Arts & Letters Vol 2 Issue 11

DHAKA TRIBUNE

S U N DAY, N OV E M B E R 2 , 2 0 1 4

Booker Power The Man Booker Prize is in it’s 46th year with Australian writer Richard Flanagan taking home the Man Booker in 2014 for writing The Narrow Road to the Deep North. We are presenting a few facts about the prize for fellow writers and readers thinking big.

family Editor Zafar Sobhan Acting Editor Arts & Letters Iffat Nawaz Artist Shazzad H Khan

First time

Two authors have won the prize with their first and, so far, only novels: Keri Hulme, with The Bone People in 1985 and Arundhati Roy, with The God of Small Things in 1997.

There are two instances where two members of the same family have been recognised by the prize. Anita Desai has been shortlisted three times since 1980, but has never won. However, her daughter, Kiran, won the acclaimed literary prize in 2006. Martin Amis has been both shortlisted and longlisted, in 1991 and 2003 respectively, whilst his father Kingsley Amis won the Booker in 1986.

twice

Hilary Mantel is the first woman and the first British author to win the prize twice. JM Coetzee was the first person to win twice, in 1983 and again in 1999. Peter Carey won first in 1988 and then in 2001. Mantel is the first person to win the prize for two novels in a trilogy.

longest The longest winning novel in the prize’s history was The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, in 2013, at 832 pages.

film

A number of Booker and Man B o o k e r w i n n i n g novel have been adapted into film.

Some of the best-known are Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel Remains of the Day and Michael Ondaatje’s 1992 novel The English Patient.

Other adaptations include: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and AS Byatt’s Possession.

Booker

1969

It was called the Booker Prize from 1969 to 2001. PH Newby was the first winner of the prize in 1969 with Something to Answer For.

2013

Since 1969, 30 men and 16 women have won the prize.

publisher

2013 was the first time since the longlist started being released in 2001 that w o m e n outnumbered men on the list.

Jonathan Cape is the publisher with the highest number of winning titles, with eight winners: The Sense of An Ending

by Julian Barnes in 2011, The Gathering by Anne Enright in 2007, Amsterdam by Ian McEwan in 1998, The Famished Road

by Ben Okri in 1991, Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner in 1984, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie in 1981, Saville by David Storey in 1976 and The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer in 1974. Faber & Faber follows with six winning titles.

2013

£5,000

Hilary Mantel was also the first Man Booker author to enter the official UK Top 50 at the number one spot, with the paperback edition of Bring Up the Bodies.

The Booker Prize initially awarded £5,000 to its winners. The prize money doubled in 1978 to £10,000, and today the winner receives £50,000. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500.

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Hello Hay Days With Hay Festival Dhaka just around the corner, Arts and Letters went behind the scenes with Sadaf Saaz Siddiqui, Co-Founder and Co-director of Hay Festival Dhaka.

What are the key elements for producing Hay Festival Dhaka? Tell us about the most exciting parts and what tends to be the biggest headache?

There is the substantive element of putting a well thought-out and exciting programme together, from careful choosing of the authors and moderators to painstakingly curating the sessions; the logistics side of ensuring all smooth running, from the panels going like clockwork to ensuring guests are looked after well; to raising money (we raise all the money in Bangladesh!), in order that an event like this can be free for all. Then there is the PR side; all while working together well in a team – most of whom are giving their voluntary time. There is the need also to work with artistic people in a sensitive way!

It is very exciting putting the programme together, and sometimes after months, getting a confirmation of an author we would love to have, as well as having a platform and vehicle through which to discover and show-case new talent. Seeing someone inspired by something they have heard at Hay Dhaka is very rewarding; and to see our English and Bangla writers with more opportunities available, and their work being recognized home and abroad. It is great to see the quality of panels we are being able achieve at Hay Dhaka, along with the enthusiasm of the attendees. Dhaka audiences having the opportunity to interact with authors like Vikram Seth and Tariq Ali, and others, is wonderful; many have also become personal friends, and well-wishers of Hay Dhaka.

The biggest challenge right now is raising money for a literature festival – much more difficult than a Bollywood-type event! Also, last year- we held the festival at the tail end of 96-hour blockade, yet we managed to keep our goal of consistently holding the festival every year.

How do you select the writers for Hay? Do you follow any international trend or theme while designing Hay each year?

Some writers are planned – some pleasant surprises. Or topical.

This year Michael Puett – who teaches one of most popular classes at Harvard University - is coming, and Salil Tripathi, is launching his much-awaited book on Bangladesh, copies of which will be hot off the press in November. We have fun brainstorming about our author ‘wishlist’ - on the other hand sometimes we spontaneously invite people if opportunity arises!

You have been to quite a few literature festivals in the past years, please give us your perspective on Hay Dhaka in relation to other festivals.

Hay Dhaka is an event of a truly international standard with a distinct Bangladeshi flavor and sensibility. I really believe that the quality and diverse range of speakers and topics, mixture of global conversations and celebration of local culture, the warmth, enthusiasm and hunger of our audiences, makes Hay Dhaka one of the ‘must-go-to’ festivals in South Asia. Our rich cultural heritage, our passion for literature, our innovative drive and creativity, and our ability to do things well if we just put our mind to it - all are reflected in Hay Festival Dhaka.

You are a key person for Hay Dhaka and a poet yourself. How do you balance between your writing time and all that comes with being a producer of Hay Festival?

Producing Hay takes up an inordinate amount of time, throughout the year, and more so in the months leading up to it. Even though it is very energizing and rewarding, at the same time I need to make sure I plan time for my own writing, which is often not easy, as I also have commitments to my other businesses, and family, of course. Hopefully the tensions and realities, the highs and lows, the dealing with every day situations, give an edge and an understanding to my own writing.

Hay Dhaka is opening up opportunities for writers to get their work out there – and of course I feel privileged to be part of this. However, it can

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get frustrating when I don’t have time to write myself. I am extremely excited about this novel that I am working on, but not able to devote the time it requires right now!

As the fourth installment of Hay Festival Dhaka takes off what would you say are the major learnings and changes from the past years?

Hay Dhaka has grown from a one-day event in 2011 to a three-day festival in over four venues in Bangla academy. We are learning what works best, and we focus on improving on the details, We have a wonderful Hay Dhaka team – myself and my co- Director Tahmima Anam, along with Ahsan Akbar and K Anis Ahmed, are working together throughout the year to put together a great festival; with the Jatrik team on the implementation side, and a group of excellent volunteers, some who have been with Hay since the beginning.

The Hay Festival’s Peter Florence and Lyndy Cooke are there always, with us.

The challenge is still being able to raise funds to cover our costs, and we hope to solidify long-term partnerships with sponsors to be sustainable. We have an amazing number of well-wishers, at home and abroad, who help us in numerous ways. We have built up some great partnerships, and forming new ones too. We also want to be relevant to those who read and write in Bangla.

The challenge is to have sessions which are stimulating to veteran readers, and at the same time inspire a student to start reading! We have the vision and passion, and the festival can only get better.

What have you learned about the English readership in Bangladesh through Hay? English readership is growing everyday. If publishers are able to tap into this, more books will be published in English, which is good for writers and readers alike. This is important, as being able to publish in your own country is often an important first step for a writer.

Please tell us a bit about what we can expect at Hay Festival 2014?

We have something for everyone – fiction, non-fiction, performance poetry, children’s section, performances, book launches – great sessions in English and Bangla. The President of Pen International, John Ralston Saul, Best-selling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang. and writer and politician, Shashi Tharoor, will all be here. We also have Zia Haider Rahman, the British writer of Bangladeshi origin, as well as the non fiction writers William Dalrymple and Patrick French. Our friends Kamila Shamsie and Aamer Hussein are back; Aamer’s new short story collection is being launched by Bengal lights. There will be a strong poetry presence with powerful poets like Iranian born Mimi Khalvati, and performance poets like Kosal Khiev from Cambodia, and T J Dema from Botswana.

We will be launching the beautifully illustrated children’s book The Honey Hunters, based in the Sunderbans, by Karthika Nair. This year are introducing science-based sessions, showcasing Oxford Maths Professor, Marcus du Sautoy, as well as Lucy Hawking, whose children’s books on discovering the universe, were written with her father Stephen Hawking. n

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LETTER FROM LONDON Ahsan Akbar

Judging the Man Booker

Ahsan Akbar

is the author of The Devil’s Thumbprint (Bengal Lights Books, 2013), a collection of poems.

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n my letter last month I tried to make head or tail of the process bookmakers go through to fix the betting odds for the Man Booker Prize. Now that we know the winner, we also know the bookies – at least the London ones – didn’t get it right this time! But let’s talk about the ‘real’ part of the process: judging the winner. So I caught up with Sarah Churchwell, one of the 6 judges for this year’s prize.

Let’s start with the numbers. As a judge, how many books did you have to read in total?

156.

And how many re-readings for the long and shortlist?

Out of the 156, we selected 13 for the longlist, which we then re-read.

We narrowed those down to a shortlist of 6, which we re-read for a third time to decide the winner.

This year was special with the Man Booker rule changing. How do you think, if at all, it affected the judging process?

I don’t think it affected the judging process at all, but it affected the submission process. Publishers decide which books to submit on the basis of which books they think can win - the rules allow for various publishers to submit between 1 and 4 books, depending on various criteria. We had 94 imprints submitting books, and it is possible that they tended to submit along certain cultural biases, betting that some types of books would be more successful with judges than others.

We are not allowed to reveal specifics about the submissions or the judging process, however.

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Do you recall any disputes when making the long or shortlist?

Of course we had disputes: the whole process is a dispute! You have 6 judges, all of whom Sarah Churchwell are very experienced and sophisticated readers - 4 of us were academics, 1 was the former literary editor of the Times, and one was the literary director of the British Council and of the UK Arts Council - and all of us had judged prizes before. We were not likely to be unanimous about anything. The entire process of whittling it down to a longlist and a shortlist is predicated on dispute, weighing the pros and cons, the virtues and failings, of individual books. If by dispute you mean

did it get personal or unprofessional, never. The disputes were about the books, which ones were excellent based on which criteria: we had to fight for our aesthetic criteria, as well as our favourite books. That’s what makes it interesting, and that’s what makes it such a valuable prize.

Please tell us about the final meeting. It sure must have been a tight decision but was there a need for a vote?

It was a tight decision and the specifics of the meeting are confidential, but as I said above, with six strong-minded judges you’re not going to get unanimity. In fact, I think that historically unanimity in the Man Booker prize has been very rare, and that is a good thing. What kind of world would we live in if everyone liked the same books for the same reasons?

In your opinion, what gave Richard Flanagan’s book the edge over the others?

We all agreed that it is a beautifully written book - the prose is incredibly elegant - about epic subjects. Indeed, it signals its epic ambitions by having its hero read Tennyson’s Ulysses in its opening pages, and by twisting the rough structure of Ulysses (the warrior who can’t come home again, the woman who might be waiting for him) into a psychological exploration of what it would mean to return home physically, but not emotionally. It’s a really magnificent book, and it thoroughly deserved to win.

Beryl Bainbridge was shortlisted 5 times but never won. There were big names this year who didn’t make the longlist: Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Donna Tartt, all of whom received praise from the critics for their new works. And we had an ambitious debut from Zia Haider Rahman, which received many excellent reviews. Do these peripheral matters affect the decision making process?

In a word, no. Our job was to debate the merits of each book as we received them: read them, discuss what we all thought were their merits and weaknesses, and reach conclusions about which books to put forward and why. I could tell you why individual books were not put forward, but I’m not permitted to discuss individual books and submissions are confidential. As for ambitious debuts - we got a lot of ambitious debuts, many of them excellent. The thing to remember is that when we whittle down 156 books to 13, we are not saying to the world: “The other 143 books were rubbish.” We just were forced to make choices about which, in our collective estimation, were I could tell you why individual the best of the books were not put forward, best. There were but I’m not permitted to discuss easily another 20- individual books and submissions 30 books I would are confidential. As for ambitious happily recommend debuts - we got a lot of ambitious to anyone, and to debuts, many of them excellent. which I would have given 5 stars if I had reviewed them in isolation. On their own, there were many excellent books. Our group judged the 13 we put forward as the best, but it isn’t a zero-sum game: it doesn’t mean we are implying that the other books are terrible. It isn’t that simplistic.

We are curious to know your personal Best of Bookers? And why?

Well I can’t claim to have read them all, but I think The Line of Beauty is wonderful; The Remains of the Day, Possession, Disgrace and The Sea are probably my top five. I’m also a big fan of Julian Barnes, although I think he should have won for Arthur and George. As for why - do you have all day? I think they share the qualities that for me mark literature: beautiful prose, intellectual ambition, living characters, and a complexity of language and thought that means they open up under repeated re-reading.

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Let’s talk about your writing. With Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of the Great Gatsby, you wrote the definitive biography of The Great Gatsby and it has been a huge success. Why did you choose this particular F Scott’s Fitzgerald classic? Could it also be a premonition to the culture of excess that we find ourselves in?

I chose Gatsby because I love it, and millions of other people love it, but I feel like increasingly we mischaracterize it as a culture: if anything, people are coming to view it as a celebration of excess, rather than a cautionary tale against it (viz. Baz Luhrmann’s film last year). The novel was certainly a prophecy about the dangers of excess, a prophecy that we didn’t heed. I tried to highlight the parallels between 1922 (the year in which Gatsby is set) and now (I was finishing it in 2012, so it was exactly 90 years later), showing that the America Fitzgerald could see on the horizon was the America we know. (I should perhaps add that although I reside in Britain I’m American.) This is why I say that my book tries to show how Scott Fitzgerald discovered modern America, and it’s why I called it “Careless People.”

What are you working on next?

I am working on another book about a well-loved novella by a classic American author, and I can’t say more than that yet as we haven’t gone public with it … But it will have some aspects in common with Careless People, others with my first book, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (an analysis of popular biography that uses Marilyn as a case study), and in other ways I hope to break new ground with it... n

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature at University of East Anglia, and author of two books: The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (Granta 2004) and Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, which was published last year by Virago.

New Books at Hay Two writers and two new books

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igerian born, Bangladeshi American writer and photographer Abeer Hoque’s novel in stories, The Lovers and the Leavers, is forthcoming from Bengal Lights Books (2014), She has also published a coffee table book of travel photographs and poems called The Long Way Home (Ogro, 2013). Abeer won a 2012 NEA Literature Fellowship and a 2007 Fulbright Scholarship, and her work has been published in Guernica, the Daily Star, India Today, and the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, among others.

Boston based Bangladeshi American writer Javed Jahangir is also launching his book at Hay. Javed’s book Ghost Alley will be published

by Bengal Books. Javed is currently working on his second novel.

A few words from Abeer and Javed on their novels:

A&L: Tell us about your novel.

Abeer: The Lovers and the Leavers is a novel in stories, and its chapters are linked by characters who live in or have ancestral ties to South Asia. The stories follow their lives as they intersect over the years and continents. Poems are interspersed throughout, and I wanted a visual dimension to the book, so each story features an image from my photography portfolio.

Javed: The original conceit was to do a sort of a Forrest Gump book – you know, a man’s life that weaves through the tapestry of post-WW II America.

My book, Ghost Alley, attempts to tell Bangladesh’s story, tracing its trajectory as a consequence of the Indian partition - the third and untold story of the Indian Partition, if you will. There were questions I wanted to explore that the Partition generation idealists must have grappled with, namely, were we first Muslims, or were we Bengalis? And if we were to be both, what kind of Utopia would this new Muslim block look like? Undoubtedly, these questions have been dealt with before, but I wanted to explore them from my own perspective, curious about the human cost to living through the consequences of those decisions, because, you and I are the results of those consequences.

A&L: If you had the choice to put your book between two others on a bookshelf, which two books would you pick to be on your right and left?

Abeer: On one side, I would pick Tokyo Canceled, by British Indian writer Rana Dasgupta, which was one of the first novels in stories I read.

It’s dark and pretty, and I love how widely the stories range in time and geography. And on the other side, I’d pick the yet to be published linked story collection, Pye Dogs and Magic Men, by Bangladeshi writer and translator Shabnam Nadiya, which is set in a college campus town in Bangladesh. Nadiya’s writing is incredibly present and precise, and her characters and plotlines are sharp, nuanced, and thoroughly engaging. I can’t wait til someone snaps it up and publishes it for everyone to read.

Javed: Hopefully not a book on Java programming and the phonebook?

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Seriously though, I would be grateful to find it next to any other book on any bookshelf.

A&L: What are your expectations from readers as they get their hands on your novel later this month?

Abeer: I rather like the limbo of not knowing. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat.

Everything and nothing exists at once.

Javed: I would love for folks to read it the book, to hopefully discuss and debate the choices the characters make. An aspirational goal for this book is to provide Bangladeshis and Pakistans a context for discussion.

Discussion of Bangladeshi independence has always been a path littered with apocrypha leading to a blackhole of uncomfortable silences. This has been the case in my conversations with my Pakistani friends. Maybe someday we can speak our truths on this matter. n

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Ad Infinitum Somnath Batabyal

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hantum loved the September mornings in Kolkata. He always preferred to call the city that. Even before the official name change, ‘Calcutta’ never really appealed to Shantum. The city brought out his “bangaliana” his father would say, laughing at his sudden interest in kurta pyjamas and Bengali women.

For the rest of the year, he and his friends listened to Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead in school.

He smiled at the memories as he walked past Lake Market. Seven in the morning, with a week left to go for Durga Puja, the place was already teeming with buyers and sellers. The smell of rajnigandha, fresh roses, jasmine; he loved the flower market here. I should buy some for Shumona, he thought. She will be surprised. He could not remember the last time he had tried to woo his wife of eight years.

“Koto kore?” he asked, pointing at the rajnigandhas.

“Seventy rupees for twelve sticks.”

I wouldn’t get a packet of biscuits for that in London, thought Shantum.

“Diye dao,” he said to the surprised boy who was anticipating a bargain.

Seeming deprived of a fight, the boy sullenly packed the sticks in a newspaper, before wrapping it with a white thread.

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The stretch from Lake Market through Gariahat to Ballygunge station was Shantum’s favourite part of Kolkata. As a schoolboy, every summer when he came to visit his grand parents, Shantum would take this walk in the mid morning heat, before taking the Metro from Rash Behari to Park Street. He remembered how gratefully he would climb down the steps of Kalighat Metro station, escaping from the sun and welcoming the shafts of wind, which every corner of the underground seemed to unleash. In London, people cower against the drafts, the icy wind chilling the bone and soul, penetrating clothes and mind. In this city, the underground tunnel was nature’s way of lending a helping hand when you could not afford air conditioning.

Now as he walked on the familiar footpaths yet to succumb to the hawker’s cries, past the known signboards of Priya Cinema and Deshapriya Park, Shantum was filled with an immense urge to share this with his five-year-old son.

Today I should take Arghya out, he thought; the same walk, the same restaurant, the kulfi faluda at Rallis on Esplanade. It’s not very hot this time of the year. Arghya loves the sun. Deprived of it in London, the boy spends hours happily in the second floor balcony of their Ballygunge house, basking in the late afternoon glow with his grand mother.

Ma refuses to leave Kolkata. Even five years after his father’s death, his mother clings to the house. “Come with me, ma. We can look after you in London,” Shantum had pleaded. But she wouldn’t budge.

She was never this stubborn, thought Shantum as he stepped over the tramlines and turned on to Ballygunge Station Road. In fact, she had been the easy going one in the family, the one who always smelled of good food and love, sweat and joy. Her behaviour was completely out of character, he thought as he walked past the teashops lining the railway station. Shantum looked at his watch. Twenty to eight; he had time.

“Come, come” a man waved at Shantum, seeing him look around. Two others made space for him on a bench.

“Ekta cha,” he said, sitting down. He overheard snatches of conversation: cricket, the non-inclusion of the Bengali captain in the national team, the coming state elections.

“Cigarette cholbe?” the man asked, extending a glass. Why not, Shantum thought and smiled his assent. He hadn’t smoked in several months now, part of the strict diet he had been put on by his doctor and wife.

Why had ma become so obstinate? It made him feel guilty to leave her here.

“I can’t come to London to lessen your guilt, Shontu,” she told him last night and there the matter ended. It was perhaps in the way she got the house, he thought, and reclaimed her space in Kolkata. Ma had stayed away for too long for her to move again. Not that Shantum wanted to sell the place. He liked it, its decrepit oldness, the large, airy rooms with their high ceiling and windows that looked down on a delightfully unplanned garden.

He had grown up in two small rooms with his parents and sister; in a town indistinguishable from the hundreds that people cross on trains on their way to somewhere else. He remembered the constant fights of the neighbours, the slum across the window, ma’s tired face. Privacy came at a premium, hiding on the terrace amongst old, worn out furniture and other cast-aways.

That terrace was his space. There a mat could be spread and the entire sky became instantly accessible. Watching Star Trek serials, Shantum had wanted to be an astronaut, crisscrossing across the Milky Way. On summer evenings, sitting alongside him, his father told him stories of impossible daring, of romances that stretched across the seven seas and thirteen rivers.

But reality refused to fade. The two rooms, the incessant noise, the bickering of family, they clawed back. His friends now tell him that most memories of their childhood were inflated, made bigger as time passed. He thought of Anton, his Greek colleague who laughs every time he speaks of his father’s boat, which, as a child seemed bigger to him than the Titanic. Seeing the same boat, thirteen years later, after the ship had been firmly etched in memory, courtesy Hollywood, Anton had been shocked at its smallness.

I had no such luxury, thought Shantum. Everything I knew was small, or short, or tiny.

Thus his craze for space! He remembered how much he loved the Enid Blyton stories. George of the Famous Five had an entire island to herself. She and her cousins went to beaches and solved mysteries in lighthouses on stormy nights. Every time he sees a lighthouse, he still thinks of sinister smugglers.

He laughed, shaking the glass. The hot liquid fell on his hand, making him wince. Stubbing the cigarette, he stood up.

“One more, sir,” the man behind the stove asked.

“No, not today.” It was getting late. Shumona would be up and ma would soon be leaving for school. He paid and started walking briskly homewards.

It has been four years since ma retired from the neighbourhood school.

But she still goes twice a week to teach the students music. The staff doesn’t mind, and the children love her. Sixty- nine this year and she still hasn’t lost an iota of melody.

Baba called ma his nightingale. Her voice filled the house, pushed back the walls and somehow widened our universe, Shantum now thought.

Even the neighbours stopped their quibbling. Baba had many stories of her singing. He insisted that ma had wooed him in college by singing Hindi film songs. Baba was a sucker for the old romantic duets. Shantum

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smiled as he stepped into the bylane leading to their home.

“We always went out in groups, you know,” baba would say. “None of this new fangled dating for us. But when your mother sang, I knew she sang for me.” Ma would laugh and say never, it was Arijit whom she fancied.

“Bloody capitalist,” baba would retort of Arijit kaku. Baba loved his communist pretensions, along with his love for the English and Nirad C Choudhury, thought Shantum. “More English than the English, you know,” baba would say admiringly of Choudhury.

“That was a long walk. Ma just left,” Shumona reproached as he came in through the door. “I know, I had crossed the Milky Way to get you these”; he said handing the flowers to his surprised wife.

“Over the top, as always,” she laughed, unable to hide her pleasure.

A trait I have got from my father, thought Shantum as he went into the shower.

“I am taking Arghya out today. We will go and have a kulfi at Rallis,” he shouted to Shumona through the door. She was going to her sister’s place in Howrah for the day. A father and son excursion, thought Shantum happily.

The water was refreshingly cool after the long walk and he closed his eyes. Yes, baba always overstated, he thought. Even the small things had to be magnified, oversold. The same excursion he was about to undertake with his son, his baba and he, they had done the same. How many years ago was it? He must have been around Arghya’s age. Thirty-four years.

He recalled his baba telling him the night before about the size of the kulfi. “This big,” baba said, hands at least a foot apart. “Do not eat too much breakfast. Otherwise you will not be able to finish it.”

Shantum steadfastly refused the delicious luchis and aloordum his aunt served the rest of the family in the morning. He really wanted to finish the kulfi. Baba had promised it was heaven.

Kolkata in those days were yet to experience the pleasures of underground travel.

After more than two hours on the bus, when they finally reached Esplanade and weaved their way through the teeming millions to Rallis, the place was crowded to the point of bursting. Shantum clearly remembered waiting in line to be seated.

“Don’t we get our own?” he had asked his father, upset at the shared tables. He had conjured up visions of grandeur from his father’s talk. At least the kulfi will be big.

When it came, Shantum was bitterly disappointed. Where was the foot long slab of heaven which his father had promised? What was in front of him was not more than three inches in size.

“Kemon,” asked his father expectantly as they both tucked into the ice cream. “Darun, baba” he smiled, unable to deflate his father’s happiness.

“Wonderful,” he gushed.

No wonder my entire childhood seemed small, thought Shantum, toweling. Nothing could live up to my father’s talk. Arghya came running to him as he walked out of the bathroom.

“When are you leaving,” he asked Shumona, picking up the still sleepy boy.

“I am out in an hour,” she replied. “Can you please give Arghya his cornflakes and make sure he brushes his teeth first.”

Putting toothpaste on the child’s brush, Shantum handed it to him.

“Ma says we are going out baba.”

“Yes,” said Shantum. “We are going to have an Indian ice cream.”

“What’s that,” the child asked.

“Well, you will see for yourself. I hope you will like it,” Shantum said smiling, watching his son brush.

“I hate the underground here, baba,” Arghya said. “Why couldn’t we take the car?” “Because your mother had to go in it; the underground doesn’t go to Howrah,” he told his by now slightly sweaty son.

“But the underground goes everywhere,” said Arghya, slightly surprised.

Not here, it doesn’t, Shantum thought, grimacing as he climbed onto a crowded compartment with Arghya. The Kolkata metro, much vaunted, and the pride of the city was just a single track covering a few kilometers.

Shantum was surprised when he came to Rallis. The place wore a deserted look. The crowds which had thronged the place of his childhood had moved on to newer, shinier establishments. Rallis looked positively seedy. Shantum stood outside, unsure.

“Baba, can we go somewhere else?” Arghya tugged at his hand. Shantum picked the boy up.

“No, Arghya, lets eat the Indian ice cream and then we will go somewhere else. I promise.”

The kulfi, if anything had become even smaller. Shantum looked doubtfully at the syrupy red liquid poured on top.

“Kemon,” he asked his son hesitantly. The five year old looked up, mouthful of cream and smiled.

“Darun baba, first class,” he replied. n

Somnath Batabyal’s first novel The Price You Pay was published in 2013

by HarperCollins and is now available in Bangladesh. He currently lives in London where he teaches at SOAS, University of London. The writer will be participating at the Hay Festival in Dhaka this month.

Poetry morsels rifat islam esha you said we’d make music as the rain soaked the sky— lasting till the flowers awoke

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

you spread jam and butter on bread: a weird combination of taste of morning just for me and everything was right. n

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7 ARTS & LETTERS

Serialized Story

Samira - Part 16 Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Awrup Sanyal 20 Years Later

T

Awrup Sanyal is an ex-advertising professional and a fiction writer.

8

he years had gone by in movie dissolves. One year into another. One location into another. One relationship into another. One face into another. One universe into another.

Overlapping. Replacing. Reshaping realities. Waiting for her flight to Amsterdam to attend a Human Right’s convention where she was the keynote speaker, Samira found herself rushing through a montage of twenty years in fast paced cuts.

She had left Gameplan and advertising a few months after Shadab Sattar’s death, and his subsequent revelations in the letter to her father.

She had played the gladiator, with the help of Sikander, the undercover man. Armed with the documents that Shadab’s lawyer had on TKM, they slayed the dragon. He was captured, tried, and imprisoned.

Two years later her father had passed away. The last few days were forgettable. More than his deteriorating health it was remorse that had killed him.

“Baba, forgive me if you can for the wrongs I have done. Whoever you think you are, you are foremost and forever my daughter, our daughter.

Allah knows…” He had whimpered on his deathbed.

Samira was holding his hands when the graphs on the monitor in his hospital room went flat — straight lines to eternity. Soon after her mother was interred in her room as dementia set in. In many ways, Samira reasoned, it had saved her the heartbreaks. And, then, one night in her sleep she too took the final leap.

But, something more happened in those months and years. Dhaka the city that she had rekindled a relationship with was behaving like an ex.

Everyone and everything she had cared for were now a world ago. Even the Samira she had grown up with was gone. Inside her was unfurling her own Big Bang moment. Constellations and galaxies were fusing and melding, and crystallizing into a new star. Right then just a speck, unborn.

After the arrest of TKM, and the fall of his network Samira was headline news. With Gameplan shut down she had joined Amnesty International.

The effusive fourth estate couldn’t stop romancing her, and in the aftermath of all this Samira had become very close to the Sattar family, with Tasneem and Upol. She had helped them with the funds and the finances. Her father had executed the trust. Upol’s treatment was bringing good results. To Oops, that’s what she called him, Samira Api was the Most Favorite Person Ever. And, then it had happened. Right there in the Sattars’ living room sofa.

They kissed, without hesitation, without awkwardness, as if it was the most natural thing to do. They kissed, and kissed long that first time. It was after they had pulled apart – their lips unlocked, their eyes engaged for a moment too long, and then falling away to the ground – that Samira felt a rush of blood to her head. She got up, and, wobbling, walked away from the room, from the house, and if she could she would from herself, into the deafening chaos of the rush hour traffic on Gulshan Avenue, where Rahim was waiting with the car.

It had taken her months to come to terms with the new feelings that had invaded, and conquered her. Dear God, I don’t know what your game is, neither my moves anymore. The dice has been thrown. It’s there on the board for the world to see. I am embarrassed but I shouldn’t be. I am happy.

I am as happy as can be. I am in love with this beautiful woman. I am in love with Tasneem Sattar.

In the cockpit the captain who was just back with a coffee settled himself in the seat.

“What are tonight’s plans? It’s near Christmas. Amsterdam is rocking!

And we have a full day’s layover.” He looked at his first officer, a naughty smile hanging from his lips.

At that moment the craft, which was in cruise mode, pitchforked and

started gaining speed.

“Switch to manual. Communicate with the nearest ATC.” The captain barked his orders in as normal a voice as he could muster.

The manual control was like fighting a thousand bulls. The aircraft was gaining speed beyond its top speed capabilities.

“Sir, we…we have broken the sonic barrier!” The first officer mumbled.

A web of cracks was spreading across the windscreen. And then the captain felt the first cutting blade of freezing air on his cheeks. The skin cracked open like a pea shell.

May Day, May Day, May Day…The radio at the ATC crackled in the dark December night.

“Wormhole…sir…worrr…”

Upol Sattar slumped on the sofa next to his mother, half hanging out like a dog’s panting tongue. Tasneem was watching the News at Ten. The newsreader, pretty in her jamdani, was speaking that stiff, accented hybrid Bangla-from-nowhere. Upol cringed. He reached out and grabbed the remote. Tasneem gave him a mock stern look.

“Don’t you have your project presentation at the university tomorrow?”

“Yes Maa. I’m so done with it. Don’t you worry! Moreover, Samira Api has gone through it, and she said, ‘Oops, you’re the smartest kid I know’!”

“It shows in your body language.”

“What?”

“The cockiness,” Tasneem humored him.

“You never watch TV when Api is around! Are you sad? Before she left Api said, ‘I’ll be back before your mother finishes cooking that mean Tehari!’

Tasneem sighed and tousled Upol’s unwashed, uncombed hair. In Samira’s absence Tasneem felt like an unwatered plant, drooping, devoid of energy to do anything. She had brought light, air and water to her desiccated life.

Upol was about to switch the channel when breaking news flashed on the screen. Flight BG 101 has vanished from the skies! As the news played out Upol realized with a sickening feeling what had just happened.

“Maa! That…that’s Api’s plane!” Upol gasped.

“Are you sure? Are you…? Tasneem was pale, looking disbelievingly at the TV screen. For two hours as the news cycle played on, mother and son sat there, on the sofa, huddling, sobbing.

Samira opened her eyes. It was light, and then dark, and then light again.

It seemed like she was in a deep, deep sleep. She was cold. Then hot.

She lifted her head to look around. To her left was a smoldering chunk of the fuselage. All around her she saw the litters, scraps and debris from the plane: bodies, baggage, seats, bodies, oxygen masks, twisted metal, bodies, clothes, shoes, and more bodies. She stood up and started walking. Miraculously she felt no pain. Nothing seemed to be broken.

Her mind started to defog. She looked around for survivors. There was no movement whatsoever.

Still. Light. Dark. Cold. Hot. There was something in her hand. It was her handbag, she was still clutching on to it. She unclasped and reached out for her phone, and switched it on. Nothing happened. The screen came alive. The halfeaten fruit never showed up. Some music was playing. It was from the phone. A strange music. She couldn’t place the instrument. Nor the tune. It wasn’t like any instrument she had ever heard. It was a single scraping sound, like that of a cricket’s chirp – an aria. She banged the phone against her palm but nothing happened. Just the bluish glow and the stridulations. Then something moved behind her. She spun around.

A young boy of twelve was trying to stand up, about twenty paces behind her. She strode towards the boy who seemed unhurt. There were more activities around her. She swept the area with her eyes as she walked.

It looked like they were inside the belly of a large crater. One by one, people around her were stirring and standing up. No one seemed to be hurt. She stopped and fell to her knees. The sun was careening across the sky. Bright. Then vanished, as if eaten up. Darkness. Light again. On the edges of the maw of the crater were the silhouettes of giant antlers. They seemed to be crackling with some sort of an electric charge.

Someone said, “This doesn’t look like earth!”

Is this some kind of a magical place? Samira closed her eyes, the strobes flashing under the lids. The aria bore into her head like a tenacious insect. n

The End

ARTS & LETTERS

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