Fly our Icarus, fly high!

Mahfuz Sadique on the return of a martyr…

A small patch of land in the graveyard for Class IV employees of the Mashrur Airbase in Karachi, has long belonged to Bangladesh.
There lay, uncared for and unmentioned, flight lieutenant Matiur Rahman, Bir Shreshtha. Not anymore.
Matiur came home on Saturday night, almost 35 years after he had taken flight from Pakistan to fly away home. Now, Matiur will be laid to rest in a free land that he had dreamed of.
Matiur’s wife lamented that he had been buried in Karachi where his grave was marked as that of a traitor.
‘I have nothing to ask from the country now. I have had a full life. All I want for my husband is to bring him back. Is he not Bangladesh’s hero?’ asked Matiur’s wife Milly, last year, speaking to New Age. Her wish has finally been fulfilled.
It was August 20, 1971, several months into a ‘no flying’ restriction on all East Pakistani pilots. Matiur decided it was time to break free. He boarded a T-33 aircraft and took off with an apprentice from West Pakistan. A few minutes into the flight, the plane crashed, burying his dream to fight for his country with the one skill he had acquired throughout his professional life—flying a fighter.
His daughter Mahim Matiur Khandakar, who was a little girl when her father left home never to come back, was the only Bangladeshi to visit his grave in 1994.
She had grown up knowing that her father was one of the great heroes who had sacrificed his life for his country. However, it was not until she was 23 that she had the opportunity to visit her father’s grave.
‘On her return Mahim officially applied to the government to relocate Matiur’s grave to Bangladesh,’ said Milly.
Bit it was not till 2003 that the government finally decided to build memorials honouring the seven Bir Sreshthas at their place of martyrdom. As Matiur died on Pakistani soil, the government decided to build a memorial near Bijoy Sarani in the capital.
At the foundation-laying ceremony in 2003, Milly and Matiur’s elder brother Khorshed Alam, a retired civil servant and a former Bangladesh Bank governor, requested the government for the second time to bring Matiur home.
‘It is not unusual. Nations have always had the custom of relocating graves of their statesmen and martyrs whenever and wherever appropriate. I requested the government to do so too,’ says Khorshed.
Matiur’s youngest brother, Alamgir Kabir Samad, has also been pursuing this cause for several years now. General awareness in the matter had also grown with the years.
Paribesh Bachao Andolan, an environmentalist organisation, had also presented a memorandum to both the president and the prime minister to relocate Bir Sreshtha Matiur’s grave in 2005.
Matiur’s memorty has been preserved in writing, at least, through publication of Bir Sreshtha Matiur Rahman Smarak Grantha brought out by Agami Prokashani at the Ekushey Book Fair in 2005.
The book, edited by Milly, attempts to put together a proper documentation of her husband’s life.
The Bangladesh Air Force and the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs were the concerned authorities regarding a move on the relocation issue. ‘I have repeatedly sent letters to both and even to the Prime Minister’s Office. But nothing has happened yet,’ complained Milly, last year.
While Bangladesh may have won independence in 1971, Milly’s personal struggle ended when the government finally decided to bring back Matiur. Our hero would finally fly home.
Earlier this year, after several rounds of talks, Pakistan agreed to return the mortal remains of Matiur Rahman.
A delegation of Liberation War Affairs ministry had gone to Pakistan on June 20 to bring Matiur back.
As Matiur’s grandson, Rashad, visits the war heroes’ museum in Washington DC, he finds his grandfather’s name there. He has long asked Milly of his great ancestor.
Other than a few faded photographs and tales of glory, there was nothing for Rashad.
Now, Rashad will have a patch of soil in his forefather’s land that holds not just his legacy, but a nation’s pride. Milly’s hero will live amongst us.
In Greek mythology, when Icarus flew high towards the sun and his wax wings melted, he had only one dream — to fly. Matiur flew too on that August morning. He dreamt of a liberated motherland. A son of our soil, our martyr, had long lied neglected in some land that is not his own. Like a ghost trapped in eternal twilight, Matiur’s bones were trapped in the soils of a foreign land.
Our Icarus’ soul will fly high, in the blue skies of a free land from now and forever.

Dhaka’s eternal winter Mardi Gras

Mahfuz Sadique on Dhaka’s winters…
Awaiting the blood-red krishnachuras to set ablaze the coming afternoons, and usually the boulevards of politics too, with the recurrent lull of fluffy Falguni saris, Dhaka is again creeping out of its hibernating cultural cocoon to the eternal Mardi Gras of literati, glitterati and dramatics of her elegant winters.
Almost like a snake coming out of its scales to the glow of a new body – new identity – of life, of nature, Dhaka will shed its old skin. As the morning mists of winter thickens, the cultural identity of the capital in particular, and the entire country in general, shows its true colours again.
With poets, novelists, and the essential die-hard amateurs of little magazines, all scampering over proofs of to-be-published titles, publishers go on an overdrive of zeal in the promise of taste, and talisman of overturned fortunes – as do their weary presses.
Winter is truly Dhaka’s literati high-tide. Despite the Dhaka International Book Fair in full swing, sceptic readers are holding back for the grand coming of Ekushey. Like a magic wand, the Ekushey book fair springs life in not just the world of words and rhymes; but the entire city becomes a congregation spellbound in the sometimes mild, and sometimes vigorous, sermon on ‘identity crisis’ as the circus of cultural pandemonium rages on.
The theatre houses find their seats filled to the brim, not just with audience but also with ‘constructive’ criticism. With a new experimental theatre in operation, and a vibrant street theatre movement gearing up to bring drama to the dramatics of the street, Dhaka’s theatre scene is all fired up. Big groups planning new plays, and the trend of staging pieces from the golden days all add up to the crescendo.
Though the celebration of the silver screen had an early start this time, and that too with much commotion, be sure to see a few more highs and lows in the film festival scene. Retrospectives are in these days – Bergman’s, Kurusawa’s, Tarkovsky’s – name it, and the quite able film societies of the capital will tickle your taste of artsy celluloid slice of life.
Photographers had a field day in early winter with the grand congregation of their kind at Chobi Mela III in December. And there are still a few exhibitions of those who claim to ‘stop life with a click.’
And then to the canvas. Zainul lover’s had a feast for their eyes with a monumental gathering of the Shilpacharya’s work all over the capital. From the supple Santal women to the maestro’s brush strokes to envisage ‘Rebellion’ and the endearing ‘Famine’ sketches, all were there. It was a colossal show of Bangladesh’s greatest gift to life’s impression on canvas.
The world of glamour, not to be left out of the fanfare, will contribute its part to the carnival. Fashion shows, award ceremonies, the essential Eid star-hype, and the unavoidable baggage of glitz is sure to distract a few.
Regional brouhaha during the SAARC summit, sometime in February, is sure to create a lot cultural soul searching for the subcontinent. But nothing to worry as the hype is sure to die down even faster than its rise. Thanks to it, Dhaka got a face lift – partially though.
Not to let lose of its grip on life, commerce will have its share of space too. And a lot of it in fact, as trade fairs – international, national and local – all to bring new fads in between those tight budgets of books and bangles.
There is something about winter though. Slow mornings, mellow evenings, roadside bhapa pithas, warm clothes, and warmer hearts are the quintessential delights this Dhaka of ours offers in her most beautiful season.
Enjoy winter, enjoy Dhaka!

Published: The New Age/ January, 2005

Ekushey Diaries: Translations, CCTVs, commissions and growing up with Ekushey

Mahfuz Sadique on the Ekushey Boi Mela…

Here is a thought, or rather a suggestion, which has long been in circulation: instead of the prime minister, why not have national or international literary personalities inaugurate the Ekushey Boi Mela? Like an annual re-run of a bad sitcom, the prime minister came, and with equal mediocrity the student wings of opposition political parties protested, and the first day of the Boi Mela went down the drain with a zillion police personnel and their ‘Black Overlords’ trampling up and down the same rough, dry soil of Bangla Academy where Chittaranjan Saha had spread a single sheet of cloth one Phalgun afternoon thirty-four years ago with the the fruits of one of our greatest struggle — books, books in Bangla!

Browsing between stalls, which have quite lost their aesthetic edge as was seen even a few years back, one genre clearly caught attention, at least in terms of quantity —translation. Major publishers have stacked their early releases with a lot of translations of everything from Marquez’s In Evil Hour (Shomoy), new translations of Shakespeare by Syed Shamsul Huq (Anyaprokash) to science fiction volumes of Asimov and Arthur C Clark (Oitijjhya). Not just from English, titles such as Kaifi Azmi’s Seleted Poems (Mawla Brothers) have added flavour to the offerings. But original works are plentiful. While the regular Mela warmers are all geared up, poetry has also seen a rejuvenated comeback on the shelves with major publishers all carrying significant numbers of poetry by young poets.

In retrospect, Boi Mela is the same as it has always been. I gather that that is good, considering that everything else seems to be in a degenerative slide. For one thing, there is less hype about publications of commercially successful authors which is in turn giving healthy space to other genres and off-track work that deserve attention. And there seems to be a genuine attempt from the side of publishers to put forward good work.

Children’s fiction has for long remained the orphan in Bangla literature. But quite a few titles on children’s themes have been published this year. Adorn Publication has come out with several good titles. But one sad casualty of placement has become the much-hyped separate children’s book arena. Completely pushed to a corner, it generates little attention, let alone excitement.

Though the first few evenings at the Mela always make it seem like an abandoned school playground, this time the first Friday came on the third day, thus generating early crowds; the lines snaking all the way to TSC indicating better days in late February. But for the second time, metal detectors and archways were slowing down entry of visitors. And here is an interesting observation, not necessarily on the Mela: we are quite an adaptable bunch. While last year saw a hue and cry over the massive security setup, this year all parties involved seem to be content with it. The latest addition is CCTV at major corners of the Mela. How perspectives change!

As for publishers, the regular complaint at including non-publishing houses at the Mela premises is still there. With prices of paper at an all-time high, publishers have had to hike prices. As a safeguard for maintaining good sales at the Mela, and invariably throughout the year, regular commission has been increased to 30 per cent. Eventually, readers will not feel much of a pinch from the price hike.

Here are some of the released titles last week that came to my attention: Dushyopner Jatri by Anisul Huq (Shomoy), Mohammad Zafar Iqbal’s Ruhan Ruhan (Shomoy), Thai Thai Nonajal by Moni Haider (Oitijjhya), Rashtrer Ghunpoka O Bibidho Galpa by Towhin Hasan (Oitijjhya), Shey Raate Bristi Chilo by Himu Akram (Oitijjhya), Shinga Bajabey Ishrafil by Wasi Ahmed (Oitijjhya), Ekatturey Ronangoney by Nizamuddin Laskar (Oitijjhya), Poth Choltey Ja Dekhechi by Ahmed Rafique (Oitijjhya), Kaifi Azmi’r Nirbachito Kabita (Mawla Brothers), Nirjonota Thekey Jonaronney by Shamsur Rahman (Mawla Brothers), Tin Pakhnar Projapoti O Onnanya Golpo by Abid Anwar (Mawla Brothers), Amader Boi Mela by Humayun Azad (Agami), Nobboi Dashake Bangladesher Chhatra Andolon by Dr Mohammad Hannan (Agami), Chomironer Ekattor by Shamoly Nasreen Chowdhury (Agami), Raman by Jahid Hasan (Agami), Amader Shangskritik Andolon O Muktijuddhyo by Taher Uddin (Agami), Nandini by Anisul Huq (Kakoly), Ek Odbhut Aroj Ali by Mina Farah (Annanya), Dhaka Hariye Jaoa Chobir Khojey by Muntasor Mamoon (Annanya), Bhalobashar Dipgulo by Rafiqul Islam Chowdhury (Annanya), Chotoder Kamrul Hasan by Dr Syeda Mahmudul Hasan (Annanya).

The inseparable sibling of the Boi Mela, the Jatiya Kabita Utsab (National Poetry Festival) saw a handsome gathering this year. With both kicking off on the same day, and the Festival continuing for two more days, many visitors ended up enjoying a double-delight.

The lazy stroll at dusk around the pond of Bangla Academy, through stalls stacked with books that still had the smell of paper, ink and glue on them, made me realise last Monday that the Ekushey Boi Mela is one of those mirrors of the everyday. Enjoy Ekushey, enjoy Phalgun!

Ekushey Diaries: ‘Real’ readers, typos, little magazines, and joys of being

Mahfuz Sadique on the Ekushey Boi Mela

I can’t help but hearing this complaint regularly: we are a nation that is becoming devoid of joy. What does that mean? No, seriously. Not even a week passes that we find ourselves rejoicing en masse on the streets, in our homes, and even in offices over some national issue. Be it Bangladesh’s win over Sri Lanka, or the first rain of Baishakh. Last Tuesday, another such celebration swept through Bangladesh. The faces of men, women, children in the Prabhat Feri, or moving to the Shaheed Minar, held a gaze that stretched far beyond Ekushey. They are rejoicing the Bengali way of life. We might not have all our ‘Baro Mashe, Tero Parbans’ (‘thirteen festivals for twelve months’), but we are a nation reinventing itself every day. And in the process, we are not just finding new joys, but rediscovering old ones.
The Boi Mela was quite subdued last week, except just Tuesday. While publishers kept up a constant stream of titles, the eagerness with which readers, or even just observers, came to the Mela saw a dip. It’s typical. The hype is over. Now, the final few days will find the ‘real’ readers rummaging, literally, through the stalls.
I bumped into one the other day. An early starter, the middle-aged man with greying hair (the absence of a thick glass disappointed me though) had a hand-written list in his hand. With the ease, and confidence, of an inner-city bus conductor, he was oblivious to the throngs whizzing past him. He stood at a corner of he stall. An attendant listened to him intently as he recited the name of books — a dozen of them — that he wanted from that particular publisher. He knew exactly the year of publication, the author, and at one point was even guiding the shop assistant by describing the cover of certain rare titles. How I felt: envy!
And while on the subject of serious readers, a disturbing observation has come to notice. As publishers, writers and even readers all seem to stack their entire year’s book-enquiries for just the Mela, the Ekushey Boi Mela sees nearly seventeen-hundred
titles published. Some estimates
put it at nearly half, if not more, of the total output of our publishing
industry.
While this might be all rosy for the Mela, the trend is not good. Books are riddled with typos, pages go missing. And the most alarming is this: in the rush to catch the Mela, even major writers, and poets (very disturbing!), fill pages with what can barely be called ‘creative endeavours’. Though almost blasphemous to say during the Mela season, but maybe publishers should put a break on the number of titles published just to catch up with the Mela. I am pained at the thought that our readers are given books filled with pages which were merely ‘produced’.
Scruffy beard, tangled-up long braids hanging over an equally greasy fatua, or punjabi, and, invariably partaking in high-pitched conversations filled with word-pairings such as ‘class-consciousness’, ‘petty-bourgeois’, ‘parallel movement’.
Welcome to the Bohera Tola, or also known as the ‘Little Mag Corner’. The names of the stalls, usually bearing an identical title of the Little Magazine that its organisers bring out, are also as refreshing as they are ‘alternative’: Shaluk, Mangal Saanyha, Lok, Shukkurbarer Adda, Trishan, Kabitar Dokan, Gandib, Shuddha Swar. Centring on the Bohera tree adjoining the Burdwan House, this corner is the frontier between commercial publishing and the ‘never say die’ alternative groups of mostly young literary activists. Their subject and medium choices though have waned in their variety. Most are obsessed with the critique and discussion on either ‘imperialism’ or ‘cultural identity’, and their only medium of choice seems to be essays.
But Little Magazines were much more vibrant even a decade or two ago. Short stories, poems, interviews that no major publishers or newspapers dared to carry, these vanguards would boldly publish them. Some attribute this decline to the ‘hungry tide’ of commercial publications and the almost unbearable pressures of conforming to their ways. But despite all their constraints and declines, Little Magazines are a genre that is needed. Even more so today, as every other voice in mainstream media, literature seems to sound ‘pre-packaged’. Maybe they are not supposed to thrive, for in their constant struggle, in their dilemma of remaining ‘little’, they bring out the best of whatever originality we have to offer.
Joy: I started with it, and I shall end with it. You have probably heard this criticism many a times, and even indulged in it yourself (I know I have): the mass-hysteria, the crushing crowds to get the autograph of a favourite author. But as I tried to cross one such clog in between stalls at the Mela last Tuesday, the joy and excitement of the restless at finding the creators of the ‘magical worlds’ they read about, just a few yards from hand is an exhilaration no less than a little boy suddenly receiving a big red balloon.
Two teenage girls were screaming, jumping, and almost out of their minds, as they came out of the hue and cry of the crowd. They each
had an autograph of Humayun Ahmed. How do you define this joy? What conjures up such feelings of exaltation?
Visit the Mela this week, the last one. Brave the crowds, and those autograph-hunters. You will not regret it. As I was saying, we are a nation reinventing itself. To know its dynamics, to feel its pulse, its frustrations and joys, a visit to the Ekuhey Boi Mela is a must. It holds the strides of a nation that is slowly gaining the confidence to speak up, to say what it feels. It is a nation that is celebrating both the future, and the spirit it imbues within itself.

Ekushey Diaries: Bashanti bhalobasha, bloated fiction, rear-end stalls

Mahfuz Sadique on the Ekushey Boi Mela…
Bashanti (saffron is closest in colour, although far from romanticism of the Bengali connotation), red and in keeping with the times, black defined the past week of Ekushey Boi Mela — the month-long book fair. Phalgun came to Ekushey, as usual, on February 13, the first day of Bengali spring.

Fair ladies, in their saffron saris, Marigold garlands clinging desperately onto their black cascading hair, lit up the evenings at the fair grounds, Teachers-Students Centre and the campus beyond. With bedazzled lovers in kurtas, timidly holding their hands, the book fair greeted the season of love with poetry.

Poets churned out an endless stream of musings. Shamsur Rahman, Al Mahmud, Syed Shamsul Huq, Rafique Azad, Belal Chowdhury, Mohammad Rafique, Mahadev Shaha, Nirmolendu Gun, each had several titles of poetry published.

Yet prose, especially the novels, saw some of the best additions to the fair. Hasan Azizul Huq’s Agun Pakhi and Shaheedul Jaheer’s Mukher Dikey Dekhi are two worth mentioning.

Tipped off as one of the best works of fiction, Hai’s only work this year crudely points towards a fundamental flaw in the ceaseless output of writers and poets, especially of those who have something worthwhile to give. Quantity seems to have taken such a strong foothold, that quality wanders like an orphan between stalls of profit-hungry publishers.

Should we consider ourselves lucky that every single year, noted novelists and poets produce, like literary tadpoles, multiple titles? Or should we feel doomed? Poetry that comes as easy as bread crumbs, novels in triplets, are signs of literature/culture that feeds by skimming off the surface of society.

Or maybe this is just a question that should be asked every February, and then forgotten? Remember Elias. That distant mountain of Bangladesh’s fiction where wild flowers once smiled, Akhtaruzzaman Elias. No self-respecting author, who knew him or have read his work, would tell you that he didn’t write enough. But in the long labour of fiction’s birth, Elias gave us just five books of short stories and two novels. And yet in their course, he has redefined and expanded the scope, depth and dream of Bengali fiction. Now isn’t that how it is supposed to be? The latent Khoabnamas, or Chiley Kotha’r Sepoys, are getting diluted in multiple novels on, well simply, nothing!

As a befitting chorus to the crescendo of nature, cupid had his day at the fair too. Valentine’s Day found the mela filled to brim with couples. Adding to their already red hot sales, popular fiction writers had a field day. Emdadul Huq Milon signed so many autographs — with probably as many ‘sweetened’ words as in his novels — that as evening drew close, he turned around and commented: ‘Love can be a pain. My hand is aching from scribbling so many sweet words of love. But I guess, for one day, it’s worth it.’ Some publishers gave out a rose to each of their ‘beloved’ readers on the day.

At the exit, an entire block of stalls have more or less remained same, for many years, at least in their nature and variation, just changing names every five years. While the past five years have seen ‘Zia’ somehow embedded into these stalls’ names, and novice oil portraits of Ziaur Rahman, Khaleda Zia, and their son, the previous five Februarys found equal, if not more, number of stalls with Bangabandhu and every possible combination that could come with him. In retrospect, though these stalls have occupied the Nazrul Chattar, a lucrative location, their position at the rear end of the Mela probably gives the best indication to the ‘vision’, or ‘content’, of their publications. The masses, naturally, rush past these stalls with the same enthusiasm that they flood into the fair with. What ignominy! But would they realise it, if ever?

Black was the other significant colour last week. Like an annual celebration of the essential symbol of the urban bohemian, Himu, Humayun Ahmed’s seminal character, came alive in another book. But Himu’s yellow punjabi, and bare feet, were not the prime attraction this time. Holud Himu Kalo RAB (Himu in yellow, RAB in black) starts off with Himu’s latest eccentricity: selling tea and coffee in flasks. Every policeman’s nightmare, he however falls into the hands of the dreaded Rapid Action Battalion, as a suspected suicide bomber (recall the suicide flask-bomber in Gazipur last November).

Not to spoil your pleasure, the interesting aftermath of the book’s publication (50 young men and women — Humayun calls them Himi — paraded the grounds in yellow t-shirt) was that on Sunday, according to a Bengali daily, Samakal, there was a top-level meeting.

Chaired by our very vigilant ‘looking-for-shotrus’ Lutfozzaman Babar, in-charge of the home ministry, was given not just a copy of the book by the battalion, but also a report on its content and possible effects on the public image of the ‘dark overlords’ of instant justice. Now that’s vigilance!

The lights of the Mela had been turned off. It was a little after 9:00pm. While coming out, at the gates, in all the rush, a father had let go of his toddler’s hand. The little boy strolled a few feet, his tiny fingers were stretched out, and for balance was about to tug at the trouser of a member of battalion, deployed at the gate.

With reflexes, that would even put Jonty Rhodes to shame, the father snatched his son back into his arms. As I passed by, a fleeting whisper caught my ear, ‘Orey shona, kalo rab! bhoy, bhoy!’ — Sweetie, that’s black RAB, beware!

So much for real-life anecdotes, I leave you with fiction. An old Bengali folk-rhyme that Himu improvises on, at the RAB Headquarters in Uttara, in Holud Himu Kalo RAB…

‘Chhele ghumalo, para juralo
RAB elo deshe
Shontrashira dhan kheyeche
Khajna debo kishe?’

To rise from the ashes of the Pheonix

Yes, it is time. The fables of great battles that imagined themselves in the minds of men are not creeping up anymore. They are here. It is time to speak out. The ‘forgotten furies’ of millions – starved, dead, forgotten – have finally deepened into a gathering storm. A pregnant pause. And then the battle shall begin, my friend.

Speak out loud against those who want their dreams to prevail and not anything else.

SCREAM!

May the dream of a ‘poetic’ world rise from the ashes of the Pheonix!

Chobi Mela: Endurance written in light

Human civilisation has moved through the centuries unwilling to yield in the face of odds and this crusade of endurance continues. Photographers unite at Chobi Mela to salute this human spirit which is delicate but never defeated…Mahfuz Sadique looks into the images of resilience…
The endurance of the human frame is not a monumental feat, but a miraculous one. From the carnival on the streets of Trenabade, Brazil of faceless slum dwellers in Meyer’s digital storytelling to the omnipresent reality of AIDS in Kuruganti’s black and white frames, survival against odds is the underlying history of the world. And the magic potion of life amidst all this is the inbuilt resistance that can be found in not just the Tuesday protests in front of the parliament building of Thailand through the images of Manit Sriqanichproom, or the brick-bat-armed coming Arafats of the eternal ‘Intifada’ of Palestine in Omit’s digital posters, but even more so in the struggle for survival of the redundant mill workers of the once ‘Manchester of India’ famed Ahmedabad leaping out of Parthiv Shah’s ghosts of the forgotten past or maybe in the new hope of rejuvenation sipping through Kay Chin’s coloured veil of resilience in human existence through the birth of a healthy baby boy amidst the devastation of nature’s disaster in the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan.

And this infallibility of the soul – resistance – is showcased at the ongoing Chobi Mela III, the third installation of the now globally recognised biennial photography event organised by Drik Picture Library, with the patronage, partnership and support from both national and international components. Staring from December 6, the Mela is going on till December 23, at seven venues and numerous mobile exhibitions all over Dhaka, showing the works of a total of 91 photographers from 17 countries through 38 exhibitions.

“To know that pity or mercy is the last thing these people [the subjects] need. Rather, their story, as told through our images at Chobi Mela, is the true story of life. It is the story of resistance,” analyses Tay Kay Chin from Singapore whose work on hope amidst the life of various underprivileged communities throughout Asia, entitled ‘Glimpses of Mercy’ is one of the colours on the canvas of this Chobi Mela. His work is being shown at the unusual setting – the outdoors of Abahani Playground in Dhanmondi; probably one of the more poignant places to show images of resistance.

Another story from a different, yet thematic perspective is the one by Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski. His photographs at the “World of little heroes” being exhibited at the Alliance Française Gallery in Dhanmondi shows the daily lives of two physically impaired children living at two corners of the world – one in Canada and another in Bangladesh. “I spent weeks and weeks with two 9 year old physically challenged girls – Samantha in Canada and Hasina in Bangladesh. The most impressive thing was that both girls and their families resisted negative feelings completely. They were happy, optimistic, positive and enjoying life deeply. They demonstrated that when you are in a position in life which seems to your disadvantage, it is up to yourself to resist it, liberate yourself and create a life which is the best,” examines the Dutch photographer.

As you browse through the exhibitions at the Chobi Mela, you are bound to discover that women are the binding thread in this story of survival. Shadi Ghardirian’s almost chrome celluloid impressions of life in the monotony of the everyday, in the veiled submissions of Iranian women, shows the story of a revolution within the four white washed walls of Tehran. “Western impression of oppression of women in Islamic communities, like that in Iran, is quite stereotyped. It is more ‘under the skin’ than it looks. Through the daily rituals of inevitabilities they stumble and falter within. The hijab-clad women with modern equipments show the confluence of the past and the present,” explains Shadi. While her black and white images at the Alliance Française hallway show the amalgamation of the new and the forgotten demons, the colour photographs show household appliances covering their faces creating the infinite loop of chores and nuances.

Maybe the same can be said of Mortein Krogvold’s hidden realities. The most intimate of realities – the one of form, of space – come out in the Norwegian’s work. If faces are the landscape of human emotions, then Krogvold knows that the rugged terrain of wrinkles, the unbroken texture of skin is the home of hope, love, despair and all those inevitabilities of existence. In the adipose, yet singular solitude of an old Peruvian woman’s frame, in the grand indifference of a widow in the urban jungle of Srebrenica, the form of life is revealed – in death and in life.

The alluvial giggles emanating from the strong frame of women on the plateau of a hill, digging the rugged land for sand and soil, gives off a different kind of sensuality; the kind quite similar to the bathing women by the banks of the Amazon, who ‘with fists like Mike Tyson’s’, and skin like sunlight, were just what their images show – alive.

Not just the timid trappings of living, but the revolutions of men have come forward also at the images at the Mela. The Iranian Reza Deghati and his upfront photographs of the Afgan warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud is one such example. A friendship that started with a challenge to a game of chess that had lasted more than 15 years, and today the walls of Drik Gallery hold the frames of their story. “They were shadows, they were men, they were mountain warriors against an iron invader,” came the own words of Deghati as he depicts his mural-like images of the warlord resting with his fellow soldiers or while, he reads from the Quran.

The land of Gandhi’s non-violent resistance and the Naxalite’s – the Indian subcontinent – has its own tale to tell. The ‘Nowhere people’ in Swapan Nayek’s pictures, at the ‘Little Asia’ exhibition at Abahani Playground in Dhanmondi, shows isplaced human mass drifting through the turns of nature. It comes out in the simple words from one his subjects. “We are at the mercy of the river. Sometimes it spares us the agony of shifting out, sometimes it doesn’t, but almost always, it haunts us,” says Zoinuddin, a grizzled seventy-year, an inhabitant of a char on the river Brahmaputra in Assam.

The tale of Bangladesh and her children of mercy are told by the visual shades of Abir Abdullah, Nayemuzzaman Prince and Bangladesh’s very own doyen of photography, Shahidul Alam. Be it the strength of existence in the lives of the people of Old Dhaka, or through the rubbles of the city shadowed by the glitter of glass domes, Abir’s work is truly a work of centuries of survival.

Shahidul Alam’s work on the untold tale of women of the Naxal movement, the class struggle spanning a generation of peasants and students, has timeless faces. In Shahidul’s own words, “These recollections help flesh out the actual lives and concerns of Bangladeshi Naxal women, women who are largely absent in party literature and in male-centred traditions of history-writing.” Arifa Begum’s portrait, as she sits on the porch of her mud hut, is as emblematic as the failed struggle for class emancipation.

And then there is Pedro, that mystery from Mexico, with his stories ‘written with light.’ The subliminal impressions on life and the pervasive reality within his photographs depict the every days of our lives with generous dashes of melancholy and ecstasy. From the empathy in the work on his dying parents entitled “I Photograph to Remember”, which was the first CD-ROM containing photographs and sound, to the critical look in his work of the representation of life that is a remake of the ‘fake of the fake’, Pedro Meyer has his own look on life. “I take pictures all the time. It’s my vehicle of memory. And that is also my work,” explains Meyer, considered to be the father of digital photography.

In his almost super-human expressions of a woman digitally clamped down to the size of the porcelain idols of drunken Mariachis on her porch is truly how Pedro sees the world around him – into frames of equality.

Ambrose Bierce describes photograph as ‘a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.’ To celebrate the art of light and shade, to capture what Salgado describes as the ‘potent magic in the pain of living and the tragedy of dying’, and eventually to celebrate this enduring human experience is what photographers do everyday.

Some of these quiet historians come together in Dhaka, every two years, to celebrate their unique human adventure. And they call it – Chobi Mela.

Published: The New Age/ December, 2004