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Ashleshar Rakshashi Belai — IV

Translated by Sonia Nishat Amin
*** In the Jaws of an Ill-starred Time by Syed Najmuddin Hashem ***
Syed Waliuilah
AMONG THOSE INTELLECTUALS and writers who had fanned the fire of unrest in the sixties Were French poet Paul Nizan. and father of Marxian structuralist thought. Claude Levi-Strauss, holding forth at Nantiees near Paris. Waliullah's eyes lit up at the men tion of these two. He derived an immense, quiet satisfaction from the knowledge that the pen had still the power to move the world. And then our 6
conversation would move on to the revolutions in France. Russia. China or Cuba — their ideologies and genesis; our arguments would branch off into diverse zones. Waliullah's erudition, his power of analysis and intensity of feeling never failed to amaze me. He was always concerned with the plight of Bengalees, their enslavement, and struggle for rights/autonomy. The vision of a free Bangladesh" — the kind of polity the Bengalees could claim as a homeland — were concerns even at that early date. He had doubts about the opportunist character of the Bengali middle-class. This also produced some anxiety about the particular brand of Bengali nationalism professed by that class. He was preoccupied with the quick and effective spread of education which could only come under a socialist agenda. He was convinced of this because he felt any change in the status-quo could be achieved not under a selfish, opportunist, rhetoric-prone leadership, but through the alternative development of rural, subaltern cadres. 1 could not agree with him fully that day. when a startling resistance was beginning to grow against.
I had the opportunity to work with Wali bhai on account of my assignment as Country Representative to the Subcommission on Communications at UNESCO while its General Conference was in progress. Waliuilah was
representing the Secretariat seated on the dais. His indulgence allowed me that year to make assertions and push my arguments through, forcefully.
On the eve of my departure from Paris (due to some difference of opinion with our ambassador there) I met the famed Tagore-singer Rajeswari Dutta, widow of poet Sudhindranath Dutta, at Waliuilah and Anne Marie's residence. Rajeswari was known to us in our adolescence by her Punjabi surname
'Basudeva'. After her husband's untimely demise, Rajeswari had gone into a phase of stony detachment from the world — no song escaped her lips. Wali bhai was recounting this incident to us. His voice shook slightly.
The first glimpse I caught of Rajeswari reminded me of the goddess Melancholy. I was somewhat inhibited. Though I craved to hear her sing I could not articulate the thought... There was a portable cassette-player on a table. While turning its knob, absentmindedly, I recited those timeless lines from Sudhindranath Dutta: "Moder shakkhat holo ashleshar rakshashi be
lai/Samudyata durbipake..." (We met in an hour when the jaws of an ill-starred tlme/Held the world in its grip ...). Rajeswari was startled, mistaking my voice for her husband's, on the tape. The ice thawed between us. My memory retains, to this day, the incomparable strain of her voice singing without any accompaniment — her lament; Shunt nai. shunt nai, rathero dhani taba (I had not heard your chariot wheels go by).
Parting from our constant companion of two years — Waliuilah and Anne-Marie Thibeaux. was painful. Our farewell dinner by candle-light, in their apartment, is still on the canvas of my mind like a still-life.
I met him briefly for the last time in 1970 at Rawalpindi. 1 was then the Executive Officer of the Pakistan Council. We were holding a reception in Waliullah's honour. The room was teeming with people. After my address. Kalimullah read excerpts from Wall bhais Lal Shalu' translated in Urdu. Others paid their tributes. Waliuilah was visibly moved, and said "Will
anyone remember me in my own land, after so long a lapse of time?"
Wali bhai had written a long letter on his return to Paris, describing the un-■ precedented, spontaneous, welcome and receptions accorded to him in Bangladesh (East Pakistan) during his visit that lime. He mentioned Shawkat Osman, Sanaul Huq and Munir Chowdhury, specifically. The essence of his letter was:
"When one finds the likes of selfless, sincere people such as these in the ranks of the narrow, envious Bengali middle-class, my hope for that nation is renewed. I share your visions of the fate of eternal Bengal."
And then, I saw Waliuilah for the last time, on my way from London to Ran goon, at the shady cemetery of Meudon. near Paris, in August 1980. The cemetery lying at the end of a gravel path — lined by trees which cast their shade all day on the grassy green. Flowers, the weekend s offerings were strewn over the stone covered graves. As 1 stood silently beside his grave. Sanaul Huq's lines (written for him) came to mind. "Why here, in a grave at Meudon. so far from Chattai?' Anne Marie had the same question. 1 told her Perhaps this could be his epitaph or his own lines He sleeps, because sleep is death But I prefer the first because that links us all — you. Wali, distant Bangladesh. But Anne was unresponsive She was
pained and puzzled by the callous behaviour of Wali's relatives and friends after his sudden demise. Her children Irej and Simin were disenchanted with Bengalis, too.
Waliuilah was one of the visionaries who dreamt of the freedom of mankind; during our War of Liberation he had worked ceaselessly to mount public opinion in France in favour of the Bengalees' struggle. And yet the bureaucrats of independent Bangladesh had raised petty questions regarding Waliullah's nationality and deprived his widow and children of their rightful share. I found among Simin s papers, the condolence message sent by the then President of Bangladesh to Anne-Marie. It was written in April 1972. seven months after Waliullah's death. The message contains references to the friendship between the two of them: eulogies of Waliuilah s works; the place he occupies in the generation of post independent writers of Bangladesh. What is missing in the condolence letter is a categorical recognition of Waliullah's role tn the nine months of Liberation War
That is why I had no answer to Anne Martes question that day at the < emetery at Meudon What should be his epitaph?"
Rangoon. Burma. October 1980
About the writer Sonia Nishat Anun is Associate Professor of History at Dhaka University