Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhaya's Chander Pahar, or the "Mountain of the Moon", first published in 1937, is one of the best adventure stories in Bengali literature.
In this series of blogs, accompanying the release of Chander Pahar as a 6 part audio-book on the Bangla Golpo-Bengali Stories podcast (gauravdas.podbean.com), we will follow the footsteps of Shankar, the hero of this story, on his extraordinary adventure from a Bengal village, to the velds and mountains of Africa.
SHANKAR AND THE POLITICAL CLIMATE OF 1909
The story of Shankar, our protagonist begins in a humble village. The author tells us that it is 1909, a time before the first world war in 1914.
What was going on around Shankar at that time?
The province of Bengal had been partitioned a few years earlier in 1905, by the decree of Lord Curzon. Bengal and Calcutta was a hotbed of political activity and the freedom struggle. The year before, in 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki had carried out their attack on Magistrate Kingsford, in the process mistakenly killing two British women. This incident had triggered a tremendous crackdown by the colonial police, leading to the famous Alipore Bomb Trial (1908-1909). Amongst the accused were Aurobindo Ghosh, Barindra Ghosh, Ullaskar Dutta and Hemchandra Das. In short, this was a time of massive turmoil in India, especially Bengal.
I find it surprising that a somebody like Shankar, romantic, bold and adventurous, was not attracted or recruited to the movement against the colonial rulers. Bibhutibhusan begins his novel in a tumultuous period of Indian history but completely ignores to mention whether Shankar is in anyway affected by these events around him.
Interestingly, Shankar like Bibhutibhusan, was born in the district of North 24 Parganas (somewhere near Naihati/Shyamnagar) and is educated in Calcutta. Although Bibhutibhusan, born in 1894, was younger than Shankar in 1909 and was probably not ready for college yet. This identity between the creator and his creation, makes me wonder how Bibhutibhusan himself was affected by the freedom struggle. The answers would lie in a biography of the author (anyone knows of one?) or perhaps in the novel APARAJITO, whose hero Apu is sometimes thought to be a shadow of Bibhutibhusan himself.
Coming back to the puzzle as to why Shankar seems completely apolitical and oblivious to the upheavals around him; I pose that as an open question in this forum: WHAT DO YOU THINK?
My own theory is quiet mundane and I will proffer it in the beginning of my next blog entry:
Until then,
hang on!
