Bitan Chakraborty

Raghu Rai: Waiting for the Divine by Rachna Singh makes it to the Hindustan Times. Thanks a bunch, @utterflea! @HawakalP

#NewReleaseAlert Step into the world of Raghu Rai, the father of Indian photography, through a deeply engaging memoir. This is not a conventional recounting of his life but a candid korero brimming with sincerity, wisdom, and humanity. Woven with iconic photographs, it captures his devotion to craft and the philosophies that shaped his legendary career. The narrative — alive with vibrant anecdotes and profound insights — offers an intimate portrait of the master craftsman and invites readers on a journey of learning and inspiration. Rachna Singh's Raghu Rai: Waiting for the Divine is as evocative as the man himself! Cover Concept and Design: Bitan Chakraborty. Scheduled to be released in early December. @HawakalP @Bitan84 @RaghuRai1

#NewArrival It's there, as promised. Buck up, folks; it's time to grab your copy of Sanjeev Sethi's latest, Legato without a Lisp: Poems (Indian Edition | Hardback). amazon.in/dp/8119858964 @sanjeevpoems3 @Bitan84 @KiritiSKiriti

New Release Alert "Subodh Sarkar and I interacted appropriately at Bhubaneswar. My question was, why did he choose me? I realized he was pretty convinced I could present him adequately before the readers, who knew him primarily as the Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Bengali poet and could not read his works in Bangla. My job was to propose a professor of English (who effectively chose Bangla as the medium of his writing) to an English-speaking (and reading) global audience. Please don't ask me why I was under the impression that poet Subodh Sarkar was a person who’s political, ill-behaved, and, on many occasions, arrogant and that it's difficult to handle him. I won't deny this suspicion was long embedded in my mind until I met him in person at the Kabita Academy (Academy of Bengali Poetry) in Kolkata. I found him warm, embracing, and secretly vulnerable. I say this because I watched the inner mind of the poet peeping out of his dignified façade," asserts Rajorshi Patranabis in his succinct introduction to Subodh Sarkar: Colonies of Twilight. Coming out next — scheduled to be released in early September. Cover Photograph & Design: Bitan Chakraborty #SubodhSarkar @HawakalP @Bitan84

Jagari Mukherjee’s poems of love and loss are evocative and haunting. Nature comes alive in glorious detail — orange roses, wet jasmines, pink chrysanthemums with pale yellow souls — and the moon glows in its multiple dimensions. In these passionate verses where reality and myth converge in Jagari’s singular voice, Radha and Lalita, Zeus, and Leda remind us of age-old moments of joy and classic despair. Replete with imagery that could easily become cliché in less capable hands, these poems linger long after one has read them, like the “scent of the lemon leaf crushed” onto the palms. This is a book to savour. — Menka Shivdasani A woman—truly, madly, deeply in love with a man, seeks solace and kinship with the moon. The moon appeals in its various incarnations: old, new, full, at times a glittering half of her soul, other times a teardrop, always watching over the woman and lighting up the way for her with silver shimmer. The man, too, reflects various incidents and moods; he comes to her as a lover, makes love, leaves behind memories, goes away and returns. , captures the enchanting lights and shades of this nuanced relationship under the aegis of the moon. Jagari Mukherjee's new book of poems, Woman and the Moon, can now be ordered on Amazon (India). Link below: amazon.in/dp/8119858182 @HawakalP @MenkaShivdasan1

Pickering makes stylistic and linguistic advances that will please his readers. His poems look at him and his landscape with a detached sense of being. It is a book with a big heart. — Sanjeev Sethi Dustin Pickering’s new book of short poems, Crime of the Extraordinary, in many ways, is summed up by the poem, ‘Polyamory’: “I love many books, / many times, / many lives. // I live.” These verses are often wistful and epigrammatic — and the dialectics between ideas of crime and punishment act as a springboard behind the birth of this volume. Love and loss, politics and ideology, allusion and delusion, articulation and silence, and much more — punctuate the texts. I suspect, rather ironically, Pickering hyperbolically sums up the book’s intention in ‘The Arachniad’ saying that “each [micropoem] is an epic essay unwritten.” The readers will do well to delve into this book to explore and exfoliate what remains unpeeled, but are indeed hinted at within parentheses. “The extraordinary” is almost always hidden. — Sudeep Sen Coming out soon! Dustin Pickering's new book, Crime of the Extraordinary: micropoems. @DustinPickerin2 @HawakalP @sudeepsennet @sanjeevpoems3

Congratulations @KiritiSKiriti

A brilliant review of The Blight and Seven Short Stories by Bitan Chakraborty (translated by Malati Mukherjee). Thank you, Sreemati Mukherjee, for this incisive review. @CafeDissensus @Bitan84

t2 caught up with popular writer Bitan Chakraborty at the Eastern Metropolitan Club earlier today. The Blight and Seven Short Stories is Malati Mukherjee's translation of Chakraborty's Bengali books, Dhosha and Landmark, launched at Hawakal's literature event April Rush, held in the club. The author spoke to t2 about the stories behind his stories and what inspires him to keep writing. @t2telegraph @EasternMetropo1 @Bitan84 #AprilRush

Bitan Chakraborty awaits the formal launch of The Blight and Seven Short Stories (translated by Malati Mukherjee) on April 13 at the Eastern Metropolitan Club, Kolkata. Before the official release, here is what he has to say about his journey as a storyteller for the past 14 years or so. Part One of this podcast (Bengali) is available on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=NPSiic… Part Two will be live on 5 April at 6 pm (IST). @Bitan84 @EasternMetropo1

There are several occasions to celebrate in the coming few weeks. Bitan Chakraborty's new book, The Blight and Seven Short Stories, arrived yesterday. A hardcover book of fiction, and it's the first time that Shambhabi Imprint has produced a moon-cut sleeve case. It protects the book from external hazards and adds to its aesthetics. Malati Mukherjee translated The Blight and Seven Short Stories from the original Bengali. In her presence, Prof. Akshaya Kumar and Prof. Ajanta Paul will launch the book on April 13 at the Eastern Metropolitan Club. A new book surfaces with fresh promises. Bitan Chakraborty has interesting anecdotes to share with his followers. He will be seen in a video podcast that is scheduled to be released on YouTube next week. Bitan and I will travel to places with our new releases; I'll let you know about all our future engagements. Before I sign off, I'm equally proud to announce that on April 13, friend and poet Rajorshi Patranabis will launch Peony: The Gogyokha Gogyoshi Society of India with its registered office in Delhi. Until then, if you are a serious reader of literary fiction, you may buy The Blight and Seven Short Stories on Amazon. The links are in the first comment. #Shambhabi #AprilRush #NewArrival #BookLaunch #BookRelease #Peony @EasternMetropo1 @Bitan84

On the controversy revolving around Gautam Vegda's manuscript: "The Black Drongo". "It is also to be noted that the literary work pertains to very sensitive issues surrounding the identity of the Dalit community and their perceptions of the earth’s ecology, and the background of the author as a young representative of the Community’s ideas ought to have been considered by you before making derogatory comments and further extending threats of terminating the contract. It is understood that such comments have been made with a view to arm twist our Client into oppressive and non-existent terms of the contract and also making the author’s creative rights subservient to the Publisher’s whip." — Excerpted from Point 13 of the legal notice sent by the Advocate on behalf of Gautam Vegda, dated Aug 31, 2023. The entire controversy began with uploading the wrong cover design that was deliberately made by the author having followed his professor's advice. Since the onset of the controversy, we refrained from commenting on caste issues. Our selection of Gautam Vegda's "The Black Drongo" wasn't based on his caste but on the merit of the poems. A simple email bearing the author's request to withdraw the manuscript could have ended the controversy that was blown out of proportion. Instead, the author chose the legal pattern and made us select an appropriate way of responding to the legal notice served to us. Legal procedures are expensive and time-consuming, to say the least. Moreover, the author's attempt to engage us with legal mediation arrived with a demand for a lump sum. So, friends and well-wishers, we had enough conversations with half-baked information — with truth, lies, and half-truths. We request that all of you refrain from making any comments/remarks in any manner until the legal procedures end. Thank you. Bitan Chakraborty (Founder-Director, Hawakal)

We congratulate Sudipta Biswas for achieving the Biography of the Year award for his book, Tulsidas Balaram, at the Ekamra Sports Literature Festival. "A biography of eminent football player and key member of India’s gold-winning Asian Games football team of 1962, Tulsidas Balaram, featured prominently at the festival. Legendary footballers from Hyderabad, Shabbir Ali and Victor Amalraj, enlightened the session on the book, Tulsidas Balaram: The Boy, The Hero, The Tormented Footballer with interesting anecdotes," reports @timesofindia. @SudptaBiswas @ekamrasportslit @KiritiSKiriti

December will witness the release of a few significant Hawakal titles of 2023. A gorgeous coffee table book, Varanasi, by director-writer @sarthakdasgupta. An intriguing collection of stories, When She Married Dr. Patekar, by Indian American author @tweetsbynidhi. Adaptation of thirteen popular songs by Leonard Cohen into short stories — Leonard Cohen and I by @Somudranil07. Authentic poetry, Under the Tropic of Cancer, by Bishnupada Ray. The concluding month offers more than we mentioned here.

@IndiGo6E Flight 6E 2239, scheduled to depart at 1 pm, will leave at 14.10 hrs. Announcement made 20 mins before scheduled departure time. How can the airline be unprofessional and insensitive to passengers? My PNR: YPGTKI

#NewReleaseAlert Nidhi Thakur grew up in Dehradun (India), and then, through a Master's degree in Delhi, she moved to the USA for graduate studies. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and two daughters. Nidhi writes shayari (poetry), fiction and commentary in Hindustani and English, and is an active community member participating in projects about culture, climate, and chaos. Coming up next — Nidhi Thakur's debut collection of short fiction, When She Married Dr. Patekar And Other Stories. Cover design: Bitan Chakraborty

A handful of new titles will arrive, and we will join the festivities around books and literature from early next year. Find us at the Second Edition of the Goa Book Fair from Jan 4 to Jan 8, 2024. We are very excited about the show! #Goa #GoaBookFair #BookFair #GoGoa @leonardjensan

One is never done with Varanasi or Banaras, as it is commonly called in India. It's always inadequate to bathe one's soul with the intricate tapestry of the gods and goddesses, the assumed saintliness, and the rich aroma of the burning lamps and pyres — all aimed at achieving salvation. Varanasi is the most frequently dwelled city in the world to have successfully carried the legacy of liberation, where one would anticipate no afterlife. To be born again or not, one has to break the worldly existence. Varanasi is the city where devotees wish to die to get rid of the vicious circle of death and birth. Whoever pays a visit to the holy ground turns a seeker. Sarthak Dasgupta’s Varanasi cinematically captures glimpses of his tour and emerges as a voyage for exploring the self. Congratulations, @sarthakdasgupta! @HawakalP @Bitan84 @Aishikk73 #Varanasi #NewReleaseAlert #Photobook #PictureBook #CoffeeTableBook #CTB

Be it his sketches or movies, Sarthak Dasgupta puts life in his frames. With Varanasi: A Filmmaker's Musings Along The Ghats, he has outdone himself. Sarthak has captured the very soul of Varanasi. I can literally feel the pulse of the stunning city in all its hues and moods. Enchanting! — Divya Dutta [Actor and Author] @divyadutta25 Writer-Director [Music Teacher on Netflix] Sarthak Dasgupta's VARANASI: A Filmamker's Musings Along The Ghats is available on Amazon. Order your copy now: amazon.in/dp/8119858662/ @sarthakdasgupta