Revisiting Razia Khan's World

ON May 28th, the family of Razia Khan launched a collected volume of her poems at a small, elegant event in Dhaka University. It includes all the poems written by her in two separate volumes “Argus Under Anaesthesia” (June 1976) and “Cruel April” (August 1977). The multi-dimensional, talented poet had wanted to revise some of the poems published in these two volumes as well as include new ones but could not complete her task due to ill-health. Her family took it upon themselves to make her wish come true, with one slight adjustment of bringing it out as one volume instead of two. In their publisher's note they express the hope that this book will evoke renewed interest in the works of Razia Khan in the English language. And indeed it does.
Several key speakers commented on how the book cover was simple and classy, much as Razia Khan would have liked it to be, drawing our attention more importantly to the content and giving her words the room to impress and imprint themselves on our minds. The speakers included her childhood friend former Secretary Asafuddowla, her former students Professor Kaiser Haq, Professor Fakrul Alam, Professor Tahmina Ahmed and Syed Badrul Ahsan.
Professor Serajul Islam Choudhury, eminent Litérateur, Professor Emeritus of Dhaka University was the guest of honour and enthralled the audience with his extensive review of the book.
He started by pointing out how, no matter what identity Razia Khan went by – and there were many, including teacher, journalist, actor, novelist, essayist, columnist, playwright – she always had an innate poetic strain in her narrative. She was gifted with great imagination and took inspiration from many sources, such as Greek mythology, English novels and Hebrew Literature. In a way she was like George Elliot, the writer she had based her PhD dissertation on. Just as George Elliot always seemed to be on a quest; just as she had based her fiction on reality, just as she was poetic in her writing; so too was Razia Khan. Here was a woman who was never still, a woman always looking for answers.
In a way, he thought, she was the embodiment of Icarius. The same Icarius who attempted to escape from Crete by flying on wings that his father had constructed from feathers and wax. Razia Khan possessed an identical urge to be free of metaphorical imprisonment or social boundaries.
It is exemplified in her poem “With Icarius”:
But me, now hardened
Chiselled and burnt,
Transcend Thy primeval
Mud; yet light eludes
These hands of clay
Suspended between
Sky and earth.

Those who are not
With us Icarius
Cling to the mud,

Similarly, we see it in her poem “St Joan in Prison”:
I will rise to you
On the wings of this new
Strength, my citadel
Of pain.
Today I reject all
That loosen
Cheapen or rust
My taut, tense and vibrant strings.
Professor Choudhury points out how full of passion these poems are, but the genius lies more in the constraint of such passion, to avoid convolution and unnecessary rhetoric. There's a liveliness, a drama to her poetry that makes the reader want to continue reading, to excitedly ride along with her imagination and see what new grounds they may arrive upon.
In fact, in her author's note, Razia Khan claims that to be precisely her aim: “All through these poems, I have consciously aimed at simplicity and avoidance of technical novelties…” and underlines why readers inevitably go back “with renewed pleasure” to the great poets – Byron, Yeats, Donne, etc. According to her, it is because: “With them circumlocutions are never an obsession. They manage to be profound and lively without being insufferably obscure.” Taking on the blueprint of these great poets, Razia Khan structured her poetry on her points of interest.
Dr Hamida Hossain, another guest speaker, highlighted Razia Khan's emphasis on understanding complex human relationships.  We see this in her poetic dialogue between 'he' and she' in the poem “Cruel April”:
SHE:
Oh God, he came into the room like
lightning
Making my emptiness
Naked under his glance; for a moment
In my dazedness
I lay open like a book; He read me
And having read
Hides the meaning in his folded
Arms, averted eyes.

HE:
You think I haven't got the courage?
I have, but
What use is it darling? For the last
Ten years
You have been another's wife;
Clearly, Razia Khan's poems have a certain sensitivity and responsiveness when focussing on such subjective matters. She takes a highly personal experience and poetically dissects it from different points of view.
Some poems are more of a dramatic monologue. Professor Choudhury identifies the first poem “Argus under Anaesthesia” as one. In this poem, Razia Khan combines the concept of a 100-eyed giant from Greek mythology with social etherisation as popularised by T.S. Elliot to symbolically refer to our '71 war. Despite being abroad at that time, she could visualize the fragility of life so clearly:
…scattered ashes enveloped
The moving column
In a thin safety of silence;
The least noise was suicidal;
A mother frenzied by the roar of mortars
Throttled her whining infant:
Its life for the life of millions.
In the third part of her poem, Razia Khan refers to the myopic British Member of Parliament who had visited Bangladesh at that time and reported back to England that the events of war were mere exaggerations.  Smoothly, sarcastically Razia Khan comments on this:
“Genocide? No! – Only banquets,
Lovely roses, bushy eye-brows,
Exotic charm – a little brutal perhaps”,
Immediately, an image of Yahya Khan floats up before us. How cleverly she thus displays various aspects of the war through her poem.
But the final part of the poem is truly the Pièce de résistance. Despite being in a country far away, sometime in November 1971, she wrote with uncanny futuristic clarity. At a point when the fighting was at its most brutal, a time when our young freedom fighters were getting killed brutally, she clung fiercely to hope:
What if these livid plants which
Bore the roses should awake in a terrible
Resurrection
Armed like Argus with a myriad eyes;
And with their
Omniscient, cruel light burn the hypnotic
Tongue of demagogues,
Scald inept fingers glued to the reins
And demand back
Their broken lives, theirs
To live or sacrifice?
Professor Choudhury opines that it is as if she is reflecting not just on the '71 war but in all the future generations who will also stand up against injustice, to demand a meaningful life or even sacrifice in order to gain it. Razia Khan had a poetic clarity about the society she lived in. Thus her poems were her dramatic responses to what was happening around her at that time.
Razia Khan's sensitivities are evident in all her poems, no matter the topic. In her poem “The School Wall”, she reflects about a physical partition separating the rich from the poor:
Only a wall divides them
Mildewed, mossy innocuous
Concrete; the bitter curtain
Of separation.
And the hope to bridge such gaps:
…their hands
Met over the barrier, exchanging
Wild berries…
In “Anglo-Saxon Attitudes”, Razia Khan deftly dons the garb of an Anglo-Saxon and shares his thoughts. She talks about how the colonial powers have stolen from us and how we, in turn, have taken their language and made it our own.
Don't tell us –
These sapphires and rubies
Our empress wears.
Her diamond tiara,
Were stolen
From your treasures?
…
The theft is mutual –
We stole the jewels and the gold
Our language you pilfered
And our bread and butter;
At the launch, Professor Choudhury said, “Poetry should be read in general but not perfectly. It should be read repeatedly and every time we read it, it should seem new. That's where the greatness of a poem lies.” His comment is an apt summation for this book. Razia Khan's “Collected Poems” is truly the kind of book that one wishes to keep within reaching distance for the passionate expressions, for the beautiful use of language and for the sheer delight of reading poetry when the mood strikes.