Rhys Hughes’ creative adaptation of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam[1] is a delightful read. Located somewhere between tribute and parody, it has recreated the tonal and prosodic rhythms of the original translation, quartet by quartet. Yet, there is a thin line between parody and subversion, and Hughes’s adaptation negotiates this with a tongue-in cheek flippancy.
To illustrate the close parallel of the original 1st quartrain of Fitzgerald’s translation and Hughes creative adaptation:
Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
The original aubade is wittily recast as:
Awake! For the alarm clock next to the bed
Is ringing the bells that can wake the dead:
And Lo! The ruby rays of the rising sun
Colour the espresso machine a pinkish red.
This paean to coffee is replete with personifications –“Dawn’s lips are coffee-smeared”(vi).
Some of Hughes odes to coffee poke fun at the metropolis and its quirky inhabitants, the poem(s) capture the rhythms of life and its frenetic pace in the urban metropolis. Thus in quatrain 18, we get a glimpse, a veritable word-picture of the tube/metro train commuter:
I sometimes think that never blows so hard,
The commuter who is late, reputation marred,
To cool his coffee so he can catch his train
Before all the doors are closed by the guard.
Literary- and other-Histories of Coffee
In a ‘Brief History of Coffee around the World’, Garrett Oden clarifies that , unlike tea and alcohol which have been around and in use for more than five thousand years, coffee has had a relatively recent history. Although it has supposedly been around for over a 1000 years, its first verifiable documented use was about 500 years ago. Accidentally discovered by a goat herder whose goats turned unusually frisky after consuming some red beans, it became popular in Yemen and the areas surrounding it, the area we know now as the Middle East or as west Asia. The journey of coffee to Europe and beyond is replete with narratives of colonialism, plunder, pillage and scandal. This murky history was often forgotten as the roasted magic bean became a rage in coffee houses across the world.
The dubious antecedents of this heady brew derived from the magic bean is invoked in literary works such as Alexander Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’ where the effects of coffee are thus described:
“Coffee, (which makes the Politicians wise, And see thro’ all things with his half-shut eyes)/Sent up in vapours to the Baron’s brain new stratagems” to fulfil his nefarious designs. Closer to our own times, we have T.S. Eliot’s line in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ where his persona declares, summing up the urban ennui of his quotidian existence, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”, a line which is yet another testimony to the fact that coffee has become an inseparable and indispensable part of our everyday life.
Echoes of Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat are interwoven into each quatrain and the poems follow the chronology of the original sequence. From the chess board (p 56-XLVIX) to the image of the “moving finger” which is replaced by the “moving tongue” (LI, p58), in poem after poem, we have many hyperboles to capture the effects of this drink which stands for a way of life. It is a way of life familiar to inhabitants of the modern metropolis where one’s life is lived under the glare of neon lights, and where sleeplessness, stress are all par for the course.
Although the poems employs the resources of several figures of speech like metaphor, personification, hyperbole, perhaps the most apt and commonly used figure is that of bathos. It is an effect of anticlimax created by a lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial. A typical example is Pope’s line in ‘The Rape of the Lock’ where he says, “Great Anna, whom three realms obey/ Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea”: In Hughes’s case, “the cosmos is nothing but a frappucino” ,”the inverted cup we call the sky.”
The poems are crafted in a spirit of irreverent good humour and this book is definitely a little nugget, worth savouring. Even if (to persist in the metaphor) one’s cup does not run over, it is definitely a cup that cheers.
[1] The translation was first published in 1859. Omar Khayyam, an astronaut, mathematician, a philosopher and a poet lived from 1048–1131 and wrote in Persian.
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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. Her most recent publication is The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
A conversation with the author,Afsar Mohammed, and a brief introduction to his latest book, Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad. Click hereto read.
A conversation with Meenakshi Malhotra over The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri and a brief introduction to the book. Click hereto read.
In His Unstable Shape, Rhys Hughes explores the narratives around a favourite nursery rhyme character with a pinch of pedantic(?) humour. Click here to read.
Mother & Child by Jamini Roy (1887-1972)Mother and Child by Picasso (1881-1973)
‘Victory to Man, the newborn, the ever-living.’ They kneel down, the king and the beggar, the saint and the sinner, the wise and the fool, and cry: ‘Victory to Man, the newborn, the ever-living.’
This is the month— the last of a conflict-ridden year— when we celebrate the birth of a messiah who spoke of divine love, kindness, forgiveness and values that make for a better world. The child, Jesus, has even been celebrated by Tagore in one of his rarer poems in English. While we all gather amidst our loved ones to celebrate the joy generated by the divine birth, perhaps, we will pause to shed a tear over the children who lost their lives in wars this year. Reportedly, it’s a larger number than ever before. And the wars don’t end. Nor the killing. Children who survive in war-torn zones lose their homes or families or both. For all the countries at war, refugees escape to look for refuge in lands that are often hostile to foreigners. And yet, this is the season of loving and giving, of helping one’s neighbours, of sharing goodwill, love and peace. On Christmas this year, will the wars cease? Will there be a respite from bombardments and annihilation?
We dedicate this bumper year-end issue to children around the world. We start with special tributes to love and peace with an excerpt from Tagore’s long poem, ‘The Child‘, written originally in English in 1930 and a rendition of the life of the philosopher and change-maker, Vivekananda, by none other than well-known historical fiction writer, Aruna Chakravarti. The poem has been excerpted from Indian Christmas: Essays, Memoirs, Hymns, an anthology edited by Jerry Pinto and Madhulika Liddle, a book that has been reviewed by Somdatta Mandal and praised for its portrayal of the myriad colours and flavours of Christmas in India. Christ suffered for the sins of humankind and then was resurrected, goes the legend. Healing is a part of our humanness. Suffering and healing from trauma has been brought to the fore by Christopher Marks’ perspective on Veronica Eley’s The Blue Dragonfly: healing through poetry. Basudhara Roy has also written about healing in her take of Kuhu Joshi’s My Body Didn’t Come Before Me.Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed a book that talks of healing a larger issue — the crises that humanity is facing now, Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World, by ex-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, Mohamed El-Erian and Reid Lidow. Parichha tells us that it suggests solutions to resolve the chaos the world is facing — perhaps a book that the world leadership would do well to read. After all, the authors are of their ilk! Our book excerpts from Dr Ratna Magotra’s Whispers of the Heart – Not Just A Surgeon: An Autobiographyand Manjima Misra’s The Ocean is Her Titleare tinged with healing and growth too, though in a different sense.
The theme of the need for acceptance, love and synchronicity flows into our conversations with Afsar Mohammad, who has recently authored Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad. He shows us that Hyderabadi tehzeeb or culture ascends the narrow bounds set by caged concepts of faith and nationalism, reaffirming his premise with voices of common people through extensive interviews. In search of a better world, Meenakshi Malhotra talks to us about how feminism in its recent manifestation includes masculinities and gender studies while discussing The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by her, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri. Here too, one sees a trend to blend academia with non-academic writers to bring focus on the commonalities of suffering and healing while transcending national boundaries to cover more of South Asia.
That like Hyderabadi tehzeeb, Bengali culture in the times of Tagore and Nazrul dwelled in commonality of lore is brought to the fore when in response to the Nobel laureate’s futuristic ‘1400 Saal’ (‘The year 1993’), his younger friend responds with a poem that bears not only the same title but acknowledges the older man as an “emperor” among versifiers. Professor Fakrul Alam has not only translated Nazrul’s response, named ‘1400Saal’ aswell, but also brought to us the voice of another modern poet, Quazi Johirul Islam. We have a self-translation of a poem by Ihlwha Choi from Korean and a short story by S Ramakrishnan in Tamil translated by T Santhanam.
Our short stories travel with migrant lore by Farouk Gulsara to Malaysia, from UK to Thailand with Paul Mirabile while chasing an errant son into the mysterious reaches of wilderness, with Neeman Sobhan to Rome, UK and Bangladesh, reflecting on the Birangonas (rape victims) of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war, an issue that has been taken up in Malhotra’s book too. Sobhan’s story is set against the backdrop of a war which was fought against linguistic hegemony and from which we see victims heal. Sohana Manzoor this time has not only given us fabulous artwork but also a fantasy hovering between light and dark, life and death — an imaginative fiction that makes a compelling read and questions the concept of paradise, a construct that perhaps needs to be found on Earth, rather than after death.
The unusual paradigms of life and choices made by all of us is brought into play in an interesting non-fiction by Nitya Amlean, a young Sri Lankan who lives in UK. We travel to Kyoto with Suzanne Kamata, to Beijing with Keith Lyons, to Wayanad with Mohul Bhowmick and to Langkawi with Ravi Shankar. Wendy Jones Nakanishi argues in favour of borders with benevolent leadership. Tongue-in-cheek humour is exuded by Devraj Singh Kalsi as he writes of his attempts at using visiting cards as it is by Rhys Hughes in his exploration of the truth about the origins of the creature called Humpty Dumpty of nursery rhyme fame.
Poetry again has humour from Hughes. A migrant himself, Jee Leong Koh, brings in migrant stories from Singaporeans in US. We have poems of myriad colours from Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Patricia Walsh, John Grey, Kumar Bhatt, Ron Pickett, Prithvijeet Sinha, Sutputra Radheye, George Freek and many more. Papia Sengupta ends her poem with lines that look for laughter among children and a ‘life without borders’ drawn by human constructs in contrast to Jones Nakanishi’s need for walls with sound leadership. The conversation and dialogues continue as we look for a way forward, perhaps with Gordon Brown’s visionary book or with Tagore’s world view of lighting the inner flame in each human. We can hope that a way will be found. Is it that tough to influence the world using words? We can wish — may there be no need for any more Greta Thunbergs to rise in protest for a world fragmented and destroyed by greed and lack of vision. We hope for peace and love that will create a better world for our children.
As usual, we have more content than mentioned here. All our pieces can be accessed on the contents’ page. Do pause by and take a look. This bumper issue would not have been possible without the contribution of all the writers and our fabulous team from Borderless. Huge thanks to them all and to our wonderful readers who continue to encourage us with their comments and input.
Here’s wishing you all wonderful new adventures in the New Year that will be born as this month ends!
In conversation with Meenakshi Malhotra and a brief introduction to The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle (Scopus Index), edited by Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri, published by Routledge
Dr Meenakshi Malhotra
Why would one half of the world population be seen as evolved from the rib of the first man, soulless or as merely subservient to fulfil the needs of the other half? This is a question that has throbbed for centuries in the hearts of that half that suffers indignities to this date, women. While feminism became a formalised idea only in the 18th-19th century and things started improving for certain groups of women around the world, in some regions, like Afghanistan, the situation has deteriorated in recent years. Their government, recognised by world leadership, has ensured that women do not have schooling, cannot work in senior positions, have to be accompanied by men if they go out and remain covered as the feminine body could tempt bringing shame, strangely, to the female but not to the man who has the right to be tempted and hence to violence and violate her body and her mind.
Given this ambience, any literature voicing protest for patriarchal mindsets that accept situations like in current day Afghanistan passively, should be celebrated as an attempt to shard the silence of suffering by one half of the world population. The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by three academics, Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri, does just that. At the start, we are told: “This book situates the discourse on the gendered body within the rapidly transitioning South Asian socio-economic and cultural landscape. It critically analyzes gender politics from different disciplinary perspectives…”
Featuring 22 writers, the narratives take up a range of issues faced by women in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Srilanka. The Pakistani implementation of Islamic law, under the Hudood ordinances, has been addressed in a powerful essay by Aysha Baqir, subsequently by Anu Aneja, in her discourse on Urdu poetry. It was interesting to read how the ghazal form started as a male-only art form where women were depicted as mysterious houris or pining with sadness. Birangona — a phrase that was given to rape victims of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — has been explored by Sohana Manzoor through a classic, Rizia Rahman’s novel, Rokter Okshor[1](1978), written about such women driven to prostitution. Women’s voices in the Sri Lankan LTTE have been explored by Simran Chaddha. Nayema Nasir has taken up decadent customs in the progressive Bohra community in Mumbai and shown how things are moving towards a change. Colonial and Dalit voices have found a hearing in Malhotra’s essay on Mahasweta Devi’s short story, ‘Draupadi’, set against the Naxalite movement of 1970s.
Dotted with women’s responses to a variety of current issues, including the Anti-CAA-NRC uprisings (Tamanna Basu), Shaheen Bagh (Meenakshi Gopinath, Krishna Menon, Rukmini Sen and Niharika Banerjea), and the pandemic (Krishna Menon, Deepti Sachdev and Rukmini Sen), there is even a case study by Shalini Masih dealing with psychiatric trauma where both the psychiatrist and the patient, who might have evolved into a stalker or a rapist without the therapy, heal. A certain sense of hope echoes through some of these narratives, a hope to heal from wounds that have sweltered over eons.
The flow of words is smooth and the ideas should be able to rise against the tide of erudition to touch our lives with lived realities. There are responses that transcend the heaviness of academic writing for instance the impassioned start made by Giti Chandra in her narrative: “A woman’s body is a story that men tell each other. When it is full-hipped, it is a tale of their healthy children; when it is fair, it speaks of their wealth; when it is narrow, it proclaims their access to gyms; and when it is tanned, it flaunts their ability to vacation on sunny isles. If its feet are not small enough to convey a leisure that does not require walking, they are bound and made smaller and more childishly submissive; if its legs are not long enough befitting its trophy status, bone-crippling heels are added to them. When it is raped it is an assertion of power, a chest-thumping; when it is raped it is an aggression over its owner; when it is raped its womb is stolen from the enemy…” Chandra points out some things that make one think, like quoting Rahila Gupta, she suggests victims is not the word we should use for women, but we should refer to the sufferers as survivors.
This collection of essays questions social norms and niceties to realise what early woman’s rights activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, drafted, that “all men and women [had been] created equal” in July 1848. While the struggle continues through centuries and the discourse of these narratives, the last essay by a man, Brijesh Rana, attempts to give a broader and more inclusive outlook to the whole human body. The book comes across as a tryst — of academic and feminist voices — to speak up for mankind to equalise.
To further understand the intent and scope of this book, we have in conversation one of the editors— Meenakshi Malhotra, who teaches gender studies and literature, has to her credit two Charles Wallace fellowships and a number of books. She reflects on the bridge that is being attempted between scholarship and activism.
How and when did you conceive this book? Tell us a bit about your journey from the conception to the publication of the book.
This book was originally conceived due to the positive response my co-editors and I received after presenting a panel at an American Association of Asian studies (AAS) conference back in 2017. We were approached by an international publisher who encouraged us to take forward the work with a focus on South Asia. We were unable to take it forward at that time, however we revived the project a few months into the lockdown in late 2020 when we felt we had a little more time. Also, along the way, we were able to reach out to fellow travellers, working in and on Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Three of you have collaborated to compile and edit this book. Collaborations to bring out books are not easy. Tell us about this collaboration.
As we three had presented on the same panel, the collaboration was a natural corollary since we had a sense of being fellow travellers and sister academics/scholars. That worked well for us because each of us were engaged in research and research guidance and wanted to showcase the recent work in this area. Both the co-editors, Krishna working on gender and its intersections with politics and Rachna on gender and psychology are very well-established scholars in the field of gender. I work on gender and literature, had my own network and I must mention that in the course of writing for Borderless Journal, I was able to access the work of others on that platform.
Explain to us the significance of the title of your book.
I think we arrived at the title through two processes-one was the immediate situation of Covid which left us in a state of precarity. However, we felt that even within the context of the contagion, women — and other genders — were endangered in specific ways. Second is the understanding that the body is always already produced by multiple matrices of gender, race, caste etc. The human body is also always a gendered body.
We had initially suggested that we call it ‘The Gendered Body and its Fragments’ to connote the bundling of several discursive strands on gendered bodies, but the idea was vetoed (by the initial reviewer) since “fragments” had resonances and nuances which we did not have space (or expertise) to go into, at that point.
You have a variety of contributors, some of who are non- academic. What did you look for when you chose your content?
Variety as you point out, is the key term. We were looking for something new, something interesting, flagging the variegated cultures of South Asian societies. The book comprises a mix of experienced researchers and some researchers whose essays are their preliminary forays into publishing.
Your book is divided into different sections ‘Negotiation’, ‘Struggle’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Protest’, ‘Critique’, ‘Representations and New Directions’. Can you tell us the need to compartmentalise the essays into this structural frame?
Just to give it a structure, organisation and coherence. Having said that, there are also frequent overlaps.
Would you call this book feminist? Feminism is as such a human construct. Why would this construct be essential for treating people equally? What is the need for feminism?
It is feminist in its orientation to the research areas as well as its methodologies. The key concept here is collaboration and therefore we have two conversation as an expression of feminist epistemology or knowledge-making.
Feminism, like other modes of affirmative action — like reservations, quotas — are an attempt to create a level playing field for historically disprivileged groups and oppressed minorities.
Having said that, I/we would like to point out that feminism has become inclusive and an umbrella term that also includes the work on masculinities and trans-identities since the 1990s.
Isn’t feminism the forte of only women?
Not at all and that is why we have the term feminisms. We hope to do more work subsequently on masculinities, on trans bodies in the future.
You have 21 women writers who write of women’s issues. Yet the last is an essay by a man — not on feminist issues— but more to create a sense of inclusivity, if I am not wrong. Why did you feel the need for this essay?
It is not so much about women’s issues as much as about gendered bodies in contemporary South Asia, about identities, subjectivities, bodies in motion gearing up for political action(the conversation and the essay on campus movements are instances).
Also, the last essay which articulates a post-humanist perspective, I felt, would take us beyond the materialities of gendered bodies and flag the way recent research/scholarship has looked at the Anthropocene. It was attempting to give a meta perspective, to bring in a way of seeing, which probably will have an impact on how we understand and conceptualise human bodies.
Your book blurb says: “Topical and comprehensive, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of gender studies, sociology, political sociology, social anthropology, cultural studies, post-colonial studies and South Asian studies.” Why would you limit the scope of your book when you have some essays that should be read by many and are like eye openers, like the ones on Hudood, Birangonas, Bohras, even your own on ‘Draupadi’ and more?
I think Routledge as an academic publisher, probably does this routinely, to highlight the academic terrain any new book covers.
Having said that, we would definitely want the book to be of general interest. Some of the essays discussed issues which were possibly eye-openers for us as well.
What is the difference between academic writing and non-academic writing? You do both, I know.
Academic writing has often a thesis and an argument underpinning it, which is not to say that non-academic writing — especially the essay — cannot have them.
Also, many of the essays were based on student papers/MPhil and even PhD dissertations. The panel we were a part of was an academic conference on South Asian studies.
Would this book be classified as women’s writing as majority of the writers are women and have written on women’s issues… and yet there is a man? Is it necessary to have such classifications? Would it rule out male readers?
Not at all to every question. It just happens that many of our contributors are women, but I would like to dispel the idea that “gender” is about women only. It is about boxes, stereotypes and role-based expectations, which are to be questioned.
Thanks for giving us a powerful book and your time.
ProfessorFakrul Alam brings to us Tagore songs in translation and in discussion on the season that follows the scorching heat of summer months. Clickhereto read.
There is no bar to losing myself in an imaginary world.
I can soar high on the wings of a song in my mind.
-- Tagore, Losing Myself
Painting of Rabindranath Tagore (7th May 1861- 7th August 1941) by his nephew, Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938). Courtesy: Creative Commons
Soaring on imaginary wings, on Rabindranath Tagore’s 162nd birth anniversary, we explore his vision for a better world while trying to recreate in English the first poem the maestro wrote for his own birthday which was later made into a song, his last birthday celebration as imagined by Aruna Chakravarti in her historical novel, Daughters of Jorsanko, and also the translation of the last song he wrote for the occasion.
As a change-maker, the maestro tried to close gaps by both his actions— Santiniketan and Sriniketan — and by his writings. The translations of the birthday songs written by the maestro himself brings to the fore what he looked forward to and prayed for. The fiction explored here creates fantastically independent women Tagore visualised, breaking the boundaries of social conventions. The characterisations can be seen both in the short story translated by Aruna Chakravarti especially for this issue and also in the novel Farewell Song, translated by Radha Chakravarty. This has been brought to attention in Meenakshi Malhotra’s review of the novel. Both the short story and the novel show the emergence of the new independent woman of Tagore’s imagined world. A hundred years later, are we able to accept women as independent as visualised by Tagore? As progressive?
And to round up our section is Professor Fakrul Alam’s musing on seasonal songs of Tagore as he translates the lyrics and discusses their relevance. These also reflect on the maestro’s need to close social gaps as Alam translates in one of the songs:
Rain streams down incessantly
Alas wayfarer; alas disabled, homeless ones!
The wind moans on and on.
In Farewell Song: Revisiting Tagore’s Vision of Modern Love, Meenakshi Malhotra revisits Tagore’s Shesher Kobita, translated by Radha Chakravarty and reflects on the modern woman and romance as shown by Tagore by bringing in a brief comparison between the women leads of Aparichita and the novel. Click here to read.
In Rabindranath’s Monsoonal Music, ProfessorFakrul Alam brings to us Tagore songs in translation and in discussion on the season that follows the scorching heat of summer months. Clickhere to read.
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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Figments caught straying in whispers of a dream,
Weave together till they form a visible stream,
Filling a void with voices that sing,
With freedom and impunity ring,
Giving credence to a distant, imagined realm.
— Introduction, Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World
As we complete three years of our virtual existence in clouds, connecting, collecting and curating words of ideators, we step into our fourth year with the pleasurable experience of being in bookshops in hardcopy too. Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World, our first hardcopy anthology, takes us into the realm of real books which have evolved over eons in history. This anthology connects us to those who hesitate to step into the virtual world created by technology. And there are many such people – as ingrained in the human heritage is a love for rustling paper and the smell of books. We have had some excellent reviews, praising not just the content but also the production of the book – the cover, the print and the feel. The collection bonds traditional greats with upcoming modern voices. We are grateful to our publisher, Om Books International, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Jyotsna Mehta and their team for giving our book a chance. We do look forward to more anthologies hopefully in the future.
The writings we have collected over the last three years are reflective of diverse voices— some in concurrence with our thought processes and some in discussion or even in divergence. We have a variety of forms — poetry, conversations, fiction and non-fiction. Some are humorous and some serious. We try to move towards creating new trends as reflected in our anthology and our journal. For instance, Monalisa No Longer Smiles starts with an experiment — a limerick was adapted to express the intent of our book and journal; whereas normally this form is used to express light, or even bawdy sentiments. Perhaps, as the limerick says, we will find credence towards a new world, a new thought, a restructuring of jaded systems that cry out for a change.
Borderless Journaldid not exist before 2020. Within three years of its existence, our published pieces have found voices in this anthology, in other books, journals and even have been translated to a number of languages. Our own translation section grows stronger by the day supported by translators like Aruna Chakravarti, Fakrul Alam, Radha Chakravarty and Somdatta Mandal. Our interviews and conversations probe to find similarities and divergences in viewpoints. Our stories tell a good tale rather than indulge in stylistic interplay and our poetry is meant to touch hearts, creating a bond between the writers and anglophone readers. What we hope to do is to expose our readers to writing that they can understand. Writers get lost at times with the joy of creating something new or unique and construct an abstraction that can be intimidating for readers. We hope to host writing that is comprehensible, lucid and clear to the lay person.
What we look forward to homing in the coming months is a mingling of different art forms to birth new ideas that will help our species move progressively towards a world in harmony, filled with peace and love, giving credence to voices like that of Tagore, Nazrul or Lennon. “Imagine there’s no heaven…Imagine there’s no countries…no religion, too…Imagine all the people/ Livin’ life in peace…Imagine all the people/ Sharing all the world…” The need to redefine has been felt and as Lennon says in his last paragraph: “You may say I’m a dreamer/ But I’m not the only one/ I hope someday you’ll join us/ And the world will live as one.” With this hope, we continue our journey into another year – a new adventure that will take us to a universe where heaven can be found on Earth, grounded and real, within the human reach and can be shared without war, greed, hatred and anger.
Here, we share with you a few iconic pieces that have found their way to our pages within the last three years.
Professor Anvita Abbi, a Padma Shri, discusses her experience among the indigenous Andamanese and her new book on them, Voices from the Lost Horizon. Click here to read.
In Conversation with Akbar Barakzai, a ‘Part-time Poet’ in Exile: The last interview of Akbar Barakzai where he says, ‘The East and the West are slowly but steadily inching towards each other. Despite enormous odds “the twain” are destined to “meet” and be united to get rid of the geographical lines…’ Click hereto read more.
Half-Sisters: Sohana Manzoor explores the darker regions of human thought with a haunting psychological narrative about familial structures. Click hereto read.
Rituals in the Garden: Marcelo Medone discusses motherhood, aging and loss in this poignant flash fiction from Argentina. Click here to read.
Navigational Error: Luke P.G. Draper explores the impact of pollution with a short compelling narrative. Click here to read.
Pandies’ Corner: These narratives highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms, with the support from organisations like Shaktishalini and Pandies. Click here to read.
Dilip Kumar: Kohinoor-e-Hind: Ratnottama Sengupta recollects the days the great actor sprinted about on the sets of Bombay’s studios …spiced up with fragments from the autobiography of Sengupta’s father, Nabendu Ghosh. Click here to read.
Farewell Keri Hulme: A tribute by Keith Lyons to the first New Zealand Booker Prize winner, Keri Hulme, recalling his non-literary encounters with the sequestered author. Click here to read.
Tagore Translations, including translations by Aruna Chakravarti, Fakrul Alam, Somdatta Mandal and Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.
Nazrul Translations, including Professor Fakrul Alam and Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read.
Gandhi & Robot by Thangjam Ibopishak, translated from the Manipuri by Robin S Ngangom. Click here to read.
Songs of Freedom by Akbar Barakzai, poems translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Clickhere to read.
Give Me A Rag, Please:A short story by Nabendu Ghosh, translated by Ratnottama Sengupta, set in the 1943 Bengal Famine, which reflects on man’s basic needs. Click here to read.
Thanks to our team, contributors and readers for being a part of our journey. Let’s sail onwards…
Abhirup Dhar, a horror writer whose books are being extensively adopted by Bollywood, talks about his journey and paranormal experiences. Click here to read.
Translations
Munshi Premchand’s Balak or the Child has been translated from Hindi by Anurag Sharma. Click hereto read.
Atta Shad’s Today’s Child has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Masud Khan’s History has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Ihlwha Choi translates his own poem,Lunch Time, from Korean. Click here to read.
Tagore’s Somudro or Ocean has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.
Title: Padmini of Malwa: The Autobiography of Rani Ruupmati
Author: Priyadarshini Thakur ‘Khayal‘
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Padmini of Malwa :The Autobiography of Rani Ruupmatiis a delightful piece of historical fiction cast in the form of autofiction or autobiographical fiction. It narrates, in the first person, the tale of Rani Ruupmati, who is kidnapped and brought up by Rao, tutored by Panditji or Pandijju, Ketki and Tara. Claiming to cover everything that history books leave out, this story employs a clever narrative ploy which is introduced in the ‘Scribe’s Note’. The scribe is Priyadarshini Thakur ‘Khayal’, author of eight volumes of poetry in Hindi and Urdu and ghazals sung by Jagjit Singh, the Hussain brothers and others. His poetic imagination seeps into the retelling of the story as he brings the medieval princess to life. ‘Khayal’ tells us in the note: “Believe it or not, this is truly Rani Ruupmati’s autobiography. I merely put on paper what she told me.” The royal subject appears to him in all her resplendent beauty, the legendary queen over whom battles were fought, ready to tell her own story. In wresting this initiative, the story acquires a unique colour and assumes a life of its own, even as it compellingly propels the reader to dive into this narrative.
The narrative employs a dream vision to communicate events and episodes which are hardly remembered by the lost little girl, referred to as kunwarini, and various terms in the narrative. Emphatic in her desire to set the record straight about Baz Bahadur and his bravery and courage, she represents a voice which might have fallen through the cracks of historical narratives. The novel, retrieving fragments from shards of memory, is given to the reader in the form of visions.
The first vision is based in the mansion by the maulshri tree, the second in a “seedy little fortress” by Garh Dharmpuri. Barely remembering the details of her natal home, she is told by her companions that she is the daughter of Reva Maiya. Thus she narrates to the scribe: “At times life seems like an elaborate play; a play full of heroes, villains and countless other characters of various shades—my life in Garh Dharmapuri, located on a river-isle of the Reva was the very opposite of what it had been in the deserted mansion…the kidnapping and the fall into the Reva that turned my life upside down, left me stunned and I remained mute for a long time.” In this fortress Ruup, as she is called, blossoms into womanhood in relative oblivion. And it is only through the eyes of others that she becomes aware of her burgeoning beauty. Steeped in her music and music lessons, she remains somewhat insulated from the ways of the world or her position in it. Hints are there a-plenty, but the text maintains its rhythm and builds up its momentum in this coming-of-age story.
A special annual occasion for Ruup is the festival of Navaraatra when she is the recipient of the ceremonial offering made to young pre-pubertal Hindu girls. On reaching puberty, Ruup is able to trace the shift or change since male guardian figures like Rao who Ruup calls ‘Baba’ start maintaining a distance. “My childhood seemed to be slipping away farther and my previous life in the maulshri mansion turned hazier by the day.” Tremulously poised on the brink of womanhood, she is hardly aware that her life is to be transformed.
Emboldened by a couple of forays into the forest by the magical lake “Ardhapadma” or half-moon lake, Ruup decides to venture out on her own. It is here that she meets Baz Bahadur, who eventually becomes the Sultan of Malwa. Their legendary meeting has been the source of many narratives, the theme of many ballads and songs. Meanwhile Ruup comes to know about her and her family’s past and its chequered histories. She learns of her antecedents, but also comes to know that her guardian at the ‘garh’(fortress) is actually her father and the story unfolds in all its splendour and romance tinged in darker tones.
The novel weaves a fascinating tale as it narrates the dramatic rescue of Ruupmati by Baz Bahadur and his forces. The love story of the two is in a sense, doomed. Located in the rocky terrain of 16th century Malwa (Madhya Pradesh), the story captures the violence and deceit of internecine warfare, where danger lurks everywhere. Set in a world of treachery, violence and intrigue, the novel does not romanticise the medieval world or sugar-coat it, instead it shows a world where every step is fraught with danger and threatened by violence. Even though the outcome of this tragic love story is foretold, the writer in giving a voice to a historical– or herstorical subject, recuperates that subject to give voice and agency to the beautiful queen of Malwa.
It is a beautifully retold narrative to be read and mulled in its poignant grandeur.
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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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
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