“Go on failing. Go on.
Only next time, try to fail better”

— Samuel Beckett

Some small wonders of life are its ironic surprises. My participation in this symposium is just such a surprise for me. At first, I was taken aback when my dear friend Amit Chaudhuri, whose writings I greatly admire and who is perfectly aware of my utter ineligibility to take part in any scholarly discourse, suddenly made me an offer to deliver a talk in an august symposium to be held on the theme of “Failure”. But then I quickly realised that it’s an offer I cannot logically decline, because, being an elderly and obscure Bengali poet who has failed in his pursuit to achieve fame in his long poetic career, I can at least claim with some dignity that failure is my forte. Thus, I agreed with a chuckle at myself, after making a quick mental calculation that my poor English might also go well with the drift of the subject itself.

So here I am, ladies and gentlemen, and here are some bare facts about myself. I have been writing poetry for the last fifty years, having published twelve books of poems, along with two collections of literary essays and one novel to my credit. And in the bargain, I have received some awards too. But in spite of such seemingly impressive biodata, not a single cultured and literature-loving Bengali bhadralok, outside the small literary circle of Bengali poetry, has heard of me. If you think it’s an exaggeration, ask any respectable Bengali gentleman in Kolkata whether he has heard of a poet called Ranajit Das and you are sure to meet with a sceptic frown and a glum response, “Ranajit who?” Please don’t think I am concocting stories to project my image in a comical light. Listen to this. Very recently, a journalist friend of mine, who is a senior assistant editor of a leading daily, did me a great favour by commissioning a short feature from me, no, not on any literary topic, but on film star Rekha on the occasion of her umpteenth birthday for his newspaper, and he published it with a prominent photograph of mine at the top corner of the feature.

My wife was elated to see her poor old husband’s photograph at long last in a newspaper, and treated me to a sumptuous breakfast with my favourite cheese omelette. But my excitement was shortlived when a neighbour of mine met me at the bazaar and said, “Hey, Mr Das, I have read in today’s newspaper an interesting article on Rekha and Amitabh Bachchan! I forgot the writer’s name, but the guy looks like you!” I stood crestfallen, as I realised that even photographic evidence in a prominent daily could not dispel my obscurity.

But there is an interesting fall-out. As you know, any longstanding obscurity of a poet gradually becomes a kind of fame in itself – a very stubborn, cultish, underground fame, which is always dreaded by celebrity poets! Because this kind of clandestine fame is rumoured to have a direct link with immortality in the world of art. (It’s a sinister and haunting rumour that tends to make the dead poets alive and the live poets dead!)

In any case, my own enduring obscurity has endowed me with a little bit of this dubious fame, and a group of young poets have become my loyal admirers. They believe that I have been deprived of my due share of fame by a literary culture dominated by aggressive self-promotion. One young poet admonished me with these words, “Dada, you are such a powerful poet, but nobody knows your name. It’s all your fault, why didn’t you take care of your PR seriously?” I instantly replied, “Listen, kid, being a genuine poet, I never had any interest in making PR, as I am only interested in making love!” But the boy was not amused, and he hit back, “Dada, it’s not a matter of your ghatia joke, because even God cannot survive without constant PR in this world.” And then he delivered his punchline with a sarcastic smile, “By the way, dada, could you find much success in your pursuit of love either?” This was a real hit below the belt, literally, because with my looks and my obscurity, I was a damn flop in that field as well. I sacrificed fame for the sake of love, and love ignored me for my lack of fame. I have got the worst of both worlds!

This, in short, is the description of my failure as a poet. Now the question is, leaving comedy apart, how do I view this failure myself? Am I okay with this failure? Or do I resent it? What kind of a failure is this? Until now, I have implied that this is only a failure to earn literary fame, and is totally unrelated to the question of quality of my poetry. It might even be surmised from my foregoing account that I have been taking a hidden pride in this failure, and covertly flaunting this failure as a feather in my cap of self-respect. And here comes the hard question. Did I actually fail to earn fame because I failed to write good poetry?

This question lies at the heart of the matter and opens up the whole issue, calmly indicating that an impartial judgement from the literary community about the quality of my poetry should be the deciding factor in the matter. For my part, I always dream of such a trial, in which the verdict is finally out that my poetry is indeed poor and therefore my failure is justified, and I accept this verdict with a humble and grateful heart. I almost feel relieved to get rid of a tormenting poetic ambition which is beyond me. I bow to the jury and step down from the dock. And then I politely recede from public view, never to be seen again. Conjuring up this image of myself as a failed and forlorn poet silently receding into literary oblivion gives me a strange catharsis from my fervent desires to achieve literary fame. I find in this image the faint prospect of a strange resurgence of a poet who has met, for the first time, the hard truth of his poetic failure, has been cast out of the garden of poetry, and retreated into a solitude of utter desolation from which he might still emerge as a true poet in his second birth. Because this solitude, like the proverbial ant-hill of the jungle-bandit Ratnakara, might prove for him the real creative solitude in which he might at last acquire the heart and the art of poetry.

And talking of failure, I must now recall the tragic life and majestic poetry of our ‘Nirjanotamo kabi’ (the most lonely of poets) Jibanananda Das (1899–1954), the poet who was almost unknown during his lifetime, lived in utter misery, but wrote incredibly great poetry, and is now universally regarded as the greatest Bengali poet since Rabindranath Tagore. He was “a painfully private person” (in the words of his American biographer Clinton B Seely), who failed miserably in almost all spheres of his personal life, except his poetry. By profession he was a teacher of English literature, but he frequently lost his jobs owing to various reasons, including his own diffidence and reclusive nature, and serial cruelties of fate. He had a slight stammer, for which he faced occasional ridicule from his colleagues and students. Afflicted with a profound poetic indolence, he remained jobless for long periods, lived in abject poverty, and bore the brunt of an extremely unhappy family life, with a bitter and disgruntled wife and two children. All along his hapless life, he frantically looked for means to earn his living, mostly without success. Even a couple of years before his death, he went to the Writers' Building – the seat of the state government in Kolkata, in the hope of procuring a government permit to start some petty business, where he fainted and fell ill. Finally, he died in a tram accident in Kolkata in 1954. Speculation is still rife in the literary circle of Bengal that this accident might actually be an act of suicide.

I feel inclined to quote the touching description of the poet’s death in Mr Seely’s heartfelt words.

Jibanananda had been in the habit of going for a walk, often by himself … On the fateful evening, Jibanananda was returning home, heading north. Rashbehari Avenue, a major thoroughfare, had to be crossed before he could proceed the hundred yards or so back to his flat. Down the centre of Rashbehari run two tram lines. Of just such tram lines he had written some sixteen years earlier:

“It is late – so very late at night.
From one Calcutta sidewalk to another,
from sidewalk to sidewalk
As I walk along, my life’s blood feels the vapid,
venomous touch
Of tram tracks stretched out beneath my feet like
A pair of primordial serpent sisters.
A soft rain is falling, the wind slightly chilling.
Of what far land of green grass, rivers, fireflies
Am I thinking?
Where are the stars?
Have those stars been lost?
Beneath my feet the slender tram track –
above my head a mesh of tangled wires
Chastises me”

Excerpted with permission from ‘Descriptions of a Poet’s Failure’ by Ranajit Das in On Failing, edited by Amit Chaudhuri, Westland Books in association with Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University.