Setu, January 2019 :: рд╕ेрддु, рдЬрдирд╡рд░ी 2019
Showing posts with label 201901E. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 201901E. Show all posts
Photo Feature: The bridges in Dombivli-Kalyan (Shrikant K.)
by Shrikant K :: рдЪिрдд्рд░ाрд╡рд▓ी - рдбोрдо्рдмिрд╡рд│ी-рдХрд▓्рдпाрдг рдХे рд╕ेрддु: рд╢्рд░ीрдХांрдд рдХे
Special edition: Indian Poetry in English
 |
| Sunil Sharma |
The special edition is here. On Indian Poetry in English (IPE). Some might prefer Poetry in Indian English (PIE) as a nomenclature. By IPE we mean the poetry written by the Indians in their chosen language of English. The first emphasizes the geography; the latter, maybe, the language, a Raj legacy, now fully incorporated in the power, educational and administrative circles and corporate India, being mobilized by users of caliber for communicating their visions and points-of-views in a language officially listed as the lingua franca of an ancient civilization with huge diversity, pluralism and tolerance.
Over the decades, English has emerged as the most popular choice for communication for the empowered middle class urban India. Whether as a first language or second, metropolitan India loves to switch over to this former state instrument of dominance and cultural hegemony, now domesticated in its Indian avatar, a mix of the American and British and local languages, in everyday use. Of late, successful and critically acclaimed writers in the country of more than one billion have expressed their weltanschauung in English and modified it greatly to keep sounds, colours and scents of the locales being recalled by the narrators. Rushdies and Roys have further democratized and Indianised a highly flexible language that worldwide grows phenomenally by absorbing and accommodating flavours and words, native to its users.
There is another category of writers that have found liberation in English and social media---solo; suburban; small town; professional---largely ignored by the mainstream media and the elites of the culture industry. They start solo, post their writings on the FB, gradually get noticed and enjoy high-name recognition through consistency and perseverance of their literary efforts and overall production.
Social-media presence further consolidates such voices, non-canonized and unheard in both academia and media but getting serious attention by the community of readers and fellow writers.
The arrival and impact of e-zines is another important determiner in the intense consolidation of these voices, voices that are hardly called in Lit Fests or invited to contribute to certain anthologies edited by the so-called high-profile writers as editors promoting a certain school of writing that has got powerful connections and Western affiliations.
Small e-zines are challenging this kind of cultural control and hegemony. Or some at least.
Can only 60 or 80 writers of Indian English represent such a gigantic country?
Are there not writers beyond these sacred numbers chosen by the high priests of poetry or prose?
Are the others left out by the magistrates of culture not writers? The ones getting published regularly in so many places?
Is it not arbitrary?
Then what constitutes writing?
Is it about Western audience only, pandering a particular view of the country?
What about the people, the subjects, not mentioned in the self-reflexive, self-referent, language-obsessed writings that look more like linguistic games and are exercises in dry intellectuality, word-play and high-decibel syntax?
Poetry---like prose---is more than that. It is about time, place and people. Mood. Interiority. Emotional states. Imagery. Thought process. Nature. Masterful articulation of all these sets as the required inputs into the production of a world view.
Bhasha Sahitya is an ample proof of this. Rich. Variegated. Rooted in the soil. Idiom of the public. Not some fractured interiority or language dexterity.
.
In this overall political context, Setu gave an open call for Voices within the largest democracy called India.
Voices that are important, innovative, radical and seen and heard in public places and social and digital communities and e-zines and print.
We wanted to showcase these voices that will gravitate to the centre of gravity in coming years by inaugurating a wave of New Writing through sheer talent and industry.
Happy to say that within a short duration, we got an overwhelming response.
Prompted by the sheer numbers, we decided to convert the general edition into a special one; an edition that celebrates these fresh voices in a most welcoming home---Setu.
Guest editor and senior poet Gopal Lahiri was kind enough to accept the responsibility of curating this edition.
He did a fine job.
We thank him for that.
And the select poets for extending support to a journal that believes in quality and innovation, and, thus, serves the cause of serious writing in these divided times.
There are 48 happening poets, already making their presence felt.
Different styles. Sensibilities. With flair for language and a strong imagination. Strong imagery. Powerful expressions. New ways of looking at old truths.
Individual, yet transcendental---the signatures spotlighted.
They render their existential experiences, angst and joy in well-crafted pieces of poetry.
A whole new world waits to unravel.
To delight.
Go and discover these poetic realms, please.
Editor,
Setu, English
January 31, 2019
Poetry: Voices Within 2019: Guest Editor’s Note
 |
| Gopal Lahiri: Guest Editor |
For this, I am extending my sincere gratitude to Dr. Sunil Sharma, the editor of the English Section of Setu, the bilingual literary journal, published from Pittsburgh, USA, for giving me the opportunity to guest edit the special poetry section titled ‘Voices Within’ where the best poems of the established as well as young Indian Poets writing in English are included.
Robert Frost once said ‘Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words’. It’s in fact none of a poem’s effects function in isolation. But it’s also true that the total of all the separate parts can in no way add up to the functioning whole. But it’s the act of analysis that may be revealing
It’s quite natural that even a poet is also speaking in different voices. In this collection titled ‘Voices Within’, some poems are strikingly inward, some makes hidden regions visible, some traces the sound wave paths within where the self dissolves into many voices. Some poems are meditative, humane and moving.
The unsentimental language and the arrangement of words and phrases, the breadth of form and content, the range of imagery and craft - all roll into a perfect poem. Poetry is all about understanding- not everyone reads a poem the same way, and that is the prettiness and truth of it all.
There are no themes in particular for this endeavor but emphasis is given on strong imagery, innovative style and syntax. Selecting poems amongst many isn’t an easy task and long debates ensue silently in your mind - on which poems more than the others. Sometimes there is disappointment when one of your fellow poets doesn’t make the cut.
It’s really heartening to note that the response for this initiative by ‘Setu’ is overwhelming. I am indebted to all the poets for sending their poems written to the best of their capabilities. But not all the poems are in tune with the poetic elements which I am looking for. Unfortunately, I do not feel that all the submissions for ‘Voices Within’ are suitable for publication but do however urge the poets to forward those poems onto other publications in order that as many as possible are able to read. Some of the Bios are edited to make them brief.
A compilation of this size is often said to contain something for everybody and I am sure most of these poems will be endearing to the readers. Admittedly, in this one, every reader is sure to find something to take away. ‘Voices Within’ holds enough evidence to support that claim.
Gopal Lahiri
Poetry: Voices Within: Authors
| 1. Ambika Ananth 2. Amit Shankar Saha 3. Aneek Chatterjee 4. Abu Siddik 5. Anuradha Bhattacharyya 6. Ayaz Rasool Nazki 7. Ballari Sen 8. Basudhara Roy 9. Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar 10. Chandni Santosh 11. Debendra Sahu 12. Deepak CJ Malakar 13. Gopa Bhattacharjee 14. Hema Ravi 15. Jagari Mukherjee 16. Jamiel Ahmad | 17. Kanwar Dinesh Singh 18. Kiriti Sengupta 19. Kushal Poddar 20. K.S. Subramanian 21. Lopamudra Banerjee 22. Molly Joseph 23. Moinak Dutta 24. Mushtaque B Barq 25. Nishi Pulugurtha 26. Nandita Samanta 27. Neetu Vaid Sharma 28. Padmaja Iyengar-Paddy 29. Parneet Jaggi 30. Pitambar Naik 31. Purabi Bhattacharya 32. Raja Chakraborty | 33. Ranjana Sharan Sinha 34. Rizwana Parveen 35. Santosh Bakaya 36. Sanjeev Sethi 37. Sangeeta Sharma 38. Sarala Ram Kamal 39. Sanhita Sinha 40. Saikat Gupta Majumdar 41. Sandeep Gupta 42. Shree 43. Sharmila Ray 44. Shristi Sharma 45. Sanjiban Roy 46. Tapeshwar Prasad 47. Vinita Agrawal 48. Wani Nazir |
Setu, January 2019 - Contents
Setu
Volume 3 Issue 8
January 2019
Setu PDF Archives
Edit: Special Edition: Indian Poetry in English
Poetry: Voices Within: Curated by Gopal Lahiri
Short/Flash Fiction
Novel (In Serial Form)
Author of the Month
Contemporary Concerns
- Gagan Bihari Purohit: Politics of Dispossession: A Reading of V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life
- Shabir Ahmad Mir: Literary response to Refugee crisis: A study of Mohsin’s Hamid’s Exit West and Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun
Conversations literary and cultural (Vintage Setu)
Special
Classics Revisited (External Link)
- Maxim Gorky: Twenty-six Men and a Girl - (Credit: East of the Web)
Photo Feature
Voices Within: Abu Siddik
Abu Siddik has edited
Representation of the Marginalized in Indian Writings in English (2015). He is
the author of Misfit Parents in Faulkner’s Select Texts (2015), Banglar
Musolman (2018).
His short
fictions and poems appeared in Muse India, Indian Ruminations, Setu Bilingual,
spillwords.com and in anthologies, Serious and Hilarious, Cherry Toppings, Rise
to Higher Essence. http://abusiddik.com/
O, my child! Why
do you stand aloof?
O,
my child! Why do you stand aloof?
Why
don’t you climb shoulders anymore?
Why
don’t you pester with inane queries?
Yes,
you catch me with your watery eyes.
Yes,
me a sinner, an impostor.
And
who isn’t?
Yes,
I’ve done thousand wrongs…
But
for whom?
My
child! You know not.
Or,
perhaps you too are growing
Day
by day,
And
learning the ways of the world!
The
world is full of wonders,
And
me not amazed by thousand onslaughts,
The
seers haven’t escaped, and who am I?
In
the eons of ages,
We
live for a moment,
And
thousand wrongs I did to escape thousand deaths.
Why
do you stare at me with such a demeaning look?
I’m
not at fault for a single act,
I
confide thee, my child.
And
if you box my ears again,
And
make me sit up and down,
Solitude
I gain, and pass in mirth the residual days.
I
promise you, my child,
Never
do I wrong for the poor and the wretched,
And
live by your side like a hermit for ages.
And
praise the blue sky,
The
green hills, and forests deep,
And
the sun rise and sun down,
The
starry night,
And
the birds’ whisper
The
swaying of the treetops,
And
the diving of the fish,
The
fraying clouds in a sea blue sky.
Or
see we both
The
velvety tea gardens,
Stretched
miles after miles,
Glistening
at noon,
And
the painted rain trees,
And
the white herons,
Flying
lazily before a blazing sunset.
Or
we both sit by the fire,
And
make us warm with children of the gods,
In
a lone winter night,
Under
the canopy of sparkling stars.
Let
us furrow the fields,
With
the ploughmen.
Let
us graze the cattle,
With
the cow boys.
Let
us mow the grass,
With
the mowers.
And
water the flowers,
With
the wreathes-men.
Let
us press the bee hives,
With
the honey-men.
Never
do I wrong for the poor and the wretched,
And
live happily ever after by your side.
Once the house was
lit
Once
the house was lit
And
party ran till midnight.
Men
and women laughed,
And
children giggled.
The
lady of the house was a peerless beauty,
And
before her gate men lined from sun rise.
The
neighbours envied her charismatic look,
Graceful,
gorgeous, sacred, forbidden.
The
white painted house exuded
An aura of warmth and enticement.
During
festivals
Aromatic
candles never died, and fragrance benumbed men.
The
villagers whispered and moaned,
And
sighed their lot.
Thus,
a decade passed,
In
light and laughter.
Then
at one midnight a howling storm
Raged,
and the candles went out.
Since
then it lay in dark, barren
A
wasteland it was.
Bats
flapped at day,
And
rats scampered at night.
Beautiful
strangers never tarried,
And
the doors, rickety and glasses shredded.
The
house decayed,
And
her bones were stiff, and walls rusted.
Men
feared her savage look,
And
mothers screened children while passing.
Thus,
she lived her last days,
The
flowers withered, candles died,
And
the house corroded.
On a Sunday haat
On a Sunday haat
I’ve seen a girl
Sixteen or so,
Selling vegetables,
With a wow child on her lap,
Scrambling for breasts.
The girl dithers,
And fears the male eyes,
They aren’t her suitors,
All busy gentle clients,
Time is money,
And not a minute more they spare.
So, what’s the choice?
Some faces are known,
And many strange,
A festival day she calculates,
And looks sideways,
And tears asunder
the door of subsistence.
Beginning days were hard,
She was shy, and timid,
And knew not the ways of the bazaar,
Day by day,
She counts coins,
And becomes bold.
So, she wars with lusty gazes,
And thumps her
baby
Under her sari,
And the child gropes and scrabbles
And sucks her mother,
And she flashes.
The scene is
awful!
The
scene is awful!
For
miles tea gardens loll under the feathery clouds,
In
an autumn noon.
Climb
the hills, or swim the mazy streams,
Or
smell the wild flowers, and hear the peacocks’ calls,
And
waste a day with the autochthons.
They
are poor,
They
are black,
And
they are far far away from the ‘civilized’.
They
toil with the sun,
And
slumber with the moon,
And
lulls the children with tales strange to enlightened souls.
No
grudge, no malice,
They
bear, and when the heavy engines whistle away,
Shaking
their huts, they wave their loved ones.
They
moan not,
And
why do they?
For
thousand roots they nourish for thousand wounds!
Voices Within - Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019
Voices Within: Anuradha Bhattacharyya
Dr. Anuradha Bhattacharyya is an Indian writer. She has been awarded the
Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi's best Book Award for English Novel of the year
2016. She is Associate Professor of English, Postgraduate Government College,
Sector-11, Chandigarh. Her forthcoming novel is called Still She Cried.
In Retrospect
The stage was set
By tiredness.
It could have been
Clear enough.
The mouths denied
Words to flow.
The function was
Called off.
Our bodies met
With hallowed eyes.
Passion could not
Be entertained.
That lingering message
In our tongues
Does not go down
The throat even today.
Facade
Keeping fake appearances
Has become a habit with me.
The most common is the smile.
One of those denials of the flesh
That does not want to yield to jest;
The poor thing, gets no rest.
And the converse is with tears;
Sorrow expressed in public sphere
Is not an inner stress.
As though it were not enough –
There’s that eloquence in praise
For a slovenly work of no consequence.
Spurious
Poetry
He stands erect, taller than
The humble camel
With his hump in cervical pain
Complying with people around
Who try hard before him to impress.
The judging heart recommends all
And hopes one day to challenge
That lofty ideal of poetry,
The type for years he’s not read.
Each moment of beatitude hurts –
Pinpricks of the heart with memories
Of times spent in solitude
Writing real poetry.
Fossilized
Desire
With you in mind
I chanted on a prayer
Of plaintiff’s summoning,
A cry for attention,
A speech for release,
Frothing in the mouth
For lack of reckoning.
It could be that the sun
Faded out of sheer
Lack of fuel
And fossilized.
Or it could be a mute
Acceptance of every guilt
I thrust on him.
Should my eloquence fall short
Of hearing
And stand undelivered
Undeliverable
So, to say,
Will passion come to the rescue at last,
And you’d wrap me in your arms
For recompense?
Voices Within - Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019
Voices Within: Ayaz Rasool Nazki
Multilingual
poet, scholar, translator, researcher, columnist, Ayaz Rasool Nazki is a man of all seasons with diverse interests in
painting, photography, calligraphy, cultural history and manuscript studies,
His dominant passion has been creatively engaging with the questions of
identity, memory and aspirations in South Asia’s most sensitive and
turbulent zone – Kashmir. A recognized poet in Urdu and Kashmiri with many
publications, he broke into English with a very impressive translation of his
outstanding father Mir Ghulam Rasool Nazki’s Sufi quatrains. His own collection
of English poems ‘songs of light’ was published to critical acclaim. His
English novel Satisar-the valley of demons that appeared recently has been
reviewed extensively.
1
One
by one
Wound
by wound,
Please
remove
All
tapes, Band-Aids
Securely
fastened
Bandages.
Let
each gash open up
Each
laceration weep;
Crimson
red blood,
Drain
the sinews
And
end the drought
In
the wilderness of my being
Let
roses bloom
Let
daffodils sprout.
2
flames
came
riding
the crest of wind
the
book with blank pages
fluttered
in my hands
pigeons
had fallen to the ground
smell
of singed feathers hung in air
iris
enveloped the land
farmers
missed the tulip days
--------------
yet
another bastardizing year has gone
time
is molesting itself in the woods
I
have lost count of stars that go down
Let
them sow the harvest of pain
Tulips
red with rage disappear from the house tops
All
rosary beads have been buried
Brilliant
chronograms on foreheads erased
Time
has come to ride the wind
And
assemble in some far-off land
And
celebrate another flock of death
3
having
done the last soul
in
the city of sun
they
entombed them
alongside
giggling infancy,
dreamy
adolescence,
and
creased wisdom
in
the grand mansions
along
the rim of the lake;
the
last abode of the great demon
then
they meticulously
hung
down from each window
a
freshly starched tricolor
and
lit a bonfire
the
final ahuti
4
I
will sing a lullaby tonight
And
lull my senses
In
to sleep
I
will keep an angel’s vigil
And
guide my soul
In
to deep
I
will burn my body
And
collect my ashes
Into
a heap
Scatter
them atop
The
hills of faith
Across
the meadows
of belief
not
a speck
shall
I keep.
5
come
let
us unlearn
whatever
we learnt
from
the manuscripts
painstakingly
written
by
ancestors
in
cold and dark nights
come
let
us begin afresh
the
search for light
Voices Within - Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019
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