#5: Glowing Poets, More Brilliant Women, Life and Death on Stage and on Earth

Glowing poetry and brilliant women

Life and death and the stage too

          In this segment, I’ll add a few more thoughts about my mother Shanti, and remember some women from different spheres of life, but always inside my sphere: Suhasini Ganguly—a resilient rebel and teacher, and Pranati Dey—another shaper of young minds. Next time I’ll think back about Suchitra Mitra (Mukherjee)—a voice for all ages. I don’t want to willfully procrastinate bringing forth memories of my aunt Tripti Mitra (Bhaduri), but I need to find the right moment to remember her with the love, respect and awe she deserves and I have felt for her from my childhood all the way to our last conversation. At the right time, alongside days and nights of perpetual theatre. 

I

          As I recall people and events and hop from place to place on my map, I keep wishing that someone else would take the trip with me—at least meet up with me at some of the coordinates, by choice or by accident.  So it is very gratifying to find responses from friends whose precious thoughts enrich whatever I may have to say—adding substance to tricks played by my own memory. As a precise chronology is not my concern, creating dialogues is always much cooler. With that in mind, here are a few additions toward that kind of creative murmur.

           First of all, I’ve been thinking about a rejoinder (or two) that came to my attention. This has to do with my various remarks about “austere scholars”—a reference which may have been misconstrued. In reality, we all have more than one countenance, and I have the utmost respect for theory, theory building and indeed theoretical leaps into the unknown. Whether the subject is physiology or philosophy, geology or geriontology, weapons of criticism or criticism of weapons, theory is absolutely indispensable to our species. On occasion I have dabbled in it myself. I know full well that in today’s world, especially in academia, people have to make a living, even as theorists. And more often than not, by any means necessary. That’s a global fact of life. My “export-import” model for theory consumption has to be seen in this context. Obviously I’m not referring, for example, to the 50^th anniversary celebration of Einstein’s general relativity theory going on right now, although even there the proliferation of lectures and papers will necessarily expose instances of thought without substance.

           During the period when I gave a few talks at Jadabpur University, one day I was chatting with a budding poet (still a budding poet, I believe) who was visiting my parents. Somewhere along the line he said to me, “Gogolda, I hope you won’t mind my saying this, but I think you are not approaching your talks the right way. I mean, I’ve been to them before and I liked them. But that’s not what people want.”

           “Tell me then, what am I doing wrong? I kind of thought I was doing okay.” 

 I wasn’t sure who his “people” were and what they really wanted.

         “Well, you delve much too much into first principles and foundations… and all that history too. These days that’s not what we—I mean young people here want.”

         “So what do they want?”  

I was ready to rethink my upcoming presentation.

         “Just tell us what’s happening your way. Here they want to know what’s going on in America so that they can become a part of the scene.”

         I remember clearly his parting words. In Bengali, the budding poet said:

         “বুঝলেন তো তাহলে ? আপনাদের ওদিকে কি হচ্ছে, তা একটু দিয়ে যান !”

         In an essential way, I take counsel and comfort from a critical essay by the German philosopher and social theorist Theodor Adorno. From his critique of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I must confess that these days I tend to quote often and with vigor one sentence from that Adorno essay: 

         “Theory is not free to choose good-naturedly that which suits it in the course of history and to omit all the rest.” 

   I’ll leave this matter here for the time being.

           Now to something I omitted about our visit to Paris in 2000. Joy has a different version of our Kamila quest. In fact, when my father died she wrote a poem about our days and nights in Paris. I should have quoted from that the last time around, so here’s making amends and remembering again the summer of 2000—excerpting from Joy Mitra’s long poem 

At Home in Paris: Celebrating the Light and Wisdom of Arun Mitra

……Soon after the beginning she writes, 

Kamila calls shortly after midnight.      
“Welcome to the city of light,” she says.     
“I will meet you for coffee in the morning                         
at the Salon des Refuses.                                       
Look for me next to the Cathedral of Rouen         
alongside the house that Vincent built.”

In the morning,                                 
past the Rue de la Galette                                      
reaching toward the Musée d’Orsay                     
we see her briefly in the shop window.
It is only the reflection of a billboard        
advertising Duracell batteries                    
promising power to the people.

Upstairs                    
in Renoir’s room                                           
there is the aroma of wine and magnolias.     
For a moment we become dizzy—                         
Were we deceived by the lateness of the hour?
Just then a glimpse of her again—                        
now behind                                       
and slightly to the side       
of the waltzers.
For a moment the light falls           
weightlessly                                     
on her face                                        
dancing with Eros                            
cheek to cheek                                      
 closer than life itself.

Who is this Kamila?                         
Has she come to shake us from our sorrow?

……She continues,

Kamila is seen walking slowly                              
Along the far banks of the Seine.                          
The swish of her red dress is barely audible.                 
She turns and points a finger in liquid sunlight
“Meet me at the Café de Flore. We shall have tea.”

Next morning we cajole the driver.                                    
“Take us to Rue de la Tombe Issoire”.                  
“Do you have a number?” He asks blankly.        
“No, we are looking for Kamila.                 
She lived there once—sometime after the war.                
Perhaps there, at the site of her birth,
her lover himself will rise to greet us,                   
perhaps there we will unlock                                 
the mystery of her name.”

There is a pounding in my forehead.         
It cannot be Kamila who                 
looks down from the window                                 
Of 33 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie     
signing in our direction                                
Fraternité Egalité Liberté.                           
Foucault’s pendulum swings.

……And again

At the Temple of Reason                 
Kamila smiles down upon us                     
Mistress of the Maidan                               
softly rocking a boy wrapped                    
in swaddling clothes.

……Then on to the end

We descend into the crypt                          
paved with the blood of martyrs                
with the fires of the Resistance                  
embers of great hearts                                
and songs sung by bold warriors.

Poet of darkness and of light         
that forges your song                                  
that brings your voice as a balm                
as a beacon to all                                        
who have eyes to hear.

We ascend the Mountain of Martyrs                     
The sidewalk painter says that                             
the city is closing now.
“Hurry up, it’s late.”

The lights will soon come on                      
for one last time                                           
for one last dance with my lady.   
Looking down on the city of light                           
we bid farewell to her mute beauty.

Listen to the poetry of the painters                        
listen to the saxophone’s song,                                             wailing to the starry, starry night                                  


As if Kamila herself was singing.                      

          Another correction, this time about my reference to Subhash Mukhopadhyay’s poem, needs to be added as well. My young friend Rangan Chakraborty sent me the whole Dien Bien Phu poem which actually goes differently from the way I remembered it. My own copy of the collection where the poem is, has gone missing. Perhaps a shrewd visitor borrowed the book and “forgot” to return it. Here’s the poem then, expressing the sentiment to which I had referred last time. The sound-play too is as one would expect:

দিয়েন বিয়েন ফুঃ

পুব দখিনে
আগুন-বোনা
সাত সাগরের ঝি !

আকাশ কেন
নীলবর্ণ ?

সাপে কাটল কি ?

সাপে কাটুক, খোপে কাটুক
আছে আমার
মন্ত্র-পড়া ফুঁঃ –

যা রে
সাপের বিষ
দিয়েন বিয়েন ফুঃ

(In the south and east the fiery maid of seven seas.
Is the sky blue from a snakebite?
Snakebite or not, I have can blow this chant:
“Scram, snake venom—dien bien phuh!”) 

     Now to the last item in the domain of responses. Recall I had mentioned at the outset that my parents were longtime friends of the poet Bishnu Dey and his wife Pranati Dey. After reading my last (fourth) posting, Arun Sen, another old friend and an erudite commentator on the life and work of Bishnu Dey, reminded me that in his long poem “অন্বিষ্ট” (AnnishTo/The Quest), he commemorates the remarkable life and heart-rending death of Lotika Sen. Here are some lines excerpted from that section: 

তোমার মুঠিতে গুচ্ছ বসন্তের একচ্ছত্র প্রাণ ।...

বরণীয় তনু ঘিরে যে জীবন নিত্য স্পন্দমান...

আর তুমি—তুমিই কি মরণের কূট-ভ্রূকুটিতে পথের ধুলায় পড়ে?...

তোমার নিথর দেহে প্রেয়সী জননী সখী সহকর্মী ! ...

সৃষ্টিময় জীবনের সূর্যে সূর্যে পরাক্রান্ত গান ।

For those who don’t read Bengali, a quick translation will link the poet’s sentiments to the story I had narrated last time. Curious Bengali readers ought to revisit the whole poem.

In your grasp one sheaf of the spirit of spring…                                                    

your revered form encircled by an unceasing pulse of life…  

And you—is that you now fallen in the dust   

under the insidious frown of death?                                                                        

In your motionless body a lover a mother a friend a comrade!                                  

An invincible song inside many suns of a gifted life…

Once again I must say it is amazing what poets and poetry can do for our imagination: shred complacent hearts and minds, create illusions and then devour them, bind past and future in an instant, and of course leave many questions unanswered. Take Kamila for example. I have read a few claims about her identity—and an answer by Arun Mitra himself. To me he gave a look of assurance—a look that said, “When you see her, you’ll know…,” referring perhaps to the end of his poem In Equilibrium (ভারসাম্যে): “Once the golden lid is removed / How exquisitely simple the face of truth!” (হিরন্ময় ঢাকনাটি সরিয়ে নেওয়ার পর / কী চমৎকার সরল সত্যের মুখ !) I believe this is a reference to words in one of the Upanishads. Yet Kamila remains elusive to me. And I think it is better that way.

II

I have mentioned before that the first time I got on stage before an audience was in a performance put together by my mother. This was a rather didactic play calling for the unity of workers and peasants against their ruthless oppressors. Of course, there were many songs in this play and I played a Muslim peasant—wearing a lungi and গেঞ্জি (undershirt), my face decorated with painted beard and mustache, waving a cardboard sickle while singing the chorus, “কাস্তেটারে দিও জোরে শাণ কিষান ভাই রে, কাস্তেটারে দিও জোরে শাণ…” (Sharpen that sickle with force, Oh peasant brother—sharpen that sickle with force.) What I myself only vaguely remember—the incident about which my friend Ira (Ruchira Chakraborty/Dey) jokes even today—is this. Somewhere in the course of foot-stomping and arm-waving, my lungi got loose and began to fall down. So I held onto it with one hand while handling the sickle with the other. I was then ushered off the stage by one of my aunts, got my lungi retied and was pushed back on join the cast. I don’t recall at all how the play ended, but I imagine with an ultimatum to the ruling classes.

An interesting fact about this performance is that it took place in the “performance hall” of a mansion not too far south of us, on Rashbehari Avenue just east of the Russa Road crossing. This was the resident of Gobinda Ghose and his family. They were very much in the tradition of wealthy patrons of the arts and sponsored many musicians and performers. My father recalls one such event in his writing. This must have been just before the end of the Raj. 

Baba happened to be a good friend of the vocalist Tarapada Chakraborty who had sung at our Sadananda Road house on several occasions. At that time, the Dey family (Bishnu, Pranati and children) had a frequent visitor named John Irwin, an emissary of the empire who, I believe, became curator of the British Museum later. One day Bishnu Dey said to my father it would be wonderful if he could arrange a recital by Tarapada Chakraborty because John Irwin and others were eager to listen to some Hindustani classical music. Tarapada was reluctant at first to sing for sahebs who were ignorant about our music, but eventually consented to sing. This recital took place in the hall of Gobinda Ghose’s house—I suspect on the same stage where once I sharpened my sickle. In any event, Tarapada Chakraborty sang for a long time, writes Baba, and the audience, including neophytes, connoisseurs and everyone in between, was quite overwhelmed. I should add that my friend Partha Ghose reminded me a couple of years ago that he was Gobinda Ghose’s nephew and grew up in that household. 

Returning to my mother one more time. She was, of course, close to the performing arts simply because of her mother’s influence and the proximity of Bijan, Tripti, the entire IPTA crew and all the artists and musicians who strolled through our house. It is less known, I think, that she acted in two films in the 1950-51 period. The first was Tathapi (তথাপি, And Yet) and the second, Chhinnamul (ছিন্নমূল, Uprooted).  

Tathapi was directed by Manoj Bhattacharya (I have no idea what his stature was then, or later) who adapted his story from the Hollywood movie Johnny Belinda, which was only a couple of years old at the time and was based on a 1940 play. The narrative revolves around a deaf-mute girl who is nurtured by a kind doctor, but naturally is also a victim of all kinds of adversity. In the American version, the girl (Belinda McDonald) is raped by a drunken acquaintance and becomes pregnant. She gives birth to a son Johnny and raises him as a single mother. Eventually, the rapist discovers that he’s the father of Johnny, goes to confront Belinda who shoots and kills the man when he turns violent. Belinda is duly exonerated and starts a new life with her friend and benefactor, the doctor. 

Now, from here in the U.S., my efforts were fruitless as I tried to find exactly how the Tathapi narrative went and, for that matter, which actor played what part. If there’s anyone out there who may know these things, I would be eternally grateful if that knowledge can be shared. Everyone connected to the film I ever knew is long gone. What remains astounding to me—especially now when the State will not allow the public showing of an Englishwoman’s documentary on the rape of “Nirbhaya” in 2012—is that the theme and plot exhibited in Tathapi were not at all censored in 1950. To the contrary, the “progressive realism” in Bengali cinema had already set a trend with Jyotirmoy Roy’s উদয়ের পথে, (Udayer Pathey) and followed a road quite different from the blockbusters of those years, like আনন্দমঠ (AnandomaTH), দর্পচূর্ণ  (Darpochurno), নষ্টনীড় (NashToneeR), etc. 

When I saw the list of cast members on the net without the roles they played I was frustrated of course. On the other hand, it didn’t seem accidental at all that other than Bhanu Banerjee and Kali Banerjee, several members of the Tathapi cast had grown under the influence of the IPTA and inside the beginnings of group theatre. Some were people I knew or had met—Manoranjan Bhattacharya, Shobha Sen, Pratibha Biswas, Gangapada Bose, Shanta Debi, Ritwik Ghatak, and of course my uncle Bijan Bhattacharya. Chhinnamul too featured some of the same people—Bijan, Ritwik, Shobha, Gangapada, Shanta, along with my mother. But there was a breakthrough here in another direction. In my view (rather, I share the view that) Chhinnamul had brought to the domain of Bengali cinema what Nabanna had to the arena of Bengali theatre. 

In this instance, there is a lot more information for public consumption and scrutiny. Supported by the IPTA, Chhinnamul was the first cinematic comment, so to speak, on the partition of Bengal, and follows the plight of refugees from East Bengal (East Pakistan then) as they migrate to Kolkata. The original story was by Swarnakamal Bhattacharya (I have mentioned that he was a colleague of my father and uncle Bijan once, and friend of the family) and adapted for the movie by its director Nimai Ghosh. He too was close to my parents, but didn’t survive the vicissitudes of film-making in Kolkata. In fact, he became a well-known cinematographer in Chennai—shooting Tamil films! (I have this photograph of my parents with him against the ocean in Chennai—a black and white photo that was later colored. Very interesting to look at.) 

A couple of observations about Chhinnamul. Nimai Ghosh died in 1988, and sometime after that, when I happened to be in Kolkata, there was a showing of the film in Nandan to commemorate and celebrate his life. Several people spoke about him, including Ma. It made a huge difference to my sensibility to watch the film for the first time as an adult. I hadn’t remembered at all that my mother Shanti Mitra and Ritwik Ghatak played one of the refugee couples living on a platform of Kolkata’s Sealdah railway station. Although I never spoke to him and I’m short on film-crit about his work, I know in my own mind that being involved in the making of Chhinnamul inspired Ritwik to make his signature films related to the partition, always with uncle Bijan in the cast of course! Another fact about Chhinnamul is that the renowned Russian director-actor Vsevolod Pudovkin was very impressed by the film and had it dubbed for showing in movie theatres throughout the Soviet Union. Apparently, this prevented the film-makers from going bankrupt because Chhinnamul was made in fits and starts—under harassment from the state (the script was seized once by court order) and limited funds. And a film made without glamorous movie stars, but with actors who wore little or no make-up and spoke in dialect, was no commercial match for home-grown cultural opiates. More than that, some of the icons of Bengali cinema were critical of the film because it wasn’t polished enough. Nevertheless, Chhinnamul was something new and different, and I am proud that my mother was a part of this adventure.

III

I often wonder why, of all the dance/music-dramas (“musicals” in the American lingo) that Rabindranath created, চন্ডালিকা (Chandalika, the untouchable woman I suppose) remains my most favorite—by far. On first thought, I realize I much prefer the story of a Dalit woman (Prokriti) falling in love with a Buddhist monk (Anando) to the exploits of arrogant warriors and mischievous merchants in Tagore’s other musicals. More than that, the self-righteousness of a caste system hiding in malodorous dung heaps is exposed in this story, along with problems in black magic—albeit in the not too radical or militant Rabindranath way. The songs are great too and I can still sing many of them. These elements are combined for me in Prokriti’s self-assertion to her mother as she ends her pronouncement with: 

রাজার বংশে দাসী জন্মায় অসংখ্য,

আমি সে দাসী নই ।

দ্বিজের বংশে  চন্ডাল কত আছে,

আমি নই চন্ডালী । 

(Countless slaves are born to royal families,

I am not one of them.

So many untouchables exist in Brahmin clans,

I am not untouchable.)

And I remember all the bastard children of Popes and monks, gurus and priests, Thomas Jefferson and his Sally Hemmings, Anukul Thakur’s court shenanigans, even King Lear and his illegitimate Edmund. Hooray for Prokriti I say and wonder how else could I be drawn so much to Chandalika. Looking deeper in my heart, however, I do find another reason, more like a visceral connection between me and Chandalika. A bond that has to do with Pranati Dey (my Pranati-mashi) and her beloved Kamala Girls School. 

As a young boy I used to be quite envious of the girls who happily trudged off to that school—the Dey sisters Ira (Ruchira) and Tara (Uttara), my sister Tushu (Uma), and all their friends. Later in life, my closeness to Ira and her husband Satyesh-da often brought me together with her classmates from Kamala Girls days—some from Kolkata of course, but others too from Pittsburgh, Chicago and Toronto. When I used to run into them back when we were kids, they talked with much affection about their teachers like ছোট আশা-দি, বড় আশা-দি (Asha-di senior and junior) and others. I didn’t have any such teachers about whom I could talk lovingly. Pranati Dey was their headmistress and a tireless, dedicated educator. Whenever she visited us or we went to her house there was always some conversation about the goings on at “Kamala Girls”. And through the years, there always seemed to be an upcoming performance of Chandalika by students of Kamala Girls School. So here’s a bit about one special performance. This happened later when I was in college.

During 1956-57, the Chinese Premier Zhou En Lai was on a goodwill tour of Asia and Africa, and somewhere along the line he was a guest of Padmaja Naidu, Governor of West Bengal then. How this came about I know not, but Pranati-mashi was invited to bring the student-artistes of “Kamala Girls” to perform Chandalika at Kolkata’s Governor House—in front of the Governor and her honored guest. I remember boarding a blue school bus with Popa (Jishnu) and of course Ira and Tara. The bus carried the Kamala Girls crew and some stray people like us. Apart from the bus driver, Jishnu and I were the only males on that journey and enjoyed the performance just as much as the Governor and the Premier did. After the play the players had their picture taken with Zhou En Lai. That I remember. I believe we (the stowaways) too were permitted to shake his hand. Perhaps others have a better recollection of the occasion. I can only say that had I not been like another son to Pranati-mashi (my parents lived in Allahabad at the time) I wouldn’t have witnessed that special event, and also another display of Prokriti’s emancipation and Anando’s compassion. 

(Also, to locate the time period another way, on that trip Zhou En Lai visited Shantiniketan when Satyen Bose, as the Vice-Chancellor of Bishwabharati, was being continuously harassed for introducing “science” to the curriculum. Times have changed since then, but I want talk about those scary months another time. For now I want to point out that there’s a picture of the two men [emissary and educator] in Bose’s collection of Bengali essays.)

Pranati-mashi eventually had to leave the ground-breaking work at her school and joined the faculty of Jadabpur University. That story is for others to tell. While she was headmistress of KGS and I was a normal impoverished undergraduate, she helped me find students who needed tutoring. (Like me, many of my friends needed that income to survive in Kolkata.) With the exception of one spoilt rich kid whose family was quite disdainful towards me and eventually very unkind to Pranati Dey, she put me in touch with a number of young minds, bright and curious. A couple of them stayed in touch even after I had left Kolkata for California. On the whole, my tutoring experience was no different from what my friends discovered in their lives as private tutors. Urban middle-class families were very conscientious about the education of their children, treated us with respect and paid us on time. The wealthier lot acted imperiously, knew their children’s future was already settled, looked on us as servants of sorts and, at least in my case, didn’t pay enough or on schedule for my effort to teach the unteachable! Perhaps it is different these days.

The most heartfelt conversation I had with Pranati Dey came much later. The evening Bishnu Dey died, I happened to be with my parents on one my trips to India. We got the news via a phone call and I went over to the familiar corner house by the pond. I arrived just as a van was leaving for the crematorium and I decided to stay with Pranati-mashi and her grandchildren. Her daughters too. (Popa/Jishnu was in Canada at that time.) I tried to cheer up the kids with tales tall and short. I don’t remember whether I succeeded, but I do remember sitting with a very quiet and subdued Pranati-mashi, and talking for a long time about our lives and destinies, starting way back—when we were children and our families could walk back and forth between our houses—3 B Sadananda Road and 1/10 Prince Golam Mohammad Road—always expecting “a good time” and never with an anxious thought. We traveled that course all the way to my student life in California. I suddenly remembered that one of the people initially on my doctoral committee had been Stephen Hay the historian. The first time I met him was in the very room where we were sitting that evening. That was back when I was an entangled physics person. Our serendipitous conversation became meaningful to both of us, and we could even laugh a little. Indeed, memories of confluence can be healing, especially on a difficult night like that.

Pranati Dey was the last of our parents to leave us. I remember conversing with Jishnu—perhaps by e-mail—after she died and we agreed that she was the last of that generation, the one that nurtured us in many ways. I didn’t have the language then, but I think now that our childhood sky was adorned with a group of stars that eventually faded one by one, in nature’s own way. And Pranati Dey was the last star in that constellation to be extinguished.

IV

Sometimes I take a peek at the map of Kolkata because I remain curious about the changing topography and new street names inside that luminous spot on my map. Just north of my old school Mitra Institution, I see a road going east-west that somewhere in past was renamed Suhasini Ganguly Sarani. Suhasini Ganguly was PuTu-di to many of my parents’ generation, and thus PuTu-mashi to us. One year, when spring had arrived in Sothern California (we never had any winter there anyway), I got a letter from my father which said that PuTu-mashi had died somewhat suddenly, following a freak accident, but it wasn’t the accident that killed her. Apparently she had broken her left arm in a street accident and was taken to Kolkata’s PG Hospital. She was being treated there when she contacted tetanus and died. Doctors hadn’t given her a routine anti-tetanus injection and by the time they realized this grievous error, it was too late. 

My parents lived in Allahabad then and the only people close to PuTu-mashi I had known in Kolkata were her younger sister (with whom she lived) and her life-long comrade Ganesh Ghosh. I didn’t know where to write to them. I didn’t have any addresses with me. I thought immediately of my grandfather Satyendranath who too had died in a hospital after being given, mistakenly, the wrong dosage of a medication, or the wrong medication, I’m not sure. I was more angry than sad because both these people died before they were sixty, and from medical neglect, to be sure.  

Recently, I concluded that the letter (which I have lost) from my father must have come in April of 1965 and I’m waiting now to think of PuTu-mashi in a meditative way later this month, taking some time for this on March 23, the fiftieth anniversary of her death. I used to visit her when I was a student in Kolkata, most frequently in 1962 when I was in Saha Institute’s “Post-M.Sc. Associateship” program and lived in the Institute’s hostel/dorm which used to be then in Rajabajar, inside the Science College compound. 

The background was this. As property-less people without a Kolkata residence, whenever my parents and my sister came to Kolkata from Allahabad, they stayed with one or another of their friends, sometimes with relatives too. That year they stayed with PuTu-mashi and her sister at their ground/first floor Kalighat flat. I spent many nights there in the room allotted to my family—a room with a low ceiling that is usually a “garage-top” space around here and I can safely say, without any “personal space”. And yet, there gathered poets, writers, friends and family members, enjoying hot tea and bright conversation—at all times of day and night, often when the hostesses were out working. Both of them were school teachers—in two of the poorest schools in South Calcutta. 

So I am trying to unearth my earliest memory of Suhasini Ganguly. The first time I saw her was at a reception for the recently released freedom fighters who had been imprisoned by the British in various jails, including Port Blair in the Andaman Islands—now a tourist site I am told. By freedom fighters I mean those who had been waging an armed struggle against the colonizers. I remember a hall with many huge plate-glass windows and that my mother and grandfather were with me. Beside Suhasini, the freed prisoners included her companions Ganesh Ghosh and Loknath Bal. Also Ananta Singh who had gone his own separate way even before he was imprisoned. And Ambika Chakraborty who was one of the prisoners from Port Blair. Who else was there I don’t remember.

When I was a little older, I saw PuTu-mashi and Ganesh Ghosh many times at Sadananda Road. They came to talk to my parents and my grandfather. Sometimes there was a serious discussion, sometimes it was time for tea and snacks and much laughter. It is then that I began to learn how fateful the summer of 1930 was to those two and other Indian revolutionaries, beginning with the Chattagram Armory raid in which Ganesh Ghosh was a leading participant. Suhasini and her fake husband Shashadhar Acharya provided a safe house for rebels on the run in Chandannagore where eventually several of them, including Suhasini, Shashadhar and Ganesh Ghosh were captured and a couple of them killed. This was at dawn of September 1, 1930, after a prolonged gun battle with a formidable police force that had surrounded the house. The man in charge of the police was the infamous Charles Tegart, who then tortured the prisoners (including Suhasini) before they were booked and transported first to the Hoogly jail and then to Lalbajar, Kolkata. Of course, Tegart was knighted in due course. 

What remains more astounding to me till today is that PuTu-mashi spent a good bit of her activist life in jail. First, from 1930 to 1938. Then she came out and was a part of group that accepted a socialist goal for India and several of them joined the Communist Party. Then again from 1942 to 1945 for some vague association with the “quit India” movement. And then she was arrested in 1948 again when the CPI in Bengal was banned. (This I discussed last time.) And yet… and yet, she was nothing but a reservoir of goodwill and affection whenever I saw her. She was so completely dedicated to “serving the people wholeheartedly” that personal suffering didn’t sway her a bit from her life’s work, or curb her overflowing humanity. That’s why I still suffer moments of anguish when I recall how she died. 

I thought a piece of music that may capture the life and times of Suhasini Ganguly (and others like her) in an instant is a song Pratul Mukhopadhyay composed in his more radical days—the one titled “সব মরণ নয় সমান” (Not all deaths are the same )

জন্মিলে মরিতে হবে জানে তো সবাই          

তবু মরণে মরণে অনেক ফারাক আছে ভাই

(Everyone knows if you’re born you’ll die

Yet one death can be very different from another)

… The last stanza… 

জীবন উৎসর্গ ক’রে  

সব হারা জনতার তরে

মরণ যদি হয়

ওরে তাহার ভারে হার মানে

ঐ পাহাড় হিমালয় ।

সব মরণ নয় সমান ।

(If death comes to a life sacrificed

for the sake of people who have nothing 

Then even the Himalays are vanquished

by the weight of that death)

Not all deaths are the same)

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day and also the 50^th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” civil rights march (actually two marches, on March 7 and 9, 1965) from Selma to Montgomery (two cities in Alabama) led by Martin Luther King and his comrades. So I’m sure I will not sound morbid if I end on the question of dying and causing death in another context.

V

When this year’s Hollywood Oscars were awarded in February, two movies from the opposite ends of the socio-political spectrum were ignored by the people who vote for these awards. The first was The American Sniper—about the “heroism” in Iraq of America’s professional killer Chris Kyle who himself was shot dead in the U.S. by a fellow soldier (the murder trial has just started). The second picture was Selma, a docu-drama based on those historic peaceful marches I just mentioned (with considerable violence against the demonstrators by the police) ending with a rally in Montgomery, and a speech by King. As the world knows, MLK was killed by a sniper too—James Earl Ray (a mere amateur compared to Chris Kyle the killing machine) in 1968. A friend mentioned that the Oscar presentations was yet another example of our culture’s inane attempt to equate left and right deviations and find the comforting middle. In other words, the award-giving would strike a balance so that no one would be offended! True, Hollywood can’t really be expected to be the seat of moral courage or economic recklessness.

But any contrived equivalence of that sort (left = right) is not convincing to me. I was reading that in spite of (perhaps because of) severe criticism from many quarters and quite a few negative reviews, The American Sniper was the highest grossing movie—globally, mind you—of 2014. Clint Eastwood has claimed that it is in fact an “anti-war” film. I don’t intend to watch it and I haven’t seen Selma either. So I thought about an American sniper I once knew, during the Vietnam War. 

This would have been in the 1967-69 period when I was a Teaching Assistant in California. There was a draft (conscription of young men in the U.S.) in force at that time and occasionally some undergrads I knew or taught, would disappear. It turned out their name had been picked and most of the time they went off to Vietnam. Two such students were “Greg” and “Ross” (not their real names). Greg was a student of mine and Ross was his good friend, but also a man about campus. Greg was quiet and diligent—didn’t get into political discussions outside the classroom, but was thoughtful and articulate in class. Ross was a singing-by-the-bonfire “peacenik” and I saw him regularly at campus rallies and “teach-ins.” No matter where he went, Ross was never without his beloved guitar. And Ross was very fond of Woody Guthrie songs, he told me once. 

Then one week I discovered that by an act of fate—a strange one to be sure, both Greg and Ross had been called up at the same time by Uncle Sam, to serve in the military. (They didn’t grow up in the same part of the country.)  So off they went to Vietnam, and I really didn’t think of them for the next two years (the normal tour of duty for conscripted men) until Greg showed up on campus one day and came for a chat. He spoke of the stupidity of that war like many other people, but appeared somewhat cheerful.

“You seem in a rather good mood. I suppose you’re happy to see me again,” I joked.

“That’s true, but I’m mostly glad that I didn’t see any combat—any real fighting in Vietnam. I was very lucky.” Greg was thoughtful now.

“What do you mean?”

“I was stationed in Saigon—as a Military Police. You know, an MP.”

“And that was safe?” I wasn’t sure at all. The NLF was everywhere because the Yanks were destroying the whole country.

“Yeah, of course. I mean there was always a chance that the VC would blow something up. But I spent most of my time busting unruly GIs. Our men on leave…they got into a lot of fights—mostly in bars. And my other job… a little less violent, was dragging them out of whorehouses and depositing them in the barracks. Too much drinking and smoking pot… Those guys got nasty.” Greg paused.

“I’ll tell you what though… those guys were too out of it to notice this, but I took a good look at those hookers and… there was nothing but hate in their eyes.”

“I’m glad you came back and I assume you’ll finish your degree now.” Greg nodded. 

“And what’s with Ross? Is he back? Did you ever see him there? Or here?” Of course I was curious. Greg paused for a while and sighed.

“Yes, Ross is back on campus. In fact, he’s one reason I came to see you. Be prepared to be surprised. He’s not the Ross you… we used to know.” 

“What happened?”

“I knew before we were shipped out that they were training Ross as a sniper. Why I couldn’t imagine… may be it was guitar fingers. You know… triggers for strings. Anyway, what I heard from people who knew him in Nam… and I ran into them because everybody came to Saigon. What they said was that Ross had become a psychotic killer!”

“I just don’t see how…” This was hard to believe.

“It’s true. He could pick off anything that was five-hundred… maybe a thousand yards away with his rifle. He became that good a shot. So he would do target practice on people and animals that were just there. To be combat ready, he was telling others.”

“What are you saying?” I wanted to be completely certain about what Greg just said.

“Ross would take his sniper rifle to the top of a hill. From there he could see men and women, water buffaloes, goats… what have you… far away. Creatures on some farmland. Peasants and their animals. And he’d shoot them… kill them.”

“How horrible! Our Ross?” This was really incredible.

“Yes, our Ross. Ask him what he did when you see him. That’s what this fucking war is doing to us… all of us.” 

We talked a bit about courses to take and such, but in a sleepwalking way. Then Greg left.

Our campus was pretty small then and sure enough I ran into Ross on the way to another meeting about the war. I greeted him with a very deliberate, “I heard you were back. Aren’t you glad to see your old friends again?” Ross looked at me with glazed eyes. He could have been high.

“Do I know you?” He asked. 

I wasn’t going to let him off that easily and reminded him of my identity—and our connection. I added that it was Greg who had told me about his return, but not the part about Ross the American sniper. Ross didn’t acknowledge anything. People were gathering for the meeting and he pointed in that direction.

“I promised them I’d hand out some leaflets. Got to pick’em up now.” 

He moved away without saying he knew me. I saw him several times around political events—among organizers and foot-soldiers, but we never talked. Just as well I thought, and RIP Woody Guthrie. I feared our Ross could have devolved into an FBI or police informer by then. There were many people like that in the anti-war movement in those days. 

And now? Where have all the snipers gone? And when will they ever learn? Learn of their own humanity and of those whose lives they snuff out from far away.

© Ranadhir (Gogol) Mitra, March, 2015