Dibyendu's WallScript

Since June 2005, according to official records, 1,045 farmers have committed suicide across various provinces of India. Yes—this tragedy unfolded in the very era when we, the middle class and the affluent, were chanting paeans to “Brand India.” It happened at that precise moment when we were told that foreign investment was pouring in like a flood, that our foreign exchange reserves were overflowing, that within ten years India would be so “developed” that every middle-class household would flaunt Tata’s one-lakh car. We were drunk on this dream. We were told: India is self-sufficient in food, India is an agrarian giant. And yet, in that other India, a rope brings down the lifeless body of one farmer, while another starving, debt-stricken farmer prepares to take his place. This is no parable—it is fact.   For the India that is supposed to become the world’s leading developed nation by 2020 (a fable relentlessly sold to the masses by domestic and foreign capitalists, by media, and b...

In 1989, Nanni Moretti made the film Palombella Rossa (Red Lob), and only recently was it screened in Kolkata for the very first time. Within the Indian context—particularly that of West Bengal—the film seems uncannily relevant and timely. Moretti, in truth, has always delighted in sprinkling comedy through cinema. In most of his films, he himself steps into the role of the protagonist. Though he is a familiar name in global cine-circles, his popularity is not widespread. His comedy, in many respects, invites comparison with Hollywood’s comedic traditions. Some even draw parallels with Woody Allen. Yet, Moretti is hardly a household name even in America—perhaps owing to his Marxist worldview. At the same time, the Hollywood-influenced filmmaking he employed never found full acceptance within the stylistic schools of European cinema. And yet, despite this estrangement, it is rare to encounter in the last two or three decades a film so profoundly politically correct as Palombella Rossa. ...

In 2001, in an interview given to the Stockholm Newspaper Press, Ingmar Bergman could not restrain himself when confronted with the state of twenty-first century European cinema. He compared the business of filmmaking to a butcher’s trade and the profession of prostitution. His remark arose from witnessing the flood of unrestrained pornography and imported sexuality sweeping into European cinema. At eighty-two years of age, the disgusted Bergman, withdrawn into the solitude of the island of Fårö, was directing a stage production of Mary Stuart. At a time when Hollywood’s unreality had completely swallowed global cinema, Bergman’s vision made me return afresh to the classical body language of film—its native grammar of image, gesture, silence, and aesthetics—which once more announced to my mind the vast, still-unrealized potential of this modern and popular art.   In three days, I watched six films. It was as though I rediscovered cinema’s archetypal imagination. Winter Light (196...

After Dukhiram’s suicide, the first question that rose like smoke was whether he had failed to endure the larger society’s ridicule. Did the sharp scar of the party leader’s honor cut him so deep that he slit himself away? None of us had sensed, beforehand, that Dukhiram carried such a brittle prestige within him.   Some, whispering with folded lips, hinted that the women were at fault. Why did they bathe in the lake wearing those short saris, gamchas, blouses? First, it polluted the waters. Second, from tender boys to withered elders, every rib and belly turned into an audience, feasting upon breasts, hips, and backs. And in that feasting, character itself was accused, corrupted.   But the suicide theory did not hold for long. It crumbled like wet paper. The case crawled out from police burrows and scurried into the newsroom. Ah, the police—dying in spirit from their burden of morality! Meanwhile, the ghouls of reportage leapt into the field. Sexual suicide or sexual murder—b...

Sin and virtue—two beasts of burden carrying the weight of human civilization since time immemorial. From the dawn of history they have stood at the opposite poles of human thought. They are the first primers of social life, the primal grammar of morality. The Ten Commandments of the Bible—ten punishments for ten sins—encapsulated this ancient struggle. And from the earliest days of human history, the contest between sin and virtue has never ceased to agitate the human intellect. Even after the myths of the Church crumbled, the debates did not end.   Krzysztof Kie ś lowski’s Dekalog is a revaluation of that very tension. A renewal in modern form. The Ten Commandments of the Bible may indeed form its thematic ground, but not in the Biblical sense, nor by direct narrative retelling. Instead, when the triumph of urban civilization and the arrogance of modernity rendered human beings increasingly lonely, Kie ś lowski’s Dekalog assumed the guise of myth, embodying those ancient archet...

Nietzsche once declared the death of God. Let us today proclaim instead: the death of Man.   Perhaps this writing cannot begin without such a proclamation. First let me say: what an impossibly tolerant creature is Man! When he declares his own death sentence, not even the faintest tremor shakes his chest. In truth, the other name for this excessive tolerance is a living hell. A heart with no plan for terrible vengeance. To declare that one is alive—that itself is a sin. From where does this infinite endurance arrive? What helpless resilience! In enduring, enduring, we have all become martyrs.   Albert Camus once remarked about martyrs: when we speak of martyrdom, we must remember only three roads lie open before them. One: to be forgotten by mankind. Two: to be mocked in jest. Three: to be devoured and exploited. Therefore, better than becoming a martyr is to rub mustard oil upon one’s nose and fall asleep in peace.   But who imparted this supreme wisdom to us? Ah, how fe...

The sky brimmed with sunlight. A narrow footpath split the field. From dry rat-holes snakes slid out and sank into the pond. It did not feel like spring at all. A vicious heat turned my head to bees. I was returning after looking upon the corpse of Kanta Halui. There are more in this village. They are dropping one after another. Some fifty starved have already gone. Another thirty or so are next to dead—half-dead from hunger and thirst.   Kanta Halui’s age lay somewhere between sixty and seventy—impossible to tell exactly. The very first day I came here I had seen him: the old man searching for something in the pond of Matichak. My friend Partha is the officer at the B.D.O. office. Born and bred Calcutta boy. A job so far from home has made him home-sick and house-bound. I had run to this back-of-beyond for a few days to stand guard over his loneliness. From the moment I arrived I began to grasp a face of my country I had never seen before; and had Partha not summoned me, perhaps I...