Marked
by Shadow and Light
Turbulent Waters and Sunlit Ponds
[This posting is, of course, long
overdue. And as it turns out, this will be the last segment from 2015. In
reality, not in dates. We are into January, 2016 already. But this segment was
pretty much completed in December, 2015. GM]
It has been
difficult for me to navigate my tiny but hopeful tugboat through currents—cruel
and kind, fierce and tender—with some kind of a vision linking past and future
ports of call. It has been almost impossible for me to steer the boat for some
time now, in turbulent waters, close to the whirlpool of stupefying, nihilistic
violence, often bred inside diabolical convictions and executed by various
agents of the State, and by fanatics, thugs, and even disgruntled individuals. A
malignant faith without humanity always seems to end up in Hiroshima, Dachau,
Agent Orange, Rwanda, Gaza, Surat and other “killing fields”.
In a sense,
therefore, I ought to address this remorseless phenomenon before I recommence
my voyage, basing my hope on historical dimensions and patterns that have
emerged in the last decades. Or at least revisit connections between erstwhile
colonies of European powers and their respective “mother countries”. You know,
South Asia and England, North Africa and France, and so on. On the other hand,
I want to be a storyteller and not a social scientist, and so for the present I
am content to roam inside an ambiguous zone.
For example, after
the recent Paris killings, I watched some TV reporting that included a
well-known clip from the classic film Casablanca.
In this scene, a young French woman, while desperately trying to leave
town, also happens to lead the regulars of Rick’s café in singing “La
Marseillaise”, drowning out the German colonel and his people who had started
singing their anthem of the era, “Deutchland uber alles”.
“Vive la France!”—the
clip ends with that spirited applause—symbolic of freedom from German
occupation.
Now, I have seen
Casablanca numerous times over the years, and like many others remember the
cool one-liners, romance between Bergman and Bogart, and “As Time Goes By”—a
catchy tune made even more popular by the BBC TV series with that title. And
like many others, I never thought about the implication of that clip from
Rick’s café until this time around when the newscaster proclaimed the feel-good
power of the French anthem with its roots in Bastille Day—an assertion of
freedom against all tyranny. This time, it suddenly occurred to me that there
was an implied lesson in what we just witnessed. That in the battle between two
successive occupiers of Morocco, only the
first one—France the colonizer, had legitimacy. Morocco was a part of “Free
France” and the Germans had no business curtailing that freedom. And, and… the
poor Moroccans didn’t have anything to say about any of this! Any extrapolation
to the present would require many steps of course, but surely it can be done.
Perhaps we’ll see that in another context.
For now, I’ll go
back to where I had started this piece, back in last August, with a timely (I
think) reflection of American History connections. Then I ‘ll conclude this
posting with memories of two more women I knew from my childhood, but who are
no longer with us. They are the golden voiced Suchitra Mitra, and my aunt
Tripti Mitra, actor and much more.
For my next
segment (and I promise to get to it quickly) I’ll dock the tugboat at a jetty
embracing tranquil waters and take a walk to a lotus pond. There I’ll jot down
some stories about the great one—Satyen Bose (Jethu to me). I have been told by
well-wishing friends that if I don’t write these down, some of the stories will
perish with me. I can’t let that happen—partly because New Year’s Day is Satyen
Bose’s birthday. For me, this refueling and replenishing stop, so to speak,
will be a cheerful break before the tugboat chugs again.
Part One
I
We
remember that the earthquake of last April was a cataclysmic event that
destroyed parts of Nepal, bits of Bihar, Tibet and Chengdu, and was felt across
the sub-continent. At that time, I was gathering my thoughts about this piece,
but paused for a number of reasons. One was hearing about complaints from
American tourists who wanted the earthquake business to be fixed rapidly so
that they could make their trip to Nepal. Tickets had been bought, hotels had
been booked, their itinerary was in hand—and they had taken time off from jobs
and meetings and even from their children. Apparently, the tour organizers in
India had assured them that one week’s delay would be the max. The would-be-tourists
to Nepal had been promised they wouldn’t have to settle for some other place
like Thailand, or Vietnam. This was just a short-term inconvenience.
So I paused a
little to consider such promises. Another recess came when I learned about
dispensable Sherpas whose lives were never as important as mountain climbers
who paid for their services. I paused again to recall that as a youngster I had
heard Tenzing Norgay the iconic Sherpa was the first to reach Mt. Everest’s summit,
but he let Edmund Hillary have the honor. Thus, one pause led to another while
disasters of one sort or another continued, including police violence against
Black Americans. Then there was the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina—the
killing of nine Black worshippers in their own church by a hateful, white
supremacist. This was followed by America’s pre-occupation with the Confederate
flag—its meaning, its place within history and tradition. In such circumstances it would be wise, I
thought, to recall a few details from the Americanization of America.
Searching through
stuff, and trying to be true to my initial resolution to be a storyteller—at
least in the main, I didn’t want to delve into the causes and consequences of
America’s bloodiest war—its Civil War of the 1860s. Many stories were written
by candlelight then, right next to thundering canons and dismembered warriors.
The questions that loom large for me in the present discussion are: what indeed
were the separatists—the Confederate States—fighting for? What is this
“tradition” which many Southerners are clamoring to uphold in 2015? Why would
anyone wish to fly high the Confederate flag today? So I looked again at a
speech Alexander H. Stephens, the vice-president of the Confederacy gave in the
state of Georgia, in 1861, explaining the Southern cause. Here’s some of it
verbatim, along with some summation:
The new constitution has put at
rest, forever, all the agitating
questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists
among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was
the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. [Thomas]
Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the
old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized
fact.
Stephens goes on
to argue that Jefferson and his friends did not fully grasp the eternal truth
upon which the institution of slavery was founded. They were ambivalent about
slavery because they knew the institution was unavoidable and even intrinsic to
the formation of American democracy. Thus the first American Constitution
guaranteed its existence and these founders were themselves slave-owners. On
the other hand, the Jefferson crowd thought the enslavement of Africans may be
morally, socially, even politically indefensible. So, they surmised—more wished
than reasoned—that “somehow or other in the order of Providence, the
institution would be evanescent and pass away.” They dared not incorporate this
view in the constitution which did guarantee the rights of slave-owners because
of the “common sentiment of the day”. But the ideas of Jefferson and company
“were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of
races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built
upon it fell when the ‘storm came and the wind blew.’ ” What then was the
Confederate solution?
Our new government is founded upon
exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests
upon the great truth, that the negro is
not equal to the white man; that
slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.
[my emphasis] This our new government, is the
first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. [my emphasis]
This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other
truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us.
Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally
admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung
to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to
these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics … They
assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal
privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their
conclusions would be logical and just—but their premise being wrong, their
whole argument fails …
This
truth, with which the South is armed, is unique also because it is the truth of
a natural order, and not the unfortunate subjugation of one class of people of
the same race by another that has been previously found in human history. “With
us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the
eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place.” This is
part of God’s plan whatever his reason may be. “It is not for us to inquire
into the wisdom of his ordinances, or to question them. For his own purposes,
he has made one race to differ from another, as he has made ‘one star to differ
from another star in glory.’ ” Therefore, concludes Stephens, the Confederate
cause is just and, in the end, must triumph.
I
dwell on this discourse some because the theory of “natural slavery” goes back
to Aristotle, and was closely involved in the Spanish conquest of indigenous
peoples of the Americas. The difference in the United States was that from the
outset the slave labor force of the plantations came from Africa, while the
indigenous people—the natives— (referred to as savages in the Declaration of Independence) were by and
large uprooted, relocated and exterminated. Secondly, Jefferson and friends
were themselves slave owners, and as such it is not clear at all that they
agreed that slavery was unnatural. Unfortunate perhaps, but not decisively
unnatural. These men may have wished that as an institution, slavery would
eventually wither away, but not necessarily because slaves and their masters were
of the same species. Anyone who thinks
otherwise should consult Jefferson’s only book Notes on the State of
Virginia, published in 1784.
Here
I’ll note a few points Jefferson makes as he considers the difference the two
races, whites and blacks. Obviously, the first notable difference is skin
color. White is better than black because it is nuanced, while black is
monotonous. “Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of
every passion by greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable to
the eternal monotony, which reigns in countenances, that immovable veil of
black which covers all the emotions of the other race?” [my emphasis] He
speculates too: “The circumstance of superior beauty is thought worthy of
attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs and other domestic animals;
why not in that of man?” Would it not be reasonable then to conclude that
Jefferson had several children with his slave mistress Sally Hemmings—as a
personal breeding experiment?
It
is not apparent to me that discussion of slavery in America consistently notes
the “double oppression” of enslaved women. That their lot included a range of
sexual exploitation by their masters would be an understatement. As property,
these women couldn’t legally say yes or no to the demands of the master. This
absolute power over their existence does not allow them to be subjects—in mind
or body. Every encounter is “consensual” by definition—from seduction and coercion
to multiple rapes and other forms of violence.
Naturally,
many slave women gave birth to children fathered by their masters. This
phenomenon—predatory sexual practice of slave masters that led to mulatto
children, was lamented by Mary Chestnut, wife of a wealthy South Carolina slave
holder in her journal on March 18, 1861—three days before Alexander Stephens
gave the speech I have cited here. Chestnut was a loyal Southerner, and her condemnation
of slavery was driven more by her regret about the moral degeneration of
slaveholders than the destruction of slave lives. She muses: “I wonder if it be
a sin to think slavery a curse to any land...
Who thinks any worse of a Negro or mulatto woman for being a thing we
can’t name? God forgive us, but ours is
a monstrous system and wrong and
iniquity... Like the patriarchs of old
our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the
mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and
every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s
household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or
pretends so to think … Alas for the men!
No worse than men everywhere, but the lower their mistresses, the more
degraded they must be.”
Back
to Jefferson the intellectual. He proceeds to compare whites and blacks along
the faculties of memory, reason and
imagination [my emphasis]. “In memory they are equal to the whites; in
reason much inferior, as I think one [black] could scarcely be found capable of
tracing and comprehending the investigation of Euclid...” I suppose TJ had
found a number of Euclideans among the “unenlightened” white farmers and
laborers of his time! And, to no one's surprise, “in imagination they [blacks]
are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” Blacks produce no art or artifacts
compared to, for example, American Indians, but Jefferson acknowledges that “in
music they are more generally gifted than whites, with accurate ears for tune
and time. But that does not mean they will ever produce intricate melody or
“complicated harmony.” And finally, “misery is often the parent of the most
affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but
no poetry.” Earlier Jefferson had argued that “their griefs are transient,” and
“in general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than
reflection.”
In
conclusion, Jefferson advances “as a
suspicion only [my emphasis], that the blacks, whether originally a
distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the
whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” Once again, he urges us to look
at nature out there: “it is not against experience to suppose, that difference
species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different
qualifications.”
If
we now revisit the “natural slavery” contention of Stephens, what seems to
remain as a decisive heritage in America is not only the conflict between ideas
upholding freedom and ideologies defending enslavement, but a more persistent
yet less articulated conflict between the absolute conviction of Mr.
Stephens and others under the Confederate flag, and the “suspicion” expressed
by Mr. Jefferson and internalized by millions of white Americans of successive
generations. All the way through the Civil Rights movement, the Obama
presidency, the Charleston massacre and its aftermath, militarization of the
police, accepted hate speech of presidential candidates, life without hope in
the prison system, and I'm afraid, on and on for many years to come. [I have
referred to the story of European colonization of the world, and in this
context the profits from the slave trade was a significant factor.]
II
It
is quite puzzling to immigrants who try to understand what is the true nature
of “American Exceptionalism” then, a concept and an attribute which make even
President Barrack Obama proud. On the surface, the reference is to the original
experiment of the 18th century—an experiment that was no doubt the
founding of an expatriate yet expansionist regime that waged a war of
independence against the English monarchy well before the French Revolution. On
the other hand, this experiment began with the import of African slaves and a
calculated genocide of the indigenous population. How does one reconcile the
contradiction which, as I have stated, remains part and parcel of contemporary
American life?
Even
though the following analysis by the social theorist and political activist
Cornel West is lengthy, this is the only answer that makes sense to me as I
reflect on my fifty plus years in this country, looking back at my personal
history and also different kinds of investigations I have undertaken. The
following quotations are from West’s book Democracy
Matters and I’ll divide them into two sections, reversing the order in
which these appear in the text:
The fundamental
paradox of American democracy in
particular [my emphasis] is that it gallantly emerged as a fragile
democratic experiment over and against an oppressive British empire—and aided by
the French and Dutch empires—even while harboring its own imperial visions of
westward expansion, with more than 20 percent of its population consisting of
enslaved Africans. In short, we are a
democracy of rebels who nonetheless re-created in our own new nation many of
the oppressions we had rebelled against.
The Declaration of Independence, principally written by the thirty-three
year-old revolutionary Thomas Jefferson – who himself embodied this paradox,
being both a courageous freedom fighter against British imperialism and a
cowardly aristocratic slaveholder of hundreds of Africans in his beloved
Virginia—offers telling testament of this complex and contradictory character
of the American democratic experiment.
The reference in
the Declaration to indigenous peoples as “Savages” worth of American
expansionist domination for an “empire of liberty” further reveals this
contradiction. In listing the colonies’
charges against British oppression, Jefferson sounds this theme in his last
charge: “He [the British oppressor] has excited domestic insurrections amongst
us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the
merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished
destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
West
discusses the uniqueness of the American experience because he has noted that
all “democratic experiments” have succeeded at the cost of eliminating from
this success, groups or classes of people. But in this instance what Stephens
defined as the unique configuration, namely the institution of slavery (my
observation) and more (role of the only superpower today)—has remained ingrained
in the body politic. Here’s how West puts it:
The American
democratic is unique in human history not because we are God’s chosen people to
lead the world, nor because we are always a force of good in the world, but
because of our refusal to acknowledge the deeply racist and imperial roots of
our democratic project. We are exceptional because of our denial of the antidemocratic
foundation stones of American democracy. No other democratic nation revels so
blatantly in such self-deceptive innocence, such self-paralyzing reluctance to
confront the night-side of its own history. This sentimental flight from
history—or adolescent escape from painful truths about ourselves means that
even as we grow old, grow big, and grow powerful, we have yet to grow up. To
confront the role of race and empire is to grapple with what we would like to
avoid, but we avoid that confrontation at the risk of our democratic
maturation. To delve into our legacy of race and empire is to unleash our
often-untapped democratic energies of Socratic questioning, prophetic witness
and tragicomic hope.
It should be noted
that Cornel West is a religious person who pursues what he calls the prophetic tradition
in Christianity and discusses the implications at length in this book. As far
as “American exceptionalism” is concerned, I’ll leave analytical tools here and
return to storytelling.
III
Other than deranged
demagogues and frightened fundamentalists, I have rarely encountered people
here who think they live “exceptional” lives, or the lives of God’s chosen
people. What I have found among the often-invoked 99% of the population over the years are some recurrent trends and honest sentiments : confusion and uncertainty all mixed up with fear and objectification of "the other". Here are some examples.
At one time, I
used to teach quite a bit in a couple of community colleges—America’s two year
institutions where the working poor, first generation college students, mothers
returning to classrooms after raising children, soldiers scarred by their
experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, often found themselves in the same classroom.
Advanced writing, world cultures, or consumerism could be the course. Most of
the time I would ask them a simple question by way of introduction: “How many
of you think you have a chance to be the president of the United States? Please
raise your hand.”
In ten odd years,
no one ever did. I would proceed then to other elected officials with a similar
question. Same answer—that is, no hands. Once, one of the mothers said she
might run for the local school board, or her local government—because in her
home town she may have a chance of doing something about education of the
children and healthcare for the elderly. All in all, it was clear these
students knew that procedural democracy wasn’t real democracy and without spending
huge amounts of money there’s no political power for anyone. No one in my
classes opposed free education, free healthcare— and everyone would welcome
libraries and clinics in their neighborhood. The mothers wished they could have
got paid maternity leave, then they wouldn’t have to quit their jobs and
struggle now to re-enter the work force—a better chance with a couple of years
of college.
At the same time, those
mostly white students, expressed (obliquely for the most part) a deep suspicion
of Blacks and Latinos and Asians. They didn’t know exactly how they would be
living out their own history in the twenty-first century, but probably in some
kind of conflict with those others, especially in countries whose names they only
recently learned—like Iraq. Their language betrayed the connection Cornel West
notes: they would refer to “those people” quite a bit and didn’t hesitate, for
example, to call Iraqis “sand niggers.” (I just heard a journalist say that
Donald Trump has enormous support among white men—men with and without college degrees.)
The consumerist
ethos that my students had internalized well drove them to desire many
commodities—stuff—they couldn’t afford, but one common thread surprised me. Most
of them either possessed or would like to possess firearms. I remember one young
man saying, “I would rather own a Ferrari and have my personal military assault-rifle
than run for office—even for a seat in the state assembly.” He really liked
sports cars and guns, disliked Mexicans and despised politicians. His friends
nodded their concurrence. One of them added he didn’t give a damn about climate
change or future of the Amazon.
“What’s all that
bullshit got to do with my life here?”
“All right. Suppose
it could be proved, with reasonable but not absolute certainty—like researchers
often say, that today’s unchecked carbon emission will put your great
grandchildren in jeopardy—from birth, then what would you say?” I was the
teacher with intelligent questions.
“I’d say I’ll
drive what I want, eat what I want… you know, ‘cause I’m American and that’s
what we do.”
“But I’m not
talking about poor kids in some slum in Brazil. I’m saying your descendants…
your own family may have children born with deformities in another eighty or
hundred years.”
“Even if there’s
trouble down the line, I won’t be around. Or you. So why should we get all in a
fuss about it? Actually, no one really believes in this global warming crap.
It’s all a gimmick to make us drive stupid, tinsy cars.”
His Ferrari friend
cheered him on. Only mothers with small children were not sure what to believe.
Too many people in their lives have lied without remorse.
Being the only
superpower today has no doubt fueled the assumption of being number one in
everything, including the culture of indulgence and instant gratification—as
those students insisted. This arrogance of exceptionalism, however, comes with
deep-seated anxiety, internalized at an early age. So let me turn to another
group.
In the last few
years, I’ve taught, off and on, some writing, storytelling and acting classes
to middle-school students—eleven to fourteen year olds in grades five to eight.
In acting classes, we worked on intonation and projection with love and hate
statements, often with examples of food.
“Tell everyone
what’s your favorite food, and what you dislike most. Perhaps you are forced to
eat stuff because ‘it is good for you’, eh? Be convincing without screaming,”
I’d ask.
Most of the time
students laughed and giggled a lot, and the food list, on both sides, was
surprising and even exotic on occasion. One time it turned out that many in the
class loved Chinese food. While they were discussing specific dishes with
gusto—perfect for the exercise—a voice rose above other voices—out of the blue.
“I hate the
Chinese!”
This was a seventh
grader talking. Others paused and I intervened, steering the discussion into
what kind of people they may like or dislike
and why. Most of those students didn’t want to go there. Perhaps they were not
sure they wanted to open up to an Indian instructor. The Chinese hater said he
knew the Chinese were “out to get us” because they wanted to be number one. Then
America would no longer be the greatest.
In the same school
on another occasion, I had asked students in a writing class to first share
their answer, orally, to a question I was going to pose and then write down their
thoughts with more details and other ideas if they had more to say. My question
was:
“If you are given
the chance to visit just one place in the world, all expenses paid, where would
you choose to go and why? The place can be a city or a country, or some other
location.”
This time Paris
was chosen by a few, London and Vienna and Poland and Italy by others, partly
because of ancestral roots and partly because of what they had imbibed in the
course of growing up. When her turn came to state her choice, one of the girls
from an immigrant Russian family spoke.
“I want to go to
Thailand.” Naturally, everyone was curious and someone asked, “Why Thailand of
all places?”
“Because they are
all Buddhists there”, she replied.
I thought it was a
good thing to be interested in Buddhism at her age. And she continued.
“People from my
church are missionaries and some of them have been to Thailand. They love that
country, and many of those Buddhists have become Christians. So I want to go
and see how I can be of help.”
Not what I
expected, to be sure. Then I realized that this student came from a group of
Russian families in Central Pennsylvania belonging to a fundamentalist sect of
the Orthodox Church. Their children are not allowed to celebrate Halloween, or
indulge in any Pagan delights of Christmas—like trees decorated with ornaments.
But I didn’t know that they sent off missionaries to Thailand to make
Christians of those misguided Buddhists.
For me, the sum
total of such experience simply brings to light what Cornel West has theorized
about. A religiosity flanked by xenophobia on one side and racism on the other is
hard to escape in American life. It is worth taking a second look at American
writers who struggle to demystify these phenomena—as poets, novelists,
historians. But more than that—observations by “visitors” that penetrate
obscure corners and transparent hourglasses of a conceived “exceptionalism” is
worth a thorough re-examination. Not only in the classic by Alexis de
Tocqueville of old, Democracy in America,
but also in more recent works like Franz Kafka’s “third novel” Amerika, Federico Garcia Lorca’s A
Poet in New York, or Jean-Paul Sartre’s commentary on American individualism and conformity in Literary and Philosophical Essays.
Enough of these dignitaries for now. I want to recall meeting a Canadian engineer of Jamaican
origin working in Toronto—many years ago. We were small-chatting about stuff
like American and Canadian currencies, living in expensive cities like Toronto
and Boston, Gavaskar and Lara, and weather patterns in Kingston and Kolkata.
Then he said something I have never forgotten.
“You know, I’ve
been recruited… and as a matter of fact offered a job or two… by American
companies... Better salaries too. But me and the missus, every time we imagine moving
to the U.S.—we kinda shudder.”
“How so?” As
someone living in the States, I was obviously curious.
“One comfort—you
may say a source of inner peace—for Canadians is that we don’t have to prove to
anyone we are number one in anything… Perhaps in ice hockey, but not anything
that matters… like the world’s largest houses and largest cars… and the largest
army. Plus, we have no anxiety about our kids’ education or our healthcare. Too
many problems and too much uncertainty in America.”
“You are right
about that… especially the cost of going to college. But in your kind of a job
you’d probably have an excellent healthcare package.”
“Maybe… but we
can’t get rid of that uncertainty inside us, you know.” He paused and added one
more thought. “There’s racism in both countries of course, but I felt it was
different over there. In the U.S. descendants of slaves seem to be reminded every day that
that’s what they are. We haven’t had that feeling here in Canada… even when we
have faced some bad shit!”
I never saw the
guy again and I have forgotten his name, but I’ll always remember him as a fan
of Courtney Walsh and Sunil Gavaskar, and a man content in Canada.
IV
One more American
adventure story to end this part. This is the tale of Banerjee of Los Angeles.
Here we find slapped together the art of American hustle (itself a combination
of ingenuity and disingenuity, initiative and deception), religious preoccupation—and
even a curious glimpse of Hollywood. I remember that season well because it was
the beginning of the year when Oscar nominations were to be released by the
Academy of Fine Arts in Hollywood. That year the Indian submission for nomination
in the category of best foreign language film was Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (মহানগর—The Big
City), and I found myself suddenly in the middle of its screening for
Academy members. And that’s when and how I met Banerjee.
No one knows how Mahanagar would have fared against
Frederico Fellini’s 8½ which won the
Oscar, or Roman Polanski’s Knife in the
Water which didn’t, but the main reason for a missed nomination didn’t have
anything to do with the quality of India’s contribution. Or it did in a different
way I believe. Because this is what happened.
My friend Robin Prasad
and I had gone up from La Jolla to Los Angeles to meet some of his friends who
were grad students at UCLA. I forget their names, but the principal character
in their Westwood apartment I’ll call Sudip who was a research assistant in the
chemistry department. Banerjee lived in that flat but didn’t seem to have
anything to do with the university. No sooner than we arrived and introductions
were made, Sudip informed us that there would be no time for adda or cooking
goat meat because a big scandal (কেলেঙ্কারী)
was brewing around Mahanagar which
was to be screened the following morning for Academy members who would then vote
for or against its Oscar nomination.
“This is how the
stupid Indian bureaucracy works. The fuckers sent a copy of the movie without
any subtitles. Can you imagine that? So now I am supposed to fix the problem within
24 hours.” Sudip blustered.
“Don’t fuss over your
own importance,” Banerjee cut in. He was a slim tallish man—a bit older than
the rest of us. “We need to find a plan to minimize the damage. You San Diego
people can help too. The truth is some guy in the Academy realized the film was
in Bengali. And this guy knew another guy and so on… until they found us.” Banerjee’s
words were mellow and yet convincing.
“This is what I
suggest.” Sudip wasn’t about to relinquish his helm it seemed. “We have to
leave in about half an hour to view the film at a special showing… so let’s all
go and put down our thoughts on paper, come back and see what we can do.”
“We need to be
clearer than that,” said Banerjee. “Sudip, you focus on the dialogue as if you
were going to be dubbing it for the audience. Nikhil can help with that.” He turned
toward me and said, “How ‘bout you and me both write our own story
line—synopsis if you will—and compare them later?”
I agreed, thinking
that Robin must have told his friends that I happened to know some of the film
people in Kolkata and probably that I was bilingual in a way Robin wasn’t. Then we proceeded to discuss the next 24
hours.
Well, we watched
the film a couple of times with many pauses, courtesy of the Academy, in some
small studio and we took copious notes, starting with names of cast and crew
and identity of the characters. We returned to the apartment where Banerjee and
I collaborated on a more or less satisfactory version of the narrative. We
didn’t think any of the voting members would work through the actual script
even if the whole thing was translated into English. They needed to keep their
focus on visual matters—on the drama screened, not read. Then came the hardest
part.
It is almost funny
to think that back then we couldn’t even imagine trying to add English subtitles
to a Bengali movie through computers. (There were no personal computers of
course!) The existing technology was completely out of our domain and we
didn’t know anyone who did subtitles. But we did know pen and paper, electric
typewriters and copying machines in halls of academia. So we worked through the
evening and a good bit of the night typing, proofreading, copying, collating—with
some joy in getting all this done, but also with a sense of shame: we feared that
“the big city”, along with us, may be laughed out of the auditorium. Only Sudip
was very upbeat and cooperative because he would be doing a soft voiceover
commentary during the screening of Mahanagar—the
next best thing to dubbing, Banerjee had thought. And it may have been Banerjee
again, who had offered Sudip his role.
In the morning, we
arrived early for the screening because the Academy had to go with Mahanagar first, and for good reason. There
were two other films to be screened that day—the Polanski film and a Japanese
movie about twin girls from Kyoto. Those were subtitled of course and needed no
added technology for getting the plot. I remember noticing Jack Lemon and
Cornel Wilde in the lobby, then we distributed the synopsis to attendees. It
occurred to me too that Banerjee was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly Mahanagar came on the screen.
Sudip did his
speaking calmly and pleasantly, but the whole setup was amateurish and
unconvincing. I was pretty sure there would be no nomination for Satyajit Ray
this time around, and I must confess that after watching the film three times
in quick succession I thought it to be a rather average rendition of an urban
middle-class family under duress. “Not ready for prime time”—in spite of
Madhabi and Anil being in the cast. Who knew them in Hollywood anyway? Eventually,
we returned to the apartment exhausted, but not dissatisfied—even a little
proud as I remember. We didn’t think anyone else could have done a better job
in a 24-hour slot, given the circumstances. At some point I asked Sudip, “What
happened to Banerjee?”
“He must have had
church duty somewhere earlier today—that’s why he wasn’t at the screening.”
Sudip giggled. There was an inside joke somewhere.
“What d’you mean?
Is Banerjee Christian?” Robin asked.
“Let me tell the
Banerjee story, please.” Nikhil (not his real name either) responded.
“Go ahead,” Sudip
laughed. “I’ll get us some beer.” And then Nikhil began his folk tale.
“First of all I
have no idea what his first name is, or if he has one. He gets his mail in some
post-box. Everyone calls him Banerjee and we don’t pry. When I first came to
UCLA, he was no longer a student. Used to be in architectural engineering, but
flunked out I was told. I don’t know how that happened because he’s very
sharp—although he told me once his destiny lies in the theatre.” Nikhil
scratched his head.
“I can see
that—and yes, he’s very sharp and observant too. Reads people well,” I said,
and Robin agreed.
“He lives with us,
pays his share of rent and other expenses. But we don’t press him for anything
else because after all he’s now in this country as an illegal… his visa has
long expired and the man has to survive somehow if he wishes to stay in this country.
And in any case he couldn’t get a job outside with a student visa.”
“All that is true,
plus Banerjee is kind of a mentor—an older brother to us. We like that he is
here. I don’t mind that he gets on my case now and then. Go on.” Sudip concurred.
He wasn’t really a rival for the chief’s position.
“Anyhow, Banerjee
told us that while wandering around Los Angeles one day, he has an epiphany—a
revelation of sorts, in front of a church belonging to Presbyterians. So he
goes in and sits in a pew, his head bent down in reverence. After a while
someone in authority approaches him—it is the Minister. ‘What can I do for you
my son? You appear distressed.’ And that’s when lightning strikes.”
“You are being a
little too dramatic, aren’t you?” Sudip intervened. Perhaps he thought he could
tell a better tale.
“No, this is
exactly how Banerjee put it to me. So he looks up at the Minister and says,
‘I’m sorry if I’ve bothered you. I just came in to pray. You see, I’m a
Presbyterian from India—out of work at the moment, trying to figure out what to
do.’ Of course, the Minister wants to help, but Banerjee is a proud
Presbyterian and wants no charity. He has a more creative suggestion. He says,
‘If I could talk to your congregation about how the Church is doing in India,
then I wouldn’t mind a small donation for the effort.’ ‘You’re right, a
speaker’s fee would be exactly the right thing’—the Minister is delighted. He
would call Banerjee when he had a date. All this happened before he moved in
here.”
“Wait a minute. I
never heard of any Presbyterians in India. Where are their churches?” Robin
didn’t think this could work.
“Banerjee didn’t
have a clue either. Like I said, he was struck by an idea whose time had come. You
know, the light bulb thing. So he goes to the UCLA library and spends several
days reading up on Presbyterians—develops a story line which even includes
persecution of the faithful. He’s a good talker who still believes that he’ll become
a professional actor one day. So he does his thing at the church and earns—yes,
earns—a few hundred dollars and a couple of patrons willing to find him a job.
How he managed to ward off such kindness he didn’t say. But now he has a grand scheme.
He locates churches of different denominations, scattered over the greater Los
Angeles and starts repeating his speaker act. Are there Baptists or Methodists
in India? I don’t know, but Banerjee never fails to bring good tidings to his
congregations—and that’s what matters, don’t you think?”
“Fantastic!” I was
really impressed. Robin was fascinated, and Sudip was eager to finish the
story.
“So… what Nikhil
is saying is that armed with hours of research at the library, Banerjee takes turns
to become a poor Baptist, Methodist and… and what not from India, temporarily
out of luck and needing a little help. He has left the Catholic Church alone
because there are quite a few of those churches in India and Banerjee could be
exposed as a deceiver. When he first moved in with us, it was because we had
been looking for another roommate. He always seems to have some money and pays
his share of rent and utilities dutifully—without fail. Of course, we didn’t
know how he made a living… until almost a year later.”
“Yes, that’s when
he sat at this table—right in that chair you are sitting now, and told me the
story of his sudden revelation. I suppose because I am the youngest here.”
Nikhil was happy to be the ‘kid brother’ to a great hustler.
“So where did the
man disappear today? After doing all that work for this morning’s screening.” I
remained curious.
“Let me see,”
Nikhil answered as he walked over to their large monthly calendar in the
hallway. “Banerjee… is green ink. He has written ‘sermon in Santa Monica, dash,
lunch, dash, dinner w R?’ So I don’t see him coming back soon.”
“Too bad,” said
Robin the marine biologist. “I have to get back to my lab before too long.”
“Me too”, I added.
“And it’s more than a two-hour drive to UCSD. Please tell Banerjee we missed
him today, and I have a couple of questions for him. How does he keep it
straight? I mean, his particular Christian identity? Also, where has he
made the most money? Which church?”
“Banerjee is quite
secretive about such things… I think too that he has met a special girl through
his church business. I hope you aren’t thinking of trying…” Sudip was cautious. Banerjee had become their
team leader—sort of. And he must be protected.
“Are you kidding?
We don’t have the man’s courage… or serenity. Or his friendly face. A good man
you have here. You are lucky.” Robin walked toward the door and I followed.
On the way back to
La Jolla, we nodded our assent quite a bit as we discussed our trip to L.A. In America
someone with Banerjee’s instinct and quick wit could survive with flair—comfortably
tip-toeing along the margin of civil society. Hustling his way to professional
theatre maybe, or even to Hollywood. (Banerjee's hustle wouldn't be possible today in that exact form because of the internet and a plethora of information about all "churches", but I'm sure other Banerjees are at work in other ways.)
While recalling this unique immigrant
evolution, I suddenly remembered another kind of learning—another reflection on
immigrant beginnings—and a good ending for this section of my own reflections.
Here is Gary
Soto’s poem then, titled
“Mexicans Begin Jogging”.
At the factory I worked
In the fleck of rubber, under the press
Of an oven yellow with flame,
Until the border patrol opened
Their vans and my boss waved for
us to run.
“Over the fence, Soto,” he shouted,
And I shouted that I was an American.
“No time for lies,” he said, and passes
A dollar in my palm, hurrying me
Through the back door.
Since I was on his time, I ran
And became the wag to a short tail of Mexicans—
Ran past the amazed crowds that lined
The street and blurred like photographs, in
rain.
I ran from that industrial road to the soft
Houses where people paled at the turn of an
autumn sky.
What could I do but yell vivas
To baseball, milkshakes, and the sociologists
Who would clock me
As I jog into the next century
On the power of a great, silly grin.
There’s a little post-script
to this story. I never saw Banerjee again and so I didn’t get answers to the
questions I had left for him in Los Angeles. Once in a while I have wondered
where Banerjee may be pacing back and forth in his old age. At a beachside
resort? An old folks home? A federal prison? A theatre workshop? Or could it be
he’s simply resting inside a Christian coffin? I lost track of Robin Prasad too—my marine
biologist mate whose brother was a mathematician and whose father used to be
the station master of Darjeeling.
Part Two
I
When thinking
about the absence of people whose presence in our world had elevated our lives,
at first we may remember the last time we saw them, whether or not that particular
encounter was uplifting. I am no exception here. And in my life these “last
encounters” have been quite varied. In talking about “luminous women” in
previous segments I didn’t follow this path because women like my mother
Shanti, her friends Lotika Sen and Pranati Dey, the incomparable Suhasini
Ganguly had come into and then out of my life in a continuous stream. But it
was different with Suchitra Mitra—the golden voiced.
A couple of years
ago, I stumbled onto a “musical biography” video of Suchitra with many stories
about her life in her own words. I recognized the venue for this videography at
once. It was her apartment on the tenth floor of the high rise “Swastik” on
Gariahat Road which I had visited on a few occasions. The connection was
somewhat serendipitous because my sister lived on the sixth floor of the
building and after my parents moved back to Kolkata from Allahabad, I visited Suchitra
with them, and one time by myself. That must have been 1990 or 1992.
What struck me
right away was the combination of utter candor and abiding affection with which
she greeted me.
“You wouldn’t have
come to see me if Arun-Babu and Shanti-di hadn’t brought you along and your
sister didn’t live nearby. But you are here, and tell me what you’re doing.”
I explained some
things about my life, but she was really interested in going way way back when
I was a child and we used to stroll on the streets of Bhabanipur and Kalighat
singing our way through those mornings. Those journeys were called প্রভাত ফেরি (probhat-pheri). One
route was south on Harish Mukherjee Road, then across a patch of Hazra Road,
again south on our street—Sadananda Road and back to our house for a rest stop.
Rather long singing treks, those were—and people stopped or came outdoor to
hear the singing. Loud and passionate chorus on the streets of South Calcutta.
“I remember that
you couldn’t walk the whole way—I guess you were what, four or five—and someone
had to carry you once in a while. I do remember carrying you on my shoulders
one time— and you shaking your head as we sang. You really liked the rhythm of
the fiery Rabindranath songs…বাঁধ ভেঙে দাও, বাঁধ ভেঙে দাও, বাঁধ ভেঙে দাও, ভা... ঙো (smash the dam… smash
it).” She sang the
opening bars.
“Some of that I too
remember. The other one I liked to sing was also catchy… আগুন জ্বালো,
আগুন জ্বালো (light the fire, light the fire).” We laughed over some tea and biscuits.
As I have written
before, our Sadananda Road house was full of people known and unknown to me.
Among regular visitors were the “three Mukherjee sisters” as they were called
by some: Sujata, Supriya and Suchitra. Suchitra Mukherjee was the youngest of
the three and was about the same age as my aunt Tripti. Sujata and Supriya were
friends of my mother. In trying find out more about those two later on, I have
discovered nothing. In Suchitra’s musical biography she mentions she had two
older sisters, but I don’t recall anything more informative. Like other comets
in my childhood sky they simply vanished. The other matter that is seldom if
ever mentioned is that her “Mitra” last name came from being married to Dhruba
Mitra who happened to be another stalwart in the Communist Party in Bengal when
they got married. Perhaps those who admire Suchitra only as one with a singular
voice rendering Rabindranath songs, feel uncomfortable about such connections.
On this score some
demystification is needed. Almost all cultural activity I witnessed as a young
boy—the IPTA, the anti-fascist writers and artists’ association, those morning
sing-outs in the streets of Kolkata, or music at public meetings and marches—had
a direct link to the Communist Party of India of that period. As I remember, there was nothing unusual
about Suchitra Mitra or Hemanta Mukherjee singing in our living room adda one
day, and at a political rally the next. In his memoirs, within a segment on
Debabrata (“George”) Biswas, the versatile Khaled Choudhury writes, “In our
adda of [anti-fascist] writers and artists at 46 Dharmatala Street, Suchitra
(Mitra) used to come and sing. At that time only a handful of people sang
Rabindranath songs. George-da used his resonant voice to lead us in IPTA tunes.
We also sang Batuk-da’s (Jyotirindra Moitra) ‘Nabajibaner Gaan’ [New Life Songs]—as
well as some Hindi and Urdu songs.”
I understand the
need today to protect careers and enjoy the comfort of revisionist history
generally, but there is no need to “expunge” from the public domain that which
inspired the public in the first place. On such matters, I always seem to end up saying, I
know what I know. In the documentary to which I referred, Suchitra was very
objective and respectful about her separation from “my husband” at a personal
level and talked about their son, who would be about ten years younger than me,
and it is possible I had seen him as a youngster back then. But I don’t
remember from the video Suchitra discussing anything about the political
dimension of her youth. I have been told she has a daughter who lives in
America, but I have never met her.
“So Gogol, you did
your undergraduate and post-graduate education in Kolkata… that’s what your
sister and Shanti-di had said.” She resumed our chat.
“That’s true.”
“Then how come I
never got to see you in those years?”
“Well, I wasn’t
sure whether you’d remember me, and you were an icon—the diva of
Rabindrasangeet. You were busy with recitals and running your school. I just…”
“If I was able to
remember the time we shared as I’m looking at you now, don’t you think I would
have remembered you thirty years ago?”
“You’re right. But
I have one defense I have to make.” I was a bit embarrassed of course. “When I
was a student here, I heard you sing many times—and in different places.”
“I’m glad we stayed
connected then.”
“Of all those
recitals—I suppose that would have been between in the late fifties and early
sixties—there are two I still remember vividly. One was sponsored by the
Medical College students, in a more or less intimate setting. My med college
friends and I sat on folding chairs, quite close to the small stage where you
sat and sang. As though we could touch you with our fingertips while listening
to you. The other was exactly the opposite, at Calcutta University… in our
Darbhanga Building hall—I think the law students organized that one. We were
all part of the Student Federation lot.”
“I think I remember
that one. But what do you mean by ‘exactly the opposite’?”
“Okay, you were in the
middle of the hall with your harmonium and there was a mic of course and sound
equipment. You seemed like a sunlit island surrounded by a sea of enchanted
students. Standing room only would be an understatement. I myself was sitting
on a large table with my friends—close to an exit.”
“Are you sure it
was like that?”
“Yes I am. You
captivated our hearts and minds for sure, but in a way you too were a captive
of sorts—of our delight and admiration. The last song you sang that day—and it
may have been a request—was এ কী গভীর বাণী... (what is this profound utterance…) Well, the sound
still echoes in my heart.”
“Thank you Gogol
for that. Yes, that’s a favorite song of mine.”
After that we
didn’t say much else, and it is possible other visitors came and the conversation
went to other places. I don’t remember.
We are privileged,
in the age of You Tube, to be able to enjoy Suchitra Mitra’s songs—that magic
of her weighted sound—at will. I discovered I still have an audio cassette of
Rabindranath’s Chandalika (not very good recording) directed by Santosh
Sengupta where Suchitra is Prakriti the untouchable and Hemanta is Ananda the
Buddhist monk. Somehow it still works for me.
After Suchitra Mitra
left us in 2011, we put on the home page of the Arun Mitra website, the poem my
father had written about her. Here it is again:
“সুচিত্রার গান”
অরুণ মিত্র
এই ঘরে রবীন্দ্রসঙ্গীত
এই কন্ঠে শব্দধ্বনি ডানা মেলে
পার হয়ে যায় বাহারবাতি ফুল সাজ চার দেয়াল
দৃপ্ত ঝাপটায় হাওয়া টলায়
আবার নীলে নীলে ভেসে চলে,
এই কন্ঠে শব্দধ্বনি মানুষ পৃথিবী ঋতু নিয়ে
প্রাণসূত্রে দিনরাতকে বাঁধে
তারায় তারায় দীপ্ত শিখা জ্বালায়
আকাশভরা সূর্যতারার মাঝখানে
কী যে বিস্ময় জাগায়
আর কী যে ভালোবাসা সোনার বাংলার ধুলোমাটির ছোঁয়ায়
ময়নাপাড়ার মাঠে কালো হরিণচোখের মায়ায় জড়ায়
কখনো অগ্নিবাণে কখনো ঝরঝর বরিষণে
কখনো ঝড়ের মেঘে কখনো আলোয় আলোয়
বাঁচার মুহূর্তগুলোকে রূপেরূপান্তরে ফোটায়
এই কন্ঠে শব্দধ্বনি কোথায় পৌঁছয়,
যেখানে কাছে দূরে হৃদয়তাপে বাতাস কাঁপে
যেখানে আকাশ মিলিয়ে যায় মহাশূন্যের নীলসবুজে।
এই কন্ঠ সুচিত্রা মিত্র।
আমি ঘরের মধ্যে গান শুনি,
ঘর? কই ঘর?
আমি তো এক অনন্ত ভূবনে।
“Suchitra Singing”
Arun Mitra
In this room Rabindranath’s songs
In this voice wordsounds spread wings
crossing chandeliers flower vases four walls
brilliant gusts shake the air
then again float across from blue to blue
In this voice wordsounds own people seasons the earth
tie night and day with a heartstring
ignite all stars with glowing flames
in a sky full of sun and stars
what a surprise awakens
and what love touches the dust and soil
of a golden Bengal
in MoinapaRa fields embracing dark deer eyes
sometimes in a firestorm sometimes in blinding rain
sometimes in storm clouds sometimes in sunlight
reshaping every living moment
wordsounds of this voice how far do they reach,
far and near where the air trembles in heartwarming
where the sky vanishes in the bluegreen universe
This voice is Suchitra Mitra.
I listen to her in my room
Room? What room?
I am now in an infinite world.
II
Of all the people
I have wanted to write about, I have the greatest difficulty in putting words
together to explain how I feel about my aunt Tripti Mitra. For one thing, a
number of people have expressed their feelings about her, based on their
lifelong connection with Tripti the person. In one of his books, my father has a couple of segments about her—with memories ranging from the first day she
walked into our house—a shy adolescent wearing a dress, and then standing up to
recite Rabindranath’s “Ashesh” [Endless] like a spring uncoiled… all the way to
the day she died in 1989. Another series of memories I find in Khaled
Choudhury’s recollections, based of course on his personal connection to Tripti from their days in the IPTA, the
staging of my Bijan uncle’s Nabanna
[see the first segment of this series], through the ups and downs of the theatre
group Bohurupee, and her solo performance
in Aparajita. His final words: “A
nation has to wait for eons to witness this kind of talent”. Whenever I
remember my aunt framed by the language of these two dear people, an
unstoppable churning begins within me and I can’t stop my tears from flowing—in
sorrow, but also in anger.
Both these memoirs recall how her life ended in considerable suffering, and
death was a kind of liberation. Like a couple of her sisters, she died before her
time, defeated by incurable cancer. That is the main source for my sorrow—that’s
how I saw her when I visited her a few months before her death. My anger, which
had been brewing for some time, was no doubt augmented during the same visit.
There was my precious aunt, who was also the inimitable Tripti Mitra, resting
on a sofa with not another human being in sight or in sound.
I remember the
place was a second floor apartment near the Lansdowne Market, or perhaps it was
a two-floor residence—rented for Tripti by her daughter. I also remember the
space to be very white—almost a funeral white with not too much furniture—where
that “shy teenager” seemed to be sitting, holding my hand, but in truth this
was a woman discarded without love. She said she was sorry she wouldn’t be able
to go to my niece’s wedding.
“As you see, I am
too sick to go places—even though she’s getting married in Ballygunge.”
“Yes, on Gariahat
Road—not far from their flat. You don’t have to be sorry for anything.” Then we
changed the subject and she asked about my family.
“How’s Joy and
Kinjal. What are they doing now?”
I talked a bit
about life in America, but it wasn’t much fun. She did brighten up a bit when I
told her that Joy has always proclaimed that other than my parents, the one
person among my relatives who was the kindest friend to her was my “chhoTo-mashi”.
“I told Joy that’s
because more than being my mother’s sister, she has always been an older friend
to me. Just as well, because Joy still remains confused about the relationship.
How is it that being the fifth daughter in the queue—with four sisters younger
than you, you would be my ‘little or youngest’ mashi?”
That made her
laugh. Then after a while, a very nice woman—her caregiver—brought her lunch
and she moved to a dining table. I sat with her and had some snacks while she
ate. We talked some more, but I don’t remember about what. Then her caregiver
hinted that it was nap time, and I took my leave.
“You really look well
today… and cheerful as always.” I said as I started down the stairs. And I’ll
come back after this wedding business is over… before I go back to America.”
But I knew that my promise was a lie. I could never return to those
surroundings devoid of warmth or dignity and remain silent about my true
feelings. And that would have been hurtful to my best aunt.
Everyone in
Kolkata (and rest of the world) has known about Tripti Mitra’s personal wounds,
causes for her private suffering. In addition to the loss of coherence in her
personal theatre, I believe she was the object of envy as far as some people were
concerned because they too would have “to wait for eons to witness” my aunt’s
talent—and that was above and beyond their own capabilities and certainly
beyond their lifetime. In the end, isolating her and keeping her hostage to a
terminal illness was the best solution.
(By sheer chance,
I just came across a fairly recent [May, 2015] article by Priyanka Dasgupta in
the Times of India, City, Kolkata,
titled, Tripti Mitra's Memories Fade Away in Neglect in Kolkata. Priyanka begins thus: “It won't be surprising if all awards of
legendary actor Tripti Mitra, including her Padma Shri and Sangeet Natak
Akademi Award, are stolen from the Tripti Mitra Smaran [memorial] museum. It is
a stroke of luck that no miscreant has as yet broken into the dilapidated
building in Park Circus Corporation market that houses these national treasures.” Enough said for now.)
I had intended to
bring up some of Tripti's writings here, especially about how she coped with demands made
by the different roles she played. In particular, I am very fascinated by her insightful
comparison of three Rabindranath heroines she had taken on: Sudarshana in Raja (The King), Nandini in Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders), and Ela in Char Oddhay (Four Chapters). But I think
I’ll save my wonderment for another time. In fact, that’ll also give me some
room to write about moments from Tripti Mitra’s presence on stage that still
haunt and rejuvenate me at the same time. For now, I’ll stay with her unforgettable compassion and affection with which she embraced my life.
As everyone who has gone
through Calcutta University’s B.A./B.Sc. honors programs knows, in our days
there used to be a “test” exam administered by individual colleges shortly
before the real final exams. The test exams were like dress rehearsals and were
supposed to be a measure of our ultimate success or failure. It so happened
that just before my test exams, I fell quite ill—with continuing high fever and
other symptoms of a viral attack—a variety of the “Asian flu” of the era. Along
with a few other students, I used to live then at “Shanti Bhavan”—a house run by
the Belgian scholar-priests, Fathers Fallon and Antoine. Obviously, there was
no one there to care for me under the circumstances, but as soon as
chhoTo-mashi heard about the situation, she said I ought to go and stay with
her until I was better. And so I moved to Tripti and Shombhu Mitra’s flat at 11
A Nasiruddin Road for a couple of weeks. (I wrote about their plight during the
riots of 1946 in the first post.)
That was a very
interesting situation. You came up the steps to the second floor (same in
Bengali and American terminology) and the apartment was to the left. Through
the front door and then to the left was the room of many hues. By day it was a
sitting room and by night it was a music room, theatre room and even a dining
room if there were late night meals to be eaten. This was where all the Bohurupee plays germinated, where ideas
found shape and structure, where rehearsals went on evening after evening.
There was one balcony adjoining this room for side-chats and cigarettes.
Evenings there reminded me a lot of my days and nights at Sadananda Road.
The next room,
sort of behind the sitting room, is where chhoTo-mashi had got a bed for me.
This too was a multi-purpose space as I recall, used for eating, sleeping,
chatting and what not. There I lay much of the time with many quilts on me,
occasionally hallucinating, or hearing sounds of elation and despair coming
from that other room. (I have been trying to recall and to investigate a bit
what play was being rehearsed by Bohurupee
at that time—which would have been the winter of 1957-58—but I have not
succeeded. In fact, I was appalled to find there was so little information
about the group on line.)
Every evening,
during breaks or at any time really, people from the “theatre room” came to ask
me how I was doing. This was my aunt and uncle’s place and everyone in the
group was an aunt or uncle to me. A couple of them, Shoven Majumdar and Mukti
Goswami were in fact relatives. Shoven (Bchcha-mama) was Shanti and Tripti’s
cousin (Satyendranath’s nephew) and Mukti (Itu-mashi) was their sister—the
seventh daughter. But everyone was concerned about my health: Khaled, Amar,
Kumar, Zakir, Arati, Amita, the two Samirs… and others whose names I cannot
recall off hand. My cousin Shaoli, a little girl running around in a white
dress sometimes, talked to me from a distance—not allowed to get too close
under the circumstances.
During the day,
Shombhu Mitra came and talked to me in his usual measured and reassuring way. He
would get excited though if I asked about his dear bonsai trees. He was growing
several of these miniatures in flower pots on another balcony. My aunt made sure I was eating properly and drinking lots of fluids, and saw to my sponge baths.
I remember a doctor, perhaps more than one, prescribing stuff and telling me
that this was a virulent virus. That the only way forward is to fight through
it. And that’s what I did. My parents phoned from Allahabad once, telling me I
was in good hands, but I don’t remember much else. I was up and around in about a couple of weeks, but in no shape to be even a casual student of physics, let alone ready to study for the B.Sc. exams.
Given the system of exams of the time, I ended up losing a year of college, but
that was a small price compared to recovering from that debilitating “virulent virus”—thanks
to Tripti Mitra and all those who touched my forehead when I was burning with fever.
While I lay in bed at
Nasiruddin Road, there was one time when I suddenly leaped back to my
childhood, when chhoTo-mashi lived with us. She was learning her lines from
goshTHo-mama’s (Bijan-uncle) Nabanna.
Tripti (Bhaduri then) was cast as Binodini and needed, of course, to memorize her
lines. It was my good fortune that because I could read well at an early age, I
became my aunt’s partner in this project. We would go to that third-floor room
at Sadananda Road with the script and I would read the dialogue with her,
impersonating whoever was in the scene with Binodini. I couldn’t remember the
details except the scene where Binodini is struggling to get out of the
clutches of “the bad guys”—shouting, “Let me go, let me go—I have to get out…”
Some time ago, as
I was looking at the cast of characters on the opening night of Nabanna, and who played what role, I was
able to remember bits and pieces of the performance. I was amazed to find on the printed page names of all
those luminaries gathered on one stage in a singular moment in history. I felt
too how lucky I had been (and still am) to have been in the audience that
evening—October 24, 1944, in the middle of a raging global conflict as well. Fighting famine and fascism was one and the same struggle at that time. And the most
obvious thing: the crucial role played by the IPTA, a people’s theatrical
association, in the political and cultural history of Bengal and India.
About Tripti
Mitra, I will always regret that I could not do anything to help her when she
needed help most, but I did assist her a bit on her way to blossoming into a
flower, when I was five years old. How many people can say that?
As I was
struggling to write about her, I began to realize that beside the danger of
turbulent waters, my tugboat can become sightless and get stuck in mud and
muck. It is hard to tell how deep the sediment is, or how widespread. But the
boat will continue its journey, with a respite, but not silence—as I promised
at the outset.
In the end, let me
return to the poet again. My father started a poem on the morning of the day
Tripti died. He says that it just happened, perhaps as a premonition that was against the grain—because he and my
mother were under the impression that my aunt was doing much better. "Why then these lines?", he writes.
ওই তো মুখের ওপর ফুলের রাশ
আর ঘুরন্ত হল্কা চারপাশে।
এমন শীতল ধারা ওই ফুল
এমন উপ্চোনো স্রোত ওই ফুল!
কথার রেশ ভাসছে আকাশে
কথা শুকিয়ে আসছে বাতাসে,
শেষ সম্মান এইবার,
নামো বর্ষা নামো।
There... a heap of flowers on the face
and a swirling gust all around.
Such a cool stream those flowers
Such an overflowing current those flowers
trails of words are floating in the sky
words are drying out in the breeze,
It is time for the final homage now
Come rain come.
____________________________________
That's it then for now.
Copyright: Ranadhir Mitra, January, 2016
Labels: Algeria, Arun Mitra, Bijan, Charleston, Confederacy. Los Angeles, Cornel West, CPI, France, Gogol, Jefferson, Khaled, racism, Sadananda Road, Satyendranath, Shanti Mitra, slavery, Suchitra, Tripti