However, some decisions excite people,
And take them into the dark alley of uncertainty.
Shakil Kalam, a renowned poet from Bangladesh, shares his poem
Shakil Kalam, born in Feni district in Chittagong Division of Bangladesh, received a Master’s Degree in Governance Studies from the University of Dhaka. Having also a diploma course on IAS and IFRS from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB), he is known as a Central Banker, Corporate Governance and Internal Audit Specialist, Researcher, Poet, Translator as well as Child-Litterateur. He was engaged as an Additional Director in the Central Bank of Bangladesh. His book “A Handbook of Corporate Governance in Bangladesh” is enlisted as a reference books and taught in several universities including the University of Dhaka. Shakil Kalam started writing in his boyhood. The author has personally tried to discuss various inconsistencies, inequalities, disillusion, hypocrisy, human suffering and the degradation of human moral and social values in his writings. But in recent times, new dimensions have come in his writings. In his scathing writings, politics, economics, cultural aggression, economic class discrimination, social values, scarcity of democratic values and culture, lack of democratic governance and deficiency of institutionalization of democracy are vigorously highlighted. He has been writing stories, poems, rhymes, essays, columns, and translated articles in different languages. His published book are more than thirty-nine and are the best sellers. His poems have been translated into 40 languages around the world. He has travelled to India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Dubai, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia to participate in seminars, symposiums and conferences. He received various awards, certificates and honors from different international literary groups. Recently he achieved “Order of Shakespeare Medal- 2021” and “Gujarat Sahitya Academy Award-2021” and the World Welfare Council’s prize “Global Prestigious Award-2021” on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti 2021. Moreover, he is the member Dhaka University Political Science and Master in Governance Studies Alumni Associations. He is the Executive Editor of the international bilingual literary magazine titled “Dipon” as well as member of the global English literary journal’s Advisory Board of “ENGLIT” and “Unending Quest. He is the International Ambassador for the Chamber of Writers and Artists in Spain.
Decision Making
Decision Making Human life is like a river flowing,
Originating from a glacier and flowing —
Down to the plain. Sometimes straight,
And sometimes changing its course.
But why this change? No one can say.
But in the change of direction of human life, decisions have to be made,
Then people have to suffer from dialectics.
They understand that they are going through difficult times,
Until they make a decision, there is fear.
But when they make a decision, the fear goes away.
However, some decisions excite people,
And take them into the dark alley of uncertainty.
The pain of a deadly weapon pierces the chest;
This pain has to be carried on this earth for a lifetime.
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কবিতা: সিদ্ধান্ত
কবিতা: সিদ্ধান্তমানুষের জীবনটা নদী প্রবাহের মতো বহমান,
কোন গ্লেসিয়ার থেকে উৎপন্ন হয়ে প্রবাহিত হয়ে —
সমতলে নেমে আসে। কখনো কখনো সোজাভাবে,
আবার কোথাও কোথাও বাঁক পরিবর্তন করে।
তবে কেনো এ পরিবর্তন? তা কেউ বলতে পারে না।
কিন্তু মানবজীবনের বাঁক পরিবর্তনে সিদ্ধান্ত নিতে হয়,
তখন মানুষকে দ্বান্দিকতায় ভুগতে হয়।
বুঝতে পারে, কঠিন সময় পার করছে,
সিদ্ধান্ত নেয়া পর্যন্ত ভয় থাকে।
কিন্তু সিদ্ধান্ত নিলে ভয় কেটে যায়।
তবে কোন সিদ্ধান্ত মানুষকে উত্তেজিত করে,
অনিশ্চয়তার অন্ধকার চোরাগলিতে নিয়ে যায়।
মারণাস্ত্রের আঘাতের যন্ত্রণায় বুক বিদীর্ণ হয়ে যায়;
পৃথিবীতে এ যন্ত্রণা আজীবন বয়ে বেড়াতে হয়।
Review on ‘Decision Making’, by renowned critic and vibrant Iraqi poet Karim Abdullah
Approaching Shakil Kalam’s Decision Making, I find myself compelled to engage with the poem not through the lens of sentiment or theme alone, but through the deeper lattice of its structure, where meaning is encoded in oppositions, shifts, and symbolic functions. This is a poem that gains its power not merely from what it says, but from the patterned architecture through which it says it.
The river, as the central metaphor, is more than an image of life’s course—it is a structural axis. The poem begins with the metaphor of life as a “river flowing,” originating from a glacier. Immediately, we are positioned at a structural binary: origin versus destination, stillness (glacier) versus motion (river). These contrasts form the poem’s initial code, upon which other dichotomies are layered—certainty versus uncertainty, fear versus resolve, suffering versus clarity.
From a structuralist perspective, the shifts in the river’s course mirror the binary function of human decisions: linearity (straight flow) versus deviation (change of course). Kalam constructs this deviation as the locus of human struggle, the site where dialectics emerge. The reference to “dialectics” is not incidental; it evokes the philosophical tension between thesis and antithesis, suggesting that decision-making is not a matter of choice alone but a synthesis of oppositional forces—social, emotional, existential.
The stanzaic rhythm itself is free-flowing, reflecting the very structure it thematizes. There is no strict rhyme scheme or metrical discipline; rather, the structure reflects a mimetic function—its form echoes the river’s fluid unpredictability. Structure and subject mirror each other.
A particularly telling structural moment occurs with the line:
“But when they make a decision, the fear goes away.”
Here, a pivot occurs—not just in meaning, but in the semiotic weight of the narrative. Fear is coded as the dominant signifier in the pre-decision state; decision becomes the transformative sign that reorders the emotional system of the poem. However, this relief is not final. The subsequent lines reintroduce uncertainty and pain, suggesting that structural binaries never fully resolve but rather shift into new configurations: from fear to excitement, from excitement to darkness, from decision to burden.
Kalam’s final metaphor—“The pain of a deadly weapon pierces the chest”—invokes a brutal, corporeal sign, disrupting the poem’s otherwise elemental and fluid imagery. Structurally, this rupture serves as a disjunctive signifier, pointing to the inescapable consequences embedded in human agency. This is not a poetic flourish, but a shift in symbolic register—from water to blood, from motion to wound.
The poem, then, can be seen as a semiotic structure in motion, tracing the shifting paradigms of human consciousness as it navigates decision, consequence, and the weight of choice. Under a structuralist lens, Decision Making is not merely about individual moments of crisis—it is a model of human temporality and the coded systems by which we construct meaning from experience.
In writing this, I am reminded that structure is not the enemy of feeling; rather, it is the skeleton upon which meaning takes form. Shakil Kalam’s work exemplifies this beautifully, offering a poem that is at once deeply personal and structurally rich, a text where flow is form, and form is fate unspoken regions of the soul.
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