Tag: Somdatta Mandal

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Review

Epidemic Narratives

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India

Author: Dilip K. Das

Publisher: Orient BlackSwan

After the major outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there has been a plethora of studies about epidemic narratives in different kinds of literary and visual forms. Not that the issue had not been dealt with earlier, but somehow it increased manifold times and contends with a reality that is now increasingly becoming our way of life as new infectious diseases break out and older ones resurface almost every year. Drawing from the humanities, medicine and social sciences, and using the approach of interdisciplinary studies, this non-fiction examines stories of epidemic outbreaks in India, from the late-nineteenth century to the present, in the form of fiction, film, memoir, blogs, media reports and epidemiological accounts, to show how epidemics have been represented in social understanding.

Epidemics signify a crisis in society on multiple levels. The author, who specialises in medical humanities and has been meticulously studying and teaching courses in this area for several years, realised that very little is readily available in the nature of theoretical and analytical scholarship of epidemic narratives in general and on Indian narratives in particular and so he decided to write this book.

Divided into ten chapters, the study attempts a close textual analysis and focuses on the subjective experience of people affected by the outbreak. This ranges from the emotional impact of the suffering it causes to socio-political conflicts that it brings to the fore as a collective crisis. It poses two questions: what kind of plot do they employ, and what significances do they attribute to outbreaks as complex human events?  

In the first chapter, the author discusses the social understanding of epidemics using a theoretical framework drawing on Charles Rosenberg and several other theorists to show how this understanding both derives from and adds to the biomedical view of disease. It examines how, in pluralistic societies, epidemic reality is constructed through both biomedical and cosmological paradigms, leading to contrary ways of responding to it. Thus, worshipping goddesses like Sitala Mata or Corona Devi and ritualising the event in shows of solidarity exists along with scientific perspectives.

The second chapter is about the impact of pandemic on the nation as a community that imagines itself as healthy yet is vulnerable to the threat posed by pathogens and pathogenic outsiders. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that the future of public health in a rapidly globalizing context depends on how nationalism and internationalism balance mutual interests. Chapters three to ten deal with specific outbreaks. The third chapter discusses two intertextual narratives of the plague outbreak Pune in 1897 which culminated in the assassination of the Plague Commissioner Walter Charles Rand. The first is the autobiography of Damodar Hari Chapekar, who was convicted and hanged for the assassination. It shows how the outbreak was constructed and framed as a political event, marking the emergence of militant nationalism and anticipating the freedom struggle. The second narrative is 22 July 1897, a film made on the same incident by Nachiket and Jayoo Patwardhan.

U. R. Ananthamurthy’s novel Samskara1 is usually studied as a text that deals with the themes of caste and religious orthodoxy, the role of tradition in a modernising society, and the tension between allegory and realism. In the next chapter, Das argues that plague not only provides the inspiration for the novel and its point of departure but also serves the function of a focaliser. Samskara is about the question of social order, how a particular code of conduct becomes rigid. In this context the plague outbreak serves as a metaphor for larger social and ethical crises.

Chapter five is about Spanish flu, which broke out in Bombay in June 1918 and was rapidly carried to the rest of the country by soldiers returning from the First World War. It begins with two official reports on the flu by the assistant health officer of Bombay municipality and the sanitary commissioner of India. The author examines newspaper accounts of the outbreak and two literary narratives to show how the outbreak was variously framed as a lapse of colonial public health, a personal tragedy and a cosmological crisis. The final section of the chapter discusses the memory of the Spanish flu a hundred years later with the outbreak of COVID-19.

Chapter six deals with an outbreak of viral hepatitis, a disease that is largely endemic but has occurred intermittently in epidemic form in India in the last hundred years. The author analyses Satyajit Ray’s 1990 film Ganashatru, an adaptation of Henrick Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, which is about an outbreak of infectious hepatitis in a pilgrimage town in West Bengal. Taking the main theme of asserting commitment to ethics as against manipulation of truth for personal gain, Ray changes the plot, characterisation and context of Ibsen’s story to criticise religious dogma which contradicts rationality and places at risk the health of people.

The next chapter analyses narratives of the HIV/AIDS epidemic which broke out in India in 1986. It examines a range of media articles, literary and cinematic texts and an AIDS awareness video to track changes in the social understanding of the disease and those affected by it. From the stigmatising accounts of risk groups and HIV-positive individuals that was characteristic of the early decades of the epidemic in India, the focus shifted at the turn of the century to empathy for them. The author discusses in details the first commercially released Hindi film on AIDS, Naya Zaher (New Poison,1991) directed by Jyoti Sarup, mentions two human interest stories like Ritu Sarin’s ‘The Outcast’ (1990) and Subhash Mishra’s ‘Damned to Death’ (2000), analyzes a film like Ek Alag Mausam ( A Different Season, 2003) directed by K. P. Sasi, Negar Akhavi’s anthology AIDS Sutra (2008), and Kalpana Jain’s Positive Lives (2002) where the author journeys more than 15,000 kilometers in four months in order to get an idea of the epidemic’ s scale. He also analyses movies like Phir Milenge ( We’ll meet again, 2004) directed by Revathy and Onir’s My Brother…Nikhil(2005) and examines the dialectical relation between social understanding and narrative in bringing about this change.

Aashique Abu’s Malayalam film, Virus, is a fictional reconstruction of the outbreak of the Nipah virus disease in Kerala in the summer of 2018 and deals with biomedical explanations as well as accounts of personal suffering. The eighth chapter therefore shows how the film constructs the event as the disintegration and renewal of community and as a sign of the vulnerability of human life. It also shows how the ending denies any assurance that the crisis is over and will not recur.

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 in India that resulted in a nationwide lockdown in 2020 forms the subject of the next chapter. It discusses stories of the pandemic and the lockdown in terms of the suffering they caused, the loneliness, disruption of everyday life, time-space disorientation, loss of life and livelihood, the lack of institutional support, and the precariousness that resulted from all of these. It focuses on two kinds of stories, those of personal suffering like the video Infected 2030 and the Times of India blog ‘My Covid Story’, and those of collective suffering like Vinod Kapri’s documentary 1232 KMS and the book that followed from it, 1232 km: The Long Journey Home. The lockdown following the COVID outbreak in India disproportionately affected migrant workers who lost livelihoods and were prevented by the police and the local administration from returning to the safety of their villages. The author clearly analyses how the governments were unable to deal effectively with so complex a crisis.

The last chapter attempts to explain why narrative is the genre best suited to represent the experience of epidemic, and why epidemic in turn calls forth narrative as its most suitable mode of representation. We make sense of an outbreak in two ways, as an objective event and as subjective human experience. Narratives bring out both these dimensions, by emphasising emotional responses to disease, death and suffering as well as making cognitive sense of it. The book also contains an interesting epilogue by S. Mukundan who examines a narrative poem Plague Sindhu (1924) by Anthony Pillai recording the outbreak of plague in his home district of Theni in Madras Presidency. The poem is an apt example of how an outbreak of infectious disease comes to be socially constructed in terms of both modern scientific ideas of disease-causation and traditional ideas of disease as divine punishment for wrongdoing.

As mentioned earlier Epidemic Narratives takes as its main theme Charles Rosenberg’s argument that the social reality of disease is constituted in the frames of explanation provided by biomedical, political, cultural and social ideals and practices. Das mentions that the book is about “human suffering and compassion” and it will be of interest to researchers and students of literature, cultural studies, the history of medicine and public health policy.

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  1. Translates to ‘A Rite for a Dead Man’, a Kannada novel written in 1965 ↩︎

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.

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Editorial

‘How do you rebuild a life when all that remains is dust?’

The Great War is over
And yet there is left its vast gloom.
Our skies, light and society’s soul have been overcast…

'The Great War is Over' by Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam.

Jibanananda Das wrote the above lines in the last century and yet great wars rage even now. As the world struggles to breathe looking for a beam of hope to drag itself out of the darkness induced by natural calamities, accidents, terror attacks and wars that seem to rage endlessly, are we moving towards the dystopian scenario created by George Orwell in 1984, which would be around the same time as Jibanananda Das’s ‘The Great War is Over’?

Describing such a scenario, Ahmed Rayees writes a moving piece from the Kashmiri village of Sheeri, the last refuge of the displaced refugees who were bombarded after peace was declared in their refuge during the clash across Indo-Pak borders. He contends: “People walked back not to homes, but to ruins. Entire communities had been reduced to ash and rubble. Crops were destroyed, livestock gone, schools turned into shelters or craters. How do you rebuild a life when all that remains is dust?”

People could be asking the same questions without finding answers in Gaza or Ukraine, where the cities are reduced to rubble. While we look for a ray of sunshine, amidst the rubble, Farouk Gulsara muses on hope that has its roots in eternity. Vela Noble wanders on nostalgic beaches in Adelaide. And Meredith Stephens travels to the Australian outback. Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in lighter notes writing of driving lessons while Suzanne Kamata creeps back to darker recesses musing on likely ‘criminals’ and crimes in her neighbourhood.

Lopamudra Nayak writes on social media and its impact while Bhaskar Parichha writes of trends that could be brought into Odia literature.  What he writes could apply well to all regional literature, where they lose their individual colouring to paint dystopian realities of the present world. Does modernising make us lose our ethnic identity and how important is that? These are questions that sprung to the mind reading his essay. As if in an attempt to hold on to the past ethos, Prithvijeet Sinha wafts around old ruins in Lucknow and sees a cemetery for colonial soldiers and concludes: “Everybody has formidable stakes, and the dead don’t preach the gospel of victory or sombre defeat.”

Taking up a similar theme of death and war is a poem from Saranyan BV. In poetry, we have colours from around the world with poems from Allan Lake, Ron Pickett, Ananya Sarkar, George Freek, Jim Bellamy, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Juairia Hossain, Gautham Pradeep, Jenny Middleton, Mandavi Choudhary and many more. Multiple themes are woven into a variety of perspectives, including nature and environment, with June hosting the World Environment Day. Rhys Hughes gives a funny poem on the Welsh outlaw, Twm Siôn Cati.

We have mainly poetry in translation this time. Snehaprava Das has brought to us Soubhagyabanta Maharana’s poems from Odia and Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. Sangita Swechcha’s poem in Nepali has been rendered to English by Saudamini Chalise. From Bengali, other that Jibanananda Das’s poems translated by Professor Fakrul Alam, we have Tagore’s pensive and beautiful poem, Sonar Tori (the golden boat). Yet another Bengali poet, one who died young and yet left his mark, Sukanta Bhattacharya (1926-1947), has been translated by Kiriti Sengupta. Sengupta has also translated the responses of Bitan Chakravarty in a candid conversation about his dream child — the Hawakal Publishers. We also have a feature on this based on a face-to-face conversation, giving the story of how this publishing house grew out of an idea. Now, they publish poetry traditionally, without costs to the poet. Their range of authors are spread across continents.

Our fiction again returns to the darkness of war. Young Leishilembi Terem has given a story set in conflict-ridden Manipur from where she has emerged safely — a story that reiterates the senselessness of violence and politics. While Jeena R. Papaadi writes of modern human relationships that end without commitment, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a value-based story in a small hamlet of southern India. 

From stories, our book excerpts return to the real world, where a daughter grieves her father in Mohua Chinappa’s Thorns in My Quilt: Letters from a Daughter to Her Father while Wendy Doniger’s The Cave of Echoes: Stories about Gods, Animals and Other Strangers, dwells on demystifying structures that create borders. We have two non-fiction reviews. Parichha writes about David C Engerman’s Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made. And Satya Narayan Misra discusses Bakhtiyar K Dadabhoy’s Honest John – A Life of John Matthai. Somdatta Mandal this time explores a historical fiction based around the founding of Calcutta, Madhurima Vidyarthi’s Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy while Rakhi Dalal looks at fiction born of environmental awareness, Dhruba Hazarika’s The Shoot: Stories.

We have more content. Do pause by our contents page and take a look.

Huge thanks to all our contributors without who this issue would not have materialised. Heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless for their support, especially Sohana Manzoor for her iconic artwork that has almost become a signature statement for Borderless.

Let’s hope that next month brings better news for the whole world.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents for the June 2025 Issue

READ THE LATEST UPDATES ON THE FIRST BORDERLESS ANTHOLOGY, MONALISA NO LONGER SMILES, BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK.

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Review

Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy

Author: Madhurima Vidyarthi

Publisher: Niyogi Books

The nomenclature ‘historical fiction’ is sometimes quite confusing for the reader who keeps on wondering how much of the novel is real history and how much of it is the figment of the author’s imagination. Beginning in 1686, and set in the later part of Aurangzeb’s reign, this work of historical fiction named Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy charts the turbulent history of an insignificant hutment in the inhospitable swamps of Sutanati in Bengal that becomes one man’s unyielding obsession. This man is no other than Job Charnock whom we all claim to be the original founder of the city of Calcutta.

Bengal during that period was the richest subah of the Mughal Empire and the centre of trade. The English were granted a toehold in Hugli when Shah Jahan ousted the Portuguese in 1632 and made it a royal port. Since then, they had been worrying Shaista Khan, the current nawab at Dhaka, to give them permission to erect a fort at the mouth of the river but the wily old nawab did not agree and dismissed their petitions repeatedly. This was a period of extreme flux when the European powers like the Dutch, the Danes, the French and the English were all playing out age-old rivalries in new battlefields, aided and abetted by individual interests and local conflicts. This is when Sir Joshua Child was at the helm of East India Company’s affairs in London throughout the 1680s and his plans were brought to fruition in faraway Bengal by William Hedges and then Job Charnock.

Of the earliest champions of the British Empire, none was as fanatic or single-minded as Job Charnock. He evinced no wish for private trade or personal gain, and unlike many of his contemporaries who returned to England as wealthy ‘nabobs’, he lived and died here as a man of modest means. His life’s work was only to identify the most strategic location on the river and secure it for his masters.

Sutanati, with its natural defences and proximity to the sea, appealed to his native shrewdness and he applied himself in relentless pursuit.  The story of this novel begins in Hugli in 1686, on the first day of the monsoon, when a poor potter, Gobardhan, and his wife, Indu, find it difficult to make ends meet and their life is centred around their young son Jadu. In the guise of Gobardhan relating bedtime stories to his son, the novelist very tactfully gives us the earlier historical background of the place. He tells us how during his great-great-grandfather’s time, two hundred years ago, Saptagram was the greatest city in the country, the greatest port in the Mughal Empire where ships and boats came from all over the world. Later the Portuguese bought land and built a fort at Golghat, but the Mughals grew jealous of them and finally attacked Hugli and ousted them from there.

Coming down to the present time, Jadu is twelve years old when his parents are burnt to death in front of his eyes as they were innocent bystanders in the struggle for power between the East India Company and the Nawab of Bengal. By a quirk of fate, Jadu is rescued by his father’s Mussalman friend, Ilyas, who is really protective of the boy and acts as a substitute father figure. But soon Ilyas leaves for Dhaka on a diplomatic mission and thrusts the young boy in the hands of a trusted Portuguese sailor and captain called D’ Mello. Since then, Jadu is drawn into the whirlwind of events that follow. He spends a lot of time on the river, and from December 1686 to February 1687, stays at Sutanati. Then, he moves from Sutanati to Hijli, and back to Sutanati up to March 1689, till at last he stands face to face with the architect of his misfortune — Job Charnock himself.

The rest of the tale hovers around how Jadu becomes one of his most trusted aides and though Charnock’s grand dreams did not come to fruition during his lifetime. When he died in 1693, the place was still a clutch of mud and timber dwellings still awaiting the nawab’s parwana[1] to build and fortify the new settlement. The English finally managed to acquire the zamindari rights to Sutanati, Kolkata and Gobindopur in November 1698, when the area had become quite lucrative by then.

In exploring the how, but more importantly the reason for this coming into being, the story then speaks of the motivations of the great and good and the helplessness of the not so great, all of whom in their own way contributed little nuggets of history to the city’s birth.  The novel is also filled with common folk, both local natives as well as foreigners, who watch unheeded while destinies are shaped by the whims of rulers. Interwoven with verifiable historical events and many notable characters from history, the novel therefore is above all primarily the story of an innocent boy Jadu who navigates the different circumstances he is thrust in and emerges victorious and hopeful in the end. As the narrative continues, he also moves from innocence to maturity. Through his eyes we are given to read about a wide range of characters who form the general backdrop of the story.

In the ‘Author’s Note’ at the end of the novel, Madhurima Vidyarthi categorically states that this is not a history book, but she has strung together imaginary events over a skeleton of fact, based on the sum of information available. She states, “While trying to adhere to accepted chronology, the temptation to exercise creative license is often too great to be overcome”. The most significant character in this perspective is Job Charnock’s wife, who has been the subject of much research and her treatment in the Company records is typical of the time. But though a lot of information is available about Charnock’s daughters repeatedly in letters, Company documents, baptismal registers, and headstones, their mother is conspicuous by her absence. This is where the author applies her ‘creative license’ and makes Mrs. Charnock’s interactions with Jadu reveal his coming of age, and with her death, he symbolically reaches manhood. Vidyarthi also clarifies that several characters in the novel like Jadu, his parents, Ilyas, Manuel, Madhu kaka and Thomas Woods are also imaginary, and they represent the nameless, faceless masses during that period and therefore provide a ‘slice of life’ that make up history. All in all, this deft mingling of fact and fiction makes this almost 400-page novel a page-turner, ready to be devoured as fast as possible.

[1] Written permission

Somdatta Mandal is a critic, translator and a former Professor of English, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.

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

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World Environment Day

This is Our Home…

Our home is our planet with it’s unique combinations which have made life possible. These evolve and mutate with human intervention and the passage of time. The changes affect the flora and the fauna — of which we are a part — of this beautiful green planet. The World Environment Day is a UN initiative to protect the environment and to create an awareness about the changes wrought on it and how it could impact us as a species. Writers from yore have written of the beauty and the inspiration invoked by nature as have the moderns. Today, we share with you vintage writings as well as modern writing in prose on the world around us, showcasing the concerns of a century ago and the reality today.

Vintage Prose

One Small Ancient Tale: Rabindranath Tagore’s Ekti Khudro Puraton Golpo (One Small Ancient Tale) has been translated by Nishat Atiya. Click here to read.

 Bolai: Story of nature and a child translated by Chaitali Sengupta. Click here to read.

Baraf Pora (Snowfall) : This narrative gives a glimpse of Tagore’s first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated by Somdatta Mandal . Click here to read.

The Day of Annihilation, an essay on climate change by Kazi Nazrul Islam, has been translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Modern Prose

The Gift : Rebecca Klassen shares a sensitive fiction about a child and an oak tree. Click here to read.

A Penguin’s Story: Sreelekha Chatterjee writes a fiction from a penguin’s perspective. Click here to read.

Navigational Error: Luke P.G. Draper explores the impact of pollution with a short compelling narrative. Click here to read.

Pigeons & People : In his fiction, Srinivasan R explores human nature and imagines impact on our fauna. Click here to read

The Theft of a River: Koushiki Dasgupta Chaudhuri reveals a poignant truth about how a river is moving towards disappearance due to human intervention. Click here to read.

Better Relations Through Weed-pulling: Suzanne Kamata introduces us to an annual custom in Japan. Click here to read.

The Toughness of Kangaroo Island : Vela Noble draws solace and lessons from nature around her with her art and narrative. Click here to read.

Potable Water Crisis & the Sunderbans: Camellia Biswas, a visitor to Sunderbans during the cyclone Alia, turns environmentalist and writes about the potable water issue faced by locals. Click here to read.

The Malodorous Mountain: A Contemporary Folklore: Sayantan Sur looks into environmental hazards due to shoddy garbage disposal. Click here to read.

Four Seasons and an Indian Summer: Keith Lyons talks of his experiences of seasons in different places, including Antarctica. Click here to read.

Tsunami 2004: After 18 years: Sarpreet Kaur travels back to take a relook at the tsunami in 2004 from Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Click here to read.

A discussion on managing cyclones, managing the aftermath and resilience with Bhaksar Parichha, author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage, and Resilience. Click here to read.

Categories
Editorial

“Imagine all the people/Living life in peace”

God of War by Paul Klee (1879-1940)
The sky weeps blood, the earth cannot contain
The sorrow of the young ones we've slain.
How now do dead kids laugh while stricken by red rain?

— from Stricken by Red Rain: Poems by Jim Bellamy

When there is war
And peace is gone
Where is their home?
Where do they belong?

— from Poems on Migrants by Kajoli Krishnan

Poetry, prose — all art forms — gather our emotions into concentrates that distil perhaps the finest in human emotions. They touch hearts across borders and gather us all with the commonality of feelings. We no longer care for borders drawn by divisive human constructs but find ourselves connecting despite distances. Strangers or enemies can feel the same emotions. Enemies are mostly created to guard walls made by those who want to keep us in boxes, making it easier to manage the masses. It is from these mass of civilians that soldiers are drawn, and from the same crowds, we can find the victims who die in bomb blasts. And yet, we — the masses — fight. For whom, for what and why? A hundred or more years ago, we had poets writing against wars and violence…they still do. Have we learnt nothing from the past, nothing from history — except to repeat ourselves in cycles? By now, war should have become redundant and deadly weapons out of date artefacts instead of threats that are still used to annihilate cities, humans, homes and ravage the Earth. Our major concerns should have evolved to working on social equity, peace, human welfare and climate change.

One of the people who had expressed deep concern for social equity and peace through his films and writings was Satyajit Ray. This issue has an essay that reflects how he used art to concretise his ideas by Dolly Narang, a gallery owner who brought Ray’s handiworks to limelight. The essay includes the maestro’s note in which he admits he considered himself a filmmaker and a writer but never an artist. But Ray had even invented typefaces! Artist Paritosh Sen’s introduction to Ray’s art has been included to add to the impact of Narang’s essay. Another person who consolidates photography and films to do pathbreaking work and tell stories on compelling issues like climate change and helping the differently-abled is Vijay S Jodha. Ratnottama Sengupta has interviewed this upcoming artiste.

Reflecting the themes of welfare and conflict, Prithvijeet Sinha’s essay takes us to a monument in Lucknow that had been built for love but fell victim to war. Some conflicts are personal like the ones of Odbayar Dorj who finds acceptance not in her hometown in Mongolia but in the city, she calls home now. Jun A. Alindogan from Manila explores social media in action whereas Eshana Sarah Singh takes us to her home in Jakarta to celebrate the Chinese New Year! Farouk Gulsara looks into the likely impact of genetic engineering in a world already ripped by violence and Devraj Singh Kalsi muses on his source of inspiration, his writing desk. Meredith Stephens tells the touching story of a mother’s concern for her child in Australia and Suzanne Kamata exhibits the same concern as she travels to Happy Village in Japan to meet her differently-abled daughter and her friends.

As these real-life narratives weave commonalities of human emotions, so do fictive stories. Some reflect the need for change. Fiona Sinclair writes a layered story set in London on how lived experiences define differences in human perspectives while Parnika Shirwaikar explores the need to learn to accept changes set in her part of the universe. Spandan Upadhyay explores the spirit of the city of Kolkata as a migrant with a focus on social equity. Both Paul Mirabile and Naramsetti Umamaheswararao write stories around childhood, one set in Europe and the other in Asia.

As prose weaves humanity together, so does poetry. We have poems from Jim Bellamy and Kajoli Krishnan both reflecting the impact of war and senseless violence on common humanity. Ryan Quinn Flanagan introduces us to Canadian bears in his poetry while Snigdha Agrawal makes us laugh with her lines about dogs and hatching Easter eggs! We have a wide range of poems from Snehprava Das, George Freek, Niranjan Aditya, Christine Belandres, Ajeeti S, Ron Pickett, Stuart McFarlane, Arthur Neong and Elizabeth Anne Pereira. Rhys Hughes concludes his series of photo poems with the one in this issue — especially showcasing how far a vivid imagination can twist reality with a British postman ‘carrying’ sweets from India! His column, laced with humour too, showcases in verse Lafcadio Hearn, a bridge between the East and West from more than a hundred years ago, a man who was born in Greece, worked in America and moved to Japan to even adopt a Japanese name.

Just as Hearn bridged cultures, translations help us discover how similarly all of us think despite distances in time and space. Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s concerns about climate change and melting icecaps does just that! Professor Fakrul Alam’s translation of Nazrul’s lyrics from Bengali on women and on the commonality of human faith also make us wonder if ideas froze despite time moving on. Tagore’s poem titled Asha (hope) tends to make us introspect on the very idea of hope – just as we do now. At a more personal level, a contemporary poem reflecting on the concept of identity by Munir Momin has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. From Korean, Ihlwah Choi translates his own poem about losing the self in a crowd. We start a new column on translated Odia poetry from this month. The first one features the exquisite poetry of Bipin Nayak translated by Snehprava Das. Huge thanks to Bhaskar Parichha for bringing this whole project to fruition.

Parichha has also drawn bridges in reviews by bringing to us the memoirs of a man of mixed heritage, A Stranger in Three Worlds: The Memoirs of Aubrey Menen. Andreas Giesbert from Germany has reviewed Rhys Hughes’ The Devil’s Halo and Somdatta Mandal has discussed Arundhathi Nath’s translation, The Phantom’s Howl: Classic Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings from Bengal. Our book excerpts this time feature Devabrata Das’s One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam, translated by multiple translators from Assamese and Ryan Quinn Flangan’s new book, Ghosting My Way into the Afterlife, definitely poems worth mulling over with a toss of humour.

Do pause by our contents page for this issue and enjoy the reads. We are ever grateful to our ever-growing evergreen readership some of whom have started sharing their fabulous narratives with us. Thanks to all our readers and contributors. Huge thanks to our wonderful team without whose efforts we could not have curated such valuable content and thanks specially to Sohana Manzoor for her art. Thank you all for making a whiff of an idea a reality!

Let’s hope for peace, love and sanity!

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents page for the May 2025 Issue

READ THE LATEST UPDATES ON THE FIRST BORDERLESS ANTHOLOGY, MONALISA NO LONGER SMILES, BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK.

Categories
Review

The Phantom’s Howl

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: The Phantom’s Howl: Classic Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings from Bengal

Translator: Arundhati Nath

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

Bengalis have always had a curious relationship with the supernatural and so stories of ghosts or bhoots are omnipresent in Bengali literature through generations. The Phantom’s Howl: Classic Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings from Bengal brings us a new collection to savour this genre once again. Written for adults and children by some of the best writers in the language, these stories have entertained generations of readers since they first appeared. Comprising eleven stories in all, from legendary authors such as Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Hemendra Kumar Roy (who contribute two stories each) to lesser-known writers like Jogeshchandra Bandyopadhyay, Niradchandra Majumdar and Amarendranath Munshi, the stories elucidate the supernatural elements in different forms. Manik Bandyopadhyay and Pramatha Chaudhuri, though well-known for writing in other genres, have also contributed their share in creating spooky tales.

Rabindranath Tagore’s immeasurable talent as a storyteller is well-known. In both Konkal (The Skeleton) where a vainglorious skeleton reminisces about her past beauty, and Kshudito Pasan (The Famished Stone), the supernatural element takes over in a slow burn and our understanding of the other-worldly is a cerebral exercise that is an interplay between emotion and intellect. Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay’s repertoire of ghost stories is well-known. Two of his short stories about hauntings included in this anthology are Bhoutik Palonko (The Spectral Bed) and Paitrik Bhita (Paternal Legacy), and both have an enticing and intangible everyday quality in them. In the first story we are told of a mysterious cursed bed of a Chinese man whose dissatisfied soul still lurks every night and disturbs anyone who sleeps on that bed. In the other story, the generations-owned massive homestead of Radhamohan is inhabited by the ghost of a young girl Lokkhi, who happened to be their youngest paternal aunt who died at the age of twelve and she slips in and out of his conscious memory.

Hemendra Kumar Roy is known for adapting many Western writings of his time and creating his own brand of short stories. In his Bari Buro Bhoot (The House, the Old Man, the Hunting Boots), the ghost has ‘sahebi’ chops and in Bhooter Raja (The King of Ghosts), Mr. J. Taylor is a typical British Raj prop who being posted as the Police Superintendent of Santhal Pargana, had access to encountering the bizarre after spending the night in a hunting lodge in the jungle.

Manik Bandyopadhyay’s horror stories explore the psychological underpinnings of supposed ghost sightings and examine what the mind can do to the perception of a lived experience – something that stands out in Pora Chhaya (The Singed Shadow). In a totally different vein, Pramatha Chaudhuri in First Class Bhoot (The First-Class Ghost) tells the story of a proud English ghost who creates trouble on a train from Kolkata to Kashi and it is steeped in humour.

As the translator mentions, she discovered the three lesser-known writers from the pages of the Bengali magazine Shuktara with its special collection of 101 ghost stories. In Bon Kolmir Bile (Inside the Water Spinach Forest Marsh), Amarendranath Munshi creates a ghostly ambience where the lonely spirit of a young girl forever rows its boat in the marshes. In Sanket (The Signal), we are told of two friends who land up in a remote corner of Aara district and take up residence in an old, rambling, dilapidated house and are narrowly saved after they come across an innocuous black cloth that spells danger for all who wave it.  In Preter Kanna (The Phantom’s Howl), Jogeshchandra Bandyopadhyay tells us how the protagonist Debkumar was trapped motionless in a maze of indescribable fear and horror only to discover how the skeleton of a dead lady’s dissatisfied soul left her secret hideaway and then whatever happens is probably a re-enactment of reality.

Though most of the eleven stories that have been included in this collection are well-known to Bengali readers who grew up during the forties and fifties decades of the 20th century, The Phantom’s Howl is a quintessential representation of Bengal and its fascination with its many ghosts and stories of haunted houses. Basically, Arundhati Nath’s translations bring these household favourites to a new generation of readers. Most of the selected stories have undergone translation several times and even non-Bengali readers might already be familiar with some of them and therefore, for many readers they would seem like warmed up fare. In the translator’s note at the beginning of the text, Nath mentions her personal choices as she began listening to ghost and horror stories from her grandmother and reading some of them in Bangla from the books her parents bought for her as she grew up outside Bengal. So, the selection was ‘tinged with the wistfulness of memory.’ But unlike the stories of Dracula, we really do not find these stories ‘as thrilling and sometimes as spine-chilling’ as she claims them to be. At best they give us a lucid picture of the different kinds of ‘bhoots’ and some spooky tales prevalent in Bangla literature.

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Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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Categories
Tribute

Celebrating Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) in the role of the blind singer in his play, Falguni (published in 1917). Art by Abanindranath Tagore. From Public Domain

On May 7th 1861, or Pochishe Boisakh of the Bengali year 1268, Rabindranth Tagore was born in Jorsanko, Calcutta. That time, there was one subcontinent. Borders were fluid though the concept of countries had already started making inroads with the onset of colonials more than a couple of centuries ago. Rabindranath Tagore — a man who rejected the academia and earned no degrees — set the world aflame with his words and ideals. Many of his works hope to inspire people out of miseries by getting them in touch with their own strength. He created Santiniketan and Sriniketan to train young minds, to close social and economic gaps, to override the stigma of walls that continue to box and divide humanity to this date. Subsequently, his works, especially his writings, have become subjects of much academic discourse as well as part of popular cultural lore.

Tagore celebrated his own birthdays with poetry on Pochishe Boishakh. Pochishe Boisakh falls between 7-9 May on the Gregorian calendar. We start our celebrations with translations of his birthday songs and poems. The song translated by Aruna Chakravarti was the last he wrote, and based on a long poem he had written in 1922, also featured here. We also have the first birthday song he composed in 1899. In prose, we bring to you works that showcase his call for change and reform. Fakrul Alam has translated a powerful play by him, Red Oleanders, which strongly seems to reflect the machinations of the current world and ends on a note of hope. We can only carry an excerpt from this long play but it will be a powerful read when published in full. Somdatta Mandal shares a translations of an essay in which Tagore airs his views on the need for change in social norms — the strange thing is it would still seem relevant today. And Himadri Lahiri rendered an essay from Bengali to English on his views about the British Raj. We also have a story about a woman who changed social norms and her religion, translated by Chakravarti.

Birthday Poems & Lyrics

Hey Nutan or Oh ever new has been translated by Aruna Chakravarti in Daughters of Jorasanko. This was the last birthday song he wrote in 1941, a few months before he died. It was based on the long birthday poem he had written in 1922. Click here to read.

 Pochishe Boisakh Cholechhe (The twenty fifth of Boisakh draws close…), a birthday poem written in 1935, seems to be a sad reminder of mortality and dreams left unfinished. Click here to read.

Pochishe Boisakh (25th of Baisakh) is a birthday poem Tagore wrote in 1922 and the poem from which he derived the lyrics of his last birthday song written in 1941. Click here to read.

Jonmodiner Gaan or  Birthday Song by Tagore was written in 1899 and later sung as Bhoye Hote Tobo Abhayemajhe ( Amidst Fears, May Fearlessness). Click here to read the translation.

Prose

An excerpt from Tagore’s long play, Roktokorobi or Red Oleanders, has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Tagore’s essay, Classifications in Society, has been translated by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

 Raja O Praja or The King and His Subjects, an essay by Tagore, has been translated by Himadri Lahiri. Click here to read.

Musalmanir Galpa (A Muslim Woman’s Story), a story by Tagore, has been translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

Bengal Landscape. Art by Sohana Manzoor.
Categories
Contents

Borderless, April 2025

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Seasons in the Sun?….Click here to read.

Translations

An excerpt from Tagore’s long play, Roktokorobi or Red Oleanders, has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Tagore’s essay, Classifications in Society, has been translated by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

Poems of Longing by Jibananada Das homes two of his poems translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Four cantos from Ramakanta Rath’s Sri Radha, translated from Odiya by the late poet himself, have been excerpted from his full length translation. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Syad Zahoor Shah Hashmi’s Nazuk, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Disappearance by Bitan Chakraborty has been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

Roadside Ritual, a poem by Ihlwha Choi  has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Pochishe Boisakh Cholechhe (The twenty fifth of Boisakh draws close…) from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Thompson Emate, Pramod Rastogi, George Freek, Vidya Hariharan, Stuart McFarlane, Meetu Mishra, Lizzie Packer, Saranyan BV, Paul Mirabile, Hema Ravi, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Three Gothic Poems, Rhys Hughes explores the world of horrific with a light touch. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

The Day the Earth Quaked

Amy Sawitta Lefevre gives an eyewitness account of the March 28th earthquake from Bangkok. Click here to read.

Felix, the Philosophical Cat

Farouk Gulsara shares lessons learnt from his spoilt pet with a touch of humour. Click here to read.

Not Everyone is Invited to a Child’s Haircut Ceremony

Odbayar Dorje muses on Mongolian traditions. Click here to read.

From a Bucking Bronco to an Ageing Clydesdale

Meredith Stephens writes of sailing on rough seas one dark night. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

Stay Blessed! by Devraj Singh Kalsi is a tongue-in-cheek musing on social norms and niceties. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

On Safari in South Africa by Suzanne Kamata takes us to a photographic and narrative treat of the Kruger National Park. Click here to read.

Essays

Songs of the Adivasi Earth

Ratnottama Sengupta introduces us to the art of Haren Thakur, rooted in tribal lores. Click here to read.

‘Rajnigandha’: A Celebration of the Middle-of-the-Road

Tamara Raza writes of a film that she loves. Click here to read.

‘Climate change matters to me, and it should matter to you too’

Zeeshan Nasir writes of the impact of the recent climate disasters in Pakistan, with special focus on Balochistan. Click here to read.

Bhaskar’s Corner

Ramakanta Rath: A Monument of Literature: Bhaskar Parichha pays a tribute to the late poet. Click here to read.

Stories

Jai Ho Chai

Snigdha Agrawal narrates a funny narrative about sadhus and AI. Click here to read.

The Mischief

Mitra Samal writes a sensitive story about childhood. Click here to read.

Lending a hand

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao takes us back to school. Click here to read.

Conversation

Ratnottama Sengupta talks to filmmaker and author Leslie Carvalho about his old film, The Outhouse, that will be screened this month and his new book, Smoke on the Backwaters. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Anuradha Kumar’s Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Snigdha Agrawal’s Fragments of Time (Memoirs). Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Sheela Rohekar’s Miss Samuel: A Jewish Indian Saga, translated by Madhu Singh. Click here to read.

Gracy Samjetsabam reviews Tony K Stewart’s Needle at the Bottom of the Sea: Classic Bengali Tales from the Sundarbans. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Raisina Chronicles: India’s Global Public Square by S. Jaishankar & Samir Saran. Click here to read.

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

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Categories
Editorial

Seasons in the Sun?

Offerings during Qing Ming Jie, a festival honouring ancestors
Songkran(Thai New Year) Celebrations
Festivals in April: From Public Domain

April is a month full of celebrations around the world. Asia hosts a spray of New Year festivities. Then there are festivals like Qing Ming Jie, Good Friday and Easter. All these are in a way reminders of our past. And yet, we critique things as old fashioned! So, where does tradition end and ‘outdated’ or ‘outmoded’ start? Meanwhile we continue to celebrate these festivals with joy but what happens to those who have lost their home, family and their living due to war or climate disasters? Can they too join in with the joie de vivre? Can we take our celebrations to them to give solace in some way?

In our April issue, we have stories from climate and conflict-ridden parts of the world. From Bangkok, Amy Sawitta Lefevre gives an eyewitness account of the March 28th Earthquake that originated in Myanmar. While in her city, the disaster was managed, she writes: “I’m also thinking of all the children in Myanmar who are sleeping in the open, who lost loved ones, who are feeling scared and alone, with no one to reassure them.” As news reels tell us, in Myanmar there have been thousands of casualties from the earthquake as well as shootings by the army.

From another troubled region, Pakistan, Zeeshan Nasir gives a heartrending narrative about climate change, which also dwells on the human suffering, including increase in underage marriages.

Human suffering can be generated by rituals and customs too. For instance, if festivals dwell on exclusivity, they can hurt those who are left out of the celebrations. Odbayar Dorje muses along those lines on Mongolian traditions and calls for inclusivity and the need to change norms. On the other hand, Devraj Singh Kalsi hums with humour as he reflects on social norms and niceties and hints at the need for change in a light-hearted manner. Farouk Gulsara makes us laugh with the antics of his spoilt pet cat. And Suzanne Kamata dwells on her animal sightings in Kruger National Park with her words and camera while Meredith Stephens takes us sailing on stormy seas… that too at night.

Art is brought into focus by Ratnottama Sengupta who introduces artist Haren Thakur with his adaptation of tribal styles that has been compared to that of Paul Klee (1879-1940). She also converses with filmmaker Leslie Carvalho, known for his film The Outhouse, and his new novel, Smoke on the Backwaters. Both of these have a focus on the Anglo-Indian community in India. Also writing on Indian film trends of the 1970s is Tamara Raza. Bhaskar Parichha pays tribute to the late Ramakanta Rath (1934-2025), whose powerful and touching poetry, translated from Odia by the poet himself, can be found in our translations section.

We have an excerpt from Professor Fakrul Alam’s unpublished translation of Tagore’s Red Oleanders. It’s a long play and truly relevant for our times. Somdatta Mandal shares with us her translation of Tagore’s essay called ‘The Classification in Society’, an essay where the writer dwells on the need for change in mindsets of individuals that make up a community to move forward. A transcreation of a poem by Tagore for his birthday in 1935 reflects the darkness he overcame in his own life. Two poems expressive of longings by Jibananada Das have been translated from Bengali by Professor Alam aswell. From Balochistan, we have an excerpt from the first Balochi novel, Nazuk, written by the late Syad Zahoor Shah Hashmi and rendered into English by Fazal Baloch. Among contemporaries, we have a short story by Bitan Chakraborty translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta, a poignant story that reflects on gaps in our society. And a Korean poem by Ihlwha Choi rendered to English by the poet himself.

Our poetry section celebrates nature with poetry by Lizzie Packer. Many of the poems draw from nature like that of George Freek and Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal. Some talk of the relationship between man and nature as does Stuart McFarlane. We have a variety of themes addressed in poems by Thompson Emate, Meetu Mishra, Saranyan BV, Paul Mirabile, Pramod Rastogi, Ryan Quinn Flanagan and many more. Rhys Hughes brings in both humour and social commentary of sorts with his poem. And in his column, Hughes has shared three gothic poems which he claims are horrible but there is that twinge of fable and lightness similar to the ghosts of Ebenezer Scrooge’s world[1]— colourful and symbolic.

Stories sprinkle humour of different shades with Snigdha Agrawal’s narrative about mendicants and AI and Mitra Samal’s strange tale about childhood pranks. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao takes us back to schooldays with his narrative. We have a fun book excerpt from Agrawal’s Fragments of Time (Memoirs), almost in tone with some of her stories and musings.

An extract from Anuradha Kumar’s latest non-fiction making bridges across time and geographies. Called Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India, the book is an intriguing read. We have a review by Professor Mandal of Sheela Rohekar’s Miss Samuel: A Jewish Indian Saga, translated by Madhu Singh. Highlighting syncretic folk traditions, Gracy Samjetsabam has discussed the late Tony K Stewart’s translation of oral folklore in Needle at the Bottom of the Sea: Classic Bengali Tales from the Sundarbans. Parichha has written about a high-profile book that also hopes to draw bridges across the world, Raisina Chronicles: India’s Global Public Square, by S. Jaishankar and Samir Saran.

This issue has been made possible because of support from all of you. Huge thanks to the team, all our contributors and readers. Thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Do pause by our contents page as all the content could not be covered here.

Perhaps, world events leave a sense of pensiveness in all of us and an aura of insecurity. But, as Scarlett O’ Hara of Gone with the Wind[2] fame says, “After all, tomorrow is another day.” 

Looking forward to a new day with hope, let’s dream of happier times filled with sunshine and change.

Enjoy the reads!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

[1] A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843

[2] Gone With the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, published in 1936

Click here to access the contents page for the April 2025 Issue

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Categories
Tagore Translations

Classifications in Society by Rabindranath Tagore

This essay was first published in Tattwabodhini Patrika, Ashwin issue, 1319 B.S.(September-October, 1912) and reprinted in Pather Sanchoy (Gleanings of the Road). It has been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal.

Tagore at Paris, 1921. From Public Domain

When we travel to Vilayet[1], then it is not simply going from one country to another; for us it is like entering a new household. The external differences of lifestyle are not that important. It is expected that there will be a difference between us and the foreigners in our dress, ornaments, eating and pleasure habits and so that doesn’t bother us too much. But not only in lifestyle, there is a deeper dissimilarity in our evaluation of life and to find a sense of direction there suddenly becomes a very difficult task.

We start feeling this from the moment we board the ship. We understand that we will have to abide by the rules of another different household. This sudden change is not to the liking of man. This is why we do not try to understand it very clearly; we somehow try to follow it or feel disgusted and then utter to ourselves—their manner and behaviour is too artificial.

The truth is that what is important is the difference we have with them regarding our social position. Our society has come and stopped within the limits of our family and village. Within those limits we have evolved certain fixed rules about how to behave with one another. Keeping those limits in mind it has been decided what we should do and what we should not. Some of those rules are superficial whereas others are quite normal.

But the society which is the target of these rules being framed is not very big in size and it is a society of relatives. So, our habits are quite domesticated. You cannot smoke tobacco in front of your father, you are supposed to pay obeisance to the guru and pay him some money, the sister- in- law must cover up her face in the presence of the elder brother-in-law and close proximity to your uncle- in- law is totally prohibited. Those rules that are outside the family or village society are based on caste(varna) differences.

It can be said that the thread of caste difference has tied our village society and families like a chain or necklace. We have reached a conclusion. India has resolved its societal problems once and for all and she feels that if this system can be permanently retained then there is nothing to worry about. That is why modern India is trying to strengthen in all manner this family and social bonding laws woven through the thread of varnashram[2].

It has to be admitted that India had been able to find a solution to the problems it was facing at one point of time. She has somehow reconciled the differences between diverse castes, she has pacified the struggle between diverse classes; by classifying professions she has managed to contain competition and disputes and has staved off the vanity created by differences of wealth and capacity through the fence of caste differences. Though, on the one hand, India has maintained through all means the independence of Brahmins who are at the helm of society to the people belonging to other castes, at the same time, she has also spread out small and big processes through which all facilities and education could be disseminated among the others. This is why what the rich person enjoys in India is also partly distributed among the ordinary people on various pretexts and in this way, by giving shelter to the ordinary and appeasing them, the powerful retains his power. In our country, there is no reason to go into a major clash between the rich and the poor and the necessity has not arisen by which the incapable person has to be protected by legal means.

The Western society is not family oriented; it is an open and large society which is much more widespread than ours. It is more on the outside than on the inside. The concept of family that is there in our country is absent in Europe and that is why the people of Europe are spread everywhere.

The nature of this spread-out society is such that on the one hand it is loosely assimilated and on the other it is more diverse and stronger. It is like composing a prose piece. Poetry is restricted within its rhymes and that is why its binding is simpler. But the prose spreads out. That is why on the one hand it is independent and on the other its steps are bound through logic and reason, through diverse rules on ideas about the development of the mind in a greater way.

Because the English society is so spread out and because all its activities are externally motivated, it must be always prepared for different social rituals. It hardly has time to wear casual domestic clothes. It must remain dressed up because its social area is not that of relatives. Relatives pardon you, tolerate you, but you cannot expect such tolerance on the part of outsiders. Everyone must do each and every work in due time, otherwise one will encroach upon another. If the rail line is in my area or is under the control of a few of my friends and relatives, then we can run the train as we wish and can even halt each other’s train as and when we desire. But if we try to detain a train for five minutes in the ordinary train route where lots of trains move up and down, then there will be lots of problems and that will be difficult to tolerate. Because our society is extremely domesticated or maybe because we are habituated with domestic practices, we behave with each other very loosely—we spread ourselves as much as possible, waste time and criticise formal behaviour as lacking in fraternal feelings. This is the first thing that prevents us from feeling at home in English society—there one cannot act in a carefree manner and then expect that people will pardon us. They have created different rules that will on an average benefit the maximum number of people. They have set up fixed rules for meeting each other, for invitation formalities, for dressing up, for entertaining guests. If we try and impose the laxity that we display with relatives in a place that is not actually a society of relatives, then everything turns out to be horrible and life becomes impossible.

Till now this wide European society has not come up with any solutions. It has made an effort through certain rules and regulations in external rituals and behaviour to retain self-restraint and gracefulness but is unable to make arrangements by which the internal strife at a personal level can be resolved. Europe is only going through experimentation, change and revolution. There is a constant rivalry cropping up between men and women, between religious society and professional society, between the power of the ruler and the ruled, between businessmen and worker groups. It has not pacified itself like the halo round the moon. Even now it is ready like a volcano waiting to erupt.

But how can we say that we have solved all our problems, have finalised our social structure, and are resting as peacefully as dead bodies? Even though time has elapsed, we can retain the system for some time, but we cannot keep the situation in chains. We are facing the entire world, now we cannot do with our domesticated society; these people are not merely our fathers, grandfathers or uncles, they are outsiders. They belong to different countries and so we should be extremely alert while interacting with them. If we are absent-minded and behave in a loose manner, then one day we will be totally unfit to act.

We are proud of our tradition, but it is not at all true that the society of India has not evolved through history. In different situations even India had to go through newer revolutions—there is no doubt about that—and history is replete with instances. But I don’t want to even utter that it is the end of all treading for her and from now on till eternity she will just be there and hold on to her traditionality. Society gets fatigued after each large revolution; during that time, it shuts its doors, switches off all lights and prepares to go to sleep. After the Buddhist revolution India had gone off to sleep latching her doors and windows with the hook of strict laws. She was sleepy. But to boast about this as eternal sleep will become a laughable though pitiable thing. Sleep is good only during the night, when there are no crowds of people outside, and when all the big shops and markets are shut down. But in the morning when everyone is awake and there is activity all around, if you go on quietly lying down and close all the old doors and windows, then you will be the loser.

The rules of the night are very simple. Its arrangements are sparse, and its requirements are very little. That is why we can complete all our tasks and go to sleep in an unperturbed manner. Then things go on lying where they were kept because there is no one to move them. The arrangements during the day are not so simple and completing the job once and for all in the early morning does not mean that one can relax and smoke tobacco the rest of the day. Work keeps pouring down our necks. We must keep attempting new things and if we cannot adjust ourselves to the flow of the outside world, then everything else falls out of place.

For some time, India has spent her nights in a system of strict and fixed set of rules. That does not mean that that situation will permanently remain very comfortable. Getting a beating is most painful and difficult, especially when it falls upon a sleeping body. Daytime is the period to receive such blows. That is why it is most comfortable to remain awake during the daytime.  

It is time for us to wake up whether we wish it or not, whether we are full of laziness or not. We are constantly being hurt both internally and externally in society and so we are sad. We are suffering from poverty and famine. The society is breaking down; the joint family system is being split into bits and pieces. And the role of the Brahmins in society has become so demeaning that with the aid of ‘Brahmin societies’ and such other things, they keep on shouting loudly to prove their existence and thus only attest to their weakness. The panchayat[3] system worn in the neck by the government’s chaprasi[4] has committed suicide and its ghost is dominating the village. The food in the country is incapable of satiating the small village schools. Due to famine, they are now relying on the charity of government dole. The rich people of the country have doused the light in their birthplaces and are roaming around in Calcutta in motor cars, and people of noble descent are ready to sacrifice their entire wealth and their daughters at the feet of a graduate groom. There is no point in blaming the Kaliyuga[5], or the foreign king or the native English-speaking people for this misfortune. The truth is that our lord has sent his assistant during the daytime, and he will not stop till such time he can drag us out of our traditional bedrooms. So, we cannot forcibly close our eyes and try to create the night at odd hours. The world that has come to our threshold has to be welcomed inside our house. If we don’t give it a cordial welcome, then it will break open our doors and gain entry. Hasn’t the door not yet been broken now?

So once again, we must think about resolving our problems. It cannot be done by imitating Europe, but we must learn from her. Learning and imitating are not the same thing. Actually, if we learn in the correct way, we will be relieved from the art of imitating. If we cannot know the other truly, then we cannot understand the truth ourselves.

But I was saying that we cannot adjust ourselves in the European society with our loose domestic habits. We can never prepare ourselves in any way. It seems that everyone is pushing us aside, no one is waiting for us for a moment. We are pampered human beings; we feel out of place without our relatives in society. After coming here, I have noticed that since our students are not used to entering other people’s houses, most of them come here and learn things by heart but they do not keep any contact with the society here. The society here is large and so it has more responsibilities. Only if we undertake those responsibilities, can we find a sort of connection with the people of this society. If we cannot connect then we shall be deprived of the greatest learning prevalent here. This is because society is the greatest truth here. The greatest strength, the greatest sublimity is in the society here and not in the battlefield. Sacrifice and self-respect suitable for a broad-minded society are being expressed at every step. They are nurtured here and are preparing themselves in different ways to sacrifice their lives for the welfare of man. In modern India, the educated class of people still consider school education to be the true education. They are deprived of the education of greater society. Even after coming here and entering the school factory, if they come out simply as mechanical things and do not enter the birthplace of humanity visible here then they will be deprived even after coming to a foreign country.

Art by Rabindranath Tagore. From Public Domain

[1] England or the Western world

[2] Casteism

[3] Villages in India are still administered by the panchayat, a council of five selected members from the community.

[4] Peon

[5] The current age in Hindu mythology which ends when the Kalki avatar comes to rescue humanity from darkness.

Somdatta Mandal is a critic and translator and a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India. An earlier version of this essay was published in Gleanings of the Road (Niyogi Books, pg 20).

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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 Amazon International