The official unveiling of the book The Bleeding Border: Stories of Bengal Partition, an anthology of 24 stories on Partition edited by Joyjit Ghosh and Mir Ahammad Ali took place at Niyogi Books Store in Kolkata in the august presence of Prof. Chinmay Guha, translator, essayist, and scholar, Prof. Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, translator and editor, Dr. Joyjit Ghosh, and Prof. Mir Ahammad Ali.

The current book is a collection of twenty-four partition stories by well-known and unknown West Bengali and Bangladeshi authors. These stories are distressing to read because of the vivid depictions of various forms of violence, apprehension, and tension at the two countries’ porous borders. They outline the horrifying communal riots that occurred in various locations and the trauma and memory disruptions they caused, the exodus of the so-called “refugees” from former East Pakistan and their ferocious struggle for survival in newly sprouting colonies at uncharted terrains, and most importantly, the longing for an idealized desh that defies geographical limitations.

Mir Ahammad Ali said “Whenever we read stories of partition, we read stories based in the Western part of the country. However, there are many stories in the Eastern part of the country revolving around the partition. It has been a challenging experience”.

Joyjit Ghosh on the selection process of the stories said “The first criteria were the border. The Bengal border is still alive and is breeding. Nostalgia, dislocation, and refugee rehabilitation issues are some of the other markers based on which the stories in the anthology were selected”.

The stories in the book are:

Acharya Kripalani Colony by Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay
The Public Hero  by Satinath Bhaduri
The Tale of a Tulsi Plant by Syed Waliullah
When the River Rebukes by Satyapriya Ghosh
The Guardian Deity by Dinesh Chandra Ray
Jatayu by Dipendranath Bandyopadhyay
Batashi: The Wild Breeze by Atin Bandyopadhyay
The Bait of a Dice by Jyotsnamoy Ghosh
The Refugee by Debesh Ray
Homeland by Asish Sanyal
The Exile by Hasan Azizul Huq
Hearth and Home by Jiban Sarkar
The Lady and the Red Rose by Sadhan Chattopadhyay
Ends of a Broken Bridge by Jatin Bala
Homecoming by Sailen Sarkar
Border by Devi Prasad Sinha
Photograph by Adhir Biswas
The Other Jews by Kapil Krishna Thakur
Soil by Anil Ghosh
Address by Goutam Aalee
One Land by Amit Mukhopadhyay
Between the Borders by Sohrab Hossain
Therefore, a Border Tale by Niharul Islam
A Mother Divided by Ahana Biswas

Depending on the reception this anthology gets, the editors will think of coming up with more such anthologies in the coming times.

Priyanka Dutta