The Bard and his Sister-in-Law

Mallika Sengupta is a poet who fought against gender politics, professed not to worship women as deities but treat them as humans. She explored Sita in her poems and prose as well as the first woman on earth who spoke for non-proliferation of weapons.

Kabir Bouthan (The Bard and his sister-in-law) is Mallika’s last work written from her hospital bed as a cancer patient. A post structural novel about Tagore, the first Nobel laureate from Asia and his elder brother’s beautiful wife Kadambari who committed suicide, it is a unique story quintessentially rooted in Indian-Bengali ethos. Kabir Bouthan is a mosaic of history and hysteria, elan and illusions, pathos and power. Lopamudra Banerjee, now based in the US, has brilliantly captured the nuances of Bengali culture in her profoundly smart translation.

Subodh Sarkar, Noted author, poet, Sahitya Akademi awardee, Fulbright Fellow, Faculty of English, University of Iowa, Reader in English Literature, City College, Kolkata

Mallika Sengupta (1960-2011) was a Bengali poet, feminist, and reader of Sociology from Kolkata, and a celebrated literary figure whose unapologetically political poetry has been critically analyzed in India and abroad. She had been described in ‘Poetry International’ as “a proponent of an unapologetically political poetry and an important voice in contemporary Bengali literature”. Her journey with poetry started in 1981 and since then she has published eleven books of poetry, two novels and several essays, and edited an anthology of women’s poetry from Bengal. She had been the head of the department of sociology in a Kolkata college, and also served as the Poetry Editor of Sananda, the leading fortnightly magazine for women (edited by actor, filmmaker Aparna Sen). Sengupta has been the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Sukanto Puraskar (1998) from the Government of West Bengal, India and a Junior Fellowship for Literature (1997 – 99) from the Department of Culture, Government of India. She also travelled to several poetry festivals, conferences and seminars in India, Sweden, Austria, USA and Bangladesh. Several English translations of her work have been anthologized and also published in various literary and academic journals. Along with her husband, the noted poet Subodh Sarkar, she was the founder-editor of Bhashanagar, a culture magazine in Bengali. As an activist and academician, Sengupta has been actively involved with the cause of gender justice and other social issues throughout her lifetime. She also initiated Aloprithivi along with her fellow poet and artists, a forum committed to raising consciousness among marginalized women and children through poetry, music and drama. ‘Kobir Bouthan’ (Ananda Publishers, 2011) is one of her three published novels which received critical acclaim.

Lopamudra Banerjee is an author, poet, translator, editor with eight solo books and six anthologies in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She lives in Texas, USA with her family, but she is originally from Kolkata, India. She has been a recipient of the Journey Awards (First Place category winner) for her memoir ‘Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant’s Wayward Journey’ (Authorspress, 2016), the International Reuel Prize for Poetry (2017) and International Reuel Prize for her English translation of Nobel Laureate Tagore’s selected works of fiction (2016). Her poetry has also been published in renowned platforms including ‘Life in Quarantine’, the Digital Humanities Archive of Stanford University. She has been a Featured Poet at Rice University, Houston in November 2019. ‘Bakul Katha: Tale of the Emancipated Woman’, her English translation of Ashapurna Devi’s award-winning Bengali novel ‘Bakul Katha’ has received Honorable Mention at London Book Festival. Her recent collection of poetry and monologues ‘We Are What We Are: Primal Songs of Ethnicity, Gender & Identity’ (Black Eagle Books, 2022) is a collaboration with Mexican-American poet and storyteller Priscilla Rice.