March 2017

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The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

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VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 12 - MARCH 15 - 2017

Columns:

Sotto Voce-Indira Parthasarathy 04

Musings Of An Axolotl -C.S.Lakshmi 18

Letter from London-John Looker 12 Non-Fiction: Essay - Bill Vernon 54 Book Excerpts: Poisoned Dream by Kuna Kaviazhagan 59 Poetry:

Yuan Changming 39

Colin James 42

JD DeHart 45

Rony Nair 47

David Rodriguez 69

Mark Jackley 71 Kariuki wa Nyamu 75 Dr. Anuradha Bhattacharyya 78

Ramu Ramanathan 80 Fiction: Era.Murukan 19 Book Review:

Nabina Das / Smitha Sehgal 88

Madhu / N C Naidu 94 Movie Review:

Mehal Yadav 92 Tribute: S.Manjunath/ Kannada Poet

Kamalakar Bhat 98 Wrapper photograph by Topher Mcgrillis :The Royal Shakespeare Company

THE WAGON MAGAZINE KGE TEAM

4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024 Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

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PRASAD'S POST Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost. You really do start to believe it after a while

- Walt Whitman

After writing about poetry and appreciation, I was thinking

about the relationship between a poet and a reader. Something was nagging me for a few days until I realised the cause. That was a very short poem by Walt Whitman; in fact, it is a couplet. In the year 1881, that was a late addition to the ‘Leaves of Grass’ Poem To You Stranger! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me,

why should you not speak to me?

And why should I not speak to you?

We find here that neither of the two lines rhyme nor of meter and both are in the form of questions. By these open-ended questions, he makes us look for an answer. The title of the poem, “To You,” accentuates the fact that the poet, Whitman, is directly talking to the reader. We can approach this poem on many levels. On the face of it, it is about two strangers passing each other, somewhere. About the stranger, Whitman reveals nothing. He just asks the other why The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

4 two unknown individuals should not openly address each other.

However, by offering no answer, it remains ambiguous and opens the mind gate of the readers to go in search of more. Whitman, by using very simple diction in this uncomplicated setting, reduces the space between the poet and the reader. Whitman believes that all humans are connected and associated in one way or other and thus, communication should surge without any restraint between everyone. This poem reveals that this does not happen always, and here, through this poem, he expresses his anguish.

Though Whitman wrote this poem more than a century ago, the simple questions he poses here are still convincingly relevant. These are simple questions to ask, but much more difficult to answer. The problems of communication and understanding between the creator and the viewers, the author and the reader and between people, in general, are still prevalent in the society; hence, the poem too. * Since we are discussing Walt Whitman, there is news to be shared here. In a Walt Whitman Novel, lost for 165 Years, found by Zachary Turpin, the graduate student at the University of Houston, there are clues to ‘Leaves of Grass’. The novel titled “The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle” was published online on Feb. 20 in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, and soon will be in book form, courtesy of the University of Iowa Press.

NPR reports this with an excerpt from the book. Readers can find more at www.npr.org. The link is given below. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/21/ 516442353/ grad-student-discovers-a-lost-novel-written-by-walt-whitman Krishna Prasad a. k. a. Chithan The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

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SOTTO VOCE

INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

Though the ancient cultural grammarians of

the Tamil language have included ‘theatre’ as one of the in the intrinsic aspect of ‘Muthamizh’, many of us in Tamil Nadu, especially in the capital city, are inclined to treat ‘theatre’ as the poor cousin of the other two, namely, music and dance. Even during the ‘cultural explosion’ that takes place in December and January, even the few ‘popular’ plays that are being performed are not given the prime time but relegated to the morning session by the sabhas that conduct these festivals.

The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

6 As such, how many of us would know that a young playwright-director from Tamil Nadu was the first Tamil to have won the Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar (Sangeet Natak Akademy) for playwriting in 2012 at All-India level?

The recipient of this prestigious award is Murugabhoopathi, who holds a doctorate degree in Drama. He is a dedicated theatre activist, performing in the rural areas of the southern districts of Tamilnadu. This could be also one of the reasons that he is not much heard of in the urban Chennai, assumed as the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu in the last few decades, though Madurai had that distinction earlier. Murugabhoopathi has the theatre in his blood, as the grandson of the legendary stage-music composer Bhaskardas, who during the twenties and thirties of the last century, challenged the British Empire by his patriotic lyrics sung on the stage by fearless actors, although the plays were mythological! When one is seized by patriotism logic becomes the casualty!

It is very difficult to classify Murugabhoopathi’s theatre. ‘Good theatre is complex in its simplicity’ wrote Wyspianski, the famous Polish painter and playwright. Though it sounds as an Oxymoronic statement, I could comprehend its meaning only after I saw one of the plays of Murugabhoopathi. He needs only an open place for his performance, apparently ‘simple’ in his approach to theatre. But, his emphasis is on this ‘place’ having ‘cultural’ and ‘historical’ memories, which is the complexity of it. He does not call the performing area as ‘stage’. For him, it is ‘Nataka Nilam’ (‘the land for a play’.) The theatre is associated with agriculture in the Marxian sense. Most of his plays are related to this issue of Man’s alienation from Nature, who tirelessly deprives the latter of all its bounties.

His play ‘Semmoothaai’ (The Primordial Mother) which represents the personification of the agricultural land as a feminine entity. In a way it looks like a celebration of the ‘aching joys’ and ‘dizzy raptures’ because of good harvest along with being seen as a visual elegy in times of drought and deprivation.

The ‘place’ for the performance he chooses for each play is very significant, His characters are all ‘non-persons’. They are just physical The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

7 bodies in the literal sense, charged with brutal energy, but no ‘persona’ to conceptualize.

Perhaps, he first creates in his mind ‘verbal’ sounds that precede meanings and later, non-verbal images, which he gets imprinted on the bodies of his group of actors, that eventually evolves into a linguistic text for which he gives a form and direction.

In one of his interviews, he has said that ‘sounds are more meaningful than sense’. To illustrate, when one sees a tiger face to face, the outburst of animal cry emanating from him, would be more meaningful than a statement from him, ‘I feel scared’.

He chose ‘Therikadu’, for his play ‘Koonthal Nagaram’ (‘City of pigtails’), in a southern district, an arid land now, but once, perhaps, had a rich, cultural geography to which the natives living there could relate nostalgically. When he staged the play at that ‘place’ the aesthetic distance between the performers and the spectators vanished. Once he, as the director, provoked them by his innovative theatrical projection, to kindle their primaeval and genetic memories, that the past became one living reality of a continuous ‘present’. Those who saw the play said it was a unique experience.

His play ‘Miruga Vidhushakam’ (‘Animals and clowns’) is a sad postmodernist fairy tale in search of a lost Paradise inhabited by clowns, trees, flowers, birds and all that represented fertility and innocence. A clown is an important character in Sanskritic and Shakespearean plays, as sad wise characters condemned to entertain the audience. But, in Bhoopathi’s play, they are the protagonists, who get lost as clowns but assume different roles to play. They become the agents of destiny to fight for a seed that would become a field to feed the humanity. Beautifully choreographed visuals of white-robed human shadows haunt the stage in perennial search of freedom, food and God! It is apparent, that Bhoopathi is still in his search for creating a post-modernist theatre that has all the native air of ritualism, shamanism and innumerable other folk elements, well-integrated along with the western concepts of Richard Schechner, Jerzy Grotowski and others.

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of R.Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright.

The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

8

Letter from London - 5 from John Looker

William Shakespeare in the Age of Digitally Augmented Reality

The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

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This time my Letter comes to you from Stratford upon Avon,

Shakespeare’s birthplace. A new production of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest has been making news there and my wife and I made a pilgrimage to see it.

The acting and direction are superb, but what I want to tell you about is something else, something that has created excitement and debate.

This is a play in which both magical powers and quotidian political rivalries play their part. So too does love: romantic love of course, but also parental and filial affection. There are wonderful lines and heart moving scenes but famously it also invites spectacular special effects. There is the storm at sea, the magical isle, the presence of spirits – such as Ariel who can fly, become invisible, and change shape.

The Royal Shakespeare Company have excelled themselves in this, using the latest ‘body-capture computer imagery’ to project moving images of actors playing spirits.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether this computer wizardry has enhanced the magic or distracted attention from the true play.

Do you know the story? The idea is this: Prospero, once Duke of Milan, has been marooned on an island, his title and lands stolen by his own brother. He rules this island with magical powers acquired by long years of study.

At last he has the opportunity for revenge over his brother and repossession of his dukedom: a ship draws near carrying the King of Naples, courtiers, and – significantly – the brother, the usurping Duke of Milan.

Using his occult powers, Prospero creates a tempest in which The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

10 the ship founders and the company find themselves stranded on the island at Prospero’s mercy.

Among other themes, Shakespeare charts Prospero’s transformation as he moves from tyranical rule over the creatures of the island and obsession with revenge to a mellowed state in which he is ready to grant freedom to his servants and forgiveness to his enemies. Our world today could use such transformative powers.

Shakespeare’s imagination is at full stretch as he explores how people respond to danger and isolation and – more importantly – to moral dilemmas and crises. The play opens with the storm, which tests the courage of all on board. Cast ashore on the island they face a bleak future. We witness rivalries and ambitions in which not one but two murders are planned. And, there is the wonder of love as Prospero’s daughter meets the first young man she has ever set eyes upon.

There is also one of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters: Caliban, described in the cast list as ‘a savage and deformed slave’. He can be played in many ways. There are post-colonial interpretations in which he stands for the first peoples of a newly colonised land.

There are psychological interpretations and it is not hard to see him as a representation of the id in Freud’s writings.

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11 If we view him through Prospero’s eyes he is clearly The Other, not Us. We might loath him or fear him. Prospero treats him with contempt – not without reason as Caliban once had designs on Prospero’s daughter. Or we might make the imaginative leap to see the world through his own eyes, as Prospero does finally, seeing in him the potential weaknesses of any human. Despite his debased nature, Shakespeare has given him one of the most beautiful speeches in the play. Try saying this without being thrilled: Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices, That if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again.

It is a surprising play and leaves me wondering why this experienced playwright constructed it as he did. It opens with his most dramatic scene, the one with greatest opportunities for special effects: the storm at sea. One of the pleasures of going to The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

12 any production of The Tempest is to see how the director and set designer handle this.

The RSC’s production triumphs: huge timbers suggest the ship, and the full suite of sound and light effects create the storm. Later, those timbers suggest the hills and woods of the island, mysterious and unsettling.

After such an opening scene a production could easily run downhill. Shakespeare however introduced a masque towards the end, with music, dance, extravagant costume and the stately appearance of gods from Greek mythology. For the 17th century audience this generated a new climax. The Stuart kings especially liked royal masques with their courtly display and heavy-handed symbolism about royal prerogatives. In the 21st century the masque scene could be deadly dull.

This production solves the problem beautifully. It brings the masque to us with music and singing the equal of opera. It also deploys those same pioneering computer effects.

It is not easy to explain these. The RSC brought in a specialist company called The Imaginarium Studios. Their description of what they do leaves a lot to the imagination: the computerised capture of The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

13 body images. Movements of the actor playing the spirit Ariel, for example, can be tracked and converted simultaneously into a computer avatar, which is projected onto wispy screens hanging above the stage. The audience sees Ariel metamorphosed into spirit shapes, now flying among the clouds, now imprisoned in a tree. This same 21st century magic enriches the masque.

It’s not perfect but it is impressive.

My feeling is that Shakespeare would have embraced the technology eagerly because his company, The King’s Men, used all the tricks of the stage available at the time.

The Royal Shakespeare Company spent two years working on this with the experts.

In due course other companies around the world will surely repeat it, and improve on it.

Keep an eye open for developments!

All photographs, including front wrapper, by Topher Mcgrillis

:The Royal Shakespeare Company

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

The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

14 MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C.S.LAKSHMI

Raising a River

I

t is strange what the summer can do to you. In Mumbai, we have only two seasons. One is summer and the other is the monsoon.

We miss winter, spring completely and only mildly witness autumn.

December to March is supposed to be “winter� and mid-March we do play Holi with water but for those who know Mumbai, these The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

15 months only tell you stories about what the summer is going to be.

Stories about water scarcity, prickly heat and thirst seem unquenchable. Oranges from Nagpur often quench the thirst much more than water but this time they have come in only now and there are stories of not a bountiful crop this year and one’s thoughts are on the lakes and if the rains have filled them enough. Along with such thoughts of water come memories of death and life. Inadvertently one starts reading about famines and droughts and begins to think of farmer’s suicides that have dominated the news in papers. Strangely, water dominates one’s mind and one begins to recall rivers that have gone dry.

Suddenly one remembers that one has never seen the Vaigai River in Madurai, in flood. All that one has seen is a thin line of water looking an emaciated snake running across the sand. Considering that it was the Ganges itself to gush forth from Shiva’s head as Vaigai, it seems a pity to remember it now as a thin ribbon of water wounding its way on the sand. It was when I was lost in thoughts of drying rivers and dying lives that I read a moving note by Tamil writer Bogan Sankar on Face book. The note talks about changing landscapes and thoughts of rain and rivers that have gone salty. Suddenly at a traffic jam, he sees a tortoise on the side of the road, obviously, one that belongs to a pond. The tortoise is trying to cross the road but is stymied each time it attempts to do so, by the non-stop traffic. It keeps coming up to the road from below and then when it sees the traffic it goes back once again. Someone standing next to it says that it has been trying to cross the road for a long time to go over to the other side of the road, to the pond across the road. Then, he says with a sigh. It does not know that the pond across has also gone dry. It has no water.

With thoughts of water pushing me into a mood of desolation, I had chanced upon the news of a ‘Home Ministry Kit for Adolescents’ in which one of the things the adolescents were told was that same-sex attraction was normal and that it was okay for boys to cry.

In a particular passage, it said, “Yes, adolescents frequently fall in love.

They can feel attraction for a friend or any individual of the same or The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

16 opposite sex. It is normal to have special feelings for someone. It is important for adolescents to understand that such relationships are based on mutual consent, trust, transparency and respect. It is alright to talk about such feelings to the person for whom you have them but always in a respectful manner… Boys should understand that when a girl says ‘no’ it means ‘no’.” It seemed that at last, the queer was going to be normal.

It was in this mixed mood of desolation and elation that I picked up to read a book of poems by Dibyajyoti Sarma. I was drawn to the book because it had no author’s name on the cover and the cover was very differently designed with a rather unusual drawing and the title read Pages from an Unfinished Autobiography. Moreover, the first poem my eyes fell upon as I opened the book was about adopting a river. In addition, strangely in a country where most of the rivers are feminine, this poem spoke about the river being male.

“I have adopted a river” the poem began, and then went on to The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

17 say:

He will be my son; my inheritor, my future He too was lonely, he too didn’t know what smile means Under the old sisham tree, on the nest The woodpecker had built for her unborn daughters.

I brought him home; brought him Colourful fishes form the pet shop For winter I made him paper boats I gave him my name, my future But it wasn’t easy.

The sky said no He won’t give cloud to my son The birds raised objections and shrieked in agreement The fishes too were doubtful; they asked, Would I be able to raise the river Without his mother? Who will love him?

I said, I. I have poison in my heart Poison in his lips too I can feed him the unbroken tears of my soul I am lonely. He too.

I argued, but they won’t listen I ran from one hill to another From one tall pine tree to another…

I need the river He is my future.

Finally, the old vulture near the hill Passed the verdict: Sadness is the seed of love I am seeped in sadness I can raise the river.

It was the most unusual poem I had ever read about making a river your son. Apart from a yearning it revealed for fathering (or is it mothering) something that was not still and solid but fluid and flowThe Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

18 ing, the poem seemed to speak of the ephemeral nature of life itself.

Of it not being something to hold on to but something that always flowed away, thwarting all attempts to be held. That the river was as lonely as the person who wanted to be its father and as sad made it seem as if nature itself had come closer to this person who seemed to be seeking love from another just like him, in his own likeness. It was as if all his relationships had flown past him much like the river and in a river, he had seen himself turning into the lonely child he was and the lonely human being he had continued to be.

It was an amazing poem. So were many of the others in the book. The punctuations were unusual. They were not grammatically right. The words seemed scattered. The lines appeared broken. Yet the poems managed to reach out. I wondered about the poet and the note on him only confirmed that someone whose life had not taken the beaten path wrote these unusual lines. The note on the author says: At 25, Dibyajyoti Sarma thought life is beautiful and he had seen it all (he was in love of course). By the time he turns 33 (he refuses to grow anymore), has made some terrible choices, is single, and realizes that he doesn’t know anything about anything anymore, except, there’d be many more choices to make.

The note talks about him living in between the wasteland of hope and remorse. About him being genetically lazy and that he keeps wondering whether it is in him to be an author. And that he is an optimist “when not going through bouts of clinical depression, which is almost every day, and that he continues to dream of a better existence when Rabindranath whispers in his ears, ‘I don’t get what I want, I don’t like what I get…’”

Dibyajyoti is the river he wants to adopt it looks like, never still, always on the move, lonely and flowing in all directions. It is the only book where some 75 people are acknowledged apart from one R who is mentioned with the words, “even in death, forever, at least till I am alive.” The acknowledgement reads like one long prose poem by itself.

If Dibyajyoti is this person keeping a journal of poems, which he often loses for he is not sure who would be interested in his broken The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

19 ramblings, the person doing his illustrations, Farbod Morshed, who was born in an old quarter of Tehran on a hot summer day in 1974, in a family home with a small pool full of goldfish, and pomegranate and fig trees, is a poet who has become an illustrator. He is called a poet of lines and shapes. All he knows is that “gravity is not all about physics; it is also about falling.” And, he draws “whenever he falls down/in/apart and what other conjunction that may follow this verb, to help himself stay ‘on the line’.”

My earlier mixed thoughts about the summer, water, drying rivers, ponds and lakes and teaching adolescents that same-sex attraction was normal and that boys could cry had wandered to the poems of Dibyajyoti Sarma and to the illustrations of Farbod Morshed (or should one say to the poet of lines and shapes?). A strange calm settled on my mind. I felt that despite our lives flowing like rivers in different directions, some dry and some in flood, there is always a confluence at some point or the other.

No one is really left all alone.

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 - March - 2017

20

FICTION

ERA.MURUKAN

As Karupiah alias Karp entered the luxury hotel room, he could hear the low volume hum of the aircon unit. He gently placed his laptop computer on a cushioned chair and powered it on. The application that came alive on the screen started throwing routine queries against a blue and white background.

Is the meeting room open? Is the aircon functioning? Are the chairs comfortably cushioned? Are the bathroom lights on? Is the commode working?

Karp repeatedly marked ‘Yes’ as his response to the barrage of questions, while trying to wean an animated giraffe away from the cursor. The application developers had incorporated a little graphics into their work like that playful giraffe, to break the monotony of responding to an endless stream of questions.

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21 Is the room pleasant to be in?

He paused for a moment. He was not quite certain when the air conditioning unit was switched on. Yet, It was not as hot and sultry in the room like what prevailed outside, as the evening was advancing. It had to get further cooler. When the team would meet in an hour’s time, it should not be the source of unpleasantries.

Is the room pleasant?

The query popped up again impatiently and Karp with practiced ease, quenched the system’s thirst for answers, with another ‘yes’.

But for two, Karp knew all others who would be attending the get-together. They, all of them Japanese, worked along with Karp and a hundred and twenty local professionals. Karp, his people and the visiting Japanese together were developing a massive application software to run the operations of a large retail bank in Tokyo.

This was the largest technological team headed by a Japanese middle management executive by name Yudha Nakamura. All the team members including the locals respectfully addressed him as Yudha-san. The ‘San’ suffix was mandatory to be applied to the names of all associated with the project, men and women, when addressing them either in person or in email correspondence. ‘People are very sensitive to the way they are addressed’, Yudha-san said at the first project meeting, especially to the Indian team members.

Yudha-san was always seen with a tiny computer held in his hand and with eyes squinting to read the display on it. A comprehensive version of the questionnaire would be perpetually open on his computer. The questions would relate to anything that might even remotely impact the bank operation software, posing a risk to its completion as scheduled.

Have the team members availed 4 hours of rest last night? Have they taken any extended respite beyond that? Did they have their breakfast this morning? Were they able to pass their stools without difficulty? Are they drinking adequate water? Are they keeping away from smoking?

The questionnaire would get dynamically configured and customized based on the time of the day and the task on hand as well as the entity at the responding end. When a new member of the team The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

22 is administered the questionnaire, it would commence in an innocuous manner with a query about the fragrance of flowers. Which flowery fragrance do you like most? Having obtained that piece of information, the questionnaire would gradually get more intimate.

Did you have a good sleep last night? Did you have sex last night?

How many times did you indulge in penetrative sex last night? With how many persons you went to bed? How many of them were the project team members? How many of them were of your sex? How many of them were of your age? How many were below your age? Did you indulge in oral sex? Was it before or after coital sex? Did you and your partners wear condoms?

All this information and much more would be required by Yudha-san to be fed into the application. This would be necessary for reckoning the progress or setback of the project going on. Karp was aware of all that and like others was never tired of answering any questionnaire, anytime.

This happened only the day before – On knowing that the Festival of Lights, Deepavali would be celebrated in another two weeks time, Yudha-san added one hundred and seventy-seven queries to his question database. These were the ones on how to handle the ensuing risk due to the arrival of the festival, somehow missed to be reckoned earlier. With the guidance of the system, Yudha-san also came up with the process to be employed to handle the crisis called Deepavali, the festival of lights. It was: On Thursday, the Deepavali day, none of the team members would be granted leave. A thirty minutes long Deepavali celebration would be organized in the office premises where the decibel-configurable eCrackers would be burst with appropriate amplification. This would be followed up with the ePyrotechnics display on giant screens at the application development area and arranged on a secure corporate net cloud so that those working in the project at Tokyo could also participate. As a gesture of goodwill, all the team members would be provided with 125 gramme of Indian sweets and another 125 grammes of Japanese sweets each, at the canteen during lunch which would be offered free of cost by the company. Each of them would be The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

23 gifted with lingerie or a scarf or a handkerchief made from pure, soft Japanese silk, for Deepavali. Yudha-san made the team aware of all these in a specially conveyed meet.

A young girl, who joined the team as a campus recruit a month ago, on hearing that there will be no holiday for Deepavali started sobbing uncontrollably with her face getting flushed. She grabbed the duster kept at the bottom of the whiteboard Yudha-san used to write on when conveying new regulations and fast-tracked schedules to the team, and threw it aimlessly. It hit Yudha-san on his knee and rolled to the ground. Yudha-san looked at the girl in all benevolence and sympathy and muttered in Karp’s ears, ‘It is all my mistake, Karpsan. I should have anticipated such action and framed appropriate questions’. Yudha-san revised the application immediately and a set of new questions came scrolling on his palmtop computer.

It was then Yudha-san observed excitedly, ‘Karp-san, the Application reminds me to ask a hitherto low priority question, now promoted to the top in the order’.

Karp was wondering whether it would be about the duration of his sexual activity last night about which he knew he could not furnish an impressive response if honestly given. Yudha-san came up with a totally unexpected question, though, ‘Was a meeting conducted for providing rest and recuperation to the team leaders’?

‘Yudha-san, no meeting was conducted to provide rest and recuperation to the team leaders’.

‘If it was not conducted, Karp-san, it has to be conducted this evening.’ said Yudha-san.

‘It will be conducted’, Karp nodded in approval.

‘They have to take rest this evening. Let this be auctioned upon as a top most priority item’, repeated Yudha-san, as the supreme head of the project.

That obstinate response from Yudha-san galvanized Karp into action and he found himself standing all alone in the hotel room.

Konichiwa.

Someone was wishing Karp a good evening. He turned back.

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24 Carrying a black shiny attaché and with a huge jute bag hanging loosely from his shoulder, Akira-san was standing at the entrance, appearing a tad nervous. If Karp was not in the mood to wish him back his greetings in Japanese or in any other language, he seemed all prepared to retrace his steps. He would have preferred to get himself dissolved in the crowd and disappear, had that happened.

Konichiwa.

Karp bent a little, bowed and uttered the greetings, which immediately put Akira-san at ease. With an impish grin, he entered the room.

As Karp switched on all the LED luminaries, it became much brighter and colourful, with shades of soft blue and lavender engulfing the room. Karp gradually brought down the brightness to make it suitable for availing rest and recuperation.

There were eight black reclining chairs laid out in two rows of four each. They were stuffed with plush cushions with cosy and comfortable headrests and broad hand rests. A low table with a pure white cloth spread on top was there besides the chairs. All these were on expected lines as envisaged by Yudha-san.

‘Gosamasi’, Akira-san thanked Karp, bending forward a little and immediately ran towards the last chair to the left on the second row, with the swiftness of a stealth bomber.

‘I have been instructed to be present here 15 minutes before the commencement of the proceedings’, Akira-san told Karp in a whisper.

‘You have come exactly 15 minutes before the scheduled commencement’, Karp showed him his laptop time display with an appreciative nod. Akira-san clapped his hands and laughed in abandon like a child.

His mobile phone purred. With an instantaneous excitement descending dense on his countenance, he ran to the room corner away from Karp, shouting ‘moshi, moshi’ into his mobile. Karp went out to switch on the corridor lights and when he came back in, he found Akira-san still listening attentively on his mobile with his whole body bent down in servitude. For the next 15 minutes, he was in rapt attention to the caller with occasional Hai Kutasi uttered with all devotion and with the head nodding perpetually in a quick up and down motion.

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25 The conversation over, he ran back towards Karp and in a voice choked with emotion and ecstasy of one who was the sole witness to a recent miracle said: ‘The senior executive of Division 7 called me up just now. Yes, the senior most. Top-san’.

‘For his rank and designation, he ought not to have known about the existence of a low level being by the name Kinato Akiro’, Akira-san declared. Yet, it was indeed his fortune that happened.

What did the Top-san communicate to Akira-san? Karp enquired.

‘Karp-san, you also should be happy. Top-san is happy we are going to integrate into the main application the voice to Japanese written word conversion widget we are developing here. He is delighted the sentences like I am living, I am working, He is winning, She never takes rest etc. are getting properly formed as written output in Japanese, both as Katakana and Kanji scripts’.

Akira-san was momentarily back at the trance-like state as he uttered this.

The senior, second highest in the hierarchical order executive, Top-san from Tokyo told Akira-san that he was excitedly awaiting the test run of the software developed here. He was thrilled it would be accomplished with 75 testers conducting quality assurance runs of the application, non-stop for two weeks, which was due to commence, the week after. Though organization hierarchy-wise, he was 6 slabs down below Top-san from Tokyo, Top-san was gracious enough to phone up Akira-san and share his thoughts on the software. This seldom would happen in the hierarchy-driven corporate organization. Akira-san went on repeating how the God from Tokyo interacted with him.

Tears were welling up in Akira-san’s eyes as Karp gently guided him to his chair. It was at that moment, others entered as a group.

There were five of them, the expert technologists from Japan.

They all carried black leather attaches in their hands. Yudha-san was the first to enter.

Following Yudha-san, maintaining a respectful social distance of two feet, Mari-san came with a humble smile. She happened to be the only expert woman technologist in the group. The golden earThe Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

26 rings Mari-san wore dazzled in the controlled brightness of the vapour lamps lit in the room.

After Mari-san, Ishikava-san entered, carrying a tiny electric rice cooker on his right hand in addition to the mandatory attaché on the left. Close on his heels were the two new-sans entering with trepidation. Not being sure what they were supposed to do, they nervously looked at Yudha-san for guidance.

‘Am I late, Karp-san’? Yudha-san asked. He shuffled his feet while he kept standing, awaiting Karp’s reply. Others too stood behind him in single file.

‘No, Yudha-san, you are not late. In fact, you have arrived a minute earlier’, Karp looking at his watch and beaming a smile, informed in encouraging tones. Yudha-san’s face registered a sad look immediately.

‘I am extremely sorry. I have come unplanned like a moron a full 60 seconds in advance and have wasted a portion of your time you would otherwise have scheduled for your tasks on hand’ He sat with a look of anguish crossing over his face and marked ‘No’ on his palmtop computer for the question, ‘Did you arrive in time for the meeting’? He reclined on his chair looking remorseful while others shared his grievance and sat bolt upright. The new-sans were perched on their seat edge with contrite.

Yudha-san stared at his palm top for quite some time. He raised his head, looked at all and enquired -‘Is the entire group of team leaders now tension free and happy?’

They answered in the affirmative, in unison, Karp with his voice raising with increased decibels joined others in their saying ‘Yes’. The tiny smile that crept on Yudha-san’s face stood frozen there. Yudha-san, with his palm top now on his lap, reclined a little more and nodded his head in approval of their sentiments.

Without any trace of emotion on his face, he looked at the screen and read out loud the next question -‘Has half a bottle of sake, the rice-based Japanese liquor been made available to each of those presen t here’?

‘Cooooochi coo’ Akira-san screamed like a recalcitrant schoolboy and excitedly The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

27 opened the large jute bag he kept under the side table. A small improvised cork-screw with a tiny motor and a LED display at top was taken out of the bag first. This was duly placed on the table. Akira-san then took out deliberately slow the bottles of sake one by one from the bag, to the hushed murmurs of ‘Arigato’ from the group assembled there.

Karp muttered appropriately in similar phrases in his own language.

Akira-san ultimately took out the coloured ornamental glasses and arranged them on the table.

Akira-san kept the improvised cork-screw at the centre of the stopper on a bottle of sake and switched it on. The rotating needle protruding long and thin out of the gadget drilled with vigour into the cork and decanted the spirit through its long capillary tube, onto the glasses kept nearby.

Does anyone feel like tasting any other variety of liquor?

Raising his glass to the level of his eyebrows, Yudha-san enquired, looking at his palm top. Two feeble voices answered ‘Yes’, only to be immediately corrected to ‘No’, as all others responded so. The newsans with their hands trembling looked at each other with feeble smiles. Yudha-san conveyed his pardon with a nod which made them appear relieved and smiling joyously.

‘Does anyone require hot Indian chips’? Karp asked.

Though there was a resounding ‘No’ that came from the group, all eyes were on the side table, Karp noted.

Karp looked at the extra large side table. He had arranged with the hotel administration to keep it there near the wall with a few bottles of chilled beer. Also there were four plates of banana chips and other Indian savoury items like Bikaneer bhujia, with sheets of cellophane paper covering them air tight. A hermetically sealed packet nearby had on it in large print, ‘Extruded, fried zero-cholesterol wheat flour based salted Indian sticks – for export’.

They all commenced sipping sake together as if on cue. Yudha-san with an eye on the palmtop enquired again – Are all happy here? They responded together they indeed are. It was then they noticed the young girl standing at the entrance.

‘She is the dancer’, said Karp. The girl looked hardly a day more The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

28 than 16. She was lean, tall and black and was wearing a crimson coloured chudihar, the Indian pyjamas and a printed kurta, the loose shirt with pictures of lotus and sun flowers. She looked around and with evident satisfaction went near the flower pot in the corner to leave her footwear besides it. Having done that, she came in with the large leather bag on her shoulder dangling a little, greeting all with a cheerful Hello.

‘Please sorry me. Apologies for me, please. You please excuse me ’.

It was Mari-san trying to say something, which escaped her mouth as a repetitive broken murmur. She would always write in her mind in Japanese what she had to convey and would translate it through multiple iterations, murmuring all along, Karp recalled.

‘Will this girl dance’?

Mari-san gestured towards the girl and enquired with surprise.

As she took another sip of sake from her glass, her face radiated calmness and tranquillity like the countenance of Maya Devi on giving birth to Gautama Buddha.

‘Yes, she will. It’ll be a performance of Indian traditional dance.

The grand finale would be the snake dance’, Karp told her, trying to gulp the sake in his glass at one go. He somehow could not relish it.

‘Are there snakes with her’?

‘Yes, I have’, said the girl. They all stood up in unison looking at her shoulder bag with primordial fear.

‘Has an entertainment programme been organized for the group’?

As Yudha-san asked squinting to read the next question on his palmtop, they all said ‘yes’, together.

‘Where are your dance costume and jewellery’? Karp asked the girl with evident impatience.

‘They are in my bag. I shall come costumed and made up in another five minutes’, the girl said with all confidence, chewing gum slowly.

‘What happened to the singer, the drum player, the flautist and the one with cymbals’?

‘They are all here’.

She pointed at her mobile phone and pulled out a small contraption with two enjoined cobra like tiny speakers from her bag. She The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

29 connected it to the mobile and on touch of a key, mellifluous Indian dance music came gushing forth loud and clear from the phone.

Karp waved her to a chair.

‘And where is the snake’?

Yudha-san asked in anxiety and reverted to his questionnaire still going up on his screen. Obviously, this question could not be in his database.

‘The snake will come when it has to, sir’.

The girl stood up, answered with all respect and went straight into the bath enclosure. As she closed the door gently, Ishikawa-san with the tiny rice cooker on his hand was walking across the room surveying the walls. He was looking for a plug point to plug the cooker on.

‘These Indian chips and other fried low-fat savouries are speciality items popular among food fans globally. They are vegetarian and mildly spicy, the Rajasthani bhujia and Manaparai murukku. You can try these snacks if you feel like’, Karp told the group.

‘Snakes’? Mari-san let out an excited scream as Karp immediately responded, ‘No san, not snakes, these are snacks’. He went on to spell both the words as Mari-san thanked him profusely as she resumed sipping her glass of sake.

‘Why don’t you try these, just a spoonful, Ishikava-san’?

As Karp enquired, Ishikava-san explained –‘My doctor in Tokyo has advised me to always go for rice cooked fresh. It can be mixed with desiccated and pound fish if I desire. But he suggests it is better to go for plain cooked rice. He insists I carry this rice cooker wherever I go’.

As he was cooking the rice, the dancing girl returned from the bath, attired in a bright dance costume and with a golden band around her waist. She had washed her face and had her hair braided tight and decked in jasmine flowers. With black kohl applied to her eyes and a red spot on her forehead, she looked charming and effervescent. She was wearing at her ankles anklets with tiny bells which chimed as she walked briskly. And, she was ready to dance.

Mari-san got up from her chair and went towards the dancing girl.

She held her in an embrace hissing, ‘excuse me, excuse me, excuse me’.

‘Dear girl, why don’t you wear my earrings and dance’?

The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

30 The girl politely declined Mari-san’s offer and holding her hands, smiled beautifully.

‘The programme is about to start. All, please occupy your seats’, Karp announced. Mari-san screamed ‘yes’ and walked with faltering steps to her chair.

‘Give the girl some sake’.

Mari-san waved in the direction of the dancing girl and raised her near empty glass.

‘No, thank you’, the dancing girl declined with poise and pressed a few keys on her mobile. The music commenced playing again. She kept it on an empty chair as a voice of a woman too joined the instruments, on the mobile.

‘They are the veena, the string instrument, flute and mrudangam, the drum accompanying any performance of south Indian dance’.

Karp explained.

The girl took out of her handbag, a few perfume sticks. She also took a gadget looking like two tiny fire stones chained together with a silver thread and vigorously stroke them together. With a few sparks of fire spurting out, she lighted the perfume sticks and looked at the group.

‘This is not a cigarette lighter. Smoking is injurious to health’.

As others nodded in unison, she took a small plastic flower holder from her bag and kept the sticks stuck into the holes on its base.

She kept the holder upright on the side table, near the bottles of beer.

A soft and gentle fragrance engulfed the room as she started dancing.

‘Are all happy now?’

Yudha-san enquired again and with the ‘aye’ sounds reverberating in the room, he grinned as he entered ‘Yes’ on the computer.

‘Does anyone feel like some more sake? Another half a bottle, perhaps?’

Everyone except Karp answered ‘yes’ this time.

‘Karp-san, my apologies. To have more sake is the decision of the group. You too shall have it’.

Yudha-san said in a low voice accompanied with a gentle bow of his head. He marked yes to the next question about another round of sake for all as they rest and recuperate. Akira-san poured directly The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

31 from the bottles into every glass filling them up to the brim in the process.

Yudha-san raised his glass and solemnly addressed the gathering - ‘Tokyo has conveyed their best wishes to all of you, through me.

The company has wished you all success in your endeavour and trust you would be soon back home at Tokyo. Dear all, I am proposing a toast for the success of our project and growth of our company. Please join me’.

‘Please please please’. It was Mari-san. Sake has made her voice mellow and vibrating. It sounded like a dirge –‘My daughter is getting married, she has emailed me. The house is her own. She built it with her income as a hospital nurse. She wants to be there with her husband to be. Only those two. Where, please excuse me, please, where should I return in Tokyo’?

‘Questions of this nature are not there in my computer’, said Yudha-san. They are not there, said Akira-san. Ishikava-san watching his rice-cooker from his seat echoed yes. The two new-sans told with all confidence, ‘Yes, they are not there’. Mari-san nodded her head in affirmation and said ‘I please understand’. She thereupon resumed watching the dance, somewhat relaxed.

Fast paced music came loud and clear from the mobile phone of the dancing girl. As she danced, she also announced in advance what is it all about, for each part of the programme. ‘This is alarippu, meaning flowering of the bud is the first piece of the programme; this one is kavuthuvam, invoking the Divine blessings; this is Thodiamangalam’, she chirped as she danced.

Mari-san sent a flying kiss to her sipping, intensely her sake.

‘My dear daughter, dance like there is no tomorrow. Don’t love anyone without having a house of your own. No snakes should be allowed to sleep on the floor there’. The dancing girl was smiling as she cavorted in all elegance.

Ishikava-san’s rice cooker whistled like a mini steam locomotive and switched off the cooking mode, turning to ‘keep warm’ status.

‘This whistle means it is just the right time to consume the cooked rice. If delayed, it won’t be that palatable, though hot’. Saying so, IshiThe Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

32 kava-san walked with feeble steps towards the cooker. He kept his glass of sake on the floor. It was half-full.

‘Due to my sensitive stomach, I find it difficult to dedica te my full efforts and expertise to our glorious organization. I don’t know how long I’ve to carry this rice cooker wherever I go. To eat cooked rice daily is tedious. It smells shit. It tastes shit. Wish me more health and strength to contribute my best to the institution. A glass of sake for me please’.

He was crying as he bowed in all humility. The smell of cooked rice. Standing by the cooker, he started consuming the rice using a long wooden spoon.

The strong smell of cooked rice was in the air.

The dancing girl who was depicting the scene of the neighbours complaining to the mother of infant lord Krishna about his pranks, stopped abruptly in the middle of a musical note. The gagra blouse with tasteful embroidery work she was wearing gave away at the hooks on the back and the inner garments were visible. She immediately pushed her back to the wall and was leaning on it to save any embarrassment.

‘Does anyone have a safety pin please’? She enquired. Mari-san searched into her handbag and took out a long safety pin that glittered under the bright room lights. With unsteady steps, she walked towards the girl and gave it to her. ‘Gold?’ the girl enquired hesitantly.

Mari-san replied ‘My lover boy presented this to me for my birthday last year. Wear it. Excuse me, please. Then you return to me. You are my daughter. Please excuse me and dance. Finish before the snake appears, is that alright’?

The girl momentarily went into the bath and returned forthwith to continue with the complaints about Krishna’s pranks. She was getThe Wagon Magazine - March -2017

33 ting polymorphic as Krishna, his mother and the complainant.

Akira-san’s mobile rang. The ring tone was a sound byte of the running commentary of a vintage FIFA final football match. It was the voice of the commentator going in a loop narrating excitedly how the header from the halfway line turned into a victory-clinching goal. As the dancing girl pranced around as Natarajan, the God of Dance with a swift footwork and hands arched gracefully, the football commentator rudely intruded into it. Akira-san shook himself out of inebriation and as everyone was looking impatiently at him, he ran to the corner of the room, screaming ‘Moshi, moshi’ into his mobile.

‘It would be midnight now in Tokyo’.

Yudha-san informed Karp. With a blank look he was watching the dancing girl circumambulating the space she was gyrating. Her eyes were rolling menacingly as her tongue was a little protruding from her mouth, blood red in colour. With her whole body trembling she jumped up holding an imaginary spear in her hands, as she performed the dance of Kali, the Divine mother and the destructor of evil.

Akira-san was trembling in excitement as he returned with the mobile held closely to his ear. He informed loudly over the sound of drums emanating from the girl’s mobile building to a crescendo, as she nonchalantly whirled past: Top-san regrets no one has realized the importance of the software being developed here to convert spoken Japanese to written words. He is surprised none here or elsewhere appreciates the fact this opens doors to speak in Japanese and get written in English immediately. He says that is Godly.

Akira-san started weeping uncontrollably. All stood up and clapped.

‘Top-san conveys through me, a non-descriptive role-holding insignificant employee, all best wishes to you all. He wishes you all the best through me’ Yudha-san gently tapped him on the shoulder and lead him to his seat. The dancing girl was enacting the annihilation of a demon in the hands of the angry Goddess Kali, oblivious of Top-san’s out of the world generosity and kindness to fellow human beings.

‘Let us propose to the health of Top-san’.

Akira-san measured sake and filled up all glasses.

The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

34 ‘Let us take a vow we shall sacrifice our life, family, holidays, friends… everything to the institution and wish many happy years of active service to Top-san. Let us promise him we shall successfully implement this speech to writing the application as scheduled ’.

All of a sudden, the room was filled with a melodious music like that from a bagpipe. Karp stood up with his whole frame shaking and shouted, ‘Snake music. Hear the music of the snake’.

He stopped abruptly and with a loud laugh sipped his sake.

The dancing girl was gyrating with head thrust forward and back like a snake closing on its prey, to the rhythm of the pipe music oozing out from the mobile phone. Akira-san went close to the girl, watched intensely her dance, and he too tried to imitate her movements, revolving slowly with a benign smile. He, however, failed in his attempt to dance and dropped down to the floor.

‘Even if I fall down, our software will be a success. Our software for’. He was muttering repeatedly lying on the floor with eyes closed. The dancing girl continued her traverse reptilian movements unperturbed.

‘Please please excuse me’, Mari-san in a shrill voice said as a snake came crawling in from the far off corner of the room. It was where Akira-san felt enlightened conversing with Top-san.

Karp observed it was a python as it was large and it advanced slowly with an apparent knowledge of the terrain and inhabitants.

‘A python here? Not at all possible. Pythons don’t come attracted by pipe music. This should be a cobra. But cobras are not admitted in five-star hotel rooms. This reptile should then be an overgrown earthworm. Maybe coming from the lawns’, he argued with himself. He started believing that too much sake is playing tricks with his eyesight and reasoning. He took another sip from his glass to quickly do a sanity check of that line of thinking which lead to ambiguity.

The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

35 Yudha-san read the display on his palmtop kept on the hand rest of his chair. In a feeble tone, he asked, ‘Is everyone happy’? Mari-san stood up and bowed to him like a sumo wrestler. She then started making long shrill notes like the whistle of a locomotive train entering a long circumventious tunnel. After a few seconds, the whistle stopped and she spoke.

‘No... Yudha-san. I am not happy. Excuse me, please. I’m sad.

Very sad. The sounds of love making my daughter and her husband produce in the adjacent room make me stay awakened throughout the night. A large snake sleeps in my room. It wants me to dance. It wants to sleep with me. I’m very disturbed. Without having a room of my own, without sake, how can I sleep? How can I sleep silently with the snake? I have to tell him about the dancing girl... about Akira-san’s project to convert spoken a word into written English. What is loving without sharing information?’.

‘Your questions are not in the computer’, Yudha-san declared with a sympathetic nod of his head. He politely gestured to Mari-san to take her seat. ‘A member can speak for a maximum of 30 seconds at a stretch’, he reminded the gathering, as a matter of fact.

‘May I have a bottle of sake all for myself ’? Mari-san enquired no one in particular. She was obviously tired of speaking that long.

‘This too is not in my database’, Yudha-san observed with a languid demeanour. He, however, gestured to Akira-san to issue her a bottle of sake.

The snake crawled near the dancing girl. It raised its hood a little.

Karp pointed at the snake and moved between the rows of chairs drawing everyone’s attention.

‘Excuse me all. This is a king cobra. This will dance like the girl. It can dance much better than the girl, free of cost. You have to watch it.

It is for our real rest and recuperation. No more questions. ‘Yes’ for all questions asked. ‘Yes’ for all queries yet to be raised. ‘Yes’ for the questions that will not be asked. You can better’. Without completing the sentence, he collapsed in a chair.

‘It is sake’, Mari-san remarked wryly.

Yudha-san hastily looked at his palm top computer and asked The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

36 Karp –“Will there be a downslide of expertise in the completion of the job that would impact application delivery to Tokyo, on the 7 th of next month, because of additional sake?’

‘No’, vehemently said Karp clueless about delivery on 7th next month.

Satisfied, Yudha-san added, ‘Will there be a downslide in efforts due to the group watching snake dance?’

‘No downfall watching cobra dance’, Karp replied.

‘What is corba? No question about a corba on my database’, Yudha-san told in disappointment.

‘Cobra, Yudha-san. We call it a good snake in our language’, as Karp was replying, the pipe music for the snake dance rose to a crescendo. The girl was sitting on the floor with legs stretched at an angle to her torso. The snake did nor spread its hood but was holding a foot of the dancing girl in its mouth. It was trying to further its hold. The dancing girl continued to dance like a snake, with only the movement of the torso and hands. Her eyes were half-closed as in a trance and beads of sweat were appearing on her forehead.

Yudha-san got up from his chair. ‘Please listen, all’, he announced in a loud voice.

The snake was swallowing the dancing girl slowly. She was partially visible with both her hands together gesturing the flowering of a large lotus at dawn and the birds flying gently across as the waves touch the river banks and recede. The music was at its loudest and was getting repetitive as if caught in a warp. The tick-tock of a clock was heard crystal clear amidst all den and low-level hum of the aircon. It was Yudha-san’s mobile announcing the time. Big Ben chimes were heard as the clock struck twelve.

‘The company has fired me’, said Yudha-san.

Karp, not sure what he is supposed to do, slowly clapped.

‘I was short by 5000 US dollars for achieving the business target of 5 million I was assigned for last financial year. I know it is not a shortage in real terms. Currency conversion calculations were a tad wrong in arriving at that shortage. The wild fluctuation of Japanese Yen against American Dollars was not factored into the conversion.

However, I abide by what the company decided. There is a breach of The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

37 trust on my part. That is a tragedy. I have to go’.

Yudha-san wore a melancholic look as he looked at the group for some time before lowering his gaze. Everyone lowered their eyes as on cue and stood as in mourning. The pipe music was still going on in repetitive notes, apparently ceaseless.

‘Excuse me, please excuse. You please’. The pipe music was accompanied by Mari-san’s short burst cries.

‘My daughter is getting married next week. Let her occupy the flat she procured with her revenue. I’ll, please excuse me, I’ll sit here. I’ll complete my work, surpass my target. Excuse me, I will teach. Please excuse, I’ll learn.

I’ll learn dancing like a snake. I’ll dance, get paid. I’ll have my own flat. A lot of sake. The snake will come to sleep with me. Where is the dancing girl?

I like her costumes. I’ll buy. Buy costumes that don’t require a safety pin’.

Mari-san was squatting on the floor and was reciting that like a litany, fixing her stare away and up at the ceiling.

This snake had swallowed the dancing girl fully.

Karp with a shudder glanced at the dancing girl’s mobile phone on the side table. It still was playing the staccato musical notes.

Where is the girl?

He was alarmed. How to pay her the remuneration for her dance programme? There will be a question in Top-san’s computer at Tokyo – ‘Was the dancing girl paid appropriately for her services’? A ‘yes’ will get Karp fired instantaneously.

‘Yudha-san, I’ll without fail to make the payment to the dancing girl ’.

He was promising in the tone he normally deploys to make near impossible delivery commitments to the company’s American customers, promising the earth and the sky together.

Yudha-san wore a benevolent smile for a second. He informed no one in particular, ‘I’m returning to Tokyo tomorrow’.

‘Will I be able to get another job?’, he asked with apprehension.

Mari-san took a look at the palm top computer he was holding and announced triumphantly, ‘That question is non-existent’.

“Won’t you be with us, Yudha-san, when we test successfully the widget for converting spoken word to written, next week’?

Akira-san was sobbing uncontrollably as his words became The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

38 increasingly muffled.

The snake was slithering away from the room. Mari-san looked into her handbag and took out a small casket. It was an ornamental box of the type the jewellers pack the sold jewels in. It was made of light wood and had a silk interior in bright red and blue velvet encasing it.

Mari-san opened the box. There was a small safety pin in it.

Made of gold, It looked identical to the one she gave the dancing girl to wear. She held it in her hand and requested Yudha-san – ‘Please excuse me. Please, can you deliver this to my daughter as my gift for her marriage , along with my best wishes? You can also convey your own greetings to the newly wed couple. Her husband to be is a much sought after undertaker in Kyoto. He could help you land a job’.

Yudha-san took the casket from her and knelt in front of her on his left knee in ceremonial saluting. ‘Arigato, arigato’, he said, thanking her profusely, with his arms in quick motion like that of a gravedigger.

All of them started leaving together from the room. Karp took the mobile phone from the side table. It was still playing the Indian dance music. Karp tried to put it off but could not succeed.

‘The cash in this envelope is to be paid to the dancing girl. She was devoured by a snake. This mobile phone is hers’.

Karp told the beautiful and sleepy young girl at the hotel reception. He handed over to her the envelope and the mobile phone. She pressed a few keys on the mobile with deft fingers and the phone became silent.

‘She is an accredited dancer in this hotel. But I am unable to furnish you any information about the snake. You may be aware the Government has made it a cognizable offence to use animals, which include reptiles, in a recreation performance’.

Karp said, ‘Yes, I am aware’. And the money, how will it be paid to her? Maybe the receptionist would be knowing that.

“If the girl comes, we shall hand over the envelope to her. I shall send a short message to your mobile on her receiving cash. Please leave your mobile number’.

‘The dancing girl is wearing a safety pin made of gold. Our team member Mari-san lent it to her’.

The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

39 As Karp said this, the receptionist became somewhat agitated.

She replied, ‘The hotel administration, as a policy, does not encourage their customers paying gratis or providing as a gift in cash or kind to the entertainers. Anyway, If she brings back the safety pin, I’ll pass it on to you’.

She handed over to him a tablet computer much larger than Yudha-san’s palmtop. Karp entered his name and mobile number as the gadget was generating a lot of static like an old radio receiver. He returned the noisy contraption to the receptionist. Walking out, he remembered the snacks in the room. He could have brought the Bikaneer bhujia with him.

The children would love to munch it while watching cartoon films on TV. They all left in an air-conditioned van to their office, to resume their work.

‘Are you all happy’?

Yudha-san enquired as he kept his palm top tucked into his trouser pocket.

Karp gyrated clumsily and cooed ‘yes’. Others too began moving slowly imitating him and shouted yes. After a few seconds delay, two young voices came feebly from the floor, purring,‘Yes’.

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

The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

40

POEMS

Yuan Changming

The Unidentified Crow In its beak, it carries a long lost prophecy So ominously heavy, it cannot fly high Or afar, but keep flapping its broken wings against the fog, where the bird fears to drop the message on a snag a car roof rather than a human head If it falls on a wild field, it can never grow into a copse; if on a tower it will not be seen by any open eyes Becoming too tired to fly, how much longer can the spirit of darkness keep the secret in its short beak?

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41

The Evolution of Inner Being Before learning to think in language we had emotions and imaginings Running wild within the skinny boundaries of our inner space, where they lived and became extinct like dinosaurs While some of them have gone into the land of history as fossils, others have evolved into birds flying high and afar until they are caught in the net of a mother tongue

The Painting What a reservoir of lost beauty framed within the dikes of time ready to overflow when there is another storm

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42

Swinging Push.

Up there you saw the horizon above your childhood as wide as your vision Pull.

You faced backwards close to the playground with footprints messy on the sand Push again.

Higher up you hope to fly like a kite with a string held in a human hand Pull again.

Your mind became confused as if everything could be withdrawn beneath your body

Yuan Changming, nine-time Pushcart and one-time Best of the Net nominee, started learning English at the age 19 and published monographs on translation before moving out of China.

With a Canadian PhD in English, Changming currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver, and has poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poems Online, London Magazine, Three penny Review and 1259 others worldwide.

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43

1. BREAKTHROUGH AT THE TWO DAY SEMINAR OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL DISASTERS A number of crawling survivors.

At least several, perhaps greater

struggle to see around the fallen buildings.

Admonishments are like crowns they don’t

protect your soon to be crushed head,

so Fridays are a tough sell.

As you try to run from the instinctual,

your first rushed step always

insists you talk it out, the mutt mutt

muttering of internal programing.

Pertinently destroyed, you suddenly become aware

of some steps leading down.

At the bottom enough rubble has been cleared

to make a right handed turn.

In an adjoining room chairs are provided.

A vented generator assures power.

Fifteen people, you count twelve, are seated.

The lecturer has turned on his laser pen.

The screams from above may have

blended into a barley discernible hum.

You’re lucky to have made it here alive.

The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

44

POEMS-

Colin James

2. IF THE EQUINOX WOULD JUST GET IT OVER WITH During the long walk back to base camp, I was breathing pins.

Our guide suffered not.

The dissent wasn’t brief, long drops hung in gathering mist.

The air was atheist.

We rested by a stone kiosk.

I heard the sound of water or old Faquir pissing.

The birds were of the rapture variety.

I didn’t have the strength to look that high up.

A pox on your mythical warm air currents, my ankle joint had locked.

I pushed with hands tense, knees contoured, senses swollen, and managed to arrive here half in and out of you.

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45

3. JUSTICE FOR THE DELUSIONAL The subversives were just nosing into the harbor, when word reached us of the change in your sunbathing tendencies, Paramour.

I thanked the captain.

We walked the last kilometer in deference, the ferry to your worship having ignored the tide.

Colin James has a chapbook of poems: Writing Knights

Press: Dreams of the Really Annoying by Colin James He lives in Massachusetts.

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46

POEMS-

JD DeHart

Wanting I want it all in a moment like anyone trying to swallow the world at once Like a python moving through a world of pay and purchase and put the new toys where you want them From layaway and pay as you go to get it all.

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47

Identity Come as you are but change the moment you pass through the door On the other side is the person we promised you, shiny and new There is a language to be learned here, plus art, every movement has its own music and so you must Find gentle conformity even as we offer unclear invitation

Paper Dolls Never a day like this where these moments line up like paper dolls on a freshly cut string.

JD DeHart is a writer and teacher.

His work has appeared in Gargouille and Mother Bird, among other publications.

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48

POEMS

Rony Nair

Juwairiya 3 escape artists ride with outsize plans, to trip coached stages; rob sperm banks. saints in reinvention pee beer out of gains, febrile robber barons approve sainthood games. there’s reach and retch as we go down under, hands scratching out - crushing tongues, and biting chins, faces that balance radio tower ledges, snipping at stains on decorous beds, we came up for air-annexed sofa heads; searching for cadaver; the meat all spare, your moans ring on; a clarion call. withal labors cease-dictated unease. her “wifely” face comes on again-a newer disease.

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49

Orange The orangeness of the sky was only matched by the orangeness of the images. They were resolute in their refusal to bow down.

Or divorce themselves from the insistence of the filter.

That contraption that was screwed on many years ago by him.

But forgotten. And now, the tripod would point, the leaves would part, but the darn picture would be orange.

A bit like her insistence that only black would subdue.

Black would ease. The escape from the light. The retreat within. All helped by the darkness. The absence of light Except for that darn filter and the orange shades.

Well nothing to be helped he thought. But point and fire away, the dial turned slowly and the click. The bloody indicant of a picture taken and ushered in through the silence.

But the picture. Was of her.

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50

Reinventing Wheels Accusatory affronts miss out on fingerprints scarring t-shirts, wrapped around vague bends resembling pylons, in the head.

Where we once held each other so tight, that we exchanged chins.

Your bites remain imprinted in faces grained and greyed, headrests and grey sofas; bequeathed, bestowed. aureoles remain, waiting; to be jettisoned, through long closed doors.

We were displaced in the giving. withdrawn in second thoughts about living and piety; images reinvented like calling cards. re-reimagined in groups, of failed house wives setting out to conquer the equinox, The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

51 Round the periphery.

Mediocrity.

Clearing up worlds in a stroke Rinsed with stored up passion. amniotic fluid sprays over the latest victims and rebukes, latest expletives fill up blanked out faces of the latest group of victims, Corralled into shelters and homes. those secrets and lies are both the same, two penny half-truths complete the game. false-hoods complement a reinvented prism; a new mother superior. airbrushed. Dreamlike; walking through the haze. convergent disciples go out and paint walls in graffiti; awaiting the next round of instructor led piety.

You wait for a year to call her, and feel the contours of her tone! “Wanna fuck somebody? Find somebody else.�

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52

Transaction Analysis (TA) in Bakehouses

We went in whiter than white cars, holding hands. toward bends, that led to culverts and bunds, inside our heads, we never even knew existed. you were the cool, all knowing one, dainty, slipping through swings, waiting for TA sessions, in between our kissing rings. was there nothing else we spilt over in rewind mode. bake houses called “KR� still stand with old chairs stuck between, long indignant stares.

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53 you walk away after lemonade sips, shades of confusion, kiss your lips. i took steps sideways, down miles of carrion, narrow bends, empty market pews, solitaire played in bus-stops, with private carriers crafting death. yet one couldn’t forget your eyes, resembling holy mosques, in ace of spades. yet one couldn’t forget your eyes, playing hide and seek, with those elemental, bounded waves.

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54

Courts The One who departs on the passing train is the one who leaves his soul.

The One who stays back solitary, on fading sidewalks, is

the one who makes him whole. the end of all our meandering, starts off a new day, of dithering souls and loss, ignominious profanity spewing from your tongue; over a distant phone line.

You once walked those slopes with me behind bird sanctuaries eaten up by high courts that

encroached declining habitats and birds of prey. whispering “i like spending time with you and maybe; we could do it again.”

Rony Nair’s been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for

almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. Rony works as an oil and gas Risk Management consultant. Rony was a published columnist with the Indian Express. He is also a professional photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and has previously been published

by Sonic Boom, Quail Bell Magazine, YGDRASIL journal, Mindless Muse, Yellow Chair Review, Two Words For, Ogazine, New Asian Writing (NAW), Semaphore, The Economic Times, 1947, The Foliate Oak Magazine, Open Road Magazine, Tipton Review, Antarctica Journal, North East Review, Muse India, and YES magazine, among others. Rony has also featured in the Economic Times of India.

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55

NON-FICTION

BILL VERNON

SUSPENSION

Maybe because from a distance the bridge resembles a huge,

misshapen harp, I knuckle-rap its metal, starting across, as if trying to play it. My touches evoke bongs, bong, bong, and more bongs, a rhythm but no melody. At the apex of the bridge, I stop in what seems to be silence, admiring the grace of an architect’s thoughts and the parts that my brother’s steel business fabricated decades ago.

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56 In seconds the silence dissolves in a song that my noise had muffled before. The invisible fingers of a breeze are strumming the cables, stroking them like strings, inducing a hum that combines several notes like a chord. My palms on the railing can feel the unseen vibrations.

That revelation expands my consciousness the way “heads” used to say a tab of LSD would do. I notice how below me the river is lapping the shore. The sun is shimmering on ripples and rocks. Six mallard ducklings are chasing their mama from reeds out into the open water—like notes swimming across a brilliant score, like words dancing across a blank page.

Metaphoric responses: inside a musical instrument, my brain resonates. Drugs are not needed. The mood I am in does the job, reminding me of other unexpected concerts. Of going down into a subway, intimidated as usual, leaving the familiar surface where I live, feeling the rush of air from below, hearing the screech of steel wheels on steel rails, the clanging of metal on metal, the gushing swirl of partial conversations as people rushed past, the awesome thunder-like subdued roaring beneath all the other sounds. I stopped in an alcove at the bottom of the first escalator, breathed deeply, held the air inside, and caught the repetitions of the noise, the ups and downs, the shrill, the low notes, some of their patterns.

The Paris Metro gave my wife and me this blood-infusing but expected song. We had entered a busy station where three or four lines converged. The Gare de l’est? I don’t remember exactly which station it was, but I do recall dragging baggage, the heaviest being our naive Ohio backgrounds. That burden allowed us to be alarmed enough to speed up like everyone else. It was two hours before our hotel check-in time so actually we were in no hurry. But we carefully followed signs, climbed and dropped down stairways, rushed through tunnels that amplified sound one minute, smothered it the next. Then, suddenly, clarinet, violin and other instrumentation reached our ears.

So unexpected, as if emerging from the earth’s core, the music drew us eagerly to five musicians, a small table and a sign in English, The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

57 “Musicians of Kiev.” They were classically trained, playing compositions from Romania, France, the Ukraine, and Israel, one of which was Klezmer. Jewish émigrés I guessed, entertaining tourists and Parisians for donations. The playlist of one of their CDs for sale included folk songs, some classics, and I bought it. We listened there for 15 minutes, in a chamber whose resonating vibrations spread through me. The music calmed us until “Hava Nagila,” which was so fast and so perfect, my feet moved in my shoes as if doing the hora. If it had not been so crowded, though it was a large open area connecting three tunnels, a line of people might have formed and danced.

Back around the bridge I am standing on, apparition, my grandmother’s house floating up into view: the last time I saw it, when it was leaning precariously northward, down the steep hill as if about to topple into the coal-mining pit just below it. Her family had already lost one house to the coal veins burning underground. That was a half mile farther uphill on a side road where the charred remains from 30 years before still remained. This leaning abode held the remnants of her family and her life. My aunt in the trailer uphill from the house warned me about going inside. The floor could collapse. But she said that if I wanted to, and felt like I had to, then be very careful. Aunt Bette was 86 then and recently married to Karl, an 89-year-old. She liked older men, she told me, smiling.

“I’ll just take a quick peek inside,” I promised her.

“Take whatever you want,” she said.

On the porch over which the whole house leaned, I pried open the door and watched the dust settle. Inside was the same old drawing room: a card table bearing a completed jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were slightly askew. The couch with lace coverlets spread over the backrest and arms. Three framed complicated crossword puzzles glued together and hung on the wall like trophies among paint-bynumber landscapes my Uncle Hed had done. No one had lived in the house since Grandma Vernon died, and nothing seemed to have been moved, as if frozen in time.

All the same, except for a steady buzz that had never been there before. An undulating sound that rose and fell in pitch. Honey bees.

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58 I noticed a few darting about in the parlor just through the opposite doorway. The house had become a bee hive with the bees inhabiting the lowest level, the basement which I had never been allowed to visit.

I put my right foot inside to test the floor’s stability, my left holding most of my weight back on the threshold. The floor shook, and it gave a little as I shifted my weight forward. The danger made me hesitate, but the floors in the house had always had a little give. I wanted a physical memento, but that horde of bees? If the floor gave way, the swarm below would have me.

I took a deep breath as if that might distribute my weight, crossed the floor as flat- and light-footed as possible to the couch, and lifted the wire off a nail holding up the nearest Uncle Hed landscape. Then carefully back, through the doorway, back out onto the porch. There I breathed, having held my lungs taut that whole little trip. I was in and out in a minute, and breathing more easily outside in safety?

My eyes were opened to wonder. The entire house seemed to be looming over me—in some ways it still is. I smelled a thick, sweet aroma, studied the surroundings, and saw that the honeysuckle vines were in full bloom. Their yellow-white flower covered the steep sides of Harrison Hill and the pit. Their smell was powerful enough to smother the odor of sulphur from the underground burning veins of coal. The humming rose and poured out the doorway behind me.

Only a few bees were visible. I didn’t know where they’d gained entry inside.

That basement was always a mystery for me, and it remains so.

In my 50s I’d learned the family secret of my father’s incarceration in a Federal Penitentiary for moon shining. Revenuers had caught him leading two brothers down a ladder into a mineshaft where their father’s still was hidden. His brothers and father escaped, leaving my pregnant mother to support herself during Dad’s lock-up. I remembered Grandma and Grandpa Vernon shooing my brother and me away from the basement several times. They kept its door hidden under rugs and forbad us to enter the room. Our imaginations suggested exotic contents hidden down there. After learning of my father’s The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

59 jail time, I had figured the basement contents were materials used in their production of shine, maybe some full bottles of the liquid.

Everyone has gone by now so the truth of the basement’s contents is lost as well. The bees like time had turned the past into honey.

I come back to the present and leave the bridge, walk off its other side into Triangle Park and Howell Field, locations where well-documented public events have occurred. Personal memories stay with me much better than things I read about. Amazing surprises, collaborations of humans and the elements. As I proceed on with my hike, the promise in those bridge-induced memories lets me hear music in my own footsteps, in my heels clipping the tar surface of the bike trail, in my soles’ sandy shuffle across the rough, pitted surface. As my pace picks up and my body responds to exertion, there is music even in my thin raspy breath. A rhythm, a tempo, a song.

***

Bill Vernon served in the United States Marine Corps, studied English literature, and then taught it. Writing is his therapy, along with exercising outdoors and doing international folkdances. Five Star Mysteries published his novel OLD TOWN, and his poems, stories and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies.

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60

BOOK EXCERPT This excerpt is from Kuna Kaviazhagan’s novel “Poisoned Dream.”

Originally published in Tamil as Vidameriya Kanavu, this novel has been translated into English by Dr. N. Malathy and Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan.

The author Kuna Kaviazhagan was a fighter for Tamil Eelam and was witness to the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka in 2009. He now lives in Netherlands with his wife and children after gaining asylum.

He has so far published three novels in Tamil. Poisoned Dream/Vidameriya Kanavu, a work of auto fiction, is based on his real life experience of what happened to Tamil POWs under the custody of the Sri Lankan army. The novel won much critical acclaim in Tamil literary circles.

This excerpt from this translated work deals with the protagonist’s encounter with his torturers, and the realization of the absolute hopelessness of his situation. This is a key portion of the book and it contains themes that recur in other portions.

Poisoned Dream

By Kuna Kaviazhagan BLISS In this prison, morning comes when the chains that bind our hands and legs to the ground in the ‘corpse position’ all night are removed. Except the captors and the victims, no one sees us practicing this ‘yoga’ position all night, night after night. Humans will squirm at the thought of being chained this way on a rough concrete floor night after night. Humans will also survive it because life wants to sustain itself at all cost. It is now morning for me and the other two men in the room.

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61 I had tried to look at the other two men while in the corpse position by turning my head. But the restricted view and the dull light in the room did not permit taking in their appearance fully. Now standing up all three of us sized up each other. The silence behind the desire to talk connected us. But it was the military man – we always used the word ‘army’ to refer to them – who spoke.

“Brush your teeth and wash your face and be ready before sir arrives.

Do you understand?” shaking his index finger at us he ordered in broken Tamil and left after locking the prison door.

The narrow prison room had one toilet at one end and a basin for face-washing at the other. I had not defecated since I was brought to this room. Today I must. I was irritated that there were two more men in that small room when I wanted to shit. I still managed. I had to.

My thoughts raced back. During the last days of the war in Pokkanai and Maathalan, our young women had to shit right in middle of the sea of displaced people. The women would use their skirts to cover their faces while shitting. Our people would turn their faces the other way, respecting the privacy of these young women. Where else could one find such decency?

Daughters of the rich, the laboring class and senior government officers - all of them - defecated in the same manner, along the path, on beach sand, in the middle of massive crowds. The memories brought on anger and a desire for revenge against all those who brought this fate on us. No! No! Such emotions cannot be permitted. I must perform like a skilled actor, engineering new emotions. The engineered emotions must show on my face, deceiving my captors.

The other two men in the room were looking away from me while I was on the toilet. I told them to wash their faces quickly before our captors arrived. One of them moved to the wash basin to wash his face. I finished washing up with the water I had collected in the plastic bottle. I looked at my shit once before turning away. As repulsive as it is, there is something that compels us to look at one’s own shit.

While the other two were washing up, I observed their movements. I must avoid getting into unnecessary conversations with The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

62 these two men. I now carefully observed the prison room. I tried to see if the room had any spying equipment like an audio or a video device. Nothing. Could they have put one on the wall and covered it with paper and painted over it? But will such a setup receive any of the sound in the room? Perhaps there are devices that can detect even the slightest sound. I wanted to tap along the wall. But not now.

There is one more place where something could be hidden. That was behind the wash basin. I must check that when I wash my face without these two men noticing.

One of the men asked, “Annai, what will they do to us now?”

I wanted to reply, “They are going to kill you. Before that, you must kill at least a few of them.”

But I said instead, “They will interrogate.”

“Will it be severe?” “…”

“Where is this place?” the other man queried.

“Don’t know.”

They continued with their questioning. I responded cautiously all the while observing their speech and their intentions. Suspicion made me re-examine my responses to them to check whether I had made any errors. For now, their questions may help to deduce who they were.

I went to wash my face. I checked very carefully behind the wash basin for any spying devices. I found nothing. While I was washing, an interrogator came in and ordered me to follow him. My heartbeat racing, I complied.

I walked in the dark between walls and turned a corner. We entered a large room. I was made to sit in front of a wide table. The interrogator had not arrived yet. The one who brought me had left. I observed the room. I was suspicious that they maybe observing me through a camera. The room was neither dark nor bright. The walls were bare, with no colors. There were odd smears of black soot here and there. I thought I saw darkened red too. Was it the color of dried blood?

A rope hung from a corner near the western wall of the room.

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63 An indescribable whirl in my mind threw up many stories and anecdotes that my people have told. This room looked very different to the other room in which I had been interrogated until now. The strange lines on the wall and its colors swirled into bizarre pictures that sprang from the wall. Various figures came up and disappeared.

The mind did not wish to see these pictures but the eyes sought them out.

Sound of boot steps. I steadied myself. Three men entered the room. I easily spotted the high ranking officer among the group. It is easy to gauge rank in the military by just looking at those standing near the person concerned. They had brought a hooded man too.

The soldier and the officer talked for a while and then the soldier left, leaving the hooded man in the room.

I must now prepare to face this method of interrogation. I need to comprehend this new situation first and then comprehend my own fears. I tried to be calm without success. I must. The hooded man’s gaze was sending shivers down my back. I have been through these feelings many times during recent days. But the intensity of the fear rises again when the environment creating the threat is new.

The interrogator asked me very politely to sit down. He sat in front and began shooting his questions. He kept checking the files in front of him while he shot the questions. Was he checking my answers against what is recorded in the files? The files maybe records of my previous interrogations. What was at start very ordinary questions slowly became extraordinary. But the ordinary questions at the start did help to steady myself.

I saw a parallel between my reactions here and my reactions while taking part in a battle. There is fear and nervousness before the start of a battle. But once the battle starts a steadiness settles as one is immersed in fighting back the threat at front. With steadiness come skillful actions to deflect threats. Is that experience in battles now helping me to skillfully deflect the threat in front? I was steady but one question threw me off balance.

“What is your rank in the movement?”

“I do not know. In the movement rank is given only when one dies.”

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64 “Do not pull wool over my eyes. What about the Brigadier ranks you gave to people like Sornam, Banu and Theepan?”

“The movement gave such titles to only senior military leaders,” I responded.

“We know that. But based on the time you were in the movement, the work you did and the rank given to others who died and who did work similar to yours, you should know what your rank will be. Is it not?”

I could not answer. My heart raced uncontrollably.

“Say it.” The order was hot.

“Lieutenant,” I said in one word.

He got up and struck me with severe force. I lost my bearings.

Before I could recover he struck me again on the other side. As the force of his strikes and his anger seeped through me I buckled within. He continued striking me. I fell down. I got up and stood with my head down. He held me by my collar and raised me. The action was intended to drain one’s sense of self value. He struck again holding me up. An ultimate form of humiliation!

“Say it. We know everything…” he was very agitated.

“I do not know. I have not participated in many battles. Therefore I will not have a high rank. I did not hold responsible positions.

I was punished many times for mistakes I made. That is why I said I will only get a Lieutenant rank.” I strengthened the validity of my response with clever reasons. I started to steady myself again once I had given these reasons. But what followed threw me off-balance again.

He continued to hold me by my shirt and said “You are a Colonel.

A very important person in the movement. If you agree voluntarily you will have no problem. All we need is information. It is all over now. Do not hide anything. There is no benefit to you in hiding anything. Tell me the truth and I will protect you.” It was an empathetic speech.

Should I say the truth? Why not tell the truth? He is right. It is all over now.

Bullshit! If I tell the truth I am finished. The interrogation will turn away from who I am to other matters. My mind warned me, The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

65 “Don’t be a fool. Don’t say anything. Keep acting. Keep acting.” I steadied.

“I am not lying,” I said it softly like a meek, defeated man.

One may act like a meek person but one cannot become one. We can appreciate good acting but we never believe it. One’s personality and nature is formed by those around him. This in turn is determined by his external environment. What is a person was in a particular environment is more important than what that particular environment actually was; this determines a man’s nature. Even when he is transplanted to a new environment, what he was will reveal itself. Like an air-balloon submerged in water, this nature of man keeps popping up.

When the interrogator struck me and knocked me to the ground, my self-respect arose to the surface. It destroyed the steadiness which I was struggling to maintain. The officer most certainly would have observed my stiffening body and the fire in my eyes. If I had hit his face with my fist that clenched involuntarily, even his own mother would not have recognized him. But in a split second I pushed my true self under the cover that I had created. Was that of any use? He could have seen my nature in that split second.

He turned to the hooded man and asked, “He is a Colonel in your movement, right?”

The hooded man nodded his million dollar head. “He had big responsibility in the movement, right?” The head nodded again. The interrogator got up, raised his boots and gave a massive blow in my groin.

The interrogator now instructed his assistant in Sinhalese to remove the hooded man from the room. In that instance I understood that they do not know my identity. If the hooded man had known me, he would have given my name, my responsibility in the movement and many other details. But he did not even know my name.

He may have been given instructions to nod his head. He may even be a Sinhalese soldier. It is all a drama!

But that is not what is important at this moment.

I was able to gauge the interrogation skills of this officer. His tools consisted of making threats, making me believe that he knows The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

66 all about me, followed by torture. These are the tactics of the unskilled. I still have hope, I thought, to stay alive using my acting. My head was making these calculations. Yet, when the realization came that I would be tortured, a numbing anxiety spread through me.

“OK. Tell me the names of those who worked with you, who are dead, who are still alive and how and through whom you received orders from your leader during the last days. That hooded man was one of the men who were there with you. He says he does not know the rest. You can tell me the rest,” the interrogator said calmly.

This interrogator is clever. Although his skills are rudimentary, he is not a fool. Assessing him thus, I decided that I must try to mask even my slightest of my body language. I must also mask that I am watchful of his moves. I continued to act as though I was intimidated by him. “I am not lying. I was an assistant in the administrative section and did the tasks that were given to me by the member above me. Other than that I did not have any responsibility.” Saying this I observed him, to see his reaction.

I continued, “If you want you can ask the many people who surrendered to you, who would also know me,” still observing him for his reaction. I congratulated myself for the clever response and continued again, “If I am a big person in the movement, there will be records of it in your intelligence file. You can ask them.” By giving advice on how to identify me, I had shown that I am an unimportant member in the movement. I was very pleased.

That was until I was hung upside down on a rope from a bar.

The torturer doesn’t judge people by their words. It is one’s mannerisms that register in the mind of the person observing. My satisfaction with my answers and my eagerness to see the reaction of my interrogator to my answers would be broadcast through my eyes. I should have hid my eyes from his eyes. When I realized it, it was too late. I was hanging upside down on a rope.

The blood rushed to my head due to fear and because of the way I was hung. My head became heavy and it hurt. The lines on the wall now looked different, revealing other images. My mind persisted in dwelling on them even when I tried to avoid them.

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67 “This is your last chance. If you want to survive, say it. Do you understand?” the officer in ruffled uniform told me. Looking at him upside down, his broad nose and face looked even more frightening.

I focused on the life substance – the cyanide capsule - under my gums. I touched it with my tongue. I have been protecting it inside my gums all these days. Nothing should happen to it now. My attention was focusing more and more on it. Is it to live or die? I struggled hard to pull away from these emotion-driven thoughts and tried to stay rational - let my head rule.

“All what I said is true. If you wish to know anything else do ask me. I will tell you. It is all over. Why should I hide anything? My legs are really painful. Please let me down. I will tell you whatever you need.” I contorted my face showing extreme pain and spilled the words. I did not look at his eyes now. My mind felt fear more than pain. But I showed otherwise. My words reflected on the walls and came back to me.

I looked at him with a contorted face, showing pain and pleading for mercy. I wanted to see if there was any change in him. It looked as if he was hesitating. Did my decision not to look at him in the eyes pay dividend? His words came to the contrary. “What we need now is for you to tell us all lies you have told us. Who are you really? What was your work?”

“Why should I lie…” before I could finish he pulled the rope he was holding. I was pulled up by the rope on which I was hanging. He let go of it abruptly. I was falling down, my chest and the heart in it experienced a different kind of fear, fear of light-headed emptiness.

He caught the rope. My leg tied to the rope pained. I did not hit the ground but my head was now closer to the ground.

Oh God, I had forgotten to shout in pain. Was it due to his sudden action? Or is it because I was focused on what was in my mouth?

I did not know. I must shout next time.

“Are you going to say it or do you want to die breaking your neck and head?” he threatened in a tone of finality.

I feigned fear. “No. I will tell anything you need. I cannot stand the pain anymore. My legs are hurting too much. Please…”

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68 I did not attempt to look at his eyes but my mind was urging me to look.

He pulled the rope again and let go of it with the same speed. Before the head could crash onto the floor he caught the rope skillfully, like a magician. It was obvious that he was trying to scare me. Well, if I knew that I should not be scared, should I? But I was scared. Very scared. The pain on the leg was real but my concern was on the substance in my mouth. That it may break. The thought of what would happen next created even more fear.

When he pulled the rope the fourth time, I remembered that I was being raised further up than the other three times. When I was falling, the chest and the heart within did not feel that fear of emptiness so acutely. Perhaps that was due to the practice from the previous three falls but the fear was always there. For a split second in some corner of the mind a flash said that I was falling further than the other times. That was it. “Dong…” the sound! It felt like my head shattered to pieces. What had happened? I did not know or feel anything.

Then, I saw myself lying on the ground. Believe me when I say this. Who is seeing whom? Which is me? The one looking or the one lying on the ground? I might have seen myself on the ground only for a split second but it was registered in the brain. My ears now hurt; there was a loud noise between them. My head was heavy. Very heavy.

Unbearably heavy. Then, the pain appeared to recede. It felt as if the pain and I had become one. I knew I couldn’t stand this anymore.

I was lying there like a corpse. The heaviness in the head was reducing now. I was going cold. The coldness spread from the legs upward. When it passed through my backbone, I understood that I was dying. There was no pain. The coldness brought a kind of comfort. My hands were now getting cold. Was I sweating? I think so.

The sweating body sensed a gentle afternoon breeze. Where was the breeze coming from into this room? Soothing…!

I was leaving my body. I tried to hold it back. Not sure how or with what I tried. Was life preventing life from leaving? Yet, something else wants to relish in the bliss of leaving the body. Total bliss.

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69 Is this freedom?

Unable to hold myself back from leaving, I relish that bliss.

Gouthaman is finished.

About the translators:

Dr. N. Malathy is a leading Tamil human rights activist.

She is a survivor of the war in Sri Lanka and she currently lives in New Zealand. She is the author of A Fleeting Moment in My Country and the translator of War Journey: Diary of a Tamil Tiger.

Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan is a Senior Lecturer at Azim Premji University. He received his PhD from the University of Essex. He has written extensively on Tamil politics and society. His short stories have been published on Queen Mob’s Teahouse and The Aerogram.

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70

POEM

David Rodriguez

Croc-Speak What was the thing about crocodiles, Ray asks, that they talk with their hands orhave Predator vision? He holds an iced latte toward me and offers a sip, which I take though I don’t recall saying anything about crocodiles or anyother animal last night, and I barely know Predator from Alien.

I return to my desk and look on my phone history, the rememberer, and there—no, they communicate with chemical signals, head slaps, bellows, and infrasound vibrations, not infrared vision. But I can hear him telling Mark: they’re basically Predator, and Mark The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

71 says: Well, yeah, as if this is all already known, we’re all responsible for the internet, we’re all geniuses. No one knowsanything anymore apart from the people on the other side of the screen, whoever they are, in a world where lies aren’t bound so intimately to shame. We have to find a croc, Mark says,speaking in iambic pentameter andto no known purpose. Ray has found a heating pad under Jodi’s desk. We can use this for cover. And they’re going somewhere. There will be crocs. The end of the work day. Any sense of purpose.

Did our parents have moments like this?

Of course, but they stopped. Mom,what is the signal for yes, I’m with you idiots, though someone’s going to die? A chemical release, a head slap, fullbellow, thenvibratewith what you cannot say.

David Rodriguez is a writer and teacher based in New Orleans with an MFA from Florida State University. He has previously been published in the New Orleans Review, The Southeast Review, Poetry Pacific, The Literateur, and The Double Dealer Redux, among other places.

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72

POEMS

Mark Jackley

THELONIOUS MONK if garden slugs could twist and shine in the dirt doing the holy dance of life seeking life he could play the first few drops of rain stumbling beautifully on the roof The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

73

AFTER YOU DIED I gave birth myself, slowly, to acceptance The child I never loved, who raised me

SNOW GLOBE For PJ wherever you are a two-lane in the sticks three locals in a field dressed up like Santa, dancing on a bright green tractor who waved their beers and hooted something and a little joy flaked down in a place we sped through

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74

IN THE “GREAT DAY IN HARLEM� PHOTO

Mary Lou Williams bends her gaze away she improvises like a flower parched at the core a flicker and a shift a ripple change in key sensing rain perhaps August torpor and how fast the heart incites the storm

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A YEAR LATER his feeding tube you fished from the trash again, unable to let go—Ma, you should wear it like a necklace, the plastic cap you finger like a rosary for people who don’t pray will dangle on your chest, a totem as the grief of chimps and chieftains, villagers who stare into rainy fields comes at you like a spear

Mark Jackley’s work has appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House Review, Natural Bridge and other journals.

His new book of poems On the Edge of a Very Small Town is available for free at chineseplums@gmail.com.

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76

POEM Kariuki wa Nyamu

Silenced Forever Kunyamazishwa daima!

Silenced forever

is the renowned satirical essayist and most acclaimed poet since he became the President’s Advisor on Literature and the Media!

Silenced forever is the outspoken Professor of Comparative Politics since he joined the government he castigated for years on end!

Silenced forever is the critical playwright and most prolific novelist since he quit writing after he was allegedly accused of treason!

Silenced forever

is the radical and foremost fighter for Gender equality since she was crowned as Minister without Portfolio!

Silenced forever The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

77 is the iron-hearted Parliamentarian alias iron lady since she was coaxed into taking up the Ministry of Women and

Children’s Affairs!

Silenced forever is the most vocal and cynical economic analyst since he was nominated the chairperson of Anti-corruption Commission!

Silenced forever

is the daring and award winning investigative Journalist since he was appointed the head of State House Press unit!

Silenced forever is the senior Literature don and vociferous critic of president’s stand since she took up government spokesperson-ship!

Silenced forever

is the charismatic lead protestor and paupers’ rights activist since she was decorated with an accolade on Heroes day!

Silenced forever is the visionary columnist and strident public sensitizer on mal

administration since he won the State’s overseas PhD scholarship in Film Technology!

Silenced forever The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

78 is the prominent opposition MP and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate since her acceptance to form the coalition government!

Silenced forever

is the no-nonsense Major General freshly turned politician after

retirement since he was inveigled to take up the ambassadorship to I Don’t Know Where!

Anyhow, kindly bear with them since they knew not how it would cost our nation and don’t ever take me seriously…

Since I don’t wish to be Silenced forever!

Kunyamazishwa daima!

Kariuki wa Nyamu is a Kenyan poet,

radio playwright, editor and high school teacher. He got graduated from Makerere University in Uganda. He is published widely both in print and online.

He is presently pursuing an M.A. (Literature) at Kenyatta University, Kenya.

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79

POEMS

Dr. Anuradha Bhattacharyya

A CHALLENGE Peeping through the slit In the dark reservoir of my heart I saw a vast landscape of foggy meadows: It’s as if, a film of satire has usurped the green.

It cost me a rupture to regain my vision Clear in the dawn of love Only to rupture further apart a friendship.

I picked up the fragments of a wretched heart Cooing to it softly Forgiving its follies desperately Clinging to its beauty As of dawn and dusk In nature but hopeless.

It had long lost its lustre and now remains the dregs.

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80

DELUGE Vulture You will be terrified of this deluge not seasoned in fine weather.

You will be daunted by this display of gaiety and indulgence.

Were you a migratory bird that sweeps over the mountains to learn about other climates, places of abundance and mirth, you could have saved the shock.

This is not your place, my dear, Fly off.

Not here, not here.

Vulture You cannot terrify the lizard that slithers out of its skin every year.

You cannot gather the flavour of smoke before fire.

You can no longer linger over matter that regenerates itself.

Were you my friend in good and strife?

Were you a travelling partner in life?

You could have deserved a beautiful favour.

But no.

Not here. Not here.

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A HEART ATTACK Deserted on the lake after sunset A little vessel of amour Floated aimlessly in starry moonlight.

She did not foresee the calm that rocked her bosom.

Dr. Anuradha Bhattacharyya is author of One Word, a

novel about the love of literature as an art. She is a prolific writer and poet of long standing, with poetry on topics ranging from life, love to death and immortality. Her first book of poems was published in 1998. Since then she has been widely anthologized. She has published several short stories. Her first novel The Road Taken, discusses many features of contemporary life neatly packed in the plot of a love story.

She has published two academic books, The Lacanian Author and Twentieth Century European Literature. Knots is her book of poems on the theme of friendship and Lofty - to fill up a cultural chasm is on the theme of love and responsibility. Anuradha is known for being rebellious and willful. Her stint with poetry has emerged from her repressed emotions.

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82

POEMS Ramu Ramanathan

Mumbai This is she, Mumbai Always awake, awakening others, insomniac Popping Prozacs on potholes In a hurry, muck on the move Millions who dance in delusion Millions in her trance, depressed Mumbai, Undernourished Uneducated Unclean Proud as a whore Don’t you mock her She pays your fucking bills And does your dirty chores

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83

Weltanschauung’s obituary My Weltanschauung, it clanged Oh, didn’t you notice how My sister is my brother My father is my mother My thoughts, fuck one another And suck one, then the udder Hegel proofs his Owl of Minerva Until dusk What’s the point, I say?

No one to tell the difference between Tolstoy and Hemmingway A video game about how Faust’s love for Gretchen runs its

fateful course This, my friend, is the obituary of my Weltanschauung

Post Script The family darzi he came home To stitch my tattered thoughts together He measured my head And then, he said Whatever I do, you will remain a fool Please go back and sleep in your bed The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

84

Mr Poem Hello Mr Poem!

Will you stop playing the fool!

The words are complaining!

You are changing all the rules!

All this began When Mr Poet sent a message Its true meaning, a top secret Which remained concealed Nothing meant to be Codes and riddles leased on rent Even so, they knew Now Mr Poet sits inside his shadow Surveillance on the floor above CCTV cameras that monitors what you imbibe, including food A dossier on him Outside, a submarine observes Mr Poet shuts up He walks on Sassoon Dock Smells the fishes Bombay Ducks, unavailable The sea is overfished, says a Koli woman Dropped to one-quarter of their un-fished level Life is hazardous Sell the bloody boats But no one to buy, she says The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

85 Mr Poet wants to write this He can’t without permission He must not use words like plastics pollution Sea acidification, and coral-beachy-fication My Lord, Mr poet pleads To the presiding magistrate Forgive me I was merely on a vacation in a town near Dehradun I was not part of the Morcha at the Power Corporation office I was observing The typos in their poster About power cuts and voltage fluctuations I don’t mind sleeping in the dark.

I don’t intend to intensify my struggle Nothing doing, is the wordy judgement Why, asks he Mr Poet: Haven’t you heard the latest news There has been an indictment Against people like you With ideas skewed You have been imprisoned In solitary confinement Where you can live With your precious words

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86 That’s why I repeat, Mr Poem!

Will you stop playing the fool!

They are doing the observing!

They are freezing, banning And embargoing – all the rules!

You In the elevator, I see you I jab, basement I smell the vishnukranta As we descend Into the bowels of earth I and you, like Sita Maate The other day Who are you?

What do you do?

What will you do you?

Why do I miss you?

If I don’t see you tomorrow Will I shed tears in the night?

I, who know nothing about you Except your back resembles an Ashoka tree And I imagine Charudatta and Vasantasena Walking in the rain through Ujjayini’s streets Hand in hand The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

87

The malnutrioned child The malnutrioned child The mystery of his life He tries to solve, daily Shifting junk inside a scrap shop On Mutton Street No one will make a documentary about him He thinks, pidgin But he sings, classical All one-track thoughts Rotting inside His ceramic brain, forever He swallows warm pav Mixed with mint leaves At the back of Abdul Hakim’s cafe His past, rough-tough An escape from a remand home 40 dreams he has had In all formats: day, nightmarish, kakotopiac The woodpeckers cheer When ne chops down his family tree Cuk cuk cuk cuk He lives in an attic On a hungry sort of street Where people get mercury-poisoned in shifts The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

88 A spider in the roof, his best friend Together they discuss: whose anemia is worse He is a refugee of our time No one to tell his story to So he locks his memories Inside a graveyard Where one day he will meet himself

Shraadh The Holy Priest says According to the Garuda Purana Today is the thirteenth day The soul of the dead will start its journey We have procured tickets in taatkaal.

Since ninth century Shaivite rites are expensive How long will it take to complete the journey, I ask It will take seventeen days to reach Yamapuri, says the priest Oh, I said, can we send him by the superfast express He hates passenger

Ramu Ramanathan is a Mumbai based journalist and poet The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

89

BOOK REVIEW The House of Twining Roses

Review by Smitha Sehgal

By Nabina Das

How did I precisely chance my way into ‘The House of Twining

Roses, Stories of The Mapped and The Unmapped’ is a fond recollection.

A striking volume of seventeen short stories by Nabina Das, a versatile poet, opinionated socio political essayist and writer, I had stumbled upon the imagery from her story ‘Waterborne’ in this volume one afternoon and got enchanted abruptly.

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90 “…the border glittered and her sepia face floated like a translucent lotus in the afternoon’s radiance…”

Charmed as I was, instinctively I knew I had to go for this collection, an immensely rewarding pursuit. Following her debut novel “Footprints in the Bajra” long listed in the prestigious ‘Vodafone Crossword Book Award 2011, this distinguished body of work is Nabina Das’s first collection of short stories.

The narratives resonate of an unmistakable harmonious lyricism, which comes with ease to an accomplished musician and poet.

The stories take the reader by hand along the narrow lanes and roads of Amrawa, New York, Delhi and Calcutta; we inhale the heady fragrance of orange stalked Shewali flowers; we breathe the beel-jaanjuri (wetlands-canals-springs)of “Xunor Axom” (Golden Assam).

Nabina Das’s characters become one with you, there is little piece of you in each story. The opening story ‘Home Coming’ sketches the anguish and hope of Pushpo. Her sense of alienation and grief mingled with an almost obsequious eagerness of an abandoned aged and arthritic mother becomes yours when ‘… crying, she tried flailing her hands like bird wings, and fell. Hard on the hot tar. On her back. No more a bird”.

‘Atif ’s World’, a story of love and betrayal is a subtle take on crime and justice system, which leaves no room for reformation and rebirth.

‘After the Music Stopped”, a lyrical story on the deep enchantment of the protagonist with harmonium is an incisive sample of the author’s resplendent narrative.

“Beyond the protruded teeth, were the shiny bones of keys, its brass skeleton, under a cover that was dark nut brown, and carved with baroque grape vines and entwined flowers… It was like maze that invited Kon-moni to walk it on her own. It beckoned her to open up the cover and look inside the body of keys that more music in their hearts… she put her right index finger on a tooth with eyes closed, her heart a pounding tom tom… T-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-i-i-i-i-n-n-n a fairy sound greeted her…”

Desire of the Pollen with its myriad characters whom we seem to have encountered in our own reflections of past enfolds us in The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

91 rapture. It is also a story of coming of age and disillusionment. ‘…Deha, the body, said lover poet Hasan Raja, frolics like a calm river dolphin in the eventide of senses, pining for a home...”

I cannot but smirk at VS Naipaul’s presumptuous observation on women writing while reading the story Waterborne, remarkable for its water imagery and the incredible ease with which Nabina Das pulls off the narrative in the voice of Ken. The title story “The House of Twining Roses”, is an absolute delight woven around the lives of a dreamy Mitra and a level headed Indu.

The bunch of roses, luminous pink flowers of radhachura, the pale lime pickles and the tiny guavas that were feasted upon by the raucous crows even before they turned pink inside make this story a visualtreat. “ ‘… For us roots are those that grow in the earth’s belly, and origins are where we find them to be growing’ Mitra wrote to Indu…”

Yet, succinctly, one cannot miss what it was for a child of late 1970’s generation to grow up in Assam, witnessing the prolific agitation spear headed by AASU. The House of Forgotten Youth and the House of Childhood are tributes to houses where memories are collected, stacked and savoured, before life catches up with in its whirlwind frenzy. Singapore Girl is another story packed with the flavour of Delhi, the whims of youth and most importantly reminds one of the easy shrug with which Delhi changes loyalties and discards people whom it finds inconsequential. One cannot the miss the self-deprecating yet powerful punch line of the protagonist as the story ends.

Women; Two Lives is a window to partition history told in halting narratives by an old Amala picking up broken shards of old memories, piecing them together, once again seeing in the mirror of mind two smiling girls, Amala and Suraiya who read Toru Dutt together.

Partition is documented history for our generation. The deep wounds left by it in the psyche of those who have lived through it, can never be documented enough; it can never heal enough; yet this story is a brave and sensitive effort at that.

Another subtly narrated story is “The Smell of Rains” told by The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

92 little Uma. For her, grief is loss of mother inextricably mingled with the memories of a roof tearing blast at a busy marketplace in the huge and crowded city of Delhi. It is only fateful that this review coincides with the Court verdict this mid-February. Adolescence and Two Voices, yet again dazzle with the sunlight of youth with jaunty conversations of two child women coming of age. The 9-11 Bride is a story of loss and reconciliation of the protagonist with the loss of her sibling in the 9-11 attack. The plot as it matures, however take a different twist and though this story is one of grief, one feels deeply appreciative of the author’s ingenuity. Nabina Das has her own style of narrative, weaving in and out of the stories the flavour of Assam where the plot allows. About Aribam in one such story where she brings us the tale of a man branded insurgent and terrorist. A mention of this story and review is not complete without the alluring lore from Assam ‘He’s a liar, He is divine/ He’s a thief, He is mine- thus gasped Radha’. On a very personal note, one observes that the cover photo of this beautiful collection of stories where bunches of white roses bloom and the wall overlooking them speak volumes about bygone days.

An immensely promising writer from Asia, Nabina Das, has carved her own niche amongst contemporary Indian writers. Her writing reminds one of Maya Angelou’s words “Pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”

Smitha Sehgal is a legal professional and writer.

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

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93

MOVIE REVIEW

By Mehal Yadav

A Lost Chapter in the History of Hindi Cinema Not many directors can change your perception of life in a mere 45-minute movie, but then Satyajit Ray is not just any director and Sadgati is not just a mere 45-minute movie.

Lost chapters in Hindi cinema are films like Sadgati which, unfortunately, not many people know about. And even if they do, not many are willing to watch it. Why, you ask? Well, the answer is a little complex.

Contrary to what people might think, it is actually very easy to make larger-than-life cinema. A big movie budget, a star-studded cast and a story of grand proportions can easily do wonders at the box office. But a film that captures the essence of humanity and all that it symbolizes is not easy. Films like Sadgati remind us of the harsh, very harsh cruelties of the caste system which is a reality that exists even today, a reality that we are not ready to face, much less counter. Which is why Satyajit Ray deserves every bit of honor that can be bestowed upon him because each and every one of his movies captures that very essence of reality. This also probably why he is the only Indian filmmaker to be given the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1992.

Condemning the vicious indictment of the caste system, Ray paints a picture of Dukhi (Puri), an untouchable who wants to invite the village priest to his home to decide a date for his daughter’s marriage. The priest who seems to be too busy eating and sleeping tells him The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

94 that he would perform this task in exchange for labour and he gives him various tasks around the house which include sweeping of the verandah, shifting sacks of grain to the shed, and the chopping of wood. Meanwhile, his illiterate wife, Jhuria (Patil), struggles to learn a grocery list. Already ailing, Dukhi performs all given tasks without a word but as he starts to chop, his frustration begins to show. With every blow, his anger and force increase but soon he succumbs to his fatigue and falls to the ground, dead. The Brahmin, to dispose off his body, ties a rope around one leg and then drags the corpse to drop it off to a place where dead animals are dumped, just like he would have done with a mule or a bull, without a thought and worse, without a conscience.

Released in 1981 and produced by Doordarshan, Sadgati was primarily made for TV viewers. The film features Om Puri, Smita Patil and Mohan Agashe in leading roles who give extremely fine performances. The agonizing shriek Patil gives when she is given the news of the death of her husband pierces through the stillness of the scene and your heart. The brief scene where she weeps bitterly at her ill-gotten fate is almost excruciatingly painful. Dukhi is the embodiment of the caste segregation which labels people as untouchables who can be mistreated and be made to live as second rate citizens. Puri’s frustration is palpable and makes you curse the cruel world we have created.

Though Ray makes you notice the bigger picture here, it is the smaller things that really define the film. The big mutli-headed idol in the Brahmin’s verandah, the grocery list, Agashe’s dilemma of disposing the body are all the things which subtly display the finesse of Ray’s work. Like all of his screenplays, the dialogues are short and precise.

As of today, there exists a faded copy in the National Film Archives, and has no subtitles. You can find an unclear version on YouTube but it can’t be downloaded. Yet I would recommend you watch it. Sadgati, or the ‘The Deliverance’, is a film that, in all its aspects, doesn’t fail to deliver.

Mehal Yadav, a student of Delhi University, likes reading, travelling & exploring new themes through her writing and research.

By Simultaneous publication arrangement with www.openroadreview.com The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

95

BOOK REVIEW

Raghavendra Madhu

Make Me Some Love To Eat

Review by Chandramohan Naidu Love and poetry are conjoined twins. To separate them is a fool’s errand. Yet, lately, love has got a bad rap in Indian English poetry; it has come to be recognised as juvenilia – serious poets write about the struggles of life.

This is why I am so impressed with Madhu’s debut collection of poems, Make Me Some Love To Eat. His is a book of unabashedly straightforward love poems, where poems after poems, the poet sing paeans of love: ‘Let love consume love/ let love make love to love/ let love procreate love.’

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Make Me Some Love To Eat was launched in Bhopal on 6 th January at Bharat Bhawan, by Makrand Deshpande, film and theatre actor; Vira Sathidhar, Dalit cultural activist and actor; Pubali Chaudhuri, screenwriter of Rock On and Kai Po Che; Tushar Paranjpe, writer, director, actor; and Maria Lourdes Pallais, as part of the Vihaan International Festival of Arts.

The book is virtuoso feat, a book of love poems for our time. I attended the launch of the book during Poetry with Prakriti festival in Chennai in December 2016 and was impressed with both the poet and his book. Raghavendra Madhu is a well known name in the poetry circles in India for his organisation Poetry Couture, through which he has been working towards taking poetry to public by organising poetry events in public venues. So perhaps it is understandable that his first collection of poems should be about love.

Another thing that impressed me about the book was the book itself. It has the most interesting title. Then the production, published by an upcoming Delhi-based publisher i write imprint, is top-notch. From the paper used to the design of the book, filled with some interesting drawing by the artist Devi Ganguly, all speak of love. One thing is certain. This is not your assembly line book. This is a book nurtured with love.

I have this habit of turning the pages slowly and devouring the first line or word. Upon receiving the book soon after the Chennai The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

97 launch, I did the same. That’s how I chanced upon the Faiz Ahmed Faiz quote which ends the book. His mention reminds me of Sahir Ludhianvi, who said, ‘Ishq hi ek haqeeqat naheen kuch aur bhi hai’.

This reality dawns on many of us after a few experiences into romance, love and its dreamy world. We all fall in love, fall out of it. These experiences make many become poets and try to reach out to the world, creating their own languages, words. They use them so deftly you feel they have discovered another meaning to an orphaned word, or line.

Madhu does exactly that. Take this poem, ‘Reason’, for example.

I like you, I do not have a specific reason to.

So I like you.

My liking you is not the sum of rationalities put together howsoever.

A boy or a girl whose innocent hearts have got locked, may dish out many reasons as to why one likes the other. But this is the immediate reaction, just to answer, nothing more, nothing less. In vacant moments search, prod, probe your inner self a little -the poem makes sense, matures you a little and your walk in the park, beach could be more dignified.

As I delved deep into the book, some lines leapt forth from the pages. ‘It’s miraculous how you are prose by day, and poetry by night,’ Madhu writes. There was a nukkad poet in Hyderabad. He said, ‘Din mein woh haas kar chal deti hai, raat ko mere saath zindagi gujaar leti hai. He is no more. Else, I would have sent him a photocopy of these lines.

Rochelle Potkar puts it aptly when she says that there is a certain earthiness to Madhu’s poems, like a river of loosening silt, but viewed through a modern cafe window.

Imagine two lovers on their first date on a terrace, both looking at the stars, the sky is silence. A few words is exchanged to break The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

98 the ice, and then you hear the hum, ‘Is anjuman mein aapko aana hai bar baar, dewaro dar ko guar se pehchan lijiye.’ These lines from Umrao Jaan are lifted higher and taken to a different plane in the poem ‘Nights’. He brings you out of restricted space in which the heart dwells for a moment, takes you elsewhere, to a lost world unfathomed.

Jayakanthan, Tamil writer and Jnanpith award winner, on relationship, he said, ‘one for one is fine, who for whom.’ The sum total of Madhu’s poems also raises this question, not directly but in a subtle manner.

There are many who say that love has become momentary, people fall in and fall out as if they are changing clothes. This I feel is an accusation. In reality, all of us are in search of love. You could be in bar and find a single female on other table sipping her beer yet throwing glances, loneliness does bind people. As this exchange goes on, she could say hello, then pay her bill and while passing by say thanks. You wonder what the thanks was for. You did not speak, but the silence seems to have said a lot. Between strangers, this is like tonic for the day. You step out with confidence. This momentary feeling springs into action. The day passes off beautifully.

You have to read Madhu’s poem, then close your eyes, go back to your moment, relive that, decipher, dissect, maybe you could find the answer for your falling or a falling out.

Madhu writes: I do not believe in holy places yet, every night I set on a pilgrimage on a train of kisses from your forehead to your toes.

Madhu declares his religion and spirituality. This makes me envious of him.

It is time that I ask someone to make me some love to eat.

N.Chandramohan Naidu is a freelance journalist, poet and an amateur photographer. He lives in Chennai.

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Undermining Conclusions: Four Poems of S. Manjunath

S Manjunath, a major contemporary name in Kannada

poetry, was born in Jog, Karnataka, in 1960 and was educated in Hasan and Mysore. He worked in the BSNL at K R Nagar near Mysore. His collections of poems include, Hakkipalti, Bahubali, Nandabattalu, Maunada Mani, Kalla Parivalagala Beta, Magalu Srujisida Samudra and Jeevayana. An edition of his “Complete Poems” was released recently. He has also translated Tao poems into Kannada.

Manjunath passed away in February 2017.

Kamalakar Bhat

Contemporary Kannada poetry is a mixed pot with recent poets writing in diverse poetic styles. Since the time of the modernist movement, Kannada poetry has seen several ‘schools’, appealing to distinct reading habits. The decolonizing spirit that followed the wan of modernist movement in Kannada poetry meant that experimentation prospered. Poetry too has voiced identity politics and has been a medium of radical politics for making assertive claims on behalf of, for example, working class, women and dalits. Alongside this, there are those who have experimented with subtler and The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017

100 nuanced literary expression to engage with the material existence.

One such experimental writing that has become distinctly visible now is ethical writing. A few poems of one such writer, S. Manjunath, are offered here in translation to introduce this development in contemporary Kannada poetry.

With ten collections of poems and a collection of translated verse, Manjunath is one of the major names in contemporary Kannada poetry. What sets apart this poet is his deep-seated particularity. He has admitted that for him poetic medium is a space for exploring concrete experience. He in fact asserts that what is written about should be less than what one has endured: “the abstract is only an effect, materiality is the only way.” (Preface, Magalu Srijisida Samudra, {‘The Sea She Made’}p.6). This materialistic approach makes him follow the ethical path of humility. His poems record what escapes attention in hasty viewing. They invite the reader to pause and perceive the tiniest beauties, and to indulge in wonder; to suspend the egotistic speed and wait in stillness till the space around comes alive with endless lively matters.

Manjunath, born in Jog, Karnataka, in 1960, received his education in Hasan and Mysore. He worked for the state telecom corporation, BSNL, before his untimely death in February 2017. Although he has contributed prose pieces to magazines, his published books are all collections of poems: Hakkipalti, Bahubali, Nandabattalu, Maunada Mani, Kalla Parivalagala Beta, Magalu Srujisida Samudra and Jeevayana. An edition of his complete poems, Nelada Beru, Nabhada Bilalu was brought out in 2012. He has also translated Tao poems into Kannada.

Manjunath describes his poetic practice as a journey: I like my poems to be about ordinary experiences rather than the extraordinary, about the serene rather than the sensational. I like even the desire for the stars to spring from the muddy grounds... I have increasingly felt that poetry disrupts settled knowledge, frees it, or in other words, it is a medium of softening one’s ego. Poetry teaches us to understand the difference in saying ‘I am a glass of water’ from ‘I am water’... After all, life itself shares this poeticism as it keeps underThe Wagon Magazine - March -2017

101 mining conclusions. (Preface, Nelada Beru, Nabhada Bilalu, (‘Roots of the Soil and the Sky’) p.10-14) An abiding aspect of Manjunath’s poetry is the intense interaction with the world in the course of which any distance between the observer and the observed is sought to be erased; the object of a poem being very often invoked as a form of the speaking self. The poetic attitude in Manjunath always aims to collapse the divide between the subject and the object. The speaking subject is submitted to reformulation through the poetic object. In other words, while the poem is an observation of a concrete scene or event, the perception refers back to the possibility/desirability of change in the observer. The steady look employed by the speaking subject yields perceptions of the imperfections of the self. This, I believe, is the ethical core of Manjunath’s poetry.

Poems of S. Manjunath translated from Kannada by Kamalakar Bhat

Deer Why is the deer so fast?

Nature has made it so by making it the tiger’s food and giving it long legs to run.

How about the beauty of its glistening eyes, of its horns and of its skin?

That is god’s art to melt the human heart when the tiger hunts the deer.

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In the street Rain began to lash out suddenly.

An old woman, caught midway with an infant in her arms, holds up the folds of her sari as a cover.

I can’t hasten to shelter them under my umbrella; Yet, I can’t keep standing under it unruffled.

As if poked sharply by my umbrella’s handgrip, an unknown twinge urging me I hurry to cross the distance between us.

As though the rain drops had washed away her age, This granny sprints in a rush to a tree’s shelter with the infant in her arms bouncing like a ball, leading even the infant to burst The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

103 into a cackle.

The infant’s laughter radiates brightly all around.

Where have the dark clouds gone!

No one needs this umbrella anymore.

Bird Green and washed clean by dew the smiling tree stands swaying in the cool breeze this morning.

A prettier or more serene scene there can be none!

So strolled the poet rejoicing heartily; ... a moment earlier a nest on that tree was attacked by a snake sending the bird-couple into shrill screams till their feathers fell defoliating the tree!

An earth-shattering event Had transpired in the lap of the tree unseen.

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Cat We might enter its light yellow world for an instance, but living onas a cat is not possible.

Shoot of grass, lily, pumpkincreeper arethe forest, and we are the strange movingtrees in its world.

A cat has a bigger challenge thanthe tiger; we whoslink away fearing the tiger, take our revenge here.

The cat knows it too; there is a tigerin its heart.

It rears up to pounce, yet sensing its body’s limits, saunters away softly.

It has put up with all this withtaut nerves since ages, though there is a black pain inits chest.

If the fist is loosened, pity pours over: so the cat fights on, not melting completely The Wagon Magazine - March -2017

105 even to the cat-lover’s touch.

Flitting about the houses, faced with locked up doors and resisting defeat, the cat does not let its savagery off at the kind man on the steps; for its self-knowledge is not for sale!

At the touch of the tender rays of a winter morn I saw a cat!

On loose soil I place its foot prints.

Kamalakar Bhat is an Associate Professor at the Post-graduate Department of English, Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar in Maharashtra, India. He is a bilingual writer and a translator in Kannada and English. His publications include two collections of poems in Kannada, the first appeared in 2006 and won the “PUTINA Award for Best Book” and the second appeared in 2010. His research articles have appeared in various academic journals. His translations of poems and stories from Kannada into English have appeared in Indian Literature, Protocol and Muse India.

FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY Published by Vel.Kathiravan, K G E TEAM, Chennai, India - 600024 Printed by Print Process, Chennai- 600014 / Phone: +949176991885 The Wagon Magazine - March - 2017