Letter from Advaita Malla Barman
Gokanghat, Tipprah 23.6. 34 Dear Brother, I have read your poem a few times, from beginning to the end. I would like to give my comments here. Hope you will not be annoyed. Wherever I found something wanting, or irrelevant in style or meaning, I have marked with a red pen. I have left the responsibility to correct those to you. About publishing poetry, I can say this much that the poem is not bad at all; in fact quite surprisingly fresh coming from a young poet. Its but still not fully there, not fully fit for publishing, if I may say. So, do not try to publish it right away. Do not get disheartened. Keep on writing. You will make a name in a short while—I harbor such faith and hope. Here, probably a couple of words about poetry will not be entirely irrelevant. 1.Giti-kavya (Lyrical Poems). 2. Khanda-kavya (Narrative Poems). 3. Maha-kavya (Epic) all vary in style and approach. Your heart and mind needs to be prepared differently for each. First, you have to work hard as an apprentice on Giti-kavya. Snapshots, a pictorial bent is the soul of Giti-kavya. Try to paint such pictures on the page. Only then get into Khanda-kavya. You may write Khanda-kavya with past or present happenings, but perhaps past is a better repertoire to start with. It will be easier. This is because you can run your imagination ceaselessly and with abandon over the past. You will understand the difficulties with the present—for instance, a blurring and continuity of events that are yet to unfold often is a problem. Future gets in. And we are not prophets. But do not try your hand on epic. That is a most difficult task. It takes a lifetime to assimilate– first style and then proportion. And needs a fund of knowledge too. Hindu-shastra says that there needs to be at least 9 Swargas in an Epic. You cannot use more than one rhyme scheme. And so on. For Narrative poetry you can collect ‘material’ from Hindu or Muslim mythology or history. There should be an overall symmetry—this you should be truly careful about. Expression and language should be impeccably used. You have that kind of thoroughness and eye—and you will surely be successful. Nature itself and all around you is a grand granary. For the pictorial, I mean. Try shorter lyrics with minor things and make them connected to the world. Let readers know that nothing is minor. The more you culture these things the more you will become ecstatic with joy and love. Never follow anyone. Keep your own style, personality and freedom intact, distinct. I am sure you know the difference between imitating and following. You may try a bit of Madhusudan’s blank verse. This is possible until you inculcate your own style. But do not hobnob with Tagore’s transcendentalism or romanticism—those cannot be easily worked out. I shall conclude my letter with one more thing. Do not get yourself into print without sadhana. And whatever sadhana you do carry on—keep that secret and no need to make any hue and cry. No fire can be extinguished. Do not hasten. The reading public will come to know about your talent sooner or later. I can say that with some conviction. If you have an iota of faith and love in me, do keep on writing, ceaselessly. I have tried to relate to you all that I thought of your poetry, as a true friend. Openly. Frankly. If all these annoy you to the least, please forgive me with your ample kindness. Sincerely, Yours Advaita Malla Barman ———————————————— Advaita Malla Barman is one of the most significant writers from Bengal writing in the first half of the twentieth century. He died young.This letter was written when he was all of 20 years. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
No Detergent Can Undo
Sreyashi Goswami Books: Lover forever, makes strong friends, permanent enemies. Flower: Softness or is it hallucination. Brotherhood: Feeling towards a brother that needs to be chiseled for a man particularly. Responsibility: Easy and difficult to know when to jettison it. Night: 12 hours of silent howling. Wind: Unkempt thoughts in mind, suddenly. Lie: Moment’s Yes, Moment’s No. Uncivility: As if its our democratic right to be rude. Ink–Fountain Pen: Green, Red, Blue–clarity. Day: Each day, witness to a memorable event. TV: All spectators or are there some attentive readers too? Year: Relations and wonder anew. Liking: Shifting of the unliked. Hearing: Unsaid, once in a while uttered. Dead Man: Burning pyre or a puppet in an airconditioned room? Personality: The protocols of knowing each one distinctively. Dignity: A pot made of a different metal. Birth: To let oneself be part of a new beginning. Love: A strange giving, a time of giving. Traffic Jam: Lines of jet planes on the road, as if all will qualify for future exams. Gotra: Never begins fresh like morning dew. Indifference: Cruel, barbed manner of speaking. Time: Sharp, breaking brook– now slowing, hastening now… Spot: No detergent can undo. —————————————- Sreyashi Goswami is a poet and a traveller. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Pancho Adrienzén, Late 1970s & Peruvian Films
NOTE ON PERU IN THE 1970s In October 1968, President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was ousted in a military coup and succeeded by General Juan Velasco Alvarado. Velasco’s government was one of contradictions. It combined nationalizations; recognition of Cuba; agrarian, educational, and labor reform; Third Worldist rhetoric and behavior; repression of the working class; and imposition of an enormous foreign debt which led the country into a severe recession. The left was split by these contradictions, with the Peruvian Communist Party and other elements supporting the regime while others vehemently opposed it. In August 1975, General Francisco Morales Bermúdez replaced Velasco and led the country rightward. By 1977 the country had entered a depression and was subjected to “stabilization” measures by the International Monetary Fund: devaluation of the sol, a high rate of inflation, and harsh restriction of wage increases. The period was marked by growing labor militancy, including general strikes in 1978 and 1979; by the election of a constitutional assembly in 1978; and finally by new elections in 1980, with Belaúnde returning to power. The left parties united temporarily, but tragically and irresponsibly they split just before the elections, and so fared very poorly. JUMP CUT: Describe the formation of your group. Pancho Adrienzén: We came together to project films. In 1970 repression in the universities was very severe. The only way for students to organize politically was through clubs where they could link cultural and political work: film clubs, theater clubs, song clubs, and so on. Through the film clubs we could help students grow in their political consciousness by showing Cuban, Chinese, and Soviet films. But we always intended that our work reach beyond the university. From the beginning we showed films three or four times a week in unions and barriadas (poor communities circling Lima). We never exhibited films just for the love of films but clearly understood the political usefulness of such work. Our film exhibition project originally started out from a mass-based, neighborhood, organizing project in a barriada. Showing films let us get people together and carry out activities that would keep people thinking of themselves as active social agents. The project let us, as a group, work collectively. The films chosen served to highlight various social problems, show other countries’ realities, and demonstrate — in a small but very important way — that there is another kind of cinema. People also have to learn to look at commercial film with other eyes. What was the political stance of your group? Our vision of the world was Marxist, but we had members from different political groups. We never privileged any international line or position. We were in reality a broad political front. For all of us the fundamental factor was that the epoch of President Velasco was a reformist epoch: there would be no basic structural changes. Our effort was to help citizens of the barriadas and workers to organize independently and not succumb to the reformist propaganda of the government. It was this effort that united us and motivated us to work, and it is an effort we have been carrying out for almost ten years now. We want to use film as a weapon, as a way to forge independent, popular organizing and peoples coming to consciousness. Two films which we have distributed a lot come closest to our way of thinking: Eisenstein’s OCTOBER and a Cuban film by Manuel-Octavio Gomez about the literacy campaign, HISTORIA DE UNA BATALLA. The work in the university above all helped us to form a core group of politically committed, technically competent people. Have you changed your strategies over the years? Yes. In the beginning it was rather dispersed work, based on individual initiative and good will. After a while we became more organized, forming a group which took on responsibilities that obligated each of us to commit ourselves to the plan of work. We had weekly meetings where we discussed the political side of what had gone on, evaluated our activities, and planned new projects. Sometimes we even met two or three times a week — almost continuously. Many of us also became interested in aspects of production, in taking photographs and trying some filming. There was another development. At first a union would invite us to show a film for its anniversary or because it needed to raise funds or for some other reason. But we soon became dissatisfied with this process. We would show a film, a lot of people would come, there would be a political discussion about film, then people would go home. There was no follow through. And the unions did not get a lot of support because the whole thing was very sporadic and did not lead to any constant progression in the political consciousness of the working class. So we decided that every time a union invited us, we would commit them to a cycle of four or six films, shown in the same location and with a certain political rationale. For example, we could project a series on countries that had suffered repression, or countries that had struggled for liberation: Vietnam, China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. We also learned from this experience to apply the same policy in the barriadas. We learned at the same time to hold preliminary discussions with union and community leaders, so that they would understand the importance of each film. Thus, they were the ones who always presented the films and led the discussions. This is how we collaborated in the organizing of unions. From 1970 to 1973-1974, a great number of unions were formed in Peru, class-conscious unions. With these film projections we assisted in organizing those unions. Did you work with any particular political organization? We have worked with all the political organizations on the left: organizations opposed to right parties such as APRA and Acción Popular or SINAMOS (Sistema Nacional de Apoyo á la Movilización Social — the government’s branch intended to organize peasant collectives and other
The Importance of Being Big B
Ahmer Nadeem Anwer Doesn’t have a point of view, Knows not where he’s going to, Isn’t he a bit like you and me? Nowhere Man, please listen – You don’t know what you’re missin’ Nowhere Man, the world is at your command! – Lennon-McCartney In terms of the provenance, propinquity and social ethics of some of his current public engagements, Amitabh Bachchan seems to exude all the moral dubiety of an invisible man – a ‘Nowhere Man’. It isn’t as though the actor can’t act with decent personal-social ethics. To cite just one example close to home, family sources have told me that when K. A. Abbas (who introduced the star in Saat Hindustani) lay fighting for his life near the end, Bachchan just quietly underwrote the medical bills – sans fanfare or publicity glitz. In this he showed himself more caring, magnanimous and decent than some others who owed Abbas way more. Nor, surely, could that be a one-off good deed; there must be others in that line. Still, he does come across of late as a figure swathed in paradoxes, shadows and contradictions that may seem just a shade disturbing, perhaps even a little sinister. Bachchan’s trajectory down the years, but especially his recent flirtations with far-Right sectarian elements in the polity – outfits that would, if they could, have silenced an Abbas in every imaginable sense and meaning –, give unsettling pause for thought. Recent developments show for example how complete and thoroughgoing is the matinee idol’s problematic enmeshment in brand promotion for the state of Gujarattoday. The Entertainment Daily ofJune 4, 2010 carried a report noting that the Bollywood superstar, having already shot some of the sequences at the Gir forest and in the Junagarh region, had now visited the historic Somnath temple. Overtly of course it’s all very pleasantly accoutred as part of an ad-campaign style shoot purporting to do no more than promote tourism in the state, yet the overdetermined symbolism of Somnath as a prime early destination of Bachchan’s hard sell ‘campaign’ in Modi’s state cannot be lost on anyone. It was from this very spot after all that almost exactly two decades ago L. K. Advani’s fateful and infamous Rath Yatra had been set rolling, leaving in its wake a long and harrowing trail of devastation and internecine societal divisions – a symbolic journey whose conceptual (and praxeological) end point was the razing of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992. For even the most complete technical/judicial let off for powerful persons widely believed to be mired in the run up to the occurrence could not hope to convincingly establish for everyone that this traumatic and politically convulsive modern demolition of a place of worship was the work of hands wholly and solely divine. Fast forward to June 2010. While the overall ambience of the latest promotional venture involving Amitabh’s visit to Somnath has all along been imagically packaged as conspicuously “touristy” (“During a shooting sequence, Bachchan was seen wearing a traditional red kurta, while taking pictures of the temple’s architecture”), sightseeing pleasures are clearly not unmixed with hardnosed business considerations in the case: ANI reported that as part of his drive to promote Gujarat tourism, the star would also produce a film under the banner of his production company, Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL). And, as if to seal the multilevel pact in straight bucks, the Bachchan starrer Paa suddenly became tax free in Gujarat in the wake of the actor’s visit. Thus a loaded mix brewed of various quid pro quo arrangements and semiotically surcharged signifier plays of mutual interest and benefit underpin what symbolically, and at bottom, is after all an ideological alliance (advertising, when fully imbricated with politics is more accurately known as “propaganda”). So even though Bachchan would be unlikely to broadcast too loudly the underlying politics of the deal, and may even prefer to keep it as a quietly unspoken subtext of the relationship, this doubleness of the liaison, its simultaneous status as both business and ideological politics, is no doubt what seals the pact. In the event, the rhapsodic slogan for Bachchan’s campaign may be all very touching and edifying, yet the poetical aroma of the slogan itself – “Khushboo Gujarat Ki” – might strike the unconverted as a tad too ersatz and meretricious, all things considered, to be entirely in good taste. Some might wonder whether it’s not perhaps even positively malodorous – what’s the smell of burning human flesh really like, you might ask, if you’re not wholly carried away by the photo-op effulgence and lyric rapture of the ‘show’! So how does the once clean-cut and sober-countenanced son of a Gandhian nationalist poet and one-time English professor who translated Omar Khayyam, who received the Soviet Land Nehru award and had originally named his first son Inquilab (after the revolutionary slogan ‘inquilab zindabad’, vive la révolution) – how does this man, having come from where he did, get so thoroughly sucked up into the cynical and seamy side of political contacts-building and (to adapt Scott Fitzgerald) the “business go(o)nnections” game – to the point where he today can set aside every sobering compunction in the selection of friends and foes, and causes to promote? The man first called “Inquilab” eventually became “Amitabh”, which translates as the light that would never go off. No? “O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!” It might perhaps be too quixotic at this late turn in the plot, to expect a serious change of course, far less a complete turnabout by the megastar on those far-reaching but deeply questionable choices, or to now essay a major recharting of the trajectory. Perhaps it’s already too late. Still, it’s worth pondering just how much impactual power such a hyper-charismatic public personality wields in a society ever more consummately shaped by mass culture and its deities, and what might be the effect of an Amitabh Bachchan deciding to put his weight behind a more healing societal politics. If