Arts & Letters

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Arts & Letters

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Rabindranath’s flute Nirmalendu Goon Those who sang with their fingers on the flute those who wrote poems at midnight -- those farmers, those factory workers who were the real makers of steel, who made biscuits and shirts for me and sari for Nilima; they all are different people now; their homes are the bastion of revolution now!

Those who sang with their fingers on the flute those who learnt from the school, or from the world, or from this civilisation, or from nature, those students and teachers and workers -they have come together and are all very different now.

They don’t sing songs anymore, they’ve all become different people now.

They threw their ploughs away and have taken up iron-made arms; in their foreheads flash the red ribbons;

Those who thrust wooden ploughs into the heart of the soil, those artists, those labourers who sang with their fingers on the flute, who dreamt in their sleep; leaving the village by the Dhaleswari river they are all rushing towards the city now!

Translated by Rifat Munim

Inside

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Non-fiction: The poetics of a revolution

In the exultation of triumphing over the city, they call Rabindranath independence; they call his songs sten guns.

Those who sang with their fingers on the flute, those who wrote poems at midnight -they all are farmers now -- seasoned farmers of revolution.

For you, the barrel of a gun has become a flute in my hand too!

[ Nirmalendu Goon is a leading poet in Bangla literature. He stole the limelight as soon as his first volume of poetry, Premangshur Rokto Chai, was out in 1970. He has since published at least 35 poetry collections including Na Premik Na Biplobi, Tar Age Chai Somajtontr, Banglar Mati Banglar Jol and Chasabhusar Kabyo. The theme of a revolution by underprivileged groups cuts across his voluminous body of work. ]

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Essay: Bridging distance through literature

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Book review and Poetry

Send your submissions to: anl@dhakatribune.com

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Arts & Letters

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Saturday, March 12, 2016

Non-fiction

The poetics of a revolution Tea garden workers of Chunarughat in Habiganj have waged a movement against the government scheme to take away their farmland. Here we publish the first instalment of a nonfiction piece that was written after interviewing some of the protesting workers

n Ahmad Ibrahim

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he following is an investigation into the real world manifestations and contradictions of a revolutionary moment. A revolution can be a large transborder phenomenon or a relatively small event involving a particular group, area or community. The accounts that follow are meant to illuminate a revolutionary moment not as an abstract concept of change, but as a real world experience lived and influenced by its participants. It draws upon notes and interviews gathered from the tea garden workers’ community in Chunarughat, Habiganj. The workers there are revolting against the government’s decision to set up a Special Economic Zone on their farm lands, demanding legal rights to their homes and farms, something that has been denied them since colonial times. Some names have been changed to respect the request of anonymity of individuals involved.

Part I: A revolution is always a little late in coming.

Biren Pal stood at the mouth of the bridge that connected the tea estate to the village of Chunarughat. Behind him, he heard the faint tolling of the garden bell and a dust storm, as a thousand more bodies rushed to join him, wielding machetes, arrows, sticks and an irrepressible anger. His hands were empty, but he didn’t bother much. In front of him, he saw a procession of men attempting to cross the bridge, shouting chants in support of the economic zone.

The procession hesitated a while as it saw a furious Biren waiting on the other side, being flanked by an increasingly large body of infuriated tea garden workers. A majority of the supporters did not really know what an economic zone was, or why it would be beneficial to people in this particular area. They had mostly been paid to be there.

Biren’s blue top was now all

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Later that night, he told me that in that instant, he had thought of the anger pulsing through all of their bodies, and of the centuries spent in painful obedience

soaked. He yelled out a stream of curses at faces standing on the other side – these were the people who had previously expressed solidarity with the cause of his people. He noticed the police commissioner, who too was standing on the other side, not really trying to stop the workers from crossing the bridge. Streams of angry men and women rushed past him and onwards to where the economic zone supporters, now visibly frightened, stood. A few of the police officers did try to stop the rush from the workers’ side, but they soon wilted in the face of their overwhelming wrath.

The supporters were by now terrified and had turned tail and scampered away. Biren Pal waited for a split second before acting swiftly to stall his angry people.

Later that night, he told me that in that instant, he had thought of the anger pulsing through all of their bodies, and of the centuries spent in painful obedience. It was a historic moment, but he didn’t care much about history. “Don’t cross the bridge!” he yelled.

Part II: A revolution moves forward through moments of incoherence.

In a large courtyard shared by three different families, twenty women sat on the ground facing two journalists and narrated their stories. It was the middle of a cool January afternoon. Work at the tea gardens had been cancelled for a long three-day weekend for puja celebrations. Behind them, a few more women were busy scaling fish and grinding spices to prepare the midday meal. On certain nights, these women fry tea leaves and eat it with puffed rice as a wage of Tk 69 per day leaves them with little choice. Today, however, the presence of Dhaka-dwelling reporters demanded an elaborate feast.

Sitting at the front of the gathering, Palak Rajbongshi was speaking at length. She wore a green sari with patches of leaf print on it. It was the kind of garment that symbolized the ease with which women tea workers moved throughout the community, tucking it around the

waist to wield a machete either to cut down the leaves from old trees or to face down those who would come to take their land from them. The twenty women who had gathered were always at the head of all rallies, always poised to lay down their lives at a moment’s notice for the land that fed them and held the bodies of their forefathers. “Everybody knows that tea garden workers don’t understand anything other than ‘the boat’ when it comes to politics,” Rajbongshi continued.

“Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had come here when the war was breaking out with Pakistan. He told us to be prepared to fight. We still have the bows and arrows that we had used in 1971”.

The smell of crushed peppers wafted around the courtyard.

Rajbongshi was the sardarni of the tea estate. All the other women became silent when she spoke. As questions were asked by reporters, she answered them all without hesitation, as if all the questions were aimed at her. Outside the compound, rumblings of a few voices could be heard. Something was happening.

“We don’t want to play dirty politics. Our demands are not towards local politicians. It’s towards the leader of this country.

Her father supported us and we believe with all our heart that she supports us, too. If she comes here and tells us to give up our land, only then will we give it up. We will give it up happily”.

And then, there was a silence

filled with unease. The women behind Rajbongshi looked at each other and started to murmur. Not everyone, it seemed, was fine with the idea of leaving their fate in the hands of another.

“We can’t give up the land,” Anjana Bakti, tea worker for 25 years, said quietly. “We believe she would never ask us to give up our land, but even if she does, we won’t give it up. She will have to take it over our dead bodies.”

The air was suddenly thick with an outcry of ‘No!’ They would not give up this land at any cost and they wanted legal ownership.

Mondagini Bakti spoke, loudly now, of her patch where she grew watermelons and, before that, a whole host of vegetables. She was ready to spill blood and let her blood be spilled. Rajbongshi, too, found her real voice and nodded her approval. All of them vehemently turned against toiling their life away for the interests of the existing political class. In that moment of incoherence, the movement was united, even if on a minuscule scale.

It was clear by then what was happening outside and the women began to leave their posts, emboldened by a new sense of clarity. They grabbed their weapons and prepared themselves for a battle that might entail death, as they scampered to join Biren.

The feast for the guests would have to wait. l Ahmad Ibrahim is a freelance journalist, writer and activist.

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Arts & Letters

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E s s ay

Bridging distance through literature Bengali readers did not know much about the exchange between Bengali and Latin American cultures.

Writers who translate directly from Spanish reveal that the exchange had started with Rabindranath Tagore

n Razu Alauddin

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am not a researcher, so I cannot say for sure what exactly the political and commercial state of relationship between Bangladesh and Latin America is. But I am certain of one thing and that is, there exists a very long historical and literary bond between Bengali culture and Latin American countries. Even a very conservative estimate reveals that this has flourished through one hundred years.

This bond was initiated by none other than our most celebrated cultural personality Rabindranath Thakur, who is more known as Tagore among the Spanish speakers. This significant historical fact, unfortunately, remained unknown to us for a long time because of our inaccessibility to the Spanish language. But we know now that their taste, clarity of mind, appreciative nature and most of all -- their unprejudiced inquisitiveness had led them to extend their welcoming hands towards Bengali culture one hundred years back. The exchange that happened through Rabindranath had tremendous impact on the culture and literature of some of the regions of Latin America.

Rabindranath entered Latin America through the translation of Argentine writer-journalist Carlos Muzzio Saenz Peña’’s in 1915. This initiative paved the way for building a bond between Rabindranath and the eminent personalities of Latin America.

Eminent personalities who showed an active interest in studying, translating and discussing Rabindranath included Argentine thinker and minister Joaquin V. Gonzalez, cultural personality Victoria Ocampo, poet Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, Jorge Luis Borges, Osvaldo Svanascini, Ricardo Guiraldes and painter Horacio Alvarez Boero; Chilean poet and educationist Gabriela Mistral, writer professor Raul Ramirez, poet Vicente Huidobro, poet Pablo de Roka, poet ambassador Pablo Neruda, essayist and professor Arturo Torres Rioseco; Bolivian writer-diplomat Abel Alarcon, leftist thinker Jose Carlos Mariategui; novelist Mario Vargas Llosa from Peru; thinkeressayist Pedro Enriquez Ureña

1st row: Portraits of Tagore by Latin American painters Federico Schiff, Osvaldo Svanascini, Roberto Montenegro, Gabriel Fernandez Ledesma; 2nd row: portraits of Tagore by Horacio Alvares and unknown artist; a Diego Rivera painting with long-bearded Tagore in the middle; and a photograph of Tagore with Victoria Ocampo from Dominican Republic, among many others.

From the north of the continent we can mention Mexican writer and philosopher Jose Vasconcelos, poet Jose Gorostiza, playwright Celestino Gorostiza, translator Pedro Requena Legarreta (who died prematurely), Emma Godoy, poet Jaime Sabines, poet ambassador Octavio Paz, Antonio Castro Leal, painter Diego Rivera, Gabriel Fernandez Ledesma and Roberto Montenegro.

All of them not only touched the very soul of Bengali culture through Rabindranath but also projected the light of that touch through the prism of their own cultural ambiance.

On the other hand, we Bengalis showed our interest in Latin America comparatively later -- almost half a century after them. Yet, we have been able to bridge the time gap by means of

our passion for Latin American literature through translations, studies and researches. It is no news now that most of the prominent Latin American writers of our time have been translated into Bangla and they have a very wide readership here in Bangladesh.

Let me provide you with a short list of writers whose works are available in Bangladesh: Mexican writers Mariano Azuela, Juan Rulfo, Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes; Nicaraguan poets Ruben Dario, Ernesto Cardenal, Sergio Ramirez; Chilean writers Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra; Peruvian writers Garcilaso de la Vega, Cesar Vallejo, Ricardo Palma and Mario Vargas Llosa; Cuban Jose Marti, Alejo Carpentier and Nicolas Guillen; Venezuelan writer Romulo Gallegos; Brazilian George Amado and Jose Carlos

Calvalcanti Borges; Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Ocampo and Julio Cortazar; and Columbian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

All the major works of these writers have been translated into Bangla, yet we must remember that they do not represent the entire range of Latin American writers. I hope this not-socomprehensive list will suffice to show the depth and enormity of our love for Latin American literature -- though belated.

Common cultural practices and traditions have bound us together.

Hence, Latin American music and football, too, have a huge popularity here.

The exchange was on even during our Liberation War. Ocampo, Borges, Ernesto Sabato and Octavio Paz -- the compassion they showed and the support they gave during the most critical time

of our history is a gesture of love for humanity. Such a gesture is the core foundation of our culture as well as yours. This is perhaps why Gabriel Garcia Marquez, when asked to explain, said absence of love was the root cause of the Buendia family’s alienation in his famous novel Hundred Years of Solitude. The same thing was rephrased by Rabidranath too. He said: We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. l Razu Alauddin is a translator and poet.

He delivered a longer version of this speech during a dinner in honour of ambassadors from Latin American countries at Padma, the state guest house in the capital. The programme was organized by the ministry of foreign affairs on March 5.

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Saturday, March 12, 2016

Book Review

Why we all should be feminists

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himamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 TED talk “We all should be feminists”, also available in a tiny book format now, has added a new momentum to the feminist movement worldwide.

The impact it has made on different segments of culture is evident.

Even Beyonce Knowels, one of the biggest names in today’s pop industry, featured extracts from this book in her song “Flawless”.

Of course it caused a lot of controversy as Beyoncé embodies all the glitter and glam of a culture nurtured by male chauvinism. But it also shows the extent to which her book has reached.

“I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness. Because I deserve to be.”

Celebration of femininity is not new in the discourse of feminism, but the way Adichie has put it in her book offers a new perspective.

She boldly celebrates femininity without compromising the feminist stance. This fresh perspective sets the pace for “today’s” women in their struggle for emancipation, making it a must read, especially in the wake of International Women’s Day. There is another distinct feature that too sets this book apart. Unlike

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She says, “Some people ask: ‘Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’ Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general -- but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded

many feminist texts which are addressed exclusively to women, her book is addressed to both women and men. It shows how a gender divide, rooted in our ideology, is equally harmful for men.

“But by far the worst thing we do to males—by making them feel they have to be hard—is that we leave them with very fragile egos.

The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.”

It is after elaborating on this point she decisively says that we all, irrespective of our gender, should be feminists.

“Some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism. This comes, I think, from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how their sense of self-worth is diminished if they are not ‘naturally’ in charge as men.”

Through humour and sarcasm

We should all be feminists Publisher: HarperCollins UK Pages: 64, Price: £5.00 she addresses head-on the discrimination that the world has subjected women to, “by dividing human beings into two groups”, and “proceeded to exclude and oppress one group”. She argues how women are told to meet masculine standards, and men to shun away from anything that might emasculate them.

She discusses the double standards of gender expectations and unmasks

the delusion of the Nigerian terms “bottom power” and “hard man” and how boys are raised to be hard men in domestic spheres.

Adichie also talks about why we should use the word feminism, instead of human rights, to capture women’s position and struggle in society. She says, “Some people ask: ‘Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’

Because that would be dishonest.

Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general -- but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender.

It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded.”

Gender is a complicated issue involving many layers of politics.

It is difficult to deal with it holistically without sounding pedantic at times. Adichie, however, touches upon most of the current issues of gender politics and succeeds in giving a very light touch to everything she discusses. Readers don’t feel lost as they often do in the esoteric intellectual exercises of many feminist writers.

Sharmin Ahmed is a freelance writer and reviewer.

Poetry Rifat Islam Esha mourning light good morning, begin the day, fresh, grieve, as you may don’t shame others wash your mouth with unlearning gurgle if you please, rinse your face– in a prayer form and don’t doubt others who pray or not eat the newpapers, news of yesterday think where the splinters could be today swallow the shrapnel join the dots in the air if you may invite others on board or let them be end your morning light.

years down the line years down the line, when you look back– don’t say ‘the time was just not right’. the time

was perfect. it was just a small eternity.

they they said: ‘what is sadder is that you counted stars and i gazed at the moon; you clouded your eyes with the edges of winter and i inhaled the smog of your words’. and again: ‘what is sadder is that i nailed on to the shards of a mirror and mistook them for your eyes you were juggling with them anyway’

Ikhtisad Ahmed they hummed: ‘place them back and you’ll find a faint picture place them back into the shadow.’

red bird i know it right when friday comes to an end that maybe the faint echo of the red bird that maybe lives inside my mind is one of realisation not anger; molten words morphed into sighs, just a bit of realisation– i should listen.

The R-Word I do not know if using the R-word, I will stay alive in Bangladesh; Life over death the easy choice, Caution preferred when possible; Self-censorship for survival, sensible?

I am ashamed nonetheless.

Pen mightier than sword They say, they assert; Should I take their word for it?

Paper-cuts hurt, They know from experience – Convinced, no more shall I prevaricate.

Arguments confidently offered, I think, therefore I articulate!

My undeniable rights I assert, I celebrate!

Venture into the R-word I do As a self-proclaimed Roy or Bruno.

Most profound, the R-word: Religion, rationality, Better still, reason!

The sweet embrace of the ultimate freedom Before succumbing to lamentable martyrdom, Except that they will say it was treason.

This poem was written in response to Avijit Roy’s killing.