Tag: Black Eagle Books

Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Snehaprava Das

NIGHT OF THE ECLIPSE

That night a shadow spread over the 
Moon's face. 
The moon, heavy in its 
Pain of loss became red
And shed scarlet tears
On the nocturnal earth caught in a
Warm vaporous net.

The shadow lengthened down to
A morning full of rain and river
And the waves screaming a vow
To drag the fields into
Coffins of sand even while
They still breathed in green.

The morning after, 
No sun peeped through the clouds of east.
No music dropped from the wind 
Or the drowsy trees.

The green lay inert in its grave
And rotted.
Dreams rotted too, eaten away
By worms swarming in grey abandon.

The shadow swallowed everything
Like a desert, like an ocean,
Like the endlessly expanding time.

Everything, like the moon 
went inside the dark, crippling net.
The sparkle in a thousand pairs of eyes
sank in the shadow of the river
In a permanent eclipse.

From Public Domain

Snehaprava Das is an academic, translator and writer. She has multiple translations, three collections of stories and five anthologies of poetry to her credit. She has been published in Indian Literature, Oxford University Press, Speaking Tiger, Penguin and Black Eagle Books.

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Categories
Review

Tales of Secrets and Darkness

Book Review by Bhaskar Pariccha

Title: Keep It Secret

Author: Snehaprava Das

Publisher: Black Eagle Books

Snehaprava Das, a former Associate Professor of English, is a noted poet and translator. She has translated many Odia works into English and published five poetry collections. Her translations have received several awards, including the Prabashi Bhasha Sahitya Sammana, the Jibanananda Das Award, and the Fakir Mohan Anubad Sammana.

Keep It Secret is a collection of ten short stories. The relatively lengthy narratives are equally grounded in reality and fantasy. In the author’s view, these narratives strive to traverse the delicate, ephemeral boundary that exists between reality and illusion. They delve into the inner jungle to uncover the secrets that are meticulously hidden behind a facade of pretense and the artifice of a pleasing and socially acceptable exterior.

Engaging with her stories provides a rewarding experience. These tales encompass a diverse array of themes, including life and death, the supernatural, the real and the surreal, peculiar coincidences, and the intricacies of human relationships.

 In the Preface, Das provides a rationale for her stories, which contributes to their uniqueness. Citing Regina Pally, a distinguished psychiatrist and therapist based in Los Angeles, Das states, “Most of what we perceive occurs non-consciously and effortlessly, and according to her, this process can be described as a ‘survival instinct’.” This may lead the guilt-ridden mind to interpret and shape a future aimed at compensating for past wrongs. This ‘survival instinct,’ which entices individuals to assume and perceive various things, can even distort the true impact of actual events, creating multiple and bizarre interpretations of a single incident that may approach the surreal.

She bases her stories on the presumption made by Freudian scholars: “From error to error, one discovers the entire truth, observes Freud. Some of the stories aim at exposing the errors man is forced to commit, lured by compulsive emotions, which leave life irrecoverably difficult, and could at times prove fatal in that self-destructive process of discovering the truth. Some stories attempt to study the complex and shifting patterns of human relationships that hang precariously balanced between trust and distrust, and to observe the reaction of the characters while confronting the secret of that relationship, which was kept closely guarded till the end. The experience of that confrontation could be subversive in that specific moment of anagnorisis.”[1]

Some stories may not always offer a seemingly logical, definable, or happy ending.

Das’s short stories possess a cerebral quality, posing a challenge for discerning readers to fully appreciate her offerings.

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[1] ‘The other Freud: Rethinking the philosophical roots of psychoanalysis’ by Parker & Donald Lewis

Click to access Parker_2022_The_other_Freud_rethinking_the_philosophical.pdf

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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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Categories
Excerpt

Keep It Secret

Title: Keep It Secret

Author: Snehaprava Das

Publisher: Black Eagle Books

It was for the first time Karisma had entered her father’s room after he was discharged from the Amrit Hospital. He had suffered that massive paralytic stroke a month and a half back, the night on which she had announced that she had transferred her shares in the company and debentures in the name of Sunil Arya, the company’s junior partner. Doctors had little hope of any significant improvement in his condition. Karisma had engaged a couple of nurses from the hospital who worked in shifts and took care of her father. A doctor visited the house twice a week to examine his vitals.

‘How are you, father?’ Karisma asked. Her voice had a formal, indifferent note. A brief sparkle came to the eyes of the man who lay helpless in the bed. He tried desperate to move his hands that lay dead and stiff.

‘This is the last time you are seeing me father,’ she said softly. ‘I will be leaving this place. I have no idea what I am going to do but I will not return here. I have made all financial arrangements for you. Aruna aunty will see to it that you are taken care of properly as long as you are alive. There will be no lapse in your treatment.’

The man’s eyes darted around revealing how desperate he was and his lips quivered as if he struggled to speak out something but the only sound he made was a muffled groan.

‘I know what you want to say, father,’ Karisma said, a deep agony in her eyes. ‘But I cannot continue to live here now. You have to be alone. Didn’t you want to live in a palace and own heaps of wealth? I have transferred all the amount to your account and authorized Aruna aunty to do all transactions on your behalf. You have avenged the injustice done to you years ago, though I would not call it a heinous sin as you have always believed and made my poor mother believe it to be one. But what did I do to deserve the punishment you meted out to me, father? Which father would subject his daughter to such devilish exploitation? But of course, you were determined to torture your poor wife for the slip she made by punishing me, by snatching away every damn thing I loved, by utilizing me to slake your hunger for money. What a fool have I been to fall for that dirty ‘princess’ trick you played with me! I have never wanted to be a princess father. I was happy in that small tenement house, with the love of my mother.  That was genuine and not fake, motivated by greed and hostility like yours. And of course, there was Ronit! My Ronit! The only silver lining behind my gloomy clouds of despair. You destroyed that too. I do not believe in the existence of a world beyond this one, or that of a hell or a heaven. Each of us has to atone his sin through a penance, through self-afflicted torments, like mother did, like I have been doing all these years. My sin was just that I had a look that constantly reminded you of the slip my mother made.’ Karisma paused for a breath and looked at the eyes that had sunken into the pale, desiccated face. A few drops of tears trickled down from the corners of the dull eyes. Karisma wiped the tears with the end of her sari. ‘There is nothing I could do to help you father.. This is your nemesis and you cannot escape it. And I give you my word father, I will not let the truth come out to the open, ever! It will always remain a secret.’

 She rose to her feet and cast a long pitiful look at the inert figure, then turned and walked towards the door. A frantic but low and muffled animal howl rippled across the room, bringing her to a halt. She repressed the urge to look back and strode out of the room, breaking into a tearless, dry sobbing.

About the Book

Keep It Secret, a collection of ten stories, has in its agenda an effort to cross over the flimsy and floating border between the substance and the shadow, to explore into the jungle within, to study the secrets carefully concealed behind the mask of pretence and shamming of an agreeable and acceptable facade.

In the words of Andre Malraux, ‘Man is not what he thinks, he is what he hides.’ 

The aim, thus in a way, is to unravel the truth man hides and strives to protect it under a falsehood, that, at times projects, reveals itself through a behaviour pattern which may appear absurd. It intends to push aside the deceptively glossy screen of fake complacence, and traverse into that murky, elusive terrain beyond the ordinary logical perceptibility.

This excerpt is the from the title story, a tale of  personal vendetta.

About the Author

 Dr.Snehaprava Das, Former Prof. of English, is a noted author, poet and translator. She has three collections of English stories, five collection of English poems, and thirteen collection of Translated texts (Odia to English) to her credit. She has received  The Prabashi Bhasha Sahitya Samman, The Jivanananda Das award, The Fakirmohan Anuvad Sammana  and Lakshmi Narayan Mohanty translation awards for her contribution to literature.    

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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