Selected Short Stories

"No, but we were part of the British colony so we had lots of connection with English literature and I don’t mention the local language because it doesn’t make any sense to you. But local literature is more influential for me than European literature – Rabindranath Tagore stories, for example, about poor families and their struggle with their life. No, not really."

"It’s a masterpiece and hugely read. If you go to any house in Bangladesh or West Bengal you will find a copy of this collection of stories. In it you will discover everything about the lives of Bengali families. It would be very unfair of me to single out one or two stories because it will undermine the others – the collection is so good. If you insist, there is one story I’ll describe, called ‘The Wish’. A father tells his son that he must read and not play, and the boy doesn’t like this. The boy thinks if he could switch places with his father he would enjoy great freedom. And the father wants to be his boy, to enjoy youth again. The wish is granted, but suddenly the boy feels pain in his back and he has all sorts of problems. And the father, after so many years of freedom, finds himself being punished. It’s quite a funny story and also very interesting. Yes, he was a very famous man and he came from a very rich family. He had a home in Kolkata in India as well as a home in Bangladesh. He was one of the lucky few who didn’t have to worry about their bread and butter. He just wrote and what he produced was amazing."