Texts of Power, Acts of Dissent:

Performability and Theatricality in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Short Stories

Abstract

Nabarun Bhattacharya is often hailed as the “rebel” writer and two of his larger fictional works, Herbert and Kangal Malshat (War Cry of Beggars) have been adapted for screen and stage. However, Nabarun’s short stories may also be understood as texts that show possibilities of being conceived as political performances. This paper wishes to read a few of Nabarun’s short stories like Bhashan, Aguner Mukh, Ondho Beral, Kaktarua, Fyataru and Basanta Utshab E Fyataru, through the concept of performability. Developing on the theoretical framework for performance as a political act (Randy Martin, 1990), this paper further underscores the themes of ritual, banality of re-performance, violence and theatricality in looking at the thematic progression of the selected short stories as three paired units of analysis. How do we locate Nabarun’s prose within this performability of “subversive meanings Can we read the Fyatarus as containing the possibilities of re-performance as opposed to the relentless tediousness of meaningless ritual? Does the coupling of grim description with black humour make his texts rife with possibilities of performable experiments? This paper attempts to answer these questions by studying the selected short stories in their movement from exposition to climax and to bathetic resolution within performance.