Aug 2016

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The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

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VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 5 - August - 2016

Columns: Sotto Voce-Indira Parthasarathy 14 Musings Of An Axolotl -C.S.Lakshmi 17 P&P - Yonason Goldson 64 Talespin - Era.Murukan 32 Flash Fiction: Jeff Coleman 29 Vyjayanthi Subramanian 83 Verse Travelogue - Book Excerpts: Usha Akella 56 Poetry:

Christopher Barnes 26

Chris Macalino 72

Bhekumuzi Christopher Kubheka Mloi 85

Norbert Gora

76 Fiction:

Graham Wynd 42 Non-Fiction: Theatre - C.Raveendran 90 Author Interview:

Kerry J Donovan / Usha Akella 69 Event: Bengaluru Poetry Festival: 78

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

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PRASAD'S POST

Somebody said somewhere: ‘never plan ahead’ ... I didn’t.

Oh! ... But …. Life had other plans!

Life is not that easy to throw down your dice and walk away dusting your bottom, you see.

July had been [still is] an overwhelmingly eventful month.

Let me stick to the joyful part to start with. *** History fascinates me.

Even during my younger years, in an attempt is to recapitulate, though I loved to read Perry Mason, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, P.D.James, Nevil Shute, Ian Fleming, Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, John Le Carre etc., from my father’s bookshelf to fast paced James Hadley Chase, Ken Follet, Robert Ludlum, Colin Forbes, Trevanian and other thriller writers, I usually return home to historical novels. G.M. Fraser, Patrick O’Brian, William Golding, Margaret Mitchell, Alexandre Dumas and Sir Walter Scott were the favourites. Then I found Thomas Hardy, a wonderful story teller. But, Colleen McCullough with her ‘Masters of Rome Series’ swept me off by her meticulously The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

4 researched works, particularly, Caesar’s Women (1996). By selecting this, I might differ with critics like Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D. {Clinical Professor of Surgery (Neurosurgery, ret.) and Adjunct Professor of Medical History (ret.)}. I will write in defence of Colleen McCullough on some

other occasion. Coming back to ‘Caesar’s Women’, Cleopatra is more than an allegory of personality traits. She is not a Helen, the legendary face to launch a thousand ships and burn the topless towers of Ilium. She is a full-dimensional complex human being. Most of us know the Shakespearian version of ‘Cleopatra’ or read ‘Cleopatra’ only through Shakespeare: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety;...”

But, I found a totally different Cleopatra in Margaret George’s ‘The Memoirs of Cleopatra’. She had spent two and a half years writing ‘The Memoirs of Cleopatra’, travelling to Egypt four times to do the research.

Referring to the many incorrect presentations of the legendary queen, Margaret George considers her novel to be ‘the most historically accurate version within the limits of the medium.’ She viewed Cleopatra fundamentally as a ‘political leader’ who suffered from centuries of Roman propaganda and Shakespearean plays, each of whom sought to depict her as ‘flighty’. Margaret George said, “She was obviously very appealing but not this bimbo that the Romans would like you to think she was.” Anyway, she stands tall in history among all the Kings and Emperors put together. Equally intrigued I am when it comes to the ‘Ranis’ & ‘Maharanis’ of India.

We have read a lot about Maharajas and their escapades, eccentricities, indulgences and debaucheries. ‘Freedom At Midnight’ mentions that the Maharaja of Mysore would only buy the cars in batches of sevens, with ‘doing a Mysore’ becoming a common parlance in the Rolls-Royce showroom for selling seven cars at the same time. King Jai Singh of Alwar, after being insulted by a salesman of Rolls Royce in London, used their cars to pick the garbage of the city. He kept doing The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

5 so until the company apologized for their behaviour. Debauchery was once such privilege of them. For instance, the Nizam of Hyderabad had in addition to his legal quartet of wives, 42 other begums in the zanana and 44 khanazads or women attendants. And if they were inadequate, he would often marry a new woman on a Thursday and divorce her on Friday. Those were days when a maharaja could snap his fingers and order a dish, thus: “Take a whole camel, put a goat inside it, and inside the goat a peacock, inside which, put a chicken. Inside the chicken put a sand grouse, inside it put a quail, and finally, a sparrow.

Then put the camel in a hole and steam it.”

The extravagance is clearly portrayed in the words of Ranjith Singh Gaekwad: “ I feel privileged to have been born in the Royal house of the Gaekwads of Baroda. My childhood was filled with the most amazing sights and experiences. When I look back at those days, it almost feels like a fairy tale… Living in this beautiful palace surrounded by acres of greenery that included a riding track, a full- fledged cricket ground adjacent to the to which Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, was the Princes’ private school… also known as Princess Ayesha of Cooch Behar, photographed by Derek Adkins in 1951.

My father Pratapsinhrao Gaekwad Courtesy: MAP / Tasveer brought us a toy train with full steam engine, which was a made- to -scale model of the flying Scotsman. Chugging through the palace estate, this little train took us to school” To put it in a nutshell, I quote Diwan Jarmani Das who wrote in his book, Maharaj: “The perversions, indulgences and little whims of stunning cruelty have always appealed to popular imagination. The world still loves a royal!”

But very little is known about their queens. Though exceptions are there like Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, who was instrumental in promoting girls’ eduThe Wagon Magazine - August 2016

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Maharani Chimnabai II of Baroda, also known as Shrimant Gajrabai Ghatge of Dewas Senior.

Photographed by Lala Deen Dayal in 1891. Courtesy: MAP / Tasveer

cation in India. In fact, she was one in the list of ‘most beautiful women’ by Vogue. On other hand, most of the queens never were mentioned even in the pages of history. When Tasveer, a photography studio, who declare themselves as ‘an organisation committed to the art of photography and photography as art”, announced that they are going to present an exhibition - ‘Maharanis: Women of Royal India’ for the first time in Chennai, I entered the exhibition hall promptly on the inaugural morning itself. Through the lenses, this exhibition presented ‘a peek at the enigmatic women of royal India from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries.’

The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

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Maharaj Kumar Rani Sita Devi of Kapurthala Photographed by Andre Durst in 1934 - Courtesy: MAP / Tasveer

For the first time images of ‘Maharanis’ are out in open and for public display. That is why this exhibition presented by Tasveer becomes important and they have done a remarkable job at it. They have sourced these photographs from the archives of the Museum of Art and Photography, royal collections from across the subcontinent and

Rani Sethu Parvathi Bayi and Rani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore, Kerala.

Unknown photographer, undated. Courtesy: B Jayachandran / Tasveer

The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

8 other institutional and private collections both in India and abroad such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Amar Mahal Museum and Library in Jammu.

By this exhibition, roles of these fascinating women in history in the public and private spheres are brought out along with the glamour of a bygone era into the limelight. Thanks to Tasveer, I had a vintage tour of the fascinating faces of the ‘better-halves’ of the erstwhile kings of wealth and power and the book chronicles more of these legendary beauties and their extraordinary lives lived literally behind the curtains, spent in all female courts, their creative dining enclosures, political alliances to balance the power and much more.

Tasveer’s heavily illustrated book, also titled ‘Maharanis: Women of Royal India’, includes over 100 photographs, some of them for the very first time. The book, as well as a collector’s portfolio, is available for sale at retail bookstores and online at the Tasveer Bookstore. https://tasveerbookstore.com/products/maharanis- women-of-royal-india

*** With an apology to James Baldwin, “we are trapped in history; History is trapped in us”.

Some of the literary stalwarts who created history are history now and will go down well in history.

Let me start the condolences with the loss of Mahasweta Devi, an eminent Indian Bengali writer, who had been studying and writing incessantly about the life and struggles faced by the tribal communities in the states like Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Born into a middle class Bengali family at Dacca, which is located in present day Bangladesh, in the year 1926, she evolved to be a litterateur with the zeal of an activist. Of late, Mahasweta Devi is known to have been studying the life history of rural tribal communities in the Indian state of West Bengal and also women and dalits. She used creative expression as a tool to fight The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

9 for the rights of the indigenous people and marginalised sections.

Her creative works reflected the brutal oppression faced by the tribal people at the hands of the powerful upper caste persons comprising landlords, money lenders and government officials in this belt.

And then, Tamil Literary world has lost one of the pioneers of modern poetry, Jnanakoothan. Born as R.Ranganathan, having Kannada as his mother tongue, he leaves behind a number of volumes of poetry in Tamil, a real treasure.

With his strong foundation in Tamil Classical Literature, and a deep study of Kalidasa in Sanskrit, he turned to free verse and used it as a tool to criticise the Dravidian Movement.

The authenticity of the Dravidian Movement’s ‘love’ for Tamil language was questioned, and its rhetoric was satairically criticised by him. His comment that they are responsible for Tamils losing respect for their language is indeed a fact to reckon with.

He responded contemptuously to some Dravidian leaders’ common catchphrase ‘Tamil engal moochu’ (‘Our breath is Tamil’) by writing: “Enakkum Tamilthaan moochu; aanaal aduthavar mel athai vidamatten” (I breath Tamil too but I will not blow it on others).

-(translated by Krishna Prasad)

His strong contention was that only free verse could reflect the current society better.

It is still green in my memory that myself and Riyaz Ahamed travelled with Jnanakoothan to Madurai, representing Kanaiyazhi magazine in the early nineties. A wonderful day was spent drenched in literary conversations with the likes of Devakottai Va Murthy, Sureshkumar Inderjith and Ravi Subramaniyam.

After that, I met him only in the year 2007 when I launched the Tamil literary journal Yugamayini. He did oblige by contributing The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

10 his poems regularly. There is no denial that his absence has created a vaccuvam in Tamil literary field.

Here I present translated version of a couple of poems by him:

What sort?

With an expression of enquiring something he walked towards me.

Shop?... Residence?... Auditorium?... Temple?

As I stood pondering over the nature of his question opening his mouth liberally he walked off sans enquiring anything.

What a world it is, see!

Express

Withholding nothing I am accustomed to speak out Exactly contrary is a friend of mine He never utters anything for anything Silence is his means ‘Expressing yourself is always the best’ We all said.

To our astonishment he did not even after that The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

11 Will he not say something when he dies?

He too died one day While returning back after seeing him burnt like a cigar in the sunny street a cock stiffened once to crow as always, I said ‘even after the dawn, cocks do crow’

-( Poems translated by Krishna Prasad) Though I have read Mahasweta Devi in translations and Jnanakoothan in Tamil, Bart Wolffe was closer to me on an oneto-one basis. Beside the conversations on theatre and acting, he willingly edited my earlier poems and as well taught me the approach to ‘editing’ poems. In that sense he is a teacher to me. He encouraged me a lot; gave me valuable suggestions when I launched the Wagon Magazine.

Last month, in the middle of the night, he spoke a lot over the phone. I could sense shivering in his otherwise booming voice. He could only share some excerpts from his old book of plays with an apology that he could not do anything more at that juncture due to his failing health. He died on the 5th of August.

I could only say that ‘I miss you Bart’ with an acking heart.

‘Bart Wolffe was a leading playwright in Zimbabwe and worked extensively throughout the sub-Sahara running theatre workshops in countries such as Zambia and Namibia as well as in the UK. Since leaving Zimbabwe in 2003, Bart spent two years in Germany before settling in England.

During Refugee Week, the Victoria & Albert Museum hosted an event where he gave a reading of his poetry accompanied by a traditional mbira player from Zimbabwe. A chapbook essay on exile The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

12 and alienation was published under the title of FLOTSAM by Exiled Writers Ink. He has been interviewed on BBC Radio since being here as well as by German Radio and an Independent Zimbabwean radio station broadcasting from London to Africa. Most recently, he has been a guest on Croydon radio for Poets Anonymous. His published works may be found on Lulu.com and Amazon. He won a national poetry award in 2013 and has recorded many audio books. He was a resource provider in workshops with schools in Norfolk and London, ran a series of theatre workshops with refugee children in Croydon and has presented his work with a community-based organisation that goes by the name of Moot and whose underlying philosophy concerns staying human in the city. He was also a primary guest speaker for a British Psychological Society seminar. His published plays under the cover of AFRICA DREAM THEATRE incorporate a body of work that express themes such as loss of innocence, discrimination, intolerance and alienation.’ - From his biography in his website.

He had posted his very last poem in his webpage on 2nd of August.

Here it is: SHELTER FROM THE STORM Rust grows its red beard aboard the ark.

A hedge-strimmer’s serrated blade leans Up against the shack’s shelter Among the planks with foot rot And the plastic tarpaulin’s blue dimples Filled with mosquito ponds.

From the crowded occupation of metal and wood, Bags of cement or compost, Unused rolls of chicken fence mesh breathing, Obsolete workshop machinery in stasis, Iron rakes and sharp nails protruding From a slatted door that won’t stay shut, Bins and broken boxes competing damply.

You have to squeeze in to find a place Where you can stay dry and hold your cup steady The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

13 As you sip your smoke grey as the sky.

Green leaves drip down the bordering branches And everything crowds in As at a bus stop passengers press together When the rain makes waterfalls on canopied edges To curtain off the outside.

Here, webs multiply the tangled view As angled drainpipes provide their anchor And for five minutes or more Respite allows a man his tea and cigarette Before going back indoors to write this note.

Roger Turner, poet and a friend of Bart has written a tribute: A Lion Silenced

(for Bart Wolffe RIP) Listen to the silence It’s louder than before A Lion now has left us We no longer hear his roar A poet of the people His voice a summer storm The lion now is silenced Now silence is the norm Read the words he’s written Listen to the voice The lion has entrapped you You do not have a choice

We were in his story He touched us to our core Now, the lion...he is silenced And Bart Wolffe will roar no more

Roger Turner The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

14 I cap my post with a poem by Jnanakoothan:

Parting

Why does the December go deserting the extolled Margazhi?

-Margazhi - Winter month of the Hindu Calender.

(Translated by Krishna Prasad)

Krishna Prasad

a. k. a

Chithan

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The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

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SOTTO VOCE INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

Absurd theatre in ancient Tamil Once I wrote, that, perhaps, the ‘kUrru’ in the ancient Tamil grammatical work, ‘Tholkappiyam’, could have later become ‘kUthu’ indicating ‘theatre’. This ‘atrocious statement’, as it was described, stirred up ‘a hornet’s nest’. I was hauled up by one traditional Tamil scholar, who argued that Tholkappiyam had only reflected the way of real life of the Tamils in the past and that ‘the treasure-house of the ancient Tamil culture, which what Tholkappiyam is’, could not have described a fictional life on the stage.

I do not want to enter into the philosophical domain to discuss whether ‘art is real and life is an illusion’ or ‘life is real and art is an illusion’ but this much I can say that all the ‘agam’ (love) poems that portray life as found in the Sangam classics, and thereby, providing a classical blue-print of illustrations for the Tholkappiyam grammatical rules and regulations, follow a rigid and strict convention without any deviation whatsoever, that it cannot but be fictional.

The Tamil country is divided into five geographical regions; the hills, the plains, the pastoral regions, the coastal area, and the arid barren lands. Hills providing the romantic environs, the pre-marital love (‘PuNarchi’- ‘union’) is the main theme of all these poems, which are in the form of either dramatic monologue or dialogue.

The plains, rich and fertile, portray an affluent life, when there are frequent lovers’ tiff (‘Oodal’- ‘feigned anger’), who are now married.

The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

16 The husband has also social obligations and when he goes on such missions, the wife patiently waits for him in the pastoral called ‘mullai’. Excellent visuals like sunset in autumn, sounds of the cattle slowly walking back home, chattering rains and distant thunder, distinguish these scenes of dramatic poetry in this geographical division.

The sea always reminds one of the dividing lines and the drama visualized in this region is characteristically brought out as slings and arrows of romantic agony.

It is possible that many of these dramatic poems existed much before than Tholkappiyam, but only later, they were collected and classified, on the basis of which Tholkappiyam could have set forth its grammatical rules.

There are a few poems in ‘agam’ poetry of dramatic import, which now look like totally different from the main stream thinking, as what had been stipulated by Tholkappiyam. According to Tholkappiyam, the hero and heroine, who fall in love, must be extremely good-looking, endowed with all the noble qualities and belong to the same economic and social class.

There is a beautiful drama portrayed in one of the ‘Kaliththogai’ poems that can be described as ‘rebel theatre’ that defies convention.

‘Kaliththogai’ has many poems of dramatic dialogue that sets it apart from the love poems of other anthologies belonging to the same era.

In one of the poems, a hunch-backed woman and a dwarf, who are in their autumn years of their life, fall in love. Nature has wronged them physically but it has not meddled with their indomitable spirit of love.

Leslie Fielder has said that, in those days, people really believed that God had created freaks to provide amusement for the children and wealthy. No wonder therefore, these two poor mishaps, the hero and the heroine are always at the receiving end. But in each other’s company, they appear to be in an overwhelming stature. They appear on the stage in no less presence as that of a conventional hero or heroine. Their wit, their playhouse irony, and above all, their natThe Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

17 ural ability to laugh at themselves, without any inhibition, elevate them to a much unusual romantic throne than that of a normal pair.

Let us see the play: The stage is in darkness.

In the dim lights that come, we see an hunch-back (late middle-aged woman) enters from back stage right corner and she moves quickly in like a snake in the waters towards the front stage.

In the left corner of the back stage, a dwarf (man of the same age as the woman) watches her with amusement. He walks in measured steps towards her.

Bright lightsShe gives him an angled look.

Both of them are in simple plain dress that announces their economic status. They are servants in that house.

The dwarf addresses her in a mock-heroic fashion, imitating an epic hero’s idiom of stylized speech.

‘Oh! Gracious lady! Your Excellency moves like a wavering shadow in the running waters of a sacred river. I salute thee’ Feigning anger but nevertheless, not concealing her admiration for him, she retorts: ‘Look, who is making fun of whom! A dwarf! Aren’t you less than a man? Am I in anyway inferior to you, you son of a bird?’

‘You walk like an upright tortoise, with both your hands firmly holding your waist and what a grace, my God’ While engaged in this wordy duel, they walk around the stage, almost like chasing each other.

These dialogues can also be rendered in music making it a musical parody. But the tragic- comedy built up in the construction of this beautiful poem should not be lost in a dramatic production.

This poem, as a play has numerous sub-texts, although apparently frivolous but what that makes it refreshingly modern, reading like a Beckettian creation, is a classic text for an absurd play.

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

The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

18 MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C.S.LAKSHMI

One River, Many Streams Around this time of the year, when due to heavy rains in the first two months of monsoon in Mumbai, buildings and roads have collapsed and old trees have fallen, and it is the month of August when occasionally the sun comes out, there is that sinking feeling in the stomach. Not because of all the disasters wrought by the rains but because in the middle of the month would be Independence Day celebrations in housing societies, schools and colleges and the unit tests of children would be over and there would be a one-day holiday and some clever children in the family or in the neighbourhood would ask you what the day means to you. And it is always difficult to answer. And one always goes back to the growing up years of forties and fifties.

I have talked about these years in a story of mine. Often I read out that portion, from the beautiful translation of my story by Lakshmi Holmstrom, to young students as my take on how I feel about the nation and its independence. It is a portion that comes as an attachment in the story; it is a letter written to a newborn girl child: Attachment: For Roshni, a morning song.

A few weeks ago your mother invited me to your home to give you a name; to whisper it in your ear. In that tiny hut, where there was scarcely enough room to sit down, your mother had hung a cradle which she had bought for a hundred rupees.

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She had strung flowers around the room. She had bought a new frock for you. A couple of months ago I had seen you in the hospital—within three hours of your birth. You looked like a peeled fruit then! Now your face and your features were bright, radiant.

When I whispered in your ear, like a secret, ‘You are Roshni, you are Light,’ you swivelled your eyes round and gazed at me.

Every night, your grandmother, who gave up her share of a small piece of agricultural land and left her village to come and work in the big city and bring up four daughters in this slum colony by the seaside, will sing you to sleep with lullabies.

As you grow up she will tell you stories to the sound of the waves until you fall asleep: Stories of kings and queens, stories about the devil, about valorous mothers and noble wives. At dawn, the calling of the azaan from the mosque will wake everyone, summoning them to prayers. I have heard that in the temples too, they sing the tirupalli ezhucchi to wake up the gods. Roshni, this is my azaan for you, my dawn song. To wake you up and keep you awake. This is the song of years. A generation that wants to tell many stories; in many voices;, in many forms. You will hear many tunes here. And there will be some discordant notes, too; Because it spans many years. It touches many lives; Lives which are similar, and very different. But do listen to it.

During these years, it wasn’t easy to grow up, to live, to make the right choices in life, in education and work. Several of us, even now, keep changing those choices. We had to oppose the mainstream and swim against it, taking care not to be caught in the whirlpools. They told us many stories, too. They told us that for women, marriage was the most important thing in life. But we had also heard of the Sufi saint Rubaiya, and of Meera. We knew about Bhakti. All the same, several among us were atheists, didn’t believe in rituals, didn’t accept that one religion alone was true. Even now, that is so.

From our childhood, the Independence movement and its deals had merged into our lives. The men and women who had been part of it were our role models. Many of them lived among us. They came and spoke to us in our schools. You could say The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

20 there wasn’t a home without a picture of Gandhi smiling. From our schooldays we learnt the song about Gandhi’s life, which began, ‘Suno, suno ae duniyavalo Bapujiki amar kahaani’. When we were still in school, we saw the film Jagruti in which a teacher takes his pupils all over India and sings to them, ‘Take this earth, and wear it on your forehead as an auspicious sign. This is the land of our sacrifices.’ For our generation it became almost a national song. We were stirred by other Hindi songs, such as the one that went, ‘We have saved the boat from the storm and brought it safely ashore. Children safeguard this land.’ We wept.

There were some among us who had grown up learning the poems of the poet Bharati. Iqbal’s lyric, ‘Sare jehan se accha’ rang out in every school. We learnt to sing Tagore’s songs, ‘Ekhla chalo’ and ‘Amar janmabhumi’, making no discrimination against any language. In another picture Kabuliwallah, the hero, from Kabul, sings a song, remembering his country. ‘My beloved land, I dedicate my heart to you. You are my desire. You are my honour.

I greet the winds that come from your direction with a salaam.

Your dawns are most beautiful; your evenings most splendid-coloured.’ We used to apply these words to our own country, and weep. Of course, there were many other labels amongst us—as Marathi, Kannadiga, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Assamese, and so on. Bur for us who grew up in the years following Independence, the country as a whole was the important thing.

But these were not the only songs we heard. There were other sounds and voices. Proverbs, discussions, the voices of everyday life. Listen to some of them: Rubbish and daughters grow quickly. Women and cows will go where you drag them. Women on earth become fertile with beating. A woman learns by giving birth; a man learns through trade. A daughter is like a basket of snakes on the head. A leaking roof and a nagging wife are best abandoned. A woman’s virtue is like a glass vessel. If a husband batters or the rain lashes, to whom can you complain? You may sit on any ground; you may sleep with any woman.

Sometimes, the older women in our homes, or travellers The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

21 we met on journeys, sang yet other songs. Such sounds brought us down to earth from the idealistic heights where we were floating. I found some of those songs in books, too. One remains in my memory: it’s a song by a widow who says she might have served society better had she bloomed as a flower on a tree and not been born a woman. The metaphor in the song refuses to leave me.

There was also something called national culture. Motherhood was at its core. A woman like Jija Mata. A woman who suckled her child with the milk of valour. Before our time, women had already left their homes to work for the country. They had accomplished extraordinary things. But we, who came after them, had to safeguard our homes. We were instructed that our duty was to reap the benefits of the previous generations, to listen without opening our mouths, never to raise any questions.

Our responsibility was to create a home, set up a good family, learn what was useful to society. The advice to us was clear: Sit still. Otherwise you will rock the boat.

Our bodies grew heavy. We carried a heavy burden of stones that we did not choose to carry. I say all this, Roshni, with the clarity of hindsight. But at that time we were both clear and confused. We were not silent, though. Do you know, there is a Bengali proverb that says, no one can control a woman’s tongue?

So we never stopped talking. We spoke up through poems, stories, political essays, music, drama, painting; in many different ways. Many of us aimed for higher education. If you look at many family photograph albums, there will be one photograph of a young woman in a graduation gown, clutching a rolled-up degree in her hand. Wearing an expression of fulfilment; Head held high; A keenness in the eyes. I too have such a photograph.

But it was also customary, as soon as this photograph was taken, to remove the graduation gown and take another photo which would be sent to prospective bridegrooms. I told you, didn’t I, there were all kinds of pressures on our lives? It wasn’t easy to deal with them. A woman called Subhadra Khatre has said, ‘It The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

22 would be good to deposit one’s femininity in a safe-deposit vault and move around freely in the outside world.’ She was an engineer of that time. She writes, ‘Had I been a typist, I would have picked up a job easily. As an engineer, they looked at me as if I were trying to usurp a man’s place.’

Until the end of the sixties we fought only within our own homes and our narrow surroundings. It was a battle to stop others from directing our lives. In 1961, the law against dowry came into force. We debated it in schools and colleges.

There were some women in politics even at that time. But it was in the seventies that a serious networking among women with divergent views began through conferences, workshops, protest marches, and dialogues. We wrote many songs for our movement. We sang them. We raised our voices against price-rise, against dowry, against rape, against domestic violence, against liquor, and against exploitation of the environment. We worked together and independently. We gained victory. We saw defeat.

Sometimes, we were divided as activists and academics. But one thing we understood clearly. Just because we had similar bodies we did not need to have similar thoughts. The political atmosphere made some of us disillusioned with the movement. Some of us opted out. Others became isolated. They retreated into their shell, refusing to communicate. We became aware of one thing. We needed to learn humility. However much we celebrated sisterhood and love, there were still many demons within us such as jealousy, competitiveness, arrogance, insolence, hatred.

Some of us emerged with renewed strength. Like so many Sitas who couldn’t be banished to any forest. Like so many Rubaiyas who walked their own path, singing the stories of their own lives.

Roshni, Light, I have strung together for you fifty years of doubts, rebellions, battles, struggles. This is only a song. When I write an epic for you—and I will write it one day—I will speak of all this in detail. But don’t think the song is complete. It is true that communal violence, caste-wars, and human degradation have all dispirited us greatly. But our battle continues. We still The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

23 raise our voices to safeguard rivers, trees, and animals; To safeguard human beings, above all. You will hear in this song, resonances of our joy, despair, disappointments, and exhilaration.

Sleep well, Roshni. And when you wake up, let it be to the sound of our song. You and I and many others must complete it.

For we believe that a song once begun ought to be completed.

It was with such words resounding in my mind and that of the SPARROW team that we thought of organizing a cultural festival with focus on North East and Orissa. SPARROW had been planning a cultural festival for a very long time to showcase regions like the North East and Orissa in order to dispel the illusion of an unvaried national identity. We felt that there was a great need to posit against this myth of a defined national identity, other identities of women and men that exist within the rubric of nation. After its project of making two films on women from the North East, SPARROW was convinced that images that question the notion of uniformity and shatter illogical and contrived definitions must be presented in a manner that they continue to exist as valid parallel images which are as much a part of our country. Without such efforts, there is the danger of marginalizing other cultural contexts that are very important for broadening one’s view of life, women and politics. Cultural festivals such as these are important to expose people to concepts and lives that are not part of their experience.

SPARROW sincerely hoped that when exposed to images, voices and sounds other than those they are bombarded with every day through the media and their education, it may result in a new The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

24 awareness and understanding of, and a new sensitivity to other areas of experience; that it may also serve the purpose of expanding their vision of life as it is lived in this country.

The cultural festival which we finally organized with the collaboration of National Film Archive of India, Pune, and venue partners Fun Cinemas, was a modest attempt to break this notion of one single national identity, for where defined identities begin to emerge they also define women in specific ways. The films short-listed for this festival were chosen with the purpose of revealing the lives of women. They explored the everyday life of women and their functional life both inside and outside the family. The films also dealt with family relationships and the space women occupy within the family system. Film Directors Jahnu Barua, Manmohan Mahapatra and Aribam Syam Sharma were generous with their time in helping to choose films for this festival.

Their support made it possible to structure the film section of this festival. Apart from films there were music and dance performances, and there were paintings and arts and crafts from Mizoram brought by Zaithangpuii Vuvangtu and Klanghro Khuma.

The popular Hindi and other language directors, actors and other artists are known to many, as some of them are cult-figures.

SPARROW felt that it was very important to present The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

25 artists and technicians from other languages and fields as people before such an audience. This may enable them to include in their existing memory of faces and people, images other than those they see every day. With this in mind, SPARROW invited Preeti Saikia, wife of late B.N. Saikia, the legendary film-maker from Assam, film-makers Aribam Syam Sharma, Oken Amakcham and M A Singh from Manipur, actors Malaya Goswami and Bishnu Kharghoria from Assam, actor Yengkhom Roma from Manipur, and film-makers Bijoy Ketan Mishra and Bijaya Jena from Orissa. The festival was held over five days from January 26 to January 30, 2007. The venue was part of the Fun Cinemas multiplex complex.

The festival was inaugurated by the well-known artiste Shabana Azmi and concluded by Jarjum Ete, Chairperson, Arunachal Pradesh State Commission for Women. The films chosen were award-winning films brought in especially for the festival from the National Film Archive of India, Pune, and the Directorate of Film festivals, New Delhi. Everything was well-planned and extremely well-organized. Classical Manipuri dance by students of Manipuri Nritya Kendra and vocal and violin recital by Sunita Bhuyan on the inaugural and concluding days, respectively, were well-appreciated performances. The guests of honour from the two regions were national artists whose work had been awarded. And yet the response from the Mumbai public was anything but encouraging. North East and Orissa were not regions they were interested in. In fact, one of the members of the audience who had come to see some other film in the multiplex saw the artifacts from Mizoram and commented, “These don’t belong to India.”

The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

26 Even the media’s response was cold. The venue partners lost interest in the festival even before it began and quietly withdrew all support of media contact, advertisements and other logistical support. We had an auditorium and nothing else.

The cultural festival organized by SPARROW, the first of its kind, made very little impact on the Mumbai public. We now feel that not just one festival of this kind but several are needed to awaken a public lulled by the sex and gore of Hindi films and a warped notion of nationhood. But we are still holding our heads high for we feel it is better to have organized such a festival and failed than not to have organized it at all.

And this year, like many other years I remember the letter to Roshni in my story and the cultural festival we organized. Maybe this Independence Day I would read out once again, to an inquisitive and wise girl child who knows how to listen and who has the time, the letter to Roshni, and tell her about the cultural festival we organized. And just maybe a girl child from here or anywhere else would be able to grasp those words.

Source: Photographs of the cultural programme and painting exhibition: SPARROW Collections, Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women, Mumbai.

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 - August- 2016

27

POEMS Christopher Barnes

Travelling Incognito ...Joseph Stalin bib and tuckers for Blackpool Pier.

His Roma caravan fiddles with moods.

A hocus pocus trumps purse strings.

The misty ball formulates a void, Throbs in the rootlessness of edges.

He captions shading, parameters, Instincts an emphatic face.

A donkey sheers off in cross-currents.

Style Jackie Stallone’s Nagasaki vacation Wobbled crabbed. The mushroom, belly-flopped by parachute, Harbingered air raid ear-splits.

Implosion tarred on a megacritical squeeze, In one howling flash.

Skin-rips tasselled her limbs.

The crumpled face Pussed grisly.

Dior’s rig-out blistered.

The elegant Saké bar jiggled, molten.

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28

Half-Mast Captain James Cook was earth-shook To be weeping at Judy Garland’s final curtain.

Stuffy, rain-splodged beaten tracks, A wind-leaf, uncomplicated service.

Kill time hearse, three elite Limos.

Wrapped in yellow roses, The elfin coffin tensed at flashbulbs.

He was a true friend of Dorothy.

Sunderland

Prince Otto Von Bismarck lopes east, Stages in municipal yards.

The lift jitterbugs debris Into a thickset hopper. Crumpling bulk-heads Maul slop-reeking bins.

Hours are sedimentary. Cylinders zigzag, throwback.

Pay’s a miser but back-slapping’s on tap.

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29

Bubble Vlad, the Impaler, goosefleshed Upright, basketed, Fellow-travelling with The Wright Brothers and a duck.

The balloon ramped on its lash Topsiding a hullabaloo.

Loomed fixtures of this dragon Wafted gazette print into the stratosphere.

Publicity vigorous on lenses.

Brut glissades into ice.

A Northern Arts writers’ award winner in the year 1998, Poet Christopher Barnes reads for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and partake in workshops. His collections LOVEBITES got published in the year 2005. He made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called ‘Out Of The Picture’ which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords. He worked on a collaborative art and literature project called ‘How Gay Are Your Genes’, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which was exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, including a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic.

The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

30 FLASH FICTION

JEFF COLEMAN

The Gift

The man sat on a long wooden bench, watching a little boy no older than two play in the grass. He saw him kick a soft red ball, and thought the sight should have made him smile. But he only felt despair; an aching emptiness that had hardened his heart long ago. He’d lived a long life, had expected so much and received so little. He had no spouse, no family, no friends. He’d spent the better part of his life drifting from one thing to the next, always in pursuit of something better, a dream only half glimpsed, always on the edge of the horizon and forever out of reach. Now his life was like his eyes, blurred and unfocused in his old age.

The boy chased after his soft red ball. When he caught up to it he laughed, drew back his right leg and kicked it with as much force as a toddler could muster. The ball rolled along the dewy grass, cut across the asphalt path and skittered to a stop just below the man’s worn brown shoes. He looked down at the boy, and he tried so very hard The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

31 to smile. Instead he sighed, gave the ball a light kick and watched as the boy took off after it.

The boy picked up his ball. Returned to the man; eyed him curiously and smiled.

The man said, “Hi,” tried to make his voice light and playful but succeeded only in a tone that was dull and flat.

The boy frowned and waddled closer, cradling the ball in his arms. He peered into the man’s eyes, tilting his head slightly, and extended his arms outward, gesturing with his soft red ball.

“Ball?” The boy dropped it into the man’s lap.

The man’s eyes brimmed with unexpected tears. “For me?” he asked, pointing to himself with a finger that trembled only partially due to old joints.

The boy smiled in reply.

Such kindness. For what seemed the first time in a very long life, the man cracked a smile, thin and awkward as it was. The boy had given him a gift greater than anything he’d ever received. A tiny spark that had lain dormant in the man’s heart for many years ignited and he let the awkward smile bloom into a broad grin.

The boy saw the change in the man’s face and giggled.

That was when the man realized he too had a gift to give, a gift he’d almost forgotten, a gift he’d never expected to give himself.

The man said, “Come,” and the boy came.

“For your kindness, I give the oldest gift, the oldest and the greatest.”

He extended his right hand and laid it atop the boy’s head. A sudden gust of wind scattered strands of the boy’s light blond hair.

The man closed his eyes and turned his gaze inward. He saw into the boy’s heart, the boy’s future. He saw all that the boy was and all that he would become.

“You will hold this gift in your heart always, whether or not you want it. I pray that you’ll treasure it, that you’ll never let it die. Most of all, I pray that you’ll have the opportunity to share it with another.”

The boy frowned, comprehending nothing. No matter. Knowledge would come when the boy was ready. Knowing was its own gift, The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

32 one that gave itself in its own time, one that could be accepted or rejected when the boy came of age.

The man muttered a string of words he’d once thought lost forever, and for a brief moment the space between the boy’s head and the man’s hand seemed to glow, a brilliant gold that highlighted the boy’s blond hair. A moment later the light died and the man opened his eyes.

The man said, “Go.” He said it gently, smiled warmly.

The boy took his ball and ran, bobbing awkwardly as he kept it clutched against his tiny chest.

The man exhaled deeply, content. Finally, he’d given what he himself had received so many decades ago, a light he’d turned away from when he was only a young man. He hoped the boy would pass it on. He was strong, and the man had seen great things in his future.

His life’s work, he now realized, was complete. He’d done what he came into the world to do, and it was time to go home. His eyelids grew heavy and began to fall. His breathing slowed, and he fell into a permanent dreamless sleep.

He was free now, and he would never be unhappy again.

Jeff Coleman is Modern Literary Fantasy Author who finds himself drawn to the dark and the mysterious, and to all the extraordinary things that regularly hide in the shadow of ordinary life.

He writes modern literary fantasy for children and adults.

He is from California.

He blogs @ http://blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com./ The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

33

TALESPIN Era.Murukan

The scent of books Last Sunday while rummaging through the attic in my ancestral house, I chanced to lay my dusty hands on a still dustier old diary. Bound in soft leather with a smooth silk thread running across as a book mark, it was a diary for 1921.

The proud owner of the diary was a great-grand-cousin of mine, who I learnt was a lawyer’s clerk. I quickly went through the volume looking forward to be treated to little nuggets of life in the 1920’s.

The lawyer’s clerk was meticulous in recording the details of happenings around him on a regular basis, mostly those pertaining to his work life. I glanced through pages and pages of entries about the civil cases coming up for hearing on various dates at the local subordinate judge’s court and quite a few, in the appellant court in a nearby town. The lawyer for whom this grand cousin of mine worked appeared to have lived comfortably in an environment of acute civil turmoil that necessitated his intervention as the council The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

34 for either the plaintiff or the defendant in numerous cases throughout the year.

The court proceedings recorded would often be the summaries of the discussions at the court hall, garnished with animated observations of the boss-lawyer, like ‘the plaintiff ’s arguments were shred to pieces, leaving them with tattered loin cloth’, ‘uttered to the thunderous claps at the court hall by all lawyers with no work whatsoever’ or ‘the defence fell apart decimated like they faced an Emden attack’ or the still more interesting and less frequent, ‘the judge ejaculated as if he was answering a mating call by his Madurai based paramour, the one with buck teeth’. Now, this is an archaic usage of ‘ejaculate’ to mean, to come quick – oh, not, again.

The non-court of law entries in the diary were pertaining to the diary-keeper attending the marriage of the court sheriff ’s third son, of the mother of the court Head Clerk who went to sleep in Jesus at the ripe old age of eighty five and seven more months, the accident the honourable judge’s twelve year old son met with while cycling down the muddy embankment road (he luckily had a few scratches, as the bicycle plunged into the ever dry pond west to the back entrance to the subordinate court) .. it goes on in that stride till the page is exhausted. That indeed shows how he valued his life as a law man’s clerk over anything else. He constrained his universe to be populated with beings and inanimate objects that in some way or other remained connected to the courts of law, through an invisible umbilical chord. I also read an entry about the renovation of a temple of Lord Ganesa, the first son of Siva of the celestial triumvirate, and the ensuing celebrations in all gaiety. That tiny temple was situated inside the court premises, facing the East and was under a large peepal tree.

The diary surprisingly had a few advertisements too in the opening pages and towards the end. The first one was a full page insert for an ‘all vitamin’ tonic imported from Leeds, United Kingdom, the regular partaking of which would ensure the children would have a glowing fair complexion, would be strong, tall, intelligent and would ever stay healthy. Anyone ordering the elixir through post was The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

35 entitled to a free gift of two bars of original British chocolate laxatives.

At least three perfume vendors in quarter-page advertisements proclaimed somewhat identically that they used a secret, centuries old process to distil the perfumes of roses and other exotic flowers. These were available at ‘attractive’ prices as indicated in the long catalogue, the gist of which made the body of the rest of the advertisement. Any buyer purchasing a minimum of three bottles of this ‘scent’ was entitled to a free gift of a vial of original French perfume.

Along with the invisible fragrance of French and other perfumes, a captivating flavour most satisfying to the olfactory sense arose from the old diary. That was the pleasant scent of age old paper bound as a volume. It was the incense of books and fragrance of the words, printed or hand written.

One can outgrow one’s craving for perfumes of the East and West but can never extricate from the addiction to the captivating scent emanating from old books. I have a friend of mine who is also the sub editor of a vernacular daily newspaper. He is one of the diehard bibliophiles, more so of the category of lover of old paper beauties. There are no detox routines or time tested treatment methodology available for curing this malady, sadly.

My sub-editor friend would wait impatiently as the work days of the week slowly wear out and the calendar declares with suppressed glee that the happy weekend indeed has arrived. This is the day my friendly paper tiger would be on his prowl, looking up and down, and far and wide, for old books.

With a large cotton bag sufficient to hold him in if he doubles up, slipped nonchalantly on his left shoulder and holding a long and viciously thin bamboo cane authoritatively in his hand, he would set out on his diurnal hunt.

‘You know mate, in Elephant’s Gate, someone has purchased at a fortune a palatial house more than a hundred and fifty years old.

They have commenced bringing down the doors and teak wooden columns en bloc before demolishing the building’, he told me cheerThe Wagon Magazine - August 2016

36 fully when he once bumped into me, while on his ambitious mission.

‘But, my friend, you are a news man and are supposed to be more focussed on the columns in print than those falling apart when a dilapidated house is pulled down’.

‘Oh, no, you are always your ever-lazy-to-listen self. What I meant was the house has a reasonably good inventory of books that occupy a whole room, in neatly placed wooden cabinets. The sellers being those of the Generation Next and based out of France are not keen to airlift the entire collection de livres to Paris. The buyers of the property who too seem to maintain a safe distance from books want someone to clear the ‘garbage’ at next to nothing prices or render a free service. And so, I am on my way to strike gold. You know, there are about a hundred books in French apart from the rest in English and Tamil, over there’.

‘Do you know French’? I looked at him puzzled.

‘I don’t. Yet, a book is a book is a book’.

The impatient sub editor started walking towards the bus stop taking hasty strides. I could not stop wondering how he, a resident of Chromepet, the south most area of the metro, came to know about the bargain offer in an up north city locality, at least 30 kilometres away from there. Yet, the primary doubt to be cleared was not on staying well informed but about the cane he was carrying. What has a bamboo stick got to do with a weekend vintage-book-crawl?

I ran after him and tucking at the jumbo size cotton bag hanging off his shoulder, shot the question lingering in my mind for long, gasping for breath.

‘Why don’t you get a little more informed on all matters related to plain simple existence, like this one’?

He chided me and pulled up, obviously to enlighten me.

‘The sweet incense of age old books hypnotises and lures not only lesser mortals like us but even the scurrying centipedes, roaches, lizards, scorpions et al. They glide through the pages stealthily and live happily with family and friends ever after their entry. Don’t spare the cane. Wield it firm. Wield it with love towards the book and with zero tolerance towards the miserable insects. When a you strike The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

37 the cane and land a couple of sharp lashes on the dust jacket of the book, these unwanted immigrants exit in a flurry, without any need for even the slightest violence to evict them. It is thereafter an endless tryst with the printed word, you see’, he elaborated.

It is quite another story as to how this salt pepper bearded member of the fourth estate smuggles into his house tons of old books he procures, with trepidation and without attracting the slightest attention of his wife. He had told me how that elaborate operation using a few temporary hide outs and taking several hours, again, over a weekend, would see the acquired treasure reach its new abode without any hitch. ‘It is worth all the trouble, to inhale the intoxicating scent of those books’, he confided to me then, sounding as if in a trance, oblivious to the surroundings.

I was hooked on to this bewitching fragrance of old books somewhat early in life, that is, while at school, some four years before appearing for the secondary school leaving certificate examinations.

The small town I hail from has at least four large tanks and that many small ponds, all with reddish soil-soaked water looking and almost tasting like thick orange squash. One such pond to the west of the town is on a slightly elevated plane with a narrow meandering path gently gliding down, circumventing it. The path reaches down to an avenue of banyan, neem, mango and tamarind trees and a couple of coral jasmine shrubs which flower at dusk emitting a heavenly fragrance that permeates the atmosphere through the whole night.

To ride a bicycle without pushing the pedals down and not using the breaks on this gradient path to heaven is something I would love to do even now. The palace on two wheels would more often come to a stop at the gates of a majestic Victorian building with numerous windows, huge imposing pillars and large wooden double doors. This building houses the town library and is named after a national leader who strode the national scene like a Colossus, two generations before mine. His huge photograph with a munificent look behind thick framed glasses is kept mounted on the wall at the entrance with all reverence and garlanded weekly. We had seen The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

38 his passport size photograph regularly appearing in our history text books and as such he appeared quite familiar to us unlike most elders of his time bygone.

Straight beneath the portrait, a wooden table with an overturned bottle of resin based adhesive and a torn register with a thick vertical line drawn in the middle of each page, strictly dividing it into two columns would be found. The teeny-weeny pencil with a near blunt lead could easily be traced next. A piece of thick jute thread would tie the dwarfed pencil securely to one of the hind legs of the table.

The task would be to write one’s name in the first column of the register and sign in full in column two. That way the details of all who enter the library any day would be monitored, God knows for what purpose. It would be quite a challenge to enter the information on the pages kept open, as the length of the thread would never be adequate to use the pencil tethered to it freely without restraining its movement. Somehow we would manage to accomplish this too, sometimes nearly turning the table upside down, and would enter the library looking triumphant.

And we would step into a large hall with rows of chairs and tables and rows and rows of wooden cabinets with glass windows, all kept towards the walls. There would be books all around with most of them stacked optimally in the cabinets. Piles of books would be on the floor also, near the bureau, ready to be confined to the warm innards of the cabinets. All the books reaching the library from the publishers would be bound afresh after removing the original wrappers and would sport the same floral design for cover, very much akin to children in the school assembly, in their uniforms. And there would be at least fifty library users at any given time, filling up almost every inch of available space, perched on steel chairs and on long teak wooden benches laid at right angles to the entrance.

At the tail end of a wooden bench, trying hard to garner more space to sit comfortably and holding a tattered copy of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ would be a small boy of ten, who happens to be the writer of this article. I would read a page, raise the book and hold it close to The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

39 my nostrils and take a deep breath in, imbibing a whiff of the magical scent of books.

All the cabinets in their lower panes and up to those rungs easily available for a boy of ten to stand gingerly on toes and reach out, would have scores and scores of books cleared ‘safe for reading by an youngster’ beckoning me towards them. There would be volumes of Asterix comics with a massively built Obelix jutting out of the newly bound books, carrying a huge menhir upon his shoulders and inviting me to share a wild-boar dinner with him. There also would be books with the loquacious ghost Vedhala piggybacking on King Vikramathithya, reeling out interesting stories in riddles and shooting questions with aplomb. The king, who is supposed to be silent, would correctly answer each question coming his way, as he cannot keep quiet knowing the right answer, for his head would shatter into a thousand pieces, had he done so, as the cunning ghost reminds him gleefully. Obelix, Getaphix, the Vedhala, Vikramathithya, detective Shankar Lal, his sidekick The Brinjal, Dorathy, Wizard of Oz, the Iron Man.. it was a friendly atmosphere with the heady scent of books over there, along with the pungent odour of moth balls randomly strewn inside the cabinets.

The books on the upper rungs of the cabinets were not reachable for school boys, also in the sense they were intentionally kept perched there up as some elderly person with a self assumed social responsibility had decided they have to remain out of reach for the children. We used to stare with envy at those who would have come off age much ahead of us, take these books out and occupying a corner chair in utmost comfort written large on their faces, would get swiftly absorbed in their world. They would leave the books at a book pile and walk out, so that the books could be restored safely to their own slots inside the cabinets, away from the sight of boys aspiring to grow fast, gulping table spoons of imported vitamin tonic.

Kalidasa’s Sanskrit plays in English translation, a thousand and seven hundred years old Tamil verses on love and love alone, on pregnancy, child rearing, books with funny titles like Lady Chatterjee’s Lover (that is what I read it first) .. the choices available to the The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

40 grown-up would be really endless. I once located a well maintained copy of ‘The One Thousand and One Arabian Nights’, which was inadvertently left on the cane chair itself. As I grabbed it and was busy turning the pages to find out what genre the book is of, the middle aged librarian approached from the sidelines and in a swift operation snatched the book away from me before I could react in shock and disbelief. He placed it again on the top most rack of the cabinet, muttering, ‘You are most welcome to take this book out and read as long as you wish, when you are as tall as me or a few inches more’.

The librarian was enjoying a hot masala dosa his peon had brought for him from the hotel nearby, as a high tea delicacy for the afternoon, when his sixth sense warned him there is a boy in the vicinity about to go astray now in the book land that is his domain. He intervened appropriately and with a satisfaction he has performed his duty, resumed eating his dosa. I have since then read and reread the Arabian Nights more than three score times having met remarkably the criteria of height prescribed by the librarian. Every time I open the book, I detect the scent of old books juxtaposed with the aroma of delicious masala dosa, engulfing me.

If that was about how the library smelt, it was quite different for the weekly market at the town square. It emanated as a combo-flavour of mangoes, jack fruit being cut, dry fish, egg plant, fresh curry leaves and of neem oil sold as a panacea for all illness. A few regulars at market would smear a teaspoon of neem oil on their tresses, munch a slice or two of jack fruit and mango freshly cut and would carry under their arm, a palm casket containing sun dried fish. They always define the smell of the market for me, to a certain extent.

The market place had another strong contender for olfactory attention. It was the aroma of native sweets being fried in groundnut oil, at a corner of the market place. Holding leaf cups half filled with hot palm sugar sweets and munching to content, a sizable crowd of old and young would stand in rapt attention to two elderly brothers, both sporting flowing white beards. They would hold a copy of a book each and in a sing-song voice would narrate excerpts from the book. These books were large-font editions enabling easy readabilThe Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

41 ity for those adults who were initiated late into the world of print through adult education. The contents of these books were mostly folk tales on the exploits of heroes from epics and those belonging to subaltern history. Along with the gripping narrative, It would be interesting for the onlookers to observe the beards of these minstrels go up and come down in unison as they would be engrossed in their narration of the taming of a wild horse by the chieftain Raja Desingh and his riding it thereafter.

My repeated appeals to the elders in my family to empower me to procure a leaf plate full of native sweets, to have a copy of the large font book, to allow me to grow a beard ahead of my age and join the singers at the market place were all turned down mercilessly. Had I been given the green signal to go ahead on these counts, I would have furnished a more authentic olfactory definition of this variety of the scent of books.

Every year in April, when the mercury shoots up, it would be time for conducting the annual chariot festival in the temple of Lord Muruga, celebrating His wedding to his tribal consort Valli. Somehow, the book publishers in the far off Moscow would get informed of this festival well in advance and would in a jiffy erect a cloth tent near the temple, sharing space with the sweetmeat vendor, the toy seller, soda water dispenser, plastic and glass bangles seller, the girl without arms lighting a stove with her legs and preparing coffee for her and those exhibiting her for a small entrance fee and our all time favourite, the lady turning into a python down the shoulders and vice versa, again on payment. The Soviet stall would not have a display of magic and mystery like the snake woman but would endearingly sport all works of literature penned by Maxim Gorky, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Ostrovsky, Taras Shevchenko and Chekov printed on premium paper and with an invigorating scent of high quality print ink.

These literary gems with their arcane Soviet smell are always held in my mind with the olfactory attribute gently embedded in them.

It was one such Soviet book expo time at the roadside in our small town reeking of horse droppings, jasmine flower garlands, fish, freshly plucked cucumber and the red soil smelling sweet drenched The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

42 in brief summer showers. A friendly young man, tall and slender and with a red towel wrapped around his shoulder, picked out from display a book with a jet black jacket with only the book name and the name of the author printed on it. He was chewing tender betel leaves with cardamom and aracanut shavings, raising an agreeable flavour all around.

‘Do buy this book and read, thampi. You will ever remember it’, he told me with a contended smile.

It was a Tamil translation of Yakov Perelman’s all time great classic, ‘Physics for Entertainment’. I still consider the book as a fabulous curtain raiser to the vistas of physics, transforming basic science into an ever interesting subject. The book was made available by its publishers in Moscow at a most economical price of rupees two (roughly two British pence) and came along with another wonderful novella, ‘Seryozha’, authored by Vera Panova, as a free gift. I learnt rather late, that Y.Perelman died of starvation in the nine hundred days long siege of Leningrad by the Germans during World War II. Vera Panova passed away in 1973 much ahead of the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and thus was saved from enduring the harsh reality of surviving in a totally alien political environment for her, where red would be a taboo. I have long ago misplaced my copies of both the books and rely on their digital versions for any occasional reference now. Yet, I remain ever grateful to the elder-brotherly looking young man with a red towel wrapped around his shoulder and nudging me to read what I was supposed to read at that age. He smelt of betel leaves amidst the books with the Soviet scent, then and as I write this now.

Red Salute to you, comrade Big Brother.

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 - August- 2016

43

FICTION Graham Wynd

The Bride with White Hair Usually it was an advantage, her hair that is. There’s no one more invisible than a middle-aged woman. Add a few pounds and shock of white tresses and then eyes just passed over her like the glaze of rain on a window. She would ease in, find her mark and knock him off before he’d even clocked her existence.

Only last week, she had managed to locate her target, follow him back very nearly to his doorstep and walk up to his car window without the slightest notice on his part—though he had given the hairy eyeball to any male who passed him in his wanderings and ran a lascivious searchlight up and down the two young women who had crossed his path. When she stopped beside his Land Rover, his expression betrayed only annoyance.

Perhaps he thought she had been collecting for OxFam. The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

44 Surprise came belatedly as she put the Glock up to his neck and fired it. He died eyes wide, looking somehow cheated, as if she didn’t fit the arc of his storyline. She smiled to herself later remembering it and celebrated with an expensive bottle on the way home to her tiny flat, feeling a smug satisfaction with her ability to remain unseen.

Not this time.

The penny dropped as soon as she stepped through the door.

She’d done her research, following up on the sketchy details the client provided, tracing her mark’s schedule and movements. He had a routine of unerring predictability that showed his age. Men tended to draw the threads of their lives closer as they got older, avoiding change and surprise. They had habits.

Women, on the other hand, often chucked the known and sought out the unexpected. As she had done: after all, it wasn’t easy living on a former teacher’s pension. Her invisibility had been a positive boon, as had been her dad’s early instruction in ridding the farm of rabbits. Her reflexes remained speedy and she could be justly proud of her sharp shooting skills.

Lately, however, all the work had been at close range, which required a rather different set of skills.

When she started out, her primary fear had been that she would feel too much empathy to carry out the assignments. She found that channeling all the frustration of years of budget cuts, pointless bureaucratic regulations and an endless stream of resentful kids—all convinced that education was a mug’s game because all you needed was to get on a reality show or make a viral video to get rich—provided her with ample ammunition for this new line of work. Her marks were precisely the kind of people who sneered at education, who had nothing but contempt for learning, erudition and knowledge. Would-be thugs and thugs right enough, many of them were engaged in simply knocking one another off.

Why not help?

She had a modicum of natural empathy for any living thing, but had to admit there was a frisson of joy in bringing to an end a few The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

45 lives that delivered nothing but pain, crime and poor grammatical skills to the world. You’re something of a snob, she scolded herself upon feeling grim satisfaction dispatching a particularly vile goldchain clad lad in a shiny track suit with “ASBO FOR LIFE” tattooed in a Gothic script along his arm.

She performed a charitable service. And the pay proved extraordinary. While she did worry occasionally about the way it inured her to the humanity of some, those ponderings could be reserved for quiet contemplation over a glass of good single malt, which had given her a good philosophical problem with which to wrestle.

At the moment her primary problem was slipping into the pub without drawing any more notice. A pub was a pub was a pub—except when it was one of these old geezer pubs where a woman never darkened its threshold. Many small pubs remained largely the province of men, it was true. Women might appear on Friday or Saturday night without alarm. Before Geoff died, she had often gone with him to the local, but only at the weekend. He had always joked about sending her into the women’s snug, though it had usually been full of laughing young people who treated it as their own club room.

This place, though; she knew if she asked for a Guinness the barman would give her a half without even asking. Waves of hostility emanated from a couple of the men, indifference from the rest. This changed the dynamic.

She walked up to the bar, turning alternatives over in her mind and decided ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’. Maybe she would have to pass the mark to another, but she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

Scanning the shelves she saw a dust-free bottle of Lagavulin and asked for a double when at last the barman deigned to notice her and leave his murmured conversation down the other end of the bar.

The perfume filled her nose as she sipped the golden liquid and her confidence returned. Popping open her bag on the bar— which drew a raised eyebrow of displeasure from the barman—she pulled out the battered Moleskin she used for notes and turned to a fresh page. The other two men at the bar studiously ignored her as she began to make a list. After a moment, she paused, looked around The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

46 and then moved to a small table under a one of the few lights. Returning to her list, she stopped now and then to savour the single malt and smiled to herself.

Luck smiled upon her fairly soon. “Not too common to see a woman with such exquisite taste.”

She looked up. Double luck; it was the mark. “I assume you mean the scotch and not my impeccable taste in Marks & Sparks.”

The smile she offered sprang from the memories of other bars and younger days.

He held up his glass. “People come and go, but a good single malt will always delight.” His smile seemed genuine. It had warmth, too, unexpectedly so. She motioned for him to sit opposite her.

“Making a list?”

“Checking it twice.” She looked up at him. The pictures didn’t do him proper justice. It seemed particularly unfair that people considered the crags and wrinkles of a man’s face to enhance an older man’s looks, but handsome was the only accurate word for this one.

“Figuring out how much longer I need to save and be nice, before I can spend and be naughty.”

He chuckled. It was a nice sound, one she hadn’t heard in some time. Since Geoff died most of her concern had been managing their finances and figuring out how to leave the dreary north for a wee villa or condo in Spain, where she could let the sun leech the ache in her joints that she somehow woke up with most days now.

“I’ve never seen you in here before,” he said, a mild look of surprise on his features. She noticed his suit had an expensive cut, though he wore it with the ease of one long accustomed to its comfort. Born to money—or just successful so long that it had become second nature? Judging by the bonus offered for this little commission, he was something of a heavy weight, but clearly all class.

Mr. Land Rover last week; now there was tacky new money.

From his shiny tracksuit to his ridiculous Burberry cap everything shouted, “Look at me! I’m rolling in it!” A lot of the kids dressed like that, hoping to be taken for the real thing. The last years of teaching she had found the loud boasting and posturing set her teeth on edge.

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47 It wasn’t just manners—though the art of them seemed completely lost—it was the jangling noise of all the attention seeking, as if they had regressed to toddlers.

“I’ve never been here before,” she said with a genuine laugh.

“That sounds dangerously like a cliché, doesn’t it? ‘Do you come here often?’”

He smiled, showing nice teeth that were nonetheless not Hollywood bright. She’d always found those too white teeth unsettling.

His showed his years without embarrassment. “I think I’m too old to try that sort of line. Or any sort of line.”

“It’s one of the few advantages of age. You don’t have to bullshit anyone.” She looked at him over her glass as she took another sip, pleased to see his reaction to her words.

“A time saver that,” he agreed, swirling his own glass. “And I’ve done well enough that I really only accept the very best these days, too.”

“Ah, the lost art of compliments,” she said with mock sorrow.

“Although I notice there’s a good bit of confidence in there, too.”

Her sharp observation did not daunt him. “I think a woman of quality appreciates a man who’s confident.”

“And drinks good Scotch,” she added, sipping her elixir with pleasure.

They had a second drink together and exchanged little tit bits of truth. His ex, her Geoff, his disappointment with his son, hers with her students. They traded stories like old war heroes, showing their scars and medals.

Inevitable perhaps that she should be tempted. It had been some time since she had had the least interest in pursuing such a thing. Geoff had left the bar high behind him, not only as a lover but as a companion, too. The truth was that she got more excitement from her new employment than she did with the pursuit of the mostly tedious old men who would be willing to bed her. She found something gauche in the idea of a young lover and filed the thought away for Spain and later days.

Yet she found the adrenaline charge of her new pursuit quite The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

48 entertaining. Tracking, dodging, getting close and then dispatching them with consummate skill. Unlike teaching there was a sense of closure and completion. She enjoyed the feeling of striking the latest name off the “to do” list with a flourish of her pen. So different from the endless grading grind! It really brought a sense of accomplishment to her day.

This man confused her, however. She found herself attracted to him. She had already blown the hit by miscalculating the pub’s nature. If she had to pass the lucrative pay packet on to someone else, why not get something out of it for herself?

“You are an unexpected development,” she told him.

“You are an unexpected treasure.”

“I feel I should steal some sophisticated badinage from Coward or Wilde,” she said downing the last of her single malt.

“I could pull you into an elegant dance like Astaire and Rogers, but I forgot my tuxedo.”

“We would shock the regulars anyway,” she said with a glance around the pub where the regulars in question were studiously ignoring the two of them.

“Or we could retire to a rather nice boutique hotel around the corner and decide just how much we would like to get to know one another.” He almost looked abashed at his own boldness, a faint hint of pink in his cheek betraying the very real investment in his words.

She put her hand on his and smiled. “I’m glad we’re too old to need a lot of folderol before getting down to what we want.”

“So you do want it, too?”

Her smile assented and a nod fixed their fate. She insisted on paying for the hotel room, one of the cards from her employer—insurance if anything should go wrong. She would reconcile it somehow.

In the room, he paused before touching her. “I love your hair,” he said at last running his fingers lightly through it as if afraid to find out she was too delicate. She wrapped her arms around his waist and lifted her face to be kissed. He put his hands on her cheeks and gazed into her eyes before at last touching his lips to hers.

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49 What a wonderful feeling. It had really been too long. She found herself eager for more and reached up to unbutton his shirt.

“I think I’m old enough to demand darkness for undressing,” he said, smiling but serious. Yet later, after they had made love, he did not mind when she opened the curtains to let the moonlight caress their skin.

“This night is special,” she whispered as they lay side by side.

“Magical,” he agreed, his voice choked with rare emotion. He fell asleep in her arms and she thrilled to the familiar warmth and weight of him. It really had been far too long. The moon cast a silvery sheen over the bed like a spell.

She awoke well before dawn, the internal clock set too many semesters ago. Her purse had a lipstick but no makeup, which she regretted, but a shower restored her confidence. Dressed once more, she stared at the figure under the sheets. Removing the pillow from his face, she admired once more the handsome lines of it, then sighed at the blood seeping into the mattress. A good man was hard to find—and vice versa. But a condo in Spain was for life.

A writer of bleakly noirish tales with a bit of grim humour, Graham Wynd can be found in Dundee but would prefer you didn’t come looking. An English professor by day, Wynd grinds out darkly noir prose between trips to the local pub, including SATAN’S SORORITY from Number Thirteen Press and EXTRICATE from Fox Spirit Books.

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50

AUTHOR’S INTERVIEW BY KERRY J DONOVAN

USHA AKELLA Usha Akella’s work is known for an undertow of spirituality

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

Hi guys, Usha Akella is a genius poet and travel writer based in the US. I met Usha through Krishna Prasad, the editor of Wagon Magazine. So here we have it, an Irishman living in France, is chatting to an American poet he met through a man in India—world publishing. It could only happen in the Information Age. I love technology, except when it fails and becomes the bane of my existence.

KERRY.J.DONOVAN: Welcome Usha, thanks for coming all this way. Relax, make yourself at home, and take a slice of chocolate cake.

Coffee or tea?

USHA AKELLA: Tea please, white, no sugar.

KJD: Excellent choice. Most of my friends from America run a mile from tea.

UA: Kerry, I love Indian tea, and this chocolate cake is to die for.

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51 KJD: Yep, my wife knows how to bake a fine cake, hence my expanding waistline.

UA: You carry it well.

KJD: That’s why I’m hiding behind this screen. Anyway, now you’re settled, here’s the first question. Ready?

UA: I am.

KJD: Where do you live and what’s the best thing about the place?

UA: I live in Austin keeping it weird. The best thing here? Community.

KJD: What’s the first poem you ever remember writing? Please give me the first verse/stanza.

UA: I don’t remember the poems written very young when I was 8 or 9…

KJD: Fair enough, I can’t remember my early writing either, but it’s probably just as well. What is it about poetry that lights your fire?

UA: Poetry has the ability to shape experience into something tangible for me to comprehend.

KJD: Excellent. Now, imagine I’m a complete idiot (I know it’s not difficult), explain to me why poetry feeds the soul in a way that watching a baseball game doesn’t.

UA: Because it serves as a mirror with many possibilities. Poets say something the reader inherently wants to say, feel, or comprehend. The poem begins on the page and ends in the reader’s soul, mind, or heart—whatever is receiving it. It’s bridge between both and welcomes the reader to actually complete the process not just be witness.

KJD: Wow. That makes me want to read more poetry. Thanks.

In fact, I spent my childhood in Wales, in the town where Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood. Perhaps my all-time favourite poem is his powerful rant against death that starts, “Do not go gentle into that good night” To this day, it still has the power to move me. What is your favourite poem, and why.

UA: Many poems in fact but the first flash is always ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by Keats and ‘Love Song’ of J Alfred Prufrock. I spent The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

52 my graduate days drunk on those two poems.

Why? Everything. They both created this languor in me. The ability to intoxicate totally. Images/escape/music/words- the perfect cocktail.

KJD: A drunken undergrad? What a strange concept. Teehee.

On a recent visit to the UK, I understand you spoke to members of the Houses of Lords. Please tell me all about it.

UA: I was one of ten poets honoured by Skylark Publications/ Word Masala founder Yogesh Patel.

KJD: Fantastic. Congratulations. Please tell me more.

UA: Yogesh Patel established an award recognizing a South Asian poet both sides of the Atlantic once a month last year. It was an intelligent event bringing publishers, poets, and politicians together with the specific mission of promoting South Asian poetry to the mainstream. The impact sought after was one of community on community. Mr Patel is seeking to widen the arc of publishing possibilities for all of us.

KJD: A laudable goal indeed. What did you read?

UA: I read a poem on the Paris Bomb Attacks.

KJD: May I read it?

UA: Maybe at the end of our chat.

KJD: Brilliant. If there were a single thing you’d like to change about yourself, what would it be?

UA: My propensity for vertigo—I would like a new head! Or maybe to learn the ability to do small talk or another lacking—learn to be senselessly joyful instead of working at it.

KJD: I’m with you on all of those except the vertigo thing. I don’t fear heights, nor do I fear falling. I actually fear hitting the ground after The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

53 the falling bit. By the way, I love the idea of being senselessly joyful.

There’s a poem in there somewhere, I’m sure.

How do you relax when you aren’t travelling or writing?

UA: I watch sitcoms and movies. Right now, it is Sherlock Holmes and swooning at the brilliant script, acting and production.

Damn! How do they do it?

KJD: I LOVE all things Sherlock. I read the complete works of Sherlock Holmes when I was about thirteen (which is one of the reasons I write crime novels) and recently uploaded the e-book, I started reading it again, fearful that I’d lose the original magic, but needn’t have worried. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a total genius, whose characters stand the test of time.

By the way, the recent BBC series Sherlock, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman is brilliant. Updating the stories to modern day has done nothing but augment the brilliant characters and original plots. Ahem, rant over, moving on.

What’s the best advice you can offer to a fellow author?

UA: Believe in yourself and don’t be content to be mediocre.

Read a lot and compete with your Self and not with the industry of poetry. Be kind and try to open doors for others as someone’s kindness helps you on your path.

Also, if poetry is making you a lousy human being, you haven’t learnt the first thing about poetry.

KJD: Wonderful. I second those statements. Which famous author (living or dead) would you like to meet and why?

UA: Yehuda Ammichai. Undoubtedly. I am wordless to say ‘Why? All that I aspire to in poetry is what he achieves.

KJD: Nice. Do you have any favourite anecdotes related to your writing?

UA: So many, so much to be grateful for. On a simple level – The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

54 when my young students write poems I never could have written at that age. That moment when they digest a pointer, put pen to paper and produce something- the sheer magic of it.

The closing ceremonies at Struga Poetry evenings and Medellin’s festival—unforgettable!

On a ship on the Bosphorus with poets around the world at a Turkish festival.

When I returned from my first international poetry festival, my six-year-old daughter had made many, many paper airplanes…to welcome me home.

KJD: That last one is so sweet.

What is the absolute best thing about being you?

UA: My receptivity to life and constant striving to embrace all peoples and religions.

KJD: Wish I could emulate that, but I sit alone in my room, tapping away at my keys, and allow the rest of the world to go about its business without me. Yep, I’m a miserable old solitary git. No two ways about it. Tell me a about your latest project. Where did you find the inspiration? What’s it about? When can we expect to see it on the bookshelves? How about a sneak preview?

UA: My latest book, “The Rosary of Latitudes” was released by Transcendent Zero Press last year thanks to the poetic sensibility of its editor Dustin Pickering.

The book was inspired by travels that seem to have quickened in 2006.

The invitations to various international poetry festivals was something I had never dreamt of and I began to visit countries like Macedonia, Slovenia, Nicaragua—countries that normally do not pop up in a top tier tourist list. The experiences there have been profound and I feel truly honoured and blessed to say I have poet friends across the world who have enriched my understanding of poetry and of the world.

The reading experiences, for example in Macedonia and Medellin, Colombia with The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

55 an audience average at 5,000-7,000 at opening or closing.

The book is available from my publisher and me. For financial reasons we decided not to put the book on Amazon or any public selling sites.

KJD: For fun, let’s try this experiment. What is your favourite word of the moment?

UA: Good question. Let me see … Scuttlebutt. I’ve been chanting it lately and wrote an acrostic and telestitch with it.

KJD: Excellent, and enlightening. So, what’s next in your writing life?

UA: I am working on two manuscripts. One is ‘feminist’ and the other is a form based manuscript exploring English, Welsh, French, and Eastern stanza patterns and forms.

For years, I’ve wondered why the Western models have largely guided our creativity in Indian English Poetry. I want to study indigenous poetry forms, delve into the complex classical music rhythms (called ‘tala’) and see if there is a possibility of an alternative poetics.

I imagine this study will take at least five years and Cambridge is a good place to get serious.

KJD: Yes, Cambridge seems like the ideal place for such activity.

I studied for my doctorate in Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham, and loved every minute of it. I wish you well in your endeavours.

And finally, is there anything I’ve forgotten to ask that you’re desperately, desperately keen for our readers should know?

UA: South Asian Poets need to appear more in the American ‘canon’, reading series in universities and doors need to be opened more widely. Unfortunately, many of us experience bias. We still struggle to open doors… the exclusion is veiled but it is real.

KJD: That is a sentiment I can throw my considerable weight behind.

Now this is a cheeky one, and at the risk of upsetting the Republican Party: Donald Trump, true visionary or racist pig-dog? How do you feel?

UA: Alarmed of course as an immigrant. There is no funny side to bigotry veiled or overt.

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56 KJD: I could not agree more. Hilary Clinton, despite her faults, must win!

KJD: Usha, it’s been fantastic chatting with you, a true pleasure.

All that’s left is for me to say, thanks millions for your time and candour, and to wish you the very best of luck with your poetry.

Here’s the poem, Usha read to the House of Lords: “A lot of light because it was like a concert.”

So much breaking news everybody is broken, Who wakes up whole when the sun rises?

Let me know, learn to twist your tongue in new names to count history’s footsteps: Tenancingo/ Abdelhamid Abaaoud/ Aulnay-sous-Bois/ Hasna Ait Boulahcen/Bataclan/ Bernard Cazeneuve.

Know boys will be boys and the clan is the clan, And we will strengthen our borders to keep the madness in, And Justin Bieber can end a show after one song, And Karla is raped 43,200 times four years long, And who has the true religion in this gallimaufry?

Explain it any way you can- this our earth, turquoise marble in a pristine mind coming undone, perhaps the clash between yin and yang, the apogee and perigee of sin, While the officials take their papillary prints and some are sure someone measures the soul’s thumbprint, And someone can say of carnage: “And a lot of light because it was like a concert.”

Go figure that.

Kerry J Donovan was born in Dublin in the late 1950s,

before the time of mobile phones and twenty-four-hour television. Kerry’s psychological thriller, ‘The Transition of Johnny Swift’ became a number one bestseller only a few months after release and his ‘DCI Jones Casebook’ series are also bestsellers. He can be reached at: http://kerryjdonovan.com/publications-by-kerry-j-donovan/ The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

57

Book Excerpts - Travelogue When the job of selecting poems to be placed along with the interview of Usha Akella by Kerry J Donovan was entrusted to me, I never expected that to be a tough task. I could not decide and finally, as in the children’s game, I closed my eyes and touched the ‘contents’. That is how the poems below are selected - K P

Published by : Transcendent Zero Press, Houston, Texas www.transcendentzeropress.org The book is a travelogue- when I say travelogue I don’t want to confine it within the set parameters of what the definition stands for. The book is about the travels of the poet but the journeys are not confined to the ones physically taken but those of life. This beautiful compilation of prose and poetry is to be taken in slowly and to let it unfurl in your senses like the heady tones of a cup of jasmine tea.

--Semeen Ali

Two poets in a car Black tongue of the road flicking from the moving mouth of the car, Above, circles of crosses — birds of prey, Poets — we are eaten and eat everything.

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Istanbul Blue scarf gracing the necks of two continents, Line two of the Villanelle, the quiet pause between the repeating refrains of Europe and Asia, the musical emanation of the cymbals Europe and Asia, the slit of the vulva of Eurasia, Pure poetry this strait, pantoum-like, the chorus of Christianity and Islam wedged in the sandwich of Turkish history.

Blue tongue, blue fire, blue waters, blue stork, Blue iron, blue shoelace, blue malt, blue virgin.

On your shore, Constantinople baptized, emerged as a mermaid from your waters singing her name: Istanbul, Istanbul, Istanbul.

Long silent your Symplegades clenched handshake, And the tongues of many poets release doves.

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Botero’s doves Can there be a dove of peace, And a dove of war?

Can a country stick out two tongues?

Its wounds bloom like roses Or explode as rifle fire, Can there be two dawns?

A dawn of the sun, A dawn of the night.

Humans, we have two hearts, One black and one white, But to see it so exposed…

Botero’s doves are installed at the entrance of the church of St. Antonio. Botero donated the dove of peace to the city of Medellin which was subsequently bombed. He donated another on condition that the former dove remains as it is. The two doves stand next to each other, a chilling symbol of Medellin’s history.

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The Basilica of Guadalupe I bear copal

I bear frankincense joining my footsteps on your site.

I walk to the rhythm of huehuetl

I walk to the rhythm of the resurrection.

The coyoli jingle, the joyous anklets on my feet

My feet are bare in the humble servitude of the Lord.

I command you in Nahuatl, tongue of your forefathers

I command you in the tongue of the Lord.

I Coatlaxopeuh

I Mary the mother of Jesus.

My name is La Virgen de Guadalupe

My name is La Virgen de Guadalupe.

I fill the cape of your heart with Cozcamiauh, sign of the earth’s bounty gifts

I fill the cape of your heart with the rose, sign of his blood spilt for you.

I bow to the Gods of the four winds

Four times I appear in his name.

I, carrier of your woes and worry, I hear

I savior of the oppressed, poor and unheard, hear!

I Tonantzin, the dark one, I the Venerable mother, the blessed, I the dark virgin, I Tonantzin-Guadalupe, Build! Build!

It is I. It is I. Our Lady of Guadalupe, shrine to the dark virgin, marks her appearances on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City, to Juan Diego, a peasant in 1531. Some contention exists about her ethnic identity. The poem views her as a composite image of Mexican and Spanish Catholic images of worship; the Mexican Aztec goddess of the earth and the Virgin Mary

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Rumi Mausoleum Sharpened green pencil whirs around itself craning its neck above Konya piercing blue, Like your poems.

The pilgrims come drunk on your wine, a hieroglyph of footsteps on the courtyard, Dervish clouds gyrate And doves rest.

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Wild woman Wedded to five names like Draupadi: Aburrá de los Yamesíes, San Lorenzo de Aburrá, San Lorenzo de Aná, Valle de San Bartolomé, Villa de la Candelaria de Medellín.

Glittering with jewels, casting your eye-light about like a net to lure another, unsatiated, roving eye in the botanical gardens there is The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

63 gossip with long tongues, about your shameless display of charms, reading poetry to lovers* from the books of many countries fluttering your eyelashes, stealing glances, heavy pauses and flourishes in intonations plying your silletas high, flailing flowery robes, you tango giddily, your perspiration blooms wild orchids, coins jangling in the pouches of Pinocchio you snare with unruly thoughts that flare as lilies, carnations agapanthuses, sunflowers, bridal veil, gladioli, chrysanthemums, rose, in the balconies of your home you courted Escobar**, he danced to your charms walking on live coals, lost his life on the rooftops of your houses, fickle heart like a mansion with many rooms, Who is your true love? * - Refers to Medellin Poetry Festival ** - Escobar is a famous drug lord who died in the late 1980’s

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Indian Coffee House One in white, one in black, Identical signs stacked on another, Coffee workers Cooperative Society 15 Bankim Chaterjee Street 700 073, Vodafone’s white circle can be anything from endless attempts to connect or the void in spite of having done so.

The stairwell’s terracotta mosaic — leaves, vines, fish, waves, triangles, circles.

Inside, sunlight casts rectangles of light on the walls, an assortment of chairs, fading menu, basic fare, liveried waiters are an anomaly, here, everybody could be somebody, or nobody trying to be somebody.

On an ochre wall Tagore so assured, proud and haunting, young and virile, flowing locks and regal cape, gave way later to mystic eyes.

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65 PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

Between Heaven and Earth Everyone I see should be smiling. A few of them are. Most of them aren’t, and I feel sorry for them, caught up in the distractions of earthly existence and overlooking the miracles that surround them.

Such is the human condition: the eyes betray the soul, and the heart grows deaf to its own inner voice, which vanishes into the rumble of routine that drums out the exhilaration of each new moment.

It should be easier here at the eye of the universe, and indeed it is. But easier is a relative term, and a hundred pounds might as well be a hundred tons when our muscles have atrophied from disuse. Just the same, in the absence of spiritual discipline, spirituality itself remains a clichĂŠ, a meaningless abstraction or, at best, a mere footnote in the narrative of life, an asterisk relegated to indices of the Sabbath, the Festivals, and the House of Worship.

Such an insidious lie. Such an insipid deception.

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66 The Jewish liturgy begins each day with a series of 15 blessings acknowledging the gifts of fundamental existence and identity. How fortunate we are to have eyes that can behold the beauty of our world, limbs that can carry us to the corners of the earth, minds capable of discerning light from dark and good from evil; how reassured we are to commit ourselves to a higher purpose, to recognize that path we are meant to follow, and to trust the guiding Hand that gently steers us toward the fulfillment of our destiny; how much reason we have to rejoice that we are able to master our own passions, to summon the strength to meet failure with determination, and to discover new inspiration everyday amidst the monotony of life in the material world.

Yet still we forget. Even here in this place where heaven and earth kiss, even here at the focal point of human history, human nobility, and human aspiration. Too much light can blind even more effectively than too much darkness.

In the Old City of Jerusalem, the center of Creation, and in the ancient village of Tzefat, home of the greatest kabbalists of the last 500 years, the tension between the past and the present gives way to a supernal harmony that radiates from every rock and tree, that grows stronger as you turn every corner and pass through every archway.

The voices of ages gone by whisper always in your ear, if you remember to listen for them.

You walk on stones laid in place by lost generations, bisect streets named for prophets and kings, for sages and milestones from biblical history; you enter synagogues founded by luminaries of scholarship and piety from the distant past. In the early morning light, you make out the silhouette of a chassid, adorned in a style unchanged since the days of his grandfather’s grandfather. As he draws closer, you see in greater detail his long coat, his broad-rimmed velvet hat, his beard and sidelocks. He draws closer still, and you see he is talking on a cellphone.

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67 On your way back from morning prayers, another chassid passes you, this one astride a scooter navigating the narrow streets and dodging pedestrians.

You leave the cities and travel north to Tel Dan, where the headwaters of the Jordan River flow forth from springs fed by the melting snow of Mount Hermon. Here you find landscapes world apart from the rugged slopes of the Judean hills and the sprawling sands of the southern desert. Lush greenery and a kaleidoscope of wildflowers provide a cool pavilion for the serenade of singing rapids.

This truly is a reflection of Eden.

Along the trail, you pass through the gates that separated the Kingdom of Judah from the Kingdom of Israel after the ten tribes seceded during the reign of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, 28 centuries ago. It was here that the wicked King Jeroboam placed border guards to prevent his people from making the pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem to observe the Festivals. Nearby, you discover the site of the altar believed to be where Jeroboam erected a golden calf to pacify his people’s yearning for intimacy with the Divine, leading them instead into idolatry and, eventually, to exile and oblivion.

A stone’s throw from this site of national tragedy lies the northern border and the trenches dug to repel the Syrians who, in 1964, hoped to divert the waters that are Israel’s lifeblood. When the British and French divided their respective mandatory territories in 1923, they literally drew a pencil line across their map. Surely they had no inkling that the 130 meters represented by the thickness of that graphite delineation would prove such an enduring source of strife for decades to come.

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In the northern town of Katzrin, you meet David Zibell. After a mere two years in the country, the Montreal native is already producing Israel’s first whisky in his Golan distillery, assisted only by a single, part-time employee.

Returning south, you arrive at the ancient Roman capital of Caesarea. It was here that the sage Rabbi Abahu founded his talmudic academy in the third century, escaping Roman oppression by hiding in plain sight, right under the noses of Israel’s enemies. Even 17 centuries ago, people could be counted on to grow blind to their surroundings. One wonders if the current residents have grown indifferent to the impossibly blue waters of the Mediterranean.

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69 Eventually you return to Jerusalem, where contradictions abound.

Makhaneh Yehudah, the open air marketplace known simply as the shuk, assaults the senses with a mĂŠlange of smells, sights, sounds, and cultures. The aroma of fish, cooked meat, roasted nuts, dried fruit, freshly baked bread and pastries, middle eastern spices, cigarettes, and beer are punctuated by the shouts of vendors and shoppers in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, Arabic, Russian, French, and Spanish, as well as the perpetual rattle of coins from cash registers and the cups of beggars.

The main thoroughfares and side passageways teem with people -- especially on Friday afternoons in preparation for the Sabbath -- from devoutly religious chareidi women with their long-sleeves, long skirts, and covered hair, to the most secular Israelis and tourists in short-shorts and tank-tops. Little children, octogenarians, and parents pushing single and double strollers weave through the congested concourse in chaotic symbiosis.

On the other side of town, under the shadow of the Old City walls, the Mamilla Mall provides an alter-ego, a glittering Fifth Avenue in contrast to the earthy egalitarianism of the shuk.

Here, upscale shops and cafes draw a similar variety of people, albeit without the frenzied crush of human flesh, from black-hatted chareidim to religious Arabs, from tourists to Israelis of every type.

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70 Curious pairings abound: a Muslim woman wearing a hijab over a neon pink blouse and tight jeans; a meticulously attired seminary girl in the company of a modern-looking young man; a Chassid in full regalia playing the Sultans of Swing on acoustic guitar.

Crossing the intersection of two major boulevards near the center of town, your eye is drawn to a young, model-perfect blonde, all the more noteworthy in her oversized mirror sunglasses and the jet-black uniform of the “supercops,” the elite, SWAT-trained, rapid response police officers. One hand rests easily on the stock of an M-16 rifle hanging at her hip.

Drifting into the older residential neighborhoods, you zigzag your way through narrow streets and garden walks, never knowing exactly where you are but never quite lost, especially when you don’t really care how you get to where you’re going or what you might find along the way. Turn one corner and happen upon a tour group of Parisians, a band of machine-gun-toting soldiers, or a trio of Coptic priests. Turn another and discover a mural by Solomon, the city’s most famous street artist, on the retaining wall of a single-family home beneath their laundry lines.

Everywhere construction cranes tower overhead while the sound and dust of pneumatic hammering fill the air, as if the entire city populace is striving to fulfill the thrice-daily benediction beseeching the Almighty to rebuild Jerusalem in preparation for the advent of the messianic era. In some places the changes are dramatic, with massive luxury apartment complexes and commercial centers sprawling over city blocks and soaring toward the heavens.

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71 upward.

And amidst it all, the hum of life goes on, from the break of dawn to the embers of dusk, with seven year old children leading their younger siblings by the hand to school and sixty year old men leading their fathers to synagogue.

Even the irreligious cannot escape the ancient culture of Torah that defines this land. Divinity resides in the stonework underfoot and in the sapphire sky overhead. It inhabits the daily language of the street, in which profanities are all borrowed from English and Arabic, and in which casual queries of How are you? are met not with fine, thanks, but rather with Thank God. It is etched upon the spiritual DNA of the people who taught the rest of the world the principles of moral virtue and spiritual vision.

Indeed, a new exhibit in the Israel Museum -- adjacent to the Shrine of Book, which contains the Dead Sea Scrolls -- presents the Nano-Torah, all 1.2 million letters of the Jewish Bible inscribed by laser on a gold parchment smaller than the head of a pin.

The sages of the Talmud teach that the Almighty looked into the Torah and created the universe, that the verbal expression of the Divine Will formulated the genetic coding of all Creation. Under a microscope, you can see the tiny letters that constitute the genesis of human existence and which established the template for human wisdom. Before your eyes, the ancient past merges with the elusive future, like the 2000-year-old Roman amphitheater outfitted for a modern sound-and-light show.

But really there is no contradiction, no paradox. The timelessness of eternal wisdom never becomes outdated, never ceases to be relevant, never goes out of style unless we turn away from it to embrace the fads and fancy of superficial society that become obsolete even before they’ve fully taken hold.

Suspended between time and space, between heaven and earth, between the far corners of the universe, an ancient people live in a modern land, thriving amdist the tension between the spiritual and the material without attempting to resolve it.

The true believers among them, unable to ascend the mountain The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

72 of their God, wait in the shadow of the Wall of Wisdom, intoning holy words beneath hallowed archways, chanting to the heart of the world, singing their song of hope and joy in anticipation of the redemption they know will come.

The ancient Egyptians, the empires of Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome lay in ruins. The Crusaders and the Inquisitors have come and gone. The Persians and Parthians are chapters in history books unread except by historians, while the Mamluks and the Almohads have vanished from the face of the earth.

But the People of the Book remain, prosperous in their own land, more vibrant and alive than ever. Every day they rise anew to grapple with the challenge of hearkening to the exhortations of their souls and the echoes of eternity.

All photos taken by the author with his Galaxy Note 3.

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

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

Visit him at http://proverbsandprovidence.com.

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POEMS

Chris Macalino These poems all belong to a small series, a long poem called “Timing Is Everything: The Princess Poems”. They are unpublished; I hope to include them in a collection of long poems entitled ‘The Holosuite Usher’.

Every piece in this series is written with the princess in mind and she manages to keep her family and friends in check as her belief in dreams are questioned.

I think many people can relate to these poems because the dream of nobility is a shared interest, a lot of people know stories about romantic figures, and these stories can conversely be large enough to fill a fictional world. I hope these poems are appreciated by readers of many ages, as I intended them for an audience of fantasy enthusiasts, people who have ever compared themselves to the heroes found in tales of wonderment. In this case, it is the heroine, a princess trying to accept reality.

- Chris Macalino

The Know How For princesses who can summon rides (like dragons, horses, griffins, and birds) actually need their knights to be guardians so they could meet their true love prince.

We show too much and ask more time, trying to be perfect, punctual, in payment with every attendance that could be due but what is done but poise before lights?

Soft as fresh fabric from the clothes line, Warm like the thumb of a postage stamp; Subtle like balancing acts for candle races From one room to another in all fairness.

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74 Like the only grace be allowed are rules to which are followed beyond a principle so they might be certifiable in one’s style, movements that beat and separate cake.

Me As A River A young lady who won’t change her beliefs And can’t let go of her boyfriend’s image Would rather live in a fantasy than be told About being wrong about friends in the river That spiritual notion of everybody’s direction Flowing to the sum in all fittings personified And her boyfriend was just like a fish once And how he’s not a fish anymore but still Swimming around, breathing and bubbling Like the guy she knew about faded away Into the reputation of colds, over her head.

We aren’t animals, she says, we’re tense.

Game I can’t believe my grandfather will always be a prince, and that my uncle is actually queen.

I will not believe he’d just lie like that and never was my king of ages.

Now my uncle only counts daughters.

Why does my mother refuse to believe that dames, and their lengthened names, will not rise up from princess beyondAs if my real destiny will be the same, then there isn’t anybody good enough, to define my dreams?

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75 Boyfriends are fiends who fight, all the time of our lives would-be knights, will rather not pay and sit as prince.

They don’t have the right!

Cannot speak about magic lands where old people lay down cards.

Must I try to make them understand their translations are just an ultimatum and my life matches an epic sense?

It is justice to have my brothers be the princes they ought to live by, but in my word, we are players.

Twist To see so much beauty, it’s shocking, An atonement of the creative humanity.

Impressionists? Who can paint that fast!

And the abstract turn of daily patience.

The craziest thing of you is a lot of work, For me to believe this astonishment, You’d have me while away as you practice Difficulty all the way to the easy terrain.

Love me, don’t level me, and be with it; I can handle anything, the truth is light And I have the right to not include time, All day I fill up on the story of our roots.

We come from a family of survivors who Once knew that dragons we’re really big The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

76 And those dragons stayed the same size, Now we face them to a lifted excellence.

I need you to be noble, and grant us now The memory for you don’t concern with it As if work is more important than history, How do we believe me if streets are gone?

You must remember what I have learned And what we are all about in reciprocity, If the fantasy world has beauty replaced By hindsight we will all remove rationality.

Developing My grandparents were always in different rooms And our parents just grouped together by interest Then there’s us wild grandkids all playing together.

Do you see a pattern here like A Beautiful Mind?

When my grandparents sat beside each other Our parents would turn their attention to them And we’d stop playing, wondering, what’s next?

You can’t blame children for believing in romance, We were disciplined to respect elders seriously And when my grandparents had important news Then I had no more to say but breathe carefully.

That was the little throne in our big happy family.

It was traditionally touch and go and also verbal, Stories to remember about beauty and heroism.

Chris Macalino is a millennial artist.

Now in his 30s, his accomplishments include: travel, graduation, and an exhibit. He is a licensed car driver, avid bus rider, and casual walker. His hometown is Winnipeg.

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POEMS Norbert Gora

Mainistir na Coille Móire Close to Baile na Cille God’s monastery looms large drenched in his love. floating warped image divine as heaven reflected Mainistir na Coille Móire where hundreds of hearts beat for him The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

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walls woven with words of prayer, built by mortals in belief by the sacrum beatified a miracle isolated by a palette of transient emotions gate to this beauty perpetually closed without them Mainistir na Coille Móire suffused in nature devoid of sins stands up to the turbulent twirls of time

Norbert Gora is a 26-years old poet and writer from Poland. He lives in a little town of Góra, Poland. Many of his horror, SF and romance short stories have been published in his home country. He is also the author of many poems in English-language poetry anthologies around the world”.

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EVENT Bengaluru Poetreat

The two day Bengaluru Poetry Festival got off to a good start with the rendition of Compositions of Bendre, Bharati and Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan by Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy.

A fitting start.

Volga, author and Jayant Kaikeni, lyricist and poet began the session with concern towards what is happening around in the society. Volga through one of her poems reminded us that we tend to overlook the wife of the farmer when he commits suicide and ignore the fact that the entire burden of the family left behind falls on her. Jayant, in his speech, said that though digitally we are all connected, there prevails a ‘disconnect’ in the society. When The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

80 he followed it up with concern towards farmers, taking over from where Volga left, he pointed out that in earlier days tractors from the villages used to bring the produce to the city. Now that their agricultural activities are in doldrums in the villages, with the farmers, tractors also have migrated to the city where they load and shift debris and waste.

True to the core, when we stepped out for a cup of tea, we happened to see a tractor full of debris speeding along. Jayant Kaikeni expressed his concern over the direction in which the world is heading. Though his speech sounded to be in a lighter vein, it carried much for serious thought.

Then, it was the turn of the popular scriptwriter and lyricist of Bollywood- Javed Akhtar to take stage- in conversation with Rakshanda Jalil. He pronounced that the word ‘public’ has become archaic and the term used at present is ‘youth’.

He opined that Bollywood has got in to a cliché, underestimating the youth that they prefer ‘light verses’ which is utterly false. He came down heavily on the term, currently in vogue, ‘prosepoems’. He argued that it could only be either a poem or a piece of prose; a prose version could be written poetically but that won’t make it a poem. Have we not heard similar argument much earlier when the free verse pushed aside the iambic or some other pentameters? Or for that matter, what happened when the metaphysical poets entered the poetry arena kicking out the Romantic poetry by the wayside? We differ with Javed here.

To quote Javed, ‘words to a poet are like colours to a painter.’

On vocabulary, he commented that more the merrier; they are like bricks; more the bricks bigger the castle.

Neil Hall, a physician and an internationally acclaimed poet, through his poems, voiced eloquently the prevalent racial discrimination and the place of blacks in the American society. His voice and diction led us to feel the pain.

One saw a different side of the politician The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

81 Varun Gandhi when he read from his yet to be published collection – ‘Surrender’; one was about his birthday and other, the memory of his maternal grandmother, his nani. In a world of savage transactions, in the common man’s anxieties of life and its journey, it helps one to surrender and write poetry.

What an interesting session it was: Who is Reading Poetry? But what came out starkly in this festival was that poetry books do not sell and they are not commercially viable. Poet Vivek Narayan said poetry reading is a cult; poets are like a commune. But, the fact that poetry has only a limited readership does not make it less important. Poetry books are inconspicuous at book stores, felt

Hemant Divate, a publisher and a poet. He also felt that poetry is more popular in the internet.

‘Voices from the East’ which was aptly named ‘Poetic Sojourn’ was also heard, which is otherwise inaccessible with its volatile political climate. -Bina Sarkar-Ellias, Nabina Das, Nitoo Das and Robin Ngangom took part in this session. ‘Emerging voices and the change in Hindi poetry’ was represented by Savita Bhargav and Suhdir Ranjan Singh.

Piyush Mishra, actor, lyricist and music director, held the audience in sway with his rendition of bollywood number-‘Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab harmarae dil mein hain’. He read from his latest book ‘Kuch Ishq kiya Kuch kaam kiya’. He registered his voice against alcoholism in one of his poems. Through another one, he pointed his finger at Godhra and Vietnam.

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82 Mustansir Dalvi presented a rare insight that Satyajit Ray was a poet first and then a film maker whose poems had been published in various magazines. He read to the audience the original poem

by Lewis Caroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’, a nonsense poem which was included in his 1871 novel ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ and the translation of which, in Bengali, was read by Sampurna Chattaerjee.

Anjum Hasan a Bengaluru based writer and poet, read from ‘Bangalorae Diaries’- an attempt to record the experience of ‘living in the city’. Her prose-poems talked about things that people from a city like Bengaluru could relate to easily such as the hustle and bustle in the City Railway station.

A poet gets his inspiration from almost anything. Newspaper articles and titbits have inspired Anand Thakore’s upcoming book ‘Seven Deaths and Four Scrolls’. After reading the report on the hanging of Ajmal Kasab , his mind travels and imagines the poverty of Kasab’s family and he has written a poem on that.

Simon Napier Bell, a poet from USA, was also present. Pratibha Nandakumar read some of her erotic and love poems, defining pleasure.

A book of poems titled ‘40 under 40’, edited by Nabina Das and Semeen Ali, was launched by K. Satchidanandan and the sitting had Hemant Divate, Jennifer Robertson, Nabina Das and Samantak Bhadra discussing the poems of the book, assorted fresh works by those under 40, each one dealing with changes in life and environment.

Poet and actor Kamalini Mukherjee was in conversation with Dr. Neil Hall on her The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

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poems and the way in which she approaches poetry. She read a few poems of her choice. A session on the ‘The Poetics of Resistance’ was with K.Satchidanandan.

Space was also allotted to the emerging voices in Kannada.

Well known poet Manohar Shetty read from his collection ‘Creatures Great and Small’. Arundhati Subramanium recited some of her works. Poet Kutti Revathi gave her opinion on Female body and politics there in.

Vibha Rani released her book ‘Can on how she dealt with cancer’.

In the contest held, out of the 260 entries, 155 were selected and the organisers have brought out an anthology, titled, POETRY-BENGALURU POETRY FESTIVAL -2016.

Finally, for presenting such a wonderful event, ATTA GALATTA and the team behind must be appreciated.

Keep Going, Atta Galatta!

From the desk of The Wagon Magazine: as observed by Mr. N.C. Naidu and Krishna Prasad The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

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Flash Fiction VYJAYANTHI SUBRAMANIAN

INNOCENCE Giving the currency notes, “Release him” she said, pitiably. He was charge sheeted for statutory rape of a fourteen years old. This girl looked that age.

“You should approach a lawyer, what is he to you?”

She did meet my eyes. “He is my husband, father of my children.

I want to save my family” She was the fourteen years old!

“You look so young, how can they be yours?” …. ....

“I married him because I wanted to mother his motherless children. They are mine. I will not orphan them again” She was defiant “You can’t arrest me?”

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FIGHTING ILLUSION WITH DISILLUSION

She had no voice.

He yelled at her when she complained that she could not sleep with a leg on her.

It was her mistake, she was light.

For years she accepted any touch as love; any hurt as ‘more love’.

Her hour glass figure irritated him. She ate as he forced her, soon she could only fit in to XXL. This did not please him either.

This was ‘unlove’.

It dawned after a trying decade.

At the end of the tunnel ‘they’ said, she was infidel for writing poetry - ‘An ode to illusion’.

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POEMS

Bhekumuzi Christopher Kubheka Mloi

TEARS OF A CLOWN I don’t recall why I played that part at all.

I yelled ‘IT HURTS!!!’

And they made a laughing stock out of me The truth was I did practice so hard, but…

I reckon it wasn’t my time yet.

I know what bites the big one Now that all the smoke is gone I see the obvious It’s just me and the mirror I guess the gag is on me Let the joker jog on the petals of my heart Let all my cards on the table show a joker I guess the devil played me once again Dealt me the wrong cards So with my head down ….

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Dead little mouse RATEX….

RATEX….

Where did you kill the little mouse?

I searched under the bed I hunted the closets nothing…

The unpleasant odor fills the room The neighbors complain The dog sniffs Hungry cat is restless.

I rummaged around the pile of room corner junk I explored the basement in vain Still lingers the stink RATEX… RATEX… Oooooh!

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For what it is worth In the middle of the night I still stare at her pictures Zoom them

IN and OUT till I sleep.

Every time I sip coffee I see her face still I stir it Clockwise

‌ and ANTIclockwise No matter what I love her

still For what it is worth I still yield to her touch

Touching the sun wouldn’t suffice All I want is to hug Sobbing like a baby

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The beast Swearing to hunt us down It wants what the Gods have breathed in us What to do?

Master of tricks Master of all deceptions Eyes red like blood seen all Give it drugs Give it candy Maybe it won’t look this way Give it praise Give it your soul It is what it wanted in heaven above It wants the chances we took from it but nothing that we think we own.

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The lonely king I still think of her when the sun sets blushing I still see her face in the constellation twinkling The ocean crashes with her laughter reminding Oh!...How she loved the ocean!

The moon still shines her spot on the bed The castle is so quiet and stuck up the craws feeding on our love Here comes a man laughing at the lonely king Should he be hanged?

or deported to the desert?

Oh‌ What difference does it make?

Bhekumuzi Christopher Kubheka Mloi is from Pinetown, Kwa-Zulu Natal & now lives in Durban. He works as CEO at Farmer’s World.

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NON-FICTION

C. Raveendran

continued from previous issue...

TRENDS AND MOVEMENTS IN INDIAN THEATRE

“Alkazi saab, the ferociously dedicated ‘padrone’ of the theatre, liked to personally set an example, asking no less of himself than he asked of anyone.”-

Naseeruddin Shah- ‘And Then One Day’

Instead of countering the hegemony of the power politics of the state by individual theatre attempts, Indian People’s Theatre Association (I.P.T.A) as a theatre wing of the Progressive Writers Association (P.W.A) was launched in 1943 at Bombay. Habib Tanrir, Bijon Bhattacharya, Dina Gandhi, Bhisham Sahni and a bandwagon of theatre activists

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92 took IPTA activities to all over India, except Tamil Nadu.

Since the activities of I.P.T.A were controlled by the Communist Party of India, members like Udpal Dutt, Habib Tanvir left I.P.T.A and launched their own Theatre groups.

I was fortunate to see the Bijon Bhattacharya’s Nabanna (New Harvest) revived and directed by Kumar Roy in the 80’s. In spite of the Party affiliation, I.P.T.A played a vital role in creating the ‘Theatre of the people for people.’ This became one of the theatre movements in India during the years 1940’s and 1950’s.

In 1950’s and 1960’s, number of creative writers got exposed to the theatre movements of East and West and began experiments in writing plays, breaking the monotony of the stereotyped melodramatic theatre. Mohan Rakesh, Vijay Tendulkar, Grish Karnad, Lankesh, Chandrasekar Kampar, Kavalam Naryana Panikkar, G.Sankara Pillai, J.P.Das, Badal Sircar, N.Muthusamy, Indira Parthasarathy, Kanhailal and a few others belonging to various Indian languages started creating a new genre of dramas meant for staging. Instead of waiting for directors’, playwrights like Badal Sircar, N.Muthusamy, Kanhailal staged their plays directly under the banner of their own theatre groups.

The turning point in Indian Theatre was when Ebrahim Alkazi took charge as the Director of the National School of Drama (N.S.D) in 1962. After returning from RADA in England, he had his own ‘Theatre Unit’ in performing English theatre in Bombay. When he took over NSD, his main interest was in staging the classic plays of Western theatre in Hindi. Works of Euripides, Shakespeare, Moliere, Ionesco and host of other western playwrights’ became very popular among the Delhi audience through the directorial ventures of Alkazi. Not only staging western plays, he slowly turned to Indian plays. He produced plays meticulously highlighting the power of the text in performance. Mohan Rakesh’s ‘Ashaad ka Ek Din’ had its first production under the direction of The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

93 Alkazi and that was the beginning of the Hindi Modern Theatre. Similarly C.T. Khnolkar’s, ‘EK Shunya Baji Rao’, Adya Rangachri’s, ‘Suno Janmagaya’, Mohan Rakesh’s, ‘Aadhe Adhoore’, Surendera Varma’s ‘Surya Ki Antim Kiran se Suriya Ki Pehli kiran tak’ were staged directed by Alkazi and his students such as M.K.Raina, Ramgopal Bajaj. Shifting the theatre arena from N.S.D complex, Alkazi staged Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug, Balwant Gargi’s Sultan Raziya and Girish Karnad’s Tuglag, having the ruins of Purana Quila and its wall as backdrop of these plays.

Seeing all these plays at Purana Quila was a memorable journey, recreating the historical/mythical past through the reality of the present. Actually, AndhaYug is not a play, but it is a long poem of Dharmvir Bharathi. It was Alkazi who turned it to a play with an aim to break the vicious circle of the commercialization of Hindi theatre.

Gradually, by this time, doubts got seeded in the minds of Indian Theatre People, particularly the Hindi and Regional Theatre groups of India that Alkazi was presenting the ‘western theatre tradition’ in the name of ‘Indian Theatre Tradition’. In 1971, a conference by name, ‘Round Table conference on the contemporary relevance of Folk Theatre’ was organized by Sangeet Natak Akademi along with a number of seminars on ‘Roots of Indian Theatre’. It is an irony that the entire proceedings of the above mentioned events resulted in endorsing the view that ‘Indian theatre was Hindi Theatre’ and even today, it remains as such.

The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

94 The pioneering playwright and founder of the modern Hindi theatre was Bharathendu Harichandra whose play ‘Anderi Ngari Chopet Raja’ still remains as the curtain-raiser of modern Hindi drama. ‘Bandar Sabha’ (Monkey’s court) was written and staged by Bharatendeu. It was a parody versus the ‘Inder Sabha’, a lavish production by Parsi Theatre Group. After that we had to wait for Alkazi to start staging original Hindi plays and also staging translated plays either in the original or abridged forms or as an adoption. It will be voluminous job to undertake a detailed study on the assimilation of foreign plays into Indian theatre as in the case of Sydney Finklestein’s Question ‘Who Needs Shakespeare?’ raising the issue of the relevance of staging Shakespeare plays, in any format and style. For example, B.V. Karanth’s ‘Barinam Vanam’ based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in Yakshagana style, fails to create an impact with the theatre audience.

The same goes for Brecht-ian influence on Indian Theatre and the directorial ventures of Richard Schchener, Peter Brook and host of others.

After nearly thirteen years of silence, after getting retired from NSD, Alkazi came out with the plays - Lorca’s ‘House of Bernard Alpa’, Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Ceaser’ and Girish Karnad’s ‘Taledanda’ - staging at Kamani in 1980’s. At that time, he replied to the theatre activists that he introduced a system of drama production incorporating all traditions of Western Theatre available to him and he was sincere in handing over that tradition to his students at NSD. He added that if one wants to reject his system, one must, first of all, enter the system which he has created, master it and then only reject it. We have to realize the importance of the theatre workshops conducted by NSD all over India.

One such NSD’s workshop was held at Gandhigram in 1977 which paved the way for the expansion of theatre activities all over Tamil Nadu. After attending the workshop, by seeing the play Pinam Thinnum Saasthrangal (Sastras ate by the Corpse) by S. Ramanujam and directed by Bansi kaul, participants like M. Ramasamy, Gnani started Nija Nataka Iyakkam (Real Theatre Movement) and Pariksha (Experiment) respectively. Badal Sircar of Third Theatre movement The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

95 also conducted a workshop in Chennai and thus street theatre movement gained momentum in Tamil Nadu.

In 1984, Sangeet Natak Akademi came out with a scheme to promote Indian Theatre by giving production grant to stage plays by young directors, interacting with traditional and folk theatre of India. Sangeet Natak Akademi also started arranging theatre festivals in Delhi by selecting the best plays of young directors from South, North, East and West zones of India. That made it possible to enjoy seeing four different plays selected from the four different zones at the festival in Delhi. Out of the Ten Best Indian plays, it is proud to say that, there were three plays from Tamil Nadu i.e. M.Ramasamy’s ‘Turkira Avalam’ based on Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’, R.Raju’s ‘Nandan Kathai’ of Indira Parthasarathi and V. Arumugham’s ‘Karunchuzhi’ (Black Whirlpool).

Following that, Ford Foundation of India also started giving funds, under the theme of ‘Bridging the gap between Traditional Theater and Modern Stage’, to Indian Theatre Groups projected by personalities such as Neelam Mansingh Choudhury, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Jayashree, Logendra Arambam, K.C. Manacendranath, Jose Siromal, Ragu and N. Muthuswamy, It will really be awkward to discuss the merit of the outcome of these theatre groups.

Nowadays, both government and non-governmental agencies are lavishly distributing funds in the name of production grants, salary grants and theatre building grants. Indian Council of Cultural Relation is also giving travel grants to Indian theatre groups to participate international theatre meets.

Devendar Kumar Ankur converted stories into performing plays.

Nisha Balakrishnan of N.S.D adopted the pattern of Devendar Kumar Ankur and started introducing theatre performances of short stories under the banner of N. Muthusamy’s Kootu-P-Pattari. Theatre activists like A.Ramasamy, K.S. Karuna Prasad, K. Pennerwarn followed this pattern of adopting short stories of literary merit. Purisai Kannappa Thambiran, the grand master of Therukoothu has adopted the story ‘An old man with huge wing’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, along with Rolf from Colombia and that got selected as one of the inaugural plays of the The Wagon Magazine - August 2016

96 5th International Theatre Festival held at Bogotá, Colombia in 1996.

I took part as a Lighting Designer of this play. Taking novel as well as poetry as a vehicle for theatre is in the hands of the new generation directors. Barul Islam’s adaptation of Indira Goswami novel into a stage play is worthy to be mentioned here.

Theatre festivals like Bharat Rang Mahatsov of NSD, International Theatre Festival of Kerala, Meta Theatre Festival of Mahindra group are popular among the festivals of India in addition to the festivals organized by State and Central Government of India.

Nowadays, there are two sects of theatre people in India. One is ‘living for theatre’ and the other ‘living by theatre’. Number is less in ‘Living for theatre’. ‘Living by theatre’ is the fad of the modern age.

After an experience with all kinds of theatre festivals held all over India, especially in Delhi, one can easily point out that there prevails a stereotype pattern of theatre performances all over India.

On the contrary, in Tamilnadu, apart from the theatrical productions of S. Ramanujam, Na. Muthusamy, Raju, V.Arumugham, Yadhartha Penneswaran, number of young directors like Piralyan, Shanmugaraja, Murugaboopathy, K.S.Karnaprasad, Parthipa Raja are wholeheartedly engaged in creating a variety of theatrical idioms and narratives through their visuals and also by interacting with traditional and folk forms. Sincerely speaking, theatre is now set for experiments with digital lights, multimedia mixings, and projection of visuals and fusion of sound. No doubt we are living in an age of mechanical reproductions.

Vasudha Dalmia in her book titled ‘Poetics, Play and Performance: The politics of Modern Indian theatre (2006)’ has paid only an eye wash to the theatre activities of 1990, after the evolution of Feminist Theatre Movement in the 1970’s. Women directors like Urvashi Butalia, Neelam Manshingh Choudhury, Amal Allana, Anamika Kaksher, Anuradha Kapur are lucky enough to find their names at all in the ten pages out of nearly four hundred pages of the book. Other than these above mentioned women directors, she is silent about the activities of other women directors like Jayashri in Kannada, Gandhi Mary, Mangai and Jeeva in Tamil Nadu. Till now The Wagon Magazine - August- 2016

97 Ambai’s play Mudivillatha Uraiyaadal (An endless Dialogue) awaits for a director. No feminist theatre in Tamil Nadu is ready to stage this play.

To go with the celebration of the birth centenary of Dr.Ambedkar in 1990s, all over India there was an aspiration among Dalit writers to create a ‘Theatre of Dalit’. Prof. K.A.Gunasekaran was one in Tamilnadu who not only wrote plays but also staged them by his own theatre group. His play Baliyaadugal (Sacrificial Goats) was written in late 90’s and that got included in the Theatre Festival of NSD. I am not confident about the Dalit theatre movement in India. If a Dalit can tell his story through theatre, are we ready to see the performance?

Our identity remains only in our passport in order to travel all over world. This is the crude reality of our age. In this context, it is relevant to talk about identity politics of theatre. In the third section of Vasudha Dalmia’s “Poetics, Plays and performances: the Politics of Modern Indian Theatre’, under the heading ‘what is Indian?’, there are a couple of chapters, i.e 7th and 8th Chapters, titled ‘Encountering the Other’, and ‘I am a Hindu: Assertion and Queries’. Vasudha Dalmia’s identification of Indian theatre as Hindu theatre is a paradox and a crude joke.

The bottom line is that theatre should be a medium of the ‘voice of the voiceless’.

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

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