“The air we breathe, a forgotten colour”:

Rajat Neogy and the Transition poems, 1961-1963

Abstract

This essay revisits the years 1961-1963 through a selection of poems written by Rajat Neogy for Transition magazine. There is an inherent tension in Neogy’s surrealism between its imaginative exposé of symbolic planes of abstract existence, and the distressing reality of post-Independent Uganda for the Asian expatriates. Avant-garde and ambitious, Transition was founded by Neogy in 1961 as an intellectually autonomous forum for East African literary culture. The magazine’s cosmopolitan contributions reflected the cosmopolitan ambience of Kampala. Born in Kampala in 1938 to East Bengali immigrant parents, Neogy’s writings are influenced by and reflect the anxieties of the expatriate communities unsure about their identity and status in the post-Independent scheme of things.