Tag: Bangla

How Jaladhar Sen Travelled to the Himalayas More Than a Hundred Years Ago…

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date September 15, 2025
1 Comment on How Jaladhar Sen Travelled to the Himalayas More Than a Hundred Years Ago…

A review of Jaladhar Sen’s The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal, published by Speaking Tiger Books, and a conversation with the translator.

Jaladhar Sen (1860–1939) travelled to the Himalayas on foot with two sadhus[1] in quest of something intangible. His memoir makes us wonder if it was resilience, for after all he lost his daughter, wife and mother — all within a few months. He moved to Dehradun from Bengal for a change of scene after his tragic losses before journeying into the hills.

Written in Bengali and first published as a serial in the Tagore family journal, Bharati, in 1893, the book was brought out in 1900 as Himalay. It has been brought to Anglophone readers by Somdatta Mandal, an eminent translator who has extensively translated much of Tagore’s essays and journals. She is a critic and scholar, a former professor of Santiniketan, an excellent translator to bring Jaladhar Sen’s diary to light. Mandal has given a lucid and informative introduction to Sen, his book and her translation — very readable and without the use of scholastic language or words which would confuse readers. Her commentary adds value to the text by contextualising the people, the times and the circumstances.

Her translation is evocative of the journey, creating vivid visual impact with the play of words. Sen is a Bengali who has picked up Hindi during his brief stay in Dehradun. That he uses multiple vernaculars to move around with two more Bengali migrants who have turned to a religious life and meets locals and pilgrims from a variety of places is well-expressed with a smattering of expressions from various languages and dialects. Mandal has integrated the meanings of these words into the text, making it easy for readers unfamiliar with these phrases to read and enjoy the narrative without breaking the continuity.

Sen is secular and educated — not ritualistic but pragmatic. You can see his attitudes illustrated in an incident at the start of the book: “We quickened our pace, but when we caught up to the two sanyasis, I felt a mix of amusement and irritation. One of them turned out to be my former servant, whom I had dismissed twenty or twenty-five days earlier for theft. His transformation was remarkable—dressed in the elaborate robes of a sanyasi, with tangled hair and constant chants of ‘Har Har Bom Bom’, he was barely recognisable as the thief he once was. It was sheer bad luck on his part that our paths crossed that day.”

At the end of the journey too, Sen concludes from his various amusing and a few alarming experiences: “Many imposters masquerading as holy sanyasis brought disgrace to the very essence of renunciation. Most of these so-called sanyasis were addicted to ganja[2], begged for sustenance, and carried the weight of their sins from one pilgrimage site to another.”

Yet, there is compassion in his heart as the trio, of which Sen was a part, help a sick young youth and others in need. He makes observations which touch ones heart as he journeys on the difficult hilly terrain, often victimised by merciless thunderstorms, heavy downpours and slippery ice. He writes very simply on devotion of another: “I felt happy observing how deep faith and belief illuminated his face.” And also observes with regret: “We have lost that simple faith, and with it, we have also lost peace of mind.” He uses tongue-in-cheek humour to make observations on beliefs that seem illogical. “In such matters, credit must be given to the authors of the Puranas. For instance, Hanuman had to be portrayed as colossal, so the sun was described as being subservient to him. However, with the advancement of science, the estimated size of the sun grew larger, and instead of diminishing Hanuman’s glory, his stature had to be exaggerated even further. Similarly, Kumbhakarna’s nostrils had to be depicted as enormous, so that with each breath, twenty to twenty-five demon monkeys could enter his stomach and exit again.”

Mandal has translated beautiful descriptions of the Himalayas from his narrative with lucid simplicity and elegance. When Sen chances to see the first snow peaks, the wonder of it, is captured with skill: “We were amazed to see a huge mountain of snow, its four large peaks encircling us. The sun was already quite high in the sky, and its bright rays fell upon those mountain peaks, radiating hues that cannot simply be described in words. Even the best painter in the world could not replicate the scene with his brush.” And: “Yet the scenery that unfolded before my eyes was simply magical. Standing in front of this pristine beauty, man’s power and pride were humbled. He could recognise his own triviality and weakness very clearly and, to a certain extent, grasp the greatness of the creator within his heart.”

And of course, there is the typical Bengali witty, sardonic banter creeping in to the narrative: “On certain days, when I felt inclined to indulge in minor luxuries, I would purchase a few pedas. However, such bravado was rarely worth the effort, as one might have needed the assistance of archaeological experts to determine the sweets’ actual date of origin—no one could tell how many generations of worms had made their home inside them!”

The translation has retained the simplicity of the narrative which Sen tells us was essentially his style. He had no intention of publishing what he wrote. He had started out in company of a sadhu with a staff, a blanket and a stock of Baul Kangal Harinath’s songs. He writes at the end: “I didn’t intend to write a diary. I had a songbook with me, and when that book was being bound, I had added a few blank pages with the idea of writing down new songs if I came across them.” He scribbled his notes in those blank pages.

The journey makes a wonderful read with its humorous descriptions of errant sadhus, frightening storms, descriptions of geographies and travel arrangements more than a hundred years ago, where the pilgrims live in shop houses and eat meagre meals, the perseverance, the wonder, the love and friendship one meets along the way. Though there is greed, theft and embarrassment too! Some of his narrative brings to my mind Nazes Afroz’s translation of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan.

Mandal tells us: “A prolific writer, Sen authored about forty-two books, including novels, travelogues, works with social messages, children’s literature, and biographies.” In real life, she describes Sen as “a writer, poet, editor, philanthropist, traveller, social worker, educationist and littérateur.” That’s a long list to wear. There’s more from Mandal about what the book offers and why she translated this unique travelogue in this exclusive interview.

How did you chance upon this book and why did you decide to translate it? How long did the whole process take?

I have been writing and researching on Indian Travel Writing for almost over two decades now and so was familiar with the sub-genre of travel writing about the Himalayas. In Bangla, there exists a great number of books on travel to holy places as part of a pilgrimage from the mid-19^th century onwards. But this book was unique because it was written by a secular person who did not go to the Himalayas as part of a pilgrimage but nevertheless got influenced by the other pilgrims with whom he went along. It was in the summer of 1890 when he actually travelled, and later in 1893, his perilous experience was published serially in the Bengali periodical Bharati which was then edited by Rabindranath Tagore’s niece, Sarala Devi Choudhurani.

During that period, with the proliferation of travel narratives being regularly published in several contemporary Bengali periodicals, Jadadhar Sen’s narration became very popular and after 1900 when it was published in book form, it took the Bengali readers of the time by storm. Its popularity led to it being included as part of the syllabus at Calcutta University. Feeling that pan-Indian readers who could not read the original text in Bangla should get to read this interesting text in English, I was inspired to translate this travelogue for a long time and Speaking Tiger Books readily accepted my proposal a couple of years ago.

The places visited by Sen might not seem unique in the present context, but the period during which he undertook the travel and the culture-specificity of it needed special attention. I was busy editing two volumes of travel narratives to Britain then, and after I finished my project, I took up translating this text in full earnest. It took me about three months to complete the translation, and I send the manuscript to the publishers in January this year. After several editorial interventions, it ultimately saw the light of day in July 2025.

Did you need to input much research while doing the translation? How tough was it to translate the text, especially given that it has multiple language and cultural nuances?

I did have to do some biographical research on Jaladhar Sen as his narrative is absolutely silent about why he moved from Bengal to Dehradun and the actual reason for his setting out on this particular journey. Interestingly, I was also researching about Swami Ramananda Bharati, who was the first Bengali traveller to Tibet and Manas Sarovar, and who wrote the famous book Himaranya (The Forest of Snow) whom Sen knew earlier and with whom he actually undertook the journey. With several cross references I could fill in a lot of biographical gaps in the narrative.

Regarding translation, it must be kept in mind that though something is always lost in translation, one must always attempt to strike the right balance between oversimplification and over-explanation. Translation is also a sort of creativity and the challenges it poses are significant. The intricate navigation between the source language and the translated language shows that there are two major meanings of translation in South Asia – bhashantar, altering the language, and anuvad, retelling the story. Without going into major theoretical analyses that crowd translation studies per se, I feel one should have an equal grasp over both translated and source languages to make a translated piece readable.

What are the tools you have used to retain the flavour of the original narrative? Please elaborate.

Readability of this old text Himalay in the present context is of paramount importance and though it is very difficult to replicate the grandiose writing style of late nineteenth-century Bangla, I have attempted to retain as much of the original flavour of the text as possible. Without using glossary or footnotes, the meaning of certain words becomes evident through paraphrasing the text. Thus, in keeping with Jaladhar Sen’s original work, the names of some words have been retained as they are. For example, the words dharamshala and chati—resting places on the pilgrim’s path—are so culture-specific that they are retained in their original forms. Sen also uses other culture-specific words such as panda (the Brahmin middleman who acts as the intermediary for worshipping the deity), the kamandalu (the water jug carried by sanyasis), lota-kambal (the jug and blanket that emphasise one’s identity as a sadhu), the jhola (the typical cloth bag that hangs from the shoulders), and the mahanta, or the head priest of the temple. Again, different terms such as sadhu, sanyasi, and yogi are used at different points to define ascetics and are often employed interchangeably. The term math, denoting seats of authority and doctrinal learning, has also been retained in its original form. As a Bengali gentleman settled in western India— Dehradun—the author often refers to Bengal as his desh, which literally means ‘country’, but in his parlance refers to the region of Bengal, which is as much a part of India as Dehradun. This definition should not create any confusion in the reader’s mind.

You, like the author, never clearly tell us why Sen starts out on such a perilous journey. Why do you think he went to this journey?

From evidential sources we get to know that like any other domestic person Jaladhar Sen began his career as a teacher in a High School in 1883 in Faridpur in Bengal. He got married in 1885 but however, a few years later he endured a great personal tragedy, losing his family members in quick succession. In 1887, his newborn daughter died on the twelfth day after her birth, and his wife passed away another twelve days later. Within three months, his mother also died. Overwhelmed by grief and seeking solace, he moved to Dehradun at the foothills of the Himalayas, where he worked as a teacher.

It is known that Sen did not venture into the Himalayas out of wanderlust. Dejected with domestic life, he apparently went to Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, where he chanced upon Swami Ramananda Bharati, an elderly Bengali sadhu whom he had known previously. He decided to accompany him on a trek all the way to Badrinath on foot. This was the background to his Himalayan travels and how he became a paribrajak sadhu or a traveller saint. The year was 1890.

Even though the memoir spans only a month, the author underwent many changes. Would you regard this book as a bildungsroman of sorts, especially as there is a self-realisation that comes to Sen at the end? Please elaborate.

In his travel account Sen documents his experiences of journeying to various places of religious significance, namely Devaprayag, Rudraprayag, Karnaprayag, Vishnuprayag and Joshimath before reaching the temple town of Badrinath in the upper Himalayas. He undertook this journey as a secular sojourner. But the travel impacted his soul in such a way that at the end of his narrative he admits that he had ventured in the Himalayas with a funeral pyre burning within his heart; and he merely embraced the cool breeze of the mountains with his hands and pressed the hard snow against his chest. He is doubtful whether he had the time or the state of mind to witness the eternal glory of the Lord revealed in the heavenly scenes around him. Could he lift his head and look towards heaven? That sense of wonder was absent within him. But some sort of change had already appeared within him. In this context, I feel the last two sentences of his narrative to be very significant when he states: “If anyone feels inspired to visit the Himalayas after reading this simple travel narrative of mine, then all my writing will have been worthwhile. And if anyone journeys towards the feet of the god of the Himalayas, my life would have been fulfilled.”

What was your favourite part of the book. Did you enjoy translating some things over others? Please elaborate.

There are several sections in the book which I really enjoyed translating. Most of them relate to specific incidents that Sen encountered during his travels and how human nature was the same everywhere. The first one was when they were on their way to Devaprayag and in his diary entry on 11^th May, he tells us about the incident when his money pouch along with the Swamiji’s tiger skin was stolen on the way and how with the help of a panda he managed to retrieve it after a lot of effort. Though they were not very much spiritually inclined, they realized that there were crooks on the way to the pilgrimage sites who also dressed up as sadhus and everyone could not be trusted in good faith.

The second memorable incident is when trekking during extremely inclement weather — rain and thunderstorm– and when stones rushed down from the mountain slopes nearly killed them, how Achyutananda or Vaidantik who was accompanying them managed to protect him by shielding from the natural calamities with his own body as a mother hen does to protect her chicks.

The third interesting incident that Sen narrates is dated 3^rd June when they got stranded at a chati in Pipul Kuthi. The head constable or jamadar sahib arrived there to enquire about a theft and Sen tells us how even in that remote mountainous region, the police had the reputation for rudeness and stern behaviour as the Bengal police had. He writes, “These officers, tasked with restraining wrongdoers and protecting civil society, displayed the same demeanour no matter where they were stationed. It seemed that the police were the same everywhere.”

Another memorable section is when they chance upon a young boy who probably ran away from his house and was trekking with them for some part of the way. The way in which the sick lad was ultimately deposited under the care of a doctor in the local hospital is extremely moving. Several other sections can also be mentioned here but it will turn my reply excessively long.

Why did you feel the need to bring this book to a wider readership? Are you translating more of his books?

I have already mentioned the importance of Sen’s travelogue in charting the long tradition and rich repertoire of Bengali travel narratives on the Himalayas that focus on travel as pilgrimage. As early as 1853, Jadunath Sarbadhikari embarked on a journey from a small village in Bengal to visit the sacred shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath. Returning in 1857, he chronicled his travels in Tirtha Bhraman (1865). Two lesser-known pilgrimages to the Himalayas were undertaken by monks of the Ramkrishna Mission order – Swami Akhandananda and Swami Apurvananda—in 1887 and 1939, respectively. Their travelogues were published many years later by Udbodhan Karyalaya, the official mouthpiece of the Mission. In both narratives, we find vivid details of the hardships of travelling during that period, marked by limited financial resources and minimal material comforts.

Jaladhar Sen’s narrative also holds a significant position in this chronological trend of writing about travelling in the Himalayas. From the 1960s onwards we find a proliferation of Himalayan travel writing in Bangla by writers such as Prabodh Kumar Sanyal, Shonku Maharaj, Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay and others, and many of these texts need to be translated provided one finds a responsive publisher for them. I am not translating Jaladhar Sen anymore, though as a prolific writer Sen authored about forty-two books, including novels, travelogues, works with social messages, children’s literature, and biographies.

How do you choose which text to translate? You always seem focussed on writers who lived a couple of centuries ago. Why do you not translate modern writers?

There is no hard and fast rule for selecting which text I want to translate. I have already translated several travel texts by Bengali women beginning from Krishnabhabini Das’s A Bengali Lady in England, 1876, to later ones. But I have not translated any travelogue about the Himalayas before. Here I must be candid about two issues. I pick upon writers usually whose texts are free of copyright as that does not entail a lot of extra work securing permissions etc. The second more practical reason is that I still have a long bucket list of translations I would like to do provided I find an agreeing publisher. But that is very difficult because several of my proposals have been rejected by publishing houses because they feel it will not be marketable in the current scenario.

As for the query about translating modern writers let me narrate a particular incident. As a woman writer and as someone interested in translating travel narratives of all kinds, I had approached Nabanita Dev Sen through a willing publisher to translate her visit to the Kumbh Mela that she wrote about in her book titled Koruna Tomar Kone Poth Diye[3]. After seeking necessary permission and meeting her personally on several occasions to discuss several chapters, I gradually got frustrated because even after three sets of corrections, the translation did not satisfy her.

She consulted several other people, including her own daughter, and ultimately told me that she couldn’t accept my translation because she ‘didn’t find herself in it.’ The colloquial Bangla humour in some places were not sufficiently translated. As far as I got to know from the publisher, she changed editors thrice, and in the end the translated book was published with one of the editors named as the ‘translator’. When I chanced to meet her at my university on a different occasion, Nabaneetadi told me that she had mentioned my name in the acknowledgement section of the book, which of course I didn’t bother to buy or check. From such a bitter experience, I feel staying with writers dead long ago is a safer bet for me.

You are working on a new translation. Will you tell us a bit about your forthcoming book?

As I have already mentioned, I found Swami Ramananda Bharati’s Himaranya (The Forest of Snow) to be a companion piece for translation. Not only is this significant because it was the same Swamiji with whom Jaladhar Sen travelled to the Himalayas, and though his name is not mentioned anywhere by Sen, we get to know a lot about him already through his narrative. As a monk, Bharati travelled to Mount Kailash and Manas Sarovar in Tibet during 1898, the first Bengali to do so. These travels form the basis of Himaranya. It was not entirely ‘spiritual’ or ‘theological’ but rather depended on the traveller’s own temperament. There are presentations of secular interests and considerations, and modern readers can relate to them easily, especially because the route to Kailash and Manas Sarovar has now been opened for Indian pilgrims once again and several groups are going there every other day. The manuscript is already with the publisher and hopefully the book should see the light of day by the end of this year if everything goes well.

You have translated so many voyages by Tagore, by Sen, do you now want to bring out your own travelogues or memoirs?

I have been translating travel narratives of different kinds for a long time now. I still plan to do a few more if I get a proper publisher for the same. I am an avid traveller myself and have actually trekked to Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri twice. I have also trekked for fourteen days to visit Muktinath in Nepal way back in the early 1980s, and during the pandemic days when I was confined at home, I managed to key in that experience in Bangla from the diary I kept at that time. That narrative was published in the online journal Parabaas which is published from the United States. But I have never taken writing about my own travelogues or memoirs seriously. Of course, last year and also forthcoming this year, a special Puja Festive number of a Bengali magazine has been publishing my travel articles. But there is nothing serious or academic about it.

Do you have any advice for fledging writers or translators?

Translating has caught up in a big way over the past five or six years. Now big publishing houses are venturing into publishing from regional bhasha literatures into English and so the possibilities are endless. Now every other day we come across new titles which are translations of regional novels or short stories. My only advice for young writers or translators is that since copyright permissions have become quite rigid and complicated nowadays, it is always advisable to seek permission from the respective authorities before venturing into translating anything. I was quite young and naïve earlier and just translated things I liked without seeking prior approval and as usual those works never saw the light of day. Also, as time went by, I learnt that translating should have as its prime motive current readability and not always rigidly adhering to being very particular about remaining close to each individual line of the source text. The target readership should also be kept in mind and so the choice of words used and glossary should be eliminated or kept to a minimum. The meaning of a foreign word should as far as possible be embedded within the text itself. All these issues would definitely make translating an enjoyable experience.

Thanks for the wonderful translation and your time.

[1] Mendicants. Sadhu and swami also have the same meaning

[2] Marijuana

[3] Translates from Bengali to The Path to Compassion, published in 1978. The translation was published by Supernova Publishers in 2012 as The Holy Trail: A Pilgrims Plight. Soma Das is mentioned as the translator.

(This review and online interview is by Mitali Chakravarty)

Click here to read an excerpt from Somdatta Mandal’s translation of Jaladhar Sen’s Travels

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Tags A Bengali Lady in England, Badrinath, Bangla, Baul Kangal Harinath, Bengal, Bengali, Bharati, Britain, Calcutta University., Dehradun, Devaprayag, Gangotri, Hanuman, Haridwar, Himalay, Himalayas, Himaranya, In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan., Jadunath Sarbadhikari, Jaladhar Sen, Joshimath, Karnaprayag, Kedarnath, Krishnabhabini Das, Kumbh Mela, Kumbhakarna, Manas Sarovar, Mount Kailash, Muktinath, Nazes Afroz, Nepal, Prabodh Kumar Sanyal, Puranas, Rabindranath Tagore, Rudraprayag, Santiniketan, Sarala Devi Choudhurani, Shonku Maharaj, Somdatta Mandal, South Asia, Speaking Tiger Books, Swami Ramananda Bharati, Syed Mujtaba Ali, Tagore, Tirtha Bhraman, Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay, United States, Vishnuprayag, Yamunotri

Interview

“Words became my dwelling place”

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date August 14, 2025
No Comments on “Words became my dwelling place”

A conversation with Neeman Sobhan

Neeman Sobhan, born in the West Pakistan of Pre-1971, continues a citizen of both her cultural home, Bangladesh, and her adopted home, Italy. Her journey took her to US for five years but the majority of times she has lived in Italy – from 1978. What does that make her?

She writes of her compatriots by culture – Bangladeshis — but living often in foreign locales. Her non-fiction, An Abiding City, gives us glimpses of Rome. These musings were written for Daily Star and then made into a book in 2002. Her short stories talk often of the conflicting cultures and the commonality of human emotions that stretch across borders. And yet after living in Rome for 47 years – the longest she has lived in any country – her dilemma as she tells us in this interview – is that she doesn’t know where she belongs, though her heart tugs her towards Bangladesh as she grows older. In this candid interview, Neeman Sobhan shares her life, her dreams and her aspirations.

Where were you born? And where did you grow up?

I was born in Pakistan, rather in the undivided Pakistan of pre-1971: the strange land we had inherited from our grandparents’ and parents’ generation when British colonial India was partitioned in 1947 down the Radcliffe line, creating an entity of two wings positioned a thousand miles apart on either side of India! The eastern wing, or East Pakistan was formerly East Bengal, and my cultural roots are in this part of the region because I come from a Bengali Muslim family. But I was born not there but in West Pakistan, which is culturally and linguistically distinct from Bengal, comprising the regions of Western Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and the NWFP (North-West Frontier Provinces, bordering Afghanistan), where the official language is Urdu.

So, my birthplace was the cantonment town of Bannu in the NWFP, (now KPK or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).

Perhaps my life as the eternal migrant, living outside expected geographical boundaries started right there, at birth.

My father’s government job meant being posted in both wings of Pakistan. So, I grew up all over West Pakistan, and in Dhaka, whenever he was posted back to East Pakistan. Much of my childhood and girlhood were spent in Karachi (Sindh), Multan and Kharian (Punjab) and Quetta (Balochistan).

How many years did you spend in Pakistan?

The total number of years I spent in undivided Pakistan (West Pakistan, now Pakistan, and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) is about two decades, or one year short of twenty years. From my birth in 1954, my growing years, till I left the newly independent Bangladesh in 1973 when I got married and came to the US at the age of nineteen.

What are your memories about your childhood in West Pakistan? I have read your piece where you mention your interactions with fruit pickers in Quetta. Tell us some more about your childhood back there.

I have wonderful memories of growing up in West Pakistan, in Karachi, Multan and Kharian of the late 50’s and early 60’s (despite the era of Martial Law under Field Marshall Ayub Khan, and later his military-controlled civilian government). However, the political environment is invisible and irrelevant to a child’s memories that center around family, school and playmates, till he reaches the teen years and becomes aware of the world of adults. Since, my father’ job entailed us going back and forth between West and East Pakistan, by the time we arrived in Quetta in late 1967, it ended up being my father’s last posting, because by then Ayub Khan’s regime was tottering under protests in both wings of Pakistan; and by the time (I should say in the nick of time) we left for Dhaka, it was already the turbulent year of 1970, which turned Pakistan upside down with General Yahya Khan becoming the new Marshall Law administrator. When we returned to Dhaka, it was the beginning of the end for Pakistan, with preparations for the first democratic general elections, and the blood soaked nine months war of independence for Bangladesh about to be staged.

But as a child, growing up in a Pakistan that was till then my own country, what remains in my treasure trove of memories are only the joys of everyday life, and the friendships (with those whom I never saw again, except one school friend from Quetta with whom I reunited in our middle age in Toronto, Canada!)

Also precious are the road trips with my five siblings and our adventurous mother, as we always accompanied our father on his official tours, across the length and breadth of West Pakistan.

But if I start to recount all my precious memories, I will need to write a thick memoir. And that is exactly what I have been doing over the years: jotting down my recollections of my past in Pakistan, for my book, a novel that is a cross between fact and fiction. The happy parts are all true, but the sad ones relating to the war that my generation underwent in 1971 as teenagers is best dealt with from the distance of fiction.

What I can offer is a kaleidoscopic view of some random memories: the red colonial brick residence of my family in the 60’s in Multan, one of the hottest cities of Punjab, known for its aandhi — dust storms — that would suddenly blow into the courtyard of the inner garden in the middle of the night as my sister and I slept on charpoys laid out in the cool lawn under a starlit sky, and being bundled up in our parents’ arms and rushed indoors; tasting the sweetest plums left to chill in bowls of ice; being cycled to school by the turbaned chowkidar weaving us through colourful bazars to the Parsi run ‘Madam Chahla’s Kindergarten School’ or on horse drawn tanga (carriages); learning to write Urdu calligraphic letters on the wooden takhta (board) with weed Qalam(pens) and a freshly mixed ink from dawaat (ink pots); and to balance this, my mother helping us to write letters in Bengali to grandparents back in East Pakistan on sky-blue letter pads, our tongues lolling as pencils tried to control the Brahmic alphabet-spiders from escaping the page.

In Karachi, returning home on foot from school with friends under a darkening sky that turned out to be swarms of locusts. Learning later that these grain eating insects were harmful only to crops not humans (and Sindhis actually eat them like fried chicken wings) does not take away the thrill of our adventure filled with exaggerated, bloodcurdling shrieks to vie with the screen victims of Hitchcock’s The Birds, viewed later as adults in some US campus. Picnics and camel rides on the seabeaches of Clifton, Sandspit, or Paradise Point. Near our home, standing along Drigh Road (the colonial name later changed to Shahrah-e-Faisal after King Faisal of Arabia, I later heard) waving at the motorcade of Queen Elizabeth II passing by with Ayub Khan beside her in a convertible with its roof down. That was in the 60’s. Later in 1970, embarking with my family on the elegant HMV Shams passenger ship at Karachi port for our memorable week long journey back to Dhaka across the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, with a port of call at Colombo in what was still Ceylon, to disembark at Chittagong port, not knowing then that we were waving goodbye not just to the Karachi of our childhood but a part of our own country that would soon become the ‘enemy’ through its marauding army.

But I reset my memories and bring back the beauty and innocence of childhood with images of my family’s first sight of snowfall in Quetta, the garden silently filling with pristine layers of snowflakes piling into a cloudy kingdom under the freshly tufted pine trees, as we sipped hot sweet ‘kahwa’ tea, and cracked piles of the best chilgoza pine-nuts and dried fruits from Kabul. And since Quetta was our last home in Pakistan, I leave my reminiscences here.

There are so many ways to enter the past. Photographs in albums discolor after a time, but words keep our lived lives protected and intact to be accessible to the next generation. I hope my novel-memoir will provide this.

How many countries have you lived in? Where do you feel you belong — Bangladesh, Pakistan, US or Italy — since you have lived in all four countries? Do you see yourself a migrant to one country or do you see yourself torn between many?

I have indeed lived in four countries, for varying lengths of time. In the sense of belonging, each country and stage of my life has left its unique impact. But I have still not figured out where I belong.

Although I lived in Pakistan and Bangladesh from birth till I was nineteen, these were the formative years of my life, and I feel they have coloured who I am fundamentally. The culture and languages of the subcontinent is fundamental to me as a human being. Also, having shared my parent’s experience of being almost foreigners and expats in their own country, trying to speak Urdu to create a Bengali lifestyle at home in a culturally diverse world of Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis or Pathans, I know it made them (and us as a family), different from our compatriots in East Pakistan who never left their region and had only superficial understanding of the West Pakistanis. My introduction to a migrant’s life and its homesickness started there, observing my parents’ life.

When I moved to the US after my marriage in 1973, it was to follow my husband Iqbal, to the Washington-Maryland area, where he had moved earlier as a PhD student after giving up, in 1971, his position in the Pakistani central government where he was an officer of the CSP (Civil Service of Pakistan) cadre. These were the days of being newly married and setting up our first home, albeit in a tiny student’s apartment, because more than as a home maker, I spent 5 years attending the University of Maryland as an undergraduate and then a graduate student. We thought our future might be here in the US, he working as an economist for a UN agency, and I teaching at a university. A classic version of the upwardly mobile American immigrant life.

But before we settled down, we decided to pursue a short adventure, and Iqbal and I came to Italy in 1978, from the US, on a short-term assignment with FAO, a Rome based agency of the UN. The mutual decision was to move here, temporarily! We would keep our options open for returning to the US if we did not like our life in Italy.

Well, that never happened! And given the fact that since then, we have spent the last 47 years in Italy, the Italian phase of my life is the longest period I have ever spent in any country in the last 71 years!

Meanwhile, we slowly disengaged ourselves from the US and it was clear that if we had to choose between two countries as our final homes, it would be between Bangladesh, our original home country, and Italy our adopted home.

Still, living away from ones’ original land, whether as an expatriate or an immigrant, is never easy. Immigrants from the subcontinent to anglophone countries like the US, UK, Canada, Australia etc, do not face the hurdles that migrants to Italy do in mastering the Italian language. I am still constantly trying to improve my language skills. Plus, there is the daily struggle to create a new identity of cultural fusion within the dominant and pervasive culture of a foreign land

So, in all these years, though I love Italy and my Roman home, I do not feel completely Italian even if my lifestyle incorporates much of the Italian way of life. For example, after a week of eating too much pasta and Mediterranean cuisine my husband and I yearn for and indulge in our Bengali comfort food. Although I enjoy the freedom and casual elegance of Italian clothes, I look forward to occasions to drape a sari, feeling my personality transform subtly, softly.

Yet, I cannot conceive of choosing one lifestyle over the other. The liberty to veer between different ways to live one’s life is the gift of living between two or more worlds.

The only incurable malaise, though, is the chronic nostalgia, especially during festivals and special occasions. For example, when Eid falls on a weekday, and one has to organise the celebration a few days later over a weekend, it takes away the spontaneous joy of connecting with one’s community, forcing one instead to spend the actual day as if it were an ordinary one. I miss breaking my fasts during the month of Ramadan with friends and family over the elaborate Iftar parties with special food back in Dhaka or celebrating Pohela Boishakh (Bengali new year) or Ekushey February (21^st February, mother language day) in an Italian world that carries on with its everyday business, unaware of your homesickness for your Bengali world. Over the years, when my sons were in school, I made extra efforts for. But you know you cannot celebrate in authentic ways.

Of course, these are minor matters. And I am aware that by virtue of the fact that I have dual nationality (I’m both an Italian citizen, and a Bangladeshi), I cannot consider myself a true and brave immigrant — someone who leaves his familiar world and migrates to another land because he has no other options nor the means to return; rather, I feel lucky to be an ex-patriate and a circumstantial migrant — someone who chooses to make a foreign country her home, with the luxury of being able to revisit her original land, and, perhaps, move back one day.

Meanwhile, I feel equally at home in Italy and in Bangladesh because we are lucky to be able to make annual trips to Dhaka in winter.

Whether I am considered by others to be an Italo-Bangladeshi or a Bangladeshi-Italian, I consider myself to be a writer without borders, a global citizen. I feel, I belong everywhere. My home is wherever I am, wherever my husband and my family are. My roots are not in any soil, but in relationships.

I often quote a line by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz. “Words became my dwelling place.” It resonates with me because for me often, it is neither a tract of land, nor even people, but language, literature and my own writings that are my true sanctuary, my homeland. I feel blessed to have the gift of expressing myself in words and shaping my world through language. My home is etched on the written or printed page. My books are my country. It’s a safe world without borders and limits.

Maybe it’s the conceit of a writer and a migrant, nomadic soul, but I think our inner worlds are more substantial than our external ones.

When I read your writing, I find a world where differences do not seem to exist among people in terms of nationality, economic classes, race or religion. Is it not far removed from the realities of the world we see around us? How do you reconcile the different worlds?

I believe and trust in our common humanity, not the narrowness of nationality, race or religion. Nationality particularly is limiting, dependent on land, and boundaries that can shift due to physical or political exigencies. Nationality by conferring membership also necessarily excludes on the basis of manmade criteria, while humanity is boundless, all encompassing, and inclusive, based on shared natural, biological, and spiritual traits.

In my case, I consider the whole world my family. I say this not just as idealistic hyperbole and wishful thinking, but from the fact that I have a multi-cultural, multi-racial family. Only my husband and I are a homogenous unit being Bengali Muslims by origin, but both my sons are married outside our culture, race and religion. One of my daughters in law is Chinese, the other has an English-French father and a Thai mother. So, through my grandchildren, who are a veritable cocktail, yet my flesh and blood, I am related to so many races. How can I bear malice to any people on the globe? The whole world is my tribe, my backyard, where we share festivals and food and rituals and languages. We celebrate unity in diversity.

Kindness and caring for others are values I hold dear in myself and others. I believe in sharing my good fortune with others, and in peaceful co-existence with my neighbours, wherever I live. I believe in living with responsibility as a good citizen wherever I find myself. And so far, the world that I see around me, perhaps narrow, is peopled with those who invariably reflect my own sense of fraternity. Maybe I am foolish, but I believe in the essential goodness of humanity, and I have rarely been disappointed. Of course, there are exceptions and negative encounters, but then something else happens that restores ones faith.

Love is more powerful than hate and generates goodness and cooperation. Change can happen at the micro level if more people spread awareness where needed. Peace can snowball and conquer violence. The human will is a potent spiritual tool. As is the power of the word, of language.

Literature is about connections, communications, bridges. It can bring the experiences and worlds of others from the margins of silence and unspoken, unexpressed thoughts and emotions into the centre of our attention. It brings people who live in the periphery within our compassionate gaze. Language is one of the most effective tools for healing and building trust. Responsible writers can persuasively break down barriers and make the world a safe home and haven for everyone, every creature.

You have a book of essays on Rome, short stories and poems set in Rome. Yet you call yourself a Bangladeshi writer. You have in my perception written more of Rome than Bangladesh. So which place moves your muse?

Any place on God’s beautiful earth can move my muse. Still, the perception is not completely accurate that I have written more of Rome than Bangladesh. It is true that many of my columns, short fiction or poems are set in Rome, but they are not necessarily just about Italy and Italians. In fact, my columns and poems were written from the perspective of a global citizen, who celebrates whichever place she finds herself in.

Poetry, in any case, is never just about any place or thing, but a point of departure. It always goes beyond the visual and the immediate and transcends the particular to the philosophical. The sight of a Roman ruin may jumpstart the poem, but what lifts it into the stratosphere of meaningful poetry is the universal, the human. For example, even when my poem speaks of a certain balcony in Verona, the protagonist is not a girl called Juliet but the innocence of first love, in any city, in any era.

My book of short stories, even when located in Rome, actually concern characters that are mostly Bangladeshi. In fact, it is my fiction that makes me a Bangladeshi writer, because my stories are ways for me to preserve my memories of the Bengali world of my past and an ephemeral present. I write to root myself. I often feel that I should write more about the new Italians, the Bangladeshi immigrants generation, rather than the expats of my generation, but my writing stubbornly follows its own compass.

Regarding my book of essays, my original columns for the Daily Star were written about many other cities I travelled to, including Dhaka and places in Bangladesh, and encounters with people in various countries not just Italy. Constrained to select columns from two decades of weekly writing, for a slim volume to be published, I narrowed the field of topics to Italy and Rome. But I had many essays and travel pieces concerning China, Russia, Vietnam, Egypt, Brazil, Spain, Netherlands and many other European cities and Asian capitals. In the end, a handful of columns about Italy became my book An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome.

However, in the preface I said: “I must remind that the scope of the book, as suggested in the title, is ‘Ruminations FROM Rome’ not ‘Ruminations ON Rome’ with a tacit emphasis on ‘from’ because the writing relates to matters not just concerning ROME but also encompasses reflections of a more general kind. This is a collection of writings from a columnist who, within her journey through the Eternal City, also attempts to share with her readers her passage through life. I wish my fellow travellers a smooth sojourn into my abiding city, the one WITHIN and WITHOUT.”

I know that had I not lived in Rome but, say, Timbuctoo, I would find something to inspire me to write about. Of course, I am privileged to have lived in Rome and Italy, but nature is beautiful everywhere, in its own way, and there are other civilisations with rich cultures, histories, arts, cuisines, poetry and philosophy that can inspire the sensitive observer and writer.

My elder son lives in Jakarta, my younger son in Bangkok and in all the years of visiting them, I am blown away by the culture and beauty of the Indonesian and Thai worlds, and I have a notebook full of unwritten essays. And there is still so much of the world I have not seen, yet every part of this wondrous earth including my backyard is a chapter in the book of human knowledge. So, had I never left Bangladesh I would still have written. Perhaps “Doodlings from Dhaka!”

What inspires you to write?

Many things. A face at a window, a whiff of a familiar perfume, an overheard conversation, a memory, a sublime view…. anything can set the creative machine running. Plus, if I’m angry or sad or joyous or confused, I write. It could become a poem, fiction, or a column.

The writer in me is my inner twin that defines my essential self. I am a contented wife of 52 years of marriage, a mother of two sons, and a grandmother of four grandsons (aged 8-7-6-5). These roles give me joy and help me grow as a human being. But my writer-self continues on its solitary journey of self-actualisation.

Yet, I write not just for myself, I write to communicate with others. I write to transmit the nuances of my Bengali culture and its complex history to my non-Bengali and foreign readers and students, but more importantly to my own sons, born and brought up in Italy, and my grandchildren, whose mothers (my daughters-in-law) are from multi-cultural backgrounds, one a Chinese, and the other a combination of English, French and Thai. I write also for the younger generation of Bengalis, born or raised abroad, who understand and even speak Bangla, but often cannot read the language, yet are curious about their parents’ world and their own cultural heritage.

What started you on your writerly journey? When did you start writing?

I have always written. As an adolescent, I wrote mostly poetry, and also kept a journal, which I enjoyed reading later. It created out of my own life a story, in which I was a character enacting my every day. It clarified my life for me. Interpreted my emotions, explained my fears and joys, reinforced my hopes and desires. Writing about myself helped me grow.

My columnist avatar is connected to this kind of self-referral writing, but in real life it emerged by accident when I was invited to write by the editor of the Daily Star. The act of producing a weekly column was a learning experience, teaching me creative discipline and the ability to marshal my life experiences for an audience. I learnt to sift the relevant from the irrelevant and to edit reality. What better training for fiction writing? For almost two decades my experience as a columnist was invaluable to my writer’s identity.

Soon I concentrated on fiction, especially short stories that were published in various anthologies edited by others in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. I now realised that while column writing was about my life in the present tense and about the daily world around me, my fiction could finally involve the past. The result was my collection of short stories: Piazza Bangladesh.

Ironically, it was my book of poems, Calligraphy of Wet Leaves that was the last to be published.

Your short stories were recently translated to Italian. Have you found acceptance in Rome as a writer? Or do you have a stronger reader base in Bangladesh? Please elaborate.

Without a doubt, as an anglophone writer, my reader base is better not just in Bangladesh, but wherever there is an English readership. However, books today are sold not in bookshops but online, so these days readers live not in particular cities or countries but in cyberspace.

But living in Italy as a writer of English has not been easy. The problem in Italy is that English is still a foreign and not a global language, so very few people read books in the original English. Every important or best-selling writer is read in translation. This is unlike the Indian subcontinent where most educated people, apart from reading in their mother tongues, read books, magazines and newspapers in English as well.

This is why I was thrilled to finally have at least one of my books translated into Italian, and published by the well-known publishing house, Armando Curcio, who have made my book available at all the important Italian bookstore chains, like Mondadori or Feltrinelli. Also, through reviews and social media promotion by agents and friends, and exposure through book events and literary festivals in Rome, including a well-known book festival in Lucca, it has gained a fair readership.

That’s all I wish for all my books, for all my writing, that they be read. For me, writing or being published is not about earning money or fame but about reaching readers. In that sense, I am so happy that now finally, most of my Italian friends and colleagues understand this important aspect of my life.

You were teaching too in Rome? Tell us a bit about your experience. Have you taught elsewhere. Are the cultures similar or different in the academic circles of different countries?

I taught Bengali and English for almost a decade at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the University of Rome, La Sapienza., till I retired, and it was an enriching experience.

I studied for a year at the University of Dhaka before I got married and came to the US in 1973, where I continued my studies at the University of Maryland, earning my B.A in Comparative Literature and M.A in English Literature. I mention this because these experiences gave me the basis to compare the academic cultures in the Bangladeshi, American and Italian contexts.

I discovered more in common between the Bangladeshi and Italian academic worlds, especially regarding the deferential attitudes of students towards their teachers. In Italy, a teacher is always an object of reverence. In contrast, I recall my shock at the casual relationships in the American context, with students smoking in front of their teachers, or stretching their leg over the desk, shoes facing the professor. Of course, there was positivity in the informality and camaraderie too, between student and teacher. But with our eastern upbringing we cannot disregard our traditional veneration of the Guru and Master by the pupil.

In Italy it was rewarding for me to have received respect as a ‘Professoressa’ while teaching, and even now whenever I meet my old students. However, some of the negative aspects of the academic world in Italy linked to the political policies that affect the way old institutions are run, cause students to take longer to graduate than at universities in the UK or US for example.

Are you planning more books? What’s on the card next?

I have a novel in the pipeline, a fusion of fiction and memoir, that has been in gestation for more than a decade. Provisionally titled ‘The Hidden Names of Things’, it’s about Bangladesh, an interweaving of personal and national history. It’s almost done, and I hope to be looking for a publisher for it soon. Perhaps, it has taken so long to write it because over the years while the human story did not change much, the political history of the country, which is still evolving through political crises kept shifting its goal posts, impacting the plot.

Most of my writings illustrate, consciously or inadvertently, my belief that as against political history our shared humanity provides the most satisfying themes for literature.

To share my stories with a readership beyond the anglophone one, my collection of stories ‘Piazza Bangladesh’ was translated into Italian and published recently in Italy, as ‘Cuore a Metà’ (A Heart in Half) which underlines the dilemma of modern-day global citizens pulled between two worlds, or multiple homes.

Meanwhile, my short stories, poems and columns will be translated into Bengali to be published in Dhaka, hopefully, in time for the famous book fair in February, Ekushey Boimela. Then my journey as an itinerant Italian-Bangladeshi writer will come full circle and return home.

(This online interview is by Mitali Chakravarty)

Click here to read an excerpt from An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome

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Essay

What Is Your Name?

By Fakrul Alam

The very last words my mother had said to me constituted the question, “What is your name?” We were in the VIP lounge of Dhaka airport and she had just been wheeled in from an aircraft with one of my sisters. Another sister and I had gathered there to receive her, perhaps knowing as well as her, that she was close to dying. And yet she had managed a smile as she said to me, “What is your name?”

The words, indeed, amounted to a kind of game she would play with me whenever I would meet her at my sister’s house in Dhaka. It was what we call a rhetorical question since she most certainly did not have to be told what my name was. It was her way of reminding me that while I might be professor of English at the University of Dhaka, I — Dr. Alam, as she would also sometimes teasingly call me — should never forget that I had learned English from her, sometimes literally at her feet as she did housework, and on other occasions, when she had done the day’s work, at the table where all of us siblings would gather to study once we were old enough to do so.

On International Women’s Day, I would like to pay a tribute to my mother, her fierce belief in the importance of education, especially women’s education, and the rights of women to study and work and have parity in every sphere with men.

My mother was an outstanding student. Recorded as well as oral family narratives enable me to reconstruct her brilliant performance as a student as well as her aborted student life and its consequences. From one of my aunts’ contributions to the 100th anniversary commemorative volume of Feni Government Girls School, I am reminded that both in Class Four and Six she had made it to the All Bengal Merit List and had been awarded scholarships for her achievement.

From an uncle’s autobiographical narrative, I have an explanation of why she had to stop studying when she was in Class Eight. The only Muslim girl studying in a very conservative town, she had become an obvious target of their religious concern. “Why must a Muslim girl study after a point?” they would say. My mother would go to school properly veiled, but these men reminded my grandfather, who had once been a progressive Swadeshi[1]but was then embracing a very conservative Islamic position, that there were Hindu male teachers teaching in the school. And, they noted, educated women tended to be immoral. For good measure they added, “Is your daughter going to become a judge/barrister after studying?” What was the point of female education, after all?

Persuaded, my grandfather withdrew my mother from school. The clinching point for him, I learnt from my uncle’s narrative, was his own father telling him with finality, “Your daughter has to stop studying. It’s enough that she can write letters and read them!” My grandfather tried to placate her by saying that she could sit for the matriculation examination as a “private” student.

Both my aunt’s account and my uncle’s narrative l record my mother’s intense grief afterwards. For a while, she tried to concentrate on studying for “private” matriculation. But then the First World War broke out; everything was disrupted in Feni, and she was married off after a couple of years. Not only was she grief-stricken at that time, as my aunt notes in her piece, but she would carry her grief at being cheated out of an education almost to her grave.

However, my mother was nothing if not a fighter. My uncles would tease her and call her a “communist”, and if the word had been fashionable in the late ’50s and ’60s when they would always be visiting us in our Dhaka house, surely they would have also called her a “feminist”, although I am sure she would have detested the sanctimonious and self-serving ways in which the word is at times bandied.

What my mother missed in formal schooling, she made up by reading voraciously, whenever she could spare the time. A lasting memory I have of my mother, both after lunch and dinner, and after all the housework was done and our studies supervised, was of her going to bed, day after day and night after night, with the Bangla newspaper, the current issue of the weekly Begum, and some Bangla novel, usually by Sarat Chandra or some other best-selling Bengali author.

Always feisty, and despite being immensely religious and completely devoted to God and the Prophet, she would never miss the opportunity to berate ‘holier than thou’ Muslim priests and men for the way they treated women. Because she knew the religion well, she would always cite examples of how the place of women was not what it was made to be by patriarchal Muslim men of her generation and how veiling beyond a point was totally unnecessary and the ghomta and orna [2]were good enough, if one knew what was prescribed in the holiest of books.

But the most eloquent way that my mother protested against the deprivation she and her generation of Muslim women suffered because of their fathers and their friends and mullahs at large, was in her single-minded dedication to the cause of women’s education. Not only did she teach us and my four sisters the English and Bangla alphabet, but she also ensured that her four daughters as well as her one son had equal access to education. She insisted that her daughters earned the highest degree possible in the field of their choice and was proud when they became working women. She was saddened when a couple of them did not go beyond an MA degree and when one of them gave up her job. And she did everything for them as long as she could to ensure that they could combine not only higher studies but career goals that would help them realise their dreams. When I told my wife I would be writing a tribute to my mother for International Women’s Day, she reminded me that my mother had told her when we were leaving for Canada, where I would be doing higher studies, that she should not come back without earning a higher degree in some field or the other.

Moreover, my mother’s preoccupation with women’s education went beyond her family. She would help any woman wanting to advance herself, through education and through jobs. Whether it was her sisters or her relatives, or even their friends, she offered our house as a home to them and would become their “local guardian” or counsellor, if not a surrogate mother. She also went way out of her way to help any woman she felt was remotely in distress, or lonely, or deprived in any way, with whatever little she could do to help or comfort them. And she would teach anyone, male or female, she could get hold of, believing that education was above all!

There is a lot more that I could say about my mother but I must end here by saying that I took this occasion not really to give you the feeling that my mother largely made me what I am, but mostly to convey to you how she had pledged herself to parity and worked for the emancipation of women in her own way all her life. In that respect, and in so many ways, she was an exemplary woman and truly ahead of her time and thus worth remembering on this day.

[1] Freedom fighter – active in the struggle for independence of the subcontinent from British rule

[2] Covering the head with the loose end of a saree or an orna (shawl or large scarf)

(First published in Daily Star, Bangladesh, on March 9, 2016)

Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibanananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).

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Tags Bangla, Bangla Academy Literary Award, Bangladesh, Begum, Canada, Daily Star, Dhaka, English, Fakrul Alam, Feni, Hindu, International Women’s Day, Jibanananda Das, Muslim, Rabindranath Tagore, SAARC Literary Award, Sarat Chandra, Swadeshi, University of Dhaka

Review

A Saga of Self-empowerment in Adversity

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date December 16, 2024
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Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Daughter of The Agunmukha: A Bangla Life

Author: Noorjahan Bose (Author), Rebecca Whittington (Translator)

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

This memoir recounts the journey of a young woman from a small island in Bangladesh who discovers the works of Tagore, Marx, and de Beauvoir, ultimately emerging as a prominent advocate for feminist causes.

Noorjahan Bose is a feminist author, social advocate, and activist resides between the United States and Bangladesh. She is the founder of two organizations based in the US aimed at empowering South Asian women: Ashiyanaa (previously known as ASHA) and Samhati. Rebecca Whittington serves as a literary translator specialising in Tamil, Bangla, and Hindi.

The narrative of Daughter of the Agunmukha[1] intricately weaves the life story of Noorjahan Bose, a remarkable woman whose journey is marked by resilience, courage, and an unwavering quest for freedom. Born in 1938 in a rural area of what is now Bangladesh, Noorjahan’s early life was deeply intertwined with the rhythms of nature and the struggles of her family, who were farmers living in close proximity to the tumultuous River Agunmukha, ominously referred to as the Fire Mouth River. This river, with its fierce currents and unpredictable nature, serves as a powerful metaphor for the challenges Noorjahan would face throughout her life.

From a young age, Noorjahan was thrust into a world of hardship and trauma. She endured sexual abuse at the hands of male relatives, a harrowing experience that left deep emotional scars. Compounding her struggles was the influence of her mother, who, having been a child bride herself, was often constrained by the societal norms and expectations of their time. Despite her own limitations, Noorjahan’s mother became a beacon of hope and creativity in her life. She instilled in Noorjahan a sense of joy and the importance of self-expression, encouraging her to explore her talents and dreams even in the face of adversity.

As Noorjahan grew older, her thirst for knowledge and personal freedom became increasingly evident. Education, however, was not easily accessible to her. The societal barriers and gender discrimination prevalent in her community posed significant obstacles to her academic pursuits. Yet, with the unwavering support of her mother and the encouragement of local activists who recognised her potential, Noorjahan began to carve out a path for herself. These activists, driven by a vision of social justice and equality, played a crucial role in empowering her to challenge the status quo.

Emboldened by her experiences and the solidarity she found in progressive movements, Noorjahan’s journey took her beyond the borders of her village. She became an advocate for women’s rights, using her voice to speak out against the injustices faced by women in her community and beyond. Her activism not only transformed her own life but also inspired countless others to join the fight for equality and empowerment.

As she traveled the globe, Noorjahan encountered diverse cultures and perspectives, each enriching her understanding of the world and deepening her commitment to social change. Her experiences abroad further fueled her passion for education and advocacy, leading her to collaborate with international organisations dedicated to uplifting marginalised communities.

Noorjahan’s life has been marked by significant hardships, beginning with the anguish of Partition, followed by the loss of her husband when she was merely 18 and expecting a child. Additionally, she faced the relentless threat of cyclones that jeopardised her family’s home and means of survival. Despite these challenges, her bravery is evident throughout her memoir. She advocated for the rights of the Bangla language in East Pakistan, navigated the tumultuous period of Bangladesh’s Liberation War (1971), and entered into a marriage that transcends her family’s religious boundaries.

This poignant and compelling narrative encapsulates a profound journey of trauma, loss, resilience, and empowerment.

[1] Agunmukha means fire mouthed

Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Essay

Memories of Durga Puja by Fakrul Alam

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date October 14, 2024
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Ramakrishna Mission Durga Puja, Dhaka. From Public Domain

The very first time I heard Shah Abdul Karim’s [1]heart-stirring song “Age Ki Shundor Din Kataitam[2]”, I was transported to my childhood years in Dhaka’s Ramakrishna Mission Road, where we revelled during Durga Puja. Karim remembers lyrically “how happily” he and other village youths would spend their childhood days, “Hindus and Muslims/Singing Baul and Ghetu songs all together.” Karim’s song always strikes a responsive note in my heart because I recall how joyously my friends—whether Muslim or Hindu—and my family members would spend the Puja days every year in our Ramakrishna Misson Road paara or neighbourhood. Although my memories of those days have dimmed considerably by now, one thing I still remember clearly is this: after the two Eids, Durga Puja was the most important festival to light up our young lives then. Alas, those days are gone, not only for me, but for most people growing up in a paara in Dhaka.

One explanation for the spontaneity with which we would participate in the Ramakrishna Mission Puja festivities was demography. Our paara consisted mostly of Muslims but also of not a few Hindus. Our nearest neighbours, for instance, were two Hindu families. True, the events leading to 1947 Partition had created a divide of sorts between people speaking the same language but belonging to different religions, yet, on most occasions, we interacted freely with each other. Every day we would hear the ululations linked to prayers in our Hindu neighbour’s house just as they would listen to the azaan[3] drift into their homes five times a day from our neighbourhood mosques (sans loudspeakers!), summoning the faithful to join the congregation. On Puja days, they would send us prasads[4] and we too would share sweets our mothers would cook for our religious festivals with them. Pakistan was very much a state built around one religion, but do I deceive myself or were ordinary people much more secular and much less bigoted then?

Another reason for the ease with which we moved in and out of Ramkrishna Mission stemmed no doubt from the attitudes of the people who directed Ramkrishna Mission. Much like the Catholic American missionaries who ran the school and college where I would get my basic education, the saffron-clad men of this mission were always tolerant of paara children irrespective of their religion. We were allowed to play football in the Mission field, bathe in its pond for hours, pick the bokul flowers from its trees or while they were strewn in the shades, chat for hours on its lawn, or read in its reading room. Occasionally, one of the missionaries who would spend most of their time meditating or leading prayers for Hindus, would even drop in for a chat with my parents, both devout Muslims but very pleased to have others in our midst. Sure, there were limits even then, for we would not go inside Hindu prayer rooms, and our Hindu friends would never disturb us during our prayer times, but open-mindedness and forbearance ensured that most of the spaces we lived in in our community were shared ones.

*Dhakkis* or drummers performing. From Public domain

In any case, Durga Puja in Ramkrishna Mission was the most memorable experience of another religion I have ever had. The moment we would hear the tak dum tak dum of the drums pervade the spaces of our neighbourhood in the mostly warm but occasionally hot and humid end-autumnal days full of fleecy clouds in nearly always blue skies, our hearts would flutter. Those thrumming, magical beats announced unmistakably that the time for another fun-filled Saradiya[5]Puja week had come! The dhakkis or drummers, I do believe, were our Pied Pipers, for we would sprint like the spellbound children of Hamlin then to the open field in front of the mission prayer hall the moment we heard them. We would find them there pounding away on their drums, swaying and smiling and showing off their skills on those ponderous-seeming but colourfully decorated and deep-echoing dhols!

The whole of Ramkrishna Mission became a spectacle of sights, smells, and sounds for the next few days. No matter where or when we went to the Mission during the festival, we would experience a riot of colours, a medley of sounds, and a range of flavours that made the Durga Puja days[6] unforgettable. During Durga Puja, Ramkrishna Mission was truly in the carnivalesque mode, for there was an unmistakable mela or fair-like quality to it.

Hindu men and women would come dressed in their fineries, the married women glowing because of their vermillion smeared-foreheads and multi-coloured saris, the men looking happy and yet self-conscious in their bright but heavily-starched new dhotis[7], and the children beaming and giggling because of anything and everything. We too would dress up for the occasion because, whether Hindu or Muslim, this was an occasion to meet people, mingle, chat, display and (for the boys) ogle.

The sound of the drums would merge with the tinkle of manjiras[8], the chiming of bells, the unique note coming from conch shells, the ululation of women, the chanting of the mysterious but solemn-sounding Sanskrit prayers and the incessant chatter of not quite focused devotees. Indeed, there was a constant buzz in the Mission compound every day from mid-morning till late in the evening. In the Mission field, hawkers would sell hot and spicy pickles and chutneys, delectable sweet and/or sour savouries, and flavoured and syrupy drinks. At times the missionaries and volunteers would serve watery but delicious labra khichuri to anyone who cared to line up and eat from the plantain leaves. The smell of the different food items sold through the day would blend with the smoke and scent of the ceremonial dhups or incense lighted for the occasion. The press of the crowd, the feeling of excitement exuded by the people who sat to watch events or wander from place to place, and the assorted Bangla dialects heard all around us created a matchless mix.

But of course, Puja was mainly a holy occasion for the Hindus of the city. While we Muslim children did not understand a lot of what went on and were often mystified by the seemingly endless cycle of rituals, there was much to keep us absorbed in at least a few of the religious events. At the centre of the Puja, undoubtedly, were the idols built for the occasion. They are traditionally unveiled on the sixth day of the moon and placed on a pandal, a temporary structure erected for the veneration of the goddess Durga. Even if we did not know the import of all that we saw, who could not but be overwhelmed by the centrepiece, the resplendent goddess, ten weapons in her ten hands, a benign smile on her face, glowing in light golden colours, draped in a flaming red sari, standing on her lion mount, taming the demon Mahisasur.

Also awe-inspiring were the attendant deities (how “filmy” are the idols made now!). We were captivated by the welcoming melodies of “agamoni” and intrigued by the “Chandipat[9]” or reading from the Hindu scriptures. Day and night we were captivated by the rituals of anjali as the deity was offered flowers and prayers.

For most of us, one of the more fascinating moments of Durga Puja came on the ninth day, when a little girl was made the kumari, symbol of pristine beauty. But the climactic event was the immersion of the deity in the mission pond on the last day. From the morning of this day we would witness intense activity. First, devotees would begin preparations to move the deity, then the pandal would be carried to the pond to the sound of ululations, and finally the Durga would be immersed in the pond water to chants affirming her victory and predicting her triumphant return the next year.

The Durga Puja days mesmerised all of us in the paara in many other ways. For instance, the dhaakis seemed to punctuate the days and nights of the Puja week with aarati[10]and ritual dances, gyrating and drumming with abandon and delighting us children. In the evenings, kirtans or devotional songs absorbed older people who were content to muse to musical tunes even in the middle of a crowd. But what fascinated most people young or old was the jatra[11] that was staged in any one of these evenings. Like the morality plays that I would read about later in my English Studies when studying the history of the theatre of Elizabethan England, this folk genre had angels and demons, characters like Vice and Conscience, music and dance, pathos and farce. In short, it was made out of a recipe guaranteed to please. Its plot, typically taken from an episode of a Hindu epic, was of the kind that would keep children as well as adults spellbound.

Jatra performed on an open (often makeshift)stage with the audience sitting all around it. From Public Domain

All in all, Durga Puja was a truly enthralling and synaesthetic experience; no wonder our senses were satiated by the end of the Puja week! The most important thing, I now realise, was that for nearly a week our paara came alive and we became part of a carnival that went on for days. And in the process our neighbourhood managed to come somewhat closer, for this was one religious occasion where differences were overcome to a great extent.

In 1967, my family moved from Ramakrishna Mission Road to another part of Dhaka and I have never been to another Durga Puja held there since then. But by 1965, a change had already come over our paara. The India-Pakistan war of 1965 had widened the rift created by Partition, a rift that seemed to have been bridged to a great extent in our neighbourhood. A few of our Hindu neighbours left for India after the war. The rest, I know from subsequent visits, have migrated to India over the decades. The Ramkrishna Mission Puja, I hear, is still a huge event, but I doubt very much if the whole neighbourhood comes alive during puja week like it did when I was there.

Will coming generations in our part of the world ever rediscover the joy that comes from knowing that despite different beliefs, people can participate spontaneously in each other’s festivals and even delight in them fully? In 1985, after six years spent in Canada, I remember walking past a Durga Puja pandal in Khulna with a nephew. I asked him, “Have you ever gone inside and enjoyed the puja festivities?”

“No,” he said, “there is a smell that comes from the dhup that they use that I can’t stand. Besides, we aren’t supposed to!” It was a moment that first made me realise that the dream of a secular, tolerant, humane Bangladesh had received a jolt in the years that I had been away. Subsequent events have been even more upsetting for those of us who believe in the values encapsulated in that part of our original (1972) constitution that was later “amended”. It is thus that Shah Abdul Karim’s song has so much resonance for me that every time I hear it, I keep thinking of the Durga Puja celebrations in Ramakrishna Mission that I had been part of once upon a time: “How happily once we village youths/ Would spend our days, Hindus and Muslims/…./ I keep thinking: we’ll never be happy like then/ Though I once believed happiness was forever/ Day by day things get worse and worse.”

(Published in Daily Star on October 20, 2007)

[1] Shah Abdul Karim (1916-2009) was a baul musician of note.

[2] Earlier, we had beautiful days

[3] Muslim prayer call

[4] Offerings of food to God

[5] Autumnal festival – Durga Puja is celebrated in Autumn

[6] Durga Puja celebrations is spread over 5 days, though the count starts from the sixth day of the lunar month.

[7] A cloth wrap worn in place of trousers

[8] Musical instrument

[9] Special chants for Durga

[10] Prayers with offerings of incense and light

[11] Drama

Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibonananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).

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Editorial

Fly High… Like Birds in the Sky…

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date June 14, 2024
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He sees a barrier where soldiers stand
with rifles drawn, encroachers kept at bay.
A migrant child who holds his mother's hand


— LaVern Spencer McCarthy, Are We There Yet?

There was a time when humans walked the Earth crossing unnamed landmasses to find homes in newer terrains. They migrated without restrictions. Over a period of time, kingdoms evolved, and travellers like Marco Polo talked of needing permissions to cross borders in certain parts of the world. The need for a permit to travel was first mentioned in the Bible, around 450BCE. A safe conduct permit appeared in England in 1414CE. Around the twentieth century, passports and visas came into full force. And yet, humanity had existed hundreds of thousand years ago… Some put the date at 300,000!

While climate contingencies, wars and violence are geared to add to migrants called ‘refugees’, there is always that bit of humanity which regards them as a burden. They forget that at some point, their ancestors too would have migrated from where they evolved. In South Africa, close to Johannesburg is Maropeng with its ‘Cradle of Humanity’, an intense network of caves where our ancestors paved the way to our evolution. The guide welcomes visitors by saying — “Welcome home!” It fills one’s heart to see the acceptance that drips through the whole experience. Does this mean our ancestors all stepped out of Africa many eons ago and that we all belonged originally to the same land?

And yet there are many restrictions that have come upon us creating boxes which do not allow intermingling easily, even if we travel. Overriding these barriers is a discussion with Jessica Mudditt about Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet, her book about her backpacking through Asia. Documenting a migration more than a hundred years ago from Jullundur to Malaya, when borders were different and more mobile, we have a conversation with eminent scholar and writer from Singapore, Kirpal Singh. Telling the story of another eminent migrant, a Persian who became a queen in the Mughal Court is a lyric by Nazrul, Nur Jahan, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam from Bangla. Ihlwha Choi has self-translated his own poem from Korean, a poem bridging divides with love. Fazal Baloch has brought to us some exquisite Balochi poems by Munir Momin. Tagore’s poem, Okale or Out of Sync, has been translated from Bengali to reflect the strange uniqueness of each human action which despite departing from the norm, continue to be part of the flow.

Among our untranslated poetry is housed LaVern Spencer McCarthy’s voice on the plight of migrants of the current times. Michael Burch gives us poems for Dylan Thomas. We have a plethora of issues covered in poetry ranging from love to women’s issues, even an affectionate description of his father by Shamik Banerjee. Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Kumar Sawan, Prithvijeet Sinha, Gregg Norman, Anushka Chaudhary, Wayne Russell, Ahmad Rayees, Ivan Ling, Ayesha Binte Islam and many more add verve with their varied themes. Rhys Hughes has shared a poem on a funny sign he photographed himself.

We have a tongue in cheek piece from Devraj Singh Kalsi on traveling in a train with a politician. Uday Deshwal writes with a soupçon of humour as he talks of applying for jobs. Snigdha Agrawal brings to us flavours of Bengal from her past while Ratnottama Sengupta muses on the ongoing wars and violence as acts of terror in the same region and looks back at such an incident in the past which resulted in a powerful Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat. Kiriti Sengupta has written of a well-known artist, Jatin Das, a strange encounter where the artist asks them to empty fully even a glass of water! Ravi Shankar weaves in his love for books into our non-fiction section. Recounting her mother’s migration story which leads us to perceive the whole world as home is a narrative by Renee Melchert Thorpe. Urmi Chakravorty takes us to the last Indian village on the borders of Tibet. Taking us to a Dinosaur Museum in Japan is our migrant columnist, Suzanne Kamata. Her latest multicultural novel, Cinnamon Beach, has found its way to our book excerpts as has Flanagan’s poetry collection, These Many Cold Winters of the Heart.

In reviews, Somdatta Mandal has written about an anthology, Maya Nagari: Bombay-Mumbai A City in Stories edited by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto. Rakhi Dalal has discussed a translation from Konkani by Jerry Pinto of award-winning writer Damodar Mauzo’s Boy, Unloved. Basudhara Roy has reviewed Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali, translated by Sucheta Dasgupta. Bhaskar Parichha has introduced us to The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal by Gurcharan Das, a book that is truly relevant in the current times in context of the whole world for what he states is a truth: “In the current polarised climate, the liberal perspective is often marginalised or dismissed as being indecisive or weak.” And it is the truth for the whole world now.

Our short stories reflect the colours of the world. A fantasy set in America but crossing borders of time and place by Ronald V. Micci, a story critiquing social norms that hurt by Swatee Miittal and Paul Mirabile’s ghost story shuttling from the Irish potato famine (1845-52) to the present day – all address different themes across borders, reflecting the vibrancy of thoughts and cultures. That we all exist in the same place and have the commonality of ideas and felt emotions is reflected in each of these narratives.

We have more which adds to the lustre of the content. So, do pause by our content’s page and enjoy the reads!

I would like to thank all our team without who this journal would be incomplete, especially, Sohana Manzoor, for her fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to all our contributors who bring vibrancy to our pages and our wonderful readers, without who the journal would remain just part of an electronic cloud… We welcome you all to enjoy our June issue.

Wish you happiness and good weather!

Thank you all.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the content’s page for the June 2024 Issue.

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Tags Africa, Ahmad Rayees, Anushka Chaudhary, Balochi, Bangla, Basudhara Roy, Bengal, Bengali, Bhaskar Parichha, Bible, Bombay, Borderless Journal, Boy Unloved, Cambodia, Cinnamon Beach, Cradle of Humanity, Damodar Mauzo, Devraj Singh Kalsi, Dinosaur, Dylan Thomas, Earth, England, Fakrul Alam, Fazal Baloch, Great Wall of China, Gregg Norman, Gurcharan Das, Ihlwha Choi, India, Ivan Ling, Japan, Jatin Das, Jessica Mudditt, Johannesburg, Jullunder, Kiriti Sengupta, Kirpal Singh, Korean, Kumar Sawan, LaVern Spencer McCarthy, Malaya, Marco Polo, Maropeng, Maya Nagari: Bombay-Mumbai A City in Stories, Michael Burch, Mitali Chakravarty, Mumbai, Munir Momin, Nazrul, Nur Jahan, Okale, Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet, Paul Mirabile, Persian, Prithvijeet Sinha, Rakhi Dalal, Ratnottama Sengupta, Ravi Shankar, Renee Melchert Thorpe, Rhys Hughes, Ronald V. Micci, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Shamik Banerjee, Shanta Ghokhale, Snigdha Agrawal, Sohana Manzoor, Somdatta Mandal, South Africa, Sucheta Dasgupta, Suzanne Kamata, Swatee Miittal, Swetarani Tripathy, Tagore, Tarik Sujat, The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal, These Many Cold Winters of the Heart, Tibet, Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay, Uday Deshwal, Urmi Chakravorty, Wayne Russell

Essay

When the Feminist and the Revolutionary Met

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date May 14, 2024
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By Niaz Zaman

Roquiah Sakhawat Hossein was born in 1880, Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1899. Apart from their difference in gender, there could not have been more differences in the circumstances of their class and upbringing. Roquiah was born and brought up in an affluent Muslim family of Pairaband. Her brothers went to elite schools in Kolkata. Though she was forbidden to read and write Bangla or English as a child, her brother Ibrahim Saber helped her to learn both languages so that she could write fluently in both. Later, her husband, Sakhawat Hossein, encouraged her to read and write, both Bangla and English.

Kazi Nazrul Islam was born in an impoverished family in the village of Churulia in the district of Bardhaman in West Bengal. Nazrul’s father was the khadim or caretaker of a mosque next to his small mud hut. The death of several earlier children led to Nazrul’s being given the nickname “Dukhu Miah,” the sorrowful one, perhaps also to cast off the evil eye. Initially, Nazrul studied in a maktab, an Islamic elementary school. When Nazrul was about nine, his father passed away, and the young boy was obliged to support his family. This might have meant teaching the children at the maktab, cleaning the mosque, and participating in religious rituals which entailed reciting the Quran.

Sometime in 1915, Nazrul got admitted to Searsole Raj High School, and studied there till 1917. This was the longest time he had spent in one place and in one school. However, he did not sit for the matriculation examination, but went off to join the British Indian Army which had started recruiting Bengalis. Posted to Karachi, Nazrul started subscribing to Kolkata papers and also writing for them.

Begum Roquiah (1880-1932) with her husband, Sakhawat Hossein, in 1898

In 1898 – a year before Nazrul was born – Roqiuah Khatun was married to Sakhawat Hossein, an Urdu-speaking widower from Bhagalpur. A civil servant under the British Raj, Sakhawat Hossein, not only encouraged his wife to read and write but was so amazed at her piece of English writing that he showed it to Mr. Macpherson, Commissioner, Bhagalpur. Mr. Macpherson commended the quality and content of the writing. We do not know whether Roquiah sent the story herself to Indian Ladies Magazine (Madras) or whether her husband did so. Nevertheless, Roquiah’s first published writing appeared in the magazine in 1905. Three years later, her Bangla translation of the story – with some changes – was published as a small book by S. K. Lahiri and Co, Kolkata.

Sakhawat Hossein passed away on May 3, 1909, leaving a large sum to his widow to start a school. Roquiah initially started the school in Bhagalpur but was unable to continue there and moved to Kolkata. It was there that, onMarch 16, 1911, she re-started Sakhawat Memorial School at 13 Wellesley Lane. Besides persuading Muslim parents to let their daughters enrol in her school and running it, she also had to write letters explaining why certain things were being done or not being done in her school. In addition to these activities, she started writing for local Kolkata newspapers and journals.

Perhaps the earliest Bangla essay of hers that was published was “Pipasha.” This piece about Muharram was published in Nabaprabha in Falgun 1308 [1](Bangla) corresponding to mid-February to mid-March 1912. She also wrote in other journals such as Mahila, Nabanur, Bharat Mahila, Al-Eslam, Bangiya Mussulman Sahitya Patrika, Saogat, Sadhana, Naoroz, Mohammadi, Sahityik, Sabujpatra, Muezzin, Bangalakshmi, Gulistan, and Mah-e-Nau. News about her school was published in The Mussulman under her initials, Mrs. R. S. Hossein.

During his deployment in Karachi, Nazrul subscribed to Bangla journals from Kolkata and also sent them some of his writings. His first publication was a short story “Baundeler Atmakahini” [The Autobiography of a Vagabond], which was published in Saogat in May 1919. The short stories “Hena” and “Byathar Dan” [The Gift of Sorrow] were published in Bangiya Mussalman Sahitya Patrika in November 1919 and January 1920 respectively. Roquiah’s writings too were being published in Saogat and Bangiya Mussulman Sahitya Patrika. Though it is not known whether Nazrul and Roquiah actually met, it is impossible that they did not know about each other’s writings.

A few years ago, I asked Majeda Saber, Roquiah’s grandniece who has written considerably on her grandaunt, whether Nazrul and Roquiah had ever met. Majeda Saber did not know. However, even if they did not meet, it is quite evident that Nazrul and Roquiah did meet in print and that they shared some common ideas. Nazrul reveals a deep empathy for women in both his poetry and his fiction. The short story “Rakshushi[2],” about a woman who has killed her husband and gone to jail for her crime, is a sympathetic portrayal of a murderess in her own voice. Nazrul’s poem “Nari[3]” demands equality for women.

I sing of equality. 
In my eyes, there is no difference 
Between a man and a woman. 
Whatever is great and blessed in this world, 
Has come equally from both, man and woman. 

		(Translated by Selina Hasib)

His song, “Jaago Nari Jaago” [Rise Up, Women], gives a clarion call to all women to rise.

Rise up women – rise up like the flaming fire! 
Rise up, O wife of the Sun god, 
with the mark of blood on your forehead!! 
...
	
Like the fire blazing out of a smouldering heap, 
rise up – all you mothers, daughters, wives, sisters! 
              (Translated by Sajed Kamal)

In his epistolary novel, Bandhon Hara [4]– which began to be serialized in Moslem Bharat from mid-April 1920 and was published as a book in 1927 – the feelings of the women letter writers reflect Roquiah’s ideas.

The narrative of Bandhon Hara seems to focus on the soldier-protagonist Nuru. However, the letters of the women not only contribute to the narrative of the triangular love story but also reflect on the condition of Muslim women in seclusion. For example, Mahbuba writes to Sophie – her friend, who, like her, is also in love with Nuru – about the claustrophobic nature of the inner quarters where women reside. It is a place where even the sun may not enter. But women are not criminals, Mahbuba says. “We are entitled to some freedom, for are we not human beings? Are we not made of flesh and blood, don’t we have feelings? Do we not possess a soul?”

After Mahbuba gets married, she writes to Shahoshika, a Brahmo teacher and a family friend, that women are supposed to be self-sacrificing. She tells Shahoshika that she has no wish to be renowned for self-sacrifice. She would like to die but refuses to die locked up in the inner quarters. “If I have to die, I would wish to have all the doors and windows around me open wide . . . I want to die looking straight at Mother Earth”.

In her essay “Subeh Sadek” [Dawn], published in Muezzin between mid-July-mid-August 1930, Roquiah asked women to proclaim aloud that they were human beings, not possessions. “Buk thukiya bolo ma! Amra poshu noi. Bolo bhogini! Amra asbab noi. Bolo konye! Amra jarau olonkar rupe lohar sinduke aboddha thakibar bostu noi. Sokole somoswore bolo, Amra manush. Mother, proclaim aloud, we are not animals. Proclaim, sister, we are not inanimate objects. Proclaim daughter, we are not ornaments set with precious gems to be locked up in iron trunks. Proclaim together, we are human beings.” In Aborodhbashini [The Secluded Ones], published in 1931, several years after Bandhon Hara, she described the claustrophobic, unhealthy, and often fatal conditions of extreme purdah.

These similarities might simply be coincidences. However, it is clear that Nazrul thought highly of Roquiah and that she too reciprocated that feeling. Roquiah had been contributing to several Kolkata journals. In 1922, she contributed two pieces to the newly founded bi-weekly paper, Dhumketu[5], edited by Nazrul. The paper started publication from 26 Sravan 1329 BS/11 August 1922. A month later, a large extract from Roquiah’s essay “Pipasha”[Thirst] was published in the Muharram issue of 16 Bhadra 1329/ September 2, 1922.

Thanks to Selina Bahar Zaman[6], we have facsimiles of Dhumketu. From this valuable collection we realise that, from the very beginning, the paper not only voiced Nazrul’s anti-British views but also displayed his non-communal and non-gendered outlook. Many of the contributors to the paper included Hindu writers as well as women. There were at least ten women who wrote at least once. One of these included a ten- or eleven-year-old girl as well as a thirteen-year-old girl, the former Hindu, the latter Muslim. Mrs. M. Rahman, to whom Nazrul dedicated his book Bisher Banshi[7], wrote several times. Roquiah – as Mrs R. S. Hossein – was published twice in Dhumketu.

We do not know whether Roquiah sent the extract from “Pipasha” herself or whether Nazrul asked her for the piece for the special issue of twenty pages. The extract published in Dhumketu reflects on the plight of Hazrat Imam Hossain and the group of warriors, women and children, who accompanied him on his tragic journey to Karbala.

The only other piece by Roquiah to appear in Dhumketu was a poem, “Nirupam Bir” [The Dauntless Warrior], published on 5 Ashwin 1329 BS / September 22, 1922. Unlike “Pipasha”, the poem does not seem to have been published before. This time, Roquiah might herself have sent the poem to Dhumketu. She would not have had to go in person to the office of Dhumketu. With a good postal service, contributions were mailed to journals.

“Nirupam Bir” is a remarkable poem from a woman who has been called an “Islamic Feminist.” The 18 August issue of Dhumketu had published a photograph of Kanailal Dutt (1888-1908). Did this inspire Roquiah to write the poem? Kanailal was a revolutionary belonging to the Jugantor Group[8]. Arrested with a number of other revolutionaries, he was imprisoned in Alipore Jail. There, along with another revolutionary, he succeeded in assassinating Narendranth Goswami, a government approver. Kanailal was hanged on 31 August, 1908. He was the second revolutionary to be hanged by the British after Khudiram Bose – whose picture also appeared in Dhumketu.

In the poem, Roquiah eulogises Kanai as the dauntless warrior. The poem begins with the magistrate telling Kanai that he will be hanged. But Kanai – addressed here as Shyam, another name of Krishna – laughs. The one who willingly sacrifices his life does not fear hanging. “Moriya kanai hobe omor/ Shadhyo ki bodhe tarey? By dying Kanai will become immortal. Who can slay him?” The poem ends with a strident call hailing Kanailal: “Bolo bolo ‘Bande Shyam[9].’” It is a brave poem by a woman who was the widow of a government servant, a woman who ran a school for Muslim girls and promised their parents that purdah would be observed.

There were no Muslim revolutionaries at the time – though Nazrul’s friend Muzaffar Ahmad was a communist – and in Mrityukshudha Nazrul would describe a Muslim Bolshevik and in Kuhelika[10] he would portray a Muslim revolutionary. In his two poems on Durga, “Agamoni[11]” and “Anandamoyeer Agamone”, published in the Puja issue of Dhumketu on 9 Ashwin 1329 BS /September 26, 1922, Nazrul used the legend of the goddess to call for the overthrow of the British. In his editorial in the thirteenth issue of Dhumketu, 26 Ashwin 1329 BS / October 13,1922, Nazrul called for complete independence from the British: “‘Dhumketu’ bharater purno swadhinata chay.[Dhumketu wants India’s complete independence]” He quoted a line from his poem “Bidrohi”: “Ami aponare chhara kori na kahare kurnish [I bow to no one but myself].” Unlike Khudiram and Kanai, Nazrul did not resort to bombs or pistols, but to soul-stirring words. Just as in some of his writings, Nazrul revealed the feminist perspectives of Roquiah; in “Nirupam Bir”, Roquiah approached the revolutionary spirit of Nazrul.

Selected Bibliography

Hossein, Roquiah Sakhawat, “Subeh Sadek.” Rokeya Rachanabali ed. Abdul Mannan Syed et al, revised edition. Bangla Academy: 1999.

Islam, Kazi Nazrul. Unfettered (translation of Bandhon Hara).Translated by The Reading Circle Nymphea Publication: 2015.

Zaman, Selina Bahar, ed. Nazruler Dhumketu, Nazrul Institute: 2013.

[1] 1902 February

[2] Demoness

[3] Woman

[4] Without Bondage

[5] Comet

[6] Selina Bahar Zaman (1940 – 2004) Bangladeshi academician and writer

[7] The Poisoned Flute

[8] A revolutionary group started in 1906

[9] Translates to — I bow to thee, Shyam/Hail to thee, Shyam

[10] Enigma, first published as a serial in 1927

[11] Advent

Niaz Zaman is an academic, writer and translator from Bangladesh. She has published a selection of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s work in the two-volume Kazi Nazrul Islam: Selections. In 2016, she received the Bangla Academy Award for Translation. This essay was first published in In Focus, the Daily Star, December 12, 2022.

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Review

Mahasweta Devi: Writer, Activist, Visionary

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Post date April 15, 2024
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Book Review by Meenakshi Malhotra

Title: Mahasweta Devi: Writer, Activist, Visionary

Editor: Radha Chakravarty

Publisher: Routledge

Mahashweta Devi (1916-2016) was a renowned and much awarded writer-activist-translator who was reputed for her close observation and documentation of tribal life and its marginalisation and willed forgetting by dominant power systems. Among the many awards received by her were the Padma Vibhushan, the Ramon Magsaysay, the Jnanpith and the Sahitya Akademi Award. The stated aim of the present volume — in keeping with the overall objectives of the Writer in Context Series — is to present a more rounded, multidimensional image of Mahasweta Devi. This has been admirably accomplished by Prof Radha Chakravarty who is an eminent translator and academic herself.

In the ‘Introduction’, she unpacks the partial truths that underlie the stereotypical image of Mahasweta Devi as an activist. Highlighting the fact that Mahashweta’s representations of different forms of marginality bring together “the aesthetic and the political in ways that demand a more nuanced reading”, she reinforces the need to read Devi’s oeuvre as literature, and not only as “forms of social documentation or ‘witnessing’”. She interrogates the stereotype of the activist-writer and opens up the possibility of re-reading Mahasweta Devi’s life and work in “newer, more unsettling ways”. Further, Chakravarty highlights how her (Devi’s) creative writings in particular emerge as “ambivalent texts, simultaneously imbued with radical potential and a continued reliance on traditional forms of signification”.

Mahasweta Devi’s writings often demonstrate a tenuous divide between fiction and non-fiction. As a matter of fact, she emphasises on “the historical basis for her creative writings”, which is evident in many of her novels like Mother of 1084 (Hazaar Churashir Maa, 1974), and stories like ‘Draupadi’ and many others, which are based on the Naxalite movement. Simultaneously however, her literary works display a measure of social realism which, Chakravarty contends, is “offset by a visionary quality that enables the imagining of transformative possibilities.” The contents of this volume testify to the varied, diverse and sometimes “contradictory dimensions of her multifaceted genius”.

The book under consideration aims to set the record straight for readers outside Bengal whose views are based on the “tiny fraction of her Mahashweta Devi’s work available in English translation”. She was an extraordinarily prolific and versatile writer who wrote in multiple genres, including fiction, biography, drama, children’s literature, memoirs, travel writing, and literary criticism. She also occasionally translated her own work into English.

Chakravarty’s introduction and compilations in this volume foregrounds the aspect of Mahashweta’s political activism and how her writing itself becomes a form of resistance. Her early induction into Marxism was also partially attributable to her family background. Her family included Ritwik Ghatak (her father’s brother was a famed film maker) on her father’s side and on her mother’s, Sankha Choudhuri and Sachin Choudhuri, one a well-known sculptor and the other, the founder/editor of India’s foremost social science journal, Economic and Political Weekly, respectively.

Her early contact with Tagore and education at Santiniketan sensitised her to values of “inclusiveness, self-reliance, freedom of thought and expression, social responsibility, and environmental issues”. There, she also imbibed some of the spirit of the freedom struggle. Through her marriage to Bijon Bhattacharya, she grew familiar with IPTA[1] and the left ideologies. Later, she was associated with different radical movements in Bengal, Manipur, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Rajasthan, which find expression in many of her writings (Mother of 1084, ‘Draupadi’).

Her political commitment to these movements is evident in her use of language. Local vocabularies become central to the style and subject of Mahasweta’s writings. She wrote in 1983: “Since I remain immersed in indigenous myths, oral legends, local beliefs and religious convictions, I find purely indigenous words very potent and expressive.”

She was critical of writers in the Bangla literary establishment whose experiments with modernist aesthetics led to disengagement with the socio-political context. All the same, her writings evince special “linguistic, textual, and aesthetic strategies that can be compared to the practices of other writers who were experimenting with new approaches”, using non-linear time. Oral traditions fascinated her and she worked closely with Prof G.N.Devy in her later years, to campaign for the recognition of tribal languages.

She also translated and edited volumes on Indian folklore. In her own writings, she includes elements from the oral traditions, as in the snatches of local lore in Jhansir Rani (The Queen of Jhansi) or the lines from an untranslated Santhal song in ‘Draupadi’. As Chakravarty points out, “Heteroglossia, the use of language as an indicator of social hierarchies in multivocal, polyphonic texts, functions as a potent literary feature in her writings.” Alongside, many of her texts incorporate multilingual elements, as if to indicate the heterogeneities in South Asian societies and cultures.

The book is an comprehensive introduction to and reappraisal of Mahasweta Devi’s life and work. It is imaginatively conceptualised and organised into different sections, each highlighting diverse aspects of her work and the criticism thereon. Section 1 of the book called ‘Spectrum: The Writer’s Oeuvre’, offers the reader in English an overview of the full range of her oeuvre through brief samples of her literary writings across diverse genres to highlight her versatility. These include Jhansir Rani (1956), a fictionalised biography of Rani Lakshmibai, Queen of Jhansi, which amalgamates historical sources, folklore, and creative characterisation, to show up the contradictions in different versions of the Rani’s life and Hajar Churashir Ma (The Mother of 1084), her powerful novel about the political awakening of a mother after her son is killed by the police during the Naxalite movement of the 1970s, altered the trajectory of the Bengali novel. The extract from the final pages captures, in a style resembling stream-of-consciousness, the dramatic political power struggles in the outer world and the inner drama of the mother’s psyche.

The short story ‘Giribala’ narrates the plight of a girl married off at 14 to a man who sells their own daughters into the flesh trade to pay for the construction of his dream house. The play Bayen uses modern experimental techniques to present the story of a woman from the caste of Doms (cremation attendants), who becomes the victim of collective superstition and scapegoating and yet, in a final act of heroic self-sacrifice, saves the very community that has ostracised her. In a complete change of tone and style,’Nyadosh the Incredible Cow’, a delightful piece of writing for children, offers a witty anecdotal account of the devastating exploits of a cow in the author’s home. The extract from Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Mahasweta Devi’s English monograph on the iconic Bengali writer, reveals her incisiveness as a literary historian and critic and also provides a window to her own literary values.

As Chakravarty clarifies, given the vast body of critical readings on Mahasweta’s writings, a comprehensive compilation is beyond the scope of this book. Instead, the selected essays in Section 2 (‘Kaleidoscope: Critical Reception’) offer the reader (in translation) a sense of the paradigm shifts that mark Devi’s critical reception in Bengal, the rest of India, and in the international domain. Tensions, debates, and contradictions are highlighted, and overview of her critical reception over four decades –1957 to 1997 in Bengal is discussed by Arup Kumar Das. An essay by Dipendu Chakrabarti analyses the debates and controversies around her work. Dilip K. Basu’s account of Hajar Churashir Ma views itas a pathbreaking text that transformed the course of the Bengali novel in the 1970s.

The essays in English by other Indian critics include Sujit Mukherjee’s classic piece on Mahasweta and Spivak, Jaidev’s account of national allegory in Douloti, Arunabh Konwar’s comparative analysis of the creative use of fictionalised biography by Mahasweta and Indira Goswami, Shreya Chakravorty’s study of the politics of translation in the work of Spivak and Samik Bandyopadhyay, Anjum Katyal’s account of Mahasweta as a dramatist, and Benil Biswas’ reading of the transmutations of Mahasweta’s texts via stage and screen adaptations.

International contributions include an important new essay on Pterodactyl by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who interprets the rhetorical pointers in the text to speak of it as an activist mediation for the reader to learn about earning the right to intervene. Shreerekha Subramanian’s essay offers a comparative study of the discourse on motherhood in novels by three women writers across different languages, locations, and literary traditions: Mahasweta Devi, Toni Morrison, and Amrita Pritam.

Section 3 (‘Ablaze With Rage: The Writer as Activist’) includes some of Mahasweta’s activist writings, such as ‘Tribal Language and Literature: The Need for Recognition’, a passionate demand for the inclusion of tribal languages in official discourse; ‘Palamau is a Mirror of India’, where she critiques what she perceives the failures of the state to address the plight of the oppressed people in post-Independence India; and ‘Eucalyptus: Why?’, a scathing critique of the nexus between local powers and global market forces that have led to the replacement of natural forests in Bengal with eucalyptus plantations that have destroyed the local ecology that sustained human and animal life there. Alongside, in ‘The Adivasi Mahasweta’, Ganesh N. Devy reminiscences about his first encounter with Mahasweta Devi and their subsequent collaborations in activist campaigns and projects. ‘Haunted Landscapes: Mahasweta Devi and the Anthropocene’, by Mary Louisa Cappelli, connects Mahasweta’s activist writings and fiction on the subject of the Anthropocene to indicate the need to take a composite view of her writing and activism as twin manifestations of the same vision.

Section 4, ‘Personal Glimpses: A Life in Words’, includes extracts from Mahasweta’s memoir Our Santiniketan (2022), along with interviews (with Naveen Kishore and Radha Chakravarty) and reminiscences by her family members (Nabarun Bhattacharya, Soma Mukhopadhyay, Sari Lahiri, Ina Puri), friends (writers ‘Anand’ and Anita Agnihotri), and associates (Ranjit Kumar Das ‘Lodha’, Dakxin Bajrange), which highlight different facets of Mahasweta’s life and personality, bringing to life the woman behind the public image.

The book offers a comprehensive overview of Mahashweta Devi’s writing and will be of immense use to students, researchers and to general readers. As Chakravarty reiterates , “New trends in Mahasweta studies continue to evolve, including emphasis on her environmental concerns, ethics, planetarity and the Anthropocene, intersectionality, the use of incommensurate realities and registers of writing, comparative readings, and an emerging focus on her life”.

This is an ambitious attempt to give us an idea of the immense range of her work. While a full biography and a full bibliography of Mahasweta’s oeuvre is yet to be published, (encompassing the entire corpus of her work, including letters and other unpublished material) this volume is a vital step in that direction. In her excellent Introduction, Chakravarty charts the long-term impact of Devi’s work which continues to resonate in contemporary forms of activism and theatre. Through the actions of the many groups of people she inspired – the women of Manipur whose public protest imitated her fiction, to the performances of the Budhan theatre, and the rise to fame of the Dalit Bengali writer, Manoranjan Byapari— “Mahasweta’s impact and influence can be felt in many ways. She survives through the people she struggled to support all her life,”

It is an ironical reflection on our times that a prolific and much awarded Indian writer-perhaps deserving of the Nobel prize, should be excised from the university syllabus of a central university. This move has, perhaps paradoxically, elicited even more interest in Mahasweta Devi’s work and has also consolidated her reputation as a mascot, a symbol of resistance to state violence. A timely intervention, this volume proves yet again that a great writer, in responding to local , regional, environmental ethical concerns sensitively, transcends his/her immediate context to acquire global and universal significance.

[1] Indian People’s Theatre Association founded in 1943

Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is Associate Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory. Recently, she co-edited The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.

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Stories

Just Another Day

By Neeman Sobhan

These days, it seems to sixty-year-old Husna that the past is clearer than the blur of her mirror…

The black Morris had come to a halt near the major crossing on Top-Khana road. In the back seat, feeling as plump as the upholstery, Husna was sweating and dabbing her pretty twenty-year-old face and neck with the anchal end of her cotton Jamdani sari.

Pregnancy had made it hard for her to fit into the long tunics and gathered pants of her hitherto comfortable shalwar-kameez outfits. Beside her lay the folded newspaper that Baba, her father Dr. Rahman, had left behind that morning, when he got dropped at the Dacca Medical College. She picked it up to fan herself. It was the Bengali language daily, Azad[1], dated February 20, 1952. The headlines wafted back and forth, screaming in print the news of the continuing agitations around Dacca, East Pakistan, on the language issue.

Without needing to look at the paper, she knew about the meeting that day of the Language Action Committee from her youngest brother Shonju, the student activist. She knew that they were meeting to discuss a nationwide hartal[2] scheduled for tomorrow, a general strike against the government’s repressive policies and disregard for the legitimate demand of the people that their mother language be given its rightful place as one of the two state languages of the country.

Since January, when she had returned home from West Pakistan for her confinement, all the discussion around the family dinner table involved the Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin’s reiteration of Governor-General of Pakistan, Jinnah’s enraging declaration of two years ago that “Urdu, and only Urdu shall be the state language of Pakistan.”

She glanced at driver Rashid Miya. The middle-aged man seemed unaffected by the heat, unlike Husna. She was due for delivery in a “matter of days”, as Daktar Chacha[3], her father’s MD friend, had promised during the last check-up, patting her head as if she were still the teen-aged, newly married bride, who had left for West Pakistan a year ago with her banker husband, Jamil.

In a way she was glad that Jamil and she had left their familiar world of Dacca immediately after their arranged marriage, helping two newlywed strangers to bond over the shared adventure of starting life as Bengalis new to the quasi-foreign, Urdu-speaking territory of Karachi in West Pakistan.

Not that Urdu was unfamiliar to Husna. Despite problems with gender in the language, she could manage basic social conversation (though, it annoyed her that she never found any Urdu speaking Pakistani who could utter even a word of Bengali, or tried to). But she was proud that just by listening to the radio she had learnt to sing the popular film ghazals of her favourite Indian playback singer Talat Mahmood, or Noor Jahan, now a Pakistani singer, who migrated to Lahore recently, after the Partition of India five years ago.

It was a bit disappointing that Jamil preferred her to sing the Tagore and Nazrul songs her music teacher had taught her since childhood, when all along her heart hummed with film songs. Songs from Bengali and Hindi films that her strict mother had seldom allowed her to see, unless escorted to the cinema halls by friends and relatives, and on special occasions, like Eid.

She had hoped to right this wrong immediately upon getting married. After all, Ma always said, “Do whatever you wish….after you’re married.” And Jamil did take her to the cinema, though, mostly to see English films. Matinees or late shows at the Rex or Ritz, or an early show at the Odeon followed by dinner in a hotel like Beach Luxury. Once she had seen a belly dancer from Beirut or Cairo perform there and had felt embarrassed yet fascinated by the lissom female body, the unfettered, uninhibited moves. She had felt a dizzy sense of freedom just watching the dancer.

She sighed, running her hand over the watermelon that was her belly! Today she didn’t feel like that bright eyed young girl in Karachi anymore. Nor even a mother-to-be. She just felt like a bloated animal, she sulked looking out of the car window. They were at a standstill for what seemed like an hour. Minutes crawled like the runnels of sweat under Husna’s new high-necked blouse, inspired by the popular Indian Bengali actress Suchitra Sen. She dabbed the constant beading of her nose and upper lip that Jamil always said he found endearing.

She started a mental reply to his last letter. “Dearest one. . . ” She began, then floundered. This would be her third letter to him since she arrived in Dacca, but she was still not convinced about how to address him in writing. Some of her Urdu-speaking female acquaintances in Karachi called their husbands by name, though often using the polite pronoun “aap[4].” Ma always called Baba “Ogo[5]” or “Shuncho?” as in “Are you listening?” That was funny because even if Baba were not listening, Ma would chatter on.

She felt awkward and insincere mimicking the spontaneous affection in Jamil’s letters, calling her “Beloved” and his “Myna bird” and so many other endearments, while she was unable to address him in a way that felt comfortable and not a lie. As usual, she settled for no salutations but an outright “Kemon acho?”

How’re you? I’m as well as can be expected. It’s only February and already Dhaka is uncomfortably warm. How is Karachi? Here, it’s not just the weather that’s heating up, but the political environment as well. The ‘bhasha andolon’, which the English newspapers refer to as ‘the Language Movement’ is going on full force. Baba and Ma are always worrying about Shonju, who is out on the streets every day and in student meetings at all hours. He creeps home late and stores all his protest posters and fliers under my bed and fills me in on what’s going on. I often have to cover for him to the family….”

She pulled forward the end of her sari and tried to cover her belly and wipe her glistening face. Oh! Pregnancy was so boring; and this heat was claustrophobic. If only she could be like Shonju, free to just come and go, walk the streets or ride the cycle or take a rickshaw.

“Ki holo, Rashid Bhai? What’s up?” she asked, as she wound the window all the way down.

“Apa[6], I think there’s a procession approaching. I feel we should take a side street. This road is blocked.” Rashid was already turning the steering wheel.

“Oh! Then, no New Market today? I wanted to collect my harmonium that I left for tuning.” Husna’s voice was lost in a volley of shouts that came from somewhere ahead. Meanwhile, a rickshaw edged close to the car, and two boys, possibly students, with cloth bags hanging from their shoulders, started throwing pamphlets through the windows of a few buses and into other rickshaws that were milling around.

One pamphlet landed on Husna’s lap like the silly, anonymous love-note she had once received while being driven to college, just two years ago. She smiled. She had often wished the author had been her elder brother’s friend and her girlhood crush, Farid. But he was hardly the type to write something romantic to her. Certainly not “Beloved one” or “My Myna bird.” No, it was hard to imagine that serious, brooding, good-looking face bent over anything but medical books.

Rashid stopped to make way for a group of demonstrators, banners folded under their arms. Some raised a slogan and the rest joined in. “Manbo na! Manbo na! Never will we accept!” Husna’s heart pumped. Ah! Unlike her, these boys dared to proclaim that they rejected whatever was being imposed on them. Was this possible? She wished she could get out of the car and walk with the boys, raise her voice in slogans. Unthinkable and unladylike, of course; plus, she was a waddling, pregnant beast.

Rashid Miya swung the car around and they entered a narrow street that led out to a wider road. He braked to give way to a truck that sped past, full of khaki-uniformed police, their rifles flashing in the sun. “Too many demonstrations today near the university, Apa. I hope tomorrow, your father will not go to Medical College. And our Shonju Bhaiyya should be careful. He and his friends were getting on a rickshaw at the gate this morning, when I was wiping the car, and they were talking about processions tomorrow. I kept hearing the date. 21^st…Ekushey February. God only knows what will happen!”

“We better go home, Rashid Bhai. Shall we pick up Baba?”

“No, it’s only past 5. I’ll come for him later. Let me drop you first.”

Suddenly, preceded by the rumble of microphone, a van came into view. As it crawled past, it left the sputtering debris of words in crackling Bengali. She could decipher only: Section 144 imposed in the city… for 30 days…a ban on gatherings of more than 4 people in public places…processions or demonstrations to be severely punished…

Husna grew restless for Shonju. She prayed he would come home safely and not get embroiled in something foolhardy. He usually confided in her. At least, he used to till Husna got married. They were the closest among their many siblings. Even on the eve of her wedding, it was he and not one of her sisters who had insisted that if she had any doubts about this arranged marriage, it was not too late to speak up.

But she had never mustered enough courage. Or conviction. After all, Farid had not really confessed his feelings for her, and, from what she discovered about Jamil, he was a perfectly decent human being. In fact, she had no complaints about her husband, except that he was not the one her heart had chosen. If only she had met him on her own, and he had not been imposed on her, as if by state decree: “Jamil, and only Jamil shall be your husband!” And… if only elusive Farid had been clear about his feelings. Even if it were non-reciprocal, she would have felt free. Her heart would not now feel so mute.

Why was the language of the heart so complicated, so hard to decipher? It was as if its familiar truths, which could be accessed non-verbally, instinctively, were now locked in a foreign alphabet that she had to relearn in order to decode their meanings. Almost like that ridiculous proposal in the Legislative Assembly two years ago that Shonju had laughed with her about, regarding the use of Arabic script to write Bengali!

“Just imagine, Bubu, the word ‘mother’ would still be pronounced ‘Ma’ but not written ‘moye-akar’ but ‘meem-alef’! Our Brahmi script curling and prancing forward gracefully from left to right would be attacked from right to left by the slanting arrows of the Nastaliq squiggles, and then both colliding explosively in the middle!”

Oh! Shonju was so dramatic! A laugh escaped Husna, then she fell silent.

They were driving past the Ramna Racecourse. Her baby shifted in her womb. Later. . . many years later, she would think that her son Azeem knew that they were passing what in two decades would be a historical spot: the pulse point of an unprecedented political gathering on a March morning in 1971. On the seventh day of that month, a voice would rise like a colossal bird filling the Dhaka sky with its fateful, uncompromising call, announcing that the time had come “for the ultimate struggle, the struggle for freedom”: Ebarer shongram, shadhinotar shongram!

Had she been clairvoyant, known that the heady creature would swoop down and snatch her son and hurl them all into the whirlpool of destiny, perhaps she would have told Rashid Miya to change route, take another road. But would that have changed the course of history, erased the scribbling of fate?

For the moment, the Black Morris like a rigid pen on paper drives inexorably forward, and the future is drowned out by the sporadic shouts in the distance of “Rashtro bhasha Bangla chai! We demand Bangla for national language!”

The baby came early. In fact, the very evening after she returned from her outing, the pains started. There was no time to shift her to the maternity ward of the private clinic of Daktar Chacha, so he sent a nurse over to help deliver her baby at home. Early in the morning of February 21, her baby son arrived.

A trunk call was made to Karachi to give Jamil the good news. Then there was much rejoicing in the house with relatives dropping in to see the baby. By late afternoon, however, the atmosphere in the house became subdued as disturbing news from the streets filtered through.

The police had opened fire on protesting students. There were hushed discussions so she would not hear. But she overheard the day nurse telling the night nurse before she left that injured students had been taken to the Medical College. The very next day, Husna’s elder brother, the final year medical student, Monju Bhaijan, had come to the breakfast table shouting in rage that a student had succumbed to his wounds, and the body of another had been found on the floor behind the Anatomy room. Baba confirmed it with sadness.

Even Jamil’s letter to her after the joy of the news of Azeem’s birth contained a postscript: “Stay safe. These are volatile times. Worried about Shonju. The Dawn newspaper here carried an editorial saying that the people of West Pakistan have no objection to Bangla getting a status equal to Urdu. Why is there always such a divide between the wielders of political power and the populace?”

A few days later, Husna wasn’t sure if it was the 25^th or 26^th, Ma and the nurse had just taken away the baby when Shonju arrived. He was carrying a box of sweets. “Moron Chand and Sons” it said on the box. Inside were her favourite sweets: the soft, creamy white, renin-based balls of rose-scented pranhara-shondesh.

Ma must have bought the sweets and forced him to come visit his newborn nephew. Husna breathed a sigh of relief, seeing her brother, who paced restlessly, refusing to sit.

“I saw the baby in Ma’s room on my way in. Looks like Dulabhai.”

“Really? I think he has our family nose.”

“Poor kid! Hope not.” Shonju finally grinned, but his mind was elsewhere. He was wearing a black badge of mourning on his white kurta sleeve.

Husna stretched her arm and took his hand: “My heart aches for those who died, Shonju. But I’m so grateful you are okay.”

He didn’t let go of her hand but turned his angry face away.

“We students are still in battle mode. It will continue, the andolon, the protests, the confrontation. The Shaheed Minar memorial we constructed outside Medical College was destroyed, but we will rebuild it.”

“Shabdhan[7], Shonju!” Husna cautioned.

He pulled his hand away, clicking his tongue: “Oh! Don’t worry. Nothing will happen to me. When you fight for a cause you feel superhuman, invincible. The collective spirit strengthens us, makes us feel immortal. We are more than an individual life. What will our enemies do? Kill or wound one person, right? But the cause… they can’t defeat that. We are the multitudes… ”

“Uff! Stop this speechifying!” Husna rolled her eyes. “Mothers don’t want multitudes. They just want their sons. Sisters want their brothers. Yes, even though you’re a moron, I’d rather have you than a street full of heroes.”

Shonju laughed. “In that case, Bubu, you better start speaking only in Urdu. Sell your mother tongue to these politicians.”

After Shonju left, the nurse brought the baby to be fed. Husna touched baby Azeem’s toes, his petal-like fingers. Once, she had laughed at her elder sister for her incessant baby talk when her son was born. Now it spilled out of her, and she felt no embarrassment. Soft, mashed up balls of Bengali words lisped with maternal love, sweeter, and more tender than the pranhara in the box.

Was that how all mother tongues started? With silly, besotted mothers cooing to the babies in their language? She realised that if she had to make up baby talk in another language, she probably couldn’t do it. There was something about expressing oneself in one’s own tongue, heard from infancy. It was the home that one carried within, because the earliest memories of the mother’s voice absorbed from the womb animated it. It was a birth right that no one could be permitted to take away or undermine.

But was it worth dying for? Worth being martyred like the student the police had shot on Thursday, the twenty-first?

A week later, after lunch, the house suddenly filled with voices. Shonju entered, followed by Monju Bhaijan, and Farid. Husna looked at him surreptitiously. His face was impassive and he gave her a distracted nod. What else could he do, or say, Husna could understand. After all, there she was, much married and a mother, to boot.

Loudly ordering tea to be served, sounding like a housewife, she left the room, disappointed in herself that despite her show of poise and indifference, her heart still ached in a dim way.

She asked herself, if, in the past, she and Farid had been granted the opportunity and the courage to express to each other what she was certain was a mutual attraction, would her life be different? Would the knowledge that her feelings were requited, or not, have made a difference to her sense of self?

When Jamil’s proposal of marriage came to her parents, and they had accepted on her behalf. It was too late. Farid was not around, having gone to visit his parents in Barishal, so nothing had been acknowledged. There had been no beginning, and subsequently, no closure.

During her impending wedding she had to make sure her feelings did not go into a Bhasha Andolon of sorts within her, agitating and demanding the right of her heart’s true language to be respected. Instead, she had gagged her heart, imposed on herself another language: a formal, emotionally correct, and socially acceptable language. The vocabulary of wedded propriety appropriate to an obedient daughter and daughter-in-law. An official language, foreign to her, like Urdu.

She sighed. Language supposedly empowered humans and differentiated them from animals. But if, despite the ability to verbalise, people could not make their wishes known or heard, were they not equal to dumb beasts? What use was the mother tongue when ones’ own mother had not understood her daughter’s unspoken wish just because she could not speak out: “I don’t want to marry, yet. I want to wait! Manbo na! Manbo na!” And what use was language when Farid too, had failed to use his tongue, express himself at the right time, ask her clearly to wait and not accede to the arranged marriage.

No, it was better that the Bengalis had spoken out. It was better that they had taken to the streets. This andolon would lead them to express their rights and desires, claim what was true. Of course, it would take four more years for Bengali to be constitutionally recognised as a state language of Pakistan, along with Urdu. But time was a tiny link in the cosmic chain of historical and personal events. Obviously, this last was not something thought up by Husna at the time, but by the Husna of today, watching her past self.

Today, she observed herself through the telescope of time, on the first day the young mother Husna nursed her baby son. Surely, she was unaware at that moment that everything was connected: her breast milk and baby talk in Bangla nourished not just her child, Azeem, but through him later, Shonju’s “multitudes” of a future generation, as a whole nation journeyed from Ekushey or twenty-first, to Ekattor or seventy-one: from the upheaval for language of February 21, 1952 to claiming a home for it in the war of independence of 1971. All were linked, even if separated by time and generation. In the end, everything existed in a grand NOW, where past and present simmered together.

Needless to say, all this was what she would think many years later, as an older sixty-year-old woman, looking back on her life as she wrote her journal, sitting in her room in her daughter’s suburban home in Maryland, in the US.

She dusted the photo frames on the painted bureau. Her doting late husband Jamil, and her gentle yet impassioned elder son Azeem looked at her from the distance of lost eras. One was gone in 1966 in a helicopter crash. The other in 1971, as a freedom fighter.

Farid, unframed, was a forbidden, almost forgotten memory. Lost like an unspoken language. Lost, because she had never fought for him.

She has a fanciful wish: in some after life she would like to ask those who had agitated and fought for a cause, and even laid down their life for it: in the end, was the sacrifice worth it?

“Today is February 21, 2002. Commemorated as Omor Ekushey in Bangladesh. But just another day here…” She wrote in her diary in Bangla, a language that her grandchildren could not speak.

She pulled out from under her bed the harmonium her daughter had recently bought for her from an Indian family that was moving back to India. She sat down on the rug, stroking the black and white keys with one hand and pumping lightly on the bellows at the back of the instrument.

On top of her harmonium lay open her old songbook, marked and written on by the music teacher of her childhood. She was a trained singer, and in 1950, she with a group from her school had performed some mass anthems and marching songs on what was then Radio Pakistan Dacca. There, they had met a musician named Abdul Latif, who would later put to melody a poem written by a journalist named Abdul Gaffar Choudhury for the student who had died on February 21. Later, the song would be recomposed by a noted composer named Altaf Mahmud and emerge as an anthem for what became Mother Language Day.

For her, of course, the day had a different and personal significance. It was the sacred anniversary of her motherhood that she had entered so reluctantly. On this day, every year, she sang to the son who had taught her the ultimate lesson of love and sacrifice and of never forgetting.

She started to hum the familiar refrain as she tried out a few chords.

Her granddaughter Zainab peeked through the door.

“What’re you singing, Nani[8]?” She said in her American accent.

“It’s a song about love, sweetie. About loving one’s language.”

“Which language, Nani?”

“Any language that you love, sweetheart. For me it’s Bangla, which you hear me speak with your mom.”

She sang the first lines. Zainab sat down beside Husna, gazing at her moving fingers.

“Cool! It’s like a portable piano! Can I learn to play it?”

“Well, only if you also learn to sing this song with me.”

“Deal!”

In bed that night, Husna wrote in her journal: “Today is February 21. International Mother Language Day. Today Zainab learnt to sing the Ekushey song, especially the refrain ‘Ami ki bhulite pari?’ And when I tested her on what it meant, she got it right as she ran away giggling and yelling: ‘Can I ever forget it?’

So, today turned out to be. . . not just another day, after all.”

Husna closed her eyes with a smile on her face. Just before she fell asleep, she felt as if she understood the world not with the uttered meanings of any language, but like an unborn baby breathing in the womb its mother’s voice, dreaming his or her first spoken word.

Dreaming in whatever language would become their home, their motherland.

[1] Literal translation of Azad is free

[2] Strike, translated from Bangla

[3] Doctor uncle, translated from Bangla

[4] Formal way of addressing in Urdu or Hindi — You

[5] Informal way of addressing a husband in Bangla as taking a husband’s name was seen as disrespectful and harmful

[6] Elder sister

[7] Careful, translation from Bangla

[8] Maternal grandmother, translation from Bangla

Neeman Sobhan is an Italy based Bangladeshi writer, poet, columnist and translator. Till recently, she taught Bengali and English at the University of Rome. She has an anthology of columns, An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome; fiction collection: Piazza Bangladesh; Poetry: Calligraphy of Wet Leaves. Armando Curcio Editore is publishing her stories in Italian. This short story was first published in Ekhushey Anthology 1952-2022, edited by Niaz Zaman, writers.ink in 2022.

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Tags Bangla, Beirut, Bengali, Brahmi, Cairo, Dacca, Dhaka, Eid, Hindi, Jamdani, Jinnah, Karachi, Khwaja Nazimuddin, Nastaliq, Nazrul, Neeman Sobhan, Partition, Tagore, Urdu, West Pakistan

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Celebrating Freedom

The right to exist with freedom to choose is threatened when dictatorial regimes try to erase a culture or linguistic group as we can see in the current conflict that rages between Russia and Ukraine. In 1971, Bangladesh came into existence over a similar issue. The colonials had divided the Indian subcontinent on the basis of religion — not culture. Before this division, Bengal was a whole. In 1905, Tagore had marched against the British directive to divide Bengal and Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India. In 1911, Bengal was reunited to be slashed again in 1947 and made a part of Pakistan with Urdu as its national language. Bangladesh fought a war to find the right to exist as an entity outside of Pakistan — adopting their favoured language Bangla. Throwing off the yoke of Urdu, Bangladesh came to its own. On 16th December, the battle against cultural hegemony was won with warplanes drawing to a halt.

Celebrating freedom from oppression, we have an article by Fakrul Alam giving the historical background of the struggle. A musing from across the border about the 1971 refugee exodus into India has been written by Ratnottama Sengupta. Asad Latif muses on the need to identify with a culture. We have translations of poetry by Nazrul to add a dash of seasoning.

Poetry

Translations of Nazrul Islam, the rebel poet of Bangladesh… Click here to read.

Prose

The Birth of Bangladesh & the University of Dhaka: Professor Fakrul Alam takes us through the Partitions of Bengal which ultimately led to the creation of Bangladesh, with focus on the role of Dhaka University. Click here to read.

Joy Bangla: Memories of 1971: Ratnottama Sengupta recaptures a time when as a teenager she witnessed a war that was fought to retain a culture. Click here to read.

Epaar Bangla, Opaar Bangla: Bengals of the Mind: Asad Latif explores the need of a person to exist as belonging to a particular cultural group, in this case Bengal. Click here to read.

Tags Asad Latif, Bangla, Bangladesh, Bengal, British, Fakrul Alam, India, Lord Curzon, Nazrul, Ratnottama Sengupta, Russia, Tagore, Ukraine, Urdu, West Pakistan