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)
Nice read!
Thanks, Agnija!
Bhaswati, this is a nice story about a father’s special relationship with a son: father, mother, friend, everything and everyone rolled up in one person. And it is a story about letting go a little at a time, and allowing the son to grow up a little at a time, a hard thing for any father or mother to do. I also liked how you wrapped this relationship around sports and education, only to have it partially severed by Apu’s more grown-up feelings for a girl.
As much as I liked the story’s sentiment, there were some things I felt were confusing. Apu’s age, for example, was not always clear. The fact that he was only 8 when we first met him would have been helpful to know sooner, perhaps as early as the opening paragraph. We are then transported to the table with eight-year-old Apu discussing a rival team that he beats at some later year, (perhaps in high-school?) and then he is suddenly of college age preparing for entrance exams and then back at age 5 or 6 again. All a bit confusing as I read.
The tension in the story was very brief. Where is Abu and why isn’t he home? At that point I wanted more about what the father was going through, his fears, his frustrations shown in some actions of his. And then when the explanation is made, again, more about the father’s internal processing of his son’s eventual growing up and extending his own identity beyond that of his father. How did the father feel about that?
The next tension is the same as the first, the same scenario, the same circumstances and the same brevity. Where is Apu and why isn’t he where he is suppose to be? There was a certain anti-climax let-down for me when the father finally finds him. Surely there was a whole bundle of emotions going on inside of him that could have been shared with the reader: relief that he was okay, anger at being lied to, distress because the father felt that he was loosing control over his son’s life.
I did like the father’s acceptance in the end, that the boy was no longer a boy, and that he was taking the natural course that a boy should take rather than one that could have been more mischievous and harmful.
The father’s voice was very touching. His love and attachment to his son was well delivered and touching to read.
Lapia, thank you so much for reading and responding to my story in such detail. I am sorry about the confusion you felt about Apu’s age. As we see right in the beginning, he is a high-school student. The instance of him being eight-year-old is only a flashback that his father experiences, which he thus describes, “my vision was a blur, my mind numb. I could just see an image of Apu flinging his body across…his small, eight-year old frame diving in a desperate bid to save the ball…” It’s the father’s memory of the younger Apu practicing.
As for your other observations, I am grateful to you for your careful reading and valuable suggestions. Thanks!