Tridib Mitra

Tridib Mitra, the poster-boy of the Hungry Generation Literary Movement in Bengali culture (1961-1965), was born in Howrah, West Bengal, India in 1943, the year in which the Axiz Powers---Germany, Italy and Japan---were in retreat all over the WWII war zones, Mussolini resigned and Italian Fascist Party was dissolved; in India, it was the year of infamous famine in Bengal, and Governor General of India Lord Wavell's machinations separated Indian National Congress and Muslim League Parties once for all. These historical upheavals impacted Mitra's well-educated parents in a way that the new-born child had to bear throughout his turbulent adolescence.

Mitra was a good student till under-graduation in science, after completion of which he fled home in order to gain experience for becoming a poet and dramatist. He was quite fair, and his soft good looks proved to be dangerous in the dirty wide world. He was forced to return home after six months' horrible life, and completed his graduation in humanities.

Hungryalist Movement

Mitra was attracted to the Hungry generation group of writers known as Hungryalists when he came in contact with the Hungryalist Troika (Subimal Basak, Malay Roy Choudhury and Debi Ray) in 1963, at the Calcutta Albert Hall Coffee house, who were distributing Hungryalist bulletins which attracted catcalls and whistles from the gathering. Mitra felt that the Anti-Establishment bulletins were enraging fascist groups, and offered to help the Troika. That day he became a member of the Hungryalist movement, and decided to publish two magazines exclusively for the movement: UNMARGA in Bengali and WASTEPAPER in English.

Anti-Establishment Mouthpiece

Mitra, with his girl-friend Alo (whom he married in a special Hungryalist ceremony), alternately published two magazines: "Unmarga" in Bengali, for readers in West Bengal and Bangladesh (the then East Pakistan), and "Wastepaper in English", for non-Bengali readers in India and abroad. The impact was electrifying. There had been no Anti-Establishment magazines in post-colonial West Bengal prior to these two magazines. These magazines were exclusively for those who participated in the Hungryalist movement. As compared to the vilification in Bengali press, "Wastepaper" could get favourable responses from other Indian languages in such periodicals as "LINK, DHARMAYUG, DINAMAN, YUGAPRABHAT, SAPTAHIK HINDUSTAN, MARAL, ANIMA, GYANODAYA, NOW, SANMARG, JANSATTA, NAYEE DHARA, BHARATMAIL, THE STATESMAN, THE SEARCHLIGHT, LAHAR" etc.

Impact of Wastepaper Abroad

Issues of "Wastepaper" reached North & South America, Europe and Australia; news of the Hungryalist movement were wrtten about and works of the Hungryalist started appearing in "City Lights Journal, Kulchur, San Francisco Earthquake, El Rehilite, El Corno Emplumado, Evergreen Review, Intrepid, Salted Feathers, Imago, Trace, Burning Water, Klactoveedsedsteen, Village Voice, Intergalactica, Ramparts, Where, Guerilla, Trobar, American Dialog, Folder" etc. Hungryalist papers have been preserved in the individual archives of the editors at various University libraries in USA.

Posters and Drawings

Tridib Mitra allowed fellow Hungryalists to get their sketches and drawings printed in both "Unmarga" and "Wastepaper"as freely as they felt, without fear or inhibition. Such explicit sketches, drawn by Subimal Basak, Anil Karanjai and Karuna Nidhan Mukhopadhyay had never appeared in any Bengali magazine before. These drawings are reprinted by various periodicals even today, since Hungryalists were against the concept of "copyright". Posters drawn by Anil Karanjai and Karuna Nidhan Mukhopadhyay were goy printed at Urdu newspaper litho press; these posters, carrying lines from Malay Roy Choudhury and Falguni Ray's poems were pasted on the walls of Coffee Houses, College Canteens and other places by Mitra and his girlfriend during the night. It was a pioneering work for Bengali culture.

Ghulghuli (The Niche)

Mitra's slogan was: "Forget Literature And Write As You Please". Ghulghuli (The Niche), published in 1965, was his first poetry collection. Mitra had argued in the first issue of "Unmarga" that poetry was hostess to meaning and should, therefore, evolve with Bengali society. He said that in post-colonial partitioned Bengal, the Bengali bourgeois individual subject has become a thing of the past. post-colonial Bengali individual is now de-identified, threatened and fragmented; his poems should have these qualities. A Bengali poet, emphasised Tridib Mitra, will betray his culture, if he submits himself to the homogeneity of the logical unilinear close-ended text-style.

Tridib Mitra's Style

Mitra's slogan allowed him to break away, like all other major Hungryalist poets, from the prevailing styles of 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and to some extent of 1960s. He wrote poems off and on and did not publish any collection after "Ghulghuli (The Niche". His style defied all canons. None of his poems is complete in itself. He has not allowed his poems a stony self-sufficiency. His poems are not intricately wrought composure of a network of subjectivity (see Postmodern Bangla Poetry 2001 edited by Samir Roychoudhury). Mitra's poems are deliberately incoherent, the are written to lack organizational intensity, they absorb the Indian disorder resulting into kinetic imageries and generic ruptures. His poems manifest symptom of modulation of logical hierarchy into heterarchy, having floating subject centres, as the smithereend text perpetuate multiplication of picture-meanings.

ources

*Salted Feathers edited by Dick Bakken, Portland, Oregon, USA. (1967)
*Intrepid edited by Carl Weissner, Buffalo, NY, USA. (1968)
*Hungry Shruti & Shastravirodhi Andolan by Dr Uttam Das. Published by Mahadiganta Publishers, Kolkata, India. (1986)
*Bangla Letters To Malay edited by Alo Mitra. Published by Hungry Books, Howrah, India. (1969).

Persondata
NAME=Mitra, Tridib
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Bengali poet
DATE OF BIRTH=1943
PLACE OF BIRTH=Howrah, West Bengal, India
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=