Auchin Pakhi (Dream Bird) by Hasan Azizul Haque

The exposition of the story is about this poor father and his son, who live well under the poverty line at a time when strikes were fairly common. The time period is clearly not mentioned but I am guessing it is during the liberation war or during one of the many events that leads up to it. The father was the only earning member of the family who worked as a school master at a local school and barely made enough money to lead a comfortable life let alone dream about luxuries as obtaining a pet.

The story is told in third person limited narrative where the father was the main narrator. The main character’s family consisted of only himself, his wife and their only son, Babul. Now they may be living under poverty due all this strikes and the husband’s not-so-much earning, but the man surely was a doting father as he tries to fulfill all his son’s wishes; sometimes even going for extreme measures for that. For example, when he bought that chandana bird for his son. Now, owning a pet might not seem like a big deal but under the circumstances of the family’s poor financial situation, buying a bird and taking care of it was quite a deal as it meant that they will now have lesser food and money to buy other stuff. Now, it is not clearly mentioned but implied that the father’s job is currently on hiatus because of all the strikes. So, just like the atmosphere of the story, the mood of the characters were kind of restless all throughout.

Anyways, the rising action begins when the father bargains with the alluring bird-seller (who was charismatic enough to have young boys like Babul drooling over his merchandise) and finally buys a chandana bird for his son. Now, here one thing should be mentioned. The bird-seller may not have been completely honest since, the father duly showed some doubt at the authenticity of the parrot actually being a chandana or not. This part of the story may have sounded irrelevant to the story but it is not, since the lying of the bird-seller not only shows how dishonest some businessmen may be but also the fact that all of them were going through such a restless period and that everyone was so in need of money that they did not hesitate to cheat the poorest of the poorest as well. This incident is further solidified by the presence of the two dead munias in his cage. He should have thrown away those birds, but he did not. This shows that the bird-seller himself was so desperate for money that he subconsciously wished to sell those dead birds for some extra profit, too. Either this or he just kept them to make his cages look fuller in order to lure more customers.

The climax was when Babul and his father set their eyes on the bird and things began to fall apart since they had to sacrifice a lot to buy it. This alone was a foreshadowing enough for a terrible end but the plot twist at the end was much too unexpected to be honest. Anyways, as soon as the “exotic” entered the threshold, Babul and his father became obsessed with him. All day and night, they looked after it and did a few experiments with it like watching its reactions at different stimuli, how it tried heart and soul relentlessly to free itself from the confines of the cage. They even took seriously drastic and expensive measures just to feed their emotional needs. For example, they did not have enough money to feed themselves; they were broke. Yet, they used Babul’s last savings just to buy some paddy for the bird and watch how it reacts to this. This just shows how emotionally starved the duo was. I am guessing the poverty and the continuous strikes were the reasons behind the father and the son’s obsession. The bird became their only source of entertainment – an escape from the restless situation.

The last part of the story, to be honest in my opinion, is not only confusing and unexpected like a bolt from the blue, but also disturbing. First we were shown how the father is obsessing over the bird. He decides to buy it a bigger cage since the last one was very constricted for it. The bird was beginning to lose its feathers. So, he gets a bigger cage for the bird and together with his son finally decide to let be free. And right the next moment, we see the funeral procession of the son, Babul. The moment the scene shifted so drastically, I was like, “what the heck just happened?” the denouement was neither mind-blowing nor amazing. It was not even sad. I felt nothing for the boy’s death to be honest since it was so abrupt and since we did not get to know him very well, too. It felt as though the writer was trying a bit too hard to produce a hair-raising situational irony.

I guess, like some other clichéd stories I have read about birds and freedom, this story is about freedom as well. But, to be honest, I do not know what kind of freedom. Since, the boy had almost everything. They were not that much oppressed as well. I know they were poor, they had hardly anything to feed themselves with. But, it was also sort of their fault. Had they not wasted all that money after a bird (which also may not of the exotic breed they were looking for), they may have saved Babul. Now, it is also not exactly clear how he died. It is implied that he may joined the strike after all and got killed in the process. But, I am not sure to be honest. So, the denouement of the story just produced more questions instead of answering the previous ones. Well, the bird flew away. I suppose that should imply that Babul’s soul is free now just like the bird.

If you ask me if I liked this story or not, I would say, “sorry, no.” The writer may have written some really good stuff but this one is not for me, because of the confusion and pointlessness. But that does not mean I do not appreciate it. Anyways, the story had no clear antagonists. But the main conflict of the story was the ever-growing restlessness of the protagonists due being forced to stay at home for long periods of time. During the falling action, it almost felt as if both the father and the son were growing some sort of psychological sickness and the bird was both the cause and the remedy. So, I would like to label this story in the Realism genre though I had some surrealistic feel to it (yes, the obsession with the bird felt a bit too surreal for me).  

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