Literature At Home

Death, a cluster of just simple five letters, encapsulates in itself the cessation of life of all living entities. But do people ever accept the death of someone or something in a positive manner? Of course, the response will be negative. But the fact is that without decay none of us would exist. And that is why when someone or something dies they become natural fertilizers for plants. If we look at our garden where dead leaves are brushed away in a heap, a hopeless thought arises in our mind as to what to do with those dead leaves. Dead leaves mean the end of life. But the fact is that those leaves can be used as natural fertilizers for the soil. So, everything has a purpose and this very thought of optimism amid the apparent pessimism is projected in a metaphorical way in the poem "The Last Leaf" by Shrestha Chakraborty which has been published in the anthology titled "Firth- A Consortium of Indian Poets".  The poem shows a conversation between a little hungry w...

Adwaita Mallabarman's A River Named Titas stands as a monumental work, illuminating the intricate tapestry of the life of the Malo fishing community along the Titas River. Through his profound narrative and nuanced characters, Mallabarman delves into the existential themes of displacement, identity, and the unyielding human spirit. Published posthumously in the year 1956, this novel has become a cornerstone of Bengali literature, offering a poignant portrayal of the community's struggle for survival and self-definition.  Crafted in an era marked by quivering socio-political upheavals, this work mirrors the dissonance and fragmentation wrought by India’s independence and the cataclysmic Partition of 1947. Adwaita Mallabarman, who himself was born into a marginalized Hindu family and experienced first-hand the socio-economic struggles of his community, has infused his intimate knowledge of the Malo fishing community into his writing, rendering a vivid illustration of their lives...

One of the earliest chess pieces introduced in Lewis Carroll's 1871 fantasy novel Through the Looking-Glass, the White King though not much interactive throughout, however, on some levels, plays the most important role within the story at least as far as the game is concerned. The king’s portrayal as quiet and naive is in fact tantamount to the moderate, juvenile nature of the King of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as reflected in his remark to Mad Hatter while acting as a judge at the Knave of Hearts’ trial “don't be nervous or I'll have you executed on the spot”. Prior to the game, the White King appears to be an animate chess piece of normal size and, for whatever reason, cannot hear or see Alice after she passed through the eponymous looking glass. Alice, not realising this, picks both him and the White Queen off the floor and places them on a table, leading them to believe that some unseen volcano blew them up there. Afterwards, however, she has some m...

  “I don't know what you mean by your way, all the ways about here belong to me…”—  The Red Queen, Through the Looking Glass. An amalgam of the Queen of Hearts, and even sometimes the Duchess from the previous book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), the Red Queen is portrayed as a domineering, puritanical, officious and matronly woman in Lewis Carroll's 1871 fantasy novel Through the Looking-Glass . Civil but yet unpleasant, she brings Alice into the chess game as the White Queen’s pawn and is often seen to hound her about her lack of etiquette and general knowledge like a quintessential Victorian governess. Though viewed as an antagonist in the story for her being in the side opposing Alice, their initial encounter besides the flowers is a cordial one, with the Red Queen explaining the rules of Chess concerning promotion to Alice in that she is able to become a queen initially by starting out as a pawn and ultimately reaching the eighth square. Alice finds herself r...

Introduced as one of the queens in Looking-glass World, the White Queen is a fictional character who appears in Lewis Carroll's 1871 fantasy novel Through the Looking-Glass. Prior to the game, the White Queen along with her husband the White King first appears to be an animate chess piece of normal size in the drawing room looking for her daughter Lily just beyond the titular looking-glass and, for whatever reason, cannot hear or see Alice after she passed through the eponymous looking glass. Alice, not realising this, picks both her and the White King off the floor and places them on a table, leading them to believe that some unseen volcano blew them up there. Upon her first arrival, Alice finds the White Queen extremely perplexing and not particularly queen-like. She does not meet her as a human-sized character until the Fifth Square. The White Queen is portrayed as an elderly woman who is very aware of her situations and what is going to happen next. She looks untidy with a comb...

Abstract Travel is a way of self-discovery. It is through travelling, one can escape from the crude and quotidian lifestyle with which he or she does not like to live. When one travels, he or she discovers new cities and countries, new people and their culture, new tastes and smells. But first of all, he or she discovers himself or herself. In this fleeting world, one begins to understand who he or she is and why he or she is, what stereotypes and limitations live in their head. We do not get what we sincerely crave for; we are denied of the fate that we dream; we meet sudden curves which we consciously want to bypass. We are bound by shackles; be it norms, institutions, traditions or societal inhibitions. We may dream of a life in Tahiti, or beside Walden; but we cannot leave behind this concrete jungle for reasons innumerable. Modern human fate is nothing but a conspiracy to entangle us by luring with one after another luxury only to forget our coveted desire. A true adventurer in...

Sons and Lovers is one of a myriad of novels by D. H. Lawrence where he brilliantly examines the antagonism between spirituality or emotional attachment and sexuality or carnal attachment as part of an essential element of his philosophy of life—  ‘the religion of blood’ . As also suggested by Sigmund Freud, a human being’s main task is to keep these two key attributes in harmony. An imbalance of any of these attributes can cause disturbance in the progressive development of a person and/or his or her relationship as is seen firstly in the relationship between Paul and Miriam owing to the latter’s excessive spiritual musings and later on between Paul and Clara— a topsy-turvy. Unable to reciprocate Paul’s overt sexual needs Miriam ends up introducing Paul to her friend Clara in a bid to hopefully fulfill these needs. Clara is a suffragette, who is separated from her husband and temporarily lodged with her mother which results in her engaging in a passionate sexual relationship with ...

“ The idea of nature contains, though unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history.” — Raymond Williams  Blake’s poem “The Book of Thel” deals with a psychological issue of purposelessness which is metaphorically projected as a journey from Innocence towards Experience. Blake’s own engraving portrays a young Girl standing under a drooping tree. In front of her blossoms a plant of a young couple. The young girl Thel in her ‘unfallen’ or innocent state, resides in the pristine valley of Har. Thel is an angel who is the youngest daughter of Seraphim. Kathleen Raine views Thel as a fairy because fairies are spirits of vegetation and in the engraving she stands amidst flora. Other interpretations suggest that the word Thel, having its Greek root can imply ‘will’ or ‘desire’ and the poem presents her desire for wisdom. Thel asks questions about her importance and the impermanence of beauty in the world and complains “no one hears my voice” but the lily and the cloud responds and...

By the titular ‘cycle’ Preetinicha Barman in her poem “Cycle” metaphorically refers to the menstrual cycle signifying fertility, birth, flow of life etc which every girl has to undergo enduring all the pain and bane in order to become a ‘woman’. The image of the beads of sweat in the speaker’s body is quintessential of a woman’s menstrual blood— “Pungent, slimy, the quasi-liquid drips” — which flows from the uterus through cervix and out of the body through vagina which is symbolized by the ‘naked hill’, thus implying the spatio-temporal action the backdrop of the poem is supposed to have set against. The use of the adjective ‘naked’ is compatible enough with the vagina in that it sheds or empties all the menstrual blood— which is partly blood and partly tissue from the inside of the uterus symbolized by the ‘red soil’— from it during menstruation. The speaker seems to have been worn out after her ritualistic participation in the monthly period. The burden, pain, sufferings infli...

A shrine of a Hindu folk deity named “Buri Maa”, Burir Pat is located in Dinhata near Bypass Highway. The temple enjoys popularity in the town with its rich history. As per the little knowledge gathered while chit-chatting with a fellow resident of this area, this temple was built during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War by a Muslim who fled to India from the then East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) and erected this temple at Buri Maa’s behest in his dream. Ever since then Buri Maa has been worshipped both by the Hindus and the Muslims of this locality. This is truly an inspiring story which talks to us about the importance of cultural syncretism and cosmopolitanism. Buri Maa is a special form of goddess Durga. But unlike goddess Durga, she is not accompanied by her children here. She is a symbol of good luck and prosperity. People worship Buri Maa in their houses before arranging any auspicious occasions like marriage, rice ceremony etc with a view to expecting propitious result ...

                   “Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies— for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text— as into the world and into history—by her own movement.” — Helen Cixous. If perceived from a cursory glance, unlike materialist feminist thinkers like Virginia Woolf, Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir who all recited a litany of complaints on the basis of how women were socially and economically oppressed by the patriarchal society, French Feminist Psychoanalytic theory is interested in the latter’s influence on women’s psychological experience and creativity. This theory focuses largely on the individual psyche, and not on group existence. And for many French psychoanalytic feminists like Helen Cixous, the possibilities for ...

Responsive reception is a unique, essential and special faculty or quality or characteristic of the Indian culture, its traditions as well as its people. As is easily sensed from a cursory glance at the titular terminology, there is an immediate or simultaneous process of at least two functions the conjoining of which makes Indian culture and traditions look exotically different from western culture by leaving a legacy that India will cherish and celebrate perennially. Unlike the western culture and traditions which are primarily deemed uniform or homogeneous, Indian culture and traditions are largely diverse in form and nature. But despite this inborn, innate, complex, indivisible and undistinguished diversities, there is a conspicuous presence of unity in Indian culture and traditions. Hence, the famous saying of Jawaharlal Nehru “Unity in diversity” . The reason behind this wide diversity lies in the fact that India is supposed to be the most active, enthusiastic and potent receiver...

  Abstract The objective of this paper is to unbiasedly and unabashedly locate among the large corpus of any genre of literature, which is historically, culturally and commercially not a very reliable medium for resistant discourses and alternative life-practices of the queer people because of the suspect bourgeois, capitalist, patriarchal, phallic-ideological, hegemonic, heteronormative, scopophilic, voyeuristic and “mass cultural” motor of the literary forms and practices, the representation of the queer in the poems of Adrienne Rich, a pioneering feminist who is credited with bringing the idea of lesbianism in the poetry world. In Gender Studies, the term “gender” is used to refer and limit only to the social and cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity. Gender is prescribed just like a script and everyone has to perform certain roles following the script. Any avoidance of or deviation from particular gender norms is immediately considered an anomaly and the suppos...

“Standing before Time, we must bear witness/ To what we have done and what we have thought.” —Jibanananda Das. Trying to figure out the nature of Time, Saint Augustine in his The Confessions wonders “What then is time?” before going on to confirm time’s enigmatic entity by himself responding “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know.” Jibanananda Das does not pose any conceptual question in his poems about time as such; not because he was never a spiritual person, but perhaps questions about time have lost their fascination for twentieth century man. Unlike poems from his collection Rupashi Bangla (Beautiful Bengal) in which Jibanananda Das is seen to transubstantiate and universalise Bengal into an ideal of the homeland that is acultural, ahistoric and atemporal much like a utopian fiction, in the poem “Horse” (Ghora), published in his 1948 collection The Darkness of Seven Stars , his idyllic setting of Bengal like other parts of...

  Do you know that the females have a penis too? Yes, they do have one. It is their clitoris. Clitoris and penis are in many ways very similar to each other. The outer part of the clitoris almost looks like a penis. Clitoris and penis are both made of the same tissues. They both have a shaft and a head. Both get erected during the time of arousal. They both play an important role in sexual pleasure. It is not the vagina that is the most sensitive and stimulating sex organ but the clitoris since this tiny external portion has more nerve endings than any other human body, be it male or female. We all know about vaginal orgasm but we hardly know about clitoral orgasm. The difference between these two types of orgasm is just the means by which nerves are stimulated. For clitoral orgasm, it is the external part of the clitoris that is being stimulated and for vaginal orgasm it is nerves inside the vagina that are being stimulated. Most women reach climax sooner from clitoral stimulation...

 Masan Baba is a folk deity of benevolent and/or malevolent nature worshipped mainly by the Rajbanshi community in North Bengal, especially in the Dinhata subdivision of Cooch Behar district. Every year on the first day of the Bengali month Jaishto (May-June) a fair is organized centering the annual worship of Masan Baba in the village named Alokjhari at Gosanimari under this very subdivision. The God, worshipped in this very temple by the name Garkata Masan as well as Alokjhari Masan, is the most primordial and popular one among its other equivalents forming one hundred twenty six in total while in the district itself only twenty eight of its equivalents are found to be worshipped. The Rajbanshi community believe that the different forms of Masan Baba can cause different harm to the people of different ages such as spreading several diseases and bringing about natural calamities and in a bid to get rid of these diseases and calamities they started to worship Masan Baba. As mytholo...