Sharmila Ray – Borderless

The story of Hawakal and a conversation with the founder, Bitan Chakraborty, whose responses have been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta.

Hawakal Publishers grew out of the compulsive need young Bitan Chakraborty had to express and connect. This was a young man who was willing to labour at pasting film hoardings to fund his dreams. An Information Technology professional by training, Chakraborty realised early he did not want to tread on trodden paths and started his journey as a creative individual. Now, he not only writes and publishes but also designs the most fabulous covers and supports local craftsmen.

Over the last nearly two decades, the brand Hawakal has become synonymous with traditional poetry publication from India. They do not offer buy back deals or ask to be paid like most publishers but pick selectively. No one seems to know what it is they look for. All Chakraborty says is – “We aimed to introduce a fresh wave in publishing.”

First Bengali book by Hawakal: *Ut Palaker Dairy* – Diary of a Camel Herder published in 2009

Chakraborty writes fully in Bengali which is why the dentist-turned-writer-turned-publisher, Kiriti Sengupta, had to chip in with the translation of his responses in Bengali. Their friendship matured over the last decade when Sengupta approached Chakraborty to publish a book of critical essays, which along with essays on Sharmila Ray’s poetry homed critical writing on his too. This was the first English publication of Hawakal.

Sengupta had given up dentistry by then and was living in a hostel on a packet of Maggi a day to indulge his creative passions. A skilled poet with a number of books under his belt, he eventually joined Chakraborty to run the English section of Hawakal. He also translates from Bengali to English. We have one of his translations of Chakraborty’s short story, Disappearance. A powerful reminder of social gaps that exist in the Subcontinent, it’s a poignant and frightening narrative, the kind someone writes and imagines out of a passion to reform.

Some of Bitan’s works are available in English. His style — by the translations — seems graphic. The deft strokes make the landscape and the stories almost visual, like films.

Chakraborty worked with ‘Little Magazines’ for some time. Then he made his way into publishing full time. Though he found it hard to make ends meet, he started his adventure without compromising his beliefs. He wanted to take books to readers and, with that spirit, they started the Ethos Literary Festival, where they host writers published by them. In fact, in the 2025 festival, Hawakal sold more than 400 books in seven hours! Who said poetry doesn’t sell?

Chakraborty and Sengupta have yet another hallmark. They wear matching clothes. These are tailored with material sourced from handloom weavers. They resorted to this when they found that commercialisation was killing the traditional homeborn handlooms. In that spirit, they started a clothes venture too, Mrinalika Weaves.

Chakraborty is an unusual person – as the interview will reveal – humble, stubborn with aims like no other publisher or writer in this day and age! He doesn’t talk of money, survival, politics, awards or glamour, but what matters to him. He is direct and straightforward and perhaps, his directness is what makes his outlook appealing. He translates a few to Bengali for his own growth. But these are poets who are known for their terse writing. Maybe, that is what he looks for… Let’s find out!

Conversation

Bitan Chakraborty. Photo Courtesy: Kiriti Sengupta

Bitan, you are a multifaceted person: a writer, an artist, a photographer, and, most importantly, a publisher for all writers. What is it you most love to do and why?

I need to talk. What I observe or learn from my experiences compels me to express myself. Therefore, regardless of the medium I use, I strive to convey meaningful messages. Nevertheless, the range I enjoy in weaving words is unparalleled.

What sparked your interest in writing? Please elaborate. Do you only use Bengali to communicate with others? Do you translate from other languages to Bengali?

I felt emotionally down when I began writing. What a dreadful time it was! I believe it must be the emotional turmoil of my youth. However, writing has never left me since then. It’s more accurate to say that I have never managed to rid myself of my urge to write. During the early period, my writings contained more emotion than substance. In my college years, I was engaged in student movements that helped me discover the purpose of words. Society, socio-economic status, politics, and human dissatisfaction are the themes that run through my stories. Bengali is my mother tongue: I think, speak, dream, and curse in Bengali. I find it challenging to derive the same pleasure from using another language; it is my shortcoming.

Nevertheless, when I meet outstanding works in English, I attempt to translate them into Bengali. Not everything I read, but I have translated poems by Sanjeev Sethi and Kiriti Sengupta. I have consistently translated Gulzar into Bengali, but it has yet to be published in book format. Translation is a mental exercise; it particularly helps when I am experiencing writer’s block. I read poetry when I wish to untangle my thoughts, and when I come across fine poems in another language, I try to make them my own — bring them into my culture through translation.

Do you write only prose or poetry too?

I have been writing stories and essays for the past fifteen years. Interestingly, I began with poems, but they turned out to be junk. Therefore, I focussed on writing fiction.

Many of your stories focus on the Bengali middle class. What inspires your muse the most? People, art, nature, or is it something else?

I grew up in a lower-middle-class environment. Poverty, unemployment, and debt were parts of my formative years. I witnessed how this economic disparity allowed a particular segment of society to insult and humiliate others. Consequently, I have developed a strong affinity for those who are underprivileged. Later, when I began writing fiction, my political awareness enhanced my observations — I was able to merge the existing economic inequality with the nation’s political perspectives. The lessons I have learned over the years motivate me to write.

You design fabulous book covers. Do you have any formal training, or is it a natural flair?

When I entered the publishing industry, I had no funds to commission professionals for book covers or layouts. I had been involved with Little Magazines since my college days. I used to spend hours with the printers, meticulously observing how they designed cover spreads and interior text files. This experience proved useful when I began producing books. For the past several years, I have frequented bookstores, picking up a book or two — I also purchase books online, especially those that help me stay abreast of recent developments in book architecture. In my early years, I was unable to learn design formally due to financial constraints.

When and why did you decide to go into publishing? Could you tell us the story of Hawakal?

From 2003 to 2008, I was involved with four Little Magazines. Bengali Little Magazines thrive on minimal funds. Therefore, we (the team) managed everything necessary to publish a little magazine. We oversaw printing, distribution, book fairs, and other activities. By the middle of 2007, I realised I wasn’t suited for a day job. I understood that I would struggle to survive the conventional 10 am to 5 pm career. During that time, my family was in financial difficulties. Suddenly, we had the opportunity to publish Kishore Ghosh’s debut collection of poems, Ut Palaker Diary. It was published under the banner of the little magazine I was actively working with. As we worked on the book, I learned that publishing a magazine and publishing a book were entirely different endeavours. A little magazine is primarily sold through the efforts of its contributing writers and poets, while a book is sold through the combined efforts of the author and the publisher. I decided to pursue publishing as my career after we successfully sold 300 copies of Ghosh’s book in 10 months. That was the beginning.

Why did you opt to name your firm after a windmill — Hawakal in Bengali? Please elaborate.

We spent days selecting a name for our publishing concern. Finally, we chose the title of one of Kishore Ghosh’s poems as our company name. Hawakal, in English, means windmill. It signifies an alternative source of energy. We aimed to introduce a fresh wave in publishing. As an independent press, we have consistently operated ahead of our time. From developing a fully-fledged e-commerce hub (hawakal.com) in 2016 to producing the highest number of books during the pandemic (2020-2021), Hawakal has accomplished it all.

The first logo of Hawakal designed by contemporary artist, Hiran Mitra and then modified over time by Bitan Chakraborty.

You have boutique bookshops in Kolkata, Delhi — any other places? I believe you started a collaboration to get your books into the USA? Could you tell us a bit about your outlets and how you connect writers with the people? Are your boutique shops different from other bookshops? Do they only stock Hawakal books?

As you know, Hawakal has two functional ateliers in Delhi and Kolkata, while our registered office is located in New Delhi. We do not have any plans for an additional studio in India. We also have a bookstore in Gurgaon called Bookalign. There is a small outlet in Nokomis, Florida. It is a new unit in the United States. We primarily stock books published by Hawakal and its imprints (Shambhabi, CLASSIX, Vinyasa). However, we carefully select titles from other publishers for our store. We have sufficient seating in the store, allowing readers to browse the books before making a purchase. Since we publish non-mainstream authors, readers need to make a conscious choice. This not only benefits the authors we publish, but it also helps us evaluate the effectiveness of our selection process.

You started as a Bengali publisher, if I am not mistaken, and then forayed into English; now you are bringing out a translation in Hindi? How many languages do you cover? Do you plan to go into publishing in other languages?

We initially focused on Bengali books. Our venture into English titles began when Kiriti Sengupta joined Hawakal as its Director. Publishing a Hindi book was unexpected. However, we will not release books in other languages that we cannot read or speak. It is essential, as a publisher, to be well-versed in the language of the books we publish.

What kind of writers do you look for in Hawakal?

Would you like me to reveal the truth? We expect more than just satisfactory work from our writers: we want writers who will value their work passionately and take the necessary steps to reach a wider readership. Please don’t assume that what we expect from our authors is not something we adhere to ourselves. We expect this because we understand what it means to be truly passionate about one’s writing.

I heard that Hawakal was diversifying into textiles. How does that align with your writerly and publishing journey?

We opened our first kiosk in Mathabhanga, North Bengal, back in 2016. We simultaneously sold books and sarees from that small outlet. We had to close the shop due to a lack of staff. Kiriti Sengupta has long cherished the dream of representing the fine textiles of Bengal. Our family has grown larger. Bhaswati Sengupta and Lima Nayak have joined the team; they are the ones who established Mrinalika, collaborating with artisans from remote regions of India to showcase their creations to a wider audience.

Where do you envision yourself and Hawakal, your most extraordinary creation, ten years from now?

We aim to publish fifty timeless books over the next decade.

Thanks for your time and for the service you render to readers and writers.

*Cinema’s Artform* edited by Bitshok Bhattacharya

[1] Ut Palaker Diary – Diary of a Camel Herder

Click here to read Disappearance, a story by Bitan translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta.

(This feature — based on a face to face conversation — and online interview is by Mitali Chakravarty)

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Book review by Madhu Sriwastav

Title: Bridging Continents: An Anthology of Indo-American Poets

Edited by Sharmila Ray and Gopal Lahiri.

Bengali Translation Tanmoy Chakraborty.

Published by: Zahir Publication.

Bridging Continents: An Anthology of Indo-American Poets, edited by Sharmila Ray and Gopal Lahiri, veteran poets and critics with numerous anthologies to their credit is not a run off the mill anthology. It’s a carefully crafted volume comprising thirteen well-known Indian English Poets along with eleven renowned contemporary American Poets. That’s not all, it comes with a translation of these poems at the end of the book, on the reverse, in Bengali by noted poet Tanmoy Chakraborty.

The compilation of living poets is to make the reader dwell on the present, be in the moment across continents, poetically. Contrary to tradition this book doesn’t have a foreword. It begins with ‘Let’s Talk’, a dialogue between the editors Sharmila Ray and Gopal Lahiri, putting forward the poetic intention of the book through a light conversation to give readers a free hand without the direction imposed by a formal foreword: “whatever meaning they come up with will be theirs entirely,” says Sharmila Ray. Gopal Lahiri adds, “I want our readers to be more of a free spirit and enjoy reading with an open mind”.

The editors seem excited in offering something unique. Poets featured in the anthology have been chosen by the editors. Browsing through the book, reading snippets of poetry geographically apart yet united by the richness of texture, one notices certain common grounds which unite mankind across the globe by the similarities in afflictions but their responses vary depending on their diverse cultural lores. The anthology posits both the uniformity and the uniqueness in human conditions across the globe from India to America and the poetic responses of contemporary poets towards common issues but coloured with their individual experiences.

With environmental crises affecting people worldwide, Indian and American poets alike poetize on it. Andrea Witzke Slot expresses her deep empathy with nature with a tone of foreboding in ‘The Time-Being of Oak’.

Hear the branches reverberate. See the mud soften like grief beneath our feet, where ropes of roots, push onward, ripping through steel pipes, cracking foundations, tearing up roads and pavements and fields sown with aversion and hate.

Kashmiri Poet Ayaz Rasool Nazki in ‘Morning at A Dying Lake’paints a pristine image of a mountain lake, shrinking and its flora and fauna gasping for life:

In the mountain sockets

Still laced with

A blemish of deodar trees

Sunil Sharma in ‘Water Dear’ uses very urban images to startle and shock the reader out of apathy:

The rationing is on, in tony neighbourhoods. One day, for one-hour only.

The fat women hoard it like gold

Terrorism is another common enemy tearing lives apart. ‘Bombs’ by Rainer Schulte versifies devastation:

Bombs

turn dreams

into unending screams

Its echoes are heard in ‘Time of Death’ by Rasool who aptly depicts desolation in a terror-struck zone:

Moth had written an epitaph

On the petals

On the marble panel

No one came to read it ever

No one came to light a candle

There was no mourning in death

In a world rife with disunity and discord, sensibilities of the poet cry to reach out, hold hands, cross bridges. Heath Brougher’s free verse ‘Invitation’ makes an urgent call:

I say the time

Is nigh to cast off these antiquated shackles

And free ourselves by taking a step forward.

I say we must cross the boundaries

Jaydeep Sarangi’s ‘True Indian’is a rhetoric on a quintessential secular Indian highly significant in the troubled times:

I see a rose

I gather lotus

I visit churches

The Indo-American poets do write about love, the most primordial emotion or the lack of it though their perspectives differ. In Gjeke Marinaj’s ‘Twenty-Four Hours of Love’ personal emotions beautifully coalesce with nature:

Twilight had sensed our need to seek out a hiding-place somewhere

It melted everything down to the color of chocolate, which ends with a chic modern image:

“New evening and undid the top buttons of her black shirt;

And for us she hung on her neck the moon washed in gold”.

Parneet Jaggi’s ‘Love Transforms’ dwells on the feeling of love and its deep inner nuances:

“Eyes shut themselves to open to subtler visions

Ears turn inward to a wordless world,

Mind waits not for the lover to appear and make love”.

Whereas Sharmila Ray writes about her inability to write on love in a devastated and disillusioned world –‘I’ve forgotten how to write a love poem’.

For those of us fed on English poets Sanjukta Dasgupta’s ‘If Winter Comes…’ stands out as a marker of an Indian winter to be cherished as opposed to its western avatar:

“Winter is our season of feasts and fairs

“We do not long for spring in winter”

“Of kash flowers in autumn

Till winter makes the jaggery drip”

There are poems by Dah Helmer weaving fairy tale characters in its tapestry to tell tales as well as poems that braid Indian and Western mythical characters by, Sunil Sharma and Sharmila Ray. Horrors of history are revisited in Gopal Lahiri’s ‘Jallianwallah Bagh Muse’ making it a living presence:

In the evening memorial lights are falling on the wounds

Empty gaze of water is still misty, still hazy

Mandira Ghosh’s poem blasts into the sun’s periphery, deconstructs human body into atoms yet sees a solar eclipse and prays to the sun:

“Oh Sun! Purify us

Pardon our sins”

Vinita Agarwal’s ‘She wolf’remindsone of Blake’s ‘Tyger’, a pithy image shouting out the state of Indian woman:

She has scented the wolf in her

uprooted the fake pews of pious womanhood…a fight for dignity

a sheet of self-esteem, an iron caress

‘Credit Cards’ by Rainer Schulte warns of the dangers of digitization balancing on the verge of spirituality. Pradip Biswal’s ‘Nero isn’t dead’ echoes the feelings of every man across the globe subject to governmental apathy. Time and space restrict the unravelling of the myriad hues in this collection which entice exploration.

Tanmoy Chakraborty has translated all the poets to introduce them to the Bengali reader as a teaser. However, his translations engage the critic into the processes of translating, word for word or transcreation and more so because arguments are rife about the translatability of poetry. “Poetry is what gets lost in translation,” claims Robert Frost whereas Voltaire says “It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?”

In a translation of ‘Between my country and the others, as ministry’, he translates ‘forget -me-not blues’ as ‘oporajita’ a blue Indian flower, this can be seen as an attempt to adapt the culture into the target language. However, ‘Twenty-four hours of love’, does lose out on the sophistication in the image of night unbuttoning her shirt to hang ‘a moon washed in gold‘. But these could be seen as lost in translation — in transposing in words from a culture unfamiliar with the gestures of another culture. Bengali readers though can get an idea of the range of contemporary poetry being written in English across the globe.

The Anthology invites a detailed reading and exploration. It deserves a place in any poetry lovers’ bookshelf, for bringing in so many poets from across the world with diverse cultures in one place and offering the reader an eclectic and arresting read.

Madhu Sriwastav is an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of English at Bamanpukur Humayun Kabir Mahavidyalaya. She is based in Kolkata. She is an academician, poet, translator, critic, reviewer and short story writer. Her articles have been published in National and International journals. She is a performing poet and has performed on various National and International platforms such as Guntur Poetry Festival, ISISAR Poetry Festival, Apeejay Kalam Literary Festival etc. She has published her poems in various prestigious National and International journals and anthologies such as The Vase, Setu, Glomag, OPA, Amravati Prism, Culture and Diversity etc.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.