Sabarna Roy is an author of
critically acclaimed bestselling literary fiction of seven published books.
They are: Pentacles; Frosted Glass; Abyss; Winter Poems; Random Subterranean
Mosaic: 2012 Â 2018; Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020, and Fractured
Mosaic.
He has been awarded the Literoma
Laureate Award in 2019, Literoma Star Achiever Award 2020, Random Subterranean
Mosaic: 2012 Â 2018 won the best book of the year 2019, the A List Award for
excellence in fiction by the NewsX Media House, Certificate for The Real Super
Heroes for spreading a spirit of positivity and hope during the COVID-19
Pandemic from Forever Star India Award 2020, and the Certificate for
Participation in the Indo Russian Friendship Celebration 2020, the Literoma
Golden Star Award 2020: Lifetime Achievement, and the Certificate of
Appreciation for featuring in the Hall of Fame of Literoma International
Symposium on Literature & Festival 2020, and the Times Eminent Writer of
the Year award by The Times of India Group in Kolkata in February 2021.
Sabarna is one of the winners of
the Champions of Change 2020 Award given out by Interactive Forum on Indian
Economy supported by Government of India, and one of the Economic Times
Newsmakers (East Zone) of 2021.
Very recently, the last literary work of Sabarna Roy, titled: Fractured Mosaic has been converted into an Amazon Audible book by the American elocutionist, Grant Tharp and released in the USA and UK markets. Earlier, SabarnaÂs two more literary works, Pentacles and Winter Poems were converted into Amazon Audible books by the Australian jazz singer, Colin Newcomer. Perhaps, Sabarna is the first author from the Eastern India whose book was converted into an Amazon Audible book in the year way back in 2014.
The unsung intermittent rains; the
sometimes-drenched-and-sometimes-arid winding and crumbling
streets  gaping craters and potholes; the melancholy crows, common mynas,
swallows and sparrows hanging on wires and hopping on fields (yet to be grazed
by real-estate agents)  restless  at the inconstancy of rains; the
transgender beggars at street-corners  half-drenched, sick of cough and cold Â
banging tirelessly on the closed windows of sedans; the concrete and steel
portals ever-changing, ever-transcending the city skyline; the sky  once full
of gray clouds fleeting across and threatening to pour and once looking like
the autumnal sky; the breeze like the slow tempo of a saxophone starting; the
aroma-king-lemon trees, the mango trees, the amra trees, the kalo jam trees,
the jamrul trees, the fig trees, the batabi-lemon trees of the village woods on
the east of our apartment-building  green, fresh and ripe; the simmering heat
trapping like the vision of a Siberian tiger: jazz-up together to form a
mysterious song in my soul.
To listen to this song more closely I walk the whole
day like an abandoned wayfarer through crowds of unknown people. I do not give
up. I keep on walking. For it is the walk that liberates the orchestra playing in
my soul  a kind of music I had heard at a jazz bar in Damascus long before the
fiasco in Syria was to begin.
In the evening I stop at the Starbucks at City
Center I finally; well I have been feeling hungry and thirsty for a very long
time I recall. I order for a Chicken Mozzarella Turnover, a Vanilla Cruffin, a
small cappuccino and a bottle of water. Waiting for my food to cool down (I
cannot have things too hot) I reply to my publisher on messenger: I will
definitely send my manuscript consisting of my writings between 2012 and 2018
by September end  a compilation of tiny stories, tiny reflective notes on
recurrent thoughts and current issues and a few narrative poems. Then I began
to think, where should I park myself to assemble my scattered writings. I
concluded, of course, a luxury hotel at Dharamshala  Mcleodganj, would be a
perfect place.
I have taken a decision: This time around I will be
involved in aggressive marketing of my book. In spite of nil publicity and
networking, clubbing and I-pat-you-and-you-pat-me from my end (also because I
have been acutely lonely all my life), not conforming to the instructions and
advice of my publisher, my earlier 4 books ran to second editions  all of
them. I have always believed writers should do nothing but write. They should
not even defend their works. What to talk of publicity? But then who cares what
I believe in. Looking at the trend on social media in the last few years I have
decided to change for worse.
In good and bad films including, a common metaphor is often used to depict the journey of life: moving trains rapidly changing tracks. Trains change tracks to a given plan and order. In life, it does not happen that way. We choose and abandon random paths, however much we would like to believe it is the outcome of our own volition. In American Beauty there is a wonderful scene of a plastic bag flying in the wind to the wind’s fancy. Life, retrospectively, is almost like that.
