Moonlit Rats and Owls
Manash Bhattacharjee Today is the sixtieth death anniversary of Jibanananda Das (17 February 1899 – 22 October 1954). Shaking himself off Tagore’s Victorian and mystical influences, Jibanananda made the most distinctive mark in the early modernist phase of Bengali poetry. There was as much a new, naturalist lyricism in his poetry as much as new ways of describing time. Time in Jibanananda’s poems was not an abstract, contemplative category, but an optical one, visible in the passing of seasons and the activities of birds and insects. It is through time one measures two intimate aspects of human life: waiting and memory, and Jibanananda’s poetry is replete with imageries where the lover waits and remembers through the passing of time, most intensely captured through naturalistic images. Nature in Jibanananda’s poetry does not resonate with the exuberant charms found in Tagore, but appears, rather, in slow, terrible images of decay. The birth of each new season and activity in nature also marks an end, a death of the previous season. There is also ‘human’ nature, and Jibanananda’s sensibility is equally tilted towards the harsh, primitive naturalism of ‘human nature’. The sexual ‘nature’ of feelings is often described in predatory terms, through the dangerous lures hiding in the dark belly of nature. This created controversy around his poems. Jibanananda was a master of bleak images, and the shadow of pessimism haunted his poems. The effects of early industraialisation and the moving away from village to city life disturbed him. This theme would become the preoccupation of many later poets from Calcutta. To conclude with a word on his most celebrated and well-known poem, Banalata Sen: Today the poem reads like an allegory imagining an impossible juxtaposition—a Bengali woman from a mofussil town of Bangladesh, belonging to the ‘vaidya’ caste, being emblematic of a Buddhist era that flung across ‘national’ boundaries, mapping a geography and time most palpably remote. The poem is perhaps still as enigmatic as ever because it manages to violently juxtapose the petty everydayness of contemporary life with a longing for a place, an era and a pair of eyes that no longer exist. ——————————– After the Harvest The harvest was over who knows when – hay, leaves, various remains, broken eggs scattered in the fields – snake skin, nest-like cold. Beyond all these, at the heart of the field, sleep a few familiar people, strangely inert. There someone else sleeps too – day and night the one I used to meet for a long time. With heart-games, so many misdeeeds I committed on her. Peace still reigns: deep green grass, grasshoppers today envelop her thoughts and the taste of her dark questions. Simple You will never come to hear this song – tonight my call will float in air along the pathway, yet this song comes to heart. Yet I do not forget the language of calling – love still stays alive in the heart, I still sing into the earth’s ear into the star’s ear; I know you will never hear it – tonight my call will float in air along the pathway, yet the song comes to heart. You water, you wave – your body paces like sea-waves – your simple mind floats by the surge of sea waters; some wave she doesn’t know touched her in which darkness; a wave she doesn’t know searches her in the dark; you are Sindhu’s night-waters, Sindhu’s night-waves; who loves you, does anyone carry you in his heart. You go along the surge of waves and far-flung waters behind call you back. You are only a night’s single day; A crowd of men and women Call you far away – so far away – To some sea coast, forest – field – or A sky where floats a make-believe Light of falling stars, Or a sky where the bent Moon like a crescent Raises up – sinks – your life’s taste For you are them, all; Where tree branches shake In a cold night – like the white Bone of dead hands – Where the forest takes dark Primal smells to heart And sings a song. You had come like a Night’s wind to the solitary Heart‘s song And gave whatever a night could. After Twenty Five Years For the last time when I met her in the field I said, ‘One day at such hour come again – if you so desire – after twenty five years’. Saying this I returned home. Later the moon and stars died so many times in the field, in the moonlight rats and owls in search of paddy fields came and went; with eyes closed on the left and right so many people fell asleep; I alone stayed awake; though times arrives faster than the flight of stars, twenty five years don’t get over. Then – one day the field is again full of yellow grass; dew drops float on leaves, dry branches, everywhere; the sparrow’s broken nest is wet with dew; broken bird-eggs on the road, cold – stiff; cucumber flowers, one or two rotten white cucumbers, broken spider webs, dried-up spiders over leaves and stems; the road is visible in the bright moonlight; a few stars are seen in the cold sky – rats and owls roam over the fields their thirst even today quenched by seeds, twenty five years however were long over. A Strange Darkness A strange darkness has set upon this world. Today the blind Are the most clear sighted Those without any love, friendliness or stirrings of pity: the world today is paralysed without their advice. Those who still have deep faith in human beings; even now before whom great truths, art and piety come naturally: today their hearts are food for vultures and jackals. Banalata Sen A thousand nights I have walked this earth. From the Singhalese sea to the Malaya ocean in the dead of night
Ethnic Minorities, Sexual Violence and University Spaces: Notes from Visvabharati and Jadavpur University
Sarmistha Dutta Gupta On a September afternoon, when the sky was signalling the arrival of the Pujo season in Bengal and yet monsoon flowers like dopati were in full bloom, I joined a rally in Santiniketan. The rally was organized by the students of Visvabharati to demand justice for a fellow-student from Sikkim who was sexually abused by her seniors in the university shortly after joining the institution in July. The rally also bore a special significance as it was being organized on the birthday of the survivor who was still hospitalized, bearing the brunt of severe physical injuries and psychological trauma. It was mainly the ethnic minorities from north Bengal, Sikkim and other north-eastern states that participated in this rally though a small group of other students also joined them. A smaller group of leftist students, mostly from the plains, had already submitted a deputation to the university authority demanding action against the accused. The day after the Santiniketan rally, another procession in solidarity with the Visvabharati students walked from College Square in Kolkata, led by the students of north Bengal and the north-east studying in JadavpurUniversity. The rally in Santiniketan was without slogans. Some of the students carried posters, sometimes they sang. The team of five ‘outsiders’ from Kolkata to which I belonged, comprised of members of the West Bengal-based women’s rights network Maitree. By virtue of being an ‘outsider,’ I also had the perspective of the ‘unattached’ observer. I noticed that most of the students felt a deep sense of let-down. Those from the hills were not convinced as to how many from the university community were standing by them and by the painter couple who had sent their daughter to study fine arts in Santiniketan. Some divisive political outfits were already exploiting the extremely sensitive nature of the situation and trying to polarize the students of the hills from those from the plains. Many of those students from north Bengal and Sikkim, who were stolidly standing by the survivor and her family, seemed to be quite unsure of the sincerity of those protesters who, following the same thread of events, were demanding the formation of GSCASH in Visvabharati, the way it has been implemented in JawaharlalNehruUniversity. ‘Are they genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of the girl?’ asked the student-organizers of the rally. The procession seemed to reflect a couple of things. First, a definite lack of trust and bonding between local students and those from the hills and from north-eastern states. The ethnic minorities and other students from these regions, who usually tend to stick together to negotiate language and other cultural differences when they first arrive for study, may develop friendly terms with their other peers but feel a justified uneasiness in trusting others to take up issues collectively. Let me come back to this anon. The other thing I noticed was the conspicuous absence of local citizens and the university community in this near-silent protest walk. I am not assuming for a moment that their absence means that they were necessarily unsympathetic and insensitive towards the survivor and her condition. It may well be possible that many of them did not get the news of the protest march on time. With my close links with Santiniketan, I can testify to the fact that many local residents including university teachers extended their helping hand unhesitatingly to the friends of the survivor without making themselves visible. Yet I certainly sensed an atmosphere of terror, spread among the local citizenry in a calculated manner, which influenced them to stay in, rather than to come out in support of students. This has been done without any use of force whatsoever, by coercing people into believing that being undisturbed is a virtue and any flutter or dissent is a severe crime to be curbed ruthlessly. It seemed that these courageous students were taking out a protest march in a society which is well on its way to becoming an oppressive Orwellian dystopia, where breaking conventions invites strict chastisement and lessons in moral edification. 2 Every year a sizeable number of students come to study in Visvabharati and JadavpurUniversity from north Bengal, Sikkim and north-east India at large. Although on campus they may not feel any particular discomfort, there is a lot of unease outside the university spaces with the kinds of provincialism usually directed at them. The feeling of discomfort and perceptions of insensitivity are felt much more acutely in Kolkata than Santiniketan as Visvabharati used to generate a sense of shared cosmopolitanism which may not be metropolitan in its outlook but was certainly borderless and more international in its engagement. As many Bengalis from both India and Bangladesh, routinely face the incredibly banal and downright obtuse question ‘Are you a Bengali or a Muslim?’, similarly many young people belonging to ethnic minorities from Darjeeling-Gangtok-Shillong-Imphal are regularly asked in Kolkata and other places in south Bengal, ‘Are you a Hindustani or are you from China or Japan?’ Such questions might be posed and racial comments passed on them anywhere—while shopping in the old Gariahat market or any of the new malls in Kolkata, or while looking for a place to rent in the city. The situation is much more complex for girls. They are forced to tolerate the intent gaze of many male strangers in the streets, who are always indefatigably curious in measuring the difference in their bodily features. The rude stare and often lewd remarks equally combines racial and sexual aggression with the young women (usually dressed in western clothes, speaking English or their mother tongue) perceived as the ‘other’ by local men. Sometimes such aggression takes extreme forms, taking full advantage of a person’s unfamiliarity with the local language and distance from the social milieu. This is what happened recently in Santiniketan where the vulnerability of the first-year-student from Sikkim was manifold. While it is true that hate crimes haven’t yet taken lives of young men like Nido Taniam in Bengal, the repeated
Kalpana Press
Avinandan Sthanpati Chandannagar/Chandernagore is usually slotted as an erstwhile French colony. Though that identity is almost shut out from memory now. It is like any other small town–congested, filthy and sporadically peppered with high-rises. The French butter, if at all relished at a distant past, and its after-taste, seems almost a surreal idea. The burrabazar area is a goldmine for the promoters. Especially since this area is close to both river Ganges and the Grand Trunk Road. In this burrabazar you will detect a century old letter press. Kalpana Press. The current owner, Swapan Das, inherited the press from his father. At one point, the press used to employ compositors and machinemen and binders. The works. The dual blow of advancement in technology and the economic downturn, has forced Swapan-babu to take care of the press. Single-handed. He is not sure about the future of the press. Perhaps a multi-storied high-rise will replace this quaint place. Who knows whether his legal claims would be honoured if such an eventuality is to befall Kalpana Press ! Here are a few snaps of a toiling, lonesome fighter of a printer, whose future remains stark and uncertain. ———————————————————————————————————————— _______________________________________________________________ ———————————————————————————————————————- ——————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————- ————————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————————- ————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————- —————————————————————————————————————- —————————————————————————————————————- —————————————————————————————————————- —————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————— ——————————————————————————————————————- [This photo-essay was first published in Agamikaal, No. 3, 2014] adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Letters To The Editor
Rabindra Kumar Dasgupta [Professor Rabindra Kumar Dasgupta enjoyed an illustrious academic career, holding numerous academic and administrative positions, including the Tagore Professorship in the Department of Modern Indian Languages in Delhi University. He had a DPhil on a work that closely studied the writings of John Milton and another PhD delving deep into the works of Michael Madhusudan Dutt. 2014 is his birth centenary year. Among other things, he wrote a great number of letters to the editor—in The Statesman and in The Assam Tribune. Those letters have now been collected in a book titled Letters to the Editor (Gangchil). It is one way, as Professor Sourin Bhattacharya, in his opening remarks to the book says, to get round the element of ephemerality. I still recall the frail and benign figure of Professor Dasgupta climbing up the stairs of Jadavpur University in the mid-1990s and in a remarkably lucid fashion, explain to us Plato’s Ion. He would transport us to a different world, week after week. Here are three of his letters. Prasanta Chakravarty (for HUG)] ——————————————————– Dead Weight of Printed Knowledge Sir , –The grand Boi Mela (Book Fair) which gives a new life to our city every year prompts me, a man of 88 years and seven months, stricken with a pernicious bronchial asthma, to speak of Mela Boi (too many books). My grandmother had only three books Krittibasi Ramayana, Kashidasi Mahabharat and Vijay Gupta’s Manasamangal. I remember she had a preference for the Ramayana which she read for an hour before her sleep at noon. I envy my grandmother for her economy of books and in my good days read for many more hours. But what have I gained for possessing so many books and giving so much time to them? Nothing except some academic trappings which I now think are but tinsels and some academic positions to which I have failed to do justice. Perhaps I fancied books just as some women fancy jewellery. I remember K. C. Mukherjee, who taught us Aristotle’s Poetics at Calcutta University, once quoted some two pages from Homer’s Greek and when I asked him how could he remember so much he said—“Young man you read all kinds of rubbish, I read only Homer.” I think the world is now sinking under the dead weight of its printed knowledge. Virgil knew more than Homer, but Homer is the greater poet. Milton knew more than Virgil, but Virgil is the greater poet. There may be some truth in Macaulay’s saying that as civilization advances poetry almost necessarily declines. Ramendrasundar Trivedi almost the same thing in his essay ‘Mahakavyer Lakhshan.’ And towards the end of the first world was Oswald Spengler wrote his The Decline of the West asking us not to write poetry but to produce machines. The world has not stopped writing poetry, but has produced so many machines that the Pentagon has now enough nuclear heads to destroy the world in several hours. It is this which has made the United States a menace to human civilization. Let us begin to realize the symbolism of Aeschylus’s play in which Zeus punishes Prometheus for bringing fire from heaven and giving it to men. Our Faustian lust for knowledge will ultimately reduce the world to ashes. I am now too frail to hold a book for reading and what is worse I begin to doze within five minutes of my taking a book in hand. So lying in bed which is my usual position. I silently recite to myself what odd bits I read in the past. The line which comes to my mind at this time of my life when I have lost so many of my near and dear ones is Goethe’s “ You must do without, you must do without.” I do not love to turn to Shakespeare’s soliloquies although I remember many of them. For me the most stirring words in Shakespeare are Cleopatra’s “ Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have/Immortal longing in me…? Methinks I hear/Antony call…/Husband I come.” My old eyes are wet with tears when I remember these words. The wily woman became a goddess while leaving the world. The line of Rabindranath which stirs me most is “Thou has made me endless.” But I was never a good teacher. What then makes one a good teacher. It is a sensitive and creative response to the text in hand. A good lecture is an expression of this response. I found it in my teacher of Shakespeare, P.C. Ghosh and two of my colleagues Tarak Nath Sen and Sisir Kumar Das.—Yours, etc., R. K. Dasgupta 17 February 2004. —————————- 150th Year of the Manifesto Sir,–I thought that the Marxist government of West Bengal would mount an exhibition of the various editions of the Communist Manifesto on the occasion of the 150th year of its publication towards the end of February 1848. It is strange that there has not been any function in this city in the more than three months and a half since that memorable date. Our state government has a department of Information and Culture and our Bangla Academy is a wing of that department. It should have been possible to hold such an exhibition and a series of lectures on this classic which is now a great human document. Its value is not in the least diminished by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of Communism from Eastern Europe. As a historic document of human progress it survives these historical events. Let us remember the memorable words of Engels on the Manifesto in his preface to its 1890 German edition: “the history of the Manifesto reflects the history of the modern working-class movement. At present it is doubtless the most widely circulated, the most international product of all Socialist literature, the common programme of many millions of workers of all countries from Siberia to California.” If at all an exhibition