Dhar in our movement belonged to lower castes). Poems never dealt with images in flux, logical cracks in sentences were frowned upon, and form of the narrative was not freed. There was more concentration on plot and content than on language and technique, and the usage of micro narratives within narratives were considered non-literary. We did away with all these, and allowed the author total freedom. We felt that the European modernism did not suit the Indian complex spirit, and we should draw more from ancient Indian puranas.

In 1961, in the home you shared with your elder brother, Hungryalism was born. Can you recall the first time you realised what you were doing was important?

Actually, it was our parents’ house. I used to discuss with Samir the economic and cultural conditions of society as a result of the shift by the Government of India from an agrarian development plan to a massive industrialisation plan, in the background of an influx of millions of refugees as a result of partition of the country. I was also preparing a draft for a book on Marxism while writing a monthly column on ‘Philosophy of History’ in a Kolkata literary periodical. We felt there was a complete downslide in Bengali society in particular, and Indian society in general, and we should start a movement which should deal with non-literary aspects as well. We felt there has to be a push to get the society out of its elitist slumber. The existing cultural structure was not suitable to solve problems – there had been unimaginable changes in socio-economic environment due to the partition of Bengal.

When the movement picked up steam in 1963 and we were being attacked on all fronts, we realised that what we were doing was quite important, and that we had to keep our critique in focus. Hungryalism became a cultural phenomena. We had to express rage against the system that demanded conformity and selling out.

Our disgust of European modernism automatically became a problem for the reigning writers, poets and thinkers of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. A famous Bengali poet and editor of a poetry magazine, Buddhadeva Basu, refused to meet me and shut the door in my face. In almost all anthologies edited by pre-1960 writers, Hungryalists were never included.

Chaucer and German history philosopher Oswald Spengler influenced the conception of Hungryalism. Why in particular these two writers?

In view of the plight of the refugees on the streets and railway platforms of Kolkata, we wanted to use a word that typified the Sixties’ bad time. Geoffrey Chaucer was in my undergraduate course, and I remembered his line “In the sowre Hungry tyme.” Hungry Time was what we were searching for, and thus we got the name Hungry Generation, or Hungryalism. I discovered Oswald Spengler while writing my column on the Philosophy of History. He had said that when a culture is in downslide, it starts eating everything from the outside – its hunger is insatiable. Thus these two fit exactly to what we were looking for. We discussed it with Samir’s poet friend, Shakti Chattopadhyay, and my poet friend, Debi Roy. We did not, however, agree with Spengler’s sense of doom. Just look at present day India. Our readings were almost prophetic in view of what we wrote in our religious and political manifesto.

Nickie Shobeiry

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Pupul Jayakar : Hungryalist Movement

Hungryalist Movement
When the members of Hungryalist movement were arrested and cases were filed against them, Pupul Jayakar took up the matter with Indira Gandhi as a result of which Shakti Chattopadhyay, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Binoy Majumdar, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Saileswar Ghosh, Subhash Gho0sh, Subo Acharya, Tridib Mitra, Falguni Roy, Basudeb Dasgupta, Subhash Ghose, Abani Dhar were exempted and case was filed against only Malay Roychoudhury as he was the leader of the movement and had become known throughout the literary world. However Malay Roychoudhury was ultimately exonerated by the Kolkata High Court.

Abani Dhar : Going to In-Laws' House for Food ( short story )

  Short Story
Going to In-Laws' House for Food
Abani Dhar

(Translated by Asrar Chowdhury

Two weeks back I drew rations after managing to scrounge up ten takas. Yesterday was the last date for getting them. I thought if I could somehow unload the children and the wife on my in-laws' for a few months, they would at least be able to eat two times a day. But the wife would not hear of it. Last year when she had gone to visit her father's house, she had to put up with a lot of comments about her lack of jewelry. Finally, after lots of endearments, I managed to change her mind. The bus fare? I borrowed the bus fare from Bashu and we started early in the morning. I didn't buy my ticket. I got off at Shialda, bought some sweetmeats, and then got on again. In the bus I tried to convince my wife-- stay at your father's house for a few months. See if it would be possible to get our son some medical treatment. My wife didn't say anything. I tried to comfort her: I'm sure something will come up in the meantime. She answered me in a dry voice, "You know all there is to know: Father has retired. Dada is bearing the burden of the family all by himself. The quarter they are staying in is also in his name. There are still four unmarried sisters in the house. I would rather die than have to face Dada..." I bought ten paisas’ worth of peanuts, handed them to my wife and told her, "Your father has a monthly pension. He also received a large gratuity. Both of your dadas have jobs. They are not wanting for anything over there." My wife chewed the peanuts and said, "But Father first has to build a house, then marry off my sisters...and both my dadas have declared they are doing all they possibly can, that they can't do anything more." Mallikpur. The house is a two-storied government-allotted quarter right next to the station. Upstairs-downstairs combined are two small rooms like little caves and a tiny kitchen. Sunlight does not penetrate into the kitchen. One dugout latrine. No way can anyone inform the doctor about the condition of feces. Paper boats float all around the house. I entered the room on the heels of my wife and children. My mother-in-law was wrapped up in a piece of cloth, sewing something in the veranda. On seeing me, she partially veiled her head. I went towards over and touched her feet. My youngest sister-in-law was wearing a loose frock. She came and took my son and said to her mother, "Look Ma, how thin Bura has gotten." She looked at my wife, "Don't you feed him?" In the meantime, everybody else in the house gathered around us. The youngest sister-in-law said, biting her lower lip, "You should feed him and fatten him up." This sister-in-law is the fairest amongst the sisters. She has failed twice in her class exams and is now studying in class eight. My father-in-law had asked me to find a B.A.-degreed groom from a good family for her. I went to the drawing room and sat down. I overheard my mother-in-law rebuking my wife, "Why did you just land here without any prior notice? There is no spare room in the house. You should use some common sense." I gestured to my wife to give the packet of sweetmeats to my mother-in-law. We had gotten on the bus without eating breakfast. I made a motion with my hand as if to slap my belly to let her know that I was hungry. There was some milk beneath the bedstead. My son somehow spotted it and drank the whole bowl in one long gulp. My mother-in-law clutched her forehead with her hands and sat down, "Oh unfortunate me! I kept that milk for tea!" One of my sisters-in-law ran to my son and snatched the bowl from his hands. I think my wife slapped my son on his back once or twice. After we finished having tea and some bread, my mother-in-law said, "There were biscuits in the house, why didn't you serve them?" I looked at my wife and she brought me two biscuits. Immediately, my two children started squabbling and then finished off both the biscuits. My father-in-law entered the room. I went forward and touched his feet. He slowly surveyed me from top to bottom and then said with a raised eyebrow, "You look as if you've let go of appearances. What do you do now"? Seeing that I remained silent and kept my eyes on the ground--except for a "hmmm"--- he again enquired, "What is the source of your income"? I replied, as meekly as possible, "Nothing." He looked at my son and said, "You seem to have nearly killed him . Haven't you taken him to the doctor"? My tongue slipped and I said, "Yes, I did." He looked at me again sternly, "So you don't have money to buy medicines?" He remained quiet for a while and then murmured almost to himself, "A seer of milk every day and gravy of fish curry, that's what you need to feed them." He called out to my wife, "Sadhana, come here, let me take a look at you." My wife came and bowed down to touch his feet. Looking at the ground my father-in-law sighed and said, "Can't you take the child to a doctor and at least get him some tonic-fonic?" My wife left the room. From behind a curtain my fair-skinned sister-in-law hissed at him, "You have a lot of money. Why don't you look after the treatment of your daughter and her husband." My father-in-law shouted at her to shut up. There were sacks of rice underneath the bedstead, row upon row of them. At one time, I pointed at them and told my wife "If it's possible to get even one sack..." My wife made a face and left the room. My father-in-law also went out somewhere. I turned on the fan and lay down on the bedstead. My youngest sister-in-law screamed at the top of her voice to my mother-in-law, "Dada said he would no longer pay the electric bills. Dada swore a lot when he saw the bill for the last month. The meter read twenty five takas." My wife came and turned the fan off. Outside, the light was blinding. One couldn't see anything clearly in the room unless the lights were on. Where could I go? Lying on the bedstead the smell of rice starch hit my nostrils. I couldn't tell if it was coming from the kitchen or from beneath the bedstead. I have no idea when I fell asleep. My father-in-law woke me up. I sat beside him at lunch. While we were eating, my father-in-law said, "You can start doing business of some sort, can't you? Look at your uncle. He has a business, now has a car and his own house. It's a pleasure talking to people about him." I ate so much that it was difficult to move afterwards. It was after a long time that I had eaten to my heart's content. When my wife came to me with betel nuts, I told her, "Is it possible to manage ten takas from your father? There's mother back home..." She asked me, "What do I tell him when I ask for the money?" I answered her, "Tell them, it's for a job application, just make up something." Then added, "Perhaps it's better if I leave today." My wife said, "But mother asked for you to stay the night. A sadhu is coming in the evening. She wants to get a talisman from him to give to you." Hearing this I thought, well, good, maybe they'd let her stay for a few days. In the afternoon, I was strolling by myself on the platform. All over the station, I saw written, in red, blue and black, "Power flows from the barrel of a gun...armed revolution... freedom...leap forward." I felt a bit excited as I read them. A group of youths wearing shirts and trousers were sitting on a bench arguing about the election. Prickly, stubbled faces. They were staring at me. I moved to a bench farther away. After a while, a working-class man came and sat down beside me. The youths were still looking at me. I was laughing to myself, but at the same time my heart was also beating. The man asked me: "Where do you stay?" "Ashoknagar." "What's the news of the election in your area?" "I really don't know." "What! You don't keep abreast of the election?" "Hmm, I don't actually live there--a little bit outside." Looking at me angrily, after some time, he started to tear into all the political parties one by one. He looked at me, stone-faced and hot-eyed, and said, "This time not a single vote will drop into the ballot boxes here." Noticing that I was not responding, he asked me in a grave voice, "Who have you come to see here?" I showed him the Rail quarter. "That is my in-laws' house." "Oh! So you are so and so's son-in-law? Why didn't you say that before? I thought… You can understand. These days I become suspicious as soon as I see somebody new to the area. Well, that settles it, you are family..." The man passed me a bidi--"Here"--and started almost talking to himself with a disprited face, "This year's harvest was terrible. The people fought among themselves and ruined whatever little did grow. You know, no matter what they say, parties and politics are not for the likes of us poor people." Then one of the youths whistled at us. "That's my call, I have to go now." The man got up and walked over to the men. It was now evening. I went back to the quarter to find that my brother-in-laws had returned from office. My youngest brother-in-law, after consulting books, was giving my son homeopathic medicine. The elder brother-in-law was writing down household accounts in a notebook and telling his younger brother, "They cheated you of twenty paisas in sugar." He stopped talking as soon as I entered the room. It's been quite a while since my eldest brother-in-law and I have been on talking terms. After dinner I went upstairs and sat down. My eldest brother-in-law shouted at the top of his voice from downstairs, "Tell him that those days are gone. It's no longer possible to feed the entire family when they come. I have to break my back to earn money." He told my wife, "Your children are going to sleep by themselves. All this flu, coughing is very contagious. I don't have money now to spend on medicine." My father-in-law said, "All right, all right, shut up now." My eldest brother-in-law was silent for a while, then started up again, "How can anybody get a job just sitting around indulging in adda the whole day? You have to go out and beg people, fall down on hands and knees. This bugger is useless. The only thing to do is to kick his arse out of the house." I woke up very early. My wife had woken up before me. The maids were washing the pots and pans beneath the tap in the courtyard. I was sitting in the veranda upstairs. I overheard one of the maids saying to somebody else, "So you thought you were the clever one, eh? You thought you could make molasses by stealing the date juice?" I laughed silently upon hearing this. Felt like saying--Good morning! Good morning! My wife returned after washing up and said to me, "Come on, let's leave while it's still morning." I took her hands in mine and said, "Dear sweetheart, please stay back for a few days. Have patience with me. Don't worry, our time will come one day. Just stay." She would not listen to me. I tried again, "No use getting angry at their words. Look, I haven't gotten angry. Come what may, they are family, not outsiders. Please, my dear, stay. Listen to me: Stay." But my wife wouldn't listen, so in the end I said, "Make sure you get some money from your father." Both the brothers-in-law soon left for work. In the meantime, my wife had finished packing. I saw her entering her father's room. I spotted the fair-skinned sister-in-law looking on from behind the curtain to see what her father gave Didi or said to her. She moved away as soon as I made a coughing sound. My wife left the room after some time with her fists closed, with my sister-in-law following close behind. I tried to signal my wife about it, but she didn't notice. So then I loudly called my sister-in-law by her name and said, "Do come and visit us." This time my wife understood, and quickly left the room. It was my father-in-law who bought our tickets. After the bus started, my wife started to laugh, then showed me the bottom of the bucket bag. I put my hand down and felt rice grains. My wife had managed to spirit away some rice from the stack beneath the bedstead. I wanted to hug her tightly and kiss her. But how could one do that in the midst of so many people? Instead, I pressed my wife's hand and said, "Bravo, Bravo"! Abani Dhar is a member of the Hungryalist movement. He lives in Kolkata. Asrar Chowdhury teaches Economics at Jahangirnagar University

Conversing with Malay Roychoudhury : Subhankar Das

Conversing with Malay‏: The Diasporic Plurality of a Behari Bengali, or a Cultural Bastard

March 26, 2010

Posted by OWCAdmin
Posted in Interviews/MiniViews | 9 Comments »

This may be a beginning of a conversation between me and poet Malay Roychoudhury who was prosecuted for his publication of the poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ in 1965. This poem was originally written in Bangla PRACHANDA BOIDYUTIK CHHUTAR which was subsequently translated in English with the help of Howard McCord and Carl Weissner. The poem defied the forms of lyric poetry (sonnet,villanel, minnesang, pastourelle, canzone, stew etc.) as well as Bengali meters (Matrabritto and Aksharbritto), retaining, however, its content vehicle, expressing subjective personal feelings. Malay Roy Choudhury, a Bengali poet, had been a central figure in the Hungry Generation’s attack on the Indian cultural establishment in the early 1960s now living a life of a recluse in Bombay. I was in Bombay for a few days but could not meet him as he was not doing to well and my visit coincided with his visit with the med. So I mailed a few questions to him and this is what he has to say.

Subhankar Das : The Hungry Generation literary movement was launched by you in November 1961 with the publication of a manifesto on poetry in English from Patna where you were residing at that point of time and nobody could believe that a behari can have any say about Bangla literature. During the course of the movement you got arrested, lost your job, dragged around town by the police with rope on your waist…how far it is true? Do you still feel the relevance of the movement exists? If not, why?

Malay Roychoudhury : Everything is recorded in the trial papers which may be retrieved from the records of Bankshal Court, Kolkata. The case No etc are also available in various publications. Why don’t you make a little effort and spend a few silver to get certified copies of those papers to enable yourself to get enlightened about the facts. The Hungryalist movement has changed the course of Bengali literature once for all. We definitely created a rupture in terms of time, discourse, experience, narrative diction and breath span of poetic lines. The lecturer of Assam University who is writing his dissertation for a Doctorate on the subject gleefully informed me that Bengali academicians are even today scared to utter the word Hungryalism. Well, I guess that speaks a lot.

S.D : I need a little more explanation on the word ‘behari’ — the causes behind the rejection etc. ‘lost your job dragged around town by the police with manila rope on your waist’ do you still remember that day.. I need the story of that day. Can you elaborate a little –’rupture in terms of time, discourse, experience, narrative diction and breath span of poetic lines’

M.R : I don’t want to recall those days; it gives me pain in my present loneliness. I want to forgive everybody. There is a rupture; in Bengali we call it ‘Bidar’. Look around you and you will get the answer. Manila ropes were not there in our time. Ropes were made of coconut husks. I don’t think you will fathom the diasporic plurality of a Behari Bengali, or a cultural bastard.

S.D : Keeping in mind the Hungryalist movement made a big difference in the attitude of Bangla Lit Scene don’t you think any kind of movement finally aspires for a kind of regimentation, closed groups where the freedom of the authors needs to be sacrificed to keep the movement going? Please share your experience.

M.R : Arrey yaar, don’t think in terms of your knowledge of the movements in Western literature. Hungryalist movement did not have a centre of power, high command or politbureau. Any one and everyone were free to join the movement just by declaring himself that he was a Hungryalist. In fact some of the later Hungryalists are not known to me even today! Participants were free to publish their own broadsides, pamphlets, booklets, magazines etc. The movement was not confined to Kolkata only. As you have just said, I was from Patna; Subimal Basak was from Patna as well; Pradip Choudhuri was from Tripura; Subo Acharya was from Bishnupur; Anil Karanjai was from Benaras. The Little Magazine Library and Research Centre at Kolkata is having an archive, you may like to check out.

S.D : What initiated you to leave the literary hub Kolkata to live a life of a recluse in Mumbai/Bombay?

M.R : I sold off my Kolkata flat, gifted entire collection of books, gramophone records, discs, cassettes etc to friends and readers and donated all furniture’s in my neighborhood. I felt very sad about Kolkata. As you know, once upon a time Kolkata belonged to our clan; I found it is just leaching. Not that I wanted to come to Mumbai; I would have preferred to go anywhere. I came to Mumbai because I have a one room flat in this city.

S.D : Why you found Kolkata is now just leaching and nothing more ?

M.R :  I just stopped myself from uttering the expression ‘The City of Lechers’. I had experienced the city some sixty years back; it was completely different. Ask any one of my age, anyone who is not a part of the present power nexus.

S.D : Do you still feel like an outsider after all these 49 years?

M.R : Oh, yes. I am ‘The Other’.

 

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9 Responses to “ Conversing with Malay‏: The Diasporic Plurality of a Behari Bengali, or a Cultural Bastard ”

1. 

   shome on March 26, 2010 at 10:25 pm

   Bhalo looking out, OW Press–thanks for posting this.
2. 

   Rhinestone Cowboy House at the JMK Arts Center | Gearone.in on March 27, 2010 at 4:08 am

   [...] Conversing with Malay? | Outsider Writers Collective [...]
3. 

   Jim Wittenberg on March 27, 2010 at 9:32 pm

   An interesting piece of outsider history here.
4. 

   R.K.Singh on March 29, 2010 at 4:49 am

   Liked it very much. I can’t remember those days of literary activism but as a young man I did keep track of it, the Hungry generation. Good, that it did not affect my poetic creativity!
5. 

   Priyankar on March 29, 2010 at 12:21 pm

   Through this conversation,a page from the history of Indian poetry in general & Bangla poetry in particular,came alive to me . I can empathise with the sense of pain & disillusionment & betrayal that hungry generation poets gone through. yes! for a so-called ‘bhoomiputra’ it is very hard to fathom the idea of diasporic plurality .
6. 

   Kamalesh Banerjee on April 2, 2010 at 7:24 am

   We who belong to a disillusioned generation, Malay Roychoudhury remains a legend for us. He is still the same fire-breating dragon-poet that he was some four decades earlier. I liked his strange fiction NAKHADANTA on West Bengal written probably in 1980s. That book really anticipated that the culture of West Bengal is going downhill and requires urgent revolutionary takeover from the Marxisists. Marx is not going to help; We must have a dereamer like Malaybabu. I wish he still keeps his pencap open. Good Luck. Thanks to OWC.
7. 

   Shamset Tabrejee on April 4, 2010 at 12:30 am

   happy to read it
8. 

   Bhaskar Sen on April 6, 2010 at 11:59 pm

   To know the man Malay Roychowdhury one has to read the complete works of Malay. That he is a story teller looking at things from an angle completely different from the authors of today, can be understood from his book ‘Bhenno Golpo’. Let Malayda keep well and write many many poems, prose and stories in the years to come.
9. 

   Kavita Vachaknavee on April 8, 2010 at 8:27 am

   मलय रायचौधरी से बातचीत के बहाने बंगाल की कविता के उस युग की कई यादें पुन: समक्ष हुईं, जो अब काव्येतिहास का हिस्सा हैं। लगभग सभी भारतीय भाषाओं की कविता में वह काल आन्दोलनधर्मी रचनाकारों के अनेक ऐसे ही संस्मरण अपने गर्भ में समेटे है, जिसने समकालीन ही नहीं अपितु अपने बाद की पूरी काव्यपरम्परा को अत्यधिक प्रभावित ही नहीं किया अपितु मोड़ भी दिया।

   अब साहित्य/कविता में आन्दोलन नहीं होते। लेखक सुविधाभोगी और बिक जाने को तैयार लोगों की जमात हो गए हैं। ऐसे में भावी रचनाकारों के लिए ऐसी बातचीत का दस्तावेजीकरण अत्यन्त उपयोगी है, आवश्यक है।

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