Odbayar Dorj writes of celebrating the start of the new school year in Mongolia and of their festivals around teaching and learning. Click here to read.
Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives a story set in a village in Andhra Pradesh. Clickhere to read.
Feature
A conversation withAmina Rahman, owner of Bookworm Bookshop, Dhaka, about her journey from the corporate world to the making of her bookstore with a focus on community building. Clickhereto read.
The idea of spring heralds hope even when it’s deep winter. The colours of spring bring variety along with an assurance of contentment and peace. While wars and climate disasters rage around the world, peace can be found in places like the cloistered walls of Sistine Chapel where conflicts exist only in art. Sometimes, we get a glimpse of peace within ourselves as we gaze at the snowy splendour of Himalayas and sometimes, in smaller things… like a vernal flower or the smile of a young child. Inner peace can at times lead to great art forms as can conflicts where people react with the power of words or visual art. But perhaps, what is most important is the moment of quietness that helps us get in touch with that inner voice giving out words that can change lives. Can written words inspire change?
Our featured bookstore’s owner from Bangladesh, Amina Rahman, thinks it can. Rahman of Bookworm, has a unique perspective for she claims, “A lot of people mistake success with earning huge profits… I get fulfilment out of other things –- community health and happiness and… just interaction.” She provides books from across the world and more while trying to create an oasis of quietude in the busy city of Dhaka. It was wonderful listening to her views — they sounded almost utopian… and perhaps, therefore, so much more in synch with the ideas we host in these pages.
Our content this month are like the colours of the rainbow — varied and from many countries. They ring out in different colours and tones, capturing the multiplicity of human existence. The translations start with Professor Fakrul Alam’s transcreation of Nazrul’s Bengali lyrics in quest of the intangible. Isa Kamari translates four of his own Malay poems on spiritual quest, while from Balochi, Fazal Baloch bring us Munir Momin’s esoteric verses in English. Snehprava Das’s translation of Rohini K.Mukherjee poetry from Odia and S.Ramakrishnan’s story translated from Tamil by B.Chandramouli also have the same transcendental notes. Tagore’s playful poem on winter (Sheeth) mingles a bit for spring, the season welcomed by all creatures great and small.
We have good news to share —Borderless Journal has had the privilege of being listed on Duotrope – which means more readers and writers for us. We are hugely grateful to all our readers and contributors without who we would not have a journal. Thanks to our wonderful team, especially Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork.
Hope you have a wonderful month as we move towards the end of this year.
Title: Silver Years: Senior Contemporary Indian Women’s Poetry
Editors: Sanjukta Dasgupta, Malashri Lal and Anita Nahal.
Publisher: Sahitya Akademi
Several centuries ago, women poets had to fight to be heard, their poems often dismissed as unworthy or mediocre. It is a testament to their determination, grace and sheer talent that today female poets are amongst the most celebrated and respected the world over. In India, pathbreaking women poets such as Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu and Kamala Das paved the way for more recent talents such as Eunice de Souza, Suniti Namjoshi and Sujata Bhatt. Of course, this list does not include the vast number of women poets writing in Indian languages ranging from Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu to name but a few.
A recent anthology of poems by senior contemporary Indian women poets titled Silver Years, reflects the centrality of women in today’s Indian society. While elders have always been revered in this society, the overwhelming influence of western media has brought in a certain skepticism towards such traditions. In this context, it is refreshing to read these poems that showcase the maturity, resilience, humour and sagacity of these women. They offer their diverse perspectives on the experience of being an Indian woman, exploring changing societal attitudes to their place in the world, the dynamics of their social roles and the trauma and transcendence they encounter in their lives.
The poems in this collection are not just pretty words that pander to social expectations, they carry the weight of the experiences of fifty senior women poets who have lived rich and varied lives, working in their chosen fields and observing the radical transformation of the world around them. The common thread that runs through this anthology is the forthright tone and boldness of expression in the over 160 poems included. As women who have lived full lives, both in India and across the world, these poets never shy away from controversies, rather expressing with rare grace and tenderness what it means to be sixty plus and female in contemporary society.
The introduction to this volume is no less impressive than the poems. Jointly written by the editors of the collection, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Malashri Lal and Anita Nahal, the introduction traces the evolution of Indian women’s poetry in English, eloquently delineating the political and social challenges faced by women writing in English. Furthermore, the introduction also explores the impact of a deeply patriarchal culture on women in Indian society. The recasting of mythology to suit contemporary societal expectations also finds a mention as well as an emphasis on the voice, agency and power these poets claim for themselves through their poetry. Most significantly, the introduction underscores the resolve, resilience and charm of these sixty plus women, who erase with the power of their words the negativity and weakness associated with aging.
The poems in this anthology vary widely in style and theme, ranging from poems that reimagine gender and societal roles, to those that focus on the havoc wrought by humans on the environment. Perhaps understandably, in an anthology of poems by women poets over sixty, perspectives on aging are numerous.
Anita Nahal’s poem ‘We are the Kali Women’ is a searing condemnation of patriarchal oppression, casteism and discrimination based on skin colour. The poems refrain “Ma Kali. Ma Kali. Ma Kali. Don’t think she’s not watching” strikes a warning note to those hypocrites who are guilty of crimes against her followers while piously bowing before her image.
On a similar theme, but in an entirely different key, is the poetry of Lakshmi Kannan. This poet’s feminism is not overt, but the poems convey an effective message nonetheless. ‘Silver Streaks’ sets forth an idea that is common to many of the poems in the anthology, that senior women do not become less attractive as they age. Instead, this poem emphasizes the power of self-knowledge that maturity brings.
Malashri Lal’s poetry slides into the readers’ consciousness as smooth as silk. Replete with irony and layered with nostalgia, her minimalistic verse has a visceral appeal. ‘Book of Doubts’ evokes a sense of loss for the books one used to treasure. ‘Jaipur Bazar’ is almost like a haiku, conveying the beauty of an emerald and the heritage it encapsulates. ‘Kashmir One Morning’ contrasts the senselessness of sectarian violence with the Gandhian legacy of nonviolence. ‘Krishna’s Flute’, juxtaposes the mellifluous music of the flute and the dreaded coronavirus pandemic. One is associated with the certitude of faith that Krishna’s tunes represent while the other stalks the silent city leaving death and loss in its wake. This is elegant poetry, that does not shock for effect, instead gently evoking images that resonate in the reader’s mind.
Sanjukta Dasgupta’s poems focus on aging with honesty interwoven with humour. Her poems cut to the bone without any unnecessary sentimentality or understatement. Aging, for Sanjukta Dasgupta is an undeniable fact, she asserts that one has to accept the harsh reality of physical debility and the inevitability of death. The poet does not try to gloss over the signs of age, rather she sees them as a culmination of a life lived to the hilt.
The poem ‘When Winter Comes’, is a recasting of P. B. Shelley’s famous line ‘…when winter comes, can Spring be far behind’. The optimism of Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is contrasted with the reality of aging as Dasgupta notes:
In such an intimate Winter No time To spring back to Spring
Spreading its embrace…. Scripting a cryptic memoir On every inch From face to toe
The poem ‘Fall’ resonates with the repetition of the words ‘falling’ and ‘failing’, which sets the tone for the final descent “into everlasting rest”. The images used in these poems are at once concrete and fanciful, “the swan throat a tortoise neck now” with “countless rings of recorded time”. The poem “Crowning Worry” addresses the anxiety of aging:
Silver waved among blackened hair Like flags of treachery Flashing grin of metallic strands
This poem highlights the power of poetry to acknowledge the reader’s anxieties and ameliorate their lack of self-worth:
Black and blonde tresses howled In low self-esteem, utter frustration And massive bi-polar manic depression As the Grey Gorgeous divas Grinned and Glowed
Poems such as these emphasise the beauty of the older woman, whose youthful innocence may have gone, replaced by something finer, the beauty of self-assurance and poise.
Another significant theme among the poems is climate change and environmental degradation, the burning issue of our times. As mature adults who are aware that their legacy to future generations includes denuded forests, polluted rivers and oceans, arid landscapes and a rampantly consumerist mindset, these poets feel compelled to lament. The elegiac tone is prominent in many poems. Well-known poet from Northeast India, Mamang Dai celebrates the biocentric culture of the tribes of the region in her poem ‘Birthplace’. The poem ‘Floating Island’ also describes the harmony that exists between women and nature. ‘Earth Day’ by Smita Agarwal is another poem that focuses on the negative impact humanity has had on the environment.
The poems in this anthology reflect the changing status of women in present day society. The poets are successful women and their clear-sighted view of life reflects their wisdom and rich experience. Aging is not seen as degeneration, but an enlightened phase where the wealth of one’s experience makes for a perspective that is to be celebrated. The poets included herein write with skill, empathy and wisdom, showing readers the hidden nuances of life that are often overlooked in the heedlessness of youth. They are unafraid to boldly present their wrinkles and grey hair as signs of a new beauty, one that is bolstered by maturity and self-acceptance. Pathbreaking feminist Betty Freidan sees aging not as decline, but as a new stage of life filled with power and promise. Her famous quote “Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength” emphasises her views on the fountain of age.
In these 143 poems, these poets have offered readers a fresh perspective on these new horizons, so that they can be viewed with compassion and a renewed appreciation for the felicities of life. Most significantly, these poems reiterate that the silver years are a time of hope and light that shines on the promise of fresh achievement.
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Dr. Anita Balakrishnan is former Head, Department of English, Queen Mary’s College, Chennai, India. Author of Transforming Spirit of Indian Women Writers (2012) and contributor to the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Postcolonial Studies, ed by Sangeetha Ray and Henry Schwarz. Has published papers in national and international journals and reviewed books for The Book Review, Borderless Journal and others. Her interests include contemporary Indian Writing in English, Ecocriticism, Ecofeminism, Cultural Studies and Postcolonial studies.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Mapping the Mind, Minding the Map edited by Basudhara Roy and Jaydeep Sarangi anthologises twenty contemporary poets. This book unveils a large canvas of poems penned by poets hailing from diverse locations and cultures, evoking thoughts on existential dilemmas of the contemporary world. The 391 pages of the anthology comprise poems by multiple poets: Adil Jussawalla, Arundhati Subramaniam, Ashwani Kumar, Bashabi Fraser, Bibhu Padhi, Jayant Mahapatra, K. Satchidanandan, K.Srilata, Keki N.Daruwalla, Lakshmi Kannan, Mamang Dai, Nabina Das, Robin S. Ngangom, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Tabish Khair, Usha Akella, Yogesh Patel and more
Every poem entails evocative images, visual and syntactic cues that put forth poetics of everyday life. Traversing maps and minds, this engaging collection of two hundred poems unravels different places and persons. The anthology is a poetic narrative and holistic exploration of locating oneself through language. As the book brings together experiences and knowledge of space, it pushes readers to rethink how landscape shape identity.
Memories encompassing reflections on landscapes, ancient history, myth, family, home, towns, cities, countries, music, seasons, elements of nature, disasters, wants, love and wounds of Homo Sapiens, women, mother as well as immigrants abounds the creation of every poet. Memories of special days, seasons, cities and cultures culminate in the compositions of Mamang Dai. Nabina Das’ creations talk about death and else. Sanjukta Dasgupta juxtaposes past and present to celebrate free spirit ofKali, Alakshmi and Millenial Sita.
This compilation, published by Sahitya Akademi, is an itinerary for dreamers and travellers alike. Ten poems by each poet weave a tapestry of emotions, experiences, moments and memories that define persons, places, practices and cultures. Every word, image and syntactical turn in these poems moves readers to discover poet’s emotional state. Events and myriad experiences, memorable and unpleasant, form an intricate reflection on life. The poems are also revelations about the contemporary world. The mosaic of memories present a ceaseless stream of significant moments that mould the minds and the maps. The compositions heighten consciousness, enrich the understanding of readers and deepen their humanity. The poems make the readers encounter hardships, moments of despair, compassion, empathy and resilience to extract invaluable insights. Reflections on difficult and dark times infuse renewed strength to deal with adversity.
Every poet uses different linguistic register to delve into solitude, decay, death and a new force that nurtures mind as well as takes to greater understanding about existence. “When Landscape Becomes Woman” by Arundhati Subramaniam reveals “That a chink in a wall is all you need to tumble into a parallel universe”. Whether it is Bashabi Fraser’s “Mothers All” claiming, “They are the bravest soldiers-marching on”, or Adil Jussawalla’s “Refuge” telling “Mother tells her rosary from six to seven, her one hour refuge,” each poet, irrespective of gender, envisions an independent and autonomous identity. “What’s wrong with us Kali women?”, “Maryada[1] and modern Draupadi”, “Woman in a Landscape” by Adil Jussawalla, “History”, “Draupadi”, “Partition Ghazal”, “The Tribal Goddess” and “Patna to Nalanda-1979” by Keki N.Daruwalla transport readers from past to present and illuminate multi-facets of life. “Somewhere like a shadow in the night like a black mineral in the earth, /Somewhere in a mirror where you can see your dreams a poem awaits deftly angled light,” writes Keki Daruwalla. Ashwani Kumar’s poems dwell on Alzheimer’s, lies emerging from deception, town vanished in the reservoir of waters and the strange ways of the world.
The deftly crafted poems blend imagery, thoughts and experiences. Many of the poems are centred on home, landscape and seasons. Titles of a few poems like “Mitti[2]’, “Bhakti[3]”, “Haldi[4]”, “Mahaprajapati[5]”, “O Boisakh[6]” and “Lopamudra[7]” have not been provided with a translation. Supplementing these titles are poems like “Earthrise”, “Missives of Music”, “The Same Moon from Edinburgh to Calcutta: A Refracted Lens”, “Sunrise at Puri-on-Sea”, “The River” and “Earth Day”.
The poems ranging from prose to typographic and linguistic variations, Mapping the Mind, Minding the Map speaks to larger issues of urban Indian identity, acceptance, adaptation and cultural estrangement. These map the poetics of womanhood, the body, institution, family and love. By doing so, the anthology erases traditional boundaries to develop a new poetic form. The poems are ensembles of words that unite to present verbal, vocal and visual sphere of communication.
This three-dimensional language becomes carrier of aesthetic message of the poet. The reduction of language to a word or fragments in many of the poems is similar to the reduction of landscape to map elements selectively and generally. This gives a distinct charm to the anthology. The poems explode with bird-names, names of cities and countries making these compositions a dialectical map. Very aptly the poems, as Howard McCord contends, can be comprehended as “a map on which articulation of consciousness can be charted, and the serial flow we associate with prose can be gathered into clusters and islands of words which reveal the individual’s voice and vision, even his philosophical stance, more accurately than a line broken by a general rule imposed.” Poems in Mapping the Mind, Minding the Map are maps that offer ways to know simplified, generalised and selective views on the world and human existence.
Dr Navleen Multani is Associate Professor, Head, School of Languages, and Director, Public Relations at Jagat Guru Nanak Dev Punjab State Open University, Patiala (India). She is Area Editor with Oxford Online Bibliographies: Literary and Critical Theory.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Baraf Pora (Snowfall) by Rabindranath Tagore,gives a glimpse of his first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Clickhere to read.
Himalaya Jatra( A trip to Himalayas) by Tagore, has been translated from his Jibon Smriti (1911, Reminiscenses) by Somdatta Mandal from Bengali. Click here to read.
Bhumika (Introduction) by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.
The Fire-grinding Quern by Manzur Bismil has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Clickhere to read.
The Tobacco Lover by Ihlwha Choi has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Clickhere to read.
Pochishe Boisakh(25th of Baisakh) by Tagore(1922), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.
Pandies Corner
Songs of Freedom: Dear Me… is an autobiographical narrative by Ilma Khan, translated from Hindustani by Janees. These narrations 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.
Paul Mirabile gives a gripping tale about a young pyromaniac. Click hereto read.
Conversation
Ratnottama Sengupta in conversation about Kitareba, a contemporary dance performance on immigrants, with Sudarshan Chakravorty, a choreographer, and founder of the Sapphire Dance Company. Click here to read.
It is clear that English is employed here not as a language on loan, but as the rich, spluttering resource of the marrow and the bloodstream.-- Arundhathi Subramaniam.
At the outset, let me make a candid statement. I am a very prosaic person, someone who in her long teaching career and academic writing as well as translation, has never ventured to write poetry myself. I might seem like the odd woman out, but somehow, I have been closely following the recent trends in which Indian Poetry in English has been rapidly spreading its wings and with new volumes being published every other day, it is now a force to be reckoned with.
Tomb of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio at the South Park Street Cemetery, Kolkata.
Recapitulating literary history briefly, it is well known that Indian English Poetry (or often called Anglophone poetry in India) is the oldest form of Indian English literature. Beginning roughly from 1850 to 1900, it went through the ‘imitative’ phase when Indian poets were primarily ‘romantic’ and tried to imitate the British masters. Beginning with Derozio[1], many poets of the time — namely Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt — were also Bengalis by birth. The poetry written between 1900 to 1947 belonged to the ‘assimilative’ period and often questions were asked why the poets didn’t write in their ‘own’ languages. Post-independence poetry was primarily experimental, and when we come to contemporary Indian English poetry, we find it becoming wholly urban and middle-class. The poets are realistic and intellectually critical in the expression of their individualised experience. They go in for precision at all levels and do not stick to one genre but experiment with multiple poetic forms.
Interestingly, I realised that a whole host of Indian English poets writing at present (some have several volumes of poetry published already, whereas others have just given birth to one or two), but coincidentally many of them happen to be Bengalis — Bashabi Fraser, Sudeep Sen, Kiriti Sengupta, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Mitali Chakravarty, Angshuman Kar, Shyamasri Maji, Basudhara Roy,Radha Chakravarty, and others. It is not a complete list at all, and what makes this study more interesting is that except for a couple of them, all these poets come from an English literature background. It is also not a coincidence that most of them teach English as their profession. So, whether it be personal lyrics, free verse, memories, experiences, observations, or even translation, the English muse therefore gives them the impetus to experiment with all forms, and at the same time helps them to move away from themes like nationalism, nature, Indian culture, love etc. that dominated Indian English Poetry in earlier times.
Bashabi Fraser receiving her CBE (2021 The Queen’s New Year Honours) from Prince Charles, now King Charles III.
Bashabi Fraser is an Indian-born Bengali and a Scottish academic, editor, translator, and writer. She is a Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University. Fraser’s work traverse continents in bridge-building literary projects. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to education, culture and cultural integration in Scotland, in particular for her projects linking Scotland and India. Among her several volumes of poetry the Bengal and Bengali connection comes out in volumes like From the Ganga to the Tay: a poetic conversation between the Ganges and the Tay (2009), Letters to My Mother and Other Mothers (2015), My Mum’s Sari (2019), and Lakshmi’s Footprints and Paisely Patterns: Perspectives on Scoto-Indian Literary and Cultural Interrelations (2023). Fraser has worked extensively on a project about the Bengal Partition and the angst resulting from this divide expresses itself in the following poem.
This Border Can shadow lines on the earth’s surface divide language and literature, rituals and customs, rivers…and memories?
There was a time when you and I Chased the same butterfly Climbed the same stolid trees With the fearless expertise That children take for granted Before their faith is daunted Do you remember how we balanced a wheel Down dusty paths with childish zeal Do you remember the ripples that shivered As we ducked and dived in our river Do you remember what we shared Of love and meals, and all we dared Together – without fears Because we were one In all those years Before we knew that butterflies Were free to share our separate skies That they could cross with graceful ease To alight on stationary trees On either side of this strange line That separates yours from mine For whose existence we rely Entirely on our inward eye This border by whose callous side Our inert wheel lies stultified This border that cuts like a knife Through the waters of our life Slicing fluid rivers with The absurdity of a new myth That denies centuries Of friendships and families This border that now decrees One shared past with two histories This border that now decides The sky between us as two skies This border born of blood spilt free Makes you my friend, my enemy.
Another well-established poet is Sudeep Sen who studied in New Delhi and in the United States and is a global citizen, so to say. Sudeep’s literary output is enormous and some of the titles of his volumes of poetry have subtle references to Indianness and Bengaliness embedded in them as well. Mention may be made of volumes like Leaning Against the Lamp-Post (1983), The Man in the Hut (1986), Kali in Ottava Rima (1992), Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (1997), and several others. Though he might not do it consciously, his Bengaliness remains embedded in his psyche.
Kiriti Sengupta who has been awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize (2018) for his contribution to literature, is a poet, editor, translator, and publisher. What is more significant is that along with Bitan Chakraborty, he mans the publishing house Hawakal, which has already carved a niche for itself as the largest publisher of Indian Poetry in English. Several poets mentioned in this essay have seen their creations see the light of the day through Hawakal Publishers and they have done yeomen service in this regard. As an established poet, Sengupta has several volumes of poetry to his credit. His collection from 2019, called Rituals, is very different from the work readers usually read in that there is a narrative thread in many poems that is not there simply to tell a story but to ultimately present a meditation on an aspect of life and the modern world that they haven’t considered before. “Fleeing the house and leaving the doors ajar. Is it perversion or fallacy?”
In an earlier volume entitled Solitary Stillness (2018), Sengupta does not give away the traits that have pervaded his poetry, he has not forgotten his Bengali roots, and has once again drawn his poetry on the canvas of the time that has been rooted in Calcutta. As he elaborates upon this point in his professional website, here, he makes a reference to Lapierre, and indeed, the ‘city of joy’ tag sounds fake just as we read that particular poem, which is so natural, that it almost appears to have been spoken by a resident of a city, one who is not a poet. According to him, that person who complains about water logging or that person for whom any tag of romanticism about the city is bourgeois, it is nothing but a label that’s needed to promote consumerism.
Mitali Chakravarty, the indefatigable editor of Borderless Journal, wrote to me saying that she is happy I feel she belongs to Bengal, “I call myself a Bengali and a human”. Though a non-resident Bengali, her perception of her own work and Bengali cultural identity is clearly revealed in a poem published in The Daily Star (Bangladesh)[2].
Confused
I am mixed up – cannot help English and Bengali under my belt
I can read a bit of Hindi Cannot understand much of French A little Chinese …low class, they said… I am mixed up – cannot help English and Bengali under my belt
I grew up thinking I will find a way But now pidgin is all that I can say I write in English – the language borrowed from the West The language that taught us or brought us unrest The language that through The Raj spread Importing Nationalism in its tread I am mixed-up – cannot help English and Bengali under my belt
But my life is that of the non-English A probashi Bengali at best
People say I am not typical, not quite the right type A mixed-up Bengali – I said Culture is something I dread at every tread Because what Culture I have is mine - Not of a Race, a Country or Religion – Human Being is the only race to which I belong
Help protect my home, the Earth – its every drop, its every stone
In a world of 7.7 billion, can I be alone? I am mixed up – cannot help English and Bengali under my belt
Though she has been writing poetry for a long time, Mitali’s first poetry collection, Flight of the Angsana Oriole: Poemswas published by Hawakal only in October 2023. In the ‘Introduction’ to this volume, she states that her random collection of poems “are sometimes of the past” as she knew it and “sometimes of the present. And sometimes in quest of a future or a dream that she hopes will go to create a more hopeful future than the world presents to us currently.” The poems in this volume are personal; some talk of her journey through life, the world as she sees it, some even influenced by her travels across the world. She further states: “Inherent in each line is not just the influence of my experiences in many countries but the nurturing I had in India, where I was born, educated and spent the first two decades of my earthly existence.” So, poems like ‘Death of Lalon’, ‘Shivratri’, ‘Kali Rise’, ‘Shraddha‘ [last respects] and a few others do convey the subconscious Bengaliness embedded in her psyche, irrespective of where she physically resides now.
Radha Chakravarty, a prolific writer and translator, Former Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at Ambedkar University, Delhi, has recently joined the bandwagon of Indian Poetry in English with her debut collection of poems Subliminal published by Hawakal Publishers in 2023. In a detailed interview given to Mitali Chakravarty for the March issue of Borderless Journal[3], she tells us about her aims and ambitions as a poet and how most of the poems in Subliminal are independent compositions, not planned for pre-conceived anthology.
My poetry actually delves beneath surfaces to tease out the hidden stories and submerged realities that drive our lives. And very often, those concealed truths are startlingly different from outward appearances. I think much of my poetry derives its energy from the tensions between our illusory outer lives and the realities that lurk within.
Many of Radha Chakravarty’s poems express the feeling of Bengaliness in different perspectives. We read about the typically soft quilt called kantha in Bengali in the poem ‘Designs in Kantha‘ thus:
Sewn into soft, worn layers, forgotten fabric of grandmother tales – patterns of the past, secret memories, hidden designs, intriguing patterns in silk strands dyed in delicate dreamy shades— embroidered storylines in exquisite, dainty kantha-stitch.
When Mitali Chakravarty asks her why she writes in English though it isn’t her mother tongue, she answers:
Having grown up outside Bengal, I have no formal training in Bengali. I was taught advanced Bengali at home by my grandfather and acquired my deep love for the language through my wide exposure to books, music, and performances in Bengali, from a very early age. I was educated in an English medium school. At University too, I studied English Literature. Hence, like many others who have grown up in Indian cities, I am habituated to writing in English. I translate from Bengali, but write and publish in English, the language of my education and professional experience. Bengali belongs more to my personal, more intimate domain, less to my field of public interactions…. Both Bengali and English are integral to my consciousness, and I guess this bilingual sensibility often surfaces in my poetry. In many poems, such as ‘The Casket of Secret Stories,’ ‘The Homecoming’ or ‘In Search of Shantiniketan’, Bengali words come in naturally because of the cultural matrix in which such poems are embedded.
Of course, the poet also mentions that all her poetry is not steeped in Bengali. In fact, in most of her poems, Bengali expressions don’t feature at all, because the subjects have a much wider range of reference. As a globe trotter, Radha has written about different places and journeys between places.
Another debut book of poems that Hawakal Publishers brought to light in December 2023 entitled Forgive Me, Dear Papa and other poems is written by Shyamasri Maji, an Assistant Professor of English teaching at Durgapur Women’s College, West Bengal. Dedicating this collection of poems to her “incurably romantic self,” Maji feels that “being ‘romantic’ in this context is being imaginative, reflective, puerile, rebellious and emotional.” The poems are a mixed bag, belonging to different thematic issues. Some focus on a woman’s radical views on the gender hierarchies in our society, in some nature plays the role of mediator between the narrator and the world, the idea of loss of love, which is closely linked with thoughts of death, while a few poems also represent an interpersonal dialogue between the self and the other. Some of Maji’s poems focus on the role of memory whereas some are experimental in the sense that they portray a woman’s comprehension of a man’s thoughts. Stressing upon the fluidity of identities, she shows how love, pain, pandemic, separation and grief affect all human beings irrespective of an individual’s gender and sexual orientation.
Six books of published poems and twenty-five years of creative journey has been a consistent exploration by the poet Sanjukta Dasgupta as she tries to find the path of freedom from among the misleading mesmeric mazes that threaten and stifle both sense and sensibility. As a woman poet with a strong feminist stance, Dasgupta admits in an online interview given to Basudhara Roy[4]:
Though I read Bangla poetry since my schooldays, I wrote my poems in English. It was an unconscious choice. Much later I learnt that I should have been embarrassed about writing in English rather than in my home language, my mother tongue Bangla. The poems written in English kept on being born on the page with embarrassing regularity.
Writing poetry is an irrepressible urge for me. It is, in a way, far more intense than the biological labour pain. This labour pain of creativity leaves me restless till the words are born on the page. But the creative process allows endless revisions; a biological production is largely about acceptance, neither revision nor deletion are considered ethical practices. In the case of poetry, it is not about choice, it is a compulsion which is intense and gratifying and multiple revisions often lead to the emergence of the perfect product.
The title of Dasgupta’s poetry book Lakshmi Unbound (Chitrangi, 2017) is very significant. Lakshmi being an intrinsic part of the fabric of Bengali culture, the radicality and dissidence of the idea of ‘Alakshmi[6]’ will require no explanation to a Bengali reader.
She thinks the core agenda in Lakshmi Unbound is a defiant, determined search for freedom. So, it is not just deconstruction, it is an endeavour to call attention to the need to destabilize the deep-rooted stereotypes that have controlled the minds and mobility of women. In Sita’s Sisters (Hawakal, 2019), she crafts a revisionist feminist mythology by taking up familiar figures like Sita, Lakshmi, Kali, Mira and attempts to free these mythic figures from their claustrophobic space so that they can be re-invented in sync with the contemporary times.
Residing in Jamshedpur, in the state of Jharkhand, Basudhara Roy is an established poet and has several books and publications to her credit. In her own website, is stated: “Committed to an undying affair with words, Basudhara finds in poetry an epistemological and existential skylight. She writes because she feels she must test words on her tongue, pulse, moods, agitation, abstraction and satire. She is convinced that words can change the world and hence, she works at them in her own culinary way – washing, peeling, grating, pounding, baking, sautéing, kneading, roasting, often flaming them for what they might yield.”
The following poem from Stitching a Home (Red River, 2021) considers the eternal problem of a woman that plagues women writers a lot.
The Right Kind of Woman
The right kind of woman will inspire affection, regard, trust. Not promiscuity, never lust.
Bred by a mother equally right, she knows to avert her eyes to innuendoes, telling smiles.
In crowded buses, shops, streets, she knows to shut tight, bud-like, relinquish space, circumscribe limbs.
Above all, she knows the prudence of holding her tongue, of choosing silence’s worth over wordy rebellion.
Schooled to surrender in dark rooms, she knows, unasked, to feign desire, moan, stifle, sigh on cue.
On her forehead, she had a third eye to emit fire, take sides, rake storms. Last night, its lid rusted
with disuse fell out, and the right kind of woman laughed herself to death over all she had left undone, unsaid.
“Writing poetry is an isolation exercise” says Angshuman Kar, an established Bengali poet who by profession is also an English Professor at a university in West Bengal. His book of poems Wound is the Shelter (Hawakal, June 2023) is unique and different from the other volumes discussed here because the poems are all translated by the poet himself from his original Bengali poems. In the ‘Introduction’, Kar tells us that authors who translate themselves often seem to be unhappy about the task of translating their own works. The Marathi poet Arun Kolkatkar likens it to incest, — “like making love to your own daughters.” Critics of translation studies have both supported and criticised self-translation. Those who support it argue that the author knows their work the best and hence s/he is the best translator of their own work. Those who oppose self-translation argue that the author-translator takes too much liberty while translating his/her own work; thus, the translation hardly remains faithful to the original. In such a situation Kar says, “Without being critical, I must say that I love self-translation. I enjoy translating my own work, I love committing incest. It makes me a better poet…. As a self-translator, I find incest healthy. It makes me a better poet – il miglior fabbro.“
Coming to the individual poems in Wound is the Shelter, it need not be reiterated that most of them portray universal feelings but at the same time are seeped in Bengali culture as well. In “My Poems” Kar talks about Jungle Mahal, the three districts of West Bengal that are full of jungles; in “World,” he writes about blooms of a sal tree and shiuli flowers; in “Memory Card” he talks about a bus ride to reach his maternal uncle’s house in Bankura from where he went to the studio to take a family photograph — “Grandma in the middle/On either side we – three brothers, two sisters and a cousin”. In “Father” he mentions how his father’s bereavement fades with time and how his portrait adorns the wooden throne in which gods and goddesses are kept and he stands with Kali, Shiva and Durga. In “Neelkantha” he refers to Shiva; in “Park” he states how man forgets grief when he comes to a park, “That is why in a city as sad and lonely as Kolkata the number of parks is always high.” The five-part poem “Tiger” is also very powerful, “there is a tiger inside every human being” he states. Kar also mentions about the mask of a demon of Chhou dance of Purulia, the aal path in paddy fields, the Chandi mandap[7] of a small village, the man called Bhagaban Das who labours in a factory, and the man called Shubhasis Babu who rents him cars, whose voice he hears but has not seen him. Thus, even in his transcreated poems, Kar’s Bengaliness expresses itself overtly.
It is not possible to analyse the poems of each of the Bengali poets that I have mentioned above within the purview of this single essay, and so I have just selected a few of them (especially the poets who have one or two volumes to their credit at present). As mentioned earlier, though Bengali by birth, all the poets rendering their emotions in English, do often consciously or unconsciously express multicultural elements, Bengali cultural nuances, and idiomatic force in their poems. As the trend for providing glossary is passe now, much is left to the readers’ imagination, but still certain occasional Bengali words and phrases make their poems even more appealing.
After sharing my random thoughts about Indian Poetry in English in general and selectively mentioning a few Indian English poets who also happen to be Bengali and often unconsciously exude a sort of Bengaliness in some of their poems, without attempting to sound rather parochial, I wholeheartedly wish to see more volumes of their poetry being published in future. I conclude by quoting a very salient observation made by Arundhathi Subramaniam who is not wholly optimistic about the situation, but believes that despite hurdles in publishing, the voices of Indian poets writing in English would be heard [8]:
Despite the clunky discourse that continues to hover around it, however, Indian poetry in English endures, even flourishes, seventy years after Independence. Publishers may be few and far between, the royalties meagre, the critical climate thick with indifference or theoretical bluster, and the poets themselves bewildered by disputes over their identity, even their existence. But poetry, in its mysteriously resilient fashion, continues to be written, shared and discussed (if sometimes with more passion than discernment). … I am not ecstatic about the state of Indian poetry in English. (But then I am not ecstatic about poetry; only, at times, about poems.) What I do know is that Indian poetry in English is alive. And like all things alive, it engages, it annoys, it provokes, it excites. On several occasions, it has given me the jolt of wonder for which I turn to poetry in the first place.
Considering the slightly mellow tone in Subramaniam’s observation, I personally feel Indian English Poetry has become a significant force in the literary arena at present and will grow stronger with time. Seasoned poets who have several volumes of poetry published already, as well as the fresher ones whose debut volumes promise a lot more to come in future, can all look forward to seeing their ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions’ in print and carry on the legacy of Indian Poetry in English to newer heights. And sure enough, the sub-genre of Bengali Indian English poetry can be researched in greater details in future.
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[1] Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809–1831), poet and assistant headmaster of Hindu College, Calcutta, a radical thinker and started the Young Bengal Movement.
Poetry which goes beyond the boundaries of words and speaks for a greater cause calls for a captivating read. The lines become more significant when the verses address multiple socio-politico-cultural issues, aesthetically and without didacticism. Poet and academician Sanjukta Dasgupta’s latest book of poems Ekalavya Speaks is not merely a gathering of words, they rather, “[…] spread out their wings untiring/ And never rest in their flight” (Yeats) and attempt to hark at deaf ears and represent unheard voices. She is a strong voice for the otherized, marginalised sections raising issues from multiple spheres of life. Caste, gender, myth, history, pre-history, and technology all find space in her chosen selection of poems. The very last lines of the first poem, ‘Accident of Birth’ says,
“No accident could be More catastrophic than The accident of birth, alas.”
This sets the tone of the whole collection, bringing out the angst of not one voice or one poet but an entire nation. The poet is a strong voice, at times ironic as she says in her titular poem ‘Ekalavya Speaks’-
“The Sun also Rises for us I may claim your thumb some day.”
These lines are from Dronacharya, the tutor of the royal princes who asks his disciple to gift him his thumb after lopping it off as a fee to maintain his allegiance to the throne. Ekalavya, the tribal prince could not question the ‘guru’ in the Mahabharata, whereas the poet in the surreal space gives him the voice to speak for the treachery of the great guru. The guru reappears in the poem ‘Dronacharya: The Teacher of Princes’ where questions are thrown at the intentions of a biased guru who was “The glamourised bonded labour/ Leashed to the regal court.”
Her poem, ‘Kurukshetra-The Killing Field’, goes beyond the boundaries of territories and is akin to any war where lives are lost. At once Kurukshetra becomes the battleground of Ukraine or Gaza where humanity is killed every day. The crying mothers and wailing children are the same everywhere and they are representatives of the universal sorrow of pain and loss and how peace is a mere myth as “Peace was restored at the price/ of rivers of blood […]”. In fact, ‘In the Holy Land’, she talks of dying children and the toxic air of war-trodden Gaza; of the grief-ridden Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
In her greater narrative, Ekalavya and Karna unite to quest for justice, for a space in the mainstream, and for a better liberated world. In Dasgupta’s poetry, Ekalavya, Shambuka or Shikhandi are not figures from the great epics, they represent the backwards sections of society who perhaps after eons of silence they have now found the time to come out of death, saying– “ I rise from my ashes/ Resurrected!”
With Shikhandi, Draupadi’s brother in the Mahabharata, who was born a female and exchanged gender with a yaksha (nature spirit) for that of a male, Dasgupta brings in the suffering caused by gender identity. She sensitively writes about Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality in her poem ‘The Poet In Reading Gaol’. One’s sexual orientation can ironically be treated as a heinous crime. Heterogeny is also a kind of capitalism as the poet strongly urges and questions progressiveness and maligning of human rights.
In her earlier books Lakshmi Unbound, Sita’s Sisters, and Indomitable Draupadi. Dasgupta has primarily addressed the feminist question. Her latest includes poems like ‘Bapu’ and ’Manipur’. In ‘Bapu’, she talks about the rape of a 12-year-old child in the name of religion in India with sensitivity.
‘The Coffee Shop’ is an interesting and ironic poem. Dead leaders meet in a surreal space where neither murderer nor violence can touch them. They are ‘immortals’ and ‘martyrs’ and, now, are even invincible. It is utopian when Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther, and Julius Caesar meet each other. Religion and politics, peacemakers and warriors, all blend in a higher realm of understanding. The flavour of this poem is unique and different from the rest of the poems in the collection and yet thematically it stands out as a statement against violence and death. Death cannot bring an end to the ones whose deeds and ideals are immortal. The same can be said about another visionary poem, ‘Shakespeare and Kalidasa’.
In all the poems, the poet comes across as a strong, sensitive voice whose pen cuts across dogmas, blind faiths, violence and otherization. At the same time, she speaks for the cause of humanity. There are personal poems, like ‘I can’t breathe’; a brilliant poem describing psychological claustrophobia in a world where no peace or no prayers can end the suffering of souls. ‘The Exit’ or ‘Loss’ add richer gravity .
As a poet Dasgupta’s language is lucid and she draws her allusions and examples from the myths, from the past and the projected the future. She strongly voices her opinion. As an educator and as a responsible human being she becomes the voice of the many. Each poem unfolds a story to guides our way through obstructions, which are not physical but mental barriers from which one must liberate oneself. As I read her, I am reminded of a few lines by the great Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who wrote:
Speak, your lips are free. Speak, it is your own tongue. Speak, it is your own body. Speak, your life is still yours.
Swagata Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor of English at a state-aided college under Vidyasagar University. She is an academician and a keen reader.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
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.
“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”
― Omar Khayyám (1048-1131); translation from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald (Rubaiyat, 1859)
I wonder why Khayyam wrote these lines — was it to redefine paradise or just to woo his beloved? I like to imagine it was a bit of both. The need not to look for a paradise after death but to create one on Earth might well make an impact on humankind. Maybe, they would stop warring over an invisible force that they call God or by some other given name, some ‘ism’. Other than tens of thousands dying in natural disasters like the recent earthquake at the border of Turkiye and Syria, many have been killed by wars that continue to perpetrate divides created by human constructs. This month houses the second anniversary of the military junta rule in Myanmar and the first anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian war that continues to decimate people, towns, natural reserves, humanity, economics relentlessly, polluting the environment with weapons of mass destruction, be it bombs or missiles. The more weapons we use, the more we destroy the environment of our own home planet.
Sometimes, the world cries for a change. It asks to be upended.
We rethink, reinvent to move forward as a species or a single race. We relook at concepts like life and death and the way we run our lives. Redefining paradise or finding paradise on Earth, redefining ‘isms’ we have been living with for the past few hundred years — ‘isms’ that are being used to hurt others of our own species, to create exclusivity and divisions where none should exist — might well be a requisite for the continuance of our race.
Voices of change-pleaders rang out in the last century with visionaries like Tagore, Gandhi, Nazrul, Satyajit Ray urging for a more accepting and less war-bound world. This month, Ratnottama Sengupta has written on Ray’s legendary 1969 film, Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne: “The message he sent out loud and with laughter: ‘When people have palatable food to fill their belly and music to fill their soul, the world will bid goodbye to wars.’” Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri has given an essay on one of the greatest pacifists, Gandhi, and his attitudes to films as well as his depiction in movies. What was amazing is Gandhi condemned films and never saw their worth as a mass media influencer! The other interesting thing is his repeated depiction as an ethereal spirit in recent movies which ask for changes in modern day perceptions and reforms. In fact, both these essays deal with ghosts who come back from the past to urge for changes towards a better future.
Delving deeper into the supernatural is our interviewee, Abhirup Dhar, an upcoming writer whose ghost stories are being adapted by Bollywood. While he does investigative stories linked to supernatural lore, our other interviewee, Andrew Quilty, a renowned journalist who has won encomiums for his coverage on Afghanistan where he spent eight years, shows in his book, August in Kabul:America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban, what clinging to past lores can do to a people, especially women. Where does one strike the balance? We also have an excerpt from his book to give a flavour of his exclusive journalistic coverage on the plight of Afghans as an eyewitness who flew back to the country not only to report but to be with his friends — Afghans and foreigners — as others fled out of Kabul on August 14 th 2021. While culturally, Afghans should have been closer to Khayyam, does their repressive outlook really embrace the past, especially with the Taliban dating back to about only three decades?
This intermingling of life and death and the past is brought to life in our fiction section by Sreelekha Chatterjee and Anjana Krishnan. Aditi Yadav creates a link between the past and our need to travel in her musing, which is reminiscent of Anthony Sattin’s description of asabiyya, a concept of brotherhood that thrived in medieval times. In consonance with wanderlust expressed in Yadav’s essay, we have a number of stories that explore travel highlighting various issues. Meredith Stephens travels to explore the need to have nature undisturbed by external interferences in pockets like Kangaroo Island in a semi-humorous undertone. While Ravi Shankar travels to the land’s end of India to voice candid concerns on conditions within Kerala, a place that both Keith Lyons and Rhys Hughes had written on with love and a sense of fun. It is interesting to see the contrasting perspectives on Southern India.
Professor Fakrul Alam has also translated poetry where a contemporary Bengali writer, Masud Khan, cogitates on history while Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the ocean tries to capture the vastness and the eternal restlessness that can be interpreted as whispers carried through eons of history. Fazal Baloch has also shared a poem by one of the most revered modern Balochi voices, that of Atta Shad. Our pièce de resistance is a translation of Premchand’s Balak or the Child by Anurag Sharma.
This vibrant edition would not have been possible without all the wonderful translators, writers, photographers and artists who trust us with their work. My heartfelt thanks to all of you, especially, Srijani Dutta for her beautiful painting, ‘Hope in Winter’, and Sohana for her amazing artwork. My heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless Journal, to our loyal readers some of whom have evolved into fabulous contributors. Thank you.
Do write in telling us what you think of the journal. We look forward to feedback from all of you as we head for the completion of our third year this March.
RENDEZVOUS
Every midnight I live a little
As you appear out of the horizon
To hold me in a dream
Every night sleep seems
To be an entry ticket
To the boudoir of fantasies
As we hold each other
The grip sways
Between a clutch and a touch
The embrace of the vibrant Unreal
Enlivens the comatose Real
Every midnight I die a little
I stretch my arms
And hold each dream
Breathless in ecstasy
Drunk with the elixir
That only dreams can stir
Happiness jerks me out of sleep
Dreams disturbed
Lie like glass shards underfoot
The dreamless daze of day
Living death everyday
Waiting to wake up
In your arms again my love
When midnight strikes
And dreams of you
Dispel living death.
Sanjukta Dasgupta is a poet, critic, short story writer and translator. Indomitable Draupadi (2022) is her eighth book of poems.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
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