A dream-come-true for Torontonian Bengali Literati

It is not the story of any Scrutiny or of any F R Leavis or L C Knights. It is actually the truth about BLRC Literary Journal, published by Bengali Literary Resource Centre, Canada, hitting the stand.

A dream… dream… dream… since August, 2015, and finally a dream-come-true, a reality with a 'bang' (and not just a 'whimper') on December 3, 2016. And yes, in the editorial line up you are going to see Subrata Kumar Das and Sujit Kusum Paul et al instead of Leavis or Knights.

A dream, as defined by great APJ Abdul Kalam, is not anything that comes in your sleep; rather it is something that drives your sleep away. BLRC Journal is definitely a realest and longest dream in the Kalam sense for its team members who dreamed it for longer-than-a-year period surely with no Guinness thing in mind.  

Bengali Literary Resource Centre has already been a truth and 'BLRC Sahityo Potrika' is now a fresh truth. It is outstanding in several aspects. One, it is born with a huge bang because Toronto Poet Laureate Ann Michales was the Chief Guest to witness and honour the birth event on December 3, 2016 which marks this as a mega event in Toronto's cultural arena. Two, it is going to be the first regular literary journal published by any of Toronto's diverse diaspora. Three, it is bi-lingual to bridge between the mainstream and the Bengali speaking writers in Canada. Four, it succeeded to bring Bengali speaking Canadian writers from coast to coast under one umbrella. Better see what the bi-lingual editorial of the inaugural issue says: 

The message of sharing a Canadian writer's (Margaret Atwood) literary award with a Bengali colleague (Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury Tutul) has undoubtedly elevated the proximity between the two shorelines of these two literary globes which have already been connected in one straight line with two Nobel Laureates from both the sides in the span of exactly one hundred years - Rabindranath Tagore in 1913 and Alice Munro in 2013. These two occurrences are really propagating the extract of an intellectual flyover between the Canadians and the Bengalis. [Parentheses mine] 

Enough is covered about the conceptualization, birth, growth and maturation of the BLRC Literary Journal in this English editorial.

Beginning from the front cover to the back, you must not miss the tangible touch of the artistic acumen brushed by its intellectually bankable board of editors. The front cover itself stands out as a compact painting in watercolour clearly depicting two vibrant galaxies in close proximity representing the mainstream Canadian intelligentsia and the rising Bengali diaspora which BLRC is going to bridge between. You can value it as a perfectly balanced piece of art designed in the fool's cap frame of the cover. 

Beyond the cover, you have ample scope to wonder how the editors could collect as many as sixty nine writings contributed by all Canadian Bengalis for the inaugural issue of a literary journal and that too in a foreign country like Canada. Venturing even a tiny little mag may appear outrageously challenging here. Imagine the volume of optimism, courage, patience, labour and above all, the commitment of the team behind. Immensely laudable and thanksworthy. 

To mention the range of writings: 'here is God's plenty'. Altogether thirty one Bengali prose writings are there and you can relish from structural analyses of contemporary North American poetry in search of ennui and alienation to some diachronic studies of linguistics through a host of articles on subaltern history of Bengali music and film, on Chinese Nobel Laureate Mo Yan with a bonus Bengali translation of one of his short stories, an excellent review on 'A Thousand Farewells' by Nahlah Ayed, pieces on our war of independence and language movement, on women issues and homosexual issues as well as issues on immigration to mention just a few. The number of short stories are twelve and those of the poems are eleven and the writers are mostly contemporary some of who are already very well known in the Canadian Bengali community, let alone Bangladesh and West Bengal with their publications. A special section of reviews of BLRC published books includes recent publications by Akbar Hussain, Dilip Chakravarty, Shekhor E Gomes and Sujit Kusum Paul. The English section containing eight pieces includes an interesting article on Margaret Atwood, a few poems and a purely academic article on Pedagogy with others. So happy reading!

Now back to Scrutiny, I must confess that 'BLRC Literary Journal' little matches the epoch making British journal edited by Leavis that set the modern trend of literary criticism in English literary world. But you also must agree that if the former does not match in magnitude with Scrutiny, it at least matches in attitude. Because as expected by both the guests and the commoners in the inaugural ceremony, 'BLRC Literary Journal' is going to be a trend setter in Canadian literary publications for sure, in near future as Scrutiny did with its first appearance in 1932. For our beloved Bangla language, Bengali literature and Bengali culture it is a Himalayan great expectation to applaud. Let us keep our fingers crossed!

The reviewer lives in Toronto, Canada.