Manzu Islam’s Godzilla and the Songbird stands as a mosaic of myth and modernity in which the protagonist’s life can be an allegory of the journey of post-colonial East Pakistan to Bangladesh.
In an unsettled Pakistan, two decades after being dissected from British India, murmurs of disaffection with dictator Ayub Khan are rife in East Pakistan, separated by 2000 km from its Western counterpart. Godzilla and the Songbird’s plot progresses in parallel to the historical events that culminate in the country of Bangladesh being born out of bloody conflict with West Pakistan. The novel integrates themes of post-colonial identity, conflict among people, and the conflict of tradition vs progress.
We are introduced to Bulbul whose name means “singing bird” as he arrives in his grandfather’s ancestral home in Dambarpur, among the throngs of Muslims who migrated to East Pakistan from India. Bulbul’s childhood is filled with destabilizing challenges as his grandfather moves him to a city called Mominabad for school. Village bumpkin that he is, he faces ridicule from his peers. His grandfather’s eccentricities and identification with the British don’t make it easy for him and stands in stark contrast to his grandmother’s homespun wisdom.
At school, he makes two lifelong friendships with Sanu the Fat, so named for his girth, and White Alam, whose fair skin defines him. The trio are snuck into a movie theater where they watch the film, Godzilla. They relate to the monster, wrenched from his habitat by a nuclear test, breathing radioactive fire, and misunderstood by the people he encounters.
Godzilla, it is plausible to conclude, represents the potential danger of unleashing nationalism particularly when people have different ideas of what it means and the identity itself is undergoing evolution(first, religious identity, then language and socialism, then some amalgam hybrid the two absent socialism) so, in that context it is akin to nation or national identity, post-partition. Indeed, the three friends call themselves “The Godzilla Brothers”. They, like most characters in the novel, are forced to confront identity rethink as regime change occurs. In the process, they endeavor to remain true to the core of who they are.
Parochial Mominabad has a religious identity in a country created for Muslims from which Bulbul wishes to escape. He applies himself in school becoming a university graduate, and moves to Pakistan’s then second capital, Dacca.
Bulbul gets work as a journalist, reporting for a left-leaning daily called The People’s Voice. The editor is difficult to please but turns out to be a formidable mentor. There, he is involved in various stories, and makes friends with a small circle of artists and left-wing intellectuals who meet regularly for political discussions. He becomes especially close with one of the poets, Noor Azad.
He and Noor meet a female journalist named Dipa Kaiser with whom they both fall in love—but Noor stakes his claim first by confessing his love for Dipa to Bulbul; Bulbul cannot then act on his feelings, allowing Noor to win Dipa over and marry her.
Bulbul and Dipa’s reporting on the indifference of the government of Pakistan to a disaster in the East helps stir sentiments to reject the West Pakistan dominance of the East. With the dictatorship in its last throes, East and West Pakistanis vote for opposing parties in almost equal measure, forcing either cooperation or confrontation.
Bulbul is sent to investigate and goes to a military base where his old friend White Alam, now a senior army officer, is stationed. He arrives in time to witness the arrival of West Pakistani troops who proceed to massacre their Bengali-speaking counterparts before spreading out into Dacca to carry out a reign of terror. He finds Alam alive only to see him off to rendezvous in India with surviving East Pakistani military and volunteers calling themselves the Mukti Bahini (liberation fighters). A red line has been crossed and there will be no going back.
Arriving back in Daaca, Bulbul shockingly finds the decapitated body of his editor at the newspaper office; his friends are missing. News comes that Noor has been killed and Dipa is hiding out at her father’s house as marauding West Pakistani soldiers weaponize rape against Dacca’s women.
The promise of the newly minted country of Bangladesh soon fades. A final reporting assignment to uncover a coup leads to Bulbul being taken captive. He is rescued by his old friend White Alam, but set adrift on a dinghy headed to India through the wild Sunderbans with an uncertain fate.”
Islam’s writing is evocative, exploring personal and cultural struggles in how to define a people in a post-colonial world. He narrates time and place with vivid descriptions of the settings and featuring key elements of ordinary life such as custom and cuisine. His use of symbolism is effective: the gecko representing observers, the man-eating tiger embodying death. While the character development is rich, the numerous and not always consequential sub-plots can at times distract from the overall narrative.
The story of Bulbul’s life is that of East Pakistan’s transformation into Bangladesh and then a rejection of the new identity taken. Born a saint, Bulbul is defined by religion only to reject it under the influence of socialism. As he rises in society, he hobnobs with the elite, ultimately becoming ensnared in their machinations from which only the martial White Alam can release him. But not before Alam suffers the same fate as Bangladesh’s heroic leader, sending the country adrift just as Bulbul is unmoored at the end.
Through Bulbul’s life, Islam posits that while regimes may change, power dynamics may not. Identity can’t be forced. It must naturally settle in – and the people of Bangladesh were never afforded sufficient political or cultural space. In this rare English-language novel set in what is currently Bangladesh, Islam makes a significant contribution to the post-colonial writing of the region.