This was written for the elements prompt, please excuse the lame title. It also needs a fair amount of refining, but this is as it was on the day we were supposed to finish it, so. [/lame justification]
*** ***
A girl walks into a forest, feet dragging and walks steadily—unsteadily—away from the fringes, away from the huts of hunters and woodcutters that cling to them like mud to the hem of her skirts, and deep into the heart of it, where even the birds are quiet. Her feet track blood on the fallen leaves and her slender body shivers with the coming cold—it is winter, and the trees are bare. And though she fears to sleep, yet sleep overwhelms her, and when she wakes, the sun has sunk and risen again, and the east sky seen through the latticed branches is a dark gold, shot with red.
And the woman standing before her, back to the bole of a tree, one slim arm twined about a low branch, watching her through narrowed eyes, is dark, near the colour of the earth and the wood—dark skin, black hair in coils, brilliant black eyes, and long black lashes. “Who are you?” she asks, not without trepidation—though the woman is slender and seems unarmed, she has seen too much of the malevolence of women.
“I am your mother,” she says, “and you, child, what is your name?”
“Vasudha,” she says, “but you are not my mother, lady, though you smile as she did, for she walked as though her feet were shackled and her back was bent and her shoulders stooped, and you carry yourself like a queen.”
“A queen? What know you of queens, child?” And yes, what can she know, mud-stained shabby clothes and small, dark body and simple braid and all? But she does.
“I served a queen, lady, till a week before.”
“A good queen?”
“Nay, lady.”
“A wise one?”
“Nay.”
“A beauty, then?”
“Yes, lady.” She stops, lips pressed tight, and the woman looks at her with kind eyes that remind her of the mother she lost so long ago. “But not kind.
“Neither a good queen, nor a wise one, nor kind.” The woman seats herself by Vasudha, puts a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You did well to leave her service.”
“I left it not, my lady,” she admits, “She sent me away.”
“Why sent she you away, my Vasudha?”
“She received in tribute a new vase,” she starts, stutters, stops, wonders why she speaks so freely to this woman she has never seen, and brings out the rest of her words in an agonised rush, “and I broke it.” The memory of the queen’s anger colours her cheeks a dark rich red, and she looks away, down at the barren ground, and the cracking carpet of leaves on it.
“For so little a crime?” the woman muses, voice full of restrained anger. “Have you a home to go to, child?”
“Nay, lady.” No home, she thinks, but the glittering Palace she has had to quit, that she has stayed in since she was a child sold in the slave-markets, plucked from kin and home in war.
The woman sighs and the leaves lift and fall with her exhale, and stands, one hand briefly on her head in benediction. “Then come to my house, child, and meet my kin.”
There is no guile in those eyes when she meets them, nothing but kindness, and she rises, and takes her hand. “You are too kind to me, lady.”
“My name is Vasundhara, child, and I bid you call me mother,” says the woman and smiles her dead mother’s gentle smile. “For as a mother I will be to you, for a little while, while you dwell in my home.”
“I cannot,” she says, and oh, it is hard to speak the words. “I have been forbidden shelter and food within the limits of Suryapur. It is death, mother, to disobey.”
“I live not in Suryapur, child, and I fear not the lady in Surajgarh. Come to my home, child, and live therein.”
***
It is no mean distance to Surajgarh—a full day’s ride, or a week’s walk, along Vasudha’s meandering route—and the trees ’round Vasundhara’s home have put out new leaves and new flowers, while those in the Palace gardens remain still bare, when a stranger enters first city limits, and then walks slowly up to the Palace gates. He comes wrapped in the scent of incense, and all he passes feel the balmy breath of spring wrap them ’round.
Into the Palace he walks alone, and into the audience-chamber, where Rani Indumati rules on her son’s behalf, and there stands, some unfelt wind ruffling his uttariya, and tangling in his hair, and making soft music of his strings of rudraksha and tulsi wood.
“Hail to thee, Queen of Suryapur,” he says, and his voice is the susurration of wind through trees laden down with the bounties of spring.
“Hail to thee, Brahman,” she answers, “who are ye, from whence come ye, and for what purpose?”
“My name, lady, is Anilesh, but that” he smiles, “is of no moment. I come from Raja Banhishwar, and I come, lady, with a message.”
“What message is this that you bear, from this King who I know not?”
“Raja Banhishwar rides to war against you, Rani Indumati, and that is the message I bear.”
“To war against me?” There is curiosity in her voice, and no fear. “But what harm have I or Suryapur done him?”
“You have greatly harmed his kin,” says Anilesh, and seems unaware that he should be afraid of Rani Indumati, that his hands should shake and his voice falter.
“How,” asks Indumati, and in her voice is anger, “can I harm the kin of a King I know not?”
“All men are kin to Raja Banhishwar,” says the Brahmin, and his voice carries the heat of the wind crossing desert sands, “and greatly have you harmed them.”
“How dare this King of no name and no realm thus criticise me?” The anger in her voice is evident now, and guards creep closer to the Brahmin.
“I have told you his name, lady, and all realms are his realm.”
“But not mine,” Indumati snarls, and gestures at the guards.
“Even yours, Rani Indumati, I promise you this,” answers Anilesh, nothing repentant, and raises his eyebrows as the guards put heavy hands on his shoulders. “I am a messenger and inviolate.”
“You have stood in my halls and insulted my rule. Neither caste nor age nor being a messenger can keep you inviolate, Brahmin.” Indumati smiles as Anilesh’s wrists are shackled. “Nor will your master be able to free you.”
Anilesh looks at his chained hands and then at the Queen, eyes cold. “I serve no master, lady. I came bearing a message,” he says, and his voice is an insidious icy wind, “and I have told you it.”
“And now you will regret telling me it, in my dungeons, without food and water.”
Anilesh smiles. “I am glad I came, lady, for I have now seen that in truth you are not a good queen, nor a wise one, nor even kind.”
“You dare?”
“I dare, lady. And now farewell.” The shackles fall clanking to the floor as white mist swirls around the Brahmin’s form, and his form dissipates, and the mist turns air.
***
At the height of summer, when all Suryapur’s farmers are praying daily for rain, for thunderstorm, for massing monsoon clouds, a barge sails up the river and docks at the Surajgarh jetty and a man walks to the city gates and hires a palanquin that takes him to the Palace. At the gates the guards move to stop him, and fail, and later think he flowed ’round them like a river breaking its banks, and shake their heads, bemused.
Into the Palace the man walks, and into the audience-chamber, where Rani Indumati doles out what she calls justice, and there quietly stands—the light from the many windows lighting his black curls blue, and shifting over his garments in illusory waves.
“Hail to thee, Rani Indumati,” he says, and his voice is waves lapping the shore.
“Hail to thee, stranger,” she answers, “who are ye and whence come ye?”
“I am Ambupati the merchant, lady, and I come from Rani Vasundhara with a message for thee.”
“What message do you bear?” she asks, and though her voice is steady, yet a shiver goes through her.
“I bear news of war, lady.” The Queen and all her court tense, for the sound of a tide rolling inexorably in is in their ears.
“Why bring you this message to me, when I never have seen your mistress?” The anger in her voice is tinted with fear—even Suryapur, prosperous and powerful cannot wage war against not one realm but two.
The merchant laughs like a jaltarang being played. “Oh, lady, she is no mistress of mine. And she wages war against you for you have grievously injured her kin.”
“I have injured no kin of hers,” Indumati says, fighting fear down in favour of rage.
“All women are kin to Vasundhara,” says Ambupati, and in his voice is the rumbling of a thousand thunder-storms. “And grievously have you injured them.”
“I let no man, nor woman, stand in my halls and instruct me in king-craft,” Indumati answers, voice deceptively gentle, eyes hard. “Even rulers I know not, even envoys they send.”
Ambupati inclines his curly head. “I have given you the message I bore, lady, and I will say naught else.”
“You will tell me, merchant, all I wish to know,” says the Lady of Surajgarh, as her guards chain the merchant’s hands behind him. “In the dank dungeons, you will tell me all.”
“I am a messenger, lady, and inviolate.”
“You are in my realm,” smiles Indumati, “and in my power.”
The merchant smiles, sunshine on water. “Aye lady.”
He lets them take him to the dungeons, and push him, still shackled, inside. But all night the guards hear the gurgling as of a spring rising from between the dungeon stones, and in the morning the merchant is absent from his cell, and the barge from the jetty. And the river slows to a trickle as it crosses Suryapur on its way to the sea, and all the streams become mud and all the pools dry.
***
It is monsoon by the seasons, but only by the seasons is it monsoon. No rain has fallen on Suryapur’s soil, and no trees have burst into leaf and flower and fruit. The royal granaries have begun to dole out grain, and even the seed-corn in the granaries has gone to fill the hungry bellies of the farmers. And then the cracked soil turns the brown of wet earth, and the trees unfurl new leaves and petals, and the mingled fragrances bring Rani Indumati into her gardens, away from the starving men she has had thrown into the dungeons for stealing food.
And in the garden, beside a flowering jutika plant, gathering up the fallen petals—so soon flowered an so soon fallen—she finds a dark, shabby, woman, easily dismissed as a gardener, save her bearing—when she unfolds, she stands as though no servant, as though a queen meeting another.
“Hail to thee, Rani Indumati, lady of Surajgarh, queen of Suryapur.” And though the voice is hoarse, the cadences are crisp, and so too are the words.
“Hail to thee, woman.” And she turns her face away, to look at the flowers and revel in their redolence. Surely the gods are pleased with them, to send thus this bounty, and without rain make the trees burst into leaf and flower and fruit, and turn the ashen bark the rich colour of the woman’s hands. The woman’s hands that are close to hers, now. And Indumati turns, all mellow pleasure gone—and rage coursing her veins. This woman, so shabby, earth-shaded skin and threadbare clothes—this servant, this shudra, how dare she? “I was not aware,” she bites out, longing for the guards she has dismissed, “that my gardeners employed woman to sweep away the leaves.”
“Do they so?” The woman’s eyes are like dead coals. “I know not, Rani Indumati, I number myself not amongst them.”
“Where number you yourself, then? Amongst the cleaners of slop buckets, or the eaters of carrion?”
The woman smiles, reaches to pluck a flower. “Neither, lady, though they are my kin, as all women are. I am Vasundhara.”
Indumati moves, finds a root catching at her feet, stumbles and steadies herself against a tree-trunk, flattens her back against it. “And you go needlessly to war against me.”
The woman plucks another flower, and another, and another, and begins twisting them all in a chain. “Not needlessly, Rani Indumati,” she admonishes, reaches out to pluck more flowers till the bough is bare, “for you have grievously injured my kin.”
“And you would avenge them?” She fights back the fear in her voice—this woman cannot fight, let alone defeat her. And yet she looks so calmly certain.
“I would,” answers Vasundhara, still calm, and raises her flowers to wrap them ’round her neck, and finds the chain fall short. “But that is not all the reason, lady, not the real reason.” She reaches her hand out towards the bare bough, and plucks a flower from its new burden. “You are not a good queen, nor a wise one, nor kind.” She twists the last flower into the chain and the chain round her neck. “And that, Rani Indumati, is why I go to war against you.”
And she smiles again, soft and gentle, and moves deeper into the trees, while Indumati stands in her garden, bark rough against her back, and the trees in her garden shed fruit and flower and leaf.
***
“Have we displeased the gods?” The raj-guru shakes his head, mute. “Then magic is being worked against us.”
“No, lady. These things that are happening—they owe naught to gods or magic. They are natural.”
Indumati grips the carved arms of her throne. “Natural? There has been no rain this year, no grain can be brought in because the river has dried, the land breaks the plough, and you call this natural, priest?”
It is autumn, and the granaries are bare, and the people, hungry all summer, have begun to starve, when a man on a bay horse comes riding through Surajgarh, up to the Palace gates. There guards try to stop him, this stranger dressed for war, but neither their flesh nor the iron-barred door can bar his way.
The murmuring audience-chamber falls silent as he enters, and the chastened raj-guru rushes gratefully away from Indumati. And Indumati rises from her throne to greet the stranger who stands before her throne, sunlight throwing living flame aross his copper ornaments.
“Hail to thee,” he says, “Rani Indumati of Surajgarh.”
“Hail to thee, northerner,” she answers. “Who are ye, and whence come ye, and for what purpose?”
“I am Raja Banhishwar,” says the man with flame in his hair, “and I come with news of your defeat, lady.”
“My defeat?” she asks, then again, forcing her voice steady, “My defeat, when you have not fought me?”
“Need I fight you, lady, when your granaries are empty, and your people starving? Your soldiers could not lift sword or spear against me.” He smiles with the warmth of a new-lit fire on a cold night. “Come, lady, step down from your throne.”
“You are one man,” she says, eyes wide and curious, “no matter how well-fed; and I have in this Palace at least a hundred warriors. And yet you speak of my defeat?”
“I am one man,” Banhishwar echoes, and draws from his scabbard a sword along the blade of which flames play. “But I am, lady, also the devourer and the scourge of all things. Step down, lady, for you are defeated.”
But Indumati does not step down. She stands before her throne and watches her guards let their weapons fall clattering to the ground, watches her son shrink behind his tutor, watches the raj-guru stare and stare and stare at Raja Banhishwar, as though his aged eyes see what no-one else can. And she pulls a sword from the nearest guard, hefts its weight in both hands, and moves towards the man with fire in his eyes, her own eyes clouded with crimson rage.
And Banhishwar laughs like the crackling of a forest fire and pulls her into his arms, and stifles her cries against his shoulder, and holds her as she burns to cinder, to ashes floating down to rest in a pile at his feet. “Not a good queen,” he says, as flakes of ash fall from his hands, “nor a wise one, nor kind. But brave.”
At the open doors of the audience-chamber the raj-guru stops him. “Will you rule us, Lord?” he asks, eyes wide and hands shaking.
“Nay, priest, not I,” he smiles, and takes the old man’s trembling hands between his. “We will bring you a queen in place of the one you have lost.”
***
It is winter, and the trees are bare. Yet, though it has not rained all year, nor has soil been ploughed, nor crops sown, yet in Suryapur there are bellies and granaries are filled and the river in danger of overflowing its banks.
A girl walks out of a forest, over a crackling carpet of leaves, under the dawn sky red against the latticed branches. She walks steadily away from the heart of it, where even the birds are silent, and at the eaves of the forest, where the huts of hunters and woodcutters cling like zari work to the hem of her skirts, she mounts a dappled horse and takes its reins from a white-garbed Brahmin.
And then she rides alone towards Surajgarh to take its throne.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
BOKAROO! BOKAROO AT LAST!
Nonsense word exercise.
By- Shayeari Dutta
Yet again, life stirred in the land of Wambo.
And yet again, life pierced its way into existence.
But the inhabitants were elated…gigantic thought-bubbles captured the coveted desire of their hearts…the desire to skate around the pulsating slimy orb of their suffocatingly tiny land and shout out to all who may hear- “bokaroo! Bokaroo at last!”
And youthful eddies of wind swooped down upon the echoes of their cry and carried them afar. The news must spread…and with that, a sudden burst of blinding light.
“that light, again!” the inhabitants exclaimed. This was the very thing they had been scavenging for all this while! “bokaroo at last!”
This light was indeed a strange creature. It had tentacles that were wax-tipped and always had a glaring tongue of fire burning at that tip. At first, it was an object of extreme paranoia. But with time, the inhabitants learnt to harness their fears and learn more about this strange creature….and so they learnt about the hypnotic powers of this flash of light…the power to distill and dispel clouds of one of the greatest things these inhabitants lacked in their lives- bokaroo! Clouds and clouds of intoxicating, rejuvenating bokaroo! Bokaroo of the sort that flushed their hearts with a cozy warmth. Bokaroo of the sort that made some of them tie their skates on to their heads and spin around till giddiness restrained their acts!
How they cherished this sudden feeling of bokaroo! Tears welled up in their eyes when sharp and stinging memory broke through the walls of their mind and reminded them of the infinite acts of desperation which they had adopted to grasp even a single wisp of this bokaroo…they had robbed chemical labs, begged at street corners, dealt with bootleggers for alluring packets screaming promises of ‘an eternal state of communion with bokaroo!’ only to be snubbed later by bitter grains of salt!
And now! Now bokaroo was in the very air!
With this they anticipated the entry of their god. The god, who would come riding the tumultuous winds with a charm that would melt the hearts of all. The god- he who is the harbinger of the elusive bokaroo that seems to take great delight in playing peek-a-boo with the inhabitants of Wambo. Now the king would come! He would come with his infant projects of urban and rural development. The government of Wambo would unthinkingly relinquish every acre of land that he has. The walls of his ridiculously tiny country would expand, every single brick would would be re-laid, far far away, and in the very heart of the country, the god’s secret laboratory would be established. Hush! The inhabitants would say, pointing bony fingers at the spherical building throbbing and vibrating with strange sounds from within… “hush! For the god is working in his great chambers for us!”
It did not seem to bother them that the god was from an alien world, that he had forced his way through, ripped through the gates of their land. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. The air of bokaroo was spread like an oxygen mask on a giant face turned pallid by dearth of oxygen. The air of bokaroo was a savior. And nothing mattered anymore….
But the oldest inhabitant remembered. He remembered the feel of a cloud of bokaroo in his palm. He was not supposed to touch it. So had the foreign god warned in his benign tone. But the cloud had rested there in the old inhabitants palm, almost as though it had a purpose to do so. At first, it just lay there, couched in his palm, purring like a contented cat, eliciting burps of bokaroo that almost tickled the inhabitant to death. But then, he slowly started feeling a pain. A distant pain, almost an out-of-body experience. But the pain escalated, it surged forth and he dropped the cloud with a loud cry. His palm was scalded, the acrid smell of roasted flesh snaked its way to his nostrils and fear gripped him tight, in a suffocating embrace.
‘I don’t want bokaroo!’ he had screamed, skating madly through the streets.
and the god directed him to be sent to an asylum.
But the truth would be told one day….some day…when the world of Wambo would care to listen to this madman.
Then, he would have horrific tales to re-count.
Tales of the chamber of the god expanding to gigantic proportions, of the great flood that the god had summoned to keep his precious chamber afloat, where millions had perished. And yet, the victorious shouts of ‘bokaroo is here! bokaroo is here!’ penetrating the eardrums. The heavens had screamed in agony, in extreme pain of what the madman did not know, and all the while that she shrieked and roared, the god had smartly pushed out his massive chamber in periodic heaves. And the chamber! The chamber was no more of the bulbous shape, now it was a creature with arms and legs! The government had cried out to the god- ‘please do not move out your project from our land! We would extend all the support that we can!’ yet, he had moved out. And with his exit, the world of Wambo had collapsed, like castles in the air built with a pack of cards…..
The land had met its own demise….
Bokaroo does not exit. Or maybe it does. But wait, of course it does!
They sell it in inconspicuous bottles without labels on them. The inhabitants of Wambo pierce their veins with syringes spurting bokaroo. Sometimes they purchase it in dark alleyways, packets of powdery bokaroo which they snort. And how it fills them with limitless bokaroo!
Ah! Bokaroo! The very source of all life!
{Wambo is a Proto-Germanic word, (hypothetical prehistoric ancestor of all Germanic languages, including English.) meaning, the womb.}
By- Shayeari Dutta
Yet again, life stirred in the land of Wambo.
And yet again, life pierced its way into existence.
But the inhabitants were elated…gigantic thought-bubbles captured the coveted desire of their hearts…the desire to skate around the pulsating slimy orb of their suffocatingly tiny land and shout out to all who may hear- “bokaroo! Bokaroo at last!”
And youthful eddies of wind swooped down upon the echoes of their cry and carried them afar. The news must spread…and with that, a sudden burst of blinding light.
“that light, again!” the inhabitants exclaimed. This was the very thing they had been scavenging for all this while! “bokaroo at last!”
This light was indeed a strange creature. It had tentacles that were wax-tipped and always had a glaring tongue of fire burning at that tip. At first, it was an object of extreme paranoia. But with time, the inhabitants learnt to harness their fears and learn more about this strange creature….and so they learnt about the hypnotic powers of this flash of light…the power to distill and dispel clouds of one of the greatest things these inhabitants lacked in their lives- bokaroo! Clouds and clouds of intoxicating, rejuvenating bokaroo! Bokaroo of the sort that flushed their hearts with a cozy warmth. Bokaroo of the sort that made some of them tie their skates on to their heads and spin around till giddiness restrained their acts!
How they cherished this sudden feeling of bokaroo! Tears welled up in their eyes when sharp and stinging memory broke through the walls of their mind and reminded them of the infinite acts of desperation which they had adopted to grasp even a single wisp of this bokaroo…they had robbed chemical labs, begged at street corners, dealt with bootleggers for alluring packets screaming promises of ‘an eternal state of communion with bokaroo!’ only to be snubbed later by bitter grains of salt!
And now! Now bokaroo was in the very air!
With this they anticipated the entry of their god. The god, who would come riding the tumultuous winds with a charm that would melt the hearts of all. The god- he who is the harbinger of the elusive bokaroo that seems to take great delight in playing peek-a-boo with the inhabitants of Wambo. Now the king would come! He would come with his infant projects of urban and rural development. The government of Wambo would unthinkingly relinquish every acre of land that he has. The walls of his ridiculously tiny country would expand, every single brick would would be re-laid, far far away, and in the very heart of the country, the god’s secret laboratory would be established. Hush! The inhabitants would say, pointing bony fingers at the spherical building throbbing and vibrating with strange sounds from within… “hush! For the god is working in his great chambers for us!”
It did not seem to bother them that the god was from an alien world, that he had forced his way through, ripped through the gates of their land. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. The air of bokaroo was spread like an oxygen mask on a giant face turned pallid by dearth of oxygen. The air of bokaroo was a savior. And nothing mattered anymore….
But the oldest inhabitant remembered. He remembered the feel of a cloud of bokaroo in his palm. He was not supposed to touch it. So had the foreign god warned in his benign tone. But the cloud had rested there in the old inhabitants palm, almost as though it had a purpose to do so. At first, it just lay there, couched in his palm, purring like a contented cat, eliciting burps of bokaroo that almost tickled the inhabitant to death. But then, he slowly started feeling a pain. A distant pain, almost an out-of-body experience. But the pain escalated, it surged forth and he dropped the cloud with a loud cry. His palm was scalded, the acrid smell of roasted flesh snaked its way to his nostrils and fear gripped him tight, in a suffocating embrace.
‘I don’t want bokaroo!’ he had screamed, skating madly through the streets.
and the god directed him to be sent to an asylum.
But the truth would be told one day….some day…when the world of Wambo would care to listen to this madman.
Then, he would have horrific tales to re-count.
Tales of the chamber of the god expanding to gigantic proportions, of the great flood that the god had summoned to keep his precious chamber afloat, where millions had perished. And yet, the victorious shouts of ‘bokaroo is here! bokaroo is here!’ penetrating the eardrums. The heavens had screamed in agony, in extreme pain of what the madman did not know, and all the while that she shrieked and roared, the god had smartly pushed out his massive chamber in periodic heaves. And the chamber! The chamber was no more of the bulbous shape, now it was a creature with arms and legs! The government had cried out to the god- ‘please do not move out your project from our land! We would extend all the support that we can!’ yet, he had moved out. And with his exit, the world of Wambo had collapsed, like castles in the air built with a pack of cards…..
The land had met its own demise….
Bokaroo does not exit. Or maybe it does. But wait, of course it does!
They sell it in inconspicuous bottles without labels on them. The inhabitants of Wambo pierce their veins with syringes spurting bokaroo. Sometimes they purchase it in dark alleyways, packets of powdery bokaroo which they snort. And how it fills them with limitless bokaroo!
Ah! Bokaroo! The very source of all life!
{Wambo is a Proto-Germanic word, (hypothetical prehistoric ancestor of all Germanic languages, including English.) meaning, the womb.}
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Thursday Morning
Nonsense word exercise.
In Thursday morning’s class the insanely beaming teacher asks us to speak on why each of us is special. Every child must have secret specialty hidden somewhere about them, or primary schools would cease to function. Freckle-faced Simran is special because of her purple pencil-box with Mickey Mouse on it. Joydeep, clumsily fixing the spectacles on his nose, is special because his class-works never fail to return an A+. Anurag, stodgy and heavy-breathing, is special because his mum bakes the best chocolate cakes in the world.
I try to lower myself into my desk till the teacher’s eyes inevitably spot me. ‘You, Chintan! Tell your friends why you are special, won’t you?’
‘Um. I’m not,’ I give her a stupid, confused stare as I drag myself up to stand. ‘Really,’ I add by the way of emphasis, taking care to sound just the right amount of pathetic.
My classmates duly dissolve into peals of laughter. Someone snickers behind my back. The teacher quips, ‘Oh, my poor boy,’ and proceeds to silence the uproarious class. With a sigh of satisfied resignation, I sink back into my seat and return my attention outside the window, where a guava tree sways gently in the summer breeze just outside the school wall.
That guava tree is my regular refuge. Its highest branches – so thin that even a cat can’t balance on them – are a dreamy nook of intertwining light and shadow. The leaves dance lightly in the breeze, tickling your skin continuously, making you flicker and ripple at the edges. You can see for miles from up there. You can occasionally let the air current dislodge you off your branch and gently float about in circles above the city, shimmering transparently in the sunlight and not upsetting any cosmic balance anywhere in the world. You can even take a peaceful nap, save for the trouble of the rare collision with a bewildered bird in mid-flight. While the rest of my class learns the mysteries of multiplication, I spend my afternoons on the top of the guava tree dangling my legs.
It’s a good thing that the teachers have given up on me. No one bothers me any more if I spend the entire day dozing on my desk, or staring glassily out of the window. Some children are born… a little slow, as it is politely said. It’s not anyone’s fault, especially if those particular anyones are being paid good money by the parents of the said child to keep him at their school.
‘What’s up, eh, Chintu Master?’
I turn my head to look into the wild, grinning face of Anita inches away from mine. It amazes me how Anita always manages to look scruffy – even her shimmer has a grainy quality to it. Anita is twelve and agile like a monkey. When she wants, she can slip through cracks in windows and holes in fences as if her body did not possess any mass at all.
Back in school Anita studies two classes above me and scores even worse. Anita is a certified retard. Her parents spend thousands of rupees running from child psychiatrist to counsellor and back again. Anita doesn’t care. She dislikes that other life far worse than me. She despises every bit of it.
This particular afternoon Anita is puffing on a small, oblong item that looks to me suspiciously like a beedi. ‘You’re smoking,’ I tell her reproachfully.
‘Ah, yes,’ Anita gives me a toothy grin. ‘Wanna try?’
‘No, thank you,’ I grimace, angrily adding, ‘This your newest hobby, is it? What would your parents think if they found out?’
‘Who cares? My parents think I’m a drooling, babbling retard,’ Anita shrugs. She sways her legs furiously. ‘A stain on their blood.’
‘That’s because you’ve never spoken to them, Anita. You’ve never even uttered a word! You’re so smart, maybe you could even pass off as a normal kid if you tried. Why don’t you make the effort?’
‘Well, who wants to be a normal kid? My sister was a normal kid and she will be married off as soon as her college is over and be someone’s miserable housewife all the rest of her life. I say a zanit’s life for me!’ Anita grins widely and stretches.
I don’t answer, so Anita drags at her beedi happily and rattles away, ‘Say, did you hear of that massive power failure in Bombay yesterday? That was Manish Iyer, you remember him? Tall dark guy with a severe case of acne, used to go to DAV Public? It’s unbelievable the things he does with technology! And that doctor in Vellore whose pants spontaneously caught fire last week? Such a roar! That was a girl called Preeti Mohanty from Cuttack. Just a little older than me. Her folks had taken her for treatment out there.’
She laughs aloud by herself, swaying her head like a transparent dusty doll. Then she suddenly notices my silence and pokes me in the ribs. ‘Don’t you think they’re the coolest, Chintu? When I grow up I’ll be cool like them! Hey, what’s up, kid? Want me to punch that long face out of you?’
‘Those people sound just as horrible as you,’ I return her glare.
Anita smirks at me and aims the remaining beedi at a sparrow perched a few branches away from us. She misses, and the beedi lands in our school courtyard. ‘Then what do you want to do, sit on a guava tree like a sad little ghost all your life?’
‘I don’t know, Anita,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t you think we zanits could do better things than playing nasty pranks on normal people? We can do so many good things, useful things... we can help people, can’t we?’
‘And what good will that be to us? They’ll never find out who did those things.’
‘They would, if we told them,’ I tell her. ‘We could all tell them. There are so many of us.’
‘Hahahaha, you think they would? Is that really what you think?’ Anita laughs out at my face with sudden viciousness, and then her voice turns dark, ‘Listen, kiddo, how old are you? Ten next month, eh? There’s a lot about the world you need to learn. You’ll tell them, and they’ll believe you, a bunch of slow-brained, drooling, stuttering children who can’t tell mama from papa? They’ll lock you up in asylums for life, and you’ll be thankful if they do that, because at least in asylums they leave you alone. Or else they’ll send you to laboratories and cut you up, try to find out what’s special in your genes and how they can replicate them. They’ll keep you under watch, stick things into you, make laws and invent devices to ban you from going where you want and doing what you like… You’ll never, never be able to fly about by yourself!’
She pauses to catch her breath, and then dangles a finger in front of my nose, ‘If even one of us gives away, all of us are destroyed. Never forget that! A zanit keeps his lips zipped.’
I stare at her in horror, the callous, cheeky Anita I knew peeling away into this new, ferocious person who sounded so much like as adult. ‘Where – where did you find out these things?’
She reaches out and pats my cheek with her small, rough hand. The unprecedented gesture of affection takes me by surprise. ‘We all find out, Chintu Master,’ she sighs, ‘You’re still too young to worry about these things. Enjoy your stupid guava tree! I’m here for you, no?’
The school bell rings below us and Anita’s face lights up with another grin. ‘Well, here they come! See you around, Chintu Master… Ta!’ She puckers her lips and throws me a flying kiss – knowing perfectly well that it embarrasses me – does a couple of somersaults in the air above the guava tree and glides off smoothly towards the school building. I will follow her after a few minutes: the older classes are released before the younger ones so it will still be a while before a teacher gently nudges me to leave my seat and start walking towards the gates.
For now I dangle my legs at the guava tree and wonder, How difficult is it to be special? All you need is a mum who bakes the best chocolate cakes in the world. How difficult is it to not be special? I did not choose to be a retard, I did not choose to be a zanit. I cannot tell if I would’ve taken this, given a choice. I know Anita will say she would, but would she either, honestly?
But a zanit keeps his lips zipped, even to his own kind. So be it, then. So be it.
Monidipa Mondal
Word picked: zanit.
---
In Thursday morning’s class the insanely beaming teacher asks us to speak on why each of us is special. Every child must have secret specialty hidden somewhere about them, or primary schools would cease to function. Freckle-faced Simran is special because of her purple pencil-box with Mickey Mouse on it. Joydeep, clumsily fixing the spectacles on his nose, is special because his class-works never fail to return an A+. Anurag, stodgy and heavy-breathing, is special because his mum bakes the best chocolate cakes in the world.
I try to lower myself into my desk till the teacher’s eyes inevitably spot me. ‘You, Chintan! Tell your friends why you are special, won’t you?’
‘Um. I’m not,’ I give her a stupid, confused stare as I drag myself up to stand. ‘Really,’ I add by the way of emphasis, taking care to sound just the right amount of pathetic.
My classmates duly dissolve into peals of laughter. Someone snickers behind my back. The teacher quips, ‘Oh, my poor boy,’ and proceeds to silence the uproarious class. With a sigh of satisfied resignation, I sink back into my seat and return my attention outside the window, where a guava tree sways gently in the summer breeze just outside the school wall.
That guava tree is my regular refuge. Its highest branches – so thin that even a cat can’t balance on them – are a dreamy nook of intertwining light and shadow. The leaves dance lightly in the breeze, tickling your skin continuously, making you flicker and ripple at the edges. You can see for miles from up there. You can occasionally let the air current dislodge you off your branch and gently float about in circles above the city, shimmering transparently in the sunlight and not upsetting any cosmic balance anywhere in the world. You can even take a peaceful nap, save for the trouble of the rare collision with a bewildered bird in mid-flight. While the rest of my class learns the mysteries of multiplication, I spend my afternoons on the top of the guava tree dangling my legs.
It’s a good thing that the teachers have given up on me. No one bothers me any more if I spend the entire day dozing on my desk, or staring glassily out of the window. Some children are born… a little slow, as it is politely said. It’s not anyone’s fault, especially if those particular anyones are being paid good money by the parents of the said child to keep him at their school.
---
‘What’s up, eh, Chintu Master?’
I turn my head to look into the wild, grinning face of Anita inches away from mine. It amazes me how Anita always manages to look scruffy – even her shimmer has a grainy quality to it. Anita is twelve and agile like a monkey. When she wants, she can slip through cracks in windows and holes in fences as if her body did not possess any mass at all.
Back in school Anita studies two classes above me and scores even worse. Anita is a certified retard. Her parents spend thousands of rupees running from child psychiatrist to counsellor and back again. Anita doesn’t care. She dislikes that other life far worse than me. She despises every bit of it.
This particular afternoon Anita is puffing on a small, oblong item that looks to me suspiciously like a beedi. ‘You’re smoking,’ I tell her reproachfully.
‘Ah, yes,’ Anita gives me a toothy grin. ‘Wanna try?’
‘No, thank you,’ I grimace, angrily adding, ‘This your newest hobby, is it? What would your parents think if they found out?’
‘Who cares? My parents think I’m a drooling, babbling retard,’ Anita shrugs. She sways her legs furiously. ‘A stain on their blood.’
‘That’s because you’ve never spoken to them, Anita. You’ve never even uttered a word! You’re so smart, maybe you could even pass off as a normal kid if you tried. Why don’t you make the effort?’
‘Well, who wants to be a normal kid? My sister was a normal kid and she will be married off as soon as her college is over and be someone’s miserable housewife all the rest of her life. I say a zanit’s life for me!’ Anita grins widely and stretches.
I don’t answer, so Anita drags at her beedi happily and rattles away, ‘Say, did you hear of that massive power failure in Bombay yesterday? That was Manish Iyer, you remember him? Tall dark guy with a severe case of acne, used to go to DAV Public? It’s unbelievable the things he does with technology! And that doctor in Vellore whose pants spontaneously caught fire last week? Such a roar! That was a girl called Preeti Mohanty from Cuttack. Just a little older than me. Her folks had taken her for treatment out there.’
She laughs aloud by herself, swaying her head like a transparent dusty doll. Then she suddenly notices my silence and pokes me in the ribs. ‘Don’t you think they’re the coolest, Chintu? When I grow up I’ll be cool like them! Hey, what’s up, kid? Want me to punch that long face out of you?’
‘Those people sound just as horrible as you,’ I return her glare.
Anita smirks at me and aims the remaining beedi at a sparrow perched a few branches away from us. She misses, and the beedi lands in our school courtyard. ‘Then what do you want to do, sit on a guava tree like a sad little ghost all your life?’
‘I don’t know, Anita,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t you think we zanits could do better things than playing nasty pranks on normal people? We can do so many good things, useful things... we can help people, can’t we?’
‘And what good will that be to us? They’ll never find out who did those things.’
‘They would, if we told them,’ I tell her. ‘We could all tell them. There are so many of us.’
‘Hahahaha, you think they would? Is that really what you think?’ Anita laughs out at my face with sudden viciousness, and then her voice turns dark, ‘Listen, kiddo, how old are you? Ten next month, eh? There’s a lot about the world you need to learn. You’ll tell them, and they’ll believe you, a bunch of slow-brained, drooling, stuttering children who can’t tell mama from papa? They’ll lock you up in asylums for life, and you’ll be thankful if they do that, because at least in asylums they leave you alone. Or else they’ll send you to laboratories and cut you up, try to find out what’s special in your genes and how they can replicate them. They’ll keep you under watch, stick things into you, make laws and invent devices to ban you from going where you want and doing what you like… You’ll never, never be able to fly about by yourself!’
She pauses to catch her breath, and then dangles a finger in front of my nose, ‘If even one of us gives away, all of us are destroyed. Never forget that! A zanit keeps his lips zipped.’
I stare at her in horror, the callous, cheeky Anita I knew peeling away into this new, ferocious person who sounded so much like as adult. ‘Where – where did you find out these things?’
She reaches out and pats my cheek with her small, rough hand. The unprecedented gesture of affection takes me by surprise. ‘We all find out, Chintu Master,’ she sighs, ‘You’re still too young to worry about these things. Enjoy your stupid guava tree! I’m here for you, no?’
The school bell rings below us and Anita’s face lights up with another grin. ‘Well, here they come! See you around, Chintu Master… Ta!’ She puckers her lips and throws me a flying kiss – knowing perfectly well that it embarrasses me – does a couple of somersaults in the air above the guava tree and glides off smoothly towards the school building. I will follow her after a few minutes: the older classes are released before the younger ones so it will still be a while before a teacher gently nudges me to leave my seat and start walking towards the gates.
---
For now I dangle my legs at the guava tree and wonder, How difficult is it to be special? All you need is a mum who bakes the best chocolate cakes in the world. How difficult is it to not be special? I did not choose to be a retard, I did not choose to be a zanit. I cannot tell if I would’ve taken this, given a choice. I know Anita will say she would, but would she either, honestly?
But a zanit keeps his lips zipped, even to his own kind. So be it, then. So be it.
Monidipa Mondal
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Nonsense word exercise: grumelisk
At the crossing of Andromeda Avenue and Lakshmi Lane there stands a very grimy statue of Confucius, his features obscured almost beyond recognition by the incorrigible smog of the lower levels of Paradise.
If your vision of heaven is filled with graceful arches and naked cherubs and voluptuous apsaras, then let me tell you, you’d have to be the bloody Prince of Eden himself to get them. For the rest, especially here in the lower levels, Heaven is just another shanty-town. Everything is caked in sooty squalor because of the filth percolating down from the upper levels. Shabby and derelict apartment buildings lean on each other’s shoulders, spilling onto the narrow, dimly lit, cobbled streets. Welcome to the divine tragedy.
But I digress. I doffed my halo to the grimy sage before me and ambled down Lakshmi Lane until I came upon the Café Manichaean. It lives up to its name by seeming to be in eternal struggle with itself to bring some kind of uniformity to the décor. Mismatched chairs stand huddled around dirt-encrusted antediluvian tables. Each wall of the tiny cafe had several layers of peeling wallpaper on them, each a different design. I swear, even the waitors wore mismatched uniforms.
I perused the menu, holding it with my fingernails for fear of infection and thought it safe to order an apple cider. I had hardly handed back the menu when I saw Terziel enter the shop. “A small coffee,” he said to waiter without prelude. Noting down the order, the genie disapparated into the kitchen below, perhaps in a hurry to get away from Terziel’s singularly ugly face, which no amount of ambrosia can cure.
“Do you have the grumelisk I wanted?” he asked once he was sure no one was eavesdropping.
“Certainly. But explain to me exactly how you intend to kill GOD,” I replied.
“How I intend to kill GOD?” he repeated. “It’s really very simple. But first, do you know what grumelisk is?”
“Of course,” said I. Fuck you, I thought. How dare he insult me like this! As if there was a single apparition in heaven that did not know. It is, in a word, the quintessence of one’s soul. In effect, it is used as a raw material to power the divine city’s generators. Every new soul that manages to reach heaven has to pay a ‘grumelisk levy’ of one-fifth of one’s soul in exchange for a visa into Paradise. This collected soul is decomposed in special vats into grumelisk before entering the city’s power grid. The tax has been rising steeply for the past few centuries from a mere two percent in my time, more than five hundred years ago.
The waiter deposited our orders on the table and floated away again. Terziel wrinkled up his nose at the smell of alcohol in my cider. Fuck you, I thought again. Paradise was a better place without the likes of you!
Ah, heaven had been a very different city in the day. It was only seven levels high when I first arrived here. But the great spurt in human population following the Industrial revolution has led the city into a state of gargantuan overpopulation. The city has grown into a massive eighty-two levels high, with each new level that is added filthier, and more crowded, and more dangerous than the one above.
And correspondingly GOD’s powers have grown. Gaian Operations Division, as it was once called, controls grumelisk production, which means GOD controls energy, which means GOD controls the city. GOD’s energy monopoly has allowed its insidious growth into a Byzantine monstrosity that uses new souls pretty much as walking-talking grumelisk production units. GOD has introduced twenty new forms, to be filled in by immigrants seeking to enter heaven, in the last century alone, charging 1% soul for each. By the time new immigrants arrive at the Pearly Gates for the grumelisk levy of 20%, they may not 20% to give. I have heard of many souls who have simply disintegrate onto the floor just then and there. GOD doesn’t care.
Gaian Operations Division is our only interface with the mortal realm. Once a benign and innocuous agency, it has grown into a draconian and dictatorial bureaucracy which controls every aspect of our lives. Even Archangel Michael, the duly elected President of Heaven, does not dare to oppose GOD publicly. They maintain a vicious shadow government which monitor’s people’s lives without their knowledge. If a prominent angel disappears mysteriously, we all know he’s been fed to the city generators by an agent of GOD for publicly denouncing them.
Terziel took a sip of his coffee and said, “Well I shall use the grumelisk against GOD. Ironic, don’t you think? I have recently perfected a device that runs on grumelisk … an explosive device which can destroy every soul in the radius of one kilometer. The device is strapped onto my chest. I need only push a button, and…boom! Penetrating the facility will be cherub’s play with the gate-pass you have provided me. You have very influential backers.”
“You can be damn sure I do,” I said, keeping my voice barely above a whisper. I did not intend to meet my end as raw material for powering heaven’s anti-gravity engines. Not when I’ve come this far.
Terziel was exactly the thing I had hoped for: hysteric, malicious and stubborn. You could say he was fulfilling his destiny. You see, Terziel had been a terrorist in his before-life. A suicide bomber, to be precise. In fact, he was one of the last terrorists to get into paradise before the 723rd Mount Kailash Conference back in `82, which banned people with a history of violence from entering heaven.
Terziel never had a chance. Public opinion being the way it is, the stigma of terrorism hung over him like an ominous cloud. Nobody wanted to hire him. His last steady job had been as a garbage collector in Valhalla New Town. That had been seven months ago. He had lived his entire afterlife as a dreg in the lower levels, and he could take no more. He focused his anger against GOD. GOD had stopped others like him from entering. GOD bled him dry of grumelisk every chance they got. GOD had never explained to him that the phrase “seventy-two virgins” isn’t gender-specific.
“But won’t you perish in the blast as well?” I asked, feigning concern as I had a sip of my cider.
“A small price to pay,” he replied. “Trust me, I’ve done this before.”
“Excellent,” I said, as I indicated to the suitcase sitting at my feet. “The grumelisk as per your specifications, in concentrated vials.”
“Your master must be a powerful man, to acquire this much grumelisk in such a short time,” he answered.
I thought to myself, You have no idea.
At last, GOD shall fall! Years of planning are finally to bear fruit! Luckily, their facilities stand well on the outskirts of the divine city. The annihilation of a few thousand new immigrants as collateral damage was well-justified.
“It happens tomorrow,” Terziel said, as he got up to leave.
“Godspeed,” I said without thinking. With a withering look, Terziel was gone, his coffee unfinished. If all went according to plan, I would not be meeting him again.
I gave a sigh and reflected upon my inner demons, for you see I have many. In fact I always keep one tucked inside my left nostril in case I need to send a message across quickly.
“Take a message,” I commanded, as it hovered obediently at nose level.
My Lord President Michael,
Our plans are going perfectly. GOD shall fall tomorrow, and you shall soon be undisputed master of Heaven and Earth. I can only pray that we do not meet the same fate as befell your brother Lucifer.
Your most obedient servant,
Joanne de Arc.
P.S. Can’t wait to see you tonight.
------------------------------------------------
Rimidi was good enought to point out that Terziel has in him shades of Achmed the dead terrorist. However, the biggest influence was Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", which taught me to verbalize my deep suspicion of God(s).--- Sharad
At the crossing of Andromeda Avenue and Lakshmi Lane there stands a very grimy statue of Confucius, his features obscured almost beyond recognition by the incorrigible smog of the lower levels of Paradise.
If your vision of heaven is filled with graceful arches and naked cherubs and voluptuous apsaras, then let me tell you, you’d have to be the bloody Prince of Eden himself to get them. For the rest, especially here in the lower levels, Heaven is just another shanty-town. Everything is caked in sooty squalor because of the filth percolating down from the upper levels. Shabby and derelict apartment buildings lean on each other’s shoulders, spilling onto the narrow, dimly lit, cobbled streets. Welcome to the divine tragedy.
But I digress. I doffed my halo to the grimy sage before me and ambled down Lakshmi Lane until I came upon the Café Manichaean. It lives up to its name by seeming to be in eternal struggle with itself to bring some kind of uniformity to the décor. Mismatched chairs stand huddled around dirt-encrusted antediluvian tables. Each wall of the tiny cafe had several layers of peeling wallpaper on them, each a different design. I swear, even the waitors wore mismatched uniforms.
I perused the menu, holding it with my fingernails for fear of infection and thought it safe to order an apple cider. I had hardly handed back the menu when I saw Terziel enter the shop. “A small coffee,” he said to waiter without prelude. Noting down the order, the genie disapparated into the kitchen below, perhaps in a hurry to get away from Terziel’s singularly ugly face, which no amount of ambrosia can cure.
“Do you have the grumelisk I wanted?” he asked once he was sure no one was eavesdropping.
“Certainly. But explain to me exactly how you intend to kill GOD,” I replied.
“How I intend to kill GOD?” he repeated. “It’s really very simple. But first, do you know what grumelisk is?”
“Of course,” said I. Fuck you, I thought. How dare he insult me like this! As if there was a single apparition in heaven that did not know. It is, in a word, the quintessence of one’s soul. In effect, it is used as a raw material to power the divine city’s generators. Every new soul that manages to reach heaven has to pay a ‘grumelisk levy’ of one-fifth of one’s soul in exchange for a visa into Paradise. This collected soul is decomposed in special vats into grumelisk before entering the city’s power grid. The tax has been rising steeply for the past few centuries from a mere two percent in my time, more than five hundred years ago.
The waiter deposited our orders on the table and floated away again. Terziel wrinkled up his nose at the smell of alcohol in my cider. Fuck you, I thought again. Paradise was a better place without the likes of you!
Ah, heaven had been a very different city in the day. It was only seven levels high when I first arrived here. But the great spurt in human population following the Industrial revolution has led the city into a state of gargantuan overpopulation. The city has grown into a massive eighty-two levels high, with each new level that is added filthier, and more crowded, and more dangerous than the one above.
And correspondingly GOD’s powers have grown. Gaian Operations Division, as it was once called, controls grumelisk production, which means GOD controls energy, which means GOD controls the city. GOD’s energy monopoly has allowed its insidious growth into a Byzantine monstrosity that uses new souls pretty much as walking-talking grumelisk production units. GOD has introduced twenty new forms, to be filled in by immigrants seeking to enter heaven, in the last century alone, charging 1% soul for each. By the time new immigrants arrive at the Pearly Gates for the grumelisk levy of 20%, they may not 20% to give. I have heard of many souls who have simply disintegrate onto the floor just then and there. GOD doesn’t care.
Gaian Operations Division is our only interface with the mortal realm. Once a benign and innocuous agency, it has grown into a draconian and dictatorial bureaucracy which controls every aspect of our lives. Even Archangel Michael, the duly elected President of Heaven, does not dare to oppose GOD publicly. They maintain a vicious shadow government which monitor’s people’s lives without their knowledge. If a prominent angel disappears mysteriously, we all know he’s been fed to the city generators by an agent of GOD for publicly denouncing them.
Terziel took a sip of his coffee and said, “Well I shall use the grumelisk against GOD. Ironic, don’t you think? I have recently perfected a device that runs on grumelisk … an explosive device which can destroy every soul in the radius of one kilometer. The device is strapped onto my chest. I need only push a button, and…boom! Penetrating the facility will be cherub’s play with the gate-pass you have provided me. You have very influential backers.”
“You can be damn sure I do,” I said, keeping my voice barely above a whisper. I did not intend to meet my end as raw material for powering heaven’s anti-gravity engines. Not when I’ve come this far.
Terziel was exactly the thing I had hoped for: hysteric, malicious and stubborn. You could say he was fulfilling his destiny. You see, Terziel had been a terrorist in his before-life. A suicide bomber, to be precise. In fact, he was one of the last terrorists to get into paradise before the 723rd Mount Kailash Conference back in `82, which banned people with a history of violence from entering heaven.
Terziel never had a chance. Public opinion being the way it is, the stigma of terrorism hung over him like an ominous cloud. Nobody wanted to hire him. His last steady job had been as a garbage collector in Valhalla New Town. That had been seven months ago. He had lived his entire afterlife as a dreg in the lower levels, and he could take no more. He focused his anger against GOD. GOD had stopped others like him from entering. GOD bled him dry of grumelisk every chance they got. GOD had never explained to him that the phrase “seventy-two virgins” isn’t gender-specific.
“But won’t you perish in the blast as well?” I asked, feigning concern as I had a sip of my cider.
“A small price to pay,” he replied. “Trust me, I’ve done this before.”
“Excellent,” I said, as I indicated to the suitcase sitting at my feet. “The grumelisk as per your specifications, in concentrated vials.”
“Your master must be a powerful man, to acquire this much grumelisk in such a short time,” he answered.
I thought to myself, You have no idea.
At last, GOD shall fall! Years of planning are finally to bear fruit! Luckily, their facilities stand well on the outskirts of the divine city. The annihilation of a few thousand new immigrants as collateral damage was well-justified.
“It happens tomorrow,” Terziel said, as he got up to leave.
“Godspeed,” I said without thinking. With a withering look, Terziel was gone, his coffee unfinished. If all went according to plan, I would not be meeting him again.
I gave a sigh and reflected upon my inner demons, for you see I have many. In fact I always keep one tucked inside my left nostril in case I need to send a message across quickly.
“Take a message,” I commanded, as it hovered obediently at nose level.
My Lord President Michael,
Our plans are going perfectly. GOD shall fall tomorrow, and you shall soon be undisputed master of Heaven and Earth. I can only pray that we do not meet the same fate as befell your brother Lucifer.
Your most obedient servant,
Joanne de Arc.
P.S. Can’t wait to see you tonight.
------------------------------------------------
Rimidi was good enought to point out that Terziel has in him shades of Achmed the dead terrorist. However, the biggest influence was Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", which taught me to verbalize my deep suspicion of God(s).--- Sharad
Colour Exercise: Green
You sit in front of the astrologer, eyes anxious, as his eyes pore over the spider-web of your palm. “Emeralds,” he says, drawing out a selection that winks up at you like the eyes of so many snakes—too many Harry Potter references chasing themselves in your skull. “Emeralds assist in intelligence,” he insists, and you frown over the cost and pick the smallest—the cheapest—and it gleams against your skin like rain-washed leaves.
“Emeralds for intelligence,” you mutter, and pay him with figuratively green money for your green stone that has nothing to do with wealth at all.
“Emeralds for intelligence,” you mutter, and pay him with figuratively green money for your green stone that has nothing to do with wealth at all.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Derision
Letters I could not deliver, I could not write.
A dog that starts barking whenever I begin,
The ball-boy who has not received a single ball today
Pierces into the microphone.
Letters I could not write, I could not deliver.
An unexamined touch of an unknown hand in the dark,
That endeared back-road where ants take on strumpets
Falls like moonlight on my copulating words.
There could still be tears in the dark---
De-populated, Like
Letters I never wrote, never delivered.
Friday, November 21, 2008
DEUCE
The story was located deep into the night when the streets were relaxing, stretching their bodies easefully from one end of the night to another. The story was stretching itself too! There were little yawns to begin with but then it decided to tell itself…be told. The streets had just started to think that the footfalls had mostly come to an end for the day when the story decided to shake them up, a wee bit. All of a sudden, there were footfalls and quite thumping ones at that! One could see a man running across the sidewalk, nervously looking at his back from time to time. He smashed against the light post and awakened a street urchin who had been sleeping right beside it. The story looked into his bewildered eyes, full of muck. The man saw the mouth of a subway, staring at him to his left. Someone had gone into it a moment ago. He had felt a shadow while bumping into the post. How could it be open at such a time? Did it have an opening at the other end or was it yet another trap? There was a maze in his mind. But soon he realized it was not the time for thinking. The subway promised a shelter, a hideout for him. He took out his lighter, which had a small torch at its back and started running down the dark stairs. The street was still amazed. Was someone chasing the man? A very faint sound could be heard in the distance. Someone was dragging something along. The street asked the story who that man was? The story was silent for a while, lost in some deep thought, as it were, and then it uttered the word ‘Sahay’. The street could not go into the subway and check things out. So, it was the story, which went in, but only after it had made a promise to the street that it will disclose everything on its return.
The steps went down deep into that hollow until Sahay lost their count. It felt like moving down on an escalator. The stairs carried him away until he reached the pit. It was pitch dark and Sahay felt rather shadowless in its company. The torchlight helped him find a corner where he could lean against the wall and then all of a sudden, he turned around and pointed the torch at the wall, trying to find something on its surface, as it were. Nothing…it was a blank wall, much like a white sheet of paper, yet to be filled in by its writer. If it could still be white in that uncompromising dark! Sahay faced his back to the wall and switched it off. The story kept looking at him from a safe distance, imperceptible to him. Sahay kept staring into that dark where opened and closed eyes seemed all the same to one. Sahay went back in his mind. It had all started from that number. He could remember it so vividly! The train had been moving fast. It was a scorching afternoon and there were not many people in the compartment. Sahay had been standing near the gate. Something was written on the other side upon the inner-body of the train. His eyes fixed it with a stiff glance—“9836002729—Rupa, a call girl”. All places have been sold. Now who said this in present tense, all of a sudden? Had the story been following him even then? Someone must have mumbled something in his ears. Sahay took out his mobile phone from the pocket and copied the number and it was that very day on his way back home that he lost his mobile. Who could have stolen it? Perhaps the same person who had written the number on the train! However, it was only now that Sahay could say this…not then. The pungent smell of a plot had frozen the air around him that day onwards. He took a new mobile after that and it had to happen again! The same train in the same heat of a same afternoon and Sahay was up against the same spectacle—“9836002729—Rupa, a call girl”, but it was a little too familiar for comfort this time! The size of the letters had increased and now he felt them, glaring at him. However, there was something more to it and Sahay simply could not believe it! He took out his new mobile from the pocket and clarified whatever little doubt he had. He had saved his new number in his phone for he had been forgetting it frequently. He looked at the screen and then back again at the number—9836002729! He still tried to pass it off as a coincidence. May be someone had jokingly written a fictitious number which had become real in his case. Should he change the phone for that?
After a tiny respite that bitch had got back to business. Someone had thrust a handmade leaflet into his hands that day, while he had been running to catch the train. He could only look at it, after having boarded the train. It was an advertisement of a doctor of secret sexual diseases. Sahay had always been irritated by such stuff. As if he was the only one for them! But this time it had more embarrassment in store for him. The contact number written on it had been 9836002728 earlier but then somebody had overwritten on that 8 to make it 9. It was back to 9836002729—square one for Sahay. How could things be so contrived in the world of reality? Sahay could only wonder. The train had long left the platform where someone might have still been chuckling at his situation.
Sahay had to change his number. It had started to get on his nerves. But he stored that fateful thing in his new mobile alright, lest something more was to happen with it. And then it was this fearfully stagnant night when he had missed the last train that a call came from that number on his mobile. How could it be so? He had exchanged that phone and the man at the mobile-shop had assured him that he would give the phone to someone only after de-activating the old number. The loop around his neck had tightened. He had rejected the call and switched off the mobile only to realize that someone had come behind him on the empty street. Sahay started running and could hear footfalls at his back. He was being chased.
The rest, as they say, is hi(-)story…for the story…for the street. The story left Sahay and moved out of that dark tunnel. The street had been waiting for him eagerly. The story blurted out the story that was Sahay’s, but what story? How could it know the number-game? How could the story access the depths of his mind where words were fluttering like half-torn kites in a musty wind, writing and re-writing the number 9836002728 endlessly? Sahay, like most of us, had kept his most bizarre experience a top secret. The street could not understand head or tails of it and was left agape. All that was so absurd, he thought. Once again, that strange sound of someone dragging something along had become faintly audible in the distance. The eastern horizon had started to light up. The story said to the street, “I have to go now. I simply cannot tolerate daylight.” It hooted like an owl, weary of light. Ah, if one could look into its dead dark eyes where a fire was burning! It represented the eternal desire of man to tell stories, more and more stories…more and more hollow stories. The street bid him good-bye.
ARKA CHATTOPADHYAY
Monday, November 10, 2008
Presentations
Presentations will be on Tuesday 11 Nov at 3pm and on Wednesday 12 Nov at 3pm. Be there. Remember there are marks for presentation which you will not get if you don't present.
Friday, October 17, 2008
illusionist
down, down, down
down the vodka dream
swallow, hic, up all my scream...
night's sweet and the sleep
is like in dclouds
coz i've got my vodka dream...
forget muh sorrow
forget my pain
the double break-up
becomes just a phase
-coz all's been downed
downed ,downed,downed
downed by the vodka dreams...
down the vodka dream
swallow, hic, up all my scream...
night's sweet and the sleep
is like in dclouds
coz i've got my vodka dream...
forget muh sorrow
forget my pain
the double break-up
becomes just a phase
-coz all's been downed
downed ,downed,downed
downed by the vodka dreams...
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Perchance to dream
Character: Young karate whiz
Place: Theater
Mood: Grief
Object: Sandwich
"Nothing to be done."
Two men stood on an empty stage. One tugged at his old, ratty boot and the other stood by him, doing nothing. They began to talk, apparently bored and unsure of what they were doing there. To young Arko Bose, none of this made any sense. He began to lose interest, and gazed instead at the sandwich he had sneaked into the auditorium. It was a salami sandwich with a delicious layer of cheese. Strictly speaking, he was not meant to be eating while watching a play. He was 13 years old, and should of course behave like one. He knew that. But he was bored. In the first place, this was not his idea of fun. Watching this nonsense play where nothing seemed to be happening. But his mother thought it would be good to take the mind off things, and she was tired of taking him to see animated films. And karate class was over for the day. She forced a smile, as she sat next to him, and squeezed his hand once. I guess this is fun for old people, he thought, watching as the man with the hat stared stupidly into its depths. Looking down at the sandwich, he noticed how the slice of meat was sticking out and hanging limply. Pink and faintly dotted, it protruded out like a tongue.
An image flashed through his mind, and he felt sick- his father's tongue, sticking out of his mouth as he lay dying on the bathroom floor. His mouth open, and his face pressed into the pool of blood and vomit he had regurgitated during the stroke, the smashed door of the bathroom and the shameful nakedness of his father, lying helpless and prostrate on the bathroom floor. For a few minutes, it was all he could think about. After all, only 3 weeks had passed. His father, dead. Baba, old guy, dead. They had carried him out while he was muttering incoherently, touching his stomach and his forehead as if to indicate pain. Then the ride to the hospital… The familiar train of images began to tumble through the boy's mind again. Like a series of bizarre dreams they were; haunting, and impossible to make sense of. Stop, stop. He had to stop himself. This doesn’t help, remember?
He had worked out a defense mechanism. It didn’t always work, but it was necessary. He forced himself to look at the stage, at the actors, at the stupid tree made of paper on stage, at anything. Stoically, he took another bite of the sandwich.
“What is it?” said the actor with the boot. “I don’t know. A willow”, came the mechanical reply. “Where are the leaves?” asked Boot. “It must be dead”, said Hat. “No more weeping.”
It was impossible. The bloody play was prodding him back to 30th August. No more weeping. Funny. The afternoon his father had died, Arko had not shed a tear. His aunt Rita had wept her eyes out and howled. It irritated him, seeing her. She hadn’t given a fig leaf about Ranjan Bose when he was alive. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t cry at first. Arko was not one for histrionics. But the truth was, he didn’t know what to do. They took the body to the ghat, and a grotesque string of rituals followed. Ghee and rice, and white pastes. Incense and some burning wood. Mukh-agni, it was called, and it made him sick. Just a shell, the body is just a shell, someone whispered in his ears. It made him angry. Up to that point, he could still feel anger.
His mother stroked his hair gently, in the theatre hall. For a moment he snapped back to reality, and the mockery of it taking place on stage. They just didn’t understand, did they, these writers and actors, how bloody real life can be? His mother’s fingers in his hair brought back another memory. His father used to stroke his hair every morning, to wake him up from sleep, before the school bus came. He was too gentle a man to shout and be rough. He would sit next to the bed and run his fingers through his son’s hair, calling gently, “Shona, ebaar uthe por”. Why did he have to die? Why? He had so much to live for. He was perfectly healthy. Why? Arko gritted his teeth and clenched his fist. The sandwich lay forgotten. A tear ran down his cheek and he lapsed back to 30th August.
He hadn’t cried until they hoisted the body up on a conveyer belt. As the hideous mouth of the electric furnace opened, it all came crashing down on him. He would never see his father again. Never again. Never see his face, never see his kind eyes, never hear his voice, and never hear the jingle of the keys outside the door that meant he had come home. It all came crashing down on him, as the body disappeared towards the crackling yellow flames. And he howled like he had never howled before. He tore his hair out and wept, he screamed with the wild rage of a child who has been hurt. Hurt so deep inside, so deep inside, in a place where you couldn’t even look and you couldn’t even imagine and could never feel, because you are old and hard and cold and he was just a little, little boy, with the shining joy of 13 years dashed into pieces in the space of 2 hours. He closed his eyes and he howled, hurling his little fists against the hands that held him back from the furnace. Anger, wild, mad, unreasonable, bubbled up within in. Raw sorrow cut into him, making it hard to breathe, hard to swallow, hard to think. He clutched at the bier where the body lay, refusing to let go. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, he could not let go. It was his father. His father, dear God, and he didn’t want that fire to turn him into ash. But they tore him away; they pushed him into his mother’s arms. They wept together, helplessly. The door of the furnace closed. That was all.
“Don’t tell me!” someone bellowed on stage. After a moment of silence,
“Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can't tell them to you?”
“Let them remain private.”
Arko looked at his mother. Her eyes shone in the darkness. Perhaps she was thinking about his father too. Perhaps not. She was a hard woman, and strong. He loved her for that. I must be strong, he told himself. There’s so much to do. To take my mind off. It was true. There was his karate, for one. At 13 years of age, and already a brown-belt, Arko was something of a prodigy. His father had always encouraged his talents. He had just come back from a very satisfying karate class. He loved the peace it gave him. He always had. The silent flow of muscles and the calmness of mind that came with it, the sweat that trickled down the nape of his neck, the silent striving that numbed his mind. It was the only time when he no longer felt his thoughts gnawing at him.
Suddenly, someone on stage shouted excitedly, “An erection!” This broke into his thoughts with sudden sharpness. He thought guiltily about how he had been masturbating in the toilet, just the other day. What would his father have thought? It had only been about 3 weeks and he was already thinking about naked girls again, and looking at dirty pictures on the Internet. Something shriveled up inside him in self-loathing. But then, he reasoned with himself, what was wrong with it? It was natural, right? And besides, it helped him survive. Whatever helped him to fight it out was good for him, he told himself. He must be strong and move on.
It was all part of Arko’s plan. To run. Run away. That’s what he would do. He would never face reality. There was so much beauty in the world to dive into, like a deep blue ocean strewn with coral and fish. There were the books he loved, Harry Potter’s fabulous world of magic, Middle Earth, where good was good and evil was clothed in black. Poems, endless and beautiful. Video games, he loved those. Diablo 2 and Metal Gear Solid. Shoot ‘em ups and racers. He could lose himself in these worlds for days on end, and not think. Not remember. Why think, why think at all? It would be better to just forget. Just forget and move on.
'Oh to sail away, To sandy lands and other days
Oh to touch the dream, Hides inside and never seen.'
- Led Zeppelin - Achilles Last Stand
Oh to touch the dream, Hides inside and never seen.'
- Led Zeppelin - Achilles Last Stand
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
the wringing in my head...
my dearest bandhobi has convinced me into pouroing my thoughts- here i am!
its not a downpour though, just drop by drop...
it has roughly been three and half months in delhi and i have seen my dream of four years come true.i have got what i have always wanted- though lately i dont think it's exactly what i need...
always living a lie, here i feel i must face the truth about myself,about how unreasonable i can get.selfish to the depths of a devils heart and cold at times like a witches teat(no, the famous delhi winter has not shown its face yet.)
and here i must leave on a tantalising note!!
its not a downpour though, just drop by drop...
it has roughly been three and half months in delhi and i have seen my dream of four years come true.i have got what i have always wanted- though lately i dont think it's exactly what i need...
always living a lie, here i feel i must face the truth about myself,about how unreasonable i can get.selfish to the depths of a devils heart and cold at times like a witches teat(no, the famous delhi winter has not shown its face yet.)
and here i must leave on a tantalising note!!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Violet
COLOUR EXERCISE:
Violet
Sometimes the noon changes before my eyes. Not everyone notices. Everyone is either sipping on coffee or remembering sexual moves. I, however, watch the strong white of the sky give way to a moist violet. I become aware that the ancient ghosts are mourning again, revealing their ancient grief.
Some of them have beautiful faces, and some have their faces wrapped in thin violet masks. Not all of them can sing, but the ones who do always sing of love and murder.
On noons like this, I start feeling defenseless, and I too order a coffee, my finger tapping on the space between miracle and ruin.
Slowly, the noon turns white again, the soccer on the television starts making sense again, and the waitress comes with my order. I do notice, however, that she wears a faint violet on her lips.
-Inam Hussain Mullick
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Second Corpse
Both these posts are courtesy El Kay, who is not in the course but was drafted to make up an Exquisite Corps
Writing in Practice: 8 September, 2008
Results of a group experiment concerning the creation of narrative
Narrative 2
Folding a piece of paper, a crocodile was made.
He looked up with the crocodile in his hand at the clock.
The clock strikes twelve.
The flash floods come down on the desert.
There could still be tears in darkness!
Let there be light!
He said, and switched on the torch; he fumbled in the darkness with the torch on and saw a piece of pie.
His stomach grumbled.
Sorry El Kay, the iter scribentis didn't make it. In any case it won't make sense to anyone.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Exquisite Corpse, 08/09/08
This is the latest in our series of weird and wonderful collective writing jags.
‘Away!’ she cried, and ran towards the village.
‘Marie, Marie, hold on tight.’ and down we went.
We hurtled down the tunnel, taking corners at breakneck speeds, into the dark unknown.
A dust-bin to be seen and then gunshots rending the air.
A dog sniffs around near the dustbin, looking for scraps of meat.
A sudden sharp cry is heard.
A stone exploded and an enormous bird emerged, flapped its wings and flew away crying.
Little did they know that she was their last hope.
Toto Award
You might want to have a crack at this. In other news, people are being remiss in submitting their revised assignments. SUBMIT if you want lots of lovely marks, otherwise you will have zeros in the relevant columns of your internals.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TOTO AWARDS 2009
CREATIVE WRITING (calls for photography & music entries attached)
CALL FOR ENTRIES
TOTO FUNDS THE ARTS (TFA) invites entries for its fourth annual TOTO
awards for Indian creative writers in English. Two cash awards of Rs.
25,000 each will be given in January, 2009.
BUT: Entries are only invited from young people -- over the age of 18,
and who have not celebrated their 30th birthday before 1 January 2009.
ALSO: The spirit of the Toto Awards is to identify promise and
encourage young talent. Therefore, do not submit an entry if you are
already an established writer.
TFA is looking for entries in three genres –– short plays, short
stories and poetry.
The submissions should not exceed 7,500 words. You can submit any
combination of your writing in the above genres, as long as the entire
submission is within the stipulated word limit.
Entries should reach TOTO FUNDS THE ARTS (TFA) by 4 October 2008 at
the latest. There will be no extension of the submission date.
TOTO FUNDS THE ARTS (TFA)
H 301 Adarsh Gardens, 8th Block, 47th Cross, Jayanagar, Bangalore 560 082
Phone: 080-26990549
Entries should be sent in soft e-mail copy to
totofundsthearts@yahoo.com as well in hard copy form to the above
address. Please address queries to the same e-mail ID.
THE FINE PRINT:
Entries must be accompanied by a signed statement confirming the
applicant's date of birth, whether the applicant's work has been
published in print (give details), and also affirming that the
submitted work is original. Please ensure that the hard copy does not
carry your name on it. Submitted entries will be given code numbers to
protect applicants' identities from the jury during the judging
process.
Submitted material will not be returned.
The decision of the TFA jury is final and cannot be contested in any forum.
Please note: We reserve the right to use your submitted writings (if
necessary) to publicise the awards either on our website or in any
in-house materials such as a newsletter. Otherwise, the copyright
rests with the writer and your submission will be put to no other use
without your express permission.
TOTO FUNDS THE ARTS (TFA) is a not-for-profit public trust set up in
memory of Angirus 'Toto' Vellani, who was intensely passionate about
music, literature and films.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open Baithak" group.
To post to this group, send email to openbaithak@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to openbaithak+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openbaithak?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TOTO AWARDS 2009
CREATIVE WRITING (calls for photography & music entries attached)
CALL FOR ENTRIES
TOTO FUNDS THE ARTS (TFA) invites entries for its fourth annual TOTO
awards for Indian creative writers in English. Two cash awards of Rs.
25,000 each will be given in January, 2009.
BUT: Entries are only invited from young people -- over the age of 18,
and who have not celebrated their 30th birthday before 1 January 2009.
ALSO: The spirit of the Toto Awards is to identify promise and
encourage young talent. Therefore, do not submit an entry if you are
already an established writer.
TFA is looking for entries in three genres –– short plays, short
stories and poetry.
The submissions should not exceed 7,500 words. You can submit any
combination of your writing in the above genres, as long as the entire
submission is within the stipulated word limit.
Entries should reach TOTO FUNDS THE ARTS (TFA) by 4 October 2008 at
the latest. There will be no extension of the submission date.
TOTO FUNDS THE ARTS (TFA)
H 301 Adarsh Gardens, 8th Block, 47th Cross, Jayanagar, Bangalore 560 082
Phone: 080-26990549
Entries should be sent in soft e-mail copy to
totofundsthearts@yahoo.com as well in hard copy form to the above
address. Please address queries to the same e-mail ID.
THE FINE PRINT:
Entries must be accompanied by a signed statement confirming the
applicant's date of birth, whether the applicant's work has been
published in print (give details), and also affirming that the
submitted work is original. Please ensure that the hard copy does not
carry your name on it. Submitted entries will be given code numbers to
protect applicants' identities from the jury during the judging
process.
Submitted material will not be returned.
The decision of the TFA jury is final and cannot be contested in any forum.
Please note: We reserve the right to use your submitted writings (if
necessary) to publicise the awards either on our website or in any
in-house materials such as a newsletter. Otherwise, the copyright
rests with the writer and your submission will be put to no other use
without your express permission.
TOTO FUNDS THE ARTS (TFA) is a not-for-profit public trust set up in
memory of Angirus 'Toto' Vellani, who was intensely passionate about
music, literature and films.
--~--~---------~--~----~------
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open Baithak" group.
To post to this group, send email to openbaithak@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to openbaithak+unsubscribe@
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/
-~----------~----~----~----~--
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Quick Tales, courtesy the Griff
Peter Griffin sends this notice. Do please participate, everyone, and tell your friends.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Hi all,
We're delighted to be able to tell you about this contest we have just got up and running. We're presenting it in partnership with LiveJournal, one of the oldest, most respected names in the community blogging world.
You probably know what Flash Fiction is all about - we have run Flash Fic contests for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival for the last three years, and FF tags and memes have been floating around the blogosphere for ages - but, just in case you do need a few starting tips, see this page: http://livejournal.caferati.com/contests/what-is-flash-fiction/
The contest is open to residents of India who are members of LiveJournal's India Writing community. (If you're not an LJ member, joining is free. Click the "Create a LiveJournal Account" link at the top of any LJ page.) The theme is "Journal," and your deadline is 7th September.
Prizes? The top 5 winning entries take home cash prizes of Rs 19,999, Rs 16,000, Rs 12,000, Rs 8,000 and Rs 4,000, respectively. And the rest of the top ten get paid accounts on LJ for one year. Each of the top 100 entries will also be highlighted on LJ's India Writing community - http://community.livejournal.com/india_writing/ - for the world to see. (Short-listed stories may also be included in a book that LiveJournal plans to publish at a later date.)
Go straight through to our Quick Tales microsite - http://livejournal.caferati.com - for all the details, and don't forget to join India Writing, which is the place where all the updates will be happening. Live Journal has more plans for writers in all languages in India, and that community will be HQ.
We'd also be very, very grateful if you chose to tell your friends about it, and, if you have a blog or personal site, or are a member of other writing communities, to link to the site - http://livejournal.caferati.com - as well.
Good luck, and we hope to see your entry soon!
Peter, Manisha and Annie
Editors & moderators, Caferati
--
http://www.caferati.com/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Hi all,
We're delighted to be able to tell you about this contest we have just got up and running. We're presenting it in partnership with LiveJournal, one of the oldest, most respected names in the community blogging world.
It's a pretty simple challenge we have here, one that will particularly appeal to all the fiction writers among you, but not too intimidating for those of you who like other forms of writing to give it a bash.
Can you tell a quicker, snappier story than anyone else? Would you care to pit your story-telling abilities against those of your peers?
Quick Tales, the LiveJournal - Caferati Flash Fiction contest, asks you to tell us a story in 500 words or less. On offer: delicious cash prizes, global visibility and the chance to be part of a book.Can you tell a quicker, snappier story than anyone else? Would you care to pit your story-telling abilities against those of your peers?
You probably know what Flash Fiction is all about - we have run Flash Fic contests for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival for the last three years, and FF tags and memes have been floating around the blogosphere for ages - but, just in case you do need a few starting tips, see this page: http://livejournal.caferati.
The contest is open to residents of India who are members of LiveJournal's India Writing community. (If you're not an LJ member, joining is free. Click the "Create a LiveJournal Account" link at the top of any LJ page.) The theme is "Journal," and your deadline is 7th September.
Prizes? The top 5 winning entries take home cash prizes of Rs 19,999, Rs 16,000, Rs 12,000, Rs 8,000 and Rs 4,000, respectively. And the rest of the top ten get paid accounts on LJ for one year. Each of the top 100 entries will also be highlighted on LJ's India Writing community - http://community.livejournal.
Go straight through to our Quick Tales microsite - http://livejournal.caferati.
We'd also be very, very grateful if you chose to tell your friends about it, and, if you have a blog or personal site, or are a member of other writing communities, to link to the site - http://livejournal.caferati.
Good luck, and we hope to see your entry soon!
Editors & moderators, Caferati
--
http://www.caferati.com/
Saturday, August 02, 2008
An unfortunate picture exercise
I really don’t know how to describe my picture, it was of a man serving cakes to a little girl in a dinning room (or so I thought) but here’s the end result. And Rimi di hope you get well soon and become your usual roaring self in no time.
Tamosha couldn’t believe that this was indeed happening. She had been awaiting this day restlessly for so long and now that she was finally there, dinning in a five star hotel soon to meet Sharukh Khan, the little girl didn’t know where to hide her excitement. Mr. Sharukh Khan was in Kolkata for a charity event and a letter had reached her school stating that he wanted to meet few terminally ill children and spend a day with them. Tamosha didn’t understand what ‘terminally ill’ meant, but she knew that the words qualified her for she had heard them often enough to realize that.
The Reception at Sonar Bangla had been nothing less than royal. The multi-course lunch was unlike anything Tamosha had ever seen. She had even worn make-up and played at being a grown up. Her parents would have never approved of that! She was missing school again, but that wasn’t unusual, with blood transfusions lined up every month things weren’t exactly in her hands. But this was probably the first time she was enjoying the preferential treatment she received. Regular absence from school often made it difficult for her to keep up with the school curriculum but her teachers never scolded her the way they did others and she almost resented the partiality. She grew angry at the feelings of inadequacy this aroused in her. Her parents said she treated different was because she was special but Tamosha was a big girl now and she knew that it was not because of what she was but it was because of what she was not. She didn’t fit in her class, she wasn’t ‘normal’ like the other girls, and she envied them for it.
Tamosha had felt death when her grand mother died and it had made her recognize how vulnerable life was. It also brought the realization that she too would one day be what her grandmother had become, rings, bangles, perfumes and a wooden almirah full of sarees. She too would metamorphorise into some physical objects that would stand out as a rude reminder of a lost self. Was it then strange that she couldn’t never really write anything in her “my aim in life” essay? The future seemed like a dark void, they never talked about it at home.But meanwhile she smiled, and the little lines on her temple gave way to two charming dimples that blossomed on her cheeks. Hmm…the muffins were going to be delicious.
Tamosha couldn’t believe that this was indeed happening. She had been awaiting this day restlessly for so long and now that she was finally there, dinning in a five star hotel soon to meet Sharukh Khan, the little girl didn’t know where to hide her excitement. Mr. Sharukh Khan was in Kolkata for a charity event and a letter had reached her school stating that he wanted to meet few terminally ill children and spend a day with them. Tamosha didn’t understand what ‘terminally ill’ meant, but she knew that the words qualified her for she had heard them often enough to realize that.
The Reception at Sonar Bangla had been nothing less than royal. The multi-course lunch was unlike anything Tamosha had ever seen. She had even worn make-up and played at being a grown up. Her parents would have never approved of that! She was missing school again, but that wasn’t unusual, with blood transfusions lined up every month things weren’t exactly in her hands. But this was probably the first time she was enjoying the preferential treatment she received. Regular absence from school often made it difficult for her to keep up with the school curriculum but her teachers never scolded her the way they did others and she almost resented the partiality. She grew angry at the feelings of inadequacy this aroused in her. Her parents said she treated different was because she was special but Tamosha was a big girl now and she knew that it was not because of what she was but it was because of what she was not. She didn’t fit in her class, she wasn’t ‘normal’ like the other girls, and she envied them for it.
Tamosha had felt death when her grand mother died and it had made her recognize how vulnerable life was. It also brought the realization that she too would one day be what her grandmother had become, rings, bangles, perfumes and a wooden almirah full of sarees. She too would metamorphorise into some physical objects that would stand out as a rude reminder of a lost self. Was it then strange that she couldn’t never really write anything in her “my aim in life” essay? The future seemed like a dark void, they never talked about it at home.But meanwhile she smiled, and the little lines on her temple gave way to two charming dimples that blossomed on her cheeks. Hmm…the muffins were going to be delicious.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Voiceless in Gaza
This is my current status. So please, people, upload your stuff here. I think everyone has received an invite and been added to this blog. I can't say for sure when I will be roaring again, so rather than wait for that fateful day, come one, come all. For a start, everyone please (re)write out and upload your picture exercise so I can assess it. If you don't want it to be displayed publicly, send it to me by email. (you all have my address; I sent you the invites, remember?) Or if you like I will set it for private showing here.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
What You Can and Can't Put Up
OK, valid question: should we post lots of stuff here or not? I agree that we don't want to get too choked up, so i would recommend that those who have large texts to share and have blogs should put them on their blogs and crosslink. short texts can be placed here. Better to have Babel than the seasonal silence :)
Friday, July 11, 2008
I've been wondering...
while I appreciated most of the past few posts, doesn't it become a little too crowded if we all post our individual creative efforts (out-of-course that is) in this blog? Since, if you consider, there'll be an amount of coursework we'll need to write and share, and then after you pass out (not me personally, since i'm auditing, so i used "you"), the same blog will be used by later students of the course?
Maybe we post small excerpts from our prose or poem or anything else and leave a link to our personal blogs, and request Rimi'di to link them at the sidebar, as Bodhi's novel-in-progress was once linked?
Just my opinion though.
Maybe we post small excerpts from our prose or poem or anything else and leave a link to our personal blogs, and request Rimi'di to link them at the sidebar, as Bodhi's novel-in-progress was once linked?
Just my opinion though.
Con-front-ing
A passage dry
Two wet floors.
Three clips alone left upon the string.
--All in a life of silence.
Till a sound like human hand appears!
May no such human hand appear!!
Words waiting in a cue for a mouth.
Four horizontal lines upon a white page.
And words becoming mouths!
May such mouths ever move in tears!
Till the words are well mouthed into fear!!
Two wet floors.
Three clips alone left upon the string.
--All in a life of silence.
Till a sound like human hand appears!
May no such human hand appear!!
Words waiting in a cue for a mouth.
Four horizontal lines upon a white page.
And words becoming mouths!
May such mouths ever move in tears!
Till the words are well mouthed into fear!!
Pour
Potholes uniting people
A moving umbrella
One hand
Another.
The switches of light and fan
Positioned like a cross.
A tiny man holding up his umbrella
In a high interim to avoid pricks.
And such continuous sentence-like stretches of oddity,
Till I give up on a Period.
A moving umbrella
One hand
Another.
The switches of light and fan
Positioned like a cross.
A tiny man holding up his umbrella
In a high interim to avoid pricks.
And such continuous sentence-like stretches of oddity,
Till I give up on a Period.
Gilotin
Hands dipped in hot, boiling milk. Utpala. Even an un-man like me! When the second bullet had struck, I knew, this was to be the end. Still inched forward with the body on wet soil, holding all the pressure onto the elbows, crippling on as ever. In this bullet-hit hell of a body, for the first time, in the (w)hole of 32 years, I felt some sort of an instinct, boiling up to a considerable height. If home can be reached, I will put in one final effort, even if it is the last gasp. Neither eroticism nor exactly self-love, it was like a desperation to create a future to resistance, that had been clawing my blood-smeared hell-body! A man like me would do something to deserve a bullet sometime! Could Utpala ever imagine this in her wildest day-dreams?
Perplexed hands then, Utpala's, dipped in hot, boiling milk. Hands almost fully white, further whitening, Utpala's. Day in and day out, this dipping, this dripping! Some inexplicable comfort, as if, Utpala's! Each time, when she lifts her milked, whitened and further whitening hands from the bowl, a child gets designed (ah! only to be a figment!)amid her finger-lines. After that, a strange anger, Utpala's, which can kill and does kill as she strangulates the mis-imagined child, dipping it into the hot, boiling milk. Utpala can create as well as uncreate.
Had to stop in this bush. The body, nearing stagnation, could hardly move on. But, still enough understanding left to realize that I had had an erection. The thing had stiffened so much, that it was becoming exceedingly difficult to crawl forward. Could not even stay on my back. There were bullets in the shoulder and underneath. Tried to dig a hole with both hands. The soil was soft due to rain and went in comfortably. Then I opened my zip and entered the thing straight into the hole, I had dug. It went deep, out of visibility. The pain started to soften. My eyes were closing in ease.
Hands dipped in hot, boiling milk. Utpala. Almost the dead of night. Subimal arrives pretty late these days. Must be some secret meeting again! With a pain that had started to soften, Utpala lifted her hands from the milk. There was something in her hands. Utpala observed. A bullet. Bloodless. Utpala looked at the blank wall, which was in front of her. Then, she threw the bowl full of milk, towards it. Little columns of milk started to make their way down in the form of streams. The wall had become partially wet with milk. There was some heat too and perhaps the surface of the wall shook a little as there were little twig-like rings of smoke, making their room from it. By that time, Utpala had closed her eyes and got stuck into the bullet with her sharp, boiling teeth. Even the bullet had to be silenced, silence.
Arka Chattopadhyay
Perplexed hands then, Utpala's, dipped in hot, boiling milk. Hands almost fully white, further whitening, Utpala's. Day in and day out, this dipping, this dripping! Some inexplicable comfort, as if, Utpala's! Each time, when she lifts her milked, whitened and further whitening hands from the bowl, a child gets designed (ah! only to be a figment!)amid her finger-lines. After that, a strange anger, Utpala's, which can kill and does kill as she strangulates the mis-imagined child, dipping it into the hot, boiling milk. Utpala can create as well as uncreate.
Had to stop in this bush. The body, nearing stagnation, could hardly move on. But, still enough understanding left to realize that I had had an erection. The thing had stiffened so much, that it was becoming exceedingly difficult to crawl forward. Could not even stay on my back. There were bullets in the shoulder and underneath. Tried to dig a hole with both hands. The soil was soft due to rain and went in comfortably. Then I opened my zip and entered the thing straight into the hole, I had dug. It went deep, out of visibility. The pain started to soften. My eyes were closing in ease.
Hands dipped in hot, boiling milk. Utpala. Almost the dead of night. Subimal arrives pretty late these days. Must be some secret meeting again! With a pain that had started to soften, Utpala lifted her hands from the milk. There was something in her hands. Utpala observed. A bullet. Bloodless. Utpala looked at the blank wall, which was in front of her. Then, she threw the bowl full of milk, towards it. Little columns of milk started to make their way down in the form of streams. The wall had become partially wet with milk. There was some heat too and perhaps the surface of the wall shook a little as there were little twig-like rings of smoke, making their room from it. By that time, Utpala had closed her eyes and got stuck into the bullet with her sharp, boiling teeth. Even the bullet had to be silenced, silence.
Arka Chattopadhyay
Angularity
The thread was being moved through the surface of the grass. Perhaps, somebody had been flying a kite somewhere. As our feet came into its tangle and we got stuck, we looked down, only to see the thread being pulled away from us, across the vast stretch of the maidan. I was trying to kiss her, but the thread had got in the way of it. The kiss. The lips. The family. Like upturned shoe-soles in the sea-beaches. Cross-currents, there were in the quicksand. The thread had become a pointer. Trying to take us along--an anchor? There were little pockets in the grass. Little errors. The thread was strangling them one by one, striving to establish a pause in the two of us. We looked up. Not a single kite in the sky.
There had been one such thread, sometime back. Taking life. A pigeon's left wing had come under its power, impairing the ability that may have led to flight. Then, the dog's turn arrived. I could not do anything for the bird. The thread was the similarity between the two events, the lack of a kiss over there, the difference.
Now, I could see the thread, up in the air, going round and round like a web and linking the remaining tree-tops all across the maidan. It had started to emit a tremendous energy of darkness, blanketing the blueness of the afternoon-sky with a dusk-like madness, as if the whole sky was about to turn into a giant wingless kite. She had been mute all along. Not even a sound had come out of her. Could she peep into my thinking? I looked at her. She was looking up towards the sky. She finally broke her silence, of my thoughts and of her words---"Can we get married now?"
There had been one such thread, sometime back. Taking life. A pigeon's left wing had come under its power, impairing the ability that may have led to flight. Then, the dog's turn arrived. I could not do anything for the bird. The thread was the similarity between the two events, the lack of a kiss over there, the difference.
Now, I could see the thread, up in the air, going round and round like a web and linking the remaining tree-tops all across the maidan. It had started to emit a tremendous energy of darkness, blanketing the blueness of the afternoon-sky with a dusk-like madness, as if the whole sky was about to turn into a giant wingless kite. She had been mute all along. Not even a sound had come out of her. Could she peep into my thinking? I looked at her. She was looking up towards the sky. She finally broke her silence, of my thoughts and of her words---"Can we get married now?"
Yellow
It's this piece I wrote but conviniently forgot to bring to class!
I’ve often wondered what the colour of a scorching summer afternoon should be. Should it be white or should it be yellow? White, said a poet, but I decided yellow. Sure it looked yellow as the sun rays flirted with the tree tops, it was the exact shade of a fire cracker whirling about madly on some festive surface. The crazy buzz of a cracker, I noticed the other day, sounded exactly like the distant drone in a shopping mall that despite the music fought into my ears. You shouldn’t wear purple lipstick, I read in a beauty magazine, it makes your teeth look yellow. The girl’s lipstick was purple. Did her teeth look yellow? I didn’t notice but her dress reminded me of a woman I once saw on a local train. She had spent the entire length of the journey weaving a yellow thread onto plastic rings. The rings would embroider some dress whose owner no doubt would be oblivious of those nimble fingers and the face behind the hands. Meanwhile the current goes off again. The deep yellow of the street lamps give way for a single strand of pale flame that flickers on in my one- roomed apartment. It casts a yellow shadow on the legs my girl…she has fallen asleep.
I’ve often wondered what the colour of a scorching summer afternoon should be. Should it be white or should it be yellow? White, said a poet, but I decided yellow. Sure it looked yellow as the sun rays flirted with the tree tops, it was the exact shade of a fire cracker whirling about madly on some festive surface. The crazy buzz of a cracker, I noticed the other day, sounded exactly like the distant drone in a shopping mall that despite the music fought into my ears. You shouldn’t wear purple lipstick, I read in a beauty magazine, it makes your teeth look yellow. The girl’s lipstick was purple. Did her teeth look yellow? I didn’t notice but her dress reminded me of a woman I once saw on a local train. She had spent the entire length of the journey weaving a yellow thread onto plastic rings. The rings would embroider some dress whose owner no doubt would be oblivious of those nimble fingers and the face behind the hands. Meanwhile the current goes off again. The deep yellow of the street lamps give way for a single strand of pale flame that flickers on in my one- roomed apartment. It casts a yellow shadow on the legs my girl…she has fallen asleep.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Song about the Wild Car Schizoprhenia
[Here's one of my prose poems, guys, although I am not aware if prose poems are allowed on this blog :-O ]
….the winter runs though your hair…the car moves through lairs of dreams and darkness…cuts the night in deathly cubes of ice…the dice spins upon her body…spinning infinite pieces of the city in your throat…the road reveals the laughter of hidden ghosts….and after the memory is shaken…after the panther is born…you suddenly feel alone…you are the only pulse in the sky….
And you throb among the skyline…your wings shine…a vampire slips into your mind…around you now is the forest…where guitars charm the graves…electric trees sink into the poem…and find the keys to the soul of winds…the car gathers speed….broken city offers its homes…its windows…its cold forgetfulness…
It is good to be forgotten…to be an ancient king’s sword in the museum…it is good to be forgotten at times.
And the smells of the day linger in her veins…and won’t let her die…
the car moves through the sleeping souls…a mole tunneling into the bones of lone women…who clasp the vampire’s teeth to their breasts…even the skyline is unaware of their secrets…the guitar stabs his muscles…his memory tussles between windscreens and the smell of panthers…
and may the city never wake again…never take its morning tea with friend and enemy…never mend its torn shoes…never remember whose hands were crushed by the machine…
and my enemies are dead now…I can see their ghosts dining in the old
And among the music…among the fragments of the dead sky…among the windows and the shadows of trees…the road unfolds like her skin…tonight her smells remind you of the meaning of time…of the soon-to-die forests in your blood…
But you choose the blade…and make a cut on your forehead…so the winter seeps in with its own stories…my enemies are dead.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
A suggestion
Why don't we do the freeyourmind exercise with music too. We tried colours. That was fun. I find music conjuring imaginary landscapes as easily as pictures or colours. We could stretch it from a landscape description to a short story or something too.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Photo prompt fiction
Joe’s girlfriend Dina took a picture of Joe in her father’s library one day. He wasn’t sure why she wanted him to stand with his arms crossed in front of her father’s library. There were lots of Greek and Roman books. Joe had read excerpts from ‘The Odyssey’ in high school. He liked Orwell, Burroughs, Ballard, people like that. Dina insisted he not smile in the photograph. She wanted him to look serious. A literary sort of guy. She stuck her fingers through the lacing on the front of his shirt and also through his hair. Dina really liked his hair. She told him about Samson and Delilah. Joe already knew about Samson and Delilah because his mother had been a devout Christian woman who had read the Bible to her older son until her husband left her. Everything changed afterwards. Dina’s mother thought Joe was ‘sweet’. Dina’s mother was much more beautiful and well-dressed than Joe’s mother, and she had a flatter accent.
Dina stepped away from him and took his picture. Later he found the picture distressing. He looked like an American Idol reject in his stupid shirt with his stupid hair. The books rose behind and above him like a vaguely potent symbol of… something.
The last time he saw Dina was the day before she left for a trip to Florence with her parents. She met someone literary, foreign and less boring there. There were two brief and straightforward phone calls, and that was it.
Three weeks later Joe was in a different city. There he met a girl. She worked in the Starbucks opposite the record store he worked in. He knew this because she was wearing a Starbucks work uniform, not because he had coffee there. Coffee gave him indigestion, plus he was new in the neighbourhood. Green was a perfect colour on her, and she had a few violet streaks in her shoulder-length hair. Taylor, who owned the record store, looked up at her with pure hatred in his eyes. It was the Starbucks uniform that had set him off. Joe had tried to explain to him before that being rude to prospective customers would do nothing to keep his flagging business in competition. The Starbucks girl shoved her very tiny hands into her pockets and peered at the vinyl on display. A boy no older than fifteen was browsing them, muttering and shaking his head. The boy was a friend of Joe’s younger brother from school. ‘Hey, Bren,’ said the Starbucks girl, in an unexpectedly raspy voice. The boy almost dropped the LP he was holding. ‘Uh,’ he said. ‘Uh.’ The Starbucks girl smiled, her hands still in her pockets. ‘Well, nice to see you.’
A few days later Joe and the Starbucks girl went on a date.
They saw a Wes Anderson movie and ate ice cream by the river. Joe was feeling peaceful. He was well and truly over Dina by now. It turned out that the Starbucks girl’s name was Mina. Joe was troubled by this fact, but chose not to let it show. Mina was a classic rock fan. He watched her pout prettily while she went on an extended rant about how much modern rock bands fucking sucked. Joe found it appropriate to mention that he thought Led Zeppelin was the best classic rock band. He did not add that he was no longer a fan of Led Zeppelin and had already given his entire collection, poster and t-shirt included, to his brother on his thirteenth birthday, who had actually jumped on to the bed and held him close in his chicken arms. Mina stared at Joe for a few seconds. She had a smear of ice cream on the corner of her mouth that Joe considered licking off but decided not to because that would be kind of corny. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Oh my God, I knew it, I knew it from your hair. Robert Plant has amazing hair.’ Joe blinked and tried to decide if this was an insult or a compliment or both.
They had sex and it wasn’t very good. Mina messed his hair up so that it covered his eyes and shut her own eyes tight. Then she sat up and smoked five cigarettes, craning her neck to look out the window of his apartment. ‘So,’ she said, finally looking at Joe. Joe wrapped one of the sheets around his waist and padded to the bathroom, where he found a porcelain soap dish. Silently he presented this to Mina. She looked at him through her hair. The violet streaks could not be seen in this light.
The next week he was in the record store arranging CDs in chronological order like Taylor wanted. Mina walked in again, but this time she was accompanied by another man. The man had long blond hair with corkscrew curls. His face was very unpleasant and he had enormous bags under his eyes. Mina talked to him and ignored Joe.
Joe went home after work and tried to read random issues of Wired before going into the tiny kitchen. He retrieved a jar of peanut butter and a spoon. He dug the spoon into the jar with a satisfying splotch. Then he started eating.
There was a small radio next to the kitchen window. He turned it on and rummaged in the drawers for a big pair of scissors. He wondered if he should finish eating the peanut butter first or cut all his hair off first. Joe walked into the bathroom with his scissors. He looked in the bathroom mirror. His hair looked limp and stupid. He could not remember why he had ever kept it that long. He wasn’t even a hippie.
He walked back to the kitchen. The radio was playing Led Zeppelin. It was the sort of thing that happened in movies and novels, but really it was just that the first station that always came up when he turned the radio was the classic rock station. Suddenly Joe was fourteen and chubby, watching TV in his bedroom, safe from the world. Robert Plant walked on the stage, wrists languid and chest glistening with sweat. He flipped his hair. He was bathed in golden light, most of it emanating from his body rather than from above. He was a god! And he knew it.
Equally suddenly Joe was adult again, and Robert Plant was wailing, don’t you hear, don’t you hear them falling, and Joe felt them, right on cue. He thought of Dina and he thought of Mina.
Then he sat down on the nearest chair and ate the rest of the peanut butter.
--
(better v v late than never, i daresay. i will try to upload the prompt photo sometime.)
Isheeta Basu Mallik
Dina stepped away from him and took his picture. Later he found the picture distressing. He looked like an American Idol reject in his stupid shirt with his stupid hair. The books rose behind and above him like a vaguely potent symbol of… something.
The last time he saw Dina was the day before she left for a trip to Florence with her parents. She met someone literary, foreign and less boring there. There were two brief and straightforward phone calls, and that was it.
Three weeks later Joe was in a different city. There he met a girl. She worked in the Starbucks opposite the record store he worked in. He knew this because she was wearing a Starbucks work uniform, not because he had coffee there. Coffee gave him indigestion, plus he was new in the neighbourhood. Green was a perfect colour on her, and she had a few violet streaks in her shoulder-length hair. Taylor, who owned the record store, looked up at her with pure hatred in his eyes. It was the Starbucks uniform that had set him off. Joe had tried to explain to him before that being rude to prospective customers would do nothing to keep his flagging business in competition. The Starbucks girl shoved her very tiny hands into her pockets and peered at the vinyl on display. A boy no older than fifteen was browsing them, muttering and shaking his head. The boy was a friend of Joe’s younger brother from school. ‘Hey, Bren,’ said the Starbucks girl, in an unexpectedly raspy voice. The boy almost dropped the LP he was holding. ‘Uh,’ he said. ‘Uh.’ The Starbucks girl smiled, her hands still in her pockets. ‘Well, nice to see you.’
A few days later Joe and the Starbucks girl went on a date.
They saw a Wes Anderson movie and ate ice cream by the river. Joe was feeling peaceful. He was well and truly over Dina by now. It turned out that the Starbucks girl’s name was Mina. Joe was troubled by this fact, but chose not to let it show. Mina was a classic rock fan. He watched her pout prettily while she went on an extended rant about how much modern rock bands fucking sucked. Joe found it appropriate to mention that he thought Led Zeppelin was the best classic rock band. He did not add that he was no longer a fan of Led Zeppelin and had already given his entire collection, poster and t-shirt included, to his brother on his thirteenth birthday, who had actually jumped on to the bed and held him close in his chicken arms. Mina stared at Joe for a few seconds. She had a smear of ice cream on the corner of her mouth that Joe considered licking off but decided not to because that would be kind of corny. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Oh my God, I knew it, I knew it from your hair. Robert Plant has amazing hair.’ Joe blinked and tried to decide if this was an insult or a compliment or both.
They had sex and it wasn’t very good. Mina messed his hair up so that it covered his eyes and shut her own eyes tight. Then she sat up and smoked five cigarettes, craning her neck to look out the window of his apartment. ‘So,’ she said, finally looking at Joe. Joe wrapped one of the sheets around his waist and padded to the bathroom, where he found a porcelain soap dish. Silently he presented this to Mina. She looked at him through her hair. The violet streaks could not be seen in this light.
The next week he was in the record store arranging CDs in chronological order like Taylor wanted. Mina walked in again, but this time she was accompanied by another man. The man had long blond hair with corkscrew curls. His face was very unpleasant and he had enormous bags under his eyes. Mina talked to him and ignored Joe.
Joe went home after work and tried to read random issues of Wired before going into the tiny kitchen. He retrieved a jar of peanut butter and a spoon. He dug the spoon into the jar with a satisfying splotch. Then he started eating.
There was a small radio next to the kitchen window. He turned it on and rummaged in the drawers for a big pair of scissors. He wondered if he should finish eating the peanut butter first or cut all his hair off first. Joe walked into the bathroom with his scissors. He looked in the bathroom mirror. His hair looked limp and stupid. He could not remember why he had ever kept it that long. He wasn’t even a hippie.
He walked back to the kitchen. The radio was playing Led Zeppelin. It was the sort of thing that happened in movies and novels, but really it was just that the first station that always came up when he turned the radio was the classic rock station. Suddenly Joe was fourteen and chubby, watching TV in his bedroom, safe from the world. Robert Plant walked on the stage, wrists languid and chest glistening with sweat. He flipped his hair. He was bathed in golden light, most of it emanating from his body rather than from above. He was a god! And he knew it.
Equally suddenly Joe was adult again, and Robert Plant was wailing, don’t you hear, don’t you hear them falling, and Joe felt them, right on cue. He thought of Dina and he thought of Mina.
Then he sat down on the nearest chair and ate the rest of the peanut butter.
--
(better v v late than never, i daresay. i will try to upload the prompt photo sometime.)
Isheeta Basu Mallik
Monday, November 12, 2007
Let There Be Light.
Mukul Chakroborty stepped out of the cab and onto the sidewalk. It was unbearably hot. He turned the corner, fanning himself frantically with a newspaper and walked into Her. She was the stuff of dreams, nay, her beauty was beyond dreams even. This was who he had been waiting for all his life, this beautiful pilgrim of rarefied light. She was standing at the mouth of the Tunnel that led into the fish market and he had almost knocked into her.
Srinanda Ganguly.
A dialogue between a model and a proffessor, at a fishmarket.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Encounters
The moon grew old and fat and bald. The astronaut pretended to sleep. The nurse tied him up securely, into a contraption of leather and metal that was only five weeks old.
‘Would you like some water now,’ said the nurse. His hand smoothed a corner of the sheet. He was a little embarrassed.
‘I am not your father,’ said the astronaut. His eyes were tiny glimmers in the dark.
‘That’s not the right answer.’
‘I’m not your father.’
The nurse poured some water into a cup. It was two in the morning. There were two chairs, both of which were nailed to the floor.
‘Are you going to kill me?’ said the astronaut, clenching his fists at his sides. His veins were like thin gnarled roots.
‘That’s not the right question.’
‘Jesus. Jesus.’
The nurse drank the water from the cup. He sat down on one chair, dragged his buttocks across the seat, crossed his legs, uncrossed them, stood up.
‘I just had something to tell you,’ said the nurse, and began to remove his shirt. His shirt was a deep red. He removed it slowly, almost sensually. The astronaut saw in the milky light how hairy the nurse was. The astronaut had stared down the void. This was not a void.
‘Jesus,’ said the astronaut. He didn’t believe in God.
The nurse turned.
* * *
The nurse was the fifth person to speak up. He spoke in a measured tone devoid of surface emotion. He seemed to be reciting the contents of a work of fiction written in a rather mannered style. This inspired some unease in the circle. In his clean white clothing and greyish white canvas shoes the nurse was more disturbing than a doctor.
‘I work in an old people’s home. Last Tuesday one of my charges, a Mr Hewett, reached eighty-five years of age. He celebrated by smearing icing all over his shirt and crying by the window. There was something cinematic and nightmarish about the way the little party disintegrated into a parody of a funeral. The single baroque candle on the cake seemed like a cruel joke. Mrs Doherty, another of my charges, started rocking on her feet, letting out choked sobs. Lizzie, a fellow nurse, put her guitar down and went to comfort her. Mr Hewett curled up against the windowsill and refused to move. He has two sons and a daughter, all of whom are employed adults living in this country.’
The rest of the group froze unanimously to digest this. The nurse added as an afterthought, ‘I have violent urges sometimes.’
A woman swathed in a pink cashmere sweater reached out towards the nurse. The nurse’s arm was cool and hard under her soft palm. ‘Thank you, dear, for sharing that.’
The sixth person to speak up said, ‘I like to break into my neighbour’s beach house on summer evenings and lie naked on his roof under the stars. On such evenings I am an astronaut, suspended in the amniotic silence of space, connected by a fragile umbilical cord that technology birthed through the miracle of science.’
The nurse inspected the crescent spaces under his fingernails. The rest of the group failed to notice that they were dashed with blood and dirt.
‘So many of us wanted to be something, when we were children,’ said the woman in the pink sweater. I wanted to be a firefighter. My husband wanted to be the emperor. Of China.’ She laughed, quivering candyfloss and braces.
‘You don’t understand,’ said the sixth person. He was now looking at the nurse. The nurse was not looking at him. ‘You don’t understand at all. I am an astronaut.’
* * *
The nurse was walking back to his flat. He had had a hard day at work. He walked down what some would call a working-class neighbourhood.
Suddenly a spaceship landed. It was round, with many fiddly bits, and emitted lights that reminded the nurse of the lighting at a rave party when he had been seventeen. A neon girl had placed a pill on his tongue. She had been struck red by the lights. He, too, had been struck. And transformed.
The spaceship flicked open. A being came out that was probably not a human. The nurse thought that it was dressed like an astronaut. The nurse burrowed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. If he actually stopped to think about it, the being was an astronaut.
The alien astronaut was short and had tentacles. It did something to the nurse’s brain and climbed back into the spaceship. The spaceship lifted off into the night. Soon it was no bigger than the full moon.
The nurse blinked. In his brain there was only one thought left.
He thought out loud.
Rosie Harding's cold cream jars full of family teeth.
--
(my dialogue assignment character picks were 'male nurse' and 'astronaut')
Isheeta Basu Mallik
‘Would you like some water now,’ said the nurse. His hand smoothed a corner of the sheet. He was a little embarrassed.
‘I am not your father,’ said the astronaut. His eyes were tiny glimmers in the dark.
‘That’s not the right answer.’
‘I’m not your father.’
The nurse poured some water into a cup. It was two in the morning. There were two chairs, both of which were nailed to the floor.
‘Are you going to kill me?’ said the astronaut, clenching his fists at his sides. His veins were like thin gnarled roots.
‘That’s not the right question.’
‘Jesus. Jesus.’
The nurse drank the water from the cup. He sat down on one chair, dragged his buttocks across the seat, crossed his legs, uncrossed them, stood up.
‘I just had something to tell you,’ said the nurse, and began to remove his shirt. His shirt was a deep red. He removed it slowly, almost sensually. The astronaut saw in the milky light how hairy the nurse was. The astronaut had stared down the void. This was not a void.
‘Jesus,’ said the astronaut. He didn’t believe in God.
The nurse turned.
* * *
The nurse was the fifth person to speak up. He spoke in a measured tone devoid of surface emotion. He seemed to be reciting the contents of a work of fiction written in a rather mannered style. This inspired some unease in the circle. In his clean white clothing and greyish white canvas shoes the nurse was more disturbing than a doctor.
‘I work in an old people’s home. Last Tuesday one of my charges, a Mr Hewett, reached eighty-five years of age. He celebrated by smearing icing all over his shirt and crying by the window. There was something cinematic and nightmarish about the way the little party disintegrated into a parody of a funeral. The single baroque candle on the cake seemed like a cruel joke. Mrs Doherty, another of my charges, started rocking on her feet, letting out choked sobs. Lizzie, a fellow nurse, put her guitar down and went to comfort her. Mr Hewett curled up against the windowsill and refused to move. He has two sons and a daughter, all of whom are employed adults living in this country.’
The rest of the group froze unanimously to digest this. The nurse added as an afterthought, ‘I have violent urges sometimes.’
A woman swathed in a pink cashmere sweater reached out towards the nurse. The nurse’s arm was cool and hard under her soft palm. ‘Thank you, dear, for sharing that.’
The sixth person to speak up said, ‘I like to break into my neighbour’s beach house on summer evenings and lie naked on his roof under the stars. On such evenings I am an astronaut, suspended in the amniotic silence of space, connected by a fragile umbilical cord that technology birthed through the miracle of science.’
The nurse inspected the crescent spaces under his fingernails. The rest of the group failed to notice that they were dashed with blood and dirt.
‘So many of us wanted to be something, when we were children,’ said the woman in the pink sweater. I wanted to be a firefighter. My husband wanted to be the emperor. Of China.’ She laughed, quivering candyfloss and braces.
‘You don’t understand,’ said the sixth person. He was now looking at the nurse. The nurse was not looking at him. ‘You don’t understand at all. I am an astronaut.’
* * *
The nurse was walking back to his flat. He had had a hard day at work. He walked down what some would call a working-class neighbourhood.
Suddenly a spaceship landed. It was round, with many fiddly bits, and emitted lights that reminded the nurse of the lighting at a rave party when he had been seventeen. A neon girl had placed a pill on his tongue. She had been struck red by the lights. He, too, had been struck. And transformed.
The spaceship flicked open. A being came out that was probably not a human. The nurse thought that it was dressed like an astronaut. The nurse burrowed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. If he actually stopped to think about it, the being was an astronaut.
The alien astronaut was short and had tentacles. It did something to the nurse’s brain and climbed back into the spaceship. The spaceship lifted off into the night. Soon it was no bigger than the full moon.
The nurse blinked. In his brain there was only one thought left.
He thought out loud.
Rosie Harding's cold cream jars full of family teeth.
--
(my dialogue assignment character picks were 'male nurse' and 'astronaut')
Isheeta Basu Mallik
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