A story of hunger and politics: review of Manoranjan Byapari’s The Nemesis, the second in his ‘Chandal Jibon’ trilogy
The Hindu
In this semi-autobiographical book, Byapari tells an absorbing tale that is masterfully translated by V. Ramaswamy
Rickshaw puller-turned author-turned politician Manoranjan Byapari’s writing teems with vivid descriptions of poverty, squalor, the helplessness of the poor and the working class, the precarity of being a refugee or a person displaced for political reasons, and the machinations of politicians. Plus, caste.
Nearly all of Byapari’s books denounce caste, the upper castes and their efforts at propagating discrimination, and communalism in the strongest of terms. Yet, they do not seem repetitive, primarily because of his strong and forthright prose. Also, the fact that his writings are derived from his life as a refugee from East Bengal, a rickshaw-puller on the streets of Kolkata, and his predicament as a Dalit.
My introduction to Byapari’s writing came via Facebook some five or six years ago when translator Arunava Sinha would post excerpts from his translations of the author’s work. (Sinha would go on to translate two novels by Byapari: There’s Gunpowder in the Air and Imaan, both shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature.)
What drew me then, besides Byapari’s honesty, was the fact that he was writing about caste in a way that I could not find at that time in mainstream English writing. In 2018, I read what I think was the first English translation of one of his books, Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit, translated by Sipra Mukherjee . The book went on to win The HinduPrize in the Best Non-fiction category for that year.
In the book, Byapari has an alter ego named Jeeban. He is the runaway boy through whom Byapari “narrates his own wandering life, when he is repeatedly abused, beaten, cheated and exploited”, a technique that perhaps allows Byapari “the distance required to articulate [his] misery”.
We meet Jeeban again — as Jibon — in The Runaway Boy, translated from Bengali by V. Ramaswamy, and the first book of Byapari’s Chandal Jibon trilogy. What I found in The Runaway Boy was what I had already read in Byapari’s autobiography — a history of the Namashudras, the caste the author belongs to; how society in general insists on forcing the Chandal identity upon the community, thus treating them as untouchables; the faultlines drawn between the majority Muslims and the minority Hindus in East Bengal; the life of Byapari’s family in East Bengal; their flight from there and subsequent efforts at building a new life in a refugee camp in West Bengal; and the family’s later migration to a village near Kolkata.
The Runaway Boy ends with Jibon returning from Kanpur, where he had run off to, to find himself back in the same circle of poverty and hunger, where his father, Garib Das, stuffs himself with a handful of baking soda and some water to suppress the stomach-ache caused by hunger.
As an individual of influence, blessed with a larger-than-life personality Lord Byron captured the imagination of many who crossed his path. Beyond his literary genius, his life was filled with intriguing stories that are often overlooked—like keeping a pet bear at university and possibly inspiring the first vampire in English literature. Dive in to uncover the fascinating facets of this enigmatic figure.