Volume II,Issue IV, March 2026
Volume-II, Issue-IV, March, 2026 |
Received: 20.03.2026 | Accepted: 27.03.2026 | ||
Published Online: 31.03.2026 | Page No: | ||
DOI: 10.69655/atmadeep.vol.2.issue.04W. | |||
মতি নন্দীর ‘শবাগার’: সত্তরের উত্তাপদগ্ধ আবর্তে অবক্ষয়ী মন ও হিমশীতল
মৃত্যুভয়ের ঊর্ধ্বগামী পারদ
মহেন্দ্র নাথ পাল, গবেষক, বঙ্গভাষা ও সাহিত্য বিভাগ, কলিকাতা
বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়, পশ্চিমবঙ্গ, ভারত |
Moti Nandi’s ‘Shabagar’: A Decadent Psyche and the
Soaring Mercury of Icy Fear of Death Amidst the Scorching Vortex of the
Seventies
Mahendra
Nath Paul, Research Scholar, Department of Bengali Language and Literature,
University of Calcutta, West Bengal, India | ||
ABSTRACT | ||
The 1970s marked a period of terrifying, turbulent
deadlock in the heart of Bengal. On one side stood fierce resistance; on the
other, retaliatory repression. Caught in this turbulent vortex of the Naxalite
era, human lives drifted like mere straws in the current. The complacent
slumber of the mind and consciousness was shattered. The veneer of values—which
had, until then, clung fast to human existence—began to crumble away. A
chilling fear of death constantly encroached upon and consumed the very last
frontiers of human consciousness. As one struggled to cut through the silt of
that worm-eaten era, the decay of the human psyche emerged as the sole,
undeniable truth. In a single instant, the edifice of familiar human
relationships came crashing down in ruins; for when the mind plunges into the
very depths of darkness, one no longer feels any imperative to preserve
anything at all. Moti Nandi’s short story, ‘Shabagar’ is a harrowing
narrative of just such a decaying psyche and the terror born of a chilling fear
of death. It is a tale set in the cremation ground of the 1970s, where families
stood amidst the ashes, engaging in a macabre ritual of living alongside the
dead. As people carried the contagion of this terror, and as the primal
instincts—hitherto lurking in the shadows of human nature—crawled out into the
open, the responsibility to uphold moral values ceased to exist for anyone. A
son’s overwhelming revulsion toward his father—stripping away the veneer of
middle-class morality—drove the father to engage in unbridled, anarchic
behavior. Thus, in those turbulent times, the worm-eaten psyche poisoned every
established convention. All notions of morality and ethical values were
rendered utterly trivial. Consequently, the son’s contemptuous attitude toward
his father burst forth into the open. And in the wake of this breakdown, the
father’s own primal instincts—long dormant in the recesses of his mind—surged
forth like a river bursting its banks, transgressing every boundary of decency
and propriety to find a stage for their unbridled gratification. ‘Shabagar’
stands as a faithful chronicle of that turbulent era and the conflicted
psychological landscape that defined it. | ||
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