TSC Interviews| Madam Odillard (The Beat Hotel)

Aletta Andre and Abhimanyu Kumar

A view of the street which leads to the Beat Hotel / Photo : Aletta Andre

Aletta Andre: Are you from Paris? 

Madam Odillard: Yes.

AA: You were born in Paris?

MO: Yes, I was.

AA: Is this your family’s property?

MO: No, I bought it. But I did not know it was a hotel so famous when I bought it. 

Abhimanyu Kumar: When you bought it, it was already in existence (as the Beat Hotel)? 

MO: Someone bought it in 1968 and renovated it. I came in 1980. I could not have run a hotel like that! 

(Before the start of the formal interview, she spoke of how she too renovated the Hotel and did away with the hole-in-the-floor latrines, and the stairs to construct a lift) 

A photo Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky in the lobby of Beat Hotel/Photo : Abhimanyu Kumar

AK: How did you come to know of the Hotel’s existence?

MO: By chance. I lost my job. I was in the east of France. The whole east district was working with iron and steel. Steel works left for south of France. The industry moved and everyone was fired. My parents were living in Paris. I walked alone in the streets and I did not know what to do. (One day) I met a lady in a hotel, Hotel Odeon, it is still there. 

I asked her, “To run a hotel, it is difficult?” She said, “No, if you can manage people, you can do it.” Two weeks later, I came back and (I was) walking in the same street, I don’t know why, because my parents lived in another part of Paris, but I was walking here… (In the Latin Quarter – Ed) 

AK: It was in 1980?

MO: It was in 1979. I saw the same woman standing in the doorway and she asked me if I was the one she met two weeks ago. I said yes. She said, “Come in and have a cup of coffee. I have someone who wants to sell a hotel. You can speak with him.” I went in, had a cup of coffee. And the man said, “Look, if you want to see what a hotel is, I can take you around. And he took me to the worst hotel in Paris!” (chuckles again)

AA: Was it this hotel…?

MO: No, no, no, no, no! Because he did not know me, he wanted to see who I was…

AA: Yeah, how you would respond…

MO: So he took me around a few hotels, the worst ones…

AK: Why were they worst?

MO: They were dirty. (Exhales) With girls!

AA: After seeing that, you still wanted to run a hotel…?

MO: (Laughs) So, after months, he said,“Ok, you know how to count, you know how to speak, so I am going to show you a better hotel.”

AK: This man was like an agent?

MO: Yes, he was an agent, dealing in hotels. He had contacts. So I took out a map and I said,“I want a hotel in this part, or that part, I don’t want to go where the brothels are”; I wanted to come this way, to the south of Paris. We started to look around and when we came here, I said,“I want this one.”

AK: The Beat Hotel?

MO: Yes. 

AK: How did it look and why did you…

MO: Dirty! I will show a picture of what it looked like, I have a picture. Voila… (Shows a picture of the wallpaper in those day) The flowers (on the wallpaper) were grey, and brown… I said, “Look, I like the location and I think in my mind, I can make something of that.” And I kept the name like the previous owners who bought it from Madam Rachou. 

AK: So you are the third owner?

MO: Yes. 

AA: Why were they selling it? 

MO: Because they wanted to retire. 

AK: How long did they have it? 

MO: About ten years…So, I did not have any money; I went to see my mother-in-law, to ask her if she would sell an apartment so she can give(some) money…I (also) had three friends who said, “Look, you lost your job, you are crying. If you make a business, I will put money with you.”  When you are fired, you feel five years older, you think you are nothing. So, in my mind I said, if they put money in something I want to do, I am worth something….

AA: If other people trust you…

MO:  First, my husband did not want to tell his mother I wanted money (laughs). So for one month, we did not say anything. (Laughs again) At the end of the month, I prepared my luggage, and opened the door of the lift and I started to pull my luggage and I heard a voice behind me say, “Look, you can type the papers (of authorization)”. She was giving me the power to sell it. So, I pulled my luggage back from the lift…it is true! (laughs) I typed the papers of authorization…

AA: Your husband had a job?

MO: Yes. For three years, he stayed in the east… I bought the hotel, I started alone here…

AA: He was supporting you? 

MO: Yes, and he would come every week, on weekend, with paint, and he was painting the rooms and the stairs, just so we would forget about the dirt (guffaws). It was really dirty!

A mural of William Burroughs in the same street as the Beat Hotel/ Photo : Aletta Andre

AK: And they were regular visitors, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso and others…?

MO: They were there at the time, they were coming all the time …

AA/AK: Until when/How often did they come ?

MO: Pouf! Every month! (Reminisces) My husband did not speak any English at all. (Once) Allen Ginsberg came and said, "I have a lecture at the Pompidou Centre"... Have you heard of it?

AK: Yes, they just had a Beat Retrospective.

MO: Did you go there? 

AK: No, I just came so I missed it. 

MO: You could have seen me 20 years ago, in a picture … I went and saw the exhibition, (there was) the scroll (on which) Kerouac wrote (On the Road), I saw Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs in Tangiers, on New Year…There was a screen and I  saw a girl crossing the street, (near) the Beat Hotel. She had the same coat I had! I looked and said – That’s me! 

(Everyone laughs)

AK: This was in the exhibition? 

MO: Yes! Yes! 

AA: When you started, did you know these writers used to come here? 

MO: When I started to renovate, somebody pushed the door and said (voice drops), "Where did he sleep?" I said – "Who? Danton, Voltaire, (must be) a Frenchman you know (I thought)…Montaigne, Victor Hugo, I don’t know! He said – (almost whispering) Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs…"

AK: So Burroughs also used to come here? 

MO: Yeah…(laughs) So I said I really don’t know. So he started to tell me the story.  He made this book (points to the copy of Beat Hotel). Banal, Gris Banal…

AA:The editor …

MO: Then I met Harold Chapman (whose photographs of the Beats in Paris are collected in the book Beat Hotel - Ed) when he came and lived here. They were living for months here because they could cook in rooms. You can understand the smell and the dirt, whoo! 

AK: They came I think till until their deaths? 

MO: Yeah.  

Madam Odillard/ Photo: Aletta Andre

AK:I know that Ginsberg died in ‘97. Did they give you trouble? 

MO: No. When I came in, they were old.

AA: I did not know they came so often to Paris? 

MO: Yes, they did not need a passport, they could have the drugs and the owner here Madam Rachou was paying the (voice drops) …

AK:She was the second owner ?

MO: Yeah. She was paying the police …

AK: So this could continue …

(MO laughs.)

AA: So she was supporting them…

MO: When they could not pay, she was cooking for them. They were like children to her. 

AK: Who did you like best? 

MO: Allen Ginsberg was nice, Gregory Corso was nice. Look…

AK: (Corso) was quite wild they say…

The postcard that Ginsberg sent to Madam Odillard/ Photo: Aletta Andre

Ginsberg's photo makes up the front part of the postcard/ Photo: Aletta Andre

MO: They were all wild! Allen Ginsberg sent me this postcard…(shows it) 

AA: Did you speak English from before they were coming? 

MO: Yes. 

AK: But you said your husband did not speak English. 

MO: No. And we went to a lecture (where) Allen Ginsberg put us  at the first rank. I could not understand anything and my husband was worse. My husband was ready to divorce me! And we were in the first rank so we could not move!

AK: Did Burroughs not have a reputation for being difficult? 

MO: Burroughs was more pretentious. He was the one with money in fact. He was friends with the police…that was his job. He was putting the people together, keeping them quiet. 

AK: He took charge when he was here? 

MO: Voila! 

AK: They listened to him because he was elder …

MO: Yes. And when you needed a shower, you had to buy your key. And when you had the key, you invited all your friends to shower.  

AK :So the sexuality was quite in-your-face? 

MO : O Oui!   They were gays, you know. Look, Gregory Corso wrote this (shows the hotel’s reception book) 

A bluebird alights

Upon a yellow chain

Spring is here.

(Sotto Voce )Blue and yellow make green…

AK : Right. 

MO :Ah, you see! 

AK : Alchemy it’s called, in fact. 

(MO starts to read from a note in the reception book, by Corso but stops, missing her reading glasses.)

MO: “Dear old Beat Hotel, bonne nuit, with once rats from the cellar to the street. So were we, poets, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso, Orlovsky, Gysin… The sun…” Well, I don’t  have reading glasses.

AK : I can read…(starting from where she left) “The sun was as bright for us poets as for the rats. Now, forty years later, the rats are gone. And so are we. What was a no-star hotel has become a four-star hotel. My attic room tho changed still shows the St.Chapelle …”

MO : That’s the church behind.

AK : …Back I am, 1997. First came here 1957. 40 years ago. Bless all, Gregory Corso.” 

MO: I show you something which is really something. One day, I was at the door and a girl came and said,“I was there with Gregory Corso”. And look what she writes: “Hey Gregory, remember me? Sorry for what I have done to you.”

AK : What was her name? 

MO: I don’t know…here, (first name not audible on tape) Dora. 

AK: He had a great affair with a woman called Hope Savage so I was wondering if she appeared…

MO: He had so many (laughs). Go on…

AK/AA: (Reading from the note by Ms. Dora) “But regrets are no good. If you  pass by here again, please contact me”(the note is followed by an address). 

MO: She even gives the code!

AA: So she left a message for him in your book.

MO: Oui, oui!

AK: (Still reading) “I had a wonderful time with you. Unforgettable!”

MO: Unforgettable, ah!

(Everyone laughs)

MO:But she never came back. 

AA: When did you last renovate the hotel? 

MO: From 1980’s, I started to clean it. I put nice paper on the wall. But you know what? People were pulling my paper! Because they were painting, there were designs on the wall…You know, I had a gallery from New York coming, and they said, “if you find a nice picture, we will buy the wall.” I said,“I am not going to sell you one of my walls!”

AA: How many rooms are there? 

MO: 19. At that time, there were 35. 

AK: Then what happened? You had to demolish some of them?

MO: Because they were so small…some of them did not have any lights. No windows. 

AA: Now all the rooms have bathrooms also.

MO: And when you were using too much electricity, Madam Rachou used to cut it. And in the reception, it was a bar. 

AK: That has closed now? 

MO: Oui. There was no name. William Burroughs started to call it the Beat Hotel. 

The Dream Machine/ Photo: Aletta Andre

AK: Kerouac never came?

MO: Oui, he came and for one night, he slept in Allen Ginsberg’s room. 

(Points to a corner in the room) You see that machine? 

AK: Is it the Dream Machine? 

MO: Yes. It is used in psychiatry and epilepsy (treatment). And some doctors come here and look at it. 

This is the original machine. Now it is more complex. They modernized the machine but the basis is this. And it is working. You have epilepsy? 

AK: I don’t. 

MO: (Puts it on) Close your eyes… (Whirring motion starts) You feel good? We don’t! (Stops it) The box came from China. We saw the box and saw a telephone number in New York. We called the number and asked what it was for. The man said, we are producing the machine in mass but I want you to have the first one. 

AK: And Brion Gysin had ordered it? 

MO: He made it! He made it in his room. 

AK: He was a painter…

MO: He was everything, he was painting, and he was cutting up pictures… books…

AA: And do you get a lot of visitors these days interested in the history of the hotel?

MO: Yes, that’s why we put pictures in (the lobby of) the hotel. Harold Chapman took these photos… He is too old now, lives in England... Have you been to New York?

In New York, there is Chelsea Hotel and there is a bookshop in San Francisco (The City Lights).  

(Madam Odillard is interrupted at this point by a staff member of the hotel with a housekeeping concern and the interview also comes to an end). 

Plaque at the entry of the Beat Hotel / Photo : Abhimanyu Singh 

TSC Interviews | Malay Roychoudhury

Malay Roychoudhury by Utsab Chatterjee,  

pencil on paper

Malay Roychoudhury is an Indian Bengali poet and novelist who founded the Hungryalist Movement in the 1960s.  He was awarded a Sahitya Akademy award  for translating Dharamvir Bharati's Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda in 2003 but he refused to accept it. He spoke to The Sunflower Collective at length about his work, Hungryalist movement, Allen Ginsberg, other writers associated with the movement, politics and rifts with other poets, publishers and the establishment during the movement.

TSC: Young poets are calling themselves Hungryalists in West Bengal again, as you said in a recent interview. Jeet Thayil is making a BBC documentary on Ginsberg's time in India for which he met you. Deborah Baker wrote a book about the same not so long ago. Internationally, several films about the Beats hit the screens in quick succession in recent years. Do you see it as a revival of the two movements that were linked willy-nilly?

MRC : I don't think so. Saileswar Ghose, Subhas Ghose, Basudeb Dasgupta had been editing Hungryalist magazines Kshudharta and Kshudharta Khabor before they died a few years back. Pradip Choudhuri is still publishing Phoo and Swakal. Rasaraj Nath and Selim Mustafa are still publishing Anarya Sahitya. Ratnamoy Dey is still publishing Hungryalist Folder. Aloke Goswami had published Concentration Camp before he concentrated on  writing novels and short stories. Arunesh Ghose continued publishing Giraffe before he died a couple of years back. Since these magazines are in Bengali and they are not active on  social media, you don't hear about them. Pradip Choudhuri has done a lot of translation of Hungryalist work in French.

Prior to Jo Wheeler and Jeet Thayil, another producer, Dominic Byrne, had come and made a radio programme exclusively on our movement. Marina Reza had come from Weslyan University for research on our movement. Daniella Limonella had come from Italy for the same purpose. University of Exeter has published an interview of mine in their Exeposé  online newspaper. Mrigankasekhar Ganguly has made a film based on my poem Stark Electric Jesus. A debate is going on for a decade, for and against this poem on a Bangladeshi news portal.

Deborah Baker  neither met any Hungryalist nor consulted any written material available at Kolkata's Little Magazine Library Research Centre. Most of the information is  wrong and concocted, though she claims to read and write Bengali.  This Research Centre has an exclusive section on Hungryalist periodicals, bulletins, manifesto and books.

Students at IIT, Kharagpur, Jadavpur University, Rabindra Bharati University, Visva Bharati University, Calcutta University, Assam University have been doing PhD and M Phil etc on our work for more than a decade as a matter of academic routine.

Academic interest in the Beats, especially Allen Ginsberg continues. He had himself established a Trust to look after the interest of all the Beats and his own work with the million dollars he got from Stanford University by selling his collections. Bill Morgan, one of the Trustees, had visited me when I used to reside at Kolkata.

We, the Hungryalists, have not even been able to bring out an anthology of our work in English and Hindi, as there is no commercial interest in our work from the publishers. And none of us are well to do. Hindi being the prime Indian language, the Sahitya Academy should have evinced interest in bringing out an anthology.

TSC:  Ginsberg was concerned that the Beats did not receive the amount of academic attention in America they deserved. Do you feel the same about the Hungryalists, as far as Indian academia is concerned? In the case of the painter Karanajai, it appears even the critics abandoned him after a while leading to a very embittered existence.  What are your thoughts on this?

MRC: Yes, he was worried during his lifetime that the American Establishment is not ready to award them with governmental and academic recognition. However, presently a lot of academic work is being done on Beats due to the next generation of poets who took an interest in them. Even if the Beats were anti-Establishment, they were typical products of the American capitalist world. Ginsberg created his trust with a huge fund to carry on his legacy. Kerouac's manuscript roll was sold for 2.40 million dollars; enough to carry on his legacy by his Trustees for eternity. Ferlinghetti opened City Lights Bookstore on West Front in order to regularly publish the Beats. In Greenvich village they had Barney Rosset's Grove Press, James Laughlin's New Directions and the Village Voice newspaper for support. They regularly interacted with the digital companies and brought out their recitations and films etc. They appointed secretaries to enable them to get paid invitations for poetry readings from various European and American cities.

As I told you just now, there has been continuous academic work on Hungryalist poets and writers. Sahitya Academy has awarded prizes to Utpalkumar Basu, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Binoy Majumdar, Saileswar Ghosh and Subimal Basak. Since I do not accept literary and cultural prizes I had refused their award. The point is we do not get publishers like Ferlinghetti or James Laughlin in Kolkata to bring out our works and arrange for distribution. And we do not get translators who would translate and publish our works in Indian periodicals. There is still a strong lobby against us at Kolkata, though it has weakened after Sunil Gangopadhyay's demise ; nevertheless Sunil's trained disciples are still active.

After receiving the Lalit Kala Academy prize at a young age in 1972, Anil Karanjai started sympathizing with the Naxalite movement; his studio at Benaras was ransacked by police. To avoid the repression, he married an American lady and went to Wahington DC to live there. He was soon disillusioned with the Western world and came back a few years later after divorcing the lady. He got involved in social activities and avoided the dirty machinations that painters had started  resorting to at that time. Karuna Nidhan also fled from Benaras and went to Patna where my elder brother Samir opened a coloured fishes shop for him. When Anil returned to Delhi, Karuna joined him. Anil married Juliet Reynolds and settled at Dehradun to avoid the Delhi painters' circus. . Anti-Establishment writers and artists in that circuit are rare these days.

TSC : What are your views on Shakti Chattopadhyay leaving the movement?

MRC: Shakti Chattopadhyay testified against me because Shakti  had fallen in love with Samir's sister-in-law Sheela at Chaibasa. He felt that he could not marry Sheela because of Samir who did not want her  to get married to an unemployed drunkard. That Sheela was living at our Patna residence at that time for post graduate study at Patna University added fuel to Shakti's fire.

This,  along with instructions from a newspaper group which was against us, and which offered Shakti a sub-editor's job,   forced him to leave the movement. Now, after Sunil Gangopadhyay's death, when Sunil's letters to his friends are being published, it is found that Sunil was goading his friends to leave Hungryalist movement, as Sunil thought that my sole motive in launching the Hungryalist movement was to destroy his 'Krittibas’ group. Almost all of these letters spew venom against me. In these letters Sunil wrote that to be an anti-Establishment writer, you have to join the Establishment and work from within.

TSC: Is there something akin to an anxiety of influence which informs the relationship between the two movements? In his Indian Journals, Ginsberg continues to profess adherence to the Blake vision. He mentions the harmonium but there is no indication he first learnt about it through the Hungryalists. At what point do you think he discarded the Blake vision and allowed the Indian influences to play out? Could you give some specific examples? I understand that his use of breath as a measuring unit for verse might be one?

MRC: I don't think we were bothered about influencing each others' movements. In an interview to LIFE magazine Ginsberg had said that the Blake vision departed from him when he was traveling in a train while returning from India and started weeping .

When he had visited Bodhgaya he had chanced upon a piece of stone wherein small replicas of Buddha were inscribed. He had told me that seated on two stones he was shitting, as at that time the Japanese had not developed Bodhgaya and it was almost a village. He said it was a divine direction from Buddha ; thus he became interested in Buddhism and departed from mysticism. Due to archaeological restrictions he could not carry the stone to USA. He had cleaned that stone with his tooth brush at our Patna residence.

Bill Morgan, one of Ginsberg’s trustee, who visited me had said that there were more than fifty copies from which edited pages were included in his India Journals. Ginsberg was spied upon by Indian agents and a few of his copies were picked out of his shoulder sling bag by some of these agents to find out what was he recording. Ginsberg himself told me about it. The harmonium story might have been in one of the fifty copies.

Sunil Gangopadhyay, who was in USA at the time of editing Indian Journals, tried his best to shut out the Hungryalist movement from this book. Bill Morgan had told me that Ginsberg regularly mailed packets to his step mother in New Jersey so that she could arrange the papers in the almirahs of their basement. Ginsberg had country-wise almirahs . He collected most of our manifestos and they are available in Stanford University.

TSC : In his Indian Journals, Ginsberg does not allude to your movement although he knew about it and took deep interest. Do you think it was deliberate? Do you think he appropriated your techniques and attitudes regarding poetry and art in general?

MRC : I think I have answered your question just now.

TSC: Ginsberg met poets in Bombay also, including Kolatkar and others. How can then it be said that he was principally influenced by the Hungryalists?

MRC: He met poets of other Indian languages for a day or two ; but he stayed in Kolkata for about two years, attended Bengali poetry readings, went to country liquor den Khalasitola visited by Bengali poets, Sonagachhi visited by Bengali poets, smoking joints visited by Bengali poets.

TSC : You have criticised Ginsberg for clicking pictures of beggars while he was here. Is that part of a larger disenchantment with your old friend? Do you think at the end of the day, he was as superficial as other white tourists?

MRC: Yes, when Ferlighetti sent me a copy of India Journals I felt quite ashamed, I did not show the book to my dad who had admonished Ginsberg for taking photographs of beggars, lepers, lame men, naked sadhus etc. I have visited other countries and never thought of making a mockery of poverty of certain people. In his Indian Journal there is a photograph of Ginsberg himself in the guise of a beggar seated beside a beggar.

Ginsberg had several photo exhibitions in USA which highlighted Indian beggars, lepers, destitutes, almost naked sadhus, cows on the streets, stray dogs, goats etc. Cards to these exhibitions were sold to patrons. When he revisited India during Bangladesh war, he shot photos of refugees fleeing the war zone.

He did have the typical white tourist in him.

Probably my childhood in Imlitala slum taught me to respect the poorest man.

TSC: Could you tell us about the politics of the Hungryalists?  Were there direct links back then between the Naxals and the Hungryalists?

MRC : Hungryalist movement had started in 1961, The Naxalite movement started in Seventies. I have already told you about the plight of Anil Karanjai and Karuna Nidhan. My first book was on Marxism. Saileswar Ghose, Subhas Ghose, Aloke Goswami had joined the CPI (M) for literary gains. I was disillusioned with Marxism after I started reading about the activities of the Soviet establishment as well as the activities of the lumpens of CPI ( M ). Strangely CPI ( M ) resorted to the same murderous activities of the earlier Bengal governments. Now the new Bengal government has co-opted the same lumpens and are resorting to same murderous activities.

TSC : The beats were crticised for their lack of gender awareness. How do the Hungryalists fare in your opinion on that count? Were there female hungry gen writers and artists? Also, did the movement display consciousness of caste issues?

MRC : Young bold women writers were rare at that time. We had one lady member, Alo Mitra, who later married Tridib Mitra. They together used to edit two Hungryalist magazines, one in Bengali, named UNMARGA, another in English named WASTE PAPER.

We were the first to bring lower and backward class writers and poets in literature. Prior to us there was not a single poet to be seen on the pages of poetry magazines. Debi Roy, Subimal Basak, Abani Dhar, Rasaraj Nath belong to lower or backward class.

TSC : Tell us a little about your poetic process? What influences and inspires you?   Is the process of writing poems that deal with stark reality harder than facing the wrath of audience and editors?

MRC:  I was initiated into poetry in a strange way. Being a Brahmin family, at our Imlitala house we were not allowed to eat chicken eggs. I was sent to fetch duck eggs from our Shia Muslim neighbour quite frequently. I was ten. The elder girl of their house whom I called Kulsum Apa was fifteen years old. She used to recite Ghalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz to me which I did not understand; but she explained those poems to me. She indirectly, through those poems, told me that she loves me. One day when I asked for the meat being cooked in their house because of the scent, she induced me into sexual relation. The meat was wonderful and she licked clean my lips with her tongue. After a few days, due to painful  scratches on my penis, I got scared and stopped going to Kulsum Apa's house. However, the impact of the poems remained. I had told about this sexual relation to my grandmother who told me to never talk about it to anyone in my life. I still miss Kulsum Apa. When I last visited Imlitala I enquired of the family and was told that they had sold their house and left Imlitala.

My next influence was again a girl of higher class named Namita Chakroborty at the Ram Mohun Roy Seminary, who doubled up as Librarian for the Bengali section. I had a great crush on her. She initiated me into Marxism and introduced me to works of Brahmo writers and poets including Rabindranath Tagore and Jibanananda Das. One day I had kept a chit on her table in which I had written "I love you". She had preserved the chit and showed it to one of my aunts after several years, when my name started appearing in magazines and papers. Both Kulsum Apa and Namitadi had dimples.

At Imlitala house we had two servants, Shivnanni and Ram Khelawan, who were paid in kind, that is food, dresses and shelter. Since they were servants they could not reprimand us children directly. Shivnanni knew Ramcharitmanas by heart. Ramkhelawan knew dohas of Kabir, Rahim and Dadu. Both of them reprimanded through quotations and explained the lines as well. Shivnanni used to play a game called Ramshalaka, that is a metal stick. You have to close your eyes, open a page and put the Ramshalaka on a line. Shivnanni explained how our day will pass based on the line.

Imlitala was considered a bad influence by Dad as we were exposed to free sex, toddy, cannabis, country liquor etc. He constructed a house in Dariapur and we shifted there. My elder brother Samir was packed off to Kolkata for post-school studies. It helped me. He joined groups of poets and brought lots of poetry collections and periodicals for me. Ginsberg had come to our Dariapur residence. Prior to that Ginsberg and Orlovsky had visited Samir at Chaibasa, Singhbhum and experienced Mahua drink.

I am not bothered about editors in my life. Only when I am requested do I send my poems and novels to them. Most of the editors are younger to me and they respect me. Yes, dealing with reality is harder. Earlier I used to maintain a bank of images, words, lines, sentences when I wrote with pen on paper, Now, because of arthritis of fingers, specially the thumb, the process has become difficult with the computer. Since I take a lot of medicines, including sleeping pills, I tend to forget these days.

TSC : What is your opinion of the current writing scene in Bangla and English in India? Are there any writers you like in particular?

MRC : I do not have much idea about what is happening in Indian Writing in English. As far as Bengali writing is concerned lot of exciting things are happening in the little magazine world. Every year a Little Magazine Fair is held apart from the Kolkata Book Fair. Book Fairs are also held at the district headquarters. This gives us a glimpse into a wide range of creative writing.

The poets whom I have noticed recently writing in a new way are Raka Dasgupta, Sridarshini Chakraborty, Mitul Dutta, Barin Ghoshal, Dhiman Chakraborty, Anupam Mukhopadhyay and Bahata Anshumali to name a few.

TSC : Are you concerned about the general rise of right-wing and other intolerant forces in India and elsewhere?

MRC: Yes, I am very much disturbed by the latest events taking place all over India. It appears that a worthless government run by cheaters was better than one influenced by fundamentalist criminals baying for blood of the meek and helpless. I wonder how this country had once given us Khajuraho, Puri temple, Meenakshi temple, Konarak, Ajanta, Ellora ; how kings enjoyed meat and wine after the Ashwamedh Yajna.

TSC: Is Neera in Sunil's poems and the one whose name appears in your poem "Please Don't tell my grandmother" the same person? Was she real? Was she a writer/ publisher who could be associated with the Generation? Is Mala in Debi roy's Malar Jonne real?  Was she too a poet associated with the Generation?

MRC : Yes, she is the same Neera. Sunil Gangopadhyay never asked for a poem from me for his magazine Krittibas. After his death his wife Swati Gangopadhyay became editor of Krittibas which Sunil used to edit. Krittibas asked me to contribute a poem. I had sent this poem but they were scared to publish it in Krittibas. They did not publish it and told me to replace it. Obviously I had to decline. But the fact became known to little magazine circle of poets and writers in Kolkata.

No, Debi Roy's wife Mala was not a poet ; she was a housewife. She died recently.

TSC Interviews | Hasan Mujtaba

Hasan Mujtaba is a Pakistani poet and journalist living in America in exile, as his work on the persecution of Hindus in Sindh earned him the wrath of his country's government. His poetry collection Koel Sheher Ki Katha has been recently released, with a foreword by journalist and novelist Mohammad Hanif. He spoke to The Sunflower Collective's Abhimanyu Singh at length about his work, his experience of exile, his love for Allen Ginsberg's poetry, and the murder of Sabeen Mahmud, his friend, among other things. Here are the edited excepts :

                                                                Source : wire.in

AS: Could you tell us the exact circumstances in which you decided to go into exile in the US? It appears that you were there to receive a prestigious award following which you decided to stay back?

HM: State and non-state actors were after my blood because of my journalistic work. I was an anti-military establishment journalist, poet and writer, and was also a nonconformist Sindhi, and openly bisexual in today’s Islamic Republic of Pakistan which I call as Intelligence Republic of Ghaibistan (the land of the disappeared). The last assignment I was doing as a journalist in Pakistan was on the state of Hindus in Sindh in the backdrop of India-Pakistan relations. So, in the words of the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz,"Every road that goes from here leads to the slaughter house." To escape death threats owing to my published work, I wanted to flee the country and take refuge anywhere in the world that respected human rights and freedom of expression. Invitation from the US to receive my Excellence in International Journalism Award from the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University came out of blue. I took it as a life jacket. America proved to be a promised land for my safety and freedom.

AS: Exile seems to play an important role in your poetic worldview. Could you elaborate on what it is that exile does to a poet? Have you come to terms with it, as the poem in the video seems to suggest?

HM: I did not come to America as an economic refugee but as a political exile. Pull and push factors between my country which I left behind and the new country where I arrived would really play buzkushi with me. It ripped me off every day and pieced me together in my dreams every night. That is why most of the poetry I wrote here revolves around exile. I think any poet and writer who has to say something which puts him into real hot waters must have a country of exile. But this is the beauty of America that it gives you a great opportunity for assimilation. Unlike your country, here you don’t have to look above your shoulder. Or you lend your ear to your doorbell.It is the rootlessness: walking between your country of origin and what Rushdie calls the imagined homeland; your country of origin evaporates into a metaphor.

AS: Do you intend to ever return? What is it that you miss the most about Pakistan? Do you think the murder of Sabeen Mahmud marked a new low?

HM: Well, I return every second or third night in my dreams in my sleep. I have made America my home but Sindh exists somewhere else. I want to return one day like Gabriel Garcia Marquez returns in his ‘Clandestine in Chile’. Or, only after my death, in the form of my ashes to be scattered onto Sindhu, the river Indus. So far, I don’t intend to return. I will return when the country really starts to respect human rights and stops killing Sabeen Mehmuds. Her killing was a political but state sponsored assassination which of course has sent the country into its lowest. Everyone close to her knows well Sabeen was killed because she hosted a seminar on Baluchistan. Talking on Baluchistan differently than the official line of the State means inviting death for yourself.Of course, I miss my friends, my parents who are ageing, people and places I visited. I wish I could revisit them again. And the people I fell in and made love with.

AS : The poem in the video pays an ode to Allen Ginsberg. Tell us about your relationship with his work and why do you think he remains relevant?

HM: I was in my late teens when I was captivated by a single line of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl that I read as a passing reference in a book that I had bought from a used book cart in my city Hyderabad in Sindh. The line was: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked….”I was so amazed by the writings about Allen Ginsberg and the Beat generation that I went to the local library of the erstwhile American Center and got his collection of poetry Howl. Later, I was fascinated by his Indian Journals and other works. It made me think he was to India like Ravi Shankar was to America. He was, I thought, up to building bridges between eastern philosophy with western civilization, especially American sub-culture and literature. I developed an image of America in mind that was in Allen Ginsberg’s poetry. When I came to America, he was still alive. My friend Ifti Nasim (who died in July 2011,alas, men of his ilk take centuries to be born in Pakistani and Muslim societies; He was a poet, and a gay rights activist in main stream LGBT movement in America) came to America in mid 1970s and had a chance meeting with Allen Ginsberg. I had then read him in American libraries and heard about him a lot through Ifti. This was Allen Ginsberg who did not only change the culture and every day slang of America but even influenced my generation in the East or subcontinent of South Asia. I stayed around Columbia University. I would hang out with my other exiled friends like Zafaryab Ahmed and another in a famous bar called West End near Columbia University, and in the Greenwich Village where Allen Ginsberg and his comrades used to hang out. And with my American sociologist friend Amy Donavan in the Greenwich Village. There were other personalities like Edward Said I saw in Columbia and Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn. Yet, it was a different America. Different Greenwich Village. The world was different in pre-September 2001 period, till terrorists attacked America. To me, America meant poetry of Allen Ginsberg and New York. It is from the stairs of the New York Public Library, right on the Fifth Avenue, that I saw the Hare Rama Hare Krishna parade. And I saw a man towards the end of the line in the parade looking like Allen Ginsberg. I did relate that all to the giant American poet and his spiritual connection to India, and to myself in America and back to Sindh to the streets of Schwan and all. It unfolded to me like the opening of floodgates of Deja vu sort of feelings, and thoughts . It really swept me away from across the Atlantic to Sindh, from Hudson to Sindhu and the sub-continent. I return with the poem dedicated to Allen Ginsberg.

AS: Could you tell us a little about your new collection? Who are the poets other than Ginsberg that inspire you? What role does Sindh play in your poetry?

HM: “Koel Shahar Ki Katha” ( A tale of cuckoo’s city) is a collection of Urdu and some Punjabi poetry (as I write poetry in my native language Sindhi , Urdu, Punjabi and little in English as well) consisting of poems I wrote during my years of exile in New York. It has been published by Saanjh Publishers, Lahore with a foreword by my friend and novelist Mohammed Hanif. Though I have made America my home, Sindh is the center of gravity of my poetry. It includes a poem about my exilic experience in New York City though. My book begins with an ode to Allen Ginsberg and ends on a poem against Mumbai attacks titled “Zia-ul-Haq talking from his grave”. May be you will find it a little different from the traditional and modern Urdu poetry. There are some cuss words. There are curses against generals and dictators. There is a poem against killing of children in the mosque of Rawalpindi in the name of God. There is a poem on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; Benazir Bhutto of my poetry is different than the Benazir I would love to criticize in my journalistic writings. Of course, there are love poems based on the theme of love for both man and woman, including my own favorite poem written on missing a beloved, ‘That boy with the name of Yosuif’. I have made my own kind of Sindh in America: Sindh in exile. There is a poem in Punjabi on sale of the house of Amrita Pritam that was I have heard razed to ground, with a plaza to be built over its site. And there is a ‘song of missing persons’, about the people who were made to disappear at the hands of military in Pakistan: the Baluchs and the Sindhis. There was a poem against Taliban which my publisher refrained to include in the collection. Besides Allen Ginsberg, I am deeply influenced by the great Sufi and Sindhi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, and, doyen of Sindhi poetry Shaikh Ayaz( Shaikh Ayaz would have been a Nobel Prize Laureate if he had found a translator befitting his poetry), Imdad Hussaini, Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, all classical masters Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib to modern day Urdu poet Gulzar, Afzal Ahmed Syed, Fehmida Riaz, German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, American poets Silvia Plath, Charles Bukowski, Maya Angelou, and Punjabi poets great Sufi Bulleh Shah and today’s Najam Hussain Sayed, Kabir and Rumi and my own beloved friend and Sindhi poet Hasan Dars who died young; new promising voice Amar Sindhu is in the list of poets I have madly fallen in love with all my life.         

AS : The Amhed episode involving the clock shows America might be dealing with rampant Islamophobia. Does it colour your everyday existence?

HM: This is an unfortunate incident but Ahmed is lucky he wasn’t a Sindhi, a Hindu, and living in Sindh under Pakistan. I know a Hindu engineer who tried to invent an electronic gadget was harassed and hounded by the military spies. Another brilliant engineer Ashok Kumar is still missing on charges of a wireless found from his office since 1973. A Hindu journalist who was mistakenly included in a group of reporters visiting the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant came under intense investigation. However, as a Latin American proverb goes,“exile is a cow which sometimes gives poisonous milk.” So sometimes here in America, unfortunately, everybody does experience attitudes, treatment, or even discrimination by everyone else on basis of his or her color of skin, religion, national origins, faith, sect, culture, nationality, race , sex or sexual orientation on everyday basis on every level in a very crude or unseemly way, although that’s not what America is all about. It’s unlawful and unconstitutional in America . As far as Islamophobia is concerned, there is a thin line between it and the Islamo-fascism the world is facing these days. But I am optimistic the world will be a livable place for everyone again.