A young, homeless woman finds herself in a pseudo-conjugal relationship with a jawan at a remote border outpost. A bank official is drawn to a prostitute when he goes to recover a loan taken by a dead lover. Accidentally dubbed a god-man, a labourer begins to instil justice around him. A singer entrances her devotees to help them erase unwanted memories. These stark, magical stories by Abhijit Sen, from the recesses of north Bengal, straddle communities, castes and classes. His lush narratives deftly navigate structures of power and oppression as well as rituals and realities of the region. His ruthless portrayal of love, hatred, belief and resilience is what makes for a deeply textured character of human existence.
Abhijit Sen received the Bankimchandra Memorial Award for Rahu Chandaler Haar (1985) in 1992 and the Saratchandra Memorial Award from the University of Calcutta in 2005 and 2022 for his contribution to Bengali literature. Some of his widely known works include the short stories 'Debangshi', 'Santrash' and "Poddhoti' and the novels Chayar Pakhi, Bidyadhari O Bibagi Lakhindar and Mousumi Samudrer Upokul. Rahu Chandaler Haar has been translated as Magic Bones by Papri Sri Raman and published jointly by Abhinav Publications, Delhi, and Facet Books International, New York, in 1992.
In those turbulent and uncertain days of 1970s, when I had no place to stay in Kolkata for two consecutive nights, I boarded a long-distance bus bound for the northern districts of West Bengal. It was a rushed decision, as I had no other place to go. After an overnight journey, the bus stopped at a district town almost five hundred kilometres away from Kolkata. My wife Dipika lived there alone, depending on a humble, low-paying job. We had married just two years back and thereafter spent only four nights together on three occasions. I, however, had no intention to stay with her for more than a month this time. But my destiny compelled me to live there for a period of thirty years. That is how I learnt about the hills, plains and rivers of north Bengal, about the people and their culture. I spent the first five years searching for jobs, reading books and taking care of our daughter, who was born a year after I reached that place. And it is there I started writing stories, a habit which I cherished to develop since my school days. I present here twenty-one stories from my collection of hundreds of stories that I penned in the last three decades of the twentieth century.
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