Calcutta Notebook
Shoummo

[Kangal Malsat: When Phyatarus, Choktars and Marshal Bhodi come charging the state must scurry for cover]

24 February was just another Sunday and yet the leading vernacular daily had the face of singer/politician Kabir Suman in a fancy head dress on page 1. Central Board of Film Certification's Revising Committee for West Bengal had issued a 'refusal of certificate' to the film Kangal Malsat. Very briefly, the reasons for the refusal were "unnecessary use of abusive languages (sic), sexuality...", 'irresponsible' portrayal of Stalin, unfair depiction of the 'civic society movement' (sic) behind Tatas' Nano project's departure from Bengal and the distortion of 'history' in the picturisation of Mamata Banerjee's swearing in ceremony. Kabir Suman plays the character of Dandabayas, a talking raven and father to Marshal Bhodi, in the film. The film based on a 2003 novel authored by Nabarun Bhattacharya is directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay. Mukhopadhyay had earlier directed a play based on the same novel and the play drew crowds as well as critical acclaim. There is use of foul language in the play and Children below 10 years not allowed announced ticket stubs and flyers to the show. So the director of the film had accepted the 'abusive language' charge in his capacity as the director of the play.

Nabarun Bhattachaya's novels and short stories can hardly ever be ignored. ‘Baby k Parijat’ is his latest work that was available at the just concluded Kolkata Book Fair. Baby K is a sex worker, short in stature, who survives on a daily nourishment of 5 litres of petrol. At times she pays cash and guzzles it directly from the dispensers at petrol pumps. Sometimes Parijat, Baby K's paramour ferries the fuel in jerry cans for her. In a particular episode 'American Petromax', three American GIs outmanoeuvre Parijat and take Baby K to a seedy bar in a side street in Chowringhee, Kolkata. 34 others are waiting in the bar for their share of fun. The boisterous lot prop her up on a table to dance. A Gl pushes a Marlboro into Baby K's mouth and lights the cigarette. The immediate explosion is equivalent to five Molotov Cocktails, so says the forensic report of the US army. Is there message in the bottle?

Kangal is a pauper and Malsat is loincloth worn by tucking between one's legs like a suspenser; bragging or vaunting (as by a fighter); slapping one's arms etc. as one gets ready to attack. The Kangal Malsat war is yet to end and is continuing on the pages of Bhasabandhan, the quarterly edited by Nabarun Bhattacharya. In the latest episode of Mabologe Novel, a plan has been hatched by Comrade Acharya of the Left Front Government to assassinate Marshal Bhodi. The kill is structured like the John F Kennedy assassination plot, writes the author. While Radhesyam Dhole is contracted to shoot Marshal Bhodi with a Czech sniper rifle, Badrinath Dhara is contracted to shoot Radhesyam at that very moment with a 9 mm pistol. Things go awfully wrong in the end.

Most of the subversives in Kangal Malsat are to be found in Kalighat, near Tolly's Nullah which is also known as Adi Ganga and close to Keoratola crematorium. Marshal Bhodi makes a living by letting out the spare rooms in his house for hosting 'inauspicious events'. The fire power of the human subversives is multiplied manifold by Phyatarus, a group of three flying human beings and innumerable flying discs of multiple sizes called Choktars. Marshal Bhodi heads the Choktar sect. Purandar Bhat, one of the Phyatarus, is a poet and a slim but bound volume of Bhat's verse was published in the 2012 Kolkata Book Fair. (This is not fiction since this correspondent possesses a copy of the publication).The effectiveness of fire power needs an external boost since they are targeted at the state and the inventory weapons is limited to one double barrel gun, two pistols, a sword and a chopper. The armoury also includes a Portuguese canon with an unprintable name that was found by Sarkhel while incessantly digging a tunnel on the banks of Tolly's Nullah. Incidentally, Sarkhel is a retired Geological Survey of India employee who is prospecting for oil. At the peak of the subversives' war on the state this canon under the command of Major Ballabh Baxi stationed on a building near the junction of Rashbehari Avenue and SP Mukherjee road creates havoc with Comrade Acharya's troops.

Choktars with their cutting edge and with their play of light and sound can attack as well as confuse the enemy ranks. During an initial sortie, a Choktar detaches the head of Kolkata's police commissioner from his torso. The commissioner continues in his post in this condition, using a motorcyclist's helmet and later a frame to keep the head in place. Choktars can also perform something as precise as Lobotomy. A group of industrialists and businessmen is at the receiving end of this surgical procedure. The surgery is so effective that in a gathering of businessmen, Mr Dholakia shouts a la Proudhon that 'Property is theft' and they also yell in unison that 'Lai Qila par lal nishan, mang raha hai Hindustan'. The slogan can be roughly translated as 'A red flag on the Red Fort, that is what the nation wants'.

The core committee of the group of subversives comprises Dandabayas, Marshal Bhodi, Bhodi's wife Bechamoni, Sarkhel, Bhodi & Bechamoni's servant Nolen and a representative of the Phyatarus. In a particular meeting of the core committee sound bytes as diverse as insurrection, Chittagong armoury raid, Tupamaros, Marighella and Regis Debray's foco are picked up by an eavesdropper The subversives are supervised by a two member advisory comprising of Dandabayas and Begum Johnson (1728-1812) who is reported to have lived in 10 Clive Street and met Siraj-Ud-Daulah. While Begum John-son is all brains, Dandabayas has the onerous task of neutralising intellectuals who are enamoured with the present order. One such intellectual, Pishach Daman Pal brags in a television interview that had Kangal Malsat been published in Germany of the 1930s and had Pal been a German then he would certainly have joined the Nazis and burnt Kangal Malsat in the huge bonfire of 10 May 1933. Dandabayas flies into Pal's residence to warn him that if he does not mend his ways then the world will come to know that Pal's pet name is pedo. Pal looks worried since pedo is not a pet/nick name which any Bengali would like to sport in public or in private.

Dandabayas also elucidates very clearly to his flock the reasons for the forthcoming upheaval. "50,000 small and big industries are either closed or gasping for breath and the buggers talk of downstream units, formula one race tracks, hotels, car parking plazas." The rousing speech is to invigorate the Choktars to go for their targets.

While every character is an eccentric and there is hardly anybody who rises in the morning, shaves/bathes and rushes to office, it is the narrator/author's voice that comes out loud and clear throughout the novel. The author does not leave much to the readers' imagination and does not care to conceal his unbridled support for the subversives that populate his novel. To put an end to all doubts, he refers to Kangal Malsat as a submarine (p 38, second edition, 2004). Allusions to subversion are plenty, for example the digging of a tunnel by Sarkhel. There are 21 chapters in the book and almost all the chapters begin and end with the author's caustic comment on the society he lives in, on its intellectuals, the poets, the politicians. The most vitriolic barbs are directed at his fellow bhadraloks. To cite a few examples, the two liner by the Phyataru poet 'so pale and so banal, you must be an intellectual' or the clairvoyance that is evident in 'While in the garden CPM blooms, in the undergrowth flourishes Trinamool'. Nabarun Bhattacharya does not spare himself either. The author is perhaps aware of the misogynist drift in his own writings. While commenting on this trait in the Phyataru poet's verse another Phyataru enquires if the poet's wife has run away.

The grand finale of the novel is enacted in the core Kalighat, Hazra, Rashbehari Avenue area of the present chief Minister's constituency. The declaration of war on the Left Front Government, where Com. Acharya is a minister, is made by storming the Bhowanipur police station. (This is the same police station that was under siege of the present Chief Minister and her cohorts on 6 November 2011 to seek the release of two law breakers). The officer -in-charge calls up the police commissioner to say that the thana is being carpet bombed by a fusillade of brickbats, earthen pots filled with muck, pots and broken buckets filled with excreta et al. The action then shifts to the crossing of Rashbehari Avenue and SP Mukherjee Road where Major Ballabh Baxi and his Portuguese canon are stationed on the roof of a building. There is a contingent of RAF and Kolkata police marching on the road below along with ten police vans marked with the legend Ko Pu (i.e.Kolkata Police) but the force has to retreat in the face of the shelling from the canon. Meanwhile Dandabayas decides to send Marshal Bhodi, Bechamoni, Nolen and Sarkhel into hiding. The police commissioner plans the next attack from Deshapriya Park but before the forces can advance they are attacked by a flying battalion of Phyatarus and Choktars. An excited Major Baxi eggs them on by whistling 'Colonel Bogey's March', the signature tune from the 'The Bridge on the River Kwai'. This aerial display of light and sound and 'carpet bombing' is joined by lumpens of every locality in the city. They participate in the excitement by bursting crackers at their disposal and the city reverberates to the sound of their fury.

The next day's newspapers carry an appeal for talks from the notables who have for long been resting in peace. The previous night's high decibel campaign had disturbed their sleep. The appeal is signed by Rabindranath Tagore, Ashutosh Mukhopadhyay, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, AN Sardar Jafri, Krishan Chandar, John Stuart Mill, Bishnu Dey, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, Vladimir Nabokov, Carl Gustav Jung, Michael Madhusudan Dutt and many other luminaries. The venue for peace talks is the parish hall on the premises of St Paul's Cathedral.

So why was a 'refusal of certificate' issued to the film? The answer could be in the numbers, in the massive reach of cinema as a medium. On a recent chat show the publisher said that on an average he sells 20-25 copies of Kangal Malsat every month. If we assume that the publisher has sold an average of 25 copies every month since January 2003, the month when the book was published, one comes to a sale figure of 3000 copies in 10 years. Presuming a readership of 2 or even 3, the book must have been read by not more than nine to ten thousand people in the last ten years. On the other hand if the cinema is released in a single screen theatre with a small capacity of 500 seats, the first day with three shows will bring in an audience of 1500 people. In a 1976 interview Ritwik Ghatak said that "I just want to convey whatever I feel about the reality around me and I want to shout. Cinema still seems to be the ideal medium for this because it can reach umpteen billions once the work is done" (Cinema and I, Rupa & Co. 1987). He had also written earlier in 1967 that "I then felt that though literature is a terrific medium, it works slowly into the minds of the people. Somehow, I felt, there is an inadequacy in the medium. To start with, it is remote at the same time, limited to a very small readership, serious literature being what it is" (My Coming into films, Cinema and I, Rupa & Co., 1987). The filmmaker was explaining the reason for his shift from a being writer to a theatre activist and then a film director.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 39, Apr 7-13, 2013

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