Arts & Letters December 7 Thursday, 2017

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, 2017

Editor's note 

Editor 

Zafar Sobhan 

Editor 

Arts & Letters 

Rifat Munim 

Design 

Mahbub Alam 

Alamgir Hossain 

Shahadat Hossain 

After Dhaka Lit Fest 2017 was over, I was left wondering at the stack of materials piled up on my desk. There lay all the stories and 

interviews written and taken by a host of young talented writers from the literature, features and reporting teams of Dhaka Tribune. 

Browsing through all of them, I was happy on one hand that the coverage was adequate but worried on the other that some of the very 

well-written and nicely done stories and interviews, which have great literary potential, might get lost in the midst of an overwhelming 

number of published materials. That’s why more than half of this issue puts together some of the most brilliant pieces written on 

the occasion. Some are interviews, some features, but they all bring in new perspectives, introduce authentic viewpoints in literary 

discussions. I believe they will provide readers with useful and at the same time enjoyable reading material. The regret, however, is 

that there were more brilliant pieces that could not be fitted in due to space constraint. 

The other half contains new pieces of fiction and essay, and art and book reviews. There is an excellent tribute to Professor Nurul 

Islam that no one should miss. The book reviews are illuminating and the fiction pieces sharp-edged. 

Happy reading! 

 

Rifat Munim 

Cover 

Syed Rashad Imam 

Tanmoy 

Illustration 

Priyo 

Colour Specialist 

Shekhar Mondal 

‘No piece of art is the final 

statement’ 

Whose culture is it anyway? 

2 

• Sabrina Fatma Ahmad 

The “Whose Culture is it anyway” panel that was held on the Lawn stage 

on the final day of Dhaka Lit Fest 2017, was a timely exploration of identity 

politics in all its nuances of 

racism, inclusion and expression, 

when applied to 

art. 

Novelist and DLF director 

Dr Kazi Anis Ahmad introduced 

the panel, which 

featured poet/translator 

Andres Naffis-Sahely, novelist 

Karan Mahajan, and journalist/author 

Lionel Shriver 

in a lively discussion about 

identity politics, cultural 

appropriation and political 

correctness. 

After a rather quiet 

start, possibly caused by 

the acoustics of the openair 

location, the discussion 

gradually gathered steam, 

moderated ably by Kelly 

Falconer, founder of the 

Asia Literary Agency. The 

focus shifted from matters of inclusion and control of the narrative to the 

toxic nature of the PC movement in its present incarnation, and although 

there wasn’t much disagreement, some strong statements were made. 

“There are some important principles that, at this point in time, need 

defending that are behind the cultural appropriation movement, that’s all 

part of the package, the ways of thinking – categorising people and limiting 

them to the labels we put on them and encouraging them to embrace 

a very limited concept of identity,” said Lionel Shriver. It is the author’s 

belief that free speech, which has recently been appropriated, at least in 

the US by hate groups and neo-Nazis, might be disturbing, but also provide 

opportunities for the said groups to hang themselves. “Racists, when we 

let them talk, sound like racists. Big surprise,” she quipped. 

“Out of a sense of misguided 

righteousness, I 

think, a lot of young people 

in the United States, 

have abandoned the idea 

of free speech, in preference 

for assuming the role 

of censor, because it feels 

very powerful to tell people 

what they can or cannot say, 

and I think the big mistake 

that these young people are 

making is to assume that 

they will always be in a position 

to censor others,” she 

added, warning that this 

was something of a slippery 

slope that could come back 

to haunt them. 

“Every generation wants 

to bring down the old systems 

that haven’t of course 

Photo : Mahmud Hossain Opu 

kept the pace of change that 

they demand,” said Andres Naffis-Sahely. He counselled the need for a 

roadmap, a proper plan to effect change in identity politics. 

Talking about the struggle that artists have with censorship, or cultural 

appropriation particularly in writing about other cultures, Karan Mahajan 

said, “There are two things that are being forgotten; one is that no piece of 

art an artist produces is the final statement about something, and the other 

is that overall, you have to tune out the criticism.” • 

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, 2017 | DHAKA TRIBUNE

Interview 

‘We should keep as many of 

our dreams alive as possible’ 

• Sayeeda T Ahmad 

Booker Prize-winning fiction writer Ben Okri is also a poet. He took part 

in a panel on magical narratives on the opening day of Dhaka Lit Fest 

and in another panel on the second day he talked about his most famous 

novel, The Famished Road. A former poetry editor at West Africa 

magazine, he has published several books of poetry including An African Elegy, 

Mental Flight and Tales of Freedom. This interview took place on November 17. 

This is your first time in Bangladesh. How does it feel to be here? 

Yes, this is my first time, and it feels really great to be here. 

Has your poetry evolved? How so? 

Yes, of course it has evolved. The nature of writing is that it will evolve. 

Notebook or online? How do you get started? 

I start writing on paper first. I hand-write everything. Paper. Typing. Paper. 

Typing. I like to do most of my corrections by hand. I think it’s the ultimate 

authority over the text. 

In your session on November 16, you spoke about paintings. Do paintings influence 

your poetry? 

When I was younger, I wanted to be a painter as well. And I really believe that we 

should keep as many of our dreams alive as possible. My book, The Magic Lamp, 

is a book that I collaborated with another painter friend of mine. I wrote these 

25 stories from 25 of her paintings. 

Very beautiful paintings. 

Her name is Rosemary Clunie. 

Are you writing any new poems 

now? 

I’m always writing new poems. 

That’s what a poet does. Even when I’m sleeping, I’m writing poems 

in my sleep. 

Do you plan to publish another book of poems anytime soon? 

I’d love to publish another book of poems soon, but I always take my time. 

You spoke about that on the second day of the festival as well. The waiting, 

for their own time. 

Yeah, I always take my time. I feel poetry … I mean what’s the rush with poetry, 

you know? If a poem is true, it will always be true, and I’d rather wait and 

get it right. But sometimes, like with the Grenfell poem (Grenfell Tower), you 

can’t wait because you’re full of anger and you’re full of outrage. 

So, every now and again, I have this burst of reactions, or something, but 

it’s very, very, very rare. On the whole I really, really take my time. 

What are you reading now? 

I’m reading hundreds of things. If I start to go over a list of them, you’ll be here 

after a week.• 

Photo : Rajib Dhar 

‘Sometimes it feels as 

if the words are coming 

from my fingers’ 

• Saqib Sarker 

British novelist Esther Freud attended Dhaka Lit Fest 2017 last month. 

Born in 1963, Freud was named as one of the Best of Young Novelists 

under 40 by leading literary magazine Granta after the publication 

of her second novel Peerless Flats (1993). She has written eight novels. 

Her first book, a semi-autobiographical novel, Hideous Kinky (1992) was 

made into a film in 1998, starring Kate Winslet. She is the great-granddaughter 

of Sigmund Freud. This interview took place on November 17. 

Have you been to different panels at DLF? 

I saw some panels yesterday. I saw the opening ceremony and wonderful dramas. 

I saw Adonis speaking and also various international writers. Then today 

I did a tour of the old city. I wanted to make sure I saw some of Dhaka. 

What was it like seeing the old Dhaka? 

Fascinating. I loved that. I’m glad I did it. 

Was there any panel you enjoyed particularly or was insightful for you? 

It’s interesting as a writer, because you don’t actually hear writers talking that 

often. When writers meet they don’t talk about writing. So, it was nice to hear 

people like Lawrence Osborne, to hear about his process of writing. And I’m 

hoping to go see Ben Okri, who is talking now. So, as soon as I finish this interview 

I’ll go. 

What in your opinion are the transcending qualities 

in a piece of writing that make people relate regardless 

of language or boundary? 

I think it’s very personal. Everyone has a 

book that they love I’m sure they have 

experienced that somebody else doesn’t 

enjoy that book. For me, I have certain 

books that transcend the usual books 

because they speak to me so directly. But 

that’s because I make a personal connection 

with that book. And that’s what’s interesting 

about being a writer is that, you 

know, someone doesn’t like your book it’s 

ok. 

What is your advise to someone who lost touch 

with reading? Lots of people say that they used to 

read a lot but now they just YouTube? 

Photo : Syed Zakir Hossain 

Well, I’d say go to a quiet place and rebuild your connection 

with books. There is certain kind of peace and tranquility you get from reading. 

It’s a wonderful thing. 

You said in an interview with Alain Elkann that “it’s always hard to know the 

moment” when you could consider a work finished. How often do you experience 

those inspired moments when the writing flows seamlessly and you 

almost don’t know where that comes from? 

The moments when the writing flows is what makes it all worth it. Sometimes 

it feels as if the words are coming from my fingers, but how often that happens 

is hard to measure. Those times are so precious that they can loom larger in 

my memory, to make up for all the hours, days, weeks, when this doesn’t 

happen. • 

3 

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, 2017 

ARTS & LETTERS

Event 

The DSC Prize 

is the biggest literary prize in south Asia 

The seventh edition of the prize went to Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam 

for his debut novel, ‘The Story of a Brief Marriage’. 

For a literature prize that’s been in existence for seven years, the DSC 

Prize for South Asian Literature appears to have a less than powerful 

impact on India’s literary landscape. That’s particularly strange 

considering the prize money alone – which used to be $50,000 in the 

first six years before being halved to $25,000 in 2017 – is big enough to have 

been exciting interest among readers. 

After all, even a prize as distant as the Man Booker Prize – which still doesn’t 

consider books published in India, even though it now includes US publications 

– often has readers rushing to buy the winning title. But the DSC Prize, 

which is given to a book published anywhere in the world, as long as it has a 

South Asian theme, does not attract nearly as much attention or even curiosity 

about the winner. The interest appears to be limited to the literary circuit. 

Will the latest edition – the seventh time that the prize has been awarded – 

change all this? Especially with at least one of the other major literary awards 

in India, the Crossword prizes, losing steam in terms of scale and grandeur, 

the ground is certainly ripe for a major prize to capture the imagination of 

people. In fact, at least one new literary prize is believed to be in the works. 

The breadth of literature prizes in the UK and the USA, the world’s largest 

markets for English books, is mind-boggling. A large number of awards – most 

of them well-funded by corporate sponsors or private philanthropists – are 

given every year, across an array of genres and even for writers grouped by 

gender or geographical origin. There are prizes for, among other things, fiction, 

non-fiction, travel writing, essays, translated literature, poetry, and genre 

fiction, and for women, for writers of colour, for first novels, for second 

novels, and so on. 

India, of course, has very little by way of variety. Besides the Sahitya 

Akademi prizes for every official language – original writing as well as translation 

– the Hindu Prize for fiction, the Tata Literature Live prizes for fiction, 

non-fiction, business, and first book, the Shakti Bhatt first book award, and 

the Crossword Prizes (whose lustre has dimmed), there is little else. Except, of 

course, the DSC Prize, which is not limited to India. 

On November 18 this year, the three-day long Dhaka Literary Festival hosted 

the award ceremony of the DSC Prize for the first time ever. Ritu Menon, 

chair of the jury, announced the winner – The Story of a Brief Marriage, the 

debut novel by Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam from a shortlist of five 

books. 

Anuk Arudpragasam receives the award from Bangladesh’s Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhit and the international Jury 

 

Photo: Mahmud Hossain Opu 

4 


How it began 

The DSC Prize was founded in 2010 by Surina Narula to showcase the work of 

authors who are passionate about South Asia and to present their works to a 

worldwide audience. The prize is sponsored by DSC Limited, an infrastructure 

company headed by HS Narula, Surina Narula’s husband. 

For the first five years, the $50,000-prize, was awarded at the Jaipur Literature 

Festival, as the climax to the process of announcing the longlist in Delhi 

and the shortlist in London. The year 2016 saw a change in venue to the Galle 

Festival in Sri Lanka, before moving on to the Dhaka Literary Festival this year. 

Surina Narula, in her speech at the award ceremony, described how the 

DSC Prize was founded. “The prize was actually instituted at the Jaipur Literature 

Festival because DSC Limited was the founder-sponsor of the festival. 

We started going there from the beginning but noticed that something was 

missing, that a South Asian prize wasn’t there. Then my son suggested, ‘let’s 

do this’.” 

The prize money was halved to $25,000 this year, but it is still the largest 

monetary value for a literary prize for South Asia writing. Arudpragasam, 

whose winning novel is set during the Tamil-Sinhala conflict announced that 

he would donate one-third of the money to organisations working with Northern 

Sri Lankans, Rohingya Muslims and Kashmiris. 

“I don’t like to speak up for other people, you know, but I was given this 

money. I am from a community that was destroyed by a nation state. Also, 

across South Asia there are similar people. So, it’s my duty. I don’t enjoy talking 

about it. I’m a writer, you know. But in this case, because it is the subject 

of my novel, it felt necessary,” he said. 

What it takes to win 

With his win, Arudpragasam joins the ranks of a talented group of writers. In 

the inaugural year of the prize, Pakistani writer HM Naqvi won for his novel 

Home Boy with Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka being awarded in 2012 

for his debut novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. The year 2013 

saw Jeet Thayil as the first Indian novelist to win for Narcopolis and in 2014, 

Indian novelist Cyrus Mistry was awarded for Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer. 

Famed American author – of Indian origin – Jhumpa Lahiri took home the 

prize in 2015 for The Lowland, and Indian novelist Anuradha Roy won last year 

for her novel Sleeping on Jupiter. 


Interview 

The DSC prize only considers full-length fictional works of at least 

25,000 words published between February 1 of the previous year and 

February 15 of the current year. Short story anthologies are ineligible, although 

the jury can make exceptions for short story collections that are 

linked by theme. Unfortunately for self-published authors, only entries 

sent in by publishers are eligible and the book has to be written in, or 

have been translated to English. Each year’s jury, selected by the advisory 

committee, goes on to review all entries and eventually selects a longlist, 

shortlist and finally, the winner. This year’s jury was chaired by publisher 

and writer Ritu Menon. 

In her speech at the award ceremony, Menon said, “The process we followed 

as a jury was one of consultation and discussion from the longlist 

to the shortlist to the finalist. And given the diversity of our backgrounds, 

it was a process marked with remarkable consensus.” 

Senath Walter Perera, a professor of English who has been on numerous 

juries including this year, said “I normally find that juries are made of disparate 

individuals. The duty of a chair is to bring together these disparate 

individuals and try to move toward a decision that the majority agrees with. 

In the juries I have been in and chaired, there has been wonderful rapport, 

[and] for this jury as well, despite the physical distance.” 

Writer Stephen Alter, whose book In the Jungles of the Night was also on 

the shortlist this year, said the prize “doesn’t define itself by nationality 

or by ethnicity or by language necessarily and is something that is simply 

defined itself by the territory that your imagination inhabits in that way.” 

But do literary prizes even matter? 

The DSC prize, as literary awards are meant to, plays an important role 

in the career of writers in terms of increasing recognition, book sales and 

opening up further opportunities for them. Recipients have gone on to be 

published globally, with their work reaching wider international audiences, 

which is the central vision of the prize. 

Alter believes that the professional benefits of the prize aren’t just limited 

to the writer of the winning book. “Being on the shortlist not only 

celebrates that particular book, but also positions other books within the 

publishers’ minds, within the readers’ minds, [and] within the booksellers’ 

minds,” he said. 

Awards are especially important for younger writers, according to Senath 

Walter Perera, giving the example of Shehan Karunatilaka, a young 

writer from Sri Lanka who won the prize in 2012, when Perera was a member 

of the advisory board. Karunatilaka had also won the Commonwealth 

Prize earlier that year, leading his book to be published in England as well 

as the United States. 

However, Perera advises, receiving the recognition of a literary prize 

is only a start: “A writer can’t become complacent. He has to work. The 

writer has to use the prize as a point of departure to make it be beneficial 

to his writing career.” 

For this year’s winner, recognition matters for writers. “Receiving any 

kind of recognition is important for any author. You put in all this energy 

into your work and many hours. It’s important for that work to be recognised,” 

Arudpragasam said. The Sri Lankan author has also been named 

the winner of this year’s Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the cumulative 

impact of these awards can only lead to greater readership of his book. 

It’s a sentiment Stephen Alter agrees with: “It validates in a sense the 

hours that you spend by yourself wondering whether anyone’s going to be 

interested in reading the story that you’re writing. So, prizes, I think, on a 

very personal level, validate the efforts.” 

Practically speaking however, Dhaka Lit Fest co-director Ahsan Akbar 

put it best: “No writer sets out to write to win prizes. They write because it 

comes from deep within, but one still has to make a living, so prizes work 

beautifully that way.”• 

This article was first published in the scroll on November 25 

‘Recognition is important 

for any author’ 

In conversation with the DSC Prize 2017 

winner 


The award ceremony 

for 

the DSC Prize 

for South 

Asian Literature 2017 

was held in Bangladesh 

for the first time on the 

closing day of the Dhaka 

Lit Fest. The winner 

was Sri Lankan writer 

Anuk Arudpragasam 

for his novel, The Story 

of a Brief Marriage, 

which is set in Sri Lanka 

during the last days 

of its civil war and the 

genocide of 2008-2009. 


In his award speech, 

Arudpragasam said he would donate one-third of the $25,000 award to organisations 

that work in the northeast of Sri Lanka, the Rohingya community 

whose plight is similar to that which his community faced for many years, and 

the Kashmir people who have been rendered adrift for many decades. 

After the announcement, Dhaka Tribune caught up with the young writer. 

Congratulations on your award. 

Thank you. 

How do you feel having won this award, now that you stand on a platform 

where you are able to speak up for other people that do not have a voice? 

I don’t like to speak up for other people, you know, but I was given this money. 

I am from a community that was destroyed by a nation state. Also, across 

South Asia there are similar people. So, it’s my duty. I don’t enjoy talking 

about it. I’m a writer, you know. But in this case, because it is the subject of 

my novel, it felt necessary. 

This is your first time in Dhaka. How have the last three days been for you? 

It’s been lovely. I wish I had more of a chance to see Dhaka, but we are so busy. 

I would love to come back to Dhaka and see the city and see the country a 

little bit. I didn’t get the opportunity. But yeah, the festival itself was lovely. I 

enjoyed it a lot. Yes, I had a good time. 

Thank you. What are you working on now? Another novel? 

I’m working on another novel, yes. 

Similar themes? 

No, it’s quite different. It has a lot less violence. It’s a lot more ordinary life. 

Do you think an award can have an impact on a writer? 

Receiving any kind of recognition is important for any author. You put in all 

this energy into your work and many hours. It’s important for that work to be 

recognised. • 

5 


ARTS & LETTERS

Interview 

‘We have one good book inside’ 

• Mir Arif 

Ashok Ferrey is one of Sri Lanka’s finest fiction writers. He has published six 

books, including Colpetty People, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl and Serendipity. 

His most recent novel, The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons, was longlisted for 

the DSC Prize this year. Ferrey studied Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford. 

He joined the DLF 2017 and participated in many sessions. In this interview, 

which took place on the second day of the festival (November 17), he talks 

about his fiction and his writing process. 

Is this your first visit in Bangladesh? 

No, it’s my second. I came here to open an art gallery a few years ago, but it’s 

my first at the Dhaka Literary Festival. 

How do you feel about attending the DLF? 

It is wonderful because there are so many similarities between Bangladesh 

and Sri Lanka. We originally came from this part of the world; Sri Lankans 

came originally from Bengal. So, when I compare the features of Bangladesh 

with those of ours, I find that they have a lot in common. The language and 

food are similar. But at the same time we are different. We are a different 

culture and a different race, and it’s important for all the South Asian races to 

get together in terms of literature and so on because you have India, which is 

the big fish in the middle and all of us around. For many of us, these festivals 

are very important in order to promote what our countries are like. 

If you write a book and 50 people read the book, 

there are 50 different books in their mind. That is why 

literature or books or nonfiction books are so supreme 

as far as I am concerned. 


What is it like to be a fiction writer? How would you describe your process of 

writing a story? 

Well, it’s a creation. Just like building a house or writing a song, it’s a creation. 

It’s a supreme creation because unlike a painting – a painting remains the 

same; for everyone who sees a painting, it is the same – writing a book is a 

different thing. If you write a book and 50 people read the book, there are 50 

different books in their mind. That is why literature or books or nonfiction 

books are so supreme as far as I am concerned. They can fire up so many 

different people in different ways because each person reads a different book. 

Who are the authors that have inspired you the most to write? 

For me there is a set of authors who started writing in the middle of the 

twentieth century. I can talk about Graham Greene. For him, the good and evil 

were also very important. A lot of his novels explored these themes. There is 

another writer, Evelyn Waugh, who is very funny, and as I write comedy, I find 

him a supreme writer. Also stylistically, his English is almost unmatched; the 

way he writes it and styles it. 

6 

Your novel, The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons, explores the idea and concept 

of evil. What inspired you to write this book? 

I think evil is quite an unfashionable thing nowadays in the west where 

people make excuses for evil. People will say, “Oh, he is not evil, it’s just his 

father beat him when he was young and that made his mind go funny, or he is 

genetically conditioned to be the way he is.” But I actually think that there is 

an actual evil around and it’s a free choice to be good or bad. You know it’s not 

totally outside our control, and this is what my book is about. Although it’s a 

comedy, it’s a funny book about Sir Lankan life: It’s about how we set or place 

evil, how we define it in Sri Lanka and we have very funny ways of doing it. We 

are also a very superstitious race, so nothing is ever anyone’s fault; everything 

is other people’s fault. People will say the cat crossed my path or somebody 

threw salt over their shoulder and that’s why the bad things happened. You 

know we refuse to accept responsibility, so it’s a comedy on those lines. 

Your early childhood was spent in Africa and a boarding school in the English 

countryside. You only came back to Sri Lanka after college and began writing 

stories. Do you see instances of your formative years moulding your writing 

today? 

Yes, all the time. I think I started writing quite late in life when I was in my 

early forties. As a result, there’s a lot of raw material inside me and a lot of 

stuff that happened to me, or countries, people and civilization I have been 

through in Africa, Somalia, Nigeria, England and America. 

Do you think your writing belongs to the postcolonial tradition? 

I don’t think about it much. In fact, I don’t care. I think any author should not 

care. It is up to the critics to tell you where you belong. As an author, as an 

artist of any sort, you should not care. You should not be looking over your 

shoulder all the time or looking into the mirror. If you recognise something 

in yourself, your own output changes. It is like looking into a mirror. The only 

truth that comes in that quarter second before you recognise yourself is: The 

moment you recognise yourself, your expression changes. So, if I consciously 

sit down and say I am writing postcolonial literature, it will change the way I 

write. It will ruin the way I write, because all writing has to come from inside. 

And I must not think about what other people think of me. I must write 

because that is what is inside me. 

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers? 

Yes. Don’t be afraid, pick up the pen. We have one good book inside – in each 

of us. So pick up that pen today or get to the computer. I think one of the 

great reasons why we South Asians don’t write is because we are afraid. We 

are afraid of what other people will say about our writing; we are afraid of lots 

of things. But actually, don’t be afraid. I know that Bangladeshis, for instance, 

are hugely talented and they are very artistic. I’ve travelled to many countries, 

and this is possibly or probably the most artistic country I have been to. That’s 

why it pains me to think that there are so many writers, potential writers, who 

will never pick up the pen. So, do it and that’s all. • 


Interview 

Defying stereotypes in 

reading and writing 

A joint interview with Jesse Ball and 

Catherine Lacey 

The first day of the Dhaka Lit Fest started with an unromantic drizzle. 

It must have had some effects on Jesse Ball and Catherine Lacey, two of 

Granta’s list of best young American novelists, who came for the first time 

in Bangladesh. Jesse Ball has written 17 books, including his bestsellers: 

Samedi the Deafness, The Way Through Doors, Silence Once Begun and 

A Cure for Suicide. Catherine Lacey is the author of The Answers and 

Nobody Is Ever Missing; she won a 2016 Whiting Award and has been 

translated into five languages. I saw them standing silently by the pond at 

Bangla Academy premises. A breeze stirred the leaves and sent ripples on 

the pond water. As I approached them, both smiled at me warmly. Jesse 

Ball is tall and he wore a black half-sleeve shirt, his hair trimmed short. 

There were a lot of tattoos on his hands, of mostly bees but also of other 

insects. Catherine Lacey had tattoos too on both hands -- a paperclip on 

the left and phases of moon on the right. She looked enthused with her 

hair bobbed shortly in layers. As I informed Ball that I would like to 

interview him, he agreed outright. Then I thought it would be great if I 

asked Catherine, too, to come along. When asked, she stood with arms 

akimbo and smiled once again and agreed to join us. It was wonderful to 

have found them together and ask them for a joint interview. 

• Mir Arif 

Mir Arif: Ball, you write in the absurdist tradition, which was one of the popular 

literary and philosophical movements in the twentieth century led by 

Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Why this predilection for absurdism? 

Jesse Ball: I think it’s a logical response to modern time. You wake up in the 

morning and go out into the world and nothing makes any sense. And you 

see all these people who try to pretend that things make sense one way or 

the other. It’s so obvious: It’s all just absurd. So, when it’s your turn to write 

something, of course you’re going to write absurdly because you are pointing 

out that nothing makes sense. 

MA: Catherine, your books deal with human relationship, such as love, marriage 

and separation. They are also about women pursuing their dreams in a 

tough world. Do you find yourself genre-specific while writing? 

Catherine Lacey: Not really. A lot of female writers get sort of lumped together 

writing about female experience simply because they portray female characters. 

I don’t think that’s always very accurate. We can’t see a female character 

as a female character. There is still this fixed reaction to women writing or 

making anything about anything. But when I step back and look at my work, 

I don’t think I really write caring much about female experience. That’s not 

worth writing about and it’s not my concern. 

MA: Ball, a lot of your novels are set in imaginary cities. In fact, you literally 

name cities after letters: X, Y, Z etc. What is the reason of this anonymity? 

JB: Well, I think in the realistic tradition we say: I am going to write about 

something, or to be specific, let’s say: I am going to write a novel about Dhaka. 

You can’t write a novel about this city because no novel will specifically be 

about it. As soon as you try to write something about it, things change and 

become something else, and it isn’t the actual thing. So, if that’s true, if you 

actually can’t risk writing something that’s not true, maybe it’s better to create 

imaginary things. I mean that’s that. 

MA: Catherine, we talk about writer’s block more than reader’s block. Have 

you ever gone through reader’s block? 

CL: I often have reader’s block. A lot really. 

MA: What do you do then? 

CL: I tend to think about it and what will help me read. And if it is just for 

reading novel after novel, I switch to play or poetry or other texts. Ultimately, 

if I think I am supposed to read some texts or authors because they write sort 

of cultural badge, or for oh yes, I have read this and that, very talked-about 

author, I am not often in this game. Reading for reason other than the excitement 

in the text generally backfires. 

MA: Ball, do you believe in a fixed time for writing? 

JB: No, I don’t. I rarely write. Most of the time I just think. 

MA: Your novel, Samedi the Deafness, was written in eight days. I was reading 

one of your interviews where you said that you didn’t edit it; it was published 

as it was when you had written it. Is this because you want your readers to go 

through the process and the truth you have been through while writing? 

JB: Yes, that’s it. If the book is an attempt to demonstrate the philosophy of 

how you write it, in a sense you don’t want to try to make it polished and perfect 

because that presents a false and something else that’s not true, whereas 

you can just present who you actually are entirely to the readers. That’s a kind 

of honesty from an author’s perspective. 

MA: Catherine, do you believe in the notion of a fixed time for writing? 

CL: I am very different from Jesse in that. I write every morning because I 

don’t often know what I want to be working on. I just like having a ritual of 

writing. And I edit ferociously. I change lots of things. 

MA: George Orwell wrote in an essay, “Writers write out of sheer egoism”. 

Ball, do you think it’s egoism or it’s a process through which writers connect 

themselves with the world? 

JB: For me, it’s certainly not egotistical impulse to write. I am interested in 

demonstrating the internal world more than the external one. For as to read is 

the opposite, you read someone else. But in a sense our actions are egotistical 

actions, and we are trying escape the “I”. And we can also say there are more 

writers who are egotistical than others. 

MA: Catherine, can you remember the first book you read in your childhood? 

CL: The Bible. 

JB: She is from the South. 

CL: Yeah. I read too much Bible as a child. But I read a lot of other books, and 

mentioning one or a few would not be enough. They created a whole world for 

me in my childhood. 

MA: Ball, which fictional literary character has made the most lasting impression 

on you in your childhood? 

JB: Alice in Wonderland. That was terrific. 

MA: Book festivals are enjoying a boom these days. Catherine, do you think 

they are important for writers to connect with different parts of the world? 

CL: Yeah, absolutely. Any kind of festival is very important for writers. People 

are disposed to learn about each other and get to know things. I find them 

really resourceful. • 

(Abridged. Read the full version at http://www.dhakatribune.com/articles/magazine/arts-letters/) 



7 


ARTS & LETTERS

Interview 

Chasing history 

Historian and award-winning author William Dalrymple talks about his love of 

writing, travelling, latest book and upcoming project 

8 

• Farina Noireet 

their work, have to travel. 

One of the reasons I live in Delhi is to have access to 

In an interview with the Times of India earlier this 

year, you’ve mentioned how Indian history is 

much like Game of Thrones. Is that complicated, 

enigmatic appeal part of why your work 

the National Archives, which is the main repository 

of all the stuff I write about, and if I lived anywhere 

else in the world, well, I’d have to travel 

to Delhi to study it. It’s just the way it is. 

focuses so much on the history of this particular 

region? 

Indian history is an endless cornucopia of 

wonders. I’ve never run out of exciting 

and fascinating things to write about – I’m 

like a child in a sweet shop. Most history 

that’s written in South Asia comes out of 

academic departments and is written for 

other academics and is quite dry, and while 

I’m not denigrating that, it is what it is – it’s not 

literature. There are very few writers in South 

Asia who research like historians, but write for a 

general audience. I feel I’m very lucky in that regard, 

because I have an opening there with very few competitors. 

As a result, my books sell wonderfully well. 

I’m very lucky, especially in the area I write about – from 

the late Mughal period through to the early colonial period – 


You’re a renowned historian and you’re 

also well known for your work on travel 

writing. What has been your best travel 

experience so far? 

I think the moment for any traveller, which 

in my case was at the age of 18 and again 

at 21 with the Xanadu journey, is when for 

the first time you are free to travel on your 

own and you have the resources to be able to 

travel cheaply, as a backpacker, on buses, etc, 

and that is a moment of great release. And like a 

first love affair, it can never quite be repeated. Normal 

life, reality, middle age, all these things set in and 

the thrill of your first love affair and the thrill of your 

first journey abroad are things which remain with you 

forever. So if I had to choose a best travel experience, 

there’s virtually nothing written on it. And my current subject – the East India 

Company, and the fall of the Mughals – there’s almost nothing in print. It’s 

extraordinary and fascinating, and the reference to Game of Thrones I suppose 

is in the unbelievable violence that is part of this history. For example, Shah 

it would either be my first year in India at age 18 through to 19, travelling as a 

backpacker, sleeping rough, unable to afford a hotel three times a week, or my 

Xanadu journey at the age of 21, from Jerusalem, up the Karakoram Highway 

to China, to Xanadu in Mongolia. 

Alam, my hero, who starts off in the beginning of this book as a handsome 

young prince, battling his way out of Delhi, much like prince Caspian in the 

Narnia stories, ends up having his eyes ripped out by Ghulam Qadir, and dying 

a blind king in a ruined palace – how Game of Thrones is that! 

What inspires you to write? 

I don’t have a sort of innate urge just to sit down in the morning and take up 

a pen and scribble. I’m driven to research and write about things that interest 

me. So when I get interested in something, I buy the books, begin to devour 

As the co-founder of the Jaipur Lit Fest, how do you think our newer Dhaka 

Lit Fest compares? 

I’m super impressed. In a sense, the surprise is that Jaipur hasn’t had more 

competion. It’s not that it’s a formula which can’t be repeated, and 11 years 

them and think up ways to shape them and put it together in writing. As a 

writer, it means you can pursue your interests and go off and make a living by 

writing about whatever it is that interests you. It is a wonderfully flexible way 

of earning a living. 

on, we are much bigger than any other South Asian literary festival. All the 

other Indian ones, with the exception of Chennai and Bombay Times of India, 

tend to feature the same Indian writers in English. About a third of our sessions 

are in Hindi or Rajasthani or Bengali and certainly are about literature 

in those languages. Nor do they have the international programs we do – a 

third of our authors are international. The only two festivals that have even 

the beginnings of an international list are here and Lahore. I would imagine 

that 10 years on, we would be facing much more competion than we are. As 

Dhaka Lit Fest shows, festivals can grow quite quickly and confidently in just 

a couple of years. 

Tell us somthing about your latest work. 

I’ve just finished a book called Kohinoor, about the Kohinoor diamond, which 

is probably the single most famous piece of loot that the British “took” from 

India. It’s a fascinating story, because it’s like the Ring of Power in Lord of the 

Rings, where everyone associated with it comes to horrible, sticky ends. It’s a 

fabulous tale and very complicated. Everyone wants this diamond and it’s a 

great cause of dissension. 

This was a book which I co-wrote with Anita Anand. It was provoked by 

this ridiculous claim that the British were “gifted” the diamond by Ranjit Singh. 

Now first of all, they fought a war to get it; secondly, Ranjit Singh was 15 

Writers in Bangladesh looking to write about Bangladesh or Bengal in general, 

often struggle from a lack of proper documentation of our region’s history, 

compared to what is available across the border. How do we research? 

Well the two big depositories of Colonial Era documentation are at the National 

Archives in Delhi, and the British Library, which inherited the whole India 

Office Library, and neither of those two archives are likely to give up their 

treasures. On the other hand, both those institutions are engaged in a rapid 

process of digitalisation and putting their collections online. So one answer 

is online. But the other answer is that, I’m afraid historians, by the nature of 

years in the grave when this happened, so that whole history needed clarifying, 

so we went ahead and did that over a short project. 

I’m now engaged in this monster of a book on the East India Company, and 

the story of a corporation, the third in the world and by far the most powerful, 

which by 1850 had an army twice the size of the British army. It’s the ultimate 

example of corporate violence in world history. Once you begin to see it as 

a corporate story, rather than one in terms of nationalism, it becomes much 

more interesting, and everything becomes a bit more complex. Hopefully I’ll 

be back here in a couple of years talking about it. • 


Theatre in a postmodern era 

‘We’re living through a brief 

period of utopia’ 

David Hare discusses the modern world, millennials and Netflix 

• Shuprova Tasneem 

David Hare’s interest in all things political is evident as soon as we 

start talking. The first part of the conversation was dominated by 

questions from the playwright himself – starting from the Citizens’ 

Committee Rally next door at Suhrwardy Uddyan to the ease of access 

to political institutions in Bangladesh. 

“I’ve written a new play on whether you can still achieve good through the 

political system in Britain, or whether you are best working outside it,” he explained. 

While widely known as one of the greatest writers of political theatre, Hare 

began with talking about his love for all stories that have “heart”. 

Referring to his adaption of a trilogy of Chekhov plays for the stage, he 

said, “I love that kind of ‘hot drama’. I don’t see anything wrong with passion 

within theatre. The reason I was drawn to the young Chekhov, crudely, was 

because it was romantic. Seagull is done a lot, but the other two, Platonov and 

Ivanov, less so, because they’re a young man’s play. It’s before he developed 

the theory that the playwright shouldn’t be seen in his work and he should 

only be revealed through his characters, and honestly I prefer his romantic 

genius over his classical genius.” 

New stories, new mediums 

Hare also shared his thoughts on his latest series Collateral featuring Carey 

Mulligan, out on Netflix in February 2018. 

“Collateral is about illegal immigrants and people who live under the wire. 

Grenfell tower showed to an astonished world how many people live in Britain 

without permission and who are just trying to make a honest living.” 

This is first project for Netflix, and he admits to it being a wonderful experience 

and hugely different from being a writer for Hollywood. 

“There is this incredible period on television now where companies like 

Netflix and Amazon are actually interested in good writers, and your story 

is your own that others won’t fiddle around with. It’s like this brief period of 

utopia where all the best stories are making it to the screens.” 

Does that mean television is not only stealing the audience, but taking 

away stories from theatre too? 

“The danger of new writing in the theatre is that it can often just end up 

in the ghetto. There are very commendable attempts now to get new playwrights 

into the big spaces, because if they don’t get that sort of exposure, 

even the good stories can’t survive and they end up on TV.” 

“We lost a generation to television – the people who are now in their 40s 

who grew up looking at TV screens and started to look at their phones, they 

don’t go to the theatre. But the young, the people we now call millenials, 

they’re interested because they’re sick to death of the screen. And more importantly, 

they’re writing for theatre.” 

“People are always saying that theatre is dying, but I always thought the 

theatre would come through. It’s like saying print journalism is finished and 

the Kindle will replace books – not at the moment, no.” 

‘The great issue of the 21st century is mass migration’ 

After spending decades as one of the foremost writers of Britain, it’s difficult 

to focus on only one of his works, yet the clichéd question must be asked -- 

does he have any favourites? 

“My book The Blue Touch Paper is about how I finally wrote the play Plenty 

-- it took me 30 years of living – about a woman and her disillusionment in the 

People are always saying that theatre is dying, 

but I always thought the theatre would come 

through. It’s like saying print journalism is 

finished and the Kindle will replace books – 

not at the moment, no 

post war period. Definitely the young play of mine that I’m quite pleased of. 

Since then, maybe Via Dolorosa, which is about Israel and Palestine, and Racing 

Demons, about the Church of England. It grips an audience I think mainly 

because it shows people trying to do good in the inner city.” 

While on the topic of the youth and their receptiveness to not just new (and 

old) forms of entertainment but new ideas as well, Hare said, “What your generation 

is seeing is the shortcomings of global capitalism and the distinguishing 

feature of all systems across the world - inequality. People feel that very 

keenly, and they are more open to socialist ideologies now as a result.” 

What do the youth have in store for them? According to Hare, “The sexual 

liberation of the 50s to the 70s was essentially about women’s equality. The 

feminist revolution is clearly unfinished – whether professionally or in private 

lives, and the finishing of it is a complicated business.” 

“The great issue of the 21 st century is clearly going to be mass migration, 

and whether the rich are willing to surrender a little bit of the world they live 

in for other people to live too. They are knocking at the door and we are leaving 

Europe to keep people out. This is the big raging issue and that’s what I’m 

trying to write about.” 

He added with a rather wry smile, “However, the mating rituals of the 

young are undoubtedly a mystery to me. I’m not sure I would like to be young 

now.” • 


9 


ARTS & LETTERS

Event 

Poet Mohammad Rafiq receives 

Gemcon Literary Award 2017 

Gemcon Group Vice-Chairman Kazi Nabil Ahmed handed over the award to the 

poet at the inaugural evening of the Dhaka Lit Fest 2017 

• Afrose Jahan Chaity 

Poet Mohammad Rafiq was honoured with the Gemcon 

Sahitya Puroshkar (Literary Award) 2017 for his 

book Duti Ganthakabya on the first day of the Dhaka 

Literary Festival. Ashraf Jewel and Mamun Or Rashid 

were also jointly announced as winners of the Tarun 

Literary Award, while Nusrat Nusin won the Tarun 

Poetry Award. 

All four received their awards during a ceremony 

at the Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad Auditorium 

of Bangla Academy in Dhaka. Seventy-five-year-old 

Rafiq said there were several times in his life when he 

had felt that he had been reborn, such as after the 1971 

Liberation War and following a bout of severe illness. 

“I was born in 1943, then I was reborn in 1960, 1969, 

1970, 1971 … it’s a miracle, I am alive and my country 

is alive,” said the poet. “I was severely ill for many 

Gemcon Group Vice-Chairman Kazi Nabil Ahmed, third from left, and poet Mohammad Rafique, fifth from left, 

along with other award winners and juries during the Gemcon Literary Award ceremony at Bangla Academy on 

years and could do nothing at all. Then I felt like doing 

something. Going back to work, I wrote this book in 

November 16, 2017 


two months. “This book was mine before, then it belonged to the publishers, 

and through this award, it’s now on the way to all,” he added. 

During the ceremony, Gemcon Group Director Kazi Nabil Ahmed presented 

the awardees with the prize money and the jury board members handed over 

the crests to each winner along with a garland and an honorary sash (Uttorio). 

The jury board consisted of poets Asad Mannan, Khaled Hossain, Kumar 

Chakraborty, Bibash Rai Chowdhury and Shebonti Ghosh. 

Mohammad Rafiq received TK 800,000 as the winner of the Gemcon Sahitya 

Puroshkar, while the Tarun Literary Award winners received TK 50,000 

each, and Nusrat received TK 100,000. • 

‘A poet needs to meditate a lot’ 

10 

• Mir Arif 

ing over the years. I believe the future of our country is inseparably 

linked with women’s uprising. This book is part of a trilogy. 

Mohammad Rafiq is one of the pre-eminent Bangladeshi poets. 

He has been awarded Gemcon Sahitya Puroshkar 2017 

for his book Duti Ganthakabyo. In this interview, he expresses 

his joy on receiving the award and talks about his poetry. 

Many years ago I wrote one of its parts, Kapila. But if I put 

them thematically, Behula would be the first part of this trilogy; 

Mahua, second; and Kapila, third. However, I had written 

Kapila first. If readers read them all, they will understand 

my points clearly. I said in the prize-giving ceremony that I 

You have received all the prestigious awards of Bengali literature. 

Gemcon Literary Award is a new achievement in your literary 

career. How do you feel about receiving this award? 

Awards generally don’t define the standard of someone’s work; the 


was suffering from many physical problems after I had retired 

from Jahangirnagar University in 2010. I had to frequent hospitals 

and consult doctors. I lost hope that I would write once again. 

Suddenly, I felt a sort of inspiration in me, a kind of emotion that kept 

standard lies inside his/her writing. What authors actually have is the love of 

readers. But it’s true that receiving an award is always a joyous experience. 

It distinguishes you in many ways – in your society and family. An award impacts 

other parts of life more than a literary career. However, I am happy that 

creeping in me. I started writing Behula almost blindly. I felt a spontaneity in 

me which helped write the book in 15 days only. I never had to write a single 

poem twice. Mahua took a month to write. These three books are my world. 

You could say that these three together uphold a poetic vision. 

I have received Gemcon Literary Award 2017. I am really delighted. 

Would you like to say something for aspiring poets and writers? 

The prize has been conferred on you for your poetry collection Duti Ganthakabyo. 

Would you please tell us something about your book? 

When a poet starts writing, he/she develops some themes and ideas. Such a 

theme was liberty of women and their future, which kept coming in my writ- 

I would like say that pursuit of fame is not good for one’s writing career. A 

poet needs to meditate a lot. The young poets are after fame and enriching 

their profile. These don’t go with poetry. If someone writes really good poems, 

fame would follow anyway. You don’t need to rush for it. • 


Interview 

‘Religion will always be used by politicians’ 

Azeem Ibrahim, author of ‘The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden 

Genocide,’ spoke about the recent refugee crisis during the DLF 2017. 

In between the panels, we caught up with him for a quick interview. 

• Shuprova Tasneem 

In your book, you wrote extensively of earlier mass attacks and subsequent 

refugee crises. Clearly, this is an ongoing issue. Why is the global media 

spotlight so focused on it this time around? 

The Rohingyas have faced wave after wave of violence for over half a century, 

but the most recent wave is probably the most severe. I believe this is 

happening now because in 2016, the Burmese Army Chief General Min Aung 

Hlaing did a dry-run of these attacks and learnt three important things - that 

Aung Sun Suu Kyi supports him and the military action, that the military 

becomes very popular when they are seen as defenders of Buddhist values and 

that the international community’s attitude to such massacres is completely 

benign. He still got an invitation to Europe and he still went on to buy more 

armaments for his military. 

In light of recent events, are you less optimistic about the impact of 

international pressure on Myanmar? 

I am less optimistic now. When I wrote the book, I was still hoping the international 

community would take action to stop what was not just predicted by myself, but 

almost every Myanmar expert. Now that almost 615,000 Rohingya have been 

expelled and so many have been ethnically cleansed, the probability of them 

going back to their land has diminished considerably. The Myanmar authorities 

know there is not enough pressure being put on them, so their strategy is now 

to buy time until international attention moves on and these refugees become a 

permanent fixture in Bangladesh. 

What diplomatic role do you think Bangladesh should play? 

I absolutely salute the authorities of Bangladesh who have taken in such a 

huge number of refugees and have tried to take care of 

an extremely difficult situation. But at the same time, 

on a diplomatic level, Bangladesh needs to be more 

aggressive with Myanmar. For example, they have 

agreed not to use the term “Rohingya”, which I think is 

problematic. Bangladesh is also able to refer themselves 

to the International Criminal Court as a victim of the 

massive influx of refugees, which will then open up an 

investigation on Myanmar and put pressure on them. 


Is religion and politics inseparable? 

Religion will always be used by politicians as a cover for unpopular policies 

or particular strategies. As long as religion plays an important part in people’s 

lives, which it does for billions of people across the globe, politics will 

capitalise on it. I believe a fundamental reason religious extremism exists is 

because people believe normal political systems have failed them. Religion 

offers answers to very complex socio-economic problems and provides 

representation to the under-represented. 

What’s next for you? 

My new book, published last month, is called Radical Origins: Why We Are Losing 

the Battle Against Islamic Extremism. The central argument is that we can tackle 

this problem from a military perspective, a fight that was almost conclusively 

ended in Iraq in 2013, but because we haven’t tackled the root of the problem, 

it has warped into something more dangerous. As a global community, we have 

to look at the root of the problem of Islamic extremism, which is the ideology 

that is fueling it. I’m now working on another book that looks at the future of UK 

foreign policy after Brexit, but that’s still in its early stages. • 

Dhaka Lit Fest participants stand by the Rohingyas 

• Tribune Desk 

Dhaka Lit Fest participants have expressed support for the Rohingya 

refugees, urging the global community “to stand up and support these 

refugees, and to hold accountable those who have orchestrated the 

violence leading to this catastrophe.” 

Celebrated Syrian poet Adonis, academy award-winning actress Tilda 

Swinton, Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri, playwright David Hare, 

historian William Dalrymple, writer Lionel Shriver, and Bangladeshi literary 

icons Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaiser Haq, were among over 50 other 

participants of the festival who have signed the statement issued on Sunday. 

The statement has also been endorsed by the Dhaka Lit Fest alumni 

from previous years, including Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Vijay 

Seshadri, writer Nayantara Sahgal, and public intellectual Tariq Ali, 

among others. 

The full statement reads: “Since 26 August 2017, over 600,000 

Rohingyas have been exiled into neighbouring Bangladesh due to a preplanned 

and systematic ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar government 

and army. This is one of the largest forced migrations in recent times, and 

puts the Rohingyas as a community at risk of extinction from their native 

Arakan province. The participants in Dhaka Lit Fest express sympathy 

for the refugees, and wish to keep the news of this unfolding situation 

at the forefront of global consciousness, as the situation in the refugee 

camps precipitates what could be an even larger humanitarian crisis due 

to disease and malnutrition causing the deaths of the vulnerable – the 

young, the old, the ill and destitute. The Dhaka Lit Fest urges the global 

community, governing bodies, rights groups, and media to stand up 

and support these refugees, and to hold accountable those who have 

orchestrated the violence leading to this catastrophe.” 

The participants who signed the statement are: Adonis, Ahsan Akbar, 

Alex Preston, Ameerah Haq, André Naffis-Sahely, Anisul Hoque, Bee 

Rowlatt, Belal Ehsan Baaquie, Ben Okri, Catherine Lacey, Charles Glass, 

David Hare, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Dominic Ziegler, Esther Freud, Fakrul 

Alam, Firdous Azim, Garga Chatterjee, Jesse Ball, John Makinson, John 

Ralston Saul, Kaiser Haq, Kamila Shamsie, Kazi Anis Ahmed, Kazi Nabil 

Ahmed, Kelly Falconer, Khademul Islam, Lionel Shriver, Luba Khalili 

Luke, Neima Mahrukh, Mohiuddin Mohammed, Hanif Manjula, Narayan 

Nadeem, Zaman Nadia, Kabir Barb, Nandana Sen, Naomi Hossain, 

Nasreen Sattar, Nayantara Sahgal, Nicole Farhi, Philip Hensher, Roderick 

Matthews, Sadaf Saaz, Samrat Choudhury, Sandro Kopp, Shaheen 

Akhter, Shamsad Mortuza, Sharbari Ahmed, Stephen Alter, Sudeep 

Chakravarti, Syed Badrul Ahsan, Shobhaa De, Tahmima Anam, Talal 

Ahmed Chowdhury, Tariq Ali, Tilda Swinton, William Dalrymple, Vijay 

Seshadri, Zafar Sobhan, Zia Haider Rahman and Zulfiqer Russell. • 

11 


ARTS & LETTERS

Interview 

‘Through my intellectual, politica 

voice, I wanted to change society 

In an invigorating conversation, Adonis shared his thoughts about poetry and the Middle East on t 

Adonis is considered the greatest living poet in the Arabic world. Kaiser Haq, 

the biggest Bangladeshi poet writing in English, engaged Adonis in an invigorating 

conversation about his poetry and thoughts about literature and the Middle 

East on the opening day of the Dhaka Lit Fest 2017 (November 16). Haq spoke 

in both English and French while Adonis replied in French. Kazi Ashraf Uddin, 

associate professor of English at Jahangirnagar University, joined the two poets 

and translated Adonis’s responses into English. The following is an excerpt 

from a transcription of that conversation. 

Note: Due to some technical glitches, the first two questions and Adonis’s responses to them 

could not be retrieved. In consultation with Kaiser Haq, we have decided to provide readers 

with a summary of the missed responses. The first question was about his name which originally 

was Ali Ahmad Said Esber. In response, Adonis explained why he adopted the name 

of a Greek divine figure. According to the mythological story, Adonis, the handsome young 

hunter, is killed by a boar. Shelley had turned this myth into a mythopoeic representation of 

the Romantic poet Keats “butchered” by critics. Ali Ahmad too saw himself as Adonis and 

the newspaper editors as boars that tried to destroy him. The second question was about 

his first collection of poetry that catapulted him as a prominent voice in Arabic literature. In 

response, he shared that after doing his mandatory military service in 1955-56 in the Syrian 

Army, he was imprisoned because of his political affiliation with an opposition party. On 

his release he and his recently wedded wife, Khalida Said, a literary critic, crossed over into 

Lebanon and settled in Beirut, where they devoted themselves full-time to literary activities. 

The first of Adonis’s 20 plus poetry collections appeared in 1957; soon he became the leading 

innovator in Arabic poetry, exploiting the resources of prose poetry to extend the thematic 

and emotional reach of poetry. – Editor 

12 

Kaiser Haq: Elaborate your ideas on the Arab world. 

Adonis: Religion has a strong influence on politics, so that’s why it’s been 

corrupted. Politics is corrupted these days. The best thing would be the separation 

between religion and the state. I propose a rereading of the Quranic 

text from a more secular perspective. At the same time, I believe that the 

reading should not be against religion but that religion should be an individual 

practice and it should not intervene in any other religious practices. 

The society should be based on three things: Human rights, liberation and 

liberty of women. The society or the individual attitude should not be based 

on religious confessions; rather, it should be based on secularism and at the 

same time civic sense. 

My poetry is a kind of rupture from the past tradition and it announces a 

kind of modernity in the Arabic world. It launches a new tradition. Before 

that many things were not allowed to be expressed. There was a kind of 

constraint on alternative thoughts. So, what I did was I created in my poetry 

a character, who worked as a kind of mouthpiece for the articulation of my 

thoughts. So, through literature I expressed my ideas. It was a kind of roundabout 

way that I invented myself. Through my intellectual, political and 

literary voice, I wanted to change the society. 

Kaiser Haq: You are a critic of your own society and religion. And at the 

same time historical events impacted you. You also responded powerfully 

to the debacle of 1967, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. So, how did 

Kaiser Haq, left, asking a question while Adonis, middle, looks on 

Photo: Mahmud Hossain Opu 

you create poetry out of this extreme experience of a war? 

Adonis: The Quran is not against creativity like poetry. However, in my society 

poetry and writing were creative output that was eyed with suspicion. 

So, I opened up a new journal and the purpose was to open up those creative 

faculties of different Arab people. And this journal gave us a chance to write 

poetry, to express our thoughts creatively. One of our main problems was 

reading. There was a project to reread all those texts from a different perspective 

and when one rereads a text out of a mediocre perspective, the text 

itself becomes mediocre. An importance was put on the culture of rereading 

our tradition and the literary texts emanating from it, and the meta-narrative 

as well. We should look at the poetic tradition from a new angle and we 

should reread the whole of our cultural tradition. What we found through 

our rereading was that the literature we liked was marginal due to its opposition 

to power. Literature connected to power was less important, less poetic 

and less creative. Marginal literature is more interesting and more vibrant. 

We had begun a movement and this movement gave us a new concept of the 

world: The first one was the conception of God and the second one was the 

conception of our cultural identity. We found out in the process that identity 

is not something we inherit from our generations; rather, identity is something 

that we create. So, there is some sort of existentialist connection here. 

My own self is not competing with itself, so I need other selves to communicate; 

I need other selves to enrich myself because my own self is the whole 

constituted of different other selves. 

Kaiser Haq: It is by now clear that you are interested in mysticism. You also 

say that Sufism and surrealism are similar in many aspects, and you have 

written a book on this. So, how do you think Sufism and surrealism are 

similar? 

Adonis: There is a debate about the relationship between poetry, national 

tradition and internationalism or globalisation. We have said that we want to 


l and literary 

’ 

he opening day of the Dhaka Lit Fest 2017 

be open to all other cultures and all other traditions. And what we also found 

that the very mysticism we find in surrealism existed 1000 or 1500 years 

back. The west is not the inventor of surrealism; rather, this kind of mystic 

tradition is something that goes beyond our nationality that has existed in 

the Arabic culture for centuries. The mystics used to believe that there was 

a reality beyond reality, and reality does not have to be something that is 

visual or visible. It can be something invisible. And that’s the connection 

between mysticism and surrealism. 

Kaiser Haq: Surrealism has had a connection with leftist politics. You also 

have had a long association with left politics. In fact, now you claim that you 

are a leftist. I would like to know how you define leftist politics today and 

how things have changed. 

Adonis: I believe humanity constitutes the essence of leftism. And this 

essence lies in change. Human beings are not a static entity. There should 

always be prospects for a change in the future. The future is basically constructed 

by human beings. 

Kaiser Haq: You said that the perfume of poetry should be able to combat 

the dark forces. What do you mean by that? 

Adonis: My poetry has its own force. For example, if we consider the door 

is rectangular, it’s a very simplistic and linear expression. But if we say that 

the door is like a woman who is opening her arms, then it gets some different 

meanings and different nuances. There is an interesting chemistry between 

the world, the word and the self. And there is also a kind of triangular connection 

between the world, the word and the self. It is important to me to 

create a world of images. The Arabic language is very corporeal. It has got 

some sensorial charm. So, it is always important to me to create a world of 

images through language, which I call “the world of images.” If we consider 

the whole world to be a flower, then we can consider poetry to be the perfume 

of that flower. 

Kaiser Haq: Do you think people are more interested in a flower than its 

perfume? 

Adonis: I think the American society and the American politics could be that 

flower we are always looking for. This is the flower of money, this is the flower 

of politics and this is the flower of power. The American politics distorts 

the smell of this flower. 

Kaiser Haq: The recent events in the Middle East have provoked sharp comments 

from you. Would you share your thoughts on that? 

Adonis: The Arab Spring opened up a new horizon for the Arab people. But at 

the same time, it was a kind of American creation the way they had created 

Osama Bin Laden. The Arab Spring has destroyed some of the Arab countries, 

such as Libya, Iraq and Lebanon. 

Kaiser Haq: In literary festivals, one topic that keeps coming up is the increasing 

difficulty of circulating literature and the declining readership and 

the declining reading habit in the younger generations. 

Adonis: I am not really worried about the new generations because they read 

more than readers of the previous generations. Different media that have 

emerged are helpful for facilitating the act of reading and also, the documentation 

process. • 

A poem by Adonis 

They say I’m done 

– translated by Khaled Mattawa 

They say I’m done for 

and nothing remains of my joy 

no oil, no flame. 

I walk past roses, and what do they 

care if I laugh or weep? 

In roses, inside my eyes 

and in my soul, there is a morning 

in which I erase and am erased. 

I love, I love beauty 

and in it I worship my follies, 

the ones I found on my own, 

and the ones to which I was led. 

You’ve become thirsty – 

when will you say, “I’m sated,” my blood. 

I thirst for an hour 

for which I would bet all my days. 

I thirst for a deep, open heart. 

I’ll light its flame along my road 

store it among my veins 

somewhere between alive and dead. 

when will you say 

‘’I’m sated,” my youth, my blood. 


even as the earth’s glory stands before me, 

her largesse. 

Her hands wound me 

and her chest worships me. 

And when her thorns heal me 

her roses capture me again. 


as the ages hold me dear, 

and become drunk 

at the mention of my name. 


while on every path 

a thousand hearts greet me, 

shadows and houses laugh. 

I drink to every heart, 

I drink until rapture. 

I say, soul, you are released, 

become now what you always wished. 

(Reprinted from Adonis Selected Poems with 

permission) 

13 


ARTS & LETTERS

Tribute 

To forge in 

the smithy of 

my soul 

Shamsad Mortuza 

is Professor of 

English at the 

University of 

Dhaka. Currently 

on leave, he is 

the Head of the 

Department 

of English and 

Humanities at 

ULAB. 

14 

• Shamsad Mortuza 

“My God! I felt like a bull in a China house!” Professor Nurul 

Islam was reflecting on his UK days when he began to 

appreciate the western culture. He realised the pitfalls 

of not having a direct exposure to the actual culture 

or a lived experience for those who were studying English literature as an 

academic discipline. In the early 1990s as a student, who was transitioning 

from the uncritical appreciation of English culture to postcolonial undertaking 

of “Other Englishes”, I found this statement a bit problematic. Then again, 

over the years I have learnt to locate this statement in an appropriate context 

to understand one great English teacher who has passed away recently. I 

reckoned that this same professor had the opportunity of teaching in the UK, 

but decided to return to Dhaka after an epiphanic realisation that there was 

hardly any tree around him that he could name just like he used to do in his 

childhood village in Chandpur or in his favourite Jahangirnagar University 

campus; this same man who had earlier instructed his wife to sing Tagore’s 

song at the time of his death. 

Prof Islam was the founding Chairman of the Department of English. He 

retired from Jahangirnagar University in 1998 after an illustrious career of 28 

years, and joined Eastern University as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Law 

and eventually became its vice-chancellor. In his demeanour he looked like a 

typical country gentleman who would wear his flat cap and tweed jacket. Prof 

Islam went to the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland for his PhD, where 

he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Nobel Laureate novelist Graham 

Greene. He earlier spent a year at University of Leeds for a postgraduate 

diploma following his Master’s from the University of Dhaka in 1966. Prof 

Islam was one of the few Bangladeshi teachers of his generation to get a PhD 

in English literature from the UK. In the 1970s, when Bangladeshi universities 

were trying to shape up with a national characteristic, English departments 

were still seen as a foundational degree for civil service. Prof Islam’s overseas 

exposure made him aware of the cultural orientation and contextualisation 

for true aesthetic appreciation. But at the same time, he was aware of the 

changes in the world literary scene which he tried to introduce in our course 

curriculum. 

He was an erudite 

professor who would 

transport his students 

to the worlds of Yeats, 

Eliot, Dickens, Joyce or 

his specialty Graham 

Greene. At the same 

time, he would make 

us aware of their 

local implications. 

At the height of anti- 

Ershad movement, 

Prof Islam would make the Irish revolution our own; the rise of right-wing 

fundamentalism made him quote Joyce: “God-forsaken, priest-ridden 

country.” He would make us locate the Yeatsian wild swans at Jahangirnagar 

Lake; or the illusion of social mobility of Dickens’s Great Expectations in 

contemporary Bangladesh. He would reflect on the identity crisis while living 

He would make us locate the Yeatsian 

wild swans at Jahangirnagar Lake; or the 

illusion of social mobility of Dickens’s 

Great Expectations in contemporary 

Bangladesh 

in a troubled time through Joyce’s Stephen or DH Lawrence’s Morel brothers. 

He would talk of the allegorised love hate diatribe between America and 

Vietnam narrated through a quiet American. In his lectures we recognized 

the vastness of his scholarship. 

He was a voracious reader. I can hardly think of Nurul Islam sir without 

a book or some other print matters. He would browse through the Oxford 

dictionary or newspapers if there was no book around. So much so, I once saw 

one senior brother going to the exam hall with a newspaper. People normally 

carry books or notes, but I was curious to see him carrying the newspaper. 

“Well, if I put it on the table, Islam sir is sure to pick it up and get engrossed in 

reading, which will allow us all to talk during exams.” 

Prof Islam was a gentleman par excellence. He was extremely witty. For 

about three years, he taught at King Saud University and was the departmental 

chair. He was very popular among his Saudi students who insisted on 

visiting his home. To avoid them, he told them: “You see I have four wives 

and countless children. How can I have you over in my small house!” Well, 

whether the Sauds got the joke or not is another issue. After a successful stint 

in the Saudi, he came back to Bangladesh and built a fanciful house near his 

favourite campus, in the housing society of Jahangirnagar University. He used 

to tell me, “People think I am a fool to squander all my money in a suburban 

house.” He named it “Retreat”, and would spend most of his weekends there. 

“A newspaper and a steamy coffee in a sun-drenched wintry morning, what 

more do you want?”-- he would tell his colleagues. 

Prof Islam was one of the writers of our intermediate textbook. When the 

government tried to introduce Bangla at all levels, he strongly supported it. His 

support was not based on any jingoistic agenda; rather, he knew knowledge 

could be acquired and expressed in any language in which one is good. Deep 

down he was a true Bengali who believed in Bengali nationalism, and upheld its 

spirit in a post-1975 era when the time was congenial. But his professionalism 

never allowed his political interest to interfere with his administrative or 

academic role. He was loved by his students as a father figure, one who can be 

trusted. He forged hope, enthusiasm, and encouragement in the smithy of our 

souls (to borrow one of his favourite phrases from James Joyce once again). 

Prof Islam is survived by his wife, Prof Sauda Akhtar of JU Bangla 

Department and three children. He was laid to his final rest at his ancestral 

village in Chandpur. He was 78. • 


Book Review 

Vignettes from a time gone by 

A review of ‘Church Bells and Darjeeling Tea’ by Zeena Choudhury 

• Enam Chowdhury 

Church Bells and Darjeeling Tea is a real-life story of a seven years old girl’s 

blossoming up into a graceful young lady through a ten-year long period, at 

Loreto Convent, Darjeeling - a land of mists and clouds and flowers. This is a 

narrative where the rolling hills of Orange Pekoe Lopchu tea, the meandering 

rivers, the out-of-the-world toy train, the snow-clad Kanchenjunga, the pink 

clouds complimenting the white and orange peaks, and of course flowers of 

different hues all round, vividly appear in the mind’s eye in all their beauty, 

mystique, colour and splendour. 

In this highly readable 100-page narrative of a school-girl in her childhood 

and adolescence, Zeena Choudhury exhibits her mastery in ingraining 

factual descriptions with a fictional brush in a manner that keeping facts 

intact, makes reading highly delightful. His choice of words, modes of 

descriptions penetrating observations and interesting references make the 

book a most readable one. The basic technique applied by the author is to 

give aptly worked descriptions of events, people, places and institutions in 

between her own encompassing personal experiences, in a topmost boarding 

school- nestled in the foreland of the Himalayan hills. 

In their little limited world of Loreto girls, small things or incidents brought 

in great pleasure and happiness, whereas small incidents could also cause 

great pain and despair. This book strings together a bunch of small pleasures 

and tales of unspoilt innocence, of both pleasant and unpleasant experiences 

of hope, aspirations, rivalry, amity and harmony. Indeed, the book clearly 

illustrates that happiness does not have to be about the big sweeping- all milk 

and honey-circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. As 

an English poet Jonson said, “In small proportions we just beauties see; And 

in short measures life may perfect be.” A simple event of not being asked for a 

dance in a social gathering when she felt like imagining that she was Scarlett 

O’Hara in a ballroom scene, could bring in long lasting immeasurable pain and 

feelings of humiliation. Again, when she was 16 in a North Point school social 

the handsomest boy in her reckoning came up and said, “May I have the 

dance?” - that gave her so much happiness and satisfaction that she thought 

that was one of her pleasantest memories of Loreto. 

Future came to these girls all well ordained and they did not worry too 

much about anything. They banished it from their carefree lives. As the 

author writes on those days, “It was a wonderful innocent time of my life 

with nothing much to worry about except whether I had finished my essay 

on time or tidied my cupboard”. It seems that somehow or the other, the 

Loreto girls came to know that worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. 

It only diminished today’s pleasure and fun. 

Though it was like a little island of peace and tranquility submerged in 

its own way of life, the ripples of the epic main events did touch its shore 

and Zeena was not oblivious of those. 1946 to 1956 was perhaps one of 

the most tumultuous periods in the history of the sub-continent, and she 

has referred to most of those in a manner which does not at all seem to be 

super impositions. Independence from the British in 1947, and in its wake 

the mass exodus of the British girls from the school, the communal riots, 

the conquest of Mount Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the 

setting up of tea plantations, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and the 

language movement of East Pakistan - all emerge naturally as happenings, 

surrounding a conscious young girl’s growing up. The descriptions ofthe 

tea- parties and birthday celebrations, the cakes and pastries of Plivas (now 

Glenarys) and Lobos, the Gymkhana Club; Horse racing; the dance parties; 

“European life in the hills and Bengali life in the Plains’, all give glimpses of 

the social life of the strata that she belonged to. The pattern of life in colonial 

India did not go away with the exodus of the British - the lowering of the 

union jack and the hoisting of the national flags - the vestiges lingered on in 

different forms and shades. 

In her narration of the Corpus Christi procession, the way she describes 

the special “Kew garden blooms, plump golden marigolds; the multicoloured 

zinnias swaying, to and fro, the deep red salvias bowing to each 

other, the flame coloured rhododendron” is indeed superb. To quote again to 

show the beauty of her expressions, about benediction she says “The service 

was short and I enjoyed 

the hymns resonating with 

beautiful sounds wafting 

up to the church spires.” 

Then there was the 

gripping story of Mrs 

Brooks with whom she and 

her grandmother had tea 

one afternoon and who 

a week later committed 

suicide. Her comments 

on the death were -- 

“Even then as a girl of 10, 

I had sensed her bitter 

loneliness. All her kith and 

kin had departed to various 

destinations, leaving her 

with only memories, which 

like a cover of dead dry 

leaves had smothered the 

life out of her.” 

Besides the lucid 

language, another aspect 

that makes the reading 

of the book an enjoyable 

experience is the author’s 

sense of humour which 

finds subtle expression in 

many places. Examples 

are the descriptions of the 

encounters with “ghosts”, 

her anxious moments of 

waiting for the appearance 

of a possible dance 

partner, of hush gossips 

on a speculative romantic 

inclination of a nun etc. 

They are like chutneys or pickles added by a very good cook to a Mughlai 

dish - making it more palatable. 

I had the opportunity to say a few words at a tea event to present the 

book on November 24- this was an auspicious day for Loreto as this was 

the time when her annual school season ended, and a long winter break of 

three months commenced. In her book she remembers this day with great 

fondness. As she said, “That particular date will always remain an indelible 

part of my memory.” This was the day all Loreto girls in Darjeeling used to 

wait for with eager expectations -- with joy and pleasure, and a sense of relief 

from the very disciplined and regulated life in the convent. 

The book has been dedicated to “Faruq - always Faruq”, her late husband 

Faruq Choudhury, who himself was an author of eminence. This is Zeena 

Choudhury’s maiden venture and in this she has shown her worth. We look 

forward to the sequel and more vignettes from a time gone by. • 

15 


ARTS & LETTERS

Bengali classics in translation 

A different voice in 

a different home 

• Akhteruzzaman Elias 

16 

(Translated from the Bengali by Rifat Munim) 

Look at me / Turn around / Let me see you with eyes wide open 1 . 

Half-ripe plums were falling off branches in some remote char 

of the Padma tamed by the winter. Though he opened his eyes 

at the sound of the plums hitting the ground, he realised that his 

Pishima’s 2 song, too, had pitter-pattered on the thin surface of his slumber. 

He woke up with a start, and remembered that he was having trouble 

sleeping. It wasn’t even half an hour since he had dozed off, shifting from 

side to side. He had slept through the entire afternoon; maybe that was why 

he couldn’t sleep now. Last night in Idris’s room he hadn’t slept a wink. He 

had stayed up late, chatting, and when he felt drowsy Idris made him tea 

three times. In the morning, after strolling around the city for a while, he 

had taken a bus at Gulistan and come to Narayanganj. Again, he had strolled 

around, then boarded a launch and had arrived here at eleven o’clock. It was 

then he had felt like taking a tour of the town. 

Business? What business are you talking 

about? How can one live in this country? If 

the business runs well, they’ll fleece me out 

of my cash in the name of subscription fees 

The town looked much the same as before. There was one main road, 

which was as good as it had been 12 or 13 years ago, when he was 16 or 17 

years old. On both sides of the road, in front of an office or along fields that 

used to be empty, now stood squalid shanties. The black, naked children 

from the slum scooped up handfuls of flour leaking from the piles of sacks 

being transported on rickshaws, swallowing them in big gulps, thinking 

nothing of the snot that oozed from their noses and mixed with the flour— 


scenes like this could only be seen before in the big cities. Would Dhaka – 

that one and only city of theirs – now begin to extend beyond the Buriganga, 

the Sitalakkhya and the Dhaleswari? 

Nani da was not in the warehouse. Pradip had felt shy, thinking everyone 

would start looking busy on seeing him. But nothing like that happened. 

One of the employees tersely said, “Babu is not here.” 

A leather backpack was slung over his shoulder; anyone could easily 

assume there were clothes, toothbrush, shaving razor and some books in it. 

Yet the employee lowered his head and refocused his attention back to the 

accounts log. While Pradip was thinking whether he should just go directly to 

Nani da’s house, a rickshaw pulled up in front of the warehouse. No sooner 

the rickshaw stopped than two youths, aged perhaps 18 or 19, jumped off 

it. One of them, in fact, looked younger because the line above his upper lip 

seemed like a line left by water that he had just drunk but not cared to wipe 

clean. Their arrival instantly caused some agitation among the employees. 

The taciturn man, who had been glued to his log, now got up from his seat 

and said, “Please come in and have a seat.” 

“He’s not here?” the boys said. 

“Babu is out on some business at the SDO office 3 . He’ll be here any 

minute. Please have a seat.” 

The boy with the water-line moustache answered, “What is the point of 

waiting for him? Who knows when he’ll come?” 

“Let me send someone for Babu. He told us you might come. Please be 

seated,” the man said. Then he called out to Nepal in a shrill voice, and sent 

him right away to the SDO office. While giving instructions to Nepalchandra, 

aka “Nepal”, he pulled out a pack of Dunhill from behind the cash box, held 

it out to the boys and stood with his mouth open. Both of the boys had long 

and loose hair, and long sideburns. One had a moustache so overgrown that 

you couldn’t tell it apart from his sideburns; the other barely had any. Both 

were wearing bell-bottom trousers. One was in blue pants with a pair of 

pockets both at the front and back, and a high-neck punjabi with intricate 

embroidery; the other, the moustachioed one, wore a heavy shirt with 

numerous buttons, and brown cotton pants. No matter how they spoke, 

these Bangal 4 boys were very particular about their attire. Pradip looked at 

their clothes closely. Looking at Pradip, the employee said, “Have a seat. 

Babu will be here soon.” 

The wooden ceiling was quite high. The walls were solid corrugated iron 

sheets, with a wooden shelf, one couldn’t help noting, attached to them. 

On the shelf was a small idol of Ganesh 5 ; on a calendar that also had an 

image of Ganesh was written the address of an indenting firm in Kolkata. 

Another calendar with the name of a local hardware firm had a picture of 

Rabindranath. It was quite an image of the poet, undoubtedly, but would 

they know whose portrait it was? From another wall hung an expensively 

framed photo of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 6 . In the middle was a bamboo 

fence, and beyond it was a warehouse for spices. The air in this room was 

musty, but a sweet, heady smell from the other room dispersed its heaviness. 

Nani da came in 15 minutes. 

“Hey Kamal bhai, you’re here! I’ve just been to the office of SDO sahib. So 

when did you guys come?” He didn’t even notice Pradip. 

“I was wondering why Nani da would give us the slip when he had invited 

us over!” Kamal said. 

Nani da broke into laughter. “You are joking, right? I was thinking 

you guys remain so busy all the time, always swamped with meetings, 

conferences - who knows when you’ll get the time to come here?” 

Nani da was taken by surprise when he caught sight of Pradip, “You! When 

did you arrive?” Then turning back to the boys, said in the same breath, 

“Kamal, have some tea first.” Then he looked at Nepalchandra and took him 

to task, “How come you went to fetch me before serving them tea?” Putting 

a ten taka note in Nepal’s hand, he commanded, “Go, bring some rasmalai 7 

from Annapurna.” 

After a shower with the tubewell water under the scorching sun, Pradip 

lunched on eggplant fries, dopeyaja of pabda fish, mashed tengra fish with 

potato and eggplant, hilsa fry, steamed hilsa with mustard, carp or koi fish 

curry with fresh potato, a vegetable curry of potato, cabbage with lentils, 

and thick moog lentil soup. He ate so much that he could barely move his 

limbs. The bloody Bangals still loved to eat! Sitting in the veranda with his 

back to the sun, he yawned while talking to Boudi 8 . She liked hearing stories 

about Kolkata. During the Liberation War year 9 , everyone had fled to Kolkata 

but Nani da had gone to Agartala. She still lamented that he should not have 

done that. 

At this point Pishima came to put some lentil dumplings on the veranda to 

dry in the sun. Seeing Pradip yawn, she chided, “Why are you yawning like 

that? Why don’t you go take a nap in my room?” 

So he did, and it was half past six when he awoke. 

After dinner Nani da started to chat. “Business? What business are you 

talking about? How can one live in this country? If the business runs well, 

they’ll fleece me out of my cash in the name of subscription fees. This is only 

a small town which you can walk from end to end in less than 30 minutes. 

Can you imagine, there are at least three or four conferences or rallies, or 

something or the other, every week? All of it is nothing more than ploys to 

fleece you out of your money. Do you get it? This or that leader is coming, 

their big boss is coming, or their friend. So, what can you do? You have to 

spend money on them!” 

The same bunch was running things in Kolkata as well. But here 

everything was out in the open: There was no secrecy. But the Bengalis 

here, they too would soon learn how to steal and rob and kill in a polite 

way. Maybe just one generation needed to pass, after which the next would 

surely learn the right techniques. Idris had also been blabbering about it last 

night. During the year of the war, Idris had escaped to Kolkata; it was there 

that Pradip had met him. The man was quite loquacious. He stammered at 

times; words that began with “m” or “b” or “l” or “r” required him to put in 

so much effort that it brought tears to his eyes. Even so, could that bastard 

go on and on! If it wasn’t for his stammering, he would have blurted out, no 

doubt, hundreds of words in a matter of a few minutes. 

Boudi said to Nani da, “You didn’t set up any business in India. You settled 

here instead, building a new house, making new acquaintances.” 

Pradip looked down; he and his brothers had settled permanently in 

Kolkata. 

“One can’t just leave like that,” Nani da said, yawning, so the last few 

words were more accentuated. 

“Can you really set up a business in India as easily? What will you eat 

there?” Boudi said, sitting up straight. “Here what you do here is basically eat 

and sleep. But don’t you have daughters who should be married by now? One 

can barely send them to college. How can one marry them off to someone?” 

(Abridged. Read the full version on the website of DT) 

Endnotes: 

1. Lines from a Kirtan song that Pradip’s paternal aunt is singing. It is a 

musical genre very popular among the Hindus and a large section of 

Muslims in Bangladesh and West Bengal.Paternal aunt. 

2. Sub-divisional officer. 

3. Bengalis from Bangladesh are at times derogatorily referred to as 

Bangals while those from West Bengal, India are referred to as Ghotis 

in the same derogatory way. 

4. Ganesh is one of the most worshiped deities in Hinduism. He has an 

elephant head and is widely revered as the remover of obstacles. 

5. The story is set in post-independence Bangladesh when Sheikh 

Mujibur Rahman was Bangladesh’s president. He was an undisputed 

leader of the Awami League who had led the freedom struggle. 

6. A most delicious traditional sweetmeat in Bangladesh and India. 

7. Sister-in-law 

8. The Liberation War through which Bangladesh was created in 1971. 

9. One of the most popular indigenous music genres in Bangladesh and 

India. Multiple singers take part and sing in praise of some Hindu 

deity, to the accompaniment of various local instruments. 

17 


ARTS & LETTERS

Art review 

Layers, 

not smokescreens 

Sharmillie 

Rahman is an art 

critic. She also 

writes fiction. 

18 

• Sharmillie Rahman 

Anthropocene has become a byword 

or rather a useful handmaiden 

for every critic or artist 

who wishes to examine contemporary 

art, setting it against a referential 

framework. Fahad Hasan Kazmee’s narrative 

display of works that made up the exhibition, 

Layers, more akin to installation in 

both flavour and intent, seemed to weave a 

symbolic quilt-work of known signifiers of 

the Anthropocene. When man turns self-destructive: 

An era of human evolution or its 

lack thereof. But his ecosystem is somewhat 

inverted and it reads like a map of the interior, a psychic cartography of 

an urban landscape. 

A young artist from Chittagong, whom I had run into during JOG Art 

Space’s Cheragee Art Show, came across as an artist who was intuitive 

and sensitive to his environment. His presentation at that particular 

street art show stood out in its clarity of understanding of the relationship 

between art and the space it inhabits. Also striking was his choice 

of palette, intense fauvist colours sending powerful signals down the 

neuro-optical pathways, jarring the senses. We saw the same colours 

popping up in this exhibition with Prussian blue dominating most of the 

scenography. Could it be a metaphor representing the neurosis that eats 

away at the urban psyche? That aside, the entire exhibition had a strong 

retinal quality that demanded close reading as the eyes juggled with 

multi-toned textures, the architectural marriage of materials and images. 

The “gaze” traversed a rugged terrain or tiptoed around a minefield, 

He seemed haunted by nightmarish 

visions of high rises, towers, jumble of 

cars, skulls and bones and the nihilistic 

symbolism of guns, held together with 

“spider-nets” 

inscribed with hieroglyphics from the Culture Industry layered upon each 

other to mimic a landscape of dystopia, of foreboding. He seemed haunted 

by nightmarish visions of high rises, towers, jumble of cars, skulls and bones 

and the nihilistic symbolism of guns, held together with “spider-nets”, as if 

the fragile crust of the plundered Earth would hardly survive another spin on 

its axis! Herald of an end-game, geo-biological clock ticking away to a distant 

drumbeat of doom! 

He built his hyper-reality which every man/woman of this time shares with 

one another. His self-portraits or photographs stared out of the flat-screen of 

the canvases amid collages of eyes staring or covered, to hang like a listless 

clue dispelling the divide between the viewer and the viewed. Gaze meeting 

gaze in an eternal repeat 

of the seen. Or, in replication 

of the existential 

pathos that lies deep in 

the question, to be or not 

to be. How else would it 

be if it were not this way? 

Something that eluded 

the wit but remained a 

constant niggle through 

a desire to fathom. In one 

work, the cycle of commodity that encompassed both natural and man-made 

objects hovered over the precipice of a daanbaksho, a donation box, in an obvious 

reference to consumerist capitalism’s centre-periphery nexus. But, one 

must acknowledge the poetic sensibility with which he dealt with his contents 

or texts presented in a symbiosis of materials, contrasting and varied. 

The talented young breed of artists from Chittagong, namely Sharad, 

Shimul, Ripon and to some extent, even the veteran Dhali came to mind, especially 

while considering how the trajectory they covered seemed to have 

found a legacy in Kazmee’s works, though his play with materials, techniques, 

and imagery left a distinct mark on his creations that captured a quiet sensorium 

of a world gone wrong. 

Layers ran its course through October 27 - November 21 at Kalakendra.• 


Djinns, cataclysms and dark comedy: 

Book Review 

Saad Z Hossain’s Djinn City 

• Shoumik Muhammed 

The word “djinn” invokes a momentary 

widening of the eye, maybe even 

a little shiver. To an average 

Bangladeshi citizen, the djinn is 

real. It is a phantom lurking behind semipermeable 

veils between this reality and an 

alternate one, a being of incredible power and 

capacity to wreak havoc on people’s lives. 

Stories of djinns are a staple of our folklore. 

Instead of haunted houses, we have zones 

where these supernatural beings lurk, not to 

be disturbed. They are said to be capable of 

possessing and manipulating people. Tales 

of djinns are used to scare children into doing 

the adults’ bidding. Further popularised by the 

Turkish horror series, Dabbe, the conventional 

fodder for horror stories in our part of the world 

makes for an intriguing race that inhabits a 

world supposedly parallel to humans. 

What if you met a djinn, and s/he turned out 

to look no different from your neighbourhood 

mullah? Only a little more towering, a tad 

softer around the edges, more boisterous and 

thoroughly confused. You will meet him in Djinn 

City, and he’d bankrupt you partying at your 

best friend’s place, and himself intoxicated out of his mind, even if the end of 

the world was a week away. Djinn City is Saad Z. Hossain’s sophomore effort, 

following Escape From Baghdad!. Hossain has already garnered international 

renown for his distinct style, blending various genres with a dollop of grisly 

dark humour guaranteed to make you break out in roaring laughter on every 

other page, and meticulous socio-political commentary. With this book, he 

has subverted a horror trope to create an intelligent comedy, with a memorable 

cast of quirky and relatable characters. 

With this book, he has subverted a horror 

trope to create an intelligent comedy, 

with a memorable cast of quirky and 

relatable characters 

Djinn City follows two sons of the Khan Rahman family – a family with a 

magical secret that spans generations. Our two protagonists are Indelbed, 

and his cousin Rais. Their young lives drastically change the day Doctor 

Kaikobaad, Indelbed’s drunk and delusional father, goes into a supposedly 

alchohol-induced coma. The story takes a turn when an Afghan man drops by, 

an acquaintance of the doctor. He ignites the plot with a pronouncement: The 

Khan Rahman family, and Doctor Kaikobaad, 

are not what they look like, and that meant 

Indelbed’s life was in danger. A divide between 

two groups of the djinn-kind is likely to bring 

about an unrest which threatened not only the 

Khan Rahman family, but the entire human 

race. 

The most interesting element of the novel is 

how the djinns are not culturally any different 

from the humans. They are equally conflicted 

and prone to blowing things out of proportion. 

Very fond of rituals, rules and norms, they 

constantly rewrite them. Additionally, they are 

indifferent towards human beings, and discuss 

“freeing up habitable space” on the planet over 

coffee as casually as possible. 

Djinn City takes calculated steps to introduce 

the audience to the sprawling world of the 

book, before taking readers on a voyage into 

its raging seas and wyrm-infested murder pits. 

Hossain’s stock-in-trade is a buddy story, and he 

delivers one here with aplomb. The plot forks 

into two paths. One follows Indelbed’s journey 

from a lonely, morose, alienated and neglected 

boy in his family to becoming a natural (or, 

supernatural) force. The other hero, Rais – the 

pampered but not spoilt brat – is introduced 

as someone unable to settle down and finish his higher studies; he is tasked 

with saving the subcontinent by thwarting an ethnic cleansing plot by a rogue 

fundamentalist faction among the djinns, led by a charismatic and fleshed out 

antagonist. 

As with Hossain’s debut novel, the plot is acutely character-driven. There 

is a clear journey for each and every character. The book expends ample time 

and care to make sure that readers feel invested in the characters’ goals, 

hopes and dreams. The story may come off as convoluted to some readers, 

considering the erratic manner in which the cultures of characters operate. 

However, Hossain makes a good fist of positing an extensive scientific theory 

on how djinns come to be. In fact, his foray into the hereditary nature of the 

race would impress people with a rudimentary understanding of biology. He 

takes his time to let the world slowly unravel itself to readers. He invests a 

good portion of the story in fleshing out how this world works, how the djinnkind 

exists beside the humankind in the world, but not quite independently 

or ignorantly. There are plenty of surprising theories about their culture, 

and even about their co-dependence. There is very little breathing space for 

readers though -- they are carried along for a breathless, wild ride, from a tiny 

neighbourhood in Wari, Dhaka, to lush landscapes of the USA, to the frozen 

tundra in the North Pole, across time and reality. 

Djinn City, in its essence, is a meditation on the nature of chaos. It is 

written like an intensely progressive rock ballad, which appears as a tornado 

on the surface, but is driven by an intricate network of elements holding and 

propelling it forward. It seems to borrow heavily from Christopher Moore’s 

deadpan humour, with a tongue-in-cheek vibe reminiscent of Neil Gaiman 

and Terry Prachett’s book, Good Omens, with dialogues like those in a Coen 

Brother’s film, which ends like a Tarantino gorefest. The book is a relentless 

whirlwind of nearly 450 pages that the Bangladeshi literary scene can 

positively be proud of. • 

Shoumik 

Muhammed is 

a metalhead, an 

avid reader, a 

fiction writer and 

reviewer. 

19 


ARTS & LETTERS

Short story 

The ritual 

A story of redemption 

20 

• Ornob Alam 

Our prized culture has made me privy to a curious fact: A rotten egg 

that has laid waste to all that was ever invested in him could still 

hope to salvage much of his reputation by participating in a certain 

social ritual. The choice of pronoun is intentional as women here 

are often restricted even in their ability to rot. This is a story of redemption. 

Abed was born to educated parents. I would not call just anyone with a 

degree “educated”, but I knew them to be progressive individuals with a 

remarkable lack of apathy towards everything except their children. So, 

Abed went to the best schools, wore the best clothes, and from a very early 

age, could charm a Bengali out of his box of roshogollas. But he also became 

involved in things you would expect a derailed rich kid in Dhaka in the 1990s 

was. I watched him through all the stages of degradation. 

All humans are philosophers, at least to the extent that when presented 

with a possible course of action, they ask why. The answers they ultimately 

satisfy themselves with are often evasive or irrational, but for what it’s worth, 

they at least take that first step. Abed provides a shining example to the 

contrary. His instincts, though brought under some manner of control over 

the years through society’s constant conditioning, remain mostly untainted 

by civilisation. Growing up, he was completely unburdened by trivial things 

like purpose and consequence. And until a certain age, who could blame him? 

Smash his dad’s coffee cup? He’s just a boy. Take apart his little sister’s toys? 

He is sure to become an engineer! Pull down the dresser door while trying to 

climb up? What a spirited young boy. Sit down on boiling hot water? Tragic. 

But crack the old security guard’s skull by tripping him with a string tied 

between the gates? Steal money from his mom to borrow VHS tapes from the 

local video store? Get caught trying to force his way with a household help 

when he was fifteen? 

Marriage in the minds of people like my 

mother, is a magic ritual. Throw your 

aberrant son into it, and out emerges a 

fully functional, stable income-earning 

father of two kids 

As his older brother by only two years, I had an evolving relationship with 

the discourse surrounding Abed. As a child, I was resentful as I was often made 

to feel dumber for not constantly breaking things, or spewing ridiculous, 

confrontational nonsense that everyone seemed to confuse for wit. As an 

adult now, I pitied him for what people said about him, knowing that he was 

not completely to blame. During my adolescent years, I had a brief protective 

phase when I would cover up for him, but I quickly realised that it was getting 

out of hand. My mother, of course, disagreed. 

“But mom, you have to tell dad. It isn’t just weed this time. That was meth! 

Where is he getting the money?” 

“Hush, your dad would take it too far. Don’t say anything. He’ll grow out 

of it.” 

Before long, Abed was involved in a wide range of illegal activities, 

including mugging and selling mobile phones, to support his own drug 

addiction. I would be the last person to shame recreational drug use, but 

Abed was an addict at the expense of everything else. He dropped out of high 

school, could not hold simple jobs at retail stores, and ultimately almost ran 

his own cassette store, so graciously presented to him by our parents, to the 

ground. My dad, now finally aware, was also quite helpless. After multiple 

cycles of threats and promises, it was evident that they were past the point of 

punitive measures, and that Abed was not going to change. At this juncture, 

my mother, no doubt inspired by plenty of precedents in our society, came up 

with the idea of getting my then 22-year-old brother married. 

Marriage in the minds of people like my mother, is a magic ritual. Throw 

your aberrant son into it, and out emerges a fully functional, stable incomeearning 

father of two kids. It is impossible for me to understand the reasoning 

behind this, but I have gathered a little bit about how other people rationalise 

it. Evidently, having a wife calms the boy down – a subtle subtext might 

be that this is through the availability of sex – and instills in him a sense of 

responsibility that is so strong that it completely transforms his personality. 

After a month of searching, my mother had decided upon a nineteen-yearold 

girl called Bipasha for the marriage. She came from a very traditional 

middle-class family, and in retrospect, her family were probably in awe of my 

very successful parents. While I was away getting my PhD in the USA, through 

most of this – I only came back to attend the wedding – it does not absolve me 

of any of the responsibility for what followed. I knew, for instance, that my 

parents had hidden much of my brother’s past from the girl and her family, 

cooking up lies such as entrepreneurial ambitions and gap years to fill in the 

wasted time. I had been instructed to share in their blind optimism that this 

ritual would cleanse my brother of his past, and I wanted to believe there was 

hope for him. 

I first had a proper conversation with Bipasha three days after the wedding, 

after all the ceremonies, formalities and visits had been completed. She 

seemed nervous, but also excited. Her parents had not forced her into the 

marriage. My parents were planning to enroll her at a private university, and 

she was looking forward to that. 

“Do you know what you want to study?” I asked her. 

“Computer science. I want to design video games eventually.” 

I was slightly taken aback by the specificity of her answer. Bipasha went 

on to talk about her favourite computer games and how modern games 

were almost like living through stories, and very well-written and rigorously 

animated stories at that. She asked about my PhD programme in statistics and 

what the field actually involved, as she had had limited exposure to it. Based 

on my interactions with her over the next few days, she was an incredibly 

curious and driven individual, to the point that it left me wondering why she 

had agreed to this marriage in the first place. But there were socioeconomic 

forces at work. I left a week after the wedding, and have not met her since. 

My mother’s plan seemed to work initially. Abed tried to look after the 

store with some degree of responsibility, and had even started talking about 

finishing his studies. My aunt commented that Abed had finally changed for 

the better and for good. Extended relatives who had always been dismissive 


Illustration: Bigstock 

Seeing Bipasha today fills me with a 

strange kind of joy. Maybe it isn’t joy. 

Maybe it is relief. Relief that the giant ball 

of darkness my parents had created, and 

that society had thrown in her direction, 

could not snuff out her light 

and contemptuous of him eagerly invited the newlyweds to dinner. Abed 

soaked up the attention, and had the air of an embattled veteran who was past 

his horror days. But he was really just caught up in the moment. Within a few 

weeks, he went back to his old habits. Very soon after that, Bipasha realised 

why his behaviour sometimes became erratic. But she did not get time to get 

accustomed to any specific behaviour pattern. Things got progressively worse. 

It started with Abed selling her jewelry. He began to come in late often – 

always drunk – and behave increasingly strangely with Bipasha, often not 

responding to her in conversation at all, and humiliating her for being “poor”. 

If Bipasha ever became distressed enough to protest, he threatened her with 

violence. We learnt much later that he had also developed erectile dysfunction 

by this point. My parents knew bits and pieces of what was going on, and were 

always pleading with Abed to change, to expected results. They got a fuller 

demonstration when Abed finally made good on a threat, and hit Bipasha 

with a flower vase, badly bruising her arm. This triggered a series of similar 

incidents in which Bipasha would return to her parents’ house and then come 

back in a few days after getting new reassurances from my parents and brother 

each time. Her parents, too, were keen to send her back. Through all of this, 

Abed maintained his image in society as a reformed individual. 

This went on for two years. Two whole years. Then she finally filed for 

divorce. For her parents, it had finally gotten to the point that concerns over 

her safety and well-being finally outweighed worrying about what society 

would say. My parents, by now repentant for their hand in all of this, were 

also completely on board. Abed and Bipasha went their own ways four years 

ago. 

I am sometimes grateful that I was away from home through most of this 

because I am not sure what I would have done. Would I really have put an end 

to the situation sooner if I had been present? Or would I have been complicit 

in the abuse, just like my parents, by being optimistic about my brother and 

cajoling Bipasha to stay? My parents are good people, as good as they come 

in our society. Knowing how they became part of this cycle of abuse, I can no 

longer answer these questions with confidence. 

Bipasha went on to complete her undergraduate studies. My parents 

wanted to continue funding her education even after the divorce, but 

she would not agree to it. She is now finishing up a Master’s in Animation, 

evidently on course to fulfill her dream of developing video games someday. 

I know all of this because she has somehow still kept me on her social media. 

She probably has not noticed, or does not care. 

Seeing Bipasha today fills me with a strange kind of joy. Maybe it isn’t joy. 

Maybe it is relief. Relief that the giant ball of darkness my parents had created, 

and that society had thrown in her direction, could not snuff out her light. She 

has redeemed herself from utter despair. As for my brother, he simply lives 

on.• 

Ornob Alam is a 

fiction writer. 

21 


ARTS & LETTERS

Poetry fest 

World Poetree Festival 2017 

Poets from about twenty eight countries gathered for a four-day festival in mid- 

October 

• Mohammad Shafiqul Islam 

The word “Poetree” is likely to create a confusion among readers as soon as 

they take a glance at the title. So, it’s important to do away with the confusion 

at the outset. 

“Poetree” is actually a portmanteau word combining “poet” and “tree” – 

hundreds of poets from around the world made a tree joining hands together 

on a common platform shaped by poetry. With a deep sense of belonging, the 

poets gathered at Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad, India, to give birth to a large 

tree, having fresh and green leaves, with a prospect of springing up beautiful 

Poets busy talking to each other 

Photo: Courtesy 

22 

words of love, peace and harmony. One tree comprising thousands of branches 

and millions of leaves stood straight with head held high. 

Pentasi B World Poetry, a literary organisation, makes a connection between 

poets spread around the world. Dr PenPen from the Philippines is the 

founder of the organisation that brings poets together in different venues 

every year. The venue this year was Hyderabad. 

I’m happy to have participated in such a wonderful poetry festival at Ramoji 

Film City, the largest film city in the world. After taking a tour of the city, you’d 

feel that this is one of those cities that one must visit at least once, if not several 

times, in a lifetime. The city stands on 1666 acres of land which is adorned 

so beautifully that one can only feel wonderment and the bliss of eye-catching 

vista, both natural and architectural. Ramoji Rao, a man of vision, dreamt of 

this wonderland, subsequently putting his dream into a reality. 

Let’s turn to poetry. Poets from about twenty eight countries gathered for 

a four-day festival, from October 12 to 16. The countries represented in the 

festival included Italy, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Bangladesh, America, Canada, 

Mauritius, Egypt, the Philippines and Turkey. Kamrul Hasan, a poet and travel 

writer, and I represented Bangladesh in the festival. 

Having reached Ramoji, we first met at a dinner on October 12; a warm discussion 

about a range of issues followed. The programme commenced in the 

early morning next day, with a formal inauguration graced by a local minister 

and dignitaries promoting art and literature at Hyderabad. 

Dr LRS Rasad, one of the key organisers, also a poet and translator, welcomed 

all the guests and dignitaries before all the participating poets were 

declared as part of Pentasi B World Poetry, and felicitated with graduating 

gowns. 

After the inauguration, distinguished poets and personalities from different 

states of India were felicitated with fine shawls, certificates and crests. 

Some famous poets and writers were given life-time achievement awards for 

their wide-ranging contributions to art, literature and society. 

After lunch, the most fascinating part of the festival, poetry reading by poets 

from various countries, began. First, some veteran figures of Telegu poetry 

read their poems, followed by reading by poets of some other Indian languages 

including Hindi. After tea-break, poets from other countries came up with 

their amazing poems of diverse themes with a special focus on love, peace and 

fraternity. The audience highly enjoyed the poetry reading segment. 

The evening part of the programme was engrossing and sonorous. Yashoda 

Thakore, choreographer and Kuchipudi dancer, who also has a PhD on classical 

dance, made the evening special with her marvelous performance. It was a 

distinct performance. A young, beautiful girl recited poems while she danced; 

then another woman started singing while she continued dancing. It was absolutely 

a soul-stirring performance. It seemed as if a diva had come to the 

world of poets to enlighten and enrich the ambience with special glow, beauty 

and love. 

The next three days were packed mostly with book launches and poetry 

readings. Awards were also conferred on some young poets for their debut 

collections. In addition, artistes mostly from various states of India performed 

songs and dances. Another great attraction was a film city tour – it’s simply a 

dream spot that soothes eyes and fills hearts with striking views of well-designed 

and well-planned places. Our accommodation was arranged in Hotel 

Sitara, a four-star hotel inside the film city. 

It was an exceptional festival in many respects. A few wonderful sessions 

were designed instantly, the instance of which is rarely found in literary festivals. 

Dr LRS Prasad continued anchoring the programme from beginning 

to the very end, with his unending enthusiasm and life force. Despite some 

limitations and challenges, the Indian World Poetree Festival 2017 ended with 

a note of strengthening friendship and fraternity between poets and friends 

around the world. 

It was indeed a wonderful experience for me to meet so many great hearts 

and amazing poets. I was very happy to have launched my poetry collection, 

spoken in a session and read my poem in the festival. This sort of festival 

connects the world, bridges gaps between nations, helps build up new relationships, 

and above all, celebrates life and poetry to obliterate darkness and 

promote magic through words. 

Long live poetry, long live poets! • 

Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, poet and translator, teaches English at Shahjalal 

University of Science & Technology, Sylhet 3114, Bangladesh. Email: msijewel@ 

gmail.com 


Poetry 

Kamal Chowdhury 

(Translated by Dhaka Translation Center fellows) 

Third World 

Both are lovely, beautiful and loving. 

Whom to choose, whom to leave— 

whom should I touch with my longing palm? 

On my left is a serene beauty. On my right a body of gold. 

Should I reach out for the left hand? 

Whom do I need more? 

I can’t understand a thing. I can’t understand. 

I touch the chin of the left—a shadow rises in the full moon light. 

The dew drops of the night get touched by the heat of its light. 

A right turn makes me doubtful 

as I put my shivering index on the nipple of her breast. 

I feel someone is scattering grapes to evoke desire. 

Is this my desired woman? 

Right left right left right left right— 

where do you want me to lose my way? 

Whom should I embrace—whom should I kiss on the lips? 

I don’t understand a thing, I don’t understand. 

I can feel them pulling the two ears of the donkey. 

I stand between them out of my senses, without reasons. 

Overcome and dancing with my lungi over my head. 

The Old City 

Nausheen Eusuf 

The Uprooted 

Here are the steps leading down to the lake 

choked with water hyacinths crowding 

out the lilies, and algae thick as serum. 

They piss and sleep on the footpath 

Darkness clings to their clothes 

There is the rusted tube-well that once 

drank deep from the earth’s waters, 

its handle cranked like a question mark. 

They’ll join processions if you pay them 

In public rallies, they make up part of the public 

They know who the godfathers are, and the flunkies too 

Only their slogans change on command 

Often they face police batons 

Their butts are tough, so they offer those up 

The prisons are rather hospitable, 

Sometimes they’re taken there too 

Shall we not give them a name? 

If this was America, we would’ve called them homeless 

Alas, our triumphant motherland 

is worn out searching for the perfect Bangla name. 

A donkey twitches its ears on the dust path 

and vendors hawk their wares—hair bands, 

hairpins, scarves, bangles, and nail polish. 

We have been here before, in this old town 

called the city of gold, of muslin spun so fine 

that a six-yard sari could pass through a ring. 

We have walked among the arched doorways, 

the crumbling colonial walls, the moss, mud, 

and lichen, the peanuts, popcorn, and candy-floss. 

Somewhere nearby, a path leads to the shrine 

of some local saint. People pray for answers, 

for miracles. They leave garlands of flowers. 

(From Selected Poems of Kamal Chowdhury. Reprinted with 

permission. The poems are translated by fellows of Dhaka Translation 

Center, and published by Bengal Lights Books. The book was 

launched at the DLF 2017) 

We have asked about the eternal pantomime, 

about our part among these actors and props. 

But no answer came, and we expected none. 

(Reprinted from Not Elegy, but Eros with permission. The collection 

was published on the occasion of DLF 2017 by Bengal Lights Books) 

23 


ARTS & LETTERS

Short fiction 

Waiting for 

Publication 

• Marzia Rahman 

It’s a daunting task that needs to be done. And done with precision, it may 

retain its meaning. 

No one wants to do it. Rendition is tough. In a way, paradoxical. One has 

to pay attention to so many things that the essential is at risk. Moreover, it 

should flow well like a mountain spring swishing smoothly into a sea. But 

in this arduous journey, clarity shouldn’t be lost. But it does get lost. It gets 

drowned and later washes up on some far off shore, waiting to be rendered. 

How would one translate six hundred six refugees in a sinking boat? Who 

would take them—the sea or the shore? Who is the better editor of human 

sorrows? 

People prove to be indifferent, occupied as they are with their own pain 

and pathos. The sea seems friendly on the other hand. It embraces them, 

filling the white foams with prose and poetry. Too many of them, different 

size, font, meaning. 

Rendition is done. Now waiting for publication.• 

Photo: Bigstock 

Ginger 

• Myat Moe Khaing 

Ginger was three months old when she was first placed into my eleven years 

old hands. She was a scrawny foal and I was given the job of bottle-feeding 

her. 

When she was old enough to start riding, I couldn’t wait to do what I called 

“practice emergencies”. I would get on my horse and get her to gallop in a 

small ring. Then I would literally leap off of her just to see what she would do. 

I would yell “Whoa!” because I had seen it on the TV. My goal was to train her 

to stop whenever I fell off. We were doing pretty well given I was a very young 

trainer. But Dad said it was risky. 

Our barn had a nice shady trail with a steep embankment on the right side 

with woods on top. My horse knew the path well. There was no cross path, so 

I would hold the reins loosely in my hands and let my horse wander her way 

along the path. 

One fine morning, about a mile into the path, she stopped and snorted, 

holding her head high. I recalled Dad once saying that it meant she was nervous. 

I insisted her to proceed. 

Suddenly a massive buck came crashing out of the woods to the left of the 

trail. He made a deep bellowing noise at her. Panicked, Ginger reared straight 

up in the air. My flight creature went up the embankment to our right. The 

only thing that went through my head as I clung there was something my riding 

instructor had told me -“If a horse ever rears, you must jump off quickly so 

they do not fall on you”. In fright, I did so. 

As I jumped, the reins that were tangled in my hands swung me under her 

like a pendulum. No sooner had I ended up lying flat on my back under my 

horse, her hooves came flailing. Death was near! I had to think of something 

fast. 

I yelled “Whoa!!! Whoa Ginger! Whoaaaaa!” Scared, I hid my face under 

my hands. 

Ten seconds had passed and nothing had happened yet. I peeked and saw 

a Ginger frozen in mid-rear. Then she lowered her hooves and planted them 

carefully on either side of my head so as not to step on me. She lowered her 

head and sniffed me, making sure I was okay. 

She was shaking. I was shaking. I stood up and almost fell again but she 

was there. I untangled her from the vines and gasped to see the cuts on her. I 

carefully retrieved the reins and we found our way out of the woods. 

In the last five years, we navigated murky water, rode to victory for my 

school’s equestrian team. But I will never forget the day she put aside her 

instinct and saved the scared little girl who once held her in her lap. • 

Photo: Bigstock 

24

Arts & Letters December 7 Thursday, 2017

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