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Editorial
Sreetanwi Chakraborty
Chief Editor- Litinfinite
Assistant Professor
Amity Institute of English Studies and Research
Amity University Kolkata

“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom…the power to choose, to respond, to change.”
Stephen Covey

The idea to start an independent journal occurred to me sometimes back in 2016. The ‘independent will’ and ‘creative imagination’ perhaps wanted a more cogent and suitable platform where I could bring researchers, writers, poets, authors and book reviewers from different backgrounds, under a unified umbrella. Keeping myriad forms of development and research-oriented activities in mind, I decided to include papers that evinced serious research interest in areas not just restricted to literature, but also those that extended to other branches of humanities as well. Whether it is in the comforting sense of illusions that our country nurtures at this moment, or in the diversity of popular culture, there have been insightful comments from different sections of the academia as well as from the students, to get these documented in the form of papers, poems, articles and reviews. In a span of just three to four months from January 2019 onward, Litinfinite received an overwhelming response from research scholars all across the globe, with 18 research papers submitted. In terms of the kaleidoscopic presentation of diverse topics, the papers include American author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fragmented self and the prescient eye in two of his novels, or in Indian English literature, in works of Amrita Pritam and Subhash Mukhopadhyay where animal tropes create differences and negative figuration through creating the ‘other’. While taking up the microcosmic facets of the marginalized Parsi community through novels in Indian English, our researchers have also worked upon the densely fragmented lives of the Parsis as represented in the novels of Rohinton Mistry. From the economic hardships faced by the Parsis in postcolonial Bombay we have a straight diversion in the humanistic doctrines of Sufism represented through Rumi’s poetry. Studying classical literature combined with medieval travel narratives and glimpses of comparative literature and comparative literary analysis have been one such domain that has enriched Litinfinte. In fact, all those multifarious developments that are visible in pop music, gender studies, race studies and cultural patterns visible in children’s literature are closely interwoven in the pages of this book. Socio-political commentaries of fables as part of a dominant pattern of cultural study are a commendable effort on part of our researchers.

The scope of indigenous literature through folklores, oral studies and local history are some of the most important ingredients that have been studied in Litinfinite. Revisiting Jalpaiguri in North Bengal has been one such study in tales and tropes about North Bengal. The indigenous flavour is continued in the creation of an alternative Feminist hegemony through texts like Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi. There is also reference to how Spivak upholds the gendered subaltern’s impossibility to speak up or how the subalterns make themselves heard in an authorized and psychobiographically constituted society. Hence there is a fine blend of art in writing, humanitarian and social concerns along with a study in perspectives. This constant insistence on the essence of indigeneity has encouraged Litinfinite contributors to delve deeper into the nuanced aspects of Bengali as a language with all its diversities. Magic realism in Latin American literature, especially in the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez has received a succinct presentation in the pages of this book. Sprinkled with literary and cultural studies we also have theoretical discussions regarding the linguistic discourse in the films of Satyajit Ray. Knowing the hegemony and creating alternative paradoxes through films and literature thus receives a new impetus in this text.

If poetic diversions are akin to that of spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, then Litinfinite bouquet is an obvious instance. The inherent thematic details of the English and the Bengali poems range from personal love, loss, betrayal, to all-pervasive social issues that are reflective at some point, didactic with a pinch of satire at the other. While Mother Nature remains desiccated under the sky, questions are hurled at Socrates through poems that lambast categorical nuances resulting into a vortex of nothingness. Art and life, and the ambiguity concerning art, body and nudity has been reflected through deft poetic strokes.

For Litinfinite we have also included articles, two special contributions, and one book review, of Radius 200 by Veena Nagpal. The compact and analytical review consists of the complicated vortex of love, betrayal and final solutions.

Litinfinite is still in an embryonic stage, trying to take recourse to a new birth everyday, with quality and imaginative master strokes. My acknowledgement goes to my editorial team and the peer-review team for their wholehearted support in this cultural venture. Their inputs were really invaluable in this regard.
I am sincerely thankful to all my contributors, and to my students who have shown their dedication in presenting some of their best works through Litinfinite. The over-enthusiastic students were always a boost to work more everyday.

Litinfinite promotes and subverts: it promotes argument, creative extravaganza; it subverts stereotypes, hypocrisy. Going beyond the known seven colours of the Vibgyor Litinfinite presents a more colourful palette, vibrant, where fantasy gets intoxicated with dollops of reality- somewhere dangling in between the words spoken and the words that are yet to be born free.