BOOK REVIEW
A Modern Classic
Kaiser Haq is Bangladesh's leading English poet. What is interesting about his works is that they are firmly rooted in the pristine soil of Bengal. Its not that his poems does not deal with urban motifs, which all English Language writers in this part of the world do; but what sets Haq apart from his peers is his motifs that sometimes touch the lives of the ordinary, the most mundane. And this he does with a liberal pinch of irony. Read:
“All clothes have equal rights” –
this nobody will deny
and yet, some obviously
are more equal than others
So while his Postcolonial counterparts in the country are wishy-washy, feeling at home more with the depth of the soul of the gentry, Haq is thematically more aligned with the people. In his 'Ode on the Lungi', Haq addresses the perennial issue of Us and Them:
Hegemony invades private space
as well: my cousin in America
would get home from work
and lounge in a lungi –
till his son grew ashamed
of dad and started hiding
the “ridiculous ethnic attire”
His Published in the Streets of Dhaka is littered with poems like this. My favourite is the one from which the book has drawn its title, especially the stanza where the poet proudly declares his root in the streets of Dhaka; important because the poet, writing in a language, considered alien and sahib, uses local motifs and declares his affinity and pride in being on a land where English is connected with its colonial past:
Here I will stay, plumb in the centre
Of monsoon-mad Bengal, watching
Jackfruit leaves drift earthward
In the early morning breeze
Like a famous predecessor used to
And take note too
Of flashing knives, whirling sticks, burning bombs,
And accompanying gutturals and fricatives of hate,
And evil that requires no axis
To turn on, being everywhere –
And should all these find their way
Into my scribbles and into print
I'll cut a joyous caper right here
On the tropic of Cancer, proud to be
Published in the streets of Dhaka.
His Banglish poems, on the other hand, are coated with humour, reminding one of his illustrious peers such as Nissim Ezekiel. At the same time they ask the fundamental question of the role of English in the society that still has to wrestle with is colonial past, a history where the masses had to learn the language of the invader. It is however interesting to note that Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu and English--the three languages spoken by the elite in this part of the world have never been the language of the masses. Also amazing the way English, once foreign and hence alien, is now being used to fight the centre, and so wide and overpower the struggle is now that the centre cannot hold it any more, the margin has become the centre itself.
Kaiser Haq's Published in the Streets of Dhaka, which has some new poems such as 'Ode on the Lungi', is a must read; it is going to go down in the history of writing as a modern classic.
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