There are some authors who are less productive thanks to their unique temperament. Alongside them, some are extraordinarily prolific. Bengalee writer Amiyabhushan Majumdar belonged to the first category. One would like to place Sunil Gangopaddhay in the second group. In literature, the number of published books does not define a writer's position in a certain literary landscape. In Bangladesh, with only around 10 novels and a few short story collections to his credit Shawkat Ali (1936-2018) stands out as a major writer in Bangla literature. He passed away on January 25 at the age of 82. His contemporary Syed Shamsul Haque (1935-2016) has left behind a spectacularly varied corpus of literary output, fictions being dominant. The number of Haque's total works stands at around 150, the novels crossing 100. Yet in the tricky process of making critical judgements, Shawkat Ali is given the same literary status as Syed Haque.
A formidably large volume of output does not always take an author to any spectacular height. Despite 38 plays in total, Shakespeare's greatness and fame at times is seen being outshone by his contemporary playwright Christopher Marlow. The output of Marlow finally comes to 5, the most renowned and widely read being his Doctor Faustus.
The comparison between the two British dramatists and the two authors of Bangladesh may require the readers' imagination to be stretched quite far. But with the average Bengalee literary-cultural milieu in view, the parallel study does not seem much out of place. People like to view their writers at par with those living overseas. Moreover, comparisons like this are made periodically in the cases of many other authors living in different regions. Fathoming the literary genius of Shawkat Ali and Syed Haque is especially prompted by the two writers' belonging to the generation of the 1950s. However, they began appearing in print in periods having a gap of ten years. Syed Shamsul Haque's first literary output came in the form of poetry. It was published in the historic journal commemorating the 1952 Language Movement. Edited by Poet Hasan Hafizur Rahman, it came out in 1953. It was followed by the author's maiden novel Deyaler Desh in 1956. Compared to Haque, Shawkat Ali appears to be a late bloomer. He emerged in print with his novel Pingal Akash in 1963. The decade of the 1960s, however, identified him as an extraordinary short story writer steeped in the socio-political and cultural realities prevalent in the then East Pakistan in the early sixties. Social realism had remained a dominant theme in the novels and stories of Ali since his formative days. As he matured as an author, this realism in his work kept intensifying, prompting him to explore newer areas of life. Earlier this realism comprised his teenage days in West Bengal's North Dinajpur district with his parents and siblings. Shawkat Ali's politically liberal father opted to stay in India after the 1947 Partition of the Sub-continent. But he became disillusioned over the later murky developments related to their being Muslims; finally the family of the writer had to migrate to the then East Bengal. Life was not easy for the writer in Dhaka either, where he completed his university studies. He joined teaching at Dhaka's Jagannath College in 1962 to continue a 25-year job there till 1987.
Shawkat Ali had to make way through a lot of adversities during his youth in Dhaka. Unlike his contemporaries Syed Haque, Alauddin Al Azad, Borhanuddin Khan Jahangir et al, he would avoid literary 'Addas' and the crowds of dilettantes. Those who had observed him grow as an author especially singled out his love for solitude, and aversion for the literary rat-race. Stealing the limelight never appealed him. According to a section of critics and his admirers, this very trait explains to a great extent the writer's distinctive character. Despite his flexible and unpretentious prose, Ali could resist being swept by the lure of churning out popular fictions. Instead, he confined himself to the seemingly unappealing subjects of history and the human struggle for freedom. He takes a deep look at the historical turning-points as they occurred in medieval Bengal. A watershed chapter from the past of Bengal, which would mould the land's socio-political and cultural realities in the following centuries, thus, forms the subject of Prodoshey Prakritojon. It's a fiction set against a vast canvas taken from Bengal during the rule by the Sens. The story and the characters portray a period which was one of the most critical in Bengal's history. It was the time when the caste system-based social segregations and oppression of the lower class by the upper ones reached an unbearable level. Shawkat Ali draws the fiction to a close a little dramatically. As the oppressed communities grope in the dark for freedom from the clutches of the Sen rule, they notice in the horizon the silhouettes of the invading Turks. It's them who would open a fresh chapter in the history of Bengal, thus triggering many changes in the social fabric of the Bengal region. Owing to its semi-epic subject, Prodoshey Prakritojon (1984) is acclaimed as a major work in the 20th century Bangla literature.
Shawkat Ali is no facile author. Notwithstanding his unadorned and nonstylised prose, the subjects of his fictions are complex. They pierce through the deceptively transparent surface of life. Like a sculptor he carves out his characters from the apparently commonly known people whom we see around. Unlike Syed Haque and others, Ali felt comfortable with his mundane narrative style. Experiment with the language of fictions and discovering new dictions was of little interest to him. However, Prodoshey Parkritojon was an outstanding exception, with its prose at times appearing highly inspired and bordering on poetry. The decade of the 1980s witnessed the creativity of the author at its fullest. Apart from the trilogy comprising three remarkable novels, the period saw the publication of most of Shawkat Ali's major fictions. They include Warish, Uttorer Khep, Opekkha, Jononi O Jatika, etc.
In order to get to the message of his stories and novels a reader is required to have completed a little homework. Despite being a former communist, and son of a Congress supporter, his justification for stressing the Muslim identity of a Bengali author in the 1930s and 1940s may confuse general readers. But Ali has viewed the whole scenario from the perspective of the neglected Muslim writers in a Hindu-dominant society in Kolkata. He finds a liberator in Kazi Nazrul Islam, the Rebel Poet, who remained acceptable and adorable to both the communities in the Bangla-speaking pre-partition India. However, due to his upbringing in a progressive and educated upper middle-class family environment, the ground realities caused him a lot of sufferings. In the early days, Dhaka was not much comfortable to him after migration. At times, Ali appeared to have been overwhelmed by a dichotomy. Writers dealing with everyday realities are free from these ordeals. Shawkat Ali, perhaps on the dictates of his temperament, embraced a difficult domain, where a writer should develop the art of penetrating the hackneyed realism. Many a born-artist remains engaged in exploring super-reality, truth as many would like to call it, throughout their careers. It calls for sacrifices and the ability to resist temptations. Shawkat Ali mastered these qualities. He never had an eye on the celebrity status. Besides, he had never been a conformist.
