The Changeover- Kalantara

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

About the Author Numair Atif Choudhury's first and only novel, Babu Bangladesh!, published posthumously, was heralded as a sui generis masterpiece. In Taxi Wallah and Other Stories, we encounter more of Choudhury's limitless imagination and deep empathy as he captures the many Bangladeshes that make up the nation.

The stories in this collection are bound by their protagonists - outsiders looking in - whether it is the taxi wallah of the title story who ferries tourists to upmarket hotels in Gulshan, the chokra for whom the streets of Dhaka are both sustenance and threat, Rabia the maid who feels compelled to call even the youngest of her employer's children Apa, or the brick breaker who finds his life draining away as he hammers rubble at construction sites.

Fuelled by Choudhury's trademark linguistic verve and energy, Taxi Wallah and Other Stories is a searing yet tender portrait of a country that is fractured but let’s in light through the cracks.

After studying creative writing at Oberlin College and the University of East Anglia, Numair Atif Choudhury did his PhD from the University of Texas, Dallas. He had been working on his epic first novel for nearly fifteen years, but soon after completing the final draft, he passed away in an accident in 2018.

Introduction THERE IS NO SET point at which a writer becomes a national force, a symbol of pride and eminence to their country, city, community, or all. There is likewise no rhyme or reason to how such determinations is made. Much of it has to do with how the writer lives in the consciousness of the people to whom they belong, how much their work captures the dreams, hopes, fears, trials, and joys of that land; or how honestly, sometimes at great personal cost, the writer casts an unflinching critical eye on the misconducts of the very place that feeds his pen. Numair Choudhury did both, and more. He was one of Bangladesh's finest writers long before the publication of his magnum opus Babu Bangladesh! and tragically would not live to see his book enter the world.

The first story I read by Numair was the terrific 'Chokra. It was in the early 2000s. I had one e published story to my credit at the time and no prospects of others in sight. A novel had been chipping away in my brain, of which I hadn't the first word. I was at one or another job I reviled, and the best days of my week were Saturday afternoons spent at a bookstore. Since I couldn't afford to buy the books, I browsed through them at the shelves or brought a stack to a table in the café and happily lost track of the next few hours in their company. It was on one of these afternoons at Borders in Chicago that I happened upon an anthology of English writing by South Asian authors and, looking through the table of contents, arrived at the name of Numair Choudhury at the very end, chronologically the youngest writer in the collection. The other names were up and coming and established luminaries in South Asian English writing, including Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Hanif Kureishi, Anita Desai and Michael Ondaatje.

The author bio of this Numair Choudhury said he was born in Bangladesh in the mid-seventies, recounted his education to date, and had him pursuing a higher degree in the US. These being the backward ages before social media, I couldn't bring out my Smartphone and confirm my suspicion. I couldn't even jump online and Google the name. At the same time, I was certain that this was the Numair Choudhury I had known in Dhaka.

**Contents and Sample Pages**