/ ‘Golpo Shomogro’

Ahmed’s short stories are a class apart. They leave you wanting more, they tell the saddest, most profound human stories, they represent the quotidian disgrace and triumphs of life with equal tenderness and poignancy, and even compel you to shed a tear or two. Ahmed’s range is vast in this collection—from the heartbreakingly romantic tale to the experimental, genre bending science fiction narrative to the story that makes room for the utter collapse of the binary separating the normal from the supernatural,  there is something for every kind of reader in this collection. It is hard for me to pick a favourite from this stellar collection but one that stayed with me decades after reading it for the first time is “Shonkhomala”. The protagonist, his elderly mother, and his visually impaired father all harbour a quiet, deep-seated trauma which gets reopened with the arrival of Pori, a new mother who is part of the family’s traumatic past. At barely three pages, “Shonkhomala” manages to stun the reader. Other memorable tales include “Opekhkha” where Keramat who is a “kamla” at the union council chairman’s home waits to get married but his malik never gets around to organising a wedding for this negligible, expendable worker. Don’t forget also to check out the devastating “Beenar Osukh”, the clever “Newtoner Bhul Shutro”, and the absurdly adorable “Rurur Golpo”.