West Bengal

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After a degree in biochemistry, Sarnath Banerjee changed tracks somewhat drastically and did MA in Image and Communication from Goldsmiths. His popular graphic novel, Corridor, was published in India and France in 2004 and the latest, Harappa Files, came out last year. Sarnath runs Phantomville, which exclusively publishes graphic novels, and for which he received the Young Publisher Award 2008. Recently, he was commissioned by the London Olympic Association to do a public art project, Gallery of Losers. Sarnath lives between Delhi and Berlin and visits his family in Calcutta as much as possible.

Ghosts of the past

The Idea of west bengal was first constructed in my mind by its great writers. Among them is Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay of course, but also the writer lesser known outside Bengal, tarasankar Bandopadhyay. And then there is the third Bandopadhyay—Manik Bandopadhyay. the first two gentlemen wrote pastoral Bengal literature: about crops, local trees, tepantorer maath, or the endless fields of rural Bengal. And Manik Bandopadhyay wrote about sahartali, which, taken literally, means the layer under the city. He wrote about small town life of West Bengal, in the old, old cities such as Murshidabad, Bardhaman, or Purulia.

If not for these stories, I would have never known a West Bengal outside Calcutta, which had a modernity totally disconnected from the rest of Bengal. For me, West Bengal was Calcutta. But outside was this whole teeming magical scene, made more magical for me by literature. In this literature, there was the ‘real imagination’ of pastoral West Bengal. Of Bardhaman, of the Dutch establishment of Chinsurah, of Chandernagore’s French colony, of laal maati, or red soil, of the bauls travelling around, of the Bishnupur kings, the terracotta temples, the Baluchari weave, of zamindars, ragas, the dhaan bhoro khet and aam bhoro baagaan. I would read stories involving the village pond, an old crumbling mansion, evening falling gently… and these stories would remain in my mind, give shape to my imagination.

But there’s another type of geography that I grew up reading about: the fantastical geography of pastoral Bengal. the geography that doesn’t exist. Or perhaps exists. In the tepantorer math, the endless fields, huge, without boundaries, strange things would happen. You walk across the maath and you meet daini, a witch, you meet people who vanish when you look back. Daini, shakchunni, or chudail, aleya, a travelling ball of fire, brahmadatyi, demon of the trees, petni, who speaks in a nasal tone… there is a colourful encyclopaedia of ghostly beings, prets, who live in the fields of West Bengal.

the maath was the most prominent in this type of literature. typically a story would unfold with a person who has missed the last train at a sleepy station and would have to walk from one village to another across a maath. As he starts to walk he would, say, find an old woman sitting under a tree mumbling to herself, looking distressed, who would vanish in a ball of fire, an aleya, a mirage.

I grew up with all these ideas about rural West Bengal but accessed it only later when I would visit relatives for a wedding. But as a child I was fidgety; I was too young to appreciate it and wanted to return to the comfort of Calcutta. now that I live away, I go back to rediscover areas outside of Calcutta. Areas like Mukutmanipur, but especially the seascapes. every three or four years, the Banerjees get together and explore some part of West Bengal outside Calcutta. On these trips, I rediscover the seascapes and the stories related to the sea—the sea had its own ghosts. In these stories, people would go for a seaside picnic, go for a swim and encounter strange creatures of the sea. By the sea, or samudrer dhare, I feel transported.

Of course much has changed. Generic guest houses, generic circuit houses have been placed here and there, but rural Bengal still holds on to its inner ‘phantom spirit’. that is because it exists inside the head of people with imagination. Recently I started searching for this mythical West Bengal. I went to Bankura looking for the tepantorer maath. I couldn’t find it physically, of course, but you have to bring your imagination to relive literature, to bring joy to ordinary experiences. Modern highways are not the same as tepantorer maath but as I walk through the highways, the endless highways, I try to recreate West Bengal from the literature and I enjoy it. I don’t realise how much, till a month or so later, in the middle of biking from one part of Berlin to another, it starts to rain, I stop under a tree, look at the rain and all of that comes rushing back.

A place never disappoints, it is people who disappoint. transcendence is a key part of travelling, it transcendences you to another time… So when you stand at the edge of a vast meadow in West Bengal, it might be just an ordinary vast meadow beyond which is a little town, where a new tata factory is starting, or not starting, but you, in your imagination, you have to evoke the ghosts of tepantorer maath. You have to bring back the aleya like a shaman. Bring back the romance in travel.

—As told to Kalyani Prasher