This is the blog for past and present students of the Writing in Practice course at Jadavpur University Department of English. It's firstly a forum for discussing the course, but also an exchange for creativity in the WIP community. WIP is open to final year UG and PG students and runs in the autumn semester. The course coordinator is Rimi B. Chatterjee (Erythrocyte).
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Prisoner
There’s no way of sounding less like a dumb Harlem rapper. Except by going slower and slower and slower. And still the words fall out of him, looser, less insistent, but still there. He sinks lower. In his bed, the mattress stings with sweat. The air. The air. He can still smell yesterday’s breath on it, and tomorrow’s. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. The only Shakespeare he ever learnt, except sing sorrow sorrow. But good win out in the end – no, that was Greek. Some thousand years have passed since then. This week, the counselor talked of parole. That’s all they talk about in this strange hole. How small the chance of getting out is if you break a warder’s arm, an inmate’s nose, a rule. You’re never leaving then – so play it cool. No fags. No speed. No sex. No talking! Eat the words. Gag on them. Retch. Keep walking, keep walking, just look straight and keep walking. That’s enough out of you, Hickin. Maloney quit. And keep your dick in. You, keep walking.
Every day the walls but then the walls draw closer every day. I can remember they were three feet apart last year, the year before that five. Unless this year it falls – the ceiling – it’ll have to be the walls. The wall, the walls will have me by September. This is the worst, the silence. Clots of sound burst in my head and bleed into the brain. There are no thoughts, and far too little time to separate sound, echo, syllable, rhyme -- all you feel is thought, think only pain. The walls will have it all, crush, flatten, grind the blind and groping fingers of the mind – right now, they’ve made a box around my head. This cell is used to fitting round the dead. My brain will be preserved in peeling plaster. Enduring fossil. Let the rest die faster.
Aparna Chaudhuri
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Prisoner
The metal felt different. The narrow bars, as I wrapped my hands around them, emanated an unknown quantity. This once, I was scared to hold on. The bright bulb before me never erred.
The steady, strong light hit my eyes again and again. My vision wavered; quite unlike ever before. My grip tightened; the rough iron flaked lightly. The index finger reached out involuntarily. This once, there was nothing to pull.
--
The river washed my feet. The dark waters swirled under the dim moonlight. The wet corpse turned around slowly, finally pulled under by the tide. Her death brought back life to me after these many years of living in shame.
Every time those men - who she had touched untowardly - walked by, I drifted back to my youth. Those years of foreboding and pain, which I lived through to merely have her as my own, inevitably returned with forceful agony. I couldn’t flinch anymore. But she wouldn’t listen. She had to go.
--
The light went off. Slow scraping noises, maybe of mice rummaging for scraps of that meager supper, inundated the narrow corridor. Voracious snores began their nightly crescendo. The regular rhythm began.
But I held on. The touch of cold metal reverberated through my body. My knees weakened, even as my spine stood straight. I had been through his before, but never in a confined space. The walls, it seemed, drew closer. The myriad stains left by numerous inmates taunted me. I had become a criminal.
--
I hadn’t thought of it when the night began. After an entire day of ensuring the minister got from a point to another, I was on the edge. It had been a particularly bad day. The minister was irked, and the traffic erratic. As a bodyguard, I had the job to do. My ward had reached home safe.
She had strutted in late, as usual. This time, though, with a paramour at her arms. I wasn’t supposed to be back this soon, but governmental plans tend to be fluid. He ran out at first sight. She had to remain. I had barely removed my holster.
--
The darkness begun to engulf me; I had to turn. The narrow window above my bed led out that sliver of light. I staggered ahead, hoping to draw my mind out of the vortex of memories, on to the bed. Sleep evaded me. I was alone.
The linen was sparse, with no mattress. The coir rope of the bed dug into my back. I had welts already; the interrogators had refused to be kind. My better half had been much more popular than I had ever thought.
--
She had smiled, almost without remorse. I had sat very, very still as she drew closer. That chiffon blew gently off her shoulder. She held my face; her hands grasping my rough cheek. Deliberately, her spine curved, till her mouth reached my ears. “I am sorry,” she whispered.
--
I looked down at my palm. My destiny had been written, I suppose. But I will die without remorse. Unlike her.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Trapped
My flat oval body has gotten flatter and my lustrous brown coat has lost its shine. He keeps shoving paper from under the glass. I am not a cow. And just because our kind has survived through the dinosaur age, does not mean that we do not have certain standards. You are possibly wondering what in luscious-pineapple’s name was I doing there. Ante likes her cheese puffs. And I like Ante’s behind. While we were really on our way next door I noticed, on the way, this man had the puffs and I, like a fool in love, thought I could get a bit of it for her. Sigh, I miss Ante and I miss the late night parties behind the gas cylinders. Someone would always get high on the gas.
None of my mates visit, not because I want vengeance (we really are the cool sort). If only the man would treat me with some respect and not keep abusing his computer and snoring in front of the TV, I think we’d really get along. My whole being aches, I keep trying to stretch my wings but I’m afraid I might bang into the glass. I might as well start seeing the silver lining through the muck and the filth (it’s not even the kind I like in the dark wet alleys).
I wonder if I’ll be immortalised in stories, the one that bore it all with his antennae held high, like Villey who married a rat. Yeah, it’s not so bad after all. I may even have my favourite rotten cabbage named after me. I guess we are both trapped in a way. Difference is he can’t help it.
-Amrita Kar, UG III
Monday, August 30, 2010
Untitled
I was a washed-up film-maker on a comeback trail, with loneliness by my side. I had tried my hand at many odd jobs, but nothing really worked. Every girl I loved would leave me within a month: film-making was my only hope, everything else seemed so meaningless. I made forty films within a couple of years, all in my head. And now I wanted to direct a movie in real life. Real life. It had lost all it's significance: there was nothing called 'reality' in my life. The indifference of producers, the snobbery of reputed directors and the ignominions mockery of aspiring colleagues were dreams which would soon disappear. But nothing changed: I was trapped in my dreams by my reality.
It's a funny thing about life: no matter how desperate you are, there's always a right or wrong to choose: conscience is the most paradoxical realm in the human mind. I used to walk in the rain, but still returned with blood-stains on my shirt. My semi-automatic had the power to change my reality, and made me feel like a king in the lonely city-streets where beggars and criminals shared equal space during the night. The rich folks were the only victims. We were responsilble for our lives for a few hours in the dark; we always slept during the day, and committed crime during the most silent hours of night. It was a compulsion initially, but slowly became an addiction. Violence is the greatest addiction in life; we ruled the streets of violence for almost a year before getting caught. Everything that followed was merely an epilogue to a violent film.
This prison cell has protected me from alienation, but the violent impulses still remain: the mortifications on my body testify the fact. Anger billows up, and gushes out from the veins: sometimes I feel the urge of slashing them. But I have a long life to live.
Rajdeep Pal
Sunday, August 29, 2010
And the Prisoners Eat Doves
Suddenly, he broke into a bout of perspiration. He felt very cold and he felt very angry. That same feeling of panic was gripping him again and he was not feeling as self-assured anymore. He was dizzy and he felt lonely. Very, very lonely. He murmured in inaudible whispers as he rocked back and forth. He needed some water. And he needed someone to hold. There were brilliant flashes of purple and red and he closed his eyes and desperately tried to remember snatches of his childhood. He was almost there. The golden autumn sunshine was bathing the wooden floor of the kitchen. And he saw his mother. She was knitting something and probably waiting for his sister to come home. He watched her like he used to watch her every move as a child.
Suddenly, he felt something going up his leg. A nimble, grotesque intruder.
-------
He was lying on the stiff, starched bed, sprawled on his belly and grinning. The cockroach was firmly in his grasp and he was toying around with it. Holding it by one of its legs and wriggling it in the air as it struggled to let loose of his hold. He shook it from time to time and it wriggled more violently. Suddenly, he felt furious at that disgusting little bug. How dare he protest against his authority! Well, his attempts at a tiny little mutiny would fail quite miserably, Michael told himself. He placed the insect on a small piece of stark white cardboard and with a pin, practised his surgical skills. Off went one of it’s tiny, hairy legs. It wriggled violently and squirmed under the pin. Then very carefully, he snipped off the lateral wing on the adjacent part of its body. He tilted his head on one side and paused- He was reasonably satisfied with the operation. He decided to let his patient free and picked up the cockroach with one of it’s legs and set it free on the bed. It tried to scurry as fast as it could, with its mutilated body and Michael never took his eyes off it. It was struggling, he observed, to latch on to life. Desperately trying to evade it’s predator. To cheat destiny. What a brave little idiot! He chuckled to himself, before carelessly inverting the insect on its back as it squirmed in agony and helplessness. He did not like most of his patients. Michael was bored by now, so he threw it down on vinyl floor and quickly stomped on it a couple of times. Euthanasia is a huge comfort, he reflected. Pity most people did not realise that. After brushing the bed off the dirt and invisible germs, he lied down on his side.
He was gingerly rubbing his forearm, where they pricked him. There was still some dry blood that had clotted and clung on to his skin. He rubbed it off and tasted it blankly. Vague thoughts filled his head and he was trying to picture the face of his last victim- the cockroach. He wondered how it would look like had it been a human being. It would look like his father-he concluded with an air of finality. He yawned. Sleep was descending on him like a heavy blanket as he curled his body into a sort of bundle. He shut his eyes.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The kitchen smelled familiar, of freshly baked pies. The brilliant rays of the sun made his face glow as his mother scooped him up and placed him on her lap. She had put down her needlework and her arms were around his neck. He buried his face in her warm softness and tried to hide in her long brown hair. She gently stroked his back and was probably singing a lullaby as he fell asleep in his soft little cocoon.
Debjanee Chakrabarti
UG-III
Cleaved
by Arnab
When you have nothing but your mind to entertain you, you start seeing things. Like the wall in front of me, with the myriad cracks spreading from the ceiling to the floor. The left one looks like a lightning bolt, as anyone can tell. The one on the right however, with the little corner edging inwards?...that looks like a gun. I think of telling Vincent but then remember its been a week since he's stopped speaking or even eating much. Vincent has started resembling a mantis, with his arms bent and stick like. Come to think of it, I’m very insect like myself. The little slab of glass nailed to the wall tells me exactly what kind: a cross between a fly, thanks to my bulging eyeballs and an earwig. That’s how my goatee’s shaped…like an earwig’s pincers.
The cell is damp but the food is excellent. It’s a pity Vincent doesn’t agree. He misses his wife’s cooking. Heck, I miss his wife’s cooking. I miss his wife more, but I won’t quite go there. Fifteen minutes earlier, a familiar gruff voice shouted "Food!" and shoved the bowl in, and today we have soup with nothing floating in it and bread only two days old by the looks of it. Oh joy! And still Vincent sleeps. You’d almost think he’s dead! As I sit down on the damp floor and say Grace and start my meal, I wonder why they never, in all this time, gave Vincent his share of food. He’s always been a skimpy eater but even then. Why should I have to share? Not that I had to for the last couple of days but its unfair. Much like its unfair of Vincent to have stopped entertaining me with his jokes and fond reminiscing. Such an enormous wimp, that man, but he was funny alright. And he helped make things less dreary. Vincent had a way with descriptions. The world as we knew it came alive right in front of my eyes. So yes, I miss Vincent and I wish he’d stop sulking and wake up. “Here’s to you, ol’ chap”, I say and make an invisible toast to him. He makes no noise, and lies there, deathly still.
I finish my meal and utter a sigh of contentment and look again. It’s no longer a gun now. It’s a house. It’s a house and wait there’s more…the little slab of wall that’s missing there, that right there is a backyard and the specks of dirt…they look like lilies, swaying in the breeze. And just then a breeze really does blow in through the grills from the sea just beyond . Reminds me of a few lines Vincent used to say aloud from time to time. Something that had lilies and the sea in it.
Someone’s coming. But I don’t feel like getting up. It feels pleasant suddenly. I think its Geoffrey again. What’s he want now?
“Oy Vincent, mate”, he said again, laughing that disgusting phlegmatic laugh of his. “Not too many days left now, is there?”
Something with the lilies and the sea. I forget the exact lines.
Imprisoned
My memory is sharp. I remember everything. I remember how they caught me, as clear as daylight, although it was a dark night when it happened. It was hunger that drove me to steal. We did not go into the village usually. It was an unspoken rule among our kind. The villagers were the enemy. Together, they were stronger and more cunning than we could ever be. But my children had starved for a week. It was the villagers’ fault that had happened. They were taking over our territory. I remember how I crept around the cottage, a black night hiding me from sight. But I was wrong. They had kept watch. They were upon me like a wave breaks upon a boulder. I had nowhere to run. The villagers surrounded me, taunting me with their flaming torches. I shrank back. Hunger had left me weak.
“Witch!” she called me, a woman in the background, “these Godforsaken creatures have wreaked havoc on us!” was what she exclaimed, to no one in particular. I could see her, framed in a doorway. Maybe she had children too. Why did she not understand my plight? My babies, starving, left alone. I had to get back to them. But the villagers would not let me. Someone fired at me.
I woke up in this room. Tired, hungry, scared. I ached for my babies. There is a window in this room. I spent days crying through it, for my children. Hoping they would hear. I gave up after a while. They were better off wherever they were, away from this hellhole.
The man with the whip comes to my room every night. I am scared of him. I do as I am told, or else He whips me. He is here now. He cracks the whip. I stand quickly and walk out the door. I walk onto the stage to jump on stools and wave at cheering crowds. It is another regular night for me, performing for the ‘Bagher Khela’ at the Minerva Circus.
Diya Sinha