Colour of Olives
Prasanta Chakravarty Wartime _________ Our country is not warring right now With any other country Still, you have got to know A state of war has been declared Barbed wires at the borders, beyond that—prohibition In olive-coloured clothes Alertness of the woodlands And so, with much added caution One steps into the forest To the sound of bullets, a fusillade, do you hear it? Within wordlessness, now Are bitter words of wartime An explosion created by anger’s frenzied regret Is to be deflected—towards safety By lowering a trench that lies only within your heart Did you know this? Here, the worldly-being Recalls the honeyed moment Just before the war began The sanyasi Seeking peace after the war Sits bent-kneed Even the poets From the trenches, through their binoculars Watch the seasons turn The chilly winds of Magh Sweep memories in And depart with dreams This winter Is your dress smeared with the colour of olives? *** যুদ্ধকালীন __________ আমাদের দেশ এখন কোনোযুদ্ধ করছে না অন্য দেশের সঙ্গেতবু তুমি জেনে গেছযুদ্ধকালীন অবস্থা এখন জারি আছেসীমান্তে কাঁটাতার, কাঁটাতারের ওপারে নিষেধ-জলপাই রংয়ের পোশাকেবনস্থলির সতর্কতাঅতএব বড় বেশি হুঁশিয়ার হয়েএখন জঙ্গলে পা রাখাএখন গোলাগুলির আওয়াজ পাচ্ছ কি?এই নৈঃশব্দ্যের মধ্যেযুদ্ধকালীন কটু কথাক্রোধের উন্মক্ত আক্ষেপ যে বিস্ফোরণ তৈরি করছেতার থেকে সুরক্ষিত হতে নেমে যাবেএমন ট্রেঞ্চশুধু তোমার মনেরই মধ্যে থাকতে পারেতা কি তুমি জানো?এইখানে সংসারীযুদ্ধ শুরুর আগেরমধুময় মুহূর্তকে মনে করেসন্ন্যাসী এখানেযুদ্ধ শেষের শান্তির জন্যেহাঁটু গেড়ে বসেএমনকি কবিরাওএই ট্রেঞ্চের থেকে দূরবীনে দেখেঋতুর পরিবর্তন হচ্ছেমাঘের ঠান্ডা হাওয়াস্মৃতি নিয়ে আসেস্বপ্ন নিয়ে চলে যায়এবারের শীতেতোমার পোশাকে বুঝি জলপাই রং? Wartime is not war; though it could include actual conflicts. It is simply a tract of time, a signpost “wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known; and therefore, the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war,” Thomas Hobbes had averred. Indeed, wartime is a predicament and a temperament to which a whole people one day wake up and find themselves mired in. In fact, unbeknownst to them, they begin to gravitate towards such a state until it takes away their multiple private times and flattens those into a homogenous time-period for everyone. Such a mad ancient condition is renewed from time to time among socially interacting human beings. Could it be that otherwise a time of such unease and rancour could also offer possibilities of renewal and redemption from within its own belly? There have been quite a few distinct poems on war and its effects on daily living in Bangla (especially on the two world wars and the Bangladesh war of 1971), but the one written above by the actor, play-director and consummate writer and poet Soumitra Chatterjee stands apart for its psychological insight and modernist suggestivity. The first four lines constitutes the proem: ‘Our country is not warring right now / With any other country Still, you have got to know/A state of war has been declared’ A case is made in order to distinguish the temporal slice of wartime from the physical fact of warring: that one knows the time of war though one’s own country may not be going through an actual war. How could such a wartime have been ushered in? Who may have declared it? It could be that battles rage in and among other lands and the economic or political costs also have an effect on us. It could also be that some civil war takes place, within one’s own land, region or community for which no actual declaration of war is necessary. Still, it is not war that is important here. The ‘state’ of being in war is. Time has turned itself into a state of being for agents gripped by it. Perhaps such a state of war happens more at the level of individual agents and rages even within one’s own psyche? Wartime is a sudden realization; it dawns upon oneself— ‘you got to know.’ Everyone knows. The declaration of wartime is in the air, so to say. The next section elaborates on the actual predicament: the borders are guarded and wartime means encountering a certain alert watchfulness everywhere. ‘Barbed wires at the borders, beyond that—prohibition/In olive-coloured clothes/Alertness of the woodlands’ Barbed wires have arisen between us and a hush descends in everyday living. A pall marks wartime. Regular human interaction is suspended. A time of war is known to us by being aware of the limits and boundaries that cannot be trespassed—among friends, relations, even loved ones. One would perhaps not even cross the limits of one’s own imagination and mind-space. All movement is stymied. The state of war begins to choke you. You refrain from argument and affection alike. Breathlessness begins to congeal as time turns prohibitory. You endure. At this point that poet puts forth a visual image—that of the forest. Is the state of war literally related to the forest? That is to say, are some secret battles rage within the innards of the country? Or is it that the forest is a metaphor for the state of the society as such? And alertness in the forest dons a colour too—olive. Olive is of course a Mediterranean tone and flavour. But it is also universal in its reach. We are all aware of its dark yellowish-green hue. We also know that it is widely used as a camouflage colour for uniforms and equipment in the armed forces. Olive is the colour of combat. But here it is used in a more universal sense—in order to denote the forest and watchfulness associate with the forest at wartime. Thickets are soothing to the eye, but underneath its foliage lurks mystery and danger. And at this point comes the first interrogative statement of the poem: ‘To the sound of bullets, a fusillade, do you hear it?’ From generality, now the poem turns specific and we realize that the poet-speaker is actually directing his words towards some interlocutor. What kind of interlocutor is this? A close friend may be, a lover, a family relation—with whom now things have turned frosty? Now the parity is drawn between the two sides with the sounds of bullets –which defines the wartime atmosphere.
Hereafter the Bitterness
Prasanta Chakravarty_____________________ It is quite agonizing when one fails to find a close enough word or phrase to convey certain words in the English language. In Bangla, once such cluster comprises of words like: স্নিগ্ধতা, শ্রী, লাবণ্য | Grace for labanya or softness for snigdhota actually does not do justice to either language. Sree is even more difficult—at once having a sense of financial well-being and an elegance that has more to do with poise. Likewise, I had a very hard time considering what the actual English equivalence of মাধুর্য is as I was recently rereading one of my favourite poems তারপরে যে তিক্ততা (Hereafter the Bitterness) from Prasun Bandyopadhyay’s later collection of lovely poems: Modhur Tumul/ মধুরতুমুল. The regular reader of Bandyopadhay who has followed him over the years knows how his acute observations of everyday activities, objects, relations and certain enduring institutions are framed within the chalice of a selfhood that is so brittle, confused and vulnerable that it often gives over its many fragments to the eternal flow of time and space. Though he has evolved over the decades, his best poems are playful, naughty, even sassy in bringing to us certain enduring home truths. In this one, he places two contrary attributes—tiktota and maadhurjo side by side and goes on to spin his tale. (Aside: with modhur/maadhurjo I toyed with—lusciousness, charm, softness, sweetness, grace, sonority—and eventually settled on mellowness. I am not happy—for mellow is more mature than sweetness, but then sweetness is too light a word to convey the immersive sense of the original. Sweetness lacks viscosity and affection.) Contraries make the whole, even if ostensibly the attributes may seem divergently directed. The initial move is to suggest that all bitterness must come to an end: for the walnut’s hardness is deceptive. It hides the luscious and soft kernel within. One can hope that all that is modhur shall triumph eventually. A hopeful beginning. The second stanza changes tack as the poet makes a startling resolution that he shall espouse and embrace bitterness as he would do with the mellower, more affectionate conditions of living. The two are subtly woven actually; entwined with each other in a far larger relationship. And here opens space for the second example: unlike the walnut, the colourful sweater is knit with contrary threads and antithetical movement—warp and weft. But the two units are not separate but unified in a mysterious, blended concoction: sweetbitterness. In the final stanza, with the sudden inclusion of the term bodhu/ বঁধু (sweetheart), we realize he has been actually recounting the secret of the universe to his beloved, who is obviously the contrary principle in attachment. The naïve realization of the first stanza—that bitterness would eventually fade, is now no more. Once the poet has confronted the true nature of the cosmos: that contraries clash and may stay as is without reaching any final resolution or stillness, he begins to accept that as life would bring to each one of us the honey (মধু) of care and immersion, so will it churn malignancy and bitterness. But it’s only when both the principles arrive shall we realize what is the nature of the hereafter—of bitterness and mellowness melded. The equilibrium is achieved through the occasional clash of the two principles, not by skirting or striking out either of the two. The poet is perhaps trying to make us appreciate the configurations of various forms of vibrations (স্ফোট) effected through these apparently opposed principles, which are a part of a larger realized truth. Prasun Bandyopadhya has been a traveller who has tried to steer clear of political-cultural harangue (aapkhoraki/ আপখোরাকি) and discursive superfluity (maanbhasha/ মানভাষা) (which he considers to be forms of ‘fatal anaemia’) so that language and selfhood, by means of quitting inertness, can reach a certain ‘non-age time’ and a space (shawsthan/ স্বস্থান). He has often said that a mountain summit can be observed from many sides. Like the many-hued sweetbitter sweater perhaps? *** Hereafter the Bitterness________ so that the bitterness that rises hereafter can also come to an end at last, the hard walnut, in mellowness discards its shell to reveal the kernel *** to regard mellowness when bitter when mellow, not to banish bitterness on a route similar, commingled—shall receive in contrary-pairs whatever lies woven *** like a sweater many-hued still, a single one you wear the one you wore in Kalimpong Is it not a unit in partnership *** should mellowness churn honey no regrets then when bitterness arrives in realization coalesced, my sweetheart whatever originates in contrary-pairs _______________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Stunned Animals, Misunderstood Animals, Beatific Animals: Stray Reflections on ‘Allah Miyan Ka Karkhana’
[HUG reads Allah Miyan Ka Karkhana by Mohsin Khan. Trans. Saeed Ahmad. Noida: Rekhta Publications, 2023] A great humanist work is unpitying and naïve at once. Such writing brings us very close to our unuttered & unutterable tendencies and contingent calculations, and lines those up with the alignment of stars, in order to create a bewildering but eminently possible tapestry of events. History moves through the foibles and grandeur of human beings here, but invariably the central point is to deeply question assumptions about our superiority as all-knowing beings in the world; and to follow how we act and react when confronted with absolute contingency,whenever the ground shifts with no prior notice. Being there turns more significant than being something in such searching texts. One way to address such a predicament is to frame ourselves in close proximity to our neighbours: insects, moles and reptiles, crows and pigeons, domestic animals like dogs and cats, goats and monkeys, donkeys and chicken. We share our habitat with them. But we share more: our craftiness, our vast generosity and love, the sudden mustering and eruption of courage, the apprehending of unrealized terror and our common and monumental stupidity. Each species has its own world, and there are interspecies behavioural ways and tactics, and then the bipeds who call themselves humans interact with those in the ‘other’ world. Those creatures reciprocate or attack, flee or surrender to the bipeds. And of course, bipeds interact with other bipeds. How does relationality work in these overlapping spheres? Great modern writers like Melville and Cormac McCarthy, Hofmannsthal and Kafka, Conrad and Coetzee, Basheer and Bibhutibhushan have encountered their own skin and bones by squarely confronting the creaturely terrain. Francis Bacon and Werner Herzog have done the same in kindred arts. A remarkable detour in Mohsin Khan’s novel Allah Miyan Ka Karkhana (translated into Hindi by Saeed Ahmad) comes right in the middle of it. The episode proves prescient as the narration progresses. The brother sister duo of Gibran and Nusrat are left to play with their hen and chicks, as they try to protect them (vainly) from the predatory eyes of the cats and the crows since their kite has been torn and the kite-flying string burnt to ashes by their mother. At such a moment they spy a blue-white butterfly, flitting about in joyous airiness. The hen and the chicken take turns to jump at the prancing insect, but it eludes them with ease. After flitting about for a while, the butterfly perches itself on a wall. Gibran and Nusrat inch closer to the butterfly and watch it periodically open and shut its magnificent blue-white pair of wings. At an opportune moment, Gibran lurches forth and catches hold of its wings. The butterfly tries to free itself from his clutches, but in vain. Nusrat implores her brother to let go off it but Gibran says that he has now found a new pet for himself. Upon Nusrat’s advice that it isn’t easy to nurture a butterfly, Gibran finally frees it and lets it go. But with a severely impaired pair of wings now, the butterfly can hardly fly. Exhausted and writhing in pain, it decides to again sit—but this time, quite low on the wall. The hen was waiting for exactly such a moment. At one swoop it picks up the butterfly on its beaks and crushes it to death little by little. The chicks too join the unexpected feast with glee. While one of them crushes the head of the butterfly, others enjoy savouring the wings and the antennae. “Am not I A fly like thee?Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance, And drink, and sing,Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.” The short exchange that follows between the two siblings re-translates somewhat like this: Nusrat: Bhaiya, the butterfly must have condemned you with lots of malediction. Now you will see that the Almighty shall have your body plucked in the same manner by hens and chickens when you reach the abode of Allah Miyan. Gibran: Why would I be plucked and maimed? I’d let it go. The butterfly was savoured by the hen and the chickens. It’s they who would suffer. Nusrat: If you had not gotten hold of her legs with so much violence, she would have easily flown higher up. Nusrat was telling the truth, and so, Gibran turns silent. Later he notices that the blueish tinge of the butterfly’s wings is still throbbing warm over his fingertips. The novel is about various kinds of predation and its consequences. The roots of such predation cannot be removed by cosmetic morality or by cruel rationalism. The work is rather an exploration in psychological and relational phenomenology, which eventually brings about the tragic realization that the innocence of certain creatures—be it human children, dogs or butterflies, must pass through the hellfire and the miracles of Allah Miyan’s factory—which is what creaturely existence is all about. The miracles of creation are at once bewildering—for the food cycle ensures that one animal preys on another. The novel begins with a crucial question relating food cycles to creation itself. A motif begins to emerge. When a pet chick (Kallo) is taken away by the predatory local cat, the adolescent protagonist Gibran asks his sister: “What was the need to make cats at all if Allah Miyan had already made chicken?” Nusrat, in equal innocence, replies that she does not know the answer but Allah Miyan must have thought about such things before he created his myriad creatures. All through the novel, this simple and piercing question shall return in many guises. The responses of the adults range from admonishment (Don’t ask such blasphemous questions) to metaphysical unknowability (The Almighty has his own designs and reasons, which are beyond human comprehension). There is a third answer: to read books and dive into jahandari (practical and material knowledge) and not mere deendari (spiritual and religious knowledge) and to understand the nature of things as well as hone imagination.
What Next ?
Brinda Bose Kochi was the flashpoint, charged with rebellion after a violent police crackdown. Since then, Kiss of Love has danced, hugged, walked, sung, shouted, held hands, cheek-pecked, kissed and french-kissed in solidarity protests that have reverberated through many Indian cities in diverse locations, from around or on university campuses to streets outside RSS headquarters and places between. What Next? is the question already fermenting in protestors’ minds, perspicaciously enough. It’s a vital question for us to stop and think about, especially because the protesting must not, cannot stop – even while the fear of a wider movement congealing and de-fusing, through repetitive motions of protest, looms greyly on the horizon. However, such timely and pertinent self-questioning may be poised to be tripped up by what in football parlance is known, I believe, as ‘own goals’, losses conceded by one’s own team members that threaten to woefully undermine, if not willfully derail, the larger – and yes, dare I say it, political – impetus of the current chain of protest ‘events’. Hurdles are being placed along these already-always-treacherous paths of nascent youthful insurgencies not just by rabid ‘rightists’ (which we all expect, and know by now to field) but by the wise and the cautious and the skeptical in the very broad spectrum of ‘the Left’, all of whom one would have hoped were allies. This is the place, of course, where the Left has repeatedly begun to fail itself – and the reason why right-wingers will sit back and rub their hands in glee and wait for the opposition to self-destruct while they consolidate and close ranks in a frightening, calm repressiveness. And the broad Left has been consistently displaying a remarkable ability to self-destruct, splitting political and philosophical hairs ad nauseam and seemingly unperturbed about throwing out baby, bathwater as well as bathtub all in a single swing of the arm, perhaps content for having nuanced the argument sufficiently in the process. How does one alert one’s fellow-team-travellers to the urgent need of the hour: a huge, diverse, potent, sustained and ‘terrible’ coalition against the Right – one that will strike terror, not amusement, within their closed ranks –and lure one’s friends away from the dubious pleasure of being endlessly-argumentative Indians, chasing their own tails while the enemy watches, waiting to pounce? We have recently witnessed a round of this with Ranabir Samaddar’s critiques of the Hokkolorob protests at Jadavpur University, in which he dismisses the student protestors as the “articulate [read elite] class” who will remain irrelevant to the masses in West Bengal, comparing the present unrest unfavourably with student participation in the Naxal movement of the 1960s and 70s. Even as many (articulate) challenges to Samaddar’s left-conservative formulations have just been successful in decimating much of his contentions, a wave of strident evaluations of the Kiss of Love protests is clearly beginning to rumble and heave around our shores – in which the parameters of analysis are perhaps different but the upshot remains the same: this is not revolution, for revolution is something else, revolution is elsewhere – and of course, revolution is forever ‘to come’ even while revolution is desired now, today, this minute. In fact it is intriguing to seethe last kind, those invested in hastening a chiliastic, apocalyptic moment, worry about the spontaneous and morphing nature of movements and contribute toward a certain deferral on the grounds of preserving the purity of a movement.Of course we may well take constructive heed of some of the criticisms leveled against the Kiss of Love events. Leaders and participants of the protests are themselves reflecting and questioning and revising and planning; they are not unthinking players in a series of dumb rituals. But what we must consider now is the moot debate, which is double-pronged.First, that it is not about a divergence between the seriousness of issues of labour/class and the frivolity of the sexual transgression of public kissing, it is about how one may deploy a diverse range of political, social, cultural and aesthetic strategies in the long, arduous battle we have to wage now in the current censorious regime and climate. And second, since a pattern of protesting has begun to be adopted by a growing range of actors and the frequency of protests has increased, we must take into cognizance the scholarly evaluation that such protests are under threat of moving out of the sole purview of social movements and becoming ‘mainstream’, a part of everyday politics – because none of us would want the edge of rebellion to be blunted. We know that protest politics must not become the politics of ritual. But the point remains this: that while we should all put our heads together to devise new and fresh strategies of resisting the onslaught of the moral police, we must not self-flagellate or accuse each other of failing the ‘true’ test of revolutionary politics – because politics and its measures may be as diverse as its triggers, and responses must be variously sharp and immediate, contingent and rapid, passionate and sustained; they can, and perhaps should, twist and turn and morph daily but they must not fade or fall or fail until the task is done. The goalposts must not be allowed to be shifted. Yes, it is time now to ask some tough questions of ourselves. The Facebook page for the Delhi Kiss of Love protest outside RSS headquarters near the Jhandewalan metro station is instructive, both about the aggressive antagonism and condemnation from ‘the Sanghis’ and the continual strategizing, visualizing and implementation of plans by the protest’s organizers and supporters. The page is suffused as much by a sense of embattlement as by uncertainty, excitement, conviction, doubt – which is how it should be. A post-protest update by one of its organisers congratulates those who came to protest and reaffirms solidarity but cautions that the fight has merely begun as the oppressions start closing in. There is there, if I am not reading it incorrectly, a