Ashvamegh ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Issue X ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ November 2015 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ISSN:2454-4574
Ashvamegh Journal, Issue X, November 2015
Welcome to the Issue X, November 2015 of Ashvamegh International Journal of Literature. Below, you will find the editorial and issue navigation pane. We wish you a happy reading! Please do not forget to add your comments on our guestbook page once you are finished with the issue perusal.
Alok Mishra : Editorial Message : November 2015
From the pen of Alok Mishra:
Beginning with the expression of a satisfaction and happiness that Ashvamegh has become fresh, new, and more stable, better and eventually will strive for the best… The Ashvamegh Team has worked its best to redesign the new website. I am very happy to let all our readers and contributors know that all our issue since the launch will be available for readership in online version as well as pdf; you will be able to locate them for online perusal or to download on our Archive page. I personally see this as a big success for Ashvamegh, as every writer wishes to see his or her work permanently embedded somewhere! I will keep things short in the terms of praising our own achievements in design and concept. However, there are other serious things to talk about!
Recent Literary Scenario in India:
I know, however, that I am not still in the position so authoritative that I can pass comments about the ongoing events in my country. Nevertheless, as other authors and intellectuals in my country is free to express their thoughts and even return the awards given to them by government, I am also democratically free to opine. I will start by putting a straight forward question on the desk. Dear authors, poets, and intellectuals, do you think an award can ever be returned? Do you think that returning the mere shield made of brass, silver or even gold can give back just everything? Taking one more step ahead, do you think at all a writer should return the award to register the protest? Does not this symbolic (I do not, however, find myself able to see what is symbolic here) gesture mean the loss of a writer, and writing?
A writer’s pen should never stop. Yes, obstacles will be there in the society; the very business of a writer is to make people aware to see the possible solutions of a problem – be that an ongoing or a temporary problem. I have an appeal for the writers in India who have returned their awards (be that politically instigated move or anything else) to do some real philanthropy if they are so much in pain with the incident that happened. Do something with your pen; let your ink say the story; let your writing talk to the society. Merely saying that the country is getting intolerant is not a solution. How many awards you will return? There are networks like ISIS which will swallow all the awards won by authors all over the world! Let us be optimistic and awaken your writer’s soul. Let not a nation, which is ready to emerge as a giant economy and strength, fall into the dilemma of hopelessness by trying to paint the landscape that did never exist!
(Dear Arundhati Roy, today, on 14th of November 2015, ISIS has attacked Paris. Will you please return your Booker prize? More than 200 have lost their lives!)
Dear creative people, the responsibilities of a writer is a manifold, having so much to do! Let there be the zest of bringing hope, harmony and sweetness, as once Jonathan Swift has pointed out – the story of bee and the spider! I pray for the lost lives in Paris. The Ashvamegh Team stands against these cowardly terror attacks.
Editor-in-Chief
Alok Mishra
November 14, (2015)