A Host of Offences

A List of Offences by Dilruba Z. Ara; Dhaka: University Press Limited; 2006; Tk. 550; pp. 339.(left) & Kali O Kolom, May 2006, edited by Abul Hasnat, published by Ice Media Ltd.

However, the excitement faded as I began to go through the book. The story traces the life of Daria, (born with silver hair, which automatically ensures her the role of the outsider in her society) as she grows up, marries a cold-fish weirdo, breaks away and discovers herself. Though a whole host of offences are committed by the author (language that hovers between the pretentious and tone-deaf, an ill-conceived notion of what constitutes magical realism, to just list two of them), the besetting sin of A List of Offences is a fairly wholesale copying--in all manner of ways--of Arundhati Roy's style in The God of Small Things. One stark example should suffice, an example that is just the tip of the iceberg. If we were to open Roy's book, say, at p. 306 we would find:

"The History House.

Whose doors were locked and windows open..

Where translucent lizards lived behind old paintings.

Where dreams were captured and re-dreamed."

And if we open A List of Offences, say, at p. 183, we come across:

"A secret.

A borrowed family name.

A borrowed history."

And Dilruba Ara never lets up. She just keeps on doing it, on almost every other page.

Success spawns imitations; originals give birth to copies. By itself it is nothing remarkable. Eliot and Joyce gave birth--and still do--to innumerable imitators, to styles and books, and in fact, The God of Small Things itself owes quite a bit to Ulysses. Arundhati's novel, by winning the Booker and catapulting her to global celebrity-hood, has predictably given rise to overweening ambition in South Asian 'writers' eager to ride on its back to some imagined glory. But, to put it very simply, there are good copies, where there is a creative absorption and re-working that gives rise to something radiantly new, and then there are bad copies, where, in Pope's words, "the vulgar thus through imitation err." Though one has to admire Dilruba Ara's persistence and determination in having written a full-length novel in English and joined the select few Bangladeshis who have actually done so, I am afraid her book falls very much in the 'vulgar imitation' category.

One hopes that her next attempt will be more successful.

The latest issue of Kali O Kolom, the literary journal, is out at the city's newsstands. Especially interesting in this volume, among the usual cornucopia of pieces ranging from short stories to book/art/drama reviews to poetry and travel articles, is a rather brave, if ultimately doomed, effort by Debesh Rai to translate into Bengali Act I of 'Romeo and Juliet,' a laudable attempt to render into Bengali Mercutio's famous answer to Benvolio's question: "Queen Mab, what's she?"

Khademul Islam is literary editor, The Daily Star.