Kaveri, positioned in a transitional phase, experiences turmoil as she attempts to balance inherited traditions with her personal sense of self. Aparna, the youngest, represents a more liberated orientation toward life and appears freer in her choices; yet she too struggles with emotional expression and communication within relationships.
The anthology opens with explorations of identity that challenge foundational social constructs. Moushumi Kandali’s ‘A Tale of Thirdness’ (translated by Atreyee Gohain) is a study of gender transcendence. Its protagonist, a professor and dancer, embodies a femininity and yearning for motherhood that exist independently of biological sex. Kandali, through lyrical and metaphorical prose—comparing the scent of a kitchen to longing,
101 is auspicious perhaps to ward off the readers’ profane thoughts and to invoke the humane sublimity in them. If brevity is the soul of wit, then these are not just brief tell tales but are close to Sufistic and Biblical aphorisms. Some of the tales have a philosophical and ethical slant while some are able to depict and reflect upon the socio-economic processes as well. For instance, the story titled ‘Sage’
That earlier urgency diminished, and with it, a certain fire; the impulse to know more, understand more, and remain connected to one’s immediate oral environment. In linguistics classes, the first thing we are taught is how words are produced in the mouth as we speak them.
The play of colour, shapes, forms, and contrasts of light and dark is Sen’s métier, making cognition of the precepts in this volume predominantly visual. Even though this volume is black-and-white, he captures the Arjuna tree’s transformation across the day in captivating prose. When it catches the first rays of the sun, it looks like Gautama Buddha in deep meditation. At high noon, in the harsh mercury-white light and lamp-black shadows,
This restrained fury runs through the collection’s most recent poems. They come from a tradition of Bengali literary conscience that has always understood literature as a moral act. Sengupta continues that tradition without announcing it. His poem ‘Tradition’ turns a familiar concept into something quietly subversive: