After independence, a proliferation of books published about the liberation war left a lasting impact on Bangladeshi literature. Memoirs such as Jahanara Imam’s Ekattorer Dinguli (The days of 71), novels such as Shahriar Kabir’s Ekatturer Jishu (The Jesus of 71), and countless short story collections from different authors, have continued to come out.
Khashruzzaman Choudhury’s Five Minutes Stories is a significant addition to this trend, though side by side with his experiences of the 1971 war of independence this book includes stories about the post-liberation period of Bangladesh and his diasporic experiences in the USA.
Five Minutes Stories offers readers an enthralling literary experience. Choudhury delights his audience with stories of his variegated experiences in Bangladesh and beyond.
Written mostly from a first person point of view, the stories carry the flavor of a memoir. His narrators seem identical to one another and tend to resemble the author as well. Stories like “1971: That Dreadful Night” are absolutely successful both as fiction and nonfiction.
Another story titled “Civil Servant and Politics Do Not Mix” deals with how individuals treat national sentiments in their personal lives. We hear one character say, “It is not a civil servant’s job to indulge in political movements or politics.” The tension generated through conversations between characters is an exercise worth the reader’s time.
Instead of diving deep into a post-liberated Bangladesh, made up of all sorts of contradictory elements in politics as well as in society, Khashruzzaman Choudhury takes his readers into a fictional world marked by irony. Stories like “The State Minister”, “The Pious Man”, “A Well Wisher”, and “A Political Leader” give us a taste of that, while “A Different Kind of Theft” provides us with a comic relief quite absurd in nature.
The lives of Bangladeshi people and the challenges they face in Bangladesh or beyond are sketched neatly and dynamically by Chowdhury with both humor and empathy. As short pieces demand, the economy of the construction of imagery is one of the key features of his craftsmanship. He has not used unnecessary figurative language either; instead, he has given great emphasis on characterization, ensuring his characters’ lively presence within the narration of the plot. His stories are more focused on fleshing out the overall human existence.
After reading “Stranger” and “The State Minister” the reader wants Afia, the narrator’s wife in many of the stories, to appear again. Her character is developed in story after story in an intriguing manner. The stories project a vitality that is relatable and engaging. Any average reader would doubtlessly find a part of themselves in these stories. There’s a kind of warmth in Choudhury’s prose that is enduring.
Besides, the language is so eloquent that one is surprised to have learned that these stories were originally written in Bengali. The translation of the first twenty stories of the collection was done by Ziauddin Choudhury, while the author himself has translated the last four.
Five Minutes Stories by Khashruzzaman Choudhury traverses the geographical, historical, and experiential realities of Bangladesh and its people in compact patches of stories fueled by humane observation. It is a collection worthy of recommendation.
Hironmoy Golder writes occasionally for Arts & Letters.
