A Poet’s Passage
Arindam Chakrabarti ————————————- Time does not pass; we pass. So writes Bhartrahari. “kaalonayaatah, vayamevayaataah”. Utpal Kumar Basu, having lived for the last decade or so in an entirely undeserved public oblivion (though his last book of poems “Piya Man Bhabe” got the Sahitya Akademi award last year), passed away a few weeks back. I came to know him quite accidentally when I found an elderly gentleman, studiedly unkempt in attire, but with a pair of sleepy but large and scintillating eyes, attending my lectures on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, week after week—as if he needed to take a test on that text—at the Kolkata (Patuli) Center for Study of the Social Sciences. That was about eight years ago. He never introduced himself to me, but I came to know that he was Utpal Kumar Basu, a poet’s poet who was awarded the Ananda Puraskar. When I started reading his work systematically, I marveled at how incomparable his depth, subtlety and precision were in relation to all the celebrated poets in Bangla of our times. And yet, this extra-ordinary mind moved about and sat in obscure corners of literary, philosophical or social science seminars, in ill-washed kurta-pajama and a pair of boots, as if he was a retired banker’s clerk getting interested in literature, philosophy and anthropology late in his life. A well-traveled geologist who read amazingly widely, Utpal Kumar had an insatiable appetite for knowledge which was never satisfied by information. Sitting in his own flat one evening in 2009, I had debated the complex relationship between scientific and historical knowledge and poetry. I tried to provoke him by idolizing Binoy Mazumdar and making the kind of divine insanity that Socrates traces poetry to (for example in the Platonic dialogue called “Ion”) a necessary condition for good poetry. He laughed in disagreement and claimed modestly that he had never been insane, though he had often been angry and lustful. His progressive politics was never on display. Even in bitter disagreement, he maintained a good-humoured smile and a warm friendliness which have become vanishingly rare among intellectuals and prize-winning poets in India. For all his amicability, Utpal Kumar’s political irony never missed its target: “There is very little time, now let us mingle in the crowd of all those knowers of politics/ who get their food from shooting their guns on the shoulders of starving peasants. (The untranslatable original here goes “chaashider maathaay kanthaal bhenge”)”. Autobiography and cosmopolitanism, relentless protest against economic inequality and a lyrical aloneness, uncanny Jibanananda-like sensitivity to touch and smell of every body-hair, every “smell of sunlight on the kite’s wing”, every drop of sweat of corporeal animal existence combined to stamp each of Basu’s poem’s with an unrepeatable perfection. Chaitrye Rochito Kobita, Lochondas Karigar, Khando baichitryer Din,Dhusar Atagach, Salma Jorir Kaaj, Night School, Tusu Amar Chintamoni: just some of the titles of his books make a unique catalogue of phrases that remake the Bengali language, quietly but radically by the sheer juxtaposition of the classical and the contemporary, the rural and the urban, the plain and the ornate, the exotic and the quotidian. Some of his imagery defies all literary critical taxonomy: “ And then, in the grass-forest are left behind your personal sandals of Spring time/ The sky today is as real as the blue shirt and shorts of the children of gods/ A lonesome peacock is roaming in that first floor room/ Sajal used to stay in that room/Sajal’s wife and daughter used to stay…. Getting down to the furrow of the promiseless river two men are looking for copper and mica// You lost your private sandals of Spring time in Badampahar/ I lost my personal writing style in Badampahar//” He kept losing his personal style, just so that he can adopt a different style every now and then. Such quiet but strong refusal to imitate was Utpal-dA’s hallmark, that he would cautiously avoid imitating himself, let alone imitate Rabindranath, or Jibanananda or Shakti Chattopadhyay. His gaze was fixed on some god of small truths. If dead, as he is now, he would love to come back but imaginatively he was always interested in retrieving his own embryonic innocence, in imagining what it is like never to have been born, but just conceived: “When I was in the womb, as a fetus, about to be born, there was no untruth. Stray pieces of belief were there, some muck, and there was a walking trail in the forest. After the cremation fire goes out, I keep flying back into the scorched out pond, Into the ashen wood, and back in the the cracks on the path” A couple of years back he published a short poem in the magazine Anushtup. Eshechhe Bedonaa. Those days I happened to be struggling with some physical pain and also was lecturing in my classes on Buddhist and Wittgensteinian philosophies of pain. The poem was so personal and so universal in its unsharable acuteness of suffering of an aching ageing body that I wondered how it could even be written in Bengali or any language at all. It is clearly about chronic pain which no words can ever express. Yet the personification of recurrent pain and the tragic humour about such unbearable pain made it a delight to read. The more it hurt the more it charmed. I tried to translate it and failed. Well, now that the eternally inquisitive Utpal-daa is personally busy interviewing death, Nachiketa –style, I offer my failure as his translator as a tribute to his memory. Agony Arrived Pain has come. As if on a well-planned pilgrimage at his own expense. He will go to Varanasi, go to Mecca, and in between, Now and then, Will also visit me. How much has your right hand healed? Hope you have not missed Taking proper diet regularly, though it will be fine If some such trifling memories lapse, In the midst of all those goings away and comings back Of Agony. For, his
Nirmala Boudi And The Bureaucracy
Amiya Sen Translated by Bhaswati Ghosh ——————————————————— Nirman Bhavan–the foundation for which had been laid by the late Lal Bahadur Shastri–is now an imposing structure. As the older Shastri Bhavan became too cramped for space, many such buildings –each associated with a ministry –added to Delhi’s splendour. I had some work with the director of Nirman Bhavan. Though not a government employee, I have to to rub shoulders with senior government officers from time to time for the sake of my business. The sight of Nirmala boudi at the reception on the first floor shocked me. With a vigorous gesticulation of her hands, she argued with the reception officer in chaste Hindi. “Listen now. You can’t stop me from coming here, whether I make ten visits or twenty. This office is for the public after all. We’ll come whenever we need to.” The reception officer tried to reason with her with a resigned look. “I’m not stopping you from coming here, Madam. All I’m saying is if you call us before coming, it will save you unnecessary trouble.” “Necessary or unnecessary, that’s for me to decide. Now, will you please issue me a pass?” Even as she said those words, Nirmala boudi almost grabbed the huge register opened before the reception officer, Mr. Bhandari. Turning the register towards her, she entered details like name: Mrs. Nirmala Roy, purpose of visit: allotment of house etc. Mr. Bhandari had no option but to prepare a gate pass and hand it to the woman standing in front of him. I needed a gate pass, too, but my destination was different from Nirmala boudi’s. I had to meet the director of the state office, whereas Nirmala boudi wanted to meet the additional director. I watched the scene quietly, standing right behind boudi. As she turned back with the gate pass, I blurted, “What brings you here –haven’t you got your quarter yet?” Clutching a huge file close to her chest, Nirmala boudi said with a busy look reflecting off her glasses, “Come outside –I’ll tell you.” I didn’t want to get late, but Nirmla boudi could be hard to ignore. At one time, we were both residents of the same village in Bangladesh’s Bakharganj district. Nirmala boudi was the eldest daughter-in-law of the Roy family, and I, the youngest son of Hemanta Gupta of the Gupta family. Our houses were adjacent to each other –a bamboo bridge over on a small canal served as a shortcut to go from our house to theirs. This is a unique feature of Bakharganj or Barisal district, filled as it is with canals and streams. Villages, all surrounded by water, appear like islands, complete in themselves. At the time of her marriage, Nirmala boudi was fourteen and I, a ten-year-old, studying in class five in the village school. As per village customs, Atin da, Nirmala boudi’s husband, was my brother. Based on his grandmother’s wishes, Atin da was married off to Nirmala boudi as soon as he earned his graduation degree at twenty-two. Being next-door neighbours, it didn’t take the two of us too long to get acquainted with each other. The Roy family had big gardens flanking both sides of their house. I would gather whatever fruits were in season –mangoes, Java plums, berries, guavas, elephant apples, custard apples, velvet apples, grapefruit, jujubes, cranberries –and run to the Roy household. They were a joint family and the house would always be full of people. Luckily, the family elders and servants lived on the ground floor. The upper floor was almost entirely reserved for the family’s young brigade –married or not. With a whole stash of ripe and unripe fruits, I would stealthily climb up the staircase to the first floor and sneak into the southern room, allotted to Atin da after his marriage. The moment she saw me, Nirmala boudi’s eyes would gleam with delight through her veil. As I was friends with the boys of the Roy family who were closer to my age, it was easy to get introduced to Nirmala boudi. She happened to be the youngest — the same age as us –bride in the entire neighbourhood. We always kept a share of whatever we collected for Nirmala boudi. All this had to be clandestine, though, given how conservative the Roys were. A daughter-in-law was almost like a prisoner in that house, denied any contact with outside air or light. Naturally, the young Nirmala boudi took to our group. On summer afternoons, when the older folks enjoyed their siesta or were busy doing something else, we would drag Nirmala boudi to the terrace balcony and reveal our loot. Out came from our pockets treats like raw mangoes, berries, grapefruit, green chillies, a knife, salt and the like. Some of us would even bring freshly cut banana leaves to use as plates. Five or six of us sat circling Nirmala boudi. She would peel the fruits, make a delicious mix with the available ingredients and pile them on the leaf plates. Our feasting would ensue. These sessions continued even as we grew older. The menu had changed by then, though. On sleepy afternoons, escaping the elders’ glances, we would have tea parties inside the closed doors of the Roys’ kitchen, located outside the boundaries of the house. Although some of the adults drank tea, the beverage was strictly prohibited for children. Nirmala boudi made us not only this forbidden drink; she made for us something that was even more strictly off-limits –omelettes made from hen’s eggs, which she served us on banana leaf plates. She wouldn’t have it herself, though. Nirmala boudi had another talent –she was an accomplished card player. Some of the other boudis played cards, too, but their scope would be limited to the game of Twenty Nine. Nirmala boudi played Bridge with us. She came from a family where sports and arts and culture were highly valued. It’s difficult to imagine that young bride of more than forty
Singing The Boatman: Hemango Biswas and the ‘Bahirana’ in Folk Music
Rongili Biswas As part of the legendary folk singer Hemango Biswas’ birth centenary celebration,the first volume of his collected works came out which contained among others, his writings on folk music. As one of the editors of that volume (Hemango Biswas Rachanasangraha, vol 1, Pranab Biswas and Rongili Biswas ed., Deys Publishing, Kolkata, 2012), I had to read his theories and critique on folk music closely. His theorization is complex, multi-layered and geared towards achieving a purity in folk singing. He firmly believed that folk singing is non-codified. Its sensibility is defined by the specificities of physical ambience, language, tune, rhythm of labour, styles of articulation as well as geographical, historical and cultural contexts of a particular region. In that sense, it cannot have a school or gharana as found in the classical musical tradition. If it has something that is construed and shaped by the parameters I just mentioned that would better be termed as bahirana, a mode of learning that draws upon the traditions of a particular region, and is firmly entrenched in the cultural specificities of the same. The compulsions of market economy constitute too strong a force working against the traditional modes of such pure performances. Artistes often present corrupt versions of traditional songs with accompaniments that are far removed from the purpose of preserving them. Urban and sometimes even rural audiences, whose perception has been moulded by the corrupt versions, do not desire anything better than those versions. Even serious artists often succumb to such demands. Hemango Biswas was a strong and often a lonely critic of such distortions in folk singing. As a student of his classes on folk singing and as his daughter and close associate, editing the volume made me share his anxieties, anxieties that get deepened in today’s context. One way of responding to that, I thought, would be to build up a musical archive where his own recordings, those of the artistes he thought as genuine representatives of the original styles and the songs collected by him sung in his preferred styles could be preserved. This is urgently required to minimize the loss that his own collection in the house has already undergone. The archive contains several notebooks containing the lyrics of songs collected by Biswas from various Indian provinces. These range over bhatiali, bhaoaia, kamrupi, bongeet, sari, jari, jhaore, ghumor, murshidi, jhumur, gambhira, bhadu, tusu, kajri, choiti, dhamail, lullaby, hori, bihu, etc. Within this repertoire, only a chosen few have been recorded in Biswas’ own voice (in the album Surma nadir gangchil), which gives a fundamental idea about the extremely nuanced and ornate style of bhatiali and dehatatwa he represented. Bhatiali is essentially the song of the boatman on the river. Bhatiali relates to the slow downstream movement of the boat while sari relates to the vigorous upstream journey. Since rivers constitute an integral part of the terrain of the two Bengals (West Bengal and Bangladesh) these songs are often considered to be one of the principal representative forms of folk songs from Bengal. Solitude in a way constitutes the core of bhatiali. On the one hand, the sound of the water brings in a lilting unevenness in the notational structure that calls for a specific vocal timbre for rendering it properly. On the other, bare nature and the very expanse of the river facing the boatman brings out an existential anguish. And bhatiali often tends to merge with dehatattwa– a genre of music that dwells on the philosophy of the body. In these, the river is typically used as a metaphor for life. Where to get anchored and how to attain transcendence (siddhi) avoiding the enticements of life (presented through the motifs of lights, markets, colours) are questions asked perennially. ‘Dehotori dilam chhario’ is a famous song of this genre. Here is a typical Hemango Biswas style. “ I unfasten the boat of my body in your name, o guru. If I drown, your name will be tarnished. Traders trade goods in the market Colourful lights dazzle the shop windows. They rob people in full glare On the principal street, Taking your name. I unfasten the boat of my body in your name, o guru. I am puzzled to see the market. Perhaps I am luckless, Fallen into trouble. I left Narayanganj to walk The path of Madanganj. Taking your name. I unfasten the boat of my body in your name, o guru. If you go to Madanganj The alligator of desire will catch you. Pass through the town of Siddhi first In order to reach the perennial abode. Taking your name. I unfasten the boat of my body in your name, o guru. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmULE_uK1qY This is a form of bhatiali that is extremely ornate in nature. Its classical, rambling, nuanced style of rendition is rare, nearly extinct nowadays. The names of the places act as metaphors, as is the norm for this mystical mode of communication. Madanganj, Narayanganj, Siddhirganj exist as place names and they also stand for symbols of desire, abstinence and transcendence. I am tempted to quote an artiste who hails from the same region as Hemango Biswas – Sylhet in Bangladesh – and is considered to be the master of a certain style. His rendition follows a mild beat and a different scansion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivCgAyTW73k I cry my heart out By this worldly river. O my mind, who will help you cross over. I wasted my time when times were good, I have come to the river at the bad hour Boatman, I do not know your name Who would I call? The boat is there, but not the boatman There is not a soul on the banks Boatman, I do not know your name Who would I call? Idam the lesser mortal says ‘ Who knows what awaits me’ Sitting at the dargah of Hazrat Shah Jalal Idam Shah cries. O my mind, who will help you cross over. This song was used in Rittwik Ghatak’s film ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ at
Kachchh. Khambhi. Kavya. : Six Poems For My Village of Six Memorial Stones
Amrit Gangar _________________ Chhasara (chha – six, sarā – memorial stones, also called khāmbhi or pāliya in Kachchh and Kāthiawād; though sarā or saro is a Kachchhi word) is a village of my childhood memories and therefore it exists. It exists within me and in the mānas–garbha (mind-womb) of both time and space. Two smaller villages flanked it, divided by the same river named Bhookhi (Hungry) that somehow turned its course. Perhaps, she was in search of water – epār Bhookhi, opār Bhookhi! She remained dry perennially, hungry for water, and occasionally expressed her terrible fury if it rained heavily and a remote dam somewhere on Kachchh’s deserty topography impregnated her, flooding, fanatically flooding. Much towards inside her shore, she inhabited an open well with a cement-concrete flat elevated surface that surprisingly remained full of deep waters, and would generously bathe many men. Young boys would use it as a swimming pool. Along her coast, the Bhookhi had yet another much deeper and bigger well with a havādo (a pucca reservoir) outside it, which would serve and sooth the thirsty cattle under the burning sun, awaiting eagerly the godhuli bela (dusk time). A little away from her shore, inside the bāri wall (the pucca-built tall wall with a window projecting towards Bhookhi and a hill that was abode of a pir’s shrine) was another well, with pulleys called, Sākariyo Kuvo (a well with waters as sweet as sugar) that would quench the villagers’ thirst, help them cook their daily hot food and make tea. Of the two villages across Bhookhi nadi, one had the privilege of having the service of a mochi (cobbler) that my village didn’t have, while the other had a self-taught medical doctor, who, in his khādi clothes, would visit my village riding his handsome horse. Their visits were significantly essential. I have a feeling that to be a good cobbler or a doctor, you need to have strong poetic intuition. Well, my village had a flour mill that both villages on the banks of Bhookhi didn’t have. Run on a machine fuelled by diesel oil, the mill would create a harsh sound, chhuk chhuk chhuk—like a locomotive engine, but its ingenuous owner had placed a small empty tin box on its exhaust vertical pipe which would turn the chhuk chhuk into a euphonic kuhu kuhu of koyaliyā, the cuckoo. And the sound would keep both the villages across Bhookhi informed about the flour mill’s working existence. Crossing the Bhookhi, the mochi would walk a-lame (he had polio) two miles to my village every week or fortnight as many torn shoes would be waiting for him. The doctor would also be on call – on horse, with his leather box of allopathic medicines. It’s the image of shoes that pushes me into a memory, memory of death, a forced death and the well on the river Bhookhi! On that early dawn, dogs had started sounding differently; the owl on an old peepal tree had lowered his mysterious eyelashes, small insects had started emerging from sandy streets. Something had gone devastatingly wrong somewhere. An early bather on the Bhookhi well had seen a pair of solitary shoes, a pair of spectacles, a stick and a Gandhi cap on its surface. Anxious, as he looked into the well, he saw a human body floating. Shocked, he shouted “Magan Patel!” while the misty-humid Bhookhi remained non-indifferent and self-absorbed. Soon, the news spread across the stunned village while the day had barely broken. Many rushed towards the well. The man’s pregnant wife was wailing and their four children added to the heart wrenching cries. He was a half-aged step son of a village chief (Patel), whom I, with my childhood-eyes, would often spy walking alone swiftly, talking to himself most of the time. He was an intelligent man but deeply perturbed somewhere within–that it is what I had felt. It had taken a massive effort to pull out his unusually swollen body from the well. At the time it was beyond me to comprehend the meaning of death but the image of the swollen body is still heavily stuck on my memory-scape. The Bhookhi well, someone said, had taken as many as seven lives as its toll! Years after, I stand in front of the six weather-worn sandstone sarā, having no script on their bodies to decipher, except poke-marks and unheard sighs of the dead: five Rajput brothers and their sister (and her little baby) were all killed in a little war for a fiefdom. Four centuries have gone by since but oral tales circulate around, in whispers or is it whoosh! The sister’s husband was also killed some furlongs away and his memorial stone (Hekalsaro) stands on a farm enveloped in an eternal mirage (Saro 1, 2). Nobody knows the names of these souls though their periodicity is an acceptable conjecture. But the fact of the matter is that these six (plus one) tall memorial stones are still there. That bit cannot be a fabricated. Chhasarā, the village of six memorial stones has gone on to desolate itself gradually. More and more families have left it for cities in search of livelihood. Only some old widows still inhabited it. They all wore maroon, black, white or even blue clothes– as a mark of their widowhood. All battling loneliness while their sons live afar. They would sustain their meagre existence. One such widow, stooping and frail in frame, suffered from terribly chronic asthma. In winters, it would be unbearable for her and she would breathe laboriously and loudly; so loudly that the entire village would helplessly witness her misery through its organs of hearing (Saro 3). Summer noons, with blazing winds, would be lazy and laidback; often the potter’s donkey would walk through the streets alone in a futile search of a mate and install itself naked (physical nakedness as we define it) in the empty village square. Its search punctuated by a mourning dove in the chabutrā, the