Not every 'why' has an answer

I was mesmerized as I listened to a reading of Saleha Chowdhury's short stories. It was a regular meeting at Gantha, a literary platform for Bangladeshi writers to meet --- for individuals who write in English as well as for those who write in Bangla. The book that was discussed at this meeting was the author's collection of short stories, Shotogolpo. Saleha Chowdhury has been writing short stories since 1967, and all these stories have been collected in this compilation. There are but a few writers who have published a book with one hundred stories. If translated the title of the book would be 'A Hundred Stories.' It was published by Bidyaprokash in 2008. It may be mentioned here that Saleha Chowdhury was awarded the Annanya Shahitya Puroshkar in 2009.

The writer points out in the introduction that she rewrote the stories with the maturity and experience she had gained over the years. Though the stories remain the same, the language, grammar and imagery have been reintroduced with the addition of contemporary elements.

Saleha Chowdhury is an expatriate Bangladeshi living in the UK for more than thirty years. But the background of the stories is set both at home and abroad. The special feature that one notices in her stories is that she mostly writes about the trivial matters of everyday life. Her choice of words while giving the stories their headings is also commendable. Even though it is a book of over eight hundred pages it finishes quickly as its contents are gripping. She gives pictorial descriptions of the surroundings of her characters which makes her stories very visual to the reader.

Ontohin, the first story, is about a dream that is too soon shattered. A family living in the village migrates to Dhaka. As soon as it reaches its destination, its dream city Dhaka turns into a nightmare. The family lives in a slum in Zindabahar, where even the sun is ashamed to shine, it is said. Himaloye Jabar Aage is about a couple who have grown old with each other and have become two different people rather than being a pair who complement each other. They have started liking different things and hence have been moving away from each other. It was Kahlil Gibran who said once: “The cypress and the cedar never grow in each other's shadow.”

In Tolstoyer Golper Moto Golpo, the protagonist is a very old man who is the sole survivor in his village after a storm. Even though a lot of journalists interview him and a number of photographers take his snapshots and publish the pictures in the media, the absence of his only shelter and caretaker, his wife, leaves him in great peril. No one bothers about how he survived, if he has survived at all. So he is forced to take shelter at his daughter's house where he just lives as a beggar would, before finally being killed on a stormy night with the roof falling on him. Turn Water Into Wine is a simple story about a fan whom the writer admired, or the other way round, when they were young. When the writer is invited to his house at a much later stage in their lives he realizes that he is a mere visitor in her life and has no permanent place there. And then comes the truth: the pair have had a peaceful life which will not be affected by any external factor.

Je Jibon Dewal Foring-er Moto deals with a couple living in the United Kingdom who cherish their lives, Asma enjoying every little thing that comes her way and Ershad doing the same by sitting in a wheelchair. And more often than not Ershad dictates what should or shouldn't be done. One day when they go to a nearby park Asma comes across an old colleague and refreshes her memory about her past. They both agree that the time machine is the only machine that should be invented for a better life in the world. When she comes back to the place where she had left her husband she finds him cross. He has fallen off his wheelchair. In a split of a second Asma loses all her short lived enthusiasm.

In Devshishu, a divine-looking shoeshine boy asks the protagonist to help him buy a polish kit as he has to give most of the money to the person who owns the kit he uses. Now this boy looks like an angel, incapable of doing anything wrong. So when the narrator hears his story of the boy being the eldest of four siblings who have no father, he feels as though he needs to help him in some way. So he agrees to go to a place where he could buy a kit. And he gives the boy the money to buy it. A week later as he is going along the same street, he discovers the boy repeating his tale of woe to another of his clients. As the man is in a hurry, he hands some money to the boy before moving off.

Desdemona'r Rumal is the story of a woman who is close to leaving her wheelchair-bound husband for an old friend. Finally she decides to come back to her husband who treats her just as he would an item of furniture in his house. The wondrous strength and courage in a woman's heart do not cease to amaze us.

All the 'why's' in the world do not have answers, says one of Saleha Chowdhury's characters in the story Kanna.

These are just a few glimpses into some of the stories among Saleha Chowdhury's collection. One can easily spot trivial events portrayed as very fine rhetoric by the writer with her skilled craftsmanship. There is a conflict of the real and the imaginary in most of the stories, a tussle between dream and reality. There is alienation, escapism, racism (this time from an Asian perspective), humour, pain and pathos drawn on the canvas of life. The stories relate to everybody, to all men and women, all expatriates and all Bangladeshis. We can almost feel the presence of the characters all around us. What Saleha Chowdhury does is present them in rather new and different colours. Hats off to a woman who has dedicated most of her life to writing these stories and still has not given up the struggle.

Jackie Kabir is an English Language teacher and member of Gantha, a writers' group.