SYED Siddique Hossain, a homoeopath based in Kurigram in the 1930s and possibly the first Muslim in the subcontinent to write a seven-volume book on homoeopathy, would wake up every day at 4:30am, light up a lantern and write non-stop till late morning. The eldest of his eight children, Syed Shamsul Haq, then barely seven or eight years of age, would peer through his half-open eyelids at his father’s illuminated face, absorbed and striking, and listen, in a dreamy half-awake, half-asleep state, the scribbling noise the pen made on the paper. Not books, the act of writing fascinated the little boy most. ‘The scene that I woke up to every morning had immense power – I wanted to conquer the feeling,’ says Haq. ‘Reading wasn’t much of a possibility anyway. We only had five books in the house – the Qur’an, the Hadith, a Bengali translation of the Bible, a collection of poems by Kaikobad, and Anwara, a famous novel of the time by Najibur Rahman.’
   Kurigram used to be, and perhaps still is, one of the poorest places in the country. Still, it was Haq’s first tutor. Its two libraries had surprisingly rich collections of modern literature. The predicament of life around provided him with the emotional content. In 1948, having finished ninth grade, Haq, barely 13 years’ old, moved to Dhaka and got admission to Dhaka Collegiate School. Then he spent four years at Jagannath College for his higher secondary studies. By 1951, Haq had his first short story published in local magazine, Agatya, edited by Fazl-e-Lohani, the reputed journalist, author and television personality. ‘I had already written several poems, short stories and even a novel in my notepad by then.’
   The first story was about a middle-class home and their financial struggles, Haq vaguely remembers. It had little to do with romance as did his first collection of short stories, published in 1954. ‘I was still a teenager writing about what I saw around me – refugees of the partition, the struggle for language.’
   In the years to follow, as the ruling elite of West Pakistan tried relentlessly to undermine Bangla, Haq and his contemporaries – the likes of Shamsur Rahman, Hasan Hafizur Rahman and Abu Zafar Obaidullah – produced an incredible amount of work in Bangla in all major publications of the day; it was their movement to save the mother tongue.
   ‘Bengal had been partitioned and, unfortunately, most of the finest writers of Bangla had stayed back in West Bengal. We had no one to look up to, no one to guide us but we had to give a structure to our language which was under threat,’ says Haq. ‘And we did it successfully, we wrote poems, short stories and novels and we printed them in little magazines of the time. In 1961, on the birth centenary of Rabindranath Tagore, we stood up successfully against the Pakistan government’s effort to undermine him. Today, when a young man criticises my work, I tell him proudly that you can afford to do that only because of the role we played during the 1960s.’
   Haq lived in a one-room house at Laxmibazar in those days. Cramped for space, he often spent his morning in different restaurants, writing. ‘Most of the writers at the time stuck together and hung out at different places of the town. We read out our materials and exchanged books. We were our tutors, our guides.’
   In 1956, Haq got admission to the English department Dhaka University but left the university two years later. ‘Many writers of the time, including Shamsur Rahman and Obaidullah, studied English. It was a conscious decision; it helped us enrich our understanding of world literature. The bright side of my decision to drop out is that I have felt like a student through out my life.’
   In 1965 Haq married Anwara Syed Haq, a psychiatrist and novelist. She is the mother of his two children – daughter Bidita and son Ditiyo. ‘My wife has allowed me through financial and emotional support to be a writer without having to do anything else. Writing is a full-time job; you cannot do justice to it by working in your spare time.’
   The following year he won the Bangla Academy Award; he was only 30. Poet Shamsur Rahman won the award a year later. In 1969 Haq won the Adamjee Award. The same year his much-talked-about novel, ‘Khelaram Khele Ja,’ came out.
   In September 1971, with life in Dhaka becoming increasingly dangerous in the middle of the war of independence, he left with his family for England. The next nine years he would spend at the BBC Bangla Service as a broadcaster. London, which, he says, is a ‘second home’, has had a tremendous impact on Haq and his works. ‘It is one thing to read the works of great poets such as TS Eliot and Dylan Thomas but another to see with your own eyes what they have described. It evokes an overwhelming sensation.’
   In London Haq would spend hours on end in library studying the colonial history of India with special emphasis on the Bengal Presidency, which is best reflected in his work Noor Al-Diner Shara Jiban. Being a journalist, he would also get free tickets to otherwise very expensive theatre halls in the United Kingdom. ‘Almost every week I watched two plays. I was completely immersed by it and it was in London that I wrote my first play – Payer Awaj Pawa Jai. Even today, whenever I go back to London, I look forward to going to the plays.’
   
   When his father died, Haq was 21. He had a big family to take care of – his mother, his brothers and sisters, the youngest of them only two-month old. ‘I would earn on a daily basis, writing textbooks for shops at Banglabazar.
   Every night I would go to sleep anxious – where the money for the next day would come from.’
   That sense of insecurity still haunts him, half a century later, although he is one of the most successful writers in the country. ‘It’s like that the feeling has lived with me. Every night when I go to sleep I still feel like I don’t know where the money for the next day would come from.’
   That sense of writing has also taken him to every genre of writing. Between the late 1950s and the late 1960s, Haq wrote the scripts for some of the most successful movies made in Bangladesh. Starting off with poems and short stories, he has written novels, novellas, plays and many non-fictions. A four-volume non-fiction on the art of writing titled ‘Marginey Montobya’ published in 2003 has left many aspiring writers discouraged, jokingly remarks Haq. So far, he has to his credit nearly 150 titles. ‘I think up a few projects at the same time. I start with one project and while continuing with it I come up with a few more ideas. Many of the ideas don’t see the light of day.’
   Haq has finished four plays in 2007. In recent times, he has been contemplating a handy, easy-to-read book on the history of Bengal, starting right from the prehistoric times. On the personal front, he has two extensive tours abroad lined up, one across Europe and another across the United States.
   Travelling has played a major role in his life. He often leaves home for ten to fifteen days, roaming the countryside without any particular destination in mind.
   Unlike many writers, Haq, who spends more than eight hours at his study every day, has hardly suffered from a writers’ block in his life. ‘Whenever I am short of ideas I do translation work to keep myself moving. Also, I do a lot of acrylic painting and most of my close friends in life have been painters.’
   Haq has also been surprisingly technology-savvy, writing on typewriters in his early days and then switching to computers in 1989. ‘In 1992 I got my first laptop and I have had five laptops so far.’
   Clothes have also played an interesting role in his life, something most non-literary fans have noticed about him. Dressed in corduroys, stylish coats and sharp sideburns, Haq often cuts an aristocratic figure in his numerous television appearances unlike most of his fellow artists. ‘It is not that I want to appear smart but out of respect for my profession as a craftsman I have never wanted to appear scruffy. I enjoy my clothes and I am passionate about them as I am about my food.’
   Despite his long journey through time and through different genres of writing, he now finds himself very disappointed. ‘Today, when I look around to see what is going on – to the neon boards, to the signboards, to the places of names, to the jargons being used in language, I am terrified. It has been usurped by western and other foreign values. A writer is the heart of a race – he or she provides the driving force and cultural shape to the nation. During the 1950s and 1960s, when we wrote, the nation was with us. Today, the only people who read our books are unemployed young men and housewives. Not that I am criticising them but we should have had readers amongst the people who run this country as well. We have certainly failed in this regard. I am disappointed but not hopeless. Things will certainly turn around one day.’
   Mubin S Khan

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