This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale

by Subimal Misra

  FIDEL CASTRO’S HISTORIC SPEECH

  ‘Those who think that they’ll win the election against the imperialists are extremely childish, and those who think that the day will come when they will come to power through elections are even more childish … That socialism can come without a fight … through peaceful means, through the medium of elections … that’s a lie.’

  CASTRO’S CONDOLENCE ON BIRLA’S DEATH

  Fidel Castro was grieved at industrialist G.D. Birla’s death. In a telex message, he said, ‘GD’s sudden demise has saddened me. We had been counting the days to GD’s visit. His tour programme had been already been arranged. Kindly convey my personal condolences to GD’s family members and the members of the industrial group under his leadership.’

  In Bertolt Brecht’s study there hung

  A small framed piece of cardboard

  On it was written: Truth is concrete

  PUPU’S FIRST EXPERIENCE

  The wind blew gustily, suddenly it began raining and then three middle-aged men with long sideburns came running and stood under the portico overhanging the pavement. Right after them, came a girl wearing a frock. Unsure of what to do, she too slipped into a spot near a dark corner under the portico and stood with her neck slanted in a slightly aloof manner, as if she were oblivious to the existence of the three persons. An adolescent girl. The way she stood, the bright yellow frock and below that her pretty slender legs too, the hem of her frock blowing in the wind – it looked very beautiful. Heavy rain descended all over the scene. The streets began getting flooded. From somewhere, a bull came through the rain and forced its way to the spot under the portico and the four persons there were displaced, especially the girl. Being pushed into an even darker spot, closer to the corner, she looked with frightened eyes at the bull. The bull was black with white patches. It stood still after having found a place for itself. The powerfully built one among the three middle-aged men, the one who wore a green punjabi over black trousers, and whose thick black sideburns came down to the very bottom of his cheek, moved ahead towards the bull’s head and, holding the two horns, pushed it hard. The bull moved back a few steps, shook its head and tail, and did not do anything else. The girl lifted up her head, looked and then tried to slip even closer to the corner. The fat, dark-skinned person again advanced towards the bull, and again held its horns and pushed it back. The bull moved a little bit. The girl did not have any more place to move. The bull’s tail was now touching her yellow frock. A whitish wall behind her and in front, the legs, buttocks and grey-coloured tail of the bull. Circles of black and white. The rain outside grew heavier. A man rushed past in front of the space, umbrella in hand. A maroon-coloured car went by, splashing fountains of water. A brown school bus came and stood beside the pavement. Through the rain, the loud chatter of children came wafting. Red belts shone over white school uniforms. The girl, the one wearing a yellow frock, pressed a book to her chest and looked outside. The rain continued to pour down in front. The bull was silent, almost touching her leg, only the gentle swishes of its wet tail wet her yellow frock, the man with the green punjabi over black trousers put his hand in his pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes and matches. Lighting the cigarette with a flash, he blew out a mouthful of smoke. He held up the packet towards his two companions. Smoke filled the place. The girl lifted up her head and looked alternately at the rain and the bull. A book was pressed lightly against her breast with her left hand. Going by noisily on the road in front now was a double-decker bus. A wave of water spilled over on to the pavement. The swirling water flowed into the space beneath the balcony and advanced bit by bit, it touched the bull’s hooves, the feet of the three hefty people and the girl’s shoes. It accumulated. Water.

  Here every word has an independent identity And also punishment, for carrying that identity.

  In a recent survery conducted in the United States of America, it has been found that 31 per cent of women in the major cities feel unsafe, even during the daytime, to go five minutes’ distance from home, fearing rape and similar physical assaults. The women of that country are tending towards giving up jogging and learning karate instead. In the minds of the people at large, a lack of a sense of safety, continuously … and because of this fear, as many as 11 per cent of the American population of 232 million carry arms when they step out of home, for self-defence. In another survey it was found that 20-25 per cent of families possess revolvers or pistols and such like and 40 per cent of families keep guns at home. In the opinion of the surveyors, this rate is rapidly rising.

  Have a darshan

  Of dacoit-Kali

  Together with family

  What is it that is used most often in the writing of James Hadley Chase or Harold Robbins? What’s the percentage of use of the word ‘murder’ in their writing? How many words are used to create a murder situation? How many murders have direct descriptions from murder witnesses and how many are described indirectly? In all those descriptions, does the writer take the stance of enjoyment? Similarly, in the description of a rape case, some words tend to be used. Is the rule of enjoyment applied in such cases too, or is it not? How many such incidents are there in an ordinary novel, film or play? How many are direct and how many are suggested? What is the percentage of books in which immoral or unsocial relations are described or are given importance? In plays and films as well. Nowhere are smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol presented as reproachable matters. If they are, there’s the fear of being labelled old-fashioned. But obscene conversation, hints, or acts of sexual perversion, animal-like behaviour or inhuman practices, are now being used as if they are accepted facts in society. The funny thing is, even if an ordinary reader raises questions about this, serious readers, the intellectual readers, don’t really raise any objection to speak of.

  MAO TSE TUNG HAS NOT YET BEEN BORN HERE – ON THIS BELOVED EARTH OF OURS

  After that comes a time when Jhuma-di too has to leave home and go. She comes away with a three-year-old child in her arms. She says, ‘Hey Bachhu, I’ve come out too!’ She loosens the cloth on her back and shows it, saying: ‘See what they’ve done to me.’ One couldn’t look at Jhuma-di’s back. I deliberately turn my face the other way. Jhuma-di continues: ‘Not just this – there’s more, want to see?’ I don’t look. The jaw becomes tight.

  ‘Do you blame Ramen-da for this?’ … I think: ‘Am I able to do that…’ Jhuma-di continues talking: ‘I went myself and saw everything.’

  I’m very eager to know what Jhuma-di saw. Looking at my face, she understands this and asks, ‘Would you like to know what I’ve seen? I’ve seen a really funny thing. Sheocharan-ji has built a wonderful factory. He’s made the factory and a country-liquor shop next to one another. He’s fenced off the adda-site on one side for a gambling wheel. The workers go directly to the country-liquor shop after receiving their wages from the factory. Then they stand before the gambling wheel in a drunken state. The reverse also happens sometimes. They enter the country-liquor shop after losing or winning at gambling. Who’s to restrain the greed to spin the wheel when there are crisp currency notes in the pocket? It does not take more than a few hours for the principal plus interest to return to the one who dealt it out in the first place. I get what remains. The entire force of a young man’s mental anguish lands on my back.’

  I spring up in joy. So Jhuma-di too has come with us. Only one question about her description keeps striking my mind.

  ‘Tell me, does Ramen-da understand all this…?’

  ‘Your Ramen-da? He returns home at twelve or one and then beats me up. Every night. And every morning, he touches my feet and apologizes.’ I hug Jhuma-di in joy. I no longer feel any anger towards Ramen-da. He is merely a victim.

  I say happily: ‘How happy we are to get you, Jhuma-di.’

  ‘It’s not the time for happiness now. Didn’t you all say the other day that there’s a lot of work ahead of you – a lot of responsibilities. I have to get involved in that work now.’

 
; ‘Will you be able to do it, Jhuma-di … it’s very difficult work … and shameful.’

  ‘It’s because I can that I’ve come out of the house. I’ll have to coax or entice a man and get information out of him, isn’t it? According to necessity. I may also have to spend a couple of nights with him and get the work done. I’ll definitely be able to do that. Didn’t I marry your Ramen-da after falling in love with him? And are you thinking about me losing my dignity? It was you who said the other day that we’ve reached such a situation that there’s nothing left to lose? So where does the question of dignity arise, dear boy?’

  Saying so, Jhuma-di puts the child into my arms and ties the anchal of her sari around her waist. Laughing, she says: ‘Look at me and tell me, is there anything left in me now to entice a man, really, anything…’

  In Tamil Nadu’s

  Match factories

  Many child workers are aged four

  After working the whole day

  They earn about one rupee

  The largest number of child workers in the world work in Tamil Nadu’s match factories. In Raghunathpuram district alone, of the 100,000 workers in match factories, 45,000 are aged below fifteen. Some child workers live in villages thirty kilometres away from the factories. Every morning, at dawn, all these children come by lorry and bus and get off at the factories. For this, they have to wake up between 3 and 5 a.m. in the morning. They are taken back home between 7 and 9 p.m. at night. A survey was conducted in sixteen match factories in Raghunathpuram and it was found that three-fourths of the child workers in these factories are illiterate. They have to work for daily wages. Those who are aged between four and ten earn about a rupee a day. If they are a bit older, the wages are more, between six and nine rupees. All these children have to work in a terribly unhealthy environment. They use potassium chloride and other lethal chemical raw materials for over eighteen hours a day.

  Where did that silvery objectivity of yours go?

  You and your characters – as your characters

  increase in number, they become blurred and

  equally, your views take dangerous directions.

  So you understand that if a person who thinks

  is honest, he cannot remain passive in the

  so-called silvery objectivity. He has to clearly

  communicate not just the side of the exploited,

  but also which particular method of the struggle

  of the exploited he has accepted … Am I close

  to the exploited? For that matter, even our Indira is.

  ‘I WAS BORN IN THIS COUNTRY’

  Trains continuously pass by the wall of the Corporation school inside the basti in Belgachia. The locality is notorious because of the great rail line, which runs opposite the holy Pareshnath temple. The school is a mark on the map of the maze of lanes under the bridge. The work on the construction of the metro rail is taking place on the main road now. That’s why there’s always the sound of machines. I couldn’t get any clue about the school’s whereabouts even after asking three or four people. Then a paan-seller under the bridge played the role of guide. His son is a student of this school. He reads a book with pictures of peacocks. Going through lane after lane, feeling utterly harried by now, he finally noted down a bettor’s number and then again explained the directions. In this situation, a girl of about five asked me: ‘You want to go to the school, right? Come, I’ll show you.’ The girl’s name was Hasina. She had gone to the shop to buy jaggery. They eat jaggery and rotis for lunch. Hasina does not go to school. Why doesn’t she go? Simply because her father can’t afford it. We come to a two- or three-foot-wide courtyard-like space, with walls on three sides. On the fourth side, skirting an open drain, in a dark room with damp walls was the Rajrajeshwari Free Primary. One can see faeces floating in the drain … Just staying in such an environment from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. makes one sick, leave aside the matter of education. In response, the head teacher, Osman Ghani, said: ‘Fifteen years ago, there was an attempt to change the location. The effort continues. But it’s not proving easy.’ I’ve heard there’s a lot of trouble here, bombs are often thrown even during the day, isn’t it? … ‘There were bombs this morning. Such things happen frequently.’ Isn’t there a rail line adjacent to the school? ‘But what of that?’ – Didn’t it occur to them that this was a matter to think about? ‘From time to time, a few children get injured, that’s all. Last year, an eleven-year-old boy was killed. Died on the spot. But that’s normal, very normal. You can’t have bomb-throwing without anyone ever getting killed, that just can’t happen.’ The head teacher openly admitted that in his spare time, he was a satta-penciler. ‘Otherwise I can’t survive. What can I do? Some boys in the higher classes are also in the profession. In the evenings, they too light a candle and sit down to pencil. The family does benefit a bit. What can they do? In times like this?’

  When the head teacher of a primary school

  Is a part-time satta-penciler

  In order to survive, then

  Just cast your eyes for 1 minute on this calculation –

  1982-83: Expenditures

  Spent on Asiad only Rupees 15,000 million

  Spent on the Non-Aligned meet only Rupees 4,000 million

  Spent on the Commonwealth meet only Rupees 2,000 million

  TOTAL only Rupees 21,000 million

  Only 21,000 million rupees were spent

  In the normal course of events, an invitation letter reached him one day, requesting him to write for a popular weekly. Holding the letter in his hand, he thought, the right to express a different view, the right to protest, has now to be bartered away. So they have recognized very well the most vulnerable spot of a writer … And in a society in which individual earning is the only road to becoming established, where poverty and deprivation bring disregard and non-recognition, an artist’s freedom is bound to be pushed in a perverted direction.

  ONCE UPON A TIGER’S NECK

  About Indira in a Chinese periodical

  Beijing, 27 August 1983

  Anandabazar Patrika

  The Chinese government has stopped the publication of the second part of a satirical article that severely criticizes the politics and personal lives of India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi and her father, Jawaharlal Nehru. This was to be published in a government periodical, World Knowledge. The second part of the article was to be published in Volume 16 of the periodical. But it was not published. No explanation was provided for the non-publication. However, the cover of the issue has a picture of two Indian women. They are bedecked in saris and jewellery. On first sight, perhaps an expression of China’s goodwill.

  This foreign affairs centred periodical has a limited circulation. Its readership comprises only intellectuals and policy-makers. The periodical is published with the financial support of the Chinese foreign ministry.

  According to foreign policy specialists, the first part of the article about Indira and Jawaharlal had appeared in August. The article was a cause for unhappiness on the part of India and an objection had been made in this regard.

  On many occasions, critical articles had appeared concerning India (e.g. on wife-burning) in journals and periodicals controlled by the Chinese government. The stated article is the latest addition to these. In the first part, it was written that, in regard to tackling the India-China border problem, and in regard to Pakistan and Sikkim, former Prime Minister Nehru and current Prime Minister Indira simply continued the British colonial tradition.

  The article also dwelt at length on their personal lives. It was written that there had been an unusually intimate friendship and exchange of personal letters between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru. Pictures of Edwina and Padmaja Naidu had been put up by Nehru in his bedroom. In the same first part, it was written about Indira Gandhi: Her marriage wasn’t a happy one and her husband wanted to leave her. Even after seeing the dead body of her son, Sanjay, in pieces, killed in a plane crash, Indira had not shed a single tear. Apparen
tly, she calmly put a key inside a cupboard after she received the news. After writing all this, with an eye towards Chinese readers, it was asked: What is your opinion about such a mother?

  The author of the article is anonymous. The source for the details about the Nehru family has been stated to be the book by his former secretary, Mathai. In the author’s view, Indian society is very feudal. Of course, Nehru and Indira did not lose their respect as a result of rumours about their personal lives. Perhaps everything was purely rumour. We do not know about their veracity. Nehru was brisk, eloquent and given to excitement as well as indecision. Indira was always mute, one could not communicate with her; she was peaceful, proud, independent of mind. Nehru could not face political realities. But both father and daughter were one in regard to keeping the British colonial tradition intact.

  In 1967, Indira devalued the rupee by 58 per cent and created a dangerous economic situation. She coined the slogan ‘Garibi Hatao’ in order to finish her enemies and won the election by a huge number of votes. But now, after fourteen years, the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer.

  India’s protest

  India communicated its strong protest over an extremely objectionable article about Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her late father, former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in a Chinese periodical. A spokesperson of the Indian external affairs ministry has stated that India has raised the subject at the diplomatic level with Beijing and with New Delhi’s Chinese embassy.

  Several discussions regarding foreign policy and international relations are published in the periodical, World Knowledge. The first part of the article in question was published at the beginning of this month. In response to India’s protest, the Chinese government has stated that the country’s media is not state-controlled. But this response did not satisfy India, which requested that China not encourage the publication of such articles. The second part of the article in the next issue of the periodical was therefore not published. There has been no further discussion after that. There is no news regarding this. We are waiting eagerly. If we get any news, we shall inform you.