Bikshipta Ardhashatak by Ashok Mitra [Hardcover]

It seems that our primal emotions are drifting far away from us. — Ashok Mitra wrote this in the conclusion of an essay five years ago. He was perplexed and disheartened by the lack of enthusiasm around him despite the electoral success of the Communist Party in a neighboring country. Over the past few years, in various essays, he repeatedly returns to feelings of anger, astonishment, and pain in different contexts. Whether discussing society, education, literature, music, theater, politics, or economics, the distinct hallmark that shines through his insightful writings is this very "primal emotion."

The immense financial inequality and even greater social decay constantly fill him with intense sorrow, yet even in this strange darkness, even as he witnesses the devastating collapse of the dreams of social revolution he has cherished all his life, he never becomes a pessimistic fatalist. He never says, "Nothing will change, nothing can be done." The habitual, refined laziness typical of the middle-class Bengali is, as expected, entirely absent from these writings as well.

He is repeatedly shaken by the shameful and appalling disregard of the Bengali language by the upper-class Bengalis of the city, and he fiercely criticizes it time and again. But he doesn't give up; sometimes he suggests setting up primary education camps at book fairs to promote the reading of Bengali, and other times he dreams of reviving the "One Paisa Poetry" series from the 1940s. Observing the events unfolding around him, he passionately appeals: Please, don't include me among the intellectuals.