On My English Poems: Mohibul Aziz
It was Cambridge where I started writing poems in English. Or, to say more justly it was in Keyneside House, Clare Hall. The house was named after the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946). The family of John Keynes donated the house to Clare Hall. I and my wife Kazi Shamim Sultana stayed at room no 4 that is the biggest and the married couple room the way they would call it. From that first floored room through the oval shaped wide window I could see the extensive meadows directed to the horizon, the playing grounds of the Robinson College and the line of trees and the multiple kinds of berry bushes alongside. I’ve to tell a bit more about being in Clare Hall later but now I should say something about Cambridge, the city I love next to my own city and where I did spend one of the best chapters of my life.
Cambridge, I believe is one of the exquisite cities in the world, with a history dating back nearly two thousand years. Cambridge is considered to be an academic home of a University which consists of more than thirty colleges. It’s a vivid city where students live, study and do research works. There are a good number of places of historical interests. I remember visiting the Cambridge Central Library, University Press, the Botanic Garden and 7/8 Museums. Cambridge Library later became one of my favorite places where I spent almost whole day starting from quarter to nine in the morning to quarter to nine at night. Still the usual scene that became permanent is engraved in my inner mind. Getting out from Clare Hall, stepping to Herschel Road that led to long Grange Road and then having crossed the road turning right to the Barrel’s Walk I have the library building there.
Even the name of the different portions of the huge building I can recollect—North Front, South Front, North Wing, South Wing, Rare Books Room, Archive, Anderson Room, Oriental Corner Etc.
Going to the excellent Fitzwilliam Museum which is situated near to the city center is quite unforgettable. Opposite to this museum once lived Charles Darwin for one year which information is engraved on a plaque. Fitzwilliam museum presents a rich collection of relics, paintings, coins, potteries, sculptures, documents and many other things. Here I saw Monet, Paul Cezanne, Picasso, Bruegel, Georges Seurat, Rubens, Rembrandt and Al Greco’s invaluable works. I can’t forget the beautiful churches of Cambridge. For instance I can name King’s, St Johns, Trinity and Round churches. The Senate House and the huge stone wine-bowl in front of the house are something very especial to mention.
Punting in the river Cam and walking along the sides of the river were immensely pleasant. Watching tourists from all over the world with colorful dresses and many types of carriers was a nice experience. Going to the art galleries, attending lectures were really the events worth mentioning. I can’t forget the days I attended different seminar-evenings. Here American Nobel Laureate David Baltimore gave lecture. His topic was `Science for Every One’. In his idiosyncratic manner of talking he described the role of sciences so easily expressing all the complexities in simple I thought myself to be a science-conscious person despite the fact that my subject is quite opposite to that—literature or humanities rather. Then I availed myself of being in the seminar of Professor Amartya Sen. He talked on the subject that entitled `What is India’. It was probably the year of 1992 and Mr Sen had not been a Nobel Laureate at that time. But the audience in his seminar was huge.
On weekends and on vacations I never missed the chances of walking along the riverside. We walked and walked on as long as our legs could carry us. Sometimes, we walked to the outskirts like Pinehurst and Huntingdon. One fine morning while walking to Pinehurst I experienced a real surprise. That scene still peeps to my mind. I saw world famous scientist Stephen Hawking sitting on the wheel chair approaching the Library. His aiding nurse whom he married later was pushing the chair. She was his second wife after Sarah Hawking. It was a wintry day and I wore a long coat with the hat on. I nodded and took the hat off. I was so happy by this sudden outcome that I didn’t want to miss the chance of showing respect to this very especial representative of mankind.
At Clare Hall Tanner and Ashby Lecture was an auspicious occasion. Distinguished personalities would be invited there. In Clare Hall we got two presidents respectively—first, Dr David Anthony Low, a professor expert in the fields of Indian and Commonwealth history and the second, Professor Gillian Beer, who presided over one Booker Prize ceremony where Arundhuti Roy won the prize. I spent many evenings at Clare Hall café lobby talking to both of them at different times. Both were polite, gentle and persons of knowing high order. I had rare chances to meet and to talk to the famous Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe who was nominated for many times and shortlisted for Nobel in 1976 when another Nigerian poet-dramatist Ole Soyinka won the prize. His topic of Tanner and Ashby Lecture was `Education of a British Protected Child’. I may recollect the amusing comments he used to commence his talking. In his own words: once I could not be able to come here to study as a student but today I’m giving a lecture as a fellow! After the program I met him and I introduced both of us to Chinua and his son. He promised me to spare half an hour on the next day. We called him on at the Clare Hall fellow’s flat and talked nearly one and half hour over various things and issues. I took a copy of Things Fall Apart with me and he gave me autograph in that book.
The picturesque quality of Cambridge whoever could forget! No doubt, this city retains a strong reputation for academic excellence but the natural richness and scenic beauties of this wonderful city one must appreciate. The variety and diversity of it can’t be described in this short spell. All the colleges, churches, museums, shops, city center, fields, meadows, riverside beauties need individual mentions. One of the lovable things with Cambridge I must not bypass—the thoroughly co-educational character of the university. Boys and girls parallel mingled in the bond of friendship are growing up swimming in the vast sea of knowledge. I’ve never seen any kind of backwardness and prejudice in that mixing together. My wife was a commonwealth scholar and being the spouse I was also allowed to stay there with her as long as she finishes her PhD degree. We resided at Clare Hall. In 1326 firstly Clare College was founded and in 1338 reformed as Clare Hall. The new Clare Hall where we resided was founded separately as a graduate college in 1966. Situated in Herschel Road opposite to Robinson College and near to the Cambridge Central Library Clare Hall always welcomed students from Indian sub-continent. In Keyneside House and at Clare Hall as a whole there remained a multicultural atmosphere always. Students coming from all over the world made this limited sphere an unlimited source of pleasures and comforts. Say someone from China would be cooking Beijing Duck. The sizzling sound, the oily air and the spicy smell were waving through the kitchen area and at the same time someone from India would be cooking Lemon Rice or Chicken Curry. Here I saw for the first time a Nigerian fellow named Chidi Okonko cooking something where he used dusts of dried fishes. In our country we take dried fishes cut into pieces cooking like curries.
During my stay of four and a half years in Cambridge I could not cover the wholeness of the place but I tried to visit as much as I could on weekends and holidays. I was busy doing my own research as well. My topic was Rural Lower Classes as Depicted in the Novels of Bangladesh: 1947-1971. For my research work I used Cambridge University Library, British Museum, India Office Library, SOAS Library, Cambridge Center for South Asian Studies and some other libraries. Visiting Oxford, Stratford-Upon Avon, London Zoo, Madame Tussauds Museum was really great. In Oxford the Bodleian Library and in Stratford-upon Avon The Birthplace of Shakespeare are something which could be the valuable deposits of someone’s lifetime. I got immensely inspired visiting those places. In Cambridge we went to Grantchester many times. The beautiful water meadows of this tiny village attract lots of visitors daily. Anybody can imagine the good old days of English villages looking at the attractive houses and thatched cottages here. English poet Rupert Brooke in his famous poem `Grantchester’ remembered the worth mentioned church of this place. People now remember Rupert visiting the famous Rupert Brooke Café. We never missed the afternoons with having delicious English scones and strawberry-jam.
Cambridge Kettle Yard’s Museum was another place to visit. A wide span of life-sphere can be enjoyed through the relics, documents, artifacts and historical ingredients exhibited in this folk museum. The antiquarian values of those things housed in Kettle Yards’ can’t be avoided too. It was really amusing experience to see homemade cigarettes, biscuits, tidbits, cutlery, ornaments, trinkets, dresses, works of embroideries of ages old. Old clippings of newspapers and different sorts of sheets are to be found there. I copied one excerpt from an old daily dated 20 April 1850 which printed extracts of the verses that were sold in the local market long-long ago:
“Attend, good people, young and old-
A tale of woe I will unfold;
Of a dreadful murder you shall hear,
At Castle Camps, in Cambridgeshire.”
These examples of street literature I saw in the Cambridge University Library Harmsworth Collection where eight volumes of late-19th century ballad-sheets and slips are collected. Even today these pieces of works seem to be bearing excellent creativity and thoughtfulness.
We had a pet cat in Keyneside house whose owner was a French lady Madame Gilbert. But in fact we all owned the cat too. It was a healthy white-allover cat with only a sizeable black scar on her left loin. That’s how she got the name `Spot’, to us `Spotty’. She would know all the Keynesiders very well. Gilbert was the housemaid who would go to France on Easters and Christmas. During her absence it was me who had to feed Spotty taking tinned cats’ food from the cupboard. Well, I would do that on her request. The incident I’m telling about was in an Easter. Gilbert set to France two days earlier. It was quite early in the morning. Gentle air was blowing. I could see the morning-joggers along the sidewalk. A few yards away, the pointed acme of the church could be seen. I had to finish reading a borrowed book which I was supposed to give back to the library on that very day. So I got up early and sat on my desk by the oval window. All of a sudden I got distracted by the sounds of knocking at the door. I thought who could be at this unusual time. Immediately after I had opened the door I saw Spotty standing in a timid helpless way. I guessed she must be knocking using her tiny tail but it sounded so clear. Maybe her desperate hunger compelled her to do so. I rushed to the cupboard downstairs, got a can of tinned food and some thick milk for her. Gilbert got back from France next day. She brought marzipan cookies and thin dark chocolates for us. She was happy to know about Spot’s being well and safety. But after only one week in one afternoon Spot, our dear Spotty passed away. We felt very sad. The whole house felt bad for the pet. Gilbert dug a small grave attached to the house and we observed a few minutes silence for her before putting her dead body in the cavity.
I don’t know why but I felt like some strange urge inside me. It was a kind of barrenness and inexplicable sadness which I would feel at the very outset of my coming to Cambridge. I knew it quite well—homesickness. But in this case surely the cause was the sudden death of Spot. A desperate wave of becoming something meaningful I felt would be endeavoring to burst out. Yes, I got it right. What came from inside me was a poem but I got surprised to see that it had no connection with Spot so her memories. Rather it depicted my experience the year before visiting Rochester Charles Dickens Center. We went there on the 1st day of May and there gathered factory-workers to perform ritual Morris Dance which day regularly do on the May Day. Across the fence of the Cathedral the bank of the Medway River and within split second I recollected the story of Dickens’ Edmund who smuggled in a sack to flee. It was in his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities portraying the times of French Revolution set in London and Paris. Through my window I could see the smiling tulips in the bright silvery sun. The chorus of the previous Christmas Eve’s carols was flattering in my heart. Then, all of a sudden my pen let me put a sentence containing a few words— “The Tulip’s fire bounced in the sunshine.” Off I completed the poem ‘At the Rochester Charles Dickens Center’. On having finished the poem I actually started venturing my writing poems in English. After just one week Madame Gilbert the French lady came to see me: “Monsieur Mohibul, ca va?” Sometimes she fancied talking to me in French since I myself could speak a little bit of French. As the French could not pronounce the high-pitched ‘h’ it sounded like ‘Moibul’. She gave me a real surprise which was quite unexpected to me. It was a blow-up photograph of the cat Spot and printed from the renowned Eden Lilly of Cambridge. Still , after all these years Spot is with me in that still appearance, looking at me but not knocking at the door with her tail which she used like human being on an Easter dawn to let me know that she was really hungry and was desperate to have foods.
That’s how I began writing poems in English being in English weather. Now back at home I kept myself busy writing in Bengali basically but I love to write poems in English too. I’ll be happy if the readers find at least some of the words expressed in the form of poems are worth meaning. I am not sure whether I have been successful in making these poems worthwhile but I felt some things, some time, some persons, some incidents and some memories meaningful to myself.