June 2017 by The Wagon Magazine

NOTES FROM NEW DELHI

For that one unknown reader

hen I first met Krishna Prasad aka Chithan and discussed The Wagon Magazine, the first thing I told him was that running a literary magazine was a fool’s errand, a thankless job at best. First, you would scramble for funds and when you fail to find any help whatsoever, you would put in your savings — a disastrous investment. Then you would run from pillar to post for subscriptions but would find no takers. They wouldn’t mind a free copy, though. But for subscription they would stop taking your call. Even the authors you have published, they would be happy with their glory and their free contributor’s copies without bothering to ask how really you are running this little venture! We, of course, argued; agreed to disagree and that’s how we became friends. And of course, those days I was a bitter aspiring author trying to sell my book to a big-time publisher and failing miserably. I am still a failed author, but not bitter anymore. I have just killed my dream and I am happier for it. Oh, I still write, but not to publish. As I helped Prasad put together this issue of The Wagon Magazine, I am still convinced that running a literary magazine is a thankless job. I agreed to help Prasad because he believes in this venture and I am there to support my friend, even if the quest is foolhardy. Then, as I was preparing the final document for press, I remembered me, as a 13-year-old boy with unreasonable greed for reading. The only place that could sustain this greed was the small The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

district library in a small district town in Assam. I still remember how one day I found some tattered old copies of Soviet Land magazine in Assamese and copies of The Illustrated Weekly of India and Reader’s Digest in English in a corner of the reading room. I still remember the joy of holding the old copies and devouring them day after day. It was as if those copies were printed just for me and no one else. Later, in my first year as an Eng Lit student at the University of Pune, I had the same sense of discovering hidden treasure when I found some old copies of Chandrabhaga and Kavya Bharati magazines under a chair in my teacher’s cabin. As if those copies were waiting just for me to be picked up and read. Reading is a dead art now. There are other things, more interesting and important, vying for our time and attention. Yet, as I write this, I cannot help but be optimistic. Perhaps some of Prasad’s optimism has rubbed off. Despite everything else, perhaps there’s one single reader somewhere in the world who will someday find this copy of The Wagon Magazine and imagine that this was printed just for him and no one else. If there is this reader, if there is even a slightest possibility that this reader, this one reader with all-encompassing greed for reading, then I would happily concede to agree, yes, this is not a pointless exercise; it has a meaning, a need even. And it’s worth the trouble. This issue of The Wagon Magazine is dedicated to this reader, waiting somewhere, for this copy. Read. Dibyajyoti Sarma New Delhi, June 2017

The artwork featured in the cover courtesy Alex Nodopaka. This is what he says about himself: ‘Alex Nodopaka originated immaculately in Ukraine in 1940. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & sings in tongues after Vodka. Studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Presently full time author, visual artist in USA.’ The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

SOTTO VOCE

good translation is no less great as the original work. In fact, it is much more a formidable task for the translator, as he has to deal with the intricacies of two languages — the matrix and target languages, as the translation theorists call them these days. Translation is as old as the language itself. ‘Translation’ from its Latin root, meaning, ‘leading across to the other side’, a sort of guide that brings into view new visions of thoughts and ideas obtained in a different cultural landscape, which are now seen and experienced by a native speaker from the vantage position of her/his own territory. In this broad perspective, a translation is not merely a reproduction but an enlightening transmitter. This process has been in existence in India right from the days of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. We know how these two epics have been rendered, reclaimed and retold by the various Indian languages to mark their own distinctive cultural identity and thereby, establishing this fact that Indian Literature is a synthetic fabric of many coloured threads, each different from the other and yet, inseparable from the whole. Each region in India has its own version of the epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata — in classical and folk forms — that retells these immortal stories not as literal renderings but in conformity with its own regional culture and that, which makes the originals forever contemporary and relevant. In the West, when they brought out the translations of Homer and Virgil in the modern European languages, the yardstick that The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

was used to consider the quality of these translations was their total fidelity to the original in form and content whereas, in the Indian context, our cultural tradition conceded a certain amount of literary freedom for the translator, who was invariably a great poet in his own right, to trans-create the original story without offending its intrinsic essence. Kamban, the great Tamil poet, following Valmiki several centuries later, has rendered the Ramayana in Tamil ‘influenced and inspired’, as he claims, by the original work. He faithfully follows Valmiki by narrating the story in sequential order but makes subtle and sophisticated changes in the portrayal of characters, by introducing new events and incidents to justify these changes and all within the framework and structure of the original. If a classic like Valmiki’s Ramayana is forever modern in the sense that it is relevant to any period in which it is read, its rendering in another language should also stand the test of time. It is true that a faithful translation of a renowned classic may fail to extend its life beyond its time, just for the simple reason it is much too faithful and literal. Don Quixote by that Spanish genius Cervantes, belonging to the 17th century is considered to be the best novel ever written. It is farcical, serious and philosophical at the same time, a satire on orthodoxy, truth, veracity and nationalism. It reads refreshingly modern in any era it is read. It has several translations in English, starting from Thomas Shelton’s, the author’s contemporary and perhaps his friend, down to the recent Edith Grossman’s version. The reason for several translations for every succeeding period is, as some translation theorists argue, any translation in a given period is contemporary and it rarely endures, whereas, the original classic is forever green and modern and calls for fresh rendering to suit the needs of the time. I do not subscribe to this view and in my opinion, if the translator is as good a writer as the original author and his involvement with the original work is total, as was in the case of Kamban, his trans-creation is bound to be as lasting forever as the original. It is, therefore, a necessary requisite for the translator to assimilate the original to reflect successfully what is said and left unsaid in it. a The translator must be in one way or the other close to the writer by being Tamil with his works to get a comprehensive understanding of him and his The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

ways, which would go a long way in his ability to project his work in the target language. Before translation became an academic and professional exercise, we find that translation had always been a labour of love. An eminent writer translated the work he liked most in his own tongue. The best translation of some of the brilliant articles of Rabindranath Tagore on culture was done by no less a famous poet in Tamil, Subhramanya Bharati. One of the founding fathers of the Modernist Movement in Literature, Ezra Pound was so immensely absorbed with the early Chinese Poetry that he had translated and published some of them with critical introduction. Fitzgerald’s translation of Rubaiyat, again ‘a labour of love’, though initially a publishing failure when it came out in 1859, later, became a roaring success, introducing, as it did, the 11th century obscure Persian astronomer and poet to the literary world. Fitzgerald’s was not a literal translation of this great work, but it was interpretative, an outcome of total assimilation and critical selection. Translation of classics from foreign languages was done in the 19th century and early twentieth century in Europe and in India by established authors with vivid interest in literature, but with no linguistic training to speak of. Before Independence, the translation movement in Tamil was full of energy and dynamism. For the first time in the history of this country, the concept of nationalism came into existence thanks to the freedom struggle and this led to the study of languages in the other regions of the country. Literary exchanges became common and I had read while I was in the school and college, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati novels written by Bankim Chandra, Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Munshi Premchand, V. S. Kantekar and a host of such eminent authors translated into Tamil by competent writers in my language. They did this in a spirit of dedication and total involvement with the concept of literature. They were not linguistic scholars well versed in the translation theories but the only provocation that led them to do it, was their intense love for their own language which they wanted to enrich by such translations. The emphasis was not so much on linguistic equivalents, which, perhaps, is the ruling principle today thanks to the art having been reduced to an academic professional exercise, but rather on eclectic affinities between the two writers in dialogue, the translated and the translating. So it would be desirable, a translator is also a writer or with The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

the instincts and drives that go to make a writer. I am afraid a strict professional and academic training in the field of translation may produce good technician, if one thinks translation is a science but not an aesthetically satisfying translator, if one considers translation as an art. a A writer has twin responsibilities to the reader and to himself but the translator’s is threefold. His third client is the author whose work he is translating, if both the writer and translator are contemporaries. Writing itself is the first process of translation, translating thoughts and ideas into language and it is quite possible, a good writer will have lingering doubts whether what he has written does adequate justice to what he had actually felt. Louis Borges, the Latin American writer, once told his translator Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, to translate what he (the author) was trying to say, not what he had actually said. This is possible only if the translator has a total intellectual comprehension of the author’s other writings and his personality. Unfortunately, in a professional world, where books are treated as commodities meant for selling, the commissioned translations of the classics may be accurate but they fail to deliver the spirit of original. The translator should be acquainted with the literary history and culture of both languages, the translating and the translated to do a satisfying job. There may be subtle literary allusions reflecting the past in the original. The translator should be well equipped to grasp their significance and endowed with the necessary skill to convey them in an easy, natural and readable style in the target language. Also the cultural idioms, especially in the spoken language, in the original work may pose some challenges for the translator. It is much more so, if the languages belong to two different cultural backgrounds like English and Tamil. Let me illustrate this. In Tamil Nadu, and in the other parts of South India, only unmarried and married girls are privileged to decorate their hair with flowers. Widows are denied this honour. Also, those days, a widowed girl should return to her parents’ home after the death of her husband. In one of my stories, a period story, an old rural woman, looking at a child widow, says (I am translating it literally), ‘Poor girl! One does not know from which shop she had been buying flowers, she came back home one month after her wedding’. In Tamil, it reflects the poetry of The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

the spoken language of the rural women. But, when literally translated in English, unless one is familiar with the culture and customs of Tamil Nadu, this would make no sense. There are three ways of solving this problem. Translate it literally and give a footnote. I am personally against footnotes; it would read like a thesis. Or, translate in a way that would convey the meaning, perhaps, the nearest approximation to the original text and losing of course the poetry part of the speech. Like: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Curse be on the shop that used to sell her flowers, she lost the privilege of having them on her head soon after her wedding! Why? Poor girl, she became a widow!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The third solution is skipping it totally and introducing the girl as a young widow. It is also quite possible that what will read natural and not unusual in the original text, when translated in a language, belonging to a different cultural landscape, may sound exotic, which is likely to give a different focus far from the intention of the author. The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has said that the English translation of his novel The Green House gave an exotic tone and colour to the atmosphere, whereas, for a Peruvian reader it was just commonplace. What is a good translation? When I read a thing in Tamil and appreciate the style in which it is written, my admiration is not, in fact, for the style of the original text, as I do not know that language, but for the beautiful translation that conveys the text. But it is a sad thing even a good reader fails to recognise the significant role of the translator in the international success of a good novel. The literary Universe would have been much smaller but for the translators. May their tribe increase! Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of R Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright

The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

TALESPIN

ERA.MURUKAN

Those Fifteen Seconds

he other day I was watching an old Tamil cinema on cable television, along with a friend of mine for whom any movie produced after 1965 is no movie at all. This film had a robust and cheerful heroine who, to borrow my grandmother’s words, was ‘looking well-fed and happy like a calf in the palace’, which in the common parlance would mean being a tad obese. The lady, through a judicious application of her histrionics was a scene stealer in her heyday when she reigned as the undisputed queen of the tinsel empire. She was intimidatingly filling up the screen space on my television while on tight close-ups, was hogging it considerably at mid long shots edging out others and moved as a considerable mass of black and white as the camera pulled out in long shots, as the story unfolded. The movie was half way through and there was this enchanting scene of her dancing with abandon on the embankment of a huge reservoir and then climbing down the steps of the massive concrete

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barrage pretty fast for her girth, lip synchronising all the while a medium-paced song extolling the virtue of the Indian women. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Awesome; what a ravishing beauty she isâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, my friend was screaming in ecstasy, as he sat glued to the TV. I grunted in agreement munching a fistful of popcorn from a huge plastic bowl and watching the damsel dancing on the dam. My stare was fixed more intently on a specific region of her anatomy, namely her ample arms covered inadequately by the shortest sleeved pink blouse with an enchanting lace work, she wore. However, I was not into a silent celebration of the human female body but was only glaring at the two near circular scars, rather marks the size of an one rupee coin on the screen heroineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s left arm,immediately below where the short sleeve of her blouse ended. I sat fascinated by those vaccination marks indelibly etched on the supple flesh of the lady with a radiant smile. They were the representative socialist beauty marks adorning almost every arm, from the Beauty Queen to the municipal conservancy worker, the landlord to the landless, the wandering ascetic to the small trader, the industrial magnate to the factory worker, throughout the the country, half a century ago. If you think vaccinating is a hackneyed humdrum job, there you are veering away, ninety degrees off at wrong. I vividly remember the vaccination camps I have had witnessed and participated in the sensational sixties as a primary school student and can emphatically say that like every good job, it comes with its own rhyme, rhythm and reason. It all would start with a fatigued four-wheel drive jeep with the oblong Government emblem drawn on the flanks and at the back, strenuously inching through the potholed road that has not seen a decent coat of bitumen for ages. The vehicle would be coming towards our small town, quite early in the morning. As it would approach the milestone at the municipality limits, the jeep mysteriously would develop a technical snag, grinding to a laboured halt, moaning in distress. The local elders with tucked up dhotis partially covering their loosened and dangling loin cloth and with a long thick lighted Trichi cigar precariously held on their lips would be walking briskly, patting themselves loud on their posterior with an intention of The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

aiding and abetting a smooth session of answering their call of nature at the largest open air toilet under the sky. They would be the first few to observe the arrival of the vaccinators and would help giving the jeep a collective push forward in an attempt to revive the engine. A few youngsters hanging around would also volunteer to participate in the proceedings at that stage. This inquisitive lot would often look thoroughly into the jeep with probing eyes. They would then run towards the dwellings, informing no one in particular in loud voices, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The vaccinators have arrivedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. For a few minutes then on, it would be all hell broke loose. The turmoil would be grossly equivalent to, if not more than that was known to be created by the German war ship Emden that bombarded Madras during the First World War. Everything would ground to a halt in a few houses in every street with the families immediately locking out the premises and taking the next available train or bus to their close relativesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; place, a minimum 50 km safely away from the port of departure, with a prayer on their lips that the vaccination attack would not have spread to those distant lands. The vehicle, in all probability, would be the one coming from the Primary Health Centre at the nearby district headquarters. Along with the emblem, the name of the Government department in Hindi would be prominently visible on the sides but no one, including those riding the jeep would be able to read it, ours being a landmass where Hindi is an alien language. The four or five Government servants who arrived at the scene would alight from the jeep without losing time like firemen at the site of the inferno and would run forthwith into the almost deserted streets. They were normally referred to as NGOs, a term not to be confused with foreign aid agencies but only meaning Non Gazetted officials which further would be interpreted as those not finding their names on the Government notification announcing the names of their officers. A few other families might be of the same mindset as of the refugees mentioned before, but with something to peg them to their homes like having elderly family members who would not undertake a travel or the running of private lines of business like oil crushing and mongering or tailoring or maintaining a poultry farm or rearing studs to impregnate the cows for a fee. That would render any thought of The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

immediate check out impossible. They would then settle for their Plan B to face the risk, yet, significantly minimising the ‘damage’ done. Thus, they would restrict their regular movement outside their dwellings and would keep the doors closed throughout the day,becoming nocturnal owls for all practical purposes. In case they would get vaccinated, to render that ineffective, as it would tantamount to revolting against Gods to ward off smallpox and measles which are God sent, with vaccination, they would quickly prepare a ferocious mixture of cow dung, furnace ash and a few other exotic elements like neem seeds, soot from the oil lamps,dried ginger and turmeric. Such a concoction would drive away all vaccination triggered evils, they firmly believed. Needless to say, this ammunition would be prepared in sufficient quantities and kept ready in their backyards, under diligent care. To make them see reason and to understand the importance of vaccination for public health and the urgent need to eradicate smallpox from the face of the Earth, the school teachers would immediately form a self motivated brigade and would start visiting households one by one with their rational and educative narratives and with humble requests to one and all to get vaccinated. Some of them would visit the bus stand and the rail station to bring back the escapees before they board their train or bus. These school masters would be enthusiastically aided and abetted by their young students, all functioning together with a missionary zeal. The vaccination inspector would jump out of the jeep and would start walking as if he is moving on the moon’s surface. He would throw a quick glance at the houses in the street with apparent disdain and would smile a little at no one in particular. By then, two chairs would have arrived at the scene from the panchayat board president’s house. These wooden chairs would have been fetched from their place of origin, along with a million bed bugs those being the permanent residents of the aging wooden furniture. The chairs would be deposited at a corner off the street near a tree if the street has a few shady trees or right on the kerb. Moving sideways quite often and up and down as if sitting on a spring cushioned sofa, to defend himself from the ever hungry bed begs hidden snugly at the numerous crevices in his chair, the vaccination inspector would The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

retrieve a file with red flaps and would keep the page open for the names of the residents in the street who are eligible for public health initiatives. The jeep driver and a couple of orderlies from the visiting party would knock at each door and invite the residents to the grand ceremony, repeating at each household, ‘Our respected officer sir has arrived and is waiting to meet you. Please come with family’. Another orderly would be lighting a kerosene wig stove with insufficient oil resulting in a thick smoke and an unbearable stench rising in the air. The vaccination inspector would order his men to procure the necessary supply of fuel forthwith from wherever it is available at no cost. After running like headless chicken, they ultimately would return from the Panchayat President’s house with a green bottle full of kerosene and with a handful of coconut strands sealing its mouth in place of the missing stopper. By then the anti-vaccinationists would have realised it would be futile to offer resistance to the mighty first line foes from the Government and the still more formidable second line, of the teachers and students. They, with calculated indifference would make themselves available for undergoing the indignity of getting vaccinated. An aluminium utensil with a broad base like the one used for cooking rice for marriage feasts would be placed, half-filled with pond water atop the stove. As the water gets heated, a few metallic contraptions like wheel and axle arrangements for miniature trucks bristling with sharp round teeth would be casually thrown into the boiling water for making them sanitised. The students would look at these instruments of torture with lurking fear and would gaze in the direction of the teachers who with a broad smile would provide the necessary solace and confidence, telepathically. These teachers would also set an example to their disciples and other townsfolk by offering to get vaccinated first. Sometimes, there would be a lady vaccinating inspector for providing services exclusively to the women and if specifically requested, for children. The lady inspector would feel out of place anywhere and as the vaccination festivities proceed with gusto, she would sit in a corner trying to read the previous day’s newspaper repeatedly, waiting for the women to arrive. Praying from the heart for the ordeal to be over as soon as possible and The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

with eyes partially shut, we would stretch the left arm to the vaccination inspector. He would wipe a swab of cotton wet with some hospital-smelling preparation like tincture of iodine and would pull the extended hand up a little so that it is kept straight at the arms, in readiness for the main ritual. A hot wheel of metallic teeth would now rest firmly on the arm and would rotate digging deep into the flesh bringing tears to the half shut eyes and a pathetic moan in agony in some. The tooth wheel will perform an encore on the tender flesh a little below the place of the previous attack giving rise to all pain that could be induced within fifteen seconds. The officer would smile satisfied at his work and would dismiss the youngster forthwith, ordering the next eligible candidate to occupy the wooden stool. To think of it now, if not for the fifteen second pain, I would not have been sitting snug and comfortable watching the old movie of my choice and writing this. Nor would there be the fleshy heroine with prominent vaccination marks on her shoulders like those on mine or those on the valiant heroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arms or those of any other member of the movie cast and crew or the past-the-prime audience. We all would have encountered an inglorious death long back in an epidemic of smallpox or would have lost our eye sight or would have become permanently disfigured. I look with affection at the scars of vaccination on my left arm that came up there fifty years ago and thank the perpetuators of the fifteen second agony. You gave me a new lease of life, free from smallpox.

Murugan Ramasami is a techno banker and project management professional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA. As a novelist, short story writer, poet, techtravel-humor columnist (in Tamil and English), he has 28 books to his credit. Ramasami has also written plays and movie script, dialogue in Tamil and has translated from Malayalam and English to Tamil The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

LETTER FROM LONDON 8

JOHN LOOKER

A House in the Country W

hat did these three famous people have in common: Charles Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, and Ralph Vaughan Williams the English composer? Or these three objects: a rock known as a wormstone, a display of pottery and an upright piano? South of London lies England’s most densely wooded county, Surrey. It is thickly populated with stock brokers, media celebrities and Russian oligarchs, but it also has hills and valleys covered with deciduous trees, some very ancient. These are also the hills through which medieval pilgrims made their way to the Christian shrine at Canterbury. One of the best known of these ‘downs’ (that is say, in our perplexing idiom, a hill) is Box Hill where Jane Austen staged a fractious family picnic in her eighteenth century novel Emma. Another is Leith Hill, famous for a brick tower built so that

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the summit could be said to exceed one thousand feet and the hill be called a mountain (the benchmark for ‘mountain’ is set very low in southern England). On the lower slopes of Tower Hill there is a house. It lies deep in the woods, reached by a minor road. From the main rooms there are fine views: across the lawn, beyond the ha-ha and over miles of fields and hedgerows. Ha-ha? A walled ditch separating the lawn from the fields so that the family have uninterrupted views over the countryside while cattle and deer are unable to invade the garden. The house, Leith Hill Place, is rather shabby – it has suffered from being occupied by a school for many years. When my wife and I visited recently we found scaffolding outside, but that was encouraging: it was one of the signs of a restoration project by the National Trust who own it. One of the early owners was a lady, Mary Millet, who held it for forty years from 1664. Since that was unusual I imagine there is a story to be unearthed. This was the time of the restoration of monarchy after England’s civil war and our short-lived republic, so this house would have experienced some turbulent times. Later it was occupied by one Richard Hull who built the tower and was buried beneath it. The house came into different hands during Queen Victoria’s reign when it was occupied by Josiah Wedgwood III of the famous pottery dynasty. He must have found it relatively convenient for London although several counties away from the potteries. On the day of our visit there was even an exhibition of fine Wedgwood pottery in an upstairs room. But the most interesting aspect of Josiah Wedgwood’s occupation was his marriage because his wife was Caroline Darwin, sister of Charles Darwin the naturalist. Darwin’s historic voyage in the The Beagle was behind him; pubThe Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

lication of On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man lay for a time in the future, but Darwin was an active scientist here. His own house was some twenty five miles distant and is also open to the public today. You can visit his study and explore the gardens where he studied nature, although he also carried out experiments at Leith Hill Place. His curiosity had been aroused by one of the world’s humblest creatures: the earthworm. He measured the effects of worms on the soil, noting how they caused stones to sink, and a stone known as Darwin’s ‘worm-stone’ can be seen in the grounds. A large smooth rock of local sandstone, Darwin noticed how it sank slowly, earth banking up around it. He postulated that earthworms were ingesting soil beneath the stone and excreting it on the surface. Fortunately for us, his sister Caroline’s love of nature took a more conventional route. She designed a woodland garden of rhododendrons, some of which were only newly brought to England. We were lucky: the early varieties were coming into glorious bloom. Indoors we found an upright piano on which Ralph Vaughan Williams composed The Lark Ascending and other well-known works. The composer, being the grandson of Caroline and Josiah Wedgwood, had grown up at Leith Hill Place: his father died when he was three and his mother brought him back to her parents’ home. It was here that he first learnt the piano, even making tiny compositions at the age of five. Boarding school, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music took him away but Leith Hill Place remained in the family and became his own in 1944. Although Vaughan Williams’ compositions included work on the Church of England’s hymnbook, he himself became an atheist, then settling into agnostiThe Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

cism. If you look up biographies on the internet you find a story that, as a young child, he asked his mother about Charles Darwin’s controversial theories. It is said that she replied, ‘The Bible says that God made the world in six days. Great Uncle Charles thinks it took longer: but we need not worry about it, for it is equally wonderful either way’. Let me finish with a happy coincidence: shortly after drafting this Letter I turned on the radio and found they were broadcasting a live performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. It is absolutely gorgeous. And as deeply English as Leith Hill Place.

John Looker lives with his wife in Surrey, south-east England. His first collection of poetry, The Human Hive, was published in 2015 by Bennison Books (through Amazon) and was selected by the Poetry Library for the UK’s national collection. His poems have appeared in print and in online journals, on local radio and in When Time and Space Conspire, an anthology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Austin International Poetry Festival. His blog, Poetry from John Looker, is at https://johnstevensjs.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C. S. LAKSHMI

The Horizon is Just an Imaginary Line

he Dante quote I remember the most although I have not really read him is Abandon all hope, ye who enter here that is in the first part of the Divine Comedy. I never thought that I would know about a situation where I will remember this quote. I have known about so many Diasporas from so many countries. My PhD dissertation was on Hungarian refugees of 1956 and their experiences. I had chosen to study that aspect of human life for I was not interested in just international relations but wanted to study how it affected ordinary human beings. Sometimes I wonder if what led me to this was growing up in the forties and fifties when stories of Partition told by Punjabi and Sindhi neighbours had reached my little ears as a child. Our family itself had left its South Indian moorings and was living in Mumbai which was Bombay then but there was no sense of being uprooted and thrown away. There were ditties against many communities but they were somewhat fun and we could laugh about it. ‘Andu gundu tanda pani soda lemon garam pani’ was for the Madrasis. ‘Bengali Babu paise ka saboon’ was the way

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Bengalis were teased. When Gujaratis went past children, the children would scream, ‘Soonche saruche danda leke maroo che.’ The Maharastrians were not spared too. ‘Asa kasa masala machi katha Marathi’ was how the Maharashtrians were framed in these quickly made up ditties. But there was never once the feeling that there was no firm earth beneath one’s feet. That you had no land you could call your own. It was a vast diverse land where we could travel where we wanted and could still belong. It was when I started studying the refugee problem that the concept of belonging to a land loomed large in my mind. In the decades following my teenage years, I have come to know about Tamil labourers who went to work in Malaysia and Sri Lanka leaving their own land, of people rendered homeless in Europe in the World War II, of the wandering Jews, Sri Lankan Tamils and their torments in reaching another soil and yet not belonging anywhere, Syrians crossing borders and not to forget Kashmiri Pandits leaving homes they may never go back to. But it was recently that I was suddenly reminded of that Dante quote about abandoning hope and it was in connection with Somalians stranded in India. I did not even know that Somalians lived in India. One knew about Nigerians in some of the cities of India and one had, of course, heard about Somalian pirates. But the graphic book The Horizon Is an Imaginary Line: The Refugee Story by Bani Gill and Radha Mahendru, which tells the story of Maryam Jama Mohamed, a refugee from Somalia and through her story, the story of refugees in India opened my eyes to the clear and present phenomenon of refugees in the world. The book is partly designed as an infographic. THIAIL, according to the blurb, “puts into perspective several myths and assumptions about the “refugees crisis” and India’s ambiguous role within the global refugee regime.” The book is an outcome of the engagement of Khoj, an International Artists’ Association, with the Khirkee community. Those who know Delhi know that there are several urban villages like Hauz Rani The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

and Chirag Dilli. Khirkee village begins at Saket and through a maze of alleys goes up to Malviya Nagar. It used to be once part of the Tuglaq city of Jahanpanah (14th century) but now is in the midst of a concrete jungle. The idea for THIAIL came from several workshops of Khoj and the book engages with issues of forced migration, alienation and belonging. Maryam is a semi-fictional character who has emerged from the narratives of many others. The figure of the African â&#x20AC;&#x153;outsiderâ&#x20AC;? in the Khirkee extension area took shape when Bani Gill with her ongoing PhD work on migration and refugee flows from Africa to India and Radha working with Khoj had a chance meeting. The result is an extremely informative book which not only deals with statistics of migration but also the emotions of those who are forced to live in a country they have been dumped into, where their colour, their existence and their country of origin become butts of jokes. Maryam realises upon landing in India that what she had seen in Bollywood films was a lie; people were cruel. They judged her without even knowing her; through the colour of her skin, her clothes and from where she was. She is shocked to know that she can be hated for all this. As I read the book all that I knew about Somalia came to my mind. I knew about the Al-Shabab militants of Somalia and knew it had a hunger crisis for I had seen pictures of a drought hit Somalia. I found out more about Somalia to know what had led to the refugee crisis and the story of Maryam that I was reading. Somalia was created in 1960. It was a former British protectorate and was an Italian colony. It had a military regime headed by Siad Barre which was overthrown in 1991 and collapsed into anarchy. There were rival warlords and the country was torn into fiefdoms which were clan-based. Only in 2000, a unity government was formed which was backed by the international community. But the northern regions of Somalia and Puntland broke away. A coalition of Islamist Shariah courts seized Mogadishu, the capital and a large part of the southern region. Ethiopian and African Union forces intervened and a new government was established in 2012 but there is still the problem and challenge of Al-Shabab insurgents who owe allegiance to Al-Qaeda. And it is this that has led to the refugee crisis and the story of Maryam. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

What about the history of India as an asylum of refugees? Why do refugees come to India? And from where do they come? The book provides a background to Maryamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story by giving details of the role of India in dealing with refugee crisis. It begins with the mass migration of 1947. In 1959, after the exile of 14th Dalai Lama, Tibetan refugees come to India. Nearly 35,000 Chakmas fled to India from erstwhile East Pakistan following communal violence, construction of the Kaptai hydroelectric dam and widespread displacement. From 1965 onwards, after the Indo-Pakistan war, there has been a steady flow of refugees from Pakistan. After the Bangladesh war of 1971, nearly 10 million refugees fled to India. From 1980s onwards, Afghans have sought refuge in India along with ethnic minorities from Myanmar. From 1983, we have had Sri Lankan refugees. Refugees fleeing conflict and persecution in various parts of Africa and Middle East have also found their way to India. India has not been a party to the 1951 Convention or the 1967 Protocol relating to the status of refugees but has continued to host refugees. While the protection of neighbouring South Asian countries except Myanmar is decided by the Government of India, the other refugees are dealt with by UNHCR which goes through their history and gives them refugee cards and protects them from deportation. We need to know this to empathise with the story of Maryam. Maryam was 16 when her father was killed by the Al-Shabab in 2009. Although her Hooyo, her mother, did not tell her so, Maryam knew that her fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s murder would change her life forever. One night her Hooyo told her to get ready to leave and she and her siblings Abdul and The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Amina left with her for what she described as a long journey. It was the first time she was taking a flight. She thought she was going to be far away from gunfire and explosions and that she would be able to study. She wondered where they were going. Was it to France, Germany or Italy? Finally they land in New Delhi. While the struggle with UNHCR is on for a refugee card she sees an India that is not a part of Bollywood films. She is called a Habshi, a name for African and Abyssinian slaves, pirate, Kaala, whore, cannibal, Negro, monkey, cockroach, parasite and similar names. She struggles to get a job and a roof above her head while the UNHCR procedures are on to find them a country. Finally, five years after they arrived in India, her Hooyo and Amina and Abdul leave for Minnesota. Maryam cannot go with them for they have found a strain of TB in her blood. Maryam is still in Delhi. She is living with a Somali family that has come to India for medical treatment. She has applied for a long term visa which will give her the legal right to work in India. She speaks regularly to her family. Abdul and Amina are going to school and her Hooyo has found a job in a warehouse. Maryam does not resent living in India but her life has become an endless waiting game. Her life is still stuck in a maze of paperwork and her future is being “debated, dissected” and she has to wait till she is declared as someone worthy of being accepted by a country. I wonder if Maryam often thinks of that Somalian song remembering a mother who is no more, when she thinks of her Hooyo.

The panel at the launch of ‘The Horizon is an Imaginary Line’ (Courtesy Facebook/KHOJStudios) The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Some of the song’s lines are haunting: Oh Mother! Without you The world would surely Be perpetual darkness, Devoid of light… Oh Mother! Without you Spelling would have been inconceivable. Without you Mother, Expression would render unthinkable One, whom you have not indulged, Not seldom with lullabies fed One, you haven’t doted upon, Surely won’t mature. Thou, are the house of adulation Thy abode is of compassion. Oh Mother! On your back One attains peace. Oh Mother! On your lap Sleep is pure. Oh mother at your hem Shelter is most secure… It is a long wait and for the Maryams of this world, the horizon is just an imaginary line. 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 JUNE 2017

POETRY

ANANYA CHATTERJEE

Half a Crow I cannot tell my five-year-old why I let the wingless crow claw at my lunch hour bowl day after day. That it reminds me of my broken father is only half the story. I cannot tell my little boy, nor meet his wondrous eyes. I am not sure what shall hurt more, The truth or gentle lies. So I feed the crow (a half-bird now) and try to forget how it lost its feathers to wafer-thin wires crossing a partitioned sky. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

The Cat in the Winter You sit wrapped in the chequered shawl your mother had left on her last visit. Yet you are cold. And dry. Then sadness comes and hugs you like the cat you’ve been ignoring all winter long. The cat just wants some love. A bowl of warm whiteness. A pat to know he is safe with you. You cannot slip him through the pantry duct just because he had stolen the few goodies you had saved up all summer to get you past January hunger. You sit trembling in the chequered shawl your mother had left behind. You are cold. And dry. Until he starts purring right there by your cracked heels, licking them slowly back to softness wetting them until they’re human again.

A software professional, Ananya Chatterjee is the author of The Poet & His Valentine, Another Soliloquy and The Blind Man’s Rainbow. She was the winner of the Ekphrasis Poetry Contest 2015. She lives in Kolkata with her husband and two children and can be reached at ananyachatterjee.com The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

FLASH FICTION

hilosophers have pondered over it. Theologians have pontificated about it. Scientists have been sceptical of it. Life after death. The great beyond. Sarah had been afraid of it, of what would come or what would not, then had slipped silently into it during the night. She had no idea how sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d met death. She only remembered waking in a dark place, unable to move her limbs because she had no limbs to move. Her nature, her mode of being, turned on its head in an instant. It took her ages to come to terms with the loss, to begin exploring the depths of her insubstantial self. When at last acceptance came, she drifted through the cosmos. Moving was not so much an

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act of the body as it was an act of the will, a projection of thought and mind, like nothing she had ever known. She called out, hoping to find others like herself. But no one answered. Was that what death was? To be alone? The thought terrified her. If her eternal vocation was to exist in such a state, she’d rather the darkness had consumed her. She continued to skid through the universe, crying out in increasingly panicked outbursts. Hello? Is anyone there? She felt her soundless voice reverberate, ripple out through space and time. But again, there was no reply. If she kept this up, she was certain she’d go mad. Had she gone to Hell? As she streaked through a thousand worlds in silence, she pondered this terrible prospect. Hell. Was that the reward I earned in life? She tried to remember but was unable. Her old life had faded until it left only the vaguest of impressions, a formless shadow in the dark. Is anyone there? Please, answer me. She projected herself further. Further. Like a heat-seeking missile, she launched herself as far as she could go in search of the companionship she so desperately needed. Sarah. A soundless whisper, echoing across the void. Her name. Someone had used her name. If she’d had a body, tears would have poured from her eyes. I’m here! Sarah, follow my voice. And Sarah did. On and on she went, zeroing in, and every so often, that voice would say something new so she could pick up its trail and continue to follow it. Sarah, over here. That’s it, Sarah. You’ve almost made it. There was light in the distance, not the kind she had once seen with her eyes but something different, a radiant, all-consuming fire that warmed her essence. Just a little farther. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

The voice was close now, still separated from her by some unfathomable chasm, but close all the same. Suddenly, the light had become a searing fire that burned just to look at it. Sarah, you’ll have to jump. I’m scared. But she ached to pass through it, to see what lay in store for her on the other side. Most of all, she longed for communion with the voice that had reached out to her. Just let go and jump. Sarah felt power mounding in her. Fear and desire warred with each other in greater and greater intensity, until the fire in her own soul was a greater agony than the fire she contemplated crossing. That’s it, Sarah. Jump! Sarah did as the voice commanded. There was a timeless instant in which agony reached its terrible peak, in which she could feel all the impurities of her former existence smelted away. Then she was pure, pristine, and the fire could no longer harm her. She was a part of the light now, and she beheld the one who had spoken to her with an awe, she’d been incapable of in life. Welcome home, Sarah. Love filled her. The chasm had been bridged, and Sarah would never be alone again.

Jeff Coleman is a modern literary fantasy author. He blogs at blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

FICTION

‘S

ybil, darling, it’s Allison, how are you, my dear?’ ‘Just fine, Allison,’ I say, holding one of the girls in my arms, the receiver clutched between my check and shoulder. ‘And you?’ ‘Splendid, couldn’t be better. Say, I’m having a few friends over on the tenth for cocktails around eight and I’d love for you to join us, that is, if you’re free that night,’ she says. She knows that I am. Where the hell else would I be? ‘Let me take a look at my calendar, Allison…let me see,’ I say, tucking the doll under one arm and flipping diary pages so it sounds as if I’m checking a schedule. ‘Hmm, seems I’ve got another engagement later that evening, but I suppose I could pop in for a while, that is, if you won’t mind if I slip out a little early,’ I say. ‘No, not at all, Sybil. I’d just love to see you. We need to catch up, you know, it’s been ages,’ she says. ‘See you then. Tootles.’ She stretches the word ages to sustain that drama queen persona she embraced back in Ohio when she starred in our high school production of My Fair Lady. Yeah, we come from the same hamlet. And went to the The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

same state university, too, where I majored in library science and literature and she studied marketing and male social agendas. We both ended up in the city, me at a university library downtown and she on Madison Avenue in one of those tony advertising agencies—but not at first. We roomed together in an efficiency in the Village on my puny paycheck, while she tried this and that until she met Mr. Almost Right, who works at the agency where she’s now employed. After they’d been dating awhile, Allison landed a job there (to his surprise) and discovered the wife (her big surprise) and he soon became history. Now she rivals him in status if not pay at the firm. She lives on the Upper East Side, and I’m still in the Village, but hey, poverty has its advantages; I can still walk to work. The girl? The doll? I collect Barbies, always have. The apartment is full of ‘em. Sometimes I dress them for wild occasions I dream up. Adds a splash of color to my life. And helps me wind down after a hectic day at the library. Hey, life in the circulation department can do a number on a soul. And I enjoy the girls, but I’m not obsessive about them, heavens no, they’re keepsakes, nothing, more, just darling keepsakes. Did Allison neglect to say I could bring a guest? Perhaps she has a charmer she wants me to meet at her Friday do. But maybe not. Bet it’d create a stir if I sashayed in with a few of my girls. Ha! Well, back to where I was when she called. Ladies, I thought we’d read a few chapters of Jackie, dress up in period costume, play some disco on the turntable, and mix it up a bit. Okay? Sure, why not? a ‘Good morning, Miss Nettleton,’ he says. ‘Morning, Mr. Figtree,’ I say with a nod. No smile from him, none expected. Might ruffle the man’s dignity. I report to this guy, Tim Figtree, a stoic who lives and breathes in a world of rules, proportions, and symmetry. Nothing to excess, he says. Stuffy, I’d say. His favorite reply to my suggestions? Highly irregular, Miss Nettleton, ‘T would be highly irregular. As irregular as the hair in your ears? Ha. I’ll give him this: the man did instill a sense of duty in me to carry an The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

umbrella—always. And we do embrace mutual concerns over our patrons. They’re a strange hodgepodge as you might imagine. Personally, I’ve catalogued them all into four distinct groups: staff, faculty, students, and others. Simple enough. First let’s consider the staff, the easiest to define and slot into subgroups. The active staff knows where the library is and what it represents, but that’s about all. Rarely do we see any of them unless they’re attempting to deliver a message to a professor whose nose is buried in research somewhere in the stacks or the rare book room. The other subgroup, the retired staff, is another matter. Once they realize they’ve nowhere else to go on campus, they end up here lounging about reading newspapers and taking snoozes. Mr. Phillips, our security officer, bless his heart, attempts to arouse those whose naps are accompanied by raucous noises. My, what a job Mr. Phillips has. And woe to him if he actually touches a patron, a no-no in the library. And loud commands are always out of place here. Next let’s consider the faculty—the most difficult group. Yes, that’s right, they’re the worst. Mathilda refers to them as ‘the gods.’ Why? Because the rules never apply to them. Checking out too many books? Nonsense, they’re the reason the university exists, just ask them. Time limit on withdrawals? Poppycock, just try to limit them. A nasty letter will be fired off to the dean with your name in bold type in it. These are the campus prima donnas. And the library staff is forced to adapt to this sad state of affairs. Sigh. Students are a stew of personalities and agendas and are difficult to pigeonhole. Yet one inviolate regulation is pressed upon all of them: defacing a book or tearing out pages will not be tolerated here—ever. And the consequences can be quite harsh. Otherwise, we’d have total chaos. Time and again we who work in the library find ourselves face-toface with bizarre student antics. Mathilda, who’s still new enough to draw late hours at the library, tells a story of an evening when a group of male students dressed in white mechanics coveralls strolled in past the main desk flashing their ID’s. They’d done nothing wrong so the staff had no reason to question them. Later it was discovered that these pranksters had started on the top floor advising everyone (except the library staff ) The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

that the building electrical systems were being tested and the library had to be evacuated for a few minutes. In short order the quad was full of people milling about. Mathilda got the urgent call from campus security asking if she knew of a flash mob or a protest group gathering outside on the library steps. By the time the staff could unravel the mystery of this caper, the frat boys in white were gone. Other student behaviors in the library, especially types that occur in great frequency in the stacks, are particularly distressing. And the detritus they leave behind following their amorous pairings—shocking! Now, I understand the pressing biological needs of the young, I do, but the library? My word! a My work day is done and the summer daylight hours allow me to window shop for an outfit for the party. Oh, didn’t tell you, the girls suggested I find a retro outfit similar to the togs they sport from the late 50s era. And oodles of thrift stores that line the streets of the Village carry such fare. ‘May I help you?’ She says. ‘I’m going to a party on the Upper East Side this coming weekend and I’m looking for something…um, retro, say the late 50s, the 60s, or maybe the early 70s.’ ‘Ah, you’ve come to the right place,’ she says, her eyes and arms as wide as a pixie host at Never, Never Land. ‘We have loads to offer you, just loads.’ Before I can describe what I believe will do, she holds up a mini skirt. ‘Got some white patent leather go-go boots to match,’ she says with confidence. I frown and shake my head. And like a robot she reaches for another hanger and pulls out a god-awful muumuu in canary yellow. ‘I think not,’ I say coolly. ‘A shift?’ ‘No.’ The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

‘How about hippie leather?’ ‘Um, no, I don’t think so,’ I say. From her face I’d say she now realizes she should have asked rather than rattling off a laundry list of maybes. ‘Perhaps you might describe what you have in mind,’ she says with an exasperated smile. ‘Um, something black and silky perhaps?’ ‘Got a shirtwaist dress in black silk that might fit you. Wanna see it?’ she says with upturned brows. ‘Yes, if you don’t mind,’ I say. Isn’t that what I asked for? Duh. Humming, she disappears into a back room and a couple of minutes later, presto, she emerges with the dress. I’d like to ask the price before I try it on, but she’s moving toward the dressing room stall with the dress before I can say anything. ‘Perfect,’ she says as I gaze in the mirror. It just may be, but I’m no pushover. I want to see more. Forty-five minutes later I’m on my way to my flat with the ultimate combo: a black shirtwaist silk dress—that may need a bit of hemming, and a purple pillbox hat that fits over a short curly black wig so I can mirror image the Betty Boop look. A pair of pointed-toe stilettos that matched the hat was available, but I reasoned that just maybe, just maybe I’d meet the right guy and if I towered over him, that would be that. Hello and goodbye. Not worth the risk. I’ve got a pair of Mary Janes that will be fine with this outfit. Best to play it safe, I always say. A mirror reflects the image one expects to see. Sublime. The dress and hat over the wig are ideal. And the Mary Janes are cute. I’ve applied a vermillion lipstick to match my freshly painted nails. I pause to stare. Alluring, that’s what it is. And to those waifs on the fashion runway I say, move over, I’m ready to mix it up with a crowd. a ‘Sybil, darling,’ she says, giving me Hollywood air kisses at the door, ‘you look positively smashing in that outfit.’ The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

I acknowledge my hostess’s greeting as her eyes cut over my shoulder and she proffers a frantic wave at the couple behind me. Welcome, step lively, do not block the entrance way, I muse. Though I drink very little I move toward the makeshift bar, order a white wine, and ease over to an unoccupied wall where I can look about and gauge the room. A few eyes light on me with nods and smiles. Soon the room is teeming with vamps in shimmering cocktail delights, their octopi arms enhancing their ‘marvelous’ proclamations. Yet I pay them little notice, the retro look is in. And it’s me who’ll get the coy looks from alert males around the room. Soon one will move into my personal space, whoever he is. I’m ready. So, with a grin I wait. And wait. And out of nowhere isolation creeps into my psyche as I realize in this large room of garrulous people, I am alone, and just to make matters worse, my stomach growls. Across the room I spot Allison holding social court and realize her invitation was no more than a fading afterthought, the room now peppered with those whose presence she coveted, but couldn’t deem certain. In her manner and movements her confidence holds sway, her statuesque poise exuding the assurance of the socialite she’s hoped to become. My neck feels warm and I wonder how much longer I must remain without appearing rude. I look down at my empty glass and listen as rumor takes measure of the room and settles in. Here and there a cadence of inane mantras fills the air: ‘How are you, dear? Looking fabulous, I see, job going well? All in good time, you know. Well, must circulate.’ Verbal flatulence, that’s what it is. I glance toward the door and take a step forward almost bumping into a guy. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Hi,’ I gasp, ‘I’m Sybil.’ ‘Well, yes you are, but I’d have sworn I knew you by another name,’ he says. ‘Oh?’ I blink and my cheeks flush. I’ve not heard this line before. ‘Why, why yes, I mean, I’ve seen this… this lovely look of yours before, I do believe,’ he says. ‘Oh, you mean my outfit,’ I say and a reluctant grin dawns across The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

my face. And an errant thought zips into my mind: are my teeth white enough? Did I brush before I left? Maybe my lipstick has caked on them. ‘Nice party,’ he says and looks around, no doubt to see where he can alight next. ‘Believe I’ll refresh my drink,’ he says and spins away. My heart sinks. Is it stuffy in here? I look across the room for an uncrowded path toward the door. ‘Darling, so marvelous to see you again.’ I look up into the face of a woman I do not recognize and I attempt to make eye contact, but her eyes are scanning the crowd behind me. Her painted brows and frosted coif give her the look of a stunned porcupine. ‘Nice to see you,’ I say. After a pregnant pause her radar vectors back into my space and she says, ‘Dear, someday you must tell me who sculpts your nails. Divine, they are simply divine.’ ‘Why, thank you, I did them myself,’ I say. She’s eyeing a small group over my left shoulder and I doubt she’s heard me. ‘Yes, yes, of course. And how do you know Allison?’ she says, giving my dress the once-over. ‘We grew up together in Ohio,’ I say. ‘Yes, of course, and where is that?’ she says, her eyes measuring the value of another group nearby. ‘We’re from a small town called—’ ‘Val, Val, over here. It’s Mary Ann,’ she says, waving madly and in a wink she’s gone. I take a deep breath and expel on audible sigh. The crowd ebbs and flows as if part of a grand cosmic design, stars bumping into stars as a few cold orbs like me spin quietly in place. I gaze around for Allison and prepare to acknowledge her kind invitation and be gone. ‘Hello.’ I look up as my senses re-engage and weight a mellow voice that sends chills scooting down my neck and back. ‘Hi,’ I say, concluding it’d be a waste to say much more. ‘I’m Bob Hanson and I’ve been admiring you from across the room. I hope I wasn’t staring,’ he says, and at once I realize I’d like to cuddle up to those dimples in his cheeks. ‘And you are?’ The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

My face warms as a gremlin dancing on my tongue decides to ruin it all for me. ‘I’m Betty…I mean Sybil Nettleton,’ I say. We both laugh as I realize he gets it and thinks it’s funny, too. And for a few minutes our banter covers the toon I’ve attempted to mime, and he tells me matter-of-factly how well I’ve done in choosing my dress, hat, and shoes. ‘Sybil, I see your glass is empty and I’d like another. What are you drinking?’ ‘Um, Chardonnay,’ I say. ‘Well, give me a minute and I’ll refresh our drinks.’ He disappears into the crowd, and I want to follow him with a broad sword, daring other eyes whose long lashes beckon like semaphores to stop him. Time is the charm that looms between his absence and the diminishing vow I’d made earlier that I’d not awaken tomorrow with soiled regrets. But when I see him approach, my wobbly knees are a dead giveaway of my wavering resolve. We make small talk again, none of which I can recall to this day. He’s good looking, his life has gravitas, and he has foundations of respectability laced with a cologne I’d call Naked Desire if I were naming its effect. And then he asks. Yes, it’s warm in here. And noisy. Perhaps we could find a more suitable place to become better acquainted. His eyes await my instruction. In the hallway he takes my arm and I feel a silent thrum fill my chest. On the stairs we encounter a fellow with two women in tow. ‘Bob, my man, you can’t be leaving, we just got here,’ the fellow says. ‘Well, hi, Sam. Great to see you again. Sybil, this is my roommate from college and dear friend, Sam Gibbons. Sam, this is Sybil… Sybil…’ ‘Nettleton,’ I say. Sam introduces the two with him, one on each arm. One smiles broadly at me and the other nods, but she looks as if someone just stepped on her toe with a spike heel. Something is amiss here. ‘Come on, Bob. At least stay for one drink. I know you’ve met The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Laurel, but not Missy, and I’ve told her so much about you.’ My almost date gives me that puppy dog look. ‘What do you say, Sybil, shall we stay a bit longer?’ It’s in his face and I’ve seen it before. It was just happenstance, no one planned it this way. I see every detail except the shoulder shrug I expect. ‘You go ahead,’ I say with the self-possession of a mother sending a child alone to the playground. ‘I’ve another party I promised to drop in on. Nice meeting you,’ I say to the three interlopers, but fail to acknowledge further the ghost I left the party with. On the street a mist has started to fall and droplets quickly bead on my cheeks. Funny, I forgot my umbrella. But no matter, there are several cabs on the street where I stand waving as if I’m aboard a cruise ship, bidding farewell to friends and other well wishers on a pier now fading into somber darkness.

Fred Miller is a writer based in California, USA. Over forty of his stories have appeared in various publications around the world. Some of these stories can be accessed in his blog https:// pookah1943.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

FICTION

‘Y

es?’ he said, staring at Jai, who had arrived early that morning and was now greeting him. The ailing old man, quietly waiting for his tea, scrunched up his sallow face—and Jai could not tell if his father was confused, as he tried to remember him, or annoyed. He had changed drastically; his shrunken body and sunken eyes making him look so frail that Jai knew this would be his last trip to the country to see him. Through the chinks of the still-drawn blinds, once white, faded in time to pale yellow, Jai could see slivers of sunlight entering the stuffy, dingy room. On the TV, tacked to a wall that appeared to have coffee stains, an anchor was reading the local news. But the old man, half-reclining in a retrofitted bed, scarcely looked at the screen. The chatter was just background noise, and the TV’s wavering glow provided some ambient light. In his discolored eyes, as he gazed at Jai, there was no sign of recognition.

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‘Father, it’s Jai.’ ‘Where’s Ranga?’ the old man said, his voice low and raspy. Reaching for the bell next to his bed, he added, ‘My son is not here. Ranga can guide you, if you’re the new worker.’ Ranga, holding a cup of milky tea, entered the room quickly, looking embarrassed. ‘Give it some time,’ he said to Jai softly. ‘He’ll recognize you, eventually.’ Shaken, Jai walked out without saying anything, though he smiled at Ranga. It was true that Jai had been largely absent from his father’s life for a long time. Nevertheless, the old man’s reaction came as a shock; he seemed to have no clue who Jai was—and he wasn’t pretending. In the kitchen, Jai was pouring fresh coffee into his cup, when the phone rang. Picking it up in the living room, he was pleased to hear his daughter’s voice. They chatted for a while, mostly about her new school, which she had begun attending after Jai and his wife decided to live apart. The separation was meant to be temporary, but now that his wife had found a job and moved, he was not so sure. As they talked—or rather, as he listened to his daughter’s report on the teachers she liked, the friends she’d made, and what she disliked about the school, Jai kept thinking how he should make sure that his daughter would never became a stranger to him. Hanging up the phone, Jai said, ‘That was my daughter…she’s fourteen.’ He’d been watching a light brown gecko, whose buggy eyes and swiveling head gave it an extraterrestrial look, crawl tentatively near the window, when Ranga, returning to the living room, chased it out with a broom. Weren’t geckos nocturnal? Did they bring bad luck or good luck? Jai wondered. Not that it mattered. What mattered, as Ranga seemed to agree, was that they did not belong in the house. ‘Happy to hear that,’ Ranga said. ‘Seems like your girl doesn’t speak our language.’ ‘Well, her mother grew up speaking English. That’s our common language, both at home and outside.’ ‘Not like here. I wouldn’t understand people if I leave our region.’ Smiling, Ranga added, ‘My son is from another state, but he The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

speaks our language because I got him as a baby.’ ‘You adopted him?’ ‘This happened almost thirty years ago…things were a little different then. We bought our baby. He is married now and has a child of his own. They live separately, not far from me.’ Jai was stumped, not so much, because the revelation surprised him but because he couldn’t think of a good response. Though curious, he was reluctant to ask more questions. He tended to be secretive about his own past, after all, sharing only the blandest details and being coy even with people he had known a long time. Yet, when others chose to speak intimately about their lives, he did not mind listening. When Jai’s wife, during an argument, noted that an invisible wall separated them even after fifteen years of marriage, he did not disagree. Ranga, without any prompting, went on to say that he wished his son had studied further instead of dropping out of school to become a factory worker, shortly after a girl in the village caught his eye. Wanting to marry her, the son knew that her parents would agree to the match only if he had a job. But, it was going to be different with the next generation, Ranga said, because he’d make sure his granddaughter didn’t drop out of school. He hoped she would become a professional, and was pleased that his son and daughter-in-law agreed with him. In fact, that was why Ranga—a widower—had come to the city. A good education required money, for which he couldn’t rely on his son. And the village lacked opportunities. A relative had told Jai’s siblings about Ranga, who was willing to stay in the apartment and take care of their bedridden father, also a widower. Following their mother’s death not long ago, the siblings had taken turns to keep an eye on their father, often by moving in temporarily. Now it was Jai’s turn—although he realized that after all these years, he was more of an outsider. Later that morning, Jai thought his father was sleeping when he peeked in, but the old man opened his eyes as if he had been expecting him. ‘Can you sweep the room…it’s been a few days?’ he said. ‘And I’m ready for my bath. Turn on the geyser for the hot water.’ Once when Jai was playing with his daughter, she had struck him The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

on the face with unexpected force, dislodging his glasses. They did not break, luckily, but he recalled how—when his vision blurred momentarily. He had been astonished that his little girl could be so strong. Now he felt a similar sense of bewilderment. Recovering quickly, Jai said he would get to it right away. Ranga seemed horrified when he saw him sweeping the floor, but when he tried to intervene, Jai told him not to worry. Taking him to the living room, Jai said the best thing to do now was to humor his father and pretend that he was an employee. ‘It’s temporary,’ he said when Ranga expressed skepticism. ‘We’ll take it one day at a time. Let’s see what happens.’ Jai embraced his new role with gusto. After sweeping the room and making sure the water was ready for his father’s bath, he said, ‘Okay, I’ll ask Ranga to give me a hand.’ Over the next few days, Jai got to know Ranga. Stocky and barrel-chested, with a stubbly, lined and sunburned face that reflected years of toil in the farmland surrounding his village, Ranga usually wore baggy khaki shorts and a faded T-shirt. Though affable and chatty, he could, in an instant, become morose when he missed his village or got a call from his son, who seemed to be perennially short of money. Ranga would sometimes scold his son, or complain to Jai. ‘He spends more than he earns,’ he once said. ‘Thinks… I’m an ATM!’ Ranga, who could neither read nor write, had a sharp memory. A health aide came to the house every day to check on Jai’s father and spend some time with him, giving Ranga a break. Knowing that life in the apartment was constricting, Jai encouraged him to go out more often—but Ranga seldom ventured far, noting that the density and chaos of urban life scared him a little. He had no idea what an ATM was, he said, until his move to the city. Now Ranga had a proper account, and a woman at the bank helped him whenever he wanted to deposit or withdraw money. His hair had turned white and he was missing a couple of teeth, but Ranga was so nimble and strong. He could lift Jai’s father like a baby with his callused hands. Jai realized that he was younger than The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

he looked. The old man relied on him so much that Jai’s role in the apartment was marginal for the most part. Even after almost a week, he treated Jai as little more than Ranga’s assistant. While he said ‘Jai’ now, instead of ‘hey’, when addressing him, the name did not seem to evoke any memories. To his father, Jai remained a domestic worker. Another surprise awaited Jai. ‘Madam is coming today,’ Ranga announced when, on the first Sunday after his arrival, Jai was flipping through the newspaper over a cup of coffee. ‘She comes every week.’ ‘Who comes every week?’ ‘Shaila Madam…She comes to see your father.’ A stunned Jai sank back in his chair. He had not expected to hear that name, a name that stirred long-buried emotions. He had lost contact with her years ago, while they were still in college, and it came as a jolt that she was in touch with the family. He wanted to ask when she had started coming to the house, but a loud ring stopped him. His father was calling. ‘I’ll go,’ Jai said, rising quickly. ‘You can finish your breakfast.’ ‘I need my shirt,’ the old man said when Jai entered the room. ‘Shaila is coming.’ ‘Sure, let me get it.’ Moving towards the dresser, Jai saw the thick folder he had been trying to avoid. It contained the medical records that were bound to tell him all about his father’s condition, although frankly, he was afraid to find out more. Jai had become, even before the old man’s decline, a ‘foreigner’, as some would call him, and now it was too late to do anything. ‘Oddly detached’ were the words Jai’s wife once used to describe him. ‘Sometimes, it’s as if you observe rather than live your life,’ she had said to Jai when they quarreled. ‘I feel that you’re somewhere else even when we’re together, when we’re in the same room.’ When Shaila arrived, Jai wondered if he would have recognized her on the street. Yes, but it would have taken him a minute, a second glance—because he had last seen her over two decades ago. She had changed, as did he. ‘Smart, charismatic, bohemian, alluring’ was how Jai would have described her in college, where her youthful idealism The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

and intensity had drawn him. And he wasn’t the only one smitten by her. Now, he thought, she could easily pass for a respected, middleaged college lecturer. Actually, as he soon found out, she was a school principal. Shaila had preferred a no-nonsense approach, and it was not different now. Her grey-flecked hair was tied in a loose knot, her casual attire included a lime green tunic top, and her canvass shoes, which she left outside before entering the room, were well suited for walking. When she took off her glasses and plopped on the sofa, after handing Ranga a bag of oranges and bananas, Jai was suddenly transported back to his college days. Surely, it was because of her eyes-big, dark, searching-, which he remembered well. They had held him from the moment of their first meeting on campus, where she was handing out fliers to students and asking them to join a protest gathering. ‘I’m sorry…I cannot come,’ he had mumbled, though he took a flier. ‘I’ve to finish my work. My assignment is due soon.’ Shaila, without speaking, let him pass—but he was stung by the mockery in her smiling eyes, and his face turned red. Despite that unpromising start, they got to know each other well. It turned out that she already knew about him because their fathers had been classmates in school. The parents were pleased when Jai and Shaila became friends, although they did not know that there was more to it. But while the relationship did go beyond friendship, it had boundaries, not unusual back then for couples who weren’t married. Jai and Shaila had jokingly referred to it as their ‘freelationship.’ Entering the old man’s room with Shaila, Jai saw his face light up with a smile. ‘How are you, daughter?’ he said, extending his hand from the armchair. Freshly shaven and bathed, with his hair neatly combed, he looked dapper in his clean white kurta and loose-fitting trousers. He had not called him ‘son’ in a long time, Jai thought, marveling at his transformation in Shaila’s presence. Relaxed, even cheerful, the old man asked her to sit next to him. And then, looking at Jai, he said with unexpected sharpness, ‘Don’t just stand there…get some water and make tea for the guest!’ The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Jai saw the startled expression on Shaila’s face, but he hurried away before she could protest. ‘The work ethic is not the same these days,’ he could hear his father saying. ‘In the old days, you didn’t have to tell them everything. They knew what to do when there was a visitor.’ Shaila did not say anything to Jai when he brought the tea and snacks, but she glanced at him quizzically several times. Jai merely smiled. Remaining silent, he was an unobtrusive server, hovering near the door in case his father needed anything, and returning only to take the cups and plates. Thankfully, the visit ended without further awkwardness. When Shaila exited the apartment after saying goodbye, Jai followed her. ‘How extraordinary!’ she said as soon as they got to the stairs. ‘What was all that about, Jai? I could hardly believe it, and I desperately wanted to say something. Your father doesn’t know who you are?’ Jai’s smile felt more like a grimace. ‘It’s complicated. Let’s get out of the building first.’ It was oppressive outside, and the sunlight bright despite predictions of rain, as Jai felt the heat rise from the earth to envelope him in a humid bubble. Instinctively, they moved towards the shade of a quietly swaying banyan tree that had miraculously survived the onslaught of construction in the area. The sturdy gnarled vines gave it the appearance of a modern sculpture, although Jai knew that the tree belonged to an earlier period, a more gracious time in the city, when such verdant trees had been plentiful, lining streets that were quieter and less congested. As he looked up at this solitary sentinel, its branches seemed to shake mournfully. ‘Wow, it’s no time to be outside,’ he said, feeling icky. His undershirt, already damp, began sticking to the skin. ‘We should’ve called a cab to take you home. Actually, if you don’t mind me saying, I thought a school principal would come in a car.’ She smiled, and for a moment, Jai thought he saw that old mockery in her eyes. ‘Our school is far from fancy, Jai. As for the weather, I am used The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

to it. I think you have been away so long that you forgot how it is here at this time. Let us talk more over a cold drink…we have to catch up. But first, what on earth is going on between you and your father? I’m baffled!’ ‘So was I, Shaila. Nothing is happening between us—that is the problem! He doesn’t know who I am. I am just playing along for now. His memory is gone, of course, and he thinks I am a domestic worker. To be honest, I am fine with that for now. I won’t be here for long.’ An auto-rickshaw was parked under the tree, and its dozing driver had just woken up. They got in for the short ride to Cloves & Cardamom, which was almost empty in the lethargic post-lunch period, giving them both peace and privacy in the cool, partially dark interior. Jai, at first reflexively avoiding any discussion about his past, spoke after they ordered their drinks. ‘Did you know that Ranga bought his son, almost three decades ago?’ he said. ‘Yes, I know that,’ she said, looking irritated. Pausing, she added, ‘You act like a foreigner, Jai, as if you didn’t know. Don’t you remember what we were agitating against in college?’ ‘Indeed, I do. Child labor. The building contractor hired by the college was using child labor for his projects, and we…’ ‘Yes, yes, but that wasn’t the only thing. Remember, even after the administration investigated and rescinded the contract, how we continued our agitation because of what was going on? Children were being bought and sold, not only because somebody wanted to adopt one.’ Of course he did. That is when the agitation spun out of control, leading to the cancelation of classes and the postponement of exams. Moreover, the turmoil on campus did not bring about any further changes. The city’s ban on child labor came much later, only after a new government came to power. Primary education became mandatory then, but it was also true that the use of child labor continued in pockets of the city, often secretly. That turbulent year in college, as the student activists became more radical, Jai was filled with uneasiness. Elated by their early The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

success, they would become too bold, even arrogant, in his opinion. Initially skeptical, Jai had joined the agitators because of Shaila—but then, while he had been just as happily surprised by their victory, he was reluctant to go any further. The passions it unleashed seemed alarming, not admirable. Besides, being single-mindedly ambitious, Jai knew he would have to work hard and do well to get the financial aid he needed to study abroad. If the activists saw him as an escapee rather than one who stayed and tried to solve problems, so be it. When Jai had told her, before the year ended, that he was transferring to another college, hundreds of miles away, she was taken aback. ‘Why now?’ she had asked, her face showing disappointment. Activism had made her life meaningful and she was delighted that they would become good comrades, she added. That word ‘comrades’ made him squirm. But, she wasn’t joking. Why was he walking away now, she said, turning his back on a cause that was worth fighting for, especially after they had tasted the sweetness of success? She spoke calmly, and Jai was struck by the force of her convictions. I do not agree with the increasingly strident ways of the activists, and the disruption they cause, he had wanted to say. But he didn’t. Instead, Jai said he wanted to focus on his studies, which was also true, though he knew it sounded like a cop out, an admission of failure. Shaila said she understood, smiling sadly. And Jai realized, even before he could tell her which college he was heading to, that things would never be the same again between them. When Jai and Shaila stepped out of Cloves & Cardamom, the contrast—in terms of light, temperature, sound—was so striking that he stood still without talking for a few moments, blinking rapidly. His sunglasses, which he had forgotten to bring from the apartment, would have been nice. Shading his eyes, he stepped over to the bus shelter near the restaurant. Before they parted, he wanted to ask her something. Jai had hesitated because it was an awkward question, but it was now or never. Had she been expelled from the college? ‘No,’ she responded. After all the chaos on campus, she had just decided to drop out. Ah, the chaos. Jai had heard about it, in bits and pieces. He The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

had stayed in touch with her initially, but that ended when he found out that she and the group leader had become close—’an item,’ as a former classmate put it. Soon, Jai ceased to keep up with the news from his old college. It was only later, while on a visit home, that he heard more about the turmoil. A few activists, including that student leader, had gone on a fast after issuing their demands. It triggered unrest on campus and, after a period of uncertainty, the local government responded harshly, deploying the police and arresting the activists. Some students were expelled, though Jai got conflicting reports about Shaila. He could have checked with her family or her friends and tried to track her down, but he did not. And then, his break over, he went back to his college. The bus shelter looked new and surprisingly comfortable. It was an example, albeit a small one, of the improvements that locals liked to talk about, sometimes accusing Jai of being willfully blind to the good changes taking place in the city, while focusing on the negatives. ‘You’re stuck in the past, my friend,’ one of them said in exasperation. ‘You should visit more often, and stop making subconscious comparisons between here and there. Then you’ll learn.’ The man had a point, so Jai did not argue with him. But he could also sense a certain defensiveness in that posture, an assertion of local pride, and perhaps an unwillingness to be judged by an outsider. And yes, Jai had to recognize that he’d become, through his long absence from the country, an outsider. Random comments from a person who had cut his ties often held little value for the locals. Jai wished he and Shaila could have chatted more in the restaurant, but he knew she had to leave. In the shelter, though, Shaila did not seem to be in a rush, and she continued to talk. ‘I knew you’d left the country, and I knew what you were up to…kind of,’ she said. ‘But I hesitated to get in touch…after so many years. I decided to wait for your visit.’ ‘I wish I’d known, Shaila. But what happened…after you left the college, I mean?’ The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

‘It was a rough time…a surreal time. You heard about the arrests and expulsions, right? Well, there was also a death…in police custody. They claimed it was a heart attack, triggered by shock and hunger. We didn’t believe them. A lot of people didn’t know because it was hushed up.’ Jai was speechless. He saw her eyes cloud, and the sorrow in her careworn face moved him. Though he did not ask, he was sure that it was the group leader who had died. Would it be appropriate to give her a hug, he wondered, even if he did not say anything? Probably not. ‘It all happened so long ago, Jai,’ she said, recovering. ‘It was a different era.’ Following the crackdown, a disenchanted Shaila left the college and drifted aimlessly for a few years, even becoming estranged from her family. Then, thanks to the support of a few friends, she got involved in social work and attended another college to finish her degree. While training to be a teacher, she met the man who would become her husband and the father of her two children. Reconciling with her father took a while—but it did happen and, after her mother died some years ago, they became close again. The previous year, before her father’s death, he had asked her to contact his old friend—Jai’s father—and visit him once in a while. ‘My visits became a little more regular after your father’s condition deteriorated,’ she said. ‘But Jai, we can talk later. I can see the bus from here…that’s the one I need to take.’ ‘A bus!’ Jai said, appalled. ‘I thought we were just standing here to talk. Please take a cab.’ She laughed, as if he had cracked a joke. ‘I’m used to it,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to go far. But here’s an auto…I’ll take an auto.’ The passing auto-rickshaw had slowed to a crawl, with the driver looking at them expectantly, when Shaila flagged him down. He swerved and pulled over. Heartened by Shaila’s laugh, which ended the gloomy mood, Jai held up the business card she had given him earlier. ‘I like the name of your school, by the way,’ he said. ‘Wish I’d gone to a school called Fun Academy. I might have had a more pleasant experience as a student.’ The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

‘It was actually called Foundational Academy when we took over,’ she said, smiling. ‘That name was a little boring and long, so we changed it to Fun Academy.’ ‘Very appropriate.’ Getting into the auto-rickshaw, Shaila settled back on the seat and gave the driver her address. Then, turning to Jai, she said: ‘I told Ranga to send his granddaughter to our school. It will be good for her. He was very excited. He’s going to talk to his son and let me know.’ Revving up, the auto-rickshaw pulled away with a roar—and as Jai waved, a billow of exhaust mixed with shimmering dust greeted him.

Murali Kamma is the managing editor of an Atlanta-based features magazine Khabar.com. His fiction has appeared in Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, Rosebud, Asian Pacific American Journal, South Asian Review, India Currents, The Missing Slate, America’s Intercultural Magazine, India Abroad, Trikone Magazine, Muse India, and is forthcoming in Eastlit The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

POETRY

GALE ACUFF

Lips I want to know where I go when I die. I figure that this where must be a place. I could be wrong. If so, it’s not a where — I wonder if it isn’t, then, a time, a time when I leave the time of living a time that is the moment of my death, and a time that means immortality, too. Then I’ll really have time on my hands. I only know of time what I know here. Here is the only place I know--that is, one apartment or another, this town or the next. Georgia or California. North Carolina and Oklahoma. I put them all within a larger here. I’ve spent some time in all these places but nowhere like the one into which I’ll move. What’s over there? My mother and father, perhaps. They weren’t sure where they were going, either. How can I help but meet them there? I’ve things to tell them which I didn’t say The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

when I had the chance, when they were present. But I’ll make up for lost time over there or die trying--die again, I mean. But you can’t die twice, as far as I know, so if I have what passes for teeth and tongue I’ll tell them what I should have told them there. But if there’s no way to tell then with lips I’ll tell them however one tells them over there. And if I there’s a way to listen there then we won’t have to talk at all. Just live the kind of life that dead people live. So I’m not afraid, or as much afraid, of dying. I figure it’s like putting your underwear or shirt on inside-out. It’s still a shirt from either side, and my heart is still in the right place every time.

Trek On our last night together we’re apart, my wife in the Econo-lodge, room 10, I in my father’s house, sleeping alone but for his snoring from the next bedroom. Over my head is Opus the Penguin and a generic, unnamed stuffed lion which I brought back from the drug store one day when she wasn’t feeling well and it was on sale. I named him Loopy. She leans back against the pillows while I make voices for bird and beast, pretty damned good voices. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

The television atop the dresser screens that Star Trek episode where Jim Kirk has to let Depression-era sweetheart Edith Keeler die in an accident, the Captain holding back the Doctor from making the mistake of saving her. Harlan Ellison wrote this one, Loopy says, in my best falsetto. Yes, Opus booms, you like Harlan Ellison, in bass. Earlier in the show Kirk tells Science Officer Spock, I think I’m in love with Edith Keeler. Spock replies--he’s seen it all, the future they’ve changed--Jim, Edith Keeler must die. Matter-of-factual. She must die, and she’s waiting, my wife, for the end. We’ve seen this one before--it’s my favorite. But it’s so sad, she says. Yes, but they save the future, I say. True, she says, but they’re parted forever. Yes, I say — they give up their love so that others can. Well, she says, Edith dies, you know. But she was supposed to die anyway, I say. If they let her live, there is no future — well, there’s a different future, a lousy future: Nazis will rule the world, you know. Then James T. mutters those immortal words — immortal in the Star Trek chronicles — after he and Spock and Bones return through the Gate of Forever, the crew waiting for Kirk to give the signal to transport: Let’s get the hell out of here, he says, just like that. It’s just TV, Opus, Loopy, and I say, all together, one voice neither theirs nor mine. Who gets the last word? The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

And so I let her die. What’s worse, she’s still alive. I don’t mean that like it sounds, and I can still return to see her and then haul back and all will be as it was before but Edith’s dead forever; in theory, though, Kirk can go back to visit but he won’t — it would hurt too much to lose her again. It would hurt too much to lose her again and he’s in enough pain as it is and he’s not even real. But we know we are.

Holy Ghost He’s sitting in a lawn chair but he’s more past than present now. It won’t be long, less than a year, before he dies, when I’ll be in West Texas, trying to revive my career. He’s watching me steer the mower around and around the front yard. Pretty soon I’ll have lapped myself down to nothing and completed my job. A lot like life: you get this thing called existence done with, or almost--you look back, everything adds up, say, and you have some satisfaction. Then--whoops--that’s it. Job’s done and so are you. I ride the mower back to the toolshed, see Father disappear behind the wall. I’m looking back in appreciation of good work--how smoothly everything has The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

gone. Grass and weeds are on the same level again, for a couple of weeks, that is, depending on how much rain we get. I hope for just enough to keep it green, not the deluge that will make it grow. I’m not lazy --I wish that I could do a thing and keep it done. Just once. Things always spring up again. I park on the concrete floor in front of the aluminum shed, cut the engine, walk back the way I rolled, turn the corner and Father’s still alive He holds the crook of his cane with his left, left leg crossing over his right. He picks at the skin cancer on his right earlobe. Well, I see you got it done. Looks real good. Yeah, I say. Mail’s run, he says. Ran when you were putting up the mower. I say I’ll go fetch it. I walk down the gravel driveway, which I talked him out of paving, and cross the street. I return with his messages, look to him in his chair, but he’s disappeared again, gone inside, to sit in his place, wait for me to deliver him something hopeful --dividend check, new magazine, letter or card from his other children. Thank you, Son, he always says. Minutes later, he’s asked me to drive him to the bank. Sure thing, I say. We’re in the drive-through, which looks like a toll plaza stop. I ask, How’d you make out this month? He says, Well, my stock is up so I made a few hundred. I say, Cool --let’s spend it. He laughs. Your mother gets it The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

when I’m gone. I ask, as I’ve asked before, trying with humor to approach the end, Where you goin’? Laughter. I mean, when I’m dead. Don’t leave me here alone, man, I say. I wanna go, too. Lemme come with you. (Just like a kid but I’m over forty). I’ll wait on you, he says. I’ll keep a light burning. We settle accounts and drive home. I say, Man, if I knew where people go when they die, I’d be a rich man. He laughs. No. You’d be a dead man. Here’s what I think, I say, as we pull into the driveway. God wants us to be atheists. It came to me in a flash. A revelation. I kill the second engine of the day and walk around to his side of the car and help him out. I think I understand, he says. What’s for supper? I raise him up declare, Man does not live by bread alone, you know. No, he says. Not the way you cook.

Gale Acuff is from Starkville, Mississippi in the USA and has published widely in various journals. He has also published three books of poetry, Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008) The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

POETRY

RICHARD LUFTIG

Tonightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Task Even in May, the moon Cannot burn off dew; Clouds will not light up stars. Each knows its role Like the soft Lacing of a glove. I stand alone; a sentry Pine, searching the wind For its hidden thoughts.

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Shibumi: Unobtrusive Beauty All wisdom is rooted in learning to call things by their right name. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Confucius He is intent In his life To make This journey His home. But every passing Day causes Pause Like pen Poised upon Blank page. There are No words left To explain Her absence. It is more Like ice That settles In for Its own Long winter, Or her footprints Left behind To fend For themselves. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Drought Out in the back of farms, dead, rusted tractors wait, impatient for a winter bath. It has been here dry so long that even ducks have forgotten how to tilt back their heads and drink from the skies. Little left that is not ash-gray dirt, just dust, cross-hatched with tracks of long-gone sparrows, and these parched, fallow fields are left to eke out a life on their own. They sit; scarred, seedto-sedge. Sand-blasted, erased, year-in, year-out, like some ignored spinster, who wants, waits, wishes for more but is always too afraid to ask.

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Surprise Poppies Plant two on your hill And in fall songbirds will feast On the seeds. Next spring You will have one-hundred Times the flowers spreading Among the pinyon oak. Red Hawk They catch the updrafts Like October clouds Holding onto the rain. Still, the sparrows peck About, not yet knowing It is their moving day. Suddenly This year makes eight Summers since I have left flatland States, crossed their rivers. Today when someone asked, A surprise: I said California is my home.

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Speeding Through Kansas These semis are prarie schooners: sailing west, speeding past cornfields, barns, frontage roads, scatters of windbreak trees. And the towns: all video-land second-hand stores turned hand-to-mouth, brick-to-dust, falling in, fading fast. They hold out false fronts, false hopes and even now canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t admit how anything sown into this wind-blown, silt-loam land could ever be destined to survive. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

How to Write a Poem in a Cafe The woman with the auburn hair, rimless glasses, down vest. Make up a life for her. How she fell in love with the guy from the country and western band back in the eighties. A steel guitar player to be exact. How she would sit in the back of the dives and road houses he played on weekends, and wrote poems in longhand that she never showed him or even later anyone else. How they fought about his wanting to use their savings to go to England to cut a record that no one would ever buy. How he left on that weird June morning when the temperature almost went down to freezing. How she dreams now of driving out to Yellowstone in her beater of a Buick to see the geysers, feel

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the spray on her freckled neck, sporting a farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tan from painting the siding on her aged, motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house. And how she works the graveyard shift over at the box factory, comes here when her time is up, more out of boredom than anything else, drinking her third cup of coffee, black, three sugars, pretending to work on the Sudoku puzzle as she invents a life for me.

Richard Luftig is a former professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University in Ohio, now residing in California. He is a recipient of the Cincinnati Post-Corbett Foundation Award for Literature and a semi-finalist for the Emily Dickinson Society Award The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

POETRY

SHEENA SINGH

Addiction Under the dark sky, in full view of the moon and stars, I gaze into those eyes: a deep sea of mysteries, entrapping me to a world unknown. Around the corner under each shadow, rough nails grip along my hair. The touch erupts and fills me with fear still, I long to linger; my fear became fire, unfolding a taste of raw emotions. Day after day, those dark eyes hold me all day and night taking me for a ride; I follow blindfolded; my heart tuning to this sudden outpour of ripened dreams. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Flights of Fantasy The sky all dressed up in a bluish gown like an angel. Clouds engulfing her silver crown, the stage is set for music to begin by thunder and storm. I wish to be a kite, gliding through those clouds swept ahead by the wind rainbows entrusting me to shine brighter as ever. I wish to be a kite flying high in the sky Unchecked by strings beneath; aiming new heights away from every sight cherishing my flight. Sheena Singh is an engineer based in New Delhi, India. Besides writing, she is also interested in tarot reading and crystal healing. She blogs at sheenapillaisingh.blogspot.com The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

THE WANDERER

ANDREW FLECK

The N End of the World

ow and again, when Kim Jung Un threatens, as his father and grandfather did before him, to turn Seoul (on whose southern flank I live) into a sea of ashes or a river of fire, or some such formulation, I think of this poem. Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

I have heard that this poem by Robert Frost in part inspired the title of the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, more commonly known after the name given to the TV series, A Game of Thrones, which we expect will end in a great kind of CGI Ragnarok of ice-zombies battling fire-breathing dragons. Well, cast such visions out of your head, and likewise forget exploding asteroids, super-volcanoes, ice-ages and blizzards, for Frost is not really talking about natural or supernatural phenomena. He is asking a question about human emotions: whether desire, the passion of the zealot, which he calls fire, is more dangerous, or hatred, which he equates with ice, cool disregard for humans. What is worse for mankind, a surfeit of emotion or a lack of it? The poem is thought to have been inspired by Dante’s Inferno, with its divine punishments meted out to the world’s sinners in the nine circles of hell. Most people associate hell with fire – as indeed ‘inferno’, the Latinate term for fire denotes – but at the end of Inferno, at the very centre of the circles of hell, Satan himself is encased within a great block of ice. This is not the morally neutral ice of an ice-age, but the coldness and callousness of a heart without love, of a person who can reduce his fellow human beings to mere abstractions, and wreak ‘destruction’ on them. (There’s something of that ‘fire’ in the crazed rhetoric of the North Korean regime, to be sure, but there is also something of that ‘ice’ in their callous and destructive ideology.) Pondering the end of the world or of civilization as we know it, was a regular preoccupation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the philosopher and madman Frederick Nietzsche, the really big ending had already happened. But when he famously declared ‘God is dead,’ he was not making a theological argument one way or the other about the existence of a supreme being, rather he was – quite happily – declaring the end of the long Judeo-Christian – Liberal Weltanschauung that had long-dominated Western thought, and the dawning of the Supermen, as he argues in his long, crazed, and yet strangely poetic, prophetic Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Only since he has lain in the grave have you again been resurrected. Only now does the great noontide come, only now does the Higher Man The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

become – Lord and Master! Nietzsche saw a future in which ‘will to power’ held sway, and the superior used and abused the inferior as necessary – it was an absurd vision, even an evil vision, but then he took a different view of good and evil from that of most people, explaining traditional Judeo-Christian conceptions of goodness and charity as a kind of disease born of resentment and weakness that was slowly undermining the strengths necessary for the survival of Western civilization. Whatever one thinks of his answer, Nietzsche asked a question that haunted the Western imagination for much of the first half of the 20th century, and arguably still does. If we take it, as he did, that liberalism and much of western culture are offshoots of Christianity, and dependent on it, what comes after that? For the parts of the world that have no historical connection with Christianity, the question is still relevant if rephrased as so: if our society has progressed past the point at which traditional values no longer hold sway – and these are values that touch on everything, even the very meaning of words – then what will come after? What will be our new values, or our new God? W. B. Yeats posed the same question more eloquently, painting an apocalyptic picture of anarchy and some as yet unknown ‘solution’ in what is, in political circles at least, surely the most quoted poem of the twentieth century, The Second Coming. While Nietzsche enjoyed his fantasies of domination and revolution from the sanatoriums of Germany in the placid closing years of the nineteenth century, Yeats lived through more tumultuous times — revolution and civil war in his native Ireland, the First World War, and the coming of the Second — and he was disturbed by the changes he saw and those he intuited to be coming. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

He ends his poem prophetically thus: now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? That ‘rocking cradle’ is an obvious symbol of one of the centrepieces of Christian theology – the crib in which that ‘First Coming,’ Jesus Christ, was born – an event that in Yeats view changed the direction of history. The beast represents the next great movement which will dominate the west, and perhaps the world, but its exact nature, what rough beast, is left as a question mark. What is it, we might ask? Given that the poem was written decades ago, before World War II and many other tumultuous events, we may ask whether it has arrived yet — was it fascism, that short-lived dawn of the Supermen of Nietzsche’s fevered imagining? Or Communism? The modern state? The deification of the self? Were those things the death pains of the old order, or the birth pangs of a new order? Is it perhaps the coming of the technological age? Or is it, rather than something new, something actually very old indeed: the barbarians waiting at the border walls, ready to destroy and devour our precious civilization? The Alexandrian-Greek poet C. P. Cavafy wrote a poem called Waiting for the Barbarians in which he describes the strange atmosphere of anticipation in a rich and presumably quite decadent city as news filters through that barbarians have invaded and are heading to the city for an audience with the emperor. Cavafy had a keen sense of history and wrote a lot of poems based on real historical characters in Ancient Greece, Hellenistic Greece and the Byzantine Empire. He was aware that failed, decadent or just unlucky civilizations are often replaced or superseded by those less cultured yet somehow more vital. Yet, in this poem, the place and period is not named, which might suggest that decadent civilisaThe Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

tions being overrun by unlettered hordes is a permanent or recurring feature of history. The poem ends with a twist, however: the barbarians are not coming after all. In fact, there are no barbarians: And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. What if there is no drama at the end of the world or at the end of civilization as we know it? What if it dies of weakness or lassitude? T. S. Eliot suggested as much in his poem The Hollow Men. Most of the poem is voiced by the eponymous hollow men, men caught between their doubt and their yearning for belief, trapped in hopelessness and on the verge of death. We are the hollow men, We are the stuffed men Leaning together, Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! The poem ends with the famous refrain, This is the way the world ends, / Not with a bang but a whimper, lines that are italicised to show that they represent a voice distinct from the main voice in the poem. It is like a snatch of nursery rhyme – quite similar in rhythm to the old English rhyme ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’. The intention, I think, is to mock: to mock the hollow men and their lack of faith, and perhaps to goad them – and us – to change. Who are these hollow men? Perhaps he is mocking the leaders of his own day, and perhaps himself – still stuck on the verge of a religious conversion (one he would soon after embrace fully), and perhaps modern man in general, that indecisive, mediocre creature who had been the butt of the scorn of earlier satirical poems like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Compared to the fire and ice of Frost’s imagination, or the anarchy prophesied by Yeats, a bit of cultural decline and decadence doesn’t seem so much like the end of the world. The modern world, whatever Eliot or Nietzsche might think of it, is not a bad place to live. In the western world, and much – though not all - of the rest of the world, people are breaking faith with their ancient religions and traditions, and embracing a lifestyle built on technological advances, mateThe Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

rial comfort and consumption. Perhaps a society without its ancient religion and its heroic myths can linger on after all, like the city in Cavafy’s poem. And yet his own city provides an instructive case study that rather suggests that is not how things work. During his own lifetime, Alexandria was a cosmopolitan sort of a place, at the twilight of the British Empire, strongly influenced culturally by the French, and a great mix of cultures old and new, where Arabs and Copts lived peaceably alongside longstanding Jewish, Greek and Armenian Diasporas, and more recent French and Italian immigrants– and even a gay scene, in which Cavafy participated. But this is all gone now, washed away by tides of nationalism and religious extremism. Today, as ever, when a civilization loses faith in itself, loses the will even to defend itself, there is no shortage of barbarians ready to destroy it. CREDITS ‘Fire and Ice’ by Robert Frost is in the public domain The Nietzsche quotation is from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche, Trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books, London 1961, page 297 ‘The Second Coming’, from W. B. Yeats, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 1991 ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, from C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, Chatto and Windus, London 1998 ‘The Hollow Men’, T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962, Faber & Faber, London, 1963

Andrew Fleck, who has been a secondary school teacher, proof reader and EFL teacher, among other things, writes on poetry and history at sweettenorbull.com. Currently, he is working on a historical fiction set in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a project that he hopes will come to fruition at some point in 2017. Originally from the north east of England, he currently lives in South Korea with his wife and two small children The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

FICTION

1. It was in 1994 when I realized people could generate enough heat to fry fish. Men, women, boys, girls and anybody who was anything in Ijeja, would all cram themselves into our sitting room, sometimes even dogs. Some sat on the floor. Others stood and kept hitting the head of those who blocked them, in a jostle for the right to see the black and white pictures of men in round necks and shorts running after a ball from one end of a rectangular pitch to the other on our television. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

The World Cup was on and our house was the meeting point for the entire neighbourhood. The games that involved Nigeria were naturally the most seen. People would sit on all the chairs in the house including the dining room chairs, some would even bring chairs from their houses or stools or on some occasions big black 25 litre kegs which they would sit on and sometimes drum with when the frenzy of excitement caught up with them. The refrigerator with rust blending into its original brown, sitting in the corner of the dining room would witness a surge in visits on those days, as it would be opened back and forth, whining with age. When Nigeria lost a game you could always tell from the maniacal anger in the voices of the men, the resigned look on the ladies and the interest-less bents of the children since some of them had no idea why they were seeing the games anyway. During games that Nigeria won, you could hear their laughter rumbling like thunder on a cloudy day as they jeer and boo the opposing teams as if those ones could hear them. I remember that goal scored by Rashidi Yekini in the opening match against Bulgaria and how he went inside the goalpost to shake the net. How the house erupted into celebrations. Chairs in the air, fists bumping, rhythm-less dancing, football-players-styled hugging. The screaming and hysterical emotions running from one individual to the other. How the heat in the small space tripled. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really understand why we were screaming or dancing at the time and I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care, it was more important for me to be a part of the jamboree. 2. Father purchased the black and white, second hand television just three days before the World Cup began. It was the reason our sitting room played host to the whole neighbourhood. Most of the folks that lived in ijeja were either artisans or low-level civil servants and since my parents were middle level civil servants, we had it better than most of them. We lived in a three bedroom flat, with a large compound where on most days, I and the other kids in the compound would hold a track and field event. This event was usually rigged to my favour because I was the youngest. During our version of the relay race, I would be The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

placed on the team that had the older and faster kids. I would then do my best impression of my favourite American athlete Michael Johnson as I had seen him do on television countless times whenever he was about to swoop in for victory. Pushing my chest forward and swinging my arms and legs slowly, with my tongues out, to get that slowmotion effect that I see him do often. On some occasions, my impressions would land me into trouble and cost us the race. The other kids in my team would be livid and swear never to allow me on their team again while the opposing team would laugh at me till I cried and ran inside the house to hide myself. 3. It was Easter and Uncle Yomi was around, he was father’s Uncle’s brother in law’s son or something like that but he liked calling himself father’s younger brother because father’s parents had raised him and he had adopted the family name as he came to them as an orphaned child. He was tall and had a moustache and he kept an afro like father although his own afro was much taller and bushier, with a comb hanging just in between to give it the shape of a police beret. Uncle Yomi claimed that he was once an athlete for Nigeria and was training for the Olympics when injury struck, an injury he never recovered from. He liked making up stories, stories that could not be confirmed. He once told us about chasing a vehicle speeding at 80km per hour with his superfast legs, how he caught up with it, dragged the driver—who was a known carjacker—out and beat the shit out of him. Another time he told us of a wrestling match up between himself and a bear while he was training to take on Andrew the Giant in a World Wrestling Federation matchup. Uncle Yomi even showed us some scars on his shoulder to prove his story, saying it was where the bear pawed him. 4. The Friday night after the day Uncle Yomi arrived, the moon came out to play and the stars along with it. Despite the absence of Nepa light in The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

the neighbourhood, night looked like evening. Uncle Yomi said he was tired and not in the mood for stories. I was disappointed, so I looked for something else to do. Mother was in the sitting room listening to NkanNbe on her transistor radio. After a few minutes of listening with her, the anchor of the program, Kola Olawuyi and his toad like voice came on and in very smooth yoruba began talking about how a little boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s severed head was discovered under the bed of his step mother after several days of searching for him. I found myself imagining how it would be like to be headless, thinking whether the boy endured any pain while parting with his head. The thoughts sent shivers through my body. I ran to our bedroom and hid myself under the blanket, teeth clattering and shivering. I must have slept off while hiding, because the next time my eyes were opened, it was as a result of a sound I heard from the intangible land of sleep. It was brash and harsh and it pierced through my subconscious. It reminded me of the goal we celebrated during the world cup, that almost senseless noise that followed. We lived in a three bedroom flat and ours was the first from the gate. I stood from my bed and made my way to the sitting room. I was by the veranda that led to our rooms, when I remembered that the door to the sitting room from the veranda might be locked, I checked and true to my suspicions it was. Mother always ensured that the door stayed locked whenever we were about going to bed. I peered through the big round hole at the center of the door into the sitting room and noticed that the sound that had awoken me must have been what broke our front door down because the door was lying flat on the ground, the nails and the side hooks were gone and there was dust everywhere. Father was out of bedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;just his singlet and boxers shorts were on him. Mother was by his side, dancing from left to right to a soundless music and muttering something incoherent to herself. Their room was closest to the sitting room. The way the house was designed, the master bedroom was the first room from the sitting room and it had a different entry point from the other rooms. They were both in the sitting room facing the broken door and the men of the night. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Uncle Yomi was on the floor too like the broken door. I think he had passed out. Or maybe feigning a sleep was part of his plan to immobilize the advancing burglars and beat them. He had done worst things in his tales. He usually slept on the longest couch in the sitting room but this time he slept with his face to the ground and his arms spread as though he was trying to do an impression of a bird in flight. I walked back to our room to wake Tobi, my brother, but he was sleeping as though he had been drugged, he did not even stir. Aunty Kemi, mother’s younger sister who usually slept in the nursery with Tolu—my little sister—opposite the room I shared with Tobi fumbled out, I think she was on her way to the bathroom. Her eyes were sleep laden like they would shut by themselves if she didn’t shut them soon. ‘You this boy, what are you doing there?’ She said as she walked to me and squeezed my ear, dragging me towards the entrance of my room. I tried to scream out the pain but she held my mouth. As she was dragging me, we heard a slap that was swiftly followed by two more. We stopped as if on cue. Aunty Kemi put her fore finger on her lips to silence me and moved in the direction of the sitting room, squeezing the handle of the locked door as stealthily as she could. I wondered what kind of sleep she was sleeping before that didn’t allow her to have heard that the door to the sitting room had been broken and why she didn’t remember that the middle door was never left unlocked. I pointed at the big hole in the middle of door and she smiled at me. I expected an apology. There were three armed men in our sitting room. One of them was designing father’s face with slaps and asking him where he kept the money. ‘Please sir. There is no money here sir,’ Father was saying, his mouth bloodied, as though he was their butler and our house was a castle and the robbers were the owners. I think he believed he could reason with them. Another man stood by Uncle Yomi’s sleeping form, kicking him and hoping to wake him but my legendary uncle didn’t move. Another one leaned on the brown fridge, gun in hand, watching all that was happening. Mother was crying as she watched father receive the slaps. I had never seen Mother cry. She didn’t cry when she was informed that Grandma, The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

her mother had died, Aunty Kemi had been inconsolable that day. The one leaning on the fridge walked up to father. He told Father to address him as Askari. ‘Where is the money?’ He asked. His voice was gruff, his hair dyed brown like he was hawking fire. Father stared at him as though he hadn’t heard or understood the question. As he would later tell us, he had assumed that they meant his personal money. But when the robber pointed his gun at his temple and asked where the money he had withdrew from the bank the previous day was, shock seemed unworthy a word to describe the feeling that registered itself on him. How could they have known that he collected money at any point yesterday when it was only him and his superior at work that knew about the money? Money that had been withdrawn for immediate disbursement, but how do you explain that to a gun slinging robber, how would he comprehend that all the money was gone. ‘Do you want me to refresh your memory?’ Askari screamed at Father, his finger on the trigger. ‘Erm…erm it was for work sah!’ Maybe it was the threat of imminent danger, the inability to find answers to questions from a raging gun slinging maniac that knocked the senses back into father or maybe the shock just registered in his mind because the finesse with which he spoke earlier took a race. Askari’s face took on the cloak of a charged up bull running at a bright colored cloth. ‘Do you think I came to your house to count the ceiling?’ He screamed to nobody in particular as he paced the sitting room. He released the safety hammer of his gun and pointed it at father. Mother screamed in that piercing way that seemed as if she unleashed hundred sharp pins from her throat and as she would later tell us, she had thought Askari would blow father’s brains off and she may have been right. She had heard too many stories of armed robbery for her not believe that father would meet his end. Askari pulled the trigger twice but strangely the gun jammed. The bullet that was in the revolver refused to come off. Perhaps the bullets were stuck in an unreachable cavity; wonders flew out the window and ushered in Askari’s wrath. Askari threw the pistol on the floor in frustration and kicked it towards Uncle Yomi The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

who moved involuntarily bracing himself for the ensuing impact of the gun despite his supposed unconsciousness. The other men started protesting about how killing someone wasn’t part of the deal. Father, who was on his knees with his face soiled with tears, bowed his head as if praying. Mother had joined Uncle Yomi on the floor as she went butt first in a faint. In his fury, Askari picked up the gun and went outside our compound. The deafening sound of the gunshots heralded his return back into the house looking all pleased with himself as he announced that his gun still worked as if we cared. The sound of the gunshot had gone off to distil the silent noise of the night. He walked up to father and placed the round mouth of the gun on his temple again and said, ‘Where is the Money?’ Father’s face became colourless like a corpse in a morgue, raising both his arms up in surrender. ‘Oga, there is no money sah... Please sah I have children sah, don’t kill me sah. I beg you sah,’ Father pleaded, bending down in a motion, which looked as if he wanted to prostrate but not sure if he should. ‘Open ya bloody mouth, you stubborn fool. I go show you today.’ Askari commanded, a heavily drawl on his voice indicating that he could be Igbo; but there was no deciphering if he was Igbo or not, anybody in Nigeria could speak like that if they wanted. Askari squeezed the trigger and the gun refused to work again. ‘Bloody Hell!’ Askari cursed out loud. Our next door neighbour, Mr. Elema—a police officer—must have heard Askari’s shot into the air because some minutes after Askari tried to shoot father again, a police siren started wailing beside our house. The noise was so close; I guessed it must have come from Mr Elema’s flat. The thieves would not ask questions, nor wait for any answers before taking off. 5. Our house was like a circus the next day because there were several well-wishers sprawled at different angle in the house just like it had The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

been during the world cup, some of them came to see for themselves the extent of the damage done by the robbers, and some just came for the fun of it. The door was still broken. Father’s face had been stitched up by his friend Doctor Ajayi, but he was now boasting about the incident with Askari and the gun, just the way Uncle Yomi would have, had he not passed out, saying that his forefather’s juju were at work. Mother had been revived with two bowls of cold-water splashed on her face by Aunty Dupe. Uncle Yomi had awoken coincidentally at the moment the robbers were taking off and had started screaming, ‘Wey dem? Konidafun iya nla ya anybody,’ like a street thug as he crouched and tightened his fist like Mike Tyson in a boxing ring. I was ashamed of him.

Tolu Daniel is a writer and photographer. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared on Afridiaspora, African Writer, Brittlepaper, Saraba Magazine, Elsewhere Literary Journal, Bakwa Magazine, Muwado Hub, among others. He is an Assistant Editor with Afridiaspora and the Nonfiction Editor of Single Story Foundation Journal. He lives in Abeokuta, Nigeria and blogs at toludanielsite.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

POETRY

VINITA AGRAWAL

Trip to a Fishing Village We visited Versova, one rain lashed morning, hand in hand. A fishing village built around a cluster of crooked dark huts fluorescent green and Ladakh turquoise walls wooden boats bearing the names of Bollywood stars fish smells choking speech. Rain fell like grains that day. The muslin of the Arabian Sea billowed Boats on the coast whinnied to break free of their anchors. You joked they were wooden whales humping to get back into water I punched your waist, meshed deeper into you under a single umbrella. Odors of rotting wood, dry fish in covered straw baskets umami of sea salt, coconut-oiled hair prawns cooking on kerosene stoves and cheap liquor assailed our noses. We walked through the village looking for tea. A young mermaid pirouetted at the scruffy door of one shanty, dressed in a scrap of fishing net stitched over purple satin smiling through lips that hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t learnt bitter words yet We kissed her Ponds Dreamflower Talc neck. The sun came out like a jack in the box of weather gimmicks. Outside a shack like cafe, a lone wedding band player breathed a haunting melody into his gleaming saxophone. I saw his unseeing eyes. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Over tea, we looked deep into the pores of our wet sun-lit morning gilded with a haunting tune. As though, a wooden block print of someone’s pain had been embossed on our trip like a precious souvenir. We held hands tighter.

Mumbai A very dark sky but no rain and the burden of knowing too much. Cramped spaces, all sunlight in shadows, living units in short supply. This is Mumbai - where a room is a house — a solitary nameplate against a solitary pigeon hole where men dream of wheat fields, women of fresh air sweat free afternoons and breeze, just breeze. Pi is the operative number of life yet Mumbai, the city of millions, is a monad, morning after morning, spread against a sun-dolloped labarnum sea. God knows how the Arabian anchors this city, cushions it’s aching roads with silky froth, strokes its shuddering gun line into a semblance of peace. The young labourers brag to the skeletons they’ve left behind about the better future the city promises. Justifying selling farm lands for a 10x12 cubicle, rice and English speaking kids. Hoping against hope for miracles. Their heart beating in the stars amidst the diamonds of Queen’s Necklace at Marine Drive. All set to reap the promises the city has planted in their eyes like pinpoints of light tunneling black pupils. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Ventilator Dug into the pit of your throat through intubation the tubes served as an airway into your lungs bringing oxygen — but stopping all speech. Since when did oxygen spell silence? A voicelessness akin to death so that I gazed with my heart into yours, Father. You were supposed to tell me what to do where to go, how to live, how to... and now the ventilator plugs all your words. It stops the air in my life. You move your lips. I seek your voice, leaning close but not even sickness is so benign that it would unite father and daughter. Not even a last I love you. No, nothing. Seventy five years of enrichment, hushed. Later after everything is over and the ventilator has been pulled out stuffed into a garbage bag for disposal your compassionate friends pat my shoulder, stroke my head and tell me, ‘He loved you beyond words.’ Beyond words...True, that. Author of three books of poetry, Vinita Agrawal is a Mumbai-based award winning poet and writer and the editor of Womaninc.com, an online platform that addresses gender issues. She can be reached at pw.org/content/vinita_ agrawal and at vinitawords.com The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

Strangers on a Train T

here is an art to travelling with small children by public transportation. We had managed to balance our seven bags in and atop our two baby strollers. Needless to say, this left them unavailable for babies. My wife, Sara, shifted one-year-old Jake into long-distance-hip-riding mode while our new friend Blythe did the same with her own oneyear-old, Joshie. Zeke and I, the husbands and designated sherpas, prepared to push the makeshift luggage carts. The problem was, we had no idea where we were going. Sara and I had arrived in Budapest less than a week earlier, and our feelings of apprehension had been deepening by the hour. Through the mercy of divine intervention, the principal of our new school was on our flight from Israel. Otherwise, we might have taken up residence in Ferihegy International Airport like Tom Hanks in The Terminal. A haze of disorientation enveloped us almost immediately, progressively growing thicker and darker. Principal Haraszti â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whose name I soon began to slur into Horrorstory â&#x20AC;&#x201C; deposited us in our apartment with a loaf

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of bread, a bag of apples, and a box of milk. There was no crib for Jake and no bed for three-year-old Abby. Horrorstory promised to call the next morning, which he did – an hour late. Relief, if not gratitude, came naturally. We had no money, had yet to find anyone who spoke English, and didn’t know our own address or phone number. Why had no preparations been made? We asked. After all, the administration had had all summer to prepare for our arrival. We received the answer we were to hear again and again: the matter will be resolved. We proceeded to deal with one ineptitude after another. Of course, that made it easy to forge a bond of friendship and alliance with Blythe and Zeke, the other American couple who had parachuted in from across the globe to find themselves similarly neglected. Generally speaking, the end of the week allows us to shrug off our troubles and anxieties with the arrival of the Sabbath, and we had been assured that all our needs were taken care of. The school had arranged an orientation camp for the students an hour outside the city, and we were expected to participate. Horrorstory told us which train to take and where to get off. The camp, he said, was “right across the street from the train station.” Most of his information was accurate. All of it, actually, except the last part. Across the street from the train station stood a lovely expanse of woodland, with no sign of life other than birds and rodents. There was no attendant behind the station window, either. He probably wouldn’t have spoken English anyway. As we pondered our options, I found myself already thinking in Hungarian: the matter will be resolved. So we loaded up the strollers and headed off in the opposite direction, only to find ourselves wandering through an industrial area almost as deserted as the woods. It would be the sundown in a few hours, and the specter of welcoming the arrival of the Sabbath in the middle of nowhere loomed ominously before us. We asked the few passersby if they knew of the camp, but no one had any idea what we were talking about. Eventually, we flagged down a young German tourist on a bicycle. He knew no more than we did; but he took pity on us, turned back the way he had come, and set off as if in search of the Holy Grail. A few minutes later he returned. The The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

camp was indeed across the street from the station. Just a half-mile down the road and hidden entirely from view. So we survived our first week in Budapest, our first Sabbath in Hungary, and our first encounter with students who looked at us as if we had just emerged from the ghettos of their grandparents’ tortured memories. a The return trip to Budapest was somewhat more relaxed. It hadn’t started off that way, however. We had just finished loading up the strollers for our hike to the train station when the rain began to fall. A quarter hour searching for a taxi turned up nothing and left us nowhere. Then the camp director took pity on us. Miraculously, he succeeded in cramming four adults, four children, and all our baggage into his matchbox sedan, and off we went. Whatever their idiosyncrasies, Hungarians do have a certain passion for coming to the rescue of others. The camp director raced us to the station, somehow gathered up most of our belongings and carried them single-handed through the pedestrian underpass and into the first-class cabin of the train, which pulled up as if on cue for us to board. We hadn’t planned on traveling first class, but once there we had no interest in packing up to relocate. Aside from that, the price of $3.50 US – albeit triple the second-class fare – seemed eminently reasonable; at least for rich Americans like us. We had the entire train car to ourselves. The money gap would follow us everywhere. On Sundays, Sara and I crossed the street from our apartment to let Jake and Abby frolic in Városliget, Budapest’s central park. Often we would buy the children giant balloons, shaped like rabbits or roosters, almost as big as they were. The locals, never shy about staring at strangers, glared with a mixture of resentment and awe at the wealthy Westerners who could afford two balloons. They cost a dollar apiece. Our Hungarian salary was about $200 a month, which covered food and basic living expenses. That was what most Hungarians lived on. We received a separate American salary which, back in the States, would have kept us at subsistence level. But in Hungary we were able to save most of it (which had a lot to do with why we were there in the first place). The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

There was something unsettling, however, about being seen as rich. It was one more thing that set us apart in a country where we stood out noticeably already. And even if it wasn’t objectively true, it was relatively true; and that taught us an uncomfortable lesson about the reality of perception. In a way, we are what other people think we are, no matter what we think we are, and no matter what we really are. That sense of displacement tarnished the pleasure of our train ride back to Budapest. If not for us, the first-class car would have been empty. Ergo, it should have been empty. We didn’t belong there. No one did. The train pulled into the station and we descended from our private car. Porters raced each other for the privilege, and expected gratuity, of carrying our luggage. But these were no ordinary porters. They were like the cast of surreal characters from a Federico Fellini movie. The withered septuagenarian who got to us first beat out two comrades, one hobbling on a crutch and the other with his arm in a sling. We let him take one of the lighter bags, with which he struggled, uncomplaining, as he hauled it to the taxi stand. The cabbie demanded the extortionate price of 300 forint – about three dollars – to drive us back to our apartment, where Blythe and Zeke joined us. The work crew that was supposed to have completed repairs on their apartment was running behind schedule. It wouldn’t take much longer, they were told. The matter would be resolved.

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, keynote speaker with 3,000 years’ experience, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, newspaper columnist, and high school teacher. His latest book, Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages, is available on Amazon. Visit him at yonasongoldson.com The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

BOOK REVIEW JALSAGHAR BY STEFFEN HORSTMANN

‘Shahid, you’re inside the fire, searching for the dark’ REVIEWED BY SMITHA SEHGAL

abindranath Tagore in his essay on nursery rhymes starts with a caveat that proper critics carry a pairs of scales ascribing to works a certain weight whereas those who through ignorance and inexperience (counting himself in) are unable to ascribe such weight, base their criticism on pleasure or displeasure. In a poetry workshop where an exercise was given to the participants each day, ghazal was one of the challenges enthusiastically attempted by the novice, who set out to the task akin to shaping clay into beautiful painted pots. However, viewed from the perspective of a critic, most of the works produced did not qualify as ghazals. He maintained that practitioners themselves should know and understand the form before attempting to write it and maintaining a stress pattern is inherent and not easy to locate and master for everyone. This argument was pitched on a statement that Agha Shahid Ali had pointed out that Adrienne Rich who had tried to write ghazals did not understand the form. A non-inclusive statement, one wonders, and if so, at what point of evolution did man write poetry? Was it needed to express while being absorbed in the quest of concealed emotions? At what point did the basic form of expression of poetry diverge into patterns in-

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fluenced and shaped by the cultures in which they were adopted? Could anyone claim authentically that ghazal or haiku belonged to a specific geographical region? Could ghazal or haiku claim protection under geographical indications under intellectual property laws which protect creations of mind, the natural sequester being a restricted entry? It is another argument though to say that ghazal or haiku was influenced, enriched and nurtured by practitioners in certain geographic regions. Poetry has to be universally inclusive to achieve its objective. Ruminating on these lines, Steffen Horstmann’s Jalsaaghar is an unhesitating step into the world of ghazals as a poetic form, beneath a rain bow umbrella which seeks to transcend the borders drawn by maps, cultures and languages. A Japanese ghazal illustrates Horstmann’s steady and unwavering intention to have the critics and pleasure seekers sit up and notice and decide for themselves whether they would like their protectionism be challenged with this brave foray or would they prefer to welcome and hail this as a remarkable new world order in the realm of poetry. The fragrance of chrysanthemums in a tea house Through paper walls a geisha’s shadow bows * Sunlit water beneath Saihoji temple ~ in a minnow’s Transparent body the diminutive heart pulses * Basho sips hot saki in the temple at Suma beach ~ The ebony ocean studded with the duplicate of stars. Or consider this, Issa listens for poems in the wind’s exhalations, Likens koans to tangled wisteria vines There is no beloved, only ‘you’ or ‘I’. The realm of love between two individuals does not limit the conversations. The love, which shimmers through the ghazals, is a universal love, transcending the individualistic approach and limitations. Horstmann unassumingly The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

converses with the reader in an intimate tone, yet without losing his ground. You become a traveller and Horstmann your guide, by the Palace of Bodhisattvas, beneath the defiled Thracian tombs, lemon roses carpeting the avenues of Guadalajara and delta of Nile. A crescent moon dissolves in an estuary’s pool of blue light As wraiths mimic the voices of pharaohs in the Nile Delta He takes upon himself the task of being our pair of eyes to a world where love coexists with hope, disappointment and loss. Cassandra dreams of ships gliding on waves of fire~ An omen of war the sea repose belies today Or Moths with flaming wings whirled in smoke that rose From pyres on the Manikarnika Ghat. Poetry is a land where one need no passport to migrate and one can soak in the sun light of words, and at nightfall let moon and stars illuminate your soul. Akin to God in creation, Horstmann seek to breathe life into inanimate objects. Consider the expressions he coins with ‘indigo waves, arced blaze of autumnal light, blistering dunes, fluted curtains of rain, cobalt flames, onyx moon, phosphorescent comet, tempest stitched into fabric of sea, spectral dust’. Each verse, despite its rich imagery, gives you a space to absorb itself, without crowding your senses. This spacing and lay out of the verses reminds oneself of the scheme of Japanese Zen Gardens. The lucent scirocco roiling Like a typhoon in a sea of light Winged scarabs emerging From a cloudy cocoon in a sea of light He resurrects masters whom we wish we had opportunity to see in flesh and blood, with who we sit down in a private moment under a flowering lemon tree, listen to the verses. Pushkin stole the breath of Siberia & froze it in a sonnet In Paradise Milton nurtures the creative seed & grows it in a sonnet The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Michaux spoke of the worlds hidden inside the world & disguised a crisp prose within a sonnet God’s name rises in calligraphy from Tagore’s palm, Amid mountains shrouded in whirling snows~in a sonnet The unconventional step of using the ampersand is not to be missed in the above verses. Is poetry and its myriad forms including ghazal flourish only in the realm of poetry lovers? Are they limited for the consumption of a few academicians, critics and a few pleasure seekers while the rest of the world goes about busy in its daily chores? Or is the task of poetry and its literary traditions an escapism from the brutal realities of our world? Is it not convenient to have a poetry / ghazal book in your totte bag so that one can dip soul into it on a day when sun scorches too hard? Is that the task of poetry? To an extent, it is true that non-readers of poetry tends to hold poetry and poetry lovers as strange creatures who have different notions on sun, moon, river and flowers. It is also true to a great extent that the pillars of globalisation and the events that shaped them beginning from 1758 characterized by the revolt which marked birthday celebrations of King of Prussia by stone pelting on windows to recent times marked by WTO Doha Agendas have understated the power of poetry to motivate people, communicate with each other, be each other’s eyes and hands to lead on to the other side of the world and discover how similar or different sun shines, twilight descends. Steffen Horstmann’s work precisely sets forward to do that, establishing a new tradition. It would be an interesting evolution to look forward to.

Smitha Sehgal is a legal professional and writer. Her articles, poems, and fiction have been featured in Mathrubhumi, The New Indian Express, Kritya, Reading Hour, Brown Critique and Muse India and poetry anthologies Dance of the Peacock, Suvarnarekha, and 40 Under 40: An Anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

FICTION

1. ight was covering the faces like a black veil. The moon was under the invasion of the black clouds. An amateur gambler’s fear of losing in the alleys which cover the houses like an octopus. For the ones who are in a hurry to reach their homes, the angst of a bullet that hadn’t yet arrived to it’s target. The houses, when you close their doors from inside, warm and safe as a mother’s womb, if someone’s waiting for you. For those who live alone, home is nothing but the capital of loneliness. There was no one waiting for him. And at this point, he wasn’t waiting for anyone either. When everyone were stuffing their hopes in which they have been carrying around with them to the places they live; he, undressing from the arid climate of his house, wore the black coat of the night. Hikmet’s footsteps were as calm and dedicated as the stitching up of a surgeon. He wouldn’t collapse even if he were hit by a cannon ball. The alleys were reaching to the main street like the streams running down to the sea. Hikmet, suddenly crashed in the mainstreet after turning the corner. He was surprised that he was able to come here this fast. The avenue was waiting for his hunt like the insect-eating flowers. Versicolour signboards and discount notices.

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Pubs and brasseries; in other words the climate of hopelessness, the centers of rehabilitation for the disappointment, women who were forced to barter their flesh with money occupying spaces in the sidewalk; some elderly, some in their early adulthood, were flowing by Hikmet on both sides. The avenue was gradually falling behind like an old memory. And the more he was taking steps towards the pier, the more adrenalin was pouring in to his blood. Finally, he was on the port side. The sea was beginning like a bottomless cliff at the end of his fingertips. At this point for Hikmet, it was either falling down from the balcony of life into the obscurity, or to surrender to this horrible course embittering him. ‘Come on, my boy Hikmet! This will all end when you take just one more step.’ Hikmet, never moving his feet that have been fixed to the edge of the pier, looked behind moving his waist and neck. He was afraid that he would retract from his decision if he moved back his feet. Was it only the chaos of a city that he left behind? Smelling a bundle of jasmine exploding his lungs out, making love with all the geography of his skin, drinking icy water rattling his teeth, watching film sprawling at the backseat, eating a bagel scrunching and more, they would all fall behind. ‘Great surprise! So many things that I would be deprived off from now on...’ Wouldn’t the ones that he couldn’t do, also the ones he had done be left behind? He wouldn’t be able to watch sunset on top of the Nemrut mountain; go fishing with the Laz crate; learn to make jug from the clay and speaking French. The possibility for realizing all those wishes would have been drowned with him in the sea. He turned his face towards the sea. It wasn’t possible for anyone to distinguish where the sea ended and the sky began. Hikmet wouldn’t meet the sun which would take down the reign of darkness. He shouldn’t have done it. Think for a second Hikmet! Who knows what this sea harbours in her chest. How many fishes, oysters and moss! How much sand, wracked boat and lots of others. Certainly there’s space for you between them. ‘Actually, sea is the universal cluster. You know, the one which is to be shown at the courses in mathematics, comprising everything. The sea is the sub-cluster of the World Hikmet. It comprises all of us. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

Oh! What am I thinking? ‘To hell with it. I will throw myself into the sea and it will all be over soon.’ He reached in to his pocket and took out his lighter. There was about a half pack of cigars. Slowly he took one out from the packet and put it on his lips with utmost care, and then lighted it up. He inhaled with such a desire and joy as if he hadn’t smoked for days. You could say that it was a ritual. He lifted the lighter that he was still holding in his hand with respect, then he caressed it with his eyes; it was a gift from Sibel. Sibel was a tall, plump and cheerfull girl. Straightforward and candid. She would take a stand against the pain like the Chinese Wall; hope would have flourished where she touched. For a period, Sibel was the only thing that he thought about. His heart would have beaten speedily when Sibel’s hands disappeared in his palms. Sibel’s eyes would have bounced like a timid gazelle, in the steppes of Hikmet’s face. Once upon a time Sibel had stabbed love like a switchblade into his heart. But a huge love had been toppled like a plane tree, because of the unnecessary jealousy of Hikmet. ‘How many years have passed since we broke up? I wonder if she still remembers. At least if I could have just hugged her one last time.’ He kissed and caressed the lighter. Then he put it into his pocket, like putting a baby to bed. One drop of tear escaped from his eye. ‘Come on boy, Hikmet, a little bit of courage. You will hit the bottom of the sea and it will all be over. There’s no other way Hikmet. Let’s do it. Come on.’ He straightened up slightly after slightly leaning frontward upon his feet fixed to the front of the pier.’ ‘So what happened!? You were swaggering at home. You were talking big, weren’t you. Huh? You don’t have the courage, do you!?’ ‘I will make it buddy! I will end this.’ Even though he made a little move the fear drew him back from the neck. ‘Come on buddy throw yourself! Do it!’ ‘I can’t do it.’ ‘Of course you can, you coward dog’ The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

‘What if God exists?’ ‘That’s a fine kettle of fish. All of a sudden you came around?’ ‘What if ... God exists? How can I confront him like this?’ ‘You dog! You coward asshole! Throw yourself!’ ‘Shut up now!’ ‘You shut up and throw yourself into the sea.’ ‘I can’t.’ ‘You should.’ ‘I can’t, I can’t.’ He shouted out loud stabled to the front of the pier, cracking his veins: ‘This has to come to an end...’ 2. Two Months Ago

‘Welcome, officer Cemal.’ ‘What is it? Why did you call me this late!?’ ‘There is a body found. Chief Ofiicer wanted us to go to the legal medicine and see it.’ ‘Ok, let’s go.’ They left the Police Station and got into the car. Ümit had got behind the wheel. It was nigh time. Stars invaded the sky like a barbarian tribe. The moon was exhibiting it’s every detail, in the manner of a stripper. The city was flowing on both sides of the car. Children who sheltered in the cashpoint cabin caught Cemal’s eye. They were the wasted of life. These violence breast-fed children were trying to sleep by silencing the hatred that came out of their hearts and disturbed their sleep. They never spoke along the way. Cemal was deadly brokenhearted to Ümit. In fact, he couldn’t admit the truth. He loved Umit like his brother. Now he could never believe. How could someone’s brother be a homosexual ? Especially Ümit, a sturdy young man. This wasn’t a burden that Cemal could bear. He wished this was a nightmare that will disappear when he woke up. Umit was a calm and naive young man. He had been interested in men ever since he could remember, and even though he didn’t get any pleasure from it, he floated around with girls in order to be seen as The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

heterosexual by the others. He revealed his sexual identity to Cemal, to be able to live the freedom of enlightening his condition to one of his closest friends in this world. He’d rather not to. Cemal had turned into a bull which had seen a red pelerine, and disbanded the table in front of him. He madly punched the walls, cursed Umit. Cemal was a nervous man. You know, like those whose anger was a flash in the pan. But this time his anger never-ending. That night he wandered around the house like a ghost, out of misery. As if walking in his coffin, he was feeling depressed. Then he drank until he forgot his name and started crying for the first time since his childhood. 3. They arrived at their destination. Parking the car, they entered the legal medicine. Turning the corner they headed for the morgue downstairs. ‘Hi brother Ahmet.’ ‘Welcome Cemal.’ ‘How are you brother.’ ‘Fine thanks.’ ‘We came to see the new corpse that came in.’ ‘Ok, come with me’ Passing a dark, narrow corridor, they reached a large room. The room looked like a mushroom field: A bunch of stretchers and corpses covered with white sheets...This was the introduction of cemetery. Ahmet headed towards a stretcher in the middle of the room. When he lifted up the sheet that covered the corpse, Cemal and Ümit jumped one step back, startled. The corpse was beheaded. His neck had been improperly cut-off from where his shoulders started. There were large bruises and cigarette burns on the corpse. On his back, there was an inscription carved by a cutting equipment from his spinal column to his neck. ‘Which silk road multiplies sequence of letters.’ ‘As you can see Cemal, they have badly worn out the man. He had been brutally tortured. Almost all of his bones have been broken with a hammer-like equipment, lots of cigarettes had been put out on him and he was slaughtered like a sheep.’ ‘What the hell is this ? I’ve never The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

seen anything like this before. Have they found his head?’ ‘No.’ ‘Please turn the corpse over brother Ahmet,’ said Umit. ‘Let’s see the front side.’ ‘Why!? Do you want to see his prick?’ Cemal asked, adding his most humiliating stare to his words. This was the first time that Ümit was so angry with Cemal. He could understand his lack of acceptance of his condition, but his humiliating attitude got Ümit mad. Despite that, he remained silent. He prevented his anger to come out of his lips. ‘Let’s turn it over brother Ahmet’ said Cemal, ignoring Umit’s stares that were directed at him like a barrel of a gun. Ahmet turned the corpse over. The front was as much damaged as the back. And in the middle of his chest, a huge K was carved with a cutting equipment. ‘We will have to struggle a lot on this case.’ Cemal murmured. ‘Okay, brother Ahmet. You can cover it up. When will your report be ready?’ ‘I’ll finish it by tomorrow morning.’ ‘Okay brother, take it easy.’ ‘Thank you.’ Cemal in front, Ümit one step back, passed through the mushroom field elegantly. They rapidly climbed the stairs with more shivers than before, in the dark corridor. Ümit set behind the steering wheel again. They did not speak along the way a. Both of them were totally confused. They were thinking of each other and of the corpse When they came in front of Cemal’s house, two anxious hearts approached the upper floor window. A pair of half bashful half worried eyes turned back, after caressing Cemal in the car. When the car stopped, not even looking at his face, Cemal said ‘Everything that you find should be ready by morning’, and turning his back went downstairs, ignoring Ümit’s answer ‘As you command.’ When he looked up to the house-owner’s window, the face that was stuck on the window pulled back. As soon as he opened the door, he lit the corridor’s light and The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

headed for the kitchen. Taking a beer bottle out of the refrigerator he took a huge sip, and headed for the living room with the bottle in his hand. He lit the table lamp which had a photo right underneath, and sank into the arm-chair. In the room only the photo was lit, everything else was in the dark. He fixed his eyes on the photo. The photo slowly came out of the constraints of it’s frame and spread through the room. And slowly caressed Cemal’s memories. It was the picture of a beautiful young girl. Her skin was the most innocent caase of white; her hair the reddest tone of lust... A handful of freckles spread out under her eyes. And her badly hazel eyes... After finishing couple of beers and turning the room into a nicotine empire he went to bed and dived into the black waters of sleep. 4. In the morning, he woke up surprised that he opened his eyes in his own house as always. He had moved into this house years ago, and still couldn’t believe that he was no longer in the sock and pee smelling dormitory of the orphanage. Cemal had no one else but his loneliness. He neither knew his mother who left him at the door of the orphanage, nor his non-identifiable father. His oldest memories were the ruthless beating sessions of the manager. His eyes were opened with fear every morning at the orphanage. Especially when he wetted his bed...his breakfast was nothing else but the brutal slaps on his face. He deeply missed his bed during the day which passed like a storm of violence. When he went into the chest of his bed, his eyes closed to the dream of his home, and the longing for non-beating parents. He made his bed morphine, when the night breast-fed his dreams. He’d rather have a mom who would fondle his hair. ..A father who would swing him on the swing...When he was for hungry for compassion he would give a big embrace his dear mother; and take refuge in his father’s chest when he was thirsty for security. Why was he a destitute ? Why did he have this heavy-weight loneliness? He still asked this to himself. When he asked, his anger exploded like a moloThe Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

tov cocktail in his chest cage. The door-bell rang as he just washed his face. When he opened the door, Jale was in front of him with pre-rehearsed smile. Jale extended the plate full of pie as she said ‘Good Morning.’ ‘I made cheese pie. I know you love it, so I brought one plate.’ ‘Thank you. It was a burden for you.’ ‘What burden for god’s sake. Well, we wondered about you when you went away and didn’t come back for a while.’ ‘Is that so? We needed to go to the legal medicine last night.’ ‘Well...Bon appetite.’ She attached the pre-rehearsed smile on her face again. She started consuming the staircases while Cemal was slowly closing the door. Jale and Jülide were two sisters. It was quite a while that both of them passed their forties. Even though that they were both in love with Cemal, they both tried to hide it from each other and at the same time secretly competed. The only thing that made them forget the fact that they have missed life, was to embrace the hope of Cemal could love them. The sisters’ flirting was a cure for the bleeding points of his selfesteem. Cemal neither gave them hope, nor did he burn the ships. This was a pretty hide and seek game for him. He watered his flowers carefully after crowning his breakfast with Jale’s delicious cheese pie. He caressed all of them one by one and spoke to them. And then saying farewell to his house, he got on the way to the Police Station. When he reached the center and approached the murder desk an extraordinary surprise met Cemal. The corpse that was found last night had become the celebrity of media and this situation drew the attention of the Ministry of Interior Affairs. Umit welcomed Cemal saying, ‘Good Morning Chief ’. This time for the sake of formality, lightly standing up from his chair. Cemal sat on his desk with a reluctant response. As he just lit his cigarette, his brewed tea with three sugars caught up, as usual. ‘Well, chief,’ murmured Ümit. It was unusual that Ümit presented the case evaluation before Cemal finished his first tea. But this time it was different. The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

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‘The corpse that have been found last night is on the first page of every journal. The public is in panic. Minister of Interior Affairs, personally gave a call and gave special order for the suspects to be found.’ ‘Have you identified the corpse?’ ‘Yes we got the identity by scanning the fingerprints. His name is Ziya Semerci. He is a hard-boiled drug-dealer known as Broken Ziya.He got caught twice for drug dealing and he has three records for wounding. When he was in prison for his last case, he was discharged benefiting the pardon. ‘Drug-dealer, ha? Where was the body found?’ ‘Found in an empty field all nude. His head is still missing. According to legal medicine’ report, the victim was dead for twenty-four hours at the time he was found. The inscriptions on his chest and back were carved with a knife, the seventy percent of his bones were broken by hammer and one more thing which is absolute is that he was beheaded by a rusty wood-saw... But there isn’t anything that would identify the DNA of the murderer.’ ‘Now you go and collect as much information about this guy called Broken Ziya. Find out who he was working for and who his friends and enemies were. ‘Understood chief. With your permission.’ As Ümit was leaving, Cemal was lighting his new cigarette. The insides of his head was as untidy as a bachelor’s room. ‘What the hell is this,’ he said to himself. ‘Even if I thought that it was the execution of the drug mafia aiming to misdirect from the target, I still don’t think that they would be so creative. I wonder if it is the revenge of the wounding incidents? What the hell does this ‘Which silk road multiplies the series of letters? Is it a puzzle or what?’ Puff, looks like we gonna struggle a lot. Okay, but why is the head missing!?!! Cemal pushed the series of questions to the most isolated corner of his mind. He headed to the kiosk to buy a new packet of cigarettes that gave it’s breath. Downstairs, when he was passing by the theft desk his attention was caught by the hand-cuffed youngster standing in the middle of two uniformed policemen. He was good-looking and probably a university boy. The young man was continuously smiling to himself with an ironic expression on his face and nodding his head slightly on both The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

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sides. Cemal approached them unable to suppress his curiosity. ‘What’s his guilt? He asked to one of the uniformed guys.’ ‘Chief, he had stolen some books from Tüyap book fair.’ Cemal had an eye contact with the young man. He was stuck in between laughing hysterically and crying and weeping. ‘Boy, are you an idiot!? Are books stolen in this country? Go and rob a bank, avoid taxes or conspire to rig the bid. How come you are so stupid to get nailed for stealing books!?’ The young man responded with a certain smile on his face, by nodding his head sweetly up and down. Leaving the Station, Cemal left the softest place of his conscience hung on the eyelids of young man. As he just turned the corner of the street, a hand and a man behind it, stopped Cemal by pressing his hand on his chest in a polite and decisive manner. His clothes were untidy but clean, about sixtysixty-five years old, his eyes the busiest avenue of his face. ‘Hey boy! Let’s applaud the brave boys who steals books from Tüyap with a laughter derived from sorrow. Even though Turkey doesn’t know how to be proud of them, I am proud of each one of them.’ And then attaching a huge and insistent question mark to Cemal’s mind disappeared from sight in the crowd, gliding like a sword-fish. Cemal stood looking behind the old man like conned southwest fish. ‘Boy, did he read my mind!’

To Be Continued Socialist Laz-Turk poet and author Serkan Engin was born in 1975 in Izmit, Turkey. His poems and articles on poetry theory have appeared in more than fifty literary journals in Turkey. In 2004, he published a poem manifesto, entitled Imagist Socialist Poetry. He has been trying to launch a new movement in Turkish poetry and to this end has published numerous articles about literary theory The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

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ART & TRAVEL

CHANDRANI CHATTERJEE

The Living Art at KochiMuziris

hat do you do when a brilliant art exhibition is set in the most amazing of locations? The Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) poses this central question. There is always so much to see…so much to absorb and assimilate and the most alluring aspect perhaps is the call of the sea, a beckoning call, a call to adventure and wanderings. Most of the Biennale venues in Fort Kochi offer a glimpse into this ultimate artistic creation – the wide, wide sea and its many mysteries. With the tag line, ‘forming in the pupil of the eye’, the 2016 edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, held from December 2016 through March 2017, was a celebration of multiplicity and plurality in art. Curated by Sudarshan Shetty, the exhibition is set in spaces across Kochi, Muziris and surrounding islands, with shows being held in existing galleries, halls, and site-specific installations in public spaces, heritage buildings and disused structures. Established in 2012, the initiative of the Kochi Biennale Foundation, with support from the government of Kerala, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale attracts artworks across a variety of mediums, including film, installation, painting, sculpture, new media and performance art. Alongside, there are talks, seminars, screenings and a variety of activities for students. If you want to talk about spaces and how they redefine the concept of art in a fundamental way, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is the place. From wonderfully maintained art cafés to heritage buildings, abandoned and dis-

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used structures, to random street corners, this festival is a celebration of the innovative ways in which space can be used to reconfigure certain stipulations regarding art and thus redefine the experience of art altogether. Conceptualised as a ‘People’s Biennale’ the KMB envisages the idea of a social engagement where participating artists present works motivated by political undertones. Shetty says how his curatorial practice veers around an attempt to redefine notions of tradition and contemporary, not as static, historical entities, but as ideas and concepts flowing into each other making possible a multiplicity of perspectives to co-exist. The spaces at the KMB undeniably have an immense role to play in heightening this experience of heterogeneity. Spread across Fort Kochi and Ernakulam, the venues for KMB calls for active participation. Besides the sheer engagement at the level of sense perception and processing that the biennale calls for, there are other levels of participation as well. For example, traversing the lanes and bylanes of Fort Kochi, the sheer joy of getting lost and locating the venues (which are often intermeshed and almost hidden in the larger rubric of the cityscape); taking the ferry and crossing to Ernakulum for the two venues located there; participating in the vibes that the city generates around this time of the year, its festive colours, food and transportation all inviting response from the visitors – without which this journey is incomplete. One of the chief attractions for visitors at the KMB is the Students’ Biennale, exhibiting works from around 55 art schools from the country. The sheer variety in styles, concepts and ideas is overwhelming and the energy of the exhibits needs to be over-emphasised. Is food not art? You have to say yes when you are in Kochi, as the city prepares a wide variety of mouth-watering local cuisine for the visitors. Food becomes an integral part of your Biennale experience. Be it the lipsmacking biryani at Kayees or the roadside cuisine and snacks, Kochi lures you as much The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

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with gastronomic delights as with that of the cultural exhibits. Art seems to be lurking at every nook and corner of the streets in Fort Kochi. From graffiti to artifacts and mementos on sale, the cultural celebration does not seem to abate. The Biennale autos too gear up for the love of the festival, sporting their ‘Its my Biennale’ stickers! With so much art all over Kochi, the KMB truly becomes a people’s affair — a melting pot of forms, styles, and ideas of art. In emphasising this narrative of plurality, KMB reconfigures our experience of art in diverse ways. Three memorable installations at KMB The Pyramid of Exiled Poets by Aleš Šteger Slovenian poet and translator Aleš Šteger pays tribute to poets and artists who have been exiled from their homelands and whose histories have been erased. ‘The Pyramid of Exiled Poets’ draws your attention the moment you step into the front lawns of the Aspinwall Hall. You are instantly struck by the darkness within the labyrinthine structure, not knowing where it will lead. The darkness is symptomatic, a trope perhaps, of all those artists who are in exile or ever have been! Mediating the darkness are verses of poets, dead and alive, reciting their poetry. You catch a line here and there – there goes Ovid, Dante Alighieri, Bertolt Brecht, Czesław Miłosz, Mahmoud Darwish, Yang Lian, Joseph Brodsky, Ivan Blatný and César Vallejo, and others you don’t recognise! The installation by Sharmistha Mohanty Poet Sharmistha Mohanty’s text-and-light based installation flows down the walls and onto the floor of a room, with her voice slowly speaking aloud The Wagon Magazine JUNE 2017

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the words. The script, ‘I make new the song of old,’ is an elegy for the passage of time. Pushing the boundaries of fictional prose, Mohanty’s work, which includes three works of fiction — Book One (1995), New Life (2005), and Five Movements in Praise (2013) — moves towards prose poetry and is deeply influenced by the varied pasts of India, especially those most remote. The Sea of Pain by Raul Zurita Chilean artist Raul Zurita’s disturbing installation demands a rare physical intimacy with the substance of his art. Visitors are expected to take off their footwear and wade through a passage filled with sea water, while reading the poem on the walls of the warehouse, “Don’t you hear me?/ In the sea of pain.../ Won’t you come back,/ Never again,/ In the sea of pain?” This immersive installation uses text (inscribed on the walls), sound (that of wading through the water) and the intimacy of the water flowing past as one wades through to allude to the horrific deaths of two Syrian refugee brothers as they were fleeing in a boat. ‘The Sea of Pain’ compels you to participate in the act of taking off one’s shoes, wade through the water while reading the poem to its end in empathizing with the Syrian refugee crisis and in particular with the instance of the five-year-old Galip and his brother Alyan Kurdi. Chandrani Chatterjee teaches at the department of English, SPPU (formerly University of Pune), Pune, Maharashtra

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 JUNE 2017