Ahmed Sofa
Encyclopedia
Ahmed Sofa was a well-known writer, critic and intellectual from Bangladesh
. He wrote novel
s, poetry
and non-fiction essay
s. He also translated the writings of others. Ahmed Sofa was renowned for his intellectual righteousness as well as his radical approach to the understanding of social dynamics and international politics.
Sofa helped establish the anti-communalist Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir (Bangladesh Writers' Camp) in 1970 to "organise liberal writers in order to further the cause of the progressive movement".
district, Sofa's career as a writer began in the 1960s.
He never married.
On 28 July 2001, Ahmed Sofa died in a hospital in Dhaka
. He was laid to rest in Mirpur Shaheed Buddhijibi ("Martyred Intellectuals' Graveyard
").
Sofa's views, such as his position against Taslima Nasrin
, are considered controversial, even questionable, by some. This criticism did not dissuade Sofa from speaking his mind.
Surya Tumi Sathi (The Sun the Companion) was Sofa's first novel, written in 1964 and 1965, and published in 1967. The next novel, Onkar (The Om), which was received favorably in Bangladesh, was written in 1972 and published in 1975. In 1994, Sofa published a different type of novel, Alat Chakra (The Circle of Fire) which was actually written ten years earlier. In 1988, Sofa wrote two novels: Aali Kenan, published that year; and Maran Bilash (Luxury in Death), published in 1989. His later novels are Gaavi Bittanto (Tale of a Cow, 1994), Ardhek Nari Ardhek Ishwari (Half Man Half Woman, 1996), and Pushpa Briksha Ebong Bihanga Puran (A Tale of Flowers, Plants and Birds, 1996). Along with these eight novels, Sofa is the author of hundreds of lyrics, poems, short stories, essays, and columns. There were two long gaps in his writing career: the first was from 1973 to 1983, and the second from 1989 to 1994.
Sofa’s novels are generally small in size. Even the longer ones, like Alat Chakra, Gaavi Bittanto and Surya Tumi Sathi, are only 129, 110 and 93 pages long, respectively.
Due to his father’s unwise activities, the narrator is forced to marry a mute girl. Having no other alternative to save his own family, he has to do it. The mischievous father-in-law arranges a job for him. His sister, who resides with him in his town house in Dhaka, practises songs with a harmonium
. It is discovered that his speechless wife is trying to make sounds with that musical instrument. This makes the narrator-husband more sympathetic to his wife, and it inspires the woman to try even harder to speak. One day after the death of Asad in 1969, while a procession passes by their house, the housewife goes out to the veranda and tries to voice the slogans, but only blood flows out of her throat and she dies. In the novel, the socio-political condition of the society as well as the socio-familial environment has been delineated very minutely and skillfully.
is the focal point of the story. The story of the narrator, Daniel, and his lover-friend Tayeba works as a thread of loosely-related episodes, though in the same scenario. Different viewpoints about the liberation of Bangladesh, its possibility, and its way to success have been moulded into the work. On December 3, 1971, when India declared war against Pakistan and the independence of Bangladesh became certain, Tayeba, a cancer patient, passes away in the blackout night.
The novel begins with a very autobiographical attachment, around which the whole story revolves.
Some people love their pets if they were children, but Sofa enjoys a different telepathy between himself and nature. In Pushpa Briksha Ebong Bihanga Puran, he wonders at the blooming of the flowers and the budding of the seeds. Their gradual and surprising growth astonishes him. He becomes bewildered hearing the oral expressions, especially the voice of the birds. All these incidents make a deep impression on his life—on his thought and spirit. With pride, love, and solemnity Sofa recalls all those bygone happiness of his life.
The 73-page novel begins with Sofa’s change of residence. In 1993, he rented a new apartment. He particularly liked the roof. His foster-son Sushil began the real plot of the story while cleansing the roof. There, he saw some buds and showed them to Sofa. The love-bond of Sofa and the plants thus began to be expressed. In the first ten pages, Sushil brings a Jhuti Shalik from Nilkhet, starting the episodes of Sofa and the birds.
Afterwards, some flashback stories portray Sofa’s attitude and attraction towards trees. The bygone story begins with the tale of an apple seedling. The author felt the existence of a living creature in this plant. All its growing-up amazed him. Once, when the writer was shocked due to a sad news of a kith, he went near the plant and sat there. Suddenly he felt the small plant begin to caress him. To make sure, he went to the other side of the little plant, and astonishingly it tilted to that side. From then on in the book, more tales begin to upsurge connected with plants. We come to know that, along with a friend, Sofa started an elementary school for the little urchins of slum areas. There he experienced new realisation about the so-called innocence of children—children are not so innocent as people believe them to be. Rather, they are the products of their own environment.
The Juti Shalik generates a story about birds. It opens, through flashback, an episode of Sofa’s previous personal experience on pet birds. A parrot that he domesticated while at the university marked a permanent impression on his mind. The story of Jhuti Shalik exposes more stories of birds like crows, sparrows, nightingales, and hornbills.
Evaluating the nature surrounding us from a paternal point of view is an innovation in Bangladeshi literature. Such an approach to nature was quite unknown.
Except for Alat Chakra, Sofa's novels are written objectively. It is as if the author observes everything of his story—the characters and the incidents—from a distant place.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
. He wrote novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and non-fiction essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s. He also translated the writings of others. Ahmed Sofa was renowned for his intellectual righteousness as well as his radical approach to the understanding of social dynamics and international politics.
Sofa helped establish the anti-communalist Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir (Bangladesh Writers' Camp) in 1970 to "organise liberal writers in order to further the cause of the progressive movement".
Biography
Born at Gachbaria in ChittagongChittagong
Chittagong ) is a city in southeastern Bangladesh and the capital of an eponymous district and division. Built on the banks of the Karnaphuli River, the city is home to Bangladesh's busiest seaport and has a population of over 4.5 million, making it the second largest city in the country.A trading...
district, Sofa's career as a writer began in the 1960s.
He never married.
On 28 July 2001, Ahmed Sofa died in a hospital in Dhaka
Dhaka
Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh and the principal city of Dhaka Division. Dhaka is a megacity and one of the major cities of South Asia. Located on the banks of the Buriganga River, Dhaka, along with its metropolitan area, had a population of over 15 million in 2010, making it the largest city...
. He was laid to rest in Mirpur Shaheed Buddhijibi ("Martyred Intellectuals' Graveyard
Martyred Intellectuals Memorial
Rayer Bazaar is a well-known thoroughfare in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. It is generally regarded as one of the historical areas of the city.Rayer Bazaar was founded during the colonial period most probably in 19th century. It was the potters who first started to live here beside the...
").
Philosophical views
Ahmed Sofa's outspoken personality and bold self-expression brought him into the limelight. At the same time, he was very affectionate towards the younger generation, who gathered around him. He was never seen hankering after fame in a trivial sense. He hardly practised religion, but his religious belief was unquestionable.Sofa's views, such as his position against Taslima Nasrin
Taslima Nasrin
Taslima Nasrin is a Bengali Bangladeshi ex-doctor turned author who has been living in exile since 1994. From a modest literary profile in the late 1980s, she rose to global fame by the end of the 20th century owing to her feminist views and her criticism of Islam in particular and of religion in...
, are considered controversial, even questionable, by some. This criticism did not dissuade Sofa from speaking his mind.
Published works
Sofa's fictions were often based on his personal experience. He protested social injustice and tried to portray the hopes and dreams of common people through his writing. Sofa always handled his novels with meticulous thought and planning. The trend of telling mere stories in novels never attracted him; he always tried to innovate in both form and content.Surya Tumi Sathi (The Sun the Companion) was Sofa's first novel, written in 1964 and 1965, and published in 1967. The next novel, Onkar (The Om), which was received favorably in Bangladesh, was written in 1972 and published in 1975. In 1994, Sofa published a different type of novel, Alat Chakra (The Circle of Fire) which was actually written ten years earlier. In 1988, Sofa wrote two novels: Aali Kenan, published that year; and Maran Bilash (Luxury in Death), published in 1989. His later novels are Gaavi Bittanto (Tale of a Cow, 1994), Ardhek Nari Ardhek Ishwari (Half Man Half Woman, 1996), and Pushpa Briksha Ebong Bihanga Puran (A Tale of Flowers, Plants and Birds, 1996). Along with these eight novels, Sofa is the author of hundreds of lyrics, poems, short stories, essays, and columns. There were two long gaps in his writing career: the first was from 1973 to 1983, and the second from 1989 to 1994.
Sofa’s novels are generally small in size. Even the longer ones, like Alat Chakra, Gaavi Bittanto and Surya Tumi Sathi, are only 129, 110 and 93 pages long, respectively.
Surya Tumi Sathi
Surya Tumi Sathi was composed when Sofa was in his early 20s. The novel centres around Hashim, a youth whose father converted from Hinduism to Islam. The religious conflict of Bangladeshi society was vividly painted in the book. Hashim's grandmother rises above the orthodox rituals and thoughts of her society by taking responsibility for Hashem’s newly-born baby. Living in a society where a Hindu does not even take food from a Muslim neighbour, Poddar Ginni, an aged, ordinary-minded, pious woman, does not hesitate to come see the dead body of her grandson’s wife. The whole story was narrated in a very conventional way, but despite that, the book was acclaimed for its characterization and the novelist's sincerity in the analysis of social values.Onkar
In Onkar, Sofa achieved his own individual qualities as a novelist in the context of form and content. The 24-page novel assimilates an extraordinary theme in a simple story.Due to his father’s unwise activities, the narrator is forced to marry a mute girl. Having no other alternative to save his own family, he has to do it. The mischievous father-in-law arranges a job for him. His sister, who resides with him in his town house in Dhaka, practises songs with a harmonium
Harmonium
A harmonium is a free-standing keyboard instrument similar to a reed organ. Sound is produced by air being blown through sets of free reeds, resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion...
. It is discovered that his speechless wife is trying to make sounds with that musical instrument. This makes the narrator-husband more sympathetic to his wife, and it inspires the woman to try even harder to speak. One day after the death of Asad in 1969, while a procession passes by their house, the housewife goes out to the veranda and tries to voice the slogans, but only blood flows out of her throat and she dies. In the novel, the socio-political condition of the society as well as the socio-familial environment has been delineated very minutely and skillfully.
Alat Chakra
In Alat Chakra, Liberation-time helpless Bangladesh in KolkataKolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
is the focal point of the story. The story of the narrator, Daniel, and his lover-friend Tayeba works as a thread of loosely-related episodes, though in the same scenario. Different viewpoints about the liberation of Bangladesh, its possibility, and its way to success have been moulded into the work. On December 3, 1971, when India declared war against Pakistan and the independence of Bangladesh became certain, Tayeba, a cancer patient, passes away in the blackout night.
Aali Kenan
Sofa created an existentialist character in Aali Kenan in a very true Bangladeshi context. The political scenes, from Ayub Khan to Sheikh Mujib, have also been portrayed vividly.Death in Maran Bilash
Maran Bilash is about the spontaneous talks of a minister at his deathbed. From 12:13 a.m. until dawn, the minister opens his mind to his attendant-cum-political follower Moula Box. In these episodes, the whole life of the minister has been pictured—from his boyhood to his maturity. All the misdeeds of his life as the minister are revealed here, one after another. The novel exposes a society where immorality is the only ladder for a politician to climb the top. The minister's hateful activities include such misdeeds as poisoning his younger brother, having a sexual relationship with a woman of his mother’s age, and burning the headmaster in his house.Gaavi Bittano
Sofa has placed the supreme institution of Bangladesh, the Dhaka University, in a satiric milieu in Gaavi Bittano. Sofa ridiculed Bangladeshi society by making caricatures of the people of this highest education centre.Pushpa Briksha Ebong Bihanga Puran
In Pushpa Briksha Ebong Bihanga Puran, Sofa uses a distinctive approach. The writer takes the trees, flowers, and birds for his children. As the narrator-protagonist, Ahmed Sofa nourishes and loves them from the core of his heart.The novel begins with a very autobiographical attachment, around which the whole story revolves.
Some people love their pets if they were children, but Sofa enjoys a different telepathy between himself and nature. In Pushpa Briksha Ebong Bihanga Puran, he wonders at the blooming of the flowers and the budding of the seeds. Their gradual and surprising growth astonishes him. He becomes bewildered hearing the oral expressions, especially the voice of the birds. All these incidents make a deep impression on his life—on his thought and spirit. With pride, love, and solemnity Sofa recalls all those bygone happiness of his life.
The 73-page novel begins with Sofa’s change of residence. In 1993, he rented a new apartment. He particularly liked the roof. His foster-son Sushil began the real plot of the story while cleansing the roof. There, he saw some buds and showed them to Sofa. The love-bond of Sofa and the plants thus began to be expressed. In the first ten pages, Sushil brings a Jhuti Shalik from Nilkhet, starting the episodes of Sofa and the birds.
Afterwards, some flashback stories portray Sofa’s attitude and attraction towards trees. The bygone story begins with the tale of an apple seedling. The author felt the existence of a living creature in this plant. All its growing-up amazed him. Once, when the writer was shocked due to a sad news of a kith, he went near the plant and sat there. Suddenly he felt the small plant begin to caress him. To make sure, he went to the other side of the little plant, and astonishingly it tilted to that side. From then on in the book, more tales begin to upsurge connected with plants. We come to know that, along with a friend, Sofa started an elementary school for the little urchins of slum areas. There he experienced new realisation about the so-called innocence of children—children are not so innocent as people believe them to be. Rather, they are the products of their own environment.
The Juti Shalik generates a story about birds. It opens, through flashback, an episode of Sofa’s previous personal experience on pet birds. A parrot that he domesticated while at the university marked a permanent impression on his mind. The story of Jhuti Shalik exposes more stories of birds like crows, sparrows, nightingales, and hornbills.
Evaluating the nature surrounding us from a paternal point of view is an innovation in Bangladeshi literature. Such an approach to nature was quite unknown.
Comparisons
In Surya Tumi Sathi the story is narrated in a third person narrative, a technique he pursued in his later novels Aali Kenan, Maran Bilash and Gaavi Bittanto. In his other novels, Onkar and Alat Chakra, he used a first person narrative technique.Except for Alat Chakra, Sofa's novels are written objectively. It is as if the author observes everything of his story—the characters and the incidents—from a distant place.
Non-literary works
Sofa's essays mostly revolved around Bengali Muslims. He wrote about their history, society, and politics. He was critical of politics and culture.Novels
- 1967: Surya Tumi Sathi (Sun, You Are My Companion)
- 1975: Uddhar (Rescue)
- 1989: Ekjan Ali Kenaner Utthan Patan (The Rise and Fall of one Ali Kenan)
- 1990: Alatachakra (A Circle of Fire)
- 1993: Onkar (The Chest-note)
- 1994: Gabhibrttanta (Accounts of Cows)
- 1996: Ardhek Nari Ardhek Ishvari (Half Woman and Half Goddess)
- 1996: Puspabrksa O Bihangapurana (Flower Tree and the Accounts Of Birds)
- 1996: Dinga Binga Burgan (Alarms, Bells, and Whistles)
Poetry
- Jallad Samay (Time, the Executioner)
- Ekti Prabin Bater Kachhe Prarthana (A Prayer To An Old Banyan Tree)
- Lenin Ghumobe Ebar (Lenin Will Now Sleep)
Non-fiction prose
- 1973: Buddhibrttir Natun Binyas (New Exercise Of Intellect)
- 1976: Bangali Musalmaner Man (The Mind of the Bengali Muslims)
- Sipahi Yuddher Itihas (History of the Sepoy Movement)
- 1993: Ahamad Chaphar Prabandha (Essays of Ahmed Sofa)
- Yadyapi Amar Guru (Although He Is My Teacher)
- 2008: Ahmed Sofa-r Chithi (Letters of Ahmed Sofa), Khan Brothers and Co.