Freedom, poetry, rebellion and music ... when we lived our bravest moments

Dylan was Blowin’ in the Wind, theatre had hit the streets, Indira was forced to submit to people’s will

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven.

Or so we thought as we entered the Seventies. Smoking weed; falling in love; writing poetry and dreaming of a new and just world order.


I had barely entered Presidency College when Naxalbari happened and classmates began to disappear. They had gone to the forests, in the memorable words of Marxist poet Subhash Mukhopadhyay, to fight a war for those who knew not how to. By coincidence, that was when my first book of poems appeared. I got married. All night I stayed awake translating the nine cantos of the Meghnad Badh Kavya, Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s 19th-century epic. I did a day job as an office boy in 14 Bentinck Street where the Chinese shoe shops were.

Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri had just released. No one had known there was a sexual side to the Brahmo. Shombhu Mitra was still staging Dasachakra, based on Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, while Badal Sircar had discovered the Third Theatre and taken his plays out of the proscenium and on to the streets.

Shakti Chattopadhyay, then in his midthirties, was lying in the gutters, drunk as usual. His poems scribbled on torn sheets may yet outlive Tagore. Nikhil Biswas had died at 36, leaving behind 10,000 drawings. Yes, it was the best of times.

India was still recovering from the excitement of the Beatles visiting Rishikesh. Ravi Shankar was storming the West, with Yehudi Menuhin at times, with John Lennon other times. Rajneesh was shocking Bombay with his spiritual sermons on free sex. Dylan’s harmonica rang in our ears as Blowin’ in the Wind played everywhere. Madhubala had just passed away.

Zubin Mehta was conducting the LA Philharmonic. And I? I was smoking hash with Ginsberg and listening to Howl ‘midst the smell of burning flesh as funeral pyres lit up Calcutta’s night sky. Or strolling home at daybreak with the great Ustad after a nightlong concert. No, no one could sing the Malkauns like Amir Khan did.

We were all young then, full of anger and hope. We dreamt of a just world. We believed poverty could be fought and defeated. Che with his trademark beret stared down at us from red posters, though very few among us were actually Red. It was azaadi we yearned for. We protested against the Gulag as loudly as we raised our voice against Mai Lai.

I quit college. Not for politics but for poetry. Poetry, for me, was hope. It was azaadi from the tired clichés of politics. I started a magazine that brought together the best voices. Agyeya and Faiz, Muktibodh and Yevtushenko, Octavio Paz.

Brewing next door was a war. The young students of East Bengal took on the Pakistani army with the poetry of Shamsur Rahman echoing in their hearts: Freedom is a voice everyone hears; freedom is a voice everyone fears. I remember Kaifi telling students in Dhaka that poetry alone can win the war for them. Around that time, a young man quit his job in Calcutta and caught a train to Bombay to try his luck at the movies.

KA Abbas gave him his first break. But it took him a few more years and a film with Rajesh Khanna to be noticed. A script by two young men, Salim and Javed, defined his real role: the role of the Angry Young Man ready to set the skies on fire in his pursuit of hope and justice. It started with a small film called Zanjeer but soon went well beyond cinema. It defined the indomitable spirit of the seventies and raised its richest baritone: Rage.

The rhetoric of non-violence had already tired. The young were seeking hope, a new Utopia in a world without answers. Doubt and dilemma dogged them. That is when Bachchan picked up the gauntlet and showed them the way out. India found a new hero. He stood up for the weak and the poor. He fought against injustice and crime. And yes, he was violent when violence was required. He was the new moral compass, the voice that whispered in our ears: Fight back. The long war in Vietnam had ended.

Free Bangladesh was born by the will of its young writers and poets. And India showed it would not cower before the Emergency, come what may. It was a reassertion of our will. The left, the right, everyone got together to fight back the darkness. Till Mrs Gandhi submitted to the will of the people.

The Eighties came with the assassination of John Lennon. Andrei Sakharov was arrested in Moscow. The Rubik’s Cube arrived. So did the first 24 hours news channel, by CNN. Mrs Gandhi returned to power. Mikhail Gorbachev broke the Kremlin’s grip. The USSR was no more the USSR. Pac-Man took Japan by storm. Led Zeppelin broke up. And Uttam Kumar died. So did Mohammed Rafi. And Sahir.

By then I had married again. The Emergency was over. Mrs Gandhi was back in power a day before my birthday. Naxalbari was also over. My poetry gave way to journalism. Two years later, Kapil brought home the World Cup. I moved to Bombay. Amitabh won an election and went to Parliament. (I made the same mistake a decade later.) Bofors broke out. And the world as we knew it had changed forever.

The Seventies was about freedom, hope, courage. Each one of us against the world, living out our bravest moment. Will that ever come back? I doubt it.

(Pritish Nandy is a poet and journalist)