TSC Interviews | Juliet Reynolds | Part 3

Juliet Reynolds, well-known art critic and wife of the Hungryalist painter Anil Karanjai, met the editors of the Sunflower Collective at their Jor Bagh residence recently for a chat about her husband and his art, the art-world of India and in general, and the Leftist politics and its understanding of art. This is the final part of a three part series.

 A Portrait of  Ustad Ali Akbar Khan by  Anil Karanjai

JR: I know artists who paint their politics in their art.

AS: They make it very obvious...

GB: Obvious, yeah...

JR: Flag waving! Anil was against slogan-mongering in art.

GB: It’s across art I think...

JR: This was in the 80’s, he said it: “Art can be the propaganda of life.” He stuck by that. He felt it very strongly. There was a separation in his mind between what he did in art and those posters and things... He did those for many leftist organisations, or for PUDR (People’s Union for Democratic Rights); he designed their logo. Also, he did something on the rights of tribals; he did a sticker on it. He felt that was a part of his activism. He was using his skill as an artist for activism purposes. He wasn’t creating art; his art, he felt, was autonomous. He was very strict about that.

AS: But they did not get that?

JR: No, no, not at all. I don’t think anybody gets it to this day.

GB: Why did you think of leaving this place and go to Dehradun? Was it a gradual thing?

AS: A disenchantment?

JR: When my mother died, there was the possibility of buying something. But we didn’t have enough money to buy something in a nice part of Delhi. Neither did we want to live in a suburb. Anil had been to Dehradun because someone who used to deal in his work had connections there, a friend actually, one of the people who behaved quite nicely all along and gave a lot of support to Anil.

GB: He has many paintings of Anil?

JR: A lot of collectors who have Anil’s work have it through him. His name was Ashok Batra. He died a few years after Anil. It was a big blow to me. He was from Doon School. Through him, Anil got invited to do workshops in Doon School. Anil wasn’t particularly keen on that as he didn’t like the environment or what he was being paid, but he liked Dehradun. When the possibility came up to buy something, he said Dehradun was a good place as it was not too far from Delhi.

GB: It is written in your book that it was him who suggested it...

JR: It was his idea and not mine. I wouldn’t have thought of it. If I wanted to buy something, I would have gone straight to Goa. I like the sea; I was born by the sea; I loved the sea. But it wasn’t practical, I accept that, because of the distance. So that’s how it happened. It wasn’t that we had been thinking about it for years...but then he hardly got any time there.

GB: That’s what...

JR: The irony of it is that he got just one summer there.

GB: That’s what I have been thinking since I read your book.

JR: Just four and a half months.

GB: That’s very sad.

JR: Very sad and very ironic also.

GB: Very poetic in some sense, and especially the last phase of art that he did there...

JR: He was very prolific there.

GB: Yeah, you have written about it. It was quite touching, that part.

JR: Mostly small works but beautiful. Again, I can’t get anyone to understand that. Very few people get it. Even close friends and family... This is a great pity because I want to sell some works. I’ve got this trust in Anil’s name and I have no money in the account at all but this year I had to pay the accountant to file the tax returns! (chuckles) Nothing has happened all year, no transactions. I am not doing anything with it. The whole idea of the trust ...

GB: ...was to promote that?

JR: ...his memory plus doing this work with autistic kids.

AS: You mentioned his family and friends...

JR: Yes, they like the images but they say you must sell the oil on canvas. I don’t get it. Throughout art history, some great works have been done on paper, small works...it doesn’t always have to be the larger works, the oil paintings.

AS: They are only interested in the works on canvas?

JR: Maybe...one sells small works on paper at a lesser price, that’s fair enough. I’ve got such a collection of beautiful works in pastels. They’re exquisite. People should be buying them. If they want to fill their walls, they can buy more than one at a time.

AS: I would like to ask you if Anil had burned all his bridges with the Left?

JR: No. People like Vijay Singh – he is an academic but he edits Revolutionary Democracy – they had tremendous respect for him.

AS: Even Suneet Chopra of the CPM knew him well I think...

GB: I think what he is trying to say is that things can get pretty bad when you protest against the comrades.

JR: Earlier, he did not criticise them at all. They could do nothing wrong. I used to fight with him. Then I gave up. Anil and Suneet had ideological differences. Anil would curse the CPM and their attitude.  But Suneet did not have a problem. Suneet always admired Anil’s work very much. Suneet has written good pieces on Anil. Suneet was the one person who got it when Anil started painting landscapes. Anil had an exhibition, in 1991 I think. It was right in the beginning when he was experimenting with landscapes. They were difficult works; they were not so easy to like. Even I was like, oh my god, what’s he doing... But then this exhibition took place – I wasn’t here; I had gone to England to stay with my mother. But Suneet covered it for the Economic Times, I think. He got the relation between Anil’s work and Indian classical music. Anil was a great connoisseur.

GB: I have been meaning to ask about your plans...

JR: Among other things, I would like to find a home for some of the paintings in a museum.

Read Part 2 of this interview here
Read Part 1 of this interview here

     

TSC Interviews | Juliet Reynolds | Part 2

Juliet Reynolds, well-known art critic and wife of the Hungryalist painter Anil Karanjai, met the editors of the Sunflower Collective at their Jor Bagh residence recently for a chat about her husband and his art, the art-world of India and in general, and the Leftist politics and its understanding of art. 

The following discussion was preceded by Juliet Reynolds objecting to Malay Ray Choudhury making certain remarks about Anil Karanjai’s time in the US and his first marriage, in an earlier interview  with us. We would like to note that and make it known that we do not believe in censoring any form   of expression. However, it is also not our intention to cause anyone hurt and we regret any misunderstanding. This is part two of a three part series.  

    

Painting by  Anil Karanjai from the series called  'Solace in Solitude' painted during the last year of his life.

Another landscape by  Anil Karanjai

AS/GB: Anil fell out with the Leftists, isn’t it?

JR:  Anil went to America when the movement was gone.

GB: What time…

JR: He went in 1974. The Naxal movement was over by then. It wasn’t that he was running away which some of the comrades did. Anil did not do anything like that. He just left. Nothing dramatic, like getting chased, escaping… nothing like that. He was quite good at covering his tracks when the thing was going on, except they had raids, they raided the studio and all the material was taken by the cops.

GB: That Malay da mentioned.

JR: So that’s why I have almost no material. I have almost nothing from the 60’s …the police took it and he never got it back. Terrible waste, terrible.

GB: The raid was in Benaras?

JR: They were everywhere but the raid on these guys, yes. The police were following them also. They developed a kind of code in which they talked nonsense stuff to mislead the police… bullshitting you know (chuckles). So, yeah…when he came back (from the States) he continued to meet these people. Kanchan Kumar was bringing out Amukh, so Anil designed the logo; he also designed the logo of PUDR (People’s Union of Democratic Rights), he did the portraits of martyrs… Sometimes, posters and stuff he would do. And most of them would not respect his work. He used to feel really mad about that. But he never went and denounced them elsewhere. All his criticism, he would keep to himself. That hurt badly. Once they had organized an event and they asked him to do portraits of their martyrs and he went to tremendous pains to do these portraits well, black and white, not oil portraits,  but still they were very nicely done and after the rally was over, they were all torn and thrown on to the ground.

And then, when he started painting his landscapes, they really turned against him.

AS: They must have thought it was not “committed” art, or not for the people.

GB: It was probably too existential or individualistic for them.

JR: Yeah.

AS: They have their stock insults for people who don’t toe their line.

JR: Yeah. He used to feel sad or angry about this. He wasn’t at all happy about it. He called them nincompoops, half-educated fellows, illiterates….

GB: It is interesting to know that Benaras already had a communist movement going on there because we did not have much of a clue.

AS: Yeah.

JR: I think because of the Bengal connection. Huge numbers…the fixed population itself when I went there first in the late seventies, was at least 40% Bengali…and others came due to migration and pilgrimages. Now it’s much, much less. There are no jobs and they are going away. Benaras was half Bengali, all these schools and libraries…Anil was educated in a Bengali medium school, and not in Hindi. He learnt Hindi.  I think now they have scrapped that; there is no Bengali medium education in Benaras anymore. But in his time, it was very much there, you could walk out in the streets and every otherperson is speaking Bengali. Even the fish seller who came to Anil’s house spoke Bengali. Anil’s mother spoke no Hindi at all. All the vegetable vendors also spoke in Bengali. So it was mostly because of that.

GB: And he used to frequent Kolkata.

JR: He used to go there. Even after the Hungry Generation…for his artistic quest also.

He came close to Gopal Ghosh. He was a kind of a mentor (to him). Gopal Ghosh painted landscapes. I did not realise till very late how much the Ghosh family knew Anil. One of these dealers that cheated Anil, which I wrote about in the book (Finding Neema), one of the things he was able to get out of Anil was an introduction to Ghosh’s family. They trusted Anil, he introduced them to this man, and he ripped them off. He sweet talked Anil and Anil was not somebody who got taken in by people but he was getting tired and worn out by then. These were the kind of things that were happening at the end. Gopal Ghosh was quite an important figure in his life. When the Naxalite movement was going on – Anil told me this story – some journalist asked him, pointing at a flower painting, “why are you painting this when bloodshed is going on outside?” “You see, my roses are red”, (Ghosh said). The point was, the emotion Ghosh was expressing through his landscape, it was not unrelated to what was going on around him.

Read Part 1 of this interview here

Read Part 3 of this interview here

TSC Interviews | Juliet Reynolds | Part 1

Juliet Reynolds, well-known art critic and wife of the Hungryalist painter Anil Karanjai, met the editors of the Sunflower Collective at their Jor Bagh residence recently for a chat about her husband and his art, the art-world of India and in general, and the Leftist politics and its understanding of art. The conversation started with a discussion about a previous post on TSC describing Karanjai as "embittered" towards the end of his life. This is part one of a three part series. 

Anil at the Kausali artists' camp hosted by Vivan Sundaram in 1978.
Source : Facebook Page

JR: I was just a bit taken aback by the word ‘embittered’. And I got your point; you clarified it. Anil’s…wasn’t so much embitterment.

AS: I understand.

JR: In the Malay interview, that word comes up again. It hit me…

AS: Has Malay da used the word?

GB: I think one of the questions had it…

AS: Actually, that’s my understanding from reading the book (Finding Neema). I don’t put a negative value to bitterness. I like Bob Dylan; his songs are bitter. I think any reasonable person will feel bitter with this world because it is unfair.

JR: Bitterness was never really in Anil’s character. He could be very fiery; he would express a lot of rage and anger. But he also had a very soft, quiet side; he would feel sad about it then. There was a sad side to Anil…(almost) melancholic. He would feel deep sadness about things that had gone wrong…and then at times, he’d be furious. Maybe, in a way, there was an element of bitterness…

GB (to AS): I think you had meant to say that his experience was bitter…

AS: Yes.

GB: Not that as a man he was bitter.

JR: Ok, we clarified it now.

AS: He had taken to painting landscapes which were not considered highly in terms of concept.

JR: For him, landscapes were his own rebellion against mainstream art which was more and more imitating the trends in the West; he always felt strongly about that…art going into post-modernism, installation, he refused to do it.

AS: What is your view on it?

JR: Very rarely have I seen anything (of this sort) which struck a chord in me…emotional or intellectual. Recently, I was at the Royal Academy in London and I saw Ai Weiwei’s work and it was mostly installations. I was skeptical at first… because he is critical of the Communist regime so the West is making him very big…but I recognised that the man really has something, he has originality. Anish Kapoor is a midget in front of him, frankly.

AS: You don’t care much for his work?

JR: No. Highly over-rated.

AS: And Subodh Gupta?

JR: Also highly over-rated. Ridiculous. And it is not particularly new exhibiting bartan and garbage …even people like Vivan Sundaram, from an older generation, a really well-trained, very skillful artist, even he has piled up garbage at the Lalit Kala Akademi.

AS: Do you think identity is being peddled in the name of art?

JR: Certainly, I think there is tokenism. Anil was not only against it … from deep inside his core he could not do (what others were doing). It did not come from within. If his art did not come from somewhere deep inside him, he wasn’t going to do it.

There were many aspects to his painting landscapes. One was going against the mainstream. But he never protested for the sake of it. He was drawn to landscapes because he liked going into nature. He got a great feeling of solace and comfort from it. There is a film on him…

GB: Which was shown at the Sahitya Akademi?

JR: Yes, and he talks of spiritual loneliness in it. He wasn’t religious though.So that connection with nature he felt. He also wanted to give a contemporary, modern language to landscape while not straying too far from realism. That got him into a lot of trouble. Some called it calendar art. Anil looked at calendar art. He wanted to bridge the gap between high art and low art, to communicate with people. He was not interested in painting only for the elite. He wanted to communicate with as wide a public as possible.. (Of course) no artist is going to produce a masterpiece every time. It takes trial and error, experimentation. That happens to every artist. But everywhere his detractors would be saying  “aah”, “ooh”…“look at him, he’s painting Lodhi Gardens”. Lodhi Gardens was the closest place where he could be in nature. Like Cézanne, he was exploring the forms of nature, something much deeper, something more rooted; like Cézanne painted that mountain in Southern France (Mont Sainte Victoire ) hundreds of times, looking for something, that feeling he would get standing in front of it, how could he capture that feeling?

AS: Do you think he was protesting against the diktats of the Progressive movement and its emphasis on social realism?

JR: He knew about the Modern masters and paid homage to them in his early works. But he was not very influenced by any one artist. Maybe in his early years he liked the old master, Hieronymus Bosch… To be a Modernist, your work had to be full of contortions and distortions, he was also turning his back on that. But it wasn’t just for the sake of it,it was because he felt it also.

GB: It was more organic…

AS/ GB: Tell us about his politics?

JR: The Hungry Generation were anarchists, nihilsts. But Anil did not share that; from a very early stage, he was associated with the Left, the far-Left. I think he became a cadre of one of the mainstream Marxist parties also but they told him that he should wear dirty shoes when going to the people, that he should fill up these forms if he wanted to be promoted up the hierarchy, so he told them to take a running jump.

AS: So he did not favour their dogma and pretences?

JR: Oh no no! Never! But when the revolutionary movement was going on…

AS: You mean the Naxal movement?

JR: Yeah…He wasn't in Bengal at that time but he would go to Calcutta…. Also, there were student movements going on in Benaras, he was involved in all that. You couldn’t just define him narrowly. Anything which was questioning the status quo, something with solid foundation that could overthrow the status quo, anything of that kind had his support.
To come to Malay, they did not really share politics. Anil used to tell me that he did not really share their politics, anarchism and all that…it was because of the anti-establishment stance that he was part of the movement. And also, the energy and their creativity.He joined them for that. He was a bit at odds with their politics although not in any major kind of way. But he stuck to them because the Hungry Generation experience for Anil was life-changing.  I never realised until much later how much he missed it. In fact, Malay came here once, just once…

GB: In fact, he told me about you and that’s how we got in touch.

JR: Anil talked a lot about Malay after that and how much the movement had meant to him. Anil and Karuna (Nidhan, another Hungryalist painter ) were in Benaras at that time, with flower children and hippies…

GB: And the student politics…

JR: Yes, and I don’t know why the Hungry Generation fell apart, maybe there were ego problems…

GB: More than that, I think there were mass-arrests and the government…

JR: …Cracked down on them. But there were some differences between them, between Malay and others…

GB: There are.

JR: Yeah.


Read Part 2 of this interview here
Read Part 3 of this interview here

Review of BBC 3 documentary: Ginsberg in India | The Sunflower Collective

Source: http://asiasociety.org/

Allen Ginsberg came to India for the first time in early sixties. These were important times for India; most importantly, its long standing dispute with China over Tibet and border areas reached a crescendo in the shape of a war in 1962. Ginsberg was in India when the war was on. However, his travelogue Indian Journals, which documented his time here barely mentioned the war which India lost miserably. (Within two years of the defeat, Pandit Nehru passed away; he and his defence minister V.K.Krishna Menon were heavily blamed for not being able to anticipate China’s aggressive designs. Both Nehru and Menon were considered leftists, the latter more so and their ideological orientation was cited by the critics as the prime reason behind their slip to identify the threat posed by China. The war with China divided the Indian Left also, with one faction of the Communist Party of India deciding to go its own way over the issue of support to the fellow communists on the other side of the Himalayas.)

The silence of a poet like Ginsberg on such matters, whose poetry was always deeply and directly concerned with political developments the world over, can only be called puzzling, to say the least and any one going through Indian Journals is likely to be intrigued by it.

The recent radio documentary by Jeet Thayil, Booker nominated novelist and poet, looks into this and other questions which continue to interest lovers of beat poetry and literature in general. It deserves praise for at least looking into an aspect of literary history that has largely been forgotten despite its uniqueness and far-reaching consequences.

Take the matter of the Indo-China war. The documentary has the writer Deborah Baker telling us that Ginsberg believed India was turning into a “militaristic” state by warring with China and that he wanted to go on a peace march with “Gandhians” to protest this – her book A Blue Hand: Beats in India has more on this.

It can be safely said that Ginsberg’s views on India becoming “militaristic” were either naïve or deliberately cruel. The troubles with China had roots in the colonial period and were chiefly concerned with its occupation of Tibet to which India objected, apart from the delineation of the boundary between the two Asian giants. Dalai Lama was given shelter by India after China invaded his country in an act of naked imperialism, all the more ironic because the aggressor was a communist country. To say that a country was turning “militaristic” when involved in self-defense is utter baloney and even Gandhi would have never agreed to it; one only needs to remember his support to Britain and allies in Second World War to understand this simple point. 

Poet and critic Ranjit Hoskote makes no bones in the same documentary about Ginsberg’s attitude towards India in general and terms it as an example of Orientalism. This is further illustrated by the Hungryalist poet Malay Roy Choudhury in the documentary. He mentions that Ginsberg only clicked beggars, lepers and the poor in India, at the exclusion of almost everything else. He narrates that his photographer father had admonished the Beat poet for the same, telling him: “whether a poet or a tourist, you white people are all the same.”

By choosing to look at India as being  good only for a certain kind of experience and refusing to consider that it was a developing nation coming to terms with its own destiny – not willing to stay encumbered by expectations of foreigners – Ginsberg is certainly guilty of prima facie Orientalism.

It must be noted that Ginsberg also met with tantriks and bauls who are not traditionally upper-caste and it is not this author's intention to suggest that he was a dyed-in-the-wool Orientalist; rather, there were traces of Orientalism in his attitude.

His love for Benaras, a continually inhabited city, which is how he described it in his last poem too, was a metaphor for his love for the Indian civilization: a continuum existing as it was for millennia, regardless of space and time.  However, it was only an image in Ginsberg’s mind when he came; his fault was to deliberately stick to this image despite contrasting facts, and his sullen refusal to accept the country in all its contradictions. For example, he did not once mention in his book that the burning ghats which fascinated him so much had a caste system of their own and Dalits could not be cremated at the spots marked for the higher-castes.

It is entirely possible that Ginsberg was following the foot-steps of the Transcendentalists, his literary fore-fathers whose debt he always accepted but he did not question their attitudes towards India. The Transcendentalists had also looked towards India for spiritual guidance and glorified the Gita, a text which is abhorred by India’s Dalits for its militaristic and reactionary philosophy that asks people to leave everything in the hands of God and keep perpetuating the system ad infinitum, regardless of the violence inherent in Hinduism’s caste system. Had Ginsberg not heard that B.R. Ambedkar gave a call for the annihilation of caste decades ago? Why was Ginsberg so obsessed with Indian Sadhus and their mumbo-jumbo instead, who have, through the centuries, acted as agents of perpetuating Hinduism along with its pernicious caste system which has oppressed and enslaved millions of people for so long?

There is also the slight matter of the Hungryalists. In a lengthy interview to The Sunflower Collective recently, Malay RC said quite categorically that Ginsberg spent close to two years with Bengali poets, including the Hungryalists, whose manifestos he collected and admired. According to Malay RC, it was only after coming in contact with the Hungryalists that the Blake vision departed from Ginsberg, and his poetry adopted a Bengali cadence, so to say, apart from imbibing the Indian attitudes to life and its phenomena in general. The documentary would have been enriched if the context to the Hungryalist movement had been provided in greater detail and the links between Beats and their Bengali counterparts (despite differences) looked into further.

The documentary also cites poets like Adil Jussawalla whom Ginsberg met while in Bombay. We can sense the annoyance Jussawala must have felt with Ginsberg’s patronising attitude; with hardly any inflection in his voice, he tells us that Ginsberg preferred the Urdu poets to the English ones at a reading organised in Bombay and sat at their feet “entranced” although he understood no Urdu. 

All said and done, Ginsberg was a complex man. While his conscious being was that of a white tourist in India, he did allow his poetic sub-conscious to be open to India’s rich and varied influence. 

He had an epiphany about his inclination towards Buddhism in India, leading to his subsequent conversion. (Ambedkar had also converted to Buddhism and maybe in this way, Ginsberg showed his aversion to Hinduism’s caste system.) The poetic influence will always be hard to prove and it was not only a one-way street. Arun Kolatkar, legendary Indian English poet, who met Ginsberg when he had visited Bombay, did acknowledge the Beat poet’s influence on his work. Ginsberg was also quite punctilious in writing to his Indian contacts, including several writers, to solicit their support for Malay RC when he faced an obscenity trial over his poetry and manifestos, along with other Hungryalist writers. 

While it will always be difficult to include everything that went on in the years Ginsberg spent in India, it can be said in conclusion that the documentary should have enquired more into the literary aspects of Ginsberg’s Indian travels and examined his Orientalism. Still, it makes a contribution to a better understanding of Ginsberg and his time here and must be welcomed for that reason.    

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.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 5

Photo : Gb

স্যানিটারি ন্যাপকিন
মলয় রায়চৌধুরী

ভালোবাসা ওই মেয়েটির মতো, যার
স্কুলে যাওয়া বন্ধ হয়ে গেল ; মাসে
সাড়ে তিন দিন কাপড়ে শুকনো ঘাস
বেঁধে, পরে থাকতে হবে ; বর্ষায়
ঘাস তো সবুজ, তখন কাপড়ে ছাই
মুড়ে, রক্ত শুষে রাখবার তরকিবে
চুপচাপ বইহীন একা বসে থাকা ।


Sanitary Napkin
Malay Roychoudhury | Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta

Love is like that girl, who
had to drop out of school;
Three-and-a-half days each month,
Must wear dry grass tied in cloth;
In monsoon, the grass is green,
So, ash wrapped in cloth,
to soak up the blood,
seated quietly, alone, book-less.







Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 4

Source: http://www.freeimages.com/

আমার ঠাকুমাকে যেন বলবেন না
মলয় রায়চৌধুরী


উনি আমায় পছন্দ করতে বারণ করেছিলেন
আপনি কেন পছন্দ করছেন, নীরা ?
আমি আজও শুঁয়াপোকাঠাশা ঈশানমেঘে চিৎসাঁতার দিই
উনি পঞ্চাশ বছর আমার কাছে কবিতা চাননি
আপনি কেন চাইছেন, নীরা ?
আমি আজও জলের দশ-পা গভীরে দাঁড়িও বরফের লাঠি চালাই
উনি আমার সাবজুডিস মামলায় সম্পাদকীয় লিখেছিলেন
আপনি সম্পাদক হয়ে কেন লেখা চাইছেন, নীরা ?
আমি আজও স্মোকড পেংগুইনের চর্বির পরোটা খেতে ভালোবাসি
উনি আমার কবিতার বইয়ের প্রকাশক হয়েও স্বীকার করেননি
আপনি কেন স্বীকার করছেন, নীরা ?
আমি আজও দুপুর গেরস্হের হাঁ-মুখে সেঁদিয়ে ফ্যামিলিপ্যাক হাই তুলি
উনি আমার নাম উচ্চারণ করতে চাইতেন না
আপনি কেন তরুণদের কাছে করছেন, নীরা ?
আমি রক্তঘোলা জলে টাইগার শার্কদের সঙ্গে বলিউডে নাচে গান গাই
উনি বলেছিলেন ওর মধ্যে সত্যিকারের লেখকের কোনো ব্যাপার নেই
আপনি কেন মনে করছেন আছে, নীরা ?
আমি ইমলিতলায় জানতুম কাঠকয়লা ছাড়া ইঁদুর পোড়ায় স্বাদ হয় না
উনি বলেছিলেন ওর কোনো ক্রিয়েটিভ দিক নেই
আপনি কেন মনে করছেন আছে, নীরা ?
আমি অন্তত পাঁচ হাজার কোটি টাকার ব্যাঙ্কনোট পুড়িয়ে মড়ার গন্ধ পেয়েছি
উনি বলেছিলেন ওর দ্বারা কোনোদিন কবিতা লেখা হবে না
আপনি কেন মনে করছেন হয়েছে, নীরা ?
আমি অ্যামস্টারডমের খালপাড়ে দাঁড়িয়ে হাঁকরা বুড়োদের লিরিক শুনেছি
উনি সেসময়ে দুঃখ থেকে রাগ আর রাগ থেকে বিতৃষ্ণায় উঠেছেন
আপনি এত উদার কেন, নীরা ?
আমার ঠাকুমাকে যেন প্লিজ বলবেন না ।

 
Please Don’t Tell My Grandmother
Malay Roychoudhury | Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta


He asked you not to like me,
So why did you, Neera?
Even now, I perform breaststrokes in caterpillar-stuffed north eastern clouds
He didn’t ask me for any poems for 50 years,
So why are you asking now, Neera?
Even now, standing in 10-foot-deep water, I wield icy rods
He wrote an editorial on my sub-judice case,
Turning an editor, why are you asking for my writing, Neera?
Even now, I love flatbreads stuffed with smoked penguin fat
He did not confess to being my anthology’s publisher
Why did you confess, Neera?
Even now, I have family-pack yawns in the face of families,
He didn’t like pronouncing my name
So why are you telling it to youths, Neera?
Even now, in bloody waters, I join the Bollywood chorus of tiger sharks
He had said I have nothing of a true writer
So why do you think I do, Neera?
At Imlitala, I knew rat roasts don’t taste too good without charcoal smoke
He said I have nothing creative in me
So why do you think I do, Neera?
Having burnt bank notes worth Rs 5,000 crore, I smelt death
He said I’ll never write poetry
So why do you think I have, Neera?
On the banks of Amsterdam’s canals I have heard doddering old men sing limericks
He transcended from sorrow to anger and anger to hate
Why are you so generous Neera?
Please don’t tell my grandmother.















Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 3

Homage to Picasso by Hungryalist Painter Anil Karanjai
Source: Facebook Page (with permission from his wife Juliet Reynolds)

কমেডি হল ট্র্যাজেডির পরগাছা
মলয় রায়চৌধুরী


কী নাম ছিল যেন সেই সম্পাদকের ? 'জনতা' পত্রিকার? ১৯৬১ সালে
লিখেছিলেন, 'টিকবে না, টিকবে না', প্রথম পাতায়!
উনি? হ্যাঁ, বোধহয় মোগাম্বো ওনার নাম ।
তারপরে ১৯৬২, ১৯৬৩, ১৯৬৪, ১৯৬৫, ১৯৬৬
কে যেন সেই বেঁটেখাটো লোকটা, লিখেছিল দৈনিকে
'ওঃ, ও আর কতো দিন, টিকবে না, টিকবে না', সাহিত্য বিভাগে
কী যেন কি ছিল নাম, আরে সেই যে, সপ্ল্যানেডে, বুকস্টলে
মনে পড়ছে না ? কোথায় গেলেন উনি, সেই যে!
গাবদাগতর এক লিটল ম্যাগাজিনে লিখলেন—
উনি ? হ্যাঁ, বোধহয় ডক্টর ডাঙ ওনার নাম ।
তারপরে ১৯৬৭, ১৯৬৮, ১৯৬৯, ১৯৭০, ১৯৭১, ১৯৭২
মনে আসছে না ? চোখে চশমা, হন হন পাশ কাটিয়ে—
উনি ? হ্যাঁ, বোধহয় গব্বর সিং ওনার নাম ।
কেন যা পারো না রাখতে মনে করে ওনাদের পিতৃদত্ত নাম ;
পঞ্চাশ বছরেই ভুলে গেলে ? গেলেন কোথায় ওঁরা !
আরে সেই যে সেই ঢোলা প্যান্ট চাককাটা বুশশার্ট ?
লিখলেন অতো করে, 'টিকবে না, টিকবে না' !
তারপরে ১৯৭৩, ১৯৭৪, ১৯৭৫, ১৯৭৬, ১৯৭৭, ১৯৭৮, ১৯৭৯
১৯৮০, ১৯৮১, ১৯৮২, ১৯৮৩, ১৯৮৪, ১৯৮৫
১৯৮৬, ১৯৮৭, ১৯৮৮, ১৯৮৯, ১৯৯০, ১৯৯১, ১৯৯২
১৯৯৩, ১৯৯৪, ১৯৯৫, ১৯৯৬, ১৯৯৭, ১৯৯৮, ১৯৯৯
২০০০, ২০০১, ২০০২, ২০০৩, ২০০৪, ২০০৫, ২০০৬, ২০০৭
২০০৮, ২০০৯, ২০১০, ২০১১, ২০১২, ২০১৩, ২০১৪
কী ? মনে পড়ছে না এখনও ! অদ্ভুত লোক তো তুমি !
অতোগুলো লেখক সম্পাদক কবি পই পই করে
লিখে গেল, 'টিকবে না, টিকবে না, বেশিদিন টিকবে না
শিগগিরই ভুলে যাবে লোকে ।' অথচ তাদেরই নাম
মনে আনতে এতো হিমসিম ? তবে তাই হোক ।
মোগাম্বো ডক্টর ডাঙ আর গব্বর সিংহ নামে
বাঙালির ইতিহাসে ওনাদের তুলে রেখে দিই ।



Comedy is Tragedy’s Parasite
Malay Roychoudhury |Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta


What was the name of that editor of Janata? 1961:
On the front page, he wrote: “Won’t last, won’t last!”
Him? Maybe he is called Mogambo.
Then 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966
Who was that short man, wrote in the daily literary supplement
“That? How long will that last? Won’t last.”
What was his name? That man, at the Esplanade book stall
Can’t remember? Where did he go, that man?
In a famous little magazine he wrote—
Him? Maybe he is called Dr Dang
Then 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972
Can’t recall? Thick glasses, a swift stride—
Him? Maybe he is called Gabbar Singh
Why can’t you remember the names their fathers gave them?
Forgotten in just 50 years? Where did they go?
And that fellow who wore loose trousers and a bush shirt
And wrote so many times: “Won’t last, won’t last.”
Then 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979,
1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985,
1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992,
1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
What? Can’t remember yet? What a strange fellow you are!
So many writers, editors, poets repeatedly
Wrote: “Won’t last, won’t last, won’t last too long
People will forget soon.” And yet you struggle
To recall their names? Then let it be!
Let Mogambo, Dr Dang and Gabbar Singh
Be their names in the history of Bengalis.

Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 2

ইনসমনিয়া

মলয় রায়চৌধুরী

লেখা পায় । লিখি ।।

খিদে পায় । খাই ।।

প্রেম পায় । করি ।।

জ্বালা পায় । জ্বলি ।।

নেশা পায় । গিলি ।।

হাসি পায় । হাসি ।।

ছোঁয়া পায় । ছুঁই ।।

দেখা পায় । দেখি ।।

রান্না পায় । রাঁধি ।।

দান পায় । থুই ।।

পড়া পায় । পড়ি ।।

শোয়া পায় । শুই ।।

হিসি পায় । মুতি ।।

হাই পায় । তুলি ।।

ঘৃণা পায় । করি ।।

হাগা পায় । হাগি ।।

হাঁচি পায় । হাঁচি ।।

ব্যথা পায় । কাঁদি ।।

পাদ পায় । পাদি ।।

নাচ পায় । নাচি ।।

গান পায় । গাই ।।

শ্বাস পায় । হই ।।

ঘুম পায় না ।

স্বপ্ন হয় না ।।

Insomnia

Malay Roychoudhury |Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta

Feel like writing; write

Feel hungry; eat

Feel love; do

Feel inflamed; burn

Feel addicted; drink

Feel funny; laugh

Feel like touching; touch

Feel like looking; look

Feel like cooking; cook

Feel like giving; donate

Feel like reading; read

Feel like laying; lay

Feel like pissing; piss

Feel like yawning; yawn

Feel hate; hate

Feel like shitting; shit

Feel like sneezing; sneeze

Feel hurt; cry

Feel like farting; fart

Feel like dancing; dance

Feel like singing; sing

Feel like breathing; am

No sleep

No dreams

Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 1

Rebellion is in the air again. From the streets of Cairo to the boulevards of Boston, and closer home in Bangladesh, young men and women are willing to pay with their lives to stop the onward march of Moloch, representing all kinds of regressive forces that do not want the status quo to be challenged, who insist on giving us laughter in lieu of happiness, and whose sole aim is to strangle and starve to death all that is holy, and flows and lives. 

A decade like this occurred before in history half-a-century ago and it tied the Indian and American literary traditions even more strongly than before. It is known that Transcendentalism was influenced by Hindu scriptures like the Gita. Allen Ginsberg, a leader of the Beat movement which created a space for an alternative political and social order in America, also looked to India for inspiration, like his Transcendentalist literary father Walt Whitman. 

His travels in India brought him in touch with a group of artistes driven by similar ideals of reconstructing society through their art, which eschewed any bourgeoisie inhibitions, attacked the Establishment and took pride in its vulnerability.   

Like Ginsberg, the leader of the Hungryalists Malay Roy Choudhuri also underwent an obscenity trial for his poem Stark Electric Jesus, an event that was noticed around the world. We had reprinted the poem earlier and you may look it up here. 

We believe that the Hungryalists and the Beats did not fail in their aims. It was the society at large which did. We think that there is much in their poetry that can help keep the spirit of rebellion alive all over the world, for the task is far from done yet. 

Towards this end, we have a small contribution to make. Starting today, we will be publishing a poem per day for the next five days by Malay Roy Choudhury, translated by Uttaran Das Gupta,  a journalist and poet from Calcutta who now lives in New Delhi. The poems cover varied themes, tackling notions of the self and nationhood among others. Some of the more personal poems provide a striking account of the ignominy suffered by the Hungryalist poets at the hands of an insensitive state and callous society and sadly, even fellow writers and editors who far from expressing solidarity seem to have reveled in their misfortunes. 

A Painting by Hungryalist Painter Anil Karanjai
Source: Facebook Page (with permission from his wife Juliet Reynolds)

আমার স্বদেশ

মলয় রায়চৌধুরী

আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে আদিবাড়ি উত্তরপাড়া আমার দেশ নয়
জানি গঙ্গায় অপরিচিতদের চোখ খুবলানো লাশ ভেসে আসে
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে পিসিমার আহিরিটোলা আমার দেশ নয়
জানি পাশেই সোনাগাছি পাড়ায় প্রতিদিন তুলে আনা কিশোরীদের বেঁধে রাখা হয়
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে মামার বাড়ি পাণিহাটি আমার দেশ নয়
জানি কোন পাড়ায় দিন দুপুরে কাদের খুন করা হয়েছে
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে শৈশবের কোন্নোগর আমার দেশ নয়
জানি কারা কাদের দিয়ে কাকে গলা কেটে মারতে পাঠায়
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে যৌবনের কলকাতা আমার দেশ নয়
জানি কারা কাদের বোমা মারে বাসে-ট্রামে আগুন লাগায়
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে পশ্চিমবঙ্গ আমার দেশ নয়
এদেশের লকআপে পিটুনি খেয়ে থেঁতলে মরার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের চা-বাগানে না খেতে পেয়ে দড়িদঙ্কা হবার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের চটকলে গলায় দড়ি দিয়ে ঝোলার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের দলগুণ্ডাদের পোঁতা মাটির তলায় হাড় হবার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের ধনীদের ফাঁদে ফেঁসে সর্বস্বান্ত হবার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের শাসকদের বাঁধা লিউকোপ্লাস্ট মুখে বোবা থাকার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের নেতাদের ফোঁপরা বক্তৃতা আর গালমন্দ শোনার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের অবরোধকারীদের আটকানো পথে হার্টফেল করার অধিকার আমার আছে
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে বাংলাভাষা আমার স্বদেশ নয়


Homeland

Malay Roychoudhury |Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta

Can’t say my Uttarpara ancestral home isn’t my homeland,
I know unidentified bodies, their eyes plucked out, float by in the Ganga.
Can’t say my aunt’s Ahiritola isn’t my homeland,
I know abducted girls are bound and gagged in Sonagachi nearby.
Can’t say my uncle’s at Panihati isn’t my homeland,
I know who was killed, and where, in broad daylight.
Can’t say my adolescent Konnagar isn’t my homeland,
I know who was sent to cut whose throat.
Can’t say my youth’s Calcutta isn’t my homeland,
I know who threw bombs, set fire on buses, trams.
Can’t say West Bengal isn’t my homeland,
I’ve the right to be tortured to death in its lock-ups,
I’ve the right to starve and have rickets in its tea gardens,
I’ve the right to hang myself at its handloom mills,
I’ve the right to become bones buried by its party lumpen,
I’ve the right to have my mouth taped, silenced,
I’ve the right to hear the leaders sprout gibberish, abuse,
I’ve the right to a heart attack on its streets blocked by protestors,
Can’t say Bengali isn’t my homeland.























Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Jesus - Malay Roychoudhury ( Translated by the Author)

We present to you a landmark poem from the Hungry Generation by it's founder, Malay Roychoudhury. Choudhury faced an obscenity trial for this poem and underwent quite an ordeal, which made his friend Allen Ginsberg (who had faced a similar trial) contact his poet friends like Nissim Ezekiel and political ones like Pupul Jayakar, a friend of Indira Gandhi's, to help the young poet The poem has been reprinted with the author's permission.

Malay in Palamau (1963), Source: kaurab.com 

Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the back and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, a million glasspanes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brains contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
Mother why didn't you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's arse
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring with me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
Draw and elevate Shubha into my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Calcutta seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But I do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of shedding the last drops after urination
Haven't had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn Usage of French leather while lying on Nandita's bosom
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya's fresh chinarose matrix
Yet I submitted to the refuge of my brain's cataclysm
I am failing to understand why I still want to live
I am thinking of my debauched Sabarna-Choudhury ancestors
I'll have to do something different and new
Let me sleep for the last time on a bed soft as the skin of Shubha's bosom
I remember now the sharp-edged radiance of the moment I was born
I want to see my own death before passing away
The world had nothing to do with Malay Roychoudhury
Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your violent silvery uterus
Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace
Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream
Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm
Would I have been like this if I had different parents
Was Malay alias me possible fron an absolutely different sperm
Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father
Would I have made a professional gentleman of me like my dead brother without Shubha
Oh, answer, let somebody answer these
Shubha, ah Shubha
Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen
Come back on the green mattress again
As the cathode rays are sucked up with warmth of a magnet's brilliance
I remember the letter of the final decision of 1956
The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished with coon at that time
Fine rib-smashing roots were descending into your bosom
Stupid relationship inflated in the bypass of senseless neglect
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
I do not know whether I am going to die
Squandering was roaring within heart's exhaustive impatience
I'll disrupt and destroy
I'll split all inti pieces for the sake of arts
There isn't any other way out for poetry except suicide
Shubha
Let me enter into the immemorial incontinence of your labia majora
In to the absurdity of woeless effort
In the golden chlorophyll of the drunken heart
Why wasn't I lost in my mother's urethra
Why was I driven away in my father's urine after his self-coition
Why wasn't I mixed in the ovum-flux or in the phlegm
With her eyes shut supine beneath me
I felt terribly distressed when I saw comfort seize Shubha
Women could be treacherous even after unfolding a helpless appearance
Today it seems there is nothing treacherous as Women and Art
Now my ferocious heart is running towards an impossible death
Vertigo of water are coming up to my neck from the pierced earth
I will die
Oh what are these happenings within me
I am failing to fetch out my hand and my palm
From the dried sperms on my trousers spreading wings
300000 children gliding toward the district of Shubha's bosom
Millions of needles are now running from my blood into Poetry
Now the smuggling of my obstinate leg is trying to plunge
Into the death-killer sex-wig entangled in the hypnotic kingdom of words
In violent mirrors of each wall of the room I am observing
After letting loose a few naked Malay, his unestablished scramblings.