There will be time, there will be time. For words and more words again. For the moment, though, a link is worth a thousand words:
Yes, Desh won the 2012 Laurence Olivier Award for the Best New Dance Production. Congratulations, Akram: for choreography, courage and commitment! Congratulations, team Desh! And a huge thank you to Bangladesh for being the alpha and omega of this transformative, memorable journey.
That's Akram Khan before the awards ceremony:
And a third link to the recording of a post-show session at the Concertgebouw in Brügge where Guy Cools - with his usual gentle insight - asked us some very interesting questions about how it all came together:
It is a myth. Of course, it is. Everything
dies. Why we are dying as we speak. Or write. Or read. So, it shouldn’t be a
surprise, should it? To learn that icons that one has grown up hearing,
reading, watching, have died (the French euphemism disappeared seems so apt, less brutal but more final) should not be
such a shock.
But it is, and when it is news one gathers, in
the midst of the mad hurly-burly of daily existence, it seems a bigger one.
Here we are, racing like motorcycle riders in the Ring of Death sequence that
was de rigueur in most Indian circuses in the 80s, and there comes the reminder
that there is deep chasm under the ring, and that we are falling through all
the time.
I learnt of the death of composer Ravi Shankar Sharma – popularly known as Ravi, and in Kerala, as Bombay Ravi – while in a
hotel somewhere not too far from the Arctic Circle, perched beside a window,
laptop inclined at a crazy angle in an attempt to log on to a Wifi network
playing hide-and-seek. I read it not in a newspaper obit (those came much
later) but on a friend’s Facebook post – a friend who also had heard the news
“in another bench, in another airport, in another town”. Ravi died on March 7,
2012 at the age of 86, after a career spanning fifty years: the first three
decades in the Hindi film industry where he composed some truly remarkable
soundtracks – Dilli ka Thug, Chaudhvin kaChand, China Town, Gharana, Waqt, Nikaah are just a few from a long list –
but remained underrated, undeservedly slightly obscured, in the shadow of other
greats of the golden era, Khayyam, Shankar-Jaikishen, O.P. Nayyar, S.D. Burman…
oh, there was truly a pantheon of music-makers then; and, as the eighties
proved somewhat of a long winter for melody in Bombay with the rise of the action
era, he moved to Malayalam cinema where each of the dozen or so films he
composed music for was crowned with critical and public acclaim: Panchagni, Vaishali, Oru VadakkanVeeragatha, Nakhakshyathgal, Sargam, to mention the earliest ones.
Most of us did not even realise that that the
man who had composed the exuberant Aemeri Zohra Jabeen was the one who had written the complex and beauteous score
of Sargam, rooted in Carnatic music.
When I did, it was not so much because of my interest in composers as in
lyricists, and one lyricist/poet in particular: Sahir Ludhianvi. Sahir
Ludhianvi, the socialist, the atheist, the cynic, the eternal bachelor, the uncompromising, the “arrogant” — the last being an epithet he won for insisting that lyricists be
credited by All India Radio alongside singers and composers, and, not
insignificantly, that he be paid a rupee more than Lata Mangeshkar. Sahir
Ludhianvi, whose pen could sear conscience and celluloid with a Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai(Pyaasa, 1957) and, in the same film,
deliver the rollicking Sar jo terachakraye along with a Jaane kya tunekahinradiating sensuousness. Sahir Ludhianvi, whose words and images
grabbed my pre-adolescent imagination with both hands and never really let go.
Sahir Ludhianvi, whose 91st birth anniversary fell on March 8, 2012
— a day after Ravi’s demise.
I grew up on one’s words (and continue to do
so, I think) and the other’s music. While Sahir’s influence on my writing and
my imaginaire (a near-untranslatable
word the French have for something like a creative ethos) is incalculable, I
would never have first heard his words if it hadn’t been for composers like
Ravi and his contemporaries: this was the music that my parents and uncles and
aunts and elder cousins listened to, this was the music that seeped into my
bloodstream.
This post is dedicated to the lyricist and the
composer, and to their collaboration, often alchemical. It is a random
selection of their songs, chosen for either the lyrics or the music or – often
– both. I have included a couple of translations, but they are rough, hurried ones, and do not do any justice to the
penmanship of Sahir. And because I have focussed primarily on the songs as
poems set to music, I have not been attentive enough to filmed song
sequences themselves, often lyrical in their own right.
If heaven exists, it is a lucky place to host
both of them. As for us, we are left with their work, which is how we knew them
in the first place. And, as choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui says, at the end of centuries, at the end
of civilisation, art – not tyranny, not oppression, not the various daily
cruelties we inflict on each other – is what best survives the march of time. Is umeed pe duniya qayam hai.
1. Waqt
(1965): In a soundtrack bursting at the seams with melodious songs, Aage bhi jaane na tu stands out. Today,
more than ever, perhaps because Time is very much on my mind:
Anjaane saayon ka,
raahon mein deera hai
Andekhi baahon ne hum
sab ko ghera hai
Ye pal ujala hai, baki
andhera hai
Ye pal gavana na, ye
pal hii tera hai
Unknown shadows corral the paths.
Unseen arms cordon us all.
This moment is radiant; the rest is darkness.
Don’t squander this moment: this alone is yours.
Oh, and the orchestration – even to a
philistine like me – stands out. I love the way it begins, the soft tinkling
behind the dialogues opening a path to Asha Bhonsle’s voice, the instruments
woven dexterously to place the spotlight to her tessitura. As Dusted Off says
in her wonderful tribute to/obit on Ravi, “the quintessential crooner song.”
2. Gumraah
(1963): This one, more for the startling beauty of the lyrics, that
inarticulate thought which must occur to so many of us at the end of a relationship
given full, forceful, eloquent expression by Sahir, with the music allowing the
lyrics to rise to the fore. One of Ravi’s strengths that, it occurred to me
often: he could allow the words to breathe, and that he didn’t at all grudge
them their power, their pre-eminence when required. A feat he was to repeat
time and again in Malayalam cinema.
And another song from the same film, to
contrast moods words and composition: here, there is the conviction of requited
desire, illicit as it may be, the words are few and the refrain is underscored
by music in majestic command. The melody magnifies both nature in all its
splendour and the ache of love, the restrained fervour to meet the beloved.
3. Dhund
(1973): I know, there is no respect for chronology on this post! Here is one of Sahir's portentous, philosophical pieces. I saw this film as a
child, and I remember little more than a general air of impending doom, a very scary
Danny Denzongpa (who could deliver quiet menace like few others — he had no
need for wigs and prosthetics to convey evil) and a constantly sari-clad
(unusual an occurrence), petrified but beautiful Zeenat Aman. And a title song that
snagged in some corner of the mind:
4. Ek
Mahal Ho Sapnon Ka (1975): This, I believe, was Sahir’s and Ravi’s last
collaboration together. Again, a film, I saw as a child, but one I had found a little
too relentlessly weepy. Sacrifice, unless by Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities (the book, not the
film) has never appealed much to me. But there were some pleasant songs, and
this one remained with me. The cynicism is vintage Sahir. And it is nice to see Sharmila Tagore without
too much of a bouffant.
Neelam ho raha tha
kisi naaznin ka pyar
Keemat nahin chookayi
gayee, ek gareeb se
Dekha hai zindagi ko
kuch itna kareeb se
Chehre tamaam lagne
lage hain ajeeb se
Up there for bidding was a coquette’s love,
The price too steep for a pauper to pay.
So intimately have I seen life,
Each face now tends to look strange.
Another song (with three versions, and in three
voices and moods!) that used to be quite popular from Ek Mahal … is Dil mein kisike
pyar ka.
Chockfull of 1970s fashion statements, more
bouffant but also a couplet
like
Woh nakshe kya hua jo
mitaye se mit gaya
Who dard kya hua jo
davayi se dab gaya
and a brooding, handsome Dharmendra to counter the sartorial effects.
5. Aaj
aur Kal (1963): their first collaboration, I think, is this film by
Devandra Goel. It is a veritable bouquet of lovely numbers. If I had to pick a
favourite, I'd be torn between a lovely but despondent Nanda’s serenade to
death – which taught me so much: Sahir, unknown to them, was a big help to my
English teachers; the rhetoric devices that we learnt of in school came to brilliant
life in his verses
– and this paean to the landscape and to life:
Death’s embrace would pale in attractiveness
before that. And before a young Sunil Dutt.
6. Humraaz (1967): When I look at their
work, I think, hmmm, they did have a huge crush on
nature, didn't they? Especially when I listen to some of the songs of Humraaz
where the real object of devotion would appear to be not the stone-faced
heroine but the blueness of the skies, the vastness of the mountains.... the
composition, just as the lyrics, conjures up the grandeur, the lushness of the
world around:
7. Aadmi aur Insaan (1969): And switching
over to a much zingier melody and sentiments ... The more popular number from
Aadmi aur Insaan is the superbly vivacious Zindagi ittafaq hai but I love the way this
particular melody sways and shimmies, just like Mumtaz on whom it is picturised.
And the opening is just irresistible: Itni
jaldi na karo, raat ka dil tootega. What a charming ruse to hold on to someone: don't leave in such haste, or night's heart will break!Night breaking her heart seemed the
ultimate in pathetic fallacy. What
did I say about a user’s manual of literary devices, language no bar!
8. Kaajal (1965): Over to full
intoxication in Kaajal. Chhoo lene do nazuk honton ko is the
immediately identifiable song but Meena Kumari at her lachrymose best
exasperated the life out of me even at the age of twelve (though the pater
gazed at her in something close to adoration, and my mother still cites her as
the finest tragedienne ever), so I ended up with a faiblesse for this one, the
undertones are rather moving and, as ever with Sahir, self-aware, deprecating
of the world’s moral code:
Duniya ki nigahon main bhala kya hain bura kya
Ye bojh agar dil se utar jaye to achha
9. Do Kaliyan (1968): Another film full of
pleasant songs. Tumhari nazar kyon khafa
ho gayi (in two versions: happy and sad), Sajna o sajna, the ever-popular Bachheman ke sache (which, again, I suspected was an idealised vision of childhood:
neither I nor the children around me were anywhere close to altruistic!) and Murga murgi, surprisingly mature for a
children’s song. But, it is Sahir, so
there had to be some socialism and secularism woven in everywhere, even in the
Comic Side Plot-song. So, in the midst of all the high-decibel theatrics of Do Kaliyan, there is a latter-day cousin
of Sar jot era takraye, though
nowhere as blithe.
The dance producer in me cannot help but be diverted by the flash of interesting – and rather contemporary – choreography at 02.50:
10. Aankhen (1968): And still faithful to
my completely jumbled chronology, I end with a song from the fun-tastic, gadget-astic
Aankhen, which thrilled a 11-year-old me to bits when I saw it in an Indian
Army cinema hall (they did a great job of recycling old films!): radio
transmitters in shoes! Cameras in glasses! Chinese and Egyptians who speak
Hindi! Jeevan and Lalita Pawar as Enemies of the State! Complete face grafts
about thirty years before Face/Off!
And More General Amazement in every frame!
It is
difficult to choose though, between the poignancy and tender reproach of Gairon pe karam, apnon pe situm, where
music and lyrics are in terrific alliance
Gairon ke thhirakhte shaane par
Ye haath gawara kaise karen
Har baat gawara hai lekin
Ye baat gawara kaise karen
Ye baat gawara kaise karen
Tujhko teri bedardi ki kasam
Ae jane-wafa, ye zulm na kar
Hum bhi tere manzoor-e-nazar
Ji chaahe tu ab ikraar na kar
Sau tir chala seene main magar
Begaanon se milkar vaar na kar
Begaanon se milkar vaar na kar
Bemauth kahin marjaaye na hum
Ae jane-wafa, ye zulm na kar
and the
madcap abandon of Milti hai zindagi main
mohabbat kabhi kabhi, where
words and music act in counterpoint to create a mood that is teasing, buoyant
and yet a little wistful. And unusually for that era, we see a heroine
persistently pursuing the object of her affection (across continents too, it
would transpire):
Milti hai zindagi main mohabbat kabhi kabhi
Hoti hai dilbaron ki inayat kabhi kabhi
Sharma ke muh na mod nazar ke sawal par
Laati hai aise mod pe kismat kabhi kabhi
The
sequence is so gobsmackingly over-the-top that I cannot resist it. Mala Sinha's attires make
me wish there was some special punishment for bad wardrobe design but thankfullyshe remains perky despite those
pedal pushers (which could have easily cut off the blood supply to her toes).
Besides, there is a dishy Dharmendra again (over-sized trenchcoat and mandatory
fedora notwithstanding) to appreciate, though he rocks eveningwear to much
greater satisfaction in the above-mentioned Aadmi
aur Insaan.
PS: My
apologies for the change in text between this morning and now. A technical
glitch caused the entire post to vanish, and it had to be rewritten in large
part.
One
life-sustaining and quiet; the other, a celebration, a blessing and an
explosion of taste: I have been lucky; I had both at the London premiere of Akram Khan's Deshat Sadler's Wells.
My
strongest, most tender, most gratifying recollections – apart from the piece
itself, which has become so much more than the
sum of its parts: magical and moving and sprightly – came just after the show: first honey, then water.
So
there we were, just after the performance, Polar Bear and I, still a little
stunned by it all – Akram’s tour de force of a performance, the completeness of the oneiric world that
had unfolded before our eyes – and, for my part, a little dizzy for physical,
less enchanting reasons.
There
we were, in one of those little inner bubbles of almost-solitude and stillness you
sometimes find in a crowd, especially a crowd pouring pell-mell out of a theatre. When
suddenly we were submerged in a spate of voices: exuberant, joyous, tearful, nostalgic,
generous, in English and Bangla…
There
they were, Akram’s mother and father, shining with pride and emotion, and with
them, more than a dozen of their relatives and friends, all peers from the
Bangladeshi community in London. Mr. and Mrs. Khan introduced me, with much
warmth and affection, as "the scriptwriter of the piece, the person who told
our stories.” I clutched at Polar Bear, introducing him in turn — we had
written the entire Jui narrative in marathon sessions, then finessed and rewritten
many of the stories, stories that Akram and I had imagined, together and
separately, earlier.
It was a happy, unforgettable blur of introductions, and burbling of
questions and comments and reminiscences – precise and knowing and unhesitant
and curious in a very familiar way, the way of my parents and brood of uncles
and aunts – recognising, and demanding to know more of, the things I had kept
subterranean all through the last year and more. All of them, the veiled,
determined lady doctor; the spunky, bejewelled teacher; the teary-eyed aunt
and the men-folk tagging behind, all fresh with their memories and triumphs and
sorrows tumbling willy-nilly from the shelves and safes they are placed in,
for the sake of everyday…
How did you know our stories?
These are things I lived through!
You are not Bangla but you know our memories. You are too young to have
been there, so how?
(And
to Polar Bear) You are not even Asian but
you wanted to write about us, thank you. Thank you so much.
Do you speak Bangla? How did you
write those things then?
Who told you about the war?
And Bonbibi, how did you know about
Bonbibi and Dakkhin Rai?
I
had to tell them.
I
had to tell them why Bangladesh mattered and what it had meant – even though I
am not sure I know, really. Why it was so present all through childhood and
early teenage, why it had been an early, inadvertent lesson in
self-determination, in the games countries play, in what Arundhati Roy once
famously called Big History and Little History – especially in the latter.
Tell
them, in quick words, what we had never discussed during the entire year of Desh.
What
I had never really evoked, except in the strands and directions certain stories
took, insistently, sometimes to Akram’s surprise, like my early clamouring for
a political slant to Desh. Because,
as the piece progressed, it seemed important not to let my inherited memories
impinge on his very natural need to own the stories that he would embody in Desh.
But
their colours are there, strands of them, and that is what these people were
trying to trace. Cartography again.
When
I did tell them, hesitantly, in one sentence, they understood. More than I do,
probably. And the response was overwhelming: Tell your father thank you. Thank him for fighting for us.
Achan
would be moved, if he heard that. I still haven’t told him. It’s
not the sort of thing you mention casually over the phone, across 10,000
kilometres. But I hope to muster up the courage to, next time we are in the
same room. To say, Achan, your stories,
your worldview from forty years ago, the things you told me, later, after I was born, more when I was
8 and 9 and then, in sober tones, at 12 and 13, when you wanted to teach
me how unglamorous war was, and how there were seldom righteous victories, how
spurious borders can be, impenetrable and permeable all at once … they matter,
they shaped who I am, and they went, quietly, into this piece, it’s the only
way I can thank you and say, I think I know what you meant then. Though you
won’t remember telling me this so long ago, especially when you may believe in
different things today. But the you that you were, the you who made a lot of the me I am, I hope I’ve carried that voice through. And not many viewers will
feel that voice, nor the press, but these people – the ones who lived through
it all, the ones who are like you in many ways – they did, they felt it, not the
words but beliefs and emotions, and it mattered enough to them to trace the
voice to its source. And they greet you as a brother.
I
don’t know, though, if I will. Sometimes, you just don’t. Tell the most
important people in your lives exactly why and how they matter. And how much
they have shaped you. Teenage rebellions cast long shadows, stupidly.
But
back to the moment: there was a clamour for snapshots and Polar Bear and I
found ourselves in the middle of the bustling, celebratory group, two errant
husbands with mobile phones/cameras located, and made to photograph us.
Then,
these lovely, direct people blessed us, in that time-honoured sub-continental
fashion spanning all religions, telling us roundly that we were going to be
very famous, that they were sure of it, and that we must never forget they were
the first to tell us so!
Just
as the dizziness raised its head again, threatening a pretty bad night of pain, I got rescued. And rewarded. By one of
my favourite people, someone who had been bombarded across fourteen months with thoughts, ideas, words, doubts and hopes – as bouncing board for all of the
above, usually even before they were submitted to the Desh team; someone whose opinion – on dance and writing, and more – matters immensely. “I would give that 10 stars!” And then, life-savingly, prosaically, “Shall we go
eat?”
For
me, that is. For Akram Khan and the Akram Khan Company, it has just been
birthed, after a long and eventful gestation. And it will – we all firmly believe, audience
and critics, programmers and producers – go on to grow and flourish and soar
for many years to come. It has a sense of timelessness, this piece.
But
the rest of the creative associates have returned to our own worlds; after
having inhabited this one across 14 months, 15 cities, 6 time zones, 3576
emails, 196 phone calls, hundreds of sketches and videos and compositions and
lighting simulations (and these, just the ones I sent/received and remember - there are doubtless hundreds more!). And for the writers, after thousands of words of
which not more than a hundred can actually be heard on stage: the rest, all the
stories, the narrative connections, the leitmotifs, have morphed alchemically
into animation, calligraphy, chants and music, and – most breathtakingly,
unforgettably of all – into movement. Akram’s movement, which has never been
less than spectacular, is absolutely riveting here.
It
is also time to say goodbye to a team of almost preternaturally gifted people,
the kind one does not come across everyday. Brilliance – a word very easily
bandied about today – is a rare enough quality but brilliance that is so
generous, so ready to be at the service of another artist’s aspiration is
something one meets seldom in life. And that people so hugely gifted and deeply sensitive to the main artist should all converge on one project – across
continents and languages and disciplines – still seems just a whisker away from
a miracle. That is the pretty cynical, battle-hardened producer in me
talking, used to seventeen different kinds of madness on collaborative
projects, me-the-producer disarmed this time – in this new role as writer – by the suppleness everyone shared.
Akram,
the fountainhead behind this intensely creative – and, finally, inevitably
personal – journey through time and place; through history, memory and
imagination; springboarding on desire and duty and doubt and transcending them
all, surpassing even our expectations with his mastery and virtuosity.
Tim Yip, who imagined a lush, phantasmagorical visual world where dream,
reality and recollections flow into each other like all the tributaries into
the Jamuna. And Irene Lu, his costume manager and assistant, who was there at
every step, ideating, coordinating, encouraging.
Michael Hulls, with lights that conjure up a glorious palette of thunderous skies and
sunlit rivers and winter haze… the ephemera that swathes so much of Bangladesh.
Jocelyn Pook, whose score, whose soundscape,
is the most inventive yet faithful testimony I have heard: to the strident,
energetic streets of Dhaka; to the ferocity of human desire for freedom; to the
longing for land and belonging; to the muted jostling of trees and waves in
Gopalgonj on a quiet evening.
Polar Bear. Polar Bear. Writing and rewriting and editing with Polar Bear – something
I will dwell on in delight and detail – was easily among the most blithe part
of Desh days for me. The crispness of
the Jui dialogues owes so much to the shared sense of fun found in those
marathon writing sessions, and to his amazing ear for poetry and balance.
Ruth Little, the dramaturge, she of the gentle wisdom and patience which saw us through the making of the piece, through all the whimsical notions and initial profusion of ideas into sifting and selecting the truest ones.
YeastCulture, the animators who brought The
Boy, the Bees and Bonbibi – my story woven through Akram’s imaginary niece’s
refusal to learn Bangla into a reworked legend of the Sundarbans – to glorious life, with verve and puckishness, which
completely resonates with my vision of Shonu, the little boy Akram embodies.
Farooq Chaudhry, Akram’s producer nonpareil, whose vision and courage and
determination are, in so many ways, the fuel behind Desh. There is so much I learnt from Farooq in the course of the
year; it was no less than a master class in – well, much more
than production and management – in artistic accompaniment.
Fabiana Piccioli, AKC’s technical director, who translated Tim’s and Akram’s ideas into
reality and put this whole complex, polyphonic world together on stage. And
continues to, night after night.
And
the others, sometimes less visible ones who matter so much, whose touch
often had a magic-wand effect that got critics and audience enthusing about such-and-such element.
Damien Jalet, who devised the painted head sequence with Akram. Each time I see that,
I see Damien’s extraordinary capacity to take the simplest of elements and
create strangeness and otherness with it, to upend our habitual ways of perceiving
the dancing body. Each time I see that, I am also amazed by Akram’s capacity to
seize the kernel of the idea and build from it, weave the narrative into it, so the body is the story.
Leesa Gazi, actress and activist, who came in to record some of the early tales and
stayed on to vindicate our choices to highlight a very political, vocal
Bangladesh, one that fought and keeps fighting against all the ills that plague
the land. Leesa also brought in her little daughter Shreya, whose voice is
heard as Akram’s imaginary niece Eeshita, who – as Akram says – really steals
the show!
Linda Kapetanea & Jozef Frucek
of Rootless Roots, who workshopped with Akram, especially on The Boy, the Bees and Bonbibi sequence:
Akram’s and Linda’s improvisation (especially the riffs on David and Lady Gaga)
added so much more life to the tale!
Zoë
Anderson and her actors came for two weeks to record the initial scenes we had written (clumsily, speedily) as prototypes to allow Akram to devise the
staging of the stories. Only tendrils of those stories are seen, and none
through voices, but the two weeks were invaluable in gauging when and how
speech worked with dance.
Sander
Loonen, who had the sets built and the handled the videos and was unfailingly
cheerful and resourceful through our long, long days of early voice recordings.
Jose Agudo, Akram's rehearsal director and a very talented dancer.
Most
of the team at AKC, a superbly-oiled machine for logistic organisation, especially JiaXuan Hon, who singlehandedly tour-managed our whirlwind trip to
Bangladesh, and managed to get us all the appointments we (okay, mea culpa, I)
kept clamouring for at the eleventh hour. And Marek Pomocki who set up the Desh cloud and suddenly made sharing
unwieldy video and music files and thousands of photographs as easy as hello. And many more souls.
It
sounds like a bit of a variation on “It takes a village to raise a child” but
the truism does really hold true here. It took a bit of a global village, lots
of heart and lots of conviction, beyond all the material resources and talent, and I delight in having encountered it at such close quarters.
So goodbye will perforce be accompanied
by lots of vignettes. Ruth told us – at the beginning of this journey - about an anecdote she'd heard from
director Anne Bogart, of a nomadic desert poet in Senegal who had described the
poet as the one who remembers where the water holes are.
This, then, is what I am going to be doing over the next few posts. Charting out the
water holes of Desh. At least, the
moments that linger on for me, full of water — and honey.
These are some of the Deshbackstories: 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.
Mita 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?
About two weeks ago, Bangladeshi film director Tareque Masud died in a head-on collision on the Dhaka-Aricha highway. He and his team were on their way back to Dhaka from Manikganj where they had gone to check a location for his next film, Kagojer Phool (Paper Flowers), a film he had waited long to make, say his friends. But I only learnt of his tragic – and very untimely – demise last week. Ashfaque 'Mishuk' Munier, noted cameraman and media professional, was also killed in the accident. Catherine Masud, Tareque’s wife, producer, co-writer and editor for more than two decades, was seriously injured.
I only met him once, in November 2010. But Tareque Masud entered our cinephile worlds long back, in the summer of 2002, when his feature film Matir Moyna(Clay Bird) appeared on screens all over France, bearing with quiet grace the laurels of the International Critics’ Prize (Fipresci) it had won at the Cannes Film Festival. It repositioned Bangladesh – and, to some extent, the Subcontinent – on the global cinema map, at least in France, at least that year.
Critics spoke of it with surprised awe, fellow artists from Bangladesh rejoiced and the larger diasporic community glowed with vicarious pride that cinema from the Subcontinent would not be labelled solely as the “all-singing, all-dancing spectacle” of the Bollywood behemoth. This, if I remember right, was also the year Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas had fulgurated in the non-competitive section at Cannes: no two films could have been more different.
Matir Moyna, like many other films by Tareque Masud, did initially face problems with the censor board in Bangladesh: it dealt with the still-polemical story of the build-up to the Liberation War, the polarisation between a culturally vibrant, secular Bangladeshi society and religious extremism that was a growing political tool. All of it told through the memory of one child, who loses his greatest joys as his father’s orthodoxy grows to parallel that of the larger powers; a child whose sense of identity is jostled even over his name, the Hindu-ish undertones of “Anu” being repellent to the orthodox imam in his madrasah.
What I remember most about Matir Moyna is the truthfulness one felt in the voice of Anu and my complete and immediate immersion in his world. The voice of the film – soft but unafraid, polychromatic and so rich in musical and visual detail it felt like multiple, complementary canvasses for ears and eyes – was, I found later, very much a reflection of the personality of its director.
For meet him, we did: the entire creative team of Desh. It was our last night in Dhaka, and early next morning – very early, to avoid being caught in the predicted violence of the hartaal Khalida Zia and her BNP had threatened the country with – we were all to fly out of Bangladesh after an intensive 10-day stint in the country. Tareque Masud was someone a few of us had wanted to meet. Thanks to an introduction from Eeshita Azad, our wonderful liaison at the British Council in Dhaka, JiaXuan, the enterprising Akram Khan Company tour manager, managed to speak to Tareque just as he returned from his ancestral village. Tareque immediately invited us over, and offered to organise a private screening of his new, unreleased film, Runway. We shot across to their house in the quieter suburbs of Dhaka, tired as we were.
In those ten whirlwind days of travel by plane/van/car/boat/foot across a good part of the country, we had met many a soul whose art, sustained action and commitment moved and humbled us profoundly – photographer Shahidul Alam (founder of Drik, the country’s premier photo library and agency), textile curator Ruby Ghuznavi (founder of Aranya, which has revived almost-defunct indigenous dyeing/ weaving techniques), musicians and actors, journalists, otter fishermen in Gopalgonj, potters in Khulna, and shipmakers in Saderghat, among so many others. For the equivocal citizens many of us are, this sense of rootedness, of engagement was quite an eye-opener.
There could have been no sweeter nor more fitting end to our trip than that evening spent with Tareque Masud. Watching a film with its director is a wonderful experience, one I had taken for granted during childhood but cherish now, and, sure enough, we piled question after question on Tareque, about Runway, his new film, “the most accessible one” they had made, he told us. Runway is a mild but telling exploration into the rise of contemporary extremism, and the links between unemployment, corruption, violence, religious fundamentalism and the accompanying loss of democracy, women’s rights and music. There was the same gentleness in dealing with the full spectrum of characters, even the archetypal bad guys; the same refusal to be ponderous. Runway was also, perhaps, much more hopeful; perhaps unbelievably so. But heaven knows we could all do with some hope.
We wouldn’t be able to meet Catherine, he told us regretfully, for she had stayed on in his parents' village with Nishad, their infant son, their “personal miracle”. But cinema was their other, older child whom we did meet. That evening, he was full of pride and joy, because they had got permission to organize public screenings of Runway, and make it accessible to people all over the country, remote villages, distant towns et al – even in places without cinema halls. What I remembered, will remember most is just that: his passion for cinema, his love for the stories of Bangladesh, his eagerness to link both together, cinema and Bangladesh.
My thoughts are with Catherine and Nishad Masud, like those of so many of his well-wishers and friends. He touched my life very fleetingly, lightly like the paper flowers he wanted to talk of next. But his memory will remain, and his films will continue to tell his stories, their stories. Which, for so many reasons, are also our stories.
