অক্টোবরের প্রথম দিনে চলে গেলেন কবি, গল্পকার, ঔপন্যাসিক নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্য। প্রান্তিক মানুষদের জন্য তিনি প্রতিটি অক্ষর লিখেছিলেন। এদিক থেকে নবারুণ ছিলেন নিঃসঙ্গ এক লেখন-ভূমির নির্মাতা। তাঁর হারবার্ট, কাঙাল মালসাট, মসলিয়াম নিয়ে তাঁর জীবিতকালে লেখালেখির জগতে তুমুল হৈচৈ ফেলে দিয়েছিল।
নবারুণের তিনটি গল্প, দুটি সাক্ষাৎকার, স্মরণ এবং তাঁর লেখালেখি নিয়ে নিকট আলোচনা প্রকাশিত হল।
আগামী সংখ্যায় নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্যকে নতুন করে খোঁজার চেষ্টা করা হবে।



নবারুণ-পাঠ |
১. নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্যের গল্প : ৪+১
২. নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্যের গল্প : ফ্যাতাড়ু
৩. নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্যের গল্প--টয়

নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্য  | মৃত্যু উপত্যকায় সব হিসেব মেলে না
সাক্ষাৎকার : নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্য--লেখালেখি করে উপার্জন করি না

নবারুণ :: নিপীড়িতের সাহিত্যের অগ্রপথিক
স্বপ্নময় চক্রবর্তী :  কে কী বলল তাতে অবশ্য নবারুণের
রমিত দে | নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্যের সাহিত্য নির্যাস ও অস্তিবাদ
ইমতিয়ার শামীম : নবারুণ : মৃত্যু উপত্যকা থেকে স্মৃতিউপত্যকায়

অর্ক চট্টোপাধ্যায়ের নবারুণ স্মরণ: বিষণ্নতা, দহন এবং দ্রোহপরিস্থিতি

অদিতি ফাল্গুনী | নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্যের অনাথ ‘হারবার্ট’ যদি জন্মাতো বাংলাদেশে…:
গৌতম গুহ রায় :  বিকল্প গদ্য আখ্যানের অনন্য স্থপতি
সুমন সাজ্জাদ :  ফ্লবের, ফ্যাতাড়ু ও আহাম্মকের অভিধান

                                          অগ্নি রায়  | নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্য- বাক্য মধ্যবর্তী নীরবতা 
                                          নীহারুল ইসলাম  | স্মরণ : আমাদের নবারুণদা

                                          নবারুণের কয়েকটি বইয়ের পিডিএফ |
                                          উপন্যাস-- হারবার্ট
                                          উপন্যাস সমগ্র 
                                          নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্যের ছোটো গল্প
                                          অন্য গল্প : পৃথিবীর শেষ কমিউনিস্ট
                                          এই মৃত্যু উপত্যকা আমার দেশ না

 

গুরুর পোস্ট-এ এখন সম্ভবত ওয়ার্ড লিমিট হয়েছে। তবু কেউ পারলে লিংক ধরে ধরে লেখাগুলোর টেকস্ট কপি পেস্ট করে দিতে পারেন, যেমন আগের অনেক অনলাইন ওয়েব-এর লেখালেখির ক্ষেত্রে করেছিলাম।

 

কাঙাল মালসাট: জনগণের বাসনা ও দাঁড়কাকেদের নুনুকামান 

বিধান রিবেরু - October 3, 2018

 

 

Vol. 2 No. 1 Supplement (2015): Nabarun Bhattacharya: Supplement
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Published: 2021-11-15

 

Articles

• Nabarun BhattacharyaAn Introduction
  Arka Chattopadhyay , Sourit Bhattacharya
  1-15
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• Reading and Resistance in the Works of Nabarun Bhattacharya
  Aritra Chakraborti
  16-32
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• The Impossible Demands of Nabarun Bhattacharya
  Adheesha Sarkar
  33-51
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• The Vagabond”s War Cry:The Other in Nabarun”s Narrative
  Dibyakusum Ray
  52-69
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• Texts of Power, Acts of Dissent:Performability and Theatricality in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Short Stories
  Priyanka Basu
  70-89
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• Strategic Outsiderism of Fyatarus:Performances of Resistance by ‘Multitudes’ after ‘Empire’
  Samrat Sengupta
  90-112
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Translations

• Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Poems
  Samrat Sengupta
  113-119
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• Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Poems
  Supriya Chaudhuri
  120-129
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• 4+1 Nabarun Bhattacharya
  Arka Chattopadhyay
  130-135
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• Fyataru
  Sourit Bhattacharya
  136-149
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• World's Last Communist
  Sourit Bhattacharya
  150-155
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• Fyatarus in Spring Festival
  Debadrita Bose
  156-164
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• I don’t need to fear, do I?
  Sourit Bhattacharya
  165-170
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• Toy
  Arka Chattopadhyay
  171-174
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• Blind Cat
  Arka Chattopadhyay
  175-180
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• Jaws of the Moon
  Adway Chowdhuri
  175-180
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• Cold Fire
  Arka Chattopadhyay
  185-188
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Artwork

• Nabarun Bhattacharya:a sketch peripheral
  Arjun Bandyopadhyay
  1-3
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Nabarun Bhattacharya: An Introduction
Sourit Bhattacharya and Arka Chattopadhyay
 
Nabarun’s Work: A Brief Critical Layout
Nabarun Bhattacharya was born in Calcutta in 1948 to Bijan Bhattacharya and Mahasweta Devi, both noted literary personalities. Devi left family for a career in activism and literary writing at a very early age when Nabarun was a kid. He grew up under the guidance and immediate artistic inspiration of Bijan Bhattacharya, whose 1943 Bengal Famine based play Nabanna (New Harvest) had already made a huge impact in the Indian theatre world, and his uncle Ritwik Ghatak, the noted auteur, whose films captured the despairing social conditions of poverty, joblessness, and political bankruptcy in a recently liberated nation. Nabarun’s literary writings were highly alert to the immediate social and political concerns and marked by an ideological faith in Marxism. This faith was never without a critique though.
Nabarun’s first published story “Bhasan” (Immersion) came out in 1968 in the literary magazine, Parichay. It was a story about a madman killed in a park by Naxalite bombings who now spoke or thought through his dead-body. 1968 was a significant year worldwide – anger and solidarity against corrupt and inefficient governments, against imperialist war in Vietnam spread across the student and workers’ communities in France, England and Europe through to North and South America. In West Bengal, the political situation was also very turbulent. The state had encountered a horrible famine in the forties and famine-like conditions and food movements ravaged the social conditions of the fifties and sixties. These factors, associated with others such as the tyranny of the jotedars (contractors), culminated in the tribal-peasant insurgency in the Naxalbari area in 1967-8 which came to be known as the Naxalite Movement. The later transition of the insurgency into a Maoist-socialist political programme drew attention from the urban youth, which was followed by a heavy State repression. Nabarun’s literary writings began in that global political atmosphere of turbulence and came back again and again to the topics of state repression and resistance. But the focus, as “Bhashan” suggested, was not on a passionate political leader but on a madman. Curiously for us, why is it so?
One answer could be that in Nabarun’s writing there is never a blind adherence to an ideology and hero-worship, but rather a close reading of the hierarchical structures of class and society – of the lower and subaltern classes that are routinely crushed by the joint forces of multinational capitalism and political bankruptcy in the name of Communism. Despite a lifelong faith in Marxism, in solidarity movements, in proletarian resistance, and especially in the October Revolution, Nabarun’s writing is replete with references to and parody, sometimes virulent criticism, of the repressive regimes in Stalinist Russia, in Communist China, the contemporary Communist Party-led West Bengal, and that of the increasing Americanization of the world. His political world is underlined by anger, critique, dissent, deep faith in the return of Communism proper, and also of disillusionment – of the despair about repeated reactionary turns in revolutionary politics and parties. In such a world, the hero is not the political leader but the margins of society, the urban poor in this context, who live and continue to live within and against all these and just do not die. Nabarun’s interest lies in capturing their moments of love, friendship, conversation, alcoholism, cursing, little moments of joy, anger, and criticism – aspects that constitute their everyday life. Story after story, this world and the political dimensions would seize the focus – an old stream-roller driver’s sudden smashing of the glittery glass-buildings (“Stream-roller” 1970), to a man who was killed by a gunshot that only a scarecrow knew of (“Kaktarua”; Scarecrow 1979), to Kalmon and Moglai, two budding thieves and their failed initiation (“Kalmon and Moglai” 1985), to a prostitute, Foyara, who has a strange disease (“Foyara’r Jonyo Duschinta”; Anxiety for Foyara 1986), to a clerk whose son was severely wounded in football and who believed that an auspicious thread of nylon could bail him through (“Ek Tukro Nylone Dori” A Thread of A Nylon Rope 1988) to four blind and deaf corpse-bearers who were carrying a mysterious corpse through the heart of the city (“4+1” 1995), to a man who feared that he might die any day (“Amar Kono Bhoy Nei Toh” I don’t Need to Fear, Do I? 2004 and translated in this supplement), to another prostitute, Baby K, who drank petrol and, forced by some American soldiers into putting a burning cigarette into her mouth, exploded with them (“American Petromax” 2012).
Like the marginal and barely visible characters of the postcolonial third world urban life, explosion too is a recurrent theme in Nabarun. In 1993, Nabarun published his first short-length novel, Herbert (translated as Harbart by Arunava Sinha in 2011) about the life and times of Herbert Sarkar. Growing up as an orphan in a once-rich “babu” family in South Calcutta and abused and humiliated by his cousin and the neighbouring children, Herbert isolates himself from family and neighbourhood and begins to invest all his interest in the bookish world of afterlife and other-worldly communication. After the death of his beloved nephew, Binu in the Naxalite violence, Herbert declares his super-human powers of “conversation with the dead.” Though accepted soon by the society, it is finally exposed by the members of the Rationalist Association of West Bengal. In response, Herbert commits suicide, leaving a cryptic note. As his dead-body is sent to the electric chulli, it detonates smashing the modern crematorium into pieces. Nabarun attempts to empower the body of a long-humiliated and ignored being by giving him access to the non-bodily world, of necromancy and séance. The intention is probably to inform us of the contradictory practices of life in a third world city where hyper-rationalized, consumerist capitalism sits parallel with belief in the supernatural and the necromantic. If India opened its markets legally to globalized capital in 1992 (a year before Herbert's publication) with a logic of the neoliberal “rational” subject’s choice and practices, the same year saw the demolition of the 1527-built Babri Mosque which rolled into a series of bloody communal violence. There are multiple practices, beliefs and selves: the rational-legal happens to be the dominant, paradigmatic form of choice. That does not rule out the existence of the subordinated or the less-chosen ones. Explosion is probably an indication, a warning of that. The other part of this introduction will focus more broadly on the various aspects associated with the idea and practice of explosion – especially its relation with the spectral or the non-real. The novel won multiple awards, including the highest literary recognition in India, “Sahitya Akademi Award” in 1997 and was made into a feature film by Suman Mukhopadhyay in 2005 which also secured a National Award.
Explosion turns into the spirit of “damage” in another memorable creation of Nabarun’s: “Fyataru” published in the magazine Proma in 1995. The fyatarus are the flying humans of the lower or subaltern classes whose function is to damage the property and entertainment-resources of the upper class and make their private spaces filthy. They create fear within the police and the bourgeois by their sudden act of flying. Nabarun continued with these characters in many of his later stories including his noted novel, Kangal Malsat (War-cry of the Beggars 2003). Along with fyatarus, Nabarun introduces in this novel his other set of fantastic protagonists, the choktars, the black magicians who live in filthy alleys and slums of Kolkata. They have flying saucers locked in their dingy rooms, can capture ghosts and are now planning an attack against the State – the ministers, the police, and the army. A scathing critique of political inefficiency, corruption in and capitalist aggression by the so-called Communist state, the novel includes characters ranging from a huge and ancient Raven who can speak human language to an eighteenth century English woman, Begum Johnson, to a dead major general to various contemporary characters such as the curator of the Victoria Memorial. Their weapons include flying-saucers that behead the intended people but do not kill, a Portuguese-built cannon of the late seventieth century that they call “penis-cannon,” a Mughal-era sword (both found while digging for petrol in Kolkata) and the filth around – the human shit, rotten flesh, cow-dung, sweepers' broom, gout-head soup, dog excreta, etc. Nabarun extends the overlapping borders of reality and non-reality further as people from different time-scales and geographies meet and wage a spectral war against the State, compelling the latter to declare truce. These features will also appear in the later novels in Khelnanagar (Toycity 2004) Mausoleum (2006), and Lubdhak (Sirius 2006) which engage with issues such as the increasing toxification of the soil, the culture of saint-making in the third-world society, and the brutal torture on dogs by the humans and the removal of them from public places for accommodating global forms of consumerism. The spirit of protest and dissent never left Nabarun as he continued to write stories like “Prithibir Sesh Communist” (World's Last Communist 2003; translated in this supplement), “Shanghai e Ek Sandhya" (An Evening in Shanghai 2003), etc. during the last years of his life; as the liberatory image of the post-Revolutionary Communist Russia and the loss of Communism in the breaking up of the Soviet Union continued to haunt him. But protest now followed with a senile stoicism.
Nabarun also wrote poems. His first collection of poetry made his name known to the literary circles. Published in 1973 and titled E Mrityu Upatyaka Amar Desh Na (This Valley of Death is Not My Country), the poems in this collection project the writer's anger against the inhuman violence by the state during the Naxalite movement, the anxiety and fear in the heart of the citizens, the invasion in Vietnam, the children of the third world and many such issues. The spirit of the collection is suggested in the first stanza of the first and titular poem:
The father who fears identifying his son’s corpse
I hate him much
The brother who is still normal and shameless
I hate him much –
The teachers, scholars, poets and clerks
Who do not ask for revenge in public
I hate him much.
And later,
This valley of death is not my country
This executioner’s roaring stage is not my country
This earth of bones and corpses is not my country
This bloody slaughterhouse is not my country (E Mrityu 11-12)
 
His later collections of poetry include “Mukhe Megher Rumal Badha” (Cloud’s Scarf on the Face 2006), “Raater Circus” (Night Circus 2009), “Purnadhar Bhater Kobita” (Poems by Purandhar Bhat 2012), etc. The last one is a collection of poems by Purandhar Bhat, one of the three fyatarus (the rest being Madan and DS) and a failed poet whose doggerels, terse and rhymed, range from criticism of the hypocrisy of middle class morality, to the political bankruptcy in the civil society, to the blunt and consumer-led print and electronic media, to literary establishment and others. Nabarun also wrote non-fictional works and edited the little magazine, Bhashabandhan.
Let us now move to some of the aspects of his writing in more detail and situate his work in the Bengali and global intellectual traditions.
 
Nabarun: Politics, Humour and the Literary in the Bengali Novel 
Supriya Chaudhuri at the end of her essay, “The Bengali Novel” passingly mentions Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Herbert and Kangal Malsat to finish her discussion on the diversely satirical ways in which the Bengali novel has connected and reconnected with the social. In situating Nabarun’s novels within the return of a repressed comic mode in Bengali fiction, Chaudhuri identifies tropes such as “fantasy, surreal farce and linguistic and narrative experiment” in Nabarun’s work (122). She finishes her survey with a hint that Nabarun brings back the historically suppressed deflatory mode of comedy in the Bengali novel which had once been evident at its inception with works like Pyarichand Mitra’s Alaler Gharer Dulal (1857). Chaudhuri also maintains that in spite of a return to comedy and black humour, the Bengali novel has “developed by constantly transforming the realist terms of its initial premises, challenging the representational and referentialist illusion, yet never losing faith in the genre’s commitment to ‘reality’.” (ibid) We could initiate a discussion from some of these terms, especially on the novel’s fidelity to the real in a writer like Nabarun.
In an interview, Nabarun says: “I don’t understand writing just as a way of offering entertainment. For me, writing has a deeper alchemy and there’s risk of explosion there.”¹ (Sreshtha Golpo 9) The architecture of explosion isn’t limited to the representational content of Nabarun’s works, as we see for example with Herbert’s post-mortal explosion in the crematorium. Unlike Herbert, where the explosion is literal (but not terroristic because it’s unintentional and no one gets hurt by it), in a story like “4+1” (translated in this supplement) the explosion could be seen as the metaphor for a radically interruptive event that tears through the existing structure of dominant ideology and emasculates the state apparatus. The state cannot communicate with the four blind, deaf and dumb subalterns and the mystery about the “+1” i.e. the corpse as well as the event that brought the five so-called miscreants into the public eye remains entirely enigmatic. The story in its form of reportage installs the event in its function of radical non-knowledge. “4+1” finishes with an articulation of unanswerable questions that “the authorities” will always be waiting to answer. The literary text here creates an explosive rupture in the Statist repository of epistemic power by holding on to the irreducibility of the evental experience. The punching line from Herbert that has become Nabarun’s most quoted mantra, reads: “[…] when and how an explosion will happen and who will make it happen is still outside the state’s rubric of knowledge.” (78)² The narrator informs the readers about the bizarre Naxalite genealogy of this explosion in the dynamite sticks, Herbert’s nephew Binu had hidden inside his mattress which exploded after more than twenty long years of hibernation, when Herbert’s body was entered into the crematorium on his bed. However, the state and its repressive apparatus i.e. the police have no idea about this spooky explosion till the end and they keep speculating about the event in terms of terrorist conspiracy. For Nabarun their cluelessness becomes an object of jest. In his interviews, he talks about the carnivalesque aspects of these proletarian ruptures and literature becomes a way of mobilizing this carnival of reversal where laughter, in its Bakhtinian possibilities, has a subversive role (Upanyas Samagra 527).    
In this sense, we could argue that for Nabarun, the literary is an interventionist act in relation to dominant discourse. The works themselves are meant to be deliverers of explosion. For Nabarun, the literary is a field of practice, just as theory is a field of practice for Althusser and Nabarun never fails to emphasize the interruptive efficacy of the literary work.  Literature for Nabarun is an ideological vehicle to intervene into reality but he doesn’t reduce literature to a didactic political function. Literature doesn’t become political by imparting knowledge; instead it becomes political by questioning a “phallogocentric” (phallic as well as logocentric or reason-centric) construction of Statist knowledge by installing non-knowledge. As the narrator dwells on the sad dispersal of Herbert’s belongings after his death, he hypothesises that one day one of Herbert’s traces may speak of him to an other and perhaps re-turn and re-mark him in the process. The hypothetical futurity in the tenth and final chapter of Herbert insists on a political speculation of the contingent which could always supplement the state of affairs with a spectral event. We might also think of the radical futurism with which the story “Blind Cat” (translated in this supplement) ends. This radical figure of the future in Nabarun is imbued with his contingent fidelity to revolution as a figure of both possibility and impossibility.
Nabarun dares to imagine a future that places the impossible in a spectrum of possibilities. On occasions this future tilts towards a strategic utopianism, as in the finale of the story “World’s Last Communist” (translated in this supplement) while in the novel Lubdhak which depicts the dogs, revolting against their eviction from the city of Kolkata, the city as well as the whole world risks obliteration, thereby making the dystopian angle apparent.  In Khelnanagar, Nabarun returns to his thematic as well as formal experiments with explosion as the novel is arranged in sections, titled after the bodies of the characters as well as the elements and ending on a disembodied being (“Asharir”). But more relevant to this discussion is the novel’s similar slant towards dystopia as radical speculation which seizes the future in terms of destruction and non-knowledge.³ In this context, we could remember Fredric Jameson’s Marxian readings of utopia and dystopia in relation to literature’s function of critique. As Jameson indicates, the dystopian can be seen as an extension of the utopian. Jameson’s distinction (following Tom Moylan’s work on “critical dystopia”) between “anti-utopia” which is fundamentally “anti-revolutionary” and “dystopia” which is “necessarily a critique of tendencies at work in capitalism today” is helpful in placing Nabarun on the utopian-dystopian continuum of the “Left-political.” (“The Politics of Utopia” 41 and Archaeologies of the Future 198-199)    
            When Nabarun invents the spectral Fyatarus (two Fyataru stories are translated in this supplement) as flying subalterns, attacking the carousing bourgeoisie and the corrupt state apparatus with excremental objects, he isn’t just evoking the romanticised Left revolution but also laughing his way into the melancholia of that revolutionary romanticism. In Nabarun, the social and the political are dialectically poised vis a vis one another. The point where the dominant social order crumbles under the pressure of Nabarun’s troublemaking political activists is precisely the point which inaugurates the political in all its dissident libidinal discharge. The deflatory comic mode enables Nabarun to mark the ludicrous and impossible nature of this political transgression even as his personages launch into their transgressive acts. The scatological indecency permeating this absurd excremental revolt is a defining feature of the farcical. In Nabarun, it is the complex network of colonial history as well as the radical past of the Indian Naxalite decade (1970s) that stages a farce-like historical return in the form of a liminal performance. The fundamental political affect of anger colours the satirical energy of the comic as a figure of ridiculous indecency.
The ghost is this returning figure of the trouble-maker in Nabarun and he appropriates and politicises this figure from the comic tradition of Bengali ghost stories. We could consider Parashuram’s 1930 short story “Mahesher Mahajatra” (The Great Final Journey of Mahesh) for example where the ghosts finally assume an irresolvable dimension of trouble-making.⁴ It is not for nothing that Herbert is a voracious reader of comic ghost stories like “Bhooter Jalsay Gopal Bhand” (Gopal Bhand in the Carnival of Ghosts). Another relevant text Nabarun cuts up into Herbert is “Circus e Bhooter Upodrob” (Spooky Trouble in the Circus)—an essay by Priyanath Basu, the founder of Kolkata’s Great Bengal Circus in 1887. This would bring us back to the question of history and the Bengali literary tradition of the grotesque which was rampant in the 18^th and 19^th century Bengali satire. As we have noted above, Supriya Chaudhuri implicitly draws a connection between this grotesque tradition and Nabarun’s novels. As the author himself had said, the point about beginning every chapter of Herbert with obscure lines from 19^th century Bengali poetry was to “arrange the gaps in history” (Upanyas Samagra 509). These historical gaps which reactivate the cusp of colonial modernity in India also reinvigorate the grotesque in a politically subversive way as Nabarun returns to the colonial rise of the Bengali novel with its embattled relational dynamics of reason, instinct and faith. We could think of Herbert and Bhogi’s (Bhogi is a mini-novel published in 2007) relentless interrogation of reason in their extra-rational practices like the séance or the occult and how Nabarun carefully locates their tragic practices in a native Indian tradition of the occult. Herbert’s inspiration to practice as a psychic reader comes from two books he finds in his attic roof: Mrinalkanti Ghosh’s Paraloker Katha (The Other-world Story) and Kalibar Bedantobagish’s Paralok Rahasya (The Mystery of Other-world). The novel uses passages from these two books as theoretical intertexts for the occult theme. Nabarun juxtaposes the Bengali Indian discourses on the occult with the Western ones and marks a hybridization of these discourses as the intellectual capital travels from England to India through the colonial encounter. In Bhogi, Nabarun counterpoints Bhogi’s incredulous miracles with the urban modernity of the family that receives him in the city. These liminal figures acquire a contingent political subjectivity as they extend an inquiry outside the rational circles of Western thinking that had historically created the foundation of the Bengali novel.
If we briefly come back to Nabarun’s radical politics and his radical aesthetics which inter-penetrate one another, we could consider his dismantling of the linear narrative form of the novel in Kangal Malsat, Mausoleum and Lubdhak where the author arrests narrative flow with philosophical as well as polemical discursivity. An example is the opening chapter of Lubdhak which combines the genres of journalistic reportage and scientific treatise with a highly sensory body of descriptive images. Another way Nabarun breaks the narrative continuity of prose is by importing doggerels into the body of the novel. He had started his literary career as a poet in the radical decade of the 1970s but from Herbert onwards, it was the novel which became his major literary form of expression. And we could argue that the poetic text returns like a political spectre to produce an explosion or two within his novelistic prose. In Kangal Malsat, apart from using doggerels, Nabarun also mobilises newspaper articles, lists and more visual forms like ads to break the linear flow of text on the page and produces a hybrid form of assemblage which attacks realistic representation from a political standpoint. The cinematic trope is also operative in this novel as well as Bhogi and Herbert. In dismantling novelistic form, Nabarun follows a line of dissent from Bengali experimental novelists of the 60s and 70s like Debesh Ray, Sandipan Chattopadhyay and Subimal Misra who politicize the discursivity of non-narrative in fiction by posing it against the rationalist core of the European novel. To consider Nabarun’s unique contribution in this literary line of dissent, one would have to think through his evocation of a grotesque political laughter which the chiselled wit of a Sandipan or a Subimal mostly bypasses.  
In their hyper-realist commune, the flying Fyatarus speak in relentless expletives and cuss words as their use of biological excrement parallels their verbal ejaculations. This offers us Nabarun’s critique of the Bengali Bhadralok’s (elite's) language and in this he could be seen in a historical continuum of literary anti-progressivism that was registered by the Hungriyalist literary movement in early 1960s India. Hungriyalists like Malay Roychowdhury were the first to protest the narrative of social progress by engaging with Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West (1922). They experimented with erotic indecency in both form and content of their work to question the elitism of Bengali literature at large but these experiments in the 60s were primarily restricted to poetry e.g. Malay’s (in)famous poem “Stark Electric Jesus” which eventually landed him up in jail. Nabarun’s contribution lies in introducing this critique into the novelistic discourse and radicalising its anarchist lineage by forcing the Bengali novel to return to its repressed roots of indecent humour via the grotesque. And as we have seen above, there’s more than an overlap between the spectral and the grotesque at this point. The spectral Fayatrus’ deliberately indecent language of libidinal discharge speaks to capitalism’s suicidal production of “surplus jouissance” that Lacan splices with Marx’s theorisation of “surplus value” in capitalism. Let’s consider Lacan’s fundamental point that capitalism not only produces “surplus value” but “surplus jouissance” (jouissance as a strange enjoyment that supplements pleasure with pain) as well. For Lacan, capitalism doesn’t know what to do with this surplus production and this affective excess of a hybridised pain and pleasure thus becomes a tool of resistance for the subjected subject of capitalism.⁵ Nabarun’s subaltern political subjects use this invested language of excessive jouissance to attack the system that gives them pain. They enjoy their gross language and excretal revolts in a complex knotting of pleasure and pain that marks the double bind of subjection and resistance. 
            The anger of a politically subversive laughter captures the edge of language in Nabarun’s grotesque humour which goes back to the adbhuta rasa (an affect as well as an effect of the bizarre) of Indian aesthetics as he brings back the submerged grotesque tradition of the Bengali novel to question its literary politics of canonization. Here we return to where we had started in this section which is the place of Nabarun in the Bengali literary canon. Let’s end with a major theme in Nabarun which is that of the animal as yet another face of liminal subjectivity. Nabarun is critical of the humanism that constructs a dichotomous hierarchy of the man over the animal. A novel like Lubdhak directly engages with the question of animal rights and we have dwelt at some length on the novel in the “Introduction” to our “Speculation and Fiction Issue.” Let us limit ourselves here to a different implication of Nabarun’s appropriation of the animal voice in Lubdhak which returns to our thread of humour and laughter. Simon Critchley in his book On Humour draws this relation between the animal and humour: “Humour is human. But what makes us laugh is the inversion of the animal-human coupling […]. If being human means humorous, then being humorous often seems to mean becoming an animal.” (34) As Critchley argues, within a prejudiced humanist view, what produces laughter is man becoming animal but as he also qualifies, this becoming can never be possible: “what becoming an animal confirms is the fact that humans are incapable of becoming animals.” (ibid emphasis in the original). Following Critchley’s argument, we can maintain that the human being’s impossible transformation into an animal produces grotesque humour. We find this animal humour in the name “bantpakhi” or “teat-bird” with which Herbert’s neighbours poke fun at his freakishness; but of course the obvious and yet important point is Herbert is not a teat-bird and can never become one.
In Lubdhak or the story “Blind Cat” the animal trope goes beyond humour, acquiring a more brooding cynical status. However, what Critchley says about the satirical energy of Kafka could also be considered in Nabarun’s case: “[In satire] we are asked to look at ourselves as if we were visitors from an alien environment […]. The critical task of the writer is to write from the place of the animal, to look at human affairs with a dog’s or beetle’s eye, as in Kafka’s stories.” (35) Doesn’t Nabarun look at the human world from the position of the animal in Lubdhak? Does he fall into the anthropomorphic trap by doing so? If we consider the ironic humour, nascent in this admittedly impossible and untenable position of the inverted animal gaze, it creates a space where this inappropriable position of animal alterity can be strategically appropriated, without reducing the otherness of the animal other. The satirical involution in Nabarun allows him to speak from the unspeakable locus of the animal other without falling into the humanist trap of anthropomorphism as his ironic humour backhandedly communicates the impossibility of speaking from that locus. This plurivocal humour extending itself into the spectral, the political and the animal terrains, among others, is one way of thinking about Nabarun’s singularity as a dissident Bengali novelist.
To come to the articles in this supplement, Aritra Chakraborti in “Reading and Resistance in the Works of Nabarun Bhattacharya” shows how Nabarun, the critical reader of literature informs Nabarun, the writer and how the regimes of reading translate into a practice of resistance in his creative output. Other than interests in everyday practice and the archive of cultural memory, Chakraborti also explores the function of Nabarun’s characters as readers and some of these discussions return to the way we have attempted to situate him in this introduction. Adheesha Sarkar’s article “The Impossible Demands” reads Nabarun’s work in relation to the political theory of anarchism. She suggests that a critical engagement with the concept of “fyataru” – flight, dissent, damage – could illuminate real-life figures such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden who rebel against the institutional oppression and regulation of contemporary life. Dibyakusum Roy’s “The Vagabond’s War Cry” engages with the aspect of the “other” in Nabarun. Reading the last phase of the author’s career, Roy argues that the Other should not be read here in a linear assumption of the subaltern’s coming to power. Dissent in Nabarun is a ploy of letting the margin speak critically rather than radically changing the social mapping of power. Priyanka Basu’s piece “Texts of Power, Acts of Dissent” situates the aspect of performance in Nabarun’s storytelling. Engaging with some of his noted stories and reading them with a theoretical framework in performance studies, Basu informs us that the aspects of violence, dissent, and theatricality could be read as “performability” in the author that is deeply political by nature. Samrat Sengupta, to whom we are greatly thankful for the translations of Nabarun’s poems and the bibliography, offers a different perspective on the techniques of resistance in his article “Strategic Outsiderism of Fyatarus: Performances of Resistance by ‘Multitudes’ after ‘Empires’.” Sengupta engages with Nabarun’s texts in relation to a critique of capitalism and its bio-political machinery and his piece opens up a potential dialogue with Roy’s article as it explores Nabarun’s “strategic outsiderism” as a political ethics of the Other. We would like to express our gratitude to our teacher and professor Supriya Chaudhuri who was kind enough to translate some of Nabarun’s poems for the issue. Our heartfelt thanks to Adway Chowdhuri and Debadrita Bose for their translations and Arjun Bandyopadhyay for his sketch series which adds another dimension to the supplement. Finally, we are thankful to Dey’s Publishers, Kolkata whose published collections of poems and short stories have been used here for translations. They have been duly acknowledged in the critical essays as well.
In a recent edition of Bhashabandhan, the Bengali little magazine Nabarun edited, he published a special issue on the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, containing translations of and critical essays on various aspects of his work, to widen the readership of this maverick writer and to pay a literary tribute to him. As students interested in literature and critique, Nabarun’s presence was a source of great motivation for us. After his untimely demise last year, on July 31, 2014, it’s the work which carries his spectral presence further into the future. We think this is the right time to celebrate the textual afterlife of the author by engaging with his work. This supplement is our way of showing a literary-critical indebtedness to him and his work. Nabarun demands as well as deserves a wider readership both because of his sophisticated and highly crafted nature of art and also for his fierce critique of establishment politics, capitalist expansion, and class domination. It is true that he is a difficult writer to read and write upon. His work shows a certain kind of resistance to translation as well as any simplistic and one-dimensional reading. Thus it was a very challenging task for us.
We are extremely grateful to our contributors who have taken up the challenge and allowed us all the opportunity to explore Nabarun from close critical quarters. There are many other aspects in Nabarun such as the gender question (the cult of masculinity and the relative lack of strong female characters), his editorial practice, his vision of cinema and theatre etc. which could not be covered here. These are windows to future criticism and there’s work to be done there. We have only opened up some possible frameworks for a critical Nabarun studies which will hopefully have as radical a future as the future(s) imagined by Nabarun’s texts. We need more translations and various kinds of critical engagements with the work. While the vernacular reception of Nabarun’s work continues to develop on important lines of thought, it’s vital to open him to the English speaking world of discourses, not only to deliver him to a multilingual Indian audience but also to generate a dialogue between his work and an international critical readership where his work, we feel, has a lot to speak to. Some of that work has started with Herbert’s German translation this year. As translators and editors, we hope that this supplement, which is an issue by its own right, can help take these initiatives further and more such studies on Nabarun are conducted. Let these strategic framings of Nabarun in a complex network of discourses lead to increasingly dialectical supplementation. And let’s hope that a more nuanced web of discourses weaves itself around the proper name Nabarun Bhattacharya as an anchor point of complex tectonic moves.   
 
Notes:
¹ The Bengali original reads: “Ami lekhar byaparta jebhabe bujhi seta nichhok anondo deoa ba neoa noy. Aro gobhir ek alchemy jekhane bishforoner jhunki royechhe.”
² We have deliberately used our own translation of this line. The Bengali original reads: “[…] kokhon kibhabe bishforon ghotbe ebong ta ke ghotabe se sombondhe jante rashtrojontrer ekhono baki achhe”
³ We could think of the final paragraph of the novel where the narrator of the last chapter informs us why no one will ever come to know about the toy-city and yet a trace or two will survive (Upanyas Samagra 228).
⁴ At the final point of the story, Mahesh, the sceptical rationalist who didn’t believe in ghosts and afterlife, dies and comes to believe all of it as he’s transformed into a ghost himself. The central image of “4+1” could be read as an ironic echo of the iconic scene in Parashuram’s story where Mahesh’s corpse starts to move in his final journey on the shoulders of four corpse bearers. More importantly perhaps, ghosts, in the final run, just do not allow anyone to use the money Mahesh had left at his school to fund an essay writing competition in which the student would have to argue, if not prove, that ghosts do not exist. The ghosts make Mahesh’s life after death a veritable hell and when the school senate plans to spend the money elsewhere, the ghosts start pounding the roof and ensure that no one even takes the name of the Mahesh fund in future (225).
⁵ Throughout his annual seminar of 1969, Jacques Lacan discusses “surplus jouissance” as a weaving on Marx’s “surplus value.” To look at a key initial moment, in the first session of December 10, 1969, Lacan adds a psychoanalytic note to Marx’s discovery of surplus value: ‘excess work, […] surplus work. “What does it pay in?” he [Marx] says. “It pays in jouissance, precisely and this has to go somewhere.” (20 emphasis in the original) For Lacan, the worker’s surplus value is also a matter of surplus enjoyment and once capitalism produces it, it has to go somewhere. Following Lacan’s thoughts across the different sessions of this seminar, it can be stated that this jouissance is appropriated by the capitalist subject as a way of hitting back at the system that submits him or her to this excess of combined pain and pleasure.
 
Works Cited:
Bhattacharya, Nabarun. Herbert. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 1993. Print.
---,    E Mrityu Upatyaka Amar Desh Na. Kolkata: Saptarshi Prakashan, 2004. Print.
--,      Sreshtha Golpo. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 2006. Print.
--,      Upanyas Samagra. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 2010. Print.
Chaudhuri, Supriya. “The Bengali Novel.” The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture. Ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Rashmi Sadana.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 101-123. Print.
Critchley, Simon. On Humour. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Jameson, Fredric.  “The Politics of Utopia.” New Left Review 25 (Jan-Feb 2004): 35-54. Web. 8 August 2015.
--,      Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire called Utopia and other Science Fictions. London and New York: Verso, 2005. Print. 
Lacan, Jacques. Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Trans. Russell Grigg. New York and London: Norton, 2007. Print.
Parashuram [Rajshekhar Basu] Parashuram Galposamagra 1. Ed. Dipankar Basu. Kolkata: M C Sarkar and Sons, 2010. Print.
 
  
 
Sourit Bhattacharya and Arka Chattopadhyay
        Editors, Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry
editors@sanglap-journal.in
© Sourit Bhattacharya and Arka Chattopadhyay 2015
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Reading and Resistance in the Works of Nabarun Bhattacharya
Aritra Chakraborti
 
During the 2013 Taksim Square protests in Istanbul, performance artist Erdem Gunduz started a new form of demonstration by standing silently in a peaceful posture in defiance of the police and paramilitary forces deployed by the government. Soon this method of non-violent protest was picked up by other citizens who joined Gunduz at Taksim Square. Some of them would stand quietly, others would read books. Pictures of Turkish citizens protesting peacefully by standing silently and reading spread rapidly through the internet, as “The Taksim Square Book Club” became a cultural icon for its new way of using public and private reading as methods of protest against violent state oppression. However, the connection between reading and resistance is not unique in the history of either discursive process. In this essay I shall try to show how eminent Bengali writer Nabarun Bhattacharya used similar intellectual exercises as part of his revolutionary praxis. In his fiction and non-fiction Bhattacharya often speaks in his own voice and those of his characters, emphasizing the need to inculcate a habit of reading as a necessary tool of resisting the disciplinary powers of the state. Here I shall be tracing those allusions, as well as his own analysis of various texts, in order to show how he interpreted reading as a potent weapon against the state and state-sponsored mainstream intellectual paradigms which he vehemently despised.
Nabarun Bhattacharya’s untimely demise in 2014 cut short one of the most interesting careers in modern Bengali literature. Though he gained widespread critical attention much later in his career, in the last decade of his life he was acknowledged as one of the foremost literary figures of Bengal. Bhattacharya has been frequently hailed as a firebrand intellectual who represented the radical voice of literary Bolshevism in Bengal (Purakayastha 2014). One of the main features of Bhattacharya’s writing style that has received much attention is his use of rustic, colloquial language laden with expletives. In fact, critical literature on Bhattacharya seems to focus majorly, if not exclusively, on this aspect of his linguistic subversion. This attention, though overused, is not wholly unjustified. Not only did Bhattacharya put this crude language in the mouth of his characters in order to constantly attack the hegemonic dominance of “gentle speech” used by the Bengali upper and upper-middle class, he even created two groups of fictional, foul-mouthed unorganized urban guerrilla anarchists in the form of Choktars and Fyatarus who give this culture of verbal effrontery its more effective physical form. Choktars and Fyatarus are members of the urban poor and lower middle class who have no or little financial resources to speak of, hold no regular jobs and live in the squalor of the poorest neighbourhoods of the teeming metropolis of Kolkata. They can fly using mysterious occult powers to inflict all sorts of random damages on the fragile consumerist world of the upper and upper middle class citizens. Even in other works of fiction that do not feature these anarchists, Bhattacharya has constantly attacked the plastic world of the urban elite as well as the fiction of “respectability” that they construct around themselves by hiding behind the curtain of “decent” and “polished” language. Harbart (1993), one of Bhattacharya’s first novels to gain critical attention, has often been cited as a similarly revolutionary and incendiary work that attempts to send “epistemic tremors through his advocacy of radical violence and systemic change” (Purakayastha 91). Similar opinion has been echoed by other commentators who suggest that Bhattacharya’s use of “crude” language is an attempt at creating a space for carnivalesque protest within the struggle for dominance of the urban cityscape (Tapodhir Bhattacharya 140). However, it seems that concentration of critical literature on this singular aspect of Bhattacharya’s literary output has led to a rather limited appreciation of his works. Without denying the importance of the attention devoted to the linguistic subversions in Bhattacharya’s works, here I shall try to show that an equally important aspect of Bhattacharya’s political and ideological stand lies in his vast and diverse reading as much as his incendiary writing. In fact, I would go on to argue that the much celebrated revolutionary rhetoric espoused by Bhattacharya stems directly from his practice as a reader.
 
Reading as an Act of Resistance
To what extent can a reader or a writer voice his discontent about the tremendous amount of discrimination practiced regularly in society? Reading or writing may appear, at the outset, a rather passive activity often dictated by the demands of others. Contemporary society puts the individual in a scenario where meaning of any kind is way too dependent on the visual impact: communication is ensured by repeatedly exposing people to “spectacular images” on television, newspaper and billboards. As Michel de Certeau suggests in his influential work The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), this exorbitant exposure to the visual medium has created a society that borders on a sort of “epic of the eye”, forcing the subject to recognize images and words and respond to them (xxi). Society thus itself becomes a text, forced down upon the “reader” by multiple “authors” who try to control the commerce of meaning. One must remember that de Certeau is writing in the 1980s, well before the coming of digital media which has made information even more ubiquitous. However, the individual reader can use the same habit of reading to subvert the directives of the authoritarian voice that dictates the meaning of these texts. The way out of this “disciplining visual society”, then, comes from strategies employed by readers who can make the act of reading a part of the everyday practice of resistance:
 
In reality, the activity of reading has on the contrary all the characteristics of a silent production: the drift across the page, the metamorphosis of the text effected by the wandering eyes of the reader, the improvisation and expectation of meanings inferred from a few words, leaps over written spaces in an ephemeral dance. [The reader] insinuates into another person’s text the ruses of pleasure and appropriation; he poaches on it, is transported into it, pluralises himself in it like the internal rumblings of one’s body. (de Certeau xxi)
 
As the reader moves on through the text, he starts inhabiting the world created by the author, making the text habitable, like a rented apartment. It transforms another person’s property into a space borrowed for a moment by a transient: “Renters make comparable changes in an apartment they furnish [by inserting] both the messages of their native tongue and, through their accent, through their own ‘turns of phrase’, etc., their own history” (xxi). One way of moving away from this dictatorship of the visual medium is, perhaps, to find out texts of various kinds which fall outside the ambit of state-dictated syllabi. In his various essays and articles, Nabarun Bhattacharya gives us an indication of how similar practices of reading enabled him to develop the revolutionary rhetoric that becomes a prominent driving force in his oeuvre. Bhattacharya inherited the habit of reading from his literary activist mother Mahasweta Devi and his father Bijan Bhattacharya, one of the most important figures of Bengali leftist theatre movement. Through his father, Nabarun came to know Ritwik Ghatak, the maverick Bengali filmmaker whose work is noted for the use of non-traditional formal and narrative style. These intellectual connections have given Bhattacharya’s literary consciousness a cosmopolitan touch that is rarely expressed, let alone acknowledged, by his contemporary Bengali authors. In his essays, Bhattacharya repeatedly mentions various literary and cinematic works which are normally considered important for their strong political content. Most of the authors Bhattacharya mentions had their own literary careers cut short by ruthless censorship. Mikhail Bulgakov, Vassily Grossman, Isaac Babel, Yevgeny Zamiyatin and Ernst Toller are repeatedly mentioned by Bhattacharya as his sources of inspiration. In “Ajante Astropochar” [Surreptitious surgeries] (July, 2007), he acknowledges the fact that radical authors are constantly being attacked throughout the world by administrations which are trying to stifle their voices in the most terrifying ways possible:
 
In different corners of the world (irrespective of their leftist or rightist leanings) writers are being persecuted by regime after regime, who are trying to stifle their voices by citing religious, political or completely manufactured nationalistic excuses. Writers are being incarcerated and at times they are being killed, even. This has happened in past as well. (Aquarium 103)
 
Yet he declares, almost in muted triumph, that ironically enough the works of these censored authors are the ones which have survived, while the reign of those dictatorial few have vanished and their empires crumbled away. Aside from these authors, Bhattacharya continuously draws inspiration from radical filmmakers and their revolutionary creations. Talking about Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966), he fondly acknowledges how he came across this film at a moment of terrible personal strife and how it gave him the courage to deal with such difficult times. In the same breath, however, he ruefully comments that talking about such purely personal readings of literary or cinematic texts is no longer “in fashion” (21).
            Texts, for him, are not entities that are enclosed within their own discursive spaces. Subversive and anti-institutional texts refer to other texts of similar kind, eventually leading the reader through a journey of discovery and intellectual development. He has given a detailed account of his habits as a reader in a small essay titled “Andaje Andaje” [Simply by guesswork]:
 
At the beginning of every year I make a list of the books that I want to read. I spend a lot of time making this list of texts that I haven’t read, and texts that are indispensible. At the beginning of 2009, I am thinking about various political non-fiction texts (especially Robert Fisk), Buddhist Classic, the autobiography of Diego Rivera (I came across this in a biography of Frida Kahlo), Udayan Ghosh, Manto etc., plus C.L.R. James…I make such lists every year, though I know quite well that I won’t be able to cover most of them. (62)
 
One text leads to another, taking the reader from Lebanon¹ to Tibet to Latin America and post-partition subcontinent on a magic carpet that only literature can provide. Michel de Certeau has described this act of textual consumption as transience, especially when contrasted with textual production or writing:
 
[R]eaders are travellers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves…Reading takes no measures against the erosion of time …and each of the places through which it passes is a repetition of the lost paradise. (174)
 
Reading allows the individual, private reader to interpret a certain text in a context that is particular to his own personal being – a context that is created for him at that particular time by virtue of immediate association. This gift of reference, in turn, leads him onto other texts through chain of reference that is as unique as the chain of meaning that he partakes in. Thus a private reader builds his own canon of texts – his own “holy list”– which is quite often contrary to the state-mandated syllabi. de Certeau compares this with the wanderings of pedestrians though the streets of a city –  streets that they fill with “forests of their own desires and goals” (174). Quoting Lyotard, he reminds us that this very act of free-flowing textual association is something that the oppressive state-machinery wants to arrest (165). For Bhattacharya, on the opposite side of this free-flowing chain of ideas rests the stagnant world of contemporary Bengali literature, governed by the demands of large publishing houses which force authors to create tailor-made uninspiring texts that are politically and aesthetically sterile. Writers who have confronted this hegemonic structure have regularly been marginalized by mainstream literati who have persecuted them for their literary daring. He locates these draconian acts in the context of global literary history:
 
When Kangal Malsat was being serialized, one pundit, and it would not be a mistake if one called him a pundit appointed by the government, had said that since this novel was not written in the manya bhasha (gentle, polite speech), it would not stand the test of time. Can one think of something more terrible, more vulgar and asinine?…Long live the writers and readers of subversive literature. I know very well the people who raise such complaints, and I despise them heartily. Sometime in the late 1970s, Mikhail Suslov, the ‘great’ theoretician of Soviet Communist Party had told Vasily Grossman that his novel Life and Fate would not get printed in the next 200 years. Now everyone knows how things have turned out: Life and Fate has emerged victorious, while no one cares about who Mikhail Suslov was. (Aquarium 89)
 
Bhattacharya thus uses his praxis of reading to enform his subversive literary being, to create a list of his intellectual peers who he would draw on throughout his career as a writer. But the habit of reading is not limited to this list of subversive and/or revolutionary texts. Bhattacharya becomes the subversive reader himself, extracting unconventional meaning from canonical texts which are normally read in different ways. An example of that can be found in his essay “Bibhutibhusan: khudhar dalil o prasangikata” [Bidhutibhushan: a document of hunger and its importance] – a radically new interpretation of two novels by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay – Pather Pnachali [Song of the Road] and Aranyak [Of the Forest].
Originally published in 1929, Pather Pnachali is the story of the struggle of a poor Brahmin family of Bengal. The novel gained wide international attention when it was made into a critically successful film by Satyajit Ray in 1955. It has been subsequently read as a bildungsroman that tells the story of its protagonist Apu’s journey from childhood to adolescence as he travels with his family from the small sleepy village of Nischindipur to Benares in search of a stable life. Like most children of his time, Bhattacharya had read Pather Pnachali as a simple text that asks its readers to sympathize with his fellow human being. Yet, as an adult, his reading of this novel became markedly different. He proposes that it is not simply the story of the struggle of a poor family, or the journey of its protagonist from birth to adolescence, but of a “controlled famine that goes on for years. The famine selects its victims in a slow and agonizing way – even the deaths which are apparently caused by diseases of various kind, actually stem from malnutrition” (Anarir Narigyan 29-30). In order to show how Bibhutibhushan uses hunger as the principal theme of his novel, Bhattacharya provides a catalogue of food-items that are consumed by the poor people of Nischindipur, things that are no longer recognized by urban chroniclers as possible sources of nutrition. Quite often these things are eaten by the members of Roy family with much relish, and the mere presence of edible things in the house becomes a reason to celebrate. But Bibhutibhushan’s story of the hungry does not stop within the boundaries of the village. Bhattacharya reads Roy family’s journey from Nischindipur to Benares in the context of the mass-migration of famine-stricken people that became a terrifying feature of Bengal in the late 1930s and early 1940s, especially during the great famine that killed millions of villagers during the Second World War. Here Bhattacharya differs from the previous commentators and translators who have generally skipped “Akrur Sambad”², the third section of Pather Pnachali:
 
Those who consider “Akrur Sambad” an anomaly, unworthy of translation, fail to realize that this chronicle of poverty and hunger is capable of causing great textual violence by the same logic of humane struggle. [The characters who fall victim to this famine] are contributors to that document of man’s fight against hunger which begins from village and, by logical progression, reaches the city. This is a ‘normal’ social process that has been going on for centuries (31).
 
Similarly, Bhattacharya reads Aranyak (1937-39) as a testimony of the tremendous exploitation of poor tribal communities of Lobtulia-Azamabad-Baihar by the rural aristocrats in the late 1920s. A scene of fantastic opulence greets the novel’s protagonist Satyacharan at the house of loan-shark Rasbehari Singh, where weapons like sticks, shields, swords and spears hang on the wall like mute symbols of discipline that controls his subjects. The signs of prosperity are marked by the abundance of food that the aristocrat’s family enjoys. Contrasted with this scene of extravagance is the description of poor villagers who at times are forced to eat eggs of red ants and flowers and roots of wild plants. Bhattacharya provides a reason behind his unusual methods of reading:
 
I fully believe that the literature of a poor country, i.e. nations that were till recently under bonds of colonialism and are perhaps still trying to come out of those chains, should first and foremost be the representative of their people – their poor, insulted, hungry people. And those literary works demand different, contextual readings. I am a literary activist from one of the world’s most populous countries – inhabited by millions who are starved, exploited and marginalized. I read Bibhutibhushan in a different context that stems from my awareness of the social conditions of my country, something that constantly disturbs and bothers me (28).
 
Bhattacharya reads Bibhutibhushan’s novels as records of these terrible, often untold stories of exploitation and struggle that are easily forgotten.
 
Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Characters as Readers
Looking at his works of fiction, it becomes apparent that the habit of reading is not merely limited to the author himself. The authorial “reader-persona” seeps in through his numerous characters that read, or talk about the items that they have read recently. I argue that these characters are extensions of the same reader-persona that is never content at delimiting itself to a set of canonical texts mandated by the state. Even when reading does not have any obvious connection with resistance, it comes naturally even to the minor characters created by Bhattacharya, irrespective of their social conditions. One example of this can be found in his short story “Necklace” (first published in 2000, anthologized in 2001). The unnamed protagonist of the story is a former KGB hit-man currently living incognito in a small flat in Kolkata. Ruminating on the growing number of criminals in the city and their advanced weaponry, he fondly recalls meeting author William Pomeroy:
[He] is one of the great Americans that I have seen. He had fought the American Army alongside the Huk guerrillas in the Philippines³…I met him once in Moscow. Pomeroy, Astafiyev and I were walking along Prospekt Mira. Pomeroy had gifted me his book Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism, and he had written “with love, from a defeated guerrilla” on the dedication page. (Andha Beral 72)
 
This allusion serves no further purpose in the story, apart from the fact that Pomeroy had told him about the single-shot guns that he had used during his days as a rebel against his own country. Similarly in “Nostradamuser Atmahatya” [The Suicide of Nostradamus] another unnamed protagonist waiting for a nuclear holocaust in an unnamed city recalls his father buying a copy of The Prophecies of Nostradamus from a bookseller (Sreshtha Galpa 160). Like the hit-man in “Necklace”, he too talks about his father’s reading habit at the very beginning of the story, though it is never alluded to again. Reading is almost an organic process that simply becomes a part of everyday life for Bhattacharya’s characters, and they talk about it in a simple, casual way.
Aside from these rather random examples of “readers” we encounter in Bhattacharya’s fiction, there are other characters, too, who make reading a more serious activity. Two such readers can be found in Harbart (1993): the eponymous protagonist himself, and his nephew Binu. However, their reading list and methods of assimilation are vastly different. Orphaned at childhood, Harbart is the son of a wealthy family that had lost almost all of its assets in shoddy investments. Neglected and bullied by most of his relatives, Harbart never progressed beyond sixth standard at a local school in South Kolkata. He gains almost all his knowledge from trashy thrillers and horror novels like Bhooter jolsae Gopal Bhnaar [Gopal the Jester at a ghostly concert] or Circuse bhooter upadrab [Ghosts create trouble at a circus] and magazines such as Nabakallol and Shuktara. But the two books he reads most diligently are Paroloker kotha [Stories of the Other World] by Mrinalkanti Ghosh Bhaktibhushan and Paralok-Rahasya [Mysteries of the Other World] by Kalibar Bedantabageesh (Harbart 11). Both these texts are examples of occult literature that had long been discredited by the mainstream rationalist intelligentsia. Harbart reads these books regularly, almost as a duty, and they help him “develop” an ability to communicate with spirits of the recently deceased. Very soon, he garners a reputation as a “medium” and people come from far and wide to seek his help to communicate with their relatives who have recently passed away. Binu, on the other hand, is a meritorious student of one of the most reputed colleges of Kolkata. Secretly a member of Naxalite groups, he is one of the few people who never regarded Harbart as an unnecessary burden of their family. Binu is a serious reader – Harbart often takes a peak in his room to see thick, impressive English volumes displayed on the bookshelves. Though he never patronizes his uncle, Binu encourages Harbart to stop reading such “irrational rubbish” and read more practical stuff. Binu reads to him from the works of Mao Tse-tung, asks him to study Marx, Engels and other works which were banned in West Bengal in the turbulent 1960s and ’70s. Binu and Harbart both realize that the books they are harbouring in their house are not welcome in the society. Often they go up to the roof to burn them. The books burned by Harbart and Binu include The Little Red Book of Mao Tse-tung, Bengali manuals of urban guerrilla warfare and magazines like Deshbrati and Dakshin Desh (33). While the methods and ends of their assimilation are different, Binu and Harbart both emerge as subversive readers as well as readers of subversive texts. Eventually, they both perish in the hands of agents of the society who are fundamentally opposed to such subversive orders of knowledge. Binu, urban guerrilla and a danger to the disciplining state machinery, is killed by the police. Even while dying, Binu recites lines from a poem written by his fellow martyr Samir Mitra, lines that declare that the world was changing around him, and he must be part of that change (33). Harbart commits suicide after he is publicly discredited by members of Paschimbanga Juktibadi Sangha [West Bengal Society of Rationalists] who vehemently oppose Harbart’s claims that he can communicate with spirits.
            Neither Binu nor Harbart are sui generis readers. Reading as a part of the revolutionary praxis has long been employed by radical groups that emerged in Bengal over the last century. During the early days of the armed resistance movement against the British, groups like Anushilan Samiti (1906) and Prabartak Sangha (1920) grew in Bengal, members of which inculcated revolutionary ideas amongst themselves and their contemporary citizens through the reading, writing and distribution of radical, extremist literature. A large section of British intelligence system was constantly preoccupied with the activities of such groups and tried to control the literary culture that their members fostered. The Naxalites later in the century inherited and developed similar practices while waging war against the oppressive nation state. However, while such activities were encouraged and glorified by native intellectuals in pre-independence India, members of the radical left-wing groups faced severe persecution during the 1960s and ’70s. Harbart, on the other hand, represents a more personal yet equally problematic method of reading. When members of West Bengal Rationalist Society threatens to expose him as a charlatan, Harbart brings out Paroloker Kotha and Parolok-Rahasya from his bookshelf and produces those in front of his assailants as definitive texts of the order of knowledge that he represents (68). To his horror, his opponents burst out laughing, suggesting that lunatics and liars like Harbart should be dragged away to prison for perpetrating irrational ideas. One of the members of the Rationalist Society who had barged into Harbart’s room snidely remarks that the right medicine for people like Harbart is a Stalinist purge (69). While Binu represents the revolutionary reading habits of the radical section of Bengal’s youth, Harbart becomes the symbol of an individual’s right to liberated reading, as opposed to accepted standards of rationalist, liberal reading habits upheld by organized, state-fostered intelligentsia. Even in his death, Harbart remains faithful to an order of “subjugated knowledge” and the sub-culture of reading texts of occultism which were marginalized and suppressed by Western paradigms of rationalism and reason.
 
Choktars and Fyatarus: Anarchist Readers and Writers of “trash”
Building a world through reading has its drawbacks. Revolutionaries like Binu, or pedagogical anomalies like Harbart prove to be rather inadequate tools to break the shackles of the hegemonic power of rationalist civil society that is blinkered by the policies of the welfare state. In the later fiction of Bhattacharya, then, a deep sense of frustration seems to take over. As I had indicated at the beginning of this essay, I shall now try to connect this sense of disappointment to his use of crude, colloquial language as an alternative mode of protest. To clarify, Bhattacharya does not use random verbal abuse or crude humour without any specific context. I shall try to show that this device is also used within the same framework of reading and writing: passive and active literary production.
The most popular works of the later part of Bhattacharya’s career are the novels and short stories featuring his foul-mouthed urban anarchists Fyatarus and Choktars. Very much like the polished assassin in “Necklace” or the radical intellectual Binu of Harbart, Fyatarus, Choktars and their associates have readers and writers amongst their ranks. As readers, they are closer to Harbart than Binu: preferring trashy thrillers, horror and detective novels and works of occult literature over serious, rationalist and philosophical works. Bhattacharya uses a rather interesting occasion to introduce his readers to the reading habits of Fyatarus in the short story “Boimelae Fyataru” [Fyatarus at the Book Fair]. The story is set in February, 1997, when a devastating fire destroyed large number of stalls at the annual Calcutta Book Fair. This story features Madan and DS (short for Director’s Special, a popular brand of whiskey), two of the earliest Fyatarus introduced by Bhattacharya, who fly to the fairgrounds at night and try to steal half-burnt books from the wreckages of bookstalls. Madan, who emerges as the leader of Fyatarus later in the sequence, leads DS to one stall from which they “collect” books like Tantrik Sadhana o Siddhanta, Tantrikguru and Bagalamukhir Dhyan (both of them are texts related to the Tantric traditions) but throw away in utter disgust a collection of modern Bengali poetry (Fyatarur Bombachak 39-40). It’s significant to know that Bhattacharya gives us a hint of the literary taste of his anarchist readers over a scene that represents the burnt, smouldering wreckage of the most important event in Bengal’s literary calendar. Fyatarus would not have been welcome in a sophisticated cultural event like the Book Fair on any normal day, mostly because they do not have the money to buy expensive new books but also because they do not conform to the demands of the elite, gentle and cultured Bengali literati. Yet, as Bhattacharya shows us, they have the audacity to make their own selection of books, to attest their literary taste.
            Later in the sequence of stories Madan and DS would meet Purandar Bhat, a poet who spends his days composing “trashy” verses full of crude language and images. Naturally, though he gets booted out of elite literary meets, he becomes the favourite poet of Madan, DS and, later in the novel Kangal Malsat, Bhodi and other Choktars. Bhat later joined the Fyatarus and learned to fly. In the short story “Kabi Sammelane Fyataru” [Fyatarus at the meeting of poets], together with Madan and DS, Bhat caused tremendous chaos at a poetry-conference by dropping smelly rubbish on finely dressed elite poets who were sitting on the dais, simply because the organizers did not allow him to participate. In Mausoleum (2006) we meet Bajra Ghosh, a writer of vulgar, semi-pornographic novels like Khandani Khanki [Aristocratic Whore] and Membatir Alo [Light of Fair-skinned Woman]. While Bajra Ghosh and Purandar Bhat are authors of trashy texts themselves, Bhattacharya points out that their works are no worse than those produced by sophisticated writers, who are basically slaves of large publishing houses. Moreover, Ghosh and Bhat are exonerated in the eyes of Bhattacharya as their works stem from a genuine source of anguish created by years of abject poverty, neglect and discrimination. Naturally, their works refuse to conform to any pretentious literary elitism in form and content and the language that they use in their poems and novels are as aggressive, crude and vulgar as the one that they use in their day-to-day conversation.
            Bhattacharya takes this idea of literary production to a different level in the novel Kangal Malsat [Beggars’ War Cry, 2003]. Without a doubt Bhattacharya’s most popular work, this is the story of the epic battle between the administration of Kolkata and the alliance of Choktars and Fyatarus and other marginalized groups of anarchist rebels. This alliance is led by Bhodi, the principal of the Choktars and a practitioner of black magic. In their rebellion, members of the alliance are aided by supernatural forces of ghosts, mysterious flying saucers and Dandabayos – a huge raven who claims to have lived for centuries, knows sorcery and is a father figure and spiritual guide to Bhodi. But this novel is not merely the story of that battle; it is also a treatise accusing the common Bengali reader of being party to a culture of amnesia that has caused a sustained and systematic violence to cultural memory. As Aleida Assmann has pointed out, cultural working memory functions in the dual form of accumulation and neglect. While the “accumulated” texts become part of the canon, “neglected” texts are forgotten and gradually weeded out of the collective memory of a social group. Thus, the canon itself in time becomes the acceptable source of archival memory that the reader turns to in order to make an assessment of the texts which are “worthy” of preservation and consultation. But then, the canon needs to be challenged repeatedly by each generation, otherwise it could lead to a stagnant list of exemplary texts untouched by passage of time (Assmann 100). In Kangal Malsat, Bhattacharya constructs a meta-textual narrative in order to question the construction of that canonical memory. Here, like his other texts, Bhattacharya takes the reading habit of the common Bengali intellectual as an indicator of cultural amnesia. Throughout the novel, Bhattacharya directly addresses his readers by quoting from the works of forgotten Bengali writers and challenges his readers to identify their authors – to explore this alternative, marginalized canon. However, these writers are now so obscure that most people can no longer recognize them by their works. For example, Chapter 3 ends with a quote from a poem:
 
Sokoli dhwangser pathe! Sokoli dhwangser pathe!
Keho jaye ashwe goje,
            Keho jaye podobroje
Keho swarna-choturdole, keho jaye pushparothe;
Sokoli dhwangser pathe! Sokoli dhwangser pathe! (Kangal Malsat 26)
[Everything is rushing towards the end! Some travel on horses or elephants, while others walk on foot. Some ride the golden palanquins, while others go on chariots adorned with flowers. But everything is surely rushing towards the end.]
 
At the beginning of the next chapter, Bhattacharya says that the writer of this poem Gobinda Chandra Das (1885-1918), who was once hailed by his contemporaries as the last national poet of Bengal, has vanished not because he was a terrible writer, but because he was not an “impotent conformist” like his modern-day counterparts (27). Similar examples are given from the works of Girindrasekhar Basu (20), Premankur Atarthi (48), Harihar Seth (75), Kalidas Ray (93), Kumudranjan Mullick (104) and many others. None of these writers, Bhattacharya says, have received their due respect. He contends that this has not happened because the writers were themselves unworthy, but because their readers have been brainwashed into following a different cultural paradigm altogether. Also, he argues that this collective failure of generations of Bengali readers is almost irreversible, for they are passing this habit onto their next generation (20).
            The failure of the sophisticated reader comes as a disappointing antithesis to the practice of reading as an act of resistance. Bhattacharya tries to find a way out of this failure in a different way – Kangal Malsat becomes not only a text about a struggle between two mismatched powers (the alliance of Choktars, Fyatarus and other lumpens of the city versus the state administration), but also a narrative about the composition of the novel itself. Literary production becomes an act of defiance against the dominance of “pure” or “respectable” culture. The entire novel is written in the same language that is used by the Fyatarus and Choktars to abuse the upper class citizens of Kolkata. Through his novel, Bhattacharya in turn abuses the “respectable” literary culture in a similar way, accusing it of turning the Bengali consciousness into something servile, weak and unaware of its own past. In his effort, along with his revolutionary peers, Bhattacharya draws inspiration from those writers whose works have not received due recognition. Kangal Malsat becomes the representative of the forgotten literary heritage which Bengali readers should have preserved. Repeatedly, the author keeps on telling his readers how the respectable literati are trying to stop the publication of this novel, and how they are scared of the crude language and abuses that he is constantly hurling at them.  However, he does not try to alienate himself from his readers by needlessly abusing them in the crudest possible language. Rather, this language becomes a challenge to those few who would be willing to see through the culture of effrontery that lies on its surface, and venture beyond that to partake in the act of reading, reclamation of the collective memory and development of a culture of intellectual resistance.
 
Conclusion
The rebellion that the alliance of beggars and have-nots of Kolkata wages against the city administration comes to a rather tame end in the final chapters of Kangal Malsat. Bhodi, the principal Choktar and leader of the rebel alliance, asserts his claim over the imaginary reserve of oil under Kolkata, and the terrified administration gives in to his demands. The rebels assume the role of the capitalists, and the promise of freedom and subversion with which the struggle had begun ends with a situation where the rebel leader could end up becoming yet another powerful dictator, poaching on the poor and weak. The only tangible success to come out of this is the publication of Kangal Malsat, the meta-novel that Bhattacharya was writing the entire time. At the end of the novel, Dandabayos takes flight to give the news of the publication of this novel to his ghostly friends. Despite the failure of the political uprising, acts of passive resistance such as reading and writing need to go on. Individual readers of subversive texts must continue their subversive reading no matter how many obstacles come their way. Nabarun Bhattacharya’s fiction and non-fiction show us that the struggle against hegemonic dominance of canonical literature and “respectable language” must be kept alive. For a society that lives constantly under a coma induced by the pleasures of capitalist affluence, these forms of passive resistance are the only hope.
 
[All transcreations and translations from Nabarun Bhattacharya’s texts quoted in this essay are mine.]
 
Notes:
¹Robert Fisk’s book Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (1990) is an account of the Lebanese civil war which he reported on as a correspondent of The Independent.
²Even Satyajit Ray left out this section from his cinematic interpretation.
³The Hukbalahap (Hukbong Bayan Laban sa mga Hapon, or The Nation's Army Against the Japanese), or Hukbong Laban sa Hapon (Anti-Japanese Army) was a Communist guerrilla movement formed by the farmers of Central Luzon.
 
 
Works Cited:
Assmann, Aleida. “Canon and Archive.” Media and Cultual Memory/Medien und Kulturelle Erinnerung. Herausgegeben vos Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. 97-108. Print.
 
Bhattacharya, Nabarun. “Ajante Astropochar.” Aquarium. Kolkata: Bhashabandhan, 2010. 103. Print.
___________________. “Andaje Andaje.” Aquarium. Kolkata: Bhashabandhan, 2010. 62-63. Print.
___________________. “Battle of Algiers: Urban guerrilla juddher manual.” Aquarium. Kolkata: Bhashabandhan, 2010. 20-21. Print.
___________________. “Bibhutibhusan: khudhar dalil o prasangikata.” Anarir Narigyan. Kolkata: Bhashabandhan, 2012. 28-35. Print.
___________________. “Boimelae Fyataru.” Fyatarur Bombachak o Anyanyo. Serampore: Saptarshi, 2006. 34-43. Print.
___________________. Harbart. Kolkata: Dey’s, 2004. Print.
___________________. “Kabi Sammelane Fyataru.” Fyatarur Bombachak o Anyanyo. Serampore: Saptarshi, 2006. 72-89. Print.
___________________. “Kahen Kabi Purandar Bhat.” Aquarium. Kolkata: Bhashabandhan, 2010. 87-89. Print.
___________________. Kangal Malsat. Serampore: Saptarshi, 2005. Print.
___________________. Mausoleum. Kolkata: Dey’s, 2006. Print.
___________________. “Necklace.” Andha Beral. Kolkata: Srishti, 2001. 72-83. Print.
___________________. “Nostradamuser Atmahatya” Sreshtha Galpa. Kolkata: Dey’s, 2010. 160-166. Print.
 
Bhattacharya, Tapodhir. “Carnivaler bisforan.” Aksharekha. 1.1 (2008): 140-148. Print.
 
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Print.
 
Purakayastha, Anindya Sekhar. “Fyataru and Subaltern War Cries: Nabarun Bhattacharya and the Rebirth of the Subject.” Sanglaap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry 1.2 (2014): n.pag. Web. 12 April 2015.
 
Aritra Chakraborti
Jadavpur University
chakraborti.aritra@gmail.com
© Aritra Chakraborti 2015
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The Impossible Demands of Nabarun Bhattacharya
Adheesha Sarkar
 
“Mahakash hote gu-khego shokun hagitechhe tobo gaye
Bangali shudhu khochchor noy, todupori osohay.”
[Shit-eating vultures are shitting on you from the depths of space
Oh Bengali, you are not only a rascal, but a hapless one too.]
(Nabarun Bhattacharya Upanyas Samagra 303)
That was Nabarun Bhattacharya speaking - an author Bengal would like to forget, most probably, and as soon as possible. By Bengal I mean the culturally “conscious” Bengal, and by “conscious” I mean inclined towards a sterile, cautious yet confused, and politically opportunistic astuteness that clings desperately on to nostalgia since it has nowhere else to go. Nabarun is bad news for such astuteness, since this rogue had made it his sole mission to strike at the roots of such sterility and such opportunism. Nabarun, through his writing, has tried to create an alternative semantic index, one that relates to the reality of the people who are excluded from the consciousness of a civilization conceived not spontaneously, but by a throttling presumptuousness. Nabarun, both through the language and the format of his literary expression, creates an alternative index of meanings and connotations for ideas existent in the known discourse of the polite classes. These ideas, when they find alternative expressions, sometimes serve as boomerangs to assist in Nabarun’s mission of politicizing the subaltern reality.
A Fake Consciousness and Its Antidote
This aforementioned consciousness is not conspicuous to Bengal, though. It has a wider base in the psyche and culture originating from a world led by market economy. This is a world in which sales figures and stock markets govern ideology, and every aspect of life and its corresponding institutions – politics, culture, marriage, media, and even the so-called anti-institutions – has to be molded in a way that may fit the requirements of a certain saleability, and hence, a certain price tag. Belief systems in such a world often blend the real and the make-believe so finely that it is no longer possible to discern a fathomable fact on which an opinion might be based and be called “unbiased.” From a purely journalistic point of view, the world and the history it creates from moment to moment is becoming as fictional as news reports themselves today, while some writers and filmmakers, some conspiracy theorists and vagabonds, created a comparatively more “real” doctrine of reality that is being investigated and dissected with interest as ‘rebellious’ fiction, more often with wide-eyed awe whenever one of these is banned by some government or the other. Fascist governments are being dubbed as pro-development, and poverty is being hidden away behind vinyl hoardings as cities prepare for the splendor of international sports festivals. This broader civilization – some would call it the “global village” – thrives on a convenient ignorance of what is truly wrong with the systems that run it.
Nabarun relentlessly pointed out, in story after story and in verse, how the cultural pretension and pompousness of this world has resulted in an intellectual stagnation, a sort of intellectual ‘suicide’, if it can be called so. He cried out again and again – sometimes hoarse with disgust – how the falseness of a self-ignorant people, and their insincerity towards their own reality, is bringing forth a dire helplessness in their condition, and how they continue to be blind to it. Nabarun, in his journey of fiction, dreams of an upheaval based on the spirit of subversion that would jeopardize the underlying sense of security protecting this market-economy-led degenerative value system. However, whether such a sense exists in the first place – or that too is an advertisement that only the advertiser believes in – is a different question.
Nabarun’s Fyataru-r Bombachak introduces his weapon – the Fyataru. What is this creature? Physically, they are flying humans. But culturally, they are the marginalized Other, the subaltern. Nabarun’s literary journey is demonstrably inclined towards highlighting, and demarcating, the political existence of the subaltern. They exist not in the remoteness of faraway villages and tribal occupations, but at the heart of the city of Calcutta. And they are very familiar. They are visible just beyond the veil of Calcutta’s make-believe sterility, just above the surface and on the margins of the newly-cemented roads and highways, turning a corner and disappearing into a dingy gulley that both exists and does not exist on the blueprint of our so-called development. They can be spotted at roadside hideaways buying country liquor, at the wee hours of the morning in public parks, urinating on walls bedecked with gods and goddesses, spitting a little out of habit and a little out of spite for nothing in particular, looking around with an expression that is both angry and lost, wiping their perspiration on the long-unwashed sleeves of a colour-less shirt, a button missing, maybe. Their eyes, if one bothered to look into them, would seem sleepless first, and then a glint of a tired and bitter sarcasm might surface in them sometimes, only if one bothered to look closely.
Perhaps they cannot speak because the semantics of their culture and language has not yet been cemented like the roads of the city that has grown them. The mainstream language and culture of this city has long ignored their expressions, choosing to shove their existence under the carpet of “education” – an institutionalized, direly limited and immobilized system of education in our schools and colleges, that is. They speak the same tongue as us, but not with the same meanings, perhaps. But Nabarun, with a rebel’s spirit, some would say, attempted to give them a language and perhaps a cultural and political identity as well. He taught them to fly, and gave them the “aesthetic liberty” to wreak havoc in the homes and the minds of middle-class Bengal. That, for Nabarun, might have been “poetic justice.”
In his short story, “Fyataru”, Nabarun identifies his offspring as such –
“–  Fyatarura tahole ki?
–      Thik ki ta bolte parbo na. Tobe Fyatarura holo khub special, bujhle? Itihashe dekhbe koto mahapurush manushke notun kore banabar fondi batlechhe. Amar to mone hoy onek ghenteghunte sheshmesh ei fyataru toiri hoyechhe…fyataruder hatekhori mane oi bhangchur, chhenrachhenri, hisu kora.”
[ “–    what are Fyatarus then?
-   I don’t know for sure. But Fyatarus are special, okay? You’ll see that in history many great men have tried to suggest ways to reinvent human beings. I think after much experiment, the Fyatarus have been finally made.… a Fyataru’s initiation means wreaking havoc, urinating.”]
(Nabarun Bhattacharya’r Chhotogolpo 114)
If this be the initiation, later in the story, the Fyatarus proceed with what they recognize as their true calling – upsetting an ongoing upper middle-class dinner party at the Floatel (a floating hotel on the Ganges) and distressing the guests relentlessly by urinating on them and throwing rubbish on their food from above. The Fyatarus can fly, and they use their “superpower” to their advantage just in this manner, to various degrees in the various stories of his repertoire. They attack anything and everything that they see as inequality, injustice or snobbishness. Their attacks, although in the lines of guerilla warfare techniques used by the ultra-left, can be interpreted more as pranks than actual violence.
Anarchy, Demolition, Madness
The three Fyataru musketeers of Nabarun – Madan, D.S., and Purandar Bhat – may have easily become caricatures of the believers of an ultra-left philosophy. They could have been dubbed as caricatures of the erstwhile Naxals, even, by ones who would have liked to shove them under the carpet with a gross and politically misinformed generalization. But Nabarun has left no scope for such misgivings. The Fyatarus do not, by any means, belong to a doctrinal political belief. They, obviously, are most vicious in their attitude towards the moneyed lot – from which one could start to discern a hatred of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, per se. But in Kangal Malsat, the Fyatarus of Nabarun show no qualms in accepting the mother goddess-worshipping Choktars, or the imperialist Begum Johnson as their allies and friends. Obviously, their politics does not involve allegiance to institutionalized leftist doctrines. Although, in many places Nabarun has fiddled with institutional leftism in various ways, once even by making Stalin’s ghost appear in one of the offices of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). And it is more than apparent from texts like Kangal Malsat that Nabarun is a staunch critic of the degeneration of the leftist ideologies that has occurred inside the corruption-infested and stagnated CPI(M) in Bengal.
Nabarun’s criticism of the institutionalized Left in Bengal originates from his identification of what he sees as an inherent hypocrisy in the system, the self-defeating methods of mindless coercion and control that had slowly but surely spelled doom for the party. But Nabarun’s criticism of the Left is mostly ideological, and in that context one could wonder where in real terms that debate could go, given the paradoxical reality of the existence of the CPI(M) – a Marxist mechanism trying to function as a state in a regional setting within a necessarily capitalistic regime that governs the country. Nabarun’s opposition of the Marxist government can be seen in the context of regional politics, but, from a wider perspective, it can also be identified as a fundamental opposition of the idea of a nation state, which necessarily brings with it oppressive institutions. And this opposition makes Nabarun’s politics very closely resemble the politics of anarchy. In fact, Nabarun’s Fyatarus can be best interpreted through the philosophy of anarchism. 
The Fyataru narrative, from another perspective, most unavoidably had to be at loggerheads with the Left ideology, since, customarily, and with good reason, Marxist and anarchist ideologies and practices have always clashed. Peter Marshall writes in Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism:
At first sight, anarchists and Marxists would seem to have much in common. Both criticize existing States as protecting the interests of the privileged and wealthy. Both share a common vision of a free and equal society as the ultimate ideal. But it is with Marxist-Leninists that anarchists have encountered the greatest disagreement over the role of the State in society. The issue led to the great dispute between Marx and Bakunin in the nineteenth century which eventually led to the demise of the First International Working Men's Association. (24)
 The Marxists have always demanded, at least ideologically, that the proletariat takes over the state machinery. Whereas anarchists are fundamentally opposed to the very idea of the state machinery in the first place. Therein starts the conflict between these two beliefs. However, it is funny how the two conflicting sides have the same goal. They want the same thing in the end, at least in theory. As Marshall points out, “Marx and Engels felt it was necessary for the proletariat to take over the State to hold down their adversaries and to reorganize production, they both looked forward to a time when the proletariat would abolish its supremacy as a class and society would become ‘an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’” (25). Anarchism, on the other hand, demands the abolition of the state machinery altogether – be it the bourgeois or the proletariat who is heading it. It is perhaps ironic that the anarchists refuse to trust the Marxist belief that the proletariat would finally give up his own supremacy for the greater interest of equality. More ironic is the fact that this mistrust may not be entirely illogical. 
However, Nabarun was ideologically never at loggerheads with Marxism. In fact, his writings reveal that he is an ardent follower of Soviet writers and Marxist thinkers. But he quarreled most zealously with the Left party that governed Bengal for more than three decades. Nabarun’s problem, as is most apparent, is not with Marxist ideologies, but with a particular Marxist practice of ideology, where the “core” ideology is distorted to create almost a capitalist state mechanism. We can see to what extent Nabarun was bitter about the CPI(M) from the part in Kangal Malsat where Stalin’s ghost appears before an administrative officer to give him a lengthy lecture on how a tyrant should be a proper tyrant, and not mess about with the instrument of tyranny. The acidic satire here leaves nothing to speculation – it shows quite clearly that Nabarun saw the CPI(M) as a “failure.” 
            What is amusing, perhaps, is watching the adaptation of Nabarun’s text in Suman Mukhopadhyay’s film, Kangal Malsat. When the novel was written, the CPI(M) was the ruling party in Bengal. By the time the film was made, the TMC had come to power. Yet, when the film was made, the real conditions allowed the filmmaker to keep almost everything unchanged in the novel and yet the rebellion of the Fyatarus against the state machinery would stay as contextual as before. That tells us what the core of the politics of anarchy is in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s writing –it is not so much a vision to build up a new system by demolishing the old, but an immediate revolt against the suffocating sense of inertia created by a state machinery’s sheer laxity and complacency. That has remained conspicuous in the state machineries of Bengal for a long time now, old and new alike. This rebelliousness, Nabarun tries to evoke through his writings, does not so much try to point to or care for an answer and neither does it care to ask any questions. The Fyataru’s purpose is to offend and demolish, rather simply put. And this offence is directed towards a holistic demolition of every kind of institutional thought that exists, rather than the demolition of a particular political force.
From a historical point of view, Nabarun has remained faithful to just one kind of politics in his entire fictional journey – more specifically in his presentation of the Fyataru. This politics is that of the marginalized, the “cultural” subaltern, the invisibles who inhabit the city but never quite manage to belong to it, or to any geographical space or physical time, for that matter. Documented history has always stoically ignored, and will probably continue to ignore, them. They are shadows who, by their very presence, distort a defined reality, a socially-constructed and media-nurtured existence. This is why Nabarun is so hard to digest and dangerous if he is taken seriously, beyond the initial hilarity and bonhomie with which his literature is usually read by the prim and the polite.
The politics of Nabarun’s Fyatarus can be most easily identified with the concept of anarchism because what the Fyataru does is guided mostly by a will to be freed from stifling influences of all kinds of institutions and organizations. Peter Marshall, in the introduction to his book, Demanding the Impossible, writes:
ANARCHY IS TERROR, the creed of bomb-throwing desperadoes wishing to pull down civilization. Anarchy is chaos, when law and order collapse and the destructive passions of man run riot. Anarchy is nihilism, the abandonment of all moral values and the twilight of reason. This is the spectre of anarchy that haunts the judge's bench and the government cabinet. In the popular imagination, in our everyday language, anarchy is associated with destruction and disobedience but also with relaxation and freedom. The anarchist finds good company, it seems, with the vandal, iconoclast, savage, brute, ruffian, hornet, viper, ogre, ghoul, wild beast, fiend, harpy and siren.... Not surprisingly, anarchism has had a bad press. It is usual to dismiss its ideal of pure liberty at best as utopian, at worst, as a dangerous chimera. Anarchists are dismissed as subversive madmen, inflexible extremists, and dangerous terrorists on the one hand, or as naive dreamers and gentle saints on the other. (ix)
“The vandal, iconoclast, savage, brute, ruffian, hornet, viper, ogre, ghoul, wild beast, fiend, harpy and siren,” the “subversive madmen” – Fyatarus could not have been described better. The language in which they speak might sound like sacrilege to the bhadralok, given that it is chock full of the choicest expletives and every kind of crudeness possible. What is interesting is the way this language quite organically and effortlessly flows through Nabarun’s writing, never once seeming imposed. From this, apart from the writer’s skill, what emerges is the understanding that Nabarun is not creating an alien breed to make his point. The Fyatarus exist, albeit without flying powers, and their language too is familiar to the urban ear, although we try to ignore their exchanges, we try to pretend they don’t exist, we try to forget that this crudeness in their language originates from a history of being neglected, being forgotten, being excluded from the “acceptance” of the lofty institutions of democracy, culture and society. Or perhaps, their very character requires that they be pushed outside the scope of such institutions, since the lack of inhibition and structure in their life and living could very well threaten to displace the very foundation of any kind of institutionalized system.
Yet, the Fyatarus have been overtly fictionalized, made almost into characters from a science fiction novel. This element in Nabarun’s creation of the Fyatarus poses an apparent contradiction between his goal – that of establishing the political identity of the Other – and his means. The Fyatarus, as characters, are “alternative” in their political identity most naturally, but this alterity is emphasized to an extreme by their overtly fictionalized portrayal – making them the embodiment of a sarcastic retort against the established forms of socio-cultural existence. Their fantastical representation both alienates and identifies them with the reality of the political Other. The image of a Fyataru is at once a satirical metaphor and a sort of “caricature” of the subaltern. This, perhaps, reveals the hapless irony of Nabarun’s literary journey. Yet, this irony reflects the larger irony of our hazed and half-sighted perception of the real subaltern. And this reflection lends Nabarun’s Fyatarus a strange legitimacy, and they often use the thin line between fiction and reality as a skipping rope. 
The Mirror-image of the Political Other
If examined closely, D.S., Madan, and Purandar Bhat do not really fit the image of the archetypal proletariat. It is not their poverty that makes them “unique,” since they are not really portrayed as particularly stricken by poverty. Neither are they unique as the oppressed and the victims of injustice. What makes them “special” is the fact that they do not really belong anywhere – in any group or identity that could truly define them. To put it simply, they do not fit into a box that can be labelled with a prejudiced idea. And whenever people try to do so, the Fyatarus take pleasure in having fun at the expense of their presumptions. They take pleasure at deconstructing – be it the gracious revelry at a poetic meet or the secured notions of people, about other people. There is an inherent spirit of anarchism in their being, apart from their actual designs.
Marshall further writes in Demanding the Impossible:
The anarchists have thus mounted the most consistent and rigorous critique of the State, whether in its liberal, social democratic, or Marxist form. While the State may have been intended to suppress injustice and oppression, they argue that it has only aggravated them. It fosters war and national rivalries; it crushes creativity and independence. Governments, and the laws through which they impose their will, are equally unnecessary and harmful. At the same time, their confidence in natural order leads anarchists to believe that society will flourish without imposed authority and external coercion. People thrive best when least interfered with; without the State, they will be able to develop initiative, form voluntary agreements and practice mutual aid. They will be able to become fully realized individuals, combining ancient patterns of co-operation with a modem sense of individuality. The anarchist critique of the State not only questions many of the fundamental assumptions of political philosophy but challenges the authoritarian premises of Western civilization. (35)
Whether the anarchist’s ideal society that Marshall presents before us is a Utopian dream is a different debate. What is more important is how the anarchist’s character is essentially affected by the belief that “People thrive best when least interfered with.” An anarchist, therefore, is an inhibition-less “madman,” who gives free reign to his instincts rather than ordering his actions by either following or rejecting a preordained value system. The most noticeable characteristic of the Fyatarus is therefore urinating as a method of protest – a purely physical manifestation of the denial of social norms as well as the free reign of the instincts of the individual. The same can be said about their use of expletives and foul language, and the fact that the use of this language does not seem forced in the text. The characters created by Nabarun are fictional, but for their “real” counterparts, a similar language full of foul words is the most natural expression. It is perhaps the most spontaneous outpouring of the layers of frustration, anger, hatred, irritation and the nostalgia of failed dreams – which they cannot direct at anyone in particular - that have blended in the mixer of their minds to create this strange, polluted yet pure tongue, just like the water of the holy Ganges that remains sacrosanct even after taking in and blending into itself tons of garbage.
The Fyataru poet, Purandar Bhat, writes a most heart-wrenching lament in Kangal Malsat (3) –
Amar marane hoy na toh headline
Prasadgatre mutiya bhangibo ain.
[My death will never make a headline.
So, I shall break the law by pissing on a mansion.]
(Upanyas Samagra 263)
Apparently, this is an almost nonsensical, even hilarious wail and yet, it has the pungent reek of a naked reality that the polite class would like to laugh off, at best, but never give a second thought to. 
Language is a salient weapon of anarchist resistance for Nabarun. Abusiveness is an element of strategy here. If this strategy aims at distancing the Fyataru existence from the middle-class rectitude of the bhadralok, as it seems to do, it is with the purpose of creating a decisive culture shock for the reader, with an aim to subvert his or her linguistic hegemony. Yet, one wonders if this subversive strategy defeats its own purpose to an extent, since the vulgarity of the language instantly serves to first repulse and then push the bhadralok reader into non-identification with the characters. Here, we can discern a distinct rebelliousness in Nabarun’s ideology. He seems not to be bothered by the non-identification but to be hooked to the building up of the Other tongue, with the aim of pushing through the bhadralok’s cultural resistance, even if the “assault” be “violent.”
This is the anarchism of Nabarun’s Fyataru, who has become a representation of what has gone wrong in the fabric of our lives. The anarchism of this writer does have a history, one that carries within it the oft-avoided history of the Other people who are essentially forgotten when the narrative of a civilization builds itself up over the years on the foundation of multinational funding and an imperial value system. Anarchism has historically attacked state institutions. But Nabarun’s pet anarchists are not so driven. Their rebellion is mostly a haphazard, almost childish, struggle without a definite direction, but they most often rise up against and try to make a mockery of a cultural hegemony that has inflicted upon a people a certain direness, a code of conduct that has defined the ‘culture’ of Bengal in its own way, without leaving any scope for such a culture to be permeable to the social and political reality of the region.
To be fair, I argue that Nabarun’s anarchist Fyatarus are too conspicuous to Bengal’s environment and history. That such anarchism as Nabarun proposes may not find an expression elsewhere. This criticism is valid at some level, but it also has to be admitted that anarchism has remained mostly in theory and in isolated and experimental practices that have largely been closeted so far. Nabarun has given this idea or belief a plausible face and a real language. He has, at least, created a fictional reference point for how an anarchist might exist and behave in our world. Nabarun’s Fyataru may be constrained by its regional characteristics, but the practice it propagates has spread a wider wing already, elsewhere. Ironically, Nabarun did not relate to the real Fyatarus of this world in his literature, and neither did they know much of Nabarun. The media shows us what it thinks we need to see. Events, as they unfold, are given meanings and viewpoints. But the media does not tread the dangerous territory of endorsing anarchist practices by calling Julian Assange or Edward Snowden anarchists, and therefore rendering them the backing of a much-discussed and debated philosophy.
Anarchists – Fictional and Real
For some he is an egoist, an irresponsible villain who has “blood on his hands.” For others, he is a hero, an “uncompromising rebel.” Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblowing website that has till date exposed a number of shady dealings of powerful governments and other institutions, had become quite a phenomenon when the website first leaked some scandals related to the White House and its prisons in Guatemala. “I enjoy crushing the bastards,” Assange had boasted (Sarkar), which may have given his cause a certain air of fairy-tale fancifulness. Nevertheless, WikiLeaks has exposed thousands of documents containing secret, highly sensitive material that governments are fiercely protective of. In a huge leak sometime back, which was called the biggest intelligence leak of all time — over 75,000 files amounting to an entire history of the Afghanistan war had been displayed for the public to judge (Sarkar). This had made Assange an enemy of the US government and he had been branded by the US media as “one of the most dangerous men in the world.” He was already living the life of a nomad, changing homes and countries almost every week. After this massive leak, Assange was hunted fiercely, and he had to literally run for his life and seek cover wherever he could find it. In its latest leak, documents released by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks show that the US not only tapped Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, but also eavesdropped on several German ministers. This, obviously, created a controversy far beyond what the US would like to have on its plate. Now, Assange is on the verge of facing spying charges.
Nobody seems to know how to define the antics of this media insurgent. Is this investigative journalism? Or is it irresponsible activism? If one were to look at not the motive but the method of Assange’s work, what he does is in actual fact most akin to spying. It is hard to tell the whereabouts and identities of Assange’s sources. Experts call the method he uses to gather information “crowdsourcing.” His network consists of 800 part-time volunteers and 10,000 “supporters.” One of them, Bradley Manning, who had assisted the leak of the Afghanistan war documents, was a Pentagon insider. This fact gives a fair idea about the strength and viability of Assange’s network. When the WikiLeaks page on Twitter listed its location as “everywhere,” it wasn’t just using a figure of speech. Like an efficient espionage system, WikiLeaks is well guarded and almost immune from meaningful damage. The secret documents are anonymously sent to digital drop-boxes and stored on servers across the world.
What is ironic about Assange’s spy machinery is the fact that it very closely resembles espionage systems so far adopted by rulers and nation states — from Chandragupta Maurya, Queen Elizabeth I to Adolf Hitler; from the World Wars, the Cold War to the “war on terror.” What Assange does has been done earlier by Francis Walsingham and Fritz Joubert Duquesne. And, as has been revealed to the world just a few months back by another whistleblower, Edward Snowden, even today, the US government uses elaborate systems of surveillance to track the whereabouts of not only the American people, but also the people of other countries. It does so both officially and unofficially: apart from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US has well-wishers like the Project Vigilant, an alliance of 600 volunteers who scrutinize internet traffic and pass information on to the federal authorities.
Assange, apparently, is a self-confessed anarchist, although he has rarely been dubbed as such. He has most conveniently been seen sometimes almost as a fictional superhero, and sometimes as a supervillain. What is important to remember is that he has dramatically subverted State-sponsored espionage. He became the people’s spy, and robbed governments of their monopoly over information. There are many debates surrounding WikiLeaks. The reality of Assange’s standpoint is most akin to what the British journalist, David Leigh, writes in a report about WikiLeaks, “...if it can be leaked, it will be leaked.” (Sarkar) His subversion, most interestingly, stems from the fact that he is rootless, global and accountable to no institutional power.
This trait of being nation-less, this rootlessness that allows Assange to be accountable to no one has given him the freedom required to pursue the path of an anarchist. The fact that he does not owe allegiance to a particular political force or cultural framework has made WikiLeaks capable of standing up to a super-state like the US. In this world of so-called globalization, political interests of nations have become tangled with each other so irrevocably, that it is hard to conceive of an organization such as WikiLeaks without a person like Assange heading it, one who is a nomad in the truest sense, who does not belong anywhere. In a much smaller scale, the Fyatarus of Nabarun have acquired the same permeability through their lack of belonging, their rootlessness.
Is Assange a Fyataru? Here the real and the fictional meet. The Fyataru is an anarchist in the same way as Assange is. Another such anarchist in the “real” world is Edward Snowden. He was a CIA employee who made headlines in 2013 when he leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). The information he leaked told the world that powerful governments have put flies on our walls. Global surveillance systems, mainly operated by the NSA with the cooperation of some global telecommunication companies and European governments, have created an elaborate spy mechanism that is designed to dissect every move made by every other person in almost every corner of the world through the internet. Such surveillance systems has made a mockery of the word “personal.” Snowden’s revelations, obviously, sparked an immediate debate over mass surveillance programs initiated by powerful institutions, and how the common man is treated as a puppet by governments. Snowden was charged with the violation of the Espionage Act, and since then, the media has been quite baffled with him. Some have called him a hero, while others have called him a traitor. He has been called a dissident on the one hand, and, interestingly, a “patriot” on the other. But he too has seldom been referred to as an “anarchist.” Or, even if he has been, loosely, the term has not been used with an intention to connect him to an existing and practiced school of thought that is formally known as Anarchism.
Nevertheless, anarchism is becoming a recurring manifestation of the people’s dissent today, increasingly, as the governments of the world become more and more despotic and defiant of the people’s will. In the 1980s, Julian Assange was the member of a teenage hackers’ club in Melbourne called the International Subversives, which had launched a cyber-attack on the US’s space mission in 1989. The idea of Assange’s WikiLeaks originated out of this club. Assange drew inspiration from another anarchist, Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1969. The acts of these men, as is increasingly clear, are inspired by a will to destroy the false sense of invincibility that is making powerful state mechanisms so direly vindictive.
Assange’s and Snowden’s leaks created a massive turmoil across governments, which is why the world knows their names today. But such underground whistleblowers and hackers have existed just beneath the surface for quite a long time now. Every now and then, someone or the other breaches the ‘secured’ networks of the FBI, CIA, and the Pentagon to throw up information critical enough to start world wars. Sophisticated encryptions are treated by these Black Hat hackers as toys in the hands of a child. Gary McKinnon, in 2002, infiltrated 97 US military and NASA computers in a span of 24 hours, and shut down the US military’s Washington Network just for the sake of some amusement, apparently. His antic is known as the biggest military hack of all time. Another notorious group of Black Hat hackers, the Lulz Security, had hacked into the computers of Sony, News International, CIA, FBI, Scotland Yard, and several other noteworthy institutions. A 16-year-old, Jonathan James, had hacked into and shut down the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the US. But the most fantastical hacker that ever existed in reality is perhaps the ‘hacktivist’ group called Anonymous, the real identity of the members being still unknown. They were dubbed as the ‘digital Robin Hoods’, and they had made their intentions quite clear by launching serious attacks on several government, religious, and corporate institutions, including the Vatican, the FBI, the CIA, Mastercard, Visa, etc. [The references to the three hackers mentioned here are gathered from The Rise of the Hacker by Christopher Williams, The Telegraph, UK, June 22, 2011]
These hackers were clearly not driven by a strong sense of purpose as Assange or Snowden were. Their anarchy was a sort of rebellion against the larger sense of order – or perhaps just an intent to amuse themselves by mocking the aura of authority that global institutions emanate. A brewing dissent is starkly visible in their acts, but most of them do not identify a particular institution or belief system as their “enemy.” It is hard to say what would have happened, or would happen, if these sharp, young people were joined by a singular sense of purpose, under a common ideology. WikiLeaks, in a way, had sown the seeds of such an organized movement, which is why it is perceived as a dire threat by governments, and dealt with very cautiously by the media.
The Need to Subvert
The Fyatarus resemble these “floating” anarchists. They are not driven by a cause; they are rather disturbed by a void originating the lack of a concrete cause. They wreak havoc sometimes out of pure habit and sometimes to give vent to their disgust of the rich and the pretentious. In the case of the Fyatarus, subversion is a habitual trait. This is interesting, since subversion, by definition, refers to deviation from habit. When deviation becomes a habit, it implies a reversal that may politically help an anarchic vision and yet oppose it ideologically.
Mostly, Fyatarus are fractured images of the classic anarchist. The question that arises is why Nabarun chose to make them a fractured image. Why did he not create the ideal representation of an anarchist, someone in the mold of Michael Bakunin or Ema Goldman? The answer, perhaps, lies in the author’s fundamental mistrust of the sense of surety in individuals who follow the path of the politics of individualism. Perhaps, he sees this as the point from which an institutional framework takes shape. He thus wants to destroy all sense of direction and instead create an environment of pure chaos, which, he seems to believe, is the most natural state of the human mind. The Fyatarus, therefore, not only try to demolish physical institutions, but also institutions of the mind. There is a peculiar blend of the possible and the impossible in Nabarun’s work. The impossible beings – such as flying humans – become the tools for his anarchism. But Nabarun’s anarchist tendencies are limited to a certain point.
In Kangal Malsat, Nabarun had almost arrived at the point where the Fyatarus gather in an organized rebellion against the state. But he scattered their designs in the end, and the Fyatarus went back to being the madmen they are, jeopardizing the lives of the secured and healthy lot. One wonders why he chose this resolution. Was the author afraid of not merely suggesting the possibility of but actually inspiring an anarchist upheaval? Or is it not fear but something deeper? Maybe, it is the ultimate nihilism of a firm cynic that does not let him believe in even a structured rebellion to bring about a chaotic turbulence. Instead, Nabarun chooses to keep his Fyatarus in the sidelines, more as vigilant spies who would keep a watch on the ordered world around them, and punish any instance of complacency or despotism with the outbreak of an unthinkable, unmanageable disruptiveness.
As Nabarun points out in another novel, Herbert, “Bisforon kobe, kothay o kibhabe ghotbe ta rashtrojontrer ekhono jante baki ache.” (The state is yet to acquire the knowledge of how, when and where an explosion might take place). (Upanyas Samagra 62) This explosion seems to be almost an orgasmic dream for him – a refuge from the depressing reality of the stock market ruling the world.
Whatever it might be in theory, it cannot be denied that anarchism is yet to provide a practical blueprint for the transformation of a civilization. Yet, anarchism is an inevitable necessity if a truly democratic structure of a society is to be thought of. Democracy is almost always at risk of slipping into the garb of dictatorship, as has often been seen in history, or, if one may suggest so, is what is happening in several prominent nations of this world at present. It is an anarchist force that can save democracy from falling into the trap of autocracy. The disruptive power of anarchism would not allow an institution to grow so powerful and complacent that it might set a trap for the people or try to make them endorse a totalitarian regime posing as a democratic one. Anarchy would keep an eye on such vindictive institutions – be they governments or corporates – and always try to threaten their sense of indomitability with its troublemaking tactics. This is why, real-life Fyatarus like Assange and Snowden spoil the fantasies of the US government, and fictional Fyatarus spoil the weekend dinner plans of corrupt police officers. If we care to look closely, such troublemakers exist in a state of invisibility all around us. They are potent bombs waiting to go off, and sometimes they do. Nabarun’s Fyatarus and their acts of pure chaos are meant to have a sterilizing effect on a contaminated society.
The second purpose that anarchy serves is to protect the right of the individual to dissent. Ideally, democracy should mean that the ruling power protects most vehemently the right to speak of its opposition or its critique. This is the “ideal” form of democracy. I doubt if it can be practiced in its purest form at all, since the very structure of a democratic State breeds hierarchic institutions, and therefore an unequal distribution of power. In practice, actually, democratic governments hardly practice such democracy. Governing viewpoints in today’s world is rarely inclusive, and marginalization is an integral part of the political agenda that is driven by populist opinions and the appeasement of popular thoughts and demands. Moreover, hegemonic formations of groups ensure that the individual is the most endangered party in this system. In our society, opinions belong to the majority. On the other hand, minorities, too, become an instrument of the system propagated by the majority rather than actually being a counterpoint to the prevailing opinions that govern the dominant system. That might well be the mainstay of democracy, but it threatens the virtue of free speech. The individual’s freedom of thought is continuously thwarted by social institutions, so much so that often a free thought actually does not take shape in the first place. If the freedom of expression is to be protected, free thoughts must be allowed to form, and thoughts can be freed from the curbing influence of established opinions only by the instrument of subversion. Anarchy promotes such subversion, as does the Fyataru. It reminds us why subversion is important.
Although not in agreement with institutional leftism, Nabarun seems to nurture sympathy for the Naxalites. Not surprising, since the extreme-left also thrives primarily on the philosophy of a guerilla rebellion against the state machinery, an idea that his anarchist Fyatarus also toy with from time to time. In Nabarun’s writings, anarchism and ultra-Left beliefs sometimes blend in to form a wider repulsion of state-sponsored oppression, the retort to which his characters do not quite seem to find. In Herbert, Nabarun came closest to that retort. But the inability to find an apt response to blatant injustice makes his Fyatarus insane wanderers of the cityscape, mostly comic at the initial reading, but the victims of a profound tragedy as one goes deeper.
Nabarun has used the long shot to show the readers his Fyatarus. The tragedy of the spiteful madman seething with failed anger has been given a touch of comic elusiveness by a wide-angle lens. Above all, the Fyatarus are always “untouchables.” Just as the prevalent cast bias has made the “untouchables” inherit a subaltern identity, the Fyatarus, by some magical inheritance, have acquired their flying powers and their subversive nature. Therefore, their “untouchability” becomes literal too. They can escape the police – or the embodiment of State-inflicted “discipline” - by flying out of their reach. They easily fly out of prisons and hospitals, and they casually urinate on merry gatherings once in a while to establish their discontent as well as their freedom in a strained and restrained social structure. With sarcasm and cynicism as weapons against prudishness and so-called sophistication, they manage to inspire the hope for creating a balancing force that would maintain equilibrium in society, and prevent class equations from getting too tilted. But they themselves lead a tilted life, walking on a tightrope, hanging mid-air between despair, nostalgia, and an impossible vision that make up the very fabric of the city which is home to them.
Yet, the very impossibility of this vision makes it a ticking bomb. As Nabarun warns, not only the state but no one at all knows when the bomb might go off. This ticking bomb can very well be seen to represent the invisible ticking bomb inside Nabarun Bhattacharya, the author. His literary passion can be clearly recognized as his expression of pure and simple anger. He has created the Fyatarus and let them loose on his readers because he has a vision. His vision is that of a society governed by the spirit of non-governance, a society that organically adopts the principles of anarchy. He dreams of a revolution to conceive such a society. Yet, the closed and dingy alleys from where his Fyatarus emerge physically limit the scope of such an ambitious vision. The Fyatarus can fly all they want, but it is quite a conspicuous fact that they do not have wings. Perhaps they lack the space to spread their wings. The Fyatarus, and Nabarun, seem to be struggling for some “space”, pushing through the layered fabric of a culturally stoic society with all their might. But this “space” remains elusive, both literally and figuratively, for the Fyatarus. Their revolution therefore remains incomplete, their anger not wholly subdued, their dissent not fully expressed. The sense of dissatisfaction chasing Nabarun and his Fyatarus like a ghost is perhaps the holistic reality that emerges from the world of these “unreal” creatures.
 
Works Cited:
Bhattacharya, Nabarun. Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Chhotogolpo. Calcutta: Pratikshan Publications, 1995. Print.
__________________. Kangal Malsat. Calcutta: Saptarshi Prakashan, 2003. Print.
__________________. Fyataru’r Bombachak O Anyanya. Calcutta: Saptarshi Prakashan, 2004.Print.
__________________. Upanyas Samagra. Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, 2010. Print.
Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial, 2008.  Print.
Sarkar, Adheesha. “The people’s spy.” The Telegraph 10 August 2010: Calcutta. Print.
 
 
Adheesha Sarkar
Encyclopedia Britannica South Asia
adheeshasarkar@googlemail.com
  © Adheesha Sarkar 2015
 
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The Vagabond”s War Cry: the Other in Nabarun”s Narrative
Dibyakusum Ray
     Although not entirely intentional, I had a specific reader coterie in mind while writing this article. Nabarun Bhattacharya, perceived as aberrant and insignificant during the majority of his four decade long literary career has seen a sudden upsurge of interest recently.  The author’s untimely demise last year has, predictably, increased this curiosity manifold, because as Schiller had predicted, death is that ultimate mystique endowing the author an optimized distance: fuelling the reader’s desire to know him. We strive for that which we know not, and death adds to that final aura of unknowability. Nabarun’s novels, numerous poems and short stories are enjoying a reprinting drive partially for this reason.
     Like Roberto Bolano or Thomas Ligotti, Bhattacharya always had a small dedicated audience active much before his posthumous fame. This specific group—consisting majorly of University scholars and likeminded authors and editors, was active in a scholarly engagement with his work and his authorial persona—sometimes to the point of hagiography. For the same reason, his works never exactly ceased to be printed or circulated, although many past editions are still out of print. Year 2000 onwards, his multiple award winning novels were adapted into films with moderate success; Harbart has been translated into several foreign languages at least twice. In other words, Bhattacharya was not popular, but never forgotten by a set of serious, critical audience. My essay distances itself from the current frenzy while targeting this particular readership. The reasons are obvious—a full introduction to or popularization of Bhattacharya’s oeuvre with its prominent evolutionary stages and complexities deserves a greater scope and scholarship. I will, instead, assume the presence of an initiated audience, familiar with a rough chronology, for although I have selected a handful of texts from Bhattacharya’s culminating phase, his works cannot be read in isolation. The author is unique in this—his writings follow a specific progression of thought. This is a strain dominant not only in a slow but sure induction into artistic maturity, but also a violent self-enquiry accessible only to serious readers. I will signal towards this and steer past the hagiography that followed the author’s demise
     Let me clear my prerogatives again — this essay is based on the culminating phase of Bhattacharya’s prose writing career (his poetry is different in its chronology and essence—it demands an axiomatic discussion), and I wish to explain how such a culmination becomes apparent in the handling of theme, style and ideology; namely 1999 onwards. Let us retrace our steps a little. Bhattacharya’s prose fiction, as it is common knowledge, willingly engages itself with the concept of recession—into poverty, atavism, primal instinct of fear, social-political margin etc. Granted, his engagement with recession is chiefly axial to another, larger, concern—politics of the margin. Throughout Bhattacharya’s oeuvre, the marginalized beings suffer socially/ financially, get trampled on or curbed in the cradle of revolution, are pushed to the point of self-destruction and nihilistic violence. At the outset, Bhattacharya seems more interested in creating a political statement than influence, and irrespective of its altruistic appeal, discussion on such a foregrounded literary ideology can be limited.
    My argument treats this presumption to be faulty. I will show in this article that Bhattacharya, while acutely conscious and sympathetic of the plight of the marginalized, actually engages himself with the question of the “other.” The political (or social or financial) “other” is apparently easy to identify, and Bengali Left literature is rife with a narration of class struggle concluding in revolutionary change, but Bhattacharya’s “other” is philosophically more entrenched. Being the “other” is not a readymade, emancipator trope which automatically subverts all injustice and ushers in a better tomorrow. Bhattacharya knew this, or at least evolved into this realization. While starting his literary career with a defined revolutionary principle where the narrative will be axial to a spontaneous resistance of capitalist power play, Bhattacharya is significantly doubtful at the dawn of the millennium. The “other” can be unjust, violent, stagnant, sexist, even oppressive; but it poses a constant threat to the larger machinery that defines the line between the “normal” and the “abnormal.” Bhattacharya does not claim that even if a reversal of power occurs, the “other” shall make it alright. He is more interested in questioning. Is the question of the “other” irrevocably concluded with the reversal of power? Is the defenestration of the oppression-machinery really possible? Is the revolutionary state beyond reproach? “Who watches the watchmen?” Bhattacharya’s argument, in this phase, attempts to negotiate for an irreconcilable other who would not be, and sometimes actively resists being part of the envisioned “whole.” The risk and challenge of hearing and responding to an unequivocal “No” is, however, far more problematic than the mere proposition allows us to understand, because the very cognition that there is the “other” on the threshold is made possible by my consciousness, the latter being coded in a grid of language and conditioning. The paradox is unavoidable—it is the subjective consciousness that enables me to cognize the role of the “other,” yet it also hinders me from even imagining such a space of negation without understanding it in my own terms.
     Ergo, Bhattacharya moves away from the world of Harbart or Juddha Paristhiti (A State of War) or Auto where the marginalized dreams, resists and erupts in self-destruction with the ultimate intent of subverting the ennui. This is the phase of Khelna Nagar (A City of Toys), the Fyatarus (the Flying Vagabonds) or Lubdhak (Sirius). His trademark explosive conclusion is intact, but it does not serve any specific purpose. At most, there is rejection and fading into the dreamscape of surreal darkness. This is important and different, because living under the shadow of utter destruction—at the hand of normative oppression that curbs dissent -- dissolves polarities and makes one ponder on the transitive phase. It can create a deep melancholia as well as an intensely belligerent attitude towards the forces that say everything is normal. Here Bhattacharya consciously lets the “other” be the “other” who would, with their intricately detailed language, culture and behavioral non-patterns attack and upset the story, the raconteur and lastly, the readers. This is not to say that Bhattacharya’s narratives are a celebration of thoughtless, purposeless nihilism. His sense of transition does not mean constantly being on the threshold and avoiding responsibility, actually all the nuisance or acts of terrorism purported by his characters are targeted towards achieving a blank (___): something Bhattacharya never specifies. This is clearly a progress, and a progress made from a very specific political awareness. This does not mean that if the blank is filled in, Bhattacharya shall sing along; he will once again critique the reverse authorial powers, again risking stasis.
     We can, for example, take up a chapter from the portmanteau novella Baby K Parijat (January 2013)¹ to explore the non-recognition of the “other” which inevitably leads to an explosive “finale.” Bhattacharya does not give the characters any clear purpose or even a clear narrative in this phase: they don’t achieve anything and is not guided by any superior principle. “Change” is a vague word here, but “damage” or “upset” certainly makes more sense. Parijat, the washed-out, often pathos-inducing medical representative falls head over heels for the common whore, Baby K. The famous specialty of the latter is that she has an unquenchable thirst for petrol, which she buys from several petrol pumps all over the city, directly consuming it from the pipes. Parijat is certainly a representative of the staid petite bourgeois existence, and his fascination with this outlandish prostitute (this profession is also undoubtedly a careful insertion by the author as prostitutes are largely vilified and are the essential “others” in an urban society) can be taken as the unstoppable urge to flirt with disaster. It is Baby K”s outlandishness that draws Parijat towards the otherwise completely unassuming short girl, and strangely enough, throughout the six chapters of the novella, Baby K sometimes lives or sometimes dies in a queer accident, sometimes stays with Parijat forever and sometimes summarily leaves him in his despair to indulge in fortune hunting. In a grotesque parody of love’s indestructible impetus and the divine figure of the Muse, Bhattacharya weaves a world where anything and everything is constantly on the threshold of possibility as if themselves indecisive whether to come to the space of “being” and “being normal.” For example, in the fourth chapter of the novella titled “American Petromax”, Parijat and Baby K are out for an evening stroll in the overcrowded Chowranghee region of Central Calcutta. In Bhattacharya’s parallel universe, Calcutta has turned into a new colony for US marines en route the military invasion of Iraq and North Korea. The whole city turns into a grotesque dreamland in Bhattacharya’s writing:
In that indulgent evening, the entire Chowranghee area was warming up to an intense sexy vibe. Parijat, along with Baby K, after feasting on dumplings sold by the one-eyed Chinaman wearing an inner vest, was happily walking towards the metro-rail stop. The sidewalks were full with the khaki underwear of US army, artificial dildo, little and cute dinosaur babies and rhododendron in bouquets—all for sale. The cloud was like a moon-catching net in the sky, the heavy drone of the military transport flights could be heard and the old bats were flying haywire. [Translation mine] (Baby K 53)
All of a sudden, in this perfectly “normal” ambience, several US marines throw Parijat off the track before summarily kidnapping Baby K into a notorious bar. Parijat tries his best, but he is overpowered and shunned outside the closed door and his sniveling gibberish is completely lost in the roar of the US Humvee engines. Inside the bar, the setting is even more grotesque. Thirty seven US soldiers bodily lift Baby K on the table after making her drink a lot of whiskey, and then starts the dance—Baby K on top of the table and the thirty seven soldiers under it. Disaster strikes when in a drunken stupor a soldier suddenly offers Baby K a king-size Marlboro cigarette. Baby K, already overfed with petrol, was emitting highly flammable petrol gas from her mouth, nose and all the other orifices. Inevitably, there was an immense explosion that kills everyone within the bar, with the military forensic bureau later concluding that its intensity was equal to several Molotov cocktails.
     Flirting with disaster, consuming country liquor in copious amounts in random subaltern joints while planning to unleash nihilism on the bourgeoisie society, sitting in the front row of cosmic disaster and laughing at the face of palpable danger and death—all these elements make a shattering comeback in Bhattacharya’s most popular, and recently cultified pop-cultural story chain—the escapades of the fyatarus (the fyatarus, a literal English translation of which is admittedly beyond my grasp, but “the flying vagabonds” should serve as a crude alternative).² The other makes its most dramatic entrance in this special curve of Bhattacharya’s narrative and over the years the famous trio of flying vagabonds—Madan, D.S. and the poet Purandar Bhat-- has become sort of a cult phenomenon in Bengali intelligentsia as well as alternate Bengali culture. I will concentrate on two works here—a short story and a celebrated novel.
    The short story “Kabi Shammelaney Fyataru” or “Flying Vagabonds in Poet”s Convention” [my translation] is primarily focused on the author’s treatment of literature-as-institution and the audience. In this story, for the first time, we are introduced to a new character—poet Purandar Bhat,³ a dejected spokesperson of all the idiots of Calcutta who is almost on the verge of suicide for not getting through the stern screening process at the annual poetry convention. The flying vagabonds discover him in a completely shattered state for not having the chance to proliferate his perceived “genius” to the world, and after listening to a few “poems”—where he freely refers to obscenity, nudity, tremendous expletives against the urban bourgeoisie, irreverence to Bengali cultural icons such as Rabindranath Tagore in the crudest manner possible—D.S. and Madan readily agree to get him justice:
--We will have to go to their office. Rise, D.S. Let”s go. We shall see which bastard does not let Purandar Bhat read his poetry. We will go straight from here. Shall drink a full bottle on the way, and the next destination will be the office of the poetry convention.
--Ugh, the whole thing seems like a dream to me. I feel as if somebody is whispering in my ear, Purandar Bhat, this is the way of creating history, shall go forth with my demand, shall shout with all my might, and a bit of country liquor will help a great deal… [Translation mine] (Fyatarur Bombachak 80)
The point is, Bhattacharya never goes into the spiraling logic of the overlooked leftist genius in a bourgeoisie setting in his chronicles of the vagabonds. The audience is purposefully kept away from sympathizing with Purandar’s plight, because it is very clear that his work holds no literary value. This, on one hand, is a clever hint of the perennial question—what is literature and literary value? On the other hand, Bhattacharya more problematically seems to be propagating the idea that the “meaningful” has run its course, the age of construction is all but over, and the role of literature is to undergo a violent paradigm shift. Expectedly, the sexy event-manager of the convention drives the vagabonds away without a second thought, prompting them to exact revenge on the whole institution in the most radical way. We are immediately introduced to the auspicious evening of the convention”s gala opening, which Bhattacharya minutely describes. The NRI poets occupy  the centre stage, clearly discernible from their native counterparts by their suits, shirts and Bermudas and suffering from intense flatulence right on stage because of the exotic lunch en route, comprising “crab, lobsters, cow, deer, pig, lamb, young monkey and rabbits” [my translation] (86). After the veteran poet Shyamananda Gnui inaugurates the convention and another famous poet of yesteryears Kaliadaman Pal starts delivering the keynote speech, all hell breaks loose:
In such a hypnotic ambience, the three enormous bats flew very close to the audience and the dais and opened their respective sacks before emptying its contents—leaflets and hundreds of cockroaches. The sewer cockroaches of Calcutta are a savage and liberated lot. Throughout the day they were fighting each other being confined in the sacks. As they are released, they started flying happily…also brazenly getting into the dresses of the crowd of poetry lovers. By this sudden assault, the event manager Malatilata passes out on the dais, and there ensues a fight between the NRI poet from Texas and France as to who will intimately escort her outside to safety. In every cacophony there are a few well hidden fortune hunters. These started nicking cameras, cassette recorders, handicams as well as wallets and purses. It was all chaos, screams and cries of agony, only punctuated by the mad laughter of three flying bats. [Translation mine] (87-88)
     Before we go into the novel, one must understand that Kangal Malshat or The Vagabond”s War Cry is but a potboiler for Bhattacharya, he has amalgamated all of his possible thematic strands into the form (or the lack of it) of a single story. Expectedly, this narrative does not have any remote resemblance to any extant novel in Bengali literature; even Bhattacharya’s own, more celebrated novels like Harbart are far more cohesive and formally regular. The entire idea is a climactic battle between legions of vagabonds and the city police force, narrated through a series of expletives, crude gestures, chaotic ranting and violent threat against the life and sanity of administrative officials. The book is replete with violence, although curiously without any blood and gore, making the whole affair of death strangely comical and seemingly vapid. In the first few lines itself, Bhattacharya himself shuns the expectation of the reader with possibly the harshest rhetoric ever heard in Bengali literature. Although he is supposedly quoting the forgotten author Suresh Chandra Chakravarty with a sniding hint at Rabindranath Tagore’s elitism, the very context of the quotation is significant and powerful:
“Today’s readers have turned into priggish mules. For them, no writer should waste his time. Some say the readers today are impatient and pressed for time. My foot! I say, it is the author who is impatient and pressed for time.” It is difficult to determine how important this quotation is as a sound logical inference. All we know is that the literary establishment can make or break an author. In today’s world, no author can escape unscathed by infuriating something like, say, the Anandabazaar group. [Translation mine] (Upanyas Samagra 233)
Clearly, not only the reader but also the literary establishment and giant publishing houses are vilified with equal dexterity. The vagabonds are seen to be hypnotized and lured into a new vagabond kingpin’s house. The godfather, Choktar Bhadi (the original Bengali linguistic analysis of this name might be too obscene to include in this article; however, Bhattacharya is using this name to signify somebody adept at horrific rascally, with the dexterity of a lawyer) is planning to launch an all out attack against the reigning CPI(M) government of Calcutta, and he needs the assistance of the vagabonds, something the latter gladly concedes to provide. We soon come to know that it is actually Bhadi’s father, an enormous talking raven, who is the mastermind of this entire operation. The vagabond party then attempts to recruit another axis of power, the mention of which in The Vagabond”s War Cry is extremely important especially on a postcolonial level. Bhattacharya effectively jettisons all the established negative connotations of the tyrannical colonialists, before recruiting them in the vagabond’s band as another set of disruptive agents. The baggage of the past does not matter to him, if the ghosts of the British can aid the vagabonds” plan with their spectral powers, even they are welcome in the merrymaking:
Cling cling cling, gallop, gallop bush and wash and a lot of creek creeks later, the vagabonds throws themselves to the side of the street. This is the famous Calcuttan “eat the air” ceremony – a polished phaeton. The coachman with an enormous turban. Looks like the governor’s edicong. In it goes a fat-arsed mem sahib, vulture eyes on both sides of the road. In the opposite, two young, lithe mem sahibs. There comes, in respective horses, two sahibs in britches and baggy white full shirts. They both look up and measure the fantastic photograph of Rani Mukherji in the billboard above, then caste their lustful eyes towards the young mem sahibs. [Translation mine] (250-51)
Thus forming an alliance with both the specters of the past and the dormant agents of disruption rooted in the present, the vagabonds form an alliance whose sole purpose is to defeat and publicly malign the emasculated state government that came in power with the slogan of leftist liberation, but was slowly sucked into the vortex of authority. It is as if the entire discourse of the city—its past, preceding power relations, its formation of a new bourgeoisie, the gradual sidelining of the layered subaltern class into several orifices of the city—is vociferously rejecting the present “reality” that, Bhattacharya thinks, is far worse than anything Calcutta has ever experienced before. What will be the outcome of this radical alliance if the vagabonds triumph never comes into the ambit of the novel’s discourse; because Bhattacharya’s characters live in a continuum of presentness. The vagabonds cannot win, because the very conception of winning and subsequently ruling is not a valid option for them. Judging by the rather grim nature of Bhattacharya’s perception of reality it is hugely unlikely that the vagabonds shall ever be able to overcome the state’s brute force. But it is this preference of constantly remaining at the threshold, never aiming to build an alternative empire but always acting as the aberrant elements that mock and seek to destroy every empire is what makes Bhattacharya’s vagabonds one of the closest interpretations of liminal beings. Liminality is certainly not limited in high-falutin theoretical discussions, it is brought to the ground of constant radicalization and active participation in various strands of politics. Bhattacharya’s greatest achievement, I think, lies in this precise moment despite his open support for ultra leftism and nostalgia for a leftist past which is hugely controversial otherwise.
     The vagabonds mobilize their armies swiftly. Under Choktar’s command, several unidentified flying objects scour the Calcutta night sky, occasionally beheading the top ranking officials of the detective department. Chief Minister Comrade Acharya, in all probability a not-too-subtle satirization of the then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, is visited by the specter of Com. Stalin, which advises him to take up a much more authoritarian stance for the government. Com. Acharya is constantly criticized to be a nincompoop, and indecisive when swift action against the enemies of leftism is necessary. Bhattacharya’s act of hurling abuses and unpalatable authoritarian conceptions at the presumably soft liberal audience becomes even more intense in the following pages as the psychological battle against the heads of the state comes to full swing. For example, the famous scholar and curator of the Victoria Museum is visited by Bhadi’s father, the Raven. The dialogue that ensues successfully shatters several romantic concepts of Calcutta’s past by offering a hugely controversial alternative history:
--Charnock was a great man. Would there be any Calcutta if he had not been there? Would there be the horse drawn trams on the eve of Calcutta’s three hundred years ceremony? Where would be those magazines” special issues? Where would be those seminars? Where would be me with my august presence… along with all the ministers?
--Charnock was a great fucker. That son of a bitch came and shat beside the Ganges, and thus was created Calcutta. It is only bastards like you who worship that pathetic letch. In a country of ass, whatever the jackass says is considered to be the supreme logic. And your government is a laughing stock. They are dicking around with Calcutta’s birthday. Such is the state of your ministers. [Translation mine] (295)
The real battle starts, and before long the state power starts retreating in the face of the bizarre assault led by another vagabond, retired Major Ballabh Bakshi. Aided by none other than Mikhail Kalashnikov’s strategy, Team Vagabonds starts incessant and extremely surreal shelling on the retreating force. The canon shells act in unprecedented ways—some start jumping on the car roofs, some explode to generate several minuscule shells that all rain on the force, some just remain suspended mid-air, constantly threatening of an imminent explosion. The government sends truce envoy, and the vagabonds stop their assault for further political negotiations. Before wrapping up the discussion of The Vagabond’s War Cry, I would like to briefly refer to a couple of easily overlooked places in the novel. The first part, positioned cleverly right in the middle of the novel, briefly explores the merciless, suffocating reality of Calcutta with a very uncharacteristic sad tone, proving that Bhattacharya is ever cognizant of the plight of his life world in real life:
The smokes of air pollution endow everything with a charming mystic quality. And whenever there is a whimsical wind, several polybags start flying like the eponymous pigeons of peace… nobody has the time to look at such random supernatural events. The sole exceptions are the madmen and the house bats. They are the real friends of the Calcutta that is being broken, maimed, incinerated, melted, pummeled and disfigured in order to create a new synthetic existence. Along with the madmen and house bats, there are a few wasted girls, dogs, cats, owls, rats… mosquitoes, flies and a few last asphyxiated butterflies and moths…  [Translation mine] (253)
The second part also comprises the last few lines of the novel, as the Great Raven flies from the top of the Calcutta monument in order to deliver the news to the British alliance that The Vagabond’s War Cry has been published as a novel. Bhattacharya brings himself and his creation into his own novel in a bizarre twist of self-referentiality, signaling while it is indeed a joyful news to have an alternative voice in literature, this itself can turn into another institution without constant vigilance. What, then, is the way to escape this circularity? Bhattacharya attempts to answer in the next phase:
It was my long term plan to write a dog fable, and the result is Sirius. I had a deep relation with creatures like dog, cat, bird or fish from my childhood. They have given me immense pleasure and intense pain by departing prematurely. They have taught me many things which cannot be learnt by reading books. My childhood friend Gypsy influenced me greatly, and this novel can be considered a partial homage to him. The life world is not inhabited by human beings only, everybody has the right over it. In this right there lies a crucial balance of the continuous circle of life and death; this equation, if subverted, can bring great harm to the human kind. [Translation mine] (525)
Probably the most unique in Bhattacharya’s prose oeuvre, Lubdhak (Sirius [my translation], published 2000) is an automatic choice for the conclusion of the culminative phase of Bhattacharya’s narrative arc. The ascension of the “other” from its preordained, wretched “fate” to an explosive, negating irreducibility finds a suitable climax in Sirius, which is infested with the million stray dogs on the sidewalks of Calcutta. The story is neither about the unending suffering of the “other” in a normative manner nor the vagabond-esque resorting to nihilism and violence. The third phase of Bhattacharya ends with an even more important motif – rejection. This is, at the same time, a unique take on the resistance dynamics of the other, as it is an effective end of clamoring and negotiating for the same space and an exploration of something beyond, even cosmic. The philosophical underpinning is clear—growing over the politics of merging and/ or the violent friction that goes on in a spiral, this phase chooses to retain, even expand, the unbreachable distance between the “self” and the “other” as the latter moves far beyond the reach of precisely what Bhattacharya never explains. The second point is one of doubt. “Rejection” itself might amount to an innate escapism, where the “other” practically shuns violence and clears the ground for the “self.” This is also important at a purely cognitive level as to recognize and respect the existence of the “other”, it is important to be in its proximity, because the constant friction always shapes the idea of the “self” compelling it to negotiate and thus remind itself of the “other’s” ability to say “No.” Sirius, and its central politics, naturally continues to face similar questions. Bhattacharya, however, never shies away from the answerability or responsibility of the “self” for the “other”. The primary canine characters of the novel do leave the dystopian Calcutta at the climax but they are never reduced to the docile and submissive colonized subjects. Instead, Bhattacharya shows that after the series of pain and cruelty inflicted on them by the human beings, they have not lost their capacity to bark back or threaten to attack the human society with full force. In this way, rejection is not necessarily abandoning the struggle, it is more like taking the friction to a completely new level from where the search for newer horizons can be made, because, as Bhattacharya describes it, Calcutta is about to face utter destruction by the collision with a rogue asteroid seven hours after the story ends. In an interview with the magazine Kabitritha, Bhattacharya himself rejects the idea of latent escapism while talking about the philosophy of Sirius:
In a sense, I believe in the politics of life-world (“Pranamandal”) [my brackets]. As I reserve my right, a mosquito reserves the right to bite me. I believe in the parallel being of many. I tried to invoke these in Sirius. I look at the intense layerization consisting of life and consciousness. I never think that all the problems of life have been solved. Each being would raise the perennial questions in its own way. [Translation mine] (525)
With this statement Bhattacharya posits himself in a rather interesting discursive overlap. Animal literature, or animal centric/ animal rights literature is not a unique paradigm in postcolonial studies, especially, within the domain of ecocriticism.⁴ Where Bhattacharya differs from this body of literature is in his treatment of the animal characters not as a foil or extension of the existential dilemma faced by the human protagonist, but the removal—however incomplete-- of the hapless canines from the space of human cognition altogether. In other words, Bhattacharya’s animals attempt to construct the niche of perfect strangeness: an othering which creates and maintains an essential distance from the self by its unique language and other methods of articulation, while never foregoing the unending friction with the polarized “self”, and within itself. Granted, the animals cannot speak for themselves, and a question can be raised whether animal sympathizing, in Bhattacharya and beyond, is just a device of endowing the self an unbridled agency in speaking for the “other.” This limitation is certainly there in Bhattacharya, although he is using the animals as the symbols of othering, his sympathy for them is certainly very much his “own.” Added to this is Bhattacharya’s recurrent motif of an ever incumbent explosion or annihilation that endows his animal-centric stories, especially Sirius an undeniably militant yet hopeful vibe. Bhattacharya deftly handles several complex things in parallel—conflict, redemption, rejection and revolutionary hope—trying not to take sides or concretizing the image of the forthcoming. Sirius always remains on the threshold, operating within liminality.
    Sirius starts with a foreboding countdown to the zero hour—the moment of Calcutta’s destruction. Making frequent references to astronomy and pagan mythology, Bhattacharya opens his novel with a temporal play—the seven hours to annihilation never ends as the entire story is narrated through present continuous. Every moment becomes timeless in Sirius” opening page, as the reflection of uncountable stars, asteroids, nebulae and galaxies are reflected on the lifeless eyes of a random, dead puppy. From the squalid, throttling reality of rotting dog carcasses to the fantasizing of the icy vastness of space beyond is what forms the aforementioned “big picture” of this novel:
The rain is playing an essential part in decomposing and bloating the dead dogs, along with the sun, sultry air, flies, rats and bacteria. See, the dead puppy that was born and dead at the same spot; its eyes still unopened… see, the ants have eaten away the postnatal layer over its eye, thus helping him to finally see. That small, and dead eye is too insignificant, glassy too. Now see, the thing that is reflected on that eye, is called the space. That single dead eye, like a dead glass is capturing the Milky Way, the galaxies departing elsewhere… many asteroids, comets and lifeless mechanical satellites… look at the south eastern side of the Orion. You can see Canis Major. It is the extreme beautiful brightest star of the night sky. It is called Lubdhak or Sirius…It has given its verdict. It cannot be revoked. But we have seven hours left still. [Translation mine] (384)
The first chapter is full with such sporadic, yet interconnected philosophical snippets, not signaling towards a concrete story. In an almost cinematic style, Bhattacharya’s vision widens to reveal heaps of dog carcasses lying all over the out of order stable strewn throughout Calcutta. The heaps of dead bodies consist of all forms of canines domesticated, half domesticated, pregnant, young and old, belligerent or docile or simply stoic. This macabre vista is interspersed with the constant reminder that these bodies will lie inert for the next seven hours, the seven hours that are never passed in the course of the novel. On the one hand, this denotes the continuing suffering of the dogs, on the other it makes us stop in the brink of something with cosmic importance, constantly deferring the climax, allowing us space to laboriously reach and project what it should be.
    The next few chapters can be divided into two strains. In this phase, we have a semblance of a concretized narrative, which initiates through the three instances of random cruelty inflicted on stray dogs in Calcutta, which in turn serves as the initial point of a lengthy and meandering dialogue between several stray dogs and cats that reveals the real nature of systematic animal cruelty by the metropolitan authority and a subsequent bigger “change”, something the animals can sense but cannot define. We meet three characters of the novel—Ear-sprout, Whitish and Brownie, all victim of deadly or semi-deadly and unnecessary assaults by human beings. Whitish does not survive the onslaught of a speeding car, but both Ear-sprout and Brownie survive long enough to witness the intricately planned dog annihilation program, unleashed by the city on the brink of the millennia. Several ingenuous ideas of ridding the city of dogs in the name of extensive beautification are introduced then rejected for logistical difficulties before zeroing in on covertly kidnapping the dogs and throwing them, sans food and water, into the unused stables. While this planning takes place inside the heavily guarded chambers of human authority, the dogs and cats of the city talk among themselves, all scared of the impending doom, a news first secretly served by the crows. The animals talk of their past and plan for the bleak future, while their comrades are ceaselessly caught and thrown into the stables. In the overall gloom, another stray called Gypsy brings the news of an impending paradigmatic shift that, apparently, cannot be stopped:
--Within two days we will have to leave the city. Something deadly is about to happen. What precisely I cannot tell. The moment the word is spread, we shall leave this city in scores. You better join us. Ear-sprout has also requested the same.
--So you say it is better to leave?
--Whatever I have heard till now, that is the impression. Come down. Let”s go.
--Well, but what is this deadly event?
-- It”s all a rumour. Some say it will be a war. Some say an earthquake. It might be something coming out of the beyond in order to save the dogs. Nothing can be stated specifically. Let”s go, we will tell you the rest on the way. [Translation mine] (404)
While this discussion is ongoing, Bhattacharya’s gaze shifts to the cosmic machinations occurring somewhere deep inside the cosmos. The humans discover through telescope and other sensors that an immense asteroid is on a collision course with earth, originating from the Canis Minor. Bhattacharya’s imagination takes us straight into the legion of “shadow-dogs” ethereal, mythological and divine bodies flying over the Bay of Caninus. While zooming through the clouds, Laika, the spirit of the iconic Russian astronaut dog addresses Anubis, the dog faced guardian of the netherworld of Egyptian mythology. They engage in a discussion of when precisely to strike, and how far the dogs” exodus shall proceed by the time the attack is initiated. Their concern is answered by the repeated statement—“There are still seven hours to go. [Translation mine] (414)” The dogs in Calcutta, meanwhile, suddenly abandon their commotion in the black holes of the abandoned stables, and sit in strange formations as if to welcome the canine faced asteroid, approaching like judgment from the cosmos. As the elderly dogs engage in strange pagan dance, and their claws emit sparks from the friction with the stone floors, the city authority, now in throes of consternation and panic, opens the gate of the stables, the elders do not budge, but the small dogs and puppies leave with their mothers, halting traffic throughout the city pouring from every corner:
The huge buildings, feet covered in merciless boots, the wheels of a raging car … these, that instill layers of fear inside us, that make us understand that it’s us who are the weaklings—all of these are now silent, cornered and still. Woof! Woof! We bark in small voices. Yes, today we control it all… we are leaving … We leave in stride. You may guard your assets in this cursed city we rejected, like blind Golems… Your cruelty, ignorance, greed, callousness are all coming back to you like boomerangs… if the police sergeant moves one bit, his feet will hit us and he will never ever reach home tonight. All the trucks … beware! Your wheels must not move an inch, for this placid, vast, sea of canines might turn into a gaping shark… Woof! Woof! [Translation mine] (412)
The traffic goes into a complete standstill, and the headlights are suddenly doused as if several giants going blind all at once. The police and other guardians of law and order cannot move from their place, witnessing hypnotically the great exodus of puppies. Several dogs cannot escape after all as many died already due to starvation and thirst, but those that leave make a unique point in Bhattacharya’s oeuvre. We never know what they are leaving for; if the apocalypse is worldwide it is clear that mere displacement would not be enough for the survival of any of the dogs. Bhattacharya also refrains from stating whether the “new” place would be a canine utopia devoid of all layerization. It is this act of leaving, the act of struggling to find something “other” than the regular that takes us back to the trident of philosophical cores at the heart of this thesis. The struggle for the utopia is there, the machination of an inert and mysterious singularity can be felt through the cosmic intervention, but at the same time it is the essential “other” that seemingly makes these paradigms a possibility. It is through the dynamics of the “other” space that such possibilities stand a chance to be realized.
     In tandem with the basic principles of the transition of otherness, I intentionally use the term “seemingly” and “chance” as Bhattacharya never allows us to comfortably settle in a space, and to look back, ruminating and making meaning of whatever came to pass. This is also relevant in the context of the “self” and the “other,” because the self’s continual effort to signify the “other” according to its own cognition is unequivocally thwarted in this narrative, pushing the novel to a dangerous brink. The world is a series of continuities, made clear by the dialogue between dogs and cats in their nocturnal procession: as one dog asks where exactly they are going and if it had been better if they had known the exact location of the place, the feisty cat answers that there is no space, all they have to do is to move further, and beyond. They leave behind the relic of a decadent human civilization that is Calcutta, a space that cannot escape a natural order of annihilation and possible rebirth at any cost. The humans shall suffer in their grimy caves while the animals actively struggle to make a change and look for a better future. Yet, even this finality is given a timeless vibe through the last lines of the novel:
The savage dog that has been let loose in Calcutta is coming towards its target with a speed of a hundred thousand kilometers per hour. We cannot precisely tell its dimensions and weight at this moment. The mad dog shall slam on Calcutta and will evaporate but the abyss created by the impact will be ten times wider than the dog itself and twice as deep. Stone particles worth a hundred times its weight shall be strewn all over the ether. After the first impact of the collision, there will be no air for a few seconds. The whole city shall smolder. Right after shall come the size of a million storms. Calcutta shall burn, melt, perish and turn into ashes. After this, the dust particles shall blot the sun. For how many days, that wintry night shall persist, nobody can foretell… Chanting this merciless foretelling, the dog fable Sirius has reached its conclusion. Calcutta is now an inert, awaiting stable. Its punishment is death.
But there are still seven hours to go. Woof! Woof! [Translation mine] (416)
Bhattacharya, perhaps one can assume, goes through an evolutionary arc in his grappling of the concept of the “other.” Although I have concentrated chiefly on the last phase where the author presents the “other” as a belligerent agent of chaos, a thorough reading of his oeuvre shall make clear that he slowly removed himself from the linear assumption that once the marginalized assumes the power, all shall be equal forever. In this article, I have tried to explain how Bhattacharya does not thrust any emancipatory role on the “other” but lets them speak freely while being on the margin, posing a greater challenge and a more intense threat to normative powers—thematically and linguistically. Bhattacharya leaves the rest for the reader to judge.
 
Notes:
1. A little aside is important here regarding the title of the novella. In Bengali, the sound K? (ke) is a form of question directly identical to “who?”. In here, however, K means “to” as in a form of address. This way Baby K Parijat might mean from Parijat to Baby. And as explained later in the main argument, Baby K also doubly serves as the eponymous heroine of the story, in which case, the work K can be taken as an abbreviation of “khanki,” a colloquial and extremely impolite synonym of “whore.”
2. “Fyat” is an onomatopoeic prefix, and anybody with primary conceptions of Bengali should know that this word generally signifies the flapping sound of a bird’s wing in flight.  fyataru hence becomes an extremely colloquial signifier of something that flies. Obviously enough, Bhattacharya’s “fyataru’s are flying humans who flap their hands, while chanting their fail-safe mantra: “fnyat fnyat shnai shnai”—“flippety flop flippety flop, swishy swish swishy swish.”
3. Bhat is a semi-archaic word in Bengali, given a twisted colloquial pun in Bhattacharya’s writing. Archetypically, a Bhat is used to describe a minstrel, but the word gained a popular connotation especially in the post 90s Bengali urban class which generally meant “talking bullshit.” For reasons that are discussed in the main body of the argument, the poet Purandar takes up his surname to signify both the meanings—he is an urban bard as well as somebody whose poetry makes no sense.
4. Ecocriticism, especially in close relation to postcolonial perspectives, has produced several seminal works regarding natural elements as the “others”—in counterpoint to an overly machinistic human civilization. Pablo Mukherjee, Graham Huggen, Franco Moretti or Kylie Crane have produced important works regarding environmental postcolonialism, ethics, transcultural world literature and the postcolonial animal.
Works Cited:
Bhattacharya, Nabarun. Fyatarur Bombachak o Anyanya. Calcutta: Saptarshi Prakashan, 2004. Print.
__________________. Sreshtha Galpa (Best Short Stories). Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, 2006. Print.
__________________. Upanyas Samagra (Collected Novels). Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing,
2010. Print.
__________________. Harbart. Trans. Arunava Sinha. New Delhi: Tranquebar Press, 2011. Print.
__________________. Baby K Parijat. Calcutta: Shaptarshi Prakashan, 2013. Print.
Dibyakusum Ray
Symbiosis Law School
dibyakusum776@gmail.com
© Dibyakusum Ray 2015
 

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Texts of Power, Acts of Dissent: Performability and Theatricality in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Short Stories
Priyanka Basu
Introduction
Incredibly I died shrouded from the vicinity of the human eye. There was a huge raucous on the street that night. On Bijaya Dashami, Maa, was journeying back with her children (who outnumbered the regulation set by family control measures) on a truck, while causing a sea of jostling onlookers to shed bucketful of tears. It was the same truck in which “out-of-stock” sacks of rice are compelled to wander the breadth of the city, ghost-like and in the thickness of night. They cannot come out in the light of the day. Hence, the best time for them to travel between storage rooms is at midnight. Maa, likewise, is travelling at night. A bizarre symphony was created by the collective sounds of the drums, band, cymbals and crackers. Often in the course of this pandemonium, the religious enthusiasts and organizers made announcements in the manner of crying out the goddess’s victory aloud, for those who had gathered. I, too, died during this time.[1] (Sreshtha Galpo 21)
The short story, “Bhashan” (“The Immersion”) begins with two seemingly incongruous imageries amalgamated by the writer’s alteration between literary language and everyday parlance. The goddess is on her journey back “home,” the “out-of-stock” sacks of rice travel in the depths of night from one of their homes to the other, and the truck is a common link between the two events. The prelude to “Bhashan” however prepares the readers towards the inherent incongruity in talking of “many things.” Borrowing from Lewis Carroll’s much-acclaimed poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in Alice in Wonderland (1871), “Bhashan” indicates the ripeness of a time that urges one “to talk of many things.” Taking absurdities as its reference frame, such as those in the act of ascertaining “why the sea is boiling hot” or “whether pigs have wings”[2], the short story underlines what general common sense or sentiment would discern as ludicrous: the pairing of the goddess with the rice sacks and their comparability by the virtue of a truck wandering in the night-time. To beat the significance of a cultural-religious ritual (Durga Puja) to a level of malleability that suits the image of the political hushed-ness in hoarding rice sacks, is to employ absurdity in order to shock common sense and sentiment. In this sense, it turns the neatness of the objective correlatives of a celebratory ritual into an incapacity of emotive expression, as well as into the related lifelessness of a would-be-immersed idol and a sack of rice. Undoubtedly, “Bhashan” begins with the event of a death and asserts it further to underscore the banality in re-performance of ritual.
            “Bhashan” is one of the many short stories written by Nabarun Bhattacharya (1948-2014), the unprecedented maverick litterateur in the Bangla language. Defying the literary norms of institutionalized Bangla, Nabarun’s use of language jolts the reader to repeated discomfort as his prose reflects magic realistic tendencies and often goes to the extent of Gonzo journalistic reporting (e.g., in his short story, “Kaktarua”, or The Scare-crow). His prose points sharply at political carnage as he undermines the standardizations of literary norms to produce a genre of writing that celebrates the fluidity of narrativization. In his own words, ritual and language are tied in their repetitive and thus, banal re-performance:
Every year, as the winter is about to decamp, there is a yearly ritual with the Bangla language. Ritual means repetition. The same numbers. Similar platitudes. Same knowledgeable mastication. One feels like eloping with the winter. But what can one do? This is Bengal’s fate—talking precocious bunkum.[3]
As a fitting diatribe to this “relentless flat and tedious buffoonery”[4], Nabarun emerges with his “prose of counter-insurgency” and his line-up of “subaltern saboteurs” – the Fyatarus.[5] The meaning-making capacities of both ritual and language have reached an aridity that can only be re-awakened by shock therapies of linguistic havoc within which the Fyatarus perform their collective carnivalesque of violence on deified structures of power.
            Nabarun Bhattacharya is almost immediately recognized by the virtue of his longer fictional works such as Herbert, Lubdhak, and Kangal Malshat (The War Cry of Beggars), or, the much celebrated poetic condemnation, E Mrityu Upatyaka Amar Desh Noy (This Valley of Death Is Not My Country). Often compared to the Russian writer-playwright, Mikhail Bulgakov, Nabarun’s rebellious approach is no less pronounced in the numerous short stories he wrote between 1968 and 2005 for various magazines and little magazines.[6] Some of these short stories span only a couple of pages (e.g. Congratulation) and exhibit an economy of language which carefully puts across the writer’s ideology and agenda at once in sharp prose; language, here, flows from everyday parlance to slapstick and finally to slang, thus producing a distinct affect on the reader that the depiction of the abject demands. The literariness of Nabarun’s prose, in this sense, is constitutes a baring of sentiments uppermost in one’s thoughts and also of the predisposition to represent the monstrosity of contemporary times. In the words of theatre director, Suman Mukhpadhyay who adapted Nabarun’s Herbert onscreen (2005) and his Kangal Malsat onstage (2006):
The political carnivalesque and the scornful burlesque prompted me to make a play out of the novel. The roughness, rawness and the immediacy are the essence of the production. I tried to maintain the agitational-propagandist spirit in the making. It is a play of our times, black times.[7]
Performance is a political act and the potential of Nabarun’s “agitational-propagandist” prose to be performed allows one to probe into the ruptures within the text that bespeak the possibilities of enactment. Performance as a responsible political act demands a close attention to the details of language and an apt representation within the context of conflicting times. As Dwight Conquergood puts it in writing about interventions in performance studies and of performance as a radical research:
The state of emergency under which many people live demands that we pay attention to messages that are coded and encrypted; to indirect, nonverbal, and extralinguistic modes of communication where subversive meanings and utopian yearnings can be sheltered and shielded from surveillance. (148)
How do we locate Nabarun’s prose within this performability of “subversive meanings”? What qualities do his prose uphold in order to annihilate the dispositif of neo-capitalism? Can we read the Fyatarus as containing the possibilities of re-performance—“sabotage, subversion and urination at the establishment”[8]—as opposed to the relentless tediousness of meaningless ritual? Does the coupling of grim description with black humour make his texts rife with possibilities of performable experiments? This article wishes to understand political performability and theatricality with reference to some of the short stories of Nabarun Bhattacharya. The stories thus chosen for analysis—“Fyataru”, “Basanta Utshab E Fyataru” (“Fyataru at the Spring Festival”), “Ondho Beral” (“The Blind Cat”), “Kaktarua” (“The Scare-Crow”), “Bhashan” (“The Immersion”) and “Aguner Mukh” (“The Face of Fire”)—reflect not only the commonality of themes between them, but also what Michel de Certeau terms as the “immense texturology” constituting the everyday, ordinary practices:
The ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” below the threshold at which visibility begins. They walk—an elementary form of experience of this city. They are walkers, Wandersmanner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban “text” they write without being able to read it. These practitioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen… (94)
            José Garcia Villa defines the contemporary short stories as “lost” short stories: “they are left dangling, unfulfilled, lost in the air.” (231) Furthermore, he stresses the quality of the short story as “fundamentally a dramatic vehicle” necessitating struggle and solution (232). To extend this understanding of the textural capacity of the short story as a dramatic vehicle to Nabarun’s short stories, is to probe into the meta-text of performability and theatricality in/through them. For example, both “Bhashan” and “Aguner Mukh” recount the predictability of a cultural ritual in its annual re-performance; “Ondho Beral” and “Kaktarua” have the seemingly inert blind cat and the scare-crow as audiences of abjection and stifling violence respectively; and both the “Fyataru” stories celebrate the subaltern saboteurs’ re-performance of insurrectionary violence in their dark humorous unfolding. Each pair of these short stories, therefore, can be read as the theatrical progression of exposition, climax and bathetic resolution. Yet, each of these short stories hold within itself the prospective of distinct individual performability in their celebratory antithetical pronouncement and consequent demolition. Nabarun was no writer of broiler stories as opposed to the inexorable production of “broiler plays, broiler novel, broiler poetry, broiler films, broiler criticism, broiler magazine” by clones. (Sreshtho Galpo 10) Nor was he a “celebrity” produced out of the fusion of clone, broiler and mediocrity – a celebrity positioned within what he himself depicts as the traitorous empire of Judas: “Judas country, Judas politician, Judas citizen, Judas judge, Judas film-director, Judas litterateur, Judas poet, Judas intellectual”. (275)[9] On the contrary, he believed in literature’s and the litterateur’s responsibilities in cultivating a necessary consciousness of the surrounding tyrannical world-order. (11) While his prose is an indictment against the networks of cannibalising power and violence, it also signals how such indictment is bustling with real possible performability; the short stories in comparison to the larger works of fiction like Herbert and Kangal Malsat thus can be read within this possibility of indictment through enactment. The following section discusses the theoretical paradigms of performance as a political act in order to further understand the questions of performability and theatricality in Nabarun’s short stories.
 
 
 
Understanding Performability of Texts in the Political Context: Theoretical Frameworks
In a recent dialogue with the London-based performance artist, Ansuman Biswas at the exhibition on The Travelling Archives in east London[10], Biswas spoke about some of his performance projects that extend theatre to the realm of political activism and that too with an eye for making meaning from common objects, symbols and events. An enlightening point in this discussion was the reference to London’s past Millbank Prison which is now the site of the Tate Britain: “The original plan for Millbank Prison, which opened in 1816, was for a Panopticon. The design for the building, conceived by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century, would allow a single watchman to observe all inmates of an institution.”[11] Artists Ruth Ewan and Astrid Johnston have designed the The Darks audio tour (approx. 50 minutes) that plays in the format of an audio guide. The tour then “investigates ideas around privacy, social control and power relations, past and present.” The strategy of the audio-guided performance thus summarizes:
Narrated by Carolyn Pickles, this audio guide also features real and fictional accounts of passers-by, including novelist Charles Dickens and writer and reformer Henry Mayhew, inmates such as Irish political prisoner Dennis B Cashman (who was transported to Australia from Millbank) and one-time prison governor, Arthur Griffiths.
Words scratched onto coins by unknown prisoners are also heard among the fragmented voices that make up The Darks.
 
The Darks can be taken as an entry point into understanding the proposed concept of performability in the political context and to devise a theoretical framework for the reading of related texts. In a sense, The Darks invokes a historicity that aligns past and present power networks, surveillance strategies, and logic of domination through consent. Through the use of the audio-guide—a normalizing visitor device guiding the viewer to the space of the museum—The Darks subverts what in Foucauldian terms can be understood as the invisible surveillance through technology. Here, the device (through innovations in voice and sound) becomes a subversive consciousness-creating vehicle that unfolds for the audience-visitor an alternate performability and dark history of a space normally conceived of as a museum.
            What happens when one tries to substitute consciousness with the body in performance instead? At this point, it then becomes pertinent to discuss what the role of the body constitutes of in the performance of the political, and therefore the performability of the text. In his chapter entitled, “When Consciousness Is Not Enough,” Randy Martin explicates why historically people as spectators have not transformed into political actors:
 
Yet I contend that consciousness, while undeniably critical, is not enough to move people into the political arena. There is a political heart, more than that, a political body, that must be conjoined with mind to turn social arrest to unrest and move people to the center stage of history. It has been the neglect of this body that has made worldly drama so frightening and kept people in the role of spectator rather than political actor. (1)
 
This inability of the spectator to turn into the political actor is there because the networks of domination operate more through consent than by coercion in order to achieve normalization: “[t]he legions of order do not brandish weapons but bring gifts. The torture chamber dissolves into the shopping mall.” (3) In order to subvert the normativity of consensus, mostly through cultural commodities, performance needs to be taken seriously as “a way of experiencing, enacting, and embodying political activity” (9) rather than merely some kind of a metaphor. Building on Martin’s conceptual framework of perceiving performance as “any experience of social life” (11), one can see how this experience of social life is based on different relationships as E.J. Westlake puts it: “The politics of representation is the politics of multiple relationships: of the character to the actor, the character to the person being represented, the history to the story, the place to the space of performance.” (8) Both the transformation of the spectator to a political actor and the representation of relationships through performance are legitimate to the understanding of the performability of the text. Performability is enthused foremost with potentiality of the text and the language therein, and gradually the way in which it bustles with the possibility of a politically-stimulated performance. But how can we conceptualize performability in performance and apply it with reference to political texts (here, Nabarun’s short stories)?
            Performability is not a neologism in the present context of this article and has been employed variously, from the analysis of computing and communication systems (see, John F. Meyer 139-156) to the possibilities of performance in a play-text (e.g., Seneca’s Thystes, or in Shakespeare’s Hamlet) (see, Riemer A Faber 427-442; Janette Dillon 74-86). In the present context of this discussion, however, the concept of performability is based on the qualities of the text and its language to become a responsible and politically-charged piece of performance. Do the short stories chosen for analysis in this context offer such possibility? Following from the formulations of Randy Martin, this article seeks to point towards a pattern in studying Nabarun’s short stories as performance texts – social arrest to unrest and finally to celebratory annihilation. Set within this pattern and logic of progression the short stories can be seen as three paired units: “Bhashan”-“Aguner Mukh”, “Ondho Beral”-“Kaktarua”, “Fyataru”-“Basanta Utshab E Fyataru”. The choice of such pairing units is however directed by the scope and limitations of this article. The exclusivity in their selection for discussion, on the other hand, is not random but essential in devising a framework through which the numerous other short stories of Nabarun can be modelled for analysis and embodiment through performance. This article, therefore, does not attempt to be an ambitious precursor to the further study of Nabarun Bhattacharya’s works in their social/cultural/political/performable contexts and instead wishes to initiate a dialogue with the texts in their performable possibilities. Having clarified this position, it is now pertinent to take into account (though briefly) as to what was Nabarun’s own take on performance, especially theatre.
            Nabarun’s elucidations on films (especially those of Ritwik Ghatak) unlike the availability of his views on contemporary theatre, are long, intuitive as well as informative. However, his brief[12] estimation of contemporary Bengali theatre is worth considering in order to discuss the issue of performability in his stories:
It is funny how the names “theatrics” and “hypocrites” have an audible similarity. I feel that recently our theatre is becoming too dependent on celebrities. That theatre is a collaborative art, and those who are related to the stage—known as walkers-on—who keep the stage alive – no one speaks of them anymore. We know there can be one or a couple of prima ballerinas, but it is also true that behind the successful productions of Bolshoi theatre a thousand workers perform laboriously.[13]
Theatre, for Nabarun (as it can be deduced from his views), is therefore consists of the material labour of the performer-worker as well as the worker-performer. One might find it pertinent in connection with this idea of labour to conceive of the “performative labour” of the performance-worker, though not spelt out in Nabarun’s brief comment on contemporary Bengali theatre. Alan Bryman defines “performative labour” as “the rendering of work by managements and employees alike as akin to a theatrical performance in which the workplace is construed as similar to a stage” and that it creates “the experience economy” where “[the] work of the person who stages the experience is crucial for the experience to remain in the customer’s memory” (104). Performability of the text precedes this “performative labour” which is then embodied in the actual act of performance – a political act. In the subsequent sections of this paper the short stories are discussed within this broad reference frame of performability as well as through the themes of (i) the banality of re-performance and ritual as social arrest; (ii) the spectacle of violence generating unrest; (iii) the passage from consciousness to body and the consequent theatricality of celebratory annihilation.
The Banality of Re-Performance and Ritual as Social Arrest: “Bhashan” and “Aguner Mukh”
…Nobody exchanges stories anymore. Nobody tells a story anymore. Although one was meant to listen to stories and fall asleep while still listening to them. There is no story-telling anymore. A story cannot even be successfully constructed even after much labour. Stories also come as one sleeps. They leave as one awakes. But, everything is coming to an end. There were stories to tell, stories that could be told, may be someone someday will tell them– everything is coming to an end. (274)
The passage of story-telling from a meaningful socio-cultural ritual to meaninglessness forms the crux of Nabarun’s indictment against the “loss” of stories. The hopelessness, lament and angst surrounding this loss of the ritual of telling and exchanging stories echoes his critique of the Judas world with its broiler, clone and mediocrity. Ritualization is a process that is designed and orchestrated to privilege a set of socio-cultural practices over other quotidian practices. However, this quality of the ritual as a performance is lost as it falls prey to the banality of re-performance under social arrest. Consider, for example the compulsory re-performance of the recorded Chandipath (1958) by Birendrakrishna Bhadra at the traffic signals of Kolkata before and after the Durga Puja, thus removing it from the specific performance context of the Mahalaya (the commencement of the festival). Another pertinent example could be the everyday re-playing of Tagore songs at the same traffic signals in the form of cultural assertion and thus the conditioning of the urban populace. In both these cases, the performability of the ritual is lost and the ritual event transforms to social arrest after continuous re-performance, thus detaching its meaningful relationship to the community.
            Nabarun captures this banality of re-performance in “Aguner Mukh”, a story that is set within the festive event of the Durga Puja in October 1972. Akin to his juxtaposition of two incongruous imageries of the idol of the goddess and the rice sacks in his other short story, Bhashan, Nabarun begins, here, by a blunt declaration: “As the puja approaches I feel, like everybody else, that a lot is going to happen, but ultimately nothing actually happens.” (216) The futility of the event is immediately asserted by the protagonist’s encounter with a recorded female voice on the telephone, conveying best wishes for Bijaya Dashami (the end of the festival). Nabarun conveys the thoughts of the protagonist, an unnamed youth, thus:
The numbers that I was dialling, the six-digit numbers of those times, had no meaning. Only that female voice was meaningful. That was the dial-tone of that eventful day. Who was that female through whose voice Calcutta Telephones conveyed its best wishes for Bijaya? In the year 1972? Hello! Can anybody tell me? (216)
“Bhashan” and “Aguner Mukh” were written in 1968 and 2001 for the magazines Parichay and Ebong Sayak respectively. “Bhashan” is a story told by a dead lunatic as he witnesses the activities surrounding his own corpse by a fellow female lunatic (pagli), pedestrians, on-lookers, and the police. The story unfolds as the pagli guards the corpse in the open park and cries over it thus turning the event into an amusing spectacle for the on-lookers. At the end of the story, as the corpse is taken away by the police in the black vehicle, it can still hear the pagli crying. “Aguner Mukh” focusses on a chance encounter between the unnamed protagonist and a random poor young boy exhibiting his fire-trick as part of the puja procession. The unnamed protagonist lends a helping hand to the young boy as he mistakenly consumes petrol in the course of showing his fire-trick. A brief dialogue follows between them which ends soon as the boy recovers from his nauseating condition and with a promise of another meeting “up or down” the way sometime. The story ends with the unnamed protagonist’s confession as to how that second encounter never happened again.
            One of the most visible literary devices that Nabarun repeatedly employs in his narratives is that of the placement of a current event in the story with a past event of political-historical significance. The effect of pointing towards the current event in the story through this literary practice of amplification not only achieves a political significance of the past historical event, but also places the current event/character within the aftermath of the past event; the banality of re-performance is thus emphasized through this amplification. Consider, for example, the dead lunatic in “Bhashan” as he explains post-death why he could not listen to the songs of his fellow pagli properly: “The reason is that there is a busy wide road facing the park where I died.  It has big buses, trams and many other vehicles running on it. Some convoys also passed by during the last War.” (21) Consider, also, the reference to Molotov cocktail and flame throwers as Nabarun describes how the poor young boy shows his fire-trick:
This trick contains the key to Molotov cocktail…The other military use of this trick is flame thrower. It is unparalleled in burning the thatched houses of the unsophisticated rustics. The Vietnamese experienced this fully, thanks to the operations of the American military. (217)
The banality of re-performance is at once abruptly shaken to hark a political consciousness by such historical alignment. The reference to war-time convoys in “Bhashan” follows from the description of the ritual of immersion during which the lunatic had passed away. Similarly, the reference to flame throwers, Molotov cocktail, and the related Vietnam War follows from the meaningless conglomerate of re-performances in the religious festival, and the annual access of the rural cultural exotica (the drummers) for urban spectators: “…this is how the rustics come to the city of Kolkata and after re-establishing Bengal’s pride and the complacency of Bengali cultural heritage, return to their Africa; this happens every year, this has been happening every year.” (217)
G J Ashworth considers commodification as a process of transforming history to heritage (16), while Susan Stewart points to the pertinence of souvenirs and miniatures in the creation of cultural heritage: “the nostalgic desire to present the lower classes, peasant life, or the cultural other within a timeless and uncontaminable miniature form.” (66) In Nabarun’s prose the nostalgia for miniature and the materiality of this transformation is achieved through first, the imagistic representation of re-performance (through commodification) and then, to the historic past from which the ritual has been removed though not completely. Although not in the sense of bridging the discord through a “parliament of things” (see, Bruno Latour 142-145), Nabarun does point continually to a discord that breeds political unconsciousness, inactivity, and an opium-induced banal re-performance. The title “Bhashan” and the repetition of the word towards the end of “Aguner Mukh”—“bhashan, bhashan, bhashan”—negate the sense of regeneration and birth that the ritual of idol-immersion carries within itself. Undoubtedly, therefore, the central event in “Bhashan” is of death and that of the loss of an encounter in “Aguner Mukh”, thus signifying the impossibility of performability. The following section shows how two of Nabarun’s other short stories show the movement towards consciousness and consequent unrest from this impossibility and social arrest.
The Spectacle of Violence Generating Unrest: “Ondho Beral” and “Kaktarua”
The government has no alternative except to intensify its repression. The police networks, house searches, the arrest of suspects and innocent persons, and the closing off of streets make life in the city unbearable. The military dictatorship embarks on massive political persecution. Political assassinations and police terror become routine.[14]
In the Minimanual of Urban Guerrilla, Carlos Marighella shows how an urban guerrilla differs radically from a criminal who “benefits personally from his actions, and attacks indiscriminately without distinguishing between exploiters and the exploited, which is why there are so many ordinary people among his victims.”[15] The context of violence is therefore what distinguishes the guerrilla from the criminal. Nabarun’s short story, “Kaktarua” (published in 1979 in Saptaho) which also makes a necessary clarification in the prelude—“None of the sections of this story is fictional” (61)—begins with this assertion of the context of violence. It depicts an incident from 15^th August, 1979[16] in which a number of agricultural labourers and Harijan leaders were attacked and killed by the feudal lords and police force of Bihar. A vehicle consisting of three of the zamindar’s appointed criminals approaches in the dead of night to the house of the Harijan leader, Nirbhay Paswan. Nirbhay is beheaded and the head is carried back with the murderers as a proof of the act and also to erase any evidence that they had killed him. What follows from this political murder is a sea of unrest and a series of events which further politicize and mediatize the violence. Nabarun writes of the consequent unrest by fellow villagers and the mediatization of the event in the following words:
People were coming from far away villages. As their numbers kept increasing, the region could hold no more people…they lifted the bed with Nirbhay’s beheaded corpse on it. Although it was broad daylight, they carried with themselves mashals and kerosene which they had brought with them in large numbers…As they reached Saraibajar they set fire on Thakur Dharmanath’s lentil godown, grocery and cloth shop. One of Thakur’s tractors was approaching, loaded with lentils from Bishanpur. They set that on fire as well. They also incinerated an ambassador. Thakur’s eldest son was on duty that day. He had to be killed as well since he had opened fire with his revolver. (64-65)
When this news is published in a renowned daily in Kolkata—that Kolkata, where everybody knows everything—the incident of murder and incineration in a village in Bihar appears in such brief format in one corner of the newspaper that it is impossible for the reader to fathom what exactly has happened. First of all, no one wants to read it. And if they read it by chance, they would feel that a large mob with criminal motives in some remote, uncivilized region of Bihar has set things on fire and killed a shopkeeper – such is the fun in receiving the news and writing about it…Our chivalrous press is struggling 24*7 to bring independence to this country, but the incident of the murder of agricultural labourers and Harijan leaders like Ganpat Ram, Nirbhay Paswan, Bharat Bind and others by the armed forces of Bihar’s zamindar on 15^th August, 1979 does not find even a millimetre of space in their newspapers. (65)
The discrepancy between the act of unrest and that of its deference in writing (or reporting) is what Nabarun reminds the readers in (non)-fictionalizing the killing. It is by bringing in the seemingly non-functional entity of the scare-crow that he points towards the necessity of consciousness as a pre-text for performability – the performability of unrest. The scare-crow is a passive on-looker, his grimace shows him laughing, and he cannot vote although he is a witness of everything from the murder to the unrest to the deference of social justice.
Like this village scare-crow who is a witness to the process of unrest following from the cold-blooded violence, the “ondho beral” or the blind cat (in “Ondho Beral”) performs a similar function of inactivity while it thrives on the remains of food in a small mofussil hotel. “It is not possible to know if it was blinded in a battle with some other cat or is it a condition from birth. It is not an urban cat. It is a cat from a mofussil by the river which is wrapped in a fishy smell.” (184) The scare-crow, on the other hand, is an obvious lifeless on-looker who also loses an eye as the murderers nervously and aimlessly shoot everywhere in the rush of carrying Nirbhay Paswan’s head back. There is no real act of violence in “Ondho Beral” which is a story of the blind cat as it feels familiar people and the surroundings of the hotel, and waits for a possible high tide to drift away in order for it to survive. The reference to violence in the story comes in the form of the recounting of an incident in which seven kittens in England were subjected to medical violence to fulfil the purpose of an experiment:
A scientific study was conducted in England on seven new-born kittens. The experiment was carried out by the safety and security department. We know that the kittens get their vision after a few days of their birth. The vision of those seven kittens were, however, terminated. Their eyes were sewed up and sealed. They were then allowed in that condition to grow up a bit and a number of experiments were conducted on them – like how do they respond to a loud noise, how do they respond if they are singed, what are their actions and reactions to different types of assault, etc. Thereafter they were killed and their brains were studied minutely to understand the effect of the assaults that were conducted on them in their blinded condition. As the animal-lovers of England became aware of these experiments, they protested vehemently and demanded that such violent experiments be stopped immediately. The blind cat heard all this but did not understand a word of it. (188)
The inability of the blind cat to comprehend the significance of this medical experimental violence and the protests following it is comparable to the way the scare-crow fails to act against what he sees. Both of them are bound by a lack, of lifelessness and sightlessness, and yet they become the foil for whom Nabarun aims his indictment – people who fail to channelize their consciousness to political action. As Randy Martin says, “At home we watch while the world screams. We sit and soak while the earth aches.” (1) It is “stage fright” as Martin further explains that arrests the transformation of consciousness to political action, the movement of performability to real performance. Both the scare-crow and the blind cat symbolize this potential of performability as eye-witnesses to violence and unrest. However, Nabarun’s (non)-fictionalized document against violent does not stop at the indication of the consciousness that fails to perform. Instead, he moves ahead with this indictment to allow it to result into the real performance, the celebratory annihilation. To achieve this progression, he creates his brigade of “subaltern saboteur”—the Fyatarus—who actually recuperate, attack and rejoice thus making the performable a theatrical event. The following section discusses the third and final unit of the short stories as what can be understood as the theatricality of celebratory annihilation.
 
The Theatricality of Celebratory Annihilation: “Fyataru” and “Basanta Utshab E Fyataru”
Mounds are these half-human, half-plant mutants that came to life about fifty thousand years ago, when an ape-man masturbated in a field of flowers, and up sprang these creatures, and they’re called Mounds. Since then, many of them have died off for various reasons, but the main cause of death of Mounds is the premature death caused by creatures called Vegans who are evil creatures who can’t stand Mounds at all.[17]
In the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, the drawings of the Afro-American visual artist, Trenton Doyle Hancock were recently displayed as part of the exhibition – Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing.[18] A large part of the exhibition dealt with the character of Torpedoboy, a representative Mound, in his “Encounter with Vegans.” Torpedoboy, in Hancock’s own words is a superhero; “he can fly, he can lift things.” “Encounter with Vegans” serializes in a narrative fashion how Torpedoboy sabotages the Vegans’ gathering at a picnic:
ONE DAY WHILE PATROLLING THE SEWERS FOR SCUM, TORPEDOBOY CAME ACROSS A BUNCH OF VEGANS SEATED AT A PICNIC TABLE. THEY WERE ENJOYING A FRESH BATCH OF TOFU BLOCKS. THE HEAD VEGAN AT THE TABLE WAS DR.-O-TOFU OILS.
 
IN ONE BLASPHEMOUS SWIPE, TORPEDOBOY SCOOPED UP AN ARMLOAD OF TOFU FROM THE VEGANS’ TABLE. “OUR FOOD LIST!” YELLED THE VEGANS.
Torpedoboy, therefore, manifests the subversive qualities that hold in opposition to the Vegans, a carefully chosen name for those who belong to the upper quarters of the hierarchy of social class. Nabarun’s characterization of the Fyatarus resemble the Torpedoboy to a large extent in the way they aspire and attempt to sabotage the privileged practices of the upper quarters. Through the Fyatarus who sabotage, create a havoc, fart and urinate on the establishment, Nabarun creates a phantasmagoria that transforms the performable to the performed. Fyatarus are undoubtedly “a political chorus which permits a cacophony of voices” (Randy Martin 2), but they are also a distinct for being able to assert their bodily presence in the most Rabelaisian manner.
            In his two short stories “Fyataru” (1995; published in Proma) and “Basanta Utshab E Fyataru” (2004; published in Aksha Ei Samay), Nabarun sketches the Fyatarus as entities beyond social control. In “Fyataru”, Madan who is already a member of this saboteur clan initiates D S into becoming a member. Nabarun underlines the potentiality of becoming a Fyataru in the following dialogue between D S and Madan:
Madan: …You have become a good Fyataru. You will become efficient since you’re learning at an alarming speed.
D S: I can’t even understand how I became one.
Madan: You need to have proper qualifications. When you go to big offices they make you wait and delay unnecessarily in meeting you. You are no better—you abuse them in your mind, dig into your nose and rub it on the chair, tear the foam of the chair in between your nails, tell me, haven’t you done all this?
D S: Yes. Done that.
Madan: Damage. Damage things whenever you can. You have to remember this. We recruit those who are able to do this. (155-156)
Through the mantra of fyat fyat shnai shnai, the Fyatarus fly and infiltrate spaces such as the Floatel – a floating hotel on the Ganges where the distinguished urban citizens party through the night. Nabarun enlists the guests thus: “NRI sahibs, dancer, smuggler, haoladar, fashion designer, model, politician, beautician, owner, mafia, DSDD, PA to pimp, pimp of MOU, MP, MLA, coach, gigolo, publisher, court poet, king, queen…” (158) On this list of distinguished guests—products of the neo-liberal economy—the Fyatarus direct their assault by dropping objects like human shit, broom, filth, a discarded toothbrush, bed pan, remains of trimmed hair from the beauty salon etc. Likewise, in “Basanta Utshab E Fyataru”, the Fyatarus themselves do not sabotage the event of spring festival in a posh urban housing, but mobilize a host of slum-dwellers from the neighbouring shanties to disrupt the event. The mob attacks the cultural function by pelting bricks, glass bottles, and tea cups while the three Fyatarus—Madan, Purandar Bhat and D S—laugh at the mayhem as they watch from the roof of Himgiri Apartment.
            If we understand theatricality as radicalizing the neatness of performance and allowing the spectator to a self-conscious perception, every act of sabotage by the Fyatarus (like Torpedoboy’s attack on the Vegans) is infused with theatricality. The Fyatarus also come under domination sometimes as a consequence to this theatricality, e.g. D S is arrested by the Kolkata police after the Fyatarus’ attack on Floatel. However, the Fyatarus are also able to trounce social control: Madan approaches D S in his prison cell and reminds him of the mantra that helps them fly. Nabarun ends his story Fyataru with a simple indication- “The lock-up had a window.” (159) If Fyataru ends with this potentiality of the saboteurs to escape the forces of social control, “Basanta Utshab E Fyataru” re-asserts the theatricality as a consequence of this escape. The spring festival is clearly partitioned between the suave high culture of the urban elite of Himgiri Apartment and that of the Dionysian euphoria of the lumpen proletariat. The Fyatarus, here, are potential catalysts or mediators, transforming the performability of the collective angst of the slum-dwellers into the theatricality of annihilation; rather than the Fyatarus, the slum-dwellers as an oppressed class of urban inhabitants become the political actors of the performance. As the spring festival programme ends in a fiasco, the three Fyatarus inhabit the flat of fellow comrade Nabani Dhar to celebrate the annihilation with fish fries. If Torpedoboy is conceived through a cartoon-narrative, a visual art performance, Nabarun sketches his Fyatarus through dark humour, slapstick and parody – a performability of language itself which has thus seen the representation of the Fyatarus on-stage and on-screen as explicating the theatrical possibilities of Nabarun’s narrative.
Conclusion
I watched one immersion after the other as I stood at the edge of the footpath…a band of young children, playing on their little flutes, the tune a patriotic one, when you see them you feel as if they are little fascists marching on…rich urbane youth trying to embody the lumpen for just one evening…(217)
With an eye for minute and descriptive detail, Nabarun negates any set literary standard of the Bengali language through his depiction of incongruity. The performability of his language allows the reader to read his depictions as separate montages, flashbacks and shot-reverse-shots. Nabarun’s short stories are, therefore, essential “dramatic vehicles” embedded in performability. This article has tried to discuss a handful of Nabarun’s short stories within the themes of performability, re-performance, ritual, violence and theatricality. In doing so, the stories have been taken as paired units to highlight a movement from exposition to climax and finally to a bathetic resolution. Performability, in this regard, has been taken as a concept rather than a model for analysis of literary texts. As a result, the reading of performability with respect to Nabarun’s short stories needed a prior conceptualization. This article has attempted to understand performability through the theoretical concepts of analysing political performances. Nabarun is first and foremost a literary activist and his potentially performative texts cannot be appropriately analysed without a framework for reading texts of performance. Once this framework has been set, and the nature of performability has been assessed, theatricality emerges as another fundamental theme in reading some of these stories. The short stories cannot be mapped under any strict literary categorization. On the other hand, they can be read easily and thematically if they are primarily identified as performable documentations of contemporary conflicts.
            The challenges and difficulties in reading, understanding and analysing Nabarun’s short stories through the concept of performability has been mostly due to the lack of research on the writer. As a result of this dearth of an absolutely necessary archive of references on his large body of work, this article has often resorted to references from other larger global cultural texts and performances (e.g. The Darks tour or the Torpedoboy) mainly in order to achieve a comparable model as also to ascertain the relevance of Nabarun’s works within the broader disciplines of literary, cultural and performance studies. Given this attempt to study Nabarun in a new methodological approach, the chosen short stories have not been scrutinized amply in many ways; the scope and limitations of this article also contribute towards this selective analysis. What this paper has tried to do alternatively is to tease out some of the themes through which the progression (though not chronological) of Nabarun’s short stories can be seen as performance texts. It is interesting that two of Nabarun’s larger fictions have already been adapted in two different performance media, and a third documentary (by the director Q) on the writer himself is under production. Such initiatives in depictions through performances further justify why and how Nabarun’s texts are relevant scripts of political performances, and this article has been a study in explicating this relevance through the examples of his short stories.

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Priyanka Basu
SOAS, University of London
priyankabasu85@gmail.com
© Priyanka Basu 2015

Notes:
[1] Translation mine. All translations in this paper, unless otherwise mentioned, are mine.

[2]   Both of these quotes are taken from Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in Alice in Wonderland.
                 

[3] See, “Aquarium” in Humanities Underground, <http://humanitiesunderground.org/aquarium/>.
                 

[4] Ibid.
                 

[5] I have borrowed the phrase “subaltern saboteur” for Fyatarus from Aninda Purakayastha (2015: 99). Purakayastha also describes Nabarun’s prose as a prose of counter-insurgency.
                   

[6] For a chronological list of these stories as they appeared in various magazines, see Nabarun Bhattacharya 15-17.
                 

[7] See, Suman Mukhopadhyay, <http://www.sumanmukhopadhyay.com/inside-film-theatre_kangal.asp>.

[8] See, Purakayastha 90.

[9] The lines are taken from Nabarun’s another short story, Shob Shesh Hoye Jachhe, 273-277.

[10] For details on The Travelling Archive in East London exhibition, see <http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/the-travelling-archive-in-east-london/>.

[11] See, <http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-darks>.

[12] The quotation has been transcribed and translated from Nabarun’s views on contemporary Bengali theatre available on YouTube.  [<

>]   

[13] See, <

>.

[14] See, the section on “Popular Support” in the Minimanual of Urban Guerrilla <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marighella-carlos/1969/06/minimanual-urban-guerrilla/ch38.htm>.

[15] See, the section on “A Definition of the Urban Guerrilla” in Ibid. <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marighella-carlos/1969/06/minimanual-urban-guerrilla/ch01.htm>.

[16] Note that 1979 was also the year of the Marichjhapi massacre of refugees from East Pakistan.

[17] See, <http://www.art21.org/texts/trenton-doyle-hancock/interview-trenton-doyle-hancock-storytelling-characters-and-colors>.

[18] See, <http://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibition/trenton-doyle-hancock-skin-and-bones-20-years-drawing>.
 

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Strategic Outsiderism of Fyatarus:  Performances of Resistance by ‘Multitudes’ after ‘Empire’
Samrat Sengupta
Empire of Biogovernance: Open or Closed?
In the aftermath of two world wars, followed by a cold war era, as we enter a system of neo-liberal governmentality which ensures apparent peace and security to the world population, the strategy of power undergoes transformation. It aims less to impose the knowledge/power paradigm in constituting the docile bodies and minds that would be beneficial to power. The objective shifts from determination of the subject towards managing the subject according to his race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and other preferences. Apparently the Eurocentric colonial dominance and hegemony of imposing power and disciplining the subject gives way to a more free world with multiple identities to choose from and live with.  The objective of power shifts towards a certain management of differences. The old Empires ended with the last breath of colonialism and imperial dominance. US as the power centre got replaced by a more fluid and non-uniform power-structure/apparatus. The presence of this power is naturalized and neutralized, as it manages and attempts to know each and every nook and corner of the world, and therefore controls through that knowledge. A system of information network and fluidity of resources and information has created a global nexus of power which appropriates and accommodates all variations and multiplicities around the globe. This produces a new idea of Empire that is all pervasive and omnipresent. It is present everywhere and therefore cannot be identified anywhere. It shifts the binary of centre and periphery towards a new economy of domination and marginalization – new working of power that is more dispersed and spectral. It is different from political and economic empires of the past which were geographical and territorial. It also gives us a sense of permanence and finality of history, or makes the historical trajectory of progress or advancement pre-designed and targeted.
            The strategy of power in all ages has been to deliver a foreclosure to the current economy of belonging – to smooth the rough ends of confusion and difference and give the system of existence an apparent neutrality and naturalism. It may seem that there is no outside to this power. It operates primarily on the basis of hegemony and trains the subject to its encodings giving it a truth-value. In Foucauldian pastoral power, the notion of divinity acted as the hegemonic force to maintain order. In disciplinary power structure disciplining became an act of shaping the mind of the subject to a certain notion of truth and well-being, which helps to maintain power. Biopolitical power coupling with its rapid spread through information network attempts to maintain and manage all differences by knowing and controlling. It becomes a representational crisis therefore to produce an antithesis to this structure – an outside to its enframing. It is important to relocate the “literary” in this context which has always been a counter-strategy to the maneuverings of power – its appropriations and manipulation. It is important particularly to this context when not only different signs but also the traces – the textual absences are attempted to be absorbed and appropriated to this nexus of power – the Empire. This essay attempts to address such a crises.
Foucauldian notion of power apparently drives in this representational crisis in the context of power.  If the subject is constituted by power then can he be accountable for social change? Then how can we account for historic change and transformation of regimes of power, if there is no outside to the workings of the apparatus of power? If we consider post-structuralist notions of change proposed by Jacques Derrida then we will see how Derrida shifts the religious notion of messianism towards the notion of “messianic without messianism” (Derrida 2002 56; Derrida 1994 211). While different religious faiths believe in a radical divine intervention totally alien to the structure which would suddenly arrive and intervene to bring change, that change is determined by the ideology of that faith. In Derrida’s notion however such moment of arrival of messiah is undecidable and unforeseeable, yet a possibility of radical change remains folded always and already within the structure. Derrida points towards the incalculability of future to-come which is not possible to be fully determined by the present apparatus. It is like the radical alterity – the other of the self of history and politics – its current dynamics.
When the logic and rationality of the globalized world has produced its own end – reached its own logical conclusion of free flow of information and resources, and when Fukuyama is announcing the “end of history” argument suggesting we have reached a final system where no further change is possible, then Hardt and Negri announce:
Empire not only manages a territory and a population but also creates the very world it inhabits. It not only regulates human interactions but also seeks directly to rule over human nature. The object of its rule is social life in its entirety, and thus Empire presents the paradigmatic form of biopower. Finally, although the practice of Empire is continually bathed in blood, the concept of Empire is always dedicated to peace — a perpetual and universal peace outside of history. (xv)
Hardt and Negri would talk about how the multitudes maintained by the economy of power would ab-use, or use on their own the strategies of new global Empire in order to subvert the structure from within. In every discourse a certain possibility of performative shift can be recognized. This concept carries traces of Hegelian master-slave dialectic and Marx’s description of how the proletariat produced by the bourgeoisie would go against the power structure eventually. However, we must recognize that the new mode of biopower coupled with information-power¹ leads to a more control-freak society or “societies of control” (Deleuze 2-7), where ab-use of power or any performative shift becomes difficult. The objective of Empire is to redefine and appropriate each and every difference and dissent to its own purpose and use – to its own network. This end of history – this arrival of finality is not death of the presence but it is a perpetuation of the present moment without end – a world order of universal peace and stability. If we go through Foucault’s notion of biopower elaborated in his lectures Birth of Biopolitics, Society Must be Defended, and Security, Territory, Population,² we can observe how following Kant’s notion of impossibility of perpetual peace, Foucault calls peace a perpetual war to maintain order in the biopolitical regime. This is a strategic warfare fought through welfare state and global commerce. It naturalizes and neutralizes the current world order and ascribes a spectral presence to everything misfit to this new Empire without borders. Everything that belongs to the past – every identity that is different and resistant to the current world order are named, identified, defined and controlled. The control is not established by imposing force but through strict vigilantism and apparent freedom ascribed to those differences so long as they are knowable to the apparatus. There is an originary violence of maintenance and predetermination in this regime of peace and security. Security becomes a ploy for knowing, naming and controlling in order to maintain peace. This regime of power and truth categorizes people into subjects of development and rights and manages them by knowing and responding to their demands according to their identity, thereby taming the possibilities of revolution or greater political change. The Empire institutes two kinds of violence – the originary violence of maintenance and the protective violence of attacking the elements it perceives as a threat to its system. The Empire does not wage war or becomes destructive so long as it is possible to know and appropriate the differences. It justifies its violence in the name of peace, security and welfare for all.
Modern tele-technologies in alliance with biogovernance would ensure communications at work – would transform all data into digital information thereby securing all differences and all counter possibilities. This is the model of the new Empire. Its objective is to maintain its system of signs and absorb all dissent and difference, all absences, silences and traces to that system. Derrida in a seminar on Communication delivered, his famous lecture “Signature, Event, Context”. Ironically it questions the perfection of communication itself. In any communication there is an addresser and an addressee but Derrida argues both to be not fully present. If the addressee is fully known then there will be no desire for communication. Derrida borrows his idea from J.L. Austin and elaborates to show how there is a fundamental unknowability that makes communication necessary in the very first place and which asserts that the communication is an impossibly possible task that always has the chance of overriding its actual intention. This is fundamental to language. Derrida writes:
In order for my "written communication" to retain its function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable-iterable-in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability- (iter,  again, probably comes from itara, other in Sanskrit, and everything that follows can be read as the working out of the logic that ties repetition to alterity) structures the mark of writing itself,  no matter what particular type  of writing is  involved. (7)
So in every communication there is a possibility of becoming other of the language – producing something disconcertingly different or subversive to the actual plan or intention. This is a process of producing the other – iterability – a difference that is produced through repetition and yet is unanticipatable from the structure of repetition. The objective of power therefore is always haunted by its other which can be realized in each act of its repetition. Derrida calls it performativity. In each performance there is departure from the script that is unintentional. Such is the politics of reading and writing – politics of reading that becomes new writing – creating possibilities unintended by the text. The moment of the literary is the moment of writing this other – performing this other through an act of reading/writing – ab-use of language. Literature insinuates its own counterpossibilities of becoming. Literature is able to question and resist the autoimmune structure of power, which identifies its own interior as resource of terror to itself and thus attempts to control and restrict it – give it a narrative foreclosure. The positivist humanist scholarship would talk about a structural transcendence to this closure – a theoretical outside to the apparatus of language and belonging (both intricately linked and constitutive of each other). The other is outside the structure – it is to be found in the left-over of narrative foreclosure of existence – something which remains beyond its scope. But autoimmune structure of state and governance has become inclusive of all aberrations – all variations and particularities through foreknowledge and tracking down. In such case what should be the moment of the literary? Can we yet talk about a literature which gives us hope for a modernist transcendence? When everything is sucked in a protean, shape changing, appropriating structure where there cannot be an outside, what and how would be the literary imagination? In this neo-liberal and bio-political apparatus can we re-imagine the absolute alterity – the radical other which cannot be accommodated and which directs us towards a future radically different from the present, yet flowing from the present? The hypothesis here would be to re-think such an alterity or alternation as the moment of the literary or redefine literary as the eruption of that absent present other in the economy of biogovernance. However we might question the possibility of literary representation as an explication of narrative performativity, where each representation through an act of repeating performs the difference and therefore challenges the hegemony and disciplining of power-structure that attempts to fixate and stabilize itself. In an autoimmune structure of power where all differences are absorbed within, perhaps total terror would be the new form of performance that would end all performance. But the question remains as to how and why we can stage this negative performance or performance of negation, as that which would end all dialogue and possibilities of becoming. In the next section through a reading of the politics in West Bengal in the post-liberal era in the short stories of writer Nabarun Bhattacharya we shall explore this politics of representing the performance of negation amidst the totality of power.
Communities of Resistance: Nabarun Bhattacharya and Post-Human Ethics of Transformation
Twenty seven years on
Bread with Jam
Then came Burger made of ham
More haughty now Radha of Shyam
Sleepless nights
Colorful riddles complain from pillow
“Life is however a crazed lover hero
Smell it with some care”
Tells me Derrida and Foucault – two mad flying jokers.
                                                - Bengali Poet Srijato in “Uronto Sob Joker” (Srijato 50-51)³
The above quote by the contemporary Bengali poet Srijato with post-modern sensibilities refers to a ‘transition’ in the politics and culture of West Bengal – a transition from a pattern of life where there was limited resources, possibilities and aspirations towards one, which promises uninterrupted flow of capital and resources. It refers to the 27^th year of CP(I)M rule (when the poet wrote this poem, the party was still in power) which just ended after its prolonged career of 34 years of uninterrupted power. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) which in short is referred to as CP(I)M, came to power after the period of Emergency with promises and hopes for the oppressed classes, with dreams of transforming the poverty stricken villages through its land-reform policies. Its objective was to change the class-character of politics from comprador bourgeoisie to one which involves more participation of the masses. Mass movements, demands for higher wages and improvement of working conditions of laborers, allegedly became the cause of closing down of industries and opposition for establishment of new ones. For a long time, middle classes complained about the inaction on the part of the government in providing the state of West Bengal, those facilities and comfort, that global flow of capital promised since 1980’s and 1990’s. It was really a long period since the middle-classes in West Bengal were tuned to live a humble life, eat bread and jelly and be contended with cultural activities facilitated by the government. These activities were meant to mould a band of faithful intellectuals who would support it and help in maintaining its hegemony. But the lure of capital could not be avoided for long. The doors of protected national economy were opened to the planetary flow of global capital. Partha Chatterjee shows how it becomes “difficult to conceal the seductive appeal of globalization. The elite and the middle classes are the first to protest: “Why should our standards of living and the quality of our goods and services be so low?”” (Chatterjee 91) The Left party, just as the Right, could not but respond to this question. The necessity for transformation towards a post-Fordist economy was felt which would be characterized more by consumption and less by production.
            As people were gradually becoming consumers of social welfare provided by the state, the workers got to be characterized by their capacity to bargain in the labor market. They organized more in terms of their capacity to participate in the circuit of global capital than in terms of their respective role in production. Instead of getting into the expected protest against the onslaughts of neo-liberal capitalism, the ruling Left gradually paved way for its successful entry and control over the state, with the establishment of new urban spaces – the shopping malls, housing complexes and service industries like Information Technology and B.P.O’s, that would ensure the going global of the elite and middle classes. So finally, they got entangled in the “naturalness” of global order, which as Foucault suggests is characterized by “processes of a naturalness specific to relations between men, to what happens spontaneously when they cohabit, come together, exchange, work, and produce” (Foucault 2007 449). But in this re-conceptualization of capital, the concern that has to be addressed is that of marginalization and resistance. Two routes of analysis that we shall refer to in this regard are firstly, Partha Chatterjee’s notion of “Political Society” which he derives from Foucault’s notion of population⁴ and secondly, Negri’s idea of Multitudes (Hardt and Negri 2004; Negri 2008).
Surely in this global network of relations and flow, one gets confused about what is true and good – to which direction human beings must aspire to move as a totality: how they must become ethical and responsible towards each other in the face of the Empire which is uncontested, imposing and hegemonic. In the above lines, the poet’s reaction, might be thought to have been directed towards a certain kind of application of French poststructuralism and its German antecedents which Hardt and Negri called ‘weak philosophy’ (Hardt 1-9;  Negri 13-24), as it is alien and context-ridden. Amidst the totality of the Empire which does not have any competitor after the cold war, the task of political philosophy seems purely descriptive – a theoretical, hermeneutic exercise, that is just like the Empire, trans-local in nature. Derrida and Foucault in the language of the poet are described as flying jokers who simply suggest that life is a crazed lover and one must smell it carefully. The irony and nihilism towards the circuits of Empire – its hegemony is clear. It is also clear how nihilism and inaction is allegedly ingrained in philosophical thinking after Empire. It can thus be argued along the lines of thinkers like Negri, Vattimo, Esposito, Virno and Agamben, if nihilism is important in political thinking and if it is so, why is it so? It can also be argued how totality of Empire makes resistance possible without being anchored to any particular ideology. Above all, it might be suggested that biopolitics and governmentality in 21^st century does not simply produce the naturalness of Empire, but also exposes the constitutive nature of all discourses – the contingency of the world and the self. Life after biopolitics can be shown as nothing but a parody of the grand philosophical projects of modernity. Indeed, rather than associating poststructuralism uncritically with denial and nihilism, it would be interesting to enquire into the structural relation between the two and show how poststructuralism transforms existential nihilism towards an ethico-politics of the impossible.
            In the context of political and social transformation of West Bengal, which we have already mentioned, now, we shall bring into discussion some flying characters from the world of Bengali fiction. They enunciate the crisis we are discussing – the crisis of deploying and articulating protest and resistance in face of the totality of the Empire. The discussion would push us towards a redefinition of the literary as a method of transcending the tyranny of signification and epistemic foreclosure in the act of repeating the system of signs in the global apparatus. In Bengali literary world, the appearance of Fyatarus, the flying human beings, whose task is like poltergeist to create nuisance and perform sabotage happens in the current millennium. In early 2000’s in form of short stories these characters appeared in some Little Magazines. Nabarun Bhattacharya, the author of the stories collected them into a book called Fyatarur Bombachaak (The Honeycomb of Fyatarus), in 2004. Before that he completed a novel on same characters called Kangal Malsaat in 2003, and wrote two more books – a novel titled Mausoleum and another collection of short stories titled Fyatarur Kumbhipaak (Whirlwind of Fyatarus). Our current discussion would focus primarily on the stories in Fyatarur Bombachaak⁵. Dates of their publication are important, as after 2000, agitation against the hegemony of the left government started polarizing more and more, and Nabarun Bhattacharya himself was one of the major spokesperson against the Left government’s attempt towards neo-liberalization and forceful land-acquisition. Nabarun Bhattacharya, son of the communist people’s playwright Bijan Bhattacharya and Mahasweta Devi, an author who wrote on marginal people – the Tribal and the Dalits, comes from a Marxist background. He is an author with strong Marxist lineage but at the same time with strong post-humanist sensibilities which makes him an ardent critique of hegemonic leftism.
            All of the eleven stories in the collection have a structural similarity where we see three characters – D.S., Madan and Purandar Bhaat (he joins from the sixth story), apparently useless and unsuccessful in life, collectively performing some nuisance or doing sabotage to some apparently serious events such as a marriage ceremony, a poetry festival or a fashion parade. Sometimes they have some personal reasons for doing so (as in “Kobi Sanmelone Fyataru” or “Fyatarus at Poetry Festival” (Bhattacharya 2004 72-88, it was done as Purandar, an aspiring poet was denied a chance to read his poems in the festival) or they do it for reasons purely impersonal (as in “Subhobibahe Fyataru” or “Fyatarus at a Marriage Ceremony” (Bhattacharya 44-53) it was done as the groom, the son of a wealthy jeweler was the one whose previous wife was killed for dowry). All these sabotages are temporary, immediate and funny. Sometimes they spread garbage from above, sometimes they steal the secret files of corrupt businessmen and anonymously hand them to the media, sometimes they are content just spreading rumor about bomb inside a catamaran thus creating confusion and chaos. All these can be thought of more as parodies of resistance. They erupt from immediate anger and desire for subversion of anything exclusively good and perfect. More than resistance, these acts can be thought of as denial – desire for brushing aside a certain social order that is compulsive but exclusive, where everybody is not allowed. In a culture after Empire, there is no hope for programmatic resistance. It is not clear to which group the fight is directed. But the anger and will to resist is not false. The activities of Fyatarus are curiously resistant towards modernity of the Empire from within. Unlike what Paolo Virno would argue here the “mass intelligence” (Virno 26-37) that acts in response to the nihilism is not mobilized towards productive work-force. Unlike Partha Chatterjee’s political society, their politics is not that of identified group interest but simply a politics of rejection – they come together and become Fyatarus for rejection, denial and sabotage.
The Foucauldian model of Governamentality works on the principle of managing the “dangerous classes” (Chatterjee 2008 62) – people who could not be hegemonized by the system. Governmentality focuses here on the interests of population groups.⁶ These groups are not characterized by their utopian affiliation to any community with respect to their origin, but organized in terms of specific interests that could not be fulfilled through direct legal arrangements. Partha Chatterjee calls such politics, the politics of the governed. The State, on the one hand cannot stop the flow of capital; on the other hand in order to maintain peace and security, they have to ensure the reversal of the effects of primitive accumulation that is, taking away of land and property for the sake of development. The government must ensure that peace is not interrupted and capital flows smoothly. (Chatterjee 2008 53-62) This is the logic of the world after great peace of unchallenged power of the Empire. Virno’s model in the line of Negri and other Italian thinkers is based on the ‘multitudes’ for whom the programs of capitalist development are not aimed, but its networks enable them to use their knowledge and skills to participate in technological post-Fordist modernity and contribute to it.⁷ While in Partha Chatterjee we see a positive faith in effective compensation of primitive accumulation and adverse effects of capitalist programs towards the dispossessed, in Virno we see how participation to Governmentality is possible through nihilism. People, in a compulsion to participate, do so, as there is a totality in which they live and the only possible form of living is to be strategic towards that totality. This feeling of totality or what Agamben calls “irreparable” is connected with nihilism (Agamben 39-42, 89-106).
The politics of nihilism, the politics of a sense of realization of totality and closure of the Empire has two dimensions. On the one hand it exposes the existential aspect of politics – how dwelling and thinking are tied into an ensemble. On the other hand it points towards a residual activism which is constituted upon left-overs of different political struggles – class war, religious struggle, and identity politics based on race, gender, ethnicity and nationality. When possibility of all forms of struggle seems existentially closed because of the pervasive, regulatory power of the Empire one might yet resist hopelessly. This resistance would emerge from the existential locations that could not be accommodated within the nexus of dominant power structure. One nevertheless is a part of the Empire, participates and negotiates with it but at the same time is compelled by his situatedness to resist it.
Communities of Fyatarus represent habitation of such spaces. The descriptions of dust, filth, public urinal, broken chairs, and black and white television pervade the stories. This is a pattern of life towards which we are blind in the developing megacity of clean corridors. The descriptions are caricatures of urban development. While magical spaces of large housing complex and shopping malls are invading the city-space of Kolkata we are becoming evasive about this pattern of life. They seem to be impossible cohabiters of the emergent world order. As violent alternative of plush corridors these spaces seem ghostly, Fyatarus are also like ghosts. They belong to the city as marginal characters that fly in order to spread anarchy and confusion, destroy events and activities which don’t allow them to participate. They are a part of the Empire, yet could not be accommodated. They remain intoxicated most of the time drinking local liquor. They represent a short-circuit between the civil society inebriated by desire for access to global capital and good life and also the political society which is not sanctioned by legal structures and depends on the supply of the welfare state that can anytime cease their right to participate. They perform refusals of the Empire. They are the Multitudes. Negri defines Multitudes as “a class concept based on the concept of labor, on its exploitation and on the antagonism which is created within exploitation.” (181) However such definition is again economic in its character. Multitudes can simply be thought of as singularities that realize their locatedness as distinct with respect to the totality of the Empire. They are unorganized masses who for various reasons resist the Empire. They resist and yet they do not have any foundation to their resistance. It is anti-foundational in its existential mode of production. Therefore they are uprooted and they fly. They are loosely connected to the structure of Empire and they take off and land playfully. They are perhaps not a major threat to the Empire but are a cause of anxiety and indeterminacy that haunts the totality of the Empire from within.
If we see more into the social situations of Fyatarus this will become clear. D.S. is named after a brand of liquor – Director’s Special. He is a stock dealer whose wife elopes every now and then. He wears a terry line shirt and carries an attaché case with him with his initials engraved. He is dark, short and fat – ugly in conventional norms and is described as an ugly toad. Madan, who initiates him to become a Fyataru is toothless and carries false tooth in his pocket. They cannot be simply described as proletarians but somehow marginalized in their own ways. Madan’s weird ways of earning by selling fishes of his dirty little marsh or cultivating mushroom inside wet mat are exaggerations of non-conformism to corporate capital. They are caricatures of resistance and hyper-examples of those who could not be fitted in the structures of Empire. Purandar Bhat, another Fyataru in line is a failed poet. The Bengali meaning of the word bhat means trash. So he acknowledges that whatever he writes is trash but wants recognition. He aspires to read his poems in a poetry-session. There is a post-humanist confession that writing poetry is perhaps fruitless – reasonable trash in the protean, cunning, all-embracing structure of the Empire. All these characters participate and live within the Empire. They also desire to get its positive fruits but existentially they deny its dominance. If we consider how the poetry-festival was organized in the story “Fyatarus in Poetry Festival”, we see NRI poets and Bengali poets who have backing and recognition are only allowed to read their works. (Bhattacharya 2004 72-88) It privileges a certain pattern of dwelling and thinking. Purandar is against such totalizing cultural chauvinism. His poems are parody like, slang infested, short and mischievous. They grow often out of immediate situation and often contain strong sexual innuendos, apparently inappropriate for the gentle sensibilities of civil society. Colloquialism is a major feature of Fyataru stories. They are almost untranslatable. They are rooted to a certain street culture of Calcutta which has its own existential moorings. Unlike many arguments which suggest more and more inclusion of subaltern voices in dominant bourgeois world order we may think here of a simultaneous bourgeoisfication of the world. It would be interesting to note how bourgeois double standard and hypocrisy becomes a strategy of resistance in the world after Empire. Agamben comments:
The planetary petty bourgeoisie...has taken over the aptitude of the proletariat to refuse any recognizable social identity. The petty bourgeois nullify all that exists with the same gesture in which            they seem obstinately adhere to it: They know only the improper' and the inauthentic and even refuse the idea of a discourse that could be proper to them. (63-67)
            Bourgeois desire for security has been universalized by a global politics of security where Governmentality would not allow any space to remain outside its purview. Different classes become consumer of this security and governance. But they existentially cannot belong to it completely. Beneath the apparently harmless appearances of Fyatarus lurks the desire for damage. They cannot destroy the world order but can damage and disturb it with their little resistances. Madan describes that the aim of Fyatarus is not to kill or injure anybody but to simply damage. The class character of Fyatarus as we see is also dispersed. Apart from the three main characters we already mentioned, there are the Cheaters of North Calcutta, the Shopkeepers, the Sex-workers from Sonagachi, Garanhata, Bhallukpara, the Eunuchs and the failed writers. (Bhattacharya 9-20) They all come together for spreading dirt and spoiling a party on Floatel – which is a floating hotel on Ganges. The spaces like Fashion Ramp, Poetry festival or Marriage ceremony of rich people are such that Fyatarus would seem misfit and won’t be allowed entry. The damage is against such spaces. They are a community which following Roberto Esposito might be characterized by shared absences, shared denials instead of shared belongings. (Esposito 37-54) Their existential locations have to be characterized by denials and absences. Fyatarus can be then an effective tool for understanding resistances of multitudes against the Empire. Unlike Partha Chatterjee’s point of view which is from the side of governance, where he views populations as empirical categories, we might look at communities from below, from the point of view of denial. Fyatarus form a community of the ungovernable. Of course it is not meant that something purely ungovernable does exist. Nor is a faith on the purely governable asserted here. Both are fictional in certain sense. While Empire promotes the fiction of the fully governable, Fyataru stories suggests the ungovernable – it mythifies the same in a technique similar to magic realism. However the magical here descends as a ploy of representing the “other” – the imagined alterity to the appropriations of the Empire. Such “other” seems incomprehensible in the realism propounded and constituted by the neo-liberal Empire and its semiotics of repetition. Against such semiotics of repetition a different aesthetics is posited – the aesthetics of the othereal – the reality of the other that seems magical in the dominant system of signs where all marginalizations gets accommodated, invisibilized and normalized.
Communities of resistances can be thought non-teleologically here unlike the programmatic revolutions. They are thought of as, existentially defined in terms of denial, instead of a part of a grand philosophical project. When D.S. asks “what are Fyatarus?,” Madan replies: “I can’t say exactly. But Fyatarus are very special...You will see how across history so many ideas are suggested by so many great minds to re-construct man. I feel after a lot of struggle it is Fyatarus who are made.” (Bhattacharya 12) This suggests failure of all great projects of modernity to produce man as ideal being – as what he should be. It is a post-humanist caricature that mocks the liberal humanist utopia of the greatness of humanity and the myth of the naturally great man. Instead it talks about the sad hybrid, existential constitutiveness of man in the form of Fyatarus. Fyatarus just represent the anarchist force against order, against any ordering of self, any scheming of life. Paolo Virno talked about the problem of Multitudes who supposedly resists the Empire and tries to reorganize life: “Contemporary capitalist production mobilizes to its advantage all the attitudes characterizing our species, putting to work life as such. Now, if it is true that post-Fordist production appropriates “life”—that is to say, the totality of specifically human faculties—it is fairly obvious that insubordination against it is going to rest on the same basic datum of fact. To life involved in flexible production is opposed the instance of a “good life.” And the search for a good life is indeed the theme of ethics.” (Virno 2005 35) Rather than participating in search of good life which both revolutionaries and reactionaries have done through centuries, in the face of totality of ‘life’, resistances can only emerge from an acceptance of death – a death in life. Impossibility of death itself becomes death in life. So to evade such death in life the only possible way is to deny the so-called life-affirming projects – constructions of “culture,” “society,” “politics” etc – only to damage all plans, programs and projects. Fyatarus are nothing but an embodiment of such denials. In a deconstructive move we may suggest a double-bind of affirmation and denial which is the source and substance of all kinds of politics. If we think in terms of affirmation only then politics seems strategic and if we think in terms of denial it becomes anti-strategic. Foucault comments: “it is immaterial to me whether the strategist is a politician, a historian, a revolutionary...my theoretical ethic is opposite to theirs. It is “anti-strategic”.” (Foucault 2000 453) It is important to think of resistance, and communities which form around those resistances outside a political, strategic program. When we realize biopower of the Empire as a constituted totality for preservation of life we think of a counter-constitution in terms of nihilism and total denial. After Empire it would be an anti-strategic move to measure political space as an outsider who however actually is an insider. Amidst the totality of life-preservation strategy only route of escape is that anti-strategy. The best strategy for resistance is then an anti-strategy towards Empire. Fyatarus illustrate such anti-strategies. As West Bengal reached its much-awaited moment of political transformation it perhaps won’t be a bad idea to study the resistances which happened against land-acquisition along these lines. It may be a possibility to study those resistances in terms of denial of a certain global reordering of space and forceful transition of one way of life to other rather than simply towards the affirmation of a new political regime. This is both an ethical and an aesthetic move and this way of looking at politics as anti-strategic might be called strategic outsiderism.
Negative Performative: From Essentialism to Outsiderism
Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak in her interview with Ellen Rooney professes to have shifted from her earlier academic position of strategic essentialism, as the term has been used “as a point of self-differentiation from the poor essentialists” (Spivak 1992 5) and stops from critiquing its own strategic positivism. Strategic essentialism is an idea which Spivak invoked initially to make an effective use of ascribing essence to marginal identities such as woman or the subaltern in order to produce difference and critically counter the dominant power relations, despite knowing that such essences are purely contingent and transient. But such essentialism was later felt necessary to be distanced from the notion of strategy which is purely situational and contextual and therefore singular – it is not a theory with a generality to be used everywhere. She writes: “The strategic use of essentialism can turn into an alibi for proselytizing academic essentialisms…the bigger problem: that strategies are taught as if they were theories, good for all cases.” (Spivak 1992 4) The distance between strategy and strategic essentialism may be compared with the distinction between justice and law. One cannot do one without the other. Strategy immediately formulates an essence as justice assumes certain laws – certain epistemic closures in order to be at work. Yet essence may go against the singularity of strategy as it has some amount of universalism in it. It is again similar to law which regularizes and constricts the immeasurability of justice. Justice assures justness to the other – the one who is different, but it requires law to be functional. Law names the subject of justice. In the act of naming, the other is constituted and absorbed by the hegemonic world order.
            Derrida locates this paradox in his seminar on “Foreigner Question” (Derrida 2000 3-74). The law of hospitality can only work when the foreigner – the estranger is identifiable and namable. But in the act of naming he/she is framed by the laws and disciplines of the law-maker, thereby losing the status of the absolute other – outsider. The law of hospitality is therefore an impossible possibility. There cannot be hospitality without condition. If it is purely unconditional the scary possibility of the guest becoming a parasite would jeopardize the law of the host itself. Yet the host cannot be purely in control of the alterity of the guest – cannot name him/her completely. In this lapse remains the possibility of parricide – the killing of the benevolent, law giving father. One has to be a part of the family in order to perform parricide. The moment the foreigner is subjected to a law, he becomes somehow an insider to the family. One cannot avoid this inclusion. Even the law of restrictions – the encoding of passwords actually is an invitation to break it. There cannot be an ipseity without the other – there cannot be a home without windows and doors which is an invitation to the outsider. The outsider cannot be purely determined and named. In the global apparatus of power where the absolute freedom of transference of goods, people and knowledge across porous borders and apparently transparent digital networks happens, the surveillance and attempt to determine, name and control the passage of such huge amount of differences also takes place. The act of digitization of identities, freedom of communication across networks requires huge amount of archiving and framing of the same. The law of hospitality requires the conditionality by default. However Derrida suggests that in the process of this archiving and determining one “can hide a letter only by…yielding it to the outside, by exposing it to another.” He calls it “operational iterability.” (Derrida 2000 65) We have already discussed about the performitivity of the other in the very act of communication. Then what can be the nature of this performative other in the face of absolute determination and totality of Empire?
Fyatarus can be a creative possibility of depicting such other of Empire. However they are not constitutive of a positivist essence of resistance to this Empire. They are sadly hybrid constitutions shaped and appropriated by the Empire. They are not an organized humanist force against the dehumanizing force of neo-liberal capital transforming and reframing all entities into elements of calculation. They are apparently harmless. Yet their little harmless parodic resistances suggest the impossible violence as the only possible performative left in the face of the semiotic totality of the Empire. This is the post-humanist turn Nabarun brings to the defeated discourse of erstwhile Marxist social activism which claimed a certain humanist turning over of the power structure by which, apparently, it itself remains uncontaminated. Displacing and supplementing Spivak’s acknowledged limits of the concept of “strategic essentialism” with Derrida’s notion of the foreigner – the outsider who is always and already an insider in the very act of naming and yet remains inadequately determined to the structure; we may call this performance of negation strategic outsiderism. This is a notion of strategy that is different from strategy as the positivist system of values that would go either in favor or against the determinacy of the Empire. It is different from the strategy of the Empire to appropriate differences and also to the positivist faith in an outsider to that system which can put that power to question. This strategy is partly unconscious, as if the system produces its own impossible unknowability – its own outsider.
Derrida discussing the foreigner question cites example of Oedipus at Colonus, where Oedipus accuses the city of Thebes as guilty. The structure produces its own outlaw. Oedipus is a production of the “city’s unconscious.” (Derrida 2000 39)  The notion of strategic outsiderism also has to be measured as an unconscious production of the system of signs which attempts to provide foreclosure to all possible outside. The indeterminacy of Fyatarus in the act of flying depicts it. They are insiders who perform the impossible outside. They are not conscious revolutionaries but they contain the unconscious elements of resistance. The resistance to Empire however not to be read as an ethical move towards justice. Nabarun as it has already been asserted is a writer with post-humanist or anti-humanist tendencies. There are elements of strong misogyny and class-hatred in Fyatarus speeches and the cuss words they use. It would be wrong to romanticize their resistance as larger than life move against the present world order. However they nullify the positivist claim of the developmental assurance of the Empire and are reminiscent of the possibility of total terror and violence. If the strategy of global biogovernance is to appropriate and measure all differences, Fyatarus are emblematic of little acts of violence and disturbance which are insensible and incomprehensible.
Fyatarus though are performative negation to the power-structure, are at the same time constituted by it. Their outsiderism is unconsciously strategic against the global strategy of reasonable biogovernance. But they are shaped and constituted by the same structure they are negating in their little, apparently harmless acts of violence. In the totality of biopower it would be a fallacy to determine the ruptures in the structure of neo-liberal democracy as a process of the deepening of democracy. They constitute the impossible possibility – the unthought imaginative impulse of the descent of the radical other amidst liberal democracy. But this descent of the other is not coterminous to Derridean performative where it would move towards an alterity of democracy – a “democracy to come”. In an anti-humanist move it may be argued that democracy is neither fully present in the present, nor is it present fully in the future. It never comes fully. It never arrives. The possibility of democracy Derrida asserts in Rogues is already fraught with its own counter-possibility. What if through democracy the will of the people comes to an extremely undemocratic conclusion? So the descending of the radical other may not belong to justice. The radical other of the neo-liberal democracy is a risky persuasion we must however follow. It is an unconscious move against the totality of Empire without guarantee of justice. The only completion of justice in this total foreclosure inhabited by the Empire is the negative performance of death and total terror. Fyatarus are a literary symptom of such unrealizable possibility. They come in fragmented, parodic form to the Empire and seem to be harmless and imbecile. However their undecidability and indeterminacy to the logic of the Empire posits a potential threat to its totality. The post-humanist vision of catastrophe would assert that a seeming threat to the totality of the structure, which appropriates everything, is a potential threat to the totality of existence that it shaped by such structure. The future is annihilation-to-come. The Fyatarus are the post-humanist aesthetic depiction such damage.
It is impossibility to tell the tale which nobody would live to utter. The horrendous vision of totality of absence cannot be articulated. If the mask of the totality of Empire and its bio-governance is to allow the co-existence of differences thorough a hospitable act of naming and bringing those within its law, the ploy for depicting the totality of the unconscious resistance which is produced by the same structure it resists, is to present it as apparently harmless. In the last story of the book Honeycomb of Fyatarus titled “Fyatarus and Global Terror” (Bhattacharya 2004 122-128), we see D.S. accompanying his wife and baby boy, has gone out with Purandar and Madan in a park, to enjoy the breeze. A Police force with information of a possible terrorist attack at American Centre in Kolkata, suspects them, because they were carrying a wrapped old garden umbrella with them. The police suspected it to be a missile. The moment the police discovers the umbrella and lets them go realizing their mistake, suddenly the group of Fyatarus starts flying. Police could never know their actual identity. They remain confused and horrified. In the totality of Empire every subject is a potential terrorist, who must be adequately known and controlled. When little acts of unreasonable violence and damage jeopardize that order and remains undecided by the system, it feels confused and helpless. The life securing project of biogovernance gets disrupted by the left-over of civilization – the garbage of Empire who cannot be totally reduced to its use. In the little disturbances of the peace giving project of the Empire, the sudden barricades – road blocks, burning of vehicles, destruction of public property or playing loud-speaker aloud beyond control points towards the possibility of a desire for damage that is constitutive to the Empire. Fyatarus form the aesthetic or counter-aesthetic (as no real transcendence to the Empire is possible) depiction of such little resistances. They are not reducible to reasonable and manageable identities. Apparently they are harmless people like D.S., Madan or Purnadar but with strong desire for damage. It asserts a politics counter to middle-class politics of citizenship and rights. It is anti-politics of resistance to a certain world order, while, at the same time, remaining within it. It is a politics of non-identity as Fyatarus depict a community of damage. The civil society and the power-mongers can see the effect of the damage they perform, but can never know who they are as they do not form a namable identity – their subalternity is as Spivak defines the subalterns – a “position without identity” (Spivak 2007 429-448). Therefore in the end of the story, we see the Fyatarus going up in front of a beguiled and unsettled Police force:
The large Police Force beguiled. Fyatarus take off from the noon time Kolkata Maidan. They go up. They Keep going up. (128)
 
Notes:
¹ I have developed the notion of “information-power” in my unpublished article “Information-power: Teletechnology and the Ethics of Human-Animal Difference”.
² See Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics, "Society Must Be Defended” and Security, Territory, Population.
³ Translated in English from original Bangla by me from Srijato, “Uronto Sob Joker” (“Those Flying Jokers”)
⁴ See Partha Chatterjee’s essays - “Communities in the East”, “Two Poets and Death: On Civil and Political Society in the Non-Christian World”, “Democracy and economic transformation in india” and sections of The Politics of the Governed.
⁵ Nabarun Bhattacharya, Fyatarur Bombachaak o Onnyanyo (The Honeycomb of Fyatarus and Other Stories) Henceforth all references of the text are made from this book.
⁶ See Michael Foucault, “Governmentality” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Govermentality, 87-104 and Michael Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 435-455.
⁷ For discussions see Paolo Virno, “Interview with Paolo Virno” taken by Branden W. Joseph.
 
Works Cited:
Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Print.
Bhattacharya, Nabarun. Fyatarur Bombachaak o Onnyanyo (The Honeycomb of Fyatarus and Other Stories). Kolkata: Saptarshi Prakashani, 2004. Print.
Chatterjee, Partha. “Communities in the East.” Economic and Political Weekly 33.6 (1998): 277-282. Print.
---,       “Two Poets and Death: On Civil and Political Society in the Non-Christian World.” Questions of Modernity. Ed. Timothy Mitchell. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, 35-48. Print.
---,       The Politics of the Governed. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004. Print.
---,       “Democracy and Economic Transformation in India.” Economic and Political Weekly, XLIII. 16 (2008): 53-62. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles. “Postscript on theSocieties of Control.” October 59 (1992). Print.
Derrida, Jacques. “Signature, Even, Context.” Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Specters  of  Marx.  The  State  of  the  Debt,  the  Work  of  Mourning  and  the  New International. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Hospitality. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. “Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority'.” Acts of Religion. Ed. Gil Anidjar. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. Print.
Esposito, Roberto. “Community and Nihilism.” The Italian Difference: Between Nihilism and Biopolitics, ed. Cheisa and Toscano. Melbourne: re.press, 2009. pp. 37-54. Print.
Foucault, Michel. “Useless to Revolt?” (1979) Power – The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. 3. New York: New Press, 2000, 449-453. Print.
 Foucault, Michael. “Governmentality.” The Foucault Effect: Studies in Govermentality. Ed. Graham Burchell et al. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1991. pp. 87-104. Print.
Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, 1974-1975. New York: Picador, 2003. Print.
Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population:  Lectures at the College de France, 1977—1978. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print.
Hardt. Michael. “Introduction: Laboratory Italy.” Radical Thought in Italy. Ed. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. pp. 1-9. Print.
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. Print.
Negri, Antonio. Empire and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008. Print.
Negri, Antonio. “The Italian Difference.” The Italian Difference: Between Nihilism and Biopolitics. Ed. Cheisa and Toscano. Melbourne: re.press, 2009. pp. 13-24. Print.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “In a Word: Interview.” Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge, 1992. pp. 1-26. Print.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakraborty. “Position without Identity: An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 15.2 (2007): 429-448. Print.
Srijato. “Uronto Sob Joker.” Uronto Sob Joker. Kolkata: Ananada Publishers, 2003. Print.
Virno, Paolo. “Interview with Paolo Virno.” Branden W. Joseph. Grey Room 21 (Fall 2005): 26–37. Print.
 
 
Samrat Sengupta
Kharagpur College, West Bengal
samrat19802003@yahoo.co.in
© Samrat Sengupta 2015
 

 

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Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Poems
 
Self-advertisement (one)
 
I don’t want to be a paperback
Thrown away after you’ve read it,
Pages coming loose from their binding.
I don’t want to be an expensive hardback
Left to the care of soft dust and silverfish on a high shelf.
I don’t want to be either of these.
I want you to remember me like a rhyme you learnt in childhood
Or shouted aloud like a lawless handbill
I want you to accept me naturally
As you’ve learnt to accept grief.
 
 
Warning
 
On the other side of the Jirat bridge
The newly planted kadam trees, lacking intelligence
Grow by leaps and bounds.
Pruning’s going on in the sky
I saw a kite’s two wings on the street today.
Someone’s scrawling across the city
That the sun goes round the earth.
On the underground platform I wait for someone
In cold expectation.
Sounds, light: a travelling coffin
Rushes towards me.
Since everyone says that the city
Is altering its appearance at breakneck speed,
Listen, then.
Fasten your seat-belts tightly,
Put out your cigarettes.
 
 
What kind of city is this
 
What kind of city is this
That forgets its sparrows
What kind of city is this
That forgets its warriors, whores and poets
What kind of city is this
Where multi-storeyed crematoriums rise into the sky
What kind of city is this
Where dogs and trams are about to be banned
What kind of city is this
Where trees shut their eyes in fear
What kind of city is this
Where one can’t hear drumbeats any more
What kind of city is this
Where fake eunuchs dance in the newspapers everyday
What kind of city is this
Where one, licking his fingers to count banknotes, turns out to have no tongue
What kind of city is this
Where plastic bags can vote
What kind of city is this
Where writers burn out like cigarettes
What kind of city is this
Where students blind from birth are battered to death on blackboards
 
This city is dead
My last wish for it – a grenade.
 
 
Balloons
 
A man wearing blue safety-glasses is welding
At this, streaks of lightning decided to flash
A cat was startled out of sleep
 
A man pushes a huge block of ice
In the market, night-blind flies sit on the wires
From which light-bulbs hang. Dead fish don’t fear the cold.
 
A man is pulling along a garbage van
Full of flowers, bones, peelings, plastic bags, empty liquor bottles
The whole world is turning into a rubbish dump.
 
Those whose bombs blew a boy’s hands off
Have sent him two artificial ones
Those who lost their heads weren’t so lucky.
 
All that happens doesn’t find mention in literature
The whole of literature has taken possession of a void
In which, filled with sighs,
A few balloons try to float.
 
 
Last Wish
 
When I die
The house that I’ve built of words
Will collapse in tears
Not surprising
 
The mirror in the house will wipe me away
The walls won’t have my pictures on them
I never liked walls
The sky will be my wall then
And the birds will write my name on it
With chimney-smoke
Or the sky will be my writing-desk
The moon my cold paper-weight
And stars will be pricked into my dark velvet pin-cushion 
 
I won’t remember myself and feel sad
My hand doesn’t tremble as I write this
But when I first held your hand
My hand trembled
Part passion, part shyness
 
My beautiful wife, my beloved
My memories will surround you
You needn’t cling on to them
Build a life for yourself
My memory will be your comrade
If you love someone
Give them these memories
Make him your comrade
But I’m leaving it all to you
I believe you won’t make a mistake
When you teach my son his letters
For the first time, teach him
To love people, sunlight, stars
He’ll be able to solve difficult problems
He’ll understand the algebra of revolution
Better than me
He’ll teach me to walk in a rally
On stony ground or on grass
Tell him about my faults
Let me not scold me
 
My dying isn’t such a great matter
I knew I wouldn’t live long
But my belief never wavered
Overcoming every death
Denying all darkness
Long live the revolution
May the revolution live forever
 
 
 
 
Something’s burning
Something’s burning
In a corner, untimely, under the mattress, in the crematorium,
Something’s definitely burning
I can smell the smoke
Someone’s lit a cheap tobacco twist
Someone’s squatting over a clay stove, blowing on the coals
Someone’s put a shrivelled baby
Dead of enteritis, on a funeral pyre
Flaming birds tumble from the sky
Somewhere, a gas cylinder has exploded
There’s a fire in a coalmine, in a fireworks factory
Something is burning
All four corners have caught fire
The burning mosquito net will descend on you as you sleep
Something’s burning
The stars burn, the spacecraft with its crew is on fire
Entrails, gut are afire with hunger
The youth’s afire with love
The body of desire burns, chaff, cotton soaked in machine oil
Something’s definitely burning
You’re hit by a blast of heat
Buildings, moral values, huge portrait hanging somewhere
Promises, television, rare books
Something’s burning
I’m rummaging through everything to find
What’s burning, where
What’s causing the blisters on my hands
Something’s burning, something’s caught fire
Burning quietly, burning in silence
But if a storm comes it’ll suddenly burst into flame
I’m telling you, something’s burning
Fire engine, umbilical cavity, sun
Something’s burning
In front of everyone, right before your eyes,
Amidst all the people
Homeland!
 
Tram
I too am dying out from Calcutta, tram.
Written off because I’m too slow, obstinate, unprofitable:
Dark when untouched by electricity,
I too become night-blind, stupid:
Like a beached dolphin, nose down, motionless.
No one will put up with these old crocks any more;
Now it’s all fast food, debentures, shares, smart money.
Better for both of us to get out of it all,
Isn’t that so, tram?
 
No one will take you on the second Hooghly Bridge, tram.
No one will take you to Salt Lake, to the Taj Bengal,
To the marshes of Greater Calcutta, the reckless curves of the Bypass.
Does Madonna’s wild tempo ever
Make its way into a sonorous alap or jod?
 
Many years from now, indeed,
Your lights slipping away at night on the Maidan
While here and there, strung around temple or church,
Bells ring out a message;
Each ticket like a page of poetry,
The conductor-librarian,
The ancient driver – 
 all this will become antique Egypt,
The vanquished will be lost in the depths.
 
Yet, tram, with you
                        the protest march held step;
And sitting in your second class carriage
                        the poet of rallies
Sang untunefully,
                        songs of revolt and freedom.
With your three eyes and rain-soaked lights you were
                        the unearthly transport of lovers.
 
I too am being written off in Calcutta, tram.
I too from networks overhead
                        visible or invisible, draw no dreams.
Tram, I too am being taken off
                        because I’m too slow, awkward, unprofitable.
 
In the end, tram, the people of Calcutta
Will lack the word ‘outline’;
Nothing but set hymns; no one
                        will so much as sing a song of rejection.
Like a patient refused entry at hospital after hospital,
Like an injured boxer or football player,
In hurt pride, insult, neglect,
                        scrapped by the profit principle,
We too are dying out from Calcutta, tram. 
 
 
 
--------------------------------Translated by Supriya Chaudhuri
 
 
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4+1
Nabarun Bhattacharya
 
ONE
 
It was a day of incessant rain, though not torrential enough to cause waterlogging. The wind was shivering cold and the light was weak. The tram driver could have been more cautious but not that he didn’t press the brake.  The tram had just taken a turn and wasn’t running that fast either. In spite of the brake, when it skidded on the tracks before coming to a stop, the accident had already happened. The two at the front suffered minor injuries but the other two at the back got away with it. One of them had a crack on his forehead. Another hurt his nose and gums and teeth. They were bleeding. This was hearsay from the crowd which gathered immediately on the spot. Apart from the four men, there was one more who was dead. He hadn’t died in the accident. He was an unmistakable corpse before all that could happen. They had been carrying him on a cot; his body bound to it with ropes and covered by a black plastic sheet. Generally we see flower and incense sticks around these cots in which corpses are carried but this one had nothing. It was known later that there were a broken pair of black rimmed glasses, a few pieces of chalk, some torn papers and  a half-eaten thin arrowroot biscuit—all tied up in a dirty piece of cloth near the head of the dead man. It was hoped that the papers would offer some clue about his identity but they didn’t. There was nothing on the papers barring some meaningless doodles. Perhaps one could draw a far-fetched meaning from them but there was no meaning to that meaning.
     The tram driver was frightened for sure and there was no reason for him not to get frightened. The moment he had taken the turn, he could see them coming. The four men with the corpse. They were coming straight towards the tram. He was stunned and stood motionless in his driver’s cage. There weren’t too many pedestrians that day and yet a crowd gathered quite quickly. Everyone was shocked to find things as they were and the police were called in soon.  
     After colliding head on with the tram, the four carriers of the corpse had stopped for good and didn’t move a bone. Until the police came and took them away, they hadn’t given room for the tram to pass. Two of them at the front were bleeding. Everyone asked them to stand clear. Some excited young men thought they were deafened by heavy drinking. It was a cloudy and blurry day of rains after all and though the houses in this part of the city were old and quite high, they did have bright new shops on their ground floors. The shadows creep in quickly in the afternoon. And that day, they were getting thicker by the minute. The intelligent citizens, who can always smell a rat or two, had said that it was just a stunt, a spectacle. According to them, the corpse was fake and the man was still alive and all these were actors. For them, everything was planned. Perhaps it was an ad for an upcoming play or some macabre idiot’s bizarre joke. The policemen, who had come first, guessed something similar. And yet the four men didn’t look like those lumpens who have a great time decking up a corpse during Dolyatra.¹ May be they were high on heroin. The common man and the common police think alike. Over them we have the uncommon thoughts of uncommon men and uncommon police. The newly appointed IPS officer had thought alike. Not that there was a lot of trouble. A few trams had stopped one after the other in a line. There was a crowd, four dead silent carriers of a corpse and the corpse itself, covered in a black plastic sheet. The corpse was that of a sinewy middle aged man with a cracked black rimmed glass covered in a dirty piece of cloth near his head. The frame of the glass had an old world thread attached to it. It looked like one of the glasses distributed in the free cataract operation camps that are set up in localities from time to time. Beside it were some remainders of chalks. One could barely write with them. And then there were the doodled papers with plus signs, dots and the number five written on them, according to the claims made but all this is the result of fruitlessly speculative research on almost illegible pencil scribbles. No one had any idea who had eaten half of the shabby looking biscuit. One could say with some certitude that it wasn’t the dead man at least as nothing like that was informed after the postmortem. When trams stop after one another in a cue, the naked street children with festering wounds on their bodies rush in like blowflies to play their little games of climbing up and down. In the meantime the young IPS officer had instructed the policemen to arrest the four men along with the corpse. He used his resources to make sure that the corpse was immediately transferred to a mortuary where it could be preserved. The corpse could well be a booby trap. The four men were handcuffed and taken for investigations. The police report said that though they were holding on to the four legs of the cot tightly, when they were handcuffed, they had lost a bit of their stubbornness. They always looked straight ahead with eyes wide open. They wouldn’t drop their eyelid, not even during the investigations, it is said.
     The IPS officer was well within his rights to be suspicious. There were explosions in Bombay, Kokata² and southern India.  Speculations about a Pak³-fed terrorism were in the air. In those horrible times, there was no taking risk, either in central or at state level. From his Lenin, he well knew how the ultra-left and the ultra-right joined hands. They needed to know who these thin, slimy and experienced looking men were. It’s true that Carlos⁴ had been caught but so what? Where’s Tiger Memon⁵? What about the mystery of the actress falling to her death from a skyscraper⁶ or Nargis’s son⁷? RDX, AK-47, drug, Uranium and Plutonium smuggling. Does India have an atom bomb? Whether they have it or not, under these circumstances, nothing is negligible. Real life isn’t a ‘Roja’⁸ or a ‘1942—a love story’⁹. 
 
 
TWO
 
Before the investigations began, the forensics dealing with the corpse informed that it was the body of a weak and thin old man who had everything in his body that a human body would have but in an ‘insulted’ form. When a body part gets injured, or becomes weak due to a disease, the doctors say it’s ‘insulted.’ For example, if one has had jaundice twice, once he gets well, the doctors would say, his liver has faced ‘insult’ twice over. The corpse tied to the cot with ropes under the cover of a black plastic sheet had ‘insults’ written into most of the vital organs—liver, kidney, bladder, penis, eye, scrotum and so on. Recently in the United States, experiments have shown that things like religion, poetry, love, violence, justice, theft, hunger, sexuality, wifely feelings, consciousness of having children, silence, desire to rape, love of music are all properties belonging to the different lobes of the human skull. This corpse hadn’t been subjected to such experiments but there is hope still in the fact that the government has decided to preserve it and it still remains in the peace haven entirely on governmental expenses. Therefore, we can say that it’s ready for those experiments.
     The interrogations started gently so that information could be extracted from them by using that gentleness as a strategy. In investigations, there are always these twists and turns which eventually bamboozle the interrogated person and force him to speak the truth. But in this case, it didn’t work because they didn’t utter a single word. Those who interrogate are not always masters of speech and occasionally they even resort to violence. Some say, they do that deliberately while others believe it happens in the heat of the moment. Whatever be it, this second type of interrogation started with the two at the back who were unharmed by the accident. Slaps made no impression. They were dangled and kicked but that didn’t work either. Things could have become lethal, had the young IPS not intervened. He stopped the violent interrogation. After treatment for a couple of days, they once again stood up on their feet. And then all four were sent to the doctors.
 
 
THREE
 
Let’s not get into the mundane details of experiments like flashing light on the eyes or knocking the knee joints with small hammers. More than one electrodes were inserted into their brains. Let’s make one thing clear to the readers here that they mustn’t take this as a third variety of investigation. Science isn’t torture though torture uses science. The eminent doctors called a meeting after observing the lines of light on the monitoring machine. After this they gave the head of the police a detailed report in English. He kept a photocopy of it and forwarded the original to the Ministry of Home Affairs where they too preserved a photocopy and sent the original to higher officials. The report used complicated technical expressions like “no evoked potential in auditory/visual cortex on peripheral sensory stimulation” or “sensory aphasia” or “sensorial deficit” etc. What all that came down to in simple language was that all four of them were blind, deaf and dumb. If someone is blind and deaf, he has to be dumb. And if that’s the case, it’s impossible to establish any communication with him. All efforts failed. When you supplied food to them by making them hold the plate or the glass, they would respond. One can’t know if they can smell. The countenance doesn’t change at all and the eyelids don’t fall either. They don’t hear, they don’t see and they don’t speak. They’d never hear, see or speak. There’s no way one can ever know anything from them. They have been imprisoned in one particular place. On the other hand, the original continues to get transferred from one place to another with the number of photocopies on the increase with every movement. But even that journey will eventually come to a stop with the governor. Even then, there’s no chance of knowing anything about the four blind, deaf and dumb carriers of the corpse.
 
FOUR
The corpse is in an ultra-modern preservatory now. Only a few American billionaires have kept their bodies intact in preservatories more sophisticated than this. They are hoping that science in near future will be able to bring them back to life with its newest discovery. And if that happens, they’ll wake up after a few hundred years skipping two or three generations and resume their business and recreations. We can’t say that our own corpse has similar thoughts and desires. Though if he can be revived, perhaps the veil of mystery will lift. The young IPS officer didn’t think on these lines.
     As we have already said, the four men are locked up elsewhere. The doors of their chamber are as strong as they can get. They are always locked with security guards sitting outside all the time. There is a little square opening with net on the ceiling through which the lights of the sun and the moon do their diagonal scribbles across the room. And when the sun and the moon change their positions in the sky, the light flees in a moment like a magical cat, as if never there. Sometimes there are squirrels that come and sit on the net and peck on it. Occasionally the gay wind glides into the chamber and looking at the four prisoners, stumbles into stillness. Their eyelids don’t move. They sit silently on the floor. The security guards don’t like to do their work, especially at night. Some of them have made claims of hearing murmurs and chuckles from inside the chamber. The young IPS officer still visits the place from time to time but it won’t be fair to continue calling him young because time is passing as relentlessly as ever. Only inside the corpse-carriers’ chamber, time has come to a stop, as it were.
     Whose corpse is it? What’s his name? Does he have a friend or relation in this world? How did he die? What’s the identity of the four carriers? Which burning ghat were they going to, that day? How could they ever reach the burning ghat? How could something like this ever happen?
     If anyone knows anything about this, he or she is requested to come forward and inform the concerned authority. The authorities are still waiting.
 
----------------------Translated by Arka Chattopadhyay
 
 
Glossary:
 
¹ The Indian festival of colours.
² Bombay and Kolkata are names of metropolitan cities in India.
 ³ ‘Pak’ refers to Pakistan, one of India’s neighbouring countries with whom it has always had a fraught relationship.
⁴ Carlos is the pseudonym of an Indian terrorist who was in the news in mid 90s when the story was written.
⁵ Tiger Memon was another Indian terrorist who was allegedly behind the 1993 Bombay bomb blast case.
⁶ This is perhaps an allusion to the Bollywood actress Vidya Bharti who fell to death from her five-storey apartment on April 5, 1993.
⁷ Nargis (1929-1981) was a popular Hindi film actress whose son Sanjay Dutt (1959-), also a film actor, was accused of being involved in the Bombay blasts of 1993 with charges of illegal possession of arms.
⁸ ‘Roja’ (1992) was a Tamil film directed by Mani Ratnam which tackled issues like border terrorism.
⁹ ‘1942—A Love Story’ (1994) was a Hindi language film, directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra.  It dealt with the Pre-Independence years and the violent struggles and counter-struggles of Indian independence.  
 
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 Fyataru
Nabarun Bhattacharya
Don’t go near the yellow halogen lights if you buy liquor on black¹
Be it Irfan or Mandol’s, whosoever’s country liquor-shack it is, there are days when there is no sense of control in anyone. Say, a drunk policeman in civil dress utters a few “lih, lih” words of nonsense, and the whole lot of drunkards joins him in making weird and barbaric sounds. That guy sleeping peacefully against a pole –  now awake – starts abusing the man in front who was making some salty crisps for his pegs. Done, it will then turn into a ruckus. The best policy in these times is that of DS or Director Special. His attaché case has the initials of his name decoratively grafted on the side parts. DS. Black. A fat black toad. Wearing a cheap Terylene shirt. A locket with the photo of the Mahaprabhu² dangling from the half opened shirt. Glimpses of share-market forms in the attaché case. A dotted pen with the name of a foreign liquor brand on it. A filthy comb thick with the fossilized dirt from many heads. A photo of an old woman. Calmpose tablets. A metro-rail ticket. And a purchased diary. Bought this year. That night was very sweaty. Noisy too. The policy of DS was just to gulp a pint of liquor in a whisker and leave the place. But that night he was caught by a man, wearing a cheap starched kurta, fair, slim, with dyed hair covering the neck, a long nose, but no teeth.
That guy was Madan. He smiled wide with his toothless gum, then poked DS with his lean fingers and said,
-       All these shouting drunkards you see, every one of them is impotent. They will be kicked bad by their wives as they reach home. You know what it’s called – partner on, Bengal gone. I hate the Bengalis only for this. Everyone is a puppet of his wife. And the wives, give them a chance and they will flee. DS was worried. His wife had fled too. Eloped with a successful agent of the Peerless (Chit Fund). A girl from Baruipur. DS asked Madan,
-       Are you a detective?
-       What do you think? The main point is – don’t go on the other side, the fotfoting monster is there.³ But who cares? The Bengalis didn’t. They went that side. And then one after another, a tiger, a croc…today or tomorrow, DS, you’ll also be trapped in that. Madan then took out the dentures from his kurta pocket, bent the liquor bottle over a little, washed them with a few drops and wore them straight away. He glared,
-       Don’t just think about that.  There is a saying: you become more intelligent after your wife flees. Mine got better too. Whatever I said all this while is a complete lie. Just to draw your attention. My plan was to drink a pint of liquor. I don’t have money; so, would you?
DS bought it. Madan had more of it.
-       You too dying for money, eh? Look at the bastard Mandol, he was in the prison for seven years and now running a liquor shack. No shortage of money. He has his daughter admitted in a posh convent school. But you go there, ask for him, and he’ll always put up a sad face.
-       Why?
-       Suspicion. He has deep suspicion over his wife. Don’t just go and tell him these though.
-       No, no, not at all.
-       Did you watch the Saturday night English film?
-       No, why.
-       Why would you watch the good stuff? That film was scary. A shoal of flying fish. Catching people by their neck and biting them to death.
-       Vampire.
-       No, no. Vampires are those, what’s that, yes the bats. These are fish. They live in a sunken ship. And sometimes go out in a shoal to kill people.
-       Flying fish!
-       Yes, may be of the shark kind. Whatever, the film was very scary. Let’s go. We need some good air after this. My name is Madan, you know I guess?
-       Yes I know.
-       How?
-       Mandol was calling you, I heard.
Out of the shack now, DS and Madan crossed the dark topsy-turvy field in front. There was a garage close-by. A card game was being played in one of the cars in dim candle-light. Somewhere from the dark a bald guy appeared with a sack hanging from his shoulders full of liquor bottles. There was a scooter waiting.
DS stumbled upon something. Madan said,
-       Be careful. The general elections are coming next year. The Congress (Party) will be screwed this time. There will be a “jhalmuri”⁴ government at the Centre. You’ll gain big.
-       What do you mean?
-       I was studying your forehead while talking. You see that market will be profuse with stuff, bang and boom.
-       What are you talking about?
-       The share-prices. Buy some random shares now. Of Turbo, Reliance, petrol, Vrindavan Aqua, etc., and see what happens.
-       Last time I bought a hundred shares of DCM Toyota.
-       It went up till 70-72, no? But it will rocket this time. Don’t let go.
-       You seem to read the share market quite well. You buy them?
-       What, no no. I don’t have money to buy them. And I don’t need money either. The few more days I live, I want to live as a fyataru.
-       What will you live as?
-       A fyataru.
-       What’s that?
-       That’s very funny. See, I just studied your forehead and told you the stuff, but you try a thousand times, you still can’t do that.
-       Even if I know, say, I read the Cheiro books⁵ and tell.
-       Even then. There is no influence whatsoever of any planet on the fyatarus.
-       What are these fyatarus then?
-       I don’t know exactly what species they are of. But they are very special. Understand? You’ll see in History, many great men have devised various plans to build the humans anew. I think all those plans and efforts have ultimately given us the fyatarus.
DS and Madan, fully drunk, slowly walked up to the square of the street. The street was glittered with the yellow light of the halogens. There was no one around, complete silence. A line of dark buses were sleeping on either side of the street. A jerky police van  steered past. First of all, buying alcohol on black. And then the sharp yellow halogen light. With the gentle breeze flowing around, DS walked up the metal pole of the yellow halogen. He stood against it, held the briefcase between his legs, and then closed his eyes. Not even half a minute passed. And there was a sound, that too:
Fnyat Fnyat Snai Snai⁶
DS heard that someone was whispering in his ears, fnyat fnyat snai snai, fnyat fnyat snai snai, fnyat fnyat…. Awake, DS saw that the yellow lights were spinning and making a tattered dazzle, there was no Madan around, his body had an odd sensation like the new-found wings on an insect, the pain-kisses of his eloped wife all over the pores, and there was Gagarin’s innocent boy-like smile from the other side of the space. Looking up he was startled…
… Flying Madan posted immobile in the sky close to the halogen light. Slowly waving his hands to stay put in one place. The yellow light had created a golden aura on his smiling dentures.
-       Madan.
-       I said it, didn’t I, that there was no question of limit for the fyatarus? Come now. Fly up.
-       But how to?
DS tried to fly fast with his attaché case. He sweated.
-       No, not like that. Raise your hands up and down.
-       Like this?
-       Yes, and say…
-       What?
-       Fnyat fnyat snai snai….fnyat fnyat snai snai…
Madan’s starched kurta was making an odd sound against the wind. DS kept saying the words.
Fnyat fnyat snai…fnyat fnyat…DS did not realize initially that he had started to fly. Looking down he found himself floating in the air about a foot high from the ground. He became absent-minded. And he fell over with a thud. Madan shouted at him from above,
-       You just flew a little high from the ground and you stopped chanting the mantra, you fucker. Better if you had fallen from more height. Say it again, chant the mantra!
Fnyat fnyat snai snai…fnyay fnyat snai snai...This time DS flew up easy. He came close to Madan and waved his hands like proper wings. An old hairless bat ran twice around them and promptly disappeared. An owl perched somewhere far away from the yellow halogen zone hooted.
-       Once you are practised, you don’t have to say them aloud. You feel like being pulled down, you say them and you will fly up.
-       Ok, that I understand, but how do I get down?
-       Are you throwing tantrums now? How do I get down? Once your name is recorded in the fyataru registers, you don’t have to think about flying up and down. When you need to land, the corpse will automatically go down.
-       Corpse?
-       Yea, the same. I mean body, body. Let’s go, I can feel the gentle air coming from the Ganga. Let’s visit the new bridge there.
DS and Madan went high up. The moon-face came out, tearing the cloud.
-       That is the light from the new bridge. Not any average light, from the Phillips Company. Let’s go there, let’s go…. The houses and roads down started moving. Sometimes the darkness looked box-like – fields, trees. DS fell in love with flying.
-       I’m so lucky that I’ve met you. I’m a fyataru now.
-       Yes that you are. See that three-storied building there. We’ll land up on its roof.
-       Why?
-       Will smoke a biri. The antennae, you see that, we’ll rip the cables apart. Slam and break.
-       Why, what's its fault?
-       Why do you have to ask so many whats and whys – why bray so much? Just do what I tell you to do.
The people who were watching cable TV in that area suddenly found the picture gone for some unknown reasons. The local cable operator was called up. They climbed up the stairs of the three storied building, lighted the area, and found out that chunks of bricks were used to damage the antennae, the burnt end of a biri was lying around and also the foul smell of a piss full of country liquor. They realized, a thief might have climbed up the rainwater hosepipes. The antennae was so heavy, cemented so deep and hard that he couldn’t take it out.
-       That was your initiation. You got anything?
-       Yes, I’ve got the thing now.
-       What have you got?
-       The initiation for the fyatarus is breaking and smashing, tearing and slamming, and pissing.
-       Bravo! Now you are acting intelligent. I must say, you’ve become a fyataru on a very auspicious night.
-       Why?
-       Come with me. You’ll see. Fyatarus have a big programme tonight.
-       What? There are more fyatarus than we two?
-       Yes there are, my dear. Swarms and hives of them. Fyatarus have a programme every night. For instance, today’s programme is Floatel.
-       Floatel?
-       Yes, the new hotel on the breasts of Ganga – where the whore-mems dance, the cash-goons party, sing and dance, and eat shit-expensive food, don’t you know that?
-       I do know that. I heard the NRI owner of that Floatel would call for a share-buying.
-       Again your shares? Forget that. Our job tonight is Operation Floatel, meaning, attack the floating hotel.
-       Like those vampire fish?
-       No, no. no wounding and killing. Just frightening. Making the place dirty. Rampaging stuff. The fun’s there.
-       Tell me one thing, the news reports of those ghostly attacks with bricks, stones, and such on the new pleasure resorts at Diamond Harbour…
-       Yes, those were also done by the fyatarus. You are turning into a good fyataru. You will make name. You understand things so fast.
-       What I don’t understand is why I was chosen.
-       One needs proper qualifications for that. You go to big offices, the officers don’t meet you, make you wait, and you don’t just sit peacefully – you curse them in your mind, stick the dirt from your nose to the arm-chair handles, scratch the soft cover of a sofa, say, haven’t you done that?
-       Yes, I have.
-       Damage. Damage whenever you can. This has to be kept in mind. We recruit only those who do that. All those hopeless cases, half-dead, abused, humiliated, we select a few from that lot.
-       You now, I have broken many bathroom mirrors, made cracks in the water-basin sinks, wrote dirty words on many office-walls.
-       You think we don’t know that?
-       But, I was such a good boy in my childhood. On every 23^rd of January, our street vendor would give us two fry-balls for free. We would eat them and shout out loud together – Netaji, come back.
-       I know.
-       Father would beat me at random. I grew up. Started doing some cheap business. Got married. And then it happened, what had to happen. That guy, I had thought my best friend, stole my wife…
-       Correct, correct…
-       Nothing good happened in my life.
D.S started sobbing.
        - Aha! DS, don’t cry. It makes me feel sad too. I wish there were any chances tonight. Or else, I would have shown you some fun.
       -      What fun.
       -      Bedroom scenes. Peeking and seeing. Peeping Tom.
       -      What!
       -    Ya, big juicy stuff. On the High Rise Towers. Sometimes on the roof too. In a swimming pool.
-       Don’t say more. I’m feeling horny.
-       Already?
-       Why not? Haven’t had it for long!
-       Whatever, now throw those nasty thoughts out of your mind and look down!
Downward, a brilliant necklace of light could be seen hanging around the neck of darkness. DS felt amazed.
-           We’ll land straight on the middle of the bridge, got that?
-       I heard you couldn’t walk there.
-       Fyatarus don’t care for the fucking laws.
Madan and D.S landed on the bridge, panting. The moon went hiding against the oyster-like cloud. A hazy aura could be seen around. A gush of wind. And everything went haywire. 
-       Brother Madan, we are fyatarus now, but can we go back to our normal lives again? Say like casting votes, shopping for the day, enjoying bhaifota…⁷
-       Why not, you can do everything. But you have to always remember that you are a fyataru. Who wants to know anyway whether you are one?
-       Tell me, is there a Congress-CPI (M) division in the fyatarus too?
-       Yes there is. There has to be. But the fyataru programmes are always a joint action.
-       I’m kinda feeling sleepy.
-       Yes, me too.
-       Just stay put somehow and sleep will vanish.
Bawal with the police⁸
Their sleep got disturbed by the sound of a motorbike. A big-bodied sergeant. Wearing goggles at night which made him look like a kimbhut.⁹ The man said with the bike-engine on,
-       Hey you, you, where have you parked your cars? You can’t stand here. Sleeping is surely out of question. Move on, move out, not a minute more.
-       We haven’t come here by car.
-       What? You’re not allowed to walk the bridge.
-       We haven’t walked up either. We came flying.
-       What? You say flying, ha? Fooling around with me! What do you have in that briefcase? Open that now. Strange.
-       DS, buddy, don’t open.
-       Don’t open? Even his father will open it. I’ll arrest you people.
The sergeant’s hand moved towards his waist to take out the revolver. But nothing could be done as Madan and DS had already started waving their hands, flying high from the grounds. All the gravity and stiffness now gone, the sergeant threw away his goggles and began chanting the name of gods in fear. We could see high up, on the pointed end of the Second Howrah Bridge, Madan and DS were flying round and round holding their hands. Like the brave skydivers fly.
-       Let’s go. He’s been frightened enough. He won’t forget that.
-       Now where
-       What, you forgot? Floatel!
Be a “koi” fish in the shoal¹⁰
From that dark side of Howrah, a sound of “ole! ole!” could be heard.¹¹
-       There they are.
-       Who?
-       All the fyatarus of Howrah. They live in dirty alleys and slums like land snails in a colony. You give them free space and they are like the king – oh that sound, that roar.
Like a wind-cutter at night, a few more war-cries were heard, “Laila o Laila.”¹²
-       Khidirpore, Ekbalpore, Kantapukur – everyone is coming. Just hear them, and you’ll know that they are the most fiery, chaotic lot.
In a whisker, the sky became thick with the fnyat fnyat snai snai sound.
-       Can you see that gang of people there, wearing rings on their fingers, with shirt and dhoti, they are the lot of cheatingbaj, the tricksters. All from North Calcutta. Though there are a few shop-owners too.
A swarm of flying women wearing nylon-sarees and holding stuff like sweepers’ brooms, broken cooking stoves, rotten potato curry in an earthen pot, soup made of the discarded parts of a goat, etc. suddenly flew past DS, making their shrill war-cries. There were a few fat old women too. A flying woman tickled the armpit of the flying DS and giggled wide. As the army went ahead, Madan whispered to DS –
-       These are the swarms of whores from Sonagachi, Goranhata Bhallukpara. Remember, never mess with them. And that group on the right, can you see, is that of eunuchs. The more you see the more puzzled you feel. Look at that guy – just three pieces of teeth on the upper gum, and panting like he might die anytime, but still waving the wings – he’s a writer, some shit prose poems he writes. Actually a contractual labour in a court. You’ll get items like that too.
-       This looks like an air force to me.
-       DS, get ready for the dive.
-       What!
-       The Floatel is there.
The brilliantly lighted Floatel was heaven for the eyes. In every floor, there were Hong Kong mirrors, the band music from Singapore, the guitar played in the manner of Hawaii Island  with rap music, also modern Bengali songs plus “tumi robe nirobe,” and the special tandoori chicken for the night.¹³ The most respected NRIs and the gentry of the city, dancers, smugglers, extortionists, fashion designers, models, politicians, beauticians, company owners, mafia, DCDDs, PA 2 Pimps, pimps of MoU, MPs, MLAs, coaches, gigolos, editors, court-poets, king, queen – everyone placed on their plates the sock-draped tandoori legs, tandoori breast, tandoori stomach, tandoori liver, tandoori seenah, tandoori thighs, fried tandoori nose, tandoori eyes, tandoori hair with rice noodles, tandoori bleeding heart, tandoori nerves, tandoori lips, tandoori armpit, and others and was eating them happily. Just about that time, like a bolt from the blue, some weird stuff started falling from the sky – including  human shit, human piss, an entire attaché case (with the alphabets D S grafted on either sides), broken stoves, sweepers’ brooms, rotten potato curry with the weird goat-head soup, discarded toothbrush, exam scripts, the leftover hair collected from the salon, bed pan, etc.
-       What do you think DS?
-       Beyond my words!
-       Did you like that?
-       Oh! Madan, it seemed like I had a real fulfilment today.
-       No English. It does not fit well everywhere. Say, you’ve got siddhilabh tonight.¹⁴
-       Yes, yes, right that. Fnyat fnyat snai snai!
 
The notey-plant isn’t dead yet¹⁵
On the basis of ten eye-witnesses of levitation, the story of Madan, DS or the big fyataru-army was not initially believed in.
Kolkata Police investigated the Floatel attack and located the briefcase and other minute details of DS. 
A special army, with the RAF, arrested a sleeping DS at midnight. DS cried loud and prayed to them. But no result. He was sent to the lock-up. On another midnight, the man who was forced into the lock-up room by bending and freeing the iron bars, whispered to sleeping DS,
-       Just a little hassle and you forget you are a fyataru.
-       Madan, my friend!
-       The mantra, you remember that still?
-       Yes, fnyat fnyat snai snai.
There was a window in the lock-up room.
 
 
----- Translated by Sourit Bhattacharya
 
 
[“Fyataru” was first published in the Bengali magazine Proma in 1995 and was later collected in the anthology Fyatarur Bombachak o Anyanyo, 2004]
 
Glossary:
¹ The story, as with many other stories by Nabarun, is replete with barely translatable colloquial Bangla terms, with specific region or class-based meaning and use. These translations are closer in meaning. The phrase “buying liquor on black” stands for buying alcohol illegally.
² Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born in the 16^th century Bengal and drew widespread attention as a religious and social reformer through his songs and philosophy. His followers are known as the Vaishnavites.
³ Used sometimes for a monster in fairytales and children's stories, the word fotfoting appears to be a mix of a foring (grasshopper) and the act of flapping its wings (fotfot). The onomatopoeic sound is noteworthy for the larger context of the story.  
⁴ Jhalmuri is puffed rice mixed with various vegetables and spices. It is an everyday Bengali snack.
⁵ William John Warner, also known as Cheiro, was a famous 20^th century Irish astrologer. The word Cheiro derives from his excellent work in cheiromancy or palmistry.
⁶ Fnyat Fnyat Snai Snai does not have a literal meaning. It is the flapping sound of bird-wings; here that of a big flying creature.
⁷ Bhaifota is a native Indian cultural event, celebrated amongst others by the Bengalis, where the sisters pray for their brother’s safety and well-being.
⁸ Bawal may be roughly translated as fracas or brawl.
⁹ Kimbhut, which again has a fairytale etymology, is a popular expression for ugly monster.
¹⁰ Koi is a kind of fish which can climb the trees and stay out of water for long. It is also known as climbing perches and falls in the group Anabas in South Asia.
¹¹ “Ole Ole” is a very popular Bollywood song from the film, Ye Dillagi (1994) where a boy sings about his fancies, madness, and bodily pleasures after seeing a girl. 
¹² “Laila o Laila” is also a very popular Bollywood song from the film, Qurbani (1980) where a girl sings about her beauty and how all the boys want to desperately meet her alone. Both the songs are stage-songs, and have elements of band music, chorus, cabaret in them.
¹³ “In silence wilt thou be” is a well-known Bengali song by Rabindranath Tagore.
¹⁴ The word “sidhhilabh” has a Hindu mythological-scriptural basis which stands for acquiring wealth and prosperity. Often symbolized with a design, siddhilabh is generally related with  Lord Ganesha or the goddess Laxmi. It also means completion of a task and the subsequent gaining of a particular beneficial knowledge.
¹⁵ This is taken from a common end-of-story line in Bengal which goes, “The notey-plant dies/ and my story ends.”
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

World's Last Communist
Nabarun Bhattacharya
 
The incident will take place in 2020. This story proves that it is possible to write what will happen seventeen years from now. That the Soviet Union would be destroyed in 1991 could not be foretold even by the most noted Kremnologists of the world. Thousands of nuclear missiles that could burn the whole world and tear it into pieces remained asleep in their underground silos; the huge military army, the police, the KGB, millions of Party members deployed to overthrow the US, all kept mum like thnuto Jagannath.¹ We can easily term this incident the biggest paralysis of the world. Historians like Volkogonov have said many things after that. However, that Great Fall was only intimated in literature – from Bulgakov, Grossman, Lev Anatol to Solzhenitsyn and many others. Maybe it wasn't spoken out directly – but there was an indication, a pattern, or a form based on that pattern. Only literature can do that. It can change the meaning in the number – 2020. But this story will definitely take place.
 
In 2020, in a press conference in the White House lawn, speaking about the ongoing unstoppable progression of the American century, the United States President Arnold Schwarzenegger would add,
-       … And yes, let me tell you something fresh. The world's last Communist died yesterday. In Australia. At the age of 92. Even though he claims not to believe in god, God will bless his soul. There is not a single Communist left in our planet. The End of the Red...
-Reuters: But Mr President, how did you know that?
-Why? From the sources that give us faultless facts. CIA, FBI, and our compadre, the British MI5. The world is transparent today. There is nothing called secret information anywhere. At least for the White House.
 
But defying the logic of the US President, Kremlin would declare that President Schwarzenegger's words were not correct. The old man from Australia was not the last Communist in the world. The true last Communist was still alive, though on the verge of death. In a hospital in Rostov-on Don.
His name was Vladimir Rubakov. He received the medal of “Soviet Union Brave” in the Second World War.
 
The journalist was Robert Doyle. He's a freelance writer. The Daily Reporter asked him in an e-mail to go to Moscow and cover a story on Rubakov. Doyle received that e-mail at night. The following day he reached Rostov-on-Don via the Aeroflot domestic flight services. He had no experience of domestic flight services in Russia before. The toilets were as dirty as the callousness of the air-hostesses. Russia hadn’t got a touch civilized after thirty years of capitalism. The Russian capitalists were rumoured to buy the Manchester United. Doyle found out many such stories on the look-out for Rubakov. This had been always this way. Fragment after fragment. Just had to tie them together and make them look interesting, that's the point. After checking in at the Metropole hotel in Rostov-on-Don, Doyle went out with his unfailing friend, the laptop.
 
“Russia is probably the only country in the world whose hospitals still smell of iodoform or some such ancient disinfectant” - He was thinking of a beginning like this for his story as he entered the Boris Yeltsin Memorial Hospital. The receptionist girl said to him in broken English,
 
-Are you Mr Doyle?
-Yes, shall I show you my press card?
-No, no need of that. Maxim Vladimirovich Rubakov has been waiting for you for half an hour now. He'll take you to the patient cabin.
 
Maxim was walking towards Doyle. Doyle knew that Maxim was a professor in English. After shaking hands, Doyle asked him,
 
-How's your father now?
-He has consciousness left still. He's speaking without a pause. But sadly he's not replying to our words. The doctors also know that nothing can be done now. Moreover, both of his ears were badly damaged in the War. He cannot hear us. You are from Scotland, am I wrong?
-No, you are absolutely correct.
-I read Scottish still. Hugh MacDiarmid is my favourite poet. Have you read him?
-Have heard of him.
 
Maxim smiled as he opened the rusty doors of an ancient lift.
 
-I had a strong desire, you see, to work on MacDiarmid’s poetry. I learnt Scottish only for that. If you want to read “First Hymn to Lenin” or “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle,” you got to know Scottish. To be frank, I'm not that moved by Burns.
 
A fat matron on the corridor said something to Maxim in Russian. Maxim smiled,
 
-He's still speaking non-stop. Do you speak Russian?
-Not that much. But as a tourist, I could manage.
-Don't worry. I'll translate them.
-Tell me, everybody is saying that your father is the last Communist in the world! Do you believe in that?
-That is what the newspapers and the Televisions are showing. Even Kremlin is claiming that.
-But you? I'm asking what you think?
 
They were just about to enter the patient cabin. So Maxim could not reply to this question. A doctor went out. Monitoring machine. The curtains were embroidered with the designs of human joys and life. A nurse.
 
Old Rubakov was lying on a bed which was lifted a little. He was old, very old, but not lean, wide forehead, spikey white hair, eyes closed. Now suddenly opened. He had been speaking in a clear voice since yesterday...Of the Stalingrad Front... The old man called out someone,
 
-Rubin! Rubin!
 
Maxim continued,
 
-Rubin was the best friend of my father. The son of the famous Communist leader in Spain, Dolores Ibárurri. They fought together in Spain. Rubin died in the Stalingrad Battle. My father was with him then.
 
The old man was saying something louder now which included Rubin's name too.
 
-My father is telling Rubin that Rubin you can't die so fast. The German dive bombers, the stuka, are no longer in the sky. Now the sky is conquered by our Sturmovik aircrafts. All the land around has been secured by our T-34 tanks. The light you see in the sky comes from our Katyusha rockets. Rubin you just can't die now. Rubin, Comrade Stalin is telling us, Rubin, your valenki...
 
The old man started panting,
 
Maxim went on,
 
-Valenki is the snow felt boot. The Red Army wore this. It used to have a pair of woollen socks inside. The Germans did not have the valenki. They were frozen. The day Rubin died, the temperature outside was minus forty four degree. He’s crying because Rubin was dead now. He was speaking of Rubin yesterday too.
 
The panting stopped now. Deep breaths. The lips shook a little...He was now speaking in German. Doyle knew German, it meant, “Who’s this guy Zokov?” The old man laughed mildly as he spoke about this. Doyle thought so.
 
Maxim explained to him,
 
-This is a joke from the Red Army. The German Major General von Rundstedt told this in sheer amazement in February, 1942. He was bewildered by the fact that Russian Marshal Zukov was the son of a poor farmer. The Prussian Junker could not recover from this. The Red Army would always refer to that in mirth. There were many jokes like that during the War. So many have I heard from my father...
 
Suddenly the nurse stood up staring at something. She looked at the monitor. Then started calling.... The old man’s breathing went long as if he was pulling heavy objects aside; then the left hand raised... the doctor entered in a haste...
 
- Rubin!
 
The eyes were open now. He’s searching for someone or something. Who? What? A comrade? The hand of a comrade? Or a rifle that had fallen from a hand mutilated by the bullets? Doyle looked out of the window. The birch trees were shivering. Was there a storm outside? A weird sound was coming from the old man. The doctor said something to the nurse. The nurse picked up the ampoule, inserted the syringe. The old man bellowed a few words, in a mumble. Then there was nothing. Maxim told Doyle after his father's death,
 
-What my father said in the end was the last message of warning sent to von Paulus by Rokossovsky – the physical condition of your soldiers is regrettable. They are victims of hunger, disease, and heavy winter. The ruthless winter has just started. The snow-rain, heavy wind, and the snowstorm are yet to arrive. Your soldiers do not have adequate clothes for the winter...Hundred and sixty thousand people died in the Battle of Stalingrad, ninety thousand were imprisoned.
 
A mild snow-storm would also pass through Rostov-on-Don that night. After sending the reports to London, Doyle would watch a circus show on the Russian Television for a while. The Siberian tigers wee now in the circus arena. Jumping through the burning rings of fire. Then he would switch off the TV and go to bed.
 
On the same night, the sailors and workers of the Baltic naval port would declare mutiny. The spark of the rebellion would expand to the Moscow garrisons. Thousands of workers would come out in the street crushing the snow with their boots and holding the red flag. The walls of Kremlin would be hit by the slogans of the storm. St. Petersburg would turn into Stalingrad again.
 
The same night, the Indonesian Communists, not without guns this time, would declare their insurgency. Port after port in Australia would join in the strike. The tin workers in Bolivia would burn everything with rage – Holding the photos of Lenin and Che, the students and the middle class people would capture all the capital cities of Latin America. In France, Italy, Greece, and Spain, the workers' movement would put everything to a standstill... the same news would arrive from Africa, from the world of the Arabs.
 
The Communists will come back from every part of the world. Yes. They will. But for that, each and every minute and hour of the next seventeen years has to be utilized well. The Communists will return all over the world. They have to. And the world will shake, not for ten days this time, but for ten thousand years.
 
This piece of truth is reported in this story.
 
 
------- Translated by Sourit Bhattacharya
 
 
 
Glossary:
 
(“Prithibir Sesh Communist” or “World's Last Communist” was published in the Bengali magazine Kalantar in 2003)
 
1 Thnuto Jagannath is a popular Bengali expression for impotent and helpless.
 
 
 
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Fyatarus in Spring Festival
 
Nabarun Bhattacharya
 
Miss Piu, Miss Jhinuk and…
Though readers know it from the very initial stage, still it is repeated here that our favorite writer Nabani Dhar and his ex-model wife Meghamala Dhar lives on the 9^th floor of the Himgiri Apartments in South Kolkata. Who hasn’t read Nabanida’s books “The Impotent”, “Shadow in Petticoat”, “Senility of the Saint”? Oh who hasn’t?
However, the fact was that on the day before the color festival, a short, fat, black man with a dirty tery-lined shirt and similar pants, holding a discolored, disfigured briefcase between his legs, was discovered at the Muchipara Bus Stop. He was having a go, one by one at the groundnuts from the shabby two-pice-worth packet. To take an auto or a minibus or a taxi, Miss Piu and Miss Jhinuk appeared there. They had cell phones and they wore jeans and fashionable tees. Amused by the appearance of the short dork, they started giggling while sending messages on their phones. The man farted and they giggled even more.
Finishing his nuts the short one turned to the missies. In his gruff voice-
-       How many?
They were nonplussed. What does ‘how many’ mean? Again, with more gruffness
-       How many?
Miss Piu at last said limply
-What?
The man removed the briefcase and holding it high with his right hand started drumming it with his left and sang in a horrific voice
-       How many nights do I have to sleep alone?
Not waiting for another moment Miss Piu and Miss Jhinuk started walking.
DS had sung that line only once and he had not noticed the arrival of Madan and Purandar Bhat. Madan bellowed
-       No, I have told you repeatedly that you can no more remain a Fyataru. You never paid heed before. You will be cut out today itself. I am not ready to hear any argument. What say, Purandar?
-       I have been in revolutionary politics, have seen more people being expelled from the party than those joined.
- His name is DS
A bottle of liquor
He was murdered
For being a frivoler.
 
DS started whimpering and blowing his nose. Madan started, a bit tenderly this time,
-       You had elbowed that Anglo woman near Metro cinema. I did not say anything. Your wife would deliver. You stared at the young nurses. How far can you be excused?
Suddenly DS shocked both of them and started howling. People stared at a fat grown man’s howls.
-       Will you stop? Why have you started mourning!
Purandar said
-       Mess! Pure mess it is.
DS came back to the whimpers from the howls. And started
-       I never did anything. I was watching the road and munching the nuts while those two bitches
-       Shame on you DS, they are celebrities, both come on the TV.. Madan is furious.
-       Don’t tell me about the cheap shows they do. Celebrity my foot. The red light areas demand more respect.
DS stopped whimpering and said
-       They were laughing at me. I farted and they giggled even more. When I could not control I asked their rates twice and that song of Kumar Shanu[1]…
Purandar said-
-       Madan da, had I been at DS’s place I would have done the same thing. He sang, I would have pelted poems...
DS became more composed
-       What poems?
- Looking at the poet
You laugh and nod
Soon shall I
Perch you on my rod.
-       That’s cool. But boss, the meaning of rod here…
-       Leave it. You don’t need to know the meaning of rod. So Purandar, DS got released this time.
-       Seems so
-       Now minus those tramps. Now then, Nabanida’s prestige is at stake. Yesterday he cried over the booze. He said repeatedly- ‘even with you three as brothers I have to bow to this insult, I would rather take some Folidol and die.’
-       What happened? Meghu eloped?
-       No, it’s not her. What happened is the fuckers who stay at the Himgiri Apartments – tomorrow evening they will celebrate the festival of colours in the compound. It is called the spring festival, Do you know what it is, DS?
-       Spring bring pox, and goddess of pox will be worshipped.
-       No. No one has seen so little knowledge in such a big head. The spring festival is celebrated on the day of Holi- the girls tie flowers and sing catlike, and some alpha males throw colours from the backside. Pure whoring.
-       So what the fuck is it for Nabani da? If they want to act like whores, let them.
-       No. In that flat live 120 filthy rich families. But only one popular person- writer Nabani Dhar and they never called him. They did not even put his name in the card. Instead they have called some whooping procurator as chief guest. Five hundred forty three best sellers and he was struck out.
-       So, let us fly and charge bombs from the terrace. Let’s screw the celebration.
-       Not that I have not thought of that. First thing is that they have covered the top. Number two; Nabanida lives on the 9^th floor. If something drops from above they will take it as Nabanida’s doing. Once a plate and a bottle slipped from his hands. Thank God there was no one around or he would have been framed for murder.
-       Purandar was quiet for some time now. Finally he said,
-       But why did they leave out Nabanida? Nabanida is expected in all the functions.
-       You too are becoming a dickhead just like DS. Nabani da is writing his autobiography “Open Names”
-       So what?
-       The root cause is that. All his own scandals and that too of other people have been made public. They have filed cases against him. They have also threatened him. All at Himgiri have decided in a meeting that there will be no entry for Nabanida.
-       So what will we do?
-       Not clear. Let’s shove down some tea and biscuits at the tea-stall. The brain will start working.
And with that Madan took out his dentures from the side pocket of his kurta and wore them straight away.
 
Madan’s brain is charged…
They lit a Charminar after the tea and biscuits. A woman was standing by the roadside awaiting her kid’s school bus. DS and Purandar were throwing glances so they did not realize that Madan was not smoking. Eyes closed, he was swaying. They got startled as suddenly he laughed out loud.
-       This is what Madan is. No rumpus with me.
-       What happened?
-       What? Solid, liquid, smoke, all three went in and I got the plan.
-       What? Of fucking up the function?
-       Fuck’s father. But in a new style. Oh! What a brain I have here, all will happen and I will not even move my fingers. With legs dangling from the terrace we’ll watch the show.
-       Okay, tell me the plan.
-       Not the whole plan. The Telipara slum is just outside the Himgiri Apartment. Yes or no?
-       Right
-       Good
-       There is a country liquor shanty inside the slum.
-       Yes
-       There live the thugs, old and young
-       Though you won’t get those who are at the jail
-       Okay, the rest will do. Tomorrow we brothers shall go to the shanty around 3 pm. We shall share one bottle. Both of you will appear depressed. On my signal DS will cry out loud, I’ll take care of the rest
 
At the liquor shanty at Telipara
Fellows smeared with tar, colors from the press, silver and brown are boozing. Singing. They are throwing colors in between stray slangs and moves. Suddenly DS cried out loud. Madan rose.
-       We are poor. Hungry. The old are having fun with the ripe whores at the hotels. None to hear our cries.
Crowd gathered. DS went on. Madan said
-       Will they allow us if you cry? They are rich people. They will listen to songs, will kick our asses if we want the same.
Some cried out amidst the crowd
-       Who will kick the ass of the poor? Who is it?
Madan wore his dentures
-       There is Himgiri apartment. There is a big show. We too went but they drove us away.
-       Yes, they have been testing mics since morning.
DS wailed
Madan’s voice rose.
-       He is our younger brother. He said Kumar Shanu will come; Abhijit[2] will come; so I shall go. We thought, a festive day it is and transport isn’t great; we shall accompany him, but they did not allow us.
 
Kumar Shanu. Abhijit. The news spread like wildfire.
Get them. Get them.
A big crowd consisting of boozed up people, women and children went towards Himgiri. The chief guest famous procurator Gojendranath Porel had just arrived. The mike testing was on the bang. With the influence of one promoter resident Miss Piu and Miss Jhinuk had arrived with their boyfriends. The evening was waning. Girls with flower bands, boys in designer kurtas, colors and food and hidden business of booze were ready. A sudden noise came from outside.
 
The doormen had closed the doors from fear. People came crashing on the gate. Amid this chaos people failed to notice the three of them taking flight and landing softly on the terrace of Himgiri. They sat there with their legs dangling.
 
The clamour turned into howls. Stones came pelting by, along with bottles and containers. Instead of talking full form the celebration trembled at the car park--who knew what was happening, roars came from outside
Beat them up, beat them.
On everyone’s request the secretary had attempted to reach the gate but that very moment, a mini bomb banged at the gate. Crashing sounds. The secretary called the police,
-       I am calling from the Himgiri Apartments. Please send force immediately.
-       What do you mean? Force on the day of festivity? Are you crazy?
-       We are being attacked.
-       What did you say?
-       Attack
-       Brawls happen on such days. Manage it.
-       Manage, how? There are the thugs of the Telipara slum attacking.
 
-       Okay. Hang up. Bloody problem, hey, who is on duty now?
Another socket bomb banged. The police arrived. The election was on the cards. Even the police did not want to bother the parties; so a meeting was conducted. It was a meeting for peace. It took time. It’s a difficult task to make the boozers see reason. The spring festival was upset but the sense of fear still lingered. With their food packets in hand, Mr Porel, Miss Piu and Miss Jhinuk went home with police protection.
Further into the night…
Three of them dived to Nabani Dhar’s flat. Nabani was wearing a pair of half pants, with Sai Baba’s[3] lockets and beads on his bare chest.
-       Oh my brothers, come to my arms. Black Dog. Ice Cubes. Soda, Nabani called out
-       Meghu, Meghu… just come and see who are here.
Meghamala Dhar, came out wearing a house coat over her transparent nightdress. She was holding a tray of fish fries.
-       It’s okay, no need to call out. I know that my brothers have come
Nabani said
Spring festival has flopped.
DS said
-Meghu boudi[4]
-Yes dear
-I’ll take home eight fries. Today is a festive day. I have a wife and a son. They have never tasted this kind of stuff.
 
   --------------------Translated by Debadrita Bose
 
Glossary:

[1] Kumar Shanu is a Bollywood singer whose songs were particularly popular in the 1990s

[2] Abhijit was another popular Bollywood singer during the 90s.

[3] Sai Baba (1835-1918) was an Indian spiritual master.

[4]  It’s the common Bangla term referring to a friend’s or a brother’s wife
 
 
 
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I don’t need to fear, do I?
Nabarun Bhattacharya
 
Biren was one of those people, you come across or talk to almost every day and then forget immediately afterwards. Maybe in every para, every neighbourhood, one can find a few people who may be our Birens or may come very close to Biren-like figures.¹ Not many of us remember him today though. I have tested that. In various places, small alleys or streetside roaks, in houses or in STD phone-booths, in clubs or in markets, in small pan-cigarette shops, I had tried to raise the issue of Biren by throwing a quick reference in a manner one throws an unused coin so that somebody would pick it up and Biren would suddenly appear with his dirty shirt, untrimmed beard, dishevelled hair, big gray eyes, sunken cheek and safety-pin strapped slippers. And having appeared, he would do something which he always did, speaking about a thing which had no meaning whatsoever, hundred percent bhat.² No, he would not talk nonsense always. He would also speak of other things, the hot topics – such as death-by-hanging, cricket, vote, whatever was on the card. Biren would unfailingly place his hand on the shoulders of the person talking to and pinch him as he spoke. It would happen almost every day that the person, Biren started talking to, would give him an excuse in order to skip his nonsense and try to go past; but Biren would follow up and walk together without a pause in his words.
There is only one reason for saying all this. I noticed something yesterday. There has been a new, and quite big, sweetmeat shop in our para. They sell very expensive and famous sweets there, many of which I don’t even know by name. Anyway, let that be. They have installed a machine in that shop which reads – the “insect flasher”; two heavy powered tube-lights burn there, slightly bluish in colour. Attracted by that light, many flies or insects of that kind, sometimes I’ve seen butterflies too, go near it; and then their bodies writhe, and twitch, and fidget in the warm light and then burst in a cracker. Looking at that machine, Biren’s image flashed in my mind. Also how
easily have people forgotten him altogether. For a few days, there was no talk save Biren’s in our neighbourhood. When was that, just a few months back, and people have already started to forget him. I thought of all this, looking at the warm-light insect killer machine.
Biren was never a faker. He used to work in the Corporation Office, but did not like to go. He did get his salary for many months. But when they arranged for a strict monitoring on workers' attendance, he went to the office regularly on time, and then on a certain day without talking to anyone he just left his job. People like me who work in small places were completely puzzled by this. Anybody would. I work for a company that supplies the cartridge ink of the printer to go with the computers. I have two partners with me. We go to various DTP units or offices. We have to walk long distances. You got to have some tiffin, snacks, and water with you. Buying bottled water is so costly! We fill in our bottles in known offices. And taking a short break, we eat some rooti-tarkari standing under a tree.³ On some days, we carry food, some batasha, sweet granules from home. They are chopping the trees. There is little shadow anywhere these days. We save the transportation costs. Biren decided to quit his job when these insect killer machines started to be used in many of the shops! However, he did not last long thereafter. Biren's wife now stitches blouses, applying falls and Pico on petticoats. Biren had a son. Last time I heard, he was about to take the 10^th standard Madhyamik examinations. O yes, Biren's mother is still there.
Since we are talking about Biren today, let us give a sample of his bhat. I was buying ten packets of biri and three Flake cigarettes from a street-shop and Biren suddenly appeared.⁴
-       Boss, do you have a cigarette?
I gave him one. And lighted a biri myself. Then he began,
-       Yesterday I caught him on phone, you know. He was speaking, and speaking fine, but suddenly said that he could not hear me for the hustle and bustle outside. You heard me all this while, said yes and no to my words, and suddenly honking and bustling put you off?
-Yes, quite so.
-Then he said, call me half an hour later. I did call him half an hour later.
Saying this, he turned his hand upside down, nodded his head, and started again,
-       The phone is switched off this time. Some ringtone is playing, and a girl is saying something. What do you say to that, can you say anything to that?
I said, it’s alright, I have to rush for my office now. See you later. And Biren stopped there. Who he called to and why—no scene of telling any of this.⁵ Just some odd pieces of information. How would you define this kind of thing if not some bhat? 
So what happened once was that, on a particular evening some extortionists rode a motorbike to promoter Hari Dutta's office and charged hand-grenades; they fired some bullets too. Nothing happened to Hari Dutta. Some of the neighbours around said though that they had only charged the grenades. Bullets and stuff were a complete lie. But that was not true. While passing by Hari Dutta's office, I had glimpsed that the glow-signboard “H Dutta Construction” had two identically small holes in it. But I cannot be entirely sanguine on that since the small ball-bearing elements that are stuffed in a grenade could also make those holes. Sheikh Binod is in jail now. The miscreants who came that night were touted to be Binod's men. And based on this incident, a rumour started doing the rounds that a murder would take place soon. Nobody could prevent that. Today or tomorrow, the murder would definitely take place.
Biren began his new bhat around this time. Two or three people might have been talking to them in a low voice, Biren would go and stand close to them. A loose shirt. Unshaved. Untrimmed moustache, turning tawny downwards and the brown-stained and long-unwashed teeth.
-       How is it?
-What’s how’s is it?
-I'm hearing stuff, you know, hushed stuff, rumours in the air. What I was saying is, I don't need to fear, do I?
-It will happen to those who are associated with it. What’s that to you? Go home and hide for a few days. Don’t just come out.
-That’s a good idea. But I'm feeling very scared, you know, some hunches say…
-Will you go now, you nonsense-speaking asshole.
-I'm going, going. Everybody is hot-tempered these days; everyone says the same. Yes, home is a better place.
-If you know that, why do you get your ass fucked here and there? Just fuck off...
After Biren had left the place,
-This fucker is a great bastard.
-There is tension all around. So he might be scared.
-Leave that. He’s one big sister-fucker. Leave him and his deep-shit nonsense.
-He’s surely insane. Or, who would quit his job in these terrible times?
-See this is the result of a particular type of gene. I bet his father did not do any work either and fed himself on his mother's income. Everything is a game of genes, you understand.
We have a club in our para, Mahamaya Sporting Club. A big cemented house. Day and night you'll see people playing card games there. Many have seen Biren’s face stuck to the window there, especially on evenings. He would never do that before. When someone would go to a nearby shop to buy a cigarette or, say, pee in the dark market-alleys, Biren would rush to catch him up and ask,
-       Did you hear something?
-What thing?
-The thing that everybody is talking about, something like a murder.
-No, I don't know. And what will you do knowing either?
-No, actually, what I wanted to know is, I don't need to fear for that, do I?
-Don’t you have anything else to do? Don’t just blabber and waste my time now. Go home. If a murder has to take place, it will.
-Yes, that’s right. I should rather go home. So you are saying that...
-Will you fuck off?
There would be a rumour almost every day. Near the Thakurbari temple pavilion, an unknown Tata Sumo car was seen parked with the lights off. Did anybody go and check that? I don’t think so. The car was rumoured to be there for twenty minutes with the engine on. Some people from the neighbouring dark houses were told to have seen a few heads inside the car talking to their cell-phones. Who came that night and waited there burning the fuel? Were they the goons of Hari Dutta? Hari has a good connection with the Party. Hari is also rumoured to donate to the Trinamul.⁶ Did he set his goons ready following a hunch that something might happen that night? And even if he did, those goons would never come empty handed. Never. There was surely a machine-gun in the Tata Sumo. Rather, the question is: how many machine-guns were there? We don't know that but the Tata Sumo incident indicated firmly that the case was now rolling towards a murder. 
After the incident of murder had taken place, our para doctor Shyamal confided in me that Biren went to him. Biren would often go to his chamber; the doctor might be busy with the patients, he would suddenly put his head through the door-curtains and ask,
-       Doctorbabu, are you here for some time today?
He wouldn't get an answer.
-Ok, alright. I will come back half an hour later. I've to talk to you about something important.
The doctor would not say anything to that either because he knew that Biren says this every now and then and never comes back.
The doctor Shyamal said that there was no patient then. Biren came back.
-       Doctorbabu, I came to know something. I'm hearing stuff, you know. People are being hush-hush about it.
-What?
-Things that I'm hearing you see. Here and there. They are saying that it can happen anytime now. A murder. A murder will happen.
-What? I have not heard anything like that.
-Then hear from me. The situation outside is not very good. I'm sensing it always in the air. There will be a murder any day.
-What nonsense you speak of. Murder takes place every day. You open the newspapers and there is a murder there. What’s that to you or me? If it has to, it will.
-No, Doctorbabu, the thing is I'm feeling a bit scared. My hands are always sweaty. I can feel them shaking sometimes. What I mean to say is, I don’t need to fear for that, do I?
Doctor Shyamal confided in me all these things later, maybe from a sense of guilt.
That Biren was associating himself with the murder which would take place in near future and was getting scared of that was known to many people. Somebody reported to have seen him coming out of the local police station and walking towards the para. He was also seen to visit the local Party office and ask our LCM Kali-da – “I don’t need to fear, do I?” This had happened when Bishu of the Saha Medical Stores was there. Bishu was a good boy. Why would he tell Biren’s name to anyone? Actually, once frightened to the core by something mysterious and unknown, anybody could act like Biren. Especially when everyone firmly believed that there would be a murder soon.
The incident afterwards was heard from Buro. Buro, Salman, and Moglai were drinking beer in the field behind Thakurbari. It was a hot summer day. The evening had rolled on. Salman and Moglai started cursing people in their talk. They were Hari Dutta’s boys. Buro was not into this though; he had a family business of selling potatoes at the market. They saw that Biren was coming. Salman raised it,
-       Let’s startle Biren-da.
-       Why disturb him for no reasons whatsoever? Let him go.
-       Just see, it’ll be great fun, believe me. Hey, Biren-da. Biren-da. Listen. We have some news for you.
Biren came forward,
-       Where were you going?
-       To my house. Things are not good these days.
-       Not good? Say, the worst. Danger is all around us. Do you know what it is?
And he brought it out from his pocket. Black. Rough polishing. A Chinese Revolver. Biren stepped back. Buro felt nervous,
-       What is this? What are you doing? If it fires shots…
-       Shut up you fucker. No magazine inside.
Biren told them with horror on his face,
-       I’ll scream, please, take it away!
-       What! Stop that nonsense, Biren-da. Hold it in your hands and see the fun. Do you know how to fire? Very Easy. Hold it like this. And press the trigger.
There was a sound of gun-firing. The cracking sound dashed through Biren’s body into the field, somewhere in the distance. Moglai ran first. The people around also heard the sound of gun-firing. Buro followed Moglai. Salman too.
Hari Dutta gave Salman the Chinese Revolver to keep it. Hari Dutta did not know this. Neither did Salman. Even if you take out the magazine from those models, a bullet is always stored inside. Many such revolvers entered Calcutta during 1971-72.⁷
 
----------- Translated by Sourit Bhattacharya
 
 
 
 
Glossary:
 
(“Amar Kono Bhoy Nei Toh” which is translated here as “I don’t need to fear, do I?” was published in the literary magazine “Baromash” in 2004)
 
¹ Para in Bengali stands for neighbourhood. Usually a line of houses on either side of a street, para has a historical significance. It is associated with the partition of Bengal and the close settlement of the refugees from East Bengal in various parts of Calcutta and around.
² The word bhat has a specific urban use which means fabricating stories or speaking nonsense, or rather trying to make an “important” point out of a nonsense talk. So it carries both the meaning with it – party funny and partly annoying.
³ Rooti-tarkari is a round flatbread with curry. It is an everyday Indian cuisine.
⁴ Biri is a native form of smoking tobacco. It is made of tobacco wrapped in dried leaves and tied with thread. It is very cheap compared to cigarettes. Flake is an Indian brand of cigarettes.
⁵ The author uses the phrase “scene-scenery” to mean the need for clarification. The use of the word scene here is related with the sequence of scenes in a film which makes a “showing” of the “telling” of a tale, a sequence of things.
⁶ The Party is the Communist Party of India (CPIM), while Trinamul is the Trinamul Congress Party. When the story was written, the CPIM was the ruling party and Trinamul was in opposition.
⁷ 1971-72 was a politically turbulent time for Calcutta. The Naxalite movement, which was violently crushed by the State, was followed by the Bangladesh War of Liberation (again close to West Bengal). There was a deep social and political crisis in West Bengal.
 

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Toy
Nabarun Bhattacharya
 
Mithil and Mimi never left Toy alone at home. Not for a long time at least. There wasn’t even a plan as such but Mithil called Mimi from the office to tell her that Mahendra was screening Tarkovsky’s ‘Nostalgia’ at his place on VCR. They asked Amitadi to look after Toy. No one lived in the top floor of their remote three-storied apartment. In their frugal looking apartment, there was only one flat on every floor. Toy and his family lived on first floor and Amitadi on ground floor. Before going any further, let’s get to know about the aquarium.
     Last year there was trouble at Mithil’s workplace. Mithil’s boss in his division retired. Someone came from Bombay to replace him. He was in a Tata Concern there and the moment he joined, a whole series of ego-tussles began. There were disagreements over trifles all the time and Mithil became increasingly anxious in the process. He started doing Yoga: Pranayam¹ and Shavashan.² Mithil’s Yoga teacher asked him to buy an aquarium. He was a devotee of Aurobindo³ and Mother Teresa.⁴ He told Mithil that Mother had observed somewhere in her writings about the calming effect of watching fishes in an aquarium. He also said that this had really worked for a lot of people. This is how an aquarium made its way into their home for a therapeutic reason of sorts. It wasn’t huge and didn’t contain a great number of fishes. Swordtail, Guppy, Angel, Black Molly, Gourami⁵ and so on. The cat fish came later. The snails were kept in the bathroom under drops of water. It was a difficult arrangement to make and so dry foods started to come. Toy had joined Mithil in his obsession with the aquarium even at the cost of watching television. Mithil and Mimi bought Toy the book Multicolored Fins from the book fair. One day after reading the book, Toy asked:  
— Papa, why isn’t there a fighter in our aquarium?
— No point. They’ll fight each other to death.
— But the book says they don’t kill each other; only tear each other’s wings and the wings grow back as well.
— Have you read that right? 
— Yes. Do you know what Angel’s real name is?
— No.
— Terofilus Amikei.
     That evening Mimi had explained clearly what Toy was supposed to do hour by hour: Complan⁶ at seven, fruit custard at night; there could even be a surprise gift waiting for Toy. It would’ve been good to have a children’s program on TV that evening but there wasn’t. Toy was expected to do his studies after drinking Complan. Amitadi would come and see him at eight and the apartment security guard would also be careful. Unless it was a known person, he would ask all others to come later even though no one was scheduled to come. Mimi and Mithil would be back by nine fifteen. Toy was so quiet and well behaved that there was no reason to worry about him. Mimi boarded the mini bus from the nearest bus stop. Toy waved to her from the veranda. Mahendra’s place was just a matter of four stops.
     Toy counted the cars from the veranda for quite some time. He played his favourite game of predicting cars. The winter hadn’t set in at the time although the sun was setting early and there was a faint trace of fog around the light. The game of predicting cars was Toy’s own invention. No one else knew about it. It’s time for an ambassador now. And there it came. One nil. Now Maruti. In came a police van instead. The score was one all now.  Another Maruti. Now it was two to one in favour of Maruti. Cycle, two wheeler, bus, mini— they were not counted in this game. All the three rooms in the flat were well lit. After winning 45-37, when Toy had his Complan, it was five minutes past seven. Mithil and Mimi called at seven fifteen. Everything all right? Yes. Are you afraid? No. The home-task of five sums must be done. You can do the handwriting exercise tomorrow morning. Toy disconnected the phone and sat with the sums. The last of them was big and difficult. There were so many multiplications and divisions! And just as Toy geared up for that one, the doorbell rang. It was Amitadi!
— What are you doing Mr. Toy?
— I am doing my homework. Maths.
— Such a good boy! Are you afraid?
— No. Not at all.
Amitadi gave Toy four Hajmola Candies.⁷ Toy kept two of them on the table for himself and the other two on the bedside of his parents. He couldn’t quite solve the final sum. It was ten minutes past eight then.
     Toy went to the bathroom to pee and after he was done, he stood up on the commode and opened the box fixed on the opposite wall which was deliberately kept out of Toy’s reach. The moment he opened it, a beautiful aroma combining the Eau de Cologne and aftershave filled the air. When Mithil went on tours, he took a cute miniature immersion heater with him. He used it for shaving. Toy silently brought it down.
     Mithil and Mimi came back exactly at nine thirty and Toy was watching TV with rapt attention. It was Pink Floyd live from Australia on cable TV. Psychedelic and smoky light everywhere; waves of long hair in slow motion; flashing lights like lightning on the cords of the blue guitar. They had brought ice-cream for Toy. So Toy didn’t have fruit custard after dinner. He went to bed and Mimi had also fallen asleep telling him stories. Mithil was still awake. The candle lights of ‘Nostalgia’ were all around him. He felt that familiar restlessness returning in his head, as if to save the lonely candle’s only light. Sitting with a cigarette in front of the aquarium sounded like a good idea.
     The light in the aquarium was on. The lid was open and a pencil was placed horizontally to maintain the gap between the lid and the glass wall. The small immersion heater was hanging from it. All the fishes were dead. Because the heater was on, there was an invisible wave inside and an up and down of hot and cold water. The dead fishes were afloat within that invisible wave, flipping back and forth and constantly skidding from one end to another. The water was still quite warm. The silver bubbles were coming out from the diver’s half-open mouth. Tiny bubbles were also coming out from the surface of the immersion heater.
     Toy didn’t go to school the next day. His parents took him to the psychiatrist Dibyendu Mukherjee. Mimi’s father knew him well. Mithil and Mimi were sitting outside. Dr. Mukherjee talked to him for almost an hour before they came out with an Amul chocolate in Toy’s hands and smiles on both faces.
— Mr. Toy. You sit and read this picture book. Let me have a little talk with papa and mamma.
Toy nodded gently. Dr. Mukherjee said, oh what a great chat we had!
Inside Dr. Mukherjee had said this to Toy’s parents.
— I don’t think the incident is as serious and macabre as you think. What impressed me the most in the conversation with your son is that he doesn’t have a bone of aggression in him. He is such a soft hearted boy. I’d simply ask you to ignore what happened. It’s not a problem. He is perfectly normal. Sort of curiosity, you can say; it’s almost scientific…
     Sometime after the incident, Mithil read an article on children with criminal propensities from England and France in an overseas journal. An interesting debate had emerged from the discussions. One French psychologist said that these children had described their crimes in such a calm and cold blooded manner that one could almost detect a scientific attitude in it. Mithil read it out to Mimi.
Toy’s parents stopped being concerned about him after that.               
 
 
 
 
-----------------------Translated by Arka Chattopadhyay 
      
 
Glossary:
 
¹ An exercise involving inhaling and exhaling
² Another yoga exercise that involves a supine position respectively.
³ Aurobindo (1872-1950) was an Indian nationalist leader, yogi and poet.
⁴ Mother Teresa (1910-1997) was a Roman Catholic religious sister and missionary who spent most of her days in India. 
⁵ The names of various tropical fishes.
⁶ Complan is a popular energy drink for boys and girls in India.
⁷ A popular brand of digestive candies
 
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Blind Cat
Nabarun Bhattacharya
 
 (This story is dedicated to the memory of the cat ‘Gola’. His brief life was permeated with many loves and neglects from my end. Even his death taught me a lesson. Mortally ill, one night, he went away on his own to experience his death. No one saw him after that.)
 
There’s no way to know whether he was blind from birth or blindness was something he had picked up from his fights with other cats. He wasn’t an urban cat. He lived in a little village, soaked in the smell of fish with a river running right beside it. Cats like these have stories of a different kind. The two-storied hotel where he lived had a wooden floor. It stood right on the riverbank and had more than a tilt towards the river, as if deliberately leaning on the water. It made things easy. Dal¹, gravy, water, kerosene, liquor—everything that fell crawled away in one direction. Either it fell through the gap between the wooden boards or inched away towards the river. The water was salty. Eight thick wooden stumps and a few haphazard bamboo poles made the foundation for the hotel. The visitors in the hotel can’t be straitjacketed into one category. For instance, in the year 1972, a man with broken glasses had a meal of dal and rice, paid the bill and went away. He had a revolver attached to his waist, though he wasn’t a bandit. He used to write poetry for the people.  But the blind cat hadn’t been there at that point. From a boat or a steamer in the middle of the river, it was difficult to notice the tilt in the hotel. Underneath the wooden floor was a thorny creeper where a newt came at night, making a scuttling sound. The blind cat lay down and heard intently. Before this, the man, mentioned above, with a revolver hanging from his waist, after years, died while vomiting blood. Though there were shouts of ‘we’ll not forget you’ during his funeral, people started forgetting him soon after. Looking at it like that, how many knew the blind cat anyway? He’d be forgotten in no time. So many people stayed in that hotel, had their meals, committed murders and suicides, took advantage of foolish girls by making false vows of marriage, calculated the benefits of fishing, counted notes with spittle on every note, slept on the shabby bed with a huge list of debtors under the pale pillow with the dream of trawlers being the only solace in hours of distress—all these boarders were so busy with themselves that they never noticed the blind cat, all ears, among the randomly arranged furniture, sitting on the tilt towards the river.  Not that he understood the meanings of words that were spoken or events that took place. He couldn’t have made sense of the noise made by the burnt out ends of cigarettes, thrown towards the water when they finally hit the water with a sharp biting hiss on the surface. Not that he could understand the softly hummed song, a casually scattered word in the wind, a chuckle, a belch and a sob. There is a difference between listening and understanding. However, one couldn’t conclude with certitude whether the blind cat understood or not, in spite of repeated interrogations.
     In the previous section, we have mentioned the place like the head of a fish with eyes and fins where the blind cat lived, in that hotel with more than a tilt towards the river. We have talked about that side of the hotel so far which has the tilt. On the other side, there was an ascent towards the narrow lane with bricks covering across it but it always remained full of mud, going up to one and a half inches. It was used for carrying the fresh-caught fish and crab to the market. Just as in Kolkata, cars had a bumper-to-bumper jam on the road; here we sometimes saw the same, man-to-man. The one at the back, a man of course, called out jeeringly to the one ahead: “push it with your cock.” Others laughed. It was on this road that one day a banker’s bike had got stuck into the mud and after waiting for a while, he had said out of irritation: “What happened?” He had got an answer in the distance, from the man with a huge tin of Kanmagur², still alive, on his head—“It’s a boy.” Others laughed. The blind cat had heard these floating words. That afternoon, he had got hold of a half-eaten Kharasula³ and half of an Aar-tyangra’s⁴ head and tail. There was always food in such a zone. That’s the law of survival. How the blind cat had come to know of this, no one knows and not that they want to know either.
     Unless it stormed or rained, the first launch arrived from the other side at around seven thirty in the morning. A young widow with two kids boarded it every day, without being able to pay the fare. The girl washed the plates in the hotel and cleaned the two little rooms, upstairs. Both kids were male, pot-bellied and naked. They both had a black thread going around their waists. There was a stick knotted with the thread to what end, no one knew. The girl’s husband had died of snakebite. She collected the leftover rice, dal and gravy into a bowl. She had to manage like that. The owner of the hotel gave her a plate of rice with two serves of dal. That’s what the three had for meal. The fish bones went to the blind cat. He was a mix of black and grey. Due to age, his wools had become jaded. The two eyes were two deep dark holes. Sometimes blood trickled down those holes and left a dry mark around the nose. There were many cats and on occasions they came for the blind cat’s bones. The two boys shooed them away. When the cats quarrelled, outside or in the distance, the blind cat’s ears flapped up and down as he tried to capture the sounds of conflict. The owner of the hotel cooked and served the food to the boarders. He didn’t shoo away the blind cat. The first time he saw the cat, he did try to banish it with his broom but the cat had stood motionless in spite of the blow. It was the girl who had noticed then that the cat couldn’t see. From that point onwards, the blind cat had stayed. The tin surface of the hotel room had become rusty and dented. If one went out that way, there was a wet spot inside the shop which stood beside the hotel. Sometimes, the blind cat went there but generally he didn’t leave the dark spot under the table. He stood silent there and slept sometimes. When cats sleep, their dreams give them shivers in the body, the claws move; the nails come out from the paws and then go back in again. The blind cat perhaps didn’t dream. His sleep was all too stagnant. 
     After the suicide of the couple upstairs, the owner of the hotel rented rooms to couples during the day but not at night. The boy and girl were apparently so delighted that no one could imagine that at night they would finish all the sleeping pills in the pack. The owner was late in doing his cooking that night. The girl from the other side used to go back home, taking the last launch in the evening. It was drizzling but there was hardly a wind. The river was calm as well. The girl in salwar kameez⁵ was scribbling strokes in the water, on the dining table. And the boy was singing a Kishore Kumar⁶ song—this river goes to the sea…the owner had often heard this song on radio. The boy was singing it quite well. He had melody in his voice. They didn’t notice that under the table, in the dark and cold spot, the blind cat was all ears. After finishing their meal of egg and rice, when they went upstairs with refreshments in their mouth, the blind cat had started to feel drowsy. There were mild sounds of walking upstairs. The owner of the hotel had cleaned up the table and made a bed for himself there. The boy had stealthily come down with his torch and taken the dirty plastic water jug with him upstairs. The blind cat, half-asleep, suddenly became alert by the sound of his footfalls on the wooden stairs. Later on, when the girl had sobbed, the blind cat was already in his deepest sleep. When the morning slowly turned into afternoon, it all came to be known. There were heavy sounds of police boots on the stairs. The crowd, the din and bustle and the difficulty of bringing down the bodies through the narrow stairs—in all this, nobody noticed that the blind cat was right there cloaked in a dark silence.
     The two pot-bellied naked kids squatted down on the floor and observed the blind cat for hours every day. He smelled them too. In the lane outside one day, two big containers full of small fishes had fallen on the ground with fishes jumping everywhere. The kids had collected ten odd fishes in a piece of paper and served them to the blind cat. The fishes were still very much alive. Under the wooden floor, the newt which scuttled along didn’t enter the room but large rats certainly did. They were not afraid of the blind cat.
     Three men were relishing their rice with Boal⁷, chilli and onion on the day when the trawler owner was murdered. It was still an hour and a half before the murder happened. They had dropped an old half-torn bag on the floor, without noticing that it had almost touched the blind cat. The chain was off and the bag had to be closed with a gamchha⁸. In it was a new and loaded pistol, two daggers and eight handmade bombs. While having food, they were chatting along but it was difficult to guess their intentions from what they said. They had asked the owner of the hotel to bring some sweet curd for them. After finishing their lunch when one of them stooped down to pick up the bag, he was frightened to see the blind cat. He thought that the cat would swipe. The elder of the two kids said that it couldn’t see and won’t do anything. The man was still cautious in picking the bag up. Boal had strong bones and the cat had to take his time and be cautious while having them. Sometimes bones get stuck in cats’ throats and even if you offer all kinds of foods, they can’t have anything and simply sit silently in front of the food. So in this respect, the blind cat was more than alert. After finishing his food, he was leaking his right paw and wagging his tail because a blowfly was buzzing around him. When he heard the gunshot in the distance, his ears leaped up sharply. There was silence after the shot and then three bombs exploded.
     When it rained cats and dogs, the girl couldn’t come with the two kids, not because of the launch. She had to walk through a muddy road for two kilometres to reach the jetty. Canals, ponds and roads all got flooded. And then there’s the fear of snakes while returning in the dark. So the girl had to wait for others to come alongside her. Some of them had torches. On the other side, the girl bought some muri⁹. The person at the shop gave her more than usual. He even gave her free batasha¹⁰ and nokuldana¹¹ at times. At night they had muri and water for dinner. The girl didn’t have a set salary. The hotel owner gave her some money at his will. Those who came for fishing and other business became familiar with her and often gave her some money for the kids. The girl was generally silent much like the blind cat. No one had ever heard it make any sound. When the girl and the kids didn’t come, the owner of the hotel had to do everything. He would get irritated then and forgot to give food to the cat for a day or two.
     An NGO had arranged for a workshop with the villagers about how to make a dam nearby. The resource persons who had come for the workshop came to the hotel for dinner. It was a three day workshop. And all three nights, the owner had cooked local chicken along with expensive rice. They had quite elaborate meals all along. One of them came drunk. He was a generous person. He used to give cigarettes to the hotel owner and tell him stories of different countries. Because of them the blind cat got delicious chicken bones. They didn’t have the chicken’s head and the cat got that as well. When the workshop came to an end, the blind cat had to go back to his old routine of fish bones, fins and tails. When he ate, the kids looked at him wistfully. One night, the man was a little too drunk and the match fell from his hands as he was trying to light a cigarette. He saw the blind cat when he lowered himself to pick it up. He couldn’t understand that the cat was blind. It was the owner who told him. He told his two friends a real life story about the blindness of cats which he had read in a book. There was a scientific experiment with seven newborn kittens in England. It was conducted by the defence department. As everyone knows, the kittens only begin to see a few days after their birth. They had stitched the eyes of the seven kittens so that they wouldn’t open. The kittens grew up like that and they did various experiments on them. They tested their reactions to loud sounds, blows and burns. Then they killed the cats and analysed what impression the attack in the dark had made on their brains. When the British animal lovers came to know about this, they had created a furore. They had demanded that such brutal experiments be banned. Though the blind cat heard the story, he didn’t understand it. Before going away, he had congratulated the hotel owner for giving shelter to a helpless cat and said that it would do him and his place, a world of good. But attack can always come in any dark shelter. Who can say that something sinister isn’t awaiting the blind cat, just as it had been for the kittens? And there’s nothing to guarantee that the attack would only come from human beings.
     The blind cat’s fate rests on the storm which would be forecast with heavy warnings on radio and television. The river would undulate with waves as high as two men. The mad deluge would destroy the dam and in such inclement weather, it would become impossible for the girl to come to this side with the two kids. The hotel would tremble among howling winds and monstrous waves and the stumps and poles on which it had stood, would fall off one by one. Perhaps the owner would then assemble the furniture and utensils on the lane to save them from the disaster. He wouldn’t even forget to take the lantern, swinging to and fro in damaging winds. When the water would start flooding inside, it would do so from the tilted end. The blind cat would then move towards the other end at the most. However, he would never leave the room. Let there be two possibilities at this point. Either the water level in the room would keep increasing or the whole structure of the hotel with the two storeys would crumble into the river in one sweeping wave. Whichever possibility realizes itself, the blind cat can’t do anything. Either the water would overwhelm him or he would be buried in the river alongside the room and the hotel. But if the storm for some reason takes a different direction or doesn’t unleash itself so destructively, the hotel in that case would remain as it is. And under the table would the blind cat be, sitting rapt in silence. In the morning, the two kids would come and see that he is, as he always was, in the old and familiar spot, sitting rapt in silence.
 
--------------------------------Translated by Arka Chattopadhyay
 
 
Glossary:
 
1.     A common Bengali-Indian food to be consumed with rice.
2.     A type of fish.
3.         ’’     ’’  ’’
4.         ’’     ’’  ’’
5.     A popular Indian dress for girls.
6.     Kishore Kumar (1929-1987) was a famous Indian singer who sang both in Hindi and Bengali as a playback in movies and otherwise.
7.     A type of fish.
8.     An Indian variant of the towel.
9.     An Indian food made by parching rice on hot sand.
10.  A common Indian food made of sugar.
11.  Another variety of sugar made food.
 
 
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Jaws of the Moon
Nabarun Bhattacharya
Everyone knows that Kolkata’s upper line of teeth is false. Everyone also knows that Kolkata’s lower line of rugged teeth is not false. They are ill-shaped high-rises. Having uttered this tautology, I felt those who read stories and all, would recall Gorky’s ‘City of the Yellow Devil.’ Meanwhile the plot has thickened out there. Fida[1] girls will always fall for bindas[2] boys. Earlier, the ‘not-so-fida’ girls who dazzled the lanes and by lanes of Calcutta would at least recognize those boys who weren’t bindas. Now anything is cool! Why bother?
However, everyone knows that after having an uncouth early dinner, Kolkata drowns its upper line of teeth in the glass bowl of the sky which the people of Kolkata have christened moon. Glancing at the sky-bowl of night at that hour reveals nothing. The moon vanishes. Clouds entwine the layers of the sky like a crepe bandage or gauze as showers drip like drenched angels in incessant mazy motion. Awnings, ashes— everything gets soaked. The upper line of teeth is hardly visible. What would the people of Kolkata call the shape of filthy light, toned down just beneath the surface of a series of clouds under such circumstances? Jaws of the moon?
The place on which we have fixed our focus is a bus stop. Not a famous one. The final destination for the sole minibus that plies in this route from Howrah used to be the previous stoppage. But as a few concrete houses are being constructed, few other apartments are also scheduled to come up; the minibuses have started to run till this place, terminal to terminus. A few passengers get off. Then the minibus returns. A drenched night. Without a whiff of air. Sultry. How many people could read here is not known, but a big yellow and black hoarding stood behind the shade of the bus stop. To ensure that even at night the hoarding could be read cap-a-pie, three neon lights were fixed and angled towards it. Two of them were not working and the third was blinking from time to time. A few insects, even in that rain, were flying around the light. And two murderers sat on their haunches under that shade. They carried a chopper and a dagger wrapped in a gamchha[3]. They had kept watch for the past two nights. The man would arrive in the last minibus. They had received such information earlier. There was no light on that spot save the blinking neon, but the lights of the new flyover could be seen to the left. A scooter passed. Then a little silence. A C.T.C bus passed making heavy noise. A handful of people were inside. One of the murderers lit up a bidi.[4] The other declined when offered. At a little distance a bicycle stood leaning on a wall.
--Won't come.
--He will.
--When did you call?
--Past two then, told you already. Said that the bastard was in the gaddi.[5] Collecting payment.
--Then he will come.
-- Told you so.
--Me thinking, if the mini cancels the tip[6]...
--Ehh, why should it be cancelled? Last bus. It may get late in jamp.[7] It will come.
No reply came. The man who could have answered spoke not a word but tried to softly whistle the tune of a popular song without touching the roof of the mouth with his tongue. He couldn't. Just then, from the far right, came a low noise, and the light of the minibus appeared.
The murder began. The chopper and the dagger came out from the folds of the gamchha. The handle of the dagger was made of black horn, riveted with nails. One of the murderers stood up and wrapped the gamchha around his neck like a muffler. It would make it easier to wipe the warm and sticky blood with it. The thumb of the left hand tasted the sharpness of the chopper held in the right hand for once. The chopper was meant for the blow and the dagger for penetrating into the body, making way through skin-meat-fat-bones. The face of the minibus grew bigger and more distinct.
The story would be finished in five more minutes. To the left, in the smoggy night, the light of the flyover seen a while ago, lying beneath the jaws of the moon, had emerged from the opposite direction. On the very spot from where it emerged, a police van had halted to collect tola[8] from a matador carrying fish. An inspector and four constables were in the van. The man who went to collect tola owned a tea and snacks stall beside the police station. The inspector was seated beside the driver. With a lit cigarette. The matador driver handed over forty rupees to the henpecked man. The rogue walked towards the police van. Kind of lame. Lumps under his feet. While restarting the matador, the driver muttered something the meaning of which in simple language was that he wished to do many things with police’s mother. When the henpecked man got up in the police van, it started with a jerk.
A short man wearing trousers and punjabi,[9] and spectacles, with a discoloured, tampered briefcase, alighted from the minibus. Holding the briefcase between the knees, he took out a comb from the pocket of his Punjabi. The minibus made a u-turn and the man, watching the bus, combed through his oily, closely cropped hair. Just as the minibus had turned and accelerated, the man put the comb back in his pocket and held up the lower portion of the punjabi in his hand to wipe the spectacles.
            The spectacles were knocked off.
-- HE…YY!
            Drizzle or drool dripped from the jaws of the moon. He didn’t let go of the briefcase. Tried to run away. Couldn’t manage at all. Fell on the street in the pushing and shoving. The man who kept the briefcase, pressed under his feet, held the dagger.
            The other raised the chopper exactly above the man’s head. And froze there itself.
            On the opposite side of the road, the police van jammed its brakes and screeched to a halt. The inspector got down. The door of the van was left ajar. An oil tanker passed. Then he crossed the road clicking his boots. Came forward. The chopper and the dagger still remained, held exactly in the same position.
            The inspector indicated with his right hand. With his finger. When the neon light blinked, it could be read. The hoarding.
--What’s written in there?
 
        TO CARVE AND SELL MEAT IN PUBLIC IS SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION.
                                                                                            --KOLKATA CORPORATION

            The inspector, firmly walking, crossed the road and got back into the van. He muttered to himself—
--No civic sense at all.
            After the police van had left, the chopper and the dagger dragged that short man into the soaked and clotted darkness behind the shade of the bus stand.
-------------------Translated by Adway Chowdhuri
 
 
 
Glossary:

[1] Infatuated or obsessed.

[2] Cool and casual.

[3] A hand-woven towel.

[4] A crude small, thin cigarette rolled in kendu leaves.

[5] A business man's office cum shop where large scale transactions are made.

[6] Mispronounced version of 'trip'.

[7] Mispronounced version of traffic jam.

[8] Illegal extortion of money.

[9] A loose stitched upper garment worn over a pajama, trousers or dhoti.
·Other italicized English words are retained from the original text.
 

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Cold Fire
 
Nabarun Bhattacharya
 
I’ll come and give you a brochure and other literatures too. But if you watch this videocassette for ten minutes, things will become absolutely clear to you. I really like this model of the Akai VCR you have here. This is the one we usually use in our office as well. Coffee will do for me…had to be awake for most of the night…in the village burning ghat, with the help of NGOs, there is a new arrangement being made for elevated chullis¹…the body will be placed on a platform with the logs and stuff, like on a stretcher, over the metallic chulli…ashes at the bottom and bones on top. All of that is collected in due course. I have seen it near Labhpur², where Tarashankar lives. They offer training courses on this in Gujarat³. This concept works quite well in the villages. Let me switch on the VCR now.
            There’s a soft fall of snowflakes to begin with. Then the name appears—“Cold Fire…you have waited for this so long. You had to wait eighty-four years for the fall of communism. And now you get Cold Fire only in six years. The classy softness and the miraculous company of Cold Fire live up to you and others who are truly special like you.”
            K.C. Sircar, the owner of three tea gardens, watched the work of Cold Fire on his VCR. Clad in dhoti and kurta⁴, with chandan dots on forehead, the body was placed on the box which looked like a coffin. The lids opened and the body went in. The lids closed and the digital lights came on. The caption said: “After ten minutes.” The red lights went off and the blue ones came on. Two small doors opened towards the fag end of the box and two shining bowls came out. One had a label: “Ashes” and the other: “Navel.” The lids opened soon after and it was all magically empty; spick and span inside, like it had been, before the body had entered.
Mr. Nagarwala had told Mr. Sircar in the club yesterday evening.
—K.C, I will send a boy to you tomorrow morning. Fascinating! I have already booked my machine. Even the name is spot on—Cold Fire!
—I once had a Czechoslovakian brand of Vodka. It was back in the good old communist era—now the Czechs and Slovaks belong to two different countries—it was called ‘Liquid Fire.’ Is this some new hard liquor?
—No sir, this is the finale of all liquor—the final flicker.
—Right! Let me see then. Send him along.
—I’ll have a glass of cold beer. You want one? 
—Beer after sundown?
The boy is very bright. His spotlessly well shaven chicks always have a dimple in the right place.
—How did this unique project come to your mind all of a sudden? I mean what prompted you?
The boy started to mix a spoon full of sugar into his coffee.
—I am explaining to you sir. In this post-communist world, the differences between the higher and the lower strata have assumed a logically absurd dimension. In the various spheres of life—be it education, childbirth or transport—everything is completely different. If a rich senior citizen like you wants to travel to the seaside, he will go for Maldives or Seychelles and not Digha or Puri⁵. If you have an eye problem, you will prefer Geneva. This larger-than-life, free and elevated life style of yours doesn’t speak to your funeral. The same old dirty Keoratala, Nimtala, Kashi Mittir, Shiriti⁶ —house of horrors. It’s a complete mismatch, a travesty of death in fact. If there’s a high life style, why not have some panache in death? Did you have to visit a burning ghat of late, sir?
— Not very recently. Last year when my in-law’s brother…
— If you go now, you’ll see things are even worse. We have to make official visits to burning ghats quite frequently. About five days back, what a horrible scene it was at Keoratala! Only three chullis were working. There’s no one at the pyres but a group of anti-socials, high on ganja⁷. On the other hand, there were six bodies waiting on the top and another four below. And then as if all this wasn’t bad enough, there were regular showers from time to time. Every corpse was accompanied by a group of lumpens.  You can’t even imagine what a nightmare it was.
— Sounds like hell!
— I haven’t seen hell sir, but let me tell you, there’s nothing more hellish than that. A drowned body started to decompose. One killed by Alpha bullets and one BSF soldier. All others from slums or from lower middle class background, old men and women, a middle-aged man who’s a party worker perhaps; a group voicing typical communist slogans; and in the middle of all that, the purohit’s mantras⁸, malsha⁹, flowers, paper containers and what not…in the distance the cot with its mattress and quilts on fire. And a horde of street urchins wandering around for this and that. Dogs, drunkards, people screaming and crying, corpse-fluids, incense, enchantments…
— Ah! Mere description makes me feel like puking!
— That’s how it is sir. It doesn’t matter whether you book Cold Fire or not, I can’t possibly imagine you in that hell! Sorry sir, I think I am getting a bit too emotional…
—No, no, you are alright. If all I do is exclusive stuff, why won’t my funeral be exclusive too? This frail cloak of a body; it will burn once and for all. Let it burn well then. Moreover, this isn’t just a gadget; it’s a family asset, so to speak.
— Right sir.  One can even buy Cold Fire for commercial reasons. The whole concept of cremation will change.
— Have you read Gita?
— Yes sir. We had to take a special training on Thanatology. For the theory of it, we had read Gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Sir, may I ask you something?
— Yes. Go ahead.
— Do you believe in rebirth sir?
— Can’t say that but looking at Cold Fire, it seems, ‘redeath’ will be better than rebirth.
— Your observation is profoundly philosophical, sir. Should I book a machine for you?
— Of course. Let me come back with the checkbook. I think I’ll be able to refer you to at least another seven clients.
— Thank you sir. I am so grateful for that!
     The very next day a big car came and delivered Cold Fire at Mr. Sircar’s place. All his friends and relations came over to see how it worked. Appreciable indeed! The only bizarre thing was two of the oldest servants in the house, the old gardener and darwan¹⁰ quitting their jobs.
 
       The man who set the rare record of becoming the first consumer of Cold Fire in Kolkata was the gynecologist Chandramadhab or Chandu Chattujje¹⁰. The night before, he had thrown a huge party at Taj Bengal¹¹ to celebrate his granddaughter’s first birthday. There were fountains of scotch everywhere. The very next day the shocked and bereaved friends saw how Cold Fire began its work at eleven in the morning and the blue lights flashed exactly at 11-10. The lower doors opened and the two shining bowls came out. One had the ashes while the other, the navel. The whole process was captured on videotape.
Till date, two-thirty Cold Fires have been sold in Kolkata!
 
               -------------------------------Translated by Arka Chattopadhyay
 
Glossary:
 
1.                         The Indian name for an electrically operated crematorium.
2.                         Town in the Birbhum district of India.
3.                          One of the states in India.
4.                         A typical Bengali and Indian dress.
5.                         Famous tourist spots for Bengali travellers.
6.                         Names of burning ghats in and around Kolkata, India.
7.                         The Indian name for Hashish.
8.                         The priest’s enchanted words read out during a ritual
9.                         A container made of clay.
10.                      The doorkeeper
11.                       A native Bengali way of pronouncing and spelling the Anglicized   brahminical surname ‘Chatterjee’.
12.                      A posh hotel in Kolkata.
 
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Nabarun: Faces & Facets

The Face Between The Two Reds

The Raven Keeps Time

The Inverted Gaze and Fyataroos

Nabarun and Ritwik Ghatak: Playing for Endgame
 

The Blind Cat Is Watching You


Fyataroos Everywhere

4+1
Arjun Bandyopadhyay

কলকাতা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়, বঙ্গভাষা ও সাহিত্য বিভাগ, ২০১৬, দ্বিতীয় সংখ্যা

সম্পাদক : প্রসূণ ঘোষ (বিভাগীয় প্রধান)

১)  শুভদীপ দেবনাথ - কবিতার ভাষ্য ও এক কালাতিক্রমী আখ্যান [হারবার্ট] - পৃ. ১৮৪-১৯২

২)  প্রসেনজিৎ মহাপাত্র - অনর্থক অপভাষা, নাকি চরিত্রের সামাজিক অবস্থান নির্ণয়ের প্রয়াস: প্রসঙ্গ নবারুণ ভট্টাচার্য - পৃ. ২৪১-২৪৫

৩)  শুভশ্রী দাস - কুকুর উপকথার জাদু ও নবারুণের বাস্তব [লুব্ধক] - পৃ. ২৪৬-২৫৩

 

তন্ময় ভৌমিক

 

 

সেখ মোফাজ্জল হোসেন

গবেষণা অভিসন্দর্ভ - বাংলা বিভাগ, আসাম বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়, ২০১০

তত্ত্বাবধায়ক : অধ্যাপক তপোধীর ভট্টাচার্য

এরই গ্রন্থরূপ "নবারুণের আখ্যানবিশ্ব" দে'জ পাবলিশিং

Dibyakusum Ray

PhD Dissertation, 2014, Dept. of English Literature,

The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad

Guide: Prof. Dilip Naik