CultureCult Magazine (Summer 2016)

A Magazine of the

ARTS, LITERATURE & CULTURE

SHORT STORIES POETRY FLASH FICTIONS DRAMA TRANSLATION: POETRY

JIBANANANDA DAS

M A G A Z I N E

SUMMER 2016 Vol.01, No. 05

THE BAN CULTURE RELIGION, BROTHERHOOD & WAR STREET PHOTOGRAPHY THE ART OF JOHNNY MOBASHER THE NATURE OF (DIS)ILLUSIONS

SYMPHONY

PRESENTS

COMING SOON

A Magazine of the Arts, Literature and Culture

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JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI

THE SPIRIT PAGE

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PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

SUMMER

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FEATURES

JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI

COVER: JULIA CASADO

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POTHIK BAGCHI

Street Photography and the Art of Johnny Mobasher SERGIO BURNS

Cinema: Phobia JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI

Drama: Guns N’ Roses JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI

THE BAN CULTURE

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Religion, Brotherhood and War HAL O’LEARY 04

CultureCult Magazine - Summer 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| Wikipedia

CultureCult Magazine will have six issues each year, following the natural etiquette of the Indian cycle of seasons.

This Summer issue will be followed by Monsoon, before the transitions of Fall Festive, Autumn, Winter and Spring.

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LITERATURE 13

CHRISTOPHER WOODS

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MICHAEL VERDERBER

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JOAN MCNERNEY

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ANJANA BASU

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AVA BIRD

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BETHANY W POPE

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LEAH MUELLER

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ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA

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SUNAYNA PAL

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JAMES VALVIS

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KUSHAL PODDAR

URMI MASUD

64 SHAWN HATFIELD

48 SIDDHARTH PATHAK

91 Translated by SYED AMIR MILAN CultureCult Magazine - Summer 2016

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PHILIP KUAN

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MITCHELL GRABOIS

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ANKITA JAIN

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S.F.WRIGHT

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SUNAYNA PAL

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EDITORIAL Points of Disbelief

Any belief that induces a state of intellectual ecstasy is often diagnosed

as an ailment, an aberration of the regular functioning of the rational, doubting self that compels an upright human to double up in devotion, suspending all notions of sensible judgment to revert to the role of a dot in the damned herd.

It could be claimed that those afflicted by scriptural faith forget that they begun from a dot, and it is not the journey inwards but outwards that we have commenced with such universe-expanding ferocity. It was pointless to return to the dot, having faith in ‘nothing’ that we could neither see nor inspect. Perception becomes a matter of opinion, the ‘point’ being the Euclidian primitive notion that must be built upon to create the multi-dimensional world of geometry.

Sans length, area, volume, the point has originally been “that which has no part”, a Euclidian turn of phrase that can reduce humanity to the Tolstoyan “six feet” of requirement. But then we forget that the Euclidian idea was not to reduce but to expand, an expansion of the mind that would illuminate, not amaze, confound or mislead impressionable listeners with stories of angels and demons.

And thus a section of the modern world denounced conventional faith.

Humanity refused to be mere points, developing advanced notions of the non-zero for themselves. Finding their inner light mirror the extant pull of electrons, they devised the Dirac delta to remind themselves that despite being mere points, it would be their combined existence that would give birth to hitherto inconceivable human worlds.

The worlds they would be forged in chaos, creation unregulated, the coexisting real and unreal stifling the profound meaning of the straight line - that which can connect two estranged points.

The curves and the ellipses, the cycloid, the parabola; a hyperbolic spiral or the dragon curve - waves of connections that result in abject chaos, a nightly treat for the eyes of a fictitious beast overseas.

We, the misled humans, would pray that the beast attains mercy while wasting away countless lives, burning the fuel within over nothing inconsequential points of existence that would neither glow nor eradicate the bleeding ink in times of dark.

The path to salvation often begins at a point of disbelief that is hard to cross out; an argument that would transcend even the most primal of reasoning. It is the moment we break when we let there be light. []

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SYMPHONY

What was the symphony of the sun, have you wondered, when she came out of her assigned womb to burn and burn, and burn with such ferocity that she exhausts herself and burns still; in a way we cannot imagine nor conceive, perhaps even in the formlessness of a black hole... by

JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI

Graphics: Gerd Altmann

Graphics: Garik Barseghyan

What was the symphony of the sun, have you wondered, when she came out of her assigned womb to burn and burn, and burn with such ferocity that she exhausts herself and burns still; in a way we cannot imagine nor conceive, perhaps even in the formlessness of a black hole. The hurt would nigh go unnoticed, no. The ardent desire to express, to communicate, to send an SOS is so someone can come and save her soul from the agony of a lonely death. The process crushes her from the inside as she sends out waves of gravity across the sable sea.

You could ask: why all this effort? Why not revert into the nothing that she was before? A mere dot before the bang! Weightless, sans mass, a nonexistence, peace. Zero. To her, the answer was simple. Lonely she was sure she was not. She could feel him everywhere. Someone. Someone who wasn’t I. Has not the cosmic search for the other led her till here in the first place?

She had no opportunity to plan her progress, she could feel nothing but the fire. She could think of nothing but to let some part of her escape the agony, feel the receding warmth and the soothing cold. She would immerse herself into the burning music, attaining ecstasy she would give birth, become a mother yet only to push her children away, away from the engulfing flames but with enough love to keep them in orbits around her. She would give her children the gift of time, which would seem to stretch her assigned 19 minutes into eternity.

In return, she would ask her children, beg of them to find the ‘other’. Gravity was survival personified, but rather illegible a tongue to communicate in; she needed more than a mere sense; she needed voices to invade the eerie silence of space. Voices necessitated life.. and thus it went!

The fire of her children satiated with ice, they

proceeded to experiment with their selves. The third child cracked the code to consciousness as she covered herself up in a transparent yolk of life, a layer of gases, like a coat of instant make up that would transform her skin.

Earth, she had named her, would be blessed by all the stars in the system, she knew. She also knew the pitfalls of both fire and ice, and how it would cause the most fertile the most pain. She was blessed, cursed. Earth would break into a trillion selves and cry.. so many voices! Should the sun lament or rejoice?

As the bug of individualism seeped into the nine unruly births, Earth suffered on her own. In search of her elusive ‘other’, her pregnant melancholy birthed the moon. Her molten core claimed it as her own, holding on to the dead child with all her might, placated by the kind Sun’s illusory nights. A renewed hope.

Undaunted by the demise of the first born, she continued her creations.

Their cacophony not reaching beyond the realm of the cloak, the Sun pushed, made Earth follow the north so life could see the light anew.

They spent far too long traversing downwards, tearing each other’s head off, procreating like rabbits. The Jurassic experiment a fail, she made her take up Plan B. Onwards to Polaris.

Mankind, oh, mankind! A trillion splits and ‘she’ turned her back to let the base, primitive ‘he’ in the driver’s seat. How could the Sun object; she was losing her farthest rocks while others no longer had masses to uphold the maya. Earth was her only hope, and she would probably take a long time. Earth was engulfed in sadness.

Melancholy breeds art, Earth bred life to aid her identify the symphony.

Despite her sad eyes, she led them by the fingertips and introduced them to Music in a raining tropical glade. Dance was in the flight of a beautiful deer and the naked, dancing flames that scorched dead forests at a time. Art was in every moment’s sky amidst earthly scenes of breathless beauty. The love that Art forged tore away the fear, shooed off the hesitation of human veins as they set out to discover and conquer fire. Food became tastier.

The happy children made the Earth happy, the inexplicably sad children made her melancholic still. Her core heated up in agony for all the bloodshed in the hearts of the wayward. But they progressed.

Mankind did. They ripped open the heart of their mother to bring out the minerals that would sustain the extension of their existence. They experimented with success. The mother did not mind the years wasted, the life spent, so the children can grow up. And thus began their collective march towards modernity!

Imagination led them on. So did common sense; apes progressed so far as to build worlds and multiverses of their own to get lost in, yet their overworked imagination kept the lamp aflame.

Graphics: Garik Barseghyan

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It wasn’t too difficult for mother Earth to spot the ones who were lost and those that were closed. The peace of oblivion can seldom be matched in money, and thus they chose to remain stuck in a lifeless, burn-proof limbo. She pitied them, did her best to lead them back to point north.

She could be more caring, yes. She was plentiful, but never could be a perfect mother. But she misses the one to care for her too, do you not see?

Her alive exterior was being covered up square inches at a time. She could feel her children send out toys, burning garbage, piercing the cloak of life that shielded those foolish creatures from the Sun’s pain.

Their imagination had gone askew, breaking radars, cracking windowpanes during a zero gravity flight. Their imagination was eerily repeating the last few words like a broken record.

Those that still burned camphor wept on as plastic armies laid siege over the Capital. Misplaced reasons fought for the soil, the silenced souls went underground. They moved deep beneath the soil, sailing to hell with a purpose: to ignite the core of genesis anew.

The conspiracy created chaos. The symphony of perfectly timed chaos filled the heart and the mind of the living as Art poured into the open.

Art poured into the sun; filled the solar system, galaxy, the universe itself. Their cry would pierce the vacuum, recording in vinyl or ones and twos, to brave even the steepest climbs of space. They were as great as they were selfish, assigning worthlessness to that which did not manage to traverse the realms of the outer galaxy.

Mankind had but a few points to fall back over: dreams would be at their sweetest when they would end at the verge of an attainment, and that is where life would be at its most real. That was the best way to confirm the veracity of life, they had found; it was as satisfying as drinking from Earth’s finest vineyard.

Thus we began to create this molten symphony, day in and day out, igniting sparks that would otherwise not be, birthing waves of vision and sound that would otherwise remain undiscovered. We call, knock, push, shove, twist, kiss, breathe to create chaos, a conspiracy of the extraconscious that devices ways to speak to their other half. Deprived of love, care; we kick, ensnare the senses of those we think we can devour, as if a monster; necessitating the coming of a burning angel of love and lightning to balance the scales.

Fire to purify all, fire to burn her on the stake! Joining forces, forging will like the tempering of steel from molten ore, we progressed beyond our imagination to settle on a bended knee, awestruck at mere particles, the yin and the yang, that combine over eternity to gift us consciousness. Mankind’s sad, and greatest gift remains the capacity of being awed, both by this magnanimous creation and the elusive creator/ process that began it all. []

Photo courtesy: NASA

POETRY

Still Lingers The Train Cycle - Part 5

MICHAEL VERDERBER This House is cold remnants of your voice, your love, your tears expensive perfume still lingers Like swallowing sand, you reside in cracks, infecting the lost memories lingering

VISUAL POETRY

The Moon

CHRISTOPHER WOODS Hurl it into the night And it will fly through trees.

Somewhere, a woman sleeping Will wake, get out of bed, Go to the window and watch The great lightning display.

Go on, astonish her. [] Canvas: An impression by Jagannath Chakravarti

I miss your skin as it warms the bed warms me, warmed us smoky shared moments hovering Amidst moving on I am solemn cold photo albums are what remains lingering []

Still Lingers is a response poem that is a fragment of a larger story despite being a stand-alone piece. As the title suggests, this is the final of five total parts that have been written, all in different mediums (a play, flash fiction, poem, experimental fiction, and a letter).

FICTION

WHAT HIS FATHER TOLD HIM

LANCE TURNER Photography: Annie Spratt

J a c o b heard Nora's footsteps fading as she fell farther

behind him, unable to keep up as he ran. He cried as he ran, his checks wet, his backpack rubbing against his shoulders with each stride. Blood dripped from his nose onto his shirt, spotting the collar, the color bleeding into the fabric. Mud caked the sides of Jacob’s shoes as he crossed the dark, wet mud, speeding through the gap between the fence posts at the end of the playground. He heard footsteps behind him, but didn’t turn around. He knew it was Bobby running after him. Jacob clinched his fists and ran harder, his legs pumping. Jacob remembered how his father told him to man up. This wasn’t manning up, he thought, this was running.

Jacob's shoulders tightened as he ran. He kept his arms close to his body, remembering how his father told him to run.

Once, he was sitting on the front steps of his house watching his mother pull her car into the driveway as she got home from work. A squirrel jumped from the tree in the front yard and ran across the driveway only to be caught under her front tire.

Jacob closed his eyes at the moment of impact, opening them to see the squirrel’s body flattened, but its tail, still bushy, flapping on the pavement. Jacob walked over to the squirrel and bent down to pick it up, but his mother yelled at him to leave it alone. She said his father would take care of it.

Jacob stayed outside playing basketball with himself until his father came home. He didn’t want his father hitting the squirrel again, flattening the lifeless tail, so when he saw his father’s car turn down the street Jacob stood at the edge of the driveway. His father pulled up beside the curb and rolled down the window.

Jacob told him about the squirrel and his father turned off the engine. He watched his father go into the house for the garage key and then go to the garage to get a shovel. Jacob winced and turned his head when the shovel scraped the cement underneath the squirrel, a bloodied mark left on the driveway.

“Open the trash can,” his father said.

Jacob held the basketball under his arm as he lifted the lid.

With the shovel put up and the garage door locked, Jacob began dribbling the ball. His father stood behind him, putting his hands on Jacob’s shoulders, pulling his shoulders back, expanding his chest . . . standing him up straight. Then his father leaned down to his ear.

“Don’t worry about squirrels so much,” his father told him.

“It’s okay to man up a little.”

Jacob pretended to know what his father meant by man up.

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“Okay,” he said.

But afterward, manning up had to do with so many other things. It was about how he walked and how he needed to stop calling things unfair and how he needed to go outside and play with the other neighborhood boys. Or at least that was when his father would grab his shoulders and tell him to man up. But Jacob didn’t know what his father meant by manning up except that manning up meant to keep doing things he didn’t want to do. He didn’t want to go outside and play. He liked playing alone, or with Nora when she came over from her house. She lived down the block on the other side of the street.

Jacob didn’t understand how playing with her was any different than playing with boys but Jacob noticed how his father rolled his eyes when Jacob said he was going to go see her. Nora was his best friend. She had been forever. But apparently this wasn’t the type of friend he was supposed to have. He once heard his father say to his mother that he thought Jacob spent too much time with Nora. Jacob didn’t hear what his mother said because his parents moved their conversation to their bedroom.

Sweat mixed with the blood on Jacob's collar as he ran. He wondered what his father would say after the school called him and told him about the fight on the playground. For an instant, Jacob thought his father would be proud of him because men fight; they did on television.

His father always watched fights. Last year his father drove Jacob down across the border to Tulsa to watch a mixed martial arts fight. The crowd was loud and Jacob wondered why the fighters hit each other so hard. The people got louder when the fighter in the black shorts delivered what his father called a knockout punch and the referee called the fight.

Jacob would say he threw the first punch even though he didn’t. He would say it.

He replayed the fight in his mind, thinking about what to tell his father. When he came out of school today, Jacob started walking

home. Nora grinned as she caught up to him, her left hand playing with her hair. Her hair grew down past her shoulders now. She liked resting her hand against her chest and twirling her hair around her finger while she walked.

Jacob squinted at the ground and kicked a clump of dirt with his shoe.

He heard a voice behind them as they walked. “What's up?” It was Bobby. Jacob saw Nora roll her eyes when she heard his voice.

Bobby was the shortest bully the school had to offer and the only one Nora and Jacob ever had to deal with. He was clingy, always wanting in everyone's conversations. He was in their sixthgrade class. Bobby had never been physically intimidating, but he was crafty. When Daniel would not let Bobby in a game of foursquare, Jacob saw Bobby run through the court, intercept the rubberized ball, and throw it at Daniel's face, the resounding contact knocking Daniel to the ground and giving the ball an awesome bounce.

“Nothing,” Nora and Jacob said together as they continued walking.

“Come on! Don't you want to talk to me?”

Bobby persisted, coming up closer behind them.

Jacob heard his feet hit the ground. For being so short, Bobby walked like a bull, Jacob thought.

Nora looked back at Bobby. “No one wants to talk to you,” she mumbled, catching Jacob’s ear.

The top of Bobby’s head suddenly came up under Nora’s nose as he stepped in front of her. He was fast.

Bobby’s hands were in fists by his sides.

Jacob looked around and saw teachers up by the back door of the school.

“What’d you say?”

Nora turned her head, scrunching up her face. Jacob wondered what Bobby's breath smelled like. He saw Nora's nostril's flare.

Nora turned her face back toward Bobby.

“No one wants to talk to you, Bobby. No one likes you,” she repeated.

Bobby’s hands were on her fast, shoving Nora backward. She threw her arms forward and her upper body followed, stumbling onto her hands and knees.

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“Hey!” Jacob shoved Bobby hard in the shoulder, pushing him away as Nora started getting to her feet. A boy never hit a girl. Jacob's father told him that. He didn't understand why though. Several words flashed into Jacob’s mind, asshole, jerk, lame, bastard. He liked the word bastard. He heard it in a movie once.

Bobby flung himself at Jacob, tackling him, pulling him down. Jacob landed on his side.

Bobby was on top of him, a mass of arms and legs straddling his body. Jacob raised his arms around his head. He felt sharp hits to his sides and shoved Bobby off of him. Jacob stood up and was grabbed again, falling back down. Bobby’s fist hit Jacob’s face and he found himself laying face down on the ground, wet grass in his face.

Bobby was on top of him, on top of his backpack. Jacob’s sides were kicked and hit and punched. He tried rolling back and forth, but he couldn't shake Bobby off. Jacob's backpack was strapped to his body and Bobby was attached to the backpack. Jacob's face was slammed into the grass and held down. His body hurt. He lifted his face to see smears of red along the grass. A quick movement of shadow caught his attention. He turned his head and saw a pair of purple lace tennis shoes running towards him. In a blur of movement above him, Nora dove, arms outstretched, eyes and hair ablaze. The weight holding him down disappeared as Nora rolled with Bobby, assaulting him with her fists and knees, landing punches and kicks into his stomach and shoulder as she rolled on top of him.

Jacob scrambled to his feet. His left side buckled in a sharp pain as he straightened up. He saw the teachers moving quickly now, running towards them. Jacob turned around and grabbed Nora by her backpack, hauling her off Bobby.

He saw the principal come out of the back door. He had never been in trouble at school before. Bobby stepped in front of Nora and slugged her in the stomach. She doubled over, clutching her middle.

Clutching his aching side, Jacob punched Bobby across the face and knocked him to the ground. He grabbed Nora’s hand and pulled her

upright, dragging her across the playground, away from the teachers. Nora felt shaky in his hand. He heard her trying to catch her breath.

He felt like throwing up, he could feel it rise in his throat. Jacob looked behind him. Bobby was running too, his arms and legs pumping. He was charging, Jacob thought.

Jacob felt Nora let go, running on her own.

A pain gripped Jacob’s side as he continued to run. Nora wasn’t with him. His backpack was heavy. His breaths were short. He scrambled through the two loose boards of the fence in the old woman's backyard. On the other side of the fence, Jacob moved the boards back together and sat down. Bobby wouldn’t find him here, he thought. The elementary school was in the northern most part of the town. Just by walking a few minutes north of the school, as Jacob and Nora did every day, they found themselves walking through the middle of a grove of trees. In walking through the grove, they bypassed the traditional sidewalks and streets leading to their houses. There was an excellent climbing tree in the grove near Jacob’s house that was hidden from view from his kitchen window. Jacob would often try climbing to the top, trying to see over the top of his house.

Nora could already be there, he thought. She could have ran straight to grove.

Jacob got up from his hiding place on the backside of the fence and started walking. He didn’t see Bobby anywhere. Jacob wiped his nose and came away with blood. Jacob lifted the collar of his shirt and pinched it around his nose.

He still had time, he thought. His parents wouldn’t be home until after work and that wouldn’t be until after five. He still had a good hour before they came home and started asking questions. He could change his shirt and hide it under his bed. Or, better yet he could change his shirt and bury it outside by the climbing tree and his father would never find it. He was sure the principal had already called though. He would have detention tomorrow and his parents would know why. He couldn't lie.

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His mother never wanted him to lie and she could always tell when he was lying. He also knew he had to get better at lying because his mother also told him that sometimes, in life, you

have to lie and you have to make people believe you are telling the truth, but you cannot lie in this house. His father didn’t say a thing about the matter, but Jacob felt his father must have agreed. He remembered when his father took him to the doctor to get a Tetanus booster last year after he stepped on a nail in the grove and the nail went through his shoe and into his foot.

His father said the shot was not going to hurt, but it did. He was light headed when the doctor pulled the needle out and his father held him close.

His father gave him great big bear hugs when he was younger. He remembered being lifted up and held, but as he got older he got more shoulder squeezes and head rubs, his hair ruffled. But in the doctor’s office, with his bandaged sore foot and his arm stinging, he liked the presence of his father, his dad right next to him. When the nurse came back with the immunization record and Jacob hopped off the table, he heard his father chuckle.

“See,” he said, “not that bad.”

And true, it wasn’t that bad, Jacob agreed, but his father said it wouldn’t hurt.

Jacob stepped along the side of Mr. Johnson’s house and slowly walked out into the backyard. Jacob turned around to see if he saw the window shades move, but no one was watching him. He was safe. He passed through the backyard and went into the grove. The ground was wet but the muddy patches were easily missed. He knew the path well. It was a diagonal shot from Mr. Johnson’s backyard to the climbing tree which was directly to the left of his backyard. If not for the shortcut, Jacob would have to walk down to the end of the street, turn the corner and head on up to his house and that path was too much out in the open. He thought he lost Bobby on his way to the grove but he wasn't about to walk home in plain sight.

As he walked, he saw Nora in the distance.

She stood under the climbing tree. He squinted to see her as he came closer. She looked funny, different. Her hair was spotted black. Jacob tilted his head and tried to focus on the dark spots she was covered with. As he walked up to her, he saw Nora’s hair was clumped together, matted with thick mud.

“Grandma’s going to kill me,” she yelled, holding her arms away from her body and looking down at herself.

Jacob saw mud caking her backside as Nora spun around flapping her arms, flinging mud into the air. “You look ridiculous.”

Nora popped her head up, her eyes and mouth open. “Duh. That’s what I thought too.”

She noticed the blood on his shirt.

Jacob didn't like her staring at him.

She reached out to his collar and he stepped back, wiping under his nose. He could feel the dried blood against his fingers.

“I didn’t know he hit you so hard,” she said.

“Whatever. What happened to you?” He didn’t want her looking at him hurt.

“Bobby pushed me into the mud.”

“Bastard.”

Nora nodded.

“Let’s go to the river,” he said. “Maybe you can wash it out.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. And you can wash your face.”

Jacob agreed and turned toward the river.

“But I’m not sure what to do about your butt.”

“I can say I sat in it,” she said and started walking with him to the river.

“True. But you can also say Bobby did it.

You know they’re going to know.”

“Of course they’re going know. But it won’t be as bad if I look clean. The principal might not even tell them about the mud and then I’ll just be wet."

The river wound its way through the city and the grove, widening and shrinking as it flowed. It was a good walk from their climbing tree. Nora and Jacob dropped their backpacks on the bank and took off their shoes and socks, rolling up the legs of their jeans. The water was

CultureCult Magazine - Summer 2016

high today. A branch floated down stream in the middle of the river. Jacob kicked and splashed up the sides of the bank as Nora bent over trying to wash the mud out of her hair, using a stick she found to reach around and scrape the mud off her clothes.

Jacob scooped up the cold water in his hands and rubbed it into his face. He took another handful and scrubbed under his nose and his chin. Another handful went to his shirt collar and the blood stains. He gasped as the cold water slipped under his shirt and down his chest, his body constricting to the sudden cold. The blood stains were wet but still there. His blood wasn't going to come out.

Nora dunked her hair into the water, submerging her head, and something splashed into the water near Jacob. He turned toward the sound and saw the surface of the water ripple.

Another heavy splash echoed on the other side of him and he saw more ripples. He turned around and saw their backpacks on the bank. He saw Nora dipping into the water again. Scanning the opposite bank, his eyes caught sight of an object mid-flight. A rock hurtling through the air, crashing into the surface of the river near Jacob’s feet. Bobby was standing on the other side of the river, holding another rock.

Bobby yelled, “Head’s up,” as his arm stretched into the air.

Another rock smashed into Nora’s part of the river. She jerked upright, her hair flinging water. Her eyes narrowed on Bobby. “Jackass,” she yelled back.

Jacob picked up a rock from the riverbed and launched it end over end toward Bobby, hoping to hit him. Bobby jumped out of the way and slipped on the wet grass, scrambling to get up.

Jacob saw Nora suddenly bend over to look into the water. There was a shape under the surface. Blurred and green and round. Nora wriggled her pant leg in the water. She backed up, the water falling lower and lower. Nora screamed and with a giant leap, she tumbled backward. Jacob saw her body go underwater and spring back to the surface. Getting to her

feet, she bounded to the shore. She spun and kicked, swinging her left leg back and forth but the shape held on to her rolled up jeans. Jacob watched as Nora performed her odd dance, flapping her arms as she twirled and spun.

Something was attached to her leg.

“Get it off,” she yelled, throwing herself to the ground and kicking her leg madly over her head. A large round green blob flew off her leg and cannonballed back into the water.

Jacob waded over and saw the shape rise to the surface, as a pair of round, black, beady eyes and a small green head poked out of the water.

“It’s a turtle,” Jacob called to her. Nora was on the ground inching closer to the water, ready to spring up and run.

They heard Bobby laugh. He clutched his sides on the opposite bank, unable to breath, as he saw Nora’s epic tantrum. Nora picked up a rock and threw it. “Get out of here.”

Jacob looked away from the turtle and saw Bobby disappearing between the trees.

“Where’d the turtle go?”

Jacob looked to Nora on the bank and then to the water. The turtle was gone. He’s a fast swimmer, he thought and stepped up onto the bank. Jacob smirked. “The turtle freaked you out.”

“No, it didn’t. It just surprised me.” They sat down on the grass and unrolled their jeans.

Nora looked remarkably better for the time spent in the water, though now she was completely wet and the her backside was covered in the dirt she threw herself down on wrestling with the turtle.

After lacing up his shoes, Jacob walked over to his backpack, reached out to grab it, and stopped. Nestled onto the top of his bag was the turtle. He called Nora over and they sat down on their haunches.

Jacob ran a finger along the turtle’s shell.

“Look at those yellow markings,” Nora said, leaning in closer.

The turtle moved its head as she came near. She leaned back and Jacob placed his palm on the turtle’s shell. It was cool and smooth.

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“It’s a warrior,” Jacob said, studying the markings and envisioning a tribal warrior with paint across his face.

“A warrior turtle.” He elbowed Nora in the side. “You’re not supposed to mess with it.”

“Whatcha looking at?”

Jacob gasped at the sudden question behind him and turned around. Bobby stood there. Jacob felt something in his stomach. The sound of Bobby’s voice made Jacob want to cover his ears. His father was going to be mad Jacob fought and Jacob wondered if his father was going to be even madder because he lost the fight and ran. With everything else his father told Jacob to man up about, he was sure his father was going to tell him to man up about this. A man didn't run. A man didn't lose a fight. A man always did something Jacob wasn't doing.

Bobby reached for the turtle but Nora snatched it up, springing to her feet. “Go away,” she said.

“I just want to see it,” Bobby said, stepping closer.

Jacob got in front of him. “What’s wrong with you?”

He moved fast, his hands on Bobby’s chest, pushing him to the ground. “Go away!”

Jacob clinched his fists and looked down as Bobby got back up. Bobby ducked down and charged into Jacob, knocking him down and then reached for Nora. Nora darted to the side. Bobby grabbed the ends of her hair and she yelled, falling backwards, the turtle tight to her chest. Bobby ripped the turtle from her hands and threw it, hitting a tree.

Jacob grabbed Bobby around the neck and put him into the ground. Jacob pinned Bobby underneath him and hit him.

Bobby tried to get his arms up, but Jacob grabbed them and twisted them together. He kicked his legs. Jacob saw Bobby's eyes were green. Bobby cried out as he hit him. He saw Bobby cover his face. Nora ran over, wrapped her arms around Jacob’s body and pulled. He fell back on top of her.

Jacob rolled onto his stomach, pushing himself up.

Bobby scrambled to his feet, running a few feet before breaking into an awkward limp and then running again.

Jacob took a few steps after him. His nostrils flared and his fists were tight. Jacob looked down and saw blood on the knuckles of his right hand. He stared at the blood. It wasn't his. Jacob loosened his fists as he looked at the blood.

The image of Bobby stumbling and limping as he made his way through the trees replayed in his head and he felt an overwhelming feeling to throw up again. If this was close to what manning up was, he didn’t like it.

He felt sick. He saw Nora move behind a tree and he

Jacob looked down and saw blood on the knuckles of his right hand. He stared at the blood. It wasn't his.

Jacob loosened his fists as he looked at the blood. The image of Bobby stumbling and limping as he made his way through the trees replayed in his head and he felt an overwhelming feeling to throw up again.

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Turning the corner, he saw Bobby sitting up against the back of the garage, his knees pulled into his chest, his head down. He was crying. Jacob knew it.

Jacob sat in that position before in his room, leaning up against the closet, trying not to be heard.

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stepped toward her. She was holding an angry turtle. He saw its limbs wiggle and move. Nora kept repositioning her hands as its head came closer and closer to her fingers.

She held the turtle out to him. “Look!”

In the center of its shell, cut through the middle, was a crack. The turtle’s shell was cracked. Nora set the turtle on the ground but it didn’t move away.

“Why don’t we take him home?” Nora said, stroking the edges of the crack with her finger.

Jacob shook his fingers, his hand hurting. He must have punched Bobby hard. He looked at the blood on his hand again.

“Mom doesn’t like pets,” he said.

“Well, Grandma doesn’t like anything like this.”

“Like this?” Jacob was puzzled. He wiped his hand off on his shirt.

“Remember when she had Grandpa kill the lizard in her rock garden?”

Jacob nodded and looked at the turtle. He wanted to stop thinking about Bobby. Bobby was okay, he thought. Bobby got up and left. Jacob needed to focus. “Maybe we can fix it then,” he suggested.

Nora didn't take her eyes off the turtle. “How?” It was a good question. Jacob didn’t know. He didn’t know how to operate on a turtle. He didn’t know how to fix a shell. They needed something to hold it closed so it could heal.

They needed a big band-aid, he thought.

Nora sat down next to the turtle with her legs crossed, her head leaning onto her hands.

Jacob’s eyes opened wide. “I know. Wait right here,” he said as he ran from the river, Nora yelling behind him, asking where he was going. He stopped at his backpack to pull out his house key. There was one thing that could hold anything together. He remembered his father saying that in the absence of the right tools, duct tape can be used to fix almost anything, and a turtle shell was almost anything. There was a big roll of duct tape in the garage and all he had to do was go inside the house and take the garage key off the key ring by the front door. He ran and was soon in his backyard. Going around to the front of his house, he sprang up to the porch and unlocked the door. He was inside his house a few seconds before he was back outside, the garage key in hand.

When he got closer to the garage though he heard a sound. It was a soft rustling, like a squirrel taking off because he was getting too close to it. Reaching up and holding the garage's padlock in his hand, Jacob twisted the key and popped the lock off the door. Then he heard another, quieter sound. He walked around the side of the garage. Someone was breathing

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hard. Someone was back there, behind the garage. Maybe Bobby was going to try and get back at him, he thought.

Turning the corner, he saw Bobby sitting up against the back of the garage, his knees pulled into his chest, his head down. He was crying. Jacob knew it. Jacob sat in that position before in his room, leaning up against the closet, trying not to be heard. Jacob moved and Bobby lifted his head up.

“Go away.” Bobby's voice cracked as he said it and he breathed in deep.

This all started because Bobby didn't go away on the playground, Jacob thought. “It’s my house.”

Bobby lifted his head up.

Jacob noticed Bobby's nose was bleeding.

“Your nose is bleeding.”

“I can’t get it to stop,” he said, wiping under his nose.

“Do it like I did.”

Bobby watched as Jacob lifted his shirt collar and pinched his nose shut and then mimicked the procedure. "Thanks,” he said.

Jacob watched him for a few more seconds. “No problem.” Jacob turned back to the garage and wondered where this fit in with his father's desire for him to man up.

Jacob opened the garage door and opened the metal cabinets, scanning the shelves of each one until he found the roll of duct tape. He closed the cabinets, locked the garage door, put the garage key back inside the house, and headed back to the grove.

“Duct tape,” he said to Nora, panting from yet another run. “Duct tape can fix anything.”

Huddling up over the turtle, Jacob and Nora looked down and studied the crack. Nora used her hands to hold the turtle, pushing together on the sides of the shell to see if they could close the gap. The shell came together and Nora let go, looking for signs of an angry turtle but the turtle didn’t respond. Nora pushed together on the sides of the shell again and Jacob pressed a strip of duct tape onto the crack. She let go. The shell didn’t move. The tape held.

Jacob put the roll of duct tape in his

backpack. “Now what?”

Nora bent down and looked into the turtle’s black eyes. “We should take him somewhere.”

“Why?” “Because Bobby might come back.”

Jacob looked back toward his house. “I don’t think he will.”

“Are you kidding me? That boy’s crazy.

We’ll send him somewhere.”

“Bobby?”

Nora stood up. “The turtle.”

“Where?”

Nora nodded toward the direction of the river and Jacob turned to look at the water. It was moving. The current was strong.

“We’ll send him down the river,” she said.

Jacob held the turtle close to his body as they waded deep into the water, their jeans once again rolled up.

“He doesn’t look too good,” Nora said. The turtle’s head and limbs drooped.

Jacob brought the turtle up to his mouth and kissed the turtle's cracked shell. “He’ll be okay," he hoped. "He’ll go a million miles down the river and find a nice spot to live.” Jacob bent down and set the turtle in the water, letting the river wash over his hands and the turtle’s back, the duct tape holding strong. Jacob let go of the warrior turtle and they watched as the turtle flowed down the river, bobbing with the current, disappearing behind the twists and bends of the water.

Once out of the river and ready to go, they grabbed their backpacks and started the walk home.

“Grandma’s going to be mad about today,” Nora said, her hand coming up to twirl her hair.

“Yeah. So’s my mom. And my dad.” He'd have to tell them everything. Of course, he didn't know if that was what a man should do, because he could lie about it. He didn't want to face his mom's and dad's disappointment. But he did know telling the truth was the right thing to do and that, he guessed, was the only thing that mattered. []

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Two Poems JOAN MCNERNEY Art: Jagannath Chakravarti

Cat Quartet Winter That tiger cat with winking green eyes tossing up balls of red yarn.

Spring Inquisitive... the gingersnap cat stares as I get undressed.

Summer Black and white kitten lying under clothesline in soft circles of sleep.

Fall Windy afternoon my calico cat leans forward against the cold.

Virtual Love A long slim poem full of hyperbole & alliteration drifted into the wrong e-mail box.

There she met an erudite rich text format file.

They became attached.

Her fleeting metaphors lifted his technical jargon.

They were a word couple spinning through cyber space giddy with inappropriate syllables. []

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POETRY

SHORT FICTION

Dinner Party PHILIP KUAN

Photography: Paweł Kadysz

Our host gazed down the length of his dining table,

congratulating himself again for the lovely turnout. Here sat four of his closest friends and Cosma, gleefully toasting their hero with clinks of a classic 2010 Tokara Reserve. Nothing brought out the flavor of a Dashi-poached scallop salad like a Sauvignon import from the Elgin appellation.

And just wait! Sitting in the enclosed patio, beading just below room temperature, three bottles of Richard Hennessy!

Just look at college chum Charlie, burly enthusiast and purveyor of illegal brandies, giddy with anticipation.

Ah and here our rented butler emerged, model of grim precision, clapping the removal of our plates while raising no brow to the climactic moans of guests still ravished by thrusts of wasabi through their nasal cavities.

Rather pleasantly, rather suddenly the mood ruptured, polite chitter escalating into chatter as the aroma whispered its dirty proverb into crevices harboring our palates. Our host preened all over the table, collecting congratulatory nods with unaffected modesty…until he noticed her.

Cosma. The one he knew he’d regret inviting, was confirming his fears with an open frown.

“Stan, my man! Is your wife’s glass filled?”

Poor Stanley, ever prone to shyness, ever prone to

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apologetic fits and nervous starts, unfolded from his posture to stare at our host. Our gracious host, for ignoring the way this coward’s mustache quivered. “Oh no no, we’re fine…” Stan chuckled nervously. “It’s just that…well it’s just that we’re well fed and…” his confession faded to a blush.

Our host wanted to make it known that he didn’t understand. “Stan my man, I don’t understand! This next dish is perhaps famous, a family recipe!” He leaned in, waiting for us to do the same. “You know, Bernicia had to sign a nondisclosure.”

Stanley seemed to nod but couldn’t speak, so his wife did. “If you must know, it’s cruel!” she piped.

Our host refolded his napkin, taking his time. Such controlled demeanor! Such inspired restraint worthy of the sips and swirls our host now used to wet his lips. “Well now dear Cosma, let me ask YOU. What’s cruel about it?”

“What’s cruel? What’s CRUEL? They’re BABIES.” Her maleficent fuming only streaked like diaper stains across her primitive etiquette, drawing pity from our host.

“Oh Cosma, Cosma. Stanley. Cosma. I hope you don’t mind me calling you a sweetheart, but you really are!” He flashed a sentimental smile, full frontal humanity. “Let me assure you – no everyone – that what I’m serving is only the finest in tofu-fed, organic wagyu from certified Hokkaido farmers. No hormones, no preservatives. No frozen, formula-fed imports from China or Mexicoh dear!” – here our startled host jumped at his butler’s abrupt appearance – “Why y-yes thank you Wesely. Yes, please pass that around. No, let’s not start serving until all my guests are comfortable.” Another swig, warm up for a magician’s pledge. “Now folks what you’re reading here is proof that I’m no buffoon.

I’ve studied the fine print and made damn sure I’m importing no illegals, no orphans. Cosma be a doll and flip over that certificate. See that seal?

That brand represents the four decades of precision culling converging to this very dinner table, to this sanctuary where you can gnaw at bones without any concern for that genetic, inbreeding nonsense you might have read

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about.” Our host paused to let that sink in.

“Sinking in yet, friends? Well I’m not done yet!

Now normally I’d be too modest to boast about wealth, but tonight…well. Let’s just say that even though some would argue that adding standardized testing costs far too much for a quality that adds no flavor, tonight you can feast well knowing that each of your steaks has been FDA-verified Mensa-free before slaughter!”

The applause was flattering, the clinking of glasses, reassuring. Most of us leaned back, well insulated beneath the satisfaction of a onesided debate. Except of course for Cosma, who continued to hold up the evening.

“There’s also religion!” she snapped. Our host shook his head, winking without wrinkling at the rest of the room. “But Cosma, now I’m confused. You consume dry-aged Muslims and atheists all the time! Why, just last month you tweeted about a terrific meal at Deacon’s Steakhouse, so how is this any different?”

But by now we knew how little precedence mattered, to hippies like her. Their conversation had already expired into glares and epithets, well-rehearsed spittle about morally reprehensible sorts of consumption. “Well I for one shop for my protein exclusively at farmers markets, and only at the ones sponsored by sustainably funded prisons, casinos, veteran hospitals, or mental institutions. Why the one down my street just started this fantastic bankruptcy program we all should be using…” she was clearly bragging to a room that had tuned her out.

Yet our host continued to listen, waiting for that slip. “Wait wait wait. Cosma.

Bankruptcy? Volunteers? You believe that your steaks are willingly signing their own slaughter forms for a tax benefit?”

She had to hesitate, somewhat blindsided by the question. “To give their families a chance for a better life, yes. It’s an honorable choice and sacrifice” - here she sat up proudly - ” and something I give a healthy prayer for, with every morsel!”

If that boast was absurd, our host hid his snicker well. “So you’re doing them a favor then?

Because if you’re all about social ladders,” - there

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Why be cognizant of your fate, or harbor delusions of what you can or cannot become? Can’t you recognize that we’re really just saving these poor things years of meaningless torment, by serving them up before they suffer?

was that inviting smile - “then I somewhat agree! But you see I’d posit that your social ladder is built from trophic rungs, designed for ecosystems of predators and scavengers, producers and consumers, herds of these out-of-luck families giving their weakest up to natural selection. The only difference is that we use forks and knives, and we’re granting the rest of them college educations!”

“But babies don’t know any better!” she objected. “Why should they be given to slaughter before they’ve even understood what they’re living for?”

Here our host leaned back, fully confident. “Ah but you see, that’s precisely when they should be given up. Why be cognizant of your fate, or harbor delusions of what you can or cannot become? Can’t you recognize that we’re really just saving these poor things years of meaningless torment, by serving them up before they suffer? And if we’re blessed with a culinary sensation while doing God’s good work, well then isn’t that a just reward? Why do pleasure and charity have to be mutually exclusive?” Our host might have noticed Cosma struggling to interrupt, but retained his momentum. “Now, Cosma dear, let’s try to close out this wonderful debate without any more discomfort. What if I had Bernicia fix you and Stan some fresh Kujira Tataki instead? Flown in just yesterday!” And with that alternative, with sushi enthusiast Cosma involuntarily brightening at her favorite dish, counter to her own indignation, our host had miraculously restored the innocence of the evening.

The next steps, in the classic style of Ortolan consumption, spared us the impurity of Stanley’s forlorn looks, by encouraging us to obscure our heads with embroidered napkins. The sounds of happy guests, savoring the crunchy texture of the softest bones, filled the next hour. []

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POETRY

Two Poems ANJANA BASU Art: Jagannath Chakravarti

Mango Tree All summer the mango tree stretches its fingers towards the house trying to reach in with its wet green touch to grow around and around till house and tree are one and the mangoes ripen from concrete beams their scent hanging heavy on the air

Work of Hands The ridges of your palms impressed in paint Green for the fields and the earth’s furrows A pink shriek for the petals of a flower, thick veins engorged With silver Eyes in the leaves look on - each leaf can tell a story Of furrowed brows and lost lives Or the two who bend over the green Lost in its mazes seeking for land they never had But the truth of what you paint The truth of what lies written in your palms Can only be told by you []

Graphic:

Jonny Lindner

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A column that inspects what are sometimes regarded to be dying blights on 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 Problem of Interpretation RELIGION, BROTHERHOOD AND WAR Hal O’Leary inspects the inherent problems associated with religious interpretation, citing textual examples to illuminate the apparent ease with which scriptures are misinterpreted, turning ‘holy’ words into weapons of mass control.

In the course of preparing this article, I have been

made aware of the fact that I am, all too often, guilty of arrogance in assuming an absolute truth of positions that I might take when they are actually little more than conjecture: con·jec·ture noun \kən-ˈjek-chər\ : an opinion or idea formed without proof or sufficient evidence

1

Graphic: Jonny Lindner

I will plead guilty to the charge of “without proof” but not arrogance with an assumption of absolute truth or to the charge of “without sufficient evidence. Indeed, I not only seek out all the evidence I can find in support of my conviction, (a strong belief or opinion, not a conjecture).but I will likewise seek out evidence that refutes my conviction. Therefore, it is my intention to state the following not as proof of my conviction that the religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, three religions with one and the same God, have often been religions of hate and war rather than the love and peace they preach in their concurrence with “Golden Rule.”

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The sharpest evidence for their inconsistent views on this universally accepted maxim can be found in their scriptures.

CHRISTIANITY

Therefore all things whatsoever you desire that men should do to you, do you evenso unto them, for this is the law and the Prophets.

Matt. 7,2

But then, what of this?

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword Matt 10:34 NRSV JUDAISM

What is hurtful to yourself do not to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but commentary.

Talmud, Shabbat 3:1 But then, what of this?

O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us.

Blessed is the one who grabs your babies and smashes them against a rock.

Psalms 137:8-9 ISLAM

Not one of you is a believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.

Forty Hadith of an-Nawawi 13 But then, what of this?

"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them" Quran 812

Admittedly, as has been pointed out to me, the scriptures are open to many interpretations and I agree, but doesn’t this subject any one of them to the charge of conjecture, leaving the individual to

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interpret for himself, an interpretation based on what evidence he can find? I find it difficult to believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth.

Even the supposed absolute truth of mathematics has been challenged. Does not this present a conundrum forcing the faithful to either rely on conjecture or to inform themselves to a point at which they can arrive at conviction.

This brings us to the question of how these religions approach the subject of war, and here we find that what is preached is often in sharp contrast with what is practiced. Over the centuries Christians have developed guidelines to help them think about whether they might have to set aside their usual rule of nonviolence. They were first proposed in the fourth century by an African bishop called Augustine. His theory of a just war still shapes the way Christians think about these dreadful circumstances:

The Crusades

There must be a just cause. War can only be tolerated to defend people in response to tyranny.

It is forbidden to wage war in order to dominate others, increase territory or gain mineral resources.

But what of preemptive war, war without justification, war based on lies, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq?

The decision must be made by the highest government authority.

But then, what if the highest government authority cannot be trusted?

Verse 1 Romans 13: Let everyone be subject to the governing

authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by

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God.

Every possible means of resolving the crisis by peaceful means must have been attempted first.

But then what of the American practice of, “coercive diplomacy,” which experience shows actually leads to war by way of hubris and miscalculation? Can it pass muster as, every peaceful means?

It must be judged that the war will not unleash an even greater evil than the one currently being suffered.

But then what of the turmoil, death and destruction currently in the Middle East that should have been anticipated?

The war must be fought with specific constraints: civilians must be protected from attack, there must be a reasonable prospect of success, it must cease when justice has been re stored, and the level of violence must match the severity of the evil that is being addressed.

But then what of the estimated 2,000,000 violent civilian deaths in Vietnam and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan which have taken a tremendous toll on the people of those countries. At the very least, 174,000 civilians have been determined to have died violent deaths as a result of the war as of April 2014. The actual number of deaths both direct and indirect as a result of the wars is many times higher than these figures suggest. Success is nowhere in sight. There is neither justice nor any foreseeable ending. The level of violence immeasurably exceeds the severity of an extremely questionable evil.

So, there you have it. It’s not presented as absolute truth. It is however more than conjecture. The playwright Luigi Pirandello reminds us that the past is the only reality, it’s the only thing that cannot be changed, but that leaves open a future that can and must be changed. It seems that so few of the so-called faithful actually choose to live by the morality they claim as a prerogative, while so many of my secular humanist friends actually choose a righteous path of brotherhood and peace.

I present my conviction based on the evidence I have assembled, a conviction that the intolerance of these religions, contrary to the teachings of the Prince of Peace, have been and are, from the time of the Crusades, responsible for untold millions of deaths in wars of their own making. Add to this the horrors of the Inquisition and it becomes difficult to imagine that they could, as they do even now, lay claim to the founding of morality. With each claiming to be in sole possession of the absolute truth, it only serves to prove the fallibility of all. []

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SHORT FICTION

Canyon Ladies

MITCHELL GRABOIS

Art: Jagannath Chakravarti

1.

The manager sat in his office and smoked a Cuban cigar and thought:

There was a revolution around this cigar. I went and fucked fourteen year old girls after drinking a lot of rum drinks and that caused a revolution, I’m not sure how, but I got on a Pan Am plane and took off into the tropical sky and then those whores became nurses.

Floridians got their alligator asses kicked at the Bay of Pigs. Everything since then has been pigs pigs pigs. Joni Mitchell was going to kiss a Sunset pig, but smoked too many cigarettes and got horrific breath and when she went to kiss that pig, he was revolted and bonked her with a club, even though she was a babe, one of the ladies of the canyon.

2.

Another canyon lady, you weep at the crossroads. You see a young man approach. He is trying to hitch a ride. You are not trying to hitch a ride. You just want to stand there in contemplation.

He is cocky with youth, and you don’t want to tell him that his cockiness has an expiration date, and one day he will be as grief-stricken as you and, if he isn’t, then he’ll be a true insensitive lout, but you will still love him.

Your nun’s habit is stuffed into a plastic bag in a stinky dumpster, but you still have love in your heart for everyone, all victims.

The young man approaches you. You can see that even though you are no longer very young, he would like to have sex with you.

You think: Why not? I’m free, no longer married to Jesus and the church, so you stand in front and put out your thumb while he sits on his duffel bag and old trucks roll down the dusty road.

It takes you a long time to get a ride. []

FICTION

Photography: Jairo Alzate

“Everyone eats chicken!”, thought murgi-wala, a

chicken seller in a local bazaar somewhere in some distant city.

He suddenly felt a light breeze balloon his lungi. As if the thought was more than just a thought. As if it was, it was…what was it? I would tell you that the all-consuming allure of a chicken might represent a democratic consensus. But Murgiwala could never think that far, surely. What he failed to realize was that there isn’t anyone he doesn’t know in his locality and there isn’t anyone who doesn’t know him. More importantly all that knew him recognized him. He was someone who was vital to their routine. The product was a catalyst in functioning as a public service. Like Kfc, Chicken made murgi-wala an agent of faith whose steady flow of production ensured harmony. “I feed people!”, yes! That was the only thing he understood without much confusion. At a cost, no doubt, but we can forgive him for not having that foresight.

Hence murgi-wala was truly moved when the blockade caused the chicken feed supply to dwindle and for the first time in his small time carrier, he had to turn away his customer. This was not deliberate, and it made murgi-wala feel a shame that made him choke. He wasn’t a murgi-wala for long. Neither did

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Murgi-wala lived in a room, on the ground floor, where the kitchen was underneath the bamboo bed. A bench was added right next to it for a bit of extension.

One night, after a sigh, murgi-wala fell off the bed as he was about to get off his wife. She laughed so hard that he didn’t have the heart to punch her face. She is a pretty little one, that Mira.

he belong to the city. Yet, people knew him! On first name basis! Holy…something…something…Murgi-wala felt a brotherhood he couldn’t deny.

Murgi-wala had a name. He was called Alam. When Alam went home that night, he couldn’t sit down to his dinner with his usual “oomph”. He felt shrunken and folded his legs wrong. His wife noticed this sudden change but wasn’t too certain if it was a definitive change. There was sautéed spinach, boiled rice, fried fish, dal, onion, red chili and salt all sprawled in front of him on the cement floor in their designated plastic dishes. They were a display. The wife needed to serve him quite acrobatically given the space of the room was that of a bathtub. So to test his mood she poured an extra ladle of dal over his rice, and waited. Now here was a good defense. If he tries to reach out for a hearty slap, the distance provides safety considering the barricade of the dishes. He would have to jump over the food, blasphemy!..

The crime, whether befitting the punishment, is of a sensitive nature, as incorrect distribution of lentil over the hip of rice with raw onion may ruin one’s appetite. The wife was well aware of the challenges this extra ladle of dal would produce. It is very much comparable to that of a slap over extra presence or absolute absence of seasoning. So she decided to climb the single-bed placed right behind Murgiwala and watch.

Nothing happened. Murgi-wala scanned the extra deluge of liquidity as absent mindedly as a drone flying over a sleeping village.

“Who fed you?” asked a sixteen years old girl, a wife to a forty three years old murgi-wala.

Was that jealousy? I would be shocked if that was the case, but then again there was the width difference to consider. Apparently the answer is yes. The ninety kilogram man was consuming the space of a closet size room and she was nothing less of a mite. So, to matter, she would exert her presence one way or the other. No doubt she would not tolerate slightest hint of invasion, because his stomach content measured her worth. Just as the laborer would be confused if a deal was made without a strike, she questioned his lack of interest in the favorite part of his day.

Murgi-wala lived in a room, on the ground floor, where the kitchen was underneath the bamboo bed. A bench was added right next to it for a bit of extension. One night, after a sigh, murgi-wala fell off the bed as he was about to get off his wife. She laughed so hard that he didn’t have the heart to punch her face. She is a pretty little one, that Mira.

The bench was added the next day. The pan-wala was

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not at all happy to pay his debt this way. He never intended to.

His tiny betel shop would be in ruin if he paid back every Ram and Ratan. But murgi-wala went to his shop and sat down on the bench. He then took three betel leaves and two cups of tea.

“Moni bhai, do you know of a good pain killer?”

“Paracetamol.”

“Eh? Anything that you don’t have to pay for? Got a bad backache.”

“Why bhaijaan? Was the wife naughty last night?

Hahahaaaa..”

“How did you know?”

“Oho! Caught you!”

“Were, you, standing, outside my, window?”

“Eh! He he…no, I mean, we all know, right?”

“You were! Right outside my window!”

“Now now, you are getting upset. I was just joking” “You filthy man…Oh! How? How?” “Wait…no no, you are getting this wrong…”

“Look at this man! Wearing a panjabi and peeking through someone’s window!” “yolo! now, Mujib bhai…listen to him! Was I serious?

You tell me…”

“You took my money!”

“Oh well! Just borrowed!”

“Where is it? Did you pay back? No! Filthy filthy..”

“Alam bhai! Have you lost your mind?”

“I am taking that bench!”

“Wait, what? Don’t…wait…, listen Alam…Jakir bhai!

Ataur! Why..”

“You took my money! You looked through my window! This bench is mine!”

Pause, after a considerable pause, “What just happened?”

“I…I…have no idea…”

That night, murgi-wala lay on the bench side of the bed. The wife always slept inside, right next to the wall.

Absence of window made it difficult no doubt, also the mountain like barrier Alam produced. But he always fanned her when she was deep in dream. She slept with her lips parted and she snored which made him giggle. The convulsion would move the bed and she would turn on her side, away from him. The empty backside of hers would reveal the plane of Goriar char, the untamed fertile land unclothed when the river moved on in the outskirts of the village Goria. The sand under the old moon would be burning black hovering an inch above the ground, mystified of its birth and whimpering over the blood bath that would follow.

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The empty backside of hers would reveal the plane of Goriar char, the untamed fertile land unclothed when the river moved on in the outskirts of the village Goria. The sand under the old moon would be burning black hovering an inch above the ground, mystified of its birth and whimpering over the blood bath that would follow.

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He decided he wanted to do something about the chicken feed supply.

He didn’t understand his need to fulfill this task. But the pressure on his chest was not gas, which he was sure of. It had to do with the chickens. He couldn’t deny this calling.

Alam remembers those nights. The nights that always end too soon. The dawn would jump on them with blistering heat and the blood would dry like molten tar. The shape of the bamboo in his palm, feels as smooth as Mira’s legs. He could remember it heavy in his clutch and the desperation that is pushed aside by the pull of contracting muscles poised to crack bones in one blow.

The battle over the new land, it is something as simple as possession of a packet of nuts or dinner served in plastic dishes not a clay pot or a debt denied by a pan-wala donning prayer hat or the newspaper turned fan that helps Mira dream.

Murgi-wala sat up straight. It was shocking feat nonetheless. As if he didn’t have a tummy. He decided he wanted to do something about the chicken feed supply. He didn’t understand his need to fulfill this task. But the pressure on his chest was not gas, which he was sure of. It had to do with the chickens. He couldn’t deny this calling.

The customers needed meat.

Day broke and murgi-wala sat at his place at the bazaar looking at the panting chickens that were rising in status with every passing blockade days. It was blockade day number…

“So, how much are you asking for yours Alam?” The government clerk asked. His one pant leg was folded a bit higher than the other. The mud caked in between his toes, sandals turned ashen grey, and he smelled of jostling crowd and hatred of the swollen sun overhead.

“My chickens are hungry.” Said Alam, looking up at the pointed face that was poking underneath Alam’s umbrella.

“Damn it! At this rate I can only take three!” jerked mr. clerk his head away from Alam. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, wiped the back of his neck.

“My daughter’s birthday! Thirteen years old brat! Must throw a party for her friends she says. I need deshi-murgi, she says!” eyed Alam from the corner. “What is so foreign about farm I ask you.”

“My wife, my wife said that. It’s important, she feels. She is going to make Murag-musallam.” He dropped the handkerchief and it fell on the glistening thickness at his feet.

“Ahh!Shala!”

“Did you know Alam, my daughter goes to Maple Leaf?

Maple Leaf! She must go there, she says, my wife. Do you know why?”, bent and picked up the handkerchief.

“Children must go to school.”

“Eh? Yes yes…but not any school! That school Alam, blood suckers!” Looked left and right and as always, wiped the back of his neck with the handkerchief. Alam watched the movement of his hand. There was a dark patch left over his white color. Mr. clerk suddenly looked content. There was a smile of relief over his face. He closed his eyes.

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“It is free. You can take it all.”

“Ehhe! This is filth! That’s why it felt…Yuck!”

Afterwards, Alam shouted at the retreating figure of the government clerk with clucking chickens, “Your wife is a good woman! Children must go to school!” ___ Mira reached the gate just at the right moment. The fire breathing girl had already crossed security. She could see the girl’s backside as it curved through the crowd in its usual sway. “Shali!” muttered Mira and pulled out a pair of one and a half inch heels out of the sweet bag she was holding. She bellowed hopping in one foot while putting the heel on the other, “Hurry up! That bitch has already gone in!”

“What is the matter?”, thought murgi-wala to himself.

He felt his feet weren’t moving. He knew he wasn’t anxious.

This was inevitable. The magic of being a distributor of a well -loved product is undeniable. There wasn’t a single person at his locality that hasn’t voted for him. Also, his performance was flawless. Jaw dropping accuracy, they claimed.

Besides, the symbol ‘BambooBhaijan’ had its own charm. It synched with the famous song nonetheless. James, the musician, himself came to shake murgi-wala’s hand the other day and they took pictures, in front of cameras and so many journalists! Microphones they held, that offered themselves up like so many giant sized lollipops!

It also didn’t harm the fact that murgi-wala knew the sports so well. Even at this age Alam could swing a bamboo stick around like a cricket bat and jump at least a feet or two off the ground while completing an arch in midair.

Murgi-wala was also most confident of his reasoning.

It was not that he only opposed the lack of chicken feed and the consistent blockade that turned his chickens thin. It had more to do with children and their school. It also contributed to the fact that the mothers were being blamed for being good mothers. And it most definitely was about the plight of the fathers, poor fathers with bazaar bags roasting in the sun, wiping their sweat with muddy handkerchief and regretting sending their kids to school. That was crucial need that chickens fulfilled and the politics needed to undergo change if such need should remain unchecked.

“Hola! Are you posing for the camera again? We are late!” screamed Mira, now fully heeled, standing a bit taller than usual off the ground.

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Murgi-wala was also most confident of his reasoning. It was not that he only opposed the lack of chicken feed and the consistent blockade that turned his chickens thin. It had more to do with children and their school. It also contributed to the fact that the mothers were being blamed for being good mothers. And it most definitely was about the plight of the fathers...

“So now listen, the bitch has a new kamij on. She makes me laugh. Her tits were showing. I ask you can you win this with your tits on camera. I mean, is this a cut piece film or something…this is the capitol…

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Oi? What’s wrong with you? Show him your ticket. Do you not have your ticket.? Oh? This is fine? Salam bhai, salam…?

What just happened? I ask you what was that? Did you see? They like you so much, even the security let us go through without asking any questions? Oh! Oh! See! See! What I mean? Shali, she laughs at my sandals. Do you remember the other day? She laughed at my sandals. Do you like this pair? Ah oh! Look up…the producer is coming…”

The intensity of light never bothered Alam.

He was used to it…

He is used to light, pouring in and out of his cornea - bright luminescence, ensconced within a red center overhead boring in on his skull.

The intensity of light never bothered Alam. He was used to it.

Arms tied behind his back, the veins slowly going numb, blood and snot entering his open mouth and thick dryness clogging his throat while his head was pulled back, kept in place by the rope at his neck that ended in a knot at his back to his ankle. He is used to light, pouring in and out of his cornea - bright luminescence, ensconced within a red center overhead boring in on his skull.

No, the spot was just fine.

The studio was filled with sound of applause. The producer kept on gesturing at murgi-wala throwing his arms all around the place. Murgi-wala still felt numb. He felt he was still not sure that he had enough reason to be here. He tried to say so to the producer.

“Bhai, I wanted to do something about the blockade.

“Check his clip Monsur! Is the sound coming through?”

“Bhai, really. I just thought if I could be an MP and go to the national assembly than…”

“What are you mumbling about Alam bhai. Be cheerful!

You are at the final stage. Now listen don’t just stand in the middle like last time okay? The moment the lights are on do your dance.”

“It’s not a dance.”

“I know, I know, be the BambooBhaijan we all love okay?”

“I just thought, if I could get the votes…”

“You already have! Let me tell you the secret…you got the highest vote…you have won!”

“I want to quit.”

Pause “hehe…no time to joke. Hey Monsur! The clip!”

“Bhaia, let me go. I want to quit. I don’t want to win.” “ Nerves, just nerves” “I am going Bhai. I am leaving. Mira, where is Mira?”

“Stop acting! You think this is a game? Just stand there. Oi Monsur shala! Adjust the mic.”

“I am going.”

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“Listen you ignorant…sigh…sorry. I didn’t mean that…

Alam. Listen Alam. Look. You know how it is. Millions of people have voted. You cannot just walk out of here…”

“Why not? Just let the fire-breathing lady win. I…” “You! You…and her aren’t the same thing. People want you. They like who you are.” “ A murgi-wala…I know that. Everyone likes a murgiwala. They think highly of a murgi-wala.”

“You! Not the murgi-wala. They like you. I…” The sound poured in on left and right. The lights never bothered Alam. The crowd was what it always was, a heaving mass of expectations. He remembered how he had said “NO” so many times throughout his life and still it would be left untouched. Like the flower boy’s withering taunts outside the car window. Suddenly he realized why he didn’t want to continue. He recognized, ever since he first proclaimed in front of the camera that he wanted to do this because he wants to end the blockade, there wasn’t a single instance where he took a decision on his own.

He felt powerless.

Tethered to his own ankle, the bright spot overhead was burning his heart.

“This is the final episode of You got Talent and we have BambooBhaijan!!!” screamed the host from the stage at the Stadium as Alam’s world shattered in millions of applause.

——— mapleleafprinciple@yahoo.com Salam, I am not learned. My secretary wanted to edit this. But I said, “Shala, who got the votes, you or me?” You know me. I was on the cover of news last month for beating up a government official for cutting the road on rainy season. They posted a good picture of me on the front page.

Apa, I would like to request you something. My wife Mira will go to your school asking to admit my boy. You have to do something for me. You have to refuse her. I live in FrAlley from where your school is far far away. If my boy would go to your school, he would wake up six in the morning. Then my wife will wake up five in the morning.

That means I have to go to bed at 10.30 at night. Which is not possible because the minister doesn’t go to bed before 1.15pm. Now, I cannot stop my wife as my election manifesto was “happy mother happy child”. But you have

The lights never bothered Alam. The crowd was what it always was, a heaving mass of expectations.

He remembered how he had said “NO” so many times throughout his life and still it would be left untouched.

Like the flower boy’s withering taunts outside the car window.

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to do it.

Now apa, when you carry out this very important task, please make sure it doesn’t sound like you are refusing an MP’s wife. Then she will get angry and will want me to do something about it. Now my election manifesto was “happy mother happy child”. So I cannot break that promise.

So dear apa, do take care of my request. The country is indebted to you for your service.

Salam

Image courtesy: Peggy and Marco Lachmann-Anke

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CINEMA

Horror of the times Film: Phobia Co-Writer/ Director: Pavan Kirpalani Co-Writers: Pooja Ladha Surti, Arun Sukumar Released on May 27, 2016

It would not be a tremendous exaggeration to state that psychological thrillers have lost their erstwhile charm. It is certainly, in part, due to a flooding of the genre with generic specimens and partly due to the insistence that the story be framed from the shrink’s chair, rather than the vantage point of the patient’s couch.

Delving into a diseased mind is no mean feat and even when one undertakes that journey despite the friendly warnings, one returns with a painting unfinished, strung together like theories that are destined never to meet, the parallel curse of possessing a brain that isn’t ready to stoop to mimic the diseased.

It is perhaps not possible to decrypt the sick mind without understanding the root of ‘Art’, the expressed and the suppressed forms of it. While the former is a healthy release that has the inexplicable power to penetrate and influence other humans, the latter is a harrowing codex that refuses to let out the location of the key – not until the player has given up every hope of ever returning to sanity.

At its worst, one might claim, suppressed ‘Art’ becomes a phobia. What is art if not spills that are not consumed – not allowed to consume one, and

Jagannath Chakravarti

instead crystallized in colours of creation for humanity to behold.

Even as an incident of molestation effortlessly becomes a major plot point of a film – a work of ‘Art’, it is nothing but a memory of sheer horror for the protagonist Mehak (Radhika Apte) that haunts her living hours – locking her up in the confines of her last bastion as she begins to perceive the rest of the world the same way a child perceives the dark attic of the house.

Mehak being an artist, what would previously materialise in her paintings would now go on to consume her reality – ‘expression’ is too far a cry when the antennae of ‘interpretation’ itself is sent askew.

One infection begets another - the diseased psyche of a potential rapist strips the innocence off a gifted individual. The nerve-racking reality of the trauma, in turn, takes away the power to enumerate oneself to the outsiders, who quietly lose sympathy and patience with the severity of Mahek’s post-traumatic stress who ‘wasn’t even raped’.

The reality of victim-blaming lands the diseased mind of Mahek, body included, in a prison of her own, where she goes on to concoct a horror story that turns out to be crackling fodder for cinema.

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Radhika Apte, in the first Bollywood film she is helming, delivers the performance of a lifetime in one of the finest psychological thrillers attempted on screen. Her steadfast vulnerability, even during the most outlandish facets of the ‘spill’ gives life to the fears that she contends with on screen – the outof-body extension of a botched innocence.

Satyadeep Mishra and Yashaswini Dayama aid Apte in realizing the narrative, even as Ankur Vikal pitches in with a silky ‘villain act’. The seamless edit

by Pooja Ladha Surti has every placeholder pitched to precision, complementing the antics of gifted storyteller Pavan Kirpalani, whose superlative brilliance is etched in every minute nuance of the narrative, scripted by the trio of Kirpalani, Surti and Arun Sukumar.

Pavan Kirpalani has made a topical film alright, that tries to give shape to the psyche of a woman who has been exposed to the evils of abuse. It is a film for the present, no doubt.

What makes ‘phobia’ timeless is its insistence of a skewed perspective, a circle that not only makes sense but spirals into the great unknown where time is merely a fiction that we generate to justify our ornate timepieces. []

so my near death experience

POETRY

GETTING OUT OF HERE AVA BIRD

told me that we are all thieves and liars doing time here waiting til the light comes waiting for those pearly gates and i wish i could just get the fuck out of here asap but they said my work still isnt done still here til im done til i've done my time til i worked out my karma my issues all my stuff im stuck here til i finish til i learn the lessons keep coming back til i get it right til i figure all this shit out get all this shit out out of colons and intestines out of body experiences getting out of here alive transcended‌ []

Graphics: GERD ALTMANN

POETRY

EARTH TANKA AVA BIRD

Photography: JESSIE BELL

monks robe lay

face reflected

on the ground on the walkway bricks laid leading to the pool

in the stream wow

face reflected in the puddle ouch

moonlight fills my empty room seeing other suns

cant sleep mind a million miles away heartbeats fast eyes wide open damn insomnia

across this ocean no hidden treasures except the wide open land

in blood i owe my ancestors in the earth give her back

ghost of ancestors rise come to me warnings stay away

sun pierces my dreams wake up bitch sun blazes into my oversleeping time to rise and shine bitch

oceans

in blood i owe to my ancestors in the earth give her back

alone by the ocean lovers entwined happy summer

inside myself ebbs and moons inside me wax wane lunartic sun inside me i give birth to the seeds even in the dark it is me it is up to me to birth the seeds

rays of blue light through hash haze powerful scent of pine strange

infinite sky is still waters are deep and cold the wind is loud wind chimes remind trillions of scattered cells around me now

souls of bird snow seeps slow into the stream spring creeping in

souls of cat inside me too

alone at sea i speak to the waves high tides girl better run

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SERIAL NOVEL

Cross-Eyed Sleep Siddharth Pathak Canvas on facing page: Jagannath Chakravarti

PREVIOUSLY Initiated to a life of violence and crime at an early age, David Mondal has worked his way up from being a pickpocket to a professional assassin. David escapes the accidental revelations of the doctor in the train who kept coming close to randomly pinpoint his real identity of a killer for hire and takes refuge in a chosen hotel where he checks the identity of his target in Mumbai and is dumbfounded to discover that his imminent victim, Anita Bakshi is a teenage girl who happens to be a spitting image of the girl he had deflowered by force when David himself was only a teenager. Later, he orders a young, college-going escort. David takes her from the back when she is passed out drunk , after photographing the sleeping college girl extensively during which he zeroes in on the modus operandi for his forthcoming task. David takes the decision to shoot Anita Bakshi dead.

PART

TWO

POISE It is difficult to remain erect, spine held up in pride, when the straps of your bra cut upon the tender flesh of your neck and shoulders. A teardrop never escapes unnoticed in a girls’ school, but it can be as easily misinterpreted as a drop of sweat in the sweltering April heat over the assembly grounds of Anita’s convent school in Navi Mumbai.

The headmistress stands on the raised podium before the girls, quoting from Mark in an excruciatingly slow tenor and speed. She regularly does so for the sake of her students, whom she thinks very little of. She has tried and failed to introduce Jesus to their overcrowded hearts filled

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with cellphones and boys and make-up and film stars and heaven knows what else!

An opinion that Anita shares with most of her classmates is that none of the kind sisters were really kind to begin with and they were bothered far too little about them. They cared all right when it came to their own skins, choosing to rip into their students’ just to please the concerned parents who had sent their bad seeds to this purgatory for divine absolution.

Anita’s had been a case that was forged in pink for the happy ending of a Cinderella story. The tragedy of a dead mother, a remarrying father and a violent stepmom were recipes for the perfect fairy tale, she knew. And yet she feels claustrophobic on days like these, the small brassiere merely being an effect rather than the cause of the same.

After all, she wore the damned thing this morning to feel sexy.

Anita knew that a little discomfort was on the cards but it mattered little since she would be visiting the upscale coffee parlour at the end of the lane behind her school at the setting of the sun, meeting a moony fellow she had shared a joint with, during a rock concert last month.

Anita does not look 14 and she was no way admitting her true age to the dreamy eyed boy who had recently started working for an IT company in Mumbai. He was single, had recently relocated to the city from Kolkata and officially asked Anita out a week ago, after several sleepless nights of chatting over text messages.

Anita is yet to reveal her age to Jayanta Bagchi but she does not plan to do so today. She will obviously transform post school hours, the cropped top underneath her shirt serving as the stunner and a beige wraparound, presently tucked in her school bag, will replace the grey skirt that is her prison uniform.

The concert had been the gift of the same fairy godmother who had blessed her this morning with the small bra that is now cutting painfully into her skin.

Didi is at least a size smaller than Anita is, even though they share a considerable difference in age. While Anita is well endowed, didi is the personification of the quintessential Indian beauty, her slender waist, luscious legs, pale skin and large eyes forged off an erotic dream.

Frustratingly enough, didi somehow thinks that Anita is way more beautiful than she can ever be. Anita rebukes her for the

Anita is yet to reveal her age to Jayanta Bagchi but she does not plan to do so today. She will obviously transform post school hours, the cropped top underneath her shirt serving as the stunner and a beige wraparound, presently tucked in her school bag, will replace the grey skirt that is her prison uniform.

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obvious lies, but blushes all the same. She may not be as pale as Didi but has a glowing skin which turns a shade of crimson that doesn’t escape didi’s intruding eyes, who goes on to playfully pull her cheeks, or, if the mood permits, one of her nipples to get a reaction out of the blossoming teenager.

Woman seems to be a woman's greatest nemesis; the perpetual presence of the stepmother who had no intention of adopting Anita as her own in the first place & the overwhelming reality of girls her age doing everything in their power to suppress one another has convinced Anita of that unfortunate snippet of truth.

As the headmistress finally ends her morning sermon, the caterpillar lines of girls are whisked off to their respective classes in a neat queue, aided by agents of divinity in school garbs, the volunteer captains that are bent on lording over the other girls, never giving up an opportunity to impose their will on a smaller woman they might think less of.

Anita remembers being ridiculed for admitting to be a virgin back when she joined this helljoint last summer. Even as these didis hung closely to every mention of the Virgin Mary that came out of the Sisters’ holy holes, she was castigated for her lack of experience at 13 and a half.

How dumb is it of those bigger, supposedly smarter girls to tease her for not being with a boy! They did not look like they had been with one either, with their coarse attitudes and all but Anita knew better than to pick a fight with older girls on her very first day of reformation.

Like Cinderella, Anita had been set a stint of tragedy that, logically, could only pave the way for a very happy ending. Her misfortunes, like Cinderella, began with the death of her mother.

Even as the script faithfully incorporated the wrath of the vengeful stepmom, she came with no sickening step-sisters for Anita. In a world bereft of magic, Anita instead, received the gift of an unheard-of didi that came from the far east, an emissary of her lost mother who was welcomed with open arms by Anita’s unfortunate father.

Sadhudidi is Anita’s cousin, the daughter of her mother’s sister.

Their maternal bond comes into play when they team up to protest the shenanigans of Anita's evil stepmother. They conspire, confess, confide in each to survive the ordeal they face for being the women that they are.

Woman seems to be a woman's greatest nemesis; the perpetual presence of the stepmother who had no intention of adopting Anita as her own in the first place & the overwhelming reality of girls her age doing everything in their power to suppress one another has convinced Anita of that unfortunate snippet of truth.

Sadhu didi thus turning out to be a strip of land that surfaces as if pure magic, the newly formed breasts of a land grabbing river

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who finally decides to give a little something back.

Could there be any better role model than Anita's beloved Sadhu didi? Sure she had more habits than one which would have made Anita's deceased mother turn the deep crimson of her favourite Saree, didi would resonate her dead mausi's insistence that Anita grow up fearless, an independent woman who would not require a man to validate her existence.

Whereas mother, a housewife, would reiterate that independence was a state of mind rather than a lifestyle choice, Sadhu didi believes that hard-earned material wealth is what can truly emancipate a woman. Economic dependancy being the keywords when it came to the oppressor's power over a woman, Sadhu didi was investing her time and effort into building a fortress of 'indepedence' that would be a concrete manifestation of the state of mind that Anita's mother would refer to as 'independence'.

Anita preferred and found it easier to relate to the corporeal expressions of independence that appeared so important to Sadhu didi's process. Whereas mother would berate father over his drinking, intoxicants were as potent a tool as money itself when it came to the assertion of the independent woman, according to Sadhu didi.

Thus Anita would spend sleepless nights, chatting and grinding the 'good stuff' with her sister in their little big room that was actually the refurbished attic of the house. The dysfunctional couple of the household inhabiting the lower floor, Anita and Sadhu didi would smoke up throughout the night, speaking of make up and androgynous Gods of lore, musing over stepmotherly treatment as well as the felicity of love - the divine union that resulted in universes: creation itself.

Her wisdom a simple part of everyman's soul, Sadhu didi was as humble as the innocent who was acutely comfortable with having no 'sense', ironically giving in to the only condition the universe demanded for the access of true knowledge.

Humility she had with an effusive sense of pride. Anita would be in awe, every second that she would share with her fairy Godmother, at the way she would co-exhibit humility, pride as well as an abject sense of shame as, in a marked attempt at liberation, she would rent away her body to paying men to have sex with. It was something Anita felt caused her dear Sadhu didi great pain. It was, to Anita, the finest way for a woman to assert her newfound independence.

[To be continued]

Anita would be in awe, every second that she would share with her fairy Godmother, at the way she would co-exhibit humility, pride as well as an abject sense of shame as, in a marked attempt at liberation, she would rent away her body to paying men to have sex with.

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SHORT FICTION

Stuck in My Heart ANKITA JAIN Photography: ANASTASIA ZHENINA

She had loved him for as long as she can remember. He had been the first one to enter her life and find a permanent residence there.

Though it was a one sided affair, it didn’t seem to bother her much. The very thought of him made her ecstatic and that was enough, enough to keep her spirits high.

She has had men in her life, quite a lot of them but it had never worked out with anybody. How could it have, especially when you already have an overpowering image towering above all, an ‘ideal’ to compare every other person to this dreamy one.

Things do not work that way, she would often be reminded by her friends. You have to move on, others would say. She herself knew that it was not real but she chose to believe the other way. Truly madly and deeply engrossed in his love you know. He was, as C21 put it, stuck in her heart.

Often teased and often labeled a weird, such tags had ceased to matter. When you are in love, everything else fades. You see that is why they say, ‘blinded’ by love. And that she completely was. A hardcore romance fiction fan, she had fed herself on innumerable stories projecting a man in the most idealistic way possible. Little did she know the reality. Or wait, maybe she knew it but only made a choice to put her faith in the alternate one?

Whatever it was, she had her own beliefs, and no one could dare shake them. After all, our beliefs make us what we are.

They might be different from the ‘norms’ but nonetheless, they are dear to us, and that is enough to make them special.

She had a date with him tonight, once again. She would meet him and be reminded of the first time they had met, first time she read him in the book. []

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IMAGES FROM URBAN SPACE

&

STREET

c

PHOTOGRAPHY

THE ART OF

JOHNNY

MOBASHER SERGIO BURNS

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She turns, mouth agape, surprised in the process of taking a photograph of herself, while, simultaneously, an image is taken of her by an out-of-frame photographer. The shadeswearing woman turning surprised toward the image-taker like a startled hare caught in the blinding light of a giant star. An image stuck in time, she, forever turning, mouth, forever dropping open.

The image was captured by leading street photographer Johnny Mobasher. On a trip abroad he saw his opportunity, and he had it - a moment caught in a microsecond.

“I love this image...it was shot with an iPhone6,” The Iranian-born, UK-based photographer tells me enthusiastically. “My eight year-old daughter and I were on holiday in Barcelona, we took a walk to the cathedral. As we were meandering our way past the main entrance I noticed this group of tourists – you can see the tourist guide with a microphone to the right - I noticed that this one woman was taking a selfie with her phone on a selfiestick. I was holding my daughter's hand and with my other hand raised my iPhone to take the scene. I realised that while doing her selfie, looking at her... phone's screen, trying to position and compose herself and the magnificent cathedral, she must have noticed me in her phone screen.

Turns around to look at me in 'you're spoiling my picture' or some similar notion, and as she looked back at my face, I took the shot. I knew I had it! I just knew it!”

Mobasher is philosophical about his art, thoughtfully pouring over the subtle nuances of street photography and its definition. The true street photographer, he writes on his website www.streetphotography.co.uk , remains faithful to a sense of spontaneity, humour, contrast, juxtaposition and storytelling. For Mobasher street photography is always a framed visual moment of time, captured by the creative and technical skills of the imagetaker unravelling a tale. What Mobasher, himself, creates is some of the best and sharpest street photography around, but he is a man preoccupied with meaning.

“The massive, recent popularity of street photography – which has its plus points – has also diluted and degraded the genre,” Mobasher explains. “There are more selfelevated street photographers in the universe now than hydrogen! I take nothing away from the positive aspects of this explosive phenomenon (but) I think it is massively important to define or, indeed, redefine this genre, not

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only to the wanna-be street photographer, but also to ...media officials (editors, publishers) to put the true essence of street photography back on the map of education and 'instinctive to intuitive' photography.”

A chronicler of street life, Mobasher now lives part of the week in Manchester and part of the week in Birmingham. He proves an intriguing visual artist. His images have a jagged edge to them, a mash-up of irony, contrast and the tragicomic wrapped in thinly-veiled bleakness and darkness of the everyday.

A person stands at the screen of a cash machine and receives dosh. We see that he is within spitting distance of a homeless man, who lies sleeping on cold, unforgiving concrete. Above the destitute, ragged rough sleeper an advertisement features a photograph of a smartly attired man extolling, somewhat ironically, the virtues of his company's new low mortgage rate.

The photographer has captured a dramatic portrait of the modern existential milieux. Have, have-nots in a photographic representation of that clunking grungy capitalistic free market, soaring wealth, abject poverty, mind blowing money and grinding struggle, with little inbetween. Those with, those without. All told in one specifically spontaneous, yet perfectly designed frame.

These are thought-provoking, ironic and ultimately powerful images by a man whose photographic career started when his father bought him a camera (though not the one he wanted) “When I was around 14 or 15 years-old, I had started asking my father for a camera,” Mobasher tells me. “I remember taking a liking to an Olympus OM1. After many weeks of perseverance, one day my father came home with a Lubitel!

A manual, mechanical Russian made 6X6 medium format, very basic film camera. He said : 'Let's see if you can make decent pictures with this camera first'.”

Undaunted, the young photographer set about learning his trade.

Academically, the young Mobasher studied interior and exhibition design at Salford University, but the passion was always photography, and his heart was always in the street.

It was here, as a young image-taker, that he felt he truly

belonged as an artist. Moving among humanity, and shooting edgy, solidly grounded images of the everyday.

“It...has an extremely satisfying feeling of capturing a fleeting moment that only presents itself to the curious, conscious and (the) present in the now,” He says of working the streets with his camera “So, I guess, I look for myself through the lens. Now...I coin this phrase : street photography, is a state of mind. The more curious and adventurous and daring, the more tragic and comical, the more leg work...you put into it, the more you will get out of it, and the universe, occasionally rewards...with a little luck too.”

The words hang in the weightlessness of the urban space that is his artist's canvas. The mindfulness of looking for himself through the lens is existentially profound, but then so is

trying to understand the often surreal space that is regular street life. This is where he operates, like a ghost among the frightened, recording the ironies, the bitter-sweet, tragi-comic realities of existential trajectories.

Excited by his latest project, he has admitted to 'stalking' a Californian man for the last seven years. It is all innocent, he was trying to prise the street photography dot com website from him.

After a gruelling through-the-night auction, starting out with 192 bidders at two in the morning British time, Mobasher secured the website www.streetphiotography.com and is now poised to launch as a home for the art he loves so much.

“I thought to myself that this dot com can't and must not be used just for me,” he said with some humility. “I should try to make the dot com for

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everyone. An international platform and source for the best of the best...of street photography. The home for inspiration, education, exposure and support of street photographers, especially the young and talented. Editorials, essays and street photography in not only its purest form but also street portraiture, street documentary and street art-photography (not to be confused with street-art photography), and define street photography and its original essence in its purest sense and, of course, state of mind.”

A man looks out from a cafe where he sits with a friend enjoying lunch, reflected in the window is the photographer shooting him.

The man looks puzzled, perhaps slightly annoyed at his meal being disturbed. But Mobasher, the photographer, trying to find himself through the lens is exposed in the window of the cafe, perhaps this is a metaphor for the invisibility of the image-taker who, paradoxically, wants to be seen?

“I have the intention of going out and shooting. I walk around with intent,” He admits. “I get myself mind ready...but I don't have any ideas about what I want to do or (what) is going to happen. I don't get ideas, I just look for situations presented in a fraction of time.”

Johnny Mobasher disappears into the crowds of people, recording, chronicling life in images, catching a look, a startled glance. He shoots the subtle messages of faces and bodies frozen in time, as he digs out meaning from the apparent urban chaos. [] From Johnny Mobasher’s Twitter handle

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I have the intention of going out and shooting. I walk around with intent. I get myself mind ready… but I don't have any ideas about what I want to do or is going to happen. I don't get ideas, I just look for situations presented in a fraction of time

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SHORT FICTION

Majorska S. F. WRIGHT Art: Jagannath Chakravarti

Daniels saw him as he pulled into Discount Liquors: he stood next to the entrance in a dirty New York Giants jacket, filthy jeans, and untied work boots. He had a scruffy beard and bright blue eyes; Daniels had seen him here before.

Daniels parked his truck, and as he walked toward the entrance, he affected to look at his phone. As expected, the man said, “Spare some change?”

Daniels didn’t look up. As he opened the door, the man growled, “Piece of shit.”

Daniels turned. The man stared at him with crazed, lucid eyes.

Daniels had come for what he always gota 1.75 of Majorska- but when he got to the shelves, he lingered. He glanced at the brands he couldn’t afford- Grey Goose, Absolut, Smirnoffbut didn’t register them; he was thinking of the bum. The man’s words, eyes, and scowl had shaken him. Though he wouldn’t admit it, Daniels was afraid of returning outside.

Two people waited in line. Daniels debated about saying something and decided he wouldn’t.

But as the cashier handed back his credit card, Daniels said, “You know, there’s a homeless guy outside, soliciting customers.” He spoke casually but with a hint of concern.

The man nodded, as though not surprised.

“I’ll get someone as soon as the line goes down.”

Daniels looked over his shoulder; three people waited.

The man handed Daniels his bottle in a black plastic bag. “Have a good one.” He looked to the next customer.

A fat woman put a six-pack of Michelob on

the counter. Daniels hesitated. He wanted to tell the cashier the homeless man had said something combative so he’d get someone immediately, but he didn’t want the man- and the people in line- to know he was afraid.

As the cashier scanned the six-pack, he looked at Daniels. “Forget something?” His voice was kind but concerned.

Daniels felt foolish; it felt as if the time had passed for him to say something. He shook his head. “No,” he muttered and left.

Outside, the bum was asking an older woman for money. The problem was that Daniels had parked close to the entrance. (Why hadn’t he parked where he wouldn’t have to walk past the bum again?) The woman, to Daniels’ surprise, handed the bum a couple of singles. The bum said “God bless”; the woman said something pleasant and proceeded into the liquor store.

Daniels hurried to his truck. But when he went for his keys, they were wedged below his wallet.

Daniels cursed and dug into the tight pocket of his jeans.

“See that woman?”

Daniels’ fingertips touched his keys.

“She helped me out. Why couldn’t you?”

Daniels had his keys halfway out. His heart raced; a trickle of sweat ran down his arm. He glanced at the bum. The man was not approaching, but he gave Daniels a cutting stare:

I may be a bum, but you’re a scared, paranoid, selfish worm. I can pull myself out of the gutter, but you’ll never be able to not be you. And you’re not much different from me, spending Saturday afternoon buying a bottle of Majorska. How do

you think I spent my Saturday afternoons before I turned into this?

As Daniels pulled his keys to the top of his pocket, it didn’t occur to him that the bum couldn’t see what kind of vodka- or what he’d purchased at all for that matter- was in the black bag.

“Hey!” A stock boy approached the bum. “Gotta move it pal.”

The bum’s contentiousness disappeared; he gave the stock boy a forlorn look and walked meekly away toward the avenue, like a hungry, pathetic dog. He didn’t look back at Daniels, as though he’d forgotten he was there.

The stock boy made sure the bum wasn’t coming back and returned inside.

Daniels had his keys.

He turned on the avenue and spotted the bum in front of a Chinese restaurant. As Daniels drove by, he was the certain, even though he looked for only half a second, the bum gave him that same look of contempt and omniscience; once more Daniels felt vulnerable and cowardly.

At a red light, he told himself to calm down: getting worked up over a homeless man was idiotic. The man was just a bum.

By the time the light changed, Daniels convinced himself the encounter was meaningless. He drove home comforted by the knowledge that he’d soon be sipping a strong drink, along with the fact that there were many other liquor stores he could go to. []

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POETRY Six weeks into my interminable stay in the orphanage, I snuck out, shrugging my thinning shoulders into a worn-out pink jacket. I walked fast, with my head down, through the lovely, brown-and-gold avenue ducking when I passed the window my housemother glared through when her soaps were off air.

In theory, I could contact my socialworker whenever I wished. In practice it was harder. The surest way involved picking a fight with someone much bigger, but I’d already been cut, once, across the ribs (the shiv-blade scraped a rivet in my bones) and the chances were good that I’d just be drugged and thrown into the Quiet Room. I’d spent too long sitting on that gym-mat mattress, staring into the grilled drain on the floor for that option to appeal to me. Wind bit my ears as I fled across the yard.

Entering the stone administration building, I slipped past the Secretary (a large woman, wearing a false gray bun) and stalked into Mrs Scott’s office. Her back was towards me. She was on the phone. When she finally turned around she found me sitting square in the plastic blue chair across from her oak-veneered desk. I’d threaded my legs through the legs of my seat (my sneakers squeaked against those metal bars) and, seeing this, she smiled at me with the same false sweetness she gave my father when he signed over custody of me to the state. ‘Well now,’ she asked, ‘what can I do for you?’ I told her everything. I talked about the rapes, the beatings, how Fallon came in while I was showering. She nodded, her mouth in a line. She told me she’d get back to me.

I was given seventy-two hours of extra work detail for sneaking out. I spent the time raking leaves and mucking out cow stalls, singing excerpts from The Beach Boys.

At the end of my sentence, she summoned me.

I sat in that same chair, watching the slow creep of the second-hand circling around the face of her school-room style clock. She held me in silence for a full five minutes.

Autumn, 1996 BETHANY W POPE Photography: JODY DAVIS

Then, she began to lie. ‘I called your father and passed on your message. He doesn't believe you, and neither do I. We’ve decided on a fitting punishment: hay-rake detail, for the next three weeks.’ Then she dismissed me.

I thought I had failed. My hands faded, numb.

But then, that night, I was taken to the on-campus doctor. I was given a blood test and some strong penicillin.

The next day, I was issued a red wheelbarrow and ordered to pack my black trunk.

She moved me to another house, across the trap they called a campus. I still had to struggle through the baling, but at least I could sleep through the long nights alone. []

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POETRY

NITPICKING BETHANY W POPE Photography: VOLKAN OLMEZ

The first louse I ever saw was crawling through the pages of a Xanth novel, the one about the colour of a young girl’s magical panties. It was an odd story, and a very strange bug. A long, tubelike thorax (translucent, but threaded with blood) attached to a head that was all pincers. I had no idea what it was, and I was tempted to squash it, but I’d spent the night before in a barn, watching pigs bleed out from new mouths that gaped, bright red in the white fat of their necks. It was my job to hold a steaming bucket under that throbbing salt jet. I counted the pause between gouts as those huge hearts stuttered out.

Remembering this, I leaned close to the page and blew the bug to the floor of the closet that was called my bedroom. There was a foot and a half between the edge of my bed and the windowless wall. I was locked in to prevent another escape attempt.

The louse never got out either but, I suppose, context is everything. My hell was her paradise on earth, a land of rude plenty. Within two weeks my scalp swarmed with an army whose knife-like mandibles slashed a myriad of mouths in the pale flesh of my scalp. When my House-Mother found out she ordered one of the older girls to slash and burn the bloody field of combat with clippers and a harsh chemical wash.

Shorn, I remembered my attempt at mercy.

I’d been called ugly before, many times.

This wasn’t anything new. I couldn't regret it. I was glad that my louse died happy; I craved such an ending myself. []

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FICTION

MADNESS and

A

MOTOR HEAP SHAWN HATFIELD Photo Courtesy: Mixcreations

After waking, I lay in bed for about twenty minutes before I decide to take a shower. Today is October 24th and my twenty-third birthday. It has been two days since I have washed. The grease in my hair and sweat on my forehead irritates me but sometimes it’s a lot easier to just skank it through the day. Especially when you have that sun beating down on you and you know that your pits are going to soak anyways.

Showers also take up a lot of time, and I don’t have much of that to spare these days.

I’m going to ride my Harley to the studio, teach a couple of lessons, head down to the community college to take my last exam, and then go see a band in DC. The door to the bathroom has graduation/congratulations necklaces that hang from the knob, and they always get in the way of shutting the door. Why the exam then? – You might ask. I graduated from a university but had a few classes to finish up to receive my degree. It’s funny how that works: I walked across the stage with a twinkle in my eye, and here I am five months later, still working on it. I never bother taking down the necklaces.

Late, as usual, is what the clock tells me when I get out of the shower. It’s eleven now, and I’ve got to make it down to the studio before noon. Women always get a bad rap for taking too

long to get ready. They carry stigmas like blowdrying their hair, putting on a mask, changing clothes, many times, and other getting ready type things. Men are also tardy, but I’m no feminist.

For me, it’s eating breakfast, feeding the dog, getting stoned, packing a lunch, and maybe a few minutes spent brushing my hair. I hate being late for things but I always seem to be. I try to save getting high for last so that I don’t slow myself down more than usual.

Clothes are everywhere on my bedroom floor: dirty and clean. It makes for a stress driven workplace. My efforts successfully find me a tshirt, dress shirt, jeans, boxers, and a pair of socks. Brushing teeth always seems like such a chore to me because it’s uncomfortable and annoying but it’s a necessity. Of course, I love the clean feeling on my teeth when the tarter is controlled, and my teeth are whitened. I usually forget to brush these bad boys at night, and when I do remember, I mostly ignore it because it makes me feel awake and rejuvenated right before I try to go to sleep. Insomnia is hard enough without another activity to add to the madness.

It’s customary for me to lean down to the running faucet and slurp up some water to swish around the excess paste and loosened grime in

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my mouth. My hair is long, and it drops into the sink, which instantly collects paste, gunk, grime, and dirt in it. It’s a good thing I just showered. I’ll just have to tie it back today. Son of a bitch.

Deodorized, clean, and a full stomach later, I’m ready for the world. I exit the garage door, and there she is in all her glory: my 1997 Dyna Low Rider. Admiration doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings for the beautiful beast.

It is still warm outside, for October, and I decide not to load up too much with gear. I figure that a denim jacket with a leather vest over top, jeans, boots, and a helmet should do the trick.

The engine responds immediately to the starter and simultaneous throttle turn. It’s such a wild and loud sound. I hop on top, let her warm up a minute, kick it into first and accelerate down the driveway.

There has been an astronomical amount of construction going on in the county lately and today is no different. They work in neighborhoods, on the highways, off/on ramps, in the city, and in residents’ front lawns. I’m riding down East Colonial Highway when I notice a bit of traffic to the onramp.

For some reason, it’s become a bit of a trend for the state and county to get rid of three and four-way stops and replace them with traffic circles. Don’t get me wrong, three and four-way stops can be very confusing. Most of the time people will just wave you on because they don’t know what to do. In a lot of cases, there’s this kind of on and off break and gas hitting that goes on. You go they go, you stop they stop. It’s really fucking annoying.

All of that said, these roundabouts are generally a good idea: if used correctly, they generate continuous traffic flow. Again, that is if they are used properly and they commonly are not. Most of the people that drive through these traffic circles aren’t looking where they are going. I’ve seen it countless times where I’m in the traffic circle (with right-of-way), and suddenly some overly confident asshole comes flying into the circle. They just don’t look or completely rely on their failing peripherals.

I approach the roundabout at the

intersection of Dry Mill Road, Route 9, and Route 7. The workers are still completing their tasks on the roundabout, but it’s open for the public use.

I am on Dry Mill Road heading forward while drivers from Route 7 enter from the left, and drivers from Route 9 also come from the left but further into the circle. My plan is to go straight and continue down Dry Mill because I can see that the highway is completely fucked. Sitting in traffic on a bike in the summer is generally pretty shitty. It’s nice to be outside, but the heat and surrounding cars get to you.

Before I could continue down Dry Mill, a giant construction vehicle comes off Route 7 and shows no sign of slowing down. I slam on my horn and rev the engine up, but the driver continues aggressively towards me. At the moment, I think for a moment I will be crushed by the truck and dead for sure. The prey looks into the predator’s deadly yellow eyes. I had to hit hard on my brakes and begin to slide a little bit. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I scream.

The construction truck pushes it’s way right up next to me, I start moving farther to the right. Somehow this dumb motherfucker still doesn’t see me. I’ve got no choice but to go off the road into the grass and the mud. I make that choice because if I continue to stay in my right of way, then the multiple tons of steel will desecrate me. The truck would have run me over with at least four of its six wheels.

My bike is far into the shoulder now, beginning to tear up the gravel, and moving towards the mud. Finally, the bike falls to the left with me trapped underneath. I can instantly feel the pain shoot through the entire left side of my body. I slide sideways with the bike into the ditch, off the road, and slowly come to a stop.

Luckily there is no collision with any other vehicles or with the dozens of surrounding traffic cones. I lay there for a moment to sort collect myself and assess whether or not I can stand up. The entire wreck only lasts about thirty seconds.

It doesn’t feel like anything is broken. I quickly flick the kill switch and pull myself out from underneath the motorcycle. I’m in a

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substantial amount of pain but decently okay. My mind, on the other hand, is pretty warped.

The truck driver finally sees me and sees that he’s knocked me off the road. He halts the vehicle in the roundabout with traffic behind him, but when he sees that I was okay, he starts accelerating once again. I limp in front of his truck before he picks up speed, look him in the eyes, and begin screaming: “Get the fuck out of that truck you motherfucker! I’ll burn your goddamn house down!” The man throws his hands up in the air, gives me a confused look, and keeps on moving forward. “God dammit!” It seems as if he doesn’t give a shit.

Some sixteen-year-old kid jump out of a Honda Accord and asks, “Do you need some help?” He is tall, skinny, with dark hair.

“Did you see that shit? That fucking asshole ran me right off the road, and now he’s taking off!”

“Calm down man. Get his license plate!” I try to see what the letters say but I’m dizzy, not wearing my glasses, and I just can’t make it out.

“Help me pick her up.”

“Certainly. ” Despite how weak and frail he looks, the kid helps me get the bike up so I can steady it to throw out the kickstand. At about this time I notice that the truck driver has pulled about a hundred yards down Dry Mill and pulls into the shoulder. It looks like he may not be fleeing after all.

“Get that fucking car out of the way!” some construction worker screams at the kid helping me. “It’s clogging up traffic.”

A handful of employees are in the center of the roundabout digging, planting, paving, but most of them are just standing and watching the others work. The one who yelled at us was standing with a clipboard and pencil. I give him my dirtiest look and realize there is no sense in arguing because I can see that we are indeed clogging the flow of traffic.

“Call the cops prick. I’m injured, need a report filed, and might need a tow,” I yell back at him. I watch him phone the police, and he confirms with me that they are coming.

“I’m sorry,” the kid said to me, “I’ve got to move my car. They might tow it or something.”

“It’s cool, I understand. Thanks for your help.”

Right about this time the construction truck driver starts walking up from where he parked. He’s wearing dirty jeans, white Nike shoes, a bright green hoodie, and a bright shining bald head.

“I’m sorry my friend, I did not see you,” he says in very broken English with a few Spanish words thrown in between. He has few teeth and the ones he does have look yellow and cracked.

“What the fuck! What the fuck! You couldn’t see me? I slammed on my horn and revved up my engine. You could have killed me you asshole.”

“I did not see you, my friend, and I couldn’t hear anything. The truck…it…it…how you say ‘lots of noise’ or ‘loud.’ I did not know what happened until you ran out in front of me.”

All of this is extremely hard to understand and creates an even more frustrating situation.

“I just got this bike fixed up a few weeks ago from a previous accident. You had better have insurance. I am not getting fucked over because of you.”

“Sir, can we please do this out of pocket? I can’t afford my insurance rates to go up for my company” – he goes on to explain that he owns his own construction company. He doesn’t seem very sympathetic to what he had done to me. “I have the money. If the repairs are $1,000 I can pay, if the repairs are $2,000 I can spend… Please don’t call the police or your insurance.” He then says, “I pay,” repeatedly until I stop him.

“Look, man, that worker right over there already called the cops. You fucked me over. This bike means a lot to me, today is my birthday, and you severely covered my day in shit. Maybe if I wouldn’t have fallen or if it was just a scratch we would settle with cash but when you get into any serious accident you’re supposed to call the cops and call insurance. My hands are tied. You’re lucky I don’t smash your god damn skull for this.” He laughs nervously, shamefully.

“Please, my friend. I have the money.”

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“Stop calling me ‘your friend.’ We are not buddies: you fucked me over with your negligence, and now you’re trying to get out of it. I don’t understand how you can’t afford the insurance rates, but you can afford to dish out a few thousand. Sounds like bullshit to me. Even if you do give me all of your contact information there’s no way you can assure me that you won’t screw me over. This is why I pay for my insurance: so they can deal with you and your insurance and I can step back and try to carry on with my day that you fucked up.” He’s silent.

What needs to be understood is that this is my sixth motor vehicle accident: I was rear-ended three times and hit gravel on my motorcycle twice. That’s about one accident per year since I’ve been driving. Needless to say, I’m fucking angry.

We start looking at the damage done to the vehicle and at first glance it didn’t seem all that bad, but once I get a good look at things I can see more and more damage. I can see a lot of parts that need replacing and cosmetic repairs, but the pipes are the most devastating. They were shining brightly before but now they scream ugliness with deep dents and scratches. It’s hard for me to even look at.

Finally, as a distraction, I ask, “What’s your name?”

“Me Nombrees…excuse me…my name is Martin.”

“My name is Thomas Hatfield, what’s your full name?”

“Martinez Lorenzo.” The last Lorenzo I knew was a real piece of shit too. I start taking out a pen and paper to write down his information. He gives me his address, license plate, company name, but never any insurance information.

We argue a bit over what we are going to do because he really wants me to just take cash.

“I have to leave now. I’m still on the clock and on my way to another site. I will lose the job if I don’t get there soon.” Despite the shit I’m going through I see some logic in his need to be absent.

Just like that, Martin is gone before the cops even show up. I call my mother, Tori, to inform her of the incident. She is not happy and tells me she’s on her way to the scene. I try to tell her it’s all right, but she won’t listen and comes anyways. I don’t mind, but it’s not necessary.

While I wait for the one assigned to our accident I count three cop cars that drive by: a state trooper, a county cop, and a town cop. All three of them are dicking around on their computers or cell phones while they drive. I even throw my hands up in the air and wave to flag them down, which causes me great pain, and none of the officers takes

What needs to be understood is that this is my sixth motor vehicle accident: I was rear-ended three times and hit gravel on my motorcycle twice. That’s about one accident per year since I’ve been driving. Needless to say, I’m fucking angry.

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There’s a kid that’s been working there since he was fifteen and after five years has only received one dollar raised.

And I’ve heard from some of the mechanics that their pay gets skimped sometimes. All of that said, I’ve never had any personal beef them; they ain’t ever done me no harm.

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note. After much anticipation, the boys in blue arrive, two of them in two separate vehicles actually.

A couple of county boys. Deputy Garcia is young, built, shorter, and clean-shaven. He has a dry sense of humor and a distaste for “bikers.” He’s from up north somewhere, my guess is Philly. The second officer is the first’s superior, Lt. Williams.

A much taller, skinnier, older man with a cliché cop mustache.

He’s a much nicer fella, says he rides himself and is a member of the Harley Owners Group. Williams is a southern boy and probably even a local. They look over the bike, write up a report, talk some shit for a little while, and crack a few jokes.

“So after all that mess the bastard just up and took off?”

Garcia says “Yes, sir. Said he had a job to tend. The two of you didn’t arrive long after his departure.”

“I would have knocked his damn block off,” says Williams. Despite how furious I am, I manage to chuckle at this: a police officer telling me, in ‘50’s slang, how he’d kick Martin’s ass for what he did. Apart of me regrets not doing so but I knew that I better just let the suits behind the monthly payments figure it out.

“Okay we’re done here, we’ve got our report. Just tell your insurance everything you told us and don’t leave out any details. They’ll probably cover the damages and send you some sort of ‘pain & suffering’ check. You sure you’re okay? Don’t need an ambulance or a ride to the doctor or nothin’?”

“I’m all right. There are no broken bones that I can feel, just a lot of bruising. I might have a doc X-Ray me for internal bleeding tomorrow but tonight I’ve got a concert I’ve gotta go to. I’m not missin’ it.”

Garcia snaps, “Hell of an ambition kid. I’d calm down if I were you.”

“I’ll take it easy when I’m dead,” I snap back at him.

My mother shows up just before they leave with a few questions.

So after all of that bullshit comes to a halt, I have to go pick my truck up from Sharks, a local body shop. Nothing major was done, unlike what needs to be done to the bike, just a tune up. Tori follows me home to ensure that no more damage is done. She knows very well that I’m pissed and might speed all the way home. I did. I beat Tori to the house, park the Harley in the garage, and wait for her arrival. She can’t be more than a few minutes behind. She arrives, I hop in Mercedes, and without skipping a beef we hit the road.

Two of my stepfather’s and mother’s best friends run Sharks: Harold and Bonnie. They never disappoint when it comes to repairs and maintenance but they treat their

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employees like dirt. There’s a kid that’s been working there since he was fifteen and after five years has only received one dollar raised. And I’ve heard from some of the mechanics that their pay gets skimped sometimes. All of that said, I’ve never had any personal beef them; they ain’t ever done me no harm.

In that area there is more construction.

The shit follows me everywhere. We wait as the gorilla-person sign holder shows us a “STOP” sign and the citizens on the other side of the road a “SLOW” sign. He was a strange looking guy: Caucasian, tall, muscular, bald, and angry.

After what seems like an eternity, he flips the sign and we cruise through whatever the hell they’re working on. All I can see is a few guys digging holes and a bunch of guys watching.

Tori and I pull up to Sharks and park out front. There’s a large gate to the right that holds their inventory of vehicles while the entrance is on the left. Harold has an F350 that displays their logo and contact information on the driver side door. Not a lot is said when going into these types of places. Sometimes there’s some bullshitting and sometimes there are angry disputes about payment but why bother. I can try and argue my payment due, but I know they usually cut me a “family” break and the shit is expensive anyways. I know I would have it much worse anywhere else.

“Hey Thomas, we’ve got your car ready to go,” says Bonnie. “Just needed a tune up and we got that damn ‘check engine’ light off too.”

“You’re looking a little sore kid,” Harold says.

“Thanks for working on it. Just wrecked the bike down on East Colonial. Fell on my side, nothing broken remarkably, but I’ll be limping for a bit. How much do I owe ya?”

“Jesus Christ, kid. You can’t catch a break can you.”

“How much do I owe ya?”

“Your total bill is $134.98.”

“God damn, I thought nothing was wrong with the silver fox out there. I guess I really can’t catch a fucking break.” I must have spoken too soon about their leniency.

“It was the labor that got you. Took some time to figure out why the ‘check engine’ light was on.”

“It is what it is. I know I’d be worse off anywhere else.”

“That’s right.”

Bonnie hands me the keys to my Colorado then my mother and I walk toward the exit. I thank her for the ride, get in the car, and we both advance homeward.

Tori’s Mercedes is two cars ahead of me as we approach the same construction dicks. She is the first car in the line to pass through. The same dumb asshole who is getting paid to hold a sign keeps flipping it back and forth "STOP" to "SLOW" very quickly. It looks like someone is telling him through his earpiece. The gorillaperson gets mad; he starts yelling back into his piece and continues to flip the sign back and forth.

My mother, not knowing what to do, begins to accelerate past him. I would have done the same thing because what the fuck? This guy apparently doesn’t know what he’s doing. This paid employee, of some disgrace for business, then takes his sign, launches it up into the air, and starts screaming random profanities.

The sign he tossed lands in a tree nearby.

The line has grown from three to eight cars in just a few minutes, and each one of them has their windows down, watching. My mom rolls down her window and says, "You guys need to get this together. What am I supposed to do? You keep twirling your sign back and forth. So am I supposed to wait here or go forward?" Then the baton-twirling prick screams to my mother: "Fuck you, you fucking bitch! I don’t need to listen to this bullshit. I’m out of here!" Tori gets out of her car and starts giving him hell.

“Where is your supervisor asshole? What is this company called? You can’t talk to me like this!”

“Fuck off bitch, I don’t gotta tell you shit.”

“You need watch your mouth, kid. I’ve done nothing wrong and here you are at ‘work,

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cursing a woman in the street.”

“I don’t need this shit.” He drops his earpiece and radio then starts stomping away.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I get out of my vehicle and advance towards him with a few words of my own.

“Hey, motherfucker! That’s my mother and no one gets to speak to her that way.” The guy rips off his shirt, sunglasses, and work helmet and throws them in the dirt where he belongs. Who the fuck does that? I don’t need this.

Still walking towards me with his fists in the air he says, “Let’s go, I’ll fuck you up,” along with other clichés. Tori starts yelling, “get back in the car Tom!” and “Stop!” All the while, he is on the clock, and none of his fellow employees or El Hefe are doing anything about it.

Now the asshole is bouncing in front of me, in a fighter stance. My mother keeps trying to get in between us. The line of traffic behind builds up a few more cars, and they all start honking their horns and yelling at us. One of them is a postman, and I notice he flips us the bird.

I look the idiot in the eye and calmly say: “Look at yourself, dude. What are you doing?

You’re acting like a god-dammed child. All of this because you couldn’t do your job right. Just get the fuck out of here.”

The gorilla worker goes from angry to ashamed. I can see it in his eyes that he realizes his impulsive and idiotic behavior.

“So go on, get the hell out of her before she calls

the cops.” – I point at my mother. The gorilla squints his eyes, shakes his head, turns around, and starts heading towards the parked employee vehicles.

“Excuse me, sir,” I can hear my mother say to one of the spectator coworkers, “what is this company called?”

“No se,” he says. The line of traffic honks and screams are louder.

She continues to walk around and ask the workers the same questions, but dickhead #1 was the only English speaker around. Finally, everyone is more irritable than imaginable, I look at my mother, and we get in our cars to leave.

On the way out of the construction zone, I see the gorilla worker about to get into his car.

So naturally I drive by, roll down my window and say, "Why don't you do some more pushups you big ape." This infuriates him, and he begins screaming and chasing after me on foot. I slam the gas, spin the wheels a little, and flip him the bird. I musta laughed like a Disney villain all the way home.

I don’t want to make it seem like I hate construction workers, or I’m against what they’re working on but more often than not see some busting their asses off, getting dirty, and trying to afford life while the majority of them stand around with their signs or jerk each other off.

I look at myself in the rearview mirror, smile, and say “Happy Birthday.” []

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POETRY

Coney Island Freak Show LEAH MUELLER Art: Jagannath Chakravarti

Ferris wheel and wooden boardwalk deserted, on a windy March evening, the orange-haired woman and the freaks have gone home for the season.

The man with the lobster hands waits for the cash machine to spit out his earnings.

He stares straight ahead, scalpel eyes boring into the plastic facade, grasps the bills in his fleshy pincers like a stag beetle’s prey, places the money in his pocket: then scuttles away on out-turned feet.

Last summer, the man stood on the stage in front of hundreds of onlookers.

He lifted the hatchet and cut off his fingers, but I smiled, because I knew it was a trick.

His fingers disappeared in the womb long before he was born.

He raised his hands in the air to prove it, and the ecstatic crowd sighed with relief.

If you’re born with two enormous thumbs and the rest of your hand is missing, you do what you can to get by.

It might be easier than being a poet or a fortune-teller.

People love to be fooled, and they love to think their problems are interesting.

My troubles are ordinary, as insignificant as fingers.

I know nothing, yet raise the ax and pretend. The crowd goes wild, but only for an instant. I take a bow, and shuffle away across the boardwalk.

Meanwhile, the roller coaster trembles in the spring breeze, remembering what it felt like to surge towards the sky.

The shrieking throngs line up in the distance, invisible tickets clutched in their fists.

I know it won’t be long before they return to the ground.

I have landed on the earth more times than I can remember, and I haven’t even started to rise.

I hope I have the price of admission. []

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POETRY

Junk Food Cowboy LEAH MUELLER The country isn’t walking correctly.

It has a slight limp, not noticeable from certain angles, but slowly getting worse.

The country can’t stand up tall, can’t maintain a military posture.

Though a board is lodged permanently in its rectum, its gut has grown huge and spills out of its too-tight pants.

It still tries to swagger like it’s in charge.

The country ran sprints and dashes back in high school, and maintained fairly decent scores, along with a C average marked up to an A, for no reason except it showed up in class, and knew somebody’s daddy.

The country sits at Cracker Barrel and is gunned down in the parking lot after eating another meal of lard and rage.

There is no cowboy strut, no fifty paces, the sniper takes aim from his car window and six are dead. The driver is another local guy who mows his lawn, and fires shots into his yard, but his neighbors hear nothing.

The country is almost dead.

The country sits in the waiting room and hopes that somebody else will solve its emergency.

Meanwhile the sound of lullabies

On a photographic impression by

Robert Owen-Wahl

over the loudspeaker as babies are born, eager for their turn at the wheel.

The country eats poison from the vending machine, shuffles around the corridors with its ass hanging out of pajamas.

The country has dementia, and insists it’s in the wrong hospital, while the nurses laugh from their vantage point on the other side of the window.

The country lies on its single bed with a jar of IV fluids and a bad show on television.

The program is familiar and the country knows every word.

The country reclines with the remote, searches for a better channel.

The official prognosis is poor, and the sentence terminal, but still, the country is glad for a vacationso it dials room service from the bedside phone, puts the meal on someone else’s tab. []

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DRAMA

The nature of Barbers

Drama: Guns n’ Roses Writer/Director: Anupam Dasgupta Language: Bengali

Jagannath Chakravarti

As Kolkata theatre steadily sheds off its amateur hang-ups, creating celebrities and becoming an object of celebration in itself, it is time that theatre enthusiasts across the region also begin to peek further away from home and appreciate the burgeoning talent pool in the off-Kolkata centres of artistic excellence.

They are those that are consistently starved of funds, creating universes out of virtually nothing but an assemblage of smartly executed elements and a vibrant group of executioners – barbers they are, not unlike Anubrata Das’ rendition of the Tomaniyan barber in Rangan’s production ‘Guns n’ Roses’ (Inspired by Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ and Asim Trivedi’s ‘Jodi Binirman’). They are the talents who dare to define ‘God’ as not the one who perpetually destroys to create but the one who kindly trims the shades of grey when they are no longer able to elicit vivid emotions.

The particular show I had the opportunity of attending being Rangan’s first as a group in the city, the execution had its fair share of nervous ticks. To the credit of the company, however, they had a tried and tested scriptural backing, hosting a confluence of ideas, including those espoused in Charles Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’. The veracity of Chaplin’s creation, underpinned by a crystal conviction of the adaptation and expert use of

symbols on stage, make sure that Rangan delivers a production worth speaking of.

The blatant addresses of the author-figure, who eventually runs foul of the authority figures in the play, may be justified in the course of the narrative but ultimately lacks subtlety and consequently, the intended punch. But a flaw such as this is aptly compensated by the brilliant exposure of the inherent nature of the communal forces that lunges at power using the formula of divide. The clever stroke that has an amplified effect on stage is the seamless transition of the communal identities, all executed by a single man, Arijit Pal, in a commendable act where he transforms effortlessly from a fervent Nazi to an Islamic terror mouthpiece, as well as a Hindu fundamentalist – passing gibberish as jargon in the methodical vein of a conniving pulpit man who has the capacity of manipulating friends to stab each other on the back.

Whereas there is that need to deconstruct and rectify the mind that erroneously finds pleasure in the annihilation of the world we inhabit, the call of the hour is to expose the bluff of this methodical madness – commonly reflected in the syntax, the turn of phrases they employ to poison human minds. The need of the hour is to realise that these

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roles are one and the same, no matter which God/s they try to demarcate their ‘group’ with. They are the collective agents of the chaos that hinders salvation, that which attempts to destroy the shimmering innocence of a Barber.

A projection of Chaplin’s iconic speech from ‘The Great Dictator’ circling off the presentation, Rangan’s ‘Guns n’ Roses’ is a well rounded drama indeed. Aided by an impressive lighting scheme that he conceived as well, director Anupam Dasgupta deftly adapts to and utilises the tools at his disposal to present a tremendously relevant drama that stokes just the right cells.

The conspiracy of roses, after all, is all one can fall back on, in the face of a thousand cocked guns. []

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POETRY Love squared by Love rounding each edge, geometrizing each ends equalizing its alphabets, circling its triangles.

Infinitesimally surrounding transitory planes and lanes within our pyramidal silences, giving new lines and directions, intersections of re-constructions compasses and conjunctures within rebellious Mathematics

Love squared by Love applied symmetries and Platonic shapes, an amalgamation of binaries and analogues sometimes with no common denominators, no obtuse views but endless Mandelbrotian spirals where human is able to accept a simple deviation.

Love squared by Love embracing your concavity into my convex world, summing up the trigonometry of our cosmic hearts As LOVE tangles between two dots‌ Love!

Not a mundane Geometry! []

Endless rounded prismatic longings leaving behind the theory of angles rising trigonometry of the hearts forgetting about scientific breaths inside seven circles oscillating harmonies

Love squared by Love converting the Word into ART orbiting among infinite number of points till can be found just a line between me and you galactically entangled, universally connected with simplified distraction, amplified seduction sometimes equivalent, sometimes equidistant and the sum of the cosmic Algebra in two hearts.

Love squared by Love in perpendicular stars and parallel moons crossing the lines in algorithmic dances and waves of psychedelic sensations, kabbalistic stardust hologram inceptions rhythmic complexities and elastic canvas.

Neither perimeters nor cross-sections, neither postulates nor heart formula when I am blue and you are green, answers not to be based on x-y- z coordinates or figure-ing out to be even but ever-being presently present!

The Geometry of LOVE ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA Art: DORINA COSTRAS

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POETRY

An Hour of Eternity ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA Art: DORINA COSTRAS

Within an hour of Eternity and the rhythm of a Soul, Time meets Time, where beginning never ends...

Within an hour of Eternity Time plays its silent symphony in breathing echoes of the eternal recurrence...

Within an hour of Eternity Inside-outside this Existence sniffing moments of your rhythm in the shade of Time elapsing. []

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POETRY

Waiting in Anticipation SUNAYNA PAL Some find the presence of it irresistible.

Many get intoxicated by its smell.

All want to posses it, if possible.

But for each a reason dwells.

The smell titillates the most.

Sometimes seeing someone else have it causes distress.

People avoid it because of fear of consequences which will be post.

Some have it openly, some hide to avoid family stress.

Just Having one makes people lust.

Some people need it because of the inflation.

A pastry with tea is a must.

But very few truly enjoy its consumption The poet needs to lose weight and avoids it thus.

Now that you know the topic, read the poem again.

Forgive her for causing this fuss.

Enjoy, smile and make a poem too out of your pain.

Art: Jagannath Chakravarti

I Miss Me JAMES VALVIS I can’t go for my walk tonight because I’ve hurt my left foot.

Last year at this same time it was a high ankle sprain.

Things that used to be easy are now becoming difficult.

Soon they will be impossible.

You don’t think of breathing as a talent until you can’t do it.

I miss the night air, the moon, my tangled headphone wires.

I miss Orion the Hunter, which after years of stargazing is the only constellation I know.

I miss the televisions in the houses mollifying the sleepless near Seattle in a way romance never could.

But most of all I miss me, the man I was only last week, who walked four wretched miles complaining every single step. [] 00

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POETRY

TWO POEMS KUSHAL PODDAR Art: JAGANNATH CHAKRAVARTI

THE MARTIAN For hours I have the tool of loneliness to build a planet, and all I do- sit at the hem of my campground to see the vast horizon. Sometimes what you desire to see appears. Sometimes you squint and find you lost a face, albeit in others you sought its eyes, mouth, cheekbones. For hours I have the forest, and then nothing.

Darkness lights up a fistful of fireflies.

I have hours. I don't. I recall. I can't.

Where is wind when I need to hear the trees? []

A cave is a place

with one opening at least and a wall You to lean against and stare at the blur, at the bokeh of our garden, no yours.

When I cave in you look at the cocoon, imagine the butterfly.

If the process elongates, you seek some distraction-

METHODICAL CAVING IN

Here blooms a rose. There goes a photo frame with a man caught in it, pinned, cleaned and labelled. []

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"I am five minutes late but I will try to relax" I told myself as I entered the hall.

They wanted us seated 15 minutes before the program was to begin and I was there only 10 minutes in advance.

I could relax in 10 minutes and be ready to receive. Sigh!

I could try. I really wanted to make a good impression. I was being more paranoid than usual. Why can't I just relax and be the person I am?

The program started. There was going to be no talking, no speech, no noise at all actually. I tried to relax. I wanted to look around the room but was scared that someone might see me. We all sat on the floor. I gulped.

The room was quiet and I thought that my gulp was loud.

I tried to calm down. The program started and I closed my eyes. I concentrated on my breathing. In and out, out and in. Smooth.

I finally relaxed. In and out, out and in. This was so quiet.

So peaceful. It was almost 530 am in the morning and everyone was sleeping in the world. There was no noise anywhere. Only the sound of my breath. I could feel my breathing slow down. It was awesome. This technique was really working. WOW! I felt at peace and so happy with myself for doing this but then I heard a grumble.

My stomach had made a noise. Oh my GOD! What was I going to do? I wondered if the others had heard it. I tried to sit straight. Maybe, it would help. It didn't! My stomach made a noise again. What was I going to do? I shifted in my seat. What if others could hear it, Maybe they couldn't? I took a deep breath and sat with my consciousness not on my breath but my stomach.

I heard a noise again but this time, it wasn't mine. The noise came from the left. It was faint but one could definitely hear it. Oh God! This meant they could hear my stomach too. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! I was no where near the impression I wanted to make. Then a grumble from my stomach again. This was total loss.

I heard one more sound from the right and I heard that person shift in the seat. Now wait a minute! One more noise didn't mean that I could hear the noise and that others could hear mine, it meant that others were facing the same issue like me. We were all hungry. What made me think I was supposed to be perfect? I relaxed again.

Tried to take deep breaths and forget about transitory and meaningless impressions. []

SHORT FICTION

A Good Impression SUNAYNA PAL Photography: Devanath

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 – 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

ARTWORKS: RISHAV MUKHERJEE

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For thee they always food prepare, Thou shouldst not eat unthankfully.

For how each day the sun shines and serves, All praise from thee Allah deserves.'

GOD

Beloved ones of God, you may belong to any

race, cast, creed, or nation, still you are all impartially beloved by God. You may be a believer or an unbeliever in the supreme Being, but He cares not. His mercy and grace flow through all His powers, without distinction of friend or foe.

'Every leaf of tree, Allah's praise displays, Only the pious mind can hear their sacred lays.'

The sun, moon, and stars give light; the timely change of seasons promotes health and cheerfulness; the rain grows corn, fruits, and flowers; and the alternation of day and night provides the opportunity for work and rest.

'Earth, water, fire and air, All work harmoniously.

If you study your own body, you will find its mechanism to be the original model of the artificial mechanism of the world. Art and science fail if compared with that of His nature.

The ear, eyes, and all other organs, how perfectly they are adapted in shape and mechanism to the purpose which they must serve! How liberally the needs of life, water, air, and food, are supplied; even milk is prepared in the mother's breast for the unborn infant. Should we not appreciate the liberality of the Creator, and thank him each moment with all humility and gratitude? 'Praise be to Allah, the worship of whom is the means of drawing closer to Him, and the giving of thanks to whom involves an increase of benefits. Every breath which is inhaled prolongs life, and when exhaled it quickens the frame. In every breath, therefore, two blessings are contained, and for every blessing a separate thanksgiving is due' (Sa'di).

He has fashioned and molded you after His own image, and made you Ashrรก f al-Makhluรก t, the highest of all beings and the pride of the universe, having given you command over all other beings of both worlds. As is said in the Qur'an, 'Do you not see that Allah has subjected all things on earth to you?' And at the same time He has given you, by His grace, the attributes of humanity: kindness, gratitude, faithfulness, justice, modesty, piety, sympathy, reverence, bravery, patience, love, knowledge, and wisdom.

This is an open proof of your being the real object of creation and the most beloved of God.

NATURE

The argument has been raised that all manifestation is due to the interaction of natural elements, working by their own force; every cause has its effect, and the effect again becomes a cause for the reaction; thus nature works unaided. The answer is, that every cause must have some preceding cause, or first cause, to

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produce it; and logically one cause may produce many effects, which effects again become second causes, producing new reactions, 'While intellectual minds are seeking second causes, the wise man only perceives the first cause. Air, earth, water, being second causes, the precedent cause, which makes them act and pause, is hidden.'

THE PERSONAL BEING

Granting that we see nature, and also admitting its original cause, upon what grounds do we consider the cause to be a personal God, meriting worship? The answer is that nature itself consists of different personalities, and each of them has its peculiar attributes. The sum total of all these personalities is One, the only real personality. In relation to that One all other personalities are merely an illusion. Just as, in a limited form, a nation or a community is the sum of many personalities. Just as nature manifested in numerous names and forms is still called nature, singular not plural, just as the individual combines within himself the different parts of his body, arms, limbs, eyes, ears, and is possessed of different qualities yet is one person, so the sum total of all personalities is called God. He is the possessor of all the visible and invisible attributes of the Absolute, and has different names in different languages for the understanding of man. It may be said that the personality of a man is quite comprehensible, since his actions exhibit him as a single individual, whereas God's personality has no clear identification of its own. The answer is, that variety covers unity. 'Hidden things are manifested by their opposites, but as God has no opposite He remains hidden. God's light has no opposite in the range of creation whereby it may be manifested to view' (Jelal-ud-Din Rumi).

The wise man by studying nature enters into the unity through its variety, and realizes the personality of God by sacrificing his own. 'He who knows himself knows Allah' (Sayings of Mohammed). 'The Kingdom of God is within you' (Bible). 'Self-knowledge is the real

wisdom' (Vedanta).

God's relation to nature may be understood by analysing the idea expressed in the words, 'I myself'. This affirmation means the one individual; at the same time it identifies the dual aspect of the One. In this phrase 'I' is the possessor, and 'myself' is the possessed. So also God, the unmanifested, is the possessor; and nature, the manifestation, is the possessed, which has its source hidden within itself.

The possessed could not have been created from anything other than the possessor's own self, as there existed none but the possessor. Although the possessor and the possessed are considered to be two separate identities, in reality they are one. The possessor realizes the possessed through the medium of his own consciousness, which forms three aspects, the Trinity, of the one Being. The German philosopher Hegel says, 'If you say God is one, it is true; if you say He is two, that is also true; and if you say He is three, that is true too, because it is the nature of the world.'

God is regarded from three points of view: personality, morality, and reality. According to the first view, God is the most high; man is dependent upon Him and is His most obedient servant. According to the second view, God is the all-merciful and all-good Master of the Day of Judgement, while all evil is from Satan. The third is the philosophic view that God is the beginning and end of all, having Himself no beginning nor end. As a Sufi mystic has said, 'The universe is the manifestation of Allah, where from His own unity He created, by involution, variety — the state of various names and forms — , thereby distinguished as Allah, worthy of all praise and worship.'

DUAL ASPECT

According to Sufi tenets the two aspects of the supreme Being are termed Zá t and Sifat, the Knower and the Known. The former is Allah and the latter Mohammed. Zát being only one in its existence, cannot be called by more than one name, which is Allah; and Sifat, being manifold in four different involutions, has numerous names,

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the sum of them all being termed Mohammed.

The ascending and descending forms of Zát and Sifat form the circle of the Absolute. These two forces are called Nuzul and Uruj, which means involution and evolution. Nuzul begins from Zát and ends in Sifat; Uruj starts from Sifat and ends in Zát, Zát being the negative and Sifat the positive force.

Zát projects Sifat from its own self and absorbs it within itself. It is a rule of philosophy that the negative cannot lose its negativeness by projecting the positive from itself, though the positive covers the negative within itself, as the flame covers the fire. The positive has no independent existence, yet it is real because projected from the real, and it may not be regarded as an illusion. Human ignorance persists in considering Zát to be separate from Sifat, and Sifat independent of Zát.

WORSHIP

We may ask: why we should worship God, and whether the theoretical knowledge of His law in nature is not sufficient For the highest realization. The answer is: no. Theoretical knowledge of a subject can never take the place of experience, which is necessary for realization.

Written music cannot entertain us unless it is played, nor the description of perfume delight our senses unless we smell it, no recipes of the most delicious dishes satisfy our hunger. Nor can the theory of God give complete joy and peace; we must actually realize God or attain that state of realization which gives eternal happiness through the admiration and worship of nature's beauty and its source. 'The Beloved is all in all, the lover only veils him; the Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing' (Jelal-ud-Din Rumi).

TRUTH

Different methods called religions and philosophies have been adopted by different nations at various periods. Though the form and teachings of the several religions appear so unlike, their source is one and the same. But

from the very beginning the differences have created prejudice, envy, and antagonism between man. Such dissensions occupy a large portion of the histories of the world and have become the most important subject in life.

'So many castes and so many creeds, So many faiths, and so many beliefs, All have arisen from ignorance of man, Wise is he who only truth conceives.'

A wise man realizes that the fundamental basis of all religions and beliefs is one: Haq, or truth.

The truth has always been covered by two garments: a turban on the head, and a robe upon the body. The turban is made of mystery known as mysticism, and the robe is made of morality, which is called religion. Truth has been covered thus by most of the prophets and saints, in order to hide it from ignorant eyes, as yet too undeveloped to bear it in its naked form. Those who see the truth uncovered, abandon reason and logic, good and bad, high and low, new and old; differences and distinctions of names and forms fade away, and the whole universe is realized as nothing other than Haq. Truth in its realization is one; in its representation it is many, since its revelations are made under varying conditions of time and space.

As water in a fountain flows in one stream but falls in many drops, divided by time and space, so are the revelations of the one stream of truth.

Not everyone can comprehend the idea of different truths being derived from the one truth. Common sense has been so narrowly trained in this world of variety, that it naturally fails to realize the breadth and subtlety of a spiritual fact so far beyond the reach of its limited reasoning.

THE SUFIS

The word Sufi is derived from Safa meaning pure, purified of ignorance, superstition, dogmatism, egotism, and fanaticism, as well as free from limitations of caste, creed, race, and nation. The Sufis believe in God as the Absolute,

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the only Being; and that all creation is the manifestation of His nature.

There have been Sufis at all periods of human history.

Though they have lived in different parts of the world, speaking different languages and born into different faiths and beliefs, they have recognized and sympathized with each other, through the oneness of their understanding. Yet with their deep knowledge of the world and of spiritual mysteries, they have concealed their beliefs from the multitude, and have pursued in secret their way of attainment to the highest bliss.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Nature has been involved through spirit into matter, and evolves through different stages. Man is the result of the involution of spirit and the evolution of matter; the final effect of this cause is 'self-realization', which means that the Knower arrives at that stage of perfection where He can know Himself‌

'Thou art a mortal being, And thou art the Eternal One; Know thyself, through light of wisdom, Except Thee there exists none.'

The human being is inherently capable of self-knowledge; but to know oneself means not only to know that one is John, Jacob, or Henry, or short, tail, or of normal height, or to know that one is good, bad, and so forth, but also to know the mystery of one's existence, theoretically as well as practically: to know what one is within oneself, from whence and for what purpose one was born on earth; whether one will live here for ever, or if one's stay is short; of what one is composed, and which attributes one possesses; whether one belongs to angels, contemplating the beauties of God's nature, or if one belongs to the animals, who know nothing other than to eat, drink, and be merry; or whether one belongs to the devils. It requires perfection in humanity to attain self-knowledge. To know that I am God, or we are gods, or to know that everything is a part of God, is not sufficient. Perfect realization can only be gained by passing through all the stages between man, the manifestation, and God, the only Being; knowing and realizing ourselves from the lowest to the highest point of existence, and so accomplishing the heavenly journey.

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LOVE

The greatest principle of Sufism is, 'Ishq Allah, Ma'bud Allah' (God is love, lover, and beloved).

When Ahad, the only Being, became conscious of his Wahdat, only existence, through His own consciousness, then' His predisposition of love made Him project Himself to establish His dual aspect, that He might be able to love someone. This made God the lover, and manifestation the beloved; the next inversion makes manifestation the lover, and God the beloved.

This force of love has been working through several evolutions and involutions, which end in man who is the ultimate aim of God. The dual aspect of God is significant in Zรกt and Sifat, in spirit and matter, and in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms, wherein the two sexes, male and female, are clearly represented. The dual aspect of God is symbolized by each form of this wonderful world. This whole universe, internally and externally, is governed by the source of love, which is sometimes the cause and sometimes the effect. The producer and the product are one, and that One is nothing but love.

'A church, a temple or a Ka'ba stone, Qur'an or Bible or a martyr's bone, All these and more my heart can tolerate, Since my religion now is Love alone' (Abul Ala).

Sufis take the course of love and devotion to accomplish their highest aim, because it is love which has brought man from the world of unity to the world of variety, and the same force can take him back again to the world of unity from that of variety.

'Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God' (Balzac).

Love is that state of mind in which the consciousness of the lover is merged in that of the object of his love; it produces in the lover all the attributes of humanity, such as resignation, renunciation, humility, kindness, contentment, patience, virtue, calmness, gentleness, charity, faithfulness, bravery, by which the devotee becomes harmonized with the Absolute. As one of God's beloved, a path is opened for his heavenly journey: at the end he arrives at oneness with God, and his whole individuality is dissolved in the ocean of eternal bliss where even the conception of God and man disappears.

'Although love is a sweet madness, Yet all infirmities it heals.

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Saints and sages have passed through it, Love both to God and man appeals.'

PERFECTION

The ideal perfection, called Baqa by Sufis, is termed 'Najat' in Islam, 'Nirvana' in Buddhism, 'Salvation' in Christianity, and 'Mukhti' in Hinduism. This is the highest condition attainable, and all ancient prophets and sages experienced it, and taught it to the world.

Baqa is the original state of God. At this state every being must arrive some day, consciously or unconsciously, before or after death. The beginning and end of all beings is the same, difference only existing during the journey.

There are three ways in man's journey towards God. The first is the way of ignorance, through which each must travel. It is like a person walking for miles in the sun while carrying a heavy load on his shoulder, who, when fatigued, throws away the load and falls asleep under the shade of a tree. Such is the condition of the average person, who spends his life blindly under the influence of his senses and gathers the load of his evil actions; the agonies of his earthly longings creating a hell through which he must pass to reach the destination of his journey. With regard to him the Qur'an says, 'He who is blind in life, shall also be blind in the hereafter.'

The next way is that of devotion, which is for true lovers. Rumi says, 'Man may be the lover of man or the lover of God; after his perfection in either he is taken before the King of love.'

Devotion is the heavenly wine, which intoxicates the devotee until his heart becomes purified from all infirmities and there remains the happy vision of the Beloved, which lasts to the end of the journey. 'Death is a bridge, which unites friend to friend' (Sayings of Mohammed).

The third is the way of wisdom, accomplished only by the few. The disciple disregards life's momentary comforts, unties himself from all earthly bondages and turns his eyes toward God, inspired with divine wisdom. He gains command over his body, his thoughts and feelings, and is

thereby enabled to create his own heaven within himself, that he may rejoice until merged into the eternal goal. 'We have stripped the veil from thine eyes, and thy sight today is keen', says the Qur'an. All must journey along one of these three paths, but in the end they arrive at one and the same goal. As it is said in the Qur'an, 'It is He who multiplied you on the earth, and to Him you shall be gathered.'

PROPHETS

It is hard for intellect alone to believe in the possibility of prophetic inspiration. Intellect is the consciousness reflected in the knowledge of names and forms; wisdom is consciousness in its pure essence, which is not necessarily dependent upon the knowledge of names and forms.

The gift of wisdom gives vision in. to the real nature of things as the X-ray penetrates material bodies. Wisdom has been specially bestowed upon certain persons, and in these rare cases the receivers of it are more than merely wise, and may be regarded as the very manifestation of wisdom. They are the prophets, who have foresight, inspiration, intuition, clairvoyance, and clairaudience as their inborn attributes.

A Sufi considers all prophets and sages, not as many individuals, but as the one embodiment of God's pure consciousness, or the manifestation of divine wisdom, appearing on earth for the awakening of man from his sleep of ignorance, in different names and forms. Just as one's own sub -consciousness would awaken one at a certain time, if previously warned, in the same way the consciousness of God is the agency for awakening His manifestation, projecting itself through different names and forms to accomplish His desire of being known. All these causes of wisdom are the manifestation of the one cause, Haq. The prophetic mission was intended to train the world gradually in divine wisdom according to its mental evolution, and to impart it to man, according to his understanding, in forms suitable to various lands at different periods. This is why

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numerous different religions are still in existence, although the moral principles of all are the same.

Each prophet had a mission to prepare the world for the teaching of the next; each one prophesied the coming of the next, and the work was thus continued by all the prophets until Mohammed, the Khatim al Mursalin, the last messenger of divine wisdom and the seal of the prophets, came on his mission, and in his turn gave the final statement of divine wisdom: 'None exists but Allah.' This message fulfilled the aim of prophetic mission. This final definition is a clear interpretation of all religions and philosophies in the most apparent form. There was no necessity left for any more prophets after this divine message, which created the spirit of democracy in religion by recognizing God in every being. By this message man received the knowledge that he may attain the highest perfection under the guidance of a perfect murshid or spiritual teacher.

Sufis have no prejudice regarding any prophets and masters. They look upon all as divine wisdom itself, the highest attribute of God, appearing under different names and forms; and they love them with all adoration, as the lover loves his beloved in all her different garments, and throughout all the stages of her life. Sufis also respectfully recognize and offer devotion to their Beloved, the divine wisdom in all her garments, at all times, and under such different names and forms as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Mohammed teachings are studied and followed by the orthodox as religion, and by the deep thinkers as a philosophy.

SUFISM

Sufis, who had received spiritual training from all previous prophets and leaders, likewise received training from Mohammed. The openness of Mohammed's essential teachings paved the way for them to come forward into the world without the interference they had previously experienced, and a mystic order

called the Saheba-e-Safa, Knights of Purity, was inaugurated by the Prophet, and afterwards was carried on by Ali and Siddiq. The lives of these knights were extraordinary in their wisdom, piety, bravery, spirituality, and great charity of heart. This order was carried on by their successors, who were called Pir-oMurshid, Shaikh, etc., one after another, duly connected as links in a chain.

The spiritual bond between them is a miraculous force of divine illumination, and is experienced by worthy initiates of the Sufi Order; just as the electric current runs through all connected lamps and lights them. By this means the higher development is attained without great efforts.

Sufism was unostentatiously practiced in Arabia during the period of Sahabis, Taba'in, and Taba'-i -taba'in. Charity, piety, spirituality, and bravery are the real proofs of Sufi advancement.

The sensational Sufi movements which took place in Persia in the later periods, have won all the credit of Sufism for the Persians, and Sufism came to be regarded as a Persian philosophy.

Imam al-Ghazali, Juneyd-e Baghdadi, Farid-udDin 'Attar had taken the lead in advancing Sufism in the world at large. Shams-e-TabrĂŠ z, Sa'di, Khagani, Firdausi, Omar KhayyĂĄ m, Abdul Ala and other great Sufi poets, have very substantially established the reputation of Sufism by their inspired poetical works on divine wisdom. Sa'adi's works (Gulistan and Bostan) illuminate the intellect; the Divan of Hafiz expands the heart with divine love; Jelal-ud-Din Rumi's poems, the Masnavi e Ma'navi inspire the soul.

These works were originally composed in Persian, but are now translated into many other languages. They have been a most important source of education for humanity, and are studied as the most popular treatises on the divine wisdom of the East.

The spiritual part of Sufism was most miraculously realized by Abdul Qadir Jilani,

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Moin-ud-Din Chishti, Bahaud-Din Naqshband, Shihab-ud-Din Sohrawardi, and others.

India, being greatly addicted to philosophy, was well suited for Sufism, where, in ancient and modern records, a great many Sufis with miraculous careers are to be found. The tombs of Moin-ud-Din Chishti, Nizam-ud-Din, Sharif-udDin, Bandeh Navaz, Mohammed Gauth, are visited with much reverence and devotion by people of various nations and many beliefs, in thankful remembrance of their great careers.

Sufism, as a religious philosophy of love, harmony, and beauty, aims at expanding the soul of man until the realization of the beauty of all creation enables him to become as perfect an expression of divine harmony as possible. It is therefore natural that the Sufi Order should stand foremost as a spiritual power in the East, and that it is rapidly becoming recognized in the West.

Many Sufi saints have attained what is known as Godconsciousness, which is the most all-inclusive realization of the meaning of the word 'good' attainable by man. Strictly speaking, Sufism is neither a religion nor a philosophy; it is neither theism nor atheism, but stands between the two and fills the gap. Among the religious, Sufis are considered to be free-thinkers; while among intellectual philosophers they are considered religious, because they make use of subtler principles in life to elevate the soul than can readily be followed by material logic.

Sufis have in many cases realized and shown the greatest perfection in humanity. And among the lives of the Sufi saints may be found some of the most divine models of human perfection in all capacities, from a king to a laborer. The idea that Sufism sprang from Islam or from any other religion, is not necessarily true; yet it may rightly be called the spirit of Islam, as well as the pure essence of all religions and philosophies.

A true Sufi remains in the thought of truth

continually, sees the truth in all things and never becomes prejudiced, but cultivates affection for all beings. A Sufi accomplishes the divine journey and reaches the highest grade of Baqa during this life, but people of all beliefs arrive, eventually, at the same level of understanding and realization which Sufism represents.

Sufism contains all branches of mysticism, such as psychology, occultism, spiritualism, clairvoyance, clairaudience, intuition, inspiration, etc., but that which a Sufi particularly wishes to acquire is not necessarily any of the above-named powers; because the object of all these powers is towards greater individuality, and individuality itself is only a hindrance on the Sufi's path towards the accomplishment of his highest perfection.

Therefore the main object of initiation in the Sufi Order is to cultivate the heart through renunciation and resignation, that it may be pure enough to sow the seed of divine love and realize the highest truth and wisdom, both theoretically and practically, thereby attaining the highest attributes of humanity.

Divine perfection is perfection in all powers and mysteries. All mysteries, powers, and realizations gradually manifest themselves to the Sufi through his natural development, without his specially striving for them.

Self-realization is the highest and most difficult attainment of all; it is impossible to acquire it in the manner of sciences and arts, nor is it possible to attain it as health, wealth, honor, and power can be obtained by certain means. For the sake of selfrealization, thousands have renounced family and all worldly possessions, and kings their kingdoms, and they have retired to desert, jungle, or mountain fastness, striving to find in asceticism the secret of this bliss.

SUFI TRAINING

The murshid prefers a mureed whose mind is unembarrassed by other methods of training; who is free from worldly considerations, and is

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possessed of whole-hearted perseverance; who is capable of committing himself with perfect faith and devotion to the guidance of his murshid.

The practice of harmony and temperance is essential, but the murshid never prescribes for his mureeds the ascetic life; rather it is a peculiarity of the Sufi training that the mureed is quickened to appreciate and enjoy the world more than others. The murshid at first creates divine love in the mureed, which, in the course of time, develops and purifies his heart so much that it permits the virtues of humanity to develop freely of themselves. He then receives more and more divine wisdom from the appointed channel, and at last arrives at complete self-realization.

There is no common course of study for mureeds; each receives the special training best adapted to his requirements. In other words, the murshid, as a spiritual physician, prescribes a suitable remedy for curing every mureed. There is no limit of time for the advancement to a certain degree. To one, realization may come the moment after initiation; to another it may not be vouchsafed during his whole life. Among the Sayings of Mohammed one finds: 'It depends upon nothing but the mercy of Allah whomever He may kindly choose for it.'

Still, there is hope of success: 'Whoever walks one step towards the grace of Allah, the Divine mercy walks forward ten steps to receive him' (id.).

TO BE CONCLUDED

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TRANSLATION

Poetry of Jibanananda Das Translated by Syed Amir Milan Photography: Andreas Riedelmeier

Jibanananda Das (1899 - 1954) is the foremost name among poets who have written in Bengali since post-Tagore undivided Bengal. The harbinger of modernism in Bengali poetry, Das was an eclectic author who dexterously dabbled in poetry as well as fiction. In spite of being a prolific author, his ’introvert’ persona did not let him publish the majority of his works during his lifetime. It was only after his death that a massive collection of writings, locked in trunks, were discovered and intermittently published.

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darkness From the slumber of deep darkness, I rise with the babble of the river; I see the pale moon has withdrawn half its shadow towards The Kirtinasha*.

I lay at the banks of the Dhansiri** - December night Knowing I will wake up no more.

I will wake up no more - no more shall I rise.

O blue moon of musk, You are no daylight, no inspiration, neither dream.

The deathly peace and serenity in the heart, The endless sleep that exists within, You do not have the shellpower to obliterate that sensation, You are no burning, eternal pain Do you not know, o moon, The blue moon of musk, Do you not know, O night, For many days Many many days Existing in the womb of darkness like perpetual death, In the foolish excitement of the sudden morning light I have yet again identified myself As an earthling; I have been afraid, Felt infinite, indomitable pain; Witnessed the ruddy sun rising in the sky And order me to face the world, donning the garb Of a human warrior; My entire heart filled with hatred - pain - spite; Stricken by the sun's rays, the earth a fiesta of a Million boars' rending cries.

Oh, fiesta!

By drowning the sun in the peerless dark of the heart, I have wanted to sleep Inside the vagina, the breasts of the dark I have wished to remain like everlasting death.

I have never been human.

Oh man, oh woman,

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I have never known your world; I am no being of another world.

Where there are beats, collisions, velocity, Where there is inspiration, thoughts, purpose, There is the Sun, Earth, Jupiter, Orion, endless galaxies, A hundred boars, they cry.

A hundred boars in the spectacle of labour pain; Such harrowing worship!

My soul has blossomed, in the sleep of the deep dark; Why do you wish me to wake up?

O time, o Sun, o kokila of a January night, o memory, o cold wind, Why do you wish that I wake up.

From the deep slumber of the noiseless dark, I will rise no more at the babble of the river; I shall not see the lonely, composite moon Withdrawing half its shadow towards The Kirtinasha.

I will lay at the banks of the Dhansiri - slowly On a December night - knowing I will wake up no more Never will I rise - never again.

*Kirtinasha: A river in Bangladesh (literal meaning of name: Destroyer of achievements) **Dhansiri: Another river in Bangladesh. The poetry of Jibanananda Das often refers to the Dhansiri river.

orange One time, when I leave this body for good Shall I not come back to this world no more?

I hope I return On a winter night Possessing the pathetic meat of a frozen orange Beside the sick bed of an ailing, kindred soul. []

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DIS ILLUSIONS POTHIK BAGCHI delves into the dark world of disillusionment that is one of the most potent forms of intoxicants pervading the modern world, a low potentially as harrowing as a high gone rogue.

Graphics: John Hain (Also on facing page)

Would you go so far as to term disillusionment a loss that beats the ferocity of death itself? The mistimed slashes of the sickle notwithstanding, death is a constant that one gradually internalises to expect and withstand with a ritualistic pinch of salt, as devastating as the loss may initially seem to be.

Disillusionment can, on the other hand, be the rib shattering loss of a monument of devotion to the bitter reality or ‘truth’. Truth, as many of us like to smugly remind ourselves, is as relative as Einstein’s pocket watch, but that is not the point of this little conversation.

This breakdown of the relative truth is not the Derridian deconstruction, you remind me. It is perhaps more apt to describe it as a cartoonish implosion, a reaction that would jeopardize life en

masse unregulated. Its nuclear spill is often more far reaching than even the death of a celebrity, or, would you go so far as to say, the death of a being not remembered for mere cerebral or physical excellence but for the scarce quality of spreading joy, kindness?

People they can live without joy, you say. People survive the cold, molten world everyday. How would life be if your one true flagpole is as inconstant as Polaris, our assigned north star!

While us fortunate ones bask in the glory of a five thousand year cycle, the disillusioned ones, cast in hell on earth, spend eternity confusing true north with the grid and the magnetic. Robbed of pole stars, they sail disenchanted, refusing to interpret the Siren’s song or the plight of an airborne merman in gills, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

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You say you see it all too often in the bitter rants of those leaving your beloved Pompeii. They say the city will burn but you have little conviction in soothsayers. You trust your inner volcano to establish peace with the dormant one. You believe yourself enough to trust the illusion you have called your own which you are ready to burn for while the disillusioned search for greener shores in a ship sans helm.

Would you say you pity them? Would you say you were disappointed?

Would you raise your voice to stifle their rumour of sour grapes? You bang your head against a brick wall, claiming the seasons change. But you say they only see the fire and the ice and nothing in between – their simulation has fallen apart. They could try their hands at philosophy, you admit, but they can only do so in a Bordeaux chateau with pinot noir, far away from the Parisian streets.

My Venice may be humble and only a fraction from getting flooded but I know you are as much a being of disillusionment as I am. As Zika-ridden as you claim their rich slums are, they are only that, an illusion to sustain their search for the north while you take for granted your ancient gold sextant. Forgive me for being so bold, but in the melee of creation and death, you may have forgotten the math, and it is high time you begin to use a smart phone with a functional calculator.

I must ask you to refrain from using the GPS, however. As you will find out for yourself, I’m sure, they are as yet ill-equipped to complement your gifted finesse in the art of cartography. []

Graphics: Oberholster Venita

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