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  Sheikh Hasina was our only recourse. She had returned to Bangladesh in 1981 as the president of the Awami League. The people had been thoroughly displeased with Ziaur Rahman4 for letting traitors and mass murderers like Golam Azam,5 convicted of war crimes during the Liberation War, back into the country and paving the way towards the legitimization of communal politics. Besides, there were other infractions like adding ‘Bismillah’ to the constitution and undermining secular ideals, all of which ensured that the people were glad to see her back and many felt they could pin their hopes on her. However, Sheikh Hasina had been taken in by Ershad’s con and formed an alliance with the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami6 for the 1986 general elections. Khaleda Zia on the other hand had steadfastly resisted being duped by Ershad’s tricks. Although Sheikh Hasina too had figured out the workings of the sham vote soon enough and broken from the assembly, it had not been easy living down the mistakes resulting from a single imprudent decision.

  Regardless, progressive citizens were hopeful that if she were to come to power she would reinstate the ideas her father had instilled in the constitution. The immediate strategy, however, was simple: to support the anti-Ershad coalition front so that the ensuing social revolt could successfully depose the corrupt and autocratic government. Ershad had captured power seven years earlier and was only growing more adamant with each passing day about consolidating his failing influence. The people did not want him but that hardly bothered the despot—he had the guns and he had religion, and he was using them to suppress dissent and stay in power.

  I had never been a part of any political organization but at such a moment of crisis I too was willing to start nurturing the faint possibility of change. I too had begun to place my faith in these women who were promising us a better future against all odds.

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  A combined cultural coalition was created by merging the Mymensingh Sahitya Parisad, the Shokal Kabita Parisad and a number of other independent literary and cultural outfits. It comprised poets, writers, singers, dancers and theatre artists among many other performers, each and every person inspired by the spirit of the Liberation War, with shared concerns over social justice, political stability, democracy, a healthy social structure and the betterment of the people. Amir Hossain Ratan was elected leader of the coalition, a truly influential person and dedicated worker who had, with his own efforts and his own money, started a school called Mukul Niketan on Maharaja Road. It had not taken time for the school to graduate from a makeshift bamboo structure to a proper building. The number of attendees too was increasing with each passing year and Ratan had dedicated himself to the task of whipping the recruited asses into shape. His favourite word was ‘discipline’—besides formal education he was dedicated to instilling this discipline among his students.

  During the National Day parades on the Circuit House grounds one could not help but stare in wonder at the students from Mukul marching past. During the deadly floods in Mymensingh—when houses were swept away by the angry river, with cattle dying and the people’s last resources being washed away—Ratan and his students had been there helping in the rescue and rehabilitation efforts. On any given day Ratan usually had so much work he barely had time for other equally important things—for instance, taking a shower, eating, or even sleeping. However, bowing to our collective plea he agreed to assume the leadership of the coalition in addition to his numerous other responsibilities. Work was what made Ratan—Ratanda to everyone—the happiest. At a rather advanced age his relatives had coerced him into getting married, but even his beautiful young wife had been unable to tie him down at home. Perhaps I was not as audacious as him but a significant portion of my life too was spent outside domestic confines.

  There were many poets in the Shokal Kabita Parisad; but since most of them were not very good at recitation we took on new members, not poets exactly but those who could recite poetry beautifully. Our primary mission was to compile our fiery subversive poems into a compendium and teach everyone the rules and tropes of choral poetry. Poring over hundreds of books of poetry, we spent nights compiling the manuscripts; in the afternoons rehearsals were held in the room in front of Abakash with all the new recruits. As for me, my recitation skills were threatening to overshadow the poet in me. From Kazi Sabyasachi to the more recent Jayanta Chattopadhyay, there were numerous poets being discussed in the room. Not just writing poems, being able to recite poems properly is a form of art too. Consequently, the work we did was quite satisfying. Be it the solo recitals or the group performances, the poems of the Shokal Kabita Parisad managed to move our listeners and the group rapidly gained popularity in the city. Besides the Town Hall and the Public Hall, we were invited by a number of big and small cultural organizations for their events.

  In fact Shokal was a significant component even within the cultural coalition and at times people argued that without Shokal the alliance would not have had the same impact. At a time of political crisis we felt the need for poems which would inspire and incite, exactly what the poets of the Shokal Kabita Parisad were doing. Most of the poems were by R, Nirmalendu Goon, Shamsur Rahman and Mahadev Saha. Usually, poets from West Bengal were not known for their politically subversive poems and consequently there were not too many that were finally selected for the compilation. As the group became more famous, more people started trickling in and we had to tighten the selection procedure. We even organized a debate in the conference room of the Press Club on ‘Poetry for Social Change’, entirely executed by me but from behind the scenes. We asked HSS to be the chief guest and he promptly agreed to come down from Dhaka for the occasion. HSS was a great speaker and he had the audience in his thrall as expected. Events like ‘Poetry for Resistance’, ‘Poetry for Peace’, among others, were being organized and we were recalling old alliances formed on special days like 25 March7 or 16 December8 and holding silent protest marches. It had been a while since I had been in Mymensingh during the 21 February celebrations, and that particular morning would usually witness me waking up to the iconic ‘Amar bhaier rokte rangano ekushe February, ami ki bhulite pari’9 without fail. There was nothing more evocative and pure on earth than the sight of a mass of people dressed in white, barefoot and holding flowers in their palms, singing and marching to the Sahid Minar. This scene did not just wake me up, it infused my life with a new sense of vitality. I was proud of Rafiq–Salam–Barkat10 for their sacrifice and I was proud to call myself a Bengali. The morning would carry the strains of the mournful song on its wings, having such an effect on me that I would be reduced to tears. To this day the song never fails to make me cry.

  While marching down the streets of Mymensingh on 16 December, our palms cupping flowers to be offered at the Martyrs’ Memorial, we were singing songs of victory and independence. At the end of one song Jatin Sarkar11 suggested we sing ‘Joy Bangla’ (Long Live Bengal). No sooner had the song begun than a murmur of protest arose from one section of the crowd. As we turned to the dissenters we realized that the cause of the disagreement was that ‘Joy Bangla’ and ‘Ekti Mujiber theke lokkhyo Mujiber dhoni protidhoni’ (One Mujib echoes another thousand waiting in the wings) were Awami League songs. We were celebrating Victory Day together regardless of our individual political affiliations and so it was unseemly to some that we sang songs of one particular political party.

  Jatin Sarkar countered immediately, ‘Why should these be Awami League songs? These are songs from the Liberation War!’ I could not help but hang my head in shame. The songs which used to play over the radio from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra12 during the 1971 war, songs which inspired the muktijoddhas to continue their fight for independence, songs which stirred them to sacrifice their lives without hesitation in order to save the country from Pakistani forces, could there be anything more shameful than denying their legacy? These songs belonged to all of us, the people of Bangladesh. It was not difficult to figure out that there were certain conservative nationalist elements among us. Pigeonholing songs was not
a new strategy. During Ziaur Rahman’s stint in power Shahnaz Rehmatullah’s ‘Prothom Bangladesh amar shesh Bangladesh’ (First Bangladesh, my last Bangladesh) used to be played before every radio and television newscast, to the extent that it gradually took on the mantle of a nationalist song. Ershad had followed this example and adopted another song for similar purposes. Such a travesty! Songs were no longer autonomous; they had to toe the line of some political party or the other! At the Martyrs’ Memorial, Jatin Sarkar and I were asked to offer flowers. It was an immense privilege to have been asked to perform such a prestigious task alongside such a remarkable individual; I was acutely aware that I barely had any credentials to be associated with such an erudite man.

  Of the few people whose long speeches I ever wished to listen to Jatin Sarkar was one of the most significant. He had the innate ability to talk on any topic effortlessly for hours, and not simply for the sake of speaking. From the definition to an in-depth critique, he could explain a topic better than anyone else I knew. Previously a professor of Bangla at Nasirabad College, Sarkar was the author of many remarkable books on socialism. He was always clad in white, whether at home or elsewhere. It was easy to stereotype him as merely a dhoti-clad Hindu but there was not a more secular person than him in Bangladesh in my knowledge. An atheist through and through, a staunch Marxist besides that, he used to wear the dhoti because of his love for the garment.

  I had heard his long speeches in front of the public library on countless occasions during the birthday celebrations of Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Sukanta Bhattacharya. His favourite used to be Nazrul, though, and he could fluently converse in the local dialect of Netrakona. He was the product of a very simple life, almost to the point of having trouble making ends meet; I was well aware that despite being inspired by his ideals it would never be possible for me to renounce everything like he had. It is easier to pontificate about renouncing wealth and material possessions than actually practising it in life. Nevertheless, people still respected such ideals. People on the road used to move aside and let Sarkar pass and even seek his blessings. The only person I knew who had not spared Sarkar even a glance was Shakti Chattopadhyay. He had been visiting Dhaka and HSS had suggested a visit to Mymensingh; Shakti had readily agreed. Having called and informed Yasmin in advance they arrived at Mymensingh within a day. I had been in Dhaka and they picked me up along the way. Yasmin had gone on a cleaning and decorating spree; my older brother had always had a fixation for eminent poets and authors and had splurged on fish for the occasion—koi, tiger prawns, hilsa, rui—from the new local market.

  Mother had cooked up a feast and at lunch a grand spread was laid out on the huge table in the dining room. In the afternoon I had invited Jatin Sarkar and poet Pranab Roy to come and meet Shakti Chattopadhyay. After the initial round of introductions HSS at least uttered a ‘Hello, how are you?’ Shakti on the other hand did not spare even two words, carrying on a private conversation with HSS the entire time instead. Sarkar and Roy sat there for a while, had tea and biscuits, skimmed through some of the magazines on the table and then left, leaving my plans for an animated literary discussion in tatters. Shakti spent the entire time burping, perhaps a sign of a few extra drinks from the night before. To be fair, being unused to alcohol myself I could not be quite sure if a hangover could make someone burp so strangely! We fed him well and took him around Maharaja Shashikanta’s house and Satyajit Ray’s grandfather’s school before finally saying our goodbyes in the evening.

  It would have been impossible to host them if Dada, my eldest brother, had not come to my rescue; my brother had always been extremely stingy except when the situation involved poets or writers. Once when Humayun Ahmed was visiting Dhaka he had suddenly turned up at our house, despite not having my address. For some reason Ahmed had formed the impression from my writing that I had a red house by the Brahmaputra. Accordingly, he had arrived and knocked on the doors of some of the other houses in the vicinity asking about me. After several failed attempts he had asked his way to Abakash much to Dada’s stunned disbelief. After a long, incredulous silence at the door Dada had gathered his wits and launched into a flurry of questions—‘Please come inside and sit. What do you want to have for lunch? Do you like fish? My wife will cook. She cooks so well. If only I had known from before, I would have called over a few friends too.’ He had run to the market immediately to buy fresh fish. At lunch Humayun Ahmed had regaled us with stories—not stories about others but his own and we were left clutching our sides in laughter. Dada was firmly of the opinion that those who could tell good stories could write good stories too. I was never good at telling stories although I had already written a few by then, some of which I had sent off to the daily newspaper and they had been published on the ‘Women’s Page’. I was not really comfortable with the idea of a Women’s Page—it’s not as if newspapers had a separate Men’s Page too. Women were discriminated against just as children, the elderly or the differently abled were, with the simplest assumption being they were weak. Since I was not an established writer every story I sent to the literary section of the newspaper was tossed aside into an irrelevant heap.

  The meetings of the political coalition were on as usual and the city was racked time and again by the din of protest marches. Student unions in the universities too were playing a crucial role in the movement. Ershad’s police forces had allegedly murdered a number of innocent protestors by letting loose a truck on one such march organized by the students of University of Dhaka; the bloodstains there were still fresh.13 The cultural front too was tirelessly conducting protest meets. We were striving for the glimmer of hope we could spy across the stark darkness of the world around us, still unsure whether it was the light at the end of the tunnel or a mirage like everything else. Jatin Sarkar was hopeful about the future; he was convinced that should a democratic party come to power they would again consign Ershad’s divine carrot to the hereafter where it belonged. However, we could not be sure when such a party would come to power.

  Gradually the united front had shrunk to a size smaller than even the Jamaat. After Comrade Farhad passed away a huge funeral process as per Islamic rites was organized. If communists were unable to extricate themselves from religious rituals—even if it was for show—then how were the rest of the parties supposed to resist the lure! Religion is a devastating force. It does not matter if you are not a believer because if you try and eradicate it the consequences can be dangerous. Lack of education and awareness is at the root of the superstitions that sustain religion—these beliefs have no logical correspondence and neither do they concern themselves with free thought. If Islam was going to remain as the state religion nothing could stop the democratic country of Bangladesh from becoming an Islamic republic. Religion is like cancer. Once it takes root it systematically corrodes the entire state apparatus and there is no way to arrest its growth; nor can it be cured. With the investiture of a single state religion all other religious identities—Hindus, Christians and Buddhists—and even non-believers could be instantly reduced to second-class citizens.

  Consequently, if someone wished to become a true Muslim they only had to cite the Quran for legitimacy of their actions—that one must not be a friend to those of other lesser religions for fear of facing the wrath of Allah. In addition to this it would also legitimize violence on other religious beliefs—kill those who believe in other gods or in a single stroke maim non-believers entirely. Invariably, all Muslims would not be very happy with such developments and there would be other ways of making them toe the line. Religious coercion would be used to systematically subjugate Muslim women and new rules would be instituted to dehumanize women into nothing but a mass of flesh and blood.

  Like a golden virus born in blood,

  That marks the skin, the flesh with putrid wounds,

  I see a hopeless disease growing in the veins of my people.

  It grows and manifests

  As demonic bigots and merchants of providence,
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  Who scatter and infect like corrosive cancer.

  A bigot has no religion, only greed, and foul cunning,

  They break the world into a thousand fragments,

  And they break people, in the name of God—

  In His name they claim the right to kill.

  Blindness! Stupidity! Where is God!