প্রচণ্ড বৈদ্যুতিক ছুতার (Stark Electric Jesus)

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• published: 22 Mar 2012
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A thousand years ago, India was the land of Vātsyāyana's Kāma Sūtra, the classic volume that so thoroughly detailed the art of love that its translators still usually leave several key words in Sanskrit. In 1964, in a land that has become so straitly laced that its movie heroines must burst into song rather than be kissed, five scruffy young poets were hauled into Calcutta's dreary Bankshall Court for publishing works that would have melted even Vātsyāyana's pen. The Hungry Generation had arrived! Malay Roychoudhury (born 1939) is a Bengali writer, who also writes in English and Hindi. He is famous for launching the Hungryalist Movement in Bengali literature during 1960s, and is the only Indian writer who has refused the Sahitya Academy Award. He is considered to be an anti-establishment writer. He has written more than sixty books including novels, poetry collections, drama, short story collections, essay collectioms and translations of Blake, Ginsberg, Tzara, Cocteau, Neruda, Lorca, Mayakovsky, Rimbaud, Dharmavir Bharati, Rajkamal Choudhury and many other non-Bengali authors. He has edited the literary periodical ZEBRA and anthology of POSTMODERN BENGALI POETRY as well as POSTMODERN BENGALI SHORT STORIES which include writers from both India and Bangladesh. He has been visited by such poets as Octavio Paz, Allen Ginsberg and Ernesto Cardenal. Prof Swati Banerjee has based her MPhil thesis on his poems' anti-establishment features. Gale Research, based in Ohio, United States, published an autobiography of Roy Choudhury (in CAAS vol. 14), and both the Bangla Academy and the Northwestern University (Illinois), have archives of Roy Choudhury's "Hungry Literary Generation" publications. The Little Magazine Library and Research Centre, Kolkata has a complete section devoted to Malay Roychoudhury's works. Prof B.Dey of Assam University has been awarded Ph D for his 350 page seminal work on Malay Roy Choudhury and The Hungryalist Movement. "Stark Electric Jesus" is a much mythified poem, included in several poetry anthologies, most notably Poems for the Millenium, Vol. 1 ed. by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (1995), first published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in City Lights, later by Howard McCord (several editions). Stark Electric Jesus is a transcomposition made from the original Bengali poem titled "Prachanda Boidyutik Chhutaar". The publication of this poem brought charges of obscenity against Malay Roy Choudhury and the Hungryalist Movement in 1964. Calcutta Police raided his house and confiscated 21 items including his typewriter. Malay and other Hungry generation poets/authors were arrested. For the next several gruelling months the famous Hungry Generation court case followed. A whole generation of American writers supported Malay and the Hungry Generation Movement by voicing their protest against the Indian Government and legal authorities. Howard McCord, Carol Berge and others published a chapbook with the same title, several readings at St. Marks by young American poets followed aiming to collect small funds that were sent to Malay to help him fight the court case. Although the initial ruling went against Malay and other Hungry writers, they eventually took it to the Indian High Court to win it. Shibasish Dasgupta (who is a statistician by profession) tried to recite the original Bengali poem in his own style (without much preparation & rehearsal) & made this video with several pictures of Hungry Generation & it's people. To read the original poem in Bengali, please see: http://malaykobitay.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-post_13.html To read the poem in English translation, please see: http://redroom.com/member/malay-roychoudhury/writing/stark-electric-jesus-translation-of-bengali-poem-prachanda-boidyut To know more about the Hungry Generation or Hungryalist Movement, please visit the following websites: http://www.kaurab.com/english/bengali_poetry/Hungry-Generation/ http://hungryalist.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/hungry-generation/ http://hungryalistchithi.blogspot.com/ http://redroom.com/member/malay-roychoudhury/writing http://letterstomalay.blogspot.com/ http://www.poemhunter.com/malay-roychoudhury/biography/ http://poetmalay.blogspot.com/ Thanks a lot for watching the video & any constructive / & destructive criticism is more than welcome:-) Enjoy the video, Shibasish Dasgupta Gainesville, Florida, USA. http://www.stat.ufl.edu/~dasgupta http://shibasishdasgupta.blogspot.com