Nazrul’s Tumi Shundor Tai Cheye Thaki(Because you are so beautiful, I keep looking at you) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Hotel Acapulco, has been composed and translated from Italian by Ivan Pozzoni. Click hereto read.
Farouk Gulsara pays a tribute to a doctor and a friend. Click hereto read.
Musings of a Copywriter
InBecoming a ‘Plain’ Writer, Devraj Singh Kalsi explores the world of writer’s retreats on hills with a touch of irony. Clickhere to read.
Notes from Japan
In Educating for Peace in Rwanda, Suzanne Kamata discusses the peace initiatives following the terrors of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide while traveling within the country with her university colleague and students. Click here to read.
Bijoy K Mishra writes of cyclones in Odisha, while discussing Bhaskar Parichha’s Cyclones in Odisha – Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience. Clickhereto read.
Landscape of Change by Jill Pelto, Smithsonian. From Public Domain
Hope is the mantra for all human existence. We hope for a better future, for love, for peace, for good weather, for abundance. When that abundance is an abundance of harsh weather or violence wrought by wars, we hope for calm and peace.
This is the season for cyclones — Dana, Trami, Yixing, Hurricanes Milton and Helene — to name a few that left their imprint with the destruction of both property and human lives as did the floods in Spain while wars continue to annihilate more lives and constructs. That we need peace to work out how to adapt to climate change is an issue that warmongers seem to have overlooked. We have to figure out how we can work around losing landmasses and lives to intermittent floods caused by tidal waves, landslides like the one in Wayanad and rising temperatures due to the loss of ice cover. The loss of the white cover of ice leads to more absorption of heat as the melting water is deeper in colour. Such phenomena could affect the availability of potable water and food, impacted by the changes in flora and fauna as a result of altered temperatures and weather patterns. An influx of climate refugees too is likely in places that continue habitable. Do we need to find ways of accommodating these people? Do we need to redefine our constructs to face the crises?
Echoing concerns for action to adapt to climate change and hoping for peace, our current issue shimmers with vibrancy of shades while weaving in personal narratives of life, living and the process of changing to adapt.
An essay on Bhaskar Parichha’s recent book on climate change highlights the action that is needed in the area where Dana made landfall recently. In terms of preparedness things have improved, as Bijoy K Mishra contends in his essay. But more action is needed. Denying climate change or thinking of going back to pre-climate change era is not an option for humanity anymore. While politics often ignores the need to acknowledge this crises and divides destroying with wars, riots and angst, a narrative for peace is woven by some countries like Japan and Rwanda.
Suzanne Kamata recently visited Rwanda. She writes about how she found by educating people about the genocide of 1994, the locals have found a way to live in peace with people who they addressed as their enemies before… as have the future generations of Japan by remembering the atomic holocausts of 1945.
In translations, we have poetry from varied countries. Ihlwha Choi has self-translated his poem from Korean. Ivan Pozzoni has done the same from Italian. One of Tagore’s lesser-known verses, perhaps influenced by the findings of sensitivity in plants by his contemporary, Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) to who he dedicated the collection which homed this poem, Phool Photano(making flowers bloom), has been translated from Bengali. Professor Alam has translated Nazrul’s popular song, Tumi Shundor Tai Cheye Thaki (Because you are so beautiful, I keep gazing at you).
Stories travel around the world with Paul Mirabile’s narrative giving a flavour of bohemian Paris in 1974. Anna Moon’s fiction set in Philippines gives a darker perspective of life. Lakshmi Kannan’s narrative hovers around the 2008 bombing in Mumbai, an event that evoked much anger, violence and created hatred in hearts. In contrast, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao brings a sense of warmth into our lives with a story about a child and his love for a dog. Sreelekha Chatterjee weaves a tale of change, showcasing adapting to climate crisis from a penguin’s perspective.
Trying something new, being out of the box is what helped humans move out from caves, invent wheels and create civilisations. Hopefully, this is what will help us move into the next phase of human development where wars and weapons will become redundant, and we will be able to adapt to changing climes and move towards a kinder, more compassionate existence.
Thank you all for pitching in with your fabulous pieces. There are ones that have not been covered here. Do pause by our content’s page to see all our content. Huge thanks to the fantastic Borderless team and to Sohana Manzoor, for her art too.
Title: The Collected Short Stories of Kazi Nazrul Islam
Editors: Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaustav Chakraborty
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
He dons many mantles. Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899 – 1976), the national poet of Bangladesh, was a prolific Bengali poet, revolutionary, essayist, journalist, editor, activist and composer of songs. The very mention of his name conjures up the figure of a fiery iconoclast who fought against the structures of oppression and orthodoxy in society to bring about progress and change. In fact, his self-styled image as the volatile bidrohior ‘rebel poet’ overshadows his other literary achievements and that is how ordinary people still remember him.
This unique volume presents all twenty of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s short stories for the first time in English translation. Done by different hands, they feature rich imagery, evocative landscapes, references to music, classical poetry, folktales and more. The prominent characteristics of these stories are simplicity, vivacity and emotionality. They have been sourced from different anthologies. The first six stories are from the collection Harvest of Sorrow1. The opening story of the collection titled “Harvest of Sorrow”, is a collage of tales narrated by the three characters: Dara, Bedoura and Saiful Mulk. Dara, located in Iran’s Golestan, narrates his tale of love, separation and devotion to his motherland through a series of reminiscences. After that, we hear the same set of events narrated from Bedoura’s perspective. Then follows the account narrated by Saiful Mulk, portrayed as a sinner who tempted Bedoura into losing her virginity. Overcome by guilt, he joins the freedom struggle where he encounters Dara. What follows is a tale of redemption loss and transcendence of physical love to a more spiritual kind of love. “Hena”, the second story of the collection, is narrated by Sohrab, and its theme is also love and war – both internal and external battle. “In the Relentless Rain” is basically a story of love between strangers. The author doesn’t provide us the names of the lovers – rather both are addressed as dark-skinned. The next story, “Half Asleep”, is divided into two parts: Azhar’s story and Pari’s story. Azhar’s story is mainly about his sacrifices and why he favours detachment from the sensuousness. His renunciation of carnal pleasures towards attaining greater contentment ends his relationship with Pari, whose marriage he arranges with one of his friends. He ensures that Pari remains confined within the household structure. By making Pari assert that she will not betray her role as a loving wife without pretending to erase the love that she has for her former lover, Nazrul offers a critique of the conventional notion of ‘loyalty’ of wives to serve their husbands. The first-person narrator of “Insatiate Desire” soliloquizes on a saga of disunited love where the narrator falls in love with his childhood friend, feigns disinterest in her when her marriage is arranged to another man, and characterises his own actions as stemming from the most noble impulses. The final piece of the volume, “Letter from a Political Prisoner”, is an epistolary story of a political prisoner who has also been diagnosed with fatal tuberculosis. The story is addressed to the lady of his dreams, Manashi, who does not seem to have reciprocated his love.
The title story of the next section is from an anthology of the same name, The Agony of the Destitute2. The story centres around the glorification of war but in the process, it also raises questions related to war and gender. In sharp contrast to the narrator-protagonist of this narrative who detaches himself from domesticity to join the war, the protagonist of the very next story, “Autobiography of a Vagabond” suffers a tragic end to his domestic life and thereafter joins the army and eventually dies while fighting in Baghdad. “Meher Negar”, the third story of this section, is another tale of war and conflicts in love. Yusuf Khan, the protagonist, is a Pathan from the mountains of Waziristan who meets Meher Negar (whose actual name is Gulshan) after reaching a distant land to learn music. Later he joins the War of Independence for Afghanistan. Unable to forget her, he visits Meher Negar one last time only to discover that she is no more. As an allegorical piece of writing, “Evening Star” is about a man’s love for a distant beloved that is ultimately futile because of the probable demise of the beloved.
“Rakshasi” is written in the language spoken by the Bagdi community of the Birbhum district in West Bengal in which the speaker Bindi is a woman who complains to her friend about how society has stigmatized her as a demoness because she has killed her husband to save him from abandoning her and getting remarried to a notorious girl.“Salek” is a short moral story where, through a series of events, a dervish (later revealed to be Hafiz) shows an arrogant Kazi the path to salvation; the former becomes the latter’s salek or the one who shows the way. In “The Widow”, Begum, the narrator, speaks of her sorrowful youth, her happy married life and the miseries of her widowhood to her friend Salima. The story challenge multiple stereotypes that are often associated with the women of South Asia. The concluding tale of this volume is titled “The Restless Traveller” which is an impressionistic story centered round the urge towards finding freedom by restless youth.
The four stories that comprise the third volume of Nazrul’s stories and the next section, called The Shiuli Mala3, speak about Nazrul’s ecological sensitivity. The opening story “The Lotus-Cobras” is about Zohra and her human and non-human intimacies. As the editors rightly point out, “In the portrayal of Zohra’s attachment with her serpent sons, Nazrul seems to be very close to the essence of posthumanism where radical posthuman subjectivity is understood on the basis of an intersectional ethics of plurality”. “The King of the Djinns” is a tragicomic story about how Alla-Rakha, the protagonist, resorts to a series of tricks to get married to Chan Bhanu, the woman he desires. “The Volcano” deals with the disaster that is caused by the sudden eruption of repressed anger and egotistic pride in Sabur, the humble, helpful and uncomplaining protagonist of the story. It is a study of the anxiety of manliness. “The Shiuli Mala”, the concluding story of this section, is a testimony to Nazrul’s love for the trope of separated lovers or unrequited love. Set in Shillong, it primarily deals with a platonic and disunited love between Azhar, a well-known chess player, and Shiuli, the daughter of another brilliant chess player, Professor Chowdhury. Structured as a flashback, Azhar narrates the story to his friends who are part of a regular chess adda.
Two unanthologised stories end the collection. “Letter from a Lost Boy” is an epistolary account of a boy who writes to his mother about some incidents in his life that have occurred since he had left her until the time of his return. The story is a critique of child marriage and the consequent early widowhood that brings never-ending misery in the life of a woman. “The Hawk-Cuckoo from the Woods” tells the story of a marital discord between Dushasan Mitra and his wife Romola. Their friction widens after Romola becomes too attached to an injured hawk-cuckoo and her husband feels agitated by her gradual disconnect from their conjugal life. The story ends with Romola flaying her husband for throwing the bird away, finding and hugging the dying bird to her heart and plunging into the waters of the Padma.
All these twenty stories invite the reader to re-evaluate the ‘rebel poet’ as an empathetic humanitarian who also excelled in human relationships. Nazrul is essentially multilingual – he uses Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and Persian words along with Bangla. This book is the outcome of a project sponsored by the Nazrul Centre for Social and Cultural Studies, Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol, West Bengal. The volume is a transnational, collaborative labour of love bringing together the editors and translators from Bangladesh and India. Most of them are academics and have taken up the challenge to translate the stories, which in their infinite variety, is indeed a difficult task. The stories are accompanied by a timeline of Nazrul’s life and a detailed critical introduction that not only provides foundational context for the stories, but also highlights Nazrul’s attempt to counter majoritarianism and various hegemonies by dismantling hierarchies and celebrating intimate pluralities. In fact, at the end of their introduction, the editors Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaustav Chakraborty ask two very pertinent questions. “In which category can we place Nazrul? Is there a need to formulate a different category altogether in order to position him?” The answers of course lie with the readers of the translated stories to decide. All said and done, this volume of short stories is strongly recommended for all classes of readers who are keen to discover the multi-faceted genius of Kazi Nazrul Islam and who could not earlier savour their uniqueness because they were only written in Bangla.
Byathar Daan (Harvest of Sorrows) published in March 1922 ↩︎
Rikter Bedon (Agony of the Destitute) published in January 1925 ↩︎
Shiuli Mala (Garland of Jasmines) published in October 1931 ↩︎
Somdatta Mandal, critic, academic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
The many faces pf Kazi Nazrul Islam. From the Public Domain
The abiding image of Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) is that of the “Rebel Poet,” who defines himself as a fiery comet streaking across the firmament, emblazoning in the sky a message of revolutionary change. Unlike Rabindranath Tagore, Nazrul was not born into social and intellectual privilege. He has been described, in fact, as “the ‘other’ of the elite Kolkata bhadralok”.[1] Born in Churulia village in the Bardhaman district of Bengal, Nazrul was the son of the head of a mosque, studied in an Islamic school, and during his youth, joined a Leto group, a travelling band of local performers. When in high school, he was recruited into the British army, and served in Karachi. Even after he returned to Bengal as a young poet who had already acquired fame and repute, he remained something of an outsider to the intellectually sophisticated world of the literati. It was from this position of an outsider that he fashioned his own image as the bidrohior ‘Rebel poet’ who challenged the structures of the political, social, cultural and literary establishment with the sheer force of his iconoclastic writings.
Though best known as a poet, composer and revolutionary, Nazrul’s oeuvre also includes novels, essays, stories, editorials and journalistic pieces on a remarkable variety of topics. He was also a lyricist and composer, creator of the iconic genre called “Nazrulgeeti”. Nazrul’s brilliant literary career lasted from 1919 to 1942, when illness brought it to a sudden end. During this short span of time, he wrote on an amazing range of subjects, including politics, nationalism, social change, religion, communalism, education, philosophy, nature, love, aesthetics, literature and music. He saw it as his mission to arouse public awareness about pressing issues, and to jolt them out of their complacency and general apathy. Remembering Nazrul on the 48th anniversary of his death, it is daunting to think about his extraordinary legacy, but also a timely moment to reflect upon his significance for our own times.
In his political stance, Nazrul argued passionately in favour of armed struggle for total independence from colonial rule, rejecting the Gandhian path to advocate a freedom won via armed resistance. The trope of violence recurs in his writings. Yet his apparent espousal of the principle of destruction springs from a utopian dream of constructive change. “Reform can be brought about, not through evolution, but through an outright bloody revolution,” he says in the essay ‘World Literature Today’. “We shall transform the world completely, in form and substance, and remake it, from scratch. Through our endeavours, we shall produce new creation, as well as new creators”.[2]
Nazrul’s ideas on education counter the colonial pattern, advocating instead a curriculum that draws on indigenous contexts and models. He feels that the new education policy should emphasise empathy, inclusiveness and heterogeneity, with a special focus on psychological and emotional development. “It is our desire that our system of education should be such that it progressively makes our life-spirit awakened and alive,” he says in ‘A National Education’, adding: “… We would rather produce daredevils than spineless young men.” [3]
Inclusiveness and acceptance of heterogeneities are central to Nazrul’s vision. During his stint as a soldier in Karachi in his young days, he became interested in Marxist thought. The influence of this line of thinking can be felt in his emphasis on economic egalitarianism, and his passionate support of the cause of the downtrodden peasantry, particularly in his journal Langal. Following the 1926 riots in Kolkata, he expresses his anguish at the communal antagonism between Hindus and Muslims, critiquing different forms of orthodoxy in both religions. In the poem ‘Samyabadi (Egalitarian)’ [4], he declares:
I sing the song of equality— Where all divisions vanish and barriers dissolve, Where Hindu-Buddhist-Muslim-Christian merge and become one …
Nazrul was also a supporter of women’s rights. In his poetry, he speaks of equality between men and women. In ‘Nari (Woman)’ he argues: “If man keeps woman captive, then in ages to come, / He will languish in a prison of his own making”.[5]
Not surprisingly, Nazrul’s fearless, unconventional attitude aroused hostility in many quarters. His bold, outspoken magazine Dhumketu enraged the British. The journal was banned, and Nazrul condemned to rigorous imprisonment. At his trial in 1923, he delivered a resounding rejoinder in his speech ‘Rajbandir Jabanbandi (Deposition of a Political Prisoner)’. He remained a thorn in the flesh for the British administration because of his revolutionary views. Nazrul’s religious views also raised many hackles. He married Ashalata Sengupta, or Pramila, who belonged to the Brahmo Samaj. This antagonised conservative Hindus as well as orthodox Muslims.
Nazrul’s success as a writer, especially Rabindranath Tagore’s appreciation of his work, also caused jealousy among contemporary writers. For Tagore had dedicated his play Basanta to Nazrul, and also sent a telegram to him when he was in prison, exhorting him to give up his hunger strike. In 1922, Tagore had written a poem addressed to Nazrul, which appeared in successive issues of the journal Dhumketu[6]:
Come, O shining comet! Blaze Across the darkness, with your fiery trail. Upon the fortress-top of evil days, Let your victory-pennant sail. What if the forehead of the night Bear misfortune’s sinister sign? Awaken, with your flashing light, All who lie comatose, supine.
Rabindranath Tagore’s recognition of Nazrul’s talent created a lot of envy in literary circles. In 1926-27, parodies of Nazrul’s poetry started appearing in Shanibarer Chithi, a journal published by the Tagore circle. It came to be rumoured that Tagore had not liked Nazrul’s use of the Persianate word khoon (blood) instead of the Sanskritised word rakta, in his composition ‘Kandari Hushiar’. This gave rise to a controversy that became known as khooner mamla (the bloody affair), which drew a strong reaction from a deeply perturbed Nazrul, in the shape of an essay ‘Boror Piriti Balir Baandh” (A Great Man’s Love is a Sandbank)’, in which he blamed Tagore’s followers for the entire misunderstanding. The situation was resolved through the mediation of friends, and relations between Tagore and Nazrul remained cordial. When Tagore died in 1941, Nazrul broadcast a moving elegy, “Robi-Hara”, on Calcutta Radio.
In some ways, Nazrul was ahead of his time. Not many people know that he was aware of environmental issues and the threat of climate change, pressing problems in our own times. In ‘The Day of Annihilation’, he writes in a prophetic vein, of global warming, dissolving ice-caps and a changing ecology, cautioning his readers that if humans exploit the planet, we will eventually be responsible for the destruction of life on earth.
In Nazrul’s life and writings, we encounter the constant pull of contraries.His consciousness was simultaneously rooted in local culture, and infused with a broad transnational spirit. He felt inspired by movements in other parts of the world, such as the Turkish Revolution, the Irish Revolution and the Russian Revolution. In the essay ‘Bartaman Viswasahitya (World Literature Today)’, we discover his awareness about literary developments across the globe.In his political writings he espouses the path of violence, but he also composes exquisitely tender love songs, devotional songs drawing on both Hindu and Muslim imagery, and songs about the beauty of nature.
Nazrul’s style is a volatile mix of colloquial, idiomatic expressions, formal Bengali, Sanskrit and Persianate vocabulary, a smattering of English, and multiple registers of language. His polyglot sensibility also surfaces in his practice as a translator. He translated Omar Khayyam and Hafez from Persian into Bengali. His translations from Arabic into Bengali include 38 verses of the Qu’ran, part of the Mirasun Nagmat (a treatise on Hindustani classical music) and some poems. He translated Whitman’s ‘O Pioneer’ from English into Bengali. He is also known for his innovative ghazals in Bengali.
In 1942, Nazrul suddenly lost his speech. His illness brought his literary life to an abrupt end. All the same, the impact of his writings continued to be felt. In the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, the freedom fighters adopted Nazrul’s music as a source of inspiration. He was later declared the National Poet of Bangladesh. Today, while Nazrul’s poems and songs continue to delight and inspire, the true extent of his achievement remains in shadow. It is time for a comprehensive reappraisal of this much underestimated literary genius, because his writings have so much to offer us in our present world.
[1]The Collected Short Stories of Kazi Nazrul Islam, ed. Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaustav Chakraborty (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2024), p. xviii. Bhadralok translates to gentleman
[2]Kazi Nazrul Islam, Selected Essays, translated by Radha Chakravarty (New Delhi: Penguin Random House, 2024), p. 137.
[3] Kazi Nazrul Islam,Selected Essays, trans. Radha Chakravarty (2024), p. 60.
[6]The Essential Tagore, ed. Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011, pp. 115-116; Translation mine.
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.
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