Tag: Bengal

Aruna Chakravarti Converses about her Ghost Stories

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date March 16, 2026
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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.

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.

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.

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 20^th 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)

Click here to read an excerpt from Creeping Shadows.

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

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Review

Reclaiming the Forgotten History of a Pioneer

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date March 16, 2026
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Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Daktarin Jamini Sen: The Life of British India’s First Woman Doctor

Author: Deepta Roy Chakraverti

Publisher: Penguin/ EBURY PRESS

History often celebrates great events, revolutions, and institutions, yet it frequently overlooks individuals whose quiet determination helped shape the modern world.

Deepta Roy Chakraverti’s biography, Daktarin Jamini Sen: The Life of British India’s First Woman Doctor, seeks to restore one such remarkable figure to her rightful place in history. Through meticulous research and deeply personal storytelling, the book brings to light the life of a pioneering physician who challenged conventions, crossed borders, and carved a path for women in medicine at a time when such ambitions were rare.

Jamini Sen (1871- 1933) was among the earliest women doctors of British India and the first woman to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the world of medicine was overwhelmingly dominated by men, her achievement was nothing short of extraordinary. To study medicine, it required courage and determination; to excel in it and gain international recognition demanded a resilience that few possessed.

Chakraverti’s book traces Jamini Sen’s journey from the changing social landscape of Bengal to the complex and often dramatic world of royal Nepal. Born in a time when child marriage, strict gender roles, and social conservatism defined the lives of many women, Jamini’s life unfolded against the backdrop of a society in transition. The opening chapters evoke a Bengal negotiating between tradition and reform—where ideas of modern education, nationalism, and social change were beginning to challenge entrenched customs.

It was in this milieu that Jamini took her first steps toward a career in medicine. The path was far from easy. As a woman entering a profession dominated by men, she encountered skepticism, resistance, and prejudice. Yet the biography portrays her not as a passive victim of circumstance but as a determined individual driven by conviction and intellectual curiosity. Her pursuit of medical knowledge reflects both personal ambition and a broader spirit of reform that characterized parts of Indian society during the late colonial period.

One of the most fascinating phases of Jamini Sen’s career unfolded in Nepal. She was invited to serve as physician to the royal family during the reign of Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah. Nepal at that time was a kingdom cautiously opening its doors to modern influences, and Jamini’s presence there represented an important step in introducing modern medical practices to the royal court.

Serving in the palace required far more than medical skill. Court life was shaped by hierarchy, intrigue, and political sensitivities. Yet Jamini’s professionalism, discretion, and quiet confidence earned her the trust of the king and the respect of those around her. The biography suggests that her friendship with Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah was marked by mutual regard, and that she played a role in supporting his aspirations for a more modern Nepal.

But the story of Jamini Sen is not merely one of professional success. The book also reveals the personal costs that often accompany pioneering lives. Loss, loneliness, and emotional hardship form a recurring undercurrent in her journey. She endured the deaths of loved ones and navigated difficult relationships yet remained steadfast in her commitment to her work and her ideals.

Chakraverti’s narrative emphasises that Jamini’s resilience was rooted not only in determination but also in faith and introspection. Moments of spiritual reflection and philosophical questioning appear throughout the narrative, suggesting that her inner life was as complex as her public career. This dimension of the biography adds depth to the portrait of a woman who was not simply a medical pioneer but also a thoughtful and introspective individual.

The author’s own connection to the story lends the book a distinctive emotional resonance. Deepta Roy Chakraverti is the last of Jamini Sen’s descendants through the line of Jamini’s niece, Roma Sen Chakraverti. A lawyer educated at King’s College London with a first degree in mathematics from University of Delhi, Deepta writes not only as a historian but also as a custodian of family memory.

In the prologue, she reflects on the idea that our ancestors live within us—not only through blood and lineage but also through memory and spirit. Her decision to write about Jamini Sen arose from a growing sense of injustice. Why had a woman of such accomplishment been largely forgotten? Why had her life been reduced to little more than a historical footnote?

That question became the driving force behind the book. What began as a short story gradually expanded into a blog and finally into a full-length biography. Along the way, Chakraverti discovered family heirlooms, letters, and personal belongings passed down through generations—small fragments of the past that helped reconstruct Jamini’s life.

The author also drew upon anecdotes preserved in family memory and earlier Bengali writings by her great-aunt, Kamini Roy, which provided valuable insights into Jamini’s character and experiences. These sources give the narrative an intimate quality rarely found in conventional historical biographies.

Structured across twenty-five chapters, the book moves through the many stages of Jamini’s life—from her childhood in a changing Bengal to her years in Nepal, her struggles and triumphs in medicine, and the legacy she left behind. The chapter titles themselves hint at the drama and complexity of her life: ‘A Woman in a Man’s World’, ‘The Fight to Wield the Scalpel and Stethoscope’, and ‘Becoming British India’s Saree Wali Daktarin Sahib’.

A foreword by Hany Eteiba, President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, adds an important institutional recognition of Jamini Sen’s achievements. It situates her story within the broader history of global medicine and acknowledges the significance of her pioneering role.

Daktarin Jamini Sen is more than a biography. It is an act of historical recovery—a reminder that many women who challenged social boundaries and advanced professional fields were gradually erased from public memory. By reconstructing Jamini Sen’s life, Deepta Roy Chakraverti restores one such figure to the narrative of South Asian history.

Jamini Sen emerges from these pages as a courageous, intelligent, and deeply human figure—a woman who carried both the stethoscope and the burden of breaking barriers. Her story reminds us that the progress of society often begins with individuals who refuse to accept the limitations imposed upon them.

In telling that story, this book ensures that Jamini Sen will no longer remain a forgotten pioneer.

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

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

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags Bengal, Bhaskar Parichha, Biju Patnaik, Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography, Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Daktarin Jamini Sen: The Life of British India’s First Woman Doctor, Deepta Roy Chakraverti, Faith and Medical Leadership, Glasgow, Hany Eteiba, Jamini Sen, Nepal, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha, Odisha, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, South Asian, Unbiased, Wreckage and Resilience

Review

Signing in the Air by Malashri Lal

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date March 16, 2026
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Book Review by Rituparna Khan

Tite: Signing in the Air

Author: Malashri Lal

Publisher: Hawakal Publishers

Signing in the Air, Malashri Lal’s second poetry collection, announces itself as a meditative, non-linear poetic journey from the very outset. A poet, academic and critic, Lal explains in her preface, there is “no linearity in such a theme,” and the poems move instead through cycles of time, memory, myth, and lived experience. The seventy-six poems converse with each other and portray her meticulous craftsmanship.

The collection draws deeply from the Indian concept ofritu — the six seasons — while simultaneously acknowledging the disruptions of climate change and modern dislocation. Nature in Lal’s poetry is neither sentimental nor static; it is capable of both “ravage and rejuvenation,” a duality that becomes central to the collection’s philosophical stance.

The poet’s voice resists fixity. The lyrical “I” is deliberately “timeless, generic author, reader, witness,” allowing the poems to transcend individual autobiography and become collective meditations on human and feminine destinies. This makes the book not merely confessional but contemplative, situating personal memory within wider cultural and ecological continuums.

The five sections of the book do not function as isolated compartments but intricately connected that speak to one another.

‘Whispers of the Earth’ foregrounds the elemental: trees, rain, seasons, and landscapes, yet avoids pastoral nostalgia. Lal speaks to nature rather than about it, creating an intimacy that acknowledges environmental fragility without moralising.

‘Installations’ shift attention to material culture and memory. Objects, such as, old books, domestic utensils, inherited artefacts become repositories of time. Lal’s reflection on ancestral possessions, such as the hamam or the dol [1] for washing clothes, raises radical questions: have women’s destinies changed as technology has advanced, or have only the tools evolved while labour and inequality persist?

‘Echo of Myths’ is one of the most resonant sections, reworking mythological figures like Lakshmi, Sita, and Radha not as static icons but as evolving subjects. Lal’s engagement with myth is neither reverential nor iconoclastic; it is dialogic. Myth becomes a living language through which contemporary women’s struggles, endurance, and resilience are articulated.

‘Meditative Missives’ carries a distinctly philosophical tone. Time dissolves into moments of stillness, and poetry itself becomes an act of contemplation. Lal explicitly frames the volume as possessing “a meditative streak weaving through it,” where mind and body interact to create “kaleidoscopic images” that search for form and vocabulary.

‘Women Who Wander’ brings the collection into the socio-political present. Drawing upon the idea of the flâneuse, Lal reimagines wandering as a gendered act—women moving through cities, histories, and emotional terrains. These poems reclaim mobility as agency and witness.

Lal’s language is marked by clarity rather than excess. Her metaphors are precise, often luminous, and grounded in lived experience. The imagery functions kaleidoscopically: fragments turning to reveal new patterns rather than fixed meanings. Light, shadow, seasons, and movement recur as motifs, reinforcing the book’s concern with impermanence and continuity.

A powerful example of Lal’s ethical and spiritual engagement appears in the opening poem, ‘Invocation: Devi Stuti – The Divine Feminine’. Here, the feminine divine is portrayed as both creator and destroyer, compassionate yet fearsome:

She, the feminine power creates as well as destroys…
Evil seems to flourish and goodness struggles
but She knows whom to vanquish
in the final reckoning.”

The poem moves beyond ritual praise to a contemporary plea, invoking divine protection against “violence, brutality, torture of the everyday woman”. This invocation sets the moral and emotional tone of the entire collection, anchoring the personal within the cosmic.

A recurring concern in Signing in the Air is hybridity of place, language, identity, and time. Lal reflects on her own transitions between Jaipur, Bengal, and Delhi, embracing what critics have described as her ability to be “at home in her multiple worlds, and an outsider looking in”. This tension enriches the poems, allowing them to speak across geographies and generations.

Memory functions not as nostalgia but as ethical inheritance. The poet’s recollection of her grandmother—an early graduate of the University of Calcutta—foregrounds women’s intellectual legacies often erased from public history.

The book cover is understated yet evocative. The image of a silhouetted tree against a luminous sky visually echoes the book’s thematic preoccupations: imprint and erasure, presence and absence, rootedness and transcendence. The title Signing in the Air is aptly suggestive, writing that leaves no permanent mark yet insists on meaning.

In terms of physical quality, the book is finely produced. The paper and layout are reader-friendly, lending dignity to the text without distraction. The careful structuring of sections and the inclusion of preface, acknowledgements, and critical blurbs enhance the book’s scholarly and aesthetic value.

Signing in the Air is a mature, reflective, and deeply humane collection. Malashri Lal writes with quiet authority, weaving together ecology, myth, memory, spirituality, and women’s lived realities. The poems resist closure, inviting readers into an ongoing conversation, one that unfolds across seasons, histories, and inner landscapes.

Ultimately, this is a book that does not shout but resonates. It affirms poetry as an act of witness, meditation, and ethical imagination: truly, as Lal suggests, a way of “scribbling in the empty air where intimations of spirituality and social truth coexist without definable boundaries.”

[1] Objects used for laundry

Rituparna Khan is a poet, an author and a faculty in the Department of Geography, Chandernagore College, Hugli, West Bengal, India. rrohnism@gmail.com

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

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags University of Calcutta, India, Rituparna Khan, Delhi, Bengal, West Bengal, Chandernagore College, Hawakal Publishers, Jaipur, Malashri Lal, Hugli, Signing in the Air

celebrations

Six Years of Borderless Journal…

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date March 14, 2026
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Six years ago, a few of us got together to bring out the first issue of Borderless Journal. We started as a daily blog and then congealed into a monthly journal offering content that transcends artificial borders to meet with the commonality of felt emotions, celebrating humanity and the Universe. Today as we complete six years of our existence in the clouds, we would like to celebrate with all writers and readers who made our existence a reality. We invite you to savour writings collected over the years that reflect and revel in transcending borders, touching hearts and some even make us laugh while exploring norms.

In this special issue. we can only offer a small sample of writings but you can access many more like these ones at our site…Without further ado, let us harmonise with words. We invite you to lose yourselves in a borderless world in these trying times.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Jared Carter, Snehaprava Das, Manahil Tahir, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Saptarshi Bhattacharya, John Swain, Ron Pickett, Saba Zahoor, Momina Raza, Annette Gagliardi, Jenny Middleton, Afsar Mohammad, Rhys Hughes, George Freek, Mitra Samal, Lizzie Packer, Shamik Banerjee, Maithreyi Karnoor, Hela Tekali, Rakhi Dalal, Prithvijeet Sinha, Asad Latif, Stuart MacFarlane

Isa Kamari translates his poems from Malay in The Lost Mantras. Click here to read.

Two of her own Persian poems have been written and translated by Akram Yazdani. Click here to read.

A Poet in Exile by Dmitry Blizniuk has been translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov. Click here to read.

Refugee in my Own Country/ I am Ukraine… Poetry by Lesya Bakun of Ukraine. Click here to read.

Sukanta Bhattacharya’s poem, Therefore, has been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

Amalkanti by Nirendranath Chakraborty has been translated from Bengali by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard. Click here to read

Ye Shao-weng’s poetry ( 1100-1150) has been translated from Mandarin by Rex Tan. Click here to read.

Rebel or ‘Bidrohi’, Nazrul’s signature poem, ‘Bidrohi‘, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Manish Ghatak’s Aagun taader Praan (Fire is their Life) has been translated from Bengali by Indrayudh Sinha. Click here to read.

Tagore’s poem, Tomar Shonkho Dhulay Porey (your conch lies in the dust), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty as ‘The Conch Calls’. Click here to read.

Waiting for Godot by Akbar Barakzai; Akbar Barakzai’s poem has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Ihlwha Choi spent some time in Santiniketan and here are poems he wrote in reaction to his observations near the ‘home of R.Tagore’, as he names Santiniketan and the Kobiguru. Click here to read Nandini.

Fiction

Flash Fiction: Peregrine: Brindley Hallam Dennis tells us the story of a cat and a human. Click here to read.

Rituals in the Garden: Marcelo Medone discusses motherhood, aging and loss in this poignant flash fiction from Argentina. Click here to read.

Navigational Error: Luke P.G. Draper explores the impact of pollution with a short compelling narrative. Click here to read.

Henrik’s Journey: Farah Ghuznavi follows a conglomerate of people on board a flight to address issues ranging from Rohingyas to race bias. Click here to read.

The Magic Staff , a poignant short story about a Rohingya child by Shaheen Akhtar, translated from Bengali by Arifa Ghani Rahman. Click here to read.

A Cat Story : Sohana Manzoor leaves one wondering if the story is about felines or… Click here to read.

Pus Ki Raat or A Frigid Winter Night by Munshi Premchand has been translated from Hindi by C Christine Fair. Click here to read.

American Wife: Suzanne Kamata gives a short story set set in the Obon festival in Japan. Click hereto read.

Hena, a short story by Nazrul, has been translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read.

A Queen is Crowned: Farhanaz Rabbani traces the awakening of self worth. Click here to read.

A Penguin’s Story: Sreelekha Chatterjee writes a story from a penguin’s perspective. Click here to read.

Disappearance by Bitan Chakraborty has been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

The Sixth Man: C. J. Anderson-Wu tells a story around disappearances during Taiwan’s White terror. Click here to read.

Looking for Evans: Rashida Murphy writes a light-hearted story about a faux pas. Click here to read.

Used Steinways: Jonathan B. Ferrini shares a story about pianos and people set in Los Angeles. Click here to read.

The Beaten Rooster, a short story by Hamiruddin Middya, has been translated from Bengali by V Ramaswamy. Click here to read.

The Onion: JK Miller brings to us the story of a child in Khan Yunis. Click here to read.

Santa in the Autorickshaw: Snigdha Agrawal takes us to meet a syncretic spirit with a heartwarming but light touch. Click here to read.

The Untold Story: Neeman Sobhan gives us the story of a refugee from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Click here to read.

The Wise Words of the Sun: Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a fable involving elements of nature. Click here to read.

The Headstone, a poignant story by Sharaf Shad has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Sandy Cannot Write: Devraj Singh Kalsi takes us into the world of adverstising and glamour. Click here to read.

Musalmanir Galpa (A Muslim Woman’s Story) Tagore’s short story has been translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

Non-Fiction

Haiku for Rwandan Girls: Suzanne Kamata writes of her trip to Africa where she teaches and learns from youngsters. Click here to read.

Menaced by a Marine Heatwave: Meredith Stephens writes of how global warming is impacting marine life in South Australia. Click here to read.

‘All Creatures Great and Small’: Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of animal interactions. Click here to read.

One Life, One Love, 300 Children: Keith Lyons writes of a woman who looked after 300 children. Click here to read.

When West Meets East & Greatness Blooms: Debraj Mookerjee reflects on how syncretism impacts greats like Tagore,Tolstoy, Emerson, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi and many more. Click here to read.

The Day Michael Jackson Died: A tribute by Julian Matthews to the great talented star who died amidst ignominy and controversy. Click here to read.

Amrita Sher-Gil: An Avant-Garde Blender of the East & West: Bhaskar Parichha shows how Amrita Sher-Gil’s art absorbed the best of the East and the West. Click here to read.

Dramatising an Evolving Consciousness: Theatre with Nithari’s Children: Sanjay Kumar gives us a glimpse of how theatre has been used to transcend trauma and create bridges. Click here to read.

Potable Water Crisis & the Sunderbans: Camellia Biswas, a visitor to Sunderbans during the cyclone Alia, turns environmentalist and writes about the potable water issue faced by locals. Click here to read.

T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land: Finding Hope in Darkness: Dan Maloche muses on the century-old poem and its current relevance. Click here to read.

My Love for RK Narayan, Rhys Hughes discusses the novels by ths legendary writer from India. Click here to read.

Travels of Debendranath Tagore : These are travel narratives by Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

The Comet’s Trail: Remembering Kazi Nazrul Islam: Radha Chakravarty pays tribute to the rebel poet of Bengal. Click here to read.

From Srinagar to Ladakh: A Cyclist’s Diary: Farouk Gulsara travels from Malaysia for a cycling adventure in Kashmir. Click here to read.

Baraf Pora (Snowfall): This narrative gives a glimpse of Tagore’s first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated by Somdatta Mandal . Click here to read.

In The Hidden Kingdom of Bhutan: Mohul Bhowmick explores Bhutan with words and his camera. Click here to read.

The Day of Annihilation: An essay on climate change by Kazi Nazrul Islam has been translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Reminiscences from a Gallery: The Other Ray: Dolly Narang muses on Satyajit Ray’s world beyond films and shares a note by the maestro and an essay on his art by the eminent artist, Paritosh Sen. Click here to read.

The Bauls of Bengal: Aruna Chakravarti writes of wandering minstrels called bauls and the impact they had on Tagore. Click here to read.

The Literary Club of 18th Century London: Professor Fakrul Alam writes on literary club traditions of Dhaka, Kolkata and an old one from London. Click here to read.

From Madagascar to Japan: An Adventure or a Dream: Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia writes of her journey from Africa to Japan with a personal touch. Click here to read.

250 Years of Jane Austen: A Tribute: Meenakshi Malhotra pays a tribute to the writer. Click here to read.

The Chickpea That Logged More Mileage Than You: Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan gives an interesting account of the chickpeas journey through time and space, woven with a bit of irony. Click here to read.

The Day the Earth Quaked : Amy Sawitta Lefevre gives an eyewitness account of the March 28th earthquake from Bangkok. Click here to read.

Where Should We Go After the Last Frontiers: Ahamad Rayees writes from a village in Kashmir which homed refugees and still faced bombing. Click here to read.

The Last of the Barbers: How the Saloon Became the Salon (and Where the Gossip Went): Charudutta Panigrahi writes an essay steeped in nostalgia and yet weaving in the present. Click here to read.

That Time of Year: Rick Bailey muses about the passage of years. Click here to read.

The Untold Stories of a Wooden Suitcase: Larry S. Su recounts his past in China and weaves a narrative of resilience. Click here to read.

Adventures of a Backpacking Granny: Sybil Pretious recalls her travels across the world post sixty, including Kiliminjaro. Click here to read.

Tags Afsar Mohammad, Ahmad Rayees, Akbar Barakzai, Akram Yazdani, Amalkanti, Amy Sawitta Lafevre, Annette Gagliardi, Arifa Ghani, Aruna Chakravarti, Asad Latif, Balak, Bangkok, Bauls, Benga;i, Bengal, Bengali, Bhaskar Parichcha, Bidrohi, Bitan Chakraborty, Brindley Hallam Dennis, C Christine Fair, C.J. Anderson-Wu, Camellia Biswas, Charudutta Panigrahi, Dan Maloche, Debali Mookerjea-Leonard, Debendranath Tagore, Debraj Mookerjee, Devraj Singh Kalsi, Dmitry Bliznik, Dolly Narang, Emerson, Fakrul Alam, Farah Ghuuznavi, Farhanaz Rabbani, Farouk Gulsara, Fazal Baloch, Gandhi, George Freek, Godot, Hamiruddin Middya, Hela Tekali, Hindi, Ihlwha Choi, Indrayudh Sarkar, Isa Kamari, Jane Austen, Japan, Jared Carter, Jenny Middleton, JK Miller, John Swain, Jonathan B. Ferrini, Julian Matthews, Keith Lyons, Kiliminjaro, Kiriti Sengupta, Korean, Ladakh, Larry S. Su, Lesya Bakun, Lizzie Packer, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Luke P.G.Draper, Madagascar, Maithreyi Karnoor, Malay, Manahil Tahir, Mandarin, Manish Ghatak, Marcelo Medone, Martin Luther KIng Jr, Mitali Chakravarty, Mitra Samal, Mohul Bhowmick, Momina Raza, Munshi Premchand, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao, Nazrul, Neeman Sobhan, Nirendranath Chakraborty, Paritosh Sen, Persian, Prithvijeet Sinha, Radha Chakravarty, Rakhi Dalal, Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia, Rashida Murphy, Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan, Rebel, Rex Tan, Rhys Hughes, Rick Bailey, RK Narayan, Ron Pickett, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Saba Zahoor, Sanjay Kumar, Santiniketan, Saptarshi Bhattacharya, Satyajit Ray, Shaheen Akhtar, Shamik Banerjee, Sharaf Shad, Snehaprava Das, Snigdha Agrawal, Sohana Manzoor, Somdatta Mandal, Sreelekha Chatterjee, Srinagar, Stuart MacFarlane, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Suzanne Kamata, Sybil Pretious, Tagore, Tolstoy, TS Eliot, Ukrainian, V Ramaswamy, Wasteland

Review

Vignettes from Pre-partition Bengal

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date January 14, 2026
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Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: The Struggle: A Novel

Author: Showkat Ali

Translators: V. Ramaswamy & Mohiuddin Jahangir

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

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.

Click here to read an excerpt from The Struggle

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

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

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags Bangaldeshi, Bangladesh, Bengal, Congress, Dinajpur, Hindu, India, Mohiuddin Jahangir, Muslim, Muslim League, Narai, Santiniketan, Showkat Ali, Somdatta Mandal, Speaking Tiger Books, Swadeshi, The Struggle: A Novel, V. Ramaswamy, Visva-Bharati University

Excerpt

The Struggle by Showkat Ali

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date January 14, 2026
No Comments on The Struggle by Showkat Ali

Title: The Struggle: A Novel

Author: Showkat Ali

Translators: V. Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

It was being said that the landlords were terribly angry, and that apparently they would not let the sharecroppers harvest the paddy. The paddy would be cut by people brought from outside. If there was a conflict over the matter, only Allah knew what would happen. Phulmoti did not know any prayers or Quranic verses; ‘Allah’ and ‘Bismillahe Rahamanur Rahim’ were the only sacred words she knew. She inwardly uttered those whenever the fear overwhelmed her.

One morning, Qutubali suddenly spotted someone in the distance, running along the boundary ridge towards their house. The person appeared familiar. So, he kept looking, trying to make out who it was. And why on earth was he running like that?

He recognized the man soon enough. ‘Aare, it is Mahindar!’ Qutubali advanced. Gasping for breath, Mahindar informed him that he had been to Ranisankoil to meet the peasants’ union there. He said he saw many men from Bihar at Pirganj station. They had long-moustachioed faces, and were hefty of build, and they were all carrying long lathis with a brass grip. He had heard that they were going to the house of the landlord Mitra Babu of Ranisankoil to guard the paddy fields. Apparently, thieves were cutting the paddy and taking it away and so the paddy on his field had to be guarded.

Qutubali grew anxious when he heard the news. Both of them rushed to the market, discussing the matter as they went. If the landlords in their locality too brought in Bihari watchmen from the west and made them guard the paddy fields, what would the peasants do? Would the watchmen let the sharecroppers cut the paddy? And what if they did not? Would the sharecropping peasants sit idly by with folded hands? The plough and the bullocks belonged to the sharecropper; he was the one who toiled, and it was he who raised the crop. Would he have no claim over that crop now? Would they not permit him to even enter the crop field? What nonsense was this? Hired musclemen from Bihar to guard ripe paddy in the fields was simply unacceptable!

Both of them were in agreement. No, the sharecroppers would cut the paddy. If there was resistance, then a fight would break out, and if indeed it did, then they must fight.

‘There’s no option but to fight,’ Mahindar said. ‘Let anyone say what they want, but we must fight.’

When they reached the union office, they saw that Baram Horo was already there, puffing on a beedi. He was surprised to see the two of them.

‘You people? Where’s Mondol? And Dinesh?’

Qutubali and Mahindar were startled. ‘Why, was Delbar Mondol supposed to come here?’

‘Yes,’ Baram said. ‘Dinesh asked Mondol to come. He needs to be here.’

‘Why? What happened?’

The news wasn’t good, Baram informed them. ‘Instructions have been received in all the police stations that since the paddy in the landlords’ fields might be looted, the police must guard the paddy with rifles until the harvest is over. I think they won’t let the sharecropping peasants cut the paddy.’

They didn’t realize how quickly the day passed—it was already afternoon. A lot of people had joined them by now. All were sharecropping peasants, except for Dr Abhimanyu Sen. There were discussions and information was shared. No one could say what the district-level leaders had decided.

‘They will decide what they think is appropriate,’ Doctor Babu said, ‘but will we sit twiddling our thumbs because of that? The landlords are bringing musclemen. We can’t bring guns, but we too have to pick up lathis. This isn’t anything new; the peasant earlier carried a cattle-prod, now he’ll carry a six-foot-long lathi of seasoned bamboo. Go, brothers, go and cut lathis from bamboo clumps…’

Dinesh Murmu kept shaking his head, growling, ‘What rubbish is this! Saala, the government, police and political parties are all on the side of the landlords. No one is on our side.’

The stalks full of ears of ripe paddy stood all over the floodplain with their heads bowed, waiting for the festival of harvest to begin! But the festive moment never arrived.

Qutubali was unable to sleep. Countless millions of stars shed dew smeared with blue light as the night advanced towards the next horizon. From many faraway fields could be heard the cries of ‘Hoshiyar…jaagte raho—o—o… Beware, stay awake!’ He had seen with his own eyes that Ghosh Babu too had brought a hired band of Bihari guards from Purnea district. He had no idea whose counsel the Mistress had followed in taking this step. Was she planning on getting the paddy cutting done by someone else? What about the task of husking the paddy? That too?

His wife was asleep next to him, as was his son, but he remained awake.

At some point during those still hours, Doctor Babu arrived at their house on a bicycle. He gave clear instructions: Delbar Mondol and Mahindar Burman were not to remain at home at night, nor were they to set foot in the nearby town or the marketplace in the market town. If they did, they might be arrested by the police and sent to jail. Doctor Babu also conveyed the news that the police had gone to arrest Dinesh and Baram, but fortunately, they couldn’t. Having got the news, the two had gone into hiding.

‘We are not going to start fighting just now…that’s right… but that doesn’t mean that we will let the police catch us,’ Doctor Babu said. ‘We will be careful and keep ourselves safe. And we will cut the paddy and bring it home—we must keep that in mind.’

No cutting of the paddy, no ploughing of the soil for the next crop, just sitting and waiting! If the ears dried up, would the paddy be fit to cut? All the stalks would drop off their ears.

Extracted from The Struggle: A Novel by Showkat Ali, translated by V. Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Set in a remote village in the Dinajpur region of undivided Bengal during the mid-1940s, The Struggle tells the intertwined story of Phulmoti—a young widow fighting to hold on to her land, her dignity and her child—and Qutubali, a simple-minded outsider whose unexpected kindness and fierce loyalty make him her unlikely ally amid the upheavals of a precarious feudal order and the stirrings of a nation on the verge of independence.

The death of Phulmoti’s husband shatters her fragile world. Her ten-year-old, Abed, can offer little defence 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 politics of the Congress and the Muslim League hover on the margins of village life, far removed from their daily battles. But when the tebhaga struggle breaks 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 have pieced back together.

First published in 1989 as Narai, this novel is not only a vivid portrayal of endurance in the face of isolation and rural exploitation, but also a sharp indictment of the social and political systems that deny justice to the poor. This sensitive translation introduces to a wider audience a forgotten classic of Bengali literature—politically clear-eyed and deeply moving.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Showkat Ali (1936–2018) was a renowned Bangladeshi novelist, short story writer and journalist whose work explored history, class and identity in Bengali society. His most celebrated novel, Prodoshe Prakritojon (1984), is considered a landmark in Bangladeshi literature.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS

Mohiuddin Jahangir is currently Assistant Professor in Khabashpur Adarsa University College, Bangladesh. His articles on literature, history and heritage have been published in scholarly journals, and he is the author of seven books.

V. Ramaswamy has translated many well-known Benglai authors. He was awarded the Translation Fellowship by the New India Foundation, and the English PEN Presents award in 2022.

Click here to read the review of the novel

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

Tags Bangaldeshi, Bangladesh, Bengal, Bengali, Bihar, Bihari, Khabashpur Adarsa University College, Mohiuddin Jahangir, Muslim League, Narai, PEN, Prodoshe Prakritojon, Purnea, Quranic, Showkat Ali, Speaking Tiger Books, The Struggle: A Novel, V. Ramaswamy

Review

The Lost Pendant

Book Review by Udita Banerjee

Title: The Lost Pendant

Editor: Angshuman Kar

Publisher: Hawakal Publishers

The Lost Pendant brings together poems translated from Bengali by translators such as Himalaya Jana, Mandakranta Sen, Rajorshi Patronobish, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Angshuman Kar, and Souva Chattopadhyay. Through these compelling translations, the volume makes a significant intervention in Partition literature, arriving at a moment when revisiting the lingering spectres of the event has become especially urgent. The Partition of India in 1947, which divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, resulted in one of the largest mass migrations in history and left enduring scars of displacement, violence, and fractured identities. As the editor, writer and academic, Angshuman Kar, notes in the book’s introduction how Partition remains a 78-year-old wound that continues to bleed.

The anthology showcases poetry from the eastern parts of the subcontinent, chiefly Bengal, Assam, and Bangladesh, featuring works by 41 poets from India and Bangladesh. Kar does not simply compile these poems but thoughtfully curates them to reveal several critical nuances. He invokes the concept of “buoyant memory,” introduced in his earlier work, Divided: Partition Memoirs from Two Bengals, to depict how “forgetting the past is impossible for the direct victims of Partition.” He also draws attention to the disproportionate representation of upper-caste Hindu Bengali poets, in contrast to the relative invisibility of Muslims and those from marginalised communities. This imbalance extends to gender as well, with a noticeable disparity between male and female poets in the collection.

The book is structured in two parts, respectively featuring poets from India and Bangladesh. The Indian section is notably larger and presents a wide range of emotions, reflecting both the immediate trauma of Partition and its long-lasting reverberations over the years. Many of the poems in this section express a deep nostalgia for a lost homeland. For instance, Alokeranjan Dasgupta’s ‘Exile’ evokes memories of abandoned spaces. Similarly, Ananda Sankar Rai’s ‘The Far Side’ laments the estrangement from what was once familiar. He writes, “Once it was a province, now an alien land / where you must enter passport in hand.” Basudeb Deb’s ‘Picture of My Father’ constructs a powerful portrait of the nation through the figure of the father: “Swadeshi movement war sirens famine flood / Riot and partition written in the wrinkles on his forehead.” After the father’s death, only a walking stick remains. The poem draws a powerful parallel between the futility of the father’s dismissive words, “This country is not a pumpkin that you can cut it in one blow”, and the uselessness of the walking stick after his passing. This object comes to embody the spirit of the deceased father, “just another old toy”, offering a stark commentary on how individuals became pawns in the hands of the state.

Several poets in the anthology focus intensely on the experiences of refugees, capturing both their suffering and the complexities of their identities. In ‘The Refugee Mystery’, Binoy Majumdar laments the loss of linguistic roots, noting how “the Bangals now speak the dialect of Kolkata all the time, having forgotten the dialects of Barishal and Faridpur / The Moslems of Dhaka are heard singing and speaking in the radio with the lilt of Uluberia.” His reflections emphasise the deep connection between language and social identity. This theme finds a resonance in Sunil Gangopadhyay’s poem ‘That Day’, where he writes, “On one side they named the waters Pani / on the other side–Jol.” Through this simple yet evocative contrast, Gangopadhyay underscores how a shared concept can be articulated through divergent linguistic expressions in India and Bangladesh, which become subtle yet potent markers of socio-linguistic divisions. Such poems provoke profound questions: Can the adoption of a new dialect truly redefine one’s identity? How does one navigate the tension between past and present linguistic selves, and is reconciliation even possible?

Viewed through the intertwined lenses of faith and suffering, poetry often functions as a repository of collective memory and a means of resilience. In this regard, Devdas Acharya’s three poems present a poignant exploration of the lived experiences of refugees in post-Partition India. A recurring and haunting image emerges in his work: a grieving father, who has recently lost a child to hunger, standing before a deity symbolically embodied by a swadeshi leader. This image encapsulates both the profound deprivation endured by displaced communities and their simultaneous reliance on unshaken faith. Despite the magnitude of loss, what sustained many refugees was a deeply rooted belief system that imbued their suffering with meaning.

By foregrounding the gendered dimensions of violence, Partition poetry exposes how women’s bodies became contested sites of power and trauma. In “She, on the Platform of a Station”, Krishna Dhar powerfully captures the plight of women during Partition. She writes, “Chased from the other side of the border, escaping fire and the fangs and tongues of wolves, one day she arrived,” evoking the image of a refugee woman doubly marginalised– “devastated by Partition” and simultaneously “dodging the eyes of the hyenas.” Here, the metaphorical wolves and hyenas represent predatory men who treated women’s bodies as extensions of territorial conquest. Kar points out in the introduction that very few women wrote poetry about their Partition experiences, largely because they were already engaged in the broader struggle for gender equality. While women’s memoirs on Partition exist, poetry by women addressing these themes, particularly from the 1970s, is strikingly limited. This absence is significant, as women’s experiences are crucial to understanding how deeply gendered the space of the subcontinent was during and after Partition.

Following independence, conflicts often emerged within the nation, revolving around issues of region, language, religion, and ethnicity. In ‘The Diary of a Refugee’, Shaktipada Brahmachari reflects on his sense of belonging across borders, juxtaposing his memories of a past home in Bengal with his present life in Assam. He writes, “The world is my home now, in Bangla my love I spell–Prafulla and Vrigu are the cousins of my heart,” referencing two leaders of the Asom Gana Parishad. While refugees in Assam experienced a more complex form of marginalisation due to ethno-linguistic differences, Brahmachari portrays a gradual process of acceptance, where both the homeland he left and the land he adopted come to hold emotional significance.

Across the border in Bangladesh, the theme of displacement persists. In “Leaving Home”, Jasimuddin asserts, “this land is for Hindus and Muslims,” calling on educators to return and “build the broken schools once more…we will find out our beloved brother, whom I lost,” a poignant appeal for reconciliation and return of Hindu families displaced by Partition. The motifs of memory and loss recur throughout most of these poems, a trope common between both the nations. This sense of finality is further echoed in Binod Bera’s lament: “Our nation is now three, all three are independent, and love lives an alien existence.” The emotional chasm created by Partition, and the subsequent loss of mutual affection, renders any notion of return futile.

The collection deserves commendation for its ambitious effort to recover voices from Bengali literature and render them accessible to a global readership beyond linguistic boundaries, through gripping translations. It is the first-ever translated collection of Bengali Partition poetry that captures the angst of the original poems with perfect nuance. The very title, The Lost Pendant, merits particular attention, for it resonates with themes of liminality and the fractured sense of identity experienced by the refugee poet Nirmalyo Bhushan Bhattacharya, better known by his pseudonym, Majnu Mostafa. Born in Khulna, Bangladesh, yet spending much of his life in Krishnanagar, India, Bhattacharya embodies the dislocation and dual belonging of Partition’s afterlives. As Kar insightfully observes, the choice of pseudonym can be read as a deliberate act of defiance, “a strategy to cross the boundaries set up by religious politics and fundamentalism–a move much needed in the subcontinent of our times.” In this sense, The Lost Pendant is not merely an anthology but a work of cultural recuperation as it attempts to resurrect poets whose voices risked erasure, while simultaneously protecting their oeuvres from the twin threats of historical amnesia and linguistic inaccessibility.

Udita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of English at VIT-AP University. Her work has previously been published in platforms such as Outlook Weekender, Borderless Journal, Indian Review, and Poems India.

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

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Aeons of Art

Art is Alive

By Ratnottama Sengupta

The Gregorian calendar was still showing 1998.

I was in Oxford on a Charles Wallace fellowship to study John Ruskin’s influence on M K Gandhi and R N Tagore. Like any other student I lived in a hostel, walked up to the Ruskin School of Art and Ashmolean Museum, to the High Street and the flea market, to the Bodleian Library, and – of course – the book stores that continue to make that ancient city of academic excellence such a delight for a person like me who started crawling in the midst of books.

What caught my fancy on the book-lined shelves in the hometown of a ‘legal deposit’ library? The screenplays of Quentin Tarantino. Countless books on Elizabeth 1 – perhaps because Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth had just released worldwide. And the volumes on art. The gorgeous reproductions halved the tedium of walking miles of museums and galleries. And the history of art rekindled my love for paintings from our collective past.

But what I didn’t take kindly to was the neglect of – if not bias against — art from my homeland. There were books on Greek, Chinese, Japanese , African, Egyptian, Mayan, Roman art, on Russian Icons and Stained Glass windows, on French Impressionists and German Expressionists, Cubists and Moderns… But Indian art? For crying out loud, where was Ajanta-Ellora? The glass paintings and Miniatures? Pichwai and Patachitra, Nathdwara and Kalighat Pat, Warli and Madhubani, Santiniketan and Baroda?

That’s when I told myself, “Put the journey of Indian paintings between covers.” For, which other country has a continuity that I can boast, of a tradition that has continued unchequered for three thousand years and more?

Once I was back home, my friend Reeta Dutta Gupta approached me to edit an Encyclopedia of Culture for the India Series she was nursing. And Dr Jain of Ratna Sagar entrusted me to author a Notebook that would recount for school-going children the story of Indian art from Bhimbetka to the present millennia. What luck!

Be it the hunters and the hunted of Bhimbetka, the rock art now on the UNESCO list of World Heritage, or Kolam and Alpana and Rangoli, the decorative designs of Kerala and Bengal and Maharashtra. Be it the Buddha of Ajanta Frescoes or the ploughmen and blacksmith of the Haripura Congress panels painted by the Bengal master Nandalal Bose, be it the illuminations in the Jain manuscripts or the Mughal manners immortalised by the kalams: art in India has grown out of everyday life. These art expressions have been an integral part of the people’s existence, regardless of the style or the period in which they were painted. Yes, down centuries Indian art has withstood change of regiments, religions, philosophy, social content, historical setbacks. And, aesthetic excellence has found an outlet in forms and lines, strokes and colours, whether these were obtained by crushing gems or pounded rice.

This has helped India enjoy a continuity that is rare even in the developed societies. From the sketches of Bhimbetka to those of the tribal artists of Warli, from the murals of ancient India to the art of contemporary masters, from the miniaturised figures to the Tantric patterns – art in India has reinvented itself again and again. And each time it has emerged with renewed vigour and vitality. Because, every age has related to art in an intimate way. By painting on the wall. Decorating the floor. Placing it on the altar. Or simply by keeping an account of the times.

Bhimbetka Cave paintings from prehistory

As A Ramachandran – then professor of art at Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi – had said to me, “Even when our ancient language that was deemed the language of the gods, fell into oblivion, art transcended centuries because it was communicating through a universal language – the visual language of colours and hues.” The lines defined the form, and also created a unitary area for the use of colour, he had further explained. “No matter what the subject, comprehension was never a problem for the Indian – until he was confronted by the art that was imposed by the colonialists.”

The Western overemphasis on realism played havoc, with the native sensibility that allowed for imagination and stylization, Nair Sir had pointed out. That sensibility had no problem accepting a ten-armed goddess, Dasabhuja Durga, or Dasanan, the ten-headed Ravan. “Lifestyle changes too have led to the dilution of Indian aesthetics that once enveloped our workaday lives. The only living art today is the visual art traditions in the villages, but that too might not last as villagers now want to ‘rise’ to the level of the urbans!” he had lamented.

In such a situation, art becomes doubly significant in the life of a child. When she or he is exposed to it, the child can not only access the history and the continuity of a culture but also nurture it with love that can ensure it lives in the days to come… With this in mind, I will write to focus on the high points of Indian art.

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 writes books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.

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

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Review

Last Song Before Home

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Last Song before Home

Author: Indira Das

Translator: Bina Biswas

Publisher: Rupa Publications

Last Song Before Home, the English translation of Indira Das’s Bengali memoir Shuru Theke Phera – Mayer Smritikatha[1], emerges as a luminous elegy to the fragility of memory and familial bonds. Translated by Bina Biswas, the book chronicles the author’s mother, Gayatri Das, navigating vascular dementia post-stroke. Through an epistolary structure of imagined letters, Das captures the slow erosion of self, where recollections surface like half-remembered melodies amid Bengal’s partitioned landscapes. The thematic depth and stylistic finesse position it as a vital contribution to South Asian memoir literature.

Central themes orbit memory as both lifeline and tormentor. Dementia strips Gayatri of chronology, yet fragments—rain-soaked courtyards, Partition’s unspoken wounds—resurface as anchors of identity. Das reframes loss as resistance, transforming maternal decline into a testament to resilience. Sisterhood underscores this; bonds with siblings weave a tapestry of shared silences, countering isolation’s void.

Partition looms subtly, not as a historical spectacle but an intimate scar—displaced homes echo in Gayatri’s fading queries: “Where is home?” This mirrors postcolonial Bengal’s flux, where personal trauma intersects collective upheaval. Dignity persists through ritual: songs hummed off-key, hands folding faded saris. Das elevates the mundane, critiquing modernity’s erasure of oral legacies. Resilience triumphs, not via triumph, but quiet defiance—memory’s “last song” before oblivion. The memoir critiques gendered aging in India, where women’s stories dissolve unspoken, urging reclamation.

A practicing gynaecologist, Das’s prose, via Biswas’s fluid translation, mimics dementia’s rhythm: elliptical sentences drift, loop, and fracture like synapses firing erratically. “The courtyard bloomed once, or was it twice? Rain came, carrying voices from across the river.” This stream-of-consciousness narrative eschews linear plot for associative flow, evoking Woolfian interiority fused with Bengali lyricism—sensory motifs—jasmine perfume, monsoon mud—ground abstraction, rendering emotion tactile.

In the translator’s note, Biswas, who is a poet and academician, says: “This book is not simply a narrative-it is a mosaic of survival, and the search for belonging. As John Berger once wrote, ‘Never again will a single story be told as though it is the only one.’ The protagonist’s journey is part of a greater collective-a shared history of migration, exile, and emotional displacement. Her voice rises in a chorus of the grieving, each thread woven with shared loss and a fierce resolve to cling to identity.

“She is a figure many will recognize: a woman who, though exiled by circumstance, carries the remnants of home in every gesture and memory. Her story becomes a vessel for inherited struggle, for resilience passed from one generation to the next. As Milan Kundera so memorably stated, ‘The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’”

Epistolary form innovates: letters to an absent self-blur authorial voice, fostering intimacy without sentimentality. Repetition (“Remember? No, forget.”) mirrors cognitive loops, building hypnotic cadence. Das avoids melodrama; understatement amplifies pathos— a single, misplaced utensil evokes existential ache. Cultural bilingualism enriches: Bengali idioms, untranslated, preserve authenticity, challenging monolingual readers. Pacing accelerates in crescendo passages, where songs bridge eras, culminating in cathartic release.

Last Song Before Home transcends memoir, becoming a philosophical meditation on impermanence. Its strengths—haunting style, layered themes—outweigh minor translation hiccups, like occasional stiffness. Essential for readers of Partition literature or aging narratives, it earns four stars for profound humanity. Das not only mourns but hymns endurance, leaving echoes that linger.

[1] Translates to: Returning from the Beginning: Memories of Mother

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

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags Bengal, Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography, Bina Biswas, Cyclones in Odisha – Landfall Wreckage and Resilience, Indira Das, John Berger, Last Song Before Home, Milan Kundera, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha, Partition, Rupa Publications, Shuru Theke Phera - Mayer Smritikatha, Unbiased

celebrations

Festivals of Humanity

Festivals are affirmations of joy and love that bind humanity with their sense of hope even in a world torn by violence and climate change. As the end of the year approaches, we invite you to savour flavours of festivals past and, a few, yet to come, before the cycle starts again in the new year. The colours of celebrations are vibrant and varied as shades of nature or the skies.

We have new years spread out over the year, starting with January, moving on to the Chinese New Year around February, the Bengali new year in April to festivals of environment, light, darkness as in Wiccan beliefs, Tagore’s birth, more conventional ones like Deepavali, Eid, Durga Puja and Christmas. People celebrate in different ways and for different reasons. What we have also gathered is not only the joie de vivre but also the sadness people feel when celebrations are muted whether due to the pandemic, wars or for social reasons. In some cases, we indulge in excesses with funny results! And there are of course festivals of humanity … as celebrated by the bauls — the singing mendicants of Bengal — who only recognise the religion of love, compassion and kindness.

Enjoy our fare!

Poetry

Aaji Shubhodine Pitaar Bhabone or On This Auspicious Day, a Brahmo Hymn by Tagore. Click here to read the translation by Mitali Chakravarty.

Potpouri by Isa Kamari familiarises us with Malay-Singaporean traditions that are observed during festivals. Click here to read.

Eid Poems by Afsar Mohammad. Click here to read.

Ramakanta Rath’s Sri Radha celebrating the love of Radha and Krishna have been translated from Odiya by the late poet himself, have been excerpted from his full length translation. Click here to read.

Bijoya Doushumi, a poem on the last day of Durga Puja, by the famous poet, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, has been translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Groundhog Day by John Grey. Click here to read.

Christmas Cheer by Malachi Edwin Vethamani. Click here to read.

Christmas Poems by Rhys Hughes. Click here to read.

Poem on Christ by Rabindranath Tagore: Verses excerpted from ‘The Child‘, a poem originally written in English by the poet. Click here to read.

Purano Sei Diner Kotha or ‘Can old days ever be forgot?’ by Tagore, based on Robert Burn’s lyrics, Auld Lang Syne. Click here to read the translation by Mitali Chakravarty.

Prose

A Clean Start: Suzanne Kamata tells us how the Japanese usher in a new year. Click here to read.

Shanghai in Jakarta: Eshana Sarah Singh takes us to Chinese New Year celebrations in Djakarta. Click here to read.

Cherry Blossom Forecast: Suzanne Kamata brings the Japanese ritual of cherry blossom viewing to our pages with her camera and words. Click here to read.

Pohela Boisakh: A Cultural Fiesta: Sohana Manzoor shares the Bengali New Year celebrations in Bangladesh with interesting history and traditions that mingle beyond the borders. Click here to read.

The New Year’s Boon: Devraj Singh gives a glimpse into the projection of a new normal created by God. Click here to read.

A Musical Soiree: Snigdha Agrawal recalls how their family celebrated Tagore’s birth anniversary. Click here to read.

Not Everyone is Invited to a Child’s Haircut Ceremony: Odbayar Dorje muses on Mongolian traditions. Clickhere to read.

A Golden Memory of Green Day in Japan: Suzanne Kamata tells us of a festival where she planted a tree in the presence of the Japanese royalty. Click here to read.

An Alien on the Altar! Snigdha Agrawal writes of how a dog and lizard add zest to Janmashtami (Krishna’s birthday) festivities with a dollop of humour. Click here to read

Memories of Durga Puja : Fakrul Alam recalls the festivities of Durga Puja in Dhaka during his childhood. Click here to read.

From Bombay to Kolkata — the Dhaaks of Durga : Ratnottama Sengupta explores a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Festival. Click here to read.

KL Twin Towers near Kolkata?: Devraj Singh Kalsi visits the colours of a marquee hosting the Durga Puja season with its spirit of inclusivity. Click here to read.

The Oral Traditions of Bengal: Story and Song: Aruna Chakravarti describes the syncretic culture of Bengal through its folk music and oral traditions. Click here to read.

From Diana to ‘Dayaan’: Rajorshi Patronobis talks of Wiccan lore. Click here to read.

Dim Memories of the Festival of Lights: Farouk Gulsara takes a nostalgic trip to Deepavali celebrations in Malaysia. Click here to read.

When Nectar Turns Poisonous!: Farouk Gulsara looks at social norms around festive eating. Click here to read.

Hold the roast turkey please Santa: Celebrating the festive season off-season with Keith Lyons from New Zealand, where summer solstice and Christmas fall around the same time. Click here to read.

Indian Christmas: Essays, Memoirs, Hymns, an anthology edited by Jerry Pinto and Madhulika Liddle, has been reviewed by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

I Went to Kerala: Rhys Hughes treads a humorous path bringing to us a mixed narrative of Christmas on bicycles . Click here to read.

The Bauls of Bengal: Aruna Chakravarti writes of wandering minstrels called bauls and the impact they had on Tagore. Click here to read.