DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013

Idgah was the very centre of the busy life of court, and mart, and camp, and many a stirring sight it must have witnessed as the crowd of whiterobed
worshippers thronged from every quarter of the vast city to celebrate the welcome festival that closes the long fast of the Ramazan.
— The Romance of an Eastern Capital (1906)
 NOTE

A
ssembling a compilation of quality English writing in Dhaka is not
always an easy task. There is not much to choose from, and such
collections therefore tend to be repetitive and limited in range.
An Eid supplement is no different and it can take the fun out of things.
This particular Eid supplement was pleasurably different. A few years
back I had thought of a volume of collected writings on Dhaka. Things
didn’t pan out, and the dream lay unrealized. The idea, however, never
left my head. With an Eid supplement of the Arts & Letters page due, it
seemed as good a time as any to transfer that idea onto this platform.
Editor Leaving aside coffee-table confections and historical accounts, we have
Zafar Sobhan never had a true compilation of English writings on Dhaka, something
that would encompass genres ranging from historical narration to poetry
Editor and fiction. Such books exist in Bengali, of course, but not in English.
Arts & Letters
Aside from being interesting in its own right, it affords us a view at how
Khademul Islam
such a future volume would look, feel and read. How does Dhaka come
Assistant Editors across when, in one go, we see it from so many perspectives and angles,
Pushpita Alam reflected and refracted through poetry, nonfiction and fiction? Our editor
Tamoha Siddiqui Zafar Sobhan was immediately supportive of the idea, and we at Arts &
Letters are indebted to him for his unstinting support.
Artist
Shazzad H Khan Dhaka is a city older than Kolkata, and the totality of writings on it is
a vast and cluttered mess. Much of it is in Bengali. English translations
of some of these works do exist, but are of sub-standard quality. With
not enough time or resources for new translations, we decided to limit
publication to only original English writing – a small sum of the existing
works. Even then it was a time-consuming task – of searching, reading,
winnowing and organizing the material. It was also enlightenment by
slow degrees. English writing about ‘Dacca’ of course began with the
arrival of the British colonialists. Their earlier accounts had an implicit
sense of wonder at life in Bengal as they hunted, boated, played polo,
cricket, hockey and held ball dances. This expansive sense of play faded
from their writings from the 1920s onwards as nationalist movements
gained traction, and imperial accounts began increasingly to be written
by police and administration officials.
The Bengal Renaissance, unlike ‘Calcutta’, had no effect on ‘Dacca’.
It certainly produced no Derozio or Young Bengal or the equivalent
of a Hindu College or a flowering of thought and writing in English.
Dhaka’s elite, largely Hindu, throughout the colonial period were inert
in that sense. Muslim scholars did write about ‘Dacca’, but in Persian.
It was only after 1947, during the Pakistan era, that ‘locals’, i.e. Muslim
Bengalis, began to write creatively in English. Tentatively, hesitantly,
they produced novels, short stories, poems, some literary journalism. For
the first time, writing in English by women emerged here – a trend that
has continued to grow spectacularly ever since. Dhaka in these works
provided locale and mood, its inhabitants were models for fictional
characters and the city’s bustle and politics was the grist for imaginative
mills. Interestingly enough, the divide between East and West Pakistan
was reflected in the English literary works of the two wings. Despite a
common language – unlike real life – the writing streams of the two wings
remained separate and apart from each other, illustrating in its own way
how deeply flawed was the concept and practice of Pakistan.
Historically Dhaka has experienced ups and downs. When Mughal rule
ended, and later when Murshidabad became the center, Dhaka’s decline
was severe. During the Bengal Partition, as capital of East Bengal, and
later of East Pakistan, it flourished. After 1971, as the capital city of an
independent state, its expansion and growth has been nothing short of
phenomenal. Many would say this growth has come at an unacceptable
price. But in one sense, in the visible expansion of English writing by
Bangladeshis, this development has been beneficial. Never before has so
much on Dhaka been written in English by us, by Bangladeshis – and here
I include those of us abroad, all those who, no matter where they reside,
feel the tug of this frenzied city. Irremediably, undeniably. I frequently
bemoan the state of our English writing – I began this Note on that note
– yet, I was astonished to encounter the sheer volume and variety of
writing on Dhaka since 1971. It gladdens the heart. It lifts the spirits.
As the centuries fall away while you leaf through these pages, you too
should feel heartened. Dhaka is the one city we can call truly our own,
and so the writings gathered here give us an authentic sense of ourselves,
and perhaps expand it, hinting at future possibilities. That alone makes it
worth our efforts, and worth the reading.
Wishing you all a very happy and festive Eid. n

Editor Arts & Letters

NON-FICTION FICTION POETRY

Dacca 1608: The Mughals
Found the City
F B Bradley-Birt 4
Dacca 1660: Of Atheism
and the Original
Cantonment
B C Allen 5
Dacca 1824: A Dilapidated
City
Bishop Reginald Heber
Dacca 1912: Hindu-Muslim
Divide Over Dacca University
Ahmad Hasan Dani
Dacca 1949: Government
Housing
Stephen Hatch-Barnwell
Dacca 1950: Eliot, Tagore
and Shakespeare
Amy G Stock 10
Dacca Mid-50s: Bus Stop
Mahmud Rahman
Dacca 1962: A Galling
Examination!
Hasnat Abdul Hye
Dacca 1970: Cyclone and Dacca 1889: The Baboos The Dove of Dacca
Naxalite Lookers Take Over Rudyard Kipling 3
Dom Moraes 15 Qurratulain Hyder 7 Here I Love You, Dhaka
Dacca March 25, 1971: Dacca 1963: Dhanmandi Abeer Hoque 8
Forewarned? Amitav Ghosh 13 Published in the Streets
Nurul Islam 15 Dacca 1969: Back Home of Dhaka
Dacca: December 15-16, 1971 Razia Khan 14 Kaiser Haq 11
Peter R. Kann 16 Dacca 1980: A View of Dhaka Rains
Dacca Club 1972: the Park Rumana Siddique 18
5 Javed Jahangir
Redemption Like Fireflies 18 Recycled
Khademul Islam Dhaka 1984: Gandaria Nausheen Eusuf
17 19
Iffat Nawaz
Dhaka 1988: Sadarghat 19 Tree Without Roots
9
Francis Rolt 20 Dhaka 1989: The Eskaton Ahsan Akbar 21
Huzoor
Dhaka 2003: An Put It Up!
Adib Khan 21
Unshackling Tanvir Malik 28
10
Amit Chaudhuri 25 Dhaka 1999: Only Way
to Bring Him Home
Dhaka 2008: Out of Place,
Sabrina Sadique 22
Out of Time
Zafar Sobhan 27 Dhaka 1999: Basti SKETCHES
Shazia Omar 23
12 British in Dacca: 1866-67
Dhaka 2000: The City of
Deferral Arthur Lloyd Clay 6
K Anis Ahmed 24
13 Dhaka 2006: Taxi Wallah

2
Numair Chowdhury 26

ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013

Poetry

The Dove of Dacca

Rudyard Kipling

T
he freed dove flew to the Rajah’s tower—
Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings—
And the thorns have covered the city of Gaur.
Dove—dove—oh, homing dove!
Little white traitor, with woe on thy wings!

The Rajah of Dacca rode under the wall;

He set in his bosom a dove of flight—
“If she return, be sure that I fall.”
Dove—dove—oh, homing dove!
Pressed to his heart in the thick of the fight.

“Fire the palace, the fort, and the keep—

Leave to the foeman no spoil at all.
In the flame of the palace lie down and sleep
If the dove—if the dove—if the homing dove
Come, and alone, to the palace wall.”

The Kings of the North they were scattered abroad—

The Rajah of Dacca he slew them all.
Hot from slaughter he stooped at the ford,
And the dove—the dove—oh, the homing dove!
She thought of her cote on the palace-wall.

She opened her wings and she flew away—

Fluttered away beyond recall;
She came to the palace at break of day.
Dove—dove—oh, homing dove,
Flying so fast for a kingdom’s fall!

The Queens of Dacca they slept in flame—

Slept in the flame of the palace old—
To save their honour from Moslem shame.
And the dove—the dove—oh, the homing dove,
She cooed to her young where the smoke-cloud rolled!

The Rajah of Dacca rode far and fleet,

Followed as fast as a horse could fly,
He came and the palace was black at his feet;
And the dove—the dove—the homing dove,
Circled alone in the stainless sky.

So the dove flew to the Rajah’s tower— From

Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings; Departmental
So the thorns covered the city of Gaur, Ditties and Ballads
and Barrack Room
And Dacca was lost for a white dove’s wings.
Ballads.
Dove—dove—oh, homing dove, April 1892.
Dacca is lost from the Roll of the Kings! n

3
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
 Non-Fiction
Dacca 1608: The Mughals Found the City
I
It was no easy task that awaited Islam Khan on his appointment
[by Emperor Jahangir] to the Viceroyalty of Bengal in 1608. The
province, torn by the long struggle between Afghan and Moghul, lay
exhausted and disorganised...The Mughs had boldly sailed up the great
rivers and robbed and plundered in every direction unchecked...Along
the river-banks they swept like locusts, leaving desolation in their
wake… [The Portuguese], escaping from Chittagong, made their home
on the islands at the mouth of the Ganges, where they continued their
acts of piracy undisturbed.
In order to cope with the danger that beset Eastern Bengal, Islam Khan
Excerpted from at once resolved to take up his headquarters there, at the very centre of
The Romance of an the scene of disturbance. Quitting his capital of Rajmahal, with all his
Eastern Capital. court, he set sail for the eastern province, and the Afghans evacuating
1906. their fort of Gonakpara, on the Bunsi, at his approach, he halted there
with the intention, it is said, of making it his capital. But finding the
land too low-lying, and the Bunsi river prone to overflow its banks, he
quitted it and moved on down the Dullasery and Buriganga, in search
of a more convenient site. Arriving opposite the spot where Dacca now
stands, Islam Khan was struck with its strategical position and the facil-
ities offered by the wide stretch of high ground that lay beyond it, and
at once determined to build his capital there. What Islam Khan found
on the site of his future capital at his first arrival is a matter of consid-
erable uncertainty. So shrouded in doubt is its previous history that it
is almost impossible to state with any definiteness whether a town of
considerable importance or merely a collection of insignificant villages
was formerly in existence there. Several attempts have been made to
identify this site with the city mentioned by European travellers and in
Mussulman chronicles as Bengalla. Tradition says that in pre-Moghul
days there existed here fifty-two bazaars and fifty-three streets, and the
town, from this circumstance, acquired the somewhat unwieldy name
4
F B Bradley-Birt
of ‘Bauno Bazaar and Teppun Gulli.’ One of these fifty-two bazaars,
known as Bengalla, is said to have been the most important of them all,
and its fame as a centre of trade was well known throughout the neigh-
bouring district. It is possible that, from the importance of this bazaar,
its name was accepted by travellers in place of the more cumbrous one
of ‘Bauno Bazaar and Teppun Gulli.’ The identification of Bengalla with
Dacca is strengthened by the fact that no traveller or chronicler ever
mentions them both. The traveller Methold, in the sixteenth century,
speaks of Rajmahal and Bengalla as fine cities, making no mention of
Dacca. Mandelslo, who visited Bengal about the same time, mentions
Dacca, Rajmahal, and Satgaon in his book, but in his map he has written
Bengalla making no mention of Dacca. If Bengalla is not to be identified
with Dacca, its site remains a mystery. Had it met the fate of Serripore,
and completely disappeared from sight, washed away by the river, it
would assuredly have left some tradition in the neighbourhood where it
once stood. But none such remains.
How Dacca acquired its name is almost as great a mystery, and the
endeavour to explain it has been fertile in many inventions. One story
is that it derives its name from ancient pre-Mussulman times, when
Ballal Sen, having found the image of the goddess Durga concealed in
the jungle, raised a temple to the ‘Hidden Goddess,’ the Dhaka Iswari,
by which name the city that gradually sprang up round it came to be
known. Another story is that the town takes its name from the dhak
tree (Butea frondosa), which is said in ancient times to have covered the
whole of the river-bank where the town now stands. Yet another tradi-
tion associates the name with ‘dhak,’ the Bengali term for a drum. The
story runs that when Islam Khan first landed to inspect the site which
he had chosen for his new capital, he found a party of Hindus perform-
ing one of their ceremonies to the accompaniment of drums and music.
Struck by the noise of the drums, a whim seized him, and he ordered
the musicians to stand on the river-bank and beat their loudest. Then,
sending out three of his attendants, he ordered them to proceed two in
either direction along the riverbank, and one inland as far as they could
within sound of the drums. Where the sound ceased, they were ordered
to place flagstaffs, and here Islam Khan erected boundary pillars, and
fixed the limits of his capital. It seems probable, however, that the name
‘Dacca’ was in use before the time of Islam Khan, as that of one of the
numerous local bazaars that went to form the town. In tracing the his-
tory of Indian towns it is repeatedly found that, owing their origin to a
collection of small villages which gradually expanded and united, they
eventually took their name from the largest of these villages, or from
some famous shrine or temple in their midst. The villages themselves
often retain their own individual names long after they have become
known collectively under a common appellation. Dacca itself today is
a striking example of this retention of local names still used to distin-
guish the different quarters of the town. It is probable that the fame of
the Dhakeswari temple, or the fact that Islam Khan first resided in that
quarter, accounts for its having given its name to the new capital. Islam
Khan, in compliment to the Emperor, gave the city the official name
of Jehangirnagar, by which name it is generally known in Mussulman
annals. n
n
n
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Non-Fiction

Dacca 1660: Of Atheism

and the Original Cantonment B C Allen

W
e must now turn back to trace the origin of the English fac-
tory at Dacca. It is not known when or by whom this factory
was first established. Thomas Platt, or Pratt, who was Mir
Jumla’s [from 1660-1663 the subahdar of Bengal appointed by Emperor
Aurangzeb] ship-builder, would seem to have represented the East In-
dia Company at the Durbar and he appears to have been the Company’s
Agent when Tavernier visited Dacca, for he mentions Mr. Pratt as being
the English chief or President. Before his time there was another Eng-
lishman in Dacca, for we read that a few years later a deed purporting
to be signed by James Hart and dated 1658 was produced in support of
a claim for the land on which the English factory stood and which was
formerly owned by this James Hart. The deed was treated as a forgery,
but the fact that Hart was in Dacca in 1658 and owned the land was not
disputed. Nothing further is known about this man, and he may have
had nothing to do with the Company.
In 1672-73 the Company was represented by Messrs. John Smith and
Samuel Harvey, but the two seem to have fallen out, for we find that in
1677 the former alleged “that Mr. Harvey said to me that there was no
such thing as god or divell that religion was broached to keep ye world
in awe, that it was done by ye cunning of Moses and afterward Christ,
or words to ye same effect.” The court charged Harvey with “atheistical
notions,” and he was put on his trial but acquitted. In 1676 Mr. Fytch
Nedham was the Agent at Dacca, but in that year Mr. Harvey was sent
back there as chief with Nedham as his second. One of the first things
he did was to procure sanction for the erection of brick buildings for
the Company’s factory. Ten years before, Tavernier tells us, the English
house was “fairly good “ but it was probably not of brick.
Even at this early time the English appear to have had some prestige
and influence at the [Dacca] Durbar, for one “Emin Cooly” the former
“faujdar” of Hughli, got a letter of introduction to the English officers at
Dacca to help him in some business he had with the Nawab…
It is not clear when a military guard was first entertained at the
factory. In 1736 the military stores included “3 Brass Swivel guns, 2 Mor-
tars, 3 long Swivel guns, 4 large Brass Swivel Blunderbusses, 10 small
Excerpted from
(3 of which are iron), 2 iron Canon, 10 spare Bayonet pieces, 4 Carbines,
the Eastern Bengal
5 Pistols, 5 Swords, “ etc. Such was the beginning of the military guard District Gazetteers:
at Dacca. In 1745 it had increased to one Lieutenant, five Sergeants, Dacca. 1912.
six Corporals, 47 European privates, and several others…The original
cantonments at Dacca were near Tezgaon, in a village called Baigun
Bari. The place is still called Kalipaltan, and a portion of it still retains
the name of Chandmari (shooting range). Some time about the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century the cantonments were moved nearer
the town to the Purana Paltan, but the site was thought to be unhealthy
and a few years before the Mutiny the troops were transferred to the Lal
Bagh. n

Non-Fiction

Dacca 1824: A Dilapidated City Bishop Reginald Heber

W
hile we were approaching the shore, for the purposes of having a nearer view of the extensive ruins in the neighbourhood of Dacca,
when at the distance of about half a mile from those desolate places, a sound struck my ear, as if from the water itself on which we were
riding, the most solemn and singular I can conceive. It was long, loud, deep, and tremulous, something between the bellowing of a bull
and the blowing of a whale; or, perhaps, most like those roaring buoys which are placed at the mouths of some English harbours, in which the
winds work, to warn ships off them. “Oh,” said Abdullah [native servant], “there are elephants bathing. Dacca much place for elephants.” I looked
immediately, and saw about twenty of these fine animals, with their heads and trunks just appearing above the water. Their bellowing it was which
I had heard, and which the water conveyed to us with a finer effect than if we had been ashore…The cemetery is a wild and dismal place as ever
Christian laid his bones in, at about a mile’s distance from the inhabited part of Dacca, surrounded by ruins and jungle, containing several tombs
of former residents, when the province was in its prosperity, some of which had been handsome, but all were now dilapidated and overgrown with
ivy and the wild fig-tree…
[Nawab Shams-ud-Dowla] is now, of course, shorn of all political power, and is not even allowed the state palanquin. He has, however, an al- Excerpted from
lowance of 10,000 rupees per month, is permitted to keep a court, with guards and is styled “highness”. The palanquin, indeed, was a distinction Narrative of a
to which his brother [Nasrat Jang] had no very authentic claim, and which this man could hardly expect, having been very leniently dealt with Journey Through
The Upper
in being allowed the succession at all. He had in his youth been a bad subject, had quarrelled with government and his own family, and had been Provinces of India.
concerned in the bloody conspiracy of Vizier Ali. For his share in this, he was many years imprisoned in Calcutta, during which time he acquired 1828.
a better knowledge of the English language and literature than most of his countrymen possess. He speaks and writes English very tolerably, and
even fancies himself a critic in Shakespeare. He has been really a man, Mr. Master tells me, of vigorous and curious mind, who, had his talents en-
joyed a proper vent, might have distinguished himself. But he is now growing old, infirm, and indolent, more and more addicted to the listless in-
dulgences of an Asiatic prince; pomp, so far as he can afford it, dancing girls, and opium, having in fact scarce any society but that of his inferiors,
and being divested of any of the usual motives by which even Asiatic princes are occasionally roused to exertion… The Nawab’s carriage passed
us, an old landau drawn by four horses, with a coachman and postilion in red liveries, and some horse-guards in red also, with high ugly caps, like
those of the old grenadiers, with gilt plates in front, and very ill-mounted. The great men of India evidently lose in point of effect, by an injudicious
and imperfect adoption of European fashions. An eastern cavalier, with his turban and flowing robes, is a striking object; and an eastern prince on
horseback and attended by his usual train of white-staved and high-capped janizaries [jar-nisars], a still more noble one; but an eastern prince in a
shabby carriage, guarded by men dressed like an equestrian troop at a fair, is nothing more than ridiculous and melancholy.” n

5
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
 Sketches

British in Dacca: 1866-67 Arthur Lioyd Clay

From Leaves from

a Diary in Lower
Bengal. 1896.

6
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Fiction

Dacca 1889: The Baboos Take Over Qurratulain Hyder

T
he last Nawab-Nazim of Bengal, the heroic Siraj ud Daulah, lost dabad, but had also modernised themselves. Romesh Baboo began to
out to Lord Clive in the Battle of Plassey in 1757. The administra- follow the same trend, which was also prevalent in Dacca.
tion of Bengal passed into the hands of the English
East India Company… Calcutta became the second largest
city of the British Empire and a kind of poor man’s London.
Dacca, in East Bengal, remained a neglected provincial
town, important only for its river-port of Narayan Gunj
which handled the jute trade of the hinterland.
Muslims were in a majority in East Bengal, and some of
their nobility and the titular Nawabs of Dacca continued to
live in this dreamy old town surrounded by broad rivers.
The city had many splendid houses, built during the days
of the Dutch and English East India Companies… Caledonia
was also a planter’s house, built in Dacca by a Scotsman
called MacDonnel Saheb. It was not as large nor as impos-
ing as Joost House, next door, which belonged to a Dutch-
man and also faced the Old Ganga. In bright sunshine the
waves of the river reflected on the outer walls of Caledonia
like the undulating scale of Vangala Raga, or it was time
playing upon time. The silent, visual music struck no
discordant note because Georgian architecture had long
been a part of Bengal’s landscape. People like the ruddy-
faced and jovial MacDonnel Saheb and his family had been
around since the days when they rowed inland on their
barges in order to trade in European goods. Slowly and
subtly they had taken over as the river-country’s blustering
new masters. They had come to stay…
MacDonnel Saheb lived frugally in Caledonia, died of old
age and was buried in the European Cemetery in Dacca.
Young Angus MacDonnel took over his father’s vast business…In late It was summer time. He was in the process of settling down in his new
middle age Angus MacDonnel decided to marry a bonnie lass and return house and was being inspired by its picturesque setting. One evening
home. Before going back to Glasgow he sold the house to a dreamy- as he strolled in his garden, delicately smelling a bunch of jasmines, it
eyed baboo of Mymensingh. suddenly came to him—
Romesh Baboo, the new owner of Caledonia, did not have an aristo-
cratic hyphenated name like Roy-Chowdhry. He was merely a Sarkar, a Mango-birds’ ode to Goddess Laxmi
member of the middling Kayastha caste of scribes. The Kayasthas had Winged songstresses in the Garden of Moon,
mostly worked in the departments of revenue and civil administra- Trill they and lilt in mellifluous June:
tion from the time of the early medieval Afghan Sultans, the Mughals Lady of the Lustrous Lotus River,
and the Nawab-Nazims of Bengal. They were an adaptable and diligent O Padma, Bountiful Ma, Prime Giver—
people, and had become proficient in English with the same ease with
which they had mastered Persian in earlier centuries. Romesh Chan- Not quite satisfied, he began again—
dra Sarkar’s family owned a small estate along the Brahmaputra in the O flighty singer of emerald June,
district of Mymensingh. It had been given to his forefathers for services Trilling and lilting while the limpid moon.
rendered to the East India Company after the Battle of Plassey.
When his father died, young Romesh Chandra decided to leave the The Muse was rudely disturbed by the coachman’s child, Abdul Qadir.
backwaters of East Bengal and live in Dacca. He wished to be in touch Instead of Chandravati, the Moon-Maiden, he had materialised like a
with modern times. After purchasing Caledonia in 1889, he added a mischievous little imp, holding a big, fat book in his grubby hands. He Excerpted from
fireflies in the
high-walled courtyard at the back for his womenfolk and set about gave the master a toothy smile and said, “Huzoor, I was cleaning out mist.1994.
purifying the house. With much beating of tom-toms and blowing of MacDonnel Saheb’s landau when I found this lying under the seat.
conches, a tiny black idol of Kali, the mother goddess, was installed in Bootiful pictures of Mem-log and Saheb-log and Nawab-log! Look—!” n
the erstwhile ballroom… Western education led to a Hindu cultural re-
vival in Bengal. Romesh Baboo had passed his F.A. in Mymensingh. He
began subscribing to English and Bengali newspapers and journals, and
as a gesture to the new revivalism, he changed the name of the house
from Caledonia to Chandrakunj—Luna’s Grove.
Like most Bengalis, Romesh Baboo was interested in music and po-
etry. While the Muslims continued to write poetry in Bengali and Urdu,
the bhadralok—westernised Hindus—went in for versification in Eng-
lish. They lived in neo-Georgian houses and composed poems in heroic
couplets. The Hindu Zamindar class was created by the British after
the Permanent Settlement. The new landed gentry and the merchant
princes of Calcutta lived in the style of the former Nawabs of Murshi-

7
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
 Poetry

Here I Love You, Dhaka Abeer Hoque

H
ere I love you, Dhaka.
In the neon streaked night, your streets rise and roar.
The hoarse hawkers and blighted beggars
vie with their ululations.
A hundred times I listen.
Horns, whistles, engines, breath.
A thousand times I hear anew.

The crows swoop and cry.

Dust whips off their wings in slow motion.
Your black water-stained buildings are unremembering
Of the rains.

Oh the lurid flutter of your clothes.

Beckoning.
The sultry hoods of the rickshaws unfurl and wink.
Saris weep and wave from crumbling balconies.
This is a window.
Here I love you.

Here I love you, and the winter shrouds you in vain.

Published in I love you still amidst the dull and deep.
‘Slate’, New Age. Sometimes your path is lined with dark slow streams.
2006. I see myself lost in your staining excesses.
Your brides of the late afternoon light fade.
I love what I do not see. You are a vision.
My words wrap around you to no effect.
But then the moon reveals itself over your lakes.

The boat on the water is a sculpture

Carved and set upon a gleaming stone.
And as I love you, the wind threads its fingers
Through your rippling heedless body. n

Lalbagh Fort. Charles D'Oyly. 1814

8
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
 Non-Fiction
Dacca 1912: Hindu-Muslim Divide Over Dacca
University Ahmad Hasan Dani
O
n 31st January, 1912, Lord Hardinge came to Dacca in order to
pacify the Muslims. This occasion was availed of by them to
press for another demand. It is recorded: “In an address pre-
sented to the Viceroy [Lord Hardinge] at Dacca on 31st January, 1912,
a number of Muslim representatives of Eastern Bengal and Assam
placed certain proposals with the object of safeguarding the interests
of the Muslim community. They pointed out that the Mussalmans
had not taken advantage of Government educational institutions to
any extent comparable with the Hindus, and they expressed their
doubts whether the modification of the partition of Bengal might not
retard the educational progress of their community. In his reply Lord
Hardinge said that the Government of India realised that education
was the true salvation of the Muhammadans and that the Govern-
ment of India, as an earnest of their intentions, would recommend
to the Secretary of State the constitution of a University at Dacca.
On the 2nd February, 1912, a communiqué was published stating the
decision of the Government of India to recommend the constitution
of a University at Dacca.”
This proposal for a University at Dacca… and the controversy that
started on its account throws interesting light on the attitudes of the
Hindus and the Muslims. These have been preserved in the question-
naire, made by Calcutta University Commission, 1917-1919. In his
answer Mr. A. K. Fazlul Huq points out, “It was at first meant to be
a concession to the Muhammadan sentiment as a set off against the
injustice done to the community by the annulment of the partition
of Bengal.” Quite in keeping with this sentiment, Mr. A. F. M. Abdul
Ali says, “If, as is generally believed the idea in giving a pocket edi-
tion of a University to Dacca is to reward the Muhammadans of East
Bengal for submissively accepting the annulment of the partition,
the jurisdiction of the Dacca University should be extended as much
as possible. A purely residential University may be the correct thing,
but it will hardly benefit the Mussulman community of East Bengal.
A residential University is a luxury out of the reach of the majority of
the members of a proverbially poor community. In my opinion, the
Dacca University should be both a residential as well as an affiliating
University. All the colleges of East Bengal, nay, even those of Assam,
may be allowed affiliation to the University.” These points have been
more clearly brought out in the representation of the Dacca Muslim
Deputation, “Eastern Bengal, as is well-known, was till the time of
partition a neglected area. Muhammadans were the principal suffer-
The Dacca University Committee.1912
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
ers. This was the case especially as regards their education. It was
during the days of the partition that serious attempts were made by
the Government to devote their exclusive attention to the needs of
Eastern Bengal and its people…The annulment of the partition was,
therefore, looked on with serious misgivings, especially by the Mus-
lim section. For it was during the partition days that the problem of
Moslem education received at the hands of Government that amount
of attention which their importance justified. The Mussalmans natu-
rally felt that the annulment would bring back the old state of things
and that they would again be relegated to the background. It is quite
clear that, though the Dacca University question is not essentially a
Moslem question, it is a subject which is vitally connected with the
problem of Moslem education in Eastern Bengal. As regards the juris-
diction of the University, Public opinion in Eastern Bengal is opposed
to the idea of confining the University to Dacca proper. It is held that
its benefit should be shared by all alike; and not by only those who
can afford to proceed to Dacca for study. To aim at an ideal state of
Excerpted from
perfection for its own sake is to sacrifice the larger interests of the Dacca – A Record
Eastern province for whose benefit the University was intended.” of its Changing
As against this Muslim opinion, the Hindu view may be given in the Fortunes. 1956.
words of Sris Chandra Chatterji: “At the outset let me tell you that
I am strongly opposed to the idea of a separate University at Dacca
or at any other place within the Presidency of Bengal, for a separate
University would mean the establishment of a separate controlling
agency. The creation of a separate controlling agency would lead to
very serious political results. It would mean interference with the
steady growth of a feeling of nationality, which is essential for the
well-being of the people, and which is being developed through
education under the same University. As a matter of fact, I would
take the same stand with regard to it as I did with regard to the
partition of Bengal.” This attitude of opposition was expressed in a
different language by the Hindus of Dacca, who made a representa-
tion on behalf of the “People of Dacca.” They said, “In our opinion,
instead of spending twelve lakhs of rupees in the establishment of a
new University, which means a heavy recurring expenditure on ac-
count of the costly machinery, this sum may be very properly spent
in starting a few useful educational institutions in this town. If the
above institutions are granted, Dacca can well afford to be under the
existing Calcutta University for a decade or more.” n
9
 Non-Fiction
Dacca 1949: Government Housing
F
ortunately, Dacca had been a provincial capital in the first
years of the century, but, even so, in the first years after inde-
pendence accommodation was very scarce. The staff required
to manage an independent government was a very different affair
to what was necessary fifty years earlier. Space now had also to be
found for numerous diplomatic missions. When promoted to Direc-
tor’s rank, we first arrived in Dacca fresh from our splendid house in
Barisal. We were allotted a most miserable little flat and lived there
in acute discomfort for the few months before I managed to get some
leave. On our return we managed to get a half-share in a house as
good as the one we had had in Barisal. This, however, was only an
interim arrangement pending the construction of some new official
residences. In due course, we ascertained which of these was going
to be ours and we watched it grow. It was not on the same palatial
scale as those of earlier days, but it was sufficient for our needs. It
Excerpted from
had, however, certain small defects. The doors inside at first had
The Last Guardian:
Memoirs of Hatch- their locks and bolts on the wrong side. You could bolt the door of
Barnwell, ICS of the loo from the outside to imprison its user inside, but somebody
Bengal. 2011. enthroned inside could not bolt the door to keep out an intruder on
his privacy.
The great day arrived and we started moving the furniture in. About
midday a man arrived to give us our connection with the electric-
ity mains. It was very hot and the connection having been proudly
announced, we turned the knob on the regulator to switch on the
fan at full speed. The only result of this was to set the electric light
Non-Fiction
Dacca 1950: Eliot, Tagore and Shakespeare
D
acca when it was working normally — which was seldom —
was a good place to teach in. We [English Department, Dacca
University] had a few brilliant students, but later, when I had
taught in enough places to make comparisons, I found much the
same range everywhere, from the very talented to the very dull: the
students differ in background, the universities in their gift for reduc-
Excerpted from ing everyone to a dead level of mediocrity.
Memoirs of Dacca In Bengal, East or West, students came to English literature with a
University 1947-
much more intense awareness of their own literature and language
1951. 1973.
than in the Hindi and Punjabi speaking regions where I taught later
(as I never taught in the south I can make no comparisons there). It
does not necessarily make them better students, for that after all de-
pends mainly on the quality of one’s mind and the amount of work
one is ready to do, but it gives them a different approach, a more
sophisticated interest in problems of expression, form and style.
Bengali is a well-developed language, flexible and adaptable, with
a literature at once old, alive and full of experiment. The relation of
the written to the spoken language, the extent to which the former
can or should mirror the latter, the recasting of traditional forms for
new kinds of sensibility and experience were living questions there,
and students who aspired to do creative work in their own language
were alive to them in English...
After Shakespeare, the poets most revered were still the Roman-
tics, but the most studied by the more active minds at least, were
Yeats and Eliot. There seemed to be an inexhaustible appetite for
lectures and broadcasts on Eliot. At first I wondered if it was more
than a desire to be up-to-date, for he seemed to me the most Euro-
pean of modern poets, even if he did use four Sanskrit words in The
10
Wasteland; but I think he may have been a lifeline of escape from
Stephen Hatch-Barnwell
competing with the bright daylight. If the fan regulator controlled,
in fact, the lights, then the reverse should apply, so we turned on
the light switch—and this time the bell rang. The third alternative
was, then inescapable. We pressed the bell push and the fan at last
revolved merrily as long as we kept pressing. These minor defects
were quickly remedied and we finally settled in.
All went well until the first storm. All these houses had flat cement
roofs. When it rained, the water flowed down a drainpipe which
passed through our closed verandah into a sump supposed to be con-
nected with the world outside. Unfortunately, there was in fact, no
such exit from the sump so that when the first tropical storm broke,
we got its entire fall of rain on our roof inside the house.
We were to have a garden and there was land enough around us. A
fine row of concrete fencing posts was erected round what was to be
ours, but when the wire was hung on it, all the corner posts collapsed
and had to be replaced by monoliths which would have done credit
to Stonehenge. In due course these little shortcomings were removed
and we lived there in comparative comfort till we went on leave a
couple of years later.
On my return from leave and posting to the Board of Revenue, hav-
ing reached the top of the tree, I was senior and lucky enough to get
a house with three acres of garden, which provided also residence
for hares, squirrel monkeys, civet cats and even a nest of iguanas, to
say nothing of mongeese. n
Amy G Stock
Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore, less appreciated in English than the
Bengalis thought he should be, was undoubtedly a very great poet
in his own language. But a great poet casts a circumscribing shadow
like a great tree. A young Bengali sat down to write a poem, and in
spite of himself Tagore possessed his eyes and ears and feelings; po-
etry had no other rhythms, no other range of images. Only a master
of language with an utterly different sensibility could break the spell,
and T.S. Eliot more than anyone showed them how to extend the
province of poetry.
It was that summer, if I remember rightly, that we presented Shake-
speare… We settled on a public performance of two long scenes from
Othello (a sure hit with the B.A. Pass, since it was prescribed that
year)—the scene of Cassio’s disgrace, and the last scene, and played
them in the enormous Curzon Hall, packed to capacity. It was not
too bad: decor and production left everything to be desired, since
neither I nor anyone else concerned knew anything about them, but
the acting carried the show. A mixed cast, however regular in real-
life political demonstrations, would have outraged Islamic propriety
on the stage and damned us with press and public. The students did
suggest borrowing a couple of Christian girls from the local convent
school, since Christians were not known to have any proprieties, but
I doubted if this would do, and anyway it would have curtailed the
little time available for rehearsals, so we played in the true Elizabe-
than tradition with men in the women’s parts. Even so Shakespeare
triumphed; the gasp that rose when Desdemona died had no laugh-
ter in it. n
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Poetry

Published in the Streets of Dhaka Kaiser Haq

(Pretty objects continued to be admired until 1875 when the phrase ‘pretty-pretty’ was coined. That did it. For the truly clever, apt, and skilful,the
adjective pretty could only be used in the pejorative sense, as I discovered thrity years ago while being shown around King’s Collegeby E M Forster.
As we approached the celebrated chapel (magnificent, superb, a bit much), I said, ‘Pretty.’ Forster thought I meant the chapel when, actually, I was
referring to a youthful couple in the damp middle distance. A ruthless moralist, Forster publicized my use of the dreadword. Told in Fitzrovia and
published in the streets of Dacca (now spelt Dhaka), the daughters of the Philistines rejoiced; the daughters of theuncircumcized triumphed. For a
time my mighty shield was vilely cast away. Gore Vidal, ‘On Prettiness’, New Statesman, March 17, 1978.)

P
retty, isn’t it – sure he’s caught you
On the wrong foot, Mr. Morgan Forster
Broadcasts his priggish amusement
Over cigar and port in the King’s SCR,

The story travels swiftly – and why not,

It’s suitably droll – to Fitzrovia,
Where poets moustached with Bitter froth
Nibble nuts and gossip in equal measure.

But all the way to monsoon-racked Dhaka?

That’s a stretch! I should know,
I was born and live here.
Your pretty tale swinging into print
Under the bamboo, the banyan and the mango
Is the height of absurdity – isn’t that your point?

Point taken, now imagine the dread

Of a writer from Dhaka. Yes, a writer,
Homo Scriptor has a local branch, you know,
And at bazaar booksellers’ such things
As lyric verse and motley belles lettres
Peep out of routine stacks of Exam Guides
Like rusty needles – I too have perpetrated a few.

But your unsolicited publicity may well put paid

To the prospects of any pamphlet or book
Published in the humble streets of Dhaka.
After all, Mr. Gore Vidal,
You are almost as famous
As Vidal Sassoon.

Your word may not be law

But it comes close, in certain quarters –
Deservedly. In assailing the iniquitious
You never beat about the bush
Or blare like a bully. In my axiological tree
You are up there with Chomsky,
Honderich, Arundhati. That makes your snide
Aside rankle all the more. Now,

What are we to do, Mr. Vidal?

Stop writing? and if we do, not publish?
Join an immigration queue, hoping
To head for the Diaspora dead-end,
From Published
Exhibit in alien multicultural museums? in the Streets of
Dhaka: Collected
No way. Here I’ll stay, plumb in the centre Poems, 1966-2006.
Of monsoon-mad Bengal, watching 2007.
Jackfruit leaves drift earthward
In the early morning breeze
Like a famous predecessor used to
And take note too
Of flashing knives, whirling sticks, bursting bombs,
And accompanying gutturals and fricatives of hate,
And evil that requires no axis
To turn on, being everywhere – n

11
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
 Non-Fiction
Dacca Mid-50s: Bus Stop
I
n the early 1940s my father Lutfur Rahman had settled in Dhaka,
and when the British left and it became capital of the old province
of East Bengal, he opened a car dealership and service station. He
named it Pak Motors. I was born in the house that lay right behind. He
sold Austin and Morris cars manufactured by the British Motor Compa-
ny. The BMC, along with its trademark car names, would in a few more
decades itself pass into history.
But it has left some ghosts behind.
One of those is the sporty Mini Cooper, now made by BMW, but based
on the Austin Mini of the ‘60s. Another is the sturdy Ambassador that’s
been rolling off the assembly line at Hindustan Motors in India.
Pak Motors the business collapsed in a few short years. BMC cars con-
tinued to be sold by the larger dealership, Dienfa Motors, located near
Dhaka’s Phulbaria railway station. But by the late 60s, British cars were
overtaken by such Japanese imports as Toyota and Mazda. In the brief
time that Pak Motors existed, though, it managed to slip into history as
place name. It became the name of the local bus stop. In Bangladesh,
perhaps elsewhere in South Asia as well, there is a simple act of popular
democracy through which a bus stop gets named. There is no govern-
ment dictate involved, nor even the desire of any local personality. It
may come to be simply because a bus conductor needs a name when he
drops off a passenger at a new location. Or the passenger might supply
the name. Once the transaction is complete, rickshawallahs will take it
from there and that name becomes imprinted on the transport map in
people’s minds until it rolls off the tongue of all who desire to reach that
destination.
Excerpted from Who can trace how the process works? Sometimes there’s clearly a
publication in New major landmark – Press Club, Farmgate, New Market. But in newly
Age Eid Special. built-up areas, it’s often a matter of first rights. If Zahura Market had
2006.
been constructed before Pak Motors, we might call the area by that
name today. In other cases it’s a mystery why one name wins out.
Between Gulshan 1 and 2, the midway stop is named Agora after the su-
permarket branch there. But why not other businesses in the area such
as Grameenphone or Trust Bank?
Pak Motors the business might have passed, but what of the brick and
mortar that had housed it?
In 1956 my father rented out the pukka building to the U.S. Consu-
late for use as their commissary. I remember that when the Americans
cancelled the lease a few years later, my brother Sani and I eagerly
12
Mahmud Rahman
rummaged through the discards they left behind. In the leftovers of the
American goodam, we also stumbled across some cans of ‘diet drinks’.
Since we were thin ourselves we didn’t care to drink something that
might make us even skinnier. The word around the house was that if
some food item was suspect we ought to take it over to an uncle who
was a communist – he would eat anything. He lived in our Nani bari
just a short walk away. Once after our father had shot a sparrow, we had
taken the bird over to our uncle. So now the diet drinks went to him.
I cannot remember if we checked to see if they had any impact on his
weight.
Every few years the authorities would widen Mymensingh Road. From
a narrow road it became the broad, divided avenue that it is today. The
first time the contract went to an Italian company and they brought in
orange-coloured, flat-nosed Fiat trucks. When I take myself back to that
time I can still smell the sweet diesel fumes of those trucks and even
feel the heat of the melting asphalt.
The building was shorn of its front and my father converted it into a
commercial building with a row of storefronts downstairs and offices
upstairs. Sibco came here to sell bread, cakes, and patties. My mother
started up her father’s defunct Azad Pharmacy, later selling it off to the
compounder. A young doctor, Dr. Mokaddem, began his practice in the
pharmacy, then moved upstairs. He would continue to serve his many
patients with dedication and generosity into the new century. A hand-
ful of tenants came and went, but many became permanent fixtures of
the block.
Next door was another business that my father started, later passing
it on to someone else: a petrol pump and service station. It began as
Burmah Shell, changed to Burma Eastern, and after independence it
sported the Padma brand. Across the road were Minerva Studio, a tailor
shop, and the Hotel Daffodil (and bar). In the mid-60s, the large Zahura
Market was constructed just north. It housed the VIP Store, the PLO
rented its first local office upstairs, and in the back there was a court-
yard surrounded by a labyrinth of shops, offices, and mess quarters.
In 1971 when Bangladesh became independent, there was no way
people would mouth Pak Motor any longer. Overnight, to bus conduc-
tors and passengers, rickshawallahs and local residents, the name of the
area became Bangla Motor. The ghost easily embraced the new name. n
n
photos by abeer hoque
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Non-Fiction

Dacca 1962: A Galling Examination! Hasnat Abdul Hye

S
oon after passing the honours examination he [the author]
received a letter from USAID Dhaka informing him that he had
been offered a scholarship under Foreign Student Leadership
Programme... At first he thought there must be a mistake and the award
was meant for a teacher by the same name. When he was asked to pick
up visa form from the Consulate there was no doubt left that it was real
and meant for him…
The application for visa to enter America was long and some of the
columns to be filled up appeared ludicrous. One was to answer ques-
tions like whether he or she was a prostitute and whether there was a
case of conviction against him or her. More galling was the requirement
to have one’s stool examined in addition to submission of x-ray report.
He had seen their statistics lecturer Wahidul Huq carrying a cigarette
can with his excrement inside for test in a pathological laboratory. At
that time he did not realise that one day he also would have to do the
same, eating his humble pie.
For x-ray the American consulate had authorised the Holy Family
Hospital who sent the x-ray report direct to the consulate. The stool ex-
amination was to detect amoebic dysentery and other serious intestinal
disorders. For the stool test, the Consulate had designated a pathology
professor of Dacca Medical College who charged fees from both the
applicant and the Consulate. He used to live in Dhanmondi and turned
out to be an eccentric fellow, almost a crackpot. He talked non-stop
which made his charcoal black bony frame shiver in excitement. After
sometime he started to drool like a tiny tot or a half-wit. He looked at
him suspiciously and said, “Full Bright? Bright Fool? Eh? So you want
to be go to America to be a Fool Bright? Not half bright but Fool Bright.
Well, we will make you a Fool Bright.” Saying this in his chamber, he
started cackling like a sly jackal…
The pathological and x-ray reports were sent direct to the American
Consulate and he was asked to see the Honorary Consul in Adamjee
Court. The building was the tallest in Dacca in those days and had the
second elevator, the first one being in the Co-operative Bank in Sadar-
ghat. When he was about to enter the elevator (‘lift’ in English which
was in vogue then) to go to the top floor for the appointment, the lift-
man asked him to go by the stairs. He saw a man in suit entering the lift,
overtaking him and the lift went up leaving him on the ground floor. He
felt very much insulted and came back to the S.M. Hall. His roommate
Tareq Hossain had a light brown suit, the second resident student in the
Hall (thank heavens for that!) to own one. He borrowed the suit from
Tareq Hosain and after putting it on (it was a bit loose) he went back to
the Adamjee Court. The same liftman was on duty and seeing him (nay,
his suit) he gave a smart salute and stood aside to let him in. He reached
the top floor with his head high, not even looking at the obnoxious
fellow. His eyes were riveted at his suit. Poor fellow! Had he heard the
story told by Sheikh Saadi?
The Honorary Consul shook his hand and asked him to take a seat.
Then he opened the thin file and brought out the medical reports. Excerpted from All
“Your chest is fine, no problem there. But your stool test is kind of nega- Those Yesterdays
1954-1964. 2009.
tive.” Saying these words he paused for a while. Negative? He thought
only x-rays were in negatives. But stools? So opaque, solid and messy!
The Honorary Consul said, “You have amoebic dysentery and because
of this you are not fit to obtain a visa”. He thought he was hearing his
death sentence, till then America was within his grasp, now it was re-
ceding away. In fact, it had always passed him by. He thought about the
money spent on the tropical suit made in A.D. Paul tailors, the suitcase
bought from the new market, the farewell lunches and dinners. The
Honorary Consul read his mind and said, “Apply after one year. Next
time the report may be good. Take care of your stool”.
Next year he did not go to the crackpot pathologist who greeted his
patients with his howling laughter. Compared to him, the liftman was
a gentleman. He had respect for suit, and perhaps also, er, for stools! It
was not only a new doctor that he would choose next year but the stool
also would be different. Isn’t there a saying: money has no colour? n

Fiction

Dacca 1963: Dhanmandi Amitav Ghosh

I
tried then to see Dhaka as she (my grandmother) must have seen it that night (in 1963), sitting by her window. But I hadn’t been to Dhaka, and
in any case her Dhaka had long since vanished into the past. I had only her memories to go on, and those put together could give me only a
faint, sepia-tinted picture of her other arrivals in Dhaka, decades ago: a picture in which I could see dimly in the middle distance, a black steam
engine, puffing smoke, and a long line of carriages vanishing into the right-hand corner; in the foreground a deeply shaded platform, porters and
vendors, and a crowd of relatives jostling to meet the new arrivals as they step out of their carriage; in the background, perhaps, a glimpse of the
minarets of a mosque. I can guess at the outlines of the image that lived in her mind, but I have no inkling at all of the sounds and smells she re-
membered. Perhaps they were no different from those in any of the thousands of railway stations in the subcontinent. Perhaps, on the other hand,
they consisted of some unique alchemical mixture of the sounds of the dialect and the smell of vast, mile-wide rivers, which alone had the power
to bring upon her that comfortable lassitude which we call a sense of home-coming.
At any rate, the one thing she was completely unprepared for was the bare glass-and-linoleum airport, so like the one she had just left. Nor was
she prepared for the drive to the Shaheb’s house, along a straight road, flanked by tall eucalypti and the occasional suburban bungalow. Excerpted from
May liked it. She said: What a pretty road, it’s so much more open than Calcutta. But as for my grandmother, she kept saying: I’ve never seen any The Shadow Lines.
of this. Where’s Dhaka? 1988.
The Dhaka she was thinking of was the city that had surrounded their old house.
She had talked to me often about that house and that lane. I could see them myself, though only in patches, for her memory had shone upon
them with the interrupted brilliance of a lighthouse beam. So, for example, I could see Kana-babu’s sweet-shop at the end of their lane with
absolute clarity, I could even see the pink cham-chams stacked in their trays, the freshly pressed shandesh heaped in orderly mounds beneath the
cracked, discoloured glass of the counter; I could hear the buzzing of the flies, and I could see Kana-babu sitting hunched behind his cash-box,
scratching his stomach, the same Kana-babu who had once caught their cousin stealing a rosogolla and poured a whole potful of sticky syrup
down the front of his shorts: I could see all that, because people like my grandmother, who have no home but in memory, learn to be very skilled
in the art of recollection. For me, Kana-babu’s sweet-shop at the end of the lane was as real as the one down our own road, and yet I could not tell

13
whether the lane itself was paved or unpaved, straight or curved, or even whether it had drains running along it. n

DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS

 Fiction

Dacca 1969: Back Home Razia Khan

I
had seen Noyon once before last winter. But I had neither tried to sor Bannerjee was now the Provost of Jagannath Hall. He had already
seek her out, nor to speak to her. It was at a reception thrown by invited Noyon and myself for dinner to his house next Saturday.
the Australian Embassy. This was before I had joined the university. Keeping Fuller Road and Jagannath Hall behind me I faced the gymna-
Noyon stood in the well-lit lawn shivering in the cold breeze. She had sium compound, where all the annual games of different halls used to
worn a white sari with golden polka dots. Foreign office friends of Mihir be held. Ultra-modern structures, multi-storied buildings stood before
had put me in touch with the First Secretary who had known Mihir in it. Teachers’ flat-complexes, and the main building of the women’s hall,
Bonn. Noyon probably had no warm thing to match her white sari. I designed by Louis Kahn [The author probably made a mistake here by
was watching that smart husband of hers with his perfectly cut warm referring to Louis Kahn instead of Konstantinos Doxiadis, who designed
suit and sophisticated bearing. Definitely good-looking…The Austral- the TSC], had deprived it of its openness. Yet standing in the old play-
ground, I thought I could hear our
young voices announcing the events
of the Inter Hall Sports. The place
was overgrown with weeds and
bushes. Now the new gymnasium
was the venue for all university
athletics. Sometimes I accompanied
Mihir who was used to morning
exercises and push-ups. The dew
on the grass turned golden in the
mild sunlight of the morning. On
the right-hand side of the road I was
passing through a quiet lane which
housed the quarters of our Head of
the Department, Dr. Jamshed. His
two daughters Nina and Nahar were
playing badminton on the lawn.
Seeing me walk by they shouted:
When did you return from England?
Sometime back. I joined the de-
partment today.
Good for you.
These self-confident girls had
stayed abroad with their parents.
They invited me to tea. I said: Some
other time. Is your father enjoying
being a Provost?
Not in the least. Such a lot of
ian Ambassador Mr. Baxter was elderly and a keen Orientalist. He was bother.
discussing Tagore’s songs with Noyon in clear Bengali. I overheard The girls pulled a long face. I gave them a smile of sympathy and
snatches of their conversation. In spite of the glass of champagne in crossed Fuller Road to stand right in front of Curzon Hall. Yes, those
my hand I was immersed in ennui. Here Noyon stood before me. The clusters of mauve blossoms were on the tops of trees, which stood like
Excerpted from white tuberoses in her hair and her white and gold sari made her look sleepless sentinels as witness to the crazy laughter of our young days.
Draupadi. 2009. like a wood nymph. But somehow she seemed unfamiliar — as if I had In between lay only a few years of turbulence. We were then carefree,
never been in love with her. Everyone was talking politics — Sheikh ready to shed tears at the slightest provocation. Melody poured down
Mujib’s long imprisonment, the impending fall of Field-Marshal Ayub from our throat like uncontrollable waves. To walk down these roads
Khan were mentioned. I took an indifferent part in the talk. The kind laughing and talking was our morning and evening recreation. Some-
of political philosophy imported from the West had always seemed times I would do the rounds alone, enjoying the fresh breeze. n
unsuitable and irrelevant to our problems. Eighty percent of the
population was uneducated. I could never believe that persons clad
in immaculate clothes, sitting in an air-conditioned parliament could
represent the half-naked, hungry population. Western democracy was
just a game which they had learnt to play, using the people whose votes
they needed. The indiscriminate squandering of state-funds had also
always bothered me. The faces of the men who were babbling politics
desperately reflected self-centred blindness. I did not feel like going up
to Noyon to speak to her. When I said good-bye to Charles Schuman,
the First Secretary, he laughed: Your pal Mihir Kamal told me that when
in Dhaka I had only to know two people. Sohrab Khan and the charming n
Professor Nazneen Rahman.
I gave a toothy smile: Did he? n
…I gave my flat key to Kodom and went for a walk. The entire area
gave way to endless memories. The most colourful days of our youth
seemed to be dozing in the graceful branches of the Shireesh trees
shading the campus, waiting to be awakened by a loving touch. Profes-

14
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Non-Fiction

Dacca 1970: Cyclone and Naxalite Lookers Dom Moraes

T
owards the end of the year, as the Delhi winter set in, news came
of a cyclone that had struck East Pakistan and killed a number of
people. The number was first surmised to be 100,000, but rose
with each successive estimate. Shapiro telexed me from New York, ask-
ing me to fly out and do him a story. It was one of the greatest natural
disasters of the century…
I flew from Delhi, leaving Leela behind, to Dacca, the East Pakistan
capital...When we landed at Dacca, at nightfall, there were clouds over-
head, and a faint rain fell. Going through immigration, I encountered a
plump official, who said, ‘You are one of the journalists from Delhi?’ I
assented, and presented my passport. ‘Hah,’ he said, ‘you are Breetish?
Velcum to our beautiful country. I vas thinking you vere Indian. Indians
we do not like. Indians are terreeble fellows—vot you say—like sheet.’
I wondered what Mrs. Gandhi or Mr. Pant would have said at this
point.
A taxi took me to the Intercontinental Hotel, where I was booked. The
driver spoke a kind of English. He did not seem much concerned about
the cyclone and its effects. ‘Too many poor people on coast,’ he said.
‘What matter they die? You tell me, sir.’ But he seemed very concerned
that there were also poor people in Dacca, of which, he emphasized as
we neared the hotel, he was one. ‘All fault of West Pakistanis, sir,’ he
said. ‘West Pakistanis very bloody people. They care about me? No,
they not care.’
The Intercontinental floated, like a huge upended liner in whose port-
holes lights shone, above the darkened slums of the city. The lobby was
full of other correspondents acquiring accreditation cards and govern-
ment handouts at a desk that had been specially set up…I had no cre-
dentials, apart from Shapiro’s telex and a rather imprecise letter from
the New York Times bureau in Delhi. When I applied for my press card
with these, the government man turned me away, saying, ‘This data is
insufficient, mister.’ But a young man who was assisting him followed
me as I walked off. ‘Sir,’ he said, and called me by my name, ‘you are the
poet, isn’t it? I have seen your photo on your books. Please, sir, why you
are here? You want to write poetries about cyclone?’
At this time I was very easily irritated by people who called me a poet.
It reminded me of something I wanted to forget, like a botched but
important love affair. However, there was a look about the young man
which struck me. Perhaps I had inherited a quality from David Archer:
I could see and feel a poet without reading his work. I asked if he wrote
poetry. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I am writing in Bengali, of course. And all my
friends are poets. They will be too pleased to meet you. To think it is
taking a cyclone to bring you to us!’ We fixed an appointment for the
next day. He said, ‘How I can serve you?’
I asked about my press card. ‘I will fix,’ he said. ‘I will fix. The govern-
ment man there is also too much appreciating artists. When I tell him
you are artist, he will give.’ Within two minutes I had my card, without
which I could not have gone anywhere near the disaster area… Excerpted from
Next day the young poet showed up exactly on time, and took me, in a A Variety of
bicycle-rickshaw, through the bazaar to a flat above a sweet-meat shop. Absences: The
The occupant, I was told, was a senior Bengali poet, and he was the Collected Memoirs
of Dom Moraes.
mentor of a group of younger men, of whom my new friend was one. 2003.
The young poets were all university students; the older one was a pro-
fessor. Though my particular poet had described him as unimaginably
ancient, Asif could not have been more than thirty-five. The front-room
was filled with unshaven young men, with very Naxalite looks about
them, but with manuscripts, rather than AK-47s under their arms.
Everyone welcomed me effusively. Asif’s wife brought sweets and tea.
I was later told that it had been a singular honour to me that she had
appeared in male company at all…
I read [my poems], and then, with the younger men all squatting
round, Asif and I—we occupied the only two chairs in the room— en-
tered into a political discussion. They were all young and very enthusi-
astic, and they desperately needed to be understood… the cyclone? ‘Ah,
the cyclone, the cyclone,’ Asif said. ‘That is only one more entry in a
long list. How have the West Pakistanis helped us? All the other nations
offer assistance, even India, but the West Pakistanis sit still. They hoped
perhaps for a bigger cyclone, which would wipe us all out.’ Everyone
present laughed bitterly. n

Non-Fiction

Dacca March 25, 1971: Forewarned? Nurul Islam

T
he night of the 25th March 1971 turned out to be the night of reckoning. There was great suspense and rumours were rife about some sort of
military action by Pakistan. I had lost contact with the team involved in negotiations with Pakistan and there were rumours that negotia-
tions with General Yahya had broken down. Curious to find out any sign of an unusual nature I went out for a drive towards the centre of the
city but decided to return. It looked like the lull before a storm.
That night there was a very boisterous and largely attended party at the house of my neighbour, a First Secretary in the US Consulate. Around
midnight, there was a rumble of tanks and artillery moving along the road towards the New Market and accompanying fire. All this was visible
from the rooftop of my nearby house in the Dhanmondi residential area. At the crack of dawn, anxious to know what had happened during the
night, I tried my telephones. Finding them disconnected, I walked over to the house of my neighbour, the US First Secretary. His phones were also
disconnected. When asked about the occasion for such a big assembly of so many US families in his house, he responded that it was a birthday Excerpted from
Making of a Nation
party for one of his friends and because of the midnight commotions they had stayed overnight. I wondered what so many children of all ages,
Bangladesh: An
including infants, were doing at the birthday party of his middle-aged friend. Economist’s Tale.
It seemed as if the Americans were forewarned by the Pakistanis about the military crackdown so that they could assemble in the designated 2006.
houses that would not be in the line of fire and would be safe and out of harm’s way.
Next day, a student of mine who was an activist in the National Awami Party (Muzaffar) came to convince me that I was very naive to stay in my
house and that I should go underground. In the course of the night, the army had killed numerous civilians, including women and children, Awami
League activists and students, in order to quash the struggle for autonomy. My close association with and assistance to Sheikh Mujib during all
these years, including active help in the civil disobedience movement, were well-known to the army. They were sure to come looking for me. I
heeded the advice given and went underground that day and sure enough, the army came next day, ransacked my house and took away my do-
mestic help for questioning. While hiding from the army, I stayed for a day in Ford Foundation’s guesthouse in the company of one of the American
advisers to PIDE [Pakistan Institute of Development Economics] in Dhaka. n

15
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
 Non-Fiction
Dacca: December 15-16, 1971
W
EDNESDAY, DEC. 15: Indian air strike during breakfast. Dining
room [Hotel Intercontinental] empties in about ten seconds.
Whole roomful of half-eaten instant scrambled eggs.
The chairman of the Dacca Peace Committee, a key collaborator with
the West Pakistanis, arrives at hotel gate and is turned away. He argues
for a while, finally walks off as if in a trance, like a man walking to his
death.
Gen. Farman arrives about 9 a.m. Will the Pakistani army surrender?
‘Why should we surrender? The question of surrender does not arise.’
Farman is riding around in a Mercedes camouflaged with mud, two
general stars on its licence plate. No armed escort. A few minutes after
10, a British journalist runs by, yelling that Farman is coming to hotel
to surrender within the hour. Great excitement. TV types pleading with
one another to get organized, form a line. ‘For once,’ they say, ‘let’s not
have to photograph each other.’ Farman enters gate on schedule but
turns corner and gives TV cameras nothing but long shots. Rumour is
that President Yahya gave approval to surrender plan last night, but
Gen. Niazi may be balking.
Pak army doctor, a colonel, arrives at hotel… He says Pak army has
taken terrible casualties.
Gen. Farman leaves the hotel. Many surrender rumours still floating.
Too many.
Lee Lescaze of Washington Post and I now doing four-hour guard duty
at gate. Lee stops a mongoose trying to scurry under the gate into neu-
Excerpted tral zone. We suggest mongoose get Iranian passport.
from Peter R. Evening radio news says dollar being devalued. Seems like pretty
Kann’s ‘Dacca
Diary’ in Foreign distant crisis from here. Japanese consul general remarks that Pak army
Correspondent: must surrender ‘like Japan at the end of World War II’.
Fifty Years of Staggering rush of events these past days. Like watching a pro football
Reporting South team play its whole season in one week.
Asia. 2009. THURSDAY, DEC. 16: At 10.10 a.m. a hotel official walks up: ‘It’s
definite, it’s definite. It’s surrender.’ Five minutes later, UN aides in the
hotel make it official: ‘The ultimatum to surrender has been accepted.’
Several reporters hitch a ride out to Pakistani army cantonment to try
to see Gen. Farman. No luck but quite a spectacle at cantonment gate.
Soldiers now pouring into cantonment in every sort of vehicle— buses,
trucks, cars, even rickshaw. Rolling by is a microbus with these words
stenciled on back: ‘Live and let live’. West Pak and Bihari civilians also
trying to enter cantonment. Most of them seem to have deserted all
16
personal belongings except transistor radios.
Peter R. Kann
Pay visit to Paul Marc Henri, UN chief here, who is operating out of
another neutral zone at Notre Dame College. Henri in ebullient mood
over surrender but stresses his role only as channel of communica-
tions. He’s walking around college campus with big, black Labrador on
a chain. Labrador keeps getting into fights with another dog, interrupt-
ing Henri’s monologue. Henri still concerned over possible massacres
of minorities. One of his assistants puts it plainly: ‘Tonight will be the
night of the long knives.’
Rush out to airport with other reporters. At 12.45 a Pak army staff car
with two stars on plate rolls up. Figure it’s Pak general coming to meet
Indian helicopter. But a general in purple turban and another in cavalry
hat get out; that isn’t Pak military headgear. ‘Hello, I am Gen. Nagra,
Indian army,’ cavalry hat says, ‘and this is Brigadier Kler,’ he adds,
introducing turban. They had led Indian column that pushed into Dacca
suburbs from north early this morning.
We hear of mob trouble at Intercontinental and return to the hotel. A
hysterical Mukti is carried through hotel gate with a light leg wound.
Mukti finally is laid out on three hotel chairs. Hotel official arrives,
dapper as ever in glen plaid suit. ‘He’s bleeding all over my damned
best chairs, and all the bastard did was stub his damned toe,’ hotel man
says. This city is full of panicky men with guns: excited young Muktis,
confused Indians and frightened Pak troops who are trying to surrender
but who don’t know how or where to do so.
This afternoon Gen. Nagra and Pak Gen. Farman come to hotel gate in
jeep. Mob begins shouting at Farman: ‘Butcher, killer, bastard.’ Farman
walks towards mob and says, soft-spoken, ‘But don’t you know what
I did for you?’ He means the surrender, which saved lives. Maybe the
mob knows, but it doesn’t care.
It’s 5 p.m., and reporters rush to golf course for formal surrender
ceremony. Surrender papers are signed in quadruplicate. Takes a while
because Gen. Niazi reads the documents as if for the first time. Scene
after signing is complete chaos. Mob trying to carry Indian generals
on shoulders, Pak generals being jostled by crowds. Gen. Farman is
wandering alone, dazed, through milling mob. ‘You see, we are beaten
everywhere,’ he mumbles as two running Bengalis bump into him. Far-
man continues walking slowly, one hand in sweater pocket. ‘How do I
get out of this place?’ he asks no one in particular before I lose him in
the crowd. n
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Non-Fiction
Dacca Club 1972: Redemption Like Fireflies
I
first experienced Dhaka Club back in November of 1972. Being a
Bengali escapee from Pakistan meant that Dhaka was new to me:
Bengali and not Urdu spoken on the streets; rice at mealtimes, not
naan; a greenness to the city, and UNROB vehicles on the streets of
Dhanmandi. It was different in other ways too. On a rickshaw one sunny
morning, as I neared New Market, I saw four ‘Muktis’ cross the road
in front of me. In boots, jungle fatigues, sunglasses and Castro beards.
Sten guns slung on shoulders. Outside Dhaka, the green countryside
was littered with burnt-out hulks of Pakistani army tanks and APCs. In
Jessore, on our first night in a free Bangladesh after crossing over the
Benapole transit point, the elderly night guard at the guesthouse com-
pound pointed out the places where the Razakars had lined up Bengalis
and shot them. Fireflies had glimmered and winked over the spots.
It was this environment to which I was adjusting. Then a classmate at
then Dacca University said that tonight was housie night at ‘the Club’,
why not go. I had no idea what he meant, and therefore naturally said
yes. Another classmate, a girl, was duly informed and she said she
would get her brother-in-law to arrange entry. That evening I was in a
quandary: what to wear. Having escaped from Karachi with two suit-
cases, and now tiding over winter nights beneath Red Cross blankets,
glitzy threads were hardly top priority on my family’s list of must-have
items. So I was reluctantly forced to wear one-of-the-two pairs of shirts
and trousers that had been rendering me yeomen service in Dhaka.
I needn’t have worried. Nobody in Dhaka Club that December night
was unduly worried about things sartorial. My cares fell away as soon as
I entered the place. The lounge area, where the housie event was being
held then as now, was a brightly lit, cheery place. Men with their shirt-
sleeves rolled up leaned against the walls with glasses in their hands
calling out to each other. The more domesticated ones sat with their
families at tables. I could guess at the source of the happiness, which
was the same I saw on the faces of people on the streets, in the bazaars
and fish markets. It sprung from the sheer delight at the fact of rejuve-
nation, from the end of the stark horror and the long dark night of 1971,
that now life could get back some semblance of normality. Nearly every
face there in the club lounge was papering over its tale of brute pain,
but (and mustn’t it, mustn’t it?) life and housie and the band had to play
on…
I had never played housie before. On the way to school in Karachi I
would see discarded, torn sheets on the streets outside community
centers but that image had no bearing on the sheets that were placed
before me.
A drink, enquired the gentle brother-in-law. Till then I don’t think I’d
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
Khademul Islam
had more than two semi-scared sips of whiskey lifted on the sly from
some distant dad’s stock of Scotch, and certainly not enjoyed. Not a bit.
But tonight, beneath the starry lights, high on the humming swings of
animated conversation, teetering on the brink of winning a fortune at
the housie table, with the beginnings of a promising round of footsie
beneath the table, what the heck, why not! I desperately wanted to drop
by the wayside all my worries, forget armies and killings and Red Cross
blankets.
Easy, warned my buddy while sipping a suspicious liquid from a glass
in his hand. This is Carew’s whiskey.
What’s Carew’s, I asked.
Locally made shishkey, he said. The phoren firewater is yet to make its
way to Dhaka.
Please, I said to the brother-in-law, wafting away my mate’s warning Excerpted from
with a wave of my palm. One whiskey. 'Ramna Green’.
2010.
A lift of the finger and almost magically a waiter brought one to my
side. I took a swallow and almost choked. But in a little while a strange
warmth swept through my insides.
Right, what do I do, I asked of the table as a voice over the microphone
intoned, “Testing, testing…” It then told us to get ready.
You cross out the numbers, dummy, the elder sister of the girl from
my class tartly informed me.
Right. So where’s the pen?
There’s a pencil given to you with the sheet. ‘Dummy’ though unsaid
hung in bright letters over my head this time.
Hmmm, not a good start. Take a look around, I told myself. I took
another swallow of the drink, which now tasted better, and gave the
room a 360-degree scrutiny. Some good-looking women here. Another
swallow. Actually very good looking. At which time the voice over the
microphone boomed, “Railway lines…” – a cue for everybody except me
to busily scratch out a number on their sheet.
I, a complete novice to housie, had to wait for the sentence to be com-
pleted before I could wield my pencil.
“… Number eleven!”
Right! Well, where was the bloody number on this damn sheet…
It was a wonderful night. A feeling akin to redemption like fireflies flit-
ted through me as we walked out of the clubhouse later and I looked up
at the night sky. I was empty-handed. No fortune had been won at the
casino tables, but sometimes you can win a kind of cash that you can’t
count with your fingers. n
17
 Poetry

Dhaka Rains Rumana Siddique

C
ity of immense music
Music of life being sung in the throaty solo of the vendor
Rising over the orchestra, bells twinkling, keys clanging, bricks banging
Swinging to the drum-like rhythm of the inter-city bus
Gabtoli-Gulistan, Mirpur-Gulistan, Syedabad-Gulistan
Accompanied by the choral chants of peddlers and beggars
Pappoosh, Chanachooor, Kaccha aaam, Allahumma Salle Alla…
The trumpeters blow horns on cars and autos
The crows sound the distant note
The prayer call set afloat pierces the sky
A sudden sound more remote
From Five Faces of
Eve. 2007. Yet deeper, more native to the land
Thunder joins the crescendo below
His troupe of clouds overshadow all
A sudden lull slices through the city
Like Godiva on her horse, the hooves of her mare
Seem to be echoed everywhere
Fat waterdrops on tin, concrete, tar and soil
Notes of rain take the lead, street urchins join in glee
All other notes subdued
Like damp sulking crows
The sky, earth and man hum to the tune
As Dhaka rains. n

Fiction

Dacca 1980: A View of the Park Javed Jahangir

T
hey were not very high up. Maybe five stories. View of Ramna
Park.
The balcony was connected to a bedroom, which Mazhar
thought was likely hers. It was cool and dark, and he wished she would
sit for a moment so he could breathe it all in, but Shyama had rushed
out of the French window to the small terrace.
He had been right about the view.
Gray buildings seemed to have rusted in the deep red colors of the
burning sun. The university district, the domes of the High Court, the
sinewy streets in between, choked with rickshaws and bodies, had all
caught the dull fire.
“Where are we?” He marveled, “It’s like a different city.” Through the
familiar noises of bus horns and political slogans, he felt a strange long-
ing for a city he could not quite see.
Shyama, who seemed calmer with another cigarette, stared outwards
Excerpted from too. “Do you know what they say?” She asked, pointing in the direction
novel Ghost Alley. of Ramna Park, which was dissolving into a large spill of darkness.
Forthcoming.
“No,” he said. “I told you I don’t listen to gossip”
“Oh, no, not that, you goof,” she laughed, “About this city. What they
say about that.” She pointed at a random minaret.
“The university?”
She was pointing to a dim but ornamental set of buildings with her
glowing cigarette. “The shrine and the university,” she said.
“My mother goes to that shrine.”
“They are equidistant, you know,” she said.
“And?”
“From the park, they are almost an equal distance away,” She slowly
untied her hair behind her head.
“And so?”
your soul?”
He laughed out in surprise.
“Someone fights for my soul?” He laughed again, pretending to speak
into his shirt, “Did you hear that, Soul?” A pause.
“Come on, who fights for this?” he asked finally, slapping his chest
and laughing at her a little. But it felt good to laugh; it seemed to cut
through the weird tension of the place, of Shyama. He was reminded
of their meeting at the wedding – her playfulness, like she always knew
something he didn’t. Five steps ahead.
“Empiricism, you goof,” she said. “Western philosophy over there,”
she pointed at the university, “and eastern mysticism on that side, the
shrine.” She pointed at the shrine’s dome. “Do you see it now? Two
forces that shape this city – doubt and faith. This country, even.”
Mazhar considered this through the evening light.
“And what does that park in the middle do? Do you know?” she asked.
Mazhar shrugged, their conversation not even remotely close to how
he had anticipated it would go. “What does it do?” he asked. What
Ramna Park did, he knew, was provide a place for him and his friends to
procure ganja and get very stoned in peace.
He said, “I don’t know. Let me guess, something corny, right? Love?
Honor? Faith? Some shit like that?”
She shrugged and exhaled.
He stared at the darkness.
“Heart,” she smirked. “It’s the heart of the bloody city,” she said.
“They’ve plucked it right out. We cannot really avoid talking about the
missing heart of ours one way or another.”
Shyama stood straight from where she was leaning on the railing. She
extended her arms above her head to stretch her back.
“Shit,” he said with a smile. “That’s got to be the most twisted thing

18
“Doesn’t it strike you that these are the two institutions that fight for I’ve ever heard. About hearts.” n

ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013

Fiction

Dhaka 1984: Gandaria Iffat Nawaz

W
e lived in a big, ugly house when I was young. The house was
in old town Dhaka, Gandaria to be precise. I hated that name.
Gandaria, extremely unsophisticated until recently when
I found out Gandaria actually derived from ‘Grand Area.’ The name
shortened with time and lost all its grandness in the process. Anyway
the point is I hated uttering the word ‘Gandaria’; when the girls at
school asked, I would say I lived in Wari which sounded way better and
was supposed to be a bit more posh than Gandaria though it was still in
old town.
My grandfather, Dada, decided to also build a few new arms to the
house, and being someone who believed in instant gratification, he just
hired construction workers and started building where he pleased. A
new veranda in the middle of the house that was slightly tilted, a new
room next to the kitchen, which received no daylight and always smelt
of day-old curry and stairs in the middle of the dining room that went
up to a bathroom. Yes, nothing really made sense in our big, ugly house
in Gandaria.
But we still continued living there. My brother was born and brought
back to that home, my parents left it for a year at a time twice to finish
their higher degrees in the States, I broke my first set of teeth and grew
them back and even had my first crush standing on top of that big ugly
house’s rooftop, He was a shoemaker’s son, untouchable.
He had mocha skin tone, big eyes, slanted in the corners like the ones
of a deer, full lips that carried the perfect amount of intelligence and
allure. But then we spoke and everything went wrong. His voice didn’t
go with the face and his words didn’t go with his physique. He left me
with my very first disappointment towards the male sex; I was approxi-
mately eleven by then.
It was around then that Kusum came to stay with us. She was a few
brief years older than I. She was replacing another young maid who had
just left a month back. Kusum, fair and short, with a thin, wooden stick
on the left side of her nose where a nose-ring was supposed to be. She
had a round flat face with light brown eyes, and long hair that con-
cealed her thin structure.
The first thing my grandmother, Dadi, did to Kusum was shave all
her hair off. Apparently she had lice. Kusum sat in our tilted veranda
shedding useless tears as her hair fell off her head like dust bunnies.
She looked terrible bald, but we got used to it in a day or two and in a
week, she knew not to sit on the sofas or eat on the same plates as us.
All part of the usual maid training that went on in most Bangladeshi
households.
Excerpted from
Before we knew, months had gone by and Kusum’s hair grew back ‘Gandaria’, in
into a cute bob. She roamed around in my old dresses with unmatched Lifelines: New
pajama bottoms taking orders from the household and watching televi- Writing from
sion during her little breaks. Bangladesh. 2012.
The most number of orders came from my Dada. He was one of those
men who had many processes in place to accomplish just one task. For
example, he had separate lungis for each one of his activities during the
course of a day. One for namaz, one for relaxing and watching televi-
sion while chewing paan, one for going out for his walks and one for
using the bathroom. Each hour he changed from one lungi to another
and screamed at the top of his lungs for things to be brought to him.
At times it was his walking stick, or cubed papaya to snack on, or his
spittoon, or a special paan made by my Dadi. The orders never stopped;
in fact, they grew with his age and Kusum, being the good little worker
that she was, fulfilled every single one of them with a smile. My Dadi
was quite pleased that her husband was well taken care of though she
never expressed any gratitude towards Kusum. Dadi had separated her
bed, in fact her room, from my Dada since my brother was born. No
one thought anything of it since it was because of me that Dadi initially
left Dada’s bed. I had just started sleeping in my own room and inevita-
bly needed someone to sleep with me because I was scared of the dark
and the noises that only old houses in old town can make. n

Poetry

Recycled Nausheen Eusuf

T
his one conjures a boy Here’s one that proudly
slaving over his sums, flaunts the precision
and this one, a child of its lines and angles,
tracing his ABCs. triangles and trapezoids

This one, perhaps, wanted now strangely transformed

to be a plane, to soar into neat paper squares Previously
to distant heights and in which a peanut seller published in
alight in a far-flung land; wraps his wares, the scraps Apple Valley
Review. 2011.

instead, it recalls the clash of other lives that filter

of steel, the thundering hoofs daily through our own,
of kingdoms and conquests, just as mine will pass
Mughals and sultans. into other hands, unknown. n

19
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
 Non-Fiction
Dhaka 1988: Sadarghat Francis Rolt
T
he Moinamati rounded a long, slow bend and Dhaka’s waterfront
slid into view. For most of the city’s history the Buriganga, which
loops its southern edge, has been the road by which invaders, pi-
rates and rebels have attacked. For all its size it isn’t a real river, merely
a linking stream between the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. Even so it’s
quarter of a mile wide at Dhaka.
The river, as usual, was so crowded as to be almost impassable and the
Moinamati sounded its fog horn continuously. Every kind of boat was
there, from the rusting hulks moored in the centre of the river to Arab-
like dhows, sails billowing, and the piratical motor passenger boats,
which forged up and down regardless of everything else.
As we heaved into view like a hippo, dozens of rowing boats set out
from the shore, wide-bellied craft lying low on the water. They ap-
proached like attackers, coming at us from all directions. The captain
maintained a steady course towards this mass of predators, and it
seemed impossible that none would be swamped by our bow wave, or
disappear beneath the keel, to be pulped like the rafts of mauve water-
hyacinth through which we’d ploughed unheedingly on our way north.
Dhaka’s waterfront came closer; it’s not a particularly prepossessing
sight, although the noise, the colour and the confusion would delight a
child. The buildings are old, but most are falling down, blackened and
crumbling.
When we came level with the Dhaka nawab’s palace I didn’t recog-
nize it for a moment. The last time I’d seen it the building had had the
grandeur of all big ruins: trees grew from its rotten brickwork, squatters
inhabited its reception rooms, and like an ancient wreck it stuck out
of a sea of shanty houses, built from bits of plastic, corrugated tin and
cardboard. The palace’s once stately steps leading down to the river had
collapsed, and it seemed only a matter of months before the building
itself would sink into the mud beside the river.
The vision before us bore no resemblance to that wreck.
Excerpted from
On the Brink in
Bengal. 1991.
20
The squatters had been cleared out and grass planted where the
shanty-town had stood, the brickwork had been repaired and, most
remarkable of all, the whole, massive construction had been painted
virulent pink. Restored to its original vulgarity it looked good in the
sunlight which had forced a way through the clouds.
The dinghies came alongside and their owners clung onto the Moin-
amati’s lower deck while passengers elbowed one another aside for a
clear leap. The moment they were safely in the boats they settled down,
and arranged their bundles, bags, chickens, and in one instance, two
goats. Some opened black umbrellas. These escapees were the pas-
sengers without tickets, who had to get away before we finally docked.
There were more of them than fare-paying passengers.
Above the noise of the engine came other sounds, the first in days:
air horns of trucks edging their way down the dockside, the inces-
sant, cheeky, answering jangle of rickshaw bells, the thwack of women
beating clothes at the water’s edge, and the delighted screams of small,
naked boys diving from the massive anchor chain of a hulk moored in
mid-stream.
On the dockside all was confusion. This is the city’s business centre
– not business in the sense of offices and banks, but of the transport,
the buying and selling of goods. From storehouses ranged along the
dock road bananas, pineapples and sacks of rice spilt prodigally into the
light. You could almost hear the money changing hands, of great wads
of dirty taka stapled together in thousands. No one doing business
down here trusts banks; it’s cash or nothing.
When we docked, with a terrific clang and scrape as the Moinamati
rammed the floating iron pontoon, passengers streamed off and porters
leapt the rails to reach First Class before their competitors.
After two days on board, with nothing to look at but the river, the sky
and boats it was difficult to step into the maelstrom of Old Dhaka, to
give up the calm. n
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Fiction
Dhaka 1989: The Eskaton Adib Khan
I
am startled by his appearance. A pair of owlish dark glasses gives
him a sleazy touch. It is like looking at King Faroukh during his
years in exile. Maulana Azad is a huge, urceolate man with a belly
which juts out in front of him like a balloon on the verge of bursting. It
quivers like a terrified animal trapped under a cover as he rolls toward
us on unsteady feet. The size of his head is grotesquely small in propor-
tion to his massive torso. Perched on top of the head is a faded, black
fez. The face is ridged and puffed. Layers of adipose tissue lie beneath
the crinkled skin. The snub nose is like a polished stone nestling in a
cushion of soft leather. The fish mouth is a mere slit. His lips are caked
with dried betel-leaf juice. He is wearing a Rajshahi silk kurta and a blue
lungi. The overpowering smell of attar nauseates me.
“Aas Salaam a lai kum!” He greets Ma.
She steps back in awed deference. She bows and touches her forehead
with the fingers of her right hand. “Aadaab Huzoor!”
I am expected to bend down and touch his feet. They are encased in
expensive leather sandals. The best that can be bought at Bata. I offer
him a limp handshake and the coldest of smiles.
“Ah, the foreign way.” The slit widens. “Mashallah! How well you look,
my boy! Your daughter?”
“Not well, Huzoor!” Ma answers on my behalf. “She was so looking
forward to meeting you.”
We are invited to sit down. I prefer to move to the large window over-
looking a paved courtyard edged with rose beds and sheltered by an
Poetry
Tree Without Roots Ahsan Akbar
D
haka frightened you. Dhaka
Where I feel at home. The raw daylight,
The sun-beaten faces, the sharp
Corrupt edges to everything, frightened you.
Your schooling had somehow neglected Bangladesh.
The martyrs of 1952, of 1971 and the floods
You could not appreciate the language,
Your soul was empty
Of the rustic Bauls, the rickshaw bells, and the hartals
Made your heart shrivel. Nazrul could not invoke
A blood rush, and awake the rebel in you. Zainul
Held out a famine-struck lean hand and you took it
Bluntly, indifferent to human feelings.
You did not criticise but you pitied
The endless beggars tapping your window,
You sniffed the history books like a condescending foreigner
Hoping to recognise your roots but somehow recoiled
As your love for the West asphyxiated you,
And your panic clawed back towards your Exeter days.
You came visiting every summer and the odd winter
Assumed yourself as a tourist, armed with mineral water,
Mosquito repellent, beach shorts and funky flip-flops
Watching with bewildered eyes and behaving awkwardly
At the butchered traditions, that somehow still held.
With the occasional stab to impress your pink tongue
You tried your luck, relishing on digestive tablets,
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
ivy-covered pergola. From a brown paper bag Ma produces a carton of
cigarettes and offers it to him. So! This was the reason for the frantic re-
quest which made me carry the cigarettes all the way from Melbourne.
“Huzoor, a small gift for you.” Discreetly she places a small white
envelope on top of the carton.
Flared nostrils sniff the air suspiciously. He senses no danger. Esurient
hands snake out like deep sea tentacles and snare the tendentious offer- Excerpted
ings. In a quick, smooth motion the envelope disappears into the side from Seasonal
pocket of the kurta. Adjustments. 1994.
“Dhonobad! Dhonobad!” He responds with pleasure. “The doctors tell
me not to smoke. Rascals! They would deprive me of one of the few
pleasures a man in my position can allow himself.” He raises his hands
toward the ceiling. “My life is entirely in His hands. Even without smok-
ing I shall have to go when my time comes.”
The trite expression of Islamic fatalism draws words of comfort from
Ma. By the Grace of Allah, may he live to be a hundred. The prayers of
millions will not be unheeded. He is the light of hope for the unfortu-
nate. A source of inspiration for the spiritually weak.
Maulana Azad looks impatiently at his Rolex watch. The hint is too
obvious to miss. Ma launches into a long-winded exposition about my
life in a foreign land. A melodrama of epical proportions about love,
marriage and cruel betrayal unfolds.
I am blameless. She is the culprit. She is the one who trapped me into
marriage and then heartlessly initiated the break-up. It is all her fault. n
With the street savouries: haleem, futchka, chotpoti
And I saw you vomit with food poisoning.
Dhaka, the city of mosques and shrines
Had offered you more than the customary rituals
But you did not hesitate to puncture the spiritual mystic
Seeing only religious bigotry and fanaticism
And the sound of azaan
From The Devil’s
Was what annoyed you more than five times a day. Thumbprint.
Forthcoming.
You told me this was the land of your dreams:
But the kaalboishakhi was one
You dared not wake with, the incandescent spirit
No literature, no creative writing course had glamorised.
Perhaps this land is your nightmare, or perhaps,
Your wet dream, you did not realise
Monsoon had long spoilt your crisp bed.
Dhaka was what you tried to wake up from
And could not. You have been sleeping
Ever since; you knew you could afford
The luxury of distancing yourself from you.
You preferred to break out of your lineage
And have your real self still to be found.
Yours is a hapless soul, not understanding
Thinking it is still your prerogative
To remain in the happy world,
With your whole life waiting,
21
As a tree without roots. n
 Fiction
Dhaka 1999: Only Way to Bring Him Home
R
upa lives with her mother-in-law, Meghna. A mechanical engi-
neering student at BUET in Dhaka, Rupa has a Shakespearean
forehead—not a congenital endowment but rather a recent grow-
ing expanse from excessive hair loss. The weekly protein concoctions
(egg yolk, milk, and henna) that Meghna’s deft fingers rub onto her
scalp are counterproductive: the bath today was clogged by a nauseat-
ing clump of thick, curly black hair leaving Rupa benumbed in sadness,
fury, and vapor, coldly immune to the steaming burst of hot water on
her breasts. Trivialities as small as the hairy clump make her want to
pull the blow dryer off the socket and switch it on under water foaming
with Pantene Pro-V Sheer Volume. After class when Rupa remarked on
the plight of the receding hairline that forces her to part her hair instead
of tying it in a customary, tight ponytail, Zurvaan kissed her forehead
and said, “Adds character to your face.”
Zurvaan is the youngest assistant professor with the promise that only
a sharp bachelor with a doctoral dissertation on photonic systems can
Excerpted from bring from McGill University. A year-and-half ago, semi-comatose Zur-
‘Four Quartets’.
vaan had answered the phone at 4:16 in the morning EST, groggily un-
2006.
raveling his legs from Caroline’s waist. Despite his inarticulate mother’s
jumble of Bangla grammar diffused in a spell of sobs and hiccups, he
was able to decipher that his father was in Suhrawardy Hospital alleg-
edly fighting cardiac arrest and cerebral hemorrhage—in that order. He
left Quebec for Dhaka on the next available flight leaving a heartbroken
Caroline with swollen eyelids and salty cheeks at the airport’s sliding
door. “I’ll call you,” was his hoarse promise as he pulled his lips away
from her forehead. “No, you won’t,” she had whispered, convinced that
the seventy-five inches of warm, exotic intelligence that she had irre-
coverably fallen in love with was abandoning her, never to return from
an unheard-of equatorial country some thousands of miles away. “Silly”
Zurvaan had said, unknowing that the intuition of a caffeinated, Celtic
tarot card reader writing her dissertation on The Angst of the Aesthetic
22
Sabrina Sadique
Judgment in Kant deserved more credit. For it would be seventeen
years before Zurvaan would find Caroline (married to a Nigerian Chuk-
wuemeka) still listed under her maiden name in the phonebook. And
by that time, even in the warm bustle of a coffee-shop, the air between
them would sag so low in the weight of formal accusatory silence that
to call her “silly” like he used to would be travesty.
…What soon shocked Zurvaan were not just a pair of his father’s
healthy nose-holes sucking in bulk amounts of Dhaka’s microbe-heavy
airport air but also the patterned branch of deep lines, like the creases
of a Chinese fan that sprawled on his once-
immaculate forehead, eye, and mouth corners.
There stood Mr. Aref Khan, neither strapped to
an ICU Suhrawardy bed nor wired to a heartbeat
monitor, a bulging bag of intravenous electrolyte
solutions, or a web of alien tubes. In fact, except
for the shock of loose skin, two prominent bald-
ing spots, and his guilty nervousness, Zurvaan’s
father looked as robust as most rich, retired gov-
ernment officials are notorious for in Bangladesh,
post-senility, with a Viagra-inspired second com-
ing in an indefinitely long vacation in Mauritius
and Seychelles. His first words (accompanied by a
vigorous scratch of the posterior bald spot) to his
son were, “There was no other way to bring you
back. It’s been nine years.”
“You saw me eight months ago.”
“It’s been nine years since you have been home.
And then... that girl….”
“Caroline?”
“Driver! Luggage.”
…The following afternoon, as he sipped a quick
cup of tongue-blistering Lipton before meet-
ing with the Dean of Electrical & Electronic
Engineering at BUET, he watched Rupa’s fingers
embarrassingly but deftly reconcile with the
fury of her curly hair, curlier in April moisture,
by knotting the feisty mass into a stern, compact
bun. Trenches at the bottom of her neck were
deepened by the sharp incline of her collarbones.
Her smile, equally hollow, was nothing to die for
really but was enough to be curious about. And five weeks later, despite
her widow- and mourning-hood, Rupa found herself whispering to the
professor, “Keep the lights off.” As Zurvaan, the sensei who believed
sex to be a martial art, dauntlessly proceeded toward her breasts, Rupa
rasped a bellowing, “No!” Two mounds of untouchability on a very
touchable body.
“Reminds me of Rashad,” she confessed, “Memories, Professor, are
inevitable.” And yet she fought them with so bold a denial in bed that
in Zurvaan’s baffled mind, the long legs and dainty feet of Caroline Liv-
ingston made a posthaste exit into memory trash, ready to be displaced
and soon forgotten. n
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Fiction

Dhaka 1999: Shazia Omar

D
een twitched anxiously as they made their way up Airport Road, before they go back home to sleep with whores and drink keru.” Majid
right at the gas station towards Tongi, sharp left into the dirt pulled his bottle to his lips. “Like me, only I’m not a hypocrite.”
road in front of the basti, braking to a bumpy halt at the dilapi- Kala glanced up. Majid was getting out of control. The foil was cut, the
dated brick wall that had been erected by the Prime Minister to hide pipe was ready. Kala hurried to prepare the tillis.
the ugliness of poverty. The road smelt of piss and was deserted apart “Nobody’s scared,” said AJ. “They’re greedy bastards. Come to pray for
from a few skeletal children. Deen and AJ stepped behind the wall, past fast cars and pretty wives. Come to pray for better lives. Simple-minded
the tea stall and the mosque, and entered the basti. The stale air of the folks. They don’t know that God isn’t listening.”
shantytown enveloped them, heavy with the smell of fresh cow dung “God-forsaken and GOB-forsaken,” Deen sighed, referring to the Gov-
and burning garbage. They made their way through the narrow alleys ernment of Bangladesh.
cramped in between rows of tin shacks and ducked under clothes lines
draped with yellowed t-shirts with American idols printed on them.
Rejected export merchandise for rejected local people...
Underneath a bench in the corner of the room were a pile of pots
and a kerosene lantern for the evenings. Sitting on the hard mud floor,
between Majid and Kala, was Falani. She had a bailey flower garland
wrapped in her hair, scented and fresh. She was chewing paan. Her lips
were wet and red from the betel nut. She beamed deeply stained teeth
at Deen and moved to make space for them to sit. “I’ve got some nice
sweets for you today, you boys will be happy.” She pulled out a plastic
packet from her peacock-feather purse and handed it to Kala, who was
slouching next to her.
“What’s up?” said Deen to Kala.
The petite man smiled as he pulled off the foil wrapper of a chocolate
bar. His pitch black hair was combed back neatly, no traces of white.
He wore a fresh shirt and a soiled lungi. He sat cross-legged, with cal-
loused feet caked in mud. Clean on top, dirty below, classic junky style,
thought Deen.
“It’s goddam Izthema next week,” said Majid taking a swig from a
bottle of cheap liquor. He was only four years older than Falani, but
he looked more like her father than her brother. The combination of
a lifetime of manual labour in the oppressive Bangladeshi sun and an
intense addiction had left him a skeletal man with a confrontational
attitude towards everyone, especially Falani. Deen hated the way Majid
barked orders at her, but Falani did not seem to care, accustomed to the
violence of frustrated men. Instead, she gushed an endless stream of “God only loves the wealthy,” continued AJ.
affection over Majid. “Perhaps they pray to thank God for their blessings?” said Falani.
“We can’t keep stuff here during Izthema. There’ll be too many people “Prayers are powerful. Can keep a man happy if he believes,” Kala
around,” Falani warned gently. joined in. The smoke was ready. Kala was a tiny man, not a labourer, but
“Fuck the mullahs.” AJ shrugged. He had no respect for religion or like Majid, skeletal from years of addiction. He spent his days hanging
religious men and the second largest Muslim pilgrimage in the world around the basti waiting for Falani’s clients to arrive. He prepared the
meant only one thing to him – an obstacle to his addiction. “It’s crazy. smoke for them in return for a few drags to feed his own addiction. He
Millions of Muslims from all over Bangladesh pitch tents along this could not afford a stash for himself so the boys were usually generous
riverside. Stay for days! Why can’t they pray in their own goddam space with him, unless their urges were too strong. n
rather than crowding up mine?” Majid had not chased in a while and he Excerpted from
was becoming belligerent. Like a Diamond in
“Crowding your space, are they?” Falani asked playfully. “It’s our the Sky. 2009.
baba’s land, isn’t it?”
“It is my land!” Majid roared. “I’m the one that lives here and sleeps
here and shits here.”
“They’re poor people. God is all they’ve got,” said Deen, happy to
stoke Majid’s frenzy.
“That’s not why they’re here,” Majid countered. “It’s not devotion,
it’s fear. They’re scared of Hell! Goddam Godfearing. They’ve come to
beg for forgiveness. I see their ugly faces year after year, calling to God,

23
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
 Fiction
Dhaka 2000: The City of Deferral
W
hat we need to do now, Ramkamal said – always in medias res
– is to bring the city and the novel together in a whole new
manner. Dhaka’s a new kind of city, a glimpse into our post-
apocalyptic future, and it’s time to find a form suitable to its reality. We
were sitting in my store, which he had turned into his primary operat-
ing base. He stopped by, sometimes several times in a day: to leave his
keys or pick up messages; to drop off parcels or laundry; to make phone
calls or secure an abbreviated meal; to borrow cab-fare or cigarette-
money, and then to return those puny hand-loans and even to conduct
complex, confusing arithmetic concerning these small exchanges. But,
most importantly of all, he came by to hold his addas.
Bahar and Joydeep were regulars from the start. Bahar worked as a
statistician for a research institute, but his heart, as with the rest of us,
was sewn to literature. Joydeep was an anachronistic soul, and resisted
any set occupation. Most of the others were students, or recent gradu-
Excerpted from ates, and many connected to some facet of the writing world: news-
‘Ramkamal’s Gift’ papers; publishing; little magazines; even copy-writing in advertising
in Good Night, firms. It was the spring after our first meeting, the start of a new mil-
Mr. Kissinger and lennium, and prophetic goals entered the realms of the possible again.
Other Stories. Ramkamal held his addas, almost nightly, explaining how we would
2012. supply this city with a new grammar. It can’t, sure as hell, be borrowed
from places where the streetlights or plumbing work. What we need to
24
K Anis Ahmed
write is nothing short of a manual. The Manual will explore how to be a
citizen when the city itself is perpetually in deferral.
More than his ideas, at first, it was the verve with which he pursued
them that affected us. And even more, his innovation lay in his ability
to turn his personal mission into a collective enterprise. Everyone who
entered his orbit was assigned a role. I was his keeper, in every sense.
I kept his clothes and his cash – the erratic quantities that transected
his days. And, increasingly, he started consigning to me his memories,
unreliable as they were, and even more unreliably, his secrets. There
were references, ever oblique, to his training in a Gandhi Village, before
he turned sour on communes. Years spent as a distributor of East Eu-
ropean farming machines. Visits as a functionary of a small-time Left
party to Havana and Ho Chi Minh City.
It was hard to tell what was true, and what he believed to be true.
Once I even asked Shamsu, my friend in the Special Branch, if he could
find out anything. These are not chaps who volunteer information
easily. But we went a long way back, so he subjected me to a litany of
standard queries: Has he taken money from you? Has he ever hit any-
one? Does he keep the kind of company that worries you? Has anyone –
since you met this guy – asked you for money? Suddenly, I felt bad that
I’d asked Shamsu at all, and I prevaricated as much as I could to protect
Ramkamal.
“If he’s basically harmless, then why ask me to look into it?” Shamsu
was a bit annoyed. Besides, people go missing all the time, he said. Fa-
thers who can no longer bear to be duty-bound, and walk away to what
unknown respite, no one knows. Girls who are taken, one can only im-
agine for what nefarious purpose, in what distant capital. Young men,
who go out for a cigarette with friends, and never come back. There are
always whispers – about money or a political rival, and dark specula-
tions about special forces and interrogation cells – but who really knows
where the missing go?
…Only Ramkamal could mock a person to his face without making
them feel actually insulted. We were sitting in my store: me on a high
stool on my side of the counter, and Ramkamal on another stool on his
side. My cramped little store could barely hold Ramkamal. Why blame
my store; the city could barely contain his personality.
That was possibly the other attraction of Ramkamal. It was thrilling
to see someone defy the conventions of the city so thoroughly. Until
Ramkamal came along, Dhaka to me was a gigantic composition in con-
crete, and a poor one at that. Nothing was well made, or quite in place.
Rickety buildings with unfinished paint jobs jostled for an extra inch of
land. The roads were narrow and twisty. People, thousands of them,
exuded the noxious stink of sweat and avarice. Everyone affixed to
their place, like the letters on the pages of a crude and merciless text. n
n
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Non-Fiction

Dhaka 2003: An Unshackling Amit Chaudhuri

W
hen I told people I was going to Dhaka, they asked me if I’d been there before. I could neither say “yes” nor “no”. In effect, I hadn’t.
But my wife and I had been offloaded there by Bangladesh Biman in 1994. …We were deposited at the Mid-Town Hotel, which we have
always referred to, in retrospect, as the dharamshala. The novelist Sunetra Gupta, a close friend, was on the same flight, and now, like
us, off it. When we asked if she wanted to go out in the afternoon, she demurred; she’d rather sleep. I admired her, in private, for taking this deci-
sion; to resist curiosity, to not lay claim to the “homeland” even in the casual capacity of sightseer — this seemed to me the more morally coura-
geous position. My wife and I decided to be somewhat predictable; besides, we were less tired. All three of us, it has to be said, have our ancestral
antecedents in this part of the world. What I saw in those compressed hours of transit was so fuzzy that nothing remained with me except a jumble
of rickshaws and intersections.
The visit last month, then, properly represents my first trip to Dhaka… Almost all of (Mr. Abul Khair’s art) collection consists of the works of
Bangladeshi artists, with a few exceptions — among others, a large, strangely fascinating Shuvaprasanna I saw in his house, a picture presumably
of a Calcutta terrace, empty except for crows and television antennae; a well-known Gaganendranath cartoon, charged with his characteristic, vio-
lent, expressionist humour. The rest — displayed on the walls of his properties: his company office, the guest house we were put up at, even an em-
ployee’s flat, not to speak of his own home — is the art of this other Bengal, whose power and variety, before this visit, I knew nothing about...I’d
already become familiar, in the last three days, with Zainul Abedin’s transfiguring and exquisite line drawings; with the figures in Rokeya Sultana’s
paintings; with the exaggerated bucolic panoramas of the man they call “Sultan”. Three days was what it had taken me to realize that I had to now
rethink my understanding of the term, “the art of Bengal”…
Looking at the paintings arrayed on the walls of several rooms, I was reminded of other things: of Panini’s eighteenth-century painting of Car-
dinal Valenti Gonzaga’s picture gallery; of Teniers’s seventeenth-century portrait of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm with his private collection,
standing amongst subordinates, dwarfed in size by the paintings he owns, but augmented in stature. But, even at that midnight hour, I knew that
Bangladesh was not seventeenth-century Europe, nor Mr Khair the Archduke. Thirty years ago, at the inception of this troubled nation, roughly
around the time that Mr Khair has discovered his passion for owning paintings, Henry Kissinger called Bangladesh an “international basket case”.
What did this achievement, then — both the collection, and the art itself — represent; and in what ways did they illuminate each other'
I don’t know…
The company guest house was in an area called Gulshan II. This, and Gulshan and Banani, neighbouring enclaves, comprise what one might call
Dhaka’s Greater Kailash. I don’t make the comparison flippantly; there’s an air of New Delhi about these sections, and much of what I saw of “new”
Dhaka. A Pakistani friend says the more affluent areas resemble their counterparts in Karachi; I can’t say, not having been to that city. You see a
new city in terms of what you know; and “seeing” becomes a subterranean form of remembering. One thing became clear — Dhaka is not a lost
suburb of Calcutta, nor its “backward” twin. Dhaka is a different conception of what it means to be a Bengali metropolis.
For one thing, much of the development I saw took place in the Fifties and after. This is what reminded me of New Delhi, I suppose; the mildly
bureaucratic air of the long interconnecting avenues, in which, in spite of the burgeoning population, there is no street life: the green, suburban Excerpted from
enclosures of the rich. The grand and derelict colonial architecture that makes Calcutta surprising is missing; but there are striking new buildings, ‘This Other Bengal
among them the parliament house and, overlooking a canal, the red-stone houses with large hemispherical arches in which its members live… - The mythology
of origins, a
Having been to Dhaka and met these people marks a significant break for me in my inner relationship with that country. For the political entity
narrative of loss’
we call “Bangladesh” has been integral to the Indian Bengali’s — whether or not they’re originally from East Bengal — mythology of origins, a nar- in The Telegraph.
rative of loss. A whole literature and archive of the liberal Bengali imagination have made it so. It’s through the prism of that mythology we experi- 2003.
ence — indeed, are at all interested in — Bangladesh: as the site of a quest-journey to our beginnings. It’s as if, at the journey’s end, we will have
solved a problem, found an answer. Occasionally, the journey is made; often, it remains a powerful and poetic idea. I, too, who have atavistic links
to Sylhet, have always wanted to, and always delayed, embarking on that quest.
Travelling between Gulshan and Dhanmandi and Baily Road and the University, however, I feel I can leave aside that quest temporarily; it
remains to be made, and perhaps it will be. But going to Dhaka has, in a sense, unshackled me from that search; and that brings with it a sense of
liberation from an old and all-encompassing self-definition. Contemporary Dhaka confirms within me something else; a current exploration. As
if I’d confronted a twin who’d grown up separately and become somebody else, it provides me with a different notion of identity. The question,
“Who am I'” is only partly answered, after all, by returning to our beginnings. n

25
DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS
 Fiction
Dhaka 2006: Taxi Wallah
I
n front now I press against the metal fence that separates the arriv-
ing passengers. Damp chests shove from behind as arms snake their
way around and inside, wrestler’s feet and bodies right behind. One
breath, one tight exhalation of air, behind. Trying to create leverage.
A bee in flight is seldom perceived as harmless. Rats, cockroaches, red
ants, all of them. They would throw you on the mat, and sit on you. Lay
eggs on you, give birth, set up home and house. A squat with a cor-
rugated tin roof. Man has cloth in hand and drinks from a Coco-Cola
bottle. He drinks piping hot, brown tea. Sugar, he must like sugar. Sure.
He finds space between my chin and elbow, to drip the thicksweetstuff
into his cockroach dark mouth. Must give up sugar, cramps getting too
bad at night. Loud desperate voices grate my ears as I sidle my way to
glass doors. Six passengers remain, guarded by disinterested soldiers.
Harriers. Nice new Lexus, looks very nice. Rich bastards. Stickers on
tightly clutched suitcases tell me that they are the six o’clock Singapore
Airline’s flight. Bright stickers already peeling. One angry passenger
made me wash his before I could drive him. “Sonsofbitches, look at
them. Look at my new suitcases, they have lifetime warranties. Mother-
sleepers sticker-fied, manhandled, kicked my luggage. Mother must see
suitcases new. We have to wash them before you take me home.”
…So, now, six rich-looking bastards from the flight. Welcome to
Dhaka, jewel in the lost crown, Bangladesh. Here from America, via
London and Abu Dhabi. They stare at us frustrated. I gesture and yell
for several minutes before attracting any attention. A blue suit, much
too hot. These white people are mad, A/C will be a problem, “You,” his
voice creaks, “how much to Purbani?”
I leap forward, villains fly aside not expecting my new kung-fu. Pur-
bani Hotel? “No problem, Shahib.” I nod, smiling, assuring, hands not
allowing for intercepting fists reach for his luggage. “My taxi new, air
conditioned,” lie I. Do or die. Others step between us, scooter-wallahs,
beggars, porters. Pickpockets. Man whores. Cheater cocks.
He pulls his cases back, Samsonite, not too shabby, once smart, still
presentable, charge 250 takas, at least, I know he will tip. And he will,
but just a little. “How much? Koto, koto, tell me first!” Bastard speaks
Bangla. Some probably.
“Sir, shaheeeb, whatever you wish. Up to you, I ask for nothing, no
Shahib, nothing. Please sir, come, come.” I manage to curl fingers
around still, airport lobby 60 tonne capacity, cool plastic handle and
Excerpted from
‘Taxi Wallah’.
2006.
26
Numair Chowdhury
pull gently. Some Bangla. Lets go.
In the car, nice-smelling suit talks a little. Where does the city hide its
secrets? He beckons, tired prostitute, as if to entice secrets from me.
He has been to Dhaka before, but purely for business. This time he will
have a week to spare. I look him over, trying to guess what he likes;
what old Samsonite can afford. Which Dhaka does he want? Mid-thir-
ties, quite carefree. Nice American, even knows Bangla. Not wealthy
or important enough to be met at the airport, but had a certain breadth
of vision, a length of stride that is not characteristic of the poor. Dhaka
Museum of Magic? Snake charmers? Dance parties? Expensive handi-
craft stores? The Lal Bagh Fort? Heroin? Yaba? One can never tell.
“I want to watch a Bengali movie. In one of those big cinemas where
everybody goes.”
This afternoon rush is always bad. But then there is always traffic in
this city, people on the move trying to find a way to the money; maybe
the money moves faster than them. The privileged travel fast. In
brand new plimsoled sneakers. In a Lexus. They look very comfortable
though. Fancy shoes.
“What kind of movie sir? Action movie? Good dancing, lots of fighting.
Bruce Lee. We have James Bond also if you want English. Live or Let die.
Golden Eye.”
“No, no. A Bengali one, action sounds fine.”
“I will show you where to go sir, no problem. Close to hotel.” Too close
to miss, or I could driven him elsewhere later. Need the work. Cricket
balls, cupboard with metal hooks, pretty bangles, ribbons, battery,
shoes. Always a need.
Can help him with what he wants. We have all kinds of pictures show-
ing. Even if he wants the latest pirate copies, I can find him those that
come in from Malaysia. East Asian Tigers, rich country, tallest buildings,
Royal Bengal Tiger, skins, teeth, all very expensive. Big cut. But he only
wants a Bangla movie. If he wanted porn, we could go to Old Dhaka
where young, nervous boys fill dark rooms. Easy to find a prostitute
there. Maybe probably a pretty one. Make his own movie. A prostitute
knows you will lie, she knows how to bargain and she knows at some
point, she’s going to have your semen on her hands. Some are very
pretty. Like that one what’s her name? Girls always want to make the
big boys skip. With her free use of cheap, pink lipstick, she did stain my
very soul. But such a sinner she is! n
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013
Non-Fiction

Dhaka 2008: Out of Place, Out of Time Zafar Sobhan

D
haka today is utterly unrecognisable as the sleepy, charming, that gave birth to it, is no less than the difference between the Dhaka
tranquil town it was even half a century ago. There is something of today and the Dhaka of antiquity. People change, cities change and
thoroughly startling about this transmutation from a genteel countries change. In our minds, we are still a simple, pastoral people of
and sedate town of tree-lined avenues, ponds, canals and spacious bun- farmers and fishermen, listening to folksongs and dreaming of our idyl-
galows set amidst overgrown gardens – to this present incarnation as a lic village homes and our green-and-gold fields. That is who we think
dizzying metropolis of 12 million people, blaring automobiles and block we are at heart.
after block of unpainted concrete apartments, as far as the eye can see. All the while, however, Bangladesh is moving quickly from the rural
But the difference is more than merely in the physical transformation; it village-based agricultural economy that has sustained it for thousands
is also one of tone and feel. The city is a tinderbox, where muggers, pet- of years, to an industrialised country of cities and city-dwellers. And,
ty thieves and hijackers are routinely beaten to death by angry crowds for better or for worse, Dhaka reflects this new Bangladesh. If the old
of vigilantes; where disgruntled industrial workers take over the streets
at a moment’s notice; where violence and anarchy are never far away.
Dhaka is always seething, swelling, heaving and pulsating. Sometimes
it seems as though the one thing that everyone in Dhaka has in common
is anger. It is this anger – this wrenching coarsening – that differentiates
the Dhaka of the 21st century from the Dhaka of the past.
At the time of independence, the population of the city was still under
one million, but this swelled to over five million by the end of the dec-
ade. Today, the population of the city is anywhere from 12 to 15 million,
and it is growing by the day. Everywhere one looks in Dhaka, con-
struction is taking place. Sand, cement, bricks, iron rods, half-finished
construction sites and armies of wiry, emaciated builders. The houses
that have not been subdivided are being knocked down, to be replaced
by apartment blocks. The apartments are built as close to the boundary
perimeters as permitted by law – indeed, more often than not, much
closer – as everyone wants to make the most out of that most scarce of
resources, real estate. This inevitably gives the new developments a
crowded, cheek-by-jowl look and feel. And it is fitting that the crowd-
edness of the city’s streets finds its parallel in the congested skyline,
where the new buildings likewise jostle with each other for elbow room,
no different from the pedestrians below. Dhaka is now a city of concrete
blocks. The emblematic neighbourhoods are the lower-middle-class
ones, which stretch from one end of the city to the other – Khilgaon,
Jatrabari, Badda. Street after street of unpainted five- and six-storey
concrete boxes stacked one next to the other; whole families occupying
two rooms, maybe 500 square feet in total, that are suffocating, claus-
trophobic and sweltering cauldrons of misery.
Nonetheless, the stifling concrete boxes are a clear step up from the
slums that have sprouted in every untended corner of the city, by the
railroad tracks, under flyovers, on the fringes of stagnant and decay-
ing ponds and water bodies or perched on rickety stilts that rise up Abridged, ‘Himal
out of the murk and filth. Estimates of Dhaka’s slum population range Southasian’,
anywhere from 10 percent to a third of the entire population; and it is 2008.
expanding relentlessly with new arrivals, particularly refugees from
riverbank erosion and other rural calamities. The majority of houses in
these places are warrens of woven bamboo and cardboard and blue tar-
paulin, all crammed into the most fetid and godforsaken byways of the
city, places that no one else wants or cares or thinks about. Occasion-
ally, a developer will turn his rapacious eyes onto such plots of land,
and fire will suddenly rip through a slum, clearing it out and reducing it
to smouldering ashes within a few hours. Bangladesh was to be found in the shaded byways and sleepy villages,
Once upon a time, Dhaka was not like this. There were always slums and reflected in the genteel courtliness of the Dhaka of days gone by,
and there were always ugly concrete dwellings, just as there were el- today’s Bangladesh – brash, teeming, heaving, angry, crowded, chaotic –
egant bungalows set in rambling gardens. But more than anything else, is perfectly reflected in the honking car horns and jam-packed footpaths
there was space, breathing space. The city was marked by ponds and of today’s Dhaka.
lakes, and crisscrossed by canals. The open spaces were not wasteland
and scrub, but rather green with vegetation, bushes and trees. Dhaka
today seems thoroughly out of place when compared to the villages that n
surround it and make up most of the rest of Bangladesh. Even today,
many of the country’s villages are charming and picturesque, neatly n
arranged around ponds amid precisely planted shade trees and small
patchwork-quilt fields. Looking at such villages, it seems clear that
Bangladeshis must have a strong aesthetic sense, not evident anymore
in the capital city. But we do not live in our villages anymore. We live
in our cities. Specifically, one in ten Bangladeshis now lives in Dhaka.

27
And the difference between Dhaka and the villages that surround it, and

DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013 ARTS & LETTERS

 Poetry

Put It Up! Tanvir Malik

R
ickshaw-puller, put up the hood! But the body craves pleasure;
I’ll be pressed to her – And whatever’s here,
My thigh against Is behind the curtain –
The warmth of hers, Nobody can know.
Arms, round her shoulders, Pleasure delayed is pleasure denied.
Breaths, sword-fighting…
Blessed be the hood –
C’mon…! Boon to us all.
No time-wasting! Secrecy saves us from ignominy.
She’s gotta be back by 8. Covering spares us embarrassment.

Sitting with the hood down So, rickshaw-puller, I’m begging you:
Is an unfortunate affair. PUT THE DAMN HOOD UP! n
No freedom’s there –
Only repressed instincts:

Wooden bodies on the seat

Barely touching –
For all to see.
How boring!

The hood sets us lovers free

Greatest invention ever
For togetherness:
Brushing, crushing, gushing.

How ingenious, this hood –

Secret enclosure, as it were,
In the open.
And the bumpy ride
Adds to it.

She likes it too.

Lets my hand straggle
Through uncharted territory.
Her eyes close,
Body tautens.

My enterprising hand
Glides through the velvety folds
Of her borkha
Sending out shivers in both spines.
From 9th Edge:
Creative Writings Think of what would happen
from Bangladesh. If the hood weren’t here!
2012.
Where’d we lovers
Get the privacy?
This city’s a sworn enemy
To lovers:
Barrier to whims
Of the body.

Baton-clenching cops
Infest the parks.
Bushes are cleared,
Nooks, well-lit.
Pesky beggars look on.

28
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013