QUANTUM
It was a miniature hemisphere
of chocolate ice cream,
in a silver chalice,
with a gleaming spoon.
When is enough, enough?
Having just one scruple?
The first four notes of Beethoven's fifth?
Taking four hundred pills like sprinkles?
I skimmed the dome with my spoon,
and licked off the coating.
Then I picked out the dark chips
and crunched down on them.
Finally, I anointed my mouth
with the frozen chrism itself,
That one scoop could have been six,
or ten, or a hundred.
NOCTURNE
I opened the blind to reveal the riches of the night…
Red of the roads
Orange of the tree bark
Yellow of the moon
Green of the cat’s eyes
Blue of the grass
Indigo of the sky
Violet of the clouds
Run from the high chroma of the day!
Roam in this rainbow instead.
Caroline Am Bergris is a half-Colombian, half-Pakistani poet living in London. Her poems have been published, online and in print, in Europe and America.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Translations bridge borders, bring diverse cultures to our doorstep. But here is a translation of a man, who congealed diversity into his very being — Syed Mujtaba Ali (1904-1974), a student of Tagore, who lived by his convictions and wit. Like his guru, Mujtaba Ali, was a well-travelled polyglot, who till a few years ago was popular only among Bengali readers with his wide plethora of literary gems that can never be boxed into genres precisely. People were wary of translating his witty but touching renditions of various aspects of life, including travel and history from a refreshing perspective, till Nazes Afroz, a former BBC editor, took it up. His debut translation Mujtaba Ali’s Deshe Bideshe as In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan in 2015 was outstanding enough to be nominated for the Crossword Prize. Recently, he has translated another book by Mujtaba Ali, Tales of a Voyager (Joley Dangay[1]), a book that takes us back a hundred years in time — a travelogue about a sea voyage to Egypt and travel within.
This narrative almost evokes a flavour of Egypt as depicted by Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (1937) or The Mummy (film, set in 1932), simply because it is set around the same time period. Afroz in his introduction sets the date of Mujtaba Ali’s travels translated here between 1935 and 1939. The book was published in 1955. This book is a treasure not only because it gives a slice of historic perspective but also weaves together diverse cultures with syncretism.
Mujtaba Ali has two young travel companions, Percy and Paul, who despite being British (one of them is on the way to study in Oxford) seem to have a fair knowledge of Indian lore and there is the inimitable Abul Asfia Noor Uddin Muhammad Abdul Karim Siddiqi, who almost misses a train while trying to argue about the discrepancies shown in the time between his Swiss watch and the clock at Cairo. The description is sprinkled with tongue-in-cheek humour.
The voyage starts at Sri Lanka and sails through the Arabian Sea to Africa, where the ship pauses at Djibouti. Here, Mujtaba Ali expands his entourage with the addition of the long-named Abul Asfia, well-described in the blurb as a man who “carried toffees, a gold cigarette case, and other sundry items in his capacious overcoat pocket and who had the answer to all problems though he barely spoke a word ever.” Afroz himself has given an excellent introduction to the writer and the book — almost in the style of Mujtaba Ali himself. This is a necessary addition as it highlights Mujtaba Ali’s perspectives and gives his background to contextualise the relevance of this translation.
Mujtaba Ali’s style is poetic and humorous. It demystifies erudition and touches the heart simultaneously. His ability to laugh at himself is inimitable. He tells us a story about how the giraffe from Africa was introduced to China by a king from Bengal. At the end, he and his companions reflect about the tallness of this tale!
Mujtaba Ali contends: “‘…One of my friends is learning Chinese in order to read Buddhist scriptures in that language. Possibly you know that many of our ancient scriptures were destroyed with the decline of Buddhism in India. But they are still available in Chinese translations. My friend came across this story while searching for Buddhist scriptures. He had it translated and published in Bengali with the copy of the painting in a newspaper. Or else Bengalis would never have known of this because there is no mention of it in our history books or documents in the archives in Bengal.’”
The irony is not lost that Buddha is of Indian origin and yet an Indian has to learn Chinese to read the scriptures. The narrative continues with more dialogues:
“Percy said, ‘But sir, it didn’t sound like history. It [the giraffe’s story] exceeds fiction.’
“I [Mujtaba Ali] replied, ‘Why, brother? There is the saying in your language, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction.’
“And my personal opinion was that if the narrative of an event could not rouse interest in someone more than fiction, then that event had no historical value. Or I would say that the narrator was not a true historian. In our land, most of our historians are such dry bores.”
As Mujtaba Ali’s renditions are colourful – is he a ‘true historian’ by his own definition? Such narratives dot the travelogue, generating curiosity about major issues in a light vein and linking ancient cultures with the commonality of human needs, creating bridges, taking us to another time, finding parallels and making learned, hard concepts comprehensible by the simplicity of his observations.
Similarly, he says of the rose: “The Mughal-Pathan era of India ended a long time ago, but can we say for how long the roses brought by them will continue to give us fragrance?”
Some of his renditions are poetic and beautiful. Mujtaba Ali watches the sunrise by the pyramids and describes it: “Streaks of light were gradually lighting up the liquid darkness. The white parting in the middle of black hair was becoming visible. There was a light daubing of vermillion on that.”
Borrowing from diverse cultures, Mujtaba Ali skilfully weaves the commonality of cultures, customs and countries into his narrative under the umbrella of humanity. Afroz with his journalistic background and a traveller himself, is perhaps the best person to translate this narrative of another traveller from the past. The depth of erudition simplified with humour has been well captured in this translation too. In this interview, Afroz discusses more about the author, his new translation and the relevance of the book in the present context.
Nazes Afroz
You have translated two books by Mujtaba Ali. Is he essentially an essayist? Were there many essayists and travel writers at that point, especially from within Bengal? Where would you place him as a writer in the annals of Bengali literature?
I don’t think that ‘essentially an essayist’ is the right description of Mujtaba Ali. Of course he wrote many essays but his repertoire included novels, short stories, funny anecdotal pieces based on his experiences (in Bangla they are called romyorochona) and stories from his travels, his encounters with extremely interesting people across the globe. He was deeply interested in culinary experiences. So he wrote a lot about food habits, multitude of cuisine and also gave recipes. Hence, it is difficult to box him into one genre of writing. With the publication of his first book, Deshe Bideshe, (serialised in 1948 in Bangla literary magazine Desh and as a book in 1949) he instantly occupied a significant place in Bengali literature.
Syed Mujtaba Ali
His Bangla prose, steeped in effortless and seamless multilingual and multicultural references, swept the discerning readers of Bangla literature off their feet. It was not only the prose that he created but the breadth and depth of subjects his pen touched was unparalleled. No author in Bangla language has been able to write on such a wide range of topics till date.
Coming to the other part of the question about travel writers and essayist in Bengal in early part of the twentieth century: the short answer is, yes there were many. Travel writing has been an important genre in Bangla literature. Bengalis had been travelling – for pilgrimage, for rest and recuperation following illnesses, or just for pleasure since the middle of the nineteenth century, which was the time of Bengal renaissance. Writers who undertook such journeys, wrote about their travels too. So Mujtaba Ali is no exception in that regard. He followed in the footsteps of his predecessors and also his peers.
You have called the book ‘Tales’ of the Voyager — would you say that some of the stories are like tall tales here — perhaps tales to convey an idea or a thought which in itself would be larger than history in explaining the truth of a civilisation, like the tale of the giraffe? Would you see this as a comment on the gap between popular and documented narratives in history and on the different interpretations of history?
Ali was an excellent raconteur. He was also gifted with an almost eidetic memory. This allowed him to learn a dozen languages – some with native proficiency. He was a voracious reader too. So, not only did he read tomes on history and philosophy in many languages across cultures but also he gathered fascinating tales from many corners of the world as he loved storytelling. Whenever opportunities came, he masterfully wove those stories into his writing. Thus the tale of the giraffe’s journey from Africa to China via Bengal found its way in this book as he was narrating stories from the east coast of Africa. There is another thing that makes Ali’s writing attractive. He weaves in fascinating quirky funny stories while discussing something apparently dense and dry. I have not come across many writers who have done that. I don’t know whether to name it as his comment on bridging the gap between popular and documented history. There’s no evidence to prove that he was trying to achieve that as he never mentioned it. We could only conclude that it was a style that he invented and mastered in an effort to engage with his readers.
A writer that came to mind while reading this book of Mujtaba Ali is, one who is really more entertaining than accurate –Marco Polo. We know he lived five centuries before Mujtaba Ali. Mujtaba Ali of course is erudite, a scholar, but he seems to have a similar fire within him, a wanderlust. Do you think he would have been impacted by the writings of Marco Polo? Was wanderlust not a very typical phenomenon that was part of the culture that had evolved in Bengal post the Tagorean renaissance? Did Mujtaba Ali also travel for wanderlust?
Reading Ali’s books, one may think that he had wanderlust in the true sense. It will be correct to assume that he was fidgety; he refused to settle down; he moved jobs; he moved cities and even continents. But to be truly smitten by wanderlust, one has to enjoy the travel, which wasn’t possibly the case for Ali. His son told me that even though he travelled extensively, Ali didn’t enjoy travelling much. There had been many, of his time, who were really smitten by wanderlust — like Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963, walked to Tibet twice and wrote only in Hindi), Bimal Mukherjee (1903-1996, a true globetrotter who cycled to London from Kolkata), Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay (1902-1997, who crisscrossed the Himalayas from one end to another), Probodh Kumar Sanyal (1905-1983, his travelogues of the Himalayas), Premankur Atorthi (1890-1964, author of Mahasthobir Jatok) — to name a few. While these authors were inherently bohemian and were drawn towards travelling only for the sake of it, Ali was more of an unsettled soul who travelled with a particular purpose and wrote about his experiences as he had picked up fascinating stories and observed connections between cultures. Because he loved to tell stories and also because he was infused with the idea of internationalism that he inculcated from Tagore, there was no way he could escape but narrating the stories and cultural experienced from his travels.
Tales of a Voyager takes us on a sea voyage to Egypt. Did you travel to Egypt while translating the book? Would you say that the Egypt of those times still resonates in the present day — especially after the 2011 uprising?
Even before his one night stopover in Cairo that he narrated in Tales of a Voyager, Ali had previous experience of Cairo where he spent a year as a post-doctoral scholar in 1933-34 at the Al-Azhar University. So there are many short pieces on Cairo and Egypt by him in his other books. He raved about the café-culture of Cairo and came to the conclusion that Egyptians surpassed the Bengali in terms of adda—hours of the purposeless sessions of chitchat and chinwag. I have been to Cairo at least half a dozen times and realised how acute his observation was. I witnessed in person why Ali mentioned that this was a city that never slept. The cafes and shops were open all night and the streets were full of people with families including children until well past midnight.
Late night, a cafe in Cairo. Photo Courtesy: Nazes Afroz
As expected, the political landscape that you mention in the question, would be completely different between Ali’s time in the 1930s and in 2010 when I started visiting Cairo. When Ali first went to Cairo in 1933, Cairo had just gained full independence from the forty years of British occupation (not as an annexed state but more of a protectorate). So there are some references of the political figures like Sa’ad Zaghloul Pasha[2] in his various writings but the main focus was on its cultures.
When I started travelling to Cairo from 2010, I witnessed some similarities in the cultural traits as elaborated by Ali. But politically by then, Egypt had moved far from where it was in the 1930. It had become an architect of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1950s. It was the most prosperous country in North Africa and an important leader among the Arab nations. But it was also reeling under the oppression of one party rule and the youth were bubbling to break away from that. This is something we witnessed unfolding from 2011.
What were the challenges you faced while translating this book? Was it easier to handle as it was the second book by the same author?
The main challenge of translating Mujtaba Ali is transposing his unique language steeped in multi-lingual references into English. Also to get his oblique sense of wit and puns from Bangla into another language, which at times, may not have the right words for them. Translating the second book of the same author doesn’t make it easier as the challenges I just mentioned remain for every book.
Tell us what spurs you on to continue translating Mujtaba Ali. Please elaborate.
Syed Mujtaba Ali’s writing had a huge influence on me from my young age. His writing shaped my worldview, planted the seeds of curiosity about many societies, taught me how to make friends in distant lands and start making connections between cultures. So what I’m today is largely due to his writing. As an avid reader of his texts, I felt that it was my duty to introduce him to a wider readership. That’s the motivation of my taking up the translation of Ali. It is also a tribute to a writer who had such an impact on me.
In your introduction you have written of Mujtaba Ali and his writing. What had he written to be put on the Pakistani watchlist in 1950s?
He had penned an essay opposing the imposition of Urdu as Pakistan’s national language on the Bengalis who were in majority in the newly created East Pakistan. He even predicted how the Bengalis would rebel against such a policy, which came true in 1952 in the form of the Language Movement. He wrote this when he was the principal of a government college in Bogura. So he drew wrath of the Pakistani leaders and an arrest warrant was issued against him. That was the time when he left Pakistan and returned to India in 1949.
There also the other difficult personal situation. His wife (married in 1951) who was from Dhaka and was working in the education ministry, continued to live in East Pakistan with their two sons while he lived in India working for the Indian Government. So Pakistanis always thought he was an Indian spy while he was under suspicion in India that he was on the side of Pakistan!
Did Mujtaba Ali participate in the political upheaval between Pakistan and Bangladesh? Please elaborate if possible.
Ali was hugely affected in 1971 because of his personal situation as I just mentioned. I don’t know how deeply he was involved with the liberation war in Bangladesh but he wrote a novel, Tulonaheena (his last novel), against that backdrop – based in Kolkata, Shillong and Agartala and told through the story of a lover couple – Shipra and Kirti. So it is likely that he was involved in some capacity with the war efforts.
Tulonaheen( Incomparable), Syed Mujtaba Ali’s last novel Gurudeb and Santiniketan by Syed Mujtaba AliMore books by Syed Mujtaba Ali
Mujtaba Ali studied in Santiniketan — that would have been in the early days of the university. Would he have been influenced by Tagore himself and the other luminaries who were in Santiniketan at that time? Can you tell us how? And did that impact his work and outlook?
The simple answer is: it was huge. Tagore was the polar star for Mujtaba Ali, which he acknowledged every now and then in his writing. This experience also decided his life’s journey. He imbibed humanism and internationalism as a direct student of Tagore in Santiniketan. He also developed deep apathy towards all sorts of bigotry. So it was not surprising that he would find it very difficult to accept a country that was created on the basis of religion.
Do you find him relevant in the present-day context? Is your writing influenced or inspired by his style?
I feel that his relevance will never fade. His ability to create cultural connection from different corners of the world will continue to fascinate readers for generations. Yes, in this globalised world when information from around the world are at our finger tips with the click of a button but one also needs to learn how to look at those information beyond mere facts and go deep underneath to make a sense. Apart from being fun and entertaining read, I feel his writing is one such training tool to learn how to make cultural connections. This way, if one wants, one can truly become a global citizen.
As for me, my outlook towards the world is massively influenced by Ali’s writing but not my writing style. It’s simply because I’m not a polyglot like him! I’ll not be able to come anywhere close to his style even if I try.
Well, that is for the reader to judge I guess! You have books on Afghanistan. But you do travel with your camera often. Will you write of your own travels at some point — like Mujtaba Ali but in English?
I have only one book on Afghanistan – a cultural guide book that I co-authored with an Afghan friend. I was working on my own book on Afghanistan, which would have capture one decade of Afghan history and interspersed with my own direct experiences of the country between 2002 and 2015. But the research got stalled for lack of funding. I hope to revive it at some point. And, yes I would like to do my own writing from my travels. That’s there in the wish list.
What are your future plans as a journalist, writer and photographer?
Travel more, see the world more, make more friends and photograph more!
Thanks a lot for giving us your time and the wonderful translation.
[1] Literal translation from Bengali, In Water and On Land
[2] 1857-1957, Egyptian revolutionary and statesman
We have Tied Bunches of Kaash
We have tied bunches of kaash* and strung garlands of shefali.
We have decorated the wicker tray with new-sprung paddy.
Welcome autumnal goddess on your chariot of white clouds!
Ride on angelic azure paths,
Travel through clean bright glittering forested mountains.
Come wearing a crown of white lotus, sparkling with dewdrops.
On the banks of Ganges, in a solitary bower
Carpeted with the flowers of fallen malati,
Swans flap their wings as your entourage.
When you pluck the strings of your golden bina*,
Soft sweet notes,
Usher laughter amidst transient tears.
Like the magical parasmani* emanating light,
Stroke the flames of compassion in our hearts—
Brighten our thoughts and replace darkness with light.
*kaash: Wild grass flowers
*Bina: Musical instrument
*Parasmani: A magical touchstone
A Bengali rendition of the song performed by a contemporary artiste, Rezwana Choudhury BannyaShefali flowersMalati blooms(Rangoon creeper)Courtesy: Creative Commons
In 1913, Tagore received a Nobel Prize for his own translation, Gitanjali: Song Offerings, published in England. Only 69 of the original 157 of the Bengali Gitanjali made it into the English translation.
An essay, ‘Publication of Tagore’s song offerings, the Gitanjali : A Study’ by Partha Pratim Ray, a librarian in Vishwa Bharati, contends: “Rabindranath Tagore himself took the task of the translation of Gitanjali (Song Offerings) when he sailed for England on 27 May 1912. There he handed over the poems to William Rothenstein whom he met earlier in Calcutta in the year 1911. Moved by the poems, Rothenstein in turn gave the poems to W.B. Yeats to read. The literary and artistic circle of Yeats decided to publish the poems after Yeats made a selection of them and wished to write an introduction to it. That is how Gitanjali was first published by India Society of London on November 1912.”
The article further elucidates: “The next edition of Gitanjali was published in the next year (March 1913) by Macmillan and Company, London. The number of poems in Bengali and English Gitanjali are not the same. In Bengali there were 157 poems, but in English it was 103. The poems were first published in different Kavyagrantha. At the end of the Indian edition of India Society or Macmillan there was a statement: ‘These translations are of poems contained in three books- Naivedya, Kheya and Gitanjali…’”
Yeats wrote the introduction for Song Offerings. He wrote, “these prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for years” and “Mr. Tagore, like the Indian civilization itself, has been content to discover the soul and surrender himself to its spontaneity.”
Gitanjali, 1910 editionGitanjali: Song Offerings by Tagore in English with a forward by W.B. Yeats
This poem has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty with editorial input from Sohana Manzoor on behalf of Borderless Journal
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Title:The Wizard of Festival Lighting – The Incredible Story of Srid
Author: Samragngi Roy
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
There are two things that make this book interesting. Firstly, it is the story of a man who decorated lights during festivals and got worldwide fame for what he did. Secondly, the author of the biography is a young writer. The Wizard of Festival Lighting: The Incredible Story of Srid is written by the protagonist’s granddaughter, Samragngi Roy, who published her debut novel, a young adult fiction in 2017.
Nevertheless, what makes this book stand out most is its unconventional theme. History is presented innovatively in this 352-page book, and folklore is at the center. Just like Durga puja can’t be mentioned without Kolkata, Jagatdhatri puja can’t be mentioned without lighting. This isn’t just West Bengal’s festival history, but India’s. Here’s how one man conquered the world through his vision. Documents like this are historical.
The blurb reads: “Eleven year old Sridhar was fascinated by light. Growing up among a dozen siblings in a mud cottage in Chandannagar in West Bengal, he longed to create something beautiful. A school dropout who never studied beyond Class Eight, he taught himself about lights and electricity by doing odd jobs at an electrician’s shop—an act that earned him a severe beating from his father. In spite of his family’s opposition, he grew up to become a celebrated light artist and inventor, setting new standards for festival lighting and pioneering new techniques.”
Recalls Sridhar “In 1968, when I was hired by the Bidyalankar Puja Committee for the purpose of providing street lighting, I had volunteered to additionally decorate the banks of our old pond too for three primary reasons. Number one, I had grown up next to it. Number two, it had been the source of some of our most sumptuous meals in childhood. And number three, it had been the setting for several of my childish shenanigans.
“However, when the lights glowed around the pond after sundown, the space enclosed by the banks of the pond looked extremely empty. But of course, I couldn’t have done anything about it because the enclosed space contained nothing but neck-deep water. That’s when I first contemplated the possibility of making lights glow under water and laughed at myself for being so impractical.”
The narrative continues: “So, I closed my eyes, muttered a quick prayer and used my stick to smash a glowing lamp. Then I waited for the impact. There was none that I could feel. My muscles, which had been tense and stiff all along, slowly relaxed. Parashuram and I looked at each other, and my gentle nod was met with a happy little jig that he performed on the steps of the ghat, bursting with excitement. But then the idea stuck with me for a while and what had seemed impossible in the evening had started to seem like an idea worth giving a shot by the night. I wasn’t even sure if the idea was feasible since it was unprecedented.”
Sridhar Das’s work received great acclaim throughout the world. His work has been exhibited in the Festival of India in Russia, Ireland, Los Angeles and Malaysia. The cover of the book is based on his exhibit in the Thames Festival in London — his famous illuminated peacock boat in three dimensions.
As a result of his fame and commitment to work, Sridhar, along with those closest to him, suffered from a variety of issues. His wife had to combat illness and loneliness to care for the family, leaving her husband free to forge his own path. His daughter grew up with her famous father largely absent. The telling encapsulates the true story of his meteoric rise, as well as his family with an unflinching exploration of what his meteoric rise cost him.
The story, poignantly related by his granddaughter, is both a subtle portrait of a complex individual and an affectionate tribute to a grandfather loved by his grandchildren. It takes readers back to vanished times, and introduces them to a man who pursued his dreams and created his own field through sheer determination.
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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
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The prawn curry was getting cold. “What’s taking you guys this long to finish a match point?” I demanded while dipping my index finger in the curry bowl and touching it to my tongue. “We never got to the end, Nina. Siddh fell on the grass and couldn’t get up after. He’s in immense pain. We’re going to have a long night,” Arko said.
The line clicked, but I stood there holding the telephone.
Little did we know then that Siddh would not be able to stand on his feet that evening and every evening until after two months.
Only last week, my favourite trio – brother Siddh, his wife, Saanvi, and their toddler, Uma, had arrived in India for a grand family reunion. This week the fun was planned at my home. After spending a day indoors, we slid into our sneakers for a walk in the park. The toddler at the swing, sisters-in-law chewing the fat, the boys at a badminton rally – the season of life we were all waiting for was finally here.
The twilight hours chimed in with the chirping of crickets. My niece asked me while rubbing her eyes, “What time do crickets go to bed?” “Not until morning. Crickets are night creatures,” I said. “Let’s sing a lullaby to crickets so they hit the bed on time,” Uma urged. Saanvi and I decided to walk back home, so the only person who went to bed on time was Uma.
The boys stayed on…
This park has an endearing presence in my life—an all-weather friend, where I end up on my good days and bad days. Just a stone’s throw away from where I live, the road to the house of this picturesque friend is never too long.
When I learned that Siddh had broken his leg in the lap of this green landscape…in the lap of my trusted friend, I felt thoroughly betrayed. No one had told me the road to the house of a friend could be bumpy too!
It took a village to lift my brother and settle him into a wheelchair. One emergency room, two hospitals, and three X-rays later, Siddh came home post-midnight…leaning on a walking frame, trembling in pain, falling apart.
The house went dead and silent, broken frequently by Siddh’s grunts and groans. Hiding behind the door tugging at a curtain, I anguished over what was tougher – to be afflicted by pain or watch someone you love suffer in pain.
The misery continued the following day – dialling up ambulances, moving between stretchers, painstakingly slow MRIs, mammoth injections, multiple doctor consultations, and whatnot. Reports said Siddh had suffered both a fracture and a ligament tear resulting in a full leg cast for six weeks!
The season of life we were all waiting for had gone awry. If there were a list of the ‘biggest holiday failures’, this would feature right at the top. Siddh seemed crestfallen – six weeks of staying in bed! Saanvi had a bewildered look on her face. Uma showed a big heart in saying she could wait until the next day for her Papa’s leg to get better so they could play chase. The dispirited Mom, Dad, and cousins drifted in different directions to make arrangements. Arko and I looked at each other and then looked around – we had gone from two to five to nine folks in a span of three days. Suddenly, my mind went elsewhere, “When was the last time we got together as one big family, with three generations living under one roof? When was the last time we sat face-to-face, speaking for hours, without a virtual screen orchestrating our conversations?”
I insisted that the trio stay with us during the recovery period. While no amount of caregiving could alleviate Siddh’s pain during the initial stage, nestling in a place of warmth and care helped him get through one day at a time. When he showed indomitable resilience in not just returning to working remotely only a few days after the accident but also stepping out on a whim while still using a walking aid, it only reaffirmed my belief that families do have the placebo effect.
Making lemonade out of lemons life had thrown at us, we often brought the house down with game nights, barbecue, drinks, karaoke, good music, and all that. On his birthday evening, when Siddh entered the living area, clacking his walker against the floor, shielding his discomfort with a grin, the message on the birthday cake sent him and everyone else into peals of laughter – Happiness is NOT playing badminton. The icing on the cake exhibited a passionate boy in the act of hitting a shuttle with a badminton racquet, wearing a replica of the red tee Siddh had worn on the evening he fell. Tongue-in-cheek, but everything is fair in love and life.
From sharing homes and hearts to strengthening family bonds, it only felt like this page in the book of our lives was written in stars.
Days and weeks rolled by. The long leg cast came off. The season of life began anew.
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Siddh and Saanvi posted a handwritten note from London, “Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilisation in a culture.
“Mead said that the first sign of civilisation in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
“A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilisation starts, Mead said.”
I cast my mind back to the evening we saw them off at the airport. A strange sense of accomplishment filled me – Siddh back on his feet, Saanvi’s beaming face, and Uma settled in my arms, making a toddler promise to visit Nina’s home in India ‘next week’.
Storing the sweet note of love in my memory box, I thought to myself, “There’s nothing more fulfilling than being there for your family in a difficult time. We are at our best when we lift each other up.”
Saumya Dwivedi often pens down anecdotes about her life. Her story ‘To the deep end’ has been published in a morning English daily. Passionate about skydiving, she keeps the spirit of flying alive in whatever she does.
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‘King Bimbisara is completely enamoured with Amrapali. He seems to be in love with her, and for that, Ajaatshatru seems to detest him. They are not on speaking terms anymore. Moreover, when I was there, Ajaatshatru did not speak a word even to me…’
‘Are you sure you did not do anything to upset him?’ asked Shuddhodana, concerned. Ajaatshatru giving Siddhartha the cold shoulder was worrying news indeed. He was only a few years younger than Siddhartha and was poised to take the throne from Bimbisara. If, in the future, the rulers of Kapilavastu and Magadha could not see eye to eye, then what would be the point of this trade route that they had so carefully worked on? What would be the point of the independence from the trade route through Kosala?
‘Father, how could I have upset him when he wouldn’t even speak to me? He chose to go hunting both on the day that I arrived as well as the day that I left.’
‘This is not good,’ said Shuddhodana. ‘This is the result of Bimbisara’s own foolishness. The only reason that Ajaatshatru dislikes you is because Bimbisara keeps comparing him to you. He was always very taken by your insight.’
‘But if that were the case, then we have no reason to worry! If I try to establish friendly relations with Ajaatshatru, then perhaps we will not have anything to fear!’
Shuddhodana was taken aback at how optimistic Siddhartha sounded. He wished he could share his optimism but was wary of saying anything to take away his son’s enthusiasm for affairs of the state.
‘But there was still something wrong with King Bimbisara; he seemed to not have any relations at all with Queen Kosala. Instead, he spent most of his time with the courtesan Amrapali. I believe Ajaatshatru took offence to that too, for he didn’t seem interested in spending any time with me.’
‘I wouldn’t give it too much thought, Siddhartha, there are things about that family that you do not know. Perhaps it is not right for us to ascertain from the outside, the merits of their dynamic, but they have shared a very troubled relationship, let us leave it at that…’
‘What do you mean, father?’
‘The stars are powerful, Siddhartha. Great things can be done and undone, depending on whether one has luck and destiny on his side or not. Parents may be invulnerable when it comes to anything else on earth, but they are powerless when it comes to their children. Once the idea that some misfortune might befall their children enters their heads, they will do anything to ensure that this does not happen.’
‘Including banishing every single crippled, injured or maimed person from their kingdom to live in misery?’
Shuddhodana gave Siddhartha a sharp look.
‘Who has told you of this?’ asked Shuddhodana.
‘I have seen Sukhibasti with my own eyes, Father.’
Shuddhodana felt like he had been hit square in the chest with a mace.
‘I did what I believe was right, Siddhartha,’ he said.
‘You could call it that, Father, but I am simply trying to understand how a man as great as you could love his family as much as you have, while showing no mercy to your subjects.’
Shuddhodana was insulted, more so because he was hearing these words from his own son. Siddhartha was crossing a line.
‘Siddartha, I am your Father but I am your king as well. Do not forget that.’
‘Do not threaten me, Father. I have seen what you created. How long did you plan to keep it a secret? How long did you plan to have it hidden from me? How many more lies are there to discover?’
‘Enough!’ bellowed Shuddhodana. ‘I did what I had to, to safeguard the kingdom and its heir from straying off the path that was chosen for him.’
‘Did you think that you needed to take the words of someone who hadn’t seen the future so seriously that it influenced the way you brought up your own child?’
‘He was my Guru, Siddhartha, just as Guru Kondanna was yours.’
‘Guru Kondanna is my guru!’ Siddhartha corrected an angry Shuddhodana.
‘You are overstepping your boundaries, Siddhartha. I have been very patient and understanding, but enough is enough. You cannot take the pain of others and make it your own all the time. At the end of the day, one’s duty must take precedence over everything else.’
Siddhartha calmed down and collected himself. He took off his armour and laid it on the floor of the courtroom at the foot of his father’s throne.
‘Forgive me, Father. I do not mean to disrespect you or my duty but what must one do when he is unable to see the reason behind one’s duty and dharma? When I left Kapilavastu, I encountered nothing but suffering and sadness. The farmers who grow the food we eat are exploited mercilessly by royal guards and collectors. I have been sleepless since I returned from Sukhibasti. Are you aware that our own injured and maimed soldiers are sent there? They fought for us and with us in the war. How can one call this duty?’
(Extracted from Siddhartha: The Boy Who Became the Buddha by Advait Kottary. Published by Hachette India, 2023.)
ABOUT THE BOOK
His family was happy to see him, but they had hoped to meet the Siddhartha they knew, not the Buddha he had become.
Long before Siddhartha became the enlightened leader [Buddha], he was a boy oblivious of the world. As the young prince navigates politics and relationships, he slowly begins to question his oppressively perfect life. Meanwhile his family struggles to maintain their deception in the hope that they can mould him into a dutiful king – from banishing the old and sick to hiding their own advancing age. In Advait Kottary’s intricately woven narrative, raw human emotion and conflict is tempered with the boundless compassion of the Buddha. Exciting and insightful in equal measure, Siddhartha is at once a riveting story and a profound meditation on our shared quest for truth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Advait Kottary is a writer and actor residing in London. Passionate about cars and engineering, he worked as an engine designer before quitting his job to pursue his love of writing and the performing arts. He went on to lead the world’s biggest Bollywood musical Jaan-E-Jigar, and act in international productions such as Beecham House. Advait has also co-conceptualised the award-winning television show Molkki and voiced several audiobooks with Swedish platform Storytel. Siddhartha is his first novel, which stemmed from his own quest to understand the Self and his encounter with the Buddha’s teachings.
When I recently flew from Australia into Gatwick Airport, London, I was struck by the ease of passing through customs and immigration. Once I exited the plane, I was ushered to an empty lane and directed to a machine to present my passport. As I had nothing to declare I walked through the green lane. A group of four customs officers were engaged in conversation and did not notice me. I had entered the UK seamlessly in about five minutes without making eye contact with a single person.
Not so when travelling within my home state of South Australia. Alex, Verity and I were on our way from Adelaide to Kangaroo Island, situated across Investigator Strait off the southern coast of South Australia. We would have preferred to sail there, but Alex’s boat was high and dry, awaiting repairs to the mast and windows in Yaringa, eight hundred kilometres away in the state of Victoria. We had made a booking for the three o’clock ferry from Cape Jervis to Penneshaw, on Kangaroo Island. We left Adelaide at 1 pm, allowing ninety minutes for the drive and thirty minutes to board, as we always do.
Half an hour into our trip, we were stuck in a traffic jam along the arterial roadway heading south. We had never been trapped in a traffic jam in this direction before, because it was leading away from Adelaide towards sparsely populated farmland.
“Oh no! It’s the Tour Down Under! The road is closed for the cycling race,” lamented Alex.
He did a U-turn and headed west to the side streets in the hope of finding an alternative route along the Esplanade. After winding through the coastal suburbs, we arrived at a T junction facing the Esplanade, and were greeted by a woman in a bright orange vest holding a prominent sign saying ‘Stop!’
Onlookers lined the streets holding their cameras ready to snap the cyclists. We waited, all the while nervously checking the time on our phones, wondering whether we would miss our ferry. A few minutes later we heard an excited murmur run through the crowd, and sure enough, a group of cyclists whizzed past.
We glanced at the woman in the orange vest, hoping she would let us pass. She was on her walkie talkie and shook her head at us. Soon another group of cyclists raced past. Then the woman let us on to the Esplanade and we headed south. Soon after we were stopped by a police officer on a bicycle, who directed us away from the Esplanade. We turned east to weave our way back to our original route.
“We won’t make it to the ferry on time!” complained Alex, pressing heavily on the accelerator.
We arrived back on the highway that we had originally departed from and tried to turn right so that we could head south to Cape Jervis. A line of cars from the north were trying to turn right into our street.
“We’ll be here for hours. Best turn left and then do a U-turn,” announced Alex.
Alex turned left, accelerated, and braked when he found a gap in the oncoming traffic. He quickly did a U-turn and then headed south, passing the line of cars waiting to turn right onto the road where we had been waiting.
Would all of this be in vain? Would we get to Cape Jervis just after 3 pm to watch the ferry departing, on its way to Penneshaw? I held my phone to check the distance to Cape Jervis and noted that the estimated time of arrival was 2.54 pm. Alex tried to make up time by driving to the speed limit. A truck was labouring up the hill in front of us. Alex waited until we reached a passing lane, and then floored the accelerator. The estimated time of arrival was now 2.52 pm. Sitting next to Alex as he sped along the highway was more exciting than rides on a fairground had been when I was a child. I trusted his judgment and felt safe all the while enjoying the exhilarating speed. Next, there was a red car dawdling in front of us. Again, Alex waited until we reached a passing lane, and overtook them. The estimated time of arrival was still 2.52 pm. At least we had not been losing time as we were delayed by the slow coaches ahead of us. We entered the township of Cape Jervis, rounded the hill, and then descended to the ferry port, arriving as predicted at 2.52 pm. We expected boarding to be well underway. Instead, four lanes of cars were waiting in the line-up to board the empty ferry, which was running late. We slid into the shortest lane and turned off the engine. A biosecurity officer approached Alex’ window, his curly auburn ponytail blowing in the wind. Alex wound down the car window.
“Do you live on Kangaroo Island or are you just visiting?” he asked.
“We’re just visiting.”
“Oh, lovely! Do you have any honey?”
“No honey.”
“Do you have any bee-keeping equipment?”
“No, definitely not.”
“How about fruit?”
“We have some apples.”
“Are they from the supermarket?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you buy them?”
“In Adelaide.”
“How about potatoes?”
“No.”
“Do you have any plants?”
“We have some caper plants in the back.”
He looked at the back of our vehicle in acknowledgement.
“Oh capers! They look nice. Where did you get them?”
“From a business in Port Adelaide.”
The biosecurity officer seemed satisfied and waved us on.
“Have a lovely trip!”
Shortly after we boarded the 45-minute ferry for Penneshaw. We had been asked more biosecurity questions than at any other place on our travels, and we hadn’t even left our home state. I yearned for the ease of passing through immigration at Gatwick Airport. I had felt perversely miffed at Gatwick for having been ignored by immigration and customs officials.
No sooner had we arrived at our destination though, did we spot a marvellous mob of kangaroos bounding across the property.
Then the following day we had a charming encounter with a Rosenberg’s Monitor looking for a drink of water – a species that is endangered on the mainland.
Rosenberg’s monitor lizard
Verity later came across an elusive short-beaked echidna.
Short-beaked echidna
At last I could appreciate that protecting the fauna and flora of Kangaroo Island was important and necessary, and well worth the interrogations of a biosecurity officer.
Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.
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This is a delightful book for two reasons: One, it is a reminiscence of a civil service official with the princely state of Mysore and Gwalior, and later with the government of British India. Secondly, the stream of language and the lucidness with which the author has penned his recollections is remarkable. What is more, it reflects on the administrative practices of the former princely states of India.
M.A. Sreenivasan (1897-1998) lived through almost the entire 20th century and was among the very few people who witnessed at close quarters the enormous changes that took place in India during this period. Born in Madras, he belonged to a family that traced his subsequent generations of Pradhans (ministers) of successive kings of Mysore for 150 years. Sreenivasan joined the Mysore Civil Service in 1918 and, after a varied career both with the Mysore Government and the Government of British India. He became a Pradhan of the Maharaja of Mysore in 1943. In 1947, he was invited by the Maharaja of Gwalior to become the Dewan of that State. During that momentous year, he was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India and in regular touch with many of the leading figures (including Mountbatten) involved in the transfer of power from British to Indian hands.
Much more than an autobiography, the bookis a rare portrait of India during and immediately after the British Raj. The princely States of India have been neglected by scholars, many of whom have tended to be unfairly critical. There is much in this book on the effectiveness of administration in two major princely States. It redresses the balance and makes the book a valuable document on the subject. Further, Sreenivasan provides sharp insights into the negotiations that led to the end of the Raj, and into the new polity that emerged after Independence.
Writes Sreenivasan about Louis Mountbatten: “I had seen and talked to Mountbatten at lunch parties in Viceroy’s House and meetings of the Chamber of Princes. Tall of stature, with an enviable reputation as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during the War, he impressed everyone with his fine personality and pleasing manner. Standing on the dais that day, wearing his bright, white naval uniform, festooned with medals and decorations, he addressed the gathering as Crown Representative of His Majesty, the King of Great Britain, his cousin, and spoke of the King’s concern for the Princes of India with whom the Crown’s long-standing associations and obligations were soon to come to an end.”
Elsewhere in the book he writes about Sir CP Ramaswamy Iyer: “He was a remarkable man. Endowed with a fine personality and a keen intellect, he was learned and brilliant, an eloquent speaker, and a brave and dynamic administrator. In his early years, he was a much sought-after lawyer and one of the first, most ardent, champions of Home Rule for India. CP, as he was called by friends, was among the leaders and statesmen whose views were sought by successive British missions. He did not, however, take part in the Constituent Assembly or its committees. I knew he had plans of making Travancore an independent maritime State. I had always held him in esteem as a distinguished elder statesman and called on him at Travancore House in New Delhi, asking him why he had not agreed to the accession of Travancore.”
Write Shashi Tharoor in the foreword: “This book is simultaneously an exploration of the region’s glorious past and present and a memorable personal history, tracing Sreenivasan’s life and career, which was as challenging as it was deeply interesting. From the ups and downs of local politics to navigating the bureaucracy of nascent independent India, not to mention moving forays into Sreenivasan’s home life particularly relating to his beloved and constantly supportive wife, Chingu, there is little that is not covered. The reader follows the author through his myriad journeys, from Mysore to New York and London, to the Chambal Valley and beyond.”
The last few chapters of the book are notable. Whether it is the merger of the princely states or Prime Minister Nehru, Sardar Patel and the two Nobel laurates- CV Raman and Dalai Lama – Sreenivasan’s chronicles make for an absorbing read.
In the epilogue, he writes: “The years have witnessed revolutionary changes in India. There has been impressive progress in many directions and many remarkable achievements. The scourge of smallpox and plague has been eradicated. The shame of human beings carrying night soil has ended in many cities and towns. Infant mortality has been reduced, and life expectancy enhanced.
“The production of food grains and other needed crops has vastly increased. Thanks to generous foreign aid and increased revenues, huge dams and reservoirs have been built. Hydro-and thermal power generating stations installed. An industrial revolution has taken place. Thousands of mills and factories turn out myriads of products, from cotton cloth and silk to telephones, television sets, computers, locomotives, motorcars, and aeroplanes. Transport and communication have also been revolutionized. Scores of universities, hundreds of engineering and medical colleges and research institutions have been started and equipped. India can boast of having perhaps the largest surplus of scientists and technologists in the world for export. But progress has not come with both hands full. With great gains have come great losses. An irreparable loss is the grievous vivisection of India.”
This captivating life story will be of particular interest to students and scholars of modern Indian history as well as the general reader.
Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
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CRACKING THE CODE
The Rubik’s Cube Craze was pushed
like some mathematician’s drug
by parents, teachers and TV
but still I thought more of jelly shoes
and whether they were maybe made
partly at least -- of jelly cubes --
the type eaten at parties
and turned in to trifles
pulled from the elastic
of their gelatinous blocks
and dissolved from their geometry
in boiling water -- growing paler and smoother
with each stir
-- or pushed --
the way my diabetic uncle pops them
with urgent desire into his hot mouth’s cavern
chewing sugar into his blood
and I thought, when I was eight
about sweetness, about needing
something beyond yourself and
about how hard things have to be
before it gets easy
twist life right.
Jenny Middleton is a working mum and writes whenever she can amid the fun and chaos of family life. Her poetry is published in several printed anthologies, magazines and online poetry sites. Jenny lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats. You can read more of her poems at her website https://www.jmiddletonpoems.com
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Title: The Shaping of Modern Calcutta: The Lottery Committee Years, 1817 – 1830
Author: Ranabir Ray Chaudhury
Publisher: Niyogi Books
If you ask any layman about the city of Calcutta (now rechristened as Kolkata) you will get three major pieces of information — namely, it was founded by Job Charnock in 1690; it was the seat of East India Company and capital of British India till 1911; and that it was divided roughly into two sections — the white English town at the centre and towards the south and the native town in the north. Beyond that, very few people have the idea of how the city developed spatially and how several major arterial roads, tanks and squares were built systematically during the beginning of the nineteenth century and this is where The Shaping of Modern Calcutta: The Lottery Committee Years, 1817 – 1830 by Ranabir Ray Chaudhury gives us plenty of information about the gradual development of Calcutta. This was undertaken by raising money through sale of lottery tickets and implemented by the creation of a Lottery Committee which functioned specifically for thirteen years from October 1817 to 1830.
Under the system then prevalent, the surplus lottery funds remained with the Bank of Bengal which would continue to be involved in the sale of tickets and the payment of prizes but would have nothing to do with other payments. The three senior members of the committee were John Eliot, Charles Trower and Henry Wood who had already looked after the construction of the square and tank at Baparitala (Wellington Square) and the new road being built from Dharamtala Road to Bowbazar. Later officials like Henry Shakespear and Barwell, G. Gordon and A. Colvin were inducted, and featuring in various sub-committees, they were also deeply engaged in the city’s development work.
In 1830, for all practical purposes, the functions of the committee relating to the improvement of the city ceased effectively. Though the beneficial impact of the committee’s work affected everyone, native and European alike, and there was nothing remotely furtive about it, yet the Directors of the East India Company in London were not happy with what was happening in distant Calcutta on the city-development front, choosing to view the evolving picture in a different light. Keeping in mind the virtues of economy in expenditure, the Company wrote to its Government of Bengal that whenever there was any activity relating to general and public utility, some part of the charges ought to be borne by the inhabitants. Further, the Lottery Committee was handling large sums of money and perhaps there was the Company’s deep-seated skepticism about the sensibility of such expenditure in general and a tendency to conclude that the money was not being spent efficiently. The work done by the committee was phenomenal because the projects conceived and implemented by it still cast a long shadow on life in modern Calcutta.
It becomes very clear that the city of Calcutta gained immensely from the development work carried out by the Lottery Committee since October 1817. The Strand Road had spruced up the eastern bank of the River Hooghly beyond recognition; the western side of Tank Square (today’s BBD Bagh) down to the Maidan till the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, had been given its modern shape with its grid of streets; pucka drains had been built and upgraded all over the city; the major north-south arterial road extending from Park Street in the south to Shyambazar in the north with four squares along it had been constructed; Free School Street had been made; the entire area south of Park Street up to Circular Road had been transformed into ‘virgin’ land ready to be settled in by the genteel (for the most part, sahib) population of Calcutta; and the modernisation of the Garden Reach area, reaching up to Khidirpur in the north, had been begun.
Among other things, the Lottery Committee built the major arterial roads in the northern and central parts of the city, which in time determined the layout of the contiguous residential areas. Dalhousie Square and the entire ground between Park Street and Circular Road were developed by the committee. Previously, a large part of the ground south of Park Street was low-lying and marshy, generating pestilence all around. Bustee clusters were located here probably because of the availability of Gangajal from Tolly’s Nullah (the Adi Ganga) through the existing network of drains, the river being some way off to the west.
The story of the making of Strand Road is narrated in detail, as with increasing economic activity and population pressure, it would provide the inhabitants with easier access to the river, both for recreation and commerce. The Lottery Committee was also responsible for putting up the first brick-and-mortar decorative balustrade which still adorns the Chowringhee area and Red Road. Thus, in its 13 years of effective functioning (till 1830), the committee had been successful in providing the critical push necessary to transform Calcutta from the topographical shape it had inherited since the years immediately following the landing of Job Charnock at Sutanati in August 1690 into one which, in a manner of speaking, would make the city ready to be launched into the 20th century and beyond.
The interest in reading the book persists throughout because apart from the maps, figures, numbers, statistics, and other logistic details, we get a lot of information of the different hindrances the Lottery Committee faced while implementing their projects. Human nature has not really changed much and so we read about people at that time who flouted the rules to line their own pockets and for whom profiteering was the norm.
The basic premise here is that human nature being what it is, there are some aspects of life and behaviour which are universal in their reach, both temporally and spatially. Another very interesting area of study is how the officials encountered the problem of encroachment, the process of land acquisition and the demand for compensation by native plot holders. The committee was aware of matters affecting the native sentiment and there are instances of how they altered the alignment of a major road to suit the convenience of the natives. Even then in some instances tiffs and legal hassles with local residents in North Calcutta were also recorded. Apart from private property rights, religious considerations too played an important role in the decision-making process of the committee.
Before concluding it is worthwhile mentioning a few lines about the author of this volume. During his quarter-century with The Statesman in Calcutta (1970-94), principally as a leader writer, Ranabir Ray Choudhury became interested in the past of a great city which the East India Company had selected as the nerve centre for its operations in the Indian subcontinent and further to the east, extending to Singapore and beyond. In time, this growing interest led to three compilations – Glimpses of Old Calcutta 1835-1850 (1978), Calcutta a Hundred Years Ago 1880-1890 (1987), and Early Calcutta Advertisements 1875-1925 (1992). He next wrote The Lord Sahib’s House, Sites of Power: Government Houses of Calcutta 1690-1911 (2010). A City in the Making, Aspects of Calcutta’s Early Growth (2016).
This volume under review is his sixth book and thematically is a sequel to the last one. That work ended with the formation of the Lottery Committee in 1817: this book takes up the story from there. From a connoisseur of the city, we get details of its development to a point that a lot of unknown facts are provided to the reader which the author garnered from documents and archival material available at the West Bengal State Archives.
Though he is not a historian, trained or otherwise, the author mentions in the ‘Introduction’ how he faced the constant struggle to avoid getting enmeshed in detail and to refocus attention on the broad current of policy and the effects of its implementation. Attention to the specific problems faced in the day-to-day execution of projects also does help to throw light on the precise nature of hurdles encountered at the grassroots level. The book is therefore highly recommended for scholars of history, architecture, town planning and every layman reader who is interested in Kolkata – a city which has been defined in multifarious ways as a city of joy, a city of palaces, a dead city, and so on.
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Somdatta Mandal, an academic, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.
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Borderless 