Keisham Priyokumar and the Economy of Fragmented Narratives
Loiya Leima Oinam [This essay is on changing trends in identity formation in Manipur. I focus on the construction of the ethnic outsider in relation to anti-outsider movements and the Kuki Naga clashes (1992-97) in Manipur and the ways they were narrativised in short stories.] ——————————— Keisham Priyokumar is perhaps the most important author in this regard since his stories capture the challenges in presenting the subjectivities and a coherent narrative of the killings. His work shows that fiction can also provide an important intervention in the linear and sanitised histories that one comes across concerning these events. Here, I have dwelled on one short story by Priyokumar in order to understand the predicament of the writer in fictionally re-presenting real incidents of ethnic violence, and also to reflect on our own interpretive engagement with narratives of such nature. In a way, the difficulty faced by the author while trying to reconstruct this particular story leads us to a scenario where one can reconcile with narrative perspectives or voices that are sutured. *** In the first edition of his collection of short stories Nongdi Tarakkhidare (The Rain that Failed) (1995), Keisham Priyokumar expresses his objective of presenting “inner worlds”, and contends that the seriousness of literary work lies in the ability to depict the changing world.[1] This is not an “experiment”, he says, but the “journey” of the short story in Manipur (ibid). Priyokumar makes clear his commitment to representing people who live at the periphery of progress and modernity and to whom he dedicated his multiple awards winning book, including the Sahitya Akademi Award. As someone who is particularly conscious of the contribution of his stories in the field of arts, there has been a discernible change in his assessment of his own work and role as a writer. A decade later, he maintained that the long standing aim for a “new expression” in his writing is deliberate.[2] Amidst the gradual evolution of the short story form in Manipur in conjunction with the changing social situation, the 1970s marked a new wave in short story writing. Considered as path-breaking, the bi-monthly journal Meirik (Sparks) had its inception during the 1960s. From 1974 onwards it became a collective venture of some of the most renowned writers in Manipur. Conceptualised under the leadership of Nongthongbam Kunjamohan, the first volume of Meirik came out in 1974. The other writers were Shri Biren, Yumlembam Ibomcha, Lamabam Birmani, Keisham Priyokumar, Laitonjam Premchand, among others (Aruna, 2009). It heralded a new and experimental style in form and themes, and the use of dreams and allegories became popular. As subsequent writers began to focus on marginalised voices, the influence of Meirik became even more apparent in the realistic portrayal of society and contemporary issues besetting the state. Although the generation of short story writing to which Priyokumar belonged was in itself a groundbreaking one, for him, a desire for further change, if not disillusionment, set in. It stems from problems regarding publishing and even of readership. He says, “[m]oreover, our literature is not able to do anything for the society today… So, I can write no more short stories. This is what worries me. For now, I can just quietly observe and listen”.[3] Following this rather grim declaration in Lan amasung Mang (War and Dream) (2000), The Rain that Failed has seen its third edition due to its resonance in the current socio-political atmosphere. He admits that he continues to face queries from fellow writers as to whether he will write again or not. The eponymous short story “The Rain that Failed” won him critical acclaim and was adapted in theatre and as a telefilm.[4] From “The Rain” to other stories in the 1995 collection, one sees a collage of fragmented narratives and fractured selves of individuals getting habituated to living with ethnic conflict and everyday violence. Priyokumar’s work has stood out for its ability to sensitively and insightfully portray the lives of the underdogs and those living at the darker end of modernity and development. His changing perspective regarding the efficacy of the function of writers in contemporary times points towards the complex and rather important role of the fiction writer. He therefore brings up the centrality of the short story writer in relation to ‘acts’ of witnessing and questions about translating the real experiences and testimonial utterances into fiction. In the entire process of conceiving a story, the writer then draws upon the lives of the people he comes across for inspiration and presents the experiences as those of the fictional characters. “The Rain”, written in October, 1994, is one of the most poignant stories to have captured the deep-rooted social and personal devastations of the nineties Kuki-Naga clashes. Apart from it, the author has dwelled on the subject in “Ahing Ama” (One Night) and “Mangsatheigi Mang” (Mangsathei’s Dream) from War and Dream (2000). Based on the life of Chongnikim, whose husband died in the killings, “The Rain” is told through a series of flashbacks and reminiscences of events preceding Lungjahao, the husband’s, death. Set against a secluded village in Manipur that is situated near the Barak River (Assam), the story opens with a glimpse of a beguilingly simplistic life led by the couple even while facing acute adversity. In the story, Priyokumar depicts a multi-cultural society that draws its peaceful co-existence from a mutually demarcated distance and civility. This is only ritually crossed while carrying out trade-related transactions. Lungjahao cuts and sells bamboo to the “extremely thin, dark complexioned” Moti, which are then carried across to the other side of the village on a makeshift ferry through the powerful streams of the Barak river. However, when the much anticipated rain never comes and fails to fill the river, Lungjahao goes to another village to fish in order to provide for his family. Chongnikim’s good-humoured parting remark, “Be careful, lest the fish kills you” (“The Rain” 95), proves ominously prophetic when Lungjahao is brought back dead. Chongnikim is based on a real person
Fafamau
Prasanta Chakravarty ওর আর কোনো গতি নেই জানো, কবিতা লেখা ছাড়া—she does not have any recourse, you know, other than writing poetry. This is what rings in my ears. This is how Anindita Mukhopadhyaya, whom I keep meeting as she swings on her Aeolian School Balcony ( বাতাসিয়া স্কুল বারান্দায়ে ), was introduced to me by a friend who himself only knows to swim and perish with poetry. There is a ticket that you have to earn. If you are ‘an explorer of the bliss of writing’, in Roland Barthes’ words. And this ticket can only be earned if you have routinely skipped classes and tutorials in college, dumped all projects and deadlines for good: কলেজ পালিয়ে যারা চুপিচুপি /ঘাসে নেমে এলো,/চলে গেল দূর দূর গঞ্জের হাটে,/তারা পেল /ঝাউফুল আর –/নেপচুনের সমুদ্র মুকুতা “Those who bunked college classes, and noiseless /Came down to the grass /Disappeared at the gunj-haat /They would accrue jhau-flowers/Neptune’s sea-pearls” On this balcony, living is tentative. Buffeted, but not indifferent: living, dying and living again on the swinging school balcony is a shared belief system that one partakes of. No one looks for any clarification here. Because no pointers are given. Living is staying in constant amazement of our existence and being aware of our finitude, even as we are deeply aware of and puzzled by the angelic and diabolic presences all around us: আসলে একটা পোকা সেই কোনকালে/মাথায়ে সেঁধিয়ে গেল–/ গন্ধতেলে ভেসে থাকত দুপুরের সর,/অসুধ খেয়ে সে কী ঘুম/আলোকলতা পিসির,–ইজিচেযারটা হাঁফাত,/বিচ্ছিরি টিকটিকি দুটো কী যে করত/খাটের তলায়!/ সমীরণ ধীরে না বইলে ভীষণ ভয় করত/সবেদন পরশন সইতে না পেরে/ছবিটা ঝনঝন করে পড়ে ভাঙলে/লতুপাগলি আবার সমস্ত পাড়াঘর মাথায় করবে | “Actually an insect, long ago/Embedded itself in the head /Afternoon’s rind stayed afloat in fragrant oil / Popping pills, those everlasting siestas used to begin /Aloklata Pishi’s easy-chair would pant /Those ugly lizards! Devil alone knows what they were up to /Underneath the bed/The buffeting breeze, not gentle, would terrify /Unable to withstand the aching touch /The painting came crashing down, in splinters/Lotu pagli, her wails and shrieks, shall once again wake the whole colony up.” Living is slow. And living is a misunderstanding that is unmistakably erotic. So the poetic recollection of that eroticism is eternity’s flowing back into the present. For the poetic tick that infiltrates our head is a delicious pall of an unrushed creamy rind, maddening in its extended fragrance. Everything around us takes time, wondrous and wondering , every bit rocks sluggishly, the insect’s magical potion taking charge, gestates inside our head—the leaden siesta, aunt’s chair that is easy, the resident lizards, all owe their existence in the nowness of their presence to that bug that had entered our cranial woodwork at the beginning of time. The bug of existing is now in poesy, undulating in living matter, throbbing. Such is the tremulousness of our living, such is its pitch-perfect diurnal cycle, that any minor change in this seasonal flavor— effected by the busy wind in this case, will inevitably lead to shrillness and imbalance. This strident intrusiveness of the wind starts off the dawdling madwoman. Who, with some oracular premonition, alerts us with her clamour of some impending doom. As a contrary force to time’s wind, there is a waft of a breeze, not mellow but full, and it always arrives in the dawn—যোগাযোগহীন এক হাওয়া —an unconnected puff of air. This is how visitations of memory, and connections, rustle us. This rustle will take more concrete shape anon. There is a side to the gunj/shahartoli existence that fills us up with rubies and pearls, this lost existence in utter oblivion–কী গান যেন, কাদের ঘরে?–অনুচ্চ, অনুক্ত…/ সেও বোঝেনা আমরাও চাই ওসব মণিমুক্ত. The basis of an existence, of all poetry, is the unsaid, the tonality of the low-lying, sunken, the nether. This is where the Aeolian balcony appears —within the cocoon of a concerned oblivion. It is a school of learning, a magical parallel cosmos that runs athwart us—বাঁ পাশে বিস্কুট-কলোনী ভরে যাচ্ছে নতুন আলোয়—this is the milky way of the light-awash refuge of a biscuit colony. It is this incandescent biscuit colony on the left side of our existence that leads to that dawn’s railway station where one encounters fafamau: হঠাত জীবনে এলো ফাফামাউ/ ভোররাতে রংচটা কোটে/…স্টেশনমাস্টার বলেন ” এই তো সিগন্যাল/ এ লেড়কি, ট্রেনে উঠে পড়”/তিনি তো জানেন না কিছু –/জীবনে এসেছে ফাফামাউ !/…এইবার ভোর হবে, পাহাড়িয়া ভোর/জোনাকিরা ফিরে গেছে, বাবুনাই ডাকে…/তুমি যদি নাও আসো/জীবনে তো ফাফামাউ এলো/ তাকে ছেড়ে তাকে ছেড়ে/যাবনা কথাও আমি আর | “And lo! fafamau has come into my life/ In his discoloured coat, at dawn/ The station-master says “There goes the signal/Hey girl, get into the train”/ But hardly would he know/ that fafamau has come into my life! /…Soon there will be morn, a hilly morn/ The fireflies have departed, the babunai sings…/Even if you do not arrive/Still fafamau has come into my life/Leaving him, quitting him/ I shall not, shall not go anywhere.” There is a undistinguished railway station where fafamau lives. The station is laden with matt-blue wooden benches, and a bluer waiting room. Here’s where fafamau shall welcome you. And black deodar trees and deodar fruits are afar, that surrounds you as night falls over you like a shroud. The tall darkening blacks, the azure waiting rooms are where our business of love and wonderment never comes to a stop. You will ignore the signal and disregard the station-master. But there is a price to pay for embracing such a life of a private, unhurried non-journey. The deodar darkness of the station turns into a macabre tribunal that exhibits us in our full, creaturely vulnerability. First to ourselves. And then to the world. A forlorn abjectness is our only fate. We genuflect. And an unconditional declaration is the only possible means to square with such stringent, unforgiving judgmental ways: না, না দয়া করে আমার দিকে আলো ফেলবেন না–/চোখে ব্যথা করে খুব–এমনিতেই আমি এরকমই ঘামি–/না, কোনও অসুবিধে হচ্ছে না আমার–লাই দিলে আমি মাথায়/উঠে যাই–আরও ধমকধামকের দরকার আছে আমার–/ বেত্শিক্ষকের
Fake Tree, Real Death
Anil Kumar Yadav [The original Hindi version of this essay appeared in Tehelka yesterday, May 1, 2015. Translation: HUG] —————————————– Among the things with which the future shall take stock of and measure our times, surely facebook will be one.Events used to be enacted twice even in the earlier times. The first time in real terms; and the second, within the inner retreats of human beings. But this occurrence of the second time often gets manifested now in the form of a many-hued poetry of diverse emotions on the pages of facebook. If we refrain from getting judgmental, it can be assumed that the poems that used to die within our selves can now see the light of the day; how long such flickers stay alive would depend on their internal fibre though. After that many-textured incident took place among the crowds, in full glare of the camera, a poem by Krishna Kalpit came into being: एक नकली किसान/एक नकली मुख्यमंत्री के सामने/एक नकली पेड़ से लटककर मर गया/और नकली पुलिस और नकली जनता देखती रही/सब नकली थे/लेकिन मृत्यु असली थी! A fake farmer/in front of a fake chief-minister/died hanging on a fake tree/and fake police and fake crowd kept watching/everything was fake/but death was real! One needs to have some courage in order to pen the very first line of this poem. For this is being penned after a death has just occurred, amidst a countrywide spell of fake outcry on the issue of farmer-suicides. The poet can be easily pulverized.Pilloried.But if you could imagine yourself standing beside that bearded dead-body among the clapping throng at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, then you would know that a whole fake people has not only been manufactured, but this condition has become complicated to such an extent that it is impossible to get back the very idea of people—janta— in the old sense anymore. This throng, having exorcised all its feelings and occupying that hazy zone between truth and falsehood, is ever-ready to be shoved and propelled in any direction. An unsurpassed example of this predicament is the deceased Gajendra Singh himself. He was aware of the ruined realities of the farmers. Having been a regular in quite a few political parties, he had mastered the finer art of attracting the attention of the leaders. Contrary to the farmer sensibility, he had also chosen a kind of work for himself for which he would be rewarded with tipping—बख्शीश, rather than caring to earn an honest workman’s wages—मजदूरी. Literally mounting slices of amusing spectacles, he would tie turbans onto the heads of the political leaders. He would be tipped by those kinds of people who, aided by turbans, swords, crown and butter, would help the political leaders play-act the game of being maharajas for those daily brief moments of harlequinry that caricatures our times. And hope to climb up a few rungs themselves in the wake. Actually he wished to follow the successful mercenary imprints of those leaders who were singing paeans to a pedigreed clan or stoking the self-conceit of a single arrogant man. Pity, in this pursuit, he could only become an attention seeking pawn—in life and in death. In this multi-textured event that testifies to a retrogressive political culture, much more staggering than the death of this mercenary farmer is the death of a party and a man who, people had once thought, wanted to establish the aam admi (common man) at the front and centre of the political arena. The last time, having sacrificed the 47 days government in an ambition to proliferate across the nation, Arvind Kejrwal was slapped by an auto-wallah. Arvind went to his place after paying homage at Rajghat. At that point people suffered from the crazy hope that perhaps our lost ideals and political embodiments could be reinstated by this man. The same Arvind went ahead with his political speech even after the death of a man, as if a hovering insect got scorched in the glamour of his blazing petromax. From the rapidly unscaling layers of his persona this time, it is evident that the lessons of humility, idealism, mercy and piety, his readings from the Hind Swaraj, were all but mere rites of passage to power—well thought out and practiced. Not unlike those against whom he had come out in war in the first place. Now,at some point if he implores the people of Delhi, citing humanism, to transport maimed and dying people from the streets to the hospitals, he will surely be asked in reply whether he is the same man who can stop a meeting in deference to azaan emanating from a mosque but cannot do so when a man dies. More fraudulent is that dissonant and hoarse clamour for the farmers from people who actually make policies for the rich and the influential and who are, every passing day, enclosing the spaces of all resistance. In modes of pure farce, the symbols, allegories and the metaphors of language are all lurching towards the villages. In order to conceal one’s true aims, a whole alternative cosmos has been created, where everything is illusive. And every bit delusory, non-existent. Recall that the poet had also spoken of a fake tree in which the man had hanged himself. *** adminhumanitiesunderground.org
No More Flat Feet
Serge Berna, Jean-Louis Brau, Guy-Ernest Debord & Gil J. Wolman Internationale Lettriste #1 (November 1952) _________________________________________ Sub Mack Sennett director, sub-Max Linder actor, Stavisky of the tears of unwed mothers and the little orphans of Auteuil, you are Chaplin, emotional blackmailer, master-singer of misfortune. The cameraman needed his Delly. It’s only to him that you’ve given your works, and your good works: your charities. Because you’ve identified yourself with the weak and the oppressed, to attack you has been to attack the weak and oppressed — but in the shadow of your rattan cane some could already see the nightstick of a cop. You are “he-who-turns-the-other-cheek” — the other cheek of the buttock — but for us, the young and beautiful, the only answer to suffering is revolution. We don’t buy the “absurd persecutions” that make you out as the victim, you flat-footed Max de Veuzit. In France the Immigration Service calls itself the Advertising Agency. The sort of press conference you gave at Cherbourg could offer no more than a piece of tripe. You have nothing to fear from the success of Limelight. Go to sleep, you fascist insect. Rake in the dough. Make it with high society (we loved it when you crawled on your stomach in front of little Elizabeth). Have a quick death: we promise you a first-class funeral. We pray that your latest film will truly be your last. The fires of the kleig lights have melted the makeup of the so-called brilliant mime — and exposed the sinister and compromised old man. Go home, Mister Chaplin. _________________ Translated by Sophie Rosenberg adminhumanitiesunderground.org