Harishankar Jaladas (b.1955) started his novelist career in 2008. His debut novel ‘Jalaputro’ was written on the life of the fishing community of Chittagong and it was noticed that very immediately he was hailed by the Bangladeshi readership. Till 2012, the number of his novels is only four including ‘Dahankaal’, another one based on the life of the fisherfolk that Harishankar himself experienced, created a tumult in 2010. In the current year, his ‘Ramgolam’ has brought his name as the best book published in the Ekushe Book Fair 2012. In this novel he has fictionalised the life of the sweepers who are called the ‘harijans’ or ‘methors’ in Bangladesh. In between ‘Dahankaal’ and ‘Ramgolam’ he wrote ‘Kosbi’, a tale that tells of the prostitutes. The recent novel opens with the character Ramgolam, a child asking his grandpa about the mystery behind his name. It could be noted here that earlier it was not usual to name a Hindu person with a word which befits a Muslim. The boy who carries the word ‘Rama’, the name of the nine Avataras of Hindu mythology, can in no way have the word ‘golam’ with it. The curiosity of the minor boy is quenched by his grandpa Gurucharan and we can hear a deep sigh of the elderly man. He talks against the people who took strategic roles in Hinduism in the distant bygone days. In his small but authentic conversation he narrates how the people of the Harijan community have been defamed since time immemorial. It was the outcastes, or the dalits who had been the victims of discrimination and prejudices for centuries. Though, Mahatma Gandhi tried his best to free them from the level ‘untouchable’ by calling the ‘Hari-jon’ meaning ‘son of God’, they are yet in the same darkness as is observed by Gurucharan, or his grandson Ramgolam, or by their writer Harishankar Jaladas himself.
MAHITHOR
SAMUDRER DAAK
JALADASIR GOLPO
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