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DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong>


Editor's note<br />

Editor<br />

Zafar Sobhan<br />

Editor<br />

<strong>Arts</strong> & <strong>Letters</strong><br />

Rifat Munim<br />

Design<br />

Mahbub Alam<br />

Alamgir Hossain<br />

Shahadat Hossain<br />

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

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

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<br />

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy reading!<br />

<br />

Rifat Munim<br />

Cover<br />

Syed Rashad Imam<br />

Tanmoy<br />

Illustration<br />

Priyo<br />

Colour Specialist<br />

Shekhar Mondal<br />

‘No piece of art is the final<br />

statement’<br />

Whose culture is it anyway?<br />

2<br />

• Sabrina Fatma Ahmad<br />

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

on the final day of Dhaka Lit Fest <strong>2017</strong>, was a timely exploration of identity<br />

politics in all its nuances of<br />

racism, inclusion and expression,<br />

when applied to<br />

art.<br />

Novelist and DLF director<br />

Dr Kazi Anis Ahmad introduced<br />

the panel, which<br />

featured poet/translator<br />

Andres Naffis-Sahely, novelist<br />

Karan Mahajan, and journalist/author<br />

Lionel Shriver<br />

in a lively discussion about<br />

identity politics, cultural<br />

appropriation and political<br />

correctness.<br />

After a rather quiet<br />

start, possibly caused by<br />

the acoustics of the openair<br />

location, the discussion<br />

gradually gathered steam,<br />

moderated ably by Kelly<br />

Falconer, founder of the<br />

Asia Literary Agency. The<br />

focus shifted from matters of inclusion and control of the narrative to the<br />

toxic nature of the PC movement in its present incarnation, and although<br />

there wasn’t much disagreement, some strong statements were made.<br />

“There are some important principles that, at this point in time, need<br />

defending that are behind the cultural appropriation movement, that’s all<br />

part of the package, the ways of thinking – categorising people and limiting<br />

them to the labels we put on them and encouraging them to embrace<br />

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

belief that free speech, which has recently been appropriated, at least in<br />

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

opportunities for the said groups to hang themselves. “Racists, when we<br />

let them talk, sound like racists. Big surprise,” she quipped.<br />

“Out of a sense of misguided<br />

righteousness, I<br />

think, a lot of young people<br />

in the United States,<br />

have abandoned the idea<br />

of free speech, in preference<br />

for assuming the role<br />

of censor, because it feels<br />

very powerful to tell people<br />

what they can or cannot say,<br />

and I think the big mistake<br />

that these young people are<br />

making is to assume that<br />

they will always be in a position<br />

to censor others,” she<br />

added, warning that this<br />

was something of a slippery<br />

slope that could come back<br />

to haunt them.<br />

“Every generation wants<br />

to bring down the old systems<br />

that haven’t of course<br />

Photo : Mahmud Hossain Opu<br />

kept the pace of change that<br />

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

roadmap, a proper plan to effect change in identity politics.<br />

Talking about the struggle that artists have with censorship, or cultural<br />

appropriation particularly in writing about other cultures, Karan Mahajan<br />

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

art an artist produces is the final statement about something, and the other<br />

is that overall, you have to tune out the criticism.” •<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Interview<br />

‘We should keep as many of<br />

our dreams alive as possible’<br />

• Sayeeda T Ahmad<br />

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

in a panel on magical narratives on the opening day of Dhaka Lit Fest<br />

and in another panel on the second day he talked about his most famous<br />

novel, The Famished Road. A former poetry editor at West Africa<br />

magazine, he has published several books of poetry including An African Elegy,<br />

Mental Flight and Tales of Freedom. This interview took place on November 17.<br />

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

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

Has your poetry evolved? How so?<br />

Yes, of course it has evolved. The nature of writing is that it will evolve.<br />

Notebook or online? How do you get started?<br />

I start writing on paper first. I hand-write everything. Paper. Typing. Paper.<br />

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

authority over the text.<br />

In your session on November 16, you spoke about paintings. Do paintings influence<br />

your poetry?<br />

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

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

is a book that I collaborated with another painter friend of mine. I wrote these<br />

25 stories from 25 of her paintings.<br />

Very beautiful paintings.<br />

Her name is Rosemary Clunie.<br />

Are you writing any new poems<br />

now?<br />

I’m always writing new poems.<br />

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

in my sleep.<br />

Do you plan to publish another book of poems anytime soon?<br />

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

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

for their own time.<br />

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

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

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

can’t wait because you’re full of anger and you’re full of outrage.<br />

So, every now and again, I have this burst of reactions, or something, but<br />

it’s very, very, very rare. On the whole I really, really take my time.<br />

What are you reading now?<br />

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

after a week.•<br />

Photo : Rajib Dhar<br />

‘Sometimes it feels as<br />

if the words are coming<br />

from my fingers’<br />

• Saqib Sarker<br />

British novelist Esther Freud attended Dhaka Lit Fest <strong>2017</strong> last month.<br />

Born in 1963, Freud was named as one of the Best of Young Novelists<br />

under 40 by leading literary magazine Granta after the publication<br />

of her second novel Peerless Flats (1993). She has written eight novels.<br />

Her first book, a semi-autobiographical novel, Hideous Kinky (1992) was<br />

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

of Sigmund Freud. This interview took place on November 17.<br />

Have you been to different panels at DLF?<br />

I saw some panels yesterday. I saw the opening ceremony and wonderful dramas.<br />

I saw Adonis speaking and also various international writers. Then today<br />

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

What was it like seeing the old Dhaka?<br />

Fascinating. I loved that. I’m glad I did it.<br />

Was there any panel you enjoyed particularly or was insightful for you?<br />

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

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

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

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

I’ll go.<br />

What in your opinion are the transcending qualities<br />

in a piece of writing that make people relate regardless<br />

of language or boundary?<br />

I think it’s very personal. Everyone has a<br />

book that they love I’m sure they have<br />

experienced that somebody else doesn’t<br />

enjoy that book. For me, I have certain<br />

books that transcend the usual books<br />

because they speak to me so directly. But<br />

that’s because I make a personal connection<br />

with that book. And that’s what’s interesting<br />

about being a writer is that, you<br />

know, someone doesn’t like your book it’s<br />

ok.<br />

What is your advise to someone who lost touch<br />

with reading? Lots of people say that they used to<br />

read a lot but now they just YouTube?<br />

Photo : Syed Zakir Hossain<br />

Well, I’d say go to a quiet place and rebuild your connection<br />

with books. There is certain kind of peace and tranquility you get from reading.<br />

It’s a wonderful thing.<br />

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

moment” when you could consider a work finished. How often do you experience<br />

those inspired moments when the writing flows seamlessly and you<br />

almost don’t know where that comes from?<br />

The moments when the writing flows is what makes it all worth it. Sometimes<br />

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

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

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

happen. •<br />

3<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Event<br />

The DSC Prize<br />

is the biggest literary prize in south Asia<br />

The seventh edition of the prize went to Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam<br />

for his debut novel, ‘The Story of a Brief Marriage’.<br />

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

Prize for South Asian Literature appears to have a less than powerful<br />

impact on India’s literary landscape. That’s particularly strange<br />

considering the prize money alone – which used to be $50,000 in the<br />

first six years before being halved to $25,000 in <strong>2017</strong> – is big enough to have<br />

been exciting interest among readers.<br />

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

consider books published in India, even though it now includes US publications<br />

– often has readers rushing to buy the winning title. But the DSC Prize,<br />

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

South Asian theme, does not attract nearly as much attention or even curiosity<br />

about the winner. The interest appears to be limited to the literary circuit.<br />

Will the latest edition – the seventh time that the prize has been awarded –<br />

change all this? Especially with at least one of the other major literary awards<br />

in India, the Crossword prizes, losing steam in terms of scale and grandeur,<br />

the ground is certainly ripe for a major prize to capture the imagination of<br />

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

The breadth of literature prizes in the UK and the USA, the world’s largest<br />

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

of them well-funded by corporate sponsors or private philanthropists – are<br />

given every year, across an array of genres and even for writers grouped by<br />

gender or geographical origin. There are prizes for, among other things, fiction,<br />

non-fiction, travel writing, essays, translated literature, poetry, and genre<br />

fiction, and for women, for writers of colour, for first novels, for second<br />

novels, and so on.<br />

India, of course, has very little by way of variety. Besides the Sahitya<br />

Akademi prizes for every official language – original writing as well as translation<br />

– the Hindu Prize for fiction, the Tata Literature Live prizes for fiction,<br />

non-fiction, business, and first book, the Shakti Bhatt first book award, and<br />

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

course, the DSC Prize, which is not limited to India.<br />

On November 18 this year, the three-day long Dhaka Literary Festival hosted<br />

the award ceremony of the DSC Prize for the first time ever. Ritu Menon,<br />

chair of the jury, announced the winner – The Story of a Brief Marriage, the<br />

debut novel by Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam from a shortlist of five<br />

books.<br />

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

<br />

Photo: Mahmud Hossain Opu<br />

4<br />

• Sayeeda T Ahmad<br />

How it began<br />

The DSC Prize was founded in 2010 by Surina Narula to showcase the work of<br />

authors who are passionate about South Asia and to present their works to a<br />

worldwide audience. The prize is sponsored by DSC Limited, an infrastructure<br />

company headed by HS Narula, Surina Narula’s husband.<br />

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

Festival, as the climax to the process of announcing the longlist in Delhi<br />

and the shortlist in London. The year 2016 saw a change in venue to the Galle<br />

Festival in Sri Lanka, before moving on to the Dhaka Literary Festival this year.<br />

Surina Narula, in her speech at the award ceremony, described how the<br />

DSC Prize was founded. “The prize was actually instituted at the Jaipur Literature<br />

Festival because DSC Limited was the founder-sponsor of the festival.<br />

We started going there from the beginning but noticed that something was<br />

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

do this’.”<br />

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

monetary value for a literary prize for South Asia writing. Arudpragasam,<br />

whose winning novel is set during the Tamil-Sinhala conflict announced that<br />

he would donate one-third of the money to organisations working with Northern<br />

Sri Lankans, Rohingya Muslims and Kashmiris.<br />

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

money. I am from a community that was destroyed by a nation state. Also,<br />

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

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

of my novel, it felt necessary,” he said.<br />

What it takes to win<br />

With his win, Arudpragasam joins the ranks of a talented group of writers. In<br />

the inaugural year of the prize, Pakistani writer HM Naqvi won for his novel<br />

Home Boy with Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka being awarded in 2012<br />

for his debut novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. The year 2013<br />

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

Indian novelist Cyrus Mistry was awarded for Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer.<br />

Famed American author – of Indian origin – Jhumpa Lahiri took home the<br />

prize in 2015 for The Lowland, and Indian novelist Anuradha Roy won last year<br />

for her novel Sleeping on Jupiter.<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Interview<br />

The DSC prize only considers full-length fictional works of at least<br />

25,000 words published between February 1 of the previous year and<br />

February 15 of the current year. Short story anthologies are ineligible, although<br />

the jury can make exceptions for short story collections that are<br />

linked by theme. Unfortunately for self-published authors, only entries<br />

sent in by publishers are eligible and the book has to be written in, or<br />

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

committee, goes on to review all entries and eventually selects a longlist,<br />

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

and writer Ritu Menon.<br />

In her speech at the award ceremony, Menon said, “The process we followed<br />

as a jury was one of consultation and discussion from the longlist<br />

to the shortlist to the finalist. And given the diversity of our backgrounds,<br />

it was a process marked with remarkable consensus.”<br />

Senath Walter Perera, a professor of English who has been on numerous<br />

juries including this year, said “I normally find that juries are made of disparate<br />

individuals. The duty of a chair is to bring together these disparate<br />

individuals and try to move toward a decision that the majority agrees with.<br />

In the juries I have been in and chaired, there has been wonderful rapport,<br />

[and] for this jury as well, despite the physical distance.”<br />

Writer Stephen Alter, whose book In the Jungles of the Night was also on<br />

the shortlist this year, said the prize “doesn’t define itself by nationality<br />

or by ethnicity or by language necessarily and is something that is simply<br />

defined itself by the territory that your imagination inhabits in that way.”<br />

But do literary prizes even matter?<br />

The DSC prize, as literary awards are meant to, plays an important role<br />

in the career of writers in terms of increasing recognition, book sales and<br />

opening up further opportunities for them. Recipients have gone on to be<br />

published globally, with their work reaching wider international audiences,<br />

which is the central vision of the prize.<br />

Alter believes that the professional benefits of the prize aren’t just limited<br />

to the writer of the winning book. “Being on the shortlist not only<br />

celebrates that particular book, but also positions other books within the<br />

publishers’ minds, within the readers’ minds, [and] within the booksellers’<br />

minds,” he said.<br />

Awards are especially important for younger writers, according to Senath<br />

Walter Perera, giving the example of Shehan Karunatilaka, a young<br />

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

of the advisory board. Karunatilaka had also won the Commonwealth<br />

Prize earlier that year, leading his book to be published in England as well<br />

as the United States.<br />

However, Perera advises, receiving the recognition of a literary prize<br />

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

writer has to use the prize as a point of departure to make it be beneficial<br />

to his writing career.”<br />

For this year’s winner, recognition matters for writers. “Receiving any<br />

kind of recognition is important for any author. You put in all this energy<br />

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

Arudpragasam said. The Sri Lankan author has also been named<br />

the winner of this year’s Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the cumulative<br />

impact of these awards can only lead to greater readership of his book.<br />

It’s a sentiment Stephen Alter agrees with: “It validates in a sense the<br />

hours that you spend by yourself wondering whether anyone’s going to be<br />

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

very personal level, validate the efforts.”<br />

Practically speaking however, Dhaka Lit Fest co-director Ahsan Akbar<br />

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

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

beautifully that way.”•<br />

This article was first published in the scroll on November 25<br />

‘Recognition is important<br />

for any author’<br />

In conversation with the DSC Prize <strong>2017</strong><br />

winner<br />

• Sayeeda T Ahmad<br />

The award ceremony<br />

for<br />

the DSC Prize<br />

for South<br />

Asian Literature <strong>2017</strong><br />

was held in Bangladesh<br />

for the first time on the<br />

closing day of the Dhaka<br />

Lit Fest. The winner<br />

was Sri Lankan writer<br />

Anuk Arudpragasam<br />

for his novel, The Story<br />

of a Brief Marriage,<br />

which is set in Sri Lanka<br />

during the last days<br />

of its civil war and the<br />

genocide of 2008-2009.<br />

Photo : Mahmud Hossain Opu<br />

In his award speech,<br />

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

that work in the northeast of Sri Lanka, the Rohingya community<br />

whose plight is similar to that which his community faced for many years, and<br />

the Kashmir people who have been rendered adrift for many decades.<br />

After the announcement, Dhaka Tribune caught up with the young writer.<br />

Congratulations on your award.<br />

Thank you.<br />

How do you feel having won this award, now that you stand on a platform<br />

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

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

I am from a community that was destroyed by a nation state. Also, across<br />

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

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

my novel, it felt necessary.<br />

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

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

I would love to come back to Dhaka and see the city and see the country a<br />

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

enjoyed it a lot. Yes, I had a good time.<br />

Thank you. What are you working on now? Another novel?<br />

I’m working on another novel, yes.<br />

Similar themes?<br />

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

Do you think an award can have an impact on a writer?<br />

Receiving any kind of recognition is important for any author. You put in all<br />

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

recognised. •<br />

5<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Interview<br />

‘We have one good book inside’<br />

• Mir Arif<br />

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

books, including Colpetty People, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl and Serendipity.<br />

His most recent novel, The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons, was longlisted for<br />

the DSC Prize this year. Ferrey studied Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford.<br />

He joined the DLF <strong>2017</strong> and participated in many sessions. In this interview,<br />

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

about his fiction and his writing process.<br />

Is this your first visit in Bangladesh?<br />

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

my first at the Dhaka Literary Festival.<br />

How do you feel about attending the DLF?<br />

It is wonderful because there are so many similarities between Bangladesh<br />

and Sri Lanka. We originally came from this part of the world; Sri Lankans<br />

came originally from Bengal. So, when I compare the features of Bangladesh<br />

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

food are similar. But at the same time we are different. We are a different<br />

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

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

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

are very important in order to promote what our countries are like.<br />

If you write a book and 50 people read the book,<br />

there are 50 different books in their mind. That is why<br />

literature or books or nonfiction books are so supreme<br />

as far as I am concerned.<br />

Photo : Mahmud Hossain Opu<br />

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

writing a story?<br />

Well, it’s a creation. Just like building a house or writing a song, it’s a creation.<br />

It’s a supreme creation because unlike a painting – a painting remains the<br />

same; for everyone who sees a painting, it is the same – writing a book is a<br />

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

different books in their mind. That is why literature or books or nonfiction<br />

books are so supreme as far as I am concerned. They can fire up so many<br />

different people in different ways because each person reads a different book.<br />

Who are the authors that have inspired you the most to write?<br />

For me there is a set of authors who started writing in the middle of the<br />

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

were also very important. A lot of his novels explored these themes. There is<br />

another writer, Evelyn Waugh, who is very funny, and as I write comedy, I find<br />

him a supreme writer. Also stylistically, his English is almost unmatched; the<br />

way he writes it and styles it.<br />

6<br />

Your novel, The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons, explores the idea and concept<br />

of evil. What inspired you to write this book?<br />

I think evil is quite an unfashionable thing nowadays in the west where<br />

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your early childhood was spent in Africa and a boarding school in the English<br />

countryside. You only came back to Sri Lanka after college and began writing<br />

stories. Do you see instances of your formative years moulding your writing<br />

today?<br />

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

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

stuff that happened to me, or countries, people and civilization I have been<br />

through in Africa, Somalia, Nigeria, England and America.<br />

Do you think your writing belongs to the postcolonial tradition?<br />

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

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

artist of any sort, you should not care. You should not be looking over your<br />

shoulder all the time or looking into the mirror. If you recognise something<br />

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

truth that comes in that quarter second before you recognise yourself is: The<br />

moment you recognise yourself, your expression changes. So, if I consciously<br />

sit down and say I am writing postcolonial literature, it will change the way I<br />

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

And I must not think about what other people think of me. I must write<br />

because that is what is inside me.<br />

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?<br />

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

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

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

are afraid of what other people will say about our writing; we are afraid of lots<br />

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

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

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

why it pains me to think that there are so many writers, potential writers, who<br />

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

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Interview<br />

Defying stereotypes in<br />

reading and writing<br />

A joint interview with Jesse Ball and<br />

Catherine Lacey<br />

The first day of the Dhaka Lit Fest started with an unromantic drizzle.<br />

It must have had some effects on Jesse Ball and Catherine Lacey, two of<br />

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

in Bangladesh. Jesse Ball has written 17 books, including his bestsellers:<br />

Samedi the Deafness, The Way Through Doors, Silence Once Begun and<br />

A Cure for Suicide. Catherine Lacey is the author of The Answers and<br />

Nobody Is Ever Missing; she won a 2016 Whiting Award and has been<br />

translated into five languages. I saw them standing silently by the pond at<br />

Bangla Academy premises. A breeze stirred the leaves and sent ripples on<br />

the pond water. As I approached them, both smiled at me warmly. Jesse<br />

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

There were a lot of tattoos on his hands, of mostly bees but also of other<br />

insects. Catherine Lacey had tattoos too on both hands -- a paperclip on<br />

the left and phases of moon on the right. She looked enthused with her<br />

hair bobbed shortly in layers. As I informed Ball that I would like to<br />

interview him, he agreed outright. Then I thought it would be great if I<br />

asked Catherine, too, to come along. When asked, she stood with arms<br />

akimbo and smiled once again and agreed to join us. It was wonderful to<br />

have found them together and ask them for a joint interview.<br />

• Mir Arif<br />

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

literary and philosophical movements in the twentieth century led by<br />

Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Why this predilection for absurdism?<br />

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

morning and go out into the world and nothing makes any sense. And you<br />

see all these people who try to pretend that things make sense one way or<br />

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

something, of course you’re going to write absurdly because you are pointing<br />

out that nothing makes sense.<br />

MA: Catherine, your books deal with human relationship, such as love, marriage<br />

and separation. They are also about women pursuing their dreams in a<br />

tough world. Do you find yourself genre-specific while writing?<br />

Catherine Lacey: Not really. A lot of female writers get sort of lumped together<br />

writing about female experience simply because they portray female characters.<br />

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

as a female character. There is still this fixed reaction to women writing or<br />

making anything about anything. But when I step back and look at my work,<br />

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

worth writing about and it’s not my concern.<br />

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

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

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

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

You can’t write a novel about this city because no novel will specifically be<br />

about it. As soon as you try to write something about it, things change and<br />

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

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

imaginary things. I mean that’s that.<br />

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

you ever gone through reader’s block?<br />

CL: I often have reader’s block. A lot really.<br />

MA: What do you do then?<br />

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

reading novel after novel, I switch to play or poetry or other texts. Ultimately,<br />

if I think I am supposed to read some texts or authors because they write sort<br />

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

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

in the text generally backfires.<br />

MA: Ball, do you believe in a fixed time for writing?<br />

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

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

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

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

through the process and the truth you have been through while writing?<br />

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

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

because that presents a false and something else that’s not true, whereas<br />

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

of honesty from an author’s perspective.<br />

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

CL: I am very different from Jesse in that. I write every morning because I<br />

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

writing. And I edit ferociously. I change lots of things.<br />

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

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

themselves with the world?<br />

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

demonstrating the internal world more than the external one. For as to read is<br />

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

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

writers who are egotistical than others.<br />

MA: Catherine, can you remember the first book you read in your childhood?<br />

CL: The Bible.<br />

JB: She is from the South.<br />

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

mentioning one or a few would not be enough. They created a whole world for<br />

me in my childhood.<br />

MA: Ball, which fictional literary character has made the most lasting impression<br />

on you in your childhood?<br />

JB: Alice in Wonderland. That was terrific.<br />

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

they are important for writers to connect with different parts of the world?<br />

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

are disposed to learn about each other and get to know things. I find them<br />

really resourceful. •<br />

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

Photo : Mahmud Hossain Opu<br />

Photo : Syed Zakir Hossain<br />

7<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Interview<br />

Chasing history<br />

Historian and award-winning author William Dalrymple talks about his love of<br />

writing, travelling, latest book and upcoming project<br />

8<br />

• Farina Noireet<br />

their work, have to travel.<br />

One of the reasons I live in Delhi is to have access to<br />

In an interview with the Times of India earlier this<br />

year, you’ve mentioned how Indian history is<br />

much like Game of Thrones. Is that complicated,<br />

enigmatic appeal part of why your work<br />

the National Archives, which is the main repository<br />

of all the stuff I write about, and if I lived anywhere<br />

else in the world, well, I’d have to travel<br />

to Delhi to study it. It’s just the way it is.<br />

focuses so much on the history of this particular<br />

region?<br />

Indian history is an endless cornucopia of<br />

wonders. I’ve never run out of exciting<br />

and fascinating things to write about – I’m<br />

like a child in a sweet shop. Most history<br />

that’s written in South Asia comes out of<br />

academic departments and is written for<br />

other academics and is quite dry, and while<br />

I’m not denigrating that, it is what it is – it’s not<br />

literature. There are very few writers in South<br />

Asia who research like historians, but write for a<br />

general audience. I feel I’m very lucky in that regard,<br />

because I have an opening there with very few competitors.<br />

As a result, my books sell wonderfully well.<br />

I’m very lucky, especially in the area I write about – from<br />

the late Mughal period through to the early colonial period –<br />

Photo : Syed Zakir Hossain<br />

You’re a renowned historian and you’re<br />

also well known for your work on travel<br />

writing. What has been your best travel<br />

experience so far?<br />

I think the moment for any traveller, which<br />

in my case was at the age of 18 and again<br />

at 21 with the Xanadu journey, is when for<br />

the first time you are free to travel on your<br />

own and you have the resources to be able to<br />

travel cheaply, as a backpacker, on buses, etc,<br />

and that is a moment of great release. And like a<br />

first love affair, it can never quite be repeated. Normal<br />

life, reality, middle age, all these things set in and<br />

the thrill of your first love affair and the thrill of your<br />

first journey abroad are things which remain with you<br />

forever. So if I had to choose a best travel experience,<br />

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

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

extraordinary and fascinating, and the reference to Game of Thrones I suppose<br />

is in the unbelievable violence that is part of this history. For example, Shah<br />

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

backpacker, sleeping rough, unable to afford a hotel three times a week, or my<br />

Xanadu journey at the age of 21, from Jerusalem, up the Karakoram Highway<br />

to China, to Xanadu in Mongolia.<br />

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

young prince, battling his way out of Delhi, much like prince Caspian in the<br />

Narnia stories, ends up having his eyes ripped out by Ghulam Qadir, and dying<br />

a blind king in a ruined palace – how Game of Thrones is that!<br />

What inspires you to write?<br />

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

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

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

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

Lit Fest compares?<br />

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

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

them and think up ways to shape them and put it together in writing. As a<br />

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

writing about whatever it is that interests you. It is a wonderfully flexible way<br />

of earning a living.<br />

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

other Indian ones, with the exception of Chennai and Bombay Times of India,<br />

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

are in Hindi or Rajasthani or Bengali and certainly are about literature<br />

in those languages. Nor do they have the international programs we do – a<br />

third of our authors are international. The only two festivals that have even<br />

the beginnings of an international list are here and Lahore. I would imagine<br />

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

Dhaka Lit Fest shows, festivals can grow quite quickly and confidently in just<br />

a couple of years.<br />

Tell us somthing about your latest work.<br />

I’ve just finished a book called Kohinoor, about the Kohinoor diamond, which<br />

is probably the single most famous piece of loot that the British “took” from<br />

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

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

fabulous tale and very complicated. Everyone wants this diamond and it’s a<br />

great cause of dissension.<br />

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

this ridiculous claim that the British were “gifted” the diamond by Ranjit Singh.<br />

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

Writers in Bangladesh looking to write about Bangladesh or Bengal in general,<br />

often struggle from a lack of proper documentation of our region’s history,<br />

compared to what is available across the border. How do we research?<br />

Well the two big depositories of Colonial Era documentation are at the National<br />

Archives in Delhi, and the British Library, which inherited the whole India<br />

Office Library, and neither of those two archives are likely to give up their<br />

treasures. On the other hand, both those institutions are engaged in a rapid<br />

process of digitalisation and putting their collections online. So one answer<br />

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

years in the grave when this happened, so that whole history needed clarifying,<br />

so we went ahead and did that over a short project.<br />

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

the story of a corporation, the third in the world and by far the most powerful,<br />

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

example of corporate violence in world history. Once you begin to see it as<br />

a corporate story, rather than one in terms of nationalism, it becomes much<br />

more interesting, and everything becomes a bit more complex. Hopefully I’ll<br />

be back here in a couple of years talking about it. •<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Theatre in a postmodern era<br />

‘We’re living through a brief<br />

period of utopia’<br />

David Hare discusses the modern world, millennials and Netflix<br />

• Shuprova Tasneem<br />

David Hare’s interest in all things political is evident as soon as we<br />

start talking. The first part of the conversation was dominated by<br />

questions from the playwright himself – starting from the Citizens’<br />

Committee Rally next door at Suhrwardy Uddyan to the ease of access<br />

to political institutions in Bangladesh.<br />

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

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

While widely known as one of the greatest writers of political theatre, Hare<br />

began with talking about his love for all stories that have “heart”.<br />

Referring to his adaption of a trilogy of Chekhov plays for the stage, he<br />

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

within theatre. The reason I was drawn to the young Chekhov, crudely, was<br />

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

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

the theory that the playwright shouldn’t be seen in his work and he should<br />

only be revealed through his characters, and honestly I prefer his romantic<br />

genius over his classical genius.”<br />

New stories, new mediums<br />

Hare also shared his thoughts on his latest series Collateral featuring Carey<br />

Mulligan, out on Netflix in February 2018.<br />

“Collateral is about illegal immigrants and people who live under the wire.<br />

Grenfell tower showed to an astonished world how many people live in Britain<br />

without permission and who are just trying to make a honest living.”<br />

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

and hugely different from being a writer for Hollywood.<br />

“There is this incredible period on television now where companies like<br />

Netflix and Amazon are actually interested in good writers, and your story<br />

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

utopia where all the best stories are making it to the screens.”<br />

Does that mean television is not only stealing the audience, but taking<br />

away stories from theatre too?<br />

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

in the ghetto. There are very commendable attempts now to get new playwrights<br />

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

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

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

who grew up looking at TV screens and started to look at their phones, they<br />

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

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

they’re writing for theatre.”<br />

“People are always saying that theatre is dying, but I always thought the<br />

theatre would come through. It’s like saying print journalism is finished and<br />

the Kindle will replace books – not at the moment, no.”<br />

‘The great issue of the 21st century is mass migration’<br />

After spending decades as one of the foremost writers of Britain, it’s difficult<br />

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

does he have any favourites?<br />

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

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

People are always saying that theatre is dying,<br />

but I always thought the theatre would come<br />

through. It’s like saying print journalism is<br />

finished and the Kindle will replace books –<br />

not at the moment, no<br />

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

Since then, maybe Via Dolorosa, which is about Israel and Palestine, and Racing<br />

Demons, about the Church of England. It grips an audience I think mainly<br />

because it shows people trying to do good in the inner city.”<br />

While on the topic of the youth and their receptiveness to not just new (and<br />

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

is seeing is the shortcomings of global capitalism and the distinguishing<br />

feature of all systems across the world - inequality. People feel that very<br />

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

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

liberation of the 50s to the 70s was essentially about women’s equality. The<br />

feminist revolution is clearly unfinished – whether professionally or in private<br />

lives, and the finishing of it is a complicated business.”<br />

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

and whether the rich are willing to surrender a little bit of the world they live<br />

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

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

trying to write about.”<br />

He added with a rather wry smile, “However, the mating rituals of the<br />

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

now.” •<br />

Photo : Syed Zakir Hossain<br />

9<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Event<br />

Poet Mohammad Rafiq receives<br />

Gemcon Literary Award <strong>2017</strong><br />

Gemcon Group Vice-Chairman Kazi Nabil Ahmed handed over the award to the<br />

poet at the inaugural evening of the Dhaka Lit Fest <strong>2017</strong><br />

• Afrose Jahan Chaity<br />

Poet Mohammad Rafiq was honoured with the Gemcon<br />

Sahitya Puroshkar (Literary Award) <strong>2017</strong> for his<br />

book Duti Ganthakabya on the first day of the Dhaka<br />

Literary Festival. Ashraf Jewel and Mamun Or Rashid<br />

were also jointly announced as winners of the Tarun<br />

Literary Award, while Nusrat Nusin won the Tarun<br />

Poetry Award.<br />

All four received their awards during a ceremony<br />

at the Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad Auditorium<br />

of Bangla Academy in Dhaka. Seventy-five-year-old<br />

Rafiq said there were several times in his life when he<br />

had felt that he had been reborn, such as after the 1971<br />

Liberation War and following a bout of severe illness.<br />

“I was born in 1943, then I was reborn in 1960, 1969,<br />

1970, 1971 … it’s a miracle, I am alive and my country<br />

is alive,” said the poet. “I was severely ill for many<br />

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

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

years and could do nothing at all. Then I felt like doing<br />

something. Going back to work, I wrote this book in<br />

November 16, <strong>2017</strong><br />

Photo : Rajib Dhar<br />

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

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

During the ceremony, Gemcon Group Director Kazi Nabil Ahmed presented<br />

the awardees with the prize money and the jury board members handed over<br />

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

The jury board consisted of poets Asad Mannan, Khaled Hossain, Kumar<br />

Chakraborty, Bibash Rai Chowdhury and Shebonti Ghosh.<br />

Mohammad Rafiq received TK 800,000 as the winner of the Gemcon Sahitya<br />

Puroshkar, while the Tarun Literary Award winners received TK 50,000<br />

each, and Nusrat received TK 100,000. •<br />

‘A poet needs to meditate a lot’<br />

10<br />

• Mir Arif<br />

ing over the years. I believe the future of our country is inseparably<br />

linked with women’s uprising. This book is part of a trilogy.<br />

Mohammad Rafiq is one of the pre-eminent Bangladeshi poets.<br />

He has been awarded Gemcon Sahitya Puroshkar <strong>2017</strong><br />

for his book Duti Ganthakabyo. In this interview, he expresses<br />

his joy on receiving the award and talks about his poetry.<br />

Many years ago I wrote one of its parts, Kapila. But if I put<br />

them thematically, Behula would be the first part of this trilogy;<br />

Mahua, second; and Kapila, third. However, I had written<br />

Kapila first. If readers read them all, they will understand<br />

my points clearly. I said in the prize-giving ceremony that I<br />

You have received all the prestigious awards of Bengali literature.<br />

Gemcon Literary Award is a new achievement in your literary<br />

career. How do you feel about receiving this award?<br />

Awards generally don’t define the standard of someone’s work; the<br />

Photo : Rajib Dhar<br />

was suffering from many physical problems after I had retired<br />

from Jahangirnagar University in 2010. I had to frequent hospitals<br />

and consult doctors. I lost hope that I would write once again.<br />

Suddenly, I felt a sort of inspiration in me, a kind of emotion that kept<br />

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

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

It distinguishes you in many ways – in your society and family. An award impacts<br />

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

creeping in me. I started writing Behula almost blindly. I felt a spontaneity in<br />

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

poem twice. Mahua took a month to write. These three books are my world.<br />

You could say that these three together uphold a poetic vision.<br />

I have received Gemcon Literary Award <strong>2017</strong>. I am really delighted.<br />

Would you like to say something for aspiring poets and writers?<br />

The prize has been conferred on you for your poetry collection Duti Ganthakabyo.<br />

Would you please tell us something about your book?<br />

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

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

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

poet needs to meditate a lot. The young poets are after fame and enriching<br />

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

fame would follow anyway. You don’t need to rush for it. •<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Interview<br />

‘Religion will always be used by politicians’<br />

Azeem Ibrahim, author of ‘The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden<br />

Genocide,’ spoke about the recent refugee crisis during the DLF <strong>2017</strong>.<br />

In between the panels, we caught up with him for a quick interview.<br />

• Shuprova Tasneem<br />

In your book, you wrote extensively of earlier mass attacks and subsequent<br />

refugee crises. Clearly, this is an ongoing issue. Why is the global media<br />

spotlight so focused on it this time around?<br />

The Rohingyas have faced wave after wave of violence for over half a century,<br />

but the most recent wave is probably the most severe. I believe this is<br />

happening now because in 2016, the Burmese Army Chief General Min Aung<br />

Hlaing did a dry-run of these attacks and learnt three important things - that<br />

Aung Sun Suu Kyi supports him and the military action, that the military<br />

becomes very popular when they are seen as defenders of Buddhist values and<br />

that the international community’s attitude to such massacres is completely<br />

benign. He still got an invitation to Europe and he still went on to buy more<br />

armaments for his military.<br />

In light of recent events, are you less optimistic about the impact of<br />

international pressure on Myanmar?<br />

I am less optimistic now. When I wrote the book, I was still hoping the international<br />

community would take action to stop what was not just predicted by myself, but<br />

almost every Myanmar expert. Now that almost 615,000 Rohingya have been<br />

expelled and so many have been ethnically cleansed, the probability of them<br />

going back to their land has diminished considerably. The Myanmar authorities<br />

know there is not enough pressure being put on them, so their strategy is now<br />

to buy time until international attention moves on and these refugees become a<br />

permanent fixture in Bangladesh.<br />

What diplomatic role do you think Bangladesh should play?<br />

I absolutely salute the authorities of Bangladesh who have taken in such a<br />

huge number of refugees and have tried to take care of<br />

an extremely difficult situation. But at the same time,<br />

on a diplomatic level, Bangladesh needs to be more<br />

aggressive with Myanmar. For example, they have<br />

agreed not to use the term “Rohingya”, which I think is<br />

problematic. Bangladesh is also able to refer themselves<br />

to the International Criminal Court as a victim of the<br />

massive influx of refugees, which will then open up an<br />

investigation on Myanmar and put pressure on them.<br />

Photo : Mahmud Hossain Opu<br />

Is religion and politics inseparable?<br />

Religion will always be used by politicians as a cover for unpopular policies<br />

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

lives, which it does for billions of people across the globe, politics will<br />

capitalise on it. I believe a fundamental reason religious extremism exists is<br />

because people believe normal political systems have failed them. Religion<br />

offers answers to very complex socio-economic problems and provides<br />

representation to the under-represented.<br />

What’s next for you?<br />

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

the Battle Against Islamic Extremism. The central argument is that we can tackle<br />

this problem from a military perspective, a fight that was almost conclusively<br />

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

it has warped into something more dangerous. As a global community, we have<br />

to look at the root of the problem of Islamic extremism, which is the ideology<br />

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

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

Dhaka Lit Fest participants stand by the Rohingyas<br />

• Tribune Desk<br />

Dhaka Lit Fest participants have expressed support for the Rohingya<br />

refugees, urging the global community “to stand up and support these<br />

refugees, and to hold accountable those who have orchestrated the<br />

violence leading to this catastrophe.”<br />

Celebrated Syrian poet Adonis, academy award-winning actress Tilda<br />

Swinton, Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri, playwright David Hare,<br />

historian William Dalrymple, writer Lionel Shriver, and Bangladeshi literary<br />

icons Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaiser Haq, were among over 50 other<br />

participants of the festival who have signed the statement issued on Sunday.<br />

The statement has also been endorsed by the Dhaka Lit Fest alumni<br />

from previous years, including Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Vijay<br />

Seshadri, writer Nayantara Sahgal, and public intellectual Tariq Ali,<br />

among others.<br />

The full statement reads: “Since 26 August <strong>2017</strong>, over 600,000<br />

Rohingyas have been exiled into neighbouring Bangladesh due to a preplanned<br />

and systematic ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar government<br />

and army. This is one of the largest forced migrations in recent times, and<br />

puts the Rohingyas as a community at risk of extinction from their native<br />

Arakan province. The participants in Dhaka Lit Fest express sympathy<br />

for the refugees, and wish to keep the news of this unfolding situation<br />

at the forefront of global consciousness, as the situation in the refugee<br />

camps precipitates what could be an even larger humanitarian crisis due<br />

to disease and malnutrition causing the deaths of the vulnerable – the<br />

young, the old, the ill and destitute. The Dhaka Lit Fest urges the global<br />

community, governing bodies, rights groups, and media to stand up<br />

and support these refugees, and to hold accountable those who have<br />

orchestrated the violence leading to this catastrophe.”<br />

The participants who signed the statement are: Adonis, Ahsan Akbar,<br />

Alex Preston, Ameerah Haq, André Naffis-Sahely, Anisul Hoque, Bee<br />

Rowlatt, Belal Ehsan Baaquie, Ben Okri, Catherine Lacey, Charles Glass,<br />

David Hare, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Dominic Ziegler, Esther Freud, Fakrul<br />

Alam, Firdous Azim, Garga Chatterjee, Jesse Ball, John Makinson, John<br />

Ralston Saul, Kaiser Haq, Kamila Shamsie, Kazi Anis Ahmed, Kazi Nabil<br />

Ahmed, Kelly Falconer, Khademul Islam, Lionel Shriver, Luba Khalili<br />

Luke, Neima Mahrukh, Mohiuddin Mohammed, Hanif Manjula, Narayan<br />

Nadeem, Zaman Nadia, Kabir Barb, Nandana Sen, Naomi Hossain,<br />

Nasreen Sattar, Nayantara Sahgal, Nicole Farhi, Philip Hensher, Roderick<br />

Matthews, Sadaf Saaz, Samrat Choudhury, Sandro Kopp, Shaheen<br />

Akhter, Shamsad Mortuza, Sharbari Ahmed, Stephen Alter, Sudeep<br />

Chakravarti, Syed Badrul Ahsan, Shobhaa De, Tahmima Anam, Talal<br />

Ahmed Chowdhury, Tariq Ali, Tilda Swinton, William Dalrymple, Vijay<br />

Seshadri, Zafar Sobhan, Zia Haider Rahman and Zulfiqer Russell. •<br />

11<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Interview<br />

‘Through my intellectual, politica<br />

voice, I wanted to change society<br />

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

Adonis is considered the greatest living poet in the Arabic world. Kaiser Haq,<br />

the biggest Bangladeshi poet writing in English, engaged Adonis in an invigorating<br />

conversation about his poetry and thoughts about literature and the Middle<br />

East on the opening day of the Dhaka Lit Fest <strong>2017</strong> (November 16). Haq spoke<br />

in both English and French while Adonis replied in French. Kazi Ashraf Uddin,<br />

associate professor of English at Jahangirnagar University, joined the two poets<br />

and translated Adonis’s responses into English. The following is an excerpt<br />

from a transcription of that conversation.<br />

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

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

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

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

of a Greek divine figure. According to the mythological story, Adonis, the handsome young<br />

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

innovator in Arabic poetry, exploiting the resources of prose poetry to extend the thematic<br />

and emotional reach of poetry. – Editor<br />

12<br />

Kaiser Haq: Elaborate your ideas on the Arab world.<br />

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

corrupted. Politics is corrupted these days. The best thing would be the separation<br />

between religion and the state. I propose a rereading of the Quranic<br />

text from a more secular perspective. At the same time, I believe that the<br />

reading should not be against religion but that religion should be an individual<br />

practice and it should not intervene in any other religious practices.<br />

The society should be based on three things: Human rights, liberation and<br />

liberty of women. The society or the individual attitude should not be based<br />

on religious confessions; rather, it should be based on secularism and at the<br />

same time civic sense.<br />

My poetry is a kind of rupture from the past tradition and it announces a<br />

kind of modernity in the Arabic world. It launches a new tradition. Before<br />

that many things were not allowed to be expressed. There was a kind of<br />

constraint on alternative thoughts. So, what I did was I created in my poetry<br />

a character, who worked as a kind of mouthpiece for the articulation of my<br />

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

way that I invented myself. Through my intellectual, political and<br />

literary voice, I wanted to change the society.<br />

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

same time historical events impacted you. You also responded powerfully<br />

to the debacle of 1967, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. So, how did<br />

Kaiser Haq, left, asking a question while Adonis, middle, looks on<br />

Photo: Mahmud Hossain Opu<br />

you create poetry out of this extreme experience of a war?<br />

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

poetry and writing were creative output that was eyed with suspicion.<br />

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

faculties of different Arab people. And this journal gave us a chance to write<br />

poetry, to express our thoughts creatively. One of our main problems was<br />

reading. There was a project to reread all those texts from a different perspective<br />

and when one rereads a text out of a mediocre perspective, the text<br />

itself becomes mediocre. An importance was put on the culture of rereading<br />

our tradition and the literary texts emanating from it, and the meta-narrative<br />

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

should reread the whole of our cultural tradition. What we found through<br />

our rereading was that the literature we liked was marginal due to its opposition<br />

to power. Literature connected to power was less important, less poetic<br />

and less creative. Marginal literature is more interesting and more vibrant.<br />

We had begun a movement and this movement gave us a new concept of the<br />

world: The first one was the conception of God and the second one was the<br />

conception of our cultural identity. We found out in the process that identity<br />

is not something we inherit from our generations; rather, identity is something<br />

that we create. So, there is some sort of existentialist connection here.<br />

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

I need other selves to enrich myself because my own self is the whole<br />

constituted of different other selves.<br />

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

say that Sufism and surrealism are similar in many aspects, and you have<br />

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

similar?<br />

Adonis: There is a debate about the relationship between poetry, national<br />

tradition and internationalism or globalisation. We have said that we want to<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


l and literary<br />

’<br />

he opening day of the Dhaka Lit Fest <strong>2017</strong><br />

be open to all other cultures and all other traditions. And what we also found<br />

that the very mysticism we find in surrealism existed 1000 or 1500 years<br />

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

tradition is something that goes beyond our nationality that has existed in<br />

the Arabic culture for centuries. The mystics used to believe that there was<br />

a reality beyond reality, and reality does not have to be something that is<br />

visual or visible. It can be something invisible. And that’s the connection<br />

between mysticism and surrealism.<br />

Kaiser Haq: Surrealism has had a connection with leftist politics. You also<br />

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

are a leftist. I would like to know how you define leftist politics today and<br />

how things have changed.<br />

Adonis: I believe humanity constitutes the essence of leftism. And this<br />

essence lies in change. Human beings are not a static entity. There should<br />

always be prospects for a change in the future. The future is basically constructed<br />

by human beings.<br />

Kaiser Haq: You said that the perfume of poetry should be able to combat<br />

the dark forces. What do you mean by that?<br />

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

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

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

meanings and different nuances. There is an interesting chemistry between<br />

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

between the world, the word and the self. It is important to me to<br />

create a world of images. The Arabic language is very corporeal. It has got<br />

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

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

the whole world to be a flower, then we can consider poetry to be the perfume<br />

of that flower.<br />

Kaiser Haq: Do you think people are more interested in a flower than its<br />

perfume?<br />

Adonis: I think the American society and the American politics could be that<br />

flower we are always looking for. This is the flower of money, this is the flower<br />

of politics and this is the flower of power. The American politics distorts<br />

the smell of this flower.<br />

Kaiser Haq: The recent events in the Middle East have provoked sharp comments<br />

from you. Would you share your thoughts on that?<br />

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

the same time, it was a kind of American creation the way they had created<br />

Osama Bin Laden. The Arab Spring has destroyed some of the Arab countries,<br />

such as Libya, Iraq and Lebanon.<br />

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

difficulty of circulating literature and the declining readership and<br />

the declining reading habit in the younger generations.<br />

Adonis: I am not really worried about the new generations because they read<br />

more than readers of the previous generations. Different media that have<br />

emerged are helpful for facilitating the act of reading and also, the documentation<br />

process. •<br />

A poem by Adonis<br />

They say I’m done<br />

– translated by Khaled Mattawa<br />

They say I’m done for<br />

and nothing remains of my joy<br />

no oil, no flame.<br />

I walk past roses, and what do they<br />

care if I laugh or weep?<br />

In roses, inside my eyes<br />

and in my soul, there is a morning<br />

in which I erase and am erased.<br />

I love, I love beauty<br />

and in it I worship my follies,<br />

the ones I found on my own,<br />

and the ones to which I was led.<br />

You’ve become thirsty –<br />

when will you say, “I’m sated,” my blood.<br />

I thirst for an hour<br />

for which I would bet all my days.<br />

I thirst for a deep, open heart.<br />

I’ll light its flame along my road<br />

store it among my veins<br />

somewhere between alive and dead.<br />

when will you say<br />

‘’I’m sated,” my youth, my blood.<br />

They say I’m done for<br />

even as the earth’s glory stands before me,<br />

her largesse.<br />

Her hands wound me<br />

and her chest worships me.<br />

And when her thorns heal me<br />

her roses capture me again.<br />

They say I’m done for<br />

as the ages hold me dear,<br />

and become drunk<br />

at the mention of my name.<br />

They say I’m done for<br />

while on every path<br />

a thousand hearts greet me,<br />

shadows and houses laugh.<br />

I drink to every heart,<br />

I drink until rapture.<br />

I say, soul, you are released,<br />

become now what you always wished.<br />

(Reprinted from Adonis Selected Poems with<br />

permission)<br />

13<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Tribute<br />

To forge in<br />

the smithy of<br />

my soul<br />

Shamsad Mortuza<br />

is Professor of<br />

English at the<br />

University of<br />

Dhaka. Currently<br />

on leave, he is<br />

the Head of the<br />

Department<br />

of English and<br />

Humanities at<br />

ULAB.<br />

14<br />

• Shamsad Mortuza<br />

“My God! I felt like a bull in a China house!” Professor Nurul<br />

Islam was reflecting on his UK days when he began to<br />

appreciate the western culture. He realised the pitfalls<br />

of not having a direct exposure to the actual culture<br />

or a lived experience for those who were studying English literature as an<br />

academic discipline. In the early 1990s as a student, who was transitioning<br />

from the uncritical appreciation of English culture to postcolonial undertaking<br />

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

over the years I have learnt to locate this statement in an appropriate context<br />

to understand one great English teacher who has passed away recently. I<br />

reckoned that this same professor had the opportunity of teaching in the UK,<br />

but decided to return to Dhaka after an epiphanic realisation that there was<br />

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

childhood village in Chandpur or in his favourite Jahangirnagar University<br />

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

song at the time of his death.<br />

Prof Islam was the founding Chairman of the Department of English. He<br />

retired from Jahangirnagar University in 1998 after an illustrious career of 28<br />

years, and joined Eastern University as Dean of the Faculty of <strong>Arts</strong> and Law<br />

and eventually became its vice-chancellor. In his demeanour he looked like a<br />

typical country gentleman who would wear his flat cap and tweed jacket. Prof<br />

Islam went to the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland for his PhD, where<br />

he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Nobel Laureate novelist Graham<br />

Greene. He earlier spent a year at University of Leeds for a postgraduate<br />

diploma following his Master’s from the University of Dhaka in 1966. Prof<br />

Islam was one of the few Bangladeshi teachers of his generation to get a PhD<br />

in English literature from the UK. In the 1970s, when Bangladeshi universities<br />

were trying to shape up with a national characteristic, English departments<br />

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

exposure made him aware of the cultural orientation and contextualisation<br />

for true aesthetic appreciation. But at the same time, he was aware of the<br />

changes in the world literary scene which he tried to introduce in our course<br />

curriculum.<br />

He was an erudite<br />

professor who would<br />

transport his students<br />

to the worlds of Yeats,<br />

Eliot, Dickens, Joyce or<br />

his specialty Graham<br />

Greene. At the same<br />

time, he would make<br />

us aware of their<br />

local implications.<br />

At the height of anti-<br />

Ershad movement,<br />

Prof Islam would make the Irish revolution our own; the rise of right-wing<br />

fundamentalism made him quote Joyce: “God-forsaken, priest-ridden<br />

country.” He would make us locate the Yeatsian wild swans at Jahangirnagar<br />

Lake; or the illusion of social mobility of Dickens’s Great Expectations in<br />

contemporary Bangladesh. He would reflect on the identity crisis while living<br />

He would make us locate the Yeatsian<br />

wild swans at Jahangirnagar Lake; or the<br />

illusion of social mobility of Dickens’s<br />

Great Expectations in contemporary<br />

Bangladesh<br />

in a troubled time through Joyce’s Stephen or DH Lawrence’s Morel brothers.<br />

He would talk of the allegorised love hate diatribe between America and<br />

Vietnam narrated through a quiet American. In his lectures we recognized<br />

the vastness of his scholarship.<br />

He was a voracious reader. I can hardly think of Nurul Islam sir without<br />

a book or some other print matters. He would browse through the Oxford<br />

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

one senior brother going to the exam hall with a newspaper. People normally<br />

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

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

reading, which will allow us all to talk during exams.”<br />

Prof Islam was a gentleman par excellence. He was extremely witty. For<br />

about three years, he taught at King Saud University and was the departmental<br />

chair. He was very popular among his Saudi students who insisted on<br />

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

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

whether the Sauds got the joke or not is another issue. After a successful stint<br />

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

favourite campus, in the housing society of Jahangirnagar University. He used<br />

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

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

“A newspaper and a steamy coffee in a sun-drenched wintry morning, what<br />

more do you want?”-- he would tell his colleagues.<br />

Prof Islam was one of the writers of our intermediate textbook. When the<br />

government tried to introduce Bangla at all levels, he strongly supported it. His<br />

support was not based on any jingoistic agenda; rather, he knew knowledge<br />

could be acquired and expressed in any language in which one is good. Deep<br />

down he was a true Bengali who believed in Bengali nationalism, and upheld its<br />

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

never allowed his political interest to interfere with his administrative or<br />

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

trusted. He forged hope, enthusiasm, and encouragement in the smithy of our<br />

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

Prof Islam is survived by his wife, Prof Sauda Akhtar of JU Bangla<br />

Department and three children. He was laid to his final rest at his ancestral<br />

village in Chandpur. He was 78. •<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Book Review<br />

Vignettes from a time gone by<br />

A review of ‘Church Bells and Darjeeling Tea’ by Zeena Choudhury<br />

• Enam Chowdhury<br />

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

blossoming up into a graceful young lady through a ten-year long period, at<br />

Loreto Convent, Darjeeling - a land of mists and clouds and flowers. This is a<br />

narrative where the rolling hills of Orange Pekoe Lopchu tea, the meandering<br />

rivers, the out-of-the-world toy train, the snow-clad Kanchenjunga, the pink<br />

clouds complimenting the white and orange peaks, and of course flowers of<br />

different hues all round, vividly appear in the mind’s eye in all their beauty,<br />

mystique, colour and splendour.<br />

In this highly readable 100-page narrative of a school-girl in her childhood<br />

and adolescence, Zeena Choudhury exhibits her mastery in ingraining<br />

factual descriptions with a fictional brush in a manner that keeping facts<br />

intact, makes reading highly delightful. His choice of words, modes of<br />

descriptions penetrating observations and interesting references make the<br />

book a most readable one. The basic technique applied by the author is to<br />

give aptly worked descriptions of events, people, places and institutions in<br />

between her own encompassing personal experiences, in a topmost boarding<br />

school- nestled in the foreland of the Himalayan hills.<br />

In their little limited world of Loreto girls, small things or incidents brought<br />

in great pleasure and happiness, whereas small incidents could also cause<br />

great pain and despair. This book strings together a bunch of small pleasures<br />

and tales of unspoilt innocence, of both pleasant and unpleasant experiences<br />

of hope, aspirations, rivalry, amity and harmony. Indeed, the book clearly<br />

illustrates that happiness does not have to be about the big sweeping- all milk<br />

and honey-circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. As<br />

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

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

dance in a social gathering when she felt like imagining that she was Scarlett<br />

O’Hara in a ballroom scene, could bring in long lasting immeasurable pain and<br />

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

the handsomest boy in her reckoning came up and said, “May I have the<br />

dance?” - that gave her so much happiness and satisfaction that she thought<br />

that was one of her pleasantest memories of Loreto.<br />

Future came to these girls all well ordained and they did not worry too<br />

much about anything. They banished it from their carefree lives. As the<br />

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

with nothing much to worry about except whether I had finished my essay<br />

on time or tidied my cupboard”. It seems that somehow or the other, the<br />

Loreto girls came to know that worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow.<br />

It only diminished today’s pleasure and fun.<br />

Though it was like a little island of peace and tranquility submerged in<br />

its own way of life, the ripples of the epic main events did touch its shore<br />

and Zeena was not oblivious of those. 1946 to 1956 was perhaps one of<br />

the most tumultuous periods in the history of the sub-continent, and she<br />

has referred to most of those in a manner which does not at all seem to be<br />

super impositions. Independence from the British in 1947, and in its wake<br />

the mass exodus of the British girls from the school, the communal riots,<br />

the conquest of Mount Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the<br />

setting up of tea plantations, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and the<br />

language movement of East Pakistan - all emerge naturally as happenings,<br />

surrounding a conscious young girl’s growing up. The descriptions ofthe<br />

tea- parties and birthday celebrations, the cakes and pastries of Plivas (now<br />

Glenarys) and Lobos, the Gymkhana Club; Horse racing; the dance parties;<br />

“European life in the hills and Bengali life in the Plains’, all give glimpses of<br />

the social life of the strata that she belonged to. The pattern of life in colonial<br />

India did not go away with the exodus of the British - the lowering of the<br />

union jack and the hoisting of the national flags - the vestiges lingered on in<br />

different forms and shades.<br />

In her narration of the Corpus Christi procession, the way she describes<br />

the special “Kew garden blooms, plump golden marigolds; the multicoloured<br />

zinnias swaying, to and fro, the deep red salvias bowing to each<br />

other, the flame coloured rhododendron” is indeed superb. To quote again to<br />

show the beauty of her expressions, about benediction she says “The service<br />

was short and I enjoyed<br />

the hymns resonating with<br />

beautiful sounds wafting<br />

up to the church spires.”<br />

Then there was the<br />

gripping story of Mrs<br />

Brooks with whom she and<br />

her grandmother had tea<br />

one afternoon and who<br />

a week later committed<br />

suicide. Her comments<br />

on the death were --<br />

“Even then as a girl of 10,<br />

I had sensed her bitter<br />

loneliness. All her kith and<br />

kin had departed to various<br />

destinations, leaving her<br />

with only memories, which<br />

like a cover of dead dry<br />

leaves had smothered the<br />

life out of her.”<br />

Besides the lucid<br />

language, another aspect<br />

that makes the reading<br />

of the book an enjoyable<br />

experience is the author’s<br />

sense of humour which<br />

finds subtle expression in<br />

many places. Examples<br />

are the descriptions of the<br />

encounters with “ghosts”,<br />

her anxious moments of<br />

waiting for the appearance<br />

of a possible dance<br />

partner, of hush gossips<br />

on a speculative romantic<br />

inclination of a nun etc.<br />

They are like chutneys or pickles added by a very good cook to a Mughlai<br />

dish - making it more palatable.<br />

I had the opportunity to say a few words at a tea event to present the<br />

book on November 24- this was an auspicious day for Loreto as this was<br />

the time when her annual school season ended, and a long winter break of<br />

three months commenced. In her book she remembers this day with great<br />

fondness. As she said, “That particular date will always remain an indelible<br />

part of my memory.” This was the day all Loreto girls in Darjeeling used to<br />

wait for with eager expectations -- with joy and pleasure, and a sense of relief<br />

from the very disciplined and regulated life in the convent.<br />

The book has been dedicated to “Faruq - always Faruq”, her late husband<br />

Faruq Choudhury, who himself was an author of eminence. This is Zeena<br />

Choudhury’s maiden venture and in this she has shown her worth. We look<br />

forward to the sequel and more vignettes from a time gone by. •<br />

15<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Bengali classics in translation<br />

A different voice in<br />

a different home<br />

• Akhteruzzaman Elias<br />

16<br />

(Translated from the Bengali by Rifat Munim)<br />

Look at me / Turn around / Let me see you with eyes wide open 1 .<br />

Half-ripe plums were falling off branches in some remote char<br />

of the Padma tamed by the winter. Though he opened his eyes<br />

at the sound of the plums hitting the ground, he realised that his<br />

Pishima’s 2 song, too, had pitter-pattered on the thin surface of his slumber.<br />

He woke up with a start, and remembered that he was having trouble<br />

sleeping. It wasn’t even half an hour since he had dozed off, shifting from<br />

side to side. He had slept through the entire afternoon; maybe that was why<br />

he couldn’t sleep now. Last night in Idris’s room he hadn’t slept a wink. He<br />

had stayed up late, chatting, and when he felt drowsy Idris made him tea<br />

three times. In the morning, after strolling around the city for a while, he<br />

had taken a bus at Gulistan and come to Narayanganj. Again, he had strolled<br />

around, then boarded a launch and had arrived here at eleven o’clock. It was<br />

then he had felt like taking a tour of the town.<br />

Business? What business are you talking<br />

about? How can one live in this country? If<br />

the business runs well, they’ll fleece me out<br />

of my cash in the name of subscription fees<br />

The town looked much the same as before. There was one main road,<br />

which was as good as it had been 12 or 13 years ago, when he was 16 or 17<br />

years old. On both sides of the road, in front of an office or along fields that<br />

used to be empty, now stood squalid shanties. The black, naked children<br />

from the slum scooped up handfuls of flour leaking from the piles of sacks<br />

being transported on rickshaws, swallowing them in big gulps, thinking<br />

nothing of the snot that oozed from their noses and mixed with the flour—<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


scenes like this could only be seen before in the big cities. Would Dhaka –<br />

that one and only city of theirs – now begin to extend beyond the Buriganga,<br />

the Sitalakkhya and the Dhaleswari?<br />

Nani da was not in the warehouse. Pradip had felt shy, thinking everyone<br />

would start looking busy on seeing him. But nothing like that happened.<br />

One of the employees tersely said, “Babu is not here.”<br />

A leather backpack was slung over his shoulder; anyone could easily<br />

assume there were clothes, toothbrush, shaving razor and some books in it.<br />

Yet the employee lowered his head and refocused his attention back to the<br />

accounts log. While Pradip was thinking whether he should just go directly to<br />

Nani da’s house, a rickshaw pulled up in front of the warehouse. No sooner<br />

the rickshaw stopped than two youths, aged perhaps 18 or 19, jumped off<br />

it. One of them, in fact, looked younger because the line above his upper lip<br />

seemed like a line left by water that he had just drunk but not cared to wipe<br />

clean. Their arrival instantly caused some agitation among the employees.<br />

The taciturn man, who had been glued to his log, now got up from his seat<br />

and said, “Please come in and have a seat.”<br />

“He’s not here?” the boys said.<br />

“Babu is out on some business at the SDO office 3 . He’ll be here any<br />

minute. Please have a seat.”<br />

The boy with the water-line moustache answered, “What is the point of<br />

waiting for him? Who knows when he’ll come?”<br />

“Let me send someone for Babu. He told us you might come. Please be<br />

seated,” the man said. Then he called out to Nepal in a shrill voice, and sent<br />

him right away to the SDO office. While giving instructions to Nepalchandra,<br />

aka “Nepal”, he pulled out a pack of Dunhill from behind the cash box, held<br />

it out to the boys and stood with his mouth open. Both of the boys had long<br />

and loose hair, and long sideburns. One had a moustache so overgrown that<br />

you couldn’t tell it apart from his sideburns; the other barely had any. Both<br />

were wearing bell-bottom trousers. One was in blue pants with a pair of<br />

pockets both at the front and back, and a high-neck punjabi with intricate<br />

embroidery; the other, the moustachioed one, wore a heavy shirt with<br />

numerous buttons, and brown cotton pants. No matter how they spoke,<br />

these Bangal 4 boys were very particular about their attire. Pradip looked at<br />

their clothes closely. Looking at Pradip, the employee said, “Have a seat.<br />

Babu will be here soon.”<br />

The wooden ceiling was quite high. The walls were solid corrugated iron<br />

sheets, with a wooden shelf, one couldn’t help noting, attached to them.<br />

On the shelf was a small idol of Ganesh 5 ; on a calendar that also had an<br />

image of Ganesh was written the address of an indenting firm in Kolkata.<br />

Another calendar with the name of a local hardware firm had a picture of<br />

Rabindranath. It was quite an image of the poet, undoubtedly, but would<br />

they know whose portrait it was? From another wall hung an expensively<br />

framed photo of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 6 . In the middle was a bamboo<br />

fence, and beyond it was a warehouse for spices. The air in this room was<br />

musty, but a sweet, heady smell from the other room dispersed its heaviness.<br />

Nani da came in 15 minutes.<br />

“Hey Kamal bhai, you’re here! I’ve just been to the office of SDO sahib. So<br />

when did you guys come?” He didn’t even notice Pradip.<br />

“I was wondering why Nani da would give us the slip when he had invited<br />

us over!” Kamal said.<br />

Nani da broke into laughter. “You are joking, right? I was thinking<br />

you guys remain so busy all the time, always swamped with meetings,<br />

conferences - who knows when you’ll get the time to come here?”<br />

Nani da was taken by surprise when he caught sight of Pradip, “You! When<br />

did you arrive?” Then turning back to the boys, said in the same breath,<br />

“Kamal, have some tea first.” Then he looked at Nepalchandra and took him<br />

to task, “How come you went to fetch me before serving them tea?” Putting<br />

a ten taka note in Nepal’s hand, he commanded, “Go, bring some rasmalai 7<br />

from Annapurna.”<br />

After a shower with the tubewell water under the scorching sun, Pradip<br />

lunched on eggplant fries, dopeyaja of pabda fish, mashed tengra fish with<br />

potato and eggplant, hilsa fry, steamed hilsa with mustard, carp or koi fish<br />

curry with fresh potato, a vegetable curry of potato, cabbage with lentils,<br />

and thick moog lentil soup. He ate so much that he could barely move his<br />

limbs. The bloody Bangals still loved to eat! Sitting in the veranda with his<br />

back to the sun, he yawned while talking to Boudi 8 . She liked hearing stories<br />

about Kolkata. During the Liberation War year 9 , everyone had fled to Kolkata<br />

but Nani da had gone to Agartala. She still lamented that he should not have<br />

done that.<br />

At this point Pishima came to put some lentil dumplings on the veranda to<br />

dry in the sun. Seeing Pradip yawn, she chided, “Why are you yawning like<br />

that? Why don’t you go take a nap in my room?”<br />

So he did, and it was half past six when he awoke.<br />

After dinner Nani da started to chat. “Business? What business are you<br />

talking about? How can one live in this country? If the business runs well,<br />

they’ll fleece me out of my cash in the name of subscription fees. This is only<br />

a small town which you can walk from end to end in less than 30 minutes.<br />

Can you imagine, there are at least three or four conferences or rallies, or<br />

something or the other, every week? All of it is nothing more than ploys to<br />

fleece you out of your money. Do you get it? This or that leader is coming,<br />

their big boss is coming, or their friend. So, what can you do? You have to<br />

spend money on them!”<br />

The same bunch was running things in Kolkata as well. But here<br />

everything was out in the open: There was no secrecy. But the Bengalis<br />

here, they too would soon learn how to steal and rob and kill in a polite<br />

way. Maybe just one generation needed to pass, after which the next would<br />

surely learn the right techniques. Idris had also been blabbering about it last<br />

night. During the year of the war, Idris had escaped to Kolkata; it was there<br />

that Pradip had met him. The man was quite loquacious. He stammered at<br />

times; words that began with “m” or “b” or “l” or “r” required him to put in<br />

so much effort that it brought tears to his eyes. Even so, could that bastard<br />

go on and on! If it wasn’t for his stammering, he would have blurted out, no<br />

doubt, hundreds of words in a matter of a few minutes.<br />

Boudi said to Nani da, “You didn’t set up any business in India. You settled<br />

here instead, building a new house, making new acquaintances.”<br />

Pradip looked down; he and his brothers had settled permanently in<br />

Kolkata.<br />

“One can’t just leave like that,” Nani da said, yawning, so the last few<br />

words were more accentuated.<br />

“Can you really set up a business in India as easily? What will you eat<br />

there?” Boudi said, sitting up straight. “Here what you do here is basically eat<br />

and sleep. But don’t you have daughters who should be married by now? One<br />

can barely send them to college. How can one marry them off to someone?”<br />

(Abridged. Read the full version on the website of DT)<br />

Endnotes:<br />

1. Lines from a Kirtan song that Pradip’s paternal aunt is singing. It is a<br />

musical genre very popular among the Hindus and a large section of<br />

Muslims in Bangladesh and West Bengal.Paternal aunt.<br />

2. Sub-divisional officer.<br />

3. Bengalis from Bangladesh are at times derogatorily referred to as<br />

Bangals while those from West Bengal, India are referred to as Ghotis<br />

in the same derogatory way.<br />

4. Ganesh is one of the most worshiped deities in Hinduism. He has an<br />

elephant head and is widely revered as the remover of obstacles.<br />

5. The story is set in post-independence Bangladesh when Sheikh<br />

Mujibur Rahman was Bangladesh’s president. He was an undisputed<br />

leader of the Awami League who had led the freedom struggle.<br />

6. A most delicious traditional sweetmeat in Bangladesh and India.<br />

7. Sister-in-law<br />

8. The Liberation War through which Bangladesh was created in 1971.<br />

9. One of the most popular indigenous music genres in Bangladesh and<br />

India. Multiple singers take part and sing in praise of some Hindu<br />

deity, to the accompaniment of various local instruments.<br />

17<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Art review<br />

Layers,<br />

not smokescreens<br />

Sharmillie<br />

Rahman is an art<br />

critic. She also<br />

writes fiction.<br />

18<br />

• Sharmillie Rahman<br />

Anthropocene has become a byword<br />

or rather a useful handmaiden<br />

for every critic or artist<br />

who wishes to examine contemporary<br />

art, setting it against a referential<br />

framework. Fahad Hasan Kazmee’s narrative<br />

display of works that made up the exhibition,<br />

Layers, more akin to installation in<br />

both flavour and intent, seemed to weave a<br />

symbolic quilt-work of known signifiers of<br />

the Anthropocene. When man turns self-destructive:<br />

An era of human evolution or its<br />

lack thereof. But his ecosystem is somewhat<br />

inverted and it reads like a map of the interior, a psychic cartography of<br />

an urban landscape.<br />

A young artist from Chittagong, whom I had run into during JOG Art<br />

Space’s Cheragee Art Show, came across as an artist who was intuitive<br />

and sensitive to his environment. His presentation at that particular<br />

street art show stood out in its clarity of understanding of the relationship<br />

between art and the space it inhabits. Also striking was his choice<br />

of palette, intense fauvist colours sending powerful signals down the<br />

neuro-optical pathways, jarring the senses. We saw the same colours<br />

popping up in this exhibition with Prussian blue dominating most of the<br />

scenography. Could it be a metaphor representing the neurosis that eats<br />

away at the urban psyche? That aside, the entire exhibition had a strong<br />

retinal quality that demanded close reading as the eyes juggled with<br />

multi-toned textures, the architectural marriage of materials and images.<br />

The “gaze” traversed a rugged terrain or tiptoed around a minefield,<br />

He seemed haunted by nightmarish<br />

visions of high rises, towers, jumble of<br />

cars, skulls and bones and the nihilistic<br />

symbolism of guns, held together with<br />

“spider-nets”<br />

inscribed with hieroglyphics from the Culture Industry layered upon each<br />

other to mimic a landscape of dystopia, of foreboding. He seemed haunted<br />

by nightmarish visions of high rises, towers, jumble of cars, skulls and bones<br />

and the nihilistic symbolism of guns, held together with “spider-nets”, as if<br />

the fragile crust of the plundered Earth would hardly survive another spin on<br />

its axis! Herald of an end-game, geo-biological clock ticking away to a distant<br />

drumbeat of doom!<br />

He built his hyper-reality which every man/woman of this time shares with<br />

one another. His self-portraits or photographs stared out of the flat-screen of<br />

the canvases amid collages of eyes staring or covered, to hang like a listless<br />

clue dispelling the divide between the viewer and the viewed. Gaze meeting<br />

gaze in an eternal repeat<br />

of the seen. Or, in replication<br />

of the existential<br />

pathos that lies deep in<br />

the question, to be or not<br />

to be. How else would it<br />

be if it were not this way?<br />

Something that eluded<br />

the wit but remained a<br />

constant niggle through<br />

a desire to fathom. In one<br />

work, the cycle of commodity that encompassed both natural and man-made<br />

objects hovered over the precipice of a daanbaksho, a donation box, in an obvious<br />

reference to consumerist capitalism’s centre-periphery nexus. But, one<br />

must acknowledge the poetic sensibility with which he dealt with his contents<br />

or texts presented in a symbiosis of materials, contrasting and varied.<br />

The talented young breed of artists from Chittagong, namely Sharad,<br />

Shimul, Ripon and to some extent, even the veteran Dhali came to mind, especially<br />

while considering how the trajectory they covered seemed to have<br />

found a legacy in Kazmee’s works, though his play with materials, techniques,<br />

and imagery left a distinct mark on his creations that captured a quiet sensorium<br />

of a world gone wrong.<br />

Layers ran its course through October 27 - November 21 at Kalakendra.•<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Djinns, cataclysms and dark comedy:<br />

Book Review<br />

Saad Z Hossain’s Djinn City<br />

• Shoumik Muhammed<br />

The word “djinn” invokes a momentary<br />

widening of the eye, maybe even<br />

a little shiver. To an average<br />

Bangladeshi citizen, the djinn is<br />

real. It is a phantom lurking behind semipermeable<br />

veils between this reality and an<br />

alternate one, a being of incredible power and<br />

capacity to wreak havoc on people’s lives.<br />

Stories of djinns are a staple of our folklore.<br />

Instead of haunted houses, we have zones<br />

where these supernatural beings lurk, not to<br />

be disturbed. They are said to be capable of<br />

possessing and manipulating people. Tales<br />

of djinns are used to scare children into doing<br />

the adults’ bidding. Further popularised by the<br />

Turkish horror series, Dabbe, the conventional<br />

fodder for horror stories in our part of the world<br />

makes for an intriguing race that inhabits a<br />

world supposedly parallel to humans.<br />

What if you met a djinn, and s/he turned out<br />

to look no different from your neighbourhood<br />

mullah? Only a little more towering, a tad<br />

softer around the edges, more boisterous and<br />

thoroughly confused. You will meet him in Djinn<br />

City, and he’d bankrupt you partying at your<br />

best friend’s place, and himself intoxicated out of his mind, even if the end of<br />

the world was a week away. Djinn City is Saad Z. Hossain’s sophomore effort,<br />

following Escape From Baghdad!. Hossain has already garnered international<br />

renown for his distinct style, blending various genres with a dollop of grisly<br />

dark humour guaranteed to make you break out in roaring laughter on every<br />

other page, and meticulous socio-political commentary. With this book, he<br />

has subverted a horror trope to create an intelligent comedy, with a memorable<br />

cast of quirky and relatable characters.<br />

With this book, he has subverted a horror<br />

trope to create an intelligent comedy,<br />

with a memorable cast of quirky and<br />

relatable characters<br />

Djinn City follows two sons of the Khan Rahman family – a family with a<br />

magical secret that spans generations. Our two protagonists are Indelbed,<br />

and his cousin Rais. Their young lives drastically change the day Doctor<br />

Kaikobaad, Indelbed’s drunk and delusional father, goes into a supposedly<br />

alchohol-induced coma. The story takes a turn when an Afghan man drops by,<br />

an acquaintance of the doctor. He ignites the plot with a pronouncement: The<br />

Khan Rahman family, and Doctor Kaikobaad,<br />

are not what they look like, and that meant<br />

Indelbed’s life was in danger. A divide between<br />

two groups of the djinn-kind is likely to bring<br />

about an unrest which threatened not only the<br />

Khan Rahman family, but the entire human<br />

race.<br />

The most interesting element of the novel is<br />

how the djinns are not culturally any different<br />

from the humans. They are equally conflicted<br />

and prone to blowing things out of proportion.<br />

Very fond of rituals, rules and norms, they<br />

constantly rewrite them. Additionally, they are<br />

indifferent towards human beings, and discuss<br />

“freeing up habitable space” on the planet over<br />

coffee as casually as possible.<br />

Djinn City takes calculated steps to introduce<br />

the audience to the sprawling world of the<br />

book, before taking readers on a voyage into<br />

its raging seas and wyrm-infested murder pits.<br />

Hossain’s stock-in-trade is a buddy story, and he<br />

delivers one here with aplomb. The plot forks<br />

into two paths. One follows Indelbed’s journey<br />

from a lonely, morose, alienated and neglected<br />

boy in his family to becoming a natural (or,<br />

supernatural) force. The other hero, Rais – the<br />

pampered but not spoilt brat – is introduced<br />

as someone unable to settle down and finish his higher studies; he is tasked<br />

with saving the subcontinent by thwarting an ethnic cleansing plot by a rogue<br />

fundamentalist faction among the djinns, led by a charismatic and fleshed out<br />

antagonist.<br />

As with Hossain’s debut novel, the plot is acutely character-driven. There<br />

is a clear journey for each and every character. The book expends ample time<br />

and care to make sure that readers feel invested in the characters’ goals,<br />

hopes and dreams. The story may come off as convoluted to some readers,<br />

considering the erratic manner in which the cultures of characters operate.<br />

However, Hossain makes a good fist of positing an extensive scientific theory<br />

on how djinns come to be. In fact, his foray into the hereditary nature of the<br />

race would impress people with a rudimentary understanding of biology. He<br />

takes his time to let the world slowly unravel itself to readers. He invests a<br />

good portion of the story in fleshing out how this world works, how the djinnkind<br />

exists beside the humankind in the world, but not quite independently<br />

or ignorantly. There are plenty of surprising theories about their culture,<br />

and even about their co-dependence. There is very little breathing space for<br />

readers though -- they are carried along for a breathless, wild ride, from a tiny<br />

neighbourhood in Wari, Dhaka, to lush landscapes of the USA, to the frozen<br />

tundra in the North Pole, across time and reality.<br />

Djinn City, in its essence, is a meditation on the nature of chaos. It is<br />

written like an intensely progressive rock ballad, which appears as a tornado<br />

on the surface, but is driven by an intricate network of elements holding and<br />

propelling it forward. It seems to borrow heavily from Christopher Moore’s<br />

deadpan humour, with a tongue-in-cheek vibe reminiscent of Neil Gaiman<br />

and Terry Prachett’s book, Good Omens, with dialogues like those in a Coen<br />

Brother’s film, which ends like a Tarantino gorefest. The book is a relentless<br />

whirlwind of nearly 450 pages that the Bangladeshi literary scene can<br />

positively be proud of. •<br />

Shoumik<br />

Muhammed is<br />

a metalhead, an<br />

avid reader, a<br />

fiction writer and<br />

reviewer.<br />

19<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Short story<br />

The ritual<br />

A story of redemption<br />

20<br />

• Ornob Alam<br />

Our prized culture has made me privy to a curious fact: A rotten egg<br />

that has laid waste to all that was ever invested in him could still<br />

hope to salvage much of his reputation by participating in a certain<br />

social ritual. The choice of pronoun is intentional as women here<br />

are often restricted even in their ability to rot. This is a story of redemption.<br />

Abed was born to educated parents. I would not call just anyone with a<br />

degree “educated”, but I knew them to be progressive individuals with a<br />

remarkable lack of apathy towards everything except their children. So,<br />

Abed went to the best schools, wore the best clothes, and from a very early<br />

age, could charm a Bengali out of his box of roshogollas. But he also became<br />

involved in things you would expect a derailed rich kid in Dhaka in the 1990s<br />

was. I watched him through all the stages of degradation.<br />

All humans are philosophers, at least to the extent that when presented<br />

with a possible course of action, they ask why. The answers they ultimately<br />

satisfy themselves with are often evasive or irrational, but for what it’s worth,<br />

they at least take that first step. Abed provides a shining example to the<br />

contrary. His instincts, though brought under some manner of control over<br />

the years through society’s constant conditioning, remain mostly untainted<br />

by civilisation. Growing up, he was completely unburdened by trivial things<br />

like purpose and consequence. And until a certain age, who could blame him?<br />

Smash his dad’s coffee cup? He’s just a boy. Take apart his little sister’s toys?<br />

He is sure to become an engineer! Pull down the dresser door while trying to<br />

climb up? What a spirited young boy. Sit down on boiling hot water? Tragic.<br />

But crack the old security guard’s skull by tripping him with a string tied<br />

between the gates? Steal money from his mom to borrow VHS tapes from the<br />

local video store? Get caught trying to force his way with a household help<br />

when he was fifteen?<br />

Marriage in the minds of people like my<br />

mother, is a magic ritual. Throw your<br />

aberrant son into it, and out emerges a<br />

fully functional, stable income-earning<br />

father of two kids<br />

As his older brother by only two years, I had an evolving relationship with<br />

the discourse surrounding Abed. As a child, I was resentful as I was often made<br />

to feel dumber for not constantly breaking things, or spewing ridiculous,<br />

confrontational nonsense that everyone seemed to confuse for wit. As an<br />

adult now, I pitied him for what people said about him, knowing that he was<br />

not completely to blame. During my adolescent years, I had a brief protective<br />

phase when I would cover up for him, but I quickly realised that it was getting<br />

out of hand. My mother, of course, disagreed.<br />

“But mom, you have to tell dad. It isn’t just weed this time. That was meth!<br />

Where is he getting the money?”<br />

“Hush, your dad would take it too far. Don’t say anything. He’ll grow out<br />

of it.”<br />

Before long, Abed was involved in a wide range of illegal activities,<br />

including mugging and selling mobile phones, to support his own drug<br />

addiction. I would be the last person to shame recreational drug use, but<br />

Abed was an addict at the expense of everything else. He dropped out of high<br />

school, could not hold simple jobs at retail stores, and ultimately almost ran<br />

his own cassette store, so graciously presented to him by our parents, to the<br />

ground. My dad, now finally aware, was also quite helpless. After multiple<br />

cycles of threats and promises, it was evident that they were past the point of<br />

punitive measures, and that Abed was not going to change. At this juncture,<br />

my mother, no doubt inspired by plenty of precedents in our society, came up<br />

with the idea of getting my then 22-year-old brother married.<br />

Marriage in the minds of people like my mother, is a magic ritual. Throw<br />

your aberrant son into it, and out emerges a fully functional, stable incomeearning<br />

father of two kids. It is impossible for me to understand the reasoning<br />

behind this, but I have gathered a little bit about how other people rationalise<br />

it. Evidently, having a wife calms the boy down – a subtle subtext might<br />

be that this is through the availability of sex – and instills in him a sense of<br />

responsibility that is so strong that it completely transforms his personality.<br />

After a month of searching, my mother had decided upon a nineteen-yearold<br />

girl called Bipasha for the marriage. She came from a very traditional<br />

middle-class family, and in retrospect, her family were probably in awe of my<br />

very successful parents. While I was away getting my PhD in the USA, through<br />

most of this – I only came back to attend the wedding – it does not absolve me<br />

of any of the responsibility for what followed. I knew, for instance, that my<br />

parents had hidden much of my brother’s past from the girl and her family,<br />

cooking up lies such as entrepreneurial ambitions and gap years to fill in the<br />

wasted time. I had been instructed to share in their blind optimism that this<br />

ritual would cleanse my brother of his past, and I wanted to believe there was<br />

hope for him.<br />

I first had a proper conversation with Bipasha three days after the wedding,<br />

after all the ceremonies, formalities and visits had been completed. She<br />

seemed nervous, but also excited. Her parents had not forced her into the<br />

marriage. My parents were planning to enroll her at a private university, and<br />

she was looking forward to that.<br />

“Do you know what you want to study?” I asked her.<br />

“Computer science. I want to design video games eventually.”<br />

I was slightly taken aback by the specificity of her answer. Bipasha went<br />

on to talk about her favourite computer games and how modern games<br />

were almost like living through stories, and very well-written and rigorously<br />

animated stories at that. She asked about my PhD programme in statistics and<br />

what the field actually involved, as she had had limited exposure to it. Based<br />

on my interactions with her over the next few days, she was an incredibly<br />

curious and driven individual, to the point that it left me wondering why she<br />

had agreed to this marriage in the first place. But there were socioeconomic<br />

forces at work. I left a week after the wedding, and have not met her since.<br />

My mother’s plan seemed to work initially. Abed tried to look after the<br />

store with some degree of responsibility, and had even started talking about<br />

finishing his studies. My aunt commented that Abed had finally changed for<br />

the better and for good. Extended relatives who had always been dismissive<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Illustration: Bigstock<br />

Seeing Bipasha today fills me with a<br />

strange kind of joy. Maybe it isn’t joy.<br />

Maybe it is relief. Relief that the giant ball<br />

of darkness my parents had created, and<br />

that society had thrown in her direction,<br />

could not snuff out her light<br />

and contemptuous of him eagerly invited the newlyweds to dinner. Abed<br />

soaked up the attention, and had the air of an embattled veteran who was past<br />

his horror days. But he was really just caught up in the moment. Within a few<br />

weeks, he went back to his old habits. Very soon after that, Bipasha realised<br />

why his behaviour sometimes became erratic. But she did not get time to get<br />

accustomed to any specific behaviour pattern. Things got progressively worse.<br />

It started with Abed selling her jewelry. He began to come in late often –<br />

always drunk – and behave increasingly strangely with Bipasha, often not<br />

responding to her in conversation at all, and humiliating her for being “poor”.<br />

If Bipasha ever became distressed enough to protest, he threatened her with<br />

violence. We learnt much later that he had also developed erectile dysfunction<br />

by this point. My parents knew bits and pieces of what was going on, and were<br />

always pleading with Abed to change, to expected results. They got a fuller<br />

demonstration when Abed finally made good on a threat, and hit Bipasha<br />

with a flower vase, badly bruising her arm. This triggered a series of similar<br />

incidents in which Bipasha would return to her parents’ house and then come<br />

back in a few days after getting new reassurances from my parents and brother<br />

each time. Her parents, too, were keen to send her back. Through all of this,<br />

Abed maintained his image in society as a reformed individual.<br />

This went on for two years. Two whole years. Then she finally filed for<br />

divorce. For her parents, it had finally gotten to the point that concerns over<br />

her safety and well-being finally outweighed worrying about what society<br />

would say. My parents, by now repentant for their hand in all of this, were<br />

also completely on board. Abed and Bipasha went their own ways four years<br />

ago.<br />

I am sometimes grateful that I was away from home through most of this<br />

because I am not sure what I would have done. Would I really have put an end<br />

to the situation sooner if I had been present? Or would I have been complicit<br />

in the abuse, just like my parents, by being optimistic about my brother and<br />

cajoling Bipasha to stay? My parents are good people, as good as they come<br />

in our society. Knowing how they became part of this cycle of abuse, I can no<br />

longer answer these questions with confidence.<br />

Bipasha went on to complete her undergraduate studies. My parents<br />

wanted to continue funding her education even after the divorce, but<br />

she would not agree to it. She is now finishing up a Master’s in Animation,<br />

evidently on course to fulfill her dream of developing video games someday.<br />

I know all of this because she has somehow still kept me on her social media.<br />

She probably has not noticed, or does not care.<br />

Seeing Bipasha today fills me with a strange kind of joy. Maybe it isn’t joy.<br />

Maybe it is relief. Relief that the giant ball of darkness my parents had created,<br />

and that society had thrown in her direction, could not snuff out her light. She<br />

has redeemed herself from utter despair. As for my brother, he simply lives<br />

on.•<br />

Ornob Alam is a<br />

fiction writer.<br />

21<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Poetry fest<br />

World Poetree Festival <strong>2017</strong><br />

Poets from about twenty eight countries gathered for a four-day festival in mid-<br />

October<br />

• Mohammad Shafiqul Islam<br />

The word “Poetree” is likely to create a confusion among readers as soon as<br />

they take a glance at the title. So, it’s important to do away with the confusion<br />

at the outset.<br />

“Poetree” is actually a portmanteau word combining “poet” and “tree” –<br />

hundreds of poets from around the world made a tree joining hands together<br />

on a common platform shaped by poetry. With a deep sense of belonging, the<br />

poets gathered at Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad, India, to give birth to a large<br />

tree, having fresh and green leaves, with a prospect of springing up beautiful<br />

Poets busy talking to each other<br />

Photo: Courtesy<br />

22<br />

words of love, peace and harmony. One tree comprising thousands of branches<br />

and millions of leaves stood straight with head held high.<br />

Pentasi B World Poetry, a literary organisation, makes a connection between<br />

poets spread around the world. Dr PenPen from the Philippines is the<br />

founder of the organisation that brings poets together in different venues<br />

every year. The venue this year was Hyderabad.<br />

I’m happy to have participated in such a wonderful poetry festival at Ramoji<br />

Film City, the largest film city in the world. After taking a tour of the city, you’d<br />

feel that this is one of those cities that one must visit at least once, if not several<br />

times, in a lifetime. The city stands on 1666 acres of land which is adorned<br />

so beautifully that one can only feel wonderment and the bliss of eye-catching<br />

vista, both natural and architectural. Ramoji Rao, a man of vision, dreamt of<br />

this wonderland, subsequently putting his dream into a reality.<br />

Let’s turn to poetry. Poets from about twenty eight countries gathered for<br />

a four-day festival, from October 12 to 16. The countries represented in the<br />

festival included Italy, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Bangladesh, America, Canada,<br />

Mauritius, Egypt, the Philippines and Turkey. Kamrul Hasan, a poet and travel<br />

writer, and I represented Bangladesh in the festival.<br />

Having reached Ramoji, we first met at a dinner on October 12; a warm discussion<br />

about a range of issues followed. The programme commenced in the<br />

early morning next day, with a formal inauguration graced by a local minister<br />

and dignitaries promoting art and literature at Hyderabad.<br />

Dr LRS Rasad, one of the key organisers, also a poet and translator, welcomed<br />

all the guests and dignitaries before all the participating poets were<br />

declared as part of Pentasi B World Poetry, and felicitated with graduating<br />

gowns.<br />

After the inauguration, distinguished poets and personalities from different<br />

states of India were felicitated with fine shawls, certificates and crests.<br />

Some famous poets and writers were given life-time achievement awards for<br />

their wide-ranging contributions to art, literature and society.<br />

After lunch, the most fascinating part of the festival, poetry reading by poets<br />

from various countries, began. First, some veteran figures of Telegu poetry<br />

read their poems, followed by reading by poets of some other Indian languages<br />

including Hindi. After tea-break, poets from other countries came up with<br />

their amazing poems of diverse themes with a special focus on love, peace and<br />

fraternity. The audience highly enjoyed the poetry reading segment.<br />

The evening part of the programme was engrossing and sonorous. Yashoda<br />

Thakore, choreographer and Kuchipudi dancer, who also has a PhD on classical<br />

dance, made the evening special with her marvelous performance. It was a<br />

distinct performance. A young, beautiful girl recited poems while she danced;<br />

then another woman started singing while she continued dancing. It was absolutely<br />

a soul-stirring performance. It seemed as if a diva had come to the<br />

world of poets to enlighten and enrich the ambience with special glow, beauty<br />

and love.<br />

The next three days were packed mostly with book launches and poetry<br />

readings. Awards were also conferred on some young poets for their debut<br />

collections. In addition, artistes mostly from various states of India performed<br />

songs and dances. Another great attraction was a film city tour – it’s simply a<br />

dream spot that soothes eyes and fills hearts with striking views of well-designed<br />

and well-planned places. Our accommodation was arranged in Hotel<br />

Sitara, a four-star hotel inside the film city.<br />

It was an exceptional festival in many respects. A few wonderful sessions<br />

were designed instantly, the instance of which is rarely found in literary festivals.<br />

Dr LRS Prasad continued anchoring the programme from beginning<br />

to the very end, with his unending enthusiasm and life force. Despite some<br />

limitations and challenges, the Indian World Poetree Festival <strong>2017</strong> ended with<br />

a note of strengthening friendship and fraternity between poets and friends<br />

around the world.<br />

It was indeed a wonderful experience for me to meet so many great hearts<br />

and amazing poets. I was very happy to have launched my poetry collection,<br />

spoken in a session and read my poem in the festival. This sort of festival<br />

connects the world, bridges gaps between nations, helps build up new relationships,<br />

and above all, celebrates life and poetry to obliterate darkness and<br />

promote magic through words.<br />

Long live poetry, long live poets! •<br />

Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, poet and translator, teaches English at Shahjalal<br />

University of Science & Technology, Sylhet 3114, Bangladesh. Email: msijewel@<br />

gmail.com<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE


Poetry<br />

Kamal Chowdhury<br />

(Translated by Dhaka Translation Center fellows)<br />

Third World<br />

Both are lovely, beautiful and loving.<br />

Whom to choose, whom to leave—<br />

whom should I touch with my longing palm?<br />

On my left is a serene beauty. On my right a body of gold.<br />

Should I reach out for the left hand?<br />

Whom do I need more?<br />

I can’t understand a thing. I can’t understand.<br />

I touch the chin of the left—a shadow rises in the full moon light.<br />

The dew drops of the night get touched by the heat of its light.<br />

A right turn makes me doubtful<br />

as I put my shivering index on the nipple of her breast.<br />

I feel someone is scattering grapes to evoke desire.<br />

Is this my desired woman?<br />

Right left right left right left right—<br />

where do you want me to lose my way?<br />

Whom should I embrace—whom should I kiss on the lips?<br />

I don’t understand a thing, I don’t understand.<br />

I can feel them pulling the two ears of the donkey.<br />

I stand between them out of my senses, without reasons.<br />

Overcome and dancing with my lungi over my head.<br />

The Old City<br />

Nausheen Eusuf<br />

The Uprooted<br />

Here are the steps leading down to the lake<br />

choked with water hyacinths crowding<br />

out the lilies, and algae thick as serum.<br />

They piss and sleep on the footpath<br />

Darkness clings to their clothes<br />

There is the rusted tube-well that once<br />

drank deep from the earth’s waters,<br />

its handle cranked like a question mark.<br />

They’ll join processions if you pay them<br />

In public rallies, they make up part of the public<br />

They know who the godfathers are, and the flunkies too<br />

Only their slogans change on command<br />

Often they face police batons<br />

Their butts are tough, so they offer those up<br />

The prisons are rather hospitable,<br />

Sometimes they’re taken there too<br />

Shall we not give them a name?<br />

If this was America, we would’ve called them homeless<br />

Alas, our triumphant motherland<br />

is worn out searching for the perfect Bangla name.<br />

A donkey twitches its ears on the dust path<br />

and vendors hawk their wares—hair bands,<br />

hairpins, scarves, bangles, and nail polish.<br />

We have been here before, in this old town<br />

called the city of gold, of muslin spun so fine<br />

that a six-yard sari could pass through a ring.<br />

We have walked among the arched doorways,<br />

the crumbling colonial walls, the moss, mud,<br />

and lichen, the peanuts, popcorn, and candy-floss.<br />

Somewhere nearby, a path leads to the shrine<br />

of some local saint. People pray for answers,<br />

for miracles. They leave garlands of flowers.<br />

(From Selected Poems of Kamal Chowdhury. Reprinted with<br />

permission. The poems are translated by fellows of Dhaka Translation<br />

Center, and published by Bengal Lights Books. The book was<br />

launched at the DLF <strong>2017</strong>)<br />

We have asked about the eternal pantomime,<br />

about our part among these actors and props.<br />

But no answer came, and we expected none.<br />

(Reprinted from Not Elegy, but Eros with permission. The collection<br />

was published on the occasion of DLF <strong>2017</strong> by Bengal Lights Books)<br />

23<br />

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong><br />

ARTS & LETTERS


Short fiction<br />

Waiting for<br />

Publication<br />

• Marzia Rahman<br />

It’s a daunting task that needs to be done. And done with precision, it may<br />

retain its meaning.<br />

No one wants to do it. Rendition is tough. In a way, paradoxical. One has<br />

to pay attention to so many things that the essential is at risk. Moreover, it<br />

should flow well like a mountain spring swishing smoothly into a sea. But<br />

in this arduous journey, clarity shouldn’t be lost. But it does get lost. It gets<br />

drowned and later washes up on some far off shore, waiting to be rendered.<br />

How would one translate six hundred six refugees in a sinking boat? Who<br />

would take them—the sea or the shore? Who is the better editor of human<br />

sorrows?<br />

People prove to be indifferent, occupied as they are with their own pain<br />

and pathos. The sea seems friendly on the other hand. It embraces them,<br />

filling the white foams with prose and poetry. Too many of them, different<br />

size, font, meaning.<br />

Rendition is done. Now waiting for publication.•<br />

Photo: Bigstock<br />

Ginger<br />

• Myat Moe Khaing<br />

Ginger was three months old when she was first placed into my eleven years<br />

old hands. She was a scrawny foal and I was given the job of bottle-feeding<br />

her.<br />

When she was old enough to start riding, I couldn’t wait to do what I called<br />

“practice emergencies”. I would get on my horse and get her to gallop in a<br />

small ring. Then I would literally leap off of her just to see what she would do.<br />

I would yell “Whoa!” because I had seen it on the TV. My goal was to train her<br />

to stop whenever I fell off. We were doing pretty well given I was a very young<br />

trainer. But Dad said it was risky.<br />

Our barn had a nice shady trail with a steep embankment on the right side<br />

with woods on top. My horse knew the path well. There was no cross path, so<br />

I would hold the reins loosely in my hands and let my horse wander her way<br />

along the path.<br />

One fine morning, about a mile into the path, she stopped and snorted,<br />

holding her head high. I recalled Dad once saying that it meant she was nervous.<br />

I insisted her to proceed.<br />

Suddenly a massive buck came crashing out of the woods to the left of the<br />

trail. He made a deep bellowing noise at her. Panicked, Ginger reared straight<br />

up in the air. My flight creature went up the embankment to our right. The<br />

only thing that went through my head as I clung there was something my riding<br />

instructor had told me -“If a horse ever rears, you must jump off quickly so<br />

they do not fall on you”. In fright, I did so.<br />

As I jumped, the reins that were tangled in my hands swung me under her<br />

like a pendulum. No sooner had I ended up lying flat on my back under my<br />

horse, her hooves came flailing. Death was near! I had to think of something<br />

fast.<br />

I yelled “Whoa!!! Whoa Ginger! Whoaaaaa!” Scared, I hid my face under<br />

my hands.<br />

Ten seconds had passed and nothing had happened yet. I peeked and saw<br />

a Ginger frozen in mid-rear. Then she lowered her hooves and planted them<br />

carefully on either side of my head so as not to step on me. She lowered her<br />

head and sniffed me, making sure I was okay.<br />

She was shaking. I was shaking. I stood up and almost fell again but she<br />

was there. I untangled her from the vines and gasped to see the cuts on her. I<br />

carefully retrieved the reins and we found our way out of the woods.<br />

In the last five years, we navigated murky water, rode to victory for my<br />

school’s equestrian team. But I will never forget the day she put aside her<br />

instinct and saved the scared little girl who once held her in her lap. •<br />

Photo: Bigstock<br />

24<br />

ARTS & LETTERS THURSDAY, december 7, <strong>2017</strong> | DHAKA TRIBUNE

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