Churrack Sannyasi - Sri Bhim Manik

As part of the work that I was doing on the Bazars of Calcutta, I came in touch, inevitably, with Chhatu-babu Latu-babu's Bazar, i.e. the Onauth Nauth Deb Bazar on Beadon Street. The family has a number of economic and cultural associations in Calcutta's history through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but more on that later. One of the traditions that they still preserve is the Churrack festival. I hope to compile soon a list of archival references to the Churrack festival, from the State Archives (some are provided in Calcutta in the Nineteenth Century: An Archival Exploration written by Sarmistha De and Bidisha Chakraborty), from newspaper reports and suchlike. There is of course that wonderful description and commentary in Hutom Pyanchar Naksha.

I went to watch the Churrack festival at the said Bazar (telecast widely) a year back. Subsequently I tried to get in touch with the head sannyasi to find out from him details about the ritual, his family, and so on. The directions that I got were vague at best. I was told that somewhere in Dom Para resides this gentleman by the name of Bhim Manik. I had some idea where Dom Para is but it took me a while to locate Bhim da. I first tried the Balaram De Street approach but I was told that I'd perhaps find someone by that name if I tried asking around the Minerva Theatre. So I did ask around and after a few failed attempts found someone who knew the neighbourhood where Bhim da resides. I finally managed to locate his son, who informed me that his father wasn't home. Chiranjeet gave me his number and asked me to get in touch in a couple of hours or so. I did so and after some difficulty retraced my way through the mazes and sub-mazes of the deep interiors of Dom Para back to his house. He invited me to the Club office, and there I spoke to the only Churrack sannyasi (from what I have been able to gather) in Calcutta. Here are a few excerpts from the interview:

From I was about his age [points to his nephew who is around 8 years old by my guess], I've been training under my father. He is my grandson. It's unfair to expect someone so small to fast. So my father used to feed me sandesh. I used to go with him. I grew up gradually and learnt some of the trickier bits from my father. We used to perform at Chhatu bazar even then. In fact, right from the time of my grandfather we have been performing at Chhatu bazar. My name is Bhim Manik. You can mention my father's name to them, Kanai Manik. 

There is a feat that we perform - I don't know if you've seen it - we hang upside down, our feet tied by a rope. This happens on the day when we first consecrate the deity - Baba. There is a particular way of tying the knot. Not too many people know how to do this. My grandfather - his grandfather - it has passed down to me. My grandfather was called Nandalal Manik. He too was a sannyasi.

Nimai Manik, Bhim Manik's father

Sri Bhim Manik

Aman Manna (I hope I got his name right), Bhim Manik's nephew 

We belong to the dharma pundit community. We are traditionally associated with the bamboo, cane and wicker trades. We are artisans. I work in the Burrabazar. You know, the labels that you find on your vests. My work is to attach those to vests. As far back as I know, none of my immediate ancestors were into impaling their bodies. I work with my group of 12 sannyasi-s. 

Chhora karate hoy - someone has to lie down. The deity is consecrated with flowers. Till such time as I utter the sacred words, the process cannot start. Once I give the signal, the purahit performs the ritual. The flowers are placed on the head of the linga. With time they will fall off from it. You can watch from afar. Till such time as the flowers drop, we can't let anything pass through our throats - not even water. After the flowers drop, we make a journey to the Ganges and proceed with further rites. We perform the habishyi thrice. The first two are at the river. Then there's a third, maya habishyi. Milk, kamini rice, dates, and other mewa. All the girls line up along the river hoping to get their share, however small, of the prasad. It's a fertility ritual. We will first offer to Baba. Then we consume it and then distribute it among everyone else.

This pole, you see, is constructed out of wood that is not available here. It has to be imported. I think it comes by ship. Once, one of these developed a crack. On of the persons associated with the Bazar asked me what he should do. "Should I try to repair it? May be nail it together?" I said, "No, don't ever do that. How will you feel if I drive a nail into your skin?" This too is a deity. My grandfather had swung from that tree. This one is new, it stays in their garden. I advised him to sacrifice it to the Ganges. And soon after we were able to get another tree from which we could make another pole.

I don't know if you will believe me, but there was this one time when a "sannyasi" who was supposed to perform the ritual ate when he was not supposed to. Who knows how it happened. He started coughing blood. Sannyas is not child's play. There are many who do not follow these customs sincerely. But there's no getting away from this particular deity - he is ever alert. The puja is performed by the Brahmin purahit, though. This deity is called sareshwar (ষাঁড়েশ্বর), he is one who has emerged out of the belly of a bull. My grandfather passed on the history to my father, and I have received it from him. This goes way back - 200 years or more. They had found this in the bull's dung. You can see it in the shrine right next to the thakurbari. 

This is the only one that survives in Kolkata. There are similar festivals that take place in Midnapore for instance, but those are not on the same scale as this one.

I ask him if it's not physically taxing - all this fasting and then the acrobatics.

No. We don't feel a thing, really. Even if we are fasting the whole day - if it is for Baba - nothing can hurt us. You won't be able to do it. This uttari that we wear - with our Baba's blessings - once we do wear it, we can't participate in the cremation rites, even if it is of your closest family members. Once you've taken sannyas. You have to discard the uttari if you want to get anywhere near the deceased body. I am sixty years old now. We owe it all to His blessings.

The young lad (he tells me he lives in Tollygunge) says that he too has learnt the mantra. They wish to preserve their ancestral legacy, in whatever limited way they can. I asked him if he is brave enough to fast before the performance. He looked sheepishly and confessed that he survives on sandesh. A brief video that I shot of one of the sannyasi-s performing.

(Excuse please a month's silence.)

Calcutta Blues

I haven't posted in a month I think. There are a few things I am researching right now, and I will be back with them soon after I return to Calcutta. Meanwhile, although some of you may be familiar with this, here is Brubeck's "Calcutta Blues". I rather like the sound of it, but not being very knowledgeable about the blues, I can't tell for sure what is Calcutta about it. Still, it's Brubeck. And the second one, featured only because of its title, I think, is Champion Jack Dupree's "Calcutta Blues". And no, this is not because I'm having the Calcutta Blues or anything like that for being away for a few weeks.

Abanindranath

Having kept quiet for a long time, I return with a post that has little original substance. As I often do in my spare time, I was reading Radharaman Mitra's Kolikata Darpan Vol. II. The second volume was long out of print until very recently when Subarnarekha brought it back. In a chapter titled 'The House of the Two Italians' Radharaman quotes from Abanindranath Tagore's Jorasankor Dhare.

In Calcutta at the time, near Wellesley Square there was the Madrasa College. In front of it was a large pond and the house of Mr Gilardi, an Italian artist, stood just beside it. I visit him every morning to learn, paying the customary fee, pastel drawing and painting. He treats me like one of his family. I paint sitting on one side of the studio, while on the other side his wife feeds one of her sons milk. One or two of the children go to school; at times she is engaged in getting them ready. On occasion she goes to the market in my car. On the ground floor an elderly Italian music master by the name of Manzata resides with his daughter. Father and daughter lead a happy life. Every morning the girl plays the piano, her father plays the violin. The music floats in. Sitting upstairs I paint, listening to these Western tunes.

One morning, I was painting as usual, when the notes of the violin from downstairs reached me. I quite lost myself in the music. I stopped my hand from going on with the brushstrokes. This was not a tune that was playing. It was as if the violin itself was weeping. The music that day made it clear that the strings of the violin and its bow, had become one with the strains of his being. The piano was not playing alongside today. I said to Gilardi, "It sounds as though the violin is weeping today, Sir. Do you know why? It has never sounded like this before." The gentleman said, "Hush! The old man's daughter has left home yesterday and gone away. Haven't you heard?" That day I couldn't paint any more. After a while, quietly I came down. I could see in the room next to the staircase the elderly man sitting with his head bent, his violin rested against the back of his chair. Strands of his silver hair were floating in the breeze of the fan.

(My translation. I am unsure about the spelling of 'Manzata'. Radharaman writes that while Abanindranath has 'মান্ধাটা' ('Mandhata'), Sarala Debi has 'মাঞ্জাটা' ('Manzata'), and Indira Debi spells it 'মাঞ্জাতো' ('Manzatto').)

This got me so interested that I started reading the book. There are certain passages in it that I would really love to share, but I'll take it easy with the translations and return later with those. It is available at dli.gov.in, which is also the source of many other fascinating and diverse books.

Sir Stuart Hogg

In addition to the image of Sir Stuart Hogg available on Wikipedia, here's another one I came across recently. I quite like this one.

Rat-kill

There was a time in school when advertisement chants, pedlar cries, and bus-conductor calls were the most popular means to disrupt class. (Yes, we were a notorious lot.) These would range from the shrill-voiced "E, Chai boley, Kuffee boley, Chai-Kuffee, Chai-Kuffee", and the monotonous but rhythmic drone of "Sōn Papdi...Sōn Papdi...Sōn Papdi", to the highly enigmatic "Khelei morbe!" Now, translated, going by the common logic of consumerism this seems to mean "If you eat, you die." But in the Bangla sentence "morbe", "will die", is without subject. Who is doomed is uncertain, and for a very long time many of us wondered how this could possibly be the selling-point of a product. Those who had brought this chant into the classroom from the local trains by which they travelled, never offered an explanation - not to me at least. I learnt later that the product being sold was in fact rat-poison. Most appropriate, then, I thought.

An old friend of mine, and one of the best-behaved in class, Atri, recently shared on Facebook a photograph he has clicked of a rat-kill seller at the Dum-Dum railway station. With his kind permission, I share it. If with time the rat-poison cottage industry does disappear, this may even be one for the archives. On the poster, in red, bold letters, it says "Rat-killer". Along the sides it describes the different kinds of pests that one may justifiably hope to kill off using the product.

De La Grandi Mephistopheles

Pataldanga was once ruled by Teni-da. No, to be honest, Calcutta cult-figures are too cool to rule. But that doesn't suit my dramatic purpose. Taking a couple of friends around College Street today, we passed through Teni-da territory.

It was Arshdeep's idea to proceed straight down Mahatma Gandhi Road (we were coming from Central Avenue), rather than turning right at College Street. We took the right at Shyama Charan Dey Street (no, I didn't know the name of the lane before today), past a shop displaying a variety of invitation cards - very colourful and glittery, needless to say, and a few not-so-famous book-shops, mostly selling text-books. This is the lane that runs roughly parallel to College Street, and joins what is known as Tamer Lane (I believe there is no pun intended there). Turning right from Tamer Lane one enters Bankim Chatterjee Street, on which stands the justly legendary Paramount. And that was our destination.

Anyone who has taken a walk through these lanes (roads, if you will) at prime-time will know the kind of chaos that grips them. One has virtually no control over the trajectory they wish to trace to get from point 'A' to point 'B', and it is impossible to be sure of where your foot will land with the next step that you take. While Arshdeep and Anushka had gone on ahead, with Kevin following closely, I found myself at the rear-guard, walking with Upasana and Arnab. Chandrima, Deeptesh and Olivia were somewhere in between. A van-gari carrying a load of paper (I think) was following us closely down Shyama Charan Dey Street. The van-puller was, of course, shouting out to pedestrians, cyclists, aakher rosh sellers, ill-advisedly parked cars, and self-cursing taxi drivers, instructions on how precisely he wanted them to move. His intended audience, paying no heed to his recommendations, were shouting out what they would like him to do. I can bet that several knocks or scratches, of varying degree, are delivered to one another on these daily lanes. I couldn't help recalling Patrick Geddes's (oft unheeded town-planner) idea that a lane can be understood to be a pavement without a road beside it. It's a beautiful way of putting it, I think, although I don't remember Geddes's exact words. Many thanks to Partho Datta for sharing this with us!

College Street - including Presidency College, Sanskrit College, Coffee House, College Square, and so on - have celebrated many heroes through the decades, through the centuries. But today the person who ruled College Street was this little girl in red, who was riding with nothing short of regal charisma her father's van-gari. The load it was carrying was urgently needed somewhere, as a result of which the van had its own fore-runner, and some other kid pushing it with all his might from behind. The little girl cared neither for where her chariot took her, nor for those who were brushed aside. She cared even less for those who tried to brush them aside. With none to dispute her right, she sat as a monarch of all she surveyed. I barely managed to take a couple of hasty shots with the mobile phone camera.

Balwant Singh's Dhaba

I am not a big fan of their doodh-Cola, although I understand why it would be on any list of things to eat/drink in Kolkata. Their tea, however, is a favourite of mine. A couple of days back my cousin sister drove us around town after midnight for a cup of tea at Balwant Singh's Dhaba. I am not sure what it is they do that makes the tea different, but I really, really like it. Their aloo-paratha is also very good. Here are a few photographs I clicked at and around the Dhaba.

And while we are on the subject of road-side tea, let me also share a couple of photographs taken at Shyamol's tea-stall, that is just outside Gate 4, Jadavpur University. My good friend, Lav Kanoi, was leaving town in a few days' time, and while I don't usually carry my camera to the University regularly, on this occasion it just happened to be there somehow. I took the photograph from his "platform". I asked him for permission. He looked baffled and said "এটা তো তোমাদের সবাইকার দোকান" ("This shop is for all of you."). It is true that occasionally we pour tea for ourselves, even though the making of things is always his department. Once when he had run out of Maggi, and I was feeling particularly desperate, I offered to get the raw material for him, and he happily cooked it for me.

Shyamol's tea stall has become something of a permanent fixture in our lives. He couldn't have set his shop up that long ago. It's been a couple of years may be. But in the short time he has won many hearts. He never counts the number of cups or ভাঁড় of tea that we drink, or the money we hand over. On festive occasions one can find his shop lit up with disco-lights, and his playlist never ceases to amaze. Apart from tea, he has a number of other things on his menu-card. There is a real menu-card, by the way, one which he got printed on the same day as these photographs were taken. The aforementioned Maggi at Shyamol is truly special, but he does a great variety of things with eggs. The peculiar thing about Shyamol is that he is very unpredictable. On a perfectly good day, he may choose not to open simply because he doesn't feel like it. This is accepted gracefully on the whole, even if with momentary and immediate disgrunt.