Mitali Chakravarty

I sit by the river  and watch storks  and turtles, 

I am a phenomenon.  Like a whirlwind  I’ll twirl till I can  change the world. 

Aruna Chakravarti is a doyen of historical fiction, spinning out narratives on the Bengal Renaissance with her Jorasanko (HarperCollins, 2013) novels, reviving the story of the Bhawal Prince with The Mendicant Prince (Pan Macmillan, 2022) and doing series of fictitious short stories based on chronicles from the past.

The unnamed You can get lost trying to  get back to the exit at the Vatican Museum. 

"You have done an excellent job. People who know English tell me that your translations are better than the originals," said the late Sunil Gangopadhyay to Aruna Chakravarti on her translation of his writings.

I jump from ship to ship, / fly dangling from the claws  of a huge bird in the sky / till my toes scrape mountain-tips. 

‘Shabnam’ is a dewdrop in Persian. Shabnam (1960) is the name of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s passionate love story that stretches beyond the history of nearly a century ago.

“I sing the song of equality– Of a country where fresh joy blossoms in every heart