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Bithika Halder

@pathbetweentrees

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Kolkata, India
gossiping about books and movies
author of the poetry book 'Sanctuary'
(link below 👇)

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My first poetry book is finally out ✨️

Sanctuary by Bithika Halder is a collection of 21 poems meditating on the ordinary, the silences, and the patterns that dictate our daily lives and cocoon us into familiarity.

The poems are selected from my works from the last seven years. This journey of discovering myself in my words started in Nov 2017 with @yourquoteapp . Deeply grateful to YQ for providing a safe space where us non-writers could put down our words like our personal journal. All whom I have got to know via YQ, some with whom I've lost contact and others who have remained in touch even now—you all are my first real life inspiration, my first readers, my first online friends. You helped me garden the words that led to this book.

To all, who have ever read my words, thank you.

Cover art is by me @distraction.art

Thank you to @bookleafpublishing for this opportunity.

Paperbacks available in India on Amazon and Flipkart (link in bio)
DM for ebook.

💌 published author, poetry books, poets, poetry community, book community, book photography #authorsofinstagram #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #authorcommunity #bookblogger #bookstagramindia #kolkatabookworms taken in Barrackpore by @pathbetweentrees

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2 years ago

late summer, slow days, gentle reads 💌

booklist:
- felicity by mary oliver
- alphabet by inger christensen (tr. susanna nied)
- the carrying by ada limon
- a village life by louise glück
- nothing is lost by Edvard Kocbek (tr. michael scammell & veno taufer)
- bluets by maggie nelson
- too much and not the mood by durga chew-bose
- goodnight and god bless by anita nair
- sidewalks by valeria luiselli (tr. christina macsweeney)
- in praise of shadows by jun'ichirō tanizaki (tr. thomas j. harper & edward seidensticker)
- welcome to the hyunam-dong bookshop by hwang bo-reum (tr. shanna tan)
- call me by your name by andré aciman
- the waves by virgina woolf
- i am a cat by natsume sōseki (tr. k. ando)
- the english teacher by r. k. narayan
- the house on mango street by sandra cisneros
- unaccustomed earth by jhumpa lahiri
- agua viva by clarice lispector (tr. stefan tobler)
- small ceremonies by carol shields
- dept. of speculation by jenny offill
- anne of green gables by l. m. montgomery
- room of many colours by ruskin bond
- the little prince by antoine de saint-exupéry (tr. irene testot-ferry)
- heidi by johanna spyri (tr. from german)
- totto-chan by tetsuko kuroyanagi (tr. from japanese)

[ danish, spanish, korean, japanese, french, slovenian, portugese, swiss, indian, poetry, nonfiction, essays, memoirs, literary fiction, children's classics, book recommendations, women in translation, translated literature, bookstagram, reading community ] by @pathbetweentrees

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2 years ago

Kannada Short Stories by Women Writers
Ed. Kruti R.
Sampark Publishing House

3.5/5

Even though most of the stories suffered from the quality of its translation, they nonetheless took me in to their world.

In Dark Cobra, we see how misogyny and patriarchy absolves men of even being the cause of death of his own child.
"He is male. [...] His past never haunts him, his present does not trouble him, his future does not mock him. He does not need to answer anybody. He is beyond the need for apology because his faults are never faults."

In Tumult, we find that lack of purpose and possibilities of expression compels one to cling to social validations, which leads one to gossip and scheme, failing to admit of its fragility.
"One moment satisfaction of having everything and at another, the dissatisfaction of having lost all; laughter at one moment and tears at next. What am I lacking?"

In Quietus, we come across the desires of an ailing person coming to terms with their limitations and proximity with death, causing in misdirected anger and cynicism.
"The victimized gate that could neither turn inside nor outside produced a helplessly suffocated noise. That gate is exactly like me, with doctors struggling to push life into my decaying body and death pushing me outside, stuck in between, neither dead nor fully alive.

In A Story for a Daughter, Tell Me A Story Parakka, and Seemantha, we witness the world through the eyes of young girls and the loss of innocence as they come across being seen as a sexual being, as they unknowingly become part of someone's tragedy, as they come to realise the imagined margins of society dictates all celebrations.

In Where is Your Castle, O Jogi? we see a changing village, as freedom is given away for more income, reflecting a parallel change in the private lives of its inhabitants.

These worlds are both near and distant, forming a landscape that is untrod yet recognizable.

#womenintranslation #southasianliterature #womenauthors #booksintranslation #indianliterature

excerpt from Introduction

excerpt from Dark Cobra

excerpt from Quietus

excerpt from A Story for a Daughter

excerpt from Tell Me A Story Parakka

excerpt from Wher by @pathbetweentrees

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19 days ago

Middlemarch by George Eliot
5/5

The book presents several issues that are prevalent even today—how a man and a woman view marriage and are willing to contribute to it, what purpose one's choices serve, how society adapts to new ideas, how changes in the economy affects various sections of the society, how the elite class controls political change and media, how the strength of community can sustain or to ruin anything—all tied together by the desire to be seen, understood and establish themselves. It presents the dichotomy between private and public aspirations, the public crowding the private life and vice versa.

The social barriers and intimacies between various sections of this town are interwoven seamlessly through overlapping interests and needs, bringing to life the working of the community. It showed the abundance and vitality of Victorian suburban life through the dreams, gossip, naivety, stubbornness, morality, conformity and liabilities of its inhabitants.

The story parallels and contrasts the lives of the three female protagonists—Dorothea, Mary and Rosamund—their aspirations, how they view freedom and independence, what they want from marriage and the unmentioned absence of female friendships in their lives. While the female friendships existed in the peripheries of the novel among the side characters, our protagonists remained devoid of them. Which to me was the primary source of their despair.

The 1832 reform bill, the expansion of railways and the growth of the medical field was the background as the politics and religion of the people directed the vocations and perception of the people. Coincidentally while reading this, there was protest going on here due to NEET exam paper leak, the exam taken by students to get into the medical field in India, a political crisis in the aftermath of state election and the rise of religious conservatism. The conflicts of the 1800s Middlemarch thereby reflecting the late 2020s India.

Towards the end several revelations rained like plot twists in asian dramas, which can be a criticism, but that didn't bother me.

It is as grand & encompassing as it is nuanced & grounded, bringing the provincial town to life. by @pathbetweentrees

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21 days ago

standstill

completing a six-month long holiday, the longest since I was admitted to nursery school at three years old, and still not having enough of myself, even amidst a reading slump, the desire to consume and create were met through other avenues, as the summer heightened I kept searching for more green, the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, the hills, the wasteland, the gardens engulfed my daydreams, I settled into the routine of going for morning swim, taking pictures of the day's bloom, reading, watching films, journaling, doodling, what a blessing to have this summer hibernation before the monsoon of life sets in.

Readings:
I Want My Hat Back - Jon Klassen 4/5
The Vegetarian - Han Kang (tr.) 4.5/5
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk (tr.) 5/5
The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh 5/5
So Late in the Day - Claire Keegan 3/5
Yamunotri Yatra - Sheela Sharma 3/5
Soft Science - Franny Choi 3.5/5
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (Vol 1 & 2) - Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (tr.) 3.5/5

Films:
Picnic (japan, 1996) 3.5/5
Still Life (china, 2006) 4/5
Mirrored Mind (japan, 2005) 2.5/5
Her Love Boils Bathwater (japan, 2016) 3.5/5
Nomadland (usa, 2020) 4.5/5
Pastoral: To Die in the Country (japan, 1974) 3.5/5
Notorious (usa, 1946) 3/5
Syndromes and a Century (thailand, 2006) 4/5
Moneyboys (taiwan, 2021) 3.5/5
Wanda (usa, 1970) 3.5/5
A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (japan, 2016) 4.5/5
Kaza-hana (japan, 2000) 3/5
Watching the Detectives (usa, 2007) 3.5/5
The Wind Rises (japan, 2013) 4/5
A Song Sung Blue (china, 2023) 3/5
Lovely Man (indonesia, 2011) 4/5
Turup (india, 2017) 4/5

Short films:
Work on the Grass (japan, 1993) 4/5
The Chair (usa, 2012) 5/5
Fauve (canada, 2018) 3.5/5
A Short Story (china, 2022) 3/5
The Perfect Human (denmark, 1968) 4/5
July (ussr, 1988) 4/5
Pria (indonesia, 2017) 3/5
Natalan (indonesia, 2015) 4/5

Series:
Love Between Lines (china, 2026) 5/5
Journal with Witch (japan, 2026) 4.5/5
The Untamed (china, 2019) 5/5
Noragami S1 (japan, 2014) 4.5/5 by @pathbetweentrees

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a month ago

tbr for women in translation month (south asian edition)

while now i consciously try to read more of non cis-men authors throughout the year, august still remains my favourite month to discover books in translation by women and by female translators.

with misogyny on the rise in the past decade with the rise in fascism and right wing nationalism, it has become deeply important to not forget and continue to share that the rights and choices women have today is because of the fight the women before us fought.

women have been always and still are silent, unrecognised contributors to the functioning of the economy and society.

we must be proud of that but not in the way that the society wants the women to be proud of being silent and unrecognised, but proud of the fact that women are the backbone of civilisation, which they don't have to continue to be unless the world learns to compensate, accommodate and respect them and their work.

#womenintranslation #womentranslators #womenauthors #southasianheritagemonth #southasianliterature

Chotti Munda and His Arrow by Mahasweta Devi
Translated from Bengali by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Original title: Chotti Munda O Taar Teer (1980)

#mahaswetadevi #gayatrichakravortyspivak #bengaliliterature

Kannada Short Stories by Women Writers
Edited and Introduction by Kruti R

Authors featured: Banu Mustaq, B.T. Jahnavi, Dr. Janaki Sundaresh, Jayashree Kasaravalli, Mitra Venkatraj, H. Nagaveni, Sumangala, Sunanda Prakash Kadame, Tulasi Venugopal, M.S. Veda, Dr. Vinaya

#kannadaliterature

Ganga's Choice and Other Stories by Vaasanthi
Translated from Tamil by Sukanya Venkatraman and Gomathi Narayanan

#vaasanthi #tamilliterature

Lajja (Shame) by Taslima Nasrin
Translated from Bengali by Tutul Gupta

#taslimanasrin #tutulgupta by @pathbetweentrees

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2 months ago

Blossoms in the Graveyard by Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya (tr. Mitra Phukan)

Mehrunnissa, a young girl, is forced to become independent before time and contribute to the liberation struggle of Bangladesh, as her house burned to ashes leaving no one to share her grief with. In the following days, she had to learn and adapt to a life of hunger, void, bloodshed, she couldn't imagine a future for. The beauty of her motherland stood in contrast to the vultures feeding into the dead bodies. But the hope of liberation kept her going.

When I read this back in February, Mehr framed my view of the story being the central character. But lately, I have been thinking particularly of a side character in this, the narrator, an “ordinary citizen” who lives in doubt that fester fear but rarely questions, letting that doubt restrict him to act, restrict him to empathise, restrict him to see his own dehumanization.

When a Maharashtrian social worker working to provide basic amenities to the refugees comes to the narrator's house, for the first time the narrator is confronted with the question of his possible role as a concerned human being. As an Assamese he has been hearing of the war in Bangladesh in close proximity but remained uncertain about it—“Would this struggle remain secular and rooted in the love for their language till the end?”—crippling his ability to act. It is his wife that reminds him that his condition is the same as Bhisma who witnessed Draupadi's humiliation in silence.

Privileged cowards will always demand purity of intention and action from victims, taking pride in their shameful whataboutery, turning away their gaze from the violence perpetuated by the oppressors. They will ask repeatedly those who resist what their motives are for speaking up because they feel uncomfortable that the people are choosing not to silently suffer.

#booksintranslation #translatedliterature #womentranslators #indianliterature #assameseliterature indian books, south asian literature, books on liberation, resistance, revolution, asian authors by @pathbetweentrees

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2 months ago

remains of the day

every month begins with undeterred hopefulness
forgetting the staleness of the past weeks

coming back from the swim I find our garden
in a state of vibrancy and of mourning

carcasses of yesterday's bloom lay sombre
towered by today's abundance

the stems and tendrils have kept their heads up
despite the late monsoon and the sparse rain

the summer fruits have come and gone
the ponds lay shallow, sterile and stagnant

contained by the longing to be brimmed
contained by the longing for a summer again

— Bithika Halder by @pathbetweentrees

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5

3 months ago

what are favorite summer / monsoon films? by @pathbetweentrees

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11

3 months ago

On romance in classics by women:

I was slightly fererish yesterday evening, could not bother to open my eyes. After dinner, feeling somewhat better, I finally picked up my first July read, George Eliot's Middlemarch. Within first few chapters I couldn't help exclaiming: I do not want any of those men for her!

This has been a recurring experience for me with most classics that has romance in them. I felt the same reading North and South, Jane Eyre, Gone With The Wind. In each of them I wanted the female protagonists to center the female friendships in their lives, which in contrast to the romance were of equal standing, agency, independence, mutual respect and caring.

Perhaps why I found myself seen in Virginia Woolf books or in children's classics or Gaskell's Cranford—bereft of romance, but brimmed with love.

Romance despite being one of the, if not the most, popular genre is the one I have read the least of. Even after all these years of trying to widen my reading, when a non-reader asks for book recommendations, and they are usually looking for romance, all I can think of is Jane Austen.

Austen was my introduction both to (English) classics and romance with Emma, which remains my favourite, followed as per preference by Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Sense & Sensibility.

I believe the male protagonists of Austen's novel acts as the blueprint of the contemporary understanding of "fiction men", "yearning men", "men written by women".

Austen's leading men are primarily partners not guardians to their wives. Love doesn't come about as a sudden change of heart or in compromise but with building familiarity and understanding. I am yet to find that in another author's work among the classics.

#classicliterature #romancebooks #readingwomen #womenauthors #classicscommunity by @pathbetweentrees

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10

3 months ago

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

5/5

Melancholic and full of human tenderness.

An intricate lacing of colonial and native history, folklore and ecology exploring caste and culture, faith and progress, political radicalism and community life set in the Sundarbans, an archipelago of islands in the Bay of Bengal.

A young couple settled in the tide country, the realist wife went on to build a tryst and a hospital, while the dreamer husband kept festering his political ideologies as he worked as a village headmaster. Refugees from Bangladesh fled a refugee camp in central India to settle in the tide country in the mangroves of Sundarbans where they can work for their living, hear their own language and not live as beggars. Decades later an American cetologist came to the tide country to study rare dolphins and hires an illiterate carefree fisherman who knows every ebb and tide of the tide country and a Delhi bred Bengali man who runs a company of providing translators and has come back to the tide country on his aunt's request, a place he has visited only once before as a young boy. The tide began to turn.

Myths and folklores become part of daily reality of people living close to nature, where fear becomes a shield for survival, giving birth to rituals and stories that are passed on as ancestral knowledge. In this island in the tide country, there is Bon Bibi, the forest goddess, who looks over her people and safeguards them from Dokkhin Rai, the demon tiger. This got me thinking about local gods. In this capitalistic world, like products, we have monopolized faith as well, tending towards a homogeneous society that exists on oppression, exclusion, erasure.

In the wild, the status quo breaks. Yet returning to the land, everything settles back. Even though momentarily, desires leaned towards impossibilities, the anchor is put in a mirage, breaking away as the fog passes. Unless the mountain splits and the tunnel collapses, altering something in you for ever.

[full review in substack: bithika.substack.com]

#bookreview #thehungrytide #amitavghosh #indianliterature #summerreads by @pathbetweentrees

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3 months ago

dreaming in green ☘️🌿🌱

ponds, lakes, live stream
twittering, gurgling, murmuring
hiking, sprawling, waiting
gazing, listening, daydreaming
shades, shadows, motifs
learning, loving, becoming

#nature #naturephoto #slowliving #dreamjournal #natureblog by @pathbetweentrees

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12

3 months ago