It is the 20th of December 1980, a Saturday, and at dinner, Lorenzo Senesi, who will turn twenty-two in a little over a month, tells his mother, ‘Mamma, I think I just might go down to Padua with Roberto and Francesca for Christmas and the New Year. Should be back by the 3rd or 4th of January.’
Elda glances at her son but says nothing. Amedeo the father grunts once to acknowledge that the information has reached his ears. Paola, Lorenzo’s sister, older by fourteen months, asks in a tone that suggests that it wouldn’t matter if he doesn’t respond, ‘With those two? But I thought you were bored to death of them.’
The next morning, Lorenzo packs some essential things, including his copy of Carlo Carretto’s The Desert in the City, in an overnight bag, places the bag on the rear seat of his Renault 5, goes to the kennel in the corner of the garden to hug and nuzzle Vega the dog (a handsome golden-brown beast, half German Shepherd, a quarter Retriever, and in her reflective moments, there is something about her eyes that recalls the young Sylvester Stallone) and is off. Francesca and Roberto are nowhere to be seen. From Aquilinia, the dot on the outskirts of Trieste where they stay (a workers’ village, really, an adjunct to the Aquila oil refinery is how it was conceived and inaugurated in 1938, with habitual pomp, by Mussolini), he takes La Strada Costiera, the scenic coast road, down to the plains.
It is late in the morning, and bright and sunny. On his right lie the hummocks, ridges and undulations of karst, their eroded limestone continually sneaking a peek between the trees of lime and pine at the brilliant blue, on his left, of the bay of Trieste. The landscape tumbles down in leaps and bounds to the radiant sea that stretches like blue polythene till the haze of the horizon. On some curves, he can spot the white sails of boats, as still as life, on the aquamarine lapping at the feet of Miramare Castle.
The Renault, three years old, is an acquisition that dates from his road accident and the insurance money that he reaped as one of its consequences. It moves well; he makes good time to Sistiana and thence to Monfalcone where, having left the Adriatic and reached the bland plains, he takes the A 4 west-south-west towards Milan. He is undecided—but only for a moment—between the radio and the cassette player. Radio Punto Zero on FM wins; with his arms fully stretched to grip the steering wheel, he leans back in the seat to enjoy Adriano Celentano crooning ‘Il Tempo Se Ne Va’.
A hundred and fifty kilometres, more or less, to Padua, an uncluttered highway through the ploughed cornfields and plantations of poplar of the region of Gorizia; Celentano on the radio is succeeded by Franco Battiato, Giuni Russo, Antonello Venditti and Claudio Baglioni. Friuli-Venezia-Giulia gives way to the Veneto a while before Lorenzo switches off the radio to enjoy, in peace, the noon silence. At Padua, though, it not being his final destination, he still has a further fifteen kilometres to go to reach Praglia at the foot of the Euganean Hills.
He parks the Renault as far as he can from a bus disgorging a contingent of British tourists alongside the church wall of the Chiesa Abbaziale di Santa Maria Assunta and carrying his overnight bag, walks across to the arched recess in which is inset an iron door. It is the principal entrance to Praglia Abbey of which the church forms an integral part. He rings the bell and waits.
He glances back at his car. Behind the wall, the church rises solid and grey, monolithic like a fortress, almost forbidding. Hearing the clang and whine of the iron door being opened, he turns back.
The monk whom he sees, Father Anselmo, sombre in his black robe, is tiny. He smiles and nods at Lorenzo and ushers him in. ‘Oh, have you come by car? Then I’ll open the main gates for you so that you can park inside.’ Without ceasing to nod and smile, he ushers him out.
Father Anselmo, being the porter of the abbey, is a statutory requirement of the institution. Let there be stationed at the monastery gate, says Chapter 66 of the Rule of Saint Benedict, a wise and elderly monk who knows how to receive an answer and to give one and whose ripeness of years does not suffer him to wander about. This porter ought to have his cell close to the gate so that those who come may always find someone there from whom they can get an answer. So when the Father does not reply, it may be presumed that the question was not worth a response. For they do not speak much, the Benedictines.
The Renault having found its parking berth in a spacious, paved, open corridor that runs right around a large, rectangular garden, Lorenzo returns to the reception room where Father Anselmo, at his place behind a plain, unadorned desk, waits for him.
‘Good afternoon,’ he starts again formally. ‘I would like to meet the maestro dei novizi. I have an appointment. My name is Lorenzo Bonifacio.’
A cue, as it were, for Father Anselmo to nod and smile again, and without getting up, lean sideways in his chair and press, six times in a measured, definite code, a red plastic button affixed to the wall. One push of the bell, a long pause, two pushes, a short pause, two more pushes, a long pause, one last push. Immediately, from the great bell tower of the church, clearly audible in each nook and cranny of the abbey, begins to ring, in the same code and with the same pauses, one of the lesser bells. Father Anselmo then gestures to Lorenzo to sit down in one of the chairs ranged along the wall. No conversation ensues.
(Extracted from Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life by Upamanyu Chatterjee. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2024)
About the Book
One summer morning in 1977, nineteen-year-old Lorenzo Senesi of Aquilina, Italy, drives his Vespa motor-scooter into a speeding Fiat and breaks his forearm. It keeps him in bed for a month, and his boggled mind thinks of unfamiliar things: Where has he come from? Where is he going? And how to find out more about where he ought to go? When he recovers, he enrols for a course in physiotherapy. He also joins a prayer group, and visits Praglia Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in the foothills outside Padua.
The monastery will become his home for ten years, its isolation and discipline the anchors of his life, and then send him to a Benedictine ashram in faraway Bangladesh—a village in Khulna district, where monsoon clouds as black as night descend right down to river and earth. He will spend many years here. He will pray seven times a day, learn to speak Bengali and wash his clothes in the river, paint a small chapel, start a physiotherapy clinic to ease bodies out of pain, and fall, unexpectedly, in love. And he will find that a life of service to God is enough, but that it is also not enough.
A study of the extraordinary experiences of an ordinary man, a study of both the majesty and the banality of the spiritual path, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s new novel is a quiet triumph. It marks a new phase in the literary journey of one of India’s finest and most consistently original writers.
About the Author
Upamanyu Chatterjee is the author of English August: An Indian Story (1988), The Last Burden (1993), The Mammaries of the Welfare State (2000), Weight Loss (2006), Way to Go (2011), Fairy Tales at Fifty (2014), and Villainy (2022)—all novels; The Revenge of the Non-vegetarian (2018), a novella; and The Assassination of Indira Gandhi (2019), a collection of long stories.
In 2000, he won the Sahitya Akademi Award, and in 2008, he was awarded the Order of Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government for his contribution to literature.
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I mostly stare at the empty ceiling;
watching the imaginary pink bees,
I sometimes try to match up with people, chaos in my wake, no one sees.
You will never know how your absence strikes my heart,
until you are in my place.
Every time I watch “The Notebook”,
I see your non-existing face in front of me --
Enjoying, laughing, seeing the miserable shredded parts of me.
My heart always ached to hear the echoes of your soul;
But you were never ready to hear.
Because you did not feel me as I felt our deja vu.
I screamed and screamed, loudly and madly just to be with you.
But you turned yourself off like a Deaf Cockatoo.
Afrida Lubaba Khan is an aspiring poet, writer, and translator from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is one of the Sub-Editors of ULAB-MUSE Magazine, and she is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English Humanities at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh.
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Poetry by Masud Khan, translation from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam
MOTHER
In the dust smeared evening
Far away, almost at the margins of the horizon,
The one who is resting all by herself
In a bed laid out under the open sky
Is my mother.
Her bed smells of grass and the antiseptic Dettol.
A tube in her nose supplies her with oxygen,
A saline bottle is attached to her arm,
And she is tied to a catheter too—
It is as if she is getting entangled inextricably
In a jungle of plastic and polythene reeds.
A smoky surreal unreal canopy encircles her bed.
Seemingly after ages, dusk descends on the world,
A few birds and insects form a chorus,
Wailing throatily obscure and dissonant tunes
In amateurish over-excited zeal,
Seeking refuge timorously in that plastic hedge,
At the margin of the horizon,
In the shadow of primeval motherhood.
A FRAGRANT TALE
The world is full of misleading, minus signs and foul smells.
At times, the world feels as heavy and unbearable
As the weight of a son’s dead body on his dad’s shoulder,
Or as stressful as playing the role of a dead soldier,
Or as formidable as a physically challenged person’s ascent up a mountain
Or as painful as caring for a precocious, traumatised child...
Nevertheless, occasionally such stress-laden memories will blur,
And suddenly, wafting on the wind’s sudden mood swing,
A fragrant moment comes one’s way!
Masud Khan (b. 1959) is a Bengali poet and writer. He has, authored nine volumes of poetry and three volumes of prose and fiction. His poems and fictions (in translation) have appeared in journals including Asiatic, Contemporary Literary Horizon, Six Seasons Review, Kaurab, 3c World Fiction, Ragazine.cc, Nebo: A literary Journal, Last Bench, Urhalpul, Tower Journal, Muse Poetry, Word Machine, and anthologies including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co., NY/London); Contemporary Literary Horizon Anthology,Bucharest; Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace (Global Fraternity of Poets); and Padma Meghna Jamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh(Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, New Delhi). Two volumes of his poems have been published as translations, Poems of Masud Khan (English), Antivirus Publications, UK, and Carnival Time and Other Poems (English and Spanish), Bibliotheca Universalis, Romania. Born and brought up in Bangladesh, Masud Khan lives in Canada and teaches at a college in Toronto.
Samya (Equality) by Nazrul, translated from Bengali by Niaz Zaman
I sing the song of equality –
Of a country where fresh joy blossoms in every heart
And new life springs in every face.
Friend, there is no king or subject here,
No differences of rich and poor.
Some do not feast on milk and cream here,
While others grovel for leftovers and broken grains.
No one bows before the feet of horses here,
Or before the wheels of motor cars.
Disgust does not arise in white men’s minds here
At the sight of black bodies.
Here, in this land of equality,
Black and white are not buried in separate graveyards;
Nor do black and white pray in separate rooms and churches.
In this land there are no footmen or guards,
No policemen to evoke fear.
There are no conflicting religions here,
No cacophony of conflicting scriptures.
The priest and the padre, the mullah and the monk
Drink water from the same glass here.
The Creator’s house of prayer
Is contained in the human body and mind here;
Here His throne of sorrow
Is formed by human suffering.
He responds readily here
To whatever name He might be called,
Just as a mother responds readily
To whatever name her child might call.
No one comes to blows here
Over the different apparel one wears –
Payjama, trousers or dhoti.
Clad though in soiled or dusty garb,
All are happy here.
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
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 translation was first published in Kazi Nazrul Islam Selections 1, edited by the translator and published by writers.ink in 2020.
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The tunes of Tagore’s Amar Sonar Bangla* flower in the streets of Bengal
Curzon calls the Partition to create a divide
However, ‘culture’ thrives
As Muslims and Hindus, unite
The year is 1947
Bloodshed and madness pick up as
Radcliffe creates new lines
People leave ‘homes’
To find new ones
Violence slices humanity
How could Bengal survive?
The year is 1965
Bengal has two sons, one -- West Bengal
The second, ‘East Pakistan’
As conflicts flare again, the memory of the lost home revives
Women adorning sarees sing the lyrics of that Rabindra Sangeet
The year is 1971
Liberation calls are made
As women get raped
A new nation is born but the legacy of the past still prospers
A woman in Bangladesh teaches her daughter tunes of Tagore’s song written in 1905 --
Amar Sonar Bangla may have been lost but is it fully forgotten?
It still hums ...somewhere
* The national anthem adopted by Bangladesh in 1971. It was written by Tagore to unite Bengalis together to oppose the 1905 Partition.
Isha Sharma is passionate about the process of translating emotions into verses. Her works, including articles and poems, have been published in Borderless Journal, Kitaab International, The Indian Literary Review, The Indian Periodical, The Indian Express, Indus Women Writing Newsletter, The Feminist Times, and The Tribune (Student Edition).
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Masud Khan’s poem, Dhamkal (Fire Engine), translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam
Having fled the madhouse, the lunatic darted up the tree. Nothing would make him come down, he said, Except for the pleas of that midget-sized nurse!
The nurse came running, quick as a fire engine, Waving wildly at him. Her gestures were coded messages, Inducing the lunatic to climb down from the tree top Just as a koi fish descends on the dining plate. Entranced by the smell of steaming curry, He descended easily and freely As consecutive numbers do when one counts down.
The lunatic’s thoughts flickered across the nurse’s consciousness.
This day that mad man will return once more to his asylum. Placing his head on the confessional, He will soundlessly suffer thirteen electric shocks Designed to induce thirteen confessions from him At the directive of the calm and composed health priest!
Masud Khan (b. 1959) is a Bengali poet and writer. He has, authored nine volumes of poetry and three volumes of prose and fiction. His poems and fictions (in translation) have appeared in journals including Asiatic, Contemporary Literary Horizon, Six Seasons Review, Kaurab, 3c World Fiction, Ragazine.cc, Nebo: A literary Journal, Last Bench, Urhalpul, Tower Journal, Muse Poetry, Word Machine, and anthologies including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co., NY/London); Contemporary Literary Horizon Anthology,Bucharest; Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace (Global Fraternity of Poets); and Padma Meghna Jamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh(Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, New Delhi). Two volumes of his poems have been published as translations, Poems of Masud Khan(English), Antivirus Publications, UK, and Carnival Time and Other Poems (English and Spanish), Bibliotheca Universalis, Romania. Born and brought up in Bangladesh, Masud Khan lives in Canada and teaches at a college in Toronto.
A brief introduction to Remaking History:1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad, published by Cambridge University Press, and a conversation with the author, Afsar Mohammed
Afsar Mohammad
In a world given to wars and fanning differences, an in-depth study of history only reflects how we can find it repeating itself. In Remaking History:1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad, academic and writer, Afsar Mohammad, takes us back to the last century to help us fathom a part of history that has remained hoary to many of us.
On 15thAugust, 1947, when India and Pakistan ‘awoke’ to a freedom amidst the darkness of hatred and bloody trains and rivers, there was a part of the subcontinent which remained independent and continued under the rule of a Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII. This was Hyderabad. Later, in post-Jinnah times, when India decided to integrate the independent kingdom, which had even found a name for its independent existence — ‘Osmanistan’ — what broke out was an episode called Police Action, code name Operation Polo. Mohammad’s book is an exhaustive relook at the integration of a people into the mainstream nation of India, using the voices of common people.
There were strands of communists in the Telangana movement and the mercenaries we know of as Razakars. His own family was involved in the events, and he had an uncle arrested for the performance of Burra Katha, a form of theatre used by Left to educate the audience, somewhat like a musical street theatre. Mohammad has interviewed survivors extensively and knitted into his narrative findings which make us wonder if religion or nationalism were used as a subtext of power play and greed. For, we have the local cultural lore where the people despite differences in faith had a tehzeeb or a way of life, where Hindu writers wrote in Urdu for the love of it and Muslims used Telugu.
Afsar Mohammad interviewing an activist from abasti in Old Hyderabad. Photo Credits: Sajaya Kakarla
Hyderabad was perceived by some as a sanctuary, like writer Jaini Mallaya Gupta. He contends: “Like me, many leftist writers and activists had migrated to the city at that point and they became popular by using pseudonyms. Hyderabad was like a sanctuary as it could hide us in its remote neighborhoods where we were supported by local Muslim community too. But we all became really closer to each other and more connected to the Urdu literary culture that indeed provided a model for our activities.”
But did things stay that way post Operation Polo? Razia, a witness to the police action, states: “It was a phase of unfortunate turns—everything so unexpected! Not about the Razakars or the Nizam, but most of the ordinary Muslims (ām Musalmān) whom I know fully well since my childhood had a hard time. Particularly young Muslim men and women … all suddenly became suspects and many of them from their homes leaving everything. They just wanted to live somewhere rather than dying in the bloody hands of the Razakars and Hindu fundamentalists.”
That cultural hegemony has a tendency of typecasting languages based on political needs is shown as a myth by Mohammad as both Hindu and Muslims used Urdu and Telugu in Hyderabad. His book revives Hyderabadi tehzeeb as the ultimate glue for defining a Hyderabadi. This is somewhat similar to what Bengal faced which had been divided along religious lines in 1947. Professor Fakrul Alam, a well-known academic, essayist and translator, tells us in his essay on the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, “The key issue here was language and the catalyst was the insistence by the central government of Pakistan that Urdu should be the lingua franca of the country…” Bangladesh emerged as a protest against linguistic and cultural hegemony. Eminent writer, Aruna Chakravarti, goes further back in history in her historical novel, Daughters of Jorasanko (2016), and shows how Tagore was involved in preventing the division of Bengal proposed by Lord Curzon in 1905. However, despite these historic precedents, we are seeing the world suffer wars from such divides and common people continue to be affected by the violence and bloodshed, losing their homes, livelihoods and often, their lives. What happened in the last century continues to reiterate itself more virulently in the current world. In times such as these, Remaking History surfaces as a book that has much to offer, perhaps if humanity is willing to learn lessons from history.
Your book is focussed on a small group of people, the common people of Hyderabad who suffered during the integration into a nation. Why would this be important in a larger context? How would it assimilate into stories of the world? By stories, I would mean plight of Rohingyas,Muslims, Jews … more or less plight of minority groups of people. Do you see any emerging patterns in all these stories?
In this work, I’ve consistently used the category of ordinary people as related to Hyderabad and Deccan. I needed this term to speak about both Hindus and Muslims as I was constantly reminded of the divisive politics persistent in this region and throughout South Asia. Despite the focus on the Muslims of Hyderabad, this work emphasises the inseparability of Hindus and Muslims when it comes to the violence and trauma of the Police Action of 1948. According to many interlocutors, the violence had inflicted the entire community — mostly the ordinary people of the Deccan.
I started writing this book with a primary idea that this lens of ordinariness helps us to not just this 1948 violence in Deccan, but many other religious conflicts now rampant through the globe. The examples you just mentioned above are not an exception. Since we’re blind to an ordinary person’s approach or emotional life, we totally failed to capture many dimensions of these violent events. Most patterns, either subjective or objective, that emerge out of this violence and trauma have their origins in this search for ordinariness.
Along with a few interviews, you have brought up the issues through writings of great Telugu and Urdu writers of that time. Can you tell us if literature actually translates to real life situations?
To be honest, being a writer and poet by myself, I’ve always believed that literature is half-truth which is filtered by multi-dimensional subjectivity of a writer. Specifically, when there’s a political situation, literary writings also tend to project a partial reality. However, these gaps could be filled by empirical evidence that we gather from the stories of ordinary people who not only witnessed the violence, but also suffered many setbacks caused by such violence. Yet, we require a balanced perspective to level these oral narratives and written materials. In this way, rather than relying fully on a singular story, we can explore the possibilities of multiple stories of a singular event.
Your family and you profess Leftist leanings. And yet, you write of religious minorities. Historically, the Left professes to be above traditional religions, like Hinduism and Islam. How do you integrate religion into communist ideology? Would you agree with Harari that Left is a religion unto itself?
One of the major critiques in this work is to contest the left-centric approach to 1948 and even the Telangana armed rebellion of 1946-1951. As I argued in this book, leftist writers, poets and ideologues completely failed to capture the reality of the day. I’ve presented evidence for this argument from various writings and witness narratives too. Since their high emphasis on economic determinism, many key social and religious dimensions remained their blind spots. Various religious and caste developments during the periods of the 1930s and 40s were determining factors of modern Indian history. Yes, of course, I still believe in the Leftist ideology, but never worship it though! To put it simply, I’m a critical Leftist and critical Muslim!
‘Popular understanding is largely shaped by what exists in circulation. This is what we see in the form of how people understand the Police Action across India as well as folklore, including the reconstructed folk narratives such as Adluri Ayodhya Rama Kavi’s burra katha. Such popular representations further reinforce the larger narrative peddled by the state.’ What exactly is burra katha? And what was your family involvement in it?
Burra katha was a popular storytelling and music genre in Telugu utilised by the leftist organisations to circulate their idea of resistance against the status quo in Telangana and elsewhere. Shaik Nazar was an icon of this radical narrative tradition and he also trained hundreds of disciples in this genre. Most artists and writers from the leftist camp were busy producing stories based on the Telangana armed rebellion and other resistance movements to gather the people in the public meetings between 1946 and 1952. My family also had some role in the production and circulation of this genre. However, it’s a story beyond my family’s history and had numerous political and performative implications that I’ve discussed in my book. I already have a detailed narrative of these personal and professional connections in my book and I encourage my readers to access them directly from the book. Just a brief note, many performers were arrested and put in prisons for months and months during this armed rebellion and they also suffered heavily due to the oppression of the Nehru’s government.
Do you see a parallel between what was happening then to such performers and protest writers in more recent times? Do you find still that popular opinion is being shaped by stuff circulating in media?
I see many parallels between the past and the present conditions of performers and writers who speak out against the hierarchies and status quo. Recent times, we see more strategic ways of silencing such protest and performance genres. Various apparatuses of the state have become extremely powerful and most writers/performers are being cleverly trapped into a governmental system. Nevertheless, there’re always exceptions. This book captures such intense moments that stubbornly contested the government-led media or privileges. We need more such strong voices to change the current state of things.
Were Razakars the Nizam’s army? I had been under the impression that they were mercenaries — irrespective of religion. But you say they were volunteers. Can you explain who were the Razakars exactly?
During the earliest phase of the Razakar activism, this was not Nizam’s army. It was supposed to be a group of young Muslims who volunteered to initiate radical changes in the Hyderabadi-Deccan Muslim community. In that sense, Razakar was a “volunteer,” the actual literal meaning of the term. Later, when Kasim Razvi became the president of this group, it took on a totally different manifestation. Razvi promoted a version of the Razakar activism that eventually served the military needs of the Nizam. I actually tried to show these different faces/phases of Razakar activism by collecting evidence from various writings and oral histories.
Before the Indian government ‘integrated’ the state of Hyderabad, there seems to have been a simmering of resentment against the Nawabi lifestyle and the common people, irrespective of their religious beliefs as you have shown. Do you find in the world context such reactions against wars or cultural hegemony currently?
Before, during and after the integration of the state into the Indian national government, it was an extremely complicated situation which we could name it as a “transition” period. It was similar to many states in India, but Hyderabad state had a peculiar situation due to its local politics and Deccani identity. Of course, there was a resistance to the Nawabi lifestyle as the new generation Muslims were engaging with many facets of modernity and embracing a reformist version of Islam. Nevertheless, these changes were not merely the products of local Muslim life. As I argued in the book, local Islam and Muslim sense of belonging was in constant dialogue with the larger networks of Islam and Muslim politics. I see similar thread continuing in contemporary Muslim discourse since 1992 when Hindu nationalism became a defining factor for many identities.
Did and do common people resent the “integration” as they did the Nawab? What would be the cause of that? Was it religion or economic and social discontent that becomes the focal point of riots then and as of now?
Whereas the Nawab’s resistance had his own political and private reasons, as I noticed from the evidence, the resistance from ordinary people had more to do with the common good and also, there was a protest against the way the entire military invasion was initiated and promulgated. People were concerned about the atrocities of the military which were aimed at wiping out the leftist movement on the first hand. At the end of the day, the Nawab and the Nehru government remained safe and friendly, while thousands of people were killed for this power sharing. Despite several different viewpoints, most of the public opinion was against this military invasion and the killings.
Why is evolving a Muslim, or for that matter any religious identity, important in today’s world? Will these not lead to conflict as we are experiencing in the post-pandemic twenty first century?
It’s not about a specific religious identity: now it’s high time for any identity to be discussed and disseminated. I see this more as a conflict resolution so that we become aware of our differences and learn the limits of our discourses. We’ve bigger issues that the pandemic. We’ve caste, religion, gender and regional issues that we need to sort out gradually. Many conflicts around us are due to our failure to acknowledge these identities and their role in the making of our community.
“The nationalist/textbook version of history is determined by the nation-state as is seen in how a nascent India emphasized and celebrated the ‘integration’ with an utter disregard for native opinion or the costs people paid associated with the bloody event.” Is this true not just in the Indian context but in context of the battles we see happening in the world?
Yes! Absolutely! The desire for “integration” is a product of hegemonic politics and turning into global phenomenon and we’re all plagued by the idea of nationalism and we’re forced to declare a singular nation, culture and language in many instances. We’ve too many examples right now to prove this and I don’t have to rehearse everything here.
Can you suggest a solution to finding and enforcing, peace, love, kindness and forgiving?
At first, we need to realise our mutual desire for such love and compassion. Our sheer dependence on political parties and making their goals as our own goals is a self-defeat by all means. I see community as a larger concept and we need to acknowledge its real sources of being and belongingness.
Thanks for your time and the comprehensive book.
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In conversation with Meenakshi Malhotra and a brief introduction to The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle (Scopus Index), edited by Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri, published by Routledge
Dr Meenakshi Malhotra
Why would one half of the world population be seen as evolved from the rib of the first man, soulless or as merely subservient to fulfil the needs of the other half? This is a question that has throbbed for centuries in the hearts of that half that suffers indignities to this date, women. While feminism became a formalised idea only in the 18th-19th century and things started improving for certain groups of women around the world, in some regions, like Afghanistan, the situation has deteriorated in recent years. Their government, recognised by world leadership, has ensured that women do not have schooling, cannot work in senior positions, have to be accompanied by men if they go out and remain covered as the feminine body could tempt bringing shame, strangely, to the female but not to the man who has the right to be tempted and hence to violence and violate her body and her mind.
Given this ambience, any literature voicing protest for patriarchal mindsets that accept situations like in current day Afghanistan passively, should be celebrated as an attempt to shard the silence of suffering by one half of the world population. The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by three academics, Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri, does just that. At the start, we are told: “This book situates the discourse on the gendered body within the rapidly transitioning South Asian socio-economic and cultural landscape. It critically analyzes gender politics from different disciplinary perspectives…”
Featuring 22 writers, the narratives take up a range of issues faced by women in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Srilanka. The Pakistani implementation of Islamic law, under the Hudood ordinances, has been addressed in a powerful essay by Aysha Baqir, subsequently by Anu Aneja, in her discourse on Urdu poetry. It was interesting to read how the ghazal form started as a male-only art form where women were depicted as mysterious houris or pining with sadness. Birangona — a phrase that was given to rape victims of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — has been explored by Sohana Manzoor through a classic, Rizia Rahman’s novel, Rokter Okshor[1](1978), written about such women driven to prostitution. Women’s voices in the Sri Lankan LTTE have been explored by Simran Chaddha. Nayema Nasir has taken up decadent customs in the progressive Bohra community in Mumbai and shown how things are moving towards a change. Colonial and Dalit voices have found a hearing in Malhotra’s essay on Mahasweta Devi’s short story, ‘Draupadi’, set against the Naxalite movement of 1970s.
Dotted with women’s responses to a variety of current issues, including the Anti-CAA-NRC uprisings (Tamanna Basu), Shaheen Bagh (Meenakshi Gopinath, Krishna Menon, Rukmini Sen and Niharika Banerjea), and the pandemic (Krishna Menon, Deepti Sachdev and Rukmini Sen), there is even a case study by Shalini Masih dealing with psychiatric trauma where both the psychiatrist and the patient, who might have evolved into a stalker or a rapist without the therapy, heal. A certain sense of hope echoes through some of these narratives, a hope to heal from wounds that have sweltered over eons.
The flow of words is smooth and the ideas should be able to rise against the tide of erudition to touch our lives with lived realities. There are responses that transcend the heaviness of academic writing for instance the impassioned start made by Giti Chandra in her narrative: “A woman’s body is a story that men tell each other. When it is full-hipped, it is a tale of their healthy children; when it is fair, it speaks of their wealth; when it is narrow, it proclaims their access to gyms; and when it is tanned, it flaunts their ability to vacation on sunny isles. If its feet are not small enough to convey a leisure that does not require walking, they are bound and made smaller and more childishly submissive; if its legs are not long enough befitting its trophy status, bone-crippling heels are added to them. When it is raped it is an assertion of power, a chest-thumping; when it is raped it is an aggression over its owner; when it is raped its womb is stolen from the enemy…” Chandra points out some things that make one think, like quoting Rahila Gupta, she suggests victims is not the word we should use for women, but we should refer to the sufferers as survivors.
This collection of essays questions social norms and niceties to realise what early woman’s rights activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, drafted, that “all men and women [had been] created equal” in July 1848. While the struggle continues through centuries and the discourse of these narratives, the last essay by a man, Brijesh Rana, attempts to give a broader and more inclusive outlook to the whole human body. The book comes across as a tryst — of academic and feminist voices — to speak up for mankind to equalise.
To further understand the intent and scope of this book, we have in conversation one of the editors— Meenakshi Malhotra, who teaches gender studies and literature, has to her credit two Charles Wallace fellowships and a number of books. She reflects on the bridge that is being attempted between scholarship and activism.
How and when did you conceive this book? Tell us a bit about your journey from the conception to the publication of the book.
This book was originally conceived due to the positive response my co-editors and I received after presenting a panel at an American Association of Asian studies (AAS) conference back in 2017. We were approached by an international publisher who encouraged us to take forward the work with a focus on South Asia. We were unable to take it forward at that time, however we revived the project a few months into the lockdown in late 2020 when we felt we had a little more time. Also, along the way, we were able to reach out to fellow travellers, working in and on Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Three of you have collaborated to compile and edit this book. Collaborations to bring out books are not easy. Tell us about this collaboration.
As we three had presented on the same panel, the collaboration was a natural corollary since we had a sense of being fellow travellers and sister academics/scholars. That worked well for us because each of us were engaged in research and research guidance and wanted to showcase the recent work in this area. Both the co-editors, Krishna working on gender and its intersections with politics and Rachna on gender and psychology are very well-established scholars in the field of gender. I work on gender and literature, had my own network and I must mention that in the course of writing for Borderless Journal, I was able to access the work of others on that platform.
Explain to us the significance of the title of your book.
I think we arrived at the title through two processes-one was the immediate situation of Covid which left us in a state of precarity. However, we felt that even within the context of the contagion, women — and other genders — were endangered in specific ways. Second is the understanding that the body is always already produced by multiple matrices of gender, race, caste etc. The human body is also always a gendered body.
We had initially suggested that we call it ‘The Gendered Body and its Fragments’ to connote the bundling of several discursive strands on gendered bodies, but the idea was vetoed (by the initial reviewer) since “fragments” had resonances and nuances which we did not have space (or expertise) to go into, at that point.
You have a variety of contributors, some of who are non- academic. What did you look for when you chose your content?
Variety as you point out, is the key term. We were looking for something new, something interesting, flagging the variegated cultures of South Asian societies. The book comprises a mix of experienced researchers and some researchers whose essays are their preliminary forays into publishing.
Your book is divided into different sections ‘Negotiation’, ‘Struggle’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Protest’, ‘Critique’, ‘Representations and New Directions’. Can you tell us the need to compartmentalise the essays into this structural frame?
Just to give it a structure, organisation and coherence. Having said that, there are also frequent overlaps.
Would you call this book feminist? Feminism is as such a human construct. Why would this construct be essential for treating people equally? What is the need for feminism?
It is feminist in its orientation to the research areas as well as its methodologies. The key concept here is collaboration and therefore we have two conversation as an expression of feminist epistemology or knowledge-making.
Feminism, like other modes of affirmative action — like reservations, quotas — are an attempt to create a level playing field for historically disprivileged groups and oppressed minorities.
Having said that, I/we would like to point out that feminism has become inclusive and an umbrella term that also includes the work on masculinities and trans-identities since the 1990s.
Isn’t feminism the forte of only women?
Not at all and that is why we have the term feminisms. We hope to do more work subsequently on masculinities, on trans bodies in the future.
You have 21 women writers who write of women’s issues. Yet the last is an essay by a man — not on feminist issues— but more to create a sense of inclusivity, if I am not wrong. Why did you feel the need for this essay?
It is not so much about women’s issues as much as about gendered bodies in contemporary South Asia, about identities, subjectivities, bodies in motion gearing up for political action(the conversation and the essay on campus movements are instances).
Also, the last essay which articulates a post-humanist perspective, I felt, would take us beyond the materialities of gendered bodies and flag the way recent research/scholarship has looked at the Anthropocene. It was attempting to give a meta perspective, to bring in a way of seeing, which probably will have an impact on how we understand and conceptualise human bodies.
Your book blurb says: “Topical and comprehensive, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of gender studies, sociology, political sociology, social anthropology, cultural studies, post-colonial studies and South Asian studies.” Why would you limit the scope of your book when you have some essays that should be read by many and are like eye openers, like the ones on Hudood, Birangonas, Bohras, even your own on ‘Draupadi’ and more?
I think Routledge as an academic publisher, probably does this routinely, to highlight the academic terrain any new book covers.
Having said that, we would definitely want the book to be of general interest. Some of the essays discussed issues which were possibly eye-openers for us as well.
What is the difference between academic writing and non-academic writing? You do both, I know.
Academic writing has often a thesis and an argument underpinning it, which is not to say that non-academic writing — especially the essay — cannot have them.
Also, many of the essays were based on student papers/MPhil and even PhD dissertations. The panel we were a part of was an academic conference on South Asian studies.
Would this book be classified as women’s writing as majority of the writers are women and have written on women’s issues… and yet there is a man? Is it necessary to have such classifications? Would it rule out male readers?
Not at all to every question. It just happens that many of our contributors are women, but I would like to dispel the idea that “gender” is about women only. It is about boxes, stereotypes and role-based expectations, which are to be questioned.
Thanks for giving us a powerful book and your time.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976)
1400 SAAL OR The YEAR 1993
A hundred years ago O poet, you had thought of us With such immense affection, A hundred years ago!
Mystical one; child of mystery, Taking off the cloak covering your eyes, When did you arrive from some far-off haven? Heading from the south and opening a window of our house, O secret stroller into our dreams, You came with the fragrance wafted by the spring breeze, To where a hundred years later I was reading your poem At nighttime. An absent-minded butterfly, you saw us with pain-brightened and moist eyes— With silent wings, Fluttering casually, you went languidly away. And we, a hundred years later, Keep reading your poem, dyed in the tenderness of youth, With rapt attention, affectionately. In a reverie, and sleepy, with eyes drooping, My beloved listens to your prophetic song With tear-moistened eyes.
Alas, to this day, The shut southern window Opens again and again. The restless spring breeze cries out in pent up pain. In minds and forests and in murmuring blossoms, Moist flowers shed from their braided beds, Again and again.
The dark eyelids of the blossoms keep fluttering softly. The female bee snatches honey from the beak of her mate.
The dark-eyed buds flutter in the gentle breeze. Drenched in pollen, bees drink honey-sweetness fully. The she-dove loses herself at the warbling of her mate. The forest bride has decked herself in crimson robes of youthfulness. Every now and then earth’s heart gasps At the breeze’s passionate outbursts.
Immersed in the depth of your being, a hundred years later, Oh sun-suffused one, I have been reading your poem, With immense adoration. At your gesture I wake up to your music, O artful one, I’ve grasped your artfulness! Stealthily you tiptoe To our far away youthful beings, In poetry, songs and in lush tones and colourful dreams. All flowers that have bloomed today—all birdsongs, All crimson hues, Caressed by you, O ever-youthful poet, Have become livelier! In the morning hours of this spring festival, You’ve become the song in our youthful festivities. Once a darling child and now immortal in a bower All of us youthful men and women await your nuptial hour. Sing O dear one, sing again and again The songs you would sing amidst blooming flowers, Songs my beloved and I sing on our own or together, Songs at whose end I slide into sleep, only to hear In a dream appearing in a midnight hour, My beloved weep, “Dearest poet, friend and wise one—“ Till my dream ends suddenly And I view my beloved’s eyes moisten Until tears trickle down her eyes.
I remember now, how a hundred years ago You had stirred—and others too had awakened In some far away cloistered state. At your gesture a sad tune had spread its wings and flown. Glancing back from the window momentarily, It had caressed the tears lining your eyelids. It had bent the curling tresses of flower buds. And then vanished—leaving you sitting silently. Moistened by the dewdrop of your eyes, Your messages blossomed; some bloomed, Some even resonated instantly, And then were tucked away inside our dreams.
All of a sudden a door opened In the spring morning your greeting came through. The envoy of spring you’d sent a hundred years ago Filled us youthful ones with intense yearnings.
O Emperor of all poets, though we haven’t seen you, The Taj Mahal you created, Sparkling like sandalwood on the forehead of time Entrances us and we behold it breathlessly. We curse our youth— “Why did it have to be a hundred years later?” Alas, in this day and age, We’ve never been able to glimpse Mumtaz and behold the Taj!
A thousand years later—O emperor of poets, New poets keep coming to sing your praise From sunrise to sunset songs celebrate your feats And the tune that wandered away from you Fill groves and forest shades with your message anew.
And in our time A hundred tunes keep sounding from veenas in our homes And yet the heart remains unfulfilled and the soul keeps yearning Traversing a hundred years your song drifts into our dreams Then it occurs to me our poet You have settled in our horizon to light it up forever— Our very own and eternal sun!
A hundred years ago, You had greeted us -- young ones -- warmly, Vibrantly and affectionately. The same greeting is being sent to you this day As a floral wreath to decorate your feet.
O perfect poet, it seems you’ve appeared in imperfect guise Amidst us, softly, silently! And with a trembling voice imperfect being that I am, I sing your spring song in your spring bower And send it to you a hundred years later!
(First published in Kazi Nazrul Islam: Selections 1, edited by Niaz Zaman, Dhaka: writers.ink, 2020)
Clickhere to read Tagore’s 1400 Saal, the poem that inspired this beautiful response from one of the greatest poetic voices of all times.
A rendition of Nazrul’s poem in response to Tagore’s 1400 Saal in Bengali
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
Exodus of 1971 refugees, out of East Pakistan, the name for Bangladesh between 1947 & 1971Rome, Piazza
She is wondering how to enter the story, if she were to write it. The story she has been circumambulating in the last few days, ever since the encounter at the Bar in her piazza.
Was it possible to enter any story directly, as if through a front door? It occurs to Naureen that there might be as many doors and windows to a tale, as there actually were in any house. Her own, for example, here in a suburb of Rome, as also in all those houses she had inhabited in her childhood and growing years, all over undivided Pakistan before 1971.
In West Pakistan, there was the red brick colonial house in Multan of the late fifties, the modern bungalow in Nazimabad colony in Karachi of the early sixties, or in East Pakistan, the pink and grey two-storey house next to a boys’ school in Dhaka Cantonment, when the city was still written as Dacca, and the school was owned by the powerful Adamjees of West Pakistan and not a college yet, and the momentous seventies had not started. East Pakistan was not Bangladesh yet, and still yoked to its bullying Western half.
Naureen brushes off her thoughts about the past and returns to the story nagging her, which was not about houses. But wasn’t every story like a house? The house of an amnesiac who enters it as if it were an unfamiliar space, till certain things made him realise that this might be a place he knew well: a piece of furniture, a smell, a view, adding up to a sensation of déjà vu.
Or it could be an oddly familiar face. Or a voice, husky and wounded, whispering, even laughing, hiding its unspeakable pain.
*
A week ago, Naureen adjusted her mask and entered the Bar in the piazza near her house.
“Un caffè Americano, a tavolo.” She ordered her coffee at the counter and went outside to sit under the striped awning. The August heat, like clockwork, had turned after the middle of the month and it was cool in the shade. She opened her laptop but her eyes scanned the streets of her neighbourhood. Things were almost normal now, more people were out and about, wearing masks. Since the lockdown in Rome in March, her university had shut physically, but till June, Naureen had taught on-line her classes of English and Bengali to her Italian students. Now, finally, she was free.
A writer friend in Dhaka, editing an anthology dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence had requested her to translate into English a Bengali story submission, and Naureen had been happy to return to the world of fiction.
The story, based on facts, the editor friend mentioned in his email, concerned the experience during the war of liberation in 1971 of a teenage girl abducted from a high school in a district town by collaborators and brought to a military camp. A rape camp. A harrowing, yet ultimately redeeming story. How could such a cruel fate end in redemption? Naureen started to read.
She had barely finished reading the first page of the story when she heard a voice across the street from the Bar.
“Apu[1]!” Naureen turned around. On the pavement, under the Nespole fruit tree stood Sadia with a pram. She looked plump since the birth of her baby. The last time she had seen her young compatriot was the year before, when Sadia had regretfully announced that due to her pregnancy, she could not continue the lessons of Italian and English that she loved taking with Naureen. Those two hours once a week were something even Nareen had enjoyed. Then came Covid. So, they had not seen each other for a long time, even though they lived in the same zone, different neighbourhoods.
Standing beside Sadia was another Bengali woman, in shalwar-kameez. Despite the mask, and her head loosely covered in a scarf, Naureen could see she was an older person, Naureen’s age, or a bit more. Possibly in her late sixties. Sadia waved with genuine delight at Naureen and whispered to her companion, who took off her mask and nodded in Naureen’s direction.
The woman looked strangely familiar. Where had she seen her? Naureen knit her brows, before she produced a polite smile. Meanwhile, Sadia left the pram with the other lady and crossed over. She walked up to Naureen’s table and beamed.
“Apu, how have you been? You never came to see my baby.”
“I know, Sadia. But with this Corona virus situation…” Naureen rose saying, “But let me see the baby now.”
“Oh! Stay where you are, Apu. Let them walk over. I’ll introduce you to my mother.” She signalled and the mother ambled over pushing the pram. Naureen cooed appropriately and forced a fifty euro note into Sadia’s reluctant hands.
“It’s for the baby,” Naureen said.
“Your blessings would have been enough, Apu,” Sadia protested.
The lady kept a smiling but dignified distance. They exchanged formalities, and the mother said: “My daughter has mentioned you often. How special you are, your home…”
Naureen kept looking at her, not listening to her words but absorbing that husky, bruised voice. “When did you come from Dhaka? Didn’t you have problems with the visa, and with quarantine?” Naureen asked.
“Oh! I don’t live in Bangladesh. I live in London. I have a small tailoring shop there in a Bengali neighbourhood. Brick Lane. I came to Rome early this year, before the corona problem started. I am now stuck here. But happily, of course, with the baby….”
Naureen was only half listening.
Somewhere, through a cloudy window she peeked into another era. Dacca, 1972, the year after Bangladesh’s tumultuous birth. Naureen and her young aunt Fahmida, a doctor and social activist, had gone to the Dhanmandi Rehabilitation Centre to interview some of the rescued rape victims….
The baby was getting cranky. Sadia was saying “Apu, you have to come over to my flat and have tea with us one day.”
“I will,” Naureen said, then turned slowly to the mother. “Is your name by any chance, Shopna?”
Sadia laughed, “No, her name is Shamima Akhtar Begum, Shumi.”
The lady turned placid eyes to Naureen, a glint of recognition surfacing. They locked eyes for a second. She said, “Sadia, you can’t just ask your teacher to drop by. Invite her for a meal.”
Sadia joined her effusively. Naureen said, “You should bring your mother to my place, too. But I will come over for tea very soon.”
After they left, Naureen sat over her coffee, her laptop, and the world of stories waiting to be uncovered. She was thinking, after fifty years, everything becomes fiction: our past, our lives, our dreams, our struggles and pains, our joys and triumphs. It all transforms into story.
Story. History. His-story. Her-story. Everyone’s story. All we could do was to preserve it by narrating and transmitting it to each other.
*
Why the hell was she talking so much? The bitch. Spawn of bloody Hindus, or sister of some ‘Mukti’ for sure. Traitors! Bastards all
“Shut the hell up!” He didn’t want to hear her voice, especially her pleading, broken Urdu. Nor look at those limpid, fraught eyes. Already it was diluting his rage, his fire.
No. He had been told while being posted to Jessore, these Bengalis needed to be a taught a lesson. . . His slap knocked her down, her head hitting the floor.
“Oof! Allah!” She cried out, and instead of terror she looked up at him with wild, angry eyes, as if she would jump up to his throat, kick and slap him back. Just the way his younger sister, Laali, would as a kid. Lalarukh, far away in Quetta.
Instinctively, he was on his knee. “Oh! God, I’m sorry.”
In a flash the expression in the girl’s eyes changed from anger back to fear. Her cracked lips trembled and so did her hand as it lifted to wipe a trickle of blood from her forehead.
But before he could pull her up, they froze on the floor listening to heavy footsteps coming up the corridor outside. The boots stopped at the door next to their room. The door handle rattled as voices jeered.
‘Oye yaar! Let us in. Why is the door locked?”
“How many do you have there? Come on, give us a share.” There were thuds, sounds of laughter interjected with the sharp notes of women’s screams and wails.
He pulled her up. She was shaking and clung to him. He held her for an instant then moved her away and said, “Listen, see that door at the back. It leads out. Just go.”
She looked at him blankly.
He repeated, “Go!”
“Go where?”
He shrugged, “Kaheen bhi. . . wherever. Just leave. Now.”
She turned her face away. “Yes, and have a whole battalion of grizzly animals descend on me. I’d rather be protected by someone decent like you.”
“I can’t protect you and I am not decent. In war, we are all barbarians.” He sat down on a chair, face in hand. She stood before him her shoulders sagging, her dupatta pooled at her feet.
*
“And then? What happened?” Seventeen-year-old Naureen asked.
Shopna gazed unseeing outside the windows of the Dhanmondi Rehab Centre and let out a shuddering sigh.
Fahmida said. “It’s okay. Shopna, you don’t have to tell us more, if you don’t want to.”
“It’s not that.” The dark eyes were strained but tearless. Her voice was low and scratchy. “It’s just that this is not a ‘story’ but things that actually happened to me, so in my mind it’s all jumbled up. Some parts are erased, others sharp as a knife. What we saw and endured…no language has words to describe these. . .”
Shopna started to sway from side to side. “We were a dozen women, all herded like cattle in that room…. One woman was fortunate and died after being assaulted repeatedly. Her body was hauled away like a sack of rice . . .” Her voice was thin and low as a keening.
Fahmida stroked Shopna’s head. “It’s okay, dear. We don’t want you to dig into anything you don’t want to. Unless it helps you.”
Naureen wiped her eyes and whispered to her aunt, “Khala, I just can’t process what she went through! Imagine, her husband brought her, a newlywed bride, to be safe with her parents in Dacca and went to join the guerrillas, and a neighbour betrayed her!”
Shopna raised stony eyes to them and muttered, “Yes. I will never forget that morning. It started as any morning. How was I to know what destiny had in store for me by day’s end?”
*
Yet the girl knew how lucky she was not to have been herded into the other crowded rooms where they took the rest of the girls brought in military trucks. She was deemed more educated and pretty, so reserved for officers. Thus, she was in a separate room.
And she survived to narrate her story.
Early the next morning, it was still dark when the officer opened the back door and smuggled her out to the compound outside. She hid behind a drum while he went and got a jeep. He backed to where she was. She scrambled in and lay low at the back. There was only one sentry at the check post at that hour, who saluted and then they were out.
She stayed hidden till he stopped the jeep. It was near a road edged with paddy fields. This was the road going out of the cantonment. He asked her to sit up. She peeked out and saw in the distance two figures: old men, farmers, watching them from the field. Nearer to them, across the road and beside a ditch stood a little boy.
“O Ma! Military!” She heard him say as he ran into the grove of thatched houses. She hid her face in her hands. He observed her reaction and understood. It would not be safe for either of them. He drove further off to a more isolated spot, took his jeep down the earth track and stopped under a tree. He let her out. She barely had time to utter her gratitude before he turned the jeep sharply around, said, “‘Forgive me.” and drove off.
*
Teenaged Naureen let out her breath. She felt she had aged since she entered the Rehab Centre that morning.
Fahmida whispered, “I wonder what happened to him.”
Shopna was far away, silent. And within the silence, each moved further into the untold story.
*
A month later the girl was in her uncle’s village home. It was a safe zone, far away from Jessore, near a Mukti Bahini training camp. Some freedom fighters including her brother and cousins had come to stash arms. She was in the kitchen boiling rice and dal for a quick khichuri for the men when she heard shouts. Then grunts, groans and sounds of jostling and kicking came from the courtyard. Her brother and his group of freedom fighters had captured a Pakistani soldier.
They dragged him to the inner courtyard and were beating him with the butt of a rifle. One of the men held up his head by his forelock. She glimpsed his terrorized, bewildered eyes in his bloodied face. In an instant, she ran outside leaving the pot simmering on the fire.
“Stop. Oh! Please stop.” She screamed and dashed between the attackers and the prone body. “Let him go.” She shouted, beating at the others.
“What?” Her brother motioned the others to stop.
“Don’t touch him. Please! He… saved my life. A month ago, in Jessore. . . before I came here.” She sank to her knees and started to weep. The soldier’s left eye was puffed, a side of his face bloated and bruised. He looked at her blankly.
The beating had stopped. “What the hell do you mean?” her brother shouted.
The girl wiped her tears and said, “Bhaiyya[2]. You have not been in touch with our mother, and when I came here, I only told you that I was with my friend Mubina at her aunt’s house outside Jessore and had come here directly to be safe. That’s true, and I told Uncle to tell Amma that also. But there was one day and night, earlier in Jessore town, when Amma was desperately searching for me since I did not return from school.” Her lips trembled. “Bhaiyya! I was abducted and taken to a military camp by someone. . .”
Her brother yelled, “Which haramjada bastard did this…? I’ll rip out his. . .”
“Bhaiyya! Listen. Nothing happened to me. It was the new chowkidar of the school. He said that Amma was seriously ill and had asked me to come home quickly. He whisked me away in a three-wheeler. With his beard and prayer cap, I trusted him Bhaiyya!” Instead of tears, her eyes are aflame with loathing.
She continued steadily, “Luckily, I was spared, because this soldier saved my honour. He helped me escape. I recognised him.” The brother, still breathing heavily kept his rifle pointed at the soldier but told the others they needed to discuss. The others turned away, all shouting and gesticulating, and motioned the brother to follow. “Lies!” One of them spat on the soldier’s boots before he left. They stood not too far away, keeping an eye on the soldier. When they came back, they told the girl that they had decided to tie his hands and feet, blindfold him and set him adrift on a boat.
“He will die,” she cried.
“Oh! Don’t you worry. Every village, every riverbank is crawling with collaborators. Some bloody razakar[3] will find him and help him get back to his camp. It’s only important that we obliterate our tracks.”
While the freedom fighters discussed the proceedings among themselves, the Pakistani soldier turned to whisper to the girl in Urdu. ‘I don’t know why you saved my life. I can never repay you for your humanity.”
She put a warning finger to her lips and muttered. “This is what I owe someone.”
He looked at her baffled. “You said I saved your life. I don’t understand. But God bless you, my sister.”
The men came back with a bundle of rope and a thin, chequered gamchha[4]. Before they dragged him away, he turned to the girl and said, “Khuda hafez[5].”
“You too. God be with you. . . and with him,” she whispered.
*
Naureen opened the windows of her study room wide to get some air to dispel the August heat and sat down at her desk computer to look at her translation so far. The rawness, the immediacy in the Bengali narrative was not coming through in English. It was sounding trite. The fault was hers. She could not improve it, because another story was fidgeting within her. She wished she could write that: Shopna’s untold story that Naureen could not even begin to imagine.
Still, she was wondering how she could enter that tale, if she were to write the story. Not through doors or windows, but possibly by burrowing through like animals, tunnelling underground, and re-imagining the trench of captivity. The grave-like penumbra, the women not knowing if it was night or day, summer or winter. A dozen half-naked ravaged females with unseeing eyes lying like corpses, wishing they were properly dead and buried, and not awaiting the shame of light, of discovery, the world outside.
Naureen got up. She needed to talk to Sadia’s mother. Not to Shamima Akhter Begum, Shumi, but to Shopna.
*
Naureen calls Sadia for directions. Her flat is near the Viale dei Caduti per la Resistenza — “The Street of Those Who Fell during the Resistance.” — the Italian struggle against the enemies during the Second World War. Naureen finds these long street names both musical and moving. How painful must have been the path of those who fell during any struggle, whether men or women. But in Italy, the “Fallen” had been elevated and preserved in public memory, and they had shady avenues dedicated to them, lined with pine trees and flowering oleander bushes.
In 1971, the struggle for freedom was fought not just by men; countless women had made sacrifices. Remembering and honouring them was of fundamental importance. Naureen feels excited that today, this peaceful street named for the spirit of resistance was leading her to Shopna. For her Italian students of Bengali, she could translate that name as “she who dreams.” But how would she tell the story of dreams mutating into nightmares?
*
Sadia’s flat is on the third floor of a well-maintained, middle-class apartment block between a supermercato[6] and a shady children’s park.
Naureen is welcomed by Sadia and ushered directly into the main bedroom.
“Apu, the room at the front, we have rented to two Bengali bachelors who work in a restaurant nearby. We hardly see them.”
The bedroom Naureen enters is well lit and airy. Next to the neatly made-up bed is a two-seater sofa facing a TV on a laminated bureau. Once Naureen is settled on the sofa, Sadia goes to the kitchen to make tea. Naureen watches Sadia’s mother put the baby in her cot in another room.
“I keep the baby in my room,” she says coming back to sit on the bed.
Without preliminaries, Naureen says, “So, Shopna, tell me your story since we last met.”
Shopna’s head is uncovered today. She takes time to knot her loose hair into a bun. There are some grey strands. “Sister, I am no longer the person you met with your aunt that day in Dhaka, fifty years ago. That Shopna died in 1971 and was reborn since then. A cruel rebirth. Still, here I am, sitting before you, smiling.” She looks out at the view of the distant hills.
Sadia returns with a mug of milky tea. It’s sweet. Naureen only drinks black sugarless tea. But she sips it to not make a fuss.
“Have you taken your mother to the hills?”
“What’s there to see, Apu?”
“You have never been there?”
“Well, my husband is so busy all week working at the petrol station that on Sundays our only outing is to go shopping.” Sadia laughs.
“Those hills that you see in the horizon, that’s where the Pope’s summer palace is. You know, the Pope? The Vatican? Anyway, in summer he lives there, overlooking a volcanic lake . . .”
Sadia is listening gravely, trying to absorb all the information.
Naureen rushes on. “Anyway, it’s a scenic place. Go there sometime.” Naureen ends, feeling slightly foolish.
Sadia says eagerly, “Apu, please write down the name of the place. I will ask my husband to take us next week. I always learn so much from you.”
Shopna smiles. “Actually, even in London, I hardly go anywhere. Once a nephew took me on the bus and showed me the Queen’s palace. Otherwise, I only know Wembley and my area.”
They are quiet for a while. Sadia goes to check on her baby, saying, “Apu, it’s her feeding time. I hope you don’t mind. It takes a while. You two chat.”
After Sadia leaves, Shopna says, “Sadia’s father, my present husband, was a widower when I met him. He married me after my first husband abandoned me. Another day, I will tell you about my life. I had thought, the ordeal I went through with the army animals during 1971 was hell. But another fiery dozakh[7]awaited me when my husband came to see me at the Rehabilitation Centre. He and his family could not accept me. To be fair, they tried at first, but could not when they found out I was pregnant. I, too, wanted to die, but failed. I recovered from the abortion. And the day after your aunt and you came to the Rehabilitation Centre, I joined a sewing course and decided to live in a women’s hostel. I started to work as a seamstress. One day, I met Sadia’s father. He had a small business in London…”
Shopna pauses and looks towards the open window. “Some might consider Sadia’s father to be an ugly man. But I only saw a beautiful heart. He came like a fereshta, an angel who took me away. I was granted a new life.”
Naureen follows Shopna’s gaze, directed, she realizes now, not at the lofty faraway hills. Shopna, a smile like a tremor on her lips, is looking nearby, at a shard of sunlight on the open windowpanes, one of them reflecting a tiny balcony with baby clothes drying on a stand.
*
That long ago February winter morning in Dacca was not as chilly as Shopna’s eyes were, as she recounted her ordeal, in bits and pieces. The room at the back of the Dhanmandi Rehabilitation Centre was quiet at this time.
Fahmida put her hand on Shopna’s head and said, “You must allow the tears to come.”
Shopna let out a hysterical laugh. “I watched my parents being shot dead in front of me, my mother’s blood and father’s brain splattered on the verandah by the military. I was dragged away to the hellhole of the army camp. For months we women underwent torture. All my tears dried up. Forever. Even on the day we heard ‘Joy Bangla’ shouted all around us and we were released and rescued by some Bengali brothers and kind Indian officers who wrapped us in blankets, I had no tears of joy. And the day my husband sent me the message to not return home, I had no tears of sorrow.”
Suddenly Shopna burst into tears. Wild tears. She howled in fury. Her eyes were molten lava: “If only one day I could find that razakar, the neighbour who betrayed my family, led the military to our house as the family of freedom fighters, thrust me into hell fire…. and if I could avenge myself, that day I would find peace.”
“Do you know his name, where he lives?”
Shopna sighed. “Yes. But he’s not there. He escaped.”
Naureen blinked back tears and let out her breath.
Fahmida said, “I wonder what happened to him…and to other devils like him….”
Shopna was silent. And each of them burrowed into the silence of untold, unspeakable stories.
Neeman Sobhan,Italy based Bangladeshi writer, poet, columnist and translator. Till recently she taught Bengali and English at the University of Rome Publications: 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 When the Mango Tree Blossomed, edited by Niaz Zaman, for the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh.
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