Birth Anniversary of Selim Al Deen

Today--18th August--marks the birth-anniversary of my close colleague Selim Al Deen (18 August, 1949--14 January, 2008)--the legendary Bengali playwright, drama theorist, and theater activist-- whose highly innovative plays inaugurated an explosive rupture with the Aristotelian and West-inspired tradition of Bengali theater, while creatively bringing together the dramatic and the narrative and the poetic and the epical and even the theoretical with unprecedentedly superb effects. Despite our age-difference, Selim bhai was also a close friend at one point, with whom I had endless conversations. His death continues to be a huge loss, and a huge personal loss as well. On his birth-anniversary, I post again the link to our conversation--a segment of the national television program called "ntv Samoyiki" I used to conduct and the poet Alfred Khokon used to design and produce back in 2007-2008--and this was Selim Al Deen's last television appearance in Bangladesh: