At 21, Deen is not your average textbook romantic. His disapproval of the circuitous tracks that establishments, emotional failures and destiny, have put his life onto is drowned in the momentary reassurance of heroin, pethidine and marijuana. Love, lust and desperation struggle for a coherent definition in his head. Music is escape at times, and a refuge at others. Shazia Omar’s protagonist in her debut novel Like A Diamond In The Sky might not be completely representative of the contemporary Bangladeshi youth, but she agrees that he is also not removed from the latter’s reality. “Disillusionment is everywhere. So is substance abuse. The problem in countries like ours is, we don’t talk about them,” says the 30-something author from Bangladesh.

Despair and urban alienation, along with a volatile establishment that is struggling to meet the demands of a growing, eager nation, has become a part of the long list of sordid home truths of Bangladesh, like several other South Asian countries. But does being brutally honest question a writer’s responsibility towards his/her country? “The job of a writer is to turn a critical eye towards most things. And if I talk about the problems plaguing my country, it is not because I have a Western readership in mind. It’s because I love my country, I want people to take notice and change things for the better,” says Omar.

It was when she was studying to become a social psychologist in the London School of Economics that the idea of the novel took shape in her head. “I was surrounded by socialists and leftists. My protagonist is very socialist in spirit one would notice,” says Omar. And then it was her stint at a rehabilitation centre in Mumbai that brought the problems of addicts, their relationship dynamics, and their negativity, before Omar. “I had gone there for academic reasons and to train as a counselor. I came back with a story I had to tell,” says the Dhaka-based author.

... contd.