Comitted to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW Vol. 4 Num 38 Fri. July 04, 2003       Focus Excuse me, Michael Dutt! Muhammad Habibur Rahman Mr.Michael Madhusudan Dutt! Excuse me, Poet Michael Dutt! Excuse me for that, I mean for rhyming in a non-mother tongue Particularly when like you now I am not that young. You experimented with writing in English when young But good sense dawned soon on you And you started writing in mother tongue anew. To the realm of Saraswati, the beautiful goddess Of learning and poesy, you got a wonderful access And in the end you achieved a glorious success. Doing tedious humdrum imperial job in Latin Marcus Aurelius switched on to Greek for writing in His The Meditations. Instead of German, his native tongue, Frederick the Great In San-souci loved in French to read and communicate. Tagore got the Nobel prize for his English Gitanjali, Not for rhyming his devotional songs in Bengali. Oxford conferred on him the doctorate honoris causa in Latin But it was in Sanskrit Tagore's speech in reply was written. We do not know why on a second thought what to do For writing Asrar-e- khudi Iqbal preferred Persian to Urdu. Nobokov would have liked to write Lolita in Russian He, however, chose to write it in English, but not for fashion. May be that his mother tongue Russian lacks An apt expression for 'She is Lola in her slacks', Or an appropriate Russian line that rhymes With, "She is Lolita on the dotted lines". Kierkegaard continued to write in Danish So did Juan Ramon Jimenez in Spanish. But Joseph Conrad wrote hardly anything in Polish. Known Irish writers wrote mostly in English. Big names have been cited by a small fry. Let him enjoy his new try That on one fine morning did suddenly appear And one sad afternoon it may suddenly disappear . It may be as transient as the twilight . I do, however, admire Michael Dutt's great insight, His return to his second nature and first language Abandoning the Queen's English, his second language. In my case it is absolutely a new venture. One may call it a misadventure, An old man falling maddeningly in love with one An incomparable companionable companion. A great fun indeed, I greatly enjoy the dalliance. A great companion, I greatly enjoy the misalliance. Michael Dutt! Excuse me for that, I mean, for my rhyming in English. One may like to call it Benglish, The English as it is spoken in Bangladesh Not the Queen's English, but English nonetheless. Excuse me, Michael Dutt! Excuse me for that, I mean for rhyming in a non-mother tongue, Particularly when I am now not all that young. Muhammad Habibur Rahman is former Chief Justice and head of caretaker government