Robihara (Sunless) was written by Nazrul on the occasion of Rabindranath Tagore’s death in 1941. Both the poets were friends despite the large age-gap. The poem has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam.
Kazi Nazrul Islam Statue of NazrulFrom Public Domain
The afternoon sun sags, collapsing on the roadway, Sravan’s dark monsoonal clouds swarm in, Darkening the day, And shrouding the entire sky, Since you, Bengal’s heart, India’s bard, and the world’s sun, Have passed away! Did you not hear at all the lament of Mother Earth? Was that why you feigned illness and kept your eyes shut? This day the pulse of Bengal has begun to throb with pain O poet!— seas, rivers, forests— all cry out for you in vain! Vedantic knowledge was yours, forever on the tip of your tongue Your writings had Saraswati’s blessings, full of learning and rhyme. In your meditations, Shiva, God of everything auspicious, resided In your heart Sri Krishna, the one who had even smitten Love, dallied! Durga, consort of Shiva, and source of all joy, would with you converse. How could they, deities so powerful, not feel the extent of our loss? How could they snatch away what they had given so sympathetically? After all, you were Bengal’s beacon of hope, lighting us up eternally! We took pride in your glory; you made us feel earth was our only need. You made us forget our afflictions—timidity, hunger, misery, and ruin! You shone over our heads every day—like your namesake--the sun! You made us proud; you made us feel we would never be undone! You’ve bestowed much love on this land—on India and Bengal, How have we offended to have made you thus leave us all? Tell me—who else is there to bless those who dare to blaze? Who else can protect the pride of the ones that are frail? Behold, the whole of Bengal laments, unfurling its tresses. See in this lunar fortnight the distressed moon hiding itself! Screened by Shravan’s rain cloud, the sun weeps in the horizon. In house after house men and women cry out, “O poet, return!” Alas, India’s fate blazes on a pyre, the body no longer visible. This day, the vermilion marking Bengal’s beauties too is invisible! Today Saraswati’s lyre and Bengal’s poetic soul know only silence And funeral flames have scorched even the moon’s radiance! Till now none knew how close you had become to everyone. All roads now hold millions of people—all with grief overcome! After you return to the rasa-filled realm from which you had come To give us delight, won’t you miss us and lament your earthly home? Your lyrical messages had made you this land’s dearest soul But it was not merely its loveliness-- you loved all of Bengal!
Assure us, O poet dearest to our heart, responding to our love You will return once more to your people from up above. Full of the rasas, you cried out soulfully for our suffering race Why did you enamour us so? Now we’ll rue forever your loss! I believe that if the sun is put out, the entire solar system will go. Bengal’s sun set forever today; what we’ve lost, only we will know! No one besides Bengalis will feel the extent of their deprivation Nowhere outside Bengal will be heard such loud lamentation! The sun that shone over us has left, leaving us all benighted In Bengal’s heart the one light still to be seen is that on your funeral pyre! The rest of India envied Bengalis their good fortune and wondered How had the sun on Bengal’s thatched huts deigned to descend? Will Bengal get such a great, world-conquering superman again? Can this poor land ever again dream of the kind of happiness You gave us? And so, Kobi guru, our beloved muse-teacher, We grieve, finding no consolation, no solace whatsoever! We had thought of you as God’s blessing given to us eternally Let not death’s torpor make us forget forever heaven’s bounty. As you depart from us let us plant on your feet farewell kisses No matter where you are keep this ill-fated people in your wishes
From Public Domain
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
When the word ‘Partition’ is mentioned, it is always assumed to refer to the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. In fact, the Partition of the British Raj occurred five times.
Not so long ago, as recently as 1928, a vast expanse of land from Aden in the West to Rangoon in the east was united as the Indian Empire, all under British rule. It was the zenith of the British Empire, and it seemed the sun would never set on the Empire. A quarter of the world’s population lived here, from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia, and they all used the Indian rupee. One would travel across the span with an Indian passport. By 1971, in just 40 years, this Empire had been shattered five times, resulting in 12 nation-states.
We should learn to tell stories by listening to how housewives gossip. They narrate intimate personal stories about their neighbours, with vivid detail, as if they were there in the target’s bedroom. It becomes more believable when real characters are added. The same advice applies to telling history, his-story. Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia does exactly that. A dry subject like history is turned into an unputdownable book by giving human faces to the people making difficult decisions at the administrative level and to those who have to bear the brunt of those decisions. Perhaps the author’s filmmaking background pushed him towards this style. That makes it very engaging.
The author, Samuel Hew Tantallon Darymple, is a scholar of Sanskrit and Persian, as well as a historian, author, activist, and social media influencer. He co-founded Project Dastaan[1], a peace-building initiative that uses digital technology to reconnect people displaced by the 1947 Partition of India with their childhood communities and villages.
The five Partitions mentioned in this book are: the separation of Burma from India in 1937; the reclassification of Aden as a British protectorate; the formation of Pakistan; the dissolution of the 550-odd princely states; and, finally, a bloody civil war that led to the formation of Bangladesh.
The Indian idea of ‘Bharat’ is traditionally shaped by the ancient Hindu geography of Bharatvarsha, a triangular landmass stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south. Notably, Afghanistan, mentioned in the Mahabharata, and Burma, known as Brahmadesh (Land of Brahma), do not fall within this framework. The city of Kandahar in Afghanistan is apparently named after Gandhari, the blindfolded matriarch of the Kaurava clan.
After the 1905 Partition of Bengal and the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, calls for self-governance grew louder. To pacify the Indian public, the Crown sent a group of seven, known as the Simon Commission[2], in 1928 to implement constitutional reforms. It did nothing to advance Indian independence but demarcated Burma as a territory quite separate from British India, and its inclusion in India was an error.
Coincidentally, this was the aftermath of the 1928 Depression. Before this, Burma was a melting pot of cultures. Its capital, Rangoon, one of the busiest commercial cities in Asia, was labelled the ‘Paris of the East’. It is said that in 1920, there were more traders in Burma than in New York. Rangoon port was an important harbour for the export of rice, teak and petroleum. Its banking services drew people from many regions. It was a multilingual and multicultural city, shaped by large-scale migration. People were heard speaking Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Marwari, Urdu, Chinese, English, and other languages.
The turn of the economic tide and the disparity in economic status between the ethnic Burmese and the sojourners sparked a series of unrest. The Chettiars and Bengali houses and shops were targeted. Indians were systematically excluded from Burma, forcing rich traders to become refugees and make a beeline for India. This long march over the Patkai hills to India became a feature again as Japanese soldiers (and the Indian National Army under Bose) advanced during World War 2. The experiences of Mariappan, a Tamil shopkeeper who fled to Tamil Nadu to start anew in Burma because of his lowly caste, and had to run again because of Burmese nationalism, are heart-wrenching. Then there is Uttam Singh, who had to endure a treacherous long march home to Punjab across the hills. Losing everything, it was a miracle that he and his family made it in one piece. Little snippets like these are the real reasons this book grows on readers.
Caught in the middle are the Naga people, whose land lies precariously between Burma and India. Although its leaders rallied for an independent Naga state, a fifth of the region fell under Burmese control. For decades to come, insurgency remained an issue. On April 1st 1937, Burma was carved out of British India, leaving many unanswered questions and triggering years of attempts to usurp power within Burma, followed by years of military rule and turmoil.
After its capture by the British East India Company, Aden was governed as part of the Bombay Presidency. It was an important coal station for ships. The administrators regarded Arabs as fundamentally different from Indians. To increase efficiency, the British decided in 1937 to rule the port of Aden as a British colony and its hinterland as a protectorate, much to the dismay of many in the Indian community there. The rise of Arab nationalism that followed, with the emergence of dynamic leaders such as Gamal Nasser of Egypt, who promoted Arab patriotism, meant the former Arabian Raj kingdom would no longer be associated with Indians. Indians, once regarded as cultured and civilised, were soon viewed as competitors. By the late 1950s, a reverse exodus began. Indians with deep roots in these Arab lands, including property, businesses, and connections, had to flee helter-skelter back to India and the UK. The Ambanis were one such family affected by this.
Although Jinnah initially joined the Indian National Congress, his affiliation with the Muslim League grew stronger as he felt that Gandhi was leading the party and the nation towards a more Hindu-centric direction. The way the Congress conducted its meetings was as if they were at a religious ceremony, with chanting of mantras and singing of religious hymns. Muslims began to question how they would be treated in an independent India with Congress at the helm of power. Even though Jinnah appeared as an icon of Hindu-Muslim unity, later events propelled him and other Muslims to push for a two-state solution for post-independent India.
In a way, as Gandhi promoted his Hindu agenda, the Burmese, with their Buddhist practice, also increasingly felt more detached from India, further fuelling Burmese nationalism.
The post-WW2 era saw many changes in India. Britain was in debt, and the push for independence and a separate nation for Muslims was in full force. The third Partition was about to take place, but it was preceded by mindless killings and violence in the areas destined to be part of Pakistan. The Bengal region witnessed brutality on Direct Action Day, led by Suhrawardy and his acolyte, Mujibur Rahman, who would later be instrumental in the formation of Bangladesh. Things were no better in Punjab. The confusion created by Radcliffe’s arbitrary carving of the country left people unsure which country they belonged to, even one month after the ‘tryst with destiny’ speech.
There was then a scramble to recruit the 550-plus princely states to join Pakistan or India, or to stand alone. This was the 4th Partition. Recruitment reached feverish heights in states such as Junagadh, Kashmir, and Hyderabad. Junagadh housed two sacred Hindu sites, Dwarka and Somnath, but was ruled by a Muslim Nawab. Kashmir had a Hindu king, but his subjects were predominantly Muslims. The situation was reversed in Hyderabad.
The shattered subcontinent of India has been in constant flux even after attaining self-rule. It has to deal with internal squabbles and hostile neighbours. The situation becomes complicated as the world divides itself into the blue corner of capitalism and the red corner of communism. Marxism and Maoist ideology spread across its states, creating skirmishes here and there.
Pakistan, too, had its own problems. The insistence on using Urdu as the national language was not taken lightly by the Bengali-speaking East Pakistanis. The discord reached a tipping point in 1971, when the Bengali Awami League won the Pakistani elections. Civil war broke out when West Pakistani leaders refused to accept the election results. India sent in its troops to squash West Pakistan’s army and effectively completed the Fifth Partition, the creation of the country of Bangladesh.
The recurring theme throughout the book is that people continue to help one another, regardless of the day’s political climate. Despite ideological differences, people help people. The book highlights numerous heart-stirring accounts of the extraordinary resilience and compassion of everyday people. These ‘unity in diversity’ stories emerge from small acts of kindness that transcend religious, social, and economic boundaries.
It remains to be debated by future historians whether the colonial masters can be blamed for shattering the land that spanned the Arabian Gulf to Southeast Asia. Given the insatiable appetite of human greed for land, wealth and power, are these sequelae inevitable anyway?
Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
An introduction to Aruna Chakravarti’s Creeping Shadows: 13 Ghost Stories, published by Penguin India, along with a discussion with the author.
Ghosts are evocative of a past… of history one could say. Then who could be a better storyteller of the past than an author steeped in colours of historical fiction — Aruna Chakravarti! In the past she not only translated novels set in colonial India but evoked the Bengal Renaissance to perfection in her two Jorasanko novels and details of a court hearing in her retelling of the Bhawal prince! This time the diva of historical fiction brings to us a book of spine chilling, ghost stories, Creeping Shadows: 13 Ghost Stories. It is her third collection of short stories.
Aruna ChakravartiPublished in 2026
The narratives are so vivid and visual that they could be worthy of being made into films. They are distinctive in that she has mostly created her own very horrific ghouls – not the traditional ones. They pop up and frighten the reader with their bizarreness and terrifying presences which linger even when you try to sleep at night! She has given us thirteen stories — a spooky number in itself — spread across multiple communities in Asia.
Some of the narratives evoke the past, starting from the 1800s. ‘The House of Flowers’ is set in China partly and partly in Kolkata, where there is now a thriving Chinatown known as “Tangra” and a Kali temple that serves ‘noodles’ as its prasad or offering. The story has echoes of Pearl S Buck’s China interestingly. What comes as a surprise is the fluency with which she has woven in the influences that impact a community of migrants!
Chakravarti has used her skills as a writer of historical fiction in some of the stories like, ‘The Road to Karimganj’, in which a spook takes us back to undivided Bengal, when passports were not needed as in the story of the migrant Chinese. Hovering around history are more narratives like ‘Possessed’, where a courtesan who performs with the legendary Girish Ghosh1 of the nineteenth century Kolkata undergoes, along with the audience, a strange spooky experience!
Traveling down the century, closer to our times, is the story that is perhaps one of the most bizarre and yet most relatable, ‘The Necklace’. Set in the Anglo-Indian community and the glamour of Park Street — where Wiccan writer, Rajorshi Patranabis, claimed to have met a colonial ghost awaiting her lover — Chakravarti’s narrative is of black magic and betrayal. The fiction is far more impactful and frightening than the factual narrative, which too was spine chilling! You realise what makes fiction so much more gripping than facts — anything can happen in fiction. Chakravarti is imaginative enough to make it as creepy and shadowy as any regular horror writer!
Holding on to that thought, the author holds the key to our experiences as she skillfully outlines two demons grown out of poverty in ‘A Winter Night’. The conclusion has a sense of irony and tragedy. ‘Truth is stranger than Fiction’ weaves in more of the diversity in the historic annals of Bengal. The story that starts the book, ‘The Caregivers of Gazipur’, has an unresolved ending, like some of her other narratives. Though there is a frightful resolution in ‘They Come Out After Dark’. The ghosts play spine chilling havoc with fears of the living while recalling the senseless violence of 1947. ‘There are More Things in Heaven and Earth’…takes us back to the atrocities committed during the Sikh riots of 1984 in Delhi. The mingling of fact and fiction to create weird a fantastical narrative is addressed during a conversation on the supernatural. And there is an exploration of the lines from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which probably is a touch of the academic as Chakravarti had a long tenure as the principal of a girl’s college in Delhi. It also defines the authorial stance in this story:
‘Don’t forget what Hamlet said to Horatio? There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
What is unusual about these stories is the way she has created fictitious geographies and personas, evoking historic realities. They seem perfectly authentic to the reader, including the one set in China. There is a vast mingling of facts and fiction in these stories all to lead to spine-chilling ends with strange twists.
‘Grandmother’s Bundle’ stands out in its rendition as the ghosts given out are part of the mythical lore of Bengal — stories that were related to most Bengali kids of the twentieth century. They have a touch of humour and dry wit, perhaps introducing a sense of comic relief among very dark and horrific stories that transport us into different worlds.
‘The Motorcycle Rider’, set in modern times, takes us into a university campus to shock us with horrific spooks born out of tragic deaths, while ‘Twenty-nine Years, Seven Months and Eleven Days’, merges a modern outlook with an unfathomable past, touching upon strange tantric yearnings. ‘Vendetta’ twirls nature and supernatural to give a frightening narrative of how nature takes its revenge… a theme that reiterates in writings addressing our current concerns with climate change.
The ease and fluidity with which she has switched from history and realism to horror and fantasy is amazing. Let’s find out more from her about this new persona that inhabits her writerly self…
Till now we have had translations, numerous novels—many of which can be called historical fiction—and realistic short stories with their base in history or contemporary life. What made you think of writing ghost stories?
After writing The Mendicant Prince which involved extensive research into the life and times of Prince Ramendranarayan Roy of Bhawal, I didn’t feel up to writing a historical novel again. The work had demanded delving into sociological texts, court records, letters, insurance papers and medical reports. Apart from research, historical fiction also demands a certain amount of field work.
Published in 2013Published in 2016
Before writing the Jorasanko novels I visited the Tagore mansion thrice and while writing The Mendicant Prince, I went to Bangladesh to see the royal palace in Bhawal, renamed Gazipur. Though it has been totally neglected, with shopkeepers and squatters having overtaken most of the area, I was able to get some idea of the topography of the palace and its grounds. I saw the lake and the temple (which was locked) and was able to visualise where the halls and galleries and the apartments of the queens and princesses would have stood. All this work was exhausting. So, for a change, I decided to try my hand at short stories which emerge straight from the imagination. And while at it, I decided to break out of the mould of “historical fiction” writer in which I had trapped myself and try a completely new genre.
Published in 2022
I wrote the first one on an impulse and found myself quite enjoying the process. I didn’t even think of publishing at that time. The first story led to another and another. When eleven stories had been written I sent the manuscript to three publishers and was surprised when all three accepted it. It was then that I found out that ghost stories were the in-thing. That they were selling well and that publishers were looking out for them. I signed up with Penguin as you know. At one point my editor Moutushi Mukherjee suggested I write another two. Thirteen stories will make it even more spooky, she said. So, I wrote another two.
Would you list these stories as fantasies or fantastical? Or are they stories of personal experience? Please elaborate.
No. They are not born out personal experience. I must confess that I have never seen a ghost in my life. I believe in sixth sense. As a matter of fact, I have acted on my sixth sense on occasions. I have had sudden impulses to do certain things and realised later that if I hadn’t yielded to the impulses, I would have regretted it. But I have had no brush with the supernatural. These stories were sparked off by sudden memories. Something I had read somewhere. Something somebody had told me years ago. A face I had seen in childhood which had stuck in my mind though whose I don’t remember. A conversation overheard which made no sense at the time but which, as an adult, seemed ridden with sinister nuances. A phrase from a book whose title and author’s name I had forgotten. In fact, I didn’t even remember the context from where the phrase had come.
Sudden flashes such as these triggered off the stories. But in the writing, they took on a life and soul of their own. I even feel, sometimes, that the pen took over and they were written by an invisible hand.
Your stories are set, sometimes in real landscapes and sometimes in fictional ones. What kind of research went into creating them? How do you make them so vivid and real?
There wasn’t any immediate research. I needed to look up a few facts, now and then, mostly to be sure of their authenticity. But nothing truly back breaking. The landscapes, both physical and of the mind, were culled from my travels and my reading of both English and Bengali writers over the eight decades of my life. Much of it stayed with me tucked away in some unconscious part of the mind. Although I write in English, you will notice that almost all the stories are about Bengalis. Bengalis living in Delhi, Kolkata, Bihar and the small towns and villages of Bengal. There are Anglo-Indians, Punjabis and Chinese, too among my characters. But having lived in Bengal for generations, they have adopted Bengali customs and a quasi-Bengali way of living. Many of the locales in which, they appear are fictional…gathered from my reading and observation of people from different strands of Bengali life.
You have a story set in China which also has the Chinatown of Kolkata in it. Have you been to China? What was the reason for the choice? Were you influenced by any Chinese writers? How did you visualise the Chinese migrants in Kolkata?
Yes, I have been to China. I visited the cities of Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing in 2004. Naturally, I have no personal experience of life as it was lived in the late 18th century which is the period covered in the story ‘The House of Flowers’. For this I had to rely totally on my reading of English authors writing about China like Pearl Buck and Amy Tan. Pearl Buck was a great influence on me while writing this story. It was from her books that I was able to catch the ambience of tea houses and brothels of the period. In depicting the Chinese family who lived in Calcutta in the early 20th century I had to rely on childhood experience, I knew some Chinese girls who had lived for several generations in Calcutta. And my imagination went into full play, of course.
In ‘Grandmother’s Bundle’ you have written about spooks from Bengal. It departs from your other stories in as much as it does not really introduce the supernatural except as a source of folklore. Do you feel it blends with the other narratives in your collection?
Well. It is different from my other stories in certain ways. Firstly, it is three stories rolled into one. Secondly, unlike the others, they are children’s stories. Thirdly, it is the only one that deals with ghosts and other supernatural beings with humour. Lastly, they have been drawn from folklore. I agree that it doesn’t quite blend with the others in this collection. But it is also true that each story in this collection is different from another. There are different time spans. Different locales. Different themes. Characters from different levels of society. That being the case, I think that this story lends variety and another flavour to the collection.
Your stories aren’t like the usual ghost stories one reads. The structure and content seem different. Your comments.
You are right. These stories do not belong to the gothic/horror genre. They are not about vampires, blood sucking bats, severed heads or violence heaped on violence. They are essentially human-interest stories with a supernatural twist at the end. I have taken my cue, you may say, from Coleridge’s demand for a willing suspension of disbelief before reading his poetry. These stories have innocuous beginnings. Two friends sharing an apartment, a boy walking from his village to an unseen destination, a dinner party in an exclusive area of the capital, a marital spat or a telephone call at dawn. Then, a few paragraphs later a subtle hint is dropped startling the reader into a realisation that it is not a simple story of human relationships. That it is headed in another, more sinister direction. Another hint is dropped and another. Then in the final sentence the bomb bursts. The last line is the most important line of the story.
Which is your favourite story? And why?
Just as a mother loves all her children, I love all my stories. But mothers also have favourites and so do I. “The House of Flowers,” “Vendetta,” “Possessed” and “The Necklace” are my favourites. That’s because their themes are unusual and posed a greater challenge. And, perhaps, because I had to work harder on them than on the others.
Are you planning any new books? Exploring any new genres? Any new book we can expect soon?
I always think of a new book even when I am writing the current one. Yes, I am planning to explore yet another genre of writing. But my ideas are nebulous at the moment. Still in a fluid state That being the case I cannot share them with you. All I can say is that the work will be a challenging one and I’m not even sure I’ll be able to see it through. So, we must both wait for some more time
Girish Ghosh (1844-1912) Actor and Director from Bengal ↩︎
(This review and online interview by email is by Mitali Chakravarty)
Ishrat looked at the girl staring at her from the computer screen. Smooth and silky dark hair framed a face with wide eyes and lips that curved into a tender smile. According to her bio-data, Raihana Mimi finished her Bachelor’s from Stony Brook three years earlier. Then she did a Master’s in Social Work from UMASS Boston before going back to Bangladesh. Ishrat wondered why the girl liked Asif. At first glance, Asif seemed like an ordinary young man, even if pursuing a PhD in Computer Science. He was not handsome and he carried himself like a bear with a perpetual frown on his forehead. So why this lovely girl took a liking to Asif seemed a mystery to Ishrat. She hoped it wouldn’t end like the affair two years ago. It had broken Asif’s heart, and until very recently he would not hear of marriage.
“She’s very pretty,” Ishrat finally said. “But marriage is a life-long commitment, Asif. Do not marry for the wrong reasons. Do you love her?”
Asif looked at the somber face gazing upon him and smiled sadly. “Love? I thought I was in love the last time I went home. You know the rest.” Both of them went silent reminiscing about the unprecedented series of events that occurred about two years ago when Asif had gone back to Bangladesh to marry the girl he had been planning to wed for years. He came back alone a month later as the girl’s family had refused to allow their youngest daughter to marry him, and his sweetheart accepted the decision made by her family without protest.
Ishrat still remembered the bleak look on Asif’s face when he had asked her after returning from home, “What’s wrong with being fatherless, Apa[1]? And is an American passport essential for marriage? Tania’s uncle told me to get a US passport and then ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage.”
Ishrat couldn’t tell him that the marriage mart in Dhaka was a fish market. Most people with assets in the capital city would turn up their noses at someone like Asif whose father had died leaving his children still struggling to make a place for themselves. Instead, she had said, “It’s better that this match didn’t work out, Asif. Obviously, the girl didn’t care enough to stand up for you. I’m sure that you have a better person waiting for you in the future.”
“I told you Apa, she got married last year, didn’t I?” asked Asif.
“Who? Tania? Yes, you did. But Asif, I hope you are not planning to get married just because you want to show off that you’ve got a better wife,” said Ishrat with a frown. “Raihana is surely prettier than Tania and more accomplished. But just that would be a wrong reason for getting married.”
Asif shook his head. “That’s not why I want to marry Mimi. I’ve been talking to her for a few months now. She seems. . . how to put it. . . very mature, level-headed and practical. Has a lot of good sense,” he paused and then added, “something Tania never had.”
Ishrat asked again, “So, how does your family take it? I thought your mother had somebody in mind?
“That was years ago,” Asif said. To him, Kakon was just a next-door girl, the daughter of her mother’s best friend. It was a plan hatched by the mothers. He and Kakon never discussed this. There was never an occasion. “My sisters have already paid Mimi’s family a visit. And Mimi’s eldest brother and one of her sisters went to my elder sister’s house to meet my mother. Anju Apa is complaining even though Laiju is quite taken in.”
Ishrat nodded, “What does Laiju say?” Laiju was Asif’s younger sister, and not sentimental like Anjuman.
Asif smiled. “She says that Mimi seems friendly and sensible. Even though Anju Apa pulled a long face in front of everybody, she didn’t take offense. When Laiju apologised on her behalf to Mimi she said that she didn’t mind. People say a lot of things during such negotiations. It’s not wise to hold on to them.”
Ishrat nodded approvingly. “That sounds like uncommonly good sense to me. Marriage is a complex business though. Since you two like each other, you must keep a level head.”
*
Hamida Khatun looked helpless as her eldest daughter ranted about her brother’s marriage. “You’ll see that it will come to no good. That girl’s family is way better off than ours. Two of her sisters are settled in the US. And you still want him to marry her?”
“And how do you propose that I stop it, Anju?” asked Hamida. “You heard him. He is determined to have her.”
“I still don’t understand what was wrong with Kakon,” grumbled Anjuman. Kakon was their neighbour from their hometown in Khulna. They had known her since childhood. Kakon’s mother, Nahar, and Hamida once made plans to get their children married. But Asif was always busy with other things and once he went off to Dhak to study at BUET[2], he changed altogether. He fell in love with a girl named Tania who practically abandoned him at the altar. After that Hamida had tried to incline him toward Kakon once more. But Asif did not budge. At one point he told his mother, “If you nag like this, I will marry an American girl and never return home.” That sealed her mouth as Asif knew it would.
Hamida heaved a sigh and said, “Look, daughter, I don’t have a choice in this. If he can’t marry this girl, I’m afraid he will marry an American Christian girl. Do you want that?” Anju looked up at her mother, horrified. “You must be mad! What will our relatives say? American! And Christian too!”
“What do I care about our relatives?” asked an irritated Hamida. “Their tongues have been wagging since your father died. I just want my son to marry well and be happy.”
Anjuman grimaced. She was sure that this rich girl will only bring trouble for their family.
At this point, Laiju entered the room with a bundle of shopping bags in hand. She was buoyed up by the upcoming wedding of her only brother. Many of their close relatives had already arrived in Dhaka. She and her mother were staying in Rampura where Anjuman lived with her husband and two children.
Laiju looked at her elder sister keenly and said, “I don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal. I like Mimi Bhabi already. She is not like those typically snobbish rich girls. On the contrary, she seems very nice and sensible.” She paused and then added, “The kind of scene you made at their house! ‘I know our brother will be taken away from us after his marriage’—That was poor taste, Apa. I would have been mad if I was in her place.”
Anju shuffled uneasily and Hamida nodded gravely. “Yes, that was really bad.”
Laiju was about to say something more when they heard a commotion outside. Several voices were shouting, and one gruff voice most of all.
“I need to talk to Bhabi[3]. Where is she? This is insufferable and totally unacceptable. . .”
“Oh no, that’s Chhoto Chacha[4]!” groaned Laiju. As soon as she uttered the name, a dark burly man entered the room.
Without preamble he said, “Did you buy a saree for my wife? The eldest son of our family is getting married—where is the saree for his Chhoto Chachi?”
“We got sarees for everyone,” said Laiju. “And of course, Chhoto Chachi has got one too.”
“You call that a saree?” sneered their uncle. “That’s a gamchha[5]! If my brother was alive…”
“Unfortunately, he is not,” Laiju interrupted. “And his son is still a student. If you don’t like the saree we got for your wife, go and buy one yourself. Do you ever get anything for her?”
“You have such a foul mouth! No respect for elders at all!” growled Chhoto Chacha. He turned to his sister-in-law and bellowed, “I won’t come to the wedding, Bhabi. And I won’t allow my family to attend either.” He stormed out of the room. They heard him slam the front door shut.
Hamida Khatun heaved another sigh. “When will Asif come? I can’t take all this any longer. My poor boy! Nobody to give him peace of mind.”
Anjuman dried her eyes and said, “I won’t give you any more trouble. I, too, will keep away from the ceremony. . .” she stopped as her mother’s eyes started gleaming ominously. Laiju said, “For once, Apa, please act your age. How long will you behave like a 15-year-old?”
“What did I say?” asked a nervous Anjuman.
“You will act like a proper, respectable elder sister,” said Hamida quietly. “If I hear you babbling like a fool, I will leave your house. Just because we’re staying in your flat, don’t assume that you can do and say whatever you want. If necessary, I will rent a place and conduct the marriage ceremony from there. Understood?”
Anjuman eyed her mother with a newly found apprehension. Laiju gaped at her mother too. Then recovering herself she said half-laughing, “O dear! I didn’t know you could talk like that! You should take on that tone more often, Amma[6]. Chhoto Chacha will never dare to say anything again.”
*
“I still don’t understand why she has chosen that guy,” Gulshan Ara grumbled. “He looks more like an ape than a human being.”
Her fourth daughter Moni shook her head. “Ma, you’ve said that at least ten times.”
“So?” asked Gulshan Ara. “Your headstrong little sister doesn’t pay heed to anything I say. She has her heart set on that ape.” She stopped and lowered her voice. “You and I are the only two with good sense. Even Muhib and Moin are taken in.”
“I’m more worried about his family,” said Moni. “Remember how the elder sister spoke?”
“I can’t understand why you’re so worried about the family,” said a third voice. Moin had entered the room silently like a cat. “Mimi will be living abroad with her husband. She may have to visit Khulna only once or twice in her lifetime. Honestly, how much trouble can her in-laws cause?”
In the next room of the plush apartment in Dhanmondi, the subject of their conversation was busy wrapping up the gifts for her wedding. She had already brought several sarees for herself. She meant to save at least some money for Asif. She understood that he was still a graduate student and could not be expected to spend a fortune on his bride. He also had nobody to support him with expenses. She insisted that there should be only one ceremony and the expenses should be borne by her family. She used to be indifferent when her family members rejected one suitor after another. But something about Asif made her stand up for him and maneuver her siblings, especially her brothers and eldest sister, into accepting him as a prospective candidate. Asif also went out of his way and visited her two elder sisters in New York. Whatever initial reservations they had about his appearance vanished after meeting him face to face. Both spoke approvingly of him, and Mimi’s parents also gave in reluctantly.
When her sister Moni had asked her what she liked so much about Asif, Mimi avoided a direct answer and asked, “What’s wrong with him? He is a good guy, pursuing higher studies. That’s what you wanted too.” She paused, then added, “Okay, so he is not very handsome. But Mishu Apu’s husband was. Did that help?” Mishu was her second sister who had died a few years ago. Her husband was the most handsome and obnoxious man imaginable. Mishu’s untimely death had cast a perpetual gloom on their family.
Moni wrung her hands, “No, but…”
“If you people continue like this, I may never get married, you know,” Mimi had said, half-teasingly. “I’ll be thirty in November.”
Mimi counted the boxes and eyed the suitcase carefully. These were mostly things for her in-laws. They still had not got anything for Asif who was arriving in Dhaka that very afternoon. The two of them had planned to do the shopping for their wedding clothes themselves. Asif’s mother already had the jewelry. Apparently, she had them made three years ago, which proved to be an excellent decision.
Asif’s elder sister Anjuman and Mimi’s mother had been raising a hue and cry over every little thing. Anjuman took it to her head that her brother’s wife should have her nose pierced, and Asif should give her a diamond studded nose-pin. Mimi let Asif handle that. Both of them had discussed the situation and decided to largely ignore their comments and avoid unreasonable suggestions without being directly offensive. Asif seemed to rely a lot on her judgment, which Mimi appreciated.
She remembered when her eldest brother’s wife had shown her Asif’s Facebook page. “He’s so funny, Mimi. Just take a look! Says he has all A’s in everything except in his love life. There he has an F!” Mimi had smiled, but somehow it didn’t appear funny to her. She still thought Asif shouldn’t have put such personal information on Facebook, but it pulled a string at her heart. She knew exactly how it felt to get an F in love. She wondered where Dipak was, and if he was still looking for a pretty face with a ton of money. Mimi’s family was very affluent and that turned out to be his main reason for pursuing her. Dipak was gone from her life forever, and Mimi had no intention of bringing him back.
Once upon a time she held Dipak dear, but now she shuddered to think what might have happened if they had been married. He was making advances on three girls at the same time, and Mimi was one of them. The incident taught Mimi a number of things. She promised herself that she would only marry someone she could trust and would look beyond physical appearance. She may never have love, but she would also never feel humiliated or pitied.
*
When Asif and Mimi finally met in person, it was the most unromantic situation possible. His flight was delayed, and he arrived three hours late. After assuring his nervous mother, a pouting elder sister, and an over-enthusiastic younger one, he reached his future in-laws’ house around 9 p.m. along with two uncles and a cousin. He looked tired and harassed, in a crumpled purple shirt and khaki pants. Mimi’s parents were a bit awkward, but her brothers were very cordial as they had heard glowing reports about Asif from their sisters in New York.
While the others were talking, Mimi observed her intended husband surreptitiously. She almost smiled at his attire—he was so unpretentious. Obviously, he was more worried about keeping his engagement than his appearance. She noticed that he also looked at her once in a while, and realized with a jolt that he wished, just as she did, to talk to her, to be away from this crowd, just to be by themselves. Mimi was surprised at her own reaction—she had known this man for only a few months, and yet she longed to be with him. She tried to concentrate on the conversation and heard that they were discussing her Kabin. Asif was saying, “Whatever you decide is fine with me. I won’t be able to pay it right away, though, as I am still pursuing higher studies.”
Her eldest brother Muhib said, “Of course, we understand as much. Will 10 lakhs be too much for you?”
At this point, her mother spoke up. “I won’t allow my daughter’s Kabin[7] to be less than fifteen.”
“Fifteen!” someone in Asif’s party gasped. “Fifteen lakhs is too much! Even ten is a lot.”
Everyone in the room shifted uncomfortably while Gulshan Ara sat straight and glared at Asif with animosity. Mimi was about to pinch her brother Moin when Asif said in a quiet voice, “Whatever you say, I will accept. It’s your daughter we are discussing, after all.”
Even Mimi gaped at Asif. As everybody in the room started talking once again, Mimi realised that Asif’s move was the best possible strategy. Gulshan Ara would not complain any more. And Asif was not in serious trouble because he did not have to pay the amount right away. She didn’t know how Asif’s family would take it, though. She promised herself that she would always try to make things easier for him. He didn’t have any idea how rich her family was. He wanted to marry her.
*
The wedding reception was held at a posh restaurant in Dhanmondi. Asif sat on the stage and watched his bride smile and greet the guests who approached them. She was as beautiful as a fairy, thought Asif. Wise and kind too.
Then Asif saw his Chhoto Chacha approaching the stage and he said a swift prayer so that nothing disastrous happened. His uncle addressed Mimi, “The others are saying that the food is good. But I felt it was aida.” He looked triumphantly at Asif, as if saying, “You can’t fool me!” Mimi also looked at Asif, not knowing what aida meant. Asif hastily said, “That was kachchi biriyani, Chacha. It is the standard food for weddings in Dhaka. But we will have a reception in Khulna too. You can have your menu there with your favourite fish.” Chhoto Chacha nodded, looking pleased. “You have a pretty wife,” he said approvingly, “much prettier than your mother ever was.” He walked away. Asif heaved a sigh of relief.
Kachchi Biriyani. From Public Domain
Mimi whispered, “What’s aida?”
“I’ll explain later,” mumbled an embarrassed Asif. How could he say that aida meant food that has been half-eaten by somebody else? Basically, it suggested that the guests had not been properly treated.
Then came Asif’s friends. They were all laughing and joking. Asif was quite popular among his friends, and they seemed happy about Asif’s marriage and his choice of bride. Mimi had very few friends present—understandable, since she did her bachelor’s in the US. Someone mentioned that they had attended Tania’s wedding the previous year whose husband was a bald man in his forties and held an American passport.
A heavily bejeweled, fat lady appeared before them, and Mimi introduced her to Asif. “This is my Chhoto Mami. Mama[8] couldn’t come as he is in Singapore right now.”
Asif smiled and greeted her. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” the lady said with a broad smile like a crocodile. “You are not very handsome, are you? But then, Rahat was very handsome, and it didn’t help us at all.” She sighed, then added, “Hopefully, you’ll take good care of Mimi.”
Mimi made a face as she walked away. “Sorry about that.”
“Who is Rahat?” asked a puzzled Asif.
“My ex-brother-in-law,” replied Mimi briefly. “I’ll tell you later.”
“You and I both seem to have a fine lot of relatives,” observed Asif. Mimi smiled. “It seems so, doesn’t it?” They smiled at each other, and Asif knew that they would be working as a team. Their relatives wouldn’t be able to make a rift like they did in his parents’ case. He thoughts turned to Tania probably for one last time, and he wished he had never met her. Then he realised that it did not really matter. She was already a distant memory. Asif started to comprehend what Ishrat had meant by marriage being a life-long commitment.
Mimi sat contentedly. She liked her husband, she thought. Fair enough. He was sometimes a little rash, but good-natured. He had also shown himself to be sensitive to her needs. She remembered the scuffle over her wedding saree. They got it from Mansha. It was quite expensive and Mimi did not want to buy it even though she liked it very much. Asif, however, insisted that at least the main wedding saree should be costly, so that everybody was content.
*
Anjuman sat in one corner, still resentful at the turn of events. She looked at her children on stage with their uncle, nodding and smiling at their new aunt. Anjuman wondered how nobody could see what she saw—her only brother slowly moving away from them. She remembered what Laiju had said a few days ago: “He is not the same guy who left Bangladesh 4 years ago. He has changed. He has been leading a different life, his friends and peers are of a different sort. His world has changed, Apa. He couldn’t be happy with someone like Kakon. Don’t you see?”
No, Anjuman did not see. All she saw was a rich and beautiful girl taking her only brother away from them. Her resentment rose higher. She had tried to derail her own husband—to move him away from the influence of his nagging mother. But she had failed. The old woman had died only recently, and her husband still cried like a baby over the loss. And here was this girl, a mere chit of a girl, accomplishing what she could not in nine years. “If only it was Kakon!” thought Anjuman wistfully, their brother would have always been theirs. She did not see why he would be unhappy. What was the duty of a wife? To cook, bear children and maintain the house. Their mother did all this, she herself was doing the same; what more could Asif want? And in spite of all her good looks, what could Mimi give him that Kakon could not? Did he have to sell himself to money?
Somewhere at the back of her mind, Anjuman felt cheated. She felt that her brother got something she never even dreamt of. She saw the light of a different life on Laiju’s face, or even on their mother’s, a light she could not share. She thought of the flat in Rampura where she had so far lived with her husband and children. The 1200 square feet she had been so proud of owning suddenly seemed to have diminished into nothing. Owning a flat in Dhaka did not seem so great anymore as she wondered what kind of a house Asif and his wife would have in the US.
Hamida Khatun noticed the tear-stained face of her elder daughter from a distance and heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God she realises that they are happy, and she is praying for them,” she thought, and smiled with misty eyes. Her thoughts then flew to the future where she saw herself surrounded by grandchildren. She did not see even the flicker of any dark shadow on the bright stage where her son gazed lovingly at his bride.
[7] Marriage registration fees determined by the dowry
[8]Mami is wife to mother’s brother referred to as Mama
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Sohana Manzoor is a writer and academic from Bangladesh, with a PhD in English from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her works have appeared in Bellingham Review, Eclectica, Litro, Singapore Unbound, Borderless Journal, and elsewhere. She was the Literary Editor of The Daily Star from 2018- 22. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at UBC, Vancouver.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Zihan stirred in his sleep. A chill breath passing over his limbs had awakened him. He strained his eyes, still heavy with wine fumes, and looked around. Where was he? This was not his room and this wasn’t his bed. He was lying in what seemed to be a small, confined space under an ornate gilded ceiling in a bed so soft, his limbs were sinking into its depths. The sky was paling with first light and long beams from a dying moon streamed in through the open window. The fragrance of an unknown flower, wild and sweet, filled the room.
He turned his head towards the window. Something, like an opalescent haze, was obscuring his vision. At first, he thought it was a sheet of mist. Then, before his amazed eyes, it started to take a shape and form. It became a woman. He could see her slender limbs, smooth as white satin, shimmering through the garment that swayed and billowed around her form. Diaphanous as a film of gossamer. So light, it seemed woven out of moonbeams. Her face was swathed in mist.
The figure moved from the window and came gliding towards him. He could see her face clearly now. A perfect oval with apricot shaped eyes, brows like strung bows and hair that fell down her back like a sheet of black silk. He stared at the vision of loveliness so long and hard …his eyes began to hurt. He had never seen such beauty in a woman before.
She stood by his bed for a while gazing into his eyes, then lay down, her body light as a feather against his. Taking his face in her hands, she caressed it with a tenderness that reminded him of his mother’s touch. She drew the silky strands of her floating hair all over his naked body. Across his chest and abdomen, over his genitals, thighs and legs, down to the insteps of his feet. The wildflower scent from her limbs filled his nostrils. Her kisses fluttered on his lips, soft and cold as drifting snow…
The wine, still running in his blood, quivered in his veins. His limbs, untouched by a woman before, heaved luxuriously and his eyes closed in ecstasy. He drifted away…
How long he lay in this state of bliss, he couldn’t tell. It could be minutes. It could be hours. Gradually, an uneasy feeling came over him. Something heavy was pressing against his body. It was squashing his chest and squeezing the breath out of his lungs. He moved aside but the pressure grew in intensity, driving him further and further towards the edge of the bed. And now his heart beat rapidly with an unknown dread. What was happening? Washe still asleep and this a fearful dream? Suddenly his eyes sprang open and what he saw sent currents of ice water rippling down his spine. He felt the hot blood pulsing and pounding in his ears. A muscle twitched and shuddered in his cheek…
The reed-slim body of the woman beside him had bloated to a colossal size. Her eyes, thin slits in the vast globe of her face, glittered with hate. Her mouth was a deep red gash through which yellow teeth, long and sharp as a panther’s fangs, hung to her chin.
The mountain of flesh was growing larger and larger every moment. It was filling the bed. He would fall over the edge any moment now. A scream gathered in his lungs but froze before it could reach his throat…
Suddenly she sprang on him; her nails sharp as claws ripping the skin off his chest and thighs. Digging her teeth into the soft flesh just below the right shoulder, she bit off a large hunk. Zihan’s eyes were glazed with pain and fear. He stared mesmerized as the monstrous creature rose from the bed and swayed and shuffled towards the opposite wall. She wore a garment of sheer white muslin that swelled and surged like waves about her form. Blood dripped from her slavering mouth and fell on the floor as her great body waddled, like a gorilla’s, from side to side. And now, for the first time, Zihan saw the coffin. It was open…
Zihan screamed. Shriek after shriek burst from the throat that had been frozen all this while, hit the walls, and sent fearful echoes all through the house. Then, exhausted and half dead from shock and loss of blood, he lay motionless, whimpering like a child.
Kueilan was a light sleeper and the first to hear the cries. They seemed to be coming from the dead girl’s room. Her heart thudded with fear as she rushed to it and flung the door open. She stood where she was for a while, her eyes glued to the coffin. It stood in the same place but the seal was broken and its open lid rested against the wall. A lily-white hand with long tapering fingers was dangling from the edge. And now the lid began to move downwards. Slowly, soundlessly, it was falling in place. In a few moments it would reach the hand and crush it. A tremor ran through Kueilan’s frame. Her mouth opened in a scream but before she could utter a sound, the hand glided over the edge and slipped into the hollow where the rest of the dead girl lay. Then, before Kueilan’s amazed eyes, the coffin closed, the seal came together and all was as it had been.
‘Published with permission from Penguin Random House India from Creeping Shadows (2026)’.
About the Book:
The stories in Creeping Shadows are spread over a vast canvas, both in terms of time span and locale. A teahouse in ancient China. A brothel in nineteenth-century Calcutta. A forest lodge in Bankura. An old mansion in Bangladesh. A university campus in today’s Delhi. Beginning as human-interest narratives, they end with sudden, unexpected twists that raise hair ends and send trickles of ice water down the spine. Here are tales of shadows, tingles and chills…
About the Author:
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 LiteratureU.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. She is also a scriptwriter and producer of seven multi-media presentations based on her novels. Comprising dramatized readings, interspersed with songs and accompanied by a visual presentation by professional artists and singers, these programmes have been widely acclaimed and performed in many parts of India and abroad.
Nazrul’s lyrics of Mor Priya Hobe Eso Rani (My Sweetheart, Be My Queen) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam
From Public Domain
MY SWEETHEART, BE MY QUEEN
My sweetheart, be my queen! Let me make a garland of stars for your chignon. Dear girl, your ears I’ll adorn With the spring moon’s third visitation. Your throat, dear girl, I’ll deck with a pair of dangling swans. I’ll make a ribbon too to tie your cloud-coloured disheveled hair Out of the lightening in the spring moon’s third visitation! A paste blended from moonlight and sandalwood Will be your body’s balm. The red of the rainbow Will be the lac-dye used to color your feet The seven notes of my song will compose Your bridal chamber’s decor While my muse’s bulbul bird will sing a song for you— in full-throated ease!
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
Title: River Traveller: Journeys on the TSANPO-BRAHMAPUTRA from Tibet to the Bay of Bengal
Author: Sanjoy Hazarika
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Sanjoy Hazarika, a former reporter for the New York Times, dons many hats, combining roles as researcher, columnist, mentor and practitioner. Over decades this veteran journalist has travelled extensively across the Northeast and its neighbourhood. His interests include developments in Myanmar, Bhutan, Tibet (PRC), Bangladesh and Nepal and he has produced over a dozen documentaries including on the Brahmaputra, dolphins, governance, conflict, and rights.
River Traveller tells the story of a great river, as powerful as it is mysterious. The Brahmaputra rises in Tibet, travels through three countries and, after travelling over 2,900 kms, flows into the Bay of Bengal. But the most interesting part is that this river is known by many names: Yarlung Tsangpo and Po Tsangpo in Tibet, Siang in Arunachal Pradesh, Brahmaputra in Assam, the Jamuna in Bangladesh, merging with the Ganga at Arichar Ghat, to form the vast Padma on its unending flow to the Bay of Bengal and its quest for union with the sea.
This book has come together over decades of travels on this braided river (including on the boat clinics that he launched in 2005 in Assam) where Hazarika had seen its beauty and faced its wrath, been stuck on sandbanks and swept out to sea. He listened to those who plied the boats, the pilots, drivers, fishermen and their families, the sick and the ailing, women and children, Buddhist and Hindu monks, Sikh and Muslim priests, officials, politicians, students and scientists. He has listened to poets, singers, writers and artists, and to businessfolk and daily wage earners, boat builders, contractors, tea planters and workers. The writer amalgamated all their stories which were a mix of sadness, a determination to survive, an acceptance of fate and joy. Therefore, his traveller’s tales span not just his own journeys but the stories of those who had gone before him. Like the river, the region and its neighbourhood “never cease to delight, surprise, inspire, sadden and confound.”
Of course, the most ostentatious reason for Hazarika’s travels is the filming of documentaries on the river at different points of time. His first travel was for the film A River’s Story, the Quest for the Brahmaputra that he scripted and produced with Jahnu Barua as the director, Sudheer Palsane as cinematographer, Sanjoy Roy and Jugal Debta as audiographers as well as many others. The thrust area was to study the stories of the river and its people, from its beginnings in the Tibetan Plateau to the end in the Bay of Bengal. It wasn’t about science and theory, or politics and the environment, or climate change, but about the river and its moods, and especially its people and their relationship with each other, through history and changing geography, culture, faith, peace and poverty.
In the second venture, Gautam Bora was director and cinematographer of Brahmaputra, a six-part series for Doordarshan, shot in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. In his third venture, he was involved in the making of Children of the River, the Xihus of Assam, which was directed and filmed by Maulee Senapati and where he learned much about dolphins.
Divided into three parts, the book is as exhaustive a study on the river as can be imagined. The Brahmaputra is one of the world’s longest and widest rivers—sustaining entire civilizations and agrarian systems. It has fascinated cartographers, lured adventurers, attracted kings and dynasts, and has supported life and ways of living by its banks. Before beginning with the actual travel in Part One that includes his sojourns in Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh, Hazarika goes back to history of the thirteenth century when in about 1215 AD, the Tai-Ahom prince Siu-ka-pha left his native land now on the China-Myanmar border and undertook a long march before settling down in Charaideo, his capital, with its surrounding flat plains, rich red soil, streams and the vast Brahmaputra nearby. After that for centuries, traders, smugglers, fighters, fugitives, goods, cuisines, languages and ideas as well as religions and religious people have travelled in either direction on the Siu-ka-pha trail.
Hazarika begins his yatra in Tibet and narrates how the challenges relating to it were not new. He describes a Tibet that was trying to hold on to its cultural legacy in the face of Chinese rule and the land’s exploitation for its resources. He recounts stories of explorers, spymasters and mapmakers, especially a motley crowd of intrepid men in the service of the East India Company and the Survey of India, who discovered the route of the river especially when it’s source was hidden in the most inhospitable terrain on earth. They finally solved the puzzle of the vanishing river and established that the Brahmaputra and the Tsangpo were the same river.
In Arunachal Pradesh, Hazarika views the river from a helicopter and to him it resembled a great, brown meandering serpent, moving in huge loops, with many channels; at times, a stream or two which joined the flow backed down on themselves, creating elegant oxbow lakes. At Gelling, the first village on the Indian side, the turbulent Tsangpo churns its way through a narrow valley after a cascading drop from Tibet. Here for the first time the Tsangpo changes its name and is known as the Siang or Dibang for the next 200 kilometers before it enters Assam. At a place called Kobo, the Lohit meets the Dibang, Noa Dihing, Tengapani and Siang and develops the immense power that is mirrored in the Brahmaputra in full flow.
Part Two comprising of nine chapters focuses on Assam. After the earthquake of 1950, water ‘blockades’ happened not just on the Siang but also on several other rivers flowing into the Assam Valley and as a result the river changed its course, lifted the riverbed, flattened the banks and land, and braided it in many places far more than ever before. As a result, many towns like Rohmoria, Sadiya simply vanished after being embraced by flood waters, and places like Barpeta, Goalpara and Dhubri underwent demographic changes.
In separate chapters we learn about the tea gardens of Assam, the influence of Srimanta Sankaradeva and his satras[1], about the great river island Majuli, the singer Bhupen Hazarika, the presence of dolphins in the Brahmaputra, the thousands of islands known as the chars and saporis, which are permanent in their impermanence, where the Muslim residents are known as Miyas, the large number of migrants that inhabit the place, the sand bars and sandbanks that dot the riverscape from Upper Assam and how the collection of sand and its sale and distribution has changed the lives of many along the river to the point where it enters Bangladesh. He also gives us details about the ferry system, the boat clinics on the river that represent both a dream and a reality, as annually, nearly three lakh people are treated in these mobile structures.
The third part of the narrative obviously ends with four chapters on Bangladesh. We are told how to move from a slow riverine economy to a bustling one is quite challenging. This section includes fear of being hunted by pirates on an open sea, the faith in the navigators, ‘drivers’, pilots and other crew members who can read the mind of the river, the trip to the confluence of the Ganga and the Brahmaputra along with a Bangladeshi singer called Maqsoodul Haque or Mac. Both these rivers have different names in Bangladesh. The Ganga is the Padma while the Brahmaputra is the Jamuna. We are told about the story of the island known to Indians as New Moore Island and to the Bangladeshis as Sandwip island that appeared and disappeared, causing a diplomatic furore. The Brahmaputra’s role in shaping the destiny of low-lying Bangladesh is well-established and we are told of the connectedness of the people to the river, on either side of the human-made border. There are many places where the turbulent river refuses to accept human markers and controls and the border just remains an imaginary line snaking across shifting sands.
After reading about the multifarious experiences of Hazarika, it is needless to state that this book of non-fiction mesmerizes the readers to such a great extent that one hankers for more information. It is best to conclude the review by quoting from the poetic way Hazarika himself speaks at the end of the book about the interconnectedness that lies even in a grain of sand:
“I have traversed the river, shared my secrets with it and laid my fears and troubles to rest there. It too has spoken to me and has been kind and generous, in the midst of its vastness and power, to someone who could not swim.
“River Traveller is deeply personal and piloted by my life and learnings on the river, failings, shortcomings, understanding. It’s about shared stories, loves gained and lost, inspiration and sadness. Autobiographical in parts, it navigates history and crosses borders.
“Many travels beckon, for the river still calls.“
From extremism to environmental responsibility, politics to ethnography, River Traveller touches on a multitude of subjects, and is an enduring study of human life and natural history. It is a rich and memorable portrait of one of the mightiest rivers on our planet. The colour photographs that are included in the middle of the narrative add extra charm to the narration. A volume worth possessing and reading and rereading repeatedly.
[1] Specialised Vaishnavi monasteries in Assam serving as socio-religious, cultural and educational centres since the fifteenth century.
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Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Nazrul’s Ashlo Jokhon Phuler Phalgun(When Flowers Bloom Spring) has been translated from Bengali to English by Professor Fakrul Alam
From Public Domain
When flowers bloom spring, Gulbagh’s roses would rather leave. On such a day though, why would one want to leave a friend behind? Even before daybreak, a forlorn bulbul bird cried out in the flower garden, Before their buds could bloom, flowers shed in the chilly breeze. This is how it always was in old flower gardens! Men want fresh flowers, But the cruel gardener keeps plucking away from the garden that is life! The soil is where all golden body parts lie hidden, covered by dust, Emperors and newly married brides too—everyone in the prime of life. The world’s colourful blossoms may shed well before dusk descends So sorry a sight it is to see souls leaving still young bodies to survive! Tread thoughtfully dear wayfarer, for you’ll be treading on dead flowers As the earth’s pathways are always strewn with dust blowing from graveyards. It’s time for you, Hafiz, to give up all worldly desire and attractions, Time to leave home for a spouse in a faraway world calling out to you!
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
Imagine a woman bound by shackles – not of iron, but of her own people, her country, her religion, and above all, by men. This is not just a metaphor; it is the reality that moulded Taslima Nasrin’s life and journey as a writer. Her first English poetry collection, Burning Roses in My Garden (translated and edited by Jesse Waters), gathers 103 poems that bear the scars of exile and the defiance of survival.
Nasrin, hounded by fatwas and banned for her unflinching criticism of patriarchy and religious dogma in Bangladesh, writes from the margins yet refuses to be silenced. The anthology commences with early meditations on passion and desire, seen in poems like ‘A Bouquet of Scarlet Envy’ and ‘On Love’, toward darker elegies like ‘The Cycle of Loneliness’, ‘Walking through This Life and into Death’, and ‘Am I Not to Have a Country of My Own?’ that grapple with loneliness, mortality, and the burden of political banishment. These poems become the very tools with which she breaks the restraints, not to escape them, but to forge them into weapons of truth.
The collection opens with poems like ‘On Love’, which delve into romantic love and intimacy as the poet tenderly explores physical connection through sensory detail. In the piece ‘The Last Kiss’, the poet reminisces about a lover’s touch that transcends geographical boundaries. “That kiss that brought an entire world within her grasp, /…a rush of youth, /His kiss was becoming more than him,” compares her memories to permanent imprints. These early poems in the collection reveal a different register – more vulnerable, more willing to dwell in private emotions rather than public testimony. It creates a counterpoint to the later poems of exile and loss, suggesting what was left behind when she was forced to choose between fragile love and unwavering candour.
Through images of loss and displacement, which work both as wound and testimony, the poet confronts her banishment with stark honesty: “To me, my country is now a crematorium. /A lonely dog stands and whines all night, a few/Pyre-makers lie here and there, drunk to the bone.” In her traversal of exile, she transforms personal anguish into universal questions of belonging and continues to write from a place of loss. Her voice carries the weight of those who cannot speak, turning poetry into both elegy and resistance.
Feminist consciousness also flows through Nasrin’s verses with unflinching directness. In ‘Another Life’, she exposes the grinding reality of women’s domestic servitude through devastating metaphor: “Women spend half of their lives picking stones from rice. /Stones pile up in their hearts.” The image suggests not only physical drudgery but emotional calcification – the heart itself becoming a repository of unspoken grievances. Her feminist vision extends beyond individual suffering to collective oppression, revealing how patriarchal structures trap women in cycles of invisible labour.
The poet’s political views turn philosophical, confronting mortality while examining the cost of speaking truth to power through the lens of displacement and exile. This progression from the collection’s early love poems to these darker meditations reflect not only her growing maturing but also usher in a socio-political awakening – the recognition that private desire cannot exist separately from public consequence.
Nasrin doesn’t shy away from contemporary political realities; instead, she shows how religious fundamentalism and state censorship became suffocating forces that compress individual expression. She highlights the way authoritarian systems silence dissent through both legal mechanisms and social ostracism. In ‘Am I Not to Have a Country of My Own?’, she directly questions the price of dissent and the meaning of citizenship when one’s own nation rejects its truth-tellers. In contrast, particular tender pieces like ‘Miserable Ma’ highlight the endurance of personal relationships despite geographical separation within the collection’s otherwise relentless critique.
This collection’s strength lies in its refusal to separate the personal from the global. An American poet and professor, Waters preserves Nasrin’s directness in her translation while maintaining the emotional intensity that makes her work so compelling. These poems serve as both autobiography and historical document, charting one woman’s journey from intimate expression to public testimony. Her masterful use of juxtaposition, placing tender domestic moments against brutal political realities, creates a poetic tension that amplifies both spheres of experience.
Ultimately, Burning Roses in My Garden becomes a new mythology of endurance, not the tidy myth that comforts, but a foul-weather myth that survives storms. In the current climate, Nasrin’s poetry resonates with startling immediacy – mass rallies, hardline backlashes, midnight vigils, and student protests – the streets themselves find their voice through her verses. As if to remind us what her poetry truly stands for, the last poem of the collection bears the words: “I don’t write poetry, I write life on paper. /I don’t write poems; the wind that hits my body/When I stand on the top of a hill? I pen it down.” In closing lines like “when all game ends… I’ll sit down to write about love,” Nasrin promises that love’s survival against cruelty becomes an article of faith. The world of the poet and that of the reader blur here, and in that blurring, a strange comfort arrives, a lesson that even in a country’s crematorium, the rose of hope can burn and perfume the air.
Anindita Basak, a student at the University of Calcutta, is an avid enthusiast of literature and philosophy. Her published works include poetry, prose, and reviews in reputed magazines.
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Showkat Ali (1936 – 2018) was a renowned Bangladeshi novelist, short story writer and journalist whose work explored history, class and identity in Bengali society. In 1989, he published a novel called Narai (translated from Bengali as The Struggle) which is set in a remote village in the Dinajpur region of undivided Bengal during the mid-1940s.
The novel is broadly divided into three sections. In the first section entitled ‘A Ploughing Household,’ the author gives us detailed description of an agrarian society where poor Muslim farmers as well as some other lower classes of untouchable Hindus eked out their living primarily through farming as well as other low-paying jobs. The feudal setup of the society is complete with threatening and wily landlords (often Hindus) who are always on the lookout for cheating the sharecroppers of their legitimate dues.
The story begins with a poor farmer called Ahedali who, unable to procure a second bullock to till his field, bore one side of the yoke himself, and soon fell ill and succumbed to death leaving his young wife Phulmoti and a ten-year-old son Abedali behind. The real problem for this widow begins when she is left alone to fend for herself along with a few ducks, chickens and goats. Her fragile world is shattered. People in the village start advising her to get married once again and she gradually finds it very difficult to survive from the ogling eyes and salacious offers from different men in the community. Her son can offer little defense against the men now circling her—neighbours, relatives, even the local cleric—drawn by desire and the lure of her small property. Malek, a kindly bookseller at the local market, too, proves not to be what he seems. It is Malek’s hired hand, Qutubali, who finds himself drawn into her struggles, standing by her in ways that others do not.
The second section of the novel ‘Home and Family’ describes in detail how Qutubali, the simple-minded outsider whose unexpected kindness and fierce loyalty turns into Phulmoti’s unlikely ally. Apparently, he was a senseless and stupid man who provided her benefaction again and again. Much younger to her, he was totally ignorant of standard man-woman relationships and though he often stayed back at Phulmoti’s house, he didn’t express any sort of physical desire for the young widow. He tended to the animals, helped in sowing seeds and worked relentlessly to bring some comfort and peace in the household.
This entire section gives us details of how they come close to each other. Finding no other alternative to live a decent and harmonious life, they go to a mosque where a saint called Darbesh Chacha, who had brought up the orphan Qutubali earlier, gets them married in order that both can live their lives peacefully hereafter. Since then, things gradually changed. If a young widow found a husband, or brought home a ‘ghor jamai’[1], that was definitely news, especially if the man in question was from another village. But people gradually accepted it. Of course, the widow’s suitors fumed with resentment, though even that fire cooled eventually. Qutubali also gradually started learning the tricks of the trade – he had their own land and along with the yield of the sharecropped land, he knew he could become a full-fledged farmer soon. He was sure the days of his misfortune were over. At the end of this section, when Phulmoti announces to the simple-minded Qutubali that she was pregnant, the reader feels that the rest of the story would follow suit in domestic harmony and bliss. The family had a happy air about them. But that was not to be.
The third section of the novel aptly titled ‘We Must Fight!’ begins amid the upheavals of a precarious feudal order and the stirrings of a nation on the verge of independence. Qutubali did not have the time to stay at home. He was never clear about where he went and what he did. When asked, he replied in monosyllables. He started attending sermons. The headmaster of the village school started indoctrinating him and the village folk with the idea of swadeshi.
The politics of the Congress and the Muslim League started to hover on the margins of village life, far removed from their daily battles. But when the tebhaga[2]struggle broke out in Bengal—with sharecroppers demanding two-thirds of the harvest from landlords as their rightful due—Phulmoti and Qutubali stand to lose what little of their lives they had pieced back together.
By that time, she no longer saw Qutubali as a callow youth. He had become a regular, responsible, labouring man but his gradual involvement in the politics could not be avoided. He got involved in the activities of the peasants’ union. The novel remains open-ended with Phulmoti keeping on waiting for her husband to come back from wherever he was even after a decade is over.
Before concluding, a note must be added about the excellent quality of translation. Both V. Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir have done a wonderful job in translating this social realist novel from one of the most celebrated novelists of Bangladesh for the benefit of a wider audience to remember a very detailed study of rural Bengal from both social and political angles from the 1940s — a very significant time when amidst the prevailing feudal order of the agrarian society in rural Bengal, the stirrings of a nation on the verge of independence as well as outside forces were gradually creeping in.
[1] In the usual Bengali tradition, a wife moves on to live in her husband’s house after marriage. The situation is reverse when the married man comes to live in his wife’s or in-law’s house and is then called a ‘ghor jamai.’
[2] The Tebhaga movement was significant peasant agitation, initiated in Bengal in the late 1940s by the All India Kisan Sabha of peasant front of the Communist Party of India. It aimed to reduce the share of crops that tenants had to give to landlords.
