These interludes made me confident that there were many renowned authors and litterateurs who were fond of me not because I was a young, perhaps beautiful, girl but because of what I was writing. Possibly, in my poems and my prose, in what I had to say, they found the indications of a new direction of thought and a new generation of writing. They read my work, discussed it and truly believed that what I was writing was indeed important. Rather than with writers my age I was more often seen with senior writers much older than me. Of course, as important as art, literature, society and culture were, what was perhaps most important was to learn how to be truly human.
Suddenly one day I received word from Shamsur Rahman that Rashid Karim was extremely unwell. Rushing to him I got him admitted to Suhrawardy Hospital immediately. The doctors managed to revive Karim but due to internal bleeding in his brain half his body was left paralysed. After being discharged from the hospital both Shamsur Rahman and I went to see Karim to keep him company and cheer him up. Shamsur Rahman was close to writer Panna Kaiser and we went to K’s house in Iskaton for drinks and conversations. I even accompanied K to a literary meet in Jessore. The wife of writer Sahidullah K., Panna Kaiser herself was a novelist and was used to giving speeches in political rallies. The speech she delivered at the literary meet in Jessore was fantastic as usual. I was happy seeing a new city and its new people, so one can imagine the level of discomfort I faced when I too was suddenly pushed up to the stage to speak. My speech, devoid of the jargon necessary for such occasions, could scarcely match up to K’s in impact.
Often while visiting M.A.R. Akhtar Mukul’s bookshop, Sagar Publishers, I would run into renowned author Saukat Osman sitting there. He would catch hold of me and talk to me nineteen to the dozen about everything under the sun. One day he even explained the origin of my name to me. Some days later I found out that he had written a poem about me and was distributing photocopies of it to his readers: ‘Nasrin, the wild rose, and so her fragrance endures’. I could not help but feel that I had far exceeded the limits of how much a person was allowed to have in life.
A fine friendship developed with the talented and popular poet Nirmalendu Goon, to the extent that he soon became like a member of my family. One aspect of Goon’s character was particularly fascinating. He never hesitated in speaking the truth, no matter how unpleasant, irrespective of who he ended up offending in the process. Goon was the sort of person who lived the truth he spoke in his life. After reading his poem ‘Huliya’, like many of his other readers I had assumed that he must have been charged with a political case in real life too. I asked him one day how he had managed to evade capture and whether the police had managed to catch up with him in the end. Eager to hear about the banned left politics of his time or some covert operation against the oppressive Pakistani government, you can imagine my surprise when Goon confessed that he had been booked in a robbery case!
Without an iota of hesitation he narrated the story of how in the village of Netrakona he had once joined a gang of robbers. Why had he done it? Because he had needed the money, was Goon’s simple reply. That was one constant feature in Goon’s life: issues with money. While staying at the Anandamohan Hostel he had been hostel captain and used to regularly steal from the mess fund to buy new shirts. He would run gambling parties in the hostel room at night for which he was eventually expelled. While living in Dhaka the meagre sum he used to earn from his poems was never enough. Broke and racked with hunger, there were many occasions when he would go to a restaurant to eat without even half a cent in his pocket. The play was to run before the owners got wind of his intentions. Accordingly, getting up to wash his hands after the meal, he used to throw the glass and take off on a run with the restaurant people in hot pursuit. But try as they might they could never manage to get their hands on the lanky, Tagore-resembling Goon.
What impressed me the most about his stories was his utter lack of hesitation in talking about past deeds. I had never met anyone who could relinquish pride and self-awareness to this degree and display such an open sense of humour. Once, when I was ten years old and had just been promoted to a new class in school, Father did not buy all the books required for the school year right away. As class started and all the girls began turning up with their new books, I realized most of them had more books than I did. One day after school I noticed Abha R. had left behind her Bengali Rapid Reader by mistake. Since I was the last to leave class, unable to curb my greed I carefully looked around to see if anyone else was watching before quickly slipping the book inside my pyjama bottom. As I walked out of the classroom my heart was beating loudly and I was plagued by an intense anxiety that whoever was looking at me could clearly see the book wedged near my stomach. There were other girls standing at the gate, including Abha R. Seeing her, my first reaction was to take out the book and give it back to her. However, it would have been impossible to take the book out in the middle of the field and so I returned home with it! My anxiety did not lessen one bit even after that and I had to hide the book under the mattress so that no one discovered my ill-gotten gains.
Carrying it around wedged against my stomach, I took it with me everywhere, to the bathroom or to the roof, and finished reading it the very next day. In a couple of days Father brought home all my books, including the Rapid Reader. After returning to school I felt terrible for Abha, seeing her cry for her lost book and asking everyone around if they had seen it. I could not give the book back to her for fear that she would turn around and call me a thief. On the other hand I did feel like a thief and the feeling wreaked havoc on my peace of mind, not letting me sleep at night and forcing me to toss and turn in unease. Neither could I confess my guilt to anyone. Unable to endure this torture for much longer and the reminder of the stolen book weighing like a mountain on my shoulders, I wedged it into my pyjama bottom again one day and, reaching school before everyone else, placed it neatly on Abha’s desk, unloading the heavy burden off my chest instantly.
Abha and I became friends later but I could never tell her about the book. In fact, even after I was all grown up I could never tell the story to anyone. Despite secretly returning the book I had failed to get rid of my guilt. Goon could confess to such crimes without batting an eyelid. I might not have liked his habits and his history of robbery and gambling but I must admit that I loved how nonchalantly he accepted his own shortcomings. He even wrote poems about his dissolute lifestyle and his liking for prostitutes.
Goon was once married to Neera Lahiri, a medical student, and they had a happy family with their young daughter, Mrittika. The poet used to be busy earning money and the medical student was busy training to become a doctor. So they had summoned Geeta from Netrakona to look after the little girl. Geeta had no children and she loved Mrittika as her own. One fine day Neera had abruptly declared that she was ending her relationship with Goon and left with their daughter, leaving him behind with Geeta. He moved from Mymensingh to a slum in Dhaka, not just with Geeta but her entire family, all of who he felt responsible for.
Neera married again, this time a doctor, and Mrittika was left to the care of her grandmother. The slum that Goon had moved to was quite close to where Mrittika lived. Not once did I hear him complain about staying in a slum or having so many mouths to feed. He was perennially a happy man; he did not have material comforts but did not feel the lack. Instead he enjoyed life to the fullest, laughed loudly, loved generously and wrote just as much. Not particularly attached to wealth, he was as comfortable eating delicate cuisine laid out on exquisite dinner tables in palatial mansions as he was eating stale dal and rice while swatting flies away in front of his shanty in the slum. To him winning a few thousand dollars in a Las Vegas casino was as exhilarating as earning a few taka in a shabby gambling den in some back alley of Dhaka. He saw the world from a unique vantage point, full of experiences but shorn of illusions. Life, when compared to the universe, was merely a fragile thread whose tenuous hold could snap at any moment—Goon fearlessly walked this tightrope to extra
ct the last bit of joy he could from it.
One night our conversation continued for so long that it got too late for him to return home. Since neither Mother nor Milan was at home I asked him to stay the night at my place since I had an extra bed. Early the next morning we were surprised by Geeta’s sudden appearance at my doorstep. Worried that her Dada had not returned the night before, the dutiful Geeta had combed the city in search of him before finally getting hold of my address and turning up there to look for him! As soon as she saw him she got right to the point. ‘Dada, what sort of behaviour is this? Here I am dying of worry. You should have left me word!’
‘How did you find out I’m here with Nasrin?’ Goon asked with a laugh.
A calm slowly descending on her anxious face, Geeta quipped, ‘Asimda suggested I try here.’
‘Did you walk here or you came in a rickshaw?’
‘How could I walk so far? I took a rickshaw.’
‘Did you pay?’
‘No, he’s waiting at the gate.’
‘Don’t you have school today?’
‘Yes, I do. Let’s get home soon or I’ll be late.’ They had tea and breakfast and left soon after.
Goon had dedicated the first volume of his collected poems to Shamsur Rahman and the second to Geeta, short for Geeta Gandiba Dasi. Geeta worked at a school in Azimpur where she rang the bells. She was no longer a domestic help, her body was healthier, and she had learnt to hold her head high. Her little sisters were with her too and she intended to get them jobs soon. Goon had suggested one of them come work for me. After Kulsum ran away Geeta’s youngest sister Baby was sent over to work in her stead but she did not last long. She later joined a garments factory where she threaded needles for 300 taka. These were the people who comprised Nirmalendu Goon’s family and I had heard a lot about them from him.
Once I asked him why he did not consider moving from the slum to a better place and he explained to me how for them the slum was the best place they could ever live in. The slum gave them the freedom to be the way they wished to be, abuse, scream and shout if they had to, behaviour which they would never get away with in a regular middle-class neighbourhood. Besides, every landlord would have uncomfortable probing questions to ask about his relationship with Geeta and her sisters, questions that no one cared about in the slum. Social shame, the fear of losing one’s social standing—these were decidedly middle-class preoccupations and Goon’s life cut across class boundaries. He was a man who had moved out of the framework of class; I used to think of him like the mythical swan, with neither the dirt of the slum in Azimpur nor the glitter of the palaces of Gulshan managing to have any effect on him.
Goon never won when he gambled; it was a losing game for him from the get-go. Despite that he was a gambling aficionado. I had once said to him, ‘Just let it be. Why do you go? Waste of time and waste of money!’
‘What do I do? There’s no other way,’ he had morosely replied.
‘Why?’
Blaming his cohorts he had told me, ‘If I don’t play they call me a bastard.’ He used to go and gamble with them because he did not like them calling him a bastard!
No matter how dismissive and playful he was about life, about politics he was never anything but serious. However, in the 1991 elections he did do something outrageous. He had always been keen on contesting the general elections and since he was a staunch Awami League supporter he was convinced that he was going to get a ticket for the election as a League candidate. Although it did not go quite as he had planned, it failed to deter him from his firm resolve to fight the election. In the absence of the boat29 he had wished for, he adopted the symbol of a crocodile and registered himself as an independent candidate. Soon, Netrakona was covered in posters and Goon earnestly threw himself into the campaigning. The voice used to reciting poetry could suddenly be heard across Netrakona shouting slogans and speaking to his electorate in a door-to-door campaign. With his crocodile symbol adorning the background of the rickshaw, independent political leader Nirmalendu Goon waved at his supporters and well-wishers throughout his tour of Netrakona. He gained considerable electoral knowledge from this exercise but unfortunately that did not translate into victory for him. In the end, five votes was all he got.
Goon wrote the most evocative and the most number of poems about Sheikh Mujib. The same Awami League that used to include his poems in almost all their special events and programmes, the party that had given election tickets to so many rank idiots over the years, never gave Goon a shot at contesting the polls. At a time when no one dared say anything about Sheikh Mujib, let alone write against him, Goon was the only one writing such poems and reading them out fearlessly in public gatherings.
Mujib meant nothing else,
nothing more than freedom,
and the unwritten love
between father and son.
Mujib meant nothing else,
nothing more than might,
and the brave Bengali’s timeless devotion.
His poetry was an asset to the Awami League. Dubbing the 7 March 1971 address delivered at the Race Course grounds a ‘poem’ and calling Mujib a ‘poet’, Goon had written the poem ‘Swadhinota Sobdoti Kibhabe Amader Holo’ (How Did We Learn the Word Freedom). Whenever the BNP tried claiming that Ziaur Rahman was the one who had called for independence, the Awami League set itself the task of reminding everyone of Sheikh Mujib’s contributions back in 1971 and Goon was the one who was summoned. Seeing the ardent Mujib-loving poet extol the great man’s virtues through his poems in public gatherings and meetings must have made Sheikh Hasina considerably proud. In the pin-drop silence of the congregation Goon read his poems out aloud.
Like everyone gathered here I too love roses.
While zooming past the race course yesterday,
One of the roses whispered to me
To write a poem on Sheikh Mujib;
And here I am today.
While walking past Samakal yesterday
A freshly blossomed flame-of-the-forest whispered to me,
To write a poem on Sheikh Mujib;
And here I am today.
Yesterday, the fountain at Shahbag Square
Begged me in a choked cry
To write a poem on Sheikh Mujib;
And here I am today.
A bloodstained brick from the Sahid Minar
Whispered to me yesterday,
To write a poem on Sheikh Mujib;
And here I am today.
Like everyone here I too favour dreams,
And Love. The heroic dream I had last night
Whispered in my ears,
To write a poem on Sheikh Mujib;
And here I am today.
Let the people gathered under this vast oak bear witness,
Let the buds in the fiery flamboyant tree,
Poised at the edge of new life, lend me their ear,
Let the cuckoo in this forlorn spring afternoon know,
In the name of this pious earth under my feet,
I have kept my word to the rose
And the fiery flames-of-the-forest,
I have not come to ask for blood,
I have come instead to sing about love.
Despite his refusal to play by the rules the Awami League never broke off its ties with Goon, and his relationship with Sheikh Hasina too remained as before. After moving to the government quarters on Minto Road, residence of the leader of the opposition, Sheikh Hasina organized a lavish iftar party to rival a similar event organized by the ruling party some time back. Both Goon and I received invitations for the evening and we were more than interested at the prospect of a lavish spread. Goon was carrying a jar of Dove cream in his pocket bought from America as a gift for Sheikh Hasina. Both my hands and my pockets were empty, except for my eyes that were brimming with curiosity about a political iftar. A huge canopy had been erected on the grounds of the house at Minto Road and chairs and tables had been arranged underneath. The Quran was being recited over lo
udspeakers and as the sirens blared the fasting Awami politicians drank water with chants of ‘Bismillah’ to signal the end of yet another day of Ramzan. Sheikh Hasina herself was moving from one table to another, greeting guests and informing them that the League too was a religious party just like the BNP and the Jamaat. This unholy congregation of religion and politics was both painful and terrifying to witness.
Communal politics, so long prohibited in Bangladesh, was finally legitimate. The same Jamaat leaders who had gone into hiding after independence were now proud parliamentarians of the nation. Things were so different! The Jamaat would never have come this far had it not enjoyed the tacit encouragement of many established leaders. Golam Azam, the chief figure behind the genocide carried out in 1971, was living in the country with impunity and leading the Jamaat, and many other treacherous agents were roaming about with their heads held high.30 A few individuals still standing by the ideals of the Liberation War instituted an organization called Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee (Committee for Resisting Killers and Collaborators of Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971) in January 1992, led my Jahanara Imam. She also published her memoirs titled Ekattorer Dinguli (The Days of the Liberation War), an account of the tumultuous time of 1971 and how she had lost her husband and her son to the war.
One day Khoka took me to Jahanara Imam’s house, around the time when she was busy with a signature campaign demanding punishment for Golam Azam for war crimes. I was tasked with helping with the campaign, and when a huge people’s court was organized at the Suhrawardy Udyan to try Golam Azam under the leadership of the Nirmul Committee, I was among the thousands of people who marched there. The judgement was unanimous: Golam Azam had to be hanged for his crimes. But there was no one to carry out the sentence, especially in the face of the police forces that the government deployed to stop the people’s court. The police came and disrupted the peaceful crowd gathered at the protest, disconnected the mikes and destroyed the stage. Golam Azam was put in prison but that too was merely for show. The slight charge levelled against him—staying on in Bangladesh with a Pakistani passport even after his visa had expired—was nothing in comparison to the crimes committed in 1971 when he had murdered thousands of Bengalis on behalf of the Pakistani military junta, crimes the government had nothing to say about. I was concerned that after things settled down Golam Azam was again going to be set free, and the citizenship he had applied for was also going to be granted to him. What was the country going to look like? Was it going to be habitable at all? The way religion was increasingly spreading its influence over politics, I was troubled that some day soon state power was going to pass on to the Jamaat-e-Islami.
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