I took Babu Bangladesh to honestly just read about Bangladesh and its history. Every bong has a soft corner for the country, I have it too. It’s not love, just fascination of how it looks like when you have so many Bengalis in a country. I am a Bengali out of Bengal and hence the fascination has always been there for me. Babu Bangladesh with its comic cover, its assurance that I’ll get a sneak peek of Bangladesh was enough for me. The day I brought this book from the bookstore, I wasted no time to start reading it.

Babu Bangladesh has been a tough read for me. The last book which took so much time for me might have been Sapiens. I struggle with books that are too descriptive and where I feel I am a little lost in the narrative. Babu took me several months where I read the book for a day and then left it, took it again, read it for a few days more, giving up but then again taking it up. But at no point did I feel that I did not want to read the book, it just felt intensive. I finally took it up last month and finished the book and I am so glad I did. Imagine being so impressed by the book, that you start a book review column that you had thought of doing ages ago. 

Babu Bangladesh is an imagination of a character of the same name who might have changed Bangladesh’s history if he would have been a real character. The author Numair Atif Choudhary recreates Bangladesh’s history, present, and future in his own way giving a glimpse of what he imagines Bangladesh to be. His Bangladesh is the one where it is a country that has become self-sustainable and much more relevant to the modern world than it is now.

Babu Bangladesh takes you through the course of time in five different parts – Building, Tree, Snake, Island, and Bird. The first two parts give you a glimpse of the past, the history of majestic Bangladesh. It talks about one of the most fascinating things about Bangladesh – Jatiya Sangsad, how within Bangladesh’s history there is a history of this building that not many people outside Bangladesh don’t know about. It takes you to a parallel storyline of Babu and how like the Jatiya Sangsad his understanding of the world is built. There is a strong parallel that the author has tried to convey while telling both these stories. The stories merge when Babu falls in love with Jatiya Sangsad. 

The tree gives a glimpse of Bangladesh’s revolution, a very strong commentary on what Bangladesh’s Nationalism should look like. It speaks volumes on what the revolutionaries fought for, drawing a parallel narrative with babu’s vision to recreate a similar thing. The Snake is a retelling of the present, how Babu would have affected the presence of Bangladesh and improved it. It gives the first human glimpse of the god-like character Babu. The island takes you into a nearby future of Bangladesh under Babu’s guidance and gives a glimpse of modern politics in its most raw way. How wars are fought when in reality there is no war.

Bird is one of the most exceptional parts of the book. The book feels anticlimax during the beginning of the part and takes the most exceptional turn. It takes you on a spiritual journey whose narrative is hidden throughout the book. This is where the book gives a glimpse of how it’s not just any other fictional book but something much more. The Birds part talks about the aspiration of people like Babu, and how one can really achieve what they desire. One of the most realistic parallels is the author’s life himself. He talks about a fakir who gives his life just to prove to a person how he can be greater than himself. He shows him the way of detachment, of loving the world but not being affected by it. The fakir is Numair Atif Choudhary for me who spent 15 years of his life on this book and died before publishing it. He is that fakir who gives his life to provide meaning to everybody else’s.

Numair isn’t just the author of this book, but he also exists as an author in the book writing the biography of babu Bangladesh. The book is a story of the author finding traces of Babu because babu has vanished from this world. I feel he isn’t just that; Numair disguises under the name of Babu to show what he really feels for the world and Bangladesh, he is the Messiah whom we have lost too young, and this is his legacy. Babu Bangladesh is Numari Atif Choudhary and this is what I want to believe. I feel this book is worth reading but also worth preserving for centuries.