In Silent Dignity
On the first day of the festival, at 2 pm, a medium sized crowd consisting of academics and litterateurs gather at the historic Bottola or under the banyan tree at the Bangla Academy. What could be a more befitting place to remember Razia Khan? After all, she called her first novel, which she wrote at 18, Bot tolar Upannayash—literally, the story of the Banyan tree. The novel caused a stir when it was published in 1958.
By the time poet Kaiser Haq is reciting a poem from Razia Khan: Collected Poems, the crowd has grown bigger. Do they understand poetry? Do they know English? Doesn't seem to matter. “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood,” writes TS Eliot.
Razia Khan's poems are genuine. They depict occasions we experience between womb and tomb. In the same way her poems illuminate our individual lives, they also help us understand ourselves as a culture. They spur us to ask questions. Her poetic utterance shapes our perspective of the mystery that is the present and helps us imagine our past.
When Walt Whitman writes, “And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” he invites us to join the communion between the poet and human aspirations.
Similarly, Razia Khan's poetry connects us to our past, and unmasks both private and civic memories, dreams, and urgencies.
Her poetry matters because it is the utterance of both beauty and the grotesque. In her timeless poem Argus under Anaesthesia, prompted by the genocide of 1971, she thus describes the mass exodus of refugees to India: “Departures lay heavy over the fields. The mourning corn/bent with grief; impossible phantasmagoria/Haunting the eyes/Of deserted dogs and cattle.”
When you read GOD IN THE GOBLET which she wrote after getting the news of the massacre of intellectuals, you hear the horror with your eyes and see it with your ears. She wrote both poems while in virtual exile in Germany.
Dr Hameeda Hossain, prominent academic and human rights activist says, “Razia Khan always stood against injustice. Her poetry was a source of inspiration for a lot of people. During the sixties, writers like her created a space for people to write and talk openly against the military rule during that period. She wrote even at great risks to herself. She also wrote about an internal world and its conflicts.” Dr Hameeda was a close friend of the poet.
Razia Khan was many things—a distinguished Professor of English at the University of Dhaka, a Pope Gold Medal winning student at DU, novelist, playwright, essayist, short story writer and an editor. But poetry seems to be what found her thought. Razia Khan: Collected Poems actually combines two books—Argus Under Anaesthesia (1976) and Cruel April (1977).
Although Bangla was her mother language, the English language was very much an integral part of her consciousness. Daughter of distinguished politician and social activist Moulvi Tamizuddin Khan, she studied Tagore, Maxim Gorky, Bernard Shaw, Marx and Engels during her adolescent years. She received the P.E.N Drama Award in 1956, the Bangla Academy Award in 1975 and the Ekushey Padak in 1997.
rBecause Razia Khan has the highest faith that every word in a poem has value and implication and suggestion, her poems orient us in both our inner and outer existence. No matter what language we speak—Bangla or English— she wrote in both—we follow the guidance of her poetry to better perceive sorrow and radiance, love and hatred, violence and wonder.
Kaiser Haq, poet, Professor and a student of Dr Razia Khan says, “I think Razia Khan is a post-romantic modern poet. A lot of people wonder if she was a feminist. I would suggest she did not need feminism. She was liberated from that. When I think of her, the word Shakti comes to mind.” She was a pioneer among poets who write in English in this country. Her poems are very different from each other. One may have a nice satiric touch while the other may be more solemn.”
Razia Khan does not need a label. The more she evades definition, the more august the titles we devise for her. In a remarkable poem called 21st FEBRUARY, 1975, she writes, “…so your grim procession now retreats in silent dignity/Glad to be forgotten by a pack of liars.”
English poetry is the weakest sister of its sibling branches of literature in this country. That will change only by means of a long and tedious effort at persuasion. It is no doubt a blessing to have Razia Khan's work on one's side in that struggle. One hopes the full scope of her contribution to literature will be realised soon.
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