The Mark

The Mark is a collection of seven short stories by Bitan Chakraborty (translated from their original Bengali by Utpal Chakraborty). The collection enables readers to identify the often ignored signs of the day-to-day living. It also allows them to revisit memories, resulting in revival of a few existential queries, buried in our hearts for years. Editor and poet Dustin Pickering comments in his foreword: Bitan Chakraborty is in defiance of the postmodern tropes that rule conventional storytelling in contemporary fiction. The brilliance of his storytelling is he does not defy deconstruction, but rather elaborates on it thematically. The story begins and ends on the same note, with the same trouble. Yet the full picture does not emerge until we endure the story with the characters. We become participants or observers of the action as we pick through its details. Chakraborty is not reacting against postmodern philosophy-instead, he is revealing a visionary approach to solving the impasse of the narrator by letting the story tell itself as well as inviting the reader’s surprise. Pickering rightly points out: Chakraborty’s stories also have their uniquely crafted style. They create microcosms within microcosms-as if each twist runs parallel to the opening-like planets revolving around the sun by the law of gravity.