Bangladesh:
voices
Programme notes written
for Akram Khan Company and Sadler’s Wells
These are some of the Desh backstories: a summary of our leitmotifs, borrowed and extended memories and fictionalised narratives in choreographer Akram Khan’s new solo.
Mahaboub
Khulna, 1971
They came again today. Our
soldiers. Only, they are not our
soldiers anymore. You don’t want to be
Pakistani any more. You want to have a new land: Bangladesh. You want to stand
on your own feet? And then, they brought out the bayonets.
It is all changing.
The names we give ourselves, the names we give others. The roles they play; the shape of our land, the curves of its borders.
It is all changing, again. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan. Friend, enemy, brother, neighbour.
I was seven when it first happened. We were playing after school, Tapan and I. Tapan lived next door, he had always lived there. Suddenly, people thronged the streets, shouting, singing. No more British rule. We rule our land now. Three nights later, Tapan’s house burst into flames. I never saw him again, never heard if they fled or died. The two cousins who had survived the massacre in Calcutta rebuilt Tapan’s house and moved in.
It was like that, 1947. The year of independence, newspapers had announced. The year of the wandering dead, my mother called it: a million murdered, six million homeless.
It's that time again.
It is all changing.
The names we give ourselves, the names we give others. The roles they play; the shape of our land, the curves of its borders.
It is all changing, again. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan. Friend, enemy, brother, neighbour.
I was seven when it first happened. We were playing after school, Tapan and I. Tapan lived next door, he had always lived there. Suddenly, people thronged the streets, shouting, singing. No more British rule. We rule our land now. Three nights later, Tapan’s house burst into flames. I never saw him again, never heard if they fled or died. The two cousins who had survived the massacre in Calcutta rebuilt Tapan’s house and moved in.
It was like that, 1947. The year of independence, newspapers had announced. The year of the wandering dead, my mother called it: a million murdered, six million homeless.
It's that time again.
Mita
South Wimbledon, 1982
South Wimbledon, 1982
We left Bangladesh seven years ago, just after the first military coup.
Sometimes it feels like yesterday: I can still hear Sheikh Mujibur
Rehman’s voice thundering across the Ramna Race Course in Dhaka. This time the struggle is for our freedom. We
had stood there in that swelling crowd, glowing with pride and hope.
Sometimes it feels like we have been here forever. Like all I have known
is these long winters, the measured sunshine and the clean, even sounds of this
language, English, which I teach all day.
In the evenings, I try to teach Akram Bangla. But it can’t be a real
language, he says sometimes: it is not taught in school and none of his friends
speak it. My mother cried when she heard that. What did your brothers die for?
But Bangla should not be a language of martyrs and tears for Akram. So I
tell him stories from the magic kingdom where honeybees light up the earth by
night and demon tigers save mangrove forests.
I tell him the password to enter this kingdom is in Bangla, and it will
be lost forever if no one learns Bangla.
Noor
Dhaka, 1987
No, Amma, I am not being reckless. There will be thousands of us on the
streets today. We need to act. How long can things go on this way?
It’s not just for the politicians, the professors. It’s up to me, too.
All we are asking is fresh, fair elections and a neutral, caretaker government.
Military rule was not meant to last.
It isn’t enough that your brothers fought for this country sixteen years
ago; we have to do it again today.
Don’t say that, Amma. It does matter.
We live in fear everyday. Everyday you wonder whether Abba will reach
home. Everyday you wake up scared of arrests.
It shouldn’t be that way, Amma.
Fear should not be the language you speak. Not in your land, the land
you helped build.
Look around, Amma. It is a time for beginnings. Look: around us earth
rises again, green and ripe and firm.
The Buriganga becomes younger; all the rivers return, tame – the monsoon
is over. Even the flowers dare to bloom. It is autumn, Amma. In our country,
autumn belongs to the youth.
We will win. If not tomorrow, soon.
Now, go home before the protests begin. Allah Hafiz.
Owen
Lyon, 1999
The rivers. That’s what I miss most. I lived there for two years, and I
am happy to be back, don’t get me wrong. When did you go last? Yeah, I was
there for work. But the rivers, mate. The Jamuna, Padma, Buriganga… They blew me
away. At first, it was just water, right. Everywhere. I’d go for field trips to
Porabori and there was a fisherman there, Jibenda, who’d row me across the
Jamuna? He used to talk to her, yeah, to the river. Weird, huh? Thing is, my
granddad was a fisherman in Finistère, he liked to talk to the sea, and
suddenly, Bangladesh got closer home? Jibenda showed me amazing stuff. Like how
the rivers are like gods, they can do anything.
Rewrite maps. Swallow land and spit it out. Tear away acres of fields and bang!
you get a new island or settlement a hundred miles down. Nothing ever stays the
same, no straight lines, no stops, no rules. But the people, mate, the people
just adapt. They build their homes and when their land goes under, they move to
another patch and just rebuild. They’re survivors, mate. They’ll be here even
after we’ve nuked ourselves to kingdom come.
Jui
Chittagong Hill Tracts
(CHT), 2009
There’s this guy calling our Tech Support hotline these days. He doesn’t
know nuts about configuring the planner on his phone and claims that’s totally
messed up his life. He introduced himself as British-Bangladeshi, so I said I
was Bangladeshi too. He suddenly went ballistic
about syncing. Yelled and swore and said do
you know who I am? I am world famous. I dance at the Sydney Opera House.
Who cares? It’s not like he’s Lady Gaga!
Anyway, I fixed his life. He called back to thank me. In Bangla. I just
froze him. Imagine speaking in Bangla to me, to a Jumma? Dork. But it turned out he didn’t even know about Jumma!
Nothing, not about the minority communities, the massacres in CHT, not even
about other languages in Bangladesh. His uncles had fought to free
Bangladesh, he said, way back. Cool, I replied, mine are still fighting for
Bangladesh. Not all of us are free yet, to speak our language or till our land
or visit our gods.
How on earth do they get to be so rich and powerful when they know so
little?
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