These Madmen

A solitary man lives with his idea.
 
At the beginning of every month, I would see him—emerging from Beniatola, carrying on his head a mountain of books. He was nearly seventy, his hair the color of dry jute stalks, dressed in an age-worn tunic, a half-burnt bidi dangling from his lips. Behind him trailed three or four young men, radiant yet burdened, each carrying cloth bags filled with books.
 
Thick, white-covered volumes—five hundred copies printed, three hundred retrieved. The rest still lay hostage in the press, released only after the old man had signed bonds and advanced money. Those youths, unknown to us, were each given fifty copies to sell; with that money, they were to buy reams of paper for the next issue.
 
These were men without country, time, or property in our eyes. What they carried upon their heads was not merely printed matter but the sum of their pains, struggles, and wounds. Society had cast them aside. Their only great gift was to inscribe words in ink upon white paper—and for that very gift, society exiled them.
 
Plato once declared that poets should be banished from the ideal Republic. For, said the philosopher who was once a poet himself, poets lack sufficient realism; dwelling in the realm of imagination, they may at any moment undermine the rational framework of the state. The visionary madness of poets, he warned, is perilous to the engine of polity. Better to exile them first.
 
And yet, in defiance of Plato, poets—madmen—were born in countless numbers. They did not create states; they created states of frenzy. Once there was an age when those who walked against the grain filled the earth. Their madness was volcanic, their actions tumultuous. They shattered governments, broke social structures, and through revolt upon revolt made society tremble.
 
History turned, and at some point seemed to settle into equilibrium. Modernity found its compromise with stability. In consequence, the madmen dwindled. Today, we rarely see them. Who now dares spit upward into the sky, knowing it will fall upon his own face? Who dares challenge massive institutions? Who accepts loneliness and the anguish of unending struggle as companion?
 
What society calls unnecessary, foolish, babbling, madness—it is the great work of madmen to enshrine that very madness in life. Ordinary men cannot taste the subterranean joy of this grandeur. For ideas, being immaterial, belong only to these madmen.
 
In today’s world-village, the old man bent beneath the weight of little magazines is none other than Plato’s condemned poet. Knowing well that the spit will fall back on his own face, still he hurls it skyward. Not everyone is destined for such madness; it requires otherworldly genius. Ordinary people can only look on, crying “Eureka! Eureka!” from a distance. At best, they can do two things: brand these men as mad and cast them into prison; or, like gods glimpsed from afar, observe them from a safe remove, never daring to draw near.
 
A recent anthology came into my hands: People of the Little Magazine, the tenth anniversary issue of Sahaj. It chronicles the unknown stories of those still possessed by their madness, those who continue their difficult journeys, their daily diaries of struggle.
 
For history testifies: many madmen, once imprisoned, became ordinary men; many ordinary men, once possessed, became madmen.
 
The little magazine has ceaselessly given Bengali literature new talent—Eklavyas experimenting with language and form while their Dronacharyas remain unknown. Outside profit or loss, these magazines emerge from years of collective sacrifice. Lives and livelihoods are shattered, youth consumed, all for a silent devotion to literature.
 
Without such revelation, someone like Dipanjan Dutta might have remained forever exiled in the caves of an epic. The maker of art deserves no less credit than the maker of warriors.
 
Every year, more than a hundred thousand little magazines are published in Bengali. Behind each—even the smallest—there labors one madman’s furious heart. He works silently, unseen.
 
For if life is fleeting, disjointed, mutable, can it ever touch the eternal? Yet despite time’s sting and death’s certainty, life’s possible riches remain immense. Can the wheel of time erase this treasure? Perhaps a new madman, in a new guise, can preserve and renew their history. Sahaj’s issue People of the Little Magazine will remain such a testament.
 
The Consolation of Madmen
 
And finally—especially in this age, when all around we see a decaying society, when inside us is born the torment of the age, when we feel the tremor of insecurity—then these madmen console us.
 
So long as they endure, we need not despair.