Ashim Rayer ‘Ani’ Galpe Trun-Jubader Sang-gram O Adarsher Dandha (অসীম রায়ের ‘অনি’ গল্পে তরুণ-যুবদের সংগ্রাম ও আদর্শের দ্বন্দ্ব)

Abstract

The story ‘Ani’ of Ashim Roy was published in ‘Des’ patrika in March 1971. As a reporter, Asim Roy observed the victory cheers of public gathering in Kolkata after the formation of the United Front Government in 1967. And at the time, while meeting a police chief of Lalbazar, Kolkata, Ashim Roy noticed a row of worried young faces on the second floor of portico, who would be taken for questioning for creating protests and chaos in the state in the name of establishing ‘Socialism’. After returning home from there, Ashim Roy rights the story ‘Ani’. The story is about that moment, hundreds of educated youth where wasted in the middle class families of West Bengal during the reaction and flood of the Naxalbadi Peasant Movement. The story is also about youths from middle class educated families who are self-centered and who immersed themselves in self-affirmation (jobs, cars, houses, beautiful women). Nevertheless, a class of urbanized middle-class youths, driving by the idea of revolutionary life, jumped into the movement in various cities and prosperous areas of West Bengal with passionate hearts. In Ashim Ray’s story ‘Ani’, such a middle class youth lives up to his extreme end in his attempt to revolutionize the flow of the Naxalite Movement. The entire story is told through Ani’s father’s analytical mind and his own stream of consciousness. Ani’s father’s statement reveals, the nature of the selfished & self-centreted beliefs of large sections of the middle class in the city of Kolkata. On the other hand, it is the selfless sacrifice of the youth of this middle class family. In the story, revolutionary Ani alias Anirban Mukherjee’s father took to the streets to wage an armed revolution (1948-51) tweeny five years ago. And then as the tide of revolution receded, the ribs of self-denial rose to the bone. So, Ani’s father is a dialectical materialist. The concept is fully aware of the meaning of ‘reactive’. He is also well aware of the roots of the middle class people of Kolkata city and the unceasing ‘PALKA’ existence of people’s lives. So, he can neither support nor prevent his son’s indoctrination into Naxalite Movement. Because, he knows which ‘SLOGAN’ gets the blood pumping in the heart and the muscles contracting. The strangeness of Ani and their party’s ‘SLOGAN’ which seem like rhetoric, melodrama, but which Ani’s father feels touch the very rootes of Bengal middle-class life. Anirban Mukherjee, an educated youth in the story of ‘Ani’, feels that a new revolution is happening around, new standards of judgement are being created. In real life, many people make a career in the name of revolution then why is this enormous sacrifice of young people like Ani and his party people? Ani is not willing to listen to this Platitudes and Slogans. He expresses his protest in clear terms— revolution is not a newspaper editorial, not a cocktail party; revolution is death, sacrifice is invitable. Most of the revolutions involved the poor people of the country. But Ani wants to Shoulder the responsibility of waking them up and guiding them.