In a Future April: An Excerpt
Paramita Ghosh Excerpt from: In a Future April (a novel) © Radical Notes radicalnotes@radicalnotes.com Aakar Books, 2017 ISBN 978-93-5002-510-9 *** [In a Future April is a novel about revolutions in this age— but being of this age, it is truly a “monstrous abbreviation” of all times, even of those revolutionary periods which were inaugurated exactly a century ago…If this is a novel about precariats and cognitarians as vanguards, it is also about vanguards as precariats and cognitarians. But was this not true for all revolutions? In a Future April narrates and operates the stories of revolutions to abbreviate them into the pregnant dialectic of hope and dismay.] ~from the Foreword (Pratyush Chandra) *** The Night of the Hound SIXTEEN MEN AND women were picked up all over The City that night and sent to the police station of Hardy Screw. Of the sixteen, not one had any lead to Woegore but as one officer, told Screw, they could not go around picking people up from their beds and then tell them they were innocent. They must have been upto something otherwise why would they have attracted a brother officer’s attention—pigs always smell! The best thing to do was to ask them the officer suggested. People generally think they are to blame for something or the other and if they think you are asking them nicely, they may out of concern for their health, not waste their time. Screw, smarting under the fact, that the idea had not come out of his head, took his time to scratch his chin with the tip of his pen, to give the impression that he had better ideas to mull. He dispatched his junior to get him a file from his room upstairs and threw the man shivering before him in the basement the first question. The other fifteen were not packed off into a cell, they were made to watch the proceedings and draw whatever lessons they could from it. “What do you think you are here for?” “Last week, I wished my wife was dead…But every once in a while I’m sure she wishes me dead too.” “And this week you were going to act on it! And for that you hired a man called Woegore?” “Honest sir, I didn’t.” “What else? What else? Talk you crook, otherwise…” Bendy Lulu, the officer sent out for the file had come in and seeing the investigation in progress, was waiting for permission to whisper in his ears. The expression on his face told Screw he was onto something. Screw nevertheless gave him a withering look to tell him he resented the interruption—let the boy stew, let him realise there were repercussions of speaking out of turn. After a few minutes, he called him over, to ask him what he had learnt. Lulu meticulously took out a sheaf of papers and dropped some in nervousness, and then found the right one to prompt his narration, but Screw did not soften. He gave the impression that he had followed the argument but was not in agreement with it. These boys, he thought, looking at the head now busy in clipping back the documents, think they are so clever, when what they really do is present ideas with an air of discovery, one had to be very careful around them so as not to be caught acting and reacting to their dual needs of being embraced by you, to begin with, and then their impatience to pull you down! Look, how he had humiliated him a few minutes back—thank god for small mercies that there had been few witnesses. But the information Lulu had extracted from the file was solid, he had to admit, and it had changed everything—it seemed he was no longer presiding over a routine enquiry over a robbery but a terror investigation! The man before him may not be Woegore or his relative but he was a Partisan, and he, Hardy Screw who had waited all his life to meet one, was going to catch one, even if they had nothing to do with the case! He looked up from the file at the man cowering before him with the love that butchers reserve for the day’s first goat and decided to tell him as plainly as possible the facts of his life which it would do him good not to deny. He could, of course, deny it if he wished, but it would not sweeten his stay. “The walls of your house are red! The flower pots as well! And the red hibiscus is the only flower you grow—now that we have you rascal, you’re going to tell me everything about the Partisans, otherwise I will tell you what you read, how you live, who you meet and that I’m the only one you are likely to keep meeting for the next 20 years as I’m going to keep you here for a very long time!” With every accusation, the man grew more despondent, and then started to mewl. Screw was surprised—his first encounter with a Partisan and he had made him cry! He did wish the man wouldn’t take it so hard—they hadn’t hit him anywhere yet! “There, there!” he said in his best rallying tone: “We have a very nice garden in the jail and it’s just lost its gardener, but no hibiscuses mind you.” The room erupted in laughter and at least ten men belched out sounds in imitation of low-paid stage villains. That there were so many officers in the room watching him conduct the investigation he had not realised, but Screw knew this was nothing new. Professional envy and camaraderie did exist side by side and he had been at the receiving end of both to know these were temporary knocks—take it
The Constellation of Singularity
Adrita Mukherjee, Mantra Mukim and Rohan Kamble [Review of The Deed of Words by Pothik Ghosh, New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2017. The authors are reading for the M.Phil in the Department of English, University of Delhi.] *** For any new form of art, which in its epoch might be censured as being too ‘political’, in its trajectory from the streets, where it was born, to the hallowed grounds of academia is characterized by hostility and diffidence. The tenuous bond that had been forged between art and politics in these incipient stages does strengthen over time and yet remains a conundrum that continues to attract further rigorous analyses and study. Do art and politics constitute non-overlapping magisteria or are they inextricably entangled with each other? What are the dynamics that drive the sustenance of the politico-aesthetic interface, assuming that there is one? Pothik Ghosh’s The Deed of Words is a welcome addition to this area of study. Ghosh swerves away from the conventional path of tracing the political affiliations of authors in their literary oeuvres. Instead he looks at a literary work as a reified entity which by its sheer existence and peculiar aesthetic arrangements necessitates ramifications which are political. Its ‘being’ invariably inflects the domain of what we construe as the ‘political.’ Ghosh’s contention that Akhtaruzzaman Elias in his novel Chilekotar Sepai foregrounds the universality of the struggles in the meditational specificity that they posit is a significant argument in the book. The description of the struggle manages to transcend the boundaries of identitarianism and representation that the politics of capitalism follows. This leads us directly into a caveat: the insurrectionary potential of the identitarian struggles, one has to admit, is derived precisely from the adhesive forces which forge the identity. If the moment of insurrection, the culmination point of localized insurgent forces, results in a new subjectivity emerging which is resistant to ‘externalized determination’ doesn’t it invariably lead to the subsumption of infinitely different space-time configurations under the rubric of the counter-totalization; the force of singularity? If the ‘savage mind’ is a de-identitarianising force it simultaneously dissipates the revolutionary potential that one can find in the underbelly of struggles driven by a mixtures of identity and principles. The non-identity that emerges as a result of the insurrectionary moment will inevitably have to confront the question of newer modes of identification and representation. This yet unresolved question Ghosh may wish to confront more squarely. This question has forever vexed the serious independent left positions but given the current geo-political climate, takes much more ardency. The crisis of capital (capital itself being a moving contradiction) is that it wants to eliminate singularity, the book argues. This is a significant thrust in the book. At this moment, even as there is a will to eliminate the same, singularity is constitutive of capital. It does not lie outside of capital but is significant as a formalization: it can be a moment of launching the critique of capital. But how? One can relate this insight with the insurrectionary politics that the first essay of the book locates in Elias’ work. The moment of insurgency is the moment of break or rupture: an event that harbours the potential to transform the reader-writer relationship, which is that of capital. The expression of this break is one that collates both spontaneity and form—something that can also be seen in Walter Benjamin’s conceptualization of the allegorical. Elias’ description of Tamijer Baap chasing the ashen clouds away in Khowabnama is precisely this moment of a break. That is to say, there is a desire to experience “that past when it was present as its own emerging.” Herein lies the politics of the break, of insurrection. Regarding the moment of rupture and the consequent dream of the implosion of capital: this transformation will occur only by stretching the finite, historically defined moment to the monstrous beyond. Tamijer Baap then becomes an allegorical figure harking to that break. Allegory and politics, therefore, cannot be separated. Politics of insurrection, that is and within this framework, the insurrectionary mind as revealing itself to be a constellation of forces. In other words, the constellation of singularity wherein lies the break and its potential, then, to transform passive practicality. The constellation of singularity, in the text, is the proletariat. One notices the relentless counter-capital strain of the work. One underlines how in Ghosh’s mind the proletariat not at all a sociological group but a living, material concept that questions ideas of historically bound identities. This is an extremely crucial point of departure for the political way of reading literary texts in the way that Ghosh has conducted. Another entry point to this critical work is to notice how the act of reading literature for Ghosh has a use-value, which is non-relational. Unlike the circuit of capital where the value of a commodity is determined by its exchange, literary experience is valued singularly on how it, the work itself, is consumed. Literature, for Ghosh, thereby never becomes a tool for political didacticism as it can never be exchanged for politics. As his reading of Muktibodh makes evident, literature rather becomes politically productive only at the moment of its non-relationality, that is, its withdrawal from exchange. The issue with Ghosh’s argument here is the ease with which he brings together Marxian theory of value with the concept of singularity, particularly Badiou’s. In Capital, Vol I, use-value actually exhausts the object of consumption, that is, if object A is consumed rather than exchanged for object B, then the utilization of A would limit any possibilities of exchange. Thus, it is surprising that Ghosh deploys the concept of use-value to theorize literature as an excess that cannot be supplanted or redistributed for any empirical uses including that of consumption. If use-value is a relation of consumption that exhausts its object, how can literary experience have one such value since the literary work never completely exhausts its field of content/style nor is it ever exhausted by a
The Circle of Tyrants (selections from Caligulan)
Ernest Hilbert _________________ Siege of Fort Mifflin (Battle of Mud Island) A squadron of the vaunted British empire Fell prey to mud, to wind and vengeful fire. A ship-of-the-line ran aground and burned here, Bombed by batteries on shore. Seeking to retire, A sloop named Merlin stuck fast in the mire, As Isis, Roebuck, and Pearl circled near. Today, sparkling like swirls of fish spawn, Undulating armadas of plastic— Unsinkable cups, trays, strips, and bottles, Restless, as if alive. When we are gone, Will these tokens foretell drastic Efforts to win new kinds of battles? The air is heavy and wet, and I stand Uneasily in this humid marshland. I float in the aura of a gas giant, Cast in its corona, watching vacant Spacecraft cluster like trash into orbit, Like casings of shells that failed in flight. *** Save Earth We thought they came from distant moons. We couldn’t tell at first if they had eyes, But we learned they have mouths. Big ones. Good God! A storm of great worms squirms across the skies. We wondered if they were loosed by ancient runes Or slithered through some blurry dimensional door. Then we thought maybe earth, that they had clawed From a blistering crack in the seafloor. Now we know they were planted eons ago, Right here, and come to claim their rightful place. They pour into our wrecked cities and grow. They smash bridges, dams, and soon this very base. They’ve neutralized our weapons, but we’re one Step from being saved! Behold, Mr. President, One of these will save us. Just one, and they’re done. We’re ready. We need only your permission To deploy, and drive these things away, But we have to do it now, now, before they . . . *** Apparition at Moss-Hanne Ospreys orbit here, ruling as lords Their drowned domains. We row watercourses Through miles of lily pads, hoards Of hemlock, spruce groves, and grim fortresses Of alder swamp. Millions of years flood This place, where salamanders slide in mud. Our Depression-era log cabin warms When we return in rain. As the storm passes, We stir fire from damp wood. It squirms and thirsts In muggy air, struggles up and catches barks. The pit smokes. A winding helix of sparks Climbs when a wet log pops and bursts Its musty treasure of grubs to the furnace. Above, a colonnade of oak glows and forms Like candles on cathedral triforia. The flames are my phantasmagoria. Higher, a cloud, like a skull, with a grin Too mild to scare, masks the moon. It sheers Apart in light to frost, feather, fin— A thing that never slows and always nears. *** The Victory Stele of Narām-Sîn This lecture insults the king. Is he merely One more item to be addressed as if not Present or no longer alive? His force Is renewed by death. He knows what is yearly Replanted will grow best from mud and rot, What pours long enough returns to a source. The surly king storms out, eager for rebirth, Quick dawn from darkness, but this equinox Is one of misalliance, disarray. There is no eclipse. No magic is worth This much. No longer the waking and long walks, No longer the sun to etch the skies, weigh The hours with consequence, mark the slow End of things. Not now. His is a sour star, A sick land, thimble ziggurats by which flow Veins of black space, singing, and no longer far. *** Circle of the Tyrants Unscrew the metal pegs that spur the stock. The strings go slack and spool from courses, Unwind and curl useless as railway track Pulled up by an army. Embrace the neck And swab from fret to saddle, feel forces Vanished but yearning always to fly back. For now, tuneless, the black body stretches Like a swan murdered on a muddy bank, Songless until restrung. Unleash new strings. Pull high E to a finger joint. It etches Small lines in skin, thin enough to kill. Still lank, Low E, gold wound for kings, binds like a ring; The strings are tools, tribute to horse and swan, Till, tensed and tuned, transmuted to weapon. *** Caligulan Your bank calls. Events begin to register Some unwelcome forecast. The dreamy nurses Switch to Goodfellas on the overhead TV. The omens come and signs are sinister. Texts go unreturned. You’re out of coffee. The Olympian Jupiter curses. In sleep, a great toe kicks you back to earth. The slaves stage a play about the Under World. The smoke alarm fails, and your computer crashes. Your favorite gladiator is lashed For theft, lightning blackens your temple, thunder Sinks your song, because, like the day of birth, The day you’ll wake and have your death is set, But just hasn’t, just hasn’t happened yet. *** Unlorded Behind us all an ancient king gone blind, Who gropes at books, beside a queen who’s lost Her once-worshiped beauties, her taunting songs, And all her appetites, save that for sleep. Conceits as well have dimmed, lost hawk and hind, And what was spent is only felt as cost. They find they hear no more the wind that long Ago propelled their fields to drought, put sheep Into the earth, when rainfall loosened soil, And, if they still recall our names and days We took the games and shook the eaves with roars, And laughed until we were emptied of breath, They know we carried with us hurt and toil, And voyaged far to get where flocks could graze, Found humor, even happiness, in wars, And kindness, as well, and life, in kind, in death. *** Ice Dwellers Watching the Invaders The ship is locked beneath frozen mountains. It crunches by inches against white floes. Its masts are bare cold poles of long-stripped tents, Its silhouette a stalagmite, its rows Of furled sails, half-mast, sagging like bellies Over the black pedestal of the hull. Five seals splash and plunge near the icy shore.
I Put Aside The Inspection Of My Great Talent
Devi Prasad Mishra ___________________ POEMS ARE PARAMOUNT Poetry is possible only in the mother tongue so said a poet One should stick to one’s tongue then lest one forget it Also that one may never forget That fathers are the first dictators And as I said before the first communists are the mothers Neighbours have never assured us they will not turn fascists At the very start of the Allahabad to Delhi rail journey A person proposed we exchange seats And then what else there was to possibly exchange I said I will not exchange my chaos with anyone One gets paid well for idiotic films that lie he said getting off The protection that a poet must get from the Constitution is given to the cow I commented before I left He was chewing paan and he laughed Some of the spit came right on my face Poems must be written lest poets be reduced to a moral minority Poems must be written to remember Muhammad Ali as boxer That Vietnam ,is a nation Palestine worth settling in Being Rohit Vemula means being human Only poems register the passing Of seasons and sisters, and falling of leaves and men Poems must be written because only poets return awards And they know the solitary art of crying while writing a poem on Akhlaq. (Translated by Asad Zaidi) *** I COVET MY RUINATION TO ENCOUNTER TRUTH About others I cannot say But my trade goes on fine without Arnab Goswami I covet my ruination to encounter truth— No harm if hair too is included in the grand Einsteinian disarray Che’s visage and Stephen Hawking’s body Fassbinder’s soul and Ritwik Ghatak’s black & white For a few days I put aside the inspection of my great talent Rest of the time I make do with my audacity and irreverence I feel assured by the empty hall during my poetry-reading session Three people had appeared during Ismat Chugtai’s last rites During the funeral services of Raghuvir Sahay there were a few more I too was there but people did not know me then nor do they know me now There was no facebook then and now there is but I never knew how to be on it I used to carry a strange and crabby mien As if after drawing a semi abstract charcoal portrait of a perennial dissenter The artist ran away with his lover In a society where Sunny Leone, Modi and Amitabh Bachchan tweets receive the highest like-followers Talking to oneself at 1 am in the morning And to be sleepless because One’s nephew in Singapore is a Modi supporter is quite dry and desolate an opponent I shall die of exploding veins It is only a sign of how each of us shall die Which means the culture minister shall die of the poison within Come, before we depart let us complete the ritual of asking why people watch the films of Shah Rukh Khan at all? And pray, why are numerous IPL matches and the lost countenance of Rajiv Shukla embroiled within it? If you remember I have said many times that no love is illicit And contempt for the tyrant is the most romantic work-load. I am getting late abdicating this world But to quit my lover’s bed I am forging a few excuses All right, let us consider this poem to be over at this point And you all please collect subscriptions for my quitting Delhi I don’t know for how long I shall remain with this thought That how can a fascist be named Ramakant Pande? (Translation: HUG) *** कविताएं लिखनी चाहिए जैसा कि एक कवि कहता है कि मातृभाषा में ही लिखी जा सकती है कविता तो मातृभाषा को याद रखने के लिए लिखी जानी चाहिए कविता और इसलिए भी कि यह समझ धुंधली न हो कि पिता पहला तानाशाह होते हैं और जैसा कि मैं कह गया हूं मांएं पहला कम्युनिस्ट पड़ोसियों ने फाशिस्ट न होने की गारंटी कभी नहीं दी इलाहाबाद से दिल्ली के सफर के शुरू में एक आदमी ने सीट को एक्सचेंज करने का प्रस्ताव रखा फिर उसने कहा कि और क्या एक्सचेंज किया जा सकता है मैंने कहा कि मैं किसी को अपना कोहराम नहीं देने वाला जाते-जाते वह कह गया कि झूठ पर फिल्म बनाने के बहुत पैसे मिलते हैं मैंने गायब होने के पहले कहा कि जो संरक्षण संविधान में कवि को मिलना चाहिए था वह गाय को मिल गया पान खाते हुए वह हंस पड़ा और उसका सारा थूक मेरे मुंह पर पड़ गया कविताएं लिखनी चाहिए ताकि कवि नैतिक अल्पसंख्यक न रह जाएं कविताएं लिखी जानी चाहिए ताकि मुक्केबाज के तौर पर मुहम्मद अली की याद रहे और देश के तौर पर वियतनाम की और बसने के लिए फिलिस्तीन से बेहतर कोई देश न लगे और वेमुला होना सबसे ज्यादा मनुष्य होना लगे कविताएं लिखनी चाहिए क्योंकि ऋतुओं और बहनों के बगल से गुजरने को कविताएं ही रजिस्टर करती हैं और पत्तों और आदमी के गिरने को कविताएं लिखी जानी चाहिए क्योंकि कवि ही करते हैं वापस पुरस्कार और उन्हें ही आती है अखलाक पर कविताएं लिखते हुए रो पड़ने की अप्रतिम कला *** सत्य को पाने में मुझे अपनी दुर्गति चाहिए औरों की मैं नहीं जानता लेकिन मेरा काम अर्णव गोस्वामी के बिना चल जाता है सत्य को पाने में मुझे अपनी दुर्गति चाहिए — आइंस्टीन का बिखराव जिसमें बाल भी शामिल हों तो क्या हर्ज चे का चेहरा और स्टीफन हाकिंग का शरीर फासबिंडर की आत्मा और ऋत्विक घटक का काला-सफेद मैं अपने प्रतिभावान होने का सर्वेक्षण कुछ दिनों के लिए टाल रहा हूं — बचे समय में मैं अपने दुस्साहस से काम चला लूंगा और असहमति से मैं अपने काव्य-पाठ में खाली हॉल से आश्वस्त हुआ इस्मत-चुगताई की अंत्येष्टि में तीन लोग थे रघुवीर सहाय के दाह-संस्कार में कुछ ज्यादा थे मैं भी था लेकिन मुझे लोग नहीं जानते थे अब भी नहीं जानते तब फेसबुक नहीं था और अब है तो मुझे उस पर होना नहीं आया मेरे पास अजीब झुंझलाया चेहरा था कि जैसे किसी सतत असहमत का आधा अमूर्त चेहरा चारकोल से बनाकर कलाकार अपनी प्रेमिका के साथ भाग गया हो जिस समाज में सनी लियोनी, मोदी और अमिताभ बच्चन के ट्विटर पर सबसे ज्यादा लाइक-फॉलोवर हों उसमें रात एक बजे खुद के साथ खुद का होना और इस बात पर नींद का न आना कि सिंगापुर में रहने वाला आपका भांजा मोदी समर्थक है काफी अजीब और बियाबान विपक्ष है मैं अंदर-अंदर ही फटती नस से मरूंगा — यह केवल संकेत है कि कौन किससे मरेगा मतलब कि संस्कृति मंत्री अपने भीतर के जहर से मरेगा आइए अब चलते हुए पूछ ही लेते हैं कि लोग शाहरुख खान की फिल्में क्यों देखते हैं और आईपीएल के बीसियों मैच और उनमें फंसा राजीव शुक्ला का बहुत खाया चेहरा अगर आपको याद हो तो मैंने कई बार कहा है कि कोई भी प्रेम अवैध नहीं होता और अत्याचारी से घृणा सबसे रोमांटिक कार्यभार है पृथ्वी छोड़ने में मुझे देर हो रही है लेकिन प्रेमिका का बिस्तर छोड़ने में भी मैं कई तरह के बहाने करता रहा हूं चलिए इस कविता को यहीं खत्म मान लें और मेरे लिए दिल्ली छोड़ने के टिकट का चंदा इकट्ठा करें मैं पता नहीं कब से यही सोचे जा रहा हूं कि एक फाशिस्ट का नाम रमाकांत पांडे कैसे हो सकता है *** [ The poems first appeared in the October 2016 issue of Pakhi magazine] adminhumanitiesunderground.org