For the last few days, prose has been beckoning me. So, yesterday, after emailing DRR the poem, I finally settled on working on a re-vision of this story I have written for Beth Ann Bauman's workshop at UCLA. The story is loosely based on Raha Didimoni, this formidable teacher of our Balia Nafar Chandra Balika Bidyalaya. I have never been to that school myself, but have enough stories about her from those who went. I have known almost nothing about her, so the story really began as a way for me to explore how can one think of such a figure, and once I went inside the project, Raha Didimoni began to move further and further away, although, I guess, one can still see certain traces of our Garia Station Road if one tries hard. So, yesterday, I spent some time looking through the feedbacks I received. One of them said:
The back-story was too much, too heavy.
And, my reaction is, yeah, you know, we are an ancient people, have known life before capital, have dealt with colonialism, too many famines, genocides etc. On top of that there is gender, caste, multiple religions, a Partition. So, yes, our back-stories are heavy, and involve more that a nuclear family in the suburbia and after-hours fucks in the school-gym and a smoke in the parking lot. You just have to deal with it.
But apart from that, some of the feedbacks, especially Beth Bauman's was dot on. I am hoping to have a revised version of the story by Jan. 1. So that I can send it out to few for feedback.
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