FIVE QUESTIONS - FACE TO FACE WITH ABU SIDDIK

After a long hiatus, I am back with Five Questions.
Today, we have Abu Siddik with us- a writer, from Berhampore, Murshidabad, India, who works as Assistant Professor in English at Plassey College, Nadia. He has contributed to various e-journals and anthologies and has also published three books.  His Website is: www.abusiddik.com

Santosh. Q 1   Good morning Abu Siddik. Hope you are hale and hearty in the present unprecedented times of incarceration.  Tell us some interesting facts about yourself, your idiosyncrasies, your pet peeves, your eccentricities and Abu Siddik, as a teacher, as a writer and as a thinker.

Abu Siddik: Thank you madam  for this wonderful opportunity for sharing some of my thoughts. Some interesting facts are:

Once I was shy and extremely nervous to speak before an audience. Now I can freely speak and earn audience’s applause.

Before the age of thirty seven , I hardly wrote a poem or a story. Yes, for academic purposes, I edited a book, Representation of the Marginalized in Indian Writings in English in 2015. I also wrote a book on American writer William Faulkner entitled Misfit Parents in Faulkner’s Select Texts in the same year. And in my mother tongue Bangla I wrote Banglar Musolman in 2018 basically in protest against dull, baseless and hackneyed Muslim discourse common in Bengal and other parts of our country.

The funniest fact is that I am lazy, and write only when something haunts me. However, I know a writer should write on a daily basis.

As a teacher I always try to inject life to the printed words. I love my students and with them try to build a relation which endures and even withstands oddities of syllabi and vagaries of seasons.   

As a thinker I think of the poor, the pariahs, the marginalized, the downtrodden, the aged, the widows, nature, children, misfits, odds, invisibles, unheard, etc. And my site www.abusiddik.com is a sweet home for them.

Santosh Q 2 Your story ‘Undersell’ left me with a lump in my throat, so did your poem, ‘He also lights candles’.  Tell me, do you think more highly of your story-telling abilities or your poetic skills? I have read your poetry and prose both, and have felt that you have a deeply sensitive nature, which bleeds for the invisibles and the underprivileged.

Abu Siddik: Humbled and also happy that you have liked my story ‘Undersell’ and my poem ‘He Also Lights Candles’. To be honest, I don’t exactly know where my gift or skill lies. But I try to give a unique shape to my creative space both in poetry and story, which, I know, is a never-ending, uphill trek. And I just begin my journey. My characters  in poetry and fiction are mainly misfits, tribal men and women, mower, ambitious poets, widower, widowed, shoeshine boys , station master, watchman, orphan, idler, poor peasant, broker, salesman, book seller, fruit seller, dhaba owner, mason, unemployed youth, bird watcher, drunker, prostitute, barber boy, invalids and the likes.  

Santosh Q 3: Well, I don’t know whether you have noticed, but my writings are also a lot about the invisibles of society.  In fact, in my latest novel, a satire on higher education – which I seem to be perennially editing, a shoeshine boy is one of the very important characters.
 Tell me, do you think there is a writer hidden in each one of us? Why do you think stories need to be told?

Abu Siddik: Yes, there is a writer hidden in each of us.

I believe stories have tremendous power to shape and reshape our destiny as a human race. Stories need to be told. Otherwise they will get lost, and with them our sense of being and belonging too. I also believe what Maya Angelou said, “there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Telling stories is cathartic. It is also self-congratulatory. In the end tales, individual or collective, make our lives loveable, bearable, and livable. It gives us courage and strength, endurance and resilience.     

Santosh Q 4: We would like to hear something about your debut book of poetry, Rugged Terrain. What were your apprehensions, doubts and misgivings while writing and getting it published?  

Abu Siddik: In Rugged Terrain poems are simple and at the same time realistic, challenging, and thought provoking. And they are not meant to please the readers. Each poem is nuanced. Broadly , each poem is a celebration of the faceless multitudes, the unheard, and the unsung. Each poem attests to their undying sufferings and their charismatic resilience to it.

Here the earth is black and empty. Poverty, squalor, illness, flesh trade, child labour, liquor, war for stomachs and  illiteracy drape a deathly pallor to the sea blue skies, endless stretches of greeneries, dark hills and deep forests. You find no mosaic of words or refined imagery. Poems are not flashy but insipid here. They are bold, cruel, crude, and savage in their pluralistic underlying thematic textures.

By writing and publishing it, I voice my disquiet with certain issues common in our society. It’s a kind of counter narrative, you may say.

     

Santosh Q 5 You are a bi-lingual writer. Writing in which language do you feel more comfortable in and also do tell us about your future literary projects.  

Answer: Yes. In writing poetry I am more comfortable with English. But in case of fiction and non-fiction, I think I am equally qualified to write both in Bangla and English.  

In immediate future I am publishing two poetry books, namely, Rugged Terrain, Whispering Echoes and a flash fiction book containing twenty nine flashes, titled Bird Watcher and Other Stories. All are soon going to be published by Authorspress. Moreover, I am ambitious to seriously concentrate on more critical and creative works. Let’s see what the future holds.

Santosh:  It was indeed a pleasure interacting with you. Hope to read more and more of your books in the near future.  Here is wishing you all the best.

Abu Siddik : Thank you madam , once again for this opportunity.