Writing in Practice

2012-01-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction

2011-12-11T21:49:00.001-08:00

Dear Wrippers,
I have a soft copy of Jerome Stern's very useful writing manual Making Shapely Fiction. Any Wripper who wants a copy please comment here and I will send it. If you are registered on the blog I should have your email address.

Rajorshi Chakraborti Coming to JU

2011-11-22T02:43:00.001-08:00

My good friend Rajorshi from Edinburgh is in town to launch his new book Mumbai Rollercoaster. He's going to be at Worldview on Friday 25 Nov at 3pm for a little interactive talk on the book. Please come down and meet him, all you Wripers.

Here's the official notice from Hachette

About the book:

Everything had been going swimmingly for Rahul and Zeenat.OK, so they had to hide their relationship from disapproving parents, and couldonly meet at specified times up in that abandoned building. But at least theysaw each other regularly, which is saying a lot here in Mumbai, where privacycan be a priceless commodity.

Until Rahul went and spoiled it all by saying somethingstupid like —I found a body. And adding, I think I know who did it, solet’s try and get him.

As events unfold with unstoppable momentum, Rahul and Zeenatgrow to recognize the reach and power of their adversary, and understand thatthe only help they can call upon is from a poor twelve-year-old boy, who wouldhimself be in desperate trouble if his connection to them was ever revealed.

Soon their families are in as much danger as they are. Undersuch pressure, it seems inevitable that they will also lose each other. WillRahul and Zeenat be able to save anything they love? What is the true nature ofthe organization they have uncovered? And, just as importantly, what will theylearn about themselves during the trials by fire that follow, as old loyaltiesshift, and there are as many temptations as threats.

About the author:

Rajorshi Chakraborti is an Indian novelist, essayist andshort story writer. He was born in 1977 in Calcutta, and grew up there and inMumbai. He has also lived and studied in Canada, England and Scotland, andworked, between 2007 and 2010, as a lecturer in English Literature and CreativeWriting at the University of Edinburgh. He currently lives in Wellington, NewZealand.

Rajorshi is the author of four novels so far, Or the DaySeizes You, Shadow Play, Balloonists and MumbaiRollercoaster. Or the Day Seizes You was shortlisted for theVodafone Crossword Book Award in 2006, and was translated into Spanish as LaVida Que Nos Lleva. Shadow Play was originally published in 2008under the title Derangements.

Rajorshi has also published reviews, short stories andessays in several periodicals and anthologies, including the EdinburghReview, The Istanbul Review, Excess: The Tehelka Book of Stories,Why We Don't Talk, Too Asian, Not Asian Enough, The EdinburghIntroduction to Studying English Literature, and The Popcorn Essayists:What Movies do to Writers.

Do join us for refreshments after the event. Look forward toseeing you there.

Final Reading by Lav Kanoi

2011-11-11T11:05:00.001-08:00

Lav Kanoi will be reading his story Femme Fatale on Monday 14 November at 3pm. We'll probably be in the UG1 classroom. All are welcome.

Tale of a Girl

2011-11-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

In the rolling grasslands of the Turkmenian Karakum there roamed a pretty young Bedouin girl called Amira. Many a mad wind of the Hindukush having roared down the mountains with fierce pleasure, have reached the valleys, where, taken aback by the sudden greenness of the grass, the tinkle of bells on four hundred sheep and the scent of Amira’s hastily tied hair, the fierce winds have calmed down to a gentle breeze and have blown over Amira’s face, causing the drops of her brass earrings tinkle against each other in mild appreciation of the world. In situations like these, Amira was foolish enough to laugh aloud to herself and to fling whatever she was holding up in the air, simply for the pleasure of watching the wind carry it away.

The sight of such silliness gladdened Amira’s many grandparents who, seated outside their tents, chuckled quietly among themselves but fell silent as soon as they caught a glimpse of Amira’s father herding his animals across the fields. Amira’s father rode a fine Arabian steed, owned 3 wives, 14 children and a gun which he has never been seen to use but which he polishes regularly and keeps in excellent condition. It was said that he had once made a whole tribe of the deadliest of Tatar bandits flee with a single roar. However, Amira and her brothers and sisters who had almost never heard their father speak, only sniggered among themselves while listening to these stories. With every passing autumn, Amira’s father spoke lesser with humans and more with his animals. He longed to be able to read and this longing produced in him a strange sadness that found no place in the valleys cradled by the harshest of the hills. But since no one in his family had ever believed that a nomadic horseman could desire anything other than a life of valour, they thought that the sadness in his eyes was because of the fact that he had 9 beautiful daughters to marry off and everyone knew that in the valleys where the nomads roamed free and the mad winds calmed down to tease the sequins on the blouses of young girls, eligible grooms were impossible to find.

It so happened that one plain summer afternoon, when the wind was engaged in a merry game with the clothes hanging by the stream, Amira who was sitting nearby and mending a hole on a rug, came to the conclusion that the time was ripe for her to get married. And immediately, the mind of this wandering nomad who had learnt since birth that for her survival she was not to attach herself to any earthly constant, descended with unnatural firmness upon the prospect of losing itself to a man who would be the prince of her dreams. The wicked wind of the valleys murmured their approval and immediately began to flirt with the red silk thread with which Amira was working, making it flutter frantically quite like Amira’s foolish little heart.

The following night, long after all the fires had been put out and the sheep were snoring in their pens, Amira woke up with a start. As the cloth window of her tent flew open at the command of the conspiring winds, Amira saw the shadow of a man standing by the river. Driven by curiosity and shielded by the protection only the innocence of youth can provide, Amira brushed her sister’s sleepy arm off herself and crept out of the tent for a better look. Her eyes followed the moonlight which in perfect harmony with the scheme of the winds led them to the stream. Amira’s heart leapt to her mouth. There was a man standing with his horse on other side of the stream. In the faint light cast by the moon, he appeared to Amira like a warrior prince who had travelled across the mountains and braved the deserts to win her heart and steal her away to his kingdom. His face, half-lit by the moonbeam, showed off the rugged beauty that Amira was convinced came only after having fought many a brave battle. She had only heard of princes like these in stories recited to her by her many aunts and which she herself had recited to her younger sisters more than once. Little did she know then that her heart would one day beat as fast as a galloping Bedouin steed for a prince who could only be found in the fairytales of the nomads of the grasslands. As her knight lifted his face, his eyes, Amira felt, beheld her in the way Husrev’s eyes first beheld Shirin as he watched her bathe, in the fables of Nizami. It was beyond Amira to translate the maneuvers of the mysterious wind of the valleys and so the faint rustle of her skirt, the gentle tinkle of the water of the stream and the murmur of disquiet in the lone camp fire’s flickering light together reached her ears as the quiet and deep voice of her gallant groom to be.

‘Come with me, Amira,’ she heard him say. ‘Marry me and we will ride away to happiness.’

Amira’s cheeks were warm with emotions that had spent a million years rehearsing in preparation for this very moment. Her palms were sweating like the time when she had been caught stealing a sweetmeat by her father. The cunning wind was meanwhile whispering in her ears more words she thought were being said to her by her stranger of a suitor.

‘Fear not, Amira,’ she heard. ‘Only the stream lies between us. Come to my arms. I have been waiting for you since time immemorial.’

A thousand storms raged inside Amira. Outside the sly wind fell quiet in greedy anticipation of her actions. Amira clutched at her scarf, looked at the reflection of the prince on the stream and as if convinced by the promise of the shadow on the flowing water, slowly started walking towards the stream. At the edge of it, she stopped and looked up at her fabled warrior. In the one moment that passed before he silently stretched his hand to help her across the water, Amira felt herself hesitate. The most abnormal feeling of uncertainty strangled her for a moment and she stopped and looked back at the tent she had been sleeping in until a little while ago. The night was deep and though her family was fast asleep Amira felt everyone beginning to stir in realization of her absence. She paused anew driven by the sudden recognition of the fact that she could not swim and the waters were perhaps too turbulent for her to wade through. As if acting on cue, the wind orchestrated every sound in the valley to enter Amira’s ear for a third time as the voice of her beloved.

‘I yearn for the moment when we will be united, my princess. I have travelled far and wide in search of you. I am weary and thirsty. Will you not allow me to drink the water of the stream from your hands?’

Like a wildflower tossed in a winter gust, Amira threw herself on her suitor’s arm as if the very question of her survival depended on it. Clutching at it, she crossed the stream, the cool waters of an unnamed river caressing her ankles as if to say goodbye. She forgot about her father, her sisters, her grandparents, and about the colors in the carpets she and her family had made off the wool of 400 sheep. In front of her stood the traveler, her hand in his, his eyes upon her. The wind, mad once again in raucous celebration, became a fierce gale, blew out the camp fire and made the tents sway to an unheard rhythm. In one of these tents, Amira’s oldest grandfather sighed in his sleep and turned.

The next morning when Amira’s father woke up to the cry of one of his sons, the winds smirked and blew over Amira’s raped and lifeless body for one last time before heading southwards.

Soumashree Sarkar, UGIII

Something in Sight

2011-11-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

She started with a tentative scratch. A tiny blue line at the top of the page. The tiny blue line would reach out to other blue lines and soon the page would be covered with her beautiful handwriting. Titi stared at the white page. She needed time to think. She had tried to keep pace with her favourite lizard. “You prey – I write”, she had said. But Lizard was eating very efficiently, and she had only one little blue line to show for herself.

“You are R.G. ma’am’s daughter, right?”

“Yes?”

“She told me to take you to the staff room.”

“Ok.”

“Have you heard? A boy in my class tried to commit suicide! The exam’s just two months away! I’m feeling pretty suicidal too!”

“Why don’t you go back to class? No need to come with me.”

The school had found something to talk about. Titi wondered whether she was satisfied. She had at last found something to write about. “Nothing ever happens.” With the point of her compass she had left this little reminder on her wooden desk. Hadn’t she always waited – and with infinite patience? Would anyone have read Anne’s letters to Kitty if she had been a seventeen year old schoolgirl sitting placidly at the bottom of a well?

“Titi, a boy is in hospital. I might not be able to go home with you. S.R. ma’am will take you home.”

“Yes, ma.”

“What a stupid boy! I’ll tell the headmistress – two years back my daughter was in the same situation! Did she try to kill herself? No! Is it my fault that he never managed to score more than 50%? No consideration for anybody! His mother can blame me all she wants. Huh! If she looks hard enough she’ll find a dirty love-letter or something!”

Titi could almost feel the dark circles forming under her eyes. But she couldn’t allow herself to sleep – not now! “I am a seventeen year old paedophile”, she wrote. She wrote the last word with a certain amount of vindictive pleasure, ending the ‘e’ with a flourish. Seven words – forming a lie – he was only two years younger – hardly a child. But wasn’t it better to offend with the lie than try to defend with the truth?

***

Nothing ever disrupted the calmness and purposefulness with which the Ghosh family’s life progressed. Radhika Ghosh was a Maths teacher, in school and at home. Niloy Ghosh was a busy doctor. Their only daughter Tilottama was a pretty girl of varied talents and interests. Every morning, mother and daughter left for school, engrossed in conversations about the importance of breakfast, hard work and good behaviour. Every evening the house buzzed with life. Numerous patients would throng the waiting-room; on the floor above, about fifteen young minds would try to concentrate on a whiteboard. At night, the family sat down to dinner and analysed the day in detail, and special attention was always given to Tilottama’s words and actions.

The news of the attempted suicide deeply affected the Ghosh family. Niloy remembered the child – he had belonged to the Wednesday-Saturday batch – he had once fallen down the staircase. Radhika, worried and angry, was not in a mood to teach, which had never happened before. Tilottama waited in silence. The whole school was uncontrollably excited. Every other day, a student somewhere would commit suicide, but such things had always seemed so remote – until now! Everyone was busy making speculations, depending on his or her own special knowledge. Tilottama’s best friend Anindita told herself again and again, “I told her not to get involved with him! All that nonsense about love knowing no boundaries! That happens in movies! In real life, you just have to find someone suitable.” Contrary to what her words might suggest, Anindita was a diehard romantic. She truly believed that her friend had fallen in love, and was genuinely sorry for her.

***

Lizard was nowhere to be seen. The triumphant winner, he had retired with dignity. Titi was alone with the seven words that she had written. On a scrap of paper she tried to list all the different kinds of emotions she thought she must be feeling. She persevered until she reached number 9, and then gave up with a sigh.

“Why are you in bed? Don’t you have a test on Tuesday?”

“I’m trying to think.”

“Oh? Is this why you took up Arts? So that you can lie in bed and pretend to work?”

“You can say what you like.”

“Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that! I don’t know what’s wrong with your generation! You are absolutely heartless! All of you!”

“I know! It’s odd, right? We are big black boulders with legs!”

“Keep quiet! You people are so selfish! Did that boy stop to think what would happen to his family if he died? I won’t be doing his sums for him in the final exam! He is dumb and lazy. Whose fault is that?”

Very softly, Titi read aloud to herself – an old paragraph written long ago. It had been written on a particularly memorable day. One of her more grandiloquent passages.

A sentence does not end at the period. It ends with a parenthesis. The unsaid, the inexpressible, the vital phrase that follows it. Unarticulated – rendered invisible by the cloak of the brackets. Those words haunt the sentence. But one can only guess at its existence. One can only speculate what that all-important line means. We look at the speaker with all our eyes; we strain our ears to catch those words. We FEEL! But we are not meant to know.

Titi scowled in dissatisfaction. How juvenile! Of course people said only half of what they meant. She had wasted precious words to state something very obvious. Slowly and deliberately she tore the page away and put it in the dustbin. Everything felt different today. She looked at the seven words on the white page. Soon the white would be beautifully patterned with blue.

“Hello?”

“Did I wake you up?”

“I couldn’t sleep! I was worried about you!”

“Really? But you couldn’t call?”

“You were in hospital!”

“Huh. They let me go. The doctor was such a bastard. He said that my mother would be able to take care of me. As if he knows what she is like! However hard I try, I just can’t get away from her! Didn’t I try enough? Thank god that she got tired of bitching about your mom and fell asleep, her voice was killing me! Hello? Hello? Titi? Hello?”

Titi looked across the floor at her phone. The back-cover and the battery had come apart, but it seemed unharmed. Titi reread the words that she had produced. With a sudden burst of violence she tore the page to bits and flung it across the room.

Amrita Dutta

Monday Readings Postponed to Tuesday

2011-10-30T05:16:00.001-07:00

As I have to attend a Ph.D. viva at 3pm, the Monday presentations are postponed to Tuesday, 3pm.

Presentation Schedule

2011-10-12T21:47:00.001-07:00

Group A	Monday 17 October 2011
PG2 20	Sejuti Roy
UG3 24	Anuj Raina
UG3 14	Vikrant Dadawala
UG3 13	Dipankar Lahiri
UG3	Soumashree Sarkar
UG3 15	Anushka Sen

Group B	Wednesday 19 October
PG2 34	Lav Kanoi
PG2 30	Shreya Sarkar
	Dhruva Lal
UG3 4	Deeptesh Sen
UG3 49	Piali Mandal
UG3 5	Amrita De

Group C	Monday 24 October
UG3 2	Trisha Ray
UG3 50	Lopamudra Chatterjee
UG3 38	Dipabali Dey
UG3 32	Sreyashi Mukherjee
UG3 42	Barsha Saha
UG3 19	Safdar Rahman
UG3 6	Shinjini Chattopadhyay
UG3 44	Amrita Dutta

Very sorry for having left out Amrita Dutta.

Dipankar's Character Sketch

2011-09-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

And I mean sketch
Life and Times of Shoshi Thakur-
Internal Timeline in square brackets.
Born Malda Town, 1970, as Ravi. Bihari father fugitive from law. Suspected of plotting to assassinate President. Bengali mother, who marries to escape village squalor.[Learning to stand on own feet early, learning to trust few people.]Till age 9, family of 3 move about from Malda to father's ancestral home in Giridih and from there to Benaras, staying for a few years at each place.[Sees and listens to people from many places. Learns never to settle down, to always be on the move]
Age 10, father is apprehended and shot 'accidentally' while trying to escape, in Benaras ghats.[Responsibility of a mother to look after toughening up Shoshi]Mother and Shoshi come to Kolkata under new names. Mother works in houses for a living, managing to send Shoshi to a school. Shoshi discovers a flair for football and debating.[Finds joy in comradeship in muddy fields and in being listened to by audiences in non muddy rooms]Age 18, enters Presidency COllege. Runs for student elections at 19,winning by big margins.
Age 22, jailed for protesting against police action of lathicharging students at a gathering.Acclaimed student hero.[Popularity, sees good and bad people from many sections of society. Obstinately dreams of changing the world.]
Age 26, runs state elections against the ruling party. Garners support,publicity. People talk about a wind of change.Identity of father discovered, allegations of corruption thrown at Shoshi by ruling party. Shoshi loses elections, resigns from party.[Ashamed at having a secret past he thought unimportant dug out. Devastated that a minor fact as that could remove him from people's favour.]
Age 27, Shoshi marries.[Seeking escape into the domestic.]Age 28, Shoshi leaves wife behind and goes to Tibet. Gains admittance to a monastery in North Tibet. Stays there in a room of his own and writes poetry secretly.
Age 32, Shoshi slips off mountainside and dies while on a search of a lost dog that used to live with him.

Times of Sochu---
Thwarter.Born Martin Goodson in 1930,London to Catholic parents.
25, takes up job of schoolteacher.
40, travels to Ichitaga in North Tibet.
44, Ordination to Sochu.
50, made Chief Abbott of Ichitaga Temple.
68, finds Shoshi dying of dysentery in a Tibetan house. Shoshi's delirious talks of philosophy and history attract him, and he takes Shoshi to his monastery, nursing him back to health and giving him a place to stay.

Trashy Remnants of Stupid Thoughts: Interlude ( or a little something I cooked up for ...

2011-09-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

Piali's other story...

Trashy Remnants of Stupid Thoughts: Interlude ( or a little something I cooked up for ...: words of inspiration: FLOGGING, HONEY, HIGHWAYS, HAND OUT, FELLOW-WARRIORS As the final and twelfth chime of the clock faded away int...

Map Exercise

2011-09-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

Ecin- PoliticalLocation- 2000 Km South-West to AustraliaShinjini ChattopadhyayEach colour coded area represents a province (like the ‘states’ in India) and the little black circle in the middle of each province is its centre (which areknown as ‘capitals’ in India).

Stratlin

Centre- Leninopolis.

Area- 88,752 km²

Population- 91,347,746
When all the communists were driven out of Europe and Americain 2020, they came to Ecin. The inhabitants of Ecin did not give a shit aboutcommunism and let the expatriates stay in a sparsely inhabited area of thecountry.

Unicornolium

Centre- N.A.

Area- 21,081 km²

Population- N.A.

This is the land of all the fantastical creatures from thefairy-tales of the world. You can find the unicorns, the fairies, the princesand princesses. They are all real in Unicornolium. Every inch of the soil ofthis province is enchanted. The creatures cannot cross the enchanted boundary.If they do they just disappear into thin air. And outsiders cannot enterUnicornolium either. The invisible enchanted boundary creates a barrier foranyone who tries to get inside the land of magic. The magical creatures arevisible only from a certain distance.

Dwarfistan

Centre- Dopeynabad

Area- 94,163 km²

Population- 103,804,637

This province is populated by one of the native tribes ofEcin, called the ‘Tringeedipitee’. They are not dwarfs as the name of theprovince might suggest, but none of them scale a height of more than 5 feet.Hence the other tribes of the country assigned their province the saidappellation.

Ѐcrancortum

Centre- Babel

Area- 38,863 km²

Population- 33,387,677

The inhabitants of this province are obsessed movie-buffs.They name everything in their province after movie-stars or directors or moviesor anything related to movies.

Plutony

Centre- Haidrocloristopolis

Area- 22,347 km²

Population- 2,721,356

This province is known for being the cradle of manyground-breaking scientific inventions. All the budding scientists of thecountry head for Plutony.

Greeneland

Centre- Grainagogue

Area- 308,252 km²

Population- 75,697, 585

This is the agricultural hub of Ecin. Most of the farms ofthe country are located in the rich soil of this province.

North Vagiconland

and South Vagiconland

Centre(s)- Kalapakkam (North Vagiconland)

Bitchiathipore (South Vagiconland)

Total Area- 243, 286 km²

Total Population- 199,581,477

Until two months ago Vagiconland used to be a unitedprovince. Vagiconland has been known for its strict gender boundaries. Ifanyone wishes to have sex with anyone he/she will have to file a petition withthe administrative body of the province. Unmarried men and women are allowedvery limited interaction. Homosexual activities are strictly banned. People arenot allowed to go to the beach before the age of 40years. The net providershave been given strict instruction to block any sort of porn site. Movies areconsidered as a bad influence on the youth. The inhabitants of this provincehave a strong disapproval for the culture of Ѐcrancortum. Many of theinhabitants of Vagicon have been seen to shift base to Plutony.

Five months ago, agroup of young people demanded that the age of going to the beach should be loweredto 30 years. While they got many supporters, again many went against them.Before long, the whole province was divided into two opposing factions. Inorder to avoid civil war, the government of Ecin decided to take matters in hisown hands and divided the province between the two factions. The ones who hadcome up with the demand got North Vagiconland. The ones who were for preserving the age-old traditions got the Southernportion and decided this was the best solution because mixing with the‘progressive’ mass would inevitably lead to decadence of the society.

Ecin- Important cities

Ports

Industrial Area

Agricultural Hubs

1,2 Important Cities

Ecin- Natural

Mountainous Region 4500-6000meter

Plateau1500-2000 meter

Plain Land 150-250 meter

Plain Land0-250 meter

Lake

River

Desert

Shinjini Chattopadhyay

UG III

Character Sketch

2011-09-21T01:06:00.000-07:00

This is from Piali

Name: Miyamoto Takashi, age: 21 years, year of birth : 1987 nationality: Thai, occupation: hairstylist, origin/ethnicity:Japanese, parents emigrated to Thailand before his birth.

Reason for immigration: Mother had a premarital affair with an influentialmember of the DIET and got pregnant with Takashi’s elder brother Hiroshi.Hiroshi’s biological father didn’t accept paternity. Grandfather,florist,married her off to one of his students and paid them to immigrate toThailand. Father opened a florist shop in Pattaya, and there Hiroshi, Takashi,and their younger sister Miyuki was born. The difference was two years betweeneach conception.

Family and theirbehavioural characteristics, aka timeline and Takashi’s psychologicaldevelopment: Brother was told of his true paternity by a nosy relative(probably the mother’s aunt) when he was four. Father, trying to show that heloved Hiroshi despite his coming from a different father,spoiled himexuberantly and in the process alienated Takashi and Miyuki. Mother, who ran aparasol shop in the tourist district andwho was rather subdued and guilt-riddenfor her past indiscretions, followed whatever her husband did. Being so alienated, Takashi grew fond of his books,and Miyuki sarcastic and bitter, though they were the only two people in thehousehold to truly connect. Hiroshi, a bully by now, used one of Takashi’sbooks as toilet paper. Miyuki hit him with a spanner. Father, suspectingTakashi to be the origin of Miyuki’s violent behavior, sent him to Singapore tohis uncle. He had initially a very good relationship with his uncle, who hadtwo daughters but no son, but the two soon grew distant as Takashi came torealize that his uncle fervently opposed his career decision, dismissing it asmerely effeminate.

Major turn in life: 27^th December, 2006. He gets newsthat his parents and Hiroshi were killed in the tsunami. Miyuki was away on avacation, so she survived. He is slightly relieved by the news, and feels nosurvivor’s guilt and feels very cold and clinical towards his parents’ death.Returns to Pattaya to look after Miyuki, who is still a minor( despite hisuncle’s wishes, who wanted him to stay in Singapore and take on the familybusiness). Opens up a hair salon with the aid of his mother’s friend NakamuraTomomi and gains fame gradually. Tomomi, a widow made so by the tidal waves oftsunami, comes by often to talk about her friend and reveals that the son herfriend used to talk about all the time was not Hiroshi but Takashi. Takashidoes not want to hear nor believe, but he falls in love with Tomomi. He’safraid of telling her, but he constantly offers to cut her hair. Tomomi refusesto do so, arguing that her husband used to love her hair, and will only allowher hair to be cut when she is ready to be put to coffin.

Present time: Takashi sits in his salon as he recounts all this. He is about totake part in a prestigious competition amongst hairstylists. This is the galanight. He is confident he will win and wishes to confessto Tomomi at the victory party, after she has seen him as a man capable ofwinning.

Characteristics: very sedate andpessimistic, but can excel if given the right incentive. His father indirectlytaught him that even something as simple as a parent’s love also can never betaken for granted, so he has given up wanting even the simplest things andtakes whatever fate throws his way. Has a love-hate relationship with olderwomen, but prefers those with backbone, something his mother never had. Likesto be led around by the nose (which we may attribute to his fondness forexternal authority), and can never impose his own wishes upon others unless hefinds a suitable and unselfish enough reason to do so ( He could only break hisuncle’s stronghold on him because he thought Miyuki needed his help after thefamily disaster.)

Thwarter

Name: MiyukiMiyamoto, Age: 19, Nationality: Thai, Ethnicity: Japanese, Occupation: MedicalStudent, faring well in her studies at the moment.

Familycharacteristics and reasons for character development: Her father was fond of her, though she hated him with a passion.The reason for this was her father’s partiality, who favoured her eldestbrother Hiroshi over the second brother Takashi for some unknown reason (Shesuspects that Takashi knows the reason, but he has never told her). She fanciedherself and Takashi to be the second Justice League against the great big bullyHiroshi and defended her second brother at every opportune moment. At othertimes she was a quiet student, determined to make it out of the house and makeenough money to support her brother, who she guessed (and rightly) to be apush-over. Has an intense brother complex that borders on downright incestuousfeelings. She was also the only person to keep contact with Takashi over theyears he spent in Singapore. The rest of her family simply did not bother.

Reason for thwarting:Nakamura Tomomi. Miyuki wanted, and still wants, to be the one to supportTakashi, and does not approve of Takashi having a job to look after her, despitebeing only a young student herself (she resented being a minor at the time ofher parents’ death). She has quite the independent streak and is convinced itwas Tomomi who coaxed her brother to set up the salon. She also knows about herbrother’s obsession with Tomomi.

Method of thwarting: She plans to invite Tomomi to dinner justbefore the latter leaves for the finale of the hairstyle competition. She willpour a few drops of a deadly poison into her dinner, and the effect of thepoison is slow but sure and the subject will die within three hours of theintake, right in time for Takashi’s appearance on the stage ( and with Tomomi’sage and heart problems, it will most probably look like a natural death). Shebelieves that witnessing Tomomi’s death will shake her brother out of theunhealthy obsession he seems to have for her locks (and looks) and he willpromptly return to being her adorable big brother, completely dependent on her.

Acknowledgement: Photoscurtsey of google images. The model for Takashi is Kim Jae Wook (Koreo-Japaneseactor who has worked in a bunch of Korean dramas. Do look up Coffee Prince ifyou ever need a sugar rush). And the model is from a hairstyle advertisement (Ifound it to be rather strangely appropriate.)

Locker Room

2011-09-21T00:57:00.000-07:00

This is Safdar's.

When Swayam Patel felt a slight tug behind his right kneewhile stretching before the all-important final, he knew that it was somethingwhich was not supposed to happen. He sat down in slow motion and cautiously dughis fingertips into the flesh. It did not hurt, but it did not feel greateither.

He was a lad oftwenty one, with a most endearing smile, and a gentle tuft of hair protrudingfrom his chin on an otherwise spotless face suggesting that he’d never felt theneed for using the razor on his skin- very different from the face you’d expecta merciless striker, who was the biggest name on the University circuit to have.If one looked at him strolling down the street, he could easily be mistaken fora school student who loved math and was going to appear for his tenth standardfinal examinations. It was, in fact, right about that time when he had tochoose between appearing for his board exams and attending the Nationalunder-18 trials, when he realised that all that mattered to him in life, wasplaying hockey. Hailing from a conservative Gujarati family which expected himto take care of his family business as soon as he got out of school, gettingthis thought across to them had not been easy. But he was no good at math, norcould he remember names of customers, and he refused to learn anything aboutbathroom fittings. He’d hardly left his family with an option other than lethim do the only thing he could.

He looked around the locker room at players who were busywarming up, the first spots of sweat appearing on their foreheads, and histhoughts went back to the day he sat all alone in a corner crying his guts outafter an inter-house match back in school. His mother had passed away theprevious day, and nobody in his family understood why it was so important forhim to play a match that people skipped when they were down with cough. He hadprobably played only to take his mind off his mother, he had thought later, butthere was a strange fatality that he had attached to that match back then. Hehad had abuses hurled at him from the opposition team throughout the match.Whispers also went around that he had faked his mother’s death to garnersympathy. He hammered five goals that day, a middle school record.

Casting these thoughts aside, he sprang up and got on hisfeet, he wouldn’t let anything get the better of him today, and tried walkingaround. With every step that he took, hefelt a slight niggle, but no major pain. He sat down again and absent-mindedlywrapped his palm around the Toofaan, a gift that his great grandfather hadgiven him when he was shorter than the hockey stick itself. The canvas grip had been replaced by foam,the stickers had given way to imprints made when dirt sticks on to the glueleft behind by stickers, but the hockey stick itself was just the way it waswhen he had first laid his hands on it.

The coach called out for a last-minute pep talk, andeveryone huddled around the chalk board. The strategy was to hold back duringthe first half, play the lone striker and play long balls to him, depending onhim to convert and get the early break, after which they’d step it up and goall out. He drew stick figures and criss-crossed through the board, marking outwhat would be a flawless seventy minutes if the match went on the lines drawnon the board. The players could hear the buzz outside, the entire Universityhad come out for the finals. Glucose was passed around, along with thumps onthe back, and the odd come-on. Swayam glanced at the smiley that blinked on hisphone screen as a text message and tried to think of all the nice things thathad ever happened to him. He thought of Priya, who was in the stands, it wouldbe the first time she’d see him play. He thought of her smile, he tried topretend like it didn’t make him nervous. He felt the scar on his left elbow. Ithad become smooth over the years, fingers almost glided over it. He rememberedhow he’d got it, one of the first memories of the field for him. He thought ofthe Number 8 jersey, and how no one had touched it in his absence. He thoughtof how he was allowed to bunk the first three periods for practice duringschool for two years every day, because he was their star player and the schoolwanted to claim support when he finally made it big. Yet, somehow, this matchheld a lot of significance for him. He was back on the field after an enormousgap of a year and a half, and he had a lot to prove to his team and himself, aburden he’d almost become accustomed with over the years.

The team ran out to a huge roar all across the field. Theiryellow jerseys shone brightly as they took their positions and waited for thereferee’s whistle. Swayam looked all around, noticed a familiar smile, ran downthe pitch and felt that the stage was finally his. The game started, he darteddown the turf, in an opening move which had been rehearsed over and over againin the locker room. The ball was lobbed to him, he received it on the face ofthe stick, faked a flick and drove the ball between the defender’s feet, movingto his right while he threw the opponent off, and then pulling it back inspectacularly, while stretching for the drag. He felt the ball under his eyesand in front of his right toe, in perfect position for the end strike, and ashe lumbered up, his right knee gave in, making him collapse onto the ground.

In the few moments between the whistle blowing, and himbeing lifted off the ground, he knew it was all over. He knew he wasn’tsupposed to return to sport for another six months, he knew the ligament hadtorn again, he knew how it felt. He had just heard his life pop under hisbreath.

In the haze that followed, a familiar face was spottedhovering around, only without the smile, clutching the Toofaan very close toher, while Swayam Patel let out a sigh.

Submissions So Far

2011-09-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

Updated as of 22/9/11

Roll no Name Back1st CS/T 3rd 4th
UGIII
      Deeptesh Sen 7 7
      Vikrant Dadawala 7
32 Sreyashi Mukherjee 7 6.5
      Shinjini Chattopadhyay 8 8.5
      Amrita De 6
      Barsha Saha 7 7 6
      Piali Mandal 7.5 7.5
2   Trisha Ray 9
      Dipabali Dey 7 7 6
      Piu Chatterjee
      Anushka Sen 8.5 7
     Safdar Rahman 6.5
     Anuj Raina 7
     Amrita Dutta 8
     Dipankar Lahiri 5
     Soumashree Sarkar 8
PGII
      Lav Kanoi 8 7
30   Shreya Sarkar 7.5 6 8.5 7
      Sejuti Roy 8
This is the state of things so far. Some of you need to give me one more story, and some haven't submitted anything yet. The only person to submit all four assignments is Shreya Sarkar. Piu please send me something. I need to have everything before the pujas so I can send the internal marks off. safdar, Souamshree, Anushka, Trisha, Anuj, Deeptesh, Vikrant and the Amritas need to send me more.

Note: You absolutely HAVE to send me at least two complete stories. I don't much care which two you send,. They need not even be one of the prompts we have done so far. If you send me more than two, I will take the best two.

Story by Piku?

2011-09-19T03:03:00.000-07:00

~~Another unknown genius. Please own up~~.It's official: this one is Anushka

It’s a questioninteresting enough to think about- well, at least for a little while. What kindof relationship has the most scope for pain? I’m not trivialising it by callingit interesting. It’s just that it’s difficult to defend tags like profundity whereas‘interesting’ will always find takers. So yeah. I’d come down to two options.Parent-child is one. There’s too much emotional investment there, too muchhistory, too acute an instinct for anticipation and attack. You knowjust where to hit and it almost always hurts. And of course, man-woman. Thatone has a remarkable range of death-bound routes to choose from. The pair I’mgoing to talk about in a moment is just one of the ways it can get crazy.

So let’s begin with thegirl- Sameera. She didn’t seem to be particularly exceptional in any way,except that most people who met her thought she was. And though naturally theydidn’t think about why, chances are they couldn’t really offer an explanationfor it. In fact to be honest, she was really, well... moderate. Patient withoutthe halo of a martyr. Passionate without the zest of one who changes things.Acutely logical and perceptive, but always tempered by a distaste for harshcriticism and a fear of misplaced praise. Never really straining against the bordersthough she appeared so very close. Yet, with her, one was always moved.She moved people in the sudden, half-conscious way that an empty street atdawn, or a new bloom on a dying plant, or the soft sigh of an animal might moveyou. It didn’t have to be full of grace or subtlety, but it was real, it wasalive, it was coursing through your veins and you couldn’t dismiss it. Longafter the thrill of a first encounter with her had faded, the depth of emotionshe had once evoked would persist and call for love, even if she had beenintellectualised and dissected and scaled down to average size in the meantime.

Now that’s a lot ofwords and concepts. But if we want movement, we need a few more rounds of them.We need to introduce the man. Because till Sameera met him, there wasn’t much thatwas dramatic in her life. Family played a big role, and it was an affectionate,close knit family of four- well off, not highly cerebral but educated and inlove with the idea of education. They had a very healthy respect for eachother, and an equally healthy difference of opinions. There were frequent,pleasant little vacations. There was a lot of talk. Friendly repartee and fiery(but sometimes pointless) debates, the usual quarrels and some solid advice–this formed the stuff of Sameera’s home-and conclusively-early life. Sure, herthoughts were largely beautiful and her appearance entirely so. Her growth frominfant to young woman was full of exquisite little details; but with the worldso full of grand, explosive things, we need more than that. We need somethingbig, something we need to grapple with before we can name it. And that onlyhappened once she met Prakash.

It was in college, hewas in her class, they were both studying English. There was however a distinctdifference in the way they responded to literature. Sameera’s first instinctwas to celebrate what she loved. She knew what to say and look for as astudent, a budding critic, but above all she loved to pay tribute to a workthat affected her deeply. She spoke of these books on very personal terms,pointed out little nuances for having struck her instead of working them intoan argument; and often went about in a glorious haze of recalling and relivingthe reading experience instead of following it up with a flurry of research.Prakash had no patience for celebration. It came too close to religion for him,and he despised religion, though that didn’t stop from knowing an awful lotabout it. That was the thing with him, really. He knew aboutthings and had a hell lot of opinions too but they hardly had anything to dowith sentiment. As for ‘intuition’, ‘instinct’, ‘spontaneous perception’, theywere dirty words. He believed they were convenient abstractions, maliciouslycreated to place ideas out of intellect’s reach. And he believed they weredegraded even further by romantic simpletons who pounced upon these concepts asa means of worshipping the artist, and taking some warped pleasure in wideningthe rift between the ‘intuitive genius’ and themselves. Was he a cynic? To saythat would be the easy way out. Rather, he was full of anger and that angerworked at many levels. Often it was quiet like a snake in the sun, at othertimes bristling and restless, or at still others- just a resentful fatigue.Interestingly, his background was almost the same as Sameera’s, except that hisfamily was more old-fashioned, milder, their tastes more at odds with his. Andthat little inclination towards the slower side was all it needed for him toreject them. Not through confrontation, no point there; but in his mind andheart. So he lived apart from them, in a mess near college, hardly ever got intouch with them, and earned money by working part-time; so that his scornwasn’t dismantled by a parasitic existence.

Now from the above it would seem impossible for Sameera and Prakash toachieve anything close to intimacy. But that wasn’t how things happened.Prakash, for all his anger wasn’t cold and he wasn’t overtly hostile. He had away of being friendly and full of laughs even when he didn’t really care forthe person opposite. Sameera found something oddly appealing in him- thepresence of an energy and ideology, even if it wasn’t very cohesive. She knewshe herself would never achieve a concrete ideology- there were too many voicesin and outside her head, too many things to make excuses for, bring in the ‘yetI can see why’, or the ‘even so, one might be justified in...’. Prakash’sability to feel things definitely, to voice them in his inimitably crude butright on point, and often uproariously funny way- these were things thatattracted and disconcerted (even annoyed) her in the same breath. An addedfactor was his face, endearingly nondescript when it wasn’t animated bydeclamations. As for her effect on Prakash- it wasn’t overwhelming, but thevery fact that he couldn’t dislike despite her wispiness got him thinking. Hecould chart out a whole list of things he thought was wrong with her, wereabsolutely small and degrading. And yet, yet he responded to her physically, evenemotionally. There was in her a generosity, a startling lack of ego, somethingwhich thrived on affection. It was impossible not to meet that withpleasure.

They began seeking outeach other’s company. It was easy and unobtrusive because they both wanted it.They never seemed to run out of things to say to each other- if opinions becametoo hard to handle, there was always an anecdote, or a fresh in-house joke totake off from. Perhaps Sameera was the only girl around who was as lovely asshe was genuine. The rest seemed to be divided between glitz and dowdiness- theformer was repellant to Prakash and the other not arresting enough. PerhapsPrakash was the only guy who was as stimulating without being frighteninglyacademic. But whether it was for lack of options, or sheer circumstances or anatural attraction between them, Prakash and Sameera were drawn closer to eachother every day. Soon enough, the inevitable happened- a day when everythingcame together- good weather, unity of thought, a well-timed kiss. And theywere, without a doubt, romantically involved.

At first, thingsweren’t too different. There was the same friendly banter, the exchange ofstories. Their lovemaking didn’t seem to add much their non-physicalrelationship. But few things remain static. Prakash and Sameera were definitelyheading along a trajectory and it was one that found most transparentmanifestation in Sameera. You see, she was a girl who was unnaturally sensitiveto opinion. Every little thing one said to her, unless she thought the personwas a real idiot- mattered. And if she liked the person a great deal and haddiscovered the joy, thrill almost, of agreement, it mattered a hell of a lot.It’s not as though they made her change her mind every minute, but they put herthrough moments of torturous reflection and vacillation during which she’d findherself putting forward passionate defences of contrasting opinons to differinggroups. And the conclusion she’d come to would be positively quivering withvulnerability, where the only certainty was an overriding sympathy with thesimple, the ignorant, the pained and the conflict-ridden. Prakash listened towhat others had to say, listened carefully, but unless it was ostensiblyearth-shaking, irrefutably wise, his attention rarely seemed to serve a purposeother than inducing a sharp reaffirmation of his thoughts. He would acknowledgethat compassion had its place in the larger scheme of things but it could nevertweak his beliefs. So it was natural that of the two, Sameera would bedisturbed by the other whereas Prakash would merely be annoyed as one might bewith a child’s naivety.

---You’re too middlepath. Middle path never goes anywhere.

--Never? That’s waytoo simplistic.

--That’s a commonmisconception. Extreme isn’t necessarily simplistic. It can be complex enough.And actually achieve more.

--What if I don’twant to achieve the same things as you do?

--Naturally, we’redifferent people. But it wouldn’t stop me from scoffing at diluted philosophy.Like, like private good, that’s another thing that really gets to me thesedays. People who have more patience for a friend’s sob story than, I don’tknow- a classroom of poor children. I don’t know when we’re ever going to breakout of the I-love-my-mother mode.

--You’re so bloodyopinionated.

--Since when wasthat a bad thing?

These glib assertionson his path would trouble her more than one would expect. The worst part was,she couldn’t be sure if he was serious because he’d even be known to say thingslike -Oh I speak a lot of cock. Why was she so damn self-conscious?

But it was worse whenthey spoke of concrete things. Like poverty and government and war. The coverof reality that these subjects assume generate more memories, more tangibleimages than theory so that superficiality is often hard to detect, and jargonbecomes inevitable. Sameera began to hate words like ‘fascist’, ‘tradition’,‘neo-liberal’, ‘natural’. Every thing that tried to say something definiteseemed suffocatingly smug to her. But she couldn’t shut tear herself away fromthem. They seemed too real, to urgent to shrug off. Retreat to the havens ofart was impossible now. Art became too firmly affiliated with society, and noneof the thinkers who she could respect without misgivings ever severed this connection.

She began usingPrakash’s terminology with surprising ease. She would defend his ideas in hisabsence when she sensed them to be under a mere impersonal attack. And all thewhile she grew increasingly resentful towards him, for not realising that shewasn’t a ray of sunshine who’d never met a cloud. She wasn’t a fairytaleprincess obsessed with crowns and rose gardens. She was scared and confused,she always had been and the only thing she knew how to do was love. She, whowould always give more time to the individual over a group, simply because thesight of one sad face sucked her in before a mass echo of depression couldknock her out completely. It was survival, in a way. A loving heart has a lowerthreshold for sorrow than a harsher one. But he never felt pity for her, onlyindulgence and affection.

Prakash sensed thechange in Sameera. More than anything, he sensed a core growing bitterness andanger within her. And it thrilled him. All along, he had questioned himself onhis choice of lover. He had wondered whether it wasn’t mere lust, or surrenderto fresh, feminine charm. He had even suspected with a shudder that he might’vebeen pampering his pride with the tolerance and tenderness he knew he’d getfrom her. But now, he felt there was substance to it. She was allowing uglinessto breed inside her. She had opened her arms to anger. She could share hispain, even if she didn’t quite understand it yet. Now, when they had sex, therewas a violence in it which gratified him.

With time, Sameera’sactions and words became more and more erratic. She would just not turn up atcollege on certain days, and refuse to explain why. She got a tattoo and thengot it removed in the next three days. To compensate for the waste of money,she refused to buy herself lunch for a week and then gave up, though it hardlycovered half the expense. She would stare at the raw, red patch of skin on herforearm with a menacing glare while it lasted. One day she woke up at dawn andwalked over 5 kilometers to college, arriving flushed and jubilant. But soonshe was bleary-eyed and slept through lessons, and when she went home it waslike a dog with its tail between its legs- humiliated. Even while these changeswere taking place, she initially retained the sweetness and vibrance of herdisposition in direct conversation with friends. But gradually it wore off. Shebecame increasingly argumentative and she would often just stop short in themiddle of what she was saying and drum restlessly with her fingers on some nearbysurface, staring into space. They found it tremendously strange and exhaustingtoo but they couldn’t hate her. A few were genuinely troubled but at large theygrew more wary than anything, backed off and hoped it was just apassing phase. If anyone was really hurt by this change though, itwas her family. They just couldn’t fathom it and they watched and acted andwatched more with growing desperation and weariness.

She still gotinto debates with Prakash but now she had had stopped being pacifiying andaccommodating. Moreover, there was no consistency in what she was saying. Herviews jumped from more radical than Prakash’s to indifferent or spiritualwithin moments. Prakash never bothered playing the role of quiet listener, buthe found a peculiar sense of fulfillment in these outbursts. He looked uponSameera’s whole change as a transitory phase- a necessary period of turbulencebefore something hard and profound set in. Even regressive views didn’t botherhim as they would have coming from other people, because they were provoked bymomentary madness. The madness would be self-redeeming. From the chaos wouldemerge truth.

One day they had aparticularly violent argument. Prakash was somewhat restless that day;Sameera’s venom and hysterics were getting a bit taxing. The last words shesaid to him were-

You, and everyonelike you. You’re just so fucking arrogant. And limited. In this world, how canyou believe in anything? Anything at all? How can you even speak with a freeconscience? I don’t want your ideas, I don’t want your pretty littleguide-books telling me how to change the world. I want- I want to see pain. Iwant to walk into a room and see a crowd of miserable people, wasting away, notknowing what to say to each other, to themselves, to god or the sky oranything. That’s the only way to be.

In a few days, newsemerged that Sameera had disappeared without a trace. Her family was frantic,her friends concerned but not entirely surprised. They all waited long enoughtill they stopped expecting a dramatic return from a whimsical absence. Nonews. The moment Prakash finally accepted her disappearance as final, he saidto himself-

She’s free she’sfinally free. She’s even free of me, she doesn’t need me or any of us anymore.

He kept muttering thesewords to himself, faster and hoarser. Then he went into his room, locked thedoor and wept for a while.

Red vs Blue

2011-09-19T02:47:00.000-07:00

This is from Anuj

Red vs. Blue

I shoved the barrel of the revolver into the traitor’s mouth. The Red’s eyes bulged. He choked on the gun.

“You should have surrendered.”

“Ethan,” Jon Tristan said, standing at my shoulder. “That’s enough.”

“No, Jon. This is enough.”

I pulled the trigger and made one helluva mess.

Afterwards, as the twin moons Phobos and Deimos rose in the west and east, one after the other, Jon and I set about burying the squad of Red Phantoms on the lush, green slopes of Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the Solar System.

“Got any painkillers?” I asked. The altitude made the work hard, the air too thin. My head was killing me.

Jon wrapped his Blue armband across his brow to keep his hair out of his eyes as he worked. “Why do you use that old gun? The Red’s fear it, you know. Call you ‘Gunslinger’. Not very practical, is it. Only six sh—”

“—shots to the barrel. Yeah, I know.” I patted the original Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum, made trusted and true in the old United States of America at the turn of the millennium—some five hundred years ago. “It reminds me of home.”

Jon turned his gaze up to the plateau, reaching six miles above the surface of Mars, at the very tip of Olympus Mons. Creeping green vines clung to what was once barren red rock, disappearing into loose white clouds. In the three centuries since Mars had been terraformed from a wasteland of dust and windstorms, the plant and animal life had flourished.

“We’re along way from home, Gunslinger,” he said.

“Hmm… you looking for a few weeks Earth-side?”

Jon scoffed. “That won’t happen this far west of the Moon.”

I scowled and booted the last dead Red into the pit. The whole stinking planet had become a giant headache—a pain in the ass, Tess—for the Earth Defence Force. The Reds wanted ‘freedom’, wanted independence from Earth—and control of Mars and all its resources. They were traitors, spoilt children, clinging to red dust.

Terraforming Mars had taken the best part of four centuries. The planet was seeded in the 22nd century. Heat factories were constructed, converting CO2 into oxygen, nanobots introduced for nitrogen. Enormous solar mirrors in orbit directed light towards the poles. Superconducting rings buried at key lines of latitude, thousands of miles across, created a man-made magnetosphere, reflecting harsh radiation back into space. Comets and ice-rich asteroids were manoeuvred into sub-orbits around the planet, releasing vast amounts of water as they burnt up. Once the key building blocks were in place, the process was accelerated through a series of chain reactions and micro-feedback loops. Genetically adapted plant and animal life was introduced at the beginning of the 24th century. A hundred years beyond that, Mars was declared safe for biological humans. It had taken five hundred years and collaboration on a planet-wide scale, but it was done.

Humanity had created a second Earth.

Not long after, humanity started its first interplanetary war. The original settlers, the ‘Reds’, declared themselves independent from Earth. Mars, and all its vast potential, was to be denied to its creators.

The stink of blood and death clouded my nostrils. I drew my trusty revolver and punched six dark red holes into the scum at the bottom of the pit. The shots echoed across the undulating slopes of the enormous mountain, carried on the still air. I didn’t care if there were more Reds around. Jon and I were the best Hunters on two planets. We could handle it.

“Yeah? Who killed you?” I spat into the pit.

Jon cocked his ear, listening to something I couldn’t. My nano-communicator had been fried by Red electromagnetic cannon fire some days ago. “EDF commends us for holding Olympus Mons. Ethan Reilly is hereby promoted to Field-Commander, First Class.” He laughed, shifting our reserve ammo belt from one shoulder to the other. “Looks like you might get Earth-side after all, Commander. You’re being recalled.” Jon’s voice caught in his throat. “Oh… hell. They want you to lead the armada from Serenity Base against Ascension City.”

“Piss on that. I’m staying grounded until every last one of these rebel bastards is dead and buried.”

Jon’s smile didn’t touch his eyes. I could sense his discomfort. He was good at his job, but he didn’t want to be. I think he didn’t quite know how to kill himself. “Killing Reds won’t bring Tessa back.”

I shook the dead shells from the Colt’s barrel and handed it to Jon. “Hollow points reload,” I said, a brisk order, and turned to shovel dirt back into the pit.

The Martian moons hung in the sky against a curtain purpling toward night. Jon handed me back the Colt. I pointed the barrel at the bright star in the southern sky, at Earth, two hundred and twenty million kilometres away. “Killing Reds makes me feel better. Makes me feel like I’m making a bloody difference.”

Jon laughed. “Oh, Ethan, you are in the unique position of knowing you are able to make a difference. Most people never see that, they wait for someone else, anyone else, to be the difference. That makes you, right now, across both worlds, the most dangerous man alive. Mars fears you and Earth respects you. You have the opportunity to change how this story is supposed to end.” Jon shook his head. “Don’t. You. Fucking. Waste. It.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying maybe the Reds aren’t all wrong. Maybe at the head of an Eternity-class battleship armada you could force a peace.”

“Bullshit.”

“Is it? Tessa saw this war for what it was—brothers fighting brothers. She came here to make peace.”

“And they killed her in the uprising. They think they can just bite the hand that feeds them and not get smacked for it? No.” I shovelled more dirt into the pit, masking that stench of death. With any luck we could reset the ambush and catch some more of the bastards tomorrow. “I will take that armada and turn Ascension City back into red dust.”

“I thought you might say that…” Jon whispered.

Any soldier worth his salt could’ve sensed Jon’s next move. I twirled on the spot, drawing my revolver, as Jon raised his pulse rifle against me. I was the faster draw, always had been, and I didn’t hesitate. My finger hammered the trigger, as it had done a thousand times before, and a round of hot, solid lead—

The barrel turned with a dry click. Misfire? No…

Jon’s smile was grim. “Sorry, Reilly. Must’ve missed a chamber on the reload.”

I licked my lips. “Your mother was a nano-augmented whore.”

A sphere of arced light burst from Jon’s rifle and obliterated my shoulder, cutting through it as if it were warm butter. I was thrown back into the pit atop of the Reds, my shooting arm flying clean away from the rest of my body. Blood sprayed in a violent arc against the star-strewn sky.

This ain’t no painted desert serenade…

There was no pain—only cold, red dirt. Earth shone like a beacon so far away. Jon blocked the stars, kneeling down next to me in the pit. He unwrapped his Blue band from around his head and dabbed it against the bright, crimson socket where my arm used to be. It stained the cloth, soaked it. Not red, but—

“Close enough,” Jon said, wrapping the band back around his arm. He spared me a final glance and then turned and walked away.

I remembered running into the sea back home on Earth with Tessa. You’re my sad song, she had once told me, and you’re stuck on repeat, baby.

I remembered the smell of her wet hair. My headache was gone. I imagined her blood trailing through the waters of Mars. Bless her—she had been trying to do the right thing.

Jon Tristan would have understood.

Amelie Bossan

2011-09-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

Character Sketch

Name: Ámelie Bossan

Age: 20 years

Gender: Female

Sexual Orientation: Claims to be straight

Current Location: 16, Rue Saint- Benoȋt, L’Auberge de Jeunesse, Paris- 75006, France. She is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in French and Comparative Literature from Sorbonne University.

Place of Birth: Resolute, Queen Elizabeth Islands, Canada.

Languages Known: English and French.

Religion: Christian Catholic

Family

Father: Late Jacques Bossan. Scientist/Alchemist.

Mother: Hélène Bossan. 48 years old. Teaches History at University of Bordeaux.

Uncle: Christophe Trévisan. 51 years old. Occupation- unknown.

Socio-economic Status: Apart from her mother’s lavish salary, she has a substantial portion of her ancestral property in Bordeaux to her name.

Physical Attributes

Ámelie is 5’7” tall. Her complexion is somewhere between cream and white matching the shade of the pages of the Penguin Classics. She is neither thin, nor bulky. Rather she has a fuller figure like the woman in Paul Delvaux’s painting Pygmalion 1939. Her chestnut coloured, ear-length hair often appears dishevelled. Her eyes twinkle like emeralds but are often obscured by her hair, still their innate gleam draws the onlooker’s attention. The sharp nose stands like a mountain-top in the middle of her oval face. Her thin lips were once red, but time has worn out the colour and has lent it a faded hue.

Timeline

1991. September. Ámelie is born to the delight of M and Mme. Bossan in St. Patrick’s Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Islands, Canada.

1998. February. Jacques Bossan dies at the age of 31 due to an accident at his lab in Queen Elizabeth Islands, Canada.

1998. April. Mme. Bossan and Ámelie move to Bordeaux in their ancestral mansion to live with Mme. Bossan’s brother Christophe.

1998. May. Ámelie is enrolled in Lycée Privé Le Mirail. She starts going to a proper school for the first time.

2006. October 16. Morning. Ámelie is ‘bitten’ by a Hyrophil (a kind of monster) in the garden of her home.

2006. October 16. Afternoon. Mme. Bossan reveals to Ámelie that M. Bossan was not a ‘conventional’ scientist but an alchemist. He was working on a secret project under the International Union of Alchemists (IUA), an undercover organisation, to annihilate the Hyrophils. M. Bossan had chosen Queen Elizabeth Islands as the cite of his research because he had thought that the he would be able to protect his findings from the Hyrophils in this largely unpopulated island. But the Hyrophils were not ready to be executed this easily. They did eventually find out about M. Bossan’s objectives and barged into his lab one fateful day and killed him and destroyed his lab. So, what Ámelie had known to be an accident all along, was actually a murder. There is something that Hyrophils did not know either. Although the IUA had commanded M. Bossan to create a killing machine for the Hyrophils, but he was actually working on the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone to restore the Hyrophils to their original human form. A secret confided only in his wife. Unfortunately, all his notes and findings were lost in the rampage of the Hyrophils. The death of her husband induced a sense of disillusionment in Mme. Bossan and she severed all ties (whatever she had left after her husband) with IUA and moved to Bordeaux with her daughter to live with her brother, who was genuinely pleased to have them over.

2009. September. Ámelie joins Sorbonne University, Paris, to study French and Comparative Literature.

2009. October. Ámelie visits the IUA headquarter in Paris and is found to have developed a psychic ability due to the Hyrophil bite to be able to tell if there is any Hyrophil around within a 1Km radius.

2009. November. Ámelie is invited to join the IUA Hyrophil Annihilation Squad (IUAHAS) for having special psychic powers. She accepts the invitation. She is currently under training and has not been to any actual combat.

2011. January. Ámelie accidentally discovers from a book in the IUA library that her maternal grandfather was a descendant of Bernard Trévisan. The fifteenth century French count Bernard Trévisan was believed to have procured the Philosopher’s Stone and even wrote a short treatise on the bounty that the stone had brought him. Something tells Ámelie that there is some truth to this legend of Bernard Trévisan. Although her mother and uncle, the only two living descendants of the Count, have heavily denied any authenticity to the matter.

2011. February- present. Apart from performing her IUAHAS duties Ámelie is secretly looking for Bernard Trévisan’s Philosopher’s Stone.

Hyrophils

The IUA believes that alchemic experiments should be strictly confined to metals and alloys as outlined by Roger Bacon. But when the extensive searches of the IUA for the Philosopher’s Stone proved to be futile, a rebellious faction of alchemists violated the rules in 1995 and added organic matters with alloys and created a strange liquid substance called étern el printemps. It had the power of bringing back a mortally ill person to life. But it was not able to entirely cure the disease rather enabled the person to extract energy from living organisms and live until that energy lasted. Once that energy was exhausted, the person would have to find a new host. It made the person a parasite. The IUA coined the term Hyrophils for these human parasites. The alchemists who had created étern el printemps (endless spring) were thrown out of IUA for breaching the rules, which enraged them even more and they went on creating Hyrophils because they believed that they are serving mankind by curing the sick without realising that their act might turn out to be fatal for humanity. The Hyrophils can extract energy from any living organism (trees, birds, animals, insects, human beings and others) by clasping them for a few minutes. This is called the ‘bite’ of a Hyrophil. The appearance and lifestyle of a Hyrophil is just like any other human being. It is not possible to tell by looking at a person whether or not he/she is a Hyrophil. They generally domesticate cats or dogs or some such animal to act as the host. A full-grown golden retriever can withstand approximately six Hyrophil bites before it dies. A Hyrophil bite is not fatal or does not cause any injury for a human being and they generally do not thrive upon humans unless they need energy urgently. However, five or six Hyrophil bites in a row without given the chance of recuperation may prove to be fatal for a man.

The IUA has set out to annihilate the Hyrophils because they consider them to be upsetting the ecological balance.

At the age of 15 Ámelie was bitten by such a Hyrophil.

The one thing that can put a stop to the creation of Hyrophils is the Philosopher’s Stone. It will be able to cure any fatal disease and étern el printemps will not be needed any more and therefore futher Hyrophils will not be created. This is why Ámelie is looking for the stone.

Internal Map

Ámelie’s experiences in school

For the first few years she was rather pitied by her teachers and classmates for not having her father. The special attention made her uncomfortable. As a result she gradually became an introvert person. A sense of determination to prove her potential grew strong in her.

Ámelie’s thoughts on Alchemy.

Ámelie is not much interested in the intricate alchemical reactions. She is more drawn towards the mystical side of it. Growing up with the magical enchantment of Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, Bilal and Profondeurs she was rather pleased to know that alchemy was not confined to ancient scriptures only. She regards alchemy as almost something supernatural and is glad to be a part of this unconventional universe. She is devoted to IUAHAS and wishes to make a mark in the world of alchemy as a warrior. The thought of a ‘normal’ life is boring to her. She somewhat pities the mass for not having the least bit of magic in their lives. She enjoys living her dual lives, one as a University student and the other as a secret IUAHAS warrior.

Ámelie and her Mother

Ámelie shares a close bond with her mother. Throughout her teenage her mother was her best friend and confidant while her friends complained of regular fights with their parents. Although Mme. Bossan’s over-protectiveness sometimes drives her crazy, but she understands the reason behind her anxiety. Her daughter is the only one she can hold on to (Christophe does not really count). In Paris, Ámelie misses her mother a lot.

Ámelie and her Father

Ámelie has become prouder about her father since the day she came to know that M. Bossan was not just another scientist but a high-profile alchemic researcher. She remembers her father mostly through the photographs. She can envision the face of a young man with a benign smile. Although she doubts whether it is an actual memory. She holds a deadly grudge against the Hyrophils for snatching her father away from her.

Pride: After joining IUAHAS Ámelie has become a bit too proud. Although she is not aware of her having an excess of pride. Also she feels that she is burdened with all the responsibilities of saving the world and without her contribution the world might stop rotating. It is her idea that she and she only will be able to find the Philosopher’s Stone.

Fears: Ámelie fears that she will not get the recognition she deserves for her contribution in alchemy. She does not want to suffer the fate of her father who is remembered as an unfortunate victim of the Hyrophils but his alchemical findings are blissfully forgotten by IUA.

At the back of her mind Ámelie feels that without the associations of alchemy she is just another brick in the wall.

Needs: Ámelie is subconsciously always seeking attention. When she is with her friends from her university she always wants their conversations to be on topics she is interested in. If they talk about anything else she feels left-out and tries her best to change the topic.

Strengths: Growing up with a single and working mother made Ámelie self-sufficient earlier than usual. She has grown to be a strong and brave person. She can keep her calm in troubled times. She is not scared of Hyrophils. However, she is no wonder woman. She runs the possibility of snapping midway if tried to the ultimate limit.

Secrets: At twenty Ámelie is still a virgin and has never been physical intimate with anyone. She is very embarrassed of this fact and claims to have made out with nameless people.

Shinjini Chattopadhyay

Story by Unknown Genius

2011-09-19T02:29:00.000-07:00

I suspect the Deeptesh

Prufrock

Thin shards of glass flew into her skin. At the moment of impact, she fell nothing. Everything seemed to have coalesced into a void. And then, as the sensation began to sink in, she felt pain. Terrible, unthinkable pain. Pain was beautiful.

AS LEENA STOOD on the bridge, she felt beautiful. The sky in the far horizon was melting into the Ganges. The sun had set leaving a crimson afterglow. She could almost taste the soft tobacco sky as it flowed inside her mouth. In the distance, a small dinghy was sailing in the crimson waters. Quietly it sailed towards the vanishing point of light and vision.

And you must vanish like smoke in the sky

Which no one holds back

Leena watched the boat vanish moment by moment and felt a great sadness. Now the boat was almost gone, beyond human vision and her eyes strained to catch the ghostly shape melting away. She could feel the boat sail along the curve of the river at Liluah. Further still, the boat will come to a narrow stretch where the river bed had dried up on both sides and the water was green with algae. The banks will still be hot from the golden sunbeams; on the ghat there will be women wrapped in saris taking a dip. Then children will come running in when they see the boat; their faces pink and white with fatigue.

Evening will descend on the bridge as in other places. Silver moonlight on the estuary. Leela standing on the bridge, a childish figure. Her hair is tied up and she is wearing a deep blue dress. She is fair complexioned and of short stature. Faces go past her. Memories. Men smelling of hot coffee and cigarettes. Porters in khakee dresses. Gunpowder lips. Time rolling down like liquid rust. Slender legs. Laughter thrown like a universe wrapped into a paper ball of time. Papermoneylust. Pink seahorses with dark, green vagina. A ghost-woman with a pendulum in her womb. Infundibulous time. Skytimewomen. A sentence ending with comma and full-stop,,…,

When she re-gained consciousness, she was not sure about where she was. There were dim lights in the room. She could see a woman in white uniform coming towards her. Death can’t be ugly, she thought.

In her dreams, she always rode on paper-horses. She always knew time was a strange paperboat. And her friends called her a paper-girl. She had always loved magic. She had written a poem about a paper girl in the rain. Her friends had liked the poem and called her paper-girl. Paper-girl. Paper woman. Gosh! What a name. She never believed life being real. Life for her was a huge joke and totally unreal. Emotion for her was placid as paper and real like rain. In those important junctures of life, where there is a possibility for a hundred decisions and indecisions, she would always tend to follow the dictates of her conscience ahead of anything else. Science and religion was for her pure magic. How time was elastic and even space could bend fascinated her. Time and space was like paper, she thought. When she would grow up, she thought, she would have a paper baby one day.

And then it happened two summers earlier. She was nineteen at that time. She had just entered college and was studying for a degree in English. Life for her was just a humdrum affair. And then things changed one day. Almost like magic.

On the bridge, time stood with Leena. Time convoluted into a coughball of consciousness. Time moved like a bitch, it always does. Time eats, sleeps and menstruates. For time is time, nothing else. She could feel time. Liquid hands tugging at her dress. Away bitch, she cried. Separation anxiety. A man was sliding in through the doorway. Time. He slid off his pajamas, his breathe warm and moist on her cheek. Time. He had only hands, big large hands with which he painted. Squashed the universe into a ball and pinned it onto his neck-tie. What is your name, man with hands? I am Prufrock, people call me Alfred. Thank you. I love food and dolls. She was trying to resist. Time. Bergson’s huge eyes. Sleep on the walls, bells ringing. Loyola was a good man, with claws. Time bites.

He dined at cheap restaurants. He had killed his father for killing the old queen. Yet he was timid, with weasel eyes. No, I’m not Prufrock, you imagine. Lips trembling to ask the over-whelming question. Do I exist? Are you real? We’re in love, yes, no, who knows? Tooraloom Tooraloom tay, famous words now. Yes, I remember. Doctor stares into her eyes, what do you see? I’m on a bridge on the Ganges. I’m in the water. I’m with Prufrock under lovely skies. Schizopreneria. Border-line, line, border. The mermaids are thinking, singing, lust for the fleshy curves of time. Who is Rakesh? Rakesh Prufrock, no Prufrock, mon amour.

Remember. White light. Great hand of time. Remember the name. Rakesh Malhotra, CEO, LNT Cement. To be husband. Remember. Another bright light. Lips on omphalos. Engagement. No? Grew up in Lousiana. Not religious, but a good man. Good looking, same scar behind the left ear, see? Prufrock, Prufrock. No. Your childhood pen-friend. Chat-friend. Believes you are the only truth in life.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Then the accident. Hemorrhage. No, I’ll explain the character. My Prince Hamlet, I’m not dreaming. Believes in art, not a public servant. Grew up under sunny skies and lamp-lit rooms. Fifty almost, but how he turns me on. Met him along blurry lines. Courted women and went to bed with most of them. But loved me the most. We were seated on the wrong side of the room. You could stare through him like glass and see the streets and women flow like arguments. He had the breath of chalk and soul of the yellow fog that rubs its tail in the sunlit breeze. You could feel him wound up like the soul of a bird in the yellow fog and slither out of smokeless chimneys into the city. He was at motion and rest as he filled the room like music...women with braceleted arms and bare breasts in lamplight, had golden hair and spoke like dust. The music flowed through trees, through empty streets and teaspoons of vanishing breath. The universe panted...the universe rubbed her breasts and arms on the naked body of time, the universe spat out a symphony with golden hair and panting lips, across the slender, white fingers of the sea. Infinite, my love, infinite my lust for silence, as flesh penetrates flesh and metal penetrates the soft belly of light, on that baked afternoon in Algiers.

You are a bridge, on the Ganges. You’re the quiet centre of harmony. Useless images. Rakesh Malhotra, CEO, with neck-tie and collar walked out. I have had enough, he thought. No more shit. On a cold November morning when he was ten years old, his mother had beaten him for telling a lie. He had cheated on a Maths test and his assignment was cancelled. He had not confessed the truth to his mother. What followed was ten days of silence; he refused to talk or touch food. This was the same obstinate desire to achieve his ends which would later take him to the top. He was already flourishing in his work when he met Leela. Or re-met let’s say. He and Leela were classmates once and more than that- their spending time together on...

Anikesh stared at the paper. Those were the good days. He almost strained to remember. How difficult it is to create her again as he remembered her! The smiles, the strokes, the beliefs, the years. His novel will sell. Sunlight fell across Ashima’s face and he had an overwhelming sense of pity for her. Her limbs lay inert as she stared with lacklustre eyes from her wheelchair, mumbling indiscreetly. Her words have a sense of their own. It was tough to understand her as she was now or she was back in school...let alone trying to give a voice to her inert consciousness. Wild, restless consciousness. Yet words weren’t false; she had lovely eyes, wanted a good job and stable career and...and she believed he was Prufrock. Yet she was unreal, he thought, more so on paper. His publisher had already phoned him twice that day. Puffs of dust went up into the sunbeam in the dark room as he turned the pages of his manuscript. Prufrock he thought. Ashima was right. Her mumbling getting worse. Sound of tap dripping.

Do I dare disturb the universe?

Her lines always. Will be always. Damn that tap that disturbs the silence. Every single word is...enough. Time is water and silence. Red, blue, green. What do you do all day sitting there, said Ashima. Dream. He fancies strange things. Like I’m mad and all that. Ever since his unemployment...Ashima on the wheelchair mumbling. Who is lying? You or I or both? What is the game darling? My novel will sell.

Character Sketch by Unknown Genius

2011-09-19T02:27:00.000-07:00

As usual, you guys are displaying an allergy to writing your names on things. Who created this one?

CHARACTER CONSTRUCTION

Institutional layer

NAME: Bhikhucharan Yadav

AGE: 37 years

PLACE of BIRTH: Baheri village in Samastipur, Bihar

LANGUAGE: Magadhi, broken Bengali

GENDER: Male

ORIENTATION: Heterosexual

FAMILY

· FATHER: landless worker, illiterate, dead for 8 years at the time of the story

· MOTHER: house-wife. Studied in village school till 10^th standard. Married off when tried to elope with the boy-next-door. Died in 1985.

· 2 older sisters, 3 younger brothers, 1 younger sister

· Wife – dead

· Son – 19 years old whom he had not seen for more than 10 years

RELIGION: Hinduism

ETHNICITY: Indian

CASTE: Vaishya

CLASS: lower; earlier landless worker, now porter

SCHOOLING: primary school in village till the age of 11(Class 4)

Time-line

13^th May, 1974 – born to Sita Devi and Ramcharan Yadav; 3^rd of 7 children, 1^st son

11years old – mother dies(smallpox)

17 years old – marries a girl in the next village

18years old – son born

28 years old – father dies. Bhikhu moves to Kolkata. Leaves behind wife and young son(10years old) in search of better jobs. Luggage stolen at railway station. Works as porter.

37 years – news of wife’s death.

Internal Maps

Bhikhu, being the first male child of his parents, had a lot of expectations riding on him. But while his father wanted him to work in the fields and earn enough money to recover the lands lost to the local money-lender, his mother wanted him to study and become a ‘bada aadmi’. Due to her insistence, Bhikhu was enrolled into the local primary school. Bhikhu, however, did not share her dreams and was soon bunking classes to go to the nautankis that came to the village.

When 11 years old, Bhikhu had a bad bout of small pox, from which he recovered under his mother’s nursing. She, in turn, was infected fatally, and died. This incident left a deep impact on Bhikhu’s mind as he blamed himself for his mother’s death. This, coupled with his realisation of his earlier disregard of his mother’s dream, filled him with a deep sense of guilt which was to play an important part in building up his personality. Bhikhu’s resolution to fulfil his mother’s dream was, however, thwarted when his father put him to work in the fields with his younger brothers. Gradually, Bhikhu’s sub-conscious tried to suppress these feelings of over-whelming guilt. As a defence mechanism, he developed a rowdy, misogynistic character. His father, in an attempt to ‘tame’ him, married him off to a docile girl of 15. After the initial charm had faded away, he became indifferent to his wife, occasionally beating her when he was too frustrated with life. His son’s birth, less than a year after Bhikhu’s marriage, failed to shake up his emotions in anyway.

Neither did his father’s death. In fact, within a year of his father’s death, Bhikhu left his village for Kolkata. He left behind his wife and 10 years old son. He told everyone that Kolkata provided better employments for him. While this was partly true, he also wanted desperately to get away from the village which always affected him with a sense of claustrophobia and despair. He knew his promise to his tearful wife, that he would return to take them to Kolkata, was a lie, as he wanted to cut himself off from his past life completely and start afresh. He was so guilt-ridden that he promised himself to send regular money to his family once he got a job at Kolkata.

Bhikhu lost his luggage when he arrived at the Howrah station. Rather, it was stolen. Distrustful of everyone, he roamed about in the platform for a couple of days, afraid to set foot in the alien city. A kind coolie offered him a job as a porter after he saw him eyeing his food greedily.

Initially sceptical, Bhikhu soon made friends with his co-workers. In fact, he became some kind of a leader of the men due to his robust personality.

Used to living in a three-roomed hut in his village with his extended family, the vast expanse of the station gave him a taste of freedom which, he realised, he had longed for all his life. Free from his mother’s dream, free from his father’s expectations, free from the responsibility of his wife and son. The multitude of people pouring in and out of the station made him feel invisible – a feeling which both thrilled and terrified him. He, very diligently, sent money to his family every month. But he took great care never to reveal his address to them. Neither did he ever write to them. He loathed the idea to be saddled with their responsibility again.

But there are times when he is filled with a surge of overpowering sadness, emptiness and guilt. But he has learnt to anticipate such depressions, and whenever he feels the onslaught of such a sadness, he indulges in his hedonistic urges of food and flesh to offset.

At the time of the story, Bhikhu meets an acquaintance of his village at the station by chance, who tells him that his wife had died 6 years back. He comes to know that his son has passed his school-leaving exams with distinction. Bhikhu feels oddly proud of the achievements of his son, whom he has not seen for almost 10 years. He cannot decide whether to go back to Baheri to reconnect with his son or not.

INSTITUTIONAL LAYER

NAME: AKHYAYIKA SENGUPTA

AGE: 21 YEARS

PLACE OF BIRTH: BALLYGUNJ, SOUTH KOLKATA

LANGUAGE: BENGALI

GENDER: FEMALE

ORIENTATION: HOMOSEXUAL

FAMILY

· MOTHER: SNIGDHA SENGUPTA, A SOCIALITE, ONCE ACTRESS IN SOME MOVIES

· FATHER: RANJAN SENGUPTA, CEO IN AN MNC

· GRANDMOTHER: CHHAYA SENGUPTA, HOME-MAKER, DEAD (2005)

RELIGION: NON-PRACTISING HINDU

CLASS: UPPER, HEREDITARILY RICH

SCHOOLING: IN A REPUTED SOUTH KOLKATA SCHOOL, DOING MASTERS IN HISTORY UNDER RABINDRA BHARATI UNIVERSITY

TIME-LINE

8^TH SEPTEMBER, 1989 – BORN, ONLY CHILD

9 YEARS OLD – FATHER’S ADULTERY DISCLOSED

18 YEARS OLD – GRANDMOTHER DIES

19 YEARS OLD – FALLS IN LOVE WITH ZAREEN, A GIRL IN HER COLLEGE

20 YEARS OLD – MEETS WITH AN ACCIDENT WHICH LEAVES HER CRIPPLE FROM WAIST DOWN-WARDS

INTERNAL MAP

Akhyayika’s name was chosen by her mother who wanted her to be as distinct as her name. Akhyayika herself, however, liked her nickname, Rai, given by her thamma. Till the age of nine, Ahyayika was brought up mostly by her paternal grandma, or thamma, as her father was mostly on trips while her mother was busy shooting for films. Though sometimes craving for motherly tenderness, Akhyayika had a more or less happy childhood, cared for by her thamma who was a strict but loving guardian. Like her thamma, she held pity and contempt for her mother’s attempts to land leading roles in films. When Snigdha finally gives up on her dream to become the frequent organiser of kitty-parties, that disdain remained, and Akhyayika could never imagine her as someone more than a resident of her house. She considered herself as her grandma’s child, often calling her ‘maa’ in jest sometimes.

At the age of nine, Akhyayika, while fiddling with her father’s cell-phone, comes across a lewd text sent to her father by one of his female colleagues. Not knowing what to do, but having a strong sense of foreboding, she shows it to her grandmother. To her immense surprise, her grandmother, who had always sided with the truth often to the displeasure of others, asked her to keep mum about the whole affair. This incident, more than her father’s adultery, shocked her to the core. Instinctively she gravitated towards her mother, though not revealing the truth about Ranjan to her. Snigdha, however, was too pre-occupied with her life to pay much attention to her daughter’s fragile mental state, and besides taking her to a few movies every month, did little else.

Akhyayika found herself without a friend in her own house. She had always been a quiet girl in school, with few friends. But she now made effort to be popular in school. She invented new and newer excuses to stay away from home, especially from her grandmother. It was at this time that her grandmother was diagnosed with the early signs of dementia. Akhyayika was filled with a deep sense of justice being done. Oddly enough, she had no anger towards her father. All her acts of rebellion had at their root the conviction that it would hurt her thamma, who was, by then, has lost almost all her grip on reality. Her realisation of her sexual orientation was not to much of a shock to her as she knew that thamma would not approve.

When her thamma died finally, incidentally on her 18^th birthday, Akhyayika was assailed by very different emotions at once. There was a sense of freedom, but also an utter emptiness. All her actions had been in accordance or defiance of thamma’s presumed wishes. Without her, everything seemed meaningless. It also made Akhyayika question her sexuality.

Such concerns were put to rest once she met Zareen. She was a docile girl from an orthodox Pathan family at her college, one year her junior. Akhyayika fell head over heels in love with her. And she reciprocated. But within a year Akhyayika met with a car accident which paralysed the lower part of her body. Her parents, who were gradually drifting apart through the years, started taking her to different doctors and therapists all over the country, in hope of ‘curing’ her. Zareen was a pillar of strength to her through out, though neither of her parents knew about their relation. Akhyayika did not tell them of this, less from the fear that they would not approve than the conviction that they did not care either way.

At the beginning of the story, Akhyayika is returning from Hyderabad with her parents after a futile appointment with another ‘baba’. The night before Zareen has called her saying that her parents has fixed her marriage and she is going to comply to their wishes. She asked Akhyayika not to contact her anymore.

STORY

Bhikhu has decided not to go meet his son. He is too ashamed of how he abandoned his family 10 years back. Akyhyayika has decided to commit suicide as she feels Zareen was the only string attaching her to life.

Bhikhu carries Akhyayika’s luggage from the train to her car. That is how they meet.

The Story

2011-09-02T12:55:00.001-07:00

(This is the first story I wrote for WRiP. Thought I might as well post it here)

And then there was a violent thud which made the room shake. As if the world were bursting open into splinters. Liquid splinters of light and deafening flux of paranormal vision. Music floated into the room like the last breathe of existence. Perhaps it was Mozart. “Perhaps a little too dull for untrained ears”, she mused. But definitely soothing amidst all this madness and collapse.

She could feel her loneliness weighing down upon her. Relentless alienation. She could feel the breathe of time along every hair on her skin. Just like the flowing tongue of an evil sorceress. Perhaps she had a name, she thought. Not that it mattered much to her now. Names were useless in times such as these. Especially when she was having her ‘visions’. She could feel time flow along criss-crossed points of motion within and without her. She was being held out like a transparent being in all her nakedness to the serene indifference of the world. Her body had thus turned into a paradoxical shrine of conflict between shifting states of rest and motion ~ between what she believed was more than one kind of conceivable time. Expanding co-ordinates of time zero and multiple points of simultaneous existence. Every atom in her body, she felt, was alive both to the neutral world outside and her vivid flux of painstaking images.

The clock-hands had twisted themselves and were raining down in the form of liquid daggers. Vertigo of images spun in a mist of red. Horses that speak as they turn into women. Fingers caressing wet glass and navel. The women move like water across the floor and the room moves in a waltz like time. Time now becomes language. Mosaic of trance in glass. Finger sky. Jesus bird. Move. Waltz. Penetrate. Then melt, melt, melt.

The cat beside the window stares at her in disgust. Our universe is full of surprises. Perhaps I don’t need a plot, he thinks. She has been living her visions. Her body twisted in vile postures like a pre-Raphaelite painting as she snaked along the co-ordinates like a moving story. Ok, back to time zero. The women, the waltz, the motion all receded till they merged into a single point of amnesia. Thankfully, normalcy returned to the room. “I have been dreaming,” she told herself, “Or may be I’m dreaming now. But surely, both can’t be real.” “Or may be, “ she cried looking at the cat with twinkling eyes, “you are the one dreaming. In which case, I don’t have to bother much about reality.” The cat looked at her in an irritated manner and then yawned. “I need a plot,” he declared. “I have been travelling from Moscow to London for years now. But not a plot in sight.” “I can provide you with a plot,” she told the cat. “The only problem is I can see it vividly the moment I close my eyes but can’t put it down in the form of language. I can see it all,” she murmured. “The waltz. The women. I can still feel time flowing through my body like a torrential...”

“There you are,” interrupted the cat. “You’ve put it down in the form of language.”

“You don’t understand,” she explained. “There has to be a logic. There has to be a plot. I know all of these images are linked together almost like a secret fraternity but it’s not clear. Who was waltzing for instance- the room or the women or both? Were the women women or horses?Or were the horses women? There are no real, discernable boundaries. They are all messed up. And to narrate a story, I have to plot them along a real time axis. So, do the women come first or the horses? Do I use real time for narration or the time frame of the images. But time then was insignificant.”

“Insignificant questions.” Said the cat with another yawn, “You theorize too much.” “My problems with language are different. “I have been editing and re-editing the sentence “The cat loves the fish””. What if you say the “The fish loves the cat”. Probably it would mean different but how can you be sure that you always say what you want to? Then again, what if the verb comes first. Or you simply say “Loves the the cat fish.” Language breaks down you might argue but doesn’t it sound more beautiful? And more realistic for then your problem of trying to convert memory into language will be solved.”

It was her turn to get bored. “I believe,” the cat said, taking a step forward and whispering with great precaution ,” such a conversion is false as it is always forced. Everything can’t be language. Is it for instance so important to hanker after a relation and a plot? And then narrate logically? What you told me perhaps made no sense but it is beautiful as it is nothing but a reiteration of your memory and vision.” The cat then paused for a breath and opened his eyes to find the woman gone. He felt stupid to find himself talking to thin air. But surely she was there a minute ago, or had he been dreaming? He then recalled the woman in her state of being almost possessed as she narrated her visions. Or was it his vision? Alternate realities. But the poet was the poem and memory was the narrative without language. He had an idea about who the woman was. The music, the women, the red trance and madness will have to be obstinately committed to paper. After all these years, the cat has at last been blessed with a story.

Character Exercise

2011-08-13T01:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, a lot of people have been having trouble with the character exercise, particularly with the exact meaning of 'thwarter'. The 'thwarter' thwarts the STORY, not the character: he or she deflects, shocks or bends the storyline. Let me clarify with an analogy from Newtonian physics.

Our protagonistic will, given the shape of their life and personality, either remain at rest or continue in motion with uniform acceleration in a straight line, right? Let's call this person A. The straight line is where the story is headed if nothing intervenes (usually a very boring direction)

Now let us introduce another person into this universe. Let's call them B. B can do the following:
1. B can attract A. A will curve towards B, and will then either attain B, or be thwarted by circumstances and remain frustrated.
So a new love interest, or a long lost parent, or a rich man to rob, or a new baby, or an escaping spy that A has to catch, or a gay man he's secretly attracted to, could be this kind of B. Actually all objects of love will be in this category.
2. B can repel A. A will move away from B and from his old line of movement, and either escape or be prevented from escaping by circumstances. A could also attack B in an effort to get back on track, or simply avoid B and solve the problem on his own.
Examples will include an overbearing mother, a jealous boss, a spy hunting him down, a wronged lover, an unwanted child, an enemy soldier, a besotted but unattractive lover, a rapist, or a terrorist who hijacks B's plane, or a man who steals his woman, or anything that does him harm and needs to be neutralised. B need not be doing this specifically to target A; it might be a by product of something else, but A will experience it as a personal effect. A could either rise above it an attack the root or take out a personal (deserved or undeserved) vendetta on B.
The reason why I want you to do the characters in pairs is that it makes it easier to work them into a story. A character in isolation isn't story material; two characters have to be.

Marriage is a Private Affair

2011-07-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

Someone once said that the old are in a second childhood. I could not agree more. Memories of a life never lived flood you till you start believing that it is not the wrinkles that make you old, but the weight of recollection of moments that live inside you. At this age, it is difficult to resist talking about ones past. No amount of education and pension can make you forget what you most enjoyed being – a young girl. But this is not the story of a young girl. This is the story of a sunset. This is the story of a sunset who was born at seven pm on the 13^th of February many years ago and who died a few minutes after he was born. I was fifteen years old at that time and was bathing in what remained of the dried up river Rufiji which flowed through our village. I had discovered the benefits of bathing in the shelter of the ebbing afternoon and was happily scrubbing soap on my woolly hair when I noticed the sunset glistening on the droplets of river clinging to my jet black body. At that age I knew sunsets like the back of my hand. ‘Sunsets are like men,’ I used to think. ‘If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all’. But this one was different. He was, of course, not the first sunset to flirt with me, what made him different was his shyness. I decided to take matters into my own hands.

‘Hello,’ I said timidly.

He beamed for a moment and then said, ‘I love you’.

Whatever surprise I might have felt, I took care not to show.

‘Oh you do?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Will you marry me?’

‘But I am only fifteen!’ I said coyly.

‘So am I,’ he said. ‘But I am going to be older soon.’

Of course, I knew that would die in a matter of minutes. Besides, marriage was a public affair. I could not get married just because I felt like it one evening. This made me a little sad. I kept silent.

‘Will you at least travel around the world with me?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Do you have a car?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said sadly. His eagerness faded a little but returned fast enough for him to say, ‘I used to, but it broke down the other day and I haven’t repaired it yet.’

I laughed in mock shyness. It embarrassed him greatly.

‘You are beautiful,’ he said finally. ‘Your parents must have rejoiced greatly when you were born’.

‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘I am their seventh daughter. They weren’t happy. And anyway, my father left soon after. He has four sons with his third wife.’

‘But…,’ he stopped.

We looked at each other for some time.

‘Will you remember me?’ he suddenly asked in desperation.

I could see that he was dying.

‘Yes, if you want me to,’ I said.

‘I will remember you all my life,’ he said.

He watched me as the sky grew to resemble the colour of ash. With one last attempt to bathe me in his glowing embers, he died. I could do nothing to save him.

----
1.The words I was given were: black, ash, car, rejoice, sunset.
2.The title is borrowed from Achebe's short story of the same name.

3.I have actually quoted Aristophanes in the first line.
----

Soumashree Sarkar

UG III

Demo: Pacing and Emotional Temperature

2011-07-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Compare the techniques and effects of these two decriptions of the same events.

Version A

The party was in a fashionable part of town. Lots of people had come, for Rudra was a popular TV producer. Manali got down from the taxi and rang the doorbell. The door was opened by Rudra. She could hear the party noise coming from inside the house. Rudra gave Manali a glass of fruit juice, saying with a wink, ‘The hard stuff’s in the kitchen, for later.’ In the living room were twelve couples, all of them colleagues of Rudra’s from his office. Manali knew some of them only slightly. She sipped her drink feeling self conscious and strange.* As usual, to cover up her confusion she began to eat the food laid out on the side tables. She was the kind of person who always gravitates to the kitchen. There Rudra’s girlfriend Priya asked her, ‘Do you want some rum in your fruit juice?’ She nodded. Even though she was from a small town she had no problems with drinking.** ‘That’s a lovely dress,’ Priya said. ‘How do you keep so slim? I just balloon up.’ Manali started to say something but a rowdy group of boys came in, demanding to spike their colas with rum. She slipped away. She shouldn’t have eaten those cream puffs, she really shouldn’t. They were as heavy in her stomach as her guilt and shame. She had come out in the direction away from the living room onto a closed verandah with a washing machine and a pile of clothes. Beyond it a toilet stood invitingly open. She went inside, shut the door and balanced her drink on the cistern. Then she knelt and vomited into the porcelain bowl. She vomited again and again until her back and sides hurt. But it felt so good and she knew then that she deserved the compliment. She had suffered for it.

Version B

Rudra’s party was in a fashionable part of town: as a popular TV producer, he knew the value of having the right address on his business card. He opened the door himself for Manali, letting a wave of party noise spill over her into the street. He glanced at her polyester kurti and sequinned jeans just a touch too slowly and she saw the thought form over his head: small town girl from the sticks. The living room was filled with the gaiety of a dozen strangers, some of whom she vaguely recalled were his colleagues at work. Rudra gave her a glass of fruit juice, saying with a wink, ‘The hard stuff’s in the kitchen, for later.’ He moved off to laugh adroitly at someone’s joke, leaving her to fend for herself. She wished she was a disembodied pair of eyes, a wraith at the feast. Ah yes, the feast. There it was, spread out tastefully by the upmarket caterers on the little side tables, beckoning her. Mechanically she polished off a plate before coming to herself with a start. This wasn’t the way to blend in. She put the plate down as if it were suddenly hot and went in search of the kitchen. There Rudra’s girlfriend Priya sat hugging a collection of bottles. ‘Do you want some rum in your fruit juice?’ Manali nodded. ‘That’s a lovely dress,’ Priya chattered, pouring. ‘How do you keep so slim? I just balloon up.’ Manali started to say something but a rowdy group of boys came in, demanding to spike their colas with rum. She slipped away. She shouldn’t have eaten those cream puffs. What did these city people put in their food? She had come out onto a closed verandah with a washing machine and a pile of clothes. Beyond it a toilet stood open. She pulled the door shut behind her, latched it and balanced her drink on the cistern. The white curves of the toilet were smooth as expensive flesh. She hunched over and let her nausea squeeze her like a giant fist, like a sneeze, like an orgasm. The hairs stood up along her forearms; her neck stretched and arched and tremors ran down her thighs. This was cleansing; this was better than sex. As she retched for the last time, she imagined Rudra’s face swimming in the fouled water of the toilet bowl.

The asterisks in Version A indicate the following:
* There is a 'tell' before a 'show'.
** There is an out-of-sequence revelation of part of Manali's backstory, giving the impression that the writer has only just thought it up for his/her convenience. This breaks the illusion. Backstory is best delivered such that the reader does not need to suddenly revise the character of Manali they are building in their heads unless you intend this effect.

What can you conclude about the pacing and the emotional temperature of each version?

Animal Assignment

2011-07-14T04:08:00.001-07:00

Assignment for Monday: Imagine you are the animal assigned to you. Concentrate on what and how the animal feels, hears, sees, touches, smells and/or tastes the world. Be in the moment. Describe a few minutes in the life of that animal. Use narrative voice in either first or third person.
No cutesy talking Disney loony-toons please. The objective of the exercise is (1) developing empathy with the character and (2) giving 'colour' or reality to the imagined world.
Those in black were present and chose their animals. Those in red were absent and have had animals assigned to them by me. If you were absent please check your animal and be ready on Monday. Any questions, call or mail me.

Sejuti horse
Shreya cat
Lav fly
Sreyashi whale
Barsha iguana
Shinjini pig
Piali dragon
Amrita De antelope
Deeptesh dog
Rudrani shark
Trisha chameleon
Lopamudra otter
Dipabali cheetah
Anuj bear
Anushka squirrel
Vikrant yak
Deblina bull
Dipankar ant
Amrita Dutta lion
Abhijit tiger
Safdar octopus
Soumasree penguin

Ruby, Queen of the Midnight Hour

2011-07-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

I.

“Everything sells in Mumbai,” Rubaiya reminded herself.

Everything sells, even people. Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, Rubaiya was going to sell herself. She was busy applying gaudy red lipstick onto her already heavy makeup. She was wearing a fluorescent pink tube top and a pair of skinny jeans, and she felt quite naked in them. It was her first day (or rather night) at her new job at Deepa Bar in Chembur. It was a smoky place with room for about forty people. The tables were arranged around a stage which, now empty, would soon fill with the sweaty gyrations of glittering women. The cheap glass chandelier cast a ghastly and unnatural light over the assembled patrons, who were leering at the stage in their private alcoholic stupors, waiting for the nautch to begin. Rubaiya was grateful that she wasn't dancing on her first day. She hitched up her tiny tube-top as far over her cleavage as she could and began serving drinks to the men. “Zor se pakro. Hold it firmly!” reminded Ashok the bartender as she felt a beer bottle almost slip through her fingers. Perhaps it was the moisture of the bottle, or perhaps it was her shaking palms!

Rubaiya somehow managed to place the bottle and glass on her customer’s table. As she was walking away relieved, however, her client barked out. “Arre, khol! Hey, open!” She turned around slowly to find the man, his polyester shirt stained with food and straining to camouflage a middle-class paunch, steadily gazing at her. His beady, sunken eyes were boring into her skull. “Khol de, Open it up.” he said more gently, looking at her supple body straining again her clothes with a satisfied look on his flabby face. Rubaiya started shivering: so is this how it happened? Right here, in sight of everyone? She stared around helplessly wringing her hands, but nobody was looking her way. She felt ready to scream, when he held up the beer bottle to her face and said irritably, “Damn it girl, kuchh samajh mein nahi ata kya? Go and get a bottle opener!”

II.

Rubaiya had come to Mumbai five years ago when she was fifteen. Her husband had brought her from her village in Madhya Pradesh the day after their wedding. They had lived in a one-room tin-walled shanty in the slum adjoining Mankhurd station. Abdul, her husband, had been a zari worker in Ghatkopar. At first he was very loving and gentle with her. He would grin broadly when he came back home in the evening and caught a glimpse of his beautiful wife. But what Rubaiya did not know was that Abdul was a terrible drunkard. He and his family had carefully hidden this unsavoury aspect of his character when they had come to her father’s house to arrange the match. She was too naïve to know that the road to her destiny would be paved with tears.

The beatings started from the third week. Abdul would take his daily wage straight to the liquor shop, get drunk, come back home and take out his guilt on Rubaiya. At first she used to scream for help. When no help came, Rubaiya learned to bite her lower lip and suffer in silence. Abdul would slap and beat her until her tears flowed freely, and then he would get on top of her. Sometimes he would fall asleep after he had satisfied himself of his conjugal rights. Afterwards, Rubaiya would get up and go back to her housework as if nothing had happened. She would keep up this pretense for the sake of the neighbours. The room had thin walls, and she could not tolerate them thinking poorly of her husband. Pity did not mix well with her pride.

“Come back right now, I’ll get you a better husband,” her father insisted, his baritone voice making the telephone handle vibrate. Standing in the STD/ISD booth, straining to hear in the torrential Mumbai monsoons, Rubaiya knew that things were not so simple. There was no rewind button for life. Besides, she was too proud to return to the village like a dog with its tail between its legs, after having left for Mumbai with such pomp and ceremony. “I’ll be back to attend my own funeral, not before that,” she told her father with finality.

In time, God blessed Rubaiya with a son. Little Ismail was the joy of her life. She would look longingly into his guiltless young eyes while she was nursing him and whisper softly into his ear, “Mera beta, I promise to build a better life for you, full of laughter and love.” She swore she would send him to the best school she could afford—a proper English-medium mission school where her employers sent their pretty children. Rubaiya had started working as a housemaid to make ends meet; she had long ago stopped depending on Abdul’s income to buy bread in the market. In a small plastic jar hidden among the many pots and pans adorning the corner with the stove, she had secretly hoarded nearly three thousand rupees. She was already saving up for Ismail’s English education.

III.

Rubaiya patted her rouged cheeks one last time. The chandeliers were all ablaze. She could hear the music swell on the loudspeakers. The audience was whistling in anticipation. Her sequined skirt made soft tinkling noises. On cue, she burst onto the stage, her hips swaying rhythmically to the music, smiling coyly and sometimes winking to the crowd, making seductive mudras with her polished fingers. She felt the beats take over, and soon she was dancing—vigorously, sexily, superbly—like a siren on the stage of Deepa Bar. Her patrons went wild, thumping the tables. The song spoke about love that is lost and regained through penance. Nobody listened to the lyrics though; they were all too busy gawking at her exposed midriff and what lay below. She was no longer Rubaiya, but Ruby: the Jewel, the Mystery, the new star of the night. “Marry me, Ruby!” screamed an over-eager young fan. Ruby just kept dancing. In her tiny realm of the dance bar, she was Queen, she was Goddess of the Midnight Hour.

“Marry me, Ruby,” said Ashok the bartender very seriously. Rubaiya’s shift was over; she was lounging at the bar for a bit with the other girls before she went home. Last year, she had found a 1BHK in Govandi for four thousand rupees a month. It was just half an hour by bus to her ‘work’. Rubaiya liked the privacy the thick cement walls afforded her, which was some small measure of solitude from the world. But catching a auto-rickshaw at 6 am was always a pain. “And why would she marry you?” came the giggling reply from Saira, “when she knows you are for me only?” Saira was drunk, slurring her words. “C’mon baby, let’s go,” muttered Saira’s escort, a middle-aged school teacher with a salt-and-pepper moustache. Unlike Saira, Rubaiya didn’t mix work and pleasure. She never brought customers home. She made less money, but at least she was sure she wouldn’t die of AIDS. In fact, nobody but the owner of the bar knew where she lived. “If she’s not careful, she’ll end up on Grant Road, and then they’ll sell her off in Dubai.” Rubaiya told Ashok when the others had gone. “One less rival for you then,” Ashok said with a wry smile, “now, let me take you home.”

“Go back to your wife, Ashok. I can take care of myself,” she said as she got up to leave.

IV.

Liver failure is a painful way to die. The moment of death is of course the same for everyone, but the moments preceding death are particularly excruciating. Abdul’s face was set in a tortured grimace as he writhed on the hospital bed. His life-long alcoholism had caught up to him at last. He was thirty years old, but looked sixty. His waxy face looked pale and emaciated.

Rubaiya wept openly at his bedside. She could not afford a transplant. Her three thousand rupees were long gone. They had hardly covered the cost of all the medicines. Her life’s savings, meant to give her son an easy life, could not even purchase her husband an easy death. She had already borrowed money from everyone she knew to pay for his treatment. The doctor had informed her that Abdul would die within the next couple of days. Rubaiya sobbed uncontrollably because she did not know what else to do. On the floor, near her feet, Ismail celebrated his first birthday gleefully playing with a bedpan.

In the end, Rubaiya missed Abdul’s last moments. She had fallen asleep on the wooden bench kept outside the hospital ward, her cheeks streaked, and her hair loose and unwashed. She was dreaming of the trip to Mecca Abdul had promised her the day they had first met, in her father’s village. She dreamt that Abdul was saying sorry for not keeping his promise, again and again.

After the final rites, Rubaiya fell into a depression. Even if she swept and laundered from dawn to dusk, how would she ever pay back the money she borrowed? How would she provide for Ismail? In her melancholy, she wondered if she should really return home to her father’s house. But how could she? Would anyone want to marry her? How long could she be a burden on her parents? No, she could not burden her parents unnecessarily. And turning to anyone else was out of the question. Zindagi bahut bari hai. Life is a very long time. Rubaiya felt she would soon overstay her welcome. Nobody wants a young widow and her child hanging over them like an unfortunate omen.

“Would you like to dance for a living?” asked Sujata with a wink, after hearing how much debt Rubaiya had taken on for her late husband’s hospitalization. Sujata worked as a maid in the same building as Rubaiya. Her daughter worked in “the line”, as she called it.

Rubaiya considered the question seriously. “Well, I don’t know... does it pay?” she asked tentatively.

“A lot more than sweeping floors, I can guarantee! My daughter will tell you all about it!”

“Thanks, but…will they want me?”

“Haven’t you heard, my dear? Mumbai mein sab bikhta hain. Everything sells in Mumbai.”

V.

It was almost eleven pm. In an hour's time, Ruby would be sashaying onto the stage.

Ismail was deep asleep. He still had an infantile habit of sucking on his thumb. Rubaiya stroked his head lovingly. He was in Class I now. The fees were steep, but one had to make sacrifices for a convent-school education. Rubaiya liked it when he read out his English lessons aloud. Just last December his teacher had told her what a clever little boy Ismail was: Rubaiya had never had a prouder moment! A woman in her “line of work” was lucky to even keep her baby.

Rubaiya knew that a few years down the road she would have to tell Ismail the truth. He would meet Ruby one day. He would discover that she was his mother by day and his father by night. He too would know that the road to her destiny was paved with tears. Would he still recognize her after that? Would he still care to call her ‘mother’? Rubaiya could not say for sure; after all, boys grow into men, and men may grow cruel. But for now, she wished her child good night, locked the door gently, and prepared to sell herself at the stroke of midnight once again.

***The End***
Re-opening my account! Also, my very best to this semester's WIP folks. Happy imaginings!!
PS. This is a fictionalized account based on a conversation I had with a former bar dancer.

SO YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT?

2011-07-11T06:54:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in Not-So-Far-Away Land there lived a nurse who used to train dragons. Well, it’s not what you would say falls under the general repertoire/job qualification of nurses. They mainly limit themselves to nursing sick people and prescribing antacids for all ailments. Then what was Nurse Cuckoo, for that was her name, doing training dragons?

You see, Nurse Cuckoo had enough spare time on her hands. Her only patients were the boys from the nearby boarding school. And one does get tired of treating bruises, runny noses, projectile vomiting and what-have-you. So, to save herself from boredom, she used to moonlight as a dragon-trainer. But she did not teach the usual burn-destroy-and-pulverise type of things, which, more or less, were what the dragon-training curriculum included. No, she taught them to sing. You are probably scratching your chin in confusion by now, so I feel a little explanation is needed.

As you know, dragons are usually rich. True, they are only guardians of treasures, but a few nuggets more or less from a heap doesn’t really bring in charges of appropriation of funds from their bosses. So they do just fine for themselves. But this particular branch of dragons had tried to pull off a major embezzlement of their master’s wealth. Consequently, they were banished from their kingdom until they could refund the amount of money stolen. Reimbursing the money would not have been such a problem if there was not such a dearth in the demand for dragon-labour in the market. I mean, who, except maybe the fire-proof Hellboy, would willingly engage in their services? So they were in a bit of a soup.

Now, there was an open-for-all talent show in Not-So-Far-Away Land with a prize money of 5000 gold nuggets, which happened to be just a little more than what the dragons owed to their master, with compound interest. They were pretty hopeful about winning too because they could do what nobody else could – blow fire as they sing! But they knew only a gimmick wouldn’t win them the show, they needed vocal training. And so they enlisted the help of Nurse Cuckoo who was the niece of the brother of the uncle of the great-grandson of Cinderella, to train them as a choir. The dragons had too much pride to take her services for free. They promised her the fuss-free disappearance of a particularly annoying neighbour if she helped them win the competition.
Anyway, everything was going picture-perfect until, as you must be expecting by now, there arose a problem. The children of the boarding school were also participating in the talent show. And when they heard how good the dragons were, especially Fireball Timberlake, Sparky Jackson and Lady Kindle-Light Gaga, they were really tensed. But no one got their goat (metaphorically of course, goats give dragon indigestion!) more than the new dragon-kid on the block, Combusting Bieber. He could even blow fire-raspberries while he sang!

The children realised that to win the competition they must remove Combusting from the scene. So they sent their snake, Mr. Lucifer, in the guise of a doctor, to mix poison in the antacid Nurse Cuckoo made every dragon take before rehearsing. His job became easier when Nurse Cuckoo fell head over doctor’s scholls in love with him. She adored his snake eyes and forked tongue, and what he could do with both of them. It was the perfect situation for Mr. Lucifer to carry out his task. But he couldn’t. Or rather he didn’t. He was really a nice soul, having lured into doing the job in exchange of life-long supply of raw porcupine eggs. So, on the day of the competition, instead of wholly poisoning Combusting, he just gave him enough to make his voice crack.
When Combusting realised what the children had done to him, he was really pissed. But he had an ace up his sleeve which even his dragon-cronies did not know about. He could dance the best tango in the whole of Not-So-Far-Away Land! He never publicised the fact because, well, you know, it is not a dragony type of thing to do, unlike singing, which all dragons give in to occasionally when sad. Anyway, the talent show that day saw the best tango ever danced in the world, accompanied by a dragon-version of Dancing Queen!

Unfortunately, all that dancing was too much for Combusting’s poisoned body to take. He succumbed to his death on the stage himself, but not before he had won the competition for his friends and singed the eyebrows and hair of every boarding-school children to the skin. The dragons won the prize-money and could go back to their kingdom.

Nurse Cuckoo proposed to Mr. Lucifer, but he confessed to her that he has lost his heart to an Oriental dragon. ‘Snakes and dragons do not usually make a pretty pair,’ he admitted to Nurse Cuckoo, ‘there’s much power-struggle. But we are too much in love to care about statistics. I am going to the dragon-land,’ he said with a shy smile to Nurse Cuckoo, ‘to meet the parents of my soul-mate Mr. Lappi Bahiri.’

BARSHA SAHA

UG III Roll No. 42

Welcome, 2011 batch

2011-07-05T04:07:00.000-07:00

I've just sent off invites to the new batch of 20 wripers as per the list of email address you gave me in the last class. Tell me if you haven't got an invite: some of your handwriting was a little hard to follow, so I may have got one or two addresses wrong. If you haven't yet got an invite, mail me at rimibchatterjeeATg[spambuster: leave this bit out]mailDOTcom. You should all get an invite mail with a link in it to click and join.
Here is this year's batch, in no particular order

UG3
Trisha Ray
Lopamudra Chatterjee
Dipabali Dey
Anuj Raina
Anushka Sen
Vikrant Dadawala
Amrita De
Deeptesh Sen
Rudrani Gangopadhyay
Piali Mondal
Abhijit Dutta
Amrita Dutta
Sanjana Majhi
Dipankar Lahiri
Shinjini Chattopadhyay
Barsha Saha
Sreyashi Mukherjee
Safdar Rahman

PG2
Lav Kanoi
Shreya Sarkar
Sejuti Roy

Check your inboxes for the invite, click and join up!

Workshop at IICP

2011-03-10T08:32:00.000-08:00

There is a unique opportunity going for 15 people to join a five day creative writing workshop with the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy (IICP) to be held from 21 March to 25 March. Trainers include myself, Aveek Sen of the Telegraph, Sarmishta Das, and Swati Ganguly of Viswa Bharati. The 15 participants will do the workshop alongside members of IICP who have physical disabilities. IICP believes in inclusion and in building bridges. It's hoped that this will foster creativity and communication between the differently abled. And let me warn you, these guys are smokin'.

If you want to be part of this, send a mail to jeeja.ankur@gmail.com. You will reach Jeeja Ghosh, who is the Head of Advocacy and Disability Studies. You could also call her on 9433045340, or call Ms Sonali Nandi on 9831057152. Email is preferred. If you call, listen patiently as Jeeja speaks slowly but with great deliberation. Alternatively, you can mail or call me. Places are filling up fast so hurry: I need the names by Monday.

The venue will be the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, P35/1 Taratolla Road, Kolkata 700088. Each day will begin at 11 and end at 4.

Cosmopolitan by Akhil Sharma

2011-02-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

COSMOPOLITAN

The magazine article mentioned that when leaving after making love for the first time, one should always arrange the next meeting.
Gopal phoned Mrs. Shaw

by Akhil Sharma

LITTLE after ten in the morning Mrs. Shaw walked across Gopal Maurya's lawn to his house. It was Saturday, and Gopal was asleep on the couch. The house was dark. When he first heard the doorbell, the ringing became part of a dream. Only he had been in the house during the four months since his wife had followed his daughter out of his life, and the sound of the bell joined somehow with his dream to make him feel ridiculous. Mrs. Shaw rang the bell again. Gopal woke confused and anxious, the state he was in most mornings. He was wearing only underwear and socks, but his blanket was cold from sweat.

He stood up and hurried to the door. He looked through the peephole. The sky was bright and clear. Mrs. Shaw was standing sideways about a foot from the door, and appeared to be staring out over his lawn at her house. She was short and red-haired and wore a pink sweatshirt and gray jogging pants.

"Hold on! Hold on, Mrs. Shaw!" he shouted, and ran back into the living room to search for a pair of pants and a shirt. The light was dim, and he had difficulty finding them. As he groped under and behind the couch and looked among the clothes crumpled on the floor, he worried that Mrs. Shaw would not wait and was already walking down the steps. He wondered if he had time to turn on the light to make his search easier. This was typical of the details that could baffle him in the morning.

Mrs. Shaw and Gopal had been neighbors for about two years, but Gopal had met her only three or four times in passing. From his wife he had learned that Mrs. Shaw was a guidance counselor at the high school his daughter had attended. He also learned that she had been divorced for a decade. Her husband, a successful orthodontist, had left her. Since then Mrs. Shaw had moved five or six times, though rarely more than a few miles from where she had last lived. She had bought the small mustard-colored house next to Gopal's as part of this restlessness. Although he did not dislike Mrs. Shaw, Gopal was irritated by the peeling paint on her house and the weeds sprouting out of her broken asphalt driveway, as if by association his house were becoming shabbier. The various cars that left her house late at night made him see her as dissolute. But all this Gopal was willing to forget that morning, in exchange for even a minor friendship.

Gopal found the pants and shirt and tugged them on as he returned to open the door. The light and cold air swept in, reminding him of what he must look like. Gopal was a small man, with delicate high cheekbones and long eyelashes. He had always been proud of his looks and had dressed well. Now he feared that the gray stubble and long hair made him appear bereft.

"Hello, Mr. Maurya," Mrs. Shaw said, looking at him and through him into the darkened house and then again at him. The sun shone behind her. The sky was blue dissolving into white. "How are you?" she asked gently.

"Oh, Mrs. Shaw," Gopal said, his voice pitted and rough, "some bad things have happened to me." He had not meant to speak so directly. He stepped out of the doorway.

The front door opened into a vestibule, and one had a clear view from there of the living room and the couch where Gopal slept. He switched on the lights. To the right was the kitchen. The round Formica table and the counters were dusty. Mrs. Shaw appeared startled by this detail. After a moment she said, "I heard." She paused and then quickly added, "I am sorry, Mr. Maurya. It must be hard. You must not feel ashamed; it's no fault of yours."

"Please, sit," Gopal said, motioning to a chair next to the kitchen table. He wanted to tangle her in conversation and keep her there for hours. He wanted to tell her how the loneliness had made him fantasize about calling an ambulance so that he could be touched and prodded, or how for a while he had begun loitering at the Indian grocery store like the old men who have not learned English. What a pretty, good woman, he thought.

Mrs. Shaw stood in the center of the room and looked around her. She was slightly overweight, and her nostrils appeared to be perfect circles, but her small white Reebok sneakers made Gopal see her as fleet with youth and innocence. "I've been thinking of coming over. I'm sorry I didn't."

"That's fine, Mrs. Shaw," Gopal said, standing near the phone on the kitchen wall. "What could anyone do? I am glad, though, that you are visiting." He searched for something else to say. To extend their time together, Gopal walked to the refrigerator and asked her if she wanted anything to drink.

"No, thank you," she said.

"Orange juice, apple juice, or grape, pineapple, guava. I also have some tropical punch," he continued, opening the refrigerator door wide, as if to show he was not lying.

"That's all right," Mrs. Shaw said, and they both became quiet. The sunlight pressed through windows that were laminated with dirt. "You must remember, everybody plays a part in these things, not just the one who is left," she said, and then they were silent again. "Do you need anything?"

"No. Thank you." They stared at each other. "Did you come for something?" Gopal asked, although he did not want to imply that he was trying to end the conversation.

"I wanted to borrow your lawn mower."

"Already?"April was just starting, and the dew did not evaporate until midday.

"Spring fever," she said.

Gopal's mind refused to provide a response to this. "Let me get you the mower."

They went to the garage. The warm sun on the back of his neck made Gopal hopeful. He believed that something would soon be said or done to delay Mrs. Shaw's departure, for certainly God could not leave him alone again. The garage smelled of must and gasoline. The lawn mower was in a shadowy corner with an aluminum ladder resting on it. "I haven't used it in a while," Gopal said, placing the ladder on the ground and smiling at Mrs. Shaw beside him. "But it should be fine." As he stood up, he suddenly felt aroused by Mrs. Shaw's large breasts, boy's haircut, and little-girl sneakers. Even her nostrils suggested a frank sexuality. Gopal wanted to put his hands on her waist and pull her toward him. And then he realized that he had.

"No. No," Mrs. Shaw said, laughing and putting her palms flat against his chest. "Not now." She pushed him away gently.

Gopal did not try kissing her again, but he was excited. Not now, he thought. He carefully poured gasoline into the lawn mower, wanting to appear calm, as if the two of them had already made some commitment and there was no need for nervousness. He pushed the lawn mower out onto the gravel driveway and jerked the cord to test the engine. Not now, not now, he thought, each time he tugged. He let the engine run for a minute. Mrs. Shaw stood silent beside him. Gopal felt like smiling, but wanted to make everything appear casual. "You can have it for as long as you need," he said.

"Thank you," Mrs. Shaw replied, and smiled. They looked at each other for a moment without saying anything. Then she rolled the lawn mower down the driveway and onto the road. She stopped, turned to look at him, and said, "I'll call."

"Good," Gopal answered, and watched her push the lawn mower down the road and up her driveway into the tin shack that huddled at its end. The driveway was separated from her ranch-style house by ten or fifteen feet of grass, and they were connected by a trampled path. Before she entered her house, Mrs. Shaw turned and looked at him as he stood at the top of his driveway. She smiled and waved.

When he went back into his house, Gopal was too excited to sleep. Before Mrs. Shaw, the only woman he had ever embraced was his wife, and a part of him assumed that it was now only a matter of time before he and Mrs. Shaw fell in love and his life resumed its normalcy. Oh, to live again as he had for nearly thirty years! Gopal thought, with such force that he shocked himself. Unable to sit, unable even to think coherently, he walked around his house.

IS daughter's departure had made Gopal sick at heart for two or three weeks, but then she sank so completely from his thoughts that he questioned whether his pain had been hurt pride rather than grief. Gitu had been a graduate student and spent only a few weeks with them each year, so it was understandable that he would not miss her for long. But the swiftness with which the dense absence on the other side of his bed unknotted and evaporated made him wonder whether he had ever loved his wife. It made him think that his wife's abrupt decision never to return from her visit to India was as much his fault as God's. Anita, he thought, must have decided upon seeing Gitu leave that there was no more reason to stay, and that perhaps, after all, it was not too late to start again. Anita had gone to India at the end of November -- a month after Gitu got on a Lufthansa flight to go live with her boyfriend in Germany -- and a week later, over an echoing phone line, she told him of the guru and her enlightenment.

Perhaps if Gopal had not retired early from AT&T, he could have worked long hours and his wife's and daughter's slipping from his thoughts might have been mistaken for healing. But he had nothing to do. Most of his acquaintances had come by way of his wife, and when she left, Gopal did not call them, both because they had always been more Anita's friends than his and because he felt ashamed, as if his wife's departure revealed his inability to love her. At one point, around Christmas, he went to a dinner party, but he did not enjoy it. He found that he was not curious about other people's lives and did not want to talk about his own.

A month after Anita's departure a letter from her arrived -- a blue aerogram, telling of the ashram, and of sweeping the courtyard, and of the daily prayers. Gopal responded immediately, but she never wrote again. His pride prevented him from trying to continue the correspondence, though he read her one letter so many times that he inadvertently memorized the Pune address. His brothers sent a flurry of long missives from India, on paper so thin that it was almost translucent, but his contact with them over the decades had been minimal, and the tragedy pushed them apart instead of pulling them closer.

Gitu sent a picture of herself wearing a yellow-and-blue ski jacket in the Swiss Alps. Gopal wrote her back in a stiff, formal way, and she responded with a breezy postcard to which he replied only after a long wait.

Other than this, Gopal had had little personal contact with the world. He was accustomed to getting up early and going to bed late, but now, since he had no work and no friends, after he spent the morning reading The New York Times and The Home News & Tribune front to back, Gopal felt adrift through the afternoon and evening. For a few weeks he tried to fill his days by showering and shaving twice daily, brushing his teeth after every snack and meal. But the purposelessness of this made him despair, and he stopped bathing altogether and instead began sleeping more and more, sometimes sixteen hours a day. He slept in the living room, long and narrow with high rectangular windows blocked by trees. At some point, in a burst of self-hate, Gopal moved his clothes from the bedroom closet to a corner of the living room, wanting to avoid comforting himself with any illusions that his life was normal.

But he yearned for his old life, the life of a clean kitchen, of a bedroom, of going out into the sun, and on a half-conscious level that morning Gopal decided to use the excitement of clasping Mrs. Shaw to change himself back to the man he had been. She might be spending time at his house, he thought, so he mopped the kitchen floor, moved back into his bedroom, vacuumed and dusted all the rooms. He spent most of the afternoon doing this, aware always of his humming lawn mower in the background. He had only to focus on it to make his heart race. Every now and then he would stop working and go to his bedroom window, where, from behind the curtains, he would stare at Mrs. Shaw. She had a red bandanna tied around her forehead, and he somehow found this appealing. That night he made himself an elaborate dinner with three dishes and a mango shake. For the first time in months Gopal watched the eleven o'clock news. He had the lights off and his feet up on a low table. Lebanon was being bombed again, and Gopal kept bursting into giggles for no reason. He tried to think of what he would do tomorrow. Gopal knew that he was happy and that to avoid depression he must keep himself busy until Mrs. Shaw called. He suddenly realized that he did not know Mrs. Shaw's first name. He padded into the darkened kitchen and looked at the phone diary. "Helen Shaw" was written in the big, loopy handwriting of his wife. Having his wife help him in this way did not bother him at all, and then he felt ashamed that it didn't.

HE next day was Sunday, and Gopal anticipated it cheerfully, for the Sunday Times was frequently so thick that he could spend the whole day reading it. But this time he did not read it all the way through. He left the book review and the other features sections to fill time over the next few days. After eating a large breakfast -- the idea of preparing elaborate meals had begun to appeal to him -- he went for a haircut. Gopal had not left his house in several days. He rolled down the window of his blue Honda Civic and took the long way, past the lake, to the mall. Instead of going to his usual barber, he went to a hair stylist, where a woman with long nails and large, contented breasts shampooed his hair before cutting it. Then Gopal wandered around the mall, savoring its buttered-popcorn smell and enjoying the sight of the girls with their sometimes odd-colored hair. He went into some of the small shops and looked at clothes, and considered buying a half pound of cocoa amaretto coffee beans, although he had never cared much for coffee. After walking for nearly two hours, Gopal sat on a bench and ate an ice cream cone while reading an article in Cosmopolitan about what makes a good lover. He had seen the magazine in CVS and, noting the article mentioned on the cover, had been reminded how easily one can learn anything in America. Because Mrs. Shaw was an American, Gopal thought, he needed to do research into what might be expected of him. Although the article was about what makes a woman a good lover, it offered clues for men as well. Gopal felt confident that given time, Mrs. Shaw would love him. The article made attachment appear effortless. All you had to do was listen closely and speak honestly.

He returned home around five, and Mrs. Shaw called soon after. "If you want, you can come over now."

"All right," Gopal answered. He was calm. He showered and put on a blue cotton shirt and khaki slacks. When he stepped outside, the sky was turning pink and the air smelled of wet earth. He felt young, as if he had just arrived in America and the huge scale of things had made him a giant as well.

But when he rang Mrs. Shaw's doorbell, Gopal became nervous. He turned around and looked at the white clouds against the enormous sky. He heard footsteps and then the door swishing open and Mrs. Shaw's voice. "You look handsome," she said. Gopal faced her, smiling and uncomfortable. She wore a different sweatshirt, but still had on yesterday's jogging pants. She was barefoot. A yellow light shone behind her.

"Thank you," Gopal said, and then nervously added "Helen," to confirm their new relationship. "You look nice too." She did look pretty to him. Mrs. Shaw stepped aside to let him in. They were in a large room. In the center were two pale couches forming an L, with a television in front of them. Off to the side was a kitchenette -- a stove, a refrigerator, and some cabinets over a sink and counter.

Seeing Gopal looking around, Mrs. Shaw said, "There are two bedrooms in the back, and a bathroom. Would you like anything to drink? I have juice, if you want." She walked to the kitchen.

"What are you going to have?" Gopal asked, following her. "If you have something, I'll have something." Then he felt embarrassed. Mrs. Shaw had not dressed up; obviously, "Not now" had been a polite rebuff.

"I was going to have a gin and tonic," she said, opening the refrigerator and standing before it with one hand on her hip.

"I would like that too." Gopal came close to her and with a dart kissed her on the lips. She did not resist, but neither did she respond. Her lips were chapped. Gopal pulled away and let her make the drinks. He had hoped the kiss would tell him something of what to expect.

They sat side by side on a couch and sipped their drinks. A table lamp cast a diffused light over them.

"Thank you for letting me borrow the lawn mower."

"It's nothing." There was a long pause. Gopal could not think of anything to say. Cosmopolitan had suggested trying to learn as much as possible about your lover, so he asked, "What's your favorite color?"

"Why?"

"I want to know everything about you."

"That's sweet," Mrs. Shaw said, and patted his hand. Gopal felt embarrassed and looked down. He did not know whether he should have spoken so frankly, but part of his intention had been to flatter her with his interest. "I don't have one," she said. She kept her hand on his.

Gopal suddenly thought that they might make love tonight, and he felt his heart kick. "Tell me all about yourself," he said with a voice full of feeling. "Where were you born?"

"I was born in Jersey City on May fifth, but I won't tell you the year." Gopal tried to grin gamely and memorize the date. A part of him was disturbed that she did not feel comfortable enough with him to reveal her age.

"Did you grow up there?" he asked, taking a sip of the gin and tonic. Gopal drank slowly, because he knew that he could not hold his alcohol. He saw that Mrs. Shaw's toes were painted bright red. Anita had never used nail polish, and Gopal wondered what a woman who would paint her toenails might do.

"I moved to Newark when I was three. My parents ran a newspaper-and-candy shop. We sold greeting cards, stamps." Mrs. Shaw had nearly finished her drink. "They opened at eight in the morning and closed at seven-thirty at night. Six days a week." When she paused between swallows, she rested the glass on her knee.

Gopal had never known anyone who worked in such a shop, and he became genuinely interested in what she was saying. He remembered his lack of interest at the Christmas party and wondered whether it was the possibility of sex that made him fascinated with Mrs. Shaw's story. "Were you a happy child?" he asked, grinning broadly and then bringing the grin to a quick end, because he did not want to appear ironic. The half glass that Gopal had drunk had already begun to make him feel light-headed and gay.

"Oh, pretty happy," she said, "although I liked to think of myself as serious. I would look at the evening sky and think that no one else had felt what I was feeling." Mrs. Shaw's understanding of her own feelings disconcerted Gopal and made him momentarily think that he wasn't learning anything important, or that she was in some way independent of her past and thus incapable of the sentimental attachments through which he expected her love for him to grow.

Cosmopolitan had recommended that both partners reveal themselves, so Gopal decided to tell a story about himself. He did not believe that being honest about himself would actually change him. Rather, he thought the deliberateness of telling the story would rob it of the power to make him vulnerable. He started to say something, but the words twisted in his mouth, and he said, "You know, I don't really drink much." Gopal felt embarrassed by the non sequitur. He thought he sounded foolish, though he had hoped that the story he would tell would make him appear sensitive.

"I kind of guessed that from the juices," she said, smiling. Gopal laughed.

He tried to say what he had wanted to confess earlier. "I associate drinking with being American, and I haven't been able to truly Americanize. On my daughter's nineteenth birthday we took her to dinner and a movie, but we didn't talk much, and the dinner finished earlier than we had expected it would. The restaurant was in a mall, and we had nothing to do until the movie started, so we wandered around Foodtown." Gopal thought he sounded pathetic, so he tried to shift the story. "After all my years in America, I am still astonished by those huge grocery stores and enjoy walking in them. But my daughter is an American, so our wandering around in Foodtown must have been very strange for her. She doesn't know Hindi, and her parents must seem very strange." Gopal noticed that his heart was racing. He wondered if he was sadder than he knew.

"That's sweet," Mrs. Shaw said. The brevity of her response made Gopal nervous.

Mrs. Shaw kissed his cheek. Her lips were dry, Gopal noticed. He turned slightly so that their lips could touch. They kissed again. Mrs. Shaw opened her lips and closed her eyes. They kissed for a long time. When they pulled apart, they continued their conversation calmly, as if they were accustomed to each other. "I didn't go into a big grocery store until I was in college," she said. "We always went to the small shops around us. When I first saw those long aisles, I wondered what happens to the food if no one buys it. I was living then with a man who was seven or eight years older than I, and when I told him, he laughed at me, and I felt so young." She stopped and then added, "I ended up leaving him because he always made me feel young." Her face was only an inch or two from Gopal's. "Now I'd marry someone who could make me feel that way." Gopal felt his romantic feelings drain away at the idea of how many men she had slept with. But the fact that Mrs. Shaw and he had experienced something removed some of the loneliness he was feeling, and Mrs. Shaw had large breasts. They began kissing again. Soon they were tussling and groping on the floor.

Her bed was large and low to the ground. Behind it was a window, and although the shade was drawn, the lights of passing cars cast patterns on the opposing wall. Gopal lay next to Mrs. Shaw and watched the shadows change. He felt his head and found that his hair was standing up on either side like horns. The shock of seeing a new naked body, so different in its amplitude from his wife's, had been exciting. A part of him was giddy with this, as if he had checked his bank balance and discovered that he had thousands more than he expected. "You are very beautiful," he said, for Cosmopolitan had advised saying this after making love. Mrs. Shaw rolled over and kissed his shoulder.

"No, I'm not. I'm kind of fat, and my nose is strange. But thank you," she said. Gopal looked at her and saw that even when her mouth was slack, the lines around it were deep. "You look like you've been rolled around in a dryer," she said, and laughed. Her laughter was sudden and confident. He had not noticed it before, and it made him laugh as well.

They became silent and lay quietly for several minutes, and when Gopal began feeling self-conscious, he said, "Describe the first house you lived in."

Mrs. Shaw sat up. Her stomach bulged, and her breasts drooped. She saw him looking and pulled her knees to her chest. "You're very thoughtful," she said.

Gopal felt flattered. "Oh, it's not thoughtfulness."

"I guess if it weren't for your accent, the questions would sound artificial," she said. Gopal felt his stomach clench. "I lived in a block of small houses that the Army built for returning GIs. They were all drab, and the lawns ran into each other. They were near Newark airport. I liked to sit at my window and watch the planes land. That was when Newark was a local airport."

"Your house was two stories?"

"Yes. And my room was on the second floor. Tell me about yourself."

"I am the third of five brothers. We grew up in a small, poor village. I got my first pair of shoes when I left high school." As Gopal was telling her the story, he remembered how he used to make Gitu feel lazy with stories of his childhood, and his voice fell. "Everybody was like us, so I never thought of myself as poor."

They talked this way for half an hour, with Gopal asking most of the questions and trying to discover where Mrs. Shaw was vulnerable and how this vulnerability made him attractive to her. Although she answered his questions candidly, Gopal could not find the unhappy childhood or the trauma of an abandoned wife that might explain the urgency of this moment in bed. "I was planning to leave my husband," she explained casually. "He was crazy. Almost literally. He thought he was going to be a captain of industry or a senator. He wasn't registered to vote. He knew nothing about business. Once, he invested almost everything we had in a hydroponic farm in Southampton. With him I was always scared of being poor. He used to spend two hundred dollars a week on lottery tickets, and he would save the old tickets in shoe boxes in the garage." Gopal did not personally know any Indian who was divorced, and he had never been intimate enough with an American to learn what a divorce was like, but he had expected something more painful -- tears and recriminations. The details she gave made the story sound practiced, and he began to think that he would never have a hold over Mrs. Shaw.

Around eight Mrs. Shaw said, "I am going to do my bills tonight." Gopal had been wondering whether she wanted him to have dinner with her and spend the night. He would have liked to, but he did not protest.

As she closed the door behind him, Mrs. Shaw said, "The lawn mower's in the back. If you want it." Night had come, and the stars were out. As Gopal pushed the lawn mower down the road, he wished that he loved Mrs. Shaw and that she loved him.

He had left the kitchen light on by mistake, and its glow was comforting. "Come, come, cheer up," he said aloud, pacing in the kitchen. "You have a lover." He tried to smile and grimaced instead. "You can make love as often as you want. Be happy." He started preparing dinner. He fried okra and steam-cooked lentils. He made both rice and bread.

As he ate, Gopal watched a television movie about a woman who had been in a coma for twenty years and suddenly woke up one day; adding to her confusion, she was pregnant. After washing the dishes he finished the article in Cosmopolitan that he had begun reading in the mall. The article was the second of two parts, and it mentioned that when leaving after making love for the first time, one should always arrange the next meeting. Gopal had not done this, and he phoned Mrs. Shaw.

He used the phone in the kitchen, and as he waited for her to pick up, he wondered whether he should introduce himself or assume that she would recognize his voice. "Hi, Helen," he blurted out as soon as she said "Hello." "I was just thinking of you and thought I'd call." He felt more nervous now than he had while he was with her.

"That's sweet," she said, with what Gopal thought was tenderness. "How are you?"

"I just had dinner. Did you eat?" He imagined her sitting on the floor between the couches with a pile of receipts before her. She would have a small pencil in her hand.

"I'm not hungry. I normally make myself an omelet for dinner, but I didn't want to tonight. I'm having another drink." Then, self-conscious, she added, "Otherwise I grind my teeth. I started after my divorce and I didn't have health insurance or enough money to go to a dentist." Gopal wanted to ask if she still ground her teeth, but he did not want to imply anything.

"Would you like to have dinner tomorrow? I'll cook." They agreed to meet at six. The conversation continued for a few minutes longer, and when Gopal hung up, he was pleased at how well he had handled things.

While lying in bed, waiting for sleep, Gopal read another article in Cosmopolitan, about job pressure's effects on one's sex life. He had enjoyed both articles and was happy with himself for his efforts at understanding Mrs. Shaw. He fell asleep smiling.

HE next day, after reading the papers, Gopal went to the library to read the first part of the Cosmopolitan article. He ended up reading articles from Elle, Redbook, Glamour, Mademoiselle, and Family Circle, and one from Reader's Digest -- "How to Tell If Your Marriage Is on the Rocks." He tried to memorize jokes from the "Laughter Is the Best Medicine" section, so that he would never be at a loss for conversation.

Gopal arrived at home by four and began cooking. Dinner was pleasant, though they ate in the kitchen, which was lit with buzzing fluorescent tubes. Gopal worried that yesterday's lovemaking might have been a fluke. Soon after they finished the meal, however, they were on the couch, struggling with each other's clothing.

Gopal wanted Mrs. Shaw to spend the night, but she refused, saying that she had not slept a full night with anyone since her divorce. At first Gopal was touched by this. They lay on his bed in the dark. The alarm clock on the lampstand said 9:12 in big red figures. "Why?" Gopal asked, rolling over and resting his cheek on her cool shoulder. He wanted to reassure her that he was eager to listen.

"I think I'm a serial monogamist and I don't want to make things too complicated." She twisted a lock of his hair around her middle finger. "It isn't because of you, sweetie. It's with every man."

"Oh," Gopal said, hurt by the idea of other men and disillusioned about her motives. He continued believing, however, that now that they were lovers, the power of his concern would make her love him back. One of the articles he had read that day had suggested that people become dependent in spite of themselves when they are constantly cared for. So he made himself relax and act understanding.

Gopal went to bed an hour after Mrs. Shaw left. Before going to sleep he called her and wished her good night. He began calling her frequently after that, two or three times a day. Over the next few weeks Gopal found himself becoming coy and playful with her. When Mrs. Shaw picked up the phone, he made panting noises, and she laughed at him. She liked his being childlike with her. Sometimes she would point to a spot on his chest, and he would look down, even though he knew nothing was there, so that she could tap his nose. When they made love, she was thoughtful about asking what pleased him, and Gopal learned from this and began asking her the same. They saw each other nearly every day, though sometimes only briefly, for a few minutes in the evening or at night. But Gopal continued to feel nervous around her, as if he were somehow imposing. If she phoned him and invited him over, he was always flattered. As Gopal learned more about Mrs. Shaw, he began thinking she was very smart. She read constantly, primarily history and economics. He was always surprised, therefore, when she became moody and sentimental and talked about how loneliness is incurable. Gopal liked Mrs. Shaw in this mood, because it made him feel needed, but he felt ashamed that he was so insecure. When she did not laugh at a joke, Gopal doubted that she would ever love him. When they were in bed together and he thought she might be looking at him, he kept his stomach sucked in.

HIS sense of precariousness made Gopal try developing other supports for himself. One morning early in his involvement with Mrs. Shaw he phoned an Indian engineer with whom he had worked on a project about corrosion of copper wires and who had also taken early retirement from AT&T. They had met briefly several times since then and had agreed each time to get together again, but neither had made the effort. Gopal waited until eleven before calling, because he felt that any earlier would make him sound needy. A woman picked up the phone. She told him to wait a minute as she called for Rishi. Gopal felt vaguely deceitful, as if he were trying to pass himself off as just like everyone else, although his wife and child had left him.

"I haven't been doing much," he confessed immediately to Rishi. "I read a lot." When Rishi asked what, Gopal answered "Magazines," with embarrassment. They were silent then. Gopal did not want to ask Rishi immediately if he would like to meet for dinner, so he hunted desperately for a conversational opening. He was sitting in the kitchen. He looked at the sunlight on the newspaper before him and remembered that he could ask Rishi questions. "How are you doing?"

"It isn't like India," Rishi responded, complaining. "In India the older you are, the closer you are to the center of attention. Here you have to keep going. Your children are away and you have nothing to do. I would go back, but Ratha doesn't want to. America is much better for women."

Gopal felt a rush of relief that Rishi had spoken so much. "Are you just at home or are you doing something part time?"

"I am the president of the Indian Cultural Association," Rishi said boastfully.

"That's wonderful," Gopal said, and with a leap added, "I want to get involved in that more, now that I have time."

"We always need help. We are going to have a fair," Rishi said. "It's on the twenty-fourth, next month. We need help coordinating things, arranging food, putting up flyers."

"I can help," Gopal said. They decided that he should come to Rishi's house on Wednesday, two days later.

Gopal was about to hang up when Rishi added, "I heard about your family." Gopal felt as if he had been caught in a lie. "I am sorry," Rishi said.

Gopal was quiet for a moment and then said, "Thank you." He did not know whether he should pretend to be sad. "It takes some getting used to," he said, "but you can go on from nearly anything."

Gopal went to see Rishi that Wednesday, and on Sunday he attended a board meeting to plan for the fair. He told jokes about a nearsighted snake and a water hose, and about a golf instructor and God. One of the men he met there invited him to dinner.

Mrs. Shaw, however, continued to dominate his thoughts. The more they made love, the more absorbed Gopal became in the texture of her nipples in his mouth and the heft of her hips in his hands. He thought of this in the shower, while driving, while stirring his cereal. Two or three times over the next month Gopal picked her up during her lunch hour and they hurried home to make love. They would make love and then talk. Mrs. Shaw had once worked at a dry cleaner, and Gopal found this fascinating. He had met only one person in his life before Mrs. Shaw who had worked in a dry-cleaning business, and that was different, because it was in India, where dry cleaning still had the glamour of advancing technology. Being the lover of someone who had worked in a dry-cleaning business made Gopal feel strange. It made him think that the world was huge beyond comprehension, and to spend his time trying to control his own small world was inefficient. Gopal began thinking that he loved Mrs. Shaw. He started listening to the golden-oldies station in the car, so that he could hear what she had heard in her youth.

Mrs. Shaw would ask about his life, and Gopal tried to tell her everything she wanted to know in as much detail as possible. Once, he told her of how he had begun worrying when his daughter was finishing high school that she was going to slip from his life. To show that he loved her, he had arbitrarily forbidden her to ski, claiming that skiing was dangerous. He had hoped that she would find this quaintly immigrant, but she was just angry. At first the words twisted in his mouth, and he spoke to Mrs. Shaw about skiing in general. Only with an effort could he tell her about his fight with Gitu. Mrs. Shaw did not say anything at first. Then she said, "It's all right if you were that way once, as long as you aren't that way now." Listening to her, Gopal suddenly felt angry.

"Why do you talk like this?" he asked.

"What?"

"When you talk about how your breasts fall or how your behind is too wide, I always say that's not true. I always see you with eyes that make you beautiful."

"Because I want the truth," she said, also angry.

Gopal became quiet. Her desire for honesty appeared to refute all his delicate and constant manipulations. Was he actually in love with her, he wondered, or was this love just a way to avoid loneliness? And did it matter that so much of what he did was conscious?

He questioned his love more and more as the day of the Indian festival approached and Gopal realized that he was delaying asking Mrs. Shaw to come with him. She knew about the fair but had not mentioned her feelings. Gopal told himself that she would feel uncomfortable among so many Indians, but he knew that he hadn't asked her because bringing her would make him feel awkward. For some reason he was nervous that word of Mrs. Shaw might get to his wife and daughter. He was also anxious about what the Indians with whom he had recently become friendly would think. He had met mixed couples at Indian parties before, and they were always treated with the deference usually reserved for cripples. If Mrs. Shaw had been of any sort of marginalized ethnic group -- a first-generation immigrant, for instance -- then things might have been easier.

The festival was held in the Edison First Aid Squad's square blue-and-white building. A children's dance troupe performed in red dresses so stiff with gold thread that the girls appeared to hobble as they moved about the center of the concrete floor. A balding comedian in oxblood shoes and a white suit performed. Light folding tables along one wall were precariously laden with large pots, pans, and trays of food. Gopal stood in a corner with several men who had retired from AT&T and, slightly drunk, improvised on jokes he had read in 1,001 Polish Jokes. The Poles became Sikhs, but he kept most of the rest. He was laughing and feeling proud that he could so easily become the center of attention, but he felt lonely at the thought that when the food was served, the men at his side would drift away to join their families and he would stand alone in line. After listening to talk of someone's marriage, he began thinking about Mrs. Shaw. The men were clustered together, and the women conversed separately. They will go home and make love and not talk, Gopal thought. Then he felt sad and frightened. To make amends for his guilt at not bringing Mrs. Shaw along, he told a bearded man with yellow teeth, "These Sikhs aren't so bad. They are the smartest ones in India, and no one can match a Sikh for courage." Then Gopal felt dazed and ready to leave.

HEN Gopal pulled into his driveway, it was late afternoon. His head felt oddly still, as it always did when alcohol started wearing off, but Gopal knew that he was drunk enough to do something foolish. He parked and walked down the road to Mrs. Shaw's. He wondered if she would be in. Pale tulips bloomed in a thin, uneven row in front of her house. The sight of them made him hopeful.

Mrs. Shaw opened the door before he could knock. For a moment Gopal did not say anything. She was wearing a denim skirt and a sleeveless white shirt. She smiled at him. Gopal spoke solemnly and from far off. "I love you," he said to her for the first time. "I am sorry I didn't invite you to the fair." He waited a moment for his statement to sink in and for her to respond with a similar endearment. When she did not, he repeated, "I love you."

Then she said, "Thank you," and told him not to worry about the fair. She invited him in. Gopal was confused and flustered by her reticence. He began feeling awkward about his confession. They kissed briefly, and then Gopal went home.

The next night, as they sat together watching TV in his living room, Mrs. Shaw suddenly turned to Gopal and said, "You really do love me, don't you?" Although Gopal had expected the question, he was momentarily disconcerted by it, because it made him wonder what love was and whether he was capable of it. But he did not think that this was the time to quibble over semantics. After being silent long enough to suggest that he was struggling with his vulnerability, Gopal said yes and waited for Mrs. Shaw's response. Again she did not confess her love. She kissed his forehead tenderly. This show of sentiment made Gopal angry, but he said nothing. He was glad, though, when Mrs. Shaw left that night.

The next day Gopal waited for Mrs. Shaw to return home from work. He had decided that the time had come for the next step in their relationship. As soon as he saw her struggle through her doorway, hugging sacks of groceries, Gopal phoned. He stood on the steps to his house, with the extension cord trailing over one shoulder, and looked at her house and at her rusted and exhausted-looking station wagon, which he had begun to associate strongly and warmly with the broad sweep of Mrs. Shaw's life. Gopal nearly said, "I missed you" when she picked up the phone, but he became embarrassed and asked, "How was your day?"

"Fine," she said, and Gopal imagined her moving about the kitchen, putting away whatever she had bought, placing the tea kettle on the stove, and sorting her mail on the kitchen table. This image of domesticity and independence moved him deeply. "There's a guidance counselor who is dying of cancer," she said, "and his friends are having a party for him, and they put up a sign saying 'RSVP with your money now! Henry can't wait for the party!'" Gopal and Mrs. Shaw laughed.

"Let's do something," he said.

"What?"

Gopal had not thought this part out. He wanted to do something romantic that would last until bedtime, so that he could pressure her to spend the night. "Would you like to have dinner?"

"Sure," she said. Gopal was pleased. He had gone to a liquor store a few days earlier and bought wine, just in case he had an opportunity to get Mrs. Shaw drunk and get her to fall asleep beside him.

Gopal plied Mrs. Shaw with wine as they ate the linguine he had cooked. They sat in the kitchen, but he had turned off the fluorescent lights and lit a candle. By the third glass Gopal was feeling very brave; he placed his hand on her inner thigh.

"My mother and father," Mrs. Shaw said halfway through the meal, pointing at him with her fork and speaking with the deliberateness of the drunk, "convinced me that people are not meant to live together for long periods of time." She was speaking in response to Gopal's hint earlier that only over time and through living together could people get to know each other properly. "If you know someone that well, you are bound to be disappointed."

"Maybe that's because you haven't met the right person," Gopal answered, feeling awkward for saying something that could be considered arrogant when he was trying to appear vulnerable.

"I don't think there is a right person. Not for me. To fall in love I think you need a certain suspension of disbelief, which I don't think I am capable of."

Gopal wondered whether Mrs. Shaw believed what she was saying or was trying not to hurt his feelings by revealing that she couldn't love him. He stopped eating.

Mrs. Shaw stared at him. She put her fork down and said, "I love you. I love how you care for me and how gentle you are."

Gopal smiled. Perhaps, he thought, the first part of her statement had been a preface to a confession that he mattered so much that she was willing to make an exception for him. "I love you too," Gopal said. "I love how funny and smart and honest you are. You are very beautiful." He leaned over slightly to suggest that he wanted to kiss her, but Mrs. Shaw did not respond.

Her face was stiff. "I love you," she said again, and Gopal became nervous. "But I am not in love with you." She stopped and stared at Gopal.

Gopal felt confused. "What's the difference?"

"When you are in love, you never think about yourself, because you love the other person so completely. I've lived too long to think anyone is that perfect." Gopal still didn't understand the distinction, but he was too embarrassed to ask more. It was only fair, a part of him thought, that God would punish him this way for driving away his wife and child. How could anyone love him?

Mrs. Shaw took his hands in hers. "I think we should take a little break from each other, so we don't get confused. Being with you, I'm getting confused too. We should see other people."

"Oh." Gopal's chest hurt despite his understanding of the justice of what was happening.

"I don't want to hide anything. I love you. I truly love you. You are the kindest lover I've ever had."

"Oh."

For a week after this Gopal observed that Mrs. Shaw did not bring another man to her house. He went to the Sunday board meeting of the cultural association, where he regaled the members with jokes from Reader's Digest. He taught his first Hindi class to children at the temple. He took his car to be serviced. Gopal did all these things. He ate. He slept. He even made love to Mrs. Shaw once, and until she asked him to leave, he thought everything was all right again.

Then, one night, Gopal was awakened at a little after three by a car pulling out of Mrs. Shaw's driveway. It is just a friend, he thought, standing by his bedroom window and watching the Toyota move down the road. Gopal tried falling asleep again, but he could not, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. His mind was blank, but sleep did not come.

I will not call her, Gopal thought in the morning. And as he was dialing her, he thought he would hang up before all the numbers had been pressed. He heard the receiver being lifted on the other side and Mrs. Shaw saying "Hello." He did not say anything. "Don't do this, Gopal," she said softly. "Don't hurt me."

"Hi," Gopal whispered, wanting very much to hurt her. He leaned his head against the kitchen wall. His face twitched as he whispered, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be that way. I love you. I didn't want to hurt you. That's why I told you."

"I know."

"All right?"

"Yes." They were silent for a long time. Then Gopal hung up. He wondered if she would call back. He waited, and when she didn't, he began jumping up and down in place.

OR the next few weeks Gopal tried to spend as little time as possible in his house. He read the morning papers in the library, and then had lunch at a diner, and then went back to the library. On Sundays he spent all day at the mall. His anger at Mrs. Shaw soon disappeared, because he thought that the blame for her leaving lay with him. Gopal continued, however, to avoid home, because he did not want to experience the jealousy that would keep him awake all night. Only if he arrived late enough and tired enough could he fall asleep. In the evening Gopal either went to the temple and helped at the seven o'clock service or visited one of his new acquaintances. But over the weeks he exhausted the kindheartedness of his acquaintances and had a disagreement with one man's wife, and he was forced to return home.

The first few evenings he spent at home Gopal thought he would have to flee his house in despair. He slept awkwardly, waking at the barest rustle outside his window, thinking that a car was pulling out of Mrs. Shaw's driveway. The days were easier than the nights, especially when Mrs. Shaw was away at work. Gopal would sleep a few hours at night and then nap during the day, but this left him exhausted and dizzy. In the afternoon he liked to sit on the steps and read the paper, pausing occasionally to look at her house. He liked the sun sliding up its walls. Sometimes he was sitting outside when she drove home from work. Mrs. Shaw waved to him once or twice, but he did not respond, not because he was angry but because he felt himself become so still at the sight of her that he could neither wave nor smile.

A month and a half after they separated, Gopal still could not sleep at night if he thought there were two cars in Mrs. Shaw's driveway. Once, after a series of sleepless nights, he was up until three watching a dark shape behind Mrs. Shaw's station wagon. He waited by his bedroom window, paralyzed with fear and hope, for a car to pass in front of her house and strike the shape with its headlights. After a long time in which no car went by, Gopal decided to check for himself.

He started across his lawn crouched over and running. The air was warm and smelled of jasmine, and Gopal was so tired that he thought he might spill to the ground. After a few steps he stopped and straightened up. The sky was clear, and there were so many stars that Gopal felt as if he were in his village in India. The houses along the street were dark and drawn in on themselves. Even in India, he thought, late at night the houses look like sleeping faces. He remembered how surprised he had been by the pitched roofs of American houses when he had first come here, and how this had made him yearn to return to India, where he could sleep on the roof. He started across the lawn again. Gopal walked slowly, and he felt as if he were crossing a great distance.

The station wagon stood battered and alone, smelling faintly of gasoline and the day's heat. Gopal leaned against its hood. The station wagon was so old that the odometer had gone all the way around. Like me, he thought, and like Helen, too. This is who we are, he thought -- dusty, corroded, and dented from our voyages, with our unflagging hearts rattling on inside. We are made who we are by the dust and corrosion and dents and unflagging hearts. Why should we need anything else to fall in love? he wondered. We learn and change and get better. He leaned against the car for a minute or two. Fireflies swung flickering in the breeze. Then he walked home.

Gopal woke early and showered and shaved and made breakfast. He brushed his teeth after eating and felt his cheeks to see whether he should shave again, this time against the grain. At nine he crossed his lawn and rang Mrs. Shaw's doorbell. He had to ring it several times before he heard her footsteps. When she opened the door and saw him, Mrs. Shaw drew back as if she were afraid. Gopal felt sad that she could think he might hurt her. "May I come in?" he asked. She stared at him. He saw mascara stains beneath her eyes and silver strands mingled with her red hair. He thought he had never seen a woman as beautiful or as gallant.

A Bit More on Akhil Sharma

2011-02-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

One Indian Writer’s Experience

Akhil Sharma in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, New York, where there is a vibrant South Asian community.

By Akhil Sharma

Akhil Sharma’s first novel, An Obedient Father, won the 2000 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2001 Whiting Writers’ Award. He writes for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, among other publications. He was named among the best of young American novelists (2007) by Granta magazine.

I can only speak from my own experiences, and so I should not be understood to represent all Indian-American writers.

I first started writing short stories in ninth grade. I did this because I was very unhappy and I wanted attention.

My family came to America in 1979. There was me, my brother, my mother, and my father. Two years after we arrived, my brother had an accident in a swimming pool that left him severely brain damaged. I was 10 then, and my brother, 14.

My brother is still alive and he cannot walk or talk. Anup, which is my brother’s name, cannot be fed through his mouth, and so he is fed through a gastrointestinal tube that enters his stomach from just below his right ribs. Anup does not roll over automatically in his sleep, and so someone has to be with him all night long and turn him from side to side every two hours and, in this way, keep him from getting bed sores.

For two years after the accident, my brother was kept in a hospital, and then my parents decided to take care of him themselves. They brought him to our house and hired nurses. Other than the direct worries of my brother’s condition, another pressing worry that I grew up with was concern about money. Because we had such little money and because we were dependent on insurance companies and nurses, we felt that we were always being betrayed, that people were not fulfilling their responsibilities. Many times we had nurses who said that they would come and start a shift on a particular day and time and they wouldn’t show up. Also, because there were strangers in our house, we were always afraid that people would steal things. We had one nurse who stole teddy bears that my mother had bought at a flea market.

Until ninth grade, when I was 15, the only time I wrote short stories was when they were assigned for a class. In ninth grade I had a teacher, Mrs. Green, who praised me for how well I understood our reading assignments and so, to get more attention from her, I began writing stories.

At first all the stories I wrote had white American characters. I think this was partially because all the fiction I read was about white people. Equally important though was that I felt the experience of being an Indian American was not important. Living as a minority, not sharing the experiences of the majority population, I felt that my experiences, because they were not the majority experience, were not as important as those of white people. Also, to some extent, I felt that my experiences, because they were not shared, were not even as real as those of white Americans.

Among the problems I had in writing about whites is that I didn’t know anything about whites. It was only in 10th grade that I first went into a white person’s house.

In 10th grade I read a biography of Ernest Hemingway. I remember starting reading it one morning at the kitchen table and the windows of the kitchen being dark. I read the biography of Hemingway so that I could lie to people and tell them that I had read Hemingway’s books. (I used to lie all the time and claim I had read books I had not.)

I read the book and was amazed. What amazed me was that Hemingway had gotten to live in France and Spain, that he had travelled to Cuba and appeared to have had a good time in his life. Till then I had thought that I would be a computer programmer or an engineer or a doctor. When I read the book, I suddenly thought that I could have a lifestyle like Ernest Hemingway’s and not lead a boring life.

After I read the biography, I began to read other books about Hemingway. I read biographies and collections of critical essays. I must have read 20 books about Hemingway before I read any actual work written by him. I read all this about Hemingway because I wanted to learn how to repeat what he had done and I didn’t want to leave any clue unexamined. At first, I was not actually interested in Hemingway’s own writing.

I think of Hemingway as the writer who has influenced me most. Hemingway, as you probably already know, wrote about characters whose experience was exotic to American readers. He wrote about gangsters and soldiers in Italy and journalists in Paris. Among the many things I learned from Hemingway, and I could say that almost everything I am as a writer began with Hemingway or as a response against Hemingway, one was how to write about exotic things without being bogged down by the exoticism. Scholars who analyzed Hemingway pointed out that his stories began in the middle of the action, that he wrote as if the reader already knew a great deal about the environment that he was writing about, that when he gave direct explanations, this breaking of the reality of fictional experience was a way of saying to the reader that the reason I am breaking this fictional convention is because I don’t want to lie.

For me, because I began my education as a writer with Hemingway and did not really read any nonwhite writers until I was in college, I have always thought that writing is just writing. Writing is just a string of words and a series of strategies that generate experiences within the reader. I have always felt that in the same way that the race of a surgeon does not matter because a heart and a gall bladder remain a heart and a gall bladder, no matter the race of the patient, the race of a writer also does not matter.

I came to America as part of a great wave of immigration. Because this wave of Asian immigrants has created curiosity within American society as to what exactly it is like to be in Asian families, I have been lucky to have had my books read. (I think of myself as a good writer, but I could imagine that if I had been writing 50 years earlier, my writing might have been too exotic and peripheral to be worth reading by ordinary readers.)

My first book won the PEN/ Hemingway prize. This is given to the best first novel published in any given year.

The person who gave me the prize was one of Hemingway’s sons. I believe it was Patrick Hemingway who gave me the prize. This white-haired gentleman and I sat and talked in a conference room for about 10 or 15 minutes. I did not tell him how much his father had mattered to me because I felt shy. Instead we talked about how his father had found titles for his books in The Book of Common Prayer.

Sometimes when I think of how lucky I have been, I want to cry.

Akhil Sharma Coming to JU

2011-01-26T10:14:00.000-08:00

Following on from the Naqvi visit tomorrow (please come) we have Akhil Sharma coming to see us on Friday February 4 (that's next Friday). Sharma has written one novel, An Obedient Father, but it's won two awards and has generated a lot of controversy. It's about a corrupt government official who abuses his own daughter. His crimes come out many years later, and his daughter takes her revenge. See here to check out the controversy.
Sharma will be in the PG2 classroom, not the AV room, as there is another talk happening there at 3, and we don't want it to clash.

Husain M. Naqvi Visiting JU on Thursday

2011-01-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

H.M. Naqvi is the author of Home Boy, a novel about Indian-origin boys in New York. It's bold, it's brash, it pulls no punches and it's just won the DSC South Asia literature Prize. Husain is coming to see us on Thursday 27 January at 4pm in the AV Room. Do please try to come and meet him.
Here's his Wikipedia page

Valerie Miner Workshop

2010-12-16T02:47:00.000-08:00

IMG_0829
Originally uploaded by Amoo4

16th December, 2010 at the A.V room in JUDE, an amazing workshop took place.

An Interesting Set of Tips

2010-12-14T23:41:00.000-08:00

This is a bit long and grey, but you might find it of use.
http://www.pjballantine.com/for-writers/

The Tale of a Tooth

2010-12-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

Bimal Babu weaved his way through the drowsy morning traffic while North Calcutta struggled to shake off its torpor, a hydra-headed monster, lazily swaying to and fro. Cradling his trusty black umbrella under his arm, he hurried towards the doctor’s chamber. The street shone like a lemon and the morning felt blue after ages, but Bimal Babu oblivious to it all, moved at a speed that belied his age. At last, he stopped outside the clinic to catch his breath. Running nervous fingers through his graying hair, scratching his neck and chin, touching his throat and forehead feverishly, he stepped inside to greet his old friend, the doctor.
“Why, hello, Bimal Babu! Is it already time for your monthly check-up?” The gentle doctor smiled. He was a portly middle-aged man, his round face forever red and genial. He was both accustomed to these visits and Bimal Babu’s customary (and half hearted) complaints of knee pain and a persisting cold. He was one of the doctor’s prized patients, duly handing him a fee of three hundred rupees fortnightly. It was just an elaborate charade, and the doctor liked to play along. He knew that Bimal Babu, like most elderly men was sorely in need of some company, a kindred soul with whom he could discuss the nitty-gritty’s of politics, football and fascinating ailments. Unlike most septuagenarians, up until now Bimal Babu had enjoyed perfect health and despite his regular grievances, he secretly believed that he was infallible.
However, this morning, the flustered Bimal Babu waved aside all greetings with an impatient sweep of his wrinkled hand. “I think” and he paused for theatrical effect, “Nay, I am sure that I am being poisoned.” The doctor’s broad smile turned into one of incredulity as he looked into his patient’s saucer-like eyes. “Poisoned, you say?”
“Yes! That too in my own house! You of all people realize how cautious I have been regarding my health. I ask you to single out one other man who could boast of perfect eyesight and a faultless liver.”
“You are absolutely right”, the good doctor humoured him. Clearly something had agitated the old man recently. Perhaps he had quarreled with his wife, or his son, or the ayah who dogged his steps throughout the day without any apparent reason. “Look, how I sweat today,” Bimal Babu whined, “Look, how my knuckles turn white!”
The doctor patted his thin bony shoulders and murmured words of comfort. Bimal Babu ranted on in his own inimitable manner, “It is the lead paint, I tell you. Flakes flying everywhere, and I can’t even begin to tell you about the dust. Oh, it chokes me, it does.”
“Are you repairing your house?”
“Not me, never! I believe my house is still in its prime condition, yes. Have you seen the old, grand arched entrance? My son, dear man, is a fool. He is redecorating, he tells me, redoing the place, and preserving its character. Liar!”
He spat out the last word with considerable venom, banged his fist on the table and winced. “They are digging up the old paint, and then applying a fresh coat. What’s the use of it all, I ask you? You have seen my house; it is a fine architectural piece. It needs no paint; it needs no colour to spruce it up like a harlot.” His voice softened and his eyes misted over; it was the bitter complaint of a man who could no longer manipulate or influence his present circumstances.
The doctor sat across the table and grinned to himself. Bimal Babu’s paranoia concerning his advancing old age was widely known in the neighbourhood. An erstwhile athlete, he refused to take matters of health lightly. One could even say that the man was terrified of growing old, senile and insignificant. Post his retirement he had opened an unassuming curio shop, tucked away into a nameless corner of his locality. There he spent his long mornings, reading books and solving puzzles. It was a room of his own, not meant for pecuniary dealings.
When he perceived that the doctor had become inattentive he growled impatiently, and mumbled something about his morning tea, and how the world suddenly turns its back on an aged man. The more the doctor reflected on the situation, the more absurd the conversation seemed. At last he intended to put a stop to Bimal Babu’s harangue. “My dear man,” he drawled, “Tell me your symptoms.” Bimal Babu looked puzzled for a while and said, “Why! There’s this congestion in my chest- right here”, he poked himself hard in the ribs with his thin fingers. “Stomach cramps, headaches.” He narrowed his eyes in deep thought and gravely said, “Oh and this tooth, it hurts.”
“Tooth?” The doctor repeated, genuinely puzzled. The rest of Bimal Babu’s hypochondriacal complaints were made-up, fabrications of an old man’s restless mind devoted solely to the study of books on medicines and physiology, but he had never heard of a phony toothache. “Why, let me take a look.”
Sure enough, he found one of Bimal Babu’s molars rotting away. “This, my friend, is not because of lead poisoning. You need to see a dentist straightaway.” Before the irate old man could interrupt him, he hastily continued, “As for lead poisoning, when was the last time you painted your house?”
“Sometime in the eighties, I don’t quite remember- late eighties, maybe?”
“Then you need not worry. I can assure you that the paint currently being peeled off your walls is lead-free.”
Bimal Babu glared at the doctor, unconvinced at the diagnosis, clearly hoping that the doctor would relent and administer a thorough check-up. Instead he was sent off to a nearby dentist to have his tooth extracted without further delay.

***

Unlike the doctor, the dentist was a silent, severe character. He asked a few direct questions, demanded straightforward answers and as soon as he had studied the panoramic X-ray, he started operating on his patient. Before Bimal Babu could moan out in protest, he grasped the tooth with forceps, twisted and turned it, and wrenched it out. Whimpering in pain, Bimal Babu realized the folly of complaining falsely. His bland life flashed before his eyes, and being a god fearing man, he murmured a prayer to the beings above, while he spat out blood in the cracked white basin. “Never, never again will I visit a doctor without reason. That tooth-” he stared at his molar that lay orphaned in a steel bowl, “That tooth was a perfectly fine specimen.” The dentist pretending not to hear his feeble protests, remarked, “A cut in the mouth tends to bleed more than a cut on the skin because the incision cannot dry out and form a scab. Bite on this piece of gauze for half an hour, and allow the blood to clot. Under no circumstance should you disturb this clot, or else, the bleeding might not get staunched.” His steely voice droned on monotonously, barking out instructions. Stealthily, Bimal Babu reached out for his abandoned tooth and slipped it into his pocket. Still whimpering in pain, and forcibly rendered mute, he walked out of the dentist’s cabin- a broken man.

***

Instead of returning to his house, he chose to spend the rest of the day at his small curio shop. The shop was indeed an old man’s fancy, a whim to while away the hours of the day. It was stocked with old, worm eaten books, jewelry that had long ago lost their sheen, antique watches, yellowed porcelain dolls and other such worthless possessions. To him, stepping into the shop was like slipping on an overused, frayed at the edges, comfortable coat. He let its old world charm, its soft velvety darkness envelop him for a while. For a moment reassurance burst afresh in his parched heart. He looked into the grainy mirror that hung lopsided beside the counter. His face was a stranger’s, with its ruffled hair and swollen cheeks. Bimal Babu dragged out his rickety chair and let the familiarity of the shop lull him into sleep. It had been a rather peculiar morning. He woke up to a lukewarm cup of tea, whose contents had been rendered inedible. A great flake of paint had peeled off his roof and landed right into his cup. The doctor had laughed off his anxieties, and the dentist had caused him unimaginable suffering. The whole world was conspiring against him, and at the helm of it all was his own son, with his insistence that the house be transformed into a modern monstrosity.
He fished out the tooth from his pocket and laid it on the counter, staring at it fixedly. For a while he was oblivious to everything else; he had found a metaphor for his life in that extracted tooth. I am old, he breathed out, I feel old and useless. His tongue prodded his injured gum gingerly. His mouth felt wet, and tasted metallic. Perhaps, I need to let go, let go of it all. Misery wormed its way into his heart.

***

A chink of sunshine poured into the shop unexpectedly. The painkillers had rendered Bimal Babu drowsy, and he scrunched up his eyes to look at the blurred figure that had entered his shop. He opened his mouth to speak when the pain shot through his nerves, renewed. His vision cleared and he saw a grizzled, old foreigner with sallow, sickly skin stretched right across his bones pottering about the shop. With his gangly, spotted hands, he picked up various artifacts and inspected them curiously. Bimal Babu’s eyes narrowed in suspicion- he was not used to customers disturbing his hour of meditation and siesta, in fact, he was not used to customers at all! As the cotton gauze, rendered heavy with blood, threatened to slip out of his mouth, he beckoned to the stranger and mumbled incoherently in English. The yellowish man craned his neck, and walked towards the shop-owner, when his sunken eyes fell on the tooth. With a manic grin on his face, he picked it up and turned it over on his palm. Bimal Babu gestured wildly to indicate that it was his tooth and not an article of curiosity, repeatedly pointing towards his mouth. “Toof! My toof!”
The stranger’s face clouded over and he clenched the tooth within his fist. He took out his wallet and fished out some notes. Bimal Babu shook his head vigorously to point out that the tooth was not for sale. He snatched at the other’s closed fist. The man stood still, bemused at the antics of the shop-owner. Exasperated, Bimal Babu signaled him to wait. He turned around to take the gauze out of his mouth, and by the time he turned back towards the counter, shop was empty. The foreigner had disappeared, along with Bimal Babu’s molar tooth. He was astonished, and wondered what else this strange morning would hold in store, when his eyes fell on some crisp currency notes that the shoplifter had left behind. Cautiously he counted the notes; he had been given five thousand rupees in lieu of his tooth. Clearly, allegedly valueless goods could magically acquire unexpected value.

***

Years later, Bimal Babu would fondly refer to this incident, as the Tooth-Fairy episode- the day when an old and graying fairy, had walked into his shop, and without speaking a word transformed his mundane, bleak worldview with a touch of pure, untainted optimism. Bimal Babu’s dulled memory had wrought fabrications of its own during various retellings of this event; sometimes, he swore that the tooth fairy had looked just like him, and had vanished into a puff of smoke before his own eyes, sometimes he said that the stranger looked unmistakably like one of his great grandfathers. However, the kernel of truth remained untarnished: his chipped soul had been wholly restored. The day he lost his wisdom tooth, Bimal Babu became a wise man.

***

(Anurima Sen, PG-II)

Last Call for Valerie Miner Workshop

2010-11-20T23:26:00.000-08:00

Please send me a mail on gmail (facebook not acceptable, it has to be gmail) if you want to participate in Valerie Miner's Creative Writing Workshop on December 16 in the AV Room. A few places are left. Please do this by 30 November AT THE LATEST.

Final story: Untitled

2010-11-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

This was the third time she’d been scrubbing the bathroom floor. It was 6 in the morning and the toilet brush looked butchered as Mimpsy kept struggling to get the yellow stains out. But the smell still remained. She tried squeezing out the last drops of ‘Mr. John Clean: A clean John is a happy John’ as it read on the now-misshapen plastic bottle, hoping this would be enough to get rid of the stench of the intoxication and the intoxicated.
“Are ye done in there, ye little tramp?” came with the incessant banging on the bathroom door. In a flash Mimpsy gathered all her cleaning things, prayed silently for her and the loo and with a click of the door opening came face to face with her. She was enormous. Mimpsy was only five feet and having been treated like Quasimodo all her life also had a virtual hump making her even shorter. But Tiara was always the tallest, in any room. Even when her hair looked like it had gone through a mini nuclear explosion, when her eyes looked bloodier than the numerous Bloody Marys she had downed and when she looked puffed and bloated like a corn in hot oil, she still managed to look better than Mimpsy. And Tiara was very aware of it.
“Hogging’ the loo like it belongs to ye, are ye?” her breath smelled of the same stench Mimpsy was trying to get rid of for the past hour and a half. “You were always inconsiderate”, she said as she kneeled in front of the toilet bowl, “just like yer mum was. She was always...” but that was drowned by the sound of her throwing up the rest of last night’s party. Mimpsy’s day had just begun.
The rest of the day was spent in bed with the occasional calls for food and sometimes to remind Mimpsy that it was a pain and a burden to have a baboon in the household. It was only at 9.30 at night did they finally leave allowing Mimpsy a few hours of rest before it all began again. Yes, life was beautiful.
*
That Sunday seemed like every other Sunday in Mimpsy’s life. It began with Mr. D dropping the familiar cleaning kit on the floor where she had been vacuuming. “Clean,” he said and handed her the big brown mahogany box. Mr. D was never the kind to use many words. He was a lot more physical. He kicked the vacuum and left. Something was wrong. Tiara came two minutes later and confirmed what Mimpsy feared.
“A knife’s missing! Did ye sell it, you greedy rat?” Tiara pointed at the box, the box that once contained seven different kinds of knives, now had just the six. It was a family heirloom. Every Sunday it was Mimpsy’s job to clean, polish and at times to sharpen them. Apparently Mr. D’s ancestors were either butchers or were a part of some circus act. She never dared to clarify.
“Well, where is it?” and without waiting for an explanation picked Mimpsy up by her ragged shirt collar and banged her against the front door. This went on for a while, sometimes with her being pulled and dragged and finally being tossed at a corner of the living room. “Ye get no food tonight till ye tell us where it is ye sold it off to. Do you understand?” Mimpsy kept looking at the floor; she did not have much strength to look up and answer and hoped her silence would be understood as an affirmation. “Try not stealing another one. Now, get back to work!” with that the giant left leaving Jack to tend to his bean stalk.
At 4 a.m. Mimpsy did not wake up to her usual alarm clock ringing. It was a loud scream coming from the bedroom. She scrambled out of bed and ran into the room. There was something unusual about this scream, having been screamed at all her life she knew something was wrong. And then she saw it. Tiara was standing on the large bed with blood all over her and the purple bedcover. Those blood stains were the toughest spots to remove. Her hair was dishevelled and she looked like she had just woken up from a nightmare. But Mr. D looked peaceful lying on the bed, in spite of all that blood covering him like a thick blanket. They had found the missing knife; it was with Mr. D after all, lodged into his chest.
For a while Tiara and Mimpsy stared at each other. This kind of a mess never could fit into Mimpsy’s household chores. No, this required a bigger garbage bag and something much stronger than ‘Mr. John Clean’, the bathroom cleaner. So, she set of to work. Tiara stood silently as she watched Mimpsy as she put on her gardening gloves, take out the big needle and the thick thread and sow the garbage bags together. For the first time she realised how invaluable Mimpsy had been to their home. The trickiest past was separating the huge knife from its owner. Tiara with all her strength grabbed the knife with her bloody hands and pulled it out and Mimpsy held out a plastic bag for it. Mr. D, wrapped in the purple bedcover, was put into the garbage bag. All they had to do now is somehow dispose the body off somewhere, where no one would notice.
“I know what we can do,” Tiara looked like she had an epiphany. “There’s that lake, an hour’s drive from here. The uhm, it’s called..the uhm.. Windsor? Yeah, Lake Windsor!” So it was decided and at 1 a.m. Tiara dragged the bag out of her car and as she was about to dump it into the lake..
“Stop right there.” The voice from the microphone, the sound of the siren and that strange sound that almost sounded like a bark made Tiara drop the bag and put her hands in the air.
*
The Police Station was buzzing with activity. Fresh donuts had just been delivered and it was the survival of the fittest or possibly the fattest. Amidst all this, Inspector Terran had been examining the newest case. “It’s pretty simple. They partied a lot and she was wasted at the time. She was a bit drunk when we caught her with the body near the lake. ”
“We have a witness who saw how the murder happened?” asked Roy, Terran’s partner of four years.
Terran flipped through the case file. “It’s her step sister, Mimpsy Jones. She saw the whole thing. She’ll be coming down here any minute now.”
Roy placed a plastic bag on the table, “This was under the victim’s bed. It’s got the wife’s finger prints all over the knife in the bag. And the blood matched the victim.”
Terran smiled at Roy’s bored expression. “It’s okay buddy, we’ll get a better case soon.”
There was a knock and both looked up to find Mimpsy standing, small and insignificant like always. Sitting down she looked up at Terran as he asked, “Are you ready to testify against Mrs Tiara Jones D for the murder of her husband Mr. D?” Mimpsy already felt like she was in court.
“Don’t be afraid. I know she is your sister but you are doing the right thing”, Terran gave her an encouraging smile.
Roy read through the file, “You said you saw them leave for a party at 9.30 pm and then at 3 a.m. you woke up to find Mrs D take her husband’s antique knife and stab him in the chest. And then she sowed garbage bags together and stuffed the body in there and kept the knife in another plastic bag. She threatened to kill you if you told the police about this.” Roy looked up at Mimpsy, “But you did the right thing. No one will harm you anymore.”
Terran and Roy led Mimpsy towards the exit. “I didn’t do it! I swear I didn’t!” Tiara was being dragged to her new home, prison. She suddenly saw Mimpsy, “She did it! She stole the knife and stabbed my husband! She did it! Not me! Let me go!” Tiara struggled and screamed but in vain.
“I know it must be hard for you, especially after she took you in after your mother died.” Terran added as he watched Mimpsy get into the cab.
Mimpsy smiled for the first time in a long while and said, “Oh no, sir, you are mistaken. She didn’t take me after my mother’s death. She had taken me in after she had killed my mother.” And with that the cab sped off.

Final Story: Padmabati Printers Ltd

2010-11-15T21:45:00.002-08:00

PADMABATI PRINTERS LTD

On the auspicious morning of Kali Pujo, Biswambhar babu decided to die.

The news spread like wildfire through the back alleys of Bat-tala, crisp as the clattering of type in the print shops, spicy as the perfume of a Chitpur whore, sizzling and scandalous as The Amours of Elokeshi still warm from the press, fifty copies of which Biswambhar babu’s assistant, Haripada, had finished binding only the day before. Presses clanked to a halt as phalanxes of printers rushed down the street, shedding stray pages of the Panchatantra, Battrish Singhashan, Gol-e-hormuj Ketab, Lokhhi’r Panchali, The Paramour of Parameswari, Lustful Dreams of Lonely Wives, Shib-Parbati Parba, Kama-Rahasya, Hemlata-Ratikanta and Shepherd’s Atlas. Their assistants raced after them, dripping ink, glue and perspiration – artists and binders, harlots and pimps, vendors, beggars, urchins and stray dogs clustered at street-corners clamouring for details. Rampant in her little shrine, Ma Kali winced as handfuls of hibiscus were hurled at her like cricket-balls; stared open-mouthed as her devotees abandoned her altar, scuttling off to join their friends at Biswambhar babu’s deathbed.

By noon, a steady procession of would-be mourners could be seen marching along to the little house at the end of the lane. The dying man lay in state in the front room, on the enormous brass bedstead that had been part of Padmabati’s dowry. Plump and comely Padmabati, Biswambhar babu’s widow-to-be, stood weeping copiously at his head; from time to time, she dried her tears and plumped up the six enormous pillows that supported her husband’s languishing form. One by one, Biswambhar babu’s neighbours, his fellow-printers and friends tiptoed up to the bed and tried to persuade him not to die. Was he feeling ill? they asked anxiously. Had he, perhaps, quarreled with his wife or mortgaged his press or been diddled out of a deal? Had that idiot Haripada mixed up the pages while binding those fifty freshly-printed copies of the Amours of Elokeshi? No, said Biswambhar babu shortly and turned his face to the wall.

It was suggested that his favourite food might win him back to life. His middle son was immediately dispatched to the market to buy lobsters, ilish, the best gobindabhog rice and two seers of ghee. Padmabati sat on the kitchen floor shedding tears and grinding shorshe. Biswambhar babu’s brass plate was piled high with delicacies and offered to him by loving hands, the oily fragrance of sweets cooked in ghee was wafted under his nose, plump pods of cardamom were held to his unyielding lips: Biswambhar babu only opened them long enough to utter in ringing tones, 'No!'

The stomach having proved recalcitrant, the next appeal was to the sentiments. Biswambhar babu’s two year- old grandson trailed sticky fingers over his grandsire’s chest, his sons and daughters wept, Padmabati (suffering the combined effects of emotion and mustard-paste) wept even more bitterly. Krishnadas babu, Biswambhar babu’s oldest friend, bent over his bed with a fan of cards in his hand and begged him in broken tones for one last game. Haripada, who had been hovering helplessly in the background, had the brilliant idea of waving The Amours of Elokeshi before his master’s face, but Biswambhar babu proved dead even to the scent of new paper and fresh ink. Motilal, his eldest son, boxed poor Haripada’s ears for bringing dirty pictures to his father’s deathbed.

By evening, the crowd outside had swelled to alarming proportions. Biswambhar babu seemed to feel the excitement: he turned away from the wall, motioned to Padmabati to bring him a paan and muttered indistinctly through it, to his three sons, ‘I have no money’, ‘You’ll get nothing from me,’ and ‘Look after the shop.’

Late at night, Kali Pujo commenced in the mandir. Little by little, all through the afternoon, the dhakis had edged closer to the house. Their manic drumming pounded in Biswambhar babu’s head as fireworks hissed and blazed outside. Chorkis whirled, tubris flowered, kalipatkas exploded deafeningly in a brilliant show of pyrotechnic persuasion. But Biswambhar babu turned his face to the wall again, said (in grave and gravelly tones this time), ‘No.’

Clustered on the balconies of Roshanara Bai’s celebrated brothel, the women looked down at the squat little house. From a particular angle, it was possible to see right through Biswambhar babu’s bedroom window; buxom young Mohsina Bai thought she could make out the dim form of Biswambhar babu himself, lying in bed. She sighed, as did many of Roshanara Bai’s plumper ladies: Biswambhar babu had been particularly partial to their company. Not one of your tight-fisted customers, either, she reflected, rolling a handsome string of pearls between her thumb and forefinger, and so well-versed in all thirty-six poses described (with illustrations) in Rasikpriya’r Rasabhandar! A true rasik, and a true gentleman. Not like the goose-pimpled, pigeon-chested, English-speaking, whore-fearing urchins of today. ‘Why do you want to die?’ she demanded of the gunpowdery, burnt-smelling air.

At three o’clock in the morning, the audience outside Biswambhar babu’s window finally dispersed and Padmabati found herself alone with her husband. Impossible to go to sleep beside that inert form. Besides, he and his six massive pillows had left no room for her on the bed. Padmabati stared at Biswambhar babu’s plump, cosseted body, his face which, even in sleep, wore the expression of a peevish child. He had married her when she was ten, sown the seeds of five lusty children in her belly, and done absolutely nothing else for her in the last thirty years. She could not think of a single important reason why she should mourn his passing, yet it seemed immeasurably important that he should not die. Padmabati found herself hurrying out of the house, down the now deserted road, past the shrouded row of printing-presses to the temple at the end of the street. She threw herself at the feet of the goddess. ‘Save him Ma, save him. He is my parameswar, my supreme lord. My life and his are one, his death is my death.’

The goddess snorted. Her divine snort descended upon Padmabati’s ears like a mighty clap of thunder. She sat bolt upright and looked around the empty temple. Ma Kali seemed to be grinning down at her rather sardonically. Padmabati’s eyes were on a level with the goddess’s alta-painted feet, and with Shib-thakur, who was lying beneath them, a supremely fatuous expression on his face.

'That lord of yours is best kept under your feet, child,' a matter-of-fact voice informed Padmabati. ‘Though from what I’ve seen of him, you’ll have trouble balancing on his belly. Then again, you’re no fairy yourself' – the goddess seemed to be gazing approvingly at Padmabati’s plump and shapely arms, ' – you should be able to keep him down.'

'But Ma –' protested Padmabati weakly.

'Much better for him,' said Ma Kali, a little defensively. 'And if he doesn’t like it, he’ll have to lump it, won’t he? Look at my lord, he’s perfectly happy down there and as good as gold. Of course, yours is a different matter. Rasikpriya’r Rasabhandar indeed! Amours of Elokeshi! Pinch his nose, and it’ll run printing ink. He even takes his rasabhandar – his thirty-six poses with their matching diagrams – to Mohsina Bai’s bed! Let him die if he likes, Padmabati – he’ll have to answer to me here.'

'Mohsina bai’s bed?' demanded Padmabati, heaving herself to her feet.

'Yes, and a good little whoreling she is too. I won’t have you quarrelling with her, Padmabati, you just leave her alone. Deal with that lord of yours. Sit in his printing-shop, it’s that rascal Ganesha’s new engine. Take a trip on it. See the world!' For a second, Ma Kali’s face was transfigured with pure mischief as she stuck her tongue out at Padmabati and waved two of her four arms as though clanking up the press.

'Thank you Ma.' Touching her head briefly to the altar, Padmabati hurried home.

Over the next few days, Biswambhar babu remained fixed in his resolve. He lay on the huge brass bed, his face a picture of weary resignation, refusing to talk or eat. Every evening he chewed morosely on a single paan that Padmabati prepared for him. The Bat-tala presses began to clank again, but Biswambhar babu’s little print-shop stood silent and forlorn. The very press seemed less black and shiny than before; Haripada moped around the shop with nothing to do, having finished sewing the quires together for a hundred and twenty copies of Kula Kalankini ba Kalikatar Guptakatha.

Biswambhar babu’s neighbours continued to gather in anxious knots around his bed: Padmabati fried them cauliflower singaras and brewed endless cups of sweet, cardamom-scented tea. Biswambhar babu was offered his share of the treats, but he turned his face to the wall and said, in low, resonant tones, ‘No.’ Padmabati did not shed tears as before; she popped a singara into her own mouth and bustled away to discuss the arrangements for Biswambhar babu’s funeral. Regiments of stiff white rajanigandha stood at attention, sandalwood and camphor for the pyre piled up in the courtyard. Padmabati and her daughters-in-law were forever running down to the shops; on haat days they returned with loaded with the finest jasmine-scented incense, yards of white cotton for winding around the corpse, gold rings for the dom to steal, pewter-handled razors for his sons to shave their heads with, gamchhas, dhotis, shawls and umbrellas for the priest, white saris for the widow, red-bordered ones for the other women, ghee and spices, sweets and savouries, enough to feed fifty Brahmins. Biswambhar babu lay with his face turned to the wall; with a piece of chalk pinched from the pocket of his youngest son, he engaged in complex calculations to determine exactly how much they were spending. Even by the most modest estimates, the figures were so staggering that for a second he wondered if they were really the disordered imaginings of his dying brain. Padmabati appeared, flushed and triumphant: she drew fifty crisp new rupees from the lokhhi’r jhaanpi by Biswambhar babu’s head. It was all true.

That evening, Biswambhar babu did not ask for his usual paan. Padmabati came in and sat by his bed. The little window framed a square of flaming sunset sky, huge wings of shadow flitted over the walls, the brass bedposts, the teakwood chest, the tarnished silver of Padmabati’s immense sindoor-box were no more than faint gleams in the room’s dimness. The presses were closing for the day, their last mournful clanks lingered on Biswambhar babu’s ears like the lowing of cows returning at twilight to the fold. The peace of the mellow hour stole into his heart, he forgot his funeral bill of nearly five thousand rupees and felt almost tender towards Padmabati. Poor, ignorant woman – what would she do without him? Was it right to die, on a whim almost, because his tea had not been hot enough one morning, his neemtwig toothbrush had prodded agonizingly at the sore spot on his gum, because the smell of wet ink drifting in from the street had brought on a sudden nausea, as if it were wafting to his nostrils the acrid draught of the world’s indifference, the bitterness of domestic monotony? Perhaps, after all, life was worth living; after all, he was supremely important to this wretched woman by his side. Across the street, lamps glowed in Roshanara Bai’s whorehouse; Padmabati turned to her husband and asked accusingly, 'Aren’t you going to die soon?'

Biswambhar babu shrank into his pillows and said in weak, languishing accents, 'No'.

'Then you won’t mind if I buy myself a new pair of earrings? So many people come to the house these days, this old pair really isn’t fit to be seen. And I might as well go down to the shop one of these days, see how Haripada’s looking after things. No sense in ushering Lokhhi in by the door, then letting her fly out of the window!'

'No,’ said Biswambhar babu in broken tones.

Two days later, Haripada, waggling his feet to the rhythm of his neighbour’s press and thumbing through an unsold copy of Swachitra Ratishastra looked up and froze in horror as he saw Padmabati bearing down upon him like a Benarasi-draped battleship. Cuffing his head with one shapely hand, she snatched the book from him with the other and bellowed, 'Reading, are you, my young lug-headed loon? D’you want to ruin us? Why, you gormless gibbon, your master’s press will crumble into rusty dust before those dirty books can put hair on your skinny chest! Now fetch me the accounts and go to your work. And don’t let me see you sneaking off to chat up that young whore at Roshanara Bai’s, leave her for your master and I’ll buy you a better one.'

The rubies in Padmabati’s ears flashed an angry scarlet, the light streaming through a gap in the wall seemed to strike off her face in a shower of sparks. A dazzled Haripada gasped and scuttled off to start up the press, while Padmabati, clicking her tongue, flicked through the red-bound notebook that was their catalogue of publications. 'Gopon Gopi-katha!' she bellowed. 'Brinda Sangbaad! Rati-rahasya! Sankhhipta Kama-sutra! Kalankini Kankabati with illustrations! Forty lithographs of fornication in full colour! Haripada, ekhane aye…'

Calling upon his ancestors to save him, an ink-stained Haripada scuttled out from behind the press. Padmabati dumped bundles of Biswambhar babu’s more colourful publications in his arms. 'Take these away,' she said sternly. 'You can sell them cut-price in front of Roshanara Bai’s in the evenings. Now start setting the type for a nice illustrated set of Lokhhi’r Panchalis. I want fifty copies bound in scarlet by the day after tomorrow.'

Biswambhar babu’s press shuddered into life again. Padmabati tucked her alta-painted feet under her and flipped fascinatedly through the pages of Pass-Kora Magi: Samajik Prahasan (Bluestocking Bitch: Satirical Sketches of Contemporary Society). In the days that followed, as Haripada clanked out copies of Lokhhi’r Panchali, Annadamangal, Manasamangal, Chandimangal, Sri Krishnakirtankabya and Satibrati Sita-pati, she made her way through Ratibilas, Kama-kahini, Swachitra Ratishastra and (snorting) Rasikpriya’r Rasabhandar. Her education considerably advanced, she then refreshed herself with Yousuf-Zuleikha, The Tales of Amir Hamza, One Thousand and One Nights and Hutom Pyancha’r Naksha. As Biswambhar babu stared through the bars of his window at the lights on Roshanara Bai’s balcony, Padmabati, the jewels in her ears flashing bewitchingly, flirted by the hour with the neighbourhood printers, Kalicharan Ghosh, Bihari Das and Ramkari Mitra, whose consequent neglect of their own print-shops greatly increased the prosperity of hers. She acquired a new layer of sleek golden flesh and a larger set of crocodile-headed bangles to fit her dimpled wrists.

All the talk of that garrulous street now revolved around Padmabati’s astonishing emancipation. No one asked about Biswambhar babu any more, though they remained vaguely conscious of him dying slowly, stubbornly and silently in the background.

And then, one morning, almost in protest, as if he were saying a final, futile, despairing ‘No’ to his complete obliteration from public memory, Biswambhar babu did die. Padmabati, dressed in a new and dashing sari of fine organza cotton and about to float off to the press with billowing turquoise sails, noticed him lying with his face turned up to the ceiling and not towards the wall. She laid her glossy black head on his chest and listened to the silence where there had once been the beat of his heart. Her eyes brimmed over with tears, she thought of the length of white cotton laid away in her teakwood chest, of the sandalwood and camphor waiting silently in the yard. He was gone, just when she had begun to believe he would be lying there forever. Sunlight streamed through the little window, the smell of jasmine drifted across the street from Roshanara’s Bai’s, the little back lane seemed poised in a moment of uncertain silence as Padmabati wondered what she would do now. Then suddenly, an indefinable change came over her features, a slow, subtle, wonderful smile spread over her face, she got to her feet calling briskly for Rakhal-er ma and told her to lay out the body. Then she hurried out of that death-hushed house into the sunshine of the waiting street. It was calling her. She could hear it as she walked quickly along the row of print-shops, the clank of Biswambhar babu’s – no, her – little black printing press.

Valerie Miner Workshop

2010-11-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. I am in Bangladesh at present, using a rather temperamental keyboard that belongs to the Mad Hatter. The reason that I'm writing is that the very wonderful Valerie Miner is coming to JU to conduct a creative writing workshop on December 16. I need ten or at the most twelve names and email ids of people who want to participate. The only requirement is that you be passionate about writing and very good with the English language. It will be first come first served other than that. Send me a mail if you want to be part of it. The first twelve good candidates to send their names to my gmail account will be in. All WrIPpers have my gmail address. Valerie will share some material with you before the workshop. We will most probably hold the event in the AV Room provided that DrIP isn't using it then.

Final Story: Sanyasi

2010-11-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

I am stranger, a ghost, a drifting shadow. Nameless I float through the crowd, the throng in every shopping mall, village bazaar or seedy bar; I haunt the empty dancing hall, and night-deserted playing ground; hear all and never make a sound, unwatched I watch the world. Indeed I am a mendicant, a vagabond, a bum; indeed I am an only child, indeed I’m on the run. Four years I’ve roved both far and wide, through city and through countryside, unheard, invisible, absurd, four years I have not said a word, have perfected my surreptitious stare, four years I have not had a care.

I have sought oblivion, chased it into the sunset, into the night, chased it over the horizon, over mountains and oceans and deserts of sand and ice. Stripped of identity, shorn from home, I seek my anonymous divinity, seek my right to roam naked through the streets of life an alien, or expatriate at least.

Why do I wish to leave off life, and why have I left home?

Why do I seek to seek alone, and how should I presume?

The truth – I’m on a noble quest, to find a damsel in distress, and find a corner with a view, record, re-order and review the facts and add some jingle jangle, a fight scene or a love triangle, perhaps an ancient gypsy curse, perhaps I’ll write it all in verse.

I am the after-showtime stage, the back of messy notebook page, stalker, stranger, shadow, ghost, the unstamped, misdelivered post; I’m blank as I must need to be, show only half of what I see, indeed I am a raconteur, a poet and a thief.

I’ll steal your face to put in words, I’ll trap your soul to make it heard, I’ll read your stories through your eyes, then mix them up, then throw in lies, then shape and structure and then honour the story with a worthy genre.

I catch a train upon a whim; I do this quite a lot. People in transit are people standing still, existing temporarily in limbo, between worlds, their daily lives suspended or their holiday not begun. For a while they are a bit like me, at least not who they used to be. For a while they can be strange, or still, or stranger still be friends. I like to watch the people waiting for the train to start to stop, at stations like to watch them drop back into the sea of life, of lost humanity.

In the compartment with me are two middle income families, which may as well be one. Father works his government job, sleeps and files, collects his pay, and takes his two week holiday once a year with wife and kids to the same spot as the year before, the year before and the year before. Mother stays at home and cooks, cribs and quarrels and cares, takes an active interest in the personal affairs of neighbours and celebrities, and ancient family recipes. Chintu goes to school but likes to play cricket in corridors and passageways, his sister Sita gets good grades, and wears red ribbons on oily braids.

And then an army of maidservants and migrant labour whirlpooling into the anus big city, sucked in and spat out periodically, sometimes just sucked in.

And then the hawkers and tradesmen of various denominations, wearing their occupations around their necks or carrying them in boxes that became beds and jute bags that doubled as pillows on long journeys. Shoe-shine boys, muriwallahs, sellers of cigarettes, magazines, repackaged drinking water and dubious crisps, perhaps people with stories of their own to tell, who had become instead replaceable types, faceless, nameless, generic.

In that crowd I spot an interesting face. It bears the creases and wrinkles of a lifetime’s hard work, two oddly twinkling eyes and a luxuriant white handlebar moustache that twitched over a somewhat impish half-smile. The man wearing it stands out as one not bearing the mark of any trade. Dressed in a clean but slightly worn dhoti and a faded blue and white checked shirt, he would fit into any one of a hundred different roles.

I begin to ascribe him a background story. He is a farmer. Or perhaps the owner of a small grocery shop. He is travelling from his home in the village (small town?) to arrange the particulars of his daughter’s marriage. Or to procure a job for his eldest son. Or to beg a loan or pay a bribe, mortgage land or ask for a waiver of interest. Perhaps he is a proud, independent patriarch paying a visit to one of many children, or on his way to resolve a family dispute.

I notice that he carries nothing with himself, not even a small bag, and guess that his journey is perhaps not a significant one, but rather one that he undertakes regularly, perhaps every day, probably to work.

Or maybe nothing’s all he owns, or maybe he’s like me, itinerant and gypsy soul, a noble sanyasi. Or maybe even something more, or maybe he’s like me.

He sits by the open door, lights a biri and watches the countryside stream past. He puffs leisurely, stretching out and savouring each drag, blowing majestic jets of smoke through his nostrils. He seems lost in the moment, seems to be living it out of context, moulding it into its perfect place in his own mind.

The train moves fast on sea legs, wobbling but rattling out a steady rhythm over the tracks. The tracks seem to grow out of each other and melt into each other, seem to dance in frenzied grace beneath us. He stares, appears to contemplate them deeply.

He stubs his biri butt end and throws it out the door. Then he stands up, looks directly at me, winks, and jumps out after it.

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Note: Any and all grammatical, syntactical or other miscellaneous errors were made on purpose and may be written off to artistic license.

Promise.

Arijit Sett

UG-III

Roll-19