Wild Animals Prohibited

by Subimal Misra

  I asked him, 'You're earning money by dressing yourself up like the father of the nation. Isn't that unethical?'

  Cut-Ball became agitated. Knocking the unpared bamboo staff on the ground, he exclaimed, 'I … only me … am I alone … you … all of you…'

  Let me take this opportunity to say something about myself. I returned to Calcutta the very next day after the interview. Earlier, I used to teach, but for the last few years I've been a film journalist. Art films are my favourite. Even if people use the term 'intellectual' in a pejorative sense, I've personally felt elevated to be so labelled. I've put on a sad-sad face but felt quite pleased inside. Recently, I wrote a wonderful article about the wedding of Sarah and Andrew in England, which was a great hit – the sex life of the future princess, who hadn't the girl slept with – accompanied by some hot pictures … I haven't seen the article yet. Of course, some friends have complained that this article borders on pornography. But I've explained to them that I am a gentleman, I uphold a wholesome culture, I only bring facts to light and in gentleman's parlance. I've portrayed the sex life of the elite of the contemporary world, and that can never be compared with pornography. Pornography contains perversion, and the language is extremely obscene. Pornography cannot be written in decent language and it can never be published in the largest-selling weekly of the Bengali language – after all, they too have a notion of taste. I've demonstrated that I can be no less proficient in popular writing, that if I wanted to I could have become at least another Ganguly-Tanguly. An intellectual journal is bringing out a special issue on Eisenstein shortly. They've asked me to contribute an article. I'm thinking of beginning the article like this: 'Just as one cannot conceive of the existence of Battleship Potemkinwithout the Bolshevik revolution…' I praise myself inwardly. The opening is fantastic, at once left-wing and intellectual. But the rest can be written later, with more thought. Today I must write a rousing article about Cut-Ball, and it should be written in simple language, from an objective point of view. There can't be any communist sloganeering in it, the owner of the paper doesn't like that, besides, since the article is for ordinary half-educated people, it's safest to write it in simple language, with a tone of objectivity. Oh, the sound of money falling! Cling-clang! Easy money, grey coins. The name Cut-Ball's really fantastic! The subject has to be explained simply … a man in free India who makes a living by playing Gandhi … adopting the name Cut-Ball – oh, it'll sell like hot cakes!

  _________________

  Mohandas O Aenrkata, 1986

  Calcutta Dateline

  PREFACE

  It is easy to point to the Tata Centre tower and identify the class enemy. But it is not so easy to recognize a culture that loves to denigrate the son of a peasant who has become a civil servant as an ingrate for concealing his father's identity, and the next moment has no hesitation in jesting with another about his being a peasant's son and imagining he's actually an IAS officer … All of us believe equally in democracy, but the responsibility of running the country can't be handed over to a peasant's son, to a block-headed son of a peasant…

  BITU

  I hate the word 'tradition'. That my father's correct merely because he was born before me, I don't think there's any logic in accepting that. If one must talk about tradition, well, I'll say that my generation is far more progressive than the earlier one. I openly read Playboy, of course I do. I enjoy reading porn, much more than the classics. Playboyis like a bottle of champagne. An adult needs pornography like a child needs fairytales.

  SOMPRAKASH

  You're making a mistake in one respect, Bitu. Sex is not related to pornography but to health, and to enjoying sport.In fact, our society is afflicted with bedsores. Something rotten in the state of Denmark… And my own life, my responsibilities – I just act out everything. I'm greedy to live on even after I'm finished, so that I can transform my downfall into another acting experience.

  BITU

  In these nineteen years, I've realized that the male is indeed a peculiar creature. When a man isn't in a relationship with a girl, just observe his behaviour as he pries into her affairs. For all you know, he treats the girl in his life, whether through marriage or some other means, quite badly. But when he's with a girl with whom he doesn't have any such relation, he uses every opportunity to be nice to her – I wonder why the male species has this mentality. Perhaps it isn't wise to wager too much on personal relationships.

  In the course of this conversation, the massive staircase becomes visible. The wooden planks on which Bitu descends elegantly, completely naked. She climbs down to the door on the landing. Perhaps it's a solo exhibition – meaning a nude female body being shown for a long time. A mid-shot of nakedness from the breasts to the feet. Only the head is not visible. Just the head. By being present in front of our eyes for a long time, this raw nakedness makes sex seem dull and insipid. It also revolts against the male conception about women's liberation – the view that relegates the whole issue of women's liberation to a fad for conversation …

  SOMPRAKASH

  He once had a dream that he was standing in front of the throne of the Great Adjudicator. But he was not at all afraid. What can you do to me, boy – sitting in peace on the seashore, you carry on playing chess with Bergman; the sea, the lifeless sea, roars behind you, as if it is only an arid backdrop. I have survived forty-four years, after all that the world has done to me, what more can you do? The night advances, I get drunk. Rats emerge in stages from the darkness, hordes of them, green-eyed, they come and nibble at me and eat me alive – every night. And I, a hired killer, out to reach another form of existence. For which I could murder my own daughter. I could even poison my own blood in order to survive. The red-masked man snatches away everything from him, everything he struggled for. He exists wherever I go. He is there, my rival, a king above everyone else, supreme monarch, a looter, universal and cold as death. It's very real, all this, a terrifying thing, and yet, whatever I am, why should I be ashamed? I don't think we have done anything wrong, anything for which we need to be ashamed or hate one another. Believe me, Bitu, there's nothing in the world that's more meaningful than life, there can't be. That's why, for me, our relation is not frivolous or reproachable, and that's why I don't consider myself wretched or corrupt – no reason at all to think that way. Not even after seeing the array of green eyes staring intently at me.

  Our protagonist Somprakash is an affluent, sociable man who has pushed his way ahead through the crowd of ordinary people. He has a fridge, a colour television and a guitar at home and, what is unthinkable, a huge collection of books. A middle-class Bengali, a product of the managerial revolution. The story pursues him and sees his typicality, his connection with the masses or lack of it. The personal tragedy of this apparently well-to-do man, with his office, bar, club and sexuality, surrounded in turn by oppressed humanity, is in fact the tragedy of every half-conscious man in the third world who is neither able to rise above his prejudices nor accept them. Hence ambivalence manifests itself everywhere. At a glance, this might appear to be a cheap story of perverted tastes, but this is the story of a society in which one destroys human relationships and moves rapidly towards the lowest station, to a culture based on unequal competition, where even mother and daughter are mutual rivals and no more. Normally society accepts this inhuman competition as a precondition for success, it's seen as part of the warp and woof of unseen social forces. At the end of the story, when he wishes to reach the final stage of the relationship but fails, in order to find a rationale in favour of his morally compromised life, he tries to provide his attitudes and conduct with a rational basis. In this way, then, society selects him as an object of collective hatred. 'Thinking is the greatest pleasure known to mankind,' he cries. Self-centred sorrows and pleasures find multidimensional expression. The death scene is rendered keeping green nature as witness. The screeches of vultures in the crematorium are audible, beside the body of flesh and blood. Water continues to flow in a gentle stream. B
ut for that, all is silent, like the white of bones. As the night advances, his teeth become keener. One cigarette after another burns away, dangling from eager fingers. In the next scene, Somprakash and Bitu are shown in close-up. They move swift-footedly through blueness, across a blue-carpeted bedroom with curtains of smooth silk drawn on windows, and hold each other tight. Behind them, the dim light of the inner quarters floats into focus again and again, illuminating different parts of their faces and bodies, their blue amorous moans on the silver screen. The characters behind the curtain seem impervious to all this. After about fifteen minutes, having set their clothes in order, Bitu nudges Somprakash. Nobody knows who reaped profit from the game. Music plays to a fast beat behind the sheet of glass. He looks at them through a window –

  –Do you think it is creditable to become pregnant at nineteen?

  –My mother was also nineteen when she conceived.

  –But she was married.

  –You mean she had a licence to fuck!

  A dog stands over a dead body, tears apart and eats the flesh. It wouldn't have been proper to show this scene too vividly. Why does the moon cast so much light on the dry riverbed on the night after the new moon? Bit by bit, the past arrives and gets enmeshed with the present. Bitu had just finished reading Slaughterhouse Five, furtively. Feeling hot, Bitu took her shirt off and lay down beside Somprakash. Only a beer bottle lay between the two of them. Such a fragile and transparent barrier! After some time, she comes closer. She whispers: 'It's hot – what intolerable heat and humidity today … Somprakash stands in front of the door wearing a lungi, his hands covered in blood – 'The bulb broke in my hand' … 'Oh god, so much blood …' She is frightened and a little nervous. Drops of blood splash onto the floor. Bitu comes running in a flash. 'Come, let me bandage it, don't worry.' As she shuts the door, the episode vanishes from the room, leaving behind only the bloodstain on the blue carpet.

  The next film begins with a rape scene, which runs for almost twenty minutes, in a film within a film. The entire incident takes place in a desolate room on a winter's night. Later, the girl who was raped is interviewed. And one after another come little girls, young women and middle-aged matrons who have at one time or another been abused by men. We hear the immaculately dressed little girls, adolescents and young women utter one by one, 'I was first raped by my father…' and then the vulture on the dead body tears out and eats flesh. Images, and images after images. It could instead have been that this nineteen-year-old buxom heroine, Bitu, prances and dances around throughout the story, under soft light, with the hero … TDH (tall, dark and handsome). But it isn't so. Now even the deep green valleys turn grey, even the closest relations lose brightness steadily.

  Murder for Salt

  Jalgaon, 22 September 1982

  Too much salt in the food – for just this grouse, mother-in-law and brother-in-law beat up a newly married twenty-seven-year-old bride. While cooking, the young woman had put a little too much salt in the vegetable curry. There was a terrible furore as soon as the family sat down to eat. She was taken to the hospital with severe injuries after being assaulted by her mother-in-law and brother-in-law. She died in hospital.

  The face in silver colour, the moustache and its environs, till the throat, are blue, only the inside of the wide open mouth is red. The square of white lines on the four sides steadily becomes larger and goes out of frame. On one side an orange moon hangs from the sky. Children hold hands and dance among trees and shrubs, the trees are deep green. Our impatience mounts. We move forward. The episode begins.

  The scene, made up of things collected bit by bit, is one of complete disorder. It takes some time, naturally, to get used to the jolt of this introduction. A bathroom fully done in pink porcelain comes into view. Bitu with her body immersed in lukewarm water – the water is still, Bitu's eyes are closed. A herd of wild buffaloes graze in a meadow of tall green grass atop a hill. One must admit he has aesthetic discernment. In the disorderly background, string-like, linear, coloured snakes have been released with artful brushwork. Men, trees and rocks wriggle on the lines. One is informed that in one version of the tale of Rama, Sita was Ravana's daughter. Ram lured her away from the forest. Thereafter, Ravana steals her away from Rama, with evil designs. Through discussions like this, the story gets written. The descriptions and dialogues are written out on a page at first. It is read out to Bitu from time to time. If there are to be any changes, there are further discussions and arguments. After that it begins to be written anew. If Bitu is displeased, she changes it herself. The task is so complex and mutual that it can't be explained in words, there's no formula here. Simply writing and cutting, cutting and writing. Sometimes it attains such immense depth that one is unable to comprehend exactly what's happening. It's necessary to observe how Bitu acts in every single scene. One has to watch, alertly, how she brings a character to life. Despite the impediments, the desire to write out the story is born. It is necessary to sit with pen and paper. Do you like it, sir? A very difficult question indeed. Summer's around the corner. There's so much soot in the lantern that hardly anything is visible, everything is shadowy, there's only gloomy darkness. We are all born socialist and they have to work very hard to change us– a wry smile plays on Somprakash's lips. As a college student he frequently quoted this line from Engels. The stairs on the right side, the door on the left side and in a corner, Bitu's room, the door ajar. She sits with one leg propped over the other, the hem of her skirt has risen considerably above her knees. What's in her hand – Barbara Cartland even now! Somprakash gasps and says, There's a terrible ache on the left side of my chest. Bitu, please hold me and take me to the room. The story begins in this way. After that the attack on the story begins. It is challenged, it is broken into smithereens, its storyness lies in pieces. Questions are asked about the way we read. For instance, in one scene, Somprakash and Bitu, with great élan, watch a blue film, freshly acquired from Denmark, on the videocassette player. As she gets tired, the girl wipes beads of perspiration from her nose. Such an excess of all this every day that it no longer holds excitement. On the tip of her nose is a bead of sweat. The wildness is subdued, the bead of sweat becomes clearer than the image of the bra being undone. And furthermore, this has no physical meaning any more. The music playing lacks sweetness. Sound is used as the seventh note, consequently every composition loses its meaning. A vast wetland can be seen through the bedroom window of the huge apartment, a forest through the window of the living room. Childhood's butterflies enter through the open window in the east, they fly round the room. Somprakash thinks the colourful butterflies are like the pattern on the border of a Dhakai jamdani sari that floats in from the recesses of his memory. What had the jamdani butterfly begged him for? His eyes are vacant. The butterfly touches the wobbly study table in the room, it touches the timepiece with its legs and then flies around, working its restless wings. And in the middle of this shot, a three-or four-year-old girl, dark in complexion, wearing only a red string around her waist, dances animatedly, singing a love song –

  Crooked your flute, crooked the melody

  Hold and play it crooked, dear

  Cast your crooked eyes crookedly

  And steal this maiden's heart, oh dear

  A brilliant socio-economic explanation could be included in this – what rural life is like, Somprakash's childhood, the destruction of village life and the rapidly growing immorality of the metropolis. She has no objection to being completely naked. There is a very fashionable drawing-cum-dining room. ABBA and Runa Laila play all day on the stereo, and Bitu dances in bright red jeans. The loud strumming of a harp playing continuously, the sound of stones being broken, the shriek of a vulture, the roar of thunder, the splashing of a waterfall, and Bitu's amorous moan – which is natural, like the rhythm of the breeze or the blue of the sky. Remembrance: on a night in the seventies, a pregnant woman's body was cut into pieces and left in a flat in Jodhpur Park. And the scandal of raping a minor girl. Later, it was found that
her age was nineteen, she wasn't a minor after all. All this clotted darkness, the environment of memories mingled with terror, is never a matter of pleasing romanticism. All the ups and downs of his own life – childhood poverty, terror, dreams, memories, pains and yearnings – all of it, every single thing, gets mixed up as they are written out, they become hazy. In his own married life, is he quite what they call 'happy' – or is he something else? He had married for love, Joya and Som both liking each other, all those things of college life. But nothing is too clear or illuminated to be probed or justified. Does Som now inwardly desire death – Joya's death? Nothing is reliable and dependable. I don't fear defeat or suffering, that's why I see Dostoevsky's hero as much braver than James Bond, Somprakash thinks. In my eyes he is a hero because he is on the verge of defeat – a man, a tiny, insignificant, imperfect creature in the vast expanse. In this way, incidents and characters move simultaneously in dream and reality. Place, time and character are entangled. Robert McNamara pops his head out from a pile of old newspapers. At one time, when he came to India as President of the World Bank, what an outburst of protest there was from the communists. 'Go back … go back.' He returned after a long time, precisely during the regime of communist ministers, to West Bengal itself, to Calcutta. There was no protest at all. No one said, 'Murderer of Vietnam – go back.' The newspapers report that the murderer now looks at the communist ministers in Writers' Building and smiles wryly as he listens to their demands and appeals. There is an abrupt sound, the line gets disconnected. Calcutta Dateline Heavy Damage. Somprakash thinks that socialism is not just the language of protest, it is also a rich lifestyle – as far as he understands it. When the shameless god comes around dawn, hobbling on his crutch, piercing the veil of carbon monoxide emitting gustily from the chimneys, Bitu is sleeping in her room, lying naked on the bed. Her mother makes tea and calls her. Here, when Somprakash talks face-to-face with the author, the story remains the same, although Somprakash himself thinks that he is playing a radical, left-wing role. The story shows it from a particular angle but doesn't get into direct criticism. The intelligentsia have a certain view of themselves, and are habituated to seeing themselves so. Somprakash too observes his role in society, and the effect of criticism on him. But here the criticism proceeds into deeper territory, drawing the reader also into the equation. In the whole process, the classical form of storytelling is demolished. Again, sometimes, while keeping the process of construction and deconstruction active, the new framework is prepared for emotional reasons. His is a solitary, individual rebellion against total dehumanization. The huge sitting room in Jodhpur Park comes into view, its splendid lampshades and bronze-coloured silk curtains on the window lie in shadow, a Japanese kimono, soft slippers on the feet, Economic Timeson the lap. Bitu has gone to Trinca's with her friends, and Joya is on the sofa, knitting a golf-jumper for Som. There are bottles of whiskey and soda on the centre table. Somprakash was pouring from the bottle for Joya, taking some for himself too. There was no peg measure. When Bitu returned, she too would join them and sit next to her father. As the cabaret began, the people there got excited. Bitu sensed hands on her back, buttocks and thighs, perhaps suggestive finger signals, but she did not pay any heed to all that. Recently a young man who loved her had committed suicide. He had shot himself. Bitu says, that's the only thing he did well. She didn't cry one bit. She went off in the car with her friends to eat ice cream at Kwality's. Joya said to her husband, The girl has been thoroughly trained, she never misses a pill. The three of them set out on voyage aboard three different ships. When the ships sank in a blue storm, they returned, having salvaged the broken stories. A group of three persons: mother, daughter and father. Whatever else we may be, after all we are bhadralok, cunning through and through. Once, in the scavengers' hamlet, a girl of about seventeen or eighteen – she would be about the same age as Bitu – Somprakash had then passed with a first division and gone to study in Presidency College – she was wearing only a gamchha, and seeing me suddenly, not finding anything else close at hand, she wrapped a torn floor-mat around herself, I remember, as a means to avoid shame. Even after all these days, Somprakash hadn't forgotten the incident, it was so long ago … Come, let's go and sit somewhere, let's have something to drink. Beware, whatever you do, don't let your own daughter wear a punjabi and parallel trousers. A smile plays on the corner of the lips. Calcutta has a new culture, of wearing embroidered punjabis and expensive handloom saris. Attending solo recitals of Rabindrasangeet in Rabindra Sadan. Splendidly flows the unceasing, eternal stream of joy. On returning home, the better half dons a nightie, and the girl a kaftan. The bar cabinet between the two windows. Pull the long wooden handle, and there are rows of expensive scotch whiskey, cognac and bottles of wine. A dark-skinned adivasi, his wavy hair flowing down to his shoulders, plays a dhamsa like a crazed man – who knows how long he has been playing? The dhamsa was about six or seven feet long, as tall as a person and a half, made of ancient buffalo hide. It had been carried on people's weary shoulders. Dark-skinned, muscular and bare-bodied, he kept assaulting the dhamsa in drunken intoxication with two saal sticks, and with the assault awakens Sing Bonga, the clan god …