Letters from Rays

2009

Society, 1983

Rose's fine piece on David Riesman in the March/April 1982 issue of Transaction]SOCIETY and want to let you know that I not only enjoyed the analysis of his career and writings but was moved by the last several paragraphs on how much David has meant to the author. 1 was very moved because I, too, have felt the influence and friendship of this remarkable man for many years. He has mattered to me in more ways than 1 can enumerate, which is the real reason Professor Rose's personal comments struck home. I have a file of letters, as hundreds of others do, and they are small gems. When I was president of San Jose State University, David was constantly in touch with me on a variety of things-and always with that special attention which, at the time and given the nature of the job, I particularly appreciated. To this day, he is still in touch as a friend-wise, patient, penetrating, clearheaded, and gentle. I thank Professor Rose for saying what a lot of us feel.

Philosophy and Progress, 2016

This write-up is premised upon my experience of translating Ekattorer Chithi (Bengali title) or Letters of 1971 (English version of the title), an anthology of letters written by the freedom fighters of the 1971 War of Liberation of Bangladesh, into English. Letters of 1971, a collection of letters, diverse as they are in meaning and implications, encompasses a myriad of issues and hence can be looked at from different perspectives in different ways. These are the letters written by our freedom fighters at the most critical junctures of our personal and national life, when things were falling apart. But the purpose of this study to follow is not to embrace all the concerns in the narrow space of this chapter. The main point of this study is to investigate the political and literary aspects of the letters written by the freedom fighters in 1971. In tandem, it also takes cultural and historical issues into consideration to put the

In the 1950s Nehru preached the doctrine that factories and dam s were the new tem ples of India. And if the base was to be an industrialised econom y the superstructure m ust be a secular, dem ocratic and urbanised society established on enlightened hum anism . If the tem ples stood for the old feudal or colonised order then the factories were to stand for m odern India 1 . The 1950s was a decade of transition from the old to the new. Ray's early realism reflects this transition of Indian society. In m ost of Ray's film s up to the m id-l960s we find the tension of the old and the new social orders, and this is m ost pronounced in the father figures. In Apu Trilogy, Harihar is a village priest representing the old, agrarian order. Apu has to transcend that stage to becom e a bourgeois intellectual. He knows the world, he reads and writes novels, he is rom antic and enlightened, he is an individual -the citizen of m odern India 2 . A sim ilar project can be traced through Devi, Kan ch en jun gh a and Mah an agar. In Devi there is a feudal, authoritarian and superstitious father. His son, who studies in Calcutta, is his rational foil. The son believes in 'Reason' m ore than in the sanctity of beliefs. He supports his friend's m arriage to a widow; prom ises to follow the legacy of Ram m ohun Roy, and m usters up the courage to protest against his father's superstitions. He provides a m odel of the em erging individual 3 . In Kan ch en jun gh a, Manisha breaks out of the dom inance of her colonial patriarch of a father and finds her own independent voice. In Mah an agar the father is a retired, old school teacher living in a world of values under attack. He believes that a wom an should not go out to work. Arati, his daughterin-law, and then Subrata, his son, have to transcend this barrier of ideas. The father keeps posing the lim it against which the protagonists in these early film s have to struggle.

A short story from my Arabic collection "Melancholy of Being" (2018), translated into English by me.

Axes, 2019

This paper seeks to look at popular literature vis-à-vis the canonical literature, with special reference to Nonsense Rhymes. The emphasis is on Sukumar Ray's Aabol Taabol (1923), which has recently become a part of the undergraduate syllabus in the University of Calcutta. The tradition of nonsense rhymes has been traced since Edward Lear and also through Lewis Carroll. The paper also seeks to take a peek at the problematics of teaching Ray's poems in their English translation and also analyses the feasibility of, at all, translating 'nonsense' keeping in mind Ray's rhymes, in particular. There is also an attempt to look critically into the history of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengal and thus to situate him in context, with respect to their family history and to contrast it with his peculiar and individual genius. The paper finally aims to apprehend the magnificently insular and opaque world that Ray has created in his poems.

TEXT Special Issue Number 60, TEXT: Journal of writing and writing courses 24, 2 (October), 2020

The collaborative work consisting of corresponding poems between an Adelaide-based poet Arnis Silvia and a Prayagraj-based poet Susheel Sharma deals with anthropological phenomena like identity, ecological awareness and social justice. Taking the geographical background in both resident cities, the six pairs of poems reflect on how both the poets understand the world around them along with its impact on them personally and socially. The poets have employed some principles of duoethnography in their poetic conversations by dialoguing themselves with another self, with another context of culture, tradition, values, histories and meaning-making (Sawyer & Norris 2012). The authors have attempted to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and have tried to see the world through their and others’ eyes to better understand the reality(ies) that were portrayed in the poems. The authors have discovered that despite their geographical and cultural differences, they share many similarities in terms of the issues they deal with daily; they struggle with their selves to make sense of the world and they reflect on realities in their surroundings to understand them better.

A school paper edited by Ana Marie Calapit, The Ray has a limited circulation. The headline, "Taguig youth push for plastic-free city," was used in the March 17, 2010 issue of The Philippine Star and appeared in the Philippine Star as "Taguig students bat for ban on plastic bags, styrofoam." This 'laboratory paper' was distributed in Gen. Ricardo Papa Memorial High School Taguig City, Philippines in January 4, 2010.

2018

The recent exhibition, 'Letters from Arakan', featured hand-written letters and audio clips alongside portraits of survivors of the brutal military and militia attacks taking place in the Rakhine State. For Adib Chowdhury, the photojournalist who put the project together, the impetus behind the project was to 'let the Rohingya tell their story through me'. The full project can be viewed on his website.