CultureCult Magazine [Monsoon 2016]

M A G A Z I N E

MONSOON 2016 Vol.01, No. 06

THE BAN CULTURE SALMAN RUSHDIE APHRODITE TO ATHENA FEMININITY TO FEMINISM THE SUFI MESSAGE

SHORT STORIES

POETRY

FLASH FICTIONS

TRANSLATION: POETRY

RABINDRANATH TAGORE A Magazine of the

ARTS, LITERATURE & CULTURE

Ra

in

HI

Sh

o

RO wer a SH t Shō IG no E

A Magazine of the Arts, Literature and Culture

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JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI

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71

PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

COVER

08

FEATURES

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THE SPIRIT PAGE

Translations by Syed Amir Milan RABINDRANATH TAGORE COVER: PADURARIU ALEXANDRU

Film: Udta Punjab (India/2016) SUNDAR RAGHAV

From Femininity to Feminism ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA

60 Evaluating the Self and the Other SANJANA GUHA

THE BAN CULTURE

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Salman Rushdie and ‘The Satanic Verses’ JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI

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CultureCult Magazine - Monsoon 2016

Editor JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI Publishing Coordinator MADHURIMA BASU Editorial Team SUNDAR RAGHAV || ARIJITA DEY || DIPAN CHAKRABORTY Layout Design JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI Promotion TRII-RA © CULTURE CULT Published by Jagannath Chakravarti from 11/1, Khanpur Road, Kolkata 700047, West Bengal, India. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine can be reprinted/reused in its entire form or in part without the written permission of the publisher.

THANK YOU Basanti Chakravarti | Liton Bhakta | Pixabay | Unsplash | Pexels

LITERATURE

CultureCult Magazine will have six issues each year, following the natural etiquette of the Indian cycle of seasons. This Monsoon issue will be followed by the Fall Festive issue, before the transitions of Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer.

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AVA BIRD

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NICHOLAS SOLLITTO

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SCOTT THOMAS OUTLAR

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RINKI DEBNATH

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VONNIE WINSLOW CRIST

99 102

DEBARUN SARKAR ARITRIK DUTTA CHOWDHURY

16 STEVE CARR

54 SABRINA BINTE MASUD

36 IFRAN MUZAMMIL

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GEORGE SALIS

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STUART LUKE

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MICHAEL WAYNE HAMPTON

83 TOTI O’BRIEN

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In this issue, we are unable to include the respective instalment of SIDDHARTH PATHAK’s serial novel CROSS EYED SLEEP. CROSS EYED SLEEP will resume in our Fall Festive issue.

’ JIM MEIROSE

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EDITORIAL Broken Selves How many live in you, Oh my mind, you know not.

One paints in a fervour, While the other drenches in colours, And who spoils that picture, oh my mind!

How many live in you, you know not!

This hastily done translation of a famous song from the endless oeuvre of the mystic bauls of Bengal does in no manner capture the rustic charm and lively nuance of the original.

It will, however, be an interesting exercise to analyse this particular verse in terms of the ‘many selves’ theory which has always been a fruitful staple of literature as well as clinical psychology. The opposition of personalities that often send us frail human beings away from the proposed paths of our ‘choices’ is a problem that has plagued even the most gifted of women and men throughout the humble history of humankind.

As little as I may know about literature, my knowledge of clinical psychology is far abysmal for my pen to quote any pearls of knowledge that might pacify a broken self.

What I can express is mere gratitude for the seemingly magical phenomenon that comes as much as a necessity as a blessing to the multitudes that inhabit our tropical nation. Rain – the graceful gift of the heavens as it were that not only alleviates the searing summer heat but brings life by feeding the acres of natural produce that would, in turn, feed more than a billion souls.

But what is rain to a cosmopolitan as I but a cyclical show of the seasons marked by waterlogging and escalating surge prices on taxi services?

The heat has been taken care of by the uber-cool systems conditioning the breathable air at office or at home while food is the purview of the local supermarket or online vendors, hardly something “I” should be concerned with.

“I” seldom empathise with a cinematic group of desi farmers who might be singing and dancing in true blue Bollywood fashion as they pray for monsoon. “I” seldom empathise with that man in rags hogging the boiling attic of his own home – now that he is old and nearing a lonely death, his dear ones deem it better to free up one room of their threestorey castle in upscale South Kolkata.

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I cannot help but think of myself – only myself – even when rain floods the entire city, district, the entire southern part of our state to prove, yet again, the theory of natural non-discrimination.

Water fits the container, sure. Thus one might argue how the waterlogging of Behala (the western bit of the city) and the crisp dryness of the bylanes of Sector Two (far east) is not so much a discrimination of the rudderless clouds but a human folly in something as basic to a citystate as a drainage system.

As I keep reverting to myself and the states of unclean in my multiple selves – the unprepared issue of the magazine that is past time, the fiction that is to be filmed which is not getting enough light – and of course, the newly acquired teaching gig that promised to be a regular monsoon of money.

The rain, as I think of nothing but myself, rages on with as much ferocity of wind inside as it does on the outside. I feel the three selves melting into each and the unspoken many fuse themselves in the dance of the water too – the guilt, fear and heartaches all roll into a cohesive din – rain on a tin roof – until it filters to the drip-drop on a wooden drum in the middle of a haunted jungle out of a Satyajit Ray juvenile classic.

The point of contention – when one reverts into a glorious rain drenched afternoon in childhood, spent looking into the eyes of a girl I fancied, or making paper boats to launch marine expeditions to the north of our childhood home- that moment of sheer time-travel is but a moment too short as the dam – it gets flooded, broken into a wave of binaries I cannot help but fall for.

Where black meets white and “I” meets all other, why does myself feel like an unkempt rock in the sky that keeps revolving around a neverending ball of fire? Why do I keep waiting for the rain, and when it comes, begin to wait till it is done? []

Artwork: Author

A SELECTION OF MONSOON POEMS BY NOBEL LAUREATE

RABINDRANATH TAGORE TRANSLATED BY SYED AMIR MILAN

ue

en Av

on

pin ER ne n HL He

C

OE K ve T y E ER n i B Ra RO g nin

The Damaru rumbles in the heart The Damaru* rumbles in the heart,

The brows of dark clouds twisted in cunning, The woods and forests shiver Which guest sways in heartbeats uneasy, dreaming Of divine union?

Sounds of rain rends the sky during the thunder-wary night, The jasmine boughs and leaves shiver in the moving dance While scared crickets sends the garden abuzz.

*drums (In mythology, the preferred drums of Lord Shiva)

team Rain, S

eed

and Sp

ER

URN T .

W .

J.M

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The deep blue cover The blue deep cover has not spared an inch of the sky.

O, do not go outside today, we pray.

The rain falls steady, the Ayush* fields they fill, Look how inky clouds bring darkness on the other side!

Hark! Someone cries for the boatman to take him home, The boats have stopped plying today.

The wind rushes from the East, the waves climb Both shores of the empty river bank.

At a great speed, water crashes into water and it rings, The boats have stopped plying today.

Hark! The milch cow calls out, bring her home, The darkness is to descend at the end of the day.

Stand by the door and see if those that went to the fields return, Where has the cowherd boy lost himself today?

The darkness is to descend at the close of day.

O, do not go outside today, we pray.

The sky is dark, the day is soon to end.

The steady drench will wet the skirt, the road to the river bank slippery – The clumps of reed they sway by the way, O look! *seasonal paddy

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a Mo a (May

untain

)

II KUNI O Y O AWA T G A T U yam in at O

a Night R

Come, oh dark beauty Oh dark beauty, come

Bring your sweet company That would rob the heat and thirst Of the deprived; she looks up at the sky.

She has her troubled heart spread Over the shadowed path among the giant tingles, Her eyes the seat of a touching harmony.

Blossoms and buds she weaves, While the flute of union plays on the lawn.

Bring your mandira* along So she can dance to the fervent beats, Her bracelets will sound, waistlets would sing, Her anklets will jingle to the sound of the rain. *a stringed musical instrument

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How deep the ink spreads How deep the ink spreads across the sky.

The ten ways stifled, the forest struck dumb, The miles all anxious - what is to happen?

Fervent night – The lady of directions Fraught with fear.

In shivers the place lights up In bursts the lightning streaks Illuminating miles in a blink, The world of the sky bathes in darkness.

Among grave roars of the clouds, the mute darkness sleeps, A sudden gust of wind follows – crackling thunder!

Shadows assemble in the woods Shadows assemble in the woods, the heavens they call out.

When in this new spell of rain did you come in secret, o Keya*?

A mute gesture of the East, on a sleepless night, What course of imagination the winds take Which wheelboat of July whims?

The honey spread over the heart hides among thorns for fear – As if you saw in your mind the one you came looking for, A give and take away from prying eyes, A give and take, hiding in oneself. *a monsoon flower

13

iny Day

Pa

et: Ra ris Stre

TTE

AV GUST

LEBO E CAIL

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ALL TRANSLATIONS ARE SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT

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FICTION There is a stillness about Nadia, the way that she lies

there as if a queen on her throne holding an audience with her subject. Even the blinking of her eyes seem controlled, the upper lid closing with the bottom one only as she wills it to happen. Her lashes are thick with expensive mascara but there is no weight to them; they flutter with ease at her command. Above her lashes on her eyelids is the faintest hint of baby blue eyeshadow. The shadow matches her eyes. When she changes her eye shadow she changes contact lenses to match the color of the shadow. She was a toddler when she learned how to apply makeup, what makeup was only worn by those with wealth, and she has never forgotten. The makeup is her mask. There are no smile lines around her finely painted lips. Despite her age her face is free of wrinkles. Any that ever appeared were botoxed, lasered away, stretched or surgically removed from existence. Her movements are so deliberate, so planned at a conscious level that the air around her is only disturbed with thought about it beforehand.

Nadia is stretched out on the divan, her head back against a silk pillow, not a single perfectly salon- blended honey-colored strand of hair disturbed that she hadn't pre-planned. Her long neck tapers down to a creamy white blemish-free chest and perfectly artificially enhanced shaped breasts held within the black floor length lace applique lounging dress bought at the most expensive boutique in Soho. Stretching out, her long slender form extends to the end of the divan, her left foot in a handmade black and gold slipper sewn together by Portuguese lace makers with satin imported from Malaysia then shipped directly to her in New York. The other slipper is strategically placed on the floor by the divan. Her naked right foot extends out from the hem of the dress displaying five perfectly privately pedicured toenails of subtle pink blush made and bought at an exclusive shop in Taipei. Her left elbow is bent and resting on her side, her hand in the air displaying expertly manicured fingernails with a peach color polish. She keeps this arm and hand perfectly still as if keeping it

OPULENCE STEVE CARR Photography: Adrianna Calvo

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ready in the event she needs to summon someone to her or wave them away. Her right arm and hand rest on the divan alongside her side.

When she listens she gives no hint that she is hearing what is being told to her.

“Marie just disappeared. Gone. Vanished,” Burns tells her.

The room is filled with silence, the aftermath of something said that registers no response.

Burns sits back in the custom made hand embroidered overstuffed chair and crosses one long leg over the other. Her private-trainer toned legs are displayed in Mayfair nylons that extend to milk soaked feet inside Gucci strapless black heels. She puts an E-cig to her royal red painted lips and inhales the nicotine loaded vapor. She looks around the room and extends one hand and points a slender finger at a small painting in a gold frame. “Is that your new Matisse?”

Without looking to where Burns is pointing, Nadia barely parts her lips as if to do more would be wasted energy and utters a simple “yes.”

Still staring at the Matisse, Burns says “Marie had just bought that Modigliani at an auction. Who knows what she was thinking buying a painting like that one, even if it is a perfect example of his work.” Burns pauses and takes another drag on her E-cig. “To just up and disappear the way she has is so surprising. She just doesn't seem to be the type to do such a thing.”

“Marie has disappeared?” Nadia asks indifferently.

“Yes just a few days ago. It's being kept very hush-hush.” Looking at her friend on the divan Burns whispers. “They say she was hearing things before she vanished.”

Nadia pulls in her naked foot beneath the hem of the garment, hiding her toenails. “What was she hearing?”

Burns leans slightly forward, the small pearl necklace around her neck shifting slightly.

“It's so odd. Things in the air vents in that

fabulous penthouse of hers and under the kitchen appliances. Exterminators were coming and going from her house like lawyers at a nasty divorce proceeding and nothing was ever found.

And now Marie can't be found.”

“That's too bad,” Nadia says.

“Yes it is,” Burns says. “We were supposed to have lunch at that marvelous new restaurant on Friday.” Burns takes another puff on her E-cig. “Marie had the best manicurist in the entire city. I never saw such a beautiful shade of green she had on her nails.” She raises her hand and looks at the pale crimson on her own nails. “To vanish without telling who the manicurist was is just plain rude.”

Nadia lies on her back looking up at the rose colored canopy over her bed. She lifts the remote control in her hand and presses a button and the drapes made of manually weaved fabric on a loom begin to close, shutting out the night sky and the lights of the city. Other than the movement of her finger holding the button down she is perfectly still, as perfectly posed in her bed as a mannequin displayed in a show room. As the drapes close completely her initials, N.A., are revealed monogrammed in large red letters on them. The N on one drape, the A on the other.

Automatically the room is diffused in pale blue light beaming out from two recessed spaces in the ceiling. She presses another button on the remote and waits in bored anticipation.

When the bedroom door opens, Clarice enters carrying a silver tray with a small glass filled with a light umber colored liquid. “Here is your L'Art de Martell, ma'am” she says as she brings the tray around to the side of Nadia's bed.

Without moving her head, staring at a small framed sketch of a nude male by John Singer Sargent on the wall straight ahead, Nadia says “Clarice I have asked you not to wear any perfume, haven't I? It clashes with my Patou Joy.” “Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. I didn't think a small dab would be noticed.”

“I notice everything Clarice.” She languidly lifts her hand to the tray and picks up

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the glass of cognac and brings it to her lips and takes a small sip then places the glass back on the tray. “Tomorrow evening Clarice before I come to bed please make sure that my pillows are properly fluffed.”

“Yes ma'am, would you like me to fluff them now?”

“No Clarice, I took care of it myself.”

Nadia says in a tone of resignation, then places her hand in the middle of her breasts then covers it with her other hand. “I'm ready to sleep now Clarice, you can go now.”

“Yes ma'am,” Clarice says leaving the room, turning a dimmer switch by the door before she exits.

In the artificial moonlight that bathes the room, Nadia pulls a sleep mask over her eyes and thinks “I must have Frederick do something about those clicking noises.”

Wearing a black Alexander McQueen tailored peplum coat, black slacks, black Giuseppe Zanotti spiked heels and carrying a silver Prada clutch, and with a choker of white diamonds around her neck Nadia enters the restaurant and stares out over the heads of the patrons from the raised entrance way. She does not look left or right, but straight ahead. She is there to be seen, not to see, and stands there as if unaware why she is there or why, or even where she is. The din in the restaurant is annoying; like the buzzing of gnats around her head on the beach in the Hamptons. She runs the tip of her tongue ever-so-lightly around the inner edge of her lips, feeling the smooth texture of the Dolce & Gabbana devil red lipstick, but not tasting it.

The aroma of food wafts about her and momentarily she wants to vomit, but her stomach like the rest of her organs are under her complete control, so she waits with perseverance to be waited on and be shown to the table of her waiting companion.

“This way Miss Arnault,” a young, handsome waiter in a starched gold silk shirt, white toreador jacket with pearl buttons and tight white trousers says to her as he holds out his white gloved hand for her to take as she steps

down the two steps to the floor of the restaurant.

With her hand lightly on his she is guided to the table.

“Nadia you look absolutely ravishing as always,” Stephany says looking up from texting on her cell phone.

The waiter pulls out the chair and Nadia sits down across from her friend. “Send your wine steward over immediately, ” she says to him.

“Certainly Miss Arnault,” the waiter says and turns and for Nadia no longer exists until he is to return with the menus.

“I just had to see you,” Stephany says picking up her glass of ice water and taking a sip, not because she is thirsty, but to show off her one-of-a-kind emerald green nail polish. “I was so glad you could meet me, but isn't this place just too horribly wanna-be for words?”

Nadia opens her clutch and takes out a gold compact, opens it and looks at herself in the mirror. “I'm on my way to see my agent and had some time to kill. What was so secretive that you couldn't tell me over the phone?”

Stephany leans over the table, her huge breasts encased in a too-tight Ralph Lauren floral print blouse and nearly knocking over the basket of bread sticks. “Women are disappearing and no one knows where they have gone and no one is talking about it.”

Nadia purses her lips and looks at the sheen of her lipstick in her reflection. “Burns told me something about it. She said Marie had vanished.”

“When did you talk to Burns?” Stephany asks, sitting back in her chair as if pushed there.

“Last week,” Nadia says.

“Then you don't know?”

“Know what?”

“Burns has disappeared also. Her husband has been frantic about it, that poor dear.”

Stephany leans over the table again. “He told my husband that Burns had been hearing things.”

“What things?” Nadia asks.

“Noises. Clicking noises coming from her bathtub drain.” Stephany sits back again as if exhausted. She dabs one of the linen napkins to

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the edges of her pale orange lipsticked mouth.

“Her husband went to the police and they only said they would look into it, but that was a few days ago and still nothing. It's a conspiracy and God knows who is listening to our phone conversations.”

“Burns said the same thing about Marie?”

Nadia says.

“What same thing?”

“That Marie had been hearing things.”

Nadia says just as the wine steward arrives at the table.

“What can I serve you Miss Arnault?” He asks.

“I'm just dying for a glass of your finest Vieux Chateau Certan.”

Nadia watches Frederick as he climbs out of her bed and stands looking at her. “What noises have you been hearing ma'am?” He says as he bends down and slides his large feet into his underwear and pulls them up over his narrow hips.

“Noises. Clicking noises. Like someone tapping their fingernails on something.” She looks away, at the drawing done by John Singer Sargent. “How many times do I have to tell you?

Just find out what it is and put a stop to it.”

“Where are the noises coming from ma'am?”

“How should I know? I just hear them and I want it stopped. Doing things around here is what you were hired for, now just do it.”

“Yes ma'am.” Frederick finishes dressing and goes to the door. “I hope everything was satisfactory,” he says before opening the door and exiting.

In the fake moonlight in her room, Nadia rises to a sitting position in her bed and pulls the sleep mask over her perfectly coiffed hair and tosses it on the floor. She slips her bare arms into her salmon color Sarrieri Passiflora Chantilly Lace bed jacket and throws the covers aside and gets out of bed. As she puts her panties on she hears it: the clicking noises. Scanning the room, she tries to determine where the noises are coming from, then bends down and lifts the satin sheets hanging over the edge of the mattress and looks under the bed.

Out of the darkness from under the bed a hundred roach-like creatures with lobster-like claws and a single bee-like stinger in the middle of their heads rush at her. Nadia falls back onto the floor just as one of the creatures latches onto her surgically perfected nose with a claw sending pain shooting across her entire face and bringing tears to her eyes around the blue tinted contact lenses. It drives its stinger into her cheek and as her body stiffens in paralysis the last thing Nadia sees before she is devoured alive are the tips of the lobster claws, each claw a different color of nail polish. []

Canvas: An impression by Wiktor Zaborowski

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POETRY

Era of Disguise NICHOLAS SOLLITTO

Photography: David Mark

You put that white veil over your face So they can’t see what you have done The world is ignorant on how you ran your race Talk about the times you won, succeeded, did Don’t communicate the times you lost, failed, or hid Don’t worry that white veil will cover your face Showing the world a symbol that sits in your place Day in and day out the world will see That white veil and not skin on your bones Try to take it off you will, but decide to let it be Addicted because it protects, promotes, covers Don’t communicate how it lies, deceives, or severs Don’t worry that white veil will cover your face Showing the world a symbol that sits in your place A gathering pursues, a casket, a crowd, a death I hope they put that white veil over your face When your body was broken and expelled of breath The nails are hammered over you; through your casket The veil is missing in action; back home in a basket There is now nothing to hide and cover your face The world now can see how you ran your race []

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POETRY

To The Shore NICHOLAS SOLLITTO Photography: Manolo Franco

Black is the night that takes you under The thoughts in your head crash like thunder Only Tuesday and you think it’s all you can muster Keep going. Keep going. Only a little farther Gracefully pretending Never ending Patiently Surrendering Noisily sending Red is the feeling you have inside Wondering if the voice really died Waiting for the internal war to subside Keep going. Keep going. Only a short ride Nasally sounding Arms surrounding Expeditiously mounding Head impounding Blue is the battleground after the war Startling but settling the score Eyes cautiously waiting for more Keep going. Keep going. Safely to the shore. []

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POETRY

EXPANSIVE SALVATION SCOTT THOMAS OUTLAR In the beginning‌ God’s tongue let loose with the word Love, and darkness gave way to Light as the radiant shine of purified source surged through the souls of a thousand clay vessels, breathing Life into every lung that longed to gasp with an exclamation of thankfulness.

Photo courtesy: LEEROY Agency

Consciousness careened through the infinite space of an ethereal realm, pulsing at every point of a synchronized web with notes of harmonic vibration as the song of the spheres burst with a bang into an electric symphony of static discharge, and the lyrics born from the stars found their way into the spirit of Man as the perfect plan reached a safe home in which to rest. []

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POETRY

Edging Nearer an Eruption SCOTT THOMAS OUTLAR

Photography: George Digalakis

Whichever way the wind blows, I will flow or flux accordingly because there is no weather system nor circumstance that can arise in life to cause my soul the least bit of strife.

We are born and then we die, but in between we manifest these dreams while riding the Jetstream that jettisons our bags of flesh and bone from one plateau to the next.

A constant, continual, progressive, evolutionary process of adaptation as we assimilate with the conditions of each new moment being birthed into form from that which was settling into the smoothness of that which now is, all the while setting sights of a third-eye laser on the future that erupts as a fire burning hot and loud toward what we must become. []

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A column that often revisits what are sometimes regarded to be open wounds of the extant cultural setup.

The magazine does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in the article.

Remarks/counter criticisms can be mailed to CultureCultin@gmail.com for publication in our next issue.

The Cursed Verses of Rushdie SALMAN RUSHDIE & THE SATANIC VERSES Jagannath Chakravarti revisits a past with implications that seem to keep popping its ugly head in forms outdated, yet new. This certainly does not speak of when it all began, but when things began to appear as bleak as they stand today.

THE BLUE BOOK The Blue Book is large. The distant red letters doesn’t escape your near-perfect eyesight as you clearly see the five words printed on its fat spine: Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses. It is still Kolkata, a distinct nip in the bud hinting at February but reassuringly away from March, barely a few days after the author’s flight landed in the city only to whisk him back ‘where he belonged’.

Following his hyped absence at the Kolkata Literary Meet of the Kolkata Book Fair 2013, the author went into a tiring tussle and faced a familiar tune from yet another bureaucratic set-piece. While the green Hakims of the city were busy prescribing antidotes to the easily offended, the secular media rose up in protest. The famed ‘addas’ of the city, be it Hari’s ‘Cha’ or the cheap and not-so-cheap cafes strewn across the map got a literary issue to fight over their steaming ‘bhaars’. Even a seasoned British citizen such as Rushdie would marvel at an average Bengali’s ability to raise a storm over a cup of tea!

Incidentally, you are at a ‘Book Fair’ as well, and this is one of the numerous makeshift book fairs that dot

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several community grounds in South Kolkata around the time when the state-sponsored ‘Big Brother’ of book fairs bring traffic on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass to a staggering halt. This particular venue, in the heart of ‘Colony-para’, is famous for a seasonal religious carnival.

These grounds are of course, quite ill-suited to host a proper Book Fair. Two-score stalls and the allotted space for munchies cannot turn on such a passionate bibliophile as you. In fact the only reason why you are here at all is quite simple: you are there to look for old copies. Scavenging bibliophiles often hunt (seldom in pairs) these fairs for fair deals on rare and old books. And you have finally hit upon the jackpot.

A middle-aged, cross-eyed man of unassuming build and a threeday stubble spots you poring through the copy of the Blue Book.

Maybe the greed in your eyes is quite apparent as he gives you a questioning glance, sprinkled with the smile of a seasoned antiquedealer. You try to fake indifference and ask, ‘How much for this?’

The man replies with a toothy grin, beginning with an aside: ‘It’s hard to come by a copy of this one anymore. I’ll sell it for 700’ You gulp. 700 is not an unfair price per se, the book being beyond rare. But 700 isn’t such a petty amount for you either. ‘How about 400?’ you low-ball.

Being as apt in bargaining as you are at swimming, you gulp again.

The man’s face turns sour as he murmurs, ‘Bhai, even you know it’s too less. How about 650?’

You hesitate.

THE FACTS The facts often tend to sidestep one another as the ephemeral mental chronology is finalized in grandeur. Fact: Salman Rushdie’s notorious work ‘The Satanic Verses’ is not banned in India, at least in the sense that a surprising number are under the impression of.

It is, technically speaking, not an offence to possess the book or even read it. There are parallel suggestions, of course: it’s liberally endowed pages can be used as traditional ‘thongas’ for the consumption of a generous amount of ‘Ghoti-Gorom’. The recyclefriendly pages can effortlessly replace toilet wipes and you can even burn the book on a stake, like good old times, and cause minimum agitation to the environment. However, all these hypothetical and crudely brilliant scenarios are rendered moot by the fact that the Finance Ministry of India imposed a ban on the import of the book under Section 11 of the Customs Act, circa 1988.

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As Rushdie’s third-person narrator states in his memoir ‘Joseph Anton’, the Finance ministry were quick to add that the ban 'did not detract from the literary and artistic merit' of Rushdie’s work.

It is quite a ‘literal’ literary risk to pan somebody like Rushdie’s work on the basis of its merit. After all, even though Rushdie’s 1981 masterpiece ‘Midnight’s Children’ is as blasphemous a book as any as far as a diligent supporter of Indian National Congress is concerned, it did win its fair share of laurels. It’s ‘Booker of Bookers’ and ‘Best of the Bookers’-winning take on the first woman Prime Minister of the World’s largest Democracy is controversial at best, quite akin to Rushdie’s 1983 novel ‘Shame’ which is a similar take on the Zia ul-Haque regime of Pakistan.

In fact, come 1984, Mrs. Indira Gandhi would sue Rushdie for libel in a London High Court and win, motivated more from a sense of personal injury since the book went on to claim that she neglected her husband. The supplementary accusations of genocide, warmongering and rampant castrations were ignored by the plaintiff, quite sensibly perhaps, as an Indian Woman is nothing if not a quintessential goody two-shoes sati-savitri, epitomized by the drunken tinsel town divas of yonder years (on-screen, of course).

Rushdie’s tryst with politics had turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. He was inevitably ‘categorized’ by a section of the reading and non-reading public, yet the class of his work and consequently, the popular awards he was conferred with invariably cemented his place in literary history as well as university syllabi, perhaps the only way known to mankind to attain immortality. However, as Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”

The Satanic Verses would emerge four years later in 1988. Former India Today journalist Medha Jain would get hold of a copy and publish a review and interview with the author, nine days before the book was scheduled to hit bookstores in India. The article, which boasted a succulent headline: “An unequivocal attack on religious fundamentalism” and a malignant finishing touch: 'The Satanic Verses is bound to trigger an avalanche of protests..' is viewed by Rushdie to be: ‘an open invitation for those protests to begin.’ According to Rushdie, the review allegedly violated ‘the traditional publishing embargo and print its piece nine days before the book’s publication, at a time when not a single copy had arrived in India. This allowed (Indian Parliamentarian and editor of magazine Muslim India) Mr Shahabuddin and his ally, another opposition MP named Khurshid Alam Khan, free rein. They could say whatever they pleased about the book, but it could not be read and therefore could not be defended.’ The publication quoted some

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of the ‘juicy bits’ among others (especially the ‘bit’ about the Prophet’s wives) and published them devoid of any context, creating space for a substantial amount of misinterpretation.

Among the early adopters who did read the book was noted journalist & author Khushwant Singh, who received an advance copy of the book and called for a ban as a ‘measure to prevent trouble’ in The Illustrated Weekly of India.

The plot thickened the following month as the ‘ban’ on the book was imposed officially by the Indian Government on October 5th, 1988. Within weeks, the precedent was lapped up by the menace that was Apartheid-era South Africa and several other nations including Pakistan (whose beaureaucrats couldn’t really see the joke in ‘Virgin Ironpants’ and had happily banned ‘Shame’ as well), Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, Bangladesh, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Qatar. Come Christmas month of 1988, the book would take centrestage as 7000-strong protesters would assemble in Bolton, England and make a post-modern Bonfire of Vanities using Rushdie’s Verses.

THE TRIAL Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the then-Supreme Leader of Iran, on the Valentine’s day of 1989, declared a fatwa calling for the blasphemer’s head, with a sweet little bounty in place. While several militant groups across the world responded cheerfully to the news of the fatwa and expressed interest in carrying out the orders, souls perished in riots and bombings in Karachi, Srinagar and even Rushdie’s home city of Mumbai (then: Bombay).

Bookstores were attacked in various places in the US and Europe, and the novel’s Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was shot dead on July 11, 1991.

Although the ailing Khomeini passed away soon after voicing his verdict in 1989, his words have been lauded and periodically reaffirmed and an additional bounty of a whopping $2.8 million was put up by an Iranian foundation in 1999. Salman Rushdie, without a fair trial for the ‘crime’ that he had committed, began a life of hiding and guarded seclusion. Rushdie’s political bar-fights could not have prepared him for the ‘divine’, ‘foreign’ wrath that was about to change the rest of his life! With The Satanic Verses, Rushdie had taken up a battle whose burden refuses to let him go and effectively turned him into a religious refugee.

Artists and pioneers often cave under pressure, exchanging the elusive Peace of Mind with the overhyped Freedom of Expression.

Although it is a matter of contemplation whether Rushdie’s Verses can at all be compared to a work like Galileo’s ‘Discorsi’, the former did follow the latter as far as an attempt to get back

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into the popular fold, an effort at getting a semblance of the obscure peace on the horizon is concerned. Rushdie apologized more than once and even implored the publishers to stop circulating the book at one point, only to realize that nothing was going to pacify his headhunters. The fatwa remained in effect in spite of Rushdie’s best efforts at reconciliation – a fact he finally regretted, terming his repeated apologies the ‘biggest mistake(s) of my life’ in an interview with The Times in August, 1995. Quite naturally, the initial bounty was immediately doubled to $600,000.

Considering the age of mankind, concepts such as ‘textbook democracy’ and ‘Freedom of Expression’ are relatively new to the race, all whose heroes have on a given day, consolidated his/her position by putting down one detractor (the thesaurus suggests ‘disbeliever’ as an alternative) or the other. The oxymoron of a question that keeps arising is therefore, where does ‘freedom of expression’ draw the line? Who is to determine what comes under ‘expression’ and what falls under ‘insult’ or whether ‘insult’ is a form of ‘expression’ too, especially in a scenario that transcends the local laws and political borders & wholly exists in a theological realm, originating in a country that refuses to be chained under the banner of ‘Democracy’ and likes to call itself a ‘Theocratic Republic’.

Another question that shall remain unanswered is whether the ‘Verses’ controversy was a ‘result’ of the book’s contents at all or motivated by other subsidiary issues hogging the limelight at the time. The plot-holes have been traced and thinkers have gladly attached several political motivations behind the issuing of the fatwa. Journalist Robin Wright puts it thus: “As the international furore grew, Khomeini declared that the book had been a 'godsend' that had helped Iran out of a 'naïve foreign policy'”, in wake of the truce with Iraq. The fatwa even took the spotlight away from the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, a win for the God-fearing West and the Islamic state over the atheist Communist forces.

Daniel Pipes, the author of ‘The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West’ points out that the motive may well have been to divide Muslims in the West by highlighting the difference in ‘conflicting political and intellectual traditions’ extant in the two cultures. It was a ‘good call’ in cricketing terms, with enough emotional backing and the enabling changing times to carry forth the controversy.

However at this point in time, it is pointless to argue whether Rushdie was one of the unwitting perpetrators, or merely a catalyst: a Sikhandi of epic proportions in the scheme of things that would culminate like a jittery stack of dominoes, dividing the world in two distinct halves over the next quarter of a century.

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Making the Indian Government face the ethical music for creating the precedent is also a juvenile enterprise at best.

Misinterpretation is as universal a trait as any, and considering Rushdie’s history, it would not have been long before somebody set the precedent even if the Indian Government had taken the high road.

The point that must be remembered, however, is that every war has the archetypal ‘Collateral Damage’, the by-product of an uncontrolled chemical experiment. A seldom-voiced fact which often tends to be sidelined remains that whatever the book may have said or did not, multiple people perished in the farce that began twenty five years ago. Among the fundamentalists or the ‘fundamentally inclined’, the topic called ‘Rushdie’ is still a favorite item of battery to provoke the masses. The people who are brainwashed over a non-existent piece of allegedly provocative material are not that different from the people who may not even have been aware of the existence of the deadly Blue Book while they were brutally slained over a ‘pious’ cause. At times, allusions and their interpretations merely form a greater excuse, a veil to hide the shame within. Gruesome means justified by a glorious end can only succeed so far as to clear the conscience of the blind believers. A leader must become even more blind to succumb to this temptation. Truth is, even a hundred years from now, when all parties in this travesty will long be dead, the blood will remain in the memory of a yetunborn who will be enchanted by the brilliant blue hue and red letters, just like you were.

THE DEAL You hesitate.

“How about 450?” you say with little conviction. The cross-eyed man merely smiles and nods his head slowly. He goes ahead to take care of an enthusiastic little customer who has come hopping into his shop for some second-hand Famous Fives.

You feel at once relieved and disappointed as the man leaves you two on your own so you can say a final goodbye to the volume.

You glance around one more time, the names of the other volumes on the shelf unable to hold your attention for long. You spot Aravind Adiga’s ‘Between the Assassinations’. Wasn’t that the book which had a… nah, you’ve too much on your mind to recall correctly. You return to the bird at hand. You feel the luscious pages one more time, try to catch a whiff of the seminew smell of the book without being seen, heave a classic sigh of despair and slowly, very slowly… at an uncouth eighty eight frames per second, put the book back on the shelf.

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Fact: You suddenly feel lighter.

DREADFUL MISTAKE Even with the enlightened youth in Rushdie’s home country gunning for justice and the blood of rapists (constitutionally underage or not), it can be safely said that as far as his original ‘Home’ is concerned, Rushdie has constantly been at the butt end of a rather unfair deal. The step-treatment meted out by a select populace of his homeland, even twenty five years later: be it the Jaipur Literature Festival or the Kolkata Affair, is something neither a writer nor any self-respecting Indian would like to experience, even with a Knighthood and a British citizenship in one’s kitty. This is one of the prime reasons why the cause of contemporary headline-grabbers such as Rushdie and Tasleema Nasrin becomes so strong. When the Hitchcockian ‘Birds’ converge in the real world, they miraculously become saintly white. And Tippi Hedren never manages to have a happy ending!

But what about the mortals whose only acts of rebellion are mere parodies of a livid acceptance? To us, Home is where the heart is.

Home is where all the running stops. But homes have slights too.

Your Home has that dark corner, that scary wooden closet and that creaky-sounding ceiling fan that you meant to change a long time ago but didn’t, the one that comes alive at night. Your Home has that man who stereotypically comes home drunk, whips off his leather belt and starts ‘teaching’ the woman. Your Home has that tall, mean lady whose shout runs a shiver down your spine, you can hear your heartbeats at the back of your tongue. And indeed…

Your Home is where you refuse to shell out a few more bucks to buy a book that you think Mama won’t like. But you’re wrong.

Mama doesn’t care what you do, as long as you keep it to yourself!

“Enough of invisibility, silence, timidity, defensiveness, guilt! An invisible, silenced man was an empty space into which others could pour their prejudices, their agendas, their wrath. The fight against fanaticism needed visible faces, audible voices. He would be quiet no longer. He would try to become a loud and visible man.” ― Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir []

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POETRY

Two Poems AVA BIRD Photography: Bkrmadtya Karki

autopsy they will study my thoughts they study my brain read my works display my art they will have a memorial and i hope they celebrate and when they cut me open and look at my insides give away my organs still they will not find they will never know these deep thoughts some of these feelings the intangibles but spirit still says have a a great journey be good now and thanks for the ride! []

magic again those days of waking up on the wrong side of the couch ouch in my neck spider web mirrors block accidents and freeway mishaps these rooms, houses and bricks and concrete locks on doors lost in the woods these realms of changing tides and directions yet moons always there in phases, suns rise we wise up to new ways of being in the now again same place same time just differing patterns of relating always changing molecules atoms particles centers all my relations all my connections buzzing back to the magical the magical moment of being back here again. []

The Home of CultureCult Magazine on the Internet

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FICTION

1 As I sat inside the waiting room of the Lansing Funeral Home, I could not help but notice the absolute silence of the place. It was nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning in the first week of March. The sky outside the long

casement windows looked as if the dull grey of the clouds had melted inside its soft blue. It was a typical Lansing day of spring with its soothing chill and calmness that settled in the air after a night of heavy rain. On my way here, I noticed a secondary school a block away, yet no cackling children, not even a bird. The management had

Photography: Anja Osenberg

decorated the mortuary with stems of purple wisteria stretched around the outside walls and edges of windows, and there were carefully pruned butterfly bushes on the lawn. The waiting room had two sofas, a coffee table with a glass top in the middle, a well-stacked book case, and a long flat-screen television tacked above the

mantelpiece. Two white porcelain flower vases, with a blend of yellow, pink, and blue lilies were resting on the mantelpiece. I looked at Faisal. He was sitting at the sofa across from me, thumbing over his I-phone. He was dressed in all black: black jeans, shirt, shoes, socks. I wore a pale white shirt with its ends hanging over my blue

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jeans.

I was up till four o’clock last night talking to my wife in Pakistan, and in any other case, would probably have still been sleeping. But Faisal’s father died last evening due to a heart attack and he called me at eight this morning, wondering if I could help him wash the dead body. I hardly even knew Faisal. It had only been two weeks since I had started working as a delivery driver at the pizza place on Holland drive where Faisal was one of the other three drivers. Twenty minutes later our boss, Mr. Sajid, called me to go help Faisal. I wondered why he couldn’t help Faisal himself. He told me later that he had not had the courage. I wondered what made him think I had the courage to wash the dead body of a person I had only met once. It had only been two days when the engine of Faisal’s car gave away and his father came to tow the car home. They were Afghans. Though they had been in Lansing for more than two years, somehow I was the only guy who agreed to his request.

The dead body was already inside the bathing room. We were waiting for the local imam to help us wash it according to the traditional Muslims rituals. The imam soon came donned in papery white shalwarkameez hugging onto a little prayer book under his folded arms.

He shook our hands, looked at Faisal with some dismay, then inquired, “Why are you dressed in all black, son.”

Faisal said, “Because I thought black is what we are supposed to wear.”

Imam said, “No. It is for Christians. We are Muslims. You better go change it.”

Faisal rushed out to his car. I looked at the dark screen of the television and picked one of the brochures placed over the coffee table. It said, “At Lansing Funeral Home we offer a variety of American made eco-friendly caskets and shrouds. We also offer an extensive selection of biodegradable urns suitable for earth or water burial.”

We finally went inside the dressing room twenty minutes later when Faisal came back dressed in a blue jeans and loose grey t-shirt with a red buffalo embossed on it. He was a tall

muscular guy about the age of twenty with a carefully trimmed pencil-thin beard. Imam didn’t look pleased with Faisal’s selection of clothes but bid us to the room. Inside, the walls looked medieval with naked bricks patched with cement; a pale rubber tube came out of a tap fixed over a fairly deep washing sink with slight patches of light blue on it. A diagonal crack ran through the middle of the sink. The dead body was laid over a raised and slightly inclined stony platform in the middle of the room. The imam stood by the head whispering his prayers. To my surprise, I did not feel any fear. I still remembered the hard scabby touch of the guy’s palm. He was a short skinny guy with a bald pate, a long oval face with small restless eyes and a pointy nose; a fast talker. I could now see pockets of long auburn hair over his chest, a taut ballooning gut with a big navel, lean muscular arms. But I could not identify those restless eyes, the person I had met only for a brief minute, with the dead body lying beneath me. The imam twisted the sink faucet, soaked two small white towels, and placed the rubber tube over the body’s right shoulder. A soft gush of warm water mixed with soap cascaded down the body. He looked at me and said that the right side of the body should be washed first. I began to scrub its hands, but as I moved up toward the shoulder, the body started to slide down. All three of us rushed to hold it, pulled it back up, and steadied the head back over the stony headrest. Faisal stood over the side of the head and gripped the shoulders. I hurried with my hands, and once I was done, I took over Faisal’s place. For a short skinny man, the body was really heavy. It took all my strength to keep it stable and resting. It felt pathetic; and I kept thinking, I never want to die.

I glanced over at the imam. His lips were moving in a frenzy but to me it seemed meaningless. We were the ones with absolute power over the body. There was nothing we could not do with it.

I felt that that day, we conveyed our sense of dignity through our hands and eyes. I thought that one day I would lay at its place, at the mercy of others, probably strangers. Once we had rubbed the body with dry towels, imam sprayed

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an ittar with the scent of camphor over its armpits and private parts. We cloaked the body with three separate pieces of white cotton cerements; tying the two ends, by the head and the feet, together.

Once we were out, Faisal hugged me, and thanked me. I was ready to go home, take a shower, and rest, but he asked me head straight to the mosque after I shower, and I couldn’t say no.

A small group of men were seated inside the mosque reading Quran. From across the wall, I could hear voices of women reading Quran their lilting Arabic coalescing into a soft hum of dirge. I picked up a copy and attempted to read but it had been a while and my Arabic had become rusty. Half an hour later, few sharp cries mixed with low keening voices reached out from the wall. It meant that the dead body had arrived. It was almost noon. We had to wait another hour to start the group namaz in honor of the dead person.

After the namaz, I stood outside the mosque and gazed at the washed blue sky, birch and maple trees with freshly sprouted leaves over their stems, fresh spills of bird droppings over the parked cars. Nothing seemed more repulsive, at that moment, than my own body.

People started to walk out hoisting the open casket over their shoulders. I watched with my hands folded over my chest. It was here that Faisal introduced me to Rubab, his sister. She thanked me in her broken English tinged with a Farsi accent along with a forced smile over her lips and a hoarse quivering voice. A film of dried tears was still visible over her milky white cheeks. Her fingers were bunched inside her palm and I noticed cracked patches of pink spread over her long nails. The air was beginning to fill with dull voices of old engines and shutting car-doors. I walked with Faisal toward his car. It was an old eighties’ red Mustang. There were four other cars and the funeral bier in the shape of a black Lincoln van. We proceeded toward the cemetery like a row of timid, lethargic ants.

“Man,” Faisal said, “he was watching a movie with us yesterday. How could a thing like this

happen?” I thought it was time to speak but failed to locate a single word that stood up to the gravity of the situation. I thought about my wife.

I thought about her voice last night and how it was stained with the ache of solitude. I longed for her embrace. I thought about my four year old son. I had not seen them for three years now.

There were many more people at the cemetery: mostly white men and women from Faisal’s father’s pizza place and ours. A grave had already been dug. They came toward us, some hugged, some held our hands in condolence. An old white woman with a black scarf around her face mistook me for a family member and said to me, “He was a hard-working man but each body has an expiry period. His heart expired. There was nothing you could do.” A stocky middle-aged man in coffee-brown shalwarkameez walked toward us and said, “Please hurry. The son and close relatives are supposed to carry a man inside his final resting place. There should not be any delay.” It was essentially a Christian cemetery with a small area circumscribed for Muslim bodies. I jumped inside the six feet deep grave with Faisal. Six scrupulous arms handed down the body to us. The body had already begun to stink; we almost dropped it, but managed to place it down. As instructed, we tilted it towards its right facing Mecca, ballasted its back with a row of bricks, untied both ends.

We were pulled out by eager outstretched hands.

As we started to shovel sand inside the grave, a large flock of birds flew above us, parasolled us with the curtain of their shadow, and liberally spilled their droppings over the cemetery. One slimy sulfurous drop splashed right over the nape of the dead body. All hands paused for a moment and everyone looked at each other. All eyes turned to Faisal. He pushed his shovel, scooped more sand, and poured it inside the grave. Everyone followed him. The sounds of gasping men, their shovels, dripping sand, and birds resting on the stems of trees began to fill the vast space between the depths where the body of Faisal’s father lay and the soft blue sky with fluffy white clouds shading the green earth damp under the fresh spell of spring.

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2 Two weeks later I was surprised to see Rubab at the Pizza store. She looked quiet but composed, confident of herself. Mr. Sajid taught her how to measure the correct amount by weighing sausages and beef and bits of shredded chicken with her palm. It was five o’clock in the evening, a pale salmon-colored light had spread through the sky, and there was a calm stillness inside the pizza store without its usual clangor of phones and hobnob of drivers rushing in and out.

Five o’clock was the time when shifts changed.

Babar, the morning guy, left as I came and Fidler joined me soon after. Fidler came waddling in his usual brown shirt, which I’m sure must have been extra-extra-large and yet was too short and tight for his bulging body. Tides of fat slipped underneath it and little bubbles of skin covered with curly yellow hair poked between the buttons. I liked him. He was one of those persons who had surrendered their ego and had sunk helplessly inside the bottomless pit of puns and jokes dug by others. And yet he always brimmed with compassion -willing to go to any length for a bit of shared love and empathy.

I tried to look busy by folding boxes but my mind stayed with my wife. I had shared with her my experience of washing the body but unlike what I expected she did not appreciate it.

She said she was not comfortable with the thought of me washing the dead body of a stranger. It was only a day later during a conversation about our son’s school prospects that she revealed she felt jealous.

“Jealous of a dead body?” I asked.

“Yes” “But why?”

“I don’t know. I’ll let you know when I figure that out.”

When the first call came, I leapt toward the phone, but Mr. Sajid with his mouth chockfull of betel-leaf, its juices peeking through the corners of his lips, signaled Rubab to pick the phone. Mr. Sajid rushed toward the sink and spat out the pasty mix of betel-leaf filled with areca nuts and slaked lime juice. He wiped his mouth

with a wad of paper towel torn from the roll attached on top of the sink and then placed the crumpled wet wad under the counter. As Rubab took the order, guided by the coarse brown finger of Mr. Sajid over the computer screen, I noticed for the first time the surprising melody of broken English consonants when stretched under long Persian vowels. Despite her struggles with English, her voice remained calm. Her hair was a blend of mellow brown with golden highlights over its thin edges. Once she put down the phone, Mr. Sajid began the comforting ritual: he stretched a little fist-ball of flour over a large pizza dish, carefully trimmed the edges, and slid the dish toward Rubab who colored the pale dough with a spread of red sauce and splashes of sausages, onions, and banana peppers. I then picked up the dish and pushed it inside the oven.

Once the pizza emerged out of the other side, thick with yellow crust bubbling around its edges, it was my job as a driver to box it, note down the address, and rush toward my car. This was my favorite part of the job: exiting out of the scalding and tedious space of the store into the open roads among the broader community of rickety cars struggling to avoid the potholes and puddles of broken Lansing roads. The sky had a rim of purple that spread westward and the wind began to hit my hair as if in spurts of glee and freewill.

My wife wanted to change our son’s school. He had been studying in one of the neighborhood schools and had been doing very well. In fact, he had been ranked among the top three in his class. But my wife felt now was the time to move him to one of the better Catholic schools located far in the downtown of Karachi. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to travel two hours each way at this young age, and of course the school fees was almost ten times higher.

In Houston, I had met many expatriates who had not seen their wives and kids for more than a decade. It always surprised me how a person could tolerate such distance for such a long time and more so still maintain the marriage. But now I was beginning to understand how it works. It was a kind of barter. Freedom

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can be its own addiction; freedom from the trappings of family. One of the guys, popularly called Cowboy, had not seen his family in Lahore for fourteen years. He said the luxuries he could provide his family by wiring dollars every month could never be matched if he worked in Lahore.

He said he was content as his children went to the top schools and wore Gap jeans and Kenneth Cole watches. They could now act and dress as well as the richest families of Lahore. So what if his life here is spent serving in gas stations twelve hours a day six days a week. If he had allowed his children to move with him to States then their fate would have been the small booths of gas stations and broken cash registers. It is all about currency exchange, he laughed. May Allah keep blessing the American Dollar. But what only came out later when he joked with his other friends was that during these fourteen years, he had slept with no less than two hundred women.

A highly exaggerated number, I’m sure, but back home, once he got married, the number could hardly have been more than a few. The joke was about the night when his roommate reached home drunk and ended up making out with a prostitute whose mouth he had just filled with his own semen. These men seemed to have grown addicted to this freedom. They could now maintain their façade of hardworking middleclass men of family values while living an uninhibited life driven by instincts. The sad but obvious truth was that they themselves did not know anymore who they were. They had long lost count of the number of personas they wore each day. They were the perfect chameleons, but in their hearts, they could never admit it. They could never admit that they had allowed their souls to rest, that this was now their home, that they were now drunk with their rootlessness, with their shifting identities. They could never admit that they hated themselves for all they’d become.

I had promised myself never to drop into this abyss. I had never touched another woman besides my wife. I still felt that the most fortunate day of my life was the day I met her in Karachi University. We were both literature

students. One day we sat next to each other on the university bus and found out that we had both shared the same neighborhood for eighteen years. Since that day, she had been the calming center of my life. The first year of my life in USA, I missed her as if she was a continent of bustling cities and I was on the island of Crusoe. As if the people around me were plants and hills and warm grains of sand content with their system of life and I was running around them, confused, searching for sturdy pieces of wood. But now I feared I was beginning to lose my yearn for her smell. Now I felt I must look at her every day to keep the shape of her nose and lips alive in my head.

The day began to pick up and I was leaving with six deliveries at a time. The rush continued till nine o’clock, after which, Sajid left the store to me and Rubab. We closed at one every night, and between nine and one was the time to clean the store, wash all the dishes, and close the daily accounts. Rubab turned out to be surprisingly efficient. She had already worked at a Dollar Store, a Target, and a Walmart. After washing the dishes, I leant at the counter and tried to read the day’s newspaper. Rubab stood with her back to the telephone. I asked her, “So how come you’re working here at the pizza store now?”

She stayed silent for a while peering down at hernails, now colored lime green, until I started to feel ignored. Then she looked up at me and with a wry smile said, “I hated working at Walmart. I hated lifting their stupid boxes, their dumb managers. Faisal told me that its better here, Sajid is a good boss.”

“When did you move to Lansing?” I asked.

“Hmm, two years.”

“Straight from Afghanistan?”

“Yes.” “But why here? Who would choose Lansing?”

“We don’t choose the city. Americans do.

When we came here as refugees, we were supported by a family from a church. They are very nice people.”

“So how was life in Afghanistan?”

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She didn’t answer and instead began to sweep the floor I had already swept. I kept looking at her for a while before turning back to my newspaper.

At night, I coaxed her to close fifteen minutes before one o’clock just to be home early. She drove back in her own red Saturn.

Once home, I grabbed a bowl of cereal and turned on my Skype. My wife, Sana, had just woken up. She looked at her screen with her weary brown eyes, and I felt I could read in them her longing, her undiminished desire for me. We had been married for three years when I found the opportunity to work as an SQA tester at an IT firm in Chicago. The firm folded after nine months but we decided that I shall stay for a few more years to earn enough to at least build our own house. Since my visa was only for a year, I could not stay any longer as a legal resident and instead had to work illegally for cash. That I did for two years in Houston, before Texas INS became more efficient at deporting people, and I moved to a friend here in Lansing.

Three months after I came here, he received his immigration from Canada. Now I lived alone in a two bedroom apartment, and every night gazed longingly at a computer screen. Sana sat with her back resting by the headboard of our bed, and I spoke to her about my day, about the deliveries, about the hundred-and twenty dollars I earned in tips, about the people who tipped and those who didn’t, about the chilly weather, about Rubab. She found enchantment in even the smallest of details. She had an appointment with the principle of St. Paul’s school at two o’clock.

“We want the best for our son, don’t we?” she said with her smiling lips.

“Well, Of course,” I said.

Next day Rubab came with a bunch of books of her own. She wanted to sit for a GED exam that year. “How old are you?” I asked, half in jest.

“Twenty-four,” came out her direct reply.

“So you never went to school in Afghanistan?”

“I did. But,” she paused. “I lied to you last night.”

“About what?”

“We did not come here straight from Afghanistan.

We lived in Pakistan for eight years. In Quetta. And I used to go to school in Afghanistan but never in Pakistan.”

“Why not?”

“Because there were no schools for us.”

“But how could you not know any Urdu after living there for eight years?” I asked.

These men seemed to have grown addicted to this freedom. They could now maintain their façade of hardworking middleclass men of family values while living an uninhibited life driven by instincts. The sad but obvious truth was that they themselves did not know anymore who they were.

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She looked at me with her light-brown eyes, and for the first time, I saw myself in between the sharp rims of her pupils. I could feel her warm breath on my face. I placed the book back at the counter, unfolded it to the page she had open, and started reading it. I am sure my voice shook.

And I am sure she could sense it.

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“I know Urdu but I never really want to speak it. I hated Pakistan. And well, we had to live in large Afghan camps. My mother worked at a tire factory, and I sewed patches of carpet and rugs at home. We rarely ever got to speak to any Pakistani.

“My granny here is helping me study for the GED. Once I pass it, then I can go to a nursing school.”

“I can help you too,” I said.

But she ignored me. Later at night when I found her bent at one of her books looking absolutely clueless, I went close to her to look at her book.

“I still cannot get these ‘do’ and ‘does’, ‘has’ and ‘have,’” she said, looking up at me for a moment before looking back at the book.

She smelled of pizza crust and cheap moisturizer. I grabbed her book, folded it down, and with a smile, said, let me explain it to you. My fingers brushed against her wrist.

She looked at me with her light-brown eyes, and for the first time, I saw myself in between the sharp rims of her pupils.

I could feel her warm breath on my face. I placed the book back at the counter, unfolded it to the page she had open, and started reading it. I am sure my voice shook. And I am sure she could sense it. I tried to explain as well as I could but the skin at my shoulders and upper arms felt cold and electric with goose bumps. My body had become so agitated that I breathed a sigh of relief when the phone rang. And I ran back to the bathroom and rubbed warm water over my neck and chest and shoulders. I grabbed one of the store’s winter jackets hanging by a nail at the office. And I zipped it on me before going out to the front. I stood right by my oven with my arms crossed at my elbows.

“It is cold,” I mumbled to her.

She laughed. I had never heard her laugh before. It was a loud and sharp clang that I am sure people in the parking lot outside could hear and perhaps smile at. “Are you serious?” she said. “It is warm outside and in here I feel as if I get half cooked with every pizza I make.”

That night, I did not login on Skype, and even ignored my wife’s calls on my cell. I picked up my old copy of Anna Karenina and started to read it again. Only now, as I write these lines, I find it surprising how I did not pause that night and thought over the day at all --a routine that I had up till then experienced with my wife every night. Instead I found myself buried deep inside the imaginary world of Tolstoy as if nothing else existed.

Next afternoon, when I woke up at three, there were thirteen missed calls on my cell by my wife. I called her and apologized. I told her that I was too tired and just fell asleep,

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that I am perhaps catching a flu.

She was aggravated. Utterly upset. But perhaps rightly so; our son had been accepted at St. Paul’s school, and they needed immediate forty thousand rupees as an acceptance fee; she only had twenty-five thousand.

“You never care for our family,” she yelled on the phone. “I am the one running around to get our son to the best schools while you are there sleeping in your room.”

“What are you talking about?” I shouted.

“I work ten hours every day at a stupid job that I hate. And for whose sake?”

“For yourself. Who else?” She said. “If you sent us the money you made, I would not have to ask my own parents and brother for our son’s school fee.”

“How am I supposed to know?” I said. “Fine! I am sorry.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I need you to wire me forty thousand rupees right now.”

“Fine!” I yelled back and hung up the phone.

I showered and left for the nearest Western Union. I called her to let her know once the money was wired, and went to the nearest Chinese buffet for the day’s lunch. I cannot say that I liked Lansing but I felt a curious sense of peace there. After living in three huge metropolises, Karachi, Chicago, and Houston, smallness of Lansing soothed me. The fact that I could drive from one end of the city to another in half-an-hour somehow comforted me. Living was cheaper in Lansing than Chicago or Houston. In one of my bedrooms, I kept my airbed and television with a VCR/DVD player and the second bedroom contained all my books.

Lansing was great for garage sales and cheap books. I had no cable or satellite but I bought hundreds of books for fifty cents or a dollar, and many cheap VHS cassettes of movies and sitcoms in garage sales.

That night, my body did not feel as intensely agitated when close to Rubab as it had the previous night. I helped her with her English, Physics and Mathematics problems.

Her hair smelled nicer, freshly shampooed, and her neck smelled of a strong perfume. Before we left for the night, she asked me, leaning by the hood of her car, if I could check one of her essays tomorrow. I am not working tomorrow, I told her, but I can come pick it up. She was not comfortable with Mr. Sajid or any of the drivers watching her share the pages with me.

“I can meet you somewhere outside,” I said, “before work.”

“Hmm...” she looked down as if pondering over the

I cannot say that I liked Lansing but I felt a curious sense of peace there. After living in three huge metropolises, Karachi, Chicago, and Houston, smallness of Lansing soothed me.

The fact that I could drive from one end of the city to another in half-an-hour somehow comforted me.

CultureCult Magazine - Monsoon 2016

The truth is that I felt that I was not the man with a wife and a four year old son, that I had no past, that my life had begun at that moment, in that park, among purple lilacs, right next to this girl with animated eyes, high cheek bones, slim shoulders, and goldenbrown hair.

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idea, then looked up at me and asked, “Where?”

At such moments her eyes looked straight at me, very direct, as if trying to peer into the very center of my being.

“How about the big garden on Saginaw Street?” I asked.

“Huh! Why would you want to go to a garden?” She frowned.

“Because it is beautiful,” I said. “And you can be sure there won’t be any Afghans or Pakistanis there at two in the afternoon.”

“Fine, ok,” she said, “Two o’clock then.”

I got back home more excited than I had been in the last four years, and with that familiar tingling over my arms and shoulders. I logged on to my laptop and called Sana. She was ecstatic.

“It is all done. Armaan is now a student of St. Paul’s school,” she shouted, this time with excitement.

“That is great Sana. Where is Armaan? I want to congratulate him.”

“Yes, yes, let me call him. He is right outside playing hockey with his friends.”

I shouted, “Armaan! My son!” when I saw his chubby face on the screen.

He looked like my mother with a moon like face and small eyes. “How did you do it?” I asked.

“Uh, I don’t know. They just asked me a few questions and I answered them.”

“Yes, and you answered them correctly. What do you want as your gift?”

“Xbox 3!”

“Fine, I will send it soon. But first tell me what do you want to become when you grow up?”

“A pilot!”

“Yes, of course you will be our pilot and then you’ll fly mama and papa to every country in the world.”

I talked with Sana for almost three hours that night. We talked about her father who was about to retire from his bank job, my mother who never cared for her diabetes, her brother whose wife had left him with their two daughters and gone to her parents, the property we wanted to buy, the expenses at Armaan’s new school. “I love you Sana,” I said, before hanging up. Though we were still sure of our love, we rarely expressed it anymore.

“Awww I love you too jaan,” she said. Her beaming smiling face had always brought me the greatest happiness.

And it still affected me as deeply. I genuinely wanted her to have everything she desired, all the happiness in the world, a life full of luxury and comfort.

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3 Next morning, for the first time since the day I was laid off from my job in Chicago, I dressed in formal clothes: beige pleated slacks, striped navy blue shirt, mahogany boots, and a grey herringbone jacket I bought the day after I arrived in USA. I had been to Lansing gardens a week prior and it was a captivating sight with a large stretch of Japanese maples, early flowering shrubs, spring bulbs, lilacs and iris. There was only one other person in the whole garden; and he was strolling among the Japanese maples with a camera hanging by his neck. A loud Persian song announced Rubab’s entrance even before her car turned into the parking lot. She was dressed in tight denims, high-top shoes, and a light houndstooth coat which hugged her figure.

She took light bouncy steps toward me, and said, “Hello mister!” in her unique accent, which I’ve always found impossible to produce on the page with mere alphabets. She was chewing a gum and blew a large pink bubble. She looked joyous, animated. I felt I liked her better in the cemetery, solemn and fragile.

“So you like flowers, haan?” She asked me, surprisingly, in Urdu.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“They are alright.”

We started walking between two rows of white and yellow spring bulbs. The guy with the camera was sitting on one of the benches by the main walkway. “So what do you like?” I asked.

“Songs, Indian movies, poetry.”

“Really, you like poetry?”

“Yes, Farsi poetry, Hafiz, Saadi, Rumi, Jami.”

“Do you write poetry?” I asked.

“Yes.” “Can you share any of your poems with me?”

“No,” she frowned. “They are in Farsi. I won’t translate them in your Urdu.”

We strolled for about half-an-hour before finding a bench to sit beneath a white dogwood tree.

“So, tell me why you invited me here?”

She asked me, and looked straight at my face.

“Because you needed to share your essay with me.”

“Are you sure? Is that all?”

I wish I had thought about that question.

The truth is that I felt that I was not the man with a wife and a four year old son, that I had no past, that my life had begun at that moment, in that park, among purple lilacs, right next to this girl with animated eyes, high cheek bones, slim shoulders, and golden-brown hair. I saw a pair of wrens close to the tree right next to us poking for something under the grass. They flew above the ground together, flapping their wings on each other, before turning into a sublime silhouette high against the sun-filled, cloudless sky.

“I like you,” I said.

“Why?” “I think you’re beautiful. And I feel happy around you.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“No, I mean it. I think I fell in love with you the day I saw you at your baba’s funeral.”

“Hmm…I’ve liked you too. I think you were a very kind person,” she said. “What you did for us was something nobody wanted to.”

“Nah, it was no big deal. It hardly took an hour. Anybody could have done it.”

“No, most people act like they would, but they didn’t,” she said, as she held my hands.

“You helped us though you did not even know us. You washed my father with these hands.”

“I should tell you something,” I said while following the photographer with my eyes. I wished I adored something as deeply and singularly as he adored those flowers, or maybe I did, I wasn’t sure of myself.

“I’m married.” I looked up at her expecting to find revulsion, but instead I found sympathy.

“It’s ok,” she said. She lifted my hands and like a patient lover kissed my fingers. Yet, since that moment, my guilt shadowed me just as later that night her scent did. It slipped inside of me.

Later that night, after closing the shop,

CultureCult Magazine - Monsoon 2016

we sat at the back-porch and gazed at the stars.

“Are you fond of stars?” she asked me.

“They’re ok,” I replied.

“Back in Quetta, where our camp was, I used to often sit outside and watch the stars till the sun rose. We lived with two other families, and those were the only moments I could find alone. The stars there were not as sparse as everything here in America is. I used to practice my counting as a kid on the number of stars that fell. They were never less than twelve.”

“What did you do there?” I asked.

She just looked at me puzzlingly and tightened her grip over my left hand. I loved the way she held my hands, as if our whole world would slip if she just relaxed her fingers.

“Tell me about your wife,” she said.

“What do you want to know?” I replied.

“How is she? Who is she?” she asked.

“Her name is Sana. We met at our university. We used to sit in the garden of our university and speak of books and love and loss.

Later I introduced her to my parents and we happily got married. Now we have a four year old son.”

“Now you sit in the garden of my memories,” she said and smiled.

“What’s his name? Your son?”

“Armaan.”

I skyped with Sana after I reached home; she seemed content and relaxed now that our son was admitted in one of the elite schools. I felt as if an imminent disaster was upon me and I could never run myself off it.

Our shifts were scheduled in such a way that I could only work with Rubab four times a week and only two of those were closing shifts.

After those closing shifts we would sit and gaze and walk around the lonely light tower across the parking space. There would be only two cars parked there: her red Saturn and my grey Sentra.

During these quiet twenty to twenty-five minutes, she would never let go of my hands.

Now that I’m reimagining those days and those nights I spent with her, my memory seems limited to her words, her presence, her touch; everything else fades away.

Two weeks later, as we were resting our backs upon the back seat of her Saturn, I said, “I wish I had met you earlier, much earlier.”

“We did meet before, don’t you remember,” she smiled. “I was with you the day you first rode your bicycle. You were filled with anxiety about falling off your restful stable center, as you are today, and your uncle with larger fingers than mine, but lighter grip, and two broken front teeth, kept urging you on. I was with you the morning you first stood outside your house for school, and you felt as if you will never see your parents again once you stepped onto that bus, but your mother kept comforting you with the thought of new friends. You didn’t want any new friends, you were happy inside her soft embrace.”

“I was with you too,” I smiled. “I was with you the night you first watched a sappy romantic movie and as your heartbeat tensed and your breathing fastened, it was first a single tear that trickled down your cheeks, but then as the movie ended with the death of both lovers, you couldn’t stop the flood of tears that rained down your cheeks. I asked you to stop it, don’t be such a hopeless romantic. But you said, let me cry.”

She cracked a loud laugh. And as I thought of more moments to share with her, I was irked by how empty my garden of her memories was. Like a silly historian, I urged her to tell me more about her past. She had not stopped laughing.

She said, “Ok, I lied to you that I’m twenty -four. The fact is I don’t know exactly how old I am. I don’t even know my birthdate. Our mother recordedthirty-first December for both me and my brother. Our father fought the Russians and he kept fighting during the civil war. It was our mother who reached out to the American consulate in Pakistan to get us here. We had six long interviews before we were given our visas.

Here, we were given refuge by a church who then gave our responsibility to an elderly couple who helped my little brother attend school and helped me find the job at Walmart. Our father joined us a year later. Frankly, he was a stranger to me; after all these years we only got to know

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each other here in Lansing, and I started to like him before, how funny, his heart failed while delivering a pizza.”

“Also,” she smiled, “I’m not a virgin.”

“Huh, what happened?” I asked.

“Why? What do you care to know?” She laughed. “I had an accident.”

Life, conversations back home, had all taken the form of a routine. I delivered pizzas for eight hours every day, skyped back home for an hour every night, twice a week sat around the back-porch with Rubab after closing the pizza shop, and once a week strolled around the Lansing Conservatory Garden with her. Yet I was happy, despite my endless anxieties, happier than I had ever been. My life floated around her words, her mellow touches, the poetry of her being.

But this love story, this brief patch of happiness, ended four months after the day I had washed her father’s dead body. It had begun to snow and we sat at the back-porch with elbows and knees laced around each other. She loved watching, as she said, the spectacle of countless flakes of snow casually floating towards the earth which silently, without making a fuss about it, welcomes each and every flake.

“I am getting engaged,” she said. “There is this Afghan guy from California, a distant relative, with his own business and my mother thinks he will be the best match for me, for us.

He will be here next Friday, he will stay for a week, we’ll meet and if everything goes as planned, we’ll be engaged.”

Jealousy is a physical wound. It seeps in to the heart and crack-opens its veins, and the blood that oozes out reveals the deep-rooted scars of a lifetime. I was a child again, abandoned in a back alley, with no discernible pathway that could lead me home. I made all sorts of promises to Rubab, proposed to marry her, but she skirted my desperation as a parent shirks a child.

“We can run away, you know,” I said.

“Findhappiness.”

“Will you leave your wife, your son, your parents, everybody, just for me?” She asked.

“Nothing is worth bringing pain to this

number of people,” she said. “He is a good guy, by all accounts, a very good guy, and my family will be happy. I’m tired of this town, and for once, would love to move to a big city and bring some stability in mine as well as my family’s lives.

“I love you,” she said, “as I love your wife and your son. You can’t abandon them. One day, you will be back with them and I will be a distant memory. All I wanted was to be a pleasing scent, a pretty bird, an unforgettable flower in the garden of your memories; I never wanted anything more than that; please don’t ruin it for me.

“Tell me something,” she said. “Tell me if there is anything more glorious that a calm, leisurely snowfall? It reminds me of Herat.

“Look at these flakes, they look like they’re floating aimlessly, but they long for the certainty of the earth, and the earth absorbs these flakes inside its hidden depths as if a forlorn lover had suddenly found the limits of his solitary existence and is now yearning for a love that has no limits.”

At that moment, I felt a mystifying urge, stronger than any urge I had ever felt before, to merge with her, and be her, to cease to be me, to cease this solitary, forlorn, endlessly anxious and careworn existence.

The day the guy arrived, Rubab took the whole week off. I would sit at the snowy pavements where I used to sit with her after closing the shifts, and ponder over the moments I spent with her. I was anguished, and in my solitude, imagined all sorts of schemes and setups that could bring Rubab back to me. Yet I knew it was childish, Rubab was right, no single love was precious enough to render the emotions, the desires and yearnings of others meaningless.She had given meaning to my life, but only momentarily, it was Sana, her love, and my son, that awaited me for the rest of my days.

Her fiancé came to our pizza store the night before he left. He wore a pinstripe shirt under a blue parka, khakis and leather boots. His eyes scrutinized all corners of the shop as if he planned to purchase it. He had come without

Photography: Rudy and Peter Skitterians

Rubab, and I later found out, without her knowledge. I was working that night with Fidler.

He introduced himself as Rubab’s fiancé and then beckoned me outside for a conversation. He spoke about life in California, his visits to Pakistan and Karachi, his business of importing carpets made by refugees in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“How do you like working here?” he asked with a smile.

“It’s alright,” I replied.

“How do you like working with Rubab?”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“You know, a young girl working with guys; we Afghans and Pakistanis don’t let our girls work with guys, do we?” He had kept his smile.

“Is there no flirting around here?” He asked, and then said, “I’m asking as a brother, you know, I’m engaged with her, so I should know how my fiancé behaves at work.”

“She is very professional,” I replied, “no flirting around; we respect her as a worker. And she is really good at her job.”

“Hmm, thank you brother.” He said and left.

I was astonished. I couldn’t believe his audacity, neither the stupid malevolence of his words. I immediately called Rubab, and narrated the whole conversation. Next day when I met

her, I asked her how she could continue being engaged to such a guy. She said, she had made her decision, the marriage is in three months, and they will all then move to California.

“It is settled,” she said.

Rubab left three months later for California. When you handover the lost key of your happiness to another person, when you allow that person, that soul, the choice seat at the center of your being, then a long stretch of unbearable loneliness beckons, it is inevitable.

Rubab sat at the center of all that made me happy. I can’t say I wished it, or even allowed it, it was only a yearning, an invitation, to share my loneliness and she had merely chosen to play the part. It had to end, and when it ended, I lost my center, and fell into a bottomless pit of despair and anger and misery. I should have seen it as merely a journey back to thecalm melancholy of my solitude. It has been a year since she left, Mr. Sajid decided to close the Pizza store and open a new jewelry business with his relatives in New Jersey. I am moving to Florida, a friend I knew in Karachi works there, and he has informed me of a new job opportunity. Sana is fine, so are my son and rest of the family, may be in a year I can move back to Pakistan, though by now I’m not sure if I want to move back to Pakistan. []

F

R

O

M

APHRODITE T O

AT H E NA FROM FEMININITY TO FEMINISM

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A woman can be a variety of archetypes from the embodiment of compassion and mercy, to the personification of wisdom and cold analysis.

In these modern times, women need to feel empowered, and not defined by their gender.

Over the past few centuries an interesting shift in opinion took place, as women moved from being feminine to being feminists; if before, the idea of femininity was very much synonymous with submissiveness, nowadays women feel much more in “control” of their own gender.

For years women have constantly tried to realize their full potential, from being a very loving wife, nurturing mother, and close friend to being a successful career person. She went from being viewed as Aphrodite to becoming revered as Athena. While women were liberated both

internally and externally through the various waves of feminist movements, a series of mistakes was committed along the way. One of these errors was to abandon femininity for the sake of being a feminist. This mistake caused women to lose a very essential aspect of their own selves. For too long the sensual aspect of a woman had been misinterpreted, trivialized and marketed as a commodity. The result was the neglect of a very simple truth; that women are to be honored and not objectified. For many, “femininity” simply means external projection, which, although may sustain the idea of femininity, does not represent what being a woman is all about i.e. the internal experience, the essence of the woman.

The traditional gender stereotype removal also

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led to the process of morphing women into men as they tried to keep up with a patriarchal society. The multi-faceted and multi-dimensional aspect of woman has been reduced to but a few revelatory featureswhile the rest has been left to languish in the shadows. The structure of today’s society has changed so much, and this also includes how we now perceive the family cell.

Nowadays one can easily find women who are the sole bread-winners in the household, who live as single parents. This very fact requires a woman to be more “alpha” and to have a more “masculine” approach in order for her and her siblings to survive. She must become the main “provider” (a role once attributed to men) rather than a “nurturer”. Of course she will retain her former characteristics, but unfortunately one takes over the other as she becomes more Amazonian, more warrior-like.

The end of 19th century and beginning of 20th century saw the journey of women shift from femininity to feminism, from being mystical to logical, from being an Aphrodite to an Athenatype figure. In order to be able to obtain a certain degree of gender equality, women more or less had to discard the mystical goddess aspect of

Aphrodite in order to pursue a new one, the logical and warrior type of the goddess Athena. This switch-over from being feminine to feminist made women fall into an existential trap. Major changes had occurred in their very own essence during the process of developing the ability to compete in a man’s world so that they could reinforce and validate their own image by trying to identify themselves with the logical male view. The error which I think was made was Art: Ina Hall to alter the old balance of provider versus nurturer, male energy versus female energy, as the world was not in need of more paternalistic thinkers.

Every woman should understand that living a meaningful life and having the freedom to proclaim the multidimensional aspects of femininity is not the same as taking part in a popularity contest, as these feminine aspects are fundamental to her very existence in a world which does not truly value beauty but breaks the heart of humanity, fostering greed over humanitarianism, a devolution of ancient values rather than an evolution of the consciousness as predicated by various seers.

Femininity is often very badly wrapped and is thus perceived as being a vulnerable, weak and passive trait which should be hidden if not locked away in shame, when in fact it is a sacred virtue, a powerful source of nourishment, an amazing power from which most of the time women have chosen to be disconnected. They have become so used to the idea that in order to get something they ought to behave how a man usually does, but in doing so they have sacrificed their own feminine expression, creating from the outside rather than from the inside out,

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forgetting to celebrate their femininity without fear or even shame, banning their own transformational magic.

A woman relaxing in her true feminine energy is a woman who is able to show her true self. We are living in a world which emphasizes the idea that masculinity is great and powerful. Women who try to keep up with or live up to this image are forgetting they can embrace both feminine and masculine aspects within themselves, rather than just cultivate one side. This process led to women disempowering themselves, causing them to mistrust the very core of their own existence and reject the sacredness of their femininity.

We are also guilty of engaging in the illusion that women might just not be good enough and there is a lot of existing literature on how to set this right, and how we should look like in order to be embraced and accepted as role models. This has nothing to do with the real idea of womanhood, and does no more than promote an unrealistic idea of what women should be doing. It creates damaging images which nowadays society promotes as being a dignified.

The Ancients spoke of the Divine female, the goddess, who represents balance, love, nurture, and healing - a symbol of renewal and restoration, pro-activity and wisdom applied constructively. We may be able to achieve the goals which society desires and demands of us, but that does not mean to say these goals truly serve us as women.

Personally, I perceive the word “feminist” as tending more towards male energy (Therefore Athena with her warlike attributes and determination to win) and “feminine” as leaning more towards female energy (Therefore Aphrodite, the nurturer and giver of love).

We are living in a world where finding a balance is not only necessary but compulsory, therefore finding a balance between the masculine and

feminine within us is critical to our very own existence. This is the image portrayed by the goddess Artemis in whom both energies mingle harmoniously and in whom creation and cocreation reside.

In the end, I would like you to ask yourself what femininity and feminism truly mean to you. Try to re-define yourself. Embracing and celebrating these energies within yourself and in others can bring change to you, to those around you, to your community and of course, on a larger scale, to the world itself.

In conclusion femininity is not an attribute to be feared or a trait which may bring about chaos.

The world doesn’t need more masculine or more success-driven women. The world is in need of more feminine women of the kind who know how to balance both masculine and feminine energies harmoniously within their being. The world awaits more Artemises. []

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FICTION

CHARCOAL CHARCOAL DREAM

H a r u n stumbled out of the movie theater. The crowd leaving the building forced him out the door into the absence of rain. His leg muscles were shaking from the pressure on his back. Even someone like him couldn’t maintain his spot for too long. His legs could paddle three gunny sacks full of rice with a man on top any day. But it couldn’t keep him rooted to the spot when the crowd wanted to leave the theater. He decided to anchor himself exactly where he was, no matter what. He planted his feet on the soaked ground, thighs apart; holding on to the ends of his gamchain two closed fists hanging off his shoulder, the heroes do it, in the movies.

Someone used his palm on his back to force him forward.

"Out of the way!" said the man, heavier and taller. Harun once again had to give way. He glared back at the impatient man. A head full of oil drenched hair with sweat glistening on his forehead looked over at Harun before his fat lips parted in one corner showing off molars sheltering bittle leafs and yellow teeth. "Eh! hero! Feeling like a hero aren’t we?" He spat on the footpath colored, puce. The skinny girl in cotton kamij and tight braids next to him stepped away from the man whose grip was holding her in a fist above her wrist that twinkled rainbow glass bangles, the color of which had turned also puce with the neon Cinema lights overhead. The dollop of fluid missed her by couple of inches. Utilizing this opportunity, she stepped away, still anchored, putting some distance between the man a feet taller and couple of feet wider than her and the

smell of whose sweat reinstated its presence when the hollow of his arm pit was disclosed.

"I would have split your head in two if there was a brick in my hand." Harun said these words, hitched his lungi upto his knee and using the leverage of untangled legs started running down the alleyway, right next to the cinema hall. Unfortunately one of his three years old hawaii sandals had a mind of its own and decided not to follow its owner. The sandal stayed in its spot facing the man and his skinny ensemble while Harun hopped away in a left bare foot.

Harun ran through an alleyway where his shadows couldn’t follow him. They couldn’t because it was a city night and the streetlights down this way never worked. Moving forward the situation wouldn’t improve either as Harun ran through one lane after another, jumping across pot holes and running gutters. He snaked through one funnel to another while back walls of factories, borderline of colonies, hawker’s market, sixty years old government offices, a college football field laced his progression.

It is not that his running was comfortable either. It is not that he didn’t stumble on a mossy gutter or that his toe didn’t

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accumulate onion peel or he didn’t have to linger over the glass that stuck to his heel. It is only that he could maintain a determined speed, no matter what, because the sole of his feet is almost an inch thick of crusty caked skin that had required kerosene oil application since he was ten years old to keep the germ from festering.

In between the edges of the lane came railroad junctions and silent vegetable bazars. In between the walls peeped boxed tea stalls and a bubble of lit dimples in the dark. It also contained dozing cha-wallas and cigarettewallas and condensed shape of crouching lungi clad, jeans clad men in deep huddle.

While he ran the sky over head was not noticeable.

Distant satellites sparkled here and there and were surprisingly visible. But while he ran, his progression remained untraceable parallel to the twinkling dots. The walls in both sides moved away and so did the lamp posts.

But Harun could never replace the positioning of the manmade stars. One might call it an event horizon phenomenon, an existence so immeasurable that the progression gets slower. Harun wasn’t at all aware of the fact that he could be used as a sample to explain the power of gravity that existed at the rim of a black hole. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t part of it. It seemed his inability to cover one distance from another in comparison to a satellite and earth’s surface could easily create the illusion of event horizon, the place where time slows down before it gets swallowed whole.

Harun only stopped when he reached the sandalwala whose shop was closed for the night. He raised his fist and brought it down on the makeshift bamboo made jhapi which when opened discloses an interior that fits only the sandal-wala while he sits on the ground with hundreds of second hand sandals and a limited number of new ones. It also fits the sandal-wala as he spends the night lying on the floor mat as he can sleep in fetal position. But it can never fit a customer on board nor does it require to at a railway junction bazaar. The crowd slow down here for a breathe or two. Standing is sufficient.

Unfortunately, fist on the bamboo made jhapi doesn’t have the same impact as it does fist on the tin shed shop covers onscreen. Also, the heroes hardly ever use fist. They always kick. They kick doors down, warehouse gates off the hinge, windows in pieces, stacked up drums, bare knuckles and jaws.

“Buff”, “Buff”, cried the bamboo made jhapi shaking off dust. It didn’t wake the man inside though. The sound

While he ran, the walls in both sides moved away and so did the lamp posts. But Harun could never replace the positioning of the manmade stars. One might call it an event horizon phenomenon, an existence so immeasurable that the progression gets slower.

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She will be absolutely certain that the man came back in the middle of the night and left without waking her. She will even come up with stories how because he loves her so much so that he couldn’t bear to watch her all alone, sleeping, holding her son and must have left in heartache.

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only occupied a smaller diameter. It couldn’t drown the frog’s mating call out of the wet ground. So it didn’t serve the purpose.

Harun was the running man. He couldn’t wait. Nor could he kick down the bamboo made jhapi as the man surely wouldn’t be as forgiving as the villain in the movies. He ran at the back of this attached bamboo made hovel right behind the thatch that was the sandal-walla’s shop. He knocked hard the rickety door that was attached to a card board sized shanty and screamed.

“Banu apa! Banu apaaa go! Farid bhai has a woman in his shop!”

The couple didn’t notice Harun crouching one corner of the entrance, reach out and grab a pair of sandals and run off in the distance. While the cacophony kept on rising with the number of lit windows Harun was already a dot in the horizon.

The disheveled head of Farid kept on cringing away from the vehemence of the unfed Banu who kept on reaching for one sandal after another to hurl at her husband. Farid didn’t have a woman inside, obviously. But Farid couldn’t find a gap wither in between the screeching woman, howling frogs, sandal missiles and Harun’s vague presence in that particular reality.

Harun peeked through the window. There they were a mother and a child, safely tucked away underneath each other’s plumage. The tiny room gave off the aroma of baby breathe and curry. They huddled in each other as if looking for a way to return the way they were before, one body, twin souls.

Even in this blazing summer heat turned heavy with after shower frog concerto they seemed cool as the mud wall of the tiny hut encased them in its womb.

Harun slipped off the tiny mud porch and looked for the spot. It wasn’t hard to find. Things have a way to leave traces behind be it a pair of sandals. The dual prints were right next to the two mossy breaks that led up to the porch. He brought out his sandals and placed them over the sandal dimple on the earth. The left one was dislodged by couple of centimeters. Will she notice? Harun stared at the out of shape left foot.

He sat down on the porch and stared at the satellite. He smiled. Doesn’t matter. She will choose to ignore it. She will be absolutely certain that the man came back in the middle of the night and left without waking her. She will even come up with stories how because he loves her so much so that he couldn’t bear to watch her all alone, sleeping, holding her son and must have left in heartache. Harun can hear her in his head.

“Did you know Harun, Sohel’s father came back last night?” she will say, the baby saddling her waist. “I don’t know what makes you doubt him so much. But he is helpless. He

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can’t afford to take care of us yet. But…” She will pause and adjust the baby’s weight.

“He brought me a new pair.” She will smile and find endless faith in her heart.

There is a famous dialogue they use in the movies. The heroine, in a torn sari, after toiling and struggling over unimaginable odds will sit in front of the brow beaten hero with a single plate of food. Amidst endless tears and not at all swollen eyes she will refuse to eat and say, “I will feel full if you are full.”

Harun believes in his heroes. He cannot call her stupid.

Harun scratched his feet, over the glass wound and kept staring at the manmade stars overhead. In his school books, as a younger Harun, he had memorized the information that the moon circles the earth. Although he had once seen a moon follow him all the way from Gajipur to Dhaka on the bus.

Harun looked down at the new pair of sandals replacing the old and the sandal prints just as it was. He wondered if it would have been better if he had stayed and not run away. The sandal prints reminded him of the heavy girth of the man. He frowned, not liking the feeling of self-preservation that had acted as his instinct.

No matter. Harun smiled as she would.

He made a mental note to pay back Faridbhai for the stolen sandal the day after and get him some raw turmeric smush.

Turmeric is good for wounds. []

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SHORT FICTION

TARGET MODEL MICHAEL WAYNE HAMPTON Photography: NICOLE MASON

I have stood frozen in a tank top and blackout sunglasses to be shot in the skull by men wearing American flag baseball caps. I have worn a bikini with my hands raised above my head and crossed to be gutshot by AR 15s. Young men on leave from the military have taught their teenage sons how to hit my photograph center mass so there was no chance I’d survive. Fathers have held their daughters’ arms at the elbow, steadied them as they pointed a Glock toward me down range, taught them to exhale as they squeezed the trigger so there was no doubt their bullet found their way true between my breasts. My lips have been torn by stray shots from amateurs. My legs have eaten rounds from rifles good men forgot to sight first. My image clipped to a zip line and sent down range, has never registered to any of these armed weekenders that I am someone’s daughter, that I was in college getting by through odd jobs, or that the first photographer who only asked me to point a toy gun and snarl felt like an angel. That I didn’t understand how easy it would be for strangers to put holes through me, to feel proud, to laugh. []

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LITERATURE

‘Tis The Middle of Night By The Castle Clock

“You’re going to suffer… but you’re going to be happy about it” These lines of Ronald Weasly from

Harry Potter And Prizoner Of Azkaban

Poem: Christabel Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Published: 1816

Books: The Harry Potter Series Author: J.K. Rowling Published: 1997-2007

mirror Christabel’s feelings after she has spent a dreamlike night with Geraldine. The fantastical or the magical enterprise taken

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge may have often been interpreted in lieu of its many sexual innuendoes but when pitted against Joanne Kathleen Rowling’s Harry Potter series, one can find many similarities between the two texts. The objective of my paper is to deal with these ‘similarities’ and why these similarities at all lie among these two completely different texts, written in two

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Illustrations of Christabel

different ages.

In this paper the resources have been taken from the original texts including but not limited to C. S Lewis’s The Chronicles Of Narnia series, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and S.T. Coleridge’s “Christabel”. Facts have been cited from the Bengali anthology of folk stories Thakurmar Jhuli1 by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar. Facts pertaining to fairy tales such as The Frog Prince have also been used in this paper.

Stories of fantasy and magic have a long history or tradition. It can easily be traced back to fairy tales such as The Frog Prince, which have been adapted in different ways by different cultures. If we take the example of the story The Frog Prince we will see that the Germans have chosen to comment on their Western tradition of ‘Romance’ and ‘code of honour.’ In the Korean version ‘the rigid class system’ as well as the

‘filiality’ of the East has been reflected whereas in the Chinese version the military prowess and political shabbiness has dominated the narrative.

But in all the three versions the frog’s object of desire is someone from the higher class, whose voice is being shunned. And in almost all the magical tales and fairy tales, power lies in the hands of the witch and the fairy godmother while the girl (the ‘female protagonist’) in flesh and blood remains an ineffective character. And here lies the first similarity between the magical enterprises of S. T Coleridge and J. K Rowling. In both “Christabel” and the Harry Potter series, women play instrumental roles in the action as well as the eventual outcome. Coleridge was writing at a time when women were rarely provided grave importance. During that period, Coleridge was making Geraldine, a woman, the villain-hero of his poem. J. K Rowling must have been criticized many a time for mocking the bookish cleverness of Hermione Granger2, but no reader can deny the fact that without her intellect, it would have been difficult for Harry to save his skin, and the triumph of the ‘boy who lived’ would have been something next to impossible.

According to psychoanalysts like Carl Jung, the “collective unconsciousness” that is shared by all human beings is revealed through fairy tales. The archetypes, the symbols and forms that are present in these tales represent this “collective unconsciousness”. The world of magic represents the dream world of desire. The fantasy stories fulfil the unfulfilled desires of the Human race, and so the action that takes place in these stories, takes place in a different time and in a different world. C. S Lewis has explained this in a simpler way in his juvenile fantasy series The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. Here young Lucy enters the world of Narnia by opening the doors of a wardrobe. It is quite similar to a baby’s dream world. The dream world is the world of desire.

During her childhood when a baby listens to these fairy tales, she believes them to be true and thus they act as doors of the proverbial ‘magical wardrobe’, through which she and her partners-

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Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar and the title page of his ‘Thakurmar Jhuli’ (left)

in-crime enter into the world of fantasy, imagination and desire. And so the magical world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is separated from the muggle world, hidden behind magical charms as well as a dark, ‘forbidden forest’. Christabel has to leave her castle to experience magic in the dark, inside the forest.

In the Bengali anthology of folk tales, Thakurmar Jhuli by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar, one can find the story of Lal Kamal and Neel Kamal 3. Despite the fact that Lal Kamal is born of the human queen, he shares a strong bond with Neel Kamal, the son of the demon queen. They decide that both of them would journey to the land of the demons to infiltrate and kill them for the sake of salvaging humanity and to free their kingdom from the wrath of the demon queen. The demons, on the other hand, only wanted Neel Kamal, the one they regarded their own, to survive. Therefore, during the night both brothers decided that they would

sleep in turns; and whoever would be awake would either say, “Lal Kamal er agey Neel Kamal Jage” (before Lal Kamal, Neel Kamal is awake) or will say, “Neel Kamal er age Lal Kamal jage” (before Neel Kamal, Lal Kamal is awake).

This is a very interesting situation for the children to imagine but the adult can see it in a different light. Lal Kamal and Neel Kamal can be represented as the two ‘selves’ present in humans: the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’; therefore when one is awake the other has to sleep. When Neel Kamal, which we can consider as the Other is asleep then Lal Kamal, which we can consider the Self, is awake; and vice versa. Thus, through the magical enterprise of these fairy tales, the readers confront their Self and the Other. To understand this with respect to the texts concerned, let us take an example from Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone, at the end of which, during Harry’s quest to rescue the philosopher’s stone, Harry descends through a trap door. The

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trap door through which Harry descends, can be seen as a metaphor symbolising Harry’s descend to the underworld. This underworld is metaphor of the unconscious or the Id present in us. Here Harry confronts his fiercest enemy for the first time: Lord Voldemort, hidden on the other side of his servant Quirrell’s head. As Quirrell unwraps his turban and turns towards Harry, the ‘Chosen One’ eventually meets the darkest force in his world.

spanning the seven books of the series.

Christabel’s journey to the forest in the dark is equivalent to Harry’s journey beneath the trapdoor. The forest here resembles the dark underworld or the unconscious in human, a trope similar to Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness; and Christabel, moving into the interior of the forest in search of Geraldine is a metaphor of Christabel’s introspective movement to the interior of her Self. The

Quirrell and Voldemort

“Where there had been a back to Quirell’s head, there was a ............. most terrible face” This can be seen as Harry seeing or having a face to face meeting with his Other; and because the Other is the terrible, the repressed and the unfulfilled desires, especially those which according to the super conscious or the Ego, are not ‘correct’ desires, the face of Lord Voldemort appears ‘terrible’. Voldemort, during this particular meeting, shows Harry his own sleeping self, which is not at all innocent or good like him. But at the end Harry has control over his Id and so Voldemort does not manage to possess him, even after seven long years

journey necessitates that the poet constantly asks “Jesu” and “Maria” to shield her. They are the Super Ego that could protect Christabel and save her from the unconscious. Thus, when Christabel meet Geraldine she actually comes face to face with her Other. But this Other is like Geraldine’s body, “A sight to dream of, not to tell”. And therefore it is beautiful, and it is not the terrible face of the Other. The silken robe that Geraldine wears is similar to the holy and the pure nature of Christabel, but beneath it lies; the serpent like the tempter Geraldine, or Christabel’s Other.

The Other is always the tempter. Therefore, there is always a biblical image of the tempter in the magical story. For example in C. S Lewis’s

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The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew,

One of the reasons behind this is that “Christabel” is an incomplete poem, and the element of the unknown that is present in this poem makes the poem a Gothic fiction. Harry Potter is a story that has a beginning, middle and an end. The seven books of the series allow Harry to triumph over his unconscious, and to kill the evil and establish the good. It is like a long fairy

this serpent tempter is the White Witch or Queen Jadis. In Christabel it is the serpent-like woman Geraldine who tempts Christabel to commit something which is, in the eyes of the society and to Christabel herself, a sin. Voldemort, the parseltongue5, is also a tempter and he can tempt anyone. He is able to tempt the young and impressionable Ginny Illustrations of Christabel Weasly as well as the brilliant Professor Slughorn and he even attempts to tempt young Harry by promising to make the unreal come true.

Therefore, to protect their children from this tempter the mother comes to the rescue. In the fairy tales, this mother figure has often been represented by the fairy godmother. But with time the image of fairy godmother changed. The ineffective ‘fairy godmother’ of Coleridge is the dead mother of Christabel, who tries to protect her, but falls short before Geraldine, who has the power to get rid of the mother’s spirit from the room.

“Off, wandering mother peak and pine!

I have the power to bid thee flee” In case of Harry, things are a little different, albeit being similar in premise. Even though Lily Potter is dead, she died protecting her child. Voldemort could not get rid of her spirit, magic and her love towards Harry, succumbing to the enormity to love and nearly destroying himself in the process. This mother figure can be seen as the conscious or the Self in human. In case of Christabel her unconscious wins over her conscious self and so Geraldine can very easily take over Christabel. In case of Harry, his conscious is more powerful than his unconscious.

tale with too many plots and sub plots, and with a happy ending, whereas “Christabel” is a fairy tale without any happy ending; rather the story has an abrupt end to it which increases the horror, because readers do not know what happens to Christabel after Geraldine has left the castle and Christabel is left behind with her

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sinful memories.

Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar’s Thakurmar Jhuli was published in the year 1909, four years after the partition of Bengal. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who also penned the introduction to Thakurmar Jhuli, considered the text as something that was a perfect addition to the burgeoning swadeshi culture (the act of boycotting imported goods in favour of those produced at home) that began manifesting during the era – an era of cultural resurgence unifying the citizens of a particular nation against alien overlords. “Christabel”, on the other hand was published in the year 1816, or in the year which was nicknamed as the “Eighteen – Hundred – and – Froze – to – Death”, in New England. It was a year when people around the globe had to suffer because of a radical ‘global cooling’ and the harvest perished due to various causes. It was a year without any summer and in every part of the globe people experienced famine, or disease or political, social and economical unrest. That is why in “Christabel” we find lines such as:

“The night is chill, the cloud is gray: ‘Tis the month before the month of May, And the spring comes slowly up this way.”

In fact Geraldine coming and disrupting the peaceful living of Christabel and Sir Leoline is indicative of this unrest that was prevalent, not only in Europe or in England, but in the whole world. J. K Rowling has been criticized quite a few times for depicting violence in her stories.

But sequences such as the London Bridge in Europe falling down, the nineteen year old Barty Crouch Junior blindly following the Dark Lord, the corrupt guards of the prisoner of Azkaban who feed on human sadness, and the ministry that is failing to provide security to the masses and therefore, hiding the truth, is similar to the scenario of the postmodern world where the twin towers are made to fall down, people are mercilessly killed in Gaza, terrorists attack hotels and railway stations to kill innocent civilians.

Therefore, behind the mask of magic there

lie many truths, which are not merely true but terrible. The one who wishes to know these truths has to read very carefully between the lines and there lies the spell that is cast by the penmanship of the author. Perhaps that is why even though tales of magic and fantasy are written in different ages, different ways and in different languages, at some point they turn out to be all the same.

Notes 1. Thakurmar Jhuli: A collection of Bengali folk tales and fairy tales compiled by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar, published in the year 1909.

2. Hermione Granger: A character found in the Harry Pottes series, she is a young, intelligent girl. She is the friend of Harry Potter and Ronald Weasly, who is very good at her lessons.

3. Lal Kamal And Neel Kamal - It is a story that is found in Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar’s collection of folk stories and fairy tales, Thakurmar Jhuli. It is a story about two princes, one of whom is human born and the other is born of his demon mother. It is a story about the adventures they seek, to get rid of the demons from the land of the humans so that the humans can live peacefully.

4. Parseltongue- In the Harry Potter series, this word has been used to refer to someone who can speak in the language of the snakes. This particular quality, regarded by the wizarding populace as a dark ‘art’, was possessed by both Harry Potter and Voldemort.

Works cited:

Rowling J. K; Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone, Great Britain; Bloomsbury Publication; 1997 Rowling J. K; Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, Great Britain; Bloomsbury Publication, 2000 Coleridge S. T; “Christabel”, Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel, London, The Macmillan Company, 1889 Lewis C. S; The Chronicles of Narnia, United States of America; Harper Collins Publishers, 2005 Secondary Sources “In Defence Of Harry Potter: An Appologia”. High Beam. The Gale Group. 1, Jan 2003. Web. 2nd Aug, 2014. <http://www.highbeam.com/doc> []

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SHORT FICTION

SAN SHI WU STUART LUKE

Photography: ALEX HU "Whilst backpacking around New Zealand the girl took a

job on the gondolas. She was in charge of taking photos of the tourists as they got into the carriages, many of whom were visiting from China. In her experience the younger generations of families would be more inclined to have an education in English as a language. A family arrived at her station and the son and daughter went off to look at something. The mother and father enquired about the price using hand gestures. She responded by pointing to the price on the sign beside the relevant Chinese translation. Knowing the basic phrase she was able to relay the information in their mother tongue. "sān shí wǔ" she assured them. "sān shí wǔ? sān shí wǔ?" They turned to face each other while she waited patiently for their answer. Their smiles became wide and their eyes joined in. Excitedly they turned back to her. "sān shí wǔ!!!!!!". They laughed and jumped on the spot in front of the girl. Elated.

The boy returned to see what the commotion was about.

He looked to his parents and then addressed the girl. "sān shí wǔ?" "sān shí wǔ" she repeated now becoming confused. She was sure she was saying it correctly. He smiled and shook his head at his parents who had thrust their camera at him.

Begrudgingly he accepted and began to raise it to his eye.

His parents circled round to join the confused girl and pose with her for a photo. The first photograph was smiles and peace sign poses. The second was much more formal - no hand signs, standing up straight. Good posture.

They will tell this story to their family and friends at home and her photo will remain treasured with the others from their trip. " []

SHORT FICTION

HEIR & SEA GEORGE SALIS

Painting: THEODOR KITTELSEN She swam as a fish among fish, a

scaled and finned body. The sound of the churning water like an echo chamber.

Then she was neither fish nor infant, but unborn baby. Fetus-formed, she backstroked in the russet sea of her motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s womb. She continued to perceive the fish beside her, around her. What are you doing in my mother? she asked the group of fish. This is my home. The slimy creatures looked at her with omniscient eyes. This is our element, not yours, they said. Then she was human again, in the shivering river, as she always had been.

She was translucent now, red and blue veins like tattoos beneath her jelly flesh, deeper still was the soft chalk of her skeleton. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not one of you, she said.

They hovered closer, as if to whisper in her ears. No, you are not. Her eyes slid like egg yolks to the side of her head, over her fragile temples. Fissures appeared at the hinges of her jaw. She thought that if she tried hard enough she could get used to this netherworld. Can I be in your family? she asked. Five of them laughed, pearly bubbles escaping from their pink mouths.

Then they vanished. The water vanished.

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She vanished.

A grassy knoll was the crib on which she awoke.

Soaked clothing as blankets. The sun and clouds hanging, gently spinning round and round. This world was as scentless as the other. She had a tummy ache. Her stomach was swollen with little, glowing spheres.

Thousands of fish eggs, pulsing. In her mind she gaspedchoked-wailed at an ever-increasing pitch, until a woman came upon this stray urchin.

“Oh my…help! Someone help!”

They pushed on her stomach, they breathed air into her water-logged lungs. What was oxygen? Poison.

They persisted for hours until she ejected the precious eggs and the half-formed organisms floundered against the floor. Her stomach was flat again, but with golden stretch marks rippling around her navel. She breathed the poison for the first time since her quarter-mile journey through the Styx. Her mother and father, the doctors and nurses, all faces familiar and not surrounded the bed. They regarded her as if she were a messenger from that underworld, as if she clutched the scepter of Hermes like a rattle, petite wings protruding from her ankles. But she wasn’t. She had returned only as a deathless child. *** Afterward, she grew into a gorgeous woman, but the doctors took note of the unnatural webbing between

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her toes, the barnacle-crust on her elbows, the translucency of her eyelids when examined up to the light. She became a competitive swimmer with the grace of a dolphin, winning medals throughout high school and into her freshman year of college. She was obsessed with the sea, that larger body of water which contained untold creatures—not just alien anglers, goblin sharks, and vampire squids, but also marine beings so deep within the trenches of the ocean floor that they were made of liquid darkness, held together by the very pressure of the earth’s water. She seemed to connect with all of them on a telepathic level, as with the melancholy mantra of whales. At nightfall she swam in the sea, beneath the stirring surface for minutes or hours at a time. Her classmates and teachers at school began to wonder. Where did she go? Surely not just for a swim? Those with more practical minds thought she used her mania for swimming as an excuse to defy her curfew and engage in nonsense with boys, singing from the rockclustered dock in order to attract the most handsome of them. Some said that she was learning to breathe water itself, others said that she, being so beautiful, was the princess of an Atlantis-like kingdom and lived a double life. She knew of the rumors but ignored them, consoled by the subaqueous susurrates that her webbed toes detected at the edge of the beach, the veiny membranes quivering with obscure linguistics.

When she went missing, the rumors exaggerated, refracted, until everyone in the town wanted to know where she had escaped, where she had gotten lost, where she had been taken against her will. They searched not just the beaches but the lakes and rivers and marshes, too. Some listened to the groaning and clanging of their home plumbing in case she was sending them SOS messages. Those murmuring pipes suddenly tapped Morse code from within the walls of her family’s home. Friends also reported sidereal patterns in the rain as it lashed their windows. Over time people began to forget, lose interest, allow distraction by the trivial yet

urgent errands of daily life. The missing girl’s father spent hours tending to Chiron, his pet steed, riding him in and out of rain, wind, hail, dusk, and treating a chronic occurrence of thrush on the left hoof of his foreleg that smelled of rotted wood. The missing girl’s mother lingered on the porch, rocking back and forth on a chain-suspended bench and knitting a cable crown headband by day that she would unknit by night, beginning again the next morning. The mother did this thirty times before it turned out that their daughter wasn’t trapped in the sewer system like a fabled alligator, nor was she turned into a bog mummy amidst the Everglades. She was found washed ashore on the beach she frequented. Her body sponge-like, her eyes crystalline, her nails somehow grown twice their length. Within the seaweed of her hair was the rosy paste of a head wound. The coroner declared that she was tossed and turned within the frenzy of a wave and dashed against the sharp rocks by the dock she often dove from.

Her parents wanted to cremate her and throw her ashes into the foam of the waves she loved so much, even though water was twice the death of her, but her body was like permanently wet firewood, and refused to catch flame. All the incinerator did was cover her skin in a layer of ash. Her parents settled for a less conventional ceremony: a Norse funeral, where the deceased was pushed afloat in a miniature ship and then sunk by flaming arrows, for her classmates and professors had let it be known how much she adored the cosmic immensity of Yggdrasil and the uroboric wonder of Jörmungandr. When they performed this ritual, in the presence of family and friends and a massive crowd of uninvited onlookers, the ship burned and dipped below until gone, but her blackened body remained, and did so for days, a buoying void in the sea, until one night the sunset covered all the water with hues of pink and purple, and the hole of her was never seen again. Many believed she had descended the throne. []

A column that proposes to switch theological prisms in each issue to understand life as we know it in a light unseen as yet.

Hazrat Inayat Khan (July 5, 1882 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; February 5, 1927) was the founder of The Sufi Order in the West in 1914 (London) and teacher of Universal Sufism. He initially came to the West as a Northern Indian classical musician, having received the honorific "Tansen" from the Nizam of Hyderabad, but he soon turned to the introduction and transmission of Sufi thought and practice. In 1923, the Sufi Order of the London period was dissolved into a new organization, formed under Swiss law, called the "International Sufi Movement". His message of divine unity (Tawhid) focused on the themes of love, harmony and beauty. He taught that blind adherence to any book rendered religion devoid of spirit. [Sourced from Wikipedia]

THE

SUFI

MESSAGE

ARTWORK: RISHAV MUKHERJEE

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MANIFESTATION The only Being has manifested Himself through seven different planes of existence, to accomplish His desire of being recognized: Tanzih 1. Zát — the unmanifested 2. Ahadiat — plane of Eternal Consciousness 3. Wahdat — plane of consciousness 4. Wahdaniat — plane of abstract ideas Tashbih 5. Arwah — the spiritual plane 6. Ajsam — the astral plane 7. Insan — the physical plane

The five natures corresponding to these five grades are: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Ammara — who acts under the influence of his senses; Lauwama — one who repents of his follies; Mutmaina — one who considers before taking action; Alima — one who thinks, speaks and acts aright; Salima — one who sacrifices himself for the benefit of others.

The following is a diagram illustrating the planes of Nuzul and Uruj (evolution and involution):

There are, again, seven aspects of manifestation: 1. Sitara — planetary 2. Mahtab — lunar 3. Aftab — solar 4. Madeniat — mineral kingdom 5. Nabitat — vegetable kingdom 6. Haywanat — animal kingdom 7. Insan — human kingdom Insan, being the ideal manifestation, recognizes God by the knowledge of his own self. Man reaches this perfection by development through five grades of evolution: 1. Nasut — material plane 2. Malakut — mental plane 3. Jabarut — astral plane 4. Lahut — spiritual plane 5. Hahut — plane of consciousness Each grade of development prepares a person for a higher one, and perfects him in five different grades of humanity: 1. Adam — the ordinary man 2. Insan — the wise man 3. Wali — the holy man 4. Qutb — the saint 5. Nabi — the prophet

All planes of existence consist of vibrations, from the finest to the grossest kind; the vibrations of each plane have come from a higher one, and have become grosser. Whoever knows the mystery of vibrations, he indeed knows all things. Vibrations are of five different aspects, appearing as the five elements: 1. Nur — ether 2. Baad — air 3. Atesh — fire 4. Aab — water 5. Khaak — earth In relation to these elements, mankind has five senses:

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interest as long as we are in the world of illusion.

It is the interest of God which has been the cause of all creation and which keeps the whole universe in harmony; nevertheless one should not be completely immersed in phenomena, but should realize oneself as being independent of interests.

The dual aspect of the only Being, in the form of love and beauty, has glorified the universe and produced harmony.

He who arrives at the state of indifference without experiencing interest in life is incomplete, and apt to be tempted by interest at any moment; but he who arrives at the state of indifference by going through interest, really attains the blessed state. Perfection is reached not through interest alone, nor through indifference alone, but through the right experience and understanding of both.

SPIRIT AND MATTER

Sense Organs Basarat — sense of sight the eyes Samat — sense of hearing the ears Naghat — sense of smell the nose Lazzat — sense of taste the tongue Muss — sense of touch the skin Through these senses and different organs of the mental and physical existence the Ruh, the soul, experiences life; and when the Ruh receives the highest experience of all phases of existence by the favor of the murshid, then it will have that peace and bliss, the attainment of which is the only object of manifestation.

INTEREST AND INDIFFERENCE Interest results from ignorance and indifference results from wisdom; still it is not wise to avoid

From the scientific standpoint, spirit and matter are quite different from each other, but according to the philosophical point of view they are one.

Spirit and matter are different, bust as water is different from snow; yet again they are not different, for snow is nothing other than water.

When spiritual vibrations become more dense they turn into matter, and when material vibrations become finer they develop into spirit.

For a Sufi at the beginning of his training the spiritual life is desirable, but after mastering it, material and spiritual lives become the same to him, and he is master of both.

THE HEART AND SOUL Man's heart is the throne of God. The heart is not only a physical organ but is also the function of feeling, placed in the midst of the body and soul.

The heart of flesh is the instrument which first

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receives the feeling of the soul, and transmits its effect through the whole body. There are four aspects of the heart: 1. 'Arsh — the exaltation of the will 2. Kursi — the seat of justice and distinction 3. Lawh — the fount of inspiration 4. Kalam — the source of intuition Breath keeps body, heart, and soul connected. It consists of astral vibrations, and has much influence upon the physical and spiritual existence. The first thing a Sufi undertakes in order to harmonize the entire existence, is the purification of the heart; since there is no possibility of the heart's development without devotion, so the faithful mureed becomes a Sahib-e Dil, as the easiest and most ideal way of development.

INTELLECT AND WISDOM Intellect is the knowledge obtained by experience of names and forms; wisdom is the knowledge which manifests only from the inner being; to acquire intellect one must delve into studies, but to obtain wisdom, nothing but the flow of divine mercy is needed; it is as natural as the instinct of swimming to the fish, or of flying to the bird. Intellect is the sight which enables one to see through the external world, but the light of wisdom enables one to see through the external into the internal world.

Wisdom is greater and more difficult to attain than intellect, piety, or spirituality.

DREAMS AND INSPIRATIONS Dreams and inspirations are open proofs of the higher world. The past, present, and future are frequently seen in a dream, and may also be revealed through inspiration. The righteous person sees more clearly than the unrighteous.

There are five kinds of dreams:

1. Khayali — in which the actions and thoughts of the day are reproduced in sleep.

2. Qalbi — in which the dream is opposite to the real happening.

3. Naqshi — in which the real meaning is disguised by as symbolic representation which only the wise can understand.

4. Ruhi — in which the real happening is literally shown.

5. Elhami — in which divine messages are given in letters or by an angelic voice.

Dreams give, sometimes clearly, sometimes in a veiled form, warnings of coming dangers and assurance of success. The ability to be conscious of dreams and their meaning varies with the degree of development attained.

Dreams have their effect sooner or later, according to the stars under which they take place. The dream seen at midnight is realized within one year, and the dream of the latter part of night within six months; the dream of the early morning is realized soon after. At the same time the manifestation of dreams is subject to qualification according to the good or bad actions of the dreamer.

Inspirations are more easily reflected upon spiritual persons than upon material ones.

Inspiration is the inner light which reflects itself upon the heart of man; the purer the heart is from rust, like a clean mirror, the more clearly inspiration can be reflected in it. To receive inspirations clearly the heart should be prepared by proper training. A heart soiled with rust is never capable of receiving them. There are five kinds of inspiration: 1. Elham-e-'Ilm — inspiration of an artist and scientist 2. Elham-e-Husn — inspiration of a musician and poet 3. Elham-e-'Ishq — inspiration of a devotee 4. Elbam-e-Ruh — inspiration of a mystic 5. Elham-e-Ghayb — inspiration of a prophet

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Inspirations are reflected upon mankind in five ways: 1. Kushad der Khyal — in the wave of thought 2. Kushad der Hal — in emotions and feelings 3. Kushad der Jemal — in the sufferings of the heart 4. Kushad der Jelal — in the flow of wisdom 5. Kushad der Kemal — in the divine voice and vision Some are born with an inspirational gift, and to some it appears after their development. The higher the development in spirituality, the greater the capacity for inspiration, yet the gift of inspiration is not constant; as the saying of Mohammed declares, 'Inspirations are enclosed as well as disclosed at times; they appear according to the will of Allah, the only Knower of the unknown."

LAW OF ACTION The law of cause and effect is as definite in its results in the realm of speech and thought as in the physical world.

Evil done, when it is considered evil, is a sin; and good done, when it is considered good, is a virtue, but one who does good or bad without understanding, has no responsibility for his sins nor credit for his virtues; but he is liable to punishment or reward just the same.

Man forms his future by his actions. His every good or bad action spreads its vibrations and becomes known throughout the universe. The more spiritual a man is, the stronger and clearer are the vibrations of his actions, which spread over the world and weave his future.

The universe is like a dome: it vibrates to that which you say in it, and echoes the same back to you. So also is the law of action: we reap what we sow.

It is impossible to differentiate between good and bad, because the thing seen is colored by the personality of the seer; to the bad view, all good is bad, and to the good view, even the bad seems good in a certain sense; so the wise keep silence in distinguishing good from bad. The most essential rule is not to do to others that which you would not have done to you. That action is desirable which results from kindness, and that action is undesirable which is unkind.

Doubtless also, might is often right, but in the end, right is the only might.

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There are different principles for life in different religions, but a Sufi's will is the principle for himself. He is the servant, who surrenders himself to principles; and he is the master, who prescribes principles for himself. One who has never been commanded in life, never knows how to command; in the same way, to be the master, one must first be the servant.

The murshid as a physician of the soul prescribes necessary principles to the mureed, who after accomplishing the training, arrives at that blessed state where he overcomes virtues and sins, and stands beyond good and bad. To him happiness no longer differs from sorrow, for his thought, speech, and action become the thought, speech, and action of God.

MUSIC AMONG SUFIS Music is called Ghiza-i-ruh, the food of the soul, by Sufis.

Music being the most divine art elevates the soul to the higher spirit; music itself being unseen soon reaches the unseen; just as only the diamond can break the diamond, so musical vibrations are used to make the physical and mental vibrations inactive, in order that the Sufi may be elevated to the spiritual spheres.

Music consists of vibrations which have involved from the top to the bottom, and if they would only be systematically used, they could be evolved from the bottom to the top. Real music is known only to the most gifted ones. Music has five aspects: 1. Tarab — music which induces motion of the body (artistic) 2. Raga — music which appeals to the intellect (scientific) 3. Qul — music which creates feelings (emotional) 4. Nida — music heard in vision (inspirational) 5. Saut — music in the abstract (celestial) Music has always been the favorite Sufi means of spiritual development. Rumi, the author of the Masnavi, introduced music into his Maulvi Order, and enjoyed the memory of his blessed murshid's association while listening to it. Since that time music has become the second subject of Sufi practices.

They declare that it creates harmony in both worlds and brings eternal peace.

The great mystic of India, Khwaja Moin-ud-Din Chishti, introduced music into his Chishtia Order. Even today musical

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entertainments for the elevation of the soul, called Suma, are held among Sufis.

ECSTASY Ecstasy is called Wajad by Sufis: it is especially cultivated among the Chishtis. This bliss is the sign of spiritual development and also the opening for all inspirations and powers. This is the state of eternal peace, which purifies from all sins. Only the most advanced Sufis can experience Wajad. Although it is the most blissful and fascinating state, those who give themselves entirely to it become unbalanced, for too much of anything is undesirable; as the day's labor is a necessary precursor of the night's rest, so it is better to enjoy this spiritual bliss only after the due performance of worldly duties.

Sufis generally enjoy Wajad while listening to music called Qawwali, special music producing emotions of love, fear, desire, repentance, etc.

There are five aspects of Wajad: Wajad of dervishes, which produces a rhythmic motion of the body; Wajad of idealists, expressed by a thrilling sensation of the body, tears and sighs; Wajad of devotees, which creates an exalted state in the physical and mental body; Wajad of saints, which creates perfect calm and peace; and Wajad of prophets, the realization of the highest consciousness called Sadrat al Manteha. One who by the favor of the murshid arrives at the state of Wajad is undoubtedly the most blessed soul and deserves all adoration.

CONCENTRATION The entire universe in all its activity has been created through the concentration of God. Every being in the world is occupied consciously or unconsciously in some act of concentration.

Good and evil are alike the result of concentration. The stronger the concentration, the greater the result; lack of concentration is the cause of failure in all things. For this world

and the other, for material as well as spiritual progress, concentration is most essential.

The power of will is much greater than the power of action, but action is the final necessity for the fulfillment of the will. Perfection is reached by the regular practice of concentration, passing through three grades of development: Fanรก -fi-Shaikh, annihilation in the astral plane, Fanรก-fi-Rasul, annihilation in the spiritual plane, and Fanรก-fi-Allah, annihilation in the abstract.

After passing through these three grades, the highest state is attained of Bรก qi-bi-Allah, annihilation in the eternal consciousness, which is the destination of all who travel by this path.

Breath is the first thing to be well studied. This is the very life, and also the chain which connects material existence with the spiritual. Its right control is a ladder leading from the lowest to the highest stage of development. Its science is to be mastered by the favor of the murshid, the guiding light of God.

MALE AND FEMALE ASPECTS OF GOD The only Being is manifested throughout all planes of existence in two aspects, male and female, representing nature's positive and negative forces. In the plane of consciousness there are two aspects: Wahdat, consciousness, and Ahadiat, eternal consciousness, and thus also spirit and matter, night and day, signify the dual aspect on lower planes. In the mineral and vegetable kingdoms sex is in a state of evolution, but the highest manifestation of male and female is man and woman.

Man being the first aspect of manifestation, is the more spiritual and nearer to God; woman being the next manifestation, is finer and more capable of divine knowledge. Man's natural tendency is towards God, while woman's tendency is towards the world. These contrary tendencies result in balance. Therefore man

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needs woman to direct his life, and woman needs man for her guidance and protection, both being incomplete in themselves.

The problem of the emancipation of woman may be studied by a comparison of her position in the East and in the West.

The Oriental woman, whose freedom is restricted, is the better wife from the individual point of view, but the enforced inactivity of half the population is not beneficial to the nation.

The Occidental woman who is given entire freedom is less anxious for and less capable of home life, but being out in the world her influence promotes the advancement of the nation.

At first sight it would appear that woman is more respected by man in the West, but in reality the East gives her the greater reverence.

Man has more freedom than woman throughout the entire world because he has more strength and power; and the fineness of woman needs protection, just as the eye, being the finest organ of the body, has been protected by nature with eyelids. Both excel in their own characteristics.

A virgin is idolized by man because she is the model of high manifestation; woman's virtue is a greater ideal than her physical and intellectual beauty. Nature has placed her under the protection of man, but what is most desirable is that man gives her freedom and that she appreciates it by making the best use of it.

There are three kinds of virgins. One, commonly considered a virgin, who has never had association with a man; another is the virgin in heart, whose love is centered in one beloved only; and the third is the virgin in soul, who considers man as God. She alone can give birth to a divine child.

A woman may become a doctor, solicitor, or minister, but it is incomparably greater if she can

become a good wife and a kind mother.

Monogamy and polygamy are inborn human attributes. They also exist among birds and beasts. Each individual is born with one of these tendencies, but sometimes one rather than the other is developed by the effect of the atmosphere and surroundings. These tendencies also depend upon the climatic and physical conditions of different countries and races.

Polygamy may be natural to man, and monogamy to woman, as the former helps manifestation while the latter destroys it. Illegal polygamy is worse than legal, because it creates deceit and falsehood. Monogamy is the ideal life which is a comfort in this world and the next, and perfects one in love.

Absolute renunciation is as undesirable as is the blind attachment to the world. The ideal life is detached interest in the world, which is best accomplished by man and woman together.

Woman is a mystery within herself, owing to her subtle nature. Sages who made the mistake of considering woman to be of lesser spiritual importance forgot that they themselves were the product of woman.

The majority of prophets and masters have been men because man is the higher manifestation, as is signified by the myth of Adam and Eve, in which Eve was born from the rib of Adam, meaning that woman is the later manifestation; the fruit means that woman directed man's thoughts towards procreation. The interpretation of Adam and Eve's exile from heaven is the fail of mankind from the state of innocence to the state of youth. The separation and unhappiness of Adam and Eve show the object of God to manifest in the dual aspect, that He may accomplish his real desire of love.

According to the Vedanta half of the divine body, Ardhangi, is womanhood, proving that unity of both is the complete life.

Sufis consider a life of complete unity the most

Image courtesy: LoganArt

balanced, if it is true and harmonious. Love and wisdom create harmony between man and woman; but these being absent, harmony ceases to exist.

A child inherits more attributes from its mother than from its father, therefore the mother is more responsible for its merits and defects and if she has knowledge she can train the soul of her child even before its birth by the power of her concentration, molding the child's future according to her own will.

Harmony between truer persons is more lasting than the affections of average mankind. People of angelic qualities have everlasting harmony between them, in which God Himself accomplishes His object of manifestation.

Mankind is born with a worshipful attitude, and as all attitudes demand satisfaction by expression, so the attitude of worship finds its object of adoration. The ancient Greeks and Shiva Bhaktas of India worshipped both aspects of manifestation in the names of gods and goddesses. Sufism, being the essence of all religions and philosophies, looks upon both the opposite aspects of nature as one in reality, and calls it Safat Allah. Sufis reach realization of God by adoring His nature, calling on Him saying, 'Kull-i shayin Hรก l-i kull', which means, 'Everything will perish except His own Face.'

They look upon all names and forms as the means of realizing the One, the only Being. []

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CINEMA

Flying High

Film: Udta Punjab Directed by Abishek Chaubey Released on June 17, 2016 Featuring: Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Diljit Dosanjh

Sundar Raghav

‘Udta Punjab’ (Flying Punjab) has that distinct menace in its title that distinguishes it from run of the mill films on social issues.

While most would invoke anger to get to their point, suffusing the narrative with dollops of sympathy and revolutionary spirit, they would be devoid of that reflective understanding and a remotely sound plan to address the core problem.

Thus, Udta Punjab steers clear of the ‘mass awareness’ storyline that has its own masterpieces, strategically spending that time to remove the onion peels of the business behind the lucrative trade. Thanks to Abhishek Chaubey’s sound skills in the craft of filmmaking, the plot smells menacingly close to a ‘solution’, even though ‘truth’ may be an overstatement.

that generates attention but doesn’t necessarily pose enough threat to earn the ire of the powers that be.

And yet, Chaubey’s ‘Udta Punjab’ became yet another episode in the history of film censorship where the people in power stepped in to halt a seemingly innocent march up the hill. They cried defamation and vulgarity in equal measures, trying their best to remove the sequences deemed offensive to the multifaceted Indian culture and strike off the ‘Punjab’ tag from its title and everywhere within, to banish the narrative from its adopted homeland into the realm of fiction, something that the film already claimed to be.

‘Menace’ the word has always implied a sense of ‘mischief’ in this particular observer’s vocabulary, having associated the term with Hank Ketcham’s delightful creation – Dennis the Menace, the comic strip about a lovable little boy who is the manifestation of a real imp to Mr. Brown, his elderly next door neighbour.

Popular notion suggests that the bonhomie between Punjab and drugs is no great secret. It is all but an open one, exploited and profited from.

Thus, popular notion came to the conclusion that the powers that be were apprehensive about forthcoming elections in the western Indian state to allow a bunch of filmmakers to propagate and vindicate a notion that could jeopardise their electoral prospects.

Chaubey’s penchant for menace has been evident in the two ‘Ishqiya’s that he gifted his viewers. The trailer of ‘Udta Punjab’ promised no less with the loud and abrasive Shahid Kapoor splashed all over.

Chaubey’s teaser reeked of a deliberate rockstar act

The citizens, oblivious to the film’s actual content, became piqued over the debate. As the release date approached, matters rolled from the film certification board to the courts, where the voices of justice deigned that a small snip would be

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enough to make the film fit for desi consumption.

They retained ‘Punjab’ and its allied references and most of the offensive language as well, barring a particular sequence where rockstar Shahid Kapoor urinates over the mob during one of his concerts.

And yet the lesson was painfully unlearnt when the film released over peer-to-peer file sharing services, days before its struggled release in theatres.

Whether it was the task of a “freethinking Samaritan” who understood the power of uninterrupted cinema OR the deeds of someone from the powers that be who felt bitter enough to put the makers’ financial prospects in jeopardy, is a matter that must remain for the grey cells of investigators to ruminate upon.

What stoked these humble grey cells was Chaubey’s creation itself - the sheer gall of a Bollywood filmmaker to cater to the several broken selves of a miraculously united nation: from the dubiously innocent police officers to the addicted teenagers, upright medical professionals who wage their silent war on drugs to girls with juvenile dreams of hockey who land up as a Punjab farmhands. It shamefully

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caters to the barely fertile imaginations of those who revel in the glow of drug-induced light, and to those who lose enough of their minds to murder the gifted, even their own mothers.

The haunting prison scene that has the rockstar Gabru (Kapoor) coming face to face with two of his matricidal fans, or take for example the little sequence where Kapoor’s character sings an impromptu number at the behest of a hospitalised gang member in exchange of information, while the police try to knock down the doors; Chaubey’s film is peppered with gems such as these, aided by commendable acting from big acts and small – a colourful collage of breathing characters.

Udta Punjab is a hauntingly beautiful film on a contemporary and pertinent social problem. How it stands on its own two feet has always been the measure of a film, since circumstances inevitably fade with the passage of time. As far as this benchmark is concerned, ‘Udta Punjab’ flies fine, with or without the aid of a deleted scene. []

F I C T I O N

My Beautiful Slum T O T I

O’ B R I E N

Graphics: PETE LINFORTH

The van drops me at the curb. That is when I realize that – oh lord – I have seen nothing. I just lost it: the travel, I mean. The view of town and what it does to me: how it fixes me, sucks my thoughts and feelings away then returns them ironed, orderly like a pile of folded clothes.

It’s the motion, I guess. Or the beauty. The town’s beauty: so spread out, so abundant, so free (well, you would need a ticket if you were on a bus… though, you know, there are ways).

Just watch, now: the buildings - doors, windows and chimneys – the cars, tramways, lampposts, bridges, squares with neat little gardens, cafes with tables outside… every corner. There is so much to see while you’re carried along - and all you have to do is, like they say, sit back.

Beauty is not what straightens me, though.

What makes me breath better, feel better, think better, it’s the order… The orderly beauty. All the pieces (trees, river, boats, seagulls, even people) link in. They connect, though they apparently don’t... they seem randomly bunched, as when mother asked us to tidy our room, and we tossed all our toys in

the basket. Tall, round lidded, we played hide and sick with it (mom didn’t know): it was always overturned, on the side… Our toys were scattered on the floor when mother came back: we carelessly trampled them, busy fighting (pretending or not), running after each other, summersaulting or otherwise manifesting both our zest and our tedium. Mom appeared at the door: she raised her hand to her hair, nice and fashionably bobbed. I felt bad, terrified her bangs would be upset by our fault. Kids! She yelled: put those toys in the basket! We complied, laughing, sweaty from our vivid exertions. Without loosing a bit of energy or speed, loud as we always were, we started grabbing and tossing, grabbing and tossing. It was kind of fun, quickly done: the room suddenly clear and the basket bursting, lid tipped on the side for it couldn't close properly.

Then we ran towards her, someone grabbing her legs in a desperate hug. Not me, who being taller could aim a tad higher. I always arrived a bit late, anyway.

Not truly a fast runner.

What about the city? I was telling you… this town looks like a bunch of toys tossed inside a trunk with no ratio, uncaring of what will side with what… But then, strangely, everything finds a place. It gets organized, it makes sense. The town makes sense to me, when I’m in motion. Like a prayer, you know? You sit in church for an hour, all is said that should be, then amen. Like a rosary, though I have never said one. But I have one, made of small corals. I used to.

Today I’ve kept my eyes closed, until my name was shouted out loud. Then I’ve grabbed my suitcase - my brown leather bag, oldfashioned and heavier than its contents, but I make it do – and I’ve stepped out.

I don’t know where this area is located. I have never seen it, but this town is huge. There must be a ton of outskirts I haven’t set foot in.

They look kind of alike, and I find them neat, just as downtown. For the point is the same: they are a compound of things collapsed

together, with a magic touch giving them meaning, making them come alive. This street, for example, this row of little houses…

Quite little. Do I care? A house, certainly, is more than I’ve had for a while, perhaps more than I need. I don’t know yet the effect it might have on me. I anticipate it, not exactly with pleasure. With fear maybe? With fear, I’m afraid: does such sentence work?

Can you say ‘I’m afraid I’m afraid’? I’m digressing… fear makes you do that.

Mine is the second house from the corner, a bit wider than the others. More dilapidated as well: the paint is in worse conditions, and a couple boards cross the façade, giving it a patched feel. I don’t know what they are for… they don’t look great. And yet, I will always know which is my place, should I get here at night, drunk or such.

My house is the patched one: the one band-aided with boards. The one hurt by something, then kind of sewn up.

The house right of mine, at the corner, is empty. How do I know? Come on. It took me two seconds and a sideglance. I’m good at this. I wouldn’t have sur… Well, I think all the other huts are inhabited. Did I say huts?

Just kidding. They are houses.

Only, very tiny, and - to the left of mine - all the same. Same width, barely wider than the door: I mean one foot per side. Don’t be worried: they are tiny but neat. Now what did you expect? Same width, and originally – I am sure - same design, same paint on the façade (if you can call it so: façade is a face… here we’re talking of noses, snouts maybe). The snouts, I was saying, were once painted the same color - the entire row - but not any more. They have been painted over, each one in its fashion (if the word applies), without minding the neighbors... The result is a feast of mismatched beiges and mouse greys, interrupted by a splash of pea green or sour pink. And on top of that, not a good job, nowhere. They have been painted as if by a three-year old coloring in, a large crayon melting

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through her chubby fingers.

You can tell each house was its own microcosm, during the painting business (whenever it happened, certainly not all at the same time). You are surprised I know that word?

My dear, you will be surprised again. Or I’ll give it away... be surprised once and for good: I have read tons of books. Hold on… we were allowed one hour per day in the library. I went every day, besides Sundays. Can you imagine? I didn’t finish the library – you couldn’t, even in a lifetime. So much was crammed on those shelves… not quite orderly, though they went alphabetically and there were labels, too. There were regions, areas, maps - I guess - but I couldn’t figure. So I went alphabetically: more or less, for I jumped here and there. I grabbed things I was attracted to.

Mainly, I admit, because of the cover.

Doesn’t the cover count? Like a dress: look at you. You care about it, do you? I used to. Now look at this bag: it weighs more than its contents.

That says it all. Anyway there was no one in the library. No instructor, personnel, however you call it. Him. Her. Well, I know, it should be librarian. There was no librarian. We were left to ourselves… Stealing books? Quite improbable.

Impossible, truly - we were searched before we’d get to our rooms. They let us loose in the library.

Let me, for I was almost invariably alone. You see: books weren’t very popular. Not there.

The above was called a flashback - although it doesn’t imply darkness, a cave, someone following you, nothing of the kind. But that’s how you name that kind of regressing in time.

Being sucked in: a quasi vertigo, weakening you, slowing you down. The proof: I haven’t finished to explain how each house painted itself, so to speak, unaware of the view you could have from a helicopter… of all things. From the other curb, just walking around, seeking a bit more of a landscape. The entire street – voila - looks uncannily assembled… but that trick I described saves it… That capacity towns have of self ordering, no matter what. And in fact those ill colored, narrow facades look pretty, together.

They look beautiful.

Now you ask how people can fit in such slim boxes, not much wider than caskets – forgive the gloomy comparison. Don’t be fooled. The houses expand lengthwise. Like for Russian dolls, each room opens to the next one (with no hallways: they would take up space). Two, three rooms, maybe? More than enough.

Then notice how people are small, here.

Proportioned to the buildings. It looks as if things have been thought over, does it? People, as I’ve learned by a quick glance, are consistently small, and of course dark. Smooth hair: pitch black, oily, for all of them. This includes me – the size, not the hair. Mine is grayish, discolored.

After all, I’m afraid this house is too large for me.

Wait till I get inside.

Not yet. I’m still standing in front of the door, but kind of diagonally. I look as if I’m watching the door, but I barely see it. I’m watching around, comrade. I’m checking whatever I need to, before I get in and lose touch, at least visually, with my surroundings. Well, you – I – never lose touch, not entirely. You can’t, or you’ll be dead. I mean you could... it depends… I won’t give you unrequired details.

You know basic life rules, do you? Selfexplanatory. Life is a highway: you look at the road, but in the same time you scan every lane, behind you, ahead, on the sides. You have a moving picture in mind even when your thoughts drift away, you are singing a song, or you aren’t thinking at all.

You have a picture of everything that goes on – in motion, for it always changes. But when you’re on foot is the same. When you sit at your kitchen table, eating breakfast, when you’re about to slip in bed after you brushed your teeth.

When you open your door to grab the daily papers, when you walk the dog. You always need that camera on. Why? Please.

In fact, before I step in and get gulped by the obscurity (I guess power wasn’t turned on for my arrival. Of course. Who would have done it? That is where a flashback would be useful, a flashlight I mean… There’s daylight, still: it will last

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another forty minutes or so. I shouldn’t waste time).

I am wasting time. Taking time. Slowly, I’ve lowered myself on the steps. Stairs lead to the front door: they are in surprising good shape.

I’ve counted the steps: nine, a good number. I can tell you the number applies to the entire street: all stairs are identical – and no one painted them over. Some might have slightly crumbled… most haven’t. They are solid granite: I ask myself why nothing cheaper was used. Granite, here?

Quietly, I sit on the ninth step, my bag (it looks like a doctor’s case, but I swear I don't have scalpels in it. No, not a syringe. No, no drugs)… my bag sits besides me. My arms, crossed, cover my chest: relaxed yet tight, if you get me. I know how I look, at least I’ve an idea. I look like someone who’s not going to be talked to, right now. That is fine: I don’t want to be talked to. I am busy listening.

You would be surprised how this works. I’ve done it, you know, many times. Sit in front of a door, not necessarily yours. Anywhere you can sit without being bothered. Sunset is best, then wait as much as you feel like. Until darkness is ripe, and silence comes - if you can stay that long. The point – truly – is getting the switch from day to night. Listen to the sounds, catch the motions, the patterns, the things that are said, the looks, the whole landscape... You’ll see it is organized. You’ll see it has meaning. You will learn all you need to learn.

That won’t keep you out of trouble. In fact, it could help you into trouble, if that is what you want. For that is the whole point, is it? What is it that you want.

In this moment, for instance, I’m insecure.

And I shouldn’t: that must be strictly avoided. Be insecure just once: ill luck will spot you from far.

It will start its way toward you. It will come catch you. It might take time but you won’t escape.

You cannot be uncertain. Never doubt. Being wrong is ok: unavoidable. We are all wrong at times, perhaps all the time: it isn’t the point. We are all wrong most of times, but we manage in the way I described: all collide, all finds a place,

bunched up inside a basket of sorts. If you’re wrong you are average, human. Just keep marching: do not hesitate.

I’m not really in doubt – only unsure about getting in. I will… nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. Could where I came from be better than where I’ve landed? Just the thought would be blasphemy: a curse. Nothing could be worse than where I was, library notwithstanding. Not even death: although I didn’t choose it, not sure why. You see: I’m am even flashbacking unsecure. I shall sit on these steps until I’m clear.

Fastened, pulled together: myself.

Sunset is approaching and my eyes fill with beauty. It’s my weakness: I always had a thing for it, never could resist. It has been my pitfall, I guess, my Achille’s tendon (here’s one more bit of erudition. What for?)

Beauty. What for? The sunset makes the lawns shine like emeralds. I know you don’t believe me… I’ll repeat: the lawns shine. Yes, those houses have lawns: all of them. Little lawns, identical and equally green. So luscious they hurt my eyes. Of course they are miniatures, parallel to the stairs, on both sides. A small strip on the right (facades are asymmetrical): no more than a flowerbed. Without flowers, grass only. The same grass is on the left: a kind of oblique square, a slope. The lawns, I just said, are parallel to the stairs: they are bent, slides of velvety grass.

How could people who so sloppily painted their facades tend these pristine lawns? They don’t. No one cares. No one knows what those slopes are for, how they are supposed to look, in whose fantasy. The rain season is barely over: this grass is nature given and free. Healthy, juicy, exuberant. Rich.

How possibly did it stay the right size, how didn’t it spill, overgrow? Not yet: the rain season is just past and this is its perfect product. Don’t worry: the grass will not overgrow. It will wither and die: the season of draught has begun. It will go fast: those patches, soon, will be sloppy as the rest. But we’ve come at the perfect moment. We are sitting down, watching the perfect sunset. All shines, green like emerald, and the street looks

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beautiful. Peaceful: can you believe it?

I wish you were sitting, here, now. Would you? These stairs are too narrow, of course. And there’s no man around. Not a single one. How do I know? You know how. There’s no living male down this street, except for babies. Or an elder invalid, in a back room. Maybe two.

Men will arrive later. That’s why I like sitting on stairs, watching, waiting. Men will come back and some things will change. I’d like to know, exactly. Today, maybe, I can spare the effort.

Today I can let go.

There are babies on the lawns. Doors are open.

Women - small, black hair cut at various lengths, oily and slick – are at the doors, on the stairs, squatting, standing up, going in and out, chatting with one another, house to house. Anyway, many live in the same house, small as it looks. You see the slope, do you? Those nine steps and the angled little lawn. The front door is lifted from street level - but we are not on a hill, we are in the flats. You couldn’t do flatter: it is flat till the horizon, absolutely plain. That means in the back there’s additional space, underneath.

A garage? Course not. There’s no access. In the back of the houses are the backs of other houses, mirror like. On the sides? There’s no room on the sides, not for a trash can, not even a child by profile. On the sides windows open on other windows. No shutters, no need: only dirty glass, dirty curtains. In the back of the house there’s a basement: an extra room where more people can sleep. Maybe an old invalid is there. Give a day, and I will let you know.

Women look at ease at this hour. Dinner must be ready, though I do not smell much. It must be me: smell is the thing I’ve lost, one of those. They say it happens: I’ve read it on a magazine, during library time. They say it easily goes, but it could come back. I’m not sure it will… again, doubting… Patience: I won’t miss the scent of cut lawns - that was one of my favorites. I won’t: the grass won’t be cut. It will wither, that’s all.

Women look relaxed. They walk in and out of the houses. They look over the babies: leisurely, without fretting. You could say without care, but

it isn’t true. They care but they aren’t fretting.

No reason.

Babies rest on the lawns. Plenty of them. On the grass: no cribs, no little hammocks, not even a basket like Moses’. Wrapped in bunchy clothes, serene, babies rest and they don’t slide down.

How comes? The slope isn’t that hard, or the grass keeps them. They are light: very light, don’t you…

Oh gosh, I can’t look at those kids without feeling soft, without wanting to be like them: that’s totally crazy. But that peacefulness on their faces when they sleep, or keep their eyes open towards the sky. The sky doesn't hurt them.

Sunset doesn’t hurt them. Perhaps they can’t see, yet. I don’t remember. How old are those babies?

I can’t tell. None of them walks of course: they are freshly made. You wouldn’t believe how many are on this street… that gives you a hint, does it? Of how many folks live in the small houses, what these gals do all night, what happens when the men come back. Babies, babies, babies: they flourish the lawns like ceramic dwarves I’ve seen, elsewhere. Other suburbs I’ve visited, at other times.

Dwarves: those usually are ugly. Angels, perhaps. I watch the baby on my left, by the closest house that – I said – is very close. Mothers don’t mind (I can’t tell who mom is: they all are, they don’t care). I do not stare: I know how to casually steal a glance.

Peace is what I feel, can you believe it? I had forgot – but then, did I ever know a thing about it? When I was a kid? Maybe. I mean: this is ridiculous. Peace lowers on me, unexpected: perhaps because I’ve arrived - I have been delivered, like a package. Because it’s the end of the line: and what could be best?

My house, the patched one, is the last. Or the first one. First, last - the same. Remember? Turn it upside down, whatever it is. It works, always.

Peace – whatever it is – lands on me a bit too heavily. It glues me to these steps, melting me, my limbs - my muscles no more responding. Not as fast as they should, as I have taught them to be. I was no more slow, when I grew up… didn’t

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arrive last, to hug whatever I wished. Reach whatever I wanted.

I don’t like this weight in my limbs. I should stop looking at these babies. I don’t need more sitting: I’ve learned all about this street, for now.

Stand up, get in, see what’s inside the house.

Check if power is on. (I know it isn’t. I will deal with it – the phone – and the gas – tomorrow.

Tonight I’ll sleep in the dark. That will be kind of restful. I need rest. I need opening my suitcase…)

In the bag, besides my toothbrush, my comb and my papers, there’s a picture I had forgot about. I will turn it face down. When you enter, the first room is a kitchen. This is the kitchen table, and I’m turning this frame face down. I’ll deal with this later. First, I want to change. I got a skirt and a blouse, neatly folded. Damn, I haven’t worn a skirt… for how long? Did I have this on?

Matter of fact I did. The skirt is sky blue, bell shaped: there’s a lot of it, more than needed. But I pull it on and it stays. I’m wearing it, for I have nothing else - and I need changing. I need another skin: if it’s old, re-used or re-cycled, fine.

The blouse has small flowers. Good god: did I have this on? Matter of fact, yes. I had this one. I am wearing it. It still fits. It fits more than it should: I mean there’s too much of it, too.

There’s too much of the house: I know already, though I haven’t set my foot beyond the kitchen.

The bedroom… is there one? There must be a

bed, I hope, a mattress at least. Maybe some bed stuff, maybe not. I don’t have pajamas – who cares, and I’m very tired. But I haven’t stepped out of the kitchen: this house is too large for me.

I am getting cold. Slightly. I know I won’t be: the draught season has started. It will be as hot as hell. But the rainy season has washed through the house, dampening the roof, the walls, the foundations. Chill has gotten to the core of it – the core of my house. Only time will get the chill out.

Tonight I am cold.

Outside it feels nice. Without thinking, I have stepped outside. I have stretched myself on the lawn: exposed, unprotected. Well, I shouldn’t: I know. On my left side, the baby I have watched earlier – still there - is a patch of fabric, light, dotting the green. On my right is the empty house, currently abandoned. A vacuum, I should call it.

This slight bent doesn’t bother me: I like it, in fact. The soil feels wet but the grass is warm. I look up to the darkening sky, with scratches of purple left behind, disappearing. They will be gone in minutes. If someone looked down, now, she’d see a kind of pattern. Kind of cute. A blue skirt - sort of spread, like a bell, maybe a swimming pool? And a flowery blouse, arms open aside, like a cross.

That’s me. Looking beautiful. []

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FICTION She stood at the sink with her hands

in the steaming foamy water, doing the breakfast dishes. The steam rose about her and her man stood beside, drying the dishes with a red and white rag and putting them up into the cabinets. Out the window before them, the grass spread spring-green and the sun poured down mildly. A rabbit set hunched in the dew. The woman spoke as she rinsed a mug.

So—you’re golfing again then today honey? Is it for sure—it’s a great looking Saturday.

Yes, he replied, placing a dish atop a stack in the cabinet. I got to be at the club at nine.

She turned to him as she stripped off her Playtex living gloves.

Honey?

What? he said, closing the cabinet, having put up the final dish.

What makes you play golf? she asked, reaching into the water to pull up the sink plug. What’s the thrill? I don’t understand— I do, he said. There’s a thrill—there

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just is. Plus, I’m damned good; and, still talking, they turned away from the sink after she pulled the sink plug up and the water began to circle as the drain pulled it down. The water set lower, lower in the sink as it became a vortex of heat and suds and dish dirt and food scraps and other remnants of the breakfast until the water and everything the people the house the neighborhood the rabbit and all were gone into the hole of emptiness—and the third golf green materialized and the drain became a golf cup full of dark rendering the bottom of the hole unseen and the sun came down onto the green all around and a ball rolled, rolled, rolled slowly at it, having been driven directly from the tee. The caddy pulled the flag stick and stepped back, watching.

The three men sat on stools at the clubhouse lounge waiting for the last of their foursome to arrive. They sipped at their coffees as they sat chatting, periodically glancing up at the clock on the wood paneled wall. The smallest man at the end of the bar put down his cup and spoke.

It’s nine thirty, he said—and he was supposed to be here at eight.

Maybe there was traffic, said the tall thin one, nearest to the wall. It’s rush hour.

No, said the third, dressed in green—today is Saturday— Oh, that’s right. No rush hour on Saturday.

The three men had met just this morning.

They had won a radio contest to play a round with Abater Tunek, the famous golfer—and this was the day—but he had not yet shown up.

Nope, said the tallest. No rush hour—hey look a car just pulled in the lot—is it him?

Can’t see.

As they craned their necks to see who got out of the car the smallest one said Hey—you know I heard Abater Tunek wears custom made golf shoes worth four thousand a pop.

Get out!

Nope. Serious.

The car pulled up outside, parked. An old bald man with a cane got out.

God damn, said the man in green. No. It’s

not him.

Nope it’s not, said the small man.

God that’s a bitch, said the tall one, as the ball disappeared with a hollow tap into the dark of the cup. All were amazed; the great man had done it again; and as they stepped away from the sink, she said to her man you golf every day, every weekend—you need a break. How about giving a weekend to me?

He regarded her blankly as he turned; the space between them went black in the lock of their eyes and the space spun and formed into the first hole. After the first, there will be a next hole; and a next and a next and a next. He told her you know I do this because I have to, as a ball hit directly from the faraway tee bounced onto the green and bounced and bounced and began to slowly roll at the caddy, who pulled the flag stick and stepped lightly back, as the ball approached. He stood open-mouthed; it was going to happen again, here. Rabbits leapt in a neighboring field; at the clubhouse bar, the man in green held his cup in both hands and said, You know I saw a nice pair of golf slacks online— Saville Row. Oh yeah, said the small man after taking a sip. I bet Abater Tunek wears slacks like that.

Famous man like him would wear the best— Anyway, the point of the story is—they cost $233.

Wow. Yeah—you know—and you know what else?

No. It happens to be true that in Italy, seventeen is an unlucky number—just like thirteen is here. There is no row seventeen on Italian airliners.

At the hole, the caddy watched the ball roll, as the man in green went on.

And here’s another fact I worked out. If you divide the price of those slacks by seventeen, you get thirteen point seven.

So what?

That makes them really unlucky slacks— thirteen, seventeen, thirteen point seven. You see?

No I don’t see, said the other; and the ball

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disappeared into the dark of the cup and the caddy shouted toward the tee, it’s in! But I’m no mathematician like you must be, said the small man, grinning; but regardless once more it had happened; the ball was in; and the man and woman went up toward the bedroom to wash up and get dressed for the day.

So you need to get there by when? she asked.

Nine, he said.

There’s time for a quick one, she said with a blink. You up for it?

Oh sure, he said smiling. As they mounted the stairs to the bedroom he began unbuckling his belt—I’ve always time for you honey—so what I’m a little late for a match?

She smiled down from the stair head, up above him. The dark of the hall surrounded her and made a circle that shrank and she disappeared and the circle turned out to be the cup of another golf hole; the fourth. The ball rolled toward it.

Shit I wish he’d get here, said the smallest of the three in the clubhouse.

Oh, he’ll be here. We won a contest. What’s your rush?

Hey—my rush is we got eighteen holes to play and it’s almost ten.

He’ll be here—let him worry about the time.

But anyway—I also saw shirts online from J. Lindeberg—they cost $165—they’d go perfect with those slacks.

Yeah but who would pay that? said the tall man.

Abater Tunek would, I bet—hey you know what the wife and I talked about this morning?

No, what?

She said Too much golfing, honey—too much time away.

So? Well, I said back, but I’m playing with Abater Tunek today—and we looked at each other and laughed; it rhymes—do you see how what we said rhymes? It was funny.

I bet it was, said the tall man, who drained his coffee cup as the ball rolled into the hole and a cheer went up from the crowd; she lay on her

back; her eyes were closed. She was really enjoying the sex—really, really—really really gently, as he always was. Their reflection moved in the round vanity by the bed; and as they moved the round mirror became the bottom of the cup of the next golf hole and with the small sounds they made a tiny white ball bounced and bounced and rolled toward the hole and the crowd once more held its breath, watching the small sounds come from on the bed.

Yeah, he repeated. It was funny.

The hostess came over and refilled their coffees as the man in green said hey you know what else? I saw Oakley shades online too—for $375. Small change, it said. Heh. Shit, said the tall man, picking up his fresh cup. I can’t imagine paying that—gosh, I got a kid in college. That’s where all my money goes anymore. But God damn, look; look at that clock move. Where is Abater? We’ve got a game to play—hey wait—look— He pointed through the front window.

Another car was pulling in; the ball rolled into the cup with a tap as she shuddered, gripping him, and the crowd cheered once more. Again, he had done it. Amazing, said one caddy to the other; but no—it turned out not to be him again, but the chrome and shiny paint of the wheels had caught the sun, which rose higher in the morning sky with the movement of the clock. He got up from atop her in the round vanity mirror; the clock face matched the round of the sun; the sun shone down on the next first golf green, of the next game, there are many games; and a ball once more rolled across a spread of smooth neat grass.

You know there’s a set of clubs out there that go for $75,000?

No—shit. How do you know that?

I was looking over the clubs online. I was stunned when I saw these. Japanese. Honma Five Star series, all platinum and gold—takes eight weeks and one hundred artisans to make a set.

Donald Trump has a set—and Jack Nicholson, Danny De Vito—you know; all the top golfers.

He laughed and they laughed back at the joke; and on the next green, the ball smoothly

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ran a straight line to the cup, and went in with a plop.

Cheers went up from the faraway tee; another one! cried the caddy—another one!

He went into the shower as she lay on the bed reflecting on their life together—where it might go, where it might lead. She had come live with him out of passion; he had responded by giving her love; with this linking them they got through the days; but it seemed to be wearing thin.

It seemed to be there was something missing; above her the ceiling spread across, smooth as a golf green; it was the fifth green. There was the tee stick. The green spread across her, and there stood the caddy, and here came the ball straight as a shot; hit by him again, Abater Tunek—one shot hit by him, straight off the tee, just like all the others.

My God! said the tall one at the clubhouse bar, leafing through an abandoned slick golf magazine that had lain there as they waited. My God, look at this fountain pen! You can order this online—look.

He held out the magazine and the man in green touched the page and his eyes opened wide as pies and he seemed to waken from being zoned out from his staring at the wall clock. The small man glanced over also.

A fountain pen? A fancy fountain pen? So what? It’s ugly— No, no, look at the price. $65471.

The others’ eyes bugged larger still and they were like great pale globes spidered in veins. $65471? That’s amazing—who makes that?

Montegapa. Italian company.

Never heard of them—but look at the design. It’s uglier than sin! Snakes and lizards and other filthy things wound round a silver skull—I could use a pen with snakes wound around a silver skull all day at work. Shit. For sure.Why’s it so expensive? What’s it got— The page pulled closer.

Oh, it’s called the Chaos Sylvester Stallone Fountain pen, designed by him. Look—eighteen karat gold, sterling silver. Um. Sweet. We could use that as our official foursome pen to write down our scores. People would look—Abater would get a kick out of it.

I agree, said the tall man, taking back the magazine.

People would look. Let me put this away—it’s full of ugly things. Ugly shit.

You going to buy that pen, said the other, with a narrow-eyed morning grin.

As the tall man answered he shut the magazine and tossed it back on the bar, leaned forward and clasped his

It seemed to be there was something missing; above her the ceiling spread across, smooth as a golf green; it was the fifth green. There was the tee stick. The green spread across her, and there stood the caddy, and here came the ball straight as a shot; hit by him again, Abater Tunek— one shot hit by him, straight off the tee, just like all the others.

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Even when there was no door between them, when she looked at him, he was in there, but unseen. That was how it was any more.

Him and his damned golf. Another day alone to amuse herself; Saturday Sunday Saturday Sunday.

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hands.

Oh sure, I think I’ll buy one—hey. But listen. When the hell will he get here anyway?

How the hell should I know? Maybe there’s an accident holding him up.

The cars are moving up on the highway, said the tall man, pointing out the front window.

That’s true. They are; they are indeed; and the caddy pulled the greenstick and the ball hit, bounced once and went in. The white hatted caddy stood scratching his head and looking back up toward the tee; had this been another—no it can’t have been another.

But this was, after all, Abater Tunek.

The sound of the shower running hard on her man in the bathroom ran through her, and she rolled still nude onto her side on the bed. She looked at the bathroom door and heard the sound; he was in there but unseen. Even when there was no door between them, when she looked at him, he was in there, but unseen. That was how it was any more. Him and his damned golf. Another day alone to amuse herself; Saturday Sunday Saturday Sunday. Run up the credit card, that’s what she’ll do; but the shower turned off and brought her back to the bed and the water that had come from the shower all gathered and rolled and swirled and formed into a cup on the ninth green; another cup, another green. The flag said the number of the green; but the number’s not important. It’s just that there’s a million of them. She lay on the suddenly smooth green sheets and thought as she dissolved, rather quickly, him and his damned golf, look at that ball rolling at the cup, look, pull up the green stick pull it up pull it up make way for the ball it’s coming coming— Hey you know I read something funny the other day, said the tall man, picking up his coffee. I read that if you squish down one of those little Easter marshmallow bunnies, it looks just like Kim-Jon-Un. There was a funny picture. I don’t know.

You mean that funny little Korean guy?

Yeah—you know his Father’s favorite songs were The Joy of Bumper Harvest Overflows Amidst the Song of Mechanization, Song of Blood Transfusion, and his all time favorite was The Shoes My Brother Bought Me Fit Me Tight.

What a place that must be. They also believed over there that his Father had made eighteen holes in one the first time he played golf.

What? Golf? Eighteen holes in one?

That’s right; and did you know that funny little Korean guy, as you put it, feeds people to dogs to kill them?

To kill the dogs? said the other drolly.

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No, damn it. To kill the person. You’re too damned funny. You know?

I know.

—coming, coming—the caddy stepped back; it came. The ball fell in the hole. Shit, said the caddy, as a cheer went up far back up the course at the tee—God he can hit that ball. God he can; and he does. A woman with a crown of twelve stars in heaven says he does. She could hear him toweling off through the bathroom door and she rose to take her turn in the shower. She gracefully slid off the bed, hair falling in her face, and threw on a light cotton wrapper which was draped over the vanity chair just as the bathroom door opened, and he stepped out in the nude, striking a muscular pose.

Apollo, he said seriously, darkly, as he flexed before her—Apollo.

Please, she said, and they laughed and he dropped the pose and came up and ran his hands down her over the wrapper and kissed her. The touch of his lips was real—but little else was.

Apollo, she thought as he turned away. That is how real he is anymore; as real as some fake greek God. He went to the dresser and pulled open the drawer, beginning the process of getting dressed. She slipped into the bathroom and closed the door without a word, slipped off the wrapper, started the shower, and once it was warmed up, she stepped in. The water coursed over her raising mild goose bumps. She closed her eyes and felt the water and heard the rush of the water and thought back to that first night with him. It had all been so special then. The water coursed over her and as she gripped up a washrag the water began circling the drain at her feet; the second hole. There was always a second hole. It was real and the shot had been made and here came the God-damned ball. The first shower after the first time with him was warm; but again, here came the God-damned ball. It came down, hit, and bounced, cold, from the high air it had passed through on its way to the green; this awful God damned cold ball. The water ran. Cold and hot.

You know, said the smallest of the waiting three—I’ve been sitting here thinking.

As he drained his coffee cup, the tallest one said Oh—that’s dangerous.

As he snickered at the tall man the smallest of the three said I’ve been thinking about this game we’re waiting to play. I’ve been looking in this little book—here— As he spoke he pulled a small black book from his back pocket and began thumbing through it, and went on talking.

—it says here this game is one in which competing players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course using as few strokes as possible—wait a minute— Pausing, he pointed to another line in the book, and went on reading.

It says golf is defined, in the rules of golf, as playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules.

Yeah, said the middle man in green, holding out his cup toward the hostess to be refilled—so what? We know what the game is. Where are you going with this?

The small man pointed into the book and said Nowhere, really—but why does the book go on to says that it’s a fact that if no two adjacent digits of a number added together exceed nine, then multiplying the number by eleven, reversing the digits of the product, and dividing this number by eleven will yield a number that is the reverse of the original number?

That’s got nothing to do with golf, said the tall one with raised eyebrows, as the coffee of the man in green was replenished—what kind of book is that—here—give it here— The tall man reached out for the book and the ball rolled into his hand which held the cup of the sixth hole and his hand was a spread of green and the caddy took the book from the small man and handed it to him as a cheer again went up from the four back up at the tee. The caddy waved the tee stick and pointed to the hole, and said Again! Again! Abater Tunek has done it again, as she reached through the showering water and shut it off, bringing sudden silence up around her and she opened the sliding shower door and reached for the red towel

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hanging from the rod. She stepped out and the cold air chilled her wet body and she shook out the towel and began drying herself. She felt cleaner than before, which was to be expected— anything would make her cleaner than when she had lain with legs spread under that man in the bedroom dressing for his golf game, on the other side of the door. She worked quickly with the towel. Water dripped from the showerhead. Once dry she from habit stepped onto the flat scale next to the bowl, and looked at the number as the ball was again driven hard, from the next fifth tee of ten thousand games, and was momentarily lost in the sun but it was still there though lost, it was still there and it was coming and the caddy stood on the green expectantly, shielding his eyes from the sun and the ball quickly emerged from the brilliance, coming fast, as she read the number.

Yeah, said the tall man, having taken the book and leafed through further. He pointed into another page.

Listen to this—it says if a ball be stopped by any person, horse, dog, or anything else, the ball so stopped must be played where it lies.

The other smiled.

What would a dog be doing on the golf course? said the small man.

Or a horse? said the man in green. What is that book?

It’s some kind of odd old golf rule book, said the small man. It’s very, very old. I got it for a buck at a flea market. Think it’s worth anything?

Well it’s got all this shit in here that has nothing to do with golf, said the tall man—like look—it says that on the first day, God drew forth ten primal elements from the abyss in order to construct all of creation—God damn, he said, flipping shut the book and handing it back. I don’t know the value of it, but this has nothing to do with golf mostly. It’s crazy. Show it to Abater.

Maybe he would know.

Maybe, said the small man with a smile, as he slid the book back into his pocket just as the ball hit the green and rolled to the cup and went in, again as with every cup, with a plop. The caddy waved the tee stick. She stepped off of the

floor scale onto the cold tile, satisfied. Unlike him, she wrapped the towel around herself before opening the door and walking into the bedroom. She had been taught modesty. A boil of invisible steamy air came out with her; and she spoke to him as he stood dressing.

Nice pants, she said. Nice shirt.

He turned to comb his hair before the vanity mirror.

Yeah, I know, he said—in clothes, you get what you pay for—hey look. I got an idea.

What, she said, opening her underwear drawer. It creaked loudly over his reply.

We should go to Cancun sometime, he said, combing. Take a break. Get away. You know if you want us to have more time together like you said, something like that would be a nice thing to do. What do you say?

He combed a bit longer then turned from the mirror. She slid into her underwear and looked him in the eye thinking what’s he mean, putting it like that; like spending more time together is something only I want. See how it slips into his talk. He is telling me more than he knows— Yes, she said. That would be a nice thing to do. She stepped toward the vanity to begin drying her hair. He sat on the edge of the bed lacing up his shoes, as the hair dryer began to whine just as the next ball was driven from the third tee, perfect hit on the sweet spot, nice follow through—and it was off toward the faraway green again in the sun, but lower.

God can he hit that ball.

The tall man looked up at the clock, saying It’s getting nearly too damned late to finish eighteen holes today. Should I call the radio station—have you got their number?

Oh take it easy, said the man in green.

Remember; this is Abater Tunek. Let’s keep waiting. He’ll show—hey look here in this catalogue—here’s a Bushnell Rangefinder. Only $644. Come in handy on the golf course—at the tee is what it says. Here you go, he said, handing the catalogue over. Get one. You need it. You got the bucks. $644 wouldn’t even make a dent in your wallet. Small change for you; I can tell.

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He grinned with a twinkle in his eye as he brought his cup to his lips.

Right, said the green man. Right, Small change for me—as the ball holed on the green, driving the caddy wild. Fifteen minutes later they stood in the bedroom, fully dressed, he for the golf game, she for a day of roaming the mall, as it was Saturday and there was no work. She’d be alone. Yes she’d be walking along alone; and when she returned to the house it would be empty. She felt alone creeping up through her and it hollowed her and the words from the hollow came.

What time will you be home? she asked him.

After the game. Not late.

See again no answer from this hollow man.

Not late is not a time, she said.

Say five.

Okay. Five.

Now I got to run, he said, pulling on a cap.

She regarded him. He kissed her goodbye on the cheek; she smiled. He was a handsome man; he moved smoothly, deliberately; the game went on, and each time, the result was the same. A cold chain of Saturdays and Sundays stretched ahead; a cold life alone with him, and an endless, endless succession of holes, games, greens. The next tee shot was hit as he darted from the room; and she lay back down listening to him leaving downstairs. She closed her eyes, and let the comfort of the bed take her. After all, the game would last all day. As she drifted, she thought— when would she leave him? Whenever, whenever; one day at a time. But she clutched the covers; whenever is not a time; like she’d told him about not late. She didn’t want to be like him. She didn’t want to say things that said nothing, like him. She feared that like the plague.

She heard his big sedan backing out the stone driveway outside; the emptiness engulfed her

and the ball soared over straight for the green.

She dozed, slept, woke; then rose, moved forward, finished dressing. Soon, in her Audi, she was gone to God knew where again; though God knows where is not a place, she didn’t care again; it’s round and round. There is always a next hole on the golf course; and a next and a next and a next. At the clubhouse the three men were about to give up waiting when the tall one gripped the man in green’s shoulder. He pointed out the window and spoke excitedly.

Look—there’s a Mercedes pulling in—I bet this is him.

It might be him.

The car pulled up outside. A man stepped out.

Yes! It’s him. Just like on TV. They rose from their stools at the bar to go greet him. The tall man left money on the bar, they left three empty coffee cups—outside, the great man strode toward them, reaching to shake hands as the hostess inside came to the bar, cleared the cups, and figured her tip.

Sorry I’m late, he said—some things got in the way— Oh no matter, no matter, they almost said in unison. It’s great to meet you— Okay. So—here we are, he said, pulling out a sheet of paper he had got from the radio station about the contest, with the names of the winners and everything else.

Let’s see, let’s see, he said, shaking the paper and looking up—and your names are?

And as they introduced themselves and made small talk the ball went straight in the hole again; but no one was surprised at this. No one was surprised any more, by anything—after all, all the balls were solidly driven from their tees by the great man himself; by Abater Tunek. Now the next game could begin.[]

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POETRY

MONSOON POEMS DEBARUN SARKAR Photography: VLADIMIR CHUCHADEEV

monsoon in calcutta

When the rains begin in Calcutta The lightning strikes and always Takes away the electricity or The Internet in some Neighborhood Or the other []

the lightning

When the monsoon rainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arrival Coincided with the completion Of the roadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s construction She heard the cars moan With their sirens []

the construction workers

The construction workers breathe Moments of respite with the rain As the dust settles down And the manager dares Not to take bets on Insurance []

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POETRY

Two Poems RINKI DEBNATH

déjà vi The heart still speaks with the darkest sob

Reason trims the wings of spontaneity The changed hues scorch the known experiences The wave of time brings about the same unchanged pebbles, The feet collapse, eyes flicker Blank! Blank! Blank!

The experienced eyes speak ‘déjà vu’!

The helpless ‘I’ stands with stretched arms No glimpse of hope appears… []

Graphics: Sutulo

rainbow Ever wondered why the rain falls equally on the two selves?

I get drenched, the ‘other’ I remains dry.

Waiting for the rainbows perhaps...

The rain soaked blood smells of mud The mud and the blood smell of the rain The ‘other’ I waits for the rainbow The rain prevents it! []

CultureCult Magazine - Monsoon 2016

tree frog Rainbringer, champion of fertility, a silver replica of you circles my wedding finger.

Nightsinger, your melodious trill calls to those deep urges hidden in my marrow.

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POETRY

TWO POEMS VONNIE WINSLOW CRIST Photography: IGOR GORYACHEV

the deluge

Dreamshaper, in your godhood, you supported the universe, lifting it up from the dank, primeval swamp.

Kind Vaivaswata rescued a fish, fed and cared for the beast until releasing it into the sea.

Lifegiver, your soft-bodied eroticism calls like the moon to my womb, like my husband’s voice to my heart. []

The fish, an avatar of Vishnu, returned, warned Vaivaswata of a great flood, told him to build a boat, fill it with animals and seeds.

The Deluge came, destroyed all things, except Vaivaswata and his cargo.

Like Noah of the Bible, Ziusudra of the Sumerians, Atrahasis of Old Babylonia, and Utnapishtim of Gilgamesh’s Mesopotamia: a good man served his god, saved the world.

A dream, a voice, a sacred fish – God speaks in many languages. []

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POETRY

THE SCREAM ARITRIK DUTTA CHOWDHURY Canvas: ‘The Scream’ by EDVARD MUNCH

Deaths and dowries

Have killed love For aeonsIn mushy tales Of livid silver screens; And cheap paperbacks.

Here, in the bread and wine Sucked from Christian mannaOrdeals seem psychic; Thousand stars Twinkle under lonely blankets, Husbands puking out semen In harlot-houses With the money The in-laws paid.

One candle needs to light up, One spark of revolt.

Shhh! They would say; Be dumb, be numb; Never contradict, Never question.

The molten wax Would be the hardened tears Reflecting the power Earned of a million muted mutinies: Emanate, Elude, Procreate.

You are a mother of your dreams, A child awaits in your uterus, To be wronged again, Just like you! []

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