#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 50th 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.”
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
At Home in Paris: Celebrating the Light and Wisdom of Arun Mitra
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 50th 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
Labels: American Sniper, Arun Mitra, Bijan, Bishnu Dey, Chandalika, Chhinnamul, CPI, Ganesh Ghosh, Ira, Joy Mitra, Kolkata, parttion, Popa, Pranati Dey, Satyendranath, Shanti Mitra, Suhasini Ganguly, Tara, Tathapi, theory
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