This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale

by Subimal Misra

  To manufacture weapons to kill people

  To manufacture the most advanced nuclear bombs

  We spend

  $1.6 million

  Every minute

  And we

  Civilization’s shit-piss intellectuals

  Read such facts in newspapers, read

  And with great delight

  Each of us, dash-ing the other

  Do kultur, indulge in literature/culture

  We piss and piss and spread

  The stench of ammonia around

  And through mutual dash-ery

  Bring our sense of responsibility

  To its highest expression

  Now here’s

  The song of the culture of mutual dash-ery

  Come, all of you let’s bugger around

  Swaying our buttocks and swelling our dicks

  Let’s indulge in some humanity

  Humanity is somnolence

  I’ve come to know the real thing

  The pigeon flies over the roof

  And under the roof’s crookery

  [Magnanimous reader!

  The specific word denoting the region of your backside,

  In the middle-region of your body,

  From where shit emerges,

  Imagine that in place of the ‘dash’

  The press can’t print such vulgar

  Words, there’s fierce fighting regarding the word.

  The song couldn’t be completed either.

  The censor would block it, you see.

  Just keep in mind that it’s only in our country

  That the word is called ‘shabdabrahma’

  Reader babus, what do you all say?]

  What have you done with your science?

  What have you done with your humanism?

  Where is your dignity as a thinking reader?

  The two boats joined together keep trying to come apart and move away. The tempo of the drum and cymbals changes. Those who had been sitting down so far, holding the images, undo the bamboo frames and ropes with nimble hands. The immersion, it’s the immersion now, and after that, after some time, the two boats move away to the two sides and keep moving, a gap in the middle emerges, which is only a gap, yes a gaping one. The image falls into the water with a loud splash, for the last time the victory chant is uttered, Durga Mai Ki Jai, Om Shanti, Om Shanti, there’s a frenzy of sprinkling the water of blessing, boys and girls begin to gasp and cry, the drummers play their final beats with all their life. Who knows if anyone intended to wet you then, by sprinkling puddle water instead of the water of blessing.

  BEGGAR FOR LOVE

  Four marbles of four different colours are given to a child. He learns about numbers with these: one, two, three, four. He learns about colours: red, blue, white, green. He learns grouping: red and blue, white and green. In this way, the boy advances towards fullness. Thereafter four colour pencils of the same colours are also given to him. Now he learns addition and subtraction. There are eight things in all. Four marbles and four pencils. If they keep diminishing, finally there’ll be one marble and one pencil. In that case, the grouping will now be according to colour. Red colour. That red colour. Confusion. Once again, the burp of acidity rises now – a sour taste inside the whole mouth. Pain on two fronts, one below the navel, from amoebiasis, and the other, below the ribs, from acidity. He has eaten a jilipi, a sour-ish red jilipi – which was as good as a grand rossogolla for a person like him. The acidic burp rises now – the same sour taste all over the mouth. And in this way, in just this way … Confused? The film Jukti, Takko Goppo concludes. The attack by the police. A bullet hits Neelkanth, Ritwik. It strikes. Neelkanth is dying. The police bring out the dead body from the forest. They bring it. A single-file procession – Satya, Durga, Nachiketa, Bangabala. From a narrow path to a wide background. Only the old man, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak, staring with unblinking eyes within a square frame. Confused? Just then, Pupu, unseen: ‘Uncle, I’m not there. I’m not.’

  This man is dangerous for us

  Why do you say that

  Why do you forget, the man thinks

  NITYAKALI RICE MILL FUNCTIONS, WILL KEEP FUNCTIONING

  ‘I leave my office by three or three-thirty. I get a seat on the mini-bus. Yes, dada, a government office. After reaching home, and after eating hot luchis with fried potatoes made by my wife – oh, what comfort – I lie down on the easy-chair with Desh magazine on my chest. The plot of land in Salt Lake had come about by the grace of God, now it would be good if a sizeable loan were sanctioned. Who knows what the price of a bag of cement is nowadays. After all, nothing can happen in a straightforward fashion, the way the country’s going day by day … Oh God.’

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

  In this way, attaching newspaper clippings, he, the writer, carries on writing, continues writing. From the manner in which the newspaper clippings are arranged, it can be discerned that he, the one who didn’t want to take any side, had at some point, unknown to himself, actually taken a side. Not the three meanings of the red sign, but at some point the position is firmly tied to one particular social belief. Hands, the colour goes behind some helpless hands, which he draws as a clenched fist, in conviction. So then, nothing’s objective – by custom, silvery? The political entrepreneur gets the speech delivered following Caesar’s death committed to memory. In that case, in the next scene that very speech shall erupt in Hitler-style on the assembled masses. Not a speech, but a conviction. Yet, when they don’t vote, then, openly, with kerosene cans in hand, Arturo Ui’s disciples go to set fire to the Reichstag. Wherever violence rules, violence is the only means. Now he can distinguish brilliantly between class hatred and individual hatred. And only man can say, I am confused. Wherever there is man, only man can save him there. Mao Tse Tung has not yet been born on this earth, on this beloved earth of ours. We have to make even more preparations, and wait some more. Perhaps for some ages. Perhaps for many ages.

  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR SCIENCE?

  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR HUMANISM?

  WHERE IS YOUR DIGNITY AS A THINKING READER?

  ADDENDUM

  In response, the writer held out a test tube. Look at this dust. This is cinnabar. A brilliant red is made from this. But in the light, the colour takes on a blackish hue. I’m trying to make a kind of red that won’t turn black even when brought to light. I don’t know whether it can be done, nevertheless I’m trying. And what’s the harm in hanging on to the belief that it can be done? As soon as I stand facing the sea, the colour becomes very distant. Waves rise. The colour of the waves is half cobalt blue and half ultramarine.

  Notes

  1. The weekly had a salaried editor. His name was not printed, but it was he who looked after the weekly. He had the freedom to publish short stories, poems and memoirs. But he was strictly forbidden from publishing anything untoward and the permission of the official editor had always to be obtained. Any deviation would mean losing the job at once. The poor boy had to censor even his own writing before publication. People said that once he almost lost his job after publishing a different kind of story. The story had a nurse as a character – who, outside her profession, went about doing nefarious deeds. The editor was seething with rage. ‘Hey, why do you publish such stories, with such a bad projection about nurses – what if nurses stop reading our paper? You are not to publish any stories that attack anyone’s profession. Do you get that? Our business will suffer. Never forget – our paper is not a place for all these experiments of yours. Only articles that everyone can read and understand must be solicited and obtained, which will increase sales when published. In order to sell, you can definitely stuff in a bit of sex – the writing will appear modernist – but never politics. Of course, I don’t consider the politics of non-violence to be politics. That’s acceptable.’ After saying that, the proprietor-editor began reciting the Name, using a string of prayer beads. This habit was a h
ereditary one.

  2. The yellow punjabi was a favourite of his, he loved to wear it. What’s it that yellow signifies – I won’t lie, this fat editor had made many mediocre writers famous, it was because they were ungrateful that…

  3. That day was the day of the West Bengal assembly elections in 1977, the day the Left Front got a huge number of votes. Rabin Ghosh, Ajoy Dey and Kalyan Bandyopadhyay were witness to the entire incident. On that day, they were chatting and drinking tea in Amritayan restaurant at nine in the morning. Rabi-da had served them tea. The editor, with his wife, had finished voting early, and had just arrived and sat down here, the voting ink visible on his finger-nail, impermanent, he couldn’t wipe it off. He said he had a terrible headache, and it was this writer who brought him an aspirin, walking quite a way. He had missed his tea. Whatever it may be, after all he was a senior writer … Class enemies are our enemies, we don’t have any personal enemies … if they haven’t forgotten, let it be … But thereafter, it was probably a year later, reminding him about having asked for the article that day – who was it whose story the editor had asked for and then not published? – Rabin had broken into loud laughter, in this very Amritayan restaurant … Rabi-da had become worried, our dear old Rabi-da, the eternal waiter of Amritayan. Yes, our adda site was still intact then, the metro rail had not yet demolished our tea-shop.

  4. The line is written remembering poet Sukamal Roychoudhary, who had committed suicide in harakiri fashion, with a bread-cutting knife … A year or so after his death, a little magazine brought out a special issue on him. Although invited to contribute to the issue, I couldn’t write anything … the time was spent just thinking about what I could write … it was too late … perhaps that’s why the line, this line…

  5. Someone had reminded me, ‘Hadn’t you written a story about our urinal on Rashbihari Avenue … in which an unemployed youth cleverly sets up a private urinal, he charges people money to allow them to piss and so he makes a lot of money, and then, even after spotting his girlfriend going in there, he does not put away his money-box and come out, the perverted mentality…’ (‘No, the story was not like that at all, brother.’) The venue being in Rashbihari, at the crossing, beside the road, where the Tollygunge-bound trams come and stop now, there really was a urinal then, the only people’s urinal of this locality. Dirty, malodorous, it was even more unsanitary than a dry latrine. I don’t remember exactly when it was demolished, it was probably around 1973 or ’74. Laughing, Ajoy says, ‘Your Gandhi statue on Park Street and your urinal at Rashbihari are both gone now – what do you say?’

  About the Book

  Subimal Misra - anarchist, activist, anti-establishment, experimental ‘anti-writer’ - is a contemporary master, and among India’s greatest living writers. Misra’s works are confrontational, and meant to challenge and provoke readers -morally, politically, and also in terms of what they expect from literature’. This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale is a novella about trying to write a novella about a tea estate worker turned Naxalite named Ramayan Chamar, who gets arrested during a workers’ strike and is beaten up and killed in custody. But every time the author attempts to write that story, reality intrudes in various forms to create a picture of a nation and society that is broken down and where systemic inequalities are perpetuated by the middle and upper classes, which are either indifferent or actively malignant. When Colour Is A Warning Sign goes even further in its experimentation, abandoning the barest pretence of narrative and composed entirely as a collage of vignettes and snippets of dialogue, reportage, autobiography, etc. Together these Two Anti-Novels are a direct assault on the ‘vast conspiracy of not seeing’ that makes us look away from the realities of our socio-political order. In V. Ramaswamy’s translation, they make for difficult, challenging but ultimately immensely powerful reading.

  About the Author

  Subimal Misra (b. 1943) has been called the only anti-establishment writer in Bengali. Influenced by the films of Sergei Eisenstein and Jean-Luc Godard, Misra experimented with the use of cinematic language in Bengali writing even as he made William Burroughs’s cut-up method his own. With his very first collection of stories, Haran Majhi’s Widow’s Corpse or the Golden Gandhi Statue (1971), he signalled his departure from conventional narrative fiction. He has written exclusively for little magazines. Misra’s stories, novellas, novels, a play, essays and interviews comprise over thirty volumes. Cupid’s Corpse Does Not Drown in Water, an experimental prose work, was published in 2010.

  V. Ramaswamy lives in Kolkata. He has been engaged in a multivolume project to translate the short fiction of Subimal Misra. The collection The Golden Gandhi Statue from America was published in 2010, and Wild Animals Prohibited in 2015. He was a recipient of the Literature Across Frontiers-Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship in 2016.

  PRAISE FOR SUBIMAL MISRA

  Misra’s stories are not seductive; their power lies in their subversion. They look straight into the dark heart of the middle class and use an array of startling techniques to undercut the pretensions and hypocrisies by which we live.

  – Jerry Pinto

  [I]t takes a strong stomach to stay with his reports from the morgue, from the rotting body in a sack whose stench poisons a city, the half-whores and full-whores, but he reels you in, even as he plays games with language, arranging his sentences into one of his famous collages...

  – Nilanjana S. Roy

  [A] violent mix of fragmentary narratives and essays, even statistics, juxtaposed together to deliver a shocking statement ... Everywhere in Misra’s writings we encounter the characteristic juxtapositions: images of poverty and protest jostle for space with piquant critiques of middle-class pretensions and sexual hypocrisy. News-items, scraps of dialogue, as well as commentary rub against each other, sometimes in stylized and varied font, calling attention to the fact that what we are reading has been written, it is an artifice, and ought to make us think.

  – Amitava Kumar

  Ramaswamy has notably brought a reclusive writer’s works into the light. If he had done that alone, he would have provided a great service. But the translation is artful, unobtrusive … [H]e has established himself as one of the premier translators of Bengali anywhere.

  – Kushanava Choudhury

  Ramaswamy’s translation will stand out as among the best translations from Bengali to English in a very long time … The signature figures of Misra’s speech, his style and delivery have all been captured by Ramaswamy with such effortless ease that the translation has become an act of trans-creation, and the translator has become almost inseparable from the author.

  – Kingshuk Chatterjee

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  First published in India in 2019 by Harper Perennial

  An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

  A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India

  www.harpercollins.co.in

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Copyright for the original Bengali text © Subimal Misra 1982, 1984, 1988

  English translation copyright © V. Ramaswamy 2019

  Introduction copyright © Janam Mukherjee 2019

  P-ISBN: 978-93-5302-307-2

  Epub Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 978-93-5302-308-9

  Subimal Misra asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincid
ental.

  All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.

  Cover design: Anna Lena von Helldorff

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