Our population crossed the 8 billion mark in November, 2022. As we move towards trying to hunt for alternative domiciles for our ever-expanding population, even in outer space, we still have to take into account the increased movement of people across the Earth in search of alternative homes driven by external circumstances or by personal needs.
Some have lost their homes and lands to war, some to climate emergencies and some moved out out of choice. Here we have collected narratives of past and present migrations, emphasising the fluidity of borders, despite the lines drawn artificially by manmade constructs. In an earlier interview, Anthony Sattin talks of nomadic migrations and the concept of asabiyya, or brotherhood, which tied humans to ideas and ideals instead of a piece of land mooted in Arabia by Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century. Has the time come to revive this concept with conflicts and the climate crises becoming real? As weapons, fire and water affect our habitats, one wonders if reverting to the concept of nomadic existence is not becoming a necessity… This small collection of writings will hopefully highlight the concerns.
In Belacan, Farouk Gulsara shares a narrative based on the life of a migrant in 1950s Malaysia. Clickhereto read.
Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister from Canada and former Premier of British Columbia, talks of his own journey and learning as he migrated out of India to Canada. Click hereto read.
In Mister, They’re Coming Anyway, Timothy Jay Smith writes on the refugee crisis in Lesbos Island, Greece, in 2016 with photographs by Michael Honegger. Click here to read.
An excerpt from Ramy Al-Asheq’sEver Since I Did Not Die, translated from Arabic by Isis Nusair, edited by Levi Thompson. The author was born in a refugee camp. Click hereto read.
A Question I Caught in the Air
What happens when an ordinary person falls in love
with an extraordinary person?
No, wait!
What happens when an extraordinary person falls in love
with an ordinary person?
Does the absurdity of the situation become reason enough
to make it incompletely complete?
Or completely incomplete?
Ananya Sarkar is a creative writer from Kolkata. Her work has been published in various ezines. She loves to go on long walks, cloud gaze and ponder upon miracles. She can be found on Instagram @just_1ananya and reached at ananya7891@gmail.com
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A schoolmate was fond of creating a big impression of being an avid reader. He knew there were benefits of reading that were largely unknown to genuine book lovers. He fell in love with the idea of reading as he wanted someone to fall in love with him because of this good habit he cultivated. On the way to school, whether inside the bus or train, he always sat with a storybook, trying to cast a furtive glance and observe the bevy of girls noticing him engaged in this pedantic pursuit. He had faith that some girls would become curious and smitten very soon.
With the fond hope of a conversation with them someday, he kept doing the same thing. The book covers kept changing. As he became desperate, he picked up a romantic novel to send the signal. When he did not have a storybook, he fished out a textbook. The compulsion to have some reading material in front of his eyes helped raise a façade of erudition. He wanted to be seen as a reader whenever girls were pottering around.
The impact of reading was severe for him. He was classified and identified as a bookworm. The bespectacled first-rank holder in our class never read so much. Much to his disappointment, girls did not take an interest in him or his reading. It was scary for the fun-loving types. The guys who boarded a moving train at the last minute or disembarked from a speeding bus were heroes to them.
Driven by fatigue for the first time, he was ready to flirt with other options. When he realised books were futile in winning fans or praise, he switched his strategy to something that involved more daring. He went and stood near the entrance door. Ignoring the warning sign ‘DO NOT LEAN OUT’ crafted capitals and in red, he put almost half of his body out of the train compartment, suspending his weight with the support of the hand railing above his head, hoping to be noticed by girls for his bravado.
Before he could realise what had happened, he was hit on the head and rushed to the nearest hospital at the next station halt. He underwent multiple stitches and survived a life-threatening experience. When he regained consciousness, no girls were waiting with bouquets and get-well-soon notes outside his cabin. He found just a few of us with fruit baskets. Such a misadventure, though unintended, did not elicit any wave of sympathy, but he ended up being famous as a silly boy who could not keep himself safe.
Some girls enquired how he was after he rejoined, but it was a formal query devoid of affection. The one he had a soft corner for did not seek any update. The poor fellow failed miserably in reading as well as heroism. Now he was always made to sit inside the coach, never allowed to stand near the door. Some of us cracked jokes, but he often lost his temper after this brain injury. We read it as a change of personality traits. He sat with a bandaged head for some days expecting sensitive queries, but he had stopped being an object of curiosity or pity for the entire class.
Inside the school, during the recess hour, he stopped playing indoor games like chess. He changed his strategy by approaching a lady teacher with suggestions for his reading list during lunch break. He went to the library and got some uncommon books issued, expecting that lady teachers would gauge him better, unlike the carefree girls. Inside the classroom, he raised irrelevant questions and drifted our attention to storybooks, making other students grumble as the lessons were incomplete.
When the copies arrived checked, he performed below average. Soon, the new English teacher understood his ulterior motive. He used difficult words to flaunt his vocabulary and to impress the woman English teacher. Most of us did not know the meaning of the words he used. He derived wicked pleasure as we were shown as ignoramous despite scoring better in English. He loved the idea that he was advanced in reading. He firmly believed someone would appreciate him better and attune themselves to his wavelength. Turning bespectacled before eighteen was a plus point for him as he thought readers looked like that. But the truth was that some vitamin deficiency had led to his poor eyesight.
Most of us saw him spending time in the library scanning books. He would ask us the names of the author on his list. He recalled many names and titles unheard of as his memory appeared sharpened after the head injury. Since we failed to answer, he was pleased to find us ignorant. He mentioned some names to enlighten us. Most of us thought he would become a writer one day since he was discussing what we never bothered to know in such depth. Perhaps the system of education was not doing justice to him.
When we reached high school, a creative writing contest was organised in which the toppers took part. He was asked why he had stayed out of it. He was quiet for a while and then replied the teachers who were judging had not written anything in life, so he would not insult himself by writing for them and submitting to them for assessment. We did not know whether it was his arrogance, or his statement had an iota of truth attached to it.
Years later, it was shocking for him to know I was dabbling in writing. He was still trapped in the world of books, as it appeared from the pictures he sent me of the sprawling library at his residence, and his various poses with books. I asked him what he was doing when Google did not list his name in the top five pages. He said he was doing a regular job for a living that gave him ample time and freedom to read and write. He also said he was the president of the local literary club for youth and a part-time social worker. Although he was eager to know what I wrote, he did not ask me anything as he feared being asked what he wrote all these years, I guess. I told him what I read, and he said he had finished reading those authors a long time ago – pretty advanced, as usual.
He mentioned without radiance that he wrote love poems in his mother tongue using a pen name. It must be for the girl he liked – who qualified as a doctor. Maybe, he still went around her old house on his bicycle to feel her presence though she had moved overseas to another country long ago. His unreciprocated love had many shades, and he kept it alive through poetry.
He forwarded me pictures of reading in the garden, terrace, recliner, et al. In this age of emojis, if you are seen reading, you get hundreds of likes. But in those days, you did not get a single like. These likes – for the book or his reading nook – would have made him confident then. The well-crafted image of being a pretentious reader he remains stuck with – despite no rewards. Possibly, these likes warm the cockles of his sad heart.
I realised I owed him a few likes and pressed the love icon for some of his social media posts as an act of repentance. Being a friend, he deserved likes from me. He messaged me saying one like during those school days would have worked. Even though I praised him today, he understood I was faking like many others. True, I was always a miser when it came to showering praise.
Devraj Singh Kalsiworks as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short stories and essays have been published in Deccan Herald, Tehelka, Kitaab, Earthen Lamp Journal, Assam Tribune, and The Statesman. Pal Motors is his first novel.
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Shesher Kobita(1928-29)Translation of Shesher Kobita by Radha Chakravarty (2011)
Romance and reality inevitably clash. While Tagore is not unconvinced about the existence of conjugal love in some of his stories, conjugality and romance make uneasy bedfellows inFarewell Song. Marriage is rooted in the humdrum, quotidian, everyday but romantic love dwells on another astral plane. It is the realisation of the gap between the two that informs the novel/la, a realisation that never the twain shall truly meet, manifesting itself in the pages of this complex narrative that folds into itself a romantic love story, social satire and literary criticism. The multiple strands are brilliantly woven into the plot of this novel, which could be classified as a prose-poem. Its very title, “Shesher Kobita”, literally meaning last poem and translated by Professor Radha Chakravarty as Farewell Song, is evocative of its lyricality.
Shesher Kobita is primarily a love story between two young people, Amit Raye and Labanyalata, both of whom express their love in the most lyrical vein imaginable. Labanya, like many of Amit’s compatriots in Calcutta, is an avid reader and staunch admirer of Rabindranath Tagore’s writing, and her familiarity with Tagore’s work is evident in much of her conversation and in many of her perceptions. Amit, on the other hand, persists in citing the words of a ‘modern’ poet, Nibaran Chakrabarti, who is a persona created by Amit himself, to express his views about poetry. Readers see through this ruse quickly enough, and the third person narrative , often allows space for narrative commentary. As the translator, Radha Chakravarty points out, “Two schools of Bengali poetry, pro and anti-Tagore, are pitted against each other through the dialectic of the Amit-Labanya encounter.” Tagore cleverly plays out and into the literary /poetic debates of his later decades (1920s onwards) in order to prove his contemporary relevance and above all, the modernity of his work.
Amit, the protagonist, is from an elite and rich family, privileged enough to have gone to Oxford and wealthy enough to be under no compulsion to earn immediately. He’s a dilettante who is interested in the vagaries of style, which is seen as being a notch higher than fashion. Brilliant but restless, mercurial as quicksilver, he cannot commit himself to any one thing or relationship. Yet, getting away from the highly artificial social life of Kolkata, to the relatively pristine and pastoral world of Shillong, he falls deeply, unequivocally in love, with the quiet, studious but unassuming young girl, Labanyalata and establishes a soul-connection, as it were, with her. Yet this deep commitment pales and collapses in the face of the demands of the everyday social world. It is this space–“habitus”– which is occupied by Amit’s sister’s friend, Ketaki (Katy) Mitra. To quote from Radha Chakravarty’s introduction to her translation of the book, “Two forms of love are presented through Amit’s involvements with Katy Mitter and Labanya-one rooted in the material and the social, the other, embedded deep within the soul”
The expression of this soulful love dips into and is expressed through not only Bangla literature and poetry but is steeped in the idioms of English poetry, from Shakespeare to the metaphysical poets. Seeing a book of John Donne’s poems on Labanya’s table, Amit quotes, “for God’s sake, hold your tongue and let me love.” And yet, his intense love seems doomed as an idealistic ephemeral bliss, to be swept away by the ‘real’. Not a keen observer of nature, Amit seems to indulge frequently in “pathetic fallacy”, appropriating aspects of the landscape in order to express his moods and feelings. The landscape is often symbolic with Amit and Labanya meeting for their trysts at the site of a waterfall, always a significant feature of Tagore’s landscapes. Mita (meaning friend) and Banya (of the forest) –the lovers’ names for each other– create a world of their own, full of poetry and lyricality. And yet, inevitably, inexorably, the social, material, everyday world presses upon them and the lovers part. And yet, as the novel draws to a close, we do not experience this parting/ estrangement as a tragedy but almost as much of a resolution and closure that the novel could offer.
For Amit Ray/e is an embodiment of the modern split subject, the divided self. He has made up a world of words, and it is in this world that his heart and mind dwell. It is this inner space-the still centre of the turning world (to quote from another modern poet) that Labanya inhabits. And this is what Labanya, intelligent and perceptive, realises. Labanya, in her own way, is the new woman- independent and emotionally self-reliant, reminding one of Kalyani in ‘Aparichita‘, translated by Aruna Chakravarti as ‘The Stranger‘. They are women who dream of a life beyond domesticity and conjugal felicity. For them marriage would be a slippery slope, not a nesting ground. In these versions of ‘modern’ love, each person, especially the women, are complete and self-assured in themselves. This is particularly true of Kalyani, where we get a sense that she towers over the suitors in her life.
Labanya is able to connect to connect with Amit as a friend. to Amit, the friendship acts as an anchor, a stay against the vacuousness of his urban existence. Such a soulful connection belongs to the realm of dreams and these connects are what dreams are made of. However, dreams often shatter, or worse, fester. When Amit is asked whether in marriage, partnership and companionship cannot combine, his reply is illuminating. Marriage is the finite to the infinity of love and romance. He compares his relationship to the westernised Ketaki/Katy, his girlfriend in England who later becomes his wife, after the interlude with Labanya. “My initial relationship with Katy was indeed based on love but it was like water in a pitcher, to be collected daily, and used up everyday.” In contrast, his love for Labanya “remains a lake, its waters not be carried home but meant for” his “consciousness to swim in”. This realisation creates no inner conflict because he also glimpses that Labanya is someone who lives in his dreams, “in the twilight of gleams and of glimpses” (Tagore’s lines from Gitanjali, a basket of song-offerings). In a serendipitious resolution, Labanya also finds her companion in domesticity, her father’s brilliant student Shobhanlal, who has yearned for her for years, only to be spurned. Thus the story becomes not a tragedy of betrayal, but an extended musing and discussion on love, romance and marriage of the modern subject, in a world where the ground beneath the feet of the characters is constantly shifting.
It is this sense of a world in flux and its nuances that Radha Chakravarty’s translation deftly captures. Translating a novel of discussion requires a constant awareness of key concepts and multiple contexts — literary, social, cultural and philosophical. As a skilled translator and litterateur with an extensive repertoire and many years of experience, the editor-translator has brought her many accomplishments to the task of translation. Translating poetry and its nuances is challenging; here, the translation conveys immense wealth of meaning and richness of detail. The novel, in a sense, is a plea for romantic yearning and aspiration, for reaching out to those “unheard melodies” that are far sweeter than those which are available for the asking.
Unlike Bankim, who had depicted the new woman in an unflattering light a few decades earlier, Rabindranath was essentially sympathetic to women. Women were often among his closest associates and companions, and his friendship with women like the Argentinian Victoria Ocampo not only spurred him into song , but made him rethink the contours of modern cosmopolitan womanhood. Well-read and accomplished, women like Labanya not only challenge traditional ideas of womanhood, but is reflexive and aware enough not to judge Katy Mitra. Torn between the pull of intellectual independence and the desire for surrender, Labanya also represents the emergence of the female subject in modern Bangla literature.
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Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is Associate Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory.
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They met in an alien city
After thirty years.
At first it seemed unreal --
She hardly had any expectations.
The other girl, now a woman,
Hardly emoted, but was civil,
Something that her corporate and rational
Mind taught her well
Over the years.
They were classmates, friends –
She thought she was more
And also wrote a few letters
Which went unanswered.
Life intervened –
Careers, marriages, children
After years of hearsay that are
Now so regular over social media,
The girl, now woman, called her up.
It was another girl, now her daughter
That needed help with literature.
Shakespeare and the rest,
Poems and the prose,
Who made sense of them all
Beyond the ken of rationality,
Or even of correct exactitude,
Who could ever fathom what
Magic words could do?
She was stunned –
But she was a teacher, and not less
A dealer of words, a reader
Of poetry, a lover of the arts –
It could only be an exercise of pleasure.
She did, the daughter succeeded.
The arrow had hit the target.
But this became a matter of course.
When the other day,
The day of colours,
They met, it was the same correctitude
From the other woman and the daughter,
Merely a recollection of other fellow mates
Never an introspective look or a glance.
She recollected, travelled back
To moments of past warmth
Expectations, and dried up memories.
Of course, there was no hint
Of all this in conversation.
Thirty more years may pass
In the neverland of meeting,
She hardly cared, anymore.
It was important, perhaps,
To say the proper goodbye,
Between wine and the splendour of
Five-star accommodation.
Reading the nutrition chart on labels of packaged foods becomes the favourite pastime through your bifocals or progressive lens once you turn health-conscious after reaching a certain age. Those carefree days of feasting on anything in any quantity are gone. Anxiety shoots up after you gobble a gulab jamun. The glucometer starts ticking in your mind. You are smitten by guilt even if you are pre-diabetic. One gulab jamun pronounced the culprit for the imaginary spike in the sugar level.
It has become a successful business strategy to combine healthy with unhealthy these days. Restaurants and other eateries sell paneer roll but you know it is fried in oil. Since it has cottage cheese inside, you are told it is a good source of protein for your body to stay healthy. And you end up ordering a double paneer roll, ignoring the fact that oil is not good for the heart. Those big chunks of paneer allure you in the ads – and the visual treat tempts you for gastronomical excesses. Gradually, you convince yourself that cottage cheese is indeed good for the bones, and you need a good quantity of calcium from a vegetarian source to ensure they do not crack up under pressure from detractors. Expectedly, the frequency goes up as the paneer roll becomes your favourite ‘heaathy’ snack.
Having rummaged through articles on good sources of protein, you know the vegetarian diet has glaring deficiencies in this regard. Being a committed vegetarian, you do not try out animal sources. But the fear of protein deficiency haunts you, compelling you to dig up other vegetarian sources. If you need confidence to flex muscles in front of big bullies in your locality, you must have brawny biceps – not radish-shaped arms fit only to lift bathroom buckets. Protein shake becomes your predictable supplementary choice before you hit the gym floor.
Vegetarians often compromise when it comes to health though they hesitate to admit that. I have seen them almost puke at the sight of their vegetable chops being fried alongside fish cutlets in the same oil and pan. Such buddyhood is incompatible, intolerable and revolting for fanatics. But the same vegetarian folks pop cod liver oil capsules for stamina and justify it as a valid medical option to stay healthy. Likewise, animal fat is avoided but Omega-3 capsules are eagerly popped every day after lunch to keep mind and body in sound health.
Even though they know all about walnuts and their Omega content, they call it a hard nut to crack, preferring the cheaper alternative of medical supplements marked with a non-vegetarian symbol. Ask them why they are okay with that, and they are super quick to respond by saying their frail bodies need these. If the word goes around that non-vegetarian food is the ultimate secret behind longevity, will there be a sharp decline in the number of vegetarian folks?
Take the case of those who do not consume eggs, but they love pastries and cakes with eggs even though eggless variants have flooded the bakeries. As the form of egg has changed in the preparation process, they do not feel it is a cardinal sin to try out this option. While there are many who eat vegetarian stuff at home, they are very fond of non-vegetarian stuff outside. Striking the perfect balance between vegetarian and non-vegetarian food keeps them healthy though this truth is rarely spoken in this fashion.
The population of vegetarian people also includes those who have eaten non-vegetarian food before their retirement from carnivore fare. Some give up give up their favourite fish, egg, and meat for spiritual succor. While they need applause for showing the strength to resist, they think they have done the right thing as their organs cannot take in rich food after a certain age. To prevent digestive problems, it is better to have a vegetarian diet. Once again it boils down to convenience. The desire to stay healthy governs this decision – just as they chose to eat non-vegetarian food more for strength rather than taste.
There is perhaps another category of people who have switched from vegetarian fold to non-vegetarian diet in their old age. They say they have been quite cautious and avoided non-vegetarian food during their younger days but in old age they need solid strength that comes from animal sources alone. So, their decision to turn non-vegetarian after reaching sixty is right. Here, too, the desire to live healthy is the prime reason for the switch past their prime.
The other day I was reading the health benefits of chia seeds, flax seeds, watermelon seeds, and fox nuts along with their nutritional value. Items not tried before also become the focus as the age sets in to get familiar with the best sources of staying healthy in mind and body, along with keeping a glowing, radiant skin. The search for super foods continues and the health freak seeks the daily dose of multi-vitamins to remind himself that he will remain healthy because he consumes it regularly now. Even if one consumes the most powerful sources of health, one has one’s own health challenges setting in due to aging. The fascination with reversing age inflates the budget and leads to growing stress instead of delivering effective results despite consumption of healthy items on a regular basis.
Consuming fruits and vegetables is seen as a frail attempt to maintain health, but the tendency to strike out sweet fruits leads to explore other choices that are not well-balanced. A lifetime of rich diet based on vegetables and fruits should deliver the satisfaction of leading a healthy life but the presence of random fast food intake offsets the long-term benefits.
So, it is perhaps, best to keep oneself undefined as a vegetarian or non-vegetarian because the need to stay healthy always decides what you prefer and for how long. In a lifetime there are several stages and there are several stages of being a pure vegetarian, a pure non-vegetarian and a mix of both based on convenience.
Devraj Singh Kalsiworks as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short stories and essays have been published in Deccan Herald, Tehelka, Kitaab, Earthen Lamp Journal, Assam Tribune, and The Statesman. Pal Motors is his first novel.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Ratnottama Sengupta is riveted by the phantasmagoric Bhooter Naach, the Ghost Dance, in Satyajit Ray’s legendary film — Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne — that has no precedence nor any sequel in cinema worldwide.
Some years ago, I was preparing for my talk on dance in Hindi Films, given to the Film Appreciation students at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune. I noticed that every major director in the earlier years, from Uday Shankar (Kalpana, 1948), V Shantaram (Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje, 1955), and K Asif (Mughal-e-Azam, 1960), to Guru Dutt (Saheb Bibi Aur Ghulam, 1962), K A Abbas (Pardesi, 1957) and Sohrab Modi (Mirza Ghalib, 1954) had started with Indian classical dance in its purest form – Kathak — and the leading ladies Vyjayanthimala, Waheeda Rahman and Padmini came equipped with the dance of thedevadasis, Bharatanatyam. Subsequently however, most filmmakers diluted the purity of these dances, perhaps to suit the situation in their films. And in recent years that dilution has gone further to take the form of fusion dance, westernised dancing, and group dancing to add volume to the glamorous visual of female torsos in movement.
Suddenly it struck me that Satyajit Ray (1921-92) too had used Kathak in its purest form in Jalsaghar (1958) and then ‘diluted’ the purity of classical movements to design the rhythmic footwork of disembodied spirits. And it dawned on me what level of genius could create a dance that becomes a visual statement on the history of the land itself! Of course, I am talking about the ‘Dance of the Ghosts’ in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne(1969). The towering presence had ‘choreographed’ this dance which has simply no parallel in the world of cinema. Yes, the director — who also penned the lyrics besides screenwriting his grandfather’s adventure story first published in Sandeshin 1915 – had diluted the classicism of Kathakali and Manipuri. But he had fused in so many more art forms like masks, paper cutouts, shadow art, pantomime, celluloid negatives and special effects that it emerged as a class in itself, giving even today’s viewers an experience nonpareil.
In this fantasy that ends as a fable with a timeless moral, Ray experimented with a psychedelic burst of dancing. The narrative pivots on a tone-deaf singer and a bumbling drummer. Essentially though Ray’s telling of the ‘fairytale’ was a garbed plea against war. The message he sent out loud and with laughter: “When people have palatable food to fill their belly and music to fill their soul, the world will bid goodbye to wars.”
But Ray’s recounting of the story was far from didactic. Indeed, he himself is known to have said, “I don’t know if you can truly demarcate fantasy and fable.” So, instead of categorising it as one other the other, he recommended that we see Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (GGBB) only as the story of a duo of untalented musicians. Their playing earns ridicule from fellow villagers and contempt from their king but appeals to the upside-down aesthetics of ghosts. The charmed King of Ghosts appears with an eerie twinkling of stars and a disembodied voice to bless them with three boons. With an enjoined clap of their hands, they could feed to their heart’s content, they could travel where they want to in their charmed shoes, and their music could entrance their listeners.
Building upon this children’s story, Ray himself wrote the dialogue, designed the music, the costumes of the entire cast, and the choreography of the Ghost Dance that is redolent of Uday Shankar’s Kalpana. The dead come alive when Goopy-Bagha play and perform a surreal dance that briefly echoes the past of India — because bhoot kaal in Bengali means ‘past tense’.
The celluloid representation depicts in minute details the division of society into caste, class and creed since time turned ‘civilised’. Ghosts in the first group are the royals – from the age of Puranas through Buddha’s times to the rule of Kanishka Gupta. The shadowy, amorphous shapes in the second lot belonged perhaps to the lowest strata of those they ruled – peasants, artisans, Santhals, Bauls, Mussalmans. The third set of ghosts recall the story of colonisation by people who are suited-booted, wear hats, walk with a stick, indigo planters who drink whisky from bottles and strike awe with their body language. The fourth group comprises potbellied ghosts whom Ray identified as ‘Nani Gopals’. They wear costumes that remind us of city-dwelling zamindars, money lenders, padres who try to teach Bible and orthodox priests who run away from them. Their bulky forms contrast the skeletal shadows that precede them on the screen – perhaps because they thrived by exploiting the plebians?
All these ghosts are described later by Goopy and Bagha: they are Baba bhoot Chhana bhoot, Kancha bhoot Paka bhoot Soja bhoot Banka bhoot, Roga bhoot Mota bhoot. Thin or fat, short or tall, crooked or straight, simple or strange… between them, they are the world we inhabit across time and space!
Each group appears separately, in harmony; then they reappear to fight a war and kill one another. The pantomime is danced only to the clash of percussion instruments – and makes us wonder, when did homo-sapiens get so divided?
The allegorical dance in four segments is a phantasmagoria of styles and moods that mesmerises at every repeat viewing – as much by the visuals as by its conceptualisation. But what were the technical feats that shaped the fantastic performance? In an interview given to Karuna Shankar Roy for Kolkata, a magazine edited by Jyotirmoy Dutta, for its special edition on Ray (published on May 2, 1970), the master himself had guided viewers through the Bhooter Naach. Let me retrace part of the journey.
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Ray had, since Teen Kanya (Three Daughters, 1961), scored the music for his films as the ustads he earlier collaborated with were too engrossed in their ragas to understand the needs of a film script. In GGBB, in addition to the theme music that has always borne his signature, the songs had to speak, act, develop the characters…
Let me elaborate. The original story simply said Goopy is a singer. But when Ray sat down to write the songs he had to draw upon words, and since words have meaning, the songs “say” something. When Goopy sings to arrest the march of the advancing soldiers, what could the words say? Clearly they couldn’t say, “Dekho re nayan mele jagater bahar! Open your eyes to the wondrous beauty of this earth” – that is the ditty Goopy sings right after being blessed by the King of Ghosts. Set in the calming morning raga Bhairavi, it would not be appropriate here. So he sings, “O re Halla Rajar sena, tora juddha korey korbi ki ta bol! Tell us, oh soldiers of King Halla, what will you achieve through war? You will only sacrifice your life at the altar of weapons!” At once the song becomes a diatribe against wars worldwide and through history.
So, the words are fed by the situation in which the song is being sung – and the movements were stylisation that sometimes leaned towards the Western classical form of Opera and sometimes towards Bengal’s very own Jatra[1]. GGBB is in that sense a complete musical. Yet, I notice that the songs here don’t carry the story forward – instead, they arrest movement. In that sense they can be said to owe their lineage to Jatra where the songs act like the Greek chorus, commenting on the action and acting as the conscience keeper.
Ray did not settle for the obvious, much heard folk songs of Bengal, be it Baul or Bhatiali, Bhawaiya or Gambhira, Kirtan or Shyama Sangeet, Agamani or Patuar Gaan. Nor did he entirely shun the robust classicism of ragas. He crafted his own folksy scheme that was close to the soil of the rustic protagonists yet uncomplicated enough to appeal to the strangers inhabiting the land where they find themselves amid scholastic vocalists. Here, in the distant land where Goopy-Bagha had travelled in their magical shoes, their music had to transcend the barrier of language. In Ray’s own words, “it had to be deshottar, kaalottar[2]”. And in being so, every one of their songs has become timeless. Be it Mora sei bhashatei kori gaan/ We sing the melody of that or any language, or Aay re aay manda mithai/ Rain down on us, sweets for every taste – today they are a part of Bengal’s cultural ethos.
Ray may have caricatured the learned ustads seasoned in ragas but, repeatedly and in various ways, he uses Carnatic music. When Goopy and Bagha are fleeing from the lock-up, the stylised flight parodies Bharatanatyam movement – “Goopy re Bagha re Pala re pala re! Run run run…” Contrast this with the forlorn music of “Dukkho kise hoy? What causes sadness?” The score uses merely two string instruments – a dotara, a two-stringed instrument, and a violin which is widely used in Carnatic music “but here it is played much like the sarinda that is popular in East Bengal,” Ray had explained in the 1970 interview reprinted in Sandesh.
However, I am most fascinated by the use of Carnatic musical instruments in the Ghost Dance at the outset. As in the rest of the film, this sequence too has heavy orchestration — but the movements are choreographed not to a song, only to a quartet of percussion instruments.
At the risk of repeating myself I underscore that Bhooter Naach has no precedent nor any sequel in any movie made in any country at any point of time. So, to understand the process of its creation, we can only listen to Ray. “The story simply said, ‘the ghosts came and danced’. But how could I realise that in visual terms? Bengal of course has a conventional description of ghosts: their ears are like winnows, their teeth stick out like radish, they are pitch-dark, with arched back. But this would not be artistic. Nor could this meagre description sustain me through an entire sequence that had to create an impact deep enough for the film to rest on. Besides, there is no convention about their dancing. That is why I started to think: What if those who actually lived and died, were to come back? How would their bhoot look and behave?”
Here, let me add that for Satyajit Ray as for Upendra Kishore too, the term bhoot was not synonymous with the English ghost or spirit. Indeed, ghosts have been part of our folklore since our forefathers peopled Bengal, so much so that villagers still won’t utter the word after sunset, preferring to refer to them as “They”. In fact, the bhoot always had a different connotation in Bengal’s literary convention that has an entire genre thriving on bhoot-pret-jinn-petni-sakchunni-dainee-Brahmadaitti… Not only is the phantom celebrated in Sanskrit literature’s Betal Panchavimsati, Tagore, talking of his childhood, writes how he expected one of them to stretch out a long arm from the trees after nightfall. Ray’s ‘Lilu Pishi’ – Leela Majumdar – had authored Sab Bhuturey[3], a collection of ghost stories, while Ray himself gave us Baro Bhuter Galpo[4]a fun collection of 12 stories meant to exorcise fear! The tradition continues to live on, through the pen of Sirshendu Mukherjee, author of Nabiganjer Daitya[5], Gosain Baganer Bhoot[6], and Rashmonir Goynar Baksho[7]that was made into a film by Aparna Sen.
Now, to circle back to the Ghost Dance: Once Ray had transformed the ‘positive’ – read, live humans — into their ‘negative’, the dead, he realised that they could be kings and colonists as in history books, and they could be farmers and sepoys, Buddhists and Bauls, preachers and rioters too. After all, there were miles of burial ground in Birbhum — the location where Ray was shooting — that were the resting ground for Europeans who had breathed their last in Bengal. Thus, organically, came the thought of the four categories of ghosts distinctly identified through the visuals: A) the royals; B) the exploited class; C) the firangees or foreign imperialists; D) the bloated exploiters – baniyas or shopkeepers, capitalists, preachers.
The ghosts of imperialists
In the Kheror Khata, notebooks where he drafted every frame for GGBB, Ray actually names his ghosts. So, Warren Hastings, Robert Clive and Cornwallis are resurrected with their guns and their swords. This reminded me of the Terracotta Soldiers I have seen in Xian: the funerary sculptures depicting the army of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, were modelled on actual lived soldiers, I had learnt. Similarly, the thought of Chatur Varnashram[8]may have led to the four classification of ghosts – and the depiction of rows of simplified human figures on many of our temple walls – including Konark — could have inspired the vertical arrangement of the four groups, one on top of the other.
In execution, these ‘disembodied’ figures were given body by actual dancers. “We spent long hours together choreographing the sequence,” Ray said of Shambhunath Bhattacharya who had trained students in his dance school to take turn in dancing the classical footsteps. Their costumes and make up were, of course, designed by Ray and devised by art director Bansi Chandragupta, in keeping with their station in life. The exception was the Europeans: Ray used shadow puppets dancing 16 frames a second to evoke their mechanised manner. The action was in ‘five movements’: They come, they dance, they clash and war, they build up a frenzy that is resolved in harmony. The ghosts, after all, cannot die again!
Realising the movements was a challenge that the genius overcame technically. “If the four rows had to be physically shot, with four rows of dancers standing one over another, it would have needed a three-storey space. So, we arranged two rows at first, photographed them by masking top half of the film. Then we reversed the film and operated the camera to capture two more rows. The camera was on a crane and at the precise moments marked by music, we had to zoom back from the close up…”
The music for Bhooter Naach has its origin in the Carnatic taal vadya kacheri – an orchestra of percussion instruments that Ray first heard on radio, then witnessed at the inauguration of an International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Delhi. He decided to use a unique quartet comprising of mridangam, ghatam, kanjira and morsing. For the uninitiated: mridangam is a double-sided drum (somewhat like Bengal’s terracotta drum, khol) with a body made from hollowed jackfruit wood and the two mouthpieces covered by stretched goatskin. Ghatam, known as ghara in Punjab and matka in Rajasthan, is a clay pot with a narrow mouth whose pitch varies with its size. Kanjira, belonging to the tambourine family, has a single pair of jingles on it. And morsing, a plucked instrument held in the mouth to make the ‘twang twang’ sound, is also found in Rajasthan and Sindh. Ray used mridangam for the royals “because it is classical,” and their dance movement is also purely classical. Kanjira, with its semi-folk sound, he used for the farmers, and ghatam with its somewhat rigid sound was right for the rather wooden, mechanical movement of the Europeans. And the croaking sound of the morsing? Yes, it was just what the comical bloated figures needed!
Bhooter Raja or the ghost king
Finally, we come to the most haunting part of the stellar performance: the Ghost King who grants Goopy Baagha the three boons that change their lives, the lives of the kingdoms of Shundi and Halla, and the definition of fantasy in cinema. Chumki, the decorative spangles predominantly used in zardozi, combined with a soft light that diffused the reflected shine of the beads to work ethereal magic. The radish-like teeth crafted from shola pith – the milky white Indian cork that is hallowed by its association with Puja in Bengal — stuck out of the pitch-black body that had eyebrows whitened with paint. Finally, a thick white ‘sacred thread’ across its chest completed the appearance of the gigantic holy demon, Brahma Daitya.
The matching intonation? We all know by now: It was The Master’s Voice. Sound engineer Babu Sarkar had recorded Ray’s baritone, then played at double speed, and rerecorded it…
Only a genius of Ray’s stature could visualise this!
This essay is part of the online website dedicated to the Kheror Khata Satyajit Ray maintained, detailing the making of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. This was launched to celebrate the Birth Centenary of the legend. Republished with permission from TCG Crest.
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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Ratnottama Sengupta journeys with the signature art of Suhas Roy as it transformed in theme, style, and medium
Suhas Roy = Radha.
Correct.
Suhas Roy = Crows.
Right.
Suhas Roy = Jesus.
So true.
Suhas Roy = Sensuality.
Yes. Witness the Mistress of the Moon.
For each of these Suhas Roy (1936-2016) was chased by galleries and collectors. His works have been widely exhibited and are well documented. Many of them on view at Mumbai’s prestigious Jehangir Art Galley (January 17 to 23, 2023) are not on sale. The intention is to train viewers on the diversity and skilfulness of the much loved artist from Bengal. In short, to hold up the totality of the artist who enriched Contemporary Indian Art with sketches in Western Academic style, graphics, landscapes; with his series on Crow, Jesus, Radha, The Seductress of Khajuraho; with aluminium paint on glass, acrylic on paper, egg tempera on canvas…
So where do we start? Where did he? There’s a story at every turn in the journey, so let’s start at the very beginning.
A little boy in Tejgaon, now in Bangladesh, had lost his father when he was not even two. One Kaji Saheb, who taught geography in the village school and doubled as the art teacher, took the child under his wings. If the boy learnt to outline India on the blackboard, he could also draw papayas and brinjals. And everything he drew scored 10 on 10. His teacher would say, “It seems you’ll grow up to be an artist!”
The boy loved to spend all his hours drawing and fishing. “How will these pleasures serve you in life?” the family elders would admonish him. The youth would smile in reply and go on, eventually to join the Indian Art College, study new methods of printmaking under Somenath Hore and S W Hayter, visit Paris and Florence to study Michelangelo’s David and Pieta…
Suhas Roy
However, Paris post WWII was an eye-opener for artists like Suhas Roy and, a decade before him, for Krishna Reddy, who had graduated from Santiniketan. Both India and Europe had come out of prolonged periods of turmoil. But, poised on the threshold of an independent existence as a sovereign nation, India was looking back to its roots for defining its identity, whereas England and France and Germany – which were eager to get over the bitterness left by their recent history – were looking for a complete break with the past. For Suhas Roy, returning home meant returning to his cultural roots. And Venus emerging from the Water became kin of the image of goddess Lakshmi emerging from the lotus-laden pond closer home.
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This Indian-ness was reinforced when he joined Santiniketan as a painting teacher. The lush green environs, the ponds and rivulets, the chirping birds and rustic villagers took him back to the childhood haven snatched away by the politics of religion that had culminated in the Partition of the Subcontinent. Suhas Roy, raised in the British Academic mood, with undying admiration for the values of the Italian Renaissance and the visions of the French Classicists, riding the high tide of Modernism, debating whether to go Abstract or Semi-Abstract, started painting landscapes!
Yes, landscapes. Regardless of what the critics said – just as they did for the Bengal Masters – Suhas Roy was not being ‘regressive’. For, he did not paint any particular spot with fidelity to topography – as John Constable did. Instead, his landscapes were an expression of his yearning for a paradise lost: his place of birth. When he moved from Kolkata to Santiniketan, in a reflection of spatial reality the neighbourhood palm trees started putting their heads up in his paintings. His sensitive foliage, the birds and animals and ponds were all in answer to his quest for the luxuriant green he had left behind, across the Radcliffe Line.
“Santiniketan gave me back the opportunity to go fishing as I used to in East Bengal, and I rediscovered the beauty and calming effect of Nature,” he had said to me when I curated the Living Santiniketan exhibition in Delhi of late 1990s. “It came as a relief to me, burdened as I was with the constant thought of ‘What to paint?’ For, Nature constantly changes.” Additionally, he realised that appreciation of beauty is not confined to a class or profession. “Doctors and poets alike love flowers. So, I decided to go back to landscape, taking no note of whether it was in fashion or out of it.”
*
The crow, very much a part of the Bengal landscape, then became his signature in the 1970s. The scavenger was an attraction because of its black feathers. Japanese water-colourist Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958) — notable for his role in creating the painting technique of Nihonga — had come to Bengal in early 20th century with scholar Okakura Kakuzo (1863-1913) and helped Abanindranath Tagore master the medium. He had done a series of Mount Fuji in black-n-white. Chancing upon that in the Santiniketan library, Suhas was so impressed as to reach for the austere palette. The crow readily lent itself to the scheme. Spraying the canvas with acrylic paint before construing the image in watercolour, Suhas would use a Japanese colour stick to create tones and dimensions. The Far Eastern concept of an object in a wide open space came to be highly appreciated and widely collected – including by philanthropist politician, Karan Singh.
In Indian philosophy and literature, Nature is the Eternal Feminine. That could be why, after ten years of doing landscape, Suhas Roy’s imagination sought out the allied image of tribal girls. It was a natural progression, for women – especially tribal women – have a symbolic if not symbiotic link with trees. Often, he would counterpoise a tree with a woman. Taru[1], he titled one done in an art workshop.
From a woman in a landscape to Radha was just one step away. For an exhibition on Krishna organised by Gallery 88 of Kolkata, Suhas Roy played with the concept of the Blue God being the Ultimate Being. Melding Purush and Prakriti – the Male and the Female forces of the Universe – his canvas sported a nude woman against a dark blue background. The painting, titled ‘Radha’, not only sold for an enviable sum, but it also set in motion an astonishing demand for the image that shows no sign of abating.
Truly he basked in the adulation of resolved collectors, one of whom said, “When I am tossed and tired of problems, I look at your paintings. They act like balms.” Yet, for painting these very ‘balms’ the artist had to hear the criticism that he was feeding the appetite for calendar art. His Radha was a concept no better than the ‘mass produced’ icons ubiquitous in Indian spaces. But the master was far from apologetic. “It is the very definition of icons,” he had pointed out to me one afternoon. “Images of personalities deified by popular imagination, be they mythical, historical or social, are repeated again and again, generation after generation, in different styles and contexts.” If one age worshipped them as bronze figurines and gold paintings, another flaunted them in oleographs and calendars. It has been so with Radha-Krishna, Ram-Sita, Buddha-Jesus, and even with Gandhi-Tagore-Teresa, I realised.
*
Jesus, though, had entered Suhas Roy’s world long before Radha. Sometime in 1969 he had visited Florence to see David. He found the sculpture epitomising masculine beauty “too proportionate”, and wandered into the church next door preserving Dante’s Divine Comedy in parchment. There, in one corner, he saw the last work of Michelangelo – an unfinished Pieta. Such infinite pathos! The artist could not brush it off his memory even after he returned to Calcutta and one day its picture postcard inspired him to paint a Jesus. When he stopped, the canvas was sporting a contemporary pieta – Jesus without the head, his body descending from the heavens.
As a persona, Suhas Roy had deep regards for Jesus. He was, to the Bengali artist, a symbol of forbearance. Perhaps he also saw the serene visage of the Prophet sporting a Crown of Thorns as a reflection of his own self – or was it of his country, that had been crowned with an Independence bloodied by Partition? Somewhere Suhas, a father who in his own lifetime lost both his children to Eternal Sleep, saw Jesus as a redeemer who showed mankind how to bear every suffering and pain that was a mortal’s lot. That is why such palpable love, even when tinged with sorrow, pain or sadness, flows out of His veins. This must have prompted even Vatican to acquire his Jesus in 2006.
Suhas Roy arrived at ‘Khajuraho’ in the mature years of his well lived life. He was intrigued by the carvings on the walls of the temples in central India that have embarrassed some and outraged some. Considered the descendants of the celestial Moon, the Chandela rulers had celebrated love in every expressed formation. Love, the invincible bonding between man and woman, man and man, indeed between man and all living beings, is made explicit here. Surely Suhas Roy was not equating love with lust. Was there a spiritual pursuit layering the physicality of the actions immortalised in stone?
No doubt there was. For Moon has always been equated with romance, love, passion. The artist was exploring the mysticism that wraps the ascetic deity inside the temple. Much like the sculptors of yore, his ‘Seductress’ is a quest for the sublime. If the ancients believed that you must leave all your worldly longings outside the temple door if you seek moksha, deliverance, the contemporary artist continually sought nirvana, redemption from conflict, in the beauty of peace.
*
Rigidity was unknown to Suhas Roy. The changes in his art came spontaneously, and every good result goaded him to go on. He dwelt on a theme only until another creative urge besieged him, be it Khajuraho, the series he titled Mistress of the Moon, or Cappadocia in Turkey. Never shy of experimenting, his foremost concern – always – was meticulous quality. His temperas would have egg yolk with oil and Japanese porcelain, gelatin with resin and tamarind seed. If it held the promise of a finer texture for details, he would use a watercolour brush for oil paintings. For, he would repeat, “Good art will never lose its demand just as diamond will never lose its market.”
For Suhas Roy, the aesthetic and the spiritual were one and the same. And even the hurly-burly of political turmoil had to adhere to his norms of aesthetics. Did Suhas Roy, then, live in an ivory tower away from social realities? No, he insisted, he “never ran away…” Once, on a fishing trip outside Santiniketan, he witnessed dead bodies being fished out of water following a flash flood in Ilam Bazar. Haunted by that image he had painted the Disaster series, depicting landscapes with shrouded bodies. Indeed, when the Naxalite period gave rise to despondency, he was tossed by the political reality of his land. But he prophesized that “every turmoil, be it social or political – including the ongoing one at Singur – would be short-lived.” So, if contemporary art became mere documentation, then that too would be short-lived!
“Only when it transcends the here-and-now can art have lasting value,” maintained the artist even when disturbed by the dark side of humanity. So, though distressed by cruelty, he chose to decry war by showing not blood-spill but the meditative power of peace and sublimity of love. “I focused on what has lasting appeal. Flowers blossom in the same fields that are crushed by battling soldiers. I speak of the war through the Buddha who transcended war.”
This sublime pursuit of Suhas Roy explains the unending appeal of his Seductress, his Radha, his Jesus.
*All the photographs have been sourced by Ratnottama Sengupta
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award. Ratnottama Sengupta has the rights to translate her father, Nabendu Ghosh.
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It was a stage of life when we were friends without knowing the meaning of friendship. Just like that. As we grew up and grasped what friendship meant, we lost the capacity to nurture unconditional friendship. Although we rarely admit our incompetence to strike genuine bonds, we always make tall claims of being real friends for life. Utter one word that pricks a friend’s ego, and you are thrown out of the chat room with collective opposition to make you a pariah forever. It is the equivalent of being punished by the schoolteacher who made you stand outside the classroom for disturbing the entire class.
Attending a grand gala reunion organised by school friends offers an opportunity to revive and relive childhood memories — although the attendees are more engrossed in observing your receding hairline or the protruding belly. Your grey hair reassures those with jet-black hair and gives the scope to suggest effective herbal therapy. Your glowing skin stirs jealousy, and curious friends, eager to dig up the secret of your taut skin, surround you. Tell them you apply nothing to nourish it, and they conclude you are simply masking the truth.
If you have been stylish during childhood but now prefer simple clothes, get ready to be accosted by a friend who flaunts branded apparel and tries to draw your attention to his fancy imported jacket by raising its hood again and again.
Life is strange, and meeting childhood friends makes you realise this bitter truth. Those who were the most dignified and sober types have turned out to be drunkards. Those who never used a cuss word now hurl abuses as an energy booster. Those who wore tidy shoes have turned out to be careless about polish. Those who were always late have now become punctual in life. Those with a strict routine for everything have no routine to follow. Those who never laughed or cracked a joke in school have become humorists. Those who were toppers have become showstoppers of a different kind. Those fond of reading books now dread owning a bookshelf. The compulsive liars have become worshippers of truth. Those friends who never said prayers have now become staunch devotees. Life has its unpredictable ways of shaping people and their destinies.
In a reunion, you meet old buddies and see how they have changed, grown, or decayed in the intervening decades. Although I do not attend these reunions, it fascinates me to wonder how they get the wavelength right to connect. Dance, swing, or hop to revive bonhomie? Do they stand in a queue and pass through the school corridors? Do they enter the classroom and sit on the last bench? Do they fiddle with the chalk and duster to sign their flamboyant designations and titles? Do they revisit the loo where they discovered their youth? Do they stand or jostle near the tap to drink water and then splash it on friends for aqua fun? Do they huff and puff and yet run and climb the guava tree or dangle from its lowest branch in a brave and desperate show of fitness and agility that they have lost? Do they shake an arthritic leg with a fake smile? Do they try to appear healthy and hide their blood sugar levels by gorging on sweets? Do they sprinkle table salt on chops and cutlets to show hypertension has left them untouched? Well, it is a heroic attempt to present the best side with a smiling visage.
Such impulses get the better of you in your middle age when you realise the risk of dying of a sudden heart attack looms large. Before you depart, you wish to meet these childhood buddies and relive the lost innocence. You are back to your primary school — as those were the days you lived without stress and shared without ulterior motives. Life was good, but then you wanted a life of your choice — to carve a niche, rise, and race ahead. The world beckons you then, and now your town of birth makes you feel this had been heaven on earth. Yet, it was the place you were eager to leave to explore the world. Now you have done everything, so you want to return to where it all started. Just another wish like the one that made you navigate the world for golden opportunities.
Now you want to sit under a shady tree and philosophise whether you have lived a good life. Deep inside, you realise it has been a mixed bag, and the cycle is almost complete. You want to slow down and enjoy what you lost or left behind in childhood in a somewhat apologetic way, and you want the company of friends who share a similar worldview now. The future holds no promise of anything worthwhile. But there is a lot in the haystack of the past to cherish and relish. Remember the jam and jelly and butter toast in the tiffin you shared. Perhaps the joys of a simple life pull the heartstrings, and those childhood friends allow you to be yourself and help you recognise the person were and have left behind to a long forgotten past.
Devraj Singh Kalsiworks as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short stories and essays have been published in Deccan Herald, Tehelka, Kitaab, Earthen Lamp Journal, Assam Tribune, and The Statesman. Pal Motors is his first novel.
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Dear stranger
Did we visit the same dream last night?
The wispy dandelions that floated
Did they make you smile and cry?
And wandering through the trail
Did you find my footprints strange?
But yesterday wasn't the first time...
We've been visiting the same dream
Over and over again
Just never together.
So tonight, let's make a pact
When the darkness blanks you out
And the clouds begin to drift
Wait for me
And together we
Will visit the same dream.
Ananya Sarkar is a creative writer from Kolkata. Her work has been published in various e-zines. She loves to go on long walks, cloud gaze and ponder upon miracles. She can be reached at ananya7891@gmail.com.
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