Roasted in Kashi

The stage is packed with the poets of Varanasi. The man with the microphone pauses. For suspense. He starts with a chuckle. “There’s one thing that men and government files have in common. They can both be left hanging for days.” Delivered in the local dialect, the punch line immediately cracks up the audience of 50,000 gentlemen. Some throw their heads back and guffaw, others whack the shoulders of their brethren. Since 5pm, men have jostled outside the city’s Town Hall for a spot. Glasses of bhang-laced thandai have been passed around with trademark generosity. For 46 years, many in Varanasi have seen their Holi culminate in this style. They customarily take their place in the marquee, wanting the festival of colour to be rounded off with language just as rambunctious.

Varanasi’s unorthodox Holi kavi sammelan (gathering of poets) has no identifiable antecedent. The verse that poets recite with great aplomb is replete with expletives that cannot be repeated in genteel living rooms, let alone in this national newspaper. Their irreverence — both scatological and sexual — is sometimes directed at the audience, but the real target of this public derision is most often popular politicians, administrators, cricketers. The hoary tradition of humour demands that the powerless mock the powerful. So, in Varanasi, if you make the headlines, you will be made the butt of a joke. Defined by comparable insolence, it is hard to not think of All India Bakchod’s (AIB’s) infamous ‘roast’ while listening to the local poets mercilessly slam state and central governments. Much has been said about how AIB broke new ground with their brand of insult comedy. Evidence disproves this claim. Varanasi has been roasting and insulting those in power, long before actors Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor smiled through a litany of put-downs at Worli’s Sports Club.

Intent apart, commonalities between the AIB Roast and the Benares sammelan limit themselves to adjectives. They are edgy, often facetious and sometimes side-splittingly funny. The content of each could justifiably be thought of as distasteful and offensive. Without the sanitisation, however, the poetry heard in Varanasi’s Town Hall has a kind of punch that makes AIB’s affronts sound like twee prattle in retrospect. The stuff that makes for scandal in an otherwise squeamish India is certainly more than kosher in Kashi. Rather than being encumbered by their holy city’s religiosity, poets here find their licence in scripture. When jibes about the prime minister’s girth become repetitious, gods feature as protagonists in their bawdy verse. Not surprisingly, Banarasis feel honoured when they find mention in the day’s prurient poetry. Some even bribe poets for a racy tribute.

This year, the Lok Sabha battle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal was predictably fresh in Varanasi’s mind. The latter’s resounding victory gave poets new ammunition. Parasnath Jaiswal writes his ribald couplets under the pen name Chintit Banarasi. He confessed to being rather proud of two lines he wrote recently. In language that can only be described as ‘unparliamentary’, he described how Narendra Modi’s shenanigans in Varanasi last year helped give birth to an Oedipus-like son in Kejriwal exactly nine months later. Another poet furthered this riff of birth and copulation, imploring Rahul Gandhi to give his mother Sonia the satisfaction of being a new grandmother. “But isn’t that how dynasty politics works,” he asked.

Lyricists audaciously borrowed the pietistic tune of ‘Ram Ratan Dhan Payo’ and used that to attack their prime minister’s promise of achche din . Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and his bête noire Jitan Ram Manjhi were not spared either. Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav remained perennial favourites. Someone even punned on Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s surname to help flush Indian cricket down a toilet bowl. With everybody being fair game and no sexual depravity a taboo, Varanasi’s permissibility seemed expressly at odds with Mumbai’s prohibition and the State’s censure.

The might of the cuss word

Taking the stage as the designated ‘roast master’ in Mumbai, Karan Johar had prudently reminded his audience that the language used during the course of the evening would only get filthier. The disclaimer in Varanasi wasn’t quite so long-drawn. Rajan Trivedi, President of the Bhartendu Academy and organiser of the Holi kavi sammelan, says, “Every time you hear a fresh burst of abuses being fired on stage, you will also hear the apology — Bura na mano. Holi Hai ! (Please don’t take offence. It’s Holi!)” Unlike the AIB Roast, which had asked a 4,000-strong crowd to pay ₹4,000 each for a seat, Trivedi insists that Varanasi benefits by not charging its patrons a single dime. “We don’t expect anyone to pay a tax or a fee. The atmosphere is convivial, and the powerful and corrupt get routinely unmasked.”

According to Anil Chaubey, it is precisely such subversion that separates Varanasi’s local indecorousness from the seeming refinement of its urban AIB counterparts. Though Chaubey wasn’t able to see the contentious roast before it was pulled down from the Net, the poet believes that AIB comics resorted to expletives on stage because the utterance of four-letter words has now become “fashionable”. He makes reference to the Delhi Belly song ‘DK Bose’ and soon begins to whittle down the etymology of the word b****e . “You think it’s a cuss word, but it is essentially a composite of three words in Sanskrit — bho , sad and ike . Put together, they mean — Is everything well with you these days? The Mughals were the first to spread the lie that the word was a form of abuse and now it is only acceptable if we rebrand it as something cool or cosmopolitan. We have never needed Bollywood’s sanction. Mumbai, though, certainly needs it.”

Gaalis or expletives, known to many in rural Uttar Pradesh as gaaris , were said to have been liberally hurled during the weddings of Rama, Krishna and Shiva. The scriptures prescribe that when devotees light a pyre on the night before Holi, they must bid farewell to monsters with a barrage of curses. Dharmsheel Chaturvedi points out that the many villages near Varanasi still keep alive the tradition of invoking gods with explicit ditties during the months of spring. The 81-year-old poet had been instrumental in first bringing together a motley bunch of his peers during the Holi of 1969. For the next three decades, the Holi sammelan flourished under his aegis. Chaturvedi, who is also a senior advocate, makes an interesting legal distinction. “The Supreme Court has ruled that what is obscene and what isn’t can only be determined by context. There are temples in Puri that have on their walls representations of bestiality. If you can’t call that offensive, it’s also wrong to use the label for cuss words employed in our poetry and songs.”

Get insulted, get famous

Badari Vishal is a central figure in Varanasi’s poetry circuit. He confesses that a few patrons on Holi often make their way to the stage to leave him with a few thousand rupees. “They have just one request. They want their names added to the list of those who are going to be abused that evening.” Masochism, clarifies Vishal, is not the motive that dictates their largesse. “These people want their names announced on loudspeakers and audio CDs. They want to get famous.”

When a male friend calls another in Varanasi, it is expected that he will initiate the conversation with a string of expletives. “If someone were to simply ask, ‘ Kya Rameshji, aap uth gaye kya ?’ (So Rameshji, have you woken up?), the only inference would be that the caller has suffered a sudden onset of senility,” says Vishal, with a laugh. Making the case that there is a difference between mouthing abuses and being abusive, the poet refers to the tradition of Lath Mar Holi in the nearby towns of Nandgaon and Barsana. “Every year, thousands of men get their heads broken. Not a single FIR gets registered. Why should anyone then object to the traditions here?”

In keeping with Varanasi’s unconventional traditions, the advent of Holi also sees the annual publication of a booklet named Manthan . The 60th issue was recently circulated through an underground network. The listed address of its printer — ‘ISI’s Islamabad headquarters’. Apart from couplets about the prime minister’s many assumed proclivities, the compilation published pieces ‘signed’ by the likes of Asaram Bapu. The magazine, though, is not entirely text heavy. Explicit pornographic pictures lined most of its pages. Despite a disclaimer that its pages are for ‘personal use only’, copies of Manthan freely exchange hands across class divides. Connoisseurs even pay ₹1,000 for issues not in circulation.

Jai Shankar Jai breaks into song at the drop of a listener’s hat. When convinced that he has captured the masti (raucous enjoyment) of Holi with some success, he lists the many qualities of his city. It is only his stupor that interrupts his eloquence. “Kashi is a world unto itself. Nobody has been able to understand this place. It possesses an otherworldly power. Its identity can be mapped in its untroubled joyousness.” Sanskrit scholar and veteran journalist Amitabha Bhattacharya might raise an eyebrow at Jai’s claims, but even he concedes that the effects of Shiva worship have helped give Varanasi its air of unfettered autonomy. “In the other cities of the world, everyone is simply trying to survive, but they’re ultimately dying. In Varanasi, everyone is waiting for death. People have nothing to be afraid of here. It’s not that they are being careless with what they are saying. It’s just that they are carefree.”

The bohemian nature of Shaivism is also said to culminate in a linguistic transference of sorts. Expletives of a phallic nature are all considered derivatives of Shiva’s divine linga (phallus). Besides, the god of destruction is thought to be a receptacle of all things abject — the snake around his neck, the poison in his throat, the ash smeared on his body. It is assumed that crummy language is something such a deity would heartily celebrate. Holi then becomes a tailor-made carnival for revelries in a starkly Dionysian city. As Bhattacharya explains, “The extra-constitutional liberty which Holi provides allows us to accept anything that gets uttered.”

Despite this pervasive sanction, not everyone takes kindly to Varanasi’s unique mix of trash talk and political satire. In 1980, district magistrate Bhure Lal took umbrage when informed of the invectives lavishly meted out by poets during the annual Holi sammelan . He predictably pressed for a ban. The city’s poets felt further emboldened. They gathered in much the same way they had done every year. Bhure Lal was singled out in their disparaging verse and when his convoy appeared in the crowd, the official was greeted with a dash of colours and inflated condoms. The district magistrate supposedly succumbed and quickly gave his assent. Legend also has it that former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kamalapati Tripathi had laughed out loud when he heard that a poet had questioned the sanctity of his relationship with his daughter-in-law. Here, the fuss that surrounded AIB’s roast would perhaps be more amusing than the roast itself. Though AIB comics have cancelled their all-India tour in the face of controversy, they should consider a revival in Kashi. The city’s audiences certainly know how to take a joke.

Beyond Ha Ha

Almost all of Varanasi’s poets acknowledge a certain debt to Revati Raman Srivastava, known to most by his nom de plume Chakachak Banarasi. Before Srivastava died of cancer in 1999, he had invented an entire genre of irreverence. Politicians, priests, even Mahatma Gandhi made for ready fodder. Bhojpuri litterateur Chandrakant Singh is 72, and even though he chuckles when saying that Holi helps make devars (brothers-in-law) of old men like him, he turns suddenly sombre when lamenting a drop in literary standards since Srivastava’s demise. “It is the quality of satire that has taken a beating. These days, people just drop these expletives. During Chakachak’s time, every word, good or bad, had behind it a hidden rhetoric.”

Ajay Kumar Srivastava considers Chakachak his literary master and has given himself the fitting allonym Chapachap Banarasi. Though he seems to agree with Singh’s assessment of a decline, he argues that poetry in Varanasi still hasn’t lost its defiant edge. “The only thing a poet has to give is profanity. That is his right. It is his response to the inequalities and inequities he sees in society. The role of a rebel, you could say, is his gazetted post.” An employee of the Uttar Pradesh sales tax department, Srivastava was declared dead by his office months before he could retire. His colleague Baburam Shastri is similarly frustrated with the travails of his workplace and says that he can only write satirical verse because “pain is a vital ingredient of poetry”. Compared to his peers, Shastri’s poems seem demure. “I like staying away from vulgarity,” he admits. “I leave before everyone starts their abuse.” The aversion felt by Shastri is not uncommon in the city’s poetic community. Anil Chaubey once made most of the immunity offered by Holi sammelans . “For 364 days, we remain caged. That one day feels like abandon served on a platter.” Chaubey, however, soon tired of the cacophony that came to define those merry evenings. “People would be tearing each other’s kurtas. Outward sophistication left men repressed. Moreover, when organisers outside Varanasi heard recordings of those gatherings, they quickly stereotyped you and your poetry as indecent. They hesitated when inviting you to their stage. One day adversely impacted your entire year.” Chaubey now travels the country and sometimes the world. While much of his poetry is decorous today, he still has people asking for something “non-veg” backstage. Dharmsheel Chaturvedi isn’t surprised. He has studied enough psychology to conclude that ‘sublimation’ can be a seductive force. “These sammelans used to serve as a catharsis for everyone.”

Women, though, are obviously excluded from Chaturvedi’s articulation of ‘everyone’. Many husbands confess that they memorise the choicest verse to repeat to their wives behind closed doors, but whiffs of misogyny and patriarchy are only exaggerated by the complete absence of women from the Varanasi Town Hall. “We live in a male chauvinistic society and that is a fact we cannot escape,” says Amitabha Bhattacharya. “A poet writes his poetry for the adult of a household and it is still unfortunately assumed that the adult is always male.” A keen observer of societal shifts in his city, Bhattacharya, however, does not discount change. “Poets and bulls, like kings and ascetics, are free-willed. They can go where they please.”

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