Flaming Flowers: Volume I by Bishnupriya Chowdhuri

 Flaming Flowers: Volume I by Bishnupriya Chowdhuri

This anthology features fourteen stories by women authors from West Bengal and Bangladesh. The stories collected in this volume are unique in their own way. Each story narrates the lived experiences, social aspirations and agency from strikingly contemporary perspectives.

In the first story, "Edges of Love", Shaheen brings into perspective the global concerns. It narrates a tale of a woman married to a soldier layered by hints of homoeroticism.

In the other story, "A Different Kind", explores the delicate relationship between a mother and her daughter. It explores the complexity and resilience of social belonging for a disabled mother and her young daughter, in all their vulnerability, intimacy, and silences. A story that manages to hold love in spaces defined by pain, because of and in spite of it.

In Anita Agnihotri’s "Mountain", we are transported to a multilayered narrative set against the backdrop of the pandemic. It deals with how class privilege creates a huge gap between the domestic workers and their employers. Here I find the domestic help Rani is the centre of the story. Her link with the mountain is mesmerising.

These are stories where the rural and metropolitan neighbourhoods of Bangladesh or India, the urban imaginaries of Dhaka or Kolkata, and the memories of pre-and post-Partition days across the two nations speak to the readers (in translation), as they would have done in their source language.

The authors have done research work, and the way they have translated the work is commendable. It made the story essence imbibed in an easy manner.

Overall, it is a commendable read.

Purchase here.

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