A bizarre darkness
Aftab S. Ahmad is touched by a prison diary
22 February 2008, 18:00 PM
Kathgorai Dhaka Bisshobiddaloi: Remand O Karagar er Dinolipi
Dr M Anwar Hossain
Agamee Prakashani
Becoming a literary masterpiece is not this book's professed goals. This is supposed to be precisely what it claims to be: a diary written in a particular circumstance. But like all other good, clear and sincere writing, it transcends the mundane. In the process it turns itself into a compelling read, claiming the attention of anyone interested in knowing about a series of events that shook the nation beginning August 2007. This is a unique glimpse of a sensitive and unbending intellect looking at events from his own perspective, a perspective you can disagree with but cannot ignore.
Writing from prison has a long history both here in the subcontinent and in the west. These writings encompass a variety of forms. At times they take the form of letters written from prison by a father to his little girl, like the famous Nehru letters to his daughter Indira Gandhi. At other times it takes the form of a diary like Jeffrey Archer's A Prison Diary (by prisoner Ff8282). Yet again this can turn into a veiled autobiography like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the Soviet era repression novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
The context in which such writings are done has also been the subject of literary and critical scrutiny. In his study of apartheid era political prison writing, Paul Gready of University of the Witwatersrand puts it very succinctly: "The 'power of writing' is a contested arena. Prisoners write to restore a sense of self and world, to reclaim the 'truth' from the apartheid lie, to seek empowerment in an oppositional 'power of writing' by writing against the official text of imprisonment. Autobiographical prison writing is the most comprehensive articulation of this oppositional 'power of writing'. However, there is no monopoly over the political function of writing. While the written word retains both a dominant intention and a dominant operational 'truth', it is simultaneously ambiguous, an approximation, open to interpretation, manipulation and appropriation. In the context of imprisonment these are the contours of the contested arena of the 'power of writing', at stake is the question of on whose terms imprisonment will be both written and read."
Those who are familiar with the 'text' of the official version of events which this book relates to will find a very remarkable 'sub-text' of the same. So they may have to redefine the terms of imprisonment and re-evaluate their feelings about it. The author, interestingly enough, refrains from being overtly dramatic or accusatory. A sense of stoic understanding mingles with a quiet determination to give this book its uniqeness. One suspects, as was the case with many a prison writing, the official 'text' would be subjugated in the readers' minds once they come across this candid and humane chronology of a man suffering, a family under siege and the larger population unable to comprehend why such things were allowed to happen and continue.
This diary also lets you take a look at the soul of a passionate man who can gather flowers from the prison yard, hide them in a pot and ask his wife to open the pot once she reaches home. Considering the mental state the interned teachers were in, this one fact puts into stark relief the resilience of man against undesirable and unforeseen odds. It makes the reader empathise completely with a man who values his family, his near ones and above everything else his students.
Although this is not written in the form of a novel, certain motifs recur with telling effect throughout the book. Passing references to Harry Potter novels and some of its characters and poems of Jibananada Das put all the events in a darker, otherworldly light. The author receives messages that his wife will not be coming to see him at the jail gate tomorrow through the 'owl post' and 'a bizarre darkness pervades the world / the blind are the ones who see the most' in our times. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his One Hundred Years of Solitude is another motif which crops up repeatedly. The family which has suffered unthinkable losses in the past thirty six years is seen as one with the family of Jose Aureliano Buendia. Strangely obsessed in its own way but defiant till the end.
One would like to come back to this diary over and over again. Dhaka University, which has been, and remains, a space in which non-traditional thinking reigns supreme, can be seen as an island, still giving people hope in times of need. And Dr Anwar Hossain and the likes of him, a spirit of fresh breath, which restores another point of view to its proper perspective and gleams with undiminished light in a time, which despite official optimism, may be judged mercilessly by history.
Aftab S Ahmad is a poet and columnist.
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