Great Poetry Series 6

A Child's Christmas in Wales

Dylan Thomas (Swansea, South Wales 1914 - New York, United States1953)

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.

"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs. "He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

Great Poetry Series 5

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917 S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20 And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25 There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go 35 Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40 [They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”] Do I dare 45 Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all:— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55 The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60 And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] It is perfume from a dress 65 That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? . . . . . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75 Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85 And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, 90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95 If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, 100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105 Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . . 110 No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, 115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … 120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown. ------------------------------------------ Translation of the Epigraph: "If I thought that my reply would be to someone who would ever return to earth, this flame would remain without further movement; but as no one has ever returned alive from this gulf, if what I hear is true, I can answer you with no fear of infamy." These lines are quoted from Dante's "Inferno", and are spoken by the character of Count Guido da Montefelltro. Dante meets the punished Guido in the Eighth chasm of Hell. Guido explains that he is speaking freely to Dante only because he believes Dante is one of the dead who could never return to earth to report what he says.

An Elegy for the Grass Flowers

How could I burn those letters that were fused with fragrance?
How could I burn those letters that were cleansed with love?
I have drowned those letters in the Ganges today.
I have set fire to the flowing waters today.

-- Rajendranath Rahbar

I was talking to my sister on the 13 th of January about things that are happening in our lives. We always do that-- tell each other about what we are doing or planning to do. I was telling her how infinitely fatigued I was after a Ulysses-like journey through the east coast and the south. I was in Oklahoma, warm and comfortable in the company of a wonderful host. My sister told me she saw a picture of Rupok in the newspaper. In remembrance of his memories, his family puts up a little ad twice every year – on his birthday and on the day he died.

It has been seven years!

Memories work in strange ways. I remember so many little things he told me, or places that we have been to together. What I cannot recall is his face. Closing my eyes, I try hard to conjure a mental image of him sometimes. My memories fail me. I have pictures of him elsewhere that I can look at, but I don’t have a picture of him in my head. May be that is God’s revenge on me for not answering so many desperate calls he made to my house when he was alive. I was angry. I was angry and he was gone.

I remember he wanted to be a grass-flower—one always within your reach but one you don’t always notice, one that blooms for its own pleasure and dies under your feet. I wanted to be a grass-flower too. He said everyone was a different flower. I, for example, was a flower of the moonlight. It is the flower that moonlight makes on your floor coming through the carved ventilators of the room. Why, I asked, did I have be that? Because no matter how many times he wanted to hold it, the flower always escaped. It is something you spend all your life trying to conquer. It gets you going.

I remember I went crazy after he died. I didn’t talk to anyone for months. I would freak out every time I heard the siren of an ambulance (If you know me, you know I still have the siren phobia). I had dreams almost every night where Rupok told me everybody was lying and he was not dead. I spent my days curled up in my bed beside the window looking at the cruel sky. I was skipping classes for months. I don’t remember at what point I started going back to school; but what I do remember is that I couldn’t write anything. I spent the entire class hour staring at the blank sheets. At times my sister couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t help crying and telling me “live for me, I love you too”. Probably it is for her that I slowly managed to recover some façade of normalcy.

(to be continued)

Country Roads, Take me Home

One crosses four stages when s/he comes to a new country, said the facilitator at the orientation for the Fulbright FLTAs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The four Hs. First it is the Honeymoon stage where everything about the new country seems great and fun. Everyone seems so friendly and the place appears to teem with excitement. Then comes the Hostility stage when the dreams are deceived and you are faced with all the shocks and hazards of a foreign territory. The Humor stage comes after that where you laugh at all your naiveties – “ha ha ha! I didn’t know how to use the vending machine” or “hi hi hi! I was lost at the New York Penn station for 2 hours until my friend came and rescued me”—and so on. The last stage is the Home stage where you come full circle and feel confident and comfortable and at home in the new country. With all its pros and cons you love to stay in the country which was once so foreign to you. She sincerely hoped that we all would experience the Home stage in the US at least by the end of our 10 months stay, if not before.

Laws and rules never work smoothly with me. If there is a law book that stands high in my estimation, it will be the Murphy’s Law. For me, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Things have been going wrong from the very first day I arrived here, or even before that. I almost missed the flight from Dubai to London. I was sitting in the airport lounge and reading an all time favorite book of mine (Chobirr Deshe Kobitar Deshe by Sunil) when I heard they were announcing someone’s name and telling it was the last call to board. It was some poor Mash-kat Khassen and I genuinely felt bad about him/her and went back to my book. It was almost time for my flight so I sluggishly went to the airline counter and they told me to run to the aircraft because the gate was closing. They were actually announcing for me! Things that went wrong after coming to the states would require me to write the length of two novels. I plan to write about them sometime later.

I don’t have much work to do here. I live in a fairly nice apartment with two other people. I go to class, come back, cook, eat, read, write or listen to music. It sounds like the perfect little life that any Bangladeshi girl would want. But if you ask me, I wanna go home.

Let me share with you what happened today when I was waiting for my shuttle to go my university. I was standing in the corner of the street and I heard some noise and shouts in the apartment right by the road. Then suddenly the window glass from the first floor broke and fell on the road in thousand of pieces. I don’t know what happened there. But I could be severely injured in a matter of minutes. I was standing right there half a minute ago! That was scary.

I had one of my best experiences in that particular corner of the road as well. Some weeks back I was standing there waiting for the shuttle. It was raining quite heavily. I didn’t have an umbrella so I was trying to cover my head with my jacket. A car stopped in front of me and a man gave me his umbrella. He saw that I was hesitant, but he insisted that I took it. He later gave me a ride to my university. I figured out he owns a bar at the corner of the street where I lived. He told me giving me the umbrella was his good deed of the day.

(To be continued)

photo courtesy: flickr.com/photos/ilovethecolts/2673760915/

All That Glitters

The book that i am reading now is called 'A Golden Age'; a very aptly named novel that deals withthe 1971 war of independence of Bangladesh. I bought this book about a year back.i had also leafed through it. but as i am reading it closely, i am pretty disappointed. I understand that the war of Bangladesh -- a struggle of epic grandeur-- has somehow been blurred, exoticised and/or sometimes melodramatized in this book. I won't even talk about the culture specific errors.i have so far figured out 33 of them... and i have about hundred more pages to go to finish it.who knows i might just score half a century! I will jot everything down for an academic article that i am planning to write soon.

I was talking to an American professor some weeks back and he told me how his students found this book overwhelming. i said that the book wanted to cater to your taste, so i am not surprised. He didn't understand why i was being so hard on that poor book, especially after it had won this country a reasonable share of international recognition. "You are really being emotional", Said T.S, "after all it is a novel and you cannot deny the creative liberty that the author might take."

Well, Mr. T.S. .. i understand that you and others alike in the US are great advocates of creative freedom even though the artists there still feel huge pressure from the state authorities, censor boards and so on. Don't get me wrong here. I am all for the freedom the artist too. But taking liberty does not mean presenting you with something full of historical errors and trying to pass it off as authentic.

It doesnt matter you said.. well.. what if somebody writes that the American civil war was fought between 11 southern states and one Mister chinese-american... or that during the hot summer afternoon of 911, 2001, two planes attacked the empire states building in New York city and it changed the history of the world? Do you think America will accpet it because one Ms. Whatsoever has to exercise her creative freedom?i don't think so. IF you are writing a historical novel, you better get the history straight. Surely, I wouldn't minda new kind of reality had you been using magic-realism to tell the tale. That was not the case here, right?

For the sake of arguing, you could still say that these distorted facts won't matter to you. But If facts about my country is distorted, It will matter to me. 1971 is not merely a year for me- for us- it is golden past, a time etched into our conscience as the symbol of love, protest and passion. It matters to me when the glitzy western publishers go all ooh-aah about a novel that is so poorly wirtten and more importantly one which deals with an event like the 1971 war of independence with such commercialized yet amaturish manner.

You will not understand it... and it doesnt matterto me.

You can go to hell, because you don't matter at all.

To Celebrate You, My Love

Fear not, my love
I will make such arrangements that the army
Will march past us with roses on their shoulders
And salute you
Only you, sweetheart.

Fear not, My love
I will make such planning that
Crossing the wilderness, breaking all the wire-fences
And loaded with all the memories of the warfronts
The armed cars will come to play sonata
Only at your door steps, my sweetheart.

Don’t panic, my love.
I will play such tricks that
The B-52s and the MIG-21s will only groan overhead.
I will make them pour chocolates, toffees and candies
Like paratroopers into your backyard, my sweetheart.

Don’t worry, don’t worry
I will maneuver things in such a way that
A poet will give command
And all the fleets in the Bay of Bengal
And all the voters in the next general election
Will unanimously support the lover, my sweetheart.

All possibilities of war, be sure my love, will evaporate
I will engineer the election and the singer
Will become the leader of the opposition.
A group of red-blue-golden fishes
Will look after the trenches in the borders
Smuggling anything but love will be prohibited. My sweetheart.

Don’t agonize now, my love
I will make it possible where
Devaluation of money will stop
And there will be a boom in the number of soulful poetry.
I will make the dagger fall from the assassin’s hands
Not for the fear of public hatred, but for the dread of public kissing.

Don’t be afraid, my love.
Like the sudden attack of spring on the wintry park
I will have all the revolutionaries’ line into the city
To play accordions, only for you.

Don’t be afraid, my love
I will ensure that you will get
At least four lakh taka as soon as you deposit
One rose or one Chandramallika in the State Bank.
Or four cardigans in exchange of a Jasmine.

Fear not, fear not, fear not, my love
I will ascertain that the navy, the air-force and the military
Will keep you safe day and night

And celebrate you… only you
My love.

[This is my translation of Shahid Kadri's "Tomake Ovibadon, Priyotoma"]