INTRODUCTION

On 21 February 1952, young men and women gathered at amtala, in the shade of the mango tree, on the campus of the University of Dhaka – at that time, the southern portion of the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital. The mango tree was in full bloom, but few of the young people noticed it at the time. They had other, more important, things on their minds. They were protesting the imposition of Urdu as the state language of Pakistan and were demanding that Bangla, spoken by the majority of the people in Pakistan, should be made a state language: rashtra bhasha bangla chai. The question of what would be the state language of the new state of Pakistan had been raised before. Twice, it had been squashed. Both Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the Governor General of Pakistan, and later Khwaja Nazimuddin, the Prime Minister of Pakistan and an East Pakistani, had categorically stated, at different times, that the state language of Pakistan would be Urdu.

Section 144 had been imposed the day before, preventing the assembly of more than three persons. However, the young people under the mango tree were not to be deterred and,in small groups, they emerged from the university campus demanding recognition of Bangla as a state language. The story is too well known to bear repeating, and yet, it is important to recall what happened. On that day the spark of Bengali nationalism was lit and would inspire a nation to independence a little less than twenty years later. As the small groups emerged, the police, as

was their wont, used batons on them as well as tear gas, and then, inexplicably, fired at the crowd. At least five persons were fatally wounded in the firing: Rafiquddin Ahmed, Abdul Jabbar, Abul Barkat, Abdus Salam and a young boy named Ohiullah. The next day, another young man, Shafiur Rahman, succumbed to his injuries.

As a result of the events on 21 February, the demand for Bangla to be made a state language – if not the state language – could not be denied. The East Bengal Legislative Assembly adopted a resolution recommending the recognition of Bangla as one of the state languages of Pakistan. On 16 February 1956 the Pakistan Constituent Assembly adopted both Bangla and Urdu as the state languages of the country. In honour of that day, on 17 November 1999, UNESCO adopted a resolution proclaiming 21 February International Mother Language Day, recognizing the rights of all language communities to speak and preserve their own language.

After the deaths resulting from police firing, a Shaheed Minar was built to commemorate those who had been killed. This temporary structure was subsequently replaced by another structure designed by Hamidur Rahman and Novera Ahmed. This Shaheed Minar not only became the focus of the processions in subsequent years on 21 February but also, throughout the years ahead, the stage for cultural and political protests. The Shaheed Minar became the symbol of Bengali nationalism. So much so that, in 1971, the Pakistani forces while shelling the university dormitories, the police barracks and the headquarters of the East Pakistan Rifles, while killing academics and intellectuals and setting fire to urban shanties, also razed the monument. However, the spirit of nationalism that had inspired the young men and women under the shade of the mango tree on 21 February 1951 continued to inspire the people of Bangladesh.

The realization that East Pakistan was discriminated against led the Awami League to set forth a charter of demands to

remove the disparity between East and West Pakistan. The SixPoint Programme, as it was called, was placed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at a national convention at Lahore in February 1966. Among the proposals was the establishment of a Federation of Pakistan in its true sense as proposed in the Lahore Resolution of 1940, with the federal government dealing with only Defence and Foreign Affairs.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman started being viewed as a separatist and, in 1968, was arrested in what is popularly known as the Agartala Conspiracy Case.1 In view of the protests and agitations, the case was withdrawn and, on 22 February 1969, all the accused, including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, were released. Shortly afterwards, on 25 March 1969, General Ayub Khan was forced to resign as President of Pakistan. General Yahya Khan was sworn in as President of Pakistan. One of the first announcements he made was the holding of general elections in 1970.

By now Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had gained immense popularity in East Pakistan, which, at the time, had a larger population than West Pakistan. The elections – held on 7 December 1970 – gave an overwhelming majority to the Awami League. However, the premiership was not given to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. A series of talks took place while plane loads of soldiers were flown in to Dhaka. On the night of 25 March 1971, Operation Searchlight was launched. Apart from shelling police and para-military barracks, university dormitories and shanties, the operation involved the arrest of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Many of the top Awami Leaguers left Dhaka to avoid arrest, many young men and former and serving army and paramilitary officers and soldiers joined the Mukti Bahini, the liberation forces. Fleeing the atrocities, an estimated 10 million refugees sought safety in neighbouring India. On 3 December

1 The official name of the case was “State of Pakistan vs. Sheikh Mujibur

Rahman and others.”

1971, open hostilities between the two countries started, with Pakistan launching aerial strikes on Indian air bases.

In Dhaka, on 16 December 1971, the Pakistani troops, though numbering 90,000 – of course not all of them in one place – surrendered to the joint forces of India and Bangladesh. Bangladesh – a name that was used even before the independence of the state – had in effect come into being on the night of 25 March 1971. Now, Bangladesh was free.

On 26 March 2021, Bangladesh celebrated its golden jubilee. From what Kissinger termed “a bottomless basket,” Bangladesh has come a long way. There are many things to celebrate. Despite the vagaries of nature, Bangladesh has achieved near self-sufficiency in food. The number of people living in extreme poverty has shrunk. Thanks to its garment industry, Bangladesh clothes the world. There is gender parity in education up to the secondary level, and increasing numbers of women are enrolling at tertiary institutions. “Bangladesh is one of the largest contributors to UN peacekeeping operations.”2 Rashida Sultana, one of the writers included in this volume, is working for the African Union/ United Nations Hybrid Operations in Darfur, Sudan. And though few, Bangladeshi writers have won international literary prizes or been shortlisted for them. Despite its own problems, Bangladesh has hosted more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees.3There are many reasons for Bangladesh to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its independence.

When the Mango Tree Blossomed is being published as part of these celebrations. It includes fifty stories, thirtythree written originally in Bangla and then translated into English and seventeen stories written originally in English. Two of the stories – “The Last Encounter,” by Kazi Fazlur Rahman, and “Happy Memories,” by Imran Khan – were

2 United Nations Peacekeeping. <peacekeeping.un.org> 3 The UNHCR gives the figure at “more than 742,000.” <www.unhcr.org>.

translated by the writers themselves. Many of the writers are prizewinning writers, winning prestigious national awards such as the Bangla Academy Award, and a few also winning international awards, or being short-listed for them. Farah Ghuznavi won the Commonwealth Short Story Competition in 2010, Shaheen Akhtar won the Asian Literary Award in 2020, Shamim Azad the Art in the Community Award also in 2020.However, many of the writers are relatively unknown except among small groups.

Taken together, I hope that the stories will give the reader a picture of Bangladesh. Though many of the stories are about 1971, this is not a book only about 1971, nor are all the stories located in Bangladesh. There has been a Bangladeshi diaspora and a few stories, by diasporic writers, reflect this. Most of the stories are, however, situated in Bangladesh.

The stories have been grouped according to theme, with the first part,“Beyond the Shade of the Mango Tree,”reflecting the changing political landscape of Bangladesh beginning with Nazrul Islam’s science fiction story “21-2-2121” based on 21 February 1952. The last story in this section, “The Six Arms of Rupmoyi” by Shahnaz Munni, in the fairy tale mode, narrates the story of a woman who becomes the ruler of a kingdom but is guided by her late father and husband. Syed Manzoorul Islam’s “Seventy-One,” Kazi Fazlur Rahman’s “The Last Encounter,” Rahad Abir’s “Mr. Moti,” and Anwara Syed Haq’s “ A Story That I Heard” are set during the war. Rashid Haider’s “Address Uncertain,” Manosh Chowdhury’s “Ali Bihari’s Blanket,” and Humayun Ahmed’s “Jalil Saheb’s Petition” take place after the war. Khademul Islam’s “Lunch” is not related to the war but to the turmoil that followed. Sohana Manzoor’s “The Hawk with Gold-Tipped Wings” takes place several years after the war, with memories of the war shadowing the lives of some of the characters in the story.

The figure of the birangona, literally the victorious female warrior, but the term given to women who were raped during the war – with estimates ranging from 200,000 to 400,0004 – figures prominently in many stories about 1971. Urmi Rahman’s “I, Woman,” Neeman Sobhan’s “The Untold Story” and Shaheen Akhtar’s “Amirjaan Bibi’s Reception” narrate three very different stories about birangonas. “I, Woman” is about a middle-class woman who is raped and rejected by the man she loves. Instead of committing suicide, she gains selfhood and identity, which makes her hold her head up with pride. Shaheen Akhtar’s story, “Amirjaan Bibi’s Reception,” reflects the attempt to honour birangonas, often with disastrous effects. Neeman Sobhan’s “The Untold Story” tells the stories of two women in 1971: one woman who was saved by her Pakistani captor and the other woman who was raped but is fortunate enough later in life to get married. As the narrator comments in the story, there is a “silence of untold, unspeakable stories.”

Syed Shamsul Haq’s “Another One of Our Martyrs” takes place during the late seventies, while Anisul Hoque’s “One of Those Nights: Ninety-One” describes the collapse of the Soviet Union while narrating the story of an ailing Communist Party worker in Bangladesh. Niaz Zaman’s “The Monster’s Mother” reflects on the Holey Artisan Café attack on July 1, 2016 when twenty-two persons, mainly foreigners, were killed by a group of five armed militants. Sabrina Masood’s “The Caged Sun” takes place in 2017 when, since early February, graffiti depicting a caged man or a man running with a caged sun with different

4 Susan Brownmiller writes: ‘‘During the nine-month terror, terminated by the two-week armed intervention of India, a possible three million people lost their lives, ten million fled across the border to India and 200,000, 300,000 or possible 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped.”Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 89.

warnings such as “Subodh tui paliye ja/Tor bhaggey kichhu nei” (Flee Subodh/Luck is not with you) started appearing on the walls of the streets of Dhaka.

The stories included in the section titled “Village Matters” range from questions of religious identity through the victimization of women to the uprooting of farm communities on various pretexts. The first story in this section, Saleha Chowdhury’s “The Disappearance of Gopal Maker,” is about a Hindu who converts following the Partition but secretly prays to his own gods. Rizia Rahman’s “Mother Fatema Weeps” and Nur Quamrun Naher’s “Salish” both depict the plight of women in a patriarchal society. Hasan Azizul Huq’s “The Vulture” narrates the extreme cruelty of a group of village boys who torment a vulture till it dies. Through the story of Kamlaksha in “Kamlaksha Baske’s Beautiful Eyes,” Audity Falguni narrates the story of how farmers are deprived of their ancestral land and often killed or incapacitated in the name of industrialization.

“Across the Seven Seas” traces different times and types of the Bengali diaspora. Syed Mujtaba Ali’s “Sweet and Savoury” tells the tale of Sylheti khalashis, boatmen, and of one who, through no fault of his own, found himself stranded in Marseilles, unable to return to his homeland. “The Mapmakers of Spitalfields” by Syed Manzu Islam describes the plight of Bengali settlers in London and their fear of being picked up any time. Shamim Azad’s “William’s Tale” narrates the story of a romance between a Bengali woman and a man from Kent in the form of a realistic two-part dream. Both Purabi Basu’s “The Eternal Journey” and Sitara Jabeen Ahmed’s “The Destinations” are set in the US. Basu’s story tells the story of a woman immigrant who married to get a green card, while Ahmed’s story tells the parallel stories of two immigrants with very different endings. Nuzhat Amin Mannan’s “And Tomorrow Would Be Another Day” begins in the UK, with the protagonist meeting a Burmese woman who has nothing

good to say about the Rohingyas, and ends with the protagonist meeting Rohingya refugees in Kutupalong. As she interviews them, she understands the psychology of refugees, including that of her “ghoti” grandmother.

The stories under “Metropolis Moments” are seen through the urban perspective – though in Selina Hossain’s “The Conjunction of Time” the locale changes from the village to the town and ends in the village. Alauddin Al Azad’s “The Madonna” is set in a prison, with two prisoners sharing a cell. One of them is an artist who describes how he picked up a prostitute to draw a picture of a Madonna and child. Makbula Manzoor’s “The Urban Jungle” narrates the difficult lives of people who live in the urban slums, subject to exploitation of various kinds. In “The Customer,” Farida Hossain describes the life of a woman from early youth to widowhood through the eyes of a salesman in a sari shop. Pias Majid’s “Jibanananda on the Streets of Dhaka” imagines the poet come back from the dead. As he wanders about the streets of Dhaka, he sees that his poems are being recited, people are doing research on him and that he has even become a name to advertise roadside eateries. Sumon Rahman in “Seeking Shaila” looks at the changing social conditions of women and how more and more of them are found in public spaces. “Dear Honourable Commissioner” by Mahmud Rahman purports to be a polite letter from an ordinary citizen to the Commissioner of Police. Moni Haider’s “The Procession of Tongues” is a satire on corruption in different places, with the tongues one day rebelling and refusing to aid these corrupt people in their nefarious activities.

Jharna Das Purkayastha’s “The Night Queen” is built around the contrast between the affluent and the impoverished – a common theme in many of her short stories. The Night Queen is a flower that blooms only for one night. It is a prized plant for many, but the two children, given stale rice left over from a party, who fall sick and die are also flowers who die untimely

and unnoticed. “The Silver Ashtray” by Nasreen Jahan narrates the story of a man who believes that he has fashioned his wife into what he wanted. It is only at the end that he realizes that she isn’t the docile wife he thought she was. Razia Sultana Khan’s “The Anklet” is a tender love story inspired by the collapse of an eight-storey building called Rana Plaza on 24 April 2013. The building housed a garment factory employing several workers. The collapse of the building resulted in the deaths of 1,134 men and women.

The first story of the section titled “Vital Signs” was written by Syed Waliullah in English, before the creation of Bangladesh. He later translated the story into Bangla. Waliullah passed away in Paris on 10 October 1971, without having seen the independence of his country. Syed Waliullah, however, cannot be left out from any book on Bangladeshi writing. He was a major writer, with three remarkable novels to his credit: Lalsalu, Chander Amabasya, and Kando Nadi Kando. In 1971, he actively participated in enlisting the support of French intellectuals, including André Malraux, for Bangladesh. The term “Vital Signs” is a medical one and refers to the four main vital signs that medical professionals routinely monitor. This first story, “No Enemy” by Waliullah, is about a man seeking out his enemy to make peace with him because he knows he is about to die.

The other stories in this section deal in various ways with questions of life and death. Imran Khan’s “Sweet Memories” is about a man who goes to see a doctor because he needs a doctor’s certificate for leave. The doctor asks him to recall his happy memories. The story describes his search for memories – his own and those of others. “Loosey Goosey” by Abeer Hoque narrates the story of a man suffering from memory loss – an increasing problem with longevity. Shahaduz Zaman’s “My Position on Death Is Very Clear” contains two parallel stories: the story of the narrator’s father who describes a time when jute was king and the

story of the narrator’s dilemma when his father is in hospital with an irreversible condition. Much of the second story focuses on the dialogue between the narrator and a doctor and reflects on the plight that many have today: How long does one keep a loved one in a hospital when there is no hope of recovery? Farah Ghuznavi’s “Losing Bindu” tells the tale of Bindu who suffers physical abuse at the hands of her husband. Most women keep quiet lest they bring “shame” upon their families. In Ghuznavi’s story, Bindu also keeps silent but arranges matters with her brother to leave the country, while leaving a note for her parents to suggest that she committed suicide.

The section “Other Lives, Other Loves” contains a variety of stories about mutilated beggars, a prostitute and her family, two women who appear to have a lesbian relationship, a child abandoned because its gender was not clear, and a talking mynah. Numair Choudhury’s “Chhokra” narrates the story of a beggar boy whose work is to cart around his mutilated sister. Mojaffor Hossain in “My Mother Was a Prostitute” reveals what life is like for the family of a prostitute. Jharna Rahman’s “The Magical World of Setara and Golenur” describes the relationship between two female security guards. Mahbub Talukdar’s “A Human Being” is a sensitive story about a hijra, an intersex person, who is abandoned shortly after birth. Bangladesh recognized intersex persons as the third gender on 11 November 2013. However, change has been slow to come. Rashida Sultana’s “Beating Wings” is about the relationship between the narrator and a talking mynah.

I hope that the variety of stories will give readers an idea of the history of Bangladesh as well as the range of writing by Bangladeshis in Bangla and English. It was not possible to include many important writers, even prize-winning ones. Nevertheless, I hope that the stories in this volume will suggest the richness of Bangladeshi writing and encourage others to fill in the gaps. I would like to thank all the writers or, in some cases, their heirs,

for giving me permission to include their stories in this anthology. I would also like to thank all the translators, those who had allowed me to use their earlier translations as well as those who translated the stories for this anthology, many of whom did the work despite their other commitments and in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. Among the latter are Noora Shamsi Bahar, Junaidul Haque, Fayeza Hasanat, Md. Jamal Hossain, Sabiha Huq, Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, Selim Jahan, Arifa Ghani Rahman, Marzia Rahman, and Sharmillie Rahman. I would especially like to thank Noora Shamsi Bahar and Junaidul Haque for translating a number of stories each. Despite his teaching commitment and other responsibilities, Imran Khan translated his own story and I thank him for his contribution and for the extra work of translation that he took up for this anthology. I would also like to express my thanks to the following translators who allowed me to include stories that they had translated earlier: Sitara Jabeen Ahmed, Sagar Chaudhury, Takad Ahmed Chowdhury, Jyotiprakash Dutta, Shirin Hasanat Islam, Shahidul Islam Khan, Abdullah Al Muktadir, Masrufa Ayesha Nusrat, Ashfiqur Rahman, Hasan Ameen Salahuddin, and Kaspia Sultana.

I would like to express my appreciation for Abdul Hannan who helped in putting this manuscript together. Thanks to him, my work was made much easier. I would also like to thank Razia Sultana Khan for her support and for her valuable suggestions. Above all, I would like to express my gratitude to Karunangshu Barua of Nymphea Publication for publishing this book on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of our independence.