This is an excerpt from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's short story "Abhishapta", translated by Dipty Rahman
When moon fades into dawn and when I pass away with it / Will you think of all that I was?
It was actually a bit of a relief to sit on the terrace of the Gezira Pension and have a quiet breakfast before plunging back once more into the traffic of Cairo in search of a carriage to the museum.
Where there's no scent of mother, but only a sweet sense of comfort in the touch I remember the warmth of my mother's lap
I jump from ship to ship, / fly dangling from the claws of a huge bird in the sky / till my toes scrape mountain-tips.
Nuri had just swallowed a little orange pill dry, when she noticed that the portrait of ‘The Sexual Revolutionary’ had been taken down from the wall of her childhood bedroom.
Wishing you a happy new year! / The coming year? No, years ahead—
It’s been so long since we last spoke that I don’t think I can talk to you without confessing something. There you were, standing before me
At last, God heeded Sisyphus’s prayer—a plea he had been making for countless centuries. Each time, he hoisted the rock onto his shoulders, convinced that this would be the time it ascended with ease
It was the shade of the ashwath that vanquished all one’s weariness from the fiery heat of Choitro. Or else it was not possible for fatigue to be eliminated so quickly.
When moon fades into dawn and when I pass away with it / Will you think of all that I was?
This is an excerpt from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's short story "Abhishapta", translated by Dipty Rahman
I jump from ship to ship, / fly dangling from the claws of a huge bird in the sky / till my toes scrape mountain-tips.
Where there's no scent of mother, but only a sweet sense of comfort in the touch I remember the warmth of my mother's lap
It was actually a bit of a relief to sit on the terrace of the Gezira Pension and have a quiet breakfast before plunging back once more into the traffic of Cairo in search of a carriage to the museum.
It’s been so long since we last spoke that I don’t think I can talk to you without confessing something. There you were, standing before me
Nuri had just swallowed a little orange pill dry, when she noticed that the portrait of ‘The Sexual Revolutionary’ had been taken down from the wall of her childhood bedroom.
I see her now, but not in the way I have always seen her—through the lens of service, of duty, of roles—but as a woman whose edges were softened long before I learned her name