NM’s audacity surprised me from time to time. He could casually ask renowned poets and authors to write for his journal. In fact, he went to visit Purnendu Patri for the same reason, something I would never have dared to attempt. I knew the words from Patri’s ‘Kothopokothon’ (Conversations) and ‘Amra Abohoman Dhongsho o Nirmaner’ (We Float on the Backs of Love and Death) by heart. When I met him all I could do was recite in my head what Subhankar somewhere must have said to his Nandini:
People, Nandini, only people,
In the raging storm
And the trembling shadows of the kerosene lamp,
The faces of a wretched people;
Their skins reek of diesel and harvest,
Their sweat of salt,
Their palms glisten with mica, and
Scars left by spades and engine wheels.
When I look at these people
I see the sky, the clouds, and the sunrise behind the peaks,
I see new trees growing,
And a bustling metropolis growing around it.
Since I was an admirer of Patri’s poems NM spoke to Soumitra and arranged for a meeting. He ought to have been busy with his own work but instead he was busy giving me these unexpected surprises. I noticed how concerned he was with my happiness, how considerate he was about what would please me or bring me joy. If he could have he would perhaps have plucked the moon from the sky for me! I had never experienced such dedication from any of my friends before. Let alone friends, even R, the one person I had loved to distraction, had hardly ever cared about what made me happy.
As I stared at Purnendu Patri in fascination—not speaking lest I say something silly—NM coolly asked the latter, that too in his thick Komilla dialect as if he and Patri were first cousins, to contribute a column to Khabarer Kagaj. It was as if he was asking a columnist from any random newspaper! NM would never pause to think before speaking to prominent poets and writers. To him asking them to write for his journal was as simple as demanding, ‘Hey, how’s the writing going! Finish it as soon as you can, tomorrow if possible.’ He never read anything nor did he consider any of them especially important. An ambitious man, his sole objective was to ensure that the columns written by renowned literary figures automatically increased the circulation and readership of his magazine and established him as a publisher of reckoning. So he did not wish to know if someone had time to write a column or if they at all wanted to write for a new journal published in Bangladesh. He would tell them about the remuneration without even stopping to consider if they were at all interested in such a nominal amount to begin with. Nevertheless, many people wrote for his journal, perhaps more out of their love for East Bengal than anything else.
~
One could not be sure how many things Soumitra was busy doing at any given moment. Whenever I saw him he was in the middle of something or the other. Besides reciting poetry he also had a government job as an officer in the information department. He spoke to an acquaintance of his, Kumud Manna, and made arrangements for us to go on a boat ride on the Ganga at night. I had always wanted to see the Ganga. Sitting in the boat with my legs dangling over the edge, the rustling water lapping at my feet, I could find no discernible difference between the Ganga and the Brahmaputra. While I was lost in my thoughts, NM had his back to the river, perhaps thinking about how he could overwhelm and astonish me further.
Suddenly, one morning, NM told me, ‘Get ready quickly. We have to go somewhere.’ Yet again he did not say where we were going. It was only later when we were aboard a train and I realized Soumitra too was coming with us that he revealed we were headed towards Santiniketan. At the very mention of the name a feeling of peace descended upon my heart and NM could easily see the joy flashing in my eyes. Every day he was blessing me with one surprise after another and I could not even begin to imagine when and how he had made all the arrangements for the trip. In a way I fulfilled my destiny with this visit to Santiniketan. The soft-spoken reticent poet Sankha Ghosh was there around the same time. As usual, I was struck dumb at the sight of a favourite poet and author and remained mute most of the time we were around him. Almost in a daze I spent my hours roaming around town, visiting Rabindranath Tagore’s house and the iconic mango and devil tree groves beneath which he used to hold classes.
Thanks to the efforts of the vice chancellor we were even allowed access to the parts of Santiniketan not open to visitors. NM wanted to take a photo of me sitting on Tagore’s chair but I did not possess the courage to pull off something like that; so I chose to sit on the floor instead to pose for the photograph. To me the entire visit was a dream and back in the guest house at night I could not help but cry when reminded of Tagore’s magnanimity and selflessness. It was like crying at the feet of a deity, only in this instance the deity was not imaginary and my tears were not meant to beg that he absolve me of my sins. Neither were they tears of joy or sorrow. The tears were a manifestation of my depth of feeling for the great poet; obviously, NM failed to grasp why I was suddenly hysterical. To reassure me he kept his hand on my shoulder and a few moments later I could feel the faint slide of the hand downwards. Suspicious that the hand was trying to find its way to the zipper of my pants, I quickly shrugged it off. Perhaps he had assumed that as a woman who was willing to disappear for days on end with an unknown man and not bat an eyelid about spending the night in a hotel I would be sexually liberated.
As for me, I had taken NM to be unlike other men. However, feeling his hand slide down my back, I could not help but relegate him to the long list of men who find it difficult to control themselves around women. Is there a man anywhere who can spend a night beside a woman without being overcome by desire? Perhaps not. Nevertheless, I liked the other aspects of NM’s character so much that I chose to overlook his dirty wayward hand. Neither did I let him realize that I had sensed his intentions. For his part, NM too pretended that he had casually slid his hand down my back without any ulterior motive.
~
After returning from Calcutta, NM asked me to contribute a column to his journal. Till then I had only written poems and short stories and never a column of any sort. I tried brushing him off, saying I did not know how to write a column, but NM simply waved aside my protests and asked me not to get flummoxed, advising me to write whatever I felt like. But that was easier said than done! How was I supposed to write a column when I had never written one before? NM was quite adamant. ‘You have to. HSS has told me that I must ask you to write one.’ I knew HSS was fond of me. In fact, after reading my poems he had spoken to his publisher Mujibur Rahman Khoka of Vidyaprakash about getting my book published. To that end he had even written a letter on my behalf to Khoka. I had met Khoka, only for the latter to inform me, ‘We don’t publish new poets. If you pay for it we can get it published.’ Angered, I had walked away, resolving that if I had to pay to get my book published then I was going to do it myself.
Khabarer Kagaj was a rather unique magazine. It had completely broken away from the template for the weekly journal as set by Bichitra and followed by later publications like Sandhani and Robbar. It was printed on newsprint, the cover was newsprint too and the costs were not too high, so everyone could afford it. It contained no poetry or stories, or film gossip. The only news it cared about was political news, and the rest consisted of columns written by renowned writers, intellectuals and political scientists on society, politics and literature. Writers who had never written columns before began doing so after associating with Khabarer Kagaj. To be able to gather so many popular writers in one publication was indeed unprecedented and Khabarer Kagaj had ushered in a revolution in the domain of Bengali journals.
Some invitations are truly beyond one’s wildest expectations; I had never thought such a radical journal would invite me to contribute. It was fortuitous that a well-regarded platform wished to print my opinions but fortune only ever favours the brave. Providence was at my door asking to be let in but I was unsure about taking the plunge. However, NM’s enthus
iasm and repeated reminders finally succeeded in forcing my hand. As I sat down to write, trying to rack my brains to come up with a theme and rubbing my palms on my arms in exasperation, my eyes strayed to the tiny mark on my right arm—a tiny round scar, an old memory of a burning cigarette touching my skin. In a flash my mind was back at the incident years ago, a stranger on the road stubbing a burning cigarette on my skin and laughing hysterically. As I was reminded of the scene, I felt as if I could taste the pain again. There was a blank sheet of paper in front of me and I was reliving an old wound—perhaps it was a combination of the two that made me write about that fateful day. I had left the film theatre and just got on to a rickshaw. As the rickshaw gradually picked up speed I suddenly felt a sharp blinding pain on my right arm—a boy of twelve or thirteen was pressing a half-smoked burning cigarette on my arm.
‘I wanted to scream, gather the people and demand justice. I did nothing. I was afraid that people would only gather around me to watch, to witness the spectacle of my pain, my screams, my rage and my tears. The scar remains on my skin to this day, a reminder of that violence that I carry. I also feel fortunate that no one has yet thrown acid at me, I have not been blinded and I am especially grateful that a group of men has not ambushed me on a road and raped me. I am grateful to be alive. What is my great crime for which I fear such horrific retribution? I am a woman. My education, my taste, my talents, they have failed to make me human; I have sadly remained a woman,’ I wrote with a flourish.
NM came to Mymensingh to pick up the article while I was still contemplating whether I should submit it for publication or not. I was also afraid they were going to read it and say it did not work for their journal. Eventually, I decided to hand it in with a caveat: ‘I don’t know what the rules for writing a column are. I have only written about a personal experience.’ I was convinced that a strong piece of writing composed of difficult words was never going to be my cup of tea. NM took the article away despite my suspicions that it was never going to be published. He, of course, was a master of shocks; the day the issue was to become available he came to Mymensingh with a copy. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw my name printed alongside so many renowned writers. After that I had to write a column every week. Fortunately, I no longer had to lose my mind over what to write. Letters began pouring into the office of Khabarer Kagaj after my column was published, with praise as well as reproach, the former mostly outweighing the latter. Some said it was fantastic, some said it was outrageous and some agreed as to how true it was. Some called me brave while some confessed to have cried after reading the column. Some pinched their noses in distaste—such things were personal, they said—while others labelled me a man-hater. Anyone who read it had something or the other to say.
Sometime later NM informed me that my article had inspired a veritable tide of conversations at newspaper offices, press clubs and literary circles. Readers too were ‘consuming’ it well. Truth be told, what made readers want to consume something, what made them decide against another, was not something I was aware of. My objective was not to ‘feed’ my readers either. Every column that I wrote made my eyes well up with tears, every sentence and every word was written from the heart. Pain that had been pent up inside for a long time found a vent in these columns and I wrote about things I had witnessed around me. AZ, a professor in a university and the author of numerous collections of essays, had recently published a volume of axioms, his macabre and obscene comments about women masquerading as a book. For AZ, one of the leading intellectuals of the country, every woman in the university was a prostitute. Obviously, such statements earned him praises galore from his admirers and he used to revel in such praise, his face brightening up with a smarmy smile. He may have been a formidable writer but I did not spare him in my column.
In fact, I even wrote about the unsavoury side of HSS I had witnessed and my views on it. I had a simple objective for doing so—all I wanted to do was show that many distinguished luminaries of the literary world were often no better than the worst patriarchal rascals, both in opinion and behaviour. I believed if I could reveal even a sliver of the world I moved around in through my own experiences, it could serve to foreground the normalized patriarchal oppression of women in society. My personal experiences then would cease to remain merely personal; they would take on a social dimension. I did not particularly notice it but a lot of readers pointed out that my language was particularly sharp and although many people had written many things about women till date, none had done so quite like me.
NM told me that whenever my columns were published his magazine sales shot up, an admission so strange that I could not believe him at first. Was it even possible? I soon learnt that it was indeed so. AZ’s column in Khabarer Kagaj was quite popular. Readers wrote to the magazine in response to his writings and these responses were published too. As my columns grew popular and people began to respond to my articles, the responses to my writings too started getting published. One day AZ complained to the editors of the magazine asking why more letters about my writings were being published than about his. The editors firmly but politely informed him that, should he wish to, he was welcome to visit their offices to check the piles of letters so he could be convinced that more people were writing in response to my column ‘Without, Within’ than in response to his. I later learnt that he had gone on shouting at them in rage. He was so famous already but he was still greedy for more fame. He was convinced that except him no other author in Bangladesh was worthy of any consideration, that he was the only worthwhile one, besides being the only poet worth any consideration. Ultimately, things came to such a state that he began writing letters to Khabarer Kagaj under an alias praising his own writings. The same person who was the bearer of his articles to the Khabarer Kagaj office used to bring the second set of letters too. It was a total travesty, a giant in his field reduced to such petty envy by someone as inconsequential as me!
Many other incredible things happened because of the columns in Khabarer Kagaj. Khoka of Vidyaprakash expressed his interest in publishing my work and began to hound me. Other journals were approaching me to write columns for them. Honouring NM’s special request I refrained from taking up any of these offers but Khoka did manage to convince me to publish with Vidyaprakash. Not one but two books: Nirbashito Bahire Ontore and Amar Kichu Jai Ashe Na (It Does Not Bother Me). Since the former had already been published by Shokal I initially decided against giving it to Khoka. But after submitting the second manuscript he insisted that I allow him to publish Nirbashito too. The two collections of poetry were sold out almost as soon as they were published, leading to Khoka immediately starting work on the next edition which sold out just as fast. Soon the craze became such that the publishers were left struggling to meet the demand. There was chatter that no one had seen collections of poetry sell so much in the Bengali publishing world in the recent past. In fact, HSS visited the Vidyaprakash stall at the book fair to express his ire that my books were more in demand than his. I could not believe that someone of his stature would be annoyed by my success. Such was his formidable reputation that we could scarcely be compared. Once, he had written to Vidyaprakash on my behalf to recommend the publication of my books, so he should have been happy that my book was doing well. Khoka informed me that HSS was not happy at all.
NM had expressed his desire to start a daily newspaper after the success of Khabarer Kagaj. As was his nature, if he planned to do something, he would see it through till the end. One fine day, true to his plans, he launched his daily newspaper, Ajker Kagaj (Today’s Paper). The small room on the first floor of Kazi Sahid Ahmad’s palatial house in Dhanmandi that used to be the office of Khabarer Kagaj began to grow in size till it was huge and had amassed an army of tables, chairs and journalists. Like its weekly counterpart, Ajker Kagaj soon became very popular among readers.
My two collections of poetry were unprecedented successes. The sales of Khabarer Kagaj were at an all-time high because of my column and thousan
ds of letters were pouring in on a daily basis. While all this was happening, things at Mymensingh were drastically different. Since NM used to visit me in Mymensingh quite frequently, Father had run into him on several occasions at Abakash. After a few such encounters Father began asking questions: ‘Who’s this boy? Why does she go around with him so often? Didn’t she shame us once already, didn’t she blacken our faces when she got married? What happened to that? She couldn’t live with him for two days. Now who’s this she has found? Everyone will call her a whore. I don’t want any strange men coming into my house.’ Mother simply replied, ‘This NM is apparently her friend.’
Father ground his teeth and snapped, ‘What is a friend? What is it? I don’t want to see her with any boys. If she has to go around with someone ask her to get married. If I see a random man in my house I’m going to kick both of them out.’ While I squirmed in shame and indignation, Mother took over from him. ‘Your father has asked you to get married. You are going around with these men despite being a single woman. What are people going to say? They are going to call you names.’ It became quite obvious that she was simply parroting a less harsh version of Father’s words. ‘Think about your life. If NM is a good boy, if you like him, then think about getting married. That has to happen eventually, isn’t it? Do you plan to be alone your entire life?’
When NM called I told him not to come to Mymensingh any more. A few days later I received a phone call from him; he told me to wait outside the black gate at six the next morning. He refused to reveal anything of what he was planning or why I had to wait so early in the morning. The next morning I went out to the main gate of Abakash and found NM waiting outside wishing to talk to me. The same thing happened the next day, and then again the next. Every morning he would take a train from Dhaka to Mymensingh and stand outside Abakash simply to catch a glimpse of me. Consequently, I had to get up at the crack of dawn and stealthily open the door while everyone else was sleeping, often with my toothbrush in hand in order to make it seem like I was out on a morning stroll. Since this was not an uncommon sight in the locality, the ruse worked. I would tiptoe my way out of the black gate and talk to NM for five–ten minutes as we walked—nothing especially significant, just general conversation—before he had to leave for Dhaka by the next train. He was being quite mad and I remember telling him, ‘Why are you pursuing this madness? There is no point travelling like this every day. Isn’t the journey tiring too?’ NM had simply denied it, saying that the journey did not cause him any trouble. Rather, he had claimed that he quite liked the sleepy quietness of dawn. It was not always possible for me to successfully slip out of Abakash. Some days I overslept or woke up to find Father up and about. On such days NM would wait for a long time before leaving disappointed. His behaviour made me pause to consider if he was in love with me, or was it that he had no other close friend except me? Even if it was the former, he never confessed his feelings to me.
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