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Kali O Kolom - Agrahayon 1415 October 2008

Khokon Imam
The latest copy of Kali O Kolom, came with the announcement that the journal in partnership with HSBC has instituted two prizes for young poets and writers in order to encourage literary creativity. It is a welcome step, and no doubt will have its intended effect on Bengali writers.
30th November 2008 is the centenary birth year of Buddhadev Bose. Accordingly, there are four pieces on Bose ('Krorepatra'), accompanied by photographs of Bose familiar to Bengali readers, by Bishwajit Ghosh, Mahbub Sadek, Gausur Rahman and Zakir Talukdar. Of these, Talukdar's article offers a sympathetic defense of Bose against his many detractors, pointing to the latter's reluctance to submit to a creed or dogma. Zakir ends his piece by quoting some memorable Buddhadev lines on the fact that the effect of all art is situational: "On the topic of rosh, nothing can be proved. Nothing need be proved. The poem that enchants me on a Chaitra-mo nth noon, that same poem is mute on a rain-laden Srabon-month night. The writing that could not touch the soul on an idle evening, two lines
from that very writing can stop me in my tracks while chasing a tram on a frantic office morning."
There are articles on two prize winners: the Nobel prize-winning French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, and on the Booker winner Adigar. The latter, by A Z M Abdul Ali, makes the valid point that Bangladesh dailies (such as Daily Star, one imagines) hardly published anything on the new Booker winner except for reporting the bare details. He then proceeds to a lengthy overview, complete with quotes, of an April 2004 article on Bangladesh that Adigar wrote for The New York Times. This yields the nugget that
Adigar's view of Bangladesh was deeply pessimistic. Then Ali goes on to talk about the dark underside of India's and China's economic booms, and that Adigar's novel deals with this topic. At the end, aside from knowing that the book's narrator is a chauffeur for a Delhi big shot, the reader is left hardly the wiser about the Booker winning book! One has to wonder whether this attempt makes up for the previous lack in our dailies.
There is one short story among the four that is commendable: Komol Shaha's Giraffe Gram 'er Kothokotha. Among the art show coverage that has become standard fare in Kali O Kolom, Mustafa Zaman traverses the length of the Asian Bienniale at the Shilpakala while Borhanuddin Khan Jahangir and Zahid Mustafa coverc Abdur
Razzak and Tarun Ghosh respectively. There is a very interesting piece by Omar Kaiser ('Kabita'r Bhobisshhot') on the declining audience for poetry, where the author convincingly reasons along the lines of poetic language and themes having strayed far from the reading public, having become both difficult and cliched. He also points out that as far as Bangladeshi poetry is concerned, an additional reason could be the lack of an authoritative critical tradition, or an authoritative critical voice that could act as judge and guide for the reading public, like Buddhadev Bose did for an earlier age. One feels that this is an important article, and that discussion should continue on this subject in the pages of Kali O Kolom. The other very readable write-up is an in-memorium by artist Murtaza Bashir (who has written a first-rate autobiography) of fellow artist Paritosh Sen. There is a lively drama review of Nagorik’s stage adaptation of Manik Bandopadhyay's short story 'Pragoitihashik' accompanied by reviews of five books: Sanathkumar Saha’s Kothai O Kothar Pithay, Abul Momen's Bangali'r Adhunikota O Onanyo Probondho, Zulfikar Matin edited Choudhury Osman Rachanashomogro, Shaheen Akhtar's Golposhomogro volume 1, and Binaasher Mitrapokkho by Humayun Malik
The cover art is an acrylic work by Ranjit Das. He was born in Dhaka in 1950, got his BA from the Fine Arts Institute in 1957, and his Master's in 1971 from Baroda.
Khokon Imam works for an NGO in Dhaka