A commendable approach to Elias' short stories

When I first came across the book Akhtaruzzaman Elias er Chhotogolpo, I was indeed taken by surprise. It is a well written and well referenced book but more importantly, it is an attempt at a comprehensive critical approach to Elias's short stories. One would still wonder why a critical approach should surprise one in this way. That Elias's stories call for extensive critical attention from a variety of angles is an agreed-upon truth. The same can be said about a good many of his contemporaries from Hasan Azizul Haque to Mahmudul Haque. Evidently, the reason behind giving this critical attempt a special place lies elsewhere.
Starting in the 1950s, modern Bengali prose fiction in this part of Bengal has been thriving like an ever-flowing stream since the 1960s. True this stream has taken many turns and even at times shrunk with its flow apparently ebbing forever. A creative pool of writers, however, has always found a way to break new ground and thus inject new life into its shrunken state. But what this stream has always lacked is an inquisitive breed of explorers whose job it is to dig out the gems from the rock bed and then continue to discover the geological stages and processes which have contributed to form them. Literary critics are that breed who turn an apparently simple moss-covered rock into a pearl of endless signification.
Elias's fiction constitutes one of the most potential stretches of that stream. Although one or two critical essays on his death or birth anniversary have at times tried to pay tribute to his creations, they at best could take us to the opaque surface. It is from this angle that Zafar Ahmed Rashed's Akhtaruzzaman Elias er Chhotogolpo deserves to be given a special place. I am not saying this is an impeccable piece of criticism or that it encompasses all angles. The writer himself does not claim so. I myself have spotted an error in historical information such as the one that the Jukto Front (United Front) government was dismantled in 1958 whereas it was actually dismissed just three months after its formation in 1954. In spite of this, the book certainly takes us beyond the surface, dipping down and down until it touches the bed, full of variegated rocks.
In order to give a clearer picture, Rashed also takes readers on a brief tour of the different literary strains predominant in different decades. He also provides in short the social, political and historical developments that Elias and his contemporaries were exposed to. All these not only put Elias's work in context but also point out where and how he was different from his peers and predecessors.
The pitfall of a dearth of literary criticism is that most authors are given short shrift and subjected to flawed or improper interpretation. Which is why Elias is often termed 'the storyteller of the real world' and Shahidul Zahir the 'magic realist'. Because of this gross generalisation, at stake are the many forms and layers that come into an imaginative play to create a world full of unfulfilled desires, dreams, conflicting realities and struggles. Rashed, with his meticulous look spread across all of Elias's short story collections, does justice to this 'heteroglossia' created in Elias's fiction where characters from different classes, races and genders intermingle not in a realistically constructed world, but in a far more complicated place that sees the boundaries between dreams and harsh realities blurred every now and then.
Rashed's attempt not only opens a critical window to Elias's fiction but also sets literary criticism on a new path committed to exploring the gems of Bangla literature.

Rifat Munim is with The Daily Star.