The painting at the cover is by Afrida. She is a child prodigy. She was all of twelve years old when she painted this. I feel teary that it adorns this book. Hope i get to know her someday. This is the sort of work where the translator and the editor becomes like one person, like two people do when they are making love. Poetry is very similar to lovemaking in any case. I know Afrida has done justice to Falguni Ray, hope Ratulda and I did it too. This'll be available in Kolkata shortly, and i will update the interested, if any. This will also be available elsewhere abroad and might get uploaded online, where my last book was upped and sold all of one copy thanks to the magnanimity of beautiful friend Sharmistha.

Dedicated to Falguni Ray (1954-1981). He is my second favourite poet of all time. This book is intended for all the beautiful friends and lovers of life, death and everything in between, for those who seek poetry out of life and whom "poetry provokes to stay alive" (To cross-quote Falguni quoting মলয়-da). A lot of work on the Hungry Generation has been done. I don't want to add to the corpus. All i want is love.

Look, honestly, those among you who can read Bangla and have read Falguni's works in the original might not find anything more from this. But i believe a sort of literary collective consciousness exists among all lovers of literature and there ought not to be narrow domestic walls made of languages within this collective consciousness. Languages have other and more sanguine purposes. I deserve to read Lorca as much as the Argentine lady who cried on reading Tagore derserved to read Tagore. Translations/ Transcreations are important. Bangla literature has fucked up enough on this front over the past centuries. This is sad irony, for much of ancient Bangla literature would not have survived had they not been translated into Tibetan.

Anyways, because the point has always been to change it,

Atindriyo Chakraborty