A Celebration Of The Human Spirit
This powerful anthology of poems, translations, essays, and short stories by some literary giants shine like a ray of light in today’s dystopian society…
Halfway through this remarkable book, you realize that stories are indeed borderless. While nations fight over borders and even go to war to reclaim their land and flex their muscle power, what gets lost in these conflicts is the voices of ordinary people. Monalisa No Longer Smiles… tries to weave in together the voices and stories of people from all walks of life. Mitali Chakravarty and her team have done a brilliant job of piecing together short stories, discussions, and poems of outstanding writers, poets, and social thinkers.
The emotions in Lesya Bakun’s poems as she fled to safety on March 7, 2022, especially Refugee in my Own Country/i am Ukraine transcends borders and offers an insight into the plight of human sufferings in Ukraine. Some of the essays reveal the double standards in our dystopian society and the rifts between ideologies, religions, classes, gender, and regressive practices. It is noteworthy to mention that some stories are barely four pages, but they have a lasting effect.
Author Sunil Sharma’s Monalisa No Longer Smiles Here… very sensitively highlights an affluent Vasant Kunj-based large family’s insensitive attitude towards their young domestic help, Monalisa, who works from morning to night. One can immediately visualize little Monalisa clad in an ill-fitting hand-medown frock standing with a cup of tea for Grandpa or a bucket of warm water for the matriarch’s swollen feet. The cries of Monalisa’s younger brother and her sad eyes when she is leaving her decrepit bamboo house in the basti (slums) to resume work haunt you long after the story is over. Life is unfair but it is the resilience and kindness of people like Monalisa or the tête-à-tête between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr that shine through many stories and candid discussions.
“Can love ever be killed? They are deluded if they think so! Can forgiveness ever be obsolete? NEVER! Hope this vaccine of love is a success. They have no option left, they will have to stick to love, come what may.” It’s lines like these that make you smile when you read Monalisa No Longer Smiles. One can’t help but hope for a world