FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA a "first in Indian writing in English"

INDIAN LITERATURE (IL, 259), the flagship journal of Sahitya Akademi (national academy of letters, India) recently published a nice review to my book "FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA". The book completed one year on Jan. 20 and so, this bit came as a good gift.

The attempt made by FOOTPRINTS, said the reviewer, "it seems, is a first in Indian writing in English and must be considered very seriously..."! Nice.

There is no online version. So here are not so good jpegs of the scans:

But good people are more in number in this world. So, here is a link to Saborna Roychowdhury's blog where she posted the pdfs of the same review. The two tiny links above the article are those pdfs, yes.

While at all this, I also urge you to read another review of FOOTPRINTS on Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar's blog. Very detailed, very astute.

You should check out both the blogs for more literary fare. Good stuff for new or 'old' writers.

My Father Tells a Story -- poem in "Indian Literature" (Sahitya Akademi)

"MY FATHER TELLS A STORY" is another poem from the four recently published in "Indian Literature" from Sahitya Akademi, the national academy of letters in India. I thought of putting this up on my blog especially because the question of roots, origins, and nationality always interest me a great deal, and a recent rendezvous with Edouard Glissant's talk and a documentary film about his Poétique de la Relation. (Poétique III; Paris: Gallimard, 1990) fanned some more introspection in this regard. For the strategization of language and identity to be either a linear entity or a parallel to a certain historical/atavistic notion is something all of us tend to seek. But stories are different as you inadvertently have to peel the layers, often subconsciously. For a 'colonial to a post-colonial' identity, a poem such as this cannot be seen as an exercise in a uni-dimensional "root" adherence. The "story" -- told many times over through someone to my father to me and to others who have experienced similarly in diverse histories, not just the Subcontinent -- lends itself to further re-telling, an enhancement in terms of linguistics and historicity.

MY FATHER TELLS A STORY

The young girl in a sari

Was walking to the library

She naturally didn’t see

The truck creep up behind her

Stuffed with soldiers wearing

Leafy helmets, false implants in

The heart of that shell-shocked

Macadamized Bengal town

**

Her face a sorry storybook

Quite a few pages torn

When they found her by

A garbage dump, stared at

By the ancient panhandler

The poor bastard refused arrest

Shouted abuses, got suitably

Thrashed by the police

**

The young man whispered

Show me your palm your

Red henna peacock from

Last night’s festivities

Then she read him a poem

About crocodiles in snare

Until they fell asleep in

Each other’s arms, dreaming

**

There was a river, grass and

Flowers shrouding its banks

Its depth unknown, but easy

For the rebels to swim

The same night Yahya Khan

Made quick plans to strike

Universities where students

Danced to songs of Tagore

**

That was a night when nervous

Sirens screamed on, his

Would-be bride was picked up

And thrown. Folding up

Maps that fooled, didn’t show

A country of hearts, he left

A peacock mourned for her

And him. No country yet for them.

**

Image from the Internet: Jamini Roy, Untitled; gouache on paper.

Luit On Our Tongues -- One River-Story Poem in Print

Four poems are out in the latest issue of INDIAN LITERATURE, the flagship journal of Sahitya Akademi (the national academy of letters in India). You have seen some of these poems workshopped here and there...

My river-stories are not always pastoral. Having grown up in an Assam that has seen much strife and struggle, the Luit (Brahmaputra) is my man-river in different roles -- a friend, a cradling solace, or an injured mad god (how could a god be injured you may ask, but I bring my poetic entities to live my life, ergo, a human life...).

Read this river-story:

Luit On Our Tongues

We were five or six, men and children

in a tempo, that rackety raucous vehicle

With three capricious wheels heading

towards Sonitpur, our vacation, where

Mangoes had ripened summer’s belly with

the monsoon’s heavy showering grace

The usual route was flooded, abandoned

Luit had licked it wet, fungal, even after

The water receded; this was our Old Luit

father kept telling me how the Red River

Has its liquid name from the colour red

after a battleaxe washed itself, lots of blood

Now there are bridges that drown currents

hurrying us in buses and cars in a riverine flow

The Bodo teacher sitting just next to us said

the river does actually speak the curious hue

In gurgles by his village sweeping in a chant:

Bhullum-buthur. He smiled. Bhullum-buthur

Bubbles in the head, the mad water’s dance

the Brahmaputra in news and TV he knew

It still gurgles day and night, another man said

like human voices when slashed, when spent

Gasps bhullum-buthur in river tongue, the dead

so did our Luit, took stories along and lives

Between conversations from the diverted route

we saw the faraway river gone red-eyed with mud

The blood all faded, perhaps the colour of the red-

ness entrenched like the leftover evening sun.

The other titles published in IL are: "No Country, No Names"; "Gandhari's Eyes", and "A She-Ghost can only call Names".

Image from my computer: Setting sun on the Luit (Brahmaputra), Assam.