This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale

by Subimal Misra

  Here the reader is not ignored either, the reader too is a comrade-in-arms with the writer in the creative act, sometimes the writer and reader merge into one. There is no longer any difference between ‘them’ and ‘me’, perhaps it is not even necessary. The distance between place and time is gradually wiped away. Real incidents and imagination do not go hand-in-hand, rather they are completely intertwined, they cannot be separated. Sexuality is transgressed in a kind of opaque torpor, somewhat like another Hiroshima Mon Amour. And so naturally, complexity becomes a feature in its construction, all the commas on the verge of exclusion … Hadn’t Apollinaire done that long ago, various passages entering into the same sentence, incomplete subjects from before suddenly returning without prior preparation, the insertion, while dwelling on one thing, of a long digression on something else, consciously sometimes, bearing in mind the helplessness of the reader as well? Yes, the reader too has to participate in the creative act. It is definitely not a story, and not really an incident either. Again, where necessary, inwardly, everything, everything is raw material then – the way raw material is, the way it is used. The original grassroots form emerges in the language, raw, which this techno-progress-professing civilized society does not permit at all times, sometimes new word constructions too take place. Thinking is apprehended from its source. Not an explanation of emotion and feeling, rather their union emerges in fragments. In short, in the midst of resorting to the material, seeking questions going beyond the material, searching, keeping oneself and one’s act of writing occupied in this search. In this context, the established forms of realism also arise. Even if reality – which for me is a situation of conflict between the past and the future – is not merely a fixed moment of unchanging present, there is an endeavour to try to capture that in my anti-novels, in some places. Just that.

  In this way, gradually, everyone from Cervantes to Dostoyevsky is left behind, Joyce-Proust-Borges and Kafka-Camus most definitely, for that matter Beckett of Malone Dies, Michel Butor of La Modification, Robbe-Grillet of La Maison de Rendez-vous, Burroughs of Naked Lunch and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. of Slaughterhouse-Five. Also discarded are Bengal’s Manik, Satinath, Jagadish Gupta, Dhurjotiprasad, Kamalkumar, Waliullah and Amiyabhushan – whom, at least, even if partially, at one time, Subimal used to acknowledge, could acknowledge, used to be content acknowledging. So who remains then? Other than the arrogant Subimal? Subimal then stands in opposition to Subimal, against all his writings until now. He gradually keeps discarding himself. He himself raises questions regarding his own position. All his work stands in opposition to him, all this is not for himself, for he is not in control of all this.

  Addendum

  Most of the writers in our country, or for that matter abroad as well, lay emphasis on so-called reality. Some on ‘normalcy’ as well. The basic foundation of popular literature is more or less built upon the stilts of such reality. In the early phase of writing by some of these writers from the traditional stream, a stamp of intellectual maturity could be observed. But subsequently it did not develop further. They portray characters, they write stories of personal relationships, some of them leave out events too, it is the exploration of character that is their prime concern. The same old blah-blah, which had already reached a dead-end several decades ago. For some, portraying the background is the real task, with the characters appearing to have been pasted with gum on to that; sometimes it is extremely lengthy – which was the ideal of novelists of the nineteenth century. We have already received War and Peace, Buddenbrooks, Pather Panchali or Todai Charitmanas. What is to be gained by preparing another copy of all these? None of them seemed to realize that the very highest stage of description of events, portrayal of character or explanation of mind had been crossed long ago in Anna Karenina or The Brothers Karamazov, or in The Puppet’s Tale in recent times. Again, in the view of some camps, the perspective on society does the main job, and based on that thinking they construct characters, with talk of ‘socialist reality’ on their lips. Notwithstanding an abundance of pedantic writing, the experts were unable to show this thing called ‘socialist reality’ separately from so-called reality, they could not correctly explain this sorry state. (Perhaps Maxim Gorky, while speaking about ‘critical realism’, was responsible for putting into currency its polar opposite, the term ‘socialist realism’. Even if that includes the socialist world and the writer’s commitment to workers, let’s say, nonetheless, its use in the practical sphere is, at least until now, not as clear as it should be.) In this regard, in another context, Arnold Hauser’s or Lucien Goldmann’s Marxist explanations and analyses could not satisfy us adequately either. And there is another band whose tendency is to create psychological novels. They don’t care about reality and suchlike, there are some young writers like that too. In their writing, they want to lay emphasis on form, in their view the subject does not change, only the form changes over time. I consider my writing, whatever little there is, a few stories and novels, to be different from all these forebears, and I say this without any arrogance whatsoever. When any stationary or moving thing is presented directly, in many cases its actual visage cannot be captured, but if bits and pieces of myriad incidents, characters, diaries, reportage, comments – if all these, everything in accordance with the time, from different viewpoints, can be projected, are sought to be shown, then it could well be the introduction of a different kind of endeavour. Actually, the real objective is to be able to reach the truth, an immutable route-circumambulation, most difficult, which literature has been trying to do for two-and-a-half thousand years (or is it three thousand?) but has been successful only in very few instances. Obviously, one cannot but admit that all such thinking has arisen as an outcome of decadence, and together with that it is also true that much new thinking – as well as the possibility of the opening up of avenues for ways of expression – is also manifested in this very fashion, it manifests class struggle, and going further, even the possibility of revolution. In this way, our demolitions are able to transcend meaninglessness, they attain a larger dimension. Revolutionary presentation too becomes inevitable for what is revolutionary. Personally speaking, I try my best to come face-to-face with truth, employing all my anti-convention forms, which are dialectical, which present a different point of view, and density, of the audacity of standing in the opposite corner, face-to-face with myself. Yes, face-to-face with myself, in no uncertain terms. When will you ever show the courage to be able to efface yourself, will you be able to do that, Subimal? This long journey – riddled with contradictions – and going beyond it: when? There is no end to man continuously creating himself, there has never been, Subimal. Because – when a medium as powerful as literature begins to speak in a single mould and tune, then what can make one more despondent than that, can there be anything?

  Further Addendum

  All this talk of mine will appear, or may appear, to some people to be merely advocacy in favour of form-centricity. In our so-called progressive criticism, on the one side are placed all those literary creations which are clearly straightforward, real incidents or established on proximate visualization, and on the other side are placed all those creative works that did not follow the ordinary rules of reality. After qualitative examination, the first, which speak in one’s favour, are considered progressive, and the other side is labelled as reactionary, practising the literary art of decadence. The oversimplification that this formula involves is a big fissure in the stream of Marxist criticism, and its gaping maw only widens. In the literary arts, the evolutionary viewpoint does not always remain in our sight. We forget that the different schools of thought in currency at different times, despite their dialectical limitations, attain the mantle of the historical and artistic truth of the time. Sometimes, those parts of all these ‘decadent creations’ are granted recognition when they are related purely to realism and are located at a comfortable distance from all the acts of anti-realism. Actually, the non-dialectical viewpoint is apparent within the use of reali
sm as a measure of qualitative ascent. However, as an example one can say that the witches drawn by Goya are more real than many of the so-called realist works of art, El Greco’s realization is more visible to our eyes than Constable’s, Shakespeare’s common folk are more alive than the masses portrayed in the post-revolutionary social reality formulae, Don Quixote and his companions are much more real, Tolstoy’s characters are also just as alive. Notwithstanding all the clamour regarding social realism, never could those portrayals reach anywhere close to these. Moving away from the so-called traditional arrangement, Mayakovsky demolished poetry mercilessly, but his form was just as potent in bearing the reality of revolution, something that was not seen often in the flowing stream of poetry. Brecht presented another imaginary world, in a different form, which unmasked the bourgeois social system, with an imagination that was much sharper than the dull reality of the popular stream. Mayakovsky or Brecht used all their demolitions and experiments as one of the weapons of class struggle, and if we forget this fact and cry hoarse about their form-consciousness – which is the case with our popular Marxist criticism – then we will simply jumble up everything. Because all these are not the cause of decadence, not at all, rather they are its outcome, a movement through historical progression.

  – Subimal Misra

  This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale

  The last 2-3 years’ newspapers, letters, writing,

  interview extracts, reportage … whatever I

  thought whenever I thought, all of this,

  everything, was used, fiercely, with

  broken type, and me too

  ‘I don’t-want don’t-want don’t-want, dear

  this measured out love of yours.’

  Bedana Dasi (Bengali singer, 1905)

  Here’s Ramayan Chamar’s tale

  Much about the character remained unknown to me, and as I continued to read, with all of you, I became enthusiastic, yet I kept waiting. But nothing occurred according to rules, just the bare body and the perspiring face – even the dialogue got continuously jumbled up on the tongue, becoming loose and inert. It’s one in the morning now, the rotis have become dry and hard. The lights in the house next door were turned off long ago. The social context, the frame, suddenly becomes an adversary, a palimpsest, of him, the Character – and right then, a major part, which at the time of writing was unclear even to me, gradually emerged from the shadows. I was compelled to provide explanations: the promises, the ethic of never denying humanity – but I don’t refer merely to the Telangana or Tebhaga movements. Consequently, the wooden planks of the hanging-bridge catch fire, the chemicals for country-bombs illicitly bought from Allahabad at 40 rupees a kilo get sold for 400 rupees a kilo in the No. 3 Line basti in Jorabagan. Perhaps it’s because of this that he, Ramayan Chamar, had laughingly revealed to me: ‘Only if you wet all the seeds with water – do you follow? – only if you wet all the seeds in water…’

  Dam, check-dam

  Until now, man has not been able to make a firearm

  Dam, check-dam

  Until now, man has not been able to make

  a firearm

  which fires bullets only in a single direction

  and avoids

  other directions

  Back in the village, we never had to buy food, only salt and kerosene were purchased. I used to visit Calcutta every now and then. I never knew what deprivation was. I liked Sarju, who lived next door, she was as pretty as a fairy, but I didn’t get married. The song, ‘With every wish, I swing in bliss’, had just started becoming popular then – Kanan Devi’s song, Sarju sang it beautifully. The wages for making bidis were six annas in those days, one got by well. Father died in 1950. I had begun to savour babudom. Frilled sleeves, cross-collared punjabis, and a fine-bordered Sengupta dhuti.

  Panu Mullick, Pannalal, was a militant labourer of the Howrah Bidi Workers’ Union at one time, whom I first came to know even before I started wearing trousers – a red gamcha slung on his shoulder, puffing a bidi and walking briskly to the field of clumps across the railroad tracks to do his business, the crisp morning sunlight in every direction, the kind of light in which the Robi Thakurs sat by the window and wrote poetry. Every part of Pannalal was alive, his teeth, mouth, hair, genitals, all of it, and the yellowish brains in his head too. I hadn’t asked whether he had heard the name of Ramayan Chamar. Later I saw he had become that, wanted to become that. As I listened to him, I correctly surmised that by pinching handfuls of meat he was warming the meat – making it really warm.

  ‘Which party were you in?’

  ‘There were no leftists at that time, so it was to the Congress party that I paid subscription. There was a meeting once in Goila, in Barisal, I saw Netaji there. I had also seen Gandhiji in a public meeting at Madaripur. I did love Gandhiji. Who doesn’t love him? People had given over a lot of gold ornaments to him in the cause of the nation. He set up twenty-six cloth mills across the country with that money. Is that true, babu?’

  ‘Had the partition taken place?’

  ‘Yes. Once the refugee card was issued, I got seventy-five rupees for the land and five hundred rupees for the homestead from the government. Later the government gave another five hundred rupees for a small workshop.’

  ‘Which party do you like?’

  ‘Why – the communists. There’s no party other than them that thinks about us. I had been with the bidi workers’ movement. Surya, Nani and I – we used to collect donations. Harihar babu was the president. After him, it was Bishwanath babu. And after him, all of us together made Bimal babu president. I was the main organizer. Now Bimal babu is a minister – and I’m a pauper. Do you get it?’

  ‘Do you know that the National Security Act has been passed?’

  ‘To hell with national security – the black law has been passed.’

  ‘Do you receive pension?’

  ‘Pension? Earlier I used to get twenty-five rupees, now I get thirty rupees. Can you get two hundred grams of chira a day for that amount? Where am I to get the balance from?’

  ‘But you can go to the party office now, can’t you?’

  ‘Nobody gives a damn if we go now, babu. It’s Haran Sadhukhan and company who are there now. As soon as the smell of political position touches their body, all of them become veritable Hanumans – do you get that, Hanumans, all of them…’

  Muscling his way in, Ramayan Chamar nods his head animatedly: ‘Whatever else I might be, at least I’m not Panu Mullick. Descendants of slaves, they are all slaves – each and every one of them. Sure, there’s no mark on their throats, but the vote-casting mark on the thumb remains. The mark of impermanent ink.’

  Moonlight gleams on the rail tracks. On the railway over-bridge in Tikiapara, two groups of hoodlums fight for control over the locality, people from one platform cannot cross over to the other platform. The battle steadily spreads beyond the rail yard towards the No. 3 Line basti. Guns and bombs, from nine at night to seven in the morning. Our dream: a united and prosperous India.

  BEWARE OF DANGER

  An importunate request to the people at large, that without, first of all, solving the riddle elaborated below, no one can read the novel. Otherwise, there exists the calamitous possibility of inviting divine retribution. A progressive youth, a resident of Berhampore in Murshidabad district, flagrantly disregarded the riddle and began reading the tale studiously. Consequently, in the evening, when he was going home on his bicycle after attending an important party meeting, two country-bombs landed on his head and right there he attained dissolution into the five elements. About the bombs that were directed to finish him off, all that the police could say was that there was no evidence in their possession about who had thrown them. An independent gentleman, a clerk from the Kasba locality who always avoided every kind of party-politics, who was forever reciting shlokas as if he were baring his claws and fangs, exhibited laughing disregard for the said riddle and ran his eyes over the story. That afternoon, for not being
able to give the puja donation demanded, he was thrashed under the papaya tree he himself had planted. He was admitted to hospital in a half-dead condition. Evidently he had received such punishment for going against God, or else why was no one arrested for the said incident? Considering the importance of the situation, there is only one direction to the fraternity of readers: Beware of danger!

  THE RIDDLE

  A monkey goes and attaches himself to the very end of a suspended rope. The rope hangs from the medium of a frictionless, standalone pulley. At the other end of the rope swings a bunch of full-sized martamaan bananas. The monkey now begins to climb the rope. Can you say when there will be no distance between the bunch of bananas and the monkey?

  The scavengers poke the oven ash blows out on to them

  The flames and the thick smoke

  The smell of burning corpses in the air

  Go about enraging

  9:00 in the morning

  The idea of Ramayan was coming into my head, bit by bit, then. As it happened, at the Rashbihari crossing, I ran into the editor1 of a weekly that had a print run of about fifteen thousand. He wore a yellow punjabi.2 He asked: ‘What happened … Where’s the story?’ A nice means to shut you up isn’t it? His wife stood to his right, craning her neck, staring – a lot of dirt around the cuffs of my pajamas. Two girls, chatting, passed by. They were headed for Dhakuria Lake: ‘Do you know how many editions there have been of Chowringhee?’ The high-heels of one of them slipped upon stepping on cow-dung, the other held her and arrested her fall: ‘What the heck! Don’t you look where you’re walking?’3