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Salt and Saffron; Kartography Kamila Shamsie Kamila Shamsie's second novel Salt and Saffron (2000) is a work on the partition of India in 1947. Dard e Dil, a feudal family suffered during the partition like any other in India and Pakistan. Kamila has brought out the pain, sorrows and love of the triplets Sulaiman, Taimur and Akbar in her writing. Their father, a wealthy land owner thought “bearing the names of great kings would enable his sons to face up to any crisis, but he never paused to think what would have happened if the namesakes Sulaiman the Magnificent, Akbar the Great and Taimur, sometimes called Taimur Lang or Tamburlaine, .... had been born brothers!” In 1938 Taimur disappeared while the boys were being sent to Oxford to get their degrees. He later wrote a letter saying that as they were born the year after the Jalianwalla massacre and “I lack your gift for erasing, nay! Evading history. This is our curse: Akbar and Sulaiman, we are kites that have their strings ...

The twinkling star in the faraway sky  Bright in the night. Was hazy to the sight Tinkled the hearts.  The rains cooled the earth.  Couldn’t quench the desire. Left parched For a thousand years.  Little buds of yearning Was swept away by the gale. Yet the longing haunts To hold To caress.

False Hope The moon beams in the sky Tell me that it has been to where you are.  The wind whispers your name to me. The autumn leaves roll and announce your arrival. Yet I’m not convinced That you will come Once again to soothe my tormented soul;  To kiss away the cascade of tears that roll down.  A missed Beat.  The khol on my eyes won't smudge.  The pleats of my sari won't be out of place. My bangles will make the clinking noise that you so admire.  Even the bindi on my forehead will shine in the sun.  Only my heart will but miss one beat Because you are not there.  It wont matter to the world No it won't. Nothing is indispensable  At least not anymore But my heart will miss a beat thinking of the space that was once yours!  Illusion  Day emerges out of night Night out of day Summer wades into monsoon Autumn departs as harvest announces its arrival. The dry leaves swished away by the wind White ...

Baromashi or baromaishya are songs sung by rural women narrating their agony of being away from their loved ones. The songs usually describe the state of a woman in different seasons while her loved one is missing. As the song mentions, baromashi means 'of twelve months.' Even though there are many baromashi songs which have become famous and are often sung by renowned artists, there are very few books on baromashi. Some writers have collected and compiled them in the form of research works. Prof Razia Sultana is one of them. In her slim volume, Shahitya Bikkon, published by Bangla Academy in June 1998, she has dedicated a chapter to Baromashi literature. Purbanga Geetika or East Bengal Ballad by Dinesh Chandra Sen has compiled over fifty ballads which were carried on verbally from generation to generation in different parts of Bangladesh. The ballads were composed by illiterate people of the villages with their collective wisdom as early as the 14th century. Chandra Kumar ...

Quamrul Hasan was intrigued by haiku when he was in his first year at university doing his honours in English literature. A course was being taught at the time. It was the renowned haiku as practiced by famous writers. As a student Quamrul wanted to be able to compose a few of these three lined, non rhyming poems. Finally he did write a few. A year or so later there was a haiku competition in The New Age Literature Page. As he had already composed some haiku, he sent them to the literary editor, Prof Niaz Zaman. To his utter surprise, his haiku was selected among the ten best haiku and was published in the literature page along with some of his teachers' works. That inspired the young writer and he continued with his endeavours. He was invited to the Japanese ambassador's residence along with the other published writers. Quamrul Hasan didn't have to look back since then. Hasan was published in Asahi Haiku Network, a joint venture of Asahi Shimbun and the International He...

Baromashi: The anguish of separation Little known by city folk, Baromashi is a tradition where rural women give voice to their woes and worries through song by Jackie Kabir Baromashi. The traditional music usually sang by women in the rural areas. The songs or poems are mostly to describe the anguish of separation from the people they love. The pain usually merges with the events or the work one has to do every month throughout the year. Sometimes it unveils the physical and mental hardship women go through during different seasons. Baromashi, as the name suggests, is a song that goes on for twelve months. Each month has a specific characteristic and a landscape. The songs are composed with the collective wisdom of the village folks. These are similar to seasonal songs or religious songs common to many countries. In those countries there are about four seasonal songs. What is unique about the Baromashi in Bangladesh and its neighboring countries is that they describe their...

What the Ink? was launched at the Hay Festival, the first of its kind held in Dhaka, on November 21 at the British council. What the Ink? is an anthology of some aspiring writers from Bangladesh and some other countries who have at some point of other have resided in the country. For the past few decades South Asian writers are making their voices heard in the world literary arena. Our very own poet Kaiser Haq has already reigned the genre for quite some time now. Expatriate Bangladeshis like Adib Khan, Manju Islam, Mahmud Rahman, Tahmima Anam as well as Bangladeshi born British writer Monica Ali have paved the paths for the newer generation. What we see in this book is a swarm of aspiring writers who want their voices to be heard, their stories to be told. Fifteen writers anthologized their short stories, poems and excerpts from novels in the 185 page book, published by the Writers Block. The first story Gift can be mistaken for a drama on one of the TV channels. The writer Arup Sana...

His quest to learn what his eight children thought of his family and the way they grew up led the Nobel Laureate, Günter Grass, to write Die Box. Although the eight children shared the same father, they were born of different mothers. So they gathered around a table to reminisce their childhood. The twins Pat and Jorsch, who were the first born, were asked to talk first. Then came the little girl, Lara, followed by Taddle. Then there was one more girl named Lena from a different mother and Nana, Jasper and Paulchen. Die Box by Günter Grass, published in 2008, is known as his second volume of memoirs, the first one being Beim Häuten der Zwiebel or Peeling the Onion (2007). Die Box was translated by Krishna Winston in 2010 as The Box: Tales from the Darkroom. Winston is a professor of German Studies at The Wesleyan connection. The Box: Stories from The Dark Room is really about a box, a pre-war camera and the woman behind the camera. Her name was Mariechen. She had remained close to the ...