Justify the poem "Civil Service Romance" as a satire to bureaucracy and red tapism of

postcolonial Bangladesh.(how does he satire them)?

Answer: A bureaucracy typically refers to an organization that is complex with multilayered

systems and processes. These systems and procedures are designed to maintain uniformity and
control within an organization. A bureaucracy describes the established methods in large
organizations or governments.
Red tape is an idiom referring to regulations or conformity to formal rules or standards which
are claimed to be excessive, rigid or redundant, or to bureaucracy claimed to hinder or prevent
action or decision-making. It is usually applied to governments, corporations, and other large
organizations.
Kaiser Haq is a post-colonial modern writer and poet who widely used the literary technique of
satire in a witty manner in his poetry to criticize the contemporary society. He attacks the
convention of contemporary society and reveal the superficiality of them and shows that they
have some faults and moral lacking as well though the usages of satire in his poems.
His poem " civil service Romance" is a direct satire on the civil service of our country. In our
country people who are doing government jobs they are not loyal towards their job. They does
not show any seriousness and responsibility toward their work. Through the poem " civil service
romance " Kaiser Haq satirises the system of our government officials where people are keen on
dealing with unnecessary things and how ridiculously they ignore the urgent files. In this poem
we find that an officer is quite busy for making love with a new beautiful lady employee. He
does not care the emergency file, what he care is only making romance with a new joined lady
employee. Thus, portraying this love making incidents in a sarcastic manner, Haiser Haq mock
the political system of our government’s jobs where employees show no morality or duty
towards their job. Throughout this poem he mocks the traditional concept of our civil service
where people are corrupted both morally and ethically.
The poet is said to a real ‘ambassador of Bangladeshi culture’ who proudly reveals his origin and
rationally tries to brand his country. Through a note of irony in 'Civil Service Romance, Haq
portrays bureaucratic irregularities of the civil service in Bangladesh. He mocks the Babu
English by deliberately mimicking the style used in letters of application to the English Sahibs or
Masters.
.... The poem starts with:

Subject: Improvement of Bilateral Ties

Dear Miss:
With due respect and humble submission

I beg to welcome you to neighboring section.

The title of the poem mentions a 'romance' that occasionally flowers in a work place. When in a
government office, a male employee and a female employee are engaged in discussing family
particulars, sharing likes and dislikes, making jokes (or love!) and improving all-round bilateral
ties, the most URGENT file is kept pending as per rule of the red-tape culture. Haq then speaks
about another embarrassing aspect of the civil service-the buttering or oiling of the bosses (the
neo-imperialists). Which guarantees promotions and other benefits. These are some phenomena
in a postcolonial civil service world coming down from the colonial political culture. The
limitless power of the government officials is still seen in the civil service; the officers are more
or less like Sahibs or Babus.
So we could say that the poem "Civil Service Romance" as a satire to bureaucracy and red
tapism of postcolonial Bangladesh.

Main essence of Kaiser Huq's poetry?

Answer: Haq’s poems are harmless mockery protesting against all odds and questioning the
hybrid society. The objections they had are Haq’s use of lot of references in the verses and of
creating something fully imaginative. However, all of them admitted that his poems have the true
native essence. They affirms the parody of BonolotaSen to be a lively and amazing poem clearly
depicting the city life of Dhaka, where one points out that Haq is actually worshipping the
reality, mocking at the Petrarchan style.
In postcolonial studies, the teachers find the issues of identity, nationhood etc. important to
discuss about.
It is required to find out if Kaiser Haq’s poems are playing any role in colonizing the minds of
the native readers keeping in mind about the hegemonized community. It is observed that
although the colonial tongue has the power to hegemonize knowledge and values, Haq’s English
transmitted accordingly to defend such influence. The language, ideas and contexts discussed in
the paper on Haq’s poetry are potentially enough to claim that the poet’s English is free of
colonialism.
Kaiser Haq is representing Bangladesh and its culture to the world and making them proud as
Bangladeshis.
He is rather nurturing the culture and strengthening cultural as well as national identity of the
community. From the above discussion, it can be agreed that Kaiser Haq’s poetry can be
encouraged more to the native readers.
The elements of the poems of this talented Bangladeshi poet are harmless to the minds of the
native readers, rather they contributes in formation of our cultural identities for facing the West
and in the international field of English literature. Haq’s poetry is fighting against a many social
odds and western influences. The light-hearted compositions with deep thoughts and
philosophies tinted with irony are defending the misrepresentation of the East by the West,
where he branded Bangladesh to a large extent to his international readers and also established
his place in the hearts of the natives.

Discuss how urban life is presented by Kaiser Huq?

Answer:. In Bangladesh, there are few Bengali writers and poets who practice their literary
works in English language. Among them Kaiser Haq, is said to be a leading south Asian poet
who write poems in English on native context.
Although the poet writes in the colonial language, his writings are capable of creating the image
of the native culture in their own ways and a glimpse of them will be reflected in his poems.A
number of poems in his book Published in the Streets of Dhaka are echoing Bangladeshi culture
mostly on urban context.
Why the poet is writing on native settings in English language is questioned by critiques but the
paper focuses if the language in the poems is recolonizing the minds of the native readers.
Writers of once colonized communities mainly creates literary works which try to uphold the
reality of their natives, defend the misrepresentation and misjudgment of lifestyles and ideas of
the East by the West, and reflect the parts of culture of their nation and people to the world.
The poet has been enunciating his cultural identity uniquely in the context of Bangladesh with a
variety of individual poetic images marked with flavors of irony and humor. The poet is said to a
real ‘ambassador of Bangladeshi culture’ who proudly reveals his origin and rationally tries to
brand his country.
The English of the poet is transformed to fit the urban life and its culture.
To conclude, basically both sectors of, be it urban or rural have been subjugated to colonial-era.
Being the centre of the country, urban areas are made to implement the direct subserviency and
engulf the colonial impacts thoroughly. The subjects of colonialism and its after affects, social
odds, western influence,cultural identities prevailing in the poem, gives a clear glimps of the
urban life and its functions.

Kaiser Haq’s use of wit and humour in Ode On The Lungi and other poems?
Answer: Kaiser Haq is a jolly writer with extraordinary sense of humour and wit. His
intention isn’t simply to amuse individuals, but to ridicule and correct them. He is cognizant of
the utilization of Babu English that has affected several areas including English language
learning methodology at schools. To mock at this prevailing trend of Babu English, Haq even
has written poems in Sub-continental English.
His use of irony and humour connect on to the prevailing issues in this country that have
apparently taken us to the damaging and suicidal neocolonial reign. The aim of his poems is to
get the colonial political system of this country and the way the grip of modern colonial
aggression is robbery everything from us that we used to feel pleased with.
In several poems, Haq replaces several English words with Bengali words to talk clearly, with
boldness and on to his readers (local and international). Haq has been writing since Nineteen
Sixties, and surprisingly, it’s found that he was predetermined regarding his writing designs. It
might be that he feels comfy with it. He didn’t stop victimization his ironic language, amusing
puns and simple language that is usually a poem vogue.
His famous poem, “Ode On The Lungi” sounds very comic in the sense that this piece is a tribute
to Lungi(a rectangular stitched garment vertically sewed stitched a textile tube). He punned with
the title of the poem that contrasts with the titles of poems by great romantic English poets like
Keats and Shelley. Haq uses lungi to produce humour and critical meaning.
The poet urges that, being a familiar dress among individuals over the population of the USA at
any time, the lungi, though a dress of the subaltern, should incline equal status and regard like
any other popular dresses in the West. Lungi as a symbol of the subaltern, is ready to speak
against torrential attack and encroachment of aggressive modernism beneath the gloss of
globalization that is unendingly engaged in promoting/imposing Western and moralist culture.
The consciousness of distinction as a category with the exception of the common mass in their
psyche and their behaviour and actions make us understand that some sort of neo-imperialism is
at play.
The modest lungi, therefore, is an emblem of equality in all respects: human, social, political and
economic. The lungi, as a symbol of the excluded and marginalized individuals within the
society, or within the words of the poet, “global left-outs‟, genuinely articulates its claim for
equality, dignity and position within the global society. Though a symbol of “global left-outs”, a
marginalized and neglected subaltern, yet, once it’s raised and flapped with dignity, it screams
for equality. The poem meticulously tries to blur the social, political, economic and cultural
binaries that exist in today’s polarized world.
Haq’s sense of humour and use of wit is one in all his higher traits to impart the materialistic
angle of this world.
Ode on the lungi is an expression of Haq’s as well as whole subcontinental cultural identity,
subverting the colonial or imperial conventional legacy of social structures. Haq’s notion of
exclusion encompasses two vast grounds; one that has been self-addressed wide and generally
through various communications – writing, seminars, conference, etc. – is ‘equal human rights’
and also the alternative remained unaddressed is ‘sartorial right’. Haq has justly noted the
cultural absurdities as “a clash of civilizations”.
The poem allegorically shatters the sartorial injustice inherent, and incoherent too, to
Eurocentrism – the practice of world presentation from a European or Western-centered
perspective intermeshed by the philosophic deformations of European capitalism. “Eurocentrism
not only influences and alerts, however truly produces different cultures” (Ashcroft, Griffiths,
and Tiffin 85): “the kilt is with ‘us’/ but the lungi is with ‘them’!” (69 – 60). Such notion of
partiality, fabricated to be a source of cultural meaning, engineers sartorial political system that
produces a culture of sartorial difference during which piece of cloth is simply a “symbol of
global left outs” (83) of the posh world and a “ridiculous ethnic attire” (88) of the marginalized
autochthonic ‘other’ destitute of sartorial equality.
Kaiser Haq has thought from several angles. He has written regarding people, language, culture,
autocracy, monocracy, freedom, corruption, war, violence, religion, education and even
migration. Haq, through his gruesome sense of humour and playful wit.