Kalyani Thakur Charal on Andhar Bil and I Belong Nowhere
Channel: ON PAGE ON STAGE
Date: 2024-01-12

On Thursday 16 February 2023, 6:30-8pm, the first CADALFEST concluded with an evening with Kalyani Thakur Charal. Kalyani discussed her journey as a writer, her inspiration as well we her activist and editorial work with us. She also read from her new publications in English translation.

Her novel ANDHAR BIL, translated by Asit Biswas, is a beautifully lyrical, almost plotless novel, which was recently published by Zubaan: ‘As children play in and around the bil – the central ‘character’ in the novel – people seek out varieties of fish and cook them in ways that recall the flavours of home, festivals and boat races take place, jute is farmed and sold, floods arrive and push people to high ground, marriages happen and property disputes unfold. The still waters of the bil absorb and hold all these stories and the boroi tree stands in the centre of the bil, a silent witness to everything’ Kalyani Thakur Charal – Zubaan (zubaanbooks.com).

Her poetry collection I BELONG TO NOWHERE, a militant, satirical and biting collection to be published by Tilted Axis in March 2023 is her first English language collection, translated from the original Bengali by Sipra Mukherjee and Mrinmoy Pramanick: ‘Focusing on Dalit lives in Bengal, a region whose partition into India and Bangladesh has left a legacy of communal tension, refugees and statelessness, Kalyani pulls no punches in eviscerating paternalistic bourgeois ideology and those who speak on behalf of others’ (Tilted Axis Press).

Please also visit the DALIT VOICE AND VISION (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe2s1_7J9-XpbsTn8ixRdnQ) digital publication channel which developed from the series of events organised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Research Network ‘Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’, coordinated by Dr Nicole Thiara and Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak.