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(6)Interview>Nazib Wadood with Bangla Literature (part 1)
Nazib Wadood, a leading writer of the time, was born on
July 20, 1961, at Shyampur village under Katakhali
Municipality in Rajshahi. His father, late Elahi Baksh
Molla, was an engineer and mother Mabia Khatun is a
housewife. Nazib was a meritorious student. He achieved
his MBBS degree from Rajshahi Medical College and is
now serving at Rajshahi University as a Deputy Chief
Medical Officer.
Nazib started writing from his very boyhood and has
raised himself as a leading fiction-writer and translator of
the time. He writes rhymes, plays and essays too.
However, till now, Nazib Wadood is famous mostly for
his short stories and translations. He is traditional, with
some exceptions, in his writing. He does not build story
without story in the name of creating new things,
techniques and isms. Rather, he creates his fictions with a
subject at its centre and digs into the core of life to
discover and unearth meaning of life, aims and objectives
of living, and builds it with charming and live language
that makes the writing attractive. He describes mainly
nature and people of the Barendra region. His
subjectmatter is poor and low-income people. But he
does not write traditional proletariat, realistic and
socialistic fiction. He encompasses all aspects of life and
forms of literature. That earns fame for him as a fiction-
writer.
Nazib Wadood is also an organizer of literary movement.
He edits two little magazines Porilekh and Nandan. The
two magazines are playing praiseworthy roles in
searching out and harboring new writers. Bangla
Literature is offering tribute to this great writer by
publishing an interview recently taken by Masud Ahmad,
editor of the little magazine Galpopotra.
Bangla Literature : You started writing in
boyhood, specifically in 1971, with songs… Then a rhyme
was published in the Daily Ittefaq in 1974. By that time
you also wrote plays and novels. When did you emerge
as a short story writer?
Nazib Wadood : Well, in 1971 we were in
Murshidabad as refugee when I wrote a song on our
liberation war. Then I was a mere a boy of 10 years, and
you could imagine that the song had been a product of
emotion. Then I didn’t know anything about literature.
After liberation, I used to write poems and essays on
various occasions like the National Mourning Day,
Independence Day and so on. I won many prizes in local
and national competitions. It inspired me to keep up
writing. During this period, I wrote some stories, plays
and novels, and mostly rhymes and songs. But the
attempts that mean literature actually began after
mid-’70s. I devoted myself to writing short stories in
1980. Then we had formed a literary organization
(Rabibashorio Shahitya Sangsad) and published a literary
magazine Porilekh early in 1981. My first literary attempt
of writing short story was ‘Banvasi’ (Flood-swept). It was
published in the inaugural issue of Porilekh. Then my
stories began to appear in some other magazines and
literary pages of local and national daily newspapers. But
all on a sudden it was interrupted when I left Rajshahi
town and began to live in remote villages like a traveler
(1982-1987). That could be a good bye for ever from the
world of writing, but in March, 1987 I accidentally met
three friends of eminent fiction-writer of West Bengal
Abul Bashar when I visited Murshidabad. They are
essayist Akram Ali, fiction-writer Rakibuddin Yusuf and
Shuvo Chatterjee, editor of literary magazine Rourab.
They inspired me to start writing again. There I read
stories of Samoresh Bose, Syed Mustafa Siraj, Shirshendu
Mukhopadhyay, Sunil Gongopadhyay, Abul Basher, Anil
Ghorai and some other writers of West Bengal. Just
before leaving Murshidabad, I wrote a short story
‘Shoronarthi’ (The Refugee) that was published in the
Sharadio (autumnal) issue of Rourab in 1987.
I came back to Rajshahi town. Probably in a later day of
1987, a young boy stopped me on the road at Sonadighi
Crossing in Rajshahi town and asked me whether I was
Nazib Wadood. He said that he had heard much of me
from the local senior writers. He introduced himself as
Khurshid Alam Babu and didn’t forget to say that he
wrote poems and essays and an attentive reader of short
stories. We became good friends. Babu, with his
continuous inspirations and criticisms, made me get
devoted again to writing short story. So it can be said
that my actual emergence as a fiction-writer happened in
the period of late ’80s.
Bangla Literature : From the very beginning,
you are writing short stories mostly on village life. You
narrate village people with their faith, conscience,
sensibility, struggle, and everything they have, and you
do it with very attractive forms and language of your
own. Do you think that the villages are the same now?
People’s expressions, attitudes and figures always reflect
their surroundings and its influences, isn’t it? How does
this creative process act in your case?
Nazib Wadood : Yes, I still now write mostly
with village life because I have come from village. I know
village life well. But you should know, as you are also a
story writer, that it is primarily and finally a question of
art and narration of mere experiences can’t be literature.
To be literature, experience needs to be absorbed with
imagination, appropriate form and aesthetic language. I
followed the mainstream of Bangla Fiction that had been
initiated and nourished by Rabindranath Tagore,
Sharatchandra Chattapadhyay, Tarashonkor
Bandhyapadhyay, Bibhutibhushan Bandhyapadhyay and
Manik Bandhyapadhyay. However, we shouldn’t forget
that Bangla literature takes many turns being influenced
by the literature of other languages. All these have
influenced my attempts. Yes, our villages have been
rapidly changing, at least for last two decades. Natural
and ecological, socio-economic and cultural changes as
well, are very significant. Some changes are positive no
doubt, but most changes are negative, I guess. Our social
and cultural bondages and relations are breaking down.
Our families are being dismantled. Evil things are
infiltrating into our families and societies in the name of
civilization, modernism and technology. But I am sorry to
say that these changes are seldom being depicted in our
literature. This is a feature of colonialism. I try. I don’t go
beyond my experience, but with it come imaginations
and analyses to act on to improve it to art. I draw a
picture of a man or a locality with all its characteristics–
nature and history, religion, faith and notions, values and
traditions, domestic and social atmospheres, limitations
and potentials, joy and sorrows, thoughts and
conscience, attitude and dialects, and everything. They
are involved in and concerned with. These come as hints,
gesture and allusions very briefly in short stories, and
vividly in novels.
Bangla Literature : Does any inspiration work in
this case? Everyday sufferings, sorrows and struggle of
destitute, low-income professionals and oppressed,
exploited and deprived farmers are your favorite subject
matter...
Nazib Wadood : Right. I must acknowledge
that I was very much politics-driven in the beginning.
Exploitation, oppression, disparity and deprivation hurt
me very much. That might work as inspirations. Actually, I
write about them whom I know well. I have come of a
middle-class family, but I had the opportunity to see and
know destitute and low-income people very closely. I
have the experience of living and starving with them
every now and then. That was a rude reality, not hobby at
all. So their sufferings and struggles, sorrows and joys
have occupied major spaces in my literary works. But
these do not come as `political’ inspiration now.
Bangla Literature : Real life as well as psycho-
analysis comes in your stories very distinctly but
precisely. That is why, human life is portrayed in your
stories with its perspectives and prospectives. This helps
sometimes a locality, mostly of the Barendra region, to be
grown up as a live character. How will you explain this
creative process?
Nazib Wadood : This is actually a question of
form related to creative method. It, at the same time, is a
matter of theme of the story. Life has two sides– one is
external reality and another is internal reality; but these
are, in fact, inseparable from each other. Both the aspects
of life obviously affect each other. I take the external side
in the front but do not ignore its internal aspect. It has
happened in most of my stories. I relate and often mix up
external reality with internal emotion and maintain
subtleness, hints and preciseness in doing it. I have learnt
it from Ernest Hemingway. Some writers cannot control
temptation of narrating things with minute details which
is often proved to be excessive and make language
complex as if they did not want the readers understand
the writer’s and the story’s motive. Many writers forget
that mystery; lack of clarity, psychological intricacy and
incomprehensibility of language are different things. A
human being is a complete existence with all its external
and internal possessing. He is concerned with his time,
his nature and physical surroundings, his faiths and
notions, his ideals and contradictions; he is a real man
with all these things. While writing, I always keep it in my
mind, though this aspect predominates in this story and
that in the other. You will observe this creative processes
well in my stories like ‘Abad’ (Cultivation),
‘Dokhol’ (Occupation), ‘Comrade O Kiritch’ (The Comrade
and the Falchion), ‘Kanna-Hasir Upakhyan’ (A Fable of
Crying and Laughing), ‘Pichhutan’ (Pulling from the
Back), ‘Britto’ (The Circle), ‘Aro Duti Khun’ (Two More
Killings), ‘Kosai’ (The Butcher), ‘Megh Bhanga Rod’ (The
Cloud-Breaking Sunshines), ‘Jion Kathi’ (The Magic Stick),
etc.
Bangla Literature : ‘Britto’ was written on the
occasion of cultural competition of Rajshahi Medical
College in the year of 1980. Eminent fiction writer Hasan
Azizul Haq was the chief judge. Were you then writing
seriously?
Nazib Wadood : I was then a student of first
year MBBS class. That was the period of beginning of my
short story writing. Actually I was then ignorant of the art
of short story.
Bangla Literature : Did Hasan Azizul Haq give
you some advice?
Nazib Wadood : Yes. There is a story behind it.
Actually, I stood second in that competition. But my great
reward was that my story could attract Hasan Azizul Haq.
Sohel Aman, one of our senior brothers, was then a very
busy and promising writer. He had good relations with
Hasan. Being asked by Hasan, he searched out and took
me to him. By that time I had read some stories of Hasan
and become his fan. So I went to meet him with very
excitement. He praised my writing but at the same time
pointed out some weaknesses of the story and gave me
some tips. That was really a big achievement for me. His
advice helped me in improving quality of my writing.
Bangla Literature : Well, can it be said that
Hasan influenced you in taking villages as the perspective
of your stories?
Nazib Wadood : No, not at all. Yes, his personal
association and language and socialistic approach of his
stories attracted me very much in the beginning, but I
think he could not influence my writing. Actually every
writer’s literary style is built up on his own philosophy,
experience and personality. In that perspective, distance
between us was vast. I should say that Hasan’s village-
based stories are his best writings though there are some
kinds of artificial and imposed matters in these stories.
However, I am fan of these pieces.
Bangla Literature : Let me explain the matter…
nature and environment of the Barendra region and daily
life and dialects of the Barendra people have been vividly
but artistically portrayed in your stories. Sometimes these
are so live that the writer’s voice draws pictures of their
own existence. We see the same things in Hasan’s stories
that are based on Rarh region…
Nazib Wadood : Right. Hasan’s villages are of
Rarh-Bangla, i.e, Bardhwan and Birbhum districts of West
Bengal. Tarashonkor Bandapadhyay also wrote mainly on
this region. Syed Mustafa Siraj, a very strong fiction writer
of West Bengal, has taken Bardhwan, Birbhum and
Murshidabad as his perspectives. Abubakar Siddique is
another eminent fiction-writer who has written stories on
both Rarh and Barendra regions. On the other hand,
villages of my stories are mainly from Rajshahi and
Chapainawabganj districts, i.e. Barendra region. All we
have written on village and village people. No doubt, this
is a common characteristic among us; but no other
similarity can be found among us– neither in philosophy
of life, nor in language and narratives or forms.
Bangla Literature : How did you achieve this
skill? Has it come spontaneously?
Nazib Wadood : Yes, you can say it
spontaneous. But at the same time, you shouldn’t also
forget that literature today can’t be imagined without
some kinds of conscious and intellectual endeavors. ============================================================================== Readers' Comments :
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