1971, Three Letters
#1 Sender: Ataur Rahman Khan Kaiser. Chittagong. July 17, 1971. Receiver: Oysika A. Khan. 17 Ayesha Khatun Lane, Banshalbari, Chandanpura, Chittagong. Mamoni Mine, I am writing this letter for the day, Inshallah,...
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The Mirage in the Pupil
Born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, Claude Cahun (1894-1964) tried on several pseudonyms including Claude Courlis, referencing the Curlew bird, and Daniel Douglas, after the British literary Lord Alfred Douglas. Cahun purposefully chose sexually ambiguous...
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Keraya
Syed Waliullah (as narrated by Amar Mitra) ________________________________________ Those who have read Lal Shalu, Kando Nodi Kando or Chander Omaboshya know that Syed Waliullah (1922-1971) is a writer’s writer. I recall his...
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There is Justice in this Book !
Soumyabrata Choudhury _________________________ Towards the end of its compelling career, Aishwary Kumar’s Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi and the Risk of Democracy, says that Gandhi’s and Ambedkar’s were two incommensurable ways to the...
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The Wind Instruments
HUG Editorial ______________________ # Humanities Studies in India at this Point of Time. There are two sides to it. One, institutional studies of the humanities. By that we mean the study of the...
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The Edifice
Ranajit Das __________________ Journal Entry I I still recall quite vividly that horrendous moment when my little one realized, for the first time, what a lie is. I remember, face...
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“Aao Radio Sunein”: Manto’s Radio Plays
Aakriti Mandhwani _______________________________ [i] Saadat Hasan Manto is arguably best known for his oft-acerbic, yet true-to-life depiction of the tragedies that befell India during the partition. “Khol Do” is one such popular narrative;...
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In Remembrance of Eid
Shubha ------------------------- [This essay was first published in Jalsa 4, 2015] *** Eid it is, and yet its presence eludes us. The happiness that used to infect us with the very...
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A Poet’s Passage
Arindam Chakrabarti ------------------------------------- Time does not pass; we pass. So writes Bhartrahari. “kaalonayaatah, vayamevayaataah”. Utpal Kumar Basu, having lived for the last decade or so in an entirely undeserved public oblivion...
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Nirmala Boudi And The Bureaucracy
Amiya Sen Translated by Bhaswati Ghosh --------------------------------------------------------- Nirman Bhavan–the foundation for which had been laid by the late Lal Bahadur Shastri–is now an imposing structure. As the older Shastri Bhavan became too...
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Singing The Boatman: Hemango Biswas and the ‘Bahirana’ in Folk Music
Rongili Biswas As part of the legendary folk singer Hemango Biswas’ birth centenary celebration,the first volume of his collected works came out which contained among others, his writings on folk music. As one...
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Kachchh. Khambhi. Kavya. : Six Poems For My Village of Six Memorial Stones
Amrit Gangar _________________ Chhasara (chha – six, sarā – memorial stones, also called khāmbhi or pāliya in Kachchh and Kāthiawād; though sarā or saro is a Kachchhi word) is a village of...
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Why Bear It Like A Crucifix ?
Shiv Prasad Joshi [Translation: HUG] ________________________ That there is a well-planned pattern of attacks is quite evident. One does not need to be thrilled with any prophetic prediction in this regard. People shall...
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The Ghaat Within
Biswadeb Mukhopadhay ______________________ This is a poet of circularity—of the potter’s wheel, the rotund staircase, local implements like the maku and the turpun, the chakravyuh, the foundation-stone, the navel, the chalice, planetary orbits,...
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