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SriSuvro





It was Charles Dickens who in his “A Tale Of Two Cities” had given the voice to the underlying tragedy of modern civilization with his incomparable sense of history with these lines at the very start of the novel: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness.” We at Songsoptok do believe these lines are relevant to any civilization at any period of time, which is the greatest tragedy of our civilization. Two of the greatest poets and human souls of the modern age Rabindranath Tagore and Jibananada Das, in spite of their strong belief in the innate good sense and love of beauty in humans, had to search the innermost depths of their souls to overcome the stark dark reality of the crisis of our modern civilization. Even we are in the same situation today.

Hiroshima-Nagasaki was one of the worst challenges faced by our civilization. The Dickensian ‘worst times’ is a reality still continuing almost everywhere in today’s world in different shapes and capacities. We have witnessed Vietnam War, Two Gulf Wars, manmade devastations in the Middle East and elsewhere. The war mongers are roaming free with their nuclear warheads and military divisions keeping humanity at ransom. The human conscience is being challenged by the unprecedented horror and bloodbath, lies and deceptions, media propaganda and intellectuals’ depravity.

Yet those who still have anchored their beliefs in human conscience will always try to build up a new world order of peace and universal brotherhood out of these ruins- for handing over a legacy to the unborn generations. And we at Songsoptok have considered ourselves as the inheritors of that dream, of that effort. Keeping all these in mind we thought that it was also our responsibility to cater these ideas to all, to bear the torch of human determinations, to build up a common platform for all who still nurture their individual faith that something needed to be done even with limited capacities.

Actually this was the background of Songsoptok: The Writers’ Blog. We have tried our level best to bring together the like minded writers, thinkers, social workers, innovators of new ideas to bring out their best creativity in this web journal. Our dream was to build up a world forum of cultural exchange among various races, religions, nationalities, and cultures to nurture different traditions and heritages only to build up a world consciousness that all are equal with different shades of beauty. We still believe that this is the best alternative to counter the war mongers’ conspiracies and their political vendetta to divide and rule the world. And only if it can be done the world can be saved from the Dickensian tragedy of modern civilization. We had tried to reach and invite all those who in their personal spheres are concerned about all these problems and the underlying tragedies of modern civilization, and are constantly trying to deliver their best in their individual capacities. We believed that to bring these individuals in a world forum would make a great and sustainable impact upon the readers of our web journal; which might be escalated in time and would encourage others to follow. This was our responsibility in Songsoptok.  At least this was our promise too when we started our journey in web journalism on the eve of the 153 birth anniversary of poet Rabindranath Tagore. 9th May 2014. 

Since then we at Songsoptok have tried our level best to keep our promise. Attentive readers will find it in all the thirty five numbers of Songsoptok of these last three years. We have tried to focus various important problems of our current civilization, as well as numerous achievements of human endeavors. Our primary focal point of understanding was to cater various views and opinions on any topic of discussion. To achieve this we at Songsoptok have taken hundreds of interviews of writers and workers, thinkers and dreamers world around. We have also published important essays and articles discussing numbers of different viewpoints and opinions. We have done all these as we have told already, only to promote cultural exchanges of different traditions and heritages, to communicate with different sets of viewpoints to build up a common world conscience. We know our limitations, we are well aware of our mistakes and difficulties, but there was no lack of effort from our side to achieve our primary goal. Yet we have failed miserably. Not that the issues were not up to the mark. Not that, the readers has deserted Songsoptok finding it worthless. But we have failed to bring together more and more like minded writers and researchers, workers and performers, those who would keep on providing Songsoptok with their creative excellences years together. This is the only area which we have really failed to cover-up.  

We believe in quality, we believe in honesty, we believe in dignity. So at this point of time after completing three years in web journalism, we realize that it is now beyond our reach to maintain the quality and to cater the service that we had promised at the beginning of our journey. So for the time being let us call it a day for Songsoptok. With this issue we are closing down Songsoptok: The Writers’ Blog. Our website will remain open to our readers around the world. Anyone can visit our site to review all the back issues. With this note we would like to thank all the writers who have participated in this three year long journey of  Songsoptok with their creative contributions. We would also like to extend our thanks to our readers who are still with us. We are extremely sorry to let you down by closing this web journal, hope you would realize our good intentions and the magnitude of our humble honesty. There is no good in continuing without delivering quality works. And we at Songsoptok believe it from our within..

So this April, in this concluding number of SONGSOPTOK: The Writers’ Blog we are presenting an Anthology: ‘Best of Songsoptok.’ Readers will find out one hundred items of best entries that have been published by us during this period of three years of web publication in Songsoptok. We do hope that this Anthology will become popular among the readers. We would like to extend our thanks to all those, who have supported us continuously since the start, and to all our readers round the world.

FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

SONGSOPTOK: THE WRITERS’ BLOG


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