April 2016

VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 1 - APRIL - 2016

Poetry:

Era.Murukan 5 Sadiqullah Khan 22 Santhan Ayathurai 32 Ankush Banerjee 35 Allison Grayhurst 47 Bart Wolffe 84 Non-Fiction:

Christy Bharath

8 Kathleen Poon 51 Fiction:

Kerry J Donovan 12

VyjayanthiSubramanian 55 Ilya Fosty 87 Column:

C.S.Lakshmi 8 Yonason Goldson 40 Flash Fiction:

Jeff Coleman 30 The Wagon wrapper design carries the image provided by George Bruckner https://gbruckner.wordpress.com/ All the other digital illustrations are based on the images provided by Alex Markovich http://photo-art.me/

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The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

hile editing the Tamil literary journal ‘Yugamayini’ I found a surprising fact. Most of the writers who contributed their creative works in Tamil could also write in English. In fact, a few of them like Sumathi Thangapandian, Nagore Rumi, Athankode Anishkumar, P.Rajja and Bharathi Harishankar teach English literature. Perhaps, that is where this idea to launch a literary magazine in English from the southern parts of India got seeded. After a period of hibernation, it sprouted and started nudging me. Very soon it grew so large that I became a thumbnail. The end result is in your hands now to pick and pluck.

Then, there are umpteen numbers of literary journals one can find both in the digital and print markets. Do we need one more? We do.

There are two thoughts on which I differ. One is a quote by the popular travel writer Pico Iyer. I recall his words which go something like this - with the advent of internet, there are so many means of communication available to us today but we have too little to say or share. (I don’t remember the exact words) The second thing is the ‘internet’ itself. It is an irony that it is named internet. It should have been named –‘Inner net’.

I have, even from my young years, always been in search of good reading. When I got introduced to the internet I plunged head long into that vast open net-land. One may read a lot of ‘writers’ but only a few ‘authors’ make us go for them again and again. I found and enjoyed authors like Bart Wolffe, John Smallshaw, Sadiqullah Khan to name a few. I have been following them for almost a decade now. To be candid, the truth is that there is neither interaction nor interlinking to be found. It is an open secret that everyone has their own ‘inner’ group following The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

4 them… reading them… ticking a ’like’ in a hurry. There was no sharing – no ‘inter’ netting the various regions. The Canadian League of poets is there. One of the members is Allison Grayhurst whose poems and clay sculptures I do appreciate. I have been reading her for a couple of years. Sadiqullah Khan, whose verse I admire a lot, has an exclusive page for poetry called ‘The Voices’. Bart Wolffe whose ‘drink a cup of coffee and write a poem a day’ does have a following but very limited. We Indians praise if anyone writes something appreciable in ‘The London Magazine’; reading ‘The New Yorker’ is a fad; browsing the ‘Paris Review’ is an emotional experience. Right! I don’t have any objection.

But, do we have any platform to showcase our writers to be appreciated (but for a few settled there) or for that matter, do we have a space for writers from the west to publish here, apart from a few syndicated pieces in the newspapers? Do we know of anyone who writes in English from Malaysia? Indonesia? Sri Lanka?

Australia? How do we make them cross the barriers? How do we share their literary works with the far away boundaries? – If that is not happening, then, why do we call it ‘internet’- If not to be connected, exchanged and shared.

Hence, I thought that there should be a platform to interconnect, in its truest sense, the various creators from different regions.

This is exactly what the WAGON will do.

One Era.Murukan should be exchanged for one John Smallshaw.

I wish I could accomplish this dream.

I need the encouragement and help from all sources across man made boundaries. True Art and Literature surpass all such things.

Literary magazines can continue to perform a useful role only if they continue to forge new connections. Please get connected. I welcome the new bunch looking for a space to get launched along with the canonized. I would like to receive submissions from all corners of the world.

“What we need is the magazine which will boldly assume the existence of a public interested in serious literature, and eager to be kept in touch with current literature and with criticism of that literature by the most exacting standards” said T.S.Eliot. TWM would thrive to be one.

As Pico Iyer says in his ‘The Virtue of Stillness’ (Sorry guys to quote him again, I love his writings.) “it’s not our experiences that form us but the ways in which we respond to them;” Read and respond!

Please visit the subscription page of the website to know more about the subscription details since TWM would be a subscription magazine from May onwards.

Wishes

Krishna Prasad a. k. a Chithan The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

5

Era.Murukan

Name unmentionable D

on’t stir out Cautions everyone as I steal unnoticed wandering through the marsh till the municipal lanterns get randomly lit.

Do I see it creeping up the steps, ahead of me into the passage with a low ceiling smelling of eternal darkness like hell?

Is it chasing me down the garden sparsely populated with pest ridden bean stalks and neem trees swaying like senile monsters bitterly complaining about intruders chatting in an alien tongue?

I wearily occupy a chair and as on cue fold my legs up The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

6 like a reluctant yogi.

Is it there coiled as a spring on the damp floor with cracks running north to south spewing dust, held together by a vow of eternal silence?

It is there, not one, all of them, finding a warm and snug abode in this candle lit old house with electric fuse blown since noon.

Their shadows in glee engage in a synchronized dance with the trembling candle flames till the wind from north blows off the wax wailing like a dirge a happy birth day to them.

Dancing in the dark they still go on whispering and grinning.

I unroll the bed upon the rickety cot trying to catch a few winks as the infant lying nearby whimpers intermittently looking for the mother who thinks the cradle unsafe with creeper-friendly cast iron strings.

I scent fresh soil and smell the delayed summer rains rehearsing with a long drawn drizzle and gusty winds playing on the window panes with no hinges; The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

7 get up to latch the panes safe in a mission unfinished, back on the bed rigor-mortised.

And now it goes for my jugular strangling my sweaty neck choking my lungs with heart pumping overtime in a wild dream at dawn.

The catcher with his pipe and gunny sack slung over the shoulder arrives with the morning rays blowing his pipe in a melody not meant for humans.

There is nothing over there inside he grins toothless wiping his pipe with a snuff stained towel There is nothing over there outside.

A measure of rice in his gunny bag and two rupees and a half all in coins being his charges bargained and settled he walks away satisfied with all fears safe and in slumber deep inside the gunny bag.

Murugan Ramasami • Techno banker and project management professional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA • An author with 28 books to his credit, novelist, short story writer, poet, tech-travel-humor columnist (Tamil and English) • Playwright in Tamil • Movie script - dialogue writer • Translator from Malayalam, English to Tamil The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

8 COLUMN

MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C.S.LAKSHMI

In the Shadow of a Sharp Sword I was in Paris last year when the terrorist attack took place. Short stories of mine were translated into a collection in French and I was to be part of a book fair organized by Inde Des Livres at Paris. The event was to be in an area called Gambetta and the town hall at Gambetta was where the book fair and other events were organized.

On November 13th we were invited to the Indian Embassy for an evening event and the Indian ambassador was going to inaugurate the Book Fair the following day.

I came back to Hotel Palma at Gambetta where we were put up and drifted into a dreamless sleep only to be woken up by a call saying that there had been a terrorist attack the previous night. Friends in Paris had been trying to contact me. I looked out of the window to see a practically empty road. When I came down to the reception the next morning there was fear and anxiety written on the faces of the hotel staff. A friend came and took me to her place and as we went in the metro I could feel the tension.

Somehow I felt that the fear and tension was not something new that I was experiencing.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

9 I had felt it during the Mumbai riots and bomb blast after the demolition of Babri Masjid; I had felt it after the terrorist attack on Taj Mahal hotel. I was gripped with fear and tension moving about in Imphal, Manipur, after sunset. And I had deeply felt a sense of pain, fear and impotent anger when women who were victims of the 1984 Sikh riots had narrated their stories in a workshop.

The fear filled tension during these times used to settle down in the stomach like a cold knife descending into it, and took a while to go.

Often during those times I had asked myself the question, which I recently read in an article, Irina Sirotinskaya who was the muse of the Russian writer Varlam Shalamov, had asked him: Kak zhit?

How to live?

Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel prize winner in her acceptance speech entitled ‘On the Battle Lost’ says that in the 1990s the question was posed before the Russian people: did they want a strong country or a worthy one where people can live decently?

She says they chose the former and so are living in an era of power. But what happens when an armed struggle is waged so that a people could live in a worthy land with dignity? Will that be a battle won?

It is about such an armed struggle that Thamizini, who was the head of the women’s wing of the LTTE, writes in her autobiography. Thamizini who died of cancer in October 2015 says in her introduction that she asked herself many times the reason for writing this and there was only one answer: “I had to tell some truths to people I loved with all my heart. A struggle that was begun to save the political ambitions of a people was built on the lives of lakhs of them. In the end, why did it fail so completely?”

Thamizini’s answer is clear. That the struggle failed to protect its own people; the armed struggle itself became the goal and not the people for whom it was begun. Thamizini says she felt compelled to document her experiences so that the coming generThe Wagon Magazine - April 2016

10 ation of this group of people, broken in body and spirit, does not ever take up armed struggle as a method of resolving an issue.

To look back upon one’s life that was at a time synonymous with an armed struggle that ripped apart a nation for thirty long years and was also the hope of a people, is an effort not many can take up. To write an honest history of how one entwined oneself in this armed struggle as a woman who believed in the ideology, as a woman who occupied a top position in the armed struggle and also write about the growing doubts regarding what was valour and what was betrayal is not an easy task. Thamizini accomplishes this difficult task with great success for she deeply believes that the truth about armed struggles must be told as much as the truth about a woman being a part of it.

Thamizini tries in this book to state the truth that the lives of people are more important than the success of an armed struggle centred around one character who becomes the venerated leader.

The hierarchical leadership in the armed struggle expected implicit obedience of the commands of one person. There were to be no discussions, no exchange of ideas or no questioning. Any such act was considered a betrayal and dealt with severely, with death very often. Particularly disturbing is the description of the last days of the battle that was almost lost when a woman commander breaks down and weeps for the first time saying, she did not know where this was all leading to. And in the battle she is ordered to command fully knowing that it was a losing battle, she dies.

Throughout the book one can hear Thamizini’s heartfelt message: if only people’s destiny could be written through a peaceful process of discussion and negotiation, children and young people who need to live need not die for a cause they don’t understand fully and a land green with crops and bright with blooming colours need not be ravaged. It is a lesson the people of Eezham have learnt at a great cost; a lesson that came with death of near and dear ones, broken families, destroyed land, wrecked homes and burnt libraries.

After reading the book one is left with the question: Was it worth all this?

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

11 And that is the question Thamizini is trying to deal with after the end of the armed struggle. And she speaks from deep within her soul when she says: No more rivers of blood in this land. No mothers should wail hitting the wombs that bore their children or hitting the coffins of their children. Our future generation must win the world with their wisdom. They should experience the visions of minds that have come together that belong to the new world.

The brave hearts who died in the battle wanted the war to end with them and not to be carried over to the future generation.

Thamizini’s book is not the story of her life. It is the story of a failed armed struggle that turned against its own people. It is a historical document pleading for peace. Knowing the history of the world, one knows wars are not difficult; it is peace that is difficult. Wars need only weapons of destruction. But peace needs unflinching eyes that would look steadily into that of others and speak the truth—the truth about the need to live for a land rather than die for it. What is land after all if not something bound within national borders or must one say notional borders?

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 - April 2016

12 FICTION

The station clock hanging from the wrought iron roof brace seems to have stopped. The dark hands and black numerals of the Victorian timepiece fade behind a grey mist swirling in from the sea. I squint to bring the numbers into focus. Less than three minutes to go.

Come on, John. Breathe. She’ll be here in a minute.

Jayne called earlier, when the train left Euston, so I know she’s The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

13 aboard. All I can do is wait and hope I can hold myself together until she arrives. The tension hurts like a knife thrust through my stomach, but all I can do is wait.

I try to stay calm, but the thoughts in my head churn. Can I find the right words? Will she say yes? Why is everybody staring at me? Did I brush my teeth properly? Why am I shaking?

I stare up at the near-stationary clock and beg it to tick faster, but Sod’s Law of ‘Screw Me Over’ doesn’t leave me alone and the fog rolls in again, thicker this time.

The temperature drops like a rock thrown from a railway bridge.

I’m wearing my second best rig especially for Jayne. My preferred fashion statement is one I’ve cultivated for the past decade: stonewashed chinos; blue denim shirt; worn trainers. Jayne says the clothes add to my Bohemian façade. She slays me sometimes. My best ensemble, a dark blue business suit, is reserved for special occasions. Like the registry office? Trouble is the denim shirt is too thin. It doesn’t provide much protection from the cold bouncing in chilling waves off the concrete platform. My back’s freezing, but that’s the least of my worries.

A shiver racks through me. Cold sweat tickles my brow.

The elderly woman beside me leans closer. She’s ignoring my personal space, but I forgive her, life’s too short, right? She must have picked up on my nerves because she nods and gives me a comforting smile. ‘Don’t worry, son. The train’ll be here soon.’

I nod and return the smile. “What’s the time?” I ask surprised how weak my voice sounds. Thirst dries my throat. I could do with a drink, but don’t want to ask. Don’t want to be any trouble.

“Nearly half past.” She looks worried for me.

Must be gone half past by now, surely. I want to confirm the time on my wristwatch but I can’t look. My clenched and trembling fists are the only things holding my knotted stomach together.

“You’re very pale,” says the Good Samaritan.

“I’ll be alright when Jayne gets here.”

“Jayne’s you wife?”

“Not yet. Might be. Let you know in a couple of minutes.”

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

14 A shadow falls across her face and she frowns but says nothing.

I stare up at the clock again, but it still hasn’t moved. Is the damned thing broken? # Today started well and for once, improved by the minute.

Jayne phoned after breakfast to confirm she’d booked leave for the whole of next week. I punched the air in silent delight, but played it cool. “That’s good, babe. Guess we can find something to do.”

She lit my morning with one of her infectious giggles. “I can think of plenty of ways to occupy our time, and none of them involves leaving the apartment.”

“Wow,” I replied. “Can’t wait.”

She didn’t know it, but I’d reserved a suite for us in the most expensive hotel I could afford. Not the most expensive in town, of course, but pricey enough.

After her call, I had a manic burst of creativity. I found the ending for the short story I’d been fretting over for nearly a week. The words flew from my mind, through my fingertips, and into the computer. After three edits and a final proof read, I hit the ‘send’ button with a joyous flourish and celebrated with a cup of tea. It’s not that I’m teetotal. I like a drink as much as the next bloke, but at eleven o’clock in the morning? Nah. That way leads to ruin. Time enough for the bubbly stuff later-during the celebration I hoped was coming.

It only took the commissioning editor an hour to accept the submission, and next month’s mortgage was covered. He even accepted my proposal for a monthly series on local walks.

One proposal accepted, and one more to make.

I punched the air again and this time accompanied it with a whoop of joy. Before finishing for the day, I completed another chapter of my book. Things couldn’t have been better. Five more chapters I’d be able to type those words all writers love, The End. Then the hard graft will start, the edits, and the re-edits, but that’s another story. I hadn’t felt as good in years. Everything was tumbling into place.

Two hours spent cleaning the flat and fifteen minutes to shave The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

15 filled the rest of the afternoon. Jayne would barely recognise me without the designer stubble, but I wanted to make the day special.

The sun beat down and warmed my world.

On the way to the station, after smiling and nodding at each passing stranger, I collected the sapphire engagement ring from the jeweller’s and placed it carefully in my button-down shirt pocket. The stone match my Jayne’s cornflower-blue eyes, I couldn’t have chosen better. Didn’t even mind that I’d be paying for the blooming thing for the next twenty years.

The cross-town walk to the station gave me the chance to rehearse my speech. On the way, I had second thoughts about the location. A railway station didn’t seem like the most romantic place for a proposal, but I couldn’t think of a more suitable venue. Jayne and I met under the clock three years ago to the day. You might say we bumped into each other, although after seeing her on the same train every day for a week, I made sure to time my exit from the train just right. I’m clever like that.

I paused at the concessionary stands on the station concourse long enough to pick up a small bunch of pink carnations, Jayne’s favourite, and marched towards the ticket barrier.

My nerves jumped.

Pete, the railway guard who’d known Jayne and me since our first meeting, winked and pointed to the flowers. “Bloody hell Johnny, you’re splashing out a bit. Special occasion or guilty conscience?”

I showed him the ring.

“Wow! Who’d you steal that from?”

“Cheeky bugger!’ I clapped his arm and threw him a hurt look.

“I’ve been saving up for months to make the deposit on this hunk of rock.”

“Beautiful, mate,” he flicked a glance to his left and frowned.

“Better put it away though, it ain’t safe here.”

“Don’t worry on my account, mate. I can handle myself.”

I pushed through the barrier and sidestepped a scruffy-looking man, a big guy with a ponytail and a wizard’s beard, who staggered along the platform.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

16

Pete screamed a warning.

A hand on my shoulder pulled me around and I stumbled.

Wizard-man, spat in my face. “I’ll have that, fucker,” he said.

His arm swung left to right at waist height, something brushed my shirt. He snatched the little red box from my hand before I knew what was happening.

What the fuck?

The energy drained out of me as though flushed from a cistern.

I started to shake. Something wet splashed on the concrete at my feet.

I stared down at the eight-inch gash in my stomach. Offal spewed out of my belly like a spilled can of sausages-in-tomato-sauce.

Jesus! What the hell? Oh God, no. Not now.

I collapsed and had to use both hands to hold the loose flaps of my belly together. Blood and guts oozed between my fingertips. I vomited over my nice clean shirt.

Everything hurt. My vision dimmed. # The haze clears for a second and the clock reads seven-thirty-three.

The train’s late. Of course it’s bloody late.

Typical!

I’m still hanging on, but it’s a toss-up for who’ll reach me first, the train, the ambulance, or the hearse.

The concerned old dear, the Good Samaritan, leans over me with sadness and worry in her eyes. Her skin is as pale as mine feels.

I try to say something fit for an epitaph, but my mind’s woozy and the thoughts won’t gel. What’s the use of a writer who can’t think of anything to say.

Looking on the bright side, the publicity might do something for my posthumous book sales. Dying didn’t do Stieg Larsson’s sales any harm. Yeah, right? Who’s going to know, or care? Who but Jayne?

And maybe Pete.

I’m going into shock, I can hear Angels. No, it’s the train’s horn.

Pete’s standing over me, eyes glistening. “Ambulance is on its way, mate. Hang on. We got the drunken bastard, he didn’t get far. Here’s your ring.” He holds up something red but it’s out of focus, I can’t see it properly.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

17 “Need … Jayne … soon.”

Pete can’t hear me, I’m trying to shout above the noise in the station and the babble of onlookers, but my voice is weak, coming out as a whisper.

“What did you say?”

He kneels and I speak into his ear. “Jayne… hurry.”

A tear drops from Pete’s cheek and splashes onto mine. My vision’s going. I can’t see the clock any more, or the station roof. Pete and the Good Samaritan fade and blur, but the sound of steel scraping on steel registers clear and loud.

“It’s here, Johnny, the train’s here! I’ll go fetch her.”

Colours fade to grey and white. I struggle to breathe. My fingers are numb but I don’t let go. I can’t let go.

“Johnny!” Jayne’s silhouette casts a shadow. Hair brushes my face. Her perfume blots out the iron-rich stench of my blood.

She’s here. I made it. I can go now.

“Love you, babe … marry me?” I manage. Pete hands her something red.

“Oh, God … yes, darling, yes. Just stay with me,” she cries and brushes her lips against mine. The two-tone ambulance siren drowns out her next words.

I want to reach out and touch her face, but I daren’t or I’ll lose my grip and my grip’s the only thing holding me together.

My hands relax. I give way to the light.

Kerry J Donovan was born in Dublin in the late 1950s, before the time of mobile phones and twentyfour-hour television. He spent most of his life in the UK, and now lives in Brittany with his long-suffering wife of thirtyseven years. He has three children and three grandchildren, all of whom live in England. He is an absentee granddad and praises the advent of video calling. Kerry’s psychological thriller, ‘The Transition of Johnny Swift’ became a number one bestseller only a few months after release and his ‘DCI Jones Casebook’ series are also bestsellers.

He can be reached at http://kerryjdonovan.com/publicationsby-kerry-j-donovan/ The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

18 NON-FICTION

Christy Bharath

WHEN HUMANS ATTACK

Nobody knows what they are capable of unless the situation

demands it. Heroism isn’t hereditary. Circumstances make people do extraordinary things. Most of us would like to think we are capable of some bravery in the face of danger. However, when the threat is posed by a wild animal, valor can be misplaced.

In 2013, during an Indian gaur attack, I ran faster than I ever realized I could. A friend and a tribal kid were with me. But I didn’t look back to see whether they were safe. Instead I took off, leaving a cloud of cartoon smoke behind. They did too. I knew that if I had turned around to see, I might have been gored. We were a just few meters away from an alpha gaur! That’s nearly 1000 kilograms of power, agility and anger charging at us in an alarming speed.

Sure, I like my friend. The kid had a charming disposition too.

But I liked increasing the odds of my survival a lot better.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

19 It turned out that I was the only one who suffered an injury. I shattered my left leg. My ankle felt like it had a kidney stone trying to tear through its bones. Nevertheless, there was a valuable lesson in it for me. Must run faster.

I hear it all the time, from local trekkers, who help me spot animals. They tell me to watch out for myself, in case of a close encounter. They insist that we should go, as quickly as possible, in separate directions. That way the group has a better chance of survival. It isn’t a fight or flight predicament in the wild. Not unless you know what you are doing and/or armed. If nobody has any field experience whatsoever, taking flight is a sound strategy for all involved.

Bravery is best reserved for when humans treat each other with spite.

Animal attacks are unfortunate. Some of them involve horrific amounts of pain. It’s sad. But we must share the blame for the bad karma. It is brought upon by, for lack of a better word,speciesism. A history of murder and displacement. Our utter nonchalance for lifeforms that communicate in a manner that is alien to us.

Recently I, along with a friend, spotted a family of Nilgiri tahrs on the way to Valparai.

These mountain sheeps (not goats) are majestic creatures. They are so graceful and unctuously proud about their place in the universe.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

20 Much to our dismay, some of the tourists started pulling over their cars. A bunch of excited families got out, and drew the attention of an alpha male. He zoned out as they pulled out their mobile phones and went selfie-crazy in front him.

They were about 5-7 feet away from him. I kept my anger in check for about a minute.

I then walked towards them, and tried to shoo them away.

I even claimed to be working for the forest department, and insisted that they vacate the area at once. They put up some resistance by making ignorant statements about wildlife in general. I sensed braggadocio, which is one of the reasons I hate traveling with men. I hurled back a few expletives at them while suggesting that they shut up and behave. One of them offered, with malice, his middle-finger as they drove off.

Standing there, fuming, I wished one of the tahrs, prefera-

21 bly the big guy, had gored some sense into them. I kept thinking what a wonderful lesson that would have been. An abdominal scar in the shape of the sharp end of a horn to remind them to treat animals with respect.

Animals have every right to be mad at us. We have pillaged their homes and stolen their children for profit. Dried up their rivers and disrupted their natural behaviour. We have remained mute spectators to violent and discriminatory practices in the name of commerce and comfort.

I swear, the day the tiger goes extinct – if I am still around – I am going to wear a party hat and gore everyone in sight. My advice is that, in case of an animal attack, do everything you can to get away from its line of offence. If it’s a large creature, like a gaur or an elephant, run downhill. Use their body weight against them. If it’s a leopard, flay your arms over your head or hold a stick over it. Be noisier and more intimidating.

But if you end up on the ground, gasping a last lungful of air – nursing a neck wound or having your internal organs squished under a heap of flesh – don’t panic. It will all be over soon, hopefully. You won’t die a coward. You are more than a mere statistic. You are a victim of ignorance and arrogance. Not just yours. The blood will be on our all hands. You should know that it wasn’t the animal’s fault. May they roam safe and free. And the stars were innocent too. May they blink effortlessly and endlessly.

It was always us ....... MAAAAAAAN! (Photographs: Kodaikanal, Thekkady, Valparai by Christy Bharath)

Christy Bharath:

With a degree in Journalism, he was initially a copy editor before he joined a creative media agency. At present, he is a Content and Brand Strategist. One of his poems has been included in the anthology –Modern and Contemporary Poetry Volume 1 collection. He is also an amateur ornithologist and in pursuit of a life in the hills, travelling, tasting wild fruits and talking to trees.

Write to him at christy.bharath@gmail.com Visit him at https://verseherder.wordpress.com/ The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

22

An Epic Poem by Dr. Sadiqullah Khan

Aristotle and Sappho

(The dialogue takes place between Aristotle, Homer and Sappho, based on Poetics of Aristotle.)

Part -1

Prelude to ‘Poetics’ of Aristotle

23 Macedonian, an Athenian, a Greek symbol When the rest of the world painted their faces blue Or were clinging to the trees, apelike, he was writing And teaching philosophy. An ultimate touchstone An ultimate reason, Pupil of the great Plato Surpassed, toned him down –the radical transformer Let there be a room for the common sense Let emotion prevail; let intuition be not inimical to sense.

We undertake by a grace, human An account into Poetics, of whatever might be understood By a feeble mind, frail heart, unaccustomed With wit, a study to what we call poetry As embellished by him, as it came down to us, fragmented For with all probabilities, he never wanted the work To be published, handed down by himself, or by a pupil One of the four hundred treatises written by him.

Thus we conclude, having written the above That all word that uttered his mouth, which came on his tongue Despite the written, was creativity, unique, unparalleled A science, deductive, in logic and to the posterity For all times to come, empirical, for generations.

(Portrait Bust of Sappho c.1900 by Reps & Trinte)

The apocalyptic maestro’s dialogue Whatever he said, whether wrote or not Of politics and philosophy History’s scribbled pages, lost, found and lost Again. Reason’s unblemished castle The armies select, carrying banners of divinity Feared not the death, nor a defeat but O ye!

May some one from a pouch, from a hidden hearth Spell your name, or your master’s or the master’s master.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

24

25

Sappho the Poetess Sappho the Poetess Are you thrice removed from reality?

To him you happened to be the tenth muse The nine being exhausted. A mimicry As art and banished from the Republic.

Homer’s art is lies, what is yours?

Ai’nt not the poets bring down from Heavens, life’s tender imagined impulses Ai’nt not they ‘besides themselves’ The universe is an idea, and you make A reflection, an imitation. Then what is that Which can’t be reflected, an inspiration.

An action confined to ‘single circuit of the sun’ Complete, as far as possible, and something near that.

“A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious And, also having magnitude, complete in itself; in language Embellished with each kind of ornament, each kind Brought in separately in parts of the work, in dramatic, Not in narrative form; with incidents arousing pity And fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis Of such emotion” –Poetics of Aristotle Sappho the Poetess Are you thrice removed from reality?

Act I Scene: School of Athens as painted by Raphael.

Imitation -Poetics I

Aristotle:

All art is imitation, be it Poetry, dance and music, sculpture The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

(The famous`School of Athens’ by Raphael, painted between 1510-1511 CE, depicting all of the major philosophers at the centre. (Vatican Museums, Rome).

Painting and flute-playing Not mimicry thrice removed From reality. The mime, Socratic Conversation, Homeric Odyssey; the form of imitation Without name. The arts differ in three modes Means of imitation, the medium and the object.

By language is literature, by colour and sound Music, painting and sculpture.

Rhythm, harmony and melody In verse, one of the many kinds of meter And without verse, even is poetry Imitation is; Of essence, of an object It is the imitation of emotion, the inner reality Or the soul of things.

Art seeks to imitate an inward process, Or the outward manifestation of an inward will which show some activity of thought, of feeling.

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26

27 Sappho:

Sappho: Great master, for having removed thrice, How I hold to reality The rhapsodical thought, whether a feeling How from a tender heart ariseth, A tear dropped. A sigh. Ah! Such separation From loved ones, is not the tragic heart?

Closer more to real than assigned?

Aristotle: Having said this, there comes the object What you may imitate.

There is no bigger reality than the human itself, In the background is a landscape, a curtain A choral beginning and human tragedy A comic relief, unfolds.

In dramatic art, the mimesis is reproduction of life.

The understanding of the ridiculous Is it the invective, a lampoon in imitation An ignoble and trivial action?

Aristotle: The manner of imitation may either A narrative at a moment In verse, or change dramatically Heroic poetry and panegyrics born here.

Comedy is imitation of the men Worse not as they are but in the sense Ridiculous.

Sappho: What is ugly then?

Aristotle:

Sappho:

Ridiculous is a species of the ugly Not necessarily ugly (For Greeks ugly meant bad) A defect or shortcoming which produces laughter An instability, a deformity but not causing pain Not productive enough to harm, a mask.

What do you say of Homer The poet of the poets.

Aristotle: Homer personages above all Had dealt both tragedy and comedy He is a superior, in Illiad and Odysee And in Margites (since lost) in comedy He was the first to outline the dramatic In ridiculous.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

Tragedy –Poetics II

Aristotle: A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

28 And, also having magnitude, complete in itself; in language Embellished with each kind of ornament, each kind Brought in separately in parts of the work, in dramatic, Not in narrative form; with incidents arousing pity And fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis Of such emotion.

29 A uniform meter in epic, a changing In tragic, variable.

Epic is narrative, tragic in verse Dramatic. Indefinite length of epic The tragedy is confined to ‘single circuit of the sun’

Sappho: Do you mention the three unities of action, time and space?

Sappho: What do you mean by language embellished, master?

Aristotle:

Aristotle: As far as possible And something near that.

With rhythm and harmony With song superadded And by the kinds separately I mean, Some portions worked out In verse, others in song.

End of Act I

To be continued ...

Dr. Sadiqullah Khan Wazir belongs to Wana, South Waziristan Pakistan. A Physician by qualification the author serves in the Customs Service of Pakistan. He

Sappho:

lives in Islamabad. The Voices, Chaos of Being, The Songs

Homer is epic and tragic.

What differentiate an epic from a tragedy?

of Other Times, A Forgotten Song, Chasing Shadows and Orchard of Raining Petals are his works of Poetry. The author manages two groups of poetry, The Voices and generation 21 and a page The Voices. The author can be

Aristotle:

reached at https://www.facebook.com/sadiqullah.khan.92

Epic and tragedy have things in common Of serious actions, serious characters Characters better than average The style of both Grand and elevated Their verse of lofty nature.

The difference is; The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

30 FLASH FICTION

JEFF COLEMAN

31 Finally the timing belt snapped and the whole thing unravelled. There was a crash, a thud and then the machine simply stopped running. Reality wavered; faded; disappeared.

For ages the machine sat in disrepair, silent and still, ruined and forgotten in the darkness outside creation. Then its maker stumbled into it while seeking parts for another project. He considered leaving it, for he was a busy man. But nostalgia seized him and he was overtaken by an unexpected sadness.

He toiled in endless dark. He replaced the timing belt and the ball bearings. He lubricated the sensitive inner workings. He filled the reservoir with a fresh carton of oil.

When at last he was finished he flipped the switch. The machine spun to life and the universe was new once more. And in the background, permeating space and time, was that familiar ever-present hum.

Jeff writes modern literary fantasy for children and adults.

He says: “I write for children because these other worlds have not yet been hidden from them. I write for adults because they have.� He is from California in the United States.

He blogs @ http://blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com./

The Machine If you listen carefully you can hear it, the low bass rumble of hulking iron gears winding behind a cosmic curtain, beyond space and time. It sustains the universe, scaffolds reality. Once, when the machine was new, when it was well oiled and regularly maintained, it made little sound at all, just a gentle soothing hum that saturated the universe with newborn energy.

But gradually, almost imperceptibly, the steady nearly-silent rhythm began to change. At first, it was just a tiny ping in the engine. Then the oil began to burn and the gears began to grind. Yet the machine continued to operate to specification, and the universe chugged along for another fourteen billion years.

Then the ball bearings gave out. The machine started to crack and squeak, and the universe began to spoil. Stars began to lose their heat. Gravity began to lose its pull. Time warped and stretched like Taffy. All the while that incessant squealing permeated the cosmos, driving men, women and beings of indeterminate gender mad.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

Literary magazines can continue to perform a useful role only if they continue to forge new connections. Please get connected.

Submissions: submissions@thewagonmagazine.com Subscriptions: subscriptions@thewagonmagazine.com Editorial: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

32

33 till give shade enough for village whole!

Who would’ve seen you as saplingTender, slender, dependent on foster parent, Palmyra?

Till you lengthen, and Take roots down?

My father? Never.

His father? Neither.

Great grand father, Doubtful, too.

Perhaps his father?

May be, true.

Ayathurai Santhan

BANYAN Am I to bid you farewell, tell?

And your times are nearing now?

My gentle giant, my life long friend!

Playing under, picking red fruits while listening unseen parrots chirping fresh still in mind, indelible Wide trunk cuddling tiny shrine, powerful deity protecting whole village folks!

April full moon festive day, starts with fasting to end with feast.

Born of something smaller than fish egg, dispersed by bird!

Grew and grew and expanded The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

A marvel, a wonder!

Witnessed history flowing down your lush canopy, cool and fine!

Have you seen the Portuguese?

How Dutch were galloping past tanned and burnt in alien sun, that changed red earth ember at noon?

English, then? Reasonable?

Ruled an era so peaceful.

Seen no parallel in near past.

Independence, then first election‌ Sand lanes tarred and roads earned names.

Buses plied; their colors changed fast. Yes! Came then so called double-decks, Made them chop off your arms low!

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

34 Passed times brought Power, the almighty!

High towers, three phase!

Half the green mount vanished by then!

Times turned round.

35 ANKUSH BANERJEE

To P.S Variations on Love

No power, no bus, instead then planes and shells flew past lot daily for a three decades, By then you well concealed a bunker down, camouflaged.

Saved lives of many innocent!

Came then times for all sounds cease.

Things turned back, to ‘normal’!

Floods too filled pit, made level it!

Then had I time to gaze at top.

There remained branches, but little only to host pest, Loranthus!

Mountain turned mound!

Pity, the thing that most saddest not your fate, but simple; It’s our folks’ foolishness!

But, you and I weren’t the only ones!

Hopkins and Aspens were before us!

Ayathurai Santhan has authored two novels,

Rails Run Parallel (which shared the Fairway National Literary Award for the best English novel published in Sri Lanka 2015) and The Whirlwind (both short listed for the Gratiaen Literary Prize (2009 and 2014). And three short story collections In Their Own Worlds (which won the 2000 State Literary Award), The Sparks, and The Northern Front and a prose poetry collection, Survival and Simple Things. Santhan, an engineer by profession, lives in Jaffna.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

We would never be who we were –

The full blooded dolce vita of a blind date, Quoting Jeanette Winterson from memory laced with musk, prayer and frankincense of lonely afternoons.

Beer-drunk, we muse on Prufrock’s last lines by the sea of the most expensive blue.

We feel younger than we are.

‘I am stronger than you think’, we murmur, almost simultaneously, cautiously, knowingtime makes clumsy fools of us.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

36 Later, after we make love at daybreak, and the sky is a watermelon cut upside down over our heads, and we mockingly provide assurances of ‘forever’; There is peculiar tenderness, the way you hook your bra.

Your hair a charcoal sketch over thin, white shoulders.

37

Yesterday Afterwards, in the whiskey-fuelled delirium of yet another ever after, we search for what we may never find – space shaped as solace, tattered prayer books, rickshaw rides, childhood photographs, rains seen as sheets from beneath a window. It doesn’t always turn out like those 50’s movies. ‘Longing has colour’, I say, ‘so does apathy’ you retort. Really, now, who

I want to unhook it, This timenot out of desire.

were we kidding when we assumed the musk of your scarf from last winter still throbbing like a vein clasped tightly.

These things happen. Afterwards, it is all moonlight, breathing, smell of dry rhubarbs and forgotten stories we must recollect slowly, with each telling and retelling Until we may kiss with the first-time awkwardness everyone loses like time.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

38

Majestic Bus Stop at 5 A.M. Between them they have counted words; say, the kiss-on –the-forehead vowel, a consonant of reluctant embrace the silence of suppressed sighs, give or take a few alphabets.

It is a longing, made sharper by impending distance, more suggestion than show, cradling night-sounds into daybreak only a kiss away.

And then all will be background noise inside our heads.

The bus doesn’t give a damn! It speeds away. It is part of the prop. So are heaps of trash, puddles, eager feet shuffling to work, the call of the muezzin.

She sits at the window.

He stands awhile after it leaves, glancing at posters of films no one watches.

Daylights and shop-owners encroach the mystery of yellow streetlights, sparrows appear from nowhere in particular.

A mangy dog urinates on the wall.

Only the sparrows seem to remain.

Only the sparrows seem to prevail.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

39

The Curio Shop While writing this, I don’t think of The Curio Shop where we may, except for the stationary clocks, parting lovers on porcelain tiles, Medieval Compasses with fuzzy Norths, pagan gods, rudder of a capsized ship named ‘Henry & Co.’ wood swollen by cheap polish.

There is novelty in certain objects.

Look now: this chess board has 63 squires.

A gramophone spits silence. This deer hide could pass for a doormat.

If you must know, come with me into the filigrees of your neck where my tongue played hopscotch yesterday, Each tug at your hair unleashing a bull amidst these relics.

A chessboard has 64 squares.

I am the pawn who never reaches the other end of the chessboard.

Ankush is a mental health professional based

in Kerala. His interests include art, history, travel, poetry and literature. His first collection of poetry, ‘An Essence of Eternity’ (Sahitya Akademi-Delhi) is forthcoming later this year.

He blogs at: cogitoerigosum.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

40 COLUMN

PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

Marriage of Convenience We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about

what we pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut The orderly rolled my gurney to a stop before an imposing double doorway. “Okay,” he said, “This is where you get your kiss.”

I couldn’t tell if he was speaking to me or to my wife. In any case, my wife kissed me and laughed and cried all at once. Then I was rolling again.

I arrived in surgery and scooted over onto the operating table. I joked with the anesthesiologist. He found my vein on the first try. I recited Psalms to myself and wondered distantly why I wasn’t scared out of my wits.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

41 They sliced me open, broke my sternum, compressed my lungs like empty sugar bags, and stopped my heart to patch the hole between its upper chambers with a piece of my pericardium while redirecting the blood that flowed through an anomalous vein.

I don’t remember that part.

I also don’t remember my hands clawing the air, straining against nylon straps, struggling to tear the ventilator mask from my face and the dressing from my chest. My wife stifled a cry when she saw me in recovery. Apart from the convolutions of my fingers, the pallor of my face starkly mirrored the countenance of death.

“He looks so good,” the nurse told her.

When I did regain consciousness the next day, numbed by morphine and dazed by the residue of anesthesia, I asked my cardiologist if he could release me that afternoon. “I have to catch a flight to Jacksonville this evening,” I said.

I was trying to be funny. He thought I was delirious.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED Lacking prescience, however, I had no excuse for the cavalier attitude with which I approached this whole business. No matter how distinguished my surgeon’s credentials, and no matter how casually he explained away the operation as routine (with the probability of success better than 99%), cardiac surgery remains as heart-stopping as it sounds: they carve open your chest and, during an extended period of clinical death, cut and paste around your most vital organ before sewing you back together.

Call it what you like; it hardly ranks among the more attractive forms of elective surgery. Yet “elective surgery” was how the doctor had described it. After all, I had virtually no symptoms, and my condition might not advance for twenty years. Then again, deterioration could begin within months, or even weeks. And so, at my cardiologist’s insistence, I opted to exchange the distant prospect of lingering death for the immediate promise of physical pain followed by months-long recovery.

That was what I expected. Instead, from beginning to end, The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

42 while my wife and children and parents were dealing with their respective emotional traumas, the greatest discomfort I suffered throughout the entire episode came not from the incision, not from anesthesia withdrawal, not even from the mild pneumonia I contracted during recovery, but from a persistent hangnail that nagged me from the day after surgery until I returned home and exorcised it with my cuticle clippers.

THERE IS A LESSON The great tennis player Arthur Ashe, after contracting AIDS via blood transfusion, was reported to have said, “If I ask why this has happened to me, then I must also ask concerning all the good that I have had in my life.”

Indeed, Mister Ashe, may you rest in peace -- you should have asked both questions, as should we all.

If life is all One Great Accident, then there is no why. But the exquisitely textured fabric of our universe, the elegant design of our world, and the transcendent nobility of Man when he listens to the calling of his soul -- all these testify to the genius of an invisible Conductor who guides the symphony of Creation.

And if there is a plan behind the apparent chaos, then whatever happens for good or for bad should prompt us to ask, “Why?” So what was I supposed to learn? Well, I could have learned to keep constant surveillance over my priorities, to never take for granted those things in life that are truly important: • Health • Family • Community • Love • Self-respect Nor would the lesson have been wasted.

But this lesson is one we all have to learn again and again over the course of our lifetimes. It is important, obvious, and universal, but hardly unique to my surgery. Surely, there was a more personal lesson to be found.

THE REALITY OF SURREALISM The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

43 Had I been in pain, had I collapsed clutching my chest or felt heart palpitations, the whole episode might have acquired an aura of macabre terror. Instead, it contained from the very beginning such an air of the surreal that I almost expected Rod Serling to step out from behind the curtains and announce that I had just entered the Twilight Zone.

I was 33 years old, and I had gone to my internist complaining of migraine headaches. Doctor Schleiffer never did cure my headaches, but he picked up my heart murmur, dismissed as benign by every doctor who had noted it since I was an infant. He ran an EKG. The readout was nominally abnormal. He ordered an echocardiogram. The right side of my heart appeared enlarged.

The cardiologist ordered a transesophageal echocardiogram: the technician slid a little camera down my throat, took snapshots of my chest cavity, and revealed an atrial septal defect. In simple language, I had a hole in my heart. Without treatment, accumulated back-pressure would eventually force blood up into my lungs and cause my entire cardiovascular system to begin shutting down.

So how did I remain so calm when I had every reason to indulge in blind hysteria? With no symptoms, with no pain, with nothing but shadowy images on computer screens to indicate anything was wrong, I didn’t really believe what was happening to me.

In the aftermath of surgery, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I woke up relatively free from pain, wondering when the morphine would wear off and leave me shrieking for more. I braced myself for what the surgeon warned would be the most painful moment of the procedure, and I was still afraid to relax after the odd but liberating sensation of tubes and catheters slithering out of my body had long passed.

I tensed again at his most terrifying words, “Now, this might hurt a little,” then watched in wonder as he reeled nearly a yard of pacemaker wire out through my abdomen. Uncertain with what to concern myself next, I vexed that my hangnail might become infected if left untreated for too long.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

44 Weeks later I still hadn’t let down my guard. But all the while, the overwhelming sense of unreality left me with the distinct impression that these things had been happening to somebody else, that I was merely a spectator in my own flirtation with death. Lying in my hospital room, I watched images dance across the TV screen while ruminating over the insipid ordeal from which I found myself so recently delivered.

RUNNING IN VIRTUAL CIRCLES Between doses of Good Morning, America, Oprah, and Star Trek, I began to ponder the culture of self-deception that has so successfully insinuated itself into our lives, how we demand a flawless imitation of reality from the fantasy world we have created for ourselves. Animation must appear authentic in every form of virtual entertainment. Not only movies and video games, but everything that crosses the electronic screen must conform in every way to a real world from which we are systematically cutting ourselves off. Conversely, as we impose upon all our illusions the illusion of reality, we make reality itself ever more illusory.

Reality television fabricates “real life” fantasies; docudramas replace mere documentaries; personal memoir displaces simple history. Inevitably, the line between reality and unreality grows increasingly blurred.

So it went with my own surgery. My emotions refused to invest themselves in the surreal world through which I found myself passing, so much so that fantasy affected me more profoundly than reality: Surrounded by patients hovering between life and death, I found nothing more alarming than Captain Kirk ordering the destruction of the Starship Enterprise. And this was over 20 years ago, before Facebook or Google, before cellphones or viral cat videos, before most of us even had email. Even then, fantasy and reality were merging into one through cultural osmosis. More and more we become spectators in our own lives. The effortless engagement of the modern telescreen leaves our minds vacant of higher thoughts and empty of higher aspirations.

Our souls cry out for real purpose, but our minds are too anesthetized to care.

We may look for movements to join or causes to support, but The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

45 virtual activism merely pretends to social conscience, momentarily capturing our imagination and flirting with our passions, but offering little that endures. So what can we do about it? Can we hold back the tide of cultural inevitability all by ourselves? Of course not. Noah couldn’t stop the Flood, either. But he did save himself; and by saving himself, he saved the world.

We can’t build an ark. But maybe there is an ark already prepared for those who want to escape le deluge. And the point of entry opens up for us when we realize that reality and fantasy don’t have to be at war with one another.

AN END TO HOSTILITIES The truth is, mankind has always lived in a world wherein reality and illusion are intertwined. The physical world that seems so real offers us nothing of intrinsic value, while the spiritual world that feeds our souls remains perpetually hidden from our senses. Many of us try to ignore the promptings of the soul through immersion in the material. But the soul is the essence of who we are, and it will continue to seek connection with the Source of All no matter how hard we try to supress it. Indeed, all our efforts to satisfy the soul with a diet of intellectual stimulation or sensual pleasure will only leave it more desperate for genuine spiritual nutrition after the momentary distractions of worldly indulgences has passed.

Some of us go to the other extreme, attempting to cut ourselves off from the physical by retreating to mountaintops or secret chambers, believing that they can keep the material world at bay by denying its existence or influence. In most cases, what they deny themselves are the pleasures of sensory stimulation that can ground us in our pursuit of higher purpose, as well as the human interaction that is essential to our humanity. Isolation may limit our exposure to the sensual temptations of this world, but it also robs us of the joy of giving, the wonder of friendship, the mystery and the majesty of love.

Our only hope is to learn how to reconcile the contradictions of life, not by eliminating them but by accepting the inevitable tension between them and directing it in a positive direction.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

46 True, there may be those exceptional few who can make the body and the soul coexist in perfect harmony. But most of us will never escape one extreme by seeking refuge in the other. The best we can hope for is to broker a marriage of convenience – not a cold war but an uneasy alliance, with each side chafing against an imperfect compromise but pacified by the knowledge that tension can provide its own rewards.

Recognizing that the material world is illusory makes it easier to endure – perhaps even embrace – the challenges, sufferings, and paradoxes that make up so much of our existence. Acknowledging that the world of the spirit is real makes it easier for us to take hold of that higher part of ourselves that calls us to live with selfless nobility and personal integrity. Managing the tension between the two is what provides us with the sense of purpose and accomplishment that is the source of true happiness.

Accepting that the boundaries between fantasy and reality are not absolute without abandoning them altogether, we can revive the longing for authentic relationships, meaningful achievement, and spiritual awareness. By seeking deeper truths, we can uncover the keys to freedom from the prison of illusion and the shackles of cold, hard realism.

I ran into my internist a few days before surgery. “I hear they’re going to put you through the mill,” he said.

“Actually,” I replied, “they’re going to circumcise my heart.”

He looked surprised for a moment, then nodded. “That’s true.”

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, a talmudic scholar and former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, and newspaper columnist, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri, where he teaches, writes, and lectures.

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

Visit him at http://proverbsandprovidence.com.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

47

Allison Grayhurst

If I knew this haunting Melted, swung high over the sea, plunging into the perishing darkness.

No one sees me, single as a stone, madness on my island even with gifts of peaches, blueberries, sunlight and sun-birds.

Windows are never here. The truth is a deep-throat dread, lower belly drain, water gone, shadow in between. Swing over a mound of dry bones that used to be flowers, hummingbird retreats. Shattered glass greenhouse in winter’s embrace.

Nothing flows. It tried to flow and for awhile I can remember the small animals, remember ease while breathing, myself more silence than flutter.

I can remember walking on high wet grass rolling fields all around, walking to keep from eclipsing, determined to walk, and not burn at the roots.

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48

SEE

I see you now like I didn’t before, see the eclipsing cataclysmic drive, heavy in its consumption, consuming me with images of you and the upper reaches of your forehead, upper scope of divine desire, filtering down my throat, into arm sinews, fingers and finally my teacup, drinking again.

Why did you make me see, give me urgency, anxiety unquenchable?

Hot-lip inheritor, a catastrophic omen, cutting down my log house, cutting up the loving stars.

49

And Though THe news is bad

It is time to accept happiness like a decision or commitment to faith regardless of the mammal body breaking, fraught with meaningless shifts of further incompletions, setbacks from the full flight swoop-ridged impasse, sudden hot glass thrown on the garden path, a child in jeopardy of a mudslide, sliding into hospital beds, doorways diminished like trampled flowers but happiness is a hug of a day-away-coming-home, conversations in subway cars built on curiosity and excitement, happiness is knowing God when the rats and rain win over our moon, is the miracle-motion extreme, tiptoeing the edge, a wave of great mercy, rich with oxygen currents, flooding, then overflowing.

I see you now and cannot see again ideals to strive for, homesteads of subterranean warmth.

Wait under water, wait beside the fleshy fins of mauled corpses. This reality is mine, although I tried to make something different, tried to grow great gardens in the sand.

I see you now – illusionist, collector of willing followers, a games keeper, selling me out to see how devoted I remain, to see how bravely I live after I see, after this fall.

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50

dead cold moon Lay it to rest, accept it like gravity or the flight that lasts only moments before a fall.

51

Non-Fiction:

Kathleen Poon

Breathing the Fumes

Excuses made to maintain the shrine of inward pressure, voyaging to the harbor then back out to sea, never touching shore or dipping a foot into the ocean.

I tried to make a quarantined country, a library of unreal tales, a mythology without leaven.

Spear-headed, tossing, unwrapped and wailing before a shattered creation. Playing unnoticed.

It is dark. Too many rulers burnt by stubborn commitments.

Children give courage to each other, mountains bleed.

Resting is replenishing, ambition is irrevocably removed.

I am nothing but God’s child.

I am nothing except when living with consciousness that I am God’s child - servant on a dead cold moon a servant saved (burning still) on that dead cold moon.

Allison Grayhurst lives in Toronto, Canada.

She is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets.

Three of her poems have been nominated for Sundress Publications “Best of the Net” 2015, and she has over 850 poems published in more than 375 international literary magazines, journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published twelve other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing.

She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

The second leg of my mountain-climbing adventure in

Indonesia created some trepidation. The first leg started in Bali when we climbed Mount Batur in Kintamani . There, I struggled and took an hour longer than my friends to reach the peak, and my fears almost crippled me to a standstill, when I slipped on a slope covered with scree while coming down the mountainside.

My experience created not only personal embarrassment but also slowed down my friends who were more physically fit and mentally brave. As a consequence, I was nervous about climbing another mountain, Mount Ijen on the eastern part of Java. Recalling the Bali experience, I did not want to relive the same difficulties. Yet, at the same time, I tried to be positive because many travellers had climbed it fairly easily.

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52 We journeyed to a nearby village, a short distance from the hotel. There, our driver dropped us off, so that we could walk around and enjoy the beauty of the terraced rice fields and the tranquil atmosphere of the village. It was a lovely walk – the weather was slightly cloudy, the air was fresh, no traffic – it was peaceful! It was also the month of Ramadhan and we could hear the recital of prayers from a nearby mosque.

Guests at hotel were either preparing for or recovering from the hike. We spent our first evening whiling away the hours at the patio drinking Bintang beer (I guess that wasn’t a good idea to get properly prepared for a mountain climb), chatting and listening to crickets.

After a hearty breakfast in the morning, we set off for Mount Ijen at eight o’clock. Remember how nervous I was about this climb? Well, it was not as bad as Mount Batur in Bali. The climb was gradual and the surface of the tracks was not rocky.

Mount Ijen is a volcano which has a one-kilometre wide, turquoise-coloured, acid lake crater. Ijen Crater (Kawah Ijen in Bahasa Indonesia) is also the site of an intensive sulphur mining operation, where workers climb up and down the crater, mine the sulphur and carry back baskets of sulphur chunks on their shoulders. Each basket of sulphur weighs about seventy kilos and some workers carry up to ninety kilos. They may take a breather or two, but never rest longer than that! I was told that some of them actually sprinted their way up and down the mountain with their sulphur-laden baskets. We wore proper hiking shoes to climb the volcano but I saw these workers wear normal rubber boots and some only wore rubber slippers.

It is a risky and hazardous job. Mining is done only twice a day but prolonged up to two weeks in any given month because the toxic fumes from the sulphur make them susceptible to respiratory ailments. The workers do not earn much, say, an average of only US$5 a day. There is a weighing station at the mid-point of the mountain and this is where the workers weigh the ‘fruits of their labour’. I took rest at the weighing station and observed that the workers approached the station, tired and worn out from the hike The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

53

up and down, but getting paid very little. It broke my heart.

We continued climbing and I could sense we were about to reach the crater lip. The air around changed to acrid smoke and I could see clouds of sulphur smoke blowing at a distance.

The landscape changed from thick greenery to sparse, dried up branches. Luckily I had a mask to cover my mouth and nose. At one point; I could not really see what was ahead of me, as there was a lot of sulphur smoke. In spite of this, these workers did not wear any sort of masks at all.

Our guide brought us closer to the crater lip and at that moment, the wind changed direction and we did get a clear view of the crater. It was breath-taking! The colour of the lake crater was indeed turquoise and some parts of the lake took on an emerald colour. Two of my friends went further down the crater to watch the workers mining, scrapping and collecting sulphur. One friend tried to carry a worker’s basket and despite his athletic fitness and strength, he could not carry the basket for too long since it was too heavy.

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though the air was not exactly safe to breathe. I reflected on my physical (and sometimes mental) struggles to climb the two mountains during our trip – Mount Batur and Mount Ijen – and realised that no matter how slow I was, trudging up the mountains, I was a very fortunate person. I wore proper shoes and a mask to cover my nose and mouth from the acrid smoke. I rested whenever I felt tired. I drank water when I was thirsty. The workers, on the other hand, didn’t wear masks and some only had a ragged cloth wrapped over their mouths. They hardly rested since they needed to mine as much sulphur as they could within a short span of time. More sulphur means more income! They didn’t drink a drop of water because it was the month of Ramadhan and they were fasting.

My struggles were nothing compared to these workers who struggle every day to make this hazardous journey – back and forth, breathing toxic fumes – to earn money, however little it may be. That perspective gave me some reassurance that I could still climb mountains. All I need to do is just train harder and not to give up easily.

Kathleen hails from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She jet sets every few months and gets immense joy from experiencing different cultures, admiring beautiful landscape and architecture, and eating delicious international cuisine.

She blogs at Kat Pegi Mana: Where Is Kat Going? (www.katpegimana.com) ‘Breathing The Fumes’ is a reproduction of an article, originally published as a story in www.sujatravel.com The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

55

Fiction:

Vyjayanthi Subramanian

LOVE LETTERS WITH SPELLING MISTAKES 1995 / July 4 / Tuesday/ Evening

A

n evening warm glow filtered through the old fashioned windows of the living room. Curtains fluttered. There was a lamp next to an idol of Vishnu made of five metals in a small alcove in the wall. Oxford dictionaries and Encyclopaedias of social sciences

by Will Durant sat silently in the book case. ‘Jean Genet’, a book by Sartre, half-read, lying beside her, Sindhu was strumming ‘Thampur’, and singing raag ‘Purya Dhanashri ’.

Tara walked in, white apron and a bag slung on either side of her shoulders, holding a newspaper packet in her hands. Taking in the surrounding music, she tip toed to the sofa. Totally absorbed, her mind was floating in the disciplined range of classical music.

After spending the entire day in controlling the deranged emotions……

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56 It was a relief to let go of one’s own emotions…..

If only in a tune….

‘Aalap’ deepening the experience…

Mild variations of the octaves working up to a frantic climax.

Sindhu stopped singing and looked at Tara.

“When did you come in?”

She was unable to get immediately out of the lingering effect of the music, as it felt like a betrayal to hear spoken words when she was listening to a different language of pure emotion. Tara recovered slowly to say that she did not want to disturb as the music was soothing and healing.

“Healing? … That is your job.” laughed Sindhu.

Mother must have gone somewhere; whole house was filled with silence; perhaps to the temple.

Sindhu was curious to know about the paper packet in Tara’s hands. Tara tried to be evasive and that drew more attention.

“Oh! Come on … that must be a gift from some grateful patient from that loony bin! Why shouldn’t I see?”

Sindhu knew how to annoy Tara!

“Don’t slam the psychiatric hospital with that slang” Sincerity echoed in her exasperation. She could not withstand any sort of ridiculing of the hospital or the patients.

“In the privacy of my home…? Why not? Do I have to be politically correct here too? ... Come on! Sindhu… Gift… Ha...?

New shade of lip-stick…? Wilting wine or chocolate caramel? To impress that Dilton Doyle …?’

“Stop it! Will you? … Look! We just happened to be in the same batch! As I was the only female in the whole bunch, I had to look for a Forrest Gump as a friend. That too to know about the unscheduled classes organised all of a sudden….. May be about a journal … a research project… That is all” Tara thought that could be the end of the exploration.

“Freud would conclude that you have ‘repressed sexuality’ as you hang around with the most boring guy on earth who is least threatening …. Say … sexually? You know… you are the biggest sexual The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

57 challenge to him Tara….. Look at the way he dotes on every syllable falling off your blessed lips! .... As if he has only ‘Plato’ feelings for you? ” Tara knew that Sindhu was unapologetic in her observations. … .. She might be right.

But then, her feelings mattered too! She did not have any such feeling towards this friend. In fact, she took people at their face value. She did not read between the lines to gauge every guy she met.

But, this guy was really a decent one. It was impossible to visualize him in any other manner other than a sincere student, afraid of exams. He might marry a girl holding a marks card with good grades, revealing his first symptom of affection as ‘how can I let you miss these classes… ere… you may fail your exams’.

Recalling how shocked she was when she learnt about the sexual act for the very first time, Tara smiled. How she had visualised every decent man, without his clothes, doing it with his wife! After that she could neither face nor look straight at him. Sex was neither natural nor a governing instinct for her. She was not even curious about it.

Since the men she moved with were nice to her, it was easy to be friendly with men folk. On the other hand, the women were absolutely nice to her on the face of it. But later, totally in contrast, they behaved and spoke very differently about her, betraying, behind her back.

She bit her lips...

Hurt...

But, Sindhu… She did not fall under that category! She was sisterfully different.

As Sindhu was adamant to know about the package, Tara recoiled at the sudden touch.

Then, Sindhu was concerned.

The packet slipped down Tara’s lap to reveal the contents – bottles of ‘Medicare’ and ‘Lycil’!

Sindhu was surprised! “In your hair …? … Did Dilton give you these with all the knowledge? Two packets of knowledge … for The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

58 one packet of lice ? Ha?” Tara kept her cool. She spoke calmly. “His name is Pradeep!

Stop calling him by that comic character of the ’Archie’s’. … I must have got these from my patient, Shanthi of the chronic ward … A bunt out case of schizophrenia … She is a compliant and gentle soul, always muttering something to herself.... Doesn’t make eye contact with anyone; but, during the monthly visits of the barber to shave her hair, she becomes extremely violent … Last week, when I was in the wards, barber came and I asked him not to shave.

I thought I could get her to wash her hair ....As I wanted to have her residential address so that I could communicate with her family; I frequented her at least four times last week. She was found abandoned in a temple fifteen years ago. She was very violent, then.

So the police brought her to the psychiatric hospital by a reception order from the magistrate. In her lucid moments she talks about a girl child. In all probability, her husband could have remarried but this child must be a grown up by now. If they could take Shanthi in, it would be of much help for Shanthi’s future. So, from her, in this process, I must have got these parasites on my head….. Please Sindhu, don’t tell mom…. Otherwise she could become irritated and blame my choice of profession…”

“Lousy girl .... o k! I will not speak about this…. Provided, you promise me that you will not tell mother about my visit to the Country club with George” Tara frowned! George? He was a Pink Floyd fan, claiming to be a Jazz musician just by strumming a few chords in the guitar.

Mother walked in, carrying a bag of flowers.

“How long does it take you girls to come to the doors? Did you eat? Did your father call?”

Taking the bag from Mother, peering in, Tara replied: “One question at a time… Ma! If you had to set the question paper of the common entrance test, then there would be six hundred questions instead of sixty. And, No I didn’t eat and I am not hungry” “You are with the mentally ill the whole day and that does this to you. Ask the massage therapist at Sparsh Parlour; she says, The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

59 you know, after massaging our bodies, all the heat gets into her.

And then she oils herself to bring the heat down. You …. Listening to the sob stories all through the day… at the end of the day, you are home crying…. as though something is wrong in your own life” There was a relief in the reductionist approach to life. Mother was a specialist in this right brain, totalitarian philosophy. She kept a therapeutic distance from the subject of interest. She had been an advocate of obstetrics and gynaecology, claiming how normal it was to assist deliveries, as though being a woman justified that interest. But Tara was more depressed in those wards. Starting from the Doctor to the nurse, ayah and the patient all are women. But, even now, women judged the sexual and reproductive choices of fellow women through the lens of a man! The way the ayahs make comments when the woman is made to push the baby - ‘Why do you make a fuss?’; ’Absolutely pampered and spoilt!’; ‘If you had enjoyed the act then you could spread your legs’!

Tara was completely repulsed by the attitude of women towards women. Perhaps other animals were kind enough to one another in pain and of course, they won’t use foul language to assault the one in pain already! Just because the zygote was carried by an organ called uterus in a woman’s body, the entire creative responsibility was bestowed on her! Albeit negatively. In all proud moments it was the ‘surname’ that mattered. First name was impolite and only ‘Sir’ would be considered. This baffled Tara. Did children inherit maladies quietly? At least they wanted to say that the world they were born to was imperfect.... A poetic license at least to say that....Sindhu was in agreement to concede that both male and female should take turns in having babies!

Mother was still angry with Tara choosing psychiatry reason being ‘those who reached asymptomatic phase of remission seldom acknowledged the disease let alone the doctor who treated’. For her everything culminated in popularity which is always shrouded in silence in this field of medicine. It could never be as impersonal as in the case of the treatment of a kidney or an artery here. Treatment is always personal and confidential in psychiatry. If practiced The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

60 perfectly no one would ever know.

“Tara, what happened last month? A mad guy slaps you and what does your professor say? A student should get as many slaps as possible in the wards and that experience would definitely help in getting a Master’s degree! What … if someone rapes you?”

“Ma, stop! No place on earth is safe if you look at it that way; not even grandpa’s place to where you used to send us during yearly holidays! At least here in the hospital we have security guards!”

Mother was as usual defensive about her father’s house being safer than any other place.

Tara did not explain.

1995 / July 5 / Wednesday/ Morning Tara was seated at the outpatient clinic of the psychiatric hospital. She glanced up at the bespectacled, short man, Pradeep and yes.... As Sindhu claimed, he did look a bit like Dilton Doyley, she thought......

He was reticent, smiled at her shyly and said, “I posted that letter of yours to Shanthi’s house at Kansur… mmmm.. A village in Malnad district, Sagar Taluk, right?”

“You improvised the address, I hope” Tara could depend on him.....

He looked a bit troubled to ask, “Are you Okay?”

Perplexed Tara asked back “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“That Dr.Prasad… I know he called you alone to discuss a case study ... that too after half past six in the evening! You know… his reputation is not that good … you have to be careful when having him around.”

Tara laughed in embarrassment and went on to explain that she did not meet Dr.Prasad in the evening citing her busy schedule as an excuse, promising him that she would discuss the case during the lunch break, next day. What would happen? He would go and spin stories of her being careless, uninterested in her duty, etc to The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

61 the professor. This had happened before with many others. In the end, only her reputation would carry a question tag not his or any other predecessor’s like him.

Jung was all wrong about entropy! No matter how many times she tried to change her mind about the unfair sex, it did continue to play the same game around... Either there were ‘Pradeeps’ who were so uncomfortable with their sexuality that she had to adopt the attitude of trance or possession disorder taken over by Mother Goddess! On the other hand there were over confident ‘Don Juans’ for whom conquest was mandatory! Not the intimacy!

To them taking a woman to the bed was akin to a victory medal of a battle among men. The intention was to show some diffident man -who lusts after the woman- his due place by conquering her.

So, for her, it was basically a disturbed relationship among men. Contemporary men treated her merely as a competition. They were irritated since the more powerful men from whom they had to curry favours gave her more attention. Finally all her intelligence could do was to make them mistrust her.

The alpha male seeks a prettier girl with less brains… …The smart woman wants handsome men without brains…. perfect matches made!

Like John Nash’s games theory ….. She was the blonde who could not get a single eligible man ….. So, she had to either make do with the left over and just accept that she was not eligible. In a world of mediocrity, below the norm and above the norm- both were not normal ….

Pradeep was surprised, “Why ….I mean, how did you manage that?”

Actually she had given him more credit than he deserved. He was the one who could only be affected by another man impinging on his possession; he would not bother even for a second if he had his own girlfriend, whatever may happen to Tara. Injustice was present only when it affected him. Otherwise he could even use it to his own advantage.

Tara kept an even voice to say, “I have my strategies to deal with unwanted attention” The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

62 “It may not work each and every time” Prasad entered and Tara was flustered.

She said “Good morning sir” …He did not want respect.

“Do not knight me; I am not exactly 100 years old” She kept quiet…. when he wanted to hit on a girl, age was not exactly attractive. Or else, he did not mind the power it conferred on him.

Professor Velliyappan went across to his room ….so, all became quiet. The hierarchy was rigid in this set up.

The first patient in the outpatient clinic came in with his case file. Tara entered his file number in the record and looked up to hear the patient introduce himself as Venkatesh Pillai from Kerala, a school teacher for twenty five years in Ernakulum.

She asked “Are you married?”. It was just to enter the socio demographic data in the records.

He was hesitant. “No madam, recently I wanted to ….”

She sensed a discomfort that was palpable, so trying not to sound very curious; she asked casually “Any specific reason?”

He replied nonchalantly “I love children “.

Somehow his answer was not casual; it belied an intensity that she tried to douse… ” Obviously you work with them “ “No madam, not like that. Not the way you think”.

Now, there was no use in circumventing the problem. She stopped writing and said, “Please elaborate“ He said that he liked touching them, holding them and loving them in an unabashed ‘Holier than thou’ attitude. Tara had to ensure that her face was devoid of any expression of horror which she felt inside.

He clarified that he was attracted to children younger than 5th standard students.

She wanted to know what exactly this “love” was…, “What did you do?”

“It is never about me, it is always what they want” The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

63 “How could you know what they want? I don’t understand” “I will explain doctor. I teach only primary school. When I get interested in a child, I look out for little signs which show that the child is also interested in me.”

Tara prodded, “like……? Give me specific examples” He cleared his throat and started seriously to explain. He was probably a good teacher.

“They recite that rhyme ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ looking at me in a special way; sometimes they ask me permission to go to toilet with a smile. It is not the same every time. Like this girl Rupa gave all the chocolates in the box on her birthday in my hands instead of distributing them to all the other children.”

“So you thought that she was interested in you.” Hopefully this was Socratic questioning meant to shed some insight.

He became angry, “she was interested” Tara realized that it was a mistake to upstage the sainthood act. “Sorry for interrupting. Please continue Sir” He took the bait. “Then I make friendship with the girl; ask her about her family, friends; places she has gone to; movies she has seen.”

Tara asked. “Is it only girls?”

He was trying to be honest or was so oblivious to the world?

“Both, madam. Boys are less interested in love, so I don’t love them so often. Once in a while… that is for a change.”

Tara braved it. “Continue please” “By talking like a friend, I make sure that they are fully pure and innocent. That is… they don’t have any idea about sex and such matters. Some mothers have only one child and they come to the school all the time. I don’t take such children. They don’t need much loving, you see. Then I ask them to write a letter to someone they love the most or write two lines about anything they love. That gives me a clue for the way to love them. You see. Like this girl….

She wrote to her puppy named Hobbs. I read Calvin and Hobbs for her sake and told her all of it. She really liked the stories. I called myself Calvin. You want to see her letter?”

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64 He opens the brief case and removes hundreds of letters with childish scrawls.

“I hope you don’t mind…. they have so many spelling mistakes … she is little, you know. I feel responsible as I am also their English teacher.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Last period of the day in the school is sports or Physical education. So I took her with me to the storage room of sports materials.

It is in the basement and quite dark. So I lit it up with candles and there I licked her all over with soft puppy bites and asked her to copy me. She really cried with pleasure. She was beautiful… so pure… no hair or blobs of flesh like grown up bitches.”

“Sorry to interrupt again. I just come back in a minute.”

She walked to a corner, wiped her face with a kerchief, drank some water and returned.

“So how many children have you loved till date?”

“About… two hundred doctor. I have one hundred and sixty letters here, some with drawings also” “What about your family? Parents, brother, sister… where are they? And you love the children and they love you. So, why did you come to this Hospital?”

“I have no father, my mother brought me up. She was a good mother but a very bad woman. She did dirty things for money; went with all kinds of men. She loved me the most in this world as I was the only pure person in her life. She told me I should always remain pure and not become like her or the men who visited her.

She died when I was twelve and I was put in an orphanage. One older boy loved me and took care of me; I have remained pure to this day.”

Tara persisted, “Why did you come to the hospital?”

“I met this Hindi teacher. Elena is her name. She came to our school an year ago. She was very white and pure, always praying and all. She is about thirty five years or so… not married. She talked to me on her own; told me that she was alone with her old mother. She said that I should get married as I need someone to look after me.

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65 She said that love within a marriage is also pure and divine. And I suspected that she wanted to marry me. But then, I saw little Reema who newly joined the 2’nd standard and she needed my love. She fell down in the play ground and came to the storage room on her own asking for a bandage. I was kissing her down there when Elena saw me. She said terrible things to me. She said that she will complain on me to the Principal and Reema’s mother too. I told her… I have never had actual sex with any child or adult. I have just rubbed my fellow on them; asked them to hold… that is all. She kept saying that I was sick, sick and sick and I need to see a psychiatrist. I did not want to go to a doctor in Kerala… there the news spreads fast; they may think that I am a mental and dismiss me, you know. I don’t know… whether I am a patient.”

Tara asked “Tell me sir… one last question… do you want to marry Elena?”

“I love children… I don’t think that what I do is sick and I am not hurting these children… only loving them. How can that be wrong? She called me horrible names … said that I would burn in hell … she said I was sick. She said … she will hand me over to the police. Please tell me whether I am sick and need treatment; I don’t want to marry that bitch. But I always want to be healthy or else I will lose my job. I don’t want to be scared; I want to be brave. My friend in the hostel showed me some papers where they said homosexuality was not wrong. Some men love men… if that is okay, why should I not love children?”

Tara sounded really upset. “Sir I think you do have a problem which needs to be treated urgently. Since you don’t belong to this city, it is better you get admitted for the treatment. Sir, since a child is not mature sexually or otherwise to give consent to you for a sexual involvement, it is a crime socially, morally and legally. So you need the treatment” She thought she needed guidance and went to the professor.

Professor and Prasad were seen seated in discussion. Tara knocked on the door and entered. Professor waved her to sit down looking at her expectantly.

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66

Tara was shaken, “Can I discuss my case, sir?”

Professor seemed to sense her discomfort.

“Anything unusual … What is the diagnosis?”

Tara blurted out in relief. “Disorder of sexual preference…. paraphilia...Paedophilia” Professor seemed casual. “You can discuss with Dr Prasad.

He is an authority on all sexual disorders”, he laughs and continues “except for erectile dysfunction” Prasad feigned embarrassment. “Sir, please, not in front of juniors.”

Tara said in a very cold voice. “He is a paedophile sir; he has abused two hundred children! so I advised admission” Professor asked, “Why admission?” …It was the routine “You know nothing. All decisions will be made by us. We are here to point out your inadequacy “ Tara said, “He is from Kerala… has no place here to stay for treatment. If he goes back without taking any sort of therapy…

May abuse more children “.

[India did not have a law for mandatory reporting or arrest of paedophiles then. Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act got passed in 2012, 17 years later] Professor made light of her protest. “You sound more like a public prosecutor than a doctor “ Tara decided to stick to her guns. “I strongly feel that he is more guilty than insane.”

Professor said seriously. “Have you heard of the Hippocrates oath, madam? Do you know what must be the attitude of a therapist towards the patient?”

Tara argued. “Sir, there is a potential for treatment, I am not disputing that. He was reared by a single parent… that is mother … who was a commercial sex worker. So there was no role model for a father. He has an erroneous set of sexual beliefs, cognitive therapy for that; aversive therapy for child related stimuli; covert conditioning is to be attempted. He may have some sexual dysfunctions that need to be The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

67 addressed. His hetero sexual skills must be assessed and improvised if need be. He needs assertiveness training. But first… he should stop abusing the children.”

Professor seemed annoyed. “So… are you going to the police by any chance? Do you know that what you have is privileged information?”

Tara was furiously indignant. “Sir, if a HIV positive patient tells me that he is going to have sex with his girlfriend, it is not privileged information. I can discreetly warn her. I should inform the school authorities.”

Professor lost his temper. “He will lose his job. Don’t you realize? No life is at stake here. He is after all admitted to the hospital and your patient is in front of you. So treat him. The society will take care of itself ”. She could not believe her ears. Tara replied. “After all, prison gives the best aversive therapy. Every crime has an explanation which does not justify its occurrence. He should be punished and if we can help the judiciary, why not?”

Professor interrogated her. “Has he raped a child?”

Tara said “No sir. But…………”

“Then Dr.Tara! You are wasting my time. This case is not legally admissible. (In a kinder but firm tone) May be… it would be good if you explore your own psyche to find out what is causing such an exaggerated reaction from you. You can talk to Dr. Meera..

You can be comfortable with her” Tara said, “Sir, I don’t think my reaction is really exaggerated… if you see those innocent letters, love letters, he calls them,” There was a lump in her throat… her voice breaking…

“Let us discuss this case tomorrow in the grand rounds.

Mean while Dr Prasad will help you.”

Tara said under her breath “I don’t need any help.”

She chose not to look at Dr. Prasad who would only feel legitimized in his emotional abuse. She was enraged. Here, in this hospital, psychiatrists prided on analyzing all lofty or noble human emotions as pathological and requiring help.

They were anti-Darwin in their theory of human evolution.

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68 The only true emotions for them were sex, anger and hunger.

Basically, to be selfish was normal. Anything else was abnormal.

Actually they had no problem with sex; their problem was lack of it! Any preference was acceptable not the abstinence!

Their justification of the primitive and suspicion towards any evolved emotion saddened Tara. This made her doubt her choice of psychiatry. Like Vasco-Da-Gama, maybe she was in the wrong place ….there were no answers for all these questions. Her so-called peers as usual were happy with depersonalization; they accepted being mere bundles of instincts. Some became more ruthless in their pursuit of pleasure. They wanted to affirm their ‘Normality’ by becoming conformist to a fault. It was a matter of few months.

A degree and a job before Pradeep would avidly embrace conformity and make a sexual choice…. Tara knew the most servile survived the best. Since they were never tested; all tests were to induce servility and to homogenize the unequal.

1995 / July 6 / Thursday/ Morning The next afternoon, after the grand rounds, outside the hospital premises, Pradeep and Tara were seen in discussion.

Pradeep felt that Tara should not have back answered at the professor, that too in the grand rounds, in front of everyone; that man could get difficult; she seemed to have too many convictions and stood up for all of them!

‘Yes….’, as an afterthought, Tara was plagued by self-doubt.

“He doesn’t want me to inform the school authorities. If you were treating a rare case of Rabies the first thing to do is to isolate the patient… is it not? ‘First do no harm’ is what the principle says… then, what about those little children waiting to be mauled by this man? How to prevent them from getting hurt? He says that I am over-reacting! Better still, he calls it ‘attention seeking behaviour’, as though I have not had enough of uncalled for attention in this place!”

“Do you really think that he came to the hospital to protect himself from the police… in case that Elena informs a parent and The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

69 subsequently, takes him to Jail?”

Tara was scared. “He can plead insanity. Then, you see, it is possible. I find it hard to believe that having lived in society for so long, does he not know that sexual overtures towards a child is morally wrong? Then why should he do it stealthily in the storage basement? Not choose a child whose parent is over involved with the child in the school? I find his explanations to be too contrived; made up! Recidivism is the rule in sexual crimes. I know he has convinced himself that sex with a grown up woman is impure or some such thing. I don’t doubt that his upbringing had a lot to do with it. But if you dig every crime as a psychiatrist, you will find a thousand contributing factors to classify it as abnormal behaviour!

So scrap the judiciary and treat them all in a mental hospital… simple!”

She was sarcastic; it was not possible to be humane with a grown adult and inhuman towards a child.

“To prove that he had actually abused a child is not that easy; parents in India would not come forward to a court.” Pradeep tried to be sensible.

“Children can’t be verbal about this, you know that. There may be bed wetting, tantrums, sudden scholastic backwardness, n number of illnesses… but not a single child can cogently verbalize it. The only witness is Elena and what if she turns hostile? Also, he can turn the tables and file defamation against the hospital management.”

Tara was worried. She spoke out. The man had another 13 years of service; 10 children per year and another 130 children could be abused. She was not able to sleep the previous night, recalling his exploits and those innocent love letters. He had such erroneous set of beliefs about women and sex; he had lived like this for the past twenty years; he will not change in ten days of therapy even if the great Dr Velliappan treated him! … And the teacher wanted to keep the job!

“Then, all the more reason to believe that he won’t lose it so easily.”

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70 If he had pretended to have no insight, evinced no guilt and just plead some kind of insanity, he may be tutored by a lawyer already.

Tara said, “I am sure if he was interrogated by the police he might have said something else. Listen! What if we contact Elena?”

Pradeep was irritated. “And… tell her what Tara? Take him to the police; get him dismissed? What makes you think she will oblige? Be practical” Tara felt really put down. Mentally challenged children remained that way; demented patients only got worse; schizophrenics treated for positive symptoms developed negative symptoms. Treat for anxiety, they came back with depression. Treat depression, they became manic.

Alcoholics forever relapsed.

What was she doing here?

And here she thought, at last she could make a difference and save at least some children. That too seemed impossible. Why was it that her mom was always right?

Pradeep was pragmatic. “Treat this as just a case. Why should you get in to the saviour robe? It is a job like any other at the end of the day. Your job is to treat the patient. That is it.”

Tara could not. “You remind me of my maid. When I point out to her a stain on a dress which she should have washed, she tells me … ‘I washed it, if it has not gone what I should do?’ She thinks her job is to wash not to clean the fabric. How can we say the same?

We treated the case but he did not get any better and what can we do?” Tara continued in a sarcastic tone. “Yes, he told me he likes having oral sex with second standard kids but I thought I treated the case… might be that he did not recover fully! So, he abused some more children…. let me try to treat him once again.”

Pradeep gave up exasperated. “Well, I can’t help you, Tara, no one can.”

Tara looked down.

Pradeep was concerned. “Please don’t cry! That won’t help in any way.”

Tara muttered… “Who cries… because it helps? You cry….

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71 when you can’t do anything else!”

Pradeep tried… “Shall I write some anonymous letters to the principal and tell him to verify with Elena. It may make them suspicious and our pal may get caught red-handed.”

Tara felt that doing something was better than crying.

“I would not have thought of this…..thanks. You are becoming my official ‘Pradeep Mail Service’” “I probably have a recessive gene carrying dissocial traits“ Tara knew that he was hinting at the letters he was posting to the unresponsive Shanthi’s family.

(Six years ago)

1989 / September 18 / Monday/ ….

It had stopped being an ordinary month……

She could no longer write her diary. Writing a diary was returning to one’s self after mixing with everyone and everything…. And when he is at home, how to return to ‘self ’? …Did acupressure cure pins and needles?

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72 She saw his eyes everywhere.

She heard him laugh in the kitchen. Mom spoke in her dialect animatedly, “what to cook?”

‘I am from Madras, I love sambar …. Auntie’s dosa with many holes… ‘ He played up to mom. Dad seemed happy to be left alone.

Her relatives …Had she not entertained his relatives?

She switched on the radio in her room...a low murmur of a grandiose voice… a radio jockey full of himself…. an attitude ….she had kept it at a low volume…

After building a house ……it was often about who are all on dad’s side and who are all on mom’s side…?

Dad’s side relatives, the suckers…..

Mom’s side relatives the waifs….

Mom mixed the colours in right proportions before she made a Rangoli to display before the Gods.

He behaved like a brother in the kitchen, while seated in the living room….?

She was getting ready to go to college. She thought of Abdul ….was she wrong?

May be going to his uncle’s house to say she was not interested …But she wanted privacy to make him understand… she did not want to hurt him… She had gone to his uncle’s house to tell him that she can’t accept his love letter. Her father had read the love letter ….

“If a low class Muslim boy, a Jataka Sahib ( a horse carriage driver ) can write a love letter to you, I can imagine how cheap your conduct must have been “ But the meeting had not gone the way she planned at all.

As she tried to find words…like… ‘I like you, but it is not love’ …. ‘I never once imagined myself as your girlfriend or anything….I cannot’ ‘….even if I tried….’

He had put his arms round her! He smelt of smoke ….and next … his mouth was on hers….he gave her a long wet kiss…. she was so surprised….

It felt very soft….tender….and private.

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73 How did he know to do this?

It did not feel cheap. It felt very intimate. Not violent. Not scary. Not at all intrusive!

She was confused. She liked the kiss. Liked the fact that he felt like doing this…..but she did not consider him to be intelligent or refined or cultured…..

She looked at him, he was ordinary. How did he do this?

He presumed that she liked him. But she liked the kiss …..How to be dishonest?

Kiss was not a simple matter. It did not need love to enjoy a kiss?

May be she was like that. Cheap ……?

After that day, their interactions were not simple.

He wanted affirmation of whatever took place, in a look or a word… she was weary … nothing had changed. It was just a feeling sticking on the lips….

She did not want to love him because of one kiss ….

He neither knew Jane Austen nor knew Keats, definitely no Sartre, he had never even thought about existential angst ... he did not think much; no confusion; no despair; no metaphysical doubts; no moral complications … He could not play the guitar nor dance … he was not an orator nor an actor… he was not even a mug pot who got good marks by rote memory … He was just a boy. He had no problem in being attracted to her or kissing her suddenly. He knew to do these things….he could do it …in a way that caused her no shame…..

She tried to brush it aside.

But either he did something to remind her….or she recapitulated it more often than Shelley.

And sometimes when she saw him laughing with his studious boyfriends….whose grades matched with hers …she was afraid ….would he talk about that kiss? May be they also would consider her cheap ….?

But he had not. No one else showed anything different.

He met her in practicals where they were partners in the The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

74 labs… he was less aggressive than before… tolerated her superior knowledge more easily… as though he had swallowed it.

“Will you take your cousin to the college library? He needs to study for the PG entrance… he will pick up some books”….mom asked.

She nodded.

He seemed to be a smug …

Five years ago she was merely twelve. They had not met after that … Not alone! She was wearing skirts those days… Just a petty coat inside … she felt more clothed and less exposed now.

Yet, he had a way of looking. They sat in one auto to go to her college. She was careful; to keep her legs straight and away from him; held on to the side bar so as to not shake and brush on the speed breakers…

“You grow more beautiful each time I see you”.

She did not reply.

“So… the rouge in your cheeks, kohl in your eyes… you did not dress up a little more today? Is it because of me?”

“This dress is a bit tight …”

She was polite, “I have no cosmetics except for kohl and this dress was bought last year and so, a bit tight. In fact, today I am sloppy, usually I look better.”

She did not defend the flush.

“So, how is college?”

She did not say anything.

They reached. He did not pay the auto driver. So, she did.

As usual Abdul saw her before she saw him and he walked up to her….He thought that the guy next to her was a stranger.

“Hi, you are late today ….my favourite colour” His smile gone in a flash as the stranger introduced himself, “I am her brother “ She corrected, “Cousin, mother’s sister’s son “ “Oh!” …Abdul tried to depict the distance of a casual acquaintance. But those two minutes of unconscious camaraderie was not missed. Her cousin spoke quickly.

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75 “I will go with your friend to the library …he will show me around. Easier done by him…don’t you think?”

She retreated… should she be relieved or tensed?

Now even college seemed unsafe. She had one place away from all the unpredictability of home but he had spoiled that!

Would be spoiling even the library … It was over. Nowhere to go.

Abdul missed the first two hours.

When he came to the lab, he seemed to look at her freshly as though he did not know her at all.

“Why did you not tell anything about him to me before?”

Is that a mild accusation? She had even told him about her dog.

“I did not see the need to talk about him; I have not met him in five years.”

“Yeah… he told me”, there was a smile in embarrassment on Abdul’s face…..or did she imagine it?

They were unusually quiet together.

He did use the pipette to put alkali in to the acid … they waited for the pink colour ….titrating drop by drop ….The taste was bitter…or sour…..At every drop he looked at her. She felt evaluated. It was sort of devaluated…. whatever happened in those two hours?

Abdul was not important to her.

He was pleasant …sometimes when she was dressed up, he would look at her like a man who had not seen any girl ever! ….there was undeniable tension ….she had managed to rouse something in him , it was stronger than anything around him….or in him….she was becoming dependent on the effect she had on him.

She felt alive, yet safe in his eyes….Now, it had gone. He seemed destroyed.

He kind of looked at her body parts impersonally, like they were a part of some scheme. She looked questioningly when the colour turned pink…. he wrote the reading in the The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

76 record book, flinching as her finger touched his.

She could not fathom the change in two hours…..

“Are you okay?” She hesitated near the door.

He said, “Yea…your cousin or brother or relative … left in a bus. He wanted to meet me tomorrow…”

She was speechless.

No, she could not talk about the relative here….

She did not want to talk about him at all….to anyone……

She never wanted him in her house. She did not want him in her college. She did not want him anywhere near her. Now, it seemed Abdul had to be told something….She was determined to be silent. Nothing had happened. There was nothing to tell.

He was not her brother.

She found an auto …..She did not want to go home….. yet, that was the only address she remembered.

He was in the living room chatting with her sister; she went up stairs to her room, locked the door.

Switched on the stereo “While my guitar gently weeps “ ….Time seemed to pass very slowly.

When she came out of the room, her father was watching news. She sat next to him while he patted her head….

She had to speak … would she know what words to use to explain what he did…

Her cheeks felt hot….even her ears…

It felt like it happened yesterday.

He spoke about some prime minister and his unintelligible choice of words ‘…he should read a dictionary first …..He should know the tenses…..simple tense, past tense, past perfect tense’ …her father went on….on.

She became more diffident….past imperfect tense...

She would have to refer the dictionary….

But she knew the anatomical terms for all parts of the body by now….the hidden, ugly, small or big… but actions....

What to say for that? … No, that was not a kiss….opening of the mouth ….forcThe Wagon Magazine - April 2016

77 ible opening of the mouth… she kept thinking hard. She would write them down….

He slept in the hall.

She closed her doors….but did not sleep …

During the day, it was not possible to see the hour hand move over the clock …time happened to pass…..In the night , it was possible to see it move…..when one stopped seeing, they could actually feel the moves…

She heard his movements on the bed in the hall….

She was convinced that it could not go on like this…

He would stay in her house till PG entrance exams and that was three months later… He may come to college every day …

No, she had to act ... she had to speak… she had nowhere else to go… the room ….yes, but she could not lock herself every evening.

The next day he was ready as she climbed down the stairs.

“So, you are coming with me every day?”

He smiled, “of course. I came to Bangalore to be with you.”

She stared.

His father was retiring soon and he had built a house in Bangalore… it really had nothing to do with her.

He sometimes said that he was her brother… even now after what he had done.

May be he did it to his own sister too.

All brothers did not do the things he did. She was sure of it. She could complain about his behaviour. But what if no one believed her?

It was very difficult to say those things in public.

Mom liked him, she knew that.

He put his arm around her, she started…”No” He laughed.

“Oh so you listen to Beatles… have boyfriends and won’t want me putting an arm around you?”

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78 She stiffened. “I have no boyfriend.”

He merely looked at her quizzically. “I see. You have acquired many new things…habits…”

She was afraid.

Whether he had spoken about the ‘cheap’ kiss to dad?

Abdul would not have revealed … or … would he?

His arm stayed on her shoulders, his fingers fiddled her bra strap.

“I have my secrets too….”

She shrugged off his hands. She stared back at him, “Do not touch me.”

The auto driver turned around. “Is everything okay madam?”

They had almost reached the college. She stopped the vehicle and began to walk, away from him. There were no labs that day. She did not see Abdul at all.

She listened to the lectures, not understanding anything.

That day seemed very short; she lived in some other time… in some other world… the whole day. Not sure of what to say or what to do…..frozen in time..

She wrote about the summer holidays of 8th standard... and a brief meeting in tenth standard.

Yes. She could condense the water drops, précis writing in English was like that and summary was a fantastic concept for details that were only felt, unsaid….

That evening, he returned late, while they were having dinner.

The next day, he did not come with her to college.

She saw Abdul waiting for her outside the classroom.

“Can you come with me? I want to pick up some forms from the university.”

She was not sure. He showed her the car.

It was a white Fiat car, silver tinted glasses. He had that distant air, like someone who had a lot to say to her.

May be she could ask him whether he had spoken about the kiss. So she climbed in to the car.

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79 His looks were directed at the rear view mirror…. who was he searching for?

She felt as though someone was already with them….

They drove a short distance and he slowed down, “your cousin will join us”.

She felt very surprised ……it felt like a set up.

She was utterly lonely as he entered the car.

They drove in silence; the car entered a by-lane, almost deserted.

He spoke, “If you knew I would be coming, you would have avoided it. So I asked him to tell you a lie”.

So they were friends already in two days.

She looked at Abdul; he did not meet her eyes.

The car was parked.

He spoke again, “you say… you have no boy friend. But this boy says, you guys have been necking for a while…..you told him, it was your first kiss…..I guess this lie is not that big a lie.”

Abdul gave her his destroyed look.

“He does not know that we have been in love, long before you met him. Every summer holidays, you had been in my arms…

I have touched you everywhere except may be … I have seen you without these fancy clothes… this guy thinks you belong to him” She had counted and knew the only two summer holidays he was with her. And he had torn a dress accidentally; he made it sound like she was a willing participant.

She could not get the words out of her mouth …..Stunned.

As though passivity was consent.

She had resisted, her lip was torn, her dress was torn…. apart from one forcible kiss and a glimpse of her chest …..There was nothing. That was not love.

So, has he read ‘Jude the Obscure’? I don’t think he has read even my Jackie Collins…..A real suave boy friend.

Now she spoke, “No, he is not my boy friend…you are the one I love…. “ The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

80 There was a silence.

He was surprised, yet laughing.

“I always knew that……”

“So, if you want me to choose between the two of you, I have chosen. Can we go”, she did not wish to stay in that car.

He was magnanimous, “I give few minutes to you both alone? The poor guy must know where he went wrong? He should know that” Abdul did not believe what he heard or what he saw.

But she was clear, “I have nothing to say…. I have nothing to say to him. Let’s go…”

She got down from the car.

If he allowed himself to be a pawn then he could not play the game.

He followed her, jumping in to the auto with her.

He was jubilant.

“Why do you do such a drama when we are alone…..?

I am dying to touch you” She felt numb. She crossed her legs.

He noticed… “So excited… ha?”

She could not guess what he meant….She was merely formulating a dialogue of a scene….There was a radio in this auto….obviously a live recording with a long recorded applause..

Endless hooting….her ears hurt.

They reached home. She went straight to her dad’s room.

She started without a preamble.

“This guy should not stay in our house.”

Father nodded, “Can you give me a good reason? “ She said in a steady voice, “He misbehaved with me when I was a child, kissed me in wrong places. I had a torn lip and some marks on my body, I did resist him…..I could not speak about it, as I thought I was wrong for letting it happen. I was ashamed … I did not think you would believe me … better late than never… you often say that to me. So I am telling you now… I kept thinking he may not do it again… I thought I The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

81 could avoid him or avoid being alone with him, I stopped going to mom’s parent’s house for holidays… I can’t bear it if he stays in this house. I don’t want to take him to college.”

Dad’s expression was unreadable.

Her sister entered the room from somewhere.

“She is not lying, she has written it in her diary. I have read it, I can show you” Diary never had any privacy …that is why it was created.

Sindhu sounded as angry as she did when her dress was borrowed without her permission from her wardrobe.

She walked away to her room…..

She heard voices, screams…

She did not see the end of whatever happened.

He would be gone… He could not say anything about Abdul … She had taken him by surprise.

She saw the half bitten apple on her table. Brown soggy teeth marks on the cream crust… it would be sour and dry… she should not have touched it… and wasted it.

He had replaced the text book he had borrowed from her.

She heard the gate click.

Mother was absent for a long time.

During dinner she looked irritated. But there was no mention of him; Just the way spoons cluttered and hot aroma emanated from vessels.

Father spoke about how wrong Karl Marx was about communism being a religion. He spoke about Kibbutz, it truly was a shame! He drew parallels between Mussolini and Marx.

Somehow the conversation diverted to Open University, open book examinations and she realized for the first time that it was not a day to be forgotten easily…...

Kisses were cheap and she had liked one cheap kiss…..…

That was her love letter.

And even though her father had torn it, she had joined the pieces and kept it.

He had said that her eyes were like lamps.

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82 1995 / JULY 8 / Saturday/ ….

Tara was seen sitting on one of the benches in the hospital.

It is about two weeks since the last event. Pradeep came to her with a newspaper in his hand.

Tara said with excitement.

“I wanted to talk to you since morning. Where were you? Do you know that Shanthi’s daughter was here to see her; it was such a moving scene. Her daughter is pregnant now and Shanthi was quiet and happy though I don’t think she recognized her daughter.

Her father did remarry but has no other issues and so he may help to move Shanthi to a half-way home and there… if her condition improves she may even go home … What is the matter with you?

Why are you not saying anything?”

Pradeep was listless and morose. “You are happy, why should I spoil that?”

Tara was concerned, “Don’t create suspense ...Tell me… what is troubling you?”

Pradeep spoke in his dejected voice. “This newspaper says that a certain Miss Elena suffered an acid attack yesterday and is battling for her life. They could not find the attacker but her mother blamed one Mr. Venkatesh Pillai who works in the same school as Elena, but preliminary investigations revealed that he was hospitalized for diarrhoea four days before and is still not discharged.”

Tara was aghast!

“My God, was she going to expose him after all? Did all this have to do with our anonymous letters?”

Pradeep interfered “It was my idea, remember?”

Tara was indignant. “But you did it to help me. He is not even expelled from school.”

Pradeep said quietly “He will be… shortly… I am sure.”

Tara said, “Yes… it is possible that she had already exposed him… so her mother knows about him. So, even if we did protect the children but at what cost?”

Pradeep was moved, it was unusual.

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83 He would never get marks for these feelings yet he had them.

“It is something like what you said earlier. Cure anxiety, it comes back as depression. Cure depression, it becomes mania.

We can’t stop this cycle of destruction fully. We may or may not have protected the children but another woman died trying to save them!”

Tara put her head down.

Choke, does that spell with a ‘C’ in between or not? Naïve, does that have a silent ‘K’ as in Knife? Conscience, does have an ‘S’ in it or only ‘C’? Humour Has a ‘U’ in it? Tear has ‘A’ in it, but cheer has only two ‘E’s. Schizophrenia does that have a silent ‘T’?

My mom likes Tea…..that too, Three roses……not Lipton, now, does Lipton spell as 2 ‘P’s? Dyslexia could be a projective test, not just Rorschach…… she hated analysis….Freudian Slip ….A dress inside a dress!

She could never get those ‘letters with spelling mistakes’ out of her head......

Dr.Vyjayanthi Subramanian is a Bengaluru based Poet and Writer.

Dr.Vyjayanthi is a psychiatrist by profession. Her poems are published

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

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84

BART WOLFFE

85

SPARK

BALLAD OF A THIN MAN There are some things you can’t tell your mother.

Like the time we turned three quid into a night Of drinking, the night before you flew to SA. The betting shop was kind to us. The pub Even kinder. It was the luck of the Irish That it was the pub’s last night before closing down For renovations. And that meant free beer.

I was squatting on a drug addict’s couch in Euston But to be fair to him, it was a roof over my head.

You didn’t have a place that last night in London So while my host was away, you stayed And we cooked a sausage curry. More precisely, You cooked it. You always had something to give Even when empty-handed.

And then last night, or was it the night before, You phoned to see if I was alright.

I called you back this evening and your sister

I never asked her name, didn’t try to get her number.

Do I regret it, I wonder?

All the same We smoked a cigarette together Outside the pub My lighter’s flame Lit hers and mine And something leapt between us A connecting spark untamed.

I felt I could have asked Her for a drink But didn’t think Our thirty year age difference Was something of significance Was just grateful to be touched By the warmth that meant so much Even for one shared moment

Told me the thin man had gone away To where blue skies float beneath the sun.

I walked home and let the rain do the crying.

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Particularly when I had forgotten All sense of sex and such…

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86 IN THE ASYLUM

87

FICTION

Ilya Fostiy

‌ a politically incorrect term for my head, I watch the queer and bent little folk Playing with the parings of fingernails Trying to hang them on the moon And soon realise that this obsession with minutiae May also be observed when a finger attempts to pluck A fly from behind the barred window pane.

Yet what I am saying is that a little madness helps To make small things go a lot further, Such as dead flies and clipped toenails And think such ridiculous associations That being touched might help one make.

BART WOLFFE: After many years in the advertising industry in Zimbabwe, working with both electronic media and print, Bart developed as an independent writer and theatre practitioner responsible for running workshops throughout the countries of southern Africa until he left in 2003. Organisations he has worked with include the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, the British Council, The Goethe Institute, Alliance Françoise and many more. Since leaving Zimbabwe in 2003, Bart spent two years in Germany before settling in England.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

CLONE 2015 The year was 2015.

Thirteen year old Ronald loved his grandpa a lot. Every Saturday his parents brought him to spend the whole weekend with his grandparents. Ronald liked listening to his grandpa telling stories, especially about ancient gods; those tales were really interesting!

Ronald would always sit on the next couch, pestering his grandpa to tell one more story about the likes of Anubis, Osiris, Re, Marduk, etc.

On one particular weekend, Saturday morning, Ronald was present at grandpas as usual and he was so excited that the whole The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

88 of next two days will be spent with ancient gods and of course, with grand dad.

But, on entering, Ronald instantly noticed that something was wrong! Gloomy! His grandfather was kind of sullen.

His pretentious smile revealed that all was not alright there. After drinking his cup of tea in silence with Ronald, he retired to his room.

‘Are you ok?’ – enquired Ronald in a hesitant voice peeping into the room. – ‘Are you sick?’

‘Oh! .... fine’, – answered grandfather, – ‘but, please leave me alone … at least till lunchtime... O K?’.

Ronald, closing the door, rushed in search of his grandmother whom he found in the kitchen.

‘Granny! Is grandpa ok? He is not the same! Has anything happened to him?.... mmmm. .. Did you quarrel?’

‘Look! I don’t know what to tell you… I think if he wants to, he will tell you, himself. But please don’t annoy him with your array of questions. Go... better watch TV or play at the computer’.

But, she looked a bit serious and seemed to be anxious of something. So, he slipped to the lounge and tried to channel browse at the box. At least for a while, he decided not to think more on this.

Time rolled on and he was called in to dine.

All were quiet and the silence hung above the dining table as a huge monster looking down at them. He didn’t feel like eating at all. There was no appetite.

He loved them a lot! What could have happened to disturb the peace between them? He was perturbed.

‘Finish it up …. I will tell you an interesting story’, uttered granddad, a silent moment later added, ‘I will be in my room waiting for you’ Ronald, struggling with his lasagna, somehow managed to finish and ran after granddad.

He was seen reclining in his couch with a face that betrayed anxiousness.

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89

story, son’

‘What is it today?....’ asked Ronald to clear the tensed air.

After a brief silent moment he said, ‘A very … very interesting

‘Gods?’

‘Yes! Gods! … But this time it is going to be a true story’ Ronald’s eyes brightened in joy.

‘When I was young, I had a chance to meet one of the gods.’

Continued granddad.

‘You don’t say so!,’ exclaimed Ronald, ‘you said that gods no longer come down to earth?’

‘No, they do come but quite often in disguise in our presence.

They even live in next door to us, humans. Some get used to human life and they don’t return to their world. I had a chance meeting with one of them.’

Ronald’s heart was thumping and might jump out of its case.

‘When I was…. Oh, doesn’t matter how old I was then. I was living with my mother’s cousin since my parents had died before I was three years old, in a different state in South America. Our neighbour was a family of farmers … father, mother, three kids… two boys and a girl. Father was toiling with his cattle and machines day and night… mother was in charge of the household. The children always helped one another… they even managed to go to a school which was away at five miles distance. … Didn’t even dream of a school bus back then ... The boys were typical dunce…. But Judy…. That was the daughter’s name…. she was pretty and doing pretty well in the school also.

‘JUDY! … Just like our grandma’s name…’, said Ronald in astonishment, curious to know what would come next.

‘Well…. Ronald, you see… girls like boys and vice versa… to cut a long story short… I liked Judy. But, I was very shy and didn’t know how to express my feelings to her.

We were just friends… played together… even kissed a couple of times. I wanted to be always with her… and so even helped her father in the farm. But her parents were very cautious towards me…

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90 See, I was an orphan. So to be together we slipped to the woods or to the river… otherwise we had to wait for my aunt to go to the market or her parents would take a new calf or pig to the fair……Ha… Ronald… by the way, is there any girl around who attracts you?’

‘Oh.. Grandpa.. Please don’t wander off…’ but he was blushing.

‘That shows that there is one in your kitty. Well! … back to the story… we moved together for so many years and dreamt even about getting married once we turn eighteen. But Judy was vary of her father and doubted that he would do something to thwart their affair and … she was correct that he did as expected. … Once her schooling was over their family moved to another state after selling off his farm. With that as capital, he started a small business… Judy entered college… then University… and eventually was employed in a good position… for ten long years, I had not seen Judy… almost forgot her… was dating another girl… whom I thought I would marry.

But when I had been to New York on business I spotted Judy at a restaurant… she was with her husband. …. You won’t imagine how I felt then…. That moment she was a Goddess and I could not take my eyes off her. She was a beautiful when she was a girl but what I saw was a beautiful woman… none had I ever seen like that…

Judy too saw me.

When her husband was away for a while … might be to the rest room… I approached her. I don’t remember what I said to her … but her I remember those very eyes even today… I lefy my business card with her and told her about the hotel I was staying there … so that she could call me anytime. Judy did call me that evening….

Well.. you are pretty young Ronald… otherwise I could tell you everything… O K … Before my return, for about a week we were together… Judy had been living with her husband for three years… and I was there with her for only a week before my departure…’

‘What this has to do with gods? You promised to tell me an interesting story … and… you are telling me about some Judy?’ unable to grasp that complicated narrative.

‘Be patient… this has a lot to do with gods… after returning I The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

91 was pretty much disturbed… I could not rest… could not stop thinking about Judy… I repented that I was not courageous enough to propose to her when I had a chance … or even I could overcome my inferiority complex to face either my aunt or her father… consequently, I lost what I wanted to have for the rest of my life. What could be done when Judy had a husband and two kids…. I was so depressed thinking of her… even now I feel that the whole thing happened yesterday. …

I hopped one bar after the other to get drunk and forget everything… One evening.. I had enough whisky in me and was leaving the bar.

Then, an average looking man approached me and enquired whether everything was o k… He was piercingly looking into my eyes as though he was reading something there… That my blood creeps… standing next to him I felt mixed emotions… on one hand, I was warm…other cold! Both were flowing out of him. … though he could see that I had had enough he offered to buy me a drink… of course I agreed and wobbled away looking for another bar. … He introduced himself as a historian.. specializing in ancient civilizations and cultures… for about three hours he was narrating on the gods of Egypt, Sumer, Greece and Rome… he claimed that all these were the same with different names… his presentation made me feel that he was actually present during those narrations. He also claimed that gods still walk the earth… some even living in the midst having taken a human form… I was full of whisky and didn’t care about what was he babbling on…

Probably he thought I was totally drunk… he proclaimed that he was one such god and even ready to grant me any wish …

Bullshit, I thought… he was laughing at a drunkard…

But he went on to repeat that he in a good mood and would be happy to grant anything I ask for…

Might be that I would have asked for millions or a virgin island in the pacific ocean… anything at all… but.. as my mind was full of Judy, I challenged him to make Judy live with me.’

Ronald’s eyes were bulged to the size of dinner plates. He The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

92 was sitting at the edge with his pen mouth.

‘So… you mean… Judy is our grandma?’

‘Not exactly…’ He walked to the cupboard to take out the whisky bottle and poured himself a glass. ‘have you ever paid attention to how our grandmother looks?’

‘What do you mean?’ Ronald was blinking in confusion.

‘She is over seventy but looks as though she is forty… at the most’ ‘But you say that I am young and I pay no attention but I have noticed that Mom also looks very young. Dad keeps telling her that she looks like a twenty five year old girl. And, she likes that… ‘ ‘So, I also assumed that she takes good care of herself… it is partly so. … Then, a week later, I had been to New York again on business. I had almost totally forgotten about that ‘historian’ -here granddad showed that ‘quotes’ sign as many Americans do‘But… even now I remember clearly… how the next day after that meeting with him…. Judy knocked on my doors as I was prepared to go to bed. She entered and revealed that she had made up her mind to return to me. She just smiled when I enquired about her husband and kids. But … I was the happiest man on earth at that point of time. …. The most interest part of the whole thing is that … during all these years of living with your grandma she never even once mentioned about her previous family.

I, on occasions, asked about her children …. how they were doing … whom they were living with … I even offered her the option of bringing them here. But she always avoided giving a straight answer. I am not even sure whether she would ever had a chance to see them at all. I calmed myself with the knowledge that they were with her husband or his parents … May be they’ve got a new step mother … I believed…. for Judy, it would have been pretty hard to go back home after what she had done to them. But she just smiled and kept saying that she wanted to be with me.

In the beginning days… I was scared that her husband The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

93 might come for her and there would be a brawl …. But nothing happened.

Two years later, you mom was born. I was so happy! Judy and I were so occupied with our family that nothing else drew our interest.’

Here, he looked at Ronald deeply and taking a long breath, he continued: ‘And here.... a week ago … now… when I was again in New York on business, I met Judy… the real Judy!’

Ronald’s astonished eyes became even larger.

‘I don’t quite understand’, said Ronald.

‘Aah … but now I do understand quite well. That damned “historian”, – grandfather showed ‘quotes’ again and took one more gulp, ‘was really a god or who the hell knows who or what. He granted my wish… but instead of real Judy, he gave me a clone or the hell knows what’.

‘A clone?’ – Ronald was baffled.

‘You watched many times on the TV…. how now copies of dogs, cats, rats are being made. You probably heard about that damned Sheep Dolly made by the Brits’.

Ronald nodded.

‘So, your grandmother Judy is such a clone … android or robot… or the hell knows what…

When I was again in New York a week ago, I stepped into the same restaurant where I met Judy. I quite often drop in there whenever I come to New York… I’ve even dined there several times with your grandmother.

So, when I was finishing my supper, an elderly woman of approximately my age came to me and asked if I could recognize her.

I tried to strain my memory but could not for the life of me; in all honesty say I did, though her face did look familiar. She said her name is Judy. There are lots of ladies called Judy, I thought … but in a second, the revelation hit me and I was about to faint.

In front of me was sitting Judy … ... the Judy whom I have known and loved since my childThe Wagon Magazine - April 2016

94 hood…

But she looked 70, not like your grandmother Judy who looks 40….

I thought I would have a heart attack.

That Judy asked me where I had disappeared to… why I didn’t call her back. She was waiting for my call. She thought that I got scared … as I used to many years ago.

After the initial few moments, what she was saying was so disturbing that I jumped up from the table and ran away like a scalded cat and sprinted away’.

Grandfather poured one more glass and took a big gulp.

‘I have lived my whole life with a clone … android … bio-robot or the hell knows what. My daughter off the clone … my grandson is also the issue of a clone?’.

‘Did you tell grandma Clone, sorry Judy, about that?’

‘The fact is that, yes, I did.

I was stumped; she walked around me and mildly asked how she could help me. I kept silent for a long time and then I burst out.

I just ranted and raved … getting things off my chest…And she keeps walking around me and understands nothing … She keeps saying that she loves me and always wanted to be with me.

Damned ‘historian’! If I had asked him for money or anything else I could have lived with the real Judy. I could have given her anything... everything…

Ronald, do you understand, I spent my whole life with a person who was always a stranger to me or to be exact… a ‘non-human’. I have no idea what that ‘historian’ did … but your granny is 75… and no way 40. I have realized just today that she did not get older. She was never sick in her whole life! She was always affectionate, well-mannered, she always forgave me for everything, never got upset and never was angry! …

And here it comes out that my whole life I spent with somebody’s carbon copy. Ronald, it should not be so!!! …

I genuinely felt that the girl Judy was taken off from her past and was given to me as a gift’.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

95 But Ronald did not hear. He left the room and ran to his grandma’s room.

Grandmother Judy was lying on the sofa.

‘Granny! Granny! Grandma Judy! Wake up! Please wake up!’

Grandmother’s left hand was hanging from the sofa.

Ronald was perplexed. In her hand she was holding a phial with some sort of pills, half of which was on the sofa and on the floor.

Grandfather came rushing into the room.

‘Call 911!’ – he shouted. –’Judy, Judy! Please wake up!’

The ambulance came in 7 minutes.

While taking away the body on the stretcher, one of the doctors whispered to another: ‘Why did she do that? Such a nice family… And she looked so young…’ ***** “Experiment #1504-78 failed, like all the previous ones,” – stated one of the gods. “ People are fools. They crave so much for happiness and you deliver it to the exact ounce as they desire it and see, they twist their nose.

In all the millenniums I have not met a human being who would be happy with a clone. You introduce them to an updated perfected model; equipping it with everything they want, create the most comfortable conditions about which one need not dare to dream and look back ... what happens? ...

The human beings aren’t grateful at all. They will never be since they are not thankful by nature...

And the clone cannot adequately acquire the much needed information. Too much love and other emotions we have downloaded into it. We should work on its software...

How many experiments are left with?”

“More than two millions” – answered another god.

The Wagon Magazine - April 2016

96 “But they are all doomed to fail. May be it would be better to introduce the technology of cloning to these fools...

Let the volunteers come.

I am ready to go to human scientists and provide them with the knowledge of cloning” ***** Nowadays Ronald comes to see his grandfather quite often in the mental hospital.

The doctors say that the old fellow has got cracked brains as he could not resign himself to the loss of his spouse.

Also he keeps talking about someone... a historian or an archeologist ... and wants to meet with him so that he could ask him to bring his wife back. *** Meanwhile in another part of the world, in another bar, a professor of history was in deep conversation with another young man explaining about the great gods of the ancient days who still live with humen beings. ***

2018

It’s the year 2018.

All the media channels are transmitting the news of the first successful experiment on cloning a human being.

Ilya Fostiy is the pseudonym of Alex Markovich who is a photographer from the Belgorod Region, Russia. He is a professional photographer who shares his photographs free to anyone under the sun.

Please visit his website: http://photo-art.me/2016/01/17/photo-art/

FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY The Wagon Magazine - April 2016