Kaiser Haq has never tried to make Dhaka prettier than it is. Born in the city, the poet, essayist, and translator has been writing poems about it since the 1960s, full of its noise, crowds, and smells.
His first two collections, Starting Lines and A Little Ado, appeared in 1978. They were followed by A Happy Farewell (1994), Black Orchid (1996), The Logopathic Reviewer’s Song (2002), and Pariah and Other Poems.
The enlarged edition of Published in the Streets of Dhaka adds new poems, among them “Ode on the Lungi,” which takes an everyday garment as its subject. He has also parodied Jibanananda’s “Banalata Sen,” setting it in the city.
He translated the Selected Poems of Shamsur Rahman (1985) and Rabindranath Tagore’s novel Chaturanga, published in English as Quartet (1993). He also retold the legend of the goddess Manasa in The Triumph of the Snake Goddess, published by Harvard University Press.
In this conversation with Arts and Letters, Kaiser Haq talks about why ugliness belongs in poetry, what Dhaka has lost, and writing in English.
AnL: Your poems have been set in Dhaka for decades. Is there a version of the city you can no longer see, because you have written it so many times that it has become more of a poem than a place?
Kaiser Haq: I don’t think so, because Dhaka is constantly changing. The salient aspects of my poetic take on the cityscape and its people haven’t changed, but I can see new pressures on the infrastructure and the inhabitants. I am trying to figure out how to make poetry out of this ever-changing Dhaka.
Your poems keep the noise, the crowds, and the smells of Dhaka. Why does ugliness matter to you as material, and what does prettifying the city cost a poem?
The ugliness of the city cannot be airbrushed out of art and literature without slipping into escapism. Besides, I think I’m enough of a Baudelairian to take the ugliness as legitimate material for poetry.
Has the city lost something in your lifetime that you quietly mourn?
Dhaka is a small town that has grown into a conurbation, the second largest in the world in terms of population, without acquiring the civic infrastructure that gives city life its distinctive feel. The Dhaka I feel most at home in no longer exists. It is the Dhaka of my childhood and boyhood years, when there was a sense of community and a lively literary scene. Daily adda brought together poets, fiction writers, artists, and filmmakers.
You rework a Bengali classic, setting it in modern Dhaka. What did you want to keep from it, and what did you change?
You are referring to my parody of “Banalata Sen,” right? I love Jibanananda’s poetry. In that parody, I think I have captured the essence of that particular poem within the parameters of Dhaka’s urban ambience. Of course, in the process, I have added a spritz of humor.
Your poetic persona has been described as that of a flâneur wandering through Dhaka, though you were born into the city. Does the label fit what you do?
Flâneurs belong to the cities they wander in. You don’t wander into it; you stroll around it, observing life in its myriad forms. Sadly, the crush of overpopulation has destroyed the scope for flâneurie. The city needs a thorough overhaul, like the redesign of Paris by the city planner Baron Haussmann.
You say Dhaka’s ugliness cannot be airbrushed out of art, yet you want the city overhauled. Do those two positions pull against each other?
There is a difference between airbrushing something out of poetry and rebuilding a city. Baudelaire indulged in flâneurie as Haussmann was restructuring Paris. The poetic result was Les Fleurs du Mal. Haussmann’s work was commissioned to make the city more easily administered and controlled. Long, elegant boulevards and avenues would give a clear field of fire to soldiers facing rebels and mobs. That’s the sinister side of building a more beautiful Paris.
You write about a deeply Bengali city in the language of its former colonizers. Do you ever feel like a translator of Dhaka rather than a native son, as if the city must pass through English before it becomes yours on the page?
That’s a loaded question. I grew up in Dhaka, speaking Bangla at home and with my mohalla friends and English in my English-medium schools. I hope my use of English does not seem to be something imposed. I hope it has evolved into an acceptable vehicle for my observations and lucubrations. If you look at Kipling’s stories, you will see that the English language can effectively capture the tenor of Indian life. I try to achieve a similar effect.
Many postcolonial writers and readers keep their distance from Kipling. Why do you turn to him?
I’m aware of the postcolonial knee-jerk reaction to writers like Kipling. I reject it completely. Kipling was an imperialist, no doubt, but he was also Indian by birth, so to speak, and has given a vivid and realistic portrait of colonial India. As with all writing, we have to read him critically. But there is much a postcolonial writer can learn from him.
What are you working on next?
I’m thinking of a “New and Selected Poems.”
If Dhaka disappeared and only your poems survived, what would future readers make of the city?
Who can say? It depends on the upbringing and orientation of the people in the future. If they are aware of the peculiar aspects of South Asian city life in our time, whether from books or films and paintings and photographs, they will be able to relate to my poetry, just as we can relate to, say, Cavafy’s Alexandria.