What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Rupleena Bose ‘Oh, disgraced Radha Rascal Krishna mounts the riverside Kadam-tree, Dear girl, step not into that river. Not the fair, not the village, not the ghat, Step not for your shame The mother-in-law names you disgraced Radha. Dear girl, step not into that river’ (trans. mine) Kalankini Radha (disgraced Radha) a folk song from the bhawaiya musical tradition of North Bengal takes the path of the river that flows into the popular and with it one of the sung stories of Radha’s moment of transgression. Boundaries necessitate transgression almost as if one derives its identity from the other, like this song reminding of the forbidden gently urges Radha towards the location of her desire. It is of course to be remembered that the transgression is a recurring theme in Indian mythical and folk narrative forms, named adultery in socio-legal terms. Adultery has been a central anxiety, disrupting through the site of marriage the very foundation of order and governance. However every story of stepping over boundaries is not a story of transgression. In these three novellas translated from Bengali and brought out by Penguin, the predominant idea is that of sin and adultery yet none quite delve into the realm of transgression towards desire rather remaining in the peripheries. Located firmly in a comfortable middle class universe, Maloti begins an intimate first person narrative which begins with her act of transgression and travels back deeper into her neatly divided worlds of lack and fulfilment. “It’s over-it happened-there’s nothing to say… How did it happen? Easy. In fact I don’t know why it didn’t happen before.” Beginning with these words, as the narrative alternates between the story and the arguments of Maloti and Nayanangshu and the instances that build a picture of a exalted idea of love and marriage necessitated with a negation of their own sexuality. Buddhadeva Bose’s It Rained All Night, translated by Clinton. B. Seely was first published in Bengali in 1967. It is also important to note that there was an obscenity court case against Basu in 1970, which goes to show that this narrative even though it depends on the established masculine and feminine roles threatened the moral order of patriarchal society. “This is why I love you so. You speak out your desire, you’re not timid, you’re not even careful- you play with your cards face up on the table, and that’s why no one has been, or will be able to hinder you. The traditional gender roles are firmly rooted in Maloti’s imagination as she voices the realisation of her individuality through the necessity of desire within the idea of love but the narrative never quite looks at the possibility of desire without love as a qualifier. However the interesting portrait which emerges in It rained all night is through the voice given to the husband Nayanangshu. So you realized you were on the verge of real danger, Maloti-why weren’t you more careful? But what could I have done. Everything was out of my hands…On the one hand you claim to be a person with independent will, yet you want to place the responsibility on your husband? In it’s narrative style Nayanangshu’s voice is the constructed voice of an intellectual with an intense sense of propriety, which has no space for sexual gratification. His is a fear of the body almost as if the body can disrupt order. Maloti’s body, his own body, Goyna’s body, Kusum’s body, the woman’s body, lower middle class bodies. Real bodies bring out fear of disruption in Nayanangshu as opposed to Botticelli’s Venus, which remains aesthetic and unreal, never quite disrupting any moral, social order. Nayanangshu’s is a construction of the Bengali gentleman, ‘bhadralok’ dating back to the reform movement where his primarily vocation is the fashioning of his wife and his marriage as a model of new modern patriarchy. Taking off from where Tagore’s Ghaire/Baire (trans. Home and the World) started, Nayanangshu’s narrative is that of the University professor moulded by the world of literary tropes and western education yet unable to negotiate desire within his immediate social/ moral universe. Ridding oneself of the conservatism of the middle class family structure in the 1970’s, Nayanangshu attempts at self-fashioning and Maloti’s understanding of her identity both tell a tale of politics filtering into the intimate, spaces which are usually silent and almost never uttered in own’s voice. A larger question is of-course raised about the basic premise on which marriage is based, that of ownership. A contract, which defines itself by trapping bodies as properties within the institution they inhabit. Love in such a context becomes like the only legitimate narrative carefully clothing desire and making transgression easier to accept. In any other case, guilt is the only thing that holds the possibility of redemption. When she thought of Debashish she felt uncomfortable looking at Sachin. She couldn’t look at her children either…She even feared her own shadow. There Was No One At The Bus Stop by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay looks back at the burden of an adulterous relationship between Trina and Debashish carried by both into their respective psyches. Written in 1974 and now translated into English by Arunava Sinha, There Was No One… does not step into any uncomfortable territory in the choices taken by the characters. Trina lives in a house haunted by her guilt of her affair along with the gaze of knowledge and disregard of her family. Debashish, on the other hand struggles with the memory of his bad marriage, his wife’s suicide and his son’s memory of his dead mother. Somewhere in the loneliness of their urban affluent lives, both try to hold on their tumultuous affair, which can at best stay a guilty aberration. No, there would be someone. Debashish. He was quite mad. He called her in a way that made everyone know of it. Sachin knew, the children too. Trina’s heart trembled all the time. Sometimes in the excitement of a forbidden relationship. Sometimes in fear. Sachin and
That Tree is a Myth
Pranabendu Dasgupta Charred Wood piece Whose stench do you carry along, charred wood piece? Is it my body of that prior birth that gutted my Hindu motherland? Am I not still alive in this birth—wherefore this smokescreen? I am not dead, charred wood piece, no? Not yet vamoosed in human suspicion-bile? See how I can feel love, still I do. Still I can sprint straight onto that gaping field there Ah, smouldering wood piece dear, why often do you reek so downright stark? ………. Yo-Yo Now at hand, now shifting Faith, funds, libido, politics Quite secure strings on my palm, fingertips But strange now hops, skips apace Now at hand. Eludes again. Thus things go on. Suppose I fail to stick with the tension Every shred falls off then. Strings entangle: all these fun stuff Goes haywire, what are mine Faith, funds, libido, politics. ………. Relationships Do not quite feel like going anywhere these days Resentment, humiliation, jealousy, disregard Who do I turn to? 15 years past that buddy who would give away his soul Freely, in daily restaurant sessions Now thinks nothing save writing novels Novels? So famous everyone, hectic Have turned into ants for vocation—all No, do not quite feel like going anywhere these days. But sometimes, from that double-decker bus I spy Young things, brightly dressed, walking past the plaza Laughter, pure animation, exchanging lightning glances—love and kill (as if a sprightly stream dashes past two stilly hills) I wish I could get down to the road and announce: “Listen, I do not know any one of you, still how so much I love you from afar Would you care to take me with you for a while?” ………. The Tree All of them ganged up to hack down that tree Once, twice, a third time…countless Hew after hew, slash next slash Now peeling off, grazing the crust The birds nesting inside, scampered off to the sky The whole forest resounded with those thumping hatchets But after chopping for the whole day When the tree unmoved stood its ground Exasperated they said: The tree actually isn’t there, you know The whole thing about the tree is a myth. ………. Mute Textile Plant Unspeaking textile plant, how long will this go on? So much work is left undone, fabric amassed Dumped beneath your feet Will you not match thread to thread, sketch patterns once again? Have you thought about how many remain exposed, bare If you do not clothe them? Unless you deliver designs, no floral blouse on our pretty maid. These broken, hushed pieces of fabric. Ah, meaningless, garbage all otherwise. Unspeaking textile plant, like a teleprinter speak up now Like a gushing spring, surge yourself into work. Pranabendu Dasgupta died in 2007. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Letter to H.B.N. Shetty
5, Residency Bungalow Camp Baroda Date: 7 July 1972 Shri H. B. N. Shetty Director of Industries and Commerce Chepauk Madras Dear Shri Shetty I have Mr. G. N. Raghavan’s letter No. 162821/HCA3/69 dated 20 February 1972 referring to a proposal to upgrade the sculpture-training centre at Mahabalipuram into a College of Traditional Arts, Sculpture and Architecture. I am sorry I have taken a long time to give you my opinion and that you had to send me a reminder. I have, unfortunately, been either heavily preoccupied or indisposed, by turns, in the last few months and so could not give the proposal the attention it deserved. To have an institution to teach traditional arts inclusive of sculpture and architecture is a commendable idea. When the traditional social and economic structure that sustained these arts is breaking down and is unable to support the old craft-apprentice system, this is the only alternative to extend their life. But the structure of such an institution needs mature consideration; to give new life to these arts as I shall explain later, we need a special kind of institution. We are not the first to discover the present plight of traditional arts. More than a century ago, when Jamshedji Jeejibhoy visualized an art school in Bombay (and made a handsome endowment towards its institution) or Mr. Hunter thought of an art institution in Madras, they were acutely aware of this predicament and the institutions they planned had the sustenance and strengthening of the traditional arts as their avowed objective. But it is common knowledge today that these institutions did not shape up as they wanted; in the way they grew, they kept only the most cursory contact with the traditional arts, and more often than not, worked counter-purpose to them. This was certainly not due to lack of wisdom or goodwill on the part of the early planners nor due to their ignorance of the problem, but, rather, due to the special characteristics of the new society and the institutions it threw up. The new educational institutions (for us, those teaching art) catered, on the one hand, to the needs and tastes of the new society (in art, the demand for engravers, photographers, portraitists, monumental sculptors, graphic artists and the like) and, on the other, evolved a discipline that would equip a practitioner to meet the growing needs of a growing society, broad and general, with an elastic standard of excellence, not pointed and definite as in the traditional arts, whose purposes and methods were more specific. (For instance, it would be easier for one to assess the performance of a traditional art trainee—his terms being small and specific—than that of his modern counterpart in an art school.) But no modern academic institution can escape this tendency towards generalization if only for the fact that its graduates are unsure of the employment situation they are finally going into. So, though I deplore the fact that our present colleges of art do not have a living contact with traditional arts (much to the detriment of both), I am afraid the setting up of ‘colleges’ of traditional arts will not save the situation either. It could be argued that the employment situation that these craft trainees are going into is not so indefinite as I think, the threads of traditional culture still persist in our changing society, that people are still god-fearing and pious and need temples, viharas, ritual chariots and like, if only on a smaller scale. It could also be said, with great justification, that the artists and architects of new schools are unable to meet this need (and, if we can judge by the renovations of the gopurams of the Kapaliswara temple in Mylapore and the Meenakshi temple in Madurai, are incompetent and tasteless besides.) But to think of a ‘college’ and destroy its special character—it will turn out graduates like the other colleges do, 30 to 40 every year, who may not find enough work of the kind they are trained for and perhaps end up as petty modellers in museum workshops or in workshops of curio-fakers—a most unattractive prospect. And if, eventually, more of its graduates go into these latter employments, it will adjust its teaching programme to meet this end. It will, in short, share the fate of the Ayurvedic colleges; intended though it may be to sustain and preserve the purity of the traditional arts, it will only result in hybridizing them and watering them down. This is not to be construed as my being against the setting up of an institution to teach traditional arts and professional status similar to that of a college. Far from it. My opinion is: an independent institution to teach traditional arts, if it is to be effective, has to be visualized on different lines from a normal college. To outline it briefly: —it should start as a master-craftsmen’s guild, preferably state-supported with enough professional work on hand; —its educational functions should be related to productive functions; —it should be restrictive in its student intake; —it should keep the master craftsman-apprentice relationship intact in its teaching system; —it should implement a course of the ‘conservatorial’ type (not the time-bound college type), sending out a practitioner with a professional certificate only when he has a high degree of competence and independence, in both theory and practice; —it should be centred around a research department that probes into the rationale of the traditional arts, comparing their various iconographical divisions (as the present day stapathis, for all the hoary texts they hold on to, will be practitioners in the Nayak or the Vijaynagar manners, and the education of the apprentices should cover a larger spectrum of the traditional arts and present each form in its contextual propriety); —it should have an area of environmental study (for a piece of sculpture or architecture does not become great by its iconographical precision but by its subtle responsiveness to the environment, both in design and visual content). Then
Reflections on “Being Queer” in Kolkata
Niharika Banerjea “To speak of sexuality, and of same-sex love in particular, in India today is simultaneously an act of political assertion, of celebration, of defiance and of fear” (Narrain and Bhan 2005, 2). Recent work exploring same-sex experiences in India emphasizes that lesbian and feminist causes must work together to respond to ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. This position raises several issues, among which the tenuous nature of same-sex experiences and the ongoing need seek a collective, critical community are abiding concerns. There is little published writing around queer middle-class women from India that takes reflexivity seriously as a method. Therefore my short essay takes the form of a series of self-reflective fragments that illustratethose moments of communitythat I experienced with women who self-identify as ‘samakami’. ‘Samakami’ is a Bengali term meaning same-sex desiring person. Rather than conceiving of community as a monolithic empirical unit of analysis “as points of arrival for our research agendas” (Green 2002, 521), I approach the term as emerging within the lived context of my interaction with same-sex desiring women in Kolkata. Kolkata The sights and sounds of the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass-the main thoroughfare in the city-on a June morning in 2009 does indeed have clarity. As the taxi speeds down the road, the dense summer air envelopes the weather beaten and the freshly painted residential apartments, the one manned retail store, the mall and gently pushes the masses of people – sweaty, crisply dressed, – onto their daily destinations. The public transportation is once again so conspicuous by its packed compartments. The newly designed buses are a reminder of economic liberalization, of hope for a once dying city and fear for its future. In this tropical city there is indeed an air of expectancy. Kolkata today is the juxtaposition of a pre and post liberalized economy, in its physical structure as well as social fabric. For someone like me whose personal history is entangled with the city’s pre and post liberalization history, it may be rather difficult to recognize all the signs of degradation and rejuvenation. But one change is unmistakable. There is an air of affluence in the place and a pride about the affluence. It shows itself in a plethora of various types of cars on the roads, of new buildings, restaurants, and the neighborhood stores packed with goods meant for personal grooming and household improvement-previously unavailable to the inhabitants of this place and the nation. The happy middle-class heterosexual couples staring down from the billboards are the new drivers of this economy. In a largely Hindu nation where the ideal “Hindu-nationalist citizen-body rests on the exclusion of Others who embody, albeit differentially, improper gendering, sexuality, and nationalization” (Bacchetta 1999: 151), what meaning does community hold for same-sex desiring women in the city? I cannot take Kolkata for granted. The city is too complex, too dense to be entirely familiar. Then again the tenuous nature of same-sex relationships (Vanita and Kidwai 2001) makes it hard to imagine a gay space in the city, unlike many cities in the global north. Thus, I am not in search for an enclave, but for a meaningful community at the very heart of the city. Academy of Fine Arts 2nd July 2009. A large group of people outside the Academy complex, the cultural hub of Kolkata, carrying various banners and posters celebrating the de-criminalization of homosexuality in India. Something changed that day. The High Court of Delhi ruled that the provision in Section 377 of India’s Penal Code that criminalises private consensual sex between same-sex adults violates the country’s Constitution and international human rights conventions. A group of people long considered a moral hazard and previously deemed shameful in public discourse was on its way to become an object of public discussion about human rights in the world’s largest democracy. Was this that moment where same-sex desiring people could officially reach out to the contemporary Indian public without discrimination or was it just the beginning of a new phase in the struggle to de-stigmatize same-sex relationships in the nation? The gathering at the Academy was an appeal to community, or rather the promise of a community that refuses to remain non-existent within the folds of the city, loving, laughing and seeking to change the norms of social interaction right at its heart. This collective was not a fiction, but a reality that with all its territoriality and face-to-face interaction became a site for political re-imagining. But many of us were careful not to conceive of it as an essential foundation. For those who do not live their sexuality as a fixed form of identity, community as a foundational entity is meaningless. The appeal to community therefore was an appeal for living with difference. Living with difference is “another way of thinking how it is that ‘the more than oneness’ of sociality requires new ways of living” (Ahmed and Fortier 2003: 256). Sappho Sappho is part of a long history of same-sex, particularly, lesbian activism in India. It formed in 1999 to claim recognition for lesbians in Kolkata.The first floor of a two-storied modest house in a middle-class neighborhoodin southeast Kolkata serves as its office. This location had indeed surprised me the first day I visited it. As the taxi slowly but surely made its last turn and stopped short of my destination, I asked myself: “how has Sappho managed to survive in this neighborhood for such a long time”? The taxi could not enter the small by-lane, so I got down and walked the last few minutes. There were no signs to indicate the presence of the organization. Was it possible to exist in a modest middle class neighborhood such as this? Didn’t the neighbors say or ask anything? What did the neighbors think that the office was about? The nebulous character of same-sex experiences in the Indian context is well documented (Khanna 2005; Vanita 2001). There is often an absence of explicit words in Indian languages to denote same-sex desires and relationships. Same sex-sexualities are possible