December 2016

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The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

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VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 9 - December - 2016

Columns: Sotto Voce-Indira Parthasarathy 08

Letter from London: John Looker 12

Musings Of An Axolotl -C.S.Lakshmi 75 P&P - Yonason Goldson 46 Talespin - Era.Murukan 19 Poetry:

William Doreski 31 James Croal Jackson 32 Ben Nardolilli 37

Kenneth P. Gurney 55 Sithuraj Ponraj 59 H.L.D.Mahindapala 66 John Grey 81

Smitha Sehgal 86 Flash Fiction: Jeff Coleman 16 Vyjayanthi Srinivasa 50 Fiction:

Paul Lewellan 41 Anders M Svenning 62 Book Review : Rails Run Parallel by Santhan Ayyathurai

Reviewed by Shyamal Bhattacharya 69 Non-Fiction: C.Raveendran 91

THE WAGON MAGAZINE KGE TEAM 4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024

Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

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PRASAD'S POST With just six rupee in coins, jingling in my trouser pocket,

with which I can’t even buy a cup of tea in the roadside teashop, I was a rich and happy man to walk in the streets of Chennai on this Sunday morning. That is after about twelve days of the surprise announcement of the demonetisation push by Government of India to drive away the black money.

Today the scenario is this: All over India, ATM centres are dead and the queues outside banks are killing; in a few cases, literally and regrettably so. A whole population of more than a billion is hankering for something they already have; a bizarre contradiction of scarcity in profusion. People can’t deposit the cash in their hand, nor lay their hands on the cash in their bank.

A flash fiction writes its own story in my mental notes: On 8th November, evening around dusk, everyone was going about their normal chores. All of a sudden, there was a white lightening The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

4 flash, and a booming voice followed. It loudly proclaimed that that was the GOD and wanted everyone to assemble at Marina Beach where he would make an appearance. After the initial shock in silence all hell broke loose. In Television, in FM Radios, in Mobile phones, in Social media platforms there was pandemonium. All talked, debated, doubted, denied but decided to go and see the God. All these were up to 8.15 in the night. Then Mr. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, appeared on television channels to announce the demonetisation of 500 and 1000 Rupee denominations. Then once again pandemonium prevailed. Since I did not have any such denominations to get exchanged, I decided to go to Marina and get introduced to God. When I went to the beach in the morning, cautiously, expecting a huge gathering of believers and non-believers, to my horror I found the whole vast of the beach was empty but for a few stray dogs. God was not seen in the vicinity. Then I realised, HE, being the richest of the richest, along with others might be standing in a queue outside an ATM centre or bank. On the other hand, being omnipresent, HE might be standing simalteniously in various queues.

Smiling at my own flash fiction, six rupee still jingling in my trouser pockets since could not do anything with that, I continued to walk further watching people standing in serpentine long queues, patiently, as Orientals are known for that quality in them, waiting for their turn in front of the shuttered ATM centres. A lone police man was standing beside, seen in an indifferent state of mind, scratching his shin or was he massaging?

I took a turn towards my abode to find a few women, keening loudly, beating their chests‌Ah! In front of a shuttered ATM centre!

I found the onlookers in glee and peeped in. Traditional mourning decorations like Garlands, coconut, smoking incense sticks and instead of a Single one rupee coin, there was a couple of 500 and 1000 rupee notes were all in place. The ladies seem to be professional mourners. They sang in a rhythmic singular voice.

I recalled reading a poem on this subject of ‘professional mourners’ by my poet, novelist friend Vyjayanthi Srinivasa.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

5 You empathise with a Rudali A woman crying for the whole world Unable to cry for her self

(Rudali: Indian Hindu tribal women hired as professional mourners)

(Incidentally, I also remember reading a Novel by that name written by Mahasweta Devi & Usha Ganguli translated by Anjum Katyal) After enjoying their bawdy satire for a few minutes, I moved on.

What a way to vent their anger and helplessness! Yes, we are known for this too. We celebrate everything loudly. Our culture is such that we celebrate every occasion in life, starting from birth to death, by singing songs created specifically for each occasion. In child birth we sing; to make the baby sleep we sing; in marriages we sing; while working we sing; in the fields farmers sing; Singing is within us, celebrating everything. After all, as said, if one departs leaving this living hell to a better place, heaven, why should death be mourned?

We never had this concept of ‘mourning the death’ till the arrival of the westerners three or four centuries back. But, the west is completely unaware, it seems, of the prevalence of professional mourning in the supposed fount of Western culture. ‘Keening’ is a traditional form of vocal lament for the dead. In Ireland and Scotland it is customary for women to wail or keen at funerals. Professional mourners, also called ‘moirologists’, are compensated to lament or deliver a eulogy. If dug deep, one can see this in the pages of History: 6th century B.C.: Greek legislator Solon institutes curbs against the use of professional mourners.

4th century B.C.: Plato forbids hired mourners in his Laws.

4th century: St. John Chrysostom derides the use of “hired women… as mourners to make the mourning more intense, to fan the fires of grief.”

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6 12th century: Epic about Spanish hero El Cid shows him requesting only unpaid grief: When I die, heed my advice: Hire no mourners to weep for me.

There is no need of buying tears; Those of Jimena will suffice.

17th century: Irish church forbids the hiring of professional mourners.

1800: Archbishop of Cashel prohibits “all unnatural screams and shrieks, and fictitious, runeful cries and elegies, at wakes, together with the savage custom of howling and bawling at funerals.”

Many saw professional mourners as a crucial part of the ceremony of loss. Like hired event planners, mourners applied their expertise to a practice that might otherwise fall into chaos. Of course, the bereaved were capable of grieving by themselves, but the professional mourner helped them to marshal and coordinate their expressions of grief. Among Spanish Jews in the 14th century, the hired mourner made her position as coordinator of grief more than metaphorical, by accompanying her wailing with a rhythm-setting tambourine. By the late Middle Ages, however, the church began to look down on the practice of demonstrative mourning in general (the thought of heaven should be sufficient to comfort the grieving parties, and dramatic lamentation implied a lack of belief in a happy afterlife), and professional mourning in particular. In the Christian world, priests would officiate at funerals, and in return, rich people often bequeathed money to orphanages and monasteries.

In his comprehensive book Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, Tom Lutz writes: “Professional mourners have not so much disappeared over the last millennium; they have simply donned robes and stopped crying” (201).

While researching this word ‘moirologist’, I found websites that offer ‘eulogy packs’.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

7 One such site lists a ‘Mother’s Eulogy pack’ that includes ‘9 speeches, 3 poems, 3 free bonus’. Only $25.95. Fathers go cheaper: $19.97.

Mentioned in the Bible, the occupation is widely invoked in literature, from the Ugaritic [a Northwest Semitic language, discovered

by French archaeologists in 1929. It is known almost only in the form of writings found in the ruined city of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), Syria.] epics of early centuries BC to modern poetry. Held in high esteem in some cultures and times, the practice was vilified in others. The short documentary Tabaki (2001) directed by Bahman Kiarostami follows the lives of ‘mourners for hire’. Bahman Kiarostami (born 11 August 1978 in Tehran) is an Iranian film director, cinematographer, film editor and film producer. He is the son of the late critically acclaimed Abbas Kiarostami. The main theme in Kiarostami’s films is art and music.

In Honoré de Balzac’s landmark novel Le Père Goriot (1835), the title character’s funeral is attended by two professional mourners rather than his daughters.

From ‘death’ this form of ‘hired’ chanting travels to other forms of literature too.

Hiring people to applaud dramatic performances was common in classical times. For example, when the Emperor Nero acted, The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

8 he had his performance greeted by an encomium chanted by five thousand of his soldiers.

This inspired the 16th-century French poet Jean Daurat to develop the modern claque.

Buying a number of tickets for a performance of one of his plays, he gave them away in return for a promise of applause.

In 1820 claques underwent serious systematization when an agency in Paris opened to manage and supply claqueurs. By 1830 the claque had become an institution. The manager of a theatre or opera house was able to send an order for any number of claqueurs. Claques were also used as a form of extortion, as singers were commonly contacted by the chef de claque before their debut and forced to pay a fee, in order not to get booed.

Although the practice mostly died out in Europe and America during the mid-20th century, it has continued in Russia, most famously with the Bolshoi Ballet.

Now we know why our poets when publishing their poetry books coerce all friends and contacts to attend; unpaid ‘claqueurs’! * Beef up the grief!

--Eddie Izzard We habitually forget or conveniently ignore the fact that death is also seeded along with birth. And we celebrate birthdays while in reality it is death day of the previous year.

But, we celebrate.

Krishna Prasad a. k. a. Chithan

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

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SOTTO VOCE INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

Crown or strawberries?

This year marks the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary year of the bard of Stratford-on-Avon, William Shakespeare, who was described by his senior and scholarly contemporary, Ben Jonson, as the ‘Soul of the Age’. Shakespeare was born in the year 1564, which was significant in the sense it announced the death of Michelangelo and also of Calvin, the former, representing Renaissance, in the field Arts and the latter, Reformation in the field of religion. Shakespeare’s works summed up the essence of both. Shakespeare died in the same year as Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, which by being the first of the modern novels that wrote an epitaph for the Middle Ages.

It looks like writing plays and staging them had no literary credibility, as like being a poet, during the period in which Shakespeare lived. It is said that Shakespeare had to write sonnets to prove The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

10 his literary worthiness. This is the reason his plays had to be published posthumously and his first folio found print only in 1623, seven years after his death. Ben Jonson, although, he was held in high esteem as a literary scholar (‘If learned Jonson sock be on, or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child- John Milton), was ridiculed by the academics, when he published his plays during his life time.

A small digression. Things were not different in India at that time and even now... The author of Natya Sastra and his hundred sons were considered as Brahmins of an inferior order for practising theatre.

Kalidasa, perhaps, had to write Meghadootam, Kumarasambhavam and Raghuvamsam, and such immortal poems because he knew his fame might not rest on his plays. Fortunately he had Sir William Jones to translate it in the 18th century and there was this outstanding German poet Johann Wolfgang

von Goethe to go rapturous after reading it in translation. That play did not merit literary consideration in our Indian cultural tradition could be the reason for the Sanskrit plays finding their translations in the Indian languages only after the recognition for dramatic creations came from the West in the 19th century . It must also be noted that most of the major literary works in Sanskrit had already been rendered in the Indian regional tongues centuries earlier.

This very well could be the reason why Ilango Adigal conceived ‘Silappadikaram’ as a play, but wrote it in an epic format.

Drawing the digression to a close and coming back to Shakespeare, though his infinite variety of characterization is inexhaustible, my favourite is his portrayal of the historical personalities.

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11 When one writes prose fiction or drama based on historical figures, history is mostly a grand setting, a background against which the characters, love, hate, suffer and experience their personal dramas.

But it appears Shakespeare looked at history in a totally different way.

It is not a background or setting but it is, by itself the protagonist of a tragedy.

History has no meaning, constantly repeats itself in cruel cycle that it is an elemental force, like hail, storm, hurricane, birth and death. One can find Shakespeare repeating it this over and again in all his tragedies, King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Richard II and Richard III. ………… for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antick sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, he fear’d and kill with looks; …………. And humour’d thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle- wall, and farewell king!

(Richard II,III,2) Most of Shakespeare’s historical plays are about power and politics. During the reign of the Plantagenet kings in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, history was a metaphorical staircase sketching the climb and fall of kings and their progenies.

They were either dethroned, or murdered, or both, almost reading like Mogul history in India after Jehangir.

Among the historical plays of Shakespeare, the most fascinating character is Richard III. It is very difficult to analyze this complicated character. He has a compelling presence, in spite of his uncouth physical bearing. He murders everyone that proves to be a hurdle for him to ascend the throne but yet, while reading or watching every scene, one cannot The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

12 but wait for him to arrive, and so absorbingly interesting is his character. This is, precisely, what is known as Shakespearian magic.

One illustration: It is just before early dawn, a time when royal or political conspiracies are hatched. All the barons and political bigwigs have assembled at the Tower, waiting for the most important man, Lord Protector, the Duke of Gloucester (later, King Richard III) to arrive.

The ruling king is dead and who is to ascend the throne? The decision has to be made by Richard. The dead king has two minor sons. Everyone in the assembly knows Richard’s intentions. Richard knows that he has to dispose of a few friends and foes and also the minor heirs to the throne before he sits on it. And he cannot do it openly.

The atmosphere is tense.

The lords talk amongst themselves that the Lord Protector may be requested to reveal his decision.

Suddenly there is thundering silence as Richard enters in measured steps in deep contemplation, as if he was in meditation.

Everyone looks at him in awe and anticipation.

Richard turns towards the Bishop of Ely. The Bishop trembles.

Richard says: ‘My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there; I do beseech you send for some of them’.

Saying this, he leaves the place. All of them look at each other in confusion and anxiety. What does the tyrant want? Strawberries or throne?

This is vintage Shakespeare. This could very well be from a Beckettian or Ionesco’s play.

Later, he accuses most of them of conspiracy and sends them to the Tower and that is another story.

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of R. Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright. He has published 16 novels,10 plays, anthologies of short stories, and essays.He is best known for his plays, “Aurangzeb”, “Nandan Kathai” and “Ramanujar”.

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Letter from London - 2 from John Looker

“How beauteous mankind is !

Dear Reader, I don’t suppose you follow soap operas. Neither do I, although I am about to admit to one exception. Like yours, my taste for fiction is generally assuaged by James Joyce’s Ulysses, Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Proust in the original French. But a contemporary soap opera can yield surprising gifts if we stop and think about it.

One story-line has gripped many Britons for months now: the story of a wife dominated and abused by her husband to the point where a strong and independent woman lost all confidence in herself, became cut off from friends and family, estranged from her son, robbed of her business reputation and, after an explosively emotional domestic row, locked in prison to await trial on charges of attempted murder.

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14 The story emerged in an unlikely place, on one of Britain’s oldest radio programes: The Archers, which used to be announced as ‘an everyday story of country folk’ and was smiled on for its gentle old-world values, clankingly loaded with advice on new farming practices. The old world was never a perfect place however and, like any soap opera, The Archers knew how to probe human frailties.

The recent story-line certainly did that – and modern social media unexpectedly amplified the drama. As the story progressed, listeners took to Twitter in their thousands with the hashtag #FreeHelen and other streams. There was a fierce desire to see her released, restored to her former self and justice done. Celebrities posted photos of themselves in support, from Prof Mary Beard the Cambridge classicist, to Sir Tony Robinson the actor and Samira Ahmed the broadcaster.

More practically, an online campaign was launched to raise donations in support of Refuge, a charity that helps victims of domestic abuse. Over 8,000 people so far have contributed, raising more than £170,000 to date.

The Archers has given us a subtle depiction of abuse. It was mental rather than physical, although eventually it included marital rape and a pivotal scene in which the husband placed a kitchen knife in his wife’s hand and taunted her to stab herself.

In essence however, a dominating and calculating man proceeded through countless small steps to undermine the confidence and mental health of a woman. There were small signs at first which were mistaken for over-protective love: insisting she should not wear the ‘revealing’ dress she had bought for a special occasion; pushing her to take time off work to rest. But things became clearer: taking over her business, confiscating the keys of her car, cutting her off from her friends. Yet the signs were far from clear to Helen whose The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

15 confidence slowly crumbled. Nor were they apparent to her family or others in the village to whom Rob, the husband, presented a charming and duplicitous face. If you are interested, you can read the story on the BBC website; search for “Helen and Rob the full story”.

The radio story alerted me to a similar theme in a book that I have been rereading: Middlemarch, the nineteenth century novel by George Eliot. In passing, let us note how sad it was that Mary Ann Evans felt the need to adopt a male pen name. I have foolishly left my e-reader on a plane, half way through the book, but we also have a paperback copy in the house so I can pick up in that.

If you know George Eliot’s story you will remember how her heroine married a man out of admiration more than love, longing to be of service to this scholar as his assistant, only to find that he was dismissive of her intellect. Surely the writer, investing so much of her own mental talents in her novel, must have been expressing something close to her own heart?

Worse was to come in Middlemarch, as Dorothea’s actions and motives were misinterpreted by her husband, he in time exercising his role as property owner and head of the household to restrict her own opportunities for fulfillment.

He died, as you might remember, but punitive provisions in his Will brought restrictions and shame upon his widow.

However, back to The Archers. There was jubilation in our household, as in countless others, when the jury found Helen ‘not guilty’ and she was freed, the husband’s reputation blackened in the process. Now however, we await the aftermath: Rob remains on scene, embittered, living in the village and finding new employment. Good for audience ratings, of course. Less so for our nerves.

I was not entirely joking in my opening paragraph above. I do indeed love Tristram Shandy, that immensely playful eighteenth The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

16 century English novel. Certain features are positively post-modern, such as a page blacked out and a Dedication (introduced halfway through!) with the name omitted so that it might be auctioned to any nobleman interested in becoming the author’s patron. The plot itself is a riot of fun, often harmlessly indelicate (the accidental circumcision of the young son, for example, with the aid of a faulty sash window).

Above all there is the gentle humanity of the characters: the delicacy in the relationship between Squire Shandy and Mrs Shandy despite their mutual incomprehension at times; Uncle Toby’s inexperienced courtship of the exuberant Widow Wadman; and the warmth between servants and employers (despite the great gap in position).

In its human kindness and respect for all persons it is a text for every age, even while recording a society that has since changed beyond any expectation.

My final thought is to wonder about the part that soap operas play in real life. Their simple purpose is entertainment and escape.

But do they also offer case studies in contemporary behaviour? Often their dramatic twists and turns arise from personal behaviour depicted at its worst, and yet they also take a lead in exploring social ills and reforming popular values. They can be a strange mixture.

I wonder what you think (although of course I know that you follow them only rarely).

“How beauteous mankind is ! O brave new world That has such people in’t !”

-The Tempest, Shakespeare, Act 5 scene 1

John Looker lives in southern England. He has written poetry all his life and now, in retirement, draws on the experience of a long career in the British civil service, on family life and on international travel. In his book The Human Hive, available through Amazon, John Looker explores our common humanity, down the ages and round the globe, by looking through the lens of work and human activity.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

17 FLASH FICTION

JEFF COLEMAN

ROOTS The universe was weakening.

Betty could feel the boundaries fraying around the edges, the evil beyond pounding against the celestial gates. The cosmos wouldn’t hold for long, and when its defences fell, it wouldn’t just be this universe that would suffer. Hers was the cornerstone, the center of all existence, the universe in which all other universes derived their being.

If she didn’t do something soon, all would be lost.

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Let her soul slip from her body. The cosmos absorbed her into itself, and then she was sailing across space and time. The fabric of existence quaked and shuddered with the force of the Darkness’s attacks, and she felt herself falter, gutter like a flame caught in a strong wind. But she would not let the world she loved so dearly die with her.

She pressed on.

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18 She let the Darkness draw her, let it tug her along the macrocosm’s star spangled surface like a lure. It was hungry, eager to consume her, to consume everything, and she would use its hunger against it.

One rumbling quake after another, each like a mountain hurled at her from a world-sized sling shot, and then she found herself at the source, a bulge in the cosmic substrate, a festering pustule that was growing like a cancer just beneath the surface.

I can’t do this. The thought skittered along the membrane of her mind, but she ignored it. She could, and she would. All of reality depended on it.

She let the Darkness pull her in further, until the g-forces from that supernatural black hole threatened to pull her apart. Then she reached out — it was like sticking the arms that were back with her body in tar — took hold, slowly peeled back the layers of empty space.

The darkness shuddered, reeled.

WHAT IS THIS? It was aware of what she was doing now. She had to work quickly.

She inserted herself into the place between, felt around for the roots of this deadly celestial blight and pulled.

Another rumbling shudder.

I WILL CONSUME YOU. Waves of despair crashed over her, and she faltered once more.

She could feel those poor souls who were trapped on the other side, wailing in eternal despair. It was catching, and like a fishing hook those dark emotions began to reel her in.

But Betty wasn’t having any of that. She sent out roots of her own, a blinding sprawl of intricate interconnected fibers. They anchored her to space and time, where she stood fast and let the Darkness’s greedy tugging work against itself.

Sure enough, the more ardently it struggled to pull her in, the more the hold of its own roots weakened, unable to withstand the intense shearing forces.

There was one final shudder, one that nearly did her in, and then Betty felt the first root snap. One by one the others followed.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? the Darkness bellowed, its disbelievThe Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

19 ing howl rippling across the universe. I AM UNDONE. The last of its roots disengaged and the Darkness was cast out at last, hurtling into the empty void beyond.

Exhausted, Betty surveyed the damage. It was extensive, she thought, but with time and help it would heal. She considered her body back home, an unfathomable number of miles and eons behind her, and let it go. She was a part of the universe now, ageless and eternal.

She extended her roots as far as they would go, hooked into the wounded patch of space and time like a scab. Yes, she thought again, the cosmos would heal. Together they would grow into something stronger, something greater.

The Darkness would return, but with her and the cosmos joined, they would be ready.

Jeff Coleman, Modern Literary Fantasy Author http://blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com/

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TALESPIN ERA.MURUKAN The champions and all that jazz

They walk beside us arm in arm. They, along with us, wait patiently for the next chamber pot to be vacated at the theatre rest room, as the comfort break is announced, with the stage play halfway through. They check their mobile phones for new messages at our adjacent table in the restaurant, waiting like us, to be served with filter coffee, piping hot and with no sugar added. Landing fatigued after a long haul flight, they stand impatiently next to us at the baggage claim zone in the airport, as everyone else has their baggage retrieved from the slowly moving conveyer belt and leave with big smiles celebrating their triumph. They are with us. We are all part of the crowd, the great faceless mass of entities, common and ordinary. Yet, they are different.

They appear to be away with the fairies and levitate, metaphorically or otherwise. They levitate getting a tad, may be a millimetre and a quarter, up and away from terra firma, a little floating on thin air, The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

21 defying gravity and the bondage of the dull and drab commonality.

That is my perception of those who are extraordinary. They are special human beings, these champions of various types, ethnicity and appearances. They are like us all, yet, they belong to a different lot, a group of low, if not high fliers. I am simply awe struck in their presence and at their proximity.

It all started with a slight misunderstanding on my part, as a school boy, long ago, in interpreting statistics. A twice removed uncle of mine informed me one of those days, in all solemnity‘An Australian consumes per annum 46.23 kilograms of chicken besides gulping down 230.92 litres of milk and 321.2 litres of soft drinks while the consumption of alcoholic beverages stands at 12.43 litres’.

I only asked for it, by responding to this uncle’s impromptu quiz on national capitals, with the right answer Canberra for the capital of Australia. Satisfied and with an apparent motive to impress me and the rest of the roadside cricket playing gang of ten to twelve, age wise, he reeled out this piece of Australia-centric statistics. I was in no way connected with Australia, except by the glossy information material their embassy in New Delhi would send me and other members of the gang every now and then, in response to our regular collective request for books and periodicals about their country. Yet, I was impressed enormously with this enviable achievement of the unfamiliar Australian.

I earnestly wished I could get a photograph of the super human Australian with such extraordinary powers in the realms of eating and drinking. Obviously he would have been over-worked. He would have made it his principal task to search for, identify and visit the best of breed butcher who would have self-inculcated a sense of Himalayan patience and a remarkable and infectious penchant for precision in him. Having done that, the butcher would have declared that he has all the necessary tools for his trade calibrated and ready, as well as an abundant, freshly fetched supply of the material for the underlying business transaction. With absolute élan and ease of operations coming from decades of experience, he would load fresh chicken on his electronic scales or a high precision manual weigh machine, 46.23 kilograms of the bird at one go, not a gramme more or a gramme less.

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22

Having accomplished this, the dutiful Australian would have sought the services of his near and dear ones or would have outsourced the grilling or sautéing of the chicken succulently or steam cooking it functionally. The boneless chicken would have been cooked without losing any mass in the culinary process and would have been consumed till there was no trace of it on the melamine lunch plate or on the late Victorian golden dinner plate with skilfully crafted cutlery in accompaniment.

The ordeal would hardly end there. A clean crystal glass beaker would be procured and on cue would be filled up with pasteurised milk for staged decant into a clean glass tumbler and would have been refilled repeatedly till 230.92 litres of boiled or cold milk was imbibed, not a millilitre more or a drop less. The beaker would have been washed and dried and the process would have been repeated for the binge drinking of all the carbonated sugar drinks of the outstanding Australian’s choice, all 321.2 litres of that. Then occurs the most arduous part of the Australian’s odyssey of the victuals and libation kind. Crafty sauvignon blanc and sauvignon cabernet wine glasses and stemless beer glasses and mugs would be aggregated for him to indulge uninterrupted in the extraordinary fete of alcohol consumption of all 12.43 litres, without getting drunk. These accomplishments would necessarily require the whole hearted cooperation from a motely group of patient-as–a-cow diary farm owners, retailers and bar tenders with an eye for precision as well as a medical practitioner in waiting, should any emergency arise.

I shared with others my spectacular Down Under vision and my awe and admiration for this incredible Australian who I presumed as moving around a wee bit tipsy due to heavy milk consumption and incessantly belching out, that being the after-effect of having a mini poultry farm, journeying smooth through his well organized digestive system. It was then my statistical uncle hastily interrupted me to apply the necessary course correction. He enlightened me on how to interpret statistics, any statistics that come my way. I was crestfallen to know that there is no such champion Australian who eats and drinks like a mathematical glutton but the furnished figures in litres and kilo grammes stand for an average or rather the sinister ‘per-capita’ conThe Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

23 sumption, that is arrived at by dividing the total consumption by the population count, in a year, which is per annum, in Latin.

In order to further impress me, this uncle who derived acute pleasure in procuring, constructing and sharing such information, went on to announce with unmitigated glee that he lived 1.387 kilo metres away from my home. He explained that the pedometer he strapped to his shoulder during his morning walks had measured this distance precisely as he went walking, as the crow flies. Had he, instead of ‘as the crow flies’ settled for ‘at a stone’s throw’ distance, I probably would have tested out to my content the veracity of that, with a few pieces of asphalt smeared rock stone, available heaped and strewn by the roadside.

Yet, the champion in the family, a statistical one at that, had to be lauded and applauded at all costs. It indeed is a tall order to be always on the hunt for all sorts of statistics, to read, comprehend, classify, analyse, memorize and more importantly, to continuously update the information as and when fresh data streams are made available. Considering the fact that statistics is not confined to a few spaces, the search for quality statistics would become a life-long pursuit bordering on passion. The sharing of curated statistics with all who evince genuine interest in that and with those not that intense would be a self-assigned duty for the sake of helping everyone to stay informed in the short term and get enlightened in the long run.

Arguably, it is not something one acquires on the fly. And this applies equally to all genres of special skills, the champions appear to possess.

In my native language Tamil, we have a classic literary work, Thiru-k-kuRaL, made of one thousand three hundred and thirty couplets each of a tweet length, that is, of around one hundred and forty characters. I know of one of my seniors at school and a few mighty elders of remarkable talent and an elephantine memory who had had memorized all the one thousand and three hundred and thirty couplets of Thiru-k-kuRaL. Not content with that, they would readily oblige anyone who cared to be treated to a full recital of all those verses with meaning, with curtain calls for encores most welcome.

Going still beyond that, they could even recite the exact couplet given The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

24 its serial number in the order of their arrangement. Mention any word and they would come out with a lightning response as to whether that term finds a place in the book and if it is present, the recital of all couplets containing the word would follow. Or on provided with the first word of any couplet, they usually would recall it and continue with the next ones to follow till the downpour is brought to a close with human or natural intervention. These are champions of the first degree, I would say without any hesitation.

I know of another category of champions who also specialize in Thiru-k-kuRaL. They flourished till a decade or two ago, kind courtesy the Postal Department of Government of India. An essential piece of postal stationery then was the ubiquitous ‘inland letter’. Coming with a light blue tinge, this stationery would be of roughly half the size of an A-4 size sheet of paper, length and breadth-wise, with neat flaps to tuck in and fold the letter vertically and horizontally at the middle, giving it a petit and snug look.

A couple of inland letters would just be adequate for a pair of separated-at-birth twins to appraise each other of how life was, kind or otherwise to them, at any given decade of their existence. A set of sixty-plus twins may each require half a dozen inland letters to have the entire flash back thrown open to the other with all bells and whistles and recollected family song and dance, as if they had lived together every moment of it. Though there appears to be no history documented in inland letters of any such champion twins meeting after their sixtieth birthday, all we know is that the medium of inland letter aids another category of champions as well. These are the crusaders for propagating Thiru-k-kuRaL and other classics far and wide, to re- establish the ancient ethos and attendant moral values.

They write with an ink pen the couplets of Thiru-k-kuraL on the inland letter and mail them to the addressees. Not unusual, one may think, though not quite sure of the audience for such spirited initiatives.

Anyone with a literary bent of mind, a pen to write, a friend breathing far away eagerly waiting to receive and read the epistle, as well as staying blessed with the availability in abundance of inland letter stationery in the local post office, can write at the maximum thirty or forty couplets The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

25 on the inland letter, fold it carefully along all the marked creases and mail it to the port of destination. But our champions are a different lot. They do write Thiru-k-kuRaL on a blank inland letter, but not a miserly thirty or forty. They go ahead and write the entire book of one thousand three hundred and thirty couplets on a single inland letter, with the smallest of letters one can write with an ink pen. Of course with a magnifying glass, the recipient of the letter can read all these verses and any further information written on it, lauding the skill of the letter writer, probably proceeding to safe keep the classical artefact of correspondence, for posterity.

As a young boy of ten, I was often, especially on Sunday after noons, made a reluctant letter writer by the elders in the family. It was of course not for their own use but my services were offered to the friendly neighbours, absolutely free and without even seeking the consent of the service provider, me. It was all extended as a gesture of enormous goodwill and amity with the nearest co-inhabitants of the planet, across the compound wall. The grateful grandpa and grandma neighbours would entice me with a few ripe palmyra fruits to their home and would diligently lay siege to my precious Sunday afternoon intended to be joyously spent on an invigorating game of street cricket, mindless of the scorching Sun. ‘Please help us to write a short and sweet letter to our son, the inspector of Police in the temple town, a hundred miles away from here, as you know. We want to convey briefly our blessings and best wishes to him and his family through you, a bright young lad from an illustrious family of our neighbours for the past three generations, whom we all including the inspector of Police at the temple town keep in high esteem’.

The ordeal would start in this docile manner. The first suggestion for the day will be thrown in along with palmyra fruits, cautiously yet casually.

‘Write with elegant, small letters as a brilliant, educated and cultured youngster would indulge in rather than with big ones what we illiterate and semi-literate are prone to scribble while forced to write, which the inspector of police in the temple town despises reading’.

Having established my position in the specially-enabled The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

26 hierarchy thus, I often would have to play the part I was expected to play. The wily old neighbours would start dictating a sentence, man and wife each in turn or in unison, in measured tones for me to sit all ears and faithfully reproduce in the letter. After the salutations and blessings for each member in the family of the inspector of police in the temple town, the climatic condition and the weather prevailing in our place would be duly conveyed with information on the water level at various reservoirs. The health status of these two elderly tormentors would find an elaborate mention next with updates on the previously conveyed status with data on further deterioration or improvement and the details of medicine prescribed by the allopath, homeopath and the native medicine man. Any food restrictions any of these healers of the sick would have enforced on their patients would find the next mention which usually would be followed by listed enquiries about the health condition and updates sought from the family of the inspector of police in the temple town. A quick status check would be made at that point of time by the old man by gently snatching away from me the partly written inland letter along with the cardboard pad to which it is secured with a steel clip and quickly going through the contents while reckoning the still available space for further writing.

The next warning about the need to write in still smaller sized letters would be issued forthwith, sandwiched with toothless smiles, as the ensuing sixty minutes would be utilized fully to convey the details of the cow at the backyard that had delivered the calf an hour before dawn, auspiciously on a Friday, the list of relatives who visited this month, the purpose of their visit, the duration of stay and the details of those who are expected to arrive the current and the week after. The details of the temple festivals celebrated in the past thirty days and those scheduled for the current month would be conveyed next and with a general round up of the going on like the municipal auction of tamarind trees on tank bund road and the intensifying of the bandicoot menace, the letter will come to close, again with blessings for all those intended to receive it and invoking all Gods in the pantheon to keep the family in their lists of the perpetually blessed.

These strenuous exercises in writing the history of an entire The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

27 family in an inland letter, at hindsight, makes me feel elated that I was more or less an upcoming champion once, reaching first base. Had I been a willing collaborator of the elderly neighbours and had an ear for news and deft fingers to write them all on an inland letter, I would have by now graduated to a position of writing not only Thiru-k-kuRaL in its entirety on the letter but also the meaning of all those one thousand three hundred and thirty couplets as well. I further would have proceeded with all domestic and neighbourly encouragement accrued, to write these epic epistles not on the inland letter but on its poor cousin, the post card. It was my misfortune the neighbours departed for their respective heavenly abodes sooner thereafter without intimating anyone through forced-labour-written communiquĂŠs.

It is not easy to become a champion harnessing the services of the postal department alone; nevertheless, that does not prevent me from being an admirer of champions.

The venerable author Kushwant Singh once observed the Sikhs, the race of the gallant warriors which he belonged to, have an ear for music, though in general they are never associated with music of any kind. Kushwant Singh mentions that the Sikh have so much music ingrained in them that they have set to music every verse of their holy book, Guru Granth Sahib, to a classical raga, the pre-arranged and pre-defined musical pattern. They have also meticulously indexed the whole book with appropriate raga links and soulfully sing the verses as they ought to be sung in the specified ragas. They have advanced one step further and have set the index of the book too to music. And they sing the index also, Kushwant Singh says. They are in my champions list, prominent for their innovative and spectacular achievement in the sphere of systemic, ethereal and eventually divine music.

That apart, there exists a bevy of other skill sets with exhibition of excellence and expertise in them available for experiencing and evaluating. I have watched a stellar performance by a senior citizen in his seventies, frail looking, and visually challenged. Veterans at that age would normally have hung their boots calling it a day and would have rested in earthly peace like the retired race horses immortalized by Philip Larkin in his poem ‘At Grass’. Yet, this individual did The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

28 not display any intention to be at grass or to while away the residual existence, cutting the grass. Instead he was forever eager to exhibit his unusual skills to all who cared to congregate around him. His specialization pertained to multi-tasking, now taken over entirely by computers. Nevertheless, this septuagenarian could do eight different things all simultaneously. Thus, someone sitting in front of him would be giving him a word to be the last in a four line verse with an expectation he completes and recites quickly the whole verse anew, taking into consideration the rhyme, meter and the necessity to convey a noble thought as core content. While this is going on, someone to his left, usually a lady with a supposedly melodious voice would be singing a near-melody of classical Indian music and within a minute the song commences, the performer would be expected to identify the raga -the music pattern- and mention it out. A third onlooker looking innocuous would be seated to this man’s right and would do something queer like touching the visually challenged old man’s nose every now and then with a freshly plucked rose. The old man was supposed to keep count of the number of times he was subjected to this flowery good touch and tell it out when the programme would conclude. To add to the torment of the elderly person, someone from the other end of the hall would go on mentioning loudly every five minutes, an eight digit number of his choice which the old man had to store in his mind and add to the sum total of the numbers already uttered. Another volunteer drawn from the audience would think of a popular person, like a political leader or movie star, one at a time in his mind and would be issuing three minimal clues that too cryptic to help the old man find out who the person was. The blind old man would be given a basket of flowers of different types and a bobbin of thin cotton thread, to keep his hands engaged in making a garlandof flowers, with clear demarcation of coloured segments, achieved through appropriate selection of flowers forming the sequence in getting strung together. He had to recite, yes, as you have rightly guessed, the exact Thiru-k-kural couplet, the serial number of which, yet another spectator would be furnishing at regular intervals. That would account for seven different tasks to be handled concurrently. Some one else, perhaps a history The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

29 aficionado would be at random mentioning an year in the common era at regular intervals, on hearing which the aged person with insight would be furnishing the list of historic occurrences that took place in that year, country-wise. He always would come out with flying colours at such demonstration of his multi-processing skills like a computer, never failing, quite unlike the electronic gadget. Such is the stuff champions are made of.

There is a near-extinct species of champions engaged in something unique, putting their life and limbs at risk, who seldom would make it to the safe and secured list. A couple of decades ago, I have read with interest, newspaper reports about a lanky youth who would stay in a freshly dug out shallow pit with lizards, scorpions, centipedes and, oh yes, snakes providing company, for days together. The pit would be barricaded in such a way to ensure the deadly co-occupants do not crawl up and out into the surrounding concrete jungle, while providing an unobstructed view of the peaceful co-existence of multiple forms of life, twenty four hours a day, as the event continued. This gentleman would have his leisurely breakfast, frugal lunch and a reasonably laid out dinner with all the venomous reptiles in attendance, crawling around and swaddling his body at times. He went for ablutions to a secluded corner suitably made private, as the vermin attempted playfully to crawl up his ankles or relax over his elbow when he opted to catch a few winks. Not once it was reported he was stung by a scorpion or had to be removed to the ICU, being a victim of snake bite. When I shared my unadulterated excitement over these singular happenings, with a well meaning friend of mine, she wryly observed, ‘Had these insects been gifted with the power of speech, they would have proclaimed themselves as real champions who at the greatest risk to their minimalist existence stayed that long with a human being’. Notwithstanding that observation on the vagaries of human nature and the vulnerability of animal existence, I followed with lot more interest the accomplishments of this lanky young man who in the course of time became a lanky old man with more number of snakes and other reptiles thrown in for company in confinement and the period of incarceration gradually increasing to a fortnight or The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

30 a month. I am still clueless as to who sponsored those reptilian events or what the lanky lad did for a regular living. A frequent newsmaker in the vernacular dailies with the photographs of him and the friendly snakes and scorpions appearing on the inner pages with weird captions, it was a matter of regret that this champion bid adieu through a tiny eighth page obituary reference in the same newspapers, as having passed away struck with contagious viral fever transmitted by mean mosquitoes.

Not sharing living space with snakes and crocodiles but still doing something unique and out of this world, would also, if carried out with all sincerity, earn the practitioner name and fifteen minutes of fame, if not leading one to the Hall of Fame. One of these champions stood on one leg for 7 days non-stop, shifting legs only twice a day.

Yet another, stood on his head for a couple of days, whistling old film songs while at it, and taking two minutes break every four hours.

Another champion I can place straight under this classification is the one who rolled a pea with his nose, for a distance of twenty five kilometres. It is certainly a feat qualifying for the honorary tag, namely champion, especially if they go by the opinion of someone like me gasping for breath even while crouching under the couch momentarily to retrieve the elusive ten rupee coin that has rolled out from the pocket.

While voicing out my three cheers to this champion, I also am keen to know whether there is any further information available in the public domain as to what happened to the pea and the sturdy nose after the fete.

How I wish the pea-roller took for company another champion who was at ease walking backwards. To add more variety, he could take one more achiever who could cycle backwards. If this is not enough, he with a heart for variety bound inclusiveness could have requested the reverse-bicyclist to strum a guitar as he reverse-pedalled, playing the notes in reverse order. I am ready to virtually applaud all these and write about them in my blog adorned with a dozen exclamation marks standing upright on their heads.

And still more champions do abound. There are those who contested sixty seven general elections to the nation’s Parliament and The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

31 had successfully lost all the sixty seven, getting forfeited of the security deposit they made to the Government Treasury for contesting. I wish them a happy return of the security deposit paid for the next election they would contest.

There are champions who definitely are not laughing stock but who have stood on a podium cracking jokes non-stop for seventy two hours, making the listeners roll or rather revolve with incessant laughter for three days back to back, perhaps requiring a little medical attention to put them back on their feet. That longish performance of standing comedy, as well as the collateral performance of the audience, would merit a champion tag.

Apart from these known champions, there are millions of those belonging to the unknown variety. What about the home maker as a champion? Does it matter if the entity is a he or she? For a small family of four, this anonymous home maker would have cooked half a kilogram of rice or made twenty pieces of roti (leavened bread) each day. Over a period of twenty years, these silent achievers would have cooked around a mind boggling three thousand six hundred kilograms of rice or about twenty thousand pieces of roti, of course not taking into reckoning the thousands of kilogrammes and litres of lentil soup, chutney, cooked vegetables and meat to go with the main item. Their accomplishment needs to be lauded on another count too – without getting stung by the monotony or getting fatigued and bored, they carry on tirelessly their self-assumed role of the provider of succour, vitality and energy to the whole family, as time roles on as a silent spectator. They are champions of all champions, always.

Murugan Ramasami • Techno banker and project management professional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA • An author with 28 books to his credit, novelist, short story writer, poet, tech-travel-humor columnist (Tamil and English) • Playwright in Tamil • Movie script - dialogue writer • Translator from Malayalam, English to Tamil

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32

Prose-verse William Doreski The Paintings in the Athenaeum Although too many images try too hard to flatter the eye, the fever or fervor of the paintings in the Athenaeum is catching or fetching. Elderly subjects gloom from their portraits. The brushstrokes that flesh them seem richer and surely are thicker than flesh. The backgrounds recede in browns browner than tropical wood.

I wish I were educated in oils and pastels. I wish watercolor would wash over me in sobs and sloughs. I wish I understood framing and being framed. Only someone who has undergone the proper apprenticeship can enlighten these patriarchs, make them smile.

I turn to the landscapes. Fewer in number and undisciplined in plot. Small figures conspire. A stream wriggles across a valley.

A mountain shrugs with considerable grace. A rider freezes midstride, the horse a hobby horse with tail like a speech balloon.

I want to halt this already static figure and ask how it feels to sport a canvas backing probably rotten enough to crumble at a touch. I want to ask the horse how its legs feel, splayed in this unnatural posture.

But I’ll leave these questions to art historians. They understand the upright attitudes of the portraits. They can distinguish one brown from another. And they probably already know how far that rider has to ride before the painting crumbles into dust.

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33

POEMS

James Croal Jackson MILLENNIAL BREAKUP I cracked my phone screen on my first date without you.

I carried it in my back pocket, like always, though maybe I postured myself differently, finally sitting up straight enough to carry my own weight.

I didn’t look at my phone until after the date. By then, I could no longer remember you without the shattered glass– the flawless screen was not made of the sand from our blazing beach days of black seaweed and slithering kites that begged the wind let go, where footsteps sank to let the tide become ourselves, to let the moon drag our bodies into the ocean’s boundless mirrors where, enveloped in the haunt of our thousand fractured selfies, we could hold our breaths no longer.

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34

PHONE CONVERSATION WITH MY SISTER ON CHRISTMAS DAY The trees are dead, she said.

Peering outside, it was true: A still-barren sixty degrees, sun meekly reveling in its new warm.

A week ago, our mother cut down the tree we picked apples from as children.

They were small, red, never delicious– brown and burrowed with worms because anything sweet from the skin isn’t as sweet as you might think.

All those colorful lights we tied around the necks of plastic and decoration, the way we choked the holiday, wrung out the last ounces of life from the animal ornaments on every pine.

The walrus with the broken tusk.

The hyena whose laugh can nearly be heard. As if anthropomorphizing could ever atone for the past but I would love to believe in a world where a fragment of a tusk means something is truly missing– perhaps rickety laughter ringing through thin walls, dominant as the wooden organ moans his mantra: everything in this world is connected. Not every connected thing is aware of its living, its connection.

But the way fingers dance deep resonance out of the organ’s shifty teeth to provide holiness for the changed house is the gift we must open for ourselves with our hands full of music– a sourness in harmony, an ode to shriveled apples.

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35

ENDER’S GAME We were children foretold to save the world.

We made love in alleys hidden from the moon.

We calculated the trajectory of movement, fleeing into battle rooms of weightlessness inundated with that floating feeling of our necessary covalence.

In our battle room at night you could not hear chirps or hums of passing cars.

No one heard laughter change to scorn, our mouths throttled with heavy.

I was too young to command.

In a way, the dark alleys orbited secret histories: time haunting the ghosts of war themselves.

We were honored with medals, golden kisses long after we gave ourselves naked to freezing water.

We became a star unaware of emitted light.

To touch was to will ourselves to sleep, to die knowing we had always been at war, every word a battle without the why.

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36

BROKE IN L.A. The only deals I actually found in Vons were in clearance. Beers half-off per bottle.

They’ll be ready in a box in my too-orange, too-granite Public Storage space when I am.

Bearded teens saunter by in lumberjack caps.

I will wait for more significant events in my life to drink the harp whose tones keep me moving.

Think about teeth– among the homeless drifters I probably consume the most peanut M&M’S, filling my days with processed rainbows and crunch.

How do you stop? I was at the 7th Street Metro, one a.m., no one there and the halls echoed in perpetuity.

Purple line for purple folk. I’m purple from dehydration. Mixture of gravel and headspace.

Play me some ukulele. The strings react to the roar of coming trains, twenty minutes late.

This is what I hear: my name is Grace.

I want to direct, and these are my roommates.

I realize even in the city’s darkest depths, no one is alone, even after the dream fades.

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37 The longer potatoes taste air, the more they rust over time. We strummed guitars with calloused fingertips (melodious incision). The pot overfills from the weight of boiling.

We whistled unfamiliar tunes through afternoon orgasms. My teeth cannot chew the raw. Steam will temper the room

COOKING POTATOES

enough to sustain our songs in my head.

I always liked to mix vegetables into the mash, the music, but the days are already too easy to cry. The onion remains sheathed in its flaky armor.

Bunches of corn are never shucked.

Even the cheddar stays in plastic past when these potatoes soften enough to feed. The chords are always harsh. We could never eat our fill.

James Croal Jackson is a writer, musician, and occasional filmmaker whose work in film and TV in Los Angeles led to a rediscovery of his love of poetry. His poems have appeared in magazines including The Bitter Oleander, Rust+Moth, and Columbia College Literary Review. He is the winner of the 2016 William Redding Memorial Poetry Prize via The Poetry Forum. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. Visit him at jimjakk.com.

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38

POEMS

Ben Nardolilli Dancer in the White City I am the dancer in the white city, once the boy and now the wobbling man filled with a grace of his own making the crowds jeer my every move, from the waves of me body on the floor to the echo of my shadow on the alabaster walls their disgust makes me feel strong, as if I need a license for these curves in the air I release with the rhythms of my feet because they can tear down their towers, and send their curtains and parapets crumbling, but this city is far from being a Jericho

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39

Out of the System What do you do, when the code is gone?

When the password no longer works, When the username leads you To empty calendars blocked off in gray?

What do you do when the calls cease?

When the offers stop coming?

When people who once requested you To cover them find someone else?

What do you do when this moment comes, The disorientation, the removal From everyone’s consideration?

What do you do when you fall off the roster?

Linked Out Tonight’s endorsements are coordinated, Nothing I can do to poke Through the conspiracy of kind words, Even if they are about me, I am silenced, forced to wear The stifling collar of their compliments.

I should be happy and not complain, Why violate others’ dream visions Of the ideal I help embody?

If do not see what they see within me, I should take pity on them all Their eyesight is bad and easily distracted.

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40

Clouds Over the Tribes The presents of a blast furnace Settles across the city, Soot and embers, but a sunset too, Prematurely reddened By the ironworks in the distance.

There is nothing redeemable For the ears to listen to, The rusty screech of metal and fire Is impossible to avoid, We talk in taverns to cover it up.

When winter comes, the sparks Warming up the dark air Will be welcome for their halo, Today, they only add heat To our nights and forge a sweat.

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41

The Poor Devil Beside Me I was never a good patient, I screamed, I cursed, I accused, I dared say, My insurance was a mess While I turned my charts over Into typographical crossword puzzles, Asking everyone to find the ailment Running across me, The experts were terrified and called Upon different geniuses to restrain me In dire straitjackets, I only complained Further about the reading, The used magazines in the room, They tried tongue depressors on me, But I broke them with a joke, And when pressing cold metal on my chest, My heart skipped a beat To fool those doctors that I was dead.

Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, Inwood Indiana, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry.

He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel.

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42

FICTION

Paul Lewellan Megan Bright Comes Home for a Visit

After I deposited my watch, belt, iPhone, keys, wallet, and Green Bay Packers bottle opener into a plastic basket, the pudgy orderly in powder blue scrubs ushered me through the steel doors with the reinforced windows.

“Remember me, Mr. B? I took your Creative Writing class about twenty years ago.”

I shook my head. I’d had a lot of students in the last thirty-five years. The name Harry Tillman embroidered on his white lab coat failed to jog my memory. “Help me out. What did you write about?”

Harry started walking me down the hall. “I wrote Dog Star, my first graphic novel, in your class. It was about an alien plot to take over Earth by inhabiting the brains of dogs.”

I stopped. A particularly vivid image flashed through my mind. “The alien dogs licked their balls a lot, if I recall.”

Harry chortled. “Exactly. My mother was not a fan of my work.

She would have burned it all if it hadn’t been for the assignment in your class.”

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43 “That I remembered.” We continued down the institutional hallway. “Ever finish the book?”

“I didn’t. I’ve always meant to. It’s in a file somewhere.” That was true for most of the work my students wrote. Megan Bright’s stories were the exception.

Harry stopped before the door to 211. “Good seeing you again, Mr. Beiderman. This is where I get off.” I knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a hearty voice called out from inside.

I found Megan Bright sitting on the bed with her back against the wall. She wore a loose black Children of Bodom concert shirt and cutoff jeans. She was sucking on a candy cigarette and coloring her toenails with a black Magic Marker. When she saw me she grinned so hard that the candy cigarette fell from her lips. “How the crap are you, Mr. B?” Megan, my student from fifteen years ago, had tried to kill herself two nights ago. Her caseworker called me at school and suggested a visit. It was Megan’s idea.

“I’m good,” I told her, taking off my jacket and putting it on the back of the long chair. I took off my tie. “I didn’t know you were a heavy metal fan,” I told her, motioning to her t-shirt.

“Actually I traded some pink flannel pajamas for the shirt and a box of candy cigarettes.” She put the lid on the marker and sat up.

“I’d paint your nails, too, but the marker is on loan.” Megan moved in slow motion. I wondered how many drugs it took to produce lethargy in the person who once had been the frenetic Megan Bright. “I’m working on my new image. I’ve thought about changing my name.”

“To what?”

“Dark Archangel of Death.”

“It’s got a nice ring to it.”

“Thanks.” She uttered a kind of half giggle/half snort. Even in her mid-thirties, there was still a lot of kid in her.

Megan had been a troubled teen, but a superb writer. We exchanged short stories by email long after she’d graduated. After college, her correspondence became sporadic, maybe two or three times a year, usually centered around a piece she was struggling to write.

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44 A middle-aged woman popped in. Her head was shaved and she had a violet heart tattooed on her neck. She wore Oshkosh overalls, a long-sleeved cotton blouse, and bunny slippers. On the arms of her white shirt were several damp red stains. “You done with the marker?”

“All ten toes, Alexia.”

The burly woman snatched it up. “Gotta be careful. Thieves everywhere.” Alexia motioned to me. “Your boyfriend?”

Megan shook her head vigorously. “No. He was my writing teacher in high school.”

“You got a name?” Alexia asked me.

“Joe Beiderman.”

“You single?”

“I recently reentered the dating market.”

“Good to know.” She winked at me before she turned back to Megan. “Steve said he’d take us out for smokes in ten if you’re interested.”

“Thanks, Alexia.”

The woman shuffled to the door. “I’ll swing by and pick you up.” She closed the door behind her.

“I think she likes you Mr. B.” “What can I say? I’m a chick magnet.”

“Be careful. She’s a cutter. And when she can’t get a blade, Alexia scratches her scabs until she bleeds.” Megan plopped down on the bed. “Plus she’s married to a gynecologist. He committed her. She pages through magazines and tears the heads off the male models.”

Megan sat down on the bed and sighed.

“This is embarrassing.” She didn’t look up. “When was the last time we talked that I wasn’t in crisis?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I told her. I pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat down. It had been a long day, but I had no one to go home to.

“I always enjoy our conversations.” There wasn’t much else to say. “At least you’ve made friends here.”

“It’s tough to hide. They had me in Group the first morning.”

She took a bite out of her candy cigarette and chewed it slowly.

“I just wanted to get out of St. Louis and away from Dick. I The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

45 took some comp time at work. What was he going to do, deny it? He knew why I was upset. I’m still not sure why I came home. Isn’t that such a damned cliché?”

“It happens. He was the guy you wrote about in your last story?”

“Yes. A straight shooter, I thought, and my supervisor. Then last summer I saw him at a Black Sabbath concert doing coke in the men’s room.”

“What were you doing in the men’s room?”

Megan took another bite of candy cigarette. “Too long a story.

Not germane. Anyway, he recognized me from the office and offered me a line.”

“Generous guy.”

“Actually I think it was my black lace bra and fishnet stockings that got his attention.”

That image of Megan sprang to mind. I shook it off and focused on the Megan Bright sitting across from me on the bed with the ill-fitting clothes and unwashed hair.

“I moved in with Dick last December. A month ago we took a three-day weekend and flew to Cancun. On the flight down he told me that our relationship had gone stale. He said we needed to put some lightning in it. He said, just for the weekend, ‘anything goes.’”

Megan made eye contact again. She wanted me to say something, anything. So I told her the obvious. “I’m not a relationship counselor, but that doesn’t strike me as a good first step toward longterm commitment.”

Megan laughed that little snort of a laugh again. “I thought at the time that he meant booze and drugs, but when we got to Mexico I realized he meant ... anything. A few hours later I had sex on a jet ski with an off-duty security guard who’d offered to show me his weapon.”

Megan shook her head, and scrunched up her face. “Unfortu nately that wasn’t the low point of the weekend. The other stuff is too humiliating for words. When we got home, things were different: uncomfortable, edgy, and volatile. I came home for the weekend, to be someplace safe.”

I remembered Megan’s home life, her troubled teenaged relation The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

46 ship with her parents, the fights over religion, and who she could date.

“My mother fixed Swedish meatballs and red cabbage, just like old times. My father and I discussed the new Dylan album over German chocolate cake. Then after supper I showered off the road grime and office slime. When I got back to my bedroom wrapped in a towel, there on my old bed was a pair of pink flannel pajamas, like I used to wear in elementary school. My mother must have gone out and bought them as soon as I said I was coming home. It was as though she wanted me to go back to being her little child again. And I just lost it.”

Megan drew her legs up on the bed, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She rested her chin on them and blinked, never breaking eye contact.

“So I threw off the towel, went back to the bathroom, and emptied the contents of my parents’ medicine chest into my stomach. My mother found me slumped over the washbasin of the sink. I barely had a pulse. She called the paramedics. After I stabilized, I went from the emergency ward to the locked ward. And when I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I asked them to call you.” She snorted again.

“Now isn’t that the shits, Mr. B?”

For three decades Paul Lewellan taught speech and English in the secondary schools.

Eventually he abandoned public education to teach Communications Studies at Augustana College, in Rock Island, IL. He’s been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has placed stories in publications such as South Dakota Review, Watercrest Journal, Porcupine, Big Muddy, Calliope, and Wild: A Quarterly.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

47 PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

Of Doors and Windows

When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.

No, I didn’t make that up. Julie Andrews says it in The Sound of Music. Half a century later, it may sound trite, but with the drama and trauma of this American election cycle finally behind us, it sure feels appropriate.

With uncharacteristic unity, liberals and conservatives alike long ago attained consensus that the ideological pendulum was never The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

48 going to swing back again. The polling data had us all convinced that Hillary Clinton would continue the policies of our Visionary-In-Chief, opening up America’s borders, tearing down real and figurative walls, and redistributing wealth while running up debt toward the 15-figure mark.

Some welcomed this as advancement down the highway to Utopia. Some lamented it as racing headlong toward the abyss. But all that’s behind us now. The door to the past is closed. Where the window to the future will lead, only time will tell.

Be that as it may, a few thousand years before Julie Andrews, King Solomon offered his own observations about open doors. With respect to wisdom, he said: Fortunate is the one who listens for me, attentively waiting by my doors day by day, keeping watch by my doorposts and entryways.

For whoever finds me finds life…

From Solomon’s perspective, when a door closes, it likely means we have to work harder to find a way in.

After all, what is a door? It is the transition point between one place and another or, in metaphoric terms, a portal from one phase of existence to another. As such, the only times we find doors permanently closed to us are when there are other doors that lead to better destinations.

Come to think of it, that’s probably what Julie Andrews meant.

We should see life, therefore, as a series of doors and doorways, leading us ever forward... if we have the judgment to choose and the courage to face the unknown. This is why Solomon adjures us to wait attentively and keep watch, looking and listening for opportunities, exercising patience and deliberation, always prepared to take the next step, yet always calculating to avoid the pitfalls of impetuosity.

If it sounds easy, listen more carefully. To paraphrase Robert Frost, something there is that doesn’t love a door. Think about it.

How often do you find yourself stuck behind some fellow pedestrian who heads for the doorway and then inexplicably decides not to go on through? He stops to have a conversation or to check his cell phone. She suddenly remembers something she left behind or The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

49 somewhere else she needs to be. In a single instant, the sense of purpose and resolution that leads people toward doorways mysteriously abandons them and leaves them irresolutely staring into space trying to recall where they are and where they’re going.

As successful as campaign slogans such as CHANGE and FORWARD may have proven in the past, the human psyche is averse to both of them. No different from the laws of physics, the laws of human nature dictate that an object at rest remains at rest and, even when in motion, the forces of gravity, friction, and resistance all conspire to stop our development and progress.

We don’t see these forces at work, but that just makes them more insidious. As we approach a new threshold, as we contemplate pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone in pursuit of some new level of accomplishment, a little voice beside our ear whispers, Are you sure you want to take the chance? Who knows what dangers lay ahead? Don’t abandon the safety of the tried and tested for the perils of uncertainty.

So powerful is the magnetic pull of the status quo that it creeps into the mundane activities of everyday life, creating a subliminal antipathy for every point of transition, subconsciously conditioning us to give up before we start.

And if we do make it through, that little voice changes tack but returns even more insistent. How wonderful you are! How accomplished! Look what you have achieved. Now you can rest upon your laurels. Be satisfied with your success and be at peace. Having made it through one door, our weaker selves try to prevent us from even contemplating passage through another.

But doorways aren’t the only places that traffic organically shudders to a halt. Stairwells as well seem to elicit a reflexive spasm of torpidity, especially when we are traveling in the upward direction.

Now that we’ve explained our natural inclination to turn back from every doorway, it’s easy to apply the same psychology to stairs.

Every footfall takes us a little higher, a little closer to the realm from which our souls descended into this earthly exile. Something deep inside us calls us every upward, prodding us to return to the heavens The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

50 and the source of our existence.

But every force has its equal and opposite counterforce. And the same resistance to forward progress that makes us door-averse applies itself with even greater energy to convincing us that if the Creator had meant for us to fly, He would have created us with wings.

A stairway provides a particularly apt allegory for personal growth. As gravity pulls us down, we have to push hard to propel ourselves upward against the very force that seeks to keep us earthbound. But as we do, we gain inertia, and in a single moment we make the transition to the next level, the next step, the next plain of human existence. But in that very same instant, just as we achieve the top of one step, we simultaneously find ourselves at the bottom of another, as if the universe were conspiring against us to keep us always in the same place no matter how much we exert ourselves to progress.

But that is precisely the point. Like the treadmill or the elliptical at the gym, we can go fast or slow, long or short, with or without added resistance, but we will always finish exactly where we started. Except for one thing.

We ourselves are different. We ourselves have changed. And when we step off the treadmill, like when we pass through the doorway or ascend the stairs, as much as it may be true that little has changed around us, something profound has changed within us.

Extend that process over a lifetime, and we will not recognize ourselves when we reach our final destination.

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, a talmudic scholar and former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, a keynote speaker with 3000 years’ experience and newspaper columnist, lives with his wife in St.Louis, Missourie, where he teaches, writes, and lectures.

His latest book, Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for success and happiness from the wisdom of the ages, is available on Amazon.

Visit him at http://proverbsandprovidence.com.

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51

FLASH FICTION

Dr.VYJAYANTHI SRINIVASA

CHASE

I walked fast, he kept up the pace. Is this letting off steam?

He quizzed. I walked picking up more speed. Is it because you are trying to flee the unwanted attention? I kept up my chin stared ahead; walked briskly. Anonymous congress grass with white flowers was scattered. God was not in the clouds. Is it unwanted memory? He was running now.

A woodpecker was in a huge tree, I could hear bird noise.

Did no one understand you? Father, mother? I looked at the watch, I had less time. Everyone else had no time.

Wherever does that time go...? Did someone, anyone ask you where you were? Or how are you?

I was panting, and I disliked it. I wiped my brows.

He was chasing loneliness.

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52

CREST FALLEN

“I have sort of forgotten what it is to feel like a woman, though I look like one” She was not responding to his compliment. He was thrown, he wanted a superficial distraction, a laugh, a swing, accidental touch or perhaps a caress, and he had a world of possibilities in his mind.

She had those promising eyes and that exquisite hint of a smile. “The way you systematically deconstructed his theory, it was in shreds!” He laughed, he had recovered quickly.

She liked resilience. Silence was unbearable for him.

He persisted “But you left her poetry alone, you ignored her” “Men make theories to justify power, Foucault died long ago, men write about how they enjoyed a woman, and women write about how he broke her heart” He looked crestfallen.

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53

LOVE STORY OF THE WILD AND TAMED

The jeep moved through the Nandan Kanan National forest area and the guide was loquacious about the animals, I was never interested in the wild life. But he spoke of them as though he had tamed them all and knew them personally, he passed several gates of wild birds, peacocks and knew them by names. He sort of understood me and it was unnerving, he knew animals, I wondered which animal would he think of me as? He was a conservative man with extraordinary common sense and instinct, not a man with whom I could ever engage in personal talk. He brought us to an empty cage amidst tall pine trees and deodar trees, their barks were used by painters. I was puzzled by the empty cage. He looked at me directly. Was he imitating Dev Anand? An old time famous hero of a movie called “Guide”?

“I brought you here to show the cage of a romantic white tiger. If you must know these beasts are selective in their mating habits, just because he is a male they won’t mate. They have to like each other. Otherwise they stay for years without mating or hating. In this cage lived a male white tiger, he was born and grew up in our national park. A tigress from the surrounding forest fell in love with him and came to the cage on her own and stayed with him. But those who are used to The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

54 wilderness usually want their home; she became homesick and left the cage. The male waited for her for few years; finally he stopped eating and committed suicide.

A love story of the tame and the wild, always a disaster� ....He was moved to tears.

I recalled seeing a foreign girl in a hat, next to him, in a photo in his wallet.

He looked up at me like a lost wild animal that could sense the loneliness of a fierce animal. He did not know fear, he knew loneliness.

PETALS TOUCHED WITH DEW

She was eleven years old, she could not see at all at nights.

She could not see her favorite Pogo show Thomas the tank engine, she was slowly going blind, and her retina was degenerating. She was the nerd of the class with thick spectacles, she wanted to read, and she wanted to be able to read even when she would be blind. She was blindfolded and taught to read in Braille, every day....

I saw a dew drop on the daffodil petal, hated myself for seeing.... did not want to touch anything at all.....

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55

IRISH COFFEE

“Umm....so they no longer serve Irish coffee here? I will reconcile to the sizzler”...He was annoyed already. “You think Gone with the wind is a book supporting rape myth?” He seemed to think of it as blasphemy. Perhaps, Rhett was his hero. Why people identified themselves with the opposite of their persona? He was a boy scout. “Scarlett loves him after he rapes her, remember? Because she talks of Ashley with light in her eyes” ...He nodded. “When a woman says NO, she actually means YES...Margaret Mitchell, a woman wrote it!” Sizzler arrived with a huge noise...

Dr.Vyjayanthi Srinivasa is a Bengaluru based Poet and Writer. She is a psychiatrist by profession.

Her poems are published by Unison publishers in anthologies ‘Peacock’s cry’ (2006) I, me and My self (2009 ) Silent Flute (2012) by Sahitya Akademi.

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56

POEMS

Kenneth P. Gurney Mutable Moves Toward Assimilation Two Indians stand in a darkened tunnel, the Metro train five minutes out from the station.

And it strikes me where did I get the nerve to write two Indians in a darkened tunnel, when my blood boils with Beowulf and Mabinogion poems or that my audience might lynch me for the audacity of two Indians war-paint-dancing out my white fingers and onto the white page of recorded custom that wrote the end of so many oral traditions and sent Indian kids to schools that erased their history and forbade the continuance of their native languages.

Two Indians stand in a darkened tunnel, the Metro train three minutes out from the station, when one asks the other his tribal affiliation and he responds Washington Redskins shrugs off the much debated nickname with a third and long pass pantomime and the image of him in full football gear playing high school and college ball and how he ghost dances them as glory days memory.

Wall Street says the first Indian.

It’s much less regulated by the feds than any of the tribal casinos.

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57

Because Poem #01 Because it was not a bad day, but a bad ten minutes near the end of the day, Leon drinks his first pint in seven gulps.

During his second pint he studies each dot that comprises Lidia’s patriotic and freedom tattoos with the desire to rub their ink out of her skin with his massaging hands.

Because he does not have enough money to pay for a third pint, Leon stares for a long time at the foam residue in the bottom of his second, then lets his mouth salivate the memory of the last pint into his mouth while looking at the burgers on the grill, some smothered in cheese, others smothered in onions.

Because Leon’s bad ten minute experience finally dissolves as the second pint blurs his resentment into an out of focus image of a GQ cover photo with someone famous he can’t quite name in a well tailored suit, The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

58

he gets ready to leave, but as he pushes his barstool back Lidia smiles a don’t want to go home alone smile at him that does not quite curl to desperation at the corners, but does wrap around the syllables that asks if he wants another pint of Guinness.

Because he wants another pint out of long habit, Leon mounts the barstool again and rotates to face his stout benefactor and provider.

Because there is history between Leon and Lidia he suspects that there might be a chance that she will invite him back to her place to feel her legs wrap around his waist.

He feels sure the chance will increase exponentially with each drink she consumes up to the point where her drink rubber stamps sloppy drunk to her cream-white forehead in which case he knows he will simply walk her home to see that she gets there safely.

Because Leon is now alert to Lidia’s potential loss of the ability to be a consenting adult, he slows his swallow mechanism and lets his glassware magnify the woodgrain of the bar and the stippled patterns of its bar napkin.

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59

Adoption Red Tape My family is a pastiche of artists, poets, actors and musicians.

We have all prostituted ourselves in one way or another over the years.

Each of us survived our prosecuted crimes and ineptitudes.

None of us carry guns or knives, not even swiss army knives, so the locals label us liberal.

We attempt to preserve everything we created for posterity, so the other locals call us conservatives.

The locals have prostituted themselves in one way or another, so we invited them to join our family since survival played a binding theme.

But the ones who carried guns and knives, were afraid we would want to take away their guns and knives.

And those who did not care for posterity, feared we would cause them to care.

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, USA with the lovely Dianne. His latest collection of poems is Stump Speech. For a list of publishing credits and other books visit: kpgurney.me The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

60

POEMS

Sithuraj Ponraj

Ravana Rama’s wife: like the earth (her mother) was a delight to all five senses. Her skin was brown, more supple than Ganges mud. Warm and sweet smelling as the ground under jackfruit trees at sunset.

Perhaps it was lust: that I wanted to scoop her up and slake a stubborn thirst, with twenty trembling hands. Anoint her like perfume on my chest.

Or place her on my shoulders, her feet as red as slender fish that dart across dark ponds.

But it was not to be.

For fate was a tyrant and her marriage too: That she would hold up her husband as a mirror to my soul.

And say the shadows were cold spaces Too distant to be crossed.

But my road was set, as surely as Rama’s bow. We were twin axes to the crystal That was Sita, never to coincide.

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61 There would come doubters Who would later debate if I had touched her Or just the ground under her feet as I carried her away.

They do not know that I continue to carry Sita like a potent curse As I did that day she laughed, at the last battle When I fell maimed but eager still To embrace her shadow and the earth.

Civiis Complex Make room, the rain is an old passer-by looking for space. under slanted roofs black umbrella blown up in the wind; the clouds that shake off wetness dog-like causing office people to shriek politely.

Usually a nuisance. The rain pushes a trolley full of old things, all grey and Unwanted. We have filled our pavements With so much of ourselves.

The least we could do is make space.

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62

Alexis

you sort hot afternoons like fish sending silver scales glittering across the wide open floor; they are the sea that tap your feet for a dance. you crack stories that are a bag of peanuts, offering me some that I pretend to eat: carefully separating the shells from your fingers. There I am, faithful wingman as you stare down books fighting long words with all the flourish of a bombardier.

And then you will grow up (for you always do) your mother and I quite old will remember sitting with you sorting afternoons like fresh fish and the stories that you told.

Sithuraj Ponraj lives in Singapore and

writes in Tamil and English. His pieces have been published in various periodicals as well as in Singapore's Tamil Murasu. Sithuraj Ponraj is currently translating Federico Garcia Lorca's poems from the Spanish to Tamil after which he hopes to find a publisher. He can be reached at espiesx@yahoo.com.sg.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

63

FICTION

Anders M. Svenning

Of Interest

Half past six, Evert and Linda Jameson were sitting in their favorite café, the table a blue and white plaid tablecloth, with candles flickering, the floor waxed and made of hard wood. A barista was attending two patrons who had entered and sat down to a table nearby the Jameson’s. Evert and Linda were sitting patiently, waiting for their chai tea, the café the type of place where Evert didn’t mind waiting, for every time he went into this café he saw something different, so many things were on the walls. Bright red tricycles hanging by ropes, hay brooms stuck to racks, chessboards, too, hanging from the ceiling by fishing line.

“We could go there and pick him up,” Linda was saying. She was twenty-five years old and Evert was twenty-six. “We could go there and pick him up. We’d only be gone a week at most.” The barista came over with their chai and she set the tea in front of them, and returned to her station behind the counter.

Evert Jameson took a sip of his chai, then said, “You know I’m not against it, but can’t we choose a better time?”

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64 “A better time?” said Linda. “This is the best time, the only time. He’s waiting for us in Nairobi.”

Nairobi, Evert thought, rather put off by her words, which seemed impulsive, but he had patience with her the three years they had been together, and he loved her very much. “I don’t think I can fit it into my schedule,” he said.

“You can! I know you can!” said Linda. “Oh, how I love black babies. They’re so cute in the face and their smooth, creamy skin is so beautiful. Oh, how I love black babies.”

Evert shot a glance to the corner of the café, an African-Ameri can man, who was tending his own chai. Evert felt embarrassed. The African-American man, though, did not seem to hear her. “I’m not against it,” he said. “But can’t we choose a better time?”

“A better time?” said Linda. “This is the best time.”

“I don’t think I can fit it into my schedule,” he said.

“You’re against this!” Linda said.

“I am not.”

“You’re against this!” Linda said.

“Don’t make a scene, Linda,” Evert said.

“I’m not making a scene,” Linda said. “But, I just figured— you’re against this.”

See if I take you out again, he thought. Quiet and reserved, Evert Jameson was the type of man who, for a long while, thought she was getting verbose. Of late, she would speak outright nonsensically, childishly, with a substantial dose of naïvety.

“Oh, Evert, it would be magical,” she said. “Don’t you know the wonder in such charity?”

“I know,” he said. “But can’t we choose a better time?”

“A better time?” Linda said.“This is the best time. Oh, Evert, it would be so interesting!”

“I’m interested,” Evert said. “It’s hard to believe how interested I am. It’s hard to believe.” He sat, meditative. “Can’t we just conceive our own,” he said.

“We could,” she said. “But where’s the charity in that?”

“I don’t know. It’s charitable as it is, having children.Why do you need one now? What brought this on? Have you been talking to Lisa again?”

“That liberal? No, I haven’t been,” she said, but he didn’t believe The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

65 her. “I’ve just been thinking to myself, late at night, when you’re asleep, how nice it would be to have a child, a baby, in the house.”

Feeling betrayed, in the sense that she thought about such things as he slept beside her, Evert took another drink of his chai. “I don’t think I can fit it into my schedule,” he said.

“You can, Evert. Don’t lie to me. I know you’re against this. Are you against this?”

“You know, the more you carp about it, the more I feel inclined to say yes I am against this.”

“I knew it. You’d be a great father, Evert, a great father. The obvious differences, he being from Africa, would go unnoticed after a few months. You’d be a great father, Evert, a great father.”

Evert felt he needed a glass of chardonnay, hearing her talk like this, but did not order one, and simply let slip away her remarks, virility obsolete, Evert Jameson a withering flower, the rudiments of angst permeating in his psyche, taking a last sip of chai, and setting down the paper cup on the table. He looked at his wife, who, opaque, sat between fabricated endearment and his would-be masculinity, and separated the couple in a fine and opalescent tear, pressuring him, a catastrophic imminence in his gut, telling him he was, in fact, uncharitable, that she was, and that they were to be parents, not of their own, but that of a foreign birthright. It made his usual good temper to abscond, and made brusque his smoothness, rendering arid his sweetness. He said, “What would it take?”

She said, “Like anything worthwhile, it takes determination.”

“And luck,” he said.

“Luck plays a part. But that’s where you come in.”

“How so?” he asked.

“You, as a parent, keep luck at bounds, and fate, too. You’re the mediator.”

Evert flushed at the thought. He felt not empowered, nor did he feel fatherly; he felt entirely childish and silly. The flight, the child, the paperwork, the city, Nairobi, the trip home, the homecoming, their first dinner as a family. It was all very impractical. It was all very confining. The taking in of a boy removed him from reality. His head started spinning. His heart started throbbing, and quite suddenly he felt his brow start to perspire. Incandescent rays of light hit the tables The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

66 and walls and people around him with vigor, an imperceptive itch on his back taking prescience, his head gray.

“Oh, it would be so interesting,” she said, at last.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she said.

“But, I just can’t do it,” he said.

A few seconds passed, and, finally, she said, “Fine. If you loved me you would do it.”

“Don’t say that,” he said. “I love you. I really love you.”

Linda, flustered, got up from the table. She traversed the floor to the restroom. Evert sat alone and he thought if he had made the right choice. It was not the right time. They were young. It definitely was not the right time. She returned, and she looked as if she had been crying. “Are you ready to go?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

The arose together and exited the café. Outside, the stars shone like gems in slate rock. The Floridian atmosphere clung to their necks. Evert had cooled off. Linda sniffled and shook her head. The car was just around the bend. The sky, as they drove westward, toward their home, was being sucked in a backward direction, toward the café and toward the beach. The night was receding.

“I hope I didn’t ruin your night,” he said.

“You didn’t,” she said, thinking he ruined her life. “It’s just that I thought you’d be all for it.”

“I’m not against it, but can’t we choose a better time?”

“Oh, Evert,” she said, not looking at him. She looked out the window. “Oh, Evert.”

Anders M. Svenning studies creative writing at the University of South Florida. He started writing seriously at about the age of nineteen.

His work has appeared in many literary journals, Forge Journal, Grey Sparrow Journal, and The Kentucky Review, to name a few

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67

POEM

H. L. D. Mahindapala

Colour lights at the cross-roads Right at the edge of the converging roads Where the blind lights command the hurrying hordes Travellers grind to a halt against their will Caught between hope and arrival And here I must pause, Like those burning with a cause, Till the policing lights agree to set me free.

The mirror narrows the wet road I left behind And the wiper clears the distance I have yet to find.

Trapped between lights, I wait in the middle of nowhere.

And with nothing to do, I sit and stare At the metallic mice scuttling before my impatient eyes.

The road ahead is not meant to be easy.

After the rain, it’s actually greasy.

I have to steer clear of fallen trees, Deceptive dips, bumps and debris.

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68

I stick cautiously to my lane Taking care to avoid the insane Cutting in and out Even at the roundabout.

The road runs into a steep incline: Roads never run on a fine even line.

Now I must step on the gas Just to keep up with the running mass.

Up at the peak you can look down On tiny red roofs of a small town And before me is the snaking terrain dancing all the way to the plain.

But I must take care not to exceed the speed: The winding slope is tempting indeed!

At last I cruise smoothly on the flat stretch watching the colour lights, itching to switch.

The cross roads are drawing near.

The green leaps to amber.

I rev to race on my lane to skip the wrath of red again.

My foot is flat on the board.

Will I make it across the road?

The road ahead is quite clear,

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69 But the deceptive amber, Determined to detain, is fading again.

The way ahead is determined by authoritarian lights And yet I run to beat the might of lights waiting, watching, to catch me on my way.

The colour lights are wired to delay.

So what chances are there against colours Falling silently like the lids of undertakers?

At the cross-roads it is invariably fraught With red for travellers caught Between hope and arrival And for my survival I must pause Till the forces that govern the laws Come together and jointly agree to set me free.

H. L. D. Mahindapala, a Sri Lankan

domiciled in Melbourne, Australia, is a journalist, literary critic and poet. His poems have been published in the leading literary publications in UK, Australia and Sri Lanka. He was the Editor of the Sunday and Daily Observer (1990 – 1994), President of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association (1991 – 1993) and Secretary-General, South Asian Media Association (1993 – 1994).

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70

BOOK REVIEW

Shyamal Bhattacharya RAILS RUN PARALLRL A Novel

by SANTHAN AYYATHURAI

Recently I have read a novel titled ‘Rails Run Parallel’ by Ayathurai Santhan, a contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil author of repute.

This is a story told through journeys in and across the country, and through memories of the past and ruminations on the present, a story of finding one’s place in that place called ’home’.

Background of the novel is the 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka followed the 1977 general elections in Sri Lanka where the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalistic Tamil United Liberation Front won a plurality of minority Sri Lankan Tamil votes in which it stood for secession. Around 300 Tamils were killed in the riots and thousands of Leftists were driven from their homes. The massacres were initiated and actively backed by the Sri Lankan government in power.

Ethnic allegiance is no respecter of state borders, which have been arbitrarily drawn. The struggle for cultural identity is now the world’s most potent anti-systemic force, the great destabilizer. The violence it generates defies the neat categories of ‘class war’ of Marxism-Leninism just as it makes nonsense of the Soviet-sponsored global terrorism theories of Reaganism-Thatcherism.

Pick a country and political system on any continent, from The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

71 riots in Alma Ata in the USSR to civil war in Nigeria to conflict in the Middle East, and you will find that deep-seated ethnic considerations surrounding race, religion, language and culture have proven at least as significant as issues of ideology and economics in emerging nation-states. The resulting consequences of political systems neglecting the issues of ethnic diversity have been wars, state and guerrilla-sponsored terrorism, officially sanctioned human rights violations and incredible polarization among people who have far more in common in their daily quest for a decent life than they do in their ethnic differences. Sri Lanka is an unfortunate example of this neglect. Once the envy of many developing countries for its educational and health care systems, the crisis has reversed these achievements and damaged much of the social fabric of this small Indian Ocean country. The conflict is between two ethnic groups - the largely Buddhist, Sinhala-speaking majority, which composes some 75 percent of the population, and the mostly Hindu, Tamil-speaking minority; which makes up about 17 percent of the country.

After the independence and especially after the ‘Sinhala only act’ of 1956, Tamil parties were asking for more power for North and east of Sri Lanka where Tamils are the majority. Some have gone further asking for a federal system. There were many agreements (at least two) with the Prime ministers, but nothing implemented.

Finally, the desperate Tamil leaders decided that there is no point in co-existence and only solution is a separate state. In 1974, all major Tamils parties representing Tamils in the north and north east Tamils came under one forum (named as Tamil United Liberation Front - TULF) and in 1976 they adopted a resolution at their party convention in Vaddukoddai, Jaffna calling for a separate state (Tamil Eelam).

Once Sri Lanka’s National Security Minister Athulathmudali casually referred to how the US is partly responsible for problems in Sri Lanka today. In the early 1800s, he correctly noted, US missionaries started in educational institutions in northern areas of the island inhabited by Tamils. This quality education led to Tamils having better access to universities and employment in government. This situation The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

72 bred resentment by many Sinhalese and began to be reversed after independence in 1948 by successive Sinhalese-dominated governments.

The minister was right in suggesting that many Tamils became frustrated with limited access to schools and government work. But far more revealing is his perception, as a Sinhalese, that the crisis stems from ‘problems with Tamils.’ Tamils, who have been systematically discriminated against since independence, are no more a cause to conflict in Sri Lanka than are persons of colour in South Africa for the abuses of apartheid. The fundamental cause to the civil war in Sri Lanka is the nation’s inability to forge a ‘just’ political system that accommodates diverse ethnic groupings.

Quite unlike its giant poly-ethnic neighbour to the north, the legitimacy of political leaders in the newly independent Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) did not rest on an anti-colonialist struggle that effectively united diverse ethnic groups. Some historians claim these leaders simply rode on the coattails of their Indian counterparts. The legitimacy of the government, which has always been dominated by Sinhalese politicians, became increasingly staked on the identity of the Sinhalese and their language and sacred Buddhist religion.

Of course, Sri Lankan history did not begin with independence.

Resistance to colonial rule took the form of a religious and cultural revival in the nineteenth century, which protested the fact that most Buddhists were at the low end of the socio-economic and political scales. From 1833 to 1912, in all but one case, Protestant Christians of both language groups ‘represented the interests’ of the largely Buddhist, coastal Sinhalese in the Legislative Council. Although poverty was widespread in all the island’s ethnic communities, some Muslims, Christians and Hindu Tamils had visible, highly placed economic and political positions in society. Periodic clashes between Buddhists and these other religious groups did occur.

Several factors fuelled this revival. The Sinhalese glorified their roots, claiming distinct inheritance from a superior Aryan race.

They also emphasized their belief of Buddhism’s special place on this supposedly sacred island, and exaggerated images of invading Tamil The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

73 kingdoms from India many centuries in the past. (In reality both the Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese came from India.) With tens of millions of Indian Tamils just across the narrow straits separating the island from India, this last image has been particularly troublesome to the regionally small Sinhalese population.

In the election of 1977 happened on July 21, 1977, the Tamil districts voted almost entirely for the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), a political party in Sri Lanka to openly advocate separatism of the Tamil regions of the country.

For some years, there had been sporadic attacks on army and policemen in the Jaffna region, by militant Tamil youth groups which consists a handful of members advocating separation through violent means. The new prime minister, Junius Richard Jayewardene, was convinced there was a link between the TULF and the militants, and wanted to suppress both.

Prior to the 1977 elections, JR Jayawardene promised that he would give the Police a week’s leave so that his supporters could attack members of opposing parties. After his victory, his Government launched unprecedented state violence against the opposition, targeting supporters of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, and the People’s Democratic Party. In particular, some 9,000 families of supporters of LSSP leader NM Perera in Yatiyantota were driven from their homes, many of which were destroyed.

There were different beliefs on how the riots started. Some believe they started when there was a dispute began when four policemen entered a carnival without tickets. Apparently the policemen were inebriated and proceeded to attack those who asked for tickets. The conflict escalated and the policemen were beaten up by the public and in retaliation the police opened fire.

Others have the view that the carnival incident was a pretext, inquiries revealing that it was conducted in an organized manner and was hence a pre-planned attack. The riot started on August 12, 1977, within less than a month of the new government taking office.

Edmund Samarakkody in Workers Vanguard (New York) The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

74 reported: The outbreak in mid-August (1977) of the anti-Tamil pogrom (the third such outbreak in two decades) has brought out the reality that the Tamil minority problem in Sri Lanka has remained unresolved now for nearly half a century, leading to the emergence of a separatist movement among the Tamils. As on previous occasions, what took place recently was not Sinhalese – Tamil riots, but an anti-Tamil pogrom.

Although Sinhalese were among the casualties, the large majority of those killed, maimed and seriously wounded are Tamils. The victims of the widespread looting are largely Tamils. And among those whose shops and houses were destroyed, the Tamils are the worst sufferers. Of the nearly 75,000 refugees, the very large majority were Tamils, including Indian Tamil plantation workers...

Government response was revengeful. Questioned in Parliament by Amirthalingam, Prime Minister Jayewardene was defiant, blaming the riots on the TULF: ‘People become restive when they hear that a separate state is to be formed. Whatever it is, when statements of that type are made, the newspapers carry them throughout the island, and when you say that you are not violent, but that violence may be used in time to come, what do you think the other people in Sri Lanka will do? How will they react? If you want to fight, let there be a fight; if it is peace, let there be peace; that is what they will say. It is not what I am saying. The people of Sri Lanka say that.’

Finally, on August 20, the government ordered curfews and deployed the military to quell the riots.

In this quiet, reflective, Ayathurai Santhan’s novel, love and hate, trust and distrust, the past and the aftermath, and memory and nostalgia run parallel as rails run down a track. Victims of racial violence were directly or indirectly forced to relocate to parts of North and East Sri Lanka. Protagonist Sivan is a contemplative man, he leaves Colombo to Jaffna with his wife Verni and a colleague’s family by Yarl Devi express. The description of agony before and during the journey was heart throbbing.

The events during the pogrom radicalized Tamil youths, convincing many that the TULF’s strategy of using legal and constitutional means to achieve independence would never work, and The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

75 armed insurrection was the only way forward. Many such Tamil activists began to join various Tamil militant groups to fight for separate statehood. Even though more than 100,000 Tamils had fled to nearby southern India, the civil war was largely internal in its dimensions.

But the author suggested a different way. Sivan initially thought of starting a business of his own and settles at his village near Jaffna.

His parents and wife was happy with this decision. But later returns to a Colombo that is at once familiar and unfamiliar, to find his place in society he had left behind. Sivan’s past and present fuse with the stories of others, whom he meets and remembers along the way, as an untold love story with a Sinhala girl slowly unfolds.

Though a rich mosaic of narratives emerge a society that yearns to learn to trust each other in a time charged with the rhetoric of difference. Probably this attitude of coexistence made author to remain silent about further conflicts, although this novel is published in 2015, he felt it was unnecessary to describe impacts of Indian peace-keeping forces in 1987 and the situation after killing Prabhakaran and his core team by Sri Lankan Army.

Ayathurai Santhan writes a humane story against all the brutality beside the Bo trees. After all, humanity does prevail. Civilisation does progress through trust and coexistence. We are happy that he was recognized by Sri Lankan readership and received Fairway National literary Award, Godage National literary Award and shortlisted for prestigious Gratiaen Prize. I wish him all the best and looking forward to read his famous novel The Whirlwind and The short story Collection.

(Published by PawPrint Publishing,Colombo, Sri Lanka- First Edition -2015 Price: Sri Lankan Rupee: 500

Shyamal Bhattacharya, born in Agartala (1964),

holds a graduate degree in Library Science, Masters degrees in Hindi and Public Administration and a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism. Thereafter he shouldered the responsibility of Assistant Editor in Sakalbela, a Bengali daily till April 2013. He is an eminent author of Bengali Literature and a linguist of repute.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

76 MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C.S.LAKSHMI

Closing Time for Gregorian and Vedic Chants When Leonard Cohen passed away recently, a good friend of mine, knowing I am not familiar with such music, sent me his ‘Closing Time’ to listen. I was deeply moved. He sent me more but ‘Closing Time’ kept playing in my mind. The warmth of his voice brought tears to my eyes the same way a classical song of the Indian music tradition would. It made me think that there is so much to music that one cannot fathom in a lifetime. And when that thought occurred I remembered it was not the first time such a thought had occurred to me.

Two years ago when I was furiously doing some homework before interviewing Dr S. A. K. Durga, who passed away as quietly as she had lived, on the 19th of November, and read details about her research, I realised I knew nothing about Gregorian chants which was her research subject and began to search the web to know what The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

77 they were. I also realised much to my embarrassment, that I did not know anything about Vedic chants either, two oral traditions she had compared in her research although I was familiar with Thevaram hymns which were also part of this research. When I sat down to talk with her, as we reached the subject of her research, I asked with great hesitation, if she could explain the two chants to me. I have known temperamental musicians and musicologists, who would literally burn you to cinders with their unseen third eye of superior knowledge combined with justified vanity. Durga was like none of them. With that endearing smile of hers she began to demonstrate in her enchanting voice, to this musical novice that I was and still am, Gregorian chants and Vedic chants. For a while time stood still and even her cats lay still.

When I had framed my questions for the interview I was interested in her mother Lalithabai who was a Harikatha artiste and disciple of Rajamanikkam Pillai. And Durga told me so much about her mother and her own musical journey. Being a Harikatha artiste was not easy in her mother’s time. Even the ‘Bai’ to her name was in the tradition of other Harikatha artistes of those days like Banni Bai and Saraswathi Bai. But after her marriage Lalithabai did not continue her Harikatha performances but took to music for both her husband, who was a great connoisseur of music, and her marital home in Kumbakonam, did not approve of Harikatha which had many other connotations. But Laithabai asserted herself in other ways. She was a Gandhian. So right at the entrance of the house would hang photographs of Gandhi and other leaders. Sometimes someone from the police would come and warn that the photographs must be removed and she would remove them for a while but out they would come in a few days.

Lalithabai began teaching her daughter Kumari Durga music from the age of eight. Later Durga learnt from Tirukkodikaval Venkata rama Iyer. Later, at the age of eleven she began her music lessons with Madurai Mani Iyer. At a young age she got married to her cousin as per her parents’ wish for she had always gone by what they said and she became a widow almost soon after. Kumbakonam was not The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

78 a place where relatives in the extended family would be kind to a young widow. Durga stayed at home for two or three years and then with her mother’s support decided to study further. The entire family decided to shift to Chennai. For her post graduation studies in music in the Madras University, she chose voice culture. Durga specialised in studying voice culture at a time when not many were even thinking about it. Her own musical journey also continued with Maharaja puram Viswanatha Iyer and Balamuralikrishna. She also learnt Hindustani classical music from Ustad Mohammed Munnawar of Delhi. She did her doctorate studies in Wesleyan University on ethnomusicology under the great T Viswanathan, fondly referred to as Viswa.

Her post-doctoral work which she did at Yale Univeristy in the Yale Divinity School, was on comparative study of Gregorian chants and Vedic chants and Thevaram hymns.

The little I had found out about Gregorian chants was that they were plain chants credited to Pope Gregory I (r. 590604) and that these were chants written by him at a time when there were no musical notations.

Celebrated musician John Raymond Howell, who was associate professor of music in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, University in Blacksburg, Virginia, says that there are some wonderful stories and legends associated with Pope Gregory l. He says there are paintings showing a bird singing chants into his ear as he wrote them down. There are also stories, he says, “of his sending out missionaries with instructions to bring back any new music they encountered, saying ‘Why should the Devil have all the good songs?’”

Powell goes into the history of the Gregorian chants and the myths associated with the chants, but says that it would be best to The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

79 call them plain chants. Where Vedic chants were concerned all that I knew was that they were orally passed on traditions of chanting the four Vedas and that they were recondite melodies which could be transmitted only orally with human intervention and could not be committed to books.

Durga made it all come alive for me in the course of our conversation. She did it with the ease of an expert but also with the warmth of a teacher who was trying to teach a complex subject to someone who may not be able to grasp it all. She repeated the technical terms, singing along and demonstrating each term. She explained how the Sama Veda and the Gregorian chants were chanted in a descending scale and that any melody, whether it is Western or Indian had what were known as syllabic, neumatic and mellismatic elements. When one note is sung per letter it is known as syllabic. When two notes per syllable are chanted it is known as neumatic. When several notes per syllable are chanted it becomes mellismatic. Rig Veda is syllabic, Yajur Veda is neumatic and Sama Veda is mellismatic, she explained.

The Gregorian chants are in all these styles of singing. She also explained the ragas in which Sama Veda and Thevarams are sung.

Sama Veda was sung in Karaharapriya but also in Sankarabaranam.

Thevarams could be in the pann mode but also in ragas like Harikambodhi and Sankarabaranam.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

80 The highest point of this research Durga felt was her singing the Gregorian chants in the Marquand chapel at Yale University. It was the most exciting moment but also the most poignant and deeply emotional one for a Hindu was not only allowed to enter the chapel at the time of worship but also sing the Gregorian chants.

S.A.K.Durga with trombonist and jazz teacher Bill Lowe at Wesleyan University Jazz drummer Royal Hertigan and others

Why did she not become a performer and why did she have to be a musicologist? A performer needed an entourage to accompany her when she performed, she explained. She needed a brother, an uncle or a mother to go with her to various performances. Singing over the radio was different but performances meant travel and someone who could negotiate payments, travel arrangements and so on. It was difficult for someone from a non-performing family to manage that if she happened to be a woman. Some women were lucky to have family members who accompanied them but in the case of Durga it was not possible. She did not see it as a big loss for she enjoyed the research part of it and the several books she has written are proof of how much she enjoyed doing research on a range of subjects connected with music and performance. She also wrote on music and gave regular lecture demonstrations.

Normally musicologists are seen as those who cannot sing but can theorise on music. Lalitharam Ramachandran, a connoisseur of music who writes on music and who had introduced me to Durga, The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

81 narrated an incident about Durga during a lecture demonstration, which was so typical of Durga and her charming ways. Durga was giving a lecture demonstration on South East Asian music at the Music Academy in Chennai. The audio that she wanted to play just refused to open in the computer at the Academy. After a few trials she decided to sing them herself.

Ramachandran met her later and congratulated her on her ability to sing other forms of music with effortless ease. She looked at him and said: ‘Did you think that musicologists couldn’t sing?’ with an unmistakable twinkle in her eyes.

There were celebratory events for Leonard Cohen’s music.

One wishes that this December season in Chennai there is one to celebrate the music of Durga. And just maybe someone could sing the Gregorian chants and the Vedic chants in her memory. And maybe I could be in the audience to be transported to the time in her old house in Mylapore when she sang the Gregorian chants followed by a Thevaram and the Vedic chants. Blessed was that day when suddenly that old house with a musty smell became a magical space filled with music, with her cats cuddling up to her, bringing tears to the eyes of the listener. And I happened to be that fortunate listener.

C S Lakshmi is a researcher and a writer who writes in the pen name - Ambai.

She is one of the founder trustees of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women) and currently its director.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

82

POEMS

John Grey TOGETHERNESS FROM MY ANGLE Though I’ve been friends with Matt and Ada for many years, I find I cannot appraise them with a lover’s eye.

In my presence, she is politics, he is sports, and they both are business.

That’s the after-image that stays with me once they leave – reading newspapers, watching the game, dressed in stylish but conservative suits.

They give me no indication of how people behave when they’re alone.

They do not hold hands in my presence.

Nor do they kiss.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

83

So I associate them less with romance and more with magnanimity and a constancy I never find in other couples.

Sure, they grow older, gray at the edges but there’s this expression of character that never changes.

It must be how they must handle the sheer scope of life together, twenty years and counting.

And in all that time, I’ve never heard a bad word spoken about them.

So maybe they’re overdue for a really good one.

But you just won’t hear it from me.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

84

CHARMS I used to go through life with a wheat penny and a ball-bearing in my pocket that I reckoned were my lucky charms.

The coin came to me in the change from a coffee and muffin and that tiny drop of steel I picked up off the sidewalk.

They were both light enough so that I didn’t even know they were there most of the time.

However, it seemed, good luck didn’t know they were there either.

But, at least, there was no coercion between those tiny talismans and the worst that could occur.

So, for as long as I toted them around, stuff merely happened as I would expect it to happen.

There were no unexpected windfalls, no grave disappointments.

I used to go through life thinking I had this special protection.

But it was really all about natural selection.

And the extremes of this life never selected me.

But a penny and a ball-bearing – they made their choice.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

85

WE WHO HAVE SAID SO MUCH The end of the day has been many things.

We’ve witnessed.

We’re testament.

A fire is late spring’s choice.

A tent, a camp, the two of us feeding the warmth of its will.

Paper’s just trainee logs, whisked to nothing in a whoop of heat.

The dry leaves are into it.

Veins buckling, they die for the second time.

Logs are more company than mere shudder and collapse, smoke blow and roll.

Once trees.

Once bird landing strip or squirrel walk The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

86

or a snake’s second spine.

If a flame could speak, it would be a log’s life story.

But fire runs out of things to say.

Weary, it crackles and pops its last kindling.

And we talk until our words glow here and there, cool off, their remaining sense mere ash.

Then night’s like a mouth muted, closes lips over secrets, tamps the flame, tempers the people.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

87

POEMS

SMITHA SEHGAL UNLEARNING Look at the tree choked by the lustrous electric pole of civilization Between the racing roads where cars, trucks and buses throw up the Sun There is a man (whom you and your accomplice call lunatic) beneath

its scrawny canopy

Collecting Colours of Pain in a garbage bag When you become me and I become him, we will unlearn the past and learn What you called Light Is a glitter dotted line drawn by a child with clumsy nimble fingers What you called Shadow Is the mirror of a curtain drawn by the clouds What you called Travel Is world running past a very still you What you called Yamuna Is a river subterfuged by milky froth emissions What you called Winter Is perspiration of Earth After this, when we return We shall draw out and separate the skein threads of our consciousness And learn more The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

88 what we call Home is Earth that has no borders what we call Roof is Sky cerulean by day and lantern lit by night what we call Religion is a cry for help, corroded by hunger and cold in refugee camps what we call Human is a mass of Bones and Blood beneath

Unmarked Graves,

gender is only a square column in paper work

what we call Child is a Dawn sleeping on its stomach with closed eyes, bent knees, on the shores of Mediterranean what you call Poetry is blood flowering with the tap of a keyboard

BY THE COAST OF MALABAR At nightfall I become a mason.

Piling brick upon brick, plastering them, Shaping the pillars and alcoves, Applying final coat of blue tinged whitewash Breathing life into them, I rebuild memories.

I become a gardener, planting those ancient seeds.

They grow into robust trees, heavy with fruit.

Red, thin legged ants crawl up their trunk Crow drops a half-eaten mango Fibrous core yellow, sweet At nightfall, purple jasmine opens Drinking from the tumbler of silver moon A moon which looks at its face in an ancient well She towers in an unearthly splendour - my home.

When dawn chases away the last remnants of dream, I am a little girl, growing old in a strange land The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

89

ONE DAY One day You will step out of your home And find corpses of little dolls strewn in the garden The pavement, sidewalk, streets, lifts, subways, trams, metros, gutters, manholes Those plastic faces, the shine of the apple of cheek Smeared with the dirt of your guilt Heads half severed, mutilated limbs Dangling from electric poles, branches of surviving trees Their eyes mauled, Tongue blue, rhymes frozen in them Crushed on the zebra crossing like insects Little frock and pinafore torn Hair a mass of filth where flies rummage for remnants of sticky candies You will stoop down to gather the frayed pieces like a scavenger Cart away the mangled fleshripped apart and left to rot, Beneath the heap of those corpses, there might be a possibility Of finding a little heart beating fast Crouching in fear

TO SKETCH ARABIAN SEA Saffron fish lay in a row, their bellies white Under heaps of crushed ice ‘Bridegroom fish’, said the hawker, I loved it most, years later learnt it was red snapper In the intervening years thin streams that ran across the pristine

sand of Calicut beach swelled Spewing venom into the Arabian Sea which I had once sketched in deep blue All I had to do was now to smear black The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

90

WOUNDS OF PESHAWAR 2014 “Would you, Or Should I ?”

Half past eight, right after dinner We flung the question back and forth You mumbled distractedly, Shoving dog-eared books into an almost worn satchel Mid term All this while Size no.3 shoes, white canvas, They sat patient Waiting to be polished Some dawns I woke up, frantically remembering There they were, Rubbing nose by the window sill Gazing at the mist and moon Half dreaming of muddy football grounds Polish caked onto surface Royal icing on a plum cake, your favourite Laces stiff, like cat’s tail They’ll come back home A little muddy, grimy, worn and sweaty by noon, I smile.

You would fling them to a corner Running off to play barefoot.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

91 Some dawns you woke up And found them drying under a furious fan And even more furious me Shoe polish takes time to dry.

When they lined you up When gunshot rang through the air Did you stagger, run?

Did those shoelaces come undone?

I wish I could find answers A mourning dove coos by my empty window sill I think of a bloodied little shoe, Abandoned by the sidewalk Size No.3 It is not dry yet

Smitha Sehgal is a legal professional and writer.

Her articles, poems, and fiction have been featured with Mathrubhumi, The New Indian Express, Kritya, Reading Hour, Brown Critique and Muse India and poetry anthologies ‘Dance of the Peacock- an anthology of English Poetry from India’,‘Suvarnarekha- an anthology of Women Poets of India’, “40 Under 40: An Anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry”(2016).

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

92

NON-FICTION

C. Raveendran

NOVEL AND CINEMA: WORLD OF WORDS AND VISUALS At the outset, I must confess that I am neither a media person nor a theatre artist and I am just a student of literature as well a spectator. In theatre, audience is known as fourth men (of theatre) and films also need audience participation. Here it is to be noted that both novel and film are products of Laissez-faire capitalism and in an upward inclination of individualism along with the rise of the industrialization of the western society, after the fall of feudalism.

Novel has its own history of more than two hundred years. On the The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

93 contrary, film is a youngest art, a by-product of science and art. In short, film is a synthesis of all art forms.

Chronologically speaking, “film first explored its affinity with theatre – another narrative art – but afterwards it came to play a role similar to that of the novel. Today novelists turn film makers and novels are at times written after screening of certain films” said Gaston Roberge, an unlikely colleague of Satyagit Ray. In 1960s, I happened to see a lot of David Lean’s films, starting with Great Expectation to Dr.Zhivago. Most of the films of David Lean are an attempt to explore the possibilities of bridging the gap between the writing and the visual worlds. David Lean’s Dr.Zhivago is still green in my mind. The novel and the script both were written by Boris Pasternak who won the noble prize for literature, especially for his monumental novel Dr.Zhivago. David Lean has successfully brought out the narrative power of the written word into film language which portrays the lives of the Russians under the surveillance of the power politics of the social order of Russia; the fragmented world of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and the struggle of the marginalized people of Russia. Narrated through the eyes of Dr. Zhivago who becomes isolated and separated from his family life, the film ends with the tragic death of Dr.Zhivago who mutely witnesses the communist party’s clasp over the hapless Russian citizens. The visuals of the frozen landscape of Russia haunt the viewer. The screen narration, which spells out the sufferings of the people to earn their daily livelihood, under minus 20° Celsius of The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

94 the deadly winter, pains the viewer. The screening of the Dr.Zhirago was indeed banned in Russia. This proves the power of visual language over written language.

Cahiers du Cinéma, (Notebooks on Cinema) is a French language film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca, which re-invented the basic tenets of film criticism and theory. After the publication of this magazine, most of the novelists tuned their art of novel writing in parallel with painting and film. It is also a fact that, as in the case of painters, novelists started to analyze their art of writing and to conceptualize it with their experience in film field. Valdimir Nobokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Donald Barthelme and many others began writing novels about ‘writing novel’ just as many of the twentieth century painters painted paintings about ‘painting paintings’.

Abstraction projected from focusing on human experience, leads to a concern over ideas on the experience, finally turns to an interest, mainly, in the aesthetics of thought. This has happened in the hands of film directors who attempted to touch the existential problems of the man, rather than the essence of life itself. They are merely concentrating in micro narration of the text. Here the novel becomes the text, written in the context of pretext. Similarly, film also is a text which unfolds the language of symbols, by representing human life on the screen. The celluloid images are nearer to reality than realism itself.

In this context, film or cinema is a concrete representative art form and its relationship with other narrative arts, especially novels, has been at once a boon and a curse. It is a boon because film makers were able to lean on to a rich tradition; a curse because the prejudice and idiosyncrasies of literary (dramatic) criticism got applied to the treatment of films too. What Gaston Roberge said applies to most of The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

95 the film directors who made films based on art- novels or avant-garde novels.

Stanely Kubrick‘s Lolita and Nelly Sach’s Ulysses are not Viladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and James Joyce’s Ulysses respectively.

Orson Wells has tried his hands to make Franz Kafka’s novel ‘The Trail’. The film version of Allain Robbe – Grillet’s, ‘In the Labrinth’ is still memorable one in my mind. Jean Genet playwright and novelist once said: “Ideas don’t interest me so much as the shape of ideas”. On the contrary, the greatest asset of the novel is its ability to manipulate words. In 1968, Roland Barthes has published an article entitled “The Death of the Author” in which he declares that “the author is dead, long live the author!”. It is taken further by Michael Foucault who questions: “who is speaking in the text? A character? The author?”

This becomes part of the Auteur Theory or Author Theory of Cinema.

When director becomes an artist of cinema, it is in his hands to give a visual shape to a novel. It is interesting to note that Zoltan Fabri, playwright and film director of Hungary, has made a film, based on the Timor Terry’s Monumental novel titled ‘Unfinished Sentence’. It is of 1400 pages and Fabri’s film version of the novel runs 141 minutes, so the title of Zoltan Fabri’s film is ‘141 minutes to Unfinished Sentence’.

“The relationship between the cinema and novel has now become a two-way offer. Literature is cramming in all kinds of cinema clichés and shock situation which authors think will endear them to film producers. And films are based on stuff, thereby giving fillip to much writing. The result: the growth of banality and vulgarity in literature and cinema. Both are boring and slow and packed with sentimentalism stuff. They harp endlessly on certain family relation and complications which are non existence in reality. The strike poses which are presently false and even insult to the intellect”, said Ritwik Ghatak The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

96 in his article on “Bengali Cinema: Literary Influence” (1965) which is true to cinemas of all languages. Writers like Sarat Chandra Chatterjee are the forerunners of popular literature and that tradition continues. Just like Kalki, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee had widened the

room for reading public through his novels and short stories. He was so popular all over India through his novel ‘Devadas’ which brought out a metamorphosis in its cinematic form in the hands of P.C.Barua in the late thirties.

It is true to say that his cinematic version of Devadas is much better than Leela Banshali’s Devadas, lavishly produced, capturing the life of the fictional protagonist, Devadas, in a melodramatic presentation.

It was Satyajit Ray who introduced ‘Pather Panchali’ to the world of cinema audience based on the novel of the above said title

by Vibuthibhoosan Bandopadhyay in 1955. Pather Panchali still remains a classic example of the symbiotic relationship between novel and cinema. The narration of the written words turns beautifully to be that of the visual language. The language of word, sound and silence go hand in hand for the first time in the cinematic world of India.

The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016

97 The study of a poverty stricken family is narrated in artistic reality. In short, the fundamental difference between two art forms, novel and cinema was delineated. To put it in the words of Ritwik Ghatak: “Satyajit Ray and only Satyajit Ray in India, in his more inspired moments, can make us breathtakingly aware of truth, the individual and the private”. I do not want to get into a wrangle with commercial cinema. Quoting Ritwik Ghatak, “Tagore somewhere said that all art must be primarily truthful and only then beautiful.

Truth does not make any work a piece of art, but without truth there is no art worth its salt”.

We are living in an age in which everything is politics. To me, film should be a voice of protest and it is about “truth narrated in 24 frames a second” as Godard said. Politics and aesthetics should go hand in hand to become the language of the film.

C. Raveendran was the head of the Department of Indian Languages and Literary Studies, Delhi University. Since 1981 he had been the lighting designer with almost all theatre groups and participated in International Theatre Festivals as a lighting deisgner.

FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY Published by Vel.Kathiravan, K G E TEAM, Chennai, India - 600024 Printed by Print Process, Chennai- 600014 / Phone: +949176991885 The Wagon Magazine -December- 2016