Category: Straight Bat

Apni ki adrsha markin nagarik hote chan (Do you want to be an ideal American Citizen?) is one of the most famous poems by distinguished Bengali poet Joydeb Basu. Read it in translation, and feel free to share your comments. Do you want to be an ideal American Citizen? | Joydeb Basu(translation © Kiriti Sengupta 2020)…

Fasting isn’t my cup of tea. I can’t starve for long stretches: the highly acidic gastric juice demands food from time-to-time. I used to refrain from eating on several occasions: during the pujas at home, as the news of the death of someone dear to me arrived, when the guy from the nearby diagnostic center…

I first interviewed Bitan Chakraborty back in 2015, prior to the release of his much acclaimed collection of short stories, Santiram-er Cha. The interview was then published at Dhaka Review. The journal has shut down and the piece is lost. Straight Bat comes handy as I approach the old charm. ‘আলোতে মানুষকে অবয়ব মনে হয়, আমি দেখেছি’—বিতান চক্রবর্তী প্রসিদ্ধ নাট্যনির্দেশক সুপ্রীতি…

Friends are aware I’ve been living alone for eight years now. Of course, I’ve a family, consisting of my wife and son. Work that I do regularly does not allow me to stay with them. I’m living in a rented apartment for all these years—writing, editing, translating, and publishing both my stuff and that of…

To know about Rimi Dey I’ll let you read her words first, There are plenty of snakes around.Tigers as well.These tigers are like snakes. There are alsoa handful of other animals who resemble tigers. Most of the people are aware,I keep some of themin my pocketsnowadays. Rimi is a widely published Bengali poet of the ’90s. Born…

“I love poetry/poets which guide my thoughts into new directions. Dr. Sengupta is one such poet. With “Beyond the Eyes” he painted a picture in my mind using colors I’d never seen before. Quite an achievement considering the poem’s brevity,” wrote Gary Manz, a friend and poet, as he shared his review of Healing Waters Floating…