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Monalisa No Longer Smiles (2022)
An Anthology of Writings from Across the World
Editor: Mitali Chakravarty
My father had an uncanny ability to read faces. No, he does not identify people's medical risks, personality traits or even the prediction of their future. He could tell a person's origin, caste and creed. He was proud of his achievement and held steadfast to the idea that caste division is a necessary tool for society to progress.
He would choose where he ate and sometimes refuse invitations to people's homes or even functions of people with questionable status in the caste hierarchy.
My mother tried to knock some sense into him that the whole world had moved on and things had changed. But he was having none of it. She even reminded him about Periyar EV Ramasamy's speech when he visited Malaya, to leave all the bad discriminatory habits they acquired in India and move forward. But no! He was unmoved and reasonably contended with his way of pigeon-holing people.
I convinced myself that things would change when I grew up. People would become more learned and open-minded. I assumed that religion would take a back seat as science was slowly answering all the loose ends of knowledge then.
How wrong I was.
In the 21st century, the present turned out to be a far cry from what I perceived the future to be. People are congregated in factions. They found ingenious ways to divide and subdivide tribes so that one would dominate the other. Religion has made a comeback in a big way. Fundamentalism has taken root. Putting aside the science and symbolism behind worship and beliefs, believers are more focused on the ritual and blind following of the herd.
The space between the haves and the have-nots is ever-widening. Materialism has crept into all crevices of our lives, and the future does not look bright.
Against this gloomy background, this anthology tries to make its readers that there may be hope if we try.
Borderless Journal, Editor Mitali Chakravarty's brainchild, is hopeful that the world will indeed be one whose borders will be torn down and where everyone will live as one. There would be no discrimination against people by caste, politics, or creed. There would be no wars to show the dominance of one over the other.
Trying to recreate past glory and relive past grandiosities is no use. In God's creation, everyone is supposedly created equal, so why is there a clan of oppressors and oppressed, the powerful and the weak. Through art, literature and storytelling, this anthology, from its interviews with famous moviemakers, thinkers, poets and writers, from its fiction, 'Monalisa No Longer Smiles' and 'Borderless Journal', through its editor, Mitali Chakravarty, tries to create a possible world where borders do not matter. Ideas transcend borders.
Nice review
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