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.
I weave Hibiscuses in your hair and Along with them I softly weave the strings of my I love you’s. Your eyes are closed as you soak in my touch and Your lips are pressed thin as if imprisoning yours.
In classic Bengali fiction, the kitchen is a central site for conflict and community bonding.
The night after the story got published, Jamal stormed to my home at around 11 PM, drenched in the rain. That was the first and only time Jamal raised his voice against me
The large green pond of Dhanmondi Lake was probably the first source of natural water that I had witnessed. It sheltered a huge number of people who have lived,
One sits silently. Her eyes blink sometimes. Sometimes her lips tremble a little, or they don’t tremble at all.
Pale, aristocratic, seductive forces lurking in the dark—when we think of vampires, we often perceive them through a western lens
