I am a self-taught writer-player who lives by the sweat of his brow. You become a player by playing continuously; so by writing constantly, I have become a writer-player. Having written about 17 books over 40 years of toil, I have received quite a few awards including the West Bengal Sahitya Akademi, Rabindra Smriti Purashkar from Calcutta University, Suryadatta National Award, Gateway LitFest Writer of the Year, The Hindu Award for Non-fiction and others. As a result, influential people’s interest in me — some of it curiosity — has increased these days.
They now take me to different corners of the country to look at me, to hear me speak. Apparently, a common allegation levelled against festival organisers is that they invite writers only from the higher echelons of society. By making an example of me, they can now convey the message that they aren’t discriminating between bhadralok and chhotolok. That they are high-minded enough to give even a footpathwalla the same opportunities and recognition.
Know me by my gamchha
It might be a compulsion on their part but still, it is the truth — when all these days only highly educated people could sit on those hallowed platforms, I have got a seat there now. And I am getting the chance to speak. Although I do attend these festivals, I feel that I am a total misfit in these forums — like an illegal entrant. Not all of the invited guests talk freely with me. A natural distance remains. Even if I am the winner of the all-India Hindu Prize, in their eyes I am not a cuckoo but a crow. The crow that tries to sing like a cuckoo.
My dress, deportment, way of speaking are not suited for genteel society. They talk in the language of the educated — English — while I speak in Bengali or Hindi. They eat with spoon and fork, I take food to my mouth with my hand. They might not say it, but in their hearts they revere the tie; I drape around my neck the cheap cotton gamchha , like a pennant of the labouring class.
Many say, if you know that such platforms are not for people like you, why do you go there? To them I say: in the same way that they ‘use’ me, I too go there to put them to some ‘use’. Today thousands of people all over the country know about me, read my books. If I hadn’t been to those forums, would I have been able to reach these people? Which is why, whatever the reason may be, till the time they keep having me, I will keep going. It is profitable for both parties.
Half-empty stomach
At one point of time, during the disturbance caused by Partition, lakhs of people from East Bengal had to migrate to West Bengal. I am the son of such a suppressed, poor, government-aid deprived refugee family. Once on this side of the border, we had no means to support ourselves. At an age when children go to school with books under their arms, I, driven by need and hunger, went to rich households to graze their cattle. Washing glasses at cha stalls, washing dishes in hotels — my whole youth passed this way.
My feet would be constantly wet from standing in water while washing dishes — I got psoriasis between my toes. I wouldn’t be able to sleep whole nights with the pain. I get emotional when I think of those agonising days.
When I got a little older, I worked as a porter in railway stations, I drove cycle rickshaws, I worked as a sweeper, always on a half-empty stomach. This kind of life, it has no desires, no happiness. What remains is shame and the life-wrenching desire to stay alive. What remains is the indifference, the tortures and the insults of this inhuman nation, its society, its people.
Even before entering adulthood, I got a fair idea of how accursed poverty is. In this country, discrimination on the basis of birth prevails in all its horrors. I could feel that I was a criminal just by virtue of my birth. The lowly place accorded to me in the caste hierarchy of the great Hindu religion is, in the eyes of casteists, more ignominious than the position of a mangy dog: it’s a sub-human category. I am such an untouchable creature that it is believed my touch will defile a temple. I saw, I learnt, I understood that in this country and society, all the means of survival are beyond my grasp. Those who have hegemonised all knowledge way before my birth won’t share even a morsel of it with me. Anyone can downgrade and torture me for the most negligible of mistakes. Say, the rickshaw wheels accidentally go over somebody’s feet — for this alone they can smash up my face. The civilised, suave babudom will watch the spectacle from a distance, but nobody will come over to pull back the torturer and say, stop.
Having endured such torture, insults, persecution, I realised one day that it is of no use crying and pleading for mercy with the torturer. Only beating them back makes sense. But, of course, in doing so I realised that I instantly became an anti-social in the eyes of society, of law.
Will to live
Then came the 70s — across the country, a group of eternally oppressed, battered people resolved to instil fear in Fear itself and began raising their heads. Fired by the dream of reforming society to make it habitable for a child again, lakhs of people descended on the streets. They said, we want to create a society where nobody is high up, nobody is low down, but everybody is honourable. Where every individual will get food, clothes, education, shelter, medical help.
I too wanted such a utopian society. So I walked up to stand behind them. At that point, I had no other alternative. The life I was leading was as if I were alive simply because I did not want to die. The indomitable will to live — only that was keeping me alive.
The inevitable happened. An antagonistic political party got together with the police to catch, hack and shoot all those who were trying to change society.
Those who escaped the maws of death either had their limbs broken or were sent beaten nearly half-dead to the black hole of the prison. I was one among that last gang. Fate assigned me a dark cell in Alipore jail. Whether outside the jail or inside — the dance of death was everywhere.
Even inside that horrible prison, I found I could put my time to some use: I discovered something that would come handy later in life. With the help of another prisoner, I learnt the Bengali alphabet. I would scratch the letters on the floor of the prison with a stick. After 26 months of effort, I learnt enough to read a book. When I came out of jail, nothing remained of the Naxal movement. In the face of extreme police brutality, the tiniest hopes of the rebellion had been extinguished.
I went back to my old profession of driving a rickshaw. Although I was doing the work of horses and cattle, I hadn’t discarded the addiction to reading that I had picked up in jail. I would borrow books for reading. In one such book, I chanced upon a word — jijeebisha . Puzzling over its meaning, one day I asked my rickshaw passenger, a woman, what the word meant.
I didn’t know she was Mahasweta Devi. She was amazed to hear such a word from the mouth of a person like me, and by my eagerness to know its meaning. After learning about me, she asked, “I have a magazine called Bartika — will you write about yourself there?” That’s how she brought me to the world of writing. My journey as a writer-player started through a piece published in Bartika ...
Still struggling
I have run an unbelievably long marathon. In this fight, I haven’t got the slightest help from anyone. In the way a mountaineer creates his next foothold by carving it out with a pickaxe, I too have worked very hard to progress step by step. I would labour through the day and then sit down with pen and paper at night. My body would droop with fatigue, my guts would twist like a burnt cobra in hunger, but I would keep writing, page after page, ignoring all the pain...
Now so many of my writings have been published, my fame has almost reached the sky, but in terms of social and economic position, I remain in the same place. When my first piece came out, I was a rickshaw driver. In the following years, I worked as sweeper, wood-seller, a helper in trucks, a night watchman, and today I earn my living by cooking in a school kitchen. No awards or fame has fetched me an easier job, which will allow me to write on a full stomach. In the past one year, I haven’t been able to work — and that means no salary. My family is struggling.
I will never get the help of anybody in this country — that is the impossible truth. I have to fight this battle on my own. Till the time I can keep up the struggle, I will stay afloat in the literary world. After that, I too will be lost in the rapid currents of time.
The writer is the author, most recently, of a collection of essays in Bengali , Jiboner Daandik-Baamdik (Life’s Right and Left). This essay has been translated from Bengali by Anusua Mukherjee.
