Welcome to The Antonym Magazine, where the beauty of language transcends borders and stories find resonance in every tongue. As your linguistic gateway to a world of diverse narratives, we take pride in the art of translation that breathes life into words, bridging cultures and connecting hearts.

EDITOR’S NOTE

As we end a relentlessly hot month in this part of the world and carry traces of the heatwave with us into a new month, I observe how we as people and the world outside interact with each other. I watch an array of new air-conditioner units being hauled in my neighborhood, while birds crowd around in balconies and open roofs, parched, looking for water, drinking from small pools of water emitted from the air-conditioned units. As we adjust to this new climate normal inside seething cities, we look to literature to soothe our senses.

This month we at The Antonym celebrate the life and works of Rabindranath Tagore in translation. A lot has been said about what he means to the Bengali, and Indian community at large, so I am going to refrain from adding to that. However, as I think about the sheer volume of his literary output, capturing almost every aspect of the vastness and insignificance of human life in face of nature, I can’t help but ruminate upon the fact that perhaps the universality of Tagore is not without its nostalgia—nostalgia for a world wherein he wrote, a world that was a little less clefted in various factions, a world not entirely anthropocentric, a world where a section of people still lived and were allowed to live in peaceful harmony with nature, a world with the luxury of time, of space, of reflections.

We bring to you excerpts from Tagore’s letters and translations of his poetry, fiction translations from Satyajit Ray, Sadhan Das, Parthajit Chanda, that celebrate the glory of Bengali literature at its finest. Moreover, there is a curated selection of Tamil poetry, Hindi poetry and short fiction, interviews and book reviews that delve into masterful contemporary writing.

I earnestly hope you have a good time reading!