Dear Comrades of DoubleSpeak

Are you alarmed that I am calling you all my comrades? Well don’t be. May be because of the examples of tyrannical communist connotations attached to that word, we never get to see the unfathomable hope and joy that this word can bring to us. I am a school teacher by profession and I address all my students as comrades in class, or in written emails or notices. I do that not because I want them to embrace or celebrate communism but to realise that, more than ever, there is a need for the most extraordinary camaraderie in bringing about a revolution, one that will help us think more deeply, feel with empathy and act more collaboratively. In that regard all of you, who have helped sustain this magazine with its content and principles of openness and acceptance, are dear comrades of mine. And we have managed to walk this journey of finding time and space for each others’ expressions for four years now. I haven’t paid a single dime to any of the writers or artists, neither have I made any money out of this. But I have found friends in you, who kept sending in your works, read others’ works, appreciated the ones which stood out, critiqued the ones which needed the encouragement and guidance and most of all, celebrated the abstraction of ideas. I am grateful for that. I hope this camaraderie continues as long as the purpose of it remain relevant to this obviously mutable world of ours.

I must admit, that as an editor, I am very lenient. I guess you must have seen so. I do not really reject any creative piece unless it really needs a whole lot of work on revisions. Therefore each issue of DoubleSpeak has hosted thus far, creative pieces of diverse quality. The quality does not often depend on the experience of the artist or the skill for that matter. Instead if the genuineness of the artists is felt, their honesty to their thoughts is observed, quality can be found in their work. I have followed this path throughout these four years. You will find poems written by amateurs in archaic English, poems written in faulty rhythm patterns, stories written with loopholes in plot, essays written without the essentially logical rigour and yet there is honesty in the ones that are being published in this magazine. The magazine has not discriminated for the creators political bias, neither it has cared for any religious overtones. I am an atheist and yet I have published poems which can be thought overtly devotional. In one single issue DoubleSpeak held creative pieces written by the far left and the far right. This is the spirit which makes us comrades for a future of peaceful coexistence. And I hope we continue to walk that path.

The world has come to an era when intelligence can be natural or artificial, with greater importance and leverage being found on the latter one. DoubleSpeak hopes to lean towards the natural gifts of humanity where the non-algorithmic feelings and ideas will come together to speak with one another. The language of mathematics is superior to all in its consistency and adequacy to explain the mysteries of the universe, and yet its limitations in explaining the apparently convoluted and multifaceted human mind must also be acknowledged and explored through other languages. We are comrades in that expedition. And I hope we remain so.

Read all that you can from the published pieces, write to us with your views on them and I promise, I will publish your views as letters. Your critiques should become the next stepping stone for the artists, as they would come back with better words, more vivid and layered images, not to inflate their personal egos, but to dive deeper into humanity, finding the best place for all of us to live.

I am ever so grateful to you all. Long live our revolution.

Arpan Krishna Deb

Founder and Managing Editor, DoubleSpeak Magazine.