Shabnam by Syed mujtaba ali has been one of my favorite reading since i got my hand on it. My father often told me that my name "himi" comes from the main character of this book. Shabnam in Farsi means the morning dew. translating it in Bangla using a poet's imagination it becomes "himika" or in short just "himi". I am mesmerized by her elegance, witt and life. Like her i also dream of vanishing like a morning dew someday from this world and leave behind a profound impression among people whom I've cam across. Well, it's a just a dream. But the important thing is that I am once again taking in my hand a big big project which i probably will never finish. I intend do these for explicit reason , that is to let the world know about this great piece of literature. But the true reason is to fill up those mundane moments spent in the lab to cheer me up by doing something worthy. So let my triumph begin....
if anyone happens to come across this blog and actually read it, please leave your comment, it will mean a lot. Thank you.
if anyone happens to come across this blog and actually read it, please leave your comment, it will mean a lot. Thank you.
6 comments:
OMG! Its the best book ever. Please whenever you have the time, continue with your writing.Its beautiful.Its excellent.Its exquisite.
xo
Dear Himika - can you send me your English translation of the story. I am considering making a film on this story ... would you like to collaborate on the same ? Regards. Sabyasachi Gooptu, Kolkata. 98744-80300 & sabyasachigooptu@gmail.com
Hello Himika!
I was actually searching for an English version of Shabnam to present it to an Afghani friend of mine and I ran into your blog. My father named me after the Afghani princess Shabnam, and I was very excited to know that you had your name from Himi!
Here is my email id: shabnamsharminsharnali@gmail.com
Can you please send me the whole translation if you have it? Even if not that, I would love to get to know you!
Hopefully you see the comments.
Dear Himika,
Wow, so lovely that you stared to translate Shabnam way back in 2009?
Guess what—the following is what I wrote to my wife this morning 😇
“I read this book in 1982.... now read again ..... and suddenly realized something, with a sweetness that I had longed for back then.... Subhanallah! how He grants wishes.... My ‘life’ began where Syed Mujtaba Ali had lost, as if to continue the journey ....that began and broke in 1928 with the disappearance of the twenty one year old Turkic young lady ....
Mujtaba then left for Germany for his doctorate.... and in 1958 (!!) started penning the novel at Shanti Niketan....
Another thirty-some years, the script was staged again.....
Reading back brings back two nostalgia sutured into one story.... Mujtaba knew one, and maybe I know both, with you witness to both, after reading the book as attached “
I am not sure if she would ever read the book, being busy taking care of four university-going kids in West Texas (once a mother, always a mother!)... while I sojourn as a professor in a distant country at an American University in the U.A.E....
At sixty, I bow to Allah with a deep feeling of gratitude that He fulfilled two strange wishes that I harbored at a young age: to continue the life of my uncle (Kabiluddin Sarkar , b. 1904 (same as Syed Mujtaba), d.1921–a few days before he was declared having topped the Matriculation Exam in the combined Calcutta Board including both Bengals and Assam).... and, well, to see his Kabul life restaged in me and continue unstopped (it sure did even as the guns of ULFA ricocheted the skies of Assam in 1991 but I could find and safely take my ‘Shabnam’ to America, and complete doctorate under her care and prayers.....
Dr. Ali started penning Shabnam in 1958 when I was born a few miles north of his place of birth in Assam—some thirty years after Shabnam’s story ended.... then another thirty years and Shabnam- II started..... then another thirty years, lo and behold! I wonder if Shabnam-II should be penned..... by you this time?😇
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