A poet sings of the city he loves
Junaidul Haque is ecstatic over Shamsur Rahman's emotions
Shamsur Rahman, Dhaka's illustrious son, was a living legend. That he was a brilliant writer of prose too is manifested in his novels and short stories, however few they may be in number. His best work in prose is, however, Smritir Shahar, his memoirs of Dhaka written for adolescents but liked by adults even more. The book was first published in 1979 and later reprinted in 2000 by Jatiyo Grantha Prakashan. It was first serialized in the late sixties in the monthly Tapur Tupur, perhaps the finest juvenile magazine ever to be published from Bangladesh. Shamsur Rahman and Dhaka are inseparable entities. He spent the whole of his creative life, in fact the whole of his life, in Dhaka. While singing Dhaka's glory in Smritir Shahar, he declares his unconditional love for the city and reaches great heights as a narrator. As Dhaka sets about observing its 400th anniversary of birth, I felt a great urge to reread Smritir Shahar. The experience was delightful, to say the least. We can compare the neat, eighty-page thriller to such exquisite books as Buddhadev Bose's classic on Shantiniketan, Shab Peyechir Deshey, and Humayun Azad's masterpiece, Fuler Gandhey Ghum Ashey Na. All Dhakaites should read Smritir Shahar The reader will love the book's prose. Brilliant, racy, very interesting and bearing ample signs of superb figurative craftsmanship. Rahman's grasp of child and adolescent psychology is superb. He paints childhood and boyhood with the mighty brush of an S.M. Sultan or Zainul Abedin. He helps us to recollect the finest moments of the best period of our life in vivid details. I have been praising this book privately for the last forty years. I praised it as a boy, as a young man and am now praising it as a middle-aged man. I am happy that today I can praise it in print. Rahman dips into Dhaka's beauty, its many interesting faces, its history, its geography, its tradition and declares his great attachment to it. In the process he keeps us spellbound like a true maestro. 'I am not a prince, so I don't have a winged horse Pakkhiraj. No Pakkhiraj but I love to walk around. I love to roam on all kinds of roads dusty roads, shady roads, crowded roads, quiet roads. I like to walk and watch various things, many small things.' Thus begins the book. The poet loves to peep into old, mysterious houses. He dreams of lovely children who used to once live in those houses. He casually reminds his reader that Alexander the Great, while on a conquest, ordered his soldiers not to destroy the house of Pindarus, a great poet in whose hands 'words rang like ankle bells'. The narrator loves old houses, statues and utensils and urges his readers to visit museums, if necessary, to see them. Watching everything around him is like a festival to him. The roadside tree is like a fairy to him, ready to fly into the clouds. The bamboo bridge is like an arrow, the fountain is like a broom of light. While walking he sees beautiful children with fat, soft cheeks sitting on the lotus in the big pond. The poet was born in Mahuttuly. Maybe mahuts lived there during the days of kings and emperors. The poet's lane had no gold trees with diamond flowers. There were no hiramon or tota birds on gold bars. No lovely fountain whose silvery water would turn a stone into a beautiful prince. Mahuttuly only had a lamp at the end of the lane. A man would come every evening with a ladder to light the lamp. This man fascinated the poet in his boyhood. The poet started going to school, Pogose School to be exact. He was enrolled in class two. On the first day he was nervous. He felt like the caged bird of their house, which was once freed but couldn't fly because it had just forgotten to fly. It walked stupidly on the verandah, was caught and again put in the cage. Inside the classroom a boy stood on the bench. Another was kneeling down in front of the teacher's table. The teacher had spectacles and a cane. The cane was used regularly, the poet felt. Many restless eyes fell instantly on him. 'The evenings would come, walking like cats.' Soft, fat, cotton-like legs, so there was no sound. Somebody would suck the golden water-like sunlight. Darkness would come and engulf the roads. Lanes and roads would be dark, the church of Armanitola would be dark, the canon of Sadarghat would be dark, the tomb of Ahsan Manzil on the bank of the Buriganga would be dark. A little later light would come up in points. Light at home, in shops, on roads, in mosques, temples and churches. Light in slums as well as Ahsan Manzil. The unknown and unseen Kazla Didi would make the poet sad. He would dream of her, eternally getting drenched in black rains and never coming to see him. Which Bangali child hasn't wept for Kazla Didi? More so yours truly, who had no brother or sister till his ninth year. Two were born and promptly died of small pox and birth complications respectively. The poet would roam around Ramna Kalibari temple and the Dhakeswari temple but not go inside. He gives a brief, interesting history of the temples. He would play Tarzan-Tarzan, chor-police and gollachut with friends at the Ramna race course. The Janmashtami procession attracted him. The colourful fairies and the animals fascinated him. Krishna's flute he liked the most. He would like to collect one but it wasn't possible. Goddess Saraswati appeared beautiful and sober to him. Naeem Miah, the artist who drew pictures on glass in a Babu Bazar shop, became his hero for a while. But he discouraged the poet when he wished to be an artist himself. Naeem Miah encouraged him to study and not to dream of being a struggling artist, a defeated soldier in the battlefield of life. The poet remembers Brindaban Dhar and Sons, where the lovely Shishu Sathi was available. Victoria Park reminded him of the hanging of our patriots in the past. Lalbag Fort was beautiful. The poet goes into its history. Nawab Shaista Khan and Bibi Pari haunted him in his dreams. The poet saw one maund of rice being sold for taka five in his childhood. The price shot up to taka eighty when he became a young man. The 1943 famine made the poet very sad. Hungry people attacked dustbins. While taking breakfast one day, he saw an emaciated face at the window. The face haunted him for the rest of his life. The poet's essay on famine was praised by his headmaster. He was good in English and Bangla. Abdul Majid Shahityaratna, his father's friend, was the first writer he saw. He later died of TB and the poet's father was deeply shocked. He was thus not happy when he first heard that his own son was writing poetry. The poet writes about the Buddhir Mukti Andolan and Shikha. He writes about the people who opposed these liberal thinkers. The poet sadly mentions the riots of Dhaka, the heart-rending tale of the relatives of Nawab Serajuddowla, the story of Ahsan Manzil and the glorious but sorrowful story of Khudiram and his fellow rebels. He defends the kuttis, the original inhabitants of Dhaka, and blames the Nawabs for oppressing them and not giving them education. The thrill of reading Galpaguchcha was never forgotten by the poet. It made him hungry for more books, by Rabindranath and by others. It took him to the libraries of old Dhaka, especially Rammohan Roy library and Northbrook Hall library. They were like treasure islands to him. He fell in love with Bangla language and literature but never dreamt of writing. He was in class eight when his little sister, two-year-old Nehar died. She couldn't talk properly. She could only look at the world with soft eyes and would spread her hands to come to the poet's arms. He was very fond of his little sister. One day he returned from school and found that she was no more. The pain of her loss never left the poet. The poet ends his book with the shocking death of Nehar and makes us sad. He began to write seriously much later, in 1948, in his nineteenth year. After an active poet's life of fifty eight years, he breathed his last as one of Bangladesh's greatest sons on August 17, 2006. Smritir Shahar is a fascinating tale of Dhaka, Shamsur Rahman's favourite city, his city. It makes us nostalgic. It brings us back our childhood and boyhood. It brings us back the beauty, the happiness and the sorrow of the best period of our life.
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