His footsteps to echo

I am sitting with my dried up eyes with the Bangla translation of William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' by Syed Shamsul Haq. He is no more. Translation of 'Hamlet' was done in Royal Marsden Hospital, London. This play will be produced by Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Syed Haq, my dearest Haq Bhai, entrusted me to direct this play. He developed confidence in me as I happened to direct 10 of his plays including one in English. Syed Haq, our dear Haq Bhai, has left us for good this afternoon while in the ICU of United Hospital. It is a kind of rendezvous with the father universe and mother earth. I have no tears to shed but a pair of dried up burning eyes as we have lost a great man of our family of art, culture and literature. I can only pay my tribute and bow down my head to this great son of the soil as well as the entire universes. I pay my tribute to this great writer by quoting from Rabindranath Tagore. “Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life”.

Yes, indeed Syed Haq will keep on filling up our empty vessels for ages to come with his creative spirit and love for the country and humanity. He was born with a golden pen. He was a poet, novelist, essayist and above all a playwright of rare quality. He is a writer of unique genre who can be compared with only himself. His five verse play's namely 'Paer Awaj Paowa Jay', 'Nuruldiner Sarajiban', 'Ekhane Ekhon', 'Gana Nayak' and last but not the least 'Eersha' will transcend the barrier of time. He has to his credit other plays also in prose dialogues. Following the great playwrights of Greek Golden Age, William Shakespeare and Rabindranath Tagore (only the verse plays), Haq Bhai was impeccable in writing verse plays which are equally a matter of great pleasure for both reading and staging. He was extraordinary in the use of metaphors, allegories, similes and symbolism. He was incomparable in translating Shakespeare's play keeping the original text and the poetic value almost intact. He even made a cohesion of phonetically sound of English language with Bangla. I have a long text massage exchanges with him when he was translating]] 'Hamlet', when I found out he has been engulfed with creative flare only forgetting his severe ailments. In his case, his ailments were defeated by creative spirit. He was a man with iron nerve. The posterity will remember him for all time to come for his creative genius in the field of literature (plays, poems, novels, short stories, music composition and essays).

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Syed Shamsul Haq will remain a North Star in our sky in the field of creativity and a true son of mother Bengal, especially Bangladesh. His soul was deep rooted in the soil of Bangladesh and he will always be remembered for his undaunted spirit of creative writings of varied colours. I kneel down to this great man's immortal soul. He did not surrender to death till the end and kept on hoisting the flag of life. 

(Moncho Sarothi Ataur Rahman)
Actor-Director-Writer
Recipient of Ekushey Padak