Memories of Arrival: A Voice from the Margins

Translated for the first time into English, Memories of Arrival brings together four books of a migrant’s story of displacement and exile in one volume. Adhir Biswas, a Dalit, makes the subalterns gain some visibility.

The author, though half-starved, gets an education. He finds possibilities, delighting in the city of Calcutta, making the most of what he can. He finds a place in the book world, finally emerging as the distinguished editor and publisher of Gangchil and Doel.

Adhir Biswas writes quietly and tersely, with much unsaid, to depict a life where the past and the present keep coalescing with dreams of the old place and the dreaminess of the new land. His story has much in common with that of migrants who leave a village or a small town to come to a big city and live in its shadows.

Table of Contents:
In the Author’s Words Introduction by Janam Mukherjee A Note by the Translator, V. Ramaswamy A Note on Kinship A Note on the Bengali Calendar BOOK I: IN ALLAH′S LAND Preface: One Step at a Time Setting Foot on Allah’s Land What Did Baba Write? The Old School: The Red Colour Book It Was to Take Me That the Train Arrived The First Lie Bed Number Twenty-Eight The Silver Screen of Madhumati Rani not Kuti Dewdrops Fortune Smiled at Dawn Barefoot, Alta on the Feet The World of Weeds Dadu Was Looking for a Second-Time Groom The Cross Mark Small Pica, a Rupee and a Half The Make-Belief Shop The Wheel of the Returning Chariot Rubia/Chikan and Puffed Sleeves Still Weeping Had I Been Able to Inspire with Dreams? BOOK II: A REFUGEE ALMANAC Preface: Is a Country Only Dreams and Memories? Are You the One Who ...? An Ear of Paddy and a Blade of Grass Tenant Wanted: A Small Role How Much Would Saira Have Asked For? The Maidan on 23 January Strangers Padabali Kirtan A Small-Size Letter, Arun Sanyal Was the Minister Himself Taking the Bribe? Fragrant Flower Incense Do You Want to Hear How I Got the Money? The East Bengal Ground, Thangaraj at the Goal Is It All from College? Rupu’s Dot BOOK III: LET’S GO TO INDIA! Uttam–Suchitra’s Calcutta through Refugee Eyes Preface: The Heart of Calcutta I Live in the City of Uttam–Suchitra Once the Chain Began Landing—Run Man, Run! Days of Looking for Work Calcutta’s Far Away Wasn’t There a Sari That Belonged to Ma? Inquilab Zindabad! I Left the Country after Being Promoted to Class Six Barbodhu and Miss Shefali Dada, Two on the Side Sackcloth Cinema, Nineteen Paise Santoshda Didn’t Return to the Village I Don’t Want to Weep like Dada Independence Day, Free Cinema A Wretched Face Calcutta ’71 BOOK IV: A FLAVOUR OF THE MAIDAN Preface: The Calcutta Maidan through Refugee Eyes Rivers and Streams, Hilsa Fish and Village The Maidan for a Hundred-Thousand This River, That Bank Had the Corpse Decomposed? There’s No One Nearby Now The Late Subedar Since When, Kid? Why Had He Held Me So Tight? Won’t You Collect the Body? We’re Going through the Maidan Now Could One Climb Up the Wall of Victoria Memorial? Tenants of Fort William Why So Many Questions? The Red Light Lane Badal Sarkar

About the Author :
Adhir Biswas has lived in Kolkata since 1967. He began to write in 1976, aged twenty-two, contributing fiction and nonfiction to little magazines. He ran a bookshop for many years. He is the well-known editor of Gangchil and Doel. The first volume of his memoir won the Suprabha Majumdar Memorial Prize by the Bangla Academy of the Government of West Bengal in 2014. He was awarded the Vidyasagar Memorial Prize for children’s literature by the West Bengal government in 2017. V. Ramaswamy took up literary translation of subaltern writing after almost two decades of social and grassroot activism in his city, Kolkata, for and with the labouring poor. He has translated The Golden Gandhi Statue from America: Early Stories, Wild Animals Prohibited: Stories / Anti-stories, and This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale: Two Anti-Novels, by Subimal Misra, and the novel The Runaway Boy, by Manoranjan Byapari. He was awarded the inaugural Literature Across Frontiers – Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship in 2016.