There’s a passage in the British-Bangladeshi author Manzu Islam’s new novel Godzilla and the Songbird (published by Speaking Tiger), where the protagonist, a young journalist called Syed Islam Shah aka ‘Bulbul’, is finding it tough to stay ‘objective’ about the student-led protests mushrooming across his country.
It reads: “If he hadn’t been a journalist, reduced to being a pair of watching eyes, he would have entered the fray. He had been tracking the mood among the students, their restlessness, their gatherings under the banyan. Under its circular canopy, throwing caution into the wind, they were venting their passions for the upcoming insurrection. If freedom demanded blood, they were willing to give it in bucket-loads.”
If you didn’t know the story beforehand, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking this is a prescient description of recent events in Bangladesh. After all, university students played a crucial role in the protests that ultimately led to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s exit from the country, and the beginnings of a caretaker government led by the Nobel-winning economist Muhammad Yunus.
However, the passage is actually about the summer of 1969, when Bengali nationalism was at its peak and students in (what was then) East Pakistan were protesting widely against the Pakistani government and its premier, General Ayub Khan.
Godzilla and the Songbird follows young Bulbul from the 1940s up until 1971 and the birth of Bangladesh as a nation-state. Born in Calcutta, Bulbul loses his mother in labour and his father during the Partition-related communal violence. His Westerneducated Muslim-Leaguer grandfather, Syed Amir Shah and his beloved grandmother (Dadu), flee with the young orphan across the border to East Pakistan. However, discrimination on the basis of caste, religion and accent follows Bulbul and his folks.
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