In translation: Subimal Misra’s ‘anti-stories’ about the Gulf War and other man-made atrocities

When human offspring become the offspring of dogs
Then it’s not the dog
That wags the tail
But the tail that wags the dog

He saw a designer punjabi and hit-film-styled blouse-and-sari, he saw Calcutta of 1941, processions, uproars, thousands of protesting voices, voices united in protest, Presidency, Alipore and Dum Dum Central Jails, thick crowds of protesting folk in Kakdwip, Ahalya, a peasant’s wife was killed, a fight for land, Telangana, Salil Chowdhury’s song, the child that did not get its birth papers even after having gained the right to the light and air of this earth, the whole of Kakdwip protests this, why haven’t any buds bloomed on any tree, no shoot emerged either, the more the butterfly became a silkworm another day, that night the whole of Kakdwip

After that, one day at the Park Street-Chowringhee crossing
A squad of rifle-bearing soldiers
Stood surrounding the Gandhi statue

Who had taken his copy of Anti-Duhring from the table, even after searching for three months the book was not available in any shop in Calcutta, it had personal markings in red ink, his proud possession, one time someone said this book will never be published again by Russia, if you find an old copy, do get that, Calcutta of 1970, mist of dawn, the boy is taken out of the police van and asked to walk away, he walks away, he was shot from behind, he fell on his face, the Maidan bloody with the red on the green of the dawn’s grass, Marxism is not sufficiently master of itself to be a science, someone had been screaming that out from the nineteen fifties, if modernity is the cultural manifestation of high capitalism, one can see that the eyes of the rebellious Marxist young woman of Godard have been blindfolded, black cloth, every time they try to shoot and kill her she screams out the Mayakovsky poem, finally, exhausted, the commander roars Fire, volleys of bullets reduce her to lattice, the wind blows on the crooked-as-a-snake path, one can see Orwell screaming perpetually, All pigs are equal but some are more equal than others

At the Tangra abattoir
A relay satyagraha
By the All India Cow Protection Committee

In 1990, the year of “Oye oye!”, something or the other will take place that is congruent with their interests, which they’ll embrace, like blind folk, as their own view, Ryszard Bugajski’s Interrogation, how far can oppression take humanity, socialist autocracy, the Stalin myth, the face of protest in Estonia, asked to strip naked on the pretext of interrogation, you know, how effortlessly he tore out and threw away the load of the compromise called clothing, he was not naked, but signifying civilisation and stripping it naked, the nakedness transcended every kind of bodiliness, this picture was taken seven or eight years ago, they did not let us see it, finding that film of his that begins with war

31 December 1990
Campaign for Pollution-Free Yamuna
Impure water was made pure
By pouring 200 litres of milk into the river

The earth is now shedding its slough her wombway spreads over the soil
Roots cling to the soil the roots make their entrance
Give birth to a new earth And after all, man is this soil’s offspring
Accepting the roots on her body, the fatigued, unploughed land turns fertile anew
The winds of the new generation blow in, leaving everything trembling

When everyone enters
He will still remain outside Observing

No war at any cost, no riots, may the world’s children grow in peace, the nation in the delirium of the journey to the land of implicit cognition, peace abounds, that cut-ball bodhi tree from every leaf of which hang the Third World’s balls, that’s good, the ugly steel barrel, something good, what has this incestuous civilization been able to create in all this time, losing faith in humanity is the original tale of loving humanity

When he organises the entire argument
An entire earlier argument of his
Can be presented against that
And
Such comments bring whatever was said earlier
To a new dimension

NO BLOOD FOR OIL, after a few days, even this bit of peace, these faggots will get their due, what has this earth been reduced to by the combination of man’s greed and his self-interest, so we want war and not peace, we want war, only war can stave war, not this beggarly peace, we want a peace that’s as vast as the universe, which only war can deliver, the oil streams of the Gulf shall keep floating in, carried over from two hundred years, the bloody son of man, Saddam Hussein, performs magnificently this untimely January, posters come up in Chandni Chowk, WE SALUTE THE LION OF THE ARAB NATION SADDAM HUSSEIN, the roar of artillery on the soundtrack, and flashes of light go on rolling down, like date-treacle, the new recruits ask the captain, Are we allowed to shoot helpless people You can do as you please Can I eat in the shop and walk away, leave without paying You can do as you please How elated the two new recruits were then Come, come just now, let’s go to war, come, come, let’s go to war, come, to war They choose their sides and join the fight, carrying the ration of dreams he goes through an entire determined life, even after scouring the whole of Calcutta he didn’t find a copy of Anti-Duhring in any shop, the earth sheds its slough, keeps spreading her wombway, clutching the roots she makes them enter her, her roots will give birth to a new earth, and humanity is after all this soil’s offspring, accepting the roots on her body, the fatigued, unploughed land turns fertile, the winds of the new generation blow in and leave everything trembling

Excerpted with permission from “No Blood for Oil” in The Earth Quakes: Late Anti-Stories, Subimal Misra, translated from the Bengali by V Ramaswamy, HarperCollins India.