Falguni Roy
[Falguni Roy, poet and visionary— one of the rarest of rare voices from the subcontinent, died at the unripe age of 33 in May, 1981. HUG thanks Abhisek Chakraborty for collecting his work along with allied and contemporary writings in the same tradition—in the February 2014 volume of the magazine Eksho Ashi Degree. Here is a sample. Translation: HUG.
A short film about Roy, Ebang Falguni (The Lost Lines Of A Beauty Monster), was made in 2004. It was produced by Subhankar Das and directed by Sharmi Pandey.]
——————————————-
[I am having an urge to say a few things about the womb actually the way words tend not to distinguish the scents of foreign or home-grown words within a living language like we do not remember while replacing frames for our glasses that frame is an English word so also in real writing as it gets peopled by and through living creatures the idea of writing itself becomes irrelevant at that point and when non-imagistic art poetry literature come closer to god and spirit they get closer to non-imagistic film as if life is a running film one forgets that the creator is unmoved indifferent the medium itself gets a life of its own and things get vitalized vivified.]
Shot One: A raging pyre—around which a bevy of beautiful and ugly looking naked young women—their eyes brimming with tears.
Shot Two: A Neem tree—full-moon beams dripping though its leaves.
Shot Three: The blazing flames look upward to the sky and the naked young women with brimming eyes look downward to the ground—freeze.
Shot Four: In several of the branches of the Neem tree hang a few men by the rope with no hands or legs but in each of their phallic regions there is a television set—beneath their hanging bodies that raging pyre and those naked women with their eyes welling and above those dead bodies through the Neem leaves drip full-moon beams.
Shot Five: The naked women together start ululating and at that point from each of their vaginal regions appears an unfertilized foetus—like balls they plop to the ground—the women’s faces contort with pain—they keen.
Shot Six: The television sets on the hanging male bodies begin to roll. On one of the sets one sees a man copulating with another and those naked women cackling at each other at the sight. On another set a naked woman pleasures herself, moaning, and a man pierces her bosom with a sharp knife and the woman shrieks.
On another TV an elderly woman is copulating with a dog and her old husband with his face hidden on the knees of a little girl is crying inconsolably.
Shot Seven: The naked women are picking up the fallen unfertilized foetuses from the ground and their eyes are now drying up and the retinal dots within their eyes begin to burst and as their eyes and face are awash with blood the difference between beauty and ugliness vanish.
Shot Eight: A raging pyre—a branch of the Neem tree over the pyre—men hanging by the rope on the branch—television sets on their phallic region and the following words appear on each television set—
We want food clothes a place to stay
We want women poetry
We want alcohol pure and pungent
Art our happiness
Literature our alcohol
Our alcohol the feeling of hunger
Shot Nine: The naked women face the pyre and in unison say this—We do not want theory we want bodies we just want bodies and theories about bodies.
Their faces awash in blood from their gouged eyes and in their hands the dropped unfertilized foetuses—in their vaginal region bloom abundant flowers—a profusion of flowers their colourful vaginas.
Shot Ten: A road—a gate at the end of the road—carved on the gate—Maternity Home – and on the far side, another gate which says—Burning Ghat—
A twosome—manush and manushi, on the road
Manush revolves around his manushi
Manush interrogates his manushi
Manushi interrogates her manush
Manush replies
But no one speaks only makes gestures
No one speaks save the eyes
Shot Eleven: This picture is getting projected on the television sets in the phallic regions of the hanging dead-bodies with no hand or legs.
On one of the TV sets a huge family planning poster beneath which sit those manush-manushi and in their laps 3 babies—they cry.
On another TV set excited manush—his greying hair, advancing age, manushi’s greying hair and advancing age too but a quiet, naked kid in front of them and manushi with her hands on the penis of the kid petting him and the excited manush trying to smash and smash a pair of spectacles with a fat looking fountain pen.
On another TV manushi’s body is turned into a skeleton—only the eyes are animated burning and tears flowing freely and manush is blind now and his body leprosy stricken—their child, a full grown man with breasts like women long hair like women, and manush walk gingerly and manushi pets his phallus—and both say this—
Give love back to us
Give love back to us
And their womanly-man child stare at the sky, nervous agitated—not one beard on his cheek—like women his eyes nose lips are shaped
Shot Twelve: A sole full-moon in the sky—
Shot Thirteen: All around the pyre the naked women and in every lap unfertilized foetuses plopped out from the wombs and in every vaginal region multicoloured flowers and every eye tear-filled and everyone chants again—
Give love back to us
Give love back to us
