At that time I was associated with the reading circle of Biswasahitya Kendra. Classic books were taught there, and they were discussed at the end of the reading. This was a discussion about books read every week. And at the end of these discussions, Abdullah Abu Sayeed would speak, then Abdullah Abu Sayeed would expand the boundaries of understanding as much as we understood about the books we read. So at one stage not only Humayun Ahmed’s writing, I read many more books at that time.
We can better understand that time and later, and it must be admitted that Humayun Ahmed had a great ability to tell stories. If you notice, whether it is a novel or a story, everywhere he is telling stories at every moment, creating stories in every chapter of the novel, creating stories within each character. This power was his. Coincidentally, for some time now I have been reading Humayun Ahmed’s latest novel ‘Deyal’ — Liberation War, Bangabandhu Assassination, before and after 15th August.
Since I am writing about Humayun Ahmed today, I will not place him in the place of harsh criticism, I will just say that his infinite ability to tell stories is rare, at least in our country, in Bengali literature in Bangladesh.
Humayun Ahmed was very popular.No doubt Humayun Ahmed is very successful as a short story writer. But many judge the author based on whether the book is on the market. In fact, in my opinion, whether a book is cut or not, whether it is sold or not, a writer is not judged by all these. If you go to many countries of the world, you will see that billboard advertisement after billboard with books — there are bestselling writers all over the world, but literature cannot be considered only with popularity. I don’t think Best Seller Writer means he’s a great writer. We have confused the matter in our country. A bestseller is not a great writer.
All writers want to talk about life. Even after reading Humayun Bhai’s writings, we find that he also talks about life, the humor in his literature is extraordinary, but he always stays a little away from the seriousness that people have in their language, thoughts, and the thoughts or responsibilities that the writer has about them. I think so. After reading all his books, it seems that he went to a place with a sense of humor, a serious talk, but he avoided that place with a joke.
Another thing is that those who are classics, the ones we read first, have to read, and inevitably — Manik, Bibhuti or Tarashankar, or Elias, or if we talk about Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, if we read their novels, the sentences are often quite long. Looking at Humayun Ahmed’s sentence, it can be seen that his sentences are not very long — it is important to think about shortening the sentence with a beard.
By: Parvez Hossain
Audio writing: Md. Masud Hossain
