Arts & letters vol 2 issue 8 0

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A R T S & L E T T E R S D H A K A T R I B U N E S U N DAY, AU G U S T 3 , 2 0 1 4 D H A K A T R I B U N E S U N DAY, AU G U S T 3 , 2 0 1 4 A R T S & L E T T E R S

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EditorZafar Sobhan

Acting Editor Arts & Letters

Iffat Nawaz

ArtistShazzad H Khan

Sunil Gangopadhyay (1934-2012): The Artist Returns Shabnam Nadiya

I discovered the Nil-Lohit books at a perfect age: I was about thirteen and had received his book Koishore as a birthday gift. Koishoretranslates as Adolescence, although the clinical English sorely lacks the poetry drenching the Bangla word. I remember the book still, smaller in size than the usual offerings from

Ananda Publishers, barely a hundred pages, a laminated white cover with a window painted in vivid colors. I had no idea who the writer Nil-Lohit was, and the book languished on my desk for months before I picked it up one afternoon. I was utterly transformed as only a teenager in love with words and sorrow can be. Sadness like that: isn’t that what adolescence is for?

The rest of the afternoon I spent by the calm, green waters of the lake near my house, sitting behind the wide trunk of a Flame Tree. Those Flame Trees had hidden much in those days, and they hid my tears that afternoon as well.

I cannot say why I wept, why the story of a young girl so unlike me called up tears. But I do remember feeling that if only I could meet Nil-Lohit he would surely understand all that I could not put in words. It was a few more weeks before I realized from the back-cover bio that Nil-Lohit was Sunil Gangopadhyay’s pseudonym. Sunil, whose poetry collections and novels took up a half a shelf’s worth of space in my library. The love that had started years ago when I began reading his YA novels on the adventures ofKaka-Babu (uncle) and Shontu, that was cemented as I grew into an avid reader of poetry, transformed into a personal triumph with the discovery of the Nil-Lohit novels, stories narrated by a bohemian soul who flaneured his way through life.

It was as if this was a shared secret between the poet I would never meet and me; a space no one else could share. For after all, I was his one, true reader, I was the one who understood. All his poetry was mine too—I was the reader whose eyes he sought when he crafted those lines. Love like that: isn’t that what adolescence is for?

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Sunil Gangopadhyay is a towering figure in Bangla literature, straddling both sides of the border in his life and words. Born in Faridpur, a district in present day Bangladesh, he grew up in Kolkata, India. In 1953, he founded a quarterly little magazine called Krittibas, which went on to shape Bangla poetry for decades to come. That same year a poem of his was anthologized in the seminal collection Love Poems of 25 Years. His first poetry collection was published in 1958. In 1966, he published his first novel Atmaprakash(Self-Revelation) which drew inspiration from Kerouac’s On the Road, but was wholly Bangali in spirit.

Although poetry forever remained his primary love, he was also a

prolific novelist, short story writer, memoirist, travel-writer, with over a hundred books published. Among the many awards he won was the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985 for his seminal Shei Shomoy (Those Times), a two-volume novel set against the tumultuous and vast backdrop of the 19th centuryBengal Renaissance.

He was invited twice to Iowa City’s International Writing Program ; once in the early years of the IWP, later in 1981. He wrote a book calledChobir Deshe, Kobitar Deshe (In the Land of Images, In the Land of Poetry) where he recounted his time in France and America.

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Chobir Deshe, Kobitar Deshe was and remains one of his more popular non-fiction books on our side of the border. Part memoir, part travelogue, the American chapters cover his time at the IWP and his friendship with Allen Ginsberg.

I remember reading the book as a teenager, and being enamored of the idea of an institution like the IWP, of such nurturing of poets. Of being enamored of the vivid descriptions of Ginsberg. I remember hunting through the shelves of my literature professor father, looking for something by Ginsberg. If Sunil thought him a good poet, surely he must be worth seeking. And I remember becoming mind-blown upon reading September on Jessore Road and Howl, the latter in a boring looking Norton anthology. Through such connections are our lives made large.

Sunil wrote of his discovery of the French Impressionists, the creative give and take with the Beat Poets and how all of this enriched his world. And thus he enriched ours. He was one of those people who opened up the world for us, who looked upon the world in its varied and diverse beauty and ugliness and sought to show us the same. “At times I think, there’s no use living anymore/At times I think/I’ll see the world to its end!/At times I rage at people/Yet love has to be given to someone.” n

n An earlier version of this piece appeared in Bangla at bdnews.com

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CONTENTS

Sunil Gangopadhyay (1934-2012): The Artist Returns 3Shabnam Nadiya

Amy winehouse (1983-2011)Javed Jahangir 4

A MASTER OF LIGHT PROSE: REMEMBERING KHUSHWANT SINGH (1915-2014)Kaiser Haq 5

Manna Dey (1919-2013)Sarnath Banerjee 6

What Gabo Did For FictionKazi Anis 7

RupaArunava Sinha 8

Excerpt from Black IceMahmud Rahman 9

Shuchitra Sen (1931-2014)Anika Mariam Ahmed 10

Ravi, Ike and some MonsoonSeth Panduranga Blumberg 11

Jibanananda on the Streets of DhakaPias Majid 12

The secret life of Salinger (1919-2010)Rifat Islam Esha 13

Visiting DiariesAbeer Huq 14

The Wizard of SoundTahjib Shamsuddin 15

Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014) Tribute Shakil Ahmed 16

The Pride of GreyIffat Nawaz 16

I don’t know about you, but I still remember the the play of candle light and tall shadows on the floors and walls of my childhood load-shedding evenings in Dhaka. Back in the 80s during electricity cuts, prior to the trend of generators, I remember the main entertainment was sitting around with family and listening

to stories of the past. I believe, the stories we inherited from our past generation were mostly transferred to us during these load-shedding evenings. Some stories only made sense with time, other stories were direct and stood strong right then. They were not stories from “Thakur Ma r Jhuli” or any other children’s books, they were the stories of our grandparents and parents, of adults who lived almost full and more than half lives already. They were stories that came after they ran out of memorized make-believe tales for us and reached inside their memories, telling us of incidents, feelings, or passed-on-wisdom, censored and uncensored. As an adult now, I know many like me hold on to those words as the truth from the past, some saved up medication for the future, inspiration for rainy days or learnings for the sunny ones.

This issue of Arts and Letters plays with that concept of load-shedding and people of the near past. The issue talks about those who we read, saw on television or movie screens, listened to and admired the work of.

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And those who passed away during our lifetime, some in the very recent past and a few from the decade before.

We reached out to writers and artists with this concept and the issue is a collection of writings and art works inspired by the not-so-yet-past. Our contributors chose their muse, interpreting them in their own manner, some with essays, some with paintings and comic strips.

We know, there are many great personalities who are not included in this issue, and while putting it together, instead of making sure we cover all names, we went for freedom of choice. Perhaps given more time, we would find a piece to represent each amazing artist who passed away in the recent years but with our limited time and resources, we have an installment with fourteen extraordinary talents who have influenced us.

Just a parting note, this is not a collection of obituaries but an example of how the combined wealth of the past lives in the present and the future.

Yours,

Iffat Nawaz Acting Editor

Such yearning in the heart, lips that care so muchStill he must go back, must go backYou call this going back? This isn’t a pleasure jauntThe road ends thereWhoever returns to a strange land? You can go. But return?

(Excerpted from The Artist Returns: by Sunil Gangopadhyay, translated by Arunava Sinha)

I remember reading the book as a teenager, and being enamored of the idea of an institution like the IWP, of such nurturing of poets. Of being enamored of the vivid descriptions of Ginsberg.

Shabnam Nadiya is a writer and translator, who grew up in Jahangirnagar, a small college campus in Bangladesh. She is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; and is currently working on a collection of linked stories called Pariah Dog and Other Stories.


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Amy winehouse (1983-2011) Javed Jahangir

A MASTER OF LIGHT PROSE: REMEMBERING KHUSHWANT SINGH (1915-2014) Kaiser Haq

Am y Winehouse, dead at 27, is often talked about in the

context of addiction. It is often said that to truly ‘get’ her music, one has to be an addict of something unseemly: alcohol; Class A narcotics; love. Abuse. I say ‘unseemly’, because isn’t all addiction supposed to be that? Indeed Amy Winehouse is known to have enjoyed her afflictions; nurturing them the way Daenerys Targaryen mothers those dragons. I am not sure how much addiction is needed to

understand the art of Amy Winehouse, but I am pretty sure it helps.It was an unlikely friend who introduced me to her music. Bill was

an older writer, an unrepentant alcoholic with scarred knuckles and colorful tales of Vietnam, where he had served in ‘70. He was working on compiling his experiences into an interconnected arc of short stories. Decades had passed and he was still at it; maybe this was why he liked to talk about failure, at length, and drink. Foolishly, I once asked him if he was really Tim O’Brien slumming with us mortals, to which he slammed his drink and scratched his side burns.

We’d met up at a bar not too far from Harvard Square, it was winter and we were in the respite between snowstorms. I sat across the table, tie loosened, salary-man life temporarily gone. He was tapping his shiny turquoise flecked cowboy boot to the beat of a song that was playing in the bar. His fingernails were grimy from tuning pianos at the small piano business he ran when he wasn’t writing. It was a song I had heard on the radio but had mostly tuned out.

‘Amy Winehouse’ he said pointing to the air. This was unusual as Bill was not the sort to comport with much pop music.

‘The pop star with the mascara?’ I said. ‘We call that stuff kajol, you know,’ I added unnecessarily, knowing little of her music.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘She’s real good.’ Bill was like me in Boston, a foreigner with an outsider’s perspective- he had lived in New Mexico after Vietnam, and talking to him reminded me of the type of American written by Charles Bukowski or Jack London. In return he mostly played his part.

‘I read she passed out on a stage,’ I said, remembering an article from somewhere. ‘A bit clichéd if you asked me.., in this age of the Biebers and the Cyruses. Anyway, I like to avoid brand name dilettantes on general principle.’

Bill looked out the window onto the street; you could see the frost when people breathed. He nodded. ‘Stupid. So stupid.’

‘Click-bait media stars,’ I continued. ‘Can’t have enough of them.’ It was fun to torment tough old Bill who never sided with anyone.

Bill gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Oh, because she is wasting her talents with her terrible ways?’ Bill asked. His beard was a little unkempt, gray, and belonged more on someone ready to wrestle a bear than defend a pop star. He even sounded a little hurt. ‘How many of us will produce anything close to what she’s done? Most of us never will and the few who do, will be old by the time they get there. Even if that girl dies today, her life will be pretty freakin’ full. Just listen to her shit, man.’

Bill finished his drink, a few ahead of me as usual. He was getting started for a long night probably. The neon logo behind the bar flickered once and then glowed again. The bartender in black shirt placed amber glasses in front of him. Bill and I had both been sitting at the table for over an hour and the air in the bar had grown hot. I looked for the waitress and raised my hand to her.

I went home, got stoned and found myself watching the video for ‘Back to Black’ on YouTube- Amy Winehouse’s opprobrium to failed love. It wasn’t what I had expected in a popular radio hit.

There is something about watching a video about heartbreak while inebriated, and then there is having your heart smashed with a sledgehammer. In the video there is the story of a love so strong, it has inevitably followed the pop-song highway to self-combustion, and later, after all was said and done, there was only the one way to bury the enormity of that heartbreak- and it required a massive procession of mourners, trudging their way to the graveyard, coffin on shoulders, not bearing her lover, but the love itself. The level of hyperbole of the video, co-developed by her, caught my attention. The song was beautifully syncopated, but dark as hell. Aretha Franklin often sang about the empowerment of living past heartbreak, but here was a song about settling in to really revel in that darkness. In other songs, she picked weed over her man. Over and over, she liked to make her own dark choices. These were reaches of soul music I hadn’t encountered before and needed to listen to more of her songs. She didn’t pull any punches, this Amy Winehouse. No sir.

‘You know what I like about her music?’ asked Bill the next time I saw him.

‘Her phrasing? The slyness in her vocals? The punk undertones? The Etta James sensibility?’ I said, trying to impress him with my understanding of Winehouse’s nuances.

‘When I listen to her,’ he said. ‘I can be perfectly still. No foot tapping, nothing. Looking at me you’d think I was bored or drunk or something, but I am just sitting there, listening. She takes away my capacity for tedium.’

Listening to him, I realized I had entered dangerous territory here, Bill rarely got all Zen.

‘She puts me in the zone, man. Like, makes me comfortable to be me.’ As he said this, I knew it to be true. People like Bill don’t die young, they live a long life littered with broken things that make them wish they had gone when they could’ve left a prettier corpse, but they don’t. It makes them all agitated inside. He looked pretty peaceful enough then, as he said it, like he truly had lost his capacity for the tediousness of life. Pretty remarkable, given how Winehouse’s bass heavy R&B, is definitely not what one can call trance inducing.

I checked out Winehouse’s other albums. There was Frank, her first album; then there was Back to Black, the second album. It was like watching a family member grow in front of you- a gangly sister who grows like a beanpole over a summer, into a beautiful girl.

That she lived as a tragic figure, there is little doubt. Her relationships with her lovers, her parents and those she collaborated with, all attest to this fundamental truth. What she poured into her art were the real tears of addiction- her torch songs, the distilled essence of her daily pain. There were her vocals, with those humble punk roots, infused with the bluesy stylings, leading to the unerring destruction of you, when you caught her little nods to Billie and Ella and Nina. But she also nurtured her heartbreaks and her reliance on alcohol and drugs, the way a prizefighter might nurture a left hook. In that way, it makes it harder to fault an artist who draws her fuel from whatever well she needs to and then goes and does her work. Long or short, Amy Winehouse lived what any human gets- a lifetime. A timespan, she filled with more art, more pain, more joy and more badass soul than is required to help forget the judgment of those addictions. n

Javed Jahangir’s fiction has been published in HIMAL Magazine, Smokelong Journal, LOST Magazine (picked by Peter Orner), LUMINA Literary Journal (Sarah Lawrence College), Bengal Lights Journal, Daily Star, Bangladesh and others. His novel Ghost Alley is forthcoming from Bengal Foundation Publishing in the Fall of 2014. He can be reached at [email protected].

Kh u s h w a n t Singh became a familiar name to me when he took over the

editorship of The Illustrated Weekly of India. One of the cultural icons of the Raj, since its launch in 1880 it appeared with colourful regularity under the editorial helmsmanship of a pukka sahib, even if not always an Englishman; the last sahib editor was the Irishman C. R. Mandy. Khushwant Singh was the first Indian invited to succeed him, but he chose to

go for a Rockefeller fellowship instead so that he could write A History of the Sikhs, a massive tome that added solid scholarly ballast to his reputation. With that under his belt he took over the Weekly in 1969 and in the nine years he ran it multiplied its readership six-fold and gave it a look worthy of independent India. Entertaining, provocative and sexy, Singh’s Weekly could also get serious when required. His coverage of the Bangladesh independence war was exemplary. I also recall reading in it chunky extracts from Nirad Chaudhuri’s biography of Max Mueller, and the first novel in English about our independence war, the now-forgotten The Tortured and the Damned, by Robert Payne.

It was in the mid-seventies, when Singh came to Dhaka as editor of the Weekly, that I first saw him. I am avoiding the word ‘met’ advisedly, for I was an inconspicuous part of a motley clutch of journalists and writers who gathered in the editor’s office at Dainik Bangla, then occupied by the poet Shamsur Rahman. I had been asked along by the poet Shaheed Quaderi, who as usual was accompanied by a number of his cohorts. As none of them seemed to have any idea of Singh’s standing as a journalist and writer, Shaheed Bhai had to give them a pretty basic introductory spiel. I added that Dom Moraes had remarked in a memoir that Singh was a sophisticated man about town who would be very much at home in Mayfair. I don’t think my comment meant anything to anyone in that company except Shaheed Bhai. Someone asked if Singh also wrote in his mother tongue. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Singh had declared in an essay that his mother tongue was English, even though he was born in “a dung-heap of a Punjabi village”.

Moraes’s remark had led me to expect someone who spoke like Moraes himself: I had heard the poet being interviewed on All India Radio Calcutta in 1969. His favourite response to the interviewer was “Oh really!” in a pronounced la-di-da accent. As it turned out, Singh was refreshingly free of affectation and spoke in the no-nonsense Modified Standard that marks the English of the well-educated Subcontinental.

Most of the Bangladeshi journalists were interested in asking Singh about 1971 and the Indian political situation of the time. I recall Singh saying with a mischievous chortle that on meeting General Niazi after the Pakistani surrender he had quipped in Urdu, “Lagta ek Brahmin buddi ney Punjabi jawanka garh mar dia.” At that point the buddi was out of office, but Singh predicted, correctly as it turned out, that she would be voted back into the Prime Ministership. Singh had remained loyal to Indira Gandhi through the dark days of the Emergency and its aftermath, and this earned him much opprobrium. In 1990, at a literary festival in Glasgow, organized to mark the city’s tenure as “European City of Culture”, Nissim Ezekiel in informal conversation sadly shook his head and said that Singh, his fellow delegate, had collaborated with the Emergency regime when other writers and journalists were being put inside for protesting. Alan Ross, the legendary editor of London Magazine told me in no uncertain terms that Singh had been a toady to Indira. Those interested in Singh’s defence against such allegations

should look up his autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice. Among Bangladeshi leaders Singh seemed to have found Maulana

Bhasani the most colourful. At the Glasgow festival, where I had my second meeting with him, he reminisced about visiting the venerable old man in his country headquarters at Panchbibi. Between sips of tea, which was served in chipped cups, Singh asked why the Maulana was anti-Indian even though India had treated him hospitably in 1971 and had gone to war to help liberate Bangladesh. Oh, all that was in pursuance of India’s self-interest, the Maulana fulminated in impeccable Urdu. India had taken away everything captured from the Pakistan Army, and what had they given Bangladesh, the Maulana asked; “ek shair diya, woh bhi pagal!” he concluded, referring to Kazi Nazrul Islam.

I had just given a reading and went up to Singh to greet him. Before I could say anything he had said, indicating a chair, “Come Kaiser, tell me how things are in Bangladesh.” He had remembered my name from the announcement before my reading, and called me like an old familiar. Nothing could have been more endearing. I remember that he pronounced my name the Subcontinental way, with the “s” pronounced as an “s” and not a Teutonic “z”, just as I would like it to be pronounced. I told him I had read and enjoyed his recent novel, Delhi, but he self-deprecatingly brushed aside the compliment. “Oh, I’m just a dirty old man,” he said with a chuckle: the novel’s narrator-protagonist takes a hijra as mistress.

He asked about my work and I gave him what I had produced till then. Very little: my first two slim and mostly forgettable collections of poetry, a sheaf of uncollected poems that I had mimeographed, my translations of Shamsur Rahman. I asked if he would like to see a manuscript I had taken with me: my translation of Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin’s eighteenth century travel memoir, The Wonders of Vilayet.

Before leaving Glasgow Singh asked me to see him in London, where he was staying at his favourite hotel, not far from Marble Arch. “Bring a small photograph along,” he said, “I’ll write about you in my column in Sunday. And by then I’ll have had enough time to finish your manuscript.” Khushwant Singh writing about a nonentity from Bangladesh! This was an act of pure generosity I will always remember with gratitude. He also recommended the Vilayet manuscript to Penguin India, but the firm’s London head office, which in those had the final say decided not to take it. Eventually it appeared from Peepal Tree Press, Leeds, and then from Chroniclebooks, Delhi, and Writers.Ink, Dhaka.

I never met Khushwant Singh again. This is a matter of some regret. I knew he was always a busy man, and in old age he needed all the rest he could get. But calling on him on my visits to Delhi to pay my respects would have been in order. Still, even without meeting him I always regarded him as a living presence in my literary world; I still do. That too is like keeping in touch, as is being told in an email from a friend in Delhi just two years back: “I was visiting Khushwant Singh when he gave me a copy of a book he thought I would like. It was your translation of Urukku! [The Woman Who Flew]”

When a writer dies he is at the mercy of time, for he cannot add anything to his oeuvre. Whatever he has left behind will be sifted and judged by generation after generation, and he may one day be forgotten. We cannot be sure what will remain of Khushwant Singh at any future date, but we can say what we think will survive. His novels, as he himself would be the first to admit, were pot-boilers, but among them Train to Pakistan will live, I’m sure. Among his stories, “Karma”, which Vikram Seth has rightly described as iconic, and a handful of others, not least the wickedly mischievous “The Bottom Pincher”. His History of the Sikhs will remain an indispensable study of the subject. His translation of Umrao Jan Ada is excellent. But above all, it is as an essayist that he will retain lasting value, at least to this reader. These seemingly effortless compositions, full of good humour, often risqué, brash irreverence, and a broad comic acceptance of life with all its faults and foibles, are classics of what I would call light prose (on the analogy of light verse). It’s a form that few can handle with consummate mastery; Khushwant Singh could, in a highly distinctive way. n

Kaiser Hamidul Haq is a Bangladeshi poet, translator, essayist, critic and academic.


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Sarnath Banerjee is an Indian graphic novelist, artist, and film maker

and a co-founder of the comics

publishing house, Phantomville.

Manna Dey (1919-2013) Sarnath Banerjee

What Gabo Did For FictionGabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) Tribute

K. Anis Ahmed

Gabriel GarcíaMárquez was the undisputed sovereign of letters in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Few of his peers, say, Saul Bellow or V. S. Naipaul, came close in terms of either stature or influence. What made GarcíaMárquez rather unique is that he was not only esteemed by the

literary establishment, but was also read and loved by innumerable people, including many who are not regular readers of fiction. Not since Hemmingway has any writer enjoyed such simulataneous prestige and popularity on such a scale.

So, why GarcíaMárquez? Many of his readers will immediately cite the “magic realism” aspect

of his writing to indicate what charmed them so much, what made them go back for more. Yet “Gabo”--as the late author is affectionately called in Spanish-speaking countries--did not invent magic realism, nor was he the only practitioner of that literary style. There are the other greats of the Latin boom generation--Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar and Mario Vargas Llosa--who also took license with known reality. But no one melded the magic with reality quite the way that Gabo did, and it moved millions. So to explain what made him so uniquely accessible and attractive, one must look a little deeper.

I read GarcíaMárquez for the first time during my second year at university. It was not my first encounter with magic realism: I was already a fan of Borges, Kafka, and Salman Rushdie. But from the moment I read the famous opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I was hooked, I fell under the spell like countless other readers. I read through to the end of the book in a matter of days and no sooner had I finished it, then I started over.

Until then, in the sixties, modernist fiction had branched into several streams, with Realism pre-eminent. But realism in a misguided attempt to be ever more ‘realistic’ embraced ever tighter points-of-view that increasingly shrank the space of fiction. The works of Alain Robbe-Grillet, among others, may mark the worst of this dreadful stultification of the form.

It was in this context of dull and diminished form that the Latin boom generation came out with a style that reclaimed all possibilities of fiction. They went back to total omniscience, and far beyond where realism had dared to go (Fuentes wrote from the perspective of an unborn child, to cite just one act of dare). All this was done with great narrative gusto, brilliant inventiveness and endless charm and humor. It brought back what fiction--as a form of entertainment--was originally meant to offer readers: pleasure!

As an aspiring young writer, all I wanted to do was to write a “Hundred Years” based on my land and my history. I spent my twenties under the shadow of magic realism, especially as it was practiced by GarcíaMárquez, but also Grass and Rushdie, and by fabulists such as Ismail Kadare and Danilo Kiš. Influence is of course a funny business. As Harold Bloom has famously pointed out, influence creeps upon us in ways that are both unforeseen and not easily detected.

Thus in my thirties, as I finallybegan to finish my first books, the more visible impressions on my writing were not the magic realists, but the style of realism practiced by Graham Greene, V. S. Naipaul and J. M. Coetzee. But real influence is not about surface similarities. Crucial aspects of what I prize in fiction--both as a reader and as a writer--I continue to derive from the more magical of our forbearers.

Along with qualities that I have already named--amplitude and verve--what else I learned from the Latin magicians was the validity of taking the reality of my impoverished society to say something that went beyond dreary social reportage and approached the palpitating core of our collective and individual beings. That is something the Greenes and Naipauls have failed to do: they wrote as mere observers, without being able to sufficiently access relevant indigenous consciousnesses.

Once I discovered One Hundred Years of Solitude, I moved instantly to Innocent Erendeira and other early story collections of GarcíaMárquez. Over time I read practically all his fiction. I remain partial to his political

work--Autumn of the Patriarch and The General in His Labyrinth--over the more charming and romantic works, such as Love in the Time of Cholera or Memories of My Melancholy Whores. The work that for me comes closest to rivaling the “Hundred Years” in terms of both emotional impact and formal dazzle is actually a small novella: Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

GarcíaMárquez, who started his career in the press, remained a reporter to the end, writing book-length works of journalism. As he himself said repeatedly, his fiction itself was strongly shaped by a need to report. Critics, including Naipaul in archly oblique remarks, has said that GarcíaMárquez’sreporting is compromised by his need to celebrate, and he is ultimately too forgiving to his subjects.

As my own political sensibility matured, like many of GarcíaMárquez’s critics, I too came to view certain biographic aspects, like his friendship with a dictator like Fidel Castro, to be a matter of questionable judgment. In fiction too he is hardly ever as harsh as, say, Vargas Llosa is to a figure such as Trujillo in A Feast of Goats. But painting condemning portraits is also not a writer’s obligation. GarcíaMárquez took on some of the most colorful, controversial figures of history and tried to find the human core inside their over-sized personas. That he can render characters who might repel us in real life so compelling--at times even attractive--bears testament to his powers as a conjurer of multiple realities.

Like so many of his fans, I too marked the passing of the Great Gabo by picking up well thumbed copies of my personal favorites and dipped into passages, familiar and forgotten, to be transported a new land of speculative freedom of which he was one of the most accomplished navigators of our time. And there is no question that for a hundred or more years, those magical passages will continue to fill hours both of solitude and of communion for countless readers with joy and inspiration. n

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K Anis Ahmed is a Bangladeshi writer and entrepreneur and author of The World in My Hands.


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‘Would you care to hear an interesting story?’

I looked at the man in surprise. We had struck up an acquaintance only a short while ago – and that too, not a very deep one. He had enquired whether I was waiting for a train. Yes, I had

replied, asking him out of courtesy where he was going.‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he had replied with a smile. ‘I’m here to

receive my wife. She’s coming from Chittagong. The train’s two hours late. I don’t feel like going back. I thought I’d wait instead of going all the way home and then returning to the station.’

That was the extent of our acquaintance. If a person were to ask on the strength of this faint connection, would you care to hear an interesting story, one is bound to be at least a little surprised. I was not particularly inclined to having strangers tell me stories. And besides, I have observed in my long experience that stories that are said to be interesting never turn out that way.

I remained silent. The man would understand the significance of my silence if he were intelligent. If not, I would be forced to hear his story.

The man did not prove to be even remotely intelligent. Taking a tin of paan out of his pocket and preparing one for himself, he began his story.

‘You must be very irritated with me. It’s natural, here’s a man who has started pouring out his tale without so much as a by your leave. But do you know what the problem is? It’s a special day for me. And on this

special day I have the urge to tell someone my story. If you permit me, I shall tell you.’

‘Very well.’‘Do you like

paan?’‘No I don’t.’‘Try one, it’s

a mishti paan. You’ll like it.’

‘Do you also offer paan along with your story on this special day?’

The man laughed. Quite amiably. He was about forty. Very handsome. His sparkling white kurta and pajama suited him very

well. He appeared to have dressed carefully for his wife.‘This incident took place about twenty years ago. I was studying for my

Honours degree at Dhaka University – in physics. It’s probably too dark here for you to see me clearly. If there had been enough light you’d have realised I am quite handsome. Twenty years ago I looked like a prince. In fact I was known as The Prince amongst students. The funny thing is that the girls paid me no attention. I don’t know if you’ve noticed – women are never attracted to men for their appearance. They notice everything about men except their looks. None of the girls at the university ever came up to me to make friends or even to talk. I didn’t take the initiative either. Because I stammered. I could not speak fluently.’

Interrupting him, I said, ‘But you’re not stammering now, your speech is quite smooth.’

‘My stammering was cured after I got married. It was very bad earlier. I tried all kinds of treatment – from talking with marbles in my mouth to homoeopathy and even amulets from the Pir – no stone was left unturned. Anyway, to go back to the story. My subsidiary subjects were mathematics and chemistry. A girl in the chemistry subsidiary class almost made me stop breathing. How lovely she was! Long lashes, dark

eyes. Eyes that laughed all the time. Have you ever fallen in love?’‘No.’‘If you haven’t, I won’t be able to explain my state of mind. The very

first day that I saw her, I literally fell ill. I didn’t sleep all night. My throat grew parched every few minutes. All I did was take drinks of water and pace up and down in the veranda of Mohsin Hall.

‘We had only two subsidiary classes a week. I wanted to weep with frustration and misery. What harm would it have done to have a subsidiary class every day? Two classes a week of fifty-five minutes each meant a hundred and ten minutes. These hundred and ten minutes went by in a flash. And besides, the girl was frequently absent. There were times when she wouldn’t attend classes two weeks in a row. On those occasions my impulse was to jump from the roof of Mohsin Hall and put an end to all my agony and torment. You won’t understand how horribly I suffered. Because you’ve never been in love.’

‘You haven’t told me what the girl’s name was. What was it?’‘Her name was Rupa. I didn’t know it at the time though. It wasn’t

just the name – I knew nothing about her. I didn’t even know which department she studied in. All I know was that chemistry was one of her subsidiary subjects and that she came to university in a Morris Minor. The number was V 8781.’

‘Didn’t you make enquiries about her?’‘No, I didn’t. Because I was constantly worried that if I did I would

discover that she was friendly with someone else. You’ll know what I mean when I tell you about something that happened one day. After the subsidiary class had ended, I suddenly noticed her smiling and talking to another boy. I began to shiver. I thought I would collapse. I came away, not attending any more classes – and in a short while my body was wracked by a fever.’

‘How strange!’‘Of course it was strange. I passed two years this way. I virtually

abandoned my studies. And then I did something extremely bold. I found out her address from the driver of the Morris Minor. And then I wrote her a letter, without addressing her. I no longer remember exactly what I wrote, but the sum and substance was that I wanted to marry her, and that she must agree. Until she did, I would stand in front of her house, without eating. A fast unto death. Does the story seem interesting?’

‘Yes it does. What happened after this? Did you put the letter in the post?’

‘No. I delivered it personally. Handing it to the doorman, I said, you know the apa who lives here, the one who studies at the University? Give her this letter. The doorman took it obediently, returning in a short while to say, apa says she doesn’t know you. She’s right, I told him, but I know her. That’s enough.

‘And so I camped outside the gate. As you realise, it was an insane idea. I really was out of my mind then. I couldn’t think logically. Anyway, from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon, I stood uneventfully in front of the gate. I noticed a few curious eyes observing me from the first-floor window now and then. Around four in the afternoon a man emerged from the house and told me sternly, “Enough of your madness. Go home now.”

‘ “I shan’t,” I answered even more sternly.‘ “We’re informing the police. They will arrest you.”‘ “I don’t mind. Go ahead.”‘ “You rascal! Is this any place for your drunken antics?”‘ “Why are you abusing me? I haven’t abused you.”‘Burning with rage, he went back into the house. And it started raining

Rupa Humayon Ahmed (1948 - 2012) (transleted by Arunava Sinha)

immediately afterwards. Incessant rain. I got soaked, but I couldn’t care less. I knew as I did that I was getting a fever. After spending the day under the blazing sun, I would never be able to stand the rain. But I was desperate by then – I wasn’t afraid of the outcome. I was collapsing with hunger and exhaustion. I thought I would faint any moment.

‘Meanwhile, I had succeeded in attracting the attention of curious passers-by. Several of them asked me, what’s the matter? Why are you getting drenched here in the rain? I told all of them, don’t worry about me. I am a madman.’

‘The girl’s family may have informed others about this strange incident over the phone. Three different cars arrived at their house. The passengers threw angry glances at me before entering.

It was nine at night. The rain had not stopped for a moment. I was burning with a fever. I couldn’t stay on my feet anymore. I sat down, splaying my legs out. The doorman came up to me and whispered, the sahib wants to call the police, but apa isn’t willing. She’s weeping at your condition. Sit tight.

‘I sat tight.‘It was eleven o’ clock. The lights went on in the veranda of their house.

The door to the drawing room opened and the girl came out. Followed by all the other people in their family. None of them stepped off the veranda. The girl came up to me alone. Standing in front of me, she said in an impossibly tender voice, what’s all this madness?

‘I looked at her, bewildered. Because it wasn’t the same girl. A different one. I had never seen her. The driver of the Morris Minor had given me the wrong address. Possibly deliberately.

‘Tenderly the girl told me, come inside. Dinner’s served on the table. Come now.’

‘I rose to my feet. I tried to say, please don’t mind, I’ve made a mistake. You’re not the same girl. You’re someone else. But looking into her eyes, soaked with compassion, I could not say this. No woman had ever looked at me with such softness.

‘I couldn’t walk properly because of the fever. You don’t seem well, she said. Take my hand. No one will stop you.

‘The rest of them stood on the veranda, looking at me harshly. Ignoring them, the girl held out her hand. With an intense love that man has not been given the power by god to ignore. I took her hand. I’ve been holding it for twenty years now. Sometimes I feel a sort of restlessness. I have the urge to tell my wife this story of mistaken identity. But I cannot. Then I seek out a stranger like you and tell him. Because I know that this story will never reach my wife. All right, I should go. The train’s here.’

He stood up. The lights of the train could be seen in the distance. The railway lines were rumbling. The train was indeed about to arrive. n

Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction, non-fiction and poetry from India and Bangladesh into English. He is twice the winner of the Crossword translation award, for Sankar’s Chowringhee (2007) and Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen (2011). He was born and grew up in Kolkata and lives and writes in New Delhi.

Once, I became friends with a limping shalik bird. One of her legs had somehow broken. Whenever she saw me enter the orchard, she flew towards me, then she’d start to bounce and screech, ‘Kya, kya.’ I caught dragon flies and fed them to her. One day Moni Bhaijaan asked me, ‘Do you

know who the shalik is?’‘Who?’ I asked.‘One of our sisters. You never saw her. She died just before you were

born. Her name was Tuli.’‘But this is a bird.’Moni Bhaijaan said, ‘She became a bird after she died. We are her

brothers. That’s why she can’t give up her affection for us.’My heart filled up with anguish hearing this story. I would also come to

find Ma weeping when she remembered Tuli.From then on, I had a single mission: to sit beside the folsha tree at

midday, holding rice and fish in a clay bowl. While I sat there, I picked the fish bones out and fed the bird. I would worry, though. What if I missed a bone and it stuck in her throat. I asked her, ‘Do you get hurt?’

‘Don’t you feel cold?’‘Do you want to sleep under a quilt?’‘Ma still cries for you.’She had just one reply to everything. ‘Kya, kya.’ I felt upset with myself.

Here she was speaking to me, spilling her guts out, describing her pain and suffering, everything, but the dolt that I was, I didn’t understand a single letter of what she said.

I asked Puti once, ‘Puti, can you understand what birds say?’ She replied, ‘O Ma, is that something so difficult?’‘Do you understand the shaliks?’‘Why wouldn’t I? But you know something? The language of the shaliks

is like that of the Ure. Tonka bonka hoichonti khaichonti… like that. Haven’t you heard how our Natobor speaks? No matter what you might say, it’s quite difficult really.’

She heard the full story and said, ‘When do I have the time to teach you all this? You haven’t heard the scolding I get from that haughty bitch of a wife at our employer’s house. The bitch flays me alive with her tongue, I can barely escape with my life. At every turn it’s work and more work. One thing’s possible, though. I could interpret for you what she says. But what will you give me in return?’

With a two-pice coin in her palms, Puti went into the orchard with

Excerpt from Black Ice Mahmudul Haque (1941-2008) (translated by Mahmud Rahman)

I virtually abandoned my studies. And then I did something extremely bold. I found out her address from the driver of the Morris Minor. And then I wrote her a letter, without addressing her. I no longer remember exactly what I wrote, but the sum and substance was that I wanted to marry her, and that she must agree.

Mahmud Rahman was born in Dhaka, in what was then East Pakistan. His writing life began at twelve when he hammered out — with the help of a jerry-rigged Royal typewriter — six carbon copies of a newspaper and pasted them on the walls of his school in old Dhaka. His book of short stories Killing the Water was published in 2009. Mahmud is currently working on a novel.

me. The shalik was eating clumps of rice from the overturned clay bowl and screeching ‘Kya kya’. Puti said, ‘O Ma, what a cheeky girl she is! Do you know what she’s saying? She says, “O Poka, you’ll get a gorgeous wife. O Poka, your wife will be as beautiful as Puti.” O Ma, how clever she is!’

I said, ‘Why don’t you ask her how she broke her leg?’

After the shalik cried ‘Kya kya’ some more, Puti said, ‘Did you see, did you see how wicked she is? She cursed me as a low-born. She says Hindu birds broke her leg because she wants Pakistan. Can you believe it? How is it my fault? And listen to what she says now. She says, “It’s your kinsmen who did it.”’

I couldn’t believe that Tuli the bird could curse like that. We spent so many afternoons underneath the tree. I would wait for her expectantly with rice in the clay bowl. For a long time, there would be absolutely no sign of her. Then in the end, she might show up.

Everything felt empty on the days that Tuli didn’t come. How painful that was. Sobs would well up in my chest. At such times, I’d feel like crying when I saw any bird. So many people’s brothers and sisters had become birds after dying, but no one paid any attention to them. How sad it must be for them. It must be very hard for them to bear the hot sun, the rains, the winters. Neither did they have homes nor quilts, blankets or mattresses. They had to spend their days on tree branches, alone, without any affection.

That Tuli, that bird Tuli, our young sister – she flew off somewhere one day, never to return. She was last spotted on the branches of the mango tree that bore the kind that people called Modhugulguli or Shidur Kouto. She didn’t utter a sound. Who knows why she felt so wronged and hurt. n

(Excerpted from Black Ice, translation of Mahmudul Haque’s Kalo Borof by Mahmud Rahman, published 2012 by HarperCollins India. Reprinted with permission.)


10 11

Shuchitra Sen (1931-2014) Anika Mariam Ahmed

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Anika Mariam Ahmed is a visual artist and a lover.

She is the jewellery designer and owner

of Orange Theory. She loves the smell

of paint, the feel of words, and the play of light and

shadow.

The SearchLife is a funny journey isn’t it?We are always so desperately searching for the invisible, for truth, for

understanding, for god.Artists usually acutely feel the pain of this search. It accompanies

our journey. Inspires and eludes us. Because of the nebulous quality of this search we are subject to much anxiety. This anxiety can make us desperately cling to an “identity”. Identity is comfortable, it is a way for us to say “I am this…” and “this means that…”.

All very comfortable things to say. It tells you how to act, what to wear, how to speak…you don’t have to think at all!

Perfect for our anxiety ridden monkey minds. Relax the work is done for you. I find all of these facts extremely dangerous as both an artist and a human.

Music, Identity, Ike Turner and Ravi ShankarThe art I choose to project this search and these questions is called

music. Music is a wonderful thing, it can be so direct and indirect. Specific and ambiguous. Sound, like its counter part Light is infinite in scope and only our imagination can hint at the things we cannot physically see and hear. Which brings me back to this concept of identity. When you are so incased in this identity you have no opportunity to venture into the unknown. And the unknown is where you are asked to go as an artist. Why do I bring up all these different points? Ever since I have started my journey with music my identity has been called into question. When I first started playing the guitar I met a wild an interesting human known as Ike Turner. He illuminated things in music that I had never heard before. He not only illuminated them but he defined them, sold them to me as the way. In his words he would say “Man, THAT’S how we play EVERYTHING!”. I spent almost 10 years with Ike. Within this time period I felt very secure with my “identity” through Ike but Ike always wanted me to feel things in my own way. To contribute to the music with my own personal statement. I will never forget the day Ike gave me a lesson in identity. We were recording our 2007 Grammy award winning album “Rising with the Blues”. All day during the session I kept hearing something that was bugging me but I did not say anything. At the end of the session we were all laughing and talking when I off handedly said “yeah that sound you were making was not totally fitting with the song”. Ike mood changed completely. He suddenly got VERY serious. He looked at me and said “Do you know why you are here? I could get anyone to just sit next to me all day and say nothing and smile. You are here because of what YOU think! The music that YOU hear. The things that YOU have to say!” I was shocked. Ike continued by saying “When you are in this band we have to be able to connect, we have to be strong on the inside with who we are and what we feel. We have to trust our guts. Thats how we will make music that is bigger then any one of us!” I realized I was being asked to be me. But asked to be me so that I can transcend that idea of me. In 2007 Ike died and with it the concept of that identity. His death was the final lesson from Ike. His way of telling me to be free.

Coincidentally around 2004 I met another extremely identifiable human named Ravi Shankar. His name is in the dictionary next to the word “Sitar”. Talk about identity!! Being around Raviji was like being around a magical calculator. Within 10 minutes of sitting with him my brain would be saturated with concepts, ideas, sounds, and laughter. He was the closest thing that I have met to Yoda. I was fortunate to be able to spend time with him and his magical family. Raviji came from a world where people have entire schools based on identity. Raviji was an eternally openminded and childlike artist. He opened my ears to new melodies and rhythms.

I would find any excuse to be around him. I offered my services as the official garbage man and he happily agreed! Every monday me and my musical partners Jesse Charnow and Leo Dombecki would excitedly look forward to our task of taking out Raviji’s garbage! After each garbage run,

which took approximately five minutes, he would take us into his small music room and teach us from scratch about his concept of music. I was always amazed that a 84-year-old would start from absolute zero to teach 3 white boys from America about his music. I thought to myself, “wow he must really love this music.” I spent the next eight years being around Raviji as much as I could. Always amazed when after showing us some fantastic calculated audio masterpiece he would say “what do you think?”…What do I think?! Who am I? What do I know?! He was ever curious about the world around him. And he was fearless within his identity.

He straddled 2 worlds, East and West. He pursued the known and unknown vigorously. His curiosity transcended any form of identity. He could not resist. What new sounds to be heard? I will never forget the day Ravji asked me “Pandu, what is the difference between Hip-Hop and Rap?”. His open-mindedness and

fearlessness allowed him the opportunity to ask the question of the difference between the two. The ability to enter the unknown. That is the magical quality these two magnificent musicians showed me time and again. To enter it emotionally naked and alone, and to return with sound and vision that you have not experienced before. To stay loose and not caught in the trap of identity. In 2012 Raviji left this world and with it once again my sense of identity. So much was given to me through my connection to Raviji. So many new avenues and experiences. I met the woman I love through my association with him. I live in this beautiful and pagol country called Bangladesh in a round about way through him.

The Enternal Wanderer All of these things and these experiences do not define me. We are

more then that. Death has been one of the greatest lessons with all of my “teachers”. It has allowed me to never grow stiff and atrophy with identity. It reminds me that the journey is on the inside. To honor these great musicians I will continue to be fearless, to enter the unknown. To be open, even when parts of me start screaming from discomfort. For the open mind is not a comfortable place. It is an eternal wanderer, guided by the nature that flows within each one of us. I thank you Ike and Raviji. Your gifts to me accompany my experiences. It is all music, it is indivisible, we are always connected. I will not fight the flow, I will be as free as the rain in Bangladesh. Speaking of that, doesn’t the rain sound so lovely? I listen to it, not as a musician, or an American, or a wanna be Baul, or a funky white boy. I hear it as it is…I hear it as life . n

Seth Panduraga Bloomberg collaborated with Ike Turner for 10 years and won a grammy for Best traditional Blues record 2007 “Rising with the Blues”. He was also a student of Ravi Shankar since 2004. In the past years he has collaborated with a diverse group of musicians, including Tanmoy Bose (Baul and Beyond), Kendraka, The Bodhisattva Ghosh Trio, Sam Mills, Paban Das Baul, Anoushka Shankar and Anusheh Anadil. Seth has been living in Dhaka since 2011.

Ravi, Ike and some Monsoon Seth Panduranga Blumberg


12 13

Each day, countless queer blokes are seen wondering about on the streets of this city of Dhaka. Say, just the day before yesterday, a scrawny, dark person was walking along the road beside Jagannath University, his face nonplussed and confused. A dirty, shabby Panjabi with dirtier Dhuti and

a pair of very old fashioned sandal was all he wore. There’s something peculiar about him though. In this southernmost part of Dhaka (divided into north and south) in 2014, somehow he makes you think of the 20th century. The way he walks or looks, his attire, everything irrevocably reminiscent of that century. Don’t recognize him? Though gloom and sorrow is visibly streaking down his face, he is none other than the Jibanananda Das. Quite a long while ago, he told of a jungle in Libya in one of his poems. He heard that multitudes of bombings, killings and

plundering has really turned Libya into a vast and ferocious jungle, he wanted to see the place with his own eyes. But upon his arrival, he realized that those fraudulent touts in charge of his travel arrangement, have brought him to Dhaka instead of Libya.

However, walking on the sidewalk by the Jagannath University, he recalled that somewhere along here he was married to Labonno Das. But not quite recognizing the place, he turned around and started to walk. Passing by a group of horse-drawn carriages and their skin and bones horses, the gigantic Sumona Clinic in a place called Patuatuli caught his eye. He wandered about going into the clinic to check himself up to see if he had diabetics, but seeing the signboard ‘The Brahmo Society Temple’, relented. But the locked up gate barred him from going in. Nevertheless, the thought that the place where he

entered the sanctimonious pledge of marriage is still not eradicated from the face of this earth gave him a vague feeling of peace.

No, he couldn’t think anything else in empty stomach. Finding a vacant taxi, he got into it.

“Take me to a decent restaurant.” he asked the driver.After delayed by hours long traffic jam of Dhaka city, the taxi dropped

him on the corner of the Press Club. “Sir, that one is the Dhansiri hotel. A very good hotel from our own

Barisal.” The driver told him.Approaching the hotel, he noticed that the hotel is indeed named ‘The

Dhansiri Restaurant’ and the sign post in front of the hotel said, “Come folks, have a meal of Balam rice from Jibanananda’s Barisal”.

So, Jibanananda is used in hotel advertisements these days! He lost his appetite. Back-pedalling, he halted in front of the Bangla Academy gate, seeing a banner. The banner said, “We grieve for the death of the lifelong researcher of Jibanananda Das, Abdul Mannan Syed.” Alas! It seems like the guy died only some days ago. The reason and outcome of his research could have been enquired, only if he was alive, he thought. Getting past the Bangla Academy, he ordered a Lachchhi from a food court called DUS, in TSC. As he seeped in his Lachchhi, a voice reciting a poem wafted into his ears, “Banalata Sen looked up with her eyes like a bird’s roost. Where have you been all these days?” He felt a bit nostalgic listening to the name Banalata after so long a time. Where is Banalata now? Where are those lost days?

Taking a rickshaw, he went to Shahbag from TSC. He saw numerous pharmacies just across the road and a news-stand at the fore-front. The first one he picked up turned out to be a four-page supplementary, on the topic: Jibananda, a virtuoso in prose. One discusser commented, “Novels like Jibananda’s Malyaban, Jolpaihati have changed the course of Bangla prose writing style.” Is that so? If he had known, he wouldn’t have locked those novel and story scripts in a trunk. His reverie broke on the salesman’s rush, “Oh Bhai, Why are you going through the papers unnecessarily if you won’t take anything?” He put the supplementary in its place and walked on to the Aziz Super Market. There, a book - among the arrays of books displayed on the glass shelves in the book shop ‘Prothoma’, caught his eye – Ananno Jibanananda (Jibanananda: A Poet Apart). He couldn’t help feeling a little curious about the book. He went into the shop hastily and picked up the book. Turning the cover page, he saw that the principal author of the book is Clinton B. Silly and the Bangla translator Faruq Mainuddin. It’s a tome. A glimpse through the introduction told him that a writer from USA has written it after lots of research works. Unknowingly, a teardrop formed on the corner of his eyes. How people like Shajanikanto had disregarded him when he was alive, but now, he is studied in faraway countries. He wiped his eyes with the lappet of his panjabi and went to the first floor. There he saw a bunch of youths chatting in front of a book shop named Banglar Mukh.

One of them said, “Let’s publish a little magazine. The title would be Adbhut Adhar.” Another one agreed with him, said, “A perfect title. Jibanananda was one of a kind. How exactly he postulated the present era in those words – Adbhut Adhar. ”

Moving up to the second floor from the first floor, he beheld rows of clothing stores. Seeing a shop named ‘Uter Griba’, he went into it. There is nothing quiet and peaceful here, nothing similar to the long neck of a camel, peacefully surveying the horizon. The crowd barely let you stand upright. Adolescent boys and girls have come here to buy Panjabi-fatua-sari for the upcoming Pahela Baishakh. In a fringe of a sari, written in a silvery stroke is a tiny part of his poem, ‘Oh Kite! Oh golden winged Kite…’ Jibanananda chuckled. The kite got into his mind, who knows in what long gone afternoon or night, which is now fluttering around the Aziz Super Market of Dhaka!

Getting down from Aziz Market, Jiban babu saw the group of little magazine publishers again. He heard them saying, “Let’s go to the Bengal Gallery. Bhoomendra Guha is going to give a speech on Jibanananda

today.” What are they talking about? Bhoomen, who nursed him indefatigably

in the end days of his life! Bhoomen is still alive? He rode in an ATCL bus from Shahbag to Dhanmondi 27. A little ahead is the Bengal Gallery Café. But he didn’t have to go inside. Jibanananda stopped, hearing the name ‘Labonno’ from outside the café. Some of the listeners are asking Bhoomendra questions about Labonno. Alas! Labonno thought him a worthless person in life. If she heard today, that she is named repeatedly in relation to her worthless husband, how delightful she would have been! Jibananando thought once to meet Bhoomendra but rejected the idea. What’s the point awakening the age old pain latent in deep inside of his heart.

Walking towards Dhanmondi 27 from Bengal Gallery, he thought now it would be really nice to breathe easily in the fresh air of Barisal.

Barisal. Bogra Road. Sharbananda Bhaban.

Jibanananda on the Streets of Dhaka Pias Majid

A pedestrian told him that the buses to Barisal start from Gabtoli. He got into a bus named Dhusar Pandulipi Paribahan towards Gabtoli. A girl sat beside him on the bus. She looks a lot like Manjusree. Suddenly a song rang out from her purse,

‘Bishho kobir sonar Bangla,Nazrul er Bangladesh,Jibananander ruposhi Bangla, ruper je tar neiko sesh,Bangladesh.’[‘She is the aureate Bengal of (Rabindranath),The Bangladesh of Nazrul,The graceful and charming Bengal of Jibananando,Whose beauty is unceasing. She is Bangladesh. ’]Great! So he is also in ringtones! When she finished talking on the

phone, she said her was name ‘Arunima’ as he asked. Could she be the Arunima Sanyal? After that the girl started to talk about herself. She is a student of Bangla Literature at B.M. College in Barisal. She came to Dhaka University to make arrangements for her M. Phil admission. When asked on what topic she is going to do her M. Phil, she answered, The Seamanship of Jibanananda.

“Why did you choose such a dry and difficult topic among so many others?” He asked.

“You won’t understand.” The girl answered with a derisive smile, “First read Jibanananda thoroughly, then you can try. He wasn’t a poet at all. He was just a tragic sea-mariner. Whether in Malay or Singhol, no matter on how many ships he traversed, he couldn’t decide on which port to land. Nor life neither love. So he dived on the corner of Deshpriyo Park, from the water, straight to the dry, rough, solid green onshore.”

Jibananda shuffled a bit. What is she saying? She is so close to understanding him! Unable to contain the sudden burst of curiosity, he asked Arunima, “Can you tell me the reason behind Jibanananda’s fate?” The girl responded wisely, “Do you know a disease named Biponno Bishshoy? The interesting thing is Jibanananda Das himself was the inventor of this disease and he was ailed with it too.”

Jibanananda couldn’t take it anymore. He became speechless. He closed his eyes as though he could get salvation from this insufferable truth by doing it. But why would Arunima let him? She gave him a little shove and said, “I see you are suffering from this Biponno Bishshoy too. Come, Gabtoli is almost near.” n

Traslated from Bengali by : Abdullah Al Muktadir & Ashfiqur Rahman.

Getting down from Aziz Market, Jiban babu saw the group of little magazine publishers again. He heard them saying, “Let’s go to the Bengal Gallery. Bhoomendra Guha is going to give a speech on Jibanananda today.”

I have met a few people who are not familiar with “Salinger.” But those of us who know J.D Salinger are mostly because of his book “The Catcher in the Rye.” This book has become larger than life ironically due to its sincere tone and has made an everlasting impact on the readers—it is still read and printed every year.

Many have brutally criticised Salinger’s work and have associated his “reclusiveness” with Holden Caufield—the teen who feels “sorry as hell for” the hypocrisy around him.

Readers, authors, and critics alike have been fascinated by the world kept private by Salinger. The author went into seclusion (this is where many draw similarity between him and his major characters, especially Holden Caufield and Seymour Glass). He was not very happy when an ex-lover Joyce Maynard wrote a memoir, “At Home in the World” where she reveals details of her relationship with Salinger. In 1999, Salinger’s letters to Maynard were auctioned and they were bought by philanthropist Peter Norton who returned them to Salinger. Salinger was not too happy about his daughter’s memoir “Dream Catcher” as well; but it got the attention from Salinger fans. Salinger wasn’t flawless anymore; there were traces of that from the various encounters of Salinger with papers and his fans, but there was never any close inspection like this before. However, wanting to know more about Salinger is not something alien to readers of his work. It is as though, no one is ready give the privacy Salinger sought. This privacy creates a sort of magnetism to know more about the author who could pen the mysterious, ideal yet unreal world of the Glass family. Margaret Salinger, on the secretive nature of her family directs us to the lines from “The Catcher in the Rye”:

“My parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They’re quite touchy about anything like that.”

Salinger, who served in World War II, had faced many accusations. The worst, so far, is the association of his book with famous murders and attempted murders. One of them is the shooting of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman who claimed to have identified with Holden Caufield, the protagonist of “The Catcher in the Rye” so much that he wanted to conserve Lennon’s innocence by death. He clearly misinterpreted Caufield’s remark on adulthood and how he finally decides that “children should be left alone” and not protected. Chapman was allegedly carrying a copy of the book, which bore the words “This is my statement” signed in Holden’s name, on the night of the murder.

Salinger had successfully led a private life for around half-a-century. He had not published anything after 1965 and avoided attention from the

outside world. He stopped the writer, Ian Hamilton, from publishing his letters. However, Hamilton has managed to publish a book on the ever so private author called “In Search of J.D Salinger.” Salinger also delayed the publication of “Hapworth 16. 1924”, in 1996, to avoid the unwanted publicity. In 2009, Salinger filed a lawsuit against an author, who used one of the characters from “The Cather in the Rye,” for copyright infringement.

Salinger passed away at the age of 91 on January 27, 2010 at his home. The author who wrote relentlessly behind closed door is said to have left many unpublished and untouched writings which the readers might expect to read in the near future (which is probably meant to be read by the next generation of readers, but you never know). According to the in-/famous work “Salinger” (Simon & Schuster), by David Shields and Shane Salerno, there are “two independent and separate” but nameless sources who say the works of Salinger will be released apparently between 2015 and 2020.

The author with supposedly “bizarre” take on life and spiritual inclining left the world with more to wonder.

The author at a glance: Salinger was born on January 1, 1919. As a child he used to write for the

school newspaper. It is said that he wrote “under the covers, with the aid of a flashlight.” Unlike like the geniuses of the Glass family, he had an average IQ. He finished high school in 1936 when he started his freshman year at New York University. He quickly dropped out to help his father in meat-importing business for which he went to Vienna, Austria. He stayed there till the annexation, March 12, 1938. Salinger attended evening writing classes at Columbia University School of General Studies in 1939, where his writing picked up its pace. He wrote for the magazine “Story” which was edited by his professor, Whit Burnett. Salinger wrote for The New Yorker magazine after long last in 1948 and continued publishing there. His noted short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” was published there. Salinger published “The Catcher in the Rye” in 1951— thousands of copies of this book are sold every year. He published for the last time in 1965 and was interviewed for the last time in 1980.

Reading list:The Catcher in the Rye Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction Nine StoriesFranny and Zooey n

The secret life of Salinger (1919-2010) Rifat Islam Esha

Rifat Islam Esha is a Bangladeshi poet. She is currently writing a manuscript which might make her famous, posthumously.

Pias Majid is a writer and poet. He

has won the HSBC - Kali o Kalam

Young Poet and Writer award for

his writing in 2012. He is currently

working at Bangla Academy.

FIcTION

“As Hemingway sought the words for things in motion, Salinger seeks the words for things transmuted into human subjectivity. His fiction, in its rather grim bravado, its humor, its morbidity, its wry but persistent hopefulness, matches the shape and tint of present American life,” John Updike (“Franny and Zooey,” The New York Times).”


14 15

From Abeer’s Diary

civil twilight, 103°Fthe crows screechfrom the tamarind treesdrunk with the breezeand the dying light

Dhaka at Dusk, 1994

This isn’t the summer of my childhood. Simi isn’t my constant companion. I can’t skip all the afternoon teas and dinner parties and shopping trips to play outside or swim in the pond. My grandfather doesn’t come back from his morning walk with hot and spicy daal puris for breakfast. He is not

walking with me through my grandmother’s garden, tearing off banana leaves and folding them into perfect narrow “watches” with bands and everything, his bent curly head mirroring my own.

Nana has been dead for seven years, but it is only now that I feel it, here in his house, walking through the garden, a crooked banana leaf

watch on my wrist. My one context for him is fading from my already faded memory.

But Nanu is here, and she has always been my t o u c h s t o n e f o r Bangladesh. Her shuffling walk, her w r i n k l e d hands, the way she croons, Nanu, Nanu as she hugs me, harder, longer than I expect.

My tiny grandmother is a force, a woman of reckoning. One of the first women in her generation to graduate from college and go on to get a masters degree, she has spent her life in the pursuit of miracles, not the least of which includes the education of village girls.

Nanu traipses from village to village, walks through the grey concrete classrooms with their empty windows and brackish chairs and desks, talks to headmasters, teachers, and parents, and finds the girls who might escape child-bride-hood. She has spent decades fighting to keep our bony, huge-eyed daughters in school.

Recollections by Mrs. Meherunessa IslamAfter graduation from university, I attempted to obtain graduate school

admissions without the knowledge of my parents. I applied to Osmania University in Hyderabad for admission into their MA program. They sent me a positive reply and offered me a seat at Aftab Hall with a Rs. 30/- per month scholarship. My family summarily refused to let me go. I preserved that dream letter in my hope chest for a long time.

In October 1944, I joined Sakhawat Memorial Government Girls School at Calcutta as Assistant Mistress and also took charge of the Girls Hostel.

Founded by the great Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain in 1911, it was the first purdah girls’ school in the country which allowed the emancipated Muslim community to send their daughters to school.

I worked at Sakhawat Memorial School until the partition of India on August 14, 1947. During my time in Calcutta, my parents and well-wishers were searching for a husband so that I might be socially accepted. They repeatedly told me that marriage was obligatory for Muslim women and I could not live a peaceful life in society as an unmarried woman. I was also told that my parents could not live in peace until I was married. So finally I agreed to get married. After some time, a suitor was found who was agreeable and courageous enough to marry an educated working woman. It was a simple ceremony arranged by our parents and relatives in Calcutta in 1946, a year before Partition.

After the partition of India in 1947, we left our beloved cosmopolitan city of Calcutta in tears and laughter. Dhaka, the provincial capital city of East Bengal suddenly assumed the character of a capital. It was a city of Nawabs (landowners) and Kutties (locals), with hardly any middle class. The major seat of learning, Dhaka University, was a residential university at Ramna Green, popularly known as the “Oxford of the East.” Its classes and residential halls were in a red building with Gothic spires and it boasted a staff of internationally reputed teachers built up since 1921.

The women of Dhaka city were considered hidden treasures by both the upper and lower classes. Nawab Begums were captives of Harems and Rang Mahals, hardly allowed to see sunlight or moonshine. Poor Kutti working women fashioned long Burkahs from old sarees to hide themselves while earning a livelihood. They were termed “moving tents” by onlookers. Kutti males were known to shout three times loudly: “Chadpar Admi Charta Hai” – “Man on rooftop; women beware.”

The first casualty of partition was Eden Girls’ College. It had been built by request of Dhaka girl students and based on the Chief Minister A. K. Fazlul Huq’s Calcutta-based Lady Braborne College. The college and hostel buildings had just been completed and started functioning in 1947. After partition, Eden College ended up being shunted from place to place for decades before a new college building was available. Women’s education suffered greatly during this time.

The Kuttis, the original inhabitants of Dhaka, were seriously perturbed by the arrival of liberated women from Calcutta. They raised a wall of resistance with marches, slogans, even physical violence. Women were attacked with bricks and bats and threatened to be thrown into the Buriganga River in sacks. Women were warned to wear burkahs and not to go out openly onto the roads. Many women were insulted publicly and assaulted.

Girls’ schools were another target. Horse carriages carrying girl students were stoned, injuring and terrorising girls. Abusive pamphlets

and handbills were circulated that spoken vehemently against girls and women for their non-observance of Purdah. It felt as if the age of Purdah were coming back. Across the city, parents were threatned, and girls were stopped from going to school. Because of the local Kutti and fundamental Muslim resistance, girls’ schools closed. We were demoralised, and the hopes and aspirations with which we had started to build our new country grew dim.

However, we were the flag bearers, the messengers of the emancipation of women. We were the loyal followers of Begum Rokeya. We could not back down. We stepped forward and sought government help, and

received liberal support. Every horse carriage carrying girl students was escorted by armed police for protection. Parents and guardians got letters of assurance as to the safety of their daughters. Schools started functioning again under the protection and care from both the government and civic committees.

The doors of three government girls’ high schools reopened with state and public assistance, all of which had closed down after partition with the evacuation of all the female Hindu teachers. Newly graduated Muslim girls from Braborne College took up the vacated positions. After partition, we Muslim teachers and women leaders worked together hand in hand for the education of Muslim girls, overcoming the opposition by the Kuttis of Dhaka as well as the religious fundamentalists in other districts.

After attaining seniority, I was appointed to the post of Assistant School Inspector by the Public Service Commission in 1949. During British rule, this position was reserved for unmarried women, but after the partition of India, the rule was relaxed to include Muslim women who were also married. The discriminatory pay scale and allowances for women were also revised after a long struggle.

The job of Inspector of Schools was a glamorous one that came with the services of a fully dressed orderly and an ayah, residential accommodations, and an office. The orderly wore a turban and brass livery, which drew the attention of the public whenever we passed by. The ayah was in charge of the Inspector’s children while she was in office, touring, or visiting schools. These inspections had a significant ceremonial aspect. For example, throwing feasts was a regular occurrence with inspection. Inspectors had special privileges as well as special means of conveyance such as palanquins, special boats, elephants, and so on. They also got higher priority for the use of circuit

houses (Dak Bungalows), over even the male officers.In addition to my general inspection duties, I was able to survey the

status and conditions of female teachers and students at different levels in the mixed primary schools. The female teachers were lonely and had no opportunities to improve their situations. And even in primary schools where I expected less segregation, girls were a minority, isolated from the boys, and clung to each other.

At home, girls worked as hard as the women, doing all sorts of domestic chores. They were generally treated as weak, feebleminded, and incapable. Conditioned from childhood to serve others, they continually sacrificed their own interests and needs. This sad tradition was playing out at every stage of schooling and development for girls.

At the secondary level, boys’ and girls’ schools were completely separated. In rural areas, some parents would send their daughters to boys’ school but with great fear and anxiety. They were generally escorted by the male teachers to class, sat in a corner, and left class with the teacher. They were not allowed to mix with the boys. In higher education, the same pattern followed.

In towns and cities, when families were able to consider better, more progressive schools, within the country and abroad, they only sent their sons, and hardly thought about such prospects for their daughters. Co-education was still not widely accepted by society.

Since the time of the British, the education sector has been considered the most difficult as well as traditional sector to break through. It is not the question of poverty or scarce resources, but an attitudinal aspect which needs to move in a new direction. Female education must be considered as important as male, and discriminatory attitudes should be removed at all costs. n

Visiting Diaries Abeer Hoque

Some years ago, Abeer Hoque diaried about her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Meherunessa Islam- a true champion for women’s rights and girls’ education starting from the 1940s. Though she is no longer with us, we have a bit from Mrs. Meherunessa’s life, giving a glance of the time and mind of a trail brazer.

Girls’ schools were another target. Horse carriages carrying girl students were stoned, injuring and terrorising girls. Abusive pamphlets and handbills were circulated that spoken vehemently against girls and women for their non-observance of Purdah.

Abeer Hoque is a Nigerian born

Bangladeshi American writer

and photographer. See more at

olivewitch.com

His fingers created magical symphonies whenever he played the keyboard. His vocal harmonies along with eerie sound effects have been a vital ingredient and the most distinctive feature of arguably the band which changed the sound of music – Pink Floyd. His knowledge of music

and creative genius was the core of the bands unique sound that sold millions and millions of albums around the world. The wizard of sound, the maestro, Richard Wright, died at the age of 65, on September 15th, 2008, after being diagnosed with cancer.

On a personal statement, David Gilmour remembered Richard Wright as a “gentle, unassuming and private individual whose soulful voice and playing were the vital components of the recognized Pink Floyd sound. Sadly, Rick’s enormous input to the band was frequently forgotten among the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd”.

Richard Wright influenced musicians throughout the globe including contemporary artists of Bangladesh. Here is a glimpse into the minds of a few of those musicians regarding Wright:

Shakib Chowdhury lead singer and bassist of Cryptic Fate: points out Wright’s ability to create different atmospheres through his experiments on the keyboard, especially in songs such as “welcome to the machine” that were certainly the cornerstone of the space rock genre. He is also

probably the first person to use the “moog” sounds to such great effect. Faizan R. Ahmad Buno, music producer and bassist: believes Wright

has not influenced Bangladeshi musicians as greatly as he could because Bangladeshis are more into guitar, then comes the bass, drums and then the keyboard, though Richard Wright was everything more than a keyboardist. Richard Wright was the one who drew the backdrop of Pink floyd. Almost all of David Gilmour’s voicing was shadowed by Wright and he sounded like Gilmour therefore people didn’t know who was harmonizing.

Tinu Rashid, guitarist and singer of Karnival: expresses his gratitude to Richard Wright for his somber and spacious keyboard sections that many keyboardists lack these days to be in the competition of playing fast.

Saadul Islam, composer and lead guitarist of Arnob and friends: says Richard Right wrote significant parts of the music for some of my favorite albums from Pink Floyd, such as Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Division Bell.

I thinks it is safe to say that Richard Right, with his jazz, neoclassical and experimental music influences, was the backbone for the unique sound and complex compositions of Pink Floyd, which has been inspiring musicians and music-lovers for decades. n

The Wizard of Sound Richard William Wright (1943 - 2008) Tahjib Shamsuddin

Portrait of Richard Wright: Neville Ferdous Hasan lead guitarist of The Surrogate Band

A R T S & L E T T E R S D H A K A T R I B U N E S U N DAY, AU G U S T 3 , 2 0 1 4

16 PB

I had an eating disorder when I was young. I only ate things which were white - rice with salt, banana, the whiter part of the egg and so forth. My parents undoubtedly had trouble with me, worried about my growth and nutrition they tried to introduce me to different flavors and taste. But I continued to fool them by

either throwing away my tiffin in the school garbage or distributing food amongst my school friends with healthy appetites.

It was around 1st or 2nd grade when I met a man who took care of my tiffin worries. In the late 80s I had the chance to share stage with this individual as one of those child performers with barely any dialogue for a stage play called Kitton Khola of Dhaka Theater written by Selim Al Deen. Nervous before getting on stage and sitting with glamorous adults in the make-up room I would try to take in everything from the surrounding. The way they spoke, the jokes, the songs, the sharis, the young man transforming to an old one with the strokes of the make up brush. There were a few who gave me that light pinch on the cheek with affection, some chit chatted about school and then there was Humayun Faridi who somehow knew exactly what to do to make me lighter. When we would meet he would whisper asking if I had any tiffin left, and of course I always did. I would bring out my untouched box of food and give it to him and in an instant he devoured with great pleasure the food I thought to be inedible.

This was a huge gift for for a 6/7 year with major grief with food. And

I write this as a story, but I am no Capote. I’m Arthur, a most wanted man. The getaway is not going to be flawless. No doubt, I call it Mission: Impossible. It is an attempt to liberty. You see, when a man loves a woman, you take a leap of faith, hoping to achieve greater states of happiness. Back beyond a time I vaguely

remember, I used to be happyish. However, during the ides of March, along came Polly into my life. I wish I listened to the soothsayer.

During the 25th hour of one of those boogie nights in Synedoche, New York, I was allured by the scent of a woman. We were strangers with candy as we tried to entice each other with conversation. I was from Montana. She was from Sydney. Soon enough, we engaged in a late quartet with another couple, called Mary and Max, on the dance floor. It was then I knew that I found myself in punch-drunk love.

Even before the devil knows you’re dead, we were playing twister, like savages, on the floor of her apartment. There was no law & order, as we ravished each other in our own form of the Hunger Games. That night, I was a red dragon, the master of my fate. That night, we were almost famous in the neighborhood. I slept like a cold mountain. On hindsight, that image makes me think that I should have taken part in a mattress man commercial.

Bliss ensued in the following weeks. Every day, I came back from playing moneyball at work. Now, I know what “money for nothing” means. She would greet me with exclaiming, “Yay, my boyfriend’s

Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967 - 2014) Tribute Shakil Ahmed

The Pride of GreyHumayun Faridi (1952-2012)

Iffat Nawaz

Shakil Ahmed is an educational

researcher at the Institute of

Educational Development,

BRAC University and strategic

manager at the two new BRAC

Nobodhara Schools, based

in Banasree and Uttara.

Iffat Nawaz is the Acting Editor

of Arts & Letters. She is currently

working on a novel.

maybe because of this secret dealing with him I started paying attention to all his other antics around Dhaka Theater. The way he spoke, how he interacted with people, the odd face, not handsome by any book but the expressions always so extra ordinary and costumed for each emotion that I could not take my eyes off him when he was around.

On stage he was more than the character he played. The blind man of Keramatmangal, the funny guy in Muntasir Fantasy, and the demon of Shokuntala whose mask always made my little heart jump out. All characters different from the rest, not the typical hero even if he was the main character, often the villain or in character roles which stood between black and white. To me, he was the one who gave the understanding of the grey areas, something that was confusing to my idealistic childhood world.

A few years later he was in a television drama called Shongsaptak, where he gained more popularity as Kaan Kata Ramjaan. His career was going forward with acting. But there are so few roles for those who play with grey that eventually he was placed nearer to the black as a permanent fixure in Bangladeshi commercial cinemas as the villain. His theater friends may have given that look from the corner of their eyes for such a nonintellectual money making decision. I remember hearing the gossip as a child from different mouths of adults my parents spent time with.

These days though, when I look back and try to figure out that man, that tiffin stealer, that monster with the mask who was beautifully affectionate to children if they could get over his corkiness, and that absolutely brilliant performer who taught many like me that heroes can be often boring but complexity in characters is something to watch, something to remember, something to learn from.

I thank Humayun Faridi for teaching me complexity, for making me feel okay that I had an eating disorder and how he was game with me committing the crime of not eating, he kept that secret of mine, gained a kind of trust perhaps only fantastic expressionists can. And because of him, I have chosen complexity over simple roles, to read, to watch, to admire. After all aren’t we all in the grey? Exposed or not? n

back!” Every day, I would present a magnolia from a child’s garden of poetry, in my passion to constantly woo her. Those times were blissful, but like a fifteen-minute hamlet, this culture of bliss was short-lived. I met another woman and began to love Liza.

Back then, you may have confused me with the talented Mr. Ripley for my diverse strategies to employ the invention of lying. When my boss Jack goes boating, I used to “join” him. I’m at a “poker game with the boys”, owning Mahowny. I’m at a parade at the junction of State and Main, “looking at a beautiful yearling.”

Polly, however, was nobody’s fool. Sooner or later, she figured it out. I tried to be Patch Adams, make things happyish and salvage our relationship, our boat that rocked all day and night. Her screams and threats insisted we engage in Charlie Wilson’s war. She even got her brother, The Big Lebowski, involved. Liza was nobody’s fool either. She became furious and got her brothers, Szuler and Joey Breaker involved.

I could not take it anymore. I needed to getaway. This is how an empire falls, I thought. Greed. Lust. I look at my new gun, preparing myself to put myself back into God’s pocket. I point it to myself. Is my life just a mere triple bogey on a five par hole? Like I said, the getaway is not going to be flawless. Goodbye, Earth. Next stop wonderland.

On February 2, 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in an apartment in Greenwich Village, New York. He died of an accidental drug overdose. The above short story is a tribute to his filmography. All the titles of his work are planted above. From a Scent of a Woman to Capote to Doubt to The Hunger Game, Philip was indeed a talented Mr. Ripley, but his affinity towards drugs (Liza?) above acting (Polly?) may have got the better of him. Rest in Peace and thanks for leaving us with a legacy of beautiful performances. n

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