Stories in poetic style
Ekram Kabir traces the lyrical in prose
Creative writing gurus say the title of a novel or a book always matters to readers. If a book has an attractive or meaningful title along with good content, the book has all the chance of being gleefully accepted by the audience, readers as well as critics. Many opine that the title tells half the story of a book, even a collection of short stories. It is against this backdrop that the title of Mizanur Rahman Shelley's Shwanirbachito Golpo leaves a lot of room for critical analysis. Shwanirbachito Golpo means self-selected stories. The writer, from among many stories of his, has chosen a few stories for accommodation in this collection of short stories. However, Shelley's selection dates as far back as 1965. It just shows he has been writing stories for a long, long time, indeed since his school days. Shilpee (The Artist), the last story in the book, deals with a Buddha artefact being found after many years, after many generations. In this story, the writer tries to show how the artefacts are valued by all in all ages; the artist is ignored. This story is about the tragic life of an artist. Worth reading, but the use of English words within the tale may cause something of annoyance to readers. But in one story, Rokto (Blood), written on 21 February 1967, the writer's dejection at seeing how one's mother tongue is being lost among the children of those who have chosen to settle abroad, especially in the western countries, becomes obvious. This story is loaded with English words. This over-use of English words could be one of Shelley's techniques to depict a Bengali father's sadness at his son's understanding of the Bengali language. Almost half of the 29 stories in the work were written before 1971, the year when Bangladesh became a free country. Shelley writes in the introduction that he started writing short stories back in 1950 when he was in school. Pretty interesting! He began writing when the struggle to save Bengali heritage and uphold Bangladesh in the face of opposition from a tyrannical regime was a dominant political theme. It was also a time when writers demonstrated the utmost passion in producing literature and art. Novelists and writers, almost all of them, wrote in a language which was quite removed from how people spoke. They used 'shadhu bhasha' or a diction that descended from great names such as Bankim Chandra and Madhushudon Dutta. The pre-independence Bangladeshi writers were immensely influenced by these stalwarts. It seems that Shelley is one of them. Shelley's language is also influenced by that school, making his stories difficult for people to read at one go. For instance, Shelley begins his story Oporup Shantrash (Beautiful Violence) thus: "Mritoprai diner bera bhengey chandal rat nemey elo". In English, the sentence should read: Rude night descends by breaking the fence of the dying day. This is not all. The whole book is full of such weighty diction, making his work quite time-consuming to read. But one must agree that the writer's diction is high poetry. That is a good piece of news for literature enthusiasts. Writing fiction in poetic style is not seen these days. This collection of short stories should be educative for new writers in Bangladesh. They could know how it feels reading fiction written in poetic diction. Shelley's stories are of a special kind. Sometimes they evoke a deep sense of morality. For example, in Dushshopner Deshey (In the Land of Nightmares), the main character coming to Bangladesh from Paris, Saif, does not hesitate to shoot a man who has been keeping his own niece as a concubine for long. The story ends there. Shahana's tyrant of an uncle falls down when Saif shoots him. The story, however, does not reveal what happens to Saif after he kills Chowdhury Uncle. Is Saif convicted of murder? Or what? This is what happens in almost all Bengali short stories, keeping the reader guessing as to what happens after the ending. It is a technique that possibly owes its origin to Tagore. His formula for short stories is: "Ends but doesn't end". The conflict in the narrative actually does not get resolved in the end. On the other hand, English short stories are written differently. They begin with conflict, ascend to a climax and finally there is a denouement. Many of Shelley's characters are from the Bengali diasporic community. But the actions take place in Bangladesh. The writer has evidently observed the diasporic community very deeply during his years abroad.
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