June 2016 by The Wagon Magazine

VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 3 - JUNE - 2016

Columns: SOTTO VOCE- Indira Parthasarathy Musings Of An Axolotl -C.S.Lakshmi P&P - Yonason Goldson ALP - Ted Kooser Flash Fiction: Jeff Coleman Theatre - Book Excerpts: Bart Wolffe Poetry: BZ Niditch Sadiqullah Khan Usha Akella Anushree Bose Bio-Fiction: Noel Natesan Fiction: Margaret Muthee Indran Non-Fiction: Santhosh.S Ainehi Edoro Book Review: Semeen Ali Author Interview: Kerry J Donovan / Mary Smith RIPPLES & reflections: M.G.Suresh

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The deeper a well is dug, the more the water that springs; the more one learns, the more the wisdom it brings - Thirukkural -396 The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

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The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

PRASAD'S POST The 39th edition of the Chennai Book Fair is on from first of June, 2016. The Book Sellers and Publishers Association of South India (BAPASI) are behind the event since 1976. Their introduction claims the event as ‘the second largest Book Fairs in India in terms of size and the first in terms of footfall’. We stand stranded, in fact, at a cross section where one side lit-fests are held all over the country with much fanfare and the other leads to dwindling habit of book reading with books sales sliding down and on the other we find new books shops opened. To my knowledge, paradoxically, there are a couple of new book shops opened their shutters within a decade in Chennai while second hand book shops faced the downward slide in business. Most are of the opinion that the on-line marketing giants are the cause of closure of book shops. Even Ruskin Bond shares this view in his article titled ‘Where have all the bookshops gone?’, in the TOI – Deep Focus, issue dated October 4- 2015. To quote Ruskin Bond, “ … I know that The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

5 many people buy books online because of the discounts they are offered.” But when I enquired my friend and a book seller, Mr. Vediyappan of Discovery Book Palace, he refuted by saying that the ‘across the counter’ sale of books is more than the online purchases. Book lovers like to walk in and browse through the well stocked counters and search for what they want. Sometimes they discover new good writing and buy, after reading a couple of pages, even forgetting the author they came in search of! They are real book lovers. In the same breath, I spoke to Karthik Pk of Sixthsense Publications. He is one of the next generation publishers. He assures that the market is good and growing but compared to the book publication in English, the market for the Tamil books is limited. And he also talked about future plans to take the habit of reading books among school children to start with. TWM stands with BAPASI in their endeavours. Was I satisfied with that? No! My curiosity took me further to know what is happening in the west. Alexandra Alter writes in the Newyork Times dated 23-9-2015 under the title ‘The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead’: “Five years ago, the book world was seized by collective panic over the uncertain future of print. As readers migrated to new digital devices, e-book sales soared, up 1,260 percent between 2008 and 2010, alarming booksellers that watched consumers use their stores to find titles they would later buy online. Print sales dwindled, bookstores struggled to stay open, and publishers and authors feared that cheaper e-books would cannibalize their business. Then in 2011, the industry’s fears were realized when Borders declared bankruptcy.” The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

6 “To discover a book in a well-staffed, lovingly maintained shop, then to sneak off and buy it online, is really just a genteel form of shoplifting” said author David Nicholls. Even Len Vlahos, a former executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, a non-profit research group that tracks the publishing industry declared “E-books were this rocket ship going straight up,” But the digital apocalypse never arrived, or at least not on schedule. While analysts once predicted that e-books would overtake print by 2015, digital sales have instead slowed sharply. “Now, there are signs that some “To discover a e-book adopters are returning to print, or book in a lovingly becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devicmaintained shop, es and paper. E-book sales fell by 10 percent then to sneak off in the first five months of this year, according and buy it online, is to the Association of American Publishers, really just a genteel which collects data from nearly 1,200 pubform of shoplifting” lishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago. E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television” – continues Alexandra Alter. The surprising resilience of print has provided a lift to many booksellers. Independent bookstores, which were battered by the recession and competition from Amazon, are showing strong signs of resurgence. The American Booksellers Association counted 1,712 member stores in 2,227 locations in 2015, up from 1,410 in 1,660 locations five years ago. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

7 “The fact that the digital side of the business has levelled off has worked to our advantage,” said Oren Teicher, chief executive of the American Booksellers Association. “It’s resulted in a far healthier independent bookstore market today than we have had in a long time. Penguin Random House has invested nearly $100 million in expanding and updating its warehouses and speeding up distribution of its books. It added 365,000 square feet last year to its warehouse in Crawfordsville, Ind., more than doubling the size of the warehouse. “People talked about the demise of physical books as if it was only a matter of time, but even 50 to 100 years from now, print will be a big chunk of our business,” said Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Penguin Random House, which has nearly 250 imprints globally. Print books account for more than 70 percent of the company’s sales in the United States. Is there any counter to this argument? There are. “The tug of war between pixels and print almost certainly isn’t over. Industry analysts and publishing executives say it is too soon to declare the death of the digital publishing revolution. An appealing new device might come along. Already, a growing number of people are reading e-books on their cell phones. Amazon recently unveiled a new tablet for $50, which could draw a new wave of customers to e-books (the first-generation Kindle cost $400). Some publishing executives say the world is changing too quickly to declare that the digital tide is waning. “Maybe it’s just a pause here,” said Carolyn Reidy, the president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “Will the next generation want to read books on their smartphones, and will we see another burst come?” Anyway, whatever said and done, books are back in business. Krishna Prasad The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

a. k. a

Chithan

RIPPLES & Reflections:

M.G.SURESH

There is no doubt, Poetry is dead! Dear Editor, When I read the ‘sotto voce’ of the veteran Tamil writer Indira Parthasarathy, I went down the memory lane and recapitulated that so many ‘deaths’ had taken place in our era. Not only poetry, ‘Man is dead’, ‘Truth is dead’, ‘Author is dead’! And I will not hesitate to say: ‘Literature is also dead’. What we create today is not literature; it is a duplicate literature. What we publish today is not publication. It is nothing but poubellication. (In French Poubelle means garbage can) French Post-modernist Roland Barthes divides a text into two; one is ‘writer-ly’. The other is ‘reader-ly’. A writer writes something in his text. That is ‘writer-ly’. Reader goes through the text. That is called ‘reader-ly’; readerly is quiet contrary to the idea ‘writer-ly’. What a writer wants to say in his text is defined as first order meaning. When a reader finds an altogether different meaning in his (reading) mind, it will be construed as second order meaning. In every text writer-ly is misunderstood by the reader-ly. It happens always that a first order meaning is challenged by a second order meaning. Language is basically ambiguous. For example, take the word ‘Pine’. It has got more than one meaning. One is ‘Pine tree’. The other is ‘longing for something or someone lost’. Even a simple prose passage contains ambiguous sentences. Poetry is constructed on the premises of metaphors, metonyms, images etc., and that is why Brecht suggested to ‘wash the language’ when we write poetry. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

9 Let us take a haiku/poem: “How mournfully the wind of autumn pines Upon the mountainside as day declines” In this poem we arrive at two meanings. One is that the wind, ‘pines’ as a noun, blows over the pine trees along the mountainside. In the other context, the wind, ‘pines’ as a verb, pines for, that is, the wind is longing for the lost love. This is exactly the problem. Different meanings in different contexts are in competition with each other. Prose can be written with lesser ambiguity than poetry. So, prose can be allowed if it is written in plain language without using metaphors and images which is called ‘zero degree writing’. Poetry should be written in a ‘zero degree writing’ to avoid its instant death. Structuralism cuts off the thread that binds the ‘word’ with its ‘meaning’. Poets fail to see this. When they write their poems in the writer-ly fashion, it is construed in a readerly fashion which is diagonally opposite to the intention of the poet. Then what is the use of writing something which cannot be communicated properly. It is unfortunate that each and every poem meets its death as instantaneously as it is penned. M G Suresh is a name to reckon with in the in the field of

Neo-Tamil Literary Writings. Primarily a novelist, he experiments with various styles of post-modern writing. He has also penned short-stories, critical essays on social, literary issues and reviews.

In PRASAD’S POST-May issue, I referred to the articles from TOI dated 8-1-2011. In that, there is also an article written by Pronoti Datta in which she writes, to quote: “Indian poetry in English might be dead or in the

intensive care unit in other parts of the country, but in Mumbai it’s as healthy as a pack of vegans. That’s because a number of groups, some old and some recent, offer poets regular opportunities to meet and share their work.” TWM wishes to reach out to them. Full article can be read at:

http://www.timescrest.com/coverstory/circles-of-hope-4465 -Editor The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

SOTTO VOCE INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

Systems and slaves Years ago, when I was in Delhi, a clerk in the Central Government Secretariat committed suicide, leaving a note that he was tired of being a machine. One can sympathize with him, as in a mass-society, the success of the society in terms of material gains depends upon man being increasingly mechanized. The problem of man’s mechanical reaction to the outside world has become one of the bogey-men of this century. Slawomir Mrozek, one of the most eminent Polish playwrights, has dealt with this subject in the most interesting manner. He makes the bogey-man an institution, in his play ‘On a journey’. A traveler finds the post-office employees standing erect at certain intervals along a country road, forming a ‘wireless’ telegraph line by shouting telegraphic messages to each other. The puzzled traveler asks his coachman in regard to the efficacy of this system. He replies: ‘Sir, this is better than the telegraph with poles and wires. After all, there is a possibility of live men being more intelligent and there is no storm damage to repair and a great saving of The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

11 timber and timber is in short supplys, you know.’ Before he could recover from the shocking reply, the traveler finds ‘the transmitter work’. Heard from a distance, it resembles the cry of birds on a moor, but when the nearest telegraph man receives the cry with his hands cupped to his ear, he passes it with a resonant voice, ‘ Fa…ther…dea ….d …fune ral…Wed…nes… day’. Even the message of death takes a sterile, meaninglessness in the mouths of the ‘transmitting poles’ and the coachman’s ‘May his soul rest in peace’ sounds grotesquely irrelevant. There is another play called ‘A fact’, in which, a young wife confesses to the priest that she has just discovered , purely by accident at the breakfast table that her husband is artificial, made of plasticine. The husband, a pillar of bureaucracy, Man creates systems noticing his wife’s sudden dismay asks but ultimately he her about it. She does not tell him about becomes the victim, her discovery because of an apprehentheir slave. sion that he, himself may not know about it and also, if he does but remains oblivious to the situation, in which case how it would affect her. So she decides to reconcile herself to living with a lie for the rest of her life at the side of an artificial man and who is also the artificial father of her children! At one level, these plays look like fanciful dreams that have little bearing on realty. But, at another level, the situations described are the outcome of logical reasoning. What makes the situations unreal is merely the fact that Mrozek has not stopped with his reasoning pocess at a point at which the sense of reality, or commonsense, would suggest a stop. Rather, he goes on reasoning, supporting his argument with incontestable evidence, that live men are more intelligent than the poles, they can crouch and protect themselves during a storm, while the pole just remains standing until it breaks, the artificiality of a man’s reactions can strike his mate with the suddenness of a revelation. The way of logically pursuing a line of thought at the expense The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

12 of a real situation, a delightful tendency in the reasoning of children is Mrozek’s strongest device. What he reveals in precisely this way in the two plays is how the bureaucratic and social apparatus of a nation integrates people into its process on the higher (the plasticine men) as well as at the lower level (telegraph transmitters). The apparatus created by man has changed its nature and it has become the master to give orders. Man creates systems but ultimately he becomes the victim, their slave. Mrozek wrote his plays during the communist rule after the second world war and most of the time he lived in France in exile. During the Martial Law, when, for the first time in history, the proletariat rose against the oppressive Soviet domination over Poland, Mrozek’s plays were clandestinely staged in the churches, which used to draw a large number of people, mostly, the teachers and students of Warsaw University and other educational institutes.

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name

of R. Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright. He has published 16 novels,10 plays, anthologies of short stories, and essays.He is best known for his plays, “Aurangzeb”, “Nandan Kathai” and “Ramanujar”. He has been awarded the Saraswati Samman (1999), and is the only Tamil writer to receive both the Sahitya Akademi Award (1999) and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2004).He received Padma Shri in the year 2010, given by Government of India. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

13 MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C.S.LAKSHMI

Learning to Have Ubuntu I took part in a seminar on how an artist must deal with the reality of today and if the artist’s responsibility lies in making it a part of the artist’s expression. It was not the old art for art’s sake versus art as a mirror of reality debate that was being revived in this seminar although it had shades of it. It was more a question of how an artist which includes writers, painters, musicians, dancers, sculptors, theatre artists and film-makers must respond to the reality of today and express and act in ways that the reality becomes a part of their life. I am writing this at a time when the artist community of writers, painters, musicians and film-makers have occupied, en masse, government buildings in seventeen states of Brazil as a protest against the dissolution by the interim government, of the department of culture merging it with the department of education and the dissolution of the exclusive department dealing with women and merging it with the department of justice. A government that does not believe in culture must go is their argument and they are shouting, singing and speaking about it as clearly and loudly as they can. But the seminar was not about such excruciating circumstances but more about the artist’s life, expression and the reality around the artist. The question that kept coming up during the seminar was, whose reality is it, anyway? What we think of as “today” is a set of varied experiences. All of us don’t experience it the same way. Nor do we express it the same way. Russel Hoban, whose writings are of many different genres The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

including science fiction and magical realism, once said: How many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language? So the truth of one’s experience of today need not be the same for someone else. Today may be being force fed through the nose and another day of hunger strike against the army presence for a woman in the North East; it may also be a day to think of a Lance Naik in the army who survived the glaciers only to die later; it may be a day when a farmer decides to commit suicide; it may be a day when a girl is brutally raped; it may be a day when violence is inflicted on young lovers belonging to different castes; it may also be a day when a Dalit girl, daughter of a poor farmer, makes it to the medical college; it may be a day when a cow goes dry of milk in a farmer’s household; it may also be a day when beef is removed from your menu. So today means a million different things including simple things like listening to the call of an Indian cuckoo first thing in the morning, a painting in a gallery that comes alive for you, a body movement made easy in dance, lines of a book that get imprinted on your mind or miraculously finding sur that has evaded you for a while. Which is the “true today” then? The one person I always think of at moments when truths have to be dealt with is my friend A K Ramanujan. We were talking about two different versions of a folk tale. I had one version that I had heard in my childhood and he had another which he had collected during the course of his folk story collection. Which is the right or true one, I asked him. “Both are,” he said, in his own inimitable way, “we are not looking for truth but human experiences.” We are living in times when human experiences are so much entangled with fantasies and myths and imagination permeates the real. Often I think of how children deal with this aspect. My friend Deepa Lakshmi, whose children ask some very difficult questions about life, mentioned this conversation with her two little daughters once: “Amma, is Santa Claus real?” “No, it is only a story.” “What about Doraemon?” The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

15 “That is also part of a cartoon story.” “What about Tom and Jerry and Chota Bhim?” “Those are also stories.” While this conversation was going on with the elder daughter about five years old, the three- year-old daughter’s voice piped in and asked: “What about us? Are we stories too?” Under the circumstances when the real and the imaginary are inextricably bound up what does an artist do? Is it the work of an artist to give people what the artist thinks they need? Many opinions have been voiced with regard to this. John Ruskin and later communist advocates of socialist realism felt that the value of art lay in serving some moral or didactic purpose. Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, put forth an argument in 1891, in his “The Soul of a Man Under Socialism” essay. “A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered an artist.” African writers have seen art as being functional. Chinua Achebe once said that art for art’s sake “is just another piece of deodorized dog shit.” Is it the artist’s job then to continue to capture reality in expression? There is a story on reality attributed to master film-maker Michelangelo Antonioni. Two film-makers lived together. One was lazy and the other was energetic. The energetic one got up in the morning and took his camera and shot for a while and came back. The lazy one took his camera and went out and came back almost immediately. “What happened?’ asked the other film-maker. “All the reality has already been captured,” replied the lazy one. So the question is, is expression about “capturing” one particular reality that is obvious and unvaried? Given the fact that the cultural content is as varied as the millions of people functioning as individuals and members of various communities in a culture, a playwright, a writer or a visual artist is constantly trying to retain umbilical connections with culture and at the same time breaking free of it—breaking free of definitions of caste, gender and religion, wiping away borders and The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

16 notions of belonging. It is this constant breaking free act of a writer or an artist that draws other people in or drives them away. The act of continuing to write, to perform, to paint, to sculpt, is itself an attempt to be part of the “today”. It may mean a bullet when you open the door one morning or a phone call that tells you that your writing hand will be cut off. How a writer or other creative artists decides to function cannot be dictated or imposed. A painter may paint sunsets all her life or a dancer may spend an entire life trying to explore the nature of the body or a singer may sing only songs of spring—but in their own way they would have expressed “today’s reality”. Tamil writer Sundara Ramasamy, once wrote that you can see a palm tree reflected in a dew drop, even if the palm tree looks small in the reflection. In many ways, one could say, what is today is part of us and part of what we create. What we as creative people need is what Desmond Tutu, the South African social rights activist, called ubuntu. Ubuntu is to say, according to him, “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.” According to Tutu, we belong in a bundle of life; we say, “a person is a person through other persons.” A person with ubuntu he explained, “is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.” And that is what the Brazilian artists occupying government buildings are: people with ubuntu.

C S Lakshmi is a researcher and a writer who

writes in the pen name - Ambai. She is one of the founder trustees of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women) and currently its director. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

17 FLASH FICTION

JEFF COLEMAN

Jeremy Jeremy glanced down at his hands, hidden beneath the table on his lap. A moment later he closed his eyes. It was happening again. Tiny beads of sweat popped out of his cheeks and forehead. He could feel the pressure mounding. He wouldn’t be able to hold it in much longer. “Please,” he whispered. “Not again.” He looked around the crowded downtown plaza and panicked. He saw a familiar-looking man bite into a sandwich, and his mind did a jump shot to his old best friend Patrick, who’d disappeared when he was only ten. He turned and spotted a pair of brightly dressed women chatting around a table, and was instantly transported back to high school, to the girls he’d always wanted to talk to but had never had the courage to approach. They too had disappeared. “Why is this happening?” Jeremy asked, grasping the table with trembling knuckle-white hands. He could feel the power welling up inside, knew that it would burst from him like a firework no matter what he did. He looked down at his hands again. They’d begun to glow a faint swampy green. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

18 “Not again,” he moaned. “Please, not again.” He clamped down harder on the table. His grip was so tight he thought it might snap in two. Then he convulsed. His head whipped back, his stomach clenched and he was certain everything he’d eaten for a year would come back up again. He gasped and shuddered. Shrieked. Brightness filled his vision. A moment later all was dark. * * * The first light to reach Jeremy’s eyes was cracked and broken. He lifted his head mechanically and sat up straight once more. When his mind came back online he whirled. He searched his surroundings, already knowing what he would find but hoping this time would be different. Jeremy was alone. The tables were empty. There was no sign anyone had ever been there. Silence hovered over the plaza like a thick fog. Tears began to fall from Jeremy’s eyes. He raked a hand through lanky hair, gazed up at the sky and shouted. “Why?” It was the same thing that happened to Patrick and the girls from high school. They were there. Then his hands started to glow. There was light, then dark, and when he came to they were gone. The glow was gone now, just as it had gone before. Now, all he could do was wonder how long it would be before it happened again.

Jeff Coleman is Modern Literary Fantasy Author who finds himself drawn to the dark and the mysterious, and to all the extraordinary things that regularly hide in the shadow of ordinary life. He writes modern literary fantasy for children and adults. He is from California.He blogs @ http:// blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com./ The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

POEMS

BZ Niditch

TELL ME Tell me on this earth day I will get out of my environment to celebrate with Renoir in natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shifting winds my own art of language that my memoir of spending days with him at the museum and dreaming of his shaped colors need my innocence to be in a metamorphosis dream reconciled but to get me away soon from my wintry exile into the butterflies sunshine sitting by the window watching the snow flakes hearing a blue bird whistle at the slate roof shadow knowing spring will dawn soon in neon light red in sands of earth day by the thistle branches. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

THURSDAY MORNING While light has fractured the pantry window we listen to Bachâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Coffee Cantata after a parlor game of morning scrabble, an informed delivery brings me postcard news from an ingenuous hour filled with dark shades when with a single heart of regrets will remember King Arthur and Guinevere at the Round Table with many men courting her as she deserved the royal seal for her gift of abstract painting revealed in all those shifting exonerating me for acting out for her in my own paranoia all the characters in my plays, swimming out by the lighthouses harbors and towers of Babel now I hear she has gone as the last swan.

The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

GEORGE SEFERIS’S TIME The island of the Aegean and a singer and poet chants of exiles of banishment your hands have a brotherly shape in a personal charge of amnesty denied toward poets with skeptical pens writing on the beach scratching the paper of the seaweed hand a prompter of notes by a warm night’s gamble of words in the lamplight shading your fingers printed on mirrors of sultry mirages in grey fog descriptions of the last tourist ship onto the harbor’s cul-de-sac heading to the downpour at the ports of holding you up of your last breathless possible moment.

The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

ANDRE BRETON’S MIRROR When the visiting French critic said to me ‘Do you know Breton’s verse”? and only eighteen despite my youth she brought me to Breton’s mirror of books after class seated me by the table and had me type in French about myself telling her my cousin fought in the Resistance and have a stamp with his picture on it, both Pierre and Andre became an assembly of fresh stars in my life when we shared our poetry years later in the twilight of the Louvre.

W. H. AUDEN’S LIGHT The light in April may be out by the flickering flame on the street where we heard of your passing with the odor of incense The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

23 at the last peal of bells yet we by our lamp stands waiting to remember you again at over coming misunderstanding and betrayal in a confessional search of our own ageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s delusion walking by the rails of second thoughts with a poetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s words in a free spirited conclusion lighting a candle for you in my near sleeping eyes thinking of the threshold power of a traced reunion when future and the past shine in on glow as blue bird carols under the pine branches near the ice pond in a revelation that spring is near where children skate wanting a summer orange raw almonds and poppy seed a musician plays riffs to the woodwinds with his confident notes of smooth jazz fingertip tunes, while my hands open from the bird feeder nearby on quiet country roads The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

24 with scenes of my youth everywhere by the pale suspense of a falling silence that only a poet knows from a ghost town who haunts to scale the white hills in the noonday air scattering the shadows as snow kisses the myrtle by river beds of a once rose trellis, the sunshine simmers down our backs we hold up a village sled as several boys play ball since tiny snow flakes from the exhaling sky make their eyelids wince, shuffles by near the river beds hoping greensward foliage will come forth on the pine covered branches. B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, and fiction writer.

His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Hungary); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. His newest poetry collection, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everything, Everywhere,â&#x20AC;? will be available from Penhead Press in September. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

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 -Act IV

The Plot Scene: At lyceum in the museum Aristotle: Sappho:

The implied function of Tragedy Nothing but a statement arousing Fear and Pity. It purges the audience Pleasurable. We call it Catharsis. An emotional release. Thy master sage, such a distaste A suppression of human, an emotion

The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

26 That surge, an effect for a cause Imitate the cruel life, a happy nature Be art ignoble to arouse love Fear and pity: What as humans we can Otherwise express. A moralâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s high esteem Such a deception of the self he espoused Such a lie unto himself, a harm more ignoble. Aristotle: Of the constituents six, Three are concerned with objects Of imitation.They by number are Plot or piece of life (human actions And experience); the characters of the agents Or (dramatis personae); the Thoughts Expressed by the agents. Two elements are the medium of imitation Namely Diction and Melody. The sixth and the last is Spectacle; By which a story is presented On the stage and before the audience. Sappho: What is the essence amongst the six. Aristotle: Plot The life and the soul Characters drawn with great psychological skill There may be great poetic and rhetoric brilliance But that does not constitute a Tragedy Tragedy in its essence is a story There cannot be a picture without a shape or design. Sappho: What is Peripety and Discovery? The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

27 Aristotle: The most powerful elements of emotional interest The Peripeties and Discoveries. Sappho: What does it mean master Though we do, we see and imitate An acute brilliance, like a star shining O sage, go on, like a muse Like a story do tell All that is done, all that is beautiful. Aristotle: Peripety is reversal of intention Brought about by a blindness to the truth. So that the purpose with which certain set of circumstances Is defeated. The realization of truth is Anagnorisis or Discovery. The Plot is essential design to a play In which the choice of alternatives is not easy to choose Or is not obvious. Sappho: Which comes first, Plot or Character? Aristotle: The first essential, life and soul of a Tragedy Is Plot. The Characters come second. Compare the Parallel in painting The most beautiful colors laid without order Will not give the same pleasure The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

28 Than a simple black and white sketch of a portrait. The Thought comes third. The power of saying whatever can be said Or what is appropriate to the occasion; This is what in the speeches in Tragedy Comes under Politics and Rhetoric. One must not confuse Thought and Character Character in a play is that which reveals the moral purpose Of the agents. The sort of things they see or avoid. Speeches which do not make it obvious Are not expressive of Character. Hence there is no room for Character In a speech on a purely indifferent subject. Thought, therefore is some universal proposition Proving or disproving some particular point. The fourth is Diction: the expression of Thought in words. Of the remaining two Melody, a source of greatest pleasure Of all the elements. The Spectacle though an attraction Is of least importance, and has least to do with the art of poetry. The tragic effect is quite possible without a public performance And actors, and besides, presentation up of the Spectacle Is more a matter of dressmaker and stage designer than the poet. End of Act IV

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 lives in Islamabad. The Voices, Chaos of Being, The Songs 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 reached at https://www. facebook.com/sadiqullah.khan.92

The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Bio-Fiction

Dr. S Noel Natesan

The magic spell It was ten p.m. in the evening. In Melbourne, cold weather and rain are like Siamese twins and knock rhythmically at the window sill of the consultation room of the hospital. A few clients were there with their pets but nothing major as such. Finally, I was examining a dog that had swallowed a piece of a bone. The owners were middle aged couple and this particular dog, a Pomeranian, was very special to them. After I removed the bone that was stuck in the dogâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mouth, I inquired about the type of bone they had fed their dog. They both looked at each other. I believed the bone to be that of a jaw bone of an animal like a cat or dog because of the carnivorous molar teeth. Surely this did not come from their dinner plate? I controlled my anger and before sending them away, told them not to give any cooked bone to the dog in future. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

30 When I thought of sharing this interesting incident to my nurse, a tensed Stephen, my nurse told me that an urgent message had come from the police. “What was it?” I asked. Stephen explained that a dreadful car accident had occurred very close to the Westgate Bridge which connects to Melbourne city over the Yarra River to the west. A car with three young children and their parents had crashed on the roadside. As a result, two babies and their father had been killed on the spot. Although the police and ambulance officers had arrived on site, no one was able to gain access to the car. “The family’s dog was also in the car and was showing aggression by attempting to bite the officers and paramedics making it difficult for them to approach the vehicle and attend the injured” he said. “Is it not possible to open fire at the dog” I asked. “The dog is protecting the mother and children and is placed loyally in between them. The police officers have contacted us for assistance as they feel it to be too dangerous to open fire with members of the family in the car.” Although we were in the horns of a dilemma whether to close the hospital, we gave priority to the human lives and prepared to go to the scene of accident. Stephen came to the car equipped with devices needed to catch the dog, a noose and anaesthesia. It was raining heavily that night as we drove at a fast past in the dim light. Stephen must be thinking that he was playing the hero in a film ‘Action Packed’. One side of the freeway appeared to be closed about two miles from the site of the accident. We moved through the congested traffic to approach the scene and identified ourselves to the police to gain entry to the opposite side. As the direction we were driving along the narrow kerb was opposite to the usual flow of traffic, we drove with hesitation. Stephen joked that it was the first time police allowed someone to drive on the opposite side of the road. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

31 Finally, when we reached the site, a ghastly accident was clearly visible in bright light. The front of the car had been crushed inwards like a deflated rubber ball. In the car was a family that had shed a lot of blood. In their midst was a white coloured cross breed dog, slightly smaller than American bulldog, barking while staying close to the family and frightening those around the scene. I made my way to the site with a prepared syringe full of anaesthesia while Stephen carried the noose around a rod. We were given free access to the victims’ car. The rod with the noose was flung inside the car and Stephen managed to restrain the dog by carefully placing the noose around the neck. In the beginning the dog resisted the attempt by us to catch it, but for some unknown reason accepted what we were trying to do, and jumped out of the car window and began licking Stephens’s legs. The anaesthesia I prepared was not needed at all. Those paramedics around the scene looked at us as though we had descended from heaven but then, turned immediately to give medical assistance to those who were alive. We escorted the dog to our car. “A job well done” I told Stephen. While sitting in the front seat of the car, fondling the head of the dog, Stephen complained, “Bloody... TV crew did not come”.

Dr. Noel Natesan is from Melbourne, Australia. He is a retired Veterinary doctor. He was the Editor of Uthayam, a news journal from Australia. He has written novels, short stories and bio-fictions. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Dear Ms. Paper#

CRITIQUE

Ainehi Edoro #Dear Ms. Paper is a fictional agony-aunt series that parodies readers, critics and writers in the African literary scene originally published in http://brittlepaper.com

Did Achebe invent African literature? Dear Ms. Paper, I got into a bad argument in class today. I’m so angry it’s a bit hard to type this right now. My literature professor said Achebe invented African literature. I didn’t think I heard right, so I raised my hand up and asked, ‘Excuse me sir, which Achebe do you have in mind? Is it the Achebe who was not even in his mother’s womb when Islamic poets were writing epics in Swahili or are you referring to the Achebe whose debut novel came out after Cameroon’s Mongo Beti had already written three novels?’ Everyone sided with the professor and accused me of tainting the legacy of a great man. I’m trying really hard to understand The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

33 the logic behind claims that Achebe invented or is the father of African literature. The more I think of it the more absurd it seems. Hundred of years of writing had already been recorded on the continent before Achebe rolled up in 1958 with Things Fall Apart. Am I missing something here? Achebe wrote mainly fiction—a specific type of fiction, for that matter. How can a man who wrote novels be credited for inventing the literature of an entire continent? Dear Angry Historian, Take a deep breath. It’s okay. No need to lose your head over the silly, old question of Achebe’s literary fatherhood. You also didn’t have to go off on your professor. It’s not his fault that people think Achebe is the inventor of African literature. Blame Simon Gikandi, not your professor! In the late 1991, Gikandi, a Kenyan literary scholar who now teaches at Princeton University, wrote this book on Achebe, in which he said that Achebe invented African literature. If it makes you feel better, your irritation places you in very good company. In the weeks following Achebe’s death, here is what Soyinka has to say about the claim that Achebe is the “father of African literature:” ‘Chinua himself repudiated such a tag—he did study literature after all, bagged a degree in the subject…Those who seriously believe or promote this must be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone, lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe literary scholars and consumers think of those who persist in such a historic absurdity?’ As convincing as this sounds, I would advise you to hold off on joining Soyinka in writing off the idea of Achebe as the “father” or inventor of African literature until you consider all the facts. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

34 The first mistake that Soyinka makes and that you are making is taking the idea of ‘the father’ or ‘the inventor’ way too literally. Achebe is the father of African literature only in a metaphorical sense. No one is saying that Achebe was physBefore Achebe, ically present when African litif you were black and erature came into being—like you were African, the he was some kind of god who world most likely did stood before the expanse of not see your work as Africa’s literary nothingness literary. They would and said “let there be African evaluate your work as literature, and then there was African literature.” folklore, myth, or things Because you’re fixated that should interest an on this literal interpretation anthropologist, but not of Achebe’s role as father, you literature. miss a very key distinction. Gikandi says that Achebe invented African literature. He did not say Achebe invented African writing. There is a huge difference between the two. There have been hundreds and hundreds of years of African writing circulating in the world before Achebe came on the scene. To claim otherwise would be pure stupidity. What people like Gikandi are simply saying is that it was not until Achebe and his generation came along that we could think of this vast body of African writing as literary works. Before Achebe, if you were black and you were African, the world most likely did not see your work as literary. They would evaluate your work as folklore, myth, or things that should interest an anthropologist, but not literature. This affected the way African writing was circulated globally. Instead of African fiction to be reviewed by the New York Times or shelved alongside Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf, it was published by religious presses and reviewed in anthropological journals. Things began to change in a big way after the global success of Things Fall Apart. It took a novel like Things Fall Apart for the global literary market, readership, and literary institution to see The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

35 African writers the same way they saw Virginia Woolf or James Joyce or William Shakespeare—people writing things called literature and not myth, or folklore or historical documents or anthropological texts. I will grant you this. It is confusing when people say Achebe invented African literature because most people are going to hear “literature” and confuse it with “writing.” But literature is not just writing, right? It is a unique way of looking at a body of writing. It is a way of situating a text in a literary tradition and valuing it for its aesthetic attributes. I suppose the more accurate way of putting it would be to say that Achebe invented a new way of seeing African writing as literary. Next time you hear someone say that Achebe is the father of African literature or that he invented African literature, think of it as a branding issue. He rebranded African writing as literary texts. African fiction and poetry came to be understood in relation to a global literary tradition and not as a set of specialized documents that stodgy professors studied in history and anthropology departments. No one is saying that there wasn’t African writing before Achebe, but simply that the publication of Things Fall Apart marks the beginning of a global conversation around African writing as literary texts.

Did Achebe invent African literature? I would rather say that Achebe helped reinvent African writing as literature.

Ainehi Edoro holds a doctorate in English

from Duke University and recently joined the Marquette University English faculty as an Assistant Professor. She loves teaching African fiction and contemporary British novels. This critique in fiction format was originally published in the Brittle Paper. More African fiction and literary culture could be seen at : http://brittlepaper.com The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Usha Akella Poems Turmeric hue In one hour we will host a dinner, I will serve paneer rolls stapled with mango— my creation, and marinated kababs, again my creation. They will walk through our house and admire my art, décor, brother’s talent, my creativity, our daughter’s old soul- she is three as she shows off her boo-boos or cart wheels, our house will become a museum all of us pegged on the walls. And I will subside into a cauldron of shyness, words eyeing me coldly in the distance as I mumble “I am a poet,” “as well…” trail off, conscious of the irony, my rounded belly, a possible migraine and clutter in the wardrobes. I will not mock humanity like TS Eliot and write a poem on women coming and going and drooling. I will love humanity though I would rather write a poem than have hours vaporize into cumin and hing fumes. One hour to go, I’m on the floor at Borders the books lined like spice jars, reading how different poets nibble on the world differently and leave their crumbs in pages. And I on my knees lick my fingers, pick their leftovers, taste how they taste the world hoping to see myself in their tasting. “Mmmm,” they will say, “Is it curry?” And I will patiently explain, “Curry is not a spice but a dish— any vegetable or meat dish—curry as you call it is actually turmeric. That yellow hue.” Like voice in poetry, I will say to myself. Later this night I will seize my day and the poems will splutter into space like mustard seeds. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Reversal I’m walking through aisles of famous poets waiting in line, I disperse my lines/ideas in graceful beatitude, all shine, the halo of poetry around my head, some touch the hem of my skirt, I anoint their heads, and carry my talent like the sky carries the sun, The mail box swells with rejects, the internet chokes with my poetry in its throat but the famous poets are still stealing my lines, and I am living on virtual credit, I’ve tried America, India, and decide looking at the atlas, Tegucigalpa sounds possible, a place where I may reign as laureate, a place rich with the scent of oranges, blue water, palm trees, flamingos, and journals published just for me, There my pen won’t run away to write another’s page, I will be inundated with invites, I will be gracious, wear white linen, non-leather sandals, tint my hair and contemplate the personas I could adopt. And soon stand in line to welcome a new poet fresher than the monsoon drenching us, the air anew as a kid’s drawing.

The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Un named Like leaves, like chameleons, her poems changed colors. The color peeling a little differently, each poem sometimes like mathematics, sometime like mangoes, the poems leaked juices and stained the page. She went chasing her self. The poems were like butterflies in the sun. Her net caught none. They left like swallows, like bats, like penguins. Driven to go far, home an inbuilt radar. Her aim was to write a poem that was not afraid of homelessness. They came back eventually encoded with return and longing, When they left was she lonely or alone… that clichéd difference people talk about, a worn out philosophy, it didn’t matter. Poets are the loneliest on the planet; poems alone are proof of it. She met them here and there in random places. Some greeted her cold eyed, filled with abandonment and accusation, to be so exposed! Some were blindfolded, some like lanterns, always a confusion of joy and sorrow, wisdom and unknowing. Some greeted her, bowed, curtsied, shook hands, mumbled or adaabed or namasteed or touched their heart. Others whirled like dervishes or left a cold blanch on her cheek. Others were named so differently they were bewildered, begged to be claimed… soon her poems, a silent kingdom growing, a treasure spreading like ink on the page. Haikus, ghazals, sonnets, odes, epics… she saw them praised, celebrated; saw the names pitted against each other, compared, contrasted, condemned, chided, celebrated; like a ghost she entered them all. She knows her poems are like the hands on a dial of eternity. She was erased gradually, seeking what the great poets sought. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Haiku class in the garden (Hyderabad, India)

Cell phone rings in class Bees buzzing in the garden Petals droop briefly. The garden calls us I hear children drone by rote Like ants we file out. Grass green with longing You tread on my dreams again Still, your footprints here. Tattered fingers these palm trees tap morse code, the breeze listens ears cocked keen. Smooth head of the rock Bald men basking in the sun Lazy manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paradise. Badam leaves billow Frisky green frills in the wind I hear no music. Open-shut, rust rustles The ground misses a heartbeat Butterfly is coy. A peacock preens here Her colors fading in the sun Vanityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s folly. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Rainingelephants One poet enlightens us about her ovaries and suicide, another is lofty-visioned, big bells toll and we are like mice cowering in the crevices of her voice, one about push-up bras… foxes, communion, origami, the laws of physics, fences, Pleiades, hats, cherries, faucets, God, molasses—the plenitude of the universe. All I want to write about is Love like a wilting unquenched 16 year old—its gasping notes, its fractured limbs, its puckered face, its broken wrist. And about poetry; that sits like an idol on my countertop, stalking my attention, sniffing out my suitability in the middle of the night offering me skeleton hands, her bony embrace I need to flesh out with more vapor. Chastised by the voluptuous imagination of poets who know the names of things, and don’t say trees. Flowers. But belladonna, forsythia, witches hazel, and hyphenate oak into its kinds, and dissect the Earth in its latitude, and break the many rules of poetry I can’t recall, as I never knew in the first place, I ask myself, why cannot I write about… say this new New York season, a monsoon like thing raining cats, dogs and elephants, reminding me of another city, 10,000 miles away, women walking, their saris gathered up, feet darting about as fish in water

The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Pigs and geese The ones that leave the pen when the latch is loose; the things we shouldn’t have said, sit regal now in our living room on golden thrones sharing anecdotes crossing their little hooves sipping tea and gossiping on cell phones with cousins in other living rooms, other homes, ears cocked for more—greedy scoundrels. And the things we should have said— about caring and loving each other, the ones as strong adhesive that hold our days in place have taken flight like geese in search of more hospitable spheres. We sit in the midst of shards of silence, afraid a move may bleed our soles, We avoid eye contact with the pigs, (some walls have whole wallpapers of pigs) Especially the cherubic succulent one at the end of the table slurping soup, and clamoring for dishes we know nothing of, his shifting beady eyes looking for heaps of straw to ignite. Meanwhile, till the time the pigs end their dynasty and the geese come back home I write it as it is. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Curtains Swaying palm trees on a soaked sunset, the crackles of mango yellow, mehandi green, and sindoor red match the green and orange dhuri from IKEA, this imitation batik may be a template of our life— how our strange imprint is pressed upon a foreign fabric. We put them up one evening; measured a hemline of two inches, spread out two yards and began to pleat using pins to stay the pleats, in the end the palm trees didn’t line up on either side and we collapsed laughing, the wasted material grimacing on the floor like an out of place tourist. How ashamed my mother would be to see me pin folds instead of sew them, my mother who sews curtains with dainty stitches in a perfect line and pleats her frustration in large folds, and my father the one who holds her emptiness in place. And I pleat my life in poems-these drapes swaying on pages.

Usha Akella’s work is known for an undertow

of spirituality within a contemporary voice. Her work has been included in the Harper Collins Anthology of Indian English Poets. She is the founder of the Poetry Caravan in New York and Austin which takes poetry readings to the disadvantaged in women’s shelters, senior homes, hospitals. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Book Review SEMEEN ALI

The Rosary Of Latitudes By Usha Akella: “If I told you, all the latitudes are the unread lines of my love letter…” The book is a travelogue- when I say travelogue I don’t want to confine it within the set parameters of what the definition stands for. The book is about the travels of the poet but the journeys are not confined to the ones physically taken but those of life. This beautiful compilation of prose and poetry is to be taken in slowly and to let it unfurl in your senses like the heady tones of a cup of jasmine tea. The book begins with an introduction from the poet and ends with a poem on the title of the book. The reader is given a glimpse of what is to follow but what is unexpected is the impact the book leaves on one’s mind. A sense of loss pervades and Akella’s The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

44 play with words reminds one of Mirza Ghalib’s works. His letters and his poetry encapsulate an era and a city lost to him forever. Akella through her journeys observes how the loss is irreplaceable be it of the cities that she travels to or the people she has preserved in her memory. The book has been divided into sections but the expressions and emotions flow across them like a river and by the end of the book one is submerged in the river and does not want to come out of it. The first section opens with poetry festivals that Akella has attended and been a part of. What is interesting is that this section is not only throwing light on the festivals attended but is also looking at the history and culture of the place that is visited. The photographs play an important part in helping give a visual impression of what the poet is talking about. The photographs are poignant and as the adage goes- ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ holds true for the photographs included in the book. The first photograph that arrests you is that of an old man and a small girl- the piece written on them is a powerful one and talks of the delicate connection that exists between two generations. This fragile connection finds a space in the later poems where the poet talks about her childhood. “No words pass between them, even if they did, neither of them would understand what they meant.” The section on Turkey ends with a photograph of names written on sands and implies the transitory nature of our lives and the relations that exist here. It brings to mind Orhan Pamuk’s Istnabul where hüzünpaints nostalgia and although that is present to a certain extent in Akella’s work; there is a balance maintained when she talks about a place. The delight and awe with which she regards a place has been captured beautifully. How time has flown without disturbing the rubric of the city. The “indescribable feeling” that Akella experiences while walking the city makes the reader understand what she articulates through her works that we as people are trying to hold on to moments and things that cannot be confined for long; that they are The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

45 meant to be felt and not given words. The black and white pictures that are spread across the book add not only nostalgia but arrests moments that should stay fresh in the mind of the reader and the writer. Beauty is not only to be felt and appreciated but can also become claustrophobic as experienced by the poet on her travels. The spiritual overtones in the book become apparent when Akella visits Konya in Turkey – the birthplace of Rumi. It is here that she feels the spiritual connection come alive. Akella ponders over Rumi’s creations and how “…he uses words to extinguish words.” Even the prose takes on a poetic quality in the hands of Akella and the reader does not feel the difference between what is prose and what is poetry as defined theoretically. Her discussion on Rumi takes the reader back into that era when Rumi must have composed his greatest works and Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak comes to one’s mind. Akella composes a poem on Rumi’s Mausoleum and it’s a beautiful rendition. The poet in this poem and the subject lead an entwined life- Intoxicated by the creation that surrounds them as well as the creation they make. The river of poetry that flows across nations and nationalities is felt by the poet at a poetry festival held in Struga and she feels that her poetry has “melded with an ancient river of voices”. Languages- poets- emotions- all merge to create a magical moment that Akella captures in her poem. Further on in the book, her love for poetry comes out strongly when she declares“This is consumerism I approve of — booksbooksbooks, the poet like a rock star signing unending autographs.” The interesting part about this book is how the prose precedes the poetry but does not disrupt in any manner the poetical form. The poems seem to fill the gaps that the prose has left intentionally. “The poem begins in the soul of the poet and completes itself in the reader’s mind. Throughout the world the midnight oil burns as poets validate self and other, and the poems become bridges. We may The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

46 create in isolation, but our work is for all.” The poems further on reveal a sense of a new self that foreign lands provide as well as a sense of awareness and the complicated knots that we are tied up in are not forgotten and the poet dwells on it – “…in a foreign land there are no knots of failed relationships, the gnawing unease of families as spider webs to which we belong, knowing not who is the weaver, but knowing we are caught.” She further on illustrates beautifully what it means to be a poet and who are the subjects – “You are the poems,” says one poet...” And well said; as the book is a poem and the ones that have been mentioned or discovered in this book are its subjects. To write about this book in a cold methodological fashion would be to do injustice to the essence of this book; the creations that proliferate in these pages deserve to be praised and be touched upon delicately. The India poems are where the poet engages beautifully with the old and the new. “Chants in a roadside temple somewhere make the new air ancient.” The whirling of the words continues around the hauntingly beautiful pictures that occupy a part of this book. The poet is now in Mexico and questions in one of the poems – “Is Poetry an Altar of forgotten Gods?” Amidst the questions that arise when it comes to the art of writing poetry and the new places that evoke a sense of newness inside the poet; she cannot help but acknowledge the role that familiarity plays in one’s life and she describes it as – “In some sense you look for home however far away from it..” And “A place is reborn again and again in each traveler’s imagination.” Remembering those who are no more begins with a visit to Anne Franks’ house and the poet writes“…the future is renowned to be a late visitor.” The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

47 Although the feeling of loss is universal it is being a foreign land that predominates the mood and as the poet sets it down in words“Once again we are on foreign ground, unloosened from our own culture, a bit giddy like the pigeons entirely unsure what the dance of freedom means.” This constant dialogue that occurs within the book has its focus on nostalgia and finding one’s roots. There is a feeling of familiarity when the poet visits Israel and writes- “Born Hindu, I felt not as an outsider but entered the mysteries of ‘other’ religions. I became aware that my religion of birth gave me the latitude to partake of the ‘other’ with such freedom. I experienced myself as universal capable of transcending form.” The poet further on in the book, brings in the question of how a woman is considered to be a repository of culture and what all is expected from her. The poet writes“…how one’s body becomes the battlefield of the world and in some unconscious manner we partake of the destiny of the planet; its wounds are ours; there is no ‘other’ or theirs. We all make the body of the planet which has too many gashes and wounds. We have too many causes to support and too much to comprehend.” There is too much to comprehend and it is in the section titled Home that the poet tries to make sense of relationships and look back at past to understand oneself. On her coming to India as a child she writes“When you don’t know the language you are born into you lose out on a culture, a cultural sensibility, a herd and the comfort of belonging. I’ve lived with an unanchored feeling all my life, a vagueness within like a cloud. I am not sure how to belong and whom to belong to.” Akella’s description of her mother and how she adjusts to the changes life brings has been expressed in such a heart rendering manner that one can almost visualize it“For decades, she carried Australia inside her much the way we carry our collective identity. It replaced her Indian roots with an inexplicable ease, had her loyalty and became the land to long The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

48 and weep for. Something in her died when she returned to India. My mother would have gladly traded her nationality if she could.” It is not the country that is being invoked but a repository of memories and moments that define a person’s life; those very things that attach a person to a particular place or person and to be taken away from it destroys a part of oneself. The poet is sensitive in her portrayal of this feeling. “Lands insert themselves into the mind like love letters into envelopes. As time goes by you forget the words but the fragrance remains.” Further on, in a poem titled Origami, she says“In our minds years fold as origami, (there are lists, but in the end, shapes)” It is these years that have been described in the section India once again. The gaps seem enormous when she compares her childhood with that of her daughterYou took and gave without effusive thank-you’s or self-consciousness.Our childhoods were enormously different. Nowadays, you better punctuate every deed with a Hallmark card. Market and brandish your affection and gratitude. It is not only a comment on the yesteryears and the nostalgia that it invokes; there is also a sense of loss that accompanies it. The poet’s writes – Numbed by thirteen days of feasts and meals, Still, the living cannot rent the veil and peep, Here the head, here the heart, the hip, the heel, She’s gone and grieving hearts must heal. The loss is a deep one and the poet writes in another poemBut a country presses me down as a paper weight, like fine needles pinning down butterfly wings, fluttering flightless flight. Fluttering flightless flight, I can’t fly try as I might. If India filled the poet with memories then her current place of residence has as much important role to play in her life. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

49 Her section on United States of America,opens up with her observations as a migrant who has to shift to a new place and not everything is milk and honey. The acceptance of/by goes hand in hand when it comes to the one migrating and the place on is migrating to. Home points to both sides of the Atlantic. Country is the space the mind inhabits, no longer a marked geographical entity. The book has a glossary in the end which is of great help and the bookends with a black and white photograph of the poet and her daughter. With shadows forming on the ground, the photograph encapsulates the journey the poet has been on and now she is home. A reader by the end of the book can almost feel the power of the words that the writer weaves and the book goes down deep in one’s heart to awaken the lost self that one locked up and had forgotten about. Published by : Transcendent Zero Press, Houston, Texas www.transcendentzeropress.org

Book reviewed by Semeen Ali: Semeen Ali is the author of four books of poetry. Her poems have featured in several anthologies and literary journals. Her book- Rose and Ashes won the Jury’s Commendation Award at Hyderabad Literary Festival in 2012. She has recently edited an anthology of English poetry written by women poets from New Delhi called Dilli published by Poets Printery, South Africa, 2014 as well an issue titled- Écriture feminine for Muse India. She is currently guest editing another issue for Muse India titled- The Power and Fear of the Pen: Democracy and Freedom of Expression. She has co-edited an anthology on pre globalization poetry with poet Nabina Das and published by Poetrywala and it is due for release in July 2016 She reviews books for The Book Review India. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

50 PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

The House “You’ll leave here after four years with an education few people have had access to in the history of mankind. What are you planning to do with it?” It was a good question, set forth by consumer advocate Ralph Nader as he spoke before an embarrassingly empty hall at our conservative university. I was pretty conservative myself, and certainly no fan of the wildly liberal public avenger. But I had found the opportunity to hear such an iconic figure irresistible, even if most of my fellow students felt otherwise. “There’s a world out there filled with problems and suffering and injustice,” Mr. Nader continued. “There’s a desperate need for crusaders, and you just want to get a job?” The derision Mr. Nader injected into those last three words reverberated inside the echo chamber of my mind, etching upon my psyche an unequivocal contempt toward employment for the sake of mere employment. It was 1981, during my junior year at the University of California, Davis, and I still had no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up. But during those closing moments of his address, Mr. Nader awakened within me the passionate desire to do something – anything – as long as it might make a difference, as long as it would truly matter. And so I left the lecture hall that evening feeling like Archimedes, looking for my fulcrum to move the world. And my search led me to The House. No other name could have better described it: here was The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

51 an actual house – still thriving in the shadow of university officebuildings, lecture halls, and dormitories – with its modest front porch, unaffected wooden shingles, and single-pane windows opaque with dust around the corners. Its official designation was Temporary Building-16. But to everyone who worked there, and to anyone who patronized its services, TB-16 was simply called The House. Fifteen or twenty years earlier, the thought had occurred to someone at Student Services to create an informal atmosphere where students could commiserate about the problems and stresses of college without having to endure the formality of an advisor, the social pressure of a dormitory, or the stigma of a psychologist. In the course of its various incarnations, the project acquired a director, instituted a thorough course of preparatory and continuous training, and acquired TB-16. The House opened its doors. The front door led into a softly lit salon crowded with bedraggled couches and chairs. Thick shag carpeting sprouted up like untrimmed grass. There was a weathered coffee table, stacks of obscure magazines and remaindered books, and a perpetually growling hot water urn for coffee, tea, or cacao. In the back, two rooms stocked with oversized pillows and beanbag chairs provided enough comfort and privacy for even the most self-conscious visitor. And whenever school was in session, at any time, every day and every night, there were two student counselors on call trained in the rudiments of nonthreatening Rogerian psychology. Karen was the House director, a position she had taken over from her husband, Kennebec. His name was really Ken, but he had fallen in love with the Kennebec River and used its name as his own – at least in the company of friends and close acquaintances. Student Services had brought him in to assume the directorship “after The House’s last nude retreat,” in hope of imposing greater structure upon the fledgling peer counseling facility. Not that Ken was all that conventional himself. His hobby was jumping freight trains, and he hadn’t thought it at all inappropriate to use this informal style of transportation for his own staff retreats. I nagged Ken every time I saw him to take me train-jumping, but he was The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

settling into the routine of responsible middle age, and never found time to take a weekend off to travel as undeclared baggage. So Ken, it’s your fault that I later became a hitchhiker and not a hobo. Karen was a perfect boss, striking a magical balance between compulsive professionalism and California chill to produce a working atmosphere that was intensely laid back. Student clients – contacts, we called them – were sparse, usually no more than a couple a day. But business always surged around midterm and final exams, when the trickle of students looking for help to cope with homesickness and social pressures gave way to a steady stream of contacts all sharing the same problem: test anxiety. Everyone at UC Davis knew about the article in the Wall Street Journal rating our university the second most competitive in the nation after Yale. How such a quality could be measured was never discussed; neither was the little-known datum that an administrative task force had determined that no such article had ever been published. It was, after all, a comforting rumor at a university where each year 600 students saw their hopes of medical school excised by the ruthless scalpel that was the bell curve. Counseling was a thriving concern. But the rest of the time things were pretty slow and, predictably, we counselors mostly counseled one another. Test anxiety was not a common problem among our easy-going crowd. Relationships were usually the hottest topic, particularly after someone’s significantother had transferred or graduated, thereby severing the union instantaneously or the transforming it into a long-distance relationship that limped sadly along for weeks or months before it died. About the time I arrived, incidents of post-romantic stress disorder began multiplying on account of Harold, who came across as the nerdiest of nerds and used his pitiful persona to seduce several female counselors. Harold the Heartbreaker’s libidinous capers were particularly annoying to me, since I often picked up his girls on the rebound. I was cursed, however, by a rigid adherence to the chivalric code, drummed into me relentlessly by a father reincarnated from the court of King Arthur. Consequently, the process of endearing myself The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

to any female colleague reflexively stirred in my subconscious a brotherly protectiveness that paralyzed me into amorous inaction. So I perpetually played Sir Galahad to Harold’s Lancelot, frustrated by my own virtue. Matriculation provided as much fuel for counseling as did courtship. Many of us were liberal arts majors, suddenly dismayed by our own lack of foresight in preparing for the approaching end of our academic careers. There were also those who had to reconcile an unexpected change in plans, like Todd, who was set to marry his girlfriend the month after graduation and go on to fly Sabrejets for the U. S. Air Force. But Todd succumbed to the dreaded malady of senioritis, failed his French requirement, didn’t graduate, washed out of the Air Force and was subsequently dumped by his fiancée. He spent a lot of time hanging out at The House the last week of his senior year. The truth was, we all spent a lot of time hanging out, either at The House itself or aroundcampus with other House people. It was like belonging to a co-ed fraternity. And although there were fewer structured social events and less alcohol, our members constituted a remarkably empathetic and altruistic society, almost without exception. Perhaps it was simply that we were there because we wanted to help people. But whatever our reasons, most of us ended up helping ourselves most of all. Lorenzo was our resident flower child, a wayward soul of the sixties who had missed the revolution by fifteen years. It had been his plan to live among the impoverished of India, thereby leaving his place in the middle class vacant for the downtrodden in the world. But all that ended when Tina convinced him that he could better serve the poor by changing the world from a position of power, rather than adding to their burden by increasing their number. So Lorenzo abandoned his fantasy of becoming an untouchable in Calcutta and went on to business school instead. Tina also turned her own life around. Before joining The House she had overdosed on cocaine and nearly died. By her second year counseling she was leading workshops on drug abuse and alcoholism. The last time I saw her she had lost 50 pounds, looked stunning and The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

54 vivacious, and was heading off to business school with Lorenzo. Maybe the magic of The House wasn’t magic at all. Maybe it was just our introduction to a little old-fashioned responsibility, something we hadn’t been exposed to much as standard-bearers of the Me Generation. We had to be on call and on time for two hours a week and four half-day weekend shifts each trimester. We had to respond to all kinds of personalities and problems, listen attentively, analyze quickly, and guide each contact toward understanding his own dilemma and identifying a possible solution. We had to cover for one another, we had to interview applicants twice a year, we had to conceptualize, develop, structure, advertise, and facilitate programs. These were not demands placed on the average undergraduate, and most of us discovered a pleasure and satisfaction we had never experienced before. This was especially true for Laura, who disappeared to answer the phone during a weekly staff meeting and spent the next half-hour talking a young man convinced that he was going to fail his exams out of committing suicide. I could claim my own share of sophomoric crises, not the least of which loomed large halfway through my final trimester. I would be graduating with a degree in English, a love of writing and Shakespeare, a dream of changing the world, but with little practical skill or experience. I had been subsidized by my parents and swaddled in the cushy lifestyle of the ivory tower, neither of which had prepared me for independence or directed me toward any concrete goal. Slowly, a vision began to coalesce. If I had always been taken care of, then it was time I began taking care of myself. If my daily regimen had always been outlined for me, than I would have to force myself to create my own. And if I had no sense of direction, then I would have to drift where the current carried me until I happened upon the way I wanted to go. All of which added up to the unconventional plan of taking off, after graduation, with a backpack and a sleeping bag, to hitchhike across America. “You’re kidding? You’re doing what? You’re not serious … are you?” The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

55 Those were the initial reactions from my non-House friends. But inside The House I received a different set of responses. “Oh, okay. Yeah, I can see you doing something like that. You’ll be careful, won’t you?” Of course, the response that really worried me was from my parents. I was still grappling with how to tell them my plans when I came home one day to find a postcard in my mailbox, the fulfillment of a recurring dream that had haunted me for weeks. The card contained the following information: You are missing one unit from your requirements for graduation. Units required in college out of major: 12. Units you have fulfilling requirement: 11 Obviously there was some mistake. I had done the math repeatedly and knew that I had 13 units, one more than the minimum. But the mistake had indeed been mine, for I had added into my count two units in Applied Behavioral Science, units I had received for volunteering at The House. The ABS department, however, was not part of the College of Letters and Sciences as one might suppose. Inexplicably, it was part of the College of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry. Consequently, those two units were not applicable to this particular requirement. My initial shock wore off within fifteen minutes, and I found myself galvanized, even excited, by this unexpected turn of events. Here was a problem I could handle. Here was a problem that was black and white, involving no feelings, no reactions, and no guilt trips. I proceeded to the office of John Vohs, my Communications professor, to explain my situation and ask for an independent study assignment worth one unit. He assigned me a research project that he said should take about 20 hours. I completed it in six. When I returned to his office, John looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he said, “How long have you been at this college?” “Four and a half years,” I replied. “I think you’ve done enough work. See you later.” After a year’s worth of counseling, of training, of trying to solve other people’s problems, I was suddenly astonished at how capably I The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

56 had handled my own. I called my parents that week and broke the news of my travel plans. They weren’t pleased, needless to say, but they didn’t turn suicidal, either. Instead of the car they were planning to buy me as a graduation gift, they bought me a pasta maker. “So the sky didn’t fall when you told them,” observed Tina, as we sat over donuts and coffee the week before going our separate ways. “No. It wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I imagined it would be.” “You know, hardly anyone believes you’re really going to go through with this trip of yours.” “I know. That’s why I told everyone. I’ll be too embarrassed to back out now.” Tina laughed. “I’m so glad you’re you,” she said. I smiled back, only faintly aware of what would become obvious to me later: that if not for Tina, if not for Lorenzo and Laura and Harold and Karen and Kennebec, if not for everyone who helped transform an old, unremarkable building into The House – if not for all of them, I most certainly would not be me.

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 - June- 2016

Book Excerpts - Theatre

AFRICA DREAM THEATRE By BART WOLFFE

Bart Wolffe, after a long career in media, television, radio, film and the stage, left Zimbabwe in 2003 to live in exile in the United Kingdom. He is an essayist, poet, playwright, short story writer. Most of his plays have been published in ‘Africa Dream Theatre’, consisting of 13 plays, 10 of which are one-person plays while the other three are two-handers. Bart Wolffe is arguably the leading one-person show specialist. Samuel Ravengai, in his review in the Panorama Magazine dated 28-06-2013, on the plays written and staged by Bart Wolffe, says “His published plays in this volume (African Dream Theatre) incorporate a body of work that expresses themes such as loss of innocence, discrimination, intolerance and alienation. Each play is a unique exploration of humanity in various forms. The styles of The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

58 presentation are multiple, covering physical theatre, satire, comedy, tragedy, theatre of the absurd and post-modernism.” Somewhere else it is said on this collection of plays: “here is a collection of the majority of Bart Wolffe’s published works for the stage that all have a common quality: an intimate exploration of the human condition in the most unique assembly of characters for performance you could possibly ever meet. They are all plays designed to travel, without much fuss, low-cost productions with maximum impact, in comedy and drama, satires and absurdist theatre pieces, physical theatre also; these plays have been performed throughout Southern Africa and in London, Edinburgh and Dublin, used for master classes and workshops, for festivals and for main stage venues right through to intimate and private performances in people’s homes” Syned Mthatiwa, University of Malawi, in his paper on the poems of Bart Wolffe comments, “ …. his project of belonging and identity construction in post colonial Zimbabwe is somehow complicated by his whiteness or positionality.” Bart Wolffe has sent excerpts from his plays, ‘Two men on a Bench’ and ‘On Lonely Street’. Please read- Editor

EXCERPT FROM “TWO MEN ON A BENCH” KING KAMI

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you... It’s just that you whites are so stupid with your ideas of love and romance and dreams. (THIS MAKES THE PROFESSOR SOB ALL THE LOUDER)

Oh, shut up! The truth of the matter is that survival is hardship, my friend. It could be anybody out there on this park bench. It just happens to be on loan to the two of us at the moment. (KAMIKAZI GOES RIGHT BEHIND THE BENCH TO DELIVER THE NEXT STING)

- I mean, how many times have you heard; “there but for the grace of God...”? (AGAIN, THE PROFESSOR SOBS LOUDER STILL)

Haven’t you read what DH Lawrence said on the subject of

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59 poverty... “Don’t let anybody try and tell you there is dignity in being poor.”

THE PROF (PEEVED)

So, you really have read between the covers of a book and not just second hand newspapers from people’s dustbins and stolen Gideon’s bibles!

KING KAMI

I will ignore that, for now, because I want to say that the meek shall inherit bugger all, I tell you. - Karl Marx understood the reality of that! Not just you and your kind of vacuous impotent day-dreams.

THE PROF

It’s not just dreams... You need to understand. Look, I mean, if you don’t have a dream, you become caged by the system, like them, living only for the struggle to pay the rent each month until your dying day - you lose sight of everything, you become a different animal, fighting only for business or battle. Honestly, the truth is never enough. That’s why our kind has to dream of anarchy. When the world no longer makes sense, only by getting crazy ideas, can we set ourselves free of the rules and have any hope for the likes of us for the future, don’t you know ?! Can’t you understand what I am trying to say !!! (THE PROFESSOR REALLY STARTS TO BREAK DOWN AND WEEP NOISILY, RIDICULOUSLY.)

THE PROF

What I am saying is that there would be no music, no art, if the truth, if the truth of our lives was enough...

KING KAMI

What are you talking about art for. Art is for the rich and the privileged, not for the poor who can’t even feed themselves, let alone, their children. (THIS CREATES MORE TEARFULNESS FROM THE PROFESSOR)

How much do you think a book costs in Zimbabwe. More than The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

90% of what all average citizens can afford, the employed, that is, Free education for all by the year 2000, free health for all – the empty promises they gave us along with television and independence – just look at the fact we have outlived our average life expectancy in this redundant country we call home – 34 years and most of us are dead because of that un-nameable disease, the thing with no name they refer to as “died after a long illness”. And need I say it, Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, because 90 percent of us have got just that – nothing, but are we free? Not on your life! We will never be free while the creature who eats our lives and our freedom sits on the throne of my forefathers and waves his fist at us as if his own people were the enemy.

EXCERPT FROM “ON LONELY STREET” ROSE

All you men think with your dicks, your cocks like with a gun. I tell you. You think you can have power over one of us girls because you haven’t got power in your life, with your boss or your wife or your bank manager. You, with your education and your money, do you even know what it’s like to go without a hot meal for three nights in winter, just to try to pay the rent for one room in Highfield without electricity!

BRIAN

I must admit, I have never thought about it. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

61 ROSE

Of course not. You can never think of it because you are not honest. When you come to us, you are never honest to begin with. It is always a lie. Not what you fucking call love! (SHE DOWNS THE WHISKY AND LIGHTS ANOTHER CIGARETTE)

BRIAN

But I thought a prostitute at least would be honest because she has got nothing to hide. She doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exactly hide what she is. I thought I could be honest with a prostitute, with someone like you, Rose. You understand men better than anyone.

ROSE

Yes, bastards.

BRIAN

I mean, you understand how to pretend you care, when someone needs comfort or someone to talk to.

ROSE

You say I, we prostitutes, have nothing to hide. Jesus Christ. We have to hide all the time. From police, from the truth of ourselves, that we are dying, or might be. From our disgust at the smelly animals we have to lie down for and tell how wonderful they are! Bullshit, man. You talk shit.

BRIAN

I just wanted someone to talk to. I thought you would be easier to talk to, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know why. More understanding than other woman.

ROSE

You mean that we would say sweet lies to you and agree with you, how wonderful you are, what a nice car you drive, how big your dick is...

BRIAN

Does it all have to be so cruel! (ALMOST CRYING OUT IN ANGUISH)

Jesus! Does life really have to be so cruel!

ROSE

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62 How many times do I hear of married men looking for a bit of understanding because they are not satisfied at home... Do they know how lucky they are to have a home? Or to be healthy, to have a clean bed. Mr Brian Rutherford, do you know what it is like to be one of six sisters, the only one who is working because your father has another younger woman and your mother is too sick to work and you happen to be the eldest even if you are only thirteen? Well, that was a few years ago. Two of the sisters died this year, Rutemba and Doreen. And my mother also.

BRIAN

How long have you been... I mean, how old are you now?

ROSE

You mean, how many men have I slept with or have fucked with me? How many flies do you get on a piece of shit?

Literary magazines can continue to perform a useful role only if they continue to forge new connections. Please get connected. Contribute your literary creations. Subscribe so that the magazine could serve better. Recommend the magazine to your literary circle. Contact: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com

The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

FICTION MARGARET MUTHEE

Perfect Send Off The moment the raindrops hit the ground, Sifa knew that the rest of the event would be a disaster. There was something violent in the raindrops kissing the earth like a jilted lover forcefully seeking a reunion. Within seconds, it raged in full fury, pounding everyone and everything. The pearl colored coffin, lying half open, was not spared. Its multi-colored garnets still flickered, but not as brightly. Jane had specifically wanted it customized. And that was not the only thing Sifa’s mother had wished for in her funeral...... “Don’t get me roses. They remind me of your wretched father,” she had said. They were seated at the backyard, enjoying a Sunday afternoon. Sifa was sitting separated from her chain smoking mother by a table, while her sister, Neema, sat cross-legged like a yoga guru, on the green grass fondling stones beside her. Sifa had known of her mother’s resentment towards her father; it The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

64 angered her that he had abandoned them. She also knew well that her mother was not that perfect too. “But Ma, you also left us with aunt Wambui when you went away with Jim…Uncle Jim,” she had said, composing her thoughts. Neema had flung a stone towards her, shutting her up. Jane had stood up and walked away, knowing too well of what she had put her daughters to go through, years back, when she traversed the country with Jim, a lover, half her age...... Sifa hated these memories. They swirled her heart, heavy and bitter like muarubaine herbs. She wiped the swirl like vapour and watched the rain. The wind made the surrounding trees of the compound sway wildly. The white wooden cross fell beside the coffin. Sifa rushed to put it back in place. It felt rough and sandy in her hands. Her aunt Wambui sat motionless, her head bowed as if in prayer. The children moved out to play and dance in the rain, unaware of what was happening there. Wanjohi, the bald-headed man who was never sober, joined them. He shook his feeble bones, break dancing in the rain, unmindful of his white sneakers now brownish red from the mud, or of the “Preserve water, drink beer” t-shirt that never left his body, drenched. Sifa watched him as he walked to the crowd. “What do we do?” Father Peter, the parish priest, asked. Sifa skimmed through the crowd—relatives, workmates, and one or two of her mother’s friends. Her eyes made a full circle and rested on her aunt Wambui; her eyebrows raised for an answer. The glistening stain below Wambui’s deep set eyes revealed that she had been crying. “Looks like, we have to wait until it subsides,” she answered, rearranging the flowing strands of her hair. Father Peter was the only one who had accepted to bury Jane, not so much out of obligation but out of pity. It had taken an eternity to convince him since the confines of the church compound had not seen Jane for quite a long time. “Our ship hit a sand dune,” Jane had said of her relationship with God, once. Sifa had known and expected this. The first time when she The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

65 went to see the priest, he had folded his hands behind him and was pacing the room, nodding his head, even before she could speak. “You know…. I cannot accept … what you are here to ask for…” he had said in a stutter. Sifa had walked away, cursing her mother for dying and her sister for being a loser. * In one hand, Father Peter held his Bible. He lifted his white and purple robes to his ankles with the other. He shifted his whole frame towards the tent. Sifa slightly twisted her head and peered at the crowd seeking approval. Watching her workmates spurred an answer in her. “Let’s go on,” she urged. But people suddenly scattered in different directions. They ran as if Spanish bulls were after them. The wind whistled in high octave. The trees danced to the tune of the nature, forcing the leaves off their branches. And, the banana stalks swayed in agony; waving their goodbyes to a woman they knew too well. * The rest of the service, held at the yard of a little church, began smoothly and had only been interrupted by Wanjohi, the drunken bastard. Everyone else played their part, giving elaborate speeches praising Jane; even in things she had not wished. “I am not the best mother; don’t go praising me at my funeral,” she had once told them.Her candid nature had surprised many including her daughters who did not know how to react when she was in that state, jabbering her most intimate thoughts explicitly. Sifa read her eulogy. Neema had not shown face still. In her place, aunt Wambui stood behind her, holding a leso. Four months ago when Neema urged her mother to break off her engagement with James, a growing yarn of rage had engulfed her, fuelling a serious fight. “Men are like the waves of the ocean, they come and go,” Jane had said, reaching out for a pack of cigarettes on the table. Sifa had always been supportive of the mother and expected her to move on, become more stable. Things turned awry when Sifa slapped Neema. She had not seen The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

66 this coming. Neema had walked across the room and grabbed a flower vase beside the 60 inch TV screen. She threw it towards her sister, but slightly missing. It crashed against the wall, fragments scattering down the polished floor. Jane’s legs had weakened and buckled. She had gone down sobbing, rubbing her eyes. While Sifa rushed towards her, Neema had stood there watching them and in a split second, dashed out to pack. She had left in a huff, saying a quick goodbye to their mother. As Sifa was preoccupied in the past memory, she did not notice the manner in which the priest concluded his last prayer, reading lines in quick succession and skipping some altogether. “From dust we came….to dust we shall return.” This brought her back. The thought that she would never see her mother again gnawed at her. She screamed, blacked out. She was dragged out past the choir clad in purple and white; past her neighbours murmuring; past the children staring blankly. The remaining crowd placed a handful of soil in the grave and left the rest of the work to the gravediggers. Three men shoved the remaining soil into the grave, taking care to dodge the water puddles beside the grave. Wanjohi joined them. He shoved the soil haphazardly humming a tune of Bob Marley. As they finished, he stumbled and fell into a trench that drove water downstream. “Help me out!” he shouted. The gravediggers laughed. “You asked for it,” someone shouted and laughed. Wanjohi struggled but he finally got out leaving his cap floating down the trench. He ran towards the house, not acknowledging the many apologies and chat that followed. Sifa rushed to console him. A pair of eyes followed them like torches. Looking at the distant crowd, Sifa noticed someone standing tall surrounded mostly by relatives. Her brown dreadlocks matched the color of her skin. A black trench coat covered her up to her knees. Sifa caught a glimpse of dark jeans and boots below the coat before she started towards the house. There was something about this woman that drew her. Sifa noticed people staring at her as if she had done something The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

67 that needed penance. She observed them watching her as she ran, pulling chairs to the tent and picking up everything else that was significant. * Inside the house, Sifa sat amidst choir members; children who had clearly come to eat; the men straight from the farm and the women who clung to their farm produce. The house was a playground now. The lady she had seen was Neema. “I am sorry,” her sister said. The whole room went silent. People sat watching; their eyes were on Sifa. It was as if her mother’s ‘resting in peace’ depended on this moment. “What were you thinking?” Sifa asked. “He defiled me... Jim defiled me,” Neema said, sobbing. For a few moments Sifa’s mind was a ship, all alone, caught in a whirlpool in the sea. She thought of all the hurt she had held inside her heart. She thought of what her sister had just disclosed. “Come here,” Sifa said. Neema stood there, straight as a tower. Sifa went to her and took her into her arms. There they both stood in tears, holding each other, while it started raining again. The portraits of Jane on the green walls watched them. “Shhhhh! Let’s give mum a perfect send off,” Sifa said.

Margaret Muthee is a trained journalist and Freelance writer living in Nairobi, Kenya. She is keen on developing her creative writing skills and hopes to get more published in future. Republished from: http://brittlepaper. com/2016/05/perfect-send-margaret-muthee-african-story/ Background Image used in the illustration-courtesy: “Selected by freepik” The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

POEM

Anushree Bose

Dear Dad, I love you. I want to be more than your precious daughter Please do not smother me to keep me safe Your concern feels much like steel cage My dreams are of fragile beauty like freshly hatched eggs I want to birth them, please be my friend! May be the world is a scary place yet when we haven’t ventured farther away can we really know the truth? You are the first voice of reason I heard can you not show me some faith the spirit of scientific inquiry you hail? Please don’t be mad at my ambition Don’t resent the fact that I love the cerulean sky more than our earthy cozy nest I have a restlessness your lullaby can’t soothe a hunger your care cannot quench Please don’t clip my wings to keep me close See me for who I am instead of who you wish me to be I’m a dreamer Dad, I need to wander around I’m most lost enclosed within walls My heart is filled with longings I cannot word My mind is possessed by questions I have not heard My imaginations are itching to take flight I cannot just walk by the known sticking to neighbourhood paths & lights Maybe because I took more after you than my loving mother Somehow I feel enough of a woman without marriage & motherhood I have seen mother’s sadness the wastage of her aborted dreams I have seen her wallow

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69 for years, in long silenced pain I have heard regrets gnawing at her heart many nights there were sobbing noises when she could believe that I had slept at last I cannot embrace the split she beheld a life delighted by the day and pickled in sorrow by the night I want to shed expectations that society wraps over my lifestyle the way reptiles beget new skin May be you are right like you usually are that I will surely lose my way before coming anywhere close to my path there would be unknown dangers courting my shadow through narrow alleys Trust me, I do heed these cautions and I promise to be careful But Daddy, you have raised me to be hero fear of failure is not our thing, isn’t it You have taught me well to not shy away from labor and suffering to brave the differences, and to do the right thing Is this not the right thing to do surrendering to the throws of chaotic soul calls to find one’s life purpose & true path even if it is something you didn’t raise me for?

Anushree Bose is a bibliophile, food lover and

research scholar. She studies psychology, hoards quotes, and speaks sarcasm. She is fond of long walks, laughing with friends and scribbling poetry, reflections and fictional narratives at her blog Incandescent & Insatiable. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

AUTHOR’S INTERVIEW BY KERRY J DONOVAN MARY SMITH

Mary Smith is a writer of both prose and poetry and a freelance journalist. She was born on the island of Islay, home of some of the best whisky in the world but moved to the mainland to Dumfries & Galloway when she was seven. Finished school and had the longest gap year in history which lasted about 30 years while she travelled a bit in Europe, lived in England where she worked in a factory, was a child-minder and then went to work for Oxfam UK before a chance holiday in Pakistan led to a job there followed by a job in Afghanistan. She returned to Scotland when her son was five and when he started school she finally went to university. She had started selling articles while working abroad and have continued as a journalist – sometimes freelance, sometimes staff – ever since. ‘Drunk Chickens and Burnt Macaroni: Real Stories of Afghan Women’ (a title which seriously curtails tweets) is a memoir from her time in Afghanistan. She wanted to write a novel and worked on what became No More Mulberries while doing an M.Litt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University.

When I post this, I’ll be on my way to Old Blighty to visit the little ones—three children and three grandchildren. Yes, I know, I’m a granddad. Didn’t think I was that ancient, did you? Anyway, I love my little ones to pieces, naturally, and have a great time when in the UK, but I love my own bed and hate travelling. Wish me luck. Right now, I’m interviewing my friend and Scottish author, Mary Smith. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

71 Kerry J Donovan: Hi Mary, how you doing? Mary Smith: Excellent, Kerry, thank you. How are you? KJD: Not looking forward to travelling, but keen to reach my destination. Scottish, eh? I’ve only visited Scotland once, but loved it. Can you tell me a little about there you live? M.S: It’s a small market town set in the middle of some of Scotland’s most beautiful countryside. Forget the Highlands—we have everything right here from hills that are manageable, forests, lochs, rivers and glorious beaches. I’ve just been commissioned to write a tourist brochure! KJD: A commission? Fantastic. M.S: Thank you. As for living here, if you like anonymity, it’s not a town for you—everyone knows everyone and knows everything you do. After years of being away from it, I find that comforting now. KJD: Exactly so. I live in France and don’t speak French very well, but everyone seems to know my secrets, not that I have many, of course. Not many bad ones at least. What can you see out of your studio window? M.S: I live right on the main street so there are shops opposite and I can watch people walking up and down and stopping to chat to each other. On weekend nights, I can watch the drunks weave their way homewards and eavesdrop on their alcohol-fuelled conversations, which are conducted at high decibel level. Over the rooftops, I The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

72 can see the hills. KJD: There are drunks in Scotland? Really? Who’d have thought? M.S: Don’t go there, Kerry. You have been warned. (She smiled saying it, so I know I’m okay—KJD) KJD: Sorry, Mary. Only kidding. Ahem, moving on. I know you’ve been to Afghanistan. That sounds fascinating. What led to your visit, and what did you find there? M.S: “Tell me about Afghanistan” – what in one interview? I’ve written books on the subject and still haven’t done telling people about it! It’s a country that gets under the skin and never, ever leaves you. It was whisky—indirectly—that took me there. I was watching a snooker match in a pub in Lancashire, drinking whisky and talking to a Pakistani friend and by the end of the evening had been invited to visit Karachi in Pakistan with his wife and sister (they didn’t actually know about this until much later). Off I went and while there visited the leprosy headquarters which Oxfam supported in a small way. I spent three days seeing the work they do and was totally bowled over by it and said I’d love to be able to do something. They suggested I stay on and set up a health education department! Pointing out I had no medical training didn’t put them off in the least and they said they would train me in leprosy and arrange language lessons and not being a doctor was a good thing as I wouldn’t use jargon ordinary people didn’t understand. I ended up signing a three-year contract. During those three years, I came in contact with a number of Afghans – this was during The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

73 the Soviet occupation – and at the end of my contract I signed up for Afghanistan. The Soviets left that same year! I stayed for another seven years. My time was divided between the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and the rural areas of Hazara Jat running a project to train female volunteer health workers. It was often frustrating, sometimes heart-breaking, occasionally dangerous—like when armed robbers broke in and stuck a pistol in my ear and an AK47 at the back of neck or when we got caught in a bombing raid—but ultimately incredibly satisfying. I never felt so much alive and connected to the people I was working with, ordinary people who are as appalled as the rest of us by the terror happening in the name of Islam. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the most exotic places I’ve lived but up there in exoticism are India which I’ve visited a couple of times and Vietnam which I was lucky enough to visit last year when a friend was out there for a year. I only managed two weeks and would love to go back to explore further. I’m never satisfied with a couple of weeks as a tourist. I always want to stay on and immerse myself in the culture. KJD: Wow – and here’s me complaining about travelling on the ferry to England. You are very much more intrepid than I am. I can only imagine what it must be like to have a gun against your head. Can I move to less dangerous topics? When not working, what’s the very first thing you do in the morning? M.S: Whether working or not, the first thing I do is drink coffee and read the paper. I know we can get all the news we want online but for me the day has to start with a real newspaper. Then I might have a few games of spider solitaire—totally addicted, I’m afraid. KJD: That’s more like it, very genteel. Let’s move onto books. What genres do you read and do they differ from the ones you write? If so, why? M.S: The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

74 Apart from erotica and science fiction/fantasy/horror, I read most genres. KJD: So I can’t interest you in my next book, Nymphet Vampires from Alpha Centauri on Acid. M.S: Not one bit. KJD: Shame. So, what do you like to read? M.S: I don’t have one particular favourite—a lot depends on my mood. Feeling down for example, a light romance or cosy crime cheers me up. I enjoy contemporary fiction, stories about people and what makes them tick, crime novels and I also read memoir and biography. KJD: Excellent. I know you are a writer, poet, and freelance journalist. If you had to choose only one of these, what would it be? M.S: Oh, no, don’t make me choose. I’m going to say journalist because… No, I can’t say only one because I want to write other novels, poems, and non-fiction. Journalism pays quicker so I need it but I can’t imagine only doing that. KJD: Okay, I’ll give you a pass on that one. What’s the first thing you do when starting a new novel? Do you research and write a detailed plot outline, or are you a pantser? M.S: Well, I’ve only written one novel. Correction—only published one novel. There are parts of novels, which will never see the light of day. I think I’m a pantser who does a bit of planning. When I started No More Mulberries I had my main characters and thought I knew how it was going to end—but it didn’t end the way I planned because as I got to know the characters I realised the ending had to be different. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

75 KJD: I know that feeling. Happens to me all the time. What excites you about writing and the writing process? M.S: When it’s going well and those people I’ve made up are interacting and talking to each other as though they are real—that’s exciting. I didn’t much like Iqbal at the start of No More Mulberries but when he more or less demanded a chapter to himself I discovered things about him which made him a more sympathetic character— and I love it when readers tell me they changed their opinions about him around chapter four. There’s something magical about that. KJD: I can understand that. I love it when readers ‘see’ something in one of my characters that I didn’t write in so many words. I prefer to let my characters’ actions define the person. For how long have you been writing creative fiction? M.S: Oh, I started writing stories when I was a wee girl—long, long time ago. I stopped when a teacher in secondary school demanded to know what book I’d copied a story from. I was so shocked that he didn’t believe I wrote it and would steal someone else’s work. It was years before I realised that actually he had paid me a compliment in a funny sort of way—but it put me off writing fiction for years. KJD: I understand that situation. Teachers have a lot to answer for in my life. Can’t be too hard on teachers anymore because my daughter’s head of music in a secondary school. Don’t know where I went wrong with her. Teehee. If there were a single thing you’d like to change about yourself, what would it be? M.S: I would really, really love not to be addicted to spider solitaire. I would be so much more productive. And I’d like to be less easily distracted when the writing isn’t going as well as I’d like—you The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

76 know when suddenly washing the kitchen floor seems an interesting thing to do rather than sort out a plot dead end? KJD: Nope! I can honestly say that I’ve never had a need to wash the kitchen floor, or any other floor, come to think of it. I see from your bio that one of your roles is to help writers find ways to improve their marketing skills and organise networking with other industry professionals. Can you give my author readers a couple of tips to set them on the road to success? Spend– take as long as you like here, I’ll be taking notes. M.S: Did I write that in my bio? KJD: Yep. It’s there in black and white. M.S: It sounds frightfully grand and expert-like when I feel I’m very much on a learning curve myself. What I do locally, where I live is to help writers network and find outlets for their books. There is a dearth of local booksellers and the one chain bookseller in a wide radius has little interest in stocking local writers’ work. Also, although we have a successful literary festival, it tends to bring in writers of the celebrity kind and doesn’t do much to promote local writers. I teamed up with a some other writers to form a collective called WagTongues—basically if you are a writer living locally you are in it—to provide sales outlets through pop-up bookshops around the region. This sort of evolved into mini-lit-fests with short readings, interviews and workshops. It gives writers a chance to sell books and readers the opportunity to meet writers. We now get invited to pop up at events as well as organising our own pop-up shops. What’s been really pleasing is that some bookshops have started to show an interest in stocking local writers’ books. KJD: Wonderful. That’s something I miss out on by living in France, but there are other benefits. Anything else? M.S: The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

77 I’ve also arranged writers’ gatherings with industry professionals. I didn’t want the usual things of writers listening to one speaker after another with only time for a few questions from the floor then we all go home. Writers love to talk—mostly they are holed up on their own so when they get together they chatter—and most conference allow no time for that. I make sure the time for chatting—call it networking if you want—is factored in. The speakers have included people who are experts in using social media effectively. It used to be a publisher or an agent would be invited to talk but now it is much more likely to be someone who has successfully self-published or someone who can talk about formatting issues. Lots of people, especially starting out, really have not the faintest idea about using social media. I also help people organise book launches, write press releases, contact local radio. I think we sometimes forget about the importance of this locally-based on-the-ground work – book selling is not all done on the internet, some people still want to buy a hard copy rather than an ebook. Other ways to sell books is on the talk circuit – book groups, yes, but also social groups and associations who have guest speakers at their meetings – they are always on the lookout for speakers to fill their schedules and for some reason the idea of having a published author goes down very well. Give an interesting talk about writing, sell a few books, and get your name passed on to other groups. KJD: Wonderful. Now, Tell me a little about your latest work. Where did you find the inspiration? What’s it about? When can we expect to see it on the bookshelves? How about a sneak preview? M.S: Apart from Dumfries Through Time which will be published in August this year, I’m working on two books. The sequel to No More Mulberries the one about a demented dad. For that one, readers can visit the ‘My Dad is a Goldfish blog’: https://marysmith57.wordpress.com/2014/07/ KJD: The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Good luck, I’ll have them on my watch-list. Finally, tell me something about yourself you wouldn’t want you partner/parents to know. Don’t worry; it’ll be our little secret. M.S: Nope. I don’t want to be in the divorce court next week! There is something I wouldn’t have wanted my parents to know. They used to make homemade wine—gallons of the stuff: apple, elderberry, elderflower—and I used to sell bottles of it to my pals at school. Sorry mum, sorry dad. KJD: Oh dear. So you’re the one who led all those innocent Scottish children to a life of drunkenness? How can you live with yourself! M.S: Remember what I said earlier? Be careful. KJD: Er, okay! And finally, finally – is there anything I’ve forgotten to ask that you’re desperately, desperately keen my readers should know? M.S: I want to say thank you for asking me to be a Friday interviewee. Chuffed. And I want your readers to know that Scotland is never shut and is a beautiful place to visit and it doesn’t always rain. But, at least when it’s pouring you won’t be devoured by midgies. KJD: I’m never going to live that down, am I? (I told you not to slag off Scotland! Ed.)

Kerry J Donovan was born in Dublin in the late 1950s, before the time of mobile phones and twenty-four-hour television. He spent most of his life in the UK, and now lives in Brittany with his family. 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/publications-by -kerry-j-donovan/ The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

FICTION INDRAN

DIARY OF AN UNFAITHFUL HUSBAND Rajalakshmi knew pretty well that reading the diary of others without their knowledge and consent is unethical. * But still when she found the diary of her husband, hidden inside the secret locker of his steel bureau, she could not curb her temptation to steal a peek at it. After all, it was the private property of Rajaram, her husband. His vulnerabilities and other grey areas might be in his diary and it is not fair for a civilized lady like her to peep in to the private areas of another person though he might be her own husband. She loved her husband so much that his unruliness and adamant behavior did not matter. * The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

80 Kokila, her intimate friend, and her contradictory opinion on reading the diaries of other persons secretly, came to her mind. Privately once, Kokila had unashamedly revealed how she was fond of reading the diary of her husband regularly and adjust accordingly to make him happier by knowing all his secret fantasies which he normally would hesitate to share openly with her. Kokila also commented that that was the only chance to get in to the private thoughts of husbands. After all, if a wife does not have the right to the diary of her husband who else would? At that point, the Satan in Rajalakshmi woke up to nudge her and in deep throat asked her to open the diary immediately. It reminded her that she also could hold a better control over her husband if she knew the secrets of her husband. Yes! She should! She grabbed the diary and opened it in a hurry. There the Satan in her, looked askance and threw a wicked smile. To Rajiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surprise, a handful of snapshots of a beautiful lady photographed at various places and in various time frames spilled out of the diary and scattered on the floor. The eyes of the lady in the photograph smiled at Raji. Raji was totally rooted to the floor in shock. She was dumbfounded. She managed to recover somehow and picked up the photographs. The woman in the photo was wearing a green sari in one photograph and a pink chudithar in another. It immediately struck Raji of the several quarrels she had with her husband for always selecting the same colour saree, either in green or in pink. Both are the favorite colours of her husband. Moreover, to her surprise, the woman in the photograph was wearing the same crystals which her husband had been insisting her to have and she was refusing all along to buy. As there was no clue available for her to trace the name of the woman in the photographs, she chose a name of one of her worst enemies and christened the woman. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

Raji never expected even in the wildest corner of her dreams that her husband would have a secrete lover â&#x20AC;&#x201C;that too, the lover seems to be more beautiful, much younger and obviously more complying to the taste of her husband than herself! Although she was damn curious to read the entire diary at a stretch, she was afraid that her husband might come out of the bath room at any moment and find her with his diary in her hand. So, quietly, holding the secret to her heart, Raji replaced the diary back in the same place. She drank some cold water from the fridge to regain her normal self. * That night she could not sleep for a long time. The moon showered its cool white rays through the window, drenched the room and blanketed her and her husband beside like a transparent silk. Six years of their intimate family life was metaphorically sleeping by their side in the form of their affectionate four year old daughter. Slowly her eye lids grown heavier and heavier and at last, she submerged in to the great ocean of sleep. The great ocean, in the otherwise silent night, was incessantly creating sound as though it was a prehistoric huge mammal growling in excruciating pain before its demise. Rajalakshmi was drowning deeper and deeper in to the bottomless great ocean of her sleep. Also the diary of her husband was slowly drowning in the deep sea. Soaked in the sea water, the pages of the diary unbound and, like lotus leaves on the water tank at home, loose pages were seen floating in the tireless waves of the sea. Different varieties of fishes swam in a rush to read the pages of the diary of Rajaram. Angel fish with a round large mouth started reading a diary page loudly. Six feet long gulper fish with rows of sharp teeth found it difficult to read the diary loud. So it gave a silent reading. Also, the star The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

fish whose mouth is located at the underside of its body did not fail to read the diary. Another strange fish with a nose resembling the nose of a supersonic jet aircraft swam up swiftly to the top of the sea to grab a page of the diary and darted back to the deep sea, down to eight thousand feet, to read the page secretly. Rajlakshmi was silently witnessing all these things. She felt as if the whole energy of her body was drained out. She slowly swam back like a fish from the bottom to the surface of the sea. Only after climbing over a rock, she realized that she didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have her legs. Like a mermaid, her lower body had changed in to that of a fish with a tail. With tears flowing down her eyes, she looked around. Sea of tears had surrounded her. With trembling fingers, she opened the pages of the diary to read in the broad day light. Instantly, two fascinating insects flew out of the pages of the diary. They had slender bodies with antenna-like protruding part on top and broad attractive wings â&#x20AC;&#x201C;two in the front and two at the back. Over the two fragile and delicate glassy wings, coated with coloured dust particles they flew around composing a romantic music in the space. Raji assumed that one of the butterflies must be a male and other one is a female. A sweet fragrance was emanating out of the body of the female to ensnare the male. The male, with his powerful tiny antennas, detected the body fragrance of the female. Then and there, they cleaned their antennas with their front feet to equip themselves for better observation. It was early spring and both the butterflies settled down on the petals of the colourful flowers. They unfolded their straw like tubes from their head and plunged in to the blossoms to drink the nectar. The male butterfly slightly rose above the female butterfly and flew freely in to the female. Raji observed the submissive female position and the free dominant role of the male butterfly. In normal days Raji used to feel elated to see butterflies in her The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

83 garden. But today she was very much annoyed at the two moths, with wings entwined, enjoying. When she was looking at the love making of the butterflies, she felt nauseating. When the pages moved on and on, her beloved world made of choicest words, started to rot. At last, her good round globe like an orange fruit had turned in to a rotten watermelon spreading the putrid smell through the swirling wind. When she moved on and on in reading the diary, pages after pages, there was a metamorphosis. The round chubby face of her husband Rajaram transformed to be the face of a donkey. At one point, Rajaram’s face was totally altered to be that of a hyena. Lot of dark secrets that Rajaram had been hiding for so many years came to light. * In the midnight, Raji woke up from her lousy dream with the sound of the ring-tone of her husband’s mobile. When Rajaram attended the untimely call, he became visibly upset. In the midnight, after that phone call, he told Raji that one of his best friends had passed away and so he had to rush to Chidambharam to attend the funeral. While she knew almost all the names of his friends, the name he mentioned ‘as a best friend’ was never heard off till date. To her surprise, the name was asexual and she could not make out whether the dead person was a male or a female. Rajaram left home in a hurry and so the next day morning she was free totally. She was tossing on the bed brooding over several things – her four year old daughter; the photograph of the lady; midnight call; yester night’s dream and the strange behaviour of her beloved husband. Raji felt as though she was left stranded on a still railway platform while Rajaram was sitting on a moving train which was lugging him away from her. * When Rajaram returned after a couple of days, it was shocking to see his pale face. His moustache and designer French beard The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

84 were cleanly shaved off. Without his moustache, he looked like an innocent child, more like his four year old daughter. He was totally wordless and lifeless. His bold and arrogant body language had completely changed to that of an amicable child. As soon as he entered the house, he called the name of his daughter in a very feeble voice. Hugging her to his chest, calling her name aloud, he started crying. Now Raji got the confirmation of what she was looking for. The name of the woman in green saree and pink chudithar in the photographs had to be that of her own daughter. Now Raji was no more puzzled at the sanctity of the name as she used to earlier in her married life. Now she knew why he was so adamant to name his daughter with that specific name which was very much criticised by both their parents since it was genderless. But Rajaram was adamant, then. Looking at her crying husband, Rajalakshmi neither asked the reason nor volunteered any soothing words at him. She leaned on the pillar behind her and stood in silence which was engulfing her like four walls of a room. When two drops of tears rolled down her cheek and fell on his wrist, Rajaram, lifting his head, looked at Rajalakshmi with a silent question mark. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;For whom are you weeping?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

INDRAN, well known Art critic and Poet, is from Chennai, India. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

THEATRE: AN ANALYSIS SANTHOSH. S

OEDIPAL CRISIS IN MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA: AN ANALYSIS OF EUGENE O’NEILL’S ‘DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS’ To understand the human nature, through the ages, the philosophers and critical thinkers put forth dogmas and ideologies but they did not have a target of arriving at a solution. Then the discipline of psychoanalysis emerged. The inception of psychoanalysis as an independent discipline has enabled to disclose the human existence. The whole process of the human existence is very much determined by the psychical attitude which lies beneath the surface of the unconscious mind. So the doctrine of psychoanalysis gives much importance to the ‘unconscious’ in order to reveal the very truth of human nature. The complexity to understand the act of procrastination in Shakespeare’s Hamlet has baffled the theatre and literary critics for so many years. Hamlet is portrayed as a complex and indecisive personality to kill The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

86 Claudius to avenge the murder of his father. To reveal the nature of Hamlet, Freud has keenly analysed and explained that the procrastination to kill Claudius is primarily due to something very deep and inner in the psyche of Hamlet which is nothing but his own repressed oedipal desire. Basically psychoanalysis is the study of mental process, especially the unconscious mind and a therapeutic treatment for mental problems particularly for the neurotic disease. The unconscious cannot be analysed directly since it is repressed. Therefore, it has to be studied through its indirect expressions and manifestations in our whole course of socio-cultural life, irrespective of east or west. Of course, the art and literature fields have always been the significant elements of culture which are very much useful to understand the individuals and groups since the work of art as well as literature becomes the substitute for the unconscious desire. It is one of the most important reasons that psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic critics have been concentrating so much upon the realm of art and literature. By doing so, they can grasp the core of human life. The creative works cannot expose the intended meaning explicitly but do so through certain images, symbols, metaphors, and metonymy and so on. Works of art or of literature articulate the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most secret mental impulses but they do so according to a special kind of expression. It is a tactic of artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; unconscious mind in art and literature which transfers hidden motives, instinctual forces and repressed desires into verbal or visual expressions. In many of his lectures, Freud made explicit statements about creative works. He has also The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

87 given psychoanalytic interpretations to the notable literary works such as “Leonardo da Vinci and A Memory of his Childhood” (1910), “The Moses of Michelangelo” (1914) and “Dostoevsky and Parricide” (1928). Freudian approach to Shakespeare’s Hamlet is an important work which has been very helpful to the psychoanalytic critic to develop the notion of psychoanalytical criticism in art and literary studies. I try to elucidate and explore the unconscious mind of the American dramatist Eugene O’Neill through his play “Desire under the Elms”. By analysing the creative work, the unconscious mind of the dramatist can also be explored since the literary work and the writer’s mind are inseparable entities. For Freud, art and literature are the sublimation of the unsatisfied libido which attempts to fulfil the desires. This fulfilment is not a full-fledged one but it provides a ‘socalled’ satisfaction. The individual expresses his or her own neurotic tension through his or her own creative works. The creative artists or writers are moved by the unconscious forces to compensate the unfulfilled desires which are filled with repressed love for the mother that is the first love for every human being. Freud resolved his hypothesis through the play of Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus Rex’. In this play, the protagonist Oedipus unknowingly kills his own father and marries his own mother. From this story, Freud has taken the name Oedipus and named the unconscious neurotic primal desire as Oedipus Complex. O’Neill’s works and his stage directions revealed his oedipal desire and became psychopathology as well. His heroes are severely affected by emotional strains and inner pain. If one can read his plays ‘Desire Under the Elms’, ‘Strange Interlude’, ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’, ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ and other one-act plays, he/ she can easily understand the neurotic problems of O’Neill since the dramatist’s unconscious desire and conflict are unveiled in his creative works. So it can be explained that O’Neill was affected by anxiety and depression. Christopher Bigsby, British literary analyst and novelist, The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

states:

He created, in other words, a psychopathology of the self which was, in a sense, clearly the product of his own traumatic recent past. The drug addiction of his mother, the alcoholism of his brother, his own wilful self-degradation and his tuberculosis contributed to a vision which was brutally deterministic. (Bigsby 40) Eugene O’Neill was born into a Roman Catholic family in New York on 16th October 1888. His father, James O’ Neill was a wellknown theatre personality who earned his fame and reputation by his roles in Shakespeare’s plays. O’Neill’s plays are full of high dramatic situations which are supposed to explore the interior space of human life. Even when there is no external action involved, O’Neill creates an atmosphere of intense dramatic tension and suspense. Like the classical Greek playwrights like Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, O’ Neill was very much fascinated by the tragedy of human life. Going through his works, one can easily find that his male and female protagonists are mostly influenced by Oedipus, Electra, Prometheus, Phaedra and so on. But O’Neill did not like to illuminate his works in the lights of Greek dramatists. He made the tragedy of human being with relevance to the modern era. Most of his plays reveal Freudian and Jungian concepts like Oedipus complex, aggression, The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

89 archetypes etc. His protagonists are always driven by an inner urge and expressed by what Freud defines as the unconscious. In the play “Desire under the Elms”, O’Neill tries to express his own unconscious desire through the character of Eben, the protagonist as well the oedipal son of this play. This play is perfectly constructed on oedipal structure of killing the father and securing the mother. To fulfil this oedipal desire, ‘substitution’ plays a major role to justify the incest oedipal desire. In this play, the hero Eben finds his father in competition, first of all, with the ownership of the farm- the ‘mother symbol’ and then, his stepmother-the ‘mother substitute’. In the beginning of the play itself the oedipal wish, killing the father, is revealed consciously by Eben. The dialogue of Eben proves the patricidal wish: Eben: (With a sardonic chuckle) Honor thy father! (They turn, startled, and stare at him. He grins, then scowls.) I pray he’s died. Supper’s ready. (O’Neill 205) Ephraim Cabot, the father of Eben, causes many a mental agony to his sons. The sons are aggrieved because of the way in which their father constrains them. Eben’s pray for his father’s death is expressed in the above dialogue. Eben harbours hatred towards his father because his father grabs his mother’s property after her death. In Freudian terms, land is the symbol of woman, especially mother. Even in layman’s usage, very commonly, it is addressed as ‘motherland’ or ‘mother earth’. For the conscious mind of Eben, the farm is his mother’s. So he wants to possess it but in his unconscious mind, the farm is the substitute of his own mother. Getting hold of the farm is also an act of separating the mother from the father- a rival. Eben’s father, old Ephraim Cabot’s marriage with a young woman, Abbie, creates serious dispute in the family and thus it paves the way to fulfil the oedipal desire. When Eben meets Abbie, the new wife of Cabot, she immediately The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

90 uses a seductive tone, saying she does not want to be his mother but his friend. But Eben considers Abbie as the new rival in the ownership dispute of the farm. But, in part two of the play, in the parlour of the house, Abbie is seen sitting in a sofa. Eben enters and takes a seat near her. Abbie mentions that she feels the presence of a spirit in the room. Eben is positive that it is his mother’s. Eben starts to speak of his mother. Abbie, in a motherly fashion, yet lustfully, puts her arms around him. The passion escalates and Abbie tells Eben that she could be his mother and lover. Eben feels as if his mother’s spirit urges him to sleep with Abbie to avenge his father for stealing the farm. This deliberately shows that Eben’s oedipal axis tries to re-attain the mother through the substitution. In the conscious mind, Eben is satisfied that by seducing his step-mother, he is avenging his father for killing his mother. But in the unconscious mind, the oedipal wish (instinctual drive) is satiated by successfully carrying out a union with the mother substitute, Abbie. In Freud’s view, ‘the child who emerges from the pre-oedipal stages we have been following is not only anarchic and sadistic but incestuous to force’. The boy’s close proximity with his mother’s body leads him to an unconscious desire for sexual union with the mother. Plays by O’Neill are generally filled with moral anarchy. This is expressed through the quasi-incestuous relationship between a son and stepmother. Eben’s father, an old and bitter man, remarries and thus potentially disinherits his son. But the new wife is young and powerfully attracts Eben. Abbie, Eben’s stepmother insists that their first sexual experience should take place in his own mother’s parlour, untouched since her death. For Freud, ‘incest was an image of anarchy’ and for O’Neill, likewise, it represents the pressure towards disorder which typifies so much of his work. (Bigsby 63) The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

91 By playing with the emotional backdrop of the scene, the dramatist carefully places the incestuous seed through the conversation between Eben and Abbie, his stepmother and also his lover. In Freudian view this substitution is the result of the interpretation of the superego of O’Neill to present the oedipal desire in a culturally acceptable form. The author’s ego is at work in both the characters, Eben and Abbie so as to satisfy the desire of the ‘Id’ and restriction of the ‘superego’. The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that, normally, control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the ‘id’ it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider seeks to do with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces. The illustration may be carried further. Often a rider is obliged to guide it where it wants to go; so in the same way the ego constantly carries into action the wishes of the id as if they were its own. (Freud 702) Here Abbie’s approach to Eben is completely in a seductive manner. So she is the one who promotes the oedipal desire of Eben which already exists in Eben’s unconscious mind. Freud explains: Moreover, the parents themselves frequently stimulate the children to reach with an Oedipus complex, for parents are often guided in their preference by the difference in sex of their children, so that the father favours the daughter and the mother the son: or else, where conjugal love has grown cold, the child may be taken as a substitute for the love-object which ceased to attract. (Freud 530) The expression of friendship by Abbie slowly leads to incestuous relationship- after initial resistance on Eben’s part- which results in Abbie’s pregnancy. Abbie hides her impregnation through Eben and makes him The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

92 believe that the child she carries is that of Cabot. But Eben wishes his child with Abbie is never born and longs for the death of his own child. The basic oedipal desire of Eben is to kill his father. It is evident in saying: Eben:--(With fierce determination) I’m a-goin’, I tell ye! I’ll git rich that an’ come back an’ fight him fur the farm he stole-an’ I’ll kick ye both out in the road-t’ beg an’ sleep in the wodds-an’ yer son along with ye-t’ starve an’ die! (He is hysterical at end.) (O’Neill 257) In this play, three important factors are taken into account for the Freudian approach. First and foremost, Eben wants to take the possession of the farm which symbolizes Eben’s own mother. Secondly, he wants to be the cause of his father’s death after getting alienated from the house, the ‘mother image’. Finally, Eben’s ‘unconscious’ considers his son with Abbie as a ‘father substitute’, though his real father is very much alive. Here we must think about Freud’s noteworthy explanation that in each male, a child or a father, the existing thing in the ‘unconscious’ is only the ‘oedipal son’. Even the ‘man’ becomes a ‘father’ in his point of view; unconsciously every male is the substitution of the ‘father’, since the unconscious mind works primordially form the ‘clan’ society. So, this is the reason why we should take Eben’s son as ‘father substitute’. The unconscious oedipal instinct wants to kill his child, the father substitute. So the ego works and executes this killing by way of condensation, a well known defence mechanism of ego. Condensation is the compression of two or more elements into a single form. Freud argues that condensation has the function of representing a large amount of latent material in a small manifested space. As Freud explains on condensation: “We have already found it necessary to remark that one can never be really sure that one has interpreted a dream completely; even if the solution seems satisfying and flawless, it is always possible that yet another meaning has been manifested by the same dream. Thus the degree of condensation is – strictly speaking indeterminable.” (253) Here, Eben does not kill his own son. But Abbie kills the baby, The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

93 instead of Eben. The playwright’s superego works through Abbie while killing the baby with the justification that a child born out of an incest relationship has to be killed since it is against the ‘culture’. On the other hand, the instinctual drive of Eben which is inseparable from the playwright’s Id, gets fulfilled of its wish to kill the father. At last, in part three, scene four, Eben confesses the guilt to the Sheriff and here the superego is at work. It coerces him to seek punishment for killing the child, the father substitute; even though, he did not kill the child on his own account. Eben’s superego’s desire for self-punishment, as a retribution for the evil deed he had committed, is castration: ultimately, allowing the father to be punished. It is important to note that, in Freudian view, all the creative works are outcomes of oedipal desire which is fulfilled in such a way as to look so natural and indispensable. In the same way, the play “Desire under the Elms” reveals that the oedipal complex works by the way of substitution. The O’Neill’s Id is satisfied in a symbolic way since the ego presents the play in a socially justified way by insisting upon the punishment for sinning. Eben’s repressed unconscious wish is fulfilled on one point by removing the obstacle to his sexual object. So unconsciously the author’s psychic sexual energy plans to kill the father in a disguised manner. Without these disguises, the play would not be celebrated by the audience. Of course, O’Neill’s creative mind tremendously presents this play to all sorts of audience throughout the world. Through the process of systematic substitution of all the oedipal components, the drama itself becomes a surrogate for the works dealing with the oedipal theme. Regarding art and literature, Freud’s “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” is a notable one in this context. By comparing creative writers with day-dreamers, Freud explains that the motive force of the fantasies is unsatisfied wishes, and every single fantasy is the fulfilment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfied reality. Further he states: Actually, we can never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for another. What appears to be renunciation is really the formation of a substitute or surrogate (149). The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

94 The intensive study of the portrayal of oedipal situation in this play has meditatively uncovered that there is a technical approachment of the creative mind by employing substitution as disguise mechanism to portray the oedipal situation aesthetically in the work. O’Neill brings out the inner turmoil and silent desires of the characters in a vivid stage direction. It requires imagination in abundance to find a socially acceptable action and stage direction. O’Neill’s creative mind has achieved this task splendidly through the manifestation of the force of unconsciousness which controls a group of people within the limits of certain accepted norms of behaviour and cultural values. WORKS CITED: Bigsby, C.W.E: A Critical Introduction to Twentieth Century American Drama, Vol.1.1900-1940. London: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Print. Freud, Sigmund: Nortimer J Adler ed. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 54. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007. Print. Art and Literature: New Delhi: Shrijee’s Book International, 2003. Print. O’Neill, Eugune: The Plays of Eugune O’Neill. Vol.1. New Delhi: East-West Press, 1989. Print.

Santhosh S is a Ph.D. Research Scholar in the Department of Performing Arts, Pondicherry University. Apart from acting, his areas of interest include Drama and Theatre Studies, Freudian and Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Modern Philosophy and Literary Criticism. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

95 American Life in Poetry: Column BY TED KOOSER

U.S. POET LAUREATE

Faced by a loss, and perhaps by a loss of words, many of us find something to do with our hands. Here’s a poem about just that by Arden Levine, published in 2015 in an issue of Agni Magazine. Ms. Levine lives in New York. -TED KOOSER

Offering

by Arden Levine

She tells him she’s leaving him and he bakes a pie. His pies are exquisite, their crusts like crinoline. He doesn’t change clothes, works in slacks, shirtsleeves rolled. Summer makes the kitchen unbearable but he suffers beautifully, tenderly cuts the strawberries, pours into the deep curve of the bowl. She hadn’t missed his hands since last they drew her to his body. Now she watches them stroke the edges of the dough, shape it like cooling glass. When the oven opens, his brow drips, he brings his hands to his face. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Stephen C. Behrendt, “Snakeskin,” (Refractions, Shechem Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Stephen C. Behrendt and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2016 by The Poetry Foundation. Poem copyright ©2015 by Arden Levine, “Offering,” (AGNI Magazine, 2015) Poem copyright ©2015 by Jennifer Gray, “Summer Mowing,” from Plainsongs, (Vol. XXXV, no. 3, 2015). The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

96 American Life in Poetry: Column - TED KOOSER Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a touching father-son poem by Jennifer Gray, who lives in Nebraska. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not big enough to push a real mower, well, you make a mower of your own - TED KOOSER

Summer Mowing by Jennifer Gray He has transformed his Tonka dump truck into a push mower, using lumber scraps and duct tape to construct a handle on the front end of the dump box. One brave screw holds the makeshift contraption together. All summer they outline the edges of these acres, first Daddy, and then, behind him this small echo, each dodging the same stumps, pausing to slap a mosquito, or rest in the shade, before once again pacing out into the light, where first one, and then the other, leans forward to guide the mowers along the bright edges of this familiar world. The Wagon Magazine - June- 2016

97 American Life in Poetry: Column - TED KOOSER This past autumn, pruning a big lilac bush, I found a snakeskin that some bird had woven into its nest. Here’s a poem about another find, from Stephen Behrendt, who lives and teaches in Nebraska. His most recent book is Refractions, from Shechem Press. -TED KOOSER

Snakeskin

by Stephen Behrendt

Pruning back the old spirea bushes that sprawled for years in summer’s heat, I bared the snake skin, a yard and a half long: its naked empty length rippled in the streaming wind lifting its ghostly coils from the dead shoots that scraped the slough from the slithering body that shed it in that narrow, shaded space. I paused—who wouldn’t?—shears poised, slipped off gray canvas gloves, extracted the sere, striated casing from the brown stalks that had held it, silent, hidden. I coiled the paper-thin curling sheath with care, delicately, eased it into a simple squatty box for keeping, for care, for my daughters to take to school, to show, to explain how some sinuous body we’ve never glimpsed, that haunts about our shrubs, our porch, left for us this translucent, scale-scored wrapper, this silent hint of all that moves unseen.

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