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.
