Everything is created from moment to moment, always new. Like fireworks, this universe is a celebration and you are the spectator contemplating the eternal Fourth of July of your absolute splendor.

~Francis Lucille~

Dear All,

Welcome to the fourth issue of Kinaara. As a South Asian magazine we are continually in the process of creating dialogues on the various issues which cross the cartographic borders of our nationalism in creating a unique identity that is not a colonial construct. The treatment of celebration in Indian and Pakistani literature offers an important axis of understanding nationalism in South Asia. It provides a potent site for interrogating the sacrosanct claims of the nation and its physical body as delineated by cartographic borders. Festivals have been an intrinsic part of our identity and existence and it is not surprising that the celebrations do not stop with the geographic boundary rather it extends far beyond. However “celebration” as a nurturance of the soul, a definition of our passion and our culture does not begin or end with festivals. Celebration is more of a continual process and the articles in this issue corroborate to that.

We start this celebratory journey with Ali’s poem ‘My Haj’ which is a beautiful journey of the poet as he talks about what Haj is for him. Debdatta’s poem ‘Pujo’ on the other hand throws images of the beauty and ethereality of the Durga Puja which is celebrated not just in Bengal but all over the world by the Bengali diaspora. Rajarshi’s photo feature on the idol creation at Kumartuli, the Mecca for idol makers in Kolkata, takes us behind the creation of the beautiful idols that grace the pandals during the Durga Puja. However, as celebration is not just about festivities, we have also tried to focus on the simple everyday events and survival stories that make our lives worth celebrating. In this vein we have Ales Riha’s short sketch where he celebrates his love and marriage; Benu, Anurag and Radhika’s poems which celebrate their life journey, trysts with destiny and more importantly, hope. Niluka’s poem ‘Probability Tree’ on the other hand looks at humanity which is made up of countless factions dividing us on lines of caste, sex and race and tries to reconcile them. Pujarini’s work in the deltas of the Sundarbans makes a remarkable photo story of nature’s celebration of fury and man’s celebration of survival. Lastly we end with Pranaadhika’s heart-wrenching poem dedicated to the survivors of child abuse all over the world as she celebrates her own existence as a survivor and provides hope to others still coming to terms with it.

In this issue we have focused only on poems as we felt their free structure provided an uninhibited exhibition of celebration and show us the various facets of celebration not limiting itself to just festivals it goes much further celebrating, nature, survival and hope. This issue also for the first time we feature two different photo stories. I leave you with these poems, sketch and photo features of celebration in the hope that you will enjoy them and they will, in turn, prompt you to think what celebration really means to each of us.

Shubho Bijoya
Eid Mubarak
Rohit K Dasgupta

October 2009