"Arshingar" - A Short Story by Jharna Raham (translated from Bengali, 2010)

Information on Women in Translation Month - August, 2017

Works I have read so far for Women In Translation Month - August, 2017

1.  "Happy New Year" by Ajaat Cour - Translated from Punjabi
2. "The Floating Forest" by Natsuo Kirino- Translated from Japanese
3. " A Home Near the Sea" by Kamala Das - Translated from Malayalam
4. "Maria" by Dacia Maraini- Translated from Italian
5. "Zletka" by Maja Hrgovic - Translated from Croatian
6. "Arshingar" by Jharna Raham - Translated from Bengali

This morning's  story, "Arshingar" by Jharna Rahman was translated from Bengali (sometimes the language is called Bangla) by Shabnam Nadiya.  Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh.  It is estimated to have 225 million speakers.

"Arshingar" centers on a married Muslim woman, mother of four girls and two boys, from Bangladesh.  She and her husband live in a huge house owned by her father in law.  The families of her two bother in laws also live there.  Her two married sister in laws stay there also, with their several children as their husbands work in Saudi Arabia, assorted others in the extended family live there also.

Rahman from the opening shocking  sex scene between Arshingar and her husband in which she breastfeeds her baby while her husband hammers away on top of her, afterwards he feeds from the other breast lets us see into the dynamics of her life.  She accepts this as doing her duty.  She is normally always veiled, even other men in the house have never seen her face, even when she dies she will be buried with a veil covering her face.  We get a good picture of her life, we know her family is affluent and her husband in an important man.  A very odd turn event happens as the story winds down which I will leave untold.

In just a few pages this story takes us inside a world closed to all but insiders.


Jharna Rahman was born in 1959. She received her M.A. in Bangla from the University of Dhaka and has been writing for the last thirty years. As a poet, author of fiction, and playwright, she deals with the various crises, obstacles, hardships and potentialities of Bangladeshi society with all its multidimensional joys and sorrows. Her 19 published works include the short story collections Swarna Tarbari, Agnita, Krishnapakhsher Usha, and Perek, the poetry collection Noshto Jotsna Nosto Roudro, and the play Briddha o Rajkumari. An Assistant Professor of Bangla at Bir Shreshtha Noor Mohammad Rifles Public College, she is also a regular singer on national radio and television.

I read this story in an interesting anthology, The Lotus Singers: Short Stories from Contemporary South Asia.

Mel u

"Rudali" by Mahashveta Devi (1983, translated from Bengali by Andum Katyal)

Not long ago I read my first short story by Mahasveta Devi (Bangladesh, 1926 ), "Draupadi".  I was so happy to find among the collections of Indian short stories in my possession another story by Devi.  

Frank O'Connor famously said that short stories were about marginalized subgroups of society with no one to speak for them.  By this he meant Chekhov's doctors, Joyce's working class Dubliners, and Issac Babel's Odessa Jews.  Compared to the untouchables, tribal people and prostitutes in the stories of Devi, these groups of people are  rich.   The people in Devi's stories are marginalized by the structures of caste and the weight of traditions thousands of years old.  I really think anyone who can should read at least the two stories I have featured.  

In "Rudali" the story centers on two old women.  Both were widows and their children were either dead or abandoned them.  There is a lot in this rich fairly long story.  Through luck the two old women (one could be seen as an old woman at forty in this culture if your circumstances were unfortunate) move in together, one had a hut and a little land.  They get the opportunity to be paid to be mourners at a funeral.  I was fascinated to learn how this worked.  If you were willing just to cry you might get five rupees but if you would shriek hysterically and beat your self in the face you might get ten.  The professional mourners were almost all old whores (the stories word and using a euphemism is not right here).  They once were the mistresses or higher priced girls of the upper class but when they no longer had a place as this, they had to become low class whores, going with anyone.  These were the professional mourners.  There is a deep irony, to me at least, in imaging the funeral procession of a wealthy Brahmin followed by a 100 wailing whores.  The more mourners, the more prestige accured to the family.  There is an elaborate business to this.  An agent might be paid 500 rupees to line up mourners, what he did not pay the women he kept.  Soon the women in the story become experts at lining up lots of mourners.  They monitor the rich for impending deaths.  

The story presents a picture of a very cruel and corrupt society.  If a woman is not a wife or daughter connected to a man, she is seen as  and often must become a whore.  The rich spend nothing to heal their dying relatives, being eager to inherit but they will happily shell out big money for the funeral ceremony.   One woman did intentionally arrange her own very expensive funeral to deprive her family of money.  One rich son is denigrated for refusing to use expensive ghee for his mother's cremation..

I will look for more stories by this author.  She has no Kindle collections of short stories, as far as I can tell.

I read this story in this excellent anthology.

There is an excellent back ground page on Devi here

http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/mahsweta-devi/

Mel u

"Virtue and Sin" by Sunil Gangopadhyay (1982, 16 pages)

Sunil Gangopadhyay (1934 to 2012, Bangladesh) was a very prolific writer, in the Bengali language, 

two hundred books.  He was a highly regarded poet, novelist and short story writer.  Two of his novels 

were made into movies by Satyajil Ray.  He was a close friend of the American poet Alan Ginsburg.  

(there is additional background information on him in my prior post on him)  

"Virtue and Sin" is a story about the lives of ordinary people, a police officer, a well known thief and his

working as a prostitute daughter.  It is about the pervasive corruption of daily life and the way religious 

taboos and customs in a very diversified society confuse things.  The police chief gets a tip that a 

"most wanted" thief has been spotted at an inexpensive brothel.  The chief knows he will get big

kudos if he catches him and is very excited over the prospect.  He does wonder why the thief, quite

old, would be at such a brothel until he learns the Nan's daughter works there.  In one scene with

a great depth to it, the police officer knocks on the door of the daughter, she says sorry I have an

all night customer, come back tomorrow.  The officer goes in any way  and is shocked to see her fixing

her father dinner.  Events get complicated when they discover a statue of a God in the room. The

problem is that no body in the police officer's detachment is of the right caste to move it.  The statue

may be stolen.

"Virtue and Sin" is a well done story I greatly enjoyed reading.

Please share your experience with older Indian short stories with us.

Mel u

"The Daily Woman" by Niaz Zaman

Short Stories from The Indian Subcontinent

A Reading Life Event

"The Daily Woman" by Niaz Zaman (Bangladesh, 1996)

The Reading Life Guide to The Indian Short Story

Prior Posts on Short Stories of Bangladesh


Today I am starting a new permanent event on The Reading Life.   This event will be devoted to short stories of the Indian subcontinent.   There is no literary culture with roots older than that of India.   I will always admire Edmund Burke for telling the English that they had no right to govern a region whose culture is much older than theirs.   Most of the stories I post on in this event will be from India but I have plans now to post on stories by authors from every country in the region with the exception as of now of Tibet for which I can so far locate no short stories translated into English.   Some of the writers featured will be internationally famous, such as Salmon Rushdie, Sadat Manto,  and R. K. Narayan but most of the writers I post on will be authors on whom there are no prior book blog posts.    There are numerous books and academic conferences devoted to exploring the colonial experiences of India and Ireland and I will look these stories partially as post colonial literature.   My main purpose here is just to open myself up to a lot more new to me writers and in this case most will be new to anyone outside of serious literary circles in the region.  Where I can I will provide links to the stories I post on but this will not always be possible.

"The Daily Woman" by Niaz Zaman (Bangladesh) is a haunting story about a woman  who does day work cleaning up the houses of the affluent citizens of Dhaka.   Zaman does a wonderful job of bringing us into the consciousness of the woman.    One of the basic tenants of Frank O'Connor in The Lonely Voice:   A Study of the Short Story is that the short story is very often about those with no voice to speak for themselves, members of marginalized groups.    The central character in this story is the very epitome of a voiceless person.   She cannot read or write and her various employers barely see her or know her name.   They would have other servants of higher status in their houses, she does the lowest work.   Every year for the last five years she has given birth to a child but none lived for more than a few days.  She wanted to have children with the hope that they might take care of her in her old age.   She feared she was cursed until she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.   Then two white men came in the company of Abdul, her husband, and they take one of the babies.   We watch her as she does her daily chores and we do learn a good bit about her daily life.   Some times she wishes she could become a full time live in maid, instead of a day worker as at least she would have a dry clean place to live and live in maids often get to eat the same foods as the family, or at least the left overs.   She is able to bring her  baby to her jobs with her so she can nurse him with the little milk she is able to produce.   We learn about her friend Fatema who has to support her paralyzed husband.  

Today is a good food day for the woman.   Her employer has given her a fish and told her to remove the scales and the guts of the fish in preparation for the cooking.   She knows they will not ask what happened to the guts so she hides them away to take home.   Sometimes she lucks out and gets chicken skins which the lady of the house will not eat due to the high fact content.  She cannot understand why all the rich women are afraid of getting fat as she would feel she was in paradise if she had enough food to get fat.

We learn a really lot about the daily lives of the woman and her husband, a rickshaw puller, terribly hard work.   We learn that her husband Abdul told her the white man's wife, they are Americans,  could not have a baby and would take good care of their child and besides she did not have milk for two babies.   One of her friends tell her that her baby will be taken to America where he will be turned away from the true faith and made to become a Christian.   She is told she is condemning her baby to hell.

When the American woman comes the next day to get the child, there are papers for the mother to put her mark on, some in Bengali and the same thing in English.   The American woman insists she take as a present (no doubt Abdul got paid for this along with some middlemen) a bracelet.   She thinks it must be gold.   She does not want it because she is not selling her child but trying to provide him a better future.   Everyone who lived around her had seen the transaction.   She thinks the gold bangles must be worth enough to feed them for ten years at least.   I will leave the rest of the story untold as I do hope some of my readers will be able to experience this story.

"The Daily Woman" is a very well written story that takes us into the mind and life of a very marginalized woman, the poorest of women in a place considered among the poorest countries of the world.   There is a lot to be learned from this haunting story.

I read this story in a collection of short stories from the region, The Lotus Singers:  Short Stories from Contemporary South Asia (2011) edited and introduced by Trevor Carolan with various translators.  It was originally published in 1996 in the authors collection, The Dance and Other Stories.  

Author Bio

Name:
Dr. Niaz Zaman
Designation:
Supernumerary Professor
Qualification: 

Details:

Niaz Zaman is professor of English at the University of Dhaka. Her area of specialization is American literature. She has also published articles and books on women’s folk art. Among her major publications are The Confessional Art of Tennessee Williams, The Art of Kantha Embroidery -- the first book-length study of the kantha -- and a study of the partition, A Divided Legacy: The Partition in Selected Novels of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which won a National Archives Award. She has edited a number of anthologies, including Under the Krishnachura, From the Delta, and New Age Short Stories. She was consulting editor, Arts and Humanities forBanglapedia and editor of the Bangladesh Journal of American Studies. She is also a creative writer and has published The Crooked Neem Tree, The Dance and Other Stories, the titular story of which won an Asiaweek Short Story Award, and Didima's Necklace and Other Stories. Last year she started writers.ink to publish creative writing in English and English translation as well as writings on literature and language. From 1981 to 1983, Dr Zaman was posted to the Bangladesh Embassy in Washington D.C. as Educational Attaché. 

"Befriending the Wild Elephant" by Sarmaresh Basu সমরেশ বসু

"Befriending the Wild Elephant" by Sarmaresh Basu সমরেশ বসু (1962, 5 pages)

An Enjoyable Story from a Leading

Author from Bangladesh

The Reading Life South Asian Short Stories Project


Posts on the Literature of Bangladesh

Before the 1947 partition of India and the subsequent 1971 War for The Independence of Bangladesh there was no such thing as Bangladeshi literature.   Works written in Dhaka were part of the venerable Bengali literary tradition.    The terrible events of history have helped to create a separate cultural tradition for writers from Bangladesh to draw on and at same time to help create by their work.

Saramash Basu (924 to 1988-Dhaka, Bangladesh) wrote over 200 novels and is credited with 100 longer works of fiction.    Prior to becoming a  full time writer in  1950 he worked for several years in an arms factory and also sold eggs as a street hawker.   In 1 949 he was placed in jail for a year as a member of the communist party, illegal at the time.     He was fascinated since youth by folk tales.   Unlike most of the other South Asian authors I have posted on, he was not born into a life of privilege.

"Befriending the Wild Elephant" centers on a young boy, maybe 15 or so, whose father wants to take him into a jungle preserve area that will allow them the opportunity to observe lots of wild animals, including if they are lucky, wild elephants.   I have learned recently that stories like this were very appealing to the very urbanized readers of South Asia longing for simpler days.    

As the story opens the father and son pass on a bus through places hurt badly by war and see lots of soldiers.    They see elephants tied up in the military camps where they are used kind of like living bulldozers!    They were on their way to a resort in the Darjeeling region, known for its great natural beauty and vast tea plantations.   In an interesting note, the boy's name is "Gogol".    The story is short and easy to read.   It really gets to be fun when the boy meets and becomes friends with a wild elephant (that speaks to him).    There is an exciting moment when  a wild elephant with the boy on his back charges a group of tame elephants.

"Befriending the Wild Elephant" by Sarmaresh Basu (translated by Atreyee Gusta) is a simple, well done half parable story that is sort of typical as a nostalgia for the past of South Asia story.    

You can read it HERE.    It is a fun story worth your time.

Mel u

It's Cat Story Day!- "Toontochaudhurioni and the Naughty Cat" by Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri (উপেন্দ্রকিশোর রায়চৌধুরী )

"Toontochaudhurioni and the Naughty Cat" by Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri (উপেন্দ্রকিশোর রায়চৌধুরী -1910, 4 pages, translated by Indrani Chakraborty)

A Cat Story from the Father of

Sukumar Ray and Grandfather of Satyajit Ray

A Great Bangladesh Author

Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri (1863 to 1915-Mymensingh, Bangladesh) is probably more known now for being the father of a famous writer, Sukunar Ray (who shortened his last name) and the grandfather of the very highly regarded film director and author, Satyajit Ray.   (I will, I hope, post on short stories by both of them soon.)  

Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri had a lot of accomplishments in his life.     Hid family was friends with the Tagore family and he worked with them to revitalise and preserve Bengali folklore.   He was an accomplished painter and musical composer. He was also an expert in land deeds and became very affluent through this expertise.  He helped people to establish title to their land in accord with old deeds and the rules of the British laws.   He greatly updated the printing process in South Asia.    He also wrote a number of short works of fictions and poems.    He is held in  esteem behind only Rabindranath Tagore as a Bengali Language poet.   He also wrote a very nice cat story!

"Toontochaudhurioni and the Naughty Cat" is very close to a parable.    A bird has built a nest that the household cat can see from the window.   It now has baby birds that look like a great lunch to the cat.    The cat hatched a plan.   For several days he would salute the mother bird in the most respectful fashion fitting an elder mother.   Here is what happens next:

"And then, Toontooni’s babies grew up a bit; they sported nice little wings. They didn’t keep their eyes shut anymore. So, Toontooni called out to them and said, ‘My little ones, can you fly?’ The chicks said, ‘Yes, mom, we can.’

Toontooni said, ‘Great, then why don’t you try and fly to the palm tree there?’ The little birds flew right away and sat on the branch of the palm tree. Toontooni smiled and said, ‘Now I know what to do with that horrible cat.’
And before long, the cat was there. She asked, ‘What’s up, O Toontooni?’
Toontooni put up her feet, threw a kick in the air and said, ‘Off you go, you mean, wretched Pussy!’ And then she took off in a jiffy and disappeared.
The naughty cat bared her teeth, climbed up the tree, but she could neither catch the toontooni nor eat her chicks. She got pricked by the thorns of the tree and came home bruised and battered."

This story is just a simple tale  about a mother protecting her children from a predator.   I enjoyed reading it and it could be a 2000 year old work.

It can be read HERE

Mel u

Two Older Short Stories by Authors from Bangladesh

"The Bait" by Narayan Gangopadhyay-নারায়ণ গঙ্গোপাধ্যায়-(1958, 6 pages)
"Boligarto" by Roquia Sakawat Hussain (aka Begum Rokeyo)-বেগম রোকেয়া (1920, 5 pages)

Two Older Stories from Bangladesh

A Passage to The British Raj

Bangladesh became an independent country in 1971 after a terrible conflict with West Pakistan.    Prior to 1947 both counties were under the rule of the British Raj as part of the Crown colony of India.   One of the stories I will post on today, "Boligarto",  is a colonial era short story, the other a story from the time when Bangladesh was part of a Pakistan.    The human costs of the 1971 war for the Independence of Bangladesh was, in large part,  though not entirely, a long term consequence of the era of the British Raj.

"The Bait" by Narayan Gangopadhyay (1918 to 1970-Dinajpur,Bangladesh)

opens with an ordinary man getting a parcel in the mail from a Maharajah (the ruler of a princely estate-a semi-sovereign political entity who ruled over his people but had no power to conduct out of his territory relationships other than as directed by the British-most such rulers accepted great personal wealth in exchange for total subservience to the Raj) with some fancy slippers inside as a gift for him.   The man recalls that eight months ago a poem he had written had pleased the Maharajah and he had been invited to the man's opulent estate.   While there he was amazed by the great wealth of art and exquisite furniture on display in the man's palace.   He is especially nearly overwhelmed by the wonderful food.   At first he is in awe of the ruler and sees him as such a great man he is deeply honored he even speaks to him and is completely dumbfounded when the man treats him almost as a friend.   Then he sees the man sometimes drinks heavily (which is against the religious strictures of both men), he sees the men has all sorts of guns and expensive swords on display, and in the back of his mind he realizes his new found "friend" can kill him with impunity should he annoy him.   Still he goes on and on about  how wonderful the food is and how he loves it so much.   ("The Bait" was first published in a period in which millions of South Asians were near or actually starving to death.)    The Bait it the story metaphorically would then be the trapping of the people of Bangladesh by their rulers control of the food supply.   In the starkest of terms, they had to submit or starve.   In actual story line terms (spoiler alert) the Maharajah ties up a local boy (one of many who come to his estate every day looking for food scraps from his kitchen) and uses him as bait to attract a tiger so he can shoot him.   The man in the story never really understands he is little more than an animal to the Maharajah and the British.   

Narayan Gangopadhyay was a college professor with a PhD from the University of Calcutta.    His field of research was The Short Story.   He wrote many novels, essays, dramas, short stories and children's books.

"Boligarto" by Roquia Sakawat Hussain (she wrote some of her stories under the name Begum Rokeyo-1880 to 1932-Rangpur, Bangladesh) is one of the very first short stories by an Islamic woman from what is now Bangladesh that can be seen as in defense of the rights of women.    She was married at 16 (normal at the time) through an arranged marriage.    Her husband encouraged her to continue reading in English and Bengali and urged her to begin writing in Bengali (even though he was an Urdu speaker by birth).   After his death she started a school for girls which still exists today.    In her essays and other writings she suggested that it was the ultra-conservative Islamic policies of the rulers that served at the pleasure of the British Raj that caused the Muslim portions of South Asian to lag behind other areas in development.   


"Boligarto"   (a region of Bangladesh)  is told in the first person by a young woman.    As the story opens she is sitting on the veranda of her house when a friend of hers approaches the house.    The woman is very active in the Congress Party and is traveling spreading the use of the spinning wheel.   This identifies the woman as an advocate of Independence for India and as  standing up to the monopoly of the British Raj on cloth.   The woman tells her is OK for them to go to Boligarto as one of her cousins is the local ruler there.   The only way the British could rule a huge territory such as India  (especially one in which they shared in most cases no common language with their subjects) was through local puppet rulers.     The fun of this story is seeing all of the near crazy goings on at the house of the Khan.   For example one day the woman of the family had asked to go on a car ride through the town.   The Khan reluctantly agreed but then he put a giant black cloth over the car with holes just for the driver, so no one could see the women, Of course they can see nothing also.   When the women complain, he tells them they are shamefully wanting to go against the teaching of their religion.    The Khan acts as a money lender, also against their religion.    He justifies charging a very high rate of interest by saying he is risking damnation in his efforts to help his people and this entitles him to charge a high rate.


Kals of At Pemberly-Life Between Pages has recently begun a very interesting project,  A Passage to the Raj which will focus on literature from and about India circa 1858 to 1947.   My now life time project on the South Asian Short story will inevitability touch a lot on this era.   We have decided to, where applicable,  cross link our projects.    I know that my project will take me into all sorts of totally new to me places.   Just the history of the era and places is delightfully complicated and intricate.    Both of the stories I posted on today deal directly with issues related to how the British controlled South Asia through puppet rulers who were willing to act as slave masters for the British in exchange for personal wealth and power.   I have noticed a fascination with the trappings of wealth in the stories I have read.    Kals blog has a lot of good information on Indian Literature.   I look forward to learning from her posts and hope this will be a long term collaboration.   I have in the past participated in her event, Tagore Thursday.   Anyone who wants to link up to our project is very welcome to join in.    Kals has historical background information in her introductory post.   


"Boligarto"  can be read HERE

"The Bait"  can be read HERE


Mel u

Bangladesh: Two Wonderful Contemporary Short Stories

"The Mango Belle (2002, 3 pages) by Paritosh Sen-পরিতোষ সেন
"Nishikanata in the Rain" (1999, 4 pages) by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay 

Two Very Interesting Stories by 

Contemporary Authors from

Bangladesh

Bangladesh was created in 1971 when East Pakistan declared its independence from West Pakistan.    A terrible war broke out in which the materially advantaged West Pakistan caused terrible suffering to the common people of what is now Bangladesh.    To compound the suffering one of the worse typhoons in history struck the area in the same period killing upwards of 300,000 people.    Estimates for the death tolls for the war very widely, the best estimate appears to be around one million either directly by conflict or  from resulting famines and disease.   The army of West Pakistan made a systematic effort to kill intellectuals and writers.    (There is a good article about the 1971 Bangladesh War for Independence HERE)

"Nishikanata in the Rain"  by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay reminded me of the long term human costs of war in terms of its effect on forgotten people who will suffer effects all their lives and eventually live out their days among people who may no longer even recall the war.     The central character in this short story is a seemingly mentally challenged man in his early twenties.   No one really quite knows what is wrong with him or who his family might be.   Most people in Bangladesh now have been born long after the war ended and have only partially heard of it or know much about what happened.   We see the man wishes he could have a wife and is told by someone who takes gross advantage of him that even a beggar can easily find a wife.    In a terrible scene we see into the nightmares of the young man as he remembers a long ago riot in which 1000s were killed, maybe including his parents.    He was very young when this happened and was thrown out on his own.   One of the most terrible long term human consequences of events like the 1971 war is the massive long term undernourishment of infants and toddlers which can result in a significant lowering of  mental development  for 1000s and 1000s of people.   

Mukhopadhyay  (1935-Birrampur, Bangladesh) wrote numerous adult and children's books.    Severall of his novels have been made into movies.   He is one of the most popular writers in Bangladesh.   

"The Mango Belle" by  Paritosh Sen is a very different kind of story.  It centers on a successful artist and an extremely rich patron of the arts.  I have noticed in the South Asian Short Stories I have read that a number of them deal with super rich people.   I think it may be that such stories sell well in a place of terrible poverty and they evoke a treasured half mythical history.    The artist is famous for his very beautiful erotic paintings of women.    Beautiful women are treated as part of the "entitlements" of the rich.    The artist constantly compares the women he paints to various kinds of fruit.   He receives a very large offer from the wealthy patron to paint a woman who will remind all of the beauty and sweetness  of the mango.    (Mangoes are a fruit of the tropics and little eaten outside the very warm parts of the world which kind of localizes this story a bit.   The mango is the sweetest and most luscious of fruits.  The world's best Mangoes are grown in Zambales!)   The artist goes into detail how different women are like different kinds of fruit.   A lot of the fun of this story is in fantasying what it would be like to live like a prince in a country of terrible poverty.   This is not a real profound or heavy story and does not pretend to be one but for sure it is a fun read and gives us a look at a world very different from the one most of live in.

Sen (1918 to 2008-Dhaka, Bangladesh) was a leading artist who also produced a number of highly regarded literary works.   

Both of these stories were translated from Bengali.  

You can find both of the stories Here

Mel u

Selina Hossain -(বাংলাদেশ)-A Leading Bangladesh Author

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"Honour" by Selina Hossain (3 pages, 1982)

A Very Powerful Story About the Lives of 

Ordinary Women in Bangladesh

Selina Hossain (1947) was born in Rajshahi, Bangladesh.    She has had a very productive and distinguished literary career.   Since writing her first  novel while still in college she has written twenty one novels and edited many works dealing with the rights of women and children.   Her many short stories have been published in four collections.   She  has also published many essays on a wide variety of cultural topics.    She is considered a  leading advocate of the rights of women and children in Bangladesh.      She is  on the board of directors of UNESCO, was recently named secretary-general of Transparency International Bangladash and was the director of a very well known school.     She also has the normal responsibilities of family life.     Much of her focus is on the lingering affects of England's rule of the Indian Subcontinent and on Pakistan's treatment of Bangladesh during the 1971 war for the independence of Bangladesh.   (Estimate of deaths from this war run up to 2,000,000.)     She has received many awards and is considered a strong candidate for the Nobel Prize.    Her books have been translated into English, Russian, French, German and several Indian dialects.    She is deeply into the reading life.

"Honour" (written originally in Bengali-translator unknown)  gets off to a stunning start.   I will let the story speak for itself:


"Maleka was murdered by her husband Latif, who slit her throat open. Then he beheaded her corpse and threw it into the Jaliabeel river beside Bakoljora village. Her body sank like a stone, then bobbed up again. Two days later, when it began to rot, the vultures arrived. Maleka’s two brothers tried to tow the body down from Jaliabeel to Durgapur Ghat. But it was so badly decomposed that a burial was no longer possible. The brothers cut it loose, letting the current of the Shomeshwari River take it. They were quite melancholic for a while, but they returned home rather satisfied with their handiwork."
.
Maleka, a Muslim girl, got neither a funeral nor a burial. As a child, she had learned to read the Holy Quran from a moulvi saheb. Every year, during the month of Ramadan, Maleka completed one reading of the entire Quran. She would fast right through the month as well. Her faith was without blemish.


The cool waters of the river awoke the soul of Maleka.   She did not know where to go.   She is not a sinner (her husband's accusations were groundless) so she will not go to hell but her lack of a proper death ceremony will keep her out of heaven.     She begins to be seen about the village and at the house of the family of her husband.    She was a second wife and now her husband's first wife is terrified she will be murdered also.    (Everyone, including the police knew of the murder but no one comes to investigate the killing.)   Then she sees Maleska.   When she runs screaming to her husband, he knocks her to the ground and kicks her until she passes out.   We then learned the husband somehow thought his second wife had made sexual advances toward his first wife.   That fantasy is why he killed her.


Maleka goes to her families house (of course no one can see her) she hears her sister in law say that she got what she deserved.    Her brother agrees they are best rid of her.    


Maleka goes to the market and listens to a loud policeman telling a story:


 “You people must remember the incident at Durgapur. A man brought the head of his elder brother’s wife to the police station. He said that he had killed the whore in order to protect their family honour. Just think, gentlemen, what nobility of character!”   The policeman is then reminded that this man was tried and hanged for this.   He at once says it is because they still live under corrupt laws from the days of British rule.   He says that if they lived under honorable laws the man would be celebrated.


There is more in this story than I have told.   In just a few pages Hossain brings a very ugly world to life for us.   


This another story from the pages of The Little Magazine,   a very high quality literary and cultural publication based in Delhi and dealing with pan-South Asian issues.    


I have begun a new area of reading for me, The South Asian short story.    I am very excited by this.   I would welcome suggestions and guidance from those with experience in this reading area (I would not call it a genre).      If you want to read some stories on your own, you will find about 45 of them through the web page of The Little Magazine.     There are cultural parallels to the Irish Short story in that both are set in cultures that partially define themselves through their rejection of colonial Britain.   There are other similarities that interest me also but that will wait.      


I will to some extent focus on stories about the rights of women and children and stories that deal with the effects of the British rule of India.    I have links to 100s of stories already.   


Mel u