 SetuVolume 6; Issue 1; June 2021Setu PDF Archives EditorialPoetry: New VoicesSpecialTranslation: Hindi into EnglishAuthor of the MonthPhoto EssayShort FictionBook Review
Setu Initiative: Setu Series of Virtual ReadingsSpecial Edition: Figures of Thought: Collegiate Voices across Spaces Guest Editor: Basudhara Roy |
Showing posts with label 202106E. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 202106E. Show all posts
Setu, June 2021
Of loss, pain and writing
 |
| Sunil Sharma |
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
---Alfred Lord Tennyson
That is a message that
suddenly resonates so well, in these tough, unsettling times!
Humans are no longer
arrogant lords of the universe---as, of late, they had come to believe and thus
destroyed the delicate ecology and balance between climate and life forms---but
mere travelers on a brief existential journey in a planet that was there and
would be there, long after they have vanished from the stage, as fretting
actors, with due apology to the Bard who said this or something alike with deep
import.
And Nature will also continue
to be there, too, like the old mother earth, although in much degraded forms,
all due to the selfishness and greed of the predatory capitalism. The
consequences are there of such a tampering.
The idea that humans
have limited shelf life as compared with natural bodies like a river or a brook
can be and should be, by now, a sobering realization.
The ongoing pandemic
taught the human species the value of life, its fragility and sudden cessation,
sometimes within a few days, to a virus called Corona, often demonized in
popular imagination, for its vicious ways and bloody trail.
Recently, the truth hit
us hard---deaths in the family and outside within friend circles and poor
health and emotional wounds and insecurities---leaving us traumatized.
But, as Tennyson
suggests, sometimes, like a brook, you have to negotiate stony pathways and
move on for your desired destination, singing a song, along that undulating
course, a difficult terrain.
Doing literature is one
mode of processing that deep pain and sense of loss and inner vacuum.
Communication. It can be healing.
.
So, here we are, post
these tragic events and allied health problems. June 2021 marks the sixth year
of the monthly production of both the Hindi and English Setu, published from
Pittsburgh, USA.
And more than 2-million
page views, thanks to your support.
We pledge to serve you
in coming months with doubled dedication.
.
This June, the special
section is on youth writing: Figurs of Thought: Collegiate Voices across the
Spaces, guest-edited by young poet-academic Basudhara Roy. A selection of 50 voices, fresh and invigorating,
like an early spring.
The general section
carries some other fine signatures from the intersecting fields of poetry,
prose, translation, review, art and photography.
Thanks again to you,
contributors, guest editor and you, our esteemed reader for the support.
Stay safe!
Best,
Guest Editorial: Basudhara Roy (Special Issue, June 2021)
 |
| Basundhara Roy |
While
art, youth and life are words integral to creativity’s register, how exactly do
we perceive the relationship between them? One way to characterize youth is to
look upon it as an interim period of emotional vitality that though fecund and necessary,
must eventually be sloughed off to embrace the sobriety and wisdom of maturity.
From this point of view, youth’s golden glory contains within itself an
essential lack, an absence of something not yet arrived at. In the Preface to
his Endymion, John Keats writes:
The imagination of
a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is
a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character
undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence
proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of
must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.
Though
Keats’s poetic heights attained in Endymion will, in every age, give the
lie to his own ideas on the immaturity of youth, it invites us to look at youth
as a liminal space in the process of growth. Another way of looking at youth is
to find in it the best of life and oneself and to set it up as a goal of
imaginative return, no matter how far life leads one to travel from it. This
perspective, however, can be gathered only from the vantage point of maturity,
youth having long slipped away and art being reclamation’s sole route. Viewed
thus, youth becomes a metaphor for life’s splendour, an asset to be perpetually
held on to, a destination for the creative life of the soul. In ‘Soonest
Mended’, John Ashbery writes:
None of us ever graduates from college,
For time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not
to grow up
Is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now
at any rate.
One would be hard put
to speak of the value of the phase of youth in definitive terms but it remains
to be recalled that youth has been at the centre of much of Romantic, Avant-garde and Postmodernist
art. In the unformed landscape of youth,
one comes across a subjective self-consciousness hard to discover in later
years. For every person who has been young, youth manifests itself as a space
of idealism and uncertainty, of confidence and hesitation, of marginality and
retreat, and of alienation and rebellion. Growing up, one realizes there is a legacy or
at least the ghost of one that must be squarely confronted. Does one step into
one’s legacy, alter it or reject it outright? The tension between worldviews is
at its sharpest here and it is from this conflict that a remarkable volume of
potent art has entered the world. Arthur Rimabud, in writing of (his) youth in the
prologue to his ‘Deserts of Love’, states that its “strange suffering holds an
uncomfortable authority”. (trans. Wyatt Mason) This ‘uncomfortable authority’
born out of ‘strange suffering’ comes from youth’s experiential intensity and
searing honesty – two attributes that will always be indispensable to art.
This issue that brings to you a selection of fifty student voices from
across the length and breadth of India, is an attempt to showcase not only the
writings of young poets but also the contours, colours, conjunctions and
concentration of youth itself. One comes across a passionate, unbridled energy
in these poems as the contributors explore subjects like gender, social
inequality, economic recession, violence, love, nature, relationships, depression,
dreams, failure, the pandemic, and art. In Charu Bahal’s ‘The Diary and the
Pen’, “a pen sits half-open,/ longing for the fingers
to hold it”. “Can love exist without lust lingering?” asks Debanjana Majumdar
in ‘I built a wall with sand’. “How funny it sounds, when I say/ I saw my
mother yesterday. We have been living together / For 21 years, now,” states
Nicho Rongchehonpi’s ‘My Mother’. In ‘Middle Partitions’, Shriya Girish Bhunje writes:
Ravines don’t need a partition,
but oceans? Oceans ought never to be
parted.
They can seep away and quench and
quell—
sweep away what tries to temper them.
My hair can curve into fountains on my
head
and choke the breath out of air.
“Maybe our fates too have crossed and
we have met/ Maybe they’ve intertwined but never aligned,” muses Doma in
‘Songbird’. In ‘To Love’, Titas Sarangi writes, “Between
heaven and earth, you're the bridge/ Though you've the power to ruin.” Weighed
down with life’s tyranny, Babita Daimary wonders whether “To wear or not to
wear” this ‘life saving mask’”.
Dishant Chourasia’s ‘Raining Ecstasies’ rains thus:
I
am the sunlight on your destroyed column
I
am the fire setting my own skin ablaze
I
am the tornado you never saw or will see
because
it’s inside my
pair
of odd clothes
and
torn shoes
that
goes through the empty cycles of bloom.
Syeda
Farhin Sultana writes in Christmas Grief:
This Christmas
I will wrap
myself in memories of your
chestnut eyes and saccharine
skin. This Christmas I shall
make peace with my grief.
Here are poems that will ask you to stop, to re-read and reflect. Where the language wants perfection, it is more than compensated by the energy and depth of thought and the overpowering range of association. Besides carrying the poems into a wider world to meet more readers, I believe that this issue of Setu will go a long way in helping to build a community of these young poets. In poetry, as in most forms of art, a community is crucial to catalyse belonging, assurance and growth. As you engage with these fifty voices that speak from various locations of the country – Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Dhanbad, Patna, Jhargram, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kerala, Assam, Rajasthan, Mizoram, Kohima, Chandigarh, Bangalore and Lucknow, I am certain that you will be drawn unawares through poetry into youth, promise and nostalgia.
Jamshedpur
Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim
City College, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. An alumnus of Banaras Hindu
University, she holds a Ph.D. in diaspora women’s writing from Kolhan
University, Chaibasa. Her areas of academic interest are diaspora literature,
cultural studies, gender studies and postmodern criticism. She is the author of three
books, Migrations of Hope (criticism; New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers, 2019) and two collections of poems, Moon in my Teacup (Kolkata:
Writer’s Workshop, 2019) and Stitching a Home (New Delhi: Red
River, 2021).
Figures of Thought: Collegiate Voices across Spaces:
Featured Authors
|
1. Akanksha Pandey 2. Akanksha Subba 3. Anandita Guleria 4. Ananya Pahari 5. Anjali Sharma 6. Ankita Gupta 7. Arnika Mishra 8. Asha Bhandari 9. Babita Daimary 10. Charu Bahal 11. Debanjana Majumdar 12. Dipanjan Mandal 13. Dishant Chourasia 14. Doma 15. Ekta Dogra 16. Geethu V Nandakumar 17. Kanchan Jasmine Xalxo 18. Kaushiki Singh 19. Kiran Joshi 20. Komal Gupta 21. Madhurantika Sunil 22. Meghna Mukul 23. Monami Chatterjee 24. Monobina Nath 25. Nicho Rongchehonpi |
26. Nikita Soni 27. Nitu Roy 28. Prakriti Deb 29. Puotounguno Basumatary 30. Rachana Bhosle 31. Rahul Kumar 32. Raka Mukherjee 33. Ramsha Zaheen 34. Saad Inshrah 35. Sangeeta Banerjee 36. Shailja Chaurasia 37. Shivam Kumar 38. Shreesti Kumari 39. Shreya Narang 40. Shriya Girish Bhunje 41. Shruti Singh 42. Shweta Kumari 43. Simi Baruah 44. Simranjeet Kaur 45. Sneha Bhunia 46. Surabhi Kashyap 47. Syeda Farhin Sultana 48. Titas Sarangi 49. Vidushi Pragya 50. Zahra Ahmad |
Solstice: Collection of Haikus
Book Review by Aneek Chatterjee
Rajorshi Patranabis (2021), Solstice: Collection of Haikus, New Delhi: Authorspress, pp. 57; Price: ₹ 295; $ 25.
Haiku is a short form of Japanese poetry, now used globally. In English language poetry, Haiku has become very popular due to the challenges it offered to the author, -- seventeen sound units, traditionally known as ‘On’ or ‘Morae’ in the Japanese language, broken into a 5-7-5 format. Initially, in the English language, sound units were taken as syllables, although these were not quite the same, and put into a 5-7-5 syllabic format. Therefore, initial English language haiku followed the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern; although with the passage of time this pattern was not always followed by poets. This was because Haiku provided ample space for experimentation beyond the 5-7-5 pattern. This kind of experimentation also gave birth to some related forms of Haiku, like ‘Haibun’, ‘Haiga’, ‘Kuhi’ etc. These preliminary words were necessary to understand Rajorshi Patranabis’ collection of Haiku titled “Solstice”, which provided the readers a combination of the 5-7-5 format and other short variations of poetry, with a three-line structure followed throughout the volume, -- for all short poems.
In “Solstice”, mindscape invites nature, love, nostalgia, melancholy to be companions; as author Rajorshi Patrnabis sets out for a poetic journey. “Freak escapade, pines in hill, / plums delight, big water side, / Shillong, your name is love …” Love for a city in the Himalayas, we know as Shillong, has been portrayed through the canvas of nature, in a simplistic, yet magnetic way, in these lines. Rhyming in three lines? Yes, Rajorshi provides the reader with that luxury as well: “Sense remains in absurd thought / Melancholy, that peace had sought / Love me violent, bleed in clot …” These rhymed stanza brilliantly exposes the longings of a soul which seeks violent love, because in its absence, peace only brings eternal melancholy. This craze for love continues in another rhyming poem: “Darkness beckoned your lips to my lip / Day ushers and you leave me with weep / Flowers still garden my grave, resident in you deep …” It would not be an exaggeration to term “Solstice” as a collection of love poems, because majority of short pieces in this volume depict the poet’s unending quest for love. For instance, read the following poems: “Pyre in flames / Rush to your bedside, / “Yours forever now.” or, “Your eyes feigned ignorance / We are destined / Unruly unison …” or, “In your greens do I bleed blue / Deep ignorance, my heart does rue / And in your red, I flow through you …” or, “I lived to love / Love till the end / End begins with you …” In all these stanzas, love is ubiquitous; in different hues, variegated colors, invisible postures. The last poem quoted above, follows a unique pattern where the last word of the previous line becomes the first word of the following line. Call it “Chain Verse” or “Enjambment”; to the poet and to readers like me these are only adorable, excellent love poems.
The beauty of nature mingles happily with the inner cravings for love in this volume. As poet Gopal Lahiri observes in the ‘Foreword’ to the book: “For Rajorshi, haiku is not a ripple induced by currents, but an echo of love and devotion which explore the silences and undulations”. In “Solstice”, the poet makes his invisible sorrow, cheers and pain for love visible only to nature, and to his readers. Consider these lines:
 |
| Rajorshi Patranabis |
“Orange Sunset
Twilight red
Purple hearted ecstasy …”
and:
“Hands on my heart
Tears drenched my chest
Last of your first touch …”
or:
“Trickling down the slopes
Sprinkles of gold
Heaven’s backyard …”
or:
“You see me through
Throughout your pains
Love’s hegemony …”
In his collection Rajorshi used punctuation marks, capital letters at the start of each line and ellipsis at the end of the third line in almost all haiku, barring one or two; -- not very common usages in traditional haiku writings. Did those ellipsis marks point towards the unending journey of love or parts of his experimentation with haiku? The poet knew best. These might appear out of sync to the traditionalists, but such usages actually fitted well with his compositions.
In every haiku of this worthy collection “Night smells you / Stars see you / Lost somewhere, I feel you …” We also feel the poet through his lovely creations; through his imageries and metaphors; through his unveiling of emotions and desires. Poet and painter Sarbajit Sarkar correctly observes in ‘Some Thoughts on Solstice’, included in the volume: “In Solstice, Rajorshi achieved this rare feat by integrating sun’s celestial navigation of coming to a solstice with the inner joy of his own life”. Strangely enough, this ‘joy’ often also contains pains, only the search for love knows and feels. This unending quest for love finds an abode, temporarily perhaps, in Rjorshi Patranabis’ “Solstice: Collection of Haikus”, which is surely a collector’s item.
***
Author's Bio:
Rajorshi Patranabis, a multilingual poet and translator, is a food consultant by profession. He had been published in many national and international journals. He has three collections of English poetry, one collection of Bengali poetry and one book of translations. Solstice is his most recent collection of haikus in English.
Aneek Chatterjee is a poet and academic from Kolkata, India. He has been published in reputed literary magazines and poetry anthologies across the globe. He authored 14 books including three poetry collections and a novel. His third poetry collection titled “of Ashes and Persiflage” (New Delhi and Kolkata, Hawakal) came out in November, 2020. Chatterjee has a Ph.D. in International Relations; and has been teaching in leading Indian and foreign universities. He was a Fulbright Visiting faculty at the University of Virginia, USA and a recipient of the prestigious ICCR Chair to teach abroad. His poetry has been archived at Yale University.
Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets – Selected Poems by Gopal Lahiri
A Review by Dr. Ajanta Paul
Gopal Lahiri’s latest literary offering – Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets –
Selected Poems published by Rubric Publishing (2021) is a collection full
of teasing surprises and prizes. The sudden turns in thought and feeling in the
poems leading to fine existential ironies and poignant epiphanies are
rewarding, to say the least. Divided into seven sections – “Voyages In,”
“Voyages Out,” “Cityscape Silhouettes,” “Macrocosm,” “Haiku Series and Micro
Poems,” “Travel Diaries,” and “Pandemic and Resilience,” the book sets out to
explore lyrically worlds which co-exist and collide in fascinating formations.
If there is a single dominant theme that emerges from
the welter of subjects featured in the said volume it appears to me to be that
of ‘place,’ resonantly recuperated throughout the work and incremented upon, in
the manner of a musical composition, with the related motifs of the journey and
quest extending and embellishing it. The titles of the sections “Cityscape
Silhouettes” and “Macrocosm” amply illustrate this contention evoking as they
do, the notion of place, moving from the metropolitan mystique of beloved city
Kolkata in the former to the larger apprehension of a national and elemental
cosmos in the latter.
 |
| Ajanta Paul |
Kolkata, the poet’s Muse by his own admission, is
repeatedly and hauntingly recreated as the “earthly paradise” through the
charismatic, though conventional icons of the Monument, the Maidan, the river
Hooghly, tramlines, Kalighat pat paintings
and “roadside shops decked in garlands of light.” Yet, through it all the
narrator is curiously aware of the “smoke-swathed face of the city/bends and
corners of the alley ways,” the “grim sky,” “the discoloured apartments,” and
“cheap cigarettes” which depict effortlessly the sordid aspect of the city, attaining
a sombre concatenation of effects in his reference to “dust, debris, hollow
bones and living skeletons” in the poem “City Underbelly.”
 |
| Gopal Lahiri |
Place is also “the landscape and the farmland” as it
exists in the child’s memory in “My Freedom,” both pastoral idyll and maternal apotheosis
rhapsodized by the speaker as “that refuge, that sanctuary.” In “Grandma’s
Mirror” place comes to rest like an oxbow lake in the “forgotten, isolated
paradise” of Grandma’s “private heaven” where she is “blissfully cut off from
the rest/of the world,” mirroring or reflecting the frozen past in her “crisp
white saree/with red border.”
Travel and transfer, comings and goings, and the
search for new horizons as captured primarily in “Voyages In,” “Voyages Out,”
and “Travel Diaries,” along with certain poems in some of the other sections,
as well, explore the reality and romance of journeys, both actual and
figurative. In several poems the distinctions between naturalistic and
philosophical categories of space and travel are collapsed leaving them open to
multiple interpretations. In “Departure,” for instance, while the train is
“just one goodbye away from/the platform and the speaker gives “the stars a
call/for the undestined travel,” to embark on a “parallel path of lights” which
are “fresh from the other world” the actual and aspired movements are
symbolically interposed to good poetic effect.
Journeys in time, complementing those in space appear
in poems such as “Migration Camp,” which conjure up the horrors of refugee
camps through a preponderance of graphic images. “Somewhere between my past and
present/the life has frozen,” rues the narrator of the said poem in his
perceptive recapitulation of history. The “nomadic trail” in the poem “Transit,”
invoking police violence and judicial hearings among related procedures, and
seeking “to attain life without boundaries,” evokes the forced migrations of
people caught in the crossfire of political differences longing for a safe
destination/homeland. The image of “life without boundaries,” becomes, in the
context of spatial dispossession and subsequent itinerancy explored almost
compulsively in Lahiri’s poems the quintessential trope for freedom.
The search for the other self, the ideal or the
alter-ego, undertaken in “The Other1” and other similar poems presupposes
another type of journey, subtle and subliminal in its effect as it unfolds in
the reaches of the subconscious. Then, there is the journey within and between
relationships as the speaker so adroitly expresses in “Time Capsule” where he maintains,
“Between you and me, unspoken memories swirl/in the hovering time capsule,” or
in “I Still Love,” where he promises his beloved that he would return to her “again
and again.” From inward, spiritual forays to outward projections, journeys in
Lahiri’s poetry unfold on various levels, not excepting the cosmic one as when
the speaker in “City Lights” sees “imaginary ships sailing between clouds and
stars.”
Place and time are beautifully intermingled in the
poem “Dreamland,” and journeys are informed with nuances of nostalgia: “My
journeys across the distant lands hum sad songs/memories are like unreliable
confessions resting/under the mango tree.” This is one of those rewarding
surprises mentioned at the outset of the piece. Heroic outward trajectories are
unexpectedly undercut by a simile intensely local, even rustic in its simple but
arresting associations, investing the utterance with the sense of a felt
reality difficult to achieve. Intricately wrought with detail, and fraught with
a fine fervour of feeling, (what the poet possibly describes as “latent fire”
in an eponymous poem) the poems in this collection display a rare sensitivity
to the world in all its manifold and mutating manifestations.
Lahiri’s poems tremble on the seismic fault-lines of
rupture and rapture; sometimes shattering into shards of loss and loneliness,
and gathering, at others, into an awareness of bliss. In “New Script,” for
instance, he moves from “the smoke of old factories” and “poverty segregation”
of “a modern nightmare” to scripting his “unforgettable dream.” Such a movement
from crises to oases is what sets apart Lahiri’s collection of poems as he
negotiates the binaries of reality and illusion, past and present and darkness
and light in plangent parables of loss, search, frustration and fulfilment.
In addition to the themes of place, travel and quest
is a concern for creativity, so crucial to the experience and development of a
poet. Time and again Lahiri returns to this extraordinary passion, celebrating
“the splash of (his) buried alphabets” in “Picasso’s Guitar;” the “moon channel
passing through” every “sentence” in “Diary Page;” and the “hidden stories
(which) draw on a cache of scripted letters” in “Stagecraft,” to mention just a
few instances. Words, to the poet are the keys which open magic portals; the
talismans of truth which spur him on, and also, a synergising semantics which merges
sapience with sensuousness.
A precise sense of observation coupled with a
synaesthetic imagination which constantly challenges the edges and borders of
experience enables Lahiri to re-invent the old verities of objects and ideas
into new projections of poetic truth. His forte lies in imagery, at once
translucent and transformative that fuses together different orders of sensory
perception in the crucible of the imagination so as to create an authenticity
of mood and moment which carries the poem along its inspired impetus. In “Coorg
Concerto” in the “Travel Diaries” section, for instance, the simile, “tiny
birds in flight (are) like/forgotten punctuation marks,” illustrates my point even
as a metaphor like “my guitar/weaves raindrops” in Haiku Series -5 is appealing
in its limpid simplicity. Another image, “mother earth/bleeding/molten lavas,”
in the same poem further shows the raw immediacy and pointed pithiness of his
imagery.
A handsome production, with an attractive cover design
by Jharna Sanyal, the book merits a place in every collector’s list. On the
whole Alleys are Filled with Future
Alphabets by Gopal Lahiri is a delightful and thought-provoking read, and I
sincerely hope that the poet will continue to tune “the unknown scale,” as he
so memorably mentions in “Picasso’s Guitar.”
Anjana Verma's Hindi Poetry: Translated by Ranjana Sharan Sinha
 |
| Ranjana Sharan Sinha |
Translation by: Ranjana Sharan Sinha
1. Voice of a Female Foetus
After all
why do you wish
to kill me, my father?
Let me take birth
and then
even if you will give me
Iess food
I will survive on
half-stomach meal
I will never complain
You know
it happens with daughters
And they don't feel bad
If you don't want
to educate me
I will remain uneducated
and never claim
the right to education
If you don't like
to get me married
I'll become a spinster
serving you in every possible way
without casting aspersions!
Tell me
why do you desire
to eliminate me
inside the womb?
You have an option
of throwing me on a rubbish heap
and you'll get rid of me!
So why do you want
to kill me in the womb itself?
I am listening to your negotiations
that you are planning to
nip me in the bud!
I wish to say
let me see the light of the world
After that you'll have
thousands of ways
to get rid of me
Give me a chance to survive;
after my birth
dispose of my body like a litter
somewhere on a garhage dump
but do let me come on the earth
Some childless may
pick me up and adopt
Please, please my father
do me the favour!
If you'd accept me
as your daughter
I'd have proved my worth
better than a son!
***
 |
| Anjana Verma |
2. Roots, Branches, and Leaves
The roots never get a chance
to look up at the sky
and flourish with a smile
in the azure space,
but those dependent on them
bloom in an open
and airy terrain!
Flowers receive praise
and get recognition
Fruits and crops are noticed
while roots remain in oblivion
Roots are the base
that bless the branches
with life and light
They breathe in darkness, though!
Unseen and unknown
they struggle for the nutrition
erasing their existence--
Unnamed creators
of sweetness and delight,
colours and contours!
There are so many names:
Our jawans and kisans
cleaners and mazdoors
and many many more names
who are ignored and forgotten!
Names drenched in sweat and blood
that go on providing us
a sky of joy and
brightness of fame!
3. Call of the Soil
The earth
that's neither a living being
nor a human
nor some other creature
The blue planet
that tolerates the
tramplings of feet
The soil
that accepts our
prayers and worships
and our dirt and garbage, too
with the same spirit
The pure innocent dust
that lies under our feet
is prodded and walked over
The same dust
has immense power
It calls an emigrant
settled a thousand miles away
without a voice!
And the man
living in a faraway land
listens to her silent call
again and again
and yearns to meet her
longs for her companionship
Terra firma! You
embrace without arms
You call without a mouth
You never forget them
who play in your lap
You fill their bodies and souls
with your motherly scent
Considered to be
an inanimate object
all the time
You are more than
an animate being--
A kindred soul
giving love!
So much
that the person
who left you
continues to pine for you
The magnetic attraction
of a mother
Keeps on pulling him forever!
***
My Impressions of Canadian Landscape
 |
| Srishti Sharma |
Photo Feature by Srishti Sharma
It is difficult to categorize Canada in terms of a travel destination.
From mountain ranges to huge forests, beautiful lakes to spectacular Niagara falls, and the list goes on.
This extraordinary amount of diversity in the culture, the rich natural and man-made attractions, and of course the rich heritage is what makes the world's second-largest country-Canada the most unique country to live in the world.
I could explore some beautiful places and managed to click some good pictures.
I thank Setu for giving me this opportunity to showcase my passion to its
wonderful contributors and readers.
Alrond and the magic fox
Evgeny A. Khvalkov
Have you heard the story of Alrond and the magic fox? I can tell it to you.
After all, magic foxes still live in some corners of the world to this day. It is almost impossible to catch them because they are very strong in magic. And sometimes, when such a fox runs through the forest and touches the branches and bushes with his tail, sparks fly from the tail to the sky and fall back to the ground; people call these sparks shooting stars. However, sometimes magic foxes appear among people. This is what our story will be about.
Once upon a time, there was an old knight who lived at Cape Bertoari, and he had three sons. When the old man died, the eldest son inherited the castle and all the land, according to the custom, the middle son inherited the parish in the village and the post of a priest, and the youngest, Alrond, only got his father's sword and an old horse. The elder brother gave Alrond a loaf of bread and a ham for the journey and told him to go away to seek his fortune somewhere else.
Alrond got ready for the trip and thought about going to Adtiarn to the court of King Taravon. He, people say, pays the brave and clever nobles handsomely. And Alrond went to the city of Adtiarn.
Some time passed, Alrond grew tired and hungry and sat down to eat at the edge of the forest. Lo and behold, a fox's face poked out from behind a viburnum bush. The fox looks at Alrond, and Alrond looks at the fox. And the fox said to him:
“Good afternoon, young man! Nice ham you've got there. Would you share a piece?"
And though Alrond had no other food left but that bread and ham, he was a good fellow, so he gave the fox a piece of ham and told him how his brothers had treated him and that he was going to Adtiarn to the court of King Taravon.
“Look, - said the fox, - maybe I should go with you to try my luck too? You are a good fellow, I see, but you are very simple-minded, and I am well versed in all sorts of tricks, and perhaps I can also serve you. And when we get to Adtiarn, you'll join King Taravon's guard, and I'll be an interpreter for Chancellor Berengar. I know all sorts of languages: Garegin, Adelnian, and even the language of the Igerulds”.
“Well,” said Alrond, “it's more fun to walk the road together. Come with me!"
And they went to the city of Adtiarn. Then they came, and King Taravon hired our Alrond as his personal guard, for the captain of the guards was an old friend of the young man's late father, and Alrond took after his father in face, courage, and intelligence. And the fox settled down at the chancery and surprised everyone with his knowledge of languages: the scribes, the councilors, the chancellor, and the king himself were surprised and amazed by the fox's wisdom.
The king had a marriageable daughter. As soon as she saw Alrond, she fell madly in love with him; the young man was also not indifferent to the princess. But it was a custom in the kingdom that not only could the princess choose the man dear to her heart at her discretion, but even the father-king himself could not, as is the case in almost all kingdoms, arrange his daughter's marriage according to his own opinion. There had to be a great contest, and whoever came out victorious in it must also receive the princess's hand. And since the princess was a marriageable lady, and the only daughter of King Taravon, and the king himself was already in his old age, the chancellor and the councilors began to bother him so that he would soon arrange a contest and wed the princess to the winner.
"We want," they said, "to have a suitable successor to you – a glorious, valiant, intelligent, and in every way worthy prince or knight; we do not need any other kind of king!"
The king had to give in and arrange a contest. Alrond came back home from the service sad, and the fox asks him:
“Why are you so sad, my friend? Why do you look so crestfallen?”
“How can I not be sad! – answered Alrond. – The king has declared a contest, and whoever wins it will receive the princess's hand, and my beloved will become a foreign prince's or knight's wife”.
“Why don't you take part in the competition? - said the fox. – Although your father was a poor knight, and you are even poorer, but your family is noble and your ancestry is not inferior to the kings. Moreover, you are a man of strength and ingenuity!”
“True, said Alrond, - but I feel that the trials there will not be the usual ones: not fighting with a spear, shooting a bow or wielding a sword”.
“But you have me! I'll help you through the royal trials”, said the fox.
Alrond gave it a thought and agreed. And the fox waved his tail, and golden sparks fell on the young man – and although Alrond had been handsome before and such a daredevil as there were few, now he shone with a magical light, and he had the strength of thirty strong men.
When the time came for the contest, kings, princes, dukes, counts, barons, and knights from all over the West Coast, and some even from the islands of the Archipelago, came to Adtiarn. The first three days were spent in tournaments, hunting, and feasting, and Alrond was ahead of the others in all things: in spear-fighting, sword-fighting, archery, crossbow shooting, and dancing, and he was behaving so courteously – as a true suitor for a princess! But the royal trials were more difficult than the court dances.
It was time for the first contest. And the king said:
“Last year, the Duke Larhelm of Moremont gave me some wonderful seeds that produce a harvest of five hundred, and bread made from that wheat has such wonderful properties that one small piece is enough to feed an adult man. My peasants sowed this miraculous grain in the fields, and indeed, the harvest was unprecedented. But what a misfortune: someone comes at night and eats the wheat. And when I send the guards to catch the unknown thief, they all fall asleep. Which of you, glorious knights, will protect my fields of wonder wheat and at the same time, catch the mysterious robber and bring him to me?”
All the kings, princes, dukes, earls, barons, and knights were perplexed, and so was Alrond. He came home and told the fox about the royal mission. And the fox said:
“I know who steals the wheat – it's the proboscis monster. Follow my advice, get a good night's sleep, and let's go watch the thief at night. Just don't forget to plug your ears”.
So they did. And when at night all the kings, princes, dukes, counts, barons, and knights went out to guard the field, the proboscis monster came up to it and trumpeted his trunk – then everybody fell asleep. Alrond covered his ears, as the fox had told him, and did not fall asleep. As soon as the thief began to graze on the royal fields, Alrond and the fox began to catch the proboscis monster. For a long while, they could not cope with it until the fox jumped on the monster and threw a rope on it.
In the morning, Alrond brought the proboscis monster to the king. The king was surprised, and praised and thanked Alrond. The foreign kings, princes, dukes, counts, barons and knights became envious: they slept all night while Alrond and the fox caught the monster! And they plotted against Alrond, but they did not show it.
It was time for the second contest. And the king said:
“Last year King Aethelstan of Damyria gave me a flock of golden-fleeced sheep. Now it's time to shear them. Their wool is pure gold, but I must say that these sheep are very skittish, and so far no one has managed to shear them. Which of you, glorious knights, can shear the sheep and gather the golden wool and bring it to me?”
All the kings, princes, dukes, earls, barons, and knights were perplexed, and so was Alrond. He came home and told the fox about the royal mission. And the fox said:
“That is not difficult, my friend Alrond. Follow my advice, get a good night's sleep, and tomorrow we'll go and shear the golden-fleeced sheep”.
In the morning, the pretenders to the princess's hand began to catch the golden-fleeced sheep, but they were very quick and skittish, and no one managed to cut a piece of golden wool from them. It was Alrond's turn at last. Then the fox, his faithful friend, sat down on the hillock where the sheep were grazing, took out his flute, and began to play. Oh, if you could only imagine what kind of music it was! All the sheep gathered around the fox and listened to the magic music as if they were enchanted, and now it was easy for Alrond to shear them.
And not only the sheep were enchanted! The clear sound of that music enchanted the king, the courtiers, the retinue, and everybody who were there; they all fell silent and listened as if in a daze. Wild forest animals came out of their holes and dens to listen to the wonderful music of the fox. The lion, the king of all beasts, dared not growl lest he should interrupt the wondrous music, the wolf forgot his howl, and the aurochs forgot his roar. Even old Greta, who lives at the Break-in-the-Moat and is famous for the worst character (she can't do without scolding others even for one minute), so even old Greta herself came out and listened to the music. The melody that the fox produced from his flute turned everything into a temple of music.
The King was thrilled that Alrond had completed the second task and doubly thrilled that he had heard such magical music. He sincerely thanked Alrond and the fox, and the foreign kings, princes, dukes, counts, barons, and knights almost burst with envy and anger. And one of them, King Gerneb of Lothirod, said:
“If this knight passes the third contest, he will have the princess, and we will leave unrewarded and even disgraced, and some poor soldier will be higher than us, crowned heads! We'll ambush him tomorrow morning before the third trial and kill him, and thus we won't have to suffer dishonor”.
They all decided to do so. But they did not know that the fox was standing behind the curtain all that time and heard everything. He came home and told Alrond about the insidious plans of the foreigners.
“What should I do then?” - said the young man.
“Trust me”, the fox replied, "but just remember that tomorrow we have to both defeat our enemies and to pass the last contest!"
It was time for the third and final contest. And the king said:
“I want my future son-in-law to treat me to a sumptuous dinner in his own castle, and this reception has to be royal! I will not marry my daughter to a beggar”.
Foreign kings, princes, dukes, counts, barons, and knights were alarmed. Of course, they had magnificent palaces and castles in their region – but you can't take a king there in one day, nor can you bring these palaces and castles to Adtiarn, no matter how hard you work! However, the four richest kings hired a hundred masons each and ordered them to build castles near the capital at once – but you can't build a castle in a day! Alrond looked sad, too, but the fox nudged him and said:
“I'll go and get you a castle for the king's party, and when you go hunting now, keep away from the foreigners!”
And the fox ran in the direction of Cromorgan Castle. And I must say that this castle was owned by a terrible troll, most despicable, evil and cruel. Many travellers who passed by Cromorgan Castle ended up in the teeth of that ugly ogre. But the troll ate humans and not foxes, so our dodger had nothing to fear; besides, the troll was not at home at that time – he had gone out to hunt. First of all, the fox decided to get rid of the troll's servants who guarded the castle; those were gnoll Graw, goblin Grow and gremlin Grahaham. He ran to the gate and shouted:
“Alarm! Run for your lives! Here comes the king with his army and brings with him a hundred wizards: they will burn you all to ashes with their lightnings!”
The troll's servants were alarmed. What should they do? And the fox told them:
“Hide quickly; maybe the king and his army and wizards will not notice you!”
The troll's servants were cowardly, so they left their guard posts without a moment's delay. The gnoll Graw hid in a beer keg, the goblin Grow hid in a wine barrel, and the gremlin Grahaham hid in a cask of calvados (the troll was very fond of calvados). Then our fox closed them all up, rolled them out on the fortress wall and threw them into the moat – let them swim there!
Meanwhile, the evil troll, the master of the house, returned and was quite surprised that his servants are gone and that a strange fox had appeared out of nowhere in his own castle. But our fox was an extremely courteous gentleman, so he had no difficulty in charming the troll. Knowing that the troll is very fond of flattery, the fox began to describe in every possible way the merits of the troll and his glorious fame in all the surrounding kingdoms.
I must add that this troll had two heads, and they often quarreled with each other. And here's what the fox came up with – he repeatedly paid more and more colorful compliments to one head or the other, until finally they got into a big quarrel and locked in a deadly battle. Then the fox crept softly to where the troll kept his sharp, curved sabers, like those which camelmen use in the desert for a fight, and with a deft blow cut off both of the evil troll's quarrelsome heads. And since then, no one has ever captured or killed travelers in those parts!
Meanwhile, King Taravon hunted with his courtiers, retinue, and foreign kings, princes, dukes, earls, barons, and knights, who, as you will remember, plotted to kill Alrond. In pursuit of a deer, Alrond broke away from the entire retinue and was left alone, and then the foreigners began chasing him. Their swords were drawn, their crossbows loaded, and that would have been the end of the young man if he hadn't had his fox!
And the fox, after taking possession of the magnificent castle of the villainous troll and ordered to prepare a real royal feast, hurried to the forest where the hunt was going on. At that time, there was a very old, dilapidated bridge in this forest. So, when the enemies were chasing Alrond and shooting at him with crossbows, the fox (and he was a magic fox, after all!) briefly transformed his friend into a fox and hid him in a burrow, while the fox himself turned into a young man, just like Alrond – you wouldn't even tell one from another! The foreign kings, princes, dukes, earls, barons, and knights rushed after him, and the fox in the guise of Alrond leapt from his horse and ran across the old bridge to the other side. The foreigners, thinking that their victim was in their hands, rushed after him to the dilapidated bridge, and the bridge collapsed, so they all perished.
Meanwhile, the king was hungry and was waiting for dinner. The fox restored Alrond to his human form and himself to his fox form, and they returned to the king.
“Your Majesty”, the fox said courteously, "Sir Alrond has the honor to invite you to dine at his castle.
The king was surprised. “How come, Alrond? Your father's castle is ten days' ride from here, and it belongs to your elder brother by right of the entail”.
“I assure you, Your Majesty”, the fox hastened to say, "that Sir Alrond has a castle, and a most magnificent one".
And the fox led Alrond, the king, and the entire king's retinue to the castle of Cromorgan, which had once belonged to the evil troll, and now it belonged to the fox's friend, knight Alrond. When they reached the castle, the king was overjoyed, for Cromorgan Castle was as good as a royal palace, and the reception that the fox and Alrond provided for the king and his retinue there was truly royal. The king was quite charmed, and at the same dinner he announced the betrothal of Alrond and the Princess, and appointed Alrond as heir to the throne.
What about the magic fox? And the fox, when the wedding was over, took his leave and ran off into the forest; after all, he was still a wild animal, although later he sometimes came to visit his friend.
That's it, my friends! Alrond did not spare the last thing he had for the fox, and in the end he became king.
A Poetics of Kinesis: Tempering with imagery: Sanjeev Sethi unraveled
Bleb
Wee poems by Sanjeev Sethi
Hybriddreich Ltd, Scotland
www.hybriddreich.co.uk
ISBN 9781873412763
Year of publication: 2021; Pages: 38; Price: £3
https://hybriddreich.co.uk/product/bleb-sanjeev-sethi-wee-book/
With Sanjeev Sethi, words have got their own kinesis,
energy and aura, like most of the contemporary poetry is these days---a
constant conversation between words and images; a creative process that
produces some critical epistemologies that yield breathtaking vistas of stunning landscapes,
both verbal, lexical and aesthetic, in impact and appeal.
Sethi is celebrated for his masterly grip over the Raj
legacy of English and making this post-colonial instrument of communication
supple and lyrical, despite heavy-duty words being embedded like sediments in
craggy rocks; words in lesser talent might sound snobbish or pretentious but
with him, flow with the grace of a river with its wide and variegated sweep
over changing topographies. The end-result is sublime for a reader willing to
navigate a dictionary and the text simultaneously, in a cultivated style that
Roland Barthes gleefully calls writerly. The poems featured in this Wee Book summon
up rare spirit of craftsmanship and deep thinking---a rare synthesis of
linguistic brilliance and imagery.
See this little work of art, where words shed their
denotative aspects and become something extra---joyful, prancing, suffused with
potential energy to be co- discovered with the poet at work. It contains the
poetics of a restive Sanjeev Sethi---a constant journey of recovery and
discovery of exotic in a blas├й environment, the chief function of great art:
 |
| Sanjeev Sethi |
As casual as strolling on
a graveled pathway
in a close-by parkland,
words cycle towards
me on my inner track
where ideas lap dance
with a tumescent dash.
The first draft is born.
This baby needs a battery of nurses and
other paraphernalia. I’m
the doc on duty.
Summon the accoucheur for
stillborns.
Or, this mini canvas with pulsating power:
Offing
The beauty of brackens acknowledges
my presence
with a little jig. I
smile back like one does to a natty
new arrival in the
neighborhood. The emptiness in
those eyes summons me to
shoal them with a fairing
of emollients. A poem isn’t a
fable or folktale. Its
task is to temper with images and ideas that
create
one’s fantasy or factuality: like those oeillades.
The aesthetics here is avant-garde---inner need to
innovate, restore luminosity to old words, abused and degraded by a crass
consumerist culture.
Sanjeev works hard to unlock the secret passages to
the distant summits glowing in the reassuring morning light, after a long
winter fog!
Worth the space in your shelf.
This collection will light up inner and outer regions
of existence---collective, individual, cultural and spiritual.
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