Chhotolok’s Life: Malay Roychoudhury
one
Everything has changed in childhood and youth; The stilt houses of Imlitala neighborhood have become one- or two-storied houses with protruding brick teeth. Our house is unrecognizable. The wall rises from the red rock in front, on which Kapil’s grandfather used to teach children abuse; Those who live, they feed cows in the yard, walled huts, no open roofs, the house has gone up, the group of monkeys will leave the city. No one from Kapil’s generation is alive, and the boys and girls of the new generation know my name and read the news of the Bhukhi Pidhi movement. The shacks inside the street are also made of brick; All new faces. A one-storey house has been built in the slums of pigs and ganja bushes of thieves and robbers. Mahadalit’s neighborhood has been taken over by middle-class middle-class working families. Kulsoom Apader’s house was demolished, Shia Muslim four-storied residence, women wear veils. Nazim-Kulsoom you have gone somewhere else. Kulsum Apa, it seems, has gone to Arab countries. No one seemed to play in the mosque anymore, it was dirty and dirty, although there was a huge minaret. There is no one from my father’s generation in Imlitla, and there is no one from my generation either. A complete stranger to my own childhood neighborhood.
The childhood Brahmo school, Rammohan Roy Seminary, has become huge, students have to wear uniforms, there are two shifts, Bengali media has gone up, the influence of Brahmo religion has ended; Bengali books and magazines edited by Brahmo poets-writers are no more. Patna University also has Bangla Department only for Ph.D.
The Dariyapur of my youth has also changed, our house is full of grandfather’s eldest son’s photo stuff up to three floors, now there is no father’s studio, the days of taking photos with a camera are gone, even small cameras cost more than lakhs, most of the work is done on the computer. Father could not see this change. The front porch has been demolished. Grandfather’s son does not live in that house. He lives in the flat given by his father-in-law. There is nothing for me and my children. Next door Churidala, from whom mother learned to cook chicken, with nutmeg, her family moved to Pakistan. Above the bangle shop lived a Sikh Sardar who returned every night with a prostitute, who died long ago. The owner of the house, next to which there was a bamboo hut, rented out the four-storey house. Sunni Muslim houses and shops in front of the cemetery. No one knows about Allu Mian and his repeatedly married girls.
Savarnavila in Uttarpara has been demolished and housing has been built. I, Dada, Baradi, Chhordi, Dolly, Manu have sold our shares. Those who live came to see that they were familiar with my reputation. I didn’t recognize anyone. Kakababu means Bishekhuro’s Kotrang land and house sold by his pet daughter; Who knows where it went! More than half of the uncle’s house in Panihati, the pond and land, were sold by Chhotomama; Housing has come up in that place. There is a stone written ‘Nilambati’, in front of the door of a house, but Dadamsha did not live there. Dadamshay founded the Co-operative Bank, where his photo hangs from the wall in the warehouse. Mochchavatala in Panihati, reputed to be where Chaitanya Dev rested, now seems to be the institutional gathering place for the regular festival of Bostams. Now from Panihati to Bhutbhuti, not only beyond Konnogar, but to various places. When I was a child, I used to go to Panihati from Konnogar by standing-wind boat. At Konnagar Barajethima’s father’s house is no longer there, but there is a temple at Jagaddhatri Baromes; No one there could recognize me. They have also sold a lot of land, on which housing has been built. Barojethima’s niece Alo, beautiful, was what it meant, Dada did not want to marry, because Dada loved a married young woman in Chaibasa, one of whose sisters Dada later married – this is the case in Sakthi Chattopadhyay’s novel ‘Kinnar Kinnari’.
I sold the ground floor flat and came to Mumbai. Living in that neighbourhood, in that flat, in that environment, was impossible at this age. The boy has a one bedroom flat in Mumbai. Old and old are continuing as they are. Grandpa is dead. Dada’s literary friends also died. My childhood school friends are all dead, Tarun Shur died of leukemia at a young age, Barin Gupta died of head hemorrhage, last met Suvarna Upadhyay in Calcutta five years ago – bled from botched prostate operation, told not to live long. School friends Ramen Bhattacharya and Animesh Gupta lived near Naktala, they were often seen in Banshadroni market, I heard that he died. Only a few of the colleges and universities of the youth have survived. Subimal Basak, Pradeep Chowdhury, Subo Acharya, Devi Roy and Tridib Mitra-Alo Mitra survive among the literary companions. Subimal calls occasionally. After the death of his wife, Subo Acharya is completely devoted to the service of the Ashram of the favored Tagore; They did not marry boys as “woman is the gate of hell”. Pradip’s wife is dead; Both eyes of Pradip are bad. Tridib made his home in Howrah. Subimal lives in Belgharia, with two sons and grandchildren. Devi Roy bought a flat and lived somewhere in Howrah; After the death of his wife, he is completely broken. Shaileshwar Ghosh died in the operation theater, his wife, daughter and son-in-law all died, the beautiful bungalow is completely empty, haunted. Subhash Ghosh is dead; Now on entering the house Subhash’s picture is framed in front of him, earlier there was a picture of Jyoti Bose. Avni Dhar and Vasudev Dasgupta died in Ashoknagar. Arunesh Ghosh drowned in water; Maybe he committed suicide. Anil Karanjai and Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay died in Delhi. North Bengal hunger agitators Alok Goswami and Raja Sarkar are in Calcutta, Devjyoti Roy is in North Bengal. Arup Dutta came to Kolkata from Tripura.
Baradi-Chhordi’s huge zamindari house, ‘Sylvan House’, when entering through the gate, there were rows of buckflower trees on both sides, flower gardens, all gone. There is a huge housing. The millionaire nephew has left Patna outside Bihar, fearing the kidnapping gang of Lalu Yadav’s associates. Bhagni Jaya’s son, who runs the Rabindra Sangeet channel, is also a good singer himself.
Tinkadi Haldar in Pisemsha, I have a story about him in the book “Unpublished Short Stories”, he committed suicide by jumping from the roof of Ahiritola’s house after his partners gave it to the builder, the note found in his pocket reads, “Ananddhara Bahiche Bhuban”. Pisemshay’s sons’ grandmother gave them a piece of land in Hindmotor, where the brothers live in one house each, and the other house is used for cooking. Eldest brother Ajay Halder Mane Sentuda was married off to the daughter of a ghee trader in Dwarbhanga; Gharjamai Sentuda died there after consuming ghee and Dishi Bihari liquor. Later, because Sentuda was not getting along with her grandfather for some reason, when Sentuda came to Patna, she used to stay at Didi’s house. The names of many streets in Kolkata have changed during my childhood and youth, I used to walk around those streets during the case.
In Nagpur, the in-laws’ house was also demolished by its Muslim owner, my maternal uncle Shalad, who paid a lot of money to build a shelter there for Hajj pilgrims, and built a huge mosque on his own land next to it so that a thousand people could pray at once. A Muslim friend of my wife, a girl from a neighboring house, married a Hindu youth, changed her name and lives with her grandchildren in Mumbai. Shali, whom I married in Patna, is demolishing their Lake Gardens house and building a flat house due to her husband’s repeated deaths.
two
Today, now, come to Mumbai, stop looking at the mirror, don’t brush my hair when I go out, leave in my pajamas even if the back is torn, because no one feels the need to look at my back, sitting in an auto-rickshaw in the basement of a car park of loneliness and loneliness, feeling that memory Not quite dusty, crystal-clear, me, the people around me, the bodies of many, with the sound of pots full of water falling in the crematorium, with the sound of fat cracking in the electric furnace, with the intersection of hook buttons as small as semicolons, the old-young phenomenon is emerging with its own character, and which is murky. They are floating, they are, quickly, before they disappear, I will write down, Sumita Chakraborty’s summer, tucked in the folds of her sari, the trees in her garden took care of themselves at night, I in her communist Cuban car, “I am your amateur girlfriend”; Then when the old woman spat, “Everybody in Calcutta is a party worker, visible or invisible in hand.” “Only communists can say why communism failed.” “The human bombs are going to die, there’s no end to it, you see.” “Handshake with Hirohito or with Hitler, Subhash Chandra Bose is my hero, the lover of my dreams.” “The first thing to do when writing is to forget your school-college language teachers, or you won’t be able to move forward.” “Bengali Marxists, who opposed nihilism, brought nihilism to West Bengal.” “Do you know why the followers stab in the back? They follow from behind.” “The cowards theorize the terrible poetry and the losers support that theory.” “There is no cause for suicide.” Now the only routine is going to the toilet at night, with clockwork prostate pressure.
Only women know the magic of pulse making. The delicious secret of saying “I hate you” repeatedly during sex. I was whirlwind in my previous birth and will be strong in my next birth. Many events will slip by, have to be let go, while unimportant events will suddenly assert themselves, however, chronological order does not seem to be important. I have visited so many villages and cities of India on my job that I went to which village on the back of an elephant, where I drank camel milk as if it has slipped from my memory, as well as which river I went to in which town with tour flags on my head, I can’t remember, but the events are not blurred even today; How did you learn to keep a roll of toilet paper with you, sitting on the ale, without drinking water for a long time? Who said, “Only the poor die in the motherland?” don’t remember Who said, “Born with street dog ears?” don’t remember Who said, “You leftist? I suspect that your father ate Soviet rubles!” don’t remember Who said, “You should cut the synth on the right.” don’t remember Who said “There is no such thing as God-given?” don’t remember I don’t remember who said, “The State will forever oppose the Liberty Equality Fraternity”. I don’t remember who said, “You can’t be wise without kicking”. I don’t remember who said, “You can’t be a genius if you don’t have a functional gender”.
In 1964, when I came to know from the Commissioner of Police that Santosh Kumar Ghosh and Abu Sayeed Ayyub were among the complainants against me, I realized that I had just tied the knot. In 1962, when Upal Dutt was handed a Hungry bulletin at a rally in College Street, he shouted, “Hungry Jinnadrishan”, folded the leaflet and threw it on the street, when another marcher started to read it, he took it and said, “Not for you.” In 1963, I went to the house of storyteller Shanti Ranjan Banerjee in Howrah. He said, “Hey, you’ve made such a fuss that you’re fooling the powerful, they’re plotting against you, do you know?” I said, what needs to be done, DeRozio has done what needs to be done. I don’t know why the publishers of College Street suppressed Shantiranjan Banerjee. Like Udayan Ghosh, Shanti Lahiri, he also had the weakness of Sandeepan, Shakti, and getting pleasure from chipping in with Sunil.
In 1971, Shankh Ghosh wrote an essay titled “Words and Truths” in 1971, Remember 1971. What did he write in his literary-political prose at the beginning? Wrote, Remember in 1971, that, “It is now a matter of history that a few young men of this city were jailed for the crime of writing poetry.” On December 28, 1965, he did not know that I was sentenced to one month in prison in 1971! He did not know in 1971 that he had to spend thirty-five months in court, he only knew about one day’s imprisonment. what to say After Abu Syed Ayub, Shankh Ghosh, and needless to say, Sunil Gangopadhyay have to be mentioned as the ones who have done the most damage to the Hungry movement. Shankhababu dragged Shaileshwar Ghosh to the institution’s prison, Bangla Academy. I have met Shankhababu only once, at that Bengali Academy, I extended my hand for a handshake and said, My name is Malay Roy Chowdhury, hearing it, I felt as if I was saying, I am Pharaoh Ramassez II of Egypt. And Sunil Gangopadhyay was sitting in America and thinking that Malaya had looted everything in Calcutta and after returning from America he wrote a hasty novel called ‘Atmaprakash’ at the behest of Sagarmoy Ghosh in which he did not write what he would do when he went to the brothel out of fear. In the lane, Sandeepan Chatterjee shoulders the vulture high.
In 1972, the park authorities allowed me to hold a giant cutie snake in Gindi, Chennai. Then threw a python down the throat like a northerner, what joy there was, this is the true northerner of my greeting. My assistant said, being a Brahmin, I put my hands on the snake, see if the lineage is protected. How will the offspring of the snakes detained in prison be protected? Met Falguni Roy for the last time in 1975. Came to the office in Patna, then disappeared leaving my writing finger, said, everyone has separated, and now he is fine with Deepak Majumdar, drugs and Sonagachi. Falguni often came to Patna during the hunger strike, his son-in-law was my economics professor, very fat and crooked, before pushing the rickshaw, he used to shake it and push it, he was angry at me saying Hastum, Falguni’s sister came and told my mother that I had taken Falguni to the wrong place. I wasted it. Falguni’s lover was married in Patna, her lover lived near her father-in-law’s house in Lohanipur neighborhood. Both of us would go to Gulfi Ghat in Patna or sit on top of Golghar and smoke ganja-charas bought from the government shop, we would sit at Mahendrughat and eat tharra. I got the news of Falguni’s death while staying in Lucknow.
In 1989, after daughter Anushree Godrej’s typewriter broke down, I got the home address of a mechanic. I used to live in Santacruz and the mechanic used to live in Goanese Colony in Juhu. Now, of course, the Santa Cruz-Juhu is gone, the skyscrapers of the rich are everywhere. On the day the mechanic told me to fix it, I went to his hut and waited to take the typewriter, his old lady said, he will come immediately. My face is covered with beard and mustache, name is MR Chaudhary. Vishalbapu old lady in gown was sitting quietly. In front of the house, young men and women were playing guitar and singing loudly. The old Goanese woman suddenly said, “These Protestants and Hindus, very dirty and undisciplined, that is the state of the country, when the British were in India and the Portuguese were in Goa, they did not have such violence.” I kept my mouth shut thinking that the old woman would be beaten if I exposed myself. After a heart attack in 2000, Kandivili used to walk every morning in Joggers Park in Mumbai, where he met the old members of the Laughter Club. Like everyone else, I used to raise my hands up and laugh loudly for no reason when I was one to three, besides, there is no opportunity to smile in old age. A Gujarati used to come back with me, I asked him to ask what he is doing. Inquiring about what he does, he said, “In the morning and in the afternoon, I take clients to walk their dogs, and at night I drink wine and write poetry, making fifty thousand a month.”
– Dog walking?
– Yes, no one has time, everyone is running for money in this city.
— Do you take their dogs for a walk in the morning and afternoon?
– Yes, we start from five in the morning. I know when a dog prefers to bark in the first few days, clients also give ideas about their barking time.
– How do you charge?
-Depends on the breed of dog. If it’s a Rottweiler, I propose 15,000, then settle for 3,000. If it is of another breed, take less. But I call myself a dog trainer, dogs have to play for half an hour.
– One day I will listen to your poetry.
– Come, do you drink?
—No, off for now, just got up from a heart attack; Even during heart attack, Haga gets, semen comes out. As with suicides, goo and semen come out. Do suicides come out?
It was good to know that there is a connection between poetry and dog walking. Poets are also rated according to breed.
three
In 2007, a group of foreign tourists went out to see a brothel in Amsterdam’s De Wallen canal with guide Miss Mariska Mazur. Mariska was once a sex worker herself. The word red light spread from this brothel. Napoleon’s legal brothel, a larger-than-life glass showcase where sex workers from all over the world wait with red lights, fixed rates, times and procedures; If you want to do something outside of that, you have to bargain. Red light in every room. The blue light in the room where the male sex worker is waiting. I looked around at various sex shops and sex shops in Khalpara. Whips, chastity belts, penis-sized sitola bicycles, pornography books and films, cannabis puff shops, fast food restaurants, etc. I was going to see. Suddenly a middle-aged man stumbled in front of us, the result of walking face up. Mariska Mazur pulled him up by the arms and showed him a bronze sculpture on the street, glistening with thousands of people walking by. The sculpture is a man’s right hand pressing a young woman’s left breast, the diameter is the same, the hand and a breast. Mariska said, the sculptor’s name was not known before, but now it is known that his name is Rob Hodgson, who buried him in the early morning.
Once in Khalasitola in 1961, I also cried when I saw the neighbor crying with a glass in his hand; Nirghat used to cry when he went to Khalasitola in Pisemsha, he used to cry saying, Ma Ogo Ma; Then he went to Sonagachi. I also cried, I went to Avinash Kaviraj Lane with Pistuto Dada Sentuda; Sentuda said, school finals, BA, MA have to be done here too, I will teach you everything, you know Nirodh then Nirodh, I will come with you, I will not kiss you on the lips, I will not lick you there, I will come day by day, I will leave day by day, No one will see, the rate is half at noon, then someone combs the shampooed hair, someone applies nail polish on the toenails, someone sits on the balcony and yawns, the heart will be happy, if you want, you can apply nail polish on your feet, comb your hair, even have sex. If you feel guilty before doing it, then you can put vermilion on Sinthi, when there is a storm in Kalbaisakhi, you can go down to Ahiritola Ghat and pretend that the two of you are making love. In 1964, when I was arrested in the Hungri case, Barojethima said, those who know the stories of fairies, those who know the stories of Datyidana, those who know the stories of the Gods of the Puranas, there is no such thing as dirty books, dirty gossips, no book should be destroyed, only the stories of the Puranas are known. We are hiding in all those gossips like someone, are we not in the story of Mahabharata? I am, I am, I am.
In 1963, when Allen Ginsberg was at our house in Patna, reading a hundred books, he had read the book, “Journey to the End of the Night”, by Louis Ferdinand Celine, a black mullet, a brilliant novel. I later found out about Celine that the man was an ardent anti-Semitic and used to publish pamphlets against the Jews. Ginsberg’s parents are also Jewish, yet, because the novel is extraordinary, Ginsberg felt I should read it. I gave the book to Subhash Ghosh to read and then who knows what happened, they wrote a lot, if they separated me from hunger in gangs, hungry news, hungry resistance, who knows why! . Tridiv Mitra of the party named “Muchlekapanhi”, Tridiv and Alo Mitra were also excluded by Rajsakshis. I also won the case in 1967 and left their ‘good-to-be-poor’ society. I still don’t understand what this becoming is. In 1966, I gave the book “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People” written by Lenny Bruce to Vasudev Dasgupta. In 1968, when I gave up writing, Vasudev Dasgupta wrote “Lenny Bruce and Gopal Bhand” in Krishnagopal Mallick’s magazine “Galpakbita”. I have not read Vasudev’s writings. I don’t like reading anything anymore.
I wrote my first novel in 1994, for “Hawa49” newspaper, “Dubjal Jetuku Praswam”, about friends from Patna. I can’t see the proof at all. Dada asked Krishnagopal Mallik to see the proof. Krishnagopal called him to his house, said, “Atnu kept the money bag on the cupboard, when he was leaving the house, why did the bag go under the bed?” His eyes kept going to the floor, his mother was chained to the side of his study table, he was lying on the bed on the ground, chained. He said, “You are the first to come, so you are surprised, my mother is not eating, so I have to tie you up.” Hearing this, the wind blew through his hair. When I came down the stairs to Amherst Street, I suddenly gasped.
Around that time, Edward Said came to Calcutta, at Netaji Bhavan, on the invitation of Saugata Bose, to give a speech. In his speeches, Said repeatedly mentioned the need for institutionalization. I was sitting in the back row because the front row was for Calcutta crying. The invitees, needless to say, were all well-wishers of Calcutta’s institutional power. As soon as the question and answer opportunity came, I said that, “Sir, you have been talking about anti-establishment for so long, but here the institutional leaders of West Bengal and India are sitting in the front rows.” Saugata Bose, did not expect that someone could throw such a question. He quickly stood up and said, “We don’t have time to discuss this controversy, next time we will discuss it.”
four
In 1988, when I bought the flat on the ground floor, for only two lakh rupees, then a flat of that size was less than five million rupees in Mumbai, so I bought it the way people buy Alupatal, without thinking about seven or five. Actually I bought a bit of West Bengal, open all around, but no one from any house can see that I am langto most of the time, I like to be langto even if Salila screams. Palash forest behind the house, many kinds of birds in the trees, most of which I don’t know, compare the bird number of Mizanur Rahman’s quarterly magazine to see what the names of the birds can be, behind the big pond, the fish in the pond are swimming in the moonlight, during the day, pankauris come to eat fish, fly. The coconut tree spreads its wings like a Japanese fan and mourns, many times the foxes come to the Palash forest, the call of the foxes is heard at night, there are a lot of snakes, snakes are hidden on the stairs of the house, gnats fall on the fan blades on the mosquito nets, the clouds of Kalbaisakhi can be seen in the distance. Alas, everything gradually disappeared, the palash trees were cut down, the pond became a cesspool, with a bamboo stand next to it, the metro rail came, house after house after house, then the village culture of West Bengal was introduced little by little, In front of the house, on the first day, illegal meat was cut and sold, what was the crowd and push to buy, then the comrades came to ask for the Puja contribution, as they did not like it, one threatened to install four loudspeakers on the roof of this house during Durga Puja-Kali Puja.
When he went to meet Mejmasi in Nimta, he said, “Did you buy a flat there? From Anwar Shah to Gariya, the public is full of refugees!” Mejmasi was obsessed with the refugees because they would take fish from his pond in the middle of the night, take betel nut from the betel nut tree and coconuts from the coconut tree. Mejmasi is dead; Their ponds are no longer in Nimtay; Flats are up. In 2000, Dilum sold a flat for five lakh taka, a fifty-year-old flat. Beche, freed from his stupidity in 1988. After two years of selling, I went to that neighborhood, I saw and heard that the boys of the neighborhood broke the glass of the balcony with rocks, unable to compromise with the buyer. Buyers ‘used to CPM’; Maybe he didn’t eat the flock and go to the grass.
In Naktala, very young poet Sushant Das and comrade-poet Gautam Niyogi were surprised to find me in their neighborhood in 1995, they could not match me with the Hungry movement, they thought they would see a tinge vagabond in tattered clothes, with a crooked nose and eyes, chamukun on the skin, bee stings in the hair, would see home. Very tight, crows are eating chocolate. Like Raja Sarkar and Alok Goswami, they will be more appalled to see synthetic carpets, sofas, TVs, etc. bought at the office. Then when I started working as an office head, I used to come to pick up the office car and return in it. However, after meeting Gautam-Sushantar, the people of the neighborhood pushed me on the top of the stairs. Sushantar’s mother was a CPM supporter, “Mass Shakti” was plastered on the wall every day. After sitting on the mattress, Mamata Banerjee said, “CPM has done nothing for us, we are living in extreme poverty during the period of partition.” He used to run a family by opening a rice hotel, we also brought and ate sometimes, he was a very good cook.
When the West Bengal tectonic plate was collapsing, Elum moved to Mumbai, gave away winter clothes, books and furniture, and sold the car. Beche, I got rid of the stupidity of buying a car. No local library agreed to take the books, and in the end Saptarshi Bhattacharya took a few cases full in the trunk of his ambassador’s car. Then Saptarshi was so badly beaten by the syndicate that he went to Vellore and could stand up straight; But under the influence of Vellore, now they sing the praises of Jesus Christ, some say they have become Christians. The people of the syndicate also destroyed the books given to me along with other books. The libraries in Naktala, Sreepalli, Jadavpur where I wanted to give books, they chirped and said, heh heh, poetry books, who reads these to mosquitoes, even if you donate a rack, we have no place to keep those books. Navarun Bhattacharya said that the ‘country’ of these Chutias is not mine, he probably considered Stalin’s Soviet state as his country.
Winter clothes, double-breasted suits, single-breasted suits, three-piece suits, terrycloth pants, woolen sweaters, full shirts, all at Bihari Dhopa in Dilum neighborhood. Said, high caste people will not let them wear them in our village, I will sell them to those who are a little poor among them. I will buy a sweater-sheet like we wear in the sale and give it to my mother and wife. Shops were closed for fifteen days, many in the neighborhood left their clothes at home to be pressed.
I used to rent a garage from Fanibabu, the flat owner of the lower floor, and keep the car; One day I opened the garage and saw the car floating in the middle of nowhere; The downstairs tenants blocked the exit by throwing sanitary napkins. If the corporation says go to the party office, you will find the workers there. The one who was handling the party office said, we are not responsible for any work inside the house, clean it with the dhangars, the dhangars who sit in the early morning in the bamboo market to get work said, it is not our job, it is the work of the scavengers, they went to the scavenger colony in Gangulibagan, the residents said, they Only manhole work, not guer work. Having bought two sweeping sweepers, I put on a towel on my bare body, put on a simple blouse, pushed and pushed the gooey pan, lowered the water pipe from the third floor and took out a couple of inches of the yellow-green-black sheet of gooey and entered the sewer. At Shibu’s tea shop, there was a flock of left-wing visitors, Shibu, however, got wind of it and went to the grassroots. There was no need to dirty the road because the mouth of the sewer was not in the garage. I didn’t cook that afternoon because of people’s washing, so I went to Mocambo on Park Street for lunch and whiskey. I don’t know if any other writer has experience washing two-inch thick goo. That becoming, it seems to be a transition to becoming a great man and a great woman.
Another problem with setting up the Naktala letterbox was when a comrade of the Moholla committee pitched a tent in the club ground, pitched a vien, set up a loudspeaker and sang Bitkel Besuro songs with Anukul Tagore’s disciples from morning till night. . I don’t understand this godman thing at all; All the godmen I hear about are the owners of Piñjarpole. BJP comes and sees the godmen! The neighborhood is called Letterbox because there was once a postal department letterbox in the middle of the field, at one point there was only our building on one side of the field. Subo Acharya of the Hungry Movement entered the institutional fish-repot of Godman and sang the praises of Anukul Tagore in Choporratti. I went to Subo’s house in Bishnupur, I Subimal and Tridiv, he had returned from the secret dera in Tripura, because a case had been opened against me, he was a different Subo Acharya. Four of us smoked marijuana. Now Subo is so afraid of uncertainty that he sings Gurudev Gurudev bhajan word for word whereas earlier his Gurudev was Sunil Gangopadhyay. “Sunil said Malay doesn’t know how to write”, he told me. Pradeep Chowdhury said, it remains in Subo Acharya’s DNA, guru, mantra, manusanghita, conservatism etc., genetic contribution.
five
One day I got a telephone call from Naktala, “Maloy, I am Udayan, Udayan Ghosh, I have come to your neighborhood, tell the rickshaw puller to transformer stand”. In an essay about my short stories in 2001, Udayan wrote, “As time goes on, the more I read Malay’s writings, the more I feel like the Mahabharata could be written about him.” I have not met him face to face till then. I thought, let’s find another person like Kedar Bhaduri in the neighborhood to chat. I came to buy a bottle of Peter Scott, I saw Udayan in bed, I was upset. Seeing me, he was about to get up from the bed, his wife stopped him. He has asthma, depression because he can’t write, various devices around his bed. We chatted for a while, as I gave money to Shakti Chatterjee to print the book, he also gave, we both have the same experience. I go sometimes, he is bedridden. He and Shanti Ranjan Banerjee and Shanti Lahiri were in the same situation, he had to curtail his writing time due to his pride in standing among the top three poets of the fifties. One day I got a phone call from Udayan’s daughter who died.
In 2014, when Ipsita Pal, the head of Guruchandali, asked who would unveil the new edition of the book “Nakhdanta”, I said, “Someone who returns things at book fairs.” He gave it to such a person. When I was in Kolkata, I saw young poets performing the ceremony of “unwrapping” a poet or writer with a bald head or a chulle kalapadeya shoulder-sheet from the previous decade, as if opening a packet of condoms in a bed full of flowers. I thought these young poets would spend their whole lives living in other people’s thoughts, they would never be introduced to the terror and filth that surrounds living. What is the joy of having a book “unwrapped” by a filiola?
In 1996, Naktala was very happy to see a phuchkaala from Patna, who used to fry phuchka and sell spices in the Maidan every day. “Do you sell Puchkai in Patna, or have you changed the spices?” He said to inquire, Bengalis eat a little more sweets, except Patnaiya, all the phuchkaala in Kolkata are all from Bhojpuri, Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, so all the phuchkas that are sold are in Patnaiya. If someone asks me what do you like to eat the most, then I will not say hilsa-shrimp, I will say phuchka. Puffy Irish cream is great to eat. If someone asks about meat, I would say that Ikea in Sweden is the best place to eat meatballs, I don’t know how to make the beef and pork soft like a sponge, ten meatballs for one euro, a plate of fried potatoes, a three-cornered pastry and coffee, every Sunday morning. , aha, aha, aha, then there is no need for lunch. However, I don’t like the preparation of meat in Europe, it seems raw, sometimes I have seen blood on the plate. Shaileshwar Ghosh and Subhash Ghosh did not want to eat beef during the hunger strike, if they were alive they would have become BJP party workers.
In 1966, I created a painting in my room in Dariyapur to show Anil Karanjai and Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay when they returned from Kathmandu. I named it “Attack on the Language of Painting”. The work was a self-portrait of me stuck on a white cardboard with balls around my nunu, called Jhant in Hindi. When they both saw it, Karuna said, “I’ll take classical art to school, like Ulysses, Benares, the hippies will freak out, jump for ten-fifteen dollars, if you understand, your installation art will reach uuuuuu ssssssssssssssssssssssss.” Karuna applied the appropriate color to her hair and made her face attractive. I also went to Benares with them, it is not clear when the case will come up in the court, Subimal Basak is in contact with the High Court advocate. It was Karuna who lured me to go to Benares, “Puff the Charminar full of ganja-charas-opium and do hippiesex, there is a fat hippie who no one wants to mate with, one hippie left her in Benares and took another, I’ll find her, anil her nude. When called to draw, visualize it.” I saw the plump hippie, Madeleine Corriet, shirtless, in the glaring yellow light, in Anil’s studio, and my luscious adventure, “Arup Tomar Entokanta” began again. Karuna died thirty years ago, Anil ten years ago.
Since 1947, I have taken into my own hands the freedom to express what I eat and what I do not eat. I do not eat pumpkin, shrimp, dhundhul, kuchopona, morla, tangra, beuli dal in Imlitala. I had a cook’s wife in Daryapur in 1970 and I started eating everything, because the cook’s wife was from Barisal and I used to tell her to put all the spices in the dhundhu and cook it with minced meat, add asafoetida and a lot of tomatoes to the pumpkin, add garlic to the prawns and kabli chickpea batter, whole garlic to the beeuli dal. , pills and spinach. Since then, the plan of writing a book of cooking recipes has settled in the mind. Grandmother used to say rightly that if you know how to add spices in cooking, you can eat stone curry. I’m actually quite a glutton. Nola-Socks is what it means to be human. Even if you are not hungry, you want to eat when you see good food or scotch or single malt. Hunger is a state of mind, not of the stomach.
six
In 1979, after leaving the job of the Reserve Bank, I joined the Lucknow office of the Agricultural Finance and Development Corporation as a senior analyst. I stayed in a hotel near the station for a few days and ate Old Monk every night at the Punjabi Sardar’s shop for a whole chicken tandoori khetum for twenty taka. Joined by four more senior analysts, all agro-scientists from wealthy farms, Abdul Karim, Shettikhede Prabhakar, Dr. Kurkutte and Madan Mohan, we stayed at the Uttar Pradesh Bhumi Bikas Bank guest house until we got home. The cooking business itself. Prabhakar is a complete vegetarian, does not eat onions and garlic, and Karim is not allowed to be non-vegetarian. It was decided that one day Prabhakar would cook and one day Karim would cook. We will wash the dishes, sweep, clean the four rooms and the drawing room. In this job, I had to go first to work on a project to exploit artesian wells in the Terai of the Himalayas, before that I did not know that cold water gushes out from the ground in Konkan like a fountain. It would have been better if he had not left the job of the Reserve Bank; I would get a pension of 60,000 taka more.
After seeing Karim’s meat cooked, we became tired of eating meat. They used to buy meat and soak it in water from morning till noon so that even the last drop of blood would come out, but I still eat meat, adding eggplant stalks to it. I learned to cook meat sambar, Hyderabadi biryani and haleem from Andhra’s Abdul Karim. We are relieved to praise him and drag him to cook Hyderabadi Biryani and Haleem. Karim used to buy a chicken and scald it so that there is no trace of blood. And as a result, the fire from the gas burner would be slow. After retirement, Karim, with a beard growing to his navel, used to pray five times a day, built a house in Andhra village with seven rooms, a huge bungalow, he thought he would stay with his wife and grandchild, but that wife died of cancer. Only one son, a Hindu girl, did not want to be married to her father. While staying in Lucknow, wherever Karim used to go on tour, he would bring any gift for my son from that place, when the ground floor flat was sold, everything had to be distributed to the neighborhood.
Prabhakar used to make dosa sambar or idli for breakfast. I learned to make dosa idli and sambar, and as a reward for learning I got a dosa making plate from my village in Karnataka, which is so heavy that I can’t lift it anymore. After three months I got a bungalow in Indiranagar and went to my new residence and brought Salila, children and belongings from Patna. In the bungalow I got, I got a lot of help from four agricultural scientist friends, to cultivate, garden, and even plant grass. And a lot of books, farming books, I didn’t know anything before. Since then my brain has become kaleidoscopic. The new job was also to report the progress of farming in each village. Cows, goats, buffaloes, oxen, bulls, pigs, ducks, chickens are the first known species. The technique of extracting buffalo-bull-pig semen, the technique of pouring that semen into the vagina of females, was quite exciting to watch. Before that, I could not tell the difference between millet and sorghum from a distance. Due to this new job, I lost touch with literature. Living in Patna, I did not know anything about farming, I did not know where cardamom grows on a tree.
Since 1950, Grandmother used to walk around Khandahar in Uttarpara during the summer with only a towel around her waist, playing with tenants, her breasts had dried up. Whenever you or grandma used to come to Patna, I would say, “I will play with your breasts”. I used to hold Grandma Mai’s nipples in both hands and say, “Jhmmmmm”. Grandmother used to say, you are old enough, “Now don’t go to sleep and take your wife’s milk.” I said, “The wife’s mother will not be like you who will match one drop to another.” Grandmother used to say, “My mother was once taller than your great-grandmother, you know how proud your grandfather was.” I got married four years after my grandmother died, or I would have told her, I am also proud of my wife’s breasts, I will ask you to show me one day.
In 2010, I was sitting in the food court of Malad’s Inorbit Mall and waiting for a couple, on their wedding anniversary, to invite some people for food. Almost all of us arrived. A young lady came towards me, wedding mehndi in both hands, plastic sieve in one hand, Bangla panji in other hand and expensive bag. He said to me in English, Sir, you seem to be a Bengali, I have gone out to buy these forty greens but cannot find them anywhere, not even in Crawford Market; Can you kindly tell me where to get these greens? Janlum and Kanpur’s daughter, married to a Bengali youth, looking for fourteen to impress her in-laws. Sieve is for fourth. I opened the panji and saw that the names of the vegetables were given, olpata, kenu, beto, sarisha, kalkasunde, neem, jayanti, shanche, hilanch, palta, shoulf, gulanch, bhatpata and sushni. I said, I myself did not know about these forty greens before, the fourteen greens used in our house had spinach with nuts, coriander, soy, gourd, pumpkin, spinach, kale, none of which are in this list. My wife told the young lady, buy spinach and whatever greens are available and shred them and cook them, your inlogs will be happy. When I saw a non-Bengali young woman doing that which I had given up my Bengaliness, I was moved with compassion.
Returning from Mumbai to Subhash Ghosh’s house in Gislum in Chandannagar in 1996, I could not suppress the desire to meet him after a long time, I got out of the station and saw Subhash Ghosh going to chant slogans in the procession of CPM, I was upset. When I went to his house, I saw a pile of CPM garlands in a corner of the balcony, Jyoti Bose’s photo hanging on the wall in the inner room, I felt that his coming home was a big mistake. The anti-establishment has entered the cage of the institution. Of course, when he became a witness against me with a bond, it was revealed that he was afraid to fight alone, he wanted the shelter of a procession, he wanted the gathering of young people in a coffee house. He said, “If you are in trouble, you can understand how difficult it is to survive without doing these things.” His wife also included Kanak Ghosh in the Hungry movement, although Kanak Ghosh’s writing was at a children’s level. Meanwhile, the CPM Lumpens are carrying out indescribable atrocities in villages, burning houses and rice husks, playing football with mundus, burning people by pouring petrol, burying people alive in the ground, they are not seen in Subhash’s writings.
Returning from Mumbai in 1995, Pradeep Chowdhury’s house in Gislum, my grandfather invited me to drink champagne with Salila. Dishi fed Bengali with a bottle of champagne, thought she had never had champagne before. After a long time I found the old Pradeep, the same old Comilla bloke, the same old Comilla bloke, did not break his tongue. I wrote an article about Pradeep in “Hawa 49” newspaper, along with all the documents of Pradeep’s rustication, Pradeep said that no one else could analyze him like my prose. But fearing that the bailiffs might put him in solitary confinement, he took a photo to accompany the letter, as if to show me kicking. I printed the prose along with that photo. I don’t know why he was so afraid of royal witnesses. After their disappearance, the old lamp came out of the hole. In the photo given by Abhimanyu Singh in an interview on his website, the lotus flower of BJP is hanging around Pradeep’s neck.
Back from Mumbai in 1996, Shaileshwar Ghosh’s house in Gislum, a house with a lot of space, a row of deodar trees around the panchil, but despite the picture of Vikiri in the newspaper, he asked, “Will the leaves blow?” All over the cupboard are only your own books, row after row. Died in the operation theater. His wife, son-in-law, daughter died one by one. But a lot of NTT has been used to handle his papers.
I did not know, so Pradeep Chowdhury said he will take Shaileshwar home. On the day of departure, Gap Mere informed Shaileshwar in advance, so that he would be ready. I and Dada waited for him at Gariya bus depot for a couple of hours. Took it the next day. A few days before his death, Shaileshwar’s daughter Jeeja Ghosh wrote to Pranavkumar Chattopadhyay that any newspaper containing the writings of Malay Roychowdhury and Sameer Roychowdhury should not publish her father’s writings. Not bad, before he died the bond-writer managed to make the girl stink of royal testimony too. the poor A lot of baboon-looking chicks have also left to rescue my foursome.
After returning from Mumbai in 1996, I tried to publish a book on Avni Dahar’s stories. I don’t know why Vasudev, Subhash, Shaileshwar, Pradeep didn’t want to make a book about Avni Daar’s stories. Avni too, went with Vasudev to Sonagachi and paid for sleeping with Baby-Meera-Deepti and drawing money, did not think of bringing out the book. Sharmi Pandey agreed to publish Avni’s book, I wrote an introduction. Sharmi Pandey is very upset because she is not having children, she is doing various tests in various hospitals, she is very busy. Despite that, he took out the book with interest. Avni Dhar came to give me a copy, said that the name of the book has changed from “One Shot” to “One Shot”. I said Sharmi must be like me. As a reward for bringing out the book, Sharmi got a beautiful baby, named “Rupkatha”. great I came to know that Avni Dhar is dead from her son’s phone.
seven
In 1944 the ganjedis of Imlitla refused to believe that Dhabdhabe was a white pig and its meat was better to eat than a dishi black pig, they thought I was yorkiing, “Ha ha ha hamnike burbak samaj lail ka babua”. I therefore did not break their mistake that the sun does not revolve around the earth; I know that when their grandsons start going to school, they will sit with furrowed brows.
In 1965 in Benares, the Hindi translation of my poem “Jakham”, done by Kanchankumar, was managed to be secretly printed in the government press by the Hindi and Maithili poet Nagarjuna. When I took the book in my hand, I saw that the lines of the poem were completely messed up. This is the form of my poetry, I said to Nagarjuna, from which you can pick up lines and place them wherever you want, there will be no change in the total poem, your Buddhism’s Chattari Aryasatyani Dukha is the basis of the poem. Nagarjuna died in 1998.
In 1999, Ishwar Tripathi came to Naktala’s flat, with one thousand rupees, wanted to reward me, he was so impressed after reading my “Postphilosophical” article published in ‘Prama’ magazine. I came to give one-to-one rewards as I don’t take rewards, so that no one will know, but the rewards will be given. He left the bouquet of money under the sofa cushion and wanted to leave. I said, I’m not Ramakrishna, I’m not Keshtabishtu of the book market, I don’t take awards for writing, I don’t take felicitations. He fell down, took the money and went down the stairs without saying a word. I got the news of his death quite late. Prabhat Chowdhury of “Kavita Pakshik” newspaper also offered congratulations, again I have to say that I am not in this. Maybe he didn’t like it; Since then my writings are not printed in his newspaper.
Rats were burnt and eaten in gatherings of the Ganjedis of Imlitla; In 1945, I didn’t eat the whole thing, I thought I would vomit, but I tasted a little bit in my mouth, the smell of beet pulp, I vomited. Dada ate and watched, hurriedly. Fast food training in Imlitala. Those who live now may drink English wine.
In 1962, I went to the house of Shiuchander, a colleague of the Reserve Bank, in his village Chhapauli. They have a lot of land, goats, oxen, cows, buffaloes and horses. I was put on the back of a mare, the mare had no saddle, they were controlling the mare by whistling, I stood rubbing under my penis, the guys knew what was going to happen, so they kept on whistling, and when I started to ejaculate, I grabbed the mare’s neck, mare’s. I made a personal love history by loving like this. Shiuchander died twenty years ago. He had to quit his job at the Reserve Bank because of the poisonous smell of the notes and contagious diseases.
At night, in the room where the Shiuchanders let me sleep in Bardeuri, suddenly a Bihari young woman was pushed into it and Shiuchander’s father said, “Le re Babua, desi ghori par chadha”. The girl’s smell gave me chills, I opened the door and said, go and run away. I was pretty good. Sexual activity can also cause fear in women.
I bought a Fiat car in Mumbai in 1989 with a loan from the office. I hit a truck while reversing, smashing the back of the car. To take it to the dealer, said, Seventy-five percent of people who go out for a drive when they buy their first car, you’re lucky you didn’t hit someone from the front.
From 1989 to 1994, I used to reach Nariman Point from Santacruz Flat every morning for half an hour, sitting on Marine Drive and enjoying the breeze. I used to travel to different places. Now in Mumbai it is impossible to drive so many cars, now it takes three to four hours to go from Santacruz to Nariman Point. In 1995, it was very difficult to drive a car in Calcutta because I used to stay in the street and the CPM party would stand in the middle of the public road. gave People did not understand that in a few days they will be overthrown from the mattress. Often the clutch was bad. I sold the car.
In 2000, I also sold a flat on Naktala to a person who used to write “Harmad” in the middle of his name to CPM. As soon as Mamata Banerjee sat on the mattress, she fled to the grassroots with Sangopangos. Said, what, in the end made Harmad sad, joined the Trinamool; In response, he spread his pettiness in the mouth with a heh heh heh. The building was fifty years old.
The 2016 incident, with another Harmad, is Chiranjeev Bose, with ‘Harmad’ in his name. I gave this quote from Jibanananda’s “Andhakar” poem on Facebook: “I want to sleep again in the breast of darkness in the vagina.” Chiranjeev commented, “Why do you write so modern but Baal ‘Vitar’?” There were many other comments, everyone thought, the line is mine. It was not difficult to understand that the Bengali public had given up reading Jeebananda. Reading the comments, I remembered the words of Kriti Ghosh, the young editor of the “Kalki” newspaper, ‘Jhant jjane jae. Well, what are the girls? How unromantic. If you apply depilatory and stick it on the place, the body will sing.
After my second heart attack in Mumbai in 2000, when I was in Titu Hallum at Nanavati Hospital, the cardiologist told my wife, collect three lakh rupees quickly, the bye may have to pass. After my first heart attack, I underwent angioplasty. Even if you want three lakh taka, you can’t deposit it in the hospital like a toilet or a toilet. I passed through Calcutta. Prabhat Chowdhury brought Bhumendra Guha after hearing the news of my heart attack, before that I did not know Bhumendra Guha. He cured me in one month, used to write prescriptions in Bengali, bought a weighing scale and blood pressure machine for me; Instead I had fish fry and scotch. He used to visit once every week. He suddenly stopped coming. Maybe thinking that the body is bad, I went to his house, did not behave well, threw away the prescription-report etc. I came back quietly, upset. Once Mader Ghore said that in the government hospital X-ray did not survive his sperms, so no more children. Dada later learned on the news that Sunil Gangopadhyay had told Bhumendra Guha, “What is there to do with Malay, he has no literary qualities.” This is what Sunil Gangopadhyay said to Marathi writer-translator Ashok Sahane, to Marathi dramatist Dilip Chitre, to English poet Adil Jussawala. And Allen Ginsberg.
I came to know about the death of Bhumendra Guhar on Facebook.
In 1962, I wrote a play called “Illat”, which was read and praised by Sandeepan Chatterjee, who gave it to be published in “Bahurupi” magazine. After some time, Kumar Roy said, “There is no imagination, no shadow of modernity”. I took it back and gave it to Nripen Saha of “Gandharva” newspaper. He read it and said he would print it, but in the end he didn’t print it. When he brought the manuscript back, I saw that he had placed a tea cup or a beer bottle on it, a coin. First rejection of my manuscript. On my return, I started a magazine called “Zebra” and published it. Subhash and Vasudev’s Hingse Hall drama read. The main criterion to know whether my writing was published was the violence of the four-fourths of the Hungry Movement. I saw the fierce smile on their teeth and realized that the play was well written.
After a long time, Pranavkumar Chattopadhyay, the editor of ‘Chandramikma’ magazine, who writes stories under the name Pankaj Chattopadhyay, contacted a publishing house called ‘Gangchil’ and tried to republish my published books. I made a list of the articles to be published. Samshar Karndhar Adhir Biswas published a collection of essays in 2016, but has not published another collection. But he had already composed three novels and interviews. After leaving it for one and a half years, he said not to take out my book. Pranavkumar Chattopadhyay bought the CDs from Adhir Biswas with the cost of DTPing. I found it quite humiliating. He didn’t want to reveal any more because the NTTs who had left Bakasur’s eggs to rescue my fourteen men started smelling rotting corpses on Adhir Biswas’s neck. I came to know that the newspaper group which people consider to be an institution, he did not go forward under the pressure of their khochars, meanwhile he did not bother to bring out the books of Subimal Mishra and Subhash Ghosh. On the one hand, it should also be called rejection. Rejection can also be gratifying, as it easily exposes the institutionalized nooses built against the author.
I did angiography three times in 1990, 1997, 2000, angioplasty once in 1997. Every time a nurse cleaned the forest around Nunu. Then, during angiography and angioplasty, some young nurses moved Nunu around. Their behavior seemed to have become a habit of making jokes with different kinds of salt. In their hands Nunu’s character had changed, it was no longer gender; It took a few months for Nunu to become a lingam after returning from the hospital.
In 1997, when I was in the ICU of Peerless Hospital in Kolkata for about twenty days, I wrote about the kind of slaughterhouse that used to be there in the novel “Naamgandha”. I was the head of the office at that time, and in the afternoon an officer was taken and admitted, suffering from hepatitis B, the administrative in charge called in the middle of the night to ask how he was doing, I fell while picking up the phone in my sleep and my left ear was bleeding on the corner of the bed, blood pressure Went down, Salila called a taxi and took him to the hospital and admitted him. After sewing the ears, the doctors said that the ECG was taken, it seems that there is a blockage in the heart. As a result, first angiography and then angioplasty. In the ICU, every day some young nurse would eat lunch and dinner, with great care, the nurse called the girls in the hospital. The touch of a young girl’s finger inside my mouth probably made me ecstatic in fifteen days. It seemed that there is no more joy than hugging them and sleeping, you can’t have sex with them, you can cuddle them and put your head on your chest.
In 1988, Marathi poet Arun Kolatkar said that there was a ‘naked statue’ at the corner of the street where his house is. I got down from the bus and searched for naked statues and naked idols. I searched for an hour but when I didn’t find the whereabouts, I searched for someone. Where does Arun Kolatkar live? He said, Marathi poet? Let’s show. Kolatkar died in 2004. He married a Parsi girl. They did not have children because he would be in trouble if he had a child. Lived in a small house. Everything is under the bed, if you pull out the dining table, the writing table. He used to write poetry sitting on the edge of the house. He did not mix with anyone.
In the year I was born, in 1939, a month before my birth, the Second World War began, tension in the world, darkness at night. Everyone in the house cursed my birth, for fear of second war and bombs and famine, relatives and friends from Calcutta also came to our house. From then on, Barajatha tied the four legs of his lungi and started buying vegetables from the Musallapur market, hanging them on the handlebars of his bicycle. Imlitla’s house had no electricity and no running water. Everyone had to go to the street tap to bathe, bring food and water.
A few years after I left Imlitla neighborhood, when I went to that neighborhood, many people could not recognize me, but the four dogs of the neighborhood, Moti, Tiger, Bhutua, Diler, who are old and have almost grown hair, came running and started shaking their laze when they saw me. All four dogs died; They were buried in the yard of Ganjedi. In 1966, after the death of Barojyatha, Barojethima was alone in Imlitla’s house for a few days, cooking on the stove, pumping the stove saying “Hari heh hari heh hari heh”. After ten years in Imlitla, before introducing myself, I asked Kapil’s aunt, where did this Bengali guy go. Kapil’s aunt, not recognizing me, said, Bhasmasura’s clan, all of them have been burnt to ashes by their own eyes. The race of demons! What Bengalis call Bhasmalochan, Biharis call Bhasmasur. In Imlitla’s house, there was a photo of the big Jethima, with her blouse on both sides, showing her topless, because no one else in the house had her size bra, only Kalutua’s aunt in the neighborhood, copper, not pink-fair like Jethima. I don’t know who picked it up, maybe father, maybe an uncle, maybe Mez-Jyatha. If I had the photo with me, I could have shown it to the beautician Abu Saeed Ayyub, “Look at this, sir, my great-grandmother.” He could understand that I am a product of Kemandhara family.
eight
In 1968, three days after I met Salila, I said, “I want to marry you. Who should I talk to about this matter?” He said with uncles. Epiphany was proud of the nomination. In 1968, after seeing the cup and shield arranged in Solilad’s house, I found out that they were Solila’s. It was quite a pleasure not to look like a typical Bengali girl.
At Imlitla’s house, mother is cooking most of the time in the kitchen, on two earthen stoves, there is no special sound of utensils. How many flavors of cooking. Cooking with kerosene lamps at night, mother’s face in the light of Unon. The kitchen was so dark with black ink that it had to be painted with rum juice every six months. Mother loved the kitchen more than all the rooms. Long before Jackson Pollock, my mother had painted the kitchen wall with a paintless painting of ‘yellow-lacquered darani dripping from the pan onto the wall.’ Mother did not wear sindoor unless there was a religious ceremony, she also advised Salila that if you wear sindoor every day, your hair will dry and fall out, so there is no need to wear it, there is no need for shells. As a result, Salila finished the vermilion-conch jute immediately after the wedding. But whenever a Bengali Bamun family comes to visit our house, they wear a tip and vermilion, because some do not miss an opportunity to listen.
Salila stopped visiting Dada’s house for some time, fearing the conservative tittering of Baudi’s Shaliras, who live in Bansdroni near Dada’s house. When I have finalized the sale of the ground floor flat, I told my grandfather, rent your upper floor to us, I will pay the market rate, wife said, rent one floor somewhere and go. Necessarily came to Mumbai. Dada’s younger son Bitu asked Dada why our upper floor was not rented, in reply Dada told him that there would be problems later. Dada was probably afraid that since I and my sons and daughters did not make any claim on the house in Patna, I might not want to leave if I stayed on the upper floor. If I was on the upper floor, I would not have allowed my grandfather to be admitted to the bad Marwari hospital, I would not have let him die early.
In 1950 in Rammohan Roy Seminary, I cracked my head and fainted in a stone throwing game, the scar is still there. Signs of infection. After reading the negative criticism, I forgot the negotiator with my hand on the scar on my forehead. When my father died, I was not naked during the Shraddha. After some time I felt so sorry for my father that I saw a saloon and went straight into it, and on my way back I stood in the street and cried. It felt good to stand among the pedestrians and cry, which is not the case with collective mourning. After I moved from Patna to Lucknow, Dada’s family moved to Patna. As the elder son could not get good results in studies, he was put in the shop. Father came to me in Lucknow. When the mother died in Lucknow, the father went back to Patna for a while, then went to the home of Chhotokaka or Bishekhuro in Bhadrakali, Kotrang, thinking that he would spend the rest of his life in West Bengal. Chotokaka was a very busy man, he gave the land bought by his father to his grandmother and registered it in his own name. At the end, the house in Patna can be written down to the father and the grandfather takes the father to Patna. I did not bring my father to Mumbai, it remains the only regret of my life.
My father Ranjit Roy Chowdhury was born in present day Lahore city of Pakistan, in 1912. Influenced by the gossip about Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab, Grandmother gave Baba such a name. Ranjit Singh was born on 13th November 1780. Father was also born on 13th November. Father was the third or sage brother among six brothers and one sister. While the other brothers had both clothes and nicknames, the father had only one name, Ranjit. Thakurda’s original residence was in Uttarpara of Hooghly district. In 1709, Dadu’s ancestor Ratneshwar Raychaudhuri founded the city of Uttarpara.
Thakurda Lakshminarayan Roy Chowdhury could paint portraits, and on that basis he used to travel from one royal court to another in India with his family at the invitation of various royal families. Going to Lahore, he learned to take pictures with a daguerreotype camera, so that it would be convenient to take pictures from them and not have to sit in a row of royal women. Rudyard Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, was the principal of the Mayo School of Arts and curator of the Lahore Museum at the time, and he learned photography from him by meeting and working under him. Photographs were taken directly on bromide paper. Later, negative film was taken on a glass plate, the negative was immersed in chemicals to develop the photograph; Then the photographic paper was placed on the plate, the photo was printed by showing the necessary light, and the print was dipped in chemicals, dried, and certified.
Daguerreotype cameras were quite heavy; He needed people to carry him when he went out to take pictures. As it was being taken outside, many photos were taken together and the best ones were made. Photographs were taken by placing the camera on the camera stand. At the time of photographing, the lens cover was opened by hand, ‘smile please’ and the lens was put back in a second or two. If you want to take photos in the studio, at first you had to take pictures with the light of 1000-2000 watt bulbs, but later the size of the bulbs got smaller. Now technology has advanced so much that the daguerreotype sounds prehistoric. Baba could not see this digital technology. As a child, I used to see him going outside the city to take pictures with the camera box on Ramkhelaon Singh’s shoulder, the camera himself with a three-stick stand and a black thick cloth to cover his head. When I left the house in Patna after my father died, I saw a three-storied room full of glass plates, stacked on wooden racks. What happens if there is no sense of history, neither I nor Dada tried to preserve them. Grandfather’s sons sold the glassware at the price of weight.
Grandfather started a traveling photography business in 1886 when his sons also took up photography and painting, and named the company ‘Raychoudhury & Co’. In Hooghly district, there was a road on the side of Uttarpara along the river Ganges where the flyover is now adjacent to the Bali Bridge, an office was opened there and asked to run it. But Nakaka couldn’t handle it, due to sudden depression due to his wife’s affair. Because of grandfather’s wanderings, elder, elder, father, Pisima and Nakakar did not go to school. After grandfather’s sudden death, his sons were forced to settle in Patna and then the new uncle and Bishekhuro mean younger uncle were admitted to school. Nahunkaka attended school regularly, but Chotokaka was not interested, so he left his studies. The education of the elder brothers was the contribution of the teachers of the royal courts. Dadu could read and write Sanskrit and Persian. Father had mastered the English language.
Dadu was at various times in Kabul-Kandahar in Afghanistan and Bahawalpur, Chitral, Hunza, Phulra, Makran and Lahore in Pakistan. After the start of the British war in Afghanistan, he moved to Lahore. I heard from Barajetha that the portrait of Amir on the postage stamps of Bahawalpur at that time was painted by his grandfather. Although my grandmother and my father’s brothers adapted themselves to eating the meat and dry meat of goats, sheep, dumbas etc. in that region, my father could not, and he became a vegetarian for the rest of his life. I heard from my father that after seeing the meat of cow, buffalo, yak and cut camel hanging in the market, he could not eat meat anymore, so he became a vegetarian. Dumba is a type of sheep that grows extra meat at the place of the tail, and the extra tail meat, according to Barajetta, was very tasty.
My grandfather Kishorimohan Bandyopadhyay, a resident of Panihati, North Twenty-four Parganas, met his grandfather through photography. Kishoremohan was a co-researcher with Ronald Ross, who discovered the source of malaria. After Ronald Ross returned home, Kishori Mohan used to show magic lantern slides in villages to promote the cause and prevention of malaria. Dadu made these slides. Kishori Mohan gave his father’s marriage to his elder daughter Amita. Mother was 14 years old and father was 18 years old at the time of marriage. There is information about Kishoremohan on Wikipedia and elsewhere on the net. Although the father himself was a vegetarian, he did not force the mother to follow his dietary preferences; My grandfather and I are both vegetarians. Dadu used to go back to Uttarpara every year during Durga Puja; During that time, he also completed the work of marrying the boys.
When Dwarbhanga Maharaj’s family members were called to paint, Dadu’s family went to Patna, where he died of a heart attack. The whole family was dependent on the grandfather; Grandma is in danger of dying. In Patna, they rented a mud-walled tile house and tried to earn money in various ways, but could not succeed. In front, open. On the recommendation of Grandmother’s first cousin, the writer Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay, co-curator of the Calcutta Museum, the elder brother got a fourth-class job in the Patna Museum. Later, however, he got promoted due to his merits and became the ‘Keeper of Paintings and Sculpture’ of the Patna Museum. Barajetha was skilled in making clay idols and oil-painting. When I was a child, I used to wander from one end of the museum to the other on holidays, from prehistory to Mohenjodaro in Choukath Dingo, from there to the reign of Ashoka!
When the grandfather died, the grandmother went to live in the Uttarpara homestead, which had become dilapidated by neglect, the financial burden of the family fell entirely on the father’s shoulders. Grandmother told the boys and their brothers that my mother would take care of the family. For whatever reason, the nature and behavior of Mejjetha, Nakaka and Bishekhuro were such that we heard in childhood that they were somewhat unnatural, half-mad. They had little interest in shop work; They really found the abnormality affected by the dangerous wonder of artistry. Mejjetha used to wake up in the afternoon, then have snacks by buying Luchi potato curry from a shop standing on the street, never combing her hair, coming home after brushing her teeth and reaching the shop in the afternoon, and sitting in front of a photo, she would pose in a wonderful picture painted by Maskhane. Nakaka used to get up very early in the morning, addressed everyone, even the children, as ‘you’, did not speak to his wife in particular, was not in the habit of wearing shoes, wore a black dhoti, cut his own dhoti-shirt, went to the shop at some point to get it home from his father. He used to bring ‘work’. In the middle of the night, Chotokaka used to take undressed photos of Chotokakima in various poses and went to the shop to help his father and entered the darkroom to print those ‘apsara’ photos. When he left Pakapaki in Uttarpara, he forgot to take the albums with him in a hurry. Pistuto Dada and I invented them. Chotokaka died at the age of 90, childless; Part of the Uttarpara house has been given to Choto Shala’s first-born daughter.
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Father used to go out early in the morning and return late at night. As he had to do photography, selling goods and darkroom work alone, he used to go straight to the darkroom after having breakfast in the morning, then after closing the shop at night, he would enter the darkroom again. He had no rival in Bihar at that time, so it was not difficult to get work. The special feature of both mother and father is to get along with everyone. Even though father was the breadwinner of the house, he treated his brothers and their sons and daughters, that is, our younger brothers and sisters, as equals. Great-grandfather Imlitala used to pay house tax and buy vegetables, father used to spend all the rest, send money to grandmother, pay house tax in Uttarpara. Once a month, father used to give the chaff shopkeeper a paper made by his mother on his way to the shop and he would send it to Imlitla’s house. For the clothes of the family members, the father asked the tailor to go to his shop and give measurements, he would make them and send them home. Similarly there was an arrangement with the shoe shop. The barber used to come once a month to cut his hair, then he would collect money from his father.
In Imlitla’s house, the room where my parents, grandfather and I lived was the smallest room in the house. Had to study by lantern light. There were no chairs and tables, there was a business of keeping books to get sheets on the packing box in which the goods of the shop came. Presuming that the bad reputation of the neighborhood might affect Dada, Dada was sent from Panihati to Calcutta in 1949 after matriculation. He got admission in Dada City College in Calcutta. Sunil Gangopadhyay, Deepak Majumdar, Anand Bagchi etc. young poets as friends in college. When Dada got a job in the fisheries department of the Bihar government, his friends used to reach his posting alone or in groups. As a child, I once ate tadi, which was fed to me by a public grandpa in the neighborhood. Mother had shackled me in our house after smelling the smell of tadi in my mouth; When father returned home at night, the shackles were opened. Mother always feared that we two brothers might become people of anti-social character like Mejda. But there was no ban on socializing in the neighborhood. Many people have memories of going into the bedroom and hiding under the bed while playing thief-police.
Imlitla’s house had no water tap; The elder brother used to go to the office, if the person to fill the water did not come, when the father came from the shop in the afternoon, many times he would fill his own water from the faucet for bathing. He used to bathe in cold water even in winter. Dada and I fetched water from the street tap in Imlitala and bathed in the street tap. Father’s order was that we have to do all the housework, if necessary, breaking coal and cleaning the stove, throw away the garbage. Father was shy to bathe in the street tap. By 2005-2008, I used to fill Pepsi bottles with drinking water from the streets of Kolkata, because rickshaws did not want to climb three floors with a heavy tin of water or a big bottle of mineral water. Sometimes I went to my grandfather’s house and filled two bags with Pepsi bottles and I and my wife Salila took a rickshaw to Naktala’s house. Due to all these difficulties, I had to sell the ground floor flat and move to a one-room flat in Mumbai.
Baba always wore white punjabi, dhoti and ankle boots. Although his brothers wore shirts or panjabis of colors other than white, father’s attire was not different, except in winter, when he wore a brown shawl, or woolen panjabis of that color. In the rush to go to the shop, father had become a habit of walking fast. Twice in Imlitla his leg was broken on the way to the shop; Father’s broken leg means a very dangerous situation financially; Dada had to go and sit in the shop. Even if an unemployed friend’s son was brought from Uttarpara, it would be so difficult for them to adapt to the non-Bengali environment that they would go back within a few days. After going to Dariyapur, when my father broke his leg again, I worked as a shopkeeper. What happens if you are poor, the pace is only in government hospitals, there are queues, because there were no private nursing homes at that time; Now every street has a bone doctor. Barajethi’s girlfriend’s husband was a carpenter; As his leg was broken, according to Jethima’s girlfriend, a wooden sheath was made by a carpenter and tied to his father’s leg. The sheath made the first time worked the second time.
The owner of the shop which was in front of Bihar National College gave a notice to vacate. Looking for an alternative, he bought a house in Dariyapur on the then Bari Road; It was a blacksmith’s squat house, with a small plot of land at the back and side, a ganja bush. This area was also a neighborhood of the poor at that time, a neighborhood of Sunni Muslims with past problems. The case against the owner of the shop which was in front of Bihar National College went on for several years; On that occasion, shops were built in Dariyapur. When it was ready, father moved to Dariyapur after wrapping up the old shop. Old customers used to come to Dariyapur due to the reputation of ‘Raychoudhury & Co’. Now Dada’s eldest son, Hridesh, has changed the name of the shop as suggested by the Japanese company.
When the shop was being built in Daryapur, I used to live alone in that house, because it was quite difficult to sit and read due to the shouting and quarreling of the daily drunkards of Imlitla. Moreover, Daryapur had electricity and running water. Father did not give money for children’s expenses; He used to say tell me what you want, I will buy it. Dad never gave ‘good’ to anyone in the annual school result report. Even if he got marks in his nineties, he would not give them; Said to get more. After a year, mother and father used to come to sleep at night, assuming that if I was alone in the house of Dariyapur, my character might be corrupted. Mother used to bring dinner in tiffin carrier. During the day I had to go to Imlitala to eat. It cannot be said that a few acts of depravity did not happen with friends when he was alone in the Daryapur house.
Both father and mother were not interested in going to temples and offering pujas or doing pilgrimages etc.; I think he got rid of the pressure of work. Later, after leaving the shop, the father took refuge in Hinduism and God. I have never seen my parents visiting the pilgrimage site. None of the older cousins were interested; If they wanted to go outside of Patna, they used to go only to the country house, i.e. to Uttarpara. However, father used to change pait regularly, eat luchi on Ekadashi day. Kali at Kalighat is our family deity, since it was established by one of our ancestors, so there was no need to have a family deity at home. The elder and younger brothers used to wear it as a necklace, although they did not follow any restrictions on eating, the elder sometimes wore it and sometimes kept it in a niche. Grandfather and I had to swim in childhood but we came to Swarup before the end of the year and gave Jalanjali. The father does not seem to have been debilitated by being penniless; Never said anything about this.
Mother, father and teacher, the three people who form the direction of individual life, the role of mother and father in my life is the main. In fact I never got a teacher when it was necessary. At the primary level, I got Sister Irene and Father Hillman at the Catholic Convent. Sister Irene used to take care of all the things described in the books of her childhood so that she could see with her own eyes and when she went to her native Ireland, she would collect many things, take them to the farm near the school and let them see fruits, flowers, trees and animals. I was admitted to the convent by the courtesy of Father Hillman; He loved to take pictures and became friends with my father, when he found me in a shop and took me to a transition class at the age of three and a half; One day a week, he took the Bible class to the church and told the stories of the Old and New Testaments. Later when I joined Class Six in Brahmo School Rammohan Seminary, I did not bond with any of the teachers; The person who got me interested in Bengali literature in this school was librarian Namita Chakraborty, author of my novel ‘Rahuketu’.
What I got from my mother and father was honesty, the character of fighting single-mindedly in support of one’s beliefs. Baba was honest even as a shopkeeper, which is unimaginable today. Not only was he honest, but he had courage. During the Hungry Movement, when my friends wrote bonds against me and became witnesses in the court case, and the fight became my own, then I realized the importance of my mother and father’s contribution in shaping my character. Baba went to Lalbazar in Calcutta and argued with the police commissioner that why such a lawsuit was filed and then it was known that the complaints of some social workers-intellectuals of Calcutta, who are called the bearers of the establishment, were behind it. During the course of the litigation, the father used to come from Patna several times to the Bankshall Court in Calcutta after closing his shop for a day or two. I have never seen any of the families of those who were arrested with me and became witnesses for the government to save their skins; That is, they could not support their son’s literary work.
Although father was the center of power in our house, he did not discipline any of the children. When complaints were made to him, he would say, “No, he will make amends.” Then he used to say to the person against whom the complaint was made, “What, will you fix it?” You’ve grown up, learn to make amends.” The elder brother used to rule, not by himself, but if the elder brother-in-law complained, he would get annoyed. The two eldest daughters got married in my childhood. The father arranges the marriage of the daughters of the eldest and cousins, who are growing old in their artistic indifference; Besides, there was also the issue of wedding expenses. Meenakshi, one of Mejjetha’s daughter, wanted to marry a Bihari boy, Mejjetha said; Because of Mejjetha’s disapproval, even though his father convinced him, he did not agree. Baba did not want to insult Mejjetha by opposing him. At the end, he gave me money and told me to go and pay where they want to get married. When my younger Ramla wanted to marry a young man, her guardians in Nagpur did not agree, then she was also married from Dariyapur house. Ramla died of a heart attack in 2016.
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While Dada was posted at Chaibasa, he met Sudheer Chattopadhyay’s daughter Bella, and Dada immediately agreed to go to Patna and tell her father about the marriage. Dada actually fell in love with Montidi, a literary-loving married young lady of the house, both Montidi and Dada intend to maintain the relationship. Dada married Bela so that he would have a permanent connection with the family. Shakti Chattopadhyay has written in detail about this in his novel ‘Kinnar Kinnari’.
I went to Nagpur for office work and after a few days of acquaintance, her parents agreed to propose marriage to Salila Mukhopadhyay, a state level hockey player and colleague. Father also gave his approval in telegram. After a few days of acquaintance, mother and father used to say about this marriage, “You are a revolutionary marriage, the families did not have to melt their heads, they did not have to make love after weeks of sunshine and rain, by the way, one said to marry the other, and did it.”
I was trying to write, after my mother found out about it, in 1958, my father gave me an expensive diary of the Agfa-Gevert company, and I started writing poetry in it. When he came to know that he wanted to build a collection of favorite English language books at home, his father used to tell him to make a list of books. I used to go to bookstores and get books that I like. Dada used to bring Bengali books, especially poetry books from Calcutta. Later I got a lot of books and magazines from foreign friends. During the hunger strike, the Calcutta police came to arrest me and threw my books around the house. He broke the glass cupboard of his father’s shop. The old banarasi of her wedding was torn from the folds during the vandalism of the mother’s wedding pylon. But when the police took me along the road with a rope around my waist and handcuffs, I saw my father very upset, which he was not usually. As a child I ran away from home several times; When he came back, he did not think that the father was upset; He did not ask me anything about this. Later, told my daughter that I ran away from home without telling them.
In April 1963, Allen Ginsberg came to our Dariyapur house for a few days. He traveled to different cities and took photos of several films and gave them to his father to develop. Baba developed and saw that Ginsberg only took photographs of the poor, the beggars, the poor, the sick people on the side of the road, the lepers. Then he had a small quarrel with Ginsberg. Dad told Ginsberg, “No matter how great a poet-writer you are, you want to see our country like this; Why? Isn’t there anything else to photograph!” All of the Ginsburg researchers who came to meet with me told me about this incident, but none included this debate in their writings. Later, at home in Patna or in Calcutta, when foreigners came, I would tell them that if you have taken photos, go back home and develop and print them.
My mother was born in 1916, in Panihati. Mother’s nickname is Bhulti. The mother’s father, Kishoremohan Bandyopadhyay, belonged to a fifty-one-year-old family named ‘Neelambati’ on Ramchand Ghat Road in Panihati. Kishori Mohan was, in Calcutta and Secunderabad, an assistant to Dr. Ronald Ross, who diagnosed the cause of malaria and won the Nobel Prize in 1902. For his contribution, Kishori Mohan was awarded the Emperor Edward VII Gold Medal during the Delhi Durbar in 1903. In their 2013 paper ‘The Flying Public Health Tool: Genetically Modified Mosquitoes and Malaria Control’ (Science as Culture, Lancaster, UK), Professors Uli Bijel and Christophe Boett stated that Kishorimohan’s name was not recommended with Ronald Ross due to her being a native of the colony. He sold his wife’s jewelry and ancestral property for social service, and spent the savings to become bankrupt, and died a few years after his mother’s marriage.
After the power of the family is concentrated in the hands of the mother, Kishori Mohan, hidden in the role of the mother, comes out. I would often see the neighbors of Imlitla coming to tell their mother about their financial woes and family woes, and she would help them, not only with money, but also with rice and pulses, old utensils and used clothes. As my mother’s sisters were married in a poorer family, he did not wear the sari-chatti etc. found in the puja, but sent them to his sisters or poor acquaintances at the auction house or took them with him when he went. Although the mother was the de facto head of the family, in Imlitala’s house, my mother, father, grandfather and I lived in the smallest room. Study by lantern light.
Due to his character of getting along with everyone, Barajetha used to consult his mother on all matters of the family. I remember, in the year 1951 when the first general election was held, after the discussion about which party to vote for, everyone accepted the mother’s decision, that is, vote for whichever party you want. Being in the theater in Kolkata, it was surprising to see that the party that the head of the house is a supporter of, the whole family votes for that party, but they are the ones who argue about dynastic politics!
On admission to school, I realized that mother did not know pure Hindi, Imlitla’s ‘small talk’ had taken over the bully, and that many of her words were indecent, even obscene in pure Hindi, as she found out much later, when we left Imlitla and moved to the Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Dariyapur. . Mother is illiterate because there was no school for girls in Panihati; Dada educated himself after enrolling in school.
The task of managing Hinduism in Imlitla’s house was that of the eldest son from the priestly house. That’s why mother and aunts were able to free themselves and us from the daily rituals. I attended Catholic school at the primary level thanks to the financial support of a priest; Mother used to iron my shirts and pants by filling the kettle with hot water. I was admitted to Brahmo School in class six on the instructions of my mother as my Bengali skills were getting lost.
Even after Pakapaki moved to Daryapur, she did not leave the responsibility of the members of Imlitla; He used to go one day a week and handle the matter of money and rice-dal-grains. If I gave the list to a Bania shop on Gola Road, he would send all the items to Imlitla and Daryapur. At the time of Puja, to meet the differences in dress, there was a shirt and frock of the same cloth for everyone, even the elder uncles wore that cloth shirt. After my grandfather got a job, my mother used to spend a week’s vacation at his workplace. My aunt used to cook at Dariyapur’s house. As my father did not eat rice cooked by the hands of the lower castes, I would sit the rice myself. As I had to help my mother in cooking, I also learned to cook dal and curries.
Mother, who was of a very oppressive nature, could not control her anger when she heard that grandfather and my friends had become witnesses against me in court during the hunger strike. Seeing that I was tearing up their letters, etc., he said, ‘Take everything and fall in the box of Guer; Everything is so strange, ungrateful.’ He was the main encourager of my and my grandfather’s writing. The poem called ‘The Great Electric Carpenter’ was read by parents and grandparents. We were not so familiar with the symptoms of heart disease then, mother did not talk about her suffering. He died on 18th November 1982 due to heart attack in Lucknow.
Since 1950, Chintum Fanishwarnath Renu, a Hindi-language writer, was admitted to a nursing home in Bhomarpokhar, Patna, when he was wounded fighting against the Ranas of Nepal, right in front of Baradid’s house. Latikadi was a nurse there. Didn’t know I write. He came to know after his arrest in 1964, and wrote about us regularly in Hindi newspapers, while Bengali newspapers were beating us. Renu inspired SH Vatsayan Agnoya too, and he too took up the pen for us. In Renu’s book “Bantulsi ka Gandha” in the prose named “Rampathak ka Diary” he discussed the hunger strike at length. I often used to go to his house in Rajendranagar to have alcohol in the evening, I used to take ganja, quite a lot, our chats, many young Hindi poets-writers also came. On arrival in the morning, tadi was eaten by spreading cardamom powder on the tadi. Renu died in 1977. Latikadi was taken to the village by the sons of Renu’s first wife, and died there.
In 1965, Hindi poet Ramdharisingh Dinkar called his house, his huge house on the way to Renu’s house, an MP till 1964, just back from Delhi, saying, “I have heard about you and support your revolution.” A little surprised to hear him use the word revolution, he said he was a “bad Gandhian” because when betrayal is needed, one cannot bind oneself to Gandhism. He said, “I will tell about you wherever I am called to give a speech.” As a result of his speech, many Hindi newspapers published my photo and the news of the hunger movement. Dinkar died in 1974.
In 1964 I went to meet Tarashankar’s Tala house, Tarashankar’s maternal uncle Patna, they said to meet, Tarashankar wants to talk with us. I gave him our bulletins. kept While giving a speech in Medinipur, he spoke against the Hungry movement. Later when I told Ramdhari Singh Dinkar about Tara Shankar’s speech, Dinkar said, “Wah purane khyalatke hanay, janta hun unhe.”
Around 1975, when I went to meet Devi Roy in Calcutta, Devi told me that Annadashankar Roy wanted to meet me. I don’t know why they didn’t want to meet in 1964-65. I can’t write then, I couldn’t think of writing any words. I went to his house. A Bangladeshi poet named Rafiq Haider was in his house, but it seems that he did not listen to our movement, perhaps by then the movement had moved from Calcutta to North Bengal and Tripura. Annadashankar said by himself, I did not understand why Devi and the audience wanted to meet. Devi wrote down his words in a notebook.
In 1948, at the first Nil Down Hithum Rammohan Roy Seminary, on the balcony outside the Hindi sir’s class, his Hindi books drenched in rain and silenced, he said, “Rashtrabhasaka samman karna sikho gadhaha kanhika.” It was raining outside the balcony, I still didn’t know that it was not the national language, but the official language. I saw the donkeys standing quietly and getting wet in the rain, and looking at the people with their umbrellas and smiling.
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In 1988, I was waiting at a bus stand in Lucknow to go on a tour; Suddenly a young subordinate officer who was half my age emerged from nowhere and grabbed my hand and said “let’s run”. I said, I am going to attend the board meeting of Rae Bareli Grameen Bank. The young woman said, “What happened, I will also go with you, I will wait in their office, when the meeting is over, we will disappear somewhere, I have enough money, I am ready to leave.” Hearing, I heard the sound of the hammer in the head and veins. This officer from my department, wearing a Bengali saree and a conch roll, came to the office almost every day, said, “Your wife knows that I love you.” Let’s leave somehow. The girl committed suicide. Survived for my cowardly character, oops. After marriage, I didn’t want to get myself into any trouble, even if I had the chance, I felt that I needed peace, but I caused the chaos myself, the inner Lochcha-loafer bitten me.
In 1990, I fell in love with a dead tigress while surveying native cows in the Terai of the Himalayas. Seeing the pink vagina of the dead tigress was exciting. At night, the tigress was kept in the garage of a Punjabi Sikh with all four legs tied to a bamboo stick. Many an old monk lay down on the tigress’s chest, sucking the milk, and crying, loving the tigress, ejaculating, the passage was comforted. Shankar Chakraborty, co-editor of Kabisanmilan magazine read my poem about this incident; If the imagination of the middle-class Bengali is affected, I can understand that I have been able to fill the nebula of self-doubt by cracking the existence. In fact, their experience is quite limited, seeing India through the eyes of tourists. I wrote a story about it, in Ajit Roy’s ‘Shahar’ magazine, called ‘Dudhsandarbha’.
In 1980, a nanny did not come to take home a beautiful young clerk who was disabled from the waist down. She used to drive a car like a perambulator. I couldn’t think of what to do. Another Muslim officer was with me after office break, he didn’t want to pick up the Hindu girl, Babri Masjid was broken then, I picked her up with my hand on the bottom of the ass, it seemed that the girl wanted to press her vagina with my penis, to take her wheelchair to the wheelbarrow. As time went on my lover-neutral penis swelled, appreciative of the young lady’s gesture. I have a short story about the incident, published in Sukumar Chowdhury’s ‘Khanan’ under the title ‘Weaving of two stories about uncertainty: one of love, the other of comedy’.
In 1949, the first time I stood up on the bench, in English class, while explaining Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils, I pointed to the dried daffodils given to me by Sister Irene and said, “Know, sir, here, take it out of the folds of the book.” The teacher said, “Don’t get a place to hit the yorkie, stand up on the bench.” He explained that the purple flowers of the kachuripana are called daffodils. When I went to Europe, I saw daffodils on the roadside, red flowers that Europeans call poppies, but which are not poppy flowers. In 1949, in the evenings in Daryapur neighborhood, drunken and ganjedi Mastans would start shouting fights, so I would try to memorize by shouting even louder than that. It was the result. The shouting outside would stop. Our house in Daryapur was next to an abandoned graveyard; Allu Mian, the caretaker of Gorestan, built a hut and gave it to his two daughters to do business at night, their sons-in-law worked as brokers, sometimes there was a fight between the father-in-law and the son-in-law over the distribution of money, unspeakable abuse. That was my highest class in swearing after Imlitla.
After Salila quit her job in 1994, I used to take her on a tour to introduce her to West Bengal. When I went to Malda in 1995 and saw the Stambit Holum terracotta mosque, before that no one gave news about these mosques, everyone was talking about the terracotta temple of Bishnupur. Subo Acharya’s home in Bishnupur, when we visited, we saw a terracotta temple, built between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. I went to Malda and learned that the mosques were long before that. Adina Mosque was built by Sultan Sikandar Shah between 1364 and 1375. Lotan Mosque was built in 1475. Tantipara Mosque was built by Mirshad Khan in 1480. Kadam Rasul Mosque was built by Sultan Nusrat Shah in 1531; The caretaker of this mosque showed a footprint and said that it was Hazrat Muhammad’s.Pile was shocked to hear that the Deobandis would eat the man if they found out, he used to cross the border from Bangladesh every morning and return in the evening. Looking at the mosques, I was reminded of the mosque of Imlitla neighborhood of my childhood, we were free to enter inside it, like these mosques.
“Hey, why don’t you come over to my house,” said a gentleman on College Street in 1965, brandishing an umbrella. After Subimal Basak took the address from him and said, “We will go any day”, he said, “Come in the morning.” After he left, Subimal said, “You know who? Jyotirindra Nandy.” Ghelum went down to his house, Maniktala, then a shed far above Al inside Dhankhet, so he ordered. While walking on Al, I realized that at night they use umbrellas as sticks for fear of snakes. When he reached his house, he asked what I had done that everyone was so excited. I told him everything, masks, shoe box reviews, blank paper stories, wedding cards, stenciled drawings, etc. After hearing that he was laughing a lot, when he heard that I gave him a review of the shoe box, he started laughing out loud. He said, “You didn’t close the case because it was wrong, if you don’t, someone will protest face to face.” Now housing after housing in that paddy field. Several famous poets live in that residence-turned-paddy-field. I don’t know if they smell the green smell of the wind blowing in the paddy fields.
In 1998, I was sitting and drinking alcohol at Kedar Bhaduri’s Gangulibagan house. Kedar became serious as soon as a young man entered. The next day, I came to know that the young man was Kedar’s first-born son. Kedar fell in love with a young girl during Tiushani Korba’s time and had sexual relations with her, then he had to marry, divorcing his first wife. The son of the first wife used to come to collect the maintenance money every month. Kedar’s young wife never came to Gangulibagan’s house, one of the neighbors said, “Oh mother, you have a granddaughter too, didn’t you tell me!” The young wife had a daughter, Kedar forbade her to come. After a few pegs, he would say, “You will not understand the great pain, the great pain, the great sorrow, and the agony, I have hidden it in the poem, to whom will I tell, tell it to the poem.” In a forty-page interview of Kedar, Kedar did not want to answer the second party’s wife and the sudden love affair with him. I learned about Kedar’s death on the phone of Uttam Das.
Subimal and I went to Ashok Fakir’s shop in Champahati in 1965, he let us lick opium on betel leaves, very beautiful wife, Buddhist eyes like the women painted on the walls of Ajanta. Ashok Fakir left his wife and went to America with a foreigner. The foreign wife had emailed a few days ago, along with her jattajut, a picture of Ashok Fakir, her and the temple with a Hare Krishna print on the north shoulder, a letter written by Ginsburg, copies of which were sent to Anamika Banerjee in America. The foreigner’s wife said that she has written a book about Ashok Fakir’s stay in America, but no publisher is willing to print it. Ashok Faki used to go to the US consulate to find out who had come to Kolkata and which hotel they were staying at. Hearing Ashok Fakir’s business, the Bengali wife fell in love. His face lit up when he met my lustful eyes. Ashok Fakir died in America. I heard Shyamal Gangopadhyay wrote a novel about Ashok Fakir. Subimal and I danced on the overbridge in heavy rain after eating opium given by Ashok Fakir. Until late at night, at that time Champahati was not crowded with commuters like it is now, the station was completely empty, the platforms were also empty, covered in darkness. Now when the train comes to Champahati, the darkness disappears with the rush of commuters, they all run like opium licks.
I went to Europe in 2007 and tasted a variety of wines. I did not know that wine is made even in churches; I did not notice the difference between the wine of the church and the wine of the company of atheists in France. If liquor is made in any temple in this country, there will be chaos. In fact, the dishes of Imlitla and Khalasitola and a few layers of Bengal have accumulated on my tongue. Dhanyeswari used to call Bengali wine Pisemsha. In 1965, a hippie in Banaras used to make Hanuman out of charas and break his laze and blow it. Another hippie would mix LSD in a glass of Ganges water, stick his tongue out in front of him and drop a few drops. The Ganga has been dirty since then, but the Hindus call it the Holy Ganges, and a couple of hippies used to bathe in that water. Before that, Allen Ginsberg bathed in that dirty water and took photos to show the way for the hippies. When asked to hiss on the banks of the Ganges in Patna, Ginsberg said, your holy river, and you say to hiss on its banks!
In 1981, on a tour of the Chambal region in Lucknow, I met a dacoit named Baba Mustaqeem, who put his hand on my head and said, “Jite Raho”. Due to the blessing of the bandit, the local agricultural official said, no one can harm you in Chambal, you can go to any village you want. Indeed, I have been on Chambal tour many times, in every village the people have been very hospitable, the landlords have given me a hug in the closet of their house. In 1983 I went on a tour to Gorakhpur, I had to offer the trishul in the worship of Shiva in the temple there, which my subordinate officer wanted to do. I was waiting outside in the garden in the shade. Suddenly a shaggy saint, foaming at the corners of his lips, grabbed him and said, “Jo tumse dushmani karega woah tumse pahle mor pata.” When you hear about someone’s death, you are suspicious about him, not because of the words of the saint.
In 1955, when I went to the infantry camp, we got up early in the morning, twenty or thirty of us all dressed as langtos, sat in a circle, played padbar games, drank tea and food with aluminum mugs, got naked together, no shame, all gathered for the opportunity to return to prehistoric times. I used to scream. In 1961, office colleagues Sushil Kumar, Manimohan Mukhopadhyay, Arun Mukhopadhyay and I went to Shimultala together. Four of us had a contest to become naked on a hill at night. Sushil Kumar probably won. The next day, in a small pond or knee-deep, I, Sushil and Arun hid the linga under the water and floated it; Manimohan shouted, “Snake, snake, there are snakes in the water.” Manimohan was henceforth called “Chapargandu”; I got up from the water and said to Manimohan, I wanted to show you the water orchid. The incident is in the novel “Drowning Breath”. Manimohan remembered the water orchid exhibition even in his old age. Sushil died of liver cancer, Manimohan of kidney. Arun has gone crazy with his son-in-law, he was also crazy while working in Reserve Bank Patna, the incident is in my novel ‘Dubjale Jetuku Praswa’. Dada married his eldest son with Manimohan’s daughter. Dada married Arun with one of his own clothes.
On his return from Mumbai in 1995, Gislum was sitting on the floor in his Chetla flat, with a jalchouki in front, a bag beside him, eyeing and sorting through the letters of the readers who had gathered in the “Ajkal” newspaper. I said, why are you wasting your time in these useless activities without writing, for a small amount of money. He said let’s get the matter of the story. He went inside and said something to his wife, and the wife left in a hurry. Just as he was in Kipte, he put on his clothes, locked the door, and said, “Come on, we can go to Sukriti and have tea.” I paid the taxi fare, I paid for the tea-cutlets. It seemed that this one chat was enough, he had run out of wits, when he used to come to Devi Roy’s house in the morning on his bicycle in Howrah to write for Hungri Bulletin. Sandeepan died in 2005. Now being old, I realize that at this age the accumulation of dust in the house is not a matter of importance.
In 1964, at the time of the handcuffs, the ropes around the waist, the face of the police was playing with light, as if they had a monopoly on modernity, as if they only knew what the Enlightenment was. Belting and handcuffing came with the Enlightenment. While walking along the road, the neighborhood dogs also followed me on the Kailash Yatra. In 2011 Sreejith Mukhopadhyay’s film “Baishe Shravan” featured Gautam Ghosh as a mad Hungarian realist poet, Nibaran, whose writing no one wants to print anywhere, a policeman named Rabindranath, who is also the editor of a little magazine, repeatedly requests to print poems on his mobile phone. Shubha was most happy watching the film. Why? Srijit defamed the poet of the Hungry movement, set the book fair on fire and destroyed it. No, Sreejit did not approve of me or any other Hungarian poet, perhaps to appease the establishment by inserting the poet of the Hungarian movement unnecessarily into the story. What can be done except to call the author of the story extremely dishonest. Parambrata, whose name was mentioned in the film, did not have Shaileshwar’s name, and he took his own Takla Gurudev and entered the name as an agitator by giving it to Sreejith, while he became a witness in the case against the movement on bond.
Sreejith’s film showed a little magazine editor as a police stooge, this incident is true. A hunchbacked young man named Pabrit Vallabh used to bring out a little magazine called “Upadrut”, he used to sit with Vasudev Dasgupta in the coffee house, he was a police informer, he used to submit hunger movement bulletins, books etc. to the Lalbazar press section. Vasudeva would occasionally say that it was wrong to send masks, shoe boxes should not have been given, stencil-drawing coffeehouses don’t look right, etc., etc., but I came to know that those words belonged to Pavitra Vallav when Pavitra Vallav stood in the dock as a witness for the police. Bemalum said he knew me, hung out with me at the coffeehouse, asked me to write to him, etc.
twelve
On 7th December 1992, I was in Mumbai, taking a right DK turn from Western Express into Mahim, I saw two groups of people fighting with sticks, swords, spears, guns, no police in sight, I saw people falling on swords, I didn’t go any further, straight back. at home The day before that there was a fight in two places because the Babri Masjid was demolished, but I have never seen such murder before. A direct experience of what a riot is. Fortunately, the car was there, so it was convenient to escape, because I did not see any buses, autos, taxis on the road on the way back, only the cars of the escapees. I don’t know why there is a riot, why a person agrees to be a part of the crowd, goes out to kill people of other communities.
On 12th March 1993, I am the administrative in charge of the office in Ville Parle Building. Some of the subordinate officers took leave saying, “I have work at home”. After a while the female officers came and said that there is a commotion in the city, sir, we want to go home, don’t know what the commotion is, I said ok, go. Then a person from Shiv Sena came and said that, sir, bombs are exploding in the city, some noise has started, maybe the trains and buses may be stopped. I called the head office and found out that, yes, the police informed that bombs have exploded in various places, close the office. The next day I read in the paper that the terrorists had conspired and exploded the bomb, many people died. A few days later, the Janlum case was linked to a mafia follower named Dawood Ibrahim, who had fled to Dubai before the incident. When I remember the incident, I remember the faces of frightened women, some of them died of old age due to deterioration of their health.
In our house, in Imlitala, Daryapur, Uttarpara, there was no restriction on loud stomping and stomping, regardless of big or small, everyone stomped and stomped. I still kick hard, don’t squeeze. Epiphany is proud to say that he can write now. In the literary meetings held in Calcutta, I did not hear anyone stepping, I saw some people raising their hips to one side, breathing poetry. On 30th April 2004 I received a telegram from Sahitya Akademi that they have awarded me for the translation of Dharmaveer Bharti’s “Surajka Satwan Ghora”. Getting hot, I said to myself, “Some idiot suggested my name, the scoundrels know I’m not into these literary trivia”. Before and after that, many people, who were called intelligent, were thought to be stupid. Rejected and immediately sent a letter to Dilum Sahitya Akademi saying, As a matter of principle I do not accept literary and cultural prizes, awards, lotteries, grants, donations, windfalls etc. They deprave sanity. Rejected, Epiphany became proud. Sankh Ghosh did not know that I had rejected the award, he told Pranavkumar Chattopadhyay, so understand, I did not know! Pranab went back and sent a copy to him!
In 1964 Pisemsha, the lawyer selected for the Hungry case, has his office just opposite Sonagachi. He knew their advocate as he was a regular visitor to the area. “Criminal lawyers like that don’t come cheap,” Pisemshay said. Sitting in the lawyer’s house, I saw the entire Krittivas gang headed by Parvathicharan Mukherjee walking in on Saturday. Sentuda once said, let’s go, we will go up to the balcony of the house opposite the house they will enter and see their business. Really so. Standing on the balcony of the second floor of the opposite house, I began to see the effect of Buddhadev Bose’s Badlya book. They have squeezed everything into memoirs like half life, full life, fragment life etc.
In 1976 I was going on tour to Hazaribagh, hired a car, along with my subordinate officer. An office peon, his name is given by Rasik Paswan in the novel “Dubjale Jetuku Praswam” and “Jalanjali”. Actually the peon was a Rajput, Gopal Singh, but due to marrying a Paswan girl, high caste peons did not mix with him, Rajput-Bhumihar officers also looked down on him. He said to drop him at his village, we will be on our way. Asking him to stop the car at a place, he said to go to his village inside the forest. I went with him, I had never seen a village so deep. Reaching an empty place, I saw teenagers getting married. Gopal Singh then said that he “parties in Malaya”. Maoists did not emerge then, Marxist-Leninists were called Malays for short. I will not say that it was not a little uncomfortable to hear. I saw that teenagers and young men are sitting in pairs and a Bengali young man, dirty dhoti-Punjabi, bag on his shoulder, the book from which the mantra is being recited is “Red Book”. I realized that I had bought “Red Book” from Nepal. Adivasi young men and women are getting married by reading English mantras. The young man disappeared after marriage. Gopal Singh did not want to say his name. I have named this young man Atanu Chakraborty in the novel “Dubjale Jetuku Praswam” and “Jalanjali”, although the character of Atanu has elements from my own life with many known friends. Gopal Singh did not return to office after that marriage. I also rushed back to the office to find that we had given him a lift.
In 1965, a hippie named David Garcia came, with the money he had saved working in a shoe shop in Greece, and said he wanted to make love with a Bengali girl. Where can you find a Bengali lover in two days? Be sure to visit Sonagachi, but not in the afternoon, visiting hours in the evening. David liked a little girl. I remember the girl’s name, Baby. Baby said, “O father, I can’t handle so many children, this Saeb is someone else.” All suggested that Fastinshti should be allowed. Baby agrees. After entering the house, Vasudev kissed the baby and hugged him. A two-bottle bangla was brought at Baby’s request. Khelum all together, when the tonk became confused, it was not clear who was putting his hands where the baby. Seeing the danger, Baby said, “You go out, I will take care of Saeb.” David Berolo commented, “Such a tiny cunt and small boobs, it was wonderful.” Baby put a blanket on his chest and put his face out of the gap in the door and said, “Whoever comes, let’s go.” One of the Ghosh brothers rushed in and came out after five minutes. I paid the expenses of Haghared. Later, Vasudev-Avani-Shaileshwar used to go to Baby’s house often, Vasudev’s letter also mentions the sadness of Baby’s change of house.
I went to Dumka with David Garcia, Dumka had to enter the closet by hanging his pant-shirt on a hook from the jackfruit tree in front of the closet in his grandfather’s house. David said that he would go back to their village and make arrangements to hang clothes on the fruits of the trees. David wanted to know if it was a religious festival after drinking Bhaner sharbat and playing swing with us. I told him that yes, it is a festival to celebrate the spring season of a polygamist black god.
I was at my grandfather’s house in Daltonganj, the capital of Palamau, in 1967, a Santal passed by the deer’s thong, it was cut with sticks and cooked and eaten with Mahua wine along with Mahua bread. In Jharkhand. On hearing that I had arrived at Daltonganj, the local poets organized a meeting, which in their language is called a “group”, and I and Dada Mahua gave a good speech after drinking wine; It was there that I printed a manifesto on obscenity, “In Defense of Obscenity,” which has since been translated into many languages, I heard from researcher Daniela Limonella. Daniela is researching our movement in Italian, came to Kolkata in 2014 to collect data. In 1969, Salila and I went to Daltonganj, Dada was in another house, Pistuto Dada Sentuda too; For our entertainment, biryani was made with googly and googly, and it was eaten at night with Mahua liquor.
In 2014, Dominic Burn came from the BBC to do a radio program about the hunger movement. He was so aware of the Hungry movement that he asked about Bengali culture, Rabindranath, 19th century. Later, seeing his sweat-soaked shirt in the photo, Solila said, “Why didn’t you continue this?” In fact, it is important to have practice in everything. Since 1979, lectures on rural development tours had to be given in English-Bangla-Hindi. I was giving a speech in a village, a farmer said, “Why didn’t this thought come to my mind earlier, then the work of the village would have progressed, not stagnated for years.” I said, “We didn’t know why the apple fell from the tree before, we got to know after someone named Newton said it.” The farmer said, “Why do apples, mangoes, jackfruits and coconuts fall off when they are ripe, God has made such a rule.” I realized that Newton doesn’t work everywhere, gravity can’t be explained to everyone. I said, “You are right, no one can know about him until he is caught in a thought.”
In 1965, I went to Subimal Basak’s aunt’s house in a village in Murshidabad. I slept with the mosquito net hanging at night, in the morning I saw a snake in the mosquito net, the mosquito net was quite hanging, the snake lifted its cover due to our movement and shouting, inside the mosquito net there was a hungry bulletin wrapped in paper, I threw the snake out of the mosquito net. Hearing our screams, Subimal’s aunt and other relatives gathered and chased the snake, which entered a hole. Get out of the mosquito net. An old woman brought a sugar cane and spread the sugar in a line from the ant-filled tree to the base of the tree where the snake had entered, and threw it on the snake’s coat. At noon he called half-eaten snakes and swarms of ants outside the tree, the ants were too busy to take the pieces of meat to their homes. Like lovers, snakes and woodpeckers are attracted by each other’s silence.
In 1979, blood flowed out of my penis instead of pus, due to blood pressure, the blood pressure increased while standing in the middle of a mountain of money, the doctor said tachycardia, a mountain of umbrella-hilly-oily notes, which had to be burned and destroyed. Then I took two months off and took sleeping pills twice a day. In the novel “Dubjale Jetuku Praswam” I used the method of burning the mountain of money. In 1993, I used to sign checks of 100 crore, 200 crore, 500 crore rupees, to withdraw extra money through the call money market office. I felt like I was sitting on a king’s chair by signing a check for so much money. I wasted crores of rupees once, in 1993 I increased my income by spending crores of rupees. Like the treasurer of a foreign country, I used to sign checks of crores of rupees day after day.
In 2010, my left leg got swollen one day. I ran to the doctor, the doctor saw and said, this disease affects police constables, school-college teachers and postmen, how is yours? He said thigh to toe socks are available, buy a pair and wear them from today, just take them off at bedtime. Varicose veins attack the legs. Ever since then I wear varicose veins socks, from thigh to toe. Kicking many people in the hips in a dream, so maybe.
In 1999, I fainted for the first time in Banshadroni Bazar. The public regained consciousness after laying me on the vegetables and giving me a splash of fish water. Many people were pulling to take her to the hospital, so Salila stopped crying. After that I fainted about seven times. I have done an MRI of the head. If the neurologist says, do meditation. I can’t concentrate by doing meditation sitting at home. The mind keeps flying, with different thoughts, different faces, different news, past events. Had to give up meditation. Short story writer Jhuma Chattopadhyay said, “My friend, if you keep your head awake all the time, you will get such a disease.”
In 1998, when the roof of my office Poonam Chambers in Mumbai came crashing down from the seventh floor, one by one, I was led out of the cabin by the hand by a young woman who, on first introduction, told me that she had no uterus. After retirement in 1997 I went to meet another officer but Meera did not try to save him. Nineteen people died as a result of the collapse of the house. She’s the only woman I’ve had a dirty talk with, but she’s the one who started it, “I didn’t buy bananas today, I bought brinjal, I bought coconut oil”, shocking me. Obscene talk with women! While talking with him, it seemed that it would be better if this rich man could be brought together with Abu Sayyid Ayyub.
thirteen
After marriage on 4th December 1968, I planned to go to Shimla for honeymoon in January 1969, after hearing my colleague Sushil said to go to Ropar near Chandigarh, after going to Ropar, he and his wife and children accompanied us. We had to walk in the field of plants; I had a habit of walking in the field every day during NCC. Soliler was not, but thinking of a new adventure, went to the field at dawn and took it to The Hague for how many days he had been there. The new wife is going to work in the field, the wife of the rural development expert is said to be. When I got off the bus in Shimla, I got knee deep in the snow. Bedding and suitcases were placed on the roof of the bus, with three inches of snow on it. I went back to the hotel, our honeymoon suite is on the top floor of the hotel, and the road is coming out from there. The two of us ate two Old Monks together and the cold did not go away, then we had continuous intercourse all night long. Sushil and his wife were in a room, Bayara said they had quarreled all night. After returning from Shimla, Sushil’s wife ran away with a Punjabi. Why do people’s wives run away? It seems that weak sex is the main reason. Kamal Chakraborty’s wife of “Kaurab” newspaper also ran away with someone, so the newspaper lost its light. Kamal put his entire sexuality in the newspaper, not paying attention to his wife. However, even though his wife ran away, Mamata got the literature award given by Banerjee, instead of his wife, he got the award Tak Dumadum Dum. Once upon a time I used to write in Kaurava. No more calls.
On my way back from Shimla, I came to the bus stand in Chandigarh and was surrounded by a group of Punjabi and Hindi poets to stay for a few days. Meanwhile, writing has left me and disappeared, along with poetry. They were encouraged to read news about me with pictures in Hindi and Punjabi newspapers. They have added the Hindi translation of my poem. A young poet in the group got drunk and hugged me, started kissing and eating. Wife Salila Bejay Khappa said to the young woman, “Sahitya Sabha is not doing anything else!” I was delighted to see Solila’s possessiveness.
In 1967, Hindi and Maithili language poet Rajkamal Choudhary was admitted to the Rajendra Surgical Block in Patna, disfigured by excessive alcohol and drugs. The government arranged a separate house for him. Rajkamal said lying in the hospital bed, “The doctor said that the operation cannot be done, if the operation is done, the smoke of ganja and charas will spread in the whole hospital.” I often went to meet him in the evening as an atonement for having led him into the line of alcohol and drugs. One day she asked him to bring her a packet of condoms. What will the condom do, in this state of the body? He said ask the nurse, she agreed. The nurse nodded in agreement. The next day I went with the condom packet and found the bed empty, new sheets and pillowcases, no medicine, the room empty. Finding that nurse and questioning her, she said, he died this morning, his first wife came and took the body. I threw the condom packet in the river next to it.
When I started writing again from 1985, Mizanur Rahman asked me to write a series about the Hungarian movement for his newspaper from Dhaka. I started writing “Hungry Legend”. Every year he used to come to my ground floor flat, even though it was difficult to climb the stairs. Sunil, Shakti, Tarapada through Shamsur Rahman requested Mizanur not to print the text. He told them, OK, I will not print your cartoons, but the writing will continue. Shamsur Rahman said to him, “Please, don’t publish the “Hungry Legend” from Dhaka. He did not publish Mijanur’s “Hungry Legend” in Grankhakar, but he published my novel “Namgandh” from Dhaka. Cultural politics about me is not only in West Bengal, it has spread to Bangladesh. Mizanur Rahman passed away ten years ago. Another regular visitor from Dhaka is the head of Vidyasagar Society of Bangladesh. Every time he came he said that he was being threatened to stop it, saying that Vidyasagar was not needed in Bangladesh. I don’t know what happened to him. He stopped coming five or six years before I left Calcutta.
Since 2004 I started suffering from a vacillating mentality; The dangerous joy of jumping out of yourself? As if ready to be a human-bomb, aimless, what can I call it? This is not the loneliness of sitting on a brick by the roadside and getting oil massage. Or, perhaps, I am currently living in a state where loneliness and solitude are combined. I am not an existentialist who would accept this loneliness of mine as the ‘human condition’; The Christian ‘human condition’ of being born into a Hindu family does not seem possible. My thinking does not fit with the thinking of Kierkegaard, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Maurice Marlowe Ponty, Karl Jaspers, etc. The arthritis that I had in 1997 has left scars, especially in my thumb, which is why I can’t hold a pen and write. My old wife, who is only two years younger than me, has to do all the work of Saisabud.
Let’s say here, I am an instinctive Hindu, because I instinctively like Durga Puja during Kali Puja, but I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in Manusmriti, I don’t believe in deities of Rigveda, because it doesn’t work inside me, it is from myself. Build-up blockage. Like the communists, I did not build walls by thinking or reading books, I said that I am not an intellectual. I have seen many people in Calcutta, when asked “Are you a Hindu”, they get confused, cannot answer, some pretend to be dumb, some talk about the motion of the body after thinking and dying. After dying? Dead body also thinks! Understand that they don’t look into themselves, don’t check themselves, only care about what others are doing and saying.
About death, the fear that many have at this age, has not yet appeared. Was Shakti Chatterjee really scared, or did he make death a subject for writing poetry, wrote poetry about death and then lived in peace, asking for alcohol. It seems to me that my present loneliness mixed with loneliness is instinctive, introspective, a self-made damadol prison of self-knowledge, like a solitary prisoner in mad love; It is as if I were lost in some irretrievable self-space, no one would ever find me. I try to break out of the painful prison of self-love that I have made for myself, leave for a few days, only to be overcome by lonely loneliness. We try to eliminate the loneliness of loneliness through human-relationships created in the virtual world of the Internet; But none of the five thousand friends are real, not flesh and blood. Besides, flesh and blood people are around, no change is happening in my terrible sense of self.
Loneliness differs from loneliness in that the condition of loneliness recognizes that the individual has many people around, including some relatives. That is, that condition is temporary, it can be changed, through meaningful communication with other people. Individuals can even enjoy solitude, become creative. But loneliness he cannot enjoy, it is painful, distressing, groaning as a result of having his head in the guillotine of self-love. The state of loneliness does not appear to be external to the individual; It is formed in the mind of the individual, it seems to be empty. Loneliness is not about sitting alone. Loneliness is a drop-by-drop perception, a perilous perception. I have been familiar with the temporary solitudes of the outdoors since childhood, and they remain like sores on the memory. I say outside because those loneliness were relational. I sometimes reminisce about those self-destructive events and look for healing, now I cut through the memory and see how much healing comes from trauma.
I sketch out fictions in my mind when I wake up in the middle of the night, like thieves planning the night, then when I sit down to write I find myself searching, sharing my problems with fictional characters, losing myself before I sit down to write. When I try to go, it seems that writing is my lover, my writing is rooted in my consciousness, because I have not spent my whole life in the same room, in the same house, in the same neighborhood, in the same street, in the same city, in the same state. When I was addicted to ganja-charas, I was doing it for my own pleasure, now I am addicted to writing for my own pleasure, I share the pain and suffering of that pleasure with the readers. Don’t write thinking that someone will remember. I am not worried about what will happen to my writing after I die. When the writing is over, come out of the snake hole with fresh skin.
fourteen
I don’t know when I was born, even though it is 1939 on the matric certificate, the reason is that the elders in the house of Imlitla, a neighborhood of Mahadalits in Patna, thought that it was not about the joy of the one who was born, but of the one who gave birth; So birthday can be something, what is birthday again? He who is born has no contribution to worry about his birthday, did he suffer for nine months, he learned to swim by throwing his arms and legs in the belly of Dibbi mother, ate for twenty four hours, then when his mother went into labor, his mother gave birth to him. He will never understand his mother’s pain. That’s right, the pulse is formed only in the mother’s womb. The bride of the house used to go to her father’s house for delivery, the responsibility of keeping the account of the day of delivery is the responsibility of the people of the father’s house; Now if they are happy, what else can be done! They could not write down the date of delivery.
My father had six brothers, Pramod, Sushil, Ranjith, Anil, Sunil and Vishwanath, and one sister Kamla. Grandmother used to go to her father’s house at the time of delivery, in Pataldanga, Kolkata, there was a big anturghar there, and in that anturghar she had sons one after another, when the grandmother was upset because she was not having a girl, then grandmother gave birth to a girl in that anturghar. Although our original residence, Barisha-Behala, since 1709, the original residence had moved to Uttarpara in Hooghly district on the west bank of the Ganges; There a zamindari house called “Savarna Villa” was built by the ancestor Ratneshwar Raychoudhury, which was converted into such a poor house due to shariki negligence, broken to the bones in the embrace of ashththa roots, which is given to the promoter for housing, I also got his share, Rs.60,000.
Barojyatha, meaning Pramod’s wife Nandarani, was also sent to his father’s home in Konnogar in Hooghly district. His daughter was named Savitri or Sabu. She went to Konnogar for the second delivery, and again it was a girl, Dharitri or Dhabu. Grandmother ordered that Nandrani should not go to her father’s house to give birth, because it is their home, their house does not give birth to boys. Nandarani’s brother’s wife did not go to her father’s house, gave birth to two daughters in succession, Alo and Purvi, in the Anturghara of Konnogar, and then did not dare again, fearing, if it would be a girl again. Nandarani also refused to give birth to another child, either in Konnogar or in Imlitala, if it was a girl again. The elders of Imlitla did not think it necessary to remember Sabu-Dhabu’s birthday or Nandarani’s two birth days. Barojetha bought Mazda from a prostitute for one and a half hundred rupees as he did not have a son.
Mejjatha, meaning Sushil’s wife Karuna is the daughter of our native Uttarpara, she went to her father’s house to give birth. Grandmother did not object, when Karuna went to her father’s house during delivery, she used to visit Karuna once while going to bathe in the Ganges, requesting Maganga that Karuna would at least protect the family. Mother Ganga refused the request and gave birth to Karuna, who was also dead. Grandma is scared. Mejjatha with his wife Karuna went to live in Chapra, where a photography shop was opened for him. When Mejjethimar got tuberculosis, he left the shop and moved to Patna with his two daughters, Dolly and Manu.
Then it was Sejbhai Ranjith’s wife Amita’s turn. Grandmother did not forbid, because my mother’s father’s house did not exist, mother’s father died at a young age, grandmother took three sons and three daughters and went to her father’s house, meaning mother’s uncle’s house. Father’s house is no more, uncle’s house, there is a record of son after son in their house. And lo and behold, the mother gave birth to a son. Grandfather was named Vasudev in his uncle’s house. A name given to uncles, who themselves lived in their own uncle’s house. Grandmother did not like that name, grandfather was named Sameer, everyone affectionately called him Minu.
In the family politics of the house, the mother was given the upper hand by the grandmother. He used to say, the mother of foreign enemies. Even then I had not heard the story of Ajatshatru, I did not even know who the man was, it was said that he had no enemy. We came into the world with ashes in the mouth of Shottur.
By the time I was born we were no longer of much social importance in my maternal uncle’s house. Seeing Imlitla’s house and the rows of Mahadalit huts, the overflowing gutters, the children of the neighborhood hanging in the gutters of the alleys, my mother’s brothers, and my maternal uncles from their mouths, the idea of our family hurt. They thought Savarna Chowdhury family, Virat Roshnai and jhalarjholano would be a flashy affair. The Savarna Chowdhurys in the next generation of the original Savarna Chowdhury man of the sixth century have reached thirty thousand in a geometrical leap, and most of them eat crackers in poverty, some drive rickshaws, do Mutegiri, they could not trace it. Father did not agree to send mother a second time. My mother gave birth to me in the hospital, Prince of Wales Hospital in Patna. There was no greenhouse in Imlitla’s house, and mother’s body, because of me, was not healthy. The hospital building, where my mother gave birth to me, was demolished after independence and Rajendra Surgical Block was built there. Barojatha was suffering from diabetes and was in this surgical block for several months. I went to this hospital for stitching my son’s head.
– You did not keep the hospital documents? If kept, it would be known when and what year my mother gave birth to me.
– Keep those papers at home or not? Hospital paper, how many patients are touched by the nurses throughout the day, is there any guarantee that any doctor will enter the house with the paper?
At least my birthday had the potential to be a solid proof; But the birthday is no longer important, the delivery patient has returned home with a healthy baby, even with a son in her arms for the second time, this is enough.
– You are lucky that your mother did not give birth to a girl.
Nakka, Anil’s marriage is with Amiya, the then modern woman of Bhavanipur, Kolkata. She went to Bhavanipur for delivery. His daughter is Khuku. Went for the second time. It’s a girl again, Rakhi.
Sunil’s new uncle is married to Kamala, a girl from Uttarpara. She went to her father’s house for delivery. The girl is Puti.
After my grandfather and I were born, my grandmother stopped insisting; He told the boys to send their wives wherever they want, be it a boy or a girl, you yourselves understand. The new uncle said to the grandmother, he wants many children, after the first girl, his son then a girl, in this way six girls and three boys are combined. Grandmother said give it a break, three boys are enough, if the twelve houses-four-stairs house in this Uttarpara are divided, everyone will add one salty brick to their fate.
Younger uncle Vishwanath got married, the Gangopadhyay family lived in a rented house in Uttarpara, who was popularly known as Chhoto Fani of the Yatra team of Chitpur, fell in love with their eldest daughter Kuchi. They did not have any children. Grandmother said, if you marry for love, you don’t have children. The tenant’s daughter doesn’t even have a bedroom. They don’t have to worry about keeping track of the day of delivery and the child’s birthday. However, after getting married, grandmother gave Bayai a twenty-four hour notice to leave the Uttarpara house and rent a house elsewhere. I don’t know where they were from, but they used to rent houses in different neighborhoods in Uttarpara.
The small Chhotoshali Ksyamankari or Khemi frock with her high chest and bare thighs under the frock used to visit Imlitla’s house during the summer holidays, this was our first opportunity to shine a light on each other’s characters by playing a game of jugglery. In the summer, at Imlitla’s house, at night, we all used to lie down to get a mat on the roof, a sheet to put on our feet for the cold from midnight. I am eleven, Khmer is thirteen. Called Khemimasi in front of everyone. In 1950, in the middle of the night, Khemir Thela, what the hell, your father earns money every day, toothpaste is out these days, so let’s brush our teeth with it, then it won’t smell. Both of us are wearing only one sheet, and our hands are busy searching the secrets of both bodies. My head under her frock, her hand inside my pants. Then we started eating each other’s lips, it happened on our own the first day, so I said Khemi, to use the ointment to wash my face. Ripe palm leaves. I used Khemi’s mannerisms and recklessness to portray Milly in my detective novel titled ‘Mystery of Miraculous Love and Brutal Murder’.
I was hoping when Khemi would come again for summer vacation. Three times three years came, each time the heat in the chest and the water increased. Then the news came that Khemi had died due to the kindness of her mother. Mother’s mercy! which mother Shetladevi, Mariamman Devi in South India. I don’t know why the goddess during the disease, the god during the cure. If you are bitten by a snake, or not to be bitten, worship Mansadavi. So that the epidemic does not start, worship Dhumavati, worship Parnashabari. And the gods protect everyone’s health. Ashwini Jamajvaira, Dhanvantari, Dhatridevata Ayurveda doctor! Khemi’s mother gave birth to him before my mother, so Khemi knew and taught many things, which later came in handy for me. I don’t know Khemi’s birthday-death date. Kuchi-Khemi’s mother’s name was Vibsana. Can you think of such a modern name, which does not have a body? I don’t know which mythological goddess she is. Both of us become hot, the sum of that heat is three to four times more than the heat of both of our bodies. Stars in the sky, you can see Saptarshi Mandal, you can see the moon. After leaving Imlitla, I did not find such a clear sky anywhere else; Khemi took that sky with him and passed the sky of smoky diesel factory chimney breath. Whispering, Khemi means Milli: Do you understand? It’s swelling, it’s getting hot, it’s giving me goosebumps, my chest is heaving; Are you okay? I mean not here, that’s what I’m holding? Something in mind? Or chest? I got a rag tied to hold my hand. I said with suppressed excitement, Oh, you tied yourself. Why don’t you want to give me a hand?
Khemi or Milli: You fool, the rehearsal is going on now, I will open tomorrow, then give as much as you want.
I put my hands to loosen the khemi or mili rag, how sticky. My hand felt in his frock and said, Look! Can’t wait for tomorrow. You are really a bull. Gislum in Barabazar once, I saw a bull doing that. Very pink. Why do you say? you are fair
The next day, Milli or Khemi took the middle finger of my left hand and said, keep it here, just keep it, don’t move it, but if you move it, I will sleep in another place from tomorrow.
I said to move the finger, what happens if you move it?
Milli or Khemi put her hand in my unbuttoned pant and began to press and say, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is mine, this is mine.
– Let me see tomorrow during the day.
– See what to do again? Want to see the hair?
Khemi showed, on the roof, at noon, when everyone was enjoying the rice. It was better to see than to give a hand. Water near the vein.
Before Khemi, in a similar affair with Kulsum Apa, in the neighborhood of Imlitla, I knew that exaggeration could lead to trouble; In 1949, I was ten at the time of my relationship with Kulsoom Appa. Kulsum Apadar’s house was dark, Chagal Haas is the house of chickens, so we did not see him, besides he was quite black. I have used the character of Kulsoom Appa in the novel ‘Rahuketu’. They were a Shia Muslim family. After the fall of Wazed Ali Shah, he fled to Patna, became quite poor, wore the same clothes day after day, no one wore a burkha, the housewives used to tie beedis, sell eggs, chicken eggs, eggs, chickens, goats. As chicken eggs were forbidden in our house at that time, I used to go to get goose eggs from their house. Kulsoom Apa Ghalib and Fayez Ahmad loved to listen to Fayez, where else can you find a speechless fascinated listener like me, who is drunk to watch his black deep cheeks round plump lips. When the listeners wanted to eat the meat that was being cooked in their house, fascinated by the smell, Kulsoom brought it in a bowl and ate it, saying that he did not tell anyone at home, it will rot in the neighborhood. I never said I ate beef. He wiped my lips with his tongue. I blackmailed the day the meat was cooked before the game of rubbing.
One day in the dark room of Has-Murgi he took off the pants of the listener, took down his churidar and grabbed the listener and started rubbing himself. The listeners liked it, so they went every day, even though they didn’t need to buy Haas eggs every day. Kulsum Apa told you about this too, don’t tell anyone in your house. One day, Kulsum Apa started shaking the listener so much that the listener’s leg was broken, he could not walk for two days. In fear, the audience then gave up going to Kulsoom Appa’s house. The younger cousins of the audience used to buy eggs. Mejjatha’s little daughter Manu asked, “Chordada, when will you go to their house, that black little black kulsum, why do you want to know?”
The theory that ‘we don’t have birthdays’ is probably the creation of Imlitla house. The genealogy of Thakurda Lakshminarayan and his two brothers Harinarayan and Baikunth of the Savarna Chowdhurys of Uttarpara was published in 1911 by Amarendranath Bandyopadhyay under the title of ‘Vamsh Thunya’, which is preserved in the Savarna Chowdhury Museum in Barisha. Our financial damadol started from Thakurda’s generation, and by the time of Imlitla we had reached the point of absolute feklu. The practice of proving the identity of the Indian Aam Aadmi by showing a paper probably started after independence. Thakurda’s identity in Wikipedia shows that he died in 1933, the year his mother gave birth to Dada. I mean, he saw his own descendants.
In 1709, Uttarpara city was founded by Ratneshwar Roy Chowdhury, who was seeking a separate zamindari of his own from Barisha’s Ekannavarti Jamaghat. The Savarna Raychaudhuris were Bhang Kulin, in whose houses the pure-Bamuns did not marry their daughters. Ratneshwar Roy Chowdhury lured poor Brahmin youths to Uttarpara with money and land share. As a child, I saw that they are more cheerful than us. In the grandmother’s words, “Your ancestors blew up all the tabils by gambling and drinking alcohol, they increased their tabils by buying the company’s paper.” I don’t know why company paper is expensive. Reaching the grandfather’s generation, our tabil is empty, the brickwork of twelve houses and four stairs begins to be salted, the pigeons in the day and the spoons in the night. Dadu left Uttarpara at the first opportunity. His two other brothers did not escape from Khandahar, some of their grandsons went down to work hammering on Hind Motors.
Let’s talk about an incident here. It is natural that grandpa was loved by grandma the most. He loved me too, but it was less than his grandfather’s behavior. Grandfather used to live with his grandmother while studying in City College, Kolkata. Grandmother suffered a heart attack in September 1964 on news of her grandfather’s arrest in the hunger strike, and died after three days in a coma. Barojyatha had warned him in advance that the news of Dada’s arrest should not come to his ears. But after the arrest, father-uncle-Jyatha-Pisemsha gathered at Uttarpara’s house to get bail from the Bankshal court. Seeing so many people, grandmother got suspicious. He was informed about the case. He had a heart attack as soon as he heard it. “Dead,” the doctor announced, lifting her dry nipple and placing the stethoscope under her.
It is not difficult to remember the day of grandmother’s death, along with our experience of running on the court. But there is no record of the death of anyone else in the family, such as the father or brothers of the father, father-in-law, aunts and uncles.
– Why did you not remember the days of death?
– You are not a fool or an ass; What is the need to remember the day of death?
– Bah, you will not mourn the death?
— That happens in Natok-Nobel. When the ancestors die one day in a year tarpan is done, with sesame-ganga water, to disturb the spirits or they bless us all from where they are, you too.
That means, just like we don’t have a birthday, we also don’t have a death day. According to Imlitla’s house theory, we are not born, so we are not dead. We are enemies.
Ajatshatru, it was known, was a man of this Patna city, the king, who built this city, then the name of this city was Patliputra. Barojyatha took us to see the ruins of Patliputra. The guide learned that Ajatashatru was the king of Magadha, who built a small fort on the banks of the Ganges more than four hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ.
– Why the name Patliputra?
— Patli is a kind of rice and Putra means son.
– The son of rice? Is that so?
— No, Patliputra means the son of Patli, who is the son of King Sudarshan’s daughter.
– Three hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the Greek historian wrote that Patliputra was a big city.
– I see, we are not born, we do not die, this kind of story, Barojyatha.
But history has told why. You question the guide, you cannot tell when the enemy was born, when he died.
I began to inquire, the guide again began to spin the story; Pataliputra was a fort in the triangle formed by the Ganges, Gandaka and Shone rivers, the capital of the Nanda, Maurya, Sunga, Gupta and Pala kings. Scholars from different places used to gather here, like Chanakya.
— Their sons are all born as gangsters, robbers, murderers, thieves and politicians.
Ramkhelaon Singh Dabur, the servant of father’s photography shop, holds me on the seat of a large bicycle leaning against the wall, and I, the enemy, ride out to conquer the kingdom on an elephant, sword in hand, made by Dabur, wrapped in red paper wrapped in film, like a stick Swinging the sword, if he could not handle the elephant’s back, Ramkhelaon Singh Dabur ordered, ‘Thik se Baithiye Maharaj’.
Dada, on seeing said, Oh, Grandmother gave me the throne, you are usurping the kingdom, do you know that the enemy did not have a finger on one hand; And because Ajatshatru’s nose was high, the subjects called him Pinonnat.
The age difference between me and grandfather is five years, thinking that he has the right to scare me, Dabur says, ‘Yes, Sacchimucci, people say, U Char Unglike Raja The; Hamre Vaishali Mein Sabkoi Janat Hai.’
Grandmother cannot be questioned, she has gone back to Uttarpara. How would Ajatshatru ask for permission if he got hissy in the class, then who should I ask? In Sister Irene’s class, I ask for permission that way. No one in the convent can speak advanced Bengali, Mother Superior, Sisters, Sister Irene and Father Hillman have never heard the name of the enemy.
I asked my younger brother. Even then he did not fall in love in Uttarpara, he did not bring his wife Kuchi to Patna. “Hey Dhyut, all ganjakhuri, the kings and their courtiers are in various gossip traps.”
– And he was a promoted king?
A small smile, a belly-hugging smile, called Jethima and mother. To explain the small matter to them, Jethima said, “Those with high noses are called Unnasik, and those with high eyebrows are called Peononnat, like mine, look, this is called Peononnat, there is still Peononnat.” You have been cheating on the neighborhood women for a long time now, don’t you know what’s going on?”
– The high point of m is called pinonnat? Sudamiya, Kapil’s mother, Krishnanna’s mother, Kalutua’s aunt, Birju’s mother, Munsiji’s wife are all Mi-i to Peenonnat. Grandpa told me to feed Pituni, that means!
As my mother’s breasts did not have enough milk, I used to reach the lap of nursing mothers in the neighborhood when I was little. According to Jethima, I used to get up early in the morning and cry, “me khabo, mi khabo”, and Chhordi, Dharitri, would carry me in her arms to a house in the neighborhood and hand me over to her.
In the afternoon, when father came to have lunch after finishing his work in the shop, I asked him whether the enemy had a finger on him. Father sat down to eat and said with a serious face, “Mother did not do a good job by giving you the title of Ajatshatru, Ajatashatru was a bad person, killed his own father Bimbisara in jail, Kaka’s kingdom attacked Kashi to defeat him, the king of Kashi married Ajatashatru with his daughter, and If Kashi gives away the kingdom, if he marries his first cousin, hehe. If after sixteen years of war he captured the kingdom of the Lichchavids across the Ganges, which is now called Hajipur, then attacked the kingdom of his own brothers and captured them, it is not good to shed blood.” Father is a vegetarian, so against bleeding.
Dabur said, the banana of Hajipur is known as chiniya banana, the smallest banana, because of the fear of foreign enemies, the bananas became small and a little stubby.
– Then how is the sweet litchi so good in Vaishali and Muzaffarpur?
—Brought from China by a traveler, so the litchi there is called Shahi litchi, China litchi, there was a beauty called Amrapali, the litchi is sweet when touched by her.
When my grandmother came to Patna, I said, take back our title of Ajatshatru; Dad said the man was bad. Grandmother said, your grandfather named your grandfather Sameer, along with that your father named you Malay, what else, brighten the face of the family with this name.
– The face of the tribe is bright? what is that
– When you grow up, you will realize, if other people envy you, then you will understand that you have brightened the face of the clan. .
Since my grandmother passed away, I no longer had the opportunity to say that what I did when I grew up, even though the people at home thought that my face was bright, the people of Banka did not think so. They write in various ways and commit violence.
I said, why didn’t you name your sons? Grandma said, “Why? I still call your son Khoka, your master son Mezhkhoka, your father Ranja, and then I didn’t give anyone else a nickname. I named your father in the name of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, when I gave birth to your father, I was living in Lahore, Ranjit Singh was blind in one eye, he had many wives and concubines, so will I take back your father’s Ranjit title?
– What is the left?
-Wives people do not marry but keep as wives in their own homes. Ajatshatru also had many wives and concubines.
— Great things; When I grow up, I will keep many left; If I have a child, I can eat the left’s milk.
– Keep it, but they didn’t come to my twelve-room four-stair savarna villa.
This is where my love of being a natural enemy ends. I said to my grandmother, “People keep track of how many days Ajatshatru reigned, people keep track of how long his father Bimbisa reigned, but they don’t keep track of their birthdays and deaths.” You also did not keep track of when you gave birth to your sons.”
fifteen
Grandmother could not know how many documents one has to manage to prove that a person is actually that person, hospital birth certificate, corporation birth certificate, voter card, ration card, aadhaar card, telephone bill, passport, electric bill. Fortunately, there were no such calamities during the time of Bimbisa and Ajatshatru.
What’s the fuss in collecting Jethima’s pension to die? The signature of the old age did not match the signature of the old age, learned with difficulty like hand chalk, had to go to the court and affidavit that she is Nandarani, wife of Barojyathar, to collect the pension of forty-five rupees. As of today, neither Barojyatha nor Barojethima was born in any paper. Barojatha’s job was to clean the idols and paintings in Patna Museum, for which no paper was required, even though he left the job because he didn’t like it, the curator sent people to his house and kept him on the job again, while Barojatha got the job on the recommendation of Grandmother Jathuto Dada. He was Assistant Curator of Calcutta Museum, was a writer, his name was Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay. After the British left, Barojyatha’s job title became Keeper of Paintings and Sculpture, mine also increased, ninety taka at the time of retirement. Barojyatha got a room in the museum, opened the tap in the room and filled the floor with water and in the afternoon lay on the easy chair and snored. He used to go to office wearing Punjabi dhoti, hat on his head, cycling three kilometers. During my school holidays, I used to go to his office on the back of his bicycle in a carrier, taking a tiffin cut for lunch. I used to walk around the whole museum without buying a ticket. Barojyatha would often take me to the houses and show me which idols are whose, which things are thousands of years old. An Apsara’s breast and the breast of a man with a cut throat were shining, it was not too late to find out why, I saw the female visitors rubbing their hands on the breast of the cut throat statue, and the male visitors were doing the same thing by rubbing their hands on the Apsara’s breast. I could not touch Apsara’s breasts, because my hands could not reach. Khmer Mai was smaller than the Apsaras; Kulsum is blacker than upper my apsaras.
I went to the toilet of Barojyatha and unbuttoned my pants and saw that my nose was bigger than a white stone statue. A bust, later said by Barojatha, of Alexander. It was nice to hear; That means I can go and conquer the world with my Nunu. If Khemi had lived, her breasts would have been shiny and big like an Apsara, full of luster. But she would get married, I would hide her bridegroom and touch her mother’s hand, chew her lips, eat her like a palm tree. Barojyatha died, we know the events of that day. But no one remembered the date. There is no birthday of Barojyatha, there is no death day of Barojyatha. Neither does Alexander. The day Barojetha died, my father called me from the office, telling me that there was an urgent matter. When I returned home, only Nakakima was there, she said, eat quickly, you have to go to your aunt’s house immediately. After eating, I cycled to my aunt’s house. I went and saw that Barojetha was tied to a bamboo scaffolding. I have to go to Mukhagni. The experience of applying ghee to that first corpse, chanting mantras according to the orders of Purut Satishkaka and setting fire to the fire with the firewood, throwing pots around the pyre. Standing in the crematorium, I started crying, satishkaka said, yes, this is called cremation dispassion. When a Hindu dies, the last words from his burning body fly into the sky along with the burning wood, those who are cremated are deprived of the joy of humming these last words.
I have three birthdays now; Karthik is eleven, according to his mother. October thirty-ninth, according to the school certificate. The second of November, according to Father Hillman’s diagnosis. What else do you want for a birthday to get three days of wishes.
My wife Salila has a role in celebrating birthdays in our house; If it is my daughter, then her birthday celebrations begin. Before that, no one knew that birthday was a day of fun and enjoyment. When my daughter’s birthday started to be celebrated, the restaurant business started by acknowledging my birthday on the second of November. That was the beginning of going to a restaurant and having a cocktail party. Even the one who has to cut the cake, blow out the candles and sing Happy Birthday to you on his birthday.
sixteen
Barojyatha’s two daughters, Savitri and Dharitri were married in my childhood, I could not retain any memory of it. The father arranged for the marriage of Mejjatha and Kakader’s daughter, because they were growing old in their artistic indifference; Besides, there was also the issue of wedding expenses. If Mejjatha’s younger daughter Manu or Meenakshi wants to marry a Bihari boy for love, Mejjatha refuses. As Mejjyatha disagreed, he did not agree despite his father persuading him; Opposing him, the father himself did not want to participate, gave me money and said, “Wherever they want to go and get married, go there and pay.” It was an interesting experience, I had to go to a temple in Gobindpur named Khusrupur, and I went and saw that there was a marriage ceremony in the square. I was given a pink dhoti, took off my pants, then offered, not like a Bengali wedding, or an urban Bihari wedding. On my way back, I got down at Patna station and took off my colored dhoti and put on my pants.
Mother died while staying with me in Lucknow, on November 18, 1982 of a heart attack. The father died in Patna, on 8th October 1991, when he retired from work and the shop was taken over by the grandfather’s elder son Totone or Hrudayesh. My main regret is that I didn’t bring my father to Mumbai, then I was working in Mumbai, got a big flat in Santacruz, famous hospital nearby. Regretted about mother’s death, she admitted her neighbor Haider Ali to a private hospital without informing her. Hyder Ali of the Nawab family had influence in the government hospitals, and in Lucknow at that time the equipments in the government hospitals were modern compared to the private hospitals, the doctors were experienced.
A genuine contribution to the making or breaking of my character is Mahadalit’s neighborhood Imlitala; The experience there educated me, taught me generosity, eclecticism, every one of its inhabitants was anti-establishment, reckless, noisy, anti-establishment, who called themselves “Duniyaka Nasur”, a wound of the world that does not heal, first by the foreign and then by the indigenous government. They thought their struggle for life as resistance-protest, considered enemies of Morsi-Patta, thought them dangerous, but it was their normal way of life. Jeevankechcha happened almost every day in Imlitla neighborhood, but no one laughed like the Bengali middle class.
And of course the two house-shop workers, Shiunanni and Dabur. In 1955, I was walking forward in the Julus of the BN College Student Union, me and Tarun Shur holding banners, whence Dabur ran up and grabbed my hand and said, “E sab mot kijiye, mare jayega.” A few days ago, a student named Dinanath Pandey was shot dead by the police, the police fired for no reason, as the students demanded to increase the number and time of buses. We came out to protest, the demand was for a judicial inquiry. At the end Nehru had to come and pacify the students with a speech; After Chief Minister SK Singh was forced to deal with the situation. That’s when I saw Nehru from the very front. He seemed to be a very sarcastic person.
I got my endurance and ability to cope from the Imlitla Para: handcuffs, waist ropes, jail time, hostile groups, notoriety, insults, propaganda, opposition, harsh comments, betrayal. I learned in Imlitla that every woman has her own fragrance in her body, which urban women spoil by applying perfume. I don’t like perfume. Like everyone in the neighborhood, our house didn’t have a calling bell. If you wanted to meet someone in the house, you had to call them by name. After leaving Imlitala, this verbal connection of Dhaka was lost, the days of Imlitala appeared in its own colors and smells, the nights appeared in the flame of kerosene lanterns and castor oil. I have never seen anyone wear gold jewelry in Imlitala, silver jewelry only at weddings. I got the gold ring on my niece, which I wore to my first and last romantic lover, who then wore the ring to her new lover, whom she married and later divorced; I don’t know what happened to that ring in the end, because her groom was a smuggler. Having married a smuggler, I remember his famous statement, “Money is the dollar’s unborn child”. There were no loudspeakers in the Imlitlar mosque; During Ramadan, a Fakir used to sing early in the night to wake up the Muslim family members of the neighborhood. In one hand of that fakir was a stick like a snake and in the other hand a thick gourd shell dried and smoked incense.
Mother, father and teacher, the three people who form the direction of personal life, the role of mother and father in my life is the main. In fact at the primary level except the convent, Rammohan Roy Seminary School and later in college and university, I had no teacher’s proximity and guidance and friendship, the decline of teacher’s contribution to society would have started from then. Now teaching has gone to the level of business. School teachers are earning more by leaving school for coaching and private teaching. At the Rammohan Roy Seminary I was becoming more and more stupid; I survived because of Namitha Chakraborty, an upperclassman and school lunch period librarian; After Sister Irene, she is my real teacher. When I think of Sister Irene and Namita Chakraborty, I can feel that there was immortality somewhere in their existence, some dust of which they have rubbed me.
Enrollment in a convent or Catholic school is also magical because the priest of the local cathedral, Father Hillman, who took a lot of photographs, often came to his father’s photo shop, to develop and print his photographs, and he used to say that India was an explosion of seven colors of the rainbow. He had almost become friends with his father. One day my father took me to the shop, playing, fighting with invisible monsters, lining the photo negatives used in the box cameras of the time, with a stick wrapped in long red paper, made by Ramkhelaon Singh Dabur, my father’s shop worker. At that time digital photography was not invented, amateur photographers usually took twelve or sixteen black-and-white photos with their cameras. Film reels were made of glass and covered with red paper. I never saw such a fair man as Father Hillman; It was surprising to know that the color of human skin is like this; His clothes are also such that the whole body is covered with white cloth, only two hands come out, hair is golden, eyes are narrow, I have never seen such hair before.
Father Hillman said to his father, “Why hasn’t he been admitted to school yet?” What you read at this age will remain in your memory forever.” The father said, “No school admits children so young, and I cannot afford to study in a convent, because nothing survives after the expenses of me and my brothers.” I will admit him to the government school where my elder son studies after two years.” Father Hillman told father. There is a class for very young children in the convent, its called transition class, you bring it tomorrow I will enroll you, buy navy blue shorts, white half shirt and knotty boy shoes today, tie is given by school, don’t think about fees, respite Power is mine. That afternoon, my father bought me a school dress. I had never worn such a big dress before. I put on my shoes and walked home to show everyone. Despite the whole day’s work in the kitchen, mother used to fill the kettle with hot water and iron the shirts and pants.
The next day at nine o’clock in the morning I got admitted to the convent school. Father Hillman fixed the birthday, November 2nd. After admission, I realized that speaking other languages than English is punishable. Why English, I could not speak Bengali and Hindi well then. From silence, shaking his head, the broken language started to work. Father Hillman was German, but could speak English and Hindi. After admission, father said, “Ram Khelaon Singh Dabur will bring tiffin in the afternoon, and during holidays I will return home on his bicycle. Every day Ramkhelaon will bring and take away, from tomorrow I will bring tiffin with me.” This school is separate from Dada’s Patna Collegiate School; Upon entering my grandfather’s school, there were two-storied classrooms, a straight pitch road in the middle, two huge playgrounds behind the house, where football and cricket were played, I learned to ride a scooter in that field. At the entrance to the Catholic school is a stone statue of a woman with a baby in her lap, behind a long-bearded man, with two lambs at her feet. Later, Father Hillman announced in Hindi that Mother Mary had Jesus on her lap and Saint Joseph on her back. Mother Mary is Virgin and Father of Jesus is God Himself, Mother Mary is not married because God cannot be married. He got to know the meaning of virgin when he went to the next school, Rammohan Roy Seminary.
As you enter the gate of the convent, on the left is a green grass field, with students playing, on the right is a flower garden. The students who are playing, some are as fair as Father Hillman, with golden hair, not black. I was surprised to see that no one was going to that garden, not picking flowers. If the sons of Imlitla saw them, they would pick up all the flowers and sit in front of the Durga Mata temple to sell them. The grounds at Dada’s school are four times the size of the convent grounds, with no special grass. There is a tree in the middle of the grounds of the convent, there are many small white flowers under it, and no one is picking them. Father said, it is a flower tree. Before that, I had never seen a flower; I have not seen the flowers in the garden on the right before. At home I saw only gandha, rose, rosin gandha, beli, jaba and jasmine, when Barojethima satyanarayan puja was done on Sankranti day; Ramkhelaon went and threw those flowers into the Ganges. The flowers of the convent wither on the tree.
As the bell rang loudly, the students, I don’t know where they had been all this time, rushed to the right and stood with manure in the boxwood field; Small in front and big in back, five rows. A sister, also pale white, took my hand and made me stand at the front of a row with the children and took my hands together and left. The Sisters and Father Hillman stood in front of us, facing us, and began to sing in English, and the students all began to sing along with them. I used to say it every day when I heard it, but then I didn’t know what it meant, I didn’t know that it was called prayer. Not knowing that I have sung Vandana to God, after knowing about whom I still know nothing, his prayer is like this :-
Our Father in Heaven
Holy by your name
Thy Kingdom Come
Your will be right on earth as in heaven
Give us today
Our Daily Bread
And forgive us our sins
As We Forgive Dose
Who Sin Against Us?
Do not bring us to the test
But Deliver Us From Evil
Amen.
After the prayer, everyone ran to their classes. A sister took me by the hand and took me to a room and said something to the sister who came to that room.
I didn’t know what ‘Sin’ was then, I still don’t know. What I know now is called Gilt.
My transition class teacher at school was Sister Irene, my first crush, whom I later had in second standard. He came from Ireland. Like Father Hillman, he is fair-skinned, but his head is completely covered, and his body is also covered in white cloth. His eyes were black and deep, his teeth sparkling white, his lips pink. The first day he bent down and brought his face to my face, I did not understand what he said; I remember my reflection in Sister Irene’s eyes. He gave some booklets and a book, all printed in Britain, and also gave a bunch of cards. Remember, they were of Jesus Christ, Mother Mary and Santa Claus. The book had pictures on almost every page. Another booklet had an English letter on each page, everyone was spending time looking at them, Sister Irene took the booklet from my hand and opened it motioning me to do what everyone was doing. I turned the page and saw the letters and accompanying pictures.
Then, opening another coloring book, Sister Irene began reciting to herself what the next class had learned as a nursery rhyme, “Hey Diddle Diddle, The Cat and the Fiddle, The Cow Jumped Over the Moon, The Little Dog Laughed to See Such Sport, and the Dish Ran.” Away with the spoon.” Another, “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Had a Wife and Could Not Keep Her, He Put Her in a Pumpkin Shell, and There He Kept Her Very Well.” I remember these two because they all had to recite them together in the next class, act them out, and three decades later when I admitted my daughter to this school, she too had to memorize the same nursery rhymes, while the entire school was controlled by Keralite sisters, no foreigners. . In the next class we had to learn ABCD by singing. One two three four also sing. I remember a nursery rhyme that came in handy later, “Thirty days hath September, April June and November, Thirty one the others date, Except in February twenty eight, But in leap year we assign, February twenty nine.” I could not understand their meaning then. The rhymes of the nursery rhymes remained a source of resentment in the mind, which is why I did not like the matter of rhyme when I started writing poetry. Dada taught me how to write in Gune-Gune Paar rhythm, but I didn’t find speed in it.
Bengali “Icom bycom jiree, Yadumaster shushur bari, railcom jhamajham, pa pichhale alur dum”, my jhattuto-khurtuto sisters used to play kneeling on the ground, slapping their knees, if one knee was out, the one whose knee survived would win. Similarly, “With shaggy hair, palm tree, why are you standing, brother, don’t you like to read like me, you are standing with your ears full, your learned master is not sleeping a bit”, it was also their game, who can stand on one leg for the longest time, who can stand for the longest time. He would have won if he had stood. I never thought of these as nursery rhymes.
At the convent school, during tiffin, Ramkhelaon passed me the tiffin through the small door near the gate and asked, “You have learned to speak English, from now on you will fill the money order to send money to my house.” I nodded in agreement. I entered the school tiffin hall and started eating after seeing the empty space; The other students are almost all talking among themselves in English. A girl sat next to me and whispered, in Hindi, she could not speak English, said the words in Hindi in such a way that it sounded Bengali, I asked in Bengali, “What is your name?” A smile appeared on her face, her name is Nandita, Nandi. I also said my name. Nandi said, “Oh, your name is dirt!” We have a whispering relationship. This relationship continued for a long time because Nandita also left the convent and joined Rammohan Roy Seminary with me. As a result of going there, several classmates called me dirt. Nandita was from a rich family, her uncle was a high court judge, omelette-toast and salad were brought to the tiffin, every day, so she loved my aluchchchki or alupattal or tomato-pumpkin bread, as I loved her omelette-toast-salad. We both left the convent and went to Rammohan Roy Seminary and got admission in Bengali medium for the same reason, India became independent and Bengali, our mother tongue, was slipping off our tongues under the influence of English.
In the class after Tiffin, Father Hillman came and took us to the church next to the school, for a Bible class. The church has a very high ceiling, a large hall, benches on both sides and tables in front, pictures of saints on the surrounding walls, round lights behind the heads of all of them, higher up, sheep made of colored glass, bearded men, veiled women, and other colorful designs. At the very front is a figure of a man, nailed in his hands and nailed together by his legs. Seeing, the first thing I thought was, can a man be hung by nailing his hands and feet in this way, the man will not fall, the man is not tied to the wood with a rope!
Father Hillman explained, once in English, once in Hindi, that the one who appears like that is Jesus Christ, and his story, his words, he will tell us every day. The wood on which he was crucified is called the cross. He told us to make a cross by putting one thumb on the other thumb and put it on the table to listen to his story. He also said that everyone gets a little sleepy after tiffin, so this bible story class, there is no harm in getting sleepy. Then he said the names of the saints made of colored glass above; It is remembered that he used to say it every day, and it is also remembered that when Kulsoom Apake, the daughter of a Shia Muslim family in the neighborhood, told you about the convent school and the saints, she said that those saints are also in Islam, but the names are pronounced in Arabic, such as Enoch is Idris. , Noah is Noah, Abraham is Ibrahim, Jacob is Jacob, Aaron is Aaron, Moses is Moses, David is David, Jonah is Yunus, John is Yahya, Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ. It was nice to hear that the convent has bridged the gap between my house and Kulsoom Apad’s.
Later it seemed strange that the name of the Jacob man is Yakub Khan of Pakistan, the name of John man is Yahya Khan of Pakistan. Mafia-leader Dawood Ibrahim by the name of David Loktar. Father Hillman could not know these stories. Dawood Ibrahim riots, robberies, ransoms, threats, smuggling, is a hero, film after film continues, across the pages of newspapers, across the TV screen, we cry about him, and when the poor steal two loaves, the name of Padani is Gangaram, death in lockup. In fact, education is needed to express one’s sorrows, pains and hunger, even if one does not get a job, there is no harm, such as Dawood Ibrahim, who has been able to make use of the little education he has. Humans invented “words” to write death sentences; Then the game of breaking the nib of the pen by writing the death sentence, while the pen has become tarnished, it survives only to write the death sentence.
seventeen
Kulsoom Apa has left a deep impact on my life; Entry into the world of poetry is through him. Just as I did not understand the song sung in the convent church in my childhood, but I liked to hear it, so I did not understand the poem called Kulsum Upper, but I liked to hear it in her voice. Ramkhelaon Singh knew some doha of Dabur Rahim, Dadu, Kabir and used to say them in time to rule us; Shiunandan Kahar or Shiunanni, a servant of the house could recite Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas, Shiunandan also used to rule us by quoting from Ramacharitmanas. Shiunanni was a devotee of Bajrangbali, never married, used to wrestle in the neighborhood arena, Mugur was folded, had the appearance of a wrestler, married at a very young age, the one she married had two children from her previous partner. Shiunanni took me to her wrestling arena to wrestle with my peers because I was skinny. Shiunanni had bought the dress for learning wrestling, meaning langot, after asking for a price from her mother. It was very difficult to wear the langot at that age, it had to be taken back several times and tied in front. It was not difficult to learn wrestling, it was difficult to wash off the dirt from the wrestling arena by going to the street tap to take a bath, when the neighbor’s wife’s water was full, then it was my turn, although Shiunanni pushed me under the tap so that I could finish the bath. After a few Sundays, I had to give up my ambition to become a Palawan. The wrestling match was used when there was a quarrel with someone in the neighborhood over a game of lattu or shooting.
I have not learned swimming completely. When Dada was at his uncle’s house, in 1951, he tried to teach in the pond once, but had to return to Patna before he could fully learn. When grandfather left his uncle’s house and went to live in Uttarpara, in 1953 he took him to Ganga Ghat and tried to teach, but he did not learn. A little more, I was going to sink, that’s why.
I used to listen to the quotes of Dabur and Shiunanni, but I didn’t care, but when Kulsoom recited Apa’s poetry with a cheek, such an atmosphere was created as if he was pulling towards himself through the poem. Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Ghalib were his favorite poets. Kulsum Apa used to talk about istimaliyat, which later came to know, communism; He used to talk about Ishtirakiyat, which I later came to know, socialism; He used to talk about Masawat, which I later learned was to consider all people equal. It was because of their family that the Partition riots did not affect Imlitla Para. He took two cards from the school, one of Musa and the other of Isa Mosi.
This famous poem by Faiz comes to mind when Kulsoom Apa is remembered, although Kulsoom Apa mostly recited love poems:
“Mata-e-louh-o-kalam chin goyi to ka gham hai
Ki khun-e-dil mein dubo li hai unglia mainne
Jubaan pe mohar logi hai to ka, ki rak di hai
Har ik holka-e-janjir mein juban mainne”
Kulsoom Apa also got my first lesson in leaving a deep impression of poetry on a curious boy through sex and pulsating touch, and long later, in her memory, after searching for her in the Imlitla neighborhood and not finding her, I wrote this poem, “First Love : Fayez Ahmad Fayez”. . I remembered the first line of the poem, he had heard it so many times, while writing I collected the rest from Faiz’s collection:-
Bare-footed when at Nazim’s house during summer holidays
Let’s play Ludo, Kulsum is pretending to cross the road
Looking left and right, closed the door with both hands
Dragging me into my dark damp room with a sigh.
I said, ‘Bhojpuri say, I don’t understand Urdu.’
He said, ‘You close your eyes, only then will you understand.
It’s very easy.’ I closed my eyes and stood quietly
Among the ducks.
Kulsum Apa said, ‘Muzhe de de rosile lips, masumana.
Peshani, hasin ankhen ke mai once phir ranginiyon mein
gork ho jaun…’
I said, ‘Dhyat, what are you doing, you are making me ashamed.’
He kept saying on his thick black lips, ‘Mary Hastiko
Teri ik nazr agosh men le le hamesha ke liye
Is dam men mahfuz ho jaun zia ae husn se julmat ae dunya
I will not return…
I said, ‘Ah, don’t leave, why are you doing this?’
He said, “He scarred Gujishtan Hasraton.”
Dhul jain…’
I say, ‘No no no…’
Apa in his sleepy voice, ‘may ane wale gham ki
Fikar se azad ho jaun mere maji and mustakbil sarasar
Mav ho jaen mujhe woah ik nazr, ik javedanisi
Take a look.’
I said, ‘Why do you do this every day?’
He said, ‘But you don’t understand Urdu!’
Now I know peshani means forehead, gork means sunken, ranginiyon means ornate, hasti means existence, agosh means embrace, dam means trap, mahfuz means accumulated, ziya-e-husn means light of beauty, julmat-e-dunya means oppressive world, gujishta It means past, Hasrate means sadness, Mustakbil means future, Maav means enchantment, Sarasar means completely, Javedani means eternal. But the poetry still did not attract me, Kulsoom Apa’s big eyes, cheekbones and chest warmth attracted me. At home everyone thought of poetry as song. There were no poetry books in Imlitla’s house, in fact there were no books at all. There were Persian and Sanskrit books in Khandahar of Uttarpara, dating back to Thakurda’s time. Thakurda’s predecessors had dolls written on palm leaves, because we have no sense of history, we did not bring them from Uttarpara to Patna.
Kulsoom Apad’s family used to tie bidis sitting there in front of the road where there was a small shop selling bidis and cigarettes. My beedi tying education also sat next to them in that room. I came to know another thing, there is a picture of a temple in a frame in their shop, I said one day, you are Muslims, why have you hung a picture of a temple? Kulsoom Appar Abbu said, it is not a temple, it is our pilgrimage Karbala, the tomb of Imam Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet, as you cough. Kulsum Apa’s grandfather, Thakurda, brought the picture while doing that pilgrimage, from a pilgrimage called Najaf to Karbala, thirty krosh, which means sixty miles, had to walk, with thousands of pilgrims, all sleeping on the side of the road at night. Another was a wingless flying horse of golden tin framed, with a face like a girl’s; They called the horse Burak, on which the Prophet went to Mecca.
Kulsoom liked to spend time at your house because in our house Dada was five years older than me, he had his own group of friends, Bengalis in the neighborhood Kadamkunya. Mejda is three years older than me, all the boys in the neighborhood were considered scoundrels, they were Mejda’s friends, so Mejda didn’t care about me. Barojyatha’s two daughters are much older than me, they got married and went to their in-laws’ house. The other sisters were all much younger than me, busy with their girly games. Sometimes I used to play thief-police, bullet or lattu or danguli with the boys of the same age in the neighborhood to pass the loneliness at home. If lattu or bullet fell in the sewer of Gu and Pank, I would pick it up and wash it in tap water. Many times, if the Jattuto or Khurtuto sisters saw it, they would complain to Barojethima and I had to bathe in cold water in the evening to be purified.
I remember that I told about my sexual relationship with Kulsum Appa only to my grandmother because I could share secrets only with her. Hearing this, he said, “I have never said this to anyone in my life, you told me, you told me, and don’t let anyone hear it.” I pressed Khemi’s words to him, because there was no guilt about Khemi. I didn’t feel guilty about my first romantic lover either, but I didn’t tell my grandmother.
I remember another incident. At the age of five, my mother shackled me to a room in Imlitla and kept me locked up since the afternoon, because of which the neighborhood teased me, saying ‘Pi le pi le, kuch na hotu’. Along with the other Bihari children of Imlitla, I also had a drink, and was caught by the smell of tadi. Mother didn’t punish me for fast food, she gave it so that I don’t fall into bad habits like Mejda. There was no electricity in Imlitla. I sat alone in a dark room until ten at night in a corner. When father returned from work at night, the shackles were opened. Maybe under the pressure of this incident and some other such incidents, I will gradually become a non-mixer, a Hindu-atheist, an introvert, an introvert, a transgressor, a traitor; I will be a bookworm. The seeds of anxiety and fear of self-control will be planted in the mind.
Back to Catholic school. One day the whole class was taken to a garden across the road, it was called a farm, there I saw white pigs surrounded by iron nets in a place, I have never seen white pigs before, the baby pigs whose whole body is burnt and cooked as ‘suckling pig’ by the Christians. at the feast Nandita said, these pigs are eaten by the sisters, they have so much fat that the eyes are closing, their sausage is very good to eat, one day I will feed you. In Imlitala Ganjedi-Jamghat, the people of Kanagli bring small black pigs and eat them, burn them, they feel dirty. We went into a separate enclosure to play with the baby pigs, pretty cuddly, nudus-nudus fair pigs. I saw a foreign cow, I had never seen such a big cow before, the udder was also very big, it seemed full of milk. That means Sister Irene and Father Hillman eat pure milk; When Raju came to our house to milk the cow, mother asked him, how much water have you mixed today, if you mix water, don’t mix dirty water, mix clean tap water.
In the farm, I saw a black-colored, almost vulture-like head, a big bird, not flying, in a place surrounded by nets. Nandy said, they are turkey birds, eaten at Christmas feasts, very soft and good to eat. The farm’s chickens are also large. Eating chicken eggs and chicken is prohibited in our Imlitla house. Nothing is forbidden in Nandita’s house. I have eaten chicken egg omelette almost every day in his tiffin family.
After listening to the story of Jesus Christ from Father Hillman, one day I tied two pieces of wood from a packing box together and made a cross and started walking in the streets of the neighborhood with friends of the same age as Imlitla. Those who were following behind started chanting “hip hip hooray” themselves, as the neighborhood football team, kabaddi team or wrestlers won this slogan. When I reached Birju’s house with a group shouting slogans, I saw his mother sitting with a frown on her face, she didn’t smile at me like others, when I asked what happened, she said that her little son was caught stealing and went to jail, like selling chickpeas. no wood I took him down from the cross, I told him the story of Jesus Christ as much as I could, he heard and said, You are my ‘Jesus’. Every day after returning from school, I would take out the ‘Julus’ of Jesus, tie two sticks with ropes and visit Birju’s mother through various streets.
I rose to standard four at the time of India’s independence. A huge silk flag was hung in the grounds of the convent. Everyone was given a packet of food. But I noticed that there were no fair-gold haired students, no Sister Irene and no fair sisters, no Father Hillman either. When he returned home to ask his father, he said that he did not want to stay in India anymore, so many riots and riots had happened and were going on, they did not feel safe, they went to their own country. I was sad to hear. Convent did not look good anymore. My parents decided that my Bengali speech was mixed with English and Patnai Hindi, and now I will be sent to a Bengali medium school, not in my grandfather’s school, but in my grandfather’s school, Hindi and English are taught. The year after independence, I got admission in Rammohan Roy Seminary.
eighteen
There was only one Bengali medium school in Patna, Rammohan Roy Seminary, I got admission. At the time of admission, my parents remembered my date of birth, because this date of birth will be on the matric certificate. No one thought of birthdays at the time of entering the convent; Father Hillman wanted to know the date of birth, father told him, he was born five years after my eldest son, in winter, probably November. Father Hillman fixed my birthday as November 2, 1939.
At the time of Rammohan Roy’s admission to the seminary, he opened the paper of that year and found that the new moon was falling on the second of November, not the year 1939. October 29 was found to be good from all sides, Satish Ghoshal also said in Purutamsha, this day is very auspicious. By the way, my birthday is fixed on 29th October.
I was in standard four at the convent. I was admitted to Rammohan Roy Seminary in class six, Bengali medium, because I could speak English. Dabur was released from the duty of delivering and fetching because he had grown up. School is about one and a half kilometers from home, I started commuting on foot, whether it is winter or monsoon. During the rainy season, I used to go to Ishkul wet and wet, but then I did not get fever when I was wet like that. It is probably necessary to have a small amount of money to get a fever. This Ishkul had no uniform, now I hear. Back then, you could go to school wearing your home clothes; Ironed clothes if you want, or whatever you want. I used to wear my convent dress as long as it lasted. At the time of admission, Bengali Keranibabu, whose son Ratan studied in our class, said, “This school is very old, destroyed by the Brahmo Samaj in 1890, you see the photo of those two students above, they were shot dead by the police while hoisting the national flag in the state assembly building during the August revolution of 1942. , Umakanta Prasad Sinha and Ramanand Singh of class nine, you must be such a dakabuko too.” On the way to Ishkul and on the way back, I used to kick the bricks of the road with my shoes.
In front of this clerk, in 1951, after being punished, he had to stand alone in his room all day, not even allowed to lean against the wall. This punishment was the result of another type of robbery. As some classmates were bothering a girl in the class, I opened the geometry box and tried to fight with the compass, injuring them both. After Ishkul was over, the boys and girls of different classes had left, the evening was falling, the darkness was approaching in the winter evening, the clerk had gone, I stood alone, in the midst of terrible loneliness, then the headmaster Kshetramohan Poddar Mashay came from the quarters adjacent to the school and allowed me to go home. The nuns in the convent never let me feel alone, even though it took time to get used to working in English.
In Rammohan Roy Seminary, outside all the classrooms were written on black boards which language medium which class. I was going to sit on a seat at the back after seeing the class six board of Bangla medium, a classmate said, you must be a new comer, this is my seat, you go to the front bench. In the two rows of the class, the girls, almost all wearing sarees, some are older than the boys. In this school, when the bell rang, the prayer started in the class room, prayer in Bengali, no one had to join hands, most of the students were studying from class four, their faces were difficult to sing. It didn’t happen, everyone started singing, it seemed like the school started singing. I was later told about this song by Namita Chakraborty of class nine, who was also the librarian of the school’s Bengali library during tiffin. For the first time in my life, in class six, I heard Rabindranath’s songs and poems from him. Now the school is divided into two divisions, Senior and Junior; Heard that the prayer is limited to junior category only :-
Satyasundar resides in Anandaloka and Mangalaloka.
Glory is revealed in the universe
The world is surrounded by Manibhushan.
Asteroid lunar fall is fast
Drinking, bathing, in the inexhaustible rays.
After Dharani, Mohan Madhushova drops Nijhar
Phulpallab-Gitbandha-Sundar Varane.
Bahe Jeevan Rajnidin is a new trend
Mercy is born in death.
Affection, love, kindness, devotion softens the soul,
How comforting you are in the rain.
What kind of festival does the world celebrate?
Shrisampada Bhumaspad Nirbhayasaran.
The boy who was singing next to me, his name was Tarun Shur, bent, dohara, dark oil-stained face, he muttered occasionally as if something was stuck in his throat, we remained friends till his death, why the song was so harsh to him, and What is the meaning of the song, he said, what do we do knowing that, we have to sing it, it doesn’t come in the exam, it’s Bemmod’s song, written by Ravi Babu.
– Who is Ravi Babu again?
– Don’t you know Ravi Babu? The one who won the Nobel Prize, long beard and hair.
I understand that the school is run by Brahmo Samaj, hence this song. Through this prayer, I gathered the courage to open my throat and sing. Two other schoolmates Barin Gupta and Subarna Upadhyay, four of us gathered together in an empty house in Daryapur, we would organize a Bengali Hindi song session. But if my grandfather and grandmother find out that I am enrolled in Bemmod’s school, singing Ravi Babu’s songs, then they will take me to the Ganges and bathe in the Ganges, bathe my father in the Ganges, and put on new clothes.
In Imlitla’s house, in Patna, in Basatbati in Uttarpara and in his uncle’s house in Panihati, Ravithakur was forbidden; He had no access to writing and singing at home. In Patna and Uttarpara, the elders did not have the courage to disobey the prohibition of grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Even the elders did not try to quell the curiosity about who the Ravitakur man was, and why his name or work could not be revealed.
Rabi Babu is the man Rabindranath Tagore, we brothers and sisters feel in imlitala, because I got admission in this Brahm school. About Rabi Babu, Ushma’s grandparents brought him from Rawalpindi, Lahore, Quetta, a city. At first glance Mele centers on a song. Baradi-Chhordi used to learn classical music from Pandit Bulakilal. On the day of Barojethima Sankranti, Satyanarayana was worshiped at Imlitala’s house and on that occasion a Brahmin gathering was held. On Purutamsha, when Satish Ghosal’s Chand Sadagar Hitopodesh was over, Didira used to sing Ishwar Vandana, in Brajbhasha or Hindi or Sanskrit. At Purutamshay’s request, Pandit Bulakilal taught Chhordi Savitri a Bengali thungri, in Sindhu Bhairavi Ragini. Chordi played the sitar and sang to the accompaniment of Panditji:-
Who forgets?
Let the imagination come true, know what this is,
Who are you?
That is under you
How do you call God intent?
Sometimes give Bhushan, sometimes food;
Cursing at times, cursing at times.
To whom I bow, Lord, dance before him-
Where did you see the mistake in this world?
When the song was over, Barojyatha and Purutamsha both cursed the Panditji for teaching such poor songs. Panditji argued that he had taught this song to many respectable families in the city. He was informed that they were meeting. No one from Imlitla neighborhood was ever given the title of Mlechcha. I would have forgotten the song, had I not been admitted to Ram Mohan Roy Seminary. Every year in this school Bhadrotsav was held, on one of the Sundays, the students and teachers participated in an evening performance of dance, song and drama, and the parents were asked to watch the event. Mother-aunts and grandparents from our house were in the audience. The program started by singing this song to their surprise and delight. As long as Kshetramohan Poddar was the Headmaster or Principal, this event was held; After his retirement, the Vasant Utsav was discontinued in Hindi-speaking majority.
I asked my father to find out the reason for the fever about the Purutamshay-Barojyathar song. At the time when Grandfather and Grandmother were touring in Lahore etc., Brahminical preacher Navin Chandra Roy also visited the area, and his ideology, which Grandfather and some others, Bengali and Punjabi, could not accept. Grandparents were able to get rid of their bigotry in Barojyatha’s mind, and Barojethima came from Purutbari.
In my childhood, most Bengali elite families in Patna were Brahmins, Brahmins of Adidharma. Pandit Navin Chandra Roy was the representative of that section. While Dadu was in Upper India, the Punjab High Court and the British Privy Council ruled that Adi Dharma or ‘official’ Brahmins were not Hindus. Keshavchandra Sen’s Navabidhan Brahmins were ‘ceremonial’. First, because of the religious orthodoxy of the Ekannavarti householders and officials, and secondly because of their distance from the Bengali elite society, all Brahmins who were fragmented were shunned with the title of ‘Bemmo’ by the house of Imlitla. That’s why Ushma is so enthusiastic about Brahma Sangeet written by Rammohan Roy. My mother also brought the seeds of denigration of ‘Bemmod’ from her maternal uncle’s house in Panihati. That is because the postgraduates of those days, my maternal uncles or my grandfathers, were against the Brahmins, because almost every trustee of the Brahmin community supported England and demanded severe punishment for the rebel sepoys in opposition to the Great Mutiny of 1857; In 1871, Devendranath Tagore declared that they were first Brahmins, then Indians. According to the Marriage Act of 1872, a Brahmin had to write that “I am neither a Hindu nor a Muslim nor a Christian nor a Jew.” Pictures of 19th century thinkers used to be hung in the library of maternal uncle’s house, but Rabindranath Tagore’s picture was not hung even after receiving the Nobel Prize. Maternal great-grandmother Anadinath Chatterjee used to say that “Ravi Babu perverted Indian classical music”; As long as he lived, Rabindra Sangeet was not appreciated in that house.
After father moved to Daryapur, Kakara moved to Kotarang and Uttarpara, Mejo Jethima also died then Barojyatha and Jethima went to stay at Didi’s house as Imlitla’s house was almost haunted. Singing sessions were often held at Didi’s house. I didn’t go anywhere after class nine, except my brother. Because when I went, my grandmother used to say, I hear a lot about you. Barojethima used to say, Bapu, don’t go wrong.
Once Barojyatha called his acquaintances at Didi’s house for Satyanarayan Puja evening. I went and saw my elder niece Manju sitting on the carpet in the hall singing, ‘Geetbitan’ open in front of her, Chordi playing the sitar, Baradi on the harmonium and old Bulakilal giving accompaniment on the tabla. Bivore Barojyatha sings with his eyes closed in the easy chair. Barojethima is leaning against the wall with folded hands. This is the song, the hymn from the stage of worship, now sung everywhere, the Brahman song:
Develop the heart
innermost
Clear, brighten
make it beautiful
wake up
Don’t be afraid
Do good, be relentless and doubtless.
Develop the heart
innermost
Add it to all
set free oh stop
Communicate by all means
Your rhythm is calm.
In the lotus feet, make the heart beat O,
praise, praise,
bless you
Develop the heart
innermost
Unbeknownst to the elders of the house, Rabindranath entered our house after reaching Rabindranath Tagore from Rabi Babu via Rabi Thakur. After the implementation of the Indian Constitution, there was a gradual change in the power structure in the society, the Brahmins started leaving the seat of Patna’s social leaders. The Brahma Mandir Girls School, where my younger sisters studied, was closed, the temple was demolished and the market complex was built. The “Aghor-Kamini Vidyalaya” established by Bidhanchandra Roy to teach handicrafts to girls named by his parents, continued to languish due to neglect. But not only in our and relatives’ houses, the Brahman music was spread from the upper floors among the poor Bengalis. In Panihati too, when the Ekannavarti family broke up, after generations of grandfathers, Rabindranath entered with his song. However, by then Rabindra Sangeet had become part of commodification.
nineteen
I have to become something myself, to become that I need to have philosophical plans and dreams, wisdom and power to realize them, this kind of thinking did not exist before the British came to India. The theory of becoming a person is European, Christian. The names that we find in the background of past Bengali society, and whom we think of as “became”, such as Advayavajara, Kramadishwar, Indrabhuti, Atish Dipankar, Chaitanyadeva, Jagatmalla, Jahuri Shah, etc., none of them “became” something of their own, or created a counterpart. Nor did he think of the subject as separate and self-sufficient from the object world, or of the artificial sphere of knowledge called culture separated from the nature of the universe. It was not possible in their theoretical world. For the reasons we know and respect them, it would not have been possible if they had been built in the European world.
It is impossible for me, even at the age of seventy-seven, to get out of the European world of thinking about individual creativity and the realization of individual dreams, and how to re-establish the work of the individual as a social creation without clinging to wisdom as a gender-neutral personality trait. Dethroning the myriad gods and goddesses of pre-English nature and nature, European philosophy placed the individual at the center of existence. Having traveled all over India in rural development work, seeing ordinary Indians, I now realize what a terrible crisis European philosophy has created. The Bengali society of West Bengal is now an individualistic structure built on the European philosophy. Since my childhood was not spent in an individual construction factory, I can say that I can relate to it from a distance, thanks to Imlitla and Rammohan Roy Seminary School. That does not mean that I have developed a philosophical code of my own. My literary work transcends conventional notions of literature and therefore penetrates the wider realm.
Now we think that those who became something in the traditional Bengali society, whose names I mentioned a little earlier, or Baul, Fakir, Sannyasi, which did not exist in Europe, they and their activities, happened outside what we now understand by society. That is, they did not have to prove themselves by standing “other” people in front of them. That means people need to be around to realize the European dream. Just as speech in meetings is essential to “becoming” a leader; Prizes for “being” writers; Congratulations for “being” a poet.
Why can people be anything other than being honest with themselves? Doing something for others, and putting someone or others in front of you to “become” yourself, are two completely different things. To think of others as one’s own stuff is monocentric, unipolar, unilinear. Not only people, but all ideas are seen to be built against each other. When I grow up and think “I will be like this”, it is important to have Tamuk-Tusuk in front of me from childhood. If everyone is honest, no one needs to be honest separately. The thought will not come to mind. To tell the truth, when caught in the grip of becoming, the traditional Bengaliness of a Bengali does not last.
I have seen when working, a young assistant manager is constantly worried about how to “become” a manager, when the manager “becomes” assistant general manager, deputy general manager, general manager, chief general manager, etc. When retirement happens, all the “Hawahiri” air goes out. Poets-writers are similarly running up the ladder of various awards from poets to “being” superpoets. In the end, the matter of mutuality becomes futile. In this context, it can be said that after the arrival of the British, all the Bengali thinkers and artists and writers have shown pride in “consciousness”, the background of which was that of the gifted, powerful colonialist and the submissive receiver. The discipline structure is Hellenic. The source of that discipline was the knowledge base of Europe, and that knowledge underpinned their rule. With their knowledge structure, with the reality created by them, they made a pattern to mark wise, wise, pious, heroes, thinkers, philosophers etc. If anyone dreams of “becoming” any of these, he must accept the power grid and document himself accordingly. Needless to say, I have tried to defy the power grid since childhood, staying marginalized.
Due to the marginalization, which will be revealed in my “childhood of small people”, I developed a natural instinct to refuse to get caught in the huge net that the British and Indian nationalists cast to make their own reflection by beating the sons of the soil. The philosophy that wants to beat everyone and make them equal, Bauls, Fakirs, Saints and Monks do not arise there. In the world of Bengali self-identity provided by the British, our isolated family of Imlitla, due to its strange and unwanted marginalization, has no chance to enter. It was “new”, and those who got the chance took refuge in the concept. The concept was intended to mark an initial moment in a larger timeline, and included, central Bengali; When our family was marginalized.
A man’s desire that “I will be so and so” lurks in the realm of uncertainty. To be successful at “wanting” something, it must be perfect. Made perfect in the factory of universality. The main obstacle to perfection is uncertainty. My childhood-adolescence was spent in such uncertainty. What is uncertain is different. Those who are different are others. They do not fit into the business. The other person must not think this thought must be different. I knew I was a misfit, a troublemaker, anti-establishment; But that’s why I didn’t think of myself as someone else. Kulsoom Apader’s family did not seem different. The Mahadalits of the neighborhood did not think otherwise. They have supported the family through various livelihoods, like father has supported the family in Imlitla, Dariyapur and Uttarpara through his photo shop. As a result, it is difficult to tie my life into a unilinear story. A man’s biography is bound to be different in the hands of different authors. Because the flow of time is multilinear, I got this idea in 1959 from Oswald Spengler’s book “Decline of the West”. The variable lines that can be drawn from the center to the circumference are innumerable, they cannot be counted. If someone wants to tell a story of becoming or aspiration, then he has to choose any one of those many variable lines and write the story of reaching the periphery from the center of the circle. But the man is built with as many changing lines as possible.
Let’s say that since childhood I have only looked at many animals and objects, staring, for no reason. I only have history to look at. There is only touch history. There is a history of talking. There is a history of listening. There is a history of meeting. Many houses have a history of moving in and out. There is a history of walking. Dressing has a history. There is a history of hair cutting. I will write my “coming of age” story by cutting out what? Whatever story I write, it will be one eye on time. A story that will make space irrelevant.
As a way of “growing up”, Dada, who spent a lot of time in Calcutta, said he studied economics and mathematics in college. I got admission in college and after admission I realized that mathematics was beyond my knowledge, mathematics is also hidden in economics, its name is econometrics.
twenty
In 1956, I overcame this fence and entered to study graduation in economics. I can never memorize, so I took a book and wrote the whole thing several times so that I remember it. Thanks to this writing, I was able to admire my Nepali classmate Bhubanmohini Rana, a Mongolian beauty wearing thick glass glasses; He needs the books. We became friends, Bhubanmohini, whose name is Rano in the novel ‘Rahuketu’, agreed to my kiss and food proposal. I wrote a poem in English for him, that was my last English poem. I realized while kissing Bhubanmohini that girls also drink alcohol. After telling the incident to Hindi writer Fanishwarnath Renu, he said, what have you done, do you know how powerful the Ranas are in Nepal, if you know, they will bury you alive. I seduced Bhubanmohini. In return for the kiss, I wrote this poem for him called ‘Exchange a Kiss’:
Let your perfumed hello
Fall for a few seconds
To enable me in picking up
The Memory of Your Glances
You left in the notes I lent you
Not for nothing! At list you should
Exchange a kiss, even flying will do.
Bhubanmohini Rana was the only young woman who slapped me in return for a kiss. I have written the incident in the novel ‘Rahuketu’. A hippie named William Goth said that kissing a French girl is not full of food, their kiss has the sound of French language, smells of raw fish. It is my experience that secret music floats from the vaginas of young women of unfamiliar languages.
I graduated second in 1958. In 1959, the pages of the diary given to me by my father were filled with poems written in Bengali, I was writing whatever I wanted, recklessly, Imlitla’s recklessness came to writing poems. In post-graduation, a special paper in economics was taken on monetary theory, and even there the ghost of mathematics did not leave behind. In 1960, I became a second graduate. Like me, my two favorite professors, Dr. RN Tripathi and Dr. J. N. Sinha were also upset with my results. It is no longer possible to be first in the exam in life. Namitadi’s imposed Marxism is then spinning in the head, maybe Kulsoom Apa’s influence is also there, after all, Imlitla’s life. Dr. JN Sinha once came to the Reserve Bank office to break the Zamindari Bond, saw me and said, “You have to do this after studying Economics!” During that time, until passing Intermediate in 1956 and graduating, I tried to make life as complicated as possible, sex, drugs, sex, drugs, sex, drugs, sex, when all my classmates started to graduate, IPS started. IAS to join IFS, Niden State Service Commission. Many dropped out in the middle and “became” IPS IAS, when I passed my post graduation, almost all of them had built a palace of bribery, it is not a bad thing to be able to take a bribe from the door of the university. I had no ambitions, no hobbies, no running in the park, no sitting in rowa playing the girls’ whistles. There wasn’t there wasn’t there wasn’t. The past is like rotting. Some past events stop, some events go on and on and on.
The police commissioner of Kolkata told me, “So you are the top dog”. I felt bad because I didn’t know the meaning of “top dog”, I thought it was a dog. It didn’t feel bad when he meant it to the lawyer. But the lawyer said, “From what the police commissioner said, it seems you have to fight the case alone.”
My personal library across the wall cupboards in Daryapur became the envy of my friends. If you have rare books, you will make friends of all kinds. Antum used to buy the latest English books from Pustak Mahal and father used to pay the bills. During my case many books were stolen in my absence, Marquis de Sade’s “Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom”, Havelock Ellis’s “Complete Works”, John Jane’s “Our Lady of the Flowers”, Malcolm X’s biography, Dostoevsky’s “Complete Works”, Beat Movement papers, dictionaries, many books. Many lives at the same time many I, must win but don’t know what to win, must do but don’t know what to do, must reach but don’t know where to reach, no reason, sweat song of bees in the brain, jumping with eyes closed to find the meaning of life, Maybe, just maybe, there was no interest in clothes, no need for regular cleaning, no interest in shoes, no need for regular polishing, no interest in wristwatches, it just seemed that stupid people ran the state in countries, people in Imlitla would remain poor families for thousands of years. . I don’t know how people can dream of communism with the mountains of Manusmriti on their heads, the people of West Bengal have no idea about the Indian society, even after six decades of independence, the villages are divided by caste system, the water wells are separate, if you fall in love with the upper caste, you are burnt or killed in college. If they go with branded shoes, clothes, glasses, perfumes, they are attacked by rich elites, if young women bleach their faces by applying nail polish, they have to hear gossip. So for me, writing and literary art are not the same thing. I checked myself from the beginning of writing.
twenty one
In Dariyapur, thinking that I will reduce my mother’s suffering in the kitchen, thinking that my mother should enjoy life now, I bought an inden gas cylinder, I bought a fridge so that I don’t have to cook everyday, so that I can keep her favorite fish stock, I bought a rice cooker so that I can sit looking at the rice. I don’t have to, I bought a pressure cooker so that cooking is quick. It took the mother a long time to get over these things, about four years, she was afraid of them; He used to argue that because of them there is no taste in cooking. Even when there was gas, mother loved to sit and cook in front of the coal fire, then she would tell me to turn on the gas and turn it off. He used to open the fridge from a distance by holding the handle with a towel, in case of shock. The pressure cooker could not keep up with the pressure and would burn it. Never used the rice cooker. But mother’s joy is that I took care to reduce her labor, old friends used to show them when they came to visit. In the end, the cook’s wife had to be kept to bring the mother out of the kitchen, she was also old enough, but the cylinder gas, fridge, pressure cooker were in trouble. As soon as TV came to Patna city, it was black-and-white, not color, I bought a Telerama TV for my mother, even though the program was official, she enjoyed watching it and all the children of the neighborhood, mostly from Muslim families of Dariepur, would come and gather around her on the floor.
Mother said, why a car now, go to people’s house. But it was not bought, there was no space to build a garage in the house in Patna. At Kinlum, FIAT, later in Mumbai, became Assistant General Manager at NABARD, taking a loan from the office. Both mother and father died then. When I was transferred to Lucknow, I used to go to the head post office in Lucknow and call my mother on STD every Saturday; Booked at the post office and had to wait in line with many people, the mail would arrive after half an hour and forty five minutes. If you had a mobile like today, you could talk to your mother twice a day.
In the Chilekotha house of Uttarpara, my grandfather took shelter during my studies in Calcutta, stacks of books, ganjam of friends, smoke of cigarettes. Sunil Gangopadhyay seemed to be a homely type of person. Before that, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Shakti Chattopadhyay came to our Dariyapur house and vomited on the balcony after eating Patna’s thara. Sunil Gangopadhyay has said that if you send him, he will arrange to publish my writing. After Dada got a job, when he was staying in Dhanbad, he told Deepak Majumdar to read “Philosophy of History”, I saw Deepak Majumdar washing Dada’s dishes in Dhanbad. Deepak Majumdar seems to be a farmer type of person. I started reading books about what he said, and wrote “Philosophy of History” which was later serially published in “Bingsh Shatabdi” newspaper. I doubt if the editor would have printed it if he knew how old I was. Then, on the persuasion of Namita Chakraborty, I started a long essay on Marxism, which Biman Majumdar’s son, my grandfather’s friend Buzluda, told me to read.
When my grandfather was in college in Calcutta, I often visited Uttarpara, Panihati, Konnogar and Ahiritola. If you want to go from Panihati to Ahiritola, you have to go through Shealda station. Sheyalda station was a broken family of refugees, processions on the streets of Kolkata, buses and trams burning, it seemed that no one was listening. At that time, West Bengal was newly born from tragedy, and felt like the clowns of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the flower of King Lear, the gravediggers of Hamlet, the clown of Othello, the porter of Macbeth, the touchstone of As You Like It, the feast of Twelfth Night. I have tried to capture the tidal waves of the misery of Calcutta in my novel ‘Namgandh’. Seeing the agony of people struggling to survive, listening to their helpless murmurs, it is easy to feel my own failure, to feel that I am not able to move even a leaf of a tree. Their wails are still cursed in the air of the city. I ask myself, what can be done? Drop by drop poison brew with a pen!
I have seen all the friends of grandfather! No one seemed like Grandpa or me to be a misfit, rowdy, anti-climatic Imlitla-Marca Insane type; Their ambition is to pursue a career in literature. However, if there are no imlitlapanhi insens like me and my grandfather, the movement cannot be built. Many of their sentences have bad breath, pyorrhea, indigestion, wind, rotten goat between the teeth, half the meaning of the word gets stuck in it. After seeing their work, even the closets turned red with shame. And that optimal philosophy. Money is the bastard child of the dollar. Their collective or individual actions seem to suggest that I suffer from some kind of stupid pride, superiority complex, what Allen Ginsberg called “naïve”, which leads to second place in tests, kicks in love, betrayal of friends, prudishness, greed for money. I eat with the world. Oh, forgot to mention, Grandpa’s Rolex watch was stolen by a friend in Chaibasa, since then Grandpa stopped wearing it.
Has West Bengal managed to get out of the tragedy of the 50s and 60s? No, I couldn’t, I don’t know if I ever will. It remains, with perpetual chaos, unprovoked anger, anarchy, brutality, gang rape, women trafficking and hatred. Chue-chue from above has reached the ground floor, where the slightest movement causes people to panic, become aggressive, adversary or not. Those who wanted to become heroes have gradually come out of the hollow and introduced the public with the face of a pure joker. Blending that tragedy with the joy of family memories, instead of fish they bring biryani, stew, sausages, pasta, hamburgers, hotdogs — one by one the fish are also leaving, farmed fish, gorgeous red dhoti for weddings and the likes of north Indian sherwanis. , which was contributed by poet Ajit Dutt’s daughter Sharbari Dutt.
twenty two
While writing the first novel ‘Dubjale Jetuku Praswas’, I tried to portray Namita Chakraborty as I saw her in the role of Mansi Barman. In that novel, I used Barin Gupta’s house and neighborhood of Mahendru Moholla in Atanu Chakraborty’s time. The characters of Raghav and Rama are my colleague Sushant Chakraborty and the telephone operator Ratna Atarthi. Arindam plays the role of colleague Arun Mukherjee, who later marries Dada’s Shali, and is truly madly in love with a married woman who refuses to allow him to have sex with her despite letting him sleep with her. The Maulinath character is a colleague of Manimohan Mukhopadhyay, whose daughter is married to his grandfather’s son. And there is the caste struggle in Bihar, Maoist-Leninist struggle.
Although Mizoram is not mentioned in the novel ‘Dubjale Jetuku Praswam’, Parthasarathy Chowdhury, IAS, deduced that Atanu’s sex life with Judy-Julie took place in Mizoram. I was further interrogated to know if they were events in my life. I went to Parthasarathi Chowdhury’s house once, he is the son-in-law of magician PC Sarkar. The PC government gave Parthasarathi a house with one room for reading books. He was so involved in going through books all day, making lists with numbers, arranging them according to the cupboards that he lost the habit of writing. He said, if you ever need a book written by you, tell me, I have everything. He died so early that he is not there when he is needed for the collection of essays.
One day Shyamal Gangopadhyay appeared wearing a red t-shirt and jeans after reading ‘the breath that drowns’. Even though I write fiction myself, I want to write a feature for ‘Ajkal’ daily considering the events of my novel to be true. I said go to Bangalore, maybe you will get it, of course, it was not Bangalore then. He came back and said, nothing happened in the Reserve Bank there. I said, you also write novels, I don’t go looking for them after reading them, no reader goes. An angry Shyamal Gangopadhyay wrote in ‘Ajkal’ daily, ‘Dubjale Jatuku Praswam’ is a suitable book to give as a wedding gift.
At the time of my graduation, my classmate Rajnarayan Das called me and went to his chilly house, PaTno Behind the market, turned off the house light and said with a telescope, look through the window. I saw two young Chinese girls, Indian Chinese, taking off their clothes, doing what is now called lesbian love. Rajnarayan said, Look, the slits of Chinese girls are horizontal, not vertical like Indian girls. I was just excited to see their pink tits and hairless vaginas. Rajnarayan dropped out of MA and joined the IPS, parked his government car at the gate of Dwarbhanga Building to remind us that he was on the top floor of the state apparatus and I was outside it, feckless, unambitious.
I lured Bhubanmohini Rana, a friend of my graduation class, with the desire to see the face of an upper-class or middle-class Muslim girl, hearing that there was a beautiful young woman from a rich family named Umma Habiba in their hostel. High-class girls used to wear veils. Approaching the gate of the hostel, Umma Habiba lifted the burkha’s niqab over her head and was startled to see her lipstick-stained lips and deep-set eyes, very fair, very fair, said, “See Leah?” I said “G”. And I thought, ah, if this girl was Kulsum Apa, I would have offered her unconditional love, I would not have left her even if I had torn the skin of the penis and become naked.
In 1964, the police commissioner in Lalbazar said, “Are you writing literature or selling toothpaste in handbills?” It was not in his idea that poetry can be printed on a single piece of paper and distributed on the street, like the promotion of toothpaste. None of the writers at that time had it, it was, according to them, “to bring down the goddess of art to the wayside”. I have not only attacked the language, I have also attacked its method.
Badri Patikmar, a childhood friend of grandfather in Imlitla neighborhood in 2000, became Baahubali, how he became a leader from a pickpocket and a political party by recruiting people and money laundering; Leaders don’t do anything by themselves, I realized after seeing them, there are people for everything, to steal, steal, kill, even throw. Ah, if life could be exchanged with Badri Patikmar. “Becoming” was obvious.
I asked Buzluda, who will read my book?
– Why? Just as Rabindranath used to send books to each other in envelopes, you will also send them.
I liked this idea of sending it to people. I used it during the hunger movement, printed leaflets, cards and pamphlets and distributed them.
Money is needed for books and writing. I applied to a college in Shillong and got a teaching job to teach economics. Then “Bengal Kheda” was going on, father said, “Look and see if you can get any job in Patna, your grandfather is not here, you too leave, who will see if we are ill with fever?” Schoolmate Samarendra Chakraborty from Nepal, Rammohan Roy Two classes higher than me in the seminary, one day he came and said, ‘You have to sign this paper, I have written a job application, my office is hiring, a new office will open, not many people know, don’t tell anyone.’ Reserve Bank, he was also in the note burning office, then he got off in the afternoon, then he was teaching, he had to run the family, his father committed suicide when he was young, he was caught for forging and selling drugs of a foreign company.
The pleasures of the black hole of chalk and slate were absorbing me, the book sharks were enjoying tearing pieces of flesh from my released body, the leeches of letters were sitting on my skin and sucking blood and increasing my hormones. I started writing with eyes, ears and tongue. And reading, books, books, books, books, books, no choice, this book, that book, such and such book, so and so book, knowledge knowledge knowledge knowledge. Another line, another sentence, another paragraph, the joy and sorrow of living, the desire to live forever. I was hanging between the buzz and the action, a life of peaceful comfort running into the improbability, a quarter of a life had become known, the dirty immorality hidden in curiosity from illegality to the fear of uncertainty, the phase of ignorance was over.
I used to see my father every day, he doesn’t think of himself as an artist, he thinks that his job is to give life to the dead which brings joy to their descendants, but I also saw that his health is gradually breaking down due to mental and physical ailments like artists. He also seems to play the role of a poison brewer in every film, which I was doing in my diary and notebook manuscript. Now when I think about the changes in life, it seems as if they happened in a few years.
I started to leave the habit of watching movies, because I used to watch movies for sexual appeal, not for the attraction of white woman’s thighs and cleavage, Satyajit Ray Hrithik Ghatak Mrinal Sen Akiro Kurosawa Fogederico Felleni Roman Polanski Ingmar Bergman John Luc Godard Louis Bunuel Francois Truffaut Federico Fellini. I cannot watch subtitled films; Reading and watching the frame and listening three things at the same time has never been possible.
Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot Anna Karina Marina Vladi Berruade Lafon Claude Z Jean Morea Vergano Marion Kika Markham Shirley Amaguchi Misa Uehara Anita Eckberg Giulietta Masina Sandra Milo Claudio Cardinal Anuk Aimee Carol Bock Angela Molina Catherine Deneuve Sophia Loren Elizabeth Taylor Many more How much more How, seeing their lips move, I step on my leg and handle the penis.
Kajalchokh dark eyebrows sweet smile quivering lips Suchitra Sen Savitri Devi Supriya Chowdhury Sandhya Roy Madhavi Mukherjee many more many more. Take care of yourself.
Breast folds Raw pink lips Long thighs Chiffon saree Madhubala Meenakumari Nimmi Nargis Shyama Meena Shorey Rehana Kuldeep Nair Geetabali Nutan Suraiya Asha Parekh Sadhana Mumtaz Wahida Rahman Helen Nalini Jayant Veena Roy Baijayantimala Mala Roy Many more. Take care of yourself.
My writing never got a chance to develop any association with the thoughts of film directors, whatever comes to my mind comes to my pen. If the pen wants, the brain arranges for him to become erratic. I don’t have faith, what I have is conviction. I stand alone against contemporaries, not a film, not a book, not an instruction, not a theory. I knew that the number of enemies would increase in the Iranian destination, I also knew that I would have to fight. Namitha Chakraborty could not give an answer when I took the bundle of magazines given by her and wanted to know why so many glossy propaganda papers of the Soviet country, why propaganda, why secrecy? Even so, you come to her flat, saying love is the main problem of my life, blushing in the hope of getting love. The appeal of the Communist Manifesto was haphazard by then, except for Stalin.
twenty three
All my activities, which the people of Calcutta called the bohemian life, originated in Imlitla; In the eyes of a Bengali, everyone is bohemian there. Imlitala is also the source of the volcano of anger and helplessness. The samurai built in that neighborhood started a war in my brain, life wanted to burst out of perception, I understood that writing is important to be opinionated. In other words, the world was born from global terrorism. And my writing is not to please the masses. When you think of a bee, you don’t just think of its buzzing and honey, you also have to remember its sting. If you think that your faith is the greatest in the world, many rivers of blood will flow, and in it will wash away corpse after corpse after corpse of your hatred.
After moving from Imlitla to Daryapur, grandfather got married, the new wife wouldn’t walk in the closet, so flush-closets were built, one floor and two floors, grandfather installed a mirror on the inside of the door of one floor, so that he could see himself, instead of a toilet for a toilet. Lux toilet soap. Many Bihari friends and even Bengali classmates used to come to see our toilet and ask for permission to take a little bath as there was a toilet in their house. In Imlitla’s house, the restriction of becoming a hego became tamadi, there is no need to wash Gangajal by saying, “Hago, no problem, hego” after wearing clothes. One by one, the boundary walls were breaking down, by themselves, and everyone in the house was included in the flow of that erosion, mother, father, grandfather, me, everyone. Chicken eggs, chicken meat, fish without scales, fast drinking, smoking marijuana and returning home, all the taboos disappeared. With the money of Tarun Shur sitting in Mahungu’s shop, Chebatum bater, bageri, quail, Chaha bird’s body, pigeon’s thong. Tarun used to eat pigeon and said that this meat is very hot, today Shala will have to beat his hand several times to get the heat out.
Entering Patna University was a strange experience. I did not find any professor in the university who would interest me in writing. Rammohan Roy Seminary is more chaotic than that. None of those who were teaching Bengali in various colleges at that time had a master’s degree in Bengali language and literature. Ramapati Ghosh was the Chemistry teacher in Science College, Rangan Halder was the Psychology teacher in BN College, Tridib Chowdhury was the History teacher in Patna College. The university gave them the responsibility of teaching Bengali language and literature because firstly they are Bengalis, and secondly they are post-graduates in their subject from Calcutta University. Vijay Karmakar became professor of Bengal from Rammohan Roy Seminary the year I joined BN College. He was more interested in initiation into Brahminism, marriage of Brahmin youths, supervision of Maghotsava-Paushotsava etc. Jitendranath Ghosh, a lover of scholarship, became a Bengali professor in the second year of the college, who was alarmed from the very beginning by seeing the growth of the students. Jitendranath Ghosh could not adapt himself to the uproar that took place in Bengali poetry and novels after Rabindranath. The syllabus was made by Ramapati Ghosh, Rangin Halder, Tridib Chowdhury, etc., who did not like the poets of the 1930s. When the police arrested me for the hunger strike, Jitendranath Ghosh used to say, “I knew that Malaya would go into decline.”
Bareen got a job at Martin & Harris, a company of Jitpal-Satapals, Tarun Shur got a job at United Commercial Bank after graduation. Prof. Tripathi, who was the head of my special paper, said that it is better to do a PhD than to sit down, a synopsis was prepared by him; I left I got the Reserve Bank job quite easily. But when I entered the job, I realized that it is a very stressful job, where mountains of money are counted, where thousands of small coins are shoveled into bags and weighed. But the advantage of getting a job is that you can go to the city of your grandfather’s posting whenever you want, you don’t have to ask your father for money.
In Chaibasa, grandfather’s hut was on top of a hill, distant tribal villages could be seen, young tribal women carrying manure and carrying water in earthen pots in front of the hut, the ghostly atmosphere of the flying dragonflies at night, the smell of dry leaves, the sound of the water flow of the Roro river, the fading of Mahua flowers. The aroma, the lump of kerosene placed on the hill became the sodium vapor light of the moon in the dark, the forest of shawls in the distance. Endless leisure to sit and think alone. Here I could hear the deep voice of my manuscript. Sitting, it seemed that the cave dwellers did not know what is impurity and what is purity. I have seen in Imlitla that the poor man is afraid of the joy of the rich, as if he had suddenly entered the house of a rich man; To them, happiness was the joy of being out of society. In fact, those who talk about going astray cannot guide the right path. Sitting in the darkness of night on Nimdi dunes, I used to enjoy the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, Colosseum in Rome, Parthenon in Athens, Nalanda.
With Dada, from a few years before Dada’s marriage, I used to discuss India and West Bengal, Nehru’s socio-political-economic plan, Damadol of West Bengal. Then the construction of agricultural irrigation roads in the first five-year plan moved away from small and medium industries and the second five-year plan started more towards the Bombay model, towards big industries, the expenditure was reduced in the social service sector. Big industries have started exploiting the tribes. A terrible picture of post-colonial India was emerging before us. Dada’s friends from Calcutta who used to come to spend holidays at Dada’s house in Chaibasa were all youths with an ‘art for art’s sake’ mentality which I later learned was the product of Buddhadev Bose’s Kavitabhaban, Shitavashapanhi. I did not agree with many of them.
I was introduced to Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shankar Chattopadhyay, Sandeepan Chattopadhyay, Pranavkumar Mukherjee, Uppalkumar Bose, Deepak Majumdar, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Anand Bagchi etc. through my grandfather. Shankar Chatterjee looked like a James Bond type man in black trousers and a black shirt. Uppalkumar Bose seemed to be the corporate board member type. Ravi Ghosh in the role of Tarapad Roy in the film Aranya Dinratri, I also felt the same, Ravi Ghosh’s character type. Only Saratkumar Mukhopadhyay, before his arrest in the hunger strike, had written a postcard hinting that a conspiracy had begun against me.
Shakti Chatterjee did not participate in the debate, busy with his novel ‘Kuyotala’. As Sunil Gangopadhyay gave a positive response to the poems in my diary, Dada tore out a few pages and gave him the poems for Krittivas magazine, which were published in 1959. I didn’t want to write like a conventional poem, I wanted to speed it up, then I sent the manuscript to Sandeepan Chatterjee, I named the book “Satan’s face” He didn’t like it, actually the Satan of the convent school remained in my mind, seeing people around me, I thought they were wearing devil’s masks. walk around I wanted to break out of the colonial aesthetic reality, that is, the colonial aesthetic regime.
I gave the manuscript titled “Legacy of Marxism” to Shakti Chatterjee when he came to Patna and also gave money to print the book. Without seeing the proof of the book, he took out only a few copies, seeing that my temper got hot, and I poured petrol in front of his Ultodanga slum and set it on fire. Sunil Gangopadhyay said to Dada, You could have given it to me, you know the nature of Shakti very well. He kept “Satan’s face” credit to get it out of the publication, said he will advertise in the newspaper. After “Satan’s Mouth” came out, he started opposing me, because then the voice of Hungry movement was spreading everywhere.
Dada and I realized that since we do not have contacts in Calcutta, it is difficult to express our own point of view openly depending on these friends of Dada, so we need our own mouthpiece. All of them are worried about sugarcane, lust for fame, do not want to oppose each other, avoid controversy and form a brother-brother club. One believes in God, the other does not, yet does not argue.
Both of us could feel that socialism has become more important than time in post-colonial India, colonial England should not stay in the lap, we should look at Indian society and build a dynamic movement, but we need a base in Calcutta. Dada was able to convince Shakti Chatterjee, probably then Shakti Chatterjee would have agreed to any of Dada’s proposals because he was deeply in love with Dada’s Shali Sheela and lived in Dada’s Chaibasa house, when Dada went on tour he stayed at Dada’s in-laws house. Once Sunil-Sandipan came to Chaibasa in search of power and saw that he had established a base in his father-in-law’s house and said, “Kire Shala, have you buried the station here?”
In 1960 I came across the name and address of a young writer named Haradhan Dhara in a little magazine and it seemed to me that this name had a genius of its own, a poet or writer with such a name is still unrecognized. In 1961, he went to his Howrah home, which was a slum, and called Anloom to Patna. Dada also called Shakti Chatterjee to Patna. Among the four of us, Shakti Chatterjee is comparatively better known in Kolkata. Devi Roy and I were completely unknown.
I was introduced to the philosophy of Oswald Spengler while writing “Philosophy of History” and “The Legacy of Marxism”. Incidents of Stalin’s atrocities at that time created fear. China’s occupation of Xinjiang and Tibet also raised doubts about Marxism. China’s invasion of India during the Hungry Movement was enough to confuse. In Calcutta, Marxists were writing in support of China, now many of them have stopped, Marxism has gone to hell, everyone has understood that “progress” is the most false theory of all. At first the group became two pieces, then got involved in countless divisions, did not understand why so many narratives of the same dream. The file-copy of “Philosophy of History” was seized by the Calcutta police when they came to arrest me and seized it as an “anti-state” work, as there was an FIR against me under Section 120 (B) as well. This clause was added to facilitate waist ropes and handcuffs.
My father did not like Nehru and Gandhi. His hair penetrated me from childhood went Baba succeeded in burying the seeds of suspicion of celebrities in my and Dada’s mind. Even those who went to Soviet countries with Soviet money, no matter how famous poets-writers-leaders they are, could not exclude them from suspicion. The “Optimism” that they used to shout was like a bully with a book-reading face.
I discussed Spengler’s philosophy with my grandfather and thought about naming the movement. In an undergraduate English course, Geoffrey Chaucer had a line that struck a chord, “In the sour hungry time”. Haradhan Dhara and Shakti Chatterjee agreed that our movement should be named “Hungry Generation” or “Hungry Movement”. OK, I and Dada will pay the expenses, the address of Haradhan Dhara’s house will be given so that those who are interested can contact. A one-page bulletin will be published. Will deliver Haradhan Dhara, will not be sold. Shakti Chatterjee said, “There is no need to inform Sunil for the time being, he had realized that Sunil Gangopadhyay’s conflict with my opinion was inevitable, he wanted to avoid it.” Rivers become young during monsoons, and some people grow old due to the fear of rain and clouds. Why only the middle class write poetry!
twenty four
Spengler said that the history of a culture does not just go along a straight line, it extends in different directions simultaneously; It is a bio-process and therefore it is not possible to predict in which direction the various parts of the society will change. When the culture continues to develop and enrich itself depending only on its own creativity, its constant renewal and expansion takes place. But the end of a culture begins from the moment when its own creativity runs out and it begins to absorb, to eat, what it gets from outside, its hunger is insatiable. It seemed to me that after and as a result of partition, West Bengal was at a terrible end, and the emergence of Bengali at the level of 19th century thinkers was no longer possible. In Bengali socio-culture, a yanchak-tan movement is essential.
These words of Edward Gibbon’s book ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ struck a chord at the time of writing the “Philosophy of History”, although he showed the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire, but the words also apply to our society. They are, 1) the priority of display of wealth rather than increase of wealth; 2) sexual perversion and obsession; 3) Art becomes casual, trying to forget, no one pays attention to creativity; 4) The unbridgeable gap between the rich and the poor; and five) addiction to clinging to the state like a leech.
In 1962, Shakti Chattopadhyay, while reviewing Vinay Majumdar’s book “Samprati”, raised a topic called “Khutkatar Onvaar” about this thought of Spengler, but before that, Dada Sameer Roy Choudhury had written an article with the same title in Atulya Ghosh’s magazine “Jansevak”, ” Sunil Gangopadhyay was the Sunday page editor of Janasebak newspaper; Dada’s article was later published in the Hungry Bulletin. Shaileshwar Ghosh, after becoming a royal witness on bond, wrote in various places that I stole Shakti Chatterjee’s ideas and developed the theory of hunger movement. Later, a patrician boy named Sabyasachi Sen of Bakasu’s appearance, Shaileshwar’s disciple, is doing this in various newspapers. I have nothing to say about Enad’s knowledge of Shakti Chatterjee’s studies, because the fact that Enad’s student of Spengler is caught in the crosshairs of becoming a party worker of the Ishkul master can be seen in the tumult of West Bengal politics.
Here to say that European literary and painting movements took place on a linear basis, that is, the movements were time-specific or time-centric. The work of the Kallol group and the Krittivas group of innovation in their discourse were also within the boundaries of colonial aesthetic reality or colonial aesthetic reality, because they were logic-based, and they assumed that the consciousness of the individual was a single, compact and integrated matter. The main flaw of chronological thought is that its references consider themselves superior to ancestors, and neglect civilization and hierarchical development. Due to which Haradhan Dharas are not accepted, they have to make an affidavit to become Devi Roy.
Bengali presses in Patna did not print anything except marriage, food, paite and Shraddha cards, seeing that my first Bengali manifesto could not be printed in Patna, I wrote a poetry manifesto in English and printed it in November 1961 and sent it hurriedly to the address of a slum in Haradhan Dhara, Howrah. I myself sent some people to call. As soon as it was delivered in Kolkata, the uproar started, which could be called an unexpected response.
From the very first bulletin, the Hungry movement tried to develop a “simple system of thought” completely different from the “time-driven system of thought”. The seed that lies in chronological thinking creates the psychosis that threatens and abstracts collectivity, because wisdom is established as a gender-neutral personality trait, the tendency to absorb the benefits of society, and the haste to determine historical reference between individuals. The construction of personal theory becomes important. It is precisely for this reason that a study of the European literary and painting movements shows that society is so bloody deaf to the pressure of individualism that society does not care. If we look at the Krittivas group, we will see that the contemporary Shatabhisha group is non-existent under the influence of capitalist institutionalism and fostering competitive individualism; What a shame that Alok Sarkar got Sahitya Akademi award now in 2016! Under the influence of institutionalism, even the Krittivas group has been limited to two or three intellectual property owners. After the death of Sunil Gangopadhyay, the dispute over the brand of Kritivas is the dispute over the division of capital and power.
From the very first bulletin the Hungry movement’s counter-confrontation with the institutional context of the day began and grew in scale with the distribution of every bulletin, stenciled drawing, poster, collage, card, mask, which I learned much later, the Council for Cultural Freedom Secretary AB ShahYes, from Niseem Ezekiel, President of PEN India, Bonnie Crown of Asia Society, Khushwant Singh, Editor of Illustrated Weekly, and Pupul Jayakar, Cultural Advisor to the Government of India. AB Shah told me that Abu Sayyid Ayyub had a big plot against me, so I went to meet Sayyid Saeb; He pretended not to know anything, meanwhile, letters from Allen Ginsberg arrived one after another, which made his mood worse. When Abu Syed Ayyub wrote this letter to Allen Ginsberg on October 31, 1964, the Lalbazar police were busy gathering witnesses and organizing the case:
Dear Mr. Ginsberg,
I am amazed to get your pointlessly discourteous letter of 13th. That you agree with the communist characterization of the Congress For Cultural Freedom as a fraud and bullshit intellectual liberal anti-communist syndicate, did not, however, surprise me ; for I never thought the Congress had any chance of escaping your contempt of everything ‘Bourgeois’ or ‘respectable’.
If any Indian litteratur or intellectual come under police repression for their literary or intellectual work, I am sure the Indian Committee For Cultural Freedom would move in the matter without any ungraceful prompting from you. I am glad to tell you that no repression of that kind has taken place here currently. Malay Roychoudhury and his young friends of the Hungry Generation have not produced any worthwhile work to my knowledge, though they have produced and distributed a lot of self advertising leaflets and printed letters abusing distinguished persons in filthy and obscene language ( I hope you agree that the word “fuck” is obscene and “bastard” filthy at least in the sentence “Fuck the bastards of the Gangshalik School of poetry”, they have used worse language in regard to poets whom they have not hesitated to refer to by name ). Recently they hired a woman to exhibit her bosom in public and invited a lot of people including myself to witness this wonderful avant garde exhibition. You may think it as your duty to promote in the name of cultural freedom such adolescent pranks in Calcutta from halfway around the world. You would permit me to differ from you in regard to what is my duty.
It was of course foolish of the police to play into the hands of these young men and hold a few of them in custody for a few days ( they have all been released now ) thus giving the publicity and public sympathy — publicity is precisely what they want to gain through their pranks.
I do not agree with you that it is the prime task of the Indian Committee For Cultural Freedom to take up the cause of these immature imitators of American Beat Poetry. I respect your knowledge of European literature but can not permit myself to be guided by your estimation of writers in my language — a language of which you choose to remain totally ignorant.
With all good wishes in spite of your grave disagreements and in admiration of some of your wonderful poems.
Yours Sincerely
Abu Sayeed Ayyub
In response to Allen Ginsberg’s letter of October 6, 1964, see why Bengali literature could not compete with European literature after Rabindranath. Abu Sayeed Ayyub can be called a liar because firstly no case has been registered against anyone by the police till then, and secondly, no woman has been shown topless, the word brainless in the sense of topless probably did not strike him. Needless to say, Abu Saeed, after receiving Ginsburg’s letter, did not budge, how could he budge when he himself is a complainant. However, it was leaked that the newspaper of Abu Syed Ayub Saeed’s committee, ‘Quest’, was moneyed by America’s CIA, and the scandal led to the closure of the newspaper close to the case.
Dear Mr Sayeed,
Obviously my note to you was stupidly peremptory or short witted and am sorry it got your goat, possibly or probably I deserve to be put down for the irritant discourtesy of my writing & the presumption in it, telling you what to do, etc. butting in where it is not my affair and possibly ignorant of the quality of the texts. And chiding a senior. For which I do wish to apologize, offering as excuse that I wrote in great haste — many letters on the same subject the same afternoon — and that the situation that I understand it is a little more threatening to the young scribes than you understand to be. May be it is settled a lot after I wrote. But from what I understood, from letters from Malay as well as Sunil Ganguly & Utpal Basu ( and the latter two seemed to be mature in judgement ) ( Malay I like as a person & do actually admire the liveliness of his englished manifestos — to my mind a livelier prose wit than any other Indian English writing ) ( tho I realise he is inexperienced & impetuous and part of the charm is the naivete of the manifestos, or better, innocence in them. ( this simply being a matter of gut taste preference intuition & certainly not the sort of literary matter to be settled by police action ) : the police situation at one time was that not only Malay but his brother Samir ( an excellent young philosopher ) as well as Debi Roy as well as two boys I never met Saileswar & Subhash Ghose were all arrested. Then let out on bail. In addition a general police investigation, and according to Utpal, “Those arrested are already suspended from their jobs & if they are convicted they may lose it.” Further Ananda Bazar Patrika, Jugantar, Janata and other Bengali papers fanned the fire against “obscene literary conspiracy.” Simultaneously the Supreme Court judgement of ‘Lady Catterley’ as obscene also, has, according to a clipping I read from Times of India “led many people to complain about the lewdness in the writings of many Bengali poets and novelists. Says Basu, “impossible to get another job if one is lost.” The arrested five were tied and locked up for one or two days each. Utpal Basu was detained by police and questioned for five hours. I understand also that Sunil was questioned by police. As far as I know it is still not decided whether or not the police will actually prosecute, and that decision will depend on the support given to the younger writers by older established writers and Cultural groups like Congress ( for Cultural Freedom ). Everyone I hear from has said the Congress has not spoken up in any way. All told, the situation, whether or not one approves of the literary quality of the texts, is much more threatening than I would gather from your letter. My own experience of the bureaucratic complications of police investigations in India — it’s endless and Kafkian grimness — led me to a much less light hearted view of the matter than yourself. As you may remember I was followed for months in Benares, visited by the police, threatened by Marxists, given a ten day quit India notice on vague charges of distributing obscene literature & corrupting the young. It took intervention by friends in Home Ministry in Delhi & a letter from Indian Consulate in NY to begin to straighten it out. So I have no confidence that a dismal legal process on literary matters once started, is so easily to be dismissed. Particularly where young apolitical inexperienced enthusiasts are concerned.
I don’t agree with you at all in your evaluation as obscene and filthy the sentence “Fack the bastards of the Gangshalik school of Poetry.” Not that I even know which school that is. But it’s common literary parlance both in speech and published texts from cafes of Paris or Calcutta to old manifestos by Tristan Tzara. The style, the impetuousness, the slight edge of silly ill-will, the style of “Burn the libraries”, an old charming XX century literary cry. I don’t really feel very “shocked” to hear that they let a lady show people her breasts in public. Do you seriously find that offensive ? I suppose it’s a little bit against the law — of course they had a woman completely naked on the balcony last year of the Edinburgh Festival — brightest moment of the Fete I hear tell — Yes certainly I do approve. However, I didn’t think myself nor “promote” it from halfway around the world. And I don’t really think that mere publicity is the deepest motive one can find in such typical Dada actions. In that I think you are really doing them an injustice, however low you grade their literary productions. Because after all there is considerable difference of opinion, as to the literary quality. Ferlinghetti, who does not know these writers is publishing a self-translated section of writings by Malay, Sunil & Basu in his City Lights Journal. The texts were collected by Mrs Bonnie Crown of the Asia Society, who found them as interesting as any translated texts she had been able to collect. The magazine “Kulchur” here — which has considerable avantgarde circulation — also reprinted three of the Manifestos in question ( on prose, poetry and politics ) earlier this year. This is independent of my correspondence with anyone.
In sum, what I do know of translation of the poetry & manifestos of Malay & the other poets arrested or questioned by the police, was pleasing. So, despite half a world difference, and acknowledging your greater familiarity with the literature, I must claim my prerogative as poet and also as critic ( since I edited and acted as agent here for such unpublished writers as Kerouac & Burroughs & Artaud as well as several differing schools of US poetry ) to stand by my intuition and say I do definitely see signs of modern life well expressed in their works. Not claiming they are geniuses or even great — simply that in certain precise areas dissatisfaction with their society, they do well reflect their thoughts, and reflect uniquely — their other contemporaries & seniors being more interested in classical piety or sociological “mature” formulations, Marxism Humanism etc. I don’t think it would be correct to term them Beatnick much less Beatnick imitators, since that’s primarily a journalistic stereotype that never even fit the US supposed “Beatnicks”.
Regarding the Congress ( for Cultural Freedom ) I stand by my fear that it is 1) possibly supported by Foundation funds connected with US government, 2) Less alert to dangers of suppression within the Western world and allies than within the Iron Curtain. In the US we have been all these years undergoing a siege of legal battles over stage works, books, movies, poetry etc. which has nearly crippled the public activity of Avangarde. I contacted the US Committee head Mr A. Beichman who said himself, the Congress is only a skeleton group in the US now inactive. And this year I had to contact John Hunt from NY to move the Congress to defend Olympia Press in Paris. There is a lag. My criticism was more just than you will allow, the overstated.
OK Best of Conscience —- Allen
Amandhara conflict had happened earlier in the culture of West Bengal. After the introduction of time-centered thinking by the English, there was a great jolt and jostle in the life and texts of Bengali thinkers, along with a change in the style of writing, to break out of the primitive spatial or spatial thought, as in the case of Young Bengal members, and Michael Madhusudan Dutt and many others. Similarly, when the Hungry movement broke away from the time-centered colonial thought system, and tried to return to the thought system of colonialism in the post-colonial period, then the Hungry movement’s life, activities and reading materials showed a similar shake-up, snarl and an attempt to escape from the contemporary aesthetic structure. Otherwise, apart from literature, why should I publish a manifesto on politics, religion, purpose, freedom, philosophy, painting, culture, etc.?
twenty five
Even before the Hungry case, various comments, clippings, news, cartoons aimed at us, especially me, started coming out in newspapers, Jugantar, Amrit, Darpan, Janata, Chatushkon, Anandabazar, Statesman etc. Those who wrote them, I realize now, were not well educated, most of them were half-literate journalists who considered themselves savants. They could not understand that Bengali culture is being attacked.
On hearing that Gaurkishor Ghosh also had a stake in Darpan newspaper, when he went to make a decision with him, he called for an argument with Luchi Alurdam at his house in Baranagar. I went with the news one morning, I am Tridiv Karuna Anil. It was written in ‘Darpan’ that our movement is influenced by foreign thinking. Tridiv Karuna Anil argued the influence of Surrealism, sonnet composition, poetry and novel form, imagery etc. I did not go into that argument and just praised the potatoes. After a while, he understood the direction of the argument, put his hand on the shoulder and said, “You have given good rice, now I will feed you lunch one day.” I said, yes grandpa, potatoes are not from our country, they came from South America to Ireland and came to India not long ago, Warren Hastings first started cultivation in Nainital and now there is no Bengali cooking without potatoes, potatoes are also from those days.
I went to the office of ‘Janata’ newspaper to make a handshake, because on the first page of that newspaper, some Throughout the week, “hungry people are doing this and that under the nose of the police”. In their office, a chubby middle-aged man was overseeing the printing work, I told him that I want to meet the editor or the owner, my name is Malay Roy Chowdhury. He said, “Wait, I am calling you” and left. After waiting for almost half an hour, he did not come, so I asked one of the compositors of the press, where the editor was sitting. He said, he is the editor, he ran away after seeing you.
The conflict between the counter-discourse of the Hungry movement and the hegemonic discourse of the time became serious from 1963, when we sent or sent home paper masks, monsters, clowns, animals, Mickey Mouse, gods, etc., emblazoned with the slogan “Please unmask” on behalf of the Hungry Generation. Alums, chief and other ministers, chief and other secretaries, district administrators, newspaper owners and editors, commercial writers, then the upper class “cultured” rulers of Bengal society came down to the meeting. After that, a bomb exploded on their heads when the marriage card was delivered to their address, yellowed in the corner, the card read “Fuck the Bastards of Gangshalik School of Poetry”. Those who were sent were thought by many to be poets or fellow travelers of the Gangshalik school of poetry. The idea and cost of the masks and cards were shared by me, Subhash Ghosh and Shaileshwar Ghosh in the coffeehouse. Now many people are happy with their anti-establishment title, they don’t show such masks to ministers and bureaucrats. After hearing the idea and cost of the mask and card, who knows, that innocent man, Abu Saeed Ayub, was shocked. The Commissioner of Police told me and my father that two men from Calcutta had insisted that strict action be taken against me, namely Abu Syed Ayub and Santosh Kumar Ghosh.
I had to stay in the middle of 1963 for office work at Mastinek, Old Court House Street guest house in Calcutta, in the afternoon to hang out at Jetum Coffee House, that’s when, in 1963, I first met Subhash and Shaileshwar. Shakti Chattopadhyay introduced Vasudev Dasgupta in 1962. He used to live in the guest house and use it to print Hungry Bulletin etc. During his vacations, in the paper office of the Hindi poet-writer Rajkamal Chowdhury, Rajkamal used to earn money by smoking hashish as well as translating Bengali novels, because he had to run two establishments after falling in love with a relative of the girl to whom his father had married him. One such day, I got off at Gariyahat after blowing hashish and saw my first lover, in Kanthastitch sari, startled to see me and came forward. Said to be married to a smuggler; First he said his address is behind ATB bus stand in Jadavpur, then he called a taxi and told the driver to go to New Alipore. I went I stayed all night. I saw the smuggler’s golden biscuit. I play foreign whiskey. Shulum together, but my linga did not stand, infinite luck, infinite luck, rejection of the linga at the right time. The lover’s title was “Erectile Dysfunction Lover.”
Masks were bought, printed, distributed and sent with the money that was accumulated due to staying in the guest house. “Fuck the Bastards of Gangshalik School of Poetry” was printed on the wedding card and sent. The Hungry Bulletin was published after I left Calcutta, after I left Calcutta, printed by Pradeep Chowdhury at his familiar press, covered by woodcuts by Subimal Basak, published by Dada at his home address in Pisemshay. As money is lost in bins, so is lost. Carpet vomiting had begun in Calcutta, with elite poet-writers in middle-upper-class foxholes.
In “Yugantar” newspaper on 17th July 1964, a news item titled “Sahitya Bethlemy” appeared, in which the staff reporter clearly wanted to accuse the police. I went to the Yugantar office to look for the journalist, but no one wanted to say who wrote the fake news. Later, Krishna Dhar wrote the main editorial for two consecutive days in support of the Hungry movement. I told him, though in English, that our literary hunger is not for sexuality, but for the decanonization of narrative, the decanonization, deconstruction, denarrativization, indeterminacy, thought-formation, otherness, anti-contradiction, contestation, rhetorical construction, self-awareness, marginal-individuation, subjugation, subversion, subversion.
I was arrested on 4th September 1964, in Patna, two white police officers came from Calcutta with an arrest warrant, they came to my office, entering the office head’s room, he said, you go out and talk to these two gentlemen, they have work to do with you. As I was walking down the street, two of them grabbed my shoulder from both sides and said, there is an arrest warrant against you, let’s take you home. The two called the rickshaw and held me from both sides, probably thinking that I would run away. When I reached home, I saw that the local police had surrounded the house and the public had gathered to watch the fun. The rickshaw was standing, father paid the fare. Baba had guessed right long ago about the development of my animal instincts.
One of the police officers, whose name I later learned was Barori, picked up the paperweight and suddenly broke the glass of the cupboard in the father’s shop; When the father said, don’t go and search his house to file a complaint against him, in response Barori said, we will search the whole house. To go upstairs, he pulled mother’s trunk from under the bed, broke the lock and started rummaging, mother’s wedding banarasi was torn from the old folds, and I saw Shreyakana’s letter and my card to Fultu fell out. Going to the third floor, a rack of photographic plates collected from the 19th century was thrown into a row, now those photographs are very valuable to collectors. Of course, later grandfather’s sons will consider the plates of other shelves useless and sell them at that price.
The police raided my house and collected many things, which would not be used in the case and which would be lost to history, among which the most important were two files of letters written to me by Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shakti Chatterjee, Deepen Banerjee, Saratkumar Mukherjee, Sandeepan Chatterjee, sixty each. forty letters in the other; Manuscript of my poetry drama short story; I have two diaries, English and Bengali; bundles of various bulletins of the Hungry movement; Bundle of my pamphlets criticizing the Five Year Plan; Two blocks for use on the cover, drawn by the painter of Mexico; Copy of Evergreen Review; Sandipan’s gift of ‘Bijan’s flesh and blood’; ‘Swakal’ edited by Pradeep Chowdhury; Three notebooks for writing short stories; File copy of published ‘Philosophy of History’; A book about sex; Copy of ‘Unmarg’ magazine edited by Tridiv Mitra; Hindi magazine ‘Lahar’ in which article about me came out; A corona typewriter; All the copies of Dada Sameer Roy Chowdhury’s poetry book ‘Janwar’. Of these, only the manuscript of my poem ‘The Great Electric Carpenter’ was presented in court by the government advocate. Everything else is taken care of. Kolkata police arrested three street sweepers as witnesses.
Handcuffed and roped around the waist, the police team took them to Bankipur or Pirbahore police station at night, straight to the lockup, dark, no light, shouting from the gang of prostitutes in the adjacent lockup, seven or eight prisoners in the lockup, on various charges, robbery and murder. A rat came inside the full pant, I shook my leg out, food came from the house, but it was dark, the experience of lockup, could not eat. Namita Chakraborty took courage after hearing the news of the arrest in the local newspaper in the morning. After a long time I saw her, glasses on her eyes, she has started teaching, in the school where my uncle teaches. If Namitadi is alive, I would like to know, from where so many millionaires and smugglers have suddenly emerged in the collapsed Soviet Russia, so many beggars, so many scumbags!
I was sent to Hagat with a rope around my waist, like flying a kite, a constable held the latai with a rock and I went to Hagat, surrounded by prisoners, water was pouring from the faucet, I thrust my hips forward. Again, the criminal court walked with the prisoners with handcuffs and ropes around their waists. The father called Vasant Banerjee, who practices in the High Court. Kolkata police wanted remand. Seeing Basant Banerjee, the Judicial Magistrate gave him bail and asked him to surrender in the Bankshal Court of Kolkata. Vasant Banerjee is the father of writers Enakshi Banerjee and Meenakshi Mukherjee. When I came home, I changed myself and reached Uttarpara, followed by Barojyatha and father. Dada was also arrested in Chaibasa and arrived from Chaibasa. Seeing the gathering, Grandmother suffered a heart attack after hearing that Dada was arrested. Other first cousins and Pisemsha arrived.
After surrendering at the Bankshal Court, we learned that Devi Roy, Subhash Ghosh and Shaileshwar Ghosh have also been arrested. After bail, the court told him to go to Lalbazar and appear in the press section. While visiting Lalbazar, I came to know about the police informers in the coffee house, who brought the bulletins, books and newspapers of the hunger movement and collected them in the press section. I wonder why I couldn’t understand that the person looking at me repeatedly is an informer, the young man who took the bulletin from me, is a policeman. I felt it when they stood against me in court during the case. Did you ever know by looking at the faces of Subhash Ghosh and Shaileshwar Ghosh that they would backstab. Of course, it should have been noticed, because both of them cried in Lalbazar in the lap of Inspector Anil Banerjee, who later named Naxal destruction.
People will hurt people, but not all injuries can be treated with care. Most of the injury scars have to be kept on the skin of the body.
twenty six
The timing of the case was very bad, there was no place to hang out in Calcutta, due to the suspension it became difficult to manage the cost of the case, travel expenses and food expenses. I wore the same shirt and pants after about fifteen days. The case went on for thirty five months. One could have stayed at Khandahar in Uttarpara if there was time in hand between the dates of the case, because electric trains had not started then and there was no scheduled time for passenger trains. I used to stay in the sitting room in Subimal Basak’s Jether Sakra shop and sometimes I used to go to the train standing in Shealda, the road taps were so low that I had to lie down and bathe almost under them. As a result, I had to give up the habit of bathing every day. For those who have no place to stay in the city, the biggest problem is Haga, where to go Haga. At that time, the affordable toilets were not started. If you stay at Ahiritola at night, the banks of the Ganges were the easiest to stay in the dark. It is taught by Sentuda; Pisemshay’s eight children and a toilet, sit on the banks of the Ganges for a while and if you get tired, take off your pajamas or pants and throw your hips into the Ganges. There is no greater joy than receiving Haga. Sentuda suggested that a better place than staying in a hotel for the night would be to hire a lover for the night in a room on Avinash Kaviraj Lane. But there is also the problem of getting up early in the morning. Even if he spent the night there, he had to rush to the Marwari mattress of Sharad Deora, the editor of the Hindi newspaper “Gyanodoy” in Barobazar. I spent the night sleeping on this mattress, as the night progressed, the crowd of people sleeping increased, because the businessmen who came to Calcutta from outside preferred to sleep on Marwari mattresses.
The police filed a charge sheet against me on 3rd May 1965, dropping charges against all others. From the documents with him, I came to know that Subhash Ghosh and Shaileshwar Ghosh became witnesses against me by denying association with Hungry movement, to save themselves from the case. I also learned that Shakti Chatterjee, Sandeepan Chatterjee and Uppalkumar Bose are testifying against me on behalf of the police, they have also denied their association with the Hungri movement. Uppal got a job and went to England on the recommendation of Ginsburg. Subhash and Shaileshwar did not stop testifying against me, they have distorted the history of Hungry Movement in one after another writings, increased the level of hatred towards me with time, even trained their wives and children in this matter; As a result, their own rusted daggers pierced their chests prematurely.
Deepak Majumdar wrote a statement in my support, and approached many literary people to get their signatures. No one agreed. Only Anand Bagchi signed. Anand Bagchi included my poem “The Great Electric Carpenter” while editing the “First Response Poem”. Uppalakumar Bose lived in Royd Street, a two-storey, well-furnished house, but was not allowed to sleep at night. After losing his job due to the hunger strike, he got a job in London on Ginsberg’s recommendation. He may have become a police witness due to the need for police verification of the passport. Although recently interviewed by BBC Radio’s Dominic Burne in India, he described himself as a hunger activist, out of fear of Sunil Gangopadhyay, and perhaps to win the Anand Award and the Academy Award, Hungry has dropped his famous poem “Pope’s Tomb” from the “Greatest Poems” published in the Hungry Bulletin.
From 4th September 1964 to 28th December 1965 I was walking in a Kafkaesque world, date after date, Peshkar’s gold tooth, lawyer’s fee, investigation officer’s smile, date after date, Peshkar’s gold tooth, lawyer’s fee, investigation officer’s smile, date after date, Peshkar’s gold. Teeth, Lawyer’s Fees, Investigating Officer’s Grin, Date After Date, Peshkar’s Gold Teeth, Lawyer’s Fees, Investigating Officer’s Grin, Date After Date, Peshkar’s Gold Teeth, Lawyer’s Fee, Investigating Officer’s Grin, The sweaty toil of climbing the decaying stairs ever. Such a crazy process will not stop.
All except Subimal Basak, Tridiv Mitra, Falguni Ray were cut from my side. When the witnesses against me were discussed in the coffee house, Jyotirmoy Dutt, Satrajit Dutt and Tarun Sanyal themselves approached and agreed to testify on my behalf. Sunil Gangopadhyay did not agree at first, but when he heard that Shakti, Sandeepan, Uppal were testifying against me, he immediately agreed that they should be taught because they had joined the Hungry Movement without informing Sunil. Sunil could not forgive Sandipan for this and secretly campaigned against me, saying “he doesn’t even know how to write” when asked about me in India or abroad.
How strongly Sunil was against the Hungry movement is clear from this part of his letter written to me from Iowa on June 10, 1964: “Continue those movements or the hypocrisy of the generation. I enjoy reading or watching them. from afar I don’t know why one group is so greedy to put the Morsi patta on literature. But it is better to inform one thing. You must have seen me as a calm, good person. I am that, even though I have the blood of Padmapad on my body. So, you should keep me at a distance, don’t poke too much. Otherwise, if you suddenly get excited, you can’t tell what to do. I have been so excited once in my life. last year I didn’t break up your Hungry Generation at the beginning because there are a couple of friends in the O-group. Still have the ability, know. But still don’t want to break the O-Playhouse.”
The poison that was going on in Sunil’s mind can be felt in the poisonous part of this letter written five days later on 15 June 1964 to Sandeepan Chatterjee, “You like Malay so much—but there is something of a real writer in him that you surely do not believe in your heart. Even after I left you are patronizing Hungry — did you write one for a Hindi paper — that too Hungry’s victory song. It’s amazing to think — how an abstract writer like you can even think of publishing a picture in Illustrated Weekly as a reference. These are the ingredients of hunger. That’s why I got sad again and again to be associated with you, anger from sadness, disgust from anger. One thing you must have noticed, I never directly opposed Hungry in public, I never tried to break it. I could I didn’t, because it was your love affair, and you tried to set it up as an opponent of Krittivas or Sunil. As such, it would be mean for me to break it. very Believe me, I was against your stay there, not thinking of any harm to me, but thinking of your harm. It might sound too sentimental, like a trick, but that was my real intention.” This letter was published recently.
When Sandeepan used to say inside job, inside job, inside job while sitting in the coffee house, I did not understand what he meant. I asked Sandeepan Chatterjee in 1961, “Why is the back of your and Shaktidar’s head flat while Sunilda’s is round?” In response, he said, “That extra part has his Shaolin secret.” I asked Sandipan at Chetla’s house, “Why do you write only about Magi-Marad?” Why don’t you write about the bribery of the department in which you work in the corporation?” He said, “If it is written, the pension will stop.”
twenty seven
I still can’t decipher why Sunil was so afraid of me, I was an unknown expatriate at that time, a young man named Haradhan Dhara was more unknown than him, they raised a movement and that scared the editor of Krittivas, thinking of him on a personal level. Trying to get rid of! I am sure that Sunil would have written such a letter to Uppal as well. In fact, I have not yet developed the ability to listen to what a person is thinking.
On December 28, 1965, the Presidency Magistrate sentenced me to one month’s imprisonment without paying a fine of two hundred rupees. He paid no attention to any of my evidence, not even that of Sunil Gangopadhyay; Maybe if Sunil was famous at that time like in later times then Judge Saeb would have hesitated. He gave importance to the testimony of those who testified against me. The two hundred taka fine imposed by Judge Saeb was the maximum. I used to earn 170 taka in my job because I was a graduate.
Judge Saeb himself analyzed the poem “The Great Electric Carpenter” in this way, it is understood that there was no difference in the literary values of the educated Bengali middle class at that time, be it Judge Amalkumar Mitra or Abu Sayyid Ayyub. Judge Saeb’s speech will be clear: It appears to be per se obscene. In bizarre style it starts with restless impatience of a sensuous man for a woman obsessed with uncontrollable urge for sexual intercourse followed by a description of vagina, uterus, clitoris, seminal fluid, and other parts of female body and organ, beasting of man’s innate impulse and conscious skill as to how to enjoy a woman, blaspheming God and profaning parents accusing them of homosexuality and masterbation, debasing all that is noble and beautiful in human love and relationship. It is a piece of self analysis and eroticism in autobiographical or confessional vein when the poet engages himself in mercilessly obnoxious and revolting self-degradation and resorts to sexual vulgarity to a degree of perversion and morbidity far exceeding the customary and permissible limits of candour in description. or representation. It is patently offensive to what is called contemporary community standards. Its predominant appeal to an average man considered as a whole is to prurient interest, in a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex and excretion. Considering its dominant theme it is dirt for dirt’s sake, or, what is commonly called, hard core pornography suggesting to the minds of those in whose hands it may fall stinking wearisome and suffocating thoughts of a most impure and libidinous character and thus tending to deprave and corrupt them without any rendering social or artistic value and importance. By no stretch of imagination can it be called, what has been argued, an artistic piece of erotic realism opening up new dimension of contemporary Bengali literature or a kind of experimental piece of writing, but appears to be a report of a repressed or a most pervert mind who is obsessed with sex in all its nakedness and thrives on, or revel, in utter vulgarity and profanity preoccupied with morbid eroticism and promiscuity in all its naked ugliness and uncontrolled passion for opposite sex. It transgresses public decency and morality substantially, rather at public decency and morality by its highly morbid erotic effect unredeemed by anything literary or artistic. It is an affront to current community standards of morality and decency. The writing viewed separately and as a whole treats with sex, that great motivating force of human life, in a manner that surpasses the permissible limits judged from our community standards, and as there is no redeeming social value or gain to society which can be said to preponderate, I must hold that the writing has failed to satisfy the time honored test. Therefore it has got to be stamped out since it comes within the purview of Section 292 of Indian Penal Code. Accused is accordingly found guilty of the offense punishable under Section 292 of Indian Penal Code, is convicted thereunder and sentenced to pay a fine of Rs. 200/-, in default simple imprisonment for one month. Copies of the impugned publication seized be destroyed.
Even Sunil Gangopadhyay, though he finally relented, at Dada’s request, testified for me on 5th November 1965, the crucial part of the letter he wrote to Dada on 9th November after returning from testifying does not distinguish him particularly from the literary mind of Judge Saeb and Abu Sayyid Ayyub: “ I was allowed to read Malaya’s poem in full in Sakshi’s Kathgara. Read and re-re my heart. I resent the poor poetry I am forced to read — my time is short, I read less poetry, I don’t want to bother myself with poetry that doesn’t suit my taste. There is not a single line of poetry in Malay’s three-page work.” At an old age, he must have found out that the poem ‘The Great Electric Carpenter’ has been spread in many web magazines, there has been a debate about the poem on the net for ten years.
What he wrote in the next part of the letter is even more terrifying: “However, I have said twice in a very clear voice that I like that poem of his. This is because I have no greatness—my ordinary, normal, limited life. The reason why I write a bad book well in Anandabazar criticism — that is why I call Malay’s writing good.” How many books he has discussed in Desh-Anandbazar, all the discussions are a matter of Guegobor!
I sent a copy to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the owner of the City Lights Book Store and the poet of the Beat Movement, as he wanted to publish his paper in the City Lights Journal, and he wrote this letter to me on March 26, 1966:-
Dear Malay,
I have received the legal decision on your case, and thank you very much for sending it. I find it laughable. I want to publish it together with your poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ in the next ‘City Lights Journal’ which will be out this coming summer, and I enclose a small payment immediately, since I know you must need it desperately. I am sending a copy of this letter to Howard McCord. Perhaps he knows the answers to the following questions and will send them to me rightaway since time is of the essence, and it may take some time to get a reply from you. I think it is a wonderful poem, and I will certainly credit McCord for having first published it. Bravo.
Allen is in NY and his new address is 480 East, !0 Street ( Apt 4c ), New York, NY.
I need to know the answers to the following questions : 1) Was the poem first written in Bengali and was it the Bengali or the English version which was seized and prosecuted ? 2) Is this your own translation, or whose is it ? 3) Do you wish me to use the typewritten copy of the poem which you sent me last year, or the version printed by McCord ? ( I find differences ).
Let me hear as soon as you can. Holding the press. And good luck. I hope you are still able to survive. With Love
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I filed a revision petition in Calcutta High Court. For the High Court I met barrister Karunashankar Roy, recently returned from England, who had received news of the hunger strike case from the London papers. He contacted the famous criminal lawyer Mrgen Sen. The hearing was held in the High Court on 26th July 1967 and acquitted, with this order: I hold first that the substance of any offense under Section 292 IPC could not have been explained to the petitioner in this case, and secondly, that the finding of the learned Magistrate that the petitioner circulated any obscene matter is not based on any evidence whatsoever. This rule is accordingly made absolute. The order of conviction and sentence passed on the petitioner is set aside and he is acquitted. Fine, if paid, be refunded. .
After acquittal in the High Court, I received a letter from only one writer, Sandeepan Chattopadhyay, dated 30 July 1967, and no one else, not even the bailiffs, forgiving Sandeepan for this letter:
Dear Malay,
I immediately congratulated you after reading the judgment of the High Court. There had to be a case, someone had to be the defendant in such a case. Despite its limitations, its results would be good enough for modern fiction, it seems.
The credit is all yours alone, yet, all worthy of the name of author will consider it a reward and want to share. Personally I am delighted to be awarded.
with love
Sandeepan Chatterjee
twenty eight
From that time in 1965 to the release of 1967, I had to travel from place to place. I was spared and got my job back. After getting the job, I was able to pay a small fee to High Court barrister Mrigen Sen and his team through Karunashankar Roy. Karunashankar Roy had almost waived the fees payable, otherwise it would have been impossible for me to pay the fees Mrgen Sen owed.
When my case is subjudice in the Bankshal Court, Agbarada Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote this editorial in the Krittibas newspaper, according to Dada he wrote it to satisfy the Anandabazar establishment, because the issue of the bulletin has stopped during the case in the Bankshal Court, the debtors who have been cut off, my Conspired against:
“The Hungry Generation. As many people are asking questions, we are forced to state in writing that Kritivas is completely unrelated to any organization or movement called Hungry Generation. We do not believe in any such movement. I never wanted to add the name of Krittivas. Some poets called ‘Hungri’ write in Krittivas, or many will write in the future, but like other poets personally, not as a spokesman for a party. We are not optimistic about collective literature. Moreover, the call of credit to any poet of Bangladesh. We do not know whether the Hungry Generation movement is good or bad. We have no say about the future or outcome of that movement. So far, no significant literary achievements have been seen in their published leaflets. Innovative general essay. Some funny boy usage is also seen. Besides, some activities related to literature produce irritation. It was unimaginable to us that a group of young people in Bangladesh would show the desire to write literature in Pidgin English even after nineteen sixty years. But if that movement can ever give rise to a new literary form — we shall certainly be happy.”
My lawyer Chandicharan Maitra in the Bankshal Court read the editorial and said to file a contempt of court case. It was not possible, because he testified in my favor even though he kept leeches and crabs against me in his mind.
Later, when Deborah Baker, wife of the English-language Indian novelist Amitabh Ghosh, asked Sunil for information about the hunger movement to write The Blue Hand, a book about Ginsberg and Orlovsky, Sunil misrepresented Deborah Baker to us, let alone me. His anger on me did not go away even in his old age. He never asked me for a poem for kritivas. He did not ask me for poetry for fifty years
While the case was going on, and even after that, many people would say, hey, the case is going on, what happened, such cases continue to go on in the criminal court. In response, I would say that Banchot has a house in Calcutta, has a place to hang out, and has a two-day dining business, that’s why you can say such things. There is no place to stay at night, my stomach is empty after eating at Pais Hotel, where will I wake up in the morning, if I am hungry, I will eat snacks and walk to the court after spending the bus fare, I will spend day after day wearing a shirt and pants, the condition of my jeans is such that I take them off and throw them in the garbage pile. I have to pay, I’ll grab someone and pull a bag or smoke ganja, if you face them, you’ll understand. Only two helped during the case, Kamalkumar Majumdar, passing a one hundred rupee note to Khalasitola, though I did not know him well, said, “You are Julius Caesar.” At that time I thought that there was a discussion about me in Kolkata. When friends took the stand as witnesses during the trial, I realized why Julius Caesar said it. Another, Ashok Mitra, IAS, was invited to his house for a sumptuous meal that night.
Vasudev, Subhash, Shaileshwar were avoiding me before the case was over in Bankshal court. Subo Acharya fled to Tripura with Pradeep; Subo went to a village in Tripura before Pradeep was arrested and hid in the house of a local poet. I returned after my sentence in the Bankshal Court. I came to know from Tridiv Mitra’s letter that they were trying to launch a magazine called “Khudharta” whose main objective was to exclude me, Devi Ray, Tridiv Mitra, Alo Mitra, Anil Karanjai, Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay, Shambhu Rakshit and Subimal Basak. Meanwhile, Vasudev and Subhash are talking about “humanity”, “cordiality”, “love of the world” etc., while excluding their friends from their own newspaper. I don’t know what kind of humanism it was. Later, they gathered many disciples around them, and also made their wives belong to the Hungry movement. Perhaps their humanism was patrimonial, which appeared later in West Bengal politics. Ghoshbhai did not want to eat beef and pork, we would cut it when we planned the meal. Once in 1964, seeing Shaileshwar getting down from the local at Howrah station, I shouted to him, and on seeing me, he got on the train that was leaving on the other side of the platform.
I returned from Calcutta to Patna when the case was pending in the High Court, because there is no guarantee when the revision petition will be heard, it may be in a month or it may take four years. I probably started enjoying solitude, or since then solitude has taken over my brain. How did Jeebananda deal with loneliness? He used to hide poem after poem, novel after novel.
The body was also getting worse, the court and its house in Calcutta spent the night at his house, ate at Pies Hotel. Fever appeared occasionally. I went to see the home doctor Akshay Gupta. He read news about me in local and Calcutta papers, saw pictures, did not ask for pulse or tongue or blood test. He immediately prescribed penicillin oil injection. One day I went to the compounder to get an injection in the hip, he asked, how did you prevent this disease?
What disease is this disease?
—Sexual disease?
— Oh, no more injections.
Akshay’s doctor assumed that I had contracted a sexually transmitted disease.
thirty nine
On learning that I had returned to Patna, two colleagues from the office, Eric Page and Mamud Johar, came to meet me and said, Hey, what is there to be upset about, what happened to our friends from Kolkata, we are here, come on, we are going on a trip, you have never been, good boy. Get dressed and avoid it, come on, your mind will be better. I have written about the team of Eric Page and Mamud Joherd in the novel “Dubjale Jetuku Praswa”. They had a woman-narco gang or no-no gang. I agreed with them to participate, but told them that I could not pay the money, the situation was very fragile. I have imposed my own experience regarding this incident on the character of Atanu.
Mamud Joher had a pale blue matador van with sunfilm on the windows, a wall of sunmica behind the driver. Can’t see what’s going on behind. At the back, pull out the seats on both sides and the sofa becomes a bed. Matador first aid box contains aluminum sheet, spoon, distilled water, syringe, scissors, lighter, toilet paper, cotton, foreign condom. On Saturday-Saturday, their group would go out to make a fuss. There were many clerks, officers, note examiners in their group. In the evening, a young woman with a hafger would be picked up on the condition that some of them would spend the night with her in the matador’s bed and then be dropped off at her dorm after work. I haven’t joined their group for a long time because it’s too distracting for writing. Writing had almost disappeared from the brain; At that time, the desire to hold the pen was gone in hatred towards Rajsakshi Shaileshwar, Subhash. Gradually, writing was left, not only by me, but also by Tridiv Mitra, Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay. Karuna started writing an autobiography called “Khutkattar Sanpaku” in Bengali language of Bengalis of Benares. By 1970, when Karuna-Anil turned to the Naxal movement, their hideouts and studios were ransacked by the police, but they had already fled Benares.
Mamud Johar appeared with a van in the early morning, everyone would gather in Rajgir, play “Catch Me If You Can” and drink alcohol. The car drove towards Golghar, in a narrow lane behind Golghar, a very poor area, dark wood, pale plastic, tin walls, old bamboo poles, half-rotted wooden poles, rough limestone, tattered curtains, indifferent old men, walking along the banks of the Ganges with tins. A young, toothy red loincloth-wearing Shanda is walking.
“Someone needs to be picked up”, said Mamud Johar, and went into the slum, and returned fifteen minutes later, black Kakeswari Kuchkuche, I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen this black before, sneaking a young woman with her, two hands full of plastic sky bangles. Turquoise stone or fake turquoise nakshabi on the nose, black chiffon saree, sky blouse, beli garland in the hair, kajal or eyeliner on the eyes to make the eyes look bigger. Indeed, after day after day of appearances in the Bankshall Court and finally being sentenced, I felt that I needed this girl’s company for a while. Even from such a dirty slum, the girl is so fresh, cheerful, lively and cheerful, which I really needed at that time.
Entering the car, the girl sat down between the two of us, looking at me inquisitively with her touching vitality. Mamud Johar said to the girl in Hindi, she is Bengali, you can talk to her in Bengali.
— I have never seen you before, said the girl, dropping the colorful shoulder bag of Odisha’s Pipligram on her lap, with genuine Bihari tone.
— No, this is the first time he is going with us, before we thought he was lazy, now he has come to our street after doing various business in Calcutta, his name is Malay, Malay Roy Chowdhury, tui to mukkhu, paper doesn’t read, or else in the Hindi Dharma Yuga and in the searchlight newspaper here. You can see photos and news, said Mamud Joher, in Hindi.
— And my name is Shefali, everyone calls me Two. Then he held my left hand with both hands and said, Hey, how soft are your hands, are your hands sweaty? I almost cried at the girl’s touch, I took control and said, why do you have such a heavy Hindi accent on your words?
Shefali said, her father is a Bihari and her mother is a Bengali, her father was a laborer in Kolkata’s Chatkal, mother ran away with her father, then added, mother is a daughter of Bamun house, yes, fathers are housewives of Deoghar.
— I know about the Bauris of Deoghar, the Pandas used to eat fiformas, cook and eat whatever was alive, I said. I did not say that the sub-inspector who came from Calcutta to arrest me was also from Bauri or Barori.
– And now you eat us, right? It was strange to hear that such a sly girl was not even a Calcutta baby, to whom we took David Garcia.
Mamud Joher understood the girl’s words and said in reply, Milne par kha leta hun, sar se pao tak.
The girl shouted, “Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr for us to his shoulders. Mamud Joher said, what are you doing, if it was a little more, there would have been an accident.
The street dust came through the window and covered the girl’s face and hair. I said, dust is gathering in your eyebrows, eyelids and hair. Before I finished speaking, the girl wiped her face and head on my chest, I was stunned, it can be said touched, I wanted to hug, I wanted to kiss food, I smelled fish from the girl’s mouth, there is no kiss like a kiss that smells like fish. Unable to cope, with the courage added to the behavior, I hugged and kissed. It was as if the ghost of the Bankshall Court had gone down with a kiss.
—Not Aloud, Not Aloud, said Mamud Johar, You have to win her in today’s game.
— Clumsy hai bechara, jaane do, jaane do, mujhe par se bahut par hai, said the girl to Zoher. Then today, after asking how many people, where are they going, who is the coordinator, etc., I realized that the girl is familiar with the work of Na-Na gang, Mamud and Eric Pagera often go out with her. Looking at the girl, I wanted to understand what sex workers are like.
– What are you doing like that? Shefali Ba Too suddenly poked my nose and said, you see me, you have never seen such a black Radha, right? Here, look. Then he said, you haven’t done love-taming yet?
—Are wu landifandi ka guru hai, ek namarka luchcha-lphonga. Mamud Joher said.
—Landifandi. Glasses in the eyes, looking at such a sloppy face, I don’t think you are a person from Landifundi. I will see one day, your chance will come, I am not going to run away, said Shefali.
– Where are we going? How is the settlement? The black girl wanted to know, if black is the name of a girl, her name will be something blacker than that, so black, but the girl was working to heal me, I have not forgotten it, some people think they are perfect, they free me from the disorder of virginity, the clinginess from the fear of conservatism. Birth takes away from it, sexual intercourse makes the relationship closer, so maybe landlords had baubazaar, rakshita, emperors had bandis, slave girls. It is becoming difficult for me to adjust with the surrounding events.
Johar had already announced that they would first go to Rajgir and gather at Devender’s father’s Pellai house, spend a night there and play the next day at the ruins of Nalanda. Even then the ruins of Nalanda were not organized as they are now. Shefali will go in first, then the whole team will go in and try to find him. Shefali will spend the night with the one who finds it first, on the couch of Devender’s house in Rajgir, while everyone else will be drunk with wine and meat, or Devender has brought some wives from the village, kept the men of their house, and can sleep with them if he wants.
I got what I could from the girl, entered the ruins of Nalanda and sat in the shade and watched my colleagues run around, frantically looking for Shefali. Abhijit won. I was just sitting at the dining table with the girl. The next time they went to play at the Shonpur fair, I did not go, because the game was very tiring, wandering from morning to night for two days. The fellow who won the Shonpur fair committed suicide by jumping off the sex-boat.
thirty
There is endless time on hand, until the time of sentencing in the Bankshal Court and the case in the High Court. It was through Hungry Andolan that I met two artists, Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay and Anil Karanjai. They lived in Benares. On their call, I went to Benares, in the crowd of hippies. Blotting paper smeared with ganja, charas, opium, LSD. If Karunanidhan says, yes-yes, you can offer kiss food to hippies who don’t have a male partner, they will also get LSD capsules for a seventy-two hour trip, then you won’t know what the hippie is doing to you. I wanted to make friends with a French or Japanese girl. Mercifully, all the American girls, the boys who did everything to avoid the Vietnam War, came to join them and exchanged or left. Karuna had the advantage that he did not know English, he could change himself from an interpreter to a lover by mixing Hindi and English. Secondly Karuna made a concoction of ganja, charas and opium and sold it by the charmer to the hippies, and the hippies could be said to be addicted to it. I have given some traces of this in the novel “Arup Tomar Entokanta”.
I was introduced to a new kind of love, where both parties know that the relationship has a definite expiration date, not to spend the rest of your life, leave when you’re full, the smell of the fleshy drug of youth in the air. I was slowly being swallowed up by the atmosphere, bit by bit like a snake in the pink darkness, the smell of unwashed bodies and the heavenly smell of long-unwashed clothes. A hippie’s golden armpit hair was best liked; Earlier, there was no idea that armpit hair is golden, dance of love in the hair cavity, birth control pills, probably young women would not leave home as hippies. The essence that has entered the brain with hippie is that perfume is a wall of distortion between two bodies.
When Karuna-Anil took me back from Kathmandu with them to Benares, spending time with the plump young Madeleine, and before that sleeping in a sleeping bag with Carol Novak in Kathmandu, I realized that hippies weren’t as interested in writing as the beatniks were, even though they emerged as a result of the Beat movement. Psychedelic music, opposition to the Vietnam War, sexual revolution, drugs especially cannabis, LSD and magic mushrooms, interest in Hinduism and Buddhism, abandonment of Christianity, fine dining, Gandhian non-violence, cultural differences, etc. The townspeople were not worried about their business, even standing on the street kissing and hugging, no one sang. Now, of course, it is a terrible situation. At that time, Karuna was traveling across the Ganges with a young woman and staying in a thatched bamboo pole hut, both completely naked, in “prehistoric life”, I was surprised to get off the boat. Karuna took several photos of her naked life and showed them to her wife. His wife probably didn’t object, thinking of a regular income, because Karuna was a book cover artist and ran the family in Taito.
From Calcutta, sentenced in the Bankshall Court and a revision petition in the High Court, a few days after I returned to Patna, Karuna sent a call from Kathmandu, “Coming soon, endless charas and girls, there is some Afghani charas in the envelope”. Inside the envelope was high quality charas. He would have been jailed now. At that time Satyameva Chapmara was available in Puriya in the government shop, when Allen Ginsberg came, we took him to the government shop.
Before going to Kathmandu, Rajkamal Chowdhury, the Hindi poet, took me to his village Mahishi. Fanishwarnath Renu said, go to his village during the puja of Chinnamastadevi, you will go crazy. Really crazy. At the time of puja, the oxen was sacrificed, those who vowed, everyone brought the oxen for the oxen sacrifice, seeing my nausea, I managed to eat the drink given by Rajkamal, and everyone was singing Maithili songs and dancing with blood smeared on my face and body, I also raised my hands. Let’s dance I passed out in the evening with a night of drinking and dancing, a free-for-all dance like this, I’ve never danced before.
I will talk to Allen first and then I will go to Karuna Astana in Kathmandu. Ginsberg arrived in the heat of April 1963, tipped with vermilion on his head, bathed in the Ganges, towel on his shoulders, and greeted his father in Hindi, “Maloy hai”. Father thought that his skin had turned copper due to sunburn, because some monks from Anandmarg came and took my writing in their newspaper, then I shared it with them. Dad called me, Allen to introduce himself, took me upstairs to my room. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the Beat movement until then, I had heard Ginsberg’s name from my grandfather, read it in the paper, but never heard of the poem “Howl”. “Howl” and “Caddish” Lawrence Ferlinghetti, after Ginsburg’s return, also sent me a long playing record of “Caddish”, which was helpful in translating. Magazines etc. was later sent by Howard McCord, and through that I was contacted by a number of editors who began publishing my writing.
When Ginsberg came, we didn’t have a dining table or a sofa set. There was no ceiling fan in my room. Mother used to let him sit on the floor and talk to him in Bengali-Hindi. I hired a rickshaw to visit Patna; Ginsberg said, this rickshaw is my father’s age, it is quite a crime to pull a rickshaw with it and sit in it. He sat the rickshaw puller beside me and started pulling the rickshaw himself. After a while, he saw a constable on the road and the rickshaw puller said, “Babe, look ahead, if you see that you are driving, then the license will go away, and you can also pay the police.”
We went into the dome shaped like a stack; The stupa is 29 meters high, 125 meters wide, 145 steps to the top. Golghar was built in 1786, after millions of people died in the famine of 1770 in Bengal and Bihar, to store rice and wheat, when Ginsburg came, rice and wheat were still stored inside the Golghar. Now, however, it is used for entertainment. The caretaker did not let him enter the hall at first. I said that he is a foreigner, then he let me in. Ginsberg recited his poem “The Sunflower Formula”. Shouts echoed twenty-one times inside the auditorium, surprised Ginsburg, adding that it would have been better to bring a tape recorder. I didn’t have to come and record the next day. He also asked me to recite my poem. I cannot memorize my poems. I recited the last four lines of the poem “The Great Electric Carpenter” as best I could remember. Ginsberg said, “Your voice is good enough to recite, why not record it?” I did not say that there is not much link in the knot. Ginsberg saw the Ganges, across the Ganges and the entire city of Patna as he climbed to the top of Golghar. No one took photos of the dome from above or outside. I never thought of myself as important, so I didn’t get photographed standing next to famous people.
The next day Gelum was on the banks of the Ganges, at Mahendru Ghat, on those days Bachababu’s ship used to go to Shonpur across from that ghat, now the pole has been built on the Ganges, Bachababu’s ship has also gone somewhere else. After wandering around the ship for a while, on the way back, Ginsberg started photographing the vicars’ hideouts, the lame, the nullo, the jattjut, the leper, the pangla-looking man lying on the street, etc. Back, the film was given to the father to develop. After developing the whole thirty-six pictures, Baba got fed up, told Ginsberg, you foreigners, whether you are a poet or a tourist, come to India and see only these things, see nothing good, go back and trade them. I later told Ginsberg to get your film developed and printed at another shop. Ginsberg would photograph and develop the prints and send them to her stepmother, who would arrange all the items she sent in a cupboard by country, so the curator Bill Morgan, who came to meet me in the nightstand, had the benefit of the doubt. But I saw what my father imagined was true, in his book “India Journals” there were pages after pages of pictures of all those nulli, lame, jagged people.
The next day I took him to Patna Museum, after some years, I know the rooms of the museum, Barojyatha used to work here, Ginsberg looked around. Exit the museum to Khudabox Library. Ginsberg saw handwritten Persian books. Surprised to see that outside Akbar’s mausoleum, three fish bodies and one of its heads were found in a book case in the Khudabox library, which the librarian said was Akbar’s “Deen-e-Ilahi”. The Muslim classmates of the university used to criticize Akbar when this book came up.
Octavio Paz also came to Patna, our home, but there was no literary discussion as he was accompanied by the District Magistrate and a police car. He didn’t even want to eat tea and biscuits, maybe the ambassador’s protocol. Seeing the police car and a few gunmen at the house, the people of the neighborhood thought, “He will write against the government again.” Octavio Paz went to Calcutta and looked for us. When poets-writers came to Calcutta from outside, the consulates would communicate with Anandabazar, and Santosh Kumar Ghosh would send them to his greedy young poet-writers; Later, Sunil Gangopadhyay adopted this same tactic and created his own Petya battalion.
When Mumbai was in Bombay, met Eduardo Cardenal; He came with a group of foreign poets as guests of the Government of India. I only knew his name. I met him first at the airport and then at his hotel. Said he read my controversial poem in ‘City Lights Journal’ by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A translation of the poem ‘The Great Electric Carpenter’ ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ was published along with several other poems. I still haven’t read his poetry. The representative of the Government of India had to rise to call.
Alok Goswami and Raja Sarkar of Siliguri during their stay in Lucknow-Mumbai in the 1980s communicated that they revived the moribund Hungry movement in Calcutta in North Bengal through “Concentration Camp” and “Dhritarashtra” newspapers. Both of them in North Bengal and Manoj Raut, Sameeran Ghosh. Pallavakanti Rajguru, Chandan Dey, Vijay Dey, Samar Roychowdhury, Shyamal Singh, Dibakar Bhattacharya, Tridiv Chakraborty, Dipankar Kar, Praveer Sheel, Ratan Nandi, Kishore Saha, Kushal Bagchi, Sumant Bhattacharya, Malay Majumder and others have left quite a stir. Shaileshwar Ghosh could not bear the fact that they were bringing fresh air to the hunger movement, when he went to North Bengal and started a quarrel between them and blew up the newspapers. Shaileshwar must have thought that the young poets-writers of North Bengal were eating everything looted, the Hungry movement had gone wild. Subhash Ghosh also had to be beaten by Shaileshwar Ghosh’s goons, for the same reason. Means “Khudhart” newspaper is also divided into two.
Let’s come back to Karuna’s invitation to Kathmandu. By Bachababu’s ship to Shonpur, from there by train to Rocksall. The train was dark, someone warned ‘everybody keep your belongings with you’. In terms of goods, two pants, two bush shirts and toothbrush-paste in the bag, if you get a chance to kiss, eat and brush your teeth every day, money in the watch pocket. With him were Dada Sameer, Subimal Basak and Kanchankumar Mukhopadhyay of Benares who later joined the Naxal movement and was under the watchful eye of the police first in Benares and then in Calcutta. His younger brother was in Calcutta Police, his Naxalite activism forced him to quit. I spent two nights in Kanchan’s brother’s police quarters, behind Bhavani Bhawan, when there was no place to hide during the hunger strike.
thirty one
After reaching Rocksol, I got into an Ekkagari and crossed the international gate and entered Birganj; The bus ticket to Kathmandu was bought in advance so as not to sit in the back. The road towards India is very bumpy, I don’t know how it is now. But after entering Nepal, it was understood that their road is good. As I had time, I went to see the Gahwa Mai temple, Durga temple probably, sat there in the shade, went out to eat at the restaurant and took the bus. The conversation started in Bhojpuri Buli from Shonpur and continued across Birganj to Amlekhaganj and Hetarta, everywhere the Marwaris have taken over the business, the employees are Biharis, Madhesi in the words of Nepalis. Kanchan vomited several times in the bus, a Nepali woman behind him put her hand on his shoulder and told him to turn back and yawn. Kanchan ate the white powder given by his wife without asking any questions, the wife said, he will not vomit again. There was probably some intoxication, for Kanchan then sauntered all the way, by the river, without getting a chance to see the view of the Tribhuvan Rajpath.
Karuna was waiting at the bus stand, we followed her, we entered a big mansion, a three storied mansion, about one hundred meters long and fifty meters wide, we had to enter through a lion gate, which was always open, sometimes it was an open door custom. was I went up the bamboo stairs to the second floor, Karuna had arranged a room in advance, the bed was covered with sheets on the floor, no pillows, the rent was one per person per month. The name of the neighborhood is Thamel. Narrow streets all around, going out and entering would become noisy many times. There are more than a hundred tenants in the house, most of them are hippies. Karuna said that a settlement has been made with Nepali writer Basu Shashi in the name of Hungry Movement, our food expenses will be supported by Nepali writers, the living expenses will be borne by each of us. I would go to a restaurant and sign the register. However, there was no need to eat in the restaurant every day, because people from Patan, Bhaktapur, Bharatpur, Pokhara etc. came for poetry readings or chats, sometimes they had to stay at night.
I got a couple of hippies-hippies to travel from Kathmandu to different places, they used to take a matador van lease and deliver the school children to school for pennies, they also delivered us to different cities to meet poets and writers. I read the English translation of “Strong Electric Carpenter” shouting “Stark Electric Jesus”. It was also translated into Nepali by a poet named Ramesh Shrestha, now living in Bangkok, married to a young Thai girl. Many people appreciate the food of Thailand, but I feel conflicted. Better than that, Mahesh Lunch Home’s Octopus Bara in Mumbai is better.
In poetry reading sessions, there is an opportunity to eat various brewed Nepali and Newari dishes, and get drunk. Like Roxy, very intoxicating, clear like vodka, made from rotted rice, tastes like Japanese Sake, although I have not been to Japan, I have had Sake in Thailand. Then saw, rice corn wheat rotted. Ayala, rice and tide rotted. Dude, I don’t know what’s wrong. Tongba, rotting tide. Ayala is Newari wine, I had it at Kavi Parijat’s house, he is Newari, there is a statue of him in Siliguri. I have eaten raw buffalo meat in a few places, pickled deer meat. And the hashish itself, almost every day, if you go to any temple in the evening and sit in the gathering of elders, the lihim would come and go, when you blow it three times, it starts flying in the sky.
I stayed after Subimal Basak, Kanchan and Dada went back. Karuna said let them go, I have put your words here, many people know the story of Time magazine and Ginsberg’s friends have heard and made a throne for you to sit on. The stairs of the house were such that many times when I was intoxicated with hashish, I did not know which floor I was going through. Once I got up and down like that, after a few times like that, a red-blouse young woman’s hand pulled me in from the dirty curtain of the door of a room and said, why do you come to the door every day and go back; With his pull and my shaky wobbly body fell on the chest of the healthy Nepali. When I saw it, I understood that it was the drug of sex workers; There was no such thing as food and wine, I was overcome by the smell of the young woman’s body, I came out with a Nepalese money. I have always liked mongoloid girls. When I woke up the next day, I couldn’t find the house, even after climbing up and down the stairs.
Karuna introduced a few hippie-hippies, Ginsberg and Ferlighetti fans, to City Lights Journal. I got the freedom to hang out in their rooms, smoke hashish and get drunk on LSD-soaked blotting paper. One was a numerologist, he said my name sums to one, so you get the first chance in everything. That night, a hippie, Carol Novak, pulled me into a sleeping bag, got in, and lay down with our feet on each other’s heads. This is the first face of a foreigner in my life. Karuna rented a house for both of us, I once again became the dew of the novel “Arup Tomar Entokanta”. DattaAnd Carol Novak became Madeleine Corriet. Carol Novak and Madeleine Corriet taught the joy of sex in life. I forgot to write about the smell of garlic tablets in the mouth of Madeleine Corriet in the novel “Arup Tomar Entokanta”. Clear garlic tablets, one daily.
A young American woman, Carol Novak, included in my poem ‘Festival of Love’. After the betrayal of friends in the Hungry Movement, a friend was found, with whom I was able to chip away ‘like chewing gum’ in the words of mercy. Dada, Subimal started doing more free fills as they were gone. I first learned about feminism from her, she didn’t wear a bodice, she used to say “woman on top”. Love without love, extraordinary experience, no panpanani. Bengali lovers used to say during intercourse, “My love, I can’t live without you, why don’t you say such things at this time, I will love you”. Carroll used to say, “Why don’t you make wild noises like animals, as I do”. Neither was possible for me. Said, “There is no other respiratory system like kissing food, just like a surgical ventilator.”
Karuna had an affair with a young African American woman who owned a gallery of paintings, but Karuna’s paintings did not sell, while Anil’s did. I couldn’t figure out how that kindness could attract young women. When Karuna gathered her paintings and set them on fire, we and the hippies and hippies danced around the fire, Karuna cut ashes on everyone’s foreheads. Everyone turned around to sing Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock,” a forty-five rpm record held by a young African-American gallerist.
When Carol returned home, I also returned, buying a red book of Mao printed in China. I broke my glasses in the hustle and bustle with Carol. Anil-Karuna stayed for another month. My writing almost left me as I was living in Ganjam, Kathmandu, and had to wait for the verdict of the High Court. I learned from the contact with Carol that love does not always betray, one can make oneself satisfied by absorbing as much as one can from love. The problem is that in the first youth, even though I got the body like, I did not get a lover like the mind, probably everyone suffers from this misery in the first youth, then they get educated and move on. In fact, no one needs to worry about how I will live, how I will stay, how I will write.
Anil Karanjai and Karunanidhan returned to Benares via Patna from Kathmandu, I accompanied them with hair installation art. I was afraid that Anil would not gift me a painting, because the house in Dariyapur did not have proper walls, my room on the second floor was in a miserable condition with water seeping from the roof, dust from trucks and buses all day. Let’s see, seeing the condition of the wall, Anil realized that giving the picture to Malaya would not last long. They took the painting group to Banaras, but due to their hostility towards the Naxal movement, the police entered the studio and ransacked it. Anil escaped to America via Delhi and Karuna shaved his beard and came to Patna in 1971 with the name Satish; After Dada opened a colorful fish shop for him, the wife came home with the baby.
In the Telegram of Subimal Basak and in the Statesman newspaper, I got the news of acquittal from the case in the Calcutta High Court. The office said to submit a copy of the verdict. I brought the copy of the verdict from Kolkata and submitted it to the office. After winning the case, writing almost gave up, but Muchlekapanhi continued to preach that “Malay wants to make writing a career.”
thirty two
The advantage of getting back to work is that I get to a different department, the department of rural development, the department of continuous tours, the beginning is my new experience, before that I had no idea about farming, I did not know the difference between jowar and millet, two oxen and one pung- I didn’t know that buffalo can pull more weight, I didn’t know about tube well deformation, I didn’t know about water depth problems, I didn’t know about river auctions, I didn’t know about miserable existence of bonded laborers, I didn’t know about caste effect on manual work, I didn’t know about the politics of weaving industry, I didn’t know about storage and rotting of potatoes. I didn’t know about gangs, I didn’t know the causes and consequences of farmers’ suicides, I didn’t know about mortgage farming and crop sharing, I didn’t know about sexual exploitation of young women in coffee farming, I didn’t know about the results of uprooting tribes because of minerals, I didn’t know what kinds of cows and goats there are, I didn’t know how to weave fish nets and I didn’t know about moneylenders’ panchpoiza, I didn’t know the politics of religion in silk saree weaving and Korea-China smuggling, I didn’t know the ploy of the poor in the BDO office, I didn’t know the badness of contractors only on paper, I didn’t know how terrible it really is, I didn’t know the network of sand theft on the river bank, I didn’t know the village moneylenders were trapped by loans. I only read about Fela’s technique in story books but I didn’t know its connection with politics, girls are raped when they walk in the field in the morning and they are forced to squeeze it, I don’t know, a young woman is bought and kept as the wife of all the men in the house, I don’t know how many more. I didn’t know, I was busy, busy, busy reading books. It is also a reason to leave writing, or to say, to be affected by writer’s block, that I faced my own stupidity, I realized that I do not know India, I do not know it at all. I gradually became another Malay Roy Chowdhury after the kick of experience, in fact I hid myself, grew a beard and mustache. And. In the name Chaudhary.
As much as I knew about the life of the farmers, I went to the village of my classmates, I realized that I spent so much time in the city with writing that I myself am a stranger in my own country, from being trapped in the illusion of book-reading knowledge, I no longer know the real India. – In words, I began to discover myself, I fell into the universe of immense wonder. I began to correlate the knowledge gained from reading books with the pressures happening in society. My fiction “Nakhdanta”, “Drowning Breath”, “Jalanjali”, “Namagandh”, “Mystery of Miraculous Love and Brutal Murder”, “Auras” novels, and “Unpublished Short Stories” are the seeds of a few stories, gleaned from traveling jobs, essays. The style of writing also changed after realizing the truth of the Indian lifestyle from wandering. The communist workers used to go to the villages to work and know a lot, but the party reached the villages and changed the character of the workers.
I can forget while writing, so first of all I will talk about a dense forest of Chhattisgarh called Abujhmar, whose background I have used in the novel “Auras”. Abujhmar is the forest area of these three districts of Narayanpur, Bijapur and Bastar. According to my fellow-officer, there is a liquor called ‘Salfi’ in that region, which is not found anywhere else in India, because the tree from which the Salfi is extracted, which looks like a palm tree, is only found in that jungle. It was desired, although some colleagues also expressed fear that the Maoists might kidnap them. Moreover, I learned that in the city what we consider development, the Gond and Mariya tribes have no need, there are not many words in their language, such as joy, sorrow, sadness, poverty, success; Maoists have started infiltrating Chhattisgarhi, Hindi and Telugu words into their lives. The language also disappeared due to the defeat of the revolution.
Going out for rural development work, I heard about a group of people who do not need any worldly things. Arrows, bows, and sticks were enough; A house is a hut spread with branches on poles of forest trees. Now the area is occupied by Maoists, when I went, Maoists had not penetrated that far into Chhattisgarh. Abujhmar was a no-go area for the common people except government workers and officers, because in the eighties the BBC had taken a film of the tribals and shown it, and the Indian government felt quite humiliated by it. At that time Ghotul or naked young men and women had huts of mutual acquaintance, there was no restriction on intercourse, according to them love or sex would be limited to one person or another, to increase sexual power they ate a red bright insect called biervahoti, later Kalektar said the name of that insect. Trombidida, dried insects available in half a dozen shops in Narayanpur.
I was not familiar with this India. Without understanding everything is through exchange, economics does not exist, except in vocabulary. I landed at Raipur Airport and spent the night at the hotel. The next day I took the bus to Narayanpur. The name of the bus was Naukarwala Bus, because almost all of those who were posted in Narayanpur District Headquarters, newly built with two blocks, lived in Raipur. The bus conductor took the attendance register to everyone and got them to sign, he will take the money at the end of the month. Both of us only gave a bus ride. We managed to stay at Ramakrishna Ashram in Narayanpur; we took a former student of their school named Birbal Mariya as a guide and sat on the back of his motorcycle. At the entrance of Kursuna village, we had to show our ID and collector’s permission letter to the Central Reserve Police before entering the forest.
According to Birbal, the goddess of Abujhmariyas is Kaksara, the goddess of Bastar is Danteswari, the Gorhas worship Meghnad—I don’t know if this Meghnad is the Meghnad of Ramayana—the Baigars worship Rasnava; As far as I understand, there are no specific idols of goddesses other than Danteshwari. The forest covers an area of 4,000 acres, with thirty settlements that can be called villages, last surveyed and censused during the British period. There is no electricity in the villages, no drinking water, no market-shops, no urban food, no rice and pulses, the Ishkul that is there is called mobile, Ramakrishna Ashram, if someone is sick, there is no alternative treatment except death. After death, funeral pyres are given, in the shape of a pyramid, but the graves are stepped, cloths are tied as symbols, some are red, they belong to the Maoists. After the paved road came the Gerumati road, a little further, I saw an archway, written in white on green, “Indian army waps jao, Bastarwasi bahari nahin hai : fight like rust.” “Bastarke Juvaayon, Sarkarke Nazaaj Janke Khilaf Janayudh Mein Samil Ho Jao,” written on his back.
I have not seen the Salafi wine for which I have come, nor have I seen the villagers. A little further, two low-roofed sheds were seen, behind a palm-shaped tree hanging from a tree, I realized that I had come to the right place. A few skinny men, almost naked and a few women, bare-chested, a few children who have never combed their hair, all in a world of their own, addicted to selfies. One had a Salfi bone. After Birbal said something to him in his own language, he filled a bottle of mineral water with Salfi. When I gave him a twenty rupee note, the man shook his head and shook his head. We came back after seeing Hikano village and penda kheti or jhum cultivation, had salaf on the way back and started relaxing. The addiction of salfi is completely different, from all the types of addiction I have had before, salfi is completely different from that, in the words of Birbal Mariya, after eating salfi, people become clouds in the sky. I stayed in bed all night.
Due to the partition of the country, the Namashudras had to suffer, and it is difficult to say when it will end. I met Ganesh Chandra Sarkar, a school teacher in Narayanpur who, in my novel ‘Auras’, faced the 31st January 1979 torture of Morizjhapi, married a young woman about seven or eight years older than him, who was raped by Pakistani Rajakars in 1971, and her child. Did not allow abortion, lived in Malkangiri before Narayanpur. I have seen Namashudra Bengalis in the Terai region of the Himalayas too, the land given to them has been taken over by the Punjabi Jathas, the Bengalis are again Vikhiris. I saw the same situation in Motihari in Bihar, almost most of the people have become Biharis, drive rickshaws or pull carts or do daily labour. The Namashudras who were sent to Gadchiroli, Balaghat, Bhandara, Rajnandgaon have become Marathi. I know that I have been to those places, apart from this, they may have been sent to many places in India. I don’t understand one thing about the communist party, on the one hand the Namashudras were not allowed to go to the Andaman Islands, and on the other hand they were not allowed to build settlements in Chili Jhapi, Strange.
I went to Munger, a town where katta-tamancha is made at home, to inquire about the farmers’ grievances, while Indira Gandhi’s emergency was going on. The director of the agriculture department came to pick us up at the station, sitting in his jeep and passing in front of the police station, I saw a whole lot of people hanging upside down on the front porch. The police did not lay hands on them for a long time, they were very happy as local mafia. As soon as he got the chance, he came down to take revenge. The agriculture director said that one cannot go to the village in a government vehicle, people are so afraid that they run away from a distance if they see a government vehicle. What else can be done! I called the moneylenders one day and tried to explain, they shook their heads. The next day I called the bank manager and the secretary of the assistant agricultural credit society and explained. They also shook their heads and left. On my return the next day, I saw another group of youths being hanged in the same manner. These hanged people later joined Lalu Yadav’s party.
I went to a village in Murshidabad to verify the deeds of the mortgaged land of the Agricultural Credit Society. Gkhata flip-flopped and saw that there are pictures of Dawood Ibrahim and Osama bin Laden. I turned the page without looking up. The secretary of the association said, “Bring your zainya tea”, and cut off. Someone likes someone if there is nothing to do. Osama was still alive.
I went to the inspection in Bada town in Bihar, checking the documents, a young lady on the front porch started to dance like “Avi na jao chod kar ki dil avi bhara nahin”. Even if I asked to close the front door, no one heard. I stopped myself and got up. At lunch time, I was eating rice-dal-aluvaza in a shabby hotel, when the peon came and whispered, “Sir, that rascal was told in advance by the branch officer that you are coming for inspection, he wanted to divert your mind by throwing bait, there are many scams in the branch, When the farmers come, they drive them away.” At the hotel where Sandhyabala stayed, some prostitutes appeared there. When I said that “I will do what is reported even if I sleep with those brawlers”, then the branch officer fell on his knees and started crying. Enjoying arrogance also has its downside.
In the detective book “Mystery of Miraculous Love and Brutal Murder” I mentioned a forest area inhabited by a tribe on the border of Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh, where young men and women who do not know each other nest, I went to office work to improve those tribes. The youths are usually day laborers of banana, papaya, lemon, etc. farmers, seasonally, or unemployed. Aspirants working in barrettes and other mines returned with disease. None of the forest dwellers have ever voted, none have an identity card. Eats jackfruit, pumpkin, raw banana. My report was of no use, for the discovery of minerals under the soil of the forests and gardens has destroyed the plantations of bananas, jackfruits, lemons, papayas.
thirty three
The office sent me to the Nagpur office for three months as I was owed another step up. There I spoke to the hockey player Salila, through another young lady Sulochana Naidu, after a few days of acquaintance I said, I want to marry you, who should I talk to at your house. His father disappeared during his childhood, leaving his two sisters and step-wife at their uncle’s house, and since then the three sisters have lived in his uncle’s house. So I went to meet my uncle. Grandmother, who was not the guardian, it was Grandmother, instead of listening to my suggestion, she opened her gun cupboard and showed me eight guns, rifles, to name a few, Funny pattern bolt action rifle, SMLE pattern British rifle, Mozin Nagant pattern bolt rifle, Twelve gauge pump action shotgun, sabot slug hunting gun etc., his father’s. He showed the heads of deer, leopard etc. hanging on the wall and told the story of hunting.
In the living room I saw many English paperbacks with a layer of dust on them, maybe someone had read them. There is no Bengali book or magazine. I did not tell Salila about the writing I was involved in, Sulochana Naidu showed news and photos about me in Hindi newspapers. No one in their house paid attention to the matter. But later, when he met someone from Nagpur, he asked, “Are you still writing?” Why not write in English? Writing in English earns better.” said, “I only drink Scotch wine, that’s all I know of English.”
The next day I had to go again, my great-grandmother and great-grandmother, having already discussed among themselves, asked me to telegraph to Patna to prove my source. I telegrammed father in Patna and grandfather in Chaibasa. My mother was very familiar with my fickle nature, so she wanted me to marry any girl. On receiving my telegram, Pistuto sent Dada Sentuda to Dada, with an interesting letter, the main message of which was “Bring me wearing sindoor, if you understand”. The undated letter written on lined paper was printed by Dada in the April 2001 issue of “Hawa49” newspaper along with mother’s handwriting:
Welfare
Bashudev, I hope you and Bela must have reached there. Stand up and marry Malaya and wear Sindur with Basi.
Because you will see your bed on the first floor here and Babu’s body is very bad.
So you finish all the work and bring your wife, I was waiting for you to come. All of you take our blessings. Wear vermilion and bring it, understand? .
the end
mother
Mother said ‘bring her in vermilion’, meaning she should come in vermilion even if she doesn’t get married. But Salila never wore vermilion and conch-pala after marriage, the hockey player instilled in her a way that a typical middle-class Bengali housewife could not behave. Later, Devi Ray’s wife Mala made an eight-metal boat and presented it, which she continued throughout her life. Mother did not say anything, because she herself did not wear vermilion every day, for fear of hair loss.
Mejjatha died on the day my telegram reached Patna. The son wants to get married in the end, so that this opportunity is not missed, so the son might change his mind if he falls into the ritual of sending the grandfather, or defecating etc., if it is late, the parents thought. Grandfather came to Nagpur and went back to Chaibasa to fetch his daughter-in-law and daughter Honey after visiting him for one day. Bela, the daughter of Salila’s maternal uncle, was to be married in Nagpur a few days later; Salila’s younger sister Ramla wanted her to get married first then Salila’s, that is, I marry Ramla. In the middle of the quarrel between the two sisters, the elder mother wanted me to marry her elder daughter. I was thinking that a beautiful face was peeking out from behind the partition and watching me, Bela’s sister Neelima, I would marry her if there was a mess. I came to the hotel to avoid their argument, Salila came and took me to do the final. Finally, the card was printed for my and Salila’s wedding, on December 4, 1968.
Two days before the wedding, grandfather, mother-in-law and daughter arrived with their mother-in-law along with Honey. After the marriage of my uncle’s daughter Bela, we shared their pindi and fire and got married in a short ritual. Gelum Na got married in Patna, Gelum Chaibasa and our flowerbed is the house where Shakti Chatterjee kissed his lover Sheela in the dark, described in several novels including “Kinnar Kinnari”. I left for Patna from Chaibasa, I am Dada Boudi Honey and Salila. I went to Patna and got the news of Mejjatha’s death. Mejjatha’s daughter Dolly came from Calcutta, said, “You don’t have time anymore, you have been doing whatever you want for so long, father loved you, and you could have married after a year.” Dolly was so angry that she broke off the relationship. On the day of Salila’s wedding, the Brahmin feast was held at Mejjatha. Everyone had Shraddha and wedding feast on the same day. I started a new life with death. It is natural that there was no marriage ritual in Chaibasa or Patna; According to Salila, we are half married and half live-in.
In 1970, Salila brought her dog Suji to Patna, because everyone from Nagpur was writing that Suji could not be kept, in Salila’s absence. Younger sister Ramla is unable to handle him. Suji’s house in Patna had no place to play, cement floor everywhere, the dog was upset and cried, I didn’t like it. After staying in Nagpur for a year, he disappeared one day and was never found, just as Salila’s father was never found.
By 1953, Shala brought a small Dishi dog called Bujida to Daryapur house, I named the dog Rob, and gave him a nickname, Linchipulu, to call him by his full name, that is, Rob Linchipulu. After five or six years, the dog disappeared one day. I bought lamb trimmings for Rob Lingchipulu, there was a madman in the neighborhood, from a Bengali house, he was probably not allowed to eat meat at home, I could tell by the clothes that the man was suffering from neglect, Rob came to eat Lingchipulu’s trimmings every Sunday; He would not eat meat cooked at home, saying he could not eat such tasty meat. Back home in Kotarang, Bujida also died thirty years ago; That land is also given to grandmother.
I changed my job in Patna and moved to the Lucknow branch of the Agriculture Refinance and Development Corporation, where I bought a bungalow, started farming in the back land, to see with my own eyes brinjal, potato, millet, maize, onion, garlic, coppice, coriander, fennel, radish, carrot and so on. Guava, cool, banana, papaya, sajne, gourd, pumpkin, shrimp etc. The front lawn is carpeted with unshaven bermuda grass, surrounded by colorful roses, bellies, bellies, yams, and yes, creepers. I used to read a lot of books on farming so that I don’t talk like a fool to the farmers when I go on tour. While writing about the life of potato farmers in West Bengal in the novel “Namgandha”, he used the knowledge of farming and books. Many people from the office used to come to see my garden. When the parents came, they liked it so much that they said to buy the bungalow, then they were shocked when they heard the price. I have been on various tours from Lucknow, I have seen the artesian streams coming out of the ground, the plight of the Bengali refugees in the Terai, the wild cows of the Himalayas who give so little milk that they cannot be tamed, people brought them from the mountains and ate them, that has also stopped now.
My daughter and son were small then, they also tried to understand the character of trees, they helped me with bare hands. The girl used to go to school by bicycle and the son’s school was far away, so he used to come and go by rickshaw. The rickshaw puller who took them to Ishkul used to pick me up on the train at night during the tour. At that time I went on tour to many places where there is no hotel; I was in the house of a Muslim youth in Barailly, he slaughtered one of his own chickens and fed me every day. When I went to Aligarh, the riots had just stopped, I went to the university guest house, my colleague thought that beef was being served, so food was difficult, one day I was forced to say that it would be better to cook chicken for Mr. Srivastava. Uttam Das came to Lucknow with his wife Malvika, Devi Ray came with his wife, Parthasarathi came with news from Calcutta. Listening to their talk, it seemed that some people would hate me forever, through the afterlife through hatred. In the last moment I realized that I would have gone mad if I had been in Calcutta.
I was director of two Gramin Banks in Lucknow, Rae Bareli and Faizabad. The workers laid siege in Faizabad, demanding an increase in landmines. On the board of Rae Bareli was a cap-wearing Congress leader who often said that if anything was needed, he would tell Delhi, meaning the Gandhi family. I went to Faizabad and saw Ram’s Janmabhoomi or Babri Masjid, BJP still did not demolish it, before entering, the police constable said, take off your leather belt and shoes and enter, that is, the policeman also developed a fear of Ram, inside there was a statue of Ram and Sita on a table, with a garland of flowers. , one pillar was of black stone, an old structure. When I saw it, I could not imagine that after some time there would be so much fuss about this old house surrounded by bushes. It was completely empty, I did not see a single person performing puja, rather than that I saw many people performing puja in other temples of Ayodhya. And a group of monkeys around. Has anyone ever brought monkeys to this city because there is an army of monkeys in the Ramayana? Hanuman and squirrel but did not see one at that time.
In Lucknow, my wife, son and daughter all cut vegetables, picked shrimp and fish together. There was no fish cutting and cleaning in Lucknow market like in Calcutta. If Prabhakar came and saw that the fish were being picked, he would run away with a handkerchief on his nose. My son used to come by Abdul Karim’s house, when fish or meat was cooked. When Karim went on tour, he would buy many things for my son, even antique tables, book racks, etc. In the end, there was no furniture left, I gave away everything one by one. Now it seems that the little things brought from abroad should not have been bought, all of them are useless, they are known in dust sheets. I have changed and said goodbye to what I could.
Mother died in Lucknow, could not say what happened, even the heart doctor could not catch. At that time medicine was not so advanced, our knowledge was quite limited, now I know many things for my own illness. If she had been in Mumbai then, mother could have received proper treatment. I immediately telephoned my grandfather to die in the hospital, grandfather came from Patna and returned with a smile. Purut is needed in the crematorium, I don’t know any Bengali purut, because neither I nor my wife used to do the rites, so Panchanan Bhattacharya or an office worker called Chatterjee was called by my neighbor Hyder Ali, Dada did the face according to his instructions. I realized that I have developed a creative relationship with death.
It is very strange that after my mother’s death my writer’s block was cured and it was at this time that I started receiving requests to submit poems to several newspapers from Dhaka. My book of poetry, Uttam Dasher Mahadigant was published, almost all the poems of “Medhaar Batanukuol Ghungur” were first published in Dhaka newspapers. Yogen Chowdhury painted the cover of this poetry collection. It is completely different from the poetry of the Hungry Movement period, the poetry influenced by the Khungkha incident in Uttar Pradesh. My tendency to read books was not certain, I started reading more books to understand the Indian society, I used to have a lot of time in the office to read books, when I told the subordinate officers, they would collect the books .
From Lucknow I reached the head office of NABARD, Mumbai was then Bombay, the city of contract killers, encounter specialists and the killed, both of whom love the city for the same reason, money money money money, a world of absolute unreality, each community wanting to go back to their past, In the glory days of killing and looting. Now he got out of it. The plight of the poor in this city is indescribable. We were poor in Imlitla, the neighbors were even poorer, but no one considered her unlucky, I never saw my mother jealous of anyone. Unfortunate people come to this city to return their fortune, young men and women even accept rape in order to return their fortune. Yes, youths are also willing to be bullied for jobs.
Metropolises teach us how to stand out from the crowd and how to make ourselves invulnerable in the process of standing out. I realized that I was impenetrable, that I carried the whole of humanity within me; It is the greatest happiness for human civilization that the natural world does not care about human civilization. Newspapers in Mumbai report on the ill health of the rich as if the disease itself were some kind of prosperous creature. Meanwhile, the poor are the slaves of neglect, people sit on the roadside and rail lines in front of everyone, no one cares about how many “others” there are in this city. Democracy is anonymous here.
When I came to Mumbai, I discovered the way to squeeze the real world out of fiction. In this city, love reaches such a level that it depends on mutual distrust between people; As long as there is physical infidelity, as long as there is love, I want condom protection in the relationship. Although the characters of the novel “Dubjale Jetuku Praswam” are from Patna, I got the knowledge in Mumbai. In the novel “Jalanjali” I took the characters from Patna to Kolkata. In the novel “Naamgandha” I have taken the characters from Calcutta to the villages of West Bengal, the plight of potato farmers and the politics of keeping potatoes in cold storage. In the novel “Auras” I was taken to Maoist-dominated Jharkhand and Abujhmad. The detective novel “Supernatural Love and Brutal Murder” takes us from Calcutta to the tribal areas of the Andhra Pradesh-Karnataka border. All these are imaginations mixed with experiences gained in tour jobs. In the novel “Arup Tomar Entokanta” I have mixed my imagination with the hippie experience found in Benares and Kathmandu. In “Nakhdanta” Satkahn, I have mixed the information found on the tour in West Bengal about the politics of jute cultivation and chatkal, the events found in the newspaper, scraps of my notebook, then I could write with a pen in my hand. After these books I started writing fantasy fiction, “Jungle Romeo”, “Necromancer” and “Labyrinth Spider”. I wrote another novel in “Amritlok” magazine, I have forgotten its name, I could not get the copy, the novel was in the style of “Jinnatulbilader Rupkatha” and “Gahbartirther Kushilab”, magical.
“Amritlok” newspaper reminded me of an incident. In 1995 it was reported in Kolkata that Malay Roy Chowdhury had died. There was a wave of condolence in Byas Little magazine, Sameeran Majumder wrote a big editorial in “Amritlok” magazine. I was at my grandfather’s bamboo house when I returned from Mumbai. One day Shakti Chattopadhyay came and said, “I came to verify the truth of the news, you are sitting here in an easy chair and waving bangs and your friends are celebrating in Khalasitola on the news of your death. Let’s drink to celebrate if you’re still alive.” I said one day I will go to your house with Smirnoff. I went, Dada and Pradeep too. Meenakshi also accompanied us, bringing her glass of champagne. Shakti ate good and bad. He did not do kiptemi like Sandipan.
I have done the translation quite late. I first translated “Howl”, at the request of a Bengali newspaper in America, I forgot the name, Allen Ginsberg was then in New York. Then I translated Ginsberg’s “Kaddish”. In translating this poem, I used a thirty-three rpm gramophone record of Ginsberg’s own recital to catch the breath of each line, because the breath of spoken Bengali is quite different from that of American English. When I left Calcutta in 2009, I gave this gramophone record and the record of Ezra Pound’s poetry reading to Shubhankar Dash, they both liked me; But I and my wife have not seen their daughter Rupkatha yet, I heard that the child is very beautiful. When Bob Rosenthal of Ginsburg Trust and Bill Morgan, Curator of Ginsburg Archive came to Kolkata to gather information about Ginsburg from America, I asked Shubhankar to guide them. Ginsberg sold his archive to Stanford University for $1 million, leaving half to his stepmother.
In September 2015, BBC’s Joe Wheeler and “Narcopolis” author Jeet Thiel came to interview me about Ginsburg. As it was not possible to go to Kolkata, I asked Ritusree Sengupta, a student of English from Santiniketan, to guide the team. After hearing about my various ailments, Jeet Thail said, “Your bad karma, it always takes revenge.” Having spent twenty-two years in China’s opium chatter, I have realized that it is like giving knowledge, and because the book is a best seller, I have managed to make a lot of money, houses and cars. Arvind Pradhan told me, “Don’t take English instead of writing in Bengali.” I don’t have the vocabulary to write in English.
I translated them and wrote about those foreign writers and painters who had Imlitla’s insanity, who were misfits, who were my friends. I have translated the autobiographies of Paul Gagan and Dali, Jean Cocteau’s long poem ‘Crucifixion’, William Blake’s ‘Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, Bligy Sandra’s ‘Transsiberian Express’, Tristan Zara’s Dada poetry and Dada manifesto, Surrealist manifesto. I have written biographies of Charles Badalier, Jean-Arthur Rimbaud and Allen Ginsberg. Discussed about James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Anna Akhmatova, Jean Jane, Charlie Chaplin, Adunis, Pablo Picasso, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez etc. I have translated some female poets, whose news has not reached Bengali language for a long time.
Both son and daughter are abroad with the family, the advantage is that they get single malt, scotch and absinthe regularly, but their coming and going is stopped for the time being due to Corona. An old man and an old woman are living in a one-bedroom flat in Mumbai, blocking each other. The petals of the walls have fallen, the painting of sores on every wall-ceiling, dust on the highway; Nothing can be done, inherited asthma, prostate, hernia, high blood pressure, angina pain, varicose veins, glaucoma, finger arthritis, fainting syncope. I have given one organ to one doctor for treatment; When I get a call, I go to him and attend.
And I can’t write with a pen. The wife has to sign the bank cheque. I have been typing on the computer for as long as I can. A myriad of girlfriends on Facebook, hyperreal, who encourage endless writing, exhort young people to regain their youth, as if the ethereal universe outside the literary world, does not want to recognize the boundaries of any country.
Hungryalist Poems & Photos 