D H A K A T R I B U N E S U N DAY, J U N E 2 , 2 0 1 3

Poetry
This Hour Asad Chowdhury
(Translated by Khademul Islam)

I
’m in no hurry to go anywhere
Nobody’s waiting for me —
A scolding sunlight on the bed
Silent the window curtains.
Blurred the big black-and-white photograph —
Acting Editor
Zafar Sobhan Dark hair. Against the startled sky
Fly the chaste locks of hair.
Editor Arts & No work, no leisure-time either
Letters I rummage through books
Khademul Islam Sweep away Time’s decorative
Assistant Editor
Dust. Time never does return.
Tamoha Siddiqui The mind desires to join an adda
But, alas, the body’s not willing!
Artist I startle getting up on the rickshaw
Shazzad H Khan Who did I tell to come?
Why did I tell him to come?
He surely will rage at me.
What do I do? I can’t remember a thing.

Time goes by as do clouds

I see the sun-soaked sparrows
The girls hanging the wash on rooftops —
Asad Chowdhury Spice-smell pungent on their bodies.
is one of
Bangladesh’s most
well-known poets.
This time is theirs alone,
Leisure-time blooms into flower. i want darkness zarina m

I sit and watch the flowers bloom

i
Watch the bees buzzing to and fro — don’t want to
Touch a few blurred memories, songs, wake up i want
And broken dreams a-plenty. n the night to go on
i want no lights
i look at the
moon and
Dhaka Fred Mattorn want to turn it off
i don’t want to
see anybody in

I
keep hearing dhaka i don’t want
The shuffle, the rustle them to see me
Of sandals mouths open flames
Mostly plastic in daylight stomping
knife thrusts eye gouging
Like the water bottles screaming tire burning
Discarded faces looming out of
Roadside, with foreign the sun
Names, mainly i want to live
where there is no light
A footloose city, nobody reverse things
Fred Mattorn
Seems to stay at home, sitting i want to breathe
is an occasional
visitor to Outside dingy like a fish in the deep
Bangladesh. Mattress shops, yellowed cotton sleep with eyes
open float past
Flying through the weeds reeds coral
Air flick my tail
To land on feet away from voices hammering
In dusty open-toed sandals. n in the steel air
corpses in drains
a trembling child sweaty
beards
flick flick flick
away from the
light. n

zarina m has recently started writing poetry.

2
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013
Non fiction

1867: Pig-Sticking in Tongi, Dhaka

The Brits of the Raj wrote many a book about hunts, but it is rare to find one centred in East Bengal (or ‘Lower Bengal’ as they called it, that part that
drained the Ganges basin). Much rarer is any such account taking place around Dhaka, or Dacca. This extract is from Arthur Lloyd Clay’s Leaves
from a Diary in Lower Bengal (London: Macmillan; 1896). In 1867, Clay was Joint Magistrate and Deputy Collector in Dacca, after postings in
“Moonsheegunge” near “Naraingunge,” Brahmanbaria and Comilla. He was a Cambridge man, a high-spirited soul, and his account is remarkable for
its acute depictions of life in colonial ‘Lower Bengal.’

O
n Saturday the a sudden spring and twist of his head he cut her across the trunk with a
8th June (1867) savage “Whoof!” sending her back double-quick. Presently another ele-
a course of the phant was made to step over the pig, now rather weak from loss of blood,
Oriental Sporting but just as she was lifting her hind-leg over him he again half sprang up
Magazine brought and gave her a cut in the foot that made the blood flow at once. The hog
on a bad attack of had now got to the other side of the bank, and though still in a corner was
jungle-fever, which being communi- so placed that we could manage, by riding past with a sweep, to get at
cated to Lyon, induced a desire to go him as he lay. “Dick” (my horse) went up very well, but in course of time
pig-sticking ... Toonghee (on the Riv- I broke my second spear also. At last Lyon became impatient and got off
er Toorag, a place on the Mymensin- to finish him on foot, a risky thing to do. Our pig however was very nearly
gh Road some fourteen miles north done for, and finally fell over, and with a last kick and one squeak (the
of Dacca) was chosen as the hunting first he had deigned to utter) his unconquered spirit took flight. He was a
ground, the country thereabouts be- gallant brute and died game, his back to the jungle and his face to the foe:
ing high and more rideable than the low-lying tracts further south by the from first to last he cannot have run more than a few hundred yards. The
big rivers, already getting spongy from heavy showers. assailants’ casualties were two elephants cut, one horse badly hurt, and
many spears broken. The hog was mine, by the most tremendous piece Pig-sticking
The morning of June 10 was bright and fine … Beating commenced in of luck, and his tushes (tusks) were lovely. They were sent home… and was hunting
the patch of jungle from which on the last occasion two pigs and a leop- mounted for wine-labels. In the scrimmage “Dick” had got an unlucky wild boars on
horseback, with
ard had been turned out … From the commotion among the beating el- prick in the heel from my spear, probably in twisting and turning about a spear. They
ephants, and excited gestures of those in the howdahs, it soon appeared as we rode at the pig in succession, and was laid up for some days. were plentiful
that some animal had been roused. Presently we in West Bengal
were granted a sight of his proportions—a fine – the nawabs of
boar came leisurely to the edge of the cover, but Murshidabad had
a high time of it!
not liking the look of things in the open, again – and the British
retired. The elephants were now urged forward, found it a suitably
and made to close up as they approached the end rugged and short-
of the jungle, while several shots were fired into tempered quarry
the thicket. For some time the hog obstinately on the field. In
Clay’s account
refused to break, till at last, when nearly under one notes that
the elephants’ feet, he came out with a rush. Sim- the boar of East
son and Lyon were at him first; but he dodged Bengal was no less
them and made at me, perhaps as a less formi- a distinguished
dable antagonist. As he shot past, I managed to and courageous
adversary. The
give him a prod in the back: the bamboo being
pig was usually
weak, the spear-head broke off and stuck, but he flushed, or
afterwards shook it out and the head was lost. “reared” out
I went back for a fresh spear, while Simson and of its favourite
Lyon pursued the monster. The latter gave him cover of “jhow”
(tamarisk) groves
a good spear, and was obliged to leave it in him.
by beaters, who
Returning, I saw the boar in this condition, whirl- sometimes were
ing round and round on the high bank of a tank, on elephants. The
and could not think what he was doing till I saw lance used was the
him shake the spear out, when he resumed the “Bengal spear.” It
was adapted from
defensive. The offensive would be almost more
the short, heavy,
correct, for there was very little running away in broad-bladed
his tactics. Having clearly elected to fight it out, the boar stood resolutely javelin with which
at bay, and charged anyone who came near enough. Twice he went at Next day (June 11th) we beat a heavy piece of jungle on a nullah, known the locals used to
Lyon so straight, that it seemed as if the horse’s legs must be knocked by the name of “Jan,” but got nothing; and in the afternoon returned to hunt bears before
the advent of the
from under him. In one of his charges he got home and gave Lyon’s horse Dacca. n
British.
a terrible gash in the stifle, but the plucky animal never flinched, and no
one knew he was wounded till Place drew attention to it from his how-
dah. The pig was now in an awkward corner where it was difficult to get
at him, so the elephants were brought up to drive him into more practi- n
cable ground. This however was not easy. With a good eye for position,
the boar stood, his rear protected by a little tank and patch of jungle,
champing his tusks, his eyes gleaming wickedly, but making no other

3
sign till one of the elephants (most unwillingly) came close, when with

DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS

 MacK the Knife
Reverend Mothers
I am a working stiff. Lumber to saw and sand and nail down. Reports to
write. A hangover. So before getting down to it needed a cuppa. But the
maid was off-duty.
No can do, she had informed me yesterday in a go-to-hell tone.
W-h-y-y-y-y?
Parent-teacher meeting at her kids’ school.
Now I am all for fucking progress and all that crap – why should slum
kids be deprived of the joys of bunking school, why shouldn’t maids have
the right to rage and spit at the parent-teacher interface? – but Mother of
Vishnu, not getting proper tea in the morning with a shitstorm raging in
your head is an accursedly heavy price to pay! Breakfast, just non-Twit-
ter FYI, the morning afters if household help decamps is a Rana plaza
meltdown …
So I make my cuppa and go slacker gen for a minute in front of the telly.
CNN. Obama. Drones. Well-meaning, well-educated American blacks are
now death on Muslims: Powell, Condoleeza, and now Obama. Obama,
though, I guess has reasons. It’s gotta be twice as lonely at the top for
a black president, surrounded by all these white guys. And around the
American president, they tend to be uber white. Everywhere Big O looks,
around the table, in the Rose Garden, white! Even the brothers from the
old ‘hood look mocha in this light. They’ve even got him sitting in a
color-coded house, can you believe it, the White House. So whenever he
feels the gears slipping in his head, Obama goes, okay, time to jack up
the underwear, grab a sandwich and go drone-ing … Hello Chuck, get me
Nevada, where’s the camera … Kabul … Panjshir, what’s that? Oh, shit,
nearly diced a Nato convoy! Helmand, yeah, hold it tight there, no, pan
it back … looks like some very dangerous-looking women children goats.
BOOK NOTES
Qader Imam
Lifelines: New writing from Bangladesh (ed: Farah Ghuznavi; New Delhi:
Zubaan; 2012)
Lifelines is a book of promise. This collection of fifteen stories by Bang-
ladeshi women display variety and flair. Three writers here stand out:
Sabrina Fatima Ahmad, Srabonti Narmeen Ali and Iffat Nawaz. Sabrina’s
story is complex, delicately revealing a strange weave. Srabonti’s ef-
fort, (about an ex-Lalmatia, Dhaka boy occasionally “allowed to dream
without reality fucking me from behind” who is now a cabbie in New
York), is liberated, but never loses control.
Iffat Nawaz’s story, about grow-
ing up in an old house in old
Dhaka, beautifully plays on a
decayed air suffused with sexual
Qader Imam
secrets, the plot advancing only
is currently
working on a play. to retreat, and retreating only to
advance again.
‘Lifelines’ in the title means, ac-
cording to the editor, the ‘life line’
of palmistry, which is actually two
words. It might be confusing to
readers accustomed to the more
common meaning of a life-saving
line, whether literally to a drowning
person or to metaphorically rescue
someone. There can be questions,
4
too, whether ‘new writing’ in English
KAPOW! Ah, feel much better. Sorry about the goats, but did you see the
humongous suicide vests on them?
And the Bong channels? What’s going on there? The last two months,
it’s just the same dingleberry drama, over and over again - ‘shonglap’.
The two netris won’t sit, won’t talk. Shit’s hitting the fan, everybody’s
unbuckled their pants in order to breathe, and yet the two ladies won’t
make nice. Reminded me of something. Who? Where? Salman Rushdie
aka J Anton, that’s who! His archetypal, grizzled, battling matriarchs
rending things apart. As a light rain dropped Dhaka’s ambient noise to a
mere 200 decibels, I opened his glorious dastan-e-hindustan Midnight’s
Children. Yep, there she was, Saleem Sinai’s grandmother, the once-de-
lectable Naseem, who over time, “unified and transmuted into the for-
midable figure she would always remain, and who was always known by
the curious title of Reverend Mother … a prematurely old, wide woman,
with two enormous moles like witch’s nipples on her face, living within
an invisible fortress of her own making …” And her power? “The twin
hearts of her kingdom were her kitchen and her pantry.” The kitchen and
the pantry, state power and the public treasury! All the goodies are there.
And the keys – to power, to the humming machinery, the rules, the struc-
ture, the key to making fortunes, to live the good life, eat well and be
merry, or its stark opposite, on the outside looking in, tongues lolling,
no access, clawing at the door, out of favour, granted no audience at the
court – the keys are with whichever Reverend Mother sits at the top. Our
very own Reverend Mothers, they can feast you, or they can starve you.
And in the book, only her child could make her bend.
I stepped out on to the verandah. Rain was pelting down. Knots of
people sheltering under various rags, tarps, ledges, edges, overhangs,
shades, wood and tin. Getting hosed. Among them the street people.
The invisible dark matter of our nation, its microwave background ra-
diation. The dribblers, the emaciated, the broken-limbed, the hysterical
the chanters the ghouls the dickers the wet dirty homeless, all wander-
ing sleeping walking babbling in the streets through the blast furnace of
their lives …
Right! Screw it! Time to step back inside. Saw the lumber, write the re-
ports. I am a working stiff. n
from Bangladesh is confined to women, but that is a specious and fruit-
less argument. This is new writing. Here it happens to be all women au-
thors; somewhere else it can be all men. Sometimes it can be both. The
larger point is for Bangladeshis to write, and publish, in English, and this
is one of the points this book implicitly makes. Ms Ghuznavi has done
an admirable job of compilation and Zubaan’s production is top-notch,
but putting her own padded bio over two pages while the other fourteen
contributors share five pages is immodest. n
Kali O Kolom Boishakh 1420
Kali O Kolom has proved to be dura-
ble. By now it is a fixture on the liter-
ary scene in both the Bengals. But it
sometimes seems to be falling between
the two stools of academic writing and
literary works. The latest issue illus-
trates this problem, in that its two lead
writings, one on Kamalkumar Majum-
dar the myriad-minded man, and the
other on Rabindranath, are dense and
indeed at times bordering on the turgid.
The continuing source of such articles
seems to be the groves of academia,
where the endlessly qualified declama-
tion is the sure path to excellence. These works stand in stark contrast to
the magazine’s other offerings, of short stories, poems, travel accounts
and reviews. It can make for difficult reading sessions.
But however uneasy lies the mix, Kali O Kolom always provides food for
thought, and fare for pleasure. In that sense this issue is no exception.
Abul Mansur’s ‘Zerobhai’ and Kazi Rafi’s ‘Password’ – both short stories
– are worthy reads on rainy days, while Debesh Rai’s review of Shaheen
Akhtar’s Shakhi Rangamala is in a class by itself. n
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013
DHAKA ART DIARY
Commodification?
One has to pity the junior artists, whose basic problem with the mar-
ketplace is not that it sets rules, but that the rules do not favor them.
They lack a Brand name. This non-recognition by the art-consuming

I
class, which in Dhaka means largely the moneyed class, whose artistic
n Dhaka we all now madly celebrate art. This is a comparatively tastes are set by standards extrinsic to art, arrivistes who are genetically
recent change in our social attitude towards art, one that has been supremely Brand friendly – the matched luggage, the Rolex watch, the
shaped by an expanding middle class, by the emergence of an art- latest SUV, the ‘right’ school for its children – is fatal to the junior artists.
consuming class, by frantic urbanization which is displacing age- They buy art as a class marker, as a baby pacifier for troubled nerves,
old notions about what it means to be human and Bengali, expo- for imagined harmonies of time and space in an environment that has
sure to the outside world and by its pressures on ideas about the artist in none. Art as class arbiter is art that has lost its way. So the unmarketable
relation to society. Over the last decade galleries have mushroomed in junior artists grouse, and plot and scheme over endless cups of tea in
the city. At any given moment there seem to be tens of exhibitions taking their dark hideouts, and elbow each other and jostle mightily in the art
place. Glossy art books which used to be too expensive to produce are marketplace, wanting to hit the magic formula, watching enviously as
now available. Art magazines have become formidable marketing tools.
The marketing machine of this ‘Art’ is relentless, in all forms of media,
from slick brochures to the colorful coverage on the ‘entertainment’ pag-
es of daily newspapers – the stock questions to the usual suspects, the
familiar arrangement of photos – to the repetitive formula in the manda-
tory fifteen minutes on the overbred ‘culture roundup’ shows on televi-
sion channels. SMSes and emails arrive like the plague in one’s Inbox,
tooting yet another invitation to yet another art exhibition.
The Rath of Art is unstoppable.
But what is the art that is being so expertly marketed and massaged?
It is, with a few exceptions, increasingly a commodity. The rules of the
marketplace now dictate Art and direct art production. Money and exhi-
bitions are now the real artistic currency. The market is a ruthless master,
and it does not take kindly to errant children, deviants, nonconformists,
rebels and artists. It does not take kindly to Art that functions as real art,
which is the profound ability to upset the established order of things.
At least not until the day the market can co-opt it. So it is not surpris-
ing that more and more artists are congregating in the central market-
place of Dhaka, the nation’s supreme art bazaar, the center of commerce
and business, standing in lines with their brushes and paints as artistic
equivalents of spades and shovels the day laborers carry on their shoul-
ders as they wait for the construction middleman to pick them up.
A recognizable ‘Art Style’ is now the Top Brand. Styles are exhibition
markers. This development can plainly be seen in the exhibitions and the seniors pick up the money with ease, with their brands.
works of especially the senior artists, who have become prisoners of What does the artist do in such a situation? It’s a trap. Dhaka art market-
their own easily recognizable styles: the overbright green banana frond, place is a trap. Even if one wants to rebel against the marketplace, how to
the burnished cityscape, the swirling fish, the overly peaceful pahari. get one’s message out if one cannot, or will not, exhibit, if the art doesn’t
All of these have become Brands. Brands are anti-art. Brands and adver- sell? One can’t sell if one doesn’t obey the rules of the Marketplace, and
tising rely on clichés of feeling. Brands fear adventure and experiment. if one does, what is the message of one’s Art: Paint to a formula, stick to
Brands are close-minded, frozen styles, and behind the frozen style is the Party line and run with the money to the bank? Or should one (even
the closed mind. A Brand is a formula, and if a formula sells well, and if as one screams to be exhibited, and for the work to sell, sell, sell), once in
the success of an art exhibition or a painter is measured purely on how a while, ask oneself: what is the true function of Art? What am I doing? n
many she or he can sell, no one in the marketplace will dare tamper with
a successful formula because the iron law of the market is that it takes a
long time to build a Brand.

Bhadralok timepass
Sandip Roy
“I came to that book event you once did at Oxford Bookstore because I
thought you were Satyajit Ray’s son,” a man told me forlornly once. “I am
interested in film.” I could only look vaguely sympathetic.
This is not entirely new to me. Years ago as a rookie journalist in Ameri-
ca I was sent to cover an Indian community event honouring Sandip Ray
himself. A man walked up to me and said without preamble “I knew your
father.” I nodded. The man grew animated. “I met him on a bridge,” he
said. My father, a civil engineer, did build bridges. But then the man said
“I was watching him standing on the bridge framing the shot.” At that
point I had to gently tell him that he was wasting his precious Ray story
on me.
Now living in Kolkata, I have to break the bad news to perfect strangers,
surely includes Sandip Ray himself, knows Sandip Ray is no Satyajit Ray.
But in bhadralok Kolkata, pedigree usually counts for more than achieve-
ment. Sandip’s latest film Jekhaney Bhooter Bhoy was fairly ho-hum. His
Feluda films are serviceable but not that inspired. But like dutiful fam-
ily members Bengalis go to see them – a middle-class ritual of timepass.
They complain it’s not like the old Feluda but even that complaint has a
pleasantly familiar nagging twang to it. Sandip Ray allows the city to pay Sandip Roy is
tribute to the master through him. That’s terribly reassuring for every- Culture Editor for
Firstpost. He is a
one. Kolkatan turned
That’s why the disappointment is so acute all around when I am mis- San Franciscan
taken for him. In a city still searching for Satyajit Ray, Sandip Ray is any- turned Kolkatan.
way the placeholder. I am the typo with no connection to the master. But
perhaps connections, at least the way we think of them, are overrated.
The new film Bombay Talkies has an adaptation of a Ray short story –
‘Patolbabu Film Star’. It is set in Mumbai, made in Hindi and Marathi,
by Dibakar Banerjee, a filmmaker born in Delhi. But it works magically.
“Really, it was based on a Ray story?” said a friend. “It felt so contempo-
rary.”
Ray needs more of that kind of tribute than those carefully treasured

5
sometimes over the phone. The irony, of course, is every one, and that once-upon-a-bridge anecdotes. n

DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS

 LETTER FROM SRI LANKA
Daya Dissanayake
Literary awards
T
here is always the good and the bad and sometimes an ugly
side to all literary awards around the world. But they are
an essential part of the literary scene today and we have to
accept it as it is.
The Gratiaen Prize is one such award, given away every
April to a Sri Lankan writer in English for his or her work as a poet, novel-
ist or playwright. The 2012 Gratiaen Prize was awarded on May 5th 2013,
to Lal Medawattegedera, for his unpublished novel, Playing Pillow Poli-
tics at MGK.
Daya Dissanayake It was in 1992 that Michael Ondaatje instigated the Gratiaen Prize with
is a poet and the money he received from the Booker Award for his novel The Eng-
novelist based lish Patient. The film based on the novel won the Academy Award for
in Colombo, Sri
best picture in 1996. The award was named after his mother, Doris Gra-
Lanka.
tiean and was meant to “encourage English writings by Sri Lankans.”
Ondaatje, born in 1943 in Colombo, moved to England in 1954, and then
to Canada, where he is now a member of the Department of English at
Glendon College, York University in Toronto. Even though some of his
novels are based in Sri Lanka, as a diasporic writer, probably he too is
writing about an ‘Imaginary Homeland’. However the Gratiaen shows
his love and his gratitude to his homeland.
Anti-travel
“Boy, those French…”
Aqeel Haider
There’s No Toilet Paper…On the Road Less
Traveled (ed: Doug Lansky; 2005; Palo Alto: Trave-
ler’s Tales)
W
hen I first read this book
it made me to want to
hitch a backpack and hit
the trail. Get the hell out-
ta here. To there. Sadly,
though, I never did really make it out of Palo
Alto, unless a drunken mini-Spring Break
roustabout in Tijuana with some mustachi-
Aqeel Haider oed Meski Mamas counts … Come to think
was born in of it, the way we found ourselves doing the
Pakistan and is jailhouse rock in another border town forty-eight hours later might merit
a programmer consideration for a ‘Rite of Passage’ sequel to this one.
in Palo Alto,
Published eight years back, this collection of stories about getting gen-
California.
erally fucked-up in alien lands and cultures is today a classic. The travel
industry is a plus-$3 trillion enchilada, part of the global culture. Moon-
walks the next thing, pal. Cash only. Here’s your zoot suit. Our globe is
now tramped, spat on, peed on, walked over and over like never before,
by hordes and hordes of people, the vast majority of them white west-
erners – though now the elites of the ‘developing world’ are getting into
the act. A clash of civilizations where the comic was bound to happen.
This book is a record of that clash. If it seems one-sided, it is only our –
‘our’ meaning non-whites – fault for not writing about tramping through
the western world. What’s stopping us from recording the smelly asses
6
that result from only using paper to clean up? Not to digress, but many
The first ever Gratiaen Prize was shared between Carl Muller (The Jam
Fruit Tree) and Lalitha Witanachchi (Wind Blows Over the Hills). Carl Mul-
ler, like Ondaatje, belongs to the Burgher (Eurasian) community of Sri
Lanka, and he has made this country his home, and is one of the most
outstanding English writers in Sri Lanka today. Since then the Gratiaen
Prize has been awarded every year, and some of the prize winners have
gone on to make a name for themselves, like Punyakante Wijenaike, Sy-
bil Wettasinghe (her children’s stories have been translated to Japanese
and several other languages), Tissa Abeysekara (who went on to win the
SAARC Award for Literature), Vijita Fernando and Lakshmi de Silva (both
won the highest literary award in the country, the Sahitya Rathana), and
Shehan Karunatilleke who won the Commonwealth and the DSC prize
2012 for the novel Chinaman.
Over the past 20 years the Gratiaen had made a contribution to en-
courage Sri Lankan writing in English, but whether Ondaatje could be
happy with the outcome has been questioned by critics. Other than the
few writers mentioned above, none of the other winners have made
much of a contribution. The trend in giving the award for unpublished
manuscripts, ignoring the published books, had also been questioned.
However some of the English newspapers in Sri Lanka attach a great im-
portance to this award, carrying news of the short list, interviews of the
short-listed writers and then much publicity to the winner. These same
newspapers totally ignore the State Literary Awards for the best English
novel, short story and poetry.
All other literary awards for Sinhala, English and Tamil writings, are
made in September, which is the Literary Month in Sri Lanka. The Co-
lombo International Book Fair will also be held from September 14-26,
2013. n
whites begin to really smell like roses only when they come to the mys-
terious, secret Orient, with its not-so-secret water sources placed by the
toilet bowl!
It’s an A-list of writers. Aside from well-known names such as Dave Bar-
ry, Bill Bryson, Rory Nugent and P.J. O’Rourke, there’s also David Foster
Wallace – a big name in modern American fiction. Wallace’s account is a
scathing putdown of Middle America’s travel wet dream: the megaship
Caribbean cruise – “It turns out that a seasick person really does look
green, though it’s an odd and ghostly green, pasty and toadish, and more
than a little corpselike when the seasick person is dressed in formal din-
ner wear.” The other yarns are more straightforward and uproarious:
funny toilets, weird accents, and nudist camps, all are guaranteed to
hit your laugh-o-meter. As Steve Martin points out: “Boy, those French,
they have a different word for everything.” n
Excerpt from Nigel Barley’s ‘A Simian in the Cinema’: As I sat (in
Ngaoundere, Cameroon) and contemplated the beauties of nature, I was
approached by a baboon. It sat and regarded me with obvious interest
from the river bank, exploring its body for fleas in a most immodest fash-
ion. Soon a certain sympathy had developed between us and it daintily
picked its way on all fours to where I sat and stared fixedly into my face
as if hoping to find I was a long-lost relative. Suddenly it yawned and
apparently pointed to something over my head. So great was the sympa-
thy between us that it never occurred to me that this was not a gesture
intended for me and I turned round to see what was being pointed at.
The baboon, profiting from my distraction, seized my left nipple through
the open shirt and began sucking on it vigorously. It did not take this
sagacious beast long to realize that this was a fruitless endeavour and we
withdrew in mutual embarrassment, the baboon going so far as to spit
most offensively. n
Send us your worst travel/tour experiences. Mail it to editor.lit@
dhakatribune.com.
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013
 LETTER FROM CANNES
Farrukh Dhondy
Never a ligger be!
I
am at Cannes film festival on two pieces of business, the second
of which is discussing the production of a film from my novel The
Bikini Murders with the company that’s announced their inten-
tion to make it. Strictly speaking, this could have been done any-
where in the world but since the company has films actually com-
peting in Cannes it seemed a good place for a rendezvous. My personal
rule is never go to Cannes as a spare part, a hanger-on or a ligger begging
for party invitations. Cannes is a cruel and competitive world.
The best way is for one’s film to be invited in one of the competitions.
One is in those circumstances a guest of the festival and all doors open.
The next best is to be a buyer, a person who can genuinely view films
and make deals either to distribute or produce current and future pro-
jects. Very many frauds and fakes turn up pretending to be buyers with
manufactured credentials and connections. They look busy on phones
and computers, play Movie Moghul for a week and disappear till the next
year. Thirdly, you can be a seller, meaning you seek the appointments
and buy the drinks, unless you happen to have the hottest property in
town – in which case you needn’t have come to Cannes.
I must confess that I have been in all three categories. In one particu-
lar year there were two sets of producers attempting to get international
distributors for five films I’d written in the previous year, one of which
was Mangal Pande - The Rising and one of the others an international
film called Red Mercury. On the occasion I speak of an Indian TV reporter
stopped me in a Cannes street with “Mr. Dhondy, it’s sensational you
have five films at Cannes!”
I said “That’s good to know but news to me!”
“But that’s what the Indian papers have reported.”
“Have they? Then they don’t know the difference between having films
at Cannes and bringing coals to Newcastle hoping to sell them. ‘Having’
a film at Cannes means the film has been selected by the festival in one
of the competitive categories. None of the films I’ve written have been
Writers as pole-dancers
Indrajit Hazra
Performance anxiety is not something you’d reckon writers having to
deal with. Actors, public speakers, hired assassins, yes. But not writers
shaking the ends of their pens or hovering their fingers above keyboards
in rooms smelling of whatever smells make them finish their work. The
writer, like the chef, isn’t supposed to appear on the plate of your table.
But somewhere down the line, there was a change in plan. A happy one,
I must admit considering that travelling on book tours or attending lit-
erature festivals is one way I get out of the house, never mind the city.
The trouble with this stepping out of pages, however, is that this kind of
exposure can be, for many writers including myself, like a vampire keen
on sunshine setting out for a walk in the summer.
Last month, I was at two sessions at the Shillong CALM (Creative Arts,
Literature and Music) Festival. I was trotted out to air my thoughts on
two seemingly disparate subjects: ‘Old age homes’ and ‘The serious in
comic writing’. Being a practitioner of novel-writing under the category
of black comedy, I was perhaps better equipped to hold forth on the sec-
ond subject. But I had said yes to the ‘Should there be old age homes?’
debate (of course, you moderately young person!) because while writing
my latest novel, I have been doing a lot of thinking about growing old.
(My story has a man who thinks he can see half an hour into the future
grappling with the loss of that power.) I had also agreed to participate in
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
submitted to the competitions and they probably wouldn’t have been
selected for exhibition anyway.”
“Oh, but the newspapers said they had been.”
“And that’s probably ruined my life,” I said.
She was puzzled.
“Why?”
“I’ll never be able to go back to India now,” I said. “All my creditors will
gather at the airports thinking I’ve come into hefty money.”
This year Cannes has been designated the festive spot for a hundred
years of Indian cinema. There are posters all over the festival to adver-
tise this anniversary. I tell everyone I meet that it’s a fraud. Indian cin-
ema is at least 116 years old. The first Indian films were shot in 1899 and
1901 by Harish Bhatvadekar in Bombay. In the first years of the twentieth
century Hiralal Sen of Calcutta, a pioneer of then united Bengal, shot
a feature called Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Several documentaries
featuring Lord Curzon’s Delhi Durbar, the inauguration of railways, the
return to India from Cambridge of the Indian mathematician ‘wrangler’
Paranjpye were made and exhibited before 1913. OK, so we South Asians
famously fiddle birth dates and I suppose 2013 is as good a year for a cen-
tenary as any. It should have been a bean-fest which included Pakistan
and Bangladesh, but perhaps the double-divorce has erased the memory
of such an anniversary.
Farrukh Dhondy’s
I do my business, talking to the company which has bought the film acclaimed first
rights to my novel. The Indian newspapers have announced this cine- novel was Bombay
matic intention and they all say that my novel is based on the life and Duck. He lives in
serial murders of Charles Sobhraj. My character in the novel is called London.
Johnson Thaat.
Nevertheless my phone rings in Cannes. It’s my Indian literary agent.
“Charles rang me from jail in Kathmandu. He says he’ll sue you if you
make this film.”(Sobhraj, with whom I am well acquainted, is serving a
life sentence for murder there).
“If he identifies with Johnson Thaat he’ll have to say he is guilty of the
serial murders I describe. So, as the Australians say – ‘No worries, mate’”.
I tell the producer about the call.
“Good publicity,” he says.
And now I’m invited to ten parties, two or three a day. Maybe there’ll
be one with at least two feet of red carpet on the stairs or somewhere. I’ll
step on it and then tell the Indian newspapers that I have “walked the
red carpet in Cannes”. n
the topic because if you’re asked months before the actual event, you are
duty-bound to say ‘yes’ even to things like ‘Would you like to sleep with
a sheep?’. In any case, Shillong in mid-May had the added attraction of
temperatures less than half of what it is at home in Delhi. The second
instalment of the
The writer, out of his cave and put on display, is the antithesis of Andy
annual Shillong
Warhol’s ‘fifteen minutes of fame’. It turned out to be some 160 minutes Creative Arts,
of fidgeting under a full public gaze. Some writers are good at perform- Literature and
ing – which is what these things are. But writing and speaking/perform- Music Festival – a
ing are two separate activities and the latter isn’t just about being articu- platform for the
late. It’s about being entertaining. Anyone who has seen Bob Dylan in creative arts of
India’s Northeast
interviews will get what I’m saying. – took place from
Thrown unceremoniously into the deep end of the pool, I, a land ani- 9 to 11 May, 2013.
mal, found myself far removed from my ‘Let me line these sentences up Indrajit Hazra,
and send them across’ zone. So in the back-to-back sessions at wonder- who was there
ful Shillong I ended up speaking of the need to send comic writers to old along with the likes
of Jerry Pinto,
age homes and about the ravages of old jokes. As long as I wasn’t boring,
David Davidar, Jug
I figured I would survive despite the gibberish seeping out of my mouth. Suraiya and Victor
Which is where the whole performance anxiety bit kicks in. The person Banerjee, tells us
who cannot afford to write anything boring has to avoid being boring what it was like to
himself in these public outings. But then, some writers can be great pole- be another monkey
up the greasy pole.
dancers – Vikram Seth, to continue that metaphor, comes to mind. For
most of us, such performances have little to do with staring down at our
readers. So till the next time I put my costume on, it’s back to the freezer.
I have a book to finish. n
Indrajit Hazra is a novelist and journalist based in New Delhi. His last
book, The Bioscope Man (Penguin India), was published in 2008.
7
 Serialized Story
The second

Samira - Part 2
installment of our thought, smiling slightly.
serialized story. She hadn’t even met her old friends or relatives or even her cousins. She
We hope to bring hadn’t even had a proper conversation with her parents, especially Baba,
in other writers
soon for future
not while she was still somewhat in shock over being uprooted from her

Waking Up To Reality
segments. – Editor. American life. Her real life. She still couldn’t believe that she was back in
Dhaka. Had it been the right thing to do, to bow down to the wishes of
Mum-Dad? Had it been right on their part to insist?
Morning rituals done she went to the dining table. Her father was read-
Awrup Sanyal ing the morning newspaper, ‘The Daily Trash’, she called it. Her mother

T
came in with a plate of piping hot porota and bhaji, her favourite, with
he storm had ratcheted up a few levels, doors and windows that smashing home-made achar on the side, achar that Samira never
were rattling in syncopated rhythm. A gust had entered the tired of, not in Greensboro, not in Brooklyn, not anywhere.
room and was circling her in a rage. The human head of the Her mother noticed Samira still had on her bedtime clothes.
gust flew round and knocked down paintings from the wall, “Samira! Why are you still in your nightie?” Her mother’s voice was
overturned the bed and scattered around the furniture. Now, sharp.
something or someone was banging at the bedroom door, which somehow Her father looked up. “Hello, bideshini!” he said, smiling at her. Then to
still held on; it grew louder and louder. The door started bending and bulg- his wife, “What’s the matter with you, Dolon? Let her be. She has come
ing inwards, and before she could throw herself on it, it splattered out in back after so many years…”
splinters… “Hmmm… I see you are going to play the bhalo manush here. Maybe I
should remind you of the pains you took to get her the interview.”
n “Maa, I won’t go for the interview. I need some time to figure out my
life. You took a decision about my life but I have to live it now!”
Samira woke up with a start and was relieved to find everything intact “Samira, it’s all for your own good!”
in the room. Someone was indeed banging at the door. She heard her “It’s all right!” her father said as he put down the paper and began to
mother’s voice, “Samira! Wake up! It’s your interview today! Wake up!” eat. “I can push the interview back. Now let’s just have our breakfast to-
Reluctantly she made it to the door. She unbolted it, then stumbled gether in peace.”
back to bed, got in and pulled the covers over her head. He mother “Well, that may be okay with you. But she should know that it was hard
walked in with the morning tea, her special or-
ganic green tea, without which her day would
refuse to start. This was a ritual that Brian and
she had gotten used to. They had practically
been living together all through her Master’s,
and usually, it would be Brian who would plod
down the steps and get her the tea. Brian, what
was he doing now? At the library, she knew.
“How many times have I told you not to bolt
the door from inside?” Her mother grumbled as
she put down the tray on the bed, next to her.
“Utho, ma, your father will be upset if you miss
the interview!”
“Uff, Maa! Pl-e-e-a-a-a-se!” Samira’s muffled
voice came through from under the sheet.
“Breakfast is ready. Come on now.”
Samira’s hand snaked out and reached for the
cup. As the earthy notes of the green tea hit her
Awrup Sanyal is tongue, the last wisps of the nightmare disap-
an ex-advertising peared. Fuck, she thought, these things are
professional and a
exhausting. And if I have to do the Gulshan-
fiction writer.
Dhanmandi thing every day… Oh God! Dhaka in
2009 was unrecognizable from the town where
she had spent her childhood and teenage years in the ‘80s and ‘90s – that to request… that rascal... to consider your daughter for a job!”
seemed a walk down the primrose path by comparison. And turning to Samira she said, “Requesting somebody who was an
It was not even a week that she was back and she was already be- employee of your father’s and now owns the company.”
ing hustled into a job. What was going on? Were the parental units up “Dolon! Enough! I will deal with this!” He smiled at his daughter. Sami-
to something, up to that arranged marriage shit? That’s all they could ra smiled back at him.
think of sometimes, even in this day and age: marriage and kids. Fam- And with that all three stopped talking and began to eat.
ily, respectability and tradition. But Dhaka had changed, Samira thought Outside, Dhaka had woken up and its countless children were being de-
sourly. Nowadays you probably had to get an American education to livered to school by worried parents in the funk of the city’s noise and
marry well, and a job would be another huge plus on the marriage re- grime.
sume. She had intended to chill out for at least six months, sort stuff out. Will I need a car, Samira thought, or is it going to be ricki ricks for me
But the first item on the agenda had been sleep, delicious sleep. These too as with most of those schoolchildren? n
past six years had been all about hustling out of bed early and going full
speed. So, since she had been back, Samira had been sleeping, or lying in
bed listening to the sounds of the vegetable sellers, and once or twice, a
cuckoo’s call as the neighborhood woke up. Looking out of the window
early in the morning as she got up to pee, she had looked curiously at the
crowd walking by the lake, some even jogging. Burqa-clad women too, in n

8
what seemed to be Nike knock-offs. Burqas and Nike: Just do it! she had

ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013