Arts & Letters

DHAKA TRIBUNE SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 2016

Poetry

I want n Mahadeb Saha

Editor Zafar Sobhan

Today I want full-throated laughter I want a summer storm, want madness I do not want whispers and scandals I want you to say it all out loud Not tears or moisture, I want arid heat I want burnt bridges and gaps that grow I only want distance today, not intimacy I don’t want cooling shade, but a searing sun Today I want baked clay, bricks, wood, iron Mud and wild flowers, these are what I want Today I want the roaring seas, violent waves I want an earthquake that shatters the earth I want a breast as open as the sky I want fierce courage and infinite spirit The tumult of the swift mountain river I want a wild torrent, an explosion I want separation today, not union I do not want bonds, I want freedom No more veils, I want to see and listen I won’t be anchored, I want to swim forever

Editor Arts & Letters Rifat Munim Design Asmaul Hoque Mamun Colour Specialist Shekhar Mondal

Translated by Arunava Sinha. He’s a prolific translator of Bangla fiction, but occasionally delves into translating poetry.

Anima counts some footprints one by one n Nabina Das

Here’s a footprint! There, another. Oh look, another that has gone from the porch to somewhere unknown. Slowly rising from the side of the cowering bed, over a crumpled sheet, a pair has stepped hesitantly and then – dragged for a while till the kiss of the cold stairs drove it out of the house door. Still, these are footprints. Do you see the size of the shoes or the sandals? Are you saying a woman never wore shoes inside the house? Or is it bare feet? I’m kneeling down to see if the toes are showing on the damp of the floor like little sea conches that come and go, leave their mark as though time was short. But for me too this is deep and sad. Footsteps are growing like a sea. All we look for instead of a voice or warmth or even that presence around the space greeting us, enveloping us into her oneness. Then of course I look for more footprints, one by one, each of them. Some have left their skins on the gravel courtyard, some have slipped more than once on the turn of the tar road, while some just have become blood slush algae torn blossoms shallow smithereens of the late night dew.

I, Anima, plant my footprints around the homes, the bazaars, the summerraged roads, the corners in the streets where hawkers spill oil and laughter but do not know who passed at night. I ask them if they know what the word “disappeared” does to our bones, our hands and mud-soft stomachs. Will that girl Kumari return from the far forests to show us her untouched starched underskirt? Will that teacher Hajong come and say no worries didibhai my hands are not broken and I still can write? Have they seen the boy Burhan splitting grass with his teeth before he ran away to bite a bullet and is he back to his pranks or not? I, Anima, will track footprints till I can. Till I wake from the dream and tell you – look there they are, all of them wiping their soiled soles, resting at home.

Oi Ashe Oi Oti Bhairob Horoshe This translation of a Tagore song is to celebrate the rainy season as well as the 75th death anniversary of the poet.

n Rabindranath Tagore

There, there they come— monsoonal clouds— Exhilarating, awesome, moisture-laden, Fragrant, earth-soaked, dense, rejuvenated Dark-hued, somber, glorious— ready to burst!

Their deep rumblings quiver dark-blue forests Tense peacocks out on strolls cry out The whole world is thrilled, overwhelmed.

Intense, amazing—monsoon is on its way!

Where are you, oh young and old belles of pathways?

Where are you, oh brides of darting, fluttering eyes?

Where are you, oh female gardeners and dear nursemaids?

Where could you be, oh women all set for assignations?

Come to deep forest shades and yield to deep blue desire Let honeyed tongues peal in gorgeous dances Bring forth the mind-entrancing veena!

Where are you love-sick ones, all you seekers of love?

Bring forth the tom-tom, the tabor, the melodious pipe Blow the conch and ululate, oh you brides all— Dearly loved partaker of all our delight, Monsoon, you’re here, flaming passions anew.

With brooding eyes, on the birch leaves of arbors You compose brand new tunes, Based on the cloud-induced Meghmallar raga.

Monsoon is here, flaming passions anew!

Apply the fragrance of the ketoki flower on your hair String Korobi flowers and wear them around your slender waist Lay out Kadamba pollens on your bed Daub your eyes with soothing eye-salves!

Clink your twin bracelets rhythmically Make your peacocks dance in tune Weave a warm welcome Lay out Kadamba pollens on your bed!

Monsoon is here; rejuvenated monsoon is here!

Suffusing the sky and filling the world with desire The wind susurrates through forests, making trees sway Plants and creepers lilt rhythmically to its tune, Poets of all ages meet in the heavens Making the heady wind resonate tunefully With lyrics that transcend time Till hundreds of melodies resound in forest paths.

Translated by Fakrul Alam. See more of his translation of Tagore’s song lyrics on page 5.

Nabina Das is an Indian poet. This is the most recent addition to her ANIMA series of poems. Earlier ones have appeared elsewhere.

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Tribute to Mahasweta Devi

She was a fighter all her life, through books and activism The writer died in Kolkata on July 28 at the age of 90

n Anjum Katyal

A

few streets away from where I live, one of the doughtiest fighters I knew has just fought her last battle. This is the thought that shadows me as I attempt to pay a just tribute – to Mahasweta Devi, one of the most remarkable writers and activists this country has seen.

If you haven’t heard that name, or are unsure of who she is – Google her.

You’ll learn that she’s ninety years old, that she’s variously described as a social activist and a novelist, that she’s won just about every award for literature that this nation has to bestow, plus the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award for journalism, literature and social activism, that she is one of the most respected cultural figures in Bengal, and the author of a large number of novels and short stories, many of which have been translated into multiple Indian languages.

You’ll also learn that she dedicated her life to fighting for the rights of those most downtrodden and oppressed in our society – the migrant and the destitute, tribals and dalits, communities written off as criminal and marginal. Part of no one’s agenda, they became her cause and focus. She documented and reported, organised and sued, and, above all, wrote. Haunting, powerful tales filled with unforgettable characters and mythic images.

As a literary presence in the overcrowded field of Bengali creative writing, she carved a distinct space for herself. The people in her stories were migrant workers, the lowest of the low castes, landless labourers, poor abandoned women, tribals with no rights; and those who exploited, abused and suppressed them. She said that these were men and women she had encountered, real people from whom she constructed her characters.

Her plots and storylines, she often said, were based on actual events.

Yet she found a way of lifting them to a mythic level, imbuing them with a universal relevance that rendered them literature rather than reportage.

Her language traversed a wide range, incorporating styles of Bengali from all strata of society, including a hybrid Bihari-inflected dialect. Her vocabulary was wonderfully, wildly varied; her tone elliptical, terse, often drily sardonic; her humour, black. Hers was a tough, lean style, with unexpected passages of intense lyricism. Like the woman herself.

She believed in oral histories, in people’s stories, in folk knowledge. She wove these into her writing. Her account of one of our pan-Indian heroines, the legendary warrior queen, Rani of Jhansi, is built out of tales and perspectives she collected while travelling and talking to the common people; one of the first writers to attempt such an alternative history.

She walked and walked through villages and rural India, familiarising herself with the structures of power and governance, identifying with those robbed of their rights, seeking material for her novels and stories. She found the so-called savage and backward people incredibly civilized and cultured.

It was her own class, the bourgeoisie, who disgusted her with their hypocrisy and inhumanity.

Parallel to her creative writing, she kept up with her journalistic practice.

She reported regularly in the newspapers; she investigated incidents of oppression and injustice, unearthed cover-ups, documented and testified.

She helped form organizations of the oppressed to fight for their rights. She published a journal, Bortika, in which the voices of those who were never heard were given space, and dignity.

The person This was a woman who dared to walk out of an unsatisfactory marriage to a cultural icon in order to claim a space for herself, for her writing. Who

Priyo

The writer

faced every kind of social stigma as a result. Who eked out a living as best she could, working at assorted jobs so that she could make ends meet. Who sought fulfilment in her writing. Who lived with the pain and loss of being severed from her only child. Her relationship with her son would always remain complex and troubled.

She was a person who called a spade a spade, who had no time to waste on mealy-mouthed decorum. She looked like someone’s benign grandmother but she could bite your head off if she felt you were wasting her time.

And then would come a knock on the door, a hesitant visitor bearing an invitation to some high profile event, or a bouquet of flowers, or a box of sweets. A brusque, “Yes, what is it? I’m busy” would cut short any niceties being uttered.

The invitation was usually refused, the flowers brushed away, the sweets returned. Only if she felt it would help her cause in some way – garner donations, raise awareness, pressurize the authorities – would she accept being feted.

She built her reputation for integrity and fearlessness by standing her ground and speaking her mind in the face of displeasure and pressure from those in power; but this reputation was soiled in the last five years or so, her choices criticised by many. I prefer to remember her as she was when she was at her most productive and prolific. I prefer to remember the Mahasweta di who tilted at windmills. Fought dragons. Championed the underdog.

And turned the most wretched of the downtrodden into epic heroines and legendary heroes with the magic of her pen. l

Anjum Katyal is a writer, editor and translator who, in her tenure as Chief Editor, Seagull Books, worked closely with Mahasweta Devi. This is a truncated version of an article, which first appeared in Scroll.in. See the full version online.

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ARTS & LETTERS

Shakespeare’s 400th death anniversary

Sonnet exchange by the Thames n Kaiser Haq

A

Kaiser Haq is a poet, translator and essayist. He is professor of English, Dhaka University. His most recent works include Combien de Bouddhas, a bilingual poetry selection with French translators by Olivier Litvine and an excellent translation of the Bengali epic: The Triumph of the Snake Goddess.

s you know, this year marks the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death. Various commemorative events have already taken place worldwide and more are planned for the rest of the year.

An innovative way of paying tribute to the Bard that the British came up with is the so-called Sonnet Exchange. Over a hundred British poets were asked to choose a sonnet by Shakespeare, out of the 154 he had written, and write a poem in response. The poem could be – but need not be -- a sonnet.

The response poems were then published in an anthology.

The idea was then adopted by Alchemy, an annual festival spread over a week and a half in May, at the Southbank Centre, a massive cultural hub on the Thames that describes itself as ‘the largest single-run arts centre in the world’. The express purpose of Alchemy is to celebrate South Asian culture, and that includes everything from food to fashion, with generous servings of high culture thrown in.

I got an email asking if I would be interested in participating in Alchemy’s Sonnet Exchange, which would be co-sponsored by the British Council.

Besides me there would be a poet from India (Sampurna Chatterji), and two poets of South Asian origin from Britain (Imtiaz Dharkar and Daljit Nagra). I agreed with alacrity.

My sonnet of choice was Number 66, which my good friend Laetitia Zecchini, the Sorbonne-based specialist in South Asian poetry in English, aptly described as ‘a dark sonnet’. It is unlike any of the others, in its ‘dark’ content as well as its distinctive technique. It describes a corrupt world, very much like our own; the speaker would gladly choose death if death did not mean leaving his beloved behind. The litany of charges against the speaker’s world is presented in a series of disturbing images, with the 10 middle lines beginning in an anaphoric ‘And’; the sustained parallelism looks forward to Walt Whitman; at least so it seems to me.

I did not want to write a sonnet, though; the form is too tight for my comfort. Also, I feel that Anglophone South Asians are not born to the iambic pentameter; nor for that matter are Americans; our cadences are different.

But I still wished to establish some sort of a relationship to the sonnet form.

Now, an English sonnet has 14 iambic pentameter lines, i.e. 140 syllables. My compromise was to write a poem titled ‘An English Sonnet=140 Syllables’.

My 140 syllables are spread over 24 lines; the dominant rhythm is iambic, but there is no rhyme.

I also tried something new in my work. I eschewed normal punctuation and only used dashes. In this my exemplar is Emily Dickinson, whose innovative, dash-strewn verse has long fascinated me. Her dashes have several functions. She can use a dash instead of a colon; she can use a pair of dashes to put something in parenthesis; she can use a dash simply to mark a pause or a period. Using a dash to signify a pause, to my mind, anticipates the Black Mountain poets’ prosodic innovation of Projective Verse.

Our event at Alchemy took place one pleasant weekend afternoon over an

Kaiser Haq’s response to Shakespeare

An English sonnet=140 syllables Kaiser chose Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 (‘Tired with all these, for restful death I cry’) as his starting point.

‘Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?’

–John Gray, Straw Dogs To be is to see – Eye can never tire Of the passing show – Everything a tad worse Each morning – scum rising Visibly – white-hot sun Blinding eyes with sweat – Blinkingly you read – A poet’s retraction Of satirical verses – Headlines packed with lies – Hear the growl of motorbike –

Killer or cop – who knows – While the perennial masque goes on For those who’ve made a killing – To face the tide is folly But if you’ll join me Together we’ll take note of things So long as we can breathe – So what if one can’t tell Substance from shadow – Feeling around’s always been fun – Call it love Or what you will

This is the first page of Nuhash Humayun’s graphic interpretation of Sonnet 130.

The full sonnet was released at Alchemy Festival Sonnet Exchange event. hour and a quarter at the Clore Ballroom of the Royal Festival Hall. The place was packed. Our readings and discussion and the subsequent Q&A went well; and a delightful visual dimension was added by the projection of a graphic version of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 done by our very own Nuhash Humayun. l

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22 Srabon The rains have a strange bearing on us Bangalis, a rather soothing effect when throats are parched and nerves are strained. No poet has better captured this effect on our psyche than Rabindranath Tagore, whose song lyrics explore the furthest corners of one’s emotional upheavals, elicited as they are by the pattering sounds of raindrops on the roof or by those grave, repetitive sounds of thunder emanating, as if, from the deepest core of the earth. The poet who so loved the rains died towards the end of it, on 22nd Srabon. Page 5,6 and 7 have been arranged to mark the occasion. Editor’s Note

Tagore and the rains

New translation of Tagore’s song lyrics

Dibarah Mahboob

n By Fakrul Alam

n Golam Faruque Khan

D

uring his visit to the then Soviet Union in 1930, Rabindranath Tagore recited two of his poems at a cultural event organised in his honour by a trade union forum. One of the poems was ‘Nababarsha’ (New rain) that compares the poet’s heart to a peacock dancing in joy at the approach of the rainy season.

Introducing the poem he said: “You know in our agro-based country the first shower of the rainy season makes people feel ecstatic. Clouds cover the sky end to end, and a feeling of happiness spreads from one heart to another and across villages.

This poem depicts the joy that the poet feels when he comes across the first monsoon clouds after a spell of dry summer weather. Here he speaks of the way his heart dances just as a rain-loving peacock does spreading its colourful plumes” (Soviet Union E Rabindranath; 1961).

Though a poet’s interpretation of his own poetry need not always be given full credence, particularly in these times when deconstructionists are up in arms over the pre-eminence of authorial intentions, Tagore’s testimony in this case merits some attention. The poem is steeped in agricultural imageries as we find in these lines: ‘Rice-plants bend and sway/As the water rushes,/Frogs croak, doves huddle and tremble in their nests, O proudly/ Storm-clouds roll through the sky, vaunting their thunder’ (trans. William Radice).

In fact many of Tagore’s poems, songs,

short stories and letters are replete with images from a peasant world drenched, fertilised and inundated by rain – a world in which inky clouds mass quickly in the monsoon sky, heavy downpours swamp the aus paddy-field and those who go to work there get marooned, the young cowherds are lost for the whole day, and the cows grazing in the field keep mooing helplessly to be taken home.

This vision of the rains fits nicely into Tagore’s overall attitude to nature which, as observed by an astute critic like Ketaki Kushari Dyson (I won’t let you go; 1991), was ‘shaped essentially by peasants’ India.’ Dyson goes on to add that ‘The passion with which Tagore addresses the earth as a mother, in whose womb he once was and whose milk he has drunk… was born of the close connection between the earth and the peasantry in his milieu…’ Though he was born and brought up in the city of Kolkata, located as it is in a relatively arid part of undivided Bengal, his exposure to the riverine landscape of rural eastern Bengal where he had to come and stay in his youth to look after the Tagores’ landed estates, helped him gain deep insights into the agrarian way of life and the workings of the elemental forces. He has beautifully painted the landscape and rural life of eastern Bengal in many of his works, but he does not stop there and goes far beyond.

In one sense the oeuvre of Tagore is an endless reiteration of the organic link

Sravaner dharer moto Let your melody stream like sravan’s showers on me Let it pour over my face and my body, Let your melody stream with the light from the east at dawn over my eyes; let it pour into my soul In the thick of night like thundershowers, Night and day in my lifetime, in joy or in sorrow, Let your melody pour over my face and body.

Let your monsoonal breeze revive any branch in me which hasn’t been bearing any flower or fruit at all.

Let your melody stream over layer after layer Of all that is worn out, torn, or famished in me.

Like sravan’s showers, night and day in my lifetime, in my arid patches or when I feel denuded, Let your melody pour over my face and body!

Aaj Kichutai jai na moner bhar My depression will just not go away today.

Alas, it is getting much worse on this cloud-covered day.

I keep thinking: will she come or has she left already?

I feel saddened by what she hasn’t been able to say.

Every now and then the moist wind keeps gusting endlessly; The very sky seems to be calling out to her time and again.

The restless wind too sighs, telling me she won’t be coming.

Has she left sadly forever because of our failed meeting?

Aaj Sraboner amantrone At Srabon’s invitation this day The door keeps shaking every now and then, As if all familial ties will be blown away!

In its courtyard, the earth dances rapturously Its dress’s borders keep blowing this or that way.

An age-old call for renewal stirs my mind And strikes at the very abode of my soul The east wind wafts my thoughts across the sky, Lifting it to some ethereal, eternal realm!

Aaji Jhorer Raate This is the stormy night of your assignation,

My soul’s inmate, my friend!

In disquiet, the sky sheds tears; sleep won’t come to me— Opening the door, beloved, I look out repeatedly.

Outside, I can see nothing

I keep thinking--where could you be?

Are you far away—crossing a river or beside a dense forest?

Are you traversing some thick dark stretch of land?

Fakrul Alam is professor of English, University of Dhaka. He is a literary critic, essayist and translator.

Currently he is translating Mir Mosharraf Hossain’s Bishad Sindhu and Tagore’s Gitanjali.

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22 Srabon

Punishment n Rabindranath Tagore

W

hen the two brothers, Dukhiram Rui and Chidam Rui, set out in the morning with axes in their hands to work as day labourers, their two wives were hurling insults and abuses at each other. But like other natural noises, the neighbors had become used to this shouting. As soon as they heard them shouting they would say to one another, “There they go again”. Just as nobody questions the rising of the sun in the east, nobody in the neighbourhood was curious about why the two sisters-in-law started quarrelling in the morning each day.

There is no doubt that the discord between the two wives affected the two husbands much more than it did their neighbours, but even the two brothers did not consider it to be a serious problem. The two brothers considered domestic life as a long journey on a bullock cart, and the ceaseless creaking noises and jerking movements of springless wheels, only a natural, necessary part of this journey.

In fact, on days when their home was quiet and a heavy silence hung over it, they were afraid that some unnatural, unforeseen danger was about to happen – they did not know what to expect.

On the day when our story begins, the two brothers returned home just before evening, tired from their work.

The house was utterly still.

The heat outside was stifling. In the evening there was a slight shower and heavy clouds still hung overhead; there was not a breath of wind in the air. The jungle around the house and the weeds had grown luxuriantly during the monsoon, and the thick, heavy smell of rotting vegetation from the water-logged jute fields stood like motionless walls around the house.

In the distance, the Padma, swollen with monsoon rains and overhung with new clouds, looked ominous.

Nearby, the paddy fields were already flooded, and the water lapped close to human habitations.

On that day, Dukhiram and Chidam had gone to work on a landlord’s main building. The paddy on the sandbank on the other side had ripened. All the peasants were busy harvesting the rice from their own fields or were working in the rice-fields of other farmers before the monsoon rain completely inundated the sandbanks. Only the two brothers were forced by the landlord’s thugs to work on his house. They could not come home for lunch but had a few mouthfuls of rice in the landlord’s house.

When the two brothers returned home in the evening, walking through mud and water, they saw Chandara, the wife of the younger brother, quietly lying down on the floor on the aanchal of her own sari. She had cried all afternoon, and towards evening had stopped and become still.

Radha, the wife of the older brother, was sitting on the threshold with a scowl on her face. Her one-and-a-half-yearold son was crying nearby. When the two entered, they saw a naked baby sleeping on its back in the courtyard.

Dukhiram was famished; as soon as he entered the courtyard he said, “Give me rice.”

The elder wife exploded like a keg of gunpowder lit by a flame. In a voice that reached the heavens, she shouted, “There is no rice! How will I cook for you? Did you bring any rice? Do I have to go out and earn money myself?”

Entering the dark, pleasureless room, with hunger gnawing inside his stomach, and after a day of hard labor and hu-

miliation, the harsh words of his wife, particularly the ugly insinuation of her last remark, seemed unbearable to Dukhiram. Like an angry tiger, he roared, “What did you say?”

And within seconds he had picked up his axe and brought it down upon his wife’s head, unthinkingly. Radha fell down near Chandara’s lap and died almost instantaneously.

Chandara, her sari spattered with blood, screamed, “My God, what have you done?” Chidam held his hand over her mouth. Dumbfounded, Dukhiram dropped the axe and sat down on the floor holding his face in his hands. The sleeping child woke up and began to cry hysterically.

Ramlochon from the Chatterjee household was calmly smoking a hookah. He suddenly remembered that Dukhi, his tenant, owed him a lot of back rent. He had promised to pay a part of it today. Having decided that Dukhi must have returned home now, Ramlochon threw his shawl over his shoulder, picked up his umbrella, and walked outside.

As soon as he entered the house of the brothers, a shiver ran down his spine. The lamp had not been lit, and in the dark a few shadowy figures could be seen sitting huddled on the threshold.

Ramlochon, a little frightened by the scene, inquired, “Dukhi, are you there?”

Dukhi, who was sitting motionless like a statue, suddenly burst out crying like a child when he heard his name being called.

Ramlochon started walking towards the door and asked, “But why is Dukhi crying?”

Chidam felt that there was no way to hide this and suddenly blurted out, “The younger one has hit the older one on the head with an axe.”

It is often easy to forget that future danger can be even greater than the one at present. Chidam’s immediate thought was to protect himself from the terrible truth of the moment; he was hardly conscious that lying about the truth could be even more dangerous. When he heard Ramlochon’s question, an immediate response came to his mind, and he spoke without thinking.

Ramlochon was taken aback: “What! What do you say?

Not dead, is she?”

Chidam said, “She is dead,” and fell down at Ramlochon’s feet, his arms around the latter’s legs.

When it came to giving advice on legal matters, Ramlochon was known to be “Prime Minister” of the village.

He thought a little and said, “Listen there is a way out.

Rush to the Police Station now and report to them that your brother Dukhi, on returning home from work, had asked for rice and when he found that his rice was not ready, hit his wife on the head with his axe.”

Chidam’s throat became dry. He said, “If I lose my wife, I can always get another one, but if my brother hangs I cannot get another brother.” But he had not thought of this when he put the blame on his wife earlier.

He had said something in the confusion of the moment and now his mind was unconsciously marshalling arguments in its own defense.

Ramlochon found his words reasonable. He said, “Then just report what happened. It is impossible to defend all sides.”

Part Two Chidam thought that he must proceed along the path he had already chosen for himself. He had himself given

Ramlochon an account of what happened and the entire village now knew about it. He just did not know what would happen if he now told a different story.

Chidam requested his wife Chandara to take the blame for her sister-in-law’s death. Chandara was thunderstruck! Chidam reassured her by saying, “Do as I say – there is no fear. We will save you.”

Chandara was no more than seventeen or eighteen.

Her face was soft and round, her stature not very tall.

There was such a lilt in her petite, lithe limbs that every movement seemed fluid and rhythmic. She loved visiting her neighbours for a chat; on her way to the bathing ghat, she took in all that was worth noticing with her restless, bright, black eyes.

Her elder sister-in-law was just her opposite: clumsy, lackadaisical and disorderly. Her younger sister-in-law would spoke in a mild voice but her words stung sharply, and the elder wife would erupt immediately in hysterical shouts and screams.

There was an astonishing similarity between the husbands and the wives in this household. Dukhiram was a large man with big bones and a thick nose. Harmless yet terrifying, strong yet helpless, Dukhiram was indeed a rare specimen of humanity.

Chidam, on the other hand, seemed like a person lovingly carved out of a shining, black stone, free from the

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22 Srabon slightest excess and not a dimple anywhere.

Chidam wanted to look handsome in the eyes of the pretty village belles, yet there is no doubt that he had a special love for his young wife. They quarrelled and they made up. But there was another reason why their bond was so strong. Chidam thought that a bright, restless woman like Chandara could never be fully trusted; and Chandara thought that her husband whose gaze fell everywhere must be tied down firmly or he would slip through her fingers.

For sometime before the present tragedy occurred, there had been a trouble between the two. Chandara noticed that her husband would say that he was going away to work and would not come home for a few days; and then when

the door ajar and nobody in. Chandara had walked across five villages and appeared at her uncle’s house.

Chidam brought her back from her uncle’s house after much persuasion, but he finally accepted defeat. He realized that it was impossible to fully possess this small wife of his, just as it was impossible to hold a drop of mercury within his fist. She slipped through all his ten fingers.

He did not try to use force again, but passed his days in great misery. Men’s envy of other men is greater than their fear of death. It was then the tragedy struck the family.

When her husband asked her to accept the responsibility for the murder, Chandara stared at him in dumbfounded shock; her two black eyes burned through her husband like black fire. Every fibre of her being rose in rebellion against him.

Chidam reassured her. “You have nothing to fear,” he said. He started to coach her, repeatedly telling her what to tell the police and the magistrate.

Dukhi depended on Chidam for almost everything.

When Chidam told him to place the blame on Chandara, Dukhi said, “But what will happen to her?”

Chidam replied, “I will save her.” Dukhiram was reassured.

Part Three

he returned, he had no money with him. She became suspicious and began to behave a little irresponsibly herself. She frequented the ghat and toured the neighboring houses.

Chidam’s days and nights seemed to have become poisoned. One day, when his sister-in-law walked into his room, he rebuked her sharply, and she, gesticulating with her hands, addressed her dead and absent father: “This girl outstrips a storm. I must restrain her or she will do something disastrous.”

Chandara slipped in from her own hut and said quietly, “Sister, what are you so scared about?” That was it – and the two sisters-in-law immediately began to fight.

Chidam’s eyes blazed as he said, “I will break every bone in your body if I hear you’ve been to the ghat again.”

Chandara said, “Oh, that would be great!” Chidam jumped at her, grabbed her hair and pulled her into the room. Then he shut the door from the outside.

When he returned from work in the evening, he found

Chidam had taught his wife to say that her sister-in-law was trying to kill her with a kitchen-knife, and she was trying to protect herself with an axe when it accidentally struck her sister-in-law in the head. The original idea was Ramlochon’s.

Soon the police began investigation. All the villagers had become convinced that it was Chandara who murdered her sister-in-law. The witnesses also provided testimony to prove this. When the police interrogated her, Chandara said, “Yes, I have committed the murder.”

“Why did you kill her?”

“I couldn’t stand her.”

“Was there a quarrel?”

“No.” “Did she try to kill you first?”

“No.” “Did she treat you badly?”

“No.” Everybody was surprised at these answers. Chidam became extremely anxious. He cried out, “She is not telling the truth. Her elder sister-in-law first …” The police inspector stopped him from speaking further.

Her stubbornness was remarkable; she seemed determined to get herself hanged.

Chandara, an innocent, ordinary, lively, curious village wife, took permanent leave of her own home as she walked along the eternally familiar village path, through the village market, along the ghat. As Chandara walked away, escorted by the police, women from the village – some of whom were her childhood companions – looked upon her with hatred and shame; they stared at her with something akin to fear.

Chandara admitted guilt before the Deputy Magistrate as well. And it was also not stated that her sister-in-law had attacked her at the time of murder.

But when Chidam took the witness stand that day, he broke into tears and with his hands joined together in a gesture of pleading, he cried, “My wife has done nothing wrong.” The lawyer admonished him, told him to control himself, and began to question him. Gradually, the truth began to emerge.

But the lawyer did not believe him because the principal witness, Ramlochon, said: “I arrived at the place of occurrence soon after the incident. Witness Chidam

admitted everything to me. He held on to my legs and begged me, ‘Please tell me, how can I save my wife?’ I gave him no advice, good or bad. Then the witness asked me, ‘If I say that my brother hit his wife in a fit of anger when he found that the rice was not ready, will that save my wife?’ I said, “Be careful, you scoundrel. You cannot utter a single lie before the Court – there is no crime greater than that!” And he went on.

At first, Ramlochon had made up a number of stories in defense of Chandara, but when he realized that Chandara herself had become quite adamant, he thought, “Oh my God, I don’t want to be held guilty for giving false witness. I might as well reveal all that I know.” And he narrated all that he thought he knew; in fact, he added in a few decorative touches of his own.

The police appeared in the Court with the accused and other witnesses. From the huge banyan tree in the compound, a cuckoo could be heard; there was no Court of Law for the birds.

When Chandara stood before the judge, she said, “Your Honor, how many times do I have to say the same thing again and again?”

The Judge explained to her, “Do you know what punishment you will receive if you admit to the charge of murder?”

Chandara said, “No.” The judge said, “You will be hanged.”

Chandara said, “Your Honour, I beg you, please do that. Do anything you want. I can’t bear it anymore.”

When Chidam was brought in the courtroom, Chandara looked away. The judge said, “Look at the witness.

Tell me, how are you related to him?”

Chandara hid her face in the palms of her hands and said, “He is my husband.”

Question: Does he love you?

Answer: Yes, very much.

Question: Do you love him?

Answer: I love him very much.

When Chidam was interrogated, he said, “I have committed the murder.”

Question: Why? Chidam: I had asked for some rice and it wasn’t ready.

When Dukhiram was called into the witness stand, he fainted. When he recovered, he said, “Your Honour, I have committed the murder.”

“Why?” “She didn’t give me rice when I asked for it.”

After lengthy interrogation and after listening to the depositions of several witnesses, it was clear to the judge that the confession of the two brothers was an attempt to protect the woman from the shame of hanging. But Chandara stuck to the same story from the beginning to the end.

There was not the slightest deviation in what she said.

On her wedding night, when the small, dark girl with a round face left her dolls behind in her father’s house to go to the house of her new father-in-law, could anyone have imagined that a day like this would come to pass!

Just before the hanging, the kind-hearted Civil Surgeon asked Chandara, “Do you want to see anybody?”

Chandara said, “I want to see my mother once.”

The doctor said, “Your husband wants to see you. Shall I call him?”

“Ah Death!” she said in disgust, and said no more.

This is a slightly abridged version of the original translation. Please see the full version online.

Translated by Shawkat Hussain, Professor and Head, Department of English, University of Asia Pacific)

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ARTS & LETTERS

Book Review

Forgotten past and songs from the abyss n Jamil A Chowdhury

A The writer, a free lancer, lives in Dhaka.

cclaimed for his short stories, Wasi Ahmed equally shines on larger canvas.

His novel Tolkuthurir Gaan (Songs from the Abyss), was published by Prothoma Prokashan in the Ekushey Book Fair last year. In the foreword, Ahmed briefly informs his readers that although the storyline owes to historical events spanning over fifty-plus years in the early twentieth century, centring around the notorious Nankar System in the eastern region of undivided India (now part of Bangladesh), the novel is not a historical one in the conventional sense of the term. He has taken bits and pieces of factual events from what was available from records, but the scheming of the book is entirely a work of imagination.

The term Nankar sounds a bit obtuse. Simply put, it means land slaves – not the kind one encounters in Alex Halley’s novel Roots. It may seem strange to many these days that land slavery had been in practice in parts of eastern India, now the greater district of Sylhet in Bangldesh and Karimganj in India (then part of Sylhet), even before the Mughals came to rule India. A nankar was a person who gave his service and that of his family members, to zamindars (feudal landlords) in exchange of bread -though in course of time bread became illusory. The nankar was a wretched person who had no land of his own for cultivation or for construction of hearth and home.

The person was a saleable commodity along with landed property.

These groups of people, aided by left-leaning activists, mustered enough courage to rise against their masters, eventually leading to long, unrelenting uprisings. It was purely one of the subaltern uprisings, succeeding one after another over a period of some twenty years. These historical details are only obliquely referred to in the novel.

Wasi makes these references in course of the well over 250-page book, while building and reinforcing his storyline about a nankar family in a chronicle of loss, defeat, fury, empathy and love across three generations. This is a deftly done job handled with care, caution and precision. History, despite its presence, merrily makes way for the storyline to fork out into various dimensions involving a large number of characters.

Wasi tells the story through too many characters. A good deal, however, is recounted by Sharif, the third generation member of the family, who remembers

Continued from page 5

Golam Faruque Khan is a poet and essayist who loves to keep a low profile and writes with equal fluency in both Bangla and English.

bits and pieces of what he heard from his father as a child. More than anything, he remembers the scrappy tune of a song – barely audible and difficult to make sense – which his father used to hum in his frail voice. As a grown up man, educated and nurtured in corporate culture, Sharif at one point finds it difficult to get along with his urban middle-class lifestyle, haunted by the ordeals his parents, grandparents and his sister had gone through. He feels stuck, uninspired to further his career, and even becomes indifferent to his wife and children. In his lingering obsession, he feels drawn to the workers’ unrest in his workplace, and in his fancy, he sees it as a modern parallel to his forefathers’ ordeal, more than hundred years ago.

In his narration Wasi Ahmed often makes use of wit and humour — tools that essentially characterise his fiction in general. There are occasional reliefs in descriptions, especially in chapters where he creates the atmosphere in details. There are fascinating episodes beautifully told. One such striking episode is a ten mile-long road march of village women with blazing kerosene lanterns held aloft in broad daylight seeking an audience with the British district administrator. The blazing lanterns, held over their heads, under the mid-day sun is symbolic in that it is intended to tell the district administrator that he doesn’t have eyes to see the sufferings of the nankars. The description that occupies a whole long chapter is captivating, to say the least. It is in this road march that one of the powerful female characters of the novel, Ambia, emerges with a power and blast of energy that best suits the occasion. In a way, Ambia is one of the key figures Wasi has chosen to tell a major part of the story.

Prominent among others with key roles to carry the story forward are Sharif, his father Sukurchand and mother Motijan. Sharif’s wife Munira occupies a significant space in a different setting that allows the readers to delve into the obsessive, at times sickening and wild temperament of her husband caught between urban modernity and primitive slavery—between feudal slavery and capitalistic slavery.

The most curious aspect of the book is that there are stories within stories, heart rending and masterfully crafted. They don’t stray, being well planted into the heart of the long tale of three generations. Although the storyline begins in the early twentieth century, it closes with a scathing modern parallel from our contemporary times. l

Rabindranath Tagore and the Rainy Season

between humans and nature. In fact few poets and writers in the world have been able to surpass Tagore in their awareness of the interconnectedness of all things in the cosmos. His holistic view of the universe enabled him to have a deep sense of how the human mind responds to the way nature operates – even to the fall of a leaf from a tree or the sudden rise of a cloud in the sky. The six seasons in Bangladesh come alive with all their colours, sounds and smells in the huge corpus of his works. Of all the seasons the rains appear to have stirred his poetic imagination most productively. If we just turn to the nature songs in Geetabitan, the collection of his songs, we can see that the rainy season has been allocated the maximum space. There are 115 songs on the rainy season as against 96 on spring, 30 on autumn, 16 on summer, 12 on winter and 5 on Hemanta. Apart from their highest number, the monsoon songs stand out for the depth and variety of feelings they convey. In his book Chhay Ritur Gaan (Six Seasons’ Songs; 2009) Ranajit Guha argues that these songs superbly enunciate Tagore’s philosophy of being that translates into a deep sense of loneliness, and then again manifests itself in various shades of feelings of separation and remembrance. Here he finds a lonely soul waiting for someone and passing into ever shifting moods of joy, sadness and reminiscence that heighten when it rains.

Some critics have attributed this sense of loneliness and separation in Tagore to his debt to Sanskrit poetry and the devotional poetry of the middle ages, particularly to Kalidasa, Chandidas and Vidyapati. In Kalidasa’s poetry the monsoon cloud serves as a messenger for a pining lover separated from his beloved. In Vaisnava poetry the rains go one step further and raise expectations of union of the lover and his beloved in the backdrop of rainy nights filled with the chorus of croaking frogs and singing birds. As we know, many literary and philosophical strands went into the making of Tagore’s world, and he certainly made use of the Indian classical and folk traditions in weaving his rain poetry but his great creative genius

transformed his inheritance into something unique. While drawing on the rainy season to depict life in harmony with its natural environment in rural Bangladesh and to convey the feelings of love, separation and desire at one level, he made it a conduit for an intense longing for something higher and beyond, at a deeper level. While one may like to characterize such a longing as patently romantic – and Tagore would not probably object to such a characterization – the diversity in the world of his ideas makes it almost impossible to pigeonhole him as a poet or writer of a particular hue.

When the poet asks plaintively in a song: ‘Clouds have gathered on clouds,/ darkness descends./ Why do you keep me sitting alone by the door?’ (trans. Ketaki Kushari Dyson) these simple words, much as they echo the pain of a long-waiting lonely lover, set the stage for a search for something more. The later stanzas make the wait look more unbearable and suggest something sublime that is aspired to: ‘If you slight me,/if you don’t show yourself,/how will I pass such a/day of the monsoon blues?/My eyes wide open,/I can only stare at the distance,/while my soul weeps and wanders/with the storm-wind’s roar/Why do you keep me sitting alone by the door?’ In another beautiful, familiar song the poet addresses these moving words to who he is waiting for, much in the same vein: ‘The sky weeps like/ someone in despair/my eyes know no sleep/Beloved, I throw open my door/ and look out again and again/O my friend, my soul-mate!’ The rainy and stormy night makes his mind travel far – ‘Along the bank of/ what distant river/skirting the edge of/ what dense-knit forest’ -- in search of his ‘soulmate.’ The questions asked can also be read as part of a dialogue between two selves – one smaller and the other larger – of a person who seeks to transcend himself and go beyond restricted time and space, and they need not be reduced to a conventional search for God as is sometimes done. This fruitful dialogue endlessly recurs in Rabindranath Tagore’s writings, and is central to understanding his quest for higher forms of truth. l

8 ARTS & LETTERS

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Short poems

Sehri tales n Sabrina Fatma Ahmad

W

hen I first started the #sehritales project, it was something of a self-challenge, to see if I could wake up at sehri time every night during Ramadan and compose something on the fly. At first, the biggest challenge was the structure of the poems. I’m much more comfortable with prose microfiction, and don’t have a drop of poetry in my soul, so that was fun.

And then, once I got into the groove, the next challenge was finding topics.

I had given myself a couple of rules: no post longer than 250 words (I hate reading status “essays” and didn’t want to subject my friends to the same); no politics, preaching, or activism. This was supposed to be a purely literary exercise.

The last week of Ramadan, with the terrorist attack at home and the ones immediately preceding and following it abroad, the challenge was to find the motivation to continue writing. These five poems capture my mood during the final days of the holy month.

Acrostic/limerick An acrostic poem is a type of poetry where the first, last or other letters in a line spell out a particular word or phrase. The most common and simple form of an acrostic poem is where the first letters of each line spell out the word or phrase. That’s just what I started writing on the day after the attack. Only after finishing it did I realise that the structure also matches that of the limerick, a kind of five line poem with a strict AABBA rhyme scheme.

Dark, dreary dreams drive sleep away Heavy is the heart I’ve carried all day Afraid to pause, reflect and recall Knowing I can’t make sense of it all All I can do is remember, hope and pray

Haiku There are many types of haikus. I prefer the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern My beloved ones I will hold you close tonight Who knows what’s coming?

BOOK REVIEW

The writer is Features Editor, Dhaka Tribune.

Stonehenges For those who missed the last issue, a Stonehenge is a three-line prose poem developed at Champlain College, Virginia, in the early 2000’s. It consists of a single line of action “propped up” by the two preceding lines of description.

Threads of gossip, rumours and misinformation Woven through the fabric of fevered imagination The fearmongerer raises his black flag in triumph *** A white, blank space A blinking cursor Sleep drags my eyelids down, and all fades to black l

Addressing the difficulties in translation n Preetilata Huq

T

ranslation Studies: Exploring Identities is a collection of essays about translating literary works from one language to another, in particular, translating from Bengali into English and vice versa. The idea of this book, edited by Professor Fakrul Alam and Professor Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman, came from a conference on translation studies organised by Khulna University in 2014.

The essays mainly deal with the process of translation by which a piece of writing is rendered from one language to another, and the problems that arise in the course of translation. The book begins with the essay

by Niaz Zaman, eminent writer and translator, who argues in her essay that “a good translation should retain cultural differences.”

One of the main challenges translators face is that they often have to decide to what extent words and phrases from Bengali should remain in the target language. According to Zaman, the translated work should be in readable English, but the cultural background of the writing should not disappear in the translation.

Khademul Islam, in his essay, talks about how cultural differences lead to different syntactical structures and how this difference makes the act of translation really challenging. He argues that challenges are many and “there are no ready-made and set solutions to these difficulties of translating from Bengali to English. Language is both

too intractable and too fluid to lend itself to easy answers … ‘’ Fakrul Alam, one of our illustrious translators, examines different translations of a Tagore song to reach the conclusion that “no translation of lyrics can ever be like the original, and “we will be inevitably disappointed if we seek to find in a translated poem an exact equivalence of the original” and that “no attempt to translate a text can be seen as definitive and all attempts at translation of a classical text must ultimately be seen as provisional.”

Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman picks up Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and shows how Shambhu Mitra, in his translation, has given it a new life in line with Walter Benjamin’s theory of afterlife of the text. “ ... Mitra’s attempt to take part in the afterlife of the Ibsen classic meant that he would not ‘[strive] for likeness to the original’; rather, he would ensure that through his work ‘the original undergoes a change,’” he says.

Abdullah Al Mamun, too, expounds Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on translation.

Benjamin, an exceptional translation theorist, talks about what attracts translators to a work, and how important translating a text is in order to ensure that the text lives on.

That is, if it is translated from a declining language into a language that most people of that time know, then the text will live on. For instance, Tagore’s poems were translated into English in 1912, which enabled readers in Europe and America to enjoy them.

Monika Gaenssbauer, Sabiha Huq, Mian Md Naushaad Kabir and Rumana Rahman, among others, have discussed different aspects of translation including translation as a performative act, translation as a pedagogic tool and translation as decolonisation.

There are a total of 18 essays in the book and all of them, considered as a whole, will serve as an essential reference point not only for those who are interested in theories of translation but also for those who are practising translators. This is a must read especially for those who translate from Bengali into English. l

The reviewer is an undergraduate student at Brandeis University, a liberal arts college in Massachusetts, and she occasionally reviews books for Arts & Letters.

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ARTS & LETTERS

Nonfiction

The Dangerous Fantasy of American Exceptionalism n Nadeem Zaman

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Nadeem Zaman is a Bangladeshborn American writer. He currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

wenty-five years ago this summer my family migrated to the United States. As a teenager, I was overwhelmed by the sudden decision to leave Dhaka forever and the tidal wave of changes that came with it.

But being a kid, I didn’t question the move. There would be little weight in it if I did.

During my childhood in Dhaka in the eighties, I remember being envious of people that were leaving Bangladesh to settle overseas. I recalled other friends and their families migrating to Europe, America, and other countries, and I wished the day would come when my parents too would announce plans that it was time to pack up and leave. I thought longingly, and with a hint of jealousy especially of the ones that made their new homes in England, for example, or, beating that, the United States of America – the pinnacle of destinations at the end of migratory flight.

In the early nineties, Bangladesh was still reeling from almost a decade of military dictatorship. Free speech, the semblance of a working government, law and order, education, fighting poverty – I didn’t necessarily think about these matters, and, if I did it was when I heard them discussed by grownups, never associating them with Bangladesh. Another way of putting it would be that Bangladesh was devoid of having ways to face these issues. Back then, the prospects of Bangladesh’s future were still bleak enough for this hapless perspective to find ground to stand on. From where my memory finds its recall, this is what I remember.

The summer of 1991 in America was unexceptional, especially to the sensibilities of a fifteen year old kid recently arrived from the other end of the globe. Not long before our move I had given up one of my life’s great loves, tennis, redirecting the interest toward lifting weights. I was not a good student, but I knew that at the end of the summer, starting school was an event as inevitable as the sun coming up and going down. The news, politics, current events -- were all part of adults’ lives, and boring. America had more meaningful and exciting things on offer – fast food, fast cars, state of the art technologies, megacities of high-rises and restaurants, gleaming streets and endless highways – that looked every bit as enchanting as when they appeared on the countless American TV shows exported to Dhaka that we had watched with the rapture of seeing a faraway land of magic and abundance, of beauty and perfection unlike anything that we will ever know.

In 1991, a brilliant, well-spoken, erudite young man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was killing other young men and storing their body parts in his fridge. He was reportedly making meals out of them. The case of Jeffrey Dahmer unfolded like a movie. A sick, twisted, delightfully frightful dose of mayhem to my teenage imagination. And it was real. Later that summer brought the hearings of Clarence Thomas, his conduct towards a woman named Anita Hill under scrutiny on charges of sexual harassment. Even in my limited understanding, which did not include sexual harassment, this was a different America.

Moving forward a decade, almost to the date. I wake up on that now nationally acknowledged day of stunning blue skies, idyllic sunshine, and weather that made it unbearable to sit in an office or waste being indoors, to a phone call from my mother telling me to turn on the TV. Planes had flown into the World Trade Center buildings in New York. Less than a year earlier, in a contentious general election, which was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of the loser of the contest at the ballot, a recovered alcoholic and born again Christian became the 43rd president of the United States. George W. Bush, in retaliation to the September 11 attacks, would drop bombs on Afghanistan, the haven of al-Qaeda, and perjure his way into invading Iraq, a war he declared, by his admission, based on direct guidance

from God. In the post 9/11 world the American Dream was for those and only those that were “with America.” Zealous patriotism and flag-waving nationalistic fervor was the true show of love of country. Otherwise, “you were with them enemy.”

American exceptionalism was never at a higher peak as it was beginning in March 2003, when bombs fell on Iraq, and the fight to end Saddam Hussein’s Weapon’s of Mass Destruction-laden regime launched with all the might of wronged America. And so we entered a new era, whether officially noted or not, in American life, or life in America. The ideologies, the foundational edicts of the republic, the grand designs of the writers of the Declaration of Independence invested in life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, in essence, the building blocks of the American Dream, came tumbling down. Civil liberties were disrupted in the name of “rooting out terrorists.”

The instances of Constitutional violations of the rights of American citizens and non-citizens targeted in racially profiled witch-hunts under the Patriot Act mounted faster than the national student loan debt. Terrorism became synonymous with Islam and being Muslim.

Never before had it struck this close to home. I was not ignorant to the history of racial injustice in this country, and by now, nor was I blind to America’s egregious political flaws at home and abroad, and its record of blundered foreign policy measures around the world that destroyed democratic governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in support of, and installing and aiding, the murderous regimes of Pinochet, Joseph Mobuto, and the Shah of Iran – all the while stuffing the gullet of the world with messages of freedom and democracy.

Racial injustice in this country is as American as baseball and apple pie.

America stands on the back of the sin of slavery. Even with a black president in office as I write this, America is convulsing in new waves of racism, which has bled into the very systems that are supposed to keep societies functioning, fair, and in check – police organizations, courts of law, private businesses, educational institutions, government offices, and on and on goes the list.

Eight years after the first African American president was elected America has staggered, tripped, and tumbled backward into the cesspool of Donald Trump.

Please see the full version at http://www.dhakatribune.com/articles/magazine/ arts-letters/ l

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Nonfiction

On memory n SN Rasul

O

f the January 25th of 1999, I have two memories. In one, I enter my mama’s house from my first day of Class 2, restless to take my dirt-caked white-and-navy-blue uniform off. In the other, I go to a cinema hall somewhere in Banani to watch the film Ke Amar Baba?

I was taken to the cinema, along with my cousins, by a mama (not the same one), and remember little of why we suddenly decided to go and watch it. I don’t remember much of the film either, except for the denouement, in which in typical Bengali fashion all was resolved (who really was his father?) in the midst of a group of khaki-clad policemen who, of course, came in too late.

On both these days, I eventually end up at my mama’s house at Dhanmondi 33, but I don’t know how. If I had my first day of school that day, how did I go to the cinema? Or did I go afterwards? But then, why was I still in uniform by the time I reached my mama’s?

The next thing I remember, though, is waking up around 1:00am to a cousin of mine crying on the phone because my mother had passed away.

Without having reached a certain age, one perhaps doesn’t quite understand what death means.

I remember, from the moment I woke up to the time I reached home, the world being in a rather Kafkaesque, hyperactive stasis. I went from the main bedroom to the room my mother was in, while people all around me – khalas and mamas and dadas and nanis and chakors – moved around.

I remember my father’s face bleeding tears like I’d never seen anyone cry before: ugly and grotesque, red and sponge-like. I recall holding the ends of my mother’s toes and reciting a surah I could barely remember. And then, I am suddenly at home, a servant in tears changing me out of my clothes so that I can go to bed.

Does a person exist when you don’t remember them? Because our collective memories, subsequently, were the only things that kept her alive, but only barely.

As the days went by, there was not much suffering, not a lot of crying and wailing. But, suddenly, it was as if there was a hole in the fabric of space and time. Someone, something, used to be here, occupying space, and that wasn’t there anymore: a vacuum.

That’s what memory is, a way to keep dead things alive. But our most powerful – and most tragic – trait lies in our ability to adapt, to learn and change, to get used to things. That’s what hundreds and thousands of years of evolution have taught us. To take time’s soothing balm and apply it to the bruises of our experiences.

The worst thing you can do to a memory, and those who are involved in it, is to forget it. But it’s as inevitable as a lover’s goodbye.

The earliest memory I boast also involves my mother: she is in front of a mirrored almirah, dressed in a blue saree, putting the finishing touches on her make up. A very fast-paced piano plays in the background as my memory immediately shifts to a night when I woke up to my dad grabbing the handles of the same almirah and taking it off so that they fall on the floor and the mirrors shatter, never to be replaced again.

Eta amar baba? This angry man and his angry actions?

Forward a few years into a small living room with the smallest television set you’ve ever seen, tucked neatly into an arabesque library. A girl servant sits with me as I dance to a Hindi song featuring Karishma Kapoor. Out of the corner of my eye I see my mother looking at me, her head cropped to her scalp. I get embarrassed and stop immediately, shy, coy. My mum laughs and walks away.

Why was I so okay in front of the servant though, the same one who would go on to dress me on a January night? Into the future: From Sid-

deswari to Dhanmondi. The servant, Renu, is still with us. When my dad isn’t home, she sits at the dining table with me and my grandmother.

There’s a glancing image of her talking to a man living at the student hostel opposite our Jigatola residence. Three months later, she’s carrying a duffel bag out of the house.

A few more deaths, a few more destinations serving as transits: across the Indian sub-continent to Gujrat on the back of a motorcycle, speeding past a temple. “Do you really believe in these gods?” I ask. “No, yeh sab faltu baatein.”

Back again into the homeland: fifteen years young but how old I feel.

The piano-playing only gets faster. Playing football with a soft bouncy ball that ends up with a broken “show piece” that I blame my cousin for. Miles later, I’m handing Tk15,000 to a girl I barely know because I like the way she smiles.

No deaths, but flashes of nations and cities: Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, London, Edinburgh. A blonde white girl with transparent green eyes says she loves me. Have I known happiness before?

Shorter, rapid breaths: back again. These shoes, homeward. Not Siddeswari again, surely? Have I travelled all this way, all this time, to come back to where I started? My dad’s bhuri inflates with my step mom’s; swollen tummies promise a quick death and a new birth. Will I remember her baby face in the midst of a swelling sea of memories I can barely clutch on to?

Past stubborn girls on staircases, unhappy women in relationships begging for a change. New money, new kisses. Smoke-filled lungs whisper love into my ear, while across the Atlantic a girl curls into an ampersand. Are these images even real? Will I remember them, will I remember her, will I remember anyone, or anything?

Just for now, that’s enough. Or is it? Play the piano softly, add some violins. Hold on to my memories for dear life. Fleeting, like these words, these seconds, these poems from the mouth of an angry dragon: I see you, you see me. We exist. We exist. We exist.

For now. l

SN Rasul is with the editorial team at the Dhaka Tribune.

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ARTS & LETTERS

Tribute

The man who shaped the understanding of Indian art n Saqib Sarker

The writer is with Weekend Tribune.

K

G Subramanyan was an arts critic, painter, sculptor, pedagogue, and muralist to name but a few hats he wore. It was a tragic moment for art lovers around the world when he passed away last month on 29 June at the age of 92.

The eminent Indian artist was born in a village in north Kerala in 1924.

During his long working life spanning nearly seventy years, his work was exhibited in over fifty solo shows, including an extensive 2015-2016 exhibition by the Seagull Foundation for the Arts in collaboration with the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, and the Harrington Street Arts Centre, Kolkata.

Durjoy Rahman, a Bangladeshi art enthusiast and collector, has fond and profound memories of Subramanyan.

“When I first met him he enlightened me with his simplicity and vast knowledge in the practice and movements of art.”

A full-fledged academic, Subramanyan wrote extensively on Indian art.

His writings are generally considered the founding thoughts and theories shaping the understanding of contemporary Indian art. His multifaceted talent was also reflected in children’s literature. He wrote stories for children and, of course, illustrated them.

Durjoy had a chance to see the great man just a few months before his passing. “I met Subramanyan early February of this year in Santinikatan and we spent a long time discussing Indian art, its practice etc,” he said.

Subramanyan had begun his teaching career as a lecturer in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda between 1951 and 1959. In 1955 he went to the Slade School of Art in London to study as a British Council research scholar.

He spent 14 years teaching at Baroda as a professor of painting. From 1968 to 1974 he acted as the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda. He also served as a visiting lecturer at many international universities. In 1980 Subramanyan moved back to Santiniketan and took up a professorship at the Kala Bhavan. Between 1987 and 1988 he lived at Oxford as Christensen Fellow in St Catherine’s College. In 1989 he was appointed Professor Emeri-

(Untitled, Acrylic on board, 24 X 24 inch) This is from Durjoy Rahman Joy’s collection tus at the Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati.

When asked what attracts him most to Subramanyan’s work, Durjoy said, “The use of mythology in his work attracts me.” Durjoy has a few of Subramanyan’s paintings in his collection. “I have a few of his works and his most signature styles are all expressed in them,” Durjoy said.

When asked if he has any plans to sell them at some point, Durjoy emphatically replies, “None of those are for sale.” l

MORE SUBRAMANYAN PAINTINGS

The Visitors Acrylic on canvas 57.7” x 57”, 1996

Low Relief Terracotta 64 x 64 cm

Odd encounters Acrylic on canvas 56” x 57”, 1996

Fairy tales from Pusera Palli-3 Water color and oil on acrylic 23.4” x 33.5”, 1986

12 ARTS & LETTERS

D H A K A T R I B U N E S AT U R DAY, AU G U S T 6 , 2 0 1 6