Trip and Trot but Destined to go a Long Way
The semiologists of the world had said that human life exists in words. They have uphold the value of language so high that they have even gone to say that whatever humans have achieved till date is because of language and words.
But, it is time for a different take. It’s a corporate world, a worldly enterprise of making market out of any thing. Even academics come into the paradigm of market these days. The means of expressions like print media is no exception of this phenomenon. Everything becomes a commodity in this ghastly atmosphere of consumerism. And commodity is anyway just a commodity. It has degraded the whole business of values, ethics and even learning. Print medium has tarnished to a source of information. In this hyper materialistic world even words (Sabd) are missing their meaning. And the logical conclusion of the meaninglessnes of the word leads to ‘End of History’. But, as Bertolt Brecht has written in one of his poems,
“In the dark times, will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing
About the dark times.”
We are seeing an uproar of small literary magazines in our dark time to save the spirit of word. This has become a universal phenomenon now and it is very much evident in our Indian context too. In just last decade we have seen hundreds of small magazines in various languages, loaded with their zeal to sustain the meaningfulness of words and life, coming up. ‘Sabd’ is one of those hundreds of magazines, which has a clear project to sustain the integrity of word and life.
This magazine is a beautiful combination of literary and visual arts which has certainly enriched the magazine. The glimpse of the cover page of the magazine gives the same impression. Even the design of the inner pages is so well crafted that it looks so charming and thanks to this, it invites the reader. The use of illustrations and paintings are really meant to fire the imagination of the reader. This is one of the most powerful aspects of the magazine.
The editor has clearly divided the sections for poetry, fiction, culture and reports in different names but the distribution of the segments within the magazine often breaks the mood of the reader. It should be better if the poetry, fiction, culture or report section of the magazine is entitled to minimum break ups. The segmentation as of now does not work effectively. The sudden shift in the mood of the given material would mar the enjoyment of reading. It shatters the whole spirit and involvement of the reader in a sudden manner. This should be checked from the next issue onward so that the reader would get more involvement and enjoyment.
The editor should also keep in mind that language is a very important issue for a literary text. As many of the articles are ‘translated’ from the regional original, one should take care of those words and expression that do not have parallels in English. Translation can’t be a solution to get the certified reading. The hyper sensitive texts of poems cannot be translated into other languages as each language is a product of its own culture. What is lost in translation is poetry, they say. The winter issue of the magazine carries more than eighty percent translated texts which jeopardizes the very reason of having a magazine in a particular language. The original texts will help the cause more than the translated one. I hope the editor will take care of this thing to from the next issue.
The poem by Bruce Allan and the illustrations and the short stories by Syeda Farhana are the core readings of the magazine apart from the story called ‘Samiran Barua is on his way’ by Manoj Goswami in the Jasper fiction section. A large article on the life of Dipali Borthakur, the Lata Mangeskar of Assamese Music, by Rupanjali Baruah, the editor of the magazine, is well written. An article on Srimanta Sankaradeva in the same section is the most pathetic one in the whole magazine. The article so desperately tries to showcase Srimanta Sankaradeva as the propagator of several things in the world that it becomes absurd. Srimanta Sankaradeva had taken inspiration from the Hindi heartland in shaping his Ankiya Natya, this is a well established fact, but here in this article the writer has gone to the extent of writing that it is Sankaradeva who has inspired the Mithila theatre and the theatre of Hindi heartland. This has been done only to satisfy the ego of the Assamese people. This kind of conservatism always leads the people towards fascist tendencies. The editor should have checked the content of the article before bringing it to public.
The First Impression section titled ‘Pearl’ gives us some hope that the youth are taking a break from their usual life to paint such wonderful things. The writers of this section have written very well and they should be admired for their wonderful job.
Rupanjali Baruah and her whole team have done an admirable job by publishing this magazine and it’s just a beginning of their long journey. I hope the journey of the words (Sabd) will hold up the aspiration of human life and this particular magazine will have a stake on that by the Day of Judgment. |
