Dibyendu's WallScript

What a strange logic it is! Man, who has mastered the art of discovering solutions, is equally gifted in creating problems — this I had not fully realized until now. Suddenly, the air of Calcutta has begun to vibrate with noise. A new cry has arisen: “Save the city from visual pollution!”   And what is meant by visual pollution in our city? Walls plastered with endless rows of posters, distorted billboards, makeshift shacks crowding the pavements, the naked sprawl of slums flanking the railway lines, and the beggars and hijras who line the streets. All these, in the eyes of the so-called gentleman, have become intolerable. To beautify Calcutta — this cry was raised recently, and in the name of grandeur the hawkers were evicted. Now another thunderous slogan — “Stop visual pollution!”   But this matter of visual pollution is far more complex and many-sided. Suppose a man believes that women of refined taste ought to cover their entire form in public. To him, even a woman in a b...

After proclaiming a kind of supreme faith in parliamentary democracy within a mixed social system, modern political scientists have begun to show deep concern over its structural defects and are eager to correct them. A few fundamental questions that have preoccupied scholars for some time are these:   How far does parliamentary democracy differ from true democracy? Or, is parliamentary democracy the best possible path toward realizing the ideal of democracy?   Numerous examples from the modern world suggest that a form of fascist-Marxist governance has entered into the very womb of democracy like a parasitic caterpillar. Does parliamentary democracy, in fact, nourish such quasi-fascist or Marxist forces and make them stronger?   How much liberty does man truly enjoy under parliamentary democracy? Is it only a fragment, a shadow of the freedom philosophers once imagined?   In today’s global political order and social framework, each of these questions is both valuabl...

Had Ritwik Ghatak been alive, perhaps he could never have descended to such an act — the very act now performed by Mrinal Sen and his cohort. Just before the elections in West Bengal, fifty-three so-called democratic intellectuals — writers, poets, artists — published a bizarre declaration, proclaiming their support for the Left Front. Their message was clear: let the people cast their votes in overwhelming numbers, let the Left return in triumph. The patriarch, the chieftain of this cabal, was none other than Mrinal Sen.   Many detractors often mutter that throughout his life Mrinal Sen made barely a film and a half — the rest being nothing more than propaganda reels for the Communist Party. Connoisseurs of cinema hesitate to seat him alongside Satyajit and Ritwik. Much like how the Marxists, with their Goebbels-style propaganda, pushed Manik Bandyopadhyay into the exalted company of Bibhutibhushan and Sarat Chandra, they too contrived to enshrine Mrinal Sen beside Satyajit and Ri...

What a strange and precise unreality! What a tumultuous mixture of frenzy, vitality, and melancholy at its very core. Scorched in the sharp blaze of the sun, parched and blazing, or stinking in heaps of rotting garbage. Flooded with human throngs, mingled with piles of food, where the heroes of Nabanna share scraps with stray dogs. On the sidewalks of Calcutta, someone stumbles upon an abandoned handbag and becomes a millionaire. Another, returning weary from office, is struck down by a reckless car and dragged to the brink of death. One rushes in search of another hurrying forward. One, lost in sorrow, walks slowly, no one knows where — and no one cares to ask.   The footpath entered my mind one day after school. In those days, Calcutta’s alleys and lanes did not yet have these cement-laid pavements. Pedestrians moved along both edges of the tar roads. To save bus fare, many a time we friends walked home together along the sidewalks. Walking, we swore eternal friendship with one a...

God did not send him into the world to be a poet. Upon his ignoble mind, laying her hand in false benediction, a corpulent woman bestowed her curse of blessing: be unbearable. Drink without restraint, swear loudly, scream with abandon, revel in animal joy, become brute and bony like a creature of sheer vertebrae. Do everything under the sun, but for heaven’s sake, do not write poetry. So wrote John Dryden in one of his satirical verses. And whenever I look upon the state of contemporary Bengali literature today, Dryden’s mocking lines return to me with unnerving relevance. Why is it that I stand opposed to poetry festivals or story festivals, yet speak in favor of film festivals, drama festivals, recitation festivals? Why do I resist government interference in the arts? Why do I believe that art, and the artist, must never sit in the counting house of industrialists, tallying profit and loss outside the realm of beauty’s purpose?   The festivals of slogan-shouting, factionalism, an...

The unruly wind from the land of winter drifts in by late afternoon, brushing the skin now and then. Yet the atmosphere of our city life produces a fevered turbulence, warmer and more agitated than any natural heat. On a spring evening, when that vagabond wind from the cold country touches the body, it feels as though love itself lays its caress upon all the hostile realities, the trickery, the spoiled rhythms of living. A tremor of romance stirs within. The ruined city suddenly appears innocent. The scent of palash blossoms unfurls the mind like a blooming field. Inwardly I grope for an anchor, some handhold of solace. The thought of a woman crosses the heart. And just then—the acrid fumes of burnt petrol, coupled with the demonic roar of machinery, desecrate the moment.   “Why do you speak so much? Be silent. Become soundless.” — Shankha Ghosh   This spring, the sunlight carries a sharpness, yet from time to time, dark heavy clouds gather in the sky. One night, quite late,...

" I believe that every modern state in the present world is misguided, driven astray; and that without a radical transformation of those constitutions and a profound application of ideals, this delusion cannot be corrected. After long observation, I have been compelled to conclude that without philosophy there can be no hope of justice or equality in society. Humanity shall not escape from this mounting chaos until true philosophers seize the reins of governance, or by some miraculous enchantment, political leaders are transformed into genuine philosophers."   Thus, in his advanced years, Plato explained in his celebrated Seventh Letter that political authority must be wedded to philosophy, otherwise the very path of rightful governance remains blocked. Whether it is the Platonic statecraft or the Platonic love, both are anchored to a single, luminous idea: Utopia.   This most ancient word in human thought has been given three classic definitions in the lexicon:   A place...

“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habits.” – Henry Brooks Adams. Yet, truth itself is a mountain of weariness. If there had been only a single lie in the world, death might perhaps have sealed it into permanence. The French have a phrase – La Vie en Rose – life seen in rosy hues. In Camus’ The Fall, La Vie en Rose was not poetry, but the false glitter of a youth’s life drowned in self-deception. For in this world, what unfolds cannot be untruth. The very phenomena of human life twist truth into falsehood and falsehood into truth. The difference lies here: in truth abides an endless melancholy, while falsehood is cradled in gaiety. Humanity flees from truth, fashions instead a magical realism in which the heart may dwell at ease. The lover adores a parrot, dreams of a serpent-maiden for his bed. The clash between imagination and reality is staged in this manner, through the upper chambers of consciousness and the subterranean caverns of the unconscious. Thus does a thinking ma...