Tag: Tagore

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Editorial

Fly High… Like Birds in the Sky…

Great Wall of China
He sees a barrier where soldiers stand
with rifles drawn, encroachers kept at bay.
A migrant child who holds his mother's hand


— LaVern Spencer McCarthy, Are We There Yet?

There was a time when humans walked the Earth crossing unnamed landmasses to find homes in newer terrains. They migrated without restrictions.  Over a period of time, kingdoms evolved, and travellers like Marco Polo talked of needing permissions to cross borders in certain parts of the world. The need for a permit to travel was first mentioned in the Bible, around 450BCE. A safe conduct permit appeared in England in 1414CE. Around the twentieth century, passports and visas came into full force. And yet, humanity had existed hundreds of thousand years ago… Some put the date at 300,000!

While climate contingencies, wars and violence are geared to add to migrants called ‘refugees’, there is always that bit of humanity which regards them as a burden. They forget that at some point, their ancestors too would have migrated from where they evolved. In South Africa, close to Johannesburg is Maropeng with its ‘Cradle of Humanity’, an intense network of caves where our ancestors paved the way to our evolution. The guide welcomes visitors by saying — “Welcome home!” It fills one’s heart to see the acceptance that drips through the whole experience.  Does this mean our ancestors all stepped out of Africa many eons ago and that we all belonged originally to the same land?

And yet there are many restrictions that have come upon us creating boxes which do not allow intermingling easily, even if we travel. Overriding these barriers is a discussion with Jessica Mudditt about Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet, her book about her backpacking through Asia. Documenting a migration more than a hundred years ago from Jullundur to Malaya, when borders were different and more mobile, we have a conversation with eminent scholar and writer from Singapore, Kirpal Singh. Telling the story of another eminent migrant, a Persian who became a queen in the Mughal Court is a lyric by Nazrul, Nur Jahan, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam from Bangla. Ihlwha Choi has self-translated his own poem from Korean, a poem bridging divides with love. Fazal Baloch has brought to us some exquisite Balochi poems by Munir Momin. Tagore’s poem, Okale or Out of Sync, has been translated from Bengali to reflect the strange uniqueness of each human action which despite departing from the norm, continue to be part of the flow.

Among our untranslated poetry is housed LaVern Spencer McCarthy’s voice on the plight of migrants of the current times. Michael Burch gives us poems for Dylan Thomas. We have a plethora of issues covered in poetry ranging from love to women’s issues, even an affectionate description of his father by Shamik Banerjee. Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Kumar Sawan, Prithvijeet Sinha, Gregg Norman, Anushka Chaudhary, Wayne Russell, Ahmad Rayees, Ivan Ling, Ayesha Binte Islam and many more add verve with their varied themes. Rhys Hughes has shared a poem on a funny sign he photographed himself.

We have a tongue in cheek piece from Devraj Singh Kalsi on traveling in a train with a politician. Uday Deshwal writes with a soupçon of humour as he talks of applying for jobs. Snigdha Agrawal brings to us flavours of Bengal from her past while Ratnottama Sengupta muses on the ongoing wars and violence as acts of terror in the same region and looks back at such an incident in the past which resulted in a powerful Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat. Kiriti Sengupta has written of a well-known artist, Jatin Das, a strange encounter where the artist asks them to empty fully even a glass of water! Ravi Shankar weaves in his love for books into our non-fiction section. Recounting her mother’s migration story which leads us to perceive the whole world as home is a narrative by Renee Melchert Thorpe. Urmi Chakravorty takes us to the last Indian village on the borders of Tibet. Taking us to a Dinosaur Museum in Japan is our migrant columnist, Suzanne Kamata. Her latest multicultural novel, Cinnamon Beach, has found its way to our book excerpts as has Flanagan’s poetry collection, These Many Cold Winters of the Heart.

In reviews, Somdatta Mandal has written about an anthology, Maya Nagari: Bombay-Mumbai A City in Stories edited by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto. Rakhi Dalal has discussed a translation from Konkani by Jerry Pinto of award-winning writer Damodar Mauzo’s Boy, Unloved. Basudhara Roy has reviewed Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali, translated by Sucheta Dasgupta. Bhaskar Parichha has introduced us to The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal by Gurcharan Das, a book that is truly relevant in the current times in context of the whole world for what he states is a truth: “In the current polarised climate, the liberal perspective is often marginalised or dismissed as being indecisive or weak.” And it is the truth for the whole world now.

Our short stories reflect the colours of the world. A fantasy set in America but crossing borders of time and place by Ronald V. Micci, a story critiquing social norms that hurt by Swatee Miittal and Paul Mirabile’s ghost story shuttling from the Irish potato famine (1845-52) to the present day – all address different themes across borders, reflecting the vibrancy of thoughts and cultures. That we all exist in the same place and have the commonality of ideas and felt emotions is reflected in each of these narratives.

We have more which adds to the lustre of the content. So, do pause by our content’s page and enjoy the reads!

I would like to thank all our team without who this journal would be incomplete, especially, Sohana Manzoor, for her fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to all our contributors who bring vibrancy to our pages and our wonderful readers, without who the journal would remain just part of an electronic cloud… We welcome you all to enjoy our June issue.

Wish you happiness and good weather!

Thank you all.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the content’s page for the June 2024 Issue.

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

Categories
Nostalgia

A Musical Soiree

By Snigdha Agrawal

This was an annual event organised at home, on Tagore’s birthday.  Preparations started a week before ‘Pochishe Boishakh’)[1].

Musical instruments were dusted and tuned, particularly the most used harmonium and tablas. The living room was rearranged.  Chairs were pushed against the walls.  Centre and side tables were removed, creating space for floor seating.  Durries were laid over the carpet.  All the pash balish — bolsters — in the house with freshly laundered covers, placed haphazardly for those wanting to recline.  A space earmarked for the performers, usually against the room’s longest wall.  On this wall hung a fairly large black and white framed photo of Tagore, garlanded with freshly picked jasmine flowers. Not the fully bloomed one.  White buds with short green stems.  We girls were given the responsibility of making smaller wristbands from the jasmine buds, presented to the visitors.  Stalks of rajanigandha (tuberoses) stood erect in tall vases placed on either side of the photo. 

The overpowering smell of jasmine and tuberoses drowned other smells floating in from the kitchen.  A hands-full kitchen as no jalsa[2] is complete without serving the guests chai and piping hot assortment of pakoras — onions, potatoes, brinjal, pumpkin flowers, battered fried crispy brown. Poppy seed-sprinkled vegetable chops, cylindrically shaped, were polished off as fast as they were made and served.  The service continued till the guests left, mouths sweetened with the dessert — usually rossogollas, delivered by the sweet-meat dhoti-clad guy, arriving on foot, carrying gigantic-sized aluminium dekchis[3]balanced on two ends of a pole, hoisted on his shoulder.

It was an open house event for those interested and wanting to join.  There were the regulars and walk-ins as well. Performers and audience.  A manageable crowd most years. Rarely spilling out into the adjacent veranda.  Cane chairs were lined up to accommodate the latecomers.  Ma, a gifted and trained singer had the honour of opening the ceremony with the song “Hey Nutan, Dekha dik aar-baar janmero prothamo shubhokhan…”[4].  On popular demand, she went on to sing a couple of Tagore’s songs not omitting the song dedicated to Boishakh “esho hey boishak, esho…esho. Taposniswasbaye mumushure dao uraye, botsorer aborjona dur hoye jak…”.  [5]A song that has been on our minds, with the current heat wave raging throughout the country.

As the evening progressed there were recitations from Tagore’s poetry collection.  A young couple, Soumenda and Rinadi, our neighbours, had the gathering spellbound with their singing and poetry recitation.  Close neighbourhood friends of ‘Puluda’, the affectionate nickname of the famed actor, the Late Soumitra Chatterjee, the talented couple were in demand at many such musical soirees held on Vijaya Doushami[6] in community clubs.  And through them, we met the greatest Bengali screen actor of all time, on many occasions, when he visited after the day’s outdoor shooting in the picturesque surrounding in Maithon and Panchayat, way back in the 1960s. 

With our leaving the gated community complex in 1968, ended the annual Rabindra Jayanti home celebrations. A not-forgotten era.  Rabindranath Tagore lives on. These days, I listen to Rabindrasangeet on YouTube, remembering the days of youth, Ma’s full-throated voice, and Somenda, and Rinadi regaling us with their practised/professional voices. Pakoras are replaced now with sushi.  God rest their souls. 

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[1] The 25th day of the Bengali month of Boishakh, recorded as the official date of birth of the Rabindranath Tagore in 1861. As per the Gregorian calendar, the date falls between the 7th or 8th of May.

[2] Musical soiree

[3] broad-rimmed cooking utensil with a flat round bottom

[4] Oh ever new!/ Let my eyes behold once more/ the first blessed moment of birth.- Translation by Aruna Chakravarty, Borderless Journal

[5] Hail O boisakh! Welcome./ Blow away deadly diseases with your ascetic breath./May the debris from the old year disappear. – Translation from Borderless Journal

[6] Last day of Durga Puja

Snigdha Agrawal (nee Banerjee) has published four books and is a regular contributor to anthologies.  A septuagenarian, she writes in all genres of poetry, prose, short stories and travelogues.

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

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Contents

Borderless, May 2024

Painting by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Though I Sang in my Chains like the Sea… Click here to read

Translations

Three poems by Nazrul have been translated by Niaz Zaman from Bengali. Click here to read.

Projapoti (Butterfly) by Nazrul has been translated by Fakrul Alam from Bengali. Click here to read.

Human by Manzur Bismil has been translated by Fazal Baloch from Balochi. Click here to read.

Now, What I Can Do by Ihlwha Choi has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Chhora or Rhymes by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Kirpal Singh, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Shamik Banerjee, Stuart McFarlane, Mary Tina Shamli Pillay, George Freek, Radhika Soni, Craig Kirchner, Tapas Sarkar, Stephen Philip Druce, Anjali Chauhan, Michael Lee Johnson, Milan Mondal, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Dylan on Worm’s Head, Rhys Hughes describes a misadventure that the Welsh poet had while hiking as a tribute to him on Dylan Thomas Day. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Hooked for Life and Beyond…

Ravi Shankar looks at the computer revolution in a light vein. Click here to read.

Sundays are Only for Some…

Snigdha Agrawal introduces us to the perspectives of a child of parents who iron clothes for the middle class in India. Click here to read.

Eternalising the Beauty of Balochistan

Munaj Gul gives an in memoriam for a photographer from Balochistan. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In ‘Is this a Dagger I See…?‘, Devraj Singh Kalsi gives a tongue-in-cheek account of a writer’s dilemma. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In A Golden Memory of Green Day in Japan, Suzanne Kamata tells us of a festival where she planted a tree in the presence of the Japanese royalty. Click here to read.

Essays

When the Feminist and the Revolutionary Met

Niaz Zaman writes of the feminist leanings of Nazrul’s poetry in context of Madam Roquiah, a contemporary of the poet. Click here to read.

Metaphorical Maladies

Satyarth Pandita looks into literature around maladies. Click here to read.

The Storied Past of Khiva

Gita Viswanath takes us to the heritage city in Uzbekistan. Click here to read.

Akbar Barakzai: A Timeless Poet

Hazaran Rahim Dad explores the universal poetry of Akbar Barakzai. Click here to read.

Stories

Don Quixote’s Paradise

Farouk Gulsara takes us through a dystopian adventure. Click here to read.

The Buyback

Devraj Singh Kalsi gives a tale of reconnecting with the past. Click here to read.

Pier Paolo’s Idyll

Paul Mirabile traces a story of a young boy in the outskirts of Rome. Click here to read.

Conversations

Ratnottama Sengupta in conversation with Sohini Roychowdhury, who tries to bridge cultures with dance. Click here to read.

A brief overview of Rajat Chaudhuri’s Spellcasters and a discussion with the author on his book. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Selected Essays: Kazi Nazrul Islam, translated by Radha Chakravarty from Bengali. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Aruna Chakravarti’s Jorsanko. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Selected Essays: Kazi Nazrul Islam. Click here to read.

Malashri Lal reviews Lakshmi Kannan’s Nadistuti: Poems. Click here to read.

Ajanta Paul reviews Bitan Chakraborty’s The Blight and Seven Short Stories. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Will Cockrell’s Everest, Inc. The Renegades and Rogues who Built an Industry at the Top of the World. 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

Though I Sang in my Chains like the Sea…

      Time held me green and dying
    Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Perhaps when Dylan Thomas wrote these lines, he did not know how relevant they would sound in context of the world as it is with so many young dying in wars, more than seven decades after he passed on. No poet does. Neither did he. As the world observes Dylan Thomas Day today — the day his play, Under the Milkwood, was read on stage in New York a few months before he died in 1953 — we have a part humorous poem as tribute to the poet and his play by Stuart McFarlane and a tribute from our own Welsh poet, Rhys Hughes, describing a fey incident around Thomas in prose leading up to a poem.

May seems to be a month when we celebrate birthdays of many writers, Tagore, Nazrul and Ruskin Bond. Tagore’s birthday was in the early part of May in 1861 and we celebrated with a special edition on him. Bond, who turns a grand ninety this year, continues to dazzle his readers with fantastic writings from the hills, narratives which reflect the joie de vivre of existence, of compassion and of love for humanity and most importantly his own world view. His books have the rare quality of being infused with an incredible sense of humour and his unique ability to make fun of himself and laugh with all of us. 

Nazrul, on the other hand, dreamt, hoped and wrote for an ideal world in the last century. The commonality among all these writers, seemingly so diverse in their outlooks and styles, is the affection they express for humanity. Celebrating the writings of Nazrul, we have one of his fiery speeches translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty and a review of her Selected Essays: Kazi Nazrul Islam by Somdatta Mandal. An essay from Niaz Zaman dwells on the feminist side of Nazrul while bringing in Begum Roquiah. Zaman has also shared translations of his poetry. Professor Fakrul Alam, who had earlier translated Nazrul’s iconic ‘Bidrohi or Rebel‘, has given us a beautiful rendition of his song ‘Projapoti or Butterfly’ in English.  Also in translation, is a poem by Tagore on the process of writing poetry. Balochi poetry by Manzur Bismil on human nature has been rendered into English by Fazal Baloch and yet another poem from Korean to English by Ilwha Choi.

Reflecting on the concept of a paradise is poetry from Michael Burch. Issues like climate, women, humanity, mourning, aging and more have been addressed in poetry by Shamik Banerjee, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Milan Mondal, Kirpal Singh, Craig Kirchner, George Freek, Michael Lee Johnson and many more. Hughes brings in a dollop of humour with his response to a signpost in verse. Irony is woven into our non-fiction section by Devraj Singh Kalsi’s musing on writers and assailants. Ravi Shankar explores his passion for computers in a light vein. Snigdha Agrawal gives us a poignant story about a young child from the less privileged classes in India. Suzanne Kamata writes to tell us about the environment friendly Green Day in Japan.

Ratnottama Sengupta this month converses with a dancer who tries to build bridges with the tinkling of her bells, Sohini Roychowdhury. Gita Viswanthan travels to Khiva in Uzbekistan, historically located on the Silk Route, with words and camera.  An essay on Akbar Barakzai by Hazran Rahim Dad and another looking into literature around maladies by Satyarth Pandita add zest to our non-fiction section. Though these seem to be a heterogeneous collection of themes, they are all tied together with the underlying idea of creating links to build towards a better future.

Our stories travel from Malaysia to France and India. Farouk Gulsara sets his in futuristic Malaysia, again exploring the theme of utopia as did his earlier musing. Paul Mirabile creates a story where a child tries to create his own idyllic paradise while Kalsi writes of fiction centring around a property tussle. The book reviews feature a couple of non-fiction. Other than Kazi Nazrul Islam’s essays, Bhaskar Parichha reviews Will Cockrell’s Everest, Inc. The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World. Ajanta Paul discusses Bitan Chakraborty’s The Blight and Seven Short Stories, translated from Bengali by Malati Mukherjee. Malashri Lal has written on Lakshmi Kannan’s Nadistuti: Poems, poems dedicated to Jayanta Mahapatra who the poet reflects lives on with his verses. And that is so true, considering this issue is full of poets who continue in our lives eternally because of their words. That is why perhaps, we recreate their lives as has Aruna Chakravarti in Jorasanko.

In focus this time is a writer whose prose is almost akin to poetry, Rajat Chaudhuri. A proponent of solarpunk, his novel, Spellcasters, takes us to fictitious cities modelled on Delhi and Kolkata. In his interview, Chaudhuri tells us: “The path to utopia is not necessarily through dystopia. We can start hoping and acting today before things get really bad. Which is the locus of the whole solarpunk movement with which I am closely associated as an editor and creator…”

On that note, I would like to end with a couple of lines from Nazrul, who reiterates how the old gives way to new in Proloyullash (The Frenzy of Destruction, translated by Alam): “Why fear destruction? / It’s the gateway to creation!” Will destruction be the turning point for creation of a new world? And should the destruction be of human constructs that hurt humanity (like wars and weapons) or of humanity and the planet Earth? As the solarpunk movement emphasises, we need to act to move towards a better world. And how would one act? Perhaps, by getting in touch with the best in themselves and using it to act for the betterment of humankind? These are all points to ponder… if you have any ideas that need a forum on such themes, do share with us.

We have more content which has not been woven into this piece for the sheer variety of themes they encompass. Do pause by our content’s page and browse on all our pieces.

With warm thanks to our wonderful team at Borderless — especially Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous art — I would like to express gratitude to all our contributors, without who we could not create this journal. We would also like to thank our readers for making it worth our while to write — for all of our words look to be read, savoured and mulled, and maybe, some will evolve into treasured wines.

Thank you all.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the content’s page for the May, 2024 Issue

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

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Nazrul Translations

Projapoti or Butterfly by Nazrul

Projapoti or Butterfly by Nazrul, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam

Projapoti! Projapoti! 

Butterfly, dear butterfly,
From where did you get such colourful wings?
Wings flaming red and blue,
Such sparkling, wavy wings!
I see you getting drunk sipping the honey of wildflowers.
Be my friend; share some of the liquor with me.
Lend me your pollen-tinted golden-silvery wings as well.
My mind doesn’t like the idea of going to school anymore.
Butterfly, dear butterfly—please, please take me along
As your companion. You dance in the wind as you go…
This day, why not share your delight with me too? 
I don’t want to wear the dress I have on anymore.
Let me wear your flaming, sparkling dress from now on!
A rendition of the song in Bengali by a legendary singer, Feroza Begum (1930-2014)

Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) was known as the  Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.

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Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibonananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).

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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

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Excerpt

Deposition of a Political Prisoner: A Speech by Nazrul

Title: Kazi Nazrul Islam: Selected Essays 

Author: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Translator: Radha Chakravarty

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Deposition of a Political Prisoner (1923)

[In 1922, Kazi Nazrul Islam, the famous ‘Rebel Poet of Bengal’, aroused the wrath of the British administration for the revolutionary anti-imperialist writings published in his magazine Dhumketu (Comet), published in Kolkata. The Dhumketu office was raided by the police, Nazrul’s anthology Jugabani was banned, and on 23 November 1922, Nazrul was arrested and imprisoned in Presidency Jail. On 16 January 1923, Nazrul delivered his famous speech “Rajbandir Jabandandi” (Deposition of a Political Prisoner), at his trial. Sentenced to a year’s rigorous imprisonment, Nazrul was confined first in Alipore Jail and subsequently in Hooghly Jail. In February, Tagore dedicated his play Basanta to Nazrul, and later sent him a telegram urging him to call off his hunger strike. Nazrul never received the telegram, and was released from jail in November 1923.]

I am accused of treason. Hence, I am a prisoner of the state, as indicted by the state.

On one side stands the royal crown, and on the other, the flame of the comet. One represents the king, holding the sceptre; the other stands for the truth, holding the rod of justice. On the side of the king are the salaried employees of the state. On my side is the King of kings, Judge of all judges, true from the beginning to the end of time—the living divinity.

Nobody has appointed my judge. In the eyes of this Supreme Judge, all are equal—ruler and subject, rich and poor, the happy and the unhappy. At His throne, the ruler’s crown and the beggar’s musical instrument, the ektara, are placed at par. His laws are the laws of nyaya or justice, and dharma. That law has not been created by any victor for any conquered race, but from the true insights of global humanity. It is the law of universal truth, of omnipresent, all-pervading divinity. On the side of the king is a fragment of creation, minute as an atom; and on my side, the Creator Himself, whole and indivisible without beginning and end.

Behind the king are the insignificant, and behind me, stands the divine force of Lord Shiva himself. The one who backs the king has selfish goals; the one who supports me aims for the truth, to gain perfect bliss.

The king’s words are mere bubbles; my words, the boundless ocean. I am a poet, inspired by the Lord to reveal the hidden truth, to give form to formless Creation. Through the voice of the poet, the Lord makes himself heard. My utterance is the medium that publicly announces the truth, the utterance of the Lord. That utterance can appear as treason in the judgement of the state, but in the judgement of nyaya, that utterance is neither a rebellion against nyaya, nor against the truth. That utterance may be punishable in the king’s court, but in the light of dharma, at the court of nyaya, it is guiltless, untainted, unblemished, clear, inextinguishable, like truth itself.

The truth is self-revealing. It cannot be stopped by an angry, red-eyed royal sceptre. I am the veena, the instrument of that unceasing self-revelation, the veena that resonated as the voice of eternal truth. I am the veena in the hands of the Lord. It may break if it must, but who can break the Lord? It is an eternal truth that the truth exists, and so does the Lord—since the beginning of time, and forever. The one who obstructs the voice of truth today, who wishes to silence that voice, is also one of the minutest atoms of the Lord’s creation. It is by Lord’s signs, signals and wishes that such a person exists today, or may not exist tomorrow. There is no end to the hubris of the foolish mortal: he wants to imprison and punish his own Creator! But one day, this hubris is bound to drown in tears!

As I was saying, I am  an instrument for the revelation of truth. There may be heartless powers that imprison that instrument, or destroy it; but the One who plays that instrument, who expresses His fiery message through that veena – what power on earth can confine Him? What power on earth can destroy the vidhata, the supreme arbiter of our destinies? I am mortal, yes, but my vidhata is immortal. I will die, so will the king, for many traitors like me are dying, and so are many kings who summon up such accusations against them, but through the ages, at no point in time, and for no reason, has the manifestation of truth been suppressed – the voice of truth has never perished. Today, too, in the same way, it continues to express itself, and will continue to do so forever. This utterance of mine, stifled by authority, will be heard again, in the voice of another.  If you snatch away my flute you do not kill my music, for I can take up another flute, or create a new one, and bring the music back to life. The music does not belong to the flute, you see, it exists in my soul, and in the art of my fashioning of the flute. Hence the fault lies not with the flute, nor with the tune; the fault lies in me, the player of the flute. Likewise, for the utterance that emerges through my voice, I am not responsible. The fault lies not in me, or in my veena. It lies with the One who plays his veena through my voice. Hence, I am not the traitor against the state; the ultimate traitor is that same Lord, the player of the veena.  There exists no royal authority or second divinity who has the power to punish Him. No police force or prison has yet been created, that has the power to imprison the Lord.

The royal translator deployed by the king is simply translating the language of that utterance, not its soul. His translation projects that utterance as treason, for his aim is to satisfy the king. But my writing expresses the truth, radiance and the very spirit of life, for my aim is to offer my devotion to the Lord. For the tormented, anguished dwellers on this earth, I appear as a shower of truth, the tears that rain from the Lord’s eyes. I have not revolted against the king, but against injustice. …

[From Kazi Nazrul Islam: Selected Essays, translated by Radha Chakravarty. New Delhi: Penguin Random House, 2024.]

About the Book:
Selected Essays reveals to us the extraordinary versatility of Nazrul as an essayist. Addressing subjects as diverse as social reform, politics, communal harmony, environmental concerns, education, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy, this rich collection showcases Nazrul’s dynamic vision and unique use of language as an instrument of change. The essays chart his evolving consciousness as a thinker, writer and activist, offering vivid glimpses of the ethos of his times, his relationships with leading figures such as Tagore and Gandhi, and his active engagement with social, political and cultural processes. These new translations bring Nazrul’s powerful voice to life, all its vibrant immediacy.

About the Author:

Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) is widely remembered as the fiery iconoclast who fought against the structures of oppression and orthodoxy. The iconic ‘rebel poet’ of Bengal and the national poet of Bangladesh, Nazrul continues to be loved for his songs and poetry. But he was also a writer of powerful short stories, novels, essays,  journalistic editorials and articles. In his literary career, which lasted from 1919 to 1942, Nazrul achieved both fame and notoriety, for his fiery, forthright, unorthodox approach to life and art.

About the Translator:

Radha Chakravarty is a writer, critic, and translator. She has published 23 books, including poetry, translations of major Bengali writers, anthologies of South Asian literature, and critical writings on Tagore, translation and contemporary women’s writing. She was nominated for the Crossword Translation Award 2004 and the Pushcart Prize 2020. 

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Review

Nazrul and His World View

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Selected Essays: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Author: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Translator: Radha Chakravarty

Publisher: Penguin Random House

The Bengali poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), is widely remembered as the fiery iconoclast who fought against the structures of oppression and orthodoxy. The iconic bidrohi or ‘rebel poet’ of Bengal, Nazrul continues to be loved for his songs and poetry that were aimed at arousing the rebellious spirit of both Hindus and Muslims alike. But what of his prose, his journalism, and his politics? Selected Essays reveals to us the extraordinary versatility of Nazrul as a writer, thinker, and activist. Addressing subjects as diverse as social reform, politics, communal harmony, environmental concerns, education, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy, this rich collection showcases Nazrul’s dynamic vision and unique use of language as an instrument of change. The essays chart his evolving consciousness as a thinker, writer, and activist, offering vivid glimpses of the ethos of his times, his relationships with leading figures such as Tagore and Gandhi, and his active engagement with social, political, and cultural processes.

Of the forty-one essays selected here, (three undated), the first thirteen are all written in different places all in the year 1920. That was the year Nazrul returned to Bengal after serving in Karachi during World War I as a member of the Bengal regiment of the colonial British army. Reacting to the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre he writes, “May the Dyer monument never allow us to forget Dyer’s memory” because on that occasion Hindus and Muslims embraced each other and wept together as brothers. They shared the same agony as children of the same womb. In ‘Strike’, he praises the social awareness that has swept among the ranks of the labouring class and believes that the “protest is not just a rebellion, but the death-bite of the suffering, moribund class”. When some migrants were fired upon after a clash with the armed police at a place called Kanchagarhi, he asked in ‘Who is Responsible for the Killing of Migrants?’, whether anyone can ever tolerate such injustice towards humanity, conscience, self-respect and independence and states that they are no longer going to passively accept such assaults. ‘Awakening Our Neglected Power’ contends that democracy or people’s power cannot be established in our country because of the oppression inflicted by the Bhadra[1] community.

There are several essays in which Nazrul speaks about the state of National Education, he envisages ‘A National University’, and in a very powerful piece that he wrote from Presidency Jail in Kolkata on 7 January 1923, titled ‘Deposition of a Political Prisoner’ he reveals his self-confidence:

“If anything has struck me as unjust, I have described it as injustice, described oppression as oppression, named falsehoods as falsehood. …For that endless mockery, insults, humiliation and assaults have been rained on me, from within my home and beyond. But nothing whatsoever has intimidated me into dishonouring my own truth or my own Lord. No temptation has overpowered me enough to compromise my integrity or to diminish the immense self-satisfaction gleaned through my own endeavours…. I repeat, I have no fear, no sorrow. I am the child of the elixir of immortality.”

Nazrul grew up in a traditional religious environment, yet in his writings he drew upon both Hindu and Islamic sources, and expressed a faith that transcended the limits of any single religion. In several essays, he harps on the problems of Hindu-Muslim amity and enmity and warns us about “this hideous business of purity of touch and untouchability”. He wants only humans to live in India as brothers and wants everyone to be wary of the terrible deceptions created by both the religions.

In the essay ‘Temple and Mosque‘, he states that both parties have the same leader, and his real name is Shaitan, the Devil. Written in response to the communal riots that broke out in Kolkata on 2 April 1926, he feels that those very same places of worship that ought to have been bridges between heaven and earth are instead causing harm to humanity today, and so those temples and mosques should be broken down. In another essay titled ‘Hindu-Muslim’, penned the same year, Nazrul talks about the question of an internal tail in human beings. He says, “There’s no telling what animal excitement lured the human mind to discover a substitute for tails in the beard or tiki[2]!” He further elaborates:

“Both Hindu and Muslim ways of life can be tolerated, but their faith in tikitwa and daritwa, the orthodox ways of tiki and beard, is not to be borne, for both instigate violence and killing. Tikitwa is not Hindutwa, it is perhaps punditwa, the way of the pundit! Likewise, the beard, too, is not Islamic, it is mullatwa, the way of the mullah. These two types of hair tufts, marked with religious dogma, are precisely the reason for all the conflict and hair-splitting we witness today!”

Though it is not possible to discuss all the different editorials, book reviews, and political pieces that are included in this collection, one must mention at least two essays that speak about literary issues as well. In 1932, Nazrul wrote for Patrika (subsequently reprinted in Bulbul the following year), an interesting piece titled ‘World Literature Today’. In it he states that there are two kinds of writers present in the world today and their different tendencies have assumed immense proportions.

“Ranged on both sides are great war heroes, champion charioteers of the battlefield. On one side are the dreamers, such as Noguchi, Yeats and Rabindranath, and on the other, Gorky, Johan Bojer, Bernard Shaw, Benavente and their ilk.”

But Nazrul’s ire in being ostracized comes out clearly in ‘A Great Man’s Love Is a Sandbank’ (1927), where he criticises the high-handedness of Rabindranath Tagore. He begins by telling us how he was a prisoner of state at the Alipore Central Jail when he was informed by the assistant jailor that Tagore had recognised Nazrul’s talent and dedicated his play Basanta to him. The other political prisoners present there had laughed at him not in joy but in incredulity. For him, the blessing turned into a curse. His very close friends and state prisoners also turned away from him. He realised what massive internal damage this outward gain had caused him. Busy with his political agenda, he didn’t have the time to sit and meditate as advised several times by Tagore. So Nazrul writes, “I find that the brighter my countenance shines in this glory, the darker some other famous poets’ faces seem to appear.” He mentions that he had grown accustomed to police torture but when literary personages begin to torment one, their brutality knows no bounds. “Alas, O youthful new literature!” His crime was that young people celebrated his work. He laments further,

“That Kabiguru[3], revered by both parties like the grandsire Bhisma, should assent to this plot of killing Abhimanyu, is the greatest sorrow of our times. …As for me, I have discarded that topi–pyjama—sherwani–beard look[4], only out of fear of being mocked as a ‘Mia Saheb’. But still there is no respite for me…. Now we get the feeling that the Rabindranath of today is not the same Rabindranath we have always known.”

That the trajectories and beliefs of Tagore and Nazrul went in the opposite direction is well- known. In the essay, Nazrul then further continues his complaints against Tagore. He questions whether they have been considered as his enemies, simply because they didn’t go to him frequently. Also, since the goddess of wealth blessed him, Kabiguru did not know what dire poverty the new writers had to struggle against, languishing in conditions of starvation or semi-starvation. So, he humbly requests Kabiguru not to sprinkle salt on their wounds by mocking the impoverishment that is their singular affliction, for that is one form of heartlessness that they cannot tolerate.

Of the last three essays written in 1960, namely, ‘The Science of Life’(where men “are surrounded by all sorts of travails and sufferings, and many of them cannot be alleviated”), ‘A Point to Ponder’(where the nation faces an immense problem regarding the dispute about the instructions and procedure for the worship of the mother, the Bharatmata, our Mother India) and in ‘What We Need Today’, Nazrul speaks of the necessity of a “vast tumult in India”. Making his readers aware of the vast duplicity and trickery in the name of religion, he warns that unless one avoids the baseness of being subjugated by an external power, there is no prospect of heaven for us, only the grotesqueness of hell. He wants the kalboishakhi, the wild summer storm, to “approach in all its fury, rearing his head like a hooded serpent swimming in the unchecked torrents of an ocean of blood” and sweep everything away.

Before concluding one should also make a few comments on the translation. As a veteran translator, Radha Chakravarty, has successfully managed to transcreate some very difficult Bengali idioms, cultural nuances and analogies that Nazrul used in some of his essays. As she admitted in the Introduction, “[T]ranslating Nazrul’s prose proved to be a challenge, as demanding as it was exhilarating. …The endeavour demanded experiment and creativity rather than mechanical lexical ability and involved some difficult choices…Literal translation has been avoided, with greater focus on the sense, emotion, intellectual import, rhetorical features and stylistic particularities of the Bengali source texts.” She further adds that the present translations stemmed from a desire to bring Nazrul’s essays to a contemporary audience in South Asia and the rest of the world, to draw attention to his literary achievement as well as his significance as a writer, thinker, activist, and visionary. Though a lot of research and translation projects on Nazrul has been going on in Bangladesh for quite some time (where he holds the status of National Poet), in India, especially in West Bengal, the response is still rather lukewarm. Hence this volume is strongly recommended as a collector’s item.

[1] Literally decent but here indicates the bourgeoisie.

[2] A tuft of hair at the back of a tonsured head 

[3] Tagore

[4] Cap-pyajama-longcoat – these with a beard were associated with the genteel muslim look – the look of the Mia Saheb

CLICK HERE TO READ THE EXCERPT

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

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Contents

Borderless April, 2024

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

April Showers… Click here to read.

Translations

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. Click here 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. Click here to read.

The Tobacco Lover by Ihlwha Choi has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here 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.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Kirpal Singh, Scott Thomas Outlar, Nusrat Jahan Esa, George Freek, Snigdha Agrawal, Phil Wood, Pramod Rastogi, Stuart McFarlane, Ahmad Al-Khatat, Shamik Banerjee, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Lisa Sultani, Jenny Middleton, Kumar Bhatt, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In The Desk, Rhys Hughes writes of his writerly needs with a speck of humour. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Heatwave & Tagore

Ratnottama Sengupta relates songs of Tagore to the recent heatwave scorching Kolkata. Click here to read.

The Older I get, the More Youthful Feels Tagore

Asad Latif gives a paean in prose to the evergreen lyrics of Tagore. Click here to read.

No Film? No Problem

Ravi Shankar takes us through a journey of cameras and photography, starting with black and white films. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Witches and Crafts: A Spook’s Tale, Devraj Singh Kalsi finds a ghostly witch in his library. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Of Peace and Cheese, Suzanne Kamata gives us a tongue in cheek glimpse of photo-modelling mores. Click here to read.

Essays

Discovering Rabindranath and My Own Self

Professor Fakrul Alam muses on the impact of Tagore in his life. Click here to read.

The Lyric Temper

Jared Carter explores the creative soul of poets through varied times and cultures. Click here to read.

Bengaliness and Recent Trends in Indian English Poetry: Some Random Thoughts

Somdatta Mandal browses over multiple Bengali poets who write in English. Click here to read.

Stories

Hope is the Waking Dream of a Man

Shevlin Sebastian gives a vignette of life of an artist in Mumbai. Click here to read.

Viceregal Lodge

Lakshmi Kannan explores patriarchal mindsets. Click here to read.

The Thirteen-Year Old Pyromaniac

Paul Mirabile gives a gripping tale about a young pyromaniac. Click here to 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.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Jessica Mudditt’s Once Around the Sun – From Cambodia to Tibet. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Bhaskar Parichha’s Biju Patnaik: The Rainmaker of Opposition Politics. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Mahasweta Devi: Writer, Activist, Visionary, edited by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Basudhara Roy reviews Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diasporas, edited by Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne, Shash Trevett. Click here to read.

Swagata Chatterjee reviews Sanjukta Dasgupta’s Ekalavya Speaks. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Bhang Journeys: Stories, Histories, Trips and Travels by Akshaya Bahibala. Click here to read.

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Editorial

April Showers

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
….
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

— Prologue, The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400)

Centuries ago, April was associated with spring induced travel… just as pilgrims set out on a journey in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Some of the journeys, like to Mecca, become a part of religious lore. And some just add to the joie de vivre of festivities during different festivals that punctuate much of Asia during this time — Pohela Boisakh (Bengali), Songkran (Thai), Navavarsha (Nepali), Ugadi (Indian), Vaisakhi (Indian), Aluth Avurudda (Sri Lankan) and many more.

A hundred years ago, in April 1924, Tagore had also set out to journey across the oceans to China — a trip which, perhaps, led to the setting up of Cheena Bhavan in Vishwa Bharati. Recently, Professor Uma Dasgupta in a presentation stated that Tagore’s Nobel prize winning Gitanjali, and also a collection called The Crescent Moon (1913), had been translated to Chinese in 1923 itself… He was renowned within China even before he ventured there. His work had been critically acclaimed in literary journals within the country. That arts connect in an attempt to override divides drawn by politics is well embodied in Tagore’s work as an NGO and as a writer. He drew from all cultures, Western and Eastern, to try and get the best together to serve humankind, closing gaps borne of human constructs. This spirit throbbed in his work and his words. Both towered beyond politics or any divisive constructs and wept with the pain of human suffering.

This issue features translations of Tagore’s writings from his childhood — both done by professor Somdatta Mandal — his first trip with his father to the Himalayas and his first experience of snow in Brighton. We have a transcreation of some of his lyrics by Ratnottama Sengupta. The translation of his birthday poem to himself — Pochishe Boisakh (his date of birth in the Bengali calendar) along with more renditions in English of Korean poetry by Ihlwha Choi and Manzur Bismil’s powerful poetry from Balochi by Fazal Baloch, add richness to our oeuvre. Bismil’s poetry is an ode to the people — a paean to their struggle. It would seem from all the translations that if poets and writers had their way, the world would be filled with love and kindness.

Yet, the world still thunders with wars, with divides — perhaps, there will come a time when soldiers will down their weapons and embrace with love for, they do not fight for themselves but for causes borne of artificial human divides. It is difficult to greet people on any festival or new year, knowing there are parts  of the world where people cannot celebrate for they have no food, no water, no electricity, no homes and no lives… for many have died for a cause that has been created not by them as individuals but by those who are guided solely by their hankering for power and money, which are again human constructs. Beyond these constructs there is a reality that grows out of acceptance and love, the power that creates humanity, the Earth and the skies…

Exploring the world beyond these constructs are poems by Scott Thomas Outlar, Nusrat Jahan Esa and Shamik Banerjee, who spins out an aubade to Kanchenjunga extolling the magnificence of a construct that is beyond the human domain.  Michael Burch brings in the theme of evolution and adaptation — the survival of the fittest. We have colours of life woven into our issue with poetry from Ryan Quinn Flangan, Kirpal Singh, George Freek, Stuart McFarlane, Lisa Sultani, Jenny Middleton, Phil Wood, Kumar Bhatt, Snigdha Agrawal and more. Rhys Hughes adds a zest of humour as he continues to explore signs and names with poetry and, in his column, he has written to extoll the virtues of a writing desk!

Humour is brought into non-fiction by Devraj Singh Kalsi’s narrative about being haunted by an ancient British ghost in Kolkata! Suzanne Kamata adds to the lightness while dwelling on modelling for photographs in the Japanese way. Ravi Shankar plunges into the history of photography while musing on black and white photographs from the past.

Tagore again seeps into non-fiction with Professor Fakrul Alam and Asad Latif telling us what the visionary means to the Bengali psyche. Starting with precursors of Tagore, like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and post-him, Sarojini Naidu, Mandal has shared an essay on Bengaliness in contemporary poetry written by those born to the culture. Jared Carter has given discussed ‘the lyric temper’ in poetry — a wonderful empathetic recap of what it takes to write poetry. Exploring perspectives of multiple greats, like Yeats, Keats, George Santyana, Fitzgerald, Carter states, “Genuine lyricism comes only after the self has been quieted.”

Sengupta has conversed with a dance choreographer, Sudershan Chakravorty, who has been composing to create an awareness about the dilemmas faced by migrants. An autobiographical narrative in Hindustani from Ilma Khan, translated by Janees, shows the resilience of the human spirit against oppressive social norms. Our fiction has stories from Lakshmi Kannan and Shevlin Sebastian urging us to take a relook at social norms that install biases and hatred, while Paul Mirabile journeys into the realm of fantasy with his strange story about a boy obsessed with pyromania.

We carry excerpts from journalistic books by Jessica Muddit, Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet, and by Bhaskar Parichha, Biju Patnaik: The Rainmaker of Opposition Politics.  Parichha has also reviewed for us an interesting book by Akshaya Bahibala, called Bhang Journeys: Stories, Histories, Trips and Travels. Basudhara Roy has explored migrant poetry in Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diasporas, edited by Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne, Shash Trevett. Meenakshi Malhotra has discussed the volume brought out by Radha Chakravarty on the legendary Mahasweta Devi — Mahasweta Devi: Writer, Activist, Visionary. Meenakshi concludes her review contending:

“It is an ironical reflection on our times that a prolific and much awarded Indian writer– perhaps deserving of the Nobel prize — should be excised from the university syllabus of a central university. This move has, perhaps paradoxically, elicited even more interest in Mahasweta Devi’s work and has also consolidated her reputation as a mascot, a symbol of resistance to state violence. A timely intervention, this volume proves yet again that a great writer, in responding to local, regional, environmental ethical concerns sensitively, transcends his/her immediate context to acquire global and universal significance.”

There is more content than I mention here. Do pause by our current issue to take a look.

I would hugely like to thank the Borderless team for their unceasing support, and especially Sohana Manzoor, also for her fantastic art. Heartfelt thanks to all our wonderful writers and our readers. We exist because you all are — ubuntu.

Hope you have a wonderful month. Here’s wishing you all wonderful new years and festivals in March-April — Easter, Eid and the new years that stretch across Asian cultures.

Looking forward and hoping for peace and goodwill.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Tagore Translations

Snow & Petals of Parijat

Travel writing by Tagore: Translation by Somdatta Mandal

In 1885, under Jnanadanandini’s1 editorial venture, a children’s magazine called Balak was published from the Tagore household in Calcutta. It contained different writings of the young Rabindranath, who would handle a lot of things for the publication. This magazine was later merged with Bharati and edited by his elder sister, Swarnakumari Devi. Among the different entries that Rabindranath contributed for Balak are two interesting travel pieces. One travelogue published in Vol. 3, Ashar 1292 B.S. (July-August 1885) called “Das Diner Chhuti” (Ten Days’ Holiday) narrates his trip to Hazaribagh that year along with his nephew and niece during their school holidays. The second one called “Baraf Pora” (Snowfall) describes his first experience of snowfall in England in the winter of 1878 when he was living in Brighton along with his brother Satyendranath’s family2.

Rabindranth Tagore (1861-1941) in England
Baraf Pora (Snowfall)

The outlines of pictures gradually blur out of the mind; the shadows of all that we see every day come ahead and crowd it, replacing the things we had seen a few days earlier. We cannot clearly understand where the earlier images get lost in the melee.

I went to England in the year 1878 A.D. That was about seven years ago. At that time, I was young too. I can remember overall what I had seen in England, but all her pictures are no longer clear in my mind. I cannot match one line with another. A kind of mist has already descended on my memories of England. The pictures must be brought out occasionally and aired in the sun. That is why I have brought out my memories in the sunlight today.

It was the middle of October when I reached England. I didn’t feel it to be too cold then. We stayed in Brighton. It was sunny in Brighton then. Happy with the sunshine, all men, both young and old, had come in hordes to the seashore. The sick and the elderly people moved in pushcarts with one or two young girls or any other member of the family accompanying them. The ladies were dressed up in different kinds of clothing with umbrellas over their heads. Small boys dragged iron wheels and ran along with them. Some ladies sat on the seashore with open umbrellas over their heads. Some were busy following the movement of the waves and collecting different kinds of seashells. An Italian beggar was moving around playing an organ. Vegetable and milk vendors were returning after supplying their products in different houses. A man and a woman were riding their own horses on the pathway and the dressed up stable boys were following them. Some schoolmasters were walking with a big group of boys following them; on the other hand, each schoolmistress had a whole trail of schoolgirls following her. They had come to enjoy the sea breeze, or if not, at least the sunshine. Quite often we would run around the grassy fields near the seashore. Though the age was not conducive for running around, we didn’t mind because no one suitable was present there to criticise us for our out-of-the-way behaviour. The best time for our outing was ten or eleven o’clock in the morning. Whatever it might be, the seaside was celebrating the festival of sunshine when we reached Brighton.

As the days went by, the cold started increasing. The mud on the streets froze in the cold weather. The dew on the grass would freeze too and it seemed as if someone had scattered lime powder everywhere. On waking up in the morning I found that ice crystals had formed different designs on the windowpane. Sometimes I also found one or two sparrows that had died in the cold lying on the road. The few yellow leaves remaining on the trees also fell down, leaving the lean bare branches behind. The small little robin birds came to the glass windows with reliable hearts begging for bits of bread. Everyone assured us that we would soon witness snowfall. 

Christmas was almost approaching. It was biting cold on a moonlit night. The doors and the windows of the room were all shut tight with the curtains drawn over them. The gas was burning. A fire was lit to warm up the place. After dinner we were all around the fireplace busy chatting. The two young boys attacked me. Despite having plenty of proof, I do not want to mention here that they never behaved politely with me. They have grown up now, they even read Balak; so, I do not want to write about them and then make my life more miserable answering their questions. A few days later they will also learn to protest. Because I would not be able to counter them, I remained quiet. You readers can guess whatever you like about their behaviour – I will not volunteer to take any responsibility on my shoulders.

Everyone was sitting warm enough when suddenly we got the news of the snowfall. As all our doors were shut, we did not know when it began. All of us including the children ran outside to see the beautiful sight. The cold seemed to have frozen the moonlight in layers and stuck on the streets, on the grass, the bare branches, the sloped slate roofs. There was no one on the street. All the houses in front of us had their doors and windows shut. The night and quietness, the moonlight and the snow all blended to create a wonderful scene! The children (and I too) picked up the snow on the grass and turned it into little balls. As soon as we brought them in, they melted into water.

For me this was the first night of snowfall. After this I have seen snowfall several times. But describing it is not easy, especially after so many years. I was walking on the street covering myself entirely in black woolen clothes. The sky was grey. Little flakes of snow were falling all around like quinine powder. It did not fall like raindrops – it came in lightly as if flying or dancing. It came and touched your clothes lightly; you could dust and collect them. The wheels of cars left their marks on the soft white layers of snow. One also felt sad to leave dirty and muddied shoe imprints on the white layer of snow. It seemed as if the petals of the parijat flower were falling from the sky. Snow also got stuck on the black dresses and black umbrellas of the pedestrians.

Parijat flowers falling
Snowflakes falling

It was wonderful to watch how everything got covered with snow gradually. At first, it fell merely like some white streaks on the streets. There was a small plot of land in front of our house. It had a few saplings and creepers – no leaves on the shrubs but just bare branches. Those branches were still not covered with snow, so it was a mixture of green and white. The saplings seemed to be freezing in the cold. Their clothes were gone; wearing white funeral clothes of snow, the sap in their veins also seemed to be freezing. The black slate roof of the house was gradually turning grey and then white.  Soon the streets were also covered with snow – the small saplings got buried in it. The snow also piled up on the narrow windowsill. The noses of the few pedestrians on the street turned blue, their faces shriveled in the cold. Far off at a distance, the church steeple was faintly visible like a white ghost in the sky.

It is very difficult now in this hot and humid summer month to even imagine how cold it was. I remember how after taking a cold-water bath in the morning my hands would become so numb that I could not find the handkerchief in my pocket. There was no limit to the amount of warm clothes on my body. Despite the thick shoes and socks, the soles of my feet would become cold in no time. Even after getting inside a bundle of blankets at night, I would be worried how I would turn on the other side because whenever I turned, I would get a shock. We heard the story about four fishermen who had gone out to fish in the sea. When a ship came near their boat, they saw that the four of them had already frozen to death. The coachman who was sleeping on his carriage at night had also died. The water in the pipes often froze and caused the pipes to burst. Snow had covered up the River Thames. The lake inside Hyde Park was also frozen. Hundreds of people wore a kind of iron shoes and skated over that lake every day.

This skating was a wonderful affair. Hundreds of people wearing skating shoes turned and bent and twisted and glided over that hard lake. The way people skated was like the way a boat moved with its sail. With the body slightly tilted on one side, one could float easily on the ground. No effort was needed to step forward – one did not have to quarrel with the ground or defeat it with each footstep.

Trying to bring back the winter of England to our country even through our imagination is futile. The heat here rises very quickly, melts like the snow and cannot be grasped. It is not sufficiently welcomed within the blankets and quilts here. 

  1. Eldest sister-in-law of Tagore ↩︎
  2. Elder brother of Rabindranath Tagore and ↩︎

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 to 1941) was a brilliant poet, writer, musician, artist, educator – a polymath. He was the first Nobel Laureate from Asia. His writing spanned across genres, across global issues and across the world. His works remains relevant to this day.

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

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

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