NOTE:
KATTAMASAI is an autobiographical fiction written in a surrealist manner by
Benodebehari Mukherjee. In Bengali Kattamasai means master of house hold. Here Benodebehari
uses the term to personify his inner self.
“Benodeda lost his eyesight in 1956…but he took it with his usual stoicism.
There was not a trace of self pity in his attitude. He took it as easily as it
was a passage from one room to another.”
“He saw in a new light the relationships of sensations and their
interpretations and the special role of fantasy in their inter-space. He
recognized that the dark world of a blind man has its configurations, depths
and formalities different from those of the bright world of others.”
“KATTAMASAI is a fictionalized chronicle of this passage written as a chain
of anecdotes of various grades of depth and complexity. The introductory
anecdote is neat surrealistic and radiates various wavelengths of meaning.” (K
G Subramanyan, ‘From translator’s note’)
 |
| During the Making of KATTAMASHAI by Mahan J Dutta |
I write without seeing. I came. I wanted to kiss your hand... This is the first time I have ever written in the dark... not knowing whether I am indeed forming letters. Wherever there will be nothing, read that I love you.
Diderot, "Letter to Sophie Volland", June 10,
1759
*
Now I am
there where I can’t hear anybody
Nobody
hears me either
A scream of
mine does not reach my ears
Kattamashai
rests on the ruins of the words
Floating
away into the formless colorless limitless void…[1]
Today
I am a
representative of darkness in the world of light[2].
If I were
able to know myself
The
bottomless ocean of knowledge would have been in my grip[3]
If I could
weep with fear in a lonely house,
If I could pluck out my eyes and eat them,
I'd do it for your ...[4]
When I give
up I gain a lot.
It becomes
easier to live a life
When you’re
a destitute, when you have nothing to lose
It is easy
to be happy, easy to go mad.
“Why is it
so dark? Why don’t you put the lights on?”
From all
the four sides numerous voices say,
“All lights
are on, Kattamasai.”[5]
Darkness is
more real than light
It exists
in itself, without the need of a source.
However,
reality is that where you do exist
I am hearing a horn from a train
passing away.
The last
train of the world.
All the
people are going to another world[6]
Far from
me, for forever.
Nobody is
left. No man. No woman.
Now I am at
a place devoid of fire.
Tom Hanks
struggles for a sparkle[7].
Refugee?
Who is not? We all are in exile, we're shelter-less.[8]
Heraclitus,
I dip into
the same river of solitude again and again
A man is an
island. An isolated island.
It
communicates to others by the boat of sympathy.
If the boat
fails to leave its own island under any circumstance
Or if it is
destroyed in the mid ocean
The
communication collapses[9]
Yet, man
prefers to be an island.
Yet, the
unavoidable void is full of gains.
Goodbye
then, Rudranarayan
Between the
two of us there is an impassable chasm,
It cannot
be crossed. Do you hear me?[10]
The gold I
lost in daylight is found in the dark night.
Don’t look
at, don’t touch,
Keep
awakened your soul towards…[11]
No, I am
not Hamlet, the prince of Denmark.
Neither I
am J Alfred Profrock.[12]
I dreamt a
nonsense dream.
I believed
a nonsense belief.
Today, like
Caligula, I can make a wish for the moon.[13]
I’ll by a
horse. I’ll call it Rozenante.[14]
And go out for a universal conquest.
Now, I can
feel
A music is
nothing but a geometrical progress,
I can
visualize a sound; I can hear a color somehow
Time too
has its own limit. Once,
The journey
of light comes to an end as well.[15]
Now, I can see an ever seen but unseen
dream.
 |
| Samudra in s still from Diploma Film Kattamashai, by Mahan J Dutta |
[1]Last
lines from Benode Behari’s Kattamashai
[2]
Benodebehari Wrote out his memoir with the experience with blindness over
twenty years: Today I am a representative of Darkness to the world of light.”
[3]
A song from Lalon Fakir
[4]
From Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca”
[5]
From Kattamashai
[6]
This is in reference with Meursault, the protagonist in Albert Camus’ “The
Outsider” (L’etranger) when he was getting prepared for his final sentence.
‘The Outsider portrays precisely one of those terrible innocents who shock
society by not accepting the rules of its game’. Camus himself says about
‘outsider’ in his “Myth of Sisyphus”, “In a universe suddenly deprived of light
and illusions man feels himself an outsider. The exile is irrevocable since he
has no memories of a lost homeland or no hope of a promised land”.
[7]
Casteway
[8]
From “Subarnarekha” by Rwitwik Ghatak. In his own voice about the film: “The
film not only speaks about the people exiled from the east Bengal… all of us in
either ways have turned up to be refugees. This is a much severe problem than a
geographical situational problem. In this film, we hear an echo in the
character Haraprasad.
[9]
From Subala, by Homen Borgohain
[10]
Rudranarayan was another name of Vinod Behari. He uses this name in Kattamashai
to portray the author’s alter-ego.
[11]
A couplet from Rabindra Sangeet
[12]
With reference to T S Eliot’s “Love Song to J Alfred Profrock”
[13]
Caligula
[14]
The horse used by Don Quixote.
[15]
“To Albert Einstein”, a poem by Navakanta Baruah
