The launch of Rumana Siddique's poetry volume The Five Faces of Eve I remember well since it was held on the roof of Words 'n Pages in Gulshan, where in between the discourses the mosquitoes feasted on our legs. But then, this is Dhaka, what do you do? There have been a few more book launches since then, not all of which I could attend but what can I say -- I'm busy, man, I can't make it to every darn cricket match! The memorable do was at the Bengal Gallery of Kaiser Haq's Published in the Streets of Dhaka: Collected Poems 1966-2006 -- with standing room only. After that there was Rubana's launch of www.monsoonletters.com, the website she's set up with the help of energetic youngsters, which is already a formidable database of Bangladeshi writers. She threw her bash at the Sheraton, and we tucked into dinner afterwards. I sat beside Tahmima Anam, then in town to talk about her A Golden Age, and she told me a funny story about Andrew Motion, England's poet laureate, whose creative writing class she took and whose debt in the development of her writing she freely acknowledges.

So it was on the evening of July 17, under a lowering sky, that I found myself at the launching of the English translations of Purabi Basu's Bangla stories, Radha Will Not Cook Today and Other Stories. At Neo Mendez's Omni bookstore at Genetic Plaza (Genetic, which mall developer dreamt that one up?) in Dhanmondi. It is generous of Neo to provide freely the use of his bookstore for such events. I'd been emailing back and forth with Purabi and Niaz Apa when the book was being finalized since I had translated two of her stories and they were in the book. I had not known Purabi when I had translated them, though when I asked around, Afsan Chowdhury had informed me that she was now living in the United States. She had been a scientist at BRAC. I had translated Purabi's stories because I'd liked them - in our noisy, overbearing age where every writer, poet and artist coasts by on freewheeling notions of what constitutes that debatable word called 'art', I was drawn to her stories because she was a writer whose elegant Bangla was deceptively simple and who lavished care on her constructions.

People were already there at Omni, among them the panel's chair, Dr. Anisuzzaman of Dhaka University's Bangla department, as well as the lead discussant Nuzhat Mannan of English department, Dhaka University. The last time I'd seen Dr. Anisuzzaman was at a party of Bengali writers and artists, chatting with two lady litterateurs from West Bengal who had come over for a poetry festival. I'm a huge fan of Dr. Anisuzzaman's regular column Bipul Prithibi in Prothom Alo's literature page, where some months back he had effortlessly etched the funniest and the most affectionate portrait of poet Shakti Chattapadhaya that I have ever read. Then Purabi came and we got acquainted. A very dignified lady, who had graciously brought me a copy of Updike's latest novel The Terrorist. I flipped through it, thinking of all these middle-aged white novelists trying to cash in on the 'Osama' market these days -- I think they call it 'exploring the Muslim mind' for the benefit of the gullible folks in the West. A few months back Martin Amis, a writer I otherwise admire, published a short story in 'The New Yorker' magazine based on the last hours of Mohammed Atta - the Atta of Twin Towers fame! Damn piece of garbage! As Ziauddin Sardar (whose Desperately Seeking Paradise should be compulsory reading for all thinking Muslims), recently penned in 'The Guardian' newspaper, we should wise up to these "litcons" -- meaning literary neocons, i.e., literary clones of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield!

Anyway, the room began to fill up and Niaz Apa kicked off the proceedings. Nuzhat, who had studied the book/translations very carefully, discussed the book. I don't remember exactly everything she said, but it was very intelligent stuff. She had done a good job at Rumana's book launch too. I zoned out a bit looking out the big picture window because every time I look at gray skies it reminds me of Shahid Quadri's poem Brishti Brishti. Mohiuddin Bhai of UPL came in. Neo slipped in quietly at the back. Some other translators also showed up. Suddenly Niaz Apa also asked me to say something, so I rattled on for some time about why I had done the translations and how much I had enjoyed doing it, and that it was a distinct pleasure finally meeting up with the author. I tried to keep it light, because I agree with Kaiser Haq that such events should be 'celebratory' affairs. At Rubana's website launch he was quite funny about it. "I have no idea," he declared, "what the hell is upload, or what is download." He told us he still writes with a pen, then gets them typed -- which I think in this day and age is grody to the max, but hey, different strokes for different folks! In the middle of all this Hasan Ferdous, Prothom Alo's regular New York columnist, schlepped in with a Bengali Big Apple probashi contingent. There was the writer Selina Hossain, there was Jyotiprakash Dutta, Purabi's husband, who's a well-known writer in his own right. Dr. Anisuzzaman then got up and gave his overview of things, mentioning the fact that her training as a scientist seeped into her writings and made them unusual as far as Bengali fiction was concerned. The whole formal operation was then rounded up with Purabi thanking all of us translators and writers.ink.

Then we milled around for the tea and cakes and biscuits. I caught up with Neo, since I wanted to know about Thomas Ansell, an Englishman who had washed up on these shores and had written several volumes of poetry, among which were sonnets that I was interested in. This mingling and chatting is the best thing at these launches. Ferdous Hasan came up and introduced himself, and I was dismayed to see the amount of hair he was carrying on his head. While every time I look at the mirror...but ah, let us not go there, dear readers, this here is supposed to be a 'celebratory' article, not a disquisition on the ravages of Time.

This same after-discussion chatting and mingling was fun at the launch (belated, but done at Niaz Apa's insistence) of Fakrul Alam's South Asian Writers in English in the DLB series on July 28. Nearly everybody solemnly nodded their heads and agreed that it was a really solid piece of work. Except for Kaiser Haq, who again distributed light and laughter, while Radha Chakravarty told us about the discipline involved in writing such pieces. Then it was tea time again. It was good to meet up with Nazrul Bhai of Sociology, Dhaka University, whom I hadn't seen in some time -- still slim, wearing a black RAB shirt. There was Perween Apa of Islamic History, Dhaka University, whose book launching is on the 8th - Sultans and Mosques: Early Islamic Architecture in Bangladesh. There was Shahid Alam, 'GM' to his buddies. There were others -- Shahina Rahman of Academic Press with whom I discussed book publication in Dhaka, and Shamsul Alam, of Southern Oregon University who's now teaching in Dhaka. He told me about Sadek, again of Sociology, DU, who's now in Sudan. Back in the '70s we all used to sit in a wet-crow-line in front of Pedro's to drink Sharif Miah's tea -- Jesus, it's that tea, that's what blew away the hair! Alam didn't have a lot of it either, I noticed. Cool! There were a lot of young people who came over to me and said hi -- they knew me from my Daily Star gig. Which also went some way in solacing me over the hair thing!

As they say, it's amazing sometimes what you see when you get out of the house more often!

Khademul Islam is literary editor, The Daily Star.