Malay Roychoudhury interviewed by Nickie Shobeiry for Expose.com ( Part One )

Malay Roychoudhury revealed: Part I

Malay Roychoudry is a writer whose rebellious literary past has been well-documented and continues to be researched today. He has had many fascinating experiences, including being a founding member of The Hungry Generation. The BBC have covered the story of this group. Below, Nickie Shobeiry talks to Malay about his life and works.

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Arts & Lit

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Sep 1, 2015

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You grew up in Patna. What was your childhood like, and how do you think it has affected the person you are today?

I was born in a Bengali Brahmin family in 1939, and grew up in Patna in a slum area called Imlitala. Imlitala means ‘below the tamarind tree’. Ours was the only brick-mortar house, and the area all around were hay-hutments of people who at that time were called ‘untouchables’. There were also a few families belonging to pauper Muslims who fled from Lucknow after the city was captured by East India Company. Our family did not have any problems with those ‘untouchables’ and poor Muslims.

Patna’s slums (credit: terraurban.wordpress.com)

During childhood, we were free to enter any house while playing hide-and-seek. We were even allowed to enter the local mosque and the Imam did not object. My photographer/artist Dad was the only earning member looking after a joint, extended family of twenty – my uncles, aunts and cousin brother-sisters resided in the same house. I used to visit the Muslim families for purchasing duck eggs, and they would send us a complete goat leg during Eid. Later my elder uncle got a minion job as Keeper of Paintings and Sculptures at the Patna Museum. During holidays, I would sit on his bicycle and visit the museum for free and roamed around, which contributed a lot to my formative days.

Those who were called ‘untouchables’ did not have any fixed earnings, and we knew they resorted to pick-pocketing, thievery, dacoity etc for a living. There used to be Imlitala Feast where they could lay their hands on something big, and we used to share the community food. Country liquor drinks and palm toddy were in plenty during these feasts, in which I also started sharing from about five-six years age. When the police arrived to arrest anyone, the local dogs used to bark and signal the persons concerned to flee, jumping over tiles of the hutments and disappear into the mango orchard behind.

Patna Museum (credit: http://www.holidayiq.com)

They used to grow cannabis plants in their courtyard as these were not banned at that time. Obviously we started smoking with them in our teens. Our parents were not that strict to keep us away from the locality we lived in, though there was a limit drawn and that was to sit for our studies in the morning and evening, and show good results in school. In the evening we studied by kerosene lamps, all brothers and sisters together. There was a real horror during our studies in the evening when the people used to kill a leg-tied pig, thrown into a pit and killed with hot iron rods to have its flesh for cooking. The crying yell of the pig was nerve shattering. Being Brahmin we were barred from eating pork, but me and my brother did manage to eat it in the gathering of thieves.

There was no tap for drinking water in our house, and me and my elder brother had to fill up buckets of water from the locality tap. Sometimes we visited the Ganges river to take a bath.

Allen Ginsberg had visited our Dariapur house.

Dad constructed a house in an area of Patna called Dariapur, and as we were reaching adolescence, he wanted us to move out of the almost free-sex Imlitala locality. My first sexual encounter did happen in Imlitala when once I went to purchase eggs from a Muslim family, and there I was virtually raped by the fifteen-year old elder daughter of the house. I was ten and did not know much about sex before that experience. Her name was Kulsum and she loved to recite poems of Ghalib and Faiz. Being from a Brahmin family, beef eating was prohibited for us. I enjoyed the Mughlai beef preparation at their house – she used to lick my lips to clean the trace and smell.

My elder brother Samir was sent to Kolkata, and I was admitted to a Brahmo Samaj Seminary. Samir used to bring Bengali poetry books and novels whenever he arrived from Kolkata. I became sort of a book worm. At the seminary, I developed a crush for the girl-librarian named Namita, who used to suggest novels, short-story books and poetry collections for me. She contributed a lot in making me a writer. I have recorded Kulsum and Namita in my novel, ‘Rahuketu’.

Imlitala has made me an eclectic thinker, morally daring and of tolerant disposition. I think I am ready to accept all Indian social contradictions as natural. I have become broad-minded because of the complex nature of the Imlitala society.

Allen Ginsberg had visited our Dariapur house.

 

You have now written over forty books. Is there a piece of work (book or otherwise) that is particularly close to your heart? If so, which one and why?

The poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’, as well as my experimental novel ‘Nakhadanta’, are close to my heart. Lest I forget, the poem in Bengali is titled ‘Prachanda Baidyutik Chhutar’. With ‘Stark Electric Jesus’, I felt I achieved what I intended to do in Bengali poetry, by completely redefining the contemporary form and speed of a poem prevailing during the Sixties. I shall talk about the poem later. ‘Nakhadanta’ is divided in seven parts, on the line of Indian epic poem ‘Ramayana’, and I have tried with the technique of stories within a story on the line of the epic poem ‘Mahabharata’. The stories are about jute farmers and jute mills in West Bengal which are being gradually decimated from the industrial scene due to machinations of political party bigwigs, speculators and jute black marketeers. I had researched and collected actual data of mills and farmer plights/suicides by visiting various villages in West Bengal. Some critics call it postmodern, though I had no such intention while writing Nakhadanta. ‘Nakha’ means fingernail, and ‘Danta’ means teeth.

Oh I’ll die I’ll die I’ll die
My skin is in blazing furore

from: ‘Stark Electric Jesus’

The Hungry Generation (termed ‘Hungryalism’) revolutionized the Bengali language. Did you imagine that this would happen, on the scale that it has, when the movement first began?

To be frank I did not, and neither did any other founding members of the literary movement ever think that it would reach shores of other languages, and become a topic of academic and media interest. When it started, we were attacked by the print media, and serious literary periodicals made fun of the movement. Posters drawn by Anil Karanjai and Subimal Basak were ripped out of the wall of Kolkata Coffee Houses by other literary groups. Members of a group named ‘Krittibas’ encircled Subimal Basak in front of coffeehouse one evening, and resorted to a fisticuff, resulting into a sort of gang war. Some aged intellectuals and editors secretly wrote letters against us to the Police Commissioner which was later revealed to us by the Commissioner himself.

You might have read that we did not publish regular periodicals for about three years, and published and freely distributed a one-page manifesto/bulletin in Kolkata colleges, newspaper offices and coffeehouses until 1963. The Police Commissioner of Kolkata who interrogated Samir and I sarcastically asked us if we were selling tooth powder through handbills, or if we were engaged in serious literary activities.

The movement gathered steam in 1963-64 when about 35 participants, including painters, joined. In fact, we did not approach the BBC or the Wesleyan University, the University of Ohio, the Gutenberg University or for that matter any of the Indian Universities. The PhD and MPhil that students are writing about us are doing it of their own accord. In most cases, the researchers do not approach us at all, and collect material from The Little Magazine Library and Research Centre at Kolkata. I gather that the movement had a great impact in Bangladesh where Bengali is the national language. My poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ is being debated since 2008 on a website of Dhaka.

 

Could you give an example in the way that the Bengali language has changed due to the movement ?

Prior to our movement all novels and stories used to be close ended. Poems used to have a centre identified by the title, and street lingo was not used to compose sentences. Slangs were never used, foul language was a taboo and novels were mostly European in construct, and in the sense that the entire narrative was built around a so-called hero. Compound sentences were avoided, short stories always had a whip-crack ending, the concept of ‘The Outsider’ was not touched upon, and lower-caste writers were completely absent in literary periodicals (Subimal Basak, Debi Roy, Abani Dhar in our movement belonged to lower castes). Poems never dealt with images in flux, logical cracks in sentences were frowned upon, and form of the narrative was not freed. There was more concentration on plot and content than on language and technique, and the usage of micro narratives within narratives were considered non-literary. We did away with all these, and allowed the author total freedom. We felt that the European modernism did not suit the Indian complex spirit, and we should draw more from ancient Indian puranas.

 

In 1961, in the home you shared with your elder brother, Hungryalism was born. Can you recall the first time you realised what you were doing was important?

Actually, it was our parents’ house. I used to discuss with Samir the economic and cultural conditions of society as a result of the shift by the Government of India from an agrarian development plan to a massive industrialisation plan, in the background of an influx of millions of refugees as a result of partition of the country. I was also preparing a draft for a book on Marxism while writing a monthly column on ‘Philosophy of History’ in a Kolkata literary periodical. We felt there was a complete downslide in Bengali society in particular, and Indian society in general, and we should start a movement which should deal with non-literary aspects as well. We felt there has to be a push to get the society out of its elitist slumber. The existing cultural structure was not suitable to solve problems – there had been unimaginable changes in socio-economic environment due to the partition of Bengal.

When the movement picked up steam in 1963 and we were being attacked on all fronts, we realised that what we were doing was quite important, and that we had to keep our critique in focus. Hungryalism became a cultural phenomena. We had to express rage against the system that demanded conformity and selling out.

Our disgust of European modernism automatically became a problem for the reigning writers, poets and thinkers of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. A famous Bengali poet and editor of a poetry magazine, Buddhadeva Basu, refused to meet me and shut the door in my face. In almost all anthologies edited by pre-1960 writers, Hungryalists were never included.

 

Chaucer and German history philosopher Oswald Spengler influenced the conception of Hungryalism. Why in particular these two writers?

In view of the plight of the refugees on the streets and railway platforms of Kolkata, we wanted to use a word that typified the Sixties’ bad time. Geoffrey Chaucer was in my undergraduate course, and I remembered his line “In the sowre Hungry tyme.” Hungry Time was what we were searching for, and thus we got the name Hungry Generation, or Hungryalism. I discovered Oswald Spengler while writing my column on the Philosophy of History. He had said that when a culture is in downslide, it starts eating everything from the outside – its hunger is insatiable. Thus these two fit exactly to what we were looking for. We discussed it with Samir’s poet friend, Shakti Chattopadhyay, and my poet friend, Debi Roy. We did not, however, agree with Spengler’s sense of doom. Just look at present day India. Our readings were almost prophetic in view of what we wrote in our religious and political manifesto.

 

Nickie Shobeiry

Malay Roychoudhury interviewed by Abhimanyu Singh and Goirick Brahmachari

TSC Interview with Malay Roychoudhury

By The Sunflower Collective 

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. 

The Sunflower Collective: 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?

Malay Roychoudhury: 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, and 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 the 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 the 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 Greenwich 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 trustees, who visited me, had said that there were more than fifty copies from which edited pages were included in his Indian Journals. Ginsberg was spied upon by the 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 he was recording. Ginsberg himself told me about it. The harmonium story might have been in one of the fifty copies.

Sunil Gangopadhyay, who was in the 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 a 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, and 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 Ferlinghetti sent me a copy of Indian 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 the Bangladesh War (1971), 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 the 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 criticised 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, whom 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 a 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, especially 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 the 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 the 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.

The interview was first published in The Sunflower Collective on 10/11/15 

Bio:
Malay Roy Choudhury is a Bengali poet and novelist, who founded the Hungryalist Movement that took the poetry scene in Bengal by storm in the 1960s. The Hungry Generation was a literary/art movement that Malay Roy Choudhury, along with Shakti Chattopadhyay, Samir Roychoudhury and Debi Roy, had started.

Dhurjati Chanda, Editor, Ebang, Kolkata

Malay Roychoudhury ( Photo by Sandip Kumar )

Dhurjati: Some critics are of the opinion that you are one of the main architect of Bengali fictional prose ; of the same exalted class as that of Satinath Bhaduri, Kamal Kumar Majumdar, Subimal Basak and Subimal Misra. However, you are the exceptional torchbearer in this regard. What is your opinion ?

Malay: See, compared to European languages, Bengali prose is quite recent. Mathi Likhito Susamachar ( Gospels of St Mathew )  was published in 1800. Sixty five years after that, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay‘s novel Durgeshnandini was published. Third stage in prose arrived in 1914 when Pramatha Choudhury started publishing the periodical Sabujpatra ; that would mean a three year old kid. Compared to this the Jews Had their Old Testament in ancient times. The Apology of Socretes by Plato, Poetics by Aristotle, and Confessions by Saint Augustine appeared in 3rd century BC. Six hundred years before Pramatha Choudhury, Decameron was written by Boccaccio. The Praise of Folly was written by Desiderius Erasmus ; Castiglione had written The Book of the Courier. Think of Rabelais who wrote Gargatuan Pantagruel  four hundred years before Rabindranath Tagore was born ; Autobiographical Prose was written by Benvenuto Cellini, Don Quixote was written by Miguel De Cervantes. How many names of European prose writers do you want me to refer to ? Pascal in 17th century, Voltaire and Rousseau in 18th. Obviously the appearance of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Balzac, Flaubert, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekov, Henry James in 19th century was a foregone conclusion. The prose writers who came after them in Europe revolutionized sentence structures, construction of words, diction, expressive inventions. To name a few : James Joyce, Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, Frantz Kafka, Marcel Proust, D.H.Lawrence, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and William Falkner. The labour and love invested by Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie in their prose is evident if you leaf through just a few pages of their books. Can you imagine as to which height the language and expressive medium has reached in their society as a result of their contributions ? Compare the rich prose used for conveying news by reporters of CNN and BBC with our Doordarshan, Ananda (ABP), ETV, Akash, Chobbish Ghanta, Kolkata TV etc. Right from the war zone or accident site the extempore prose the Westerners are using is far more developed than even the written news of our Broadcasters. Read the pages of TIME, Newsweek and London newspapers alongside Ananda Bazar Patrika, Ganashakti of Kolkata. Compare the lectures of illiterate President George Bush with our erudite Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya ; you will find even in prose Bush is wealthy. It is the writer who has to take up the job of nurturing Bengali prose. The foremost duty of a Bengali fiction writer is to develop the language and make it rich. Well crafted stories may be narrated by any grandmother. The question is not of converting language into Arts. The issue is of loving your mother tongue, local and geographical, and respecting it.

Dhurjati: Concurrently, you have had to talk about writers’ honesty on several occasions. In the present Indian context, West Bengal in particular, don’t you think ‘morality’ or ‘de-morality’ are just hollow words ?

Malay: The word honesty is so all pervasive in gambit, that virtue, morality, ethics, commitment etc—- every value system come within its purview.  Actually, for the weak-kneed bengali, it is very difficult to disregard the values of life emanating out of the power structure of society. I had analyzed the  present society of West Bengal in 2001 issue of Khanan magazine of Nagpur ; the essay is titled Postmodern Times and the Fall of Bengalies. It was to be included in the Little Magazine Digest, but the editor of the Digest Mr Jyotirmoy Das panicked and rejected it. You may go through the essay in Khanan. I do not know how we are going to get out of the hell that the people of West Bengali have got themselves trapped in post colonial logjam. The putrefaction is much deeper than immorality and dishonesty. Most of the poets, writers, critics— not only in the case of servants of media, but in Little Magazine world as well, lack self-confidence and self-respect, and are chicken-hearted , greedy and brazen faced. They don’t love the place called West Bengal. Sunil Gangopadhyay, wants the name of West Bengal changed to Bangla, but would not like the name of East Bengal Football Club changed to Football Club of Bengalies.

Dhurjati: “You can’t carry your flag of honesty to places where millions of Rupees are spent on fireworks by individuals in one single night during Diwali festival, lecherous lasses  collect gold biscuits in day-night performance.” You had, in an interview to Arunesh Ghosh, said these words. The word ‘honesty’ is very relevant here. To a postmodern thinker, does honesty of the day entail death of modernity ?

Malay:  Are you attacking Arunesh Ghosh ? In that case he has to answer this question. It is true, he is simultaneously writing in DESH, associating himself with Marxist Communist Party in power, trying to prove himself a participant in the Hungryalist movement, has declared himself to be an anti-establishment writer, etc. Don’t you think such a character signals the end of modernity ? Arunesh Ghosh is a present day Bengali, a member of the dreaded School Teacher Gang of the ruling party. However, his brandishment is visibly palpable at the micro level. Of late he has been found to have opposed the present power brokers of West Bengal. His modernist ideals might have withered away, but what about the dead end where the philosophy of idealism itself has reached ? LTTE, Jaish-e-Mohammad, ULFA, HUJI, Al Qaida, NLFT, LET, Hizbul Mujahideen etc are all fluttering some sort of flags of idealism to kill human beings. Modernity died at that juncture. And thus the relevance of local narratives. hordes of border-crossing ungrateful Bengalies have destroyed the ‘local’ society and culture of North West Bengal by grinding it under the steamroller of the grand narrative. Arunesh Ghosh is obviously pained and guilt stricken as he is one of those border-crossing Bengalies who have decimated the Coch, Mech and Rajbanshi people.

In reply to second part of your question, I’d like to say that one may be a modern person ; but just because the structure of his writings is postmodern, you need not label him as postmodern. Local narratives may term him as Dalit, Subaltern,  Green Peacenik, Environmentalist, Feminist, Anti Global etc., or he may be part of any other micro level protest ; here their honesty is unchallangeable. It is mainly because of their honest intent that so many Public Interest Litigations are being filed in various High Courts and Supreme Court.

Dhurjati:  What is the explanation of morality and moralization in the Uttaradhunika or Adhunantika perspective ?

Malay:  These days I prefer to use the word Postmodern in place of Uttaradhunika or Adhunantika. Linguist Dr Prabal Dasgupta had coined the synonym Adhunantika in the Indian perspective ; that is because some pro-establishment poets such as Anjan Sen, Amitava Gupta etc. had launched a poetry movement named Uttaradhunika. The idea of literary movements itself is a relic of modernism. As was Hungryalist movement. All literary movements have been conceived on the assumption of the Grand Narrative of Time and human civilization as linear. In modernist prescription one could predict the march of history. Which means the structure of present and future are known beforehand. One may conceive of theories. Postmodernity is an open-ended space. It can not predict the future. However, it analyzes the present and identifies the features. It surpasses the author to examine his texts. If you deconstruct their discourse, you will be able to make out as to why these people turned out in to great frauds who took refuge in the Grand Narrative. People who once bragged about social commitment, today we have come to know that they had forcibly occupied other people’s lands, which they are selling now to promoters-builders. Through their Grand Narrative traps they catch voters. This is whu postmodernists are giving importance to local narratives. Postmodern ethics is : “Small is Better than Big”. Microforms or microlevel systems, disciplines, relations, face negligible erosions, if confronted. That is why they are better than macroform systems. Macrolevel moralities were imposed by Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Pinochet, Franco, Idi Amin, Yahya Khan, etc.

Dhurjati: If ‘Establishment’ is a modernist epithet, what is the postmodern or Adhunantika flip side ?

Malay: No, no. A word can not be modernist or postmodernist, that way. The idea within an epithet can be confronted from modernist or postmodernist view. Modernists, I am talking of West Bengal, who are embeded in governmental Grand Narrative, have been labeling Ananda Bazar Patrika corporate house as Establishment. Whichever government is installed at the Centre in Delhi, they call it Step Mother Establishment. That is an epistemic fraud. Ganashakti newspaper and the local government secretariat are limbs of the same power structure. The Bengali Marxists do not have faith in the governmental Grand Narrative though ! In the postmodernist perspective when you talk of local narratives, all suzernities are ‘Establishment’. Patriarchy is establishment to Feminists. For Subaltern writers the State Award Committees lorded over by upper caste writers are establishment. Some son of the soil of West Bengal, ie., the original inhabitants, unlike East Pakistani refugees, had told me last year that the Bangla and Sahitya Academies have been captured by those  erstwhile  refugees who have converted them into Hindu East Bengali Establishment. Muslim writers consider these Award Committees as Hindu Establishment.

Dhurjati: I consider your poetry collection Shoytaner Mukh ( Face of The Devil ), wherein some of the poems were stamped CANCELLED, as postmodern or Adhunantika. Would you yourself call it modern ?

Malay: Oh ! I find you remember it. The day the book was released, it created much turmoil at the Kolkata Coffee House ! Publisher Sunil Gangopadhyay had gone to Iowa, USA to learn how to write poems., and the Krittibas group was headed by stop-gap leader Saratkumar Mukhopadhyay. I do not have a copy of the book. I am unable to recall the poems which were branded CANCELLED. The rubber stamp was used at that time to cancel gilt-edged bonds. I guess it may be explained this way : “the pages which were marked CANCELLED could be construed postmodern in the sense that their beginning and exit points got a visual structure of being wide-open.” Anyway, it has become one of watershed legend of the Hungryalist movement. The event was an iconoclastic venture which in retrospect now appears to be one of the ultimate triumph of modernism, that artistic game in which life was put at stake and the rules of which required such brazen acts of impudence to be legitimized by manifestoes.

Dhurjati: Today the market culture is the superordinate ruler ; consumerism is victorious. What is the postmodern explanation ?

Malay: This exactly is the condition which people are terming as end of modernism, or the Postmodern Condition in India. In such a situation the market is the superordinate discourse to which corporate media literature of potboiler writers is relativised, and in which it finds meaning and justification. Just as dot-pens and injection syringes  have now become disposable, so are poetry books, novels, films, compact discs, DVDs, songs, paintings, etc. In today’s West Bengal, there is an intensification of awareness of incoherence, along with the decline in the need for order. It reveals an equivocality about the meanings and relations of things, matched by willingness to live with uncertainty to tolerate the contemporary West Bengali world seen as random and multiple and even incongruent.

Dhurjati: A creative person’s life long struggle is not for amassing money or wealth. It is rather a desire for recognition which spurs him. How far is it applicable to you ?

Malay: Who told you only poets and writers are creative persons ? Doctors, farmers, labourers, engineers, hawkers, shopkeepers, cooks, train drivers, miners, pilots are all creative persons. Otherwise the Homo Sapiens  who once emerged from Africa would not have danced on the surface of moon. The human being in a collective is very complex. He keeps on breaking barriers and enhancing frontiers. That is how  we got high yielding Taichung paddy, Operation Flood, Borlaug’s wheat, cloning, heart transplant, Save Narmada River Movement etc. I am similar to such collective humans. Paradigm shift takes place because of the work of ‘thinking’ of some people. As a result his work or thought comes down to everybody’s notice and benefit.

( Translated from Bengali by Indrajit Bhattacharya )

Dhurjati Chanda

 

 

 

Malay Roychoudhury

Bapi Chakrabarty, Editor, Durer Kheya, Kanpur

Malay Roychoudhury

Bapi: You are considered to be a part of the Hungryalist movement. Is it proper ? Because, during the Hungry Generation movement in the 1960s, only two thin poetry collections of yours were published ; ie., Shoytaner Mukh published by Sunil Gangopadhyay and Jakham published by Subimal Basak. However, your literary fame started some 20 years the Hungryalist movement withered away, when your poetry collection Medhar Batanukul Ghungur and your novel Dubjaley Jetuku Proshwas were published. That has been the learned observation of academic readers. Have you ever made a self-assessment regarding this aspect ?

Malay: Critics did identify me that way about 30-40 years earlier ; that is because the Hungryalist movement was started by me. Now that a number of titles of mine have been published, I presume I am not branded that way anymore. This aspect has not at all been raised by Dr Tapodhir Bhattacharya, Satyajit Bandopadhyay, Udayan Ghosh, Barin Ghoshal, Ajit Ray, Zahirul Hassan, Samir  Sengupta and others who have discussed my fictions and poems in2001 in the collection of articles edited by Murshid A.M. Since you reside far away from Kolkata, you appear to live in that past glory. I would prefer that whatever I have written be discussed in a panorama. I don’t want evaluation of my identity.

Bapi: I think your personality has got mixed up with your Hungryalist image, and as a result the creative genius of poet and prose architect Malay Roychoudhury has been submerged beneath it. In the Hungry Sakkhatkarmala interview collection of yours edited by Ajit Ray, all the fifteen interviewers have repeated the same boring questions about the Hungry Generation movement. Ahabkal magazine edited by Ratan Biswas, which was published during 2002 Kolkata Book Fair, exclusively on your work, has glorified your Hungryalist image. How would you react to it ?

Malay: Modernist critics, as an easier way to enter a text, used to concentrate on the author’s person. And they were elated if they could catch hold of an image. It is just a colonial remnant; an analytical tool imposed by Europe. In traditional Indian literature, the authors were never given importance. Nobody has any idea of the identity and image of Krittibas Ojha and Bharatchandra. British imperialism had imported community-neutral image of the individual. After the Britishers departed, modernity has started disappearing in our postcolonial life. The critics who are still suffering from European canons of modernity are the persons who concentrate their focus on the writer rather than what he has written. The canon of hoisting the image was placed at the centre-stage of epistemic world of European imperialism. Nevertheless, some critics do claim that I have started surpassing my writings. I do not have any role in it.

Bapi: Your birth, childhood, youth, education etc everything have happened in Patna. Your childhood was spent in the Imlitala slum of Bakharganj. Comparison of your origin is impossible with the middle class non-resident writers such as Bibhutibhushan, Sharadindu, Bonoful, Satinath and Subodh Ghosh. With that sort of background how did you emerge as one of the foremost writer of Bengali literature ?

Malay:  Other writers write for money, fame, honour, domination, awards etc. My literary activity has been an effort of an Outsider who endeavours to enter into West Bengali culture, in view of the fact that I belong to the family of one of the original inhabitants of Kolkata city, ie., the Sabarna Roychoudhurys. Ahabkal magazine has published my ancestral tree since 9th century. I do not think any other Bengali writer has had to bear such burden of being associated with his own culture. Apart from this, my education at Catholic Christian and Brahmo Samaj schools has been inspirational for me.

Bapi: Are movements necessary for literature ?

Malay: Hungryalism has been the only worthwhile movement in Bengali literature. Obviously, there must have been socio-political reasons. Sociologists would be in a better position to explain as to why it erupted. In the post-colonial period, no other movement is possible. The reason is the speed of consumerist society. Thus the question of necessity of literary movements in future is absurd in West Bengal.

Bapi: Such a movement in Bengali literature was not launched either from Kolkata or any place in West Bengali. It started from outside Bengal ; from Bihar.

Malay:  That is because of the desire for entering West Bengali culture ; a desire to dredge the filth out of its cultural river, and recreate the streaming flow ; to kick the butts of vulgar refugee-esque literary guardians. The residents of West Bengal of that time, ie., 1960s, were not even aware of their self-imposed lethargy, inactivity, inertia, disease. Since I was born and brought up outside of West Bengal, things were quite clear to me.

Bapi:  You have termed yourself a Cultural Bastard. Kindly explain it.

Malay: Go through the two explanations which Bishwajit Sen and Ajit Ray gave on the subject. Bengalies who live outside West Bengal, gradually get transformed into cultural bastards. The same has happened with me. Bishwajit and Ajit have discussed the social, political and literary dimensions of the issue. But I have presented the matter in a wider perspective. In our Roychoudhury family, Mughal and Pathan cultures intruded during my ancestor Panchanan, who was a military commander in Humayun and Akbar’s cavalry. Panchanan’s  grandson Jia, who became known as the famous sage Kamadeva Brahmachari, tried to combine the values of Vaishnava and Shakta sects, by worshiping Shyama Rai and Kali at family level. His son Lakshmikanta, when he was advisor to Maharaja Pratapaditya, was imbibed in Portugese culture. I have studied in Catholic school and Brahmo school. The childhood locality of Imlitala had homes of low caste families, at that time called Untouchables. The locality of adolescence was crowded with conservative destitute Sunni Muslims. If one has to deconstruct my text he will have to go through these layers.

Bapi: What is your opinion about today’s Bengali literature ? Is it really unthinkabe to launch a literary movement any more ?

Malay: Other than my own writings I am not bothered about anything else these days. Not only in literature, no movement is possible in any other field. In other areas some pressure may be created, such as in Save Narmada River or Tribal Rights. However, the consumerist media impact in case of market literature is so all-pervasive that no movement can change the speed in life and living.

( Translated from Bengali by Indrajit Bhattacharya )

 

Bapi Chakrabarty ( on left )

Subhankar Das, Editor, Graffiti, Kolkata

Malay Roychoudhury

This may be beginning of a conversation between me and poet Malay Roychoudhury who was prosecuted for the publication of his poem “Stark Electric Jesus” in 1964. This poem was originally written in  Bengali titled “prachanda Boidyutik Chhutar” which was subsequently translated in  English with the help of Prof Howard McCord and Carl Weissner. The poem defied the forms of  Bengali lyric poetry ( sonnet, villanel, minnesang, pastourelle, canzone, stew etc as well as Bengali metres ( matrabritto, aksharbritto etc ) retaining , however, its content vehicle, expressing subjective personal feelings. Malay Roychoudhury, a Bengali poet, has been a central figure in the Hungry Generation’s attack on the Indian Cultural Establishment in the early 1960s, now living a life of a recluse in Mumbai. I was in Mumbai for a few days but could not meet him as he was not doing well and my visit coincided with his visit with the Doctor. So I mailed a few questions to him and this is what he had to say.

Subhankar: The Hungry Generation literary movement was launched by you in November 1961 with the publication of a manifesto on poetry in English from Patna, where you were residing at that point of time and nobody could believe that a Bihar-based Bengali can have any say about Bengali literature. During the course of the movement you got arrested, lost your job, dragged around town by the Police with a rope on your waist. How far is it true ? Do you still feel the relevance of the movement still exists ? If not, why ?

Malay: Everything is recorded in the trial papers which may be retrieved from the records of Bankshal Court, Kolkata. The case number etc are also available in various publications. Why don’t you make a little effort and spend a few silver to get certified copies of these papers to enable yourself to get enlightened about the facts. The Hungryalist movement has changed the course of Bengali literature once for all. We definitely created a rupture in terms of time, discourse, experience, narrative diction and breath-span of poetic lines. The lecturer of Assam University who is writing his dissertation for a Doctorate on the subject, gleefully informed that Bengali academicians are even today scared to utter the word Hungryalism. Well, I guess that speaks a lot.

Subhankar: I need a little more explanation on the word Behari — the causes behind the rejection etc., lost your job, dragged around town by the police with manila rope on your waist— do yo still remember that day ? I need the story of that day. Can you elaborate a little— rupture in terms of time, discourse, experience, narrative diction and breath-span of poetic lines.

Malay: I don’t want to recall those days ; it gives me pain in my present loneliness. I want to forgive everybody. There is a rupture, in Bengali we call it Bidar. Look around you and you will get the answer. Manila ropes were not there in our time. Ropes were made of coconut husks. I don’t think you will fathom the diasporic plurality of a Behari Bengali, or a cultural bastard.

Subhankar: Keeping in mind the Hungryalist movement made big difference in the attitude of Bangla literary scene, don’t you think any kind of movement finally aspires for a kind of regimentation, closed groups where the freedom of the authors needs to be sacrificed to keep the movement going ? Please share your experience.

Malay: Arrey yaar, don’t think in terms of your knowledge of the movements in Western literature. Hungryalist movement did not have a centre of power, high command or polit bureau. Any one and everyone were free to join the movement just by declaring himself that he was a Hungryalist. In fact some of the later Hungryalists are not known to me even today ! Participants were free to publish their own broadsides, pamphlets, booklets, magazines etc. The movement was not confined to Kolkata only. As you have just said, I was from Patna, Subimal Basak was from Patna as well. Pradip Choudhuri was from Tripura. Subo Acharya was from Bishnupur. Anil Karanjai was from Benaras. The little Magazine Library & Research Centre at Kolkata is having an archive, you may like to check out.

Subhankar: What initiated you to leave the literary hub Kolkata to live a life of a recluse in Mumbai ?

Malay: I sold off my Kolkata flat, gifted entire collection of books, gramophone records, discs, cassettes etc to friends and readers and donated all furniture in my neighbourhood. I felt very sad about Kolkata. As you know, once upon a time Kolkata belonged to our clan. I found it just leaching. Not that I wanted to come to Mumbai. I would have preferred to go anywhere. I came to Mumbai because I have a one-room flat in this city.

Subhankar: Why you found Kolkata is now just leaching and nothing more ?

Malay: I just stopped myself from uttering the expression The City of Lechers. I had experienced the city some sixty years back ; it was completely different . Ask anyone of my age , anyone who is not a part of the present power nexus.

Subhankar: Do you still feel like an Outsider after all these 49 years ?

Malay: Oh, yes. I am The Outsider.

( Copyright Subhankar Das )

Subhankar Das

Alexander Jorgensen ( Part 1 of Interview )

Malay Roychoudhury

Known for his candour, sense of purpose and ability to transcend the banal with ferocity, Malay Roychoudhury, founding member of the Hungryalist Movement remains a seminal figure in the formulation of 21st century poetry. Personally associated with such literary figures as Allen Ginsberg and Octavio Paz, Roychoudhury has authored 40 works including poetry, novels, drama, social criticism and translations. First published in 1964, his poem “Stark Electric Jesus” incited enormous controversy, leading to both public and private persecution and ostracisation. Due to the ensuing scandal, Roychoudhury refused to write again, only returning to his craft after his mother’s death in 1983. Now an active and vital contributor to the international arts community, Roychoudhury is gracious in his time with visitors and willing to engage in discussions on creativity and politics. Working out of Kolkata, India, Roychoudhury relates his remarkable life and career with both frankness and levity.

Alex: In what ways were you successful in “undoing the done for world” and start afresh from chaos ?

Malay: Success is a strange word as far as arts and literature are concerned. Are the cave paintings, Aztec sculptures, pyramid engravings successful ? We do not know their views. The Hungry Generation movement was definitely successful in undoing the colonial canons.

Alex: If you could name a few artists who inspired you, who would they be ?

Malay: I would name two illiterate persons : Shivnandan Kahar, a man who knew Ramayana, the epic written by  poet Tulasidas, by heart ; and Ramkhilawan Singh Dabar, who could recite couplets from the works of poet saints Kabir, Rahim and Dadu. They were our family servants at Patna. They quoted from these poets  in order to reprimand us during our childhood.

Alex: In one sentence, what would you like to say to those who might argue that Hungry Generation poets were, well, reckless ?

Malay: They have not read us, otherwise they would have known that the human brain is Divine. our books are published by small presses , and the reader generally has to contact us for a copy of any  publication.

Alex: We have many examples of individuals who have had a difficult time “balancing” the requirements of family and art. How important has “family” been to you as an artist ?

Malay: very important. Without a supportive family a writer can not have structured peaceful schedule.

Alex: If you were to die tomorrow, would be happy with the contribution to the arts and the world that you have made ?

Malay: Happiness emanates from the process of involvement in writing. I don’t think that a writer is much bothered about immortality, especially a Hindu, who burn their dead, and do not have the culture of writing epitaphs.

Alex: Any regrets ?

Malay: Yes. I should have inculcated the habit of maintaining daily diary right from the school days. My experiences are extensive and varied. Unfortunately I am unable to recall the important incidents which impacted me.

Alex: What type of things do you find yourself working on these days ?
Malay: An M Phil student, Swati Banerjee, was preparing her thesis on comparative study of my poetry and Ginsberg’s. I had to search out material for her. for the present, Prof Bishnu Chandra Dey of Assam University, who is preparing his Ph D thesis on the Hungryalist movement, is seeking my help in locating references. This has kept me busy for sometime.

Alex: Where do you go for inspiration ?

Malay: Inspiration comes from within a writer. It is an up-wailing precess in your psyche.

Alex: In terms of expression,  the saying “what needs to be said” and how that might be articulated, what do you think about the use of multimedia and technology in the arts nowadays ?

Malay: They have vastly widened our sense of wonder. One now has unlimited spark-ways to venture into the unknown.

Alex: To someone looking to learn more about the Hungry Generation movement, where would you recommend they start ?

Malay: Not much is readily available in English. My Selected Poems were published twenty years back. During the sixties several little magazines in the UK and US brought out special Hungry Generation issues. Those magazines may be traced from archives of the editors maintained in Universities. If Black Robert Journal is interested I would make available xerox of a couple of informative essays.

Alexander Jorgensen

 

( Copyright Alexander Jorgensen. Reprinted from Black Robert Journal, 1999 issue )

Alexander Jorgensen ( Part 2 of Interview )

Malay Roychoudhury’s interview by Nayanima Basu

Founding member and central figure of the Hungryalist movement, a literary torrent predicated on the subversion of India’s cultural establishment, Malay Roychoudhury is the author of more than 50 books, a Bengali poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist, translator, and social critic, he remains a seminal figure in the understanding of 21st century poetry. His association have included such literary giants as Allen Ginsberg and Octavio Paz.

Roychoudhury’s  experimental work entitled “Prachanda Baidyutik Chhutar” ( “Stark Electric Jesus” ) , a deeply personal and confessional poem penned in 1963 and first published in 1964, created enormous controversy with its publication. It led to both public and private condemnation of its author and, due to the ensuing scandal, which included his prosecution and ostracization at the hands of peers,  Roychoudhury refused to write again. It was not until 1983, following the death of his mother, that he would return to his writing.

First introduced to Malay Roychoudhury on a visit to Kolkata in 2007, I have found his discussions and correspondenses to be vibrant, thoughtful, frank, and often filled with levity. Uniquely engaging, he has offered opinions on everything from contemporary visual poetry ( vispo ) to politics. “An interview with Malay Roychoudhury : Part One”, appears  at http://www.blackrobertjournal.blogspot.com )

Alex: You have said that Hungryalists were not “reckless”. Would you admit, however, that some members would later become self-serving ? My question relates to the idea that we become less idealistic as we grow older. Is idealism important ? How does it fit into your life ?

Malay: I am not sure whether the 19th Century concepts of “self” , “ego” and “idealism” retain their original definitions in our 21st Century world. How do you explain these concepts in the perspective of what is being called Islamic Terrorist Human Bomb ?  He definitely has what we presume to be “self”, “ego” and surely “idealism!” Otherwise why should he come to India to kill Hindu, Cristian, Jew, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist infidels ? Marx, Sartre, Freud and even Darwin would have experienced a vertigo of ontological nightmares if confronted with the present world scenario . “Idealism”, thus, is a term applicable  to situations in time and space. I remain idealistic in the original Hungryalist sense of being honest . Idealism does not wane with age ; it gets continuously redefined . It definitely becomes difficult to remain a social being in West Bengal with Humanitarian Honesty as an ideal.

The Hungryalists were not self-serving, since they wrote very little during the movement, and published lesser, as nobody liked to publish them. But after name and fame , a few Hungryalists did become self-serving, whom I avoid, and who obviously despise me. The problem is that when the discourse is narrowed down to ART , ego becomes relevant. The superordinate discourse is the market today, and ego functions as a conveyance.

Alex: While in Kolkata, I witnessed what I interpreted at the time to be “poetry guilds;” my feeling was that these communities were involved in the construction of an “intentional poetry of political allegiance,” with attention paid to a particular style of writing. Would you say this is true ? if so, then would this be a byproduct of the Hungryalist Movement ? What are your thoughts ?

Malay: No. Groupism evolved in mid-1950s with Krittibas and Shatabhisha poetry magazines, which claimed and behaved in a fashion as if only they had the power of definition, distinction and evaluation of literary discourses. Krittibas ultimately got inducted into the business house called Ananda Bazar Patrika ( leftists dub it as “Establishment”). The Hungryalists were treated as untouchables by these groups, though Hungryalism as a movement was in a continuous flux, somewhat like the Surrealists. Hungryalists made attempts to wrest that power and dismantle Groupism. What you call Guilds ( may be we can call them poetry cartels ) evolved in Kolkata ( not throughout West Bengal ) after the Naxalite political upheaval. Naxalites had to form secret hitmen groups. Nowadays , poetry Guilds are formed around a couple of poets who can afford to publish a regular poetry magazine. These are magazine oriented groups, and do not have an agenda. I guess most of these poets come from refugee families of erstwhile East Pakistan who wanted to legitimize themselves by re-rooting in West Bengal through a periodical based literary group. They should not be taken seriously.

Alex: Was Tagore the worst thing to ever happen to Bengali poetry ? To Poetry ?

Malay: Rabindranath Tagore‘s ( the Shakespeare of Bengali literature ) poems are now confined to academia. Academicians use him as a ladder in the cultural circuit of West Bengal, which unfortunately lacks in “Icons.” As a Bengali cultural icon, he can not be wished away. It is not his poems, but his songs which works as an impediment, the result of which has meant that Bengali music in post-independent India has failed to catch up with the world ( only now we have a singer poet in Kabir Suman ). His songs are being sung even in funerals ! Nevertheless, written Bengali diction had emerged out of the Tagore family. You can’t blame them. Had the British started their Empire from Dhaka in Bangladesh, the Bengali literary diction would have been different. Authors in Bangladesh, such as Bratya Raisu, Jewel Mazhar and Ebadur Rahman, write in their diction ; literary diction in Bangladesh is therefore changing. I would like to mention that one of the Hungryalists, Subimal Basak had written his novel CHHATAMATHA in this diction in 1965, for which he was castigated by academicians. Today, in West Bengal, Tagore is just a show piece to be flaunted, especially by middle class gentry. His Shantiniketan has been ruined by the Leftists.

Alex: Tell us about your typical day. Now, I hear you are currently putting together a daily diary. How often do you meet visiting writers and artists ? How do your wife and son assist you with your many appointments ?

Malay: I get up early, quite early, and spend a couple of hours on the Internet, as no charges are levied till 8AM. Do some yoga thereafter as advised by the physiotherapist. Have a frugal breakfast of oatmeal with vegetables while browsing through two Bengali and English newspapers. Till 1PM, I read a magazine or a book, while taking notes in my brain. I simultaneously read several books and magazines ( that is why I refrain from reviewing books ). I dislike visitors till 3PM. From 3 to 4PM, I do some freehand exercises and sit at the PC to attend to my blogs ; nowadays I concentrate on Bengali sites where I interact with young readers. As often as possible, I avoid visitors ; I have found that most of the visitors are not well-read ( the Leftist government abolished English teaching in schools in 1980s ), and it is a sheer waste of time. It is also irritating, a few obstinate readers insist on visiting me, though I do not know why. They come from remote places and I can’t drive them away like poet Buddhadeva Basu who had shut his doors the moment I uttered my name. I was born in 1939 and at this age I love to be left alone in my silence. Due to my bad health, my wife quite often intervenes ( so that I do not lapse into bronchial bouts of coughing ) if the visitor wants me to go on talking.  Visitors are entertained upto 7PM, when I sit with my drinks and start brooding about the next day’s blog ( where I write the drafts and block public visibility till finalization ). My son is very busy now with an Australian firm. Since attending to my blogs, I don’t write daily diary, and have destroyed whatever I had written earlier .

Alex: What words of advice might you offer if asked to serve in the role of a mentor ?

Malay: No. No. I don’t want the role of a mentor bestowed on me. Each person should introspect and chalk out his own path.

Alex: How important have your exchanges with other writers been ? What did you gain from Allen Ginsberg ? What did Ginsberg gain from his time spent with you ?  In terms of cross-cultural challenges, did you find that there were  any present during this period of mutual exchange ?

Malay: Yes. That was the case till 1980s when I interacted with any or all writers. I gained a lot from the visiting authors, as varied as from Daisy Aldan to Dhumil to Kamal Chakraborty. The most important has been the visit of Professor Howard McCord of Washington State University ( later Bowling Green ) , who published my controversial poem Stark Electric Jesus with an introduction in a booklet form, and made me known in North and South America and Europe during the 1960s. It is thanks to him that this poem gets reprinted almost every year ( I do not have any copyright of any text of mine ; they are owned by my readers ). He sent me books written by US and European authors about whom I had only heard.

Allen Ginsberg visited me at a time when I was dithering in non-religious atheism. He reinforced my pagan heritage of worshiping water, light, fire, air and other gods of nature. I can’t claim that I contributed to his thinking, though, perhaps in changing the notion that there can not be only one God ; there has to be innumerable gods  for innumerable human spreads out in order to be eclectic, tolerant and resilient. Three fishes with one head, which he used as his logo, was pointed out by me from Emperor Akbar’s grave floor — the Emperor who himself wrote a religious treatise to unite all the religions of India.

Ginsberg used to talk to my mother in sign language. My father was terribly angry with him as Ginsberg was interested in taking photographs of beggars, lepers, mutilated, half-naked poor Indians. After I saw his Indian Journals, I was very much upset to see those photographs highlighted.

I spent a few months with non-literary hippies in Varanasi, Patna and Nepal. That was quite an experience with women and drugs. Hippies were fascinated that Allen Ginsberg had visited me.

Alex: Tell me about the technology you employ in sharing your work and ideas with others ? I know you have a blog ?

Malay: Other than using the desktop PC for net surfing, writing blogs and visiting network sites, I don’t have access to any other technology. No blackberry, IPod, IPhone or other gadgets. I wish I was young and used the gadgets that keep on coming. In case of the desktop PC, I am also a novice. I have to request my son to lend a helping hand to sort out things when I find myself stuck. But the internet really places my work far and wide ; people pick up my work and spread it among themselves. In most cases, I come to know after quite sometime, even a year. It is a pleasant feeling.

Alex: If you could walk a mile in whatever circumstance, where where would you choose to do it ? What would be your last meal ?

Malay: I would go to the bank of river Ganges, at the place where I had kissed my Nepali classmate Bhuvanmohini Rana. My first and memorable kiss. I do not know where she is now. Must have become old or might have died ; she was two years older than me. I would sit at the same spot at the same time of autumn evening to revisit her tenderness.

My last meal will be a hot chicken tanduri and a few pegs of single malt.

( Copyright Alexander Jorgensen. Reprinted from the Chekoslovak-based  GRASP magazine, May 2010 issue  )

Alexander Jorgensen

Alexander Jorgensen is a globetrotter poet and artist. He has visited all the continents. He met Bengali writers and poets during his visit to  India .