Review of books published by
Anisul Hoque and Dr Mohit Kamal
I seem to have got entangled in a mess of an assignment that forces me to express some unpleasant views, besides the pleasant ones, about some of the leading contemporary popular Bangladeshi writers. But a task is a task under the ongoing countrywide regimentation and I see no way out but carrying it out.
According to booksellers’ opinions, besides Humayun Ahmed and Mohammad Jafar Iqbal, one each of whose books I have already reviewed, in this year’s February book fest at Bangla Academy journalist-writer Anisul Hoque’s titles were on the top bestselling list and so were a couple by Mohit Kamal, a psychiatrist. Six titles by Anisul Hoque and two by Mohit Kamal hit this year’s Boi Mela. I choose Anisul’s novel Alo-Aondhakarey Jai and Mohit’s short story collection Chandmukh for this review.
1. Alo-Aondhakarey Jai
A novel by Anisul Hoque
Somoy Prakashan
200 pages, Price Tk 200
ISBN 984-458-573-2
The story revolves around Abul Kalam Azad, in short Azad, who loses his eyesight at the age of 10 initially thought by his kin and neighbours to a severe bout of typhoid and subsequent maltreatment by a quack kabiraj. He is the only brother of four sisters, two of whom are also blind, or, in more genteel term, visually impaired, like him. But, eye specialist doctors later said the visual impairment of the siblings had more to do with a genetic cause resulting from inbreeding as their parents were first cousins than to typhoid.
After living many long days in a black world with a hopeless future, Azad’s mother’s determination to put his son on a strong footing in life sees his enrolment in a Salvation Army school in Dhaka for the visually impaired, where he has to start his primary schooling all over again using the brail system. After completing primary schooling there, he takes admission in a secondary school in Brahmanbaria, which is one of the few in the country that admits visually impaired students. During his stay here, he encounters his first traumatic obstacle from the education system which bars him for sitting the junior scholarship exams as the district education office has no arrangement for that yet, although the boy is the first boy in his class. Azad has to suffer many more such disappointments in his life. After finishing the secondary schooling, his ambition and determination see him enrolled in the Notre Dame College in Dhaka.
As the novel unfolds it incorporates a number of burning issues of this time, particularly the neglect of the society to help and facilitate the physically and mentally handicapped to grow up as other children and lead a normal social life, and the closure of Adamjee Jute Mills that sees thousands of families including Azad’s losing their sources of livelihood. Azad’s father was a butcher and used to run a thriving meat-supplying business in the factory complex, where he also bought a house for his family to live. The sudden closure of the mills turns the family, like many others, suddenly penniless, homeless and uprooted from the locality where their children were born and spent their golden childhoods. The catastrophe turns Azad’s father half-mad.
After graduating from the Notre Dame College, Azad first takes admission at social science department of Dhaka University and then on his family’s insistence migrates to English department. Adamjee Jute Mills and his father’s business are still in operation and their family is quiet well-off. It was during his first years at the university, in 2002, the government closes down the mills, in writer’s words, according to prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank, and Azad along with his family faces a bleak financial future.
The novel also derails grossly at this point. From a practical track it has ran on so far, it gradually takes to a populist romantic road. It starts depicting Azad as a very handsome young man who attracts girls of his age, younger and even older ones like a burning lamp does to moths.
A few farcical love affairs follows, in which the girls run after a reluctant Azad who sometimes even tries to hide from them, like crazy heroines trying to grab the super hero, the James Bond 007. The story finally ends with an episode where Azad at last settles down with a singer, who is visually impaired, too, though a little less.
Well, all is well that ends well. After the sentimental charades, at last Anisul Hoque managed to make an ending that encourages the deprived people like Azad and his fiancé to continue the fight to establish their due rights. So, if you can ignore the populist romancing that may be endearing to the naïve, reading the novel will be worthwhile for the socio-economic issues it puts forward.
2. Chandmukh
A collection of short stories by Dr. Mohit Kamal
Bidya Prakash
264 pages, Price Tk 300
ISBN 984-422-221-5
Apart from Mayaboti, which the writer terms a ‘psychological’ novel, a new genre invented by him, this February Mohit Kamal also came up with Chandmukh, a collection of 25 short stories. Frankly, claiming a number of these stories as literature is simply audacious and an insult to the tradition of two centuries of Bangla fiction. Even the lowest-grade story writers of the 19th and 20th century would surely turn over in their earthen or ashen graves from shame and frustration if they knew that these sort of crap is nowadays being considered as popular Bangla literature. It also amazes one how this doctor-turned-infantile story writer pompously calls his fiction psychological as he can hardly go beyond describing the glamour of his heroines or the handsomeness of his heroes, narrating some stupid events including calf loves culminating in sex, luckily without any graphic description, some pain stricken behaviour of jilted or cheated lovers, and cheating on spouses. Nowhere has he demonstrated the quality of psychology he boasts of — of going deep into the minds of the characters and analysing them. Either he is naïve or not initiated into true literature.
Except only a few numbers, the lone theme of Mohit’s stories is love and sexual affairs and resulting complications. And this theme also he illustrates mainly using unmarried young boys and girls ranging from teenagers to those in their twenties. There, though, are a few stories about young married couples. He also made attempts to write two abortions of science fictions. I am also at a loss how to categorise the 21st number in the collection named Chokhachokhi, or meeting of eyes. I have never encountered any dumber piece of prose in print in my life.
The story Chandmukh, after which the book is named after, does not deserve the distinction, too. One is forced to presume the name probably was chosen as it seemed more attractive than the rest of the story titles, because, to be truthful there are at least four pieces in the book that somehow achieved some sort of literary quality. Those are 1.) Chaarpash Jaukhan Bhangte Thakey (when everything around starts to collapse), which depicts an old school teacher in an island who finds like the water around that has been devouring his households, the land he have passed his life on, his son’s marriage to a upper class girl of another district is also drifting apart, drowning his ties with his inheritors; 2.) Bish, or poison, in which a schoolgirl suspects, gets verification from a doctor, and begins a journey to revenge the murder of his father by her mother and her secret sex partner, who bleed the man to death by shredding his thighs and legs by blades in the name of curing him of an imaginary snakebite; 3.) Kandale Tumi Morey (you have made me weep), which is a three-part story almost of a size of a novelette, too long a story to give its summary here; and 4.) Jyotsna Ratey Baariechhi Haat (I am offering you my hand in this moonlit night), in which a young girl accidentally finds out the licentiousness of his rich businessman father. To avenge the wrong done by her father to her innocent loving mother, she whimsically marries a poor cousin coming from their ancestral village home to the city in search of a job on the condition that he must never touch her body. But, the young man falls in love with her and feels carnal desire for her too, to satisfy which he makes the girl drink a glass of sedative-mixed milk and then consummates the marriage. The girl finds out the scheme in the morning and abandons the husband, whom she has been considering as nothing more than a tool to hit back at her father. But she has conceived and the child in her womb changes her attitude towards life, about the natural bond between man and woman, and one day she returns to her husband to share the life with him.
Other than those four stories and another named Lottery, as I have already said, the remaining ones have love and sex affairs and their psycho-social snags as their lone subject. Yet, why did the book became so popular, especially among the young readers? The answer to that perhaps lies in the fact that the traditional values, norms and patterns of relationships between men and women in our society have been changing gradually but radically for quite some time and perhaps Bangladeshi writers have not have explored adequately the woes, pains, sufferings, traumas, social and inter and intra-personal complications this new situation has been, and is, generating. And that is why, despite its literary inferiority, the case stories told in a short-story form succeeded to attract so many readers as to make it one of the bestsellers of this Ekushey Boi Mela.
According to booksellers’ opinions, besides Humayun Ahmed and Mohammad Jafar Iqbal, one each of whose books I have already reviewed, in this year’s February book fest at Bangla Academy journalist-writer Anisul Hoque’s titles were on the top bestselling list and so were a couple by Mohit Kamal, a psychiatrist. Six titles by Anisul Hoque and two by Mohit Kamal hit this year’s Boi Mela. I choose Anisul’s novel Alo-Aondhakarey Jai and Mohit’s short story collection Chandmukh for this review.
1. Alo-Aondhakarey Jai
A novel by Anisul Hoque
Somoy Prakashan
200 pages, Price Tk 200
ISBN 984-458-573-2
The story revolves around Abul Kalam Azad, in short Azad, who loses his eyesight at the age of 10 initially thought by his kin and neighbours to a severe bout of typhoid and subsequent maltreatment by a quack kabiraj. He is the only brother of four sisters, two of whom are also blind, or, in more genteel term, visually impaired, like him. But, eye specialist doctors later said the visual impairment of the siblings had more to do with a genetic cause resulting from inbreeding as their parents were first cousins than to typhoid.
After living many long days in a black world with a hopeless future, Azad’s mother’s determination to put his son on a strong footing in life sees his enrolment in a Salvation Army school in Dhaka for the visually impaired, where he has to start his primary schooling all over again using the brail system. After completing primary schooling there, he takes admission in a secondary school in Brahmanbaria, which is one of the few in the country that admits visually impaired students. During his stay here, he encounters his first traumatic obstacle from the education system which bars him for sitting the junior scholarship exams as the district education office has no arrangement for that yet, although the boy is the first boy in his class. Azad has to suffer many more such disappointments in his life. After finishing the secondary schooling, his ambition and determination see him enrolled in the Notre Dame College in Dhaka.
As the novel unfolds it incorporates a number of burning issues of this time, particularly the neglect of the society to help and facilitate the physically and mentally handicapped to grow up as other children and lead a normal social life, and the closure of Adamjee Jute Mills that sees thousands of families including Azad’s losing their sources of livelihood. Azad’s father was a butcher and used to run a thriving meat-supplying business in the factory complex, where he also bought a house for his family to live. The sudden closure of the mills turns the family, like many others, suddenly penniless, homeless and uprooted from the locality where their children were born and spent their golden childhoods. The catastrophe turns Azad’s father half-mad.
After graduating from the Notre Dame College, Azad first takes admission at social science department of Dhaka University and then on his family’s insistence migrates to English department. Adamjee Jute Mills and his father’s business are still in operation and their family is quiet well-off. It was during his first years at the university, in 2002, the government closes down the mills, in writer’s words, according to prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank, and Azad along with his family faces a bleak financial future.
The novel also derails grossly at this point. From a practical track it has ran on so far, it gradually takes to a populist romantic road. It starts depicting Azad as a very handsome young man who attracts girls of his age, younger and even older ones like a burning lamp does to moths.
A few farcical love affairs follows, in which the girls run after a reluctant Azad who sometimes even tries to hide from them, like crazy heroines trying to grab the super hero, the James Bond 007. The story finally ends with an episode where Azad at last settles down with a singer, who is visually impaired, too, though a little less.
Well, all is well that ends well. After the sentimental charades, at last Anisul Hoque managed to make an ending that encourages the deprived people like Azad and his fiancé to continue the fight to establish their due rights. So, if you can ignore the populist romancing that may be endearing to the naïve, reading the novel will be worthwhile for the socio-economic issues it puts forward.
2. Chandmukh
A collection of short stories by Dr. Mohit Kamal
Bidya Prakash
264 pages, Price Tk 300
ISBN 984-422-221-5
Apart from Mayaboti, which the writer terms a ‘psychological’ novel, a new genre invented by him, this February Mohit Kamal also came up with Chandmukh, a collection of 25 short stories. Frankly, claiming a number of these stories as literature is simply audacious and an insult to the tradition of two centuries of Bangla fiction. Even the lowest-grade story writers of the 19th and 20th century would surely turn over in their earthen or ashen graves from shame and frustration if they knew that these sort of crap is nowadays being considered as popular Bangla literature. It also amazes one how this doctor-turned-infantile story writer pompously calls his fiction psychological as he can hardly go beyond describing the glamour of his heroines or the handsomeness of his heroes, narrating some stupid events including calf loves culminating in sex, luckily without any graphic description, some pain stricken behaviour of jilted or cheated lovers, and cheating on spouses. Nowhere has he demonstrated the quality of psychology he boasts of — of going deep into the minds of the characters and analysing them. Either he is naïve or not initiated into true literature.
Except only a few numbers, the lone theme of Mohit’s stories is love and sexual affairs and resulting complications. And this theme also he illustrates mainly using unmarried young boys and girls ranging from teenagers to those in their twenties. There, though, are a few stories about young married couples. He also made attempts to write two abortions of science fictions. I am also at a loss how to categorise the 21st number in the collection named Chokhachokhi, or meeting of eyes. I have never encountered any dumber piece of prose in print in my life.
The story Chandmukh, after which the book is named after, does not deserve the distinction, too. One is forced to presume the name probably was chosen as it seemed more attractive than the rest of the story titles, because, to be truthful there are at least four pieces in the book that somehow achieved some sort of literary quality. Those are 1.) Chaarpash Jaukhan Bhangte Thakey (when everything around starts to collapse), which depicts an old school teacher in an island who finds like the water around that has been devouring his households, the land he have passed his life on, his son’s marriage to a upper class girl of another district is also drifting apart, drowning his ties with his inheritors; 2.) Bish, or poison, in which a schoolgirl suspects, gets verification from a doctor, and begins a journey to revenge the murder of his father by her mother and her secret sex partner, who bleed the man to death by shredding his thighs and legs by blades in the name of curing him of an imaginary snakebite; 3.) Kandale Tumi Morey (you have made me weep), which is a three-part story almost of a size of a novelette, too long a story to give its summary here; and 4.) Jyotsna Ratey Baariechhi Haat (I am offering you my hand in this moonlit night), in which a young girl accidentally finds out the licentiousness of his rich businessman father. To avenge the wrong done by her father to her innocent loving mother, she whimsically marries a poor cousin coming from their ancestral village home to the city in search of a job on the condition that he must never touch her body. But, the young man falls in love with her and feels carnal desire for her too, to satisfy which he makes the girl drink a glass of sedative-mixed milk and then consummates the marriage. The girl finds out the scheme in the morning and abandons the husband, whom she has been considering as nothing more than a tool to hit back at her father. But she has conceived and the child in her womb changes her attitude towards life, about the natural bond between man and woman, and one day she returns to her husband to share the life with him.
Other than those four stories and another named Lottery, as I have already said, the remaining ones have love and sex affairs and their psycho-social snags as their lone subject. Yet, why did the book became so popular, especially among the young readers? The answer to that perhaps lies in the fact that the traditional values, norms and patterns of relationships between men and women in our society have been changing gradually but radically for quite some time and perhaps Bangladeshi writers have not have explored adequately the woes, pains, sufferings, traumas, social and inter and intra-personal complications this new situation has been, and is, generating. And that is why, despite its literary inferiority, the case stories told in a short-story form succeeded to attract so many readers as to make it one of the bestsellers of this Ekushey Boi Mela.
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