Baring the soul of society

Baro Ghater Shesh Ghat Collection of Short Stories Salek Uddin Annanya

As the flames of Hell lick her body, Sweety is engulfed by a sense of calm. The pain of hellfire is nothing compared to the sufferings and torture she has faced in life. She walks steadily towards the flames, towards the peace and innocence of her childhood.
 

This is an extract from the short story Baro Ghater Shesh Ghat, one of the nine stories in the book by the same name. The author Salek Uddin has managed succinctly to capture the sufferings of people, the intense psychological sufferings that perhaps far outdo the physical ones, in his short stories. The stories are not of the morbid genre, but real, painful and reveal the ugly side of life. There's a fine line between the girl in the slum and the girl living in the lap of luxury, perhaps not to the apparent eye. But Salek Uddin scratches the veneer of sophistication and civility to reveal that under the facade of respectability, the beast in humankind raises its ugly head.
In Baro Ghater Shesh Ghat, the writer follows the life of a young girl who moves from the poverty of the village to the depravity of city life. The life seems to be an interminable journey from the frying pan to the fire. She is used and abused and in the end it is only death that appears to be the release of sufferings. In an almost Dante-esque metaphor of hellfire, the last lines of the story see the girl Sweety being devoured by flames. Are these the flames of hellfire, a penance for her life of 'sin'? Or are these flames to purge her sufferings and take her back to a realm of innocence and peace? The writer lashes out at the hypocrisy of a judgemental society.
In the next story, Poonamer Jonmodin, we find the central character to be the opposite of Sweety, to all outward appearances. She is beautiful, pampered and the only child of the rich Shamshad H Rahman. She has innumerable young men at her feet, loving her, lusting for her, desperate to win her hand in marriage. But is this love? Her beauty certainly ignites their desire, but love? Do they love her for herself? Or the wealth she holds in the palms of her hand? Even all the luxury that her father lavishes on her cannot compensate for the personal attention she craves, the warmth. She wants a man, not a slave. But the one whom she desires remains elusive, a figment of her imagination? All she can do is wait...
Is the writer a hardened cynic? A realist, yes, but not one who has lost his sense of romance. Abar Kuri Bhochhor Por is infused with the nostalgia of an unquenched love, of unfulfilled dreams. It's a story of what might have been. We get a picture of NGO life in rural Bangladesh, the interaction between a man and woman in a simple backdrop. The story is not a complex one, but the underlying human psychology is intricate. Not much is said, but the silence is louder than words. The man meets the woman after twenty long years, so much has changed... but so much remains the same.
The element of mystery and yearning is further brought forward in the story Panchjaniyar Ekjon. This story has a very cosmopolitan setting of an efficiently run office in the heart of the capital city. Mahtab sahib is showing signs of the middle-age syndrome when, like a breath of fresh air, the young and lissome Tabassum wafts into his office and life is never the same again. She is not the conventional "yes, sir" kind of girl and he is intrigued. One thing leads to another and we leave them at the end of the story, grasping each other's hands and gazing into each other's eyes in his room, way past office hours...
Then it's back to the uglier side of nature in Ulthorath, where crowds look on as a young woman is dragged down the street by her hair. But Salek is not oblivious to the better side of human nature, the more humane and heroic streak that still exists in some hearts. Sharafi takes the initiative to save the girl from the hoodlum's hands, and the crowd follows suit. The silent passive crowd becomes active when given lead. Does the story symbolise the paucity of leadership and its implications for us as a nation? It gives us hope, that with proper initiative and leadership, wrongs can be righted. But is they ground reality? Rather than leaving us in an idyllic cloud, at the end of the story the writer leaves us questioning the future.
Salek Uddin has a penchant for mystery, or more specifically, mystery mingled with romance. In Mohakobir Mohakabya, we find a young couple in a hotel at Cox's Bazar. They are a couple but the wife is lonely in the sense that her husband prefers spending the evenings with his friends at a nearby hotel, gambling and drinking. Meanwhile, is completely intrigued and infatuated by the mystery man in the room next door. Who is he? Why does he spend lonely nights on the deserted beach? She cannot resist pursuing him. Is she pursuing her unfulfilled dream in a bid to fill the void in her existence? Can fulfillment ever be attained?
Then he delves into the underworld of crime and violence. In Aye Nomita Aye, the writer also touches on the problem of inter-religious love affairs, the conventions of society and communal condemnation. Unrequited love can reduce the toughest and most hardened criminal to a mumbling picture of pathos.
There are a couple of other equally compelling stories in this collection. Salek Uddin's tales ring true. These are people and stories which surround us in our every day lives. We are often blind to Machiavellian machinations of mankind and allow out silence to give the sordid side of life an upper hand. But the writer has stripped off the pretence and lain bare what lies beneath. He has also pointed to the complicacies in commonplace relationships where the fine line between right and wrong fades and accepted norms lose all meaning.
The short stories of Baro Ghater Ek Ghat do not aim at any profundity. It is simply a beautifully orchestrated prose picture of society as it exists.

Ayesha Kabir is a writer, critic and journalist