Talking with Razia Khan:
"Those who write well, do it instinctively."
Razia Khan is a Bangladeshi poet, novelist, critic essayist and playwright who has been writing since the 1950s. She was a professor of English at Dhaka University, and generations of English literature students--some of whom went on to be teachers in the same department--have passed through her classes. Razia Khan showed promise at an early age, when she won the PEN Playwriting competition in 1956. Subsequently she won the Bangla Academy Award in 1975 and the Ekushey Padak in 1997. Razia Khan is widely known to readers as a poet and novelist in Bengali. Her notable works are Bot-tolar Uponyas (1959) Anucalpa (1959), Proticitra (1975) Citra-kabya (1980), He Mahajiban (1983), Draupadi (1992), Padatik (1996). She has written four volumes of Bengali poetry, as well as two English-language volumes, titled 'Argus Under Anesthesia' (1976), and 'Cruel April' (1977). While she has written poems in the original English, her English-language novels/works are translations, primarily by herself. Her English poems are highly allusive, in which an empathy for rural Bengal is discernable. Here she exchanged a few thoughts with The Daily Star's staff member Ahmede Hussain. Ahmede Hussain (AH): You have started writing at an early age; what prompted you to write? Razia Khan Amin (RKA): Inner image. AH: You have not published a novel or a collection of poems for a long while, why is it so? RKA: The first volume of my complete works came out in 1995 with six novels. I am not in touch with publishers. AH: As one of the forerunners of English writing in Bangladesh will you share your observations of the country's current English writing scene with us? RKA: Lita Samad, Rumana Siddique write well. I like the expository prose of Dr. Serajul Islam Chowdhury. Fakhrul Alam's English translations of Jibonananda are adroit. Freedom Fighter Habibul Alam's English book on the Liberation War have a racy, lucid style. AH: We know that once people of this land fought valiantly to uphold their right to language, but at the same time, because most of the citizens do not know how to read and write Bengali as a language, it is fighting what many believe to be a losing battle. You write in both English and Bengali; how do you see the role of English in Bangladesh? RKA: English will one day play a role similar to that in India. Once we overcome our complexes, we will give it its rightful place as an international language. Our battle with illiteracy is not lost, nor our effort to establish the value of the mother tongue. AH: Are you working on a new project now? RKA: I am shaping and giving last touches to the third segment of my trilogy. The first two have been published - Protichitro (Mirrored Image), Chitrokabbo (Portrait and Poetry). This one is called Uposhanghar (Epilogue). So far my publishers have not behaved well, cheating me right and left. I need an honest, judicious publisher. AH: Do you believe Bangladeshi English-language poetry still has a long way to go, and if so, what are the reasons behind it? RKA: Those who write well, do it instinctively. Those who write because they are sought after turn wooden. Their work is not poetry. Compared to Indo-Anglian poets our output is meagre because editors and publishers do not seek out the right people. The late S.N. Hashim wrote some outstanding English poems which have not come out. English dailies and magazines must focus on writers who have a flair for English and who write with imagination. Nadeem Rahman, a good poet, should be seen in magazines. I wrote a meticulous critique on his achievements which came out in The Daily Star, years ago. But when he politicizes his work it turns wooden. Many established Bengali poets, with the exception of Shamsur Rahman and Al Mahmud, have also lost their lustre. Spontaneity, feeling for poetry and its rhythm are important. The music in poetry has to be heard and then transmitted into words. Ahmede Hussain's novella Blues for Allah was published in Colloquy, the Monash University literary journal.
Beautiful Trivandrum It is not even A year since I was Among your fiery flowers; Call them Gulmohars Flame-of-the-Forest, Or what you will. Day and night My dalliance With their falling petals Was laughed at By the more wise Who with grim faces Around the conference table sat While I played And gathered The blushing buds Of the Cadena-de-amora Truly known in distant Spain As chains of love, With these I wreathed my hair. The graceful, tapering leaves Of the lemon-scented ivory oleander I wore around my arm And thus beautiful Trivandrum Hidden in the deep South, Like myself, from the world's eyes Crowned me queen. Draupadi
Originally, this novel was written in Bengali, and the English translation was done by the author herself. The novel's principal characters are students at Dhaka University, two men and a woman, and the novel covers the time period from '50s East Pakistan to December 1971, with the locales shifting to Calcutta and London during 1971. Though the book offers glimpses of a Dhaka now irretrievably lost--small, uncrowded, and gracious-- the not-quite-lucid translation makes the novel's action seem jerky and episodic at times.
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