|
Dan “Harry Potter” Radcliffe playing Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings and Sam Riley portraying Sal Paradise in the screen adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s iconic On the Road
has sparked recent interest in the Beats — arguably the most
influential American writers post World War II. But neither film
explores their travels to India.
American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his
lover Peter Orlovsky arrived at Bombay (Mumbai) on February 15, 1962,
following the footsteps of Gary Snyder and wife Joanne Kyger. While
wandering all over north India, he stayed for a while in Patna, at the
home of two poets — Malay Roychoudhury and Samir Roychoudhury.
Malay — offered a Sahitya Akademi award in
2003 — is one of India’s iconic contemporary writers. In November 1961,
he had launched the Hungry Generation literary and artistic movement
from Patna with Samir and poets Shakti Chattopadhyay and Haradhan Dhara.
The group soon expanded to include artists, writers and intellectuals
from all over India.
Malay now stays in Mumbai and Samir shifted to Calcutta in 1991. He now edits a magazine, Haowa 49.
Recalling his Patna days, Samir (79) said: “I had a friend who was a phaeton-driver. I used to drink tharra (country liquor) with him. During one of our drinking bouts, he told me the secret of how he became rich.”
The estate of Darbhanga Maharaja was
auctioning goods of the palace. The phaeton-driver turned up and bought
an old carriage for a pittance. But while dismantling it, he discovered
precious stones hidden in the cushion of the seats. The phaeton driver
quickly sold off the gems and spread the rumour that he had won a
lottery.
Samir recalls his first meeting with
Ginsberg at Chaibasa in Jharkhand, a small village then. “In my room,
the American poet spotted a copy of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West,”
said Samir. “He asked me: ‘Have you read this book?’ I said: ‘Of
course, I have. You see the margin notes? Malay and I made those.’”
Malay was inspired by the Spengler’s
philosophy to frame the working plan for his movement. The term “hungry”
was adopted from Geoffery Chaucer’s Boece (...in sowre hungry tyme...).
While visiting different sites of Buddhist
pilgrimage in Bihar, Ginsberg stopped over in Patna in April 1963, and
stayed at the home of Roychoudhurys in Dariyapur.
“One morning, my mother (Amita
Roychoudhury) discovered him bathing without wearing anything at a tank
in the courtyard of our house,” said Samir.
“‘Why is he doing so?’ she asked me.
‘That’s how they bathe in their country,’ I replied. She did not like
it. From the balcony, she dropped two towels and told Ginsberg: ‘My boy,
cover yourself with one and use the other to dry yourself.’”
The Hungry Generation poets and authors
tried to explore how far their contemporary society would allow them to
subvert the limits of established culture.
At the height of the movement in 1963,
they delivered masks of animals, demons, clowns and cartoon characters
to the homes famous and influential people. On the masks were printed:
“Please take off your mask — the Hungry Generation”.
All hell broke! On September 2, 1964,
Malay, Samir, Debi Roy, and associates Subhash Ghosh and Saileshwar
Ghosh were arrested on charges of obscenity and criminal conspiracy.
Malay was convicted and fined for his poem Stark Electric Jesus. It was only on July 26, 1967, that the Calcutta High Court exonerated him.
But he is still rebelling. Asked the
reason for refusing the Sahitya Akademi Award, Malay said: “I do not
accept any literary awards or prizes as they reflect the value judgments
of the dispensation which bestows them.”
There has been much hair-splitting about
the influence Ginsberg had on the Hungryalists and vice versa. Malay and
Samir claim that the Hungryalists introduced Ginsberg to the symbol of
three fish with one head that became his personal motif and appears on
all works from the Indian Journals (1970). “It was brought to his
notice by the Hungryalists when they had gone to Emperor Akbar’s tomb
(at Sikandra, on the outskirts of Agra). ...Ginsberg came across a
Persian book in Patna Khudabaksh Library (Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public
Library), the leather-bound cover of which depicted the three-fish and
one-head design in silver colours,” said Malay.
Ginsberg did not write about it in Indian Journals.
But his journey to India sparked an unprecedented curiosity among
Europeans and Americans, millions of whom started to come, beginning
with none other than the Beatles.
| 
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন