Gower Bhat discusses the advent of coaching schools in Kashmir for competitive exams for University exams, which seem to be replacing real schools. Clickhere to read.
In winters, birds migrate. They face no barriers. The sun also shines across fences without any hindrance. Long ago, the late Nirendranath Chakraborty (1924-2018) wrote about a boy, Amalkanti, who wanted to be sunshine. The real world held him back and he became a worker in a dark printing press. Dreams sometimes can come to nought for humanity has enough walls to keep out those who they feel do not ‘belong’ to their way of life or thought. Some even war, kill and violate to secure an exclusive existence. Despite the perpetuation of these fences, people are now forced to emigrate not only to find shelter from the violences of wars but also to find a refuge from climate disasters. These people — the refuge seekers— are referred to as refugees[1]. And yet, there are a few who find it in themselves to waft to new worlds, create with their ideas and redefine norms… for no reason except that they feel a sense of belonging to a culture to which they were not born. These people are often referred to as migrants.
At the close of this year, Keith Lyons brings us one such persona who has found a firm footing in New Zealand. Setting new trends and inspiring others is a writer called Harry Ricketts[2]. He has even shared a poem from his latest collection, Bonfires on the Ice. Ricketts’ poem moves from the personal to the universal as does the poetry of another migrant, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, aspiring to a new, more accepting world. While Tulip Chowdhury — who also moved across oceans — prays for peace in a war torn, weather-worn world:
I plant new seeds of dreams for a peaceful world of tomorrow.
Fiction in this issue reverberates across the world with Marc Rosenberg bringing us a poignant telling centred around childhood, innocence and abuse. Sayan Sarkar gives a witty, captivating, climate-friendly narrative centred around trees. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao weaves a fable set in Southern India.
A story by Nasir Rahim Sohrabi from the dusty landscapes of Balochistan has found its way into our translations too with Fazal Baloch rendering it into English from Balochi. Isa Kamari translates his own Malay poems which echo themes of his powerful novels, A Song of the Wind (2007) and Tweet(2017), both centred around the making of Singapore. Snehaprava Das introduces Odia poems by Satrughna Pandab in English. While Professor Fakrul Alam renders one of Nazrul’s best-loved songs from Bengali to English, Tagore’s translated poem Jatri (Passenger) welcomes prospectives onboard a boat —almost an anti-thesis of his earlier poem ‘Sonar Tori’ (The Golden Boat) where the ferry woman rows off robbing her client.
We have plenty of non-fiction this time starting with a tribute to Jane Austen (1775-1817) by Meenakshi Malhotra. Austen turns 250 this year and continues relevant with remakes in not only films but also reimagined with books around her novels — especially Pride and Prejudice (which has even a zombie version). Bhaskar Parichha pays a tribute to writer Bibhuti Patnaik. Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan explores ancient Sangam Literature from Tamil Nadu and Ratnottama Sengupta revisits an art exhibition that draws bridges across time… an exploration she herself curated.
We have a spray of colours from across almost all the continents in our pages this time. A bumper issue again — for which all of the contributors have our heartfelt thanks. Huge thanks to our fabulous team who pitch in to make a vibrant issue for all of us. A special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for the fabulous artwork. And as our readers continue to grow in numbers by leap and bounds, I would want to thank you all for visiting our content! Introduce your friends too if you like what you find and do remember to pause by this issue’s contents page.
Wish all of you happy reading through the holiday season!
Sunset at Colaba, Bombay, which is currently referred to as Mumbai. From Public Domain
To think that Bombay is attainable is the first mistake of the rookie. And though this city attracts and repels in equal measure, it is the former that makes me want to linger all the more. And linger I do, over a cup (or was it two?) of piping hot Irani chai and bun maska at the Persian Cafe in Cuffe Parade. The rain starts just as soon as I step out of the metro station and make for the safer confines of the cafe, reminding me of home in more ways than one. It is only in Bombay that I am reminded that the culture of the Zoroastrians flourishes somewhere outside of Hyderabad as well.
Colaba lures me, but Kala Ghoda’s immense detachment from its suburban-esque walkways seems more pensive. With Mahatma Gandhi Road sweeping past the Fort and Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road intersecting it at Flora Fountain, Bombay’s charm offensive lies bare. It is only much later, after I step into Kitaab Khana, the Bombay equivalent of Madras’ Higginbotham’s and Calcutta’s Oxford, that I strongly feel the Raj’s tentacles of reunion. On the other side of the road, the college named after Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone, who twice gave up the chance to be appointed governor-general of India, preferring to finish his two-volume work, History of India (1841) instead, is a reminder of the good that existed among our colonial masters.
*
But the second mistake that the rookie can make is by affirming that all of Bombay lies within the island of Colaba. While it did, in the days of the Raj, it no longer holds the sanctity of tradition as much as it does for the affluent who have no idea of when the last local leaves from Churchgate to Borivali. Versova, much a fishing village as Bandra had once been, is as far away from Colaba as Islamabad is from Vancouver, and Jogeshwari is a mere landing ground for the aristocrats of the north, for whom Thane is where the merely envious congregate and share stories over pav bhaji. A hint of Marathi wafts over the air, sprinkled generally with salt from the sea, and the Bambaiya of Parel and the Hindi of the island city are forgotten.
For what does a gentleman bred in the now-reclaimed Old Woman’s Island, fondly called Little Colaba, know of the fighting on the streets of Dadar? The Gateway of India, looming far beyond the ordinary, takes no part in the skyline of this Bombay, where political representatives of all hues and colours sell dreams just as kaleidoscopic as their ever-changing loyalties. Areas where no cars enter are not strictly unheard of in the Bombay of the north, and as Suketu Mehta so lovingly painted in Maximum City, it is a conurbation not afraid of its past, and one that is constantly stuck in an identity crisis. For there are more millionaires in Bombay than in any other city in the country, and they are only matched by the number of people who go to bed hungry. The Marine Drive becomes an elongated resting place for the unfortunate, the destitute or the merely curious once the lights on the Queen’s Necklace get turned on. I would have seen it had I known where to look.
*
To reclaim the days of the Raj, there are few places more apt to while away an evening than Colaba. There are certainly no places as germane as the cafes Mondegar and Leopold, which happily serve continental fare to their patrons after all these years without a trace of embarrassment at the culinary debaucheries they joyfully commit. Old men, with fedoras last seen in fashion in 1930 (before World War II took away the joys of wearing headgear, apart from sola topis, in a country where the sun has been awarded citizenship), and with shirts tucked into waistbands up to their lower chest, order bottles of grizzled beer with a side of mashed potatoes. Cholesterol and high blood sugar are forgotten when relieving one’s youth, especially with Spanish women gawking at the absurdity of it all in the flea market on the causeway outside. With the stroke of a pen, these men bring to life the jazz clubs of the early 1950s, recollecting the trumpeter Chris Perry at Alfred’s. And then they remember Lorna Cordeiro, of whom they speak as if she were a loved one.
The scarcity of vada pav in the vicinity of Kala Ghoda scares me until I remember that even autorickshaws are banned from this part of town. Much like a man seeking water from the desert atrophies of the Middle East, I lunge into a seller close to the Victoria Terminus. When he asks for a mere INR 30 for two vada pavs, I am shamed into submission, looking towards my shoes — coloured an extravagant yellow — and murmur notes of dissent that even my ears cannot pick up. A jet-black Mercedes-Benz skids past the puddle of water that has gathered around Flora Fountain, dousing me with dredges of obstinacy. There are two worlds that we live in, and Bombay may have achieved its supremacy over both yesterday.
Bun Maska can be found in Iranian cafes in Mumbai Pav Bhaji, a popular street food of Mumbai From Public Domain
Mohul Bhowmick is a national-level cricketer, poet, sports journalist, essayist and travel writer from Hyderabad, India. He has published four collections of poems and one travelogue so far. More of his work can be discovered on his website: www.mohulbhowmick.com.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Book Title: Love and Crime in the Time of Plague: A Bombay Mystery
Author: Anuradha Kumar
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
With Love and Crime in the Time of Plague, a sequel to her first Bombay mystery novel, The Kidnapping of Mark Twain, Anuradha Kumar brings historical fiction and moral inquiry into a gripping, imaginative dialogue. Placed in 1896 Bombay during the plague, the book begins with an image of visceral dread — a rabid rat biting a dock-worker — and from that moment on, the city is portrayed as a place where anxiety, illness and suspicion trickle into every crack of public and private life. The author while successfully evoking an image of a city under siege, also makes a reader wonder whether epidemics, when they arrive, also expose deeper social and ethical contagions long embedded in a society.
The novel reconstructs the atmosphere of late nineteenth-century Bombay. The city, the colonial bungalows, the horses, the streets and the just added bicycles to the streets. Along with unnerving coexistence with science and superstition, it comes palpably alive in the pages. The plague is handled with restraint. Hospitals and the quarantine measures take the hue of resented interventions which provoke resistance from communities that view them as assaults on religious customs and social autonomy.
At the centre of the narrative is Maya Barton, a character whose quiet determination and curiosity anchors the novel. Alongside her is Henry Baker, an American trade official who figured in Kumar’s earlier novel, The Kidnapping of Mark Twain. The prequel had introduced both characters in a different historical and emotional register, foregrounding adventure, transnational intrigue, and the unsettling proximity between colonial India and the American literary celebrity. In Love and Crime in the Time of Plague, Maya and Henry reappear, seemingly shaped by prior experience. The relationship between the two books is subtle rather than overt. The second does not really depend upon the first for comprehension. Yet, the readers familiar with The Kidnapping of Mark Twain will sense a continuity of temperament, trust, and shared ethical curiosity between the protagonists.
This continuity is substantial indeed. Where the prequel revolved around kidnapping and spectacle, Love and Crime in the Time of Plague turns inward, replacing dramatic motion with moral gravity. Maya emerges as an introspective figure, troubled by unanswered questions about her lineage and identity. Her own search reflects the wider inquiry that shapes the book — what realities lie hidden beneath official narratives, and who bears the cost of their concealment? The discovery of some mysterious sketches further draws Maya into an investigation which links private memory with public disorder.
Kumar here renders institutions as sites of ethical strain. Offices, hospitals and private societies are shown not as abstract systems but as fragile human constructs, susceptible to fear, bias, and ambition. A secret organisation which opposes plague-control measures shows the darker side of communal solidarity, revealing how traditions can be mobilised to validate coercion and violence. Where colonial authority is shown without romanticisation, scientific rationality is depicted entangled with coercion and indifference.
Stylistically, the prose is austere and restrained. The unhurried pacing permits atmosphere and character to come together steadily. Although the narrative may appear deliberately slow, but this slowness mirrors the creeping, inescapable nature of the plague itself. The revealing of conspiracies does not erase loss, nor does the waning of the epidemic reinstate moral balance. Trauma lingers, relationships are changed, and the city remains marked by what it has borne. In this sense, the novel extends the thematic concerns of The Kidnapping of Mark Twain. It moves from the excitement of historical adventure to a more sobering contemplation on accountability, memory, and subsistence.
This book is historically immersive and yet quietly unsettling. Reflecting upon how societies perform under intense pressure, and how crime often emerges not from evil but from fear and silence. It stands as a richly imagined historical mystery can be read on its own. When read alongside its prequel, it divulges the steady evolution of a fictional world—and of characters—who keep searching for truth in times when certainty itself is under threat.
Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Title: Love and Crime in the Time of Plague: A Bombay Mystery
Author: Anuradha Kumar
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Maya is Discomfited
What shall we talk about?’ Maya asked in her irrepressible way, a lilt in her voice. That afternoon she was out cycling with Henry when the rain came down, turning heavy in moments. It was August and the middle of the monsoon season.
‘Tell me more about what you found. More about those…mysterious sketches. You have two minutes,’ Henry rolled his eyes playfully as he pulled out his watch.
Dark, thick clouds loomed over the sea and gathered by the palm trees and rocks lining the shore. Leaving their bicycles against the tall, old Ashoka tree, they had run, like many times before, toward the old Prong’s lighthouse to their right. Its white walls were damp-streaked and moss-stained, and the grey rocks huddled by it were dotted by foamy flecks. The sea swirled in noisily with an insistent rhythm.
They stood on the low stoop, looking out at the gravestones across the road. The door behind, blue paint flaking in places, creaked in the wind. The room in the old lighthouse always smelt musty. It was sparsely furnished with wooden chairs, a table, and a cupboard. Faded red curtains fluttered on the windows. A part of the roof near the fireplace leaked, and rainwater often dripped down into a large wooden tub. Soon, Henry always joked, it would fill up with fish. The keeper, an old Eurasian, waved to them from an upstairs window, his beard flailing through its rusting iron bars.
They were right at the tip of the city on the island of Colaba, and the new bicycles—shipped to Henry only that summer—were safe to ride on, with their evenly spaced wheels, pneumatic tyres, and a chain system. Henry was pleased with these new ‘Rover’ cycles, made by a company in Chicago, Henry’s home town. The wind left a mist on their faces, the gulls were noisy on the rafters, and they waited for the rain to ease.
The Causeway, its white stones grey in the wan light, stretched to the mainland. Built some fifty years ago, it now connected what had been the separate islands of Colaba, and the Old Woman’s Island to the bigger island of Bombay. If they craned their necks and looked to the left, through the palm trees, the stone walls of the old fort were clearly visible.
Henry took his cap off, twirled it with his fingers then placed it back on his head. Maya scraped the soles of her muddy boots against the stoop, and leaned against the door. They heard a sharp clear call, two eagles were majestically scouring the skies, their wings spotted white, and lighting up when the sun momentarily breathed through the clouds.
‘You’ve been thinking about the sketches, haven’t you?’
Maya nodded, her eyes the colours of the stormy sea. The eagles, she was thinking, maybe they were the White-bellied Sea Eagles familiar to these parts.
‘Tell me about it,’ Henry encouraged, stealing a look upstairs, and noting the open window. The keeper was probably all ears. They were always the subject of gossip, and Henry ruefully accepted this, always with a turmoil in his heart. He enjoyed Maya’s company and tried not to think too much of the future; most times he failed. Sometimes he thought Maya felt the same way.
~
Maya had found the sketches only a fortnight ago. In a room, dark, mysterious and unused, at the very back of the grey-stone ‘doctors’ house’ where Maya lived. She had wanted to use the room as a study. The doctors’ house stood on a narrow lane leading off the Colaba Causeway, on the sliver of land where Bombay stretched into the sea in a crab-like way. One walked through the house’s main hallway, and the study appeared after a series of small steps. Next to the study was the covered courtyard and on the left, its lone window faced the garden, with its wooden latticed fence, the bougainvillea and oleander creepers, and tall palm trees. Farther beyond, closer to the sea, lay the asylum and a part of the lighthouse, always visible from the upper floor windows of the doctors’ house. Sounds of the horse-drawn tramcars, the bells of the Afghan Church, the train coming in every morning and in the late afternoon, and the constant rolling of the sea, shaped a pleasing backdrop to everyday life in the house.
Once owned by Hormuzji Dorabji, a merchant whose business interests spread across Bombay, Surat, East Africa and Natal, the doctor Edith Pechey had first rented it when she came to Bombay to manage the city’s first women’s hospital. Soon there were two of them, when Charlotte Ellaby responded to Edith’s invitation, and that was how the bungalow got its name. Then about two years ago, though Maya felt it was much longer, the doctors’ house had a new resident when Maya joined them, a few weeks after reaching Bombay as part of a travelling theatre troupe from Lahore. The troupe soon moved on to another city, but Maya had stayed back. For a while only, she had thought at first, but months had flown by and the ‘doctors’ house’ was her home now. Edith had moved out when she married Herbert Phipson, an American businessman with offices in Bombay, and Maya still stayed on with Charlotte. Finding her feet in a city, warm and lively. Finding her heart too, but with that Maya wanted to take more time.
~
For Maya, the string-bound folder with the sketches was an unexpected find. It lay in the old wooden almirah, lost among dusty old account ledgers, old books, in old Pali and Persian, and crinkled maps brown with age.
‘They look so old, and so skilfully done.’ Henry still remembered the awed expression on Maya’s face the afternoon she told Charlotte and him about it. They had shared Maya’s delight, looking at the sketches—lifelike depictions of birds, drawn mainly in black ink, with distinct colours on some.
(Excerpted from Love and Crime in the Time of Plague: A Bombay Mystery by Anuradha Kumar. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025)
ABOUT THE BOOK
It is 1896. A ship docks in Bombay Harbour, and as the workers rush to unload the cargo, a scream rings out. A large black rat, frothing at the mouth, has bitten one of the men.
Within weeks, a miasma of fear engulfs the city as ship-borne rats overrun its nooks and crannies, and more and more of its inhabitants fall sick—and die. Dr Acacio Viegas is the first to ring the alarm—it is the plague. The only way to control it is to sanitize the city’s slums, clean its drains, report any fever, and stay at home. The British Administration embarks on these measures on a war footing—until warning notes begin to turn up at Doctors’ House, where Maya Barton lives with Dr Charlotte Ellaby, and at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital—notes that threaten those who are ‘interfering’ with people’s religion and customs with dire consequences—all signed by the ‘Native Society’.
Maya and her friend Henry Baker, the American trade counsel, are soon hot on the trail of the Society, which leads them to the formidable Rangnekar Bhau, the Society’s founder, and its Secretary, the treacherous Satarkar, who hates everything new and ‘modern’, whether the British and the brown sahibs, and their so-called anti-plague drive, or women like Maya, who think too much of themselves.
As Maya and Henry unravel the mystery, they draw closer to each other and to what could be a future together. And Maya learns more about Reverend Barton, who could have been her father, and the Kashmiri woman who might have been her mother.
Anuradha Kumar once again uses her talent for recreating a period setting and engaging characters to brilliant effect in this sequel to the acclaimed The Kidnapping of Mark Twain, her first Bombay Mystery.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anuradha Kumar has worked for the Economic & Political Weekly. She has an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA). Her stories have won awards from the Commonwealth Foundation, UK, and The Little Magazine, India. She writes regularly for Scroll.in. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications like Fiftytwo.in, The India Forum, The Missouri Review, among others.Two of her essays received notable mention in ‘Best American Essays’ editions of 2023 and 2024. Her essay collection, The Sound of Lost Memories, was recently a finalist for the Gournay Prize (University of Iowa) and will be published (2027) by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin, Stevens-Point).
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Ratnottama Sengupta travels through time and space to explore a UNESCO-declared ‘Intangible Cultural Heritageof Humanity‘, a festival called, Durga Puja
Dhaakis (Drummers) playing dhaaks (drums) at Durga Puja. From Public Domain
It was Saptami, the second day of the five-day Durga Puja that had been inaugurated the previous day. I had new dresses lined up for all five days. But the dawn of Saptami brought us news of disaster. A short circuit had razed the entire pavilion along with the clay icons of Durga, her brood comprising Ganesh, Kartik, Lakshmi, Saraswati and their vahanas — the lion, owl, swan peacock and mouse. Gone was the chaalchitra, the halo-like backdrop presided over by Lord Shiva and depicting the story of the goddess who fought the demons Chanda Munda, Shumbha, Nishumbha, Madhu Kaitav, Raktabeej Mahishasur…
We were mourning all through the Pujas that particular year. No new dresses worn, no new shoes on our feet, no ‘Dussehra Greetings’ nor any sweets on ‘Bijoya’. We felt sad not because of the effort my father, Nabendu Ghosh, had put in as the President of the Puja conducted by the Udayan Club, but because of the belief that “Durga comes home to her parents during this period.”
*
My father’s ancestral home was in East Bengal. My grandfather, Nabadwip Chandra Ghosh, was an Advocate who relocated to Patna in 1920. Every autumn after that the family would travel back to Dhaka for a month. Because the Durga Puja in their family home was the lone puja of Kalatiya, the village which is now a suburb of Dhaka. Everyone there would flock to ‘Ukil Babur Bari’[1]for the puja and prasad in the afternoon and the cultural programmes in the evening. Jatra, theatre, Pala Gaan, Naam Sankirtan — the itinerant groups of performers comprised of singers, actors, the narrator or the sutradhar, and the adhikari or the manager. It was at one such performance that Baba[2], then all of seven, fell in love with a ‘lady’ who had played Draupadi. Imagine his disappointment when the departing ‘lady’ turned out to be a clean shaven youth!
The next year at that very Puja Mukul[3]— the pet name of Nabendu Bhushan — first ‘acted’ as a Sakhi[4]! At eight his ‘manhood was offended at the thought of playing a handmaiden. But when he stood on the stage with three other boys, all dressed in finery and wigs, all praying ‘Madhav rakho charaney[5]!’ he was transported to Lord Krisha’s court in ancient Dwarka. That was his first experience of Rasa[6] — and unaware even to himself he had set on a lifetime’s journey with the arts.
When life took him to Bombay in 1951, there were few Pujas and no possibility of publishing anything in Bengali. Pragati Club of Andheri started a Puja in Mohan Studios that had Bimal Roy as the President and Nabendu Ghosh as the Secretary. That Puja continues to this day — and to this day these two names figure in the brochure the club publishes annually. Pragati[7] used to bring out a handwritten magazine back then. PraBas — meaning, migrant life, was an acronym for Prabasi Bangla Samaj.[8] Edited by Nabendu Ghosh, it boasted hand-painted covers by renowned artist Chitto Prasad.
Pragati, Kallol, Udayan, Natun Palli, Shivaji Park, Chembur — all the major Pujas of Mumbai continue to publish a brochure for the Pujas as a souvenir of the festival and also to raise funds through ads by the sponsors.
*
All through my school life, which I spent travelling to the Bengali Education Society’s English High School at Dadar, I would necessarily spend one evening rolling into late night at the Shivaji Park puja pandal. Long in advance I would plan which dress to wear. The latest Bengali movie would be screened. The Puja Specials would have already come home — in the pavilion we would pick up some new publication of Sunil Gangopadhyay or Shirshendu Mukherjee. The Puja songs would keep playing while we, a bunch of batch-mates from all over Mumbai, would endlessly snack on fancy food and chat.
My university years saw a shift of ‘allegiance’ to Notunpalli, the Puja started by Shakti Samanta at Bandra in 1972 as did all the major Bengali biggies of Bollywood, from Salil Chowdhury, Basu Chatterjee, RD Burman to Jaya Bhaduri and Amitabh Bachchan, who would earlier visit the Puja at Ramakrishna Mission at Khar. Now I would flock to the stalls of handloom saris, salwar suits, fashion dresses — some of which were set up by my cousins or friends. Rupa, Aloka-Tulika-Lipika, Mina Kakima and Latika Kakima — wives of actor Tarun Bose and playback artiste Talat Mehmood, sons and daughters of Dhruv Chatterjee and Asit Sen, seasoned CEOs and young bankers — the stimulating adda[9] here ranged from cinema to career choices, economics to politics.
*
Talking of Ramakrishna Mission, I am reminded of Manobina Roy, wife of Bimal Roy. Jethima[10] and my mother Kanaklata would set up a stall where they would sell papad and vadi, narkel and til naru, muri moa and kucho nimki[11]. These sesame, coconut or lentil balls were all made at home by Didimas[12], Kakimas and Mashimas[13]who lived in Rana Cottage near our house in Malad. If the Kumari Pujo[14]and Sandhi Puja[15]rituals were special for these seniors, Bijoya was super special for me and my friends. This post-immersion round of socialising to greet friends spelt many visits, to Bandra and Khar, Santa Cruz and Andheri, Goregaon and Borivali. And visiting the family of our parents’ friends meant not only naru-nimki, it could also mean chops, cutlets, cakes, sandwiches — goodies that were not so common in Bengali households 65 years ago, when sandesh and rosogolla, sweets made from cottage cheese, were also sold door-to-door, by men who brought them to our houses in aluminium trays tied in cloth!
*
That’s a faraway reality from what obtained in Kolkata where I spent some Puja holidays at my aunt’s (Ranjita Mashi’s) place on Motilal Nehru Road. It was opposite Deshpriya Park, where we children would report every morning of the five days, to help distribute the floral offering for pushpanjali and the prasad[16] in sal leaf bowls. Pandal hopping was a must, primarily on foot, as the pavilions designed with cloth themselves were works to admire. And on Dashami[17] evening, Haabu, Dipu, Reena, Minu and I would stand near the Rash Behari post office opposite Priya Cinema and watch the idols, sculpted with the signature of traditional idolmakers of Chitpore, being taken for immersion in the Ganga. What joy it was as we could watch all the Goddesses we’d heard of but not visited — even from Krishna Glass or Teish Palli! A much glamourised and glorified version is now held on Red Road, the main artery of the city, with the Chief Minister presiding over the Carnival of Immersion.
Twenty years ago when I returned to make my home in Kolkata, Deshpriya Park was still home to a Sarbojanin Durgotsav[18]. But it hit the headlines in October 2015 when mayhem broke loose crushing surging crowds who had assembled to view the 88-foot “Biggest Durga Ever.” Effectively the community celebration had become a cause for corporate branding and competition. Sponsors, in some cases, outnumbered the – neighbourhood — ‘parar‘ — volunteers. Reason? Perhaps because television was trying to grab eyeballs in every home. Even Kumari Pujo at Ramakrishna Mission was being watched on screens across the oceans. And as the Arts Editor of The Times of India, I was planning celebrity visits and artistic trophies for our Pujo Barir Shera Pujo[19]competition in high rise buildings and gated communities.
*
But what was the biggest change in observing Sarbojanin Durgotsav in Bengal? These public worship grounds had transformed into vast galleries where artists were staging the icons as installation art. These concept-driven pujas took leaves out of mythology but interpreted the goddess in the light of contemporary and universal concerns. Some were highlighting Her as a feminist force. Some as an embodiment of Nature. For some, She denotes the cosmic universe. Elsewhere crafts and looms got prominence. Family bonding was not forgotten. From the icons to the pavilions, from the chaalchitra to the fairy-light decoration — there was a unity of thought and execution. In the process, knowledge about practices in distant corners of our country, or of lifestyles several countries away from ours became accessible to the average person on the street.
A traditional Durga with a chaalchitra backdropDurga Puja, Kolkata, Themed after the famous Byomkesh Bakshi, a literary creation of Sharadendu BandopadhyayPhotos provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
There has been another interesting development. For years, the divas of Indian screen, from Bengal to Bombay, have inspired the Pals[20] of Chitpore. Sometimes she resembled Hema Malini, sometimes Madhuri Dixit. The demon too has been modelled after the politicians who are seen as foes.
At Arjunpur near Dumdum airport, the Third Eye of Durga is the nib of a fountain pen – as is the pointed middle of the three-pronged trident, trishul: “The pen represents wisdom and thought, and it is also the contemporary weapon to protest and fight,” explained Shampa Bhattacharjee. The artist from Delhi had designed the icon while her husband, physicist, created the atmosphere with rotating lights and floating balls – al in luminous steel.
*
Durga as a feminist force is perhaps the most natural interpretation of the goddess who was construed as a Goddess because evil demons had sought immunity against all other forms of power save a woman. Durga was conceived as Durgati Nashini — Destroyer of Misfortunes. The mace, the trident, the circular Sudarshan, the bow and arrow, the sword – every single weapon that empowered her was gifted by a God, be it Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva or Agni, Vayu, Varun, or even Yama. Read, the masculine forces. Perhaps that is why, the jagirdars and zamindars, under the nawabs and the British Raj worshipped Shakti, the icon of empowerment. The Raj families of the City of Palaces, the Debs of Shovabazar, the Chowdhurys of Behala, the Roys and Duttas of Kalutola and Nimtala, the Mullicks of Marble Palace or Rais of Andul – they still pay their obeisance to the Image of Shakti. And the celebration in the ancestral homes of these bonedi – once aristocratic – families are a tourist attraction.
Ironic that, during the struggle for Independence from the imperialists, She became the embodiment of motherland. Abanindranath Tagore’s iconic painting of her as the embodiment of sacrifice stays etched in our hearts and our souls to this day.
And when I stand before any invocation, in any form, in any corner of the subcontinent, these words of my father ring in my ears. “Imagine the map of India as you stand before Maa Durga. To her right are Lakshmi and Ganesha — the two realisations of Prosperity and Success — who are worshipped in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka. On her left are Saraswati and Kartik — representing Learning and Wisdom and Craft — worshipped in Assam, Bengal, Orissa, and the Deccan. At her feet is the Mahishasur, also depicted in our epic as the Dusht Ravan who ruled Lanka. And above her, reigning from the chaalchitra is Mahadev Shiva, identified with the Himalayas. Asamudra Himachal, from the mountain to the ocean, it is our motherland — Bharat Tirtha[21].”
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The crux of it? Durga Puja is not merely the worshipping of a Hindu god. What started as a religious phenomenon in the households of the rich or powerful is no longer merely ritualistic. In this millennium, it is a vibrant celebration involving, at every step, the Indian thought and creativity, mind and heart, economy and management. It knits the masses in more ways than one. The castes and classes, the highs and lows of society — no one is left out of the festivity. It is a sociocultural happening. Year after year after year it is, in the truest sense of the term, Sarbojanin.
Small wonder the largest public art festival of the subcontinent has been recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage!
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.
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Title: Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India
Author: Dilip K. Das
Publisher: Orient BlackSwan
After the major outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there has been a plethora of studies about epidemic narratives in different kinds of literary and visual forms. Not that the issue had not been dealt with earlier, but somehow it increased manifold times and contends with a reality that is now increasingly becoming our way of life as new infectious diseases break out and older ones resurface almost every year. Drawing from the humanities, medicine and social sciences, and using the approach of interdisciplinary studies, this non-fiction examines stories of epidemic outbreaks in India, from the late-nineteenth century to the present, in the form of fiction, film, memoir, blogs, media reports and epidemiological accounts, to show how epidemics have been represented in social understanding.
Epidemics signify a crisis in society on multiple levels. The author, who specialises in medical humanities and has been meticulously studying and teaching courses in this area for several years, realised that very little is readily available in the nature of theoretical and analytical scholarship of epidemic narratives in general and on Indian narratives in particular and so he decided to write this book.
Divided into ten chapters, the study attempts a close textual analysis and focuses on the subjective experience of people affected by the outbreak. This ranges from the emotional impact of the suffering it causes to socio-political conflicts that it brings to the fore as a collective crisis. It poses two questions: what kind of plot do they employ, and what significances do they attribute to outbreaks as complex human events?
In the first chapter, the author discusses the social understanding of epidemics using a theoretical framework drawing on Charles Rosenberg and several other theorists to show how this understanding both derives from and adds to the biomedical view of disease. It examines how, in pluralistic societies, epidemic reality is constructed through both biomedical and cosmological paradigms, leading to contrary ways of responding to it. Thus, worshipping goddesses like Sitala Mata or Corona Devi and ritualising the event in shows of solidarity exists along with scientific perspectives.
The second chapter is about the impact of pandemic on the nation as a community that imagines itself as healthy yet is vulnerable to the threat posed by pathogens and pathogenic outsiders. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that the future of public health in a rapidly globalizing context depends on how nationalism and internationalism balance mutual interests. Chapters three to ten deal with specific outbreaks. The third chapter discusses two intertextual narratives of the plague outbreak Pune in 1897 which culminated in the assassination of the Plague Commissioner Walter Charles Rand. The first is the autobiography of Damodar Hari Chapekar, who was convicted and hanged for the assassination. It shows how the outbreak was constructed and framed as a political event, marking the emergence of militant nationalism and anticipating the freedom struggle. The second narrative is 22 July 1897, a film made on the same incident by Nachiket and Jayoo Patwardhan.
U. R. Ananthamurthy’s novel Samskara1is usually studied as a text that deals with the themes of caste and religious orthodoxy, the role of tradition in a modernising society, and the tension between allegory and realism. In the next chapter, Das argues that plague not only provides the inspiration for the novel and its point of departure but also serves the function of a focaliser. Samskara is about the question of social order, how a particular code of conduct becomes rigid. In this context the plague outbreak serves as a metaphor for larger social and ethical crises.
Chapter five is about Spanish flu, which broke out in Bombay in June 1918 and was rapidly carried to the rest of the country by soldiers returning from the First World War. It begins with two official reports on the flu by the assistant health officer of Bombay municipality and the sanitary commissioner of India. The author examines newspaper accounts of the outbreak and two literary narratives to show how the outbreak was variously framed as a lapse of colonial public health, a personal tragedy and a cosmological crisis. The final section of the chapter discusses the memory of the Spanish flu a hundred years later with the outbreak of COVID-19.
Chapter six deals with an outbreak of viral hepatitis, a disease that is largely endemic but has occurred intermittently in epidemic form in India in the last hundred years. The author analyses Satyajit Ray’s 1990 film Ganashatru, an adaptation of Henrick Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, which is about an outbreak of infectious hepatitis in a pilgrimage town in West Bengal. Taking the main theme of asserting commitment to ethics as against manipulation of truth for personal gain, Ray changes the plot, characterisation and context of Ibsen’s story to criticise religious dogma which contradicts rationality and places at risk the health of people.
The next chapter analyses narratives of the HIV/AIDS epidemic which broke out in India in 1986. It examines a range of media articles, literary and cinematic texts and an AIDS awareness video to track changes in the social understanding of the disease and those affected by it. From the stigmatising accounts of risk groups and HIV-positive individuals that was characteristic of the early decades of the epidemic in India, the focus shifted at the turn of the century to empathy for them. The author discusses in details the first commercially released Hindi film on AIDS, Naya Zaher (New Poison,1991) directed by Jyoti Sarup, mentions two human interest stories like Ritu Sarin’s ‘The Outcast’ (1990) and Subhash Mishra’s ‘Damned to Death’ (2000), analyzes a film like Ek Alag Mausam ( A Different Season, 2003) directed by K. P. Sasi, Negar Akhavi’s anthology AIDS Sutra (2008), and Kalpana Jain’s Positive Lives (2002) where the author journeys more than 15,000 kilometers in four months in order to get an idea of the epidemic’ s scale. He also analyses movies like Phir Milenge ( We’ll meet again, 2004) directed by Revathy and Onir’s My Brother…Nikhil(2005) and examines the dialectical relation between social understanding and narrative in bringing about this change.
Aashique Abu’s Malayalam film, Virus, is a fictional reconstruction of the outbreak of the Nipah virus disease in Kerala in the summer of 2018 and deals with biomedical explanations as well as accounts of personal suffering. The eighth chapter therefore shows how the film constructs the event as the disintegration and renewal of community and as a sign of the vulnerability of human life. It also shows how the ending denies any assurance that the crisis is over and will not recur.
The recent outbreak of COVID-19 in India that resulted in a nationwide lockdown in 2020 forms the subject of the next chapter. It discusses stories of the pandemic and the lockdown in terms of the suffering they caused, the loneliness, disruption of everyday life, time-space disorientation, loss of life and livelihood, the lack of institutional support, and the precariousness that resulted from all of these. It focuses on two kinds of stories, those of personal suffering like the video Infected 2030 and the Times of India blog ‘My Covid Story’, and those of collective suffering like Vinod Kapri’s documentary 1232 KMS and the book that followed from it, 1232 km: The Long Journey Home. The lockdown following the COVID outbreak in India disproportionately affected migrant workers who lost livelihoods and were prevented by the police and the local administration from returning to the safety of their villages. The author clearly analyses how the governments were unable to deal effectively with so complex a crisis.
The last chapter attempts to explain why narrative is the genre best suited to represent the experience of epidemic, and why epidemic in turn calls forth narrative as its most suitable mode of representation. We make sense of an outbreak in two ways, as an objective event and as subjective human experience. Narratives bring out both these dimensions, by emphasising emotional responses to disease, death and suffering as well as making cognitive sense of it. The book also contains an interesting epilogue by S. Mukundan who examines a narrative poem Plague Sindhu (1924) by Anthony Pillai recording the outbreak of plague in his home district of Theni in Madras Presidency. The poem is an apt example of how an outbreak of infectious disease comes to be socially constructed in terms of both modern scientific ideas of disease-causation and traditional ideas of disease as divine punishment for wrongdoing.
As mentioned earlier Epidemic Narratives takes as its main theme Charles Rosenberg’s argument that the social reality of disease is constituted in the frames of explanation provided by biomedical, political, cultural and social ideals and practices. Das mentions that the book is about “human suffering and compassion” and it will be of interest to researchers and students of literature, cultural studies, the history of medicine and public health policy.
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Translates to ‘A Rite for a Dead Man’, a Kannada novel written in 1965 ↩︎
Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.
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Book Title: The Long Strider in Jehangir’s Hindustan: In the Footsteps of the Englishman Who Walked From England to India in the Year 1613
Authors: Dom Moraes and Sarayu Srivatsa
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
During the years, in the early seventeenth century, when East India Company began a search for the possibilities of trade with India via sea route, Thomas Coryate of the village Odcombe in Somerset, England, made an ambitious plan to travel to the Indies, as he called it, on foot. This wasn’t his first undertaking. Having travelled across Europe on foot before, writing a travelogue Crudities on his experience which brought him some fame, he now wished to travel to a place no Englishmen had gone before. Motivated by the thought of gaining more fame with this venture so as to win the affection of Lady Ann Harcourt of Prince Henry’s Court, even the idea of traversing 5000 miles on foot as compared to 1975 miles that he did in Europe did not dissuade him.
Known as ‘the long strider’, in 1612, Coryate set for his journey to the Indies from London. And in year 1999, more than three hundred years later, his journey and subsequent struggles, somehow inspired Dom Moraes to traverse the same route to correlate Coryate’s experience in the now altered places and its people. Coryate travelled alone, Moraes took the journey with Sarayu Srivatsa, the co-author of this book.
Dom Moraes, poet, novelist and columnist, is seen as a foundational figure in Indian English Literature. He published nearly thirty books in his lifetime. In 1958, at the age of twenty, he won the prestigious Hawthornden Prize for poetry. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for English in 1994. The Long Strider in Jehangir’s Hindustan was first published in the year 2003. Moraes passed away in 2004.
Sarayu Srivatsa, trained as an architect and city planner at the Madras and Tokyo universities, was a professor of architecture at Bombay University. Her book, Where the Streets Lead, published in 1997 had won the JIIA Award. She also co-authored two books with Dom Moraes: The Long Strider, and Out of God’s Oven (shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize). Her first novel, The Last Pretence, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and upon its release in the UK (under the title If You Look For Me, I am Not Here), was also included on The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize longlist.
Srivatsa, who travelled with Moraes to all the places Coryate passed through, writes diary chapters coextending the same routes subsequently. So, each fictive reconstruction of a period and place of Coryate’s travel by Moraes is followed by a diary chapter for the same place by Srivatsa. In that sense the book becomes part biographical fiction and part memoir.
Coryate, son of a Vicar and dwarfish in stature, was seized by this desire to gain fame and respect. What desire seized the imagination of Moraes, eludes this reader. It, however, doesn’t escape the notice that both the writers shared somewhat similar plight towards the end.
Some of Coryate’s writing during the period did not survive as it was destroyed by Richard Steele, but the rest was sent to England and was posthumously published in an anthology in 1625. Basing his research on such sources, after extensive three years of investigation, Moraes managed to create an account of Coryate’s demeanour, his lived life in a new land with diverse people and customs at different places which he found both shocking and fascinating. Coryate found the people of India loud and violent but he was also touched by their generosity and kindness. He witnessed the disagreements between Hindus and Muslims, the caste system where the upper caste oppressed the people from lower caste, sati, and the ways of Buddhist monks, Sikhs, pundits of Benaras and Aghoris[1], the lifestyle of Jehangir and the city of Agra before Taj Mahal. He was fortunate to have an audience with Jehangir, the main reason of his travel, but he failed in securing his patronage or enough money to continue to China which he had been his original intent.
In Moraes’ writing, the era comes alive. Vivid imagery and description makes the struggles and sufferings of Coryate palpable on one hand and on the other offer a view on the unfolding of history in a country where these many hundred years later, the echoes of a past similar to the present can be heard. In the preface, Moraes posits one of the reasons to take on the book — to compare the India then with the country during his times. As the reader proceeds with the story, the comparison becomes apparent in Moraes’ construction vis-a-vis Srivatsa’s entries.
Towards the end, an ailing Coryate succumbed to his illness and his body was buried somewhere near the dock at Surat. He could not make a journey home in 1615, but in 2003 a brick from his supposed tomb was sent back to the church in Odcombe by Srivatsa where a ninety six year old vicar waited patiently for the only famous man from Odcombe to return home. The epilogue by Srivatsa gives an account of Moraes’ own struggle with cancer and his demise in 2004, a year after the book was published. It is but right that the soil from his grave in Mumbai also found a resting place in Odcombe.
Rakhi Dalal writes from a small city in Haryana, India. Her work has appeared in Kitaab, Scroll, Borderless Journal, Nether Quarterly, Aainanagar, Hakara Journal, Bound, Parcham and Usawa Literary Review.
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Time flows at an indolent pace. The mind floats in an empty space. Into that vast void, images drift. Over many eons, many have flit To the distant past. Arrogant conquerors sped fast. Pathans rode to satiate their greed. Then, Mughals wheeled Victories, whipping dust-storms, Flying flags for their throngs. These empires have left no trace On the vast void at which I gaze. Through ages, the serene sky Is with sunset and sunrise dyed. Now the might of Britons holds sway Penetrating new pathways With the power of steam And vehicles of fiery steel. With vigour, they spread Their dominions across the land’s breadth. I know their regime will also pass. Their empire will crumble at last. On the astral plane, despite their strength, Their army will not leave a single indent.
When I look around the Earth, An ocean ripples along its girth Heaving huge waves of humanity Through myriad paths, in myriad coveys, Over centuries as their daily needs are met In life and in death. Forever, they row, With their rudders tow, Work in fields, plant seeds, Their harvests reap. They work all the time, In towns or in wilds. Empires decline silencing bugles of war. People forget histories of battles fought. Stories of glory, angst and gore, Stay concealed in children’s lore. They struggle to work hard, In Punjab, Bombay and Gujarat, In Bengal, in Kalinga, all over the land, By the coastline and the riverbank. These stories of daily life hum Reverberating like drums; Joys, sorrows, day and night Resonate as hymns to our lives. Empires are ruined to ashes. Over eons, they toil as masses.
This poem has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty with editorial input by Sohana Manzoor
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There was a time when humans walked the Earth crossing unnamed landmasses to find homes in newer terrains. They migrated without restrictions. Over a period of time, kingdoms evolved, and travellers like Marco Polo talked of needing permissions to cross borders in certain parts of the world. The need for a permit to travel was first mentioned in the Bible, around 450BCE. A safe conduct permit appeared in England in 1414CE. Around the twentieth century, passports and visas came into full force. And yet, humanity had existed hundreds of thousand years ago… Some put the date at 300,000!
While climate contingencies, wars and violence are geared to add to migrants called ‘refugees’, there is always that bit of humanity which regards them as a burden. They forget that at some point, their ancestors too would have migrated from where they evolved. In South Africa, close to Johannesburg is Maropeng with its ‘Cradle of Humanity’, an intense network of caves where our ancestors paved the way to our evolution. The guide welcomes visitors by saying — “Welcome home!” It fills one’s heart to see the acceptance that drips through the whole experience. Does this mean our ancestors all stepped out of Africa many eons ago and that we all belonged originally to the same land?
And yet there are many restrictions that have come upon us creating boxes which do not allow intermingling easily, even if we travel. Overriding these barriers is a discussion with Jessica Mudditt about Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet, her book about her backpacking through Asia. Documenting a migration more than a hundred years ago from Jullundur to Malaya, when borders were different and more mobile, we have a conversation with eminent scholar and writer from Singapore, Kirpal Singh. Telling the story of another eminent migrant, a Persian who became a queen in the Mughal Court is a lyric by Nazrul, Nur Jahan, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam from Bangla. Ihlwha Choi has self-translated his own poem from Korean, a poem bridging divides with love. Fazal Baloch has brought to us some exquisite Balochi poems by Munir Momin. Tagore’s poem, Okale or Out of Sync, has been translated from Bengali to reflect the strange uniqueness of each human action which despite departing from the norm, continue to be part of the flow.
We have a tongue in cheek piece from Devraj Singh Kalsi on traveling in a train with a politician. Uday Deshwal writes with a soupçon of humour as he talks of applying for jobs. Snigdha Agrawal brings to us flavours of Bengal from her past while Ratnottama Sengupta muses on the ongoing wars and violence as acts of terror in the same region and looks back at such an incident in the past which resulted in a powerful Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat. Kiriti Sengupta has written of a well-known artist, Jatin Das, a strange encounter where the artist asks them to empty fully even a glass of water! Ravi Shankar weaves in his love for books into our non-fiction section. Recounting her mother’s migration story which leads us to perceive the whole world as home is a narrative by Renee Melchert Thorpe. Urmi Chakravorty takes us to the last Indian village on the borders of Tibet. Taking us to a Dinosaur Museum in Japan is our migrant columnist, Suzanne Kamata. Her latest multicultural novel, Cinnamon Beach, has found its way to our book excerpts as has Flanagan’s poetry collection, These Many Cold Winters of the Heart.
In reviews, Somdatta Mandal has written about an anthology, Maya Nagari: Bombay-Mumbai A City in Storiesedited by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto. Rakhi Dalal has discussed a translation from Konkani by Jerry Pinto of award-winning writer Damodar Mauzo’sBoy, Unloved. Basudhara Roy has reviewed Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali, translated by Sucheta Dasgupta. Bhaskar Parichha has introduced us toThe Dilemma of an Indian Liberal by Gurcharan Das, a book that is truly relevant in the current times in context of the whole world for what he states is a truth: “In the current polarised climate, the liberal perspective is often marginalised or dismissed as being indecisive or weak.” And it is the truth for the whole world now.
Our short stories reflect the colours of the world. A fantasy set in America but crossing borders of time and place byRonald V. Micci, a story critiquing social norms that hurt by Swatee Miittal and Paul Mirabile’s ghost story shuttling from the Irish potato famine (1845-52) to the present day – all address different themes across borders, reflecting the vibrancy of thoughts and cultures. That we all exist in the same place and have the commonality of ideas and felt emotions is reflected in each of these narratives.
We have more which adds to the lustre of the content. So, do pause by our content’s page and enjoy the reads!
I would like to thank all our team without who this journal would be incomplete, especially, Sohana Manzoor, for her fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to all our contributors who bring vibrancy to our pages and our wonderful readers, without who the journal would remain just part of an electronic cloud… We welcome you all to enjoy our June issue.
Borderless 