Shahidul Jahir - Literary Style

Literary Style

Shahidul Jahir was one of the most important contemporary writers in Bangladesh. He died very recently on March 23, 2008 in early morning. He was known by some as the Márquez of Bangladesh, carrying on the legacy of magic-realism with strokes of his own unique surrealist style, deeply imbibing the politics, history and culture of Bangladesh, his own country home in Sirajganj and his place of birth. However, his style also remidns of Syed Waliullah, a modern Bengali fictionist of Western lineage. He relied more on narration than dialogue between characters. His diction was symbolic and mystified. He resorted to colloquellism in order to infuse reality into the context and story-line. The name of his last published story was, "Miracle of Life". Here is an excerpt (translated from Bengali) from his swan song:

An adolescent girl, or a young girl, or who is just a gal...whatever, what do we do with her? She can have a name, since she is a human being, and human beings do have names, so her name could be Pari, Banu, or Ayesha... ...If she stands at the edge of the dirty drains, standing inside her home, as broke as the ragged nest of a magpie (babui), her mother runs around...her mother goes around cooking for others, she cooks rice, she cooks curries,she makes chapatis, there are people who swallow them, or maybe they rebuke her, What the hell have you cooked,woman!... ...Perhaps at that moment, Pari or Pari Banu, is standing at the rail ways of Dayaganj or Shamibag, holding the hands of her little sister or brother, and their father runs around, he too goes to places, maybe he does things, pulls someone else's rickshaw, pushes someone else's cart, or maybe he does nothing, he just lies down on his bed and suffers from piles. Then, what do we do with this Pari? The leader, or the official of this republic, the officers, or the civil society - none of them know...We have no idea what to do with her...