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From Research to Stories: Ogni O Jol. Edited by Shamim Azad; Published by Mawla Brothers and Brac University Press, 152 pages, Price: 200 Taka

2011-07-07T18:52:00.005-10:00

Ogni O Jol is a collection of eleven short stories by young and established writers, and three papers by researchers.

Story tellers always look for their raw materials in everyday happenings, in their surroundings. This has in fact been an age-old process. Here is a project conducted by Shamim Azad who gathered some researchers from Nigeria, England, Ghana, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh to conduct a workshop named 'Pathways of Women Empowerment'. Twenty five authors took part in the six month long workshop.

The findings were given to some writers in the form of video clippings and case studies. The writers then put their imagination at work and came up with some extraordinary stories about some very ordinary women of Bangladesh in this book.

The book is comprised of two stories in English and all others in Bangla, and the group of writers covers both genders. Firdous Azim, well known Professor of English, shares her views about transforming research work into fiction. The association of young and old writers throws light on issues like writing mentorship, sharing experience with the literary icons like Selina Hossain and the new journey of non-fiction to fiction.
All the eleven stories are about women. In one way or the other the writers depict their characters as liberated beings. As a reader one feels that in a society where women are almost always suffering with some kind of binding, these women characters really are the rays of light. The light that might one day cast away all the darkness governing the lives of the majority of Bangladeshi women. Starting from the young university student like Tania or the strong-willed Parul who leaves her family to earn her living in a foreign land or even Sumaiya who falls in virtual love with Fahad via the chat room. They all tell us stories of women we come across every day. Monowara, whose husband's absence makes her a prey to her guardian, the step brother, is also heartrending. When she gives birth to a child, she reveals to the shocked villagers that Kalu Mia, her step brother is in fact the father of her child whom she wounded one night with the kitchen knife in between his thighs.

Papree Rahman's story Shohaga is about a strong female goldsmith Kamalabala Roy who takes over the family after her father passes away. When her sister looks for a suitable husband for her by giving advertisement in the paper, she revolts and spends the rest of her life as a spinster. A female photographer who gives priority to her job rather than getting settled as her mother expects is the protagonist of Shahnaz Munni's story Camera. Jharna Rahman's story Fona is about some young girls staying in dormitories at the university campus. Even though one of the girls remains burkha-clad, she is capable of making her own choices about her life. In the story 'The Twain Shall' Tanvir Malik gives his heroine Tania “…the freedom to choose what's good for her life.”

While writing 'From research to Stories' Dr Firdous Azim points out that not many women have made their place in history as they have in fiction.

“The Pathways of Women's Empowerment research programme is engaged in capturing the ways in which women are placed in the changing social scenario” Professor Azim points out. She also adds the Government and the NGO have played a big role in changing the lives of Bangladeshi womem.

The title Ogni O Jol may have arisen from the fact that women have the fury, indomitable spirit as well as the capability of accommodating the adversities that may be caused by her surroundings. Shamim Azad expresses her hope that similar books by other writers may be published in the other participating countries and that there might be a compilation of another book with writers from all the six countries.
The review was published on Friday,July 08,2011 in The Star Magazine.

Song of Our Swampland by Manzu Islam

2011-06-16T23:48:00.007-10:00

"I have a hole for a mouth” is pronounced by Manju Islam's protagonist of his second novel. The book Song of Our Swampland is based on the war of Independence of Bangladesh. It is also a book about the unanswered questions, unfulfilled dreams that the nation faces after four decades of its independence. That may be the reason why the writer portrays his characters with such deformity. The book is divided into three segments the last of which is titled 'The Island' where the protagonist Kamal takes shelter only to find another character who is a half bodied human known as the 'legless'. Manju Islam is an expatriate living in the United Kingdom for more than three decades. This is the author's fourth book, the first being The Ethics of travels: Marcopolo to Kafka, which is more of an academic book. The second book is Mapm-akers of Spitalfields, a collection of short stories mostly about the vibrant immigrant life of the Bengalis living in England. The third book Burrow is about an illegal Bangladeshi who after having exhausted all avenues to become legal in a foreign land ceases to exist and ends up flying off as a bird. The element of magic is evident in this book. The plight of Bengalis living there is in fact the main theme of Burrow. The time of the book is the 60s and 70s when Bengalis ship-jumped and paved the way for the generation of Bangladeshis living in the United Kingdom today.
After doing a lot of research on the swampland of central Bangladesh Islam collected all the raw materials his second novel needs. Although it is about the war of independence there are a number of questions the author addresses through his protagonist Kamal, born with a deformed face with only a hole in the place of his mouth. He was left on the market wrapped in clothes when he was an infant. The boy was brought up by a teacher, Abbas Mia who had a daughter named Moni Banu. Kamal and Moni Banu grow up together as brother and sister and Abbas Mia bestows them with his thirst of knowledge and makes both of them read all the famous books in his collection. Kamal finds both his lover and his sister in Moni Banu. So as Moni Banu gets married Kamal being speechless cannot express how he feels. The war breaks out, the Pakistani military kills most people in Kamal's village by calling them to the school yard by the Muazzin, the person who calls for the prayer. Kamal and some others escape the horror and take shelter on a boat which had been made by the villagers for imminent danger that would befall on them. So around nine people get on the boat and leave the village. The first part of the novel is titled 'Homestead'.

In the second part of the book 'The Journey' a Bihari girl is brought on the boat from a secluded island, who marries Kamal and becomes part of his life. The question about the part played by the Bihari in the war comes along with her appearance.

The boat is attacked by the army, and almost everyone is brutally killed, Kamal is taken prisoner to a Pakistani Major's house. He is tortured by the army. Finally they are able to run away when the freedom fighters capture the area. Kamal is nursed by Kulsum till he is able to stand on his feet again.

The novel poses many questions on the Liberation War of Bangladesh. It is a well structured book which is difficult to put down once begun as the author does a good job as a story teller. It is from a subaltern's point of view he writes the novel which makes it different from other books of this genre.

2011-05-08T00:48:00.002-10:00

For more than two decades Papree Rahman has reigned the world of Bangla literature with her expertise in writing, editing and critiquing but she seems to be at her best in storytelling. She tells her stories with an insight that is derived from extensive research. She has done so in all three of her novels Poranodir Shopnopuran, Boyon, the latest one being Palatia. She often says: “I only write when I get something very interesting to write on.”

The reader sees the truth in the statement while reading Palatia. Even though the most interesting thing about the book may seem to be the subject of the novel; it is the craftsmanship Papree Rahman uses depicting the language of the actors of Palatia that mesmerizes the readers.

The novel is written in the dialect of Dinajpur. The writer expresses the feelings of her characters with the language. Palatia is a kind of act which is specific to its birthplace, Dinajpur. The producers, directors and the actors all come from poverty stricken families. The stage used in this kind of act is known as central staging or arena theatre. The Greeks used to act on stages like that. In recent years American stage director Margo Jones introduced this in-round- theatre in 1947.There is no screen and the actors come in and out of the stage from the audience. The plays are mostly staged at night so they use hajoc or lantern.

The weather in the northern side of Bangladesh is very dry. Papree Rahman begins her novel by giving description of this dry land. The ground here is very rough. Even then it shows different views at different times of the year. It has myriads of facets for each season like, the rivers Dhepa, Tulai, Punorbhoba & Khorkhoria all comply to the changes of the seasons. And this is what intrigues the author.

Each chapter is titled by rhyming verses of one or two lines. There are numerous characters in the book, all of whom are bound together by the act, the play that they work on. Mongolchondro, the producer and director is an illiterate person. He dictates the acts and Horendro, writes it out. Even though Horendro invests much physical labour in the plays, it is Mongolchondro who gets name, fame and money.

Mongolchandra's wife Nonibala aptly maintains the household, whereas Horendro's wife Mayarani is frustrated with her husband's lack of recognition. Bishooraam, is the hero of the play Matikapa-Dewniya. He seems to be in a state of trance all the time, his wife Chonchola spends her days with her four children and her mother-in-law who remains unfed or half-fed. But Bishooraam never pays any heed to that. Resulting in Chonchola's strong hatred for the act and the actors. She goes to the extent of going to Mangolchondo's house and abusing his wife for ruining the family by giving him the part of hero in his play.

Nayanjoli lost her mother at birth, her neighbour Gauri looked after her and brought her up as her own. She was beaten up by her husband Bhubonmohon for doing that. Gauri somehow gets entrapped in a relationship with Nayanjoli's father Krisnonath. A relationship that has no name. Nayanjoli is physically assaulted by Bhubonmohon while she is alone in the garden. Her shriek makes Gauri run to the spot where she finds Nayanjoli spitting on her husband. That enrages Bhubonmohon so much that he beats her almost to death.

Padmanath and Bijoya have an airy relationship even though they were bound together by the social institute called marriage. Since they have no children they are almost like a couple just living under the same roof rather than sharing their lives. So when casanova Monoronjon meets Bijoya he wastes no time to get close to her. They have to flee their village as Padmanath catches them lying in each other's arms 'like a pair of snakes.' Padmanath wounds him with his sickle before he can run away.

Finally the night when the play Matikapa-Deoniya is supposed to be staged in Hatmadhobpur, Chancala wife of the hero commits suicide. She drenches herself in kerosine and burns herself along with her four children.

It is a sad but close-to-real life story. The writer has gone to the trouble of doing extensive research on the actors of Palatia. The craftsmanship of the author is visible as most of the book is written in the dialect of Dinajpur. Even though there are numerous characters in the book, when the reader finishes it, almost all of them are familiar characters.

Through the farmer Padmanath the writer brings in the incident of Tebhaga, when the farmers wanted two third of the crop they produced. This gave rise to unrest and hundreds of farmers were arrested, some were killed. All this took place in the northern region of Bangladesh.

Papree Rahman carefully portrays the homosexuality in the male actors of the play. What is commendable in her writing is that she writes about the subaltern. The actors of the play are from the poorest of the poor in the society. They fail to provide their families with the bare necessities yet they act for their play. They entertain people when their families go to sleep starving. Who would tell their stories had writers like Papree Rahman not put the ink on the paper for them? It's a good read and a record of one of the major components of our rural tradition.

Published in Star weekend magazine 6th may 2011

A Visit to Kolkata Book Fair

2011-04-20T05:07:00.002-10:00

A Visit to Kolkata Book Fair

Jackie Kabir
About 1.6 milion people visited this year’s Kolkata Book Fair.

A group of Bangladeshi writers and readers were in Kolkata to attend the Book Fair from January 26 to 29 this year. The fair is held every year for 12 days starting on the last Wednesday of January as a tradition. The visit was organised by The Reading Circle known more commonly as TRC and Gantha, a platform where people writing in Bangla and people writing in English meet every month to exchange their views and ideas. Sometimes they read from their work, at other times they invite famous writers to conduct workshops on creative writing. The Reading Circle, on the other hand, meets once every month to read a chosen book or some books by a certain author depending on the availability of the book.

The group gave a talk at the AC hall in Kolkata about the book club. Speakers mentioned that they regularly met for the past five years and that they successfully read 60 books within these five years. The speakers declared that it was only possible for them to do so because of cafés and book shops which were helpful towards them. They also discussed how difficult it was to get books in Dhaka and how they solved their problem by choosing books that had been either printed locally or asking someone to get some copies for them from neighbouring countries.

Kolkata Book Fair is organised by the government of West Bengal and it was held in Milan Mela Prangon at the heart of the Indian state. This is relatively a new venue as till 2007 the fair was held in Maidan near Park Street. Kolkata is a metropolitan city, and according to the organisers as many as 1.6 million people visited the fair this year which was the 35th since its inception. The fair was held in a very spacious ground with food shops in abundance. The paths around the fair were cemented and hence dust pollution was reduced. There were concrete benches where the visitors could take rest. The book stalls were big and there were usually enough room for people to move about and choose books from the shelves.

There was a separate pavilion for Bangladesh, the structure of which was like that of the National Museum at Shahbag. Numerous writers from Bangladesh attended this fair and some books sold very well. The other countries that participated in the fair were Britain, China, Vietnam, US and Italy. The focal theme country for this year was the United States of America. There was a pavilion replicating the White House which was the main attraction and the Pulitzer Prize winning writer Richard Ford inaugurated the fair. So along with Bangla books, English and translated books were showcased in the fair.

The Reading Circle and Gantha was invited by the prestigious Oxford Books on Park Street on the 28th. Anannya Shahitya Puroshkar award winning writer from Bangladesh Nurjahan Bose read from her book Agunmukhar Meye. The audience was mesmerised by Bose's memoir. The initiator of both Gantha and TRC Niaz Zaman and Asfa Hussain talked on the occasion and Shahruk Rahman read from her translation of Shahidullah Kaiser's famous book Sangspatak. Eminent writer from West Bengal Moni Shanker was present and gave the group a warm welcome.

Bangladeshis know almost all the famous writers from the other side of Bengal; however, our own writers are not so fortunate in terms of popularity on the other side of the border. Very few of them are known to the people there. So if more such visits are organised more frequently, Bangladeshi writers will get more exposure in the neighbouring country.

published in star weekend magazine on Volume 10 |Issue 09| March 04, 2011 |

Images of a vibrant culture of historical gems

2011-04-20T04:57:00.002-10:00

Razia Sultana has been teaching Bangla literature since the early 1970s. She has carried out research on many different aspects of Bangla folklore. Shahitya Bikkhon is one such book where the author has brought in nine essays which range from women depicted in the Old and Middle Ages in Bangla literature, baromashi songs describing the anguish of separation in the lives of rural women and the famous poem Bidrohi by Kazi Nazrul Islam. There are essays on the works of giants like Nawazish Khan and Mozammel Haque in Bangla literature. The hard work of the author is visible in the writing. It gives one an insight into the subjects that she deals with.

Women in the Middle Ages were very simple, as the book notes. They hardly used any make up. The only things that were available locally, herbal products, were used for beautification. A special kind of smoke was used to perfume them. The weather also had effects on the mood of Bengali women as it was neither too hot nor too cold and the women around the area were of pleasant temperament. One interesting point to note is that there is no mention of the saree as women's clothing in any of the books. Works coming down from the 16th century mention that women wore potto, neth, nethlashi et cetera. Women in those days were very hard working. To save fuel they used either two or four, sometimes six burners. And they almost managed everything about their household affairs.

The second essay deals with the time of Yousuf Zulekha famed Bangla writer

Shah Muhammod Shagir. There is a lot of controversy about the time when the famous literature on Yousuf Zulekha was written. As there was mention of Giasuddin Mahmud Shah, it is thought the time could be around the mid-sixteenth century. It must be remembered that the tale of Yousuf Zulekha is not a unique story as it is found in the holy scriptures. It was made into a famous love story by many writers prior to Shah Muhammod Shagir. Among them was the great Persian poet Ferdowsi.

The next essay is about baromashi, traditional songs usually sung by women in the rural areas. The songs or poems are mostly descriptions of the anguish of separation from the people they love. As the name suggests, baromashi is a song that describes events that go on for twelve months. Each month has a specific problem and the singer describes it in the form of poems or songs. The songs are not written but spread by word of mouth; they show the collective wisdom of the village people. There are similar seasonal songs or religious songs common to many countries. In some South Asian countries there are about four seasonal songs. What is unique about the baromashi in Bangladesh and its neighboring countries is that they project emotions in relation to the surroundings as they happen to be with each passing month. Many modern singers have adopted them in their songs. For example, there is Bhupen Hazarika's song, “maiya bhul bujish na”, where the boy just comes forth with excuses not to marry his beloved in any of the Bengali months.

Gul-e- Bakawli was written by Nowazish Khan, the seventeenth century writer. It is a story in verse about the love affair of Prince Tajul Mulk and the fairy Bakawli. The writer has gone into extensive research in finding out about the different versions of the story and has tried to place the writer at a given point of time. A comparison between Mohammad Mukim and Nowazish Khan's version is also presented by the author.

The twelfth century Persian poet Sheikh Saadi's presence in Bangla literature has been discussed by the author in her next essay. Bangla literature has always been influenced by Persian literature. Numerous Persian words are used even today. There were two streams of writing in the Middle Ages, according to Dr. Razia Khan. One was the love stories of famous people and the other which expressed the teachings of great men. Sheikh Saadi was of the latter kind. Gulistan or the Rose Garden remains his most famous work. It is in prose form and describes personal anecdotes. It comes in a package of numerous poems, advice and humorous reflections. Gulistan has been translated by many different Bengali writers, among whom are Augustine D Silva from Sylhet and poet Akmol. Comparative analyses are the main topic of the essay.

Bidrohi by Kazi Nazrul Islam came by a lot of criticism by the establishment when it first appeared before the reading public. Nevertheless it still remains one of the few masterpieces in Bangla Literature. Prof Razia Sultana has collected comments made by various famous editors in their papers in the essay “Bidrohi: Prashongik Bhavona.” Many parodies were made of the poem and Nazrul was titled as Gazi Abbas Bitkel. The well known writer of the time Mohit Lal claimed that Nazrul wrote Bidrohi being influenced by his poem Ami.

There is a tradition of Nayori in Bangladesh. The meaning is original home but in this country it usually means the girl's parental home where she longs to go on holidays. Many songs and other cultural events surround this Nayori. There is a lot of use of Nayori in out traditional literature. Professor Razia Sultana aptly describes the event related to Nayori and its presence in Bangladesh's culture.

A slim book of some 139 pages, the work is a compilation of various social and cultural events that give substance to Bengali rural life. It will be of interest to readers who want to get a broad picture of the literary history of Bangladesh and its progression. The newer generation, which is oblivious to the literary background of Bengali society, can also use it as a valuable record for research purposes. It will certainly enrich a collector's volume.

Jackie Kabir is a critic, writer and teacher.

Published in Star Literature page on Saturday, February 12, 2011

Baromashi: The anguish of separation

2011-04-20T04:53:00.002-10:00

Little known by city folk, Baromashi is a tradition where rural women give voice to their woes and worries through song

by Jackie Kabir

Baromashi. The traditional music usually sang by women in the rural areas. The songs or poems are mostly to describe the anguish of separation from the people they love. The pain usually merges with the events or the work one has to do every month throughout the year. Sometimes it unveils the physical and mental hardship women go through during different seasons.

Baromashi, as the name suggests, is a song that goes on for twelve months. Each month has a specific characteristic and a landscape. The songs are composed with the collective wisdom of the village folks. These are similar to seasonal songs or religious songs common to many countries. In those countries there are about four seasonal songs. What is unique about the Baromashi in Bangladesh and its neighboring countries is that they describe their emotions in relation to the surroundings naming each month. For example Boisakh is the first month of the Bengali calendar when spinach and jute grows, so it is said that (in translation):

“All people eat spinach, the limbs of the wife are bitter.

She cooked and prepared spinach and poured it on a plate.

My dear merchant is not at home, to whom shall I give it?

In the month of Jaysto hot is the sun

Hundreds of mangoes are ripe and huge jackfruit

I would eat mangoes, I would eat jackfruit,

Milk of five cows.

If my dear merchant were home, we would play together.

In the month of Ashar, there is new water in the Ganges,

The milkman shouts: ‘Take curds! Take curd!’

Whose curds, who will take, who would like to eat it?

The merchant is not at home, my days pass in fasting.

In this month of Sraban, householders cut the paddy

The Kora birds call, sitting on the rice stalks

Dak calls, damphala calls, bora calls, sitting there,

The call of the cruel bird kokil made my ribs split.

And it goes on for the twelve months

In this month of Chaitra, the wind chaitali is at its height.

The wife whose merchant is home is very proud

What a wife is she whose merchant is not at home?

I am unhappy wife, I am dying in pain.

Professor Razia Sultana of the University of Dhaka did research on Baromashi and this is her book Shahitya Bikkhon. The paper gives an overview of the different kinds of Baromashi that are sung by the women of the rural areas of Bangladesh. According to their subjects they can be divided in many different genres. There are

Religious Baromashi

Harvest Baromashi

Descriptive Baromashi

Baromashi on anguish of separation.

Soul searching Baromnashi

Experimental Baromashi

Personal Baromashi (one describes their personal feelings.)

Baromashi songs are usually found in abundance in North Bengal around Mymensingh area. Most districts have their own Baromashi in their local dialect. Dinesh Chandra Sen had collected some of these Baromashi’s from Mymensingh area in his book History of Bengali Language and Literature.

It was in the sixth and seventh century when the Baromashi on missing one’s loved ones was developed. It is mainly women whose voices are heard in the Baromashi. For example, there are hardly any poems or songs by Lord Krishna in Baishnab Podaboli. On the other hand, there are a number of Baromashi by Radha. Usually women lament or sing about missing their loved ones in the baromashis but there are some baromashis by men too.

We are all very familiar with the song maiya bhul bhujish na by Bhupen Hazarika where the man makes excuses for not marrying the girl he dates by saying that each month has a unique problem like Baisakh, Jaysto and so forth. This was taken from one of the baromashi folklore and made into a modern song.

In fact it is believed that marriage cannot take place in some of the months in the villages. The baromashi goes like

“Shaown month is a dangerous month to get married

The marriage is bound to be doomed if you don’t follow the rule.

There was a beautiful woman who got married in Shaown

Who lost her husband just the day after.

It is forbidden to get married in Bhadra too.

The reason? Well no one knows!

Everybody around the country follow these rules

Why won’t you?

There are many different rules in different districts

One, you must follow! “

This baromashi was collected by Chowdhury Golam Akbar from Sylhet. It can be found in the journal Lokshahitya Potrika published by Bangla Academy.

There are health related Baromashi where health tips are given with existing vegetables and fruits in Bangladesh.

“There are twelve kinds of fruits in the twelve months

In Chaitra we get bitter Ghima (leafy vegetable)

In Baisakh have Nalita in ghee.

Jaysto is good for puffed rice.

In Ashar the yogurt is great.

Shaown is for water rice and yogurt.

Don’t miss the taler pitha in Bhadra.”

There are many more different kinds of Baromashi which are traditional components of Bangladesh. The urban people hardly know about the existence of these. It could be a very interesting thing to have them collected for the next generation to read and understand.

published in probe news magazine Vol 9 Issue 43 April 15-21 2010

A sketch of Shah Abdul Karim Boyati's life and philosophy

2011-01-05T02:22:00.003-10:00

The 13th show of Mohajoner Nau has been staged at the Experimental Hall of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. The stage performance left the audience mesmerised through out the 85-minute duration of the show. The 20 or so performers did a fantastic job of captivating the audience by singing and dancing to the live folk songs. It is a musical play based on the life of the legendary Shah Abdul Karim Boyati who has composed over 1600 Bangla baul songs.
Mohajoner Nau was staged in the round or arena theatre more commonly known as the central stage with no curtains. As a result the audience feel very close to the performers in this kind of theatre. The performers walk in and out of the stage from among the audience. The play was written by Shakoor Majid, the famed writer of Londoni Konya, a television drama based on a Sylheti girl living in London, whom everybody wanted to marry in order to get a British passport created a lot of controversy. Although he had written a few dramas and telefilms this was his first work for the theatre. Shakoor was inspired by Shudeep Chakrabarti, a young lecturer of the Department of Drama, University of Dhaka. Shakoor Majid's camera followed Karim from 2003 till 2009 when he breathed his last. The tune “Payar” was used in the making of the musical drama which was often used by Baul Abdul Karim. There were about 20 songs by Abdul Karim which were partially sung by the artists trailing the life of Abdul Karim.
Shah Abdul Karim's nephew had given Shakoor Majid a lot of information regarding his life. Karim, who belonged to the cult of bauls who believe that the human body is the seat of all truths--a vehicle for spiritual journey, was born in one of the remotest villages of the country, Ujan Dhol of Derai thana in Shunamganj. That's why we find the use of boat and river in many of his songs. The boat is in fact a symbol of life or physical existence of a human being where the river stands for the symbol of journey. For Karim the boat was borrowed from its owner, only to be returned to him at the end of the journey.
Shah Abdul Karim spent his entire life in finding the philosophy behind every human's existence. He tried his best to get rid of the religious superstitions, racism that prevailed in his surroundings. Karim used to tend cows as a young man, who never took any Eid holidays. His passion for music got him infamous among the clerics and influential people in his village. They asked him to quit music on number of occasions. When one of his disciples died the cleric refused to bury him as he thought people who earned their livelihood by singing were living in sin. Finally Abdul Karim recited the prayers and buried the disciple all by himself.
Shakoor Majid had tried to show Karim's philosophy with the use of the songs. The effect of light created a dreamlike effect while describing Karim's past. The present in contrast had ordinary light, so it was very easy for the audience to travel back and forth in past and future. Even the imagery of boat with its peacock head was brilliantly constructed with a wooden dummy, the performers making the boa with long pieces of cloths. What was different about the play was that the central character was played by different artists at different episodes. The last scene where Karim passed away evoked an emotional response from the audience. It was a good production and a highly commendable play for everyone to watch.
published in Star weekend magazine on Dec 31, 2010.

Translation of Cease Fire from Selina Hossain's Fugutive Colours

2010-10-07T01:07:00.004-10:00

Ceasefire

Taherun asked her husband, "What are you doing, Bir Pratik Nuruddin? Are you ready to have your lunch now?"
"What have you prepared?"
"Lafa greens and shidol bhorta, mashed dried fish."
"Yes, I'll eat now. Serve the rice."
Nuruddin's face brightened at the thought of food. He smiled with a childlike enthusiasm. It was hard to imagine this man as a fierce freedom fighter. From all around, the villagers came to see him when he returned home a victorious hero. People were overwhelmed by his achievements. He was awarded the title of "Bir Pratik." Everyone started addressing him as "Bir Pratik Nuruddin." Gradually everyone except Taherun gave up calling him by that name. Now and then she called him "Bir Pratik Nuruddin" to remind him of his glorious past. He felt both joy and pride at this. He was a poor man. He didn't have much to pride in, no money, no wealth. His honour was his only asset. The memories of those days were his only wealth; they were very precious. No one could steal them from him. No thief, no hijacker. No one!
Taherun brought a plate of rice. Seeing the greens and fish bhorta on top of the heap of rice, Nuruddin felt hungry. His mouth began to water.
He hadn't been aware of his hunger before seeing the plate of steaming rice. Sometimes he told himself his hunger should be satisfied with pebbles because he collected pebbles from the bottom of the river. He told himself that a poor day labourer shouldn't feel hungry.
Taking the plate from Taherun, he said, "Bring your plate and eat with me." Taherun brought her plate from the kitchen and sat down.
The pot in which she had cooked rice lay empty near the chula. Taherun knew exactly how much rice was needed for the two of them. Not a single grain exceeded the amount nor fell short.
Nuruddin was proud of his wife's skill at estimating how much
was needed. He asked, "How do you manage to cook exactly the right amount?"
Taherun did not bother to answer. She knew men would never understand these things. They just couldn't understand household stuff but would of course never admit it. But she ate with her husband. This was something she enjoyed doing. When she was young, she saw that her mother and aunts would wait to eat after the male members of the family had eaten. She couldn't imagine doing that. She and her husband enjoyed each other's company while they ate. They discussed things, shared jokes. That was the only time they could do so. All day they collected pebbles. And, on returning home, she had to cook, coat the floor with wet clay, wash pots and pans, clean the place. Eating together was a luxury. A few moments of happiness. And she loved to share them with her husband.
When she sat down, she noticed that Nuruddin was eating with undivided attention. He had poured some hot water onto his plate. She knew he did it sometimes, specially when he was really happy. That was the time he realized that he didn't deserve anything other than watered rice. With his kind of earning how could he expect anything better? Taherun knew her husband's habits and supported his ideas. She felt he could never be wrong in his actions; a person willing to sacrifice his life for his country could never be wrong. That's why he had got the tide of "Bir Pratik" she thought.
She told him, "I'd like to have watered rice also."
"Go ahead then," said Nuruddin, without looking up from his plate.
It was difficult for him to talk with his mouth full of rice.
A bubbling noise accompanied the rising steam as Taherun also poured water onto her hot rice. She giggled and told her husband, "My plate is like the river. The river Dahuk."
Nuruddin laughed with his wife. He swallowed his mouthful. The peals of their laughter reached the yard.
Nuruddin commented, "It seems as though your plate is full of pebbles."
"Pebbles? We are pebble people after all, aren't we?"
They both became quiet. Were they really pebble people? They bowed their heads, mixing the rice with mashed dried fish and spinach.

The green bits of the lafa floated on their plates like lotus leaves on a pond. They seemed to be saying, Forget your unhappiness, forget your sorrow.
Nuruddin rubbed his eyes with his left hand. So did Taherun. They hadn't got their wages that day. The employer had told them they would not be paid that week.
How was she going to feed Bir Pratik Nuruddin? She dried her eyes. She slowly ate her food.
How was he going to tell her that he was hungry when he would no 'longer be able to buy rice?
It was not that easy to put nee on a plate. Whenever Nuruddin thought of that he was shaken. It was amazing how it took up the whole of one's time just to put rice on one's plate. For this he spent all his time near the Banglabandha and Tetulia highway and cleaned the pebbles and collected them in heaps. There were others who collected pebbles from the Dahuk. Young men, sometimes younger boys, brought thousands of stones which fell into the Dahuk, brought in by the Mahananda. Both these rivers had collected the love, pain, sorrow of people over the years. The love of a lifetime which couldn't be repaid. Nuruddin grew pensive. He thought of their daughter, their only child. She was at her in-laws' and they hadn't seen her in weeks, perhaps months. How could they afford to visit her? They were the poorest of the poor. It really didn't suit them to have extravagant thoughts. Taherun looked thoughtful as well.
She finished eating and said quietly, "Haven't seen her in a long time."
"Let's go and see her."
Nuruddin's eyes lit up for a split second before losing their lustre again. It would be sheer luxury. It was no use thinking about going to see their daughter. It would be best if they didn't think about it at the moment. The love they felt for her should be kept in their hearts, in silence. They finished their meal.
They were both trying to forget what had happened the day before . They were both burning with anger and sorrow. But they didn't express it to each other. Instead, they tried to focus on other things. Taherun had kept his tide "Bir Pratik" alive by using it all the time. She felt proud to use it. No one else in the whole village had that tide.This was her only treasure. The most valuable thing in her mud hut. It was like sleeping in

one's own bed. They were content with it, if not happy.
They stared at the Kanchanjanga at leisure. It could be seen beyond the fields. Through the mist, its tip shone with the gold of the sun. They gazed at the beautiful scene in wonder. They had a lot in their lives: the rivers, the mountains, and the pebble hills. They had to sell the last of their land to moneylenders and yet they had the dreams and courage to fight, seek, and not to yield. They would fight again if need be.
In fact they were trying to forget yesterday's incident.
As Taherun got up with her plate, she asked, "Would you like to drink some water?"
"Yes, please."
Taherum washed her own plate and poured some water in it. Nurud-din drank half the water and washed his hand with the rest. He wiped his hand and mouth with his lungi. What was he to do, he thought to himself. It was frustrating if he didn't have anything to do. He lit a cigarette. Taherun hummed a tune as she finished her work in the kitchen. It was a favourite habit of hers. Nuruddin listened to her song. He had found something to do, and it made him happy. The world was full of things to do. One just had to look in the right place. He went out into the courtyard.
He had to look for work in order to remain alive. He had had to do a thousand different kinds of jobs after coming back from the war. Ta-herun's song grew louder, and he felt as though the lovely mountain had come near his house. It glowed with the music. At the same time he felt as though the Dahuk was in his yard. He started picking up pebbles from the river bed, standing in chest-deep water. Now it seemed that all those who collected pebbles were present in his house.
Nuruddin felt utterly lonely. It was as if there was no one but Taherun beside him. The stars were making a procession in the dark sky and Taherun's music created a magical atmosphere. It was then he understood why his wife was so proud of his tide, why she wouldn't stop calling him "Bir Pratik." He puffed hard at his cigarette. His heart overflowed like the Mahananda. It seemed as though he could touch the sky and collect the stars to weave a necklace for his wife.
Taherun came out after finishing her work and enquired, "Are you going to bed now?"
114 Selina Hossain
"No." He shook his head. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep that night.
Taherun said, "Neither can I. Let's sit in the courtyard."
She brought some jute sacks from the house and spread them in the courtyard. She bent over Nuruddin's back and picked at his summer boils. She filled her lungs with the cigarette smoke. There was a time when she smoked a lot. She quit the habit during Mona's wedding. It wasn't worth it. She tried to tell Nuruddin to give up smoking, but he wouldn't listen. He was a chain smoker who lit a new cigarette with his unfinished one. Taherun knew that he would finish the whole packet that night.
They were still trying to forget yesterday's incident.
Sitting where she was, Taherun addressed her husband from behind, "Bir Pratik!"
Blowing the smoke from his mouth, Nuruddin answered, "Do you remember how long ago it was? The war?"
Taherun said, "Twenty-seven years" without even counting for she knew it by heart.
Nuruddin laughed. He started coughing and uttered with some difficulty, "Bhatia asked me to forget about the war."
Taherun was not disheartened. One can't just forget by being told to forget. The war was not such a trivial thing. She didn't pay attention to what Nuruddin was saying.
Suddenly he got up and pulled his wife by the hand and said, "Let's go to the river bank."
Taherun agreed. It would give her peace of mind if she went to the river bank. They used to do this often when they were newly married. Nuruddin was just 26 and Taherun 18.
Time seemed to have sped since then.
After he came back from the war, there was nothing in their house. The razakars and the Pakistan army knew that he had joined the liberation struggle even though he had informed no one he was going to fight. They killed all the members of his family. His four siblings and his parents were all shot, and their bodies thrown into the Dahuk river.
He didn't cry when he came back to the empty house. He watched the sky, the empty lands where his neighbours' houses had been. They were all coming back. Nuruddin didn't see any human beings. Instead

he saw the mountain top, shining in the sunlight. He was dumbfounded at its beauty. That was the time he realized a lot of people had to lose everything to acquire the freedom of this country.
One day a lot of people gathered around his empty' house. Everybody came to see freedom fighter Nuruddin of Tetulia, Dhamnagar. The amazement of the curious onlookers didn't cease. Some of them touched him, some stared at him. But Nuruddin's head was filled with a roar, the roar of the river. Or was it the stone-filled land? The land which had taken away all his father's energy and had left him weak? As he thought of his family, all that came to his mind was the stone-filled land. The land which did not speak but gave birth to life, to laughter and to tears. Nuruddin sat with his head on his hand.
Someone removed his hand and asked, "How did you fight the war?"
He chuckled looking at the young people. What could he say? How could he describe how he fought? He would make mistakes if he tried to narrate the story. So he kept quiet. He looked into the distance, beyond the fields, far into the horizon. He suddenly felt that there were no boundaries.
Yet more questions.
"How many Pak soldiers did you kill?"
"Weren't you scared?"
"We thought of you often."
"Your father was a good man."
"Your mother was a good woman."
"We will all help you."
"We will build a house for you tomorrow."
"Eat at my house tonight and sleep there too. You can return to your own place in the morning."
"You can sleep in your new house tomorrow."
"Let's go now."
Nuruddin just said that his father had dreamt of having a shallow pump so that he could grow paddy in his own field.
He started wailing. "Oh, Allah!"
That was the first time he cried. As he continued to cry, more and more people crowded around him. He felt suffocated. He kept his head

between his knees and tried to feel the pebbles in his body. He had to have the strength of a boulder. Solid, immovable.
Days passed quickly for Nuruddin after that.
The villagers all helped him to make his house. They arranged his marriage with Taherun. He felt as though everything was happening too quickly.
When he talked about earning money, Taherun said, "Why don't you plough the land."
At this Nuruddin kept quiet. He knew that this was one-crop land. Only aman could be grown here. For boro one needed a lot of water, a shallow pump. How could one support a family with only one crop? There would be new members in his family soon. Thinking of a new member, he started smiling.
Taherun asked, "Why are you smiling?"
"Just like that."
"You have to tell me why you are smiling."
His smile turned into a laugh.
"It's the thought of you having a baby that makes me happy."
Taherun hugged him hearing this. Nuruddin felt that pebbles would not hinder people like him from ploughing from any land.
Taherun spoke with her face against his chest, "I'll plant the seeds with the child on my back. I feel so happy just thinking about it. My son will eat rice grown on our own land."
Life seemed to hold no fears for them. The years ahead glowed with hope.
But Nuruddin's planning was in vain. They couldn't lead their lives the way he wanted to. The baby came, and it became difficult to carry on with a piece of land that yielded only one crop. So he started collecting pebbles from the river Dahuk. He searched the river bed with an iron rod to find pebbles. Then he picked them up with a shovel. He filled his basket with pebbles and carried it on his head to the bank.
The river bank looked very different with heaps of pebbles. Big and small heaps of pebbles. Nuruddin realized that mountains like these kept him and people like him alive. But these mountains belonged to someone else. The businessmen from Bhatia bought these heaps with money. There were another set of people who cleaned the sand from the pebbles. The pebbles were sorted into heaps of the same size. They

all looked so beautiful. Sometimes their shapes were beautiful, at other times their colour. Taherun worked with her baby strapped to her back.
Nuruddin no longer dreamt about fields of crops. He had sold all his land. The house was the only thing left.
Taherun would sit down under a tree when she was tired. When Nuruddin came to sit beside her, she would say, "Bir Pratik, I want to drink some water."
Nurrundin would bring some water from the river for her. As she drank the water, her heart felt like the pebble field. The water was absorbed very quickly by it. Their lives had changed. But .Nuruddin didn't get disheartened. He felt that there was a lovely underground land below the river. It was much more beautiful than the stone-filled lands above. But it was this work that allowed him to remain in his village. He would otherwise have been a day labourer and would have had to go where there was work. He did not want to leave this place. There would have been no point of the war then. It was on this land where he wanted to feel the taste of a free country. He wanted to be alive among the trees, the fields, the rivers, and the people. All of these were close to his heart. He had grown up amidst these. His parents, his childhood - all had to be sacrificed for the war. Even then he didn't want to move. He didn't want to be a gipsy; he abhorred gipsies.
He hated the Bhatia landlords who had come and bought their lands at low prices. They were the gipsies. They had left their own places and come to their village to make a fortune.
One of these men couldn't stand Nuruddin. When he heard about Nuruddin being a freedom fighter, he said, "What nonsense! Who said he is a 'Bir Pratik? He is no such thing. He is just being clever!"
One day Nuruddin tried to choke Hashmat by gripping his throat. He warned Hashmat that he would break his skull if he ever said this again. You rascal! You had to come to my land to become a landowner. You don't have any land of your own!"
Nuruddin's neck veins were visible as he muttered, ICYou didn't fight for the country, did you? You got it with the blood and sweat of people like us who fought and freed the country. Now we have become a problem, huh? We will fight again and drive you out this time! Either you stay here or I do!"

Hashmat didn't continue the conversation. He was a razakar, a traitor. He had fled from Mymensingh with a lot of money. A relation of his had helped him. Now the razakars were getting strong.
Nuruddin's days passed like this. Sometimes standing face to face with the enemies of the country and at other times thinking of a new war. In the meantime he continued to heap pebbles. "See, I have made a Himalayan mountain!"
Nowadays Hashmat was acting differently. There was a minister from his party in the cabinet. Fie told Nuruddin, "Forget about the war. It's not going to do you any good. The T3ir Pratik' tide doesn't mean a thing."
Nuruddin was dumbfounded. He wondered how people could forget about those days. He couldn't believe people of this country could forget. He sat near the river for a long time.
Taherun told her neighbour, Gedu's mother, "It's late. My husband will be home soon. I should put the rice on."
"What is it that you call him?" Gedu's mother asked.
"Bir Pratik." Taherun felt proud saying this.
Till that afternoon they had collected pebbles and made heaps to be taken to Dhaka by trucks.
Why wasn't her husband back, she thought to herself. Was he having a row with Hashmat again? Was Hashmat telling Nuruddin that he would get him as the razakars had members in the cabinet now?
Nuruddin was still not back when Taherun finished cooking rice. She left the house to look for him.
She saw him sitting on the banks of die Dahuk. She sat beside him and called him, "Bir Pratik!"
Without looking at her, he said, "We will fight again. We need another war."
"What did you just say?"
"You heard me!"
"Let's go home. You have to have your lunch."
He was happy that he had decided what to do. He slept like a log that night.
A few days later some young boys came and stood beside him. He didn't stop working. He was paid according to the amount of work he did. So if he stopped working it would be his loss.
Taherun was working beside him. She stopped as the boys approached.
One of the boys said, "You are a freedom fighter, Bir Prauk Nurud-din."
Taherun answered, "You are right!"
As Nuruddin looked up, the young man said, "I work for the BBC. Can I interview you?"
"Why?"
"You fought for the independence of the country"
"The war is not finished yet," Nuruddin said quietly.
"No?"
"No." His voice was firm. He didn't look at anything.
The journalist was somewhat surprised. What was Nuruddin talking about, he wondered. He wanted to interview people for a report. The people of the village pointed at Nuruddin when he had asked around.
He put his tape recorder in front of Nuruddin and said, "What were you saying, Mr Nuruddin?"
"What I said was that we are in a ceasefire."
"Ceasefire?" the journalist echood. Nuruddin returned to his work with a smile on his face. He didn't look at the journalist. The noise of breaking stone continued.
The journalist said, "Could you please repeat what you just said? We are in a ceasefire'?"
"I learnt this word during the war. Now I know the meaning of the word. We need another war."
The journalist stared at Nuruddin for a while. All his hair was grey. The veins on his hands could be seen. One could count his rib bones. The torn T-shirt couldn't hide everything.
A bit later Nuruddin said something to Taherun which the journalist did not understand.

Translated from "Ceasefire" by Jackie Kabir

An interview of Dr Anwara Syed Haq published in Star Literature page on 4th Sep 10.

2010-09-04T00:02:00.003-10:00

Anwara Syed Haq is a prominent writer in the realm of Bangla literature. She began writing short stories in her teens. This year she won the Bangla Academy Shahitya Puroshkar for her outstanding contributions in the literary world. She was born in 1940 in Jessore, where she spent her adolescent years. She obtained her MBBS degree in 1965 and in 1973 went to the United Kingdom for higher education. She returned home in 1982. She has since then worked at a number of institutions, among which are Bangladesh Biman, Dhaka Medical College and BIRDEM. Even though she works professionally as a psychiatrist, her presence in the literary arena has always been very pronounced. So far she has written more than fifty books. She has been awarded the Annanya Shahitya Puroshkar, Agrani Bank Puroshkar, Michael Madhushudhon Puroshkar and Shishu Academy Puroshkar, besides a host of others.

Recently the writers' group Gantha, initiated by Prof Niaz Zaman, accorded a reception to the eminent writer. On the occasion, Jackie Kabir talked to her about her writing career.

Jackie Kabir: We know you have two very prominent identities --- one a writer, the other a psychiatrist. Is there any conflict between the two?

Anwara Syed Haq: There is of course a delineation. They are totally two different terrains. But I deal with it very consciously. When I do my work as a person of science I am totally devoted to science; while I write I totally devote myself to my writing. A person has many different roles in life. We all perform these different roles by transforming ourselves at every necessary interval. We are in fact compartmentalized and we act according to those compartments and portray ourselves as such while dealing with different situations. I play the role of a writer, a mother, a wife and a physician. There are different domains for all of the roles. The patients I deal with are mentally unwell and the people living around me are mentally sound. But I always find a connection, a channel between the two. A mentally sound person may become unwell in no time and vice versa. So there is no conflict as far as I am concerned.

JK: You have just mentioned the many different roles you have to play. So how do you find the time to write?

ASH: I take writing as a habitual thing, like eating, sleeping and all. Whenever people ask me this question I say that a person must take up writing in her daily routine. I am saying 'her' because there are all women writers here. You must remember that if you want to write then you must read a lot. Much more than you write. A writer must find her time for both. Once Pablo Neruda was asked how he found the time to write when he worked as an ambassador for Chile. He answered that he was a full time poet and a part time ambassador. I would also like to mention here that I am a part time physician and a full time writer. I forget that I am a physician when I write. Writing becomes my only passion.

JK: I would say that it's a very big sacrifice . . .

ASH: You see, I decline offers to come on television as a doctor. But if it's a literary program then I always accept it. It is because I have always wanted to be a writer since my childhood. But somehow I got deviated from my goal and became a physician. I think I identify with my writer self more than I do with my other profession. I have advised the other writers, like Mohit Kamal and Zakir Talukder, to shun their profession as physicians if they really want to become writers.

JK: How do you choose your subjects?

ASH: My subjects are all around me. I go to the slums, to the brothels and collect the ingredients for my stories. I went to the central jail a couple of years back. My patients are the biggest subjects of my writing. I spend so much time with my patients that they get annoyed and seek my permission to leave sometimes.

You collect your materials all the time. Even the man standing behind the counter may be your subject. People who walk around you could be your subject. I study people who could at some point become the ingredients for my writing.

JK: I think then we can say that your two professions complement each other. Am I right?

ASH: I always have my eyes and ears open for collecting raw materials for my writing. One must always collect them at all times. I sometimes sit with girls who get arrested by the police. They warn me that even I may get arrested. But I really don't mind. I will have a new experience if I get arrested.

JK: We know that you have already written more than fifty books. Is there any book among these that you like the best?

ASH: You must remember that when a writer is creating something she is not at peace. Even the most interesting things may not hold your attention right then. The moment you finish writing and send the manuscript off to a publisher you tend to forget about it and also feel relieved. Then you start looking for something new to write on, a new theme, new characters and a new setting.

JK: You have mentioned that in order to write one has to read a lot. Have you read a lot of authors? Is there anyone who may have influenced you and your writing?

ASH: No, not even my husband's writing could influence me. I started writing at the age of fourteen and had also been published by then. So I had already entered my literary world by then. When I met him I had already made my niche in the world of writing. I had developed a way of thinking. I met Syed Haq as I liked him as a writer. But in no way has he influenced my writing.

JK: What about Rabindranath Tagore?

ASH: Of course I have read Rabindranath, Manik Bondhopadhyay, Tarashankar and Bankim but I can't say I have been influenced by them. I have tried to develop my own literary style. But, yes, I read a lot. One has to read in order to write.

JK: There are two writers in your family and both are very prominent in their own right. I would like to know if that creates any conflict. Do you discuss your writings?

ASH: Not at all. We don't discuss our writings at all. But, yes, I do seek my husband's help in spellings. I have a problem with Bengali spellings which I have to look up in the dictionary. Why should I waste my time when I have a walking dictionary in my house?

You see, I was educated to be a physician and was away from the language for a long time.

JK: Why were you named Anwara Syed Haq?

ASH: Everybody asks me this question. People say, 'You claim that you are an independent woman, so how come you have a parochial name?' You see, I was named Anwara Begum. I tried to modernize it by adding a 'Chowdhury' to it. But nobody noticed it. After I got married I was lamenting about this. My husband told me that maybe my name was very old fashioned and that's why people didn't notice it. Why didn't I change it to Anwara Syed Haq and see what happened? I did so, without realizing he was making me use his name.

JK: You were awarded this year's Bangla Academy Puroshkar. What is your reaction to that?

ASH: I got the prize, yes, but one must remember it was after writing for so long, towards the end of my career. By then I had already learnt all the tools of the trade, I had earned the confidence of being a good writer. I may not be a great writer but I am a good writer. So the award I got was really coincidental. Even so I am happy to get it.

When my name was announced I was surprised and happy for two reasons. One, the TV cameras started running towards me, which was something new for me. And, two, some young journalists came and asked me about my life, about my writing and wrote down what I said, which also made me happy.

JK: How you evaluate the women writers of our country?

ASH: I am very optimistic about them. There are some writers in this room right now who are very promising. I have faith in them. I would just request them to keep on writing and then, Insha'Allah, one day they will reach their goal.

Jackie Kabir is a writer, critic and reviewer

The Tales of the Neglected: A book review by Jackie Kabir

2010-08-12T23:12:00.005-10:00

Adibashider Megh O Shishir is a collection of four short stories, four essays, a novella for children and a travelogue, all of which are written on the backdrop of adivashi lives. There are numerous characters, real and imaginary that the author depicts with utmost sincerity.

The first story, Bonobhumi, is about an indigenous girl who was kidnapped by the army living in the hill tracts of the southern area of Bangladesh. The same people in the area abused her mother when she was only ten years old. Chandana would vent out against their wrongdoings in her diary everyday, and revolt by supporting the anti-government candidate in the election. She knew that her mother was raped brutally in the jungle, even despite her father's protests. He burnt the boot of the rapist, which he had left behind in a hurry. As such, the bootlace becomes a symbolic rope for the eventual hanging of the hill-tract girl. The lieutenant of the camp nearby was interested in Chandana. However she despised him and after she displayed her hatred for him in public, she was abducted. She was never to be seen again and no one could even trace her remains.

Darkak is a sad story about an Abdul Mannan who was called 'Mouna' by people. Losing his name in the whirlpool of poverty, Mouna didn't have any land of his own. Getting tired of not being able to feed himself and his family, he takes the offer of moving to the hill tracts to become one of the settlers. He begins to dream of starting a new life at the age of forty-three. As he is about to commence this new life with his new wife in an unknown land, the Shantibahini attacks and burns everything down. He is seriously injured and his body gets burnt and deformed to such an extent that it almost looks like the skeleton of a bird.

Polatok Rong revolves around a young Bengali boy who goes to visit the hill tracts. His friend and his host, was a native of the area. Amazed by the beauty of the place, he is awestruck by the lives of the people there. At the same time, he is shocked to find how vulnerable their lives were and how much they suffered from the maltreatment of their fellow Bangladeshis. One day the girl from his host family is raped and he is accused and punished for the crime. That is when he realises that the Adibashis and Bengalis can really never be friends.

The novella, Ek Rupoli Nodi, is about a group of monks who flee the hills of South Eastern Chittagong after Bengali settlers invaded their monastery. It's a sad tale focusing on their journey towards the Myanmar border. Many of them don't make it to the other side as they travel barefoot and hungry for weeks. Some of them reminisce about their past, about how happy they were in the monastery. Leaving one's motherland is not an easy job for anyone. But still, they do it in the hope of returning to their motherland some day in the future.

The travelogue 'Parbotto Bhumir Pothe Prantore' is more like a research work. It covers everything from the report of the Amnesty International on the Peace Treaty to the submerging of King Debasshish Roy's residence by the Karnaphuli Dam. Selina Hossain explains in her writing her desire to write a novel depicting the lives of hill tract people. Her daughter Lara was with her then, and she writes in detail of their travel adventure in the essay. Rangamati was known as the 'Land of God' because of its natural beauty. Bengalis started living there since the 19th century but were banned from the area in 1860s. In 1866 the Mughal King Aurangzeb took the hill tracts under his wing. Then in 1760, the East India Company took control of it with the rest of Bengal. It was not until 1785 when the people accepted the Peace Treaty, that they could rule the hill tracts. However, the Shantibahini couldn't bring them the peace that they wanted or needed. They were against using the word “Upojati” and would rather be called “Pahari.” They were also against using the word “Oupjati” for the Bengalis living there and the list could go on. To summarise, Selina Hossain talks in detail about her visit to the three hilly districts, the feelings of both Bengalis and paharis regarding the peace treaty and how it had affected their lives. The more she talked to them the more amazed she became. The essay of around 200 pages could stand as a book on it's own.

Adibashider Megh O Shishir is a highly recommended book for all Bangladeshis to read as it reveals the tale of people who live under the same sky as ours but yet remain almost unknown to us.

2010-06-05T02:30:00.007-10:00

Aunt and niece’s war with pens
Jackie Kabir

William Darlymple has perhaps rightly commented that if there is anyone born to write Bhutto family’s story, it is Fatima Bhutto. Songs of Blood and Sword, published by Penguin and Viking, is a sad but un-putdownable work which is a memoir. Fatima is the granddaughter of Zulfiker Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected Prime Minister - ousted by General Zia to be imprisoned and finally hanged in 1997. She is also the niece to the first female prime minister in the Muslim world, Benazir Bhutto, assassinated in 2007. The writer lost both her uncle and her father in 1985 and 1996 respectively. As I was devouring through the pages with eagerness I couldn’t help remembering yet another book with similar backgrounds written by Fatima’s aunt Benazir, The Daughter of the East an autobiography.
Some of the episodes from the books were like looking at the same picture from different angles.
Fatima was barely in her teens when her father was brutally assassinated near their home in Karachi. So she followed the trails left by him all around the world to find out more about her father. It was a huge ordeal for her to know about her father’s past and meet all the people who loved him. It was like broadening her horizon. She even met her father’s ex-fiancée who was a married woman at the time she was going out with Mir Murtaza. While the Bhutto brothers were living in Kabul which was as close as they could get to Pakistan, they married two Afghan sisters Fauzia and Rehana. Fatima was conceived even before her parents were married. Political turmoil made the brothers to emigrate to France while Benazir was in England. The youngest of them all died “mysteriously” in his own apartment France. This eventually broke Murtaza’s marriage with Fauzia. Later he met a Lebanese woman named Ghinwa in Syria whom he married and had a son whom he named Zulfiker Ali Bhutto Junior. He came back to Pakistan while Benazir was running for election for the second time. Murtaza was refused when he asked for a ticket from Pakistan People’s Party [PPP], hence decided to run independently. Benazir claimed that she loved her brothers but acted different when it came to sharing the power. Her actions were described by the former PPP vice president Aftab Sherpo in an interview with Fatima in Songs of Blood and Sword:
“She was vindictive. She got the feel for power and didn’t want to let go. She removed Begum Bhutto from the party because she was afraid of your father. She was on the weaker wicket; the Bhutto legacy was his, not hers, and this was always at the back of her mind.”
Murtaza returned to Pakistan on 3 November 1993. He won the election as an independent candidate. His plane was turned back from Karachi airport later he was arrested. Hundred of supporters who came to receive him that night didn’t get to see him as he was taken by the side exit to Ladhi jail. When asked by the media if there were any problems between the siblings Benazir answered
“He’s in jail, yes I had him arrested, but aside from my brother being a terrorist we have no problems, only personal ones here and there.”
She projected their differences as trivial, familial ones.
“There is no conflict between me and Benazir,” Murtaza answered - sometimes he called her Mrs Zardari, because he said she had long since stopped behaving like a Bhutto. I’m a feminist, I kept my name, Benazir would return. The argument usually met its end at this point: “There, however, exist differences in political perceptions, concepts and method.”
But there were other differences as well Murtaza didn’t like the way Benazir was running PPP and Benazir did whatever she could to keep her brother out of PPP. As Fatima explored her father’s life it was quite a shock for her to find answers to many unanswered questions.
Fatima quotes Sohail, a friend of her father:
“Its not about heirs or patriarchy…….. Mir had the same background as Benazir- he was a Bhutto, had strong relationship with his father too, and also struggled against a dictator. But that’s all Benazir had. Murtaza had clean hands, the corruption- and compromise free record, and the ideological understanding of socialist politics. That’s what threatened his sister.”
For Benezir, writing the book was a kind of heroic depiction of the Bhutto legacy Fatima Bhutto tried to bring out the injustice done by her family. It is said that she publicly accused Benazir of murdering of her father.
Benazir’s book starts with the chapter Assassination of my Father where as Fatima Bhutto begins her tale talking about her surroundings in Karachi in 2008. Later she goes on to describe the intricacies of political arena of present day Pakistan, before going on the day of 20th September 1996 when her father was killed. There is a tale about her great grandfather named Murtaza who was so good-looking that all the English women stared at him as he walked passed. One such lady, wife of a British emissary, fell in love with him and was poisoned by the husband when found out about the dalliance. Both Fatima and Benazir give this account while describing the family legacy. Benazir described the story in some what different tone in The Daughter of the East:
As the British officer came down to Larkana to punish Mir Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto, a handsome and dashing man with a whip
“Your great grandfather seized the whip and lashed the officer instead.”
But later he was caught and poisoned by the British in his hookah till it killed him when he was only twenty-seven.
Both the writers had unanimously agreed that the Pakistan rulers from the east wing were maltreated by the West. Fatima says about 1971
“The violence of conflict was staggering. Reports from East Pakistan placed the number of civilian casualties in the millions, citing around 3 million killed.
In addition to reports of sanctioned violence towards women, there were charges leveled against the Pakistani Army for its use of violence towards intellectuals, academics and minorities, Hindus specially.”
Benazir was studying at Harvard at the time and had supported her father’s endeavor to keep Pakistan intact and putting the blame on India as an aggressor. Even though she admitted that the Bengalis were the denied their rights, 80 percent of the government jobs were allocated to the West, 90 percent of the arm forces also came from there. Urdu was declared as the national language which only a few Bengalis understood. She goes on to write about the surrender of General Niazi
“As television cameras focused in, General Niazi approached his Indian counterpart, general Aurora, on the race course at Dacca. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw General Niazi exchange swords with the conqueror of Dacca(They had been at Sundhurst together), and embrace him. Embrace him! Even the Nazis did not surrender in such a humiliating manner. As commander of a defeated army, Niazi would have acted for more honorably if he had shot himself.”

In the introduction of Daughter of the East, Benazir writes she always believed that keeping historical records. She said a friend had suggested that:
“What is not recorded is not remembered” which prompted her to write this book.
“They killed my father in the early morning hours of 4 April1979 inside the Rawalpindi jail.”
She compared her family to the Kennedy family of the United States who like the Bhuttos rarely had natural deaths in their family.
The hanging of Zulfiker Ali Bhutto was the traumatic even in Benazir’s life, she described the moments when her father was supposed to be hung like this

“5.00 came and went. 6.00. Each breath I took reminded me of the last breaths of my father. ‘God, let there be a miracle,’ my mother and I prayed together.
How do moments pass in the countdown towards death? My mother and I just sat. Sometimes we cried. When we lost the strength to sit up, we fell onto the pillows in our bed. They will snuff out his life. I kept thinking. They will snuff out his life. How alone he must be feeling in that cell, with no one near him……………. My throat tightened until I wanted to rip it open.”
Fatima Bhutto described her feelings at finding out about her father’s death.
“I don’t remember how we got to Mideast or how we found ourselves in the large recovery room that Papa had been placed in.
I cried from the very rawest part of me, with my lungs and my soul fighting for the air. I wanted to black out, to fall and awake when this was all over. I couldn’t say goodbye to my father, I couldn’t accept that he had left me. My throat burnt and my body shook.”
She said that when she called her Wadi (Benazir) on the night of her father’s murder she was not given the phone as Zardari said
“She can’t speak, she’s hysterical….. As if on cue there was a loud wailing at the background. It had been quiet before, with no indication that anyone was in the room with Zardari.”
It was Zardari who informed her that her father was shot. She had criticized her aunt in many fronts saying:
“As Pri-minister, Benazir made the decision to cover her head with a white dupatta. She was the first member of our family to wear a hijab. Her father so progressive that he shunned traditional Sindhi dictates of Purdah, the system of keeping one’s women folk at home and behind closed doors………. Benazir’s choice was first of its kind; not even her mother Nusrat covered her hair; it was a choice designed to keep the Islamic parties and leaders, like Maulana Fazlul Rehman’s Jamiet e Ulema Islami- a constant election ally on her side.”
The first time Benazir was made to wear Burkah she described it like this in Daughter of the East
“We had been on the train from Karachi to Larkana when my mother took the black, gauzy cloth out of her bag and draped it over me. ’you are no longer a child’ she told me with a tinge of regret. As she performed this age old rite of passage for the daughters of conservative landowning families.”
Benazir’s mother also wore purdah after her marriage with other Bhutto women but things changed as time passed.
Benazir’s father always wanted her to be part of the greater world. He would take the children to visit foreign dignitaries and also he took them to foreign visits. He emphasized on getting good education and wrote numerous letters to both Benazir and Murtaza giving them political advice while he was in jail. Benazir and her mother’s house arrest was described in the autobiography with vivid details. Her brother’s party Al Zulfikar was considered to be the armed wing of PPP. And the papers reported that it was Murtaza who hijacked a plane, an act of terrorism.
In Daughter of the East, Benazir described her life during and after the assassination of her father Zulfiker Ali Bhutto. She stayed in different jails in till 1984. Solitary confinement for seven years had given her an aliment in her ear and left her frail physically. On her release from her solitary confinement on 10th January 1984 she and her sister took a Swiss flight to Switzerland and then to London for her treatment. It was here that she campaigned against the military dictator and waited for the time to come back to her country. She published a paper named Amul from there. In 1985 Zia decided to go for an election. But the oppression and killing of political prisoners were continued. Finally she went back to Karachi in August 1985 to bury her brother Shahnawaz in their ancestral home in Larkana. Five days later she was again arrested by the military regime in Karachi to be released in November to attend French Court for her brother’s murder inquiry. She finally came back to Lahore in 1985. There were millions of people to receive her that day she writes. She describes her arranged marriage to Zardari and her son’s birth in the last few chapters. She completed her book in 1988.
Fatima’s book, however, finishes with a sad note saying that she must move away from the shadows, the ghosts of her family. But she said that she could never leave behind her father for whom she started writing this book. That no matter how hard she tried to move away from the Pakistan she could never do so.

An abridged version was published in The Daily Star Book review Page on 5th June 2010.

Divided loyalties, betrayed love Jackie Kabir reflects on a complex tale of 1971

2010-05-17T05:59:00.001-10:00

Kartography is a book about Karachi, the spider plant city where you might find, according to the narrator, fossilized footprints of Alexander the Great. It is a heartbreaking love story, depicts the ethnic conflict which pervades Pakistani society and yet at the same time the resilience of its people. The story revolves around four friends and their lives in Karachi during 1971, which they call the 'Civil War'. The couples Zafar and Maheen, Yasmin and Ali swap their partners. While they handle the situation somehow, it is their children who can't accept the fact that one of their parents had betrayed the other.

Karim and Raheen were friends from the time they were born. Karim's parents get separated and somehow he can never get over the situation. His main aim in life is to become a cartographer and give names to the places in Karachi 'where the streets have no name'. Both Karim and Raheen are fascinated by the city of their birth and they keep coming back to it, abandoning the luxuries of the West. Maybe that is why the author has titled the book 'Kartography', with a K.

To me though, this book is about a beautiful Bengali girl growing up in Karachi and her plight in 1971. Maheen, who didn't know any other city as her hometown, was humiliated and tortured verbally as things went from bad to worse during the war of independence of Bangladesh. She was alienated, ostracized from the very society she grew up in. It was a nightmare she was going through when her fiancé declined to go through with their marriage and chose to marry her best friend instead. Maheen was a Bengali, who grew up in another language. In 1971 Zafar's friend Shafiq asked him:

“How can you do it? You are going to marry one of them. You are going to let her have your children. How?”

Shafiq's baby brother's body was found in erstwhile East Pakistan and could not even be identified. So he thought Zafar was being a traitor by marrying a Bengali woman.

With that and the pressure of society he had to let go of Maheen. But when he had a girl he called her Raheen, the suffix borrowed from his ex fiancée's name. He wanted Raheen to be friends with Karim, Maheen and Ali's son.

Half of the book describes Karachi in 1971, while the other half focuses on Raheen and Karim's friendship.

A waiter spilt a drink on Laila, another friend. Her husband stood up and cracked a slap cross the waiter's cheek and screamed, 'Halfwit Bingo! Go back to your jungle.' Maheen was present there and witnessed the whole scene. There was an incident where a beggar woman spat on Maheen in public. Even Zafar was hated by most people for being a 'Bingo lover'.

The war of independence in Bangladesh is something around which the novel revolves.

“71 was madness”, says a friend.

After the war was over Zafar said:

“Happy? Why should I be happy?…… Three days ago we surrendered to the Indian army. Of course we are not happy. We've lost half the country and most of our souls.”

Karim, Maheen's son, who had always thought of himself as a Bengali and thus a minority like the Muhajirs from the Muhajir Qaumi Movement, said to Raheen and her friends:

“ We didn't learn anything, did we, from '71?”

The generation of children born after 1971 hardly know anything about the war, as evident from a letter Raheen writes:

“ We are nearly forty-eight years old as a nation, young enough that there are people who have lived through our entire history and more, but too old to put our worries down to teething problems. Between our birth in 1947 and 1995, dead bang between our beginning and our present, is 1971, of which I know next to nothing except that there was a war and East Pakistan became Bangladesh, and terrible things we must have done then to remain so silent about it. Is it shame at losing the war, or guilt about what we did try to win that mutes us?”

Towards the end of the novel there is a letter from Zafar to Maheen explaining what made him betray her after the war, what made him decide not to marry her. At one point he says:

“Pakistan died in 1971. Pakistan was a country with two wings. I have never before thought of the war in terms of that image: a wing tearing away from the body it once helped keep afloat --- it was a country with a majority Bengali population and its attendant richness of culture, clothing…. Oh, everything. How can Pakistan still be when all of that, everything that East Pakistan added to the country?….. How can Pakistan still be when we so abused that image --- first by ensuring that the Bengalis were minimized and marginalized both politically and economically, and then by reacting to their demands for greater rights and representation with acts of savagery?”

Zafar's confession does make one wonder who Kamila Shamsie had in mind while describing the events. Maheen could grow out of her character to become the pervasive national identity that was so abused, humiliated at the hands of the Pakistani military. Born in 1973 Shamsie may represent the post-71 Pakistan generation's view. The parallel story is about Karim and Raheen, describes their love for a complex and violent city, a death city, according to Newsline. The suffering of city dwellers, the atrocities of communal riots, explosions. All of which make the book very exciting and hard to put down once begun.

It is a highly recommended book for people of all ages, especially those of us who think that the injustices done to us by Pakistanis is unpardonable. It will help us to understand that there are people in Pakistan who feel that they have lost more than just a part of their country. It may help bridge the gap between the two nations.

For the Love of Writing

2010-05-02T15:44:00.002-10:00

A voracious reader and passionate writer, Mahmud Rahman's short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, UK, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and recently his first collection of short stories Killing The Water – long-listed for Frank O’Connor Prize - was published by Penguin. Of the 12 stories five are set in the backdrop of Bangladesh and the Liberation War. Growing up in Bangladesh and later living in the US for many years Mahmud's writing covers a varied landscape. On his recent visit to Dhaka he talks to Jackie Kabir about his writing and the reasons behind the subjects he chooses to write on.

What inspires you to write? Did the urge to write begin early in life?
Sitting down at a keyboard feels like something I have done forever. When I was about twelve, my sister gave me a Royal typewriter with a broken carriage return. With a string and a stone, I made it work and put out a wall newspaper at my school, St Joseph's, then in Narinda.
For a long time, I would do other kinds of writing. Then, seventeen years ago, I tried my hand at narrative prose and found myself hooked.
I love stories. When I meet someone new, I crave their stories. And I enjoy sharing from my own life. I read voraciously. I read anything and everything. When the women in borkhas toss little flyers into Dhaka buses, my fellow passengers might let those scraps of paper fall to the floor. Not I. What words I learn from there! What ailments they describe, what miracles they promise, what fantasies of strength rejuvenated.
When I write, I prefer the same: make believe. Fiction.
In my teens, my other love was gadgets. I enjoyed using a soldering gun to build things from circuit diagrams. If the joints were good and the parts worked, I had a working radio or amplifier. I never knew enough to design anything, but I envied those who could. I enrolled in engineering, but it wasn't for me.
Perhaps my yearning to create something from scratch found an outlet in fiction. Here I could put together puzzles, conjure up characters from the thinnest of wisps, build fictional worlds.
As for the sources of my stories, inspiration can come from anywhere. Sometimes a striking image stays in my head. Then there are events from my own experiences or fragments of stories I hear from people. At other times, it can be an emotional response to a newspaper report or a book. They all go into this mysterious place in my head where stories take shape.

When did you first publish?
At the end of 1993, I sat next to a woman on a long distance bus in the U.S. and we had a four-hour conversation about our lives. Right after I got home I wrote a rough draft about our encounter. It wasn't very good. Later when I learned more about crafting fiction, I revised it. It got better. Three years later it was published in the anthology Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America.
The readers are enthused with your first book Killing the Water in Bangladesh. How do you feel about that? Do tell us how it was received outside Bangladesh.
I am very happy. How could I feel anything else?
Outside Bangladesh, I've heard from a few readers in India and there have been reviews in The Hindu, The Telegraph, Open Magazine, and The Book Review. They have all been positive.

Only five of your 12 stories are set in Bangladesh. Are you more inclined to write about themes based in the west where you have lived for long periods of time?
Actually half the stories are set here or imagined places based on the landscape of Bangladesh. I feel at home both here and the U.S. but one doesn't necessarily have to feel rooted to a place to choose it for a story setting. My sensibilities have been shaped by place for sure, but also by many other influences: people, philosophies, music, movements.
In one of the stories, Kerosene, you talked about the Biharis' role in the Bengali people's lives both before and during the War of independence. What is your view regarding their situation in today's post-independent Bangladesh?
The story Kerosene is written in an allegorical fashion, in an imagined country. It is partly based on the situation with the Biharis in East Pakistan/Bangladesh, but it also draws from the fate of similar communities elsewhere who are caught between larger forces in conflict. As for the situation with the Biharis today, I can't say I have close knowledge. I know many of them still live in squalid, overcrowded camps. That's tragic. With property prices high as they are in Dhaka, no doubt there are greedy people eying those camps. The residents might face new challenges. On the other hand, I am pleased that the courts in Bangladesh have decided to grant citizenship rights. But how long it will take them to get a semblance of equality I don't know. We as a people have not been very generous when it comes to the rights of minorities: whether it is Hindu Bengalis, Biharis, pahari people or other adibasis.

Are there autobiographical elements in these stories?
When I began writing fiction, I drew heavily from autobiography. But I was not satisfied with merely chronicling stories from my own life. It was inevitable that I would use elements from my life, but I wanted to see what my imagination could let loose. There are two stories, “Killing the Water” and “Before the Monsoons Come” where the main character is somewhat patterned after aspects of the child that I was. “Killing the Water” isn't so much about the narrator, though; it uses events, people, and settings from my childhood and weaves a myth from them. On the other hand, “Before the Monsoons Come” involves a boy who shares some aspects of the personality I had in childhood. I used to be easily frightened and wondered about strength and courage. I painted Moni, the boy in the story, with those features. However, in the wartime sequences, he evolves into a person quite different than me. 1971 changed me too, but in other ways.

What are you working on now?
I am currently revising a novel set in contemporary Bangladesh. All my stories set here have been drawn from the country of my memory. This one is different. It is set very much in today's Bangladesh. The protagonist is taken from one of the stories in the book, but in the novel he is thirty years older. He has been thwarted in his life's dreams but now believes he could have a second chance. Little does he know what he's letting loose. There's satire in the book, and there's also a bit of mystery. I'm about a third done, but still there's much more to be finished.

More about the author at his website www.mahmudrahman.com

The afflictions people suffer through:Jackie Kabir finds she is dealing with strange matters

2010-04-10T15:44:00.003-10:00

Rourob is the name of a Hindu hell. In this case, it symbolizes individual affliction. Leesa Gazi, an expatriate and an actor, has had her first novel published --- at this year's Ekushey book fair

The story is about a woman who enters into marriage with an impotent man in all senses of the word. But just as many Bengali women accept their fate without any complaints, she does it too. In the process she suffers and makes her two daughters suffer as they grow up, so much so that so that they all inhabit their individual hells. The girls never go to proper educational institutions, have never made any friends and are always locked up in their own territories. The older girl Lovely always hears a man talking to her. She is more outgoing whereas Beauty prefers to stay alone in her room. She is addicted and gets the grass from the boy working for her as a servant. The sisters are somewhat neurotic as they hardly have any connection with the outside world. And they are just the opposite of each other. More often than not Lovely will be locked up in her room with migraine while Beauty will get the latest Hindi movies for everyone to watch. Beauty is loud and speaks back to her mother, who acts almost like a tyrant, while Lovely is very submissive to her. Even the father's presence is not felt by any member of the household. He is more like a house husband after his retirement and is frail.

The main events of the story take place on Lovely's fortieth birthday. Farida Khanom is annoyed by thoughts of Bashir, which is triggered all of a sudden as she muses on Lovely's birthday. He is a distant relative of her husband and used to stay on payment in her house in earlier times. Farida is too busy to go out with her daughter that day and Beauty is in deep sleep in her room. So she lets Lovely go to New Market to buy some clothes for herself.

Lovely knows her mother will prepare pulao with hilsa, duck and rice pudding for her birthday. Every year it's the same for both the sisters. They are both appalled by their mother's meticulous routine. The girls hate the rituals with all their might and yet carried on with them as robots would. Farida Khanom has never failed to carry out her duties religiously.

Farida's family all know very well that the routine will have to be followed scrupulously if they do not want all hell to break loose. So each and every one complies, no matter how much they dislike doing it. Lovely, however, breaks the law that day. She goes around the market to buy some clothes and a sharp knife. 'Give me one with which I can cut the meat……. My husband doesn't like me squatting on the floor to cut things,' she tells the shopkeeper. Her next destination is Ramna Park, where she had never trod before, not even in her dreams. To her surprise she meets a little girl, her namesake, who sells water to her at five taka a glass. She envies the girl, who is flitting about like a butterfly. She sits there, enjoying the sunlight and savouring the gaze of strangers as the most adventurous events of her life. While she is cracking some peanuts, a rather strange person comes to chat her up. She even considers accepting his offer to go to his flat with him for a split of a second. This man whom she calls 'lal muffler' makes her go back in time to an episode of her life years ago.

Her cousin Riaz would come to visit her on the pretext of giving notes to her during their HSC exam. They would spent a lot of time playing, chatting and smooching while they thought no one was noticing. She seemed to have lived for that event. But suddenly one day Farida Khanom declared that Riaz was forbidden to come to the house; it sounded like a death sentence to her. But she acted normally, smiled at her mother as though nothing had happened. Lovely was locked up in the room for more than a week after that event. Her younger sister was somewhat rewarded for some obscure reason she didn't understand. The man in her head now asks her if she has ever wondered why Farida Khanom had suddenly asked Riaz never to come again. She sits there well after her curfew is over, knowing fully well what the consequences might be.

The plot of the story is well planned though some of its aspects could raise questions in readers' minds. For instance, there is the only mobile phone which is plugged to the charger at all times, with only Farida Khanom having access to it. Most people in this country prefer their daughters married off. So what makes Farida keep her daughters in the state of spinsters is also a question. But then, there are exceptions which makes of them stories for us to read. A husband who is impotent will surely feel helpless. But will he allow his wife to sleep with another man in his presence? Farida's husband Mukhles had rented out a room to his distant cousin knowing fully what the consequences might be. This may be yet another question.

The use of contemporary language and the lucidity of the narration makes the book unputdownable. One can just leaf through the pages without knowing when the end is reached. There is the strong voice of the writer in the narration, the pictorial description of the surroundings almost makes the reader visualize the events that take place. The ending, though, shocks the reader. And makes one wonder if there was any way the writer could at least save one of the characters from their personal hell.

Jackie Kabir writes and teaches. She is a member of various book clubs .

Not every 'why' has an answer

2010-03-01T23:44:00.006-10:00

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.

Pain, sorrow and women's lives - review of Jharna Das Purkayastha's The Blue House

2010-01-17T18:54:00.000-10:00

Jharna Das Purkayastha is very well known to Bengali readers. She has written numerous short stories. She won the Annanya Shahitya Puroshkar in 2008. The Blue House is a collection of twelve short stories which have been translated by different writers and edited by Niaz Zaman.

As I was reading the stories an all too well known picture of my surroundings, indeed the surroundings of most Bangladeshi women, came alive in the writing. The trivial events that we seldom take notice of, the humiliation women of this country face with no one taking note of them are the subjects of Purkayastha's stories. It seems as though these happenings are not important enough to be noted but Jharna Das Purkayastha does just that, makes readers see them. She depicts very ordinary events in such a way that she de-familiarises them, makes us see them anew. That is her expertise, her talent. She makes use of it in all her twelve stories.

'The Blue House' tells the story of young girls disappearing in the course of their studies. They get married and simply disappear. Abhimanu seizes his wife from behind which makes the newly wed woman shriek. People around the house are concerned as to what might have happened and thus a commotion is created. Everyone makes a big fuss about the event. Rituparna cannot understand where she has gone wrong and what is expected of her in her new found home. It takes her a while to realize that the comfort of her parents' home is no longer there in this house. She keeps reminiscing about her past and realizes that:

“Memories are hardly ever lost. They are just veiled by layers of the present.”

And that The Blue House will always burn quietly in her heart.

'The blue, green, yellow faces around us' is the story of a young village girl whose husband changes her name from Gulmohor to Rina as he thinks it is too old fashioned. She is changed into an urban housewife. It is a tale of how people give importance to wealth rather than to humane qualities, how the world values only moneyed people. So Gulmohor and her husband are dropped off halfway to their house on a stormy night. And the simple small town girl Gulmohor is lost in a crowd of blue, green and yellow faces.

'Jasmine Oleander Days' shows how all young girls have somehow to let go of their days full of the fragrance of jasmine and oleander as soon as they tie the knot with someone. This story is about Runu and her younger sister Dona. Both of whom must marry the boys their parents choose for them. Life changes for Runu once she becomes someone's wife. Dona fears that may be she will have the same fate.

One of the stories, 'Barbecue', draws comparisons between the needs of the poor and those of the rich. For the simple village girl Jaitun, a bare minimum of food will suffice for survival whereas for Mehnaz appetising heaps of barbecued chicken can be spoiled by Jaitun's inconsolable tears. The storm afflicted girl can only think of the mighty power of the tornado which has washed everything away from her life. As she hears the word barbecue, it comes as the term for a storm to her which only makes the lady of the house angry.

'Cascading Rain' is another story of pain and sorrow, insurmountable sorrow where the only son of the family commits suicide, as he cannot accept the way of life he and his parents have led. His father's meager earnings infuriate him. Most of his friends are well to do and so he has an inferiority complex throughout his childhood. As he reaches puberty the weight of the poverty just becomes too much for him to bear and he takes his own life.

The fragrance of 'The Night-Queen' announces its arrival, but the bad news travels even faster. Two street urchins have died of diarrhoea caused by rotten food from Nigar's house. That makes her very upset but there is nothing she can do. Inspired by her mother, Nigar is dead against the idea of wasting anything. This leads her maid into giving away the fermented polao to the street boys, who apparently fall ill from consuming it.

Most of the stories here are from women protagonists' point of view. Women share pain and sorrow through the changing face of society. The book can easily be termed as a page-turner. The writer has a commendable sense of and a keen eye for the anomalies of society. It is these she depicts in her fiction. It is a work to be highly recommended for readers.

Jackie Kabir and Jharna Das Purkayastha are members of 'Gantha,' a literary circle.

Realism, surrealism and everything in between Jackie Kabir explores worlds on some stories

2009-12-16T01:59:00.000-10:00

The word Oshtorombha is in fact zero. It is Papri Rahman's third collection of stories and her fifth book. Papri Rahman carries the banner of a writer, an editor and a critic, quite comfortably. She doesn't write about the issues related to women which we commonly see in other contemporary writers, as she claims. Whenever she finds a story that is out of the ordinary, she tries to colour it in the canvass of story telling. This makes her somewhat different from other female writers that we come across.

The book Oshtorombha has eight stories, six of which are in a rural setting; and the remaining two are narrated from an urban point of view. One of the stories, Shodh, depicts how a village woman takes revenge on her husband's second wife by urinating on her bed. It is a tempestuous night when the first wife is given shelter at their place. Everything is going on as usual, except that when she leaves the bed it is wet with a pungent smell. Both Hasna and Mohor Ali were astonished at the occurrence. Another story, Utshob, is the tale of a husband acquiring a second wife without the permission of his first wife. This is done on the pretext of his wife not being able to give birth to a boy. Before Moijuddi can bring his new bride home Fulmoti, the first wife, takes all her four daughters to the railway station and makes them lie down. This story has a parallel text of verses along with prose, which is unusual in Bengali writing. Most of her other stories are about female sensitivities -- how a woman develops a kind of intimacy with a man while her husband shows little or no interest in her. When the husband finds out about it she is maltreated by him and as result she kind of welcomes death unduly. Such is the subject of her story, Lucifer O Paira Barta.

Meghhin Raat Chhilo Purno Grash Chhad Chhilo is about a little girl working in a house and being sexually molested by the teenage boy of the family night after night. The boy gets up in the middle of the night to collect water for the household as the supply will be exhausted by the time daylight appears. It is an all too common scene where the weak are exploited by the strong. But we also witness the resistance by the weak. As the girl is thrown out by the landlady, she goes to the shelter of a nearby slum dweller. The boy goes to see her and gives some money to her which she leaves at the slum dwellers' bed as she leaves with her baby. That is another way to protest the wrongdoings of the strong and the powerful of society. The narrator here is the boy himself, which makes the story rather interesting. Kamala Dighi, a fable about a queen getting drowned in the lake when the king breaks his vow and wants to be with her. This is the story within the story of Kamalabati, an elderly woman who is gang-raped by some men as she does not allow them to touch her divorced daughter. Like the queen who drowns in the lake, Kamalabati is immersed in the insurmountable pains of her life. That is probably the reason behind the similarity between the names in both stories. It is a feature known as 'intertexuality.'

All of Papri Rahman's stories have female characters as protagonists. She portrays the inhabitants of her tales from every nook and corner of Bangladesh. The dialects she uses are sometimes difficult to understand on the part of an ordinary reader. This reviewer also feels that the writer uses obscure imagery at times. Sometimes the narration jumps from one person to another. Other than that, we see the use of magic realism and elements of folklore in different stories. The complexities of human life are used in an imaginative way, even though the author claims that she does not use any imagination.

In the inner jacket of her book, Papri Rahman maintains that she does not expect her readers to be overwhelmed by the stories nor does she want to be critically acclaimed by reviewers. She mentions all the theories that exist in literature, starting from realism to surrealism to magic to comedy and many more which cannot be easily labeled in the world of literature. She adds that she does not want these stories to be recognized as one or the other. She urges her readers to be the judge of what they find in her stories. Her stories are for the simplest of readers rather than for those who claim to be 'literary canons.'

Jackie Kabir, writer and teacher, is associated with The Reading Circle.

The Essence of True Love, Jackie Kabir reviews Mircae Eliade's La Nuit Bengali

2009-12-10T18:42:00.001-10:00

Mircae Eliade's famous book La Nuit Bengali was translated into Bangla by Shoshodhor. The book was originally written by a famous Romanian author and philosopher Mircea Eliade in 1933.

La Nuit Bengali meaning The Bengali Night by Mircea Eliade acted as the catalyst for Maitreyi Devi to write her version of the same story. Even though there was a deal between both the writers that Mircea's book would not be translated into English in either of their lifetimes, it was made into a movie in 1988. This made Maitreyi very upset and she even filed a lawsuit against the making of the film. She complained that it had misrepresented Indian culture and their religion.

One cannot help but think that La Nuit Bengali is more like reading someone's personal diary. It gives the feeling of authentic real-life occurrences as all the characters share the names of the real-life people. The magical description of Calcutta in the 1930s and its surroundings makes the reader travel back in time and witness a love affair that was alive, sad and heart felt.

A sixteen-year-old Bengali girl attired in a saree with her golden brown arms exposed was enough to turn a twenty-two year old foreigner wild with emotions. Emotions he had no control over. As they come close to each other on the pretext of teaching each other their languages, they fall in love. A kind of love that ignores all barriers, breaks all the rules and leaves them devastated. As Maitreyi's parents gave shelter to a foreigner in the hope of adopting him as their son, the whole family was in distress as their escapade was revealed. Mr. Sen who was Mircea's boss and guardian ousted him from his house. The real story begins here. One has to learn what goes through the mind of young lovers as they were separated from one another. Mircea's version was quite different from Maitreyi Devi's as they both felt abandoned by the other.

A young girl who worshipped Tagore believed in platonic love. Whereas Mircea with his European background emphasized on the physical aspect of heavenly love. Together they found a great love, a kind of love that is forbidden in all ages.

The publisher quoted Rabindranath saying

'If there was anything that ever conquered fear, disregarded any form of danger, even was unafraid by death, it was love.'

Like all great literary works it is this kind love that is the main subject of this book. Class conflict is also a prime theme in La Nuit Bengali. The Anglo-Indians didn't think very highly of the Bengali Hindus and vice versa. Mircea was friends mostly with the Anglo-Indians so when Mr. Sen invited him to stay at his house all his friends looked at it as a kind of trap. After meeting Maitreyi everything he did in his previous life felt like a sham, all the relationships he had with other women seemed like sin to him. Mircea was almost insane with sorrow as he could no longer see Maitreyi once he was out of her house. But Maitreyi kept finding out his whereabouts and sending him messages through a family relative. This put her in great danger as her parents would beat her black and blue every time they found out about it. So he left the city and went to live in the Himalayas and roamed about in the hills for months. Here he met a Finish girl who attracted him physically and he pretended to find solace in her arms, only to find out that it was but short lived.

Maitreyi Devi's book claimed that the love she and Eliade shared was platonic whereas Mircea gave vivid description of their lovemaking in his book. He described it in great detail which infuriated Maitreyi Devi. But it can be said without any doubt that the feelings they shared for each other was none other than a love that was true by its own right. Hence it is a tragedy that they could not be together. One cannot help but feel sad reading the longing of Mircea to lay his eyes on his beloved. Maitreyi was equally frantic to find out about him. Both the books must be read in order to find the true essence of love that both these characters shared.

Perek, a collection of short stories

2009-10-30T02:25:00.000-10:00

Perek, a nail that pricks. Minhazuddin feels the prick after coming across a one -legged person while his car waits at the signal. His younger brother Zahirul was one-legged. He died during the war of independence. His mother could never forget the fact that one of her sons was dead. She waited for him for as long as she lived. This is the title story of the book Perek, a collection of short stories. Jharna Rahman a contemporary female writer has earned her name in short stories. Most of her stories revolve around trivial everyday events, which are turned into powerful stories by Jharna's relentless playing with words. She defamiliarises the very intimate and insignificant events that take place in our lives. Perek is one of her most recent books. The writer has a very natural flow in her story telling which makes her narrative reader friendly. The visual effect of the writing is very strong. So strong that when we read the story Perek we can almost see the nail in Minhazuddin's head. The writer has dedicated the book to Saleha Chowdhury who won the Ananya Shahitya Prize in 2009.

There are nine stories in this book, three of which are about our war of Independence. These stories mainly talk about the after effects of the war that shaped the Bengali identity, the war that is the hub of our cultural and social activities. One aspect of Jharna Rahman's writing is her craftsmanship with the Bengali language. Her strong imagery allows the reader to visualise each scenario as if on a live screen. Socio economic problems are depicted aptly in short stories named 'Ekhane Kono Golpo Nei' a tale of a young woman's catharsis of emotion after a dead body is discovered in a sack. The police suspect that she might be related to the dead woman and thus they take her away in the pick up van. Here the story is about the second woman.

A young girl sitting in a corner of a classroom can suppress the presence of seventy-four male students just by being there. A bit of magic realism is used by the author in the story 'Janalar Pashe Bosha Meyeti'. A female teacher fails to notice a lonesome girl in an exam hall even though her male counterparts are fully aware of her presence from the very beginning.

'Gojar Pir', a story with perhaps the strongest theme in the book is about a Hindu woman disguising her identity in order to save her life in the tumultuous time of Bangladesh's history, 1971. 'Amina' comes to Jaheda's hut with a relative's family. She covers her head at all times trying to be the pious wife of a Muslim man. One day Mozammel, Amina's husband catches a big Gojar fish which Jaheda, pregnant woman at an advanced stage refuses to lay her hands on. It is left for Amina to cut the fish. As she prepares to cut it her sari's end which covered her head so neatly falls off and her crimson middle parting is unveiled. Revealing her identity to all who were at the yard. Her real name is Bonolata and she leaves Jaheda's house right then only to be found dead in a pond some two miles away,where her body floats three days later.

'Roth O Doiroth' is like every story in our lives which have double meaning or something that pulls from both sides. And somehow it leaves us going round and round in our eternal confusion.

'Tahminar Khopa', a lovely story about how far a woman would go in order to keep her spouse happy. When she shows off her new hair cut to her husband he comments that she looked better before. She is inspired by one of her younger colleagues who loves trying something new every now and then. The story depicts the friendship between a feminist Moumita and an old fashioned Tahmina.

'Jonpora Manush' is again a story of exploitation of an old woman who had lost all the male members of her family in the war. She is brought to town to work as a maid at an influential man's daughter's house. With the pretext of taking care of her he took away all that she had in the village.

Jharna Rahman reveals in an occasion that once she was asked to write a short story about the war of independence for a special issue, she expressed her doubt if she could do it in such a short period of time. A friend then asked her 'Why won't you be able to write a short story about the war of independence, were you a Razakar?' That triggered her in writing the story 'Gojar Pir' and many more followed. She mentions this in the introduction. She added that that remark would haunt her for a long time to come. Who knows it may even be instrumental in bringing out a collection of stories on the war of Independence.

The Stranger, A short story by Jackie Kabir

2009-09-25T02:49:00.000-10:00

A whistle tore through my eardrum as I walked along, I could see a teenaged boy through the corner of my eye. He was standing beside the tea stall and making the noise with his hand in his mouth.
I was returning home through the street with my grocery. apacket od salt which I ran out of last night, some flour and some candles in case we have powercut later the day. I didn’t need a rickshaw as the shop was just around the corner. The boy whistling must be someone from the neighbourhood. I didn’t turn to look at him. It didn’t really matter. After all what else can one expect where eve teasing is considered as a norm of the society! It’s not only pretty girls who get harassed everyday.But any woman with a vulnerable age (meaning less than 40) will be facing this kind of assault. Now it’d be different if it were a girl who wears the attitude “I mean business” with a tomboyish look then, perhaps, no one would bother her.

After climbing four flights I let sigh out of relief as I put the bags down after opening the door. As usual, I was fumbling with the keys. This two-room apartment was my little heaven after getting married to the man of my dreams couple of years ago. I rearrange my bed, my closet, showcase in as many ways as I can every now and then. I do the cooking and cleaning. There is also a part-timer who comes for an hour to help me in the mornings.

As I was lazing around the bell rang; I thought
what an unusual time to ring the bell! And to my surprise it was my husband who was flushed and shiny from the sweat. Even before I could greet him he took some kind of device with lots of wires and some smaller pieces of instrument and put it under my bed. I was about to ask him if I should fetch him lunch but he was gone as fast as he came.

I was standing on the small verandah in the late afternoon enjoying the orange ray of sunlight on my small balcony as I was having my evening tea. I always take my time while having tea; it’s like a luxury to me. I recalled it was while having a cup of tea I looked into this gorgeous guy’s eyes with whom I fell in love.

I was coming back from college with my friend as we saw this man coming at us; little did I know I’d get bonded with him in the days to come.

“Hi! how are you?” the guy said to my friend. And who might you be his eyes said to me.

“Oh Kollol bhai how come you are here? On this part of town?”

“Came to see a friend. Would you like a cup of tea?”

My heart skipped a beat when he looked at me again and my friend introduced to him and informed me that it was her cousin. We went to a nearby coffee shop and I had tea while they both had coffee. All of the thirty minutes we were there; our eyes locked, heartbeat synchronized; chitchat went along. His big set eyes told me he wanted me to trust him. With his wide forehead and a straight nose which beamed confidence of an aspiring businessman.

The next time it was just the two of us; oblivion of the rest of world in another café. Eleven months went by and he sent a proposal to my parents as the custom of our country. Even though young people are finding their suitors more often than ever; it still is customary to send proposals to the family in Bangladesh .

As I looked up I saw a police van approaching our lane. They asked a boy on the street about a house so the van came towards my house, I understood some policemen got out of the van and walked in my house. Were there four or five of them and what did they want in my building?

“They must be going to some other flat.” I thought aloud.

But the bell rang!! In my house!! Must be some mistake I told myself.

As I opened the door five uniformed officers burst in like a swarm of bees, as I stood dumbfounded.

The leader asked

“Where is the machine?”

“What? Why? What machine?” I asked trembling.

“The illegal VoIP machine that Mr Kollol owns. This is his flat; isn’t it?”

“Yes it is Mr Kollol’s house but what is VoIP machine? My husband is a businessman; he runs a shop of fax and phone. I don’t know anything about VoIP” I sobbed.

“VoIP means ‘Voice over Internet Protocol’ it is used to transfer data to different parts of the world. Only the government has the right to do so. But people like your husband is giving the facility to people and robbing the government.”

“You are mistaken. My husband is not like that.”

“We want to search the house” said the rude man and even before he finished his sentence his men went around looking for the what ever it was they were looking for. One of them shouted from my bedroom:

“I found it, sir!”

I froze. Tears rolling down my face. How could my husband do it? Did he do it to frame me up? Is that why he didn’t speak to me? Oh God what I am going to do now?

The leader was saying something I couldn’t understand.

The last part of the sentence was “you will have to come with us.”

“I don’t understand why do I have to go with you and where?” I screamed.

I found myself following them as they put something metallic on my wrists and was pulled me along.

This was published in Monsoon Letters in 2008

Unending love of a bygone era:Jackie Kabir is delighted after a reread of Nohonnote, a classic of Bengali literature by author Maitreyi Devi

2009-09-04T05:03:00.000-10:00

I read the book Nohonnote as a young girl and was pleased with myself as I had read one of the most well regarded books of any time. But little did I know that I would appreciate it much more when I read it as an adult. The book is about a forgotten love that shook the whole world of Amrita, a 16 year old girl. One has to metaphorically devour every page as you go through the book. The literary quality of the language is brilliant. The emotions come out alive as the writer describes the past that was, until then, suppressed inside her. It is also a document of a time when Bengali girls got little or no exposure. Yet Amrita managed to steal the heart of a young foreigner who later became a famous writer in his own country. The word Nohonnote is a Sanskrit word meaning - not of body; but of soul, of spirit. The novel is written by Maitreyi Devi, a disciple of Rabindranath Tagore. She was a famous writer in her own right. The story is set in 1972. It is Amrita’s birthday. She is an elderly writer and her fans have thrown a party for her, at her house in Kolkata. A young European man comes inside the house and asks her, ‘Are you Amrita?’ She says, ‘yes! But who are you? And how do you know me?’ ‘Oh, I’m Sergey Sebastian.’ He kisses her hands in the customary French manner. She realises Sergey is looking for an Amrita who was alive in 1930, not the Amrita of 1972. He tells her that she is like a princess from a fairy tale and that everyone in his country knows her. ‘But how?’ she asks. ‘Mircaea’s book! He made you immortal through his writing’. That simple event takes Amrita 42 years back in time; in their small house where Mircea came as a student of philosophy to her father. He was 23 and she 16. They did not go beyond kissing each other and yet Mircea described the lovemaking scene as a heavenly episode in his book. He became a big scholar and philosopher in France, an expert on Indian culture and heritage. Amrita’s affair at that time had made her father angry and he threw Mircea out of the house, making him promise never to look at Amrita again. He kept his word. All these years Amrita did not think of him once, not once. But Sergei opened a wound she had thought, had already been healed. She now bled and bled, without being aware that there was a wound at all. She was in a daze. Her husband and her son had to bring her back to the reality. She was now an old woman of sixty who did not have the strength or the money to go to France and see him. But her heart wanted to, so much. She told her husband who loved her, cherished her and was also her best friend who would never question her, for there was nothing ever to question her about. But he said he would help her to go to France. And he helped her get the visa and she waited for an invitation to go there. Finally, everything was arranged. Amrita came to the city Mircea lived in. She made sure he did not know about her arrival. As she walked into his office she saw the old man standing holding a book case for support. She requested him to turn around. He would not, saying that they were both married and had their own lives. She should not jeopardise anything. She told him she would just like to see him only once. She was also scared that she would see a pair of eyes that did not belong to the Mircea she knew. She was right. His eyes were like glass beads with no life in them. It is a story of love, a kind of love that is not usually seen any more. Not being in touch with each other for ages yet having retaining the connection - that is what true love is all about, the story says. It is the intensity of the passion that the author portrays in her writing that makes this book so unique. The book is recommended specially for all those who would love to travel back in time and see what the world was like for young people of that era. It is a must read book for generations to come.

Tale of a martyr: Jackie Kabir is touched by a soldier's tragedy

2009-08-07T21:54:00.000-10:00

CRUTCHER Kornel, one might be intrigued by the title of the book.. It starts with a quotation from Ho Chi Minh:
'Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability.'
Even though the writer calls it a novel, it really depicts the life and fate of Colonel Taher, one of the sector commanders of the liberation war of Bangladesh. It is very informative and interesting as the narrator gives a vivid description of Taher's life, starting from his revolutionary days till his untimely death on the gallows. It is said that he walked on his wooden leg as he approached death. He is compared with Khudiram by some.
The entire book is divided into short chapters with suitable headings. So it's very easily grasped by the reader. The historical facts are also portrayed in vivid detail, so much so that the visual effect is almost there. The leftist movement in Bangladesh, the formation of the Awami League and the formation of the first government of Bangladesh, all are described here. Before that, how the partition of India and Pakistan took place is shown through the eyes of a Bengali revolutionary. The major event that shaped the formation of the new country named Bangladesh is the central focus in Crutcher Kornel. This starts with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's speech on the 7th of March. This was in fact the beginning of the birth of the nation. As his speech was going on, General Tikka Khan's plane landed at Dhaka Kurmitola Airport. Taher was sent to West Pakistan for training at this time as the people of East Pakistan were fighting for their freedom. This fight was in fact preceded by the Six Point demand of Bangabandhu and the electoral triumph of the Awami League in December 1970.
The Taher family, comprising ten children and including Ashrafunessa (Taher's mother) has been depicted with dexterity by Shahaduzzaman. A simple village woman who reared so many children but with such perseverance that all of them were united and ready to sacrifice their lives for their motherland at a time of crisis. As children they shared the household work according to their mother's instructions. They were trained not be bow down under even the most severe pressure. In later years we see them standing close to one another in the battlefield; even when Colonel Taher lost his leg most of his siblings were in close proximity. Taher's wife and children were sent away to live in IshwarGanj, Lutfa's native town, while his parents and sister were arrested and were confined in Mymensingh circuit house. One of his brothers was sent off to West Pakistan. Taher was busy planning the most critical episode of the war, the Kamalpur operation. Major Zia was already planning an attack in Kamalpur on 3 July but was unsuccessful in occupying it. So General Osmani later gave orders to Taher to attack Kamalpur. The date was 14September, Taher's birthday. It was on that day he got shot in his leg. He was taken to Gauhati for his treatment. The country was liberated by the time he got back. He came back to the country in 1972 with an amputated leg and a crutch. He was awarded the highest title 'Bir Uttom' for his contribution to the war of independence. His rank was upgraded to colonel and he was appointed adjutant general of the army. Colonel Taher was not content with the state of the country; he always talked about the unfinished war. To him the war meant rebuilding the nation. He never considered himself as an invalid and refused to join the forum of wounded freedom fighters. The condition of the war battered country and the deeds of the Awami League right after the war pained him, to a point where he dreamt of a revolution to bring about change in the country.
Sheikh Mujib was assassinated by a group of army officers on 15 August 1975. Then the political scene in Bangladesh changed completely. Colonel Taher was informed about the killing on the same day and he refused to be part of the game. Even then Taher was suspected to have been associated with the evil deeds of 15 August. Then there was the jail killing of 3 November, followed by the rebellion of 7 November. He had to pay a heavy price for his revolutionary role. He was hanged after a sham of a trial in July 1976.
The book is well written and keeps the reader glued to its pages till the very end. Even though the writer says that it is a historical novel based on research work, the questions about the conversations, the chronology of events, if they did actually take place, are not answered. If it is a work of fiction then it is accepted that it is all imaginary. But then most of the characters in the book are still living. That would put the book in the non-fiction category.
Jackie Kabir is a critic and teacher.

Dohon O Droher Golpo, ed Jahanara Nuri, A book review

2009-06-27T23:42:00.000-10:00

The sorrows of lonely womenJackie Kabir is touched by some tales of sadnessDohon O Droher Golpo is a collection of thirteen stories about women, all of whom suffer in life and in death. As they suffer they also revolt against the norms of society, a society that is oppressive towards them. It humiliates them, tortures them and then stands up high with pride. As if the whole world is just created for men to rule over their counterparts. In the name of religion they both torture and squash them in their very own home. Society is against women who stand up to protest their malpractices. We all see it around us. It is these writers who paint it on their canvas, make it possible for everyone to understand it better. More than a dozen women are depicted who were really the victims of our modern day society. The male members of their family, even the very near and dear ones, do not spare women when it comes to finding faults with them.Writers like Anwara Syed Haq, Selina Hossain and Rizia Rahman have portrayed how the female members of the family are always looked upon as a piece of property, a mere utility in the home. Syed Haq's protagonist a young girl, has to abide by her husband and clad herself in a burkha to cover her beautiful countenance and her body. She can wear her favourite sari only once when her husband is asleep in the next room. In Selina Hossain's story an elderly person gets married to a much younger woman, who revolts in ways his first wife couldn't even dream of. Minhazuddin's daughter from the first marriage reminds him how it used to be with her mother. The father then was an autocrat. Rizia Rahman's story Kande Ma Fatema shows how getting independent with the help of the NGOs can become a curse for a poor woman. The powerful men of the village can destroy everything she has built through years of toil in hours, even minutes. Similarly Amiron's life in Jahanara Noori's long short story revolves around getting married. She has to get married a second time when her first husband dies as it is improper for a young woman to stay alone. All her family members decide that for her, without ever asking her what she wants. Undoubtedly that is the case of a lot of women in Bangladesh.Umme Muslima has demonstrates how the effect of conflict between parents can cripple a child's juvenile mind. Rabea Khatun in Vanga Biyer Kone and Shahin Akhter have written about expatriate marriages which end tragically in most cases, a common enough happening in Bangladeshi society. Parents are overwhelmed with pride and joy when their daughters get suitors who live overseas. Akhter's heroine commits suicide, according to her husband. But that may have been in fact a murder. In Brikkho Puran, Papree Rahman shows how a young girl's aspirations and dreams get crushed under the weight of society. A tree which was planted on Paribanu's birthday is trying to reach the sky. They share the same fate of getting sacrificed for the family's well being. The tree is sold and Paribanu is molested by an influential man's son; and as the matter is exposed. The family is offered thirty thousand taka as compensation. The author aptly shows how Paribanu's sister is happy at her misery. Brikko Puran is also a testimony of women being dishonoured by their own gender. Five male writers have contributed to Dohon O Droher Golpo with very strong messages. The first story, written by Syed Shamsul Haq, Kothai Ghumabe Karimon Bewa, is about a female corpse which is brought to the village of Jolleshwari. A young boy and an elderly male relative are with the corpse. One of them leaves the scene on the second day. The cadaver remains on the steps of the mazar for three days. No one knows for sure why the body has not been buried in the woman's home village. Upon enquiry it is found that the she worked for a man who was opposed to the ruling party. After her death from natural causes the man being very powerful does not allow her body to be buried in her own village. Hence the journey. Hasan Hafizur Rahman writes about two widows who live in their husbands' home (they are brothers). They once played as young girls and shared everything. They do the same in their old age. Only they have traveled the route of life, life with the deaths of their children, husbands and a war that leaves them scarred for a lifetime. Jojongondha, a flower that does not smell nice but rather irritates the whole locality by its foul smell, is another tale. The smell comes from the poetry notebook of a writer. There is a symbolic (Gashful, Kishori O Janala Oppakhan) story which shows how a village is divided by the idea of whether the houses should have windows or not. The dwellers split regarding the issue of windows to such an extent that it seems a war is imminent. The last story how is about a woman is afflicted by domestic violence. A young boy from the neighborhood helps her to run away from her home. She seems to be in a trance while the bus she is on moves. All the thirteen stories in Dohon O Droher Golpo seem to deviate from the norms of society as each deals with a certain problem in our society, a problem we are all aware of but seldom do anything about. Maybe writing about issues like child abuse, acid violence and divorce will sensitize people and thus help bring about a change at least in the way of thinking of the people of our country?

Breaking the Myth :An interview

2009-06-11T21:22:00.000-10:00

A delegation of young British-Bangladeshi professionals toured Bangladesh recently in order to remove misconceptions about them. It is commonly believed Bangladeshis living in the UK mostly work in restaurants and do menial jobs. This young vibrant group of young Britons came to have dialogues with the young generation of this country and change the existing impressions about Bangladeshi Diaspora in UK. Among them were entrepreneurs who owned super store chains, teachers, member of the national sports council and a TV presenter. JACKIE KABIR spoke to Tasmin Lucia Khan - a well-known news presenter for BBC Three in London. Tasmin began her career by working for Z TV network. Later she worked as a correspondent of PTV, covering UK's biggest stories to world wide Asian Audience. Before joining BBC she also worked for Channel Five producing and presenting a sports programme.
What is the purpose of this visit?

Ans:We are visiting Bangladesh to have dialogues with young Bengalis to change the misconception about Bangladeshis being ill-treated in the UK. We've come here to meet people and tell them Bangladeshis in Britain are no longer only restaurant workers. Another reason is that I feel for the country of my origin. I've visited Bangladesh thrice in recent years. While the people living in the UK usually want to have holidays in other countries, I visit to Bangladesh to meet more Bangladeshis.
What changes do you see?

Ans:Bangladesh has improved dramatically over the last decade. The infrastructure has developed a lot. But what we need is to take Bangladesh further up. The Prime Minister has declared that she wants a digital Bangladesh by 2021. It's possible to go digital much earlier than that. We want Bangladeshi children to have better communication skills; we want uninterrupted electric supply so that investors can find Bangladesh a lucrative destination like our neighbour India which has developed tremendously due to its ICT industry. I believe Bangladesh has tremendous potential and can go a long way.
We know a large number of Bangladeshis are living in the UK. How do you think they are different if they are from other Diasporas?

Ans:The Bangladeshi community in Britain is a tightly knit community. Imagine there are about 600,000 of us living in the main towns like London, Manchester and Birmingham. According to recent statistics, the Bangladeshi community has contributed 3.5 billion pound to British economy. British-Bangladeshis are quite prominent on the UK social map.

What do you really call yourself? A British or a Bangladeshi?

Ans:I would call myself a British-Bangladeshi Muslim. You see Britain gives me the freedom of retaining my identity. I am a Muslim and am allowed to pray or wear a hijab. And if anyone is not allowed to do so then they can be questioned. There have been many incidences of establishing one's right with the help of law. So that's the kind of freedom we enjoy in Britain.
What do you think is the future of Islam in the UK?

Ans:There are about 1500 mosques in the UK. There are well above two million Muslims in the UK. These figures are enough to show how Islam is practiced there. When you walk past East London mosque you can hear the azaan and I think it is beautiful. The Muslims in the UK are 'informed Muslims' which means they first learnt about the religion and then started practicing it. So we would like to see more of these people. If you just memorise the Quran and recite the surahs, you wouldn't know what it means. You know as I have got a very modern and contemporary look, my English friends ask me about our prayers. If I don't know what it means how can I tell them about it? For me every Muslim is an ambassador for her religion. That's why each Muslim should be an ambassador to their communities. That is what Islam is all about. I was taught about my religion by the famous singer Cat Stevens who converted to Islam and came known as Yusuf Islam and subsequently became a philanthropist and Islamic educator. I think the future of Islam in UK is pretty positive.

Waiting for sun to shine in a battered land: book review A thousand splendid Suns

2009-05-28T07:08:00.001-10:00

Afghanistan, the name brings images of war-inflicted, Bin Laden’s hiding heaven, America’s war on terror-labeled BBC or CNN documentary or news dispatches. Unless of course one reads Khaled Husseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. The book puts colour to the black and gray picture of the war-demolished country drawn by the world media. He dedicates the book to Haris and Farah and to the women of Afghanistan. Even though the country has been in war for almost three decades and around eight million refugees spread all over the world have been away from their motherland, Husseini draws the picture of new beginning for the country.
The novel begins with Nana calling her daughter harami, a word the daughter was not familiar with. It was only years later she could relate the word with her husband’s co-wife who had an illegitimate child. Marium was in her late 30s when her around-50 husband married a young girl of fifteen who was the only survivor of the neighboring family. As Laila’s house, along with her parents, was blown apart by a bomb, she was rescued by her next-door neighbour Rasheed. Only to ask her to marry him when she got better. Laila knowing she was pregnant with her childhood friend’s child which was conceived by her only communion with Tariq, a boy she grew up with.
The novel has a distinct voice, a woman’s voice, a mother declaring doomsday for her daughter, as she was a harami, a bustard child who wouldn’t be accepted in the world as a normal person. The women of Afghanistan give their entire lives to the family’s welfare only to be maltreated by their male counterparts. Husseini draws the picture of city, mourning for the youth who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of their motherland. Only to be ruled by one invader after the other. The revolution of 1978 left Kabul in the hands of Air Force Colonel Abdul Quader who defeated Daud loyalists. The Afghans thought that the communists of Soviet Union would save the country from the oppression that the people suffered. But they were only greeted with the atrocities of the war with its landmines and the conflict between the Tajiks and the Pushtuns.
Laila’s mother had her two sons joining the Mejahedins and she waited for the day the Soviets would leave so that the Mujahedin could declare Kabul free. The ancient city, the Red city of Chengiz Kahn. Khaled goes back in history to trace Afghanistan’s past it had, in turn, been invaded by the Macedonians, the Saussanians, the Arabs, the Mongols and then the Soviets.
The ethnically diverse Afghanistan with Tajiks, Pushtuns, and the most oppressed Hazaras were always in conflict with one another. Husseini draws his characters with utmost sincerity. A devastated country was superbly sewn together with the colours of his imagination. As he takes the readers through the narrow lanes of Kabul he shows how religion can be used as a tool for punishing the already distressed and the weak.
From 1978 to 1992 freedom and opportunities of women were gone. In 1992, the Mujahehedin took over when even the Supreme Court was controlled by hardline mullahs and they were done with the communist era. In 1996, the Taliban came. They called it “Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan”. They introduced the Shariah law in the country.
Through Laila, one of the protagonists of the novel, he shows hope still makes the people go back to live in the battered and bruised country, how the women of Afghanistan fight for their existence. The Taliban maltreated the women who had already been oppressed by the society. A woman couldn’t come out of the house with out a Muharrom or a male family member with whom she couldn’t be married. If they did they would beaten with TV antenna or sticks. There was no way a woman could go to work outside her home. So the families who lost their male members to the war had the only option of begging. There were a few hospitals where women could go for their treatment and these hospitals, too, were in deplorable conditions. The surgeon had to perform her work with her headscarf on in the scorching heat otherwise she wouldn’t be allowed to work.
Marium and Laila’s husband Raheed mistreated them even though he was nice to Laila, his younger wife for the first few years of their marriage. They once tried to run away with the child but the Mujahedins brought them back. Their repeated plea that there is no telling what their husband might do to them if they return couldn’t stop them. They only said:
” what a man does in his home is his business.”
when Laila asked them about the law the officer answered:
“ As a matter of policy, we don’t interfere with private family matters........”

As with Hosseini’s books A thousand splendid Suns has a well-developed plot, the characters are lifelike and the city though, he says, is a fictional one nowhere does one get this impression.
Even though the writer lives in the US he has a strong sense of belongingness to Afghanistan, his native country. Hosseini latest work gives an insight into a war-battered land where people still toil for living with a silhouetted hope.

The burden of a name - a book review

2009-05-10T06:17:00.001-10:00

Syed Shamsul Haq is unquestionably a pre-eminent intellectual personality in Bangladesh. He is a writer, playwright, poet and critic all rolled into one. He has won numerous awards for his writing at home and abroad, including the Bangla Academy Award and Ekushe Padak, two of the most prestigious accolades in Bangladesh. His writing career has earned him the honorific “ambidextrous writer”, meaning someone who can work with both his hands. Haq has been one of the most prolific writers of recent times in the field of literature for more than fifty years now. A number of his plays and novels have been translated in many different languages.The Blue Sting is a novella by Syed Shamsul Haq and translated by Kabir Chowdhury, a scholar of repute and translator. The slim book has a heavy message to convey. It is about a man named Kazi Nazrul Islam, a name that gets the Pakistani army into believing that the owner of the name is the famous Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. The whole novella is about Nazrul Islam's ordeal in an interrogation cell of a jail. The writer aptly shows the feeling of an innocent man as he is taken in by the soldiers. It is about how he tries to explain that his similarity with the rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam and himself ends in their names and the fact they are both originally from Burdwan. But his explanation does not satisfy his tormentors. They persist in torturing him with all their hideous methods, hoping that he will somehow reveal his identity. They keep him without food and water and finally treat him with water therapy. As they do not get any results, their anger rises and they beat him to a pulp and leave him unconscious. Finally they bury him alive. A significant aspect of the book is that the cruelty of the Pakistani army is dealt with remarkable dexterity. The other, of course, is the irony of the protagonist being the namesake of a reputed poet. Readers are liable to be shocked by the vivid descriptions of the atrocities committed by Pakistan's soldiers. The tale also shows how helpless one might feel in the kind of situation Nazrul is in. It is also noteworthy that the army has no knowledge about the famous poet and his whereabouts. This bit of information could be vital for Kazi Nazrul Islam's fate as he bears that famous name. The protagonist's predicament also provides glimpses of the situation in Dhaka during the War of Liberation. People having no connection with politics also become active during that period and attend the public rally where Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman delivers his stirring address. And they witness the birth of a new nation that has long been manipulated by foreign forces. The narrative is in tune with the realistic. The easy language of the questioners and the detainee make the book a comfortable read. It is quite enjoyable other than the fact that the description of the punishment meted out to the protagonist can make the reader feeling rather disturbed. The author dexterously portrays the psychology, the state of mind of the protagonist. But, as in most translated Bengali works, some English phrases sound unusual. The book has been segmented into eleven short chapters and can easily be a page-turner. It is one of Syed Haq's most well-known works and so it is commendable that Professor Kabir Chowdhury took it up for translation. The book is dedicated to Ruby Rahman and to the memory of her late husband Nurul Islam.

Jackie Kabir is a teacher and critic

Interview with Selina Hossain

2009-05-03T22:06:00.000-10:00

Selina Hossain has been awarded the 'Ekushe Padak' this year. She has been writing for more than four decades. One of the leading female writers in Bangladesh, Hossain was born on June 14, 1947 in Rajshahi. She started writing in the 60s and her first book, a collection of short stories, came out in 1969. She has written more than 60 books so far. Japito Jibon, one of her books, is taught at Rabindra Biswa Bharati University and another book named Nirontor Ghontadhoni is being taught at Jadhovpur University. Many of her works have been translated into different languages. JACKIE KABIR talks to her about her life and works.

Q.How long have you been writing?

Ans:I have been writing from 1964. So it has been forty years.

Q.Did you start writing fiction from the beginning?

Ans:I wrote poems first. When we were young, we used to live in Rajshahi because of my father's job. I used to fill the dairies up with poems. Some of which were published in different magazines in Dhaka. But as I grew older I realised that the background that I grew up needed to be portrayed on a bigger canvas and poems would be insufficient for that, so I switched to stories and narratives. In 1964 there was a writing competition in the Rajshahi division. I was an intermediate student at that time; all the colleges participated in that competition. I sent a short story and won the first prize. That was the first time I ventured into writing.

Q.You have mostly portrayed the less fortunate or sometimes even the oppressed, why is this so?

Ans:Well I always look for variation of subjects in my work. The reason behind this is that we stayed in Bogra near the mighty river Korotoa in the fifties. Besides his regular job, my father used to practice Homeopathy. As a child I was appointed as his helper for making the small beads of sugar. As I would do this I would hear different stories from people. As my father would treat the villagers they would narrate sad, happy episodes of their lives. I was curious to know these stories, which, later during my university days, inspired me to write stories. I can give one example: as a child I used roam around the village a lot. We used to have a boatman named Bari who would ferry us across Korotoa. Though he was thin, his wife was a stout woman called Shonamoye. One day their house was on fire and I saw the lady of the house carry a huge sack of rice on her back as she came out of the carnage. This scene would come back to me over and over again. The fight for survival, of saving one's possession with the last bit of strength enthralled me as a child. These incidents made me interested in the ordinary people and their lives.

Q.What inspires you to write?

Ans:The landscape around the river Korotoa, the fields, the trees and the people inspired me to write. I didn't start writing till I was in university. My life in the village had already instilled the rural elements in me as a child. I took the ingredients from where I spent my childhood.What is your view about the political situation of Bangladesh? We have witnessed the military rule of the 60s, then the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan. To me we were always kept under the boots of the military men, and we have stood up against the oppressive forces time and again. Though it was not easy to revolt, we did get our independence at last. I have written a book named Gayatri Sondha which is about Bangladesh from 1947 to 1984. It gives a picture of the formation of the Bengali nation. In my other book Kalketu O Fullora, which is in fact a myth about a benevolent king who loves his subjects and his kingdom dearly, I tried to reverse the story by making the king a dictator depicting the military rule of Ershad in a symbolic way. Now if you ask me about the political situation of the country at present I would say that I am a bit disappointed with it. We could have done much more in 37 years of independence.

Q.How do you think the situation can be improved?

Ans:The people have to become more conscious about the political system of our country. We must remember to speak up against the representatives even if they are elected. We must point out where they are going wrong; monitor what they are doing, if they are accountable to the people who have chosen them to work for them. If the general people are conscious about these issues then only our politicians can work for the people and also will not dare to do anything to fulfil his need alone. Some of the economists say that the remittance we get is enough to develop our economy. The policy makers must take this into account and work to give the people a better living standard. The government elected by the people must think about the people and may be then we will have a change in our society. Can you tell us something about your personal life? How many children do you have?I had three children. One of them is Lara whom I lost. She was a pilot.I have written a novel named Lara. But I don't want anyone to see it as what she was like or what she did. I would rather see it as a novel about the relationship of a mother and a daughter. Not that all mother-daughter relationship will have the same kind of emotions but I did try to portray a picture to show the depth of a relationship. People have responded to this novel well. I always tell them to forget that I wrote about my daughter. In fact I ask them to read it to broaden their minds regarding our girl children; Educate girls, help them change their lives.

Q.When do you write, any particular time of the day?

Ans:I write whenever I get time. But yes I write everyday and I always plan when I am going to write. It has to be everyday otherwise one can't finish one's work.

Q.You were awarded the Ekhushe Padak this year, bagging the second highest award in Bangladesh, what are your feelings?

Ans:Ekushey Padak is like a part of my existence. It has pleased me immensely to be acknowledged. And Ekushey is to do with our language movement so it does inspire me more to write. I feel that I have been honoured. But I don't feel that I have been given any added responsibility because I have been writing more than forty years. And never have I budged away from writing about the people of Bangladesh and their surroundings. I am working on gender issues now; I am also working on compilation of a dictionary in Bengali. So you see I was already working out of a sense of duty to the society so I don't feel that the award changed that in any way.

Q.What do you think about the female writers of Bangladesh? Have we achieved what we wanted or do we have to go a long way still?

Ans:We have not educated our girls as much as we should have. If one looks at the university one can understand the percentage of female students studying there. Considering that I think the presence of women in literature is not satisfactory. But then again one has to posses some quality to be creative. From that point of view the contemporary writers are doing very well. They are looking at things from a different perspective, doing a lot of experimentation and also producing good literary work. They are also trying to write in English. This is giving them an opening to the literary world out side Bangladesh. If we want our literature to be known to the world we must write them in English, make translations. If we have 25 writers in English I would be very happy. India has had them long time ago. And it is accepted all over the world as Indian literature in English

Q. you have anything to say to the new generation of writers in Bangladesh?

Ans:Yes, I want to tell them to get to know their roots. One can't do anything if they don't know their roots. If you want to stand anywhere one must not forget about his or her own identity and work on it.

Film Review A Heartwarming Film: Monpura

2009-03-30T03:56:00.000-10:00

Mon kerechhe “Monpura” said someone in the elevator as I was going down with my family after watching the movie. The statement sounded acceptable as I was also thinking on the same lines. Monpura can be described as a wholesome and thoroughly enjoyable Bangla film. The director Giasuddin Selim is a member of the new generation of moviemakers in Bangladesh who has revolted against the vulgarity and poor quality of mainstream Bangla commercial film. In 2003, the film industry was virtually paralysed with actors and producers blaming each other for introducing vulgarity to movies. It was only in January 2006 when an anti-obscenity law was passed in the parliament which brought back many of Bangladeshi film makers as well as movie goers back to the local cinema theatres.
Filmmakers like Tanvir Mokkammel, Taukir Ahmed and Tareq and Catherine Masud have made films which have earned international fame. In 2003 Bangladesh officially submitted a film for nomination for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film was Matir Moina by Tareq Masud which got many foreign awards. Bangladeshi movies have come a long way since then. Every now and then we get good films made by talented filmmakers.
Monpura is one such film that represents a genuine Bangladeshi rural love story. True the theme is common enough and other famous writers have written similar stories. But the picturisation, the setting of the island named Monpura is what has made the movie unique. Moreover, it is not only a love story; there is a hidden satire in it.
The actress Farhana Mili who plays the lead role shows amazing talent; the expressions of her eyes are something she should be awarded for. Chanchal Chowdhury, a renowned actor of recent times is a natural in his role of Shonai. In his solitude in Char Monpura he befriends the bird and the animals that Gazi left him to look after. The islet is owned by Gazi; one of the influential landowners of the locality. After Gazi's mentally challenged son kills a woman in his house, Shonai must take the blame for the murder. Gazi promises to get him out of jail in case the police catch him. Shonai being a simple soul believes his master and goes to live in Monpura. Just when he is on the verge of losing his sanity in the quiet, lonely islet he encounters the enchanting Pori, the local belle and this changes him forever. The two pairs of eyes met and many untold tales are revealed. They meet on a regular basis until one day when Gazi comes to Monpura and decides to make her his daughter-in-law. Hearing this Shonai is furious and has a row with his master. As Pori and Shonai plan to abandon everything to be with one another the police come and arrest him. Pori gets married to Gazi's son. But the wondrous strength of her heart makes her resolute in her love. What happens afterwards is something one would find out while watching the movie.
The eternal beauty of the Bangali woman in a sari is depicted in the movie. The pleats are not once misplaced nor is her kajol smudged. The work of the camera in bringing in the effects of sun and rain is commendable. The falling of leaves and dried fruits from the trees is beautifully captured. The audience in fact is constantly reminded of the beauty of the Bangladeshi countryside. The songs, which were already a big hit in Dhaka before the movie was released, added to the film's overall aesthetic quality.

The Girl With a Gun’ Shirin Banu Mitil, an interview by Jackie Kabir

2009-03-30T03:49:00.000-10:00

Her name is Shirin Banu Mitil but she was called Mitil Khondaker during the war of independence. Mitil was born in a family where being active in politics was quite normal. Her mother Selina Banu was an active member of the Communist Party since 1938 and her father got involved with the same party in 1940. Selina Banu won in the election with a NAP (National Awami Party) ticket from a mud hut. Mitil's maternal grandparents' house where she grew up was a centre of communist activities. So, none of her family members was surprised when she decided to fight in the war along with her two male cousins. She disguised herself as a boy wearing her cousin's clothes and sneakers. Mitil was the president of Chhatra Union in Pabna district. At that time, she was also a student of Victoria College. Her cousin Jahid Hasan Jindan was Chhatro Union's General Secretary. They joined the freedom fighters in Pabna. The independence war of Bangladesh left a lot of scars in many of its citizens. Though it's been more than 35 years since then, the wounds of war are still very raw.

Q: In what circumstances, did you join the war?

Ans:As I grew up in a family which was very conscious about the politics of the country and was directly involved in it, it was hardly a surprise to my family members when I decided to join the war. My aunt, whose two sons were my companions, ordered them to fight for their country and commented that she didn't want them to get shot at the back. They were an inspiration for me.

Q:How did your family react to the fact that you were joining the war?

Ans:My eldest aunt was the decision maker of our joint family. As my cousins got ready to go for the war, I was desperate to go with them but didn't know how. But I was making banners and festoons like everyone else at that time. Suddenly, my cousin Jindan asked me to dress like Pritilata Waddedar and go with them. Pritilata was an inspiration for many women at that time of war. I put on men's clothes and went in front of my aunt and she told me she thought I was ready to join the war. She asked me to take off my gold chain and earrings and carry them with me in case I needed them.

Q:How did you fight in the war?

Ans:One has to understand when we say 'fight the war' we don't always mean fighting with a gun or a rifle. Women all over Bangladesh fought the war - some physically, some helped the wounded soldiers, some cooked for them, some sacrificed everything in order to free their homeland. They are all freedom fighters. There were three stages in Bangladesh's war of independence. The first was the primary defense stage; then came the preparatory stage and then was the severe counter-fighting stage. In Pabna district, the first stage started on 25th March and lasted till 9th April. All the 240 Pakistani military officers were killed there. As the military started torturing the people in Pabna on the night of 25th March, the public and freedom fighters together took part in the revolt. Most people didn't have any weapon so they came out with sticks, knives whatever they could get hold of. The women were driven by only one dictum “either kill or die.” Those of us who had the weapon were practicing how to fire. It took us only half an hour to learn to use rifles. Pabna was freed on 30th March. Then the freedom fighters' contingent proceeded towards Kushtia and then Chuadanga. I was moving with freedom fighters dressed as a man all the time. While going to Chuadanga from Kushtia, Jindan and I were left behind, as there was no space in the vehicle. We met the police in charge and political leader Aminul Islam Badsha and two Indian journalists in Kushtia camp. Later we reached Chuadanga with some journalists in the same jeep. As the fighters ran out of ammunition, we were sent to the border to get more ammunition from the Bangladesh Shohayok Committee. When I returned I was told that a journalist had published my photo with the news titled “A shy girl with a gun” in the The Statesman newspaper of India. I lost my chance to take part in the war as a male fighter. While my companions were sent to different camps I was sent to Ila Mitra's house. She was the famous anti-British revolutionary in Nachol. Both Ila and her husband Romen Mitra became very good friends of mine.Do you think nine months was too short a time for winning independence?We never thought we would win the war in nine months. We were thinking of the Vietnam war and thought that we may have to fight for years to come. But India intervened as it was a great convenience for them also. About one crore people were already in Calcutta as refugees. But hadn't India came to help us, independence would have taken a longer time.

Q:Do you think Bangladesh is taking a long time to develop just because it gained independence in a very short time?

Ans:Our war began from the demand of autonomy for Bengal. Later it was transformed into a war of independence. We dreamt of a country where there would be no hunger and no scarcity of food. After our independence what we needed was a government which would have participation of all political parties. They would be united with nationalistic values. Only then would we be able to make the country we had envisioned.

Q:How do you feel about the women who were victimised during the war?

Ans:I don't understand why the society should be so hostile towards the victimised women. I think they should be honoured and accepted as freedom fighters. The war came at their cost as well. In Islam remarrying a widow is considered to be a pious deed. So why wouldn't it be possible to accept a woman who has been physically violated for the sake of her country? Why wouldn't the family accept her as 'Birangona'? Why won't we feel proud that a Birangona is part of my family? It's a pity that even the title 'Birangona' has been mocked at in our country.

Q:Do you think the war criminals should be tried under the existing laws?

Ans:Yes, if you ask me. The trial of war criminals was started in 1973. There were 12,500 war criminals in Bangladesh. It is wrongly said that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman pardoned all the war criminals. Bangabandhu couldn't have pardoned those who were the collaborators of the heinous acts carried out by the Pakistani army. He only meant those who helped the Bangalis, the freedom fighters while acting as friends with the Pakistani army. There were many who saved entire families by feigning to be friends with the enemy. But those who pre-planned to kill the unarmed Bangalis can never be forgiven and we all want to see them under trial for the crimes they committed.

No Voting for the the physically challenged.

2009-01-15T04:46:00.000-10:00

The day wasn't like any other in the sense that the media, the announcement over loud hailer declared that this was the day, December 29 2008. After seven long years Bangladeshis would be casting their votes in order to elect parliamentarians representing them at the ninth parliament. So even though it felt like a holiday with no hurried visit to the washroom and choosing what clothes to put on, I felt a kind of hurry because we needed to cast our vote as early possible. We wanted to avoid the long queue. Moreover, I couldn't wait to see the inside of the polling centre. There was a festive mood all around. The people standing in the queue didn't seem to mind; all they wanted was to cast their votes.Without finding any rickshaw, we decided to walk to the polling station. When we were crossing the road near our residence, as I looked up, all I could see was the posters hanging from the strings all over - the trees, the electric poles and from one string to another. It looked quite interesting actually. We Bangladeshis are used to seeing posters on walls, on tree trunks and on the electric poles. So, for us, this was definitely something new and unique. As we reached the polling centre at Bangladesh International Tutorial school premises, we were both shocked and elated to see so many people standing in the queue. Mind you, this was the male voters queue. Women were arriving sporadically and so were going in and out of the polling station with ease. I forgot to take my voter's number that different political parties had given us when they came to our house during the polls campaigns. I thought my national ID card would do, but I had to take the help of the polling agent of a political party to find my voter's number without which I couldn't vote. I had finished casting my vote and sat in front of the school building as my spouse was yet to cast his vote. There was an elderly man with snow-white beard sitting with a gloomy face on the same bench. I enquired if he was waiting for someone. He answered that he had got up very early to come here that day. He usually didn't get out of his house often, as it was difficult for him to move about with his crutches. His voting booth was on the third floor and it was not possible for him to go up the three flights as his number was on the third floor. He was a senior citizen and had only an attendant to look after him. The attendant was standing next to him with a kind of helplessness on his countenance. I was disturbed. Surely there must be a way for this gentleman to cast his vote. I looked for someone who could inform me about this. The police and guards were the only people I could find. One of them told me he had to be carried to the polling booth - be it five or six flights high in order to exercise his right to franchise. If that was not possible then he didn't know anything further. There was another elderly lady with her family who came in a wheelchair. Now she was adamant to talk to some higher official. She was angry, frustrated and was on the verge of breaking down. Many foreign journalists were around trying to find whether voting was being held in a free and fair environment. But to my utter surprise, even the media people were not looking at her. I could feel her pain; it bore through me. I located a BBC journalist who was a friend an asked him to talk to her. She told the journalist that had she known this would be the case she wouldn't have come here. Her husband talked to the presiding officer who said they didn't have any instruction on matters regarding the physically challenged or ailing population who might also want to exercise their democratic right. And if the ballot papers were brought out of the room, the presiding officer said, they would be arrested. So there was absolutely nothing they could do. She was the fifth voter who came in a wheelchair and had to be sent back without being able to vote. There was another voter in a wheelchair whose son carried her up the stairs but had to move from room to room as he didn't know where her serial number was. It was only eleven o clock in the morning and who knows how many more voters would come during the course of day. My journalist friend got the information and may have broadcast it on the radio. But did that ease the pain of these physically challenged citizens? Could there be any words that would make them not feel useless in the society? Why hadn't it occurred to the mind of the learned commissioners who had a whole two years to plan for the polls? They could have made special arrangements for the people on wheelchairs! But they hadn't. They had nonchalantly forgotten about them.Then the information came saying that more than 87 per cent voters turned up at the polling stations across Bangladesh. But did anyone make any note of how many voters came and yet couldn't cast their votes due to some people's utter negligence in thinking ahead about them? Some of these people may not be around to see the next election. We do hope that next time around, things will not be the same for those who will have the opportunity to cast their vote and that necessary arrangements will be made for the elderly or physically challenged people wishing to take part in democracy in a democratic country.

Ashes of Veena

2008-10-11T02:46:00.000-10:00

Short Story Ashes Of The Veena*Jharna Rahman (Translated by Jackie Kabir from Bengali)

Finally the Earth Angel completed his work, the creation of the most beautiful, rare stringed instrument called veena. He made it with utmost sincerity. The dexterous workers of heaven had not witnessed so much time or patience given to any other invention of any designer. It was constructed inch by inch with music of the highest notes from the flowing rivers of heaven. The sun lent its dazzling rays to add cheerfulness and the moon contributed its blue emission for its calmness.
It was the day of inauguration of the magnificent veena. God himself touched it first with his artistic fingers then he placed it in the garden on the bank of the river Alkananda. On an altar under the Parijat tree covered with flowers, behind which the silent silver river flew. The veena was made from a stout branch of the sandalwood tree. The full moon of Kojagori purnima, which was reflected on the waters of Alkanonda, was made into its podium.
The Earth Angel freed the veena from his embrace and held it up for his disciples to see. He announced: “Can you see the strings? I constructed them from the flowing steams of the Alkanonda and Surodhini. These rivers stand both for quietness and fierceness.”
The veena was placed back on its creator's lap. It looked majestic with its glistening body shimmering. The creator was looking far ahead as if he was in trance, in euphoria. With his artistic middle finger he touched the strings of the veena. The sound that was produced was magical; it created an unimaginable environment in the moonlit night; it was as if the Parijat tree was waiting for this moment to bloom all its flowers, all the birds in the heavenly garden waited for this particular minute to fly in the sky above.
At last its creator put the veena down. He was not a creator of music; he had far more important things to attend to. It was as if everyone around was awakened by the veena's tune. Their astonishment wouldn't cease. They had never been so fascinated with something like this ever before.
Then the Earth Angel asked everyone what they thought of his creation.
'Unparalleled!' 'Unsurpassable!' was the resounding answer. No one in heaven had even heard anything like this.
“Was it for the Goddess Swaraswati, who is an admirer of veena?” they asked.
“No! Are you crazy?” said Earth Angel.
He had given Swaraswati a different veena already. It was the eternal veena with some divine mantras to play. If he gave this veena to her he would have rewrite all the mantras. Besides she couldn't give up her old veena since it was against the heavenly rules. This veena was made to produce earthly tunes and was not an eternal one but dependent instead on its owner.
“Who is the veena for, Your Majesty? asked one of the disciples. “Is it Laksmi?”
The veena's creator laughed “Laksmi, the goddess of wealth? Oh no! She is always busy with her household accounts. When does she have the time to play a veena?”
“Then who else is there on this abode of gods to play this beautiful instrument?”
“Well, the veena is intended for the earth where humans live.”
The creator touched the strings once again.
“For earth? Such a terrific instrument; who will play it there?” inquired the disciple.
“It will be played by whoever can play it. The earth is in dire state; the people there are always after one another. Even the rivers are drying up. The jungles are disappearing, and birds are no longer singing. This veena could change it all with its beautiful melody.”
The creator bent down to the veena asked “My melodious, magnificent creation, tell me who do you want to belong to?”
The veena said “I want to belong to someone who is truthful and good.”
“A truthful and good person? Where on earth would I get a truthful and good human being?” This was the one thing the world lacked; a good human being. The world was getting worse day by day. Even Brahma couldn't find one person who could be chosen as a prophet, God's man.
The veena, however, was insistent, “I want a good and honest person!”
“So be it!” declared the creator. The veena was to be handed over to Shudhoshatya. He was a really good man. He was in a village named Arkpol near Manikanagar. He cultivated his own land. He milked his cows. He led a very simple life and spent more time doing good for others and less to take care of him. He wouldn't hesitate to give the last of his clothes to a beggar and the last grain to the hungry villager.
The veena was sent to Shudhoshatya's house.
Shudhoshatya became enthralled on getting this divine endowment without asking for it. But he was at a loss. He didn't know what he'd do with this heavenly instrument, for he was neither a composer nor a musician. The only thing he knew was ploughing. Shudhoshatya placed the veena next to his bed respectfully. Since he was always very busy during the day he could only see the veena at night. It glowed in the corner of his room and he would watch it with admiration. The veena was delighted by Shudhoshatya's appreciation and eagerly waited for Shudhoshatya's touch so that the unnamed tunes could be produced. Tunes that were inherited from the flowing streams of the Alkanonda, Surodhoni and Mondakini. But Shudhoshatya had lots of work pending. He went out forgetting the veena and its existence.
Late at night when Shudhoshatya prepared to go to sleep did he cast his eyes on his luminous veena. It was sitting in silence in melancholy. He picked the veena up. The veena ceased its vibrations for it longed for Shudhoshatya's touch.
Shudhoshatya didn't know how to place the veena on his chest so he put it next to him on his bed. It glistened; Shudhoshatya put his hand on the round resonator of the veena. Then he held the strings on the fret board with his palm. Enigmatic sound, tunes out of harmony, filled the environment of the room.
Shudhoshatya didn't notice how out of tune the veena sounded as he was no musician nor did he have any idea about tunes. He kept plucking at the strings. He loved the way it resonated in the air. He used both his hands to produce the sound, out of inquisitiveness he banged on the resonator, the fret board, the brass frets. A strong but sad timbre which was in fact a cry that came out of the veena. Shudhoshatya found this very interesting.
Shudhoshatya played with his beautiful veena till midnight then he fell asleep getting tired. By then hearing the cacophony all the birds had awakened and flew around in extreme distress. Even the moon, getting alarmed by the noise, stopped shining. The river Nirajona's waters, which flowed coyly beside the village of Arkpol, stopped flowing. Only the cool breeze that came through a small opening in Shudhoshatya's room somehow placated the veena from its frenzied vibration.
After that night Shudhoshatya always played his beautiful veena with his inexpert hands. As he got used to the way veena was constructed he didn't have to look for its strings or brass frets. Even when he was lying on his bed he could easily locate where to strike in order to produce the out-of-tune melody. Gradually he came to know about veena's magical powers. It resonated if it was held by the palm, if it was stroked or even banged. Shudhoshatya made it a habit to play the veena before going to bed. And every time he played the veena the natural beauty of the Arkpol village was lost, the trees lost their green luster and the crops failed. The fish died and the birds flew away. Everybody came to Shudhoshatya for help. He didn't know what to do. He spent all his time trying to take care of the distressed people. He forgot about his beautiful veena.
The veena was left on one corner of his room for a long time. Shudhoshatya was not any expert on music. Day after day the veena would produce tunes out of harmony; which made it lose its softness, its melody. Even then it liked Shudhoshatya's touch and thought it to be the most important thing in its life. It almost forgot the heavenly music it inherited while it was being constructed. Nowadays the veena didn't make any noise at all. It lost its lustre by not being able to produce the only thing it could - the music. Its brass strings rusted, cobwebs covered it.
The Earth Angel was frustrated seeing the condition of his precious veena. He couldn't accept the fact that the beautiful, luminous veena which he assembled with so much love and care was lying in such a deplorable state. Would it not play its magnificent melody once more before it perished?
The Earth Angel went to Brahma for help. He beseeched the Brahma to at least make the veena produce its melody once so that it could awaken the world from its slumber.
The god needed an instrumentalist, someone who would understand the heavenly tunes. But then the veena belonged to Shudhoshatya and if she went to anyone else she would lose her religion. It would perish.
The Earth Angel looked at his adorable veena with water brimming to his eyes. It didn't have any life, any joy or happiness. It'd be better if it ceased to exist.
Shudhoshatya became ill from the hard work he had been doing for the long time. And he remembered his beautiful veena; but he felt appalled looking at it and didn't feel like touching it.
Nilokdip, a friend of Shudhoshatya, had learnt classical music from his guru DibbyaPrava at the royal palace of the king Chandratilak. He had recently come home, and had heard about the heavenly veena that Shudhoshatya had acquired. One day he arrived at Shudhoshatya's house, who was delighted to see his friend. Nilokdip asked for the veena, which by now had been stored in a room filled with useless utensils. Nilokdip himself entered that room and got the veena out. The veena sprang up with a tune at Nilokdip's touch. Nilokdip cleaned it and placed it on his chest. The whole room was illuminated with the light which was reflected by the round brass fret. Nilokdip took the beautiful veena in his hands and strung the torn string into its brass fret with utmost care. He took a lot of time to adjust it, then played the finest tunes. The veena shuddered to be able to produce such fine melody for the first time in its life. Nilokdip swooned with pleasure.
Shudhoshatya was almost asleep only to be awakened with the magical melody of his beautiful veena. As soon as he woke up he felt as though he was led in a trance to a wonderful world of music. It was almost midnight. Everything around was wakened; the trees were coming back to life again. The night was animated.
Shudhoshatya left his bed quietly. Following the tune he reached the unused room of his house. It was Nilokdip who was embracing his veena and producing the magical music that caressed the night. Nilokdip had his eyes closed as if in meditation, singing along with the veena's tune. Shudhoshatya had never ever heard anything like this before. He exclaimed out aloud his friend's name, “Nilokdip!”
Nilokdip opened his eyes but didn't stop playing. He finished his tune slowly and put the veena at Shudhoshatya's feet. He gently asked his friend, “You have something so precious that no one else in the world has. Why do you not value this precious gift? I'm so lucky to have come in touch with this heavenly instrument.”
Shudhoshatya eyes glistened but then he said, “Nilokdip, put the veena in its original place. I don't need it any more.”
Nilokdip answered, “But the veena is in good condition now, it is tuned. It vibrates. I want to....”
Shudhoshatya screamed, “That's why I don't need the veena anymore. I take away my claim from it. This veena is cursed!”
Nilokdip was astounded. “Cursed! It's a heavenly veena; you acquired it without any perseverance”
“It is cursed with faulty music!”
“How can you say that; this veena is blessed with melody. It has all the vibrations from the heavenly rivers flowing through it. You must honour it.”
Shudhoshatya was trembling with anger. He kicked the veena. The veena resonated and flew apart. The strings became loose. The resonator got separated from its body. Nilokdeep ran towards it. But before he could go near it Shudhoshatya stormed out. “Let it perish,” he said.
The veena shattered into pieces and turned into ashes.
Nilokdip was shocked at the incidence. Shudhoshatya left the room. A cold wind blew through the room. Nilokdeep collected the ashes and spread it in the river Niranjaona
The wind took away the ashes back to heaven where there was Kojagori Purnima.
*This story has been abridged for publication. It is included in a forthcoming anthology being edited by Professor Niaz Zaman. Jharna Rahman is a Bengali short story writer. Jackie Kabir is a writer and translator.

Homes abroad, hearts being the same

2008-07-05T23:55:00.000-10:00

Jackie Kabir has some points to make about Lahiri's new book
The writer of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake has yet produced another book to satiate her readers' thirst. Unaccustomed Earth, for that is the book, is also a collection of short stories all of which are about second generation immigrant experiences. Her first book, Interpreter of Maladies, was also mainly based on immigrant experiences and the next book, The Namesake, is about an Indian Bengali family living in the United States and going back and forth from India to the US. Lahiri was honoured with numerous awards for her writings. Jhumpa Lahiri has acquired a specific style of writing which may be considered as unique. Her environment has always been around the Bengali-American experience. There is a problem here too. For her Bengalis mean Indian Hindus as she puts in her recent book through one of her characters:“My mother was wearing the red and white bangles unique to Bengali married women, and a common Tangail sari, and had a thick stem of vermillion powder in the center parting of her hair.............” The fact that there is a huge Bengali population who are not Hindus but are Muslims somehow escapes her.Apart from that, her new book has an easy flow which attracts readers. All the stories have some very interesting and intriguing facts in them. The element of assimilation has been always a keen subject for her. Another aspect of her writing which makes her book interesting is her point of view. That means she essentially writes from the points of view of different characters. In one it is a mother's or a woman's point of view; in another she writes as a young boy who has lost his mother. She knows this variety will make her readers help avoid the monotonous tone that might otherwise leave her stories just as a repetition of her previous writings. In the last story of the book, 'Going Ashore', Lahiri has used several voices. The collection of eight short stories gives an insight to the immigrant consciousness once again. The first story is Ruma's unwillingness to accept her widower father who comes to spend a holiday with her family. As she is married and has her own life, she thinks that it would be a burden to have an elderly person in the house. The next story is about Pranab Chakrabarti, whom this narrator's parents befriend in Cambridge. People can sometimes be intimate with people they have just met and be heartbroken when they move away. This story is from a child's point of view and about a clandestine romance that blossomed between Pranab and his boudi. But it is of a kind that never means to cause any harm to anyone. In the other three stories, relationships are drawn with expertise that is more than life-like. Both the positive and negative sides of the Bengali and non-Bengali marriages or inter-racial marriages are pointed out with utter accuracy. What this reviewer finds most interesting about Lahiri's writing is that she is bold enough to show some events that would normally be left out as unpleasant. The aged couple do have fondness for each other through accepting their shortcomings. In a 'Choice of Accommodation', Amit brings his wife Megan to the wedding of an old flame where they end up making love in a dormitory he had stayed in as a teenager. While depicting the love making of a quarrelling couple, Ms Lahiri gives a description of a mother's body, a lover's body: “He placed his hand on her hips, over the stretch marks that were like inlaid streaks of mother of pearl that would never fade, whose brilliance spoke only for the body's decay. He put his mouth to one of her breasts, flattened and drained after nursing two children...........” The stories evoke the predicament of Bengali students' assimilation in the US as in all her writings. Even though Amit was born in Massachusetts, he had always been complimented for his English and his accent. In 'Only Goodness', Sudha's parents fail to acknowledge their son's alcoholism, a trait most Bengalis have. Sudha is exasperated by her parents' lack of emotion in the relationship, even though they have spent all their life together.The book is divided into two parts. The author may have had felt that the last three stories are loosely connected to one another. The first story of this part had appeared in The New Yorker a while ago. These two characters meet one another as children and again meet in a foreign land just before Hema is returning home to her wedding. Kaushik finds his father's second marriage disturbing, but his placid behavior does not give it away. It is only when his two step-sisters fiddle around with his mother's photos that he is appalled and drives away from home and across the border.In the third and last story, Hema and Kaushik meet and spend a week in a sweltering relationship that does not have any promise of a future. They are only linked by some threads from their past. Kaushik's not being anywhere describes the immigrant way of life. Lahiri shows that to belong to two cultures is in fact not belonging anywhere. It is like one having only a few possessions which can be packed and left for a new destination on short notice. Kaushik does leave, eventually towards finality.
Jackie Kabir is a teacher and critic.

Depicting the power of the male - review of Pakistani Bride

2008-05-03T07:02:00.001-10:00

Jackie Kabir
Zaitoon, a young girl of sixteen, is going to the hilly regions to be married to a “tribal” whom her father has chosen for her. She has been brought up by Qasim since the partition of India in 1947. As the British fled the country after ruling for over 200 years, they sowed the seeds of communalism. The Muslims and the Hindus have since been rivals. There were riots in every part of the subcontinent in order to make it their respective strongholds. No one knew which part would belong to whom even till the last minute while the country was being demographically changed. Lahore, a stronghold of the wealthy Hindus, was supposed to become part of India. But it went to Pakistan. Jullander, Sikh territory, was allocated to India.

Qasim flees from Jullander; on the same train travel Sikander and Zohra with their two children from Ludhiana. When the train reaches Lahore men squatting on both sides torch the train and kill as many people as they can. Munni loses her parents and holds on to Qasim, who finds solace in holding a child who reminds him of his lost one. After that they live as father and daughter.Qasim befriends Nikka and Mirium during his stay in Lahore. They become something like his family.

As Zaitoon grows up Qasim takes her to his ancestral home to be married to a “tribal” boy. Zaitoon, having been brought up in the plains of Lahore, finds it difficult to assimilate in the hills' way of life. The family she marries into also does not understand her way of dealing with things. Bapsi Sidhwa depicts the journey of the girl towards the hills in meticulous detail. The girl's “bold and large” eyes meet those of an aspiring Punjabi soldier from the army, both knowing their paths would not merge into one.

In The Pakistani Bride the desert life of Dubair and Pattan is compared with city life, with great dexterity.“Unlike the sluggish, muddy Ravi that sprawled through Lahore, the river here was a seething, turquoise snake, voluminous and deep and for the hundredth time she (Zaitoon) thought of Marium and Nikkah.”

Zaitoon's story is paralleled with that of a white woman living in Pakistan. Carol, an American, marries a young, vibrant Pakistani she earlier falls in love with at college. They come back to Pakistan. Carol loves her city life where she is among the cream of society. She attends all the high-profile dinners with her husband. There is a party every evening and “she felt like someone from Gone with the wind.”

The best part comes in her sentiment: “I don't feel I'm programmed. People are kind and hospitable. I'm having a ball.”Regarding the city she lives in, she declares: “I love Lahore; it's beautiful and ramshackle, ancient and intensely human. I'm a sucker for the bullock carts and dainty donkey carts. They get all snarled up with the Mercedes, bicycles, tractors, trucks, and nasty buzzing three-wheeled rickshaws. The traffic is wild.”

The restrictions on her behaviour, however, makes her quite tired. She is shocked to hear that her husband is ashamed of her; that she laughs too loudly and touches men. To her dismay, she is informed that “If you only look a man in the eye it means he can have you.”They enjoy the hospitality of a Major Mushtaq working at Dubair, close to which are the hill tracts.

As Carol is frustrated with her husband's obsession with her she gets entangled in physical intimacy with the major, who has also been deprived of any female proximity. But when Carol asks the major to get a divorce from his wife and marry her, he explains the intricacy of his familial niche. He says he is married to his cousin and so if they even think of filing for a divorce their families will make both their lives more than complicated. Even though Carol feels betrayed she finally comes to her senses and sees that her desire to leave her husband for the major has been whimsical and impractical.

While depicting Qasim and Nikka Pehlowan, Sidhwa does not forget to uncover the nature of politics in her country. The political parties often adopt mean ways to win or defeat their opponents. People like Nikka Pehlowan become prey to their stratagems. Bapsi Sidhwa also portrays the Hira Mandi: men's age-old desire to enjoy nights at the feet of beautiful and charming dancers. Nikkah and Qasim go to Shahnaz's quarters. As soon as her sensuous dance arouses the passions of her admirers, she retreats into the darkness of the background. The men have to quench their desires by drinking of her beautiful, naked body with their eyes before succumbing to inescapable slumber.

Zaitoon and Carol's paths only cross once in the entire story. They seem to have shared a secret that no one else has shared. Carol gives some presents to the girl who will soon be a woman and like herself will learn the convoluted ways of married life. It seems that the author has bound them together just by that meeting. They both inhabit a society where woman are need to be protected by their male counterparts. In every situation a woman needs a man to make her life smooth, make the decisions for her, maltreat her yet love her at the same time, put her in situations she has no control over.

This is what the power of the male is all about --- power to make the choices for a woman, be it for a simple young girl from Lahore or a free spirited American-born white girl.Sakhi, the boy Zaitoon gets married to, treats her as one of his possessions. He has been brought up to behave or think in that way; the society he lives in has taught him thus. It has also prescribed how a girl should act at her 'in laws'. Zaitoon finds it extremely difficult to abide by the rules. Which is why she sits near the brook and looks ahead in the desert with a longing she never knew existed. She even waves at a distant truck looking like a toy in the faraway horizon. And her husband, stalking her, throws a stone at her. She is hurt and determined to leave him and eventually it is her only desire. Hope keeps her going. She waits for the right time. Will it ever come? Even if it does, will she be able to make it to the place, where the army patrols? How can a girl of the plains find her way in the formidable hills of Pakistan? And if she gets caught she will have to pay with her life, for that is the price exacted of a runaway bride. So will she take the chance?

This the readers will have to find out for themselves. It is a fine book that must not be missed.

A young man in search of faith - review of The Islamist

2008-04-06T05:59:00.000-10:00

Jackie Kabir

As the name suggests, it is a book about the Islamic community in Britain. The West has long been intrigued by the Islamists of Asia and the Middle East. Set in the 1980s, the book will definitely quench the desire of those who wish to be enlightened about the radical Islamists of Asian origin. It is about a young Muslim of Bangladeshi origin, a British boy brought up in the UK. It aptly deals with his dilemma of being a Bangladeshi as well as a Briton at the same time. We have seen writers like Monica Ali, Zadie Smith and Manzu Islam dealing with Bangladeshi second generation immigrants being torn apart by their need to hold on to the traditional values and the need to be assimilated in their new-found home. A very few writers have shed light on the history of young Muslims turning into radical Islamists.
Ed Husain has written an autobiography describing the plight of a young Muslim boy who gets into the whirlpool of one Islamist organization or another. He unveils the way these groups manipulate the hearts and minds of young Muslims living in the West. He also shows that all such groups mainly sprout from the same origin. Or that they are the wings of main Islamist groups who have nothing Islamic about them. They rather use Islam as their political tool to gain supremacy or power.
Ed Hussain was born in the UK to Bangladeshi parents. He was just like any other Asian child brought up in the suburbs of South London. His birthday was on Christmas day and his mother would take him to see Santa Claus. The children would make a snowman in winter and would borrow their mother's scarf. In his book he declares:
“The mixed heritage of British by birth, Asian by descent and Muslim by conviction was set to tear me apart in later life.”
Teachers like Mrs. Powlesland and Cherie, who loved him and made him have faith in a secular Britain, also inspired him to stand before National Front bullies. At the same time, there was a Mr. Coppin who taunted him for forgetting his spoons and forks by saying: “So where is your Allah then now, eh? Can He help?”
That is when Ed found that he had more differences with his white peers than just skin colour. As he grew older his father announced, “Coeducation is not a conducive environment for education”. So he was put in a school “where there were all Muslims students, all male and from Bangladesh.”
Ed did not find anything in common with those who came from Bangladesh, who could not stop talking about home and some famous Hindi film stars which they had watched at home. Ed's parents were news-watching people who had but little connection with Bangladesh. So he was left to his own devices. In his younger days his faith in Islam was shaped by the Shaik from Fultholy, whom the author addressed as grand pa. His ideology was: “God is as his servant perceives him to be. If a servant perceives God to be close, then God is so; if God is seen as remote then God is so.”
During his adolescent and teenage years, he however learnt about a different form of religion --- strict, unforgiving, radical and ready to change the world. At school he came across an organisation called MET, Muslim Educational Trust, which would separate the Muslim students during the assembly and have Islamic lessons. A Pakistani Islamist leader, Abul Ala Mawdudi, whose book The Islamist Movement was the guideline for young Muslim organisations in the UK, comes into the picture. The Jamaat-e- Islami is a sinister political organisation that, says the writer, uses Islam as a political tool and demeans the Prophet's original teaching.
Ed Husain gives a vivid description of how young people get caught up in the whirlpool of moving from one Islamic organisation to another. The protagonist gets dismayed by the ideologies of the Jamaat-e-Islami and joins Hizb ut-Tahrir. Hizb ut-Tahrir is another worldwide radical Islamic group believing in a Khalifah (caliphate) system. The idea of Hibz spread like wild fire. This group also denied the role of the Prophet in the 1990s. Their ideology has been, as Ed says: “Never defend always offend.”
We also get a picture of how this Muslim organisation gets people mesmerised by their doctrine. In east London, young Muslim girls and boys give up the moderate Islam to become extremists. It happens within weeks when girls start wearing the hijab and simply ignore boys who previously had been their friends.
“Hijab became a symbol of defiance of western values and return of Islam.” (65)
The YMO or the Young Muslim Organisation arranged a 'taleemi jalsha' every week where the difference between 'partial Muslims' and 'true Muslims' was described. They impressed upon the young the young that being Muslim meant being in conflict with non-Muslims, thus ignoring the teaching of the Koran which says, “To you your religion, to me mine.”
Along with Hizb there was another organisation called the ISB, which had close links with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Hamas. These were all global organisations. In the process of trying to find the true meaning of being a Muslim, Ed got in and out of all of them but none could quench his thirst for true knowledge.
The role of Saudi Arabia in the Islamic world, notes the writer, is as the satellite state of the US. The Arab world thinks of Britain as a colonial power and enemy of Islam that is plotting against the Arab world; and 9/11 was not perpetrated by Arabs.
As the writer travells to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to his dismay he finds that Wahabbis predominate in the region. They believe that the Prophet ought not to be venerated, that Sufis are too close to the Prophet, that celebrating his birthday is an imitation of Kuffur Christian practices and that visiting tombs of saints is tantamount to idolatry. According to the Wahhabis, selective Muslim sources are to be accepted as literal truth. Emphasis must be on the oneness of God, Tawheed.
The Wahhabis slaughter or kill other sects, he narrates. Wahhabis came from place called Najd in Arab. Ibn- Abd-al-Wahhab, a puritanical eighteenth century Muslim leader for whom worship meant obedience to a great god in the skies. There was no need for intermediaries, devotion, training and scholarly guidance. His followers spread till Karbala by 1801. They destroyed the shrines, they even killed those who had a bloodline that went back to the Prophet; locally known as Sayyids and Ashrafs.
Husain is appalled by the fact young children in Saudi Arabia want to bomb London, wage jihad without knowing the meaning of the word. For them life in Jeddah is in following 70 per cent Islam; and life in Afghanistan under the Taliban followed 100 per cent Islam, according to one of his students. The book is an eye-opener for all who are intrigued by the division of the world into an Islamic world and a western world. Its easy flow makes it a book difficult to put down once begun. Even though The Islamist is an autobiography, it has all the elements of a good story told by an expert storyteller. Strongly recommended reading for anyone and everyone to read.

CLEAR PEARLS

2008-03-18T07:49:00.000-10:00

Jackie Kabir

The tears that dropped like pearls
On my shoulder
Reminded me of another crazy summer’s day,
When the skies were the brightest and the wind the warmest;
Sweat drops tasted like tears
Or was it the other way round
I couldn’t tell.
For they are both salty; aren’t they?
The passion that you had your eyes died;
As time elapsed.
Only to be rekindled with more vigor in your ocean eyes.
Perhaps the darkest corner of my heart
Will cherish those moments
Just the way an oyster cherishes its pearls.