[silence] The Grand/petite narrative of Bharat , Part-I I
Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay
anekanta@rediffmail.com
Wed Sep 20 08:07:31 EDT 2006
Silence fiction
The Meta/petite narrative of Bharat (Contd. Posting-4)
(Summarized and translated version of a Bangla pseudo-novel, published in Kalodhvani, 13:1, October, 2005)
CANTO-II
TRANSITIONAL PHASE: WHEN purana REAPPEARED
Bharat was sitting in front of a TV. He was watching Animal Planet a lioness was attacking a pregnant deer. She jumped and grasped her. The TV screen was full with blood.
Bharat stopped speaking---an absolute pathological silence
he was silent as if he was a corpse.
Bharata the Matter- a zombie in the Jambu-island
Once upon a time, there was a king in the island called Jambu. He was Bharata, son of Risabhadeva. Being aggravated by his family and kingdom, he shunned off all the bondages and went to jungle for contemplation. One day, when he was meditating, a pregnant deer jumped into his lap to protect herself from the attacking lioness. And she died by giving birth to a child.
Bharata had begun to rear that child. That deer was his everythingsage Bharata had become a deer-fetish. And the king-turned-sage Bharata, as it was told by the purana, in the next birth, had become a deer.
During his deer-life, Bharata practiced sexual austerity and cultivated knowledge-system and in the next birth, he had become a Brahmin. However, he shunned off ritualistic practices as well as all types of daily performances including interactive actsthus he had achieved complete reification. For his complete transcendental silence, he was famed as jarabharata (Bharata the Matter). Purana told us, Bharata was a very knowledgeable person.
One day, the king Rohu, sitting in a palanquin, was passing through the Bharatas hamlet and wanted to replace one of his tired palanquin-bearers. He got Bharata and engaged him in bearing the palanquin. Bharat was unable to carry the palanquin as he was obese (thanks to his non-activity) as well as a zombie. The king Rohu was angry and rebuked Bharata. Bharata then initiated an epistemological discourse with the king regarding the status of master and servant.
In this non-puranik time, Bharata had become Bharat, though a thinking-person, he was told by his authority to build up archive or to act as a surveyorthat is the real work of so-called third world local subaltern academicians. They cannot contribute their epistemological voices in the realm of the Theory
Bharat had become dumb.
(to be contd.)
DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY
http://linguistlist.org/people/personal/get-personal-page2.cfm?PersonID=2503
N.B. Dear readers, pl. "wait", John Cage is part of this narrative. I'm
trying my best to link different silent spheres.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/attachments/20060920/1811ff99/attachment.html
More information about the silence
mailing list