After Bloodline Bandra (2014), Godfrey Joseph Pereira returns to Bombay in this provocatively titled historical fiction, to document the story of Charlie Strongbow, Cross Island and the erstwhile ‘urbs prima in Indis’, Bombay, in the 1940s and 1950s. The brick red, orange and blue cover with the silhouette of a boat, and a bird aggressively pushing through a torn page, arouses curiosity and promises a story that is full of surprises.
If one could travel as easily as the mind tours the world in a matter of seconds, where would one go? Would one go to a place from memory or a to a place one hasn’t ever ventured to even in one’s wildest dreams? Who would a traveller such as this meet and what would be the stories one would inadvertently become a part of?
The troubling question in writing about Harijan, both the original Odia novel by the renowned Gopinath Mohanty as well as its meticulous and detailed English translation of the same name, is this: how does one write about an event in which the experiencing person is the one who has contributed directly to the degradation of a fellow human being.
The history of twentieth century Indian drama has hitherto focused mostly on the work of playwrights such as Girish Karnad, Badal Sircar and Vijay Tendulkar. The enormous work of Bengali writer, actor and director, Utpal Dutt (1929-1993) has hardly received the appreciation due to it. Ananda Lal’s recent English translation of Utpal Dutt’s Barricade has shifted the spotlight to the vast oeuvre of his work as also to the absence of sustained discussion around it, especially to a non-Bengali reader/audience.
The English word ‘dry’ doesn’t even begin to cover what the Urdu word ‘khushk’ conveys. Khushk pricks and chafes, like the continuous rubbing of sandpaper. There is bruising, never enough for the sort of attention that makes one rush to the Emergency Room, but bad enough to remain a painful slow burn. As a metaphor for unacknowledged damage, there couldn’t be a better term.
The idea of migration and the internal/external struggle that a migrant undergoes has been looked at through various lens and forms of writing. Migration can be a forced one or can be construed as a voluntary one forced by economic circumstances or for seeking a better quality of life. Either way the shift is not just in terms of geographical locations but also in the way one has come to perceive the world and one’s surroundings.