Sunderban Delta Publication

If the wind gets cooler, and the paddy harvest reaches the rural  homes, the people who live in the vast hinterland of mangroved riverine  delta  of  aluvial soil  begin to celebrate the annual festivity of prosperty and wealth ( Kojagori Lokhi  variously known as Laxmi, Mahalaxmi) on the night of full moon, the Purnima as per Hindu calendar Evolving Vedic belief and  Puranaic text revers  Laxmi  as the vedic Goddess  and worshiped as the spouse of Vishnu. However, the discourse on Sri Laxmi over various scriptures, Ramayana and Mahabharata point out that Laxmi has two  other lineages - one with Indra, the first amongst the  Gods mentioned in  the Vedas;Kuber cannot be ignored while worshipping Laxmi. The Purana says that Laxmi came out of the great churning of the sea by the Gods and the Assuras. In period of vedic conquer of forest and hill tribes, Laxmi remained a lucky  daughter of the local tribes, the Asurras.it...

All Riverine civilisations worship  water as  the mother and reservoir of life on this planet. Earth or the soil is the other reservoir of life, when later life evolved on land. No wonder, when a human life ceases to exist, some civilisational ritual like the  Vedic  bestows respect to the leaving soul by merging ashes of mortal remains  into the  flowing river.  We often wonder how rituals of #durgapuja  in Bengal draws its cultural lineage from the human practices of a time period  which has no recorded but only inferred history. #MahaDashami, the last day of festive fervor and floating dreams of madness and desire, and artists shall put pale shades of color on their artworks. Here our eternal mother, Ma Durga, who drew life from river-water and river-bed  shall surrender into the river, while the drums would beat to a crescendo and the children of God chant and cry  'Asche Bochor Abar Hobe' ( Shall celebrate again in the coming y...

https://youtu.be/TlSD2OAbnfQ Come Durga Pujo, Dhaki cannot be far behind. The Dhakis are so intermingled with the blood and sweat of Dugga Pujo craving race, it is often difficult to separate them and keep our focus on DHAK and  DHAKI alone. Here is a rare piece in the domain of DHAKIs, written by late Durga Bhattacharya. Whether it rains or not,will never miss the sound of DHAK, even if one hesitant to go for pandal hopping  in the pandemic. https://youtu.be/TlSD2OAbnfQ #DHAK #Durga #DHAKI #Bengal

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 ...