THE POWER OF WORDS
We started our literary adventure exactly one year back – it was
an ambitious project, a bi-lingual literary blog to bring to the readers the
combined talents of authors writing in English & in Bengali. The readership
of our blog has increased significantly over this year, and we now have readers
in different countries all around the globe – authors too. We are grateful to
all of you for our continuing success. Our last few numbers were dedicated to special topics. This
month we have come back to our roots, in a manner of speaking, concentrating on
the role and influence of literature on our lives. The interviews in this issue
concentrate on the role of literature in personal lives and on society. We
firmly believe that it is important to revisit this fundamental issue.
Our cover story this month by Chryssa Velissariou analyzes in
detail the influences of Indian philosophy, art and poetry – from antiquity to
modern Greek culture and brings into focus the influence of historical intermingling
between two cultures. A lot of scholars in India have studied and written about
the contribution of the Greek culture to Indian civilization, and this article
is an interesting eye opener to the other side of the story. Our sincere thanks
to Chryssa for this excellent contribution.
We are also proud to announce a very special feature in this
issue – for the first time since its existence, Songsoptok is publishing an
article in a different language. Fabò Kinga, the Hungarian poet and author,
analyzes the personality of Sylvia Plath in an essay written in Hungarian. We
sincerely hope that our readers in Hungary will enjoy reading the article that
is published in the ‘Last Page’ section.
I take this opportunity to reaffirm the main objective of our
web magazine, since our readership has increased significantly since we started
our journey. The magazine was born out of the conviction that the bold and
sincere literature still remains an effective weapon against everything that is
evil, unjust, and detrimental to humanity. Our authors are independent thinkers
who like us believe in the power of ideas and words to bring about change in
any domain, be it political, social, cultural or societal. Our magazine is an
instrument of our crusade against everything that is unjust.
I end this editorial by thanking our readers and contributors
once again. You have made our journey meaningful. We count on your continued
support to make Songsoptok stronger.
[APARAJITA
SEN]
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