[Reader-list] 3rd posting: The culture of crime pulp fiction in Bengal: A novel: Hatya Bibhishika (The terror of killing)

[Debkamal Ganguly]

Hello Friends,
The current posting is about an amazing Bangla crime
novel, published in 1920s, 'Hatya Bibhishika' (The
Terror of Killing), written by Surendra Mohan
Bhattacharya. The name of the writer was advertised
with the adjective 'Darshanik Pandit'
(philosopher-scholar) prior of the publication to
promote the 'value' of the novel. In my project
description, I mentioned about noting the reference of
Kolkata as a city and a milieu for crime tales. In
this story all the happenings occur in a suburban
locality, rather in a village, but the motive of crime
is linked to Kolkata. The protagonist Gobindalal
himself is the criminal as well in the tale, and
though there are grotesque acts of murder he commits,
the inner turmoil and spiritual crisis of him has been
expressed with  doctrinal religio-philosophical
discourses (like the methods of Tantric rituals and
its implication and various interpretation). To
proceed further, a brief summary of the story would be
relevant.

The Story...........
The story starts in a clouded summer day in
Sundarnagar, a suburb away from Kolkata, where the
central character Gobindalal reads a letter. The
letter contains traces of emotional longing of a
courtesan, Nilima for Gobindalal. Nilima stays in
Kolkata. Gobindalal used to do a regular office job
staying in Kolkata, when he got introduced to Nilima
in a red light area. He became so involved with her,
that he neglected his regular responsibility in the
office and was terminated subsequently. He found no
other alternative in Kolkata and came back to his
village, though he always fancied a relation of living
together with Nilima. He was married and the wife died
when he was in Kolkata. Now Gobindalal only dreams of
enough money, so that he and Nilima can stay together
without her obligation for flesh trade. As Gobindalal
reads Nilima's letter, a sadhu comes and flares up
Gobindalal's lust for Nilima and provokes him to get
into some Tantric ritual of black magic, so that he
would get immense wealth. For the Tantric ritual the
sadhu asks for five human heads and figures out how
Gobindalal can get these heads by beheading human
beings at suitable opportunity. The rest of the story
deals with how Gobindalal manages to kill four persons
and so on.  So in the very beginning of the story, an
unusual pretext for the crime is being laid down and
unseen, unrepresented Kolkata (at least in this text)
serves as a mystifying source to produce uncanny lust
(the logic of lust here crosses the physical boundary
of libido, or the emotional contour of commonly used
notion of love..... as further down the story we would
find Gobindalal is coming close to at least three
beautiful young ladies in three occasions of his
killings, even the physical attraction and the
vulnerability of those ladies cannot prevent
Gobindalal from the act of killing, rather at those
crucial hours also he was haunted by the beauty of
Nilima, who seems to be a past memory by then. The
'past' memory of Nilima becomes so evocative, that he
goes on beheading as a man possessed by hyper-real
addiction to a certain memory of intoxicating
stimulant).

The first victim was a girl with whom the second
marriage of Gobindalal was arranged. In their first
conjugal night, Gobindalal severed her head from her
body while she was sleeping. For the second victim,
Gobindalal laid a trap to seduce a house wife with a
little girl. Her husband used to work in Assam, and
through this span of prolonged absence, Gobindalal
sneaked in and had a physical relationship with the
lady. Again in one night, while they were sleeping
together, Gobindalal chloroformed her and her child,
took away the child, cut off her head and disposed all
traces of her human remains. On the third occasion
Gobindalal captivated on a helpless couple and offered
them a job and decent living in Kolkata. While they
were departing in the night, Gobindalal made use of a
lonely dense village orchard, almost like a jungle and
killed them for their heads. 

The 'Supernatural' discourse on the limit of
modernity/rationality......................
The interesting part is after every killing police
came and investigated without any result. At last the
second victim, the girl child, appeared as a ghostly
image to her mother asking her to reveal the secret
about her killing to Magistrate. That lady was too
depressed and pressurised to save her own 'honour' and
finally committed suicide. After the four murders,
police became really desperate but without any
significant advancement. Then the ghost of the child
appears before the police personnel and told the
secret. The police person was a British  and was
apprehensive of this vision and asked for proof, the
ghost mentioned about the places where different clues
were to be found. The ghost also said that if needed
she can appear in the courtroom to testify for the
crime. The ghost also said to the Britisher that, he
shouldn't be doubtful about the presence of ghost as
many renowned scientists in the west had already
expressed their acceptance to supernatural beings.
Earlier in the story, in a self reflexive style of
alienation, the writer himself talked directly to the
readers, that even some scientists (Dr. Wallace)
contemporary to Darwin had come to the conclusion of
the presence of supernatural spirits in a scientific
way. This special feature of the story, i.e. mingling
of rational process of investigation and litigation
and the supernatural testimony is a unique product of
modernity in a colonial landscape like India, and
older belief systems are seen to be negotiating
vigorously and competitively to be represented in the
mediation process. 

A Non-'alienated' Fate Struck 'Serial Killer'.....
Some of the other features of the story are the moral
pressure on the protagonist after every killing and
the Tantric Sadhu's 'spiritual' logic to get him out
of that feeling of sin. In this context there are
series of dialogue with the Tantric and with other
Guru regarding the  spiritual goal of Tantra. The
skill of writing always maintained a tone so that the
protagonist had multiple shades, not only of a B/W
image of a villain, but a man in psychological
turmoil, at times there are passages where the reader
would empathise with the sinner-protagonist. Specially
in 1950s in west there were lot of stories of serial
killers, where the serial  -killer had a secret
design, a world view, a logic of his own, and as those
logic are distinctly different from the logic of
society, the serial-killers motive became so
mysterious for common people, and after they were
being chased by law, they were thought to be outcast
from society. Here also Gobindalal's secret desire and
secret scheme, might give him a character similar to
that of a weird serial killer, but here he is not
completely alienated from the society, the reader can
feel a pulsating relationship of the protagonist vis a
vis society in terms of inside-outside dichotomy. Even
in the end when Gobindalal was sentenced for life
imprisonment in Andaman, we find the humane aspect of
the core relationship of Nilima-Gobindalal, a sense of
love and attachment 'wrongly' placed. Knowing about
the verdict Nilima rushed to the jetty to have a last
look at Gobindalal and seeing her from the departing
ship, Gobindalal yelled, that he had done all these
wrong only for her, though they wouldn't have chance
to meet in future, he would remember her for ever.
Thus the story takes here a fatalistic end, any person
having western enlightenment ideas would argue that,
there was nothing wrong in the love and attachment
between a courtesan and a a common civilian, but as if
the writer opted to strike the tragic chord of
destined departure of the lovers over few headless
corpses, where one would expect
rationality/logic/scientific approach are the key to
frame a crime-tale. The epitome of colonial culture,
Kolkata works as a source/motif of destructive fate
and destiny and an illusory zone where an average man
like Gobindalal can end up being a 'serial killer',
and this attitude might be noted specifically in some
other early crime tales as well.

Till next posting,
Debkamal Ganguly

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