This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale

by Subimal Misra

  Once, while travelling from Varanasi to Uruvela, the Buddha came upon a band of youths. They were picnicking together with their wives. One among them was unmarried and had brought along his paramour. But the girl took some of the youth’s possessions and ran away. Everyone then began to search for her. Coming upon the Buddha, they asked him whether he had seen the girl. Hearing everything, the Buddha replied: ‘What is it you search for? Instead of looking for this woman, don’t you think it is better for you to search for your own self?’ In order to understand the Buddha’s views about the absence of self, it is necessary to know this story. The person who completely denied a separate self advises someone else to search for his own self. These two apparently contradictory views are resolved if the difference between the self which has to be denied and the self which has to be searched for is understood clearly.

  Casuarina Avenue. Under the immense trees were cars with their windows up, and there was only a mysterious darkness everywhere. Everything was enveloped in mist. Every now and then, suddenly, a tittering laughter erupted from the ground-glass windows when they were momentarily opened. Only – a few boys, bare-bodied even on this winter night, ran around collecting beer bottles thrown from cars. On one boy’s body there was only a jute sack worn like a coat. Every now and then, they rubbed their hands together to keep themselves warm. They had collected seventy or eighty beer bottles so far. As the night advanced, there would be more. ‘Look … look! That fatty has made the girl lie down on the back seat…’ It was long past eleven at night. I would like to examine once again the quotation in currency attributed to Darwin. Tonight itself if possible. Yes, the monkey – it was sitting on the German sahib’s bookshelf, and in its hand was a human skull. The monkey was gazing at it with a very thoughtful look. Reader, do you think I’m very jealous – the jealousy of non-fulfilment – what do you think, sir? I forgot to mention, some Bihari folk had even made a fire with twigs on the Victoria Memorial grounds. They sat around the fire warming themselves in the winter night.

  Long hair continuously narrows and then thickens upon the rectangle. Stands up. In excitement. The brownish-red colour will be added here. The complete list of sex offences is known to many. Polygamy is a tendency in man. Not all are mentioned in this text. For instance, the colour purple. Who on earth would openly give it company?

  From an alert writer, the reader expects that there will be a discussion on why, in certain social conditions, people express moral laxity. It is also expected that he will provide an explanation. In this kind of writing, there’s a socialist significance, and the writer is only responsible for explaining that aspect. It’s difficult to accept that he provides only tasty descriptions of sexual behaviour in the text – that he doesn’t provide a basic social explanation. Without saying anything more, the objective of presenting such a sign can be easily guessed.

  In a society in which individual earning is the sole means of gaining recognition, where poverty and deprivation bring disregard and denial, the artist’s independence is bound to be pushed in a perverted direction.

  The reader who seeks to become one with the times and tries to advance in this pursuit does not find what he is looking for in the popular stream of stories and novels. For him, the story has to convey many-more-things besides the story. And it is through these many-more-things that the real character of a writer can be discerned. Notwithstanding all the information and statistics pertaining to a country or a society that are easily available in books and are published in newspapers, it is in these many-more-things of a story that some truths are contained ever more clearly – the effort is made to do just that. It’s because of the trustworthiness of a writer’s effort that a piece of text is simultaneously story, history, proclamation and personal diary. The carrying capacity of a text can be stretched as far as man’s thinking and imagination can reach and ascend. In the normal course of things, in the eyes of an unpractised reader, it may well appear complex and entirely doomed. A story or a novel is not merely a form of art, it is also a medium of expression of a personality. On the other hand, a writer is not merely a social theorist or a sophisticated political thinker. The conscience of an independent writer submits only to truth and truth alone. And in that sense, it is the task of a writer to raise all kinds of questions, on all sides, and to always evaluate the possibility of alternative realities. Let us learn to recognize our own likes outside of the likes imposed upon us.

  Some days ago, I visited the famous French painter, Henri Matisse, to sit for a portrait, and I had a discussion with him about the purpose of art. As Matisse was feeling somewhat unwell, he was working in a semi-reclining position. He asked his secretary to fetch an elephant. The girl brought an African statue. The elephant had been sculpted as if it were in an intoxicated state. Matisse asked me whether I liked the figure. I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doesn’t something about this strike you as unusual?’ he asked.

  I replied: ‘No.’

  ‘It doesn’t strike me either. But look carefully. Not just its trunk, but even the tusks are raised too high.’

  A fool came and said: ‘The tusks can never be raised so high. The figure is not at all realistic.’

  The next time the artist worked according to the man’s instructions. Matisse asked his secretary to bring the second elephant. This was an extremely ordinary figure.

  Matisse said: ‘Do you see, the tusks are in the right place now. Everything’s according to the rules. But now there’s no art…’

  ‘Guru, I’ve seen A-class, B-class, C-class and several classes of wackos in my life. For that matter, I’ve seen golden wackos, blue wackos and orange wackos – but I’ve never seen such a Z-class pure white wacko in my life.’

  Having had a bit to drink the previous night, I woke up late. It was about nine o’clock then. Even before I could have my tea, I got the news that someone was waiting in the sitting room to meet me. I felt annoyed that I couldn’t even sip my tea in peace. I went and saw an extremely skinny-looking youth, wearing rather shabby clothes. We sat staring at each other for a few seconds. I realized he was finding it difficult to succinctly frame what he wanted to say. He had never been in such a situation before. After some time, he did open his mouth, but as if in a stupor. Need a job. A mother and several younger brothers and sisters at home, et cetera, can’t survive without a job. I became thoughtful and was about to give a suitably noncommittal reply – but I was not at all prepared for what happened next. Like a spring, the boy left his chair and shot towards my legs, he fell on his knees and threw himself at my feet. ‘Please do something … anything whatsoever … or else … or else I shall do something terrible … I’ll become bad…’

  Many days have passed. I could not, or rather did not do anything about getting the boy a job. I didn’t even remember. I don’t know whether he found a job or not. Nor have I tried to find out if he’s turned bad. Not finding out is the safest. Because if I learn that he has enlisted in the satta gang or become a wagon-breaker, then, at that very moment, I would feel the jab of a thorn within me – a thorn which wouldn’t be easy to pluck out. It wasn’t possible to bother about such things in the midst of one’s myriad responsibilities and problems.

  The people of the country ask in loud voices:

  ‘What’s the main problem before us now?’

  The country’s leader, the Big Boss, shouts:

  ‘Vanaspati mixed with the fat of cow and pig.

  Poverty, unemployment, illiteracy – all that’s for later.

  Save vanaspati first – save caste.’

  ‘You can shoot and kill me, but you can’t make me surrender. I fight for the exploited, I protect the honour of women. This land shall one day belong to the ones who plough it. Even if you people kill me, this is going to happen. Behind me many more like me are queuing up. They shall come – they will come – they will keep coming.’ He writes this once again, anew, from Ramayan Chamar; all his life he’ll keep writing the words, as a preface to his writin
g.

  The cameraman keeps taking pictures. Pictures of the person killed in the explosion. Dead or injured? Torn slippers and shreds of a saffron-coloured punjabi scattered here and there. Who knows where the shoulder-bag is, the books and papers inside it are strewn everywhere. Papers fly in the wind. One book still emits smoke, its pages smouldering. The pen had been thrown out of the pocket, who knows where the head had flown, a myriad cracks in the spectacle lenses. But they didn’t break. Someone had fondly given him a brightly coloured apple to eat, it was rolling on the ground. But isn’t it said that writers don’t eat apples? A dream? Of course it’s a dream. There was an asbestos roof overhead, a big chunk of it lay in pieces on the railway track. The rail station was the background. It was one minute past twelve on the clock hanging over the platform. And the explosion had therefore taken place then, at one minute past twelve. In this text. Blood had accumulated in various places. Blackish. Mop and bucket in hand, the sweeper had begun to wipe away the stains of stale blood from the walls and the floor. The frame, the entire frame is like this. The cameraman keeps taking pictures.

  It’s begun, the show’s begun

  The Hema Malinis will dance –

  Pran & Co.

  will flash daggers

  The Bruce Lees will show off their karate prowess

  And an all-India people’s leader

  Will remove his underwear and act wacky

  As a bonus, there’s

  Miss India’s nude cabaret dance

  Ninety paise to sit on the straw laid upon the ground

  For the babus in trousers there are chairs with cushions

  A whole section of them.

  Come, see apna cuntry

  Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai

  There’s cabaret, there are fight scenes

  There’s Rajesh and there’s Rajneesh

  There’s unrestrained sexuality

  and the politics of women’s rape

  The law for the poor and the law for the wealthy

  The parliament of shoe-flinging

  There’s the historic speech of 1947 by Nehru-ji

  Black marketeers shall be caught

  And hung from the nearest lamp-post

  There’s man licking man’s vomit in the throes of hunger

  In broad daylight

  The scene does not strike anyone’s conscience

  There’s a red-sun branded image of struggling folk

  A lively A-class cinema show for flood relief

  Perverted sex and red-light zones of women’s freedom

  How Jean-Luc Godard blends with

  Cherabandaraju’s thoughts

  The procession to Tarakeshwar

  Carrying water on the shoulder

  The world’s longest spell of darkness

  Men and women in unbridled preparations,

  Outside family life

  There’s the twenty-first century

  How, paradoxically, in building a state in a socialist mould

  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

  A film about all that

  Murder, mayhem, Rabindrasangeet

  The story of the Maruti car, elucidation of the Gita

  Even the voice of my Mao Tse Tung

  There’s everything, everything whatsoever

  Now for you, in full Eastmancolor

  Nanda ate palm fritters

  and began to dance

  COME, LET US NOW

  EMBARK UPON A RED-LIGHT TOUR,

  VIA CHAMPATALA TO HARKATA GALI

  Raising a furore, the members of the opposition raced forward. One person took a position in a corner and aimed his zari-embellished nagrai-slipper at the speaker’s nose. Crying, ‘What a disaster,’ the members from the government-side rushed towards the speaker’s table and surrounded him. A scuffle ensued, punjabis were clutched, paunches were pinched, dhutis fastened around waists were undone. ‘Hit the bloke with shoes, hit him!’ – a roar erupted. Two women members stood up: ‘Come, let’s also join the scuffle, for life’s sake!’ Another person supported them: ‘We must do that, or else we won’t be able to save our dignity.’ The woman in a sleeveless blouse tied the anchal of her sari around her waist, and then she picked up a slipper lying on the carpet with her left hand. A fat government-sider tore the speech papers of the skinny opposition-sider into shreds and kept flinging them up into the air. A feminine slipper landed with a report on a person’s cheek. Trees, flowers and creepers in exquisite golden handiwork over brown. An aesthetic member said: ‘Excellent, oh beautiful one! When there are so many surprises in the showcase, wonder what the warehouse will be like!’ (The member has to be asked later what ‘showcase’ and ‘warehouse’ mean.) Bits of paper flew in the air inside the circular chamber – pieces of protesting papers. Shreds of the sugar scam, shreds of the fodder scam, shreds of the blanket scam, even the My Marx scam. In a flash, the woman with the sleeveless blouse pinched the cheek of a woman with plucked eyebrows and said: ‘It’s necessary, Rekha-di, it’s all necessary for life.’ The face of the woman named Rekha-di became flushed, the speaker saw what had transpired. The speaker, making his sombre face even more sombre, kept saying, ‘It will be decided tomorrow whether or not it is appropriate to use the term “goondaism”. Everything is adjourned today.’

  THE FEAST JUST AFTER

  On Saturday afternoon, on the last day of the monsoon session of the legislative assembly, the honourable speaker invited the MLAs for lunch. The menu: chicken biryani, murg massallam, fried fish, palm-fruit sandesh and ice cream. There was also an arrangement for spirits, however, that was not made public – it wouldn’t do to put that in writing. People could satisfy their needs furtively and they could openly participate in the session as long as they wiped their mouths with a handkerchief. Everything is democratic, it’s a question of democratic rights. One person states the governmental view while eating. It was a very modest lunch, bearing in mind the talk of imminent famine in the country and the crop failure for two successive years. Chewing a chicken leg, gravy trickling down from his mouth, an opposition member’s view: ‘I did drought relief, and after that, for a long time I have been prepared to engage in flood relief, but why are there no floods in this state? What will we fight for then?’ Finally the government and opposition members cooled down, slowly they sat down beside one another, maintaining peace and harmony while they were all busy eating. ‘At least at this time there ought to be…’ ‘Yes, at this time…’ The way to Harkata Gali via Champatala, sometimes turning towards Murgihata, and sometimes to the Great Departure.

  CABARET SHALL CONTINUE

  Staff Reporter: Cabaret shall continue in the government-run Great Eastern Hotel. This could not be discontinued. The state tourism minister stated this in a written reply in the legislative assembly on Thursday. He further added that the ITDC would open a five-star hotel on Chowringhee and there would be cabaret shows there too.

  THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

  An immense ship on the peaceful ocean. Bits of clouds floated in the sky. The captain sat with his eye on the most modern weather-monitoring instruments, a lazy moment, there was no warning of any kind anywhere. No possibility of any deluge, people were getting on with their activities, eating-sleeping and running around, nothing unusual was showing up on the radar. And then, in front of their eyes, in a trice, everything turned topsy-turvy, there came a thundering storm that made the sky tremble. An electric storm. But for just a few moments, then everything ceased. Everything was placid again, the sky and air turned peaceful. Seeing that everything was in order, the captain of the ship heaved a sigh of relief, and suddenly there was an announcement over the wireless. One learnt that by now time had advanced by at least twenty years. A radio programme from the year 2003 was being broadcast. A gorgeous sari’s anchal floated on to the television screen. Boiling and bubbling, with red and blue drops of steam. Deep red, mixed with deep green. Past, present and future were all conjoined, illusory, erroneous. The girl’s mother walked
around clad in the mini-est of mini-skirts, chemical war broke out steadily in the north-east corner. Who is whose father, who is whose mother, and who is still brother and sister. The ravishing woman stands solitarily at the seashore. Some said the Goddess Ambika herself had come down from Mount Kailash to trick her offspring, while in the opinion of some others she was a water-sprite, and yet others had seen her before, in Champatala, standing on the road, soliciting customers. Only a long-bearded fellow, a sailor from the east, in disguise, knows her identity. And Number One knows. She’s nobody else, merely an abandoned woman who’s left the confines of family and society, who, donning a sad face, looks at the sea. This planet’s aboriginal folk had to be reproved by her. She’ll come to the pages of the text as soon as she’s called, she’ll perform a cabaret as soon as she’s asked to. Please be a bit patient, you lot, because this will happen, will definitely happen – it has to happen.

  NUMBER ONE

  Just as in a conventional detective story we are used to seeing an exceptionally strong-cum-clever hero, the hero of this story too is no less than that, although, of course, one needs to be able to identify him clearly. Just like in Hindi films, where Amitabh Bachchan can battle hundreds of people simultaneously, similarly, the hero of this story, Number One, also equals a hundred. He could have been a bit like James Bond, but he became a Hindi film hero. Fate, everything is fate. And how convenient is the water and wind in India! Look carefully, he is constantly accompanied by a secret agent who’s neither male nor female – twenty-first century citizenship. Foiling the conspiracies of various kinds of villains, placing the risk of every kind of danger upon his head, our hero jumps from the top of Writers’ Building towards the countryside – he’ll fall, fall and perhaps perform a somersault, but he won’t die. He’s a Hanuman by race, instituted ages ago in the stiff pages of the Ramayana, immortal is he through the four ages, Satya, Treta, Dwapara and Kali. And all the furore is about him, about his activities, the one who knew that if his tail were set alight he’d really create pandemonium in Lanka.