Syed Waliullah’s Last Two Novels Heralded a New Horizon

Syed Waliullah is one of the most significant novelists of Bangla literature. He is the pioneer of modern novels of Bangladesh.His novels have placed him on a permanant seat in the literature of Bangla language.

Before Syed Waliullah’s (1922-1971) Lalshalu (1948) the history of novels of Bangladesh was not very significant. No doubt, there were attempts by a good member of people, but only a few could create impression on the reader’s mind. Mohammad Najibur Rahman’s (1860-1923) Anowara (1914), Abdul Wadud’s (1894-1970) Nadibakshe (1919), Kazi Imdadul Huq’s (1882-1926) Abdullah (Published in periodicals in 1920 and in book form in 1933), Abul Fazal’s (1903-1983) Prodip O Patangya (1940), Humayun Kabir’s (1906-1969) Nadi O Nari (1945) and Abul Fazal’s Shahashika (1946) are the worthwhile ones to mention. Then after the partition of 1947 came out Lalshalu, the first novel of Waliullah, which demonstrated the Bangla-society in a more analytic and artistic way. But when af ter sixteen years his second novel Chander Amabashya was published in 1964 (although it was written in 1962-63) it heralded a newer voice in our novel. His third and last novel Kando Nadi Kando (1968) exposed that voice in a more delicate but pleasing way.

Syed Waliullah was born in Chittagong. Finishing his Intermediate from Dhaka Intermediate College he got his BA from Calcutta University. At the age of twenty-three only, when he was a student of MA and served as a sub-editor in The Statesman, his volume of short stories Nayanchara was published. Excluding his second volume of short stories Dui Teer O Anyanya Galpa, (published in 1965) he wrote more thirty-two stories, which he did not publish in any book-form. Along with fiction he had enough mastery in plays also. His plays are Bahipeer (1960), Suranga (1964) and Tarangabhanga (1965). Waliullah was awarded with the Bangla Academy Purashkar and Adamji Purashkar in 1961 and 1965 respectively. French and English translations of Lalshalu were published in 1961 and 1967 titling L’Arbre Saans Racines and Tree without Roots. In both Chander Amabashya and Kando Nadi Kando Syed Waliullah deals with tormented human mind, rather than any story about them which was till then beyond practice in Bangla fiction. The agony in Chander Amabashya beings right at the moment the protagonist the young teacher comes across the incident of Kader’s Mian’s killing a majhi (fisher) woman. The dilemma whether to expose it or not is the root cause of his agony. The other facets of his agony are whether Kader killed the woman, whether Kader loved the woman, or whether he saw everything correctly etc. In Kando Nadi Kando also we have met such a tormented man. Muhammad Mustafa, the most prominent character here, is that tormented person. His agony originates with the news of the suicide of Khodeja. Muhammad Mustafa thought that his widowed aunt’s daughter Khodeja, who took shelter at Mustafa’s, believed that Mustafa would marry Khodeja. But when she received the news of Musrtafa’s forthcoming marriage, she committed suicide although in reality her death was an accidental one. He began to think that Khodeja’s departed soul has turned to a revengeful spirit, which would follow Mustafa in every step of his life. After severe agony, consequently Mustafa hangs himself. Chander Amabashya opens with the scene when the Jubak Shikshak (the young teacher whose name is Aref Ali but Jubak Shikshak is used mostly in the novel) discovers a young woman dead body near a bamboo bush. The spectacle caused so much panic in him that he began to run untidily. The night is mysterious, the whole environment is mysterious, and the event that chases him seems to him mysterious. Because he foresees a connection of Kader Mian with t his incident. Kader Mian, the younger brother of Dadasaheb in whose house Jubak Shikshak got board and lodging, came out that night in which the incident takes plase. The Jubak Shikshak could not but follow Kader Mian in that moonlit night because he was very curious about Kader Mian’s activities. Popularly it was believed that Kader Mian Was a dervish i.e. a saintly person. After Jubak Shikshak’s hurried and anxious and nervous flight from that inconceivable episode, he returns to his room and awaits something. At last the time comes. Kader enter and in a harsh voice asks why he ran away. He also asked Jubak Shikshak what he was doing in the bamboo bush. And then the psychoanalytic behaviour of Jubak Shikshak begins to proceed on.

The happening causes many disturbances on the innocent mind of Aref Ali. He cannot expose the truth to any other one, neither can he bear the upheaval caused by it. As a result he cannot concentrate to his regular duties. In the teaching time at Barabari or even in the school time he fails to keep normal. He cannot behave normally. Every now and then he dips into the unforgettable incident that he came across unfortunately. Next night Kader again comes and proposes to him to go to the bamboo bush where the dead body reclines. They two drown the dead body in the nearby river.

As the time passes, the agony of Aref Ali increases. Boatmen discover the dead body of Karim Majhi’s wife and that causes various rumours among the local people. Every where there go talks about it. Kader hears these but cannot participate. Gradually he breaks down within him. In such a time he asks one to call Kader. Kader comes in the night and asks Jubak Master “what’s your trap?” (147) The whole world of Jubak Master gets bewildered. Kader says, “it’s an accident. There’s nothing to do. What’s the profit to call me repeatedly now?” (149)

In the meantime a new development emerges. “Kader admits that he himself is the killer of that woman. But it is not killing it is an accident. Hearing the steps and later on the voice of the Jubak Master outside the bamboo bush, he became puzzled and strangled the young woman’s throat. He did it not to kill her, but to stop her voice. He cannot remember whether he pressed her throat in place of her mouth” (153). Aref Ali analyses the whole situation from different corners. He even talks with Kader about it in an interrogating way. From the answers of his questions he realizes that Kader did not have any affinity to that woman. At last he says “I have no other way before me” (168). And he declares that he cannot pardon Kader anymore (173). As a result he exposes the truth of the incident: first to Dadasaheb and then to the authority concerned.

Meanwhile Kader begins to threaten him by imposing all the responsibilities of the killing of the woman upon Aref Ali. Last of all he meets Dadasaheb and tells him the only sentence that Kader Mian has killed a woman. Instantly he takes leave. And in the last chapter we see that Kader is arrested in the police office and the police are blaming him for killing the woman.

In Kando Nadi Kando Muhammad Mustafa is also a tormented soul. But unlike Chander Amabashya where the different phases of complexity of human mind delineated, Kando Nadi Kando narrates the multifarious actions and of people surrounding. The story line of this novel is very small. Muhammad Mustafa’s father, a very poor and treacherous man, settled Mustata’s marriage with his niece Khodeja. Through many ups and downs in his life Mustafa completes his studies and gets the job of a magistrate. By then he decides to marry a town woman. He informs it to the people of his home. Coincidentally Khodeja dies in the pond on that very day. It was everyone’s belief that Khodeja’s death is a suicidal case because a village girl like Khodeja can never die while bathing in the pond. Receiving the news Mustafa postpones his wedding ceremony and returns home. He himself gets convinced that suicide of Khodeja is due to the settlement of his marriage with another woman. The agony deepens gradually. And at last Mustafa successfully hangs himself.

The total time-span of the novel is only one day, or to be more specific from evening to the dead of night. But the writer has very skillfully intermingled these few hours in a long fictional time. We get the bygone history of Kumurdanga, the subdivision town, where Mustafa served. Eighty years before when a s teamer-ghat was opened at Kumurdanga it was feudal society. Gradually it turned to a muffasil town. There are a courthouse, a business centre, a small hospital and a minor school for the girls. When the s teamer-company decided to replace the steamer-stoppage from Kumurdanga due to heavy silt in the nearby areas of t he river, the superstitious mentality of the people of Kumuradanga got revealed. They begin to sacrifice everything they had in the river. On the other hand we all also get the description of the village, the name of it is untold in the novel, near the Chandbaran Ghat. Mustafa was born in that village and the time spots worthmentioning have taken elaborate description to uphold the moulding of Mustafa’s childhood. The behaviour of his parents, the social beliefs of the village people take minute narration in it.

There is no doubt that with Chander Amabashya Syed Waliullah introduced a different and uncommon narratoloty in Bangla novel. Before him we got the practice of “stream of consciousness” in fiction but he manipulated this aspect in a very meticulous way. In Lalshalu he did not use this rhetorical element, rather he was more sincere to narrate a story there. But in Chander Amabashya and Kando Nadi Kando he is more eager to travel in the ego and super ego of his protagonists.

So the fearful event that Aref Ali experiences take repeated description in Chander Amabashya. He revises and revises the memory to make everything sure. He talks with himself and with Kader and then again revises that memory. Any careful reader would observe slight changes in these revisions and at last he himself makes a picture of his own. In Chander Amabshya the narrator is an omniscient one but in Kando Nadi Kando we get two different narrators. The novel opens on a steamer deck where the first person narrator, a cousin of Mustafa,begins to talk. Though his identity is not very clear but his role plays very vitally. According to him, Khodeja did not commit suicide but rather it was an accident. But when Mustafa asks him about Khodeja’s death, he remains silent. Moreover, he does not exposes that Khodeja actually loved him, not Mustata, and he also had an affinity to Khodeja. This narration of Mustafa’s life is intermingled with the narration of Tabarak Mian, another narrator. While listening to Tabarak Mian’s deliberation about Mustafa’s life and death on the steamer-deck, the memories of the first person narrator begin to blend. And the reader gets a mixture of the two, which supply him with a satisfactory and complete description.

Moreover, keen observation of these two novels draws the reader’s attention to the writer’s use of words synonymous to “perhaps” or “possibly”, Tens of hundreds of times Waliullah has used these words to exhibit the inner uncertainty of human mind. He is inwardly never certain what he experiences through his senses. Or, he can never recall the things of past appropriately as they happened in the past. It is a general critique to identify foreign influences on Syed Waliullah’s last two novels. James Joyce (1882-1941), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Franz Kafka (1883-1924) or Albert Camu (1913-1960) are the most common names who are uttered in connection with the use of “stream of consciousness” in Chander Amabashya. A reader may discover semblance between Jubak Shikshak and Joyce’s Stephen of Ulysses (1922) or, Woolf’s Mrs. Ramsay of To the Lighthouse (1927). Regarding plot a reader may find such similarities with Kafka’s The Trial (1925, Eng trans 1937) and Camu’s The Outsider (1942, Eng trans 1946). In connection to Kando Nadi Kando along with the aforesaid names Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1905-1980) Nausea (1938) is also referred.

But we should not forget that the genre “novel” itself is an imported form. Since Bamkimchandra Chattapadhya (1838-1894) through onwards all the novelist owe hugely to foreign writers. Rather the credit that Waliullah should be awarded is that he used them in his own way, in the context of our own society. Jubak Shiksshak or Muhammad Mustafa are not Characters alien to our society. They come out of this soil, its history, heritage and beliefs. The novelty of Waliullah is his detailed and investigative and interpretive study of his characters.

For Waliullah’s books I have used Syed Waliullah Rachanavali Vol-1

Ed. by Syed Akram Hossain, Bangla Academy, Dhaka,First Reprint 1993.