DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Death of a Salesman: Arthur Miller. First published 1949.

I never liked the name Janaiker Mrityu (Death of Someone) given to the Bengali version of the play. A salesman in a capitalist society is not just someone. He is a unique entity encompassing a unique set of virtues and vices not to be found in earlier economies. For my own purpose I quote from the play:

Willy- Figure it out. Work of a lifetime to payoff a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.

Linda-Well, dear, life is a casting off. It’s always that way.

Linda spoke like that, okay. World over, on the contrary, all the countless Lindas think differently. They want to have houses of their own. It is instinctive since they themselves are houses. Their bodies are houses to bear, feed, and nurture the embryos of generations of mankind. Linda was only consoling Willy Loman over the inevitability of break up of a family, over leaving a house to nobody. Obviously, Linda could not mean it sincerely. And that is only natural. This Death of a Salesman, as I progress afresh for umpteenth time I am stunned by the overwhelming depth of Arthur Miller notwithstanding the canards and gossips crafted over the media. The theme is lasting for sixty years with clear signals of lasting for a century unless not “existing” socialism but real socialism starts controlling productive forces and the economy. The play, for once, strives to bring an individual out of stereotype when and where Charley says one must have something to sell otherwise you are destined for the black hole.

It is astonishing and amusing also to view us in the mirror. With what a tremendous load of illusion we continue to live and suffer only to see us dramatized and look at each other and realize that the fellow beside me is also similarly suffering and hoping and waiting for a morning with a flood of sunshine.

And the pride, arrogance and their futility when viewed in the context of relationship between parents and offspring overpowers us with such sadness. Father figure is a miniature hero and he is worshipped forgetting that the heroes too have feet of clay. Loman is continually failing and boasting and getting beaten and ending up in ridiculous womanizing in full view of his elder son Biff. When the wreckage of this son rebels in frustration he threatens him despairingly. Really, quite moving and relevant till today.

FESTIVAL FLAVOURS

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (7)

In the mind’s eye frames move backward. A serpentine coloured streak, mostly red and green , is moving forward along the earthy brown bridle path between the dense and dazzlingly green tea bushes over the undulating low hillocks of Surma valley tea gardens of Cachar area in India, Sylhet and Chittagong of present day Bangladesh. Tea garden labourers , mostly women were going to join the Durga Puja. Their own complexion, predominantly glistening ebony black among all the surrounding colours with their own defiantly bright red saris under a magical cloudless blue sky left me with a loner’s happiness which a loner can only enjoy. In fact, my first conscious feeling of a Durga Puja was gathered from the tea garden Durga Pujas. Almost all tea gardens had English managers and under managers In the matter relating to Durga Puja they stretched their generosity to the farthest limit. Every garden used to have community Natch Ghar (dance hall). That was the main venue of the puja.

This colourful procession I was watching from a slow moving train’s window while on way to visiting a friend in a tea garden. This friend was in the Royal Indian Navy in the British days, an accused in the naval mutiny and demobilized after the Second World War, one among the seven million made unemployed at that time. He had a sprawling ancestral property on the fringe of a famous tea estate. He dabbled in what was called progressive political activity. He was supposed to help me in my feeble attempt at trade union activity among the garden labourers in the dangerous days of Pakistani regime. He asked me to stay with him during the pujas. And that once a

gain threw me back into the folds of my childhood tea garden pujas. The colour, illumination by incandescent lights, sound of many hundred voices of men, women and children, absence of microphone and loud speakers , swirling dust of red earth, performance of plays ,mostly mythological by itinerant jatra parties of local origin on four side open stage. The actors had to have enormous lung power and ability to gesticulate powerfully to captivate the thousand strong audience throughout the night. And the overwhelming smell of biris, combined with that of sweets fried and made syrupy in oil and sugar of dubious quality. A painter could be very happy with all this.

The only jarring note was struck by my former seaman friend with his weakness for ganja and bhang, the potent resinous extraction of different grades from cannabis you smoke or mix with sweetened milk and drink.
But all the same childhood returned for a couple of days. We would throng around in our not so clean half shirts, shorts, frocks in the wealthy neighbor’s house and watched with intense curiosity and surprise how the kumars (sculptors) were building images of Durga and her cohorts. First, split bamboo pieces tied together with hay fastened over, then plastering with adhesive black clay brought specially from river bed which had to be kneaded with finely cut jute for more cohesion, We, all Apus and Durgas of the locality watched how carefully and truthfully the sculptors tried to shape the female and male anatomy of the Gods and Goddesses .Then with paints how a piece of hessian sheet soaked in clay turned in to a beautiful sari with borders of wonderful flower pattern. In our contemporary innocence we earnestly believed in miracles and divine deliverance.

This innocence was only relative. Every age has its own variety of childish innocence. When we also grew up later under the shadow of newly acquired arrogance of skepticism, argumentativeness and disbelief this turned into a ridiculous nothing. But that smell of shefali, view of white kash on the banks of mirror-calm rivers under an azure blue sky with drum beats around and the image of gorgeous goddess Durga always lead back to a wonderful feeling of happiness.

Image courtesy Internet: Apu and Durga, still from "Pather Panchali", a film by Satyajit Ray

OF BOOKS AND READING

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (6)
Speaking about oneself is one of the greatest pleasures. One of the greatest self indulgences one may say half deprecatingly. A high pitched love for words, sentences etc. and a frenzied reading habit develop in my kind of people exceptionally early and leave them hopefully or , if one would say hopelessly dependant upon them. What starts as a desultory way of reading, sometime romance, sometime poetry, sometime thriller, sometime racy trash, sometime really serious things, through the churning of time evolve in to something which gather around it elements of little wisdom, little knowledge. People like us usually remain content with whatever pebbles we are able to collect from the shores of what Newton described as ocean of knowledge and wisdom. Let us only be watchful that we are not turning away from those shores.

Familiarity with alphabets or words or reading and writing or even excellence in them hardly ensure against the deviation from the path of reason and logic. The powerful weapon provided by books still remains the most powerful and basic. The astonishing development in electronics is continually providing us with startlingly smarter and smarter way of acquiring knowledge. But the books are very personal. Read if you wish. Do not read if you do not. Closing or opening a book it is all up to you. Written words, in the history of human civilisation, quietly and steadily has contributed so much that no other development can come any close to this. I am no Lord Chesterfield’s son whose father could boast that he had given his son the best education that money could buy. We had very little money but a disproportionately large assortment of books scattered around an unimpressive modest house filled with an electrical impulse for reading. It was very different from what is called education for which none of us had any eagerness. Of course, plenty of urge was there to fetch a degree and a steady job. That was all about education, acquiring some comprehension of formal patterns that come along with formal education. This cannot be described as enthusiasm or respect.

In the thirties and forties of past century Bengali middle class families produced such youths. Tagore blazed the trail and during last ten years of his life he even asked the upcoming generation to defy him as an icon. We can once again try to understand Abhik in his "Rabibar". He was fearless that a change could sweep him aside. Books are books, inert by themselves.

But the electronic media channels have completely opened up itself to the upsurge of retrogression. Books are books. They cannot be changed. They can only be burnt. They can be lost for awhile only to reappear afresh from the ashes. Books cannot be effectively made vehicles of reaction and retrogression however much a section of writers long to make themselves commodities in the market place. In the existing economy all of us have to become commodity willingly or unwillingly. There is no escape from this. The struggle that a writer wages before being swallowed by market economy driven by big money and even after being swallowed register the marks of his artistic honesty, sensitiveness and greatness. Books and writings retain enduring marks of this struggle. This is one of the greatest points why books are different.

This is the backdrop. Greatness or great things do not pop up in a void. There is a void created by a dying culture The behemoth of electronic media is thriving upon this and feeding their huge clientele on a steady diet of foolish entertainment of mindless sex, of heaps of naked bodies wrestling with each other, gory violence, ridiculous obscurantism and all that.

This business of sex is very interesting.

These frenzied efforts to market sex have led to an insane fear of losing sex. The increasing ascendancy of sex prophets in media is a clear indication of this. There is nothing shameful or fearful about sex. Citing examples from only Kamasutra has become very ordinary and monotonous. Better read Kadambari of Bana Bhatta or Kalidasa’s Kumara Sambhavam and learn from the simmering warm sex of Mahashweta or Mahadeva’s coital pleasure with Parvati how passionately sex was described about a thousand years back.

Since book reading is not a guided tour conducted by a dolled up dud on the TV screen, you are left with full liberty to play with and fondle your imagination with any number of colours and tunes you wish. Books offer you this since it has inherent respect for every human soul. And it is a book that created Don Quixote by Cervantes, the unmatchable joke from the fantasy world of a book worm. In fact only books can do this. Over indulgence and dependence upon gadgets may lead one to a darkened world without books.

The pleasure and benefits derived from the ever evolving gadgets are ephemeral. Technology is being used more to push back and vulgarise all progressive cultural efforts. The first book I read with complete attention in my childhood was Ramayana by Krittivasa -- all the seven cantos stopping only for food and sleep. I am grateful to my book-loving parents till this ripe old age.

Image courtesy Internet: Dali's Don Quixote

WRITER'S WORLD

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (5)

In my earlier blog I quoted a two and half page excerpt from The Hungry Tide of Amitav Ghosh. Portrayal of some characters by some authors appear to be very similar (not in every respect, of course) to someone very close to us. In this context Piya reminded me of my daughter for her stubborn idealism, never say die attitude. This may not attract many who are after a soft life of affluence and comfort. In the instant case the author did not compromise with cheap ridicule the yearning of those who opt for such lives. Rather, his admiration was quite prominent. That is what attracted me towards these lines.

Those who are devoted to various art forms they are not concerned with a dissertation on political economy. He or she might have sound or unsound political or philosophical ideas and this may or may not affect his or her creative products, literary or otherwise. We saw Beethoven effusive after Napolean’s take over of Austria. This single fact did not lower his greatness. We found Tagore charmed by Mussolini’s fascistic ideas till Rolland removed the spell over him. We know Knut Hamsun was frankly a fascist politically but his creativity was not burdened by that. Nearer home we saw Sarat Chandra lecturing Hindu communalism and at the same time creating wonderful character of Gafur in Mahesh. While discussing Herzen or Shaw Lenin took this dialectical appraisal of creative world. Most of our confusions stem from an obstinate abs olutism. In such a world, to quote Herzen, “we are not doctors, we are the disease.”

I am not highly conversant with Amitav Ghosh’s works. I have heard a lot about him, read only a couple of his books. These were all inspired by the fact of his being an award winning celebrity. I do not have competence to judge him. In fact I feel so far as lives and happenings of estuarine Bengal are concerned Manik Bandopadhya wrote a better book. I mean his Padma Nadir Majhi (the boatman of Padma). Still, I liked Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide for its own qualities. Manik Bandopadhya could have written in English for he was quite competent in English language and literature, or he could have himself translated the book. In the unfortunate narrow confines of those times this did not happen. One more thing. In literary appreciation the reader looks for synchronization and harmony between content and form. A writer may not be able to achieve this always inspite of his best efforts. Manik Bandopadhya died with this anguish.

REMINDED ME OF MA

At midday with the sun blazing overhead Piya took a break and came to sit beside Kanai in the shade of the awning. There was a troubled look in her eyes that prompted Kanai to say, “are you still thinking about the forest guards?

This seemed to startle her. “Oh no. not that.”

Then?

She tipped her head to drink from her water bottle. “The village,” she said wiping her mouth,” she said, wiping her mouth.’ Last night: I still can’t get it out of my head- I keep seeing it, again and again, - the people, the flames. It was like something from some other time-before recorded history. I feel like I will never be able to get my mind around the –‘

Kanai prompted her as she faltered. “The horror?

‘The horror. Yes. I wonder if ever I will be able to forget it?

‘Probably not’
‘But for Fakir and Haren and the others – it was just a part of everyday life, wasn’t it?’
I imagine they’ve learnt to take in their stride, Piya.They have had to.’
That’s what that haunts me’ said Piya.” In a way that makes them a part of the horror too, doesn’t it? Kanai snapped shut the note book: ‘to be fair to Fakir and Haren, I don’t think that it’s so simple, Piya. I mean aren’t we a part of the horror as well? You and me and people like us?’

Piya ran a hand through her short curly hair, ‘I don’t see how.’

‘That tiger had killed two people, Piya’ Kanai said, ‘and that was just in one village. It happens every week that people are killed by tigers, how about the horror of that? If there were killings on that scale anywhere on earth it would be called genocide, and yet here it goes almost unremarked: these killings are never reported, never written about in the papers. And the reason is just that these people are too poor to matter. We all know it, but we choose not to see it. Isn’t that a horror too- that we can feel the suffering of an animal, but not of human beings?

‘But Kanai, Piya retorted, ‘everywhere in the world dozens of people are killed everyday- on roads, in cars, in traffic. Why is this any worse?
“ Because we are complicit in this, piya. That’s why?
Piya dissociated herself with a shake of her head “I don’t see how I am complicit.’

“Because it was people like you,’ said Kanai, ‘who made a push to protect the wildlife here, without regard for human costs. And I am complicit because people like me-Indians of my class, that is, -have chosen to hide these costs, basically in order to curry favour with their western patrons. It’s, not hard to ignore the people who’re dying- after all they are the poorest of the .poor. But just ask yourself whether this would be allowed to happen anywhere else? There are more tigers living in America in captivity, than there are in all of India- what do you think would happen if they started killing human beings?

But Kanai, said Piya, ‘there’s big difference between preserving a species in captivity and keeping it in its habitat.’
‘And what’s the difference exactly?’

‘The difference Kanai,’Piya said slowly and emphatically,’ is that is what is intended-not by you or me, but by nature , by the earth, by the planet that prevents us from deciding that no other species matters except ourselves. What will be left then? Are’nt we alone enough in the universe? And do you think it will stop at that? Once we decide we can kill off other species, it will be the people next- exactly the kind of people you’re thinking of, people who are poor and unnoticed.’

‘That’s very well for you to say, Piya- but it’s not you who is paying the price in lost lives.’

Piya challenged him.’ Do you think I wouldn’t pay the price if I thought it necessary?’
‘You mean you would be willing to die?’ Kanai scoffed,’ come on Piya’
‘I’m telling you the truth,Kanai’ Piya said quietly,’ if I thought giving up my life might make the rivers safe again for Irawaddy dolphin, the answer is yes, I would.. But the trouble is that my life, your life, a thousand lives would make no difference.’

‘It’s easy to say these things-‘

‘Easy?’ There was a parched weariness in Piya’s voice ‘Kanai, tell me, do you see anything easy about what I do? Look at me. I have no money, no home and no prospects. My friends are thousands of kilometers away and get to see them may be once in year, if I am lucky. And that’s the least of it. On the top of this is the knowledge that what I am doing is more or less futile.’

She looked up and he saw that there were tears in her eyes. ‘There’s nothing easy about this, Kanai, she said. ‘You have to take that back’

He swallowed the quick retort that comes to his lips. Instead, he reached for her hand and placed it between his own. ‘I am sorry’,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’ I take it back.’

She snatched her hand away and rose to her feet. ‘I would better get back to work.’

He called out as she was going back to her place,’ you are a brave woman. Do you know that?’

She shrugged this off, in embarrassment. ‘I am just doing my job.’

(excerpts:The Hungry Tide.Amitav Ghosh.Pp 300-302)

TWENTYFOURTH APRIL

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (4)

There are so many allusions about prisons, arrests etc. that it may naturally lead to some questions: where, why etc. Briefly, I was a political prisoner in East Pakistan (the then) for being a member of the communist party of East Pakistan, which almost always was a banned organization there. During the period lasting from 1949 to early 1956 I was thrice imprisoned for a total duration of six years one month. This explanation, I hope, will remove most of the confusions.

Today is 24th April. On this day in 1950 prison guards aided by hardened criminal convicts fired upon us, severely assaulted us leading to death of seven inmates and grievously injuring almost all of the thirty nine prisoners inside the ward. Two or three decades ago memorial meetings were held in Kolkata and elsewhere in honour of those who sacrificed their lives in this brutal killing. Gradually, with the disappearance of people of those days, waning of memory and crowding in of scores of more tragic events these memorial assemblies are naturally on the way out.

Leaving aside the post 2nd world war politics prevalent at that time developments inside Rajshahi Central Jail would be an interesting study. At the other end of the spectrum Burmese communists, particularly the white flag were waging a terrible war of insurgency against the alliance led by Aung San. Indonesian communists led by Aidet and egged on by Chinese communists were fighting the then Indonesian military led regime of Suharto ending ultimately in a horrible disaster for Indonesia. Indo China (present day Vietnam) were fighting French America combine and winning dramatically. In this backdrop of ferment powerful sections of Indian communist movement decided that an armed struggle could be waged against big bourgeois landlord collaborators backed by Anglo American imperialism and could be won decisively. By hind sight you can today describe this as infantile impulse but this kind of thinking definitely influenced us. We thought that if the prisoners could be made to rebel and a massive jail break could be staged there would be an explosive situation .Beyond that we did not want to think. To this end we set to work.

We started organizing. We established excellent contacts with greater sections of prisoners and undertrials. Total population inside the jail had been definitely more than two thousand five hundred .Our ward committee, or rather the jail committee used to publish regularly every week a neat and beautiful handwritten manuscript magazine Mazdoor . On this occasion a special issue of Mazdoor with several copies was published. Front page screamer’s free English translation would be something like” stand up in anger like Yusuf Beg” (Yusuf Beger Moto Rukhe Daraon). After recounting the heroic sacrifice of Yusuf Beg a demand for the thorough reform of jail manual was raised. Yusuf was a convict serving life imprisonment, who attacked and killed the English superintendent of the jail during Sunday routine inspection parade. Yusuf Beg had many serious grievances which were ignored and he was regularly harassed and abused. Yusuf was tried and executed.

The memorandum of demand s were mainly drawn up ,prepared and circulated by us. Apart from many demands for the improvement of living condition, food, clothing etc the vital demand of paying wage to the convicts serving rigorous imprisonment made the authorities see red. Those who have a little idea of a large prison should be well aware of large departments of cane crafts, tailoring shop, handloom,powerloom, leather craft, smithy, press, and many others,- an impressive assortment of small scale industries run by the labour of convicts . Till twenty five years or so ago even in independent India British sponsored jail manual was followed. According to this manual no wages were paid to the convict labour and they were never allowed to buy their small needs like tobacco etc from their personal cash lying in the jail office. Prisoners placed these demands and resorted to en masse indefinite food refusal. In the evening whole prison used to roar with slogans raised by the prisoners. This was certainly unprecedented. The line of administration from Dhaka to Rajshahi central jail was aflame with anger and anxiety. This was a situation termed as mutiny in the jail manual. A clash with some political prisoners leading to firing and deaths is relatively a tame thing compared to this highly volatile situation. Cases of clashes between political prisoners and guards had happened in the past but a largescale mutiny of the prisoners left the the authorities in a desperate state. The prison authorities finally capitulated and promised to look into the grievances of general prisoners. The mutiny of the prisoners was naturally over because the authorities had conceded to favourably consider their demands. Prisoners in general were not interested in a foggy idea about a revolution.

At this point prison authorities and the government in Dhaka planned to teach us a lesson. They decided to disperse us in smaller groups in to segregated enclosure. Supposedly dreaded ones to be confined to fourteen cells. They were aware that clashes would take place and a bloodbath was in their plans. It was 1950 and both Bengals were swept by the second biggest communal carnage. Looking back some of us till this day wonder in such a situation how could we organize a prison mutiny of such a dimension. Those were the days of such communal frenzy that a state frankly established on the basis of religious communalism verging on a fundamentalist attitude could rather decide to wipe out this small group of communists and left wing elements, seventy per cent of whom in the religious sense had a Hindu background They thought but failed to start a prisoners’ riot of a communal nature. Instead in the hot morning of 24th April authorities staged a blood bath in the Khapra ward when the political prisoners were just getting ready for their breakfast of chapatis, vegetables and tea.

The word Khapra in North Bengal dialect means red tiles. Khapra ward was a red tile roofed bungalow looking prison ward meant for accommodating defaulting landlords held under Bengal regulation III of late nineteenth century. These prisoners were rajahs and maharajahs and the lavish expenditure after them was borne by the government. It was quite a beautiful building with barred French windows numbering around ten or twelve. Khapra ward had another name Diwani because prisoners of Diwani (land revenue related) cases were held there. Surrounding was spacious with half a dozen impressive looking Neem trees and a very big well full of clear, cold and wholesome water. It was difficult to imagine that on this sunny hot morning there would be murders in this beautiful place. At worst we bargained for a tough physical conflict but never a shooting of buck shots from bolt action rifled muskets at practically point blank range because there never was a need of such a firing upon unarmed prisoners inside a barrack and that too without any warning. Mr. Bill,the jail superindeant, a huge anglo indian extremely enthusiastcally led the whole operation. Our plan was if the authorities applied force we would capture the officers and force them inside the barrack.Mr. Bill could manage to escape but two deputy jailors were catured by us and they were also injured in the ensuing indiscriminate firing.

Rest is history. Seven killed and every one injured, some very seriously. A few were crippled for whole life. Buck shots or riot cartridges as called by British soldiery fired from a long distance result in lighter wounds. Fired from close range they create ugly and fatal wounds. Yes, we were fearless. This fearlessness demands rich tribute. But it should be remembered that fearlessness alone is not the only capital with which revolutionary battles are fought. As for infantile impulses probably none of us is immune to it. Nobody is born old. Infantilism and mature behaviour they all join together to create the wonderful thing that is called stream of life.