Rows of severed heads are rolling about on the banks of the Old Ganga. Ergo, something terrible happened last night. Shoved a sack full of the heads and split? So where are the bodies, then? Hacked to pieces, or sliced and diced? Are the heads all male, or female? Thus ran one narrative. The other: human skulls were canter-cavorting under a cyclone-struck grey sky. At first, there were a lot of skulls, dancing. But when the police arrived, all of them had vanished but three. And while the police wondered whether to proceed or not, debated the pros and cons and sixes and sevens of getting mixed up in yet another scandal, even those three skulls vanished into the tide with a smirk. The public squatted firmly in place, clutching this particular thread, but in the evening news on a private Bengali TV channel, a long-faced police officer was heard to say that the skulls had come from the crematorium at Shiriti. They came in on one tide, and on the next tide went back to the pavilion. Another faction of the police believed that the “dancing skulls” were not the citizens of Shiriti, but Keoratola. Swept along with the plastic bags, rubber chappals, banana skins, dead flowers and other inanimate objects, they had landed up down south, in Mahabirtala.
It seems that regarding this strange and singular phenomenon, whatever the public or the police might think, we should either take up an independent position or avoid any position altogether. The incident happened on 28 October 1999 – we need to remember only the date. Those who know it all already, and then smile that insufferably familiar smile when the foretold incident occurs, is there any reason for us to not call them starched douchebags? In the very last hours of this innumerable-skull-adorned century, what exactly did you think would happen? That bulbul birds would bob and curtsy? Shehnai soirees sway through the streets? That level of sadhana, where all the ickering-bickering differences melt away into the aura of the pure essence-driven dawn of unknowledgeable consciousness – the Bengalis are nowhere near it! Therefore nothing is to be gained from all this weeping and wailing, in fact it might even cause more trouble. At another such moment of the nation’s mega-crisis, Sri Kaliprasanna Kabyabisharad (1861-1907) had written a song in Hindi, which was then sung with great pride at the 1906 Congress annual session in Calcutta:
O brother, our country’s in such a hash!
Mud and ash as good as gems,
while jewelstones are trash.
Everyone reads ‘Hindi song’ and thinks it’s a Hindi film song. But this song is not that kind of song. Sri Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay has told us more about Sri Kaliprasanna: “In the Swadeshi congregations, he introduced a novelty: at the beginning and end of each meeting, he arranged for the singing of nationalistic songs. Even though he himself was not a singer, he had a natural ability for composing such songs. And whenever he attended a Swadeshi meeting, he always had two salaried singers accompany him…” If not exactly this, then we must tune our hearts to a close-enough scale in order to think about the Curious Incident of the Dancing Skulls. Maybe then something might emerge. For now, it is enough for us to know that the dancing skulls are merely a signal.
Of an unimaginable phenomenon of mind-blowing magnitude that is yet to come.
Now we will slide back with ease to 24 October 1999, four days ago, and focus on the Anandabazar Patrika’s Sunday supplement, Page 12, lower half, near the bottom. This is of course nothing new, as insipid readers we do this often, for we have learnt that it is better to slip and fall than to fall behind. In the five columns of job notices, the second from the left has an advertisement that reads as follows:
Travel far and wide
Honoured for 27 years, world-famous Magician Ananda’s cultural team requires attractive young men and women, keyboard player, drummer, midget, experienced and sensitive carpenter, licensed persons, manager and electrician. Attractive wages, education, travel costs to and fro, food and lodging, medical benefits. Contact within the next three days. Time: 9 am to 5 pm Address: Magichouse Ananda, C/O Majestic Hotel, Room No. 207, 4C Madan Street, Kol-72 (beside New Cinema).
At the very outset we are amazed not so much by the magic tricks as much as by the magical coincidence. From the 24th, if one takes into account the three days in which to contact, we have the 25th, 26th, 27th . . . and then, on the very fourth day, voilà! The day of the dancing skulls! Is this the beginning of the magic, then? We know that the police will turn a deaf ear to our appeal; but is this not enough of a mysterious event? In such matters, who but the police may prove to be the ultimate connoisseurs? Immediately after this, the bastard snag that gradually puts down root in the sceptical mind is: the similarity of names, that is, Magician Ananda and Anandabazar Patrika – Ananda within Ananda – is this god’s little game or the devil’s dirty riddle or the seductive beckoning of a veil-shimmering shadowshape? But no one should mistake this dubious doubt in our minds as an ill-willed attempt to poke a twig up the bottom of an institution as hallowed as the Anandabazar. To bugger the great arse of the great establishment that ceaselessly claps the cymbals of news on the one hand and literature on the other would not be productive at all. On the contrary, one could get bamboodled.
A typical case of what such a bamboodling can be like is the life of Mr BK Das. Which, incidentally, Dear Reader, bears no connection whatsoever to Anandabazar Patrika. Mr Das used to write novels of short length in the English language. He had written only two: The Mischievous Englishman and An Affair with Alligators. At the time, Calcutta’s leading English daily was the Daily Pleasure. Its Book Review editor was Mr Panto, and Mr PB was the editor of Literary Snippets on that same page. It is impossible to count the number of times that Mr BK Das, for the sake of his two self-published titles, had rung the doorbell of the abovementioned newspaper. A moustachioed thug sat at Reception. His name was Mr Shantu. Rumour had it that there was a murder charge against him. His job was to shoo away unwanted visitors.
Mr BK Das, on four different occasions, had left two copies of his books with Mr Shantu in the hope that they would be passed on upstairs for the perusal of Mr Panto and Mr PB. Wrapped in imported marble paper, tied with red ribbon. A total of eight copies of The Mischievous Englishman and An Affair with Alligators were laid to waste thus. What actually happened to them remains largely unknown. It may be conjectured that Mr Panto and Mr PB threw them away. Or Mr Shantu drew up from his depths of experience the fairly certain possibility of their disposal and thus did not bother to send up the novels at all. Used the patterned marble paper to cover his own pornographic books instead and sold off the novels for recycling, weighed by the kilo – who’s to say this isn’t the truth? But Mr Das wasn’t the fragile kind; his knowledge and determination knew no bounds. Though he quit writing, he next set bravely forth into the jungles of Assam, into the terrifying world of the petrifying python – his job was to capture the babies and supply them to various zoos. And it is in the course of this job that he met his eventual end.
Excerpted with permission from Beggar’s Bedlam, Nabarun Bhattacharya, translated from the Bengali by Rijula Das, Seagull Books.
