MY STORY and MY LIFE AS AN ACTRESS Binodini Dasi Edited and translated by RIMLI BHATTACHARYA 'Roopmugdha—Binodini', Roop o Rang, 1st year, no. 18, 16 Falgun 1331 kali for women 1998 My Story and My Life as an Actress Acknowledgements was first published by Kali for Women B 1/8, Hauz Khas New Delhi 110 016 This book is greatly indebted to the editors of the Bangla text of Binodirii's selected works, Soumitra Chattopadhyay and Nirmalya Acharya, who first reprinted the texts in the journal Ekshan (1962- 64) and have subsequently revised it in book form through 1987, ) Rimli Bhattacharya, 1998 this last edition in collaboration with the theatre historian. Shankar Bhattacharya. I am specially grateful to the late Nirmalya Acharya All rights reserved for his continued support and the gift of rare copies of theatre magazines. For his generosity with time and information my thanks to Samik Bandhopadhyay. And for encouragement and help at various stages on my general project on actresses and the Bengali theatre, my thanks to Sumanta Banerjee, Tara ForRunupisbi Bhattacharjee, Deb Kumar Basu. Sisir Das, Ajit Kumar Ghosh, Debnarayan Gupta, Amitava Ray. the late Subir Ray Chaudhuri. Pabitra Sarkar and Nabaneeta Deb Sen. Bina Dasgupta and Ketaki Datta graciously shared their experiences in playing 'Nati Binodini' and conveyed to me some of ,the material exigencies of performance. Prativa Khanna's hospitality and her sharing with me of invaluable childhood memories of Binodini has enriched more than my research work. The translation and research work "was begun towards the end of my tenure as a Pool Officer with CSIR at Jawaharlal Nehru University and was supported later by an ICSSR fellowship, with an affiliation to Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. I am most grateful to Meenakshi Mukherjee and Sabyasachi Bhattacharya for agreeing to be project supervisors in these respective phases. Much of the research was conducted at Natya Shodh Sansthan, Calcutta, where I was always given prompt assistance with books, journals and photographs (and provided with much needed cups of tea). My thanks also to the library staff of the NMML and the Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, and the Baghbazar Reading Room, the Bangiya Sahitya Parshad and the National Library, Calcutta. A British Council visitorship allowed me to avail of some of the materials in the India Office Library, London; and a Rockefeller Fellowship permitted me to work at the University of Chicago. I deeply regret that I will not be able to show to Professor A.K. Typeset by Tulika Print Communication Services, Ramanujan the completed version of the translation he had read 35 A/1 (II floor), Shahpur Jat, New Delhi 110 049; with such care and interest in the spring quarter of 1993. and printed at Raj Press, I have been helped most willingly at the manuscript stage R-3 Inderpuri, New Delhi (through many years) by Nandini Bedi, Prasanta Bhattacharya, Lily Acknowledgements VI Ghosh, Swapan Ghosh, Priya Gopal, Siddhartha Gupta, Ranjana Mohan. Reena Mohan, Rekha Sen, Uttara Shahani, and Subir and Contents Hema Shukla. I thank most specially Sujit Mukherjee for his detailed comments on the translation, and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan for critical editorial counsel. Among, other debts of gratitude: to Acknowledgements v Bonani Bain who has taken care of my everyday life for the past few years and to S.K. Bakshi for his kindness in letting me use Preface ix his computer one difficult summer. To friends and my parents who have bome the brunt of my Binodini years, I cannot express enough. The book was initiated by Kali; my thanks to Urvashi Butalia Introduction 3 for her support. Having recorded only a part of my many debts, I should add that all errors, misconceptions and otherwise critical lapses are entirely my own. MY STORY 47 MY LIFE AS AN ACTRESS 127 Notes on the Bengali Public Theatre 159 Afterword 187 Appendices 245 Select Bibliography 263 Index 266 Shakuntala Preface You must keep my word Nor darken my life, or. give me back Binodini Dasi's exceptional career as a professional actress encom- the tryst of an other time. passed twelve heady years (1874-86) of the public stage in Calcutta. More than a century later, she occupies an indisputable In shadows of the bakul-tree place in the cultural history of the city and in Bengali theatre for a lonely forest where reasons that we may well have cause to dispute. you held my hand, my love, Since their publication. Binodini Dasi's story of her life, Amar and said, Come beloved, Katha (My Story. 1912), and her (incomplete) account of her let me bind you career as Amar Abhinetri Jiban (My Life as an Actress, 1924/25), in ties of love have been used sometimes as material for social history and, more frequently, as footnotes to theatre history. The documentary value Let us forget the cruel world of Binodini Dasi's autobiography, My Story, was highlighted almost two'hearts close as one; at its inception when her theatre-guru, Girishchandra Ghosh let us play the tivo (1844-1912), titled his prefatory essay to the book: 'Srimati together, Binodini Dasi and the Bengali Theatre' In this essay (see dreams of happiness. Afterword), Girishchandra explains at length his own reluctance to record the history of the Bengali stage in the form of an The creeping vines autobiography; he did not think, however, that it would be balmy wind and flowers possible to do so in any other form, considering the extent of rose and malati, the encircling green, his own involvement with the founding and shaping of the public and all birds theatre. Girishchandra then criticizes Biriodini's book for its many who make the air their home, defects, but finally, it is implied that the book will fill in the our witnesses be. lacunae he himself was unable to fill. Subsequently, Binodini Dasi's autobiography and her own life became popular material Laughter of stars for books as well as for dramatic productions of various kinds. and moonbeams enclosed Despite the many productions that the autobiographical writings in a lover's kiss. have engendered, the writings themselves have rarely been read In return take my body, as Binodini's own stories or as social texts. By this I seek to Myself, emphasise, that while Binodini Dasi was an exceptional woman, Life itself. she was also one of the many girls/women who were being trained to perform in a novel medium, by a metropolitan Here lies intelligentsia seeking cultural identity under colonial rule. Her the bank where we lay writings are a record of an unusually fine mind responding at the same flowers wild, multiple levels to the experiential world of the theatre. They offer But where unusual perspectives from which to evaluate the place of public the shining eyes, theatre in the cultural history of a nation. From this point alone, lips smiling, they may inform our present endeavours to re-examine aspects Why are bright eyes of cultural identity against the backdrop of a nation in question. cast down this day? I have not sought here to frame Binodini's stories either by providing an explication du texte or by locating them exclusively From the collection of verse, Basana, by Binodini Dasi within the theoretical terrain of women's autobiographies as a x Preface Preface XI branch of feminist studies. The writings seek, and will surely find, The Introduction delineates the continuum between actress and sustained engagements from more than one perspective. writer by providing an overview of two quite disparate histories. In re-presenting Binodini Dasi in another language, for another In the Preamble to 'A Bengallie Theatre' is outlined the entry and audience, and in another time, one may take as a cue, her 'return construction of the 'actress' on the public stage in Calcutta of the to the stage' in writing, beginning perhaps with the question: 1870s. The second part, 'Scripting a Life', is a venture into the What did the theatre mean to Binodini? quicksands of self-representation, shored by the many genealogies From both narratives emerges the story of a blood relation- that the actress-writer shared and did not share with her ship—between her and the stage and her fellow workers. Reliving contemporaries. her theatre days in her writing, decades after she has quit the The Afterword offers a cartography of the passage from stage, Binodini is unable to sever these ties of blood. An actress's Binodini Dasi, the actress and writer, to 'Nati Binodini' as a public passion for the stage and her absolute commitment to her pro- referrent in Bengali cultural history. This history of representations fession may claim, in turn, a reading that is situated in the history includes, a little ironically perhaps, translations of two essays by of her theatre world, and of that theatre in 'the world'. Therefore, Girishchandra on his pupil. One prefaced her excerpted autobio- these appendages to her own slim texts: an introduction, a rather graphy serialised in the theatre magazine, and the other (men- lengthy afterword, extensive notes on the theatre of her time, and tioned earlier) was specifically written for Binodini's book. a string of appendices and an index. In order to maintain the actual interrelation between specific This book has been designed with at least two kinds of performance contexts and broader currents in cultural and social readership in mind. The language of translation is English: as history, I have taken recourse to a somewhat intricate system of such, it will at least make Binodini's writings available to those cross-referencing. The method generally followed here has been who have no access to Bangla and/or no special knowledge of to rely on a chronology based on first appearances: for example, Bengali cultural history.