When Daud or poet Daud Haider passed away, last week it was almost with a relief that I took the news. I was expecting it and very ready because I knew what he was going through and what he had become as he lay in the hospital waiting to die. He had an accident a few months back falling down the stairs, had a stroke, was diagnosed in the hospital with his second or third bout of cancer and lost his power of speech and movement. You rarely get worse than that.

As he lay in the hospital, all he could do was stare. However, he managed to communicate that he was a victim of an accident and not an attack by anyone. That was all that he could convey, his last moments were shrouded in the same careless mystery that can't fully explain how he had stumbled all the stairs one floor down in the middle of a cold winter Berlin and died in a way that was certainly not dramatic at all. He must have hated it. After all, he loved noise and attention and all that made him who he was. He went with a painful whimper that hurts as I write these words.

I welcome the end of his earthly sufferings and mourn the death of my friend of more than half a century. So farewell Daud, you would have been happy to know that your death has been noticed by many, people have said great things about you and you have become the symbol of the voice of a poet -forced into exile. Everyone knows you now, even those who never read your poems and never will.

Remember when we met first?

Daud came from Pabna and was the fourth of five brothers from the same wife of his father who had married thrice. Today all five are stars of Bangladeshi literature, dead or alive. It begins with Zia Haider, Rashid Haider, Makid Haider, Daud and Zahid Haider. The 5 brothers, all eminent, were called the Poncho Pandavs" the "5" brothers of the Pandab clan of Mahabharat. It must be an incredible set of genes that made this happen and Daud was rightly proud of it.

Daud and our friend Hasan Ferdous were close friends, both residents of the same area Malibagh and several of us in Dhaka college were bringing out a literary magazine "Purbopatra" at that time led by the same Hasan Ferdous. whose original christened name I have now forgotten. Daud too joined the magazine and we all became not just part of the pack but friends too. It was 1969. And Daud was already well known as a poet but not yet fully famous. And he did love fame.

By the time the 1970s emerged after the war- the period of poetry and revolution and all that comes with it - Daud had become well known. Despite his age, he was managing the literary page of daily Sangbad and writing himself to bits. His close friend Hasan Ferdous had left for the USSR but Daud made many more friends all around. And then he wrote "Jonmoi amar ajonmo pap" - a poem which caught very wide attention, and even went international.

It was a big shit affair and won a literary prize abroad too. 'Purbopatra" was still on though it was soon to die and we organized a celebratory event at the Jatio Grantha Kendro for daud.. I remember author Shaukat Osman dwelling on his poems with words of much praise among others who all were congratulating him.

But soon came his "Kalo Surjer kalo josnar kalo bonnay", a fine poem except for that bit about the faith leaders and not just of Islam which earned the fury of the Islamic groups in Bangladesh. Daud was taken into safe custody and it was decided that Bangladesh would not be safe for his life anymore and his exiled life, first in Kolkata, began.

In exile and finally....

We met a couple of times when I visited Kolkata but kept in touch through occasional mails and so on. He did visit Bangladesh but knew the mood. It was not the life he wanted moving while avoiding attention but he had no options. Later Gunter Grass whom he had kept company during his Kolkata visit, helped him cross over to Germany and Daud lived there till last week.

It was there that we reconnected courtesy social media, messages and phones. He would call regularly and I was one from the past and we would converse. He sent me his poems for translations and editing but I am not sure if such a book came out. He lost his GF to an accident I heard and slowly with time he cut off from many of the known ones and the rest as he became a poet masquerading as a distant ghost of his own past.

When I first heard of his fall and hospitalization, I contacted some names in Germany and heard he was badly off. It was heartbreaking. I called his last surviving brother Zahid on the phone. "Afsan bhai, the doctors have said he won't return. We are ready mentally for the final news. Please be ready yourself. ". It was good, kind advice that I needed.

The final news did come but I had already said my goodbye by then. It doesn't make the hurt less, the tragic aspects of his life less painful, just a kind of letting go easier. Farewell Daud, till we meet again. And never forget that your messenger phone ID was Jibanananda Das. In the end it's poetry which wins. And you won.