MY REVIEW OF KILLING THE WATER APPEARS IN THE HINDU

BOOK REVIEW

Name of the book: Killing the Water

Author: Mahmud Rahman

Publisher: Penguin Books India

Price: Rs. 250

ISBN: 978-0-143-06503-6

War, Migration and Displacement

From being a witness to a bloody war that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 to being a third world migrant in the United States, Mahmud Rahman has had first-hand experience of what is called “the effects of war, migration and displacement.” This is why he is successful in weaving credibly all those experiences together in the beautiful and illuminating set of stories for his debut collection.

Insightful Tales

‘Killing The Water’ starts off on an auspicious note. The opening story ‘City Shoes in the Village’, is set in the undivided India of the 1930s, and tells the story of a boy, Altaf, who returns to his impoverished village somewhere in the eastern part of Bengal to see his family after having lived in Calcutta for many years. Altaf is remorseful for shying away from his duties as an eldest son, and the author is able to portray with lucidity the guilt-stricken conscience and dilemma of the protagonist.

The best story in the book is the one titled ‘Kerosene’. Set against the backdrop of the 1971 war and told from a Bangladeshi nationalist’s point of view, it exposes the chilling horrors of war, and shows how even a society as non-violent and mild-mannered as Bangladesh (the erstwhile East Pakistan) can lose its sanity at a time of great socio-political upheaval. In the very first paragraph of this story, women and small children, all post-partition refugees from India, are burnt alive by a Bengali mob. This scene is a powerful reminder of the fact that says that the equations between two social groups can change drastically with change of time and circumstances.

Amid the post-partition euphoria of 1947, the Bengalis of East Pakistan had welcomed Urdu-speaking Muslim migrants from Bihar and UP as their co-religious brethren in the promised homeland for Muslims. But in the late sixties Bengali nationalism reared its head demanding a separate country for Bengalis, owing to wrong-headed political policies of West Pakistan. In those difficult times, non-Bengali Muslims were at the receiving end of the Bangla anger, as they were perceived to be culturally closer to West Pakistan than to Bengali Muslims, and hence were seen as a natural ally to the Western Pakistani establishment. In this changed scenario the binding factor was not the religion of Islam but Bengali language and culture.

Elsewhere in the book there are more stories that deserve to be mentioned here. ‘Orangeline’ is a subtle depiction of the scourge of racism in the United States. In ‘Blue Mondays at the Gearshift Lounge’, a former soldier from Bangladesh tries to build a life in America while grappling with some disturbing memories from his past. In yet another story, titled ‘Yuralda,’ a beautiful love story unfolds in a Dominican Laundromat in Rhode Island as a Sri Lankan man woos a Dominican girl, the eponymous protagonist. In all these stories Rahman succeeds in fleshing out the characters from disparate backgrounds.

Missing Sense of History

The collection suffers on two counts. First, the author is not able to evoke a sense of history in some of the stories. The reader fails to see what is different about the different time periods in which the stories are set. For example, the opening story, though well told, is unable to take back the reader to the India of the 1930s. In addition, a couple of stories like ‘Smoke Signals’ and ‘Man in the Middle’ do not come out well, and are nothing to be written home about.

Despite these shortcomings, there is freshness in Rahman’s voice; and his stories leave an impact.

This is a collection well worth a reader’s time.

To read the edited version of this piece in THE HINDU click here...

MY REVIEW OF AMITAVA KUMAR'S LATEST BOOK APPEARS IN THE DAILY STAR

Not Everyone is Innocent by Abdullah Khan

Terrorism, according to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, is the use of violence for political aims or to force a government to act, especially because of the fear it causes among people. What if a democratic government itself indulges in an act of violence against its own citizenry or people elsewhere as the means to some sort of imagined noble end? Is it still called Terrorism, or will we invent some fancy term like war against terror to cloak the immorality of the act?

Another question: how justified is a state to incite or instigate a citizen to commit a crime, when it suspects that person is likely to commit some crime in the future, and then punish him or her for a crime he or she never committed? Is it not in the penal code of every country that an abettor of crime should be treated on a par with the actual perpetuator of that crime? Then what is the status of the state?

TO READ MORE CLICK Here

The Words On the Margins

हाशिये पर लिखे शब्द

साफ़ सुथरे सच बोलने वाले शब्द

अब हाशिये पर लिखे जाते हैं I

और पंक्तियों के बीच स्थान पाते हैं

वो शब्द

जो कलुषित हैं

विकृत हैं, सड़े हुए विचारों से लैश,

हिंसा की जयजयकार करते हुए I

प्रतिशोध से भरे-पूरे

इतिहास के जंगलों में बहाने ढूंढते हुए,

एक नयी प्रतिशोध कथा लिखने के लिए,

मानव रक्त की स्याही तलाशते I

मर्यादा पुरुषोत्तम के शब्द नहीं पाते हैं,

बीच का स्थान, पन्नो पर,

बल्कि हाशिये पर लिखे जाते हैं ,

और उनका अर्थ आज के परिप्रेक्ष्य में

लगाया जाता है I

रावणी व्याकरण का प्रयोग करके I

Create your badge

The Orwellian City : A piece on George Orwell appears in The Daily Star

Years ago while helping my younger brother with his English assignment, I stumbled upon a story by Eric Arthur Blair, popularly known as George Orwell. After learning that the interesting fable was part of a larger piece of work, I read Animal Farm, and became a lifetime devotee of Orwell. I loved his allegorical depiction of Russia under Stalin, a perfect example of a great revolution going wrong. Surprisingly, he was born in Motihari, my home district town, approximately 170 Kms north of Patna, the capital of the Indian state of Bihar.

Motihari is a typical small north Indian town, relatively poor and devoid of basic infrastructure if compared to similar towns of more developed states like Punjab or Haryana but vibrant nonetheless. For a westerner or a visitor from metros like Delhi or Mumbai, it is a chaotic, mud-infested town, but for local people, including me, it is a city full of life and raw energy. In the evening just stroll along the Gandhi Chowk or travel towards Meena Bazar and you will find the road bursting to the seams with people. Shops are thronged. People would queue up outside the famous Jamuna Hotel to partake Tash-Chewra, the deep fried mutton and flattened rice. The town is also significant from historical and cultural points of view. Besides being Orwell's birthplace, it is also associated with Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji's first experiment of Satyagrah, a philosophy and practice of non-violent resistance, in India was at Motihari, and is known as Champaran Satyagrah. Interestingly, Orwell was also an admirer of Gandhi. The world's tallest Stupa of Buddhism is in Kesaria, 40 Kms from Motihari..............

To Read More...Please Click Here....

Amitava Kumar's new Book

His 'Husband of a Fanatic' remains to be one of my favourite books. This is the cover of his new book, out in India in a few weeks. The US edition, which is a bit different in format and also longer, will be published by Duke University Press in some months. That book will be titled The Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb.

GRAND MA'S VOICE

The morning wakes up,
Stretching and yawning

The sun sneaks in to my room,
Caressing my face with its uncomfortably warm hands,
Disturbing my sleep,
Dragging me out of slumber

The gentle breeze pushes the heavy linen curtains
To get in to the room,
And ask me, patting gingerly on my back,
To open my eyes

Faraway the loudspeakers sing Bhajans
The birds on the trees in the backyard start the morning ragas

In my house, a velvet like voice rises,
Melodious like best of the ragas
The holy words from the holy book
Wrapped in my Grandma’s voice

It fills the ambience with tranquillity,
A strange kind of serenity
Pervades my soul
I enjoy the moments of bliss,
Keeping my eyes closed,
Body motionless

The aroma of Arhar dal pervades my room
As the cooker whistles in the kitchen
Again and again
I return to my senses.

The sound of loudspeakers
The twittering of birds
The gusts of wind
The warmth and glow of Sun
Everything is there

But no voice rises from the Grand ma’s room.

A PIECE OF MY WRITING IN BROOKLYN RAIL

The Alchemy of Identities by Abdullah Khan

In 1996, a day after India’s fantastic win over Pakistan in the Cricket World Cup Quarterfinal, I was sitting in the offices of a leading English daily in Patna, the capital of the northern Indian state of Bihar. At that time, I used to be a freelance contributor to this national paper’s local edition. The paper’s features team and I were, of course, discussing cricket. Everybody was trying to guess which strategy the Indian team would adopt against a resurgent Sri Lankan team in the semi-finals. READ MORE
http://brooklynrail.org/2009/09/express/the-alchemy-of-identities

What do you think of my piece of writing in Brooklyn rail?
	Excellent
	Good
	Its ok
	Poor
pollcode.com free polls

An excerpt from my novel appears in the Denmark based Literary Magazine ZAPAROGUE

A TREE ACROSS THE ROAD

A Novel by Abdullah Khan

CHAPTER 1 : A LADY IN BLACK

The cooker whistled in the kitchen. The aroma of freshly cooked arhar dal pervaded Arif’s room.

“Wake up beta! Breakfast is ready.” His mother’s voice reached his ears. He turned over in bed to avoid the glare of the sun coming in through the half-open window. Drawing a golden, silky Bhagalpuri chadar from under the pillow, he covered himself with it and went back to sleep again.

Once again the cooker whistled. The sound of footsteps approaching his room woke him up suddenly.

“Must be Abba”, he thought, fearing his father’s wrath if he found him in bed at this hour. He got out of bed hurriedly holding the loosened upper end of his lungi. Standing there he arranged the lungi, wrapping it around his waist and then knotting it properly. He rubbed his eyes and looked towards the door.

It was his brother, Zakir. Relieved, he sat down on the edge of the bed, his eyes half open and blurry. His feet were tentively touching the floor, feeling its cool indifference.

He stayed that way for a while.

Then he stood up, stretched and yawned.

.

His left hand moved swiftly to cover his wide-open, yawning mouth.

“Toba Astagfar! Toba Astagfar! Toba Astagfar!” He said. A smile widened his lips as his Dadi’s warning flashed in his mind, “Cover your mouth with your left hand and say Toba Astagfar thrice whenever you yawn. Otherwise, the shaitan will piss into your mouth.”

During his childhood, he had believed that the shaitan, the devil, was ever ready to piss into every yawning mouth that did not say Toba Astagfar and was not covered properly. So, whenever he yawned he did both. If sometimes he missed doing so he would spit non-stop, and then gargle till he was convinced that he had got rid of the last traces of the shaitan’s urine. He would sometimes use a solution of soap for gargling. He had never seen the shaitan but had believed in its formidable presence.

Even now, at twenty-three, he could not help saying Toba Astagfar whenever he yawned.

He looked around for today’s newspaper.

On the table near the window opening to the east, there were books and his notebooks but no newspaper. He even looked at the tangerine bookrack but all he saw was fat volumes of chemistry texts, novels, back issues of India Today and Sportstar, and a few more books. His eyes rested on Train to Pakistan, a novel by Khushwant Singh that was to be returned to Sinha Library latest by tomorrow, otherwise he would have to pay late fine.

“Zakir, where is today’s newspaper?” He asked his brother standing on the balcony. Zakir was tall, almost six feet, fair complexioned with athletic body, broad forehead, sharp nose, and narrow eyes. There is a mole of black pepper size on his left cheek. He looked like a refined and taller version of film star Govinda. Arif had walked till the door opening to the balcony. Zakir stopped brushing his teeth, spat out the foam and turned to reply ‘ Its there, Bhaiyya!’, Zakir pointed his fingers towards a bedside table.

The Saturday special pull out, Career and Competition Times, accidentally slipped out of his hands.

TO READ MORE CLICK HERE..............