Shakil Kalam | Bangladesh

Since the emergence of the Bengali language, literature has predominantly been expressed through poetry. Scholars note that until the 18th century, Bengali prose was largely confined to letters and official documents. However, the early 19th century marked a significant shift with the rise of prose literature, particularly after the establishment of Fort William College in Kolkata. Poetry remains the foundational form of Bengali literature, having undergone numerous transformations over time. Today, three major literary trends dominate Bengali literature, alongside a relatively weaker spiritualist movement. Based on these evolving phases, poets are often categorized into different schools—some identify as modern or postmodern, while others align with surrealism or spiritualism.

Modern Poetry

Modern poets highlight various aspects of daily life through distinctive wordplay and unconventional structures. Their works often reflect contemporary events, societal demands, and the spirit of the times, resonating deeply with human consciousness. Rejecting traditional poetic forms, modernist poets favor free verse, experimenting with style, abstraction, and vivid imagery. They explore themes such as reality versus fiction, social decay, detachment from life, and the degradation of values. Additionally, modern poetry frequently incorporates allusions to mythology, history, and cultural works, enriching its depth and meaning.

Postmodern Poetry

Postmodern poetry emerged in the mid-twentieth century as a radical departure from conventional forms. Characterized by playfulness, fragmentation, and a rejection of unified narratives, it challenges the notion of a single, coherent reality. This style often mirrors the social chaos following wars, revolutions, and political movements, capturing the revolutionary fervor of those seeking societal change. The youth, in particular, play a crucial role in dismantling old structures and advocating for new ones. Postmodern poetry embraces contemporary consciousness, raw emotion, vivid imagery, personal perspectives, and experimental forms—including graffiti, visual art, and unconventional metaphors—to reflect the fragmented nature of modern existence.

Surrealism

Surrealism is a form of artistic expression that diverges from reality, bearing no resemblance to authentic, rational experience. It is rooted in irrational thought, bizarre narratives, and subconscious impulses—elements that exist beyond conventional logic and reality. Surrealist poets draw inspiration from the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, particularly his exploration of the subconscious mind.

Freud’s assertion that “Thoughts originate more from the subconscious than the conscious mind” heavily influences surrealist ideology. These poets believe that human desires, fears, and unresolved thoughts often manifest in the subconscious, shaping creativity when the conscious mind is relaxed. Surrealism seeks to bridge the gap between conscious and subconscious thought, using symbolic imagery to dissolve the boundaries between reality and the inner psyche. Its ultimate goal is to transcend the limitations of rational thought, merging the physical and mental realms into a unified artistic expression.

Spirituality

Spirituality represents the depth and evolution of religious consciousness or faith emerging from the soul. It encompasses belief in a divine entity, religious principles, or metaphysical existence, often without tangible evidence. These convictions are frequently reinforced through personal experience, metaphor, or tradition, guiding followers toward spiritual fulfillment. In Bengali literature as well as in global literary and cultural traditions spiritual themes have historically permeated poetry, folklore, and prose. However, in contemporary works, this influence has significantly diminished, with fewer modern rhymes, stories, and articles reflecting deep spiritual or religious undertones.

Read: Akhteruzzaman Elias’ thought on novel writing in Bengali literature

Conclusion

Countless poets, writers, and the essayists worldwide claim their work has reached the postmodern stage. Many argue that we must abandon old ideas and move forward—especially in an era defined by scientific progress and the rapid evolution of social media. Stagnation is not an option; we must advance. But the crucial question remains: In which direction? There is no clear answer. We are but a few individuals, perhaps naive, who feel compelled to challenge these issues. Yet, driven by conscience, we dare to ask: Do those who proudly call themselves postmodern creators truly consider how deeply their works engage with urgent global concerns? Issues like peace, humanity, human rights, gender inequality, unjust wars, oppression, exploitation, wealth disparity, the proliferation of deadly weapons, combating  corruption, financial inequality between elites and marginalized groups, rape, the rule of law, good governance, democratic deficits, the lack of democratic culture, rational distribution of national wealth, fundamentalism, state control under religious pretexts, the marginalization of minorities, climate change, destruction of biodiversity, environmental degradation—are these meaningfully reflected in their writings?  Are these issues irrelevant, or are they being ignored? Isn’t it time for poets and writers worldwide to confront these questions through their work? The answer is clear: Yes. The time has come for writers to engage with these pressing issues.

Read: Geopolitical Importance of Bangladesh

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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.

The post Transformation Periods in Bengali Literature first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Philip Hensher

The first time I went to India, nearly 30 years ago, I was sent as a young novelist by the British Council. Unusually, my first encounter with the country was Kolkata, a city I loved instantly. At the first event, after I had finished reading, an audience member gently asked if I liked Indian novels. I thought I was prepared, and mentioned R.K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai and Vikram Seth. The questioner smiled. ‘Those are all writers in English,’ he said. ‘What about writers in Indian languages?’ I was stumped.

Perhaps many people of generous reading habits have the same block without knowing it. The liveliness of English-language writers of Asian ethnicity is widely appreciated, even if the author has never lived in one of these countries and hardly speaks any language other than English. But lying just out of reach, often unsuspected, are some glorious literary cultures. The most magnificent and extensive, I suspect, is Bengali, and this anthology, edited by Arunava Sinha, is a splendid guide to unmapped lands.

Included is a story by Buddhadeva Bose, which sums up the accepted character of the Bengali nation. A schoolteacher makes a mistake in construing a sentence in Bengali. He puzzles over a verb; he tries to discover the etymology, and, failing, decides to work on a dictionary of the language. His family grows up, and the demands of learning clash with the need to provide a dowry. Society is changing. At the end of Partition, the teacher’s wife is dead and his work lies in tattered boxes in a refugee camp. Still, the labor has been borne. The forces of the Bengali mind – family, debate, the violence of history – triangulate, make a sort of sense, and move on.

Read: A Fresh Translation Introduces Contemporary Readers to Tagore’s Gitanjali

Bengalis are renowned for their love of culture, discussion and argument, but that’s not the whole story. In 1971, the Pakistan army took it for granted that the Bengali poet-nationalists would not be as effective in a conflict as they were – and paid the price. One Bengali, the joke goes, equals a poet; two Bengalis a film society; three Bengalis a political party; four Bengalis two political parties.

To some degree, the stories here reflect that charming joke. Conversation is everywhere. In one of the best, by Purnendu Pattrea, an interchange between lovers – beautiful, tired, and tender – is recorded as if never heard before:

Why are you so late

Were the roads crowded?

I was a little late too

All roads have cracks

Why so many people on the streets

A funeral procession? Who’s died?

No one we know I hope

Jogo left just the other day…

Most western readers will probably have heard of only two authors here, Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray. Tagore is a hard nut to crack. He must be one of the most loved writers in history. The simplest Bengali household knows some of his poems. (I was amused recently when an English schoolteacher wrote about one of her pupils bursting into beautifully crafted verse. The work handed in was a very famous poem by Tagore about the rain, quite unrecognized by the teacher but evidently recited daily by the pupil’s parents.) In fact the poetry can often seem bland or abstract to western commentators, but the fiction is wild and strange and remote in mode.

Ray is better known as a great film-maker. His masterpiece, Pather Panchali, is based on a novel by Bhibutibhushan Bandhyopadhyay, who has a splendidly austere story in this collection. Ray’s short fiction is greatly loved – perhaps none more than his Sherlock Holmes pastiches for the children’s magazine Sandesh, about a detective called Felu-da. Those would be rather long for inclusion here, and an enchanting story narrated by a half-understanding child takes its place. My husband’s family’s recollection of the excitement when an issue of Sandesh sent Felu-da to England to investigate a crime remains infectious 50 years on.

There are also classic authors who deserve to be better known. Balai Chand Mukhophyay, or ‘Banaphool’, is mainly a writer of quizzical magazine miniatures. The superb example of his work here presents three dramatic alternatives to a situation of love and passion, before admitting that nothing much happened in the end. Jibanananda Das is the Bengali poet whose verbal intensity appeals most to western readers. The novels of his I’ve read are wonderfully closely observed and his story about bored, arguing couples is as gripping as a thriller.

But the great master is Sankar (or Mani Sankar Mukherjee). His early novels, a trilogy, follow an ordinary Indian through one setting after another. The first, The Great Unknown, describes Sankar’s own experience in the 1950s as a clerk to Noel Barwell, the last British barrister in Kolkata. They are stunning books, and I hope Penguin thinks of publishing them as modern classics. The story here is a masterpiece. A Hindu priest argues over his right to present rituals in institutions, his eyes on both profit and orthodox practice. His daughter dreams of film stardom. A girls’ school is unsure about the priest’s requirements: he wants soil from outside a whorehouse for a ritual. The daughter makes concessions to a film maker; the priest is discovered digging the soil in the house before his own house. It is simply devastating – an ironic masterpiece.

Among the best stories are those that engage with the larger political situation, which has always been at the forefront of Bengali engaged chatter. (An afternoon in the Indian Coffee House in Kolkata or a wander around that great university Jadavpur is an object lesson in impromptu debate.) Manik Bandhyopadhyay depicts the descent of a gangster into real deprivation. Sunil Gangopadhyay writes a beautifully playful parallel to Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. A pundit visiting an impoverished village asks fora cup of tea. The village takes him from one place to another, the tea repeatedly unobtainable, until finally they burst into a luxurious western hotel in town and are satisfied, amid terror and outrage.

This is not just commentary: events had a way of impacting on the practice of literature. In the final week of the Bangladesh war of independence, the retreating Pakistani army took the barbarous decision to murder Bengali intellectuals and writers, hoping to cripple the new nation’s intellectual life. Among those killed was Shahidullah Kaiser, the author of a beautiful novel, Sangshaptak. There are substantial writers from the contemporary scene, including Shaheen Akhtar (Bengali writing has always been strong in adventurous women writers). But who knows what has been lost to the later pages of this anthology?

The treatment of everyday life varies from densely precise accounts of specific situations, such as Gourkishore Ghosh’s tale of corrupt union officials, to playfully rule-bound fictional mechanisms: Humayun Ahmed’s story of a chess prodigy condemned to an inability to lose a match, or one of a man who turns everything to gold. This last must exist in some form in every literature in the world. Parashuram’s glorious version is utterly Bengali. It ventures into the economic details with energy; it relies on noisy chatter; and it has a gusto no reader could resist:

Paresh-babu had found a philosopher’s stone. When and where, how it got there, or whether there are more is none of your business. Be quiet and listen.

We are exceptionally lucky to have one of the best living translators at work bringing the Bengali classics into English. Sinha has produced another anthology, The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told, with an Indian publisher, but there is no overlap between the two volumes. He writes with exceptional elegance and wit, and is astonishingly productive. His previous translations include a glorious Banaphool selection, and an absorbingly capable version of Buddhadeva Bose’s 1949 domestic epic of a family with five daughters, Tithidore as When the Time is Right.

I hope Penguin capitalizes on the triumph of this superb anthology and commissions Sinha to translate as many of the Bengali classics as possible, starting with a reissue of Sankar’s irresistible trilogy. It ought to open many readers’ eyes to what the true variety of literature consists of.

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Philip Hensher is professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and the author of 11 novels including A Small Revolution in Germany.

Courtesy: Spectator, UK (Posted on May 11, 2024)

The post Exploring the glorious literary heritage of Bengal first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Suhina Biswasmajumdar

A writer from Kolkata, Bengal and a life-long devotee of Swami Vivekananda, Suhina is against any discrimination. Two significant life-forces propel her – ‘love’ and ‘writing’. Suhina’s book ‘Tumi’ (you) and Songs of Silence (A Journey to Love), are collections of her poetic thoughts.

Paradise Regains

Desperately I wish

 To die,

The moment I just make my mind to….

A snake smiles,

And whispers: “break”.

Those broken leaves murmur….the flowers agree…

My desire to break requests,

I dream a lucid dream…

Find myself in

A golden garden…

 The forgotten one!

The one…. the serpent

The order…. the monarchy

…

I wish to wish

Wish to feel

Feel to move

Move to get free

….

Free to speak

Speak for freedom

Freedom from fear

Fear to die

…..

The snake bites

Bites and barks

Barks to deny

Deny to die a coward’s death,

A coward’s death!

***

They Are Mine 

Yours men are calling

Asking for help

They need to be saved,

Need more food

Some threads, few stones for shelter,

No beads, no claps, nor any clumsy gesture….

My men are crazy

Their ego forbids though crying for help,

Hide their greed and pride while face their shadow,

Try to escape but …in vain

I’m walking through the dark

To reveal the truth

Truth of a firefly hardly expects one’s kindness

Let’s come n grow, grow like that mirage

Let’s focus on their target audience provides some courage,

Let’s keep some hope

Hope to survive….

It’s too from that yesterday’s page

Where no one had finally drawn any conclusion

No one sent ultimately….

No one seen any ray of hope….

Got any message of rescue

Only new species of algae n grass

Express their views

Love n unshaken trust

Only

They are calling,

Before crying for help

When surrender unconditionally.

***

Good afternoon

It’s a usual Sunday, very common one.

But I enjoy the day.

Let me think what makes it amazing, what triggers me, what may optimize…..

Perhaps, I understand,

Perhaps, I realize

Perhaps, I feel

And

Next chapter of my life assures to be a next gen guy,

A better one – don’t know

Wise one – can’t say

Mature enough – don’t bother

I’ll be a brand new version of the same old living transmuted fossil, with changing configuration.

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The post Paradise Regains – Poetry from Bengal first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Suhina Biswasmajumdar

Suhina Biswasmajumdar is a writer from Kolkata, Bengal. A life-long devotee of Swami Vivekananda, Suhina is against any discrimination. Two significant life-forces propel her – ‘love’ and ‘writing’. Suhina’s book ‘Tumi’ (you) and Songs of Silence (A Journey to Love), are collections of her poetic thoughts.

Poetry in Silence   

Unheard soliloquy of solitude like

A lucid poetry

Flowing,

From the path of eternity

Comes like the eternal tunes

The harmonious beats of light and shade

Or the ballet of day and night creates the mystery,

From the womb of unknown they blink…sparkle…. ripple.

The artist only knows the secret of debonair

And the rest only feels their uncanny vibes,

Life flows

From the pages of yesterday melts into the darkest core of tomorrow!

The rhythm of the drummer can’t break

Though the player leaves his stage

They know

The eternal show will be going on.

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The post Poetry in Silence – A Poem from Bengal first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Farizaa Sabreen

Farizaa Sabreen is a Bangladeshi journalist and writer. She spends her free time experimenting with recipes from around the world and photographing.

Bewitcher

Last night, beneath the sprawling inky sky

Wind was delicate, so was I

Reflection of palm trees created a sheer streak into pool

Water flaunted alone as a kaleidoscope.

I was lying idly on a deck chair,

Indulging myself into nocturnal tranquility

Ripples of water swept away contradiction of life

The place is my comfort zone, far from anxiety.

A sudden clack of shoes on a wooden deck made me amazed

There was a regal statue next to me

An ethereal presence of a classically chiseled face

With flair of cynical grace!

My heart penetrated by his sublime sight,

A bewitcher was all set to sparkle the night

Hide and seek of our eyes spoke thousands of words

Vibe of him captured me like a whorl of blizzards.

***

Escape

When every door of life closes

Escape is only choice

Escape from the known world, known people

No need to stay here,

Everything is crystal clear.

Leaving is painful, but hiding is fun

Run baby run

Don’t turn back

When no other choice left, accept the reality

What’s the worth of life which is cursed?

Seven seas of patience and thirteen rivers of tolerance can’t change the situation

What is the need for waiting?

Everybody deserves empathy instead of sympathy.

Time demands to move on

Be ready to take life as a boon.

***

Terror within and without

What is the value of life which is full of terrors?

No stability, no security, I live days and nights with fear

Life is a onetime offer

Why the sins of other affect my life over and over?

When I walk past crowds I see fearless faces

Walking beside you higher my nervousness

When does the life of terror end?

My innocent self at times rebel

Anxiety numb my senses often

I wish I’d foreclose this cynical direction

No wonder, people think I am reluctant to dispose of this life.

But life doesn’t give me any option.

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The post Bewitcher – Poetry from Bangladesh first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Suhina Biswasmajumdar

Suhina Biswasmajumdar is a writer from Kolkata, Bengal. A life-long devotee of Swami Vivekananda, Suhina is against any discrimination. Two significant life-forces propel her – ‘love’ and ‘writing’. Suhina’s book ‘Tumi’ (you) and Songs of Silence (A Journey to Love), are collections of her poetic thoughts.

Undefeated mankind

Will you allow me if I want to die               

In this pandemic when one tries to save n be safe

Me n my strong desires don’t haunt you in your hellish dreams 

Dreams to be…. no need to….to say sorry

No need to apologize or celebrate my victory

We learn to win together we decide to live together

We promise to survive together not suffer – but be secured

To love and to be loved hereafter

As we promise…

Promise to me promise to you promise to our frozen souls broken hearts and scary bodies

Live together love together and even snatch together

 The golden sun to bring happiness in this life span

To the hungry weary trodden world of melancholic happy prince

And selfish giants!

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Long Live the Poet  

A poet can’t die

Like the Phoenix he sings those eternal tunes

The valley of death the rally of corpse

Again get ready to live once more

The evening star dares to peep,

The morning sun’s willing to care

The golden crops share hopes to the hungry world

The wretched distressed traitor or deprived tyrant faces get equal mercy

The poet… the immortal soul of the universe

The ruler of heaven and earth

The creator of devil or divine and dreams

Can never die…

Like Phoenix he smiles and reveals the truth

The saga of victory… the rebellious journey of undefeated mankind…

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Read more:

The Artist and Her Canvas

The post Contemporary World Literature – Poetry from Bengal first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Contemporary World Literature Poetry from Bengal

A Poem by Suhina Biswasmajumdar

Suhina Biswasmajumdar is a writer from Kolkata, Bengal. A life-long devotee of Swami Vivekananda, Suhina is against any discrimination. Two significant life-forces propel her – ‘love’ and ‘writing’. Suhina’s book ‘Tumi’ (you) and Songs of Silence (A Journey to Love), are collections of her poetic thoughts.

The Artist and Her Canvas

I told you: “I don’t know the grammar of your art

I just take the brush, touch the colors and

Spread those strokes on the naked papers

Do nothing – just fill the gaps with whatever my mind …”

Eyes smiled:

“Have you ever seen the farmers with his plough ….

When plays with green that turns into golden —

Just like the sun, brings smile in her voice and their lips”

And continued

“I don’t know how to sketch that pleasure

I try … I try to pour his love

In the lonely heart of the maiden canvas

To create that verse on the golden path of the universe”

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Also read: Evolution of Bengali Literature

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