I, He and We: Our Connected Histories of Seperation

Then we met again. Turning round and round the pages of history we met. This was our common destiny which like destination always remains blur beyond the horizon. I met him through a professor I knew for long. He was from Australia I heard, pursuing his Phd on Bangla cinema. However I hardly expected him to be a Bengali. But the professor smiled at me and said ‘I hope it will not be a problem for you to help him to collect his research materials, particularly when he knows Bangla and you will be able to communicate with him in you own language’. Surely it wouldn’t have been a problem for me in case he had no knowledge of my language but was I relieved to know that piece of information or did it make a difference? It did when I got to know he is a Bangladeshi. He was the second Bangladeshi I met or may be the third (as suddenly now I remember my ‘desh’ supposed to be somewhere called Bikrampur so may be I am the first one!). So we met and explored the city, ate at several places and took loads of photos and videos. He felt uncomfortable when people leered at him on the streets. He was a Bengali come on – he is not different, nothing so special which makes you ogle! There must have been an air of a tourist or ‘foreigner’ in him which people could intuitively make out in spite of his language. Did he speak the same Bangla? Yes, not with any accent we generally point out as ‘Bangal’ – dialect(s) typical of Bangladeshis. How did we know how a Bangladeshi speaks? It is from the way still people who moved to this side of the border during the ‘long partition’ – an event which started after the division of Bengal and still continues - which the state would like to refer as infiltration. We call them Bangal here which means people who are originally from Eastern part of Bengal – currently the Bangladesh. He spoke in a neutral accent but used some variations. He called water ‘pani’ instead of ‘jal’- the way we call it here. But ‘pani’ is used in hindi and other Indian languages. He was as urban as me and one thing common to us is that we communicated in English very well constantly shifting and switching between two tongues. I was happily surprised to find we had more than one common interest – literature, film, politics, Naxalbari revolution and Partition of India. He came to Kolkata to collect his research materials and books. College Street disappointed him. Nor that other places and libraries gave him much hope. I felt ashamed. But why should I. This is our common history – the same fate we share. At least they were lucky to have a nation defined by language. He found very few DVD’s of Bangla films he was looking for. I realized here, in the so-called cultural capital of Bengal nobody has bothered to preserve copies of films by some of the stalwart Bengali film makers like Mrinal Sen or Buddhadeb Dasgupta. Satyajit Ray is spared from this humiliation as at least he in his death-bed managed to brag the Oscar. Alas people here now at last out with criticisms of Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire getting this much valued and longed for prize (the name of which however became known to many Bengali’s after Ray got it) the director being an ‘outsider’ selling the poverty of India. Lets again from both sides of the border remember our cult poet Mr. Tagore – ‘One who is not conscious of his wealth is poor’. The poverty of our world’s became apparent as he kept speaking English to everyone – even to any common shop-keeper or road-sider. Suddenly a man smiled and retorted back sweetly, “you are from Bangladesh, a Bangali, aha! Why then you keep speaking English. I was confused initially…” He kept quiet. He didn’t speak for a while. Later I got to know he was ashamed. But reality remains that the power of English still holds strong among any commoner of this subcontinent– you ought to be treated like a Sahib if you use that surrogate tongue of yours. Whose shame is this? No his, not mine, not there’s but ours. We have formed a collectivity of shame – a community. But certainly some people are insensitive enough to be absolutely shameless. They are the fence-sitters who would oil your machine for free when you ride and would ask money for the same the moment you are out of the driver’s seat. We went to interview a well-known playwright and upstart film-maker. Knowing that my friend was on a fellowship from Australia he said “you get money for your work, and then would you pay me?” I thought why the earth doesn’t split so that I hide inside in shame. This shows the real nature of our cormorant intellectuals sitting with half-closed eyes waiting for the right opportunity. West Bengal’s new intellectual Brigade is warming up; beware before they run over you! I got to know a lot of things in few days, not about him, but about myself, about my culture – our culture. With him for the first time I visited the Park Street Cemetery, climbed strange old staircases to get inside old houses of British architecture. Layers of histories waiting for us to decipher – we are too lazy to do that. Days passed, eating in food joints, taking pics of old Kolkata it was time for him to leave. I promised to send him some of the films he was looking for getting hold of them through some of my sources. But I failed to get hold of them with the best of my efforts. I am ashamed once more, for myself, for us. Will he ever come back? He has to, he must! Our destinies take us where we go. Our destinies are in our birth. Destinies are destinations. Like a criminal we ride the bus of our past to return to the site where the crime was committed. We have a common past which connects as much as it disconnects. He went away. Someone returned. My first Bangladeshi friend was someone who came as an international student to India to do his research training program. I was auditing a part of that course and I met him there. He initially came with a tourist visa and went back to his country for a while before the festivals of October in Bengal when institutions remain closed. Then when classes resumed I heard he was not getting a student visa because of certain official hazards. It has been long I gave up hope. I felt sorry he couldn’t return. Then suddenly I received a call from his Indian mobile number. It was a happy surprise to know he managed to get his much awaited visa out of the knots of bureaucracy. One day when we were talking he said that from the place in Bangladesh where he stays it should take not more than three hours to reach Kolkata but it took more than a day to reach here by train because of security checking and other border-crossing protocols. Such is the distance between us – such is the unbridgeable gaps of history which connects us through distance. We remain shut and fret between the drama of coming and going. I, he, we – all of us don’t have a name, we are histories, we are loving faces who can recognize each other and smile from two sides of the same world.

The Burden of Belonging: Sibaji Bandyopadhyay's "Aniket Mitra o Tatkalin Bangosamaj"

This short story "Aniket Mitra o Tatkalin Bangosamaj" (in Madhyarekha - 2nd edition published by Anustup, 2009) by Sibaji Bandyopadhyay which I read last night scintillated the question that what is to be done with tradition - a question too important for the new generation Bengali's - generation of Chetak, the grandson of Aniket Mitra, the absent hero of the story. Tradition suffers erosion of time and ravages of violent epistemes formulated by and for the market economy whose sole aim is to reproduce itself. Thereby tradition too is reproduced - new avatars of it emerging befitting the shapes our economy takes over time. The marriage of Aniket Mitra's son Biltu who studied economics with Rita, a student of Bangla is crucial in this context. Aniket Mitra represents that absent father whose absence defines his presence and who haunts all later-day discourses. This Aniket Mitra is however a formulation of Sanat Babu who described him in a language and idiom adapted from Sibnath Sastri's famous take on so-called Bengal Renaissance - Ramtanu Lahiri o Tatkalin Banga Samaj. After this presentation of Aniket Mitra, he is transformed into a dead patriarch whose omnipresence haunts the future events and characters. The family members of Aniket Mitra speaks in the tongue and manner borrowed from Sanat Babu. The story starts with Aniket Mitra's memorial ceremony and his death is made unforgettable by Sanat Babu's speech neatly making him a flawless and perfect character. However in this perfectionism a hidden reductionism is present - he lives more as an icon than a real-life person after his death. The call of great names is a part and parcel of Bengali culture which takes pride in its so-called renaissance set in 19th century through the upsurge of English education. Even the most uninformed and disinterested would take this pride as we see in the story the narrator informs that Biltu, who hardly ever touches any Bangla books gets appealed by Sanat Babu's speech and very soon becomes adept in his language and idiom. Often tradition is used to justify actions loggerheads with each other as we see in the family quarrel between Rita and her mother-in-law Manimala, both uses that idiom of Sanat Babu to justify herself and ridicule the other. Often that memorable speech that became an object of family pride of Mitra household is used out of context - lines and phrases are picked up random to make them suit various situations. Is this not what we have done to our father figures - calling names of Rammohun Ray, Vidyasagar, Bankimchandra, Rabindranath et al at random and quoting and misquoting them out of context helter-skelter? Tagore can appear on the signboard of any and every institute ranging from nursing home to food joint. The latest example of this being the naming of Metro Railway stations in Kolkata. Famous quotes of famous people reduced to totems are used by almost all political parties to establish there argument. This happens in a microcosm in Mitra household. In there belonging lies there conditions of unbelonging. Then one by one Aniket's objects of daily use start getting lost and the Mitra household keeps arguing about the cause in the same language of his obituary. Does it not remind us of the theft of Tagore's Nobel Medal from Visvabharati - a case not solved yet while we keep celebrating 25th of Baisakh and 22nd of Shraban felicitating him in the same monotonous language of worship and eulogy? The theft of Aniket Mitra's belongings I feel is the loss of context which makes the burden of tradition light and eases the pain of belonging it in the amnesiac culture of late capitalism. Howeveer it takes away our responsibility. At the fag end of the story when the question mark appears on the sky it seems to be the bafflement of how the sun of tradition turned irrelevant and is setting down from history. Finally the Bengal Renaissance just like Aniket Mitra's memorial speech delivered by Sanat remains an empty signifier 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing' as it attempts and claims to signify everything. The most significant aspect of the story I felt is its technique of self-effacement - never ever the irony seems to have been thrown out with a position of objectivity but it seems the author is making an auto-critique of the culture he belongs to. The use of Sibnath Sastri as a subtext and assimilation of more than one speech types becomes useful to understand the superimposition of tradition as a discursive domain which remains separated from other forms of articulation as we see in case of the language of Aniket Mitra's veneration by Sanat Babu which affects the speech of all the members of Mitra Household - which even Rita adopts after she gets married to Aniket's son Biltu. The story is unique in its treatment of the great tradition of Bengal and points out how it is an extremely contemporary issue. The great tradition is like Aniket Mitra who re-lives after his death. It is more about today in its essence - not simply about tatkalin bangasamaj (the-then Bangali society) - it is more about ei-somay (now) than sei-somay (those days). I guess this story would soon draw attention of critics and would invite several productive criticisms.

Terrorism: Fissures in Our Thinking

When I went to College street just after the Mumbai attack I found a large crowd, gathered inside college square protesting the attack. Their rhetoric was uncannily violent and the speaker, a member of Hindu Sanhati, a fireband Hindu nationalist group, presented priviledges given to the minorities (in this case muslims)as the cause of this attack. He felt these people should be made aware of their minority status and needs to be "controlled" (he even went to the extent of criticizing people's sympathy for Rizwanur as he thought it humiliating for a "Hindu" to be bothered about injustice done to a "muslim", which supposedly is not big issue as Mumbai attack!). He made absurd comments like if there is a movement against Singur and Nandigram incidents then why any such protest had not been put forth by the intellectuals of this state (though I guess he has compensated enough for that!). But then the protest was against certain policies of the government machinary. Here who will protest against whom? Who is responsible for the attack, do we know? As it is evident from initial investigation none of the terrorists are actually from India. They are even funded from and trained outside the country. So the claim of the Hindu Sanhati leader that our own "Muslims" are responsible for this attack is baseless. You are absolutely right that we cannot homogenize hindus or muslims. However the easiest way to vent out one's anger is to focus it or project it into one particular person or perhaps one particular community. Well on this earth most people wants to eliminate otherness and very few of us actually learn to live with it. But then it is also not very often that we run behind other people's lives with an AK-47. If we can't lesrn to be tolerant to differences, we at least are forced to bear up with it. So even if the constructed image of the respective religions incites people to attack each other then to nourish that false desire for revenge and to provide them with arms and ammunition there must be some external support. I feel it is important to think who sustains and nourishes terrorism today rather than asking why some people would be eager to give up their lives in order to kill others. The easy answer to the latter question must be the deprivation and negligence towards the have not's shown by the so-called democratic states round the World. I feel since historically certain religious communities (like the muslims) or races (like the blacks)have suffered torture and subjugation and have been impoverished and since almost none of the Government have taken any successful step to eliviate the conditions of the poor, most of the nations states have been partially communal, racist and jingoist. So it is natural for the people of the deprieved communities to indulge into violence and rupture. This perhaps is the cause of the violences that happen during communal riots. But that can't be the cause of terrorism indeed. Communal violence is temporary and unregulated whereas terrorism is sustained, planned and organized. It works like a corporate network where huge transaction of money is involved and great many people work in order to fullfill an aim unknown to any one of them (remember the film Aamir). Surely, a lot of people must have been bribed to successfully accomplish the Mumbai attack. It is absurd to think the Muslim's of the star hotels selflessly helping out the attackers out of some pan-islamic patriotism paving their way in. It is nontheless easy to get it done in this way for a country like India where poverty is rampant and corruption has reached the threshold mark. Then who is the culprit? Surely the one who gets benifitted. Then who gets benifitted? After the Vietnam war there has been no major battle all over the world except those related to terrorism but it should be kept in mind experiment with war weopons have never stopped. If someone asks if there will be a World War III then my answer would be - well it has already started - it has started in the form of terrorism and involves almost all the major nations of the World. If the culture of attack and counter-attack continues, the war will go on and will eventually benefit the weapon industry throughout the World. Today if Carbines are obsolete to counter terrorist attack then AK47 or even more advanced guns will be essential. If in the name of religion (that being the nexus of enmity) neighboring countries like India and Pakistan continues to fund terrorism eventually leading to another Indo-Pakistan war or if US is takes the charge of bombing Afghanistan to 'fight' terrorism then the weopon industry flourishes. So I smell something strongly fishy behind all this patriotic call to arms against terrorism, identifying it to be "Islamic". I am afraid in the process of questioning terrorism we might do something like to translate an oft-quoted Bangla phrase digging up the snake while looking for an Earthworm! So lets carefully handle it.

Cracking the mirror

I remember the girl who desperately tried to be a man and breaks the mirror which shows breasts hanging from her chest. I remember two girls – childhood friends falling in love with each other as monsoon brings rain to the heated earth. I remember the transgender sex worker who challenges the ‘masculinities’ of all those vagabond jobless men who spend time dissecting others and weighing other people’s ‘normalcy’ while they are afraid of protesting when a woman is assaulted by goons openly in a local train. I remember the schoolboy who points out to all our social prejudices to people who doesn’t confirm heteronormativity or choose not to do so whereas some college students felt homosexuality to be a crime and to be condemned and punished by law. I remember these because I cannot forget. After a long amnesia I have suddenly started remembering. Forgetting is a disease I suffered long; it is still a disease for so many. But we love this disease and enjoy our symptoms providing foreclosures to so-many loose ends of life. Then as it happens that suddenly a body is ripped apart and the inside is exposed – shaken with fear we close our eyes or behave like ostriches facing an impending danger – the danger of loosing our faith. That is why the believers denied having even a single look through Galileo’s telescope. History can give witness to the fact that it takes a long tour for human race to come out of that faith. But thanks to Sappho for Equality and Pratyay Gender Trust for making such a great effort to let us realize our polyvalent selves and multiple sexualities always set in motion in their LGBT film festival. The sooner it is the better. All the above sequences are from various films shown in this festival. The number of audience and their enthusiasm showed how people have started removing their blindfolds. Max Mueller Bhavan turned out to be an inter-space for people with various sexual preferences and gender identities trying to know, understand and stand by each other. Unlike other animals man can be characterized more by their variety than uniformity, more by their difference than by their sameness. So they can be divided in terms of class, creed, language, religion, nationhood, ethnicity, gender, sexualities et al. Understanding these varieties enables us to understand ourselves. So after the festival was over the mirror cracked into pieces as I stood in front of it trying to rebuild it from the scattered pieces. Some pieces are lost and when I rebuild the image faces peep through those gaps – remembrance of things past and these remembrances help me to forget. Yes! In order to remember it is necessary to sacrifice certain faiths, certain closers –certain positions of apparent security. The journey begins!

Compulsion to repeat?

BarBar = Repetition (in bangla/hindi) and that is how this hero and hero worship in Billu can be described. Yes repetition is the key word that dominates the entire global culture of celebrityhood - once you get success in anything you become the jack of everything and then your success is endlessly repeated. But that repetition is surely compelled by the fear of loosing one's position (read throne, for Shahrukh is the Bollywood badshah). Already Shahrukh is throwing frustrated gaze at his own vibrant youthful image of DDLJ in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi which 'he' 'himself' tries to enact and play in order to be heroic enough (textual unconscious!!!). Now Billu is a sultan's compulsive dream of pomp and grandeur. However as any Freudian dream analysis would show this compulsive frame of success only points towards its impossibility as you have already discussed that he is out of the Pepsi contract. But this film also attempts to sell a couple of things. First, it tries to sell a concocted image of (an)other Indian village to the western audience, particularly of Indian breed trying to remember their 'chere asha gram' (ref: Lara Dutta's blouse). Second, they are trying to sell the idea of celebrityhood in the Indian villages, which is definitely a fertile market for bollywood, given the fact that its popularity in select urban spaces has already got saturated. Related to this it should be remembered that the idea of a typical bollywood hero has faced severe challenges with recent experiments and success of movies which did well without any star actors. This may be because of the opening up of an international market for Indian films and vested interest of the urban elite (of both India and abroad) in Hindi movies who for last few decades focused their attention on Hollywood only. However the worst of the fears of Mr. Khan is confirmed when we measure his appearance before Irfan Khan. Perhaps more character actors like Irfan would make their appearances in the coming years so that we can do away with every kind of naive celebrityhood encouraging repetition (of both theme and treatment). Alas, inspite of every effort for asserting his celebrityhood (public euphoria regarding Shahir Khan's arrival in the village Budbuda) the moral of the film is that every celebrity is actually a common man and any common man (also 'common' actor) can do something worthy to be celebrated! Apart from repetition sentimentality was predominant in the film as it is the key to scintillate the middle-class audience for whom emotions are as impermanent and inconsequential as sentiments - something that can find an easy and immediate outlet. Perhaps as long as sentiments are there as in the last scene of the film making handkerchiefs soak with tears, the middleclass would never bother to think where a real barbar stands in the global circus of moneymaking and celebrityhood. They will barbar (repeatedly as in bangla/hindi) go to the wishfull reunion of the successful and established with someone like Billu (Irfan in the film) who dwells in the margins of the society to set themselves free from all responsibilities, spending tears for an on-screen Billu. Perhaps this is also a repeatition in order to realize the impossibility of a class-less society.