শেকল ছেঁড়া হাতের খোঁজে

by Samaresh Basu

A rare work of immense political value - it chronicles the introspection of a two times former MP (Member of Parliament) from Communist Party of India. Though it is a work of fiction, reality cannot be more real than the fiction depicted in this novella. This is an example of how a revolutionary ideology based on egalitarianism can take wrong turns and destroy all that is pure within and outside.

120 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Samaresh Basu (Bengali: সমরেশ বসু) was born in December 22, 1924. He spent his early childhood in Bikrampur, Dhaka. He also wrote under the pen-name of Kalkut.

He would in later days recall the deep impressions that the Brata-kathas (fantastic folk-tales recited by women while performing certain religious rites) narrated by his mother left on him as a child. His adolescent years were spent in Naihati, a suburb of Kolkata, in West Bengal. His life was rich with varied experiences. At one point, he used to hawk eggs from a basket carried on his head; later, he worked for meager daily wages. From 1943 through 1949 he worked in an ordnance factory in Ichhapore. He was an active member of the trade union and the Communist Party for a period, and was jailed for during 1949-50 when the party was declared illegal. While in jail, he wrote Uttaranga,his first published novel. Soon after his release from the jail, he began to write professionally, refusing to join the factory even when offered his old job.
When he was only 21, he wrote his first novel Nayanpurer Mati, later published in Parichay. it was never published as a book. Adab was his first short story published in Parichay in 1946.
A prolific writer with more than 200 short stories and 100 novels, including those written under the aliases "Kalkut" and "Bhramar", Samaresh Basu is a major figure in Bangla fiction. His life experiences populated his writings with themes ranging from political activism to working class life to sexuality. Two of his novels had been briefly banned on charges of obscenity. The case against one of these, Prajapati (Bangla:প্রজাপতি), was settled in the Supreme Court of India which overturned, in 1985, the rulings of the two lower courts.
Among other intellectuals, Buddhadeva Bose, himself once accused of similar charges for his রাত ভ'রে বৃষ্টি, came out strongly in support of Samaresh. To quote from Sumanta Banerjee's recent translation Selected Stories (Vol.1), Samaresh Basu "remains the most representative storyteller of Bengal's suburban life, as distinct from other well-known Bengali authors who had faithfully painted the life and problems of either Bengal's rural society or the urban middle class. Basu draws on his lived experience of Calcutta's `half-rural, half-urban,' industrial suburbs."
While the pen-name "Kalkut" was adopted in 1952 for the immediate need to publish an overtly political piece, the real "Kalkut" can be said to have been born with the publication of Amritakumbher Sandhane, a hugely popular, semi-autobiographical narrative centered around the Kumbha-mela. The many subsequent books by Kalkut had depicted the lives of the common people from all over India and all walks of life (including those who live on the periphery of the "mainstream") with their varied cultures and religious practices in a unique style that was Kalkut's own. He also drew upon the recollections of the Puranas and Itihas; Shamba (Bangla:শাম্ব), an interesting modern interpretation of the Puranic tales, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980.
Samaresh Basu breathed his last on March 12, 1988.

Reviews

[Soham Chakraborty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bengali literature can consider itself indebted that a writer of such enormous breadth and depth like Samaresh basu wrote in that language. Samaresh Basu has written lots of political novels but none like this - a no-holds-barred, critical fictionalized history that can put reality to shame and participants of that reality week in knees.

This book tells the story of a Agaria - iron smelter and how he rose to the ranks of a member of parliament from a fight that started with demands for 8 hours of daily labour. The author has chronicled the paths taken by Nawal Agaria - central character of this book - from being a destitute iron smelter, agitator in iron factory, member of local committee of Communist Party of India (who were inspired by Marx, Engels and Lenin) to a trade union leader, before going into parliamentary politics. In this unchained ascent to the hierarchies of power and the intoxication that comes with power, Nawal Agaria forgot everything. Everything which he once valued, admired and what had made him.

After losing election and following a quicker descent into exiles of the party, Nawal reflects on his life, what went wrong and how it went wrong. In the subversive languages of Samaresh Basu, we find out the malaise that plagues Indian politics - power and money and impunity and more power, more money and more impunity. And when Nawal tries to find out meaning of his life, his existential crisis spirals into the dark cobweb of hopelessness, where the protagonist of Basu's immortal work Bibar had found himself. However unlike that book, here Nawal finally finds out a faint ray of hope - faint but inextinguishable - which lingers on and when Nawal tries to redeem himself by going to his father, it creates a lump of pain and tear in the throat of the reader. This hope is radically different from the pervasive, obscene hopelessness in Bibar, perhaps because; in Bibar the central character was urban, privileged from birth; whereas in this book, Nawal was a destitute who after spending prime years of his life in intoxication of privilege, found a meaning of his existence.

[Shom Biswas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shekol Chera Hater Khoje ( শেকল ছেঁড়া হাতের খোঁজে ), by Samaresh Basu is an exceptional political novel. When I was very small, Samaresh Basu reigned as the most famous of all Bengali novelists, but is rather forgotten these days. I have just started exploring his writings, and this one, the story of formerly-hallowed-and-now-exiled Communist-party-leader Nawal Agaria - and his looking back at the years and decades and even perhaps centuries that had led to this day, is excellent literature.

[Joydeep · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best political novel written in Bengali.

[Mahender Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a revealing story, how even a person with pure intention may be corrupted when exposed to power.
Drama based on it is even more attractive and realistic than the book.