MRIGAYA - A Close Study

Mrigaya (1976) is, by far, one of the best movies directed by the celebrated film maker, Mrinal Sen. Based on the short story by Bhagvati Charan Panigrahi, this film is set in a fictitious Santhal village, Taldanga, against the backdrop of colonial rule of the British Raj in India. The film, made at the peak of the State of Emergency (1976), adopts the colonial fiction to denounce administrative oppression. Although this is not a historical film in its real sense, history is nevertheless present since it portrays real events, such as the revolt of the Santhals (1855-1856) who were forced to evacuate their ancestral lands under pressure from powerful Zamindars, as also rapacious moneylenders, who were permitted by a British law of 1793, to dispossess their debtors. There is a three dimensional historicisation created in this film; the three worlds of ‘real’ history are – the State of Emergency and the Naxalite period of the mid-70s when the film is made, the story of the Santhals living in the colonial period in India during the first half of the 20^th century (the story of the Taldanga village being fictional) and the Santhal Rebellion of 1855-1856. Imperial history just shows facts and never goes beyond that. Sen provides an alternate discourse on history where he portrays the living conditions, the different indigenous practices and various other ‘truths’ about the Santhals which history does not tell us.

The film is set in the context of Taldanga, a fictitious Santhal village in colonial India, in the grip of a cruel Zamindar who’s also a Mahajan (moneylender), British colonial masters and incursions by wild beasts who destroy their crops, an enlightening parallel. The film starts with a Panchayat meeting where the Mukhiya (head of the Panchayat) is told by Mundra that the latter’s crops were destroyed by wild boars; hence he would not be able to pay back his loans as well as the land revenue to Govind Sardar, the Mahajan. Ghinua, Mukhiya’s son (Mithun Chakraborty), draws a parallel between the wild animals and the Mahajan – ‘Jaisa janwar, waisa hi Mahajan’. We are told by a tribal woman that the Mahajan often takes the daughters or the wives of his debtors who cannot pay him back, to his bungalow and rapes them. When Mundra says that he cannot pay his taxes to the Mahajan, he is asked by the latter to let his daughter, Dungri (Mamata Shankar), go to his bungalow. Ghinua vehemently protests this and he asks Dungri to go to her hut immediately. Thus, we see Ghinua’s open defiance to the Mahajan as he resists his oppressive act.

There is a hierarchical system of the ruling class represented in this film. There is the British colonial master, the Commissioner, then there are his soldiers and police officers, most of whom are Indians, and then comes the Mahajan, Govind Sardar. Besides them, there are many loyalists of the respective rulers, like the interpreter of the Commissioner, who is addressed as ‘Babu’ by his master (representative of the English speaking educated middle class who assisted the British in their clerical work), followed by the followers and accountant of the Mahajan. There is a strong nexus among all these three levels of the ruling class, which, Ghinua is not conscious of. Although he detests Govind Sardar, his heart is filled with awe and reverence for the Commissioner. He greatly admires the Commissioner because both of them share the common passion of hunting. Ghinua addresses him as ‘Bare Raja Babu’ and says these words to Dungri when he takes her to the Commissioner to introduce her after their marriage – ‘Angrez saab sabse bara Raja, who toh Devta hain’. Ghinua is also liked by the Commissioner for his hunting prowess. When the Commissioner’s wife draws Ghinua and Dungri, making a portrait of them, she is praised by the Commissioner who says that the portrait is a ‘masterpiece’. Maybe both Ghinua and Dungri get sympathetic treatment from the Commissioner and his wife because they are seen as the Oriental ‘other’, exotic beings, and quite different from the other Indians. The Santhals were at the bottom of the social order in the Indian society.

Quite contrary to Ghinua’s belief that the Commissioner is a good man, Shalpu (Shamit Bhanja), a freedom fighter, also a Santhal, is conscious of the nexus between the British Raj and the Zamindars, which is reflected through his words – ‘Angrez humara dushman, Mahajan humara dushman’. The concept of hegemony is seen here, since the Commissioner faces no act of dissent from the Santhals except Shalpu, thereby, making us believe that they were ruled with their own consent. This is a case of partial hegemony because although almost all the villagers resist the Mahajan, they do not have a voice of rebellion against the British, other than Shalpu. Gramsci states that the oppressed have a dual consciousness – one, beholden to the rulers, and complicit with their will; the other, which is capable of developing into resistance. The ruling class can achieve domination not by force or coercion alone, but also by creating subjects who willingly submit to being ruled. Placed at the bottom of the social and economic order, tortured and exploited by the upper class Mahajan, the Santhals, like Ghinua, maybe thought that the British will help to discard the economic inequalities and social prejudices, so dominantly featuring in the Indian society for centuries.

The Santhals, as portrayed in the film, provided passive resistance against the colonial masters but did not actively participate in any kind of active rebellion, with the exception of Shalpu. The British Commissioner tries to shoot a swinging bottle but fails, although Ghinua, with his arrow, succeeds to do so. Sen wittily shows the supremacy of the native’s pre-historic bow and arrow over the modern technological tool of warfare, namely the rifle. This scene is followed immediately by a scene from the past, from history, of the Santhal Rebellion. There is careful juxtaposition of the colonial ‘present’ in the film with the historical ‘past’ of the Santhal Rebellion. Previously, there is a reference to this bloody rebellion of 1855-1856 when Abdul, the Commissioner’s guard, finds a human skull and tells his master that probably, it was that of an Englishman, killed by the Santhals. Mukhiya tells the story of the rebellion to Shalpu’s mother, which was led by Shidhu and Kanu Murmu, who are real persons and not fictitious characters. Mukhiya’s words echo the previously stated fact that the villagers of Taldanga did not participate in active dissent against the Government – ‘Who din ab nahin rahe, tej nahin raha, jor ab nahin raha, hum thuth hain’. There’s something more than just blaming themselves to be ‘thuth’ or cripples. The Santhals, who were marginalized in the Indian society, failed to think of themselves as Indians fighting for freedom. They lack the feeling of collective identity in the Nationalist Movement. The Mukhiya, Ghinua and other villagers do show passive resistance when Dora, a Mahajan loyalist, informs the police about Shalpu’s presence in the village, which the villagers deny after the arrival of the police officers. Mukhiya hails Shalpu as ‘Tu hi humara Sidhu, tu hi humara Kanu’ and the villagers chase off Dora. We are told that Shalpu, along with other Extremist freedom fighters, has looted a government bank and therefore, was wanted by the British. In the end, Dora leads the police to the secret hiding-place of Shalpu and kills him with his own rifle. Dora gets a reward of five hundred rupees, as promised by the British Commissioner.

To both Ghinua and the commissioner, a big ‘shikar’ is a game; this is probably why Ghinua reacts like a terrible ‘hunter’ when the Mahajan tries to steal his wife. He slays him; an avenged man, he brings his ‘trophy’, to the only man who will understand him, the English ‘Bare Raja Babu’. But Ghinua’s trust is betrayed and he is handed over to the court by the Commissioner. Ghinua asks the Commissioner why Dora gets five hundred rupees as a ‘prize’ for killing Shalpu, a person liked by all the villagers and he gets death sentence for killing the Mahajan, who is ‘sabse khatarnak, khun-khar janwar’. Even the villagers fail to understand why Imperial Justice sentences Ghinua to be hanged to death.

Mrigaya (The Royal Hunt) is one of the finest specimens of postcolonial cinema. As a postcolonial text, the film explores the many facets of indigenous culture of the Santhals in colonial India and juxtaposes historical truths with this fictitious story. The various indigenous practices of the Santhals are shown in the film like their dancing, dressing, language, marriage ceremony. There’s even a scene where Dungri and Ghinua enjoy the mythological story of The Mahabharata, performed through dance and music, as a means of entertainment in the village. From a Feministic point of view, Dungri represents the oppressed sex who is under a double state of patriarchal domination; the British Raj and the Mahajan as the ruling class and also as prey to the sexual exploitation by the usurper landlord, namely Govind Sardar. Sen delves into the past in a two-fold way; first, painting the condition of the tribal people in colonial India in the early 20^th century and then, further back to the past, by referring to the Santhal Rebellion in 1855-1856. Sen also tries to connect the past history of colonized nation to the present state of neo-colonialism and semi-fascism in a postcolonial nation, which was once colonized. By neo-colonialism, I am talking about the Santhals in an Independent India, who are still treated as colonized subjects by the upper caste ruling class, and are still subject to economic and social exploitation, beautifully represented in Mahasweta Devi’s Shishu. This perhaps explains why the villagers of Taldanga did not want to participate in an active rebellion against the British Raj. They wanted economic and social equality from their internal oppressors, like the Mahajan; only then could they think about rebellion against the external oppressors, namely the British. They could never think of themselves as a constituent class of the collective whole of the National struggle for freedom. Even after gaining Independence, the condition of the Santhals remains the same; which is synonymous with the plight of North-Eastern ‘Indians’ who can never embrace their Indian identity because of social prejudices.

Sen, also tries to allegorically connect this theme of oppression and dissent to the present politics of Independent India, which was in a turbulent state during the time of the film’s making. Besides the State of Emergency imposed by the semi-fascist Indira Gandhi government, the Naxalite movement in Bengal was at its peak in the mid 70s. Sen chose the national language, Hindi, for this movie despite the fact that he was primarily a regional film maker. Maybe, this was done to reach out to a bigger audience on a national level. When the film ends, there appears on screen, some lines in English, saying ‘Stand up, stand up, stand up. Remember the martyrs who loved Life and Freedom’. This English statement was perhaps included by the director to connect to the educated Left intelligentsia, which was on a rise in the political scene of India. Mrinal Sen is a Communist thinker, with his movies like Calcutta 71 and Padatik dealing with the Naxalite movement in Bengal. Most of his films deal with the economic exploitation and the poverty-stricken condition of the lower section of the society. A parallel can be drawn between the Repressive State Apparatus of the Central Government led by Indira Gandhi and that of the State Government led by Siddhartha Shankar Ray with that of the British Raj’s soldiers and judicial system, as portrayed in Mrigaya.

In Amit Prakash’s Jharkhand: Politics of Development and Identity (2001), the structure of ‘internal’ exploitation, where Indians also exploited the people of the Jharkhand region in the colonial past, has been brilliantly portrayed. The British Sarkar–Indian Zamindar nexus, with the ‘brown’ Sarkar taking over in 1947, was marked by a degree of continuity, with Jharkhand emerging as a ‘colony’ of Bihar. Colonial paternalism negotiated with them by directly managing the mineral resources and simultaneously excluding the tribal elite from playing any significant role. This was the fall-out of the twin policies of protecting and ‘civilising’ the region. What is distressing is that there seems to be a continuity in the approach of ‘civilising’ Adivasis (native Indian tribals), locating ‘development’ and ‘integration’ as extremely desirable and believing that the ‘majority community’ needs to protect Adivasi customs. Although this marks the triumph of colonial hegemony in post-colonial India, Prakash is clear in locating the problem also as a part of the nationalist agenda, which accorded a very low priority to the Adivasi question.

THE DARK KNIGHT

The most hyped and eagerly awaited film of the year, THE DARK KNIGHT, finally hit the movie halls. I went for the second day morning show and have been going ever since – four times till now! Unfortunately or fortunately, I ran out of money or else had plans of going on each day of the week. Prior to this, I had seen just two movies at Forum/Inox, the tickets are too expensive. IMDB has already put it at no.1 in the list of all-time greatest movies. I read one of the reader’s posts there – ‘Perhaps this is the only film that not only lives up to all the hype surrounding it but surpasses it’. The Times of India’s ratings are unbelievable – 4.5 out of 5 (critics) and 5 out of 5 (readers).

The principal reason behind the movie’s super-success is probably the portrayal of the character of JOKER by Heath Ledger. The death of Ledger had triggered a worldwide interest in the film and this role has definitely made him into a cult figure. Juvenile yet sinister, Ledger transcends the sophistication and ‘goofiness’ of the earlier Joker, Jack Nicholson. I was watching his interview on You Tube and he says that this role was physically and mentally very demanding and had exhausted him completely. Beside the brilliant speeches on morality, chaos and order, there are certain moments in the film which are really kick-ass :

1) the ‘pencil trick’

2) when he meets Rachel and finger-combing his hair says ‘hello beautiful’

3) just the simple utterance of the word ‘Hi’ when he comes to meet Harvey Dent at the hospital, made so other-worldly by the expression of his eyes and raised eyebrows

4) he holds a broken piece of glass pointed at a policeman’s neck and says ‘I just want to make my phone call’ when asked by the other policemen what he wants

5) he comes out of Gotham Hospital in a nurse’s dress and tries to trigger off explosions with his remote; it malfunctions for a second or two and he bangs the remote on his palm like a child does with his toy and suddenly the explosives go off!

‘Moments’ like these make us feel that THE DARK KNIGHT is, after all, Heath Ledger’s movie. One of the most remarkable dialogues of the movie is ‘Introduce a little anarchy... Upset the established order... And everything becomes Chaos. I am an agent of Chaos’. As Ledger says these words to Harvey Dent, he reminds us of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost keen of upsetting and toppling the order of God in Paradise. It’s something like Satan meets the modern day anti-establishment punk rock, Ledger is so bloody good! When Batman asks him why he wanted to kill him, he rubbishes it by saying ‘I don't wanna kill you, I would never do that! What am I without you? To them, you are just a freak, like me. You complete me!’ Even at the end, the Joker reasserts this view when Batman doesn’t kill him although he is beaten to pulp ‘You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness and I don't want to kill you...because you are too much fun’. Evil and Good complete each other, one has no value or significance without the other. He constantly tries to say that Batman is not a hero but more of a fallen angel who is nothing but a ‘freak’ like the Joker. The psychological treatment of the movie is fucking brilliant. The Joker is self-contradictory when he says that ‘everything is part of a plan’ and later he tells Harvey Dent that he is not a schemer, he is a ‘dog chasing cars’ and confesses ‘I don’t know what to do when I get the car… I just do things’. Here lies the brilliance of the Joker, he is a careful manipulator with the inherent sadistic sinisterness, often interpreted as madness by others.


Just as Batman thinks that the people of Gotham have rejected evil, showing that goodness has not been exiled completely, when they do not blow up the ships, the Joker informs Batman that he has won because the White Knight of Gotham, Harvey, has transformed into an evil force. The Joker pushes Harvey to the psychological twilight zone of confusion until he recognizes his suppressed ‘spatial self’ in himself. Morality takes a backseat as Harvey tries to find order in a world of chaos. He is made to choose what is ‘fair’ even though it is evil. Harvey chooses the wrong path but what the Joker points out is that by being an ‘agent of Chaos’, he is being amoral and not immoral. The manner in which the Joker introduces Harvey to his ‘dark side’ lying deep in his sub-conscious self has reverberation of Pink Floyd’s THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. The song Brain Damage has lines like - ‘The lunatic is in my head/ You raise the blade, you make the change, you rearrange me 'til I'm sane/ You lock the door and throw away the key/ There's someone in my head, but it's not me’. Sanity and insanity, if considered in the domain of order and chaos of the modern world, puts to light the fact that the fear of the unknown ‘Other’, which cannot be understood or interpreted, has often been linked to madness or insanity and it has the potential to destabilize the established order of sanity and normalcy. The Joker initiates a revolution against the normal order of society and in regard to this, he says to Batman – ‘Madness is like gravity…All it needs, is just, a little push’ (my favourite quote from the movie). Ledger is funny with his nurse’s dress and certain mannerisms but the character of Joker is very disturbing and morbid too, especially when he gives his explanation behind the scars on his face and keeps on asking in a resonating voice ‘Why so serious?’ His authoritativeness overshadows Batman when he says these words as he is confronted by the latter – ‘This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object’.

If we discuss a bit about modernist theories of Absurdism and Nihilism, we can connect the Joker’s character to it. Absurdism states that ‘The pursuit of intrinsic or extrinsic meaning in the universe is a futile gesture’ (Wikipedia) and Nihilism argues that ‘existence is without objective meaning, purpose or intrinsic value’ (Wikipedia). According to Nietzsche, objective morality does not exist in a world bereft of a higher order or God. In the absence of morality, existence has no intrinsic higher meaning or goal (Wikipedia). Hence, the Joker’s confession that he doesn’t know what to do when he finally gets an object he chases. He just ‘does things’ without completely understanding the purpose of his action or the value of the object. To the Joker, morality is just an excuse to suppress the hidden ‘inner self’. He has fun disturbing the established order of the society and he does that with an amoral stand.

As mentioned before that although the film revolves around the good guys like Gordon and Harvey Dent, the Joker is the heart and soul of the movie. Yeah, I just forgot that it’s a Batman movie after all! Christian Bale does a terrific job as a lonely and world weary Batman thinking about ‘retirement’. He is way better than Keaton and Val Kilmer who were made to behave like a ‘perfect’ and essentially moralistic superhero whereas Batman is actually a flawed superhero who has no half measures when he deals with evil. Everyone is talking about the artificial voice of Bale, but I think it’s an excellent idea since everyone should recognise Bruce Wayne’s voice as he is such a popular man. To add to all these, the gravity defying stunts are just mind blowing! A special mention must be made about Christopher Nolan for reinventing the Batman cult. A top notch script with amazing dialogues and brilliant camera work. Most of the film is shot at night and the murkiness of the chilling, dark ambiance is captured in a Dante-esque world where evil reigns supreme.

The same review on IMDB :
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/usercomments-1582

Unveiling NIRVANA's world of 'contradicted bliss'

Nirvana burst into the music scene when it was dominated by pop stars and the world was awaiting the arrival of the next big thing in rock music. It desperately needed an idol, a star, a father figure. Jim Morrison was long dead, Lennon was murdered and Roger Waters was out of Pink Floyd. Then came Kurt Cobain with his band Nirvana comprising him, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl. He became the spokesman of what was beginning to be referred as Generation X. Nirvana was one of the pioneers of grunge rock movement and made it into a popular culture. Smells like teen spirit became the new generation’s anthem. Cobain was not a prophet, he was only an artist, a musician, a poet. The characteristic subtle tension of Kurt’s vocals, his in-between-songs screaming and disturbing, angry lyrics made him the torch-bearer of young generation’s rebellion against the established norms of the society. He was a rebel and enjoyed the cult status of a HERO in the word’s true sense. Even 20 years after his suicide, he is considered the ‘Lennon of our age’ (phrase used by Kurt’s biographer Charles R.Cross) and definitely the last true ROCKSTAR that rock history has witnessed.

Nirvana started off as a pure post-punk grunge rock band, then gradually incorporated various influences in their music, spanning different genres. While other pioneering grunge bands chose to express their angst and resignation against a world which they felt was hopelessly wrong through harsh, dissonant guitar chords (Soundgarden) and constantly focus-shifting, disconnected lyrics (Pearl Jam), traits which were to become the hallmarks of grunge, Nirvana chose not to bind themselves to such limitations.

BLEACH

The subject matter of the lyrics is mostly concerned with loneliness and forced isolation. What is noteworthy is that the music is markedly aggressive. A post-punk record, with nothing much to distinguish it from other Sex Pistols and Clash clones flourishing in L.A. at that time. The first song on the album is Blew ; these two lines carry the meaning of the entire album – “If you wouldn’t care I would like to leave/If you wouldn’t mind I would like to breathe”. They suggest the theme of forced isolation and entrapment and the desire to break free, using the spirit of grunge to express the deep-rooted angst against the society. The two lines also speak in a less violent way using the phrases ‘if you wouldn’t care’ and ‘if you wouldn’t mind’, more in the line of grunge or diluted punk than pure punk. In the song Paper Cuts, the lyrics are very disconnected, which was a trait of grunge rock – “The lady whom I feel maternal love for/Cannot look me in the eyes/But I see hers and they are blue/And they cock and twitch and masturbate”. No one can understand how eyes can twitch and masturbate! In Sifting there is a deliberate attack on the authority figures like teacher and preacher. There lies a lot of sarcasm towards the education system and Christianity in these lines – “Afraid to grade/Wouldn’t it be fun/Cross,says loss”. But the most significant line in this song is “Spell the smell/Wouldn’t it be fun” – the strong hallucinogenic essence of this line surely brings out the psychedelic side of the band. Again in Negative Creep, the repetition of the line “I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned” suggests that the band wants to be in the ‘other world’ of psychedelia (“stoned”) but stuck in the present atmosphere of grunge movement. All the songs in the album complain about imposed entrapment and loneliness, but in the last song Downer, there is a call for rebellion against the present hopeless condition. Use of words like “pessimist hypocrite master”, “conservative communist” and “apocalyptic bastard” bring memories of the old punk movement which was more radical and violent towards anti-establishment. In the same song, the words “surrealistic fantasy” clearly indicate the band’s infant-psychedelia which evolved with their next albums.

NEVERMIND

This was the biggest thing to have happened to rock music in the 90’s. The album came out in 1991 and straightaway dislodged Michael Jackson’s Dangerous from the US no.1 spot. Cobain then made the famous statement – “Michael Jackson is a toast in our frying pan and rock is a weapon again”. From this album onwards, Nirvana developed their own form of grunge, highly symbolic and world-weary. The first song and the last aspire to ‘punkhood’ more than being grunge. The first song is the rock epic Smells like teen spirit, its lyrics are angry, harsh and ironic - “Load up on guns, bring your friends/It’s fun to lose and to pretend”. There is this odd sense of resignation in the line “Oh well, whatever, nevermind”. The effect of this song is very distorted with disconnected lyrics – “I feel stupid and contagious/A mulatto/An albino/A mosquito/My libido”. The last song Endless Nameless has angst filled and very disturbing lyrics – “Kill/And violent/Excitement/Right here”. It’s simply amazing to know that a hardcore rock band can also manufacture pure pop numbers like Polly and Something In The Way in this album. It really shows nothing but Nirvana’s versatility regarding music. Drain You showcases disconnected grunge lyrics – “It is now my duty to completely drain you/A travel through a tube/And end up in your infection”. The first few lines of Come As You Are “Come as you are,as you were/As I want you want you to be/As a friend,as a friend, as an old enemy/Take your time, hurry up”, are very contradicting, probably the way society expects us to do something and we end up doing just the opposite. Kurt is simply preaching to go against society’s norms and challenge them. The cover page of the album is quite amazing and subscribes to the genre of glam rock. The picture shows a baby under water trying to grab a dollar note. It’s very ironic in the sense everyone tries to save himself, when drowned, by swimming above water and trying to breathe freely. But the first instinct of the child is not to save himself but grab the dollar note, quite in line with a ‘nevermind’ kind of attitude. Glam rock spoke strictly against materialism and professed shunning of wealth and fame. This genre of rock was also against superficiality and artificial hypocrisies of man. This aspect is quite evident in the song Lithium – “I’m so ugly but that’s okay/Cause so are you/We broke our mirrors”. The meaning goes like this, a mirror gives us a reflected image but that’s not our actual self. By breaking that mirror, we are left with only our original self, there is no existence of the ‘other self’ – thus, we are not superficial and we present ourselves the way we are and do not pretend to be someone else.

I think Nirvana was a very experimental band. Some of their lyrics are in line with the theory of Colonialism. Much of Kurt’s songs (mostly in Nevermind and In Utero) are influenced by his personal life – his troubled loveless and companionless childhood which eventually led him to the consumption of drugs with a hopeless hope of finding tranquility. His lyrics focus on the individual, treating it as a whole body of information. The basic concept of Colonialism is that a ‘pure body’ is invaded by alien thoughts, implanted by unpleasant circumstances (in Kurt’s case, his parents and the society), which then take over and destroy the ‘pure body’. In Bloom perfectly fits this picture – “Nature is a whore/Bruises on the fruit/Tender age in bloom”. This same picture becomes even more vivid with Territorial Pissings – “When I was an alien, cultures weren’t options”.

IN UTERO

The dark feel to In Utero was obviously meant to counteract Nevermind’s sparkling, rip-roaring introduction into the 90’s that sounds comparatively fan-friendly. This album was Kurt’s way of responding to Nevermind, his way of lashing out against his own success. Reportedly disgusted with Nevermind’s slick sound, convinced that he had somehow sold out by making his raging songs too accessible, Cobain steered to the other direction. This time, no anthems. In Utero was Cobain’s attempt to scare away the bandwagon jumpers and reassert his own musical integrity. This album powerfully made the case that he would be his own man, but he wouldn’t destroy his talent in the process. Nirvana cut the album in two weeks and Kurt sang most of his vocals in a day, in one 7 hour stretch !

The first song on this album Serve the Servants is again a very personal song. The lyrics speak out about his hatred towards his parents and he simply couldn’t forgive them for being raised in a broken home and as an uprooted teenager – “The legendary divorce is such a bore” ; “I tried hard to have a father/But instead I had a dad”. Incidentally this brings to mind Kurt’s first poem which too was directed against his parents – “I hate mom/I hate dad/Dad hates mom/Mom hates dad/It simply makes you feel so sad”. However in the very first line of this song, we are shown the true concept behind this album – “Teenage angst has paid off well/Now I’m bored and old”. It’s quite clear that Kurt was tired of his success and fame and wanted nothing but freedom and respite. In Pennyroyal Tea too, we hear the same desire – “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld/So I can sigh eternally/I’m so tired I can’t sleep”. This in a way, also shows that Kurt was tired of being labelled as a grunge rocker, he wanted to try his hands at something absolutely different from grunge (“Teenage angst has paid off well” ), which he eventually achieves in this album. In his suicide note, Kurt makes it absolutely clear that he was slowly drifting away from music and his fans – “When we’re backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowd begins, it doesn’t affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the love an adoration from the crowd. . . . . . . The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun”. Kurt’s notion of alienating himself from the audience just because he had become too accessible to them brings to memory the same condition of Roger Waters before penning down the highly critical album The Wall. Therefore, the lyrics are intentionally made abstract, self-deprecating and cynical so that everyone can’t understand them. In Rape Me, there is a metaphorical sense of Kurt being raped of his freedom and solace by the media and his fans. Although Scentless Apprentice is based on a novel ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind, it’s also based on Cobain’s life as he never smelt the scent of love in his childhood – “He was born scentless and senseless”, senseless because he was numb to the warmth of love and affection.

Dumb deals with the theme that there is a carefree happiness in being just dumb. But midway through, these lines “We’ll float around/And hang out on clouds/Then we’ll come down/And have a hangover” bring out the essence of psychedelia very clearly. The use of ‘hangover’ surely points to the use of drugs which were a part of the psychedelic culture (It’s noteworthy that there had been an increased reference to drugs and alcohol in this album – the last song’s name says it all, Gallons Of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip). This hangover is a sub-conscious state of mind where Kurt wanted to escape in the search of nirvana. The temptation of transcending to the ‘other world’ seemed to have been beckoning him when he started to pen down In Utero and hence becoming conscious of the psychedelic side of his music-genius. On this album, Kurt said thus – “I’m worshipped the world over, people think I’m a genius, my life oughta be perfect, but it’s not – and I don’t know why. And I’m gonna sing about it”. Maybe the other world was more perfect and peaceful to him than the real world, which ultimately steered him to a more expansive use of psychedelia – kind of expanding the indistinct glimpses in the previous albums to a more full fledged psychedelic rock in this album. In Utero is dominated by extraordinary vivid visual imagery, strongly reminiscent of psychedelic bands like Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane – “Meat eating orchids forgive no one just yet/Cut myself on angel’s hair and baby’s breath/Broken hymen of your highness I’m left black/Throw down your umbilical noose so I can/Climb right back” (Heart Shaped Box). Though the song is about an unreal visual journey, it still retains the grunge character of disconnected and contradicting lyrics. How can the most delicate objects like angel’s hair and a baby’s breath be used as weapons to cut down someone? One of the most interesting songs of this album is Very Ape where Kurt seems to be transiting between the two worlds of psychedelia and harsh reality – “Out of the ground/Into the sky/Out of the sky/Into the dirt”.

OTHER SONGS

The song Sliver from the album Incesticide is a semi-autobiographical song about his childhood. Kurt even tried his hands at singing David Bowie’s folk song Where Did You Sleep Last Night in the album MTV Unplugged Live. In the same album we can find the song The Man Who Sold The World. As the name suggests, it’s about a materialist and power-crazy man, which falls in the line of glam rock. There are a few unreleased songs as well. One of them is Moist Vagina; the song is a strange psychedelic song which explores the world of sexual freedom. Probably the last written song of Cobain is Do Re Me; the lyrics are fabulous – “I might be dreaming/If I may, if I might/Wake me up”. He seems to be transiting from the psychedelic world to the world of reality, the hopeless condition of the present time seems to drag him to harsh reality.

Thus, we can see that Nirvana’s world of music consciousness was a boundless territory. Their lyrics were clear, abstract, outstanding, dark, ironic, amusing and disturbing at once. We could drown in the black rains of distortion and sarcasm, we could transcend to the ‘other world’ of eternal tranquility and then come back to the not-so-perfect society and revolt against it at the same time. All I can say about them is that they were one of the most versatile rock bands in modern times.

'Nirvana' means total and absolute bliss. Kurt’s concept of bliss was a bit different from the traditional notion of freeing one’s soul from the cyclic process of birth and rebirth. In the early Nirvana-days, the bliss was found in the domain of grunge and punk rock, where he pioneered the rebellion of break-away from the rules and regulations imposed by the society. And he did attain bliss in being a non-conformist. The whole generation followed him too, campaigning for anti-establishment in the search of bliss. In the late Nirvana-days however, there was a shift in Kurt’s concept of bliss. He wanted to escape from the suffocating world of fame and stardom to the more peaceful and perfect ‘other world’ , an unreal yet sub-consciously surrealistic world (referring to psychedelic rock). But, quite paradoxically, he finally achieved absolute bliss to transcend to a world of ‘love, peace and empathy’ (the exact words in his suicide note) by committing suicide. The whole string of events to attain bliss is very much like Cobain’s lyrics –- self-contradicting and disconnected.

Looking at it from a different perceptive, Kurt had a very troubled and loveless childhood. So music was like a Messiah to him, his battered soul found a refuge in the comforting bosom of music. Penning down lyrics for Nirvana and singing them out in his own characteristic style, he found peace within himself. Just when Kurt found total bliss , he suddenly wanted to run away from the world of music which actually brought him bliss – so strange and contradicting ! Kurt always (maybe loved) to contradict himself, be it in his lyrics or his suicide note. Ultimately, he did not attain, but ‘got’ bliss by escaping from the world of music and surrendering to Death.

Maybe Cobain was a lunatic or a genius, maybe he was an escapist or a rebel, maybe he was a loser or a hero – I am not going into the controversy. But his contribution to rock music will always burn ablaze, it will never fade away . . . . . . . . In the seductive and vast ocean of our memory, Cobain will always sail along steering his ship of revolutionary ideals.