Arts & Letters

DHAKA TRIBUNE | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016

Bangla poetry

A poetic expedition n Hasnin Hassan

Editor Zafar Sobhan Editor Arts & Letters Rifat Munim Contributors Sabrina Fatma Ahmad Shuprova Tasneem Sabiha Akond Rupa Hasnin Hassan Design Asmaul Hoque Mamun Cover Syed Rashad Imam Tanmoy Colour Specialist Shekhar Mondal

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oetry often acts as an escapade from the mundanities of reality. It actually paints the face of a reality we try hard not to see. A poet stirs the souls of millions and pens down even the most short-lived human emotions.

This year, Dhaka Lit Fest was truly a celebration of poetry. In a very short span of time and in a sea of panels and sessions going around, poetry managed to capture the limelight. Poets from all over the country and across the border came together to reflect on their collective strength and resilience. The versatility of Bengali poetry was put forth to be savoured by a global audience.

The programme titled “Somoyer Kobita Somoyanter Kobita” (poetry of transition) was the beginning of a poetic excursion comprising both emerging and established voices of Bengali poetry. It was mostly significant for young poets who have just embarked on the road as they got a rare opportunity to read their poetry out to their predecessors on the beautiful lawn of the academy. Quazi Rosy, Habibullah Sirajee, Asad Mannan, Shihab Shahriar, Jewel Mazhar, Obayed Akash, Audity Falguni, Zafir Setu, Hasan Mahmud, Kumar Chakroborty, Pablo Shahi and Mahmud Shawon, among many others, charmed the audience with their verses. The session was moderated by poet Mohammad Nurul Huda.

On the second day, poet Nirmalendu Goon appeared before a crowded lawn. A noted poet from the 1960s, he is widely known as the poet of love and revolution. At the age of 72, he evinced an astonishingly sharp memory and a gift of oration. Titled “Kobi Jibon: Jiboner Kobita“, moderated by poet Shamim Reza, the session unfolded some not-so-known facets of his life. He impressed the audience with his wit and marvelous sense of humour. He shared quite a few anecdotes from his early life. When he realised he had a penchant for versifying life, he began to view the world from the lens of a poet. He humorously disclosed how his first few attempts to get his poems published went unsuccessful, how he was caught red-handed by a then-prominent editor while plagiarising Madhusudan. He concluded his eloquent speech with the burning issue of violence against the Hindus. His recitation of a poem on the same topic pierced through the hearts of the audience.

On the third day of the festival, the second part of “Somoyer Kobita Somoyanter Kobita-2” took place at the same place. Mohammad Nurul Huda started the event quoting Wordsworth who defined poetry as “spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions.” Then came the renowned poet of the 1970s Muham-

mad Sadique who took the audience on a voyage to rediscover romance with legendary singer, lyricist Hason Raja and his beloved. Shakira parvin captured modern-day romance in her poems and the satirical undertone was very powerful in Altaf Shahnewaz’s portrayal of modern life. Poets from across the border, Jahar Sen Majumder and Akber Ahmed, delighted the audience with their soulful recitation. Poets like Shahnaz Parvin , Mostak Ahmed and Asad Chowdhury were also present with their compositions. They discussed how a poem stands the test of time to be termed “classic” that is embraced by people through ages.

Dhaka Lit Fest definitely was a big event for poetry lovers as well as for those who are not big fans of this genre. Younger poets met their predecessors and they, together, cast a spell over the audience. A wonderful poetic expedition came to an end and both the audience and the poets parted ways with the hope of meeting again next year. l

Sazzad Hossain

Syed Zakir Hossain

Syed Zakir Hossain

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DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016

Interview

‘Bangladesh has to transform the way the world sees it now’ n Rifat Munim

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bangla Tribune

he November issue of Arts & Letters carried an interview with Vijay Seshadri, the 2014 Pulitzer winning American poet. So I was determined not to interview him again while the DLF was going on. After the inaugural, I saw him standing alone on the terrace in front of the Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharod auditorium. I thought I’d just have a little chat with the poet whose 3 Sections I really liked and then I’d go about my own business. But as the talk began, (it went on for about half an hour), I was taken in and found myself pulling out my recorder. What followed turned out to be an American poet’s very interesting takes on DLF, Urdu poetry and translation of South Asian literatures.

Do you think this kind of literary festival has any true potential?

These festivals have a lot of potential, especially in Asia because they are sort of integrating these societies into a world order, and also because they are building a relationship between the global and the local, between Bangladeshi culture and literature, and world culture and literature. It also helps to bring about a change in the evolution of literature, so literature does not stay stagnant and takes on new reality, and that new reality is not in encountering another world but in synthesising new experience into the already existing imaginative world. I hope the DLF flourishes because I think Bangladesh is at a crossroads right now. There are things that are pulling it apart. It seems to me that Bangladesh is at the intersections of economic globalisation, climate change and Islamic fundamentalism, and all these come to rest here in a particularly dramatic way. Bangladesh, you know, is kind of unknown to the world and the world doesn’t realise how interesting Bangladesh is. The Americans associate Bangladesh with poverty, overpopulation, and a cyclone that killed a million people although it happened more than forty years ago.

Bangladesh has to transform the way the world sees it now, I mean it is a functioning and vibrant country. Considering all these points, I can’t overestimate the importance of a festival like this.

While reading your poetry collection, 3 Sections, I found a few translations of Urdu poetry. I remember the one by Mirza Ghalib. What exactly drew you towards Urdu poetry?

You know my experience is very American, but when I came back in New York in my late 20s -- I got a grant at the University of Colombia -- I decided I’d find out about India. Then I took a Sanskrit course and learned Urdu and Hindi there and the people in those departments liked me very much and they asked me to do a PhD. They expected me to study Urdu literature but what I was really interested in was politics. Then I went to live in Pakistan and studied Urdu and Persian literature. Soon I found I was not really that interested in politics anymore and I wanted to go back to New York and be a poet. But in the process I managed to acquaint myself with a lot of Urdu poetry. I also spent two years doing course work and learning a lot about the history of Islam in India. So what happened is Urdu literature and culture became a part of my knowledge, and I thought why not try translating some Urdu poetry? Then I

Rajib Dhar

DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016

ARTS & LETTERS

started translating and I found it really fun.

As a poet I don’t know if the Urdu tradition is congenial to me. I’m a different kind of poet, basically I’m an American poet, but I found the translating experience fascinating just as a linguistic experience, you know, to work out the puzzles and to make Khalid sound like Khalid. Let me tell you this: translations of Urdu classical poetry are horrible, and that’s a real problem with the translation of all the South Asian languages into English. That is kind of a real impasse to the appreciation of these literatures into the English speaking world. Just think of the great Indian Urdu novelist Qurratulain Hyder. When she is translated, she’s translated too badly. People say that she should win the Nobel Prize. Her novels are about the Muslim culture as also about the history of pre-partitioned India. She is a very intelligent, interesting and radical kind of writer but she’s unknown in the west because of the poorness of the translations.

It’s very interesting to note that Bangla literature has suffered massively from the same problem.

Yes. So I think I’ll go back to translating more of Urdu poetry. You know why?

Because they in the USA don’t know that Urdu has such a rich and lofty poetic tradition and it is so revered in South Asia. But they don’t know it at all.

There’s one problem that always comes up when UK and US publishers are approached for translated works of Bangla literature. In fact, it is common to Urdu and Hindi literatures too. They somehow make it clear that our fiction does not go with the European or American taste of modernity or postmodernity or post-coloniality. How do you think this can be addressed?

I think we should approach the university presses rather than the commercial presses. I think you could try persuading the commercial presses but the chances are very small that a translation of Bangla literature is going to make any impression on the marketplace there, but they can make a long-term impression on the university presses and the small presses and thus can affect the culture there. The small presses there have a very strong distribution chain. So you have to target those places where literary culture is valued, not commercial culture. l

Rajib Dhar

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Interview

‘It is important to ask when and how the stigma against them is evoked’ In conversation with Dr Nayanika Mookherjee on the Birangona like this is happening constantly. There are a lot more details in my book, although obviously I couldn’t look at everything. The ravaged mother figure is also very commonly associated with the image of the Birangona.

Do you think the ‘mother figure’ in the nationalistic discourse is problematic?

Rajib Dhar

n Shuprova Tasneem & Rifat Munim

Do you think the Birangonas are associated more with a sense of shame rather than their heroism?

ayanika Mookherjee is the writer of The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971 which traces the public memory of rape in 1971, and how that memory of wartime rape has been invoked and changed in the years after independence. On November 17, two Dhaka Tribune journalists sat down with Mookherjee, whose panel on Birangonas caused a stir at the Dhaka Literary Festival 2016, and delved into her understanding of our war history. During the talk, she highlighted the wounds of the war healed for the Birangonas long ago, but the societal violence they face every day in the form of stigma is what they find impossible to recover from.

As I argued in my book, on one level the heroic imagery of the Birangona is there, but there is also an ambiguity about her sexuality having been transgressed. But I think rather than just focusing on what happened to them then, it’s important to look at what has actually happened in the women’s lives after.

For example, one of the women I worked with had a brother who went off to war, leaving his young wife in his elder sister’s care. When the Pakistani army came, the elder sister put herself forward to protect her sister-in-law.

Her parents were crying knowing precisely what their daughter was risking and every night, the jeep came and took her away. After the war she moved to Dhaka and one day on a bus, she heard people laughing as they went past the Birangona office. But despite the scorn, she said it made her feel a quiet sense of recognition, even if people didn’t understand what she had been through.

Another woman I know was married to her childhood sweetheart during the war, and got pregnant. When the army came, she had to watch her husband get killed and then they found her, but her narrative cuts off there, and jumps to after the war. She said, “Because of what happened to me, I had to marry my cousin whom I never respected, and I am not allowed to even have a picture of my first husband in the house.”

So for her, the real loss is that she can’t evoke the memory of her first husband whom she loved so much, more than the ‘shame’ or ‘heroism’ – so these terms are actually loaded and mean nothing.

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How did you get drawn into researching the Birangonas?

In 1992, when I was an undergrad at Presidency College, one of the first formative political events of that time was the attack on Babri Masjid. I remember the curfews and the rumours of inter-community sexual violence, and that brought forth the question to me – why are men killed and women raped? It initially came from my feminist sensibilities. It was also a time when violent conflicts were going on in Bosnia and Rwanda, and finally, at the time the government of Bangladesh named the raped victims of the 1971 war Birangona. As I’ve argued many times before, this is an unprecedented step taken by Bangladesh that has not been taken anywhere else in any other instance of wartime sexual violence.

Shuprova Tasneem is feature writer, Dhaka Tribune.

Rifat Munim is editor, Arts & Letters, Dhaka Tribune.

On one level scholars say that using the mother figure as a mobilising troupe is putting lots of women in these boxes of ‘respectability’ and ties them down into these “perfect” motherly structures. So questions should arise if we can have a sex worker as a figure of the nation, or even a single woman who isn’t a mother? At the same time, the mother figure has been very mobilising - the very song “Shonar Bangla” is extremely moving and it powerfully evokes people to think of their nation in different ways. I can only imagine how much power that song would have on you when your country was being ravaged by war, and we can’t deny that.

Your critique of the visual narratives, in terms of stereotyping the Birangonas, is very original. How would you view their representation in the literature written after the Liberation War? In my book, I did a review of Bangladeshi war literature and I talked about literary and visual representations of the Birangonas. The literature of the 1970s had various instances where the Birangonas are referred to but in very black and white terms and there is a reemergence of this in the 1990s as well. But in the 1980s, you see the imagery of the Birangona with a much more critical and interrogative voice. After 2000, there is a shift in the literature and there are a lot of different kinds of material coming from Bangladeshi writers as well as filmmakers, such as the film A Certain Liberation by Yasmine Kabir.

Would you tell us something more about the literary stereotypes?

It’s coming up throughout in various kinds of literary accounts in various ways.

For example, in Rudro Mohammad Shahidullah’s poem, “Batashe Lasher Gondho,” he refers to the flag as being a bloodied sari – the superimposing of the nation

How do you think we could address the problem of stereotyping the Birangonas that underlies the societal expectation that they should always feel shame?

For me the wider question that all this leads to is -- how can we talk about women who were raped without the wound? My research is about getting away from the idea that this woman has become “abnormal” after the war because of what happened to her. Many of these women’s lives are carrying on.

What happened next depended on the power structures that they were based in – if this woman was already poor, people would try and belittle them even more by reminding her of the incident.

I remember a story where the husband of a Birangona went to the bazaar and was bargaining for vegetables and someone said, “Bagaan ujar hoye gelo, shobjir dor kore ki hobe?” (your garden’s been raided, why bargain for vegetables prices?), and he stopped, and that night they only ate rice and salt.

The everydayness of the violence enforces and perpetuates existing hierarchies and inequalities on people, and it is important for us to ask when, why and how the stigma against them is being evoked. l

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Workshop & book review

3 lessons from Richard Beard Write, edit and produce your best work Director of the National Academy of Writing, in London. Between his two panels and editing workshop at the DLF, to the interview he was kind enough to grant us, the man has given us plenty of food for thought for anyone attempting to write. Here are three quotes that make great lessons.

On inspiration “When you start off as a novelist you write about your own life, so you have maybe 2-3 books in you where you can write about what’s happened to you, and then there comes a point where you run out of stuff. Then either you can stop being a novelist, or you can write about something else, and you find what interests you in a different subject.”

On rewrites

Rajib Dhar

n Sabrina Fatma Ahmad

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ne of the pleasures of visiting events like the Dhaka Lit Fest is the chance to meet and discover amazing writers that the average reader living in Bangladesh would not otherwise probably never even hear of - given the paucity of bookstores and reading spaces in the city.

This year, the discovery that will probably stick with yours truly has undoubtedly been UK writer/teacher/translator Richard Beard. Author of six novels, including Lazarus is Dead, Dry Bones and Damascus, Beard is also the

“The first time you put something on a page it’s a process of loss. You’re losing this idea that you’ve had in your head, which is often very perfect in your head. When you put it down on paper and it becomes something which is mediocre, substandard. Then you rewrite it. Every time you rewrite it, it gets better and that’s where the joy comes.”

On what makes a good story “I think a good story is one where you stay in the story. It can be about anything; it can be as long, or as short, but there has to be a part of you which is entirely engrossed by it. That doesn’t mean you have to be immersed in the story; you might be immersed in the language, you might be immersed in the technical skills, but it has to completely involve you in what it’s doing.” l

A lesson in un-death A review of Lazarus is Dead n Sabrina Fatma Ahmad

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op culture is currently celebrating the Age of the Undeath. Vampires, zombies, and hauntings continue to enjoy staggering levels of popularity across the media. Dead characters in tv shows and movies are constantly brought back to life via magic, time travel, or Divine intervention with a nose-thumbing to plausibility.

Dead shows are being rebooted and re-imagined, their stories put on life extension via spinoffs.

You can’t talk about resurrection without ultimately cycling back to the original Comeback King, aka Lazarus of Nazareth. Of all the miracles performed by Jesus Christ prior to his crucifixion, none capture the imagination as completely as the feat of raising the dead. While Lazarus wasn’t Christ’s first resurrection attempt, he was definitely the most spectacular - at least until the Ascension.

Interestingly enough, while Lazarus continues to inspire from beyond the grave, everything from classical paintings to contemporary pop songs, details about his life, death, and resurrection are relatively spotty. Only one of the four gospel writers mention him, and even then the account is viewed with skepticism.

British author Richard Beard explores exactly that in his novel Lazarus is Dead.

Drawing from many sources and inspirations past and present, Beard zooms in on and amplifies the friendship that reportedly existed between Lazarus and Jesus. While the Messiah has several well-documented disciples, Lazarus is the only person named as his friend.

Beard traces the relationship back to the childhood days in Nazareth, when the two boys were inseparable. He reimagines Lazarus as the bolder one, taking risks where Jesus cautious, the follower. Upon reaching adulthood, however, their paths diverge.

Jesus becomes a spiritual shepherd, guiding his growing legions of followers into the light, while Lazarus turns to business as a sheep trader, “underpaying the shepherds and overcharging the priests”.

Then, as the son of Mary and Joseph begins to perform his miracles, his childhood friend, the once hale and hearty Lazarus mysteriously falls ill, and continues a dramatic decline unto death. The author creates a tense, graphic, suspenseful countdown to the demise, merging it with a character study in a way that creates a fairly unlikeable character, and then makes him pitiful in his suffering.

When death arrives, even despite the spoilers posted from the get-go, it feels like a shock.

The narrative tone balances the gravitas of the material with moments of dark humour, so that you’re surprised into smiling at certain parts, and it makes the gut-punch of the death that much darker. This is the story of friendship, betrayal, and reconciliation. It is a story of faith being tested to the breaking point, and then restored. It deals with lofty themes such as God’s experiment with humanity, the silence of the infinite, and the place and purpose of mere mortals, but does so with a deft hand, teasing out the story, making it matter whether or not you subscribe to the faith.

If you’re looking for a read that’s slightly challenging (Beard’s prose isn’t for the faint of heart), but ultimately very rewarding, this book is definitely worth a try. Lazarus is Dead can be found at The Bookworm. l

Sabrina Fatma Ahmad is features editor, Dhaka Tribune

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Essay

Naipaul under the spotlight n Rifat Munim

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ome of our writers have taken issues with the way Naipaul was not engaged in a conversation about his controversial stance on Indian Muslims, when he and Lady Nadira Naipaul were speaking to poet Ahsan Akbar about his life and works on the second day of the festival. Some have even gone one notch higher, asking what is so great about him at all?

They have pointed out Naipaul’s virulence against Indian Muslims, his ideological positions that he’s nurtured and upheld in his nonfiction books, especially in The Wounded Civilisation. Those ideologies correspond directly to the Hindutva movement, especially to the extremist section of Hindu ideologues who believe the demolition of the Babri mosque was a righteous act and the role of the Muslims in India was as invaders and destroyers of Hindu temples and culture. We are fully aware of what these ideologies have led to.

One had expected he’d stop there, but he didn’t. While on a tour in India in 2004, he attended a reception accorded to him by the BJP, then in power.

He went as far as endorsing, though indirectly, the attacks in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Writing about this reception, a surprised William Dalrymple said, “It might seem unlikely that a Nobel Laureate would put himself in a position of apparently endorsing an act that spawned mass murder -- or commend a party that has often been seen as virulently anti-intellectual.”

It’s still a conundrum to me that a writer with such unsurpassable accomplishments in the sphere of fiction can be so prejudiced against people of another religion. So there’s no doubt he has pathetically failed to stand the test of political and ideological correctness.

But the important question is if this failure should mean turning away from him altogether, dismissing all he has achieved, rejecting all he has contributed to the world of English fiction and literature in particular and world literature in general. As a writer and editor working in the English language, I believe the answer is: no, we should not turn away from him, much less dismiss his achievements and reject his contributions.

Nor should we stop criticising him for his views on Indian Muslims. We should rather give the devil his due, the word “devil” intended both proverbially and metaphorically as a critical principle: praise him for his achievements and criticise him logically for his failures, and if possible, engage him in a productive dialogue.

When Humayun Azad brought out a poetry collection, Adhunik Bangla Kobita, as an editor sometime in the late 1990s, he dropped three poets – Al Mahmud, Fazal Shahbuddin, and if my memory is not betraying me, Abdul Mannan Syed. All three of them are big names in our poetry, with Mahmud certainly topping not only this list but any that you might prepare. Shamsur Rahman is regarded his only competitor in the poetic world, and yet Azad dropped him as well as the other two. In his introduction, he employed just one small paragraph, explaining somewhat curtly that he dropped them because of their literary associations with ideologies and people and forces that opposed the freedom fighters and the creation of Bangladesh. I’m not sure about Syed, but everyone knows for a fact about the swerve that Mahmud took, both in terms of an ideological shift in poetry and political association.

Much like Naipaul, Mahmud attended several receptions accorded to him by

Jamaat-e-Islami, the party that collaborated with the Pakistan Army and killed thousands of freedom fighters and Hindus. After all these years, whenever they get a chance, the Jamaat still act fast to oust the Hindus from this country and Mahmud endorsed the activities of that party on many occasions. I was shocked at this and the hurts I received from this news are not fully healed yet. But what Azad did was a total dismissal of everything that Mahmud has achieved and by this rejection Azad actually committed a literary crime.

If put in context, may be Naipaul’s association with Hindu extremist elements had more serious social impact, and though Naipaul and Muhmud politically represent two opposing poles, but structurally they both failed the same test for which they must be criticised. But their dues must be paid too, for their achievements, in their respective languages, are too great to be turned down.

As for engaging Naipaul in a dialogue and letting the audience be a part of that, I believe those who attended the jam-packed session must have seen he came on stage in a wheelchair that was pushed by another person. Sadder still is the fact that he was having frequent problems hearing the questions and when he took them in, after brief pauses, he answered them slowly, very slowly, and his short witty answers, one perhaps couldn’t overlook, did not

Syed Zakir Hossain

fail even once to raise a ripple of laughter in the audience. It was obvious that in this physical state he was incapable of answering any serious questions.

This description, I believe, will dispel all concerns that the dialogue was deliberately avoided and should help us understand that the dialogue actually was an impossibility. If anything, he must be thanked umpteen times for showing the courage to fly in this state of his health all the way to Dhaka where fear of attacks on foreigners is actually running high.

Now I should move on to the question of his achievements. An objective analysis would do better but I have decided to take a subjective route.

I studied English literature at a public university. So, reading English fiction was indispensable for us. Not that everyone read the novels selected in a particular course but when they did, they spoke highly about them, never asking (due to the hegemonic status attached to English studies) why we should be so impressed by a work that had nothing in common with our lives or history, a question I’m sure any American or British student would ask incessantly if s/he were to read even one novel by Mahasweta Devi or Akhtaruzzaman Elias as part of their course work. So unlike most of my peers, I always suffered an identity crisis caused by what I think was a kind of absurdity. The absurdity for me lay in the way our teachers expected us to devote ourselves to  See Page 9

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Book launch

Celebrating Monirul Islam’s life and works n Hasnin Hassan

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aunch of Monir: Selected Works, 1961-2016, featuring the artworks of Monirul Islam, was perhaps the brightest programme of that segment which celebrated the richness of local art and literature. Islam is one of Bangladesh’s few artists who have gained international acclaim.

Asaduzzaman Noor, minister for cultural affairs, Anwar Hossain Monju, minister for environment and forest, Marsha Stephen Bloom Bernicut, US ambassador to Bangladesh, Teyada Chakone, Spanish ambassador to Bangladesh, Mustafa Zaman, editor of Depart and an art critic, and Javed Hossain, managing director of Energies Limited, were present at the programme. The book is the first attempt to capture his creations from the beginning of his career till now.

From his formative years in his home country to his journey into the western hemisphere and finally striking a balance between the two, everything has been featured in the short span of this book. Energies deserves accolade for funding the publication of this much-needed book.

The programme started with a documentary on the artist’s life. Born in Chandpur, Monirul Islam nurtured a passion for art from his early childhood.

Nature inspired him immensely and he could respond to its vibes. He chanced upon the local cinema posters and those gaudy paintings were too enticing for a toddler not to notice. This was his gateway to the magical world art could offer. To translate his passion in reality, he got admitted in the East Pakistan College of Arts and Crafts (now Faculty of Fine Arts, Dhaka University) in 1966. Later he was granted a scholarship under an exchange program from the Spanish government.

He moved to Spain in 1969. Thus he maintained a perfect balance by remaining rooted to the local art scene as well as being exposed to the trends in European art. This duality in his experience explains his versatility in diverse media such as print, etching, watercolour, acrylic and oil. While many of his works are in Bangladesh, a few pieces, especially some print works and etchings, remain in Madrid, Spain where he has been residing for more than three decades now. He is a noted printmaker in Spain and has influenced a flock of experimental artists there.

The book is foreworded by Zarin Mahmud Hosein and introduced by Marzia Farhana. A long, analytical article by Mustafa Zaman considers different aspects of Monirul’s art. The individual artworks have been annotated with lucidity. The book contains some of his previously unknown pieces.

Islam uses conventional as well as unconventional materials in his artwork.

He believes art is limitless so it is not limited to a few mainstream ingredients.

He plays with local pigments, coffee, corrugated boards, wastage papers, register books, pages of torn-out magazines, newspapers, to name just a few. He believes each and every creation has its own life and artwork surpasses the artist.

His fondness for geometric abstraction has made him the trailblazer of abstract painting in Bangladesh. Through his creation, he attempts to transcend sensory perception and connect to something higher. His imageries are filled with contradictory forces.

In his speech, Asaduzzaman Noor said, “I’ve known him for a long time. We often had coffee together. He is a total workaholic. I doubt if he sleeps at all.”

Jerin Hossain of Energies said, “Art often remains the personal possession of an artist. It hardly reaches out to the masses. We initiated documenting art for the sake of common people.”

In the art of Monirul, who has won many prestigious awards both in Bangladesh and Spain, the richest traditions of the east and the west are bridged with a mastery that is unique. This book is a fitting tribute to the life and works of the artist. l

Sazzad Hossain

Hasnin Hassan writes for the Arts & Letters.

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ARTS & LETTERS

Book launch & review

The Book of Dhaka: A remarkable creative collaboration n Rifat Munim

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Rifat Munim is editor, Arts & Letters, Dhaka Tribune.

hat better occasion could one have imagined for the launch of The Book of Dhaka – all the stories in which are set in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, each bringing out a unique aspect of the bustling city with high-rise buildings and sleek cars on one hand, and slums and the ubiquitous presence of rickshaws on the other? The perspectives in them differ, to the point of clashing at times, but they complement each other too. This is a Dhaka seen through the fictional lens of writers who have lived through the city’s ugliness as well as its sheer beauties.

It was November 19th, the closing day of the Dhaka Literary Festival 2016 at Bangla Academy in Dhaka, Bangladesh. As anticipated, the crowd was bigger and thicker around the KK Tea Stage a little before a quarter past four when the programme was scheduled to begin.

The last panel on the same stage, “Words under Seige”, saw Hamid Ismailov, an Uzbek writer in exile, and Kanak Mani Dixit, editor of Himal, among others, speaking about the overt state mechanisms and the covert ideological pressures through which voices of dissidence are silenced. Enthused students, readers and journalists were streaming out of the room where the stage was set, while new batches, mostly young, were going in.

As I walked towards the entrance of the room, I came across Arunava Sinha, one of the editors of The Book of Dhaka and a prolific translator of Bengali fiction and poetry. Before I could congratulate him properly, he took the stage with Kaiser Haq, a Bangladeshi English language poet; Syed Manzoorul Islam, a famous bilingual fiction writer; Pushpita Alam, the other editor of the book; and Daniel Hahn, a British author and translator who moderated the session marking the launch.

Right from the beginning, Hahn brought a vibrant touch to the session and his witty quips created an ambience for a lively discussion. After a quick introduction of the speakers on stage and a short description of the book, he passed the mantle on to Kaiser Haq. An illustrious translator himself, Kaiser traced the somewhat sinuous route of what appeared as a remarkable instance of creative collaboration between writers’ organisations, publishers and quite a good number of creative individuals from Bangladesh, India and the UK. Kazi Anis Ahmed, a fiction writer and co-director of the DLF, formed Ben-

Sazzad Hossain

gal Lights Books and Dhaka Translation Centre (DTC) with the aim of giving a boost to English translation of Bengali fiction in Bangladesh. Haq became the director of DTC and the first translated book of the centre was launched at the 2013 Hay Festival Dhaka (now known as DLF), which was attended by Emma D’Costa of Commonwealth Writers. Emma then approached Haq and Khademul Islam, director of Bengal Lights Books, with the idea that they should collaborate on a workshop where the participants would dissect a story in the presence of the author.

Soon English PEN and The British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) came on board. The first workshop was conducted in 2014 by Arunava Sinha and the author selected for it was Shaheen Akhtar. Most importantly, the participants each were assigned to a story and the workshop next year took the translators up with their assignments, working diligently to improve their craft. The much-needed funding and organisational support to hold the workshops in Dhaka were provided by English PEN and Commonwealth Writers, a cultural initiative of Commonwealth Foundation. That’s how, according to Haq, The Book of Dhaka was born. l See the full version of the article online

Doja’s brilliance shines through in Drift n David Leo Sirois

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David Leo Sirois, host of SpokenWord Paris and a critic himself.

hehzar Doja possesses, to quote the accomplished poet himself, “the poet’s capricious space.” Whether playing with language (“Look Icarus — he flies —/amaze, a maze?”), with poetry as a whole, or with the reader or proclaiming, albeit in a character’s voice, “My words – settle down/please settle down”). At times he simply utilises humour – “Mustard was the colour of the day.” Doja’s playful brilliance shines through in Drift.

At the beginning of the collection, in the short poem “Distance,” which touches upon spaces and closeness (“Distance, an illusion/our senses take comfort in”), the contemplation ends with “Our prose becomes hyperbole/ and poetry — no space for that.” This is not only capricious, but a marvelously humble and unusual way to begin a poetry collection.

The masterpiece “Compos Mentis,” which reads like a theatrical monologue -- I had the great pleasure of seeing Doja read it aloud when I had the honour of featuring him at my open mic in Paris. There it became clear that it was, indeed, originally intended to be a theatre piece. The voice of the po-

em’s speaker came to life – but reading it on the page, I can see how alive it is intrinsically.

The poem “Colour Blind,” is, I believe, the collection’s highest moment, which is playful and profoundly serious at the same time: “Thanatos, the all-seeing dog, is my best friend/Thanatos, the all-seeing dog, is my only friend.”

The tender melancholy of “Autumn’s Kiss” has a gentle joy to it as well – in the meditation on a memory of a loving moment: ”I remembered – the first winter snowflake/began its journey that year/on your trembling cheek.” Another line that particularly struck me with its originality is ”waiting for the auburn tears/of autumn to finally well up.”

The poem “Foetus,” which begins with the utterly lovely “Let the velvet shade of twilight’s touch…” also has its own “eternal lines to time,” as Shakespeare would say, such as “Life exists like a lingering reverie/trapped incoherently in infinite folds.”

I love Drift dearly, and it moves me greatly. I hold its brilliance, ingenuity, capriciousness and grace in its place as high literature. l See the full review online

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DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016

Feminism

The society needs more of ‘nasty women’ n Arts & Letters Desk

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mong the many scandals, controversies and lawsuits that have mired the US presidential race, one of the most highlighted has been Trump’s attitude towards his female opponent and it has put every feminist’s teeth on edge. Out of the many low moments that Trump had during the presidential debates, one particular moment that stuck and went viral on media was when Trump called Clinton “a nasty woman.”

This election has been defined by gender politics, and Trump’s comments have sparked some very serious concerns regarding cultural prejudices against strong, accomplished women.

At the Dhaka Lit Fest, a discussion on feminism entitled “Nasty Women” was held in a panel that had Lady Nadira Naipaul, a noted Pakistani journalist, Deborah Smith, winner of the prestigious 2016 Man Booker Prize, British-Australian writer Evie Wyd and famous journalist Rosamund Erwin on the main stage. It was moderated by journalist and writer Bee Rowlatt. The speakers exchanged views on how feminism was subjected to serious misinterpretation, how it remained a far-reaching concept both in the east as well as the west and what could be done to ensure gender parity.

Evie Wyld said she was shaken to the core as she witnessed how a misogynist was entrusted with the duty of governing one of the most powerful nations on earth. Rosamund chipped in with a comment about how mainstream politics forced women from a diverse range of ethnic background to vote for Trump. Deborah Smith declined to highlight Trump’s statements or Hillary’s defeat. She opined this was a part of the struggles women were going through the ages in every corner of the world. In this male-dominated society, women scarcely get what they deserve in a not-so-woman-friendly system. To much surprise, Hillary was not even supported by a good number of women from all age groups who viewed her as the face of elitism in politics.

Lady Nadira Naipaul, wife of Nobel Laureate in Literature VS Naipaul, reflected on how Pakistan treated women and how they were locked up and tortured by husbands when they raised their voices. About Trump winning the US election, she said lack of faith in mainstream politics and the economic circumstances of the country earned trump a good deal of female supporters. Though sexism is strongly rooted in the US, she said, Hillary lost due to her Wall Street–friendly image. She reprimanded the fact that women, when in power, try to imitate a man or be a man, which make them worse than their male counterparts. According to her, femininity does not clash with assuming power and women can rule over a nation without compromising femininity. When Rowlatt referred to her article in which she stood against Muslim women wearing burkha or hijab in England or other western countries, quite a few women in the audience opposed her. She wound up the discussion saying she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

Continued from Page 6

Nashirul Islam

The speakers drew attention to the trend of women running a country in Asia. While it still remains an abstract notion in the west, the east has set an example by electing female leaders. Soon a Bangladeshi writer from the audience stood up and shared with the speakers that women leaders were chosen in Bangladesh as well as the other South Asian countries because of family ties and also because no man was found to represent the family.

The conversation then veered towards how women faced the linguistic bias. They are represented in a language created by men. Smith said how some pre-established notions regarding women affected their freedom, making them act according to family or society expectations. Wyld said most women were afraid of coming out, speaking for themselves and being labelled as feminists. The speakers concluded the discussion by remembering Begum Rokeya, the noted 19th century Bengali feminist and how she constructed a feminist utopia in her English novella, Sultana’s Dream. They wished to create their versions of utopia and before winding up, they also remembered the first “nasty woman” of Europe, Mary Wollstonecraft.

The world needs more of nasty women to make the society better. Nasty and angry women are blessings to be cherished and they are beneficial to both men and women. They partner with men in saving humanity and together they can lift each other up. It is on this wonderful note that the engaging discussion ended. l

Naipaul under the spotlight

foreign writers, writing about whose alien works you will neither be recognised here (or the east, broadly speaking), nor there (in the west). Yet, that’s what we’re doing, dissecting Lawrence and Woolf, Becket and Pinter, Shakespeare and Webster, reading all those volumes of structural, Marxist, post-structural, psychoanalytic, post-colonial critiques of their works and gaining so much knowledge that even now, after a gap of almost ten years, I can write more fluently about Lawrence and Shakespeare than about Hasan Azizul Haque or Rokeya Shakhawat Hossain, though no one would actually want to publish them.

My alienation with English fiction began to grow more and I got tired of having to spend most of my reading and writing time over works I could hardly relate to, until I picked up A House for Mr Biswas. It was not like we were unfamiliar with Mulk Raj Anand or RK Narayan who wrote about Indian people. Anand was too realistic and too focused on the Dalits while Narayan was too fictional and his world too removed from reality. Then I started Mr Biswas and I was overwhelmed by the subject he was dealing with as also by the way he was doing it. The life of Mohun Biswas and his induction in the Hanuman House after his marriage with one of Mrs Tulsi’s daughters. I’m not sure if

an European student would love the book in the same way as I did, because the people he was portraying were my people. This was the first time I felt I was reading an English novel where I found my own people: The way they value collectivity over individuality, the way they gossip and fight in groups, the way they treat their children and show their greed for money and love for others, and the way they build their houses. He didn’t miss a single thing about that society – the Hindu families of Indian immigrants in Trinidad and Tobago. There was no big tension in the novel, other than those anxieties felt

by Mr Mohun towards different people in the Tulsi family. The psychology of the characters is intricately revealed and the sociology of the war brought in as much as was necessary to build up the story. But the sparks of wit and humour and sarcasm are such that you won’t be able to stop laughing till you reach the end. It was he who first demonstrated to me that you could write a great novel about a simple Bangladeshi or Indian family as well, it was he who first showed me that what actually matters is how you tell your story. Not all of his novels are set in such contexts but that most of them are, in my eyes, is something for which I will always owe my literary aspirations to him. l

9 DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016

ARTS & LETTERS

Books at DLF

The festival of books n Sabiha Akond Rupa

t was no doubt the biggest festival of English books in Dhaka. Bookworm, a bookstore which sells imported English books, put up a large stall, displaying the latest books by the 60 foreign authors who attended the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016.

Naturally, it was swarming with book lovers on all three days. The local

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publishers who bring out English titles, too, had their stalls, and they showcased their new and old titles. In fact, one of the most interesting segments this year was the new books, brought out by these publishers, some of them fiction, some poetry collections and some translations of Bengali literature and poetry. Bangla Academy, University Press Limited, Bengal Lights Books, Writers.ink, Ignite Publication Limited and Daily Star Books displayed their new titles.

The University Press Limited

Ignite Publication Limited

The University Press Limited unveiled four of their newest titles at the festival. The titles are Drift by Shehzar Doja, Samudragupta - The making of an emperor by Bappaditya Chakravarty, Detached Belonging by Dilruba Z Ara, and The Inheritance Powder by Hilary Standing. Drift is Doja’s debut poetry collection. Detached Belonging is a book of twelve short stories set in Bangladesh, Sweden and the Middle East. Samudragupta tells the story of Samudragupta, the most powerful king of the Gupta dynasty, who ushered in India’s golden age, bringing peace and prosperity to a land divided by religion and small states. On the last day of DLF 2016, development specialist and author Hilary Standing discussed her book The Inheritance Powder, which is not only a story of mass arsenic poisoning, but also of misguided endeavours and development agencies, haunted by scandals and corruptions.

Book on Muslin Another unique book was Muslin: Our Story by Saiful Islam, which was featured in a session that saw Fakrul Alam, Shahidul Alam and Islam, among others, talking about the history of Bengal’s finest fabric but which, they said, was destroyed by the East India Company.

Sabiha Akond Rupa is feature writer, Dhaka Tribune.

Dhaka Lit Fest 2016 has been a great platform to launch children’s books. Ignite Publication Limited (IPL), a new publishing endeavour devoted to the publication of children’s books, launched two books for children: Asha and the Magic Moshari by Pushpita Alam, and Hansher Paye Ghuri by Nazia Zabeen. Alam’s book is an English book (For ages 5-7) where children will know through Asha’s story that even the scariest and most unfamiliar journeys can lead to wonderful, magical adventures if you can keep an open eye. Zabeen’s is a Bengali book where little Minu finds a way to make her wishes come true.

A session on Ocean of Sorrow A session on Ocean of Sorrow, an English translation of Mir Mosharraf Hossasin’s Bishad Sindhu, was one of the main attractions on the first day of the festival. Bishad Sindhu is the first substantial work of fiction by a Bengali Muslim writer. The story is about the prophet’s grandson Hasan and Husayn, and their deaths at the hands of enemies. Around 3.30 pm at the main stage, Fakrul Alam, translator of the book, and writer Syed Manzoorul Islam with EMK Center Director MK Aaref talked about the significance of the book.

Bengal Lights Bengal Lights brought out four new books of translation at Dhaka Lit Fest 2016. Under the Library of Bangladesh series, two translated novels: Rizia Rahman’s Rokter Akshar, and Moinul Ahsan Saber’s The Mercenary were published. The other two are: A collection of poems by selected Bangladeshi poets in Khademul Islam’s translation, On My birthday and Other Poems in Translation, and The Book of Dhaka, a collection of translated short stories by selected Bangladeshi prose writers.

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DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016

On the cultural front Rajib Dhar

n Hasan Mansoor Chatak It is only fitting that a city as perpetually transforming as Dhaka should have a dynamic, international literary festival. Apart from numerous panels and book releases, the three-day event offered some treats in the cultural sphere, seeking to showcase our rich cultural heritage to the outer world.

On the opening day, a captivating performance was held at the Nazrul Mancha featuring ten bauls. Titled “Bauliana Caravan,” it had renditions of baul songs alongside discussions on the philosophy of Fakir Lalon Shah. The discussions reflected not only on the philosophy and interpretation of Baul songs but also brought out the life that Lalon led and how the religious bigots, both from the Muslim and Hindu sides, attacked him and felt threatened by the popularity of his songs in a time when communal tension was on the rise.

Lalon did not believe in any preconceived ideas about class or caste or race, though he had all the faith in the power of music which can transcend us to a higher state of spirituality.

Staging of the play, Bondhon, by BRAC popular theatre, was highly praised by the audience on the same day. It is a unique genre engaging common people during the staging. The BRAC popular theatre uses this unique way to raise awareness, and stimulate discussions around a variety of social issues.

A panel discussion on theatre, “When the Stage is Mine,” was held on the

second day of festival, featuring Sara Zaker, Mita Rahman and Samina Luthfa Nitra. Moderated by Bonna Mirza, the discussion covered how theatre in Bangladesh evolved and came to its current shape. When questions were invited from the audience, the panellists were asked if theatre can change the society.

In her reply, Nitra said, “As a tool theatre alone cannot change society, it needs some other components essentially. It can only be a catalyst to change.”

The second day of the literary festival had a tribute to Bob Dylan, performed by Stone Free, probably the best in town in rendering Dylan songs.

The band also paid homage to the recently deceased Leonard Cohen by performing “Hallelujah.” Cohen is widely celebrated as another legendary lyricist in folk-rock after Dylan.

In another panel on Baul songs, panellists opined that Bauls, who lead an essentially non-elite and unconventional life, have made a huge contribution to our secular culture. Folk singers Arup Rahee, Mehedi Hasan Nill, and Shofi Mondol took part as panellists in the session.

Under the vibrant canopy and colourful stage lights, Dhaka Lit Fest 2016 ended with a captivating show by the baul group, Shikor Bangladesh All Stars.

They paid a tribute to their guru, Rob Fakir, who passed away recently. In the show, the singers engaged with the audience in conversation between the acts as the conversational style holds true to the tradition of baul performances, as dialogue is part of the treat. l

Hasan Mansoor Chatak is culture reporter, Dhaka Tribune.

Rajib Dhar

Syed Zakir Hossain

11 DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016

ARTS & LETTERS

DLF overview

What we achieved n Rifat Munim

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uring an interview conducted over email sometime in the first week of November, I asked Deborah Smith how she was feeling about attending the Dhaka Literary Festival 2016. What the 2016 International Man Booker winner said in reply brought out the most beautiful side of Bangladesh’s biggest literary congregation. Referring to Tilted Axis, her non-profit publishing endeavour dedicated to translating Asian literature in English, she said, “Very excited! ... This year’s lineup includes three Tilted Axis authors, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, Prabda Yoon and Hamid Ismailov, plus our wonderful translator Arunava Sinha, so I’m looking forward to the five of us getting together for a chat and possibly an embarrassing selfie.”

The selfie didn’t happen as imagined, she told me on the second day, but she did mingle with all of her authors as well as a whole lot of others. In a world where the rise of conservative ideologies is stoking up intolerance against religious and ethnic minorities, for three days beginning on November 17, the grounds of Bangla Academy, which hosted the festival, became the place

Sazzad Hossain

Syed Zakir Hossain

where writers of all ilk and colour came together in an uncompromising spirit of embracing diversity to carve newer avenues of thoughts through engaging exchanges, discussions and performances. The response of local writers was equally encouraging with most of Bangladesh’s renowned poets, novelists, activists and artistes participating in panels alongside the foreign guests.

And there lies the biggest achievement of this year’s DLF: wrapping up a programme of this magnitude, with more than 60 foreign authors representing 18 different countries, when fear of attacks on foreigners was running high following the brutal terrorist attack on a Gulshan restaurant in Dhaka that left 23 people dead, including 17 foreigners. The three festival directors (Sadaf Saaz, Kazi Anis Ahmed and Ahsan Akbar) deserve as much praise for their courage and commitment as do the foreign and local authors and the Bangla Academy who extended their all-out support ignoring all risks. In other words, the DLF was perhaps the strongest demonstration that to fear is to play into the hands of perpetrators of such heinous attacks.

The cultural ministry and the home ministry, too, deserve thanks for addressing the security concerns. l

Rajib Dhar

Rajib Dhar

Syed Zakir Hossain

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DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016