Prof Nissim Ezekiel : The Hungry Generation

Prof Nissim Ezekiel : The Hungry Generation The Hungry Generation Movement in Bengali literature, which took Calcutta by surprise in 1961, and became instantaneously known through TIME magazine, has withstood all odds, and is now a historical and cultural force to reckon with. The movement has grown to uncontrollable proportions. All sorts of groups have emerged at various places in West Bengal claiming to be of Hungry Strain. The major Hungry Generation writers and poets are in their late forties now: Subimal, Malay, Basudeb, Subhas, Saileswar, Pradip and others. They have always been at the receiving end from the media due to their uncompromising stand. Except for Debi Ray, who broke with the Hungries quite early, none of them are invited to participate in the national or regional TV and radio programmes, official workshops/seminars/recitals/readings. The Hungry writers, better known as the Hungry Generation, are immensely popular among students and young writers today, as they are considered the voice of conscience in a Bengali society shattered by internecine political struggles of the post-partition years. Interesting, though, the Hungry Generation writers, poets and artists do not function as a group any more. But they remain the only avant garde figures in Bengali literature, always experimenting, always questioning, expressing themselves in ultimate terms. “The Movement”, as the renowned critic Dr Uttam Das has said, “is an important event in the history of Bengal”. Malay Roychoudhury(b. 1939), the towering avant garde poet who pioneered the Hungry movement in Bengali literature, is a legend by himself. Still uncompromising, and therefore not supported by the Bengali media, all his collections have so far been published by his friends and relatives. Despite being hailed by TIME magazine as an outstanding poet, he remains as controversial as he was in 1961 when he entered the literary scene in Calcutta with a whiff of liberated form, and an uninhibited approach towards expression of Indian thought concerning self and society, love and destruction, politics and despair. Malay had given up writing sometime in 1966 after some of his friends has betrayed and testified against him. But he returned with a vengeance in 1983, and took the Bengali scene by storm. His poems have been translated into almost all Indian languages as well as into Spanish, German, French, Russian and Italian. He has translated Ginsberg, Lorca and Neruda into Bengali. Malay’s collection of verse includes Shoytaner Mukh, Jakham, Kabita Sankalan, and the recently published collection revealing violence, fear and agony, in Medhar Batanukul Ghungur. Although once the leader of the fierce Hungry Generation movement, Malay now lives the life of a recluse in Bombay. The poets of the younger generation look at him with awe and inspiration. We feel he is the ultimate representative of his kind of poetry. (Courtesy: Prof Nissim Ezekiel, Editor, The Indian P.E.N., Mumbai, 1987)

Hungryalist Poetry of Chaos & Death : Prof McCord, Washington State University

Prof Howard McCord Poetry of Chaos and Death Every attitude has its poetry, and a small, neat nation may, in one age, present a singularly unified attitude and its poetry to the world, as did England in the last sixteenth century. But such a tidy clarity is impossible for India. No country in the world offer greater extremes or variety in the total experiences which shape poets. Every social ordering from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, may be found; every major religion and most of the minor ones are practiced: the world views and value structures of India are nearly endless and expressed in 723 languages. The only area in the world that offers even remotely an equivalent complexity and confusion is the whole of Africa. Two things give the country what unity it has: the first is false generalization---that there is an Indian temperament, discernable both in the North and the South, composed of egoism, agility of mind, quickness to violence, a penchant for vaporous theories and an honest material avarice; the second is a terrible truth---that nowhere else is there such an omnipresent doom, of the implacable approach of absolute disaster and collapse. India produces many kinds of poetry; I am familiar only with that in English, and it falls roughly into three categories. The first is simply bad: the sentimental outpourings of the young or heartsick; formal and bombastic occasional verse; a gauche and florid romanticism: grotesque prayers and pious exhortations, and such like, all of which suffer from banality, false emotion, and technical incompetence. The second is compromised and serious, often well-written poems which sometimes move me but most often seem too dependent on the poetic traditions of England a generation or more ago, and the bland and inoffensive taste of the upper middle class. These works exist in the limbo of the lukewarm, and represent a timid art that dares neither to hate nor love too much. Like our own academic verse, these poems reflect calm intelligence, tamed passion and the polite despairs of gentlemen born into a world they never made. The poems are cultured, introspective, sensitive, and are most true to the plight of the Indian estranged from his own culture by his mastery of English, but whose situation is tolerable, and who would not admit that poetry is a criminal occupation. These are sincere and harmless poems, and aside from a little local colour, could have been written in Leeds or Philadelphia. The denatured cosmopolitanism that infects the poetry of the West prevails in India as well, and few of the poems carry any sense of place, or the sound of a man speaking, or the rasping smell of cow-dung fires. The academic poets of India have yet to grasp the vernacular and all that implies. The poetic vision of the Hungry Generation erupted in Bengal five years ago, and has rapidly spread to such cities like New Delhi, Bombay and Allahabad. This kind of poetry is dangerous and revolutionary, cleanses by violence and destruction, unsettles and confounds the reader. This is the poetry of the disaffected, the alienated, the outraged, the dying. It is a poetry which alarms and disgusts the bourgeois, for it describes their own sickened state more clearly than they wish to hear, and exposes the hypocrisy of their decency. One reaction of good citizens has been to accuse the poets of hysteria and obscenity. The long and painful persecution of Malay Roychoudhury, ending in his conviction on 28th December 1965 on charges of obscenity, indicates the virulence and depth of the fear which these poets have uncovered. The energy of the poets is hysterical: the imagery of the poem is obscene. It is meant to be. But I take obscenity to be a just and natural reaction to a vile existence.. Obscenity is the desperate music of poets who dare speak out against the rape of mind and soul that marks our demented and vicious civilization. Obscenity is the last attempt by honest men to speak their agony to those who torture them. Obscenity is a moral weapon with which to attack the degrading and filthy use of power that characterizes our age, and assert contempt for the managers of our lives. These poets say what poets and prophets have said for a hundred years---that our civilization is desperately sick, that our consciousness is polluted, our values murderous. They are outraged at the cruel and deliberate waste of beauty and intelligence that world culture represents, and sickened by the perversions of life our societies demand. Their poems record the ugly, numbing truth that most men delight in these horrors, lust after their own destruction, and fear life insanely. The poets are nihilists. They are pessimists. And most will die before their time. But each of them has a vision of what man ought to be, and should be, and their poetry stems from the sad knowledge of what he is. I value their work most because it is an honest response to the reality of life in India. And India endures now what will come to us all before long. Pound said that poets were antennae of the race, and they are---but they are also gotten on Cassandra, and will not be believed until too late, when the vacuous mouthings that pass as earthly wisdom are known by all to be empty, dreadful lies and the hideous future we have let to be prepared for us arrives. We will not be saved. This is the obscenity their poetry must celebrate. Malay Roychoudhury, a young Bengali poet, has been a central figure in the Hungry Generation’s attack on the Indian cultural establishment since the Movement began in the early sixties. The Indian press believes to this day that the group’s origins can be traced to the 1962 Indian visit of Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gary & Jeanne Snyder. But however stimulating the visit of these American poets, however inspired by such writers as Artaud, Genet, Michaux, Burroughs, Miller, and Celine, I believe the Movement is autochthonous and stems from the profound dislocations of Indian life. There was little notice of the Movement in the United States until 1963 when City Lights Journal carried news of the group; In 1964 the Hungrealist Manifestoes appeared in KULCHUR#15, and EL CORNO EMPLUMADO and EVERGREEN REVIEW printed letters telling of the Movement’s legal difficulties. For in the autumn of 1964, as many learned from a November issue of TIME, six poets of the Hungry Generation, Malay Roychoudhury, Saileswar Ghosh, Subhas Ghose and Pradip Choudhuri, had been arrested and charged with conspiring to produce and distribute an obscene book in violation of Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code. The book was an anthology of their writings, and STARK ELECTRIC JESUS was Malay Roychoudhury’s contribution. At their arrest, all were suspended from their jobs, and when I saw them in June 1965, they had been out of work nearly ten months. Later that summer charges were dropped against five, but the prosecution of Malay Roychoudhury continued. On 28 December 1965 he was found guilty by a Calcutta court and sentenced to a fine of 200 rupees or one month’s imprisonment. The poem was banned. He has not been reinstated in his job, and life, as he writes, “has become hard and difficult…I am more or less living on alms”. In spite of prosecution and harassment, the Hungry Generation has continued to produce and publish poetry and prose. Acid, destructive, morbid, hallucinatory, nihilistic, outrageous, obscene, mad, shrill---these characterize the terrifying and cleansing visions that the Hungrealists insist Indian literature must endure. With few exceptions, contemporary Indian literature is school master’s stuff: pallid, otiose, and dull. It is timid and moralistic, and when it is not politely realistic, it is romantic and aimlessly and endlessly philosophical. Bhabani Bhattacharya and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala are among the exceptions, the one possessing a dank tartness like that of Albert Cossery, the other the lucid wit of Jane Austin. But only the Hungry Generation, excluded from the academies and the literary aristocracy, can the fullness of urgency and despair be seen, for they more than any other group have realized that there is very possibly no hope for India, that what lies ahead is chaos and collapse. They are not revolutionaries, only mourners. Revolution is pointless when betrayal has been so deep. All that remain is to protest, scream, love everything to foolishness---especially India---then nod wisely and callously at death. (Courtesy: Tribal Press, Washington DC. 1965)

The Hungryalist Controversy : Prof S. Mudgal

 The Hungryalist Controversy by Prof S. Mudgal

No other literary event has consistently remained as controversial in Bengali literature during this century as the Hungryalist movement since its eruption in 1961. This literary movement was launched by Malay Roychoudhury, Subimal Basak, Debi Ray, Saileswar Ghose, Basudeb Dasgupta, Tridib Mitra, Subhas Ghose, Falguni Ray and Arunesh Ghose who were in their early twenties at that time. They had coined Hungryalism from the word ‘Hungry’ used by Geofrey Chaucer in his poetic line In The Sowre Hungry Tyme. 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 majority of Bengalies having almost an instinctive inclination for Marxist ideology during the post-independence era, Oswald Spengler’s prophecy of doom and disaster was the first salvo of controversy which made the Hungryalists unacceptable to leftist media and professors for almost two decades. It was the individual genius of such authors as novelist Subimal Basak and poet Malay Roychoudhury that the barriers were broken. Subsequent researchers such as Dr Uttam Das of Calcutta University, Prof Nandalal Sharma of Chittagong University and Prof Howard McCord of Washington State University, however, had explained that the social commitment in the Hungryalist writers over the years alleviated the fear of political leftists. The contribution of Prof Sankha Ghosh of Jadavpur University can not also be ignored who had made utmost efforts to sponsor and praise the Hungryalist poet Saileswar Ghosh. It is the undercurrent of nationalist feeling that has kept them in good stead and cut through shallow political controversies. Nevertheless, very often their nationalism itself has led to controversy as the Hungryalists have been criticizing politicians of all hue.

All of these poets and writers had a lower income-group background and the milieu contributed a special suburban nuance in their writings. The established Bengali critics, overtly and covertly being elitist in the 1960s, detested this milieu, and the Hungryalists became controversial. Even their habits, dress sense, choice of words, friends circle became controversial issues. However, over the years as these writers and poets became financially in a better position, things changed, and the tenor of such criticism gradually faded out. One of the Hungryalists, viz., Debi Roy, became Secretary of Indian Writers Association.

Another element of controversy has been the way of their expression which probably did not suit the sophisticated Bengali intelligentsia. Initially they used to publish handbills which carried their writings, and these used to be distributed in Calcutta College Street Coffee House, colleges and newspaper offices. The papers on which these were printed were intentionally very cheap and coloured to hurt elite sensibilities. Poetry recitals were held by them in country-liquor shops, temples, brothels, street junctions and graveyards as a matter of protest to exorbitant charges of regular halls. Some of the authorities of these halls did not allow them to book the auditorium on the ground that they were vulgar. It may seem strange now that in the Calcutta Book Fair of 1988, Subimal Basak’s Anthology of Superstitions was sold out on the first day, and the publisher of Malay Roychoudhury’s collection of poems Medhar Batanukul Ghungur was virtually mobbed by college students. It could not be an overstatement that some of the Hungryalists have become legends.

The main controversy obviously relates to their writings. Subimal Basak’s Chhatha Matha is a novel written in the dialect of East Bengali tongawallas which captures the very essence of the street life of a decaying generation, of people who have lost their origin, of disaster and beyond. The language is difficult as it is not spoken by all. The raging controversy is whether such a work can be called a piece of Art. The amusing part of this controversy is that the book, when read out to the common man of East Bengali origin, is understandable to him because it is his language which the upper class people have taken care to forget.

Malay Roychoudhury is not only a controversial Hungryalist but probably is the most controversial poet among the Bengalies today. He was even arrested and sentenced for one of his poems by a lower court, although the High Court rescinded that order in 1966. But his poems remain at a distance from the general run of Bengali poets. As his publisher’s write-up says, if poetry can be deadly then he is the deadliest of Bengali poets; the designs of his poems are sinister, the images are violent and vicious. His poems are a bizarre world of flashing knife, midnight knocks, slaughtered rainbows and battered rivers, as if the poet is an antisocial character. In his poem Alo (Light) Malay has depicted the use of light in a torture chamber where light is not enlightening but is negative.

Basudeb Dasgupta in his collection of short stories Randhanshala had a remarkable idea of transplanting revolution. The hero of the story stirs the water in a glass with his finger, and cuts off the ripple of water with a blade for fixing it on the head of his friend to make the hair curly. This has been objected to by many critics as simplification of idealism. In his latest novel Mrityuguha, Basudeb has raked up the controversy again in which the hero washes utensils, and sings the ‘International’ with his pupils where he is a teacher.

The controversies do not end here. The Hungryalists insist that they are unable to forget their past. If you invite them for a dinner, they may belch and fart openly, sit cross-legged on the sofa,, make slurping-chomping sound while eating, laugh loudly, use incorrect English, talk in Hindi or Bengali, use shabby dresses and shoes, humiliate the bourgeois, get drunk, etc. A Hungryalist will try to prove that he is hundred percent Indian. Some of the major Hungryalists have even refused invitations to foreign universities or poetry readings. This might be one of the reasons why they are not invited by Doordarshan (Govt TV Channel), although Subimal Basak had been invited to attend seminars organized by Bharat Bavan of Bhopal. Malay Roychoudhury has given at least five interviews during the last couple of years.

The various controversies have actually strengthened the position of the Hungryalists authors, inasmuch as they have revealed the tenacity of independent thinking against all odds, which incidentally is in short supply among the present day Indian intellectuals who are always at the beck and call of the Establishment. Through these controversies the Hungryalist authors have proved their Indianness as well as their sincerity, that they are the only avant garde in Bengali culture today, that they are the voice of conscience, that they are the hope for the future. Controversy is essential for any living society. By being controversial the Hungryalists have consistently tried to capture and retain the centre-stage of Bengali culture, since various vested interests have been trying to dislodge them from that place during the last thirty years. But the Hungryalists are here to stay, and ignoring them will be a crime towards Art and literature.

(Courtesy: U.S.Bahri, Editor, Language News, Shahadra, Delhi. 1988)

You seem to be satisfied after joining The Establishment

 

অনুপম মুখোপাধ্যায় : মলয় রায়চৌধুরীকে নিয়ে ১টি পুনরাধুনিক কাজ

অনুপম মুখোপাধ্যায় : মলয় রায়চৌধুরীকে নিয়ে ১টি পুনরাধুনিক কাজ এই মুহূর্তে, অর্থাৎ ২০১৯-এর পশ্চিমবঙ্গে এই যে উত্তপ্ত মে মাস চলছে, লোকসভা নির্বাচনের দামামাকে দূরাগত ঢক্কানিনাদ মনে হচ্ছে, যেন আমরা যে ট্রাইবের অন্তর্গত তার বিরাট পরবটি এসে পড়েছে, ঠিক এখনই, এই ভূতের নাচের মধ্যে, অশীতিপর মলয় রায়চৌধুরীকে আমার ভারতের একমাত্র বাংলাভাষী আন্তর্জাতিক সাহিত্যিক বলে মনে হয়। আজ তিনিই একমাত্র জীবিত আন্তর্জাতিক সাহিত্যিক ভারতীয় বাংলা ভাষায়। এটা আবেগ থেকে বলছি না। ব্যক্তিগত সম্পর্ক থেকেও বলছি না। এটা ঘটনা। ষাটের দশক থেকে আজ অবধি মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর সারাজীবনের সাহিত্যিক কাজকর্ম দেখলেই সেটা বোঝা যাবে। এই মুহূর্তেও তিনি প্রচুর লিখছেন, কিন্তু, মৃত্যুচেতনার সঙ্গে একটা বোঝাপড়া করছেন। সোশ্যাল নেটওয়ার্কে তাঁর সঙ্গে কথা বলে আমার মনে হয়েছে এই বয়সে এসে একরকম অনিশ্চিত হতাশাও হয়ত তাঁকে ঘিরেছে। কিছুদিন আগে আমাকে ফেসবুকের মেসেঞ্জারে লিখেছেন- ‘আমাকে নিয়ে তো কেউ লেখে না! কী হল এত লিখে?’ এই জিজ্ঞাসার ন্যায্য হতাশা হয়ত শেষ জীবনে সবারই প্রাপ্য থাকে। যদি খুব ভুল না করে থাকি, রবীন্দ্রনাথও তাঁর শেষ জীবনে এই বোধটা থেকে মুক্তি পাননি। এটা বাংলাদেশ। এখানে বড় গাছগুলোকে আগাছারা আড়াল করতে পারে, কী করে পারে সেটা একটা দীর্ঘ প্রবন্ধের বিষয় হতে পারে, এখানে অপ্রাসঙ্গিক। তাছাড়া এই মুহূর্তে পশ্চিমবঙ্গের পরিস্থিতি পচে যাওয়া মাখনের মতো। তার বিশ্লেষণ হয়, কিন্তু ব্যাখ্যা হয় না। মলয় রায়চৌধুরীও সেই ব্যাখ্যা দিতে চেষ্টা করে অসফল। তাই, যেটা তাঁর সফলতা, শেষ অবধি সেটা তাঁর কবি আর গল্পকার সত্বার জয়। প্রাবন্ধিক মলয়ের নয়। মলয় রায়চৌধুরী সেই ধুরন্ধর সাহিত্যিক যিনি জানেন সারা পৃথিবীতে কী লেখা হয়েছে, কী লেখা হচ্ছে, এবং সেই অনুসারেই তিনি জানেন আর কী লেখা যেতে পারে। কোন লেখা তাঁর অপেক্ষায় আছে, লিখতে বাকি আছে, এই মোক্ষম সচেতনতা ব্রিটিশ ভারতে বাঙালি সাহিত্যিকদের অনেকের মধ্যে ছিল। স্বাভাবিকভাবেই ছিল, কারণ তখন কলকাতা ছিল পৃথিবীর অন্যতম গুরুত্বপূর্ণ শহর, উপমহাদেশের রাজধানী, সাম্রাজ্যের দ্বিতীয় শহর, রামমোহন-বিদ্যাসাগর-ডিরোজিও-মাইকেল-বঙ্কিম-রবীন্দ্রনাথ-বিবেকানন্দের শহর, তখন সারা ভারতের মধ্যে কোনো চিন্তা প্রথম জাগ্রত হত বাঙালির ধূসর পদার্থে। আজ যা পরিস্থিতি, মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর মতো একজন লেখকের লেখা বোঝার লোক খুব কমে গেছে। তিনি জনসাধারণের জন্য লেখেন না, এটাই যদি সাধারণ চিন্তা হয়, সেটা আমি মেনে নিতে পারি না। মলয়ের কবিতার মধ্যে ‘পিপল’স পোয়েট’ হয়ে ওঠার শক্তি এখনকার যে কোনো কবির চেয়ে বেশি। মানুষ যে তাঁর কবিতা পড়ল না, তার একমাত্র কারণ তাঁর কবিতাকে মানুষের কাছে যেতে দেওয়া হল না। তাঁর উপন্যাস বেস্ট সেলার লিস্টে পাকাপাকিভাবেই থাকত, যদি তিনি প্রতিষ্ঠানের কাছে মাথা বিকোতেন, অথবা, প্রতিষ্ঠান তাঁর জন্য নিজের দিশা বদলাত, যদি তার আদৌ কোনো দিশা থেকে থাকে। আজ সেই লংকা নেই, কারণ অন্যরূপে রাবণ থাকলেও তার দশ মাথা নেই, অথচ যেদিকে তাকাবেন দেখবেন রাবণ টুকরো টুকরো হয়ে ছড়িয়ে, এই হয়ত মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর ব্যাখ্যাকৃত পোস্টমডার্ন পরিসর। যদিও, আমার মতে, যেমন আমি আমার পুনরাধুনিক বিষয়ক গ্রন্থে দেখিয়েছি, এই পরিসর প্রথম বিশ্বযুদ্ধের পরেই কলকাতায় এসে পড়েছিল। মলয় রায়চৌধুরী এবং সমীর রায়চৌধুরী সেটাকে শনাক্ত করেন নব্বইয়ের দশকে, কিন্তু এমনভাবে করেন যেন সেটা সেই মুহূর্তেই প্রকটিত হল। জীবনানন্দ দাশ বা সমর সেনই যে তিরিশের দশকেই বাংলা কবিতার পোস্টমডার্ন এনে ফেলেছিলেন, মোটেই ৯০ দশকীয় কোনো পত্রিকার কাজ সেটা নয়, এটা কেন বলে ওঠেননি, আমার কৌতূহল আছে। ষাটের দশকে মলয়েরই নেতৃত্বাধীন হাংরি আন্দোলন কি প্রথম পোস্টমডার্ন সাহিত্য আন্দোলন নয় বাংলা ভাষার? অবিশ্যি পোস্টমডার্নে কোনো নেতা তো থাকতে পারে না। তাতে আর অসুবিধা কোথায়? ওই আন্দোলনের অন্তর্ভুক্তজনেদের মধ্যে অধিকাংশই তো মলয় রায়চৌধুরীকে তাঁদের নেতা আজ আর মানেন না, তাঁকে হেয় করেন, তাঁদের কার কারও সন্তানরাও মলয়ের প্রতি বিদ্বিষ্ট, এমনকি এমন অনেকেই আছেন যাঁরা মলয়কে হাংরি আন্দোলনের ইতিহাস থেকে বাদ দিয়ে স্বস্তি পেতে চান। শ্রীকৃষ্ণকে বাদ দিয়েই কুরুক্ষেত্র হয়ে যাবে, সেই চেষ্টাটাও ভেরি মাচ পোস্টমডার্ন, তাই নয় কি? হাংরি আন্দোলনের শত্রুরাই আজ ঠিক করে দিচ্ছে হাংরি আন্দোলনের ইতিহাস, এ এক প্যারাডক্স। আবার এটাও ঠিক, মলয় এগুলো নিয়ে না ভাবলেই পারেন। হাংরি আন্দোলন নিয়ে তিনি এই ২০১৯-এও বেশ অবসেসড্‌। ৫০ বছর আগে ফেলে আসা আন্দোলনটিকে তিনি আজও ভুলতে পারেননি। নিজেই ব্লগ বানিয়ে তার আর্কাইভ করেন। আজও হাংরি নিয়ে গদ্যের পর গদ্য লেখেন। এই অবসেসন তাঁর সাম্প্রতিক সাহিত্যকর্মে কিছুটা হলেও ছায়া ফেলে থাকবে, এমন আশঙ্কা মাঝেমধ্যে আমার মাথায় এসেছে। আত্মবিস্মৃত বাঙালিকে তিনি কি কিছুটা পটাতে চাননি এই একটা ব্যাপারে? এই একটাই ব্যাপারে? দিল্লিতে ভারতের রাজধানী চলে যাওয়ার পরে, দেশভাগের দ্বারা বাঙালিকে ২ টুকরো করে দেওয়ার পরে, কংগ্রেস-নকশাল-সিপিএম-মাওবাদ-তৃণমূল-বিজেপি বিন্দুগুলিকে স্পর্শ করে করে আজ বাঙালি ভারতের একটি প্রান্তিক রাজ্যের অবহেলিত ফতুর জনসাধারণে পুনরায় রূপান্তরিত হয়েছে, পলিটিক্স সাহিত্য আর সংস্কৃতির দিক থেকে বাঙালি আজ অধঃপতিত হয়েই চলেছে, যেমন অবস্থায় সে প্রাক্‌-ব্রিটিশ যুগে ছিল, কোনো মোগল সম্রাটের তখন বাংলাদেশে পা রাখার প্রয়োজনই হত না, আজ পশ্চিমবঙ্গের রাষ্ট্রীয় মূল্য ৪২টা লোকসভা আসনেই চুকিয়ে ফেলা যাচ্ছে। তার ফলেই সিনেমা বা সাহিত্যের চেয়ে পলিটিক্স আজ অনেক বেশি অন্তঃসারশূন্য ও দক্ষিনী সিনেমার চেয়েও এন্টারটেইনিং। মন খারাপ হলে মুখর নেতা বা মুখরা নেত্রীর স্ট্যান্ড আপ কমেডি ভিডিও দেখে নেওয়া যাচ্ছে ইউটিউবে গিয়ে, এবং হা হা হো হো করে নেওয়া যাচ্ছে। মলয় রায়চৌধুরী এটাকেই পোস্টমডার্ন পরিসর বলবেন, যথার্থই বলবেন, কিন্তু এই পরিসর তাঁকেও যথেষ্ট হেনস্থা করছে, কারণ, তাঁকে এখানে অনেকেই বুঝতে পারছে না, না বুঝে রিঅ্যাক্ট করছে, বুঝেও চুপ করে থাকছে, তাঁরই ব্যাখ্যা করা পরিসরে তিনি স্বয়ং কি যথেষ্ট বেমানান নন? সেটা না হলে তিনি বড় নন। মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর স্বাভাবিক বিরোধাভাসটা এই যে, তিনি নিজেকে ছোটলোক ইত্যাদি দাবি করেও, বাঙালির সামগ্রিক হড়কে যাওয়ার কবন্ধ শরিক হননি, বিশেষ কোনো প্রাতিষ্ঠানিক খুড়োর কলে নিজেকে জুড়ে ফেলেননি, বরং নিজেকে সারা পৃথিবীর সাপেক্ষে জায়মান লেখক করে তুলতে পেরেছেন। তাঁর উপন্যাস এবং কবিতা এবং প্রবন্ধকে প্রাদেশিক চেতনার বাইরে দাঁড়িয়ে পড়া যায়। এটা এই মুহূর্তে জীবিত দ্বিতীয় কোনো বাঙালি সাহিত্যিক সম্পর্কে আমি বলতে পারছি না। এটা আমার অজ্ঞতাপ্রসূত হলেও, দৃঢ় ধারণা, এবং কোনো প্রশংসাবাক্য নয়। একজন লেখকের জীবনে প্রায়ই এটা ঘটে যে, তিনি নিজের জন্য একটি লাগসই ভাবমূর্তি বেছে নিলেন, কিন্তু নিজেকে সেই মাপে ঢালতেই পারলেন না। মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর ক্ষেত্রেও সেটাই ঘটেছে। তিনি নিজেকে বিহারের ইমলিতলা থেকে উঠে আসা ছোটলোক হিসাবে পেশ করতে চাইলেন, কিন্তু হাড়ে হাড়ে বোঝা গেল এই লেখকটি সাবর্ণ রায়চৌধুরীর বংশপরিচয়েই অধিক মানানসই, কারণ, মলয়ের মধ্যে যে আভিজাত্য আছে, যে আত্মসচেতন উদাসীনতা আছে, তা গত ১০০ বছরের বাংলা সাহিত্যে যথেষ্ট দুর্লভ, তাঁর মধ্যে অস্তিত্বের উৎকণ্ঠা থাকলেও বাংলা বাজারের ইতরতা নেই, প্রান্তিকতা যদি কিছু থেকে থাকে, সেটা স্বরচিত। তাঁর আচরণের মানবিক স্তরটিতে আছে এক আশ্চর্য খেঁকুরেপনা, অমরত্বের অদ্ভুত উদাসীন বাসনা আর দুর্দান্ত সেন্স অফ হিউমারের মিশ্রণ, যেটা তিক্ত যোদ্ধাকে মানায়, ব্যর্থ প্রেমিককে মানায়, প্রতিষ্ঠার ভিখারী বা প্রতিষ্ঠানের দালালদের কিন্তু মানায় না। মলয় নিছক ছোটলোক নন। তিনি একজন অভিজাত ছোটলোক। ছোটলোক অভিজাত নন। বলা বাহুল্য এখানে আমি জাতপাতের কথা বললাম না। মলয় রায়চৌধুরী যে শঙ্খ ঘোষ, দেবেশ রায় বা শীর্ষেন্দু মুখোপাধ্যায়দের চেয়ে ঢের বড় মাপের সাহিত্যিক এটাও মুক্তকন্ঠেই বলতে চাই। কারণ এঁদের মতো তিনি বিগত শতাব্দীর কবিলেখক নন। তিনি একবিংশ শতাব্দির সঙ্গে তুমুলভাবে যাচ্ছেন। হ্যাঁ, তাঁর উপন্যাস থেকে বাংলা সিরিয়াল হবে না। সিনেমাও হওয়া মুশকিল। তাঁর কবিতা মঞ্চে দাঁড়িয়ে উদাত্ত আবৃত্তি করা চলবে না। মলয় মেজর সাহিত্যিকের ধারণাকে অস্বীকার করেন, সেটা তাঁর কিছুটা গড়ে তোলা এবং কিছুটা আমদানিকৃত তত্ববিশ্বের ব্যাপার। আমি মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর তত্বকে মলয়ের কবিতা আর উপন্যাসের সঙ্গে মিলিয়ে দেখা খুব জরুরি মনে করি না। আমি মেজর সাহিত্যিকের ধারনায় কঠিনভাবে বিশ্বাস করি, এবং, মলয় রায়চৌধুরীকে একজন যথার্থ মেজর সাহিত্যিক বলে মনে করি। এ প্রসঙ্গে একটা ঘটনা মনে পড়ে গেল। একবার সোশ্যাল নেটওয়ার্কে বলেছিলাম কবি হিসেবে শঙ্খ ঘোষের জ্ঞানপীঠ পুরস্কার পাওয়ার কথা ছিল না, বাঙালি কাউকে দিতেই হলে ওটা নীরেন্দ্রনাথ চক্রবর্তীকে দেওয়া যেত। আমার এই উক্তিতে ভীমরুলের চাকে ঢিল পড়ে যায়, এবং অনেকের দ্বারা আক্রান্ত হই। তাঁদের মধ্যে একজন বদমেজাজি সম্পাদক বলেছিলেন আমি মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর নাম কেন করলাম না জ্ঞানপীঠের যোগ্য প্রাপক হিসেবে। সম্ভবত এই উক্তি যিনি করেছিলেন আমাকে তিনি মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর নিকটস্থ গুণমুগ্ধ একজন ঠাউরেছিলেন এবং ভেবেছিলেন মলয়ের নাম না করাটা আমার অবস্থানের ভণ্ডামি ধরিয়ে দেবে। মজার ব্যাপার হল, সেদিন দেখলাম মলয় রায়চৌধুরী ওই ব্যক্তির ওই উক্তিকে নিজের ব্লগে সযত্নে জায়গা দিয়েছেন, অর্থাৎ গুরুত্ব দিয়েছেন, যদিও নিজে কোনো মন্তব্য করেননি। আজ এই লেখায় স্পষ্ট বলতে চাইব, মলয়কে আমি এই মুহূর্তের বাংলাভাষায় একমাত্র আন্তর্জাতিক সাহিত্যিক মনে করলেও শুধু জ্ঞানপীঠ কেন অন্য যে কোনো ভারতীয় পুরস্কারের প্রাপক হিসাবেই মলয়ের নাম কল্পনা করতে পারি না। পুরস্কার সর্বদাই উপর থেকে আসে, এবং হাত পেতে সেটা নিতে হয়। সেই পুরস্কারই নেওয়া চলে যেটার উচ্চতা লেখকের চেয়ে বেশি, এবং সেটায় তাঁর কোনো গ্লানি নেই। রবীন্দ্রনাথকে নোবেল প্রাইজে মানায়, রবীন্দ্র পুরস্কার তাঁর নেওয়া চলে কি? জ্ঞানপীঠও তারাশঙ্কর বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়কেই মানাত, তিনি পেয়েওছিলেন, মানিক বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়কে মানাত না। মলয় রায়চৌধুরীকে কোনো প্রাতিষ্ঠানিক পুরস্কার দেওয়ার অর্থ তাঁর স্তরকে মাঝারিয়ানায় নামিয়ে এনে তাঁর জায়মানতাকে খতম করে দেওয়া। মলয়ের মতো সাহিত্যিকরা পুরস্কৃত হতে জন্মান না। পুরস্কার তাঁদের মৃত্যুঘন্টা বাজিয়ে দ্যায়। যে কোনো সাহিত্যিকেরই বারোটা বাজায় একটা প্রাতিষ্ঠানিক পুরস্কার, কিন্তু তাতে সামগ্রিক বাংলা সাহিত্যের খুব একটা ক্ষতি হয় না। মলয় রায়চৌধুরীকে পুরস্কৃত করলে, কোনো সাহিত্যসভায় ধরে নিয়ে গিয়ে ফিতে কাটালে, কোমর নুইয়ে প্রদীপ জ্বালালে মলয়ের ব্যক্তিগত ক্ষতি কী হবে সে তো বললামই, বাংলা সাহিত্যের অনেক কিছুই ঘেঁটে ঘ হয়ে যাবে, সেই বিচ্ছিরি জট আর খোলা যাবে না। প্রতাপশালী কোনো প্রতিষ্ঠানের দেওয়া মুকুট পরলেই যে ওঁর মাথাটি হাতছাড়া হয়ে যাবে, মলয় সেটা নিজে খুব ভাল জানেন। যে কোনো মুকুটই আসলে একটি সাব্লিমেটেড টুপি। উনি যদি কাউকে মাথা কেটে পাঠান, সেটা প্রেমের উপহার হবে, লোভের নয়। সম্প্রতি ফেসবুকের একটি স্ট্যাটাসে উনি লিখেছেন- ‘প্রতিষ্ঠান কখন আপনাকে টুপি পরিয়ে দেবে আপনি বুঝতেই পারবেন না।’ সম্ভবত এই উক্তি উনি শৈলেশ্বর ঘোষের প্রসঙ্গে করে থাকবেন, এটা আমার অনুমান, কারণ মাথায় শীতের টুপি পরে প্রয়াত শৈলেশ্বর ঘোষ কোনো একটা সাহিত্যমেলা উদ্বোধন করছেন, এমন একটা ছবি সেই সময়ে ফেসবুকে ভেসে উঠেছিল। মলয় এভাবেই খোলাখুলি কথা বলতে পারেন এই বৃদ্ধ বয়সেও, এমনকি, নিজের তথাকথিত রাইভ্যালদের নিয়ে খিল্লি করতেও উনি কোনো দ্বিধা দেখান না। আমার মনে হয়, এটা শিক্ষণীয়। সোনার হরিণের প্রতি এই বেপরোয়া সাহিত্যিকের কোনো লোভ নেই, কারণ তিনি জানেন সোনার হরিণ হয় না, সেটার পিছনে অবশ্যই কোনো মায়াবী ফাঁদ লুকিয়ে থাকে, অনেক বড় কিছু কেড়ে নেওয়ার জন্য। বঙ্কিম পুরস্কার, আকাদেমি পুরস্কার পেয়ে মলয়ের আখের কিছুই গোছানো হবে না। যেটার প্রতি ওঁর আসল লোভ, সেই ইতিহাস তাহলে ভড়কে যাবে। মলয় তাই নিজেকে ইতিহাসে রাখার দায়টা নিজেই নিয়েছেন, এবং ঝাঁপিয়ে পড়েছেন পত্রিকাগুলোর পাশাপাশি ইন্টারনেটকে সম্পূর্ণ ব্যবহার করে নিতে। ইন্টারনেটকে মলয় রায়চৌধুরী যেভাবে ব্যবহার করেছেন, তা শিক্ষণীয়। এটা তাঁর কাছে বাঙালির শেখার আছে। একটা কথা মলয়ের বিরোধিরা প্রায়ই বলে থাকেন, যে মলয় খুব আত্মপ্রচার করেন। নিজের ব্লগ, নিজের উইকিপিডিয়া, নিজের সমস্ত লেখার সংরক্ষণের ব্যাপারে উনি সর্বদা যত্নশীল। নিজের লেখা নিজেই গিয়ে লোককে পড়তে বলেন। নিজের লেখার লিংক কেউ না চাইলেও তার ফেসবুক টাইমলাইনে গিয়ে পোস্ট করে আসেন। বলা বাহুল্য, একজন কিংবদন্তি সাহিত্যিকের কাছে বাঙালি এই আচরণ আশা করে না, এটা বাঙালির অভ্যাস আর প্রত্যাশার বাইরের ব্যাপার। আমি আগেই বলেছি মলয় রায়চৌধুরী অমরত্বের বাসনা রাখেন, ইতিহাসে থাকতে চান নিজের মর্জি অনুসারী ইমেজে। সেটাকে লোভ বললেও কি খুব খারাপ হয়? আমার মতে, মলয়ের অতীতচারিতা অর্থাৎ হাংরি-অবসেসন যদি বাদ দিই, একজন সাহিত্যিকের অমরত্বের বাসনা, যশের আকাঙ্ক্ষা থাকা উচিত, সে বঙ্কিম যাই বলে থাকুন, সাহিত্যক্ষেত্রে এগিয়ে যাওয়ার জন্য নির্দিষ্ট সফলতার লোভ খুবই প্রয়োজনীয় একটা ব্যাপার। লেখক কোনো সন্ন্যাসী তো নন! কাম ছাড়া যেমন পরিবার হয় না, ক্রোধ ছাড়া যুদ্ধ হয় না, সঠিক লোভ ছাড়া একজন শিল্পীর অগ্রগতি হয় না। ‘অগ্রগতি’ শব্দটাও মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর তত্ববিশ্বে বেমানান। কিন্তু আমার প্রিয়। পরিমিত ও সুনির্বাচিত লোভের দিকে একজন স্রষ্টা এগোবেন, এটা আমি সমর্থন করি। সেই লোভ বাঘের, তাজা রক্ত আর গরম মাংস নিজের সামর্থে লাভ করার, সেই লোভ হায়নার নয় যে যে কোনো একটা মৃতদেহ হলেই চলে যাবে। কেন একজন লেখক তাঁর লেখা একজন পাঠকের সামনে ছুঁড়ে ছুঁড়ে দেবেন না? কেন একজন পাঠককে শিকার করবেন না তিনি! বাঘ যেভাবে তার হরিণকে ধরে, একজন লেখকেরও কাজ তাঁর পাঠককে ধরা, দাঁত এবং নখের সার্বিক প্রয়োগ করে। সভ্যতা ভব্যতা প্রোটোকল এসব ছাপোষা আর ক্রীতদাসদের মানায়, কবিকে নয়। এবং মলয় জানেন, তিনি হাংরি আন্দোলনের পুরোধা পুরুষ হলেও, তাঁর উপরে অজস্র লেখালেখি হলেও, গবেষণা হলেও, তাঁকে নিয়ে কাজ করে পিএইচডি নিয়ে কেউ কেউ ঘুরে বেড়ালেও, তিনিই স্বাধীন পশ্চিমবঙ্গের একমাত্র জেলখাটা কবি হলেও, সাধারণ বাঙালি তাঁর নামই আজ অবধি জানে না। তারাই মলয়ের নাম জানে যারা স্বয়ং লেখালেখি করে, অথবা বাংলা সাহিত্যের হার্ডকোর পাঠক। আজ থেকে প্রায় বছর পনের আগে আমি প্রথম মলয় রায়চৌধুরীর সঙ্গে আলাপিত হই একজন বিখ্যাত সাহিত্যিককে বিশেষ দরকারে ফোন করতে গিয়ে রং নাম্বার ডায়াল করে ফেলায়। মলয় বুঝতে পেরেছিলেন আমি কাকে ফোন করতে গিয়ে তাঁকে ফোন করেছি। কিন্তু আমি লজ্জিত হলেও, তিনি রাগ করেননি। বরং সাগ্রহে আমার মতো একজন আনকোরা ছোকরাকে জানিয়েছিলেন তাঁর নাম মলয় রায়চৌধুরী, এবং ‘তিনিও’ লেখালেখি করে থাকেন। আমার মনে হয়েছিল নিজের এই পরিচয় তাঁকে দিতে হয়, নিজের পরিচয় নিজেই দিতে তিনি অভ্যস্ত, কারণ তাঁর সঙ্গে জনসাধারণের পরিচয় করে দেওয়ার এজেন্সি তাঁর কাছ থেকে কোনো কর্পোরেট প্রতিষ্ঠান নেয়নি, তিনিও দেননি। এটা শিক্ষণীয়। আমি তাঁর কাছে এটা শিখেছি। আমি যে আজ নিজের ঢাক বাজাতে কোনো দ্বিধা করি না, কারণ আমিই প্রথম নই, আমার আগে মলয় আছেন। পোস্টমডার্ন মলয় নন। বাঘ মলয়।

Hungryalist Movement - The Anti-Establishment Pioneers : Dr Indrajit Bhattacharya

Anti-Establishment Pioneers The Hungry Generation Movement in Bangla literature and painting, also known as Hungryalism, Hungrealism, Hungry Andolon, Sarvagrasa, Khutkatar, Khsudharta, Bhukhi Peedhi, which shook post-colonial Bangla culture with an intensity comparable to the impact of pre-colonial Young Bengal social movement, was the brain-child of Malay Roychoudhury who, after his post-graduation, was working on an essay on ‘the philosophy of history’, when he came across the book The Decline of the West written by Oswald Spengler. Though Malay did not accept the Spenglerian philosophy, he was impressed with the argument that history should not be construed in a linear progression, but flowering of a number of cultural inclinations, each with a characteristic spiritual tone, or conception of the space within which they act. This was a decisive break with the Hegelian concept of history as a process governed by reason. For 22 year old Malay, who had already conceived of a programme to launch a movement in Bangla literature and painting, Spengler cast a spell in view of the post-colonial and post-partition nightmare that had overtaken Bangla culture, especially when compared to the time and space of 19th century Bangla renaissance. Oswald Spengler’s metaphor was biological. That is, cultures go through a self-contained process of growing, reaching a crescendo, and withering away. This decay may be withstood if the culture feeds on alien diet. A culture is self-creative during ascendancy, but once the rot sets in, the culture, instead of creating from within, starts engulfing and assimilating contributions from outside. Its demand for outside elements becomes insatiable during descend. This process was termed as hunger by Malay when he came across Geoffrey Chaucer’s stunning line ‘In The Sowre Hungry Tyme’. In 1959-1960, post-partition Bangla polity was definitely on the downslide of sour time of putrefaction. Today, when we look at West Bengal, the Hungryalist premonition appears prophetic. 2. Socio-cultural sarvagrasa, or devouring as a concept, that Malay was trying to put into a contemporary mould, had Indian puranic connotations inasmuch as lord Shiva became sarvagrasi when he drank the poison that up-welled in the aftermath of churning of the seas (samudra manthana) by gods and demons in order to protect the universe. Initially Malay had decided to use the term ‘Sarvagrasi Prajanma’ or the ‘Devouring Generation’. He felt, quite rightly, that such a term would not be authentically acceptable, and may even carry wrong signals. He opted for the words ‘Hungry Generation’. The word Hunger or ‘Khaoa’ in Bengali is used as a signifier for various activities. For example, one may eat the breeze for a stroll, eat a somersault for a loss, eat money for bribe, eat happiness for a contended life, eat cannabis for incorrect message, eat broomstick for dismissal, eat the head for spoiling, eat fear to get terrorized, and many such images are commonplace with the word ‘Hungry’ in Bangla. Later, when a large number of writers, poets and painters joined the movement, ‘Hungry’ was open to interpretation in a manner that a particular participant preferred. This open-endedness would have been difficult with the words ‘Devouring Generation’. Nevertheless, the appellation had later been banalised by some participants, especially by those who were trying to re-root in India after partition; they glorified poverty in the name of ‘Hungry’ movement. In the ‘Overviews’ which Malay wrote for Postmodern Bangla Poetry (2001) and Postmodern Bangla Short Stories (2002) both edited by his elder brother Samir (one of the founder member of the movement), he has elaborated upon the cultural, aesthetic, socio-political, literary-historical factors which forced the movement to burst upon the Bangla space in November 1961. I would prefer to draw on his arguments that, 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 exemplified in pre-Hungryalist literatre, inasmuch as Parichay(1931), Kallol (1932) etc periodicals were managed, written, defined and canonized within Kolkatacentric middle class values, and identified themselves with the occidental canons and discourses, whereas Krittibas (1953) and Notun Reeti (1958) 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. They combined aesthetic self-consciousness and formalist experimentation. The Hungryalists wanted to go beyond the structure of oppositions and sanctioned negations of the discourse through de-identification. Krittibas and Notun Reeti poets and writers had ultimately degenerated into traffickers of immoral discourse which completely destroyed the achievements of 19th century reformers. The Hungryalist movement aspired to locate itself in an essentially adversarial relation to aesthetic realism. 3. Malay discussed his ideas with his friend Debi Ray, elder brother Samir, and Samir’s friend Shakti Chattopadhyay, and all of them agrred to launch the movement by publishing a weekly bulletin to be funded by Malay, and if required, by Samir. Shakti was requested to take up leadership, a decision later regretted by both Samir and Malay as a socio- aesthetic blunder, a decision for which they were criticized by participants who had subsequently joined the movement. Debi Ray, whose real name is Haradhon Dhara, was to be editor, and his Howrah slum-residence to be used for correspondence. Haradhon Dhara belonged to subaltern caste, and the decision was intentional, as prior to him subaltern authors were not given any space at all. However, there were printing problems at the outset as the printing presses at Patna, a Hindi speaking town, did not have sufficient Bangla typefaces. The only press which could have had printed them, refused to entertain. Malay was thus forced to draft the text of the first bulletin in English. The first one-page bulletin, as follows, appeared in November 1961:- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WEEKLY MANIFESTO OF THE HUNGRY GENERATION Editor: Debi Ray Leader: Shakti Chatterjee Creator: Malay Roychoudhury Poetry is no more a civilizing maneuver, a replanting of the bamboozled gardens; it is a holocaust, a violent and somnambulistic jazzing of the hymning five, a sowing of the tempestual Hunger. Poetry is an activity of the narcissistic spirit. Naturally, we have discarded the blankety-blank school of modern poetry, the darling of the press, where poetry does not resurrect itself in an orgasmic flow, but words come out bubbling in an artificial muddle. In the prosed- rhyme of those born-old half-literates, you must fail to find that scream of desperation of a thing wanting to be man, the man wanting to be spirit. Poetry of the younger generation too has died in the dressing room, as most of the younger prosed -rhyme writers, afraid of the Satanism, the vomitous horror, the self-elected crucifixion of the artist that makes a man a poet, fled away to hide in the hairs. Poetry from Achintya to Ananda and from Alokeranjan to Indraneel, has been cryptic, short-hand, cautiously glamorous, flattered by own sensitivity like a public school prodigy. Saturated with self-consciousness, poems have begun to appear from the tomb of logic or the bier of unsexed rhetoric. Published by Haradhon Dhara from 269 Netaji Subhas Road, Howrah, West Bengal, India The bulletin, which appears quite innocent today, had taken Kolkata by storm, as Debi Ray had arranged to get it distributed in one single day at the intellectual joints, offices of periodicals and college campuses. There was no cultural precedence to this kind of literary behavior for people to relate to. The move had attacked all strata of the Establishment and annoyed anyone who mattered. However, Shakti felt disturbed because of references to the four poets named in the last paragraph. The bulletin was, therefore, reprinted in December 1961 wherein the last paragraph was changed, and an additional paragraph added, as under:- “Poetry around us these days has been cryptic, shorthand, cautiously glamorous, flattered by own sensitivity like a public-school prodigy. Saturated with self-consciousness, poems have begun to appear from the tomb of logic or the bier of unsexed rhetoric. Poetry is not the caging of belches within form. It should convey the brutal sound of the breaking values and startling tremors of the rebellious soul of the artist himself, with words stripped of their usual meaning and used contrapuntally. It must invent a new language which would incorporate everything at once, speak to all the senses in one. Poetry should be able to follow music in the power it posses of evoking a state of mind, and to present images not as wrappers but as ravishograms.” The revised bulletin was again reprinted in 1962. In November 1963 it was printed for a third time under the heading ‘The Hungryalist Manifesto on Poetry’, and names of 25 participants printed on the flip-side. Meanwhile several other manifestoes and bulletins were published and distributed freely, which caused the number of participants to cross 40 in January 1964. Samir had brought in his friends Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Utpalkumar Basu and Binoy Majumdar; Malay had brought in his friends Subimal Basak, Sambhu Rakshit, Tapan Das, Anil Karanjai and Karuna Nidhan Mukhopadhyay; Subimal Basak had brought in his friends Tridib Mitra, Alo Mitra and Falguni Ray; Shakti had brought in Arupratan Basu, Pradip Choudhuri and Basudeb Dasgupta; Debi Ray had brought in Subo Acharya, Subhas Ghosh, Satindra Bhowmik, Haranath Ghose, Nihar Guha, Saileswar Ghosh, Amritatanay Gupta, Ramananda Chattopadhyay, Sunil Mitra, Shankar Sen, Bhanu Chattopadhyay, Ashok Chattopadhyay, Jogesh Panda and Manohar Das. Anil and Karuna, who were painters, brought in painters Subir Chatterjee, Bibhuti Chakrabarty, Arun Datta and Bibhas Das into the fold of the movement. Hungry Generation had become a socio-cultural force to reckon with. 4. In view of such a large and unwieldy gathering, and frequent one-page publications, certain events took place which never had happened earlier. Rajkamal Choudhry carried the movement into the domain of Hindi literature; Ameeq Hanfee into Urdu; ‘Pank Ghentey Pataley’ group in Assam; poet Parijat into Nepali literature; and a group in the then East Pakistan comprising of Rafeeq Azad, Abdullah Abu Sayeed, Abdul Mannan Sayad, Asad Choudhury, Shahidur Rahaman, Mustafa Anwar, Faruque Siddiqui, Mahadeb Saha, Shahnur Khan Kaji Rab carried the dynamics to Bangladeshi literature. The movement gathered a decentering quality, inasmuch as each participant was free to publish a bulletin, which Shakti, Utpal, Binoy, Anil-Karuna and Rajkamal had done, though funded either by Malay or Samir. The handbill-type bulletins were also aesthetically anti-occidental, since they could not be preserved for an immortal space in history. More than 100 bulletins were published in the movement’s life-span between 1961 and 1965, out of which only a dozen or so are traceable. Excepting for Debi Ray, Tridib and Alo Mitra, who were stationed at Howrah, across Kolkata, most of the participants came from outside the metropolis. They belonged to the periphery. Subimal, like Malay, came from Patna; Samir was Chaibasa-based; The Ghosh brothers, Subhas and Saileswar, were from Balurghat; Shakti was from Jaynagar-Majilpur; all the painters were from Varanasi; Pradip Choudhuri, originally from Tripura, was based at Shantiniketan; Subo Acharya was at Bishnupur and Ramananda Chattopadhyay at Bankura. The Hungryalist movement thus developed spatial qualities instead of time-centric features of earlier post-Tagore literary generations. Hungryalism emerged as a post-colonial counter-discourse. In the first bulletin itself the movement gave a battle cry against ‘modern poetry’, as well as against the ‘tyranny of logic’. Till then the concept of modern and logical progression of the text was considered the ultimate in literary canons. From 1961 onward as the movement gathered momentum and participants, by 1963 it was on the verge of activating extrication from occidental canons and discourse, which was articulated in a trilingual (Bengali-Hindi-English) cylostyled bulletin by Subimal Basak and Rajkamal Choudhary, as under:- PREVAILING CANONS 1. Establishment 2. Tyranny 3. Insiders 4. Elite high-brow culture 5. Satisfied 6. Cohesive 7. Showy 8. Sex as known 9. Socialite 10. Lovers 11. Ecstasy 12. Unmoved 13. Hatred as camouflage 14. Art films 15. Art 16. Sugam sangeet( Tagore songs) 17. Dream 18. Tutored language 19. Redeemed 20. Framed 21. Conformist 22. Indifferent 23. Mainstream 24. Curiosity 25. Endocrine 26. Conclusions inevitable 27. Ceremony 28. Throne 29. Entertainer 30. Self-projecting 31. How am I 32. Symmetrical 33. Accountants of prosody 34. Revising poems 35. Fantasy’s game HUNGRYALIST CANONS Anti-Establishment Protester Outsiders Commoners’ culture Unsatisfied Brittle Raw-bone Sex as Unknown Sociable Mourners Agony Turbulent Real hatred All films Life Any song Nightmare Gut language Unredeemed Contestetory Dissident Struck ethically Watershed Anxiousness Adrenalin No end to unfolding Celebration Abdication Thought provoker Self-effacing How are you Tattered and decanonised Extravagance Continuous revision of life Imagination’s flight 5. At the peak of the movement, Binoy Majumdar developed schizoid problems. Shakti was pressurized by literary guardians to leave the movement and issue anti-Hungryalist statements. Sandipan Chattopadhyay was lured by a mass circulation periodical with an assurance to publish his novel provided he leave the movement. Sunil Gangopadhyay, in his editorial in Krittibas, castigated the movement. As a result several fence-sitters were caught in an intellectual bind. These writers ultimately devoted themselves to prolific commercial writing. By the middle of 1964 only Utpal, Samir, Malay, Debi, Subimal, Subhas, Saileshwar, Pradip, Karuna, Anil, Tridib, Alo, Falguni, Subo and Ramananda remained in the movement. The departure of fence sitters proved to be a positive factor. The process hastened the collapse of aesthetic realism, leading to gradual deconstruction and dissolution of high and subaltern cultural distinctions. Hungryalist texts developed subversive and multi-vocal semiotic and semantic features. The mono-centric correctness as demanded by the then ruling academicians were being constantly attacked by the participants. In case of prose writers such as Samir, Falguni, Subhas and Subimal, as well as in the dramas written by Malay, textual reality developed as complexities of heteroglossia. The academic standards had started dwindling in West Bengal one and half decade after the departure of the Empire, mainly because of the incessant post-partition influx which corroded the Bangla intellectual and social fabric. There were no multi-disciplinary critics comparable to the 19th century stalwarts. The critics themselves were colonial constructs. They were oblivious of the fact that all knowledge is partial, embodied knowledge, produced by particular groups, communities, sects, governments, media, universities, schools, families, localities and persons, for particular purposes, within particular contexts. Their claim to speak on behalf of all Bengalies, restricted plurality and tolerance. In order to denigrate the Hungryalist movement, the print-media based critics started comparing the Hungryalist movement with Angry Young Men of England and Beat Generation of USA, assuming that texts could be independent of the motherland of the writer. This was compounded by the fact that Allen Ginsberg, who came to India in 1962, had met some Hungryalists at Kolkata, Patna, Varanasi and Chaibasa in 1963. It was Ginsberg whose poetry and religious life was changed completely because of the Hungryalists. Ginsberg could never again write in the form and technique of Howl and Kaddish; his post-India poems developed features of Bangla poetry. 6. It had become clear by the end of 1963 that three participants, viz. Malay, Debi and Subimal had become key figures of the movement who had picked up certain anti-establishment modules from stories about the activities of ‘Young Bengal’, Vidyasagar and Gandhi. They were being called the Hungry troika and cartoons on them started appearing in dailies such as Basumati, The Statesman and Jugantar. Tabloids and glossy magazines such as Desh, Chatushparna, Darpan, Amrita, Now, Janata, Link, Anandabazar, Blitz, Naranari, Jalsa etc attempted to sensationalize news about the Hungryalists. The daily Jugantar wrote its main editorial, twice, for them. The daily Searchlight of Patna issued a special supplement on the movement. In other Indian languages periodicals that covered their activities were Dharmayug, Gyanodaya, Dinaman, Saptahik Hindustan, Nayee Dhara, Yugprabhat, Vatayan, Anima, Ingit, Jansatta, Lahar, Asso, Adhikaran, Bharatmail etc. One evening Subimal was encircled and threatened in front of the College Street Coffee House (Albert Hall) by a literary group comprising of Bimal Raychoudhuri, Shankar Chattopadhyay, Pranabkumar Mukhopadhyay, Parbati Mukhopadhyay, Dipak majumdar, Sharat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Belal Choudhuri, Bijon Ray, Rupendra Basu, Dhiresh Bagchi, Samir Sengupta, Tarapada Ray, Shanti Kumar Ghosh and Shakti Chattopadhyay. Sunil Gangopadhyay, who was in USA on a USAID funded trip, wrote a bizarre letter to Malay, a letter which has since gained special significance in Bangla literary history. Meanwhile, the under-noted political manifesto created a great turmoil in the Bangla administration:- Hungry Generation Bulletin No. 15 The Political Manifesto of Hungryalist Movement To depoliticize the soul of each solitary individual. To let every individual realize that existence is pre-political. To let it be noted historically that politics invites the man of the third quality, aesthetically the most lowest substratum of society, at its service. To make it clear that the conceptions of Elite and that of the Politician differ absolutely after the death of Gandhi. To declare the belief that all intellectual fakeries called political theory are essentially the founts of fatal and seductive lies erupting out of abominable irresponsibility. To demarcate the actual position of a politician in a modern society, somewhere between the dead body of a harlot and a donkey’s tail. To never respect a politician, to whatever species or organism he may belong to. To never escape from politics, and at the same time, neither let politics escape from the terror of our aesthetic being. To remodel the basis upon which political creeds are founded. __________________________________________________________________ Today, when we look at Indian politics we are stunned by this prophetic discourse delivered more than 40 years ago. The Hungryalists further confounded the situation by the slogan PLEASE REMOVE YOUR MASK printed on paper-masks of jokers, demons, animals, ghosts, Hindu gods/goddesses etc. and mailed to chief and other ministers, chief and other secretaries, district magistrates, police big bosses, commercial authors, newspaper editors, sundry politicians, that is, anyone who mattered. This action was a piece of sheer genius which has become a part of literary folklore. Another action comparable to actions of 19th century ‘Young Bengal’ was distribution of turmeric-smeared Hindu wedding cards complete with symbols of butterfly and palanquin wherein the ruling school of poetry was vehemently attacked, and the intellectuals indirectly called headless. 7. Manifestoes appeared regularly on short story, drama, religion, criticism, painting, discourse, obscenity, style, diction etc during the peak of 1963-64. Alongside, magazines edited by Hungryalists started appearing quite frequently. Malay edited Zebra; Tapan Das edited Pratibimba; Subimal edited Pratidwandi; Debi edited Chinho; Tridib & Alo edited Unmarga and Waste Paper; Shambhu edited Blues; Pradip edited Swakal/Phooo. The poems and fictions printed therein drew the attention of print-media writers who charged the authors to be swathed in sexual hunger. Literary and news-magazines whose hegemony was threatened, continued their tirade against the Hungryalists almost everyday. Written and verbal complaints against the Hungryalists to the Chief Minister and Calcutta Police Commissioner continued pouring in. There were various allegations, including, conspiracy against the Establishment, corrupting the youth, defamation, violation of Press Act, obscenity, disruption of public decency etc. In the beginning of 1964 Kolkata was agog with rumours of an imminent action against Malay, Debi and Subimal, a scenario that even the Dadaists and Surrealists could not have contemplated. A Deputy Commissioner of Police who later became famous for Naxalite encounters was, incidentally, maternal uncle of a Krittibas group poet. Things obviously moved quite fast. Sunil Gangopadhyay had just arrived back from USA. On September 2nd, 1964 arrest warrants were issued against eleven Hungryalists on charges of conspiracy against the Establishment (Section 120 of Indian Penal Code) and obscenity in literature (Section 292 of Indian Penal Code). Samir, Malay, Subhas, Saileshwar, Debi and Pradip were arrested. Pradip was rusticated from Visva Bharati; Utpal was dismissed from his professor’s job; Malay and Samir were suspended from service; Debi and Subimal were transferred out of Kolkata by their employers. Samir and Malay had to present themselves before a specifically constituted ‘Investigating Board’ which interrogated them for several hours to find out whether they were really involved in any conspiracy. This phase of the Hungryalist movement is the murkiest period in the history of Bangla literature. Shakti and Sandipan, who had moved out of the movement about a year back, volunteered and recorded testimonies against Malay Shakti on 18 February 1965 and Sandipan on 15 March 1965); Subo, Basudeb and Ramananda fled from Kolkata; Subhas and Saileshwar signed good-conduct bonds (on 2nd September 1964) indicating that they had nothing to do with the Hungry Generation movement, and that they will not associate with the movement in future. However, 40 years later when Hungry Generation movement became a legendary proposition, obviously a salable one, these two brothers were the first to claim that they were the genuine Hungryalists! In view of the weak character of majority of the Hungryalists, who testified against Malay in Court, the movement withered away in May 1965. It was in May 1965 that Malay was charge- sheeted by Establishment police and all others were set free. (Case No. GR 579 of 1965, in the court of Presidency Magistrate, 9th court, Calcutta). During the short span of 1961-65 the movement had created an indelible impact on Bangla literature. In an interview to Dhurjati Chanda, Malay had stated that Hungryalism was the first and the last iconoclastic venture in Bangla literature which in retrospect now appears to be a socio-political aesthetic triumph, that artistic freedom in which life was put at stake and the rules of which required brazen acts of impudence to be legitimized by manifestoes. In another interview he gave to Anadiranjan Biswas, Malay had said that the Hungryalist defiant ventures were attempts to wrest the power of definition, distinction and evaluation from those who claimed themselves to be authorities of literary discourse. The writers of West Bengal and Bangladesh who were called 50’s poet were writing pale and stale poems till 1959; they changed completely only after the implosion of the Hungryalist movement. It is a different story that Malay had to go through a 35 month long ordeal of arrest, conviction by lower court ( on 28 December 1965) and ultimately exoneration by High Court of Calcutta. However, the movement did create a world wide stir that had brought Bangla literature in to international limelight again. Both English and Spanish versions of TIME magazine wrote about the movement. Periodicals in Europe, USA, Latin America, Australia and Asia such as City Lights Journal, SanFrancisco Earthquake, Eco, El Corno Emplumado, Kulchur, Klactoveedsedsteen, Burning Water, Intrpid, Salted Feathers, Evergreen Review, Panaroma, Trace, El Rehelite, Imago, Work, Iconolatre, Whe’re, Ramparts, Los Angeles Free Press, My Own Mag, Vincent etc either printed, reprinted or brought out special issues. In Hindi, Sharad Deora wrote a novel titled College Street Ka Naya Masiha based on the Hungryalists; Phanishwarnath Renu wrote Ram Pathak Key Diary Sey; Dharmaveer Bharati and S.H.Vatsayan Ajneya wrote quite frequently about them in the periodicals they edited; Ashok Shahane, Dilip Chitre and Arun Kolatkar hailed them in Marathi; Umashankar Joshi introduced them to Gujarati readers; Ameeq Hanfee translated and introduced them to Urdu readers. The Bengali intelligentsia had not bargained for this unexpected international exposure. Reputed academicians of the time viz. Sukumar Sen, Asitkumar Bandyopadhyay, Haraprasad Mitra, Bhabatosh Datta, Ujjwalkumar Majumdar, Kshetra Gupta, Saroj Bandyopadhyay, Shashi Bhushan Dasgupta, Sukumari Bhattacharya, Debiprasad Bhattacharya, Bhudeb Choudhury, Tarapada Mukhopadhyay, Chinmohan Sehanabis and others preferred to ignore the movement. Some academicians even persuaded academicians of other languages to ignore the Hungryalist impact. Nevertheless, intellectuals from other countries, such as Octavio Paz and Ernesto Cardenal sought the Hungryalists when they visited India. That the Hungryalist movement had shattered the colonial canons and had encircled the centre by a new epistemic periphery, became clear with emergence of powerful post-Hungryalist writers and poets such as Subimal Mishra, Arunesh Ghosh, Prasun Bandyopadhyay, Pradip Das Sharma, Atindriya Pathak, Kamal Chakraborty, Barin Ghoshal, Saswata Sikdar, Anuradha Mahapatra, Ajit Ray, Aloke Biswas, Pranab Pal, Sankarnath Chakraborty, Arun Basu, Sridhar Mukhopadhyay, Dipankar Datta, Debdas Acharya, Biswajit Sen, Achin Dasgupta, Bikash Sarkar, Abani Dhar, Nabarun Bhattacharya, Samiran Ghosh, Nitya Malakar, Manab Chakraborty, Aloke Goswami, Moulinath Biswas, Madhumay Pal, Koushik Chakraborty and a host of other writers. Any literary defiance, Hungryalism being the most potent in post-colonial Bangla literature, embodies the provocation of a literary code into a socio-cultural and political code. The ultra-leftist naxalite political explosion in Bangla polity occurred obviously immediately after the Hungryalist canonical implosion in literature and painting. 8. Some of today’s critics have opined that the main reason for aesthetic percolation of the spirit of the movement, and its power to withstand the steamroller of Establishment juggernaut, may be found in the range of experience and variety of erudition of the participants who refused to hang around vernacular newspaper offices or the joints of political masters as has been the case with most of the pre-Hungryalist writers, especially of Krittibas and Notun Reeti brands. Those wre also the contributory factors to Hungryalist texts which could gather propensities of hybridity, syncreticity, rhizomatism, heterogeneity, optativeness, disjunctiveness, immanence, irony, logical cracks etc; Hungryalist painting imbued de-layering, de-proportioning, multi-scaling, de-perspectivisation, de-structuring, fragmentariness and such other poly-hued mélanges. Poet Falguni Ray and painter Anil Karanjai have become underground cult figures after their death. Two manifestoes of the Hungryalist movement which are quoted by critics either to argue for and against their texts are as under:- THE OBJECT OF HUNGRYALISM (HUNGREALISME) 1. To never imitate the reality of Aristotle, but to take the un-enameled whoring reality by surprise under the genital of Art. 2. To let speechlessness burst into speech without breaking the silence. 3. To let loose a creative furor, in order to undo the done-for world and start afresh from chaos. 4. To exploit every matrix of senses except that of a writer. 5. To disclose the belief that world and existence are justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. 6. To accept all doubts and despairs rather than to be content to live with the sense made by others. 7. To lash out against the values of the bi-legged career-making animals. 8. To abjure all meretricious blandishments for the sake of absolute sincerity. 9. To stop writing and painting beyond the point of self-realization. MANIFESTO OF THE HUNGRY GENERATION The merciless exposure of the self in its entirety. To present in all nakedness all aspects of the self and things before it. To catch a glimpse of the exploded self at a particular moment. To challenge every value with a view to accepting or rejecting the same. To consider everything at the start to be nothing but ‘thing’ with a view to testing whether it is living or lifeless. Not to take reality as it is but to examine it in all its aspects. To seek to find out a mode of communication, by abolishing the accepted modes of prose and poetry which would instantly establish communication between the poet and his reader. To use the same words in poetry as are used in ordinary conversation. To reveal the sound of the word, used in ordinary conversation, more sharply in the poem. To break loose the traditional association of words and to coin unconventional and here-to-fore unaccepted combination of words. To reject traditional forms of poetry, and allow poetry to take its original forms. To admit without qualification that poetry is the ultimate religion of man. To transmit dynamically the message of the restless existence and the sense of disgust in a razor-sharp language. Personal ultimatum. _____________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ The reasons why these two manifestoes are referred to by critics while analyzing the movement in the perspective of preceding literary thinkers are that the arguments put forth were completely different from what Buddhadeva Basu, Dipti Tripathi, Abu Sayeed Ayub, Debiprasad Chattopadhyay, Al Mahmood, Shamsur Rahaman, Binoy Ghosh, Nirendranath Chakraborty, Shakha Ghosh etc had been articulating till then. The Hungryalists not only drew upon words, experiences, epithets, incidents, diction hitherto considered taboo by ‘bhadralok’ gentry, but they virtually dismantled the single dimension metropolitan domination of Bangla literature. They introduced grammatically prohibited ‘guruchandali’ in poetry and prose, that is, mixing of words used by Brahmins and Untouchables. The Hungryalists were disgusted and impatient with the slothful, sluggish pace of change. When the famous ‘troika’ submitted a shoe-box for book review to the newspaper with largest circulation, an action that would have definitely been appreciated by Ramtanu Lahiri, Radhanath Sikdar and Pyarichand Mitra, the anti-Establishment luminaries of 19th century, the Hungryalists were waging war against canonical hegemony, and bombarding modernist boundaries. The Hungryalist authors and painters nativised Bangla discourse. The above two manifestoes aspired to regain the pre-colonial philosophy of atman wherein culture and nature are not considered to be separate spheres. The two manifestoes refused to view culture as the product of traumatic self-extrication from nature. The pre-Hungryalist writers and painters reflexively depended upon the idea of culture as the formation of subjectivity out of the primitive unconsciousness of matter. The Hungryalists, on the contrary, were thrilled with an awareness of value immanent in the relations between the natural and the human as had been exemplified in the fictions Chhatamatha by Subimal Basak, Amar Chabi by Subhas Ghosh, Kather Phul by Falguni Ray, Randhanshala by Basudeb Dasgupta, prose pieces in Malay Roychoudhury’s Bhenno Galpo, and the poems Poper Samadhi by Utpalkumar Basu, Janoar and Aamar Vietnam by Samir Roychoudhury, Choushatti Bhuter Kheya by Pradip Choudhuri and Jakham by Malay Roychoudhury. All of these works are considered exceptional today. After the movement withered away with the commencement of Malay’s trial, when Subhas, Saileswar, Sandipan and Shakti became police witness and testified against Malay in court, the writers and poets branched out of their own. Like most of the post-partition families, Subhas, Basudeb and Saileshwar joined the governmental leftists, participating in anti-people activities; Subo Acharya became devotedly religious and a disciple of god-man Anukul Thakur of Deoghar; Anil and Karuna joined the naxalite movement; Tridib and Alo gave up writing; Utpal departed for London; Pradip shifted his craft from Bengali to French; Falguni resorted to excessive drug abuse and died; Debi joined the Radical Humanists; Malay and Samir preferred to keep silent for more than a decade. During the post-naxal period, 10-12 years after Malay’s trial, some literary aspirants in North Bengal and Tripura suddenly started calling themselves Hungryalists, though they were unaware of the manifestoes of the Hungry Generation movement and, obviously, major Hungryalist works were unavailable to them. They simply tried to be different from the commercial mainstream. From among them, names that crop up from time to time, are Arunesh Ghosh, Nitya Malakar, Jibotosh Das, Aloke goswami, Rasaraj Nath, Selim Mallik, Satwik Nandi, Arun Banik, Shankhapallab Aditya, Raja Sarkar, Bikash Sarkar, Samiran Ghosh, Prabir Seal, Subrata Paul, Arun Basu and Pranab Debnath. With the re-emergence of Malay and Samir in the late 80s things have completely changed. A new generation of critics, academicians and readers has emerged for whom the Hungryalists are legends. Samir gave this observation a proper premise with his periodical Haowa 49. Malay, one may like to say, returned with a vengeance, and his novels, drama, poetry, essays, interviews, drew respectful attention of the earlier generation also who had once denigrated the Hungryalists. With the range of Hungryalist corpus, command over Bangla language, and the depth of knowledge and variety of experience of these authors, whose avant garde discourse and discursive practices had once created literary and social avalanche, they have made history. Researchers are doing their M.Phil. and Ph.D. on them. Several periodicals have published special issues on individual Hungryalist writers and painters. (Courtesy: Prof Niraj Bakshi, Editor, Black Rainbow, Indore. 2003)

Statement of Saileshwar Ghosh against Hungry Generation movement. My name is Saileshwar Ghosh, son of Biseswar Ghosh> One Debi Ray alias Haradhon Dhara asked me to contribute in poems in Hungry Generation magazine in the last part of September 1963 in Coffee House, College Street. After that I came to know most of the Hungry Generation contributors as well as other writers also. I personally know Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Shyamal Gangopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Rabindra Dutta, Basudeb Dasgupta, Pradip Choudhuri and Utpalkumar Basu> The April last oneday I met Malay Roychoudhury in the Coffee House, and he requested me to give him some of my poems. From him I came to know that Hungry Generation is going to be published. A month ago I got a packet containing the copies of the same. I know malay Roychoudhury who is the creator of Hungry Generation. I contributed twice in poems in Hungry Generation. Malay had sent me some leaflets and 2-3 magazines but I got no instructions what to do with these papers. Usually these papers were kept in my room. Excepting this I know nothing of Hungry Generation. To write in obscene language is not my motto. I am a school teacher of Bhupendra Smriti Vidyalaya at Bhadrakali, Hooghly from 1962 on a monthly salary of Rs 210/-. After the publication of the recent issue of Hungry Generation, which was published without my knowledge and consent, I have cut off all relations from the said organisation. In future neither I shall keep relation nor I shall contribute in the Hungry Generation. I shall not write anything obscene and that is my literary intention. The booklet in question was published by Pradip Choudhuri Signed by Saileshwar Ghosh at Lalbazar DD Headquarters on 2nd September 1964. [ Because of Saileshwar Ghosh and Subhash Ghosh's testimony against Malay Roychoudhury at Bankshall Court, Kolkata, Malay was sentenced one month's imprisonment for his poem STARK ELECTRIC JESUS ]

Hungryalist Leader Malay Roychoudhury's Ancestry

Malay Roychoudhury (1939), and his elder brother Samir (1933), of the Hungry Generation (Hungryalism) literature Movement (1961-1965) fame, belong to the Uttarpara (District Hooghly, West Bengal, India) clan of the Sabarna Choudhuries. Having been born in to this clan has given them a sense of being rooted to the pre-colonial history of West Bengal, as well as an organic geographical sense of belonging to the soil, which most of the contemporary Bengali writers are deprived of. It was natural that these two brothers alongwith Shakti Chattopadhyay, resident of Joynagar-Majilpur, formed the core of the Movement. The Sabarna Choudhury clan of Uttarpara, like the clans at Halishahar, Birati and Kheput, is a branch of the Behala-Barisha (Kolkata) Sabarna Choudhuries. However, the clan did not suddenly emanate at Behala-Barisha. Like all rarhishreni Brahmins, this family also traces its origin in pre-Islamic Bengal, reportedly, from one of the five Kannaujia Brahmins, brought to his kingdom by Adisura-Sriharsa. Atul Krishna Ray in his book ‘Lakshmikanta: A Chapter in the Social History of Bengal’ (1928) has mapped the course of the descendants of one of such 10th Century Brahmins in this order: Vedagarbha (980AD), Shobhana, Shauri, Pitambara, Damodara, Kulapati (1182), Shishoo, Gadadhara, Halayudha (1282), Ayurama, Binayak, Jiyo, Paramshwar and Panchanan. The historical mist gets clearer from the time of a person in flesh and blood at Amati village of Katoa in Burdwan who shifted to Gohatya-Gopalpur (now Goghat) in Hooghly district. His name is Panchanan Gangopadhyay, who gave up hereditory brahminical vocation of religious activities, and joined Humayun’s Afghan cavalry. There is no record as to how he developed the skills of a sword fighter; nevertheless, his ingenuity, bravery and quality of leadership during the reign of Emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar entitled him to be conferred the military title of ‘Sakhtkhan’, and a promotion to commandant’s grade. He came to be known as Panchu Shakti Khan, a hero of oral ballads. Malay and Samir carry his genes. The wealth he had amassed as a commandant allowed him to shift his base to a place which later came to be known as Halishahar. He had built a haveli or a palace, and the town was called Haveli-Shahar at that time. He invited vaidyas of Bikrampur, kayasthas of Konnogar, yajurvedi Brahmins from Orissa and Tamilnadu for settling at Havelishahar. Since vocations were caste-based at that time, he had arranged for the settlement of artisans, craftsmen and traders from various areas. Panchu Shakti Khan’s son Shambhupati (1500) reverted to Gangopadhyay title, and engaged himself in developing the area as a business centre; the centre was connected by river route with Bhushana (now in Bangladesh). Shambhupati’s son Jia (1535-1620) broke the newly-built family tradition and reverted to religious inclinations. He moved from one temple to another with his wife Padmavati, probably because she was unable to bear a child. The couple visited the then Kalikshetra Kalipeeth, now known as Kalighat, the abode of goddess Kali. The legend, narrated in Kalikshetra Deepika by Suryakumar Chattopadhyay and Kalighat Itibritta by Upendranath Mukhopadhyay is that Padmavati in her trance saw a halo of light descend on the adjacent pond; she wanted to take a dip in that halo of light, which she did, and became pregnant. Hence the custom of childless couples taking a bath in the adjacent water-body. Presently it is waiting to be cleaned of filth. Next day Padmavati saw a hand right in the middle of the pond, signaling her to find out what is concealed at the bottom. On excavation, a piece of goddess Sati’s feet was discovered, reported to be locked in the temple-chest forever. Padmavati gave birth to a son, and as the story goes, died after three days. Jia renounced samsara, and became an ascetic and moved to Varanasi; thenceforth he was known as Mahatma Kamdev Brahmachari, having been ordained by his guru Atmaram Brahmachari who was well versed in Persian, Arabic, Hindvi and Sanskrit. The present image of goddess Kali at Kalighat was installed by Kamdev Brahmachari. Since then ‘Sabarna’ is a password for clan members to enter the sanctum sanctorum of this overcrowded temple. Malay and Samir do have the spiritual tolerance of Kamdev Brahmachari. Jia’s son was reared, educated and trained by Atmaram Brahmachari and his assistant Ananda Giri. The boy was named Lakshmikanta (1570-1649). The Sabarna Choudhury clan starts from him. Lakshmikanta was trained in the traits of Panchu Shakti Khan; the boy was a mathematical wonder. His mathematical prowess, command over several languages and wrestling skills drew the attention of feudal lord Srihari Guha of Gaud, who was a minister at Afgan Sultan Daud Khan’s court. Lakshmikanta got a job at Saptagram revenue department, and rose to become an advisor to Srihari Guha’s son Pratapaditya. In Bangadhip Parajay written by Pratapchandra Ghosh, and Jashohar Khulnar Itihas written by Satishchandra Mitra, when Daud Khan was defeated by the Moguls in 1576, Srihari Guha divided his fiefdom, gave 70% to Pratapaditya and 30% to his brother Basanta Ray. Pratapaditya started encroaching upon the fiefdoms of other feudal lords and increased his domain spreading over Khulna, Jessore and 24 Pargana. Lakshmikanta’s diplomacy ensured a pact between Mogul subedar Islam Khan and Pratapaditya. Pleased with the quantum of revenue, Emperor Akbar conferred the title of Maharaja to Pratapaditya, and Majmuadar (Revenue Commissioner) to Lakshmikanta. The title of Maharaja changed Pratapaditya to a different man. He broke the conditions of the pact, and along with eleven other feudal lords, refused to pay requisite quantam of silver to the coffers of the Emperor. He also conspired to kill his uncle Basanta Ray and his son. Lakshmikanta refused to be a part of the conspiracy, and fled to Halishahar. Akbar had sent a couple of military expeditions to defeat Pratapaditya but did not succeed; later, Emperor Jahangir sent a huge army contingent under Man Singh. On his way to Bengal, Man Singh had sought the blessings of Mahatma Kamdev Brahmachari at Varanasi. After capturing Pratapaditya, Man Singh requested the Emperor to establish Kamdev’s son Lakshmikanta as a feudal lord. Lakshmikanta was conferred with the titles of ‘Roy’ (for an annual fortune of one million silver) and ‘Choudhury’ (for a huge tract of land by the sea). Roy Lakshmikanta Majmuadar Choudhury, the name did not go well with the brahmin caste to which he belonged. Since Gangopadhyay brahmins are sabarna gotra, his priests and the advisors decided to call the family Sabarna Choudhury. His kingfdom being spread over Behala to Dakshineshwar, Pargana Magura, Khaspur, Kolkata, Poikan, Anwarpur, Amirabad, Havelishahar, Hatigarh and a large area of Sundarbans, Laksmikanta established revenue collection centres at various places, important ones being Behala and Dihi Kolkata. The East India Company arrived and these two centres became quite busy. Malay and Samir have the organizational skills of Lakshmikanta, otherwise Hungryalist Movement would not have been possible. According to Atul Krishna Ray, Lakshmikanta had seven sons: Ram (1590-1650), Gauri (1600-69), Gopal, Bireswar, Krishna, Gopi and Mahadeva (1639-1730). Ram had three sons: Ramballav, Subuddhi and Jagadish (1620-1690). Jagadish had four sons: Vidyadhar (1640-1720), Raghudeva (1642-1722), Ratneswar (1670-1720) and Rameswar (1674-1739). According to ‘Bangsha Parichay’ (1911) written by Amarnath Bandyopadhyay, Ratneshwar is Vidyadhar’s son. However, from this generation onwards the title Majmuadar was dropped, and Roychoudhury was exchanged for Gangopadhyay. Vidyadhar established himself at Behala-Barisha, and the Sabarna Choudhuries of this area are his decendants. It was Ramchand (1658-1732), son of Vidyadhar, who with his cousins, Manohar (1730), Pran (1653-1700) and Rambhadra (1700), signed the deed of transfer of rent collection of three villages i.e. Dihi Kolkatah, Sutanuti and Govindapur to East India Company. These three villages came to be known as Calcutta (now Kolkata). The story of the Uttarpara clan of Sabarna Choudhuries starts from Ratneshwar. Mahatma Kamdev Brahmachari had advised the family to spread out west of Ganges (Hoogly river in West Bengal), Varanasi being on the western bank of the river. In 1709 Ratneshwar purchased the northern tract of Chakbali of Sheoraphuli fiefdom of Manohar Roy; the area being on the north of Chakbali, it came to be known as Uttarpara. His palace, which has since been demolished for constructing a housing colony, was known as Sabarna Villa. In his book Atul Krishna Ray has dealt with the genealogy of Behala-Barisha and Halishahar clans. For Uttarpara clan the book by Amarnath Bandyopadhyay is authentic, as it enlists all the families of Uttarpara in 1911. Malay Roychoudhury himself though did not get a copy of this book when he wrote Chhotoloker Chhotobela (2004) and Autobiography in Volume 14 & 215 of Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series. We may chart out the genealogy in this manner as given by Bandyopadhyay: Ratneshwar->Ramjivan->Madhusudan->Gangaram->Ram Narayan. Ram Narayan had four sons: Chandicharan, Bhavanishankar, Bharatcharan and Gourmohan. Since we are interested in Malay and Samir’s ancestors, we proceed from Chandicharan (1691), whose son Jay Gopal (1718) had four sons: Jadunath, Trailokyanath, Kalachand and Kedarnath. Jadunath had three sons: Baikunthanath, Harinarayan and Lakshminarayan (1799). Lakshminarayan’s sons are: Pramod, Sushil, Ranjit, Anil, Sunil and Bishwanath. Malay and Samir are Ranjit’s sons. Lakshminarayan left Uttarpara and reached Lahore where he learned photography and painting from the Museum Curator John Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard Kipling’s father. Thereafter he, with his wife and children, was always on the move from one princely state to another, painting huge portraits of the members of royal families. Assisting him, his children learned photography and painting. Lakshminarayan died at Patna while drawing portraits of family members of Darbhanga maharaja. The brothers were forced to settle at Patna, whereas Apoorvamoyee, Lakshminarayan’s wife, along with Anil, went back to their twelve-room Uttarpara bungalow. Promod joined Patna Museum as Keeper of Paintings and Sculpture. Sushil opened a photography studio at Chhapra, Anil at Uttarpara, and Ranjit at Patna. Malay and Samir were also trained in the trade. The two young boys, guided by uncle Promod, had the rare opportunity to spend their holidays in the corridors of Patna Museum, and this experience has given them a sense of history of the micro and macro-level world that would be impossible to get by reading books. This experience has definitely been a contributory factor to the Hungry Generation Movement. Ranjit was married to Amita (Bandyopadhyay) of Panihati, a vaishnava centre across the river. Amita’s ancestry is traceable from Durgadas Bandyopadhyay, who was incarcerated by the British in 1857 for inciting soldiers in the guise of religious preaching. His son Nanilal was a part of the 19th Century renaissance, and got his three sons Lalmohan, Haridas and Kishorimohan educated in science, law and English language. Amita is Kishorimohan’s daughter. Kishorimohan wrote articles in English and Bengali, and subscribed to various radical magazines of his time. He was made a member of the Royal Malaria Commission (1899) and assisted Ronald Ross as a field investigator. Ronald Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1902 for discovering the reasons and cure for Malaria. The responsibility of anti-Malaria campaigns rested on Kishorimohan. He traveled most of the affected areas in India, and used slide-shows for anti-Malaria campaigns. In 1910 the Imperial Government awarded him with a 500gm gold medal at a function at Kolkata, which was attended by a large number of intellectuals and politicians. He was also one of the founder members of Panihati Cooperative Bank, having made an initial contribution of Rs. 100000 and 1000gms of gold. Malay and Samir have Kishorimohan’s socio-political sensitivity. Neither Malay nor Samir reside in any of their clan sites. They live in Kolkata and try to keep in touch with the Sabarna network, which by now has 20000 members spread all over the world. Malay’s son Jitendra (1975) and daughter Anushree (1969) also do not reside in any of the clan sites. Malay’s uncle Sunil’s children and grandchildren, however, live in the housing colony built on the land where once Ratneshwar’s palace stood in architectural glory. Malay Roychoudhury Biblio : Compiled by Prabir Chakraborty [Malay Roychoudhury writes in Bangla---one of the most important native languages of South Asia---and sometimes in English. One of the founders of Hungryalist literary movement (1961), Roychoudhury has been sought out by such notable writers as Mexican Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, American poet Allen Ginsberg, and Nicaraguan poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal. In addition to being a poet, Roychoudhury (better known as Malay) is also a counter-culture novelist, essayist, dramatist, short story writer, translator, and critic. An autobiographical essay by Malay has been included in volume#14 [revised in volume#215] of Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series published by The Gale Group Inc., 27500 Drake Road, Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535, USA. He is the only Indian writer who has refused to accept Sahitya Academy Award, a coveted literary award conferred by the Government of India. Malay was born on 29 October, 1939 in Patna, Bihar, India; son of Ranjit ( a photographer and painter) and Amita (Bandyopadhyay). Married Shalila Mukherjee, field hockey player, in 1968; children: Anushree (daughter) and Jitendra (son).] Prabir Chakrabarty had compiled the under-noted bibliography for the book ‘Malay’ edited by Murshid A.M., published from Avishkar Prakashani, Bansdroni, Kolkata 700 070, India, and Ratan Biswas had prepared list of writings not included in any book for the commemorative issue of AHABKAL magazine. 1. Marxbader Uttaradhikar(nonfiction), Shakti Publications (Kolkata, India), 1962. 2. Shoytaner Mukh (collected poems), Krittibas Prakashani (Kolkata, India), 1963. 3. Amimangshita (book-length poem), Zebra Publications (Kolkata, India), 1965. 4. Stark Electric Jesus (book-length poem), Tribal Press (Washington, DC), 1966. 5. Jakham (book-length poem), Zebra Publications (Kolkata, India), 1966. Second edition published by Kabitirtha ( 50/3, Kabitirtha Sarani, Kolkata 23, India. Tel. [91]033 2401 0954), 1998. 6 Hungry Andoloner Kavyadarshan (manifesto), Debi Roy (Howrah, India, )1965. 7. Hungryalist Manifestoes/Ishtahar Sankalan (collection of manifestoes), Dedicated to Malabika Das. Cover designed by Charu Khan. Mahadiganta ( Padmapukur Mor, Baruipur, 700144,WB., India),1986. 8. Kobita Sankalan (collected poems), Dedicated to mother Amita Roychoudhury. Cover designed by Charu Khan. Mahadiganta, ( Padmapukur Mor, Baruipur, 700144, WB., India), 1986. 9. Medhar Batanukul Ghungur (collected poems), Dedicated to wife Salila Roychoudhury. Cover designed by Jogen Choudhury. Illustrations by Prakash Karmakar. Mahadiganta, ( Padmapukur Mor, Baruipur, 700144, WB.India),1986 10. Hattali (book-length poem), Mahadiganta, ( Padmapukur Mor, Baruipur, 700144, WB, India), 1989. 11. Selected Poems, Writers’ Workshop, (Kolkata, India), 1989. 12. Dubjaley Jetuku Prashwas (novel), Dedicated to father Ranjit Roychoudhury. Cover designed by Sanchari Lahiri. Howa49 Publishers ( B24 Northern Park,Kolkata, India), 1994. Second edition published by Avishkar Prakashani, (Bansdroni, Kolkata 70, India. Tel. [91]033 2410 5132), 2001. 13. Hungry Kimvadanti (memoir), Illustrations and cover designed by Subimal Basak. Dey Books (Kolkata, India), 1994. 14. Chitkar Samagra (collected poems), Dedicated to Al Mahmud, Shankha Ghosh and Sunil Gangopadhyay, the last remnants of modernism. Kabita Pakshik (36D,Harish Chatterjee Street, Kolkata 26, India. [91] 033- 2455-6325), 1995. 15. Chhatrakhan (collected poems), Dedicated to Mala Ray & Debi Ray and Sunita Ghosh & Saileshwar Ghosh. Kabitirtha (50/3 Kabitirtha Sarani, Kolkata 23, India. [91] 033 2401 0954),1995. 16. Postmodernism (nonfiction), Howa49 Publishers (B24 Northern Park, Bansdroni, Kolkata 70, India), 1995. 17. Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish (translation), Kabitirtha (50/3 Kabitirtha Sarani, Kolkata, 700023, India. [91] 033-2401 0954),1995. 18. Bhenno Galpo (short story collection), Dedicated to elder brother Samir Roychoudhury. Cover designed by Raju Debnath. Dibaratrir Kavya (Kolkata, India), 1996. 19. Jalanjali (novel), Dedicated to Tarun Sur, Subarna Upadhyay and Barindranath Gupta. Cover designed by Prakash Karmakar. Raktakarabi (Kolkata, India), 1996. 20. Tristan Tzara’s Poems (translation), Kalimati (3 Atasi Road, Pramathanagar, Jamshedpur 831 002, India), 1996. 21. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl & Other Poems (translation), Kabita Pakshik ( 36D Harish Chatterjee Street,Kolkata 26, India), 1996. 22. Ja Lagbey Bolben (poems), Dedicated to Shakti, Shila & Minakshi. Cover designed by Kamal Chakraborty. Kaurab Prakashani (Jamshedpur, India), 1996. 23. Jean Cocteau’s Crucifixion (translation), Dedicated to Falguni Ray. Kabita Pakshik (36D Harish Chatterjee Street, Kolkata 26, India),1996. 24. Blaise Cendrar’s Trans Siberian Express (translation), Dedicated to Uttam and Malabika. Amritalok Prakashani ( Mitra Compound, Station Road, Midnapur 721 101, WB., India), 1997. 25. William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (translation), Dedicated to Jahar Sen Majumdar. Grafitti (2A Tipu Sultan Road,Kolkata 700026, India), 1998. 26. Natoksamagra (collection of Illot, Hibakusha and Napungpung drama), Kabitirtha (50/3 Kabitirtha Sarani, Kolkata 23, India. [91] 033 2401 0954), 1998. 27. Awe (deconstruction of 23 poems), Dedicated to Debiprasad Bandopadhyay. Cover designed by Anil Karanjai. Kabita Pakshik( 36D Harish Chatterjee Street,Kolkata 26, India), 1998. 28. Naamgandho (novel), Sahana (Dhaka, Bangladesh), Dedicated to Murshid A.M. and Kalim Khan.1999 second edition published by Avishkar (Bansdroni, Kolkata 70, India. [91] 033-2410 5132), 2002. 29. Autobiography of Paul Gaugin (translation), Grafitti (2A Tipu Sultan Road, Kolkata 700026, India), 1999. 30. Jean Arthur Rimbaud (biographical-criticism), Cover designed by Prabir Sen. Kabitirtha (50/3 Kabitirtha Sarani, Kolkata 700023, India.Tel. [91] 033-2401 0954), 1999. 31. Allen Ginsberg (biographical-criticism, includes correspondence), Prabir Sen. Kabitirtha ( 50/3 Kabitirtha Sarani, Kolkata, India. Tel. [91] 033 2401 0954), 2000. 32. Atmadhangser Sahasrabda (collection of poems edited by Rabindra Guha), Dedicated to Sukumar Choudhuri and Rabindra Guha. Cover designed by Shormi Pandey. Grafitti (2A, Tipu Sultan Road, Kolkata 700026, India), 2000. 33. Surealism/Paravastavbad (nonfiction), Dedicated to Susweta Chakraborty and Kamal Chakraborty. Illustrations by Subimal Basak. Ebong Prakashani (Kolkata, India), 1997. 34. Hungryalist Interviews, edited by Ajit Ray (collection of Malay’s interviews taken by Adrish Biswas, Sayed Samidul Alam, Shankar Sarkar, Bibekananda Chattopadhyay, Dipen Ray, Arunesh Ghosh, Kunal Mandal, Mandira Pal, Gopinath Karmakar, Abhash Mitra, Partho Mukhopadhyay, and Farzana Warsi), Dedicated to Shormi Pandey and Shubhankar Das. Mahadiganta ( Padmapukur Mor, Baruipur, 700144, WB. India),1999. 35. Matantar (nonfiction), Ataeb Prakashani ( Nimta, Kolkata 700049, India), 2000. 36. Postmodern Kalkhando O Bangalir Patan (nonfiction), Dedicated to Rabindra Guha. Cover designed by Sukumar Choudhuri. Khanan (215 Vasant Vihar,Lava Road, Wadi, Nagpur 440023, India), 2000. 37. Uttor-Ouponobeshik Postmodernism (nonfiction), Dedicated to Shankar Sarkar. Bakprotima . (Mahishadal, Midnapur,India), 2001. 38. Salvador Dali (based on Dali’s The Secret Life of Salvador Dali), Grafitti (2A, Tipu Sultan Road,Kolkata 26, India), 2001. 39. Ei Adham Oi Adham (novel), Dedicated to Arabinda Pradhan. Cover designed by Tridib Mitra and Alo Mitra. Photograph on dust-jacket by father Ranjit Roychoudhury. Kabitirtha (50/3, Kabitirtha Sarani, Kolkata 23, India Nobile Tel.No.09231859988), 2001. 40. Postmodern Bangla Poetry 2001: An Overview (nonfiction), Haowa49 Publishers, (B24 Northern Park, Bansdroni, Kolkata 70, India), 2001. 41. Postmodern Bangla Short Stories: An Overview (nonfiction), Haowa49 Publishers, (B24 Northern Park, Bansdroni, Kolkata 70, India), 2001. 42. Dada Manifestoes Of Tristan Tzara (translation), Cover designed by Shormi Pandey. Grafitti (2A,Tipu Sultan Road, Kolkata 700026, India), 2002. 43. Nakhadanta (novel), Dedicated to Surojit Sen, Ratan Biswas and Haraprasad Sahu. Cover used from a dictionary page of Gyanendramohan Das. Haowa49 Publishers ( B24 Northern Park, Bansdroni,Kolkata, India), 2002. 44. Kounaper Luchimangsho (collection of poems), Dedicated to Dr. Bhumendra Guha. Cover designed by Sukhendu Pal. Kobita Campus ( 48/2 Bhairab Datta Lane, Salkia, Howrah 711106, India. Mobile Tel. No. 09830357424), 2003. 45. Postmodern Jibonananda (nonfiction), Dedicated to Ajit Ray, Kajal Sen and Shyamal Sil. Cover designed by Shormi Pandey. Grafitti (2A, Tipu Sultan Road,Kolkata 26, India), 2003. 46. Postmodern Bangla Poetry 2003: An Overview (nonfiction), Haowa49 Publishers. (B24 Northern Park, Bansdroni, Kolkata 70, India), 2003. 47. Postmodern Bangla Short Stories 2003: An Overview (nonfiction), Haowa49 Publishers (B24, Northern Park, Kolkata 700070, India), 2003. 48. Adhunantik Bangla Kavita edited by Samir Roychoudhury and Om Nishchal (nonfiction in Hindi), Parmeshwari Prakashan (B-109, Preet Vihar, Delhi 110 092, India), 2004. 49. Pratiswa Parisarer Abinirman (self-interview), Cover designed by Tarun Dey. Dahapatra (Ghatakbagan,Chandan Nagar 712136, Hooghly, India), 2004. 50. Bishoy Postmodernity (collection of post-Hungryalist interviews edited by Aravinda Pradhan. Interviewers are : Sudakshina Chattopadhyay, Debashis Hajra,Anurag Mahato, Mrinalkanti Rakshit, Chitrabhanu Singha, Prabuddha Bhattacharjee, Gargi Ghosh Dastidar, Ajitkumar Bhowmik, Sayantani Pal, Debaprasad Sarkar, Indrani Ghosh, Shatadal Dutta, Shyamal Sil, Bapi Chakraborty, Durbadal Dutta, Tarjani, Dhurjati Chanda, Ratan Biswas, Anadiranjan Biswas, Murshid A.M., Arabinda Pradhan, Kalim Khan, Tapas Mitra and Pranabendu Debnath), Dedicated to Saswata Sikdar and Biswajit Sen. Cover designed by Shormi Pandey. Grafitti (2A, Tipu Sultan Road, Kolkata 26, India), 2004. 51. Chhotoloker Chhotobela (childhood memoir), Dedicated to Janab Mijanur Rahaman and Begam Noorjahan Bakshi. Cover designed by Saswata Sikdar. Photograph used on cover was shot by uncle Biswanath Roychoudhury. Quark Publishers (10/9, Siddhi Nath Chatterjee Road,Kolkata 34, India. Mobile Tel No.09830015525), 2004. 52. Kobita 2004-1961 (collection of all poems written between 1961 and 2004), Cover designed by Debabrata Ghosh. Illustrations by Prakash Karmakar. Malay’s photograph by Subimal Basak. Avishkar Prokashani (Bansdroni, Kolkata 70, India. Mobile Telephone No. 09830331092), 2005. 53. Hungry Andoloner Ishtahar ( Hungryalist manifestoes with introduction. Includes copies of covers and old photographs), Dedicated to Dr. Tapodhir Bhattacharya. Abar Eshechhi Phirey Publications (Bhagabangola, Murshidabad 742135, India), 2007. 54. Charles Baudelaire (biographical-criticism), Dedicated to Mandira Pal and Tripti Santra. Cover designed by Utpal Bhattacharjee. Kabitirtha (50/3, Kabitirtha Sarani,Kolkata 23, India. [Mobile Tel.No.09231859988]), 2007. 55. Aprakashito Chhotogalpo (collection of short stories), Dedicated to Adrish Biswas and Prabir Chakraborty. Cover designed by Saswata Sikdar. Quark Publishers (10/9, Siddhi Nath Chatterjee Road,Kolkata 34, India.( Mobile Telephone No. 09830015525 ), 2007. 56. Adhunikatar Biruddhey Kathavarta (nonfiction), Dedicated to Utpal Bhattacharjee. Cover designed by Prabhat Choudhuri. Kabita Pakshik (36D, Harish Chatterjee Street,Kolkata 26, India), 1995. NOT INCLUDED IN ANY BOOK AS YET Fiction *Han-mukh Sandhan (memoir-based story). Ekaler Raktakarabi magazine. January 2004 issue. Editor Pradip Bhattacharjee. *Chandrahas (memoir-based story). Ekaler Raktakarabi magazine. September 2005 issue. Editor Pradip Bhattacharjee. *Owao (short story) Kabitirtha magazine. October 2005 issue. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Boikunthalok (political short story). Ekaler Raktakarabi magazine, Novermber-December 2005 issue. Editor Pradip Bhattacharjee. *Kangshalra Sukhey Achhen (short story). Khanan magazine, May 2006. Editor Sukumar Choudhuri. *Nei Achhay (cut-up short story). Kabitirtha magazine, September 2006 issue. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Sarbatmak (political fairy tale). Padakshep magazine, December 2006 issue. Editor Asim Kumar Basu. *An O hoi Abar Un O Hoi (political fairy tale). Teer Purni magazine, January 2007 issue. Editor Sudeb Bakshi. *Prabhanjaner Shuruta (political fairy tale). Notun Shatak magazine, January 2007 issue. Editor Shirshendu Datta. *Shurpanakha, Heritage (political fairy tale). Kobita Campus magazine, January-August 2007 issue. Editors Aloke Biswas and Pranab Pal. *Gawhartirther Kushilab (political fairy tale). Horinahorinir magazine, April 2007 issue. Editor Saswata Sikdar. *Jinnatulbilader Rupkatha (political fairy tale). Kabitirtha magazine, May 2007 issue. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Pakasthali (short story). Kalimati magazine, April-June 2007 issue. Editor Kajal Sen. *Kuharbhumey Nishidishi (political fairy tale). Amritalok magazine, September 2007 issue. Editor Samiran Majumdar. *Kukshimbhari (political fairy tale). Aikya Patrika magazine, September 2007 issue. Editor Gaurishankar Sarkar. *Bhedgranthir Rupkatha ( political fairy tale). Kabitirtha magazine, October 2007 issue. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Arup Tomar Entokanta (novel bases on Hungryalist days). Bishoymukh magazine. July-December 2007 issue. Editors Debashis Biswas and Bikash Gana Choudhury. Memoirs *Abhimukher Upajibya(first instalment). Bishoymukh magazine. January-June 2004 issue. Editors Debashis Biswas and Bikash Gana Choudhury. *Abhimukher Upajibya(second instalment). Bishoymukh magazine. January-June 2005. Editors Debashis Biswas and Bikash Gana Choudhury. *Abhimukher Upajibya ( Last instalment). Bishoymukh magazine. 2006 issue. Editors Debashis Biswas and Bikash Gana Choudhury. Non-fiction *FIR. Zebra magazine. 1966. Editor Malay Roychoudhury *Bangla Gadyer Simabaddhata. Godhulimone magazine. March 1982. Editor Ashok Chattopadhyay. *Shibnarayan Rayer Sangey Kichhukshan. Mahadiganta magazine. 1986. Editor Uttam Das. *Srijansheel Atmahatyar Nayika Sylvia Plath. Amritalok magazine. September 1987. Editor Samiran Majumdar. *Bangali Jubak Jubatir Naach. Ebang magazine. October 1987. Editor Dhurjati Chanda. *Samaskritir Sankat: Sarvabharatiya Bangali Criminaler Abhab. Ebang magazine. December 1987. Editor Dhurjati Chanda. *Sati Teer: Red Indian Lekhaker Best Seller. Phooo magazine. 1992-93. Editor Pradip Choudhuri. *Meyemanusher Biruddhe. Haowa49 magazine August 1997. Editor Samir Roychoudhury. *Gadyer Prajuktibid Marcel Proust. Furnace magazine. May-June 1988. *Kobitar kaj:Kajer Kobita. Kabitirtha magazine.1989. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Kobitwer Andhakar: Lathkhorer Bidroho. Mahadiganta Magazine. 1990. Editor Uttam Das. *Aami Kothay? Paa magazine. January-April 1992. *Dantasfuta Jayadhwani. Megh magazine. 1994. Editor Sanchita Sen. *Ei Sheeter Tatwa. Kavita magazine. 1995. Editor Supriya Bagchi. *Pradip Choudhurir Kabita. Haowa49 magazine. January 1995. Editor Samir Roychoudhury. *Adhahpataner Jathartho. Kabitirtha magazine. October 1996. *Pathaker Mrityu. Majhi magazine. 1996. Editor Prashanta Ray. *Bangla Sahitye Hungry Andolon. Commemorative issue of 17th Annual Bengali Conference of North America 1997. Editors Susanta Ray, Debajyoti Das and Jiten Mohanti. *Jatilata. Haowa49 magazine. May 1998. Editor Samir Roychoudhury. *Kobitar Janmo. Kabitirtha magazine. September 1998. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Shabdartho Jar Muluk Tar. Ekaler Raktakarabi magazine. September 1998. Editor Pradip Bhattacharjee. *Rearview Aynay Kourab. Kourab magazine. October 1998. Editor Kamal Chakraborty. *Allen Ginsberger Sakshatkar (translation of Harvey Kubernik). Kavita#53 magazine. 1999. Editor Supriya Bagchi. *Pragadhunik Danrakobi Adhunik Danrakobi. Mahadiganta magazine. January-March 1999. Editor Uttam Das. *Premik Baudelaire. Disha Sahitya. October 1999. Editor Anindya Ray.. *Allen Ginsberger Sakshatkar (translation of Gloria Glikston Bram). Sannidhya. October 1999. *Ki Boi Porbo Keno Porbo. Sahitya Setu magazine. 16 September 1999. Editor Jagabandhu Kundu. *Colonial Modernity Banam Arabinda Pradhan Ki Ajib Dastan. Anuttar magazine. September 1999 *Kshudha Prem Aguner Senk.(about probasi Bengali). Padakshep magazine. September 1999. Editor Samir Basu. *Kedar Bhadurir Sakshatkar. Mahadiganta magazine. July-September 1999. Editor Uttam Das. *Ki Bhabey Bujhben Kobitati Postmodern. Kalimati magazine. October 1999. Editor Kajal Sen. *Jounata. Shahar magazine. October 1999. Editor Ajit Ray. *Adhunikata, Uttaradhunikata, Jibanananda. Godhulimone. September-October 1999. Editor Ashok Chattopadhyay. *Postmodern Kabita Kakey Baley. Ebang Arbachin magazine. October 1999. Editor Koushik Ray. *Bangalir Prabas. Padakshep magazine. October 1999 issue. Editor Samir Basu. *Jibanananda Problematique. Lokakriti magazine. November 1999. Editor Haraprasad Sahoo. *Dipankar Datter Sakshatkar. Arbachin magazine. 2000 issue. Editor Shormi Pandey. *Allen Ginsberger Sakshatkar (several interviewers). Kobita Ishtahar. January 2000. *Pratik O Pratikbadi Andolon. Dadhichi magazine. 2000. Editor Dolly Datta. *Kobitwer Kalgham:Kano Je Likhi. Kabitirtha magazine. September 2000.Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Kobitar Rhizomatic Boishishtya. Ekhon Nidagh magazine. April 2000. *’Amar’ Biswas ki ‘Tomar’ Biswaser Cheye Shreya? Kabita Campus magazine. January-March 2000. Editor Alok Biswas and Pranab Pal. *Unishatama Ashwarohi. Mizanur Rahamaner Troimasik Patrika. July-September 2000 issue. Editor Mizanur Rahaman. *Postmodern Little Magazine. Sahitya Setu magazine. March 2001. Editor Jagabandhu Kundu. *Achabhuyar Bombachak. Kabitirtha magazine. June 2001. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Postmodernism O Atharvabed. Kalimati magazine. July 2001. Editor Kajal Sen. *Pratik O Pratikvadi Andolon. Dadhichi magazine. August 2001 issue. Editor Dolly Datta. *Postmodern Sampadakiya. Kledaja Kusum magazine. September 2001 issue. Editor Pranab Kumar Chattopadhyay. *Adolf Hitlerer Sakshatkar (translation). Sahitya Suchipatra. November 1999-April 2000. *Lakshmikanto: Ekjan Sthanik Akshanvyakti. Kobititha. October 2001. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Atlas O periplus. Ekhan Nidagh magazine. Boimela 2001 *Dipak Majumdar: Ani Bani Jani Na. Dahapatra magazine. June-December 2002 issue. Editors Surojit Sen and Kamalkumar Datta. *Postmodern Brouhaha. Zero Hour. July 2002 issue. Editor Dipankar Datta *Bhashabadaler Kobita. Kabita Campus magazine.july-December 2002 issue. Editors Alok Biswas and Pranab Pal. *Aparder Best Seller. Haowa49 magazine.August 2002 issue. Editor Arabinda Pradhan. *Shankarnath Chakrabartyr Postmodern Pratilekh. Haowa49 magazine. November2002 issue. Editor Samir Roychoudhury. *Sabuj Mahishasur. Mansai Times magazine. January 2003 issue. Editor Biswadeb Chattopadhyay. *Apurbamoyeer Micronarrative. Sarvanam magazine. February 2003 issue. Editor Krishna Ghoshal.. *Barin Ghoshaler Panoptocon. Notun Kobita magazine. April-September 2003 issue. Editor Ranjan Moitra. *Krittibas Thekey Hungry Andolon. Kabitirtha magazine. July 2003 issue. Editor utpal Bhattacharjee. *Atmaprasanga. Khanan Patrika. October 2003 issue. Editor Sukumar Choudhuri. *Sabarna Choudhurira Sab Galo Kothyay. Disha Sahitya magazine. Utsab 2003 issue. Editor Anindya Ray. *Hungry, Angry O Beat Pratisandarbha. Amritalok magazine. November 2003 issue. Editor Samiran Majumdar. *Diasporic Adhunantikata. Haowa49 magazine. December 2003 issue. Editor Samir Roychoudhury. *Hungry Andoloner Majagulo. Disha Sahitya. Sharad 2003 issue. Editor Anindya Ray. *Case History: Ichchakrita Gadya. Madhyabarti magazine. January 2004 issue. Editor Biswarup Dey Sarkar. *Bishyayan O Pashchim Banglar Samskriti. Padakshep magazine. January 2004 issue. Editor Samir Basu. *Subimal Basaker Sakshatkar. Anyabhumi magazine. April 2004 issue. Editor Utpal Sarkar. *Jibanshaili: Ekti Adunantik Abhidha. Dadhichi magazine. April 2004 issue. Editor Dolly Datta. *Allen Ginsbergkey Amra Kibhabey Probhabito Korechhi.Ekaler Raktakarabi magazine. June 2004 issue. Editor Pradip Bhattachajee. *Hungry Pratisandarbha. Digangan magazine. Utsab 2004 issue *Hungry Andoloner Sakshya: Sonar Danter Gathakavya. Ebam magazine. August-October 2004 issue. Editor Dhurjati Chanda.. *Hungry Andolon. Rishra Samachar news-magazine. October 2004 Sharad issue. Editor Dilip Sarkar. *Rimbaud Rahasya. Kabitirtha magazine. January 2005 issue. Editor Utpal Bhattacharjee. *Aamar Baba. Sunrito magazine. January 2005 issue. Editor Ahmed Sayem. *Gyanchoutisha: Ananda O Duhkha. Grafitti magazine. February 2005 issue. Editor Subhankar Das. *Hungry Andolon. Sharadiya Jugasankha. 2005 issue. Editor Bikash Sarkar. *Aamar Ma. Kanakodi magazine. January-March 2005 issue. Editor Bishal Bhadra. *Nikhonj Shashurmashay. Horinahorinir magazine. May 2005 issue. Editor Saswata Sikdar. *Pratham Adhunika, Rajlakshmi Didikey Chenen? Prabase Nijabhase magazine. January 2008 issue. Editor Mandira Pal. ( For the magazines researchers may visit Little Magazine & Research Centre, 18 M, Tamer Lane, Kolkata 700009.Information relating to availability of books may be ascertained from Avishkar, Bansdroni, Kolkata 700 070, India. Mobile Telephone No: 09830331092. Land line phone No. 91-033-24105132 ).