Literary Trails

Allen Ginsberg was a fine performer, showed genuine respect and even love for his audience; a deeply inclusive writer says John Whalen-Bridge. His performances made available a poetry that could soar, joke, and grieve, and they always imply a human touch that reaches towards the audience to demonstrate that no fourth wall, or any other wall, necessarily has to obstruct communication. Curated by Jennie Skerl…[Read More]…

A story of foredoomed love, Nirmal Verma’s short story was originally titled Terminal in the collection Sookha Tatha Anya Kahanniyan 1997. Translated from Hindi by Alok Bhalla…[Read More]…

In yet another selection from his unpublished volume of poems penned in Urdu and self-translated, poet and literary essayist Asif Raza offers his bleak vision of man’s futile search for redemption in a world from which the divine has fled.…[Read More]…

Darius Cooper unpacks some of those poems of Arun Kolatkar in which he frequently combines the blues and Rock n Roll from American folk and pop culture with the medieval Indian bhakti tradition of Bhajan culture…[Read More]…

Alphonsa aka Annakutty (b. 1910) led the quiet, anonymous life of a nun in her room in the Fransiscan Clarist convent in Kerala, till her death in 1946 at the age of 36. Six decades later she was transformed into Saint Alphonsa, beatified by Pope Benedict VI in Rome in 2008 – the first Indian woman to be canonized a saint of the Catholic Church Paul Zacharia happened to read a collection of her letters and Fr. Romulus’ moving eulogy at her funeral and wrote this story. Translated from Malaayalam by Anupama Raju. With a special preface by the author. …[Read More]…

Alok Bhalla pays tribute to Edward Lear (born May 12 1812), fittingly by composing nonsense verses inspired by Lear’s nonsense images. The comedy of nonsense verse, Bhalla notes demystifies those who claim glory and glamour; it also makes the earth we live on livelier and less burdensome by inviting the entire creation to be part of its joyous carnival. …[Read More]…

Some of the poems of Pat Matsueda are about lives of unbearable violence; about our willingness as human beings to inflict pain on others. But then there are poems that are sad, yet touched by the grace of acceptance and gentleness. A selection from Bitter Angels. With an introductory note by Alok Bhalla. …[Read More]…

“No man is greater than the size of his shoes” says the cobbler Mochiram in Dhoomil’s eloquent poem, a testimony to subaltern wisdom and humanity reflected in his desire to repair/heal. Translated from Hindi by Alok Bhalla…[Read More]…

In the midst of violence and war, a persistent pandemic and a looming environmental apocalypse Shanta Acharya’s poems both remind us of the gratitude we owe to this Earth and the ineffable beauty of its creative mysteries…[Read More]…

Intizar Husain captures the mysterious evocation of Nature’s ways viewed through the bewildered and wondrous innocence of a boy bursting with curiosity. Translated by M. Asaduddin …[Read More]…

The jungle and its inhabitants the Gonds serve as the backdrop to this tale of post-partition unrest and tension across the border in Intizar Husain’s tale of looming apocalypse. Translated by Alok Bhalla & Vishwamitter Adil. …[Read More]…

Alok Bhalla, Vinod Kumar Shukla and Asghar Wajahat articulate their visions, paying tribute to this Earth in the only way poets can, through slanted truths. Guest edited and translated by Alok Bhalla.…[Read More]…

Kedarnath Singh (1934-2018) wrote poetry in deceptively simple language encompassing within his imagery the complexity of our troubled times and language itself, offering the reader a lot to think about even while savouring his sparse elegance. Translated from Hindi by Alok Bhalla. …[Read More]…

Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s story reveals the complex fate of a young widow who can neither express her sentiments nor withhold them. Society looks upon her with opprobrium while those who know her personally, fear both her power and her reticence. Malashri Lal translates from Hindi. …[Read More]…

A constant and tranquil voice in Indian English and Odia poetry collected in several volumes, Bibhu Padhi expresses the ineffable in calm and gentle tones, at times melancholic but with hope and yearning as the “earth sits still/on its own ground “ and solitude is a memory that “does not belong to you” …[Read More]…

With her fearless spirit that exuded an irrepressible and bold articulation of freedom, and a fierce commitment to her vocation, Krishna Sobti (February 1925-Janury 2019) was a rare fusion of monumental writing and a monumental personality, remembers Geetanjali Shree…[Read More]…

Krishna Sobti’s contribution to modern Hindi fiction is seminal with her works reflecting pulsating characters, each carving out her own destiny, mirroring the author’s own feisty autonomy. Sukrita Paul Kumar writes…[Read More]…

Bhawani Prasad Mishra (1913-1985) was one of the finest Hindi poets of the last century. His verses have local color, are earthy, and have pace and jingle. That is what endears him to Yashoda Nandan Singh who translates two of them…[Read More]…

Canadian writer of Indo-Guyanese origin Cyril Dabydeen fuses myth, folk lore, memory, white and subaltern cultures in this call- of-the-wild tale set in Northern Ontario, Canada.…[Read More]…

A heart-rending story of the impact of Nature’s fury on a village girl’s ambitions to do good by her folk in the flood –prone districts of western India. By Vishwas Patil. Translated from Marathi by Keerti Ramachandra.…[Read More]…

Often drawing from Arabic and Persianate cultural traditions, poems by Shafiq Fatima Shera (1930-2012) abound in rich metaphors and textured imagery, the lexical as well as imaginative fabric of her poems tends towards an evident expansiveness. Translated from Urdu by Riyaz Latif.…[Read More]…

In this beautifully sorrowful elegy to the peacock as bird of Paradise, Intizar Husain delves into the state of human consciousness bent on destruction of life and bemoans the impossibility of composing his Morenama, seeking clues (solace?) in Indic epic tales. Curated and translated by Alok Bhalla…[Read More]…

In this “hermetically sealed nightmare”, Intizar Husain has three anonymous, faceless men describe their barbaric acts of rape and endless killing to each other, realize they are horrors with nowhere to flee or even bury their own corpses. Curated and translated by Alok Bhalla. …[Read More]…

Intizar Husain tackles the theme of Man’s fall from grace and the Flood through the creation myths of various faiths in a brilliant weave of our contemporary condition of human vanities and planetary destruction. Curated and translated by Alok Bhalla …[Read More]…

Drawing from the Jatakas, Intizar Husain tells us the story of a young Bhikshu with a begging bowl seeking grace through the Buddha’s teachings of renunciation, entranced by the temptation of earthly pleasure, aware sorrowfully of his failings. Curated and translated by Alok Bhalla. …[Read More]…

: Guyana-born, of Indian-origin, Canadian poet Cyril Dabydeen ponders the parable of the remembered place, the rhythms of another country… civilization at one’s fingertips, constrained to being in one place. In verse and a short story. …[Read More]…

All conversations have a purpose: to be heard, to perhaps make others understand that grief and anger can be shared rather than multiplied. Poet-essayist Annie Zaidi runs us through a history of south Asia in five verses to illuminate this idea in our gloating darkness. …[Read More]…

Kunwar Narain’s long narrative poem Kumarajiva is an imaginative meditation on the life of Chinese scholar, teacher and translator of Buddhist texts, Kumarajiva, born in 344 CE. In it the poet attempts to imagine a society where a people could learn to pay ‘mindful attention’ to all sentient beings. Alok Bhalla translates. …[Read More]…

Two poetic meditations on women striving for empowerment and “lost sounds,” discovering worlds beyond the heart and hearth. By bilingual poet and translator, Gopika Jadeja …[Read More]…

Sajida Zaidi who passed away in 2011 at the age of 84 was a noted educationist and Urdu poet. Riyaz Latif a bilingual poet offers up fresh translations of her philosophical and reflective verses.…[Read More]…

On a surface viea a simple tale, M.A.Susila’s fiction turns out to be a lesson for these pandemic-driven times. Translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Kannan …[Read More]…

In a response to Sudhir Chandra’s meditation on Gandhi’s first birthday and his assassination in Independent India, Ashoak Upadhyay finds evidence that his legacy lives, less in remembrance, more as moral quests.…[Read More]…

An original rendition from Malayalam of a short story by the late polymath and teacher, V.C. Harris that almost reads like a creation myth. Translated by Cheri Jacob K. …[Read More]…

Sara Shagufta, the tragic young poet who took her life in 1984 aged thirty, comes to life in these fresh translations of her Urdu verses by Riyaz Latif …[Read More]…

On the occasion of his birth anniversary,19 September, The Beacon pays tribute to Kunwar Narain (1927-2017), re-issuing a collection of his works, first published in this journal 30 April 2021. Also included are links to some of the events that were organized in his remembrance 17-19 September 2021.”…[Read More]…

History, myth, fact and fable merge in Ashgar Wajahat’s story. In Afzal Ahmed Syed’s short poem words can stem an apocalypse of the dagger, herald a promise. Both translated by Alok Bhalla
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Kenya’s South Asians were officially recognized in 2017 as its forty-fourth ‘tribe;, reversing the racialising populism of its founding father. Peter Kimani’s novel released five months earlier revisits this history with a Punjabi Muslim migrant cast as the father of the nation.…[Read More]…

Poet Gavin Barrett chats up ‘oral’ poet and calligrapher H. Masud Taj. Both from Bombay/Mumbai, they meet for the first time in Toronto and talk poetry, life and memories-in verse.
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This collection of emails between Asif Raza, poet, essayist and M. U. Memon, literary critic, essayist and editor is a dialogic feast of literary influences that shaped them and an ode to friendship. …[Read More]…

A light-hearted tale of a serial talker whose company neighbours avoid and how he almost won the motor-mouth slug-fest; by Saeed Ibrahim, illustrated by Danesh Bharucha. . …[Read More]…

A story that works at two levels: the surface one, where Intizar Husain records man’s priority for commerce and at the deeper level of an unspoken bond with Nature that is wordless; memory speaks/suffices. …[Read More]…

Inflected with ‘environmental sensibilities; Majeed Amjad and Amiq Hanafi offer us poetic visions that should open our eyes and make us think of the world and the ineffable. Both translated from Urdu by Riyaz Latif…[Read More]…

Poet Vinod Kumar Shukla and late painter J. Swaminathan, created works that talk to each other about what should but doesn’t matter to us: Trees. …[Read More]…

In his short life (1904-1926) Srečko Kosovel produced diverse work: over a thousand poems, hundreds of essays, prose pieces and notes that continue to engage readers. Rabindranath Tagore cast a major intellectual influence on his work as the young Slovenian avant-garde poet sought answers to issues such as imperialism and nationalism, …[Read More]…

Jecinta Kerketta urges us to turn our attention from the horrors of floating corpses to the rivers that died or are dying; their mortality heralds the collapse of civilization itself. …[Read More]…

Hindi poet Anamika interlaces themes of politics, society and domesticity in her poems, five from her first published collection in English and the rest from a forthcoming one. All translations by Vinita Sinha …[Read More]…

Pash comes to life as the poet talking back to the demons of our imes in these fresh translations from his work by Alok Bhalla…[Read More]…

Dead bodies piling up, losing friends and relatives: Ashwani Kumar expresses his anguish but his poem is also about the longer history of hatred, the ideology of the rulers- a virus that devastates us.; his vision is dark, dystopian yet lyrical. …[Read More]…

In the twilight years of the Mughal era, a tragi-comic tale by Ismat Chugtai of a child-bride discovering dignity and selfhood as a world collapses around her. Translated by Ayesha Kidwai.…[Read More]…

Selections from the latest published volumes of prose and poetry by Kunwar Narain re-affirm the breathtaking range of his creative visions of lived experiences and their tilted truths…[Read More]…