Jibananada Das’sAndhar Dekhecche, Tobu Ache (I have seen the dark and yet there is another) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Manish Ghatak’sAagun taader Praan (Fire is their Life) has been translated from Bengali by Indrayudh Sinha. Click hereto read.
Manzur Bismil’s poem,Stories, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Homecoming, a poem by Ihlwha Choi on his return from Santiniketan, has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.
Tagore’sShotabdir Surjo Aji( The Century’s Sun today) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Clickhereto read.
Paul Mirabile wraps his telling like a psychological thriller. Clickhere to read.
Conversations
Ratnottama Sengupta converses with Divya Dutta, an award-winning actress, who has authored two books recently, Stars in my SkyandMe and Ma. Clickhere to read.
Painting by Claud Monet (1840-1926). From Public Domain
Acknowledging our past achievements sends a message of hope and responsibility, encouraging us to make even greater efforts in the future. Given our twentieth-century accomplishments, if people continue to suffer from famine, plague and war, we cannot blame it on nature or on God.
–Homo Deus (2015),Yuval Noah Harari
Another year drumrolls its way to a war-torn end. Yes, we have found a way to deal with Covid by the looks of it, but famine, hunger… have these drawn to a close? In another world, in 2019, Abhijit Banerjee had won a Nobel Prize for “a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty”. Even before that in 2015, Yuval Noah Harari had discussed a world beyond conflicts where Homo Sapien would evolve to become Homo Deus, that is man would evolve to deus or god. As Harari contends at the start of Homo Deus, some of the world at least hoped to move towards immortality and eternal happiness. But, given the current events, is that even a remote possibility for the common man?
Harari points out in the sentence quoted above, acknowledging our past achievements gives hope… a hope born of the long journey humankind has made from caves to skyscrapers. If wars destroy those skyscrapers, what happens then? Our December issue highlights not only the world as we knew it but also the world as we know it.
In our essay section, Farouk Gulsara contextualises and discusses William Dalrymple’s latest book, The Golden Road with a focus on past glories while Professor Fakrul Alam dwells on a road in Dhaka , a road rife with history of the past and of toppling the hegemony and pointless atrocities against citizens. Yet, common people continue to weep for the citizens who have lost their homes, happiness and lives in Gaza and Ukraine, innocent victims of political machinations leading to war.
Just as politics divides and destroys, arts build bridges across the world. Ratnottama Sengupta has written of how artists over time have tried their hands at different mediums to bring to us vignettes of common people’s lives, like legendary artist M F Husain went on to make films, with his first black and white film screened in Berlin Film Festival in 1967 winning the coveted Golden Bear, he captured vignettes of Rajasthan and the local people through images and music. And there are many more instances like his…
It's always the common people who pay first. They don’t write the speeches or sign the orders. But when the dust rises, they’re the ones buried under...
Echoing the theme of the state of the common people is a powerful poem by Manish Ghatak translated from Bengali by Indrayudh Sinha, a poem that echoes how some flirt with danger on a daily basis for ‘Fire is their life’. Professor Alam has brought to us a Bengali poem by Jibanananda Das that reflects the issues we are all facing in today’s world, a poem that remains relevant even in the next century, Andhar Dekhecche, Tobu Ache (I have seen the dark and yet there is another). Fazal Baloch has translated contemporary poet Manzur Bismil’s poem from Balochi on the suffering caused by decisions made by those in power. Ihlwha Choi on the other hand has shared his own lines in English from his Korean poem about his journey back from Santiniketan, in which he claims to pack “all my lingering regrets carefully into my backpack”. And yet from the founder of Santiniketan, we have a translated poem that is not only relevant but also disturbing in its description of the current reality: “…Conflicts are born of self-interest./ Wars are fought to satiate greed…”. Tagore’s Shotabdir Surjo (The Century’s Sun, 1901) recounts the horrors of history…The poem brings to mind Edvard Munch’s disturbing painting of “The Scream” (1893). Does what was true more than hundred years ago, still hold?
Reflecting on eternal human foibles, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao creates a contemporary fable in fiction while Snigdha Agrawal reflects on attitudes towards aging. Paul Mirabile weaves an interesting story around guilt and crime. Sengupta takes us back to her theme of artistes moving away from the genre, when she interviews award winning actress, Divya Dutta, for not her acting but her literary endeavours — two memoirs — Me and Ma and Stars in the Sky. The other interviewee Lara Gelya from Ukraine, also discusses her memoir, Camels from Kyzylkum, a book that traces her journey from the desert of Kyzylkum to USA through various countries. In our book excerpts, we have one that resonates with immigrant lores as writer VS Naipual’s sister, Savi Naipaul Akal, discusses how their family emigrated to Trinidad in The Naipauls of Nepaul Street. The other excerpt from Thomas Bell’s Human Nature: A Walking History of the Himalayan Landscape seeks “to understand the relationship between communities and their environment.” He moves through the landscapes of Nepal to connect readers to people in Himalayan villages.
The reviews in this issue travel through cultures and time with Somdatta Mandal’s discussion of Kusum Khemani’s Lavanyadevi, translated from Hindi by Banibrata Mahanta. Aditi Yadav travels to Japan with Nanako Hanada’s The Bookshop Woman, translated from Japanese by Cat Anderson. Jagari Mukherjee writes on the poems of Kiriti Sengupta in Onenessand Bhaskar Parichha reviews a book steeped in history and the life of a brave and daring woman, a memoir by Noor Jahan Bose, Daughter of The Agunmukha: A Bangla Life, translated from Bengali by Rebecca Whittington.
We have more content than mentioned here. Please do pause by our content’s page to savour our December Issue. We are eternally grateful to you, dear readers, for making our journey worthwhile.
Huge thanks to all our contributors for making this issue come alive with their vibrant work. Huge thanks to the team at Borderless for their unflinching support and to Sohana Manzoor for sharing her iconic paintings that give our journal a distinctive flavour.
With the hope of healing with love and compassion, let us dream of a world in peace.
There is a unique charm around books that talk of books and bookstores. Nanako Hanada’s The Bookshop Woman is an honest and touching memoir where she recounts and reflects on real life incidents that transpired in the rock-bottom phase of her life. Seamlessly translated from the Japanese by Cat Anderson, the narrative opens on a certain night in January 2013, with a distraught Nanako sitting listless and dejected in a restaurant at 2 a.m. in Yokohama. She had parted ways with her husband, and moved out of their flat. Living out of a suitcase, she moves through cheap hotels and public bathhouses, like a homeless drifter with an uncertain future.
Nanako is a manager at a branch of Village Vanguard, a bookshop chain. She is depressed with the thought that there’s a lot lacking in her life. However, as we flip through the pages, we see the resilient side of Nanako. She intends to rise above the mess and her depression. She learns to walk with her head held high without feeling sorry for herself. She moves into a cramped apartment near Yokohama station, and also happens to join a new social networking site, the ‘Perfect Strangers’, which provides dating services. She embarks on her ‘Perfect Strangers’ journey with a profile that reads, “I’m the manager of a very unusual bookshop. I have access to huge database of over ten thousand books, and I’ll recommend the one that’s perfect for you.” Although a trivial trend of the modern times, joining this new virtual platform proved a turning point in Nanako’s life.
Through several encounters with random strangers, Nanako discovers a world beyond her broken relationship and self doubt. Meeting new people puts her social skills to test and starts her on a journey of self-discovery. She learns to open up without being over-conscious of herself. In the larger picture, she understands that accepting changes in life is the right way to embrace it. The discussions that Nanako holds with people provide insight into the conditions of the modern day world and human relationships. However, through the eyes of Nanako, Tokyo which “had only felt cold and inhospitable” turns interesting beyond her dreams when she just “tried opening! What freedom there was here!” , and all she wanted to do with this freedom was to introduce more people to new books.
Meanwhile, as the manager of the Village Vanguard, she passionately continues to do her best, innovating with selling strategies and tending to her customers. She gradually learns to “discern what was special about books that perhaps didn’t look so promising at first, and to distil their charm in words”. She talks of the ‘joy of bookselling’ and gives a first-hand account of the challenges of her business. Nanako introduces readers to a host of books through the recommendations she offers during her Perfect Stranger sessions. There is even an appendix in the book that provides more details about these recommendations.
Experimenting with her ideas, Nanako also holds book jam sessions where people come over at a designated spot at an assigned time and share about their favourite books. These book jam sessions humbled her, as she realises that she had hitherto been ‘slightly condescending’ in recommending new books to people. This realisation transforms her outlook immensely.
Weaving through myriads of book suggestions and social meet-ups, Nanako evolves as a person and finds her footing in the real world. Even in the professional sphere she follows her heart and makes changes that resonate with her personal evolution. Her love for books and devotion to bookselling make her empathetic to the extent that she “would inadvertently get a glimpse of something deep in a person’s heart”.
Within a year of that dreary lonesome night in Yokohama, life comes a full circle for Nanako. As a result of her adventures and experiments, she finds peace within herself. Her divorce gets amicably finalised and she even quits the virtual platform to immerse herself in the natural flow of the delightful world she’d discovered — one full of meaningful human connections, friendships, the warmth of books and bookstores. We see Nanako wondering about the day when someone else would pick her books and recommend it to others, triggering an infinite loop– such is the power of books that turns drifters into trendsetters and dreams into reality. The book is indeed a must read to discover this incredible power and reaffirm one’s faith in resilience of human spirit!
Aditi Yadav is an amateur writer from India. She is also a South Asia Speaks fellow (2023). Her works appear in Rain Taxi Review, EKL Review, Usawa Literary Review, Gulmohur Quarterly, Narrow Road Journal, Borderless Journal and the Remnant Archive.
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