Following are the first few pages of the novel in progress, 
everything is of course subject to frequent and frustrated
change...











                             Babu


	The beginning was where he�d always get stuck, and
since in a way, this is a book about the beginnings of him,
let�s admit the difficulty of beginnings. The Exopision, as 
Mr. Rahman his fifth grade literature teacher, theatrically
waved with red chalk, is the most important and Highly
Impressionable stage of the story, second only to the Climax.
Maybe if Babu had known that Mr. Rahman had never really
completed his university degree, but had paid three hundred
takas for the diploma that got him the job of Lecturer, he might
have been a little cynical. But cynicism was something that came
much later to Babu, so he obediently jotted down in his
terrible handwriting, Exopision � very imp. But in many ways,
Mr. Rahman was teaching him something beyond literature,
something that transcended their Ahmed�s English course book.
Mr. Rahman taught Babu the fundamentals of the political career
that later, much after the advent and demise of cynicism, was to
come to him. And anyway, since no teacher in Dhanmondi Boys
would read anything other than the beginnings and endings of
fifth grade essays,  Mr. Rahman was also teaching him the
survival tricks of eleven-year-olds.
        Enough about beginnings. Since Babu needs no
introduction in this day and age, let us get away from the bones
of the matter to the proverbial meat in his much celebrated
autobiography � to the light brown flesh of a nine pound baby:
I was born incompletely on March 4 1971 in Dhaka Medical
College, my mother�s labour punctuated with the gunshots of
Pakistani Army troops as they gunned down University professors,
students, night watchmen. Incompletely I stress, because my
stillborn twin sister had exited months earlier, murdered by our
own father who had punched pregnant amma in a drunken rage.
Spared by fate and the anciently mysterious means of selective
birth, I arrived in a world fraught with the dangers a Bengali-
speaking population faced. But since I initially spoke no tongue
other than that of the infantile, I survived my tumultuous
beginnings.
        At this point it would be necessary to enclose a
controversial article printed in the Morning Star just three
years ago, in the Christian year of 2016, and in our Islamic
1436.

                         Babu a Fraud!

        A shocking fact has been discovered: Babu was not, as
commonly believed, and clearly stated in his book, born on the
7th of March 1971, but exactly a year earlier. A young budding
sleuth from our paper found hospital records of the miscarriage
of Babu�s twin, dated on the 12th of November 1969. This would
mean that the twin could not have been due on March 1971, but a
year earlier. Further investigation has revealed that Dr. Kamal
Hossain widely revered for being the hand that brought Babu into
this world was sick with jaundice during the month of March
1971. When contacted about the possibility of a cover-up as to
Babu�s real birth-date, Dr. Hossain�s near and dear family has
refused to answer.
        A photocopy of Babu�s passport (printed below) clearly
shows that the original date of 7-3-70 has been scratched out
and replaced with 7-3-71. The change was made on 26th June 1981.
A confession has been obtained from Mhd. Fakruddin Alam who was
Assistant Director of Immigration and Passports at that time.
Mr. Alam, hailing from Gopalganj, has admitted in his statement
that on occasions he and his colleagues wrongly authorised
the �Correction� of date of births for a small fee. He is
currently being held in remand at Central Jail.
	A committee has been organised by leader of the
Opposition, Sayeeda Anwar, and is currently pressing for a
withdrawal of the Civil Service Medallion for Public Service
awarded to Babu in 1998. As Begum Anwar stated at a public rally
attended by thousands �He deceived us all, the nation, the
people, the Civil Service, into believing that he was something
that he was not. The great Babu took our trust and laughed
behind our backs, and anyway, what�s all this Medallion
business? My son has been in the Service for two years already
and he works very hard too.�
 
        And so, you must understand my plight. Am I to believe
this most shocking of long-earthed facts? Is our beloved Babu a
oh the word does catch in my throat, a fraud? But how was the
poor man to know of an act committed by his parents when he was
just a wee boy? And in truth how important is it really? But to
think that what was probably a mother�s concern for her son�s
performance in the Matric examination could throw history into
such a fine mess! It is like watching what we know as truth,
pass through a prism, only to fragment into a gradation of
rumours, lies and dreams. One can only wonder if the reverse is
true, if one can somehow create light out of all the filth they
are chucking about.
        And truth, does it really lie in the ear of the
beholder; in the mouth of the teller? I have attempted to
contact the young journalist who discovered the hospital
records, but the Morning Star has been most uncompromising, in
fact threatening, about the whole affair. Their attitude has
once again thrown me into doubt about the feasibility of this
study on Babu. It seems as if nobody appreciates a little bit of
questioning.
But, as my own mother used to say, we must persevere, my little
train will take on the hill. I can do it, I can do it...More
from the autobiography:
     It is no small coincidence that I was born when the most
verbose of Bengalis � university professors -were meeting their
premature fates. Of course along with them were campus darwans,
cleaners, cooks and gardeners, as well as a helping of the
beggars that slept on these illustrious grounds. It is as if the
diverse spirits cut adrift by the well aimed bullets of Pathans,
Sindhis and Punjabis, found their way to the hospital, and
jostled about for space, frightening amma into ejecting me from
her. Apart from the numerous adult voices that invaded my
privacy, I registered one similar to mine in the background;
more specifically loud bawls of baby surprise. But this voice
unlike the others, for reasons initially unknown to me, was
familiar and one I readily welcomed.
	This I did by responding with my not insignificant
soprano, one heard by my waiting father in the hallway, causing
him to leap at a passing nurse. Sputtering oaths and dribbling
betel juice, he frightened her into calling the doctor
out. �Sir, sir, congratulations! A boy. Quite a voice on him
too.� He extended his hand, but suddenly noticing my father�s
shabby attire, he remembered that my birth expenses were
government funded, and that my family was not likely to hire his
services again. Dr. Hossain�s smile froze, he withdrew his hand
and excused himself, leaving my father with a suspicion that the
sudden change in the doctor�s demeanour was due to a flaw in me
that the kindly man could not bring himself to articulate. This
belief stayed with my father well until I was thirty.
	And my mother? She cried softly when they handed her to
me, smiled when my fists grabbed at the nothings in the air, and
loved me twice as much as reasonable - her love for my dead
sister enveloping me, drenching the very air that I grasped.
This double love has been with me all my life, it is the spring
in my walk, the ring in my laugh; it is the fibre of my resolve,
the glimmer in my eye.
	And so we can see where all the talk started about
Babu�s sanity, or should I say his actuality. The rumours about
him being strangely infused with the ideas of famous thespians
and Economics professors, being too full of maternal love, and
the spicy skills of Canteen cooks, the garrulousness of
desperate beggars. Of course his professed connection with his
dead twin (here we see the first hint) did not help, but the
most bizarre of all, the coup d�etat, we must save for later,
out of respect for the forced chronology Father Time demands.
Babu�s mother was ready to return home the next day. A proud
husband, who had now sworn vehemently to shun the alcohol
bootleggers that preyed down their road, bossed the
scooterwallah over bumps and potholes to their modest two-roomed
bungalow. Turbo, an extremely lively mongrel and young Abdul, 
their servant greeted them. Both were reserved though, unsure of
how to deal with the new arrival...














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