e : , , ee

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What really knocks me out is a book that,

when you're all done reading it,
you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours
and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
J.D Salinger
- Catcher in the Rye

 G .
M? , ,
S , L M, &5

6, 1

Hindol
Year 6, No. 1

, 1421

Editorial Team :
Chittaranjan Pakrashi, Malabika Majumdar,
Maitrayee Sen, Ajanta Dutt, Nandan Dasgupta

April, 2014

E-46, Greater Kailash-I,

New Delhi-110048
ohetuk.sabha@gmail.com

ISSN 0976-0989

S
^ S
-630, M? , ~-110019
92131344879891689053

Cover Feature:
Abananindranath Tagore

S
4

13

L [3]

-
19

e
- a

27

36

44

- +

46

48

Special Issue : Authors & Writings

55

Trilokesh Mukherjee

An Indian for All Seasons - Book Review

61

Nivedita Sen

Young Tagore : The Makings of a Genius

- Book Review

65

Hirak Gupta

Rituparno's reconstruction of "Chitrangada"

70

Chitra Sarkar

Green Islands of the Andamans & Nicobar

- Book Review

73

Mandira Mitra

This Earth of Mankind - Book Review

76

Nishtha Gautam

Fea(s)ts of Salman Rushdie

81

Preeti Diwan

The City of Death - translation

Read : http://www.scribd.com/collections/3537598/Hindol
Blog : ohetukadda.wordpress.com
Give : Make your cheques to Ohetuk Sabha
Call : 98110-24547

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55
An Indian for All
Seasons: the many lives
of R.C.Dutt
Meenakshi Mukherjee

Publisher: Penguin
Books India
Price: Rs. 399.00
(Paperback)
Pages: 385

The ICS Who Would Not Be One

Trilokesh Mukherjee

A biographer needs almost to reside within the person, to see

through their eyes and experience the world through them.
Unfortunately, biography as a genre is rather weak in India. Amidst
mountains of poetry, novels, essay, short stories, journalistic writings,
social criticisms, political analysis that keep the printing presses busy
one hardly ever comes across a biography. And even if one finds a
rare specimen, it generally tends to be highly romanticized, sentimental
and emotional.
When the writer, literary critic and professor of comparative
literature, Meenakshi Mukherjee, wrote her first biography, namely
that of Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848 1909), the difficulty she faced
was that her subject was complex, varied and with many dimensions,
hence, the sub-title: the many lives of R.C.Dutt. It is the contradictions
in R.C. Dutts ideas and attitudes that made researching his life such
a fascinating project for me, she wrote. She admits in the Afterword
why a biographer concentrates on printed sources in the absence of
private letters or autobiographical writing, Such material provides an
inventory of achievements, but does little to throw light on the doubts,

, 1421

56

The ICS Who Would Not Be One

hesitations, missed chances, and the many contradictory possibilities

that surround each event of a persons life. She further elaborates,
with amazing humility, "Also, distance tends to smooth the creases of
a life to turn a biography into a tidy narrative, giving the impression
that the shape of its subjects life had no blurred edges."
Romesh Chunder Dutt, the child of a well-to-do Bengali family,
ran away from home when he was not yet twenty and dared to sail to
England, wishing to succeed in the ICS exam which until then only
one Indian, Tagores older brother Satyendranath Tagore, had cleared.
Despite the cold weather, unfriendly and at times unwelcome
atmosphere, Romesh Chunder fulfilled his dream. He came second
amongst all the candidates, most of them English. Vincent Smith, later
the famous historian, stood first. Three other Indians also passed their
ICS exams that year, of who two were also from Bengal. On his return,
he began his service as an Assistant Magistrate and Collector. His work
in the villages and amongst the peasants made him aware of their acute
problems and he discovered the harrowing injustice done to them, not
only by the distant English government officers but also, sadly, by
Indian Zamindars and landlords. His first critical book about his
experience - The Peasantry of Bengal - published in 1874, shocked
both the English hierarchy and upper class Indians.
An able administrator, he was Commissioner of Burdwan & Orissa,
a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. He was made Commander
of the Indian Empire in 1892. In 1897 he was in London as a lecturer
on Indian History at University College, London. Between 1899-1904
he was the revenue minister for the state of Baroda, and then from
1904-07 he was the Prime Minister. Dutt became involved in Indian
politics, joining the Indian National Congress Party in 1899. In spite
of Dutts unequivocal criticism of the policies of the government he
was selected as the Indian member of the Royal Commission of Indian
Decentralisation. Passionately interested in Indias past (translating
many Indian texts from Sanskrit to Bengali, at times earning severe
disapproval from the Brahmin community), almost all his writings were
about Indias history, including The Economic History of British India
where he was highly critical of the policies of the Government which
had drained India of vast financial resources. He died in 1909 and was

, 1421

The ICS Who Would Not Be One

given Royal funeral honours by the State of Baroda.

One can see why Meenakshi Mukherjee found her character/hero
quite a challenge. She worked on her subject with her usual academic
honesty and diligence, ignoring rebukes at times by small-minded
authorities who thought it unncecessary to bother at all about R.C.
Dutt who was a British stooge. It didnt stop her from pursuing her
research. She discovered, surprisingly, ten volumes of scrapbooks, large
albums of 200 pages that Dutt had kept which told the story of himself
and his time. A goldmine for a biographer, for it directed her to the
thinking process of Dutt, what he was interested in and why. When
the research in India was almost finished she was offered a scholarship
to come to Wissenschatskolleg in Berlin to complete her book. This
gave her the opportunity to work in the British Library in London
(which had some rare Dutt papers) and in the Institute of Economics
and Social Science in Paris. The final outcome is an attractive and
very unusually satisfactory book including two family trees.
Dutts life can be divided into three broad areas: family,
professional activities and writings. Mukherjee has analysed each
section in detail. Dutts wife Matangini (Mohini) was a teenager when
she married and had two daughters born before Dutt went to England.
After he returned Mohini learnt to read, write and speak English from
Miss Pigot, with whom she also sometimes stayed while Dutt was
working away from Calcutta. For the first few years Mohini insisted
on having a Brahmin cook and Hindu servants. When an English nurse
came to look after Amala (Romeshs third daughter) Mohini would
not eat the food that has been touched by her, but gradually her husband
persuaded her to give up rigidity in matters of food. Eventually, she
had no objection to employing a Muslim cook called Arib, whose roast
mutton came to be relished by many members of the extended family.
Mukherjee further writes - "in spite of Romeshs job as a civil servant
and the resultant difference in lifestyle, he remained close to the less
affluent branches of the family as well. He was a devoted father and
husband, a kind uncle and brother. He enthused and inspired his
children to appreciate and love literature, especially English literature.
He read novels of Walter Scott aloud to his children while they were
still young.

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The ICS Who Would Not Be One

Working as a civil servant until early retirement, Dutt was an

educationist, an adviser/ minister and a Nationalist thinker. He was
aware of the rather complex responsibility on his shoulders of
combining efficient administration (so that no fault could have been
detected by the British authorities) and down to earth humane
interaction with local people. One can see that he must have performed
his duties to the satisfaction of his superiors so that he was able to, if
necessary, criticize official decisions if they were malevolent to the
Indian people, without attracting severe wrath or reprimand of the
authorities.
One of the ironies of his job was that he could take a furlough or
holiday to go home, meaning England, which he did in 1897! From
there he wrote to his daughter Bimala - My present leave is for ten
months, and very likely I will extend it by a year. What I shall do after
that I cannot guess. If I get some congenial occupation, if I do not feel
stinted for money, I dont think I shall return to service. He had
probably by then, after twenty-six years of service, felt that he had
had enough. University College, London invited him to give lectures
on Indian History which he gladly accepted and for the next three years
he spoke about The History, Civilization and Religion of Ancient
Hindus as shown in Their Literature, Epics and Epic Age, and about
Epic Poetry in Ancient India. He was made a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature in 1899. This period was also important politically
for Dutt, a supporter of the Liberal Party, because this is the historic
period when Indian politicians were beginning to take decisive active
roles in England to secure better deals, better treatment and a greater
voice in the decision-making relating to India.
Mukherjee quotes Gandhi, When I read Mr Dutts Economic
History of India I wept, and as I think of it again my heart sickens".
Indeed this economic history of India in two volumes - Under Early
British Rule 1757-1837 and Victorian Age 1837-1900 - was a
pioneering and breathtaking undertaking by Dutt. Mukherjee has
mentioned passages from the book to confirm the sheer callousness
of the British Government planners and thinkers of the time.
During his preparations to sit for the ICS examination Dutt had
learnt Sanskrit from Professor Goldstucker but later he took advanced

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courses in Sanskrit to be able to read classical Indian literature and to

be able to translate the Rigveda into Bengali. Now, just like the
conservative imperialist English, the Hindu conservative Brahmins
became the main protagonists against Dutt because he was not a
Brahmin and yet dared to touch the Veda. But he had allies too like
Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar who opened his own huge library for Dutt
to use and often the two of them went for morning walks together
talking and discussing. A few other Sanskrit scholars were enlisted by
Dutt to translate Hindu Shastra. Nine volumes came out before 1897.
He translated rather abridged versions (preserving the spirit of the
original) of Mahabharata and Ramayana, each containing 2000
couplets.
His inspiration for his six Bengali novels was history. Mukherjee
quotes No study has . so potent an influence in forming a nations
character as a critical and a careful study of history. And it is by such
study alone that an unreasoning and superstitious knowledge of the
past is replaced by a legitimate and manly admiration (from the
Introduction to A History of Civilization in Ancient India, 1890). Dutt
was inspired and influenced by Grant Duff and Todds writings about
the Marhattas and Rajasthan. He also admired Sir Walter Scott, and
many of his own historical novels are clearly influenced by Scott.
Most writer, poets, essayists and novelists express their personal
feelings, deeply held emotional beliefs, fears, anxieties and loyalties.
Dutt was no exception. The Marhatta leader Shivaji, in Dutts novel,
Madhabi Kankan, had arguments with two Rajputs who had been sent
by Aurangzeb to subdue Shivaji. Shivaji pleaded with them to abandon
their loyalty to the Muslim king and join him in consolidating Hindu
power. One of the Rajputs agreed. But for another, Jai Singh, the
personal pledge made by an individual warrior was more important
than the unity of the Hindu community. If Hindu dharma cannot be
protected through truth, how can it be protected through treachery? If
a warriors blood cannot nurture the seed of freedom, can a warriors
betrayal do it? Mukherjee writes "Jai Singh eventually comes across
as a man caught between duty and instinct, loyalty to the ruler and the
emotional tug of patriotism. It is tempting to see in Jai Singhs
predicament a parallel with Romesh Dutts own dilemma as a civil

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The ICS Who Would Not Be One

servant."
Meenakshi Mukherjee is aware of the limitations, not only her own
but of all biographers. She wrote, "Biography is an impure genre,
flanked on one side by the factual demands of history and on the other
by the narrativity of fiction which gains in depth if there are glimpses
of the private individual. Between these two poles of expectation,
random traces of politics, sociology, philosophy, literary criticism,
psychoanalysis, journalism and gossip make their appearance."
The book is important in understanding that particular and critical
period when the British had finally, as a result of Lord Macaulays
report, understood and accepted that Indians could and should be
allowed to take administrative responsibility. It would eventually lead
to giving the full responsibility of governance to the Indians, i.e. the
Independence.
Sadly this is the only biography Mukherjee would ever write. She
died suddenly in 2009, the year of its publication.

This issue of
HINDOL
is supported by

AMIT R. SARKER
PRANATI BHATTACHARYA
SANJIT SEN
&
SUMITA SENGUPTA

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Young Tagore: The
Makings of a Genius
Sudhir Kakar

Viking/Penguin, 2013
Price : Rs. 499
Pages : 238

A Poet's Evolution
Nivedita Sen
The year 2013 witnessed the rewriting of the younger days of two
of India's most iconic figures in the twentieth century. Gandhi Before
India, Ramachandra Guha's monumental effort to retrieve Gandhi's
budding years as a lawyer in South Africa, is both biography and social
history. Kakar's more modest book is a new attempt at uncovering how
the environs, influences and preoccupations of Tagore's early life
continued to impinge on his life and work into his autumnal years.
Anticipating a response that the subject of the poet's childhood
and adolescence has been done to death, Kakar justifies yet another
book on the young Tagore on the strength of his professional
credentials. He distinguishes between a historical biography with its
chronological account of a life and the psychobiography that he has
undertaken to write, tracing the 'psychological truths' of his subject as
'an outcome of his or her early relationships' (p.4). He is not a
psychoanalyst who sees his patient over a period, but a
psychobiographer who investigates the workings of Tagore's mind long
after his death. Confessing how he dismissed Tagore's poetry as 'verses
of stereotyped sentimentality and sachharine spirituality' (p.9) he relates
how this early scepticism got transformed into curiosity till he got
sufficiently intrigued by his Bengali friends' unequivocal adulation for
Tagore to want to read and write about him.

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A Poet's Evolution

None of Kakar's findings, however, are unknown and unresearched,

and given the corpus of documented work on Tagore, there is nothing
in the psychobiography that a lay person could not have read and
analysed. But for a person uninitiated into Tagore, the slim volume is
a charming read that charts his most important 'psychological'
milestones. Kakar ascribes some of the depression during Tagore's
declining years to his love for his mother, cruelly thwarted in his
childhood, first by his exile to the servants' quarters and then by her
death. He highlights autobiographical verses in Shishu (The Crescent
Moon) in which the protagonist feels deprived at not being his mother's
principal focus, but there is much more to the mother-son interaction
portrayed in the collection than this privation that is at the centre of
Kakar's formulations. Having access only to translations from Tagore,
he is obviously unaware of the more complex variations of this
relationship in Tagore's larger oeuvre that could contribute to a more
nuanced reading. He even elides similarly autobiographical poems in
Shishu in which the child shares a more layered bonding with his
mother. Intimacy between a mother and son predicated on both of them
feeling abandoned by a husband/father who works far away from home
or conveyed through the son resenting her relationship with his father
are overlooked. What about the sundry poems in which the son betrays
to the mother a wish for an Oedipal appropriation of his father's role:
'In the silence of the night/Burying my face in your chest/My eyes
will shut with drowsiness/Do not, at that time/Go away to Father,
please!' (Duorani, Shishu Bholanath)? Kakar's inadequate reading has
not located the autobiographical resonances of such pieces.
At the age of five, Rabi and his cousins were relegated to the
children's and servants' quarters. While emphasizing the cruelty and
neglect that they were subjected to, Kakar, however, also notes that
being of an impressionable age, the children were enthralled by the
fantastic stories that their servants told them about the wonders of a
life far removed from their immediate environs. The portrayal of
servants as attractive surrogate parents who let children be, in fact, is
a recurrent motif in Bengali children's fiction.
Of course, a psychobiographical exploration of Tagore's life cannot
exclude his much speculated relationship with his sister-in-law

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Kadambari, the soreness of which hurt him until his last years. In the
chapter on Kadambari, Kakar reads into Tagores writings some
adolescent agonizing, attributing it to his outrage during puberty at
the grossly physical taking precedence over one's finer feelings.
Predictably, the Bengali middle class sensibility, already suspicious
of someone other than a Bengali having the temerity to write about
the revered Gurudeb, is likely to be offended by Kakar's graphic
description of pubertal sexual arousal caused by the 'chafe of underwear
against the genitals' (p.116) in this context. But Kakar also offers an
involved and sensitive reading of the boy Rabi's veneration of his
brother Jyotirindra and sister-in-law Kadambari seen as a happy couple,
underlining Tagore's later metonymic description of a 'warm, buttered
toast' (p.119) to represent the conjugal felicity between the two that
excluded him from their private domain. Most of the book is about
how Tagore's fretful hours of loneliness became a fount of inspiration
for him, evolving into a creative solitude that became his main asset
as a poet. Ostensibly writing about the 'young' Tagore, Kakar constantly
cross-refers to the depression that hounded him in his later years,
unearthing its roots and charting its trajectory through the adversities,
bereavements and guilt of his early life. Curiously, while quoting some
evocative passages from My Boyhood Days about Rabi's identifying
himself with the andarmahal of their house, Kakar gets sufficiently
carried away to express his own nostalgia about similar scenes that he
partook of as a child.
A chapter that does not demonstrate any new research or analysis
details Rabi's isolation in school, where he was an object of derision
among his peer group because he was effeminate. In turn, he too was
scathingly critical of school, studies, the alienating experience of
having to learn everything in English and the regimented curriculum
that compelled him to live in exile each day from 10 to 4. Reacting
against formal schooling, he let his imagination flower and gave free
play to his creative impulses instead. His reformist Brahmo father as
well as his anglophile, cosmopolitan grandfather shaped his persona
as a poet. Another phase of Tagore's evolution as a thinker that is
overworked is Kakar's chronicling of Tagore's interactions with
England, Europe and theWest that contributed to what Tagore called

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A Poet's Evolution

'the dialogue of civilizations' (p.134) towards the creation of a universal

man. However, there is an interesting substantiation through letters of
Tagore's self-confessed differences with Gandhi that made it stifling
for him to be in the midst of a sweeping movement that he did not
wholly subscribe to, and his consequent longing to get away to Europe.
But what has all this to do with the 'young' Tagore? Kakar does not
burden the text with technical terms from psychoanalysis. However,
he certainly deploys his experience of clinical practice and does resort
to a psychoanalyst's vocabulary in the case of his interpretation of
Kadambari's suicide and how it haunted the poet all his life, especially
during his later years as a painter. Arguing that perhaps painting was
more therapeutic than poetry, Kakar admits to being 'hopelessly
subjective' (p.179) in his construal of the poet's old age as an attempt
to bring to a closure all 'the unlived and unresolved issues of earlier
stages of life' (p.187). The effort to reconcile the oppositions and
dualities of his life, to 'ease his unconscious disquiets,re-integrat[ing]
the cut-off parts of the self from his early life that rose to the surface
in his old age' (p.192), all find creative expression in his female
portraits. No matter how amorphously, art does reveal the artist, Kakar
infers.
As a psychoanalyst, Kakar's narrative of Tagore's life probes the
rationale of all he expressed through writing and painting. Yet he
sutures together the intertwining agonies and traumas of his youth and
old age with an empathy that oversteps the domain of an analyst or
theoretician. The title, therefore, is somewhat skewed in mentioning
only the 'young' Tagore. It could have been more suggestive of an
attempt to understand the poet's more mature years through a journey
back in time, salvaging reminiscences, letters and creative works that
document his tormented mindscapes as a child and at the threshold of
adulthood.
This article was previously printed in:
The Delhi University Journal of the Humanities and the Social
Sciences, Vol. 1 (2014), pp. 103-05 (http://journals.du.ac.in/humsoc)

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Hirak Gupta
Asansol

Rituparno Ghoshs
Chitrangada:
An Intertextual Interrogation
of Gender Identity

Any text is an intertext (Roland Barthes: 1983, 39) in the sense

that no text is original or independent of the influence of the previous
or existing texts in literature. The term intertextualite formulated by
Julia Kristeva in her essay The Bounded Text predicated on the idea
that any text was a permutation of texts (1980, 36). Kristevas use of
the term suggests the plurality of meaning in conscious or unconscious
echoing of the readings of the author. Adaptations and appropriations
can vary in scheme and range based upon the authors intent. However,
it is also undeniable that the construction of an intertextual meaning
may also emanate from the reader. An intertextual approach seems to
depict the dialogue between two texts or works of art, and how the
previous influences the present. Speaking of hybridity and
hypertextuality, Homi Bhava reflects how ideas and concepts are
repeated, relocated and translated (1995, 207) and how frequently
these processes of re-interpretation stimulate a revised point of view.
Adaptation frequently involves in offering new utterances and creativity
upon the original text. Many of the theatre, television or film
adaptations overtly accept their intertextual stature. Adaptation of texts
into theatrical dramatizations harks back to the Interludes, Mystery
and Morality plays of the Middle Ages when portions of ecclesiastical
texts were enacted for didactic purposes. Intertexuality reached the
acme of finesse in the renaissance period especially in the works of
Shakespeare and gradually percolated through the ages of literary
exuberance. The invention of motion camera in the 1880s and

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Rituparno Ghosh's "Chitrangada"

popularising of the audio-visual media after the 1930s led to cinematic

adaptations of several literary canons. The cinematic adaptations
ranging from Raja Harischandra released on 3rd May, 1913 to Life of
Pi project a long legacy of intertextual indebtedness. While discussing
on adaptation and cinematic interpretations of well-known texts,
Deborah Cartmell feels all screen versions of texts to be transpositions
in the sense that they take a text from one genre and deliver it to new
audience by means of the aesthetic conventions of an entirely different
generic process. Some of the cinematic adaptations contain further
layers of transpositions by relocating the hypotexts in a different
socio-cultural timeline and thus, Swifts Gullivers Travels gains a
contemporary setting in the hands of Rob Letterman.
Rituparno Ghosh re-configures the myth of Chitrangada and her
quest for gender identity in his movie Chitrangada: The Crowning
Wish . Although right at the onset of the movie Rituparno accepts
his adaptation and reconstruction of the theme:
Mahabharata describes Chitrangada as a beautiful princess whom
Arjun was besotted with. Tagores Chitrangada is an Amazon
warrior on a quest to discover her gender identity. From the work
of Tagore comes a very personal interpretation.

The conflict emerging from gender dialectics within the protagonist

is retold with a different perspective through the character of Rudra
Chatterjee in Rituparno Ghoshs film Chitrangada: The Crowning
Wish . Like Luhrmann who adopts a contemporary North American
setting in the film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet; Rituparno, too,
represents the theme in a different socio-cultural perspective.Unlike
the verdurous setting in Rabindranaths dance-drama, the action
initiates in a cosmopolitan town hospital . If Rabindranaths
Chitrangada is an amazon warrior a woman brought up as a man
by her father, Rituparnos Rudra is an effeminate man a dancer
cum director. The internal conflict of identity construction and the
desire to associate to any one to the two gender stereotypes lead us to
draw a parallel between these two characters. If Chitrangadas desire
for regaining her femininity originates from her quest for Arjun, Rudra
undergoes a gender reassignment surgery for Partho. The fact that Arjun
and Partho are synonyms also point towards the conscious parallelism

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Rituparno Ghosh's "Chitrangada"

between Chitrangada and Rudra. It is indeed noteworthy that Rituparno

subverts the biological identity of the protagonist while reconstructing
the theme in a contemporary perspective.
Rabindranaths Chitrangada begins with the protagonist
contemplating on how she was born in the royal family of Manipur as
a daughter and how her father reared her as a son. Being the heir, she
learns artillery and dresses like a man until she meets Arjun and falls
in love. However, Arjun misconceives her as a man and thus she prays
to Madan (the Hindu God of Love) and Basanta (Spring the season
of blossoms) to transform her into a beautiful woman. Consequently,
Arjun falls in love with this transformed beauty and courts Chitrangada.
However, deep inside she wishes to be loved in her true self. In the
meanwhile, marauders invade her kingdom and Arjun learns about the
warrior-princess who is no more there to save Manipur. Finally the
play depicts Chitrangada revealing her real self to Arjun and saving
her motherland. The play ends with the news of Chitrangada carrying
the child of Arjun.
Rituparnos Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish too portrays the
protagonist discussing his life with Subho his counsellor. It is also
interesting to note, that the counsellor Subho who guides Rudra through
his ultimate epiphany may be compared to Madan and Basanto in
Rabindranaths Chitrangada. Rudra, too speaks of how he had to live
up to his fathers expectations:
Rudra:

It had to be an heir
That was all the father knew
To carry on the name and the family pride
And so, the training began
But the child, to be a girl or a boy
Did anyone ask?
Or even want to know?

Rudra chances to meet Partho the percussionist and they

gradually develop an amorous relationship. Rudra, too, like
Chitrangada desire to alter his identity and decides for a gender
reformation surgery.
However, despite such faithful adaptation from Rabindranaths
work, Rituparno reconstructs the theme and re-interrogates the question
of gender identity. If Chitrangada vaccilates between the gender

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Rituparno Ghosh's "Chitrangada"

binaries; Rituparnos Rudra accepts the presence of a third gender.

Lois Tyson in Critical Theory Today while discussing the
construction of gender identity, very aptly proclaims that ones
sexuality must be defined, it seems, in terms of ones sexual desire
and Rituparno echoes this very concept through the portrayal of the
character of Rudra. While both the works address the issue of gender
identity, their approaches are unique and at times even antithetical to
each other. Unlike Rabindranaths Chitrangada who is brought up like
a man according to her fathers wish, Rudra volunteers to be a cross
dresser and exhibits his desire for men. If for Chitrangada the quest
for Arjun was return to her sexual stereotype; then Rudras desire for
Partho, his desire for gender reassignment surgery and finally
accepting his homosexual identity was a defiance of the manacles of
a hetero-centric society. However, this transformation is not natural
for Rudra. He undergoes several epiphanies and finally dawns the
realisation in him that he belongs to a gender beyond the accepted
labels of the society.
Rabindranaths Chitrangada is a warrior who chances to meet Arjun
in a jungle. Her encounter with Arjun arouses in her the desire to regain
her feminine identity. By divine grace she gains her desired identity,
courts Arjun and bears Arjuns child. Hence, her journey of switching
gender identity remains confined within the established norms of a
hetero-centric society. This bipolar identification of genders raises
the question of textual politics. However, Rituparnos portrayal of the
theme acquires a newer perspective. Although both the protagonists
set on a journey to re-discover their femininity, for one it is a return
while for the other it is a transformation, realisation and acceptance
of his homosexual identity.
Unlike Arjun who craves for Chitrangadas transformed feminine
beauty ; Partho rejects Rudra after his gender rearrangement.
Rudra:
Partho:

Why did I go through all this? For whom?

Ask yourself Rudy. I never wanted you to change. The man I
loved was not this half thing. If I have to have a woman, I would
rather have a real woman. Not this synthetic one.

Parthos forsaking him compelled Rudra to contemplate on the

question of his gender construction. While Rabindranath uses the duex

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Rituparno Ghosh's "Chitrangada"

ex-machina for the transformation of Chitrangada by the introduction

of the mythical and fantastical characters of Madan and Basanto,
Rituparno presents Subho as Rudras alter-ego guiding him in realising
and accepting his homosexual identity.
It may be summed up that while Rabindranath portrayed the
vacillation of the protagonist between the two established gender-roles
of a hetero-centric society, Rituparnos "Chitrangada: the Crowning
Wish" is not a mere adaptation but rather a re-construction of the
original text where the dialectics of gender association has been
resolved through the acceptance of third gender identity. Thus, though
drawing from the work of Rabindranath, Rituparnos sui generis
artistry elevates the work to a level of Gesamtkunstwerk.
References:
Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature
and Art. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984. Print.
Allen, Graham. Intertextuality.New Delhi: Routledge, 2007. Print.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. New Delhi: Routledge,
2007. Print.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York & London: Routledge, 2007.
Print.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. India:
Routledge, 2008. Print.
Glover, David & Cora Kaplan. Genders. New Delhi: Routledge, 2007.
Print.
Kundu, Rama. Intertext: A Study of the Dialogue between Texts. New
Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2008. Print.
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford,
2006. Print.
Garcia-Arroyo, Ana. Alternative Sexualities in India: The Construction
of Queer Culture. Kolkata: Books Way, 2010. Print.
Tagore, Rabindranath. Rabindrarachanabali.(Vol. 13). Kolkata:
Visvabharati, 1995. Print.
Movie: Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish. Written & Directed by
Rituparno Ghosh. Sree Venkatesh Films Pvt. Ltd.

(Hirak Gupta is Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities,

Asansol Engineering College)

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70
Green Islands of the
Andamans and Nicobar
Protiva Gupta
Translated by
Meena Gupta
Publisher : Writers Workshop
Price : Rs. 400.00
(Hardback)
Pages : 290

A Slice of History
Chitra Sarkar
Remember Tonga? He was the fearsome Andaman Islander in
Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Sign of Four. You are invited to
join Protiva Gupta on a visit to his exotic homeland in her book, Green
Islands of the Andamans and Nicobar.
Originally written in Bengali in the 1960s, the book is a fount of
information on a fascinating subject, caught at a watershed moment
of its history. The Andamans were in transition between the Raj and
Independence when Mrs. Gupta accompanied her husband, a senior
government official, to Indias own emerald isles. The original Bengali
version of her experiences was highly acclaimed when it was first
published.
The fact that she wrote it 50 years ago adds an endearing aspect
to the tale, given her quaint references to her husband as Mr. Gupta,
her undiluted patriotism and her upbeat outlook... Most piquant of all
is her total belief in the Government her husband works for. Today as
we read headlines of corruption, inefficiency and disillusionment every
day, her world view reminds me of the optimism of our parents
generation. The British Raj had been quelled, and our brand new nation
born. It was a time of joy, and infinite possibilities, when Indians would
band together, and Ram Rajya would prevail. It brings back memories
of times when we were young, our parents were in charge, and all

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was right with the world.

We have to thank her daughter, Meena Gupta, a retired Civil
Servant who made Green Islands available in English to a larger
audience last year. It is obviously a labour of love, written with
erudition and sympathy.
As a good Bengali, Protiva was steeped in stories of Kala Pani,
where idealistic young freedom fighters were sent to die, and savage
Jarawas slaughtered newcomers with a shower of poisoned arrows.
But after their arrival in Port Blair, the Guptas settled into a routine
that was similar to expatriate life in a foreign land, although they were
still, officially, in their own country. There was the Administrative
services community, with its own caste system and social whirl.
(They were out for dinner within hours of their landing.) The high
point of the public calendar was when the ship arrived literally bearing hilsa and letters from the mainland. The ladies spent their
mornings playing cards and gossiping, while their sprawling homes
were maintained by a retinue of servants.
Protiva describes a privileged post-colonial lifestyle, but she gives
us many glimpses of its craggy rocks.
Besides, she was no ordinary housewife. Exceptionally welleducated for a woman of her generation, she delved into the history
and anthropology of her new home. What she discovered makes
fascinating reading.
Port Blair was named after Captain Archibald Blair, who was sent
to survey the archipelago in 1789 by the East India Company. He
submitted a detailed report, which won him a dubious reward he
was sent back to establish the first settlement there. With true British
grit and superhuman effort, he managed to clear a space in the primitive
jungle on Chatham Island. And there began the civilization of the
Andamans.
An inadvertent outcome of this process occurred when Reverend
Corbyn, an Anglican missionary based in Port Blair sought permission
to befriend the natives. The Andaman Home was set up to lure the
natives with material blandishments. The consequences were
disastrous. A primitive, nomadic people, used to an unfettered life in
the jungle, fell prey to all the evils of civilization they became

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A Slice of History

lazy, comfort-loving, took to smoking and caught every passing disease.

Eventually, syphilis decimated their numbers to near extinction.
Meanwhile, the penal colony evolved its own customs. Since many
convicts were sentenced for life, and several who had served out their
terms opted to stay back, the British decided to match-make for them.
Once a month, the male and female prisoners were paraded in front of
the Chief Commissioner. Each prisoners history was read out. They
were then asked to choose their partners. The couples were immediately
pronounced man and wife by the Commissioner. If the couple wished
for a change later, they could decide to annul the marriage and choose
new partners. The place where these wonderfully liberated marriages
took place was called Shadipur.
The aboriginal marriage customs were equally progressive. In one
tribe, the woman had merely to sit on the mans lap to be considered
married. But that marriage had to last for the rest of their lives.
As expected, these remote, unexplored islands were connected with
many myths. Nicolo Conti, a traveler in the 15th century, talks of a
lake whose water could turn iron into gold. In his story, a British ship
lost its way and reached the shores of the Andamans. The sailors saw
an aborigine walking along the shore, carrying a conch shell full of
water. A few drops fell on a chain hanging from the ship. It promptly
turned into gold. Whereupon the sailors beat the native to death and
grabbed his shell. In the scuffle, the water drained out onto the sand.
Its source, the mythical lake, was never found.
Many believed that in the depths of the jungle there grew a flower
which brought the dead back to life. It had found its way there from
Nandan Kanan, the garden of Paradise. It may even have been the herb
that revived Lakshman in the Ramayana.
These anecdotes are just a sampler of the many delights contained
in Protiva Guptas narrative. Her conversations with convicted
murderers who had grown old and toothless on the island occupy an
interesting chapter on their own.
Does evil hang in the air of the Andamans, with the left-over angst
of convicted prisoners, dying freedom-fighters and displaced
aborigines? Or is it a verdant paradise, home to the elixir of life and
the philosophers stone? Read the book for yourself to decide!

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73

This Earth of Mankind

Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Translated by Max Lane
Publishers : Penguin
Price: Rs. 1018.00
(Paperback)
Pages: 368

Pramoedyas stories to his fellow prisoners

Mandira Mitra
It is quite by accident that I came across the name of Indonesian
writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Early this year I was reading the novel
Garden of the Evening Mist by Tan Twan Eng and suddenly realised
that I had not read any literature written by authors from countries like
Malyasia, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma or Vietnam. Though one has
read about these lands in outstanding books like The Quiet American
by Graham Greene, Dancing In Cambodia, At Large in Burma and The
Glass Palace by Amitava Ghosh, I was not aware of any recent works,
and put it down to lack of translations. A discussion with my husband
about the Malaysian Communist movement which features in Engs
book led me to discover the Buru Quartet by Pramoedya. A quick
check on Flipkart revealed that some of the books of Pramoedya are
available and a friend lent me his copy of This Earth of Mankind,
Boomi Manusia translated by Max Lane which is the first novel in
the Buru Quartet. My friend, a professor of Japanese Studies, is very
well acquainted with Pramoedyas body of work and knew the translator
of his books in Japanese. He encouraged me to read Pramoedya and
has the remaining three volumes of the quartet - Child of All Nations,
Footsteps and House of Glass.
The story begins in 1898 told in first person by Minke a Javanese

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Pramoedyas stories to his fellow prisoners

young man who studies in an elitist Dutch school in the Dutch East
Indies in the port town of Surabaya. He is a bright student and is the
only native in the school. All other students are either Dutch or of
mixed origins having or claiming some Dutch ancestry. Minke is very
impressed by all the knowledge that he is acquiring in the school and is
particularly fascinated by the modern inventions of those times like
printing of photographs and railways. He is an enterprising fellow, a
budding writer and has a business venture with a French artist who had
enlisted in the Dutch army to fight the local wars against the Aceh. He
lives away from home and hangs out with his landlady and her family
and other friends. The young lad is also fascinated by the beauty of the
Dutch princess (later Queen) Wilhelmina and daydreams about her. He
and the princess were born on the same day and in the same year and in
the beginning of the book he wonders, If there were any differences,
they were only the hour and the sex. And that bewildering difference
in time: When my island was blanketed in the darkness of the night,
her land was lit with sunshine. He further writes that his teacher,
Magda Peters forbade us to believe in astrologyAnd it demands of
us that we submit to its predictions. There is nothing else we can do
except to throw it into the pigs slops bucket
A chance journey with a classmate changes Minkes life and the
book ends with him questioning the colonial system. He encounters a
family headed by a Javanese woman called Nyai Ontosoroh who is a
concubine of a Dutch official and is a very successful businesswoman.
The story of Nyai is a very sad one as she had been sold off by her
corrupt and ambitious father to Herman Mellema at a very young age.
The transformation of the nave young girl from the countryside to a
sophisticated woman who speaks fluent Dutch and is educated under
the tutelage of her master is very revealing. She becomes the mother of
his two children and begins to feel comfortable in her role though she
nurses a deep hatred against her parents for having brought her to this
state. But this world of hers is shattered when she discovers that her
master had also deceived her.
Pramoedya unravels a tale of life in the Dutch East Indies where
caste distinction and segregation dominates, and in the name of justice
the Dutch courts deny the rights of the natives. Being a nationalist who

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was part of the independence movement Pramoedya writes about the

ranking of languages in colonial society. Nyai Ontosoroh who is a native
is forbidden to speak in Dutch with a clear voice and in flawless
Dutch defying the judicial order that she use Javanese, she affirms,
I, Sanikem, am only a concubine. Out of my concubinage my daughter
Annelies was born. Nobody ever challenged my relationship with
Herman Mellama. Why? For the simple reason he was Pure Blooded
European. But now people are trying to make an issue of Mr. Minkes
relationship with Annelies. Why? Only because Mr. Minke is a Native?
Why then isnt something said about the parents of all Indos? Between
Mr. Mellema and me there were only the ties of slavery and they were
never challenged by the law.
Pramoedya, who is regarded as one of the leading intellectuals and
literary figures of Indonesia, was a political activist who was jailed by
the Dutch colonial rulers as well as the military rulers of independent
Indonesia. While the Dutch permitted Pramoedya to write in jail, the
Indonesian government did not. While incarcerated in the Buru Island
for 12 years, Pramoedya told stories to his fellow prisoners on a daily
basis and these were later written and published as the Buru quartet.
The books were very popular but soon the government banned the books
and the ban subsists till today. Max Lane, the translator of the Buru
Quartet was an Australian diplomat posted in Jakarta and was later
recalled by his government because of his translation of the Buru quartet.
The left wing intellectual Tariq Ali wrote on the death of Pramoedya
in 2006: Had Pramoedya Ananta Toer been a Soviet dissident he would
have received the Nobel Prize, but his status as a literary master is
secure and, unlike some Latin American contemporaries, he remained
unapologetic throughout his life. The writers of the East make us feel
that we have concentrated too deeply upon the West and it is time to
turn our attention to the politics that entwined the countries closer to
home.

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76
Nishtha Gautam
Delhi

Fea(s)ts of Salman Rushdie

Food and the events in which food is served play a major role in
defining the social organization and cultural identity of the
communities. This in turn leads to the rise of distinct literary traditions.
Both food and literature symbolize the culture of which they are an
outcome. Each culture that boasts of its own tradition of literature,
also maintains its own distinct cuisine and distinct traditional rules,
which govern the acts of cooking, serving and eating. Both food and
literature share the domains of culture, economics, as well as politics.
Salman Rushdie realizes the strong ties that bind food and literature
together. The reader becomes a partaker of the feast that his works
offer.
Chutney has become the metaphor for the very writing style of
Rushdie. His alleged use of various spices has rendered his writings
palatable to some and intolerable to some at the same time. In
Midnights Children the narrator repeatedly talks about preserving
his memories by way of documenting them. This is quite similar to
the process of pickle-making which engages him and Padma. Both the
act of writing and the act of making pickle aim at preservation.
Rushdies magic realist way of writing also makes use of food and
the related imagery. In Midnights Children the emotions of the cooks
are shown to be affecting the food. The discontentment of Saleems
spinster aunt, Alia, poisons the very food she cooks. Mary Pereiras
food, on the other hand, is shown to be pleasantly flavoured by her
congenial demeanour. Towards the end of the novel the Widow orders
the castration of the midnights children. The genitals are curried and

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fed to the dogs. This grotesque act symbolizes a complete annihilation

of the threat that the midnights children posed to the Widow.
Eivind Jacobsen states that food is subject to creative cookery
and display and may serve as a material representation of individual
or collective identities. (The Politics of Food, 62) Food, therefore, is
culturally embedded, perceived and interpreted along socially defined
dimensions. Rushdie deploys food to precisely this use in Shalimar
the Clown. The legendary wazwaan of thirty-six courses minimum
becomes an index for the Kashmiri identity. The inhabitants of Shirmal
village are shown to take pride in their culinary mastery and Pachigam
is presented as a village of gastronomes.(76) It is a matter of no
mere coincidence that the village of the culinary masters is named
Shirmal, which means a kind of sweetened bread. In both The Moors
Last Sigh and Shalimar the Clown food also serves the purpose of
establishing a connection between a place and its people. The spices
and the wazwaan almost become metaphors for Cochin and Kashmir.
Rushdie often fashions the individual identities of his characters
through food. Bombur Yambarzal in Shalimar The Clown stands
distinguished for his almost religious passion for cooking. His
description in the novel reads, a lonely man for whom cookery was
his single passion in life, who approached it with an almost religious
fervour and who demanded of others the same level of dedication.
(113) This monomaniacal strain in the wazas personality- a
characteristic he shared with the fanatical mulla Bulbul Fakh makes
him a worthy opponent of the mulla. (114) The encounter between
the waza and the mulla intensifies the role of food, which represents
the culture of Kashmir. Bombur Yambarzal, the cook, epitomizes
Kashmiriyat. Armed with the kitchenware, the cook defeats the
Maulanas religious fanaticism and saves the Valley, albeit for a short
while. Similarly, Boonyi Kauls desires and ambitions that characterize
her are closely linked to her appetite. In her case, one also sees foods
fundamental relation to future health and also to risk.
As Fischler suggests in Food, Self and Identity, the human need
for a diversified composition of food increases the risk. (Anthropology
of Food, 275-92) Becoming a secularist omnivore, Boonyi includes
in her palette dishes from all the parts of the nation- vegetarian and

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Fea(s)ts of Salman Rushdie

non-vegetarian. (SC 333) Her vociferous appetite is far from doing

any good to her body and the results become evident in a short while.
Boonyis bloated body becomes a physical manifestation of her moral
corruption. The narrator tells us that she took to gluttony with the
same bottomless enthusiasm she had once had for sex, diverting the
immense force of her erotic requirements from her bed to her table.
(331)
The parallel gets more pronounced after Boonyi returns to Kashmir.
After losing everything she comes back to her village and starts living
a solitary life in the hills. Boonyi tries to atone for her wrong-doings
by taking to an agrarian life-style. Her sole dependence on agricultural
produce for sustenance has a miraculous effect on her body. Her
physiological improvement corresponds to the purgation of her moral
corruption. She seems to be exemplifying the axiom you become what
you eat.
Rushdie shows the relationship between Max Ophuls and his
illegitimate daughter, India, strengthening over their shared meals.
Their suppers together become an occasion for the narrator to draw
similarities between the father and the daughter. Both of them are told
to be in possession of similar personality traits. Max and India are
presented as father and daughter alike in their appetites, high
metabolic rates, love of meat, their slender high toned bodies.. India
inherits her appetite not only from her mother Boonyi but also her
father who in his prime used to surprise his fellow-diners by ordering
a simple green salad while his car would get clandestinely laden by
delicacies straight from the restaurants kitchens. (43)
In Rushdies works food and cooking often bestow social status
upon the characters. In Shalimar the Clown, Abdullah Nomans troupe
is celebrated not just for the entertainment it provides but also for the
cooking skills. Even Pandit Pyarelal rises phenomenally in the
villagers esteem once his identity as a cook is recognized by them. In
Midnights Children, Saleem Sinais nurse,Mary Pereiras chutneys and
kasaundis and pickles become her way to ascend the social ladder.
Her success story spills over to Rushdies other novel Moors Last
Sigh.
Food imagery appears in literature as a source of deeply embedded

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associations that lead into the depths of individual and cultural memory.
Rushdie conjures a sense of nostalgia in his Midnights Children
through repeated references to the delicacies enjoyed by the protagonist
in his childhood. He exploits the potential of food to evoke memory
as proposed by David Sutton in Remembrances of Repast. Mary
Pereiras chutneys and kasaundis represent the pleasures of
childhood. In Shalimar the Clown, food and cooking become Pandit
Pyarelals way to commune with Pamposh, his now dead beloved wife.
The narrator tells us, In the kitchen where once Pamposh had reigned,
he felt in communion with her departed beauty, felt their souls blending
in his bubbling sauces, their vanished joy expressing itself in vegetables
and meat. (168)
In Shalimar the Clown, food also represents secular values which
were said to once prevail in Kashmir. When the relations between the
inhabitants of Shirmal and Pachigam come to a rancorous end, the
Maharaja of Kashmir intervenes. He orders both the villages to pool
their resources to provide food (and theatrical entertainment) at a grand
Dassehra festival banquet in the Shalimar garden. (114) The banquet
symbolizes as well as celebrates the hybridity that permeates the culture
of Kashmir. In this context, the ecstatic speech of Pandit Pyarelal is
worth quoting:
Today our Muslim village in the service of our Hindu maharaja
will cook and act in a Mughal - that is to say Muslim garden ,
to celebrate the anniversary of the day on which Ram marched
against Ravan to rescue Sita Who tonight are the Hindus? Who
are the Muslims? Here in Kashmir our stories sit happily side by
side on the same double bill, we eat from the same dishes, we
laugh at the same jokes. (115)

The Kashmiris, both Muslims and Hindus, are presented as united

when it comes to gastronomic feats. Pandit Pyarelals cooking becomes
the symbol of this unity. His gradual blending of the wazwaan and the
pandit cooking represents the ideal co-existence of the two
communities in the pre-lapsarian Kashmir. Also, the meat-eating habits
of the Kashmiri pandits, referred to in the novel, set them apart from
Brahmins anywhere else in India and this becomes a marker for the
uniqueness of the Kashmiri culture. Rushdie connects the usurpation
of meat by the pandits with the Muslims digressing from

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Fea(s)ts of Salman Rushdie

monotheistic Islam and taking to worshipping the pirs in the Valley.

He successfully presents the happy and desirable influence of one
culture over another.
The wedding of Pandit Pyarelals daughter, Boonyi Kaul, with
Abdullah Nomans son, Shalimar the Clown, is a crucial event in the
novel. Rushdie presents the wedding episode as an ideal example of
conflict-resolution, fit to be emulated by the State. During the
celebrations, Pandit Pyarelal entertains the guests with vegetarian
delicacies in his house, while Abdullah Nomans backyard becomes a
non-vegetarians paradise. On the day of the wedding, separate sets of
cooks prepare vegetarian and non-vegetarian food on the different sides
of the venue. Rushdie shows the guests as savouring goats meat
and goats cheese side by side. (183-4)
While on one hand, Rushdie presents feasts as the sites of conflictresolution in Shalimar the Clown, the seeds of a future conflict are
shown to be sown at another feast in Midnights Children. Ayub Khan
is presented as planning a coup at the dinner party at Emeralds house
in Pakistan. After this successful bloodless coup, Ayub Khan becomes
the president of Pakistan. The narrator goes on to show that the roots
of the Indo-Pak War of 1965 go back to this coup, and thus, this dinner
party where the strategies were made using salt-pepper pots. As history
books inform us, the Indo-Pak War of 1965 also fuelled the rebellion
in East Pakistan, where the Awami League under the leadership of
Sheikh Mujibur Rehman sought more autonomy for the province. The
narrator, thus, seems to hint cheekily that the creation of Bangladesh
can also be traced to this dinner party hosted by Zulfikar and Emerald.
In the end it can be added that food also becomes in Rushdies
hands a tool to authenticate his writings. His expatriate status renders
his writings susceptible to misrepresentations, which appear
unacceptable to the native/vernacular writers. By showing his
familiarity with the native cuisine, Rushdie attempts to establish his
understanding of the native culture with its regional specificities. The
spices of Cochin, the wazwaan of Kashmir and the different pickles
and chutneys come to epitomize the culture of India, which Rushdie
claims to know well enough to write about.
(Nishtha Gautam teaches English at Deshbandhu College, Delhi)

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81
Amarkant
Translated by
Preeti Diwan
Delhi

The City of Death

Ram stepped out of his house. He jerked his neck in a suspicious,

crow-like manner and glanced around him. The sky stretched like a
spotless blue canopy above him. A glow of warm sunshine enveloped
the park, the houses and the tree-tops. Usually by this time the area
would have been abuzz with soft and chirpy sounds but today there
was no trace of either any women or children. The whole area was
weighed down by a sinister silence. In front of some of the houses,
people were standing very close to each other in groups of twos and
fours, talking in conspiratorial tones. Ram was a thin, short-statured,
middle-aged man, whose skin was torn at the shoulder and his wrinkled
pants looked like pyjamas. His eyes were blood-shot and swollen. He
looked up at the sky and a deep sigh escaped him.
After walking a few steps, he suddenly stopped short. A kind of
nervousness appeared on his face and he looked all around in an alert
manner. He felt as if he heard sounds of kill them, kill them
emanating from the adjoining locality and people running towards him.
A knife suddenly flashed before his eyes. Should he run back home?
He retraced his last steps. Groups of people, standing in front of houses
were still immersed in their conversations. Slightly reassured, he started
paying attention to these sounds and understood their tenor. In the
adjoining locality, dogs were fighting with each other. Even dogs are
fighting a lot these days, he thought and attempted to smile, but his
smile disappeared like a bubble of water. It was close to eight oclock
at that time. After many days, the curfew had been relaxed for four

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The City of Death

hours each in the morning and evening. At the time of leaving home,
his wife had pleaded in a helpless tone, Be careful. He was frightened
and alert to such an extent that any sermon appeared inauspicious to
him. He screamed, Do you want something to happen? His wife
started crying and he felt remorseful about his behaviour afterwards,
but in this atmosphere of fear and terror, every tender emotion used
to be drowned like a small pebble in flood waters.
Two more people from the locality joined him as had been decided
earlier. All three moved ahead. Their faces looked shrivelled. They
looked at each other as if they were guilty of some crime.
Anything special? one of them mumbled.
Somebody has been stabbed near the station, the other one
informed him.
Was he a Hindu?
No, he was a Muslim.
Has a girls dead body been found in Himmat Ganj?
Yes.
Was she a Muslim?
No, she was a Hindu.
Ram was listening quietly. He felt as if somebody was wringing
out the blood from his heart. Suddenly they fell silent. The boundary
of the area was marked by a brick-wall. But the efforts to segregate
people are not successful for long and the wall had been broken at
many places to create new passages.
Muslims lived in the adjoining locality. People of both the areas
had started living in harmony and peace after Independence. They
maintained cordial relations with each other. Hindus used to buy milk
from the Muslim milkmen and Muslims used to take groceries on credit
from Hindu shopkeepers. Members of both the communities used to
attend weddings in each others families and also help each other.
Cricket and football matches between boys of both the communities
used to be organized frequently. A couple of years back a boy called
Jamil had become very popular in Rams locality. He loved singing,
dancing and acting in plays. He played the role of Subhadra in a play
called Veer Abhimanyu. He was determined to play the role of a
historical Hindu female character with all earnestness. His enthusiasm

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was such that he had, ignoring the directions of the director, broken
his head by banging it six times while wailing after Abhimanyus death.
Because of this incident, his fame as a real artist had spread among
the Hindu masses very quickly. But suddenly all this came to an end
and now people didnt believe in anything except murder, terror and
rumours.
The three men moved beyond the boundary wall. Each one tried
to remain in the centre, but none was successful in this attempt for
long. Meanwhile somebody quickly moved towards them. Ram was
in the left corner, which is why, he was the first one to be startled. But
the man was a young pundit. He was barefoot, clad only in a vest and
dhoti and the long tuft of hair on his crown was being blown about
from side to side. His forehead was adorned with a sandalwood tilak.
He had come to this area for performing some rituals in somebodys
house, and he was waiting for the company of people of his own
religion to go back.
May I also come along, he mumbled and attempted
unsuccessfully to smile. The pundit was also trying, with great
alertness, to remain in the centre of the threesome. Under the pressure
of speed, he bounced to this side or that like a ball, but he used to
quickly scurry back to the centre like a mouse. At first, they were
irritated with him but afterwards they understood his helplessness
because his clothes most obviously announced the fact that he was a
Hindu.
The narrow street was as bare and deserted as the parting in a
widows head. Ram remembered, as if in a blurred dream, that a few
burqua-clad women could always be seen on this road earlier. Children
could be found chirping and playing in the dust. One was sure to
encounter the old woman Kariman, the log-seller, either crossing the
street or calling out ae, Shabbir. Novice wrestlers, clad in loincloths,
could be seen bathing at the tap in the street after their practice sessions.
What feelings of confidence and gleam could be glimpsed in their eyes
in the past! But now only 20-25 people were standing at a tea-stall on
the left-side. Their heads were bowed and their eyes were raised and
they seemed to be staring at the three men through raised eyebrows.
Their mouths were marked by poisonous smiles.

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The City of Death

The men increased the pace of their walk. There was no strength
left in their legs. Their bodies were shaking like hollow effigies. When
they had moved beyond the hotel, they found five jawans of the P.A.C.
patrolling the area. After some distance there was a settlement of
Hindushuts of hay and mud. Piles of rubbish littered the area. The
water in the drains had congealed into a black mass. An old patient,
sitting in front of his house, was coughing violently. This was the area
in which the pundit lived, so he parted from the group and now started
walking with a swagger.
I venture out alone on dark nights like these, he grinned.
When they reached the main road, the two friends turned away
and Ram was left alonge. How much hustle-bustle used to mark this
street earlier! Now there were neither any rickshaws nor any small
cycle-repair shops on the pavement, in front of which there always
used to be a big crowd of college boys and girls. Many shops were
also closed. Vendors selling ice and snacks were not be seen anywhere.
Sometimes a group of lower-class people used to come from one
direction and pass in the other. At that very moment, a group of Muslim
labourers came quickly from one side and headed towards the other
side. How they ran into each other like frightened sheep! Sometimes
they looked all around them cautiously like vigilant dogs.
Ram kept moving ahead. But he also kept glancing back again
and again, like a jackal that had entered the city. His mind was saturated
with fear. He was not a coward and he had always been against such
enmities. But the fear of the unknown had drained every drop of blood
from his body. God knows how poison had seeped his entire being
and was playing havoc with it. He felt so petty because of this!
Frightening silence! Even the softest sound seemed to hint at a mob
attack. He wished that he hadnt set out today! But it was not possible
to stay at home. He used to work in a small shop in Civil Lines and
he was losing his salary by continuously staying away from work.
He came to a small Muslim settlement. At places, people were
standing in groups in front of shops and houses. They stared at him
with ferocious eyes. Some other people were also passing through the
road. Ram had no strength left in his body, but the fear of life prodded
him on. He kept looking back or sideways. At this moment a young

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man came running from the left. He was hardly twenty. He was clad
in undergarments and he had a knife in his hand. Ram had already
spotted him. Rams body was paralyzed with fear. The P.A.C. jawans
were sitting at some distance, but he couldnt shout, despite wanting
to. The young man came running towards him, but Ram moved away
with alacrity and escaped the blow. The young man stared at him, and
then laughing, shot past him like an arrow into the street on the opposite
side.
It seemed as if he had stopped breathing. He was not even
conscious of the fact that he was walking. He visualized himself a dead
man. One doesnt know whether he was mumbling something or his
teeth were chattering. The sad faces of his wife and children flashed
before his eyes for a second.
May be somebody else was also moving towards him. He was
wearing a lungi and a shirt. He said, Babuji, carry on, dont be afraid.
These rascals come from outside and want to bring a bad name to the
locality. I happened to be away, that is why this took place, otherwise
I keep a watch so that nothing untoward happens. Ugh, what wicked
times we have entered upon. You buy milk from Majid, the milkseller,
dont you?
Ram looked at him carefully, but he didnt understand. Is he trying
to deceive me! He answered him without stopping, Yes...
Majid is my uncle. You dont worry at all, babuji, I want to say
something. Please dont step out for two-three days. We have fallen
upon evil days...ok, you carry on...I am standing here...
Ram was moving ahead in an almost unconscious state. It still
seemed to him that the young man in the vest was following him. Why
did he laugh? He recalled that when he was a student in high school,
he had run a mile-long race, clad, very much like that young man, in
a vest and shorts, and had won the race. On reaching the marketplace,
he felt a little reassured. Some people, in a frightened state, were
roaming here and there. They were avoiding each other, because
nobody had faith in anybody else.
Ram himself was avoiding others. Some rickshaws were stationary
and some were plying here and there. A rickshaw puller shouting Civil
Lines, one passenger crossed his path. The hood of the rickshaw was

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The City of Death

leaning forward in such a manner that he couldnt see the man sitting
in it. He fixed the fare and got into the rickshaw. His whole body
became numb the moment he sat down. A bearded Muslim, wearing
worn-out a worn-out pyjama and shirt, was sitting next to him. His
eyes and cheeks were sunken. He was looking at Ram with terror and
hostility.
The rickshaw started moving. They kept glancing furtively at each
other. They were sitting close to the two sides of the rickshaw, so that
their bodies didnt touch each other. Both had braced their bodies to
face the other side, but both repeatedly looked at each other from the
corners of their eyes. Ram noticed that the bearded man sometimes
looked at his pants and its pockets also. He knew the reason because
he himself was glancing at the bearded mans waistband. When the
rickshaw was jolted here and there, their bodies used to come into
contact with each other, but they would quickly move their original
position and grip the edge of the rickshaw.
Now the rickshaw was passing through a spot, where ten to twelve
men were standing on the pavement opposite a hotel. Two or three of
them appeared to be wrestlers and they were clad in vest and red scarflike towels tied around their waists. One of them pointed towards the
rickshaw. After that all of them started staring at it ferociously. Ram
noticed that the bearded Muslim uttered Allah suddenly. He rested
his forehead on the back of the rickshaw. His eyes had turned upwards.
And his feet were trembling with fear. Ram didnt take long to
understand the reason. He felt a kind of relief in seeing the man, of
whom he was so afraid, in such a terrorized state.
Was he going to die! Hadnt Ram himself been in this condition
a little while ago?
Listen...are you alright... Ram shook him.
The bearded man looked at him with extreme helplessness. But
no sound came out of his mouth.
Are you unwell?
N...No... indistinct sounds escaped his mouth.
Its all right Ram reassured him.
These words had come out of his mouth unknowingly and he was
a little surprised at them. He remembered that only a few days ago, he

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was a human being. Yes, human! Had he uttered these words out of
habit. The rickshaw moved ahead. Now the bearded man was sitting
straight. He had become a little stable.
What evil times are we witnessing, he said.
Yes, we have fallen on really wicked days, Ram repeated his
words.
People are dying like rats do during the plague.
Yes, both Hindus and Muslims are dying.
It is the poor who are most affected. I survive on my earnings
from day to day. There has been no food in my home for the last three
days.
Where do you work? Ram asked him.
In National Tailoring House. I can remain hungry, but I cant see
my children go hungry. I had no choice but to come today.
Yes, this is exactly...
I am telling you the truth, so many women have come seeking
shelter and are living like hens thrust into crowded coops. How can
I describe their condition! People are starving. One is selling his cycle,
another his watch. People are pawning their jewellery...
Mistakes are being committed on both the sides.
No one is pure and innocent. I have two-three Hindu friends, but
now they dont look into my eyes. To tell you the truth, I, too, avoid
their gaze.
This is exactly what is wrong. Thats why we cant progress.
If we live harmoniously, nobody would dare look at us.
Suddenly they fell silent. Their enthusiasm appeared to have
vanished somewhere. Ram did not feel like talking, just as a patient
doesnt feel like eating. The rickshaw was moving with great speed.
Both were looking in front of it. Every normal thing appeared to be
unusual. For a moment a thought crossed Rams mind that the Muslim
man had made these statements in self-defence. They had reached Civil
Lines. The bearded man stopped the rickshaw even before the crossing.
He alighted, paid the fare and without looking at Ram, started moving
ahead. But after taking a few steps, he remembered something and
returned. It seemed that he was delivering a piece of good news to
Ram. He said, smilingly, Lets see, whether I return home today or

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87

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The City of Death

not! O.K. bye. May be well meet sometime.

Having said this, he turned and started walking at a fast pace. His
gait resembled a leaf blown hither and thither in the wind. The rickshaw
moved ahead. Ram got down at the crossing. God knows why, his eyes
were moist. Whether these were tears of gratefulness towards that man
or of his own helplessnesshe couldnt understand. But he felt happy
for having experienced the emotion of pain. Aah, he could neither
experience happiness nor sorrow because of his feeling of fear. But
this man had softened his heart and the emotion of pain and sorrow
had resurfaced in it. Only a little while ago, Ram had taken him for
a murderer but he turned out to be as mild and lovable as a lamb.
Ram had moved beyond the crossroads. He looked all around him
happily. Beautiful roads and shops. Lush green trees. Suddenly he
remembered that he had to return home in the evening. Reminded of
this, he felt as if a heavy burden had been placed on his chest. His
heart started sinking. The sharply blowing wind seemed to be carrying
the sound of a wailing woman or perhaps a groaning child. A cuckoo
had started calling. The cooing of a cuckoo! God knows how many
times the cuckoo must have cooed ever since the riots broke out, but
his attention had not been drawn to it. But now he was totally
mesmerized by the sweet notes of the bird.
Hindi original titled Maut ka Shahar by Amarkant

Translator's Note :
Amarkant is an eminent Hindi novelist and short story writer. He was
associated with the Progressive Writers Association from his early
days. In his works he portrays the experiences and vicissitudes of the
lives of middle and lower-middle class Indians in a very sensitive and
poignant manner. His creations resonate with the complex interplay
of human emotions under the veneer of a simple narrative.

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