This writer admits that they had not read Krishnagopal Mallick until they happened to chance upon professor Niladri R Chatterjee’s translation of his writings. The introduction that narrates facts about his life and his sexuality — homosexuality and not bisexuality, as Chatterjee points out — lets us in on the lives of many men who were comfortable being married while nurturing their other personal calling. 

Mallick identified as a confirmed homosexual, not as gay — a term rooted in the political mobilisation of the 1960s and thus, beyond his personal experience. The translation reads like the addas you catch in fragments while traversing College Square and Boi Para in North Kolkata. Although we are yet to read the original short stories in Bangla, the translator ensures that readers can taste Mallick’s boldness and sensory candour in English, too.