While mankind started out perhaps speaking the same language in the heart of Africa, now there are more than 7, 100 languages in the world. The differences in languages, cultures and rituals could be fanned as unsurmountable divides for political needs. However, translators build bridges with cultural and linguistic comprehension to create an overarching rainbow that shimmers with the colours of shared emotions. We celebrate International Translation Day with a discussion with five translators from South Asia on how they create links not just across vernaculars, but across cultures, time and space. We also have gathered together the colours of 28 languages and cultures and some unique discussions about books that have been translated recently.
Bridging Cultures across Time and Space: An exclusive discussion with Aruna Chakravarti, Radha Chakravarty, Somdatta Mandal, Fakrul Alam and Fazal Baloch. Click hereto read.
We are the World: Celebrating writers and translators who have connected us with these ideas across boundaries of time and place, we bring to you translated writings in English from twenty eightlanguages. Clickhereto read.
Professor Fakrul Alam discusses his new book of Tagore translations, Gitabitan: Selected Song-Lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore. Click here to read.
Saint Jerome (the patron saint of translators) by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448-1494). The International Translation Day is celebrated on the the feast day of St Jerome, 30th September each year. From Public Domain
Art by Salvador Dali(1904-1989) From Public Domain
BEHIND BARS
I write about what I see…
If you don’t want me to see it Close the TV channels down
I write about what I see…
If you don’t want me to scroll up and down Close the internet down
I write about what I hear…
If you don’t want me to listen Put all the people behind bars
Though I fear, the truth May slip through the cracks
COME BACK THE COUNTRY I LOVE
Come back the country I love Come back and put Food on my table
Come back and bring me Peace and Love
No one is excluded and I belong here again
Not trembling over words Or the bang at the door
It is you who don’t belong here anymore
Come back Come back the country I love
THIS IS HAPPENING
This is not happening This you can’t see The prison cells are filling Whilst you digest the lies on TV
This is not happening This you can’t see
You play deaf dumb and blind Until you see
This is happening This you can see Your brother your mother your father Taken away Live on TV
CHEERING YOUR GENOCIDE
Every time I let the tap run, I feel guilty Every time I fill my belly, I turn away from the screen Every time the key clicks to my door, I can open and walk around But you and yours are raised to the ground, No guilt from those who cheer on your genocide.
DEAD SOUL
There is no limit Because babies are still born And each by being alive is dead
The last straw a family of nine wiped off this earth
But there are fields and fields of such dead souls.
SOMEONE IS KILLED
Everyday someone is Killed on your street. . . No one says or does anything to help . . .
It’s not your street. . . But everyday someone is killed on a Gaza Street A human being just like you and me.
David R Mellor is from Liverpool, England. He spent his late teens homeless on Merseyside. He is currently writing and performing in Turkey. His work has been featured by the BBC and the Tate, and his published collections of poetry are What a Catch (2012, Some Body (2014), Express Nothing (2019) and So This Is It (2020). His collection of stories An Englishman in Turkey (Turkiye’De Bir Ingililiz) has recently been published .
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Aparna Vats shares a narrative around female infanticide centring her story around a BBC interview and an interview with the journalist who unfolded the narrtive. Click here to read.
Dolly Narang recounts how she started a gallery more than four decades ago and talks of her encounter with world renowned artist, MF Husain. Click hereto read.
Shabnam (1960) by Syed Mujtaba Ali is a love story that is set in the third decade of the 20th century. ‘Shabnam’ in Persian means a ‘dewdrop’. The polyglot scholar Mujtaba Ali’s love story becomes a vehicle for articulating the profundities of life which extends beyond the plot and the telling just like that of his teacher, Rabindranath Tagore. To quote the words of another reviewer: “His novel can be compared to a dewdrop which assumes rainbow hues during sunrise as it encompasses not only the passionate cross-cultural romance of Shabnam and the young Bengali lecturer, Majnun, but also shades of humanity, love, compassion set against the uncertainties generated by ruthless political upheavals.” Sweeping in scope, set against the backdrop of the Afghan Civil War (1928-29) and beyond, the novel narrates an epic love story. That this has recently been translated by a former BBC editor stationed in Afghanistan, Nazes Afroz, and published for a wider readership, emphasises its relevance in the current context, where regressive curtailment of human rights and liberties are evident on a daily basis.
Shabnam is a young, upper class and educated Afghan woman, fluent in French and Persian. As we learn in the course of the narrative, she is daring and apparently fearless. She is proud of her Turkish heritage as she invokes it while introducing herself: “You know I’m a Turkish woman. Even Badshah Amanullah has Turkish blood. Amanullah’s father, the martyred Habibullah, realised how much power a Turkish woman—his wife, Amanullah’s mother—held. She checkmated him with her tricks. Amanullah wasn’t even supposed to be the king, but he became one because of his mother.” Given the current context, with its attack on womens’ freedom, it is perhaps difficult to imagine that a woman like Shabnam or anyone with a similar persona or voice could be found at all. She seems at times to inhabit the rarefied realms of her author’s imagination, beyond the earthly realm.
Shabnam’s knowledge of history and the world is extensive. She actively chooses and decides about her surroundings and her own life, which is more than what many women can do in today’s Afghanistan. Characters like Shabnam are also the result of the varied travels of the author Mujitaba Ali, who traveled and taught in five countries. On the power wielded by women, Shabnam offers a rejoinder to her lover/narrator: “In your own country, did Noor Jahan not control Jahangir? Mumtaz—so many others. How much knowledge do people have of the power of Turkish women inside a harem?”
The novel has a tripartite structure. In the first part, is the dramatic meeting of the narrator, Majnun, with the striking and unconventional Shabnam at a ball given by Amanullah Khan, the sovereign of Afghanistan from 1919 to 1929. The novel’s narrative is dialogic in nature and the introduction and subsequent exchanges of the protagonists are peppered with wit and poetry. The first part concludes with the two of them acknowledging their love for each other.
In the second part of this novel,we witness more developments in their relationship. Shabnam assumes an agential role and makes a decision to marry Majnun secretly with only their attendants looking on. And then later, this decision receives a legitimate sanction since a wedding is organised for them by her father, who does not know they are already married. Despite the xenophobic approach in those times of many Afghans (and other South Asian communities) against marrying their daughters to foreigners, her family decides to marry Shabnam to Majnun as they wanted her out of conflict-ridden Afghanistan and in a safer zone. Her father hopes she will go off to India with her husband. This seems unexpectedly progressive in the Afghanistan of almost a century ago. But instead, in the third part, she is abducted by the marauding hordes while her beloved attempts to organise their return from Afghanistan.
The last part continues with Majnun’s quest for his beloved. His endeavour leads him to travel, hallucinate and drives him almost insane, reminiscent of the Majnun of Laila-Majnun fame, a doomed union that resonates in and forms a motif in the narrator/lover’s repeated conversations with Shabnam. At the end of the novel, Majnun ascends the physical realm of love. He says: “Now after losing all my senses, I turn into a single being free of all impurities. This being is beyond all senses—yet all the senses converge there… There is Shabnam, there is Shabnam, there is Shabnam.”
The novel concludes with the realisation that “there is no end” (tamam na shud). This feeling seems to echo the idea of “na hanyate hanyamane sarire”(“It does not die”) in Sanskrit signifying that love is eternal, even beyond the material realm. Both the luminosity and fragility of love is represented in the novel.
Mujtaba Ali’s wide and varied experience is in evidence at several points in the novel, as is his wit and satiric sense, some of which filters through to his created characters. This can be experienced in the dialogues and descriptions even in its translated form. In order to conceal her identity from the marching and rustic hordes, Shabnam comes to visit her beloved in a burqa. She argues that it is not a symbol of oppression but a self-chosen disguise: “Because I can go about in it without any trouble. The ignorant Europeans think it was an imposition by men to keep women hidden. But it was an invention by women—for their own benefit. I sometimes wear it as the men in this land still haven’t learned how to look at women. How much can I hide behind the net in the hat?”
A valuable addition to the rich corpus of travel writing in Bangla Literature, the book remained unknown to the world outside Bengal despite its excellence as there were no translations. In 2015, Afroz had translated and published this book as In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan. It was subsequently shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award. That translations can provide a bridge across cultures is eminently clear from this work, which gives us a tantalising glimpse of a culture beyond our own and encourages us, the readers, to recognise that true love transcends borders or boundaries and that the language of true love is the same everywhere.
The novel’s title, Shabnam, is a natural choice, as the intelligent, courageous and beautiful Shabnam is the emotional centre of the novel. To describe her ineffable charm, we could draw upon Mujtaba’s teacher’s words, in Gitanjali (Song Offerings by Tagore):
She who ever had remained in the depth of my being, in the twilight of gleams and of glimpses…
… Words have wooed yet failed to win her; persuasion has stretched to her its eager arms in vain.
Majnun, the narrator lover is left, in Tagore’s words: “gazing on the faraway gloom of the sky, and my heart wanders wailing with the restless wind.” Romance by its very nature, is fleeting and transient and romantic love in its literary avatars/depictions acquires a bitter-sweetness when its founded on loss and longing. So it is with Shabnam.
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Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is an Associate 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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Based on an interview with the Amitabh Prashar, the maker of a BBC documentary on female infanticide, Aparna Vats shares a spine-chilling narrative about crimes that were accepted in the past but are now under reform.
Aparna Vats
The Female Infanticide Protection Act was enacted in India 1870, 154 years ago. However, female infanticides continued to haunt some areas of Bihar well into 1990s. The number given out by a government of India report for 2019 is 36 in the whole year, with none reported in Bihar. A journalist called Amitabh Prashar came out with a new BBC documentary on this issue in 2024 after investigations carried out over thirty years in Bihar, called The Midwife’s Confession. Prashar, wrote in a BBC article of a 1995 report: “If the report’s estimates are accurate, more than 1,000 baby girls were being murdered every year in one district, by just 35 midwives. According to the report, Bihar at the time had more than half a million midwives. And infanticide was not limited to Bihar.”
Basing his coverage on the confession by dais or midwives, this film unveils the terrifying practise of female infanticide in Bihar. The documentary begins by screening the confession video of Dharmi Devi who stoically confesses to how many children she and her accomplice had killed and buried in the forest.
Prashar started his investigations when he read of a case of female infanticide near his village in Purnia, Kathiaar district. In the documentary, he explained how a news clip that came out in the Hindustan Times of Purnia, a village in Bihar, motivated him. It was a report of a father choking his infant daughter to death and was recorded as the first case of infanticide in the area. He had visited Bihar for the sake of the story as the father had been arrested and the mother was under societal pressure to withdraw the case. Through his interactions with a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) working in the area and the midwives in 1995-96, he realised that the occurrence was not an isolated case. Unmarried and a novice in this field, Parashar said he took the risk to return to Delhi and rent a camera at Rs 4500 per day to start his exploration.
He admitted getting the midwives them confess was a major struggle but an understanding of the interviewee’s personal lives helped him understand their society and circumstances better. Certain key findings were that the infants were killed by the midwives, as the families considered the girl-child a financial liability, especially for arranging dowries. The midwives were themselves struggling to arrange dowries for their own daughters.
In the documentary, Hakiya, a midwife, was the first to confess how post birth, the men of the family used to threaten the midwives with sticks and offer money to them to kill the child as the cost of care, that was primarily dowry (‘Tilak-Pratha’) for them, weighed heavier than the barbarism of this sin. Filing a police report was out of the question. The repetition of this crime had forced these women to accept this carnage. Siro Devi, a midwive who Prashar had been in touch with from 1996, confessed: “Dekhiye sir, aurat ke haath mein marna, aurat ke haath mein jeewan dena (Sir, it is in the hands of women to kill or to give birth).”
Prashar set out to uncover more. He interviewed Anila Kumari, the owner of an NGO who worked with these midwives. Bihar suffered a state of economic crisis in the 1990s when the per capita income was growing at a mere 0.12%. The sheer state of economic desolation and social oppression coerced these women to kill more than 1000 girls in a year in Kathiaar alone, claimed Prashar.
Prashar explained this story is not exhaustive in its list of injustices. Often the sole earners post-marriage, these midwives were recruited sometimes at the young age of ten. It was a customary practice passed on from generation to generation. Their remuneration was conditional to the happiness felt by the families when the child was born which was estimated as per the sex. Unsurprisingly, a girl-child rendered lesser payment.
Kumari started working with the midwives to stop the practice of female infanticide. Families trusted midwives more than doctors. The rescued children were brought to the NGO in life-threatening states and were either registered for adoption or raised by them. One of the adopted girls called Monica was put in focus in the documentary.
Prashar said in the interview that the midwives were from the backward castes and extremely poor. A deeper analysis of the inter-community relations reveal that they were themselves victimised. They also felt guilty for their actions. Rani, a midwife, who was not featured in the documentary due to time related constraints, was such a person. She was herself struggling to get her daughters married while languishing in the guilt of having killed other’s daughters. Some of the midwives were arrested. Parashar said he visited Bihar a few days prior to the release of the arrested midwives to ensure that they did not get into legal hurdles or come under societal pressure.
Mr. Parashar confessed he was but a commoner for the people and visited Purnia at least twice a year for reasons that were unrelated to the documentary. After some initial interactions, the villagers lost interest in his activities and for a documentarian, that was the best scenario. “When characters start to ignore, that is the best thing a director can think of,” he said. He self-funded his project in which shots stretched 200 hours.
The documentary starts with joggers rescuing an abandoned girl child. And then, it plunges exploring darker aspects of this attitude that sees the girl child as a burden leading not only to abandonments but also to female infanticides brought to light by the midwives. The film concludes with a heartwarming interview with the adoptive parents of the girl child rescued by the joggers and their happy eight-month-old ward.
Reference:
Aparna Vats is a student from Bangalore.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely that of the author and not of Borderless Journal.
1971 began and ended on a note of hope but in the course of the year we went through the whole gamut of human emotions: love for our motherland and hate for its enemies; desire for freedom and abhorrence at those who had curtailed our right to be ourselves; feelings such as anxiety, fear, even terror caused by the knowledge that at any moment we might be abducted and murdered; and excitement and elation at the thought that relief could not be far away. 1971 was the year when for months we lived from day to day, totally insecure in a Dhaka which had become like a city of the dead; it was also the year when we discovered what it meant to hope against hope. 1971, in short, was a cataclysmal year; for every Bengali it was the year of living dangerously.
The year must have begun innocuously enough; at this point in time, I have simply no recollection what I did or how I felt in January and February of that year. But certainly, hope must have been in the air; after Sheikh Sahib’s massive election victory all of us must have been feeling confident and secure in the knowledge that we were finally about to master our destiny. For me—temperamentally apolitical and not yet out of my teens at the beginning of that year—the first sign that something was seriously wrong came one day while we were watching a test match in Dhaka Stadium on the first of March. Suddenly, the game was interrupted and then abandoned as news came about Yahya Khan’s decision to not call a meeting of the Pakistani National Assembly. Pandemonium ruled for a while in the field, but soon everyone left, muttering that this cannot be, indignant that the army chief could not go against the resounding mandate given to the Awami League to change the course of Pakistani history.
And then for a while: hartals[1], demonstrations, slogans, meetings, public displays of discontent, and the will to oppose and resist on one side and display of the carrot as well as the stick on the other. In fact, the month of March showed a whole nation in a state of ferment, ready to go to any length against a brutal but posturing force.
A first climax was Sheikh Saheb’s[2] speech of March 7. Hearing it now, I cannot but think: is it as stirring for people of this generation as it was for ours? Contemplated in retrospective, the speech seems to be the quintessence of the Bengali spirit in 1971: inspired, defiant, pulsating, and resolute. It considers the dangers ahead but is emphatic about the need to put up resistance and counter whatever measures were taken to contain us.
The real climax, of course, came on the night of March 25. That night I was in Sylhet, visiting my sister and her husband, along with my father and two other sisters. In Sylhet that night we could have no idea that Dhaka had become the scene of carnage or that our family, friends, and acquaintances were in the greatest of danger. It was only next morning, waking up to discover that Sylhet town was under curfew, and listening to Indian radio and the BBC, that we began to have an inkling of how devastated Dhaka had become in a night and in how much jeopardy our loved ones were.
Throughout the next week we alternated between a feeling of joy at the knowledge that Bengalis were fighting back and a foreboding that a grievous wound had been inflicted on us. We were elated by Major Zia’s declaration on the radio about independence and the reports of resistance everywhere; we were depressed by the news items transmitted in the air waves about Dhaka as a city that had been flattened by heavy weapons and was still burning. Since, our house was close to Farmgate, we were full of anxiety: had my mother and the sister we had left behind survived the mass slaughter of Dhakaites that was being narrated everywhere except on Radio Pakistan?
After a few days my father decided that he had had enough of waiting and uncertainty; he and I would head for Dhaka and determine for ourselves the fate of my mother and sister. My brother-in-law and three other sisters would remain in what seemed the relative safety of Sylhet. Little did we realise as we left them on a day in early April the hardship and suffering they would go through in the next few months, fleeing from tea garden to tea garden and even to the safety of Tripura[3] to escape the pillaging Pakistani army. Only after we were reunited with them in Dhaka in July did we get to know of their travails as they attempted to evade the marauding forces.
The trip to Dhaka was a tense and an unforgettable one. A few images are etched in my memory vividly: driving through the tea gardens, we saw tea garden workers with bows and arrows, determination wrought on their faces. In Brahmanbaria, we heard gripping stories of the confrontations that had taken place in Comilla and saw the intense preparations being taken in the town itself to resist the Pakistani onslaught. But the most vivid memory of the journey are the scenes of mass exodus we witnessed as we neared Dhaka: men, women, and children on foot or on rickshaws, looking harrowed, wearily fleeing to village homes from the city to escape genocide. Not a few of the people we met told us not to be so foolhardy as to return to Dhaka.
Thankfully, we managed to reach our Indira Road home without facing any unpleasant situations and found that my mother and sister were safe. But there were troop movements all the time and stories of mass arrests of young men during curfew. The elders of my family decided that I would be safer in my uncle’s house in Dhanmondi than in a house in the Farmgate area.
In the few weeks that I stayed in Dhanmondi I managed to get in touch with some of my friends. The news they told me was horrifying: Dr. Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, my tutorial teacher, and the man who first made me feel that I had the sensitivity to be a student of Shakespeare, and who went beyond his role as a tutor to talk to me about his passion for radical humanism, as well as Mr. Rashidul Hasan, who taught us Blake and was as humble and meek as some of the denizens of The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, had been brutally murdered. More horror stories: one of my school friends, Arun Chowdhury, and his father, could no longer be traced after they had been abducted from Ranada Prasad Saha’s Narayanganj home along with the millionaire philanthropist; one of my uncle’s in-laws, a Rajshahi University professor, had also disappeared after being picked up by the army; other people that we knew had been shot at or humiliated or hurt. A friend who had joined her family in Bogra had witnessed their house being burned and the family had barely managed to escape with their lives. The whole Bengali nation appeared to be bleeding and bruised.
Nevertheless, no one felt defeated and hope still flickered as a candle newly lit and solidly fixed will even in the darkest night. For one thing, there were the daily broadcasts from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra[4]containing news about Mujibnagar and organised resistance all over the country. Then there was the knowledge that some friends had crossed the border and were receiving training so that they could be inducted into the Mukti Bahini[5]. Everywhere one could view the resentment against the Pakistani army being concentrated to the point when it would rebound upon them.
Eventually, my parents decided that we would take a house in a part of the city which was relatively free from regular army patrolling and I rejoined them in a Central Road flat. But, really, no part of the city was completely safe. One night, to take just one example, the boys of the neighbouring family climbed the wall separating our two houses because the army had raided the house next door and stayed with us till next morning. I still remember how tense we were that night and nervous and indignant.
Gradually, we learned to sleep better and not hear the stray shots that were fired into the night by who knows whom. Inevitably, we adapted to a life lived mostly indoors, listening to the radio or the tape recorder all day, or reading, or playing cards. But we had to be very careful about everything that we did: the radio had to be toned down, books with insidious sounding titles not read, and visit to and from friends of our age restricted. Fear of army raids constricted us and forced us to make life a diminished thing. Only my father would go out regularly to spend the day in office or shopping; his greying hair gave him a kind of limited freedom that we could not hope to have.
However, consolations for lives lived under such strained circumstances were not impossible to seek even in those days when we would rarely venture into natural light. By June, bombs which were beginning to explode at regular intervals all over the city announced loudly to us that the Bengali capacity to resist, far from being diminished, had transformed itself in spectacular fashion. My father told us one day that he was one of many people who had been donating money for freedom fighters who were now infiltrating into the city in large numbers. In July and August, the Mukti Bahini activity in Dhaka intensified and I even met a few of them. Also, every once in a while, a close friend suddenly disappeared from Dhaka and those of us who still remained in the city still unsure of what we should do talked about his decision to join the freedom struggle and his daring with a mixture of admiration and envy.
Of course, we knew that the life of a freedom fighter was far from a glamorous one, and full of risks. Exactly how hazardous their life could be was driven home to us when in late August a number of them were caught and murdered. Because we knew a few of these valiant fighters personally or by name, for some time, indeed for perhaps the only time that year, we felt depressed and shaken. But another few weeks and many amongst us roused ourselves and felt hopeful again. True, there had been a setback and some of the muktis[6]who had become legendary in a short time because of their exploits had been killed or imprisoned, but September showed that the spirit of resistance was very much alive.
Explosions could once again be heard in and around Dhaka and were signs to us of the vigour and irrepressible nature of our freedom fighters. By October, Swadhin Bangla[7]Radio broadcasts regularly reassured us that there were advances being made on the diplomatic front by our government-in-exile and that on the battlefield our reconstituted Bangladesh army were beginning to engage the Pakistani forces and defeat and demoralise them.
By early November, Nasim Mohsin, my best friend at that time, decided that it was time for him to join the freedom fighters and that the moment for a decisive assault on the Pakistani army was near. I was with him when he contacted some local muktis about crossing over to training camps in Tripura. They told him that the borders were already the site of daily skirmishes and that he should postpone the journey for a while till they could confirm a safe crossing. Desperate to become part of the freedom struggle, Nasim ignored their advice and our pleas to be patient and left us, never to be seen again. Much later, we were to discover that he had been captured by collaborators of the Pakistani army in a village in the Comilla border. They then handed him over to the local Pakistani troops who summarily shot him.
Late November and our excitement grew: the Bangladesh army was no longer content with skirmishes and raids and was now attacking the Pakistanis frontally. By late November war looked inevitable as desperate Pakistani tactics drew India into the campaign. Finally, on the night of December 3, the Dhaka night sky was spectacularly lit by tracer bullets and then invaded by Indian bombers targeting military installations. The next day all of us were on roof-tops watching dog-fights and cheering Indian jets attacking the airport and the cantonment, oblivious to the danger from shrapnel and debris from shattered planes.
Over the next two weeks, our joy grew by the hour, for every Swadhin Bangla Radio broadcast or Indian radio bulletin informed us of Pakistani reverses and detailed advances made by the liberation forces. In our enthusiasm we did not realise that we were going through dangerous times in the capital city as the Pakistani army and its collaborators, their backs against the wall, were becoming more and more vicious. It was only later that we discovered that the brother of a friend who had joined the freedom fighters had been picked up by the Pakistani army during this time and would disappear from our sights forever. And as the liberation forces closed in on Dhaka, rumours spread of youths and prominent people being abducted. Undoubtedly, the scariest memory I have from this period is of a Pakistani plane droning one night, which we knew had dropped bombs on an orphanage the previous night in a bid to discredit the Indian Air Force. It was a moment when we felt totally vulnerable and at the mercy of forces whose reason had become warped to the extent that they could indulge in mass destruction of innocents merely to smear India in the eyes of the world.
Nothing the vicious Pakistani military/propaganda machine could do, however, could thwart the logic of history and prevent liberation, and by December 15 we were hearing the booming of artillery in and around Dhaka. On December 16, we headed for the Ramna Race Course area because we heard that a surrender ceremony was scheduled there in the afternoon.
But we could only go as far as the Hotel InterContinental, where we got caught in a cross-fire. A friend who was with me got slightly hurt as a splinter from a bullet pierced his leg. We took him to his house and then scattered, telling ourselves that we had not survived nine months of occupation only to get killed at the moment of liberation. But by evening we were out in the streets celebrating with muktis, among whom I could see at least one close friend, firing his Sten gun into the air. The year of living dangerously was ending, and the time for unmitigated hope had finally come to stay with us, at least for a while!
Badshah Amanullah was surely off his rocker. Or else why would he hold a ball-dance in an ultra-conservative country like Afghanistan? On the occasion of Independence Day, Afghanistan’s first ball-dance would be held.
We, the foreigners, were not that bothered. But there was a buzz of restlessness among the mullahs and their followers—the water carriers, tailors, grocers, and the servants. My servant, Abdur Rahman, while serving the morning tea, muttered, ‘Nothing is left of religious decency.’
I did not pay much heed to Abdur Rahman. I was no messiah like Krishna. The task of saving ‘religious decency’ had not been bestowed upon me.
‘Those hulking men will prance around the dance floor holding on to shameless women.’
I asked, ‘Where? In films?’
After that there was no stopping Abdur Rahman. The ancient Roman wild orgies would have sounded like child’s play compared to the juicy imageries of the upcoming dance event that he described. Finally, he concluded, ‘Then they switch off the lights at midnight. I don’t know what happens after that.’
I said, ‘What’s that to you, you mindless babbler?’
Abdur Rahman went mum. Whenever I called him a blathering prattler, he understood that his master was in a bad mood. I would use the Bengali slang word for it and being a seasoned man, though Abdur Rahman did not know the language, he would be able to read my mood.
I was out in the mild evening. Electric lamps lit up the bushes of Pagman. The tarmacked road was spotlessly clean. I was meandering absentmindedly, thinking it was the month of Bhadra and Sri Krishna’s birthday had been celebrated the previous day. My birthday too, according to Ma. It must be raining heavily in Sylhet, my home. Ma was possibly sitting in the north veranda. Her adoptive daughter Champa was massaging her feet and asking her, ‘When will young brother come home?’
The monsoon season is the most difficult one for me in this foreign land. There is no monsoon in Kabul, Kandahar, Jerusalem or Berlin. Meanwhile in Sylhet, Ma is flustered with the nonstop rain. Her wet sari refuses to dry; she is in a tizzy from the smoke of the wet wood of the oven. Even from here I can see the sudden pouring of rain and the sun that comes out after a while. There are glitters of happiness on the rose plants in the courtyard, the night jasmine at the corner of the kitchen, and on the leaves of the palm tree in the backyard.
There was no such verdant beauty here.
Look at that! I had lost my way. Nine at night. Not a soul on the street. Who could I ask for directions?
A band was playing dance numbers in the big mansion to the right.
Oh! This was the dance-hall as described by Abdur Rahman. The waiters and bearers of the building would surely be able to direct me to my hotel. I needed to go to the service doors at the back of the building.
I approached.
Right at that moment, a young woman marched out.
I first saw her forehead. It was like the three-day-old young moon. The only difference was the moon would be off-white—cream coloured—but her forehead was as white as the snow peaks of the Pagman mountains. You have not seen it? Then I would say it was like undiluted milk. You have not seen that either. Then I can say it was like the petals of the wild jasmine. No adulteration of it is possible as yet.
Her nose was like a tiny flute. How was it possible to have two holes in such a small flute? The tip of the nose was quivering. Her cheeks were as red as the ripe apples of Kabul; yet they were of a shade that made it abundantly clear it was not the work of any rouge. I could not figure out if her eyes were blue or green. She was adorned in a well-tailored gown and was wearing high-heeled shoes.
Like a princess she ordered, ‘Call Sardar Aurangzeb Khan’s motor.’
Attempting to say something, I fumbled.
She, by then, looked properly at me and figured out that I was not a servant of the hotel. She also understood that I was a foreigner. First, she spoke in French, ‘Je veux demand pardon, monsieur—forgive me—’ Then she said it in Farsi.
In my broken Farsi I said, ‘Let me look for the driver.’
She said, ‘Let’s go.’
Smart girl. She would be hardly eighteen or nineteen.
Before reaching the parking lot, she said, ‘No, our car isn’t here.’
‘Let me see if I can arrange another one,’ I said.
Raising her nose an inch or so, in rustic Farsi she said, ‘Everyone is peeping to see what debauchery is taking place inside. Where will you find a driver?’
I involuntarily exclaimed, ‘What debauchery?’
Turning around in a flash, the girl faced me and took my measure from head to toe. Then she said, ‘If you’re not in a hurry, walk me to my house.’
‘Sure, sure,’ I joined her.
The girl was sharp.
Soon she asked, ‘For how long have you been living in this country? Pardon—my French teacher has said one shouldn’t put such questions to a stranger.’
‘Mine too, but I don’t listen.’
Whirling around she faced me again and said, ‘Exactment—rightly said. If anyone asks, say I’m going with you, or say Daddy introduced me to you. And don’t you ask me any question like I’m a nobody. And I will not ask anything as if you have no country or no home. In our land not asking prying questions is akin to the height of rudeness.’
I replied, ‘Same in my land too.’
She quipped, ‘Which country?’
I said, ‘Isn’t it apparent that I’m an Indian?’
‘How come? Indians can’t speak French.’
I said, ‘As if the Kabulis can!’
She burst out laughing. It seemed in the fit of laughter she suddenly twisted her ankle. ‘Can’t walk any longer. I’m not used to walking in such high heels. Let’s go to the tennis court; there are benches there.’
Dense darkness. The electric lamps were glowing far away. We needed to reach the tennis court through a narrow path. I said, ‘Pardon,’ as I touched her arm inadvertently.
Her laughter had no limits. She said, ‘Your French is strange, so is your Farsi.’
My young ego was hurt. ‘Mademoiselle!’
‘My name is Shabnam.’
(Extracted from Shabnam by Syed Mujtaba Ali,translated by Nazes Afroz. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2024)
About the Book
Afghanistan in the 1920s. A country on the cusp of change. And somewhere in it, a young man and woman meet and fall in love.
Shabnam is an Afghan woman, as beautiful as she is intelligent. Majnun is an Indian man, working in the country as a teacher. Theirs is an unlikely love story, but it flowers nonetheless. Breaking the barriers of culture and language, the two souls meet. Shabnam is poetry personified—she knows the literary works of Farsi poets of different eras. Majnun is steeped in the language and thoughts of Bengal. Together, they find love in immortal words and in the wisdom of the ages.
As the country hurtles towards yet another cataclysmic change, and the ruling king flees into exile, Shabnam is in danger from those who covet her for her famous beauty. Can she save herself and her Indian lover and husband from them?
Shabnam has been hailed as one of the most beautiful love stories written in Bengali. Lyrical and tragic, this pathbreaking novel appears in English for the first time in an elegant translation by the translator of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s famous travelogue Deshe Bideshe (In a Land Far from Home).
About the Author
Born in 1904, Syed Mujtaba Ali was a prominent literary figure in Bengali literature. A polyglot, a scholar of Islamic studies and a traveller, Mujtaba Ali taught in Baroda and at Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan. Deshe Bideshe was his first published book (1948). By the time he died in 1974, he had more than two dozen books—fiction and non-fiction—to his credit.
About the Translator
A journalist for over four decades, Nazes Afroz has worked in both print and broadcasting in Kolkata and in London. He joined the BBC in London in 1998 and spent close to fifteen years with the organization. He has visited Afghanistan, Central Asia and West Asia regularly for over a decade. He currently writes in English and Bengali for various newspapers and magazines and is working on a number of photography projects.
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Going back to when I played here, running up the path mama mama kissing your sweet forehead
now motionless and cold
Dreaming of leaving
Not wishing to go But there is no one here, just the buzz Of the drone overhead And night falling in my soul
Leaving leaving Dreaming dreaming of leaving leaving leaving leaving…
David Mellor has been published and performed widely from the BBC, The Tate, galleries and pubs and everything in between. Now, resident in Turkey he has continued his literary career with his work appearing in journals including a weekly column in Canakkale Gündem about his observations of Turkish life. His poems and writings are autobiographical, others topical and several his take on life.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
A brief overview of Once Around the Sun : From Cambodia to Tibet (Hembury Books) by Jessica Mudditt and a conversation with the author
Jessica Mudditt
Jessica Mudditt’s Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is not just a backpacker’s diary but also her need to relate to humanity, to find friendships and even love, as she does with Kris, a photographer named after Krishna, the Hindu god, because his parents while visiting India fell in love with the divinity!
The Burmese translation of Our Home in Myanmar was published recently.
Hurtling through Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Tibet, young Mudditt concludes her narrative just at the brink of exploring Nepal, India and Pakistan in her next book… leaving the reader looking forward to her next adventure. For this memoir is an adventure that explores humanity at different levels. Before this, Mudditt had authored Our Home in Myanmar – Four years in Yangon, a narrative that led up to the Myanmar attack on Rohingyas and takeover by the military junta. Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is the first part of a prequel to her earlier book, Our Home in Myanmar, both published by her own publishing firm, Hembury Books.
What makes her narrative unique is her candid descriptions of life on a daily basis — that could include drunken revelry or bouts of diarrhoea — while weaving in bits of history and her very humane responses. Her trip to Angkor Wat yields observations which brings into perspective the disparities that exist in our world:
“I was gazing out at an empire that was once the most powerful and sophisticated in the world. In 1400, when London had a middling population of 50,000, the kingdom of Angkor had more than a million inhabitants and a territory that stretched from Vietnam to Brunei. It had flourished for six hundred years, from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.
“But somehow Cambodia had become one of the world’s poorest countries, and surely the most traumatised too, following a recent war and genocide. I knew that when we came back down to the ground, there would be a collection of ragtag street kids and downtrodden beggars desperately hoping for our spare change. It was difficult to reconcile the grandeur of Cambodia’s past with its heart-breaking present in the twenty-first century. How did a country’s fortunes change so dramatically? Could the situation ever be turned around?”
How indeed?
Then, she writes of Vientaine in Vietnam:
“I was struck by the fact that sex work seemed to be the consequence for countless young women living in poverty. It made me angry, but mostly sad.”
In these countries broken into fragments by intrusions from superpowers in the last century, judged by the standards of the “developed countries” and declared “underdeveloped”, an iron rice bowl becomes more important to survive than adventure, discovering other parts of the world or backpacking to self-discovery. Travel really is the privilege of that part of the world which draws sustenance from those who cannot afford to travel.
Jessica showcases mindsets from that part of the Western world and from the mini-expat world in Hong Kong, which continue alienated from the local cultures that they profess to have set out to explore or help develop. One of the things that never ceases to surprise is that while the ‘developed’ continue to judge the ‘third world’, these countries destroyed by imposed boundaries, foreign values, continue to justify themselves to those who oppress them and also judge themselves by the standards of the oppressors.
Some of these ‘developing’ countries continue to pander to needs of tourism and tourists for the wealth they bring in, as Jessica shows in her narrative. She brings out the sharp differences between the locals from Asia and the budgeted backpackers, who look for cheap alternatives to experience more of the cultures they don’t understand by indulging in explorations that can involve intoxicants and sex, their confidence backed by the assurance that they can return to an abled world.
Backpackers from affluent countries always have their families to fall back on — opulent, abled and reliable. Mudditt with her candid narrative explores that aspect too as she talks of her mother’s response to her being sick and budgeting herself. Her mother urges her to cut short her trip. But she continues, despite the ‘adversities’, with an open mind. That she has a home where she can return if she is in any kind of trouble begs a question — what kind of ‘civilisation’ do we as humans have that she from an abled background has a safe retreat where there are those for whom the reality of their existence is pegged to what she is urged to leave behind for her own well-being? And why — as part of the same species — do we accept this divide that creates ravines and borders too deep to fathom?
Mudditt with her narrative does create a bridge between those who have plenty and those who still look for and need an iron rice bowl. She mingles with people from all walks and writes about her experiences. Hers is a narrative about all of us –- common humanity. Her style is free flowing and easy to read — quite journalistic for she spent ten years working as one in London, Bangladesh and Myanmar, before returning to her home in Australia in 2016. Her articles have been published by Forbes, BBC, GQ and Marie Claire, among others. This conversation takes us to the stories around and beyond her book.
What led you to embark on your backpacking adventure? Was it just wanderlust or were you running away from something?
It was primarily from wanderlust, but I also didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life. After six years at university, I was still yet to have any particular calling. However, I was also glad I didn’t know. It meant that I was free to go and explore the world, because I wasn’t putting my career on hold. I had no career.
I also had a broken heart when I set off for Cambodia – but the trip was planned before that relationship had even begun. But again, part of me was glad that my boyfriend had called it quits, because my plan was to be away for a very long time (and it ended being a decade away).
What made you think of putting down your adventures in writing? As you say, this is a prequel to your first book.
It was the pandemic that made me realise that backpacking was really special. There was a period in 2020 when it looked like travel may never be so unrestricted again, so it motivated me to document my year of complete freedom. It was also before social media was even a thing. When I was lost, I was really lost, and I had to use my problem-solving skills.
Prior to the pandemic, I sort of thought that backpacking itself was too fun to write about. I hadn’t actually lived in any of the countries I visited – I was just passing through. But that is also a valid experience, and one that many people can fondly relate to. There were also some really confronting and difficult moments.
You have written of people you met. How have they responded to your candid portrayals? Or did you change their names and descriptions to convey the essence but kept your characters incognito?
While I was writing the book, I got back in touch with the people I travelled with – I can thank Facebook for still being in touch with most people mentioned. They helped me to remember past anecdotes and I got some of the back story of their own trips. I have only used first names to protect their privacy, although there are some photos in the book too. Thankfully the world is so big that the odds are small that anyone would recognise, say, an Irish guy from Adam in Vietnam in 2006! Clem from Shanghai has just sent me a photo of her with my book, and Romi from Vietnam actually came to my book launch, which was awesome.
What was your favourite episode in this book — as a backpacker and as a writer? Tell us about it.
I think it was crossing into China and meeting ‘the man.’ I felt so alive with every step I took into China after crossing over on foot from Vietnam. To be chaperoned in the way I was – without being able to communicate a single word – was unusual. His kindness left me speechless, so the anecdote has a nice story arc.
In your travels through China, you faced a language handicap and yet found people kind and helpful. Can you tell us a bit about it?
I foolishly underestimated the language barrier. It was profound. In Southeast Asia, there was always at least a sprinkling of English, and I sort of just assumed that I’d be fine. I entered China from Vietnam, so my first port of call was Nanning, where there is not even really an expat population. I couldn’t do the most basic things, from finding the toilet or an internet cafe or something to eat! I used sign language and memorised the Chinese character for ‘female’ to make sure I went into the right toilet! In a restaurant, I just pointed at whatever someone else was eating in the hope that they would bring me a bowl of whatever it was. There were times when I was seriously lost and lonely, but I ended up staying in China for two months and saw the comedic side. I was bumbling around like Mr Bean (who is hugely popular in China).
I met a lot of people who were really kind to me, and I was just so grateful to them. I didn’t have Wi-Fi on my phone back then, so getting lost in a massive city in China was a bit scary. I met a student called Mei-Xing who ‘adopted’ me for a few days in Guilin. We had a really nice time together and it was so great to hang out with a local.
What is/are the biggest takeaway/s you had from your backpacking in this part of the world? Tell us about it.
I think it’s something quite simple: the world can be a very beautiful place, and a very polluted place. Tourism can do a great deal of damage when there are too many people clambering over one area. There is also an incredible level of disparity in a material sense on our planet. Some humans are travelling into space on rockets. Others are pulling rickshaws, as though they are draught horses. It is profoundly inequitable.
Having travelled to large tracts of Asia, what would you think would be the biggest challenge to creating a more equitable world, a more accepting world? Do you think an exposure to culture and history could resolve some of the issues?
I think that democracy is key. It slows us down and forces us to act in the interest of the majority, not the top-level cronies. That is definitely also something I witnessed in Myanmar. When a few people hold all the power, the population is deprived of things that ought to be a human right.
I think that travel definitely alters your perspective and broadens your mind, and it is something I’d recommend to anyone. Realising that the way that things are done in your home country is not the only way of doing things is a valuable thing to learn.
Mostly, you met people off the street. In which country did you find the warmest reception? Why and how?
In Pakistan. The hospitality and friendliness was unparalleled. I think it was in part due to not having many tourists there. Nothing felt transactional. I met some fascinating people in Pakistan who would have a profound impact on my own life. I am still in touch with several people I met there.
At a point you wondered if the poverty you saw could be reversed back to affluence in the context of the Angkor kingdom. Do you have any suggestions on actually restoring the lost glory?
I believe that it is beginning to be restored. Pundits have called this the “Asian Century.” I am convinced that the United States and the UK are in decline, and this process will only speed up. India, to me, holds the most promise as the next superpower, because it is a democracy (albeit flawed – like all of them), English- speaking, enormous, beautiful, fascinating and its soft power is unmatched. China is facing headwinds. I blame that on making people sad by removing their agency.
How long were you backpacking in this part of the world? Was it longer than you had intended? What made you extend your stay and why?
My trip was exactly 365 days long. I planned it that way from the beginning. I wanted to travel for no less than a year (more than a year and I might stay feeling guilty for being so indulgent!). That is also why the book is called Once Around the Sun – my time backpacking was the equivalent of one rotation of the Earth. I set off on 1 June 2006 – the first day of winter in Australia – and I arrived on 1 June 2007 in London, on the first day of the British summer. I love the sunshine.
After having travelled around the large tracts of Asia and in more parts of the world, could you call the whole world your home or is it still Australia? Is your sense of wellbeing defined by political boundaries or by something else?
Home for me is Sydney. I absolutely love it. I get to feel as though I am still travelling, because my home city is Melbourne. I go down a new road every other day and I love that feeling. The harbour is beautiful, and the sun is shining most days. It’s very multicultural too.
My kids are three and five, so I haven’t travelled overseas for years. My plan is to travel with them as much as possible when they are a bit older. I hope they love it as much as me. I cannot wait to return to Asia one day. I am also desperate to visit New York City.
What are your future plans for both your books and your publishing venture?
The second part of Once Around the Sun will come out in 2025. It’s called Kathmandu to the Khyber Pass, and it covers the seven months I spent Nepal, India and Pakistan.
My goal is to complete my fourth memoir by 2027. It will be called My Home in Bangladesh (it will be the prequel to Our Home in Myanmar!).
My fifth book will be about how to write a book. I am a book coach and in a few years I will have identified the most common challenges people face when writing a book, and finding their voice.
In the next twelve months, there will be at least 12 books coming out with Hembury Books, which is my hybrid publishing company. I love being a book coach and publisher and I hope to help as many people as possible to become authors.
Please visit the website and set up a discovery call with me if you plan on writing a nonfiction book, or have gotten stuck midway: https://hemburybooks.com.au/.
Photographs from Once Round the Sun, provided by Jessica Mudditt
(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)
Ratnottama Sengupta muses on the ongoing wars and violence as acts of terror and gazes back to an incident in the past which resulted in a powerful Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat that she has translated here
The world is in the grip of violence, Rabindranath Tagore wrote on March 5, 1927, sitting in the abode of peace – Santiniketan. Full 97 years later, the world is still in the grip of violence?
It’s Gaza today. Ukraine yesterday. Afghanistan some days ago. Sri Lanka not so long ago. Sometimes it is Bosnia. At other times, it’s Vietnam. Lands far flung and near adorn themselves with blood-red mark of hatred. Religion. Self-seeking dictators. Communism. Global lust for power. No matter what is at stake, the pawn is an innocent life. Always. A woman. An elder. An unborn child…
Tagore wrote Hingshay unmatto prithibi[1]– “The world is in the grip of violence as a prayer to the Almighty. The delirium is leading to conflicts, cruel and ceaseless… Crooked is the world today, tangled its philosophy. No bond is sacred.” And the anguish of such a state of affairs? It led even the Eternal Bard of Bengal to pray for a new birth of ‘Him of Boundless Life.’ “Save them,” Tagore had prayed to the Serene, “raise your eternal voice of hope” so that “Love’s lotus, with its inexhaustible store of nectar” may open its petals in His light. In His immeasurable mercy. To wipe away all dark stains from the heart of the continents.
In vain he prayed.
“Forgive them!” Jesus said, for “They know not what they do!” And what did the soldiers do? They gambled for his clothes by throwing dice! (Luke 23:34)
Forgive them? “Have you forgiven those who vitiated the atmosphere and snuffed out light for innocent lives?” Tagore asked the Almighty, in ‘Proshno (Question)‘. Have you forgiven those who deal hate in the secret hours of night? Have you embraced with love those who murder the helpless in broad daylight under the cover of ideology? Don’t you wince when a pregnant Bilkis[2] is gang-raped? Why do you shed silent tears when elected rulers choke people’s voice with furtive use of power?
And like his Prayer, Tagore’s ‘Question’ too has remained unanswered. And dumb sit the messiahs when men with mistaken notion of mission kill, maim, mutilate hostages who become mere numbers in newspaper headlines – until a new dateline wipes it off our collective memory. Thus, once again, the world was shaken by brutalities carried out in the name of God, in Dhaka’s elite neighbourhood, Gulshan.
On July 1, 2016, before the Cinderella hour struck, five militants entered the Holey Artisan Bakery with bombs, machetes, pistols, and opened fire on men and women, from Italy, Japan, India, Bangladesh. Sunrise. Sunset.. Sunrise… unsuccessfully the police tried to secure the hostages. An elite force of the Bangla Army had to raid to put an end to what BBC News described as “the deadliest Islamist attack in Bangladesh”. Meanwhile? The toll had risen to 29 lives, totaling 17 foreigners, three locals, two policemen, five gunmen, and two bakery staff who were trying to earn their daily bread!
Since Gulshan is home to many embassies and high commissions in the capital of the secular nation, the news stirred up the world in no time. And prayers poured in – over cellphones, on Facebook, television and newspapers too. Prayers of wives for their husbands. Prayers of mothers for their sons. Prayers of a niece for her aunt. Prayers of American friends for their Indian batch mate. But once again, prayers went unanswered…
Among those who did not survive to tell the story was Simona Monti of Italy who worked in textiles. Then 33 years of age, Simona was soon to go to her home an hour away from Rome, to deliver the child she had nursed in her womb for five months. But Michelangelo too did not live to breathe in the world vitiated by hatred. When the news reached her brother, he prayed his Simona’s bloodshed would make this “a more just and brotherly world.”
His prayer, too, remains unanswered.
But poets and other men of conscience did not remain silent. Within days of the incident Tarik Sujat wrote Janmer aagei aami mrityu ke korechhi alingan (Even before my birth I embraced death, July 6, 2016). No diatribe in his words, but the muted cry of an unborn being jolts us. That cry left me with a tear in one eye and fire in the other…
On my very first reading I was touched, I was moved, I fell silent. The pensive mood of the embryonic life turned me reflective. Anger, rage, fury was not the answer to hostility, loathing, abhorrence, I realised. So will you, as you go through the poem that was handed out in Magliano Sabino when Simona’s hometown prayed for her eternal rest.
I Embraced Death Before Birth
Even before my birth I embraced death. I have no nation, no speech, No stock of my own. No distinction between Holy-Unholy, Sin and Virtue, Sacred or Cursed. Having seen the ghastly face of life I've swallowed my last drop of tear... My first breath did not pollute The environs of your earth. My last breath was the first gift Of this planet to me!
Maa! You were my only playhouse, My school, and my coffin. I had yet to open my eyes - And still I saw The sharp nails of executioner Ripping apart my naval cord. My ears were yet to hear sound, Still I could catch bells That summon lads to schools... The obscure sound echoed Through churches, temples, And minarets of masjids Until, slowly, it fell silent...
My first bed was my last. My mother's womb was My only home In the unseen world. On that nook too, darkness descended. Floating down the river of blood I groped for my umbilical cord To keep me afloat... My tiny fingers, my soft palm Could find nothing to clutch.
In that Dance of Death My unseeing eyes witnessed Koran, Bible, Gita, Tripitak Bobbing in receding blood. In the achromatic gloom Of my chamber I got no chance to learn A single mark of piety!
Still... I embraced death before I was born. My mother's womb is my Grave, my coffin, my pyre. The world of humans Is enveloped in fire - A few droplets of my meagre body Does not quench its thirst!
(Translated from Tarik Sujat’s Bengali poem by Ratnottama Sengupta)
Why has this portrayal of a tormented soul found voice in French, German, Swedish, Italian, English…? Why has it been translated into 17 languages? In the answer blowing in the wind lies hope for mankind. For, the answer is: Not every man is created in the image of Lucifer. That is why, when Giulia Benedetti learnt that she will never again see her aunt Nadia Benedetti, that “she will not talk, will not comment on fashion, will not sing together again…” she wrote on Facebook: “Do not forget. Do not lose her memory. Do not let crazy people massacre. Do not let them win…”
And I immerse my voice in the Bard’s to say: “Let life come to the souls that are dead…” And I pray, bring harmony, bring rhythm, bring melody in our lives, O Serene! Wipe away every dark cloud from the world yet to dawn!
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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