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Review

Moonlight Saga: A Chronicle of the Colonial Past

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Moonlight Saga

Author: Arupa Patangia Kalita

Translated from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

Tea garden literature in various Indian languages forms a definite sub-genre of literary history and the present 340 pages book under review gives us a wide canvas of the rise of tea plantations in colonial Assam and the human cost that sustains them. The historical background of this novel is well-known.

Since tea gardens are extensively labour oriented, the common problem facing them is shortage of workers and this is where the arkathias or middlemen keep on recruiting Adivasi and tribal families from central India by promise them a rosy picture of Assam desh — a land of milk and honey where they can live with dignity, earn money and bring an end to their impoverishment. But reality turns out to be the exact opposite. These bonded labourers or ‘coolies’ as they are termed, are then packed onto overcrowded steamers and sent upriver, where hunger, disease and death shadow every step of their journey.

Among them is Durgi, a young woman whose resilience endures even in despair. She carries with her a small bundle of marigold seeds, a fragile memory of the land of red earth she has left behind. At her side is her husband, Dosaru, the rebellious archer, bound to her by love and the shared hope of building a life of their own. However, what awaits them at Atharighat Tea Estate, located just below the Bhutan border, is no promised land. Labourers are stripped, disinfected, confined to barracks, and driven into relentless work, while sickness, fear, and muted defiance simmer beneath the ordered rows of tea bushes.

The novel opens with Jonathan, a British tea planter and manager of the plantation, who has spent decades building the plantation from a small nursery into a large and profitable estate, arranging the supply of more Adivasi labourers to work on the plantation. His authority is near-absolute, as is his feeling of superiority. The plantation company grants him freedom to rule over workers’ lives as he sees fit, a role he takes seriously. He has to manage their arrival, ensure they do not bring malaria or cholera with them, train them to avoid snake bites and tiger attacks, and keep them productive, while also worrying about his own health in a harsh climate with limited medical care. Soon, after Jonathan’s departure, the atmosphere of the garden changes with the arrival of a comparatively young new burra-sahib called Fraser. He tries his best to uplift the living condition of the coolies and enhance the productivity of the tea estate.

Throughout the novel Kalita beautifully narrates the tensions and pressures of plantation life. As many as 60 out of every 100 new coolies die before they can even begin work. The strict discipline that they have to undergo while living in the barracks is described in the minutest details. Durgi, a talented singer and dancer, brings moments of joy to the workers through her singing at festivals and religious celebrations. Moonlight becomes a recurring image and a significant metaphor throughout the novel. The songs sung by the coolies emphasise their cultural significance and adds to the authenticity of the narrative.

After her husband’s death, Durgi’s life takes a complicated turn over the years—an intimate affair with Fraser, the white manager of the tea garden, results in the birth of three mixed race children. She becomes known as Durgi-mem and though Fraser pays utmost attention to her well-being, allotting her a separate cottage and farmland, things change dramatically when he leaves permanently and goes back to England.

Among the three children, the youngest one died of cholera. Fraser returned to England with his daughter who resembled his mother in appearance making false promises of her return. The only child left behind was the eldest. The boy is caught in the horns of a dilemma when he refuses to go far away and live in a hostel like many other mixed-race children. The unequal relationship between the white officials and their coolie concubines exposes another unspoken truth about plantation life. There are generations of similar children, many of whom, abandoned by their white ancestors, still live in Assam’s tea gardens today.

One interesting fact about this novel is the beautiful blend of fact and fiction. In the ‘acknowledgement’ section Kalita tells us how she was handed a slim volume written by a gentleman called Usman Gani narrating the life story of Durgi Bhumij and a few documents about her and requested her to write a novel on her life. Coincidentally, during that period she was researching on tea garden life and its people as one of the subjects for her new novel. So, though Durgi was a real-life character, and the people around her had deep roots in Assam, ultimately it was Kalita’s credit to turn it into an excellent work of fiction which became very popular and managed to receive the Sahitya Akademi Award too. The excellent translation of this Assamese novel into English done by Ranjita Biswas now brings the novel to a wider readership.

What is interesting in this story is how the novelist depicts life in a tea garden with minutest details while placing the story in a period when the independence movement from British rule along with Gandhi’s ideals of satyagraha was changing the social ambience in this region as well. The exploitation of plantation labour comes under increasing scrutiny, and workers begin to demand better conditions. Meanwhile Durgi also grows in prominence among the workers and becomes known to the new manager Fraser. Soon, these two worlds, once rigidly separated, begin to collide and ends with the killing of Durgi. So, while Kalita has woven the story around Durgi, at the same time she has meticulously portrayed other prominent people of Assam, the rebellion against colonial rule at a time when tea plantations flourished in Assam after the East India Company lost ground in China post the Opium War. This elevates the novel into a chronicle of the times too.

The epilogue serves as an interesting finale to the narrative when the first-person narrator tries to trace the whereabouts of Durgi’s daughter. After a lot of effort and attempts to tie loose information together, she manages to locate a ‘white girl’ at Rangachali Tea Garden, her last shelter and her fifth generation. This brings the story to end on a somewhat positive note, and the narrator promises to come back again with some gifts for the children there.

Read an excerpt at this link

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is former professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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Historic Travelogue Reviewed by Aruna Chakravarti

Title: The Forest of Snow

Author: Swami Ramananda Bharati

Translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

Just as the European Renaissance was a transformative intellectual movement marking a transition from the social and cultural stagnation of the Middle Ages to a new age of enlightenment, a similar movement found its genesis in Bengal and gradually spread to the rest of India. Known as the Bengal Renaissance, it is generally believed to have had its genesis towards the end of the 18th century and its culmination in the first decade of the 20th. Like the preceding one, it marked a period of intellectual and cultural awakening in various fields: literature, politics, music, art, society and religion. At its heart was a shift from rigid religious primitivism to an all-embracing humanism. It represented a transformative era in which traditional norms were questioned, and new ways of everyday living were explored. This movement, influenced by Western liberalism, threw up many great thinkers and scholars. Among them were Raja Rammohan Roy, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda. It gradually paved the way for another — the national movement which demanded the end of British rule in India.

But the Bengal Renaissance was not only a period of intellectual and cultural awakening. Like its European counterpart, it also sparked a desire to push boundaries and go in search of unknown spaces and climes. It was a time when travel became a means of self-expression. Travelogues and narratives from this period reflect the colonised Bengali intelligentsia’s desire to assert identity and seek self-definition. While Troilakyanath Mukherjee, Romeshchandra Dutt, Dwarkanath Tagore, Michael Madhusudhan Dutt, Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore are known names in the field of secular travel, there were also those who undertook hazardous journeys in search of a different kind of enlightenment.

Earlier, religious travel was limited to traditional pilgrim spots. To sacred sites like Varanasi, Vrindavan, Mathura and Puri. But now, travellers were filled with new confidence. They became more adventurous and undertook spiritual journeys into the hearts of deserts and mountains. Some crossed miles of icy desert to reach the cave temple of Hinglaj. Some trekked to Amarnath, the twin peaks of Badri and Narayan, to Mount Kailash and Mansarovar Lake in the heart of the Himalayas.

The book under review has been written in the form of a diary. It describes in detail the hazardous journey the author undertook to reach Mount Kailash, believed to be the abode of the Gods, and Mansarovar Lake, a dip in whose waters promises redemption from a hundred years of sin. The height at which these pilgrim spots are located, the rugged terrain and the excessive cold at all times of the year made this journey almost impossible to complete in those days. Reports of deaths by falls from dangerous precipices, of being blown away by blizzards and freezing to death, were far greater than of successful returns. Only supreme faith and dogged determination enabled a person from even thinking of undertaking such a perilous expedition.

One such brave heart was Ramananda Bharati. A Bengali scholar, reformer and ascetic, he set out on a trek to Kailash and Mansarovar lake in the summer of 1898. His travels across Tibet and the experiences he gathered forms the backbone of his book Himaranya aptly translated by the translator as The Forest of Snow. In Himaranya, Bharatichronicles his experience of crossing perilous mountain passes, snowbound peaks and glacial valleys to reach his destination. But he went, not only as a pilgrim seeking divine blessing but as an observant traveller eager to explore the lives of the people who lived in the bordering villages. He notes the clarity of thought and purity of heart in these people. Their patience, forbearance and hospitality despite the acute hardship of living in a snowbound region. This is a conversation he had with an old man in the village of Malhari.

“This country of yours is very cold…If this is your summertime how do you live during winter?”

“One cannot survive here in winter…all our houses will be under snow. No one will stay here.”

“Where do all of you stay in winter then?”

“Eighteen miles below Joshimath there is a place called Lalsangha. We go there.”

“Then it must be very difficult for you.”

“Sir what shall I tell you about our hardship. It is very difficult to travel with our children, cattle, sheep and goats every year.”

“Then why don’t you shift completely and live there?”

“If we lived below during summer, not only would we die, there would be no sign of our animals too.”

Passing through different landscapes, Bharati describes the scenery. This is a description of Donagiri mountain.

“The place was very pleasant. The grand path was in front of us, the cave was located above it. And the fast-flowing river was just below. On both banks of the river were sky-high mountains…at night thousands of bright lights can be seen over this mountain…if anyone climbed up to the top of this mountain, he would become dizzy with the smell of leaves and flowers.”

Bharati regales the reader with an account of the legend associated with this mountain. The Puranic name of Donagiri was Gandhamadan Parbat. When Lakshman fell unconscious during battle, he needed a special herb that only grew there. Hanuman went to Gandhamadan but, unable to locate the herb, he carried the whole mountain on his back and brought it to Lanka thereby saving Lakshman’s life. Bharati writes:

“Till this day there are signs of that. Donagiri doesn’t have a tall peak and looks as if someone has uprooted its peak. Different kinds of medicinal plants are found in Donagiri even today.”

Somdatta’s translation is faithful and apt at the same time. Though the original is written in a Bengali that may sound archaic to the ears of today’s readers the translation flows smoothly. Kudos to her for bringing an almost forgotten but compelling record of Himalayan travel to those who love reading travelogues.

Aruna Chakravarti has been principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with eighteen published books on record. They comprise five novels, two books of short stories, two academic works and nine volumes of translation.
Her first novel, The Inheritors (published by Penguin Random House), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and her second, Jorasanko, received critical acclaim and became a bestseller. Daughters of Jorasanko, a sequel to Jorasanko, has sold widely and received rave reviews. Her novel Suralakshmi Villa was adjudged ‘Novel of the year (India 2020)’ by Indian Bibliography published in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature U.K. Her other well-known works include The Mendicant Prince which has been shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize, and Through a Looking Glass: Stories. Her translated works include an anthology of songs from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitabitaan, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s Srikanta and Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Those Days, First Light and Primal Woman: Stories. Her most recent work is titled Rising from the Dust.
Among the various awards she has received are Vaitalik Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarat Puraskar.

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Click here to read an excerpt

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Mapping Stories of a Warming World

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: The Climate Crossroads: Literature’s Encounter with a Planet on Fire

Author: Rajat Chaudhuri

Publisher: Bloomsbury

The climate crisis has produced an unprecedented body of scientific research, policy documents, and environmental journalism. Yet facts alone have often failed to generate the emotional engagement necessary to confront a planetary emergency. How, then, can literature bridge the gap between knowledge and action? In The Climate Crossroads: Literature’s Encounter with a Planet on Fire, Rajat Chaudhuri argues that stories are indispensable to understanding climate change—not merely as an environmental phenomenon but as a profound cultural, ethical and imaginative challenge.

This is neither a conventional work of literary criticism nor a handbook on climate science. Instead, it is an ambitious interdisciplinary exploration that moves effortlessly across literature, philosophy, history, politics, art, and environmental activism. Drawing upon his own experiences as a climate novelist, researcher and environmental communicator, Chaudhuri creates a work that is as intellectually stimulating as it is deeply personal.

The book opens with intriguing questions that immediately unsettle familiar assumptions. Why do climate activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers? What connects a venomous spider with a centuries-old myth from the Sundarbans? How does an ancient Chinese calligrapher recording snowfall resonate with Indian farmers marching in protest?

These seemingly unrelated images become entry points into a larger conversation about the relationship between culture and ecological crisis. Rather than offering simplistic explanations, Chaudhuri demonstrates how literature reveals hidden connections between the human imagination and the changing planet.

Organised into three sections—Maps, Routes and Discoveries—the book unfolds like an intellectual journey. The first section introduces readers to the conceptual landscape of climate storytelling. Chapters such as A Rainy Night in the North and Poets, Volcanoes and a Chinese Calligrapher explore how literary traditions preserve ecological memory and help us read environmental change through cultural narratives.

Chaudhuri argues convincingly that climate stories did not begin with twenty-first-century climate fiction; they have existed in myths, travel writing, poetry, and historical narratives for centuries.

One important feature of the book is its refusal to isolate literature from other disciplines. Michelangelo appears alongside recipes and agriculture; philosophy intersects with environmental history; artistic imagination coexists with political activism. These unexpected juxtapositions enrich the discussion, illustrating that climate change cannot be understood through scientific data alone. Instead, it demands an engagement with aesthetics, ethics and memory.

The middle section, Routes, represents the intellectual heart of the book. Here Chaudhuri explores the relationship between climate and aesthetics, asking whether beauty and artistic representation remain meaningful in an age of ecological catastrophe. Drawing upon philosophical traditions that include Kantian ethics and the Freudian concept of the uncanny, he examines how literature helps readers experience realities that often seem unimaginable. His readings of significant climate novels demonstrate how fiction transforms abstract scientific projections into lived human experience.

Equally compelling is the chapter Heart of Darkness: Climate and Justice. Chaudhuri insists that climate change is inseparable from questions of inequality, colonial history and political responsibility. The climate crisis is shown not simply as an environmental emergency but as a crisis of justice, disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities while exposing the moral contradictions of modern development. His discussion avoids ideological simplification, instead encouraging readers to appreciate the complex intersections of ecology, economics and power.

The concluding section, Discoveries, offers a cautiously hopeful vision. Rather than ending with despair, Chaudhuri argues that stories possess the power to cultivate empathy, resilience and new forms of planetary consciousness. Literature becomes not merely a record of ecological collapse but an imaginative space where alternative futures can be conceived. This emphasis on possibility distinguishes The Climate Crossroads from many climate books that remain trapped within narratives of inevitable catastrophe.

Chaudhuri’s prose reflects his dual identity as novelist and literary critic. It is elegant without being ornamental and scholarly without becoming inaccessible. Although the book engages sophisticated theoretical frameworks, including environmental humanities, philosophy and literary criticism, its language remains lucid enough for general readers willing to engage with complex ideas. The inclusion of visual material further enhances accessibility, making abstract concepts easier to grasp, as does the extensive footnote.

The author’s own credentials significantly enrich the work. As the acclaimed author of The Butterfly Effect, editor of pioneering Solarpunk anthologies, translator, and climate communicator, Chaudhuri occupies a unique position at the intersection of creative writing and environmental thought. His international engagements, including literary fellowships and participation in global sustainability forums, provide the book with a perspective that is both rooted in South Asia and attentive to global conversations on climate change.

The book is unquestionably an important contribution to the growing field of climate humanities. It reminds us that the climate crisis is not solely a scientific or political problem but also a crisis of imagination. Rajat Chaudhuri demonstrates with remarkable insight that stories are among humanity’s most powerful tools for understanding uncertainty, confronting ecological loss, and envisioning more just futures.

Richly researched, beautifully written and intellectually adventurous, The Climate Crossroads deserves to be read by scholars, students, writers, environmentalists and anyone interested in how literature can illuminate one of the defining challenges of our time. It is both a map of climate storytelling and an invitation to imagine new pathways through an increasingly uncertain world.

Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Lingering Demons of War

Book Review by Andreas Giesbert

Title: Requiem of a Lost Nation

Author: Angel Ramon

Angel Ramon is best known for his B-movie horror books. The Frogmaster, as he is called because he unleashed a whole swarm of killer frogs onto the zombie genre, is quite popular in the independent horror community.

With Requiem of a Lost Nation, however, he takes a completely different path. Instead of entertaining B-movie horror, he explores his own family history and the generational trauma caused by the Salvadoran Civil War. Loosely based on the life of his beloved mother, the novel follows Otilia, who, after emigrating to the United States, returns to El Salvador to come to terms with her harrowing experiences during the Civil War that lasted from 1979 to 1992.

This is done in a rather interesting way, as the novel alternates between chapters set in the present day (2019) and chapters depicting Otilia’s childhood, particularly the events during the outset of the Civil War atrocities 1980-1982. Together with diary entries and reports by British journalist Jon Snow—whose original reports can actually still be found on streaming services—the book leads us into the complexities of Salvadoran culture and politics. We learn about the country’s social divide, its invisible walls, and the Red Scare.

What makes this especially interesting is that Otilia—just like the author—comes from a very conservative background. Raised in a wealthy household, she was heavily influenced by her father, whose hatred of the communist rebels shaped her worldview. Looking back, however, she revises many of these beliefs and arrives at a more balanced perspective. That saves the novel from descending into one-sided accusations. In the end, it boils down to the idea that “both sides were to blame,” or, more poetically: “War was a demon indeed. It didn’t care who got hurt.”

Talking about demons: just to be clear, despite the monster on the cover, this is not a horror novel. It certainly deals with the horrors of war, which can easily be described as demonic, but there are no supernatural elements. More importantly, it isn’t about suspense or the specific atmosphere of dread that Lovecraft once described as essential to horror fiction. Requiem of a Lost Nation is best described as historical fiction.

Especially during the first quarter of the book, I learned a great deal about Salvadoran culture, its social structure, and the causes of the Civil War. Unfortunately, from that point on, it falls a little short. This is mostly due to its rather limited level of analysis. Ultimately, the novel tells us that both sides share responsibility and that war and forced migration can result in identity crises and generational trauma.

My overall impression is mixed though, because the novel uses some rather obvious foreshadowing, and for a historical novel there are simply a few too many convenient coincidences to remain believable. On the other hand, the integration of Spanish dialogue works very well. The passages are paraphrased seamlessly, so readers who don’t understand Spanish won’t miss any important information, while the original dialogue adds considerably to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, such strengths are offset by a handful of odd sentence constructions. Besides these criticisms, I am always appreciative when genre authors step outside their comfort zone. Ramon certainly deserves credit for taking such a personal path and writing the book he clearly felt he had to write.

This requiem is not over yet. While the novel reaches a natural stopping point, it leaves several plot threads and foreshadowed events unresolved. A second volume is planned for late 2027 and will presumably focus on Otilia’s life in the United States.

Andreas Giesbert is a reviewer of speculative fiction, board games and more based in the Ruhr Valley. He mostly writes for online magazines such as www.zauberwelten-online.de, or Ginger Nuts of Horror.

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Lives that Mattered

Book Review by Prof Satya Narayan Misra

Title: Icons of Odisha – Lives that Shaped a State

Author: Bhaskar Parichha

Publisher: BK Publications Private Limited

Odisha had been in the past been under the hammer for its grinding poverty and wide spread starvation deaths, despite its rich mineral resources. Beneath the markers of its civilisation – its magnificent temples, hoary history of maritime trade and its resuscitation as a distinct linguistic state in 1936, lurks the story of individuals whose ideas, actions and creative energies have shaped the heartbeats of the land. Bhaskar Parichha, a writer and critic of repute, without being hagiographic has tried to capture the life, ideas and contributions of 30 such individuals from the 19th Century to the present day, with the fond hope that they brush the imagination of the world.

Odisha has a very proud literary pedigree. Starting with Sarala Das in the 15th Century, who is called Adi Kabi (first poet), and Upendra Bhanja in the 18th century, who is called Kabi Samrat (emperor of poets) the father of modern Odia literature has to be Fakir Mohan Senapati.

Senapati was, as Parichha writes “to Odia literature what Prem Chand was to Hindi and Tagore to Bengali – the conscience keeper of his people.” He was a literary polymath, who explored almost every genre — poetry, translation, satire and fiction. He is best remembered as pioneer of modern Odia fiction. With his eye for realism and flair for humour, he created characters who were products of their times but universal in their emotion. His short story Rebati (1898), translated in to thirty languages all over the world, is a subtle commentary on gender, education and superstition, themes that resonate even today. Senapati’s contribution to the novel is monumental. Of his four masterpieces Cha Mana Atha Guntha (Six Acres and a Third, 1902), is widely recognised as India’s first novel on peasant exploitation. Preceding even Prem Chand’s Godan ( Gift of a Cow,1936), it was written long before Marxian ideas took roots in India, it’s a searing account of ruthless oppression of landless peasants in India. The other  writer  of eminence is  Gopinath Mohanty. His empathetic portrayal of tribal life in Odisha in  his landmark novel Paraja ( Citizens,1945)  won him the Jnanpith award in 1974. Manoj Das, the bilingual master story teller completes the troika, whose stories Graham Greene considers have “the same quality as RK Narayan’s Malgudi Days, with perhaps an added mystery”.

Revered as the principal architect of modern Odissi dance, Kelucharan Mohapatra ensured that Odissi emerged not merely as a revived dance style but as a sophisticated, codified and spiritually grounded classical tradition. Among his celebrated choreographies are adaptations of Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda. His greatest legacy are his disciples like Sanjukta Panigrahi whose luminous performances and deep emotional expressiveness brought Odissi to national and international prominence.

In the field of music, Balakrishna Das is celebrated as Odissi musicologist, vocalist and renowned music guru. His proximity to Ghulam Ali and mastery of Hindustani music inspired him to make Odia traditional music more beguiling and effective. In the field of cinema, Jharna Das was a trail blazer. By bridging literature and cinema, classical arts and modern media, performance and public service, she helped lay the foundations of Odia cinema and broadcasting. Dinanath Pathy would be fondly remembered as a visionary Odia painter, art historian, scholar, curator and writer whose life was devoted to the preservation, documentation and global promotion of Odisha’s artistic heritage. Akshya Mohanty captures the popular genre of musicians who sang romantic ballads with equal felicity as devotional songs.

Rama Devi, Sarala Devi, Kuntala Kumari and Nandini Sathpathy are some of the women figures highlighted in the essays. Rama Devi is a beacon of women’s liberation, a distinguished freedom fighter and social reformer. Kuntala Kumari was a trail blazing Odia poet, physician, editor, and social reformer from colonial Odisha. Sarala Devi belonged to that first generation of Indian women who claimed a decisive role in public life. Nandini Sathpathy as the only female Chief Minister of Odisha earned the sobriquet of the “Iron Lady of Odisha”. She is also remembered for her literary achievements and showcasing of the cultures within the state.

Of all the politicians, Parichha has upheld Naba Krushna Chowdhury(1901-1984) who left behind a legacy of simple life and moral integrity he displayed as the Chief Minister of Odisha. He showed steadfast commitment to the underprivileged and implemented significant reforms and progressive policies. The politician, Mehtab, brought in to journalism rare integrity. Biju Patnaik, a politician whose biography had been authored earlier by Parichha, believed that industrialisation flows from the fountain of political power and he brought to politics a rare flash of colour, dynamism and was the tallest politician Odisha.

Madhusudan Das, remains the ultimate talisman of intellect, courage, compassion, whom Gandhi adored. Gandhi visited Odisha eight times, beginning with 1921, and in August 1925 when he came at the invite of Madhusudan Das to see his Utkal Tannery. Along with Madhu Babu, Pandit Gopabandhu Das wears the pride of place as the tallest Gandhian, who embraced his ideas of Khadi and Swadeshi and promoted cottage industries as a means for economic independence. His life stands as a luminous example of self-less service, incredible sacrifice and humanism that encompassed every aspect of Odisha’s journey – social, educational and cultural. Quite justifiably both Madhu Babu and Gopabandhu Das carry the epithet of Utkal Gaurav and Utkal Mani.  

Parichha is highly respected for his clarity, sense of balance and insight. His choice of icons is both eclectic and discerning. Ideally, he could have included Sunanda Patnaik, who represented the best of classical music or Kanta Kabi Laxmikant Mohapatra who wrote an iconic patriotic song. All the same, his careful research brings out rare nuggets, which are both delicious and nostalgic. Hopefully, the secular culture that Odisha prides itself on will continue to thrive as will independent spirits like writer Fakir Mohan, visionaries like Madhusudan and Gandhians like Naba Krushna. The Icons of Odisha is an invaluable addition to any literary tapestry.   

Click here to read an excerpt

Satya Narayan Misra is a Professor Emeritus and Author of seven books, the latest, Against the Binary, was published in December 2024. He is a regular columnist and reviewer of books for several leading newspapers in Odisha and national news digital platforms like Scroll.in and The Wire.

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A Fire over Mount Everest

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: A Fire over Mount Everest

Author: Siddharth Kak

Publisher: Penguin Random House India


“I had given into a whim. It was not even a career move. Just the indulgence of a fantasy – to make a film on the highest mountain on earth.” 
                                                                                                       -- Siddharth Kak

Books on mountaineering, especially those narrating the climb to Mount Everest from various perspectives, are quite popular till date because though there have been more than fifteen hundred ascents, the aura of climbing and narrating the conquest of the highest peak in the world remains equally exciting even today. Even after so many deaths, Everest’s lure is eternal. India’s 1984 Expedition to Mount Everest, organised by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF), that succeeded in placing Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman and the fifth in the world, and four others, on the summit had noted filmmaker and television presenter, Siddharth Kak, and his crew of four cameramen follow this expedition from day one and record each moment of loss and triumph, instances of glory and distress. Though the expedition was romanticised in the world press as a story of bravery, teamwork and human triumph over nature, the entire narrative is told from a different point of view by Siddharth Kak. The spectacular achievement of that May 1984 is etched in history in glorious terms but it does not tell the behind-the-scenes stories of this expedition. This is where this book under review is particularly appealing.

Kak begins by telling us how he got involved in this project in the first place. A small news item in the newspaper in the summer of 1983 announced that after nineteen long years, a national expedition to Mount Everest, featuring seven women, was to be launched by the IMF the following year. Instantly Kak thought it would be a really cool and exciting adventure to capture in a documentary film. He approached Mr. H. C. Sarin under whose aegis the expedition was taking place, earnestly promising him that they would create a gripping script with human emotions and begin filming immediately with the expedition members and the selected girls all over India with their dreams and expectations  even before the expedition started and then later match them with what actually happened. When they were confirmed as the official film crew for that particular Everest expedition in 1984, Kak was convinced that he didn’t need to be a mountaineer to make a mountain film.

The narrative then elaborates on how the people who would climb Mount Everest turned out to be very different from any he had ever met before. It was a largely Army team he met at the Delhi Cantonment. The team members included Col. Darshan Khullar, the 23-year -old former national judo champion, Sharavati Prabhu, Lt Col Premchand, Sonam Paljor of the ITBF, Naib Subedar N.D.Sherpa and a few others like Magan Bissa of Rajasthan and Flt Lt T. Sridharan. In those days, each expedition had to open its own route and ensure the safety of its own members. His four-member film team consisted of Deepak Haldankar, who was an ace cameraman in Films Division Delhi, Sanjeev Saith, a skilled mountaineer and still photographer, K. Nandakumar, the sound recordist, and Kak himself.  They reached Kathmandu in an Army AN10 aircraft on 7 March 1984. From there they started their trek towards Lukla and several moments of rural celebration were etched in his heart as part of the romanticism of mountain life.

Kak describes in detail their next great filming adventure – a flight over Everest in an unpressurised cabin of a Pilatus Porter aircraft with the pilot Emil Wick while the cockpit door was kept open to capture the mountains in all their majesty. They had to even use chewing gum ingeniously to stick torn pieces of film together that had snapped at such high altitude.

The details of their experiences cannot be narrated within the brief purview of this review, but their stay at the Everest Base Camp, which was their home away from home for nearly two months, provided the most diverse and exciting mixed expedition that India had ever sent to Nepal and Everest. They discovered new aspects of life at high altitudes. Among the women were Bachendri Pal, Rekha P, Chandraprabha Aitwal and Sharavati Prabhu. All of them were equally competent, ‘an irresistible combination for the outside world’, but soon we get to know how they became victims of jealousies and whims of the very strict patriarchal team leaders, who acted according to an inherent army attitude of looking down upon these fellow women climbers. As Kak rightly states, they believed the mountains taught them camaraderie, but in the higher reaches, it was each man for himself.

We are then told of how Col Khullar’s ‘official’ decision about the composition of the three summit parties left women like Chandraprabha Aitwal, Rita Gombu and Rekha Sharma out without even consulting them and how ultimately Bachendri Pal successfully ascended the Everest Summit on 23 May 1984. Kak in his narrative therefore deals with the problems of male-centric mountaineering.
A Fire on Mount Everest springs from an understanding of an incredible moment etched in the memory of the author―a moment very few live to talk about. This is how Kak describes the experience of catching the incredible picture of the first sunrays that fell on the summit of the mountain:

“To an amateur like me, it seemed as if a gigantic fire was raging over Everest. Its majestic glow dwarfed the amphitheatre of the still dark 8000 metre peak around it, Lhotse and Nuptse, huddled in obeisance. It seemed as if Everest was carrying a heavenly torch lit by the gods themselves to symbolize the acme of achievement.

“I was stunned by this celestial display of nature’s savage beauty. I realized that we had been favoured by unseen mystical powers to see what the world had never seen before, a vision of Everest on fire, with towering flames that flew upwards to the heavens.”

 After the disaster of the camera films being lost or destroyed, the scene only remains immortal in his memory. The fifty-two coloured as well as black-and-white pictures along with a hand-drawn map of the standard SE route up to Mount Everest that are included in the book add to the reader’s interest as visuals can communicate much better than written words.

The second half of the book appears to be even more interesting because what the author does is to try and locate each individual participant of that 1984 expedition and find out their present status, especially after the passage of forty long years. In the meantime, eight lonely deaths awaited some of the male members of the Everest 84 team. They included Sherpa Ang Dorjee, Major Kiran Inder Kumar, Major Jai Bahuguna, Phu Dorjee, Lopsang Tshering, N.D. Sherpa, the expedition doctor, Dr. Minoo Mehta, and the Deputy Leader of their expedition, Lt Col Premchand. Except for the male mountaineers who had passed on, the others, especially the women, were constantly evolving and adapting.

Kak clearly tells us how the world of mountaineering is not woman-friendly. Women themselves are both victims and perpetrators of a system that condemns them to second-class citizenship in the mountaineering hierarchy, as indeed in most of their lives. After taking a lot of trouble in locating the erstwhile women members of the team today who are located in different corners of the world, Kak realised how for a woman in India, it is difficult to combine an independent career with marriage and domesticity. With the exceptions of Sharavati Prabhu and Rita Gombu, the rest of the women members have carried on their mountaineering ambitions as single women. Certainly, for active mountaineers, like Chandraprabha P and Bachendri Pal, mountaineering began as a liberation from male dominance and continued as such throughout their life. It is sad to learn that the 1984 expedition left a bad taste in the mouth for many members. Their story never ended, not even on the fortieth anniversary in May 2024.  

The last chapter of the book titled “The Black Everest” is really alarming as it shows how a new culture of dehumanisation is brought into play with commercialization of such climbs as it takes away from the very joy of ascending. At present the adventure, the romance and indeed, the thrill of mountaineering is literally reduced to a cold robotic logistic with high investment and returns, which do not necessarily go back to the mountain. The body count goes up every year, and ironically the fascination to climb Everest also rises in direct proportion to the increasingly visible thrill and danger of death in the higher reaches of the mountain. As Kak states: “My heart goes out to Everest, which appears as if it is being slowly disrobed due to self-defeating commercial priorities over and above the ravages of climate change, cataclysmic earthquakes and contamination littering its pristine slopes.” In 2023, despite all the advances in safety and technology, the highest number of people died – nearly a score – climbing Everest in a single season.

Reading this book on mountaineering by a non-mountaineer filmmaker like Siddharth Kak is a pleasurable experience. His simple, lucid style will surely entice one to pick it up and enjoy a thorough good read.

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Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a retired Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title:  Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons from the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

Recently Ruskin Bond turned ninety-two and from the various interviews he has been giving, one finds a single word that recurs in different forms in his interaction with his interviewers and that is ‘solitude.’ The recently published non-fiction book titled Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond, captures this solitude and his deep, lifelong love for the Himalayas. It is a gentle, meditative reflection on the changing seasons, nature, and the quiet rhythms of daily life in Landour and Mussoorie, a place that he himself states to be his home for the last sixty-one years.  He had moved to Mussoorie in the early 1960s to write full time. In the ‘Introduction’ he tells us about how he moved into a cottage called Maplewood Lodge after renting a room from a lady called Ms. Bean and settled for good in these hills. The old and isolated cottage was tucked away in the shadow of a hill, but it brought him close to nature and helped him develop a rapport with it in all seasons. The open window of the small living room exposed him to the forest outside that seemed full of possibilities and the birdsong.

The book is not a novel or a continuous narrative; rather, it is a collection of vignettes, journal entries, and remembered moments.  It allows readers to experience the mountains exactly as Bond does, observing the nuances of the landscape over the course of five distinct seasons. Most of the entries are very brief, the lengthier ones are hardly more than a page in length, but through them Bond manages to give his readers his very close observations of the place as he experiences it through the five different seasons of the year. He divides the book into six parts, and the last part is called ‘The Eternal Season’. Each section begins with a suitable prologue borrowed from the Australian traveller John Lang’s mid-nineteenth century travelogue Wanderings in India (1869), a book which Bond had retrieved from oblivion and edited for the benefit of future readers.

Bond organises his observations into a seasonal framework, detailing the subtle shifts in his environment. In the first section ‘Spring’ we get detailed description of how the first tender leaves appear, bringing a sense of tentative warmth and new beginnings. Through his very perceptive and minute observations, we get visual images of the small birds that arrive to bathe and drink in the little pool beneath the walnut tree, water beetles and tiny fish that lurk in the shallows of the pool. The different varieties of birds that he has observed include two delicate little willow warblers, the whistling thrush, the wild ducks, eagles that fly high on the mountain, the cheeky mynah birds meeting under the eaves of the roof, and sparrows that flutter in and out of the room at will. Spring comes with its varieties of flowers with splashes of colour and Bond rightly describes how “the infection of spring spread simultaneously through the world of nature, and made them one”. The honeybees and butterflies also add to the beauty of the place and as he rightfully states, they do not recognise any “man-made border”.

The vignettes of summer have details of long, insect-filled, sun-drenched days that invite slow walks and quiet afternoons. Summer for Bond “was never entirely solitary”. As he sat in the window seat in his cottage and spent his mornings turning out stories, poems, essays, children’s tales and anything that came to his mind, he looked out upon a sociable gathering of trees that provided a recreation ground for different kinds of birds too. Very evocative descriptions of the mangoes, lichis as the fruits of summer and also the ice cream are drawn from his memories. He writes how as a boy he was engulfed in loneliness, and as a man in solitude. On some mornings when he carried his small table, chair and typewriter outside on to the knoll below one of the oaks, the different birds helped him with his punctuation. For his reflective and descriptive writing, he looked into the distance, at the purple hills merging with the azure sky; or examined a fallen leaf as it spiralled down from the tree and settled on the typewriter keys. The summer sun bathes everything with clear, warm light and the camera-eye of the narrator records everything to the minutest detail. He tells us about other prolific writers who were busy writing their books during this period while he produced not so much as a paragraph.

The monsoon is a defining feature of the hills, bringing mist, heavy downpours, and the lush abundance of the forest. “The first monsoon rain always felt like a beginning,” writes Bond and how this season is one of the most beautiful times of the year in the Himalayas. As the forest dripped and it rang with birdsong, Bond found it always worthwhile tramping through the forest above the stream to feast his eyes on the foliage that sprang up in tropical profusion. He tells us how the rains also heralded some seasonal visitors like leopards and several thousand leeches, and snakes as well as insects like grasshoppers, crickets and cicadas who produced different kinds of music.

When autumn arrives, burnished light, ripening fruit, and a golden hue take over the landscape and according to Bond it is the best time of the year in the hills. Now more than any other time of the year, the wildflowers come into their own and it is the best time for taking long walks. An atmosphere of peace and harmony descends on the hillside, and Bond watches the spectacular sunset as its faint glow spreads across the whitewashed walls of the ageing cottage, as though a part of that spectacular sunset has been left behind only for them. This season also occasionally brings in bears who come to the village to eat pumpkins, flying foxes sweeping across the roads and leopards circling the houses along with dogs. The cool, uplifting autumn breeze always stirred him to the marrow and Bond thought it to be the best aphrodisiac in the world.

Winter brings with it old silences, snow-laden trees, and the beauty of the serene Himalayan peaks against a clear blue sky. During Christmas when it was bitterly cold outside, the blazing wood fire in an old-fashioned fireplace made him enjoy the experience. Again, one day, after being cooped up in his room for several days, he set out for an enjoyable tramp outside in the snow-covered countryside with hardly anyone on the way. He also reminiscences about his school days when he took the train ride from his boarding school in Shimla to come to Dehradun and find occasional snowfall there. He also remembered the first time it snowed in Maplewood. From the windows he could see, up at the top of the hill, the deodars clothed in a mantle of white. “It was a fairyland: everything still and silent.”

The eight selected entries for the last section titled ‘The Eternal Season’ describe the quiet renewal that begins where all endings meet. Here Bond reflects on renewal and the passage of time across sixty years of living in the mountains, examining how the landscape remains wondrous despite changing times. All through his life he says he had been plodding along, singing his song, telling his tales in his own unhurried way and it didn’t matter if he hadn’t managed to get to the top of the mountain. He had lived his life at his own gentle pace and his long walk had brought its own sweet rewards; buttercups and butterflies along the way. He had been observing the natural world—along forest paths, during walks, storms, solitary afternoons, and shared silences.

Thoughtful, attentive and reflective, he offers the seasons not as events to be marked, but as a way of living in time.  In the penultimate entry he states: “In spite of all indications to the contrary, I have survived – as a writer, as an individual, as a breadwinner, as a lover of beauty. So many failure and setbacks along the way; but I suppose my inner stubbornness saw me through… And here I am, ninety-one, my own person, determined to live and love till my last breath.”

This aesthetically produced hard-bound book is not to be read chronologically from beginning to end but can be opened by the reader at leisure from whichever page or season he feels like, and he can go back to it again and again. It is a collector’s delight and also one to be gifted and recommended for anyone who loves to read about Ruskin Bond’s deep and lifelong love for the Himalayas. Bond’s poetic prose can hardly be imitated and some of the spontaneous poems that abound in the collection speak immensely of his ability to cross over genres of prose and poetry with utmost ease. The black and white interior illustrations that abound in the book also add extra charm and help the less-perceptive reader gain better understanding of the particular image or scenery that Bond talks about. One is also fascinated by his exquisite sense of subtle humour, that includes the ability to even laugh at oneself.

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Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a retired Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

Click here to read the book excerpt.

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Celebrating the Monsoon

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: The Fragrance of Rain: A Brief History of the Monsoon

Author: Stephen Alter

Publisher: Aleph Book Company  

Stephen Alter has long established himself as one of India’s finest chroniclers of landscape, memory, and the natural world. In The Fragrance of Rain: A Brief History of the Monsoon, he turns his attention to the phenomenon that has shaped the subcontinent more profoundly than perhaps any other force of nature—the monsoon. The result is a richly textured work that combines travel writing, environmental history, natural science, and cultural reflection into a compelling narrative that celebrates India’s most anticipated season.

At its heart, the book is a journey. Alter traces the progress of the monsoon from the southern coast of Kerala through the Western Ghats, the forests of Goa, the plains of North India, and the mist-covered hills of Mussoorie. Yet this is not merely a geographical expedition. It is also an exploration of the countless ways in which rain has influenced the lives, livelihoods, imagination, and history of the people of the Indian subcontinent. The monsoon emerges not simply as a weather system but as a civilisational force that has determined agricultural cycles, guided maritime trade, nurtured ecosystems, inspired artistic expression, and shaped political destinies.

A key strength of the book is Alter’s ability to weave together diverse strands of knowledge without losing narrative momentum. He moves effortlessly from meteorology to mythology, from ecology to economics, from history to literature. Readers encounter perfumers in Kannauj who preserve the scent of rain in tiny bottles, fishermen who read the skies with remarkable precision, scientists tracking elusive amphibians and glowing fungi, and artists whose works reflect humanity’s enduring fascination with clouds and storms. These encounters lend the book a vibrant human dimension and prevent it from becoming a purely academic study.

The prose is among the finest aspects of the work. He writes with the sensitivity of a naturalist and the observational acuity of a seasoned traveller. His descriptions of rain-laden landscapes are evocative without becoming sentimental. Whether portraying the first monsoon clouds gathering over the Arabian Sea or the dense mist enveloping Himalayan ridges, he captures the sensory richness of the season with remarkable clarity. Readers can almost smell the damp earth, hear the distant thunder, and feel the coolness that follows a long spell of summer heat.

The title itself points to one of the book’s central concerns: the emotional and sensory experience of rain. Alter understands that the monsoon occupies a unique place in the Indian imagination. It is a season associated with longing and fulfilment, romance and renewal, abundance and uncertainty. Across centuries, poets, musicians, painters, and storytellers have celebrated its arrival. The author explores these cultural representations with insight, demonstrating how the monsoon has become a recurring metaphor for transformation, desire, and hope.

At the same time, The Fragrance of Rain does not romanticise its subject. Alter acknowledges the monsoon’s unpredictability and its capacity for destruction. Floods, landslides, crop failures, and storms are integral to the story. As climate change intensifies weather extremes, the monsoon has become increasingly erratic, raising urgent questions about environmental sustainability and human resilience. Without becoming alarmist, the author highlights these concerns and encourages readers to appreciate the delicate balance upon which ecosystems and communities depend.

The book also succeeds as a work of environmental writing because of its deep attention to biodiversity. Alter’s fascination with wildlife and natural habitats is evident throughout. His encounters with rare species and fragile ecosystems reveal a world that thrives because of seasonal rainfall yet remains vulnerable to ecological disruption. These passages add depth and reinforce the idea that the monsoon is not merely a climatic event but a life-giving process that sustains countless forms of existence.

The Fragrance of Rain is much more than a history of weather. It is a meditation on nature, culture, memory, and belonging. Stephen Alter has produced a work that is informative, beautifully written, and deeply engaging. By blending personal observation with historical and ecological insight, he reminds us that the monsoon remains one of India’s most powerful and defining experiences. Like the season it celebrates, the book is refreshing, nourishing, and lingering in its impact—a rewarding read for anyone interested in India, nature, or the intricate relationship between climate and civilisation.

Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

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Ordinary Wars of Ordinary People

Book Review by Rakhi Dalal

Title: The Cold War of Sadanand Borse

Author: Shyam Manohar

Translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

The Cold War of Sadanand Borse, translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto, was originally published as Sheetyuddha Sadanand in the 1980s. Written by Shyam Manohar, the work is considered writer’s noteworthy contribution to modern Marathi literature. A deceptively slim novel, it packs much in its exploration of ordinary lives of ordinary people. Comic yet unsettling, the novel, set within the world of Maharashtrian middle-class, deals with the ‘cold war’ of everyday existence, their struggles, ambitions and anxieties. 

Most of Shyam Manohar’s writing deals with the theme of ordinary existence. He is an author two collections of short stories, eight plays, nine novels, and a collection of speeches and critical articles. He has received numerous national and state awards for his works, including the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2010.

The novel begins with a scooter colliding with a funeral procession of a child on a sweltering afternoon. The chance incident results in an absurdly comic encounter. It triggers a chain of events which not only bewilders but keeps the reader on tenterhooks with its acute observations on the tensions which ripple through the aspirations of middle-class. Sadanand collides with Govind and Shrirang, who are the friends of the bereaved father and part of the young son’s funeral procession. As they try to extract an apology from Sadanand, the subsequent events turn his world upside down.

Although the book centres around Sadanand Borse, whose recent one lakh lottery win has made him both suspicious and nervous, the author explores the anxieties of middle-class respectability through the reactions of his pregnant wife Urmila and his immediate neighbours in the aftermath of the incident. With Govind and Shrirang constantly at their door, an atmosphere of latent conflict (as suggested by the title) sets in, and Sadanand’s wife, his neighbours and acquaintances all become participants in a discreet struggle for recognition and influence. The subtle shifts in behaviour reflected in small acts of envy, admiration, cooperation, resentment and suspicion, which emerge when social hierarchies are disrupted, are captured effectively in the seemingly simple prose. The visual imagery of the prose takes the reader into a world echoing Sai Paranjype’s comedy movie ‘Katha’ (Story, 1982). The book revolves arounda similar satire on middle-class aspirations.

Neighbours watch each other closely, interpreting every gesture and decision as confirmation of success, failure, arrogance, or insecurity. Their discussions often seem harmless, yet underlying their narratives is the continuous evaluation of social norms, niceties and hierarchies. Through these characters, the author illustrates how middle-class communities function under companionable scrutiny. The characters aren’t reduced to moral categories. There are no villains in the usual sense. Even the most petty and self serving characters are portrayed perceptively.

The spare yet evocative prose also takes the reader into routine spaces like streets, hospitals, and neighbourhood gatherings where broader questions of morality are enacted. Satire also hinges around the ethics of institutions like hospitals and police stations, where greed or power takes precedence over morality.

The Cold War of Sadanand Borse is a work of remarkable intelligence and restraint. Shyam Manohar brilliantly captures the quiet conflicts that shape ordinary lives. The Cold War thus becomes a condition of social existence itself—a state of constant, low-intensity conflict hidden under outward courtesy.

Jerry Pinto’s brilliant translation of this Marathi work by Shyam Manohar succeeds in capturing the quiet comic energy and perhaps even the tone and precision of the original work. This novel is a must read for its sheer energy, fun and its precise portrayal of the middle-class.

Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .

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Setting Traps for Light

Book Review by Meenakshi Malhotra

Title: Setting Traps for Light

Author: Giti Chandra

Publisher: Hachette India

Setting Traps for Light is a debut collection of poems by Giti Chandra which is illuminated and irradiated by her unique and multifaceted artistry. She is a writer, poet, painter and musician. She is also an academic– in all quite a tall order. As is to be expected given her remarkable gifts, her writing is both luminous and beautiful.

In literary interviews hosted by cultural platforms like Platform Magazine, Chandra shared that the title originated from her hobby of using her mobile phone camera to capture how light hitting ordinary everyday objects completely transforms them. The title — Setting Traps for Light — acts as a luminous metaphor for discovering and working towards courage, hope, and resilience in the middle of personal grief, political trauma, and climate anxieties.

Many of these anxieties, of migration and change — climate and otherwise — are refracted obliquely through her poetry. Events that have been relegated to the background of consciousness, surface suddenly, often unexpectedly. Chandra’s verses often act as a prism, refracting the everyday, the mundane to bursts of sudden illumination. For instance, in ‘Ode to the Ordinary’, she celebrates the “unwashed  beauty of the Ordinary day, the unnoticed, unapplauded/ Transcience of the repetitively mundane/The ubiquitously profane/Say it now in romantic rhyme/The ordinary is the Skylark of our time.”

Here is an instance of turning the everyday into the sublime, elevating the quotidian, the seemingly trivial into a polished gem. In a beautiful illustration of the individual talent constructing and honing a poetic tradition, she expresses her gratitude to her poetic predecessors, interlacing their phrases into the fabric, the warp and the weft of her own poetry:

A month of poems ends
With a day dedicated to labour.
A month that began
With a day dedicated to Fools.
Therein lies, perhaps, a metaphor
Requiring another set of tools.

References to Yeats, T.S.Eliot, Shakespeare are strewn across the poem. Similarly, she alludes to Ghalib and Faiz, Ludhianvi and Mira who “solder and weld the self and creation.” She continues:

But of all the names and works of hands
Those of you, all banded here
Are closest to the bone. You stand 
Together and walk the way
From All Fools to Labour Day.

Replete with scriptural echoes, the poem becomes a poetic manifesto of sorts attesting to the hard work, the perspiration that is welded in the smithy of the poet’s soul and is then acknowledged and recognised as genius. By bringing in references to Yeats’s hammer and Eliot’s chisel, poetry is apprehended as something material that brings together both inspiration and perspiration. Fleeting moments are honed to enduring monuments alchemising the transcient and the evanescent into something more lasting and profound, something rich and strange.

The fact that Chandra is an artist par excellence is evident in the strong visual imagery and metaphors that inform her poetry. The fact that she is a trained musician is also expressed  in the mellifluous cadences of her verse, in the rise and fall of words, in the rhythms and segues of free and blank verse. The fact that she is an brilliant scholar /student with a keen and perceptive eye, is attested to by the evocative title of her first poetry collection, which has been a while in the making.

Even though she understands the temptations and potential risk of resorting to Romantic conceit, Chandra soldiers on to write her experiences of climate change and crisis, the unimaginable misery of the long walk home that characterised the movement of migrant labour in India in 2020 when the Covid crisis unfolded. The poet here becomes a witness, a chronicler of critical events as she poignantly narrates the death of a twelve-year-old boy. Elsewhere, she writes of the paradox and the “irony that we /Fight for air.” There is a reference to George Floyd who had a “knee on neck, face down/Grit on cheek, no breath to speak,/No bed to sleep on, etherised/In our castles, safe in locked/Towns.”  The use of the word “etherised” had been immortalised by T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. Chandra has used it to suggest the numbness of contemporary civilisation in a state of crisis.

Chandra’s poetry opens up vast vistas and redefines the poet’s function-of playing witness, of chronicling change, treading oft-trod paths anew. Some poems also offer social commentary like ‘Simple Rhymes for Difficult Times’. In a series of apparently innocuous lines, the poet writes:

“Peace be in your streets/ Let no neighbour inspect/Your larder for its meats./Let no man  suspect/Your daughter of eyeing/Mates of other castes./Peace be in your markets/As people shop between fasts”. The reference leads inescapably to the current trends of food vigilantism. It evocatively explores loosening and binding, movement and migration, loss and desolation. A running theme is that of courage[1] , on which there are thematic and tonal variations.

In the poem ‘Love in the Time of Climate Change’, there are not only a Arnold’s poignant  lines from Dover Beach: “Ah love,let us be true /To one another,” but also echoes and resonances from Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’. Contemporary anxieties and concerns meld with eternal verities and create a delectable smorgasbord of emotions: ‘‘Our love shall be a raft, fuelled /By no heat, in a world bent on burning. /Deserts and dry continents are no grounds/ For deserting. We shall find our feet/To a love of no returning.” The brilliance of these lines lie not just in the skillful use of enjambment and caesura, but the deft summing of the   lyrical tradition.

The central metaphor of “setting traps for light” acts as an active, deliberate pursuit of hope, beauty, and clarity. Instead of waiting for illumination to arrive passively, the poet argues that one must construct “traps”—through memory, art, and close observation—to capture fleeting moments of joy and truth. With her transnational themes and multiple and extended locations, Chandra’s poetry truly seems to inhabit a borderless world. 

The collection ends with a reminder that poetry is a commitment and an act of faith. In the penultimate poem, ‘When You Run Out of Words’: “Poets/ have said that you should speak/Because your lips, your tongue/Are free and the truth lives still.” Further, she insists that “all/Shall not be well/Till you are well.”

The brave new world of Chandra’s poetry involves integrity and truth telling. While musings on death and mutability are profoundly present in her debut collection of poems, the tone is not necessarily despairing. Somber and meditative, lyrical and reflective, the poems make us think, even as they transport us into a delightful realm and an enchanted forest of words.

Meenakshi Malhotra is Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition  to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory.  Her most recent publication is The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.

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