EDITOR’S NOTE
This issue of Six Seasons Review is behind schedule, but after reading the poems, fiction and non-fictional pieces in it, and viewing the artwork and the photos we have assembled, I hope our readers will agree that their wait for it was not in vain. Having assembled the lot, we know we have ended up with contributions that were worth waiting for.
Take a few of the poems we have collected as examples. Bengt Berg’s “A New Day” offers us the kind of hope that we cannot do without: “spring arrives/like a letter in the mailbox”. Sankhat Mhatre’s three verse offerings, to quote the poet himself, will surely “keep strong the pillars on which poetry’s continent” can lie suspended. Samira Sadeque’s poem “August’s Children” tells us thoughtfully that the schoolchildren who started a movement for road safety throughout Bangladesh sometime back, did something that was of lasting value. As she puts it soulfully, “Just because/the darkness doesn’t seem to end/doesn’t mean we aren’t getting closer/to the light every day”. Nausheen Yusuf’s moving and lyrical meditation “Elegy for My Nephew” stirs deep emotions in us about life, death and relationships that bridge them beautifully.
Our collection of short fiction will surely attract our readers as well. Adhora Ahmed’s witty storytelling in “Through Feline Eyes” offers a unique insight into “the strange mechanisms that operate human emotion”. Mehrul Bari’s “Kingdom of You” weaves a storyline made out of “fantasies, fancies” and “unrealities” that are all too human. Fayeza Hasanat’s “diasporic crisis” narrative, “Crying Can Wait” and Shah Tazrian Ashrafi’s tale of a love that transcends borders, race and religion and the barrier between life and death, “Elephant in the Sky” will no doubt move our readers. For good measure we have collected Gothic fiction by Kazi Md Shaimul Reza, “The Unseen”, and Sohana Manzoor’s deftly woven tale of tangled relationships, “Half-Sisters”
But we can claim too that our non-fictional prose pieces were also worth waiting for. Andrew Eagle’s captivating account of his quest for a whale shark in the Maldives will certainly strike a familiar note for devotees of Melville’s perennial classic Moby-Dick. Somdatta Mandal’s “American Individualism” is a wry take on American individualism, while Rebecca Huq’s musings in “In My Place”provides an account of her deeply felt need to bridge “the gap betwixt first language and the mother tongue” in her existence over time.
We hope all our readers will agree at the end of their encounters with the other poems, stories and pieces we have assembled in this issue of Six Seasons Review, plus the images on offer, provide fascinating insights into the human condition, and glimpses of the world we live in and apprehend through our feelings and senses from such unique angles that they were all worth waiting for!
– Fakrul Alam