Sunderban Delta Publication

Sunderban Delta Short Story Series                                                                             Copyright © 2019 Gautam Maitra Cover Design and Illustration © Jayanti    CONTENTS       Foreword I   Introduction iii 1 Floating Towel Pg 1 2 The Two Strings Pg 8 3 Question Paper Pg 16 4 A Date with the Lost World Pg 20 5 A Bizarre Talking Competition Pg 32 6 The Land of the Blue River Pg 41 7 The Search for Oasis Pg 45 8 Reflections Pg 54 ...

  Money is what money does. Money is embedded in human history as the chameleon. From Ox, cowrie, silver, gold to minted coin, paper money, and now in the present avatar of digital money, bitcoin. It has changed too often its contour and usage. Keynes duly observed this behaviour : "Money is a far more ancient institution than we were taught to believe some few years ago. Its origins are lost in the mists when the ice was melting, and may well stretch back into the paradisaic intervals in human history of the inter-glacial periods, when the weather was delightful and the mind free to be fertile of new ideas in the Islands of the Hesperides or Atlantis or some Eden of Central Asia."1 The coinage evolved as a prelude to writing in the three regions of first human habitations, eg.,Lydia in far East, China and undivided India. Anthropologists and historians are divided in their opinion whether the origin and spread of coinage in each region is influenced by the others or were f...

It’s a curse to be born a woman. Yet ”One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”, once Simone de Beauvoir echoed. No eye bows are raised if the struggling illiterate parents marry off theirs ‘not yet come of age’ daughters to face the unknown outside world. The Ad of the movie ‘Titas Akti Nadir Nam’ successfully portrays the insensitivity of the society towards fairer sex ravaged by unwelcome events beyond their control.  In the image frame, the dominant brush colour is depressingly pinkish-white with black as the contrast. The twin colours do reflect a future of despair. The image prominently shows the face of a young rustic woman. The anguish is distinctly visible on her face, reflects nothing but gloom. The tears rolling down on one of her cheeks, warn of an impending calamity. The wrinkled eyebrows and the anguish on her forehead tell her own story to the viewers.  How far readers would agree with me that the portray reflects a universal struggle of the fairer sex ...

In the star-studded hot summer night, The kid asked me While sitting on the roof, Dad, when I will become a star-like your dad? In such a novice mind, how will I make him realise the play of life and death? Once in a while, sitting at a family get together, he came running down the lane, and sat beside me and asked, why men and women wear different formal wears? Why my aunts and mother carry the red mark of marriage on the border of the forehead where the hair split, but you have none? He was surprised. I didn't know how to explain the patriarchal aggression. One day, he angrily asked, Why some get burnt on death, while others preserved in burial. I told the kid , that’s the death wish. Then he pleaded for favour, papa when I will die, Put me up in the banyan tree in the backyard, So I could chat with the crows and play with sparrows When sun rays would enter my nest. And in the night, when you will switch off light And look at ...

  Ma Durga Calling When the first beats of Drum “ Dhanng… Kur… Kur… Dhang” hits the Indian TV network announcing the arrival of season of Durga puja, a sudden pain spread through my chest – a loss that I cannot recoup. Why do I love to live in my not-so- happy past. Am I, a slave of nostalgia I think there are millions like me who live a life out of memories. But I am grieving more that I cannot walk through these events again in this life – there is only one road that heads north.   Anyway, when I first heard the typical drummer’s beats today, I took a journey into the first date of mine with Goddess Durga and her family. It was a time when I just joined my Kindergarden school and was trying hard to pick up “ A for Apple and B for Bakwass”. Mid sixties   A street named  Shukias Street  in northern part of Calcutta had one Srimani’s house – the ancestral city joint for British time Babus who used to entertain the  Firengis  with d...

  After staying years away from the home, sometimes you feel the pain that you wish you could give the whole life for the welfare of the society. Banglar janya mon kemon kore. gram banglar roop ta jhakan maner aanginai bhase, mone hai ken jiban ta gramer dhulo makaha rastai katea deeina?( My mind yearns for Bengal, when the beauty of rural bengal flashes in my mind, I ask my mind why not spend the rest of my life on the dusty roads of Bangla! Jiban ta paisar aar sonsarer jatakole aaman bhabhe phasa, iicha thakleo durbal maner manusher pichutan ta boro bhoi paiee dei.( My life is so miserably chained in the wheel of  family and money, even if I wish I get frightened by my weaker mind pulling me back. That day I decided I would like to get engaged  with any hard working anonymous NGO who serve a small section of the Bengal hinterland without political affiliation and bias. I know of many heroes of Bengal, many unsung heroes of Bengal who have had selflessl...