This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale

by Subimal Misra

  The only son of a professor died in a nursing home. The injection that he was given in the emergency room was adulterated, it was ineffective.

  At a voting centre in central Calcutta, around afternoon, as five to seven youths laughingly claimed the identities of women voters, the electoral officer said: ‘Fine, fine, everything’s just fine, please cast your votes.’ The agent of the opposition party was, at that time, engrossed in probing his ears with a matchstick.

  The accused, Gautam Roy, a.k.a. Bhulu, was killed in public, inside the courtroom, in broad daylight. It was stated that when the accused was about to enter the courtroom, some youths suddenly, and without any apparent provocation, fired at his head. The incident occurred inside a crowded courtroom, in front of the judge.

  A prior arrangement had been made between the engine driver and his co-workers, the train would slow down, and the looters would take away the coal. On the day of the accident, there was an altercation between all parties regarding the division of spoils. The coal-lifters were not willing to give more than forty rupees to the engine driver and twenty rupees each to the other workers. They were so preoccupied with the matter of their share that they did not even have time to look at the signal. And so the train collided head on with another train standing at the station. More than two hundred people were killed in the collision and about a thousand people were injured.

  At dawn, the entire locality was surrounded, and a search for the criminals was initiated. Police entered and searched one house after another. An opposition leader declared with great perturbation that mothers and sisters had been dishonoured. In the end, ten or twelve innocent youths were taken away, on the pretext of questioning.

  A group of youths entered a voting centre in the southern fringes of the city around evening, a sheaf of papers in their hands: ‘The sons-of-swine aren’t coming, give us their ballot papers!’ The officer smiled and accommodated their demand. Together, they stamped the ballot papers and stuffed them in the ballot box, and when the opposition party protested loudly, they said: ‘Don’t shout, sir, be quiet. If you don’t like it, go away, and if you make any trouble…’ Well, there were a few rifle-bearing policemen standing outside.

  As a result of using inferior quality cement, sand and steel, and having the work overseen by an ordinary mason rather than a civil engineer, the house that an upper-division clerk constructed with his life’s savings and bribes collapsed within two months, and the whole family was buried under the debris.

  In a village in Nadia district, in West Bengal, all four daughters of a gentleman consumed rat poison and … The saris that the gentleman bought for his daughters were extremely cheap, the girls did not like them.

  There was a watch on the wrist, an expensive ring on a finger. As the train was about to leave … the entire arm from the elbow … using a sharp cleaver.

  After he was released on bail, the criminal charged with murder went to the officer-in-charge of the police station and pleaded: ‘Let me keep the den.’ He had to be allowed to continue running the gambling and illicit liquor den. This was his livelihood. ‘Should the poor die?’ he asked.

  In a voting centre in north Calcutta, a sixty-year old woman had come to cast her vote. A youth was joking around inside with the poll agent, his mouth full of paan, and smoking a cigarette. Seeing the woman, the youth asked her to stamp on a particular symbol. The woman said: ‘You are like my youngest son, dear. I know whom I should vote for.’ The boy (employing a particular demeanour) replied: ‘As soon as one gets married, kids are born, aunty, but politics is something else, so stamp where I tell you!’ And then, in front of the electoral officer, he snatched away the paper, stamped on it and put it into the ballot box. The agent of the opposition party was then gazing at the rafters on the ceiling.

  Slowly, in the background, a light appears. It becomes bright. The whole world steadily comes to light.

  – ‘Stop shouting! Quiet! In a democracy, a couple of incidents like this always happen.’

  – ‘I shouldn’t shout?’

  – ‘No! Stop shouting! The neighbouring country will hear it.’

  The masses are stunned. They keep saying: ‘But, but…’

  – ‘Aren’t you citizens of a great country … shameful…’

  – ‘But…’

  – ‘There are no buts. There can’t be. Be quiet. Everything will be all right.’

  One person is very suspicious. Sniffing, she advances, trying to get as close as she can.

  – ‘Who are you, sister?’

  – ‘Oh dear, brother-in-law – can’t you recognize me?’

  She bares her arms, one after the other, five and five, ten in all. Autumn sets in. Bell-metal gongs sound everywhere. Hussain drew his picture in exactly this way, isn’t it?

  I’m Kali, when necessary

  Krishna when necessary

  A devotee of Rama, too, when necessary

  Boons I grant, and offer sacrifices too, you see

  Sometimes large-hearted and sometimes Hitler-hearted…

  Because Ashok Maharishi married my paternal aunt’s mother-in-law’s

  Maternal grandmother

  I have stuck his wheel to the country

  With Fevicol.

  Everyone bows their head and pays obeisance. The light spreads over their heads.

  Some unruly rogues lower their heads and mutter, perhaps the Goddess’s fishy odour had entered their noses … ‘Tell me, oh tell me, Mother, why so much blood?’

  The drop-scene comes down. Shehnai spiked with cabaret

  The child dances, the mother dances, the ministers and bureaucrats dance

  Hoe dances, spoon dances, pots and pitchers dance

  Dear Mother, Firozini, let’s see you dance

  Let’s see you just dance, and dance

  Everyone looks askance. The police come running to enquire about the meaning of all these words. He feels threatened, and he starts singing a self-authored folk song, in Runa Laila’s voice –

  Whenever I go to the ghat at the rear

  Mister Bleeder, the fount of knowledge

  Lifts up his clothes and pees

  Gushingly he pees

  But why’s ‘Bleeder’ in the song? The minister comes running. The leader himself comes running from the party office –

  Politics in the name of Art

  is not permitted

  Keeping in mind the tune and rhythm, he then changes ‘Bleeder’ into ‘new son-in-law’ –

  The new son-in-law is a fount of knowledge

  He pees in his pants

  Gushingly does he pee

  Whenever I go to the ghat at the rear

  From nearby, someone remarks: ‘Isn’t this going in another direction?’ Another person responds: ‘Let that be, this is much safer than politics. And politics now means leftist politics – it’s the fashion now. But there’s never any obscenity in folk music.’

  The police and the public twirl their moustaches

  Tapping to the beat, they enjoy the sacred arts

  ‘Do you know what’s the most ancient substance found on Calcutta’s soil? – A six-million-year-old sea-oyster shell, nothing else, just this shell, a shell.’

  So who decides?

  Smiling, Boudi puts her hand on the shiny turntable and asks, in jest: ‘Begum Akhtar or Bob Dylan?’ And then, at once … The Chowdhurys had a huge, old mansion. A huge, green phonograph cone attached to a small box-like wind-up gramophone … ‘Bajubandha khule khule jaay…’ A dog with its face to the cone. Faiyaz Khan sahib on a 78-rpm record, singing raga Darbari Kanara. A gale breaks out, making the sky look distressed. Sitting alone in the darkened veranda, and listening to the just-acquired Faiyaz Khan sahib. Standing on the veranda, hunched forward with her head bent down, Ranu-di looks at the gale blowing outside. Ranu-di had just begun to wear saris. ‘Bajubandha khule khule jaay…’ Feel like laughing now. And then, just then, he saw – why is the dog white? Like Ranu-di’s neck – white. Definitely an Eng
lish dog? Its ears hang down. Has a collar round his neck. Boudi’s sister, Nandu, entered and said: ‘What was the song you mentioned – “Oh milk-maid sister”…?’ ‘No!’ ‘I rummaged through all the old records, we don’t have anything like that. Haven’t ever heard the name of Bedana Dasi. I found an old record of Dilip Roy.’ She blows away the dust from the record. ‘“Drums resound on the battlefield” … Shall I play that?’ He looks directly into her eyes. ‘With every wish, I swing in bliss, I’m a wild flower, dear…’ But she didn’t mention it was Kanan Devi’s record. Nandu was completing her MA in psychology that year, she was very keen to take up research on the attitudes of basti-dwellers … A lot of dirt has accumulated on the neck. Get terrible prickly heat these days. Someone has said that if the prickly heat’s bad, one should see a doctor.

  Just like race horses have pedigree – who’s the sire, who’s the mother – similarly, old merchant families have genealogical tables, the family background, so to speak. Robi Thakur had it too, it was published recently – want to see? They’ve got a copy at the library of our own recreation centre. It’s on the strength of such pedigrees that people get jobs. ‘Who do you have, boy? I say, did your grandpa retire as district magistrate – or at least a minor official in some government department? Do you have any family background – which college did you graduate from? Just a degree – there are so many people with BAs and MAs tramping the streets of the city. Nothing comes of that. At least get a character certificate from someone of position – or can’t you get even that?’

  The officer-in-charge dictates

  – ‘Before he was killed, the man was wearing a dirty pair of pajamas, torn at the cuffs – a saffron-brown khadi punjabi, black-framed spectacles over his eyes –’

  – ‘Shall I write saffron-brown?’

  – ‘Not exactly saffron-brown, when it fades, saffron-brown becomes a dull colour.’

  – ‘So what shall I write?’

  – [Scratching his head] ‘No point bothering about all that, write saffron-brown.’

  – ‘But the colour’s not saffron-brown.’

  – ‘I can’t express in language what exactly the colour is – colours can be so complicated…’

  – ‘Had a book in his hand.’

  – ‘Which book was it?’

  – ‘It was…’

  – ‘The name on it was Non-violence, the author was Manik Bandopadhyay.’

  – ‘Everything’s getting mixed up – the book Non-Violence was not supposed to be in his hand – apparently they don’t believe in non-violent politics – by custom, it should be a book of poems by Sukanta Bhattacharya.’

  – ‘Perhaps he wasn’t able to obtain that…’

  – ‘Keep quiet. Is it really necessary to lay so much emphasis on the book?’

  Lord Ramakrishna shines bright in the picture

  Lying with his head on Mother Kali’s lap

  The cuntry advances, the people get more than their salaries, just like the neighbour’s wife was better than the wife in one’s own home. The paan-chewing petty clerk at Writers’ Building takes a lick of the lime and tells the man beside him: ‘You know Mukherjee – when the lights are turned off, all are equal. Everyone gets aroused by exciting things.’ The freshly-recruited boy – he’s also an intellectual, who writes in little magazines to boot – replies: ‘Do you know, Sen-da, there’s a play by Brecht about a soldier who returns home after war to find that a smuggler has made his girlfriend pregnant. He doesn’t get alarmed by this, instead he too seduces someone else’s wife and runs off with her.’ But Sen does not like all this intellectual talk, he pretends to ignore the callow youth. ‘Forget about your Brecht, remember what happened in our own Mohsin Building about a year and a half back … in the darkness of twilight, a forty-year-old hag had a fourth-class staff member who was her son’s age … it’s the same thing, tell your Brecht to learn from us…’ He gets annoyed, seeing someone standing at his table clutching a file, he waves his hand: ‘Can’t do all that now … it’s tiffin time … Come later, boy…’

  – ‘Bengalis are done for. Getting screwed everywhere in India.’

  – ‘Bound to happen, too … What else can you expect when we fuck each other’s arses.’

  – ‘If only Subhas babu had arrived that day, together with the Indian National Army, then you’d have known…’

  A large rooster was feeding near the heap. Enormous, black-and-brown in colour, the comb on his head a bright red. Half running, half flying, he jumped and climbed to the top of the heap. And then, ensconcing himself comfortably there, swelled his throat and began crowing in victorious pride … cuck-koo-roo-koo-koo. A plump white hen came flying and took her place beside him, and the two of them – with their fierce claws – began scratching the dirt on the heap, began crowing and cackling and the distance kept increasing…

  Ranu-di: ‘You can’t deny that among middle-class folk like you and me – even if there are only very few – some people have realized that the affluence of 10 per cent of society is paid for by the hardship of 90 per cent of the people. They realize that perhaps it’s not right. Are compelled to realize. But until now, they have not been able to overcome the delusion of fine words like elections, democracy, human rights and so on – perhaps it would be quite accurate to express it like that.’

  Unseen, Ramayan

  ‘Your trade union movement, party politics, private property, wages-profit-production, industrial relations, self-reliance – the complex developments associated with your economic evolution, remain mere complicated words in our consciousness, they don’t exist in reality’

  Fundamental rights and suchlike are the talk of a specific class of people. They lack any meaning until the common people in our country – who never bother about such things, nor shall they do so in the future – attain awareness. No one will go to court on the grounds that, by the imposition of Emergency, he has lost his right to speech, he can’t even think about the rudimentary aspects of this. For the majority of the people, democracy means going to cast their vote, the question of whether one is able to vote, or of how he is compelled to sell his freedom to vote – such matters are not transparent to him in the normal course of things.

  Ramayan Chamar

  ‘The High Court and the Supreme Court are for moneyed folk

  The police and administration are for the folk with money

  Parallel to the court case, the bosses use the police, use the administration, to harass and torment. From ‘74 until today, the police camp hasn’t left the colony for even a day, can you imagine that – and Section 144 too’

  For the majority of the educated and semi-educated people, who have been kept in such conditions according to a plan – whether you speak of autocracy or fundamental rights – the fact remains that all these are merely words devoid of meaning; and our ruling class takes advantage of the opportunity to the fullest – our own weapons wound us.

  Ramayan Chamar

  ‘On a dark night, a thatch-roofed village house was set on fire, thanks to the links between the landlord and the police, and we became the accused, whether or not we had anything to do with it

  ‘A village boy suddenly went off somewhere one day. His father was bribed to file a complaint with the police that we had kidnapped him. Of course, soon enough, the lost boy returned merrily, but the case dragged on, and we had to be present for the court hearings

  ‘My wife was kept in the police lock-up all night – do you know why? She had apparently stolen and drunk the babu’s milk’

  It is becoming very clear that to keep the hegemony unchallenged, people’s helplessness and impotence has to be ensured and perpetuated. Don’t dare protest, the one who bears it, lives – this sermon must be broadcast everywhere.

  Ramayan Chamar

  ‘Can you imagine, for the last year and a half, not a drop of the allotted kerosene oil has come. The tea estate manager’s brother is the kerosene oil dealer of this locality. We have been living in darkn
ess for a year and a half’

  Because most of the people in our country are illiterate, they have an innate weakness when it comes to the printed word. Whenever they see something in print, they believe it is divine truth. The people who have monopoly over literature and culture know very well about this weakness of the largely illiterate people of our country.

  Diary, which was written ten years ago

  Not merely left or right politics, my battle is against anything connected with every kind of establishment – which suppresses people and does not let them be fully human.

  As he writes the letter, he yearns for a cigarette. While smoking a cigarette he also smokes two beedis, which is very common with him. Searching for the beedis, he sees the back-cover of a weekly magazine lying on the table – a clothing company’s advertisement. What magnificent colours in the advertisement – the chap is wearing a gorgeous shirt and almost-naked girls are falling all over him. Even a labouring man, whether or not he knows how to read and write, is supposed to be drawn to this advertisement. His servant boy too will most definitely see the advertisement while dusting the table and, for sure, his twelve-year-old daughter as well. All the bosses who paid to get such advertisements printed were the ones who reviled his writing as lacking in basic decency. He was apparently, through his writing – let’s take the description of the incident relating to the advertisement – poisoning society and wholesome culture. They do say that, but so also do those who ought to be thinking about, evaluating and considering the description. Perhaps most people can’t think for themselves. They are content to get by relying on others’ thinking, which is something corresponding to their likes, at least in this chapter of the social system…

  The society lives in the middle-ages, can you change society, mister, with ten or twenty schools and colleges and two or four factories?