For Rituraj
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Translator's Acknowledgements
In Lieu of a Preface
Wild Animals Prohibited
By the Roots
Only God's Alive Now
Meat Was Bartered
36 Feet Towards Revolution
Historic Descent
From the Morgue on Bhawani Dutta Lane
Come, See India
The Road to the Mill Jetty
Spot Eczematous
In a Deserted Spot Measuring a Foot and a Half
Heramba Naskar, Moushumi Naskar and Jatadhari Naskar
Radioactive Waste
The Cow Is a Kind of Quadrangular Creature
How a Horse Becomes a Donkey: Horse > Horkey > Honkey > Donkey
A Gem of a Man
Drumstick Flowers Make a Fine Chochchori
Secret Vrindavan
Babbi
Mohandas and Cut-Ball
Calcutta Dateline
Health for All by 2000
A Perfect Picture of This Social System – Who's Responsible?
Will You Preserve Your Chastity, Aparna?
Here's How We Wring a Quarter of Lime
P.S. Section
Translator's Note
Subimal Misra on Reading His Writing
Subimal Misra, the Cryto-revolutionary
Sounding in the Darkness
The Relevance of Subimal Misra
A Conversation with Sumitro Basak
An Interview with Subimal Misra
Talk to Us
About the Author
Copyright
Thinking is the greatest pleasure known to mankind.
—Bertolt Brecht
Translator's Acknowledgements
It is an honour for me to be translating Subimal Misra, and I am grateful to have received his permission, encouragement and inputs, but also more than that, his friendship. I have had the privilege of gaining Misra's affection and trust, which means a lot to me. This brings with it considerable responsibility, and I hope I have been able to do justice to that.
This volume would not have got off the ground but for the Sangam House writers' residency, in Nrityagram, Bangalore, in January 2011. The volume also includes stories translated while I was in the Ledig House writers' residency, in the USA, in April 2013. Such residencies are any writer's dream, and I am deeply indebted to Sangam House and Ledig House for providing me the opportunity. I also wish to thank: Toto Funds the Arts, for the readings in Bangalore in January 2011; Hudson Wine Merchants, for the readings hosted by them on behalf of OMI International Arts Center in April 2013; and Sangam House, for the readings during the Lekhana literary weekend in Bangalore in January 2015.
This project has benefited from the inputs and contributions of many people. That has also been a privilege and a source of satisfaction. I am grateful for that.
Dr Mrinal Bose, who first introduced me to the name of Subimal Misra, continued his active interest in my translations and never failed to respond immediately with comments. For me, he is like a colleague in my ongoing Misra translation project, and I remain grateful for his intellectual and creative comradeship. I have benefited greatly from discussions with Nilotpal Roy, scholar, teacher and writer. The selection of stories in this volume would not have been possible but for his valuable guidance. Procheta Ghosh has also been a colleague throughout my work for this volume, and also contributed a note for the P.S. Section, together with Tapas Ghosh, his co-editor for Jari Bobajudhyo. My thanks go to them.
I was fortunate to receive the timely assistance of Sangita Roy, an exceptional young woman, which helped greatly in sustaining the translation momentum.
It has been my good fortune to have as a close friend, Janam Mukherjee, historian of wartime Bengal, whose own enthusiasm about my translation project and insightful comments served to vindicate my commitment. He has contributed a note about this collection, which appears in the P.S. Section. I have also benefited from Nilanjan Bhattacharya's interest and enthusiasm about Subimal Misra's work. He too has contributed a piece about Misra for the P.S. Section, as has artist Sumitro Basak. My thanks to both of them.
Kenneth Slawenski, writer and biographer, has been a generous source of critical affirmation. Vivek Narayanan, poet and translator, has been a huge source of encouragement and inspiration. I would also like to thank Ruchir Joshi, Sharanya Manivannan, Kushanava Ghosh and Sibaji Pratim Basu for their encouragement. The continuing assistance of my colleague Tapas Ghosh must also be acknowledged. As this book goes to press, I learnt of the tragic death of Colie Hoffman, poet, who was a fellow-resident in Sangam House and Ledig House and had been warmly appreciative of my work.
It has been a pleasure to work with Karthika V.K. and Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri of HarperCollins India. Sk Jan Mohammad lent his masterly skills for the cover design.
Several of the stories have appeared in journals and e-zines. These include: Nether, Metamorphoses, Almost Island, The Four Quarters Magazine, Open Road Review, Northeastern Review, Earthen Lamp Journal, AntiSerious, Out of Printand Caesurae. One story appears in the anthology, Other Places, published by Sangam House, and a text collage that includes excerpts from several of the stories in this collection appears in Strangely Beloved: The City of Calcutta, edited by Nilanjana Gupta. I am grateful to the editors of these publications for carrying the stories. Gaurav Jain, of Tehelka, interviewed Subimal Misra in 2010, in the wake of the publication of The Golden Gandhi Statue from America. The full version of the interview is included in P.S. Sectionof this volume.
Subimal Misra's short fiction is now being translated into Malayalam and Farsi, and I am grateful to Cecily Joyce, Anuradha Sarang and Mustafa Raziee for their initiative in this regard.
My grandfather, T.V. Ramaswamy, came to Calcutta in 1930 to take up a job and lived here for the next fifty years. My father lived in this city all his life, he would have been eighty-five now. But for them, I would not be here today. Kolkata was their home, as it has been for me. My translation project is a small contribution, in gratitude, to Kolkata and Bengal, and to the Bangla language, on behalf of my Tamil family.
V. Ramaswamy
In Lieu of a Preface
I am distanced from these stories because of the passage of time, and so I am unable to say anything about them. There is a great distance, because of time. Besides, I have objections regarding the selection of stories as well as the title of the collection.
I want to write so as to disturb the reader, and that has been my practice so far. I am not sure whether the stories collected here do that, whether they make the reader throw away the book in disgust and rage.
Every story carries the mark of a particular time. I don't know whether the story has an appeal outside of that time. Unless the story is very powerful, it may seem dated.
Several of the stories are from the Naxalite period, and are written with a Naxalite bent, for instance, of doing away with everything.
I don't expect much. It depends on the readers how they will take these stories. Each reader is different. Whether at all the stories will appeal to them, and if so how – I don't know.
My writing does not conform to the kind of reading that has gained currency. Readers would definitely be dismayed. There is so much work with language, so much of destruction, which would challenge readers. It is difficult to bring this out in translation.
Breaking narrative – that is what I seek to do. So the emphasis is on language, and not on the story. The emphasis is not on what I say, but how I say it.
This kind of writing is hardly seen in world literature. After writers like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Thomas Mann,
the narrative tradition is saturated. There can't be any more. And so I ventured in another direction, departing from narrative. A major reason why I never wrote a voluminous novel was because I would not be able to have it published. I preferred short writing, in the style of Kafka and Camus.
Everyone wants to be a big writer. I don't want to be a big writer at all. I want to be a completely different kind of writer. When I am read, it should not seem like writing at all. I would be most happy if I am not counted among writers.
_________________
Subimal Misra was unwell and hence unable to write a preface for this collection. However, he agreed to make a few comments that could be used in lieu of a preface – Trs.
Wild Animals Prohibited
Any person bringing, keeping or raising in urban areas categories of animal or animals notified as dangerous vide government gazette notification, in contravention of regulations promulgated by the government, or in violation of the rules and conditions of the licence, shall be fined an amount not exceeding rupees two thousand. —Clause 71 (a) of the Bengal Law no. 4 of 1966
When Jodu arrived with his wife in the evening, we got started. Ram and Shyam had come by late afternoon and were sitting around, making conversation every now and then. Every once in a while they said: 'We're gonna have a helluva time today!' At three-thirty, when it was time for the daily water supply, my wife entered the bathroom with a loosely draped sari around her and a towel and soap-case in hand. When she emerged an hour later, her body exuded the fragrance of sandalwood soap. I often feel like biting her exposed shoulder but don't, thinking it would be improper. But as soon as Amala emerged and my old maidservant went into the bathroom with a pile of unwashed plates and utensils, I took advantage of the privacy to fondle my wife a little. But Amala was largely preoccupied with getting dressed or doing up her face, she didn't give me much time. Yet I took the opportunity to lick and lap up as much as I could. Ram and Shyam called out from the next room a couple of times, 'There are some squeaky sounds coming from your room, what are you up to, Madhu?' Making no bones about it, I replied, 'I'm kissing.' They got excited and said, 'We wanna kiss too.' In response, I tried to explain the situation to them. I counselled them to wait: 'Gently into the night.'
And thus the evening advanced. Ram and Shyam looked at their watches, they were getting impatient and restless. They knew things couldn't begin before Jodu and his wife arrived. In the other room, Amala daubed colour thickly on her cheeks and face. The old maidservant shuffled back after washing the dishes. I shouted at her: 'What's with you, you whore, you take so long to wash the dishes – come on now, hurry up and pour the liquor into the glasses.' The old woman was afraid of me. She quickly busied herself with fetching the liquor from the cupboard. In whispers, I indicated to the others the authority I wielded in my house.
The evening grew darker and the lights were turned on. Sipping our drinks, we waited in silence for Jodu and his wife. They arrived after a while, sat down, had a drink. I closely observed Jodu's wife, Kamli – how she sat, how she spoke, the way she laughed animatedly at every turn, almost to the point of keeling over. My wife Amala joined us after a while. She brimmed over with laughter at every word, her entire torso from waist to shoulder swaying lustily, the anchal of her sari slipping off time and again to expose her breasts. We carried on talking while we drank.
Shyam replied: 'I don't know.'
Jodu asked: 'How many salary increments did you get?'
I replied: 'Three.'
'What are those people doing?'
'They keep playing cards, sitting beneath the mezzanine verandah upon newspapers spread out under the tube light.'
'What do they do?'
'Sometimes when we are rapt in pleasure, they climb the stairs and knock on the door, they look here and there suspiciously and with angry expressions they ask, “What's happening here?”'
In the midst of such talk the flower seller's cry could be heard: 'Bel, buy bel-flowers!' Hearing the word 'bel', the women got excited. I called the flower seller upstairs and bargained with him. Then I bought two strings and we fixed it on the women's hair, me on Jodu's wife's, Jodu on my wife's. They were beside themselves with joy and let us kiss them right there in front of the flower seller.
After sending off the flower-seller, while some of us were kissing – were getting ready to, rather – standing at the door was the young beggar girl from the bottom of the stairs, dressed in dirty rags, holding in her arms a rickety baby just a few months old. She wailed: 'Ma, a roti for me, ma!' And I don't know why but I thought of the people sitting beneath the mezzanine verandah on spread-out newspapers, silently playing cards under the tube light. Sometimes my wife gave her a roti or half a roti and sent her off before her incessant wailing began to get on our nerves. But most days she got nothing and she stood at the door for a long time, pestering us. Sometimes we teased her: 'Hey girl, wanna come and drink some booze?' She stared at us with wide eyes as we fondled each other. Sometimes one of us got up in exasperation and twisted her arm. She would turn blue in pain and her eyes saw only darkness as she tried to protect her now withered young breasts as well as her baby. Sometimes we chucked whatever we could find at her – pieces of stone, for instance. We even spat at her. Some days my wife took the situation into her own hands. When the water in the kettle boiled she splashed it on the girl's body, and when the girl and the baby screamed at the sudden attack, we enjoyed it.
The disturbance of the flower seller and beggar having passed, the night advanced. We kept waiting, kept getting ready. There were bits of stray conversation. We talked about how the number of our female members could be increased with the addition of at least two more persons, and our wives protested loudly at the suggestion. They said, 'Getting more girls is not permitted. How are we inadequate in any way?' We laughed, and through our laughter we enjoyed their talk. 'Compared to other countries, we simply haven't become civilized' – we talked about all that too, about social norms and taboos on sexuality being a sign of backwardness, and we talked about the many countries in the world that had left these behind long ago. Our women expressed their views on how outrageous the ban on the import of foreign lipsticks into the country was. Sometimes it was 'contraceptives need to be more reliable'. They talked about things like that. Ram and Shyam wanted to talk about those four people, the ones beneath the mezzanine verandah, who kept playing cards silently under the neon light, sitting on spread-out newspapers. We knew very little about them, and consequently our discussion lacked substance. Jodu said, 'Those people are extremely unsocial, they don't say anything even when we walk past them.' My wife said, 'They're men, after all, the day you bring them under control they'll talk your head off.'
The night progressed. We couldn't stand any more useless chatter. I said, 'Let the real thing begin now. What's the use of sitting around any more?' Hearing me, everyone sat up. Everyone wondered what today's item would be. After some discussion, the day's programme was decided upon. Given that there were four men and only two women, there was some argument and bargaining and laying down of conditions. But eventually everyone was reassured that they would get their share in the next session, and the matter was more or less resolved for the day. But on some days, there was a toss, and those who won the toss got the chance to get the women. Then the bright lights were turned off and a dim blue low-voltage lamp was lit, because if anyone outside found out or suspected anything, it could be dangerous. I had locked the old maidservant up in the tiny store room. I had told her, 'Sit quietly, you old woman, don't you dare shout and scream!' Each time I locked her up like this, I inevitably felt a surge of emotion, and in that agitated state, I felt like landing two blows on her face. Damn her, how long would she oppress us like this?
And so, taking care of everything in this way, we got ready. We took the time we needed because if one was not well-prepared, if the chase was not undertaken, the whole thing got diluted. It became unappetizing. For instance, we always kept in mind the fact t
hat there were four guys here and only two women, so when it came to taking off the women's clothes and all that, we never had them do it themselves. After all, even a tiny bit of excitement is achieved with a lot of trial and effort, so how could it be wasted just like that! Take those who didn't win the toss, or those who wouldn't get a chance that day. We gave them the chance to do a little bit in the beginning of the session, so they too got some crumbs of pleasure. And thus did we advance and become advanced in our quest for pleasure. The door to the house remained closed, we were shut out from the world outside, engrossed only in ourselves.
Sometimes there were hindrances in our work: those four people, the ones beneath the mezzanine verandah, who keep playing cards, sitting silently on spread-out newspapers under the neon light. They come upstairs with an air of enquiry. When I open the door, they come near and, wearing a grave face, want to know, 'What are you people doing?' We are busy, and I say so, and not getting any cue from us they make their grave faces graver still and descend the stairs. Sometimes there's the sound of many feet arriving together and halting in front of the locked door, and in our languid embrace we wait in the dark with thumping hearts. But there is no knock and the moment passes. We suspect someone found out about the whole affair, that they spread the story in the entire neighbourhood. But there was no reaction, no one came to apprehend us. We had been frightened in vain. No one in the neighbourhood suspected anything about us. Those four grave-faced people who kept playing cards under the neon light did not suspect anything yet.
But sometimes, late in the night, after we have finished our business, when, on tired legs, I go down to see off our guests, I see the beggar girl in rags, lying in the dingy darkness on the last step of the staircase, holding the baby in her arms to her breast. Seeing her, my words suddenly choke in my throat. I feel a peculiar uneasiness rising within me, I can't make any parting talk. As quietly as possible, without waking them up, I run upstairs, my chest heaving in fear. As I climb the stairs, I feel the clutch of the desolate midnight in my heart. Observing my fear, my freshly fornicated wife says testily, 'Just forget about it. I'll pour a pot of hot water on them tomorrow and the whole lot will be set right at once.' It is this statement of my wife's that I am unable to rely on. I get scared, and on such nights I continue to feel scared. I go to the bathroom and splash water on my face and eyes to drive out the fear; I try to forget the whole scene. But try as I might, I can't. Fear roams through the recesses of my heart. Hearing the sudden screech of brakes of a speeding car in the desolate midnight, I sense that same fear awakening once more in my heart.
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