Meet the HAOAJAN team
Sarbajit Sarkar
Sarbajit is a bilingual poet, writer, painter, and translator from Kolkata, India. He has seven books of poetry and three collections of short stories in Bengali and English.
His critical essays on literature and art have been published in numerous literary journals like The Critical Flame, Sangbad Pratidin, Abahaman, Indian Express, 4numberplatform, and many others.
Sarbajit is the chief creative director of Haoajan and manages the entire process of publishing.
He also works as an illustrator and designer for many books published by our publishing house.
Mridula Sarkar
Mridula is a Cardiac Speciality nurse working with a renowned heart research institution in Kolkata for more than thirty-five years.
Apart from her professional responsibilities, she was always keen to associate herself with all forms of creative pursuits. This enabled her to associate herself with the publishing process of Haoajan.
She works as an administrator in Haoajan’s day-to-day operations and heads the event management division of our publishing house.
Satyabrata Ghosh
A filmmaker by heart he has put his soul in written words. He has a wide exposure in filmmaking and scriptwriting.
At a later stage in life he has taken up cross-translating from Bengali, Hindi and English. His Bengali translation of Arun Khopkar’s Hindi book ‘Guru Dutt: Teen Ankiyo Trasdi’ has received praise in the Bengali reader circle.
He has formerly worked as the Senior Editor of The Telegraph in School (TTIS) and presently involved in translating stories and novels for Sahitya Academy.
Haoajan was born of a flickering love story that wished to be rejuvenated.
The year was 2014 when Sarbajit and Mridula, the husband-and-wife duo coming from two different backgrounds and busy with their own starkly opposite professional career decided to reignite the bonding flame that brought them together. It was the flame of art and literature. And that’s how the magazine with the name HAOAJAN was born.
Haoajan is a Bengali word. Literally, it means ‘Airborne’.
When Sarbajit suggested this word and explained the concept behind this, Mridula immediately approved that. Every word that we speak is airborne. All words travel places and plant seeds in human minds. Haoajan dreamed of being that platform where inter-textuality and multilayered conversation between the different realities that we live in today’s world, would find a place to express them.
Thus, we chose Haoajan’s mission statement in just two words:
Imagination Unbound
Haoajan was conceptualized and published to provide a platform for new writings that embrace a polyphony of voices from different aspects of life.
The first issue of Haoajan was published in 2014 with stories and poems by young contemporary writers from Bengal. It also contained the Bengali translation of La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, by Blaise Cendrars, translated from original French by poet, and essayist, Pushkar Dasgupta.
Haoajan as an Art & Literature magazine got rave reviews and was highly acclaimed by the literary and academic circles.
In 2019, Haoajan extended its vision and launched its own independent publishing house. The mission to publish writings emerging from a wide range of cross-cultural milieu remained the guiding principle behind this endeavor.
During 2021 Haoajan made a concerted effort to streamline their in-house operations and finalized the services they would provide to their authors. We created a publishing process with a holistic and professional approach. Benchmarking was done based on global publications in terms of overall editing, designing, page layout, illustrations, cover printing, binding and finally publishing.
So far, seventeen books have been published. A lot more are forthcoming.
Some of our bestselling titles are Crossing the Shoreline by Gopal Lahiri, Through Your Eyes by Kafir, Minutes of Merit by Sushant Thapa, Collection of Feelings by Sankha Sen, Borders & Broken Hearts by Gayatri Lakhwani Chawla, My Kind of Russian Roulette by Tapaja Chakraborty and Forgive Reality by Kamal.