Nerves are at Ease, Nerves are Tense
Prasanta Chakravarty On August 4, 1943, a few days before her death and amidst war, Simone Weil began to describe to her parents, Selma (Mime) and Bernard Weil (Biri), from her little room in London, about the working conditions and daily life of her Cockney cleaning girl. Weil’s last few months in London are all about pubs in working class neighbourhoods, Sundays at Hyde Park, watching people and listening to orators and living in a cheap room (though absolutely satisfactory and suitably furnished). Weil worked in a small office at 19 Hill Street in London doing desk analysis of resistance reports. She calls her world pure Dickens. But unlike Dickens, she refuses to be sentimental with the humble people of England. She wonders why often faithfully and consistently depicting reality rings false? What exactly may lie underneath reality? The cleaning girl ‘takes care of herself with the boys’ and goes to the pub on Sunday mornings. She thinks war as bombs landing on her and “doesn’t have two ideas in her head, or rather not a single one” (Weil, 2024). And then Weil makes a double leap, but her leaps of thought always have some internal logic. First, a general comment about English people around her: “For dessert, people here sometimes eat strained apple compote without mixing anything else in, the way we do” (Weil, 2024). Such mixtures, she tells us, are called “fruit fool” and she finds the name delightful. It is from here that she jumps straight into her famous lines about Shakespearean fools—for the mixtures lie by making the consumers believe they are fruits while Shakespeare’s fools tell unadorned truth, following the visionary tradition. That the latter always pronounce unmitigated truth is not because they are sentimental but because they are tragic. And their tragedy lie (she concentrates on Lear) in the fact which Weil has been telling us all her life in many different ways: “In this world, only people who have fallen to the lowest level of humiliation, far below begging, not only without social consideration, but regarded by all as devoid of that primary human dignity of reason—only those people actually have the possibility of speaking the truth. All the others lie.” (Weil, 2024). They tell us plain and simple truth: “Pure truths, unadulterated, luminous, profound, essential.” She further adds that all her certificates and ‘intelligence” mean little when compared to the utterances of the fools and she would rather prefer their label. Degradation and abasement beget stigma. Those who lack material means and rational space to put their case forth just do not matter. This is not just a fact of medieval Europe but has actually taken new forms in modern living. Life is still dictated by structural subjugation which is invisible, extreme material scarcity, poor sanitation, and constant vulnerability to workplace debasement, community cancelling as well as to natural calamities like flood and earthquakes, disease and pandemic. And what about the widows, orphans, the elderly and the disabled in the small towns, kasbahs and villages of India? Even in the suburbs. Charity is hardly forthcoming; humiliation is. Everything is collateral damage. These are the people completely stripped of their social status. She calls such a state affliction. Such people lose all illusions—they can clearly see the false masks that make the social possible. Besides, the outcasts do not have to protect their social image. In the subcontinental tradition, such fools have certain variants—simpletons who blurt out unpleasant or unadorned truth, the wise renouncer who do not care about polite norms but can see the deeper truths of life, the vidhushaka (witty jester) who, alongside comic relief, questions power, moral hypocrisy or human flaws, and so on. But Weil is referring to a class of people who have been ousted by society and who have therefore been able to regain natural ability or power to say things that go beyond the pail of dignified or polite utterances. It is not acquired wisdom or thoughtfulness or jest. It is as if some kind of shining truth flashes in front of their eyes. We may have encountered one or two people of this kind in our lives. They may have already been nurturing a certain kind of unadorned seriousness and plain directness about them. That streak exacerbates owing to the tense political climate of our times and by the personal cost that such partisan times always extracts from individuals caught in the turmoil. Bad things happen because bad things happen. It is the same for good things. Nevertheless, the unsavoury nature of tumult and commotion elicits various kinds of reactions from people—stoic, retributive, or resignation perhaps? Some people are galvanized by adversity—they turn around and get back to life with fresh energy. All kinds of permutations emerge. I have known a young woman in Rohtak, through a celebrated Hindi poet friend, who has worked all her life tirelessly for local progressive causes and particularly in attending to women’s plight in that part of the semi-urban world. Deliberations and reason do not function in that universe in the way we usually expect them to do. It is a secretive world. The chain of social command is in place. Shrouded and lethal in a petrified traditional morass. The language of rights and equality are completely alien. Each step of progress is often balanced by counter-regressive inertia. Tenacity is the key, and yet failure is almost inevitable, for those who wish to bring about any change to the people around themselves. The repeated ordeals that the woman had to undergo cannot be adorned with adjectives. From her own family members and from other community people—physical, financial and psychological. She is herself a fighter, within and without; and a self-reflective person—no way easily triggered by whatever happened to her or others in her cohort. But the ordeals have made her a different being—chiselled with debasement and yet full of shining incandescence, materially completely present in every act that she does and yet almost other-worldly in her comportment. You
The Child is Given Over to a Stepmother
Prasanta Chakravarty Unappeasable and plain. That is the reason Simone Weil is able to unburden and pull us deeper into relentless entanglements and by doing so, sets us free. “The woman who wishes for a child white as snow and red as blood, gets it, but she dies and the child is given over to the stepmother” (Weil, 1947/1952). There are few statements that can match the starkness of the utterance. Weil considers chance in utter bareness. Chance makes every hope for security turn into a numbing stupor, and hence a joy forever, playing out its momentary and repeated whim in the lives of stranded creatures. The woman had craved for a perfect child, which is a remarkably hyperbolic aspiration in itself, biologically speaking. A speck of hubris. And yet a turn of fortuitousness conspires to bequeath her exactly what she had wished for: a white and ruddy child. But what human agent is she to desire such a gift of grace? But she does, and just like that, her wish is fulfilled. Happenstance. And at that moment, perhaps during childbirth or soon after, the woman dies. She was otherwise perfectly healthy. Some error or medical complication? Or perhaps something completely disconnected to the event of childbirth. Maybe a stray fever or a developing condition turning rogue? Chance’s scythe is unerring. She does not live to savour motherhood. The newborn too, is now reared by another woman, the stepmother—an event over which the little one has no will of its own. The child’s life takes a completely different dimension and trajectory. Is the new home a refuge and a safe-custody? Will the new born be loved, or be indifferently treated as a step-child? At the least the kid’s growing up will be different. And the stepmother, who had no plans perhaps for a child at this time, or conversely, had prayed intensely to have a child of her own—now will come to rear the child. She is given the child—someone somewhere decides to give the child to her. The child is given over to her. Their dual lot. Not by any physical agent—not by the nurse in the hospital or the official at the orphanage, but by chance. Do we still remember the second wave of pandemic in India? Thousands of corpses were detected floating in rivers in some parts of India and many more burnt on the banks. Dozens of bodies were being burnt in New Delhi too, on roadsides, since the crematoria were full. Round the clock. Veer Singh used to drive me occasionally from Noida–a suburbia of Delhi, to my university. One morning, at around 4 am, the door-bell rang. I opened the door and found Veer, with his 10-year-old daughter’s dead-body over his shoulder, coughing violently: “Saab, is nanhi sharir ko jalaane ka jagah nahi mil raha hai. Kal bete ko jalaane mein sab paise kharch ho gaye. Aaj ye. Kuch paise de do saab. Kuch bhi.” (Sir, I am unable to find a place to burn this innocent body. Yesterday I spent all my money to burn my teenage son. Today, this. Please help me with some money Sir. Any help will do”). I could do scant little. For a month Veer was not to be seen. And then he returned one Sunday and softly enquired whether I needed his services anymore. For the next three or four months he used to come sporadically: duty bound, but completely silent, with a vacant look about him. Then he disappeared again, never to be seen in the area. My life has moved on. “The beings I love are creatures. They were born to chance. My meeting with them was also by chance. They will die. What they think, do and say is limited and is a mixture of good and evil. I have to know this with all my soul and not love them the less” (Weil, 1947/1952). She doesn’t love less. In fact, Weil’s love is infinite since all our meetings take place by chance. Infinite love for finite things in that they are limited and finite. That we shall die makes the density of life that much more wondrous and acute. A pattern of moment-making flows underneath our chance encounters with each other. The piercing odour of intimate distance is to be savoured with the entirety of one’s being. We cling to each other, so that the infinite is made momentary. For caesura is inevitable. Caesura makes chance beautifully stark. This truth she has tried to know all her life, with a singular immersion and a geometric precision. So, she waits, preparing herself and her readers, to receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate our beings. Fragility projects the soul beyond time, into something enigmatic that must remain shrouded. Until grace arrives. After actor Sushant Singh’s death in June 2020, his friend and actor Rhea Chakraborty became a lightning rod for relentless trolling, threats and media trials. Her torment was not restricted to social media. A case for abetment to suicide, mental torture and financial fraud was registered. It was a free fall. Under immense public pressure, all major governmental investigative agencies were mobilized. Eventually, she and her brother had to face jail time for a month under some flimsy pretext. A lookout circular was promulgated against the Chakraborty family. Bit by little bit, the family was completely broken and devastated. They tried to show nobility, but under such scrutiny, there was no possibility of maintaining sanity. Everyone cheered on. She and her family were fodder for a primordial death dance of creatures we call humans. The rest remained silent. As other creatures know, humans are hardly like other creatures; they are smooth operators: crafty, pitiless and craven. Meanwhile, Rhea had to face travel restrictions and her bank account was frozen. Most importantly, her career as an actor was finished forever, though she has tried some comebacks since, not doing very well. Chance carries mischance along with it. She has
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