An Open Letter to A New Age Bengali Writer

Recently while surfing the net I logged on to the website of a new age bengali writer - http://www.shuvadeepbarua.com/ , who appears to be very smart in both his ideas and expression, providing us with some hope about bringing a freshness in the monotonous world of bengali literature. The writer is one Shuvadeep Barua, whose writing I found to be very interesting when they first came to my hands and of whom, I have been an admirer since then. Particularly I have been very excited since going through his recent book 'JANUARY SATERO THEKE SATASER SITE INDURERA JAKHAN SAB POSHAK KETE DIE JAI' and waiting for a dialogue with him. Here is an open letter addressed to him, which I would like to share with fellow readers.

Image courtsey: http://www.shuvadeepbarua.com/

Dear Shuvadeepda,
I have been an ardent admirer of your writings since years back, when a copy of your ALOKBIDDHA ANADHAKAR came to my hands.And it seemed to me that your book had brought some spalsh of fresh air in the stagnant pool of Bengali literature. The short stories contained in the book, which I see as a rich collection of parables, were of a genre, though initiated by masters of world literature, yet awaiting explorations by their Bengalee counterparts. This book attempts to provide a perfect picture of our worldly existence, explores its different aspects, and in this attempt takes the readers in a voyage in quest of some eternal truths and help us reach a junture where the rationale and mystic lay side by side, where darkness and light coexist and get dazzled by each other in such a way as to make the readers conscious of a higher reality within the surface reality or beyond it.
After that, there was a long wait for us, the readers, for a second book from you. Though during this period some of your short stories reached us, they were miles away from quenching our thirst in a similar way as a complete volume would have done. Among them, ‘Andhar Sagarer Opar Ek Birat Pakhi’ offered promises to be developed into a full fledged novel, but it did not as you chose to tell the story in the form of a short story. However, even if it does not fulfill our that very expectation, it proves to be a class by itself in dealing with a vast span of time in a very compact manner. This further enhanced our eagerness for a taste of your writings, in a scale greater than witnessed so far. And then finally, at this 2009 Kolkata Book Fair, our long wait has been met with a volume of your second book JANUARY SATERO THEKE SATASER SITE INDURERA JAKHAN SAB POSHAK KETE DIE JAY.

A casual reading through first few lines which gives us enough liberty to read the text in more than one alternative ways, each complemented by the others, and suddenly the text takes to gallop in a rhythm entirely of its own, bearing a sign of high musical influence, which does not fully conform to your personal account nor to the readers’ own fascination. A lot of musical references here and there made me conscious of the Rock n Roll days, the passion, crisis and expression of those days. In your novella the same eternal emotions have been vividly penned in the backdrop of Calcutta at the threshhold of the new millenium. Stark social realities like the local and colonial history of the place, and the air of globalization are mingled with the personal emotions of the protagonists as their streams of individual consciousness form the basis of a higher one, in such a way as to give a glimps of reality from a magical flight from where one can take a bird’s eye view, where one can feel the emtions objectively, and this elevation has been enabled by you in a very smooth, delicate way.
Thank you very much for offering us such a nice piece of text.

your admirer,
Sourav Adhikary.