Bhaskor Mollik was born on a humid summer afternoon in the year of our Lord 1900, in the narrow bylanes of Jessore, in undivided Bengal. The monsoon clouds hovered heavy above, the scent of wet earth and mango blossom swirling in the air. His first cries mingled with the drone of mosquitoes and the distant…
Tag: west bengal
Two Bengals Across Ichamati
The moon was a pale lantern over Ichamati that night, its silver light spilled across the rippling waters, trembling on the floats of sculpted clay that drifted downstream. The river smelled of wet mud, moss, and the faint, sweet burn of marigolds. Somewhere upstream, women’s laughter mixed with the deep drum of a dhak; somewhere…
The Armenians
The whistle shrilled like a winter’s breath, sharp and cutting, in the frosty air of the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club field, better known as the CCFC. A low sun filtered through the overhead clouds, scattering gold upon the dew-kissed turf. La Martiniere Old Boys or LMOB Captain, Harrington “Harry” Devlin, full back, stood at…
Fat Mama
The wok hissed like a temple gong struck in fire. Fat Mama’s large, seasoned hands dipped the last wonton into shimmering oil, its skin puffing golden almost instantly. Steam rose, twirling into the dusky air of her drawing-room-turned-eating-house. The smell of pork, garlic, ginger, and a whisper of sesame clung to the cracked lime-washed walls,…
Pandu And The Beast
As the sounds of a moonless night descended on the nameless little village of twelve tiny huts situated amidst the dense sal-wood forest in the heart of Bengal on the 12th night in August of 1854, Pandu tossed and turned in his jute-rope bamboo charpoy. Anxiety of the journey at the crack of dawn, just…
Chitey Dakat And Commander Chakrapani
A moonless night smothered the dense forest in velvet darkness; not even a single star dared pierce the sky. Deep within this wild, an old temple – its idol of Goddess Durga made from the wood of the Lilac or Margosa Tree, commonly known as Neem, glowing in vermilion paste and smeared with blood –…
The Last Yellow Knight
The city of Kolkata had just begun to close its eyelids. The clock tower at Esplanade yawned past midnight, rain flirting with the edges of every lamp post, swaying shadows on water-logged streets. The storm had been brewing all evening, first in the skies, now in the hearts of those still wandering the city’s underbelly….
The Harmonium’s Melody
It is 1980, a contrasting era of political turbulence and cultural vibrancy in the bustling city of Calcutta in the Indian subcontinent – a boiling cauldron of various races, religions, and philosophies. A twenty-year-old man with a pair of unusual light brown eyes peers down at a broken bellowed instrument through the murky glass of…
Ogni
Have you ever tried to burn paper or a dry leaf with a magnifying glass? Have you ever tried lighting a fire out in the open, in a desolate desert, on the icy surface of a frozen landscape, in the unbroken wilderness, beside a murmuring stream, somewhere high up on a mystic mountain, in a…
The Inverted Ashvattha
Not so long ago, in a pretty little village quaintly nestled in the bosom of nature, occurred a phenomenon most extraordinaire. Back in the day, ‘Sonarpur,’ literally meaning the ‘land of gold,’ was just another unassuming farming coterie in the rural hinterlands of the South 24 Parganas district of the state of West Bengal in…
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 