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tributes

I Owed Ilias an Apology

by Shah Husain Imam
THE death of 53 year old Akhtaruz zaman Ilias at the prime of his literary career has shocked us very deeply with its evident prematurity. even though an advancing cancer affliction had made it look inevitable since a year ago.
1 have not had a long association with him in the literal sense of the phrase since leaving Dhaka University in the mid-sixties, our paths only crossing. at the most half a dozen times, until he breathed his last. Yet. whenever we met we would feel instantly cozy in each other's company, as if transported to the warmth of our basic bonding at the Dhaka Government College. There, on the hostel lawns, we used to sit down to our almost regular evening chats with him invariably impressing me indelibly as a personification of his own short stories, both published and those
he had woven the plots of. and felt ex cited about to share with me.
Ilias was a highly charming and en gaging person with his clipped accent coming through his thin, visibly linear pair of lips, his abiding sense of lifelike simplicity, his literary finesse and aesthetics, and above all. his deeply compassionate nature.
In one word, he was a humanist par excellence with a perfectionist attitude to his labour of love — writing; so that, much as he must have been nudged by the evidences of Inhumanity around him to write more, he would be held back by the high standards he set for himself. Little wonder, he was not quite in the genre of popular writers' as we know it.
He was the literary archetype raring to go to the source, undeterred by his
preoccupations as a Professor of Bangla, for the collection of materials he thought essentia) for his novels. Once as we ran into each other at a street-comer, he said with a relish — "I just drift, live with a weaver's, fisherman s or a worker's family, and come back developing insights into the light and shade that mingle in their lives. Those were, as he put it. enchanting rigours" for him.
His works Include four collections of short stories, and two novels — the widely-read being Chilakothar's Sipai (1987). with its thematic inspiration drawn from the popular movement of 1969. His second novel Khoabnama, published in 1996 and almost epical for the time-span it covered — nearly two hundred years — won him Ananda Pu-rushkar from West Bengal, a niche in his literary career he reached only a
short while before his death. His previous high-point was a Bangla Academy purushkar.
He had planned to write a novel based on Tebhaga Andolon and also a magnum opus on the Liberation War. These were in the works and. would have taken him perhaps a couple of years more to finish.
I owe Ilias an emotional debt — an apology that I am now addressing to his soul. I was to see him on Friday, the 4th of January, the day before he died at the Mallbagh Community Hospital, in the company of Mohd. Farashuddin and Rashed Khan Menon who had planned a visit to his death-bed to hand him in a cheque for Tk 25.000 as a token of our appreciation for the honour he had done us through his literary accomplishments. All of them met him on the appointed date and time on behalf of
Padakhhep-64. an entirely non-politi-cal medley of batch-mates at the university. except myself who was thrown off course by the odd twist of the overpowering unforeseen'.
He perked up at the sight of his friends, I was to learn later on. And. as they were handing him the cheque with a bouquet. said he without appearing to struggle for words, "Why. your love is my greatest reward." And then pointing at the telephone set as if snuggling with his amputated leg he said without imagination leaving him even in those moments. "That is the rare convenience I enjoy over you as a crippled person."
Even though, in point of fact. I decided to see him on Sunday and apologise for my failure to turn up on Friday. I obviously couldn t do so as he left us for good on Saturday. I have a far greater apology to seek from him now. ■