<i>Kali O Kolom</i> Ashar 1415-June 2008
While the cover art of Kali O Kolom tends to be chosen from among the works of some of the leading artists of Bangladesh, even by those high standards the cover of the current issue of our premier literary journal acts like a magnet for the eye. It is, the journal informs us, the work of Murtaza Bashir, part of his famous Romoni series. This artwork illustrates how the journal manages to unobtrusively showcase major artists, whose works for articles and poems also decorate the inside pages. No other journal in the country does this showcasing with such ease and flair--of course it can't hurt that publisher Abul Khair has amassed the best collection of art in Bangladesh. That the journal's readers are responsive to this aspect of the journal is vividly depicted in the letters section of this Ashar 1415 issue, where they have given their views on the previous Kali O Kolom special art issue with vigour and enthusiasm. The essays leading off the volume also illustrates another trend unique to Kali O Kolom, which is an willingness to risk publication of materials that normally do not find a place in staid literary journals. Thus one can follow an engrossing debate on the changing standards and perspectives of the Bengali language, now elevated to an expanded space and coverage from its original modest start initiated by writer/journalist Anisul Hoque some issues back when a few readers engaged him on a debate about the merits/demerits of the language he had employed in a novel. Thus in this issue we have Ali Anwar propounding on the subject in his 'Bhashar Rajniti' while Hasnat Abdul Hye weighs in judiciously with his 'Lekhar Bhasha, Mukher Bhasha'. Continuing the tangentially in a knowledgeable piece on the prize-winning novelist Hasan Azizul Haq, Mostafa Tariqul Ahsan seeds his essay on the writer with a section on the latter's use of language. This aspect of the Haq's novel was previously noted in this page a couple of weeks by reviewer Mahmud Rahman: "The voice Hasan Azizul Huq has created in Agunpakhi is also extraordinary because the book is written entirely in dialect. Such language is rare in Bangladeshi fiction. The dialect is fairly close to standard Bangla, differences mainly show up in pronunciation and spelling. This language enhances the pleasure of reading the book. You can almost hear Agunpakhi singing in your ear." Ahsan expands expertly on what Mahmud referred to, and it is indeed pleasing to note that this fine but somewhat neglected writer is at last getting some due recognition. Among the short stories are two that deserve mention: Anowara Syed Haq's 'Purnimai Naukher Achor' with its careful pacing and unwinding of plot, and Kanai Kundu's 'Ebong Ami O', where a plasticity of texture seems to capture, then evade, then capture again the 'reality' of modern Bengali life. One here also must not forget Anishchoy Chakraborty's 'Binirmaan', with its cool beginning lines, "This year winter arrived very late in the city of Kolkata. And it was as if the later the winter arrived, the more time that fleeting Hemanta could display her face to Nature, to people, to women." The original Bengali lines displays a naturally fine home-spun sensibility, in contrast to the sometimes ill-advised, post-modernism-infected-importations produced by a considerable body of our writers. Among the poems Humayun Chowdhury's 'Shahid Quaderi Bari Nai' is a witty play on the title of a celebrated poem by Shahid Quadri as well as a wry tribute to a poet-in-exile ( 'Shahid Quaderi is not at home' could also metaphorically mean that he is not in Bangladesh) who in the last issue of Kali O Kolom broke his near three decades of silence by penning two poems. As in the review of that volume, we again renew the call to the journal to keep nudging the poet to write again. The rest is the usual medley of high-grade art and drama reviews, the continuing serialized fiction by Selina Hossain and the ever-fertile, ever-popular Samaresh Majumdar, an affecting tribute to the recently deceased writer Khalida Edib Chowdhury, ending with book reviews. One would hopefully not be doing these other pieces a disservice by mentioning that the most enjoyable of them is a narration by Rafiqunnabi of a trip taken by Bangladeshi artists to New York for an art show. The writing by the creator of the ageless Tokai and of watercolour washes of Dhaka city, is breezy and touching at the same time, deftly sketching a classic vignette of American probashi life. The same cannot be said of the accompanying photos, spread over five pages, all monotonously displaying the same faces. But, clearly Rafiqunnabi's talents are not all monopolized by his painting.
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