Arts & Letters June 8, 2017

DHAKA TRIBUNE
THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Editor's note
Editor
Zafar Sobhan
Editor
Arts & Letters
Rifat Munim
Design
Asmaul Hoque
Mamun
After a special issue in May, it was not possible to bring
out another special on the occasion of Eid. An Eid issue,
offering mostly fiction of varying lengths, has a special
appeal to readers, and it comes as a relief that it is still so. It
means our readers have not failed us.
The June issue of Arts and Letters is neither a regular
issue nor something like an Eid special. It has nonetheless
been devised in a way that readers, we hope, will find as
enjoyable.
loss. The essays stoke thoughts as strongly as they touch
emotions. The poems bring together diverse voices: Some
young, some old.
The three interviews address issues that most readers
will find interesting and relevant to current literary issues.
Svetlana Alexievich, winner of Nobel Prize for Literature
in 2015, talks about the importance of nonfiction and
journalistic literature. The other two highlight feminist
theories and primacy of research in fiction writing.
Cover
Syed Rashad Imam
Tanmoy
Illustration
Syed Rashad Imam
Tanmoy
Priyo
A 24-page special, it has short fiction, poetry, essays,
a travelogue, tributes and book reviews. The two short
stories, written originally in English, will jolt readers’
sensibilities as they deal with subjects we usually shun
away from talking or recognising. The translated story,
in a flowing narrative, brings into play an acute sense of
The two short and sweet tributes to Satyajit Ray will
be loved by readers who grew up making friends of Ray’s
Feluda and Topshe. Happy reading!
Rifat Munim
Literary Editor, Dhaka Tribune
Colour Specialist
Shekhar Mondal
Ruminations on the self
Azfar Aziz
170
Who can say how much agony is needed
To distill a drop of love?
How much silence and stillness is required
To understand what compassion is?
For the bitterness of melancholia
Leaves not me alone,
Except when my beloved whispers in my ears,
“Keep on. Do. Soon it will all be over.”
That faith alone is my life.
172
No distance is now between me and my lover
Entwined we play, oblivious of time flowing beneath
But a second’s separation seems like seven eternities
And when He returns, everything disappears
Like the stars go off before the rising Sun.
Between us we now hold the universe that matters.
Azfar Aziz is a poet, musician, writer, translator, and journalist. He is also a seeker of
truth and an avid reader of philosophies and theologies including Sufism, Buddhist
Sahajiya, Vaishnav Sahajiya, Nathism, Baul movement, yoga and tantra.
Two poems of Kabir
(Translated by Rabindranath Tagore)
I.16. Santan jat na pucho nirguniyan
I.58. Bago na ja re na ja
It is needless to ask of a saint the caste to which he belongs;
For the priest, the warrior, the tradesman,
and all the thirty-six castes, alike are seeking for God.
It is but folly to ask what the caste of a saint may be;
The barber has sought God, the washer-woman, and the carpenter
Even Raidas was a seeker after God.
The Rishi Swapacha was a tanner by caste.
Hindus and Moslems alike have achieved that End, where remains no
mark of distinction.
Do not go to the garden of flowers!
O Friend! go not there;
In your body is the garden of flowers.
Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus,
and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty.
Kabir was a much revered 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint whose writings inspired people hailing from all faiths including Hindus,
Muslims and Sikhs. Kabir’s poetry draws on both Hinduism and Islam, though he was critical of certain aspects of both faiths. Some of his verses
are included in the compilation of Sikh scriptures known as the Adi Granth.
2
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Essay
Manto’s prophecy about
US-Pakistan relations
• Maitreyi
“My name is Saadat Hasan Manto and I was born in a place that
is now in India. My mother is buried there. My father is buried
there. My firstborn is also resting in that bit of earth … I used to
be All India’s Great Short-Story Writer. Now I am Pakistan’s Great Short-Story
Writer … In undivided India, I was tried thrice, in Pakistan so far once. But
then Pakistan is still young.”
Thus goes one of the first paragraphs of Manto’s series of nine rhetorical
letters written to America. After the partition of India on the basis of religion,
the Indian writer Manto, who had been to what would later become Pakistan
only thrice as a British subject, was forced by circumstances to pack up and
cross the border. More well-known for his short stories and bare-bone sketches
of the horrors of partition, Manto’s Letters to Uncle Sam reveals a side of the
writer that is more than any specific ideology and strikingly prophetic about
the way US-Pakistan relations would unfold in the next two decades. Written
between 1951 and 1954, at a time of economic hardship for the writer, these
letters strike at the heart of how the USA would draw Pakistan into the Cold
War, failing to win an officially non-aligned India. The letters bear all of Manto’s
trademark: Sardonic wit, subtle jabs and a refusal to put his writing in the
service of any ideology.
Ayesha Jalal, the eminent partition scholar and also Manto’s niece, in her
biography of Manto, Pity the Partition, speaking of why he started writing
these open letters, points to the USA’s cosying up to Pakistani writers in those
days to ward off the spectre of communism. Manto himself refers to an incident
in his second letter. He was approached by a gentleman from the American
consulate who wanted him to write a short story in Urdu for a journal
the consulate was publishing. He writes to his American Uncle: “God is my
witness, I did not know that he had come to see me at your bidding. Perhaps
you made him read the letter I sent you.”
The official asked how much Manto would charge for a story. Barely making
fifty for his stories back then, he asked for two hundred. Taken aback, the
official offered five hundred. But Manto would not budge. Characteristically
eccentric, he replied, “Look, Sir, it will be two hundred and further discussion
on this matter I am not prepared for.” The official, thinking Manto was drunk,
came back next day and offered three hundred. Manto relented, telling him
that what he would write would not be to the US’s liking. The man never came
back.
This sets the tone for the entire nine-letter series. Manto, like an unwitting
nephew, complains and prods and teases his all-powerful Uncle Sam from the
land of “seven freedoms”. He moans and complains of the bizarre partition
of his country while playfully satirising the consumerism of America that so
attracted Pakistan. He speaks of the charges of obscenity that the government
brought against him. This is not new; any reader of Manto is familiar with this
tone of subtle mockery of colonial law and its prudish attitude towards sexuality
in the subcontinent. His stories, which are about prostitutes in their grim
hovels or the brutal rapes of Hindu and Muslim women, were seen by many
as racy and titillating. For him the freedom of his newly independent country
was being put to the docks for breaking colonial laws.
These letters demonstrate Manto as a genius who understood where the
country was headed. Mocking America for its wars to benefit itself, he writes
to his uncle: “Why don’t you start a war between India and Pakistan? … The
gains from the Korean War will be nothing compared with the profits from this
one. You have your nephew’s word.”
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017 ARTS & LETTERS
That Uncle Sam
would try to
counter creeping
communist
influence
in the
new country
by mobilising
the religious
right
was not lost
to Manto.
Two decades
before what is
today recognised
as an important incident
in the forming
of Islamist terrorist
groups, he wrote:
“India may grovel before
you a million times
but will definitely make a
military aid pact with Pakistan
because you are really
worried about
the integrity of
this largest
Islamic sultanate
of
the world
and why
not, as our mullahs are the best antidote to Russia’s communism.”
It is not surprising that for these nine letters, which Manto could not post
for want of money, he has been called a prophet. He saw the rise of the religious
right, and in his anger against obscurantism, asks his uncle for a bomb
for himself. He saw clearly how the religious right and the imperial uncles (be
it England or America) were in fact walking the same path through their ideology,
and that is why they so seldom could become friends.
Manto’s fear of the US backed rise of the “mullahs” would soon turn into reality.
Even as a believer, or maybe especially as one, he felt imperative to point
out the hypocrisy of the evangelist. Pakistan’s dalliances with the US to compete
with India would, as he predicted, worsen the poison of partition and set
Pakistan on a track which it still runs on today. The madness of partition that
Manto so brilliantly captured in his stories, always hover in the background
of these letters. In the first letter, he mentions: “Uncle, I will not labour the
point, since an all-knowing seer like you can well imagine the freedom a bird
whose wings have been clipped can enjoy.”
In the midst of writing the letters, Manto was hospitalised for his alcoholism,
which soon led to his death. The Pakistan he left behind and which prosecuted
him for his stories, now reveres him as one of its greatest writers, as
he predicted it would. The letters echo, in Manto’s prescience of global affairs,
the world that we know today. That Pakistan failed to heed his warning would
probably not have surprised Manto. He was after all, a sane critique in the
midst of a world gone mad. •
Maitreyi is a
literary critic.
3

A Sunlit Page:
The
writer’s
route
Neeman Sobhan
teaches at the University
of Rome,
La Sapienza. Her
published works include
an anthology
of short stories, Piazza
Bangladesh
(Bengal
Publications), and
recently, a collection
of poems, Calligraphy
of Wet
Leaves (Bengal
Lights).
4
• Neeman Sobhan
Once upon a time, three decades ago, I lived for almost 15 years in a residential
area in Rome, whose leafy streets were named after famous Italian
writers. Our apartment was on the main road: Viale Cesare Pavese.
I was at first embarrassed to realise that while I had randomly read a few
modern Italian writers, like Alberto Moravia and Italo Calvino, I had never heard
of Cesare Pavese, considered to be one of the principal protagonists of 20th century
Italian literature. Later, however, after delving into some of his books, and
despite my admiration for his commitment against the Fascism of his times, I
was disappointed to find him a writer of gloom and doom and existential angst,
which went against the grain of my own temperament and the joyous years I
spent at this address, raising a family and evolving as a writer in my own way.
Living in this neighbourhood gave me the map towards a familiarity with
some of the most illustrious names among the modernist and neo-realist Italian
writers. My daily routine and movements of that time would easily chart
a path through the history of post-war Italian literature, taking me through
lanes and by-lanes, streets (Via) and avenues (Viale), heralded by the names
of Italian poets, playwrights and writers.
Every day, waking up to the warbling of birds on the lively street, I would
walk my sons to their school-bus stop on Via Elio Vittorini, at the bottom of
a hill gently undulating, to contrast, perhaps, the brisk, unadorned “Hemingway-esque”
style of Vittorini’s prose (most famous example, Conversation in
Sicily). After my husband left for office, I would go to my gym or my supermarket
on Viale Salvatore Quasimodo, ironically a prosaic back street unsuited to
this famous poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959. Some days I met
friends for a mid-day coffee at a bar on Largo Giuseppe Ungaretti, named after
one of the leading Italian poets of the twentieth century. His most famous line
from a WWI poem: La morte si sconta vivendo/ Death is paid by living.
I had a wide network of friends and a web of social and domestic activities
in those days that required me to stray further afield, to Viale Carlo Levi (the
author of Christ Stopped at Eboli [1945], a memoir of his life as an anti-Fascist
exiled in a stark place in Southern Italy, seemingly forgotten by the world),
or Viale Tomasi di Lampedusa (the princely writer of the famous novel, The
Leopard [1958], made into a film in 1963), or Viale Ignazio Silone (the writer,
whose courageous masterpiece, Bread and Wine [1937], exposed the brutality
and lies of the Fascist state of Mussolini’s Italy), or Piazza Eugenio Montale
(the other Nobel winning poet). And yet, so many other writers, and paths,
were left unexplored. So many other roads led to my Rome of that time, my
hood of heroic writers, whom I started to know after we had moved to another
area in Rome.
When I came to Italy in 1978, I was more interested in English writers who
had come to Italy. I loved to trace their footsteps in Rome or Florence, on literary
walks. I didn’t have an interest in Italy’s literati of the past, though I
was always in awe of its long and rich literary heritage. Before I came to Italy,
while a student of English and Comparative literature in the USA, I had studied
mainly the classical Italian writers, such as Virgil, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and
Dante who wrote in Latin till he broke with tradition, using the Florentine dialect,
which became the standard Italian language.
I knew some other famous names like Pirandello, from my theatre class; or
Collodi, the creator of the Pinocchio of my childhood. Other Italian writers I
was familiar with were contemporary international names, like Umberto Eco
(who wrote The Name of the Rose, which I loved; Foucault’s Pendulum, which
I wanted to like but hated, and The Island of the Day Before, which was as
delightful and intriguing as the title), or two of my favourite Italian authors:
Natalia Ginzburg (Family Sayings etc.) and Italo Calvino (If on a Winter’s Night
a Traveler and Invisible Cities), among others.
Since then I have embarked on another journey, going back to making a
belated and deeper acquaintance of those writers, who once used to be just
points of reference in giving me directions. Take a right on Via Emilio Gadda.
Hang a left on Piazzale Elsa Morante (Ah! Finally a female writer, famous in
her own right, though married to Alberto Moravia). Now they are my compass
on the endless route on which all of us writers, big and small, are fellow
travellers.
Today, on an errand, I find myself back on Viale Cesare Pavese, and searching
for a shortcut to a shop, I drive into Viale Salvatore Quasimodo, and notice that
the Azaleas are in bloom. I stare at the transformed beauty of the place: It’s not
such a prosaic street after all! Or perhaps, it’s just a luminous time of the day,
this late afternoon stage of one's life, when every passing moment is beautiful.
Quasimodo said:
“Everyone stands alone at the heart of the world/pierced by a ray of sunlight/
and suddenly it is evening,”
–Ed è subito sera
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Satyajit Ray
My evolution through Ray’s creations
• Kenny David Rema
I
remember when I was a kid I used to go to the Ekushey Book Fair every
year with my father. I bought so many books that I alone could not carry
them. The smell of new books always excited me; it still does. Feluda
was the first character of Satyajit Ray that I was familiar with and that was
through the fair. After returning home with the Feluda series in piles of books,
I literally dived into the pages of Feluda Somogro and the next few days were
for him. Gradually I became Feluda’s adventure mate along with Topshe and
Jotayu in Gangtok, Rajasthan, the Himalayas, Lucknow and different alleys
of Kolkata.
I used to enjoy the psychological fight between Mogonraj Meghlal and Feluda.
Intense adventures, deep observations and dramatic ends of every story
taught the little me to imagine. It seemed like every moment was happening
right in front of me. The person behind these stories, who taught thousands
of children to visualise stories, is Satyajit Ray.
Not only Feluda, there also is Professor Shanku. I still enjoy my
time reading Shankhu’s stories. Later, though I met Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, the basis of my
imaginative mind was founded by Ray.
Stories of Tarini Khuro haven’t given me any less. Every
story has different angles but all of them gave me the same
goose bumps whenever I read them. These stories would
make my day and night, as if I was in the audience with
Napla and listening to the stories of Tarini Khuro.
Many of my peers and elders, I believe, still remember
the days when Hirok Rajar Deshe and Bagha Bain Gupi
Gain were telecast. I have lost count of how many times
I watched these wonderful comedy movies by Satyajit since my childhood.
When I watched his Sonar Kella, a movie based on one of the Feluda stories, I
was impressed that the movie’s setting matched perfectly with my own mental
picture of the events that I formed while reading the
book.
When I was in my teens, I became familiar
with his other movies: Pather
Panchali, Apur Songsar, Aparajito,
Kanchenjangha etc. These movies
have since been in my watch list.
What attracted me most about
Satyajit’s movies is his storytelling.
It was as organised as his
books. Besides, he composed his
own music in the movies and excelled
on this front, too.
To sum up, Satyajit Ray was an
institution from which I learned to see
and think about life differently. Every
creation he left us with has made
my childhood colourful and
to this day, whenever I get
some free time, I go on an
adventure ride with Feluda,
or sit to listen Tarini Khuro,
or roam freely about the
imaginative land of Hirok
Raja! •
Kenny David
Rema is a young
writer, translator
and script writer.
Feluda and Topshe: My childhood best friends
• Bipasha Chakraborty
(Translated by Kenny David Rema)
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS
When I came to know about Feluda and Topshe, I was only in class four.
Before I was introduced to Satyajit Ray, I became friends with his two
great characters -- Feluda and Topshe. Truth be told, I thought the writer himself
was Feluda in those days.
One day in school, our English teacher asked how many of us had read Badshahi
Angti (Emperor’s Ring) and Sonar Kella (Golden Castle). We were not
aware of what she was talking about. As the words “read” and “wear” carry
the same pronunciation in Bengali, some of us went for the other meaning
(“wear”). So, we thought we could wear rings but not a golden castle! But those
two were titles of two of the most famous books under the Feluda series, the
writer, of course, being Satyajit Ray. Then our
teacher told us to put the titles down, and announced
prize for whoever would read and tell
the stories to her at the earliest.
Our curiosities were piqued. Some of my
friends were too frightened to tell their parents
about the books. They thought their parents
would scold them if they demanded the books.
But I was certain my parents would be more liberal.
I went to my mother, and told her, wearing
a grave look on my face, that I needed the books
for my study in school. She thought I was exaggerating
matters to get them. Still, she curtly
said she’d buy them for me. In a few days, she
brought a brown packet and there it was, Badshahi
Angti. I was very sad for not getting Sonar Kella, and complained to her
that everyone would laugh if I took only one. She assured me she’d get it in a
couple of days as it was not available in the bookstore.
I started off with Badshahi Angti, and soon I realised it’s a detective story,
obviously my first. It is one of the earliest stories of Feluda, where Topshe is
very young and Jotayu is absent. Feluda has only started working as a detective.
He is a cousin of Topshe. At the time of Puja, Topshe’s father visits his
friend in Lucknow with Feluda and Topshe. There they meet a gentleman who
possesses a ring of a Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb. Soon after their arrival, the
ring is stolen mysteriously. Feluda and Topshe investigate the case, which is
an adventure from Imambara to Lakshman Jhula in Haridwar.
I was thrilled by the story. I was expecting Sonar Kella to be more interesting and
planned to borrow it from my friends. But sadly, none had it in their collection. I
carried Badshahi Angti for some more days in class, but the teacher was absent for
some reason. As soon as she came, I informed her
about my reading. She absolutely forgot about her early
announcement, but she told me to bring the book
along next day. With a lot of enthusiasm, I carried the
book to school and showed it to the teacher. She didn’t
utter one word but after some time she came to the
classroom along with the principal to see me and the
book. I was tense and thought I would be punished
for bringing story books to class. But surprisingly, the
principal flipped through the pages of the book and
gifted me a pen and a notepad. All of my friends were
watching, with their eyes wide open in surprise.
I was very happy, surprised and also a little proud
of myself. This is how Feluda and Topshe left a permanent
mark on my mind back in those days. •
Bipasha
Chakraborty is
a Bengali writer
and translator.
5

Bengali fiction in translation
In search of you
6
• Shawkat Ali
(Translated by Parveen K Elias)
It was probably here—yes, right here. There was the shade of trees. The
burning sun of Chaitra lay beyond the shade. No, the krishnachura flowers
had not yet blossomed, but the bloom was in the air.
He laughed foolishly as he looked into my eyes.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why did you laugh, then?”
“Just like that.”
After a pause, he thoughtfully queried, “So, you are leaving?”
“Yes, what’s the use of staying? Father himself has come to take me home.”
“When will you return?”
When? I thought anxiously. When will I come back? Yes, when?
I could not tell him. Who could, in those days?
I said I wouldn’t come back.
“What! What do you mean?” He had become very angry. He was such a
kid: He flared into rage at the least provocation. His eyes grew red. His dark
face looked darker with the rush of blood. It seemed he would hit me. But his
anger did not last long.
I said, “Are you angry, dear?”
“No.”
“What do you mean—no? I can see that you are angry.”
“What does it matter to anyone if I’m angry?”
“It really does make me laugh to see you this way. What kind of a man are
you, eh? Did I tell a lie?”
“Isn’t it a lie?”
“No, it isn’t. Does anyone know what will happen after two days? The situation
is so tense. If it remains this way, do you think father will let me come
back here?”
Slogans were being chanted far away.
“Why don’t we take a walk?” I said.
We walked beside each other.
I would go away. Who knew when the university would reopen? The government
had taken on such a threatening aspect. There had been random firing
on processions. So heartless, so cruel! Rumours were that planes full of
soldiers were coming in from the western part. Who knew what would happen?
I said to him, “Tell me what will happen! I feel so scared! Something awful
is going to happen ... tell me what will it be?”
“Who knows?” He gazed afar with a bewildered expression. “Yes, something
awful may happen.”
“But isn’t there talk of a compromise?”
“Who knows?” He replied vaguely. His brows had knitted in a frown. It seemed
he wanted to say something. I waited. Then I said, “What are you thinking?”
But he remained silent. He was like that. At other times he could spin marathon
tales of his own accord. We had gone beyond the Art College gate. We
were now near Shahbagh. An army van, full of helmeted soldiers with their rifles
stuck outside, rushed by. Two more vans followed. Right then a rickshaw
appeared out of nowhere. The rickshaw puller said, “Sir, go home. There’s
been firing on a procession. There might be curfew again.”
He now became agitated. “Yes, let’s go back now. Let me take you back to
the hostel.”
We did not take a rickshaw. We walked so we would have a little more time
together. I would be with him a little longer.
But we hardly talked on the way back.
When we reached near the hostel gate, he said, “I better leave.” I held his
hand. There was the guard at the gate, but I felt no inhibition. I looked at his
face. I wished I could kiss him. He looked deep into my eyes. His eyes were so
dark that they seemed unfathomable.
“Listen,” I said, “You too should go home. What’s the use of staying here?
Don’t worry, as soon as the exams are over, I’ll tell my mother about us. I just
want you to stay safe and well.”
At that moment his eyes looked even deeper. A faint smile played on his
lips. Maybe he too felt a desire to kiss. I let go of his hand and stood by the
hostel gate. He took the road towards New Market. He turned and looked back
at me several times. I saw my love going away. As far as my eyes could, I kept
gazing at him. I just wanted to keep looking at him.
Yes, this is the place. This is exactly where we stood, under this very tree.
What tree is this? Jarul? Or something else? Who knows? This is where my love
and I had stood.
We had sat here, on this bench. It was an afternoon. He had laughed uncontrollably.
The sound of his laughter rang so loud that two kids had come
to see what was going on here. When he saw the kids, his laughter rang out
even louder.
I scolded him. “Why are you laughing like crazy?”
“It’s such a laughing matter,” he paused in his laughter to say, “When will I
laugh if not now? Bilqees and Gopa will go and see that neither you nor me are
there. They will have to sit and watch that horrible movie. Poor things! What
a waste of their money!”
Actually I was the culprit. These two friends of mine had become very
naughty. They were always after me. They seemed to think that he and I spent
our afternoons in hotel bedrooms, that we necked in cinema halls and kissed
in restaurants. They always kept an eye on us. They hunted where I hid tickets
for movies. Whenever I went out they would ask where I was going. When
I returned they would say, “How was the afternoon, eh? Go and take a good
bath.” This was the kind of suggestive remarks they were always up to.
It was actually Mahmud’s idea – we bought two tickets for a bad movie. My
friends saw these tickets in my drawer and bought tickets for themselves too.
When the day came, they followed me to the cinema hall. Mahmud and I were
standing near the hall when they both arrived there. Even when we came face
to face, they feigned to be strangers and walked rapidly into the hall.
That was when Mahmud began to laugh. We sold our tickets and came to
the park. We thought that the park would be deserted in the afternoon heat.
It was deserted. But he started to laugh so crazily—it spoiled the afternoon.
Yes, Mahmud did stop laughing. Then he became very serious. He started
to unravel the complicated knots of politics. He did not speak about himself,
he never did. He even avoided talking about his home. He said, “Why should
I tell you about all this? When the time comes, I will tell your father.”
I wished he would talk about his mother. Sometimes he talked beautifully
about his mother—his mother’s school, the way she often sat alone on the
verandah. She had an obsession with crocheting—yes, and she loved to read.
She read Hardy and Sharatchandra. Sometimes songs flew from her lips: “The
worship of sorrows has not yet ended.”
I don’t have such a mother. No one does. I wanted so much to see her, meet
her, and hear about her. I often asked, “Have you gotten a letter from your
mother?” She wrote wonderful letters. She wrote vividly about her deep loneliness,
about the trees in their backyard, about why the Black Prince had not
bloomed. She wrote about birds, about the dreams she had had, about books
she had read. And in each letter memories of the past occupied a lot of space,
where there rose up pictures of the infant Mahmud, the child Mahmud or the
boy Mahmud. How Mahmud had once fallen down the stairs as a child and
cut his chin—I had seen the scar on his chin. On the left side of his chest was
a red wart—that too I had read in one of the letters. I had never seen the wart
though. I felt I got to know Mahmud more and more through those letters.
That is why I love to read his mother’s letters.
See this path here—this is where we used to walk. He walked with his head
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Bengali fiction in translation
held high. His dry hair waved in the wind. His hair was ever in disarray and
always flew. So many times I told him to use some sort of cream, but did he
ever listen?
We walked along this path every day—-a quiet path full of shady trees. One
day we saw a squirrel. Mahmud picked up a stone and flung it at the squirrel
to scare it. One day as we were walking, a procession came up. We stopped and
stood under a tree to watch it. That day Mahmud confessed his love to me. He
said he always wanted to be near me. He hated to be alone, to be away from me.
Mahmud always spoke in a clear-cut manner. Sometimes when I was alone
I thought of it in amazement. He did not seem to have any inhibition, any
shyness at all. Whether or not it was the right place or time, he always spoke
his mind without any hesitation. One day we quarrelled along this path. As we
fought violently, people gathered to watch us. But that did not bother him at
all. He called me all kinds of names that day. Afterwards, we both continued
to use the same path to go to the university. We often met along the way, but
we did not talk to each other. That quarrel lasted a long, long time.
This is the field where we would escape from the dorm on moonlit nights.
We sat here and rambled together. The dew gathered on the grass. When we
went back, our sandals and feet would be all wet. My saree would be full of
prickly thistles. Alas, those nights! The guard always threatened to report our
nightly escapades, but he never did.
The guard has now returned, but he cannot bear to look me directly in the eye.
I cannot find Mahmud anywhere. No one knows of his whereabouts. Ehsan
says he was last seen wearing only black trousers, holding a rifle and positioned
beside Iqbal Hall.
No, nobody has seen his dead body.
Haripada says, “No, I did not see his body in the pile of corpses which were
buried. But one evening I had seen him in Jagannath Hall.”
Zahid brings the information that he had gone out with a rifle on that dark
night. As he left the dorm he had declared that dying without fighting back
was meaningless.
The guard says, “Yes I recognised Mahmud Saheb. I remember clearly that
he was in the hall that night. He told me not to delay, to flee at once. I left the
hall right away and escaped. I don’t know what happened afterwards.”
But what should I do? Sometimes I wonder if they had dragged his body
along this very path. Sometimes I feel he is here under this very tree; at other
times I feel he is right beside the field. Sometimes I come back and stand at
the side of the field, sometimes I walk slowly along this path. Sometimes I
stand silently under the shade of the jarul tree. Sometimes, again, I have a
feeling that somebody will call out to me all of a sudden, my love will call me
from yonder. My life will reawaken, will begin anew somewhere from within
this burning sunshine, from this infinite afternoon, from the ashes of my devastated
universe.
When life force leaves the body, there remains the corpse. When the corpse
rots, only the bones remain. But what is left after the bones disintegrate? Tell me,
what remains then? Yet, why do I have to keep coming back again and again? •
The original
Bangla story is
titled ‘Kothai
Amar Bhalobasha.’
Parveen K Elias
has translated
stories by many
leading Bengali
writers.
7
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Interview
‘Creativity comes from
a place of authenticity’
Shazia Omar discusses conformity, community spirit, and connections in a candid conversation
Sabrina F Ahmad
is features editor,
Dhaka Tribune.
• Sabrina F Ahmad
It’s 3:00pm, and Shazia and I are sitting in her comfy, book-lined living room, doubled
over, clutching our stomachs and laughing till our sides hurt. The “joke” that got us going
isn’t really funny at all – we’re commiserating over the trials of being a writer in the
great age of self-promotion. Her latest novel Dark Diamond, published by Bloomsbury
India was released recently to mixed reviews, causing no small ripple in the relatively
small community of local readers of books in English. If either the praise or the flak is
getting to her, one can’t tell by simply looking at the popular yogilates practitioner, who
maintains an aura of serene acceptance.
“You learn and you grow from every experience. I’m just happy to have completed it
[Dark Diamond] and brought it out. I’m not really promoting this one as enthusiastically,”
she admits, of the book that has been described by William Dalrymple as a “rollicking,
rip-roaring, swashbuckling romp”. She expands a bit about the scope of the project, the
research involved, and the truth behind the cliché about the suffering and self-flagellation
required to produce a novel. “And then you have to go put yourself out there and try
and convince people to pick up your book, even though no one really reads any more,”
she exclaims, setting us both off again.
And putting herself out there for this book could not have been a pleasant experience.
As effusive as the compliments have been from the fans, the criticism from the detractors
has been particularly excoriating. Both parties latch on to the subject of the research
and factual accuracy in the novel, so that’s where we turn our attention. Dark Diamond
required some five years of reading and researching on the period in Bengal history that
provides the setting for the story. “The history of this region isn’t as well documented as it
is post Partition [of the Indian Subcontinent]. I mean, you just have so much more material
on 1971 and the events leading up to it, but go a little further back and you mostly have
to lean on work by other biographers and historians. We haven’t preserved that much.”
Doesn’t this put restrictions on creative licence, I ask her. She references Wolf Hall author
Hilary Mantel, who urges for creative writing to be viewed separately from fact. “Of
course accuracy and fact are important, but you also need to have fun with it!” Does she
feel that the literary scene for writers writing in English leave us at a disadvantage by its
suspicion of anything that isn’t literary fiction? In part. “There’s this idea that everything
you write has to be [Zia Hyder Rahman’s] In the Light of What We Know, which is a great
book, but is that what readers always want? Sometimes you want to lighten up, have an
adventure, otherwise how can one be creative?”
The focus then, is on who is reading the kind of stories Bangladeshi writers writing
in English can write authentically about. “As you said, it’s such a closed, small pool here,
everyone reading it also knows the author [laughs]. The niche that we fit in is so small,
like Bangladeshi English writing, and then living in the tri-states, our experiences are super
narrow. Maybe because we’re not the mainstream public – if we were living like we
are now, in Boston or something, we would be the mainstream public. It works in our favour
because everywhere you go, there’s crazy stuff happening in Dhaka, and they don’t
have to read about it, but we can write about it [laughs], but then who would be reading
all this? I mean, we’re relating to a Western, American/Eurocentric frame of thinking,
ideals and norms and when we write, we’re writing to that same kind of thinking, but
then maybe they’re first of all not reading it, and secondly wouldn’t really connect to it.”
How hard or important is it to be authentic in this country? “I definitely feel like we’re
living in a very homogenous society, if you look at religious norms or social behaviours
and family patterns, in general people seem to have the same kind of expectations, so to
be yourself, to express yourself, to be how you want to be somewhere where everybody
else isn’t doing that so much, you get noticed, you get singled out, your life might be
threatened – it’s not appreciated. It’s stamped out Conformity is super important. It’s
difficult, then, to be authentic. In terms of writing authentically, do you write something
to be true to something you’re passionate about? Not confining yourself, not just for the
sake of fantasy or imagination, but it can also be a security issue – do you write about
Islam, which is very relevant and important in the world today, and maybe to you, but if
you step outside of the homogenous zone...” she trails off with a meaningful look. “Creativity
comes totally from a place of authenticity. Nobody could create what you created,
it’s so individual, so I don’t think you’re being inauthentic if you’re not writing from your
own experience. But you may not be credible[laughs].”
We swap stories about writing exercises of the past. In addition to her writing, her
yoga, and her work in the development sector, Shazia is also known amongst her friends
for her tireless efforts at building support networks for aspiring writers. Having spearheaded
the writers collective Writers Block, and currently involved with a different
group called Pen Warriors, she’s a great believer in the community. “Without Writers
Block, I don’t think I could have done this book at all...just going in every week, sharing…
Like a Diamond was completely done while at Writers Block. Dark Diamond started off
with the whole group, but then was done with input from two or three members giving
weekly feedback, multiple readings. And then there was the publishing, and I worked
with an editor, also very helpful. It was a very collaborative process, and I think that’s
something we need to keep us sane. That, and remembering to have fun. It’s advice I
need to give myself a lot too [laughs].”
Wrapping up on the note about community and collaboration, Shazia takes a moment
to address the fact that more people need to read to allow for a diversity of readers, which
in turn help creative writers. She
laments on the disappearing
bookstores, the proliferation
of smartphones and digital
entertainment that
distracts readers, especially
young readers,
and hopes that parents,
teachers, and
writers can come
into some kind of
concord so that
reading can be
fun again. •
Photo: Amani Omar
8
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Interview
‘Feminism had to engage with
women of colour ...’
• Rifat Mahbub
Professor Ruth Evans is Dorothy McBride Orthwein Professor of English,
St Louis University, Missouri, USA. She is Executive Director of the New
Chaucer Society. Prof Evans was the keynote speaker at the international
conference, Redrawing Gender Boundaries in Literary Terrains, organised
by the Department of English and Humanities, BRAC University on May
18-19, 2017. The title of her paper was “Unrelatability: Reading Literary Works
from the Past in the Feminist Present.” Professor Ruth Evans was in conversation
with Rifat Mahbub on May 20, 2017 in Dhaka, talking about the relationship
between literature and feminism.
Let me start by asking what made you interested in feminism?
My interest in feminism has a lot to do with English literature and the kind of
reading I did when I was 16, 17, or 18. I read a lot of novels written by women. I
started reading Doris Lessing, her The Grass is Singing, to begin with, and then
I moved on to read some of her feminist novels. But feminism was not taught
as part of our undergraduate course.
Where do you see the future of feminist politics is headed?
That’s really a very good question. I think feminist politics means different
things in different countries and contexts. It means different things to different
people. In 1980 everyone in Britain was talking about the fragmentation of feminist
politics. There was a famous conference in Britain that was called Beyond
the Fragments that was held in Leeds in1980 where feminists gathered together
to talk about how feminism could include marginalised and oppressed groups
of women that fell outside the frame of feminism as it was then conceived. That
conference really marked the challenge to white middle-class feminist politics
in the UK. What really is interesting, as I have found it in the last five years or so,
is the strong comeback of feminism particularly amongst young women. They
have a strong feeling that the changes in society are not good enough, such feelings
are coming through in a number of ways. Young women see that attitude
towards sexual violence and rape against women has not changed. They are
very anxious about it. They are angry and I think they use social media, tweeter,
Facebook and there are a huge number of online feminist publications, such as
Jezebel, that feature very serious issues that women face every day.
And which year are you referring to?
1977. It was in 1980 I started reading feminist theories in a feminist
reading group comprised of young faculty members and graduate students
at the University of Leeds, where I was doing my PhD. We used
to read feminist theoretical texts together. The importance of Virginia
Woolf which they were teaching, and Mary Wollstonecraft, came up.
It was team talk, a group of young women talking to each other.
How much was this feminist consciousness influenced by the Second
Wave Feminism?
Very much. For me, I was never part of any feminist consciousness
raising group. But I think being part of that particular feminist reading
group was a very important way of raising feminist consciousness.
We talked a lot about literature and theory but at the same time we
did talk about our family, and how supportive our husbands might
be, and what kind of family life we might have. I read anything as long
as they were written by women. So, that was really interesting. And I
started to think how these books reflected my life and thoughts.
Had reading feminist literature changed the way you read literature?
Yes, it did. It emphatically did. It was my first exposure to the theoretical approach
to literature. I can still remember the reading group discussions on
the difference between the feminist critics and gynocritics, terms coined by
Elaine Showalter. Feminist theories for me opened up the ways to link my life
to the politics of reading. I began to see reading as a politics which I never
thought of before. And that for me was absolutely groundbreaking.
Tell us a little about teaching feminism in the literature classroom.
That’s interesting. My students now are really interested in feminism. They
want to read texts from a feminist perspective. So in a way you don’t have
to teach them how to approach a text from a feminist perspective -- it’s
already there. But the difficulty or the challenge is to make the students move
beyond the tendency to see the text as a simple reflection of social reality. We
don’t really want to have this kind of simplistic reading. So, it is important
to use some theoretical material to understand textual representation. And
in this sense, I think Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter
are texts that students can very easily relate to because they theorise gender
identity. Butler provides very firm grounding to understand both identity and
resistance.
Prof Ruth Evans speaking in one of the sessions at the conference
You are talking about the relationship between feminism and social media
as well as popular media. Where do you think the relationship between
feminism and literature stands now?
I still think that feminists read and value literature. Our interest in literature,
our interest to know the other world has not gone away, but feminist theory
is no longer grounded in literature, as it was in the Second Wave Feminism.
It has moved into a different direction. Intersectional feminism, grounded in
social justice, is now the focus. Young women are massively aware of the fact
that even societies and cultures that seem liberal such as that of America also
has serious practices of misogyny. Young women are turning to feminist activism
because they really want to see positive changes in society.
How did you like the conference here?
The conference to me is particularly important on two counts. One is to realise
how important fiction actually still is. People are talking about films but people
are talking a lot about novels and fiction too. Young women and, even in
some cases, young men are very fired up by the books that they are reading.
It was really interesting to find that feminism is very much alive in the discussions.
I don’t think there is any future without feminism, and young people in
Bangladesh may see their future through feminism. •
Abridged. Read the full version in the Arts & Letters homepage on Dhaka Tribune website)
Rifat Mahbub is an
Assistant Professor
at the Department
of English and
Humanities, BRAC
University.
9
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Poetry
silent piece
of paper
• Rifat Islam Esha
Of desire burnt into
memories
• Firoz Mahmud Ahsan Shuvo
Light
• Sarah Tabassum
one brick at a time
she scraped away
my love
she scraped away
is a silent walk
In memory of the rift between Freud and Jung
a murder
in a colourful night--
cries of desperation and help
a massacre
Sweet were those days
beneath collapsed walls
a denial
gruff and drowsy
when you and I used to
through upright rods
of lives lost and forgotten
breaths
ride on an ahistorical fireball.
like daggers ready to stab
in between
one brick at a time
brittle words
The desire rolled and got
one brick at a time
she scraped away
licked hard; the moment froze,
she scraped away
my love
and the hearts were all keyed up.
with one remaining hand
is
demolished bodies
in revision
We had to make a detour
the nauseating sight
seeking
after heavy rain--
around the heaviest traffic
of an ill-fated mess
retribution
in that godforsaken city, remember?
survival
a messy draft
one brick at a time
for a glimpse of light.
mostly splayed ink
On our way we did what we did:
on my arm
I burned you to ashes,
and your words burned into my memories.
my love
is just a silent
On that day
thought
hi(s)tory was made for us,
folded
and since then I’ve cringed into
piece of paper
that will be left behind.
a burnt child sans desires.
A Dhaka Minute
• Ikhtisad Ahmed
Emotion
• Mohammad Shafiqul Islam
Your emotion courses like water in the river
Your passion gusts like simoom in the desert
Sludge in the streets, erotic yearning in mind
You imagine in misery, hunger silences life
Memory casts a shadow over your summer
And wards you off from love and light of life
A car, a hopeful meanderer,
Static in perpetual motion, an equilibrium
Unwanted, undesired, but
The only inevitable.
Inside, the air is conditioned, cool –
Outside, an almighty inferno.
The temple, once hallowed, now erring, ablaze,
The slum, once homes, now ablaze,
The bus, a promise of transference, ablaze,
The rickshaw, a livelihood, ablaze,
The flesh, once human, destitute, desperate, despicable,
Once alive, now consumed by the blaze.
You see dogs dine with kids as if they’re crows
Banana peels and leftovers sell in blood price
Butterflies are no more fascinated with flowers
Evening stars do not correspond to pastures
Mirror images scream and paper boats float
You drown – bones, shadows and silence speak
Your emotion courses like water in the river
Your passion gusts like simoom in the desert
Inside the car, aglow with
Health and vivacity,
Wealth and virility;
Indubitably preponderant, awash with
The only green that matters,
An infallible deceit that flatters.
Outside, a macabre imponderable,
Inside, insulated, pondering the superficial.
Digital clock ensconced in leather dashboard
Resets from fifty-nine to zero –
Irked inhale, a haughty exhale,
No motion, the count begins again.
10
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Short fiction
Chamaeleonidae
• Seema Amin
When the white road somersaulted smack into her, sent her winging,
Renisha Ali was already indisposed.
It took half a minute, thirty seconds. Anthropomorphic balloon
or blind bird jettisoned into the hot intersection—
The sky between Cobalt and Majestic screeched at her sides.
A heart like a globe of marbles rumbled from within; blood mixed with
stale breath. Whiz-bang trees camouflaged in sunlight; a string of dark houses;
and as the world turned on and off, her inner and outer world whirred like
a fan. And so it seemed a discoball bounced in the mid-afternoon, gaslighting
the unnatural darkness.
The man inside the silver Elantra backtracked…Stillness like the hour-hand
as you watch it.
Hovering over her, his forehead knotted, a black umbrella questioned her.
Can you say your name?
She swung a piece of flesh, an arm, possibly a leg, and he jerked back.
R—shaaa…. Ali.
Ali.
***
You are not sure? A woman, for they are easier to discern from the general
brightness, was whispering loudly, across the street.
The umbrella had moved away, replaced by the blaze of some silver being,
like a horse. The man in the black jacket was scrutinising the disembowelled
Honda, apparently split on impact, with something many times greater in mass.
He returned, and this time the umbrella had form and shape, apart from a voice.
Ali. Renisha. Were you drinking?
Straight as a lamppost, but a body of latent venom, he thought, like a snake
who had lost consciousness. The man watched eyes slip in and out of the red
face. Drunk as an Indian. Before that hit.
It took an hour before the woman could ascertain if the young lady, an installation
of vermillion curls and uncooked flesh fetid as a bloodied diaper
below her bedroom window, had hurled itself into the truck or if the truck had
violently greeted the Honda.
By then Renisha Ali had already been helped to her feet, answering questions
with phonemes, vowels and consonants. Her ability to speak, a testament
to life, was no acceptable witness to her sanity, lucidity or harmlessness.
The man backtracked, half in terror, half in a daze. The risen creature, with
her crown of blood, seemed an apparition too real to risk --
The charge was ‘discombobulation.’
Kh noticed the redness as it moved through the light. Something half-gold
that shimmers darkly as it shies from the sun; a patch, flapping singly, as of a
stork’s wing in the afternoon. Red, though. Not beet; or, even, redwood. Like
spools of a sari, not yet made. Or a chameleon, turning lipstick red, merging
with a fallen nova, before the bald, white road. Turning back to her mantras,
she sunk into the round sounds of her daily practice.
Renisha Ali walked from house to house. An ethereal monster visiting
block after block of Sunset’s residential East End, and finding most empty, bereft
even of a dog or grandfather sprinkled on its unimpeachably self-regarding
lawns. At last, hunched like a scarecrow before the patio of a sky-hued
house resembling some postcard from Utah, with its pale yellow roof the very
skin of wheat, she was coaxed by a soft, grassy threshold beyond an open gate.
***
Renisha pounded on the window; a closed question mark like the number
nine, blackened by shadow.
On the afternoon, a quarter past two, that the giant loomed, and Robert
heard a pounding as fierce as a child’s followed by a vision of a thing so disfigured
it resembled a
numeral more than
a sentient being,
he was at the tail’s
end of his morning
routine; Clay woke
each day to a painting
of a small, coral
sun and descended
onto the shuttered
living room, then
down to the basement
where a Rider
awaited him and
accompanied him
for thirty minutes of
priceless sweat as he
gazed blankly at the body moving in place in the glass walls; then, the inevitable
sequel of a cold shower, he toasted rye bread on his sleek, black (obviously,
Chinese) toaster, dressed as though for office, and for the next three hours, he
calmly watched the news, as the TV made the still unveiled living room resound
with splashes of fish-like rays, like a technicolour hologram of LA, on his wall.
Roberto Clay was of Fijiian descent, which did not say much—for he was a
second generation coconut, here in the North American city of Vellein, and
passed easily for any of the third generation Italian immigrants who made up
the majority in the cool brown quarter.
The creature, meanwhile, looked like a veiled porcupine, or a trail of burnt
hair over scarlet widow’s weeds—like nothing he had ever seen. He could not
make out a scream. The mouth opened and closed, and Robert Clay shot down
to the basement where he kept his 22 Caliber Wesson & Smith. Already loaded,
as though expecting someone.
Kh heard the shots and called the police. It was an hour and a half since
the strange bird—a creature she would only recognise later-- landed between
Cobalt and Majestic, and only twenty minutes since a scarecrow walked up
the patio of retired auditor, Robert Clay.
***
AL Lee was a heart surgeon at the Vellein Central Hospital, on the opposite
end of Sunset. As a child back in Shanghai he had wanted to be a traffic police,
as an adolescent a forensics expert but finally, he chose something less
idiosyncratic, though no less curious. His profession made him a kind of brute
of kindness; or a kind brute. As he carried the now heart-less body away, he
was reminded of a recent death similar to this one, the woman was nineteen
and her last name was Mcbride: Her first, was the same as this Ali. The case
had proceeded slowly, but eventually, the man had been charged: Detroit, last
year. It would have been nice if she—this one-- had donated her heart…perhaps
through one of those organisations that could ship all the way…to a desert?
Senseless thoughts floated. He wondered when the heart would get to a small
town in Yemen and when, the man, the fox, who killed her, would get arrested.
***
A thread blazing red and gold like the strings of a-- harp. She remembered
something red she had seen that day. Delicate on the unsteady mound overlooking
the pond, beneath an endless, green filter of sun, Kh held herself, arms
meeting like old friends kept apart by some artifice—herself, torso, heart-- knees
cupped. Numb or mum, something had sucked the blood out of her voice.
She continued her daily practice, vowels. Aaa Iiii (mmm) UUu. No sound.
The wind did not travel. From her depths to the height. Still she tried. Aaa…I
am you. •
Seema Amin is a
fiction writer and
poet.
11
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Interview
‘My main intention is
In conversation with Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 201
reportage as a form of literature equal to fiction, poetry, and playwriting.”
12
• Audity Falguni
(Translated from Russian to Bengali by Tushar Gayen and Joydeep Barua)
(When I was meticulously reading Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History
of a Nucleur Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich, I grew interested in talking
with her about certain aspects of her work. No sooner had the idea come to my
mind than I collected the e-mail address of her literary agent, Galina Dursthoff.
I wrote an e-mail to Dursthoff asking for permission to
interview Alexievich. Dursthoff instantly agreed saying
that I should send my questions -- no more than
six -- by mid-March. She, in addition, informed
that she would translate the questions into
Russian from English for Alexievich and
that it would be my responsibility to find
a translator who would translate Alexievich’s
answers into Bengali from
Russian. I requested my elder brother
Tushar Gayen, a poet, who had studid
architecture at a university in what
was then Soviet Union. He kindly
agreed.
On March 24 I received Alexievich’s
answers, forwarded to me by
Dursthoff. Tusher, who currently lives
in Canada, worked hard till mid-April
to prepare the Bengali translation with
much help from Joydeep Barua, one of his
friends. I myself have translated the Bengali
version into English for readers of
Dhaka Tribune. )
What urged you to
interview a huge number
of the Chernobyl disaster
witnesses, and record and
write Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster? Did you
know that it would be such a huge success?
Of all my books, I had to work really hard on this one. I wrote it over a period
of ten years. So, in many ways, it has become a part of my life.
Chernobyl was something like reaching a new form of reality through a
sudden jump. The accident that had happened surpassed not only our boundaries
of knowledge but also our imagination. Everything remained as it was
but still the world got totally transformed. This new experience of Chernobyl
was an addition to those of the Second World War for Soviet citizens. Flowers
again blossomed and birds waved their wings in the air in Chernobyl but people
could feel the presence of death within everything. This presence of death
was invisible and silent. Death in a new disguise! The past remained incapable
of offering us any help.
I went to the Chernobyl region. Everyone appeared restless, wearing insane
looks. They watched as the radioactive soil was buried under special trenches.
The earth was buried within the earth. The soldiers washed and cleaned the
roads, houses, trees, and buried those under earth. They buried furniture, egg
and milk; they shot all the radioactive animals and then buried them. Our system
continued as it continues during any extreme situation – lots of ammunition
and soldiers, but the soldiers with automatic weapons in their hands
were really unfortunate. All a soldier could do there was to get contaminated
with high level of radioactivity and then embrace death after returning home.
People had preparations to face nuclear bombs in times of war but they
were not prepared to face the fallout from nuclear power during a time of
peace. I recall how an entire village was evacuated. People got on buses to
leave their parental homes and their pet dogs and cats began running all
around. An old lady was standing beside her old home and she was not willing
to ride on the bus. Seeing me close by, she walked up to me and said, “I have
witnessed the war but here we can watch the sun, then why should I
leave my home? Is there any war here?” “Yes, it’s a war. Probably
the war of the future will begin this way, an unknown and
different war,” I thought to myself.
An old man who reared bees mentioned how not
a single bee got out of the hive for a whole week; a
fisherman recalled that they could not find any
earthworms even after digging deeply into the
soil. Bees, earthworms and insects were feeling
something which human beings were yet to
predict.
Chernobyl changed our idea of time: A
number of radioactive particles will live for
the next hundred, two hundred or over a
thousand years transforming the environment
in the process. The radioactive
cloud reached the sky of Africa, shattering
the traditional concept of “our” and
“their”. There is no conventional boundary
of nation for radioactive emission.
Chernobyl is not a mere accident; it is
rather the boundary of one world
with another, a new philosophy
and a new approach to the
world. A new sort of knowledge!
Nowadays the Belarussians
call themselves the
“Black Box.” Black Box preserves all the information of the route of an aeroplane.
If the aeroplane crashes, everybody looks out for the black box. The
Belarussians are conserving all the information pertaining to the Chernobyl
disaster which is meant for everybody. For the entire humanity. This is why
I write on this. I don’t write about the past, rather I write about the future. I
write on the post-techonological world.
You were brought up in the post-World War Soviet Union. But you have
criticised the Soviet administration in your writing. So, how do you perceive
and evaluate the history of Russia particularly after the collapse of the
former Soviet Union and the ascension of Russia in the world order under
Vladimir Putin?
I have so far authored five books (War’s Unwomanly Face, Zinky Boys, Enchanted
with Death (interview of the last witnesses of the collapse of the former
Soviet Union), Voices from Chernobyl and Second-hand Time), but actually
I have been writing on only one theme my whole life -- dictionary of the
Red People, or the Red Utopia -- the life which we named here as “socialism.”
Our Russian culture possesses an unprecedented desire to build heavens
on earth, a huge human endeavour which ended in a huge cemetery. I have
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Interview
to humanise history’
5. A New Yorker article describes her Nobel win as “a long-overdue recognition of
felt the importance of doing this work because this “Red Utopia” will allure
human beings for many more days to come.
When books of Solzhenytsin got published, we thought that our lives
would no longer remain the same. As soon as his books came out, everybody
rushed to go shopping. Life went on. Probably it was better this way that our
people preferred new washing machines to the Kalashnikov rifles and they
were distracted by something other than weapons.
This is no more the Russia we used to know, the former Soviet Union where
I had grown up, or heroic soldiers had. Today there is no country named the
Soviet Union but we remain. The democratic endeavour for reconstructing
life, which we named Perestroika, has failed. Today we are threatening the entire
world with our rockets again. Now the Fourth World War is about to begin,
if we consider the “cold war” as the Third World War. More often than not I see
Russian tanks or Russian warplanes on TV. Putin is warning others that Russia
is the strongest nation on earth and that he will defeat Russia’s enemies. In all
this rhetoric, the word “war” is being repeated umpteen times.
What is most frightening is that people no longer feel scared upon hearing
the word “war.” Instead of opening ourselves to the world, we have kept
ourselves aloof from other countries. Now we are frightening others saying
the Russian soldiers are tremendous and they never sell out their integrity. To
earn respect from others, we basically instil fear in others. So, Vladimir Putin
has come to power and the world fears us again. How could Putin restore the
Stalinist system so quickly and in which manner? Now again the FSB (former
KGB) can break into any house by force, put a blogger in the docks for writing
in support of Ukraine. The FSB now searches through the entire country for
secret agents among scientists, teachers and soldiers. Gulag Archipaelego is
again becoming the book of the day.
It is told that your books owe much to the ideas of Belarusian writer Ales
Adamovich who felt that the best way to describe the horrors of the 20th
century was not by creating fiction but through recording testimonies of
witnesses. Is it your conscious decision to write nonfiction?
Yes, the first book of Adamovich, I Have Come From a Fiery Village, which he
co-authored with two other Belarusian writers named Brill and Kalesnik, influenced
me a lot. I read the book as a student. I did instantly realise: Yes,
that’s how I see and hear the world around me.
I go to people as a friend of theirs, not as an interviewer, and start some sort
of discussion about life, about everything: About a new Kaftochka (a special
sort of blouse of women), about love and pain, about what s/he has witnessed.
Our human life is basically made up of small, petty things. Apparently petty details
can reveal both facts and deeper philosophy. Another aspect is also of great
importance to me: Profound concentration to the subject I’m dealing with. Collect
small details but look at a deeper philosophy through them. That’s how an
ordinary affair or thinking might appear to be of utmost importance.
For me witnesses are the major characters of literature. I am often told that
memoirs are neither history nor literature. It is mere life which is full of dust
and not refined with the touch of an artist’s hands. But I beg to differ. I believe
that in the voices of ordinary men and women are hidden all the mystery of
our existence, its anarchy and madness, which remains beyond our comprehension.
History ignores feelings and emotions of ordinary men and women, and
keeps them out of history. My task is to search and find them from the darkness
of oblivion that they are buried in. The important thing is not to imagine
anything and instead, listen properly to others with an alertness of time --
when these things happened to them and also, in which time I’m retrieving
them. My work exposes mainly two kinds of lies: The lies of collectivism and
the lies of history which, together, drain history of the emotions and thoughts
of ordinary people. My main intention is to humanise history.
I have named my writing style as “Voice of the Novel.” I have written about
the “red dictionary” for more than 30 years, the history of utopia. I never take
on the responsibility of judging others or convicting anyone. I try to comprehend
my subject.
Your first book, War’s Unwomanly Face, came out in 1985. Made up of
monologues of women in the WWII, it was reprinted many times over and
sold more than two million copies. When did you begin interviewing the
women survivors of WWII? How many women did you interview in total and
how much time did you take to complete this work?
War’s Unwomanly Face is the history of war narrated by women -- their eye
witness accounts. War is always there at the centre of our lives! We are a
war-mongering nation. Either we are fighting in the war or taking preparations
for a war. But everything we know about war is told by voices of male
narrators, or warriors. The war accounts are shockingly male and you see war
through their eyes. The vocabulary with which they are described is also predominantly
male.
My work as a journalist took me to many women who had fought in the
war. As I started talking to them about their experience, what they said was
markedly different from men’s accounts. Men talk about exploits and heroic
feats of killing enemy soldiers, whereas women seldom refer to such brutalities
and focus more on strategy, or the generals they fought under.
I have collected thousands of details and statistics. Sometimes it so happened
that I could collect only a single sentence that is worth recording. But
then, at the end of a conversation, one lady recalled, “After the war, we were
walking in the war field, looking up for the living ones. Suddenly we found a
living soldier. The corpses were lying scattered like potatoes over a trampled
wheat field: Soldiers of Germany and ours. All were young and handsome. It
was a heart-wrenching sight for both us and them.”
Women’s accounts are far more humane and liberating. They see war as
merely a killing or slaughtering event.
War’s Unwomanly Face was published in 1985 but in a fragmented and
distorted way. The criticism it garnered was directed towards an incident in
which a battalion of female soldiers were advancing forward with their male
counterparts marching behind them. Male soldiers tried not to look at the
ground as there were blood stains left by the women. Female soldiers were
not provided with anything to absorb the blood during menstruation and they
felt ashamed. When they reached the ferry, bombing began upon them. Men
responded by hiding but the women jumped in the river to wash themselves.
Almost all of them were shot from the sky. “Why have you dealt with the discipline
of biology? We need tales of our heroes!” shouted one critic. I tried to
tell him this event was relevant. In fact, I am interested in viewing the human
body as a connection between nature and history. But nothing could deter
them and this page was not included in the first edition of the book. I could
add it ten years after its first publication. A whole passage was removed in
which I asked a woman (who was a sniper), “What did you take with yourself
when you went to war?” She replied, “A box full of chocolate. I have purchased
chocolates with all the money from my last salary.”
“Is it any history? These chocolates…” the critic said so when he shook the
manuscript.
“History is all those small and humane things which shake us even after
many decades,” I said in reply to him. •
Audity Falguni
is a fiction
writer, translator
and freelance
journalist.
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ARTS & LETTERS

Fiction
14
Bleeding
• Urmi Masud
My life has been about bleeding seven days a month. My mother comes to me
with a scissor and she leaves a shallow cut on my thigh. It bleeds and makes
me uncomfortable. It leaves surface marks.
Mother says, “That is fine.”
An elephant statue sits right next to the garden path. When it rains it glistens
darkly. It looks thoroughly bathed and overjoyed. Rain pools around its
base and finds worm-like creaks emerging on the soft earth and she seeps
through them. The elephant’s nose drips continuously and the leaves make
rain-noise.
I like the elephant. The bald head drenched in endless wetness.
I couldn’t understand my sister. She would argue with ma and get slapped. I
would be ashamed to eat afterwards. But that didn’t stop her from
squatting on the floor and gulping down
boiled rice and dal. She told my mother
she would marry a sixty three years old
man and be the youngest wife. He
said he would take good care of her.
She wanted to be pampered all
her life. My sister, when she ate,
spilt her food everywhere. Trickle
of dal hitched a ride down
her arm and dripped off
of her elbow. She didn’t
mind the stickiness.
Red ants hovered
around
her. Her toes
wriggled as
one or two
climbed
on top.
She never
bothered.
The moist mosaic
that had turned
dark over the years
from grime and filth
didn’t bother her either. She could sit there without a stool.
My mother held me one night and asked me if I understood why she cut me
every month. She didn’t wait for me to answer.
“I want you to bear the uneasiness, Mira. The difficulty of being a woman
is that we constantly want to leave. But we can never escape. I want you to
understand this.”
I didn’t understand her. What it meant only she could tell. I was happy just
sitting on her lap, embraced. You see, I am a selfish girl.
There is no father.
Men come and go.
Every time we go to buy eggs and tea from the corner store bystanders
wriggle as if they want to say something. As if words are hanging off their lips
like threads hanging off the mouth of freshly caught fish, they fidget whenever
we walk past them.
What is my dream you ask? I always wanted to be able to create intricate
patterns.
In our two storied house with tin shed, the rickety wooden stairs take me
to my grandmother’s bedroom that was meant to be used as an attic. The roof
always wants to embrace me. So when I enter I pretend to be a skinny spider
and scurry on all fours.
My nanu has made a quilt the size of a room. She has used all the colours
that are new to me. There are rivers and oceans, men and women, marriage
and love, snakes and horses, palm trees and banyan trees, boats and palanquin
and a giant elephant in the middle. The journey is possible only because
there is this promise of oneness.
Nanu’s room smells of betel juice and rotten wood.
The single window on one of the walls has wooden frames and wooden
wings. The days when my elephant drowns in happiness I sit by it and hold
on to the two rusty iron bars. I smell hundreds of years of sweat and salt with
my nose pressed against them. Stretching my arms through the bar I would
intercept the rain before she can pour over the elephant’s head. Rain, wetness
and hunger. Behind me, nanu would be hunched back and crouching over the
promise of one needle penetrating one thread, only once, on a quilt made out
of torn saris.
My mother would only have eggs from that corner
store alone. Nowhere else would do. Once,
I decided to go somewhere else and not tell
her. When I came back home she made me
throw all the eggs on the kitchen floor.
She left it that way. Ants came and
made a huge red pile. It made me itch
all over. I couldn’t stand the dark circle
against the red. She called me
over and made me clean it up
with the ants crawling up
and down my arms.
I screamed
and wanted
to jump
in a water
bucket.
It was a
blistering
July day.
Sugarcanes
stood in the
corner in rapt
attention.
Sweat crawled
down and ants scuttled up. My arms shook.
She stopped my nanu who was descending the stairs when she had heard
me scream.
“Stop it!” said my granny, her white mane dancing left and right.
“Do you need water amma?” said my mother who wasn’t angry but very
calm and polite.
“Why are you so angry? Why?” said nanu, gripping the wooden railing that
had a curved head of a horse.
“Mira! Finish this quickly. Your nanu needs water,” said my mother, still
blocking nanu’s way and watching me as I was looking over her shoulder,
pleading nanu with my eyes.
“You witch! You deranged witch!” cursed nanu.
“Exactly. Have you forgotten that?” said my unrelenting mother.
“Shaoly!” trembled my nanu. By that time I had forgotten the ants.
“I didn’t make the rules, amma. You know it,” said ma after a pause. My
nanu looked away and slowly started to ascend the stairs.
“The world is cruel enough. You are cruel enough,” said nanu, as she left
me with my mother.
My mother looked at me and said in a determined voice, “Do not listen to
your nanu. There is no cruelty in this world. Don’t be sentimental.”
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Fiction
I am very aware when I sweat. The beads trickle down my back. My armpits
itch. I want to reach down and do something about it. But I am a girl. I am
scolded because my legs spread wide when I sit. My mother often makes me
wear sari. I want to like it. But my legs get all tangled up. I want to put on lipstick.
I will definitely get slapped if I do. My mother says, “We are not whores.”
There is no father. Men come and go.
Confrontations with my mother often end with me tucked under my nanu’s
arm. She tells me stories, nanu. I bring my nose closer to her mouth as she inhales
and exhales in between words. There is a sudden coolness and smell of
damp interior that surrounds her lips. I observe with absolute attention. Her
story doesn’t last long. My sister says nanu doesn’t know how to tell a story.
She is too blunt.
Here nanu goes:
“Once your grandfather bought me. This house was a gift from him. Your
grandfather’s wife didn’t like me at all. There were other women. But she
couldn’t stand me because I came from a good family. I could read and write.
My father had paid a tutor for me in those days. Your grandfather had heard
of my beauty. But my father wouldn’t agree so he kidnapped me and brought
me here from a faraway land. I remember I cried a lot. Then his wife came
although it was forbidden for her to visit our part of the mansion. She came
because she heard that I was stolen. She must have been curious to know what
made a merchant steal a zamindar’s daughter. She found me repulsive. She
grew up in a city. I had no manners, apparently. All I knew was that this wasn’t
my world. I wanted to go back. Your grandfather
then built this house for me and made me move
here with servants. In those days river beds of the
Buriganga had stairs leading into the black water,
hundreds of them. All the boats from every part
of Bengal came and unloaded its gifts. Only there
were boats made out of wood, unlike today.”
“What about ma, nanu?”
“What about her? I made sure she had a college education. She is a wellread
woman.”
“And my father?”
“He was a good man.”
“Is there more?”
“That is all.”
“Do you like Bangla cinema?”
There are times when I bring nanu a piece of paper to read. She can never
manage it as she doesn’t have her glasses. I want to get her new pairs but she
says she doesn’t need any.
My sister often hits me over the head and calls me a fool. She tries to make
me doubt grandma. She is also the one who always drags my pants down in
public and makes me hysterical. So, I have no reason to believe her.
Soon it is my sister’s wedding day. No one came to our house. My mother
shut the door on the face of the moulavi who accompanied the groom. Now
there are only two ladies sitting with nanu on the veranda.
I don’t know why.
My ma is in the kitchen.
I don’t know why.
Something will surely happen. There is this feeling about it. Knowing my
sister, something will happen.
Suddenly she appears before me. I am in the back yard trying to decide
which room to hide in. she comes and grabs my hand and starts dragging me
behind her. Her palm feels cool from the red hena paste and her finger rings
dig into my flesh. We snake from one room to another. Every step is followed
by tiny protests from her anklet and mine. Her atar comes floating to me. Her
red doppatta has beads that get caught on a door
15
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Fiction
Urmi Masud is
poet, playwright
and fiction
writer.
handle. I help her get untangled as I intently listen to nanu’s gold banlges clink
against each other. She almost sneezes because of the giant ring puncturing
her nose. Soon we are inside mother’s room. I struggle to get away the moment
I see the direction she is taking. But holding on to the door frame does
no good against her force. I am a little girl after all.
We are finally here. Where we could never enter. She takes me to the adjacent
room and points towards the picture on the wall in one corner.
“Do you really think that man in there is our father?” asks my sister, her
red nails polished and glowing. Then she drags me to the veranda and points
again. There is our well in the middle of the yard with my elephant close by.
“How can we afford to live in a house with such a big yard?” Without waiting
for an answer, she drags me back in the room and makes me stand in front
of mother’s mirror. My feet dig inside the soft rug. Her front presses against
my back. I can feel all the intricate designs on her sari pressed against my skin
and it is cool to the touch. Her chin comes up against mine and she uses her
finger to angle my jaw towards our reflection.
“What do you see, Mir?”
“Your tickly is not rightly placed on your forehead.”
“Look at your eyes, your lips, your nose. What do you see?”
My kajol is well drawn, my lips have a tint of gloss, my nose has a tiny flower
on it.
“Mir. Can you see, Mir?” I turn my face towards her. Our reflections are
breathing on each other. The strands on her forehead dance when I exhale.
Her cheek holds the question as she presses her finger on my dimple.
“I can see.”
“You are my brother.”
I look back at the reflection. In there, her face is still turned towards me. My
jaw is still trapped in between her fingers.
I see my kajol is well drawn, my lips have a tint of gloss, my nose has a tiny
flower on it.
My nanu’s fingers have coils going down from the tips. The thumb has
grown extra lairs of skin. The corner of the nail is chaffed and the nail is partly
dead. Her fingers are crooked and cannot be straightened no matter what.
My mother has stretch marks on her belly. I have seen it. She allowed me
to. I can bathe with her.
“Do you want to run away with me? I will never come back. So you can
come with me, right now,” says my sister eagerly. Her fingers must have felt
uncomfortable against the stubbles on my chin. I reach out and slowly remove
her hand. As I hold it, her fingers -- smaller in size than mine -- hide inside the
crook of my palm.
Walking to the store for four eggs has never been easy. My feet are never
comfortable in the red sandals. And the sari always get tangled. “I walk for
another day”, I tell myself. Of course, people always step aside when I walk
by. I always think they like my perfume. My head bumps on the signposts for
the footpath shops, often dislodging the perfect hair parting mother made.
Over time I’ve known where to duck. I am very aware of the moment when
a flying jet of spit is about to land on my anchal. I tie it around my waist in
a coil. I find it easy to walk in my sandals that way. They talk and they stare.
The words are plentiful, left and right. I never forget to smile and say salam in
return. Mother says, “You are the most impressive girl out there, Mira. There
is nothing that can ever hurt you, as long as you remain my child – this loose
woman’s child.” I don’t understand what she means by this either. But I know
she’s given up something very precious to say something so confusing. Her
words don’t make sense because they don’t belong to this world.
I can never locate my mother when I take that walk through the busy market.
But I know I dare not take a short cut. That is not an option for her. She knew
when I would as a child. Every time I get back home with swollen eyes, scratched
elbows, and torn frock sleeves, I find her ready with bandage and yellow antiseptic.
The days I don’t have any, she will be standing on the porch with a cane ready.
“Why is that you do not hate me, apa? Everyone else does,” I say, holding
her trembling hand in mine.
She takes her hand away. “Mir! We have a father. I have seen him. You can
go to him.”
She then comes back to me and holds my face up to hers, “You can be
saved. Don’t you want to be free?”
“Why don’t you hate me?”
“We are a normal family, Mir.”
My mother walks in at that moment. She sees us standing where her rules
don’t apply. She takes two steps forward. Apa backs away. My sister knows
she has touched something forbidden. My mother doesn’t like actions that are
a clear display of lack of trust. She reaches out and straightens the gold disk
on my sister’s forehead. I thought she would cringe. But she dares my mother
with her eyes. My mother says nothing.
Suddenly there is this silence. Everyone gets to feel what each has lost or
was never entitled to. My sister can’t take it. She bursts into tears and runs out.
She is a liar though. She comes back whenever there is a festival and that
too, with gifts. Mine are always men’s clothing. She’s got what she wished for.
As a second wife of a sixty something man, she never gets to be treated as my
mother’s daughter.
“Nanu…”
“Can’t sleep?”
“I hate my father.”
“You do? I thought it was your mother.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Why can’t anyone love her?”
“Listen to me. When you were born…”
“I know. Father left.”
“…you had wings.” •
Charya 10
Raag Deshakh
• By Kanhupada
Outside the village, O Dombi, lies your hut.
You go merely touching the shaven-headed Brahmins.
But O Dombi, I will make love to you,
For Kanhu, a naked Kapalik, has no revulsion.
There is a lotus of sixty-four petals.
On it dances the Dombi.
O Dombi, let me ask you a sincere question,
On whose boat do you come and go?
You neither sell fabric nor the basket,
While you spread a bamboo mat for me.
For you I have discarded my box of props.
You see, Dombi, for your sake
This Kapalik has worn a necklace of bones.
You drive into the lake and eat lotus roots.
I shall kill you, O Dombi, and take your life.
Translation: Azfar Aziz
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Travel
Sandakphu:
A journey to the Himalayas
• Kenny David Rema
Fir Owchu didi,” (I’ve enjoyed much, will come
again, sister), said Malancho to the housekeeper of Paradise
“Dammibaiyo,
Home, a lodge in Gorkhey, Sandakphu. The female housekeeper
smiled and hugged her as if they’d been known for years. This was how
warmly we were treated in the locality where Nepalis constitute the majority.
We were far from our home (Bangladesh) but it never seemed like we were
foreigners there, for the warmth of the locals. This warmth took us in, spot on.
It all started in October last year. We were six in number at first, then four
in a few days, and lastly, the team decreased to three. We all wanted to see the
snow and feel it, so we aimed for January. Managing office, family and VISA
issues forced us to push it back to February. Having succeeded in booking the
tickets on February 14, we spent our days and nights in excitement.
One might wonder why Sandakphu. The answer is plain and simple: We
love mountains and if they come wrapped in snow and with views of four of
the highest peaks of the Himalayas, with a 50-km trekking opportunity, then
there shouldn’t be any reservations. The highest peak of West Bengal, India;
Sandakphu lies 11,929 ft high above sea level with a mesmerising view of the
sleeping Buddha (so called as the view of several Himalayan peaks appears to
be a giant sleeping figure). However, people there call it a baby trek as, they
say, there are more thrilling and longer treks with experience of the most exquisite
kind.
Day 1
We started at 11:00pm by bus from Kalyanpur, Dhaka. On top of bagpacks and
carry-ons, everyone of us had our own small bag for carrying passports and
necessary documents. Rubayed Hasan Rony, a professional photographer,
was more experienced in trekking than we were. But all his experience was
inside the country. He had a bad cold when we started; he still chose to go for
testing himself. Caesarea Malancho, a medical student who just completed
her study, is one of the most enthusiastic travellers and trekkers I have ever
seen.
We chose the direct bus through Benapole because of our VISA issue,
though going through Burimari border of Lalmonirhat would have saved our
time and expense. We slept till we reached Benapole border at 4:30am. We
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Travel
18
crossed the border at 8:00am and were soon on our way to Kolkata through
Petrapole. Kolkata, to me, always resembles Mymensingh what with its ageold
buildings and roads. It looked as busy as Dhaka but due to the well maintained
traffic, the journey through the city did not feel that bad. We reached
the Marquis Street at 1:00pm and called Tutul, a friend of ours. He was there
on business. If he wasn’t there, it would have been harder to get rail tickets on
the same day. The three-hour sleep at his place was much needed before the
long rail journey began.
Day 2
We reached Siliguri at 8:00am and got on a shared jeep to Sukhiapokhri for
140 rupees each. We could have booked the whole jeep but it would cost 4000
rupees. If the team were large, booking a jeep would have maximised your
chance to have some photo shoots of the beautiful roads and tea gardens. After
reaching Sukhia, we took another shared jeep for 30 rupees each to Manebhanjan
and reached there at 4:30pm. The whole journey took six hours, where
Siliguri was only 50 kilometres from Sukhia and Sukhia was 6 kilometres from
Manebhanjan. It takes more time to climb the hilly areas than the plains and
the roads were smooth enough to have a nice nap inside the car.
Here one thing travellers from the plains should remember: The temperature
drops down as you climb up the hills. Manebhanjan was 6325 ft high
and therefore, was tortuous. At night the temperature went down to minus:
It was still winter. As planned, we put our wind breaker jacket on and took
other winter stuffs in our hands. Our plan, indeed, was ambitious: To reach
Sandakphu on that very day. Which was not possible. Soon after we reached
Manebhanjan, we decided to call it a night and find a place to get ourselves
some good rest.
We wanted to stay in a home with some family, which, we thought, would
help us know the locals better. We stopped by a house owned by Nirjesh Mukkhya
Pradhan, a Nepali, who lived there with his family. He was a tour guide,
his son too. His house was in the middle of the border between Nepal and
India, though you wouldn’t notice the borderline. It sprawled over two countries
with some part in India and some in Nepal; it was like we slept in Nepal
and dined in India! But more soothing was the extent to which they went in
showing their hospitality. We were too hungry to actually give the food any
attention, we just needed to fill our stomach but the food they offered us tasted
like the best food in the whole world – Nepali chicken momo, spinach soup
and fresh vegetables with rice. We felt at home and warmly welcomed.
In the evening, we roamed the small town of Manebhanjan where only
500-600 families live with only one primary school. Most people there work
as tour guides, so their income depends on the tourists who visit. Having
submitted passport entries to the nearby Indian military check posts, we got
information about the trek and were provided with a government agency confirmed
tour guide. After learning about the places we wanted to visit, we were
handed a good planning and all the expenses including car rent were charted.
So there’s no way a tourist could be fleeced out of their money.
If we had 9-10 days to spend, then may be trekking right from Manebhanjan
is more adventurous and fun. But we had only 5-6 days, so we decided to take
a 31-kilometre ride from Manebhanjan to Sandakphu. It was not a very pleasant
ride as the roads were bumpy at times. In the middle of the journey, we
dropped by Chitre Monastery and roamed there for a while. People who hate
crowds can stay here and meditate to their heart’s content. We also had a little
trek before Gairibas, and military checking in Tumling and Meghma.
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Travel
Day 3
We reached a place named Aal in Sandakphu at 3:00pm and put up our tents
there to stay. There are a lot of lodges around but we preferred tents with
wind coming from all sides. Though the decision, a bit too ambitious, backfired
as Rony bhai showed some signs of acute mountain sickness. The cold
temperature which shot down to minus several degrees caused him migraine
headache and hypothermia. Luckily we managed a car in a short while with
the help of our guide, Nagen Tamang, and descended down a tortuous path
and arrived in Kalpokhari at 8:00pm. We stayed over at a lodge there. Later,
Malancho also caught a bit of cold in the night and we planned to return to
Manebhanjan. But the stubborn desire of trekking finally won over and kept
us away from carrying out our plan. So, the journey went on.
Day 4
Even Nagen the guide was unsure about going any further. But as the sun
shone, we decided to move forward. So we took a car up to Sabargram and
started trekking from there at 10:00am. We reached Phalut at 1:00pm and kept
trekking. There was only one trekker’s hut in Phalut which was full of tourists
at that time. So we trekked through the Singalila Forest and reached Gorkhey
at 4.30pm. Nagen was amazed at our ability to trek; he had thought we’d call
it a day much earlier! After 22 kilometers of trek, all we wanted was a good
night’s sleep. We met a lot of tourists there and most of them were from Kolkata,
though some were from Gujarat, Rajasthan and other states.
On the way through Singalila National Park, we discussed with Nagen a lot
about how much we had in common, in terms of cultural similarities. He is a
26 years old Nepali guy and a very romantic person. We were the first Bangladeshi
tourists he worked with. His amicable disposition made the whole journey
very enjoyable.
Day 5
We started at 10:00am and reached Rammam via Samanden at 1:00pm. There
we took a small 30 minutes break to rest in front of the Sikkim Mountains. Our
goal was to reach Sepi before evening. This trek was a relaxed one and we had
a lot of time to explore the mountains too.
The whole trek was through the Rhododendron Forest. I’m not equipped
with the kind of language required for capturing the beauty of magnolias
and rhododendrons embellished the roadsides everywhere. We took a walk
through the forest. Off and on, mountains were popping up and disappearing.
The weather was sunny but a little foggy in some places. After a long six hours
trek, we reached Sepi at 5.30pm and checked in at a Nepali lodge. There we
had a soft drink called “Tongba,” prepared from wheat.
We spent the evening playing with the lodge’s dog called Kali, singing
songs and talking about our experiences. Nagen became a very good friend of
ours and we still are connected through Facebook.
Day 6: We left the lodge at dawn and took a ride to Siliguri. From there we
arrived in Kolkata at 6:00am.
After five days of nonstop trekking, on 21st February we arrived back in
Dhaka at 10.00pm.
The journey gave us some insight into a different culture and geographical
location. Some of our experiences could be handy for Bangladeshi tourists. Firstly,
tourists are treated with a ton of respect there, and they are expected to reciprocate.
There are a lot of religious monasteries and temples on the way, and
tourists are expected to show the right manners while there. Secondly, smokes
are not allowed there in public. There is a fine if you are caught smoking. Thirdly,
tourists should follow the instructions that their guide provides. Guides are
there so that tourists don’t suffer on the journey. It’s really important to maintain
a good relation with the guide as he knows the place and the culture.
But we were a bit frustrated as we couldn’t see the snow. Some said it was due
to global warming; some said it was too late for snow. But even without the snow,
the trip was worth it. The beauty of the mountains is unbelievably alluring yet adventurous,
and perfect for those who want to explore the Himalayas for the first
time. April to July is the best time to travel, but snow lovers can go in November
and December. A total of TK 15,000 is enough for one person to experience the
Himalayas from the highest peak of this region. The spending will be worth it, as
wise men say: “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” •
Kenny David
Rema is a young
scriptwriter and
translator.
19
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Book note
Saqib Sarker
is sub-editor,
features team,
Dhaka Tribune.
The reviewer
is an aspiring
writer and fledgling
critic. He
can reached at
litonchakrabortymithundueng@
gmail.com
20
The daunting task of translating Frazer
• Saqib Sarker
Stories that could not be forgotten
• Liton Chakraborty Mithun
Syed Manzoorul Islam is one of Bangladesh’s leading fiction writers. He
is renowned for his extraordinary storytelling. Powerful articulation of
human emotions, irony and humour, and postmodernist literary techniques
set him apart from his peers. His newly published collection of stories,
Bhuley Thaka Galpa (Forgotten Stories), contains 15 stories selected from two
of his previously published collections, and offers a rewarding reading experience.
The book begins with “Aparanher galpa” (The story of an afternoon), which
revolves around a writer’s chance meeting with a young lady on a bus bound
for Srimangal. Sad plight of women in society, hypocrisy and corruption at
different levels are comically brought out as the story progresses. The second
story, “Ghani Miar Pathar” (Ghani Mia’s Stone), is, however, about Ghani who
spins and circulates a story of a magical, wish-fulfilling stone and makes money
exploiting popular belief. The story can as well be read as a self-reflexive
commentary on the power of storytelling. “Ferryghater Ranna” (Cooking at
the ferry ghat) is the story about a prostitute’s revenge against a corrupt, retired
police officer. It unveils the intricate web of criminal activities between
several groups of powerful people.
“Paraloukik” (The otherworldly) is a poignant story of poor rural girls working
as domestic helps in the city. A village girl with a cleft lip, called Maya,
starts working in the city home of Asma-ul-Husna, daughter of a locally influential
man. After regular dose of beatings and other tortures by both Asma and
her husband that went on for a long time, she finally succumbs. In an unex-
`ytLRivi wejvcKvix ey‡bv cebivR
S‡oi mIqvi wdbj¨v‡Ûi †eevK Rv`yKi|Ó
I first put pen to paper to write The Golden Bough I had
no conception of the magnitude of the voyage on which I
“When
was embarking; I thought only to explain a single rule of an
ancient Italian priesthood,” wrote James George Frazer about his book that
shaped the study of modern anthropology. Widely regarded as one of the
most important early texts in the fields of psychology and anthropology, The
Golden Bough was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in
1900; and in 12 volumes in the third edition, published in 1906–15. It has also
been published in several different one volume abridgments.
The monumental work is historic enough to warrant a translation and that
is what Khaliquzzaman Elias must have felt when he started the daunting task
in the 1990s. Daunting, because of the sheer volume: Elias’s translation from
an abridged edition filled up over 750 pages.
Published in February 2017 from bdnews24 Publishing Ltd, the work of
Khaliquzzaman Elias is the product of much deliberation, as the writer relates
in the preface. The translation work is also ambitious in nature, given not only
the enormous size of the work, but also the uncharted territory of translating
earliest language and jargon of anthropology.
Elias overcomes the challenge with ease. He has been particularly careful
in retaining Frazer’s storytelling, thus making the Bengali translation an engaging
read. As a student of English literature Elias knows that a translator often
has to shoulder the burden of deconstructing the sentences before putting
them back together in the target language. If the resultant structure carries
the original meaning in its entire depth and hue, then the effort will be worth
the struggle.
One can tell that the translation has tried to stay very faithful to the original
in terms of tone, which in Frazer’s original work is flowing but not light.
However, Elias is noticeably more fluid in translating the verses in the form
of many folk songs and poems throughout the book. Witty couplets from the
island of Bibili in New Guinea, Estonian lullaby -- all came to life in Elias’s expert
interpretation. Take for example
this simple verses sang in Serbia
as part of the ritual to call for rain:
ÒAvgiv Pwj Mv‡qi c‡_
E‡aŸ© †g‡Ni `j
Avgiv QywU Pjvi †mªv‡Z
wKš‘ †gNI QyU‡Q mej
Avgv‡`i †Zv Qvwo‡qB hvq Z‡e
km¨, Av½yi me wf‡R ReR‡e|Ó
Or we get a glimpse of how a
Bengali poet might have described
the swift and vigorous wind on the
planes of Finland:
Òµy‡ki nvIqv! Pcj I †eMevb
eoB KwVb †Zvgvi Wvbvi SvcUv Po Pvco
The recurring and overarching theme in The Golden Bough is the circle of
life and the inevitability of death and how the contemplation of this permeates
through time and across cultures. In between the two great events -- life
and death -- living occurs in all its colours and with all its darkness.
The translation is based on the 6th edition of an abridged version of the book
published by Macmillan Publishers in 1972. The translation was first published
serially in Uttaradhikar, a periodical by the Bangla Academy. Elias found translating
the evolution of magic and its relation to religion difficult while, he writes
in his preface, the storytelling portions of the book were gratifying to translate.
Kudos to the translator for finishing such a mammoth task of translation
and that too, with such ease and fine prose. •
pected turn of events, her graveyard
becomes a mausoleum and a myth
circulates among people about her
sainthood. The story digs out the
horrific reality of marginalised people
in Bangladesh’s villages, with a
focus on how minds of our common
people are full of prejudices. The final
story “Patkuya” (The small well)
is a sad story of a woman in her middle
age. Unmarried due to her physical
frailties (she has a limp), she finds
in the well her perfect match. She
spins a story about the well, seeking
to establish that it has magical powers
and medical properties of curing
diseases. Unfortunately, though, she
herself falls into the well and apparently
accepts her fate.
Islam’s stories are, in fact, the result of his continuous dialogue with the
Bangladeshi society. His storytelling bears witness to that.
Bhuley Thaka Galpa, like his other collections, offers readers the pleasure
of a unique reading experience but at the same time, it helps them understand
points of view that usually stay far outside the reach of the educatred
class. •
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

New translations of two
Bangladeshi novels
Book note
• Zarin Rafiuddin
The Library of Bangladesh is a literary project to boost quality English translation
of Bangladeshi fiction. Initiated by Bengal Lights Books, a wing of University
of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, the series aims to promote Bangladesh’s
unique literary heritage to the world. Its latest publications, The Mercernary
by Moinul Ahsan Saber and Letters of Blood by Rizia Rahman, stay true to the
promise of raising the bar high for literary translation in Bangladesh.
The Mercenary, translated by Shabnam Nadiya, offers a unique perspective
on Bangladesh’s Liberation War. The view is from the standpoint of the
Razakars, people who stood against Bangladesh’s struggle for independence
and collaborated with the Pakistani army. The approach is innovative, no
doubt, but there are risks involved. Saber, however, deals with the risks with
aplomb.
The protagonist
is a
man named
Kobej who
starts out as
the “handyman”
for the
village chieftain,
Akmal
Pradhan, who
believes that
supporting
Pakistan is
synonymous
with supporting
Islam.
An eloquent
man, Pradhan
is able to hold
a grip over the
villagers as an
advisor and
being wealthy
also helps.
The point to
be noted is
that his support
for Pakistan
derives
primarily from power politics: Pradhan wishes to silence opposition village
leader, Ramjan Sheikh. He uses Kobej to inflict violence on those who oppose
Pradhan, to the point of killing. But he is disillusioned when the Pakistani
army comes to the village; his view dramatically changes.
In her translation, Nadiya has aptly captured the novel’s tone of voice and
figurative aspects of Saber’s language. Saber’s use of simple questions which
people always avoid answering to, is nicely retained in the translation. So
is the character of Kobej, a “simpleton” who hates talking and thinking too
much. Though Kobej asks most of the novel’s fundamental, existential questions,
he believes that being human is more important than loosely labelling
people as Hindus or Muslims. The story extends to the post-independence
Bangladesh. Kobej initially finds meaning in being Pradhan’s “handyman” but
after that, he reneges and finds meaning as a Freedom Fighter. All the high
ideals shatter due to corruption and irregularities that consume all strata of
social and political life.
Rahman’s Letters of Blood puts the warped lives of sex workers on the table.
She brings out the humanity of sex workers, both as victims and survivors, of
wars fought daily in the battlefield of civility and ignorance. There are a lot of
existential discussions within Rahman’s novel that are beautifully brought to
life by Arunava’s Sinha’s translation. Sinha preserves the metaphors and other
linguistic, structural traits, in which, for example, the author recollects motifs
of splendour but inverts them into markers of decadence.
Rahman’s novel is polyphonic with an excess of characters whose lives are
strangely intertwined with one another. She works out the process of how a
woman is “unwomanned” by words like “whore.” It is a word to belittle even
the basic tenets of human experience, making women feel desperate, vulnerable
and helpless.
They are
emotionally,
physically
and sexually
abused. A
cruel method
of objectification
erupts
in the novel’s
pages tearing
it with a
profusion of
blood.
The diversity
of
the women
-- their habits
and idiosyncrasies
-- is
Rahman’s way
of questioning
the meaning
ascribed
to the word
“whore.”
There is the
enlightened
Yasmin, the
prima donna
Jahanara, the reluctant Parul, the over-eager Piru and the wannabe actress
Mamata. There is the former sex worker, Golapjaan, who is treated with respect.
Only a writer with a strong sense of empathy could actually write this
kind of a novel as collecting material for this, Rahman shares in her book’s foreword,
was something of a challenge due to the stigma attached to sex workers.
Discussion on the two novels is important, considering their relevance to
current social and political context of our country. But from another angle,
that of sending them abroad, getting them translated in a lingua franca, discussion
on their translation should top the priority list. Bangladesh is never
short of stories. It’s just that readers of many Asian and European countries
do not know how to get to them.
We are hopeful that more of such commendable translations will follow,
covering more and more of powerful Bangladeshi authors. •
Zarin Rafiuddin
is reviews books
for Arts &
Letters.
21
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Essay
On history
SN Rasul is a
fiction writer
and journalist.
22
• SN Rasul
History gives birth to me on a rainy summer, spitting me out into a
world of possibilities. I blink into existence, screaming in agonising
impatience.
On a bronze platter, I devour the fruits of life.
30 years back, my father is doing the exact opposite. He will not cry; he
does not breathe. My grandparents and their brothers and sisters wait for the
first son of the family to screech his first sound.
A few minutes later, my father screams, and opens his eyes, and witnesses
East Pakistan for the first time. The world heaves a sigh of relief.
I’m in school, tapping my pen on a blue Sunnydalian bench. My book is
turned to the page of Ancient Mesopotamia. I learn of Mohenjodaro and Harappa,
of their advanced technologies washed away by time. I learn of the ancient
Greeks, who would call their markets agora.
In Bangla class, I read stories of Bir Sreshthos whose names I’ll forget in a
few years’ time. I fail to see my father in the pages.
A little over 30 years ago, my dad is hunched back on the roof, tracing the
fighter jets in the sky, and their contrails of destruction. He hides for they will
shoot on sight.
Later that night, he sits around a table, in a room where the curtains are
drawn closed, under the auspices of a solitary candle. He breaks bread with
my grandparents, and his cousins.
A few centuries back, Napoleon is at war, in debt, and is forced to conduct
the Louisiana purchase, selling a huge chunk of the American continent to the
as-of-yet-to-form United States of America. Desperate, he walks into Russia.
Overconfident, he thinks he can own the world.
His soldiers perish in the brutal Russian cold. They die of pneumonia and
starvation, among other diseases. Napoleon is defeated.
In the 1980s, my father is studying Physics at Dhaka University. He loves
the subject but by the time the decade comes to a close, he has given up his
dreams to follow my grandfather into the jute business.
This is before the environment and climate change, before the obsolescence
of the plastic bag, and the business goes bankrupt.
I am born soon after, demanding the world. My father looks on in muted
happiness, carrying the world on his shoulders.
I am fifteen and I hate my father. I get myself a diary and write almost every
day about how I wish I could run away. My “O” levels are a massacre and the
hurt on my father’s face is palpable.
Somewhere in between, in consecutive years, my mother dies, my grandfather
dies, my grandmother dies. I call it a hat-trick to a friend of mine who’s
one half of a twin. He scolds me for making light of the matter.
My father and I find ourselves alone inside a two-bedroom apartment in
Jhigatola, not knowing what to do with ourselves.
60 years in the past, a great orator is climbing the political ladder in Germany.
His words seduce and woo, convince an entire continent to wipe out a
race. He thinks he can conquer the world.
Overconfident, he walks into Russia. The bitter Russian cold bites into his
soldiers, leaving them paralysed and beaten. He is defeated, having achieved
everything but failing to look a few centuries in the past, and learning his history.
2001. My grandfather tells me to call my father. I go to my father and say,
“Abbu, baba wants to see you.” He shakes his head in frustration and annoyance.
I cannot forget the hatred on his face.
In school, I have a crush on a girl because she’s as fair as an angel and wears
cute rectangular glasses and writes with her left hand. She has a masculine
name. She never finds out.
I move back and forth, to and from places I can barely call home, and find
myself in a concert where my elbow grazes against another girl’s. I continue to
have literal and figurative grazes of the elbows with her for the next two years.
She never finds out.
I move back and forth, to and from places
I can barely call home, and find myself in
a concert where my elbow grazes against
another girl’s. I continue to have literal
and figurative grazes of the elbows with
her for the next two years. She never
finds out
When I go to school, they make us recite Surah Fatiha and sing the national
anthem every morning. A decade later, I lose my religion, but not my memory
of Fatiha; I can’t remember the national anthem, but I retain some sort of
nationalistic pride.
In 2009, I fall in love for the first time. I have my heart broken.
In 2013, I fall in love for the second time. I have my heart broken.
Never again. In 2016, I fall in love for the third time. I have my heart broken.
Never again? Will I never learn?
Backtrack a few years. My father quits his job because he hates it. His lack
of ambition and his principles get in the way of companies and their ability to
make money. He delves into business.
A few years later, he goes bankrupt.
One day, my father comes up to me and does the hardest thing he’s ever
done: he asks me for money.
At work, I feel strings tugging at me from every corner of the globe. I squish
a little girl’s cheeks in between my palms in muted happiness, and I feel the
world rest heavy on my shoulders.
History kills me in silence. Unlike my birth, my mouth is shut, my hands
are tied, and I don’t even know I’m dying.
2017: I look at my reflection. Lines of repetition have formed on my face. I
see my entire future, mirrored in the history of our collective lives, doomed
to repeat itself.
Do we never learn? •
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017

Personal essay
The ‘third culture kid’ on her own
A young, Bangladeshi-born woman’s journey to become a screenwriter in Hollywood
• Tanha Dil
I
live in a hyphenated state of being. I’m a Bengali-American-Muslim child
of parents who emigrated from Bangladesh, and I often feel a little out of
place. Should I be more culturally inclined to the customs of my ancestors
or should I be a determined millennial living the American dream?
Can I be both?
“I’m a third culture kid trying to make it in Hollywood,” is the response that
perfectly sums up my last five years in Los Angeles. This isn’t the life that was
planned for me, not by my parents and certainly not by me. My life of satire,
improv comedy and screenwriting is a big, boastful fuck you to my community
as far as my parents are concerned.
It’s very difficult for a lot of immigrant families, when you come to the
States, you don’t have the capacity and capability to set up the accommodations
for an Americana lifestyle. My parents worked full time; they tried to
send me to a decent public school and made sure I didn’t get in to drugs, gangs
or theatre clubs. MyAmma and Abba juggled expenses while saving up for future
endeavours -- the Bengali normal -- opening a chain of convenient stores.
My mom juggled between being a young mother and an assistant manger
in a Circle-K convenient store in downtown Miami. My dad was crossing fast
food hurdles managing a Burger King store in Delray Beach. The infrastructure
to care for an impressionable child was not feasible. My grandmother and
extended family were in Dhaka and everything that I needed as mental nourishment
was at my fingertips, a magical remote control that would turn on the
“tube” of visual engagement.
Would you call them bad parents? I could.
But I won’t. Our narratives are very different.
They grew up in Bangladesh, literally in villages.
They were brought up in familiar surroundings
and languages. When they became
young parents, they were flown over to an
alien country, packed with Anglo languages
and customs. I’m sure they had a culture
shock so the last thing they wanted to worry
about was a child with identity issues.
I was figuratively “fresh off the boat” when
I reached Hollywood to start my adult life.
The first few years in Los Angeles I juggled
freelance writing gigs, production assistant
work, script writing courses during the weekdays
and improv classes, stand up shows and
my favourite: The path to finding a sense of
humour on the weekends. None of this fits
the expected route to academia or medicine
or business or whatever. And none fits the unspoken
rule set by my parents.
“I’ve been accepted into the MBA program at University of California, LA.
I’m leaving in the Fall,” I lied through my teeth. Honestly, lying to my parents
was the only thing that propelled my move to California without the
additional guilt of impending failure on my back. I moved out to Los Angles
with $800.00 in my pocket and a part time retail job and moved in to a bedbug
infested studio apartment in Korea Town. I haven’t looked back, but I’ve
thought about giving up at least 10,000 times since I started my journey to
become a screenwriter.
For a young Muslim, the daughter of scared immigrants, I feel the urgency
to complete the task I set out to accomplish. Or maybe it’s just my mother’s
stubborn genes speaking through me. In any case, after years of self doubt,
ancestral guilt, and back-breaking anxiety I now am a writer and performer
based out of Los Angeles. In a sea of Caucasian narratives filled with passive
aggressive racist points of view, I am a dusky young woman attempting to
make a name for myself and the culture I represent. A culture I’m afraid to
say is as foreign to me as the words of the Star Spangled Banner I didn’t bother
memorising as a child.
This coming November will be my fifth year in Los Angeles. I now work as
an assistant editor on a Sundance documentary, I perform monthly on storytelling
shows around town, I have also been cast as a series regular on my first
TV-show and I have been accepted into the MFA program for Screenwriting to
the school that started it all: University of California, LA.
“So, what part of my identity am I?”
To be honest, I still don’t know. All I can say with certainty to anyone reading this
is, don’t allow all your road blocks to prevent you from looking for other methods
of travelling to your destination. Even if that destination is not the final one. •
Tanha Dil is a
young writer
and an aspiring
screenwriter based
in Los Angeles,
USA.
Which summarises as: “No fun, no friends,
certainly no artistic future.”
My parents still question where they went
wrong. Or maybe right? There’s a big disparity
between my pragmatic parents and me. I’m
optimistic about the future and that started
with ample amounts of television viewing as
a child. Cut to November 2012, I’m sitting in
my parents’ kitchen: Newly graduated with a
useless BS degree in Communication.
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS
23

Personal essay
In dreams
may
come:
Patrick
James
Wilcox
Sayeeda T
Ahmad is
a poet. Her
first poetry
collection,
Across Oceans,
was published
by Bengal
Lights Books in
2016.
24
• Sayeeda T Ahmad
Life is strange. As are the consequences of our choices. Yet, perhaps, a
reason lies behind them all. Today’s outcome certainly reveals as much.
Now that it’s long past midnight, and I am at my laptop writing again,
I once again believe that, even after death, one is never gone and may even
affect the lives of those left behind. And so it seems, someone who died five
years ago has reached out from the grave and connected in such a way that
I’ve taken up the proverbial pen again.
I was a published poet, but could no longer write. The words refused to
come. Months, nay, years of unexpressed thoughts and fears had collected
like sewage in a clogged pipe. Impossible to transcribe on paper. Or to tap
out onto the computer screen. Even if expressed, inexpressible. Meaningless.
Thoughts and fears of inadequacy, loneliness, hopelessness, and suicide
methods persisted.
Eventually, I came to believe that my creative juices had stopped flowing.
That I could never pen another word.
This morning I awoke early, but with an acute case of abdominal pain. After
popping a couple of painkillers into my mouth, topped off with a glass of
water, the pain subsided. Then I took a decision that seemed mundane at the
time. I went back to sleep. Big whopping deal, you might say. But it was, as I
came to see from the ensuing dream.
Let me elaborate. In this dream, I bumped into someone whom I never
thought to see in a dream, never mind the real world. I wandered around a
large room, with strangers milling about. A school fair seemed to be taking
place, as each person held a plain white poster with a school name written on
it. I walked by the poster of Park Road School and then past the front wheels
of a rickshaw, resting none-too-comfortably on top of the trunk of a black car,
when someone called my name.
I looked up and was shocked to see the glowing face of my old high school
classmate, Patrick James Wilcox, sitting on a rickshaw seat, smiling! There
was that unforgettable sweet and somewhat mischievous smile. The twinkling
eyes. That kind heart. The sharp wit. And that creative, intelligent mind.
Whenever I think of him, one scene emerges to the fore. Patrick perched on
the windowsill of our cafetorium, or in the breezeway, playing his guitar.
Sometimes humming or singing softly.
In the dream, he held out his hand, pulled me on board, and gave me a hug.
“You’re much prettier now,” he said, smiling. I had to laugh. He was right. I
certainly wasn’t the best-looking girl in school. Far from it in fact.
He was eager to meet his family and friends. So, we leapt down and headed
into the nearest hallway. We wandered into a room at the far end, where a large
group stood around, chatting. I didn’t recognise their faces, but that didn’t
matter. What mattered was that they knew him and were stunned to see him.
Seeing Patrick walk in and give everyone bear hugs nearly brought me to
tears. There wasn’t a dry face in the room. He had touched the lives and hearts
of so many that they all missed him, and he missed them as well.
After bidding them farewell, we walked out a side door and into the backroom
of an industrial-sized kitchen. A few familiar faces from school were
standing around a wooden table; others were in an extended corridor. A similar
scene followed.
On leaving the kitchen, we were back in the room with the rickshaw. After
heading toward a different door, I turned around to see Patrick walking down
another dark hallway, whether to greet still others or return to where he had
been, I don’t know. Our paths would cross no more, I realised, and, hence, did
not call him back. I stepped through the door and into a different dream.
Throughout the day, I wondered what the dream meant. Why did he make
an appearance? Why not my father, who died a few weeks after Patrick’s suicide?
I reread Patrick’s obituary and his old blogs for clues. A couple of entries
were eye-opening, as I realised I was at a parallel place, fighting similar demons,
and had denied myself the one thing that always worked as my coping
mechanism, writing.
I knew if I were to start again, I wouldn’t know how to advance. Yet, perhaps
I could begin by writing about the dream and this experience?
It’s 2012 now. May 6 has come and gone. If Patrick’s friends and family, and
I, thought of him on that day, or over the years, it was privately done. Not with
fanfare. “The world don’t stop,” our ninth-grade history teacher Larry Garibaldi
would say. He’s right, and we know this. It doesn’t stop. Nor do we, as we try
to keep up with its pace.
Nevertheless, though our lives have grown eventful, that should not mean
we forget those who had, even if for a short while, been a part of our lives,
and long since left this world. Forgetting them would be akin to a scenario in
which they’ve never existed.
Far be it from me to claim to have known him well, or to say that we were
close friends, when we were not, but from those four years at HSHP, it was
clear that Patrick was a kind and creative soul. My heart is broken that he is
no more, but I would like to believe that he appeared in my dream to remind
me that, though my demons haunt me still, my creative soul, far from being
spent, is still alive and I cannot let it die. Otherwise, I too shall cease to live. •
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, June 8, 2017