On PK 2014 film by Rajkumar Hirani

Alien-ation/ Alie-nation of Religion:

PK is a typical Raju Hirani enterprise:- didactic, simple, contrived, entertaining and humanitarian...complex if not profound subtexts to do with language, truth and lies and so on....an interesting marriage of sci-fi with social satire...a good and lovable Amir Khan...though Bollywoodized, a relevant film in our dark times of increasing religious intolerance and dangerous stereotyping. 

Thought-points on PK:---

1. You need language to lie.

2. There is thought and thought reading without language.

3. Touch is the foundation of ethical encounter: a haptic ethic

4. God is an idiom of fantasy.

5. Money is only a paper with picture on it.

6. Skin with its potential racial profiling is simply a "fashion".

7. PK is a name floating between languages.

8. De-familiarization (alien-ation) creates ignorance and generates new myths such as PK's "dancing car" theory or the "wrong number".

9. The popular discourse needs a coinage/formula/mantra/letter such as "all is well" "wrong number", "gandhigiri" which will crystalize the whole discourse instantly and quilt it. This letter will capture the mass with the power of a metaphor.

10. Religion as an institutional practice bases itself on an omnipotent notion of man which can be deflected by 'planetarity'. PK is quite exactly a figure of that critical planetarity c.f. Amir Khan's response to the God-man in the television interview.

11. The talismanic object of religion comes from outer space. It's an object to communicate with the cosmic Other who isn't God but other human species living in a different planet. This is a problematic deconstructive moment because it risks replacing the transcendental Other (God) with yet another species-image of man. And if that's the case, there is a residue of the same humanistic cult of man here which the film otherwise attempts to debunk with its critique of religion.

12. The previous point demands a question: is God an alien?

13. Is TV the new God or a new God?

14. The loss of the communicating object which leads to PK's homelessness (with all connotations of the "unheimlich") on earth is strikingly supplemented by a radio/transistor which is another kind of communication: with old films and later on with the beloved's voice. The use of retro-technology (cassettes) is notable here.

What does the blood not tell you?

This is a classroom, dead, for army kids

Does the blood not tell you? 

The army is a 'repressive state apparatus'

Doesn't the blood tell you?

They've inherited their original army sin

What does the blood not tell you?

 No laces to tie in Van Gogh's shoes

Whether the blood tells you!

 A semblance of paradise in this room

Does the blood tell you?

 Buy an afterlife by killing children

Does the blood not tell you? 

Plundered chairs in a 'theatre of cruelty'? 

Is that what the blood tells you? 

Why does the floor look like the cushions? 

Does the blood tell you? 

Could we zoom in and see what book that might be? 

Does the blood allow you? 

The school is an 'ideological state apparatus'

Is that what the blood tells you? 

When is the cleaner coming? 

Who took that photo?

 Who is it that writes this poem?

Does the blood not ask you? 

The blood is 'lovely, dark and deep' with no 'promises to keep'

It flows, binds and unbinds  

That old man had too much blood and the military kids have too little!

They kill, we kill back and they in turn kill back again but for what?

For death and a possibly good life after death which remains impossible

There is no good life after death

There is no life after death

There is no world after death

There is nothing after death 

Doesn't the blood not tell you? 

[For the hundreds of army children who were brutally killed in Peshawar, Pakistan by Taliban on 16 December 2014 ]

Some stray thought points on Haider-- Vishal Bhardwaj's film adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet:

1. Haider takes procrastination out of Hamlet! Bhardwaj's Hamlet is all action! Hamlet's inability to act is positioned in the trajectory of his desire which vanishes due to a lack of mourning and gets revived when another mourning takes due course capturing him at its centre. It would be interesting to speculate if this dominance of action over contemplation is governed by Bhardwaj's more explicit politicization of the Shakespeare protagonist. Hamlet studied philosophy, Haider studies revolutionary poets in British India.

2. The theme of mourning is deepened with a Gertrude (Ghazaala/Tabu) who has more agency than ever. Haider mourns her as much as he mourns his father! Hamlet does not have his Horatio here which is a statement on the void of friendship in the world portrayed in the film. Having said that, it gives a fascinating twist to the subject of mourning in Shakespeare's play. In Shakespeare, Horatio is the surviving subject who would be in perpetual mourning in the imagined after-life of the play while in the film, Haider himself becomes that (in)terminal subject of mourning who survives in spite of himself. The subject in mourning shifts from Other to the self. The rest isn't silence in Bhardwaj! There is no rest for silence!

3. The dead father of Shakespeare's play remains 'disappeared' throughout the first half which has serious consequences for the procrastination motif. Hamlet starts the search in thin air but eventually succeeds in finding his father's grave. In the first half, he isn't in mourning; his quest is directed towards a 'localization' of the father which succeeds ironically in the grave. 'To be or not to be' extends into 'is it (true) or is it not (true)?' and Haider's quest for truth amid the persistent haze of Kashmir.

4. The Hamlet-Laertes relationship is reduced to rivalry while it was much more complex in Shakespeare. Laertes was in a sense Hamlet's idealized alter-ego--a lot of what he wanted to become. And hence it was a great fight in the play, unlike in Bhardwaj's film.

5. Ophelia as Haider's 'Arshee'/mirror is a weak link in the film. For me, that strand wasn't moving enough. The nunnery scene was omitted but beautifully supplemented by an appearance of betrayal. Although the scene where she is lying on her bed with the scattered threads of wool all around her glowing with the poignancy of a lost grip on reality was appealing, not having her float on the water was a missed opportunity. There was a great chance to connect the iconic image of Ophelia's floating body with the mythological presence of the 'jhelum'--- the river of Kashmir with all its cathartic water. The ice in the latter half of the film perhaps stood for a frozen demise of that redemptive possibility.

6. Haider is more of a Hamlet adaptation set in Kashmir than a political film on Kashmir. The statement on Kashmir is essentially humanist; in explicit empathy for the suffering of the civilian population and in implicit sympathy for their right to protest and militancy. Having said that, I think the portrayal of Kashmir and the border-line irony of nationalistic jingoism in the film cannot be wrenched from its status as an adaptation of Hamlet.

It probably lacks intensity as a film on Kashmir but not as a Shakespeare adaptation. However, the portrayal of Kashmir which is carefully controlled and works through thesis and antithesis is subversive without being outright revolutionary. It's not politically correct but it isn't full on either! The climax comes as a stopper at the cusp where Hamlet's journey threatens to grow out of the familial scene and move into the larger political domain but the film cleverly arrests the transition at the point where it was about to turn!

7. There is no Yorick as such but his skull is intact! To make militants of gravediggers is consistent with the way the film consistently implied the connection between terrorist militancy and death drive. And this added layers to the graveyard as the climactic setting! The graveyard which was doubled through the climax with mutilated corpses etched across the bloody surface of ice reminded me of a Jacobean revenge tragedy! It's viscerally spectacular; almost an Artaud on Shakespeare!

8. Though the climax was more Seneca than Shakespeare in a sense, I think, to withdraw the revenge was a political message partly driven by the fact that the film is set in Kashmir. Is it an adaptive modification of Shakespeare or more of a comment on Kashmir? What arrests and fixes his desire in the final run is the desire of his mother which reiterates the patrilineal family heritage. This echoing is a touch problematic from a gender perspective perhaps.

My interest as a Lacanian reader is focused on how Haider's final decision to retract and go beyond revenge is framed in entirety by the words of his significant dead Others (his father and his mother echoing his grandfather). It is a combination of his mother's and (grand) father's desire articulated in their voices ringing in Haider's mind but interestingly, it doesn't lead him to action as action but instead to action as withdrawal of action. Haider's final withdrawal is perhaps the obverse of Hamlet's procrastination!

9. I thought it was quite a master-stroke to parody Salman khan and his Brand Bollywood through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...it was a much needed comic relief in a broodingly dark film.

10. The Oedipal subtext of Hamlet was maintained as a subtext and not overplayed thankfully! From a post-Lacanian perspective, the desire of the mother is more functional than the desire for the mother. And Haider stands in testimony to that. His final trail through blood and ice re-turned to his trail as a 'third' separating his mother from his father in the bed--an earlier scene in the film. Just as we need to think through the relation between the two burnt houses and Ophelia's corpse in the latter, there are these two trails to consider as well.

11. Lasting images, powerful music and great performances to close this list...nothing that I can say by way of analysis about Tabu's performance. To remember what Hamm said in Beckett's Endgame, she is like the vein which never stops dripping in the head! She is the divided border of explosions!

Without taking anything away from Shahid's natural performance, it's Tabu's film! The heap of her destroyed body is the splintered motherland of Kashmir where Haider keeps his final vigil of mourning!

Translation of Kabir Suman's Song Lyric of 'Noyontara'

Evening descends
And I wake up to the stars in the sky
And there she is, somewhere, elsewhere
Wanting to see in my eye's moving stars
Her deep blue eyes as the true evening star

Evening descends
And all those who turn to their dim dappled homes
Darling peace, descend, on their dipping eyelids
May the true evening star usher peace in their gaze

Evening descends
In all tiredness, the delicate day wanes
For all those who droop now
There is a true evening star

Evening dissents
When will you come, say, when will you be
In my sleepless wait, the sky's all stars

Evening descends, evening dissents...

Translation of a poem by Nabarun Bhattacharya

    Through all these yet unnamed colours and words

When the clock turns counter-clockwise

No navigation

No science in this arch

Invisible on farewell's horizon

And yet so very visible on the firmament of return

Fly, oh sleepless plane, keep flying

An Old New Photograph

There is that photograph. An old one there. An old new one. Black and white to speak of old times. Old times in new. Times oldened by death and all. Oldened by the old and new.

I see my mother in it. She was a baby back then: a couple of years old perhaps. She is sitting pretty on the floor with a lot of panache I think; gazing straight at the camera with a gleam of wonder in her eyes. Her eyes are resolute and full of time-- time unspent, time yet to live-- time yet to die. At the back, an old poster: the shining face of the Murphy baby with the radio obscured by my mother's posture and the sad stains of time on the photograph. 

I can see a couple of legs behind the propped up poster which constitutes the scenography of this tiny little photographic drama. Someone must have held it up from the back. A patch of darkening corridor can be seen between the two legs. I wonder how my mother's expression would have altered, had she been looking at the Murphy baby's face. What would attract her more? The eye of the camera or the Murphy baby's eyes? Both alive and dead, human and non-human at the same time. Will time tell? We think it does, but it only passes; passes untelling.

I have been told that it was grandpa holding up the Murphy baby poster in the photograph. And the photograph was taken by his younger brother. The snap snapped, unsnapped and resnapped in time. The snap snapping the cord. There is this story running in the family that after this photo, my mother had got an offer to be the baby face for the Murphy ad from our city but grandma did not give permission because the original Murphy baby had died soon after the ad campaign was shot. 

This is an old story of course and it sounds older still, in narration. I have heard it long back from the man who took the photo. When he told me this, my mother had already passed away. We were talking in the solitary room of his old age home and after telling this snippet, he gave a rejoinder which got stuck in the dazzling afterglow of that evening. It is stuck in my mind too. He had said: 'We can't hold on to things in time. Everything must go.'

It's been years since. And I see there the old photograph. The old new one. It's only a copy of the original. That day in the old age home, I had photographed the photograph of my mother. There it sits pretty. My mother's photograph's photograph, twice away from me in time and she, not big enough to hold me then. The rest is locked away in time's folds and crossed out in silence. Only the photograph in photograph remains. The umbilical cord of fading sunlight, snapped long since.  

Burning on and on all night long (Song by Kabir Suman, Translation: Arka Chattopadhyay)

*

Burning on and on all night long

Grey bluish, my star, alit

Grace a shade of her colour dearest

Bless a gleam of her light please

*

Perhaps no glowworm to warm my city

Perhaps, could bend on that blue fire, had it ever been

All that had never been, never is

What if that everything remains unattained?

Let it be!

Grace the colour of unattaining my dear

Bless the dear light, unattaining

*

Oh all too pale these days and nights

Can’t find a dear colour around me

Can’t give you anything

Nothing could I bring into colour, otherwise

Would have dipped in future’s light, not to be

This pale grey, my way I seek

Grace a shade of this, my longing

Blessing the dear light, unattaining

Grace the future’s gleam my dear

Grace the future’s gleam

১৩ই এপ্রিল, ২০১৪

২০১৪র ১৩ই এপ্রিল এলো। স্যাম বেকেটের ১০৮ নম্বর জন্মদিন। জাক লাকার ১১৩তম। 

আমার সাথে বেকেটবাবুর বসত গড়া, সংসারানোর ১০ বছর দেখতে দেখতে কেটে গেল। বাবার বইয়ের তাকে গোডো নাম দিয়ে শুরু হওয়া ঔৎসুক্য, তখন আমি ইস্কুলে পড়ি। কিছুই বুঝিনি কিন্তু বাবা গল্পটা বলেছিল: মুক্তপ্রান্তরে দুজন মানুষের অনন্ত অপেক্ষার রূপকথা যেন। 

তারপর কলেজ। সৌরিৎ ভট্টাচার্যের প্ররোচনায় বেকেট ফেরৎ এলেন। এবং মুশায়েরার বেকেট সংখ্যায় বাবা বেকেটের শেষ ট্রিলজি নিয়ে যে লেখাটা খানিক অভিভূত হয়েই লিখে উঠতে পারেনি সেই অলিখিত না পারা থেকে প্রেসিডেন্সী কলেজের ম্যাগাজিনে আমার লিখিত না পারা: বেকেটের Worstward Ho নিয়ে একটি আলোচনা। ততদিনে ২০০৫।

তারপর ২০০৬, জন্মশতবর্ষ। কলকাতার রাস্তায় কত হন্যে হয়ে ঘুরে বেরিয়েছি বেকেটের বই বিশেষত উপন্যাস ও গদ্যাবলির খোঁজে। তখন ছিল না আমাজনের ক্রেডিট কার্ড কিম্বা ফ্লিপকার্টের সুরম্য কার্ট। তাই কলকাতায় বসে বেকেটবাজি ছিল দুরূহ এক স্ট্রাগল। তবে সেইসব হয়রানিও এখন ফিরে তাকালে মূল্যবান মাল্যবান মনে হয়। এক পরিচিতার সাহায্যে এসে পড়ল গ্রোভ সেন্টিনারী ভলিউম। আরো খানিক এগোনোর হাতছানি।

তারপর একে একে বছর ঘুরেছে। মনে আছে একদিন বন্ধুদের যৌবনের আবিলতায় উন্মত্ত হয়ে বলতাম কোথাও কেউ না নিলেও কোই বাত নেহি : সাদা খাতা আর কালো কালি থাকলে বেকেট নিয়ে কাজ করা কে আটকাবে? ত্বিষার হয়ত মনে থাকবে সেকথা। তারপর নবেন্দুর সাথে লেখালিখির মাধ্যমে বেকেটযাপন। বেকেটের জন্যেই কত বন্ধু হয়েছে। 

আমার বান্ধবী এবং বর্তমানে আমার স্ত্রী অনুপর্ণার সাথে অনুভূতিমালাও তো কখনো বেকেট থেকে দূরে থাকেনি। আমাদের প্রথম বা প্রাক-প্রথম প্রেমপত্রগুলো ছিল ওর পাঠানো বেকেটের ওপর নানা বইয়ের জেরক্স এবং তার সাথে মোড়া চিঠি আর আমি উত্তর দিয়েছি যন্ত্রচিঠিতে। এভাবেই শুরু হয়েছে সবকিছু। বেকেটের আশেপাশে।

যাদবপুরে পড়াকালীন শান্তনু বিশ্বাসের কল্যাণে জাক লাকা চর্চা শুরু। এবং শান্তনুদার মুগ্ধতায় লাকা বিগত ৫ বছরে অনেকটা কাছে। এখন আমার গবেষনার বিষয় বেকেট ও লাকা। ১০ বছরে হওয়া ২ টি প্রেমের সমন্বয় যেখানে আসলে আমি নিজেকেই পড়ছি,পড়ছি নিজের ফ্যান্টাসিকে তাঁদের ভিতর দিয়ে। আর মজার ব্যপার হলো এই দুটি মানুষের জন্মদিনটাও এক। যেন তাদের মধ্যেকার অদৃশ্য কোনো প্রেমপর্ব, অদেখা একটা আম্বিলিকাল কর্ড।

২ মাস হলো মা চলে গ্যাছে। এখন পড়ার টেবিলে বেকেট বাবুর পাশে মার সহাস্য ছবি। যেন দুজনে কত গল্প করছে, হয়ত আমার নামে নালিশ চলছে। মা হয়ত বলছে, 'এই যে দাদা আপনিই ছেলের মাথাটা খেলেন দেখলাম'। আমি ওখানে গেলে কেউই আর ছেড়ে কথা বলবে না।

বেকেট বাবুকে কখনো কখনো খুব নালিশ করেছি আমার জীবনকে ওনার লেখার বিষয়ে পরিণত করছেন বলে মনে হওয়ায়। পূর্বনির্ধারিত বিবাহের কয়েকদিন আগে মার সহসা চলে যাওয়ায় বেকেটীয় ভঙ্গিতে 'ফার্স্ট লাভ' এর নায়কের প্রথম বাক্যে বাবার জায়গায় মা শব্দটা বসিয়ে আমাকে আজীবন বলে যেতে হবে: " I associate, rightly or wrongly, my marriage with the death of my mother, in time".

এইসব উত্থান পতন নিয়েই আমার আর বেকেটবাবুর সংসারের এক্কা দোক্কা। জাক লাকা সেখানে আমাদের ট্রান্সফারেন্স দেখে মজা পান নিশ্চই। আমি বেকেট আর লাকা দিয়ে হয়ত তৈরী হয় আমার কাজকর্মের বরমিয়ান নট।

আজ আমার দুই গুরুর জন্মদিনে এই সংক্ষিপ্ত ইতিহাসটাই বলতে ইচ্ছে করলো।

On the two volumes of Lars Von Trier's Nymphomania:

Fishing, blasphemy, the souls of the trees and music are guiding threads in Joe's analeptic narration as a nymphomaniac to the so-called 'asexual' old man all night through. It creates patches of unparalleled beauty through images of indescribable depth such as the breaking spectrum of colours at the sunset, the inexplicable entry of the first patch of sunlight against the wall, the winter trees bared to their dry souls and the one Joe stands opposite, atop the hill one winter evening amid the glimmers of afterglow.

The editing, the colour scheme, the split-screens, the digital designing of the visual and explanatory digressions and all that is material to the moving image as a medium contributes to the humour and quite a brilliant Deleuzean suggestion that the cinema is inside the head and the way the story unfolds in Joe's words is nothing short of an always already formed cinematic montage in the mind. The camera hides more than it reveals and the repeated shots only draw our attention to the tangent in question. A wonderful example is the opening shot where we cannot see Joe and the camera perambulates the mise-en-scène till it repeats itself from a different perspective and we discover her lying unconscious on the street.

Volume 1 prepares us for the second and has bouts of rather uncharacteristic surface humour considering it's a Von Trier film. In this increasingly complex journey retold by Joe, what we encounter is a mathematically precise mental function of the 'nymphomaniac' and the incredibly complicated web of encounters and relationships which frame her life, giving motion to it. The plot is contrived to the extent that chance encounters anchor it all along and we pace through the psychopathology of this condition with emphases on games, radicalism, an implied Oedipal structure, a latent homoerotic streak and a stark realisation of the inextricability of sexual impulse and violence at every point in life: be it the lubrication at father's death or the sadistic torture therapy to revive the lost sexual sensation. What is problematised in the process is the maternal role of the woman, her family life and the social operation of guilt therein.

The use of numbers, geometry and knot all add fascinating mathematical dimensions to the working of her mind under a particular condition and there are the ambivalent joint hints of epilepsy as well as a divine command as it were. The question of language in relation to sexual jouissance is tackled in the episode with the Black men but like a lot of other things in the film, it's a serious provocation to begin with and it quickly turns into a comical mockery of the issue at hand.

When Von Trier tackles this obviously 'subversive' and patriarchal stereotype of the 'nymphomaniac', one at least expects a deconstructive take from him and this is where I wonder at the end of the film. How do we peace together the strong and inconsistent fragments of this portrayal which gives the appearance and only the appearance of being an author-backed position. The confusion in her position as a 'nymphomaniac' is clear throughout: on the one hand she has no qualms with what she does but then on the other hand though forced into it, she does go to a social group of 'sex-addicts' who are trying to cure themselves through absurd restrictive practices. It is also relevant to mention in this context, her final resolution after the end of her storytelling that she would renounce sexuality altogether. She also takes a rather uncharacteristic humanist pity on a pedophile who is one of her debtors in the phase in which she is working as a 'debt-collector' and the logic she uses to justify her pity is laced with contradiction: she seems to praise the pedophile for never acting upon his instincts thus remaining harmless all his life but then what about her own nymphomania in practice? Isn't this a conservative appreciation of self-repression from someone who does not practice it either?

Joe's nymphomania takes her into the criminal circuits and circumstances bring her back to a pseudo-maternal position which ironically turns into a lesbian relation of sorts until her lost husband Jerome comes back a third time by yet another stroke of chance and takes away her accomplice, successor and lesbian partner, immersing her further into the depths of jealousy and murderous rage. The classic Von Trier trope of sadomasochism in all things amorous shines again. The way the inbuilt audience figure, Joe's 'asexual' interlocutor comes back to initiate his sex life (his literary jouissance being dominated by the sexual once and for all), taking advantage of the 'nymphomaniac' and what she does to her and the way it echoes the beginning in a poignantly reddish black out--all of this has the Von Trier signature in its exposition of the audience's complicity, the implication of hypocrisy and so on.

What Von Trier offers here is a tremendously complicated and multi-layered aesthetic object which both underpins and mocks the consistency of our endless urge to interpret. All the actors are excellent but Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is clearly one of the finest of contemporary actresses and Stellan Skarsgård dominate throughout. 

For My Mother

You had kissed me goodbye 

A year back

My forehead is still moist with it

But this time I come to 'collect' you

The man at the mortuary breathes 

A long deep sigh on the keys

Ready to open you to me

The key turns awry in the tiny hole of time 

Like the sudden emergence 

Of a friend's face at the gate

There you are, 

Draped in your favourite dress 

A maroon sari

No, 'draped' is not the right word

'Shrouded'

You are shrouded by it

Passivity has finally claimed you

I touch your still warm forehead

There is a touch of pain on your face  

The lines on it remind me of your contorted face 

How you frightened me by making that face 

In those half-open hours of the night 

The only difference now:

The face simply 'is', and no need for 'making' it anymore

The face is where you are for me

Facing all odds as always 

Rest in my face from now on

Look, I have had two cuts while shaving

They are right beneath my nose 

On both sides

I have put two cotton balls there 

With some Dettol in them 

As I watch myself thus in mirror 

I remember the cotton balls 

In your nose 

You had no more breath left 

And breath was all that was

Left with me 

No, I refuse to call you a 'body' here

Perhaps I have to write you like that

In some official document

But no, not here!

Not in a poem!

Poetry is the solitary breath passing through the cotton block

Deep into the hollows of the nose 

It does not know how to take death for granted!

প্রথম আলোয় ফেরা সুমন

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtCLgy-akGc

নিজের সেরা গানগুলোর একটার পুনর্লিখন করলেন তিনি। 

যেন প্রৌড়ত্ব থেকে বার্ধক্যের পরিণতি পেলো অসামান্য এই পুনর্লিখন। 

প্রবীণের প্রলাপে ঘনালো ভালবাসায় বাঁচার নেশা। 'যৌবনে বেপরোয়া' 'উজবুক' যা কিছু, তা 'আদিম' হয়ে স্থিতি পেলো।

'ক্রিকেটের বল ঘষা প্যান্টে বেয়াড়া লাল দাগ' এখন মলীন। সংগীতের হয়ে ওঠার প্রিয় ইতিহাস মুছে গ্যাছে এই গানের শরীর থেকে, তার জায়গায় এসে বসেছে অমোঘ এক প্রশান্তি। যেন আরো এক কদম দূর থেকে দেখছেন যৌবনের ক্রমশ ছোট হয়ে আসা দিনগুলোকে। 

একাধিক জন্মের বিস্তার রয়েছে এই পুনর্লিখনে। একা চিলের স্থির উড়ে যাওয়া যেখানে অনেকগুলো জন্মের ইতিহাসকে মানুষের সুমন দিয়ে ঘিরে রাখে সেখানে এসে চুপটি করে বসে পড়ে এই গান।

নাগরিক চিল এখন শুধুই মহাকালের। স্থানীয় রঙগুলো সময়হীন হয়ে উঠেছে 'চেনা তবু চেনা নয়' এর স্রোতে।

যেখানে মহাকাল ঘনিয়ে ফেরে সেখানে গান ব্যপারটাকেই যেন আরেকবার ডিফাইন করে দিলেন 'কান্নার' মধ্য দিয়ে!

কান্না কি গান নয়? গানমাত্রেই কি এক ধরণের কান্না নয়?

গিটারের ওপর কম্পমান হাতের ওই আঙ্গুলগুলো জুড়ে আমার শৈশব খেলা করছে, এতগুলো বছরের দুখ জাগানিয়া গান শোনাচ্ছেন আমায়। এই সময়ের ভেতর আমাদের সুমন বসে আছেন। কবীর বসে আছেন। 

সুচিত্রা সেনকে নিয়ে:

আমি আপনার অনেক অনেক ছবি দেখিনি, আপনার অভিনয়ের উচ্চ প্রশংসকও হতে পারিনি কোনদিন, কিন্তু আপনি সুচিত্রা সেন এই নামের অধিকারিণী, বাঙ্গালী জাতির কাছে বিরাট একটা স্বপ্নের পরিসর জুড়ে আপনার আনাগোনা। অন্সক্রিন এবং অফস্ক্রিন সৌন্দর্যের আইকন আপনি, আপনাকে কি আর এড়ানো যায়? 

আজ আপনার যে মৃত্যু নিয়ে সবাই স্বাভাবিকভাবেই কাতর, তা কি অনেক আগেই ঘটে যায়নি? 

না, শুধু শিল্পীর মৃত্যুর কথা বলছি না, দৃশ্যের মৃত্যুর কথা বলছি, দৃশ্যের, ইমেজের নয় ।

আরো অনেকের মতো আমারও আপনাকে নিয়ে আগ্রহটা সারা জীবন রয়ে যাবে আপনার ৩৬ বছরের এই স্বেচ্ছানির্বাসনের জন্য। এটাই কি একমাত্র চাহিদা ছিল আপনার? শুধুই কাল্ট-এর জন্য ৩৬ বছর? শুধু সুন্দরের প্রতীস্ব রক্ষার্থে?

না এতো সহজে হবে না। এতো বছর শুধু ঔৎসুক্য বজায় রাখার জন্য এমন নির্ভূল শ্রম? এই সময়ে কত কত কালচারাল মাইলেজ মিসও তো হলো, তার বেলা? না কোনো সিপিএম-তৃণমূল তর্জায় আর না কথায় কথায় টেলিভিশনের সান্ধ্য আড্ডায় সুচিত্রাদি, এমনকি একটা দুটো রান্নার বিজ্ঞাপনেও না! এই অস্বীকারের সাহসের জন্য আপনাকে মন থেকে সম্মান জানাই

আপনার নির্বাসনের রহস্য অনেকটা অস্কার ওয়াইল্ডের 'স্ফিন্ক্স উইদাউট এ সিক্রেট' এর সেই মেয়েটির মতো যে রোজ মাঝরাতে সবার অলক্ষ্যে একটা ঘরে গিয়ে ঢুকতো, যেন কি না কি আছে সে ঘরে...কে না কে আছে আর সে মারা যাবার পরে দেখা গেলো না তার অন্ধকার ওই ঘরটাও তার মতই একা...কেউ নেই, কিছু নেই সেই ঘরে।

নারীর গর্ভগৃহের এই রহস্যের কিনারা করতে পুরুষযন্ত্রের এখনো অনেকটা পথ বাকি, নাকি বলবো এই পথ যদি না শেষ হয়? না সত্যিই এই পথের কোনো শেষ নেই! ভালো থাকুন।

A microcommentary on Suman

"Suman's music thus, despite its participation in the commercial mode of production, moves through several modes of dissemination, working at times through the industry, at times outside it. More than the urban folk (song) hero that his politics can easily make him out to be, Suman Chatterjee is a professional musician who produces and sells his craft to earn a livelihood out of an industry that has built itself on the commodification of music. At the same time, he consciously reaches out to audiences through direct communication from both stage and street. The corpus of Suman Chatterjee's work as a whole palpably connects the Bengali music industry in an ambivalent, though polydirectional, loop circulating between Stage--Studio--Street, that, as of April 1997, plays on"

---Sudipto Chatterjee ('Staging Street, Streeting Stage:Suman Chatterjee and the new Bengali Song' in Radical Street Performance: an international anthology, ed. Jan Cohen-Cruz)

While reading the last paragraph of this rare English language excursus on 1997's Suman Chatterjee and 2014's Kabir Suman, I was wondering how beautifully these words have stretched out into the future.

Kabir Suman কবীর সুমন has by and large ceased participating in what Sudipto babu here calls 'the commercial mode of production'. Kabir now produces his own music on his website without any subscription charges which means not only does he control the production and dissemination of his music but he also subverts the music market by making his music available to all without the money making agenda.

It is a fitting culmination of these insightful observations made 17 years back!

Kabir Suman has been and continues to be 'free to sing'!

His street running like a 'tedious argument of insidious intent' has now matured into the World Wide Web: a non-commercial aesthetic platform! 

'জাতিস্মর' দেখার পর:

বাংলাবাদী হতে গিয়ে কালচারাল কাস্টোডিয়ানশিপ তাও আবার এমন এক নায়িকাকে দিয়ে যাঁর নিজের বাংলাটা ইংরেজির মত শোনায়!

ছবির সমকালীন গল্পটি নাইভ রোমান্সে চোপড়া থেকে জোহর মনে করায়। শেষ চমকেও হিরোর বলিউডি আত্মত্যাগের বদখদ গন্ধ লেগে থাকে।

কিন্তু মনে থেকে যায় অতীতের চালচিত্রে জাতিস্মরের বিস্তার, প্রসেনজিতের মুখ-মুখান্তর, লাল ঘরের নিবিড় আলাপ, ক্যামেরার কম্পন, প্যানোরামা এবং সবার শেষে কিন্তু হয়ত সবার ওপরে কবীর সুমনের অব্যর্থ সঙ্গীত।

কম্পোজিশন, আরেঞ্জমেন্ট, সিচুয়েশন, দুটো একেবারে আলাদা সাঙ্গীতিক সময়ের ডায়ালগে জাক্সটাপজিশন, লিরিকের লিখন, পুনর্লিখন এবং কবিগানের কথা সম্পূর্ণ করা ও সুরারোপ সব মিলিয়ে সুমন যা করলেন তা এক কথায় ঐতিহাসিক।

যুগান্তরের মহাকাব্যিক বিস্তারে সুমন যে কালোত্তীর্ণ মহাসংগীতকে আহ্বান করে আনলেন তার অমোঘ স্পর্শে সৃজিৎ সৃজিত 'জাতিস্মর' তাঁর আগের দুটি বিস্মরণীয়, একটি অসহনীয় এবং একটি দেখার অযোগ্য ছবি থেকে অনেক এগিয়ে নিয়ে গেল তাঁর কাজকে। সুমন ম্যাজিক কাটলে পরের ছবিতে কোথায় যান সৃজিৎ, সেটা দেখার ইচ্ছে রইলো। 

On Kill Bill 1

Tarantino is a real master and he knows how to (mis)match style to content!

He picks up the staple revenge genre and adds a dash of his own twisted brilliance to it: the minute shot divisions, the shifty chromes, animation, split screen, speech bubble, the rocking background score which creates an auditory montage qua the visuals--he knows how to tale a tale on screen with oomph! He treats the complex emotion of revenge with a philosophy truly becoming of it!

The first fight sequence shows his complex insight into the relation between the maternal self and the errand of violence with the kid as a reminder of the problematic ethical perspective.

With Lucy Liu, we move into a revenge within the revenge...As this revenge story is pushed back in time and spread across different characters, we discover other anchor points which can only be steeped in revenge. It's quite a Senecan situation but without the 'tragic' aura...the aura of tragedy is deflated by a disturbingly funny take on violence, laced with black humour.

The feminised combat culture borders on antagonism at the cost of theism and a splendid Uma Thurman is there to further the gore. Kill Bill is entertainingly thought provoking with the typical Tarantino zing. 

Remembering Pete Seeger

The dog at the crossing

Always knows his bones

The old and the shiny ones

The ones  always thrown...



You may not come

But snow never fails

Old banjo sits in silence

And shines at the crossing...



His lips changed the breeze

Footsteps singing the snow...



And the dog stands silent

Among his untouched bones...

In Cense

There is a fragrant candle in my room

Don't you dare call me lonely!

Seasons came and went

And the insistent skies...

That's my walk there!

Trees have grown into it

Tooth and nail

Fangs and claws

Little room left for walking

I close in on the branches to breathe the distance

There is a fragrant candle in my room

Don't you dare call me lonely!

One of these days

I will grow into my path

My leafy palms know the trick

There I am

Where my two shadows meet on the glass

One which always proceeds

And the other which never fails to recede

I am the meeting point of a perpetual return journey

The candle burns and offers incense

In sense, it can never be lonely.