TT queen's comeback from the brink

Munira Rahman Helen was the first table tennis queenof Bangladesh. She first won the women’s singles crownat the Second Bangladesh Open Table Tennis Tournament organised by BUET in 1973 while still a student of class ten; and then she won the women’s singles title in the First National TT Championship organized by Bangladesh Table Tennis Federation (BTTF) in December 1974. At that time, the renowned sports editor of the daily Dainik Bangla Muhammad Quamruzzaman used to call her‘Helen of Dhaka’ because of her beauty and grace. Butshemysteriously disappeared from the TT-arena after winning the national women’s doubles crown for the third time in a row by partnering with her younger sister Linu in 1977.

Then sixteen years later,she returned to the sportsscene in 1993 when she was inducted as a member (later vice-president)of BTTF, and continued her organisingrole there up to 2024, followed by her induction as a member of National Sports Council in 2025. Her sudden exit in 1977 had surprised many TT enthusiasts and followers, as she was still in her prime as a leading female player of the country. However, her recently published memoir titled Phire Asha (Coming Back) has shed lightonsome of the unanswered questions that has been plaguingher fans over many years. 

Born in December 1958, Helen’s childhood was spent in the picturesque town of Kaptaionthe lush-green Hill Tracts of Rangamati and the hilly terrain of Shahjibazar in Madhobpurupazila of Habiganj district, where her father Sheikh Abdur Rahman worked asproject engineerof power plants. She amazed many observers by winning medals at the provincial athletics championship of the then East Pakistanback in 1970while she was still a teenage girl of 11 years. However, she switched to table tennis after moving to Shahjibazar in the same year, with her father as the practice partner. But she had to face exceedinglydifficult times and innumerable ordeals after leaving the TT arena in 1977.Her memoir narratesthe pains, trials and tribulations she had to undergo over a sixteen-year period from 1977 before emerging from the ashes like a Phoenixin December1993, when she ran as the torch-bearer of Bangladesh contingent at the inaugural ceremony of the Sixth South Asian Games held in Dhaka. 

A born naturalist and keen animal-lover, Helen has narrated in her memoir the many faces of nature she observed at Kaptai, Shahjibazar, and her ancestral abode of Khulna during her childhood and adolescence. She also described in minute details her family-life, as well as her eventful days in primary and secondary schools. Many outdoor adventures and sporting pursuits she and her friends undertook were divulged in the process. 

The travails of her family at Shahjibazar during the liberation war of 1971 was also portrayed candidly, when some renowned freedom fighters visited their residence at the start and end of the war, while the Pakistani Military set up camp at the rest-house of Shahjibazar Power Plant for a brief period. Helen reminisced her sudden rise on the TT scene like a meteor in 1973, as well as her experiences as a leading female player both inside and outside the country up to 1977. After that,she plunged into that terrible episode, which started with a deceptive affair and sudden marriage under pressure from a naughty andegoisticman in uniform when she was hardly 19 years old. 

Thereafter commenced a nightmarish 16-year-longjourney that has been bravely recounted by Helen in this memoir. It was a silent struggle for her own survivalas well as that of her children against domestic violence and repression that lastedfor about eleven years in Bangladesh followed by four years in the United States of America (USA).In between, she gave birth to a son in 1979 followed by two daughters in 1984 and 1989, all of whom are now well-established US citizens now. The reminiscences have been presented with such emotion and candour that they propel the readers from one pageto another till the memoir endson page-172. A mini-photo-album has also been added after that, which encapsulates Helen’s journey in life,vizher childhood days, sporting achievements at home and abroad, organisational activities, family-members, hobbies like painting, and pets including Eagle and Porcupine. 

As the publisher of the book Shahrin Haque Tithi noted in her introduction: “I stopped a number of times while reading this book, not as a publisher, but as a human being. There are some writings that do not remainmere manuscripts; rather they enter the reader’s soul, stir silent memories, and overwhelms the mind. This is one such book”. The memoir not only urges a person to look back, but also prompts the empathetic reader toreassure a long-sufferingfellow being, “Please don’t worry, I am with you”. 

Helen has not only narrated her childhood memories, the variegated faces of nature, as well as her years of agony and anguish, she has also articulated the hushed-up feelings of innumerable women who routinely fall prey to domestic repression and violence in our male-dominated society. As the publisher succinctly puts it, “At some places it seemedas if these memories are not Helen’s alone – theybelong toeverybodythat capture the days we left behind, our unspoken pains, and oururge to return to ourselves”.Helen even reminds us of the immortal utterances of that protagonist in Ernest Hemingway’s celebratednovella ‘The Old Man and the Sea’: “A human can be destroyed, but not defeated”. 

Dr Helal Uddin Ahmed is a retired Additional Secretary and former Editor of Bangladesh Quarterly.
hahmed1960@gmail.com