I could scarcely wrap my head around what he was saying. My first instinct was suspicion that he was trying to indoctrinate me into his madness. Why had he summoned me otherwise? It soon became clear that my suspicions were not unfounded. He wished to start a journal called Chinta (Thoughts) filled with these bizarre thoughts of his and he wanted me to write for it. Quite obviously MF had undergone a startling transformation. While Islamic fundamentalism was slowly spreading its tendrils across the country, only a handful of people were fighting against its incursions and trying to foreground how Bengali culture was fundamentally inclusive, be it for Hindus, Muslims, Christians or Buddhists. People like MF were actively trying to decry that. While the partition may have been an unforgivable mistake, at least no rational individual could have denied that the language and the culture of both East and West Bengal were essentially similar. But intellectuals like MF were too far gone in their delusions. He had transformed from a socialist to a sycophant of the capitalists running his NGO and the latest virus he had caught was religion!
He made me listen to this apparently stirring song by some fakir: ‘Diner nobi Mustafa . . . harin ekta bandha chhilo gachheri tolai’ (Mustafa, the prophet of the deprived . . . a deer was tied under the tree). Arabian deserts do not birth trees, nor do they have deer, so I could not help but marvel at the sheer imaginative reach of the song! He was convinced this was a true song for Bangladesh. Rabindrasangeet was for Hindus, not for Muslims! I later wrote a column contradicting MF’s preposterous claims which also included my critique of Shamsur Rahman’s use of Urdu words in his poetry and AZ’s comments disparaging Rabindranath. A debate over my column and the responses to it raged on in the magazine for quite a while. Even MF wrote a rejoinder although there was very little difference between his arguments and those of any fundamentalist writing for Inquilab. I wrote more columns in response to his debate. Around this time Purabi Basu23 came back to Bangladesh from the US for good and wrote one of her first articles against MF. It soon became evident that it was impossible to continue to disregard MF’s questionable affiliations.
After the publication of my column on language Shamsur Rahman wrote a long piece in response. Starting off with a salute to me, the article was written in defence of his position on the question of language. While commenting on the excessive intrusion of Arabic, Farsi and Urdu words in Bengali I had accused him of an unwarranted usage of Urdu words in his poetry. I had questioned his use of Urdu words in place of equally suitable words from the Bengali lexicon and that too words which were prevalent in common parlance.
He wrote in reply:
There are loan words in every language. They are like guests and it is against the tenets of hospitality to turn a guest away. Doors must be kept open. It is true that not all guests will be welcome or desirous; the unwelcome ones will fall by the wayside on their own . . . Annada Shankar Ray keeps using many Urdu and Hindi words quite naturally. I have never found them difficult or not-pleasant. There is this one instance where he uses the Urdu words ‘jaan pehchaan’ for acquaintance, instead of the more readily available Bengali counterpart. Or for instance the sentence ‘Kamli nahi chhorti’ (Kamli won’t let me be). I have not gone so far, Taslima Nasrin. So would you accuse the revered Annada Shankar Ray of producing Islamic Bengali in West Bengal?
In my initial article I had contended:
I don’t believe that the Bengali language has become such a pauper that it has to steal or loan words from other languages in order to grow. Why can’t we ever be satisfied with what we already possess? The focus of all our writers should be the elevation of the quality of our literature rather than expanding vocabulary.
To that he wrote:
No, Taslima, such a statement is not something I would have expected from a progressive individual such as you. Just because our society is at one particular place does it mean we have to be satisfied with remaining stagnant? Should we not continue to strive for change? Why should we not import ideas and expressions from the outside world which can help us change our social conditions? No language, no matter how expansive or advanced, can shy away from interaction and exchange with other languages. Surely you of all people are aware of that!
Even if I had not been aware, Rahman’s rejoinder certainly opened my eyes to a startling realization. Rahman was not in favour of dragging in terms like Hindu and Muslim within the domain of the Bengali language. A man of secular ideals through and through, he did not wish to fan the flames of a dominant Islamic Bengali in Bangladesh. His words made me take a step back and reassess my position. In the end I could not help but acknowledge my own complicity in the blunder and agree with Rahman’s opinion. There was nothing called Islamic Bengali! There was no religion to language; calling Arabic an Islamic language was in itself a grave error. There were many Arabic speakers of dissimilar faiths and even more among them who did not have faith in religion at all. A language had to be allowed to progress of its own accord, not forced to conform to a particular set of beliefs. To be fair, there was enough reason behind my anxiety over the Islamization of Bengali at the time—the conservatives were in the process of turning the country into an Islamic state. These people, who had once been against the Liberation War, were trying to eradicate the Bengali language and culture from independent Bengal and forcing a new Islamized version of the language upon us instead. I had written against loan words from this anxious vantage point. But the problem lay with a few religious fanatics who were trying to neuter the language to raise the flag of Islam over the state, bad men trying to serve their own bad ends. Not just in language, religion was being forced into the realm of politics too. If the nation was to unalterably take a turn towards radical Islam, simply purging foreign words from Bengali would be inadequate in the long run. At my wits’ end, nothing could allay my apprehensions.
~
I could never fully comprehend the public appreciation for my columns. Besides, I was always acutely aware of how little I truly knew about literature. I had once nurtured aspirations of studying Bengali literature but Father had forced me into medicine. Consequently, there was not much I knew about the field. I did write poetry but whenever it came to prose I could never be confident about the final outcome of my labours. Even if my prose was appreciated and discussed I was never able to discard the doubts gnawing inside me. Nevertheless, whether I wrote prose or poetry it all came from the heart. I could never concoct something imaginary, something that did not make me think or cry or feel, only for the sake of producing something that would go down well with people.
One day Khoka suggested that we compile my columns into a book. I was justifiably taken aback by his proposal. Could these newspaper articles be even considered literature that he wanted to make a book out of them? Mortified, I replied, ‘That’s absurd! These articles are about everyday experiences and sensations! What happened yesterday, what’s happening today and stuff like that! A few days later these slight things will hardly be of any relevance.’ Shaking his head in disagreement, Khoka persisted. ‘Be that as it may, not all of them are the same! A few of them will always be topical.’ I tried demonstrating my point with the few magazines I had at hand to show that the columns did not work as serious literature. I could not convince myself that my articles—either linguistically weak or more often than not thematically lacking—were suitable for a book. Instead I tried reasoning with Khoka, even offering him another volume of poetry to publish instead of the articles written for daily newspapers and weekly magazines. As a final nail in the coffin I opined that even if the book was published it would not work because everyone had already read all the articles. Nonetheless, Khoka’s enthusiasm for the project did not reduce one bit and he applied himself to shortlisting a set of columns from old journals. He asked me to suggest a suitable name for the collection but try as I might I could not come up with one.
It was around this time that I ran into SHA one day. As soon as he heard the idea of a collection of columns he suggested Nirbachito Kolam
(Selected Columns). ‘Nirbachito Kolam? What sort of a name is that? A column is for a newspaper or a journal. If it’s put in a book it can’t be called a column any more. It should be called an essay or a paper,’ I reasoned. However, calling my columns essays was an even more daunting thought, especially since such essays were expected to be very well researched and quite detailed. My columns were light, mostly irreverent and could never be passed off as serious research. Ultimately, it was SHA’s suggestion that ended my reservations. Khoka liked the name Nirbachito Kolam too, probably because he wished to retain the word ‘column’ in keeping with the origin of the writings.
Despite my lack of interest the book was finally published and, as he had expected, it did exceedingly well. The entire first edition was sold out within the span of one book fair and a second edition had to be commissioned immediately. Khoka could not stop smiling; he was happy about the sales but also quite surprised. Even though he had believed in the book he had not expected such a response to a collection of old columns. He requested me to sit at the stall in the fair, where many people wished to get their copies of the book autographed by me. Even the books of poetry were selling well and once his entire stock was exhausted Khoka had to order fresh ones. He informed me that no volume of poetry had ever sold at the fair as well as mine had. Not just from Dhaka, people were turning up from all over to meet me, to queue up and buy signed copies of the book. To me the entire thing was nothing short of strange and frankly quite incredible.
When there was no work at the hospital or I had a sudden free afternoon to myself I would drop in at the discussions of Asim Saha’s literary club Ityadi in Nilkhet. It was there that I ran into R one day. We stared at each other for a long moment, the many unsaid words between us hanging like tangible entities, reminding us that despite going back a long way we did not know anything about each other or each other’s lives any more. Emerging from the club I asked him, ‘Want to come with me?’ Without asking anything he simply replied, ‘Yes.’ We took a rickshaw to Armanitola and on the way R informed me that his prawn farm had folded up. During his long stay in Mithekhali he had written new poems and a new song and he told me about those too. He sang the song to me while we were on the rickshaw—‘Bhalo achi, bhalo theko, akasher thikanai chithi likho’—and every word touched my heart. It was that very afternoon, after I returned to Armanitola with R, when NM came and made that scene at my door.
R could only stand and stare in disbelief at my happy life. ‘What do you think?’ I had asked with a touch of arrogance in my tone. ‘Only you can,’ he had conceded. ‘What’s there not to? You have to want it enough! I should have done this a long time ago. My own house, my own money, no one to interfere or to order me around, no excuses or explanations required—is there anything happier than that?’
Later that evening, while R was still there, MM came by with an offer. Having managed a car from somewhere, he was on his way to Mymensingh and wanted to know if I wished to accompany him. A short story writer, MM was also the editor of a weekly magazine called Bichinta. He had somehow found out where I worked and dropped by at the hospital one day to meet me. During night shifts—when the doctors were forbidden from sleeping or dozing off even if there were no patients—he used to call and we would speak at length. It felt nice to talk to him. MM never veered towards society or politics; he would only talk about funny things and it seemed he had the book Hashir Golpo (Funny Stories) memorized! He had dropped by my place at Armanitola too. He would regale me with his old stories of running away to Brazil and his subsequent long stay there. He had since broken up with his maddeningly beautiful wife Kabita, moved back to Bangladesh to settle in Iskaton and shortened his name. Except for some obvious fat on the bones and a healthy glow on the skin nothing much had changed for him since.
‘It’s been a long time. How are you?’ I inquired. Sitting on the carpet and sipping tea he nodded. ‘Yes, it’s been many years. I am doing quite well. This place of yours, you have done it up quite nicely!’ I looked around and could not help but silently agree. Yes, I had done it up nicely. I remembered that old rhyme about the sparrow and the tailorbird, the latter proudly declaring how it lived in its own nest and not in someone else’s. The news of MM’s break-up with Kabita had been very upsetting. It had been nice seeing the two of them together, high on their youth and swimming against the tide. On asking him why they had broken up, if there was a way to resolve their differences and if he had tried to resolve them at all, I received mostly evasive answers. I advised him to sort things out with her and start afresh. It was doubtful how much of that advice actually managed to reach him.
I took MM up on his Mymensingh offer quite readily and so did R. The two of them were meeting after a long time. With them in the front seat and me in the back we set off for Mymensingh. Jhunu khala joined us en route; we picked her up from Bhooter Gully. She too was meeting R after a long time. R told us that he wanted to go and meet Yasmin once we reached Mymensingh. The car sped past Jaidevpur and then Bhaluka. Just as we were passing Trishal the tyres suddenly skidded and the car swerved dangerously on the road. By some fortuitous turn of events, just as we were about to be plunged deep into the ravine the car swerved at the last minute and wedged itself along the edge. Inside the car the four of us had just stared death in the face. We simply sat there for a long there, to calm ourselves down and gather our bearings.
After dropping Jhunu khala at Nani’s we reached the large black gates of Abakash only to find them locked from the inside. It was already quite late in the night. We did not dare wake Father up at such an hour. He was only going to let loose a volley of questions at me: how did I come at such an hour, with whom, and so on. Besides, if he noticed R in the car there was going to be hell to pay. Swallowing our pride and with no other choice in front of us, we spent the night at Yasmin’s and returned to Abakash the next morning. We had decided that MM was going to pick us up on his way back to Dhaka. In the evening when the car came and we were about to leave, R suddenly said, ‘I want to talk to Yasmin.’ Yasmin had been staying at Abakash. I pulled her to a corner and whispered, ‘R wants to meet you.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean why? He’s near the gate. Go and see him.’
‘No.’
‘Why do you say no? What harm will you come to if you speak to him?’
‘No, I won’t go.’
‘So strange! On our way here he kept saying he wanted to meet Yasmin. And now you don’t want to meet him? He’s waiting right there. Just a few words and we’ll be off. What’s your problem?’
No matter how hard I tried I was unable to send Yasmin to see R. I went back to him and informed him that Yasmin did not want to talk.
‘She isn’t coming? Did you tell her I wanted to see her?’
‘I did. She still doesn’t want to.’
I could sense he was disappointed and I was sad to see him so. Instead of telling him she did not wish to see him perhaps I should have lied and said she was not at Abakash or something to that effect. Perhaps he would not have been so sad had he known she was not home. We did not talk too much on our way back. R had to roll down the window twice to throw up. Apparently both of them had gotten drunk at Mymensingh. MM dropped us off at Armanitola and left.
I asked R to stay over that night. Deep in the night when I felt his arms around me, when he brought his face near mine to kiss me, I let him. When he dragged me closer to his body I let myself get close to him again. It was as if I was with the old R, I was still the old me, and our separation had never happened at all. It seemed as if we were still meeting every day, still in love, our bodies still attuned to each other’s touch. The warmth of his breath and the feverish glow on his skin seemed to drive away the cold that had nested within me for long. I knew his body, his every touch and I knew when he was going to yawn, when he was going to get up and stretch his arms behind his head before lighting a cigarette. I remembered which side he preferred sleeping on, how many pillows he require
d, which hand or finger he was going to gesticulate with while speaking—there was nothing about him I did not know. Try as I might I could never think of R as a stranger. And the more I thought about it the more I was convinced that it was the bizarreness of marriage that was behind all our problems. Did marriage truly bring people together? Then could divorce drive them apart just as easily? I wanted to tell him that he could live with me as long as he wished to, like it was his own house. Instead I told him simply, ‘If you ever wish to come over don’t hesitate.’ Staring at me impassively, R did not respond.
‘Are you still seeing that girl?’
‘Yes, I am,’ he replied in a dry tone.
‘Aren’t you planning to get married?’
‘Yes, we are.’ A slight smile appeared on the corner of his lips before vanishing just as fast.
I examined his right thumb that night; it was black and had begun to rot. The next morning I took him to a doctor I knew, got the thumb cleaned of pus and infected blood and had it dressed. The finger was showing signs of gangrene and there was a chance that the infection was going to spread until the only course of action left would be to amputate the entire hand or risk problems in peripheral circulation. His blood could clot and obstruct a blood vessel to the heart or the brain! I could not think of what to tell him. He looked so much more peaceful than before that I felt sorry to have to tell him anything. He was not being able to use his right hand so I had to feed him and help him clean up afterwards.
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