Biryani Tales and Life Lessons from Kerala, Review essay, The Wire (September 2018)
Back on the Bus: The world of a daily passenger, Personal essay, Sunday Eye, Indian Express (August 2018)
What Manto’s ‘Das Rupay’ Tells Us About Sexual Violence Against Girls Today , Review essay, The Wire (July 2018)
A People Ravaged: Peeling off the Many Layers of Partition Trauma, Book review, The Wire (May 2018)
Love and the Turning Seasons – India’s Poetry of Spiritual & Erotic Longing , Book review, Kitaab, (April 2018)
The Whore as Metaphor for a City, Review essay, The Beacon (February 2018)
Wet Radio and other poems, Book review, Kitaab (December 2017)
Rooting in Snow, Personal essay, Cargo Literary Magazine, (November 2017)
House of Song, Book review, Cafe Dissensus (October 2017)
The Restless Brilliance of Hassan Blasim, Author profile/Book review, Kitaab (October 2017)
On Durga’s Migrant Trails, Personal essay, Cafe Dissensus Everyday (September 2017)
Satirical Films Have a Lot to Say About India’s ‘Baba’ Culture, Essay, The Wire (September 2017)
The Historian’s Daughter , Book review in Cafe Dissensus (August 2017)
Cutting Through Mountains to Build a Statue Translation in The Wire (August 2017)
Who is Abani, at whose house, and why is he even there? Translation in Parabaas (August 2017)
Bangladesh Now, Through the Lens of Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, film review in The Wire (June 2017)
Book Review: Sumana Roy’s ‘How I Became a Tree’, book review in Cafe Dissensus Everyday (April 2017)
Singing in Dark Times—a Manual for Encoding Dissent, poem in The Maynard (April 2017)
Beheji, poem, in Stonecoast Review (December 2016)
London Relived: The precise affections of a sometimes lover, personal essay in Coldnoon Travel Poetics (August 2016)
Asavari, poem in Open Road Review (August 2016)
Balancing Yin and Yang in Coyoacan, personal essay in Cafe Dissensus Everyday (April 2016)
Nirmala Boudi and the Bureaucracy, fiction translation in Humanities Underground (November 2015)
Parama Park Street, prose translation in The Sunflower Collective (September 2015)
Fall, poem in Words, Pauses, Noise (September 2015)
Thirsty, poem in Open Road Review (June 2016)
Togetherness Formulae, poem in AntiSerious (June 2015)
Review of Rivers Run Back in Cafe Dissensus (May 2015)
Living Abroad is Making Do and Make Believe, poem in Words, Pauses, Noises (March 2015)
An anti-national friendship, translated into Bengali in Friendships Across Borders (February 2015)
When I had the Plague, humour essay in Anti Serious (December 2014)
Patch of sky for hopes to fly, review essay in DNA (September 2014)
Between the Map and the Memory/book review in Cafe Dissensus (August 2014)
Marrying the Road, essay/book review in DNA (July 2014)
Winter Outside a Grocery Store, poem in Two Cities Review (P 33) (June 2014)
Ocean of Consciousness, essay in DNA (May 2014)
Letters from a Foreign Shore, translated letters in Cafe Dissensus (May 2014)
Aranyalipi, translated essay in Muse India (May 2014)
Kabir in the time of elections, essay in DNA (April 2014)
The Curse of the Missing, column in Cafe Dissensus Everyday (April 2014)
The fabled crop of winter, essay in DNA (March 2014)
Summer at Victoria Park, poem in The Boston Coffee house (March 2014)
Two Weeks in Delhi, personal essay in Pithead Chapel (March 2014)
Flickering Embers in Verse, essay in DNA (February 2014)
Book review: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage in DNA (January 2014)
Book review: Corona in TFQM (December 2013)
The Bulldozer in Warscapes (November 2013)
His Masterly Voice: Manna Dey, in Sahapedia (October 2013)
Alice Munro: Marathons in Sprint in IBN Live (October 2013)
‘Where a line is a circle: Toronto’ in Earthen Lamp Journal (September 2013)
Shakti’s Singing in Parabaas (April 2013)
On Durga’s Migrant Trails Personal essay in The Four Quarters Magazine (December 2012)
The Crater Doesn’t Move in Open Road Review (November 2012)
Ramkinkar’s People Live Again in Indian Express (September 2012)
A restless but calming mind (May 2012)
When art meets publishing world (April 2012)
Mention in BCLT Alumni News (March 2012)
Still in Translation (March 2012)
Bhaswati, this is attractive, simple, good writing (The Witness). Well told in short story format, while choice words established the poignancy, the end weighing down the reader just right. And well, these fiction contests ARE tempting! 🙂 Cheers.
I really enjoyed this entry. A shocker in so few words. It did left me glum. Really well written.I’m also excited about the new contest. And having Anne Frasier on board, that’s really cool. I read her debut novel (Hush) and I loved it.
Whoa! What a story! I must’ve missed that one the first time through.I’ll join you in the new contest. it looks like fun.
Hi Bhas, I enjoyed reading your fiction (above) very much. It was tight, crisp and not once without keeping the reader gripped.All the very best of luck with your current entry.Looks like Jason is indeed makig a name for himself. Well done all round!
Thank you, Prashanth, Cesar, Mr. Schprock, and Susan. Hope to see you all in the new contest. Good luck!
Nicely done Bhaswati. I liked your original version too, which I remember very well. I’m pulled into the world of political struggle with a single line towards the end, just as I was in the first version.I’m also excited about the new contest.
Reposted your revised version was a great idea. Having everyone let you know how the improvements affected them could be very beneficial. I have to thank Susan for turning me on to your blog. Hopefully I can find the inspiration I need from the photo so that I can enter the competition as well. Happy writing to you.
Thanks, Scott. Always good to know if a story works with readers. And when a good writer like you says it does, the effort becomes worthwhile. Brandon, welcome to my blog. Many thanks to Susan for pointing you to this humble corner. Thank you, too, for linking to my blog. I am linking to yours too. Great stuff there. I sure hope to see you in the contest. Good luck!
Hello Bhaswati.I found your blog via Susan too. She’s doing a good job of pointing us all to other great blogs.This story, which is so short, grabbed my attention immediately. I really admire a writer who can do that with so little text. It takes real skill to do that.I look forward to reading more of your work over the coming days.
Thanks for that Bhaswati. I feel the same back at you.
Hi Amin. Welcome to my blog. I am really thankful to Susan for bringing me such wonderful visitors (and no, I don’t say that because you said kind words about my story, :P). Visited your blog. It’s great! Am adding it right now. Thanks for adding mine :)Scott, many thanks, friend. 🙂
Am always delighted, Bhaswati, by how you manage to imply so much, include so much in your short pieces.Such talent.
You are kind as ever, Bernita. Thanks. 🙂
Frankly, I found the end disappointing. This line is the culprit:>Unarmed civilians were the best targets to drive home the demand for a separate state. This makes the writer pass a judgement on the crime. Instead, it would have been better to end with a hint so that the reader discovers the irony, rather than being told point blank. It could have been replaced with something like the perpetrators having left a political pamphlet or a slogan on the electric pole with their demand or etc. This would also have provided the perspective of the people who committed the murder, however unreasonable that perspective might be.
Frankly, I found the end disappointing. This line is the culprit: “Unarmed civilians were the best targets to drive home the demand for a separate state.” Just goes to show I am still new in this game, doesn’t it? (Not trying to justify shoddy writing. I really am a novice as far as writing fiction goes.)Honestly, there couldn’t be a better criticism of this story. That line irked me, not because it was the writer’s judgment creeping in (which of course, can be rather irritating), but because it took away from the overall spirit of the story, and suddenly brought in some “agenda” from somewhere. In retrospect, the judgment perhaps sneaked in because I was actually an eyewitness of the terrorist attack that forms the basis of this story. However, I can’t agree more with what you say, Bhupinder. Many thanks for posting the comment and for making a fantastic suggestion. That works! And yes, I am going to apply it to further improve the story.