[Reader-list] Posting 2: Pulp crime fiction of Bengal, a novel

[Debkamal Ganguly]

Hello,
This posting is about a crime novel called 'Mayabi'
(The Deceiver, ... the translation is not accurate
anyway), written by Panchkori Dey, published in 1902.
As a reader of crime fiction I have had a normal dose
of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, James Hadley
Chase, Ramon Chandler, Harold Robbins etc, but rarely
I have experienced such an uncanny verbal description
and metaphorisation of violence. 

Interestingly the place of narrative is not the urban
city of Kolkata but the area of Hooghly near the
Hooghly river. Before the birth of colonial Kolkata,
long stretches of habitation zones along river Hooghly
upstream from the present location of Kolkata were the
hub of pre-anglicised Brahminical culture and
education. After the emergence of colonial Kolkata and
English system of education all these regions were
gradually being reduced to characterless suburbs to
serve as the residence of workforce for the
metropolis. According to my understanding, by the
placement of some gruesome acts of violence in the
region of Hooghly characterised by described spaces
like ---- vast non-inhabited field, big deserted
house, huge old orchard changed into jungle --- it
seems the ruining character of the place acts as a cue
for conscious plotting of crime by the author. At
times the description of villages come as well, but
those are smaller parts of human habitat and activity
and the villagers are shown to be extremely tied up
with that small definition of place. In a highly
dramatic description of a night storm with thunder
over a meadow, a girl has been described to cross it
alone. There are hints that she is being followed by
some ruthless chaser. But when the scared, tired girl
reaches a village and asks for a specific address for
help, the villagers in the stationery shop were scared
about the girl, thinking her as a ghost or witch. Its
an example of interesting merger of two kinds of
oppositely directed fears ---- materialistic fear of
the girl from the chaser and the supernatural fear of
the villagers due to the time and mode of appearance
of the scared girl (i.e. the victim of fear in the
earlier case is changed to source of fear). Till the
point of the novel only glimpses of different
characters (even same characters with different names
and place references, which only can be deciphered
after reading the complete novel) were shown, and
reader would be in a state of confusion to segregate
characters into the categories of good and bad. That
basic instability of emotion on the part of reader
with the fluctuating sense of fear, creates a
different reading experience, unlike noir thrillers of
west, which is much more unilateral in structure.

I started with the element of violence. Lets take the
liberty of briefing two sequences. The constable in
duty in the police station sees a man carrying a huge
box on his head. Due to suspicion he brings the box in
and finds it is addressed to Arindam, the practitioner
of detection and a necessary ally to the police, who
stays nearby. The officer in charge is a friend of
Arindam. While despatching the box to Arindam's house
he finds the lower side if the box is stained. Then he
detains the box and calls Arindam. As Arimdam arrives
at the police station, both of them opens the box to
find chopped pieces of a girl's corpse along with a
letter of the villain. The villain informs the officer
in charge to inform Arindam about his handiwork and
challenges Arindam to find him. While in western crime
fiction genre, the crime is always tried to be hidden,
and dept. of police or law enforcement is engaged to
chase and hunt down the criminal ---- but the writer
here in a way subverts the whole legal logic of law,
police, victim and villain. The victim is not known
(the chopped body is unidentifiable), the crime is
neither discovered by chance, nor reported by the
family members of the girl victim. rather the evidence
of crime is being sent by the unknown villain to
challenge ---- not to the police dept, but to the
detective ---- suggesting only a possible tussle of
power between the villain and the detective, assuming
the establishment of law enforcement has no power to
exert, no role at all to play. Possibly it hints also
to the transitional phase of society, where police
dept was till not an integral part of the society,
hardly common people used to look to the police dept
for the redressal of their grievances. Before police
set their foot for a hunt, the establishment is mocked
by the alternative authority of the criminal.

Another example of frontal violence happens in jail.
The criminal Phulbabu and his female ally Jumelia are
locked up in a cell. Jumelia is unavoidably
attractive. While Phulbabu poses for a tight sleep,
Jumelia flirts with the guard. She even convinces the
guard to take her away from the clutch of the
'villain' Phulbabu, and as a mark of gratitude,
Jumelia would offer herself to the guard for the rest
of the life. The guard can't resist this overtly
sexual provocation, he opens the cell to get hold of
Jumelia. Jumelia offers him a pressing kiss while
driving deep the poisonous tip of her hairpin on his
back. The guard falls dead instantly. Then Jumelia and
Phulbabu escapes to take revenge on Arindam. -----
Here again, two oppositely directed emotions are mixed
together. The job of murder is clubbed with a sexual
act. 

A last anecdote about the 'one to one' tussle of
Arindam and Phulbabu ---- Phulbabu tries to kill
Arindam by offering him a poisonous cigar in disguise.
It becomes almost fatal for Arindam while he smokes
the cigar. In the final round of showdown, Arindam
electrifies the metallic railing of the staircase of
his house by batteries, knowing in advance that
Phulbabu would come to kill him and succesfully traps
Phulbabu. These elements of poison and electricity
also share the codes of modern medical knowledge and
knowledge of physics in one hand and the mystifying
skills of an alchemist or conjurer on the other hand. 

   
Precisely this technique of juxtaposition of opposite
idioms can provide cues to read the time as well, when
colonial and oriental authorities and knowledge
systems tried radically to decode and alter the
indigenous society, without knowing it too much. Today
cultural theorists tend to agree that, the act of
'knowing' or 'understanding' the 'other' landscape,
'other' culture by the 'outsider' is almost
impossible. The interactions of cultural elements of
different polarities with their inbuilt relation of
power tend to form a different reality, a magical
reality, the traces of which can be evidently found in
the writings of Panchkori's 'lower literature'.       
         
 
Expect your valued comments.
Debkamal

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