eFiction India: Vol.02 Issue.02 by Nikhil Sharda

Vol02i s s ue02 MXSteele Pri yankaSuresh OmarShari f Pri yaaTri ppayar DeeptiRazdan Kaarti keyaBaj pai Ri ttvi kaSi ngh Bhadauri aMani shSi ngh Mi chelleD’ cost a SurbhiThukral Sthi t apragyaRay Ami tChaudhari‘ s Shei khaA Retelli ngoftheRamayana

SpearHead

Nikhil Sharda

Editor

Richa Mehta

Copy Editor

Namitha Varma-Rajesh

Content Editors

Ananya Dhawan (Features) Shifani Reffai (Stories) Ananya Guha (Poems)

Public Relations

Literati Communications, Mumbai

Cover Illustration

Paul Montgomery

eFiction India is a monthly fiction publication. The editors accept manuscripts online on the website. Visit us at www.efictionindia.in. To review our guidelines and submit a manuscript, please visit http://www.efictionindia.in/submit. Any other correspondence may be sent to info@efictionindia.in eFiction India is available both online and in print. For other formats, please visit our website.

Meet other readers on Twitter at @eFictionIndia or on Facebook at facebook.com/eFictionIndia

EDITOR’S NOTE

As a child, I was fascinated rather than scared by the idea of monsters under my bed. The bed in my old room in my parents’ house had the tiniest of crawl spaces under it, maybe about three inches high, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how any monster could comfortably hide there. But never once however did it occur to me to question their existence, these monsters that I knew were lurking under my bed. One I recall vividly. It was purple and shaped like a brachiosaur, with a long serpentine neck and razor-sharp blades all along its spine. Its big bulbous head, dominated by two giant green eyes that had glowing red slits for pupils, seemed to have no mouth when you first looked at it, but those eyes were part of the disguise. Hidden under those enormous eyeballs was a deceptively small mouth housing teeth that could shred steel. And I’m reasonably certain that’s what it used that mouth for, because you see, this monster – let’s call it Metalhead – ate metal for food. Often I heard it crunching away, slobbering over a scavenged scrap of steel, grinding it down with those nasty gnashing teeth before swallowing it in one big gulp. I wondered how it kept its teeth sharp, and if it needed to brush every night before bedtime like I did. I blame the monster for all the missing pins and screws and nuts and bolts – those must have been like a snack mix for it! And yet, while I imagined it chowing down any hapless piece of metal that rolled under the bed (or was sent to its doom by me – the details are a little foggy), I cannot remember wondering how that monster was comfortable under there. It just was. As a slightly older child now, I have wondered about this and tried to reason it out. Maybe it could shrink at will. Maybe it had a miniaturising device. Maybe it was just us humans that perceived space as big or small. Maybe I will never know, because this monster, like so many others, has long left the refuge of that little nook my bed for some other little child’s room. But what I know for sure is that the innocence of youth is a powerful tool. It transcends the limitations the adult brain imposes on itself, and I am still trying to figure out why. The older we get, the less important our monster friends become, and the lesser we let them into our lives, the less fantastic we become. As I’ve been told today, maybe it should be fed, just like the monsters under my bed, and that will help it escape the confines of a head. Just like your words have. Happy reading! Richa Mehta Editor

eFiction India | November 2013

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

CONTENTS

CONTENTS FEATURE AND FICTION

6 Special Feature IT’S BEEN A WHILE AMIT CHAUDHARI

8 A CUP OF TEA ALDEENA RAJU

10 GRANNIES

»» p.6

PRIYANKA SURESH

13 MORSELS OF FAINT RECOLLECTION – THE SUNDAY BATHS OMAR SHARIF

15 THE DAILY FORECAST »» p.8

»» p.19

PRIYAA TRIPPAYAAR

17 THE NIGHT GONE BY DEEPTI RAZDAN

19 THE BOY WHO WISHED FOR WAR KAARTIKEYA BAJPAI

21 RESCUE OPERATION »» p.10

RITTVIKA SINGH

eFiction India | november 2013

CONTENTS

POETRY

25 MY OLD HOUSE SURBHI THUKRAL

26 LAMPOONS OF GOD BHADAURIA MANISH SINGH

27 MOVE ON MICHELLE D’COSTA

28 STORMS STHITAPRAGYA RAY

29 THIS LAND IS FOR NO MAN SHEIKHA A

INTERVIEWS AND REVIEWS

30 O PEN YOUR MIND TO THE WORLD: SUBHADRA SEN GUPTA 32 MASTER OF THE INDIAN COMIC INDUSTRY 35 A CANVAS OF ORIGINALITY 36 AN ABSORBING AND UNAMBIGUOUS READ: ‘SALE OF SOULS’

eFiction India | November 2013

CONTENTS

EXCLUSIVE PRINT BONUS! FEATURE AND FICTION

40 S pecial Feature FLASHBACK URVASHI BUTALIA

44 CURTAIN CALL ALDEENA RAJU

48 MY OPTIONS ARE OPEN

»» p.8

DIVYA SESHAGIRI

50 DEADLINE MICHELLE D’COSTA

51 THE LAZARUS BOND DEBIROOPA BANERJEE »» p.39

»» p.19

52 A WALK WITH GUSTAV SUGANDHA DAS

53 A GOOD MAN AT HEART BARNALI SAHA

58 THE MARGARITA MAN ADIANA RAY

61 A TRYST WITH VAGARY »» p.21

SOHNI CHAKRABARTI

74 JOBA’S JOURNEY ANDY PAULA

eFiction India | november 2013

CONTENTS

FEATURE AND FICTION (contd)

61 Staff Pick SELAT RORRIM: MIRROR TALES DIWAKAR RALPH

76 COMPLIMENTARY COCKTAILS SAYANTAN GHOSH

»» p.29

80 A RENDEZVOUS WITH THE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS PRIYAA TRIPPAYAR

POETRY

82 WE ARE WEAVERS STHITAPRAGYA RAY

83 OPIUM SOHNI CHAKRABARTI

83 THE SOUND OF TOMORROW SHEIKHA A

84 A THOUSAND EYES SIDDHARTH YADAV

85 MY GOAL SURBHI THUKRAL

85 BOTTLED UP BAYAAR SHARMA

86 NAMELESS VERSE SUGANDHA DAS

86 PAIN SHRUTI SAREEN

INTERVIEWS AND REVIEWS

87 MEHEK BASSI: UNCHAINED

90 CHERISHING INDIA, SAVOURING DUBAI

89 CHAINED: CAN YOU ESCAPE FATE?

91 PURVA GROVER: THE INDIAN TRUMPET’S SWEET MUSIC

eFiction India | November 2013

F E AT U R E

IT’S BEEN A WHILE AMIT CHAUDHARI

HE’D BEEN WATCHING the two men for a while; the pale, rather docile, wife with vermilion in her hair sometimes went inside the small house and came out again. She’d been watching from behind a bush, so they hadn’t seen her; they had the air of being not quite travellers, nor people who’d been settled for long; but they looked too composed to be fugitives. Sometimes the men went away into the forest while the woman attended to household chores — Surpanakha observed this interestedly from a distance — and then

they’d return with something she’d chop and cook, releasing an aroma that hung incongruously about the small house. She, when she considered herself, thought how much stronger and more capable she would be than that radiantly beautiful but more or less useless woman, how she’d not allow the men to work at all, and do everything for them herself. It was the taller one she’d come to prefer, the older one, whose actions had such authority. She liked to watch him bending, or brushing away a

bit of dust from his dhoti, or straightening swiftly, with that mixture of adroitness and awkwardness that only human beings, however godly they are, have; he was so much more beautiful than she was. It was not his wife’s beauty she feared and envied; it was his. Sighing, she looked at her own muscular arms, used to lifting heavy things and throwing them into the distance, somewhat hirsute and dark, but undoubtedly efficient, and compared them to his, which glowed in the sunlight. Her face, which she’d begun to look at in a pond nearby, had cavernous

eFiction India | november 2013

F E AT U R E

nostrils and tiny tusks that jutted out from beneath her lips; it was full of fierceness and candour. But when she cried, it did not evoke pity, not even her own. The face reflected in the water filled her with displeasure. How lovely his features were in comparison! After about six days had passed, and she’d gone unnoticed, hiding, frightened, and when she was glimpsed, frightening, behind the bush, she decided to approach him. She had grown tired of hovering there like an animal; even the animals had begun to watch her. Although she’d been taught to believe, since childhood, that rakshasas were better — braver, less selfish, more charitable and better-natured — than human beings and gods, it was true that the latter were prettier. They’d been blessed unfairly by creation; no one knew why. Long ago, she’d been told that it was bad luck to fall in love with a god or a human being, but the possibility had seemed so remote that she’d never entertained it seriously. The feeling of longing, too, was relatively new for her, although she was in full maturity as a woman; but she was untried and untested, rakshasi though she was, and uncourted; and this odd condition of restlessness was more solitary and inward, she found, than indigestion, and more painful. She decided to change herself. She could take other forms at will, albeit temporarily; she decided to become someone else, at least for a while. She went to a clearing where she was sure no one would see her, where the only living things were some insects and a few birds in the trees, and the transformation took place. Now she went to the pond to look at the image in the water. Her heart, like a girl’s upon glimpsing a bride, beat faster at what she saw; a woman with large eyes and long hair down to her waist, her body pliant. She wasn’t sure if this was herself, or if the water reflected someone else. Ram and his younger brother Lakshman had gone out into the forest to collect firewood; she saw them from a distance. Her mouth went dry and she snorted with nervousness; then she recalled how she’d become more beautiful than she’d imagined, and tried to control these noises she eFiction India | November 2013

inadvertently made. She thought, looking at Ram, ‘He is not a man; I’m sure he’s a god,’ and was filled with longing. When they came nearer her, she lost her shyness, and came out into the clearing. “What’s this?” said Ram softly to his brother, pretending not to have seen her. Lakshman glanced back quickly and whispered, as he bent to pick up his axe, “I don’t know — but this beautiful ‘maiden’ smells of rakshasi; look at the gawky and clumsy way she carries her body, as if it were an ornament she’d recently acquired.” “Let’s have some fun with her,” whispered Ram. He’d been bored for days in the forest, and this overbearing, obstreperous creature of ethereal beauty, now approaching them with unusually heavy footsteps, promised entertainment. “Lord…” she stuttered, “…Lord… Forgive me for intruding so shamelessly, but I saw you wandering alone, and thought you might have lost your way.” Ram and Lakshman looked at each other; their faces were grave, but a smile glinted in their eyes. They’d noticed she’d ignored Lakshman altogether. It amused and flattered Ram to be on the receiving end of this attention, even if it came from a rakshasi who’d changed shape; and it also repelled him vaguely. He experienced, for the first time, the dubious and uncomfortable pleasure of being the object of pursuit. This didn’t bother him unduly, though; he was, like all members of the male sex, slightly vain. Lakshman cleared his throat and said: “Who are you, maiden? Do you come from these parts?” “Not far from here,” said the beautiful woman, while the covering on her bosom slipped a little without her noticing it. “Lord,” she said, going up to Ram and touching his arm, “let’s go a little way from here. There’s a place not far away where you can get some rest.” Within the beautiful body, the rakshasi’s heart beat fiercely, but with trepidation. “I don’t mind,” said the godly one slowly. “But what’s a woman like you doing here alone? Aren’t you afraid of thieves?”

“I know no fear, Lord,” she said. “Besides, seeing you, whatever fear I might have had melts away.” “Before I go with you,” conceded Ram, “I must consult my brother — and tell him what to do when I’ve gone.” Surpanakha said: “Whatever pleases you, Lord,” but thought: ‘I’ve won him over; I can’t believe it. My prayers are answered.’ Ram went to Lakshman and said: “This creature’s beginning to tire me. Do something.” “Like what?” said Lakshman. He was sharpening the blade of his knife. Ram admired the back of his hand and said moodily: “I don’t know. Something she’ll remember for days. Teach her a lesson for being so forward.” Lakshman got up wearily with the knife still in one hand, and Ram said under his breath: “Don’t kill her, though.” A little later, a howl was heard. Lakshman came back; there was some blood on the blade. “I cut her nose off,” he said. “It,” he gestured toward the knife, “went through her nostril as if it were silk. She immediately changed back from being a paradigm of beauty into the horrible creature she really is. She’s not worth describing,” he said as he wiped his blade, and Ram chuckled without smiling. “She was in some pain. She flapped her arms and screamed in pain and ran off into the forest like an agitated beast.” Crying and screaming, Surpanakha circled around the shrubs and trees, dripping blood. The blood was mingled with the snot that came from her weeping, and she wiped these away without thinking from her disfigured face. Even when the pain had subsided a little, the bewilderment remained, that the one she’d worshipped should be so without compassion, so unlike what he looked like. It was from here, in this state, that she went looking for Ravan.

A prominent Indian writer and scholar, Amit Chaudhuri’s recent honours include the LA Times Book Award. He lives in Calcutta.

STORIES

A CUP OF TEA MX STEELE

Each and every person has a dark side and MX Steele says that is what she wants to talk about and bring out into the open. Not for her the sunny characters who skip through life but her inspiration is Darth Vader.

UMATI LOOKED OUT through her grimy kitchen window. Paint peeling off the buildings, moss-covered roofs; laundry fluttering in the breeze, met her unseeing eyes. Here and there a window was open, its shutters pulled to one side – blank testimony to the woman who stood and gazed at them. How many years had she stood staring at this very scene? Maybe twenty, she surmised. Whatever, it was a long time, a very long time. Too long and a big waste to spend your life looking out at descript old buildings, she chided herself. Then again that little snapshot was hers and she felt an odd kinship with it. She knew every window, every balcony. She knew when another piece of plaster fell of any building exposing the bricks within. She even knew if the people changed in the houses by the laundry they hung out. She shifted a bit as perspiration ran in rivulets down her back. Behind her the TV was on – some politician was giving a speech in Delhi, his voice droning on and on and giving her a headache. For the life of her she couldn’t understand why her husband sat transfixed. Maybe that is why they called it the idiot box. “What happened to my chai?” queried his petulant voice. Silence greeted his query; she continued

staring out of the window. The crows were flying low over the rooftops. The sky was ominous and pregnant with low grey clouds. Hmmm, she thought distractedly, rain again I had better get in the washing. A drop of hot water splashed on her hand from the boiling pot on the stove. Instinctively she jerked it away and used her saree pallu to dab at it. “Arre! Are you getting my tea or not?” his voice rose in irritation. She turned around measuredly to look at him. He sat on the leather couch with his back to her, slouched down on its inflexible surface. Even though she could only see his bald head, she knew exactly what he was wearing; his loose white cotton pajamas which he bought every two years from P.N. Varajkar on Girgaum Road and his once white cotton vest (only from VIP and only the ones with half sleeves). Seriously, why did he even make the effort to say something, when she knew exactly what he was going to say even before he said it. Her sister called it being married for so long, she called it being boring. Well she had better get him his tea or his next words would be: Can’t you even get a cup of chai ready in time?” She turned back to the stove, her hand reaching out to the bottle of tea leaves on the counter.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

STORIES

“Why do you keep staring out of that window, what do you see there?”

Then he said something that helped her make up her mind.

She stopped, her body rigid with shock. She cast a sideways glance at him; was he actually interested in what she was looking at?

“Seriously Sumati, your brain must have got frozen, standing there for twenty years looking out of the same window. That too at the backs of some dirty old buildings. That window takes up too much of your time, it will make you mad one day.”

He had broken his pattern, but why today, she wondered? Even as she opened her mouth to answer, she heard him announce sweepingly... “All a stupid waste of time, nothing there but some people throwing rubbish out of their windows. If it stops you from doing your work, maybe I should just cover it up.” Sumati almost choked on the bile that rose up in her throat. Her hands shook so much that she held on tightly to the counter to steady herself. She turned around with a sharp retort on her lips but she saw that he had already turned away and lost interest in her. Maybe it was better that he stuck to a pattern; at least that way he left her alone. How could he even think of boarding up her window? There was a kitchen knife lying on the counter beside her. She silently picked it up and hefted it in her hand, it felt good. Cold and powerful. She deliberately looked over at him and then at the knife in her hand. He wasn’t even looking at her. Maybe she could just walk over and stick it into the back of his neck even as he sat there. Would I be able to do it? she wondered.

A strange feral sound escaped her lips. She shook her head vigorously from side to side as if to get rid of some disturbing thoughts. She was leaning against the kitchen counter now, staring at him. She hated him, she just hated him with his bald head and a few strands pulled over to the other side in a pathetic attempt to hide it. She hated the way he spoke to her, she hated the way he dressed, she hated the way he talked, the way he ate his food. She took a deep breath... but that was her and she could handle it. But he could not talk about her window like that. With an anguished cry she ran over to the couch and stuck the knife in to his chest as deep as it could go. His eyes questioned her… “Why?” even as they slowly glassed over. She drew it out carefully and then pushed it back in; into the stomach this time, again and again. Until he could breathe no more. Sumati laughed great big guffaws from deep within. She was free! Free! Free! He could not touch her again. She leaned back on her heels, surprised at how easy it had been. “Where is my tea?”

Image courtesy: Bo(Red), Flickr

Was she imagining it? A spear of lightning lit up the sky, shaking her out of her reverie. He still sat there on the couch, demanding his cup of tea. She turned around and walked over to him, her hand wrapped carefully in her pallu by her side. He looked up as she sat down beside him and then she turned to him and smiled.

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

STORIES

GRANNIES PRIYANKA SURESH

Priyanka Suresh is a homemaker by day and writer by night. She enjoys reading out Winnie the Pooh to her four-year-old daughter and selfpenned stories to her husband.

RANNIES ARE A breed that is intolerable to fun and invincible in arguments. They think that they know more than the entire lot of youngsters combined and whosoever doesn’t listen to them is doomed to hell. Their well timed frowns and looks are enough to invoke anger in some and put others to shame. Well, I know this because I have had more than my share of granny teachings. My Dadi’s best friend (and also the worst enemy) my Nani, lived just two streets away. Presence of each other made my grannies compete fiercely for the slot of most

“concerned granny”, thus spoiling any chance of peace in house. They were always in the race of outdoing each other when it came to pleating the girls’ hair, making pickles, gorging me with food and narrating the do’s and don’ts. However, they were united in their views about the girls, apprehensions about my future and suspicions about the whereabouts of our servant staff. Needless to mention, they were at complete loggerheads when it came to any discussion regarding my mother.

some of the oft-repeated instructions which I could never manage to take care of.

I was brought up in our ancestral house in Banaras along with an elder sister and two younger sisters. My elder sister and I were a team, while the two younger ones had a world of their own. In the backyard of our house there was an orchard of mango, guava, jackfruit and lemon trees which doubled up as cricket ground during day and hide and seek area during nights. On hot summers after playing, we used to relish the mangoes from the orchard. Mango tree and jackfruit tree branches were the best place to hide during hide and seek. But the entire fun of orchard would go away if my grannies were there. “No don’t climb the trees, you’ll break your bones!...Go collect some guavas…Don’t play cricket here, you might hit us…” and so on went their list of do’s and don’ts. Even without the orchard, the list was endless like: “Don’t circle the courtyard; it will haunt you at nights… Don’t face southwards while eating...Don’t shake your legs while sitting… Don’t hold your tummy while laughing…” etc. were

“Enough Leela!” she said, “I don’t understand why you should allow Sampat to go to Delhi at all. Delhi is a black pit. Whosoever enters the city gets lost! Ask him to stay back and become a partner in Munna’s trade.”

Now it so happened that one summer morning Nani was visiting Dadi to share the threads of their uneventful life. They were sitting on a cot under the mango tree. My elder sister Vinni, was up on another mango tree, plucking and dropping mangoes while I was collecting them from the ground. All of a sudden we heard our Dadi’s raised voice.

“Who am I to allow or disallow. He has already decided to go,” lamented my Nani. The piece of information was interesting. Sampat uncle, my mother’s youngest brother wanted to study in Delhi since long but was constantly put down by Nani who was against this idea. Seems he won the duel this time (or he simply gave a damn to Nani – God knows!) Dynamics were sharp. Dadi didn’t want him to go because she advised him not to go. (He would be doomed to hell if he ignored her advice). Nani did not want him to go obviously because she would miss him and actually because he was the only one in

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

STORIES

the family who cared for her. Sampat uncle wanted to go because he saw no future in Banaras. And I wanted him to go because I saw it as rebel against the grannies.

Image courtesy: TSI Healthcare, Flickr

My sister and I started on mangoes again so that grannies don’t notice that we were party to their delicate conversation. “No Leela! We’ll put a stop to this nonsense. Today Sampat is going. Tomorrow Vishu would want to go,” and she threw a sly glance at me which made me conscious enough to drop the mangoes in my hand. “We will have to do something to stop Sampat,” she declared. What they whispered next remained a secret. My sister and I exchanged cues and soon we were inside the home with at least a dozen ripened yellow mangoes. “We are going to drop mangoes in Nani’s house,” my sister formally announced to mother and off we ran to see Sampat uncle. We found him sitting in the verandah. “Do you know there is a conspiracy to stop you from going to Delhi?” said Vinni who was almost breathless after running all the way. “So you already know that I am going to Delhi,” said Sampat uncle who was a little surprised though not utterly bewildered. “We are just next to granny in news updates,” I said. “Great. Well I am going to register myself for a PhD in Delhi University.” “But if you want to go then listen carefully,” said Vinni, “Both the grannies are planning some unusual trick to thwart your plans of Delhi. We could not overhear the plan, but this time it’s really something worse than Nani pretending to fall sick.” “I care a damn. I am going, come what may.” “Yes, you are going for sure, but you might need our help to ensure this,” I said. eFiction India | October November2013 2013

“I won’t mind that.”

could be escaped.

“Oho, so the party is here to negotiate the terms of help!”

We waved at Sampat uncle and started towards home. In the boring summer vacations, this spy game came as a bonanza prize. Not only the adventure of spying lured us but also the reward of books attracted us.

“Definitely, yes.” “And may I know the terms and conditions for helping me out?” “Two things. First neither of the grannies nor any other family member should know that we are helping. Secondly, you will have to send us some good books once you reach Delhi.” Sampat uncle laughed aloud and said, “Agreed. Now tell me, how we crack the plan and get going.” “When are you going?” my sister asked. “Day after tomorrow. The train leaves Banaras at seven in the morning.” “Good, then we will spy a little more and see what these grannies are up to.” We made the game plan in less than fifteen minutes. Our plan was clear: I will linger around Nani and Vinni would cling to Dadi to garner any clue if we could. Sampat uncle had to be on the alert all the while and should try to avoid Nani as much as possible so that emotional blackmailing net

“Finally we would earn something out of our summer holidays,” I grinned to my sister. We took the challenge to send Sampat uncle to Delhi. It was rebellious and risky so we liked it all the more. Within a few minutes we began to feel that Sampat uncle’s venture to Delhi was our responsibility and so the task acquired a solemn outlook. On our way home we met Nani. I immediately accompanied her on the pretext of forgetting my pen in her house (which I never brought) while Vinni hurried home. Till evening nothing happened. Nani took a long three-hour nap after lunch and then started cleaning spinach for dinner. I expected some activity from her side but she was doing nothing that could be called out of the way. I patiently waited and decided to spend the night at Nani’s place thinking that probably she would do something at night. But at night she was the first one to sleep and it actually angered me. I was tempted to prod her into doing

STORIES

whatever she planned to so that I can catch her red-handed but resisted this temptation on time. I don’t know when I fell asleep but I got up only when the sun was high in the sky. I was utterly bored out of no activity from Nani’s side. Or may be she’s done something at night. Who knows? I immediately regretted sleeping at all. “I will have to overcome my sleep if I want to become a good spy,” I told myself. We were having breakfast when Vinni visited us. She too was clueless. She felt that Dadi has forgotten about Sampat uncle’s venture to Delhi. But it was not long before we realised how sharp our grannies were. Sampat uncle started packing immediately after breakfast and the first thing he wanted to pack was missing. His certificates, which he had to deposit in University for registration, were no longer in the designated shelf. He got crazy for he could not think of any scope, here or in Delhi, without certificates. We could not believe that Nani was capable of doing this for it was too intelligent a thing for her to do. “But she was desperate,” commented my sister. Though unwilling to give them the credit, we were forced to believe that it had been thought and executed by the grannies. “I will go and ask,” said Sampat uncle. “No we should not do it. This way Nani would be alerted,” said Vinni, who naturally was a better spy then me. Sampat uncle and I resigned to the logic. We decided that we would silently search in all the possible places where Nani could hide. Nani had by that time left for our house and she had gone bare-handed so we were sure that the blue folder containing certificates was in her house only. We decided that if we don’t succeed by evening, we will ask Nani right away. Vinni was responsible for searching Nani’s room, Sampat uncle for the backyard and hall and I for kitchen and storeroom. Jobs divided, we immediately plunged into

our respective areas. When I went to the kitchen the maid was working there. I told her that I was looking for a pickle that Nani has asked me to bring and on that pretext searched all the tins and jars. Apart from eatables and some worms, I could not find anything in the kitchen. Kitchen done, I immediately moved to the store room. It was a dark mess, to say the least. I didn’t know where to start. Jumbled wares were piled till the top and there was hardly any space to even stand in the room. Being an abnormally skinny boy, I managed to enter the storeroom and fumble for the switch board. Once I switched on the light the task did not appear that hopeless. At first glance itself I found something blue jutting out of the pile of newspapers. I immediately pulled it out and Eureka! I got it! After that what happened is quite predictable. My uncle was all gratitude and appreciation for us and promised to send books to us every month from Delhi. Nani, who came back an hour later, was quite confused at the treatment she met from all of us. Vinni and I returned to our homes without speaking to her at all and Sampat uncle deliberately avoided her and occasionally gave her hurt looks. Next morning when Sampat uncle was leaving for station he asked Nani as to how she could dump his certificates in the store room. “Just to stop me from going to Delhi, is it?” he asked Nani. My Nani started anxiously and then suddenly stopped herself. With calm eyes she just said, “I didn’t want to let you leave, at any cost.” “Even at the cost of my future?” asked Sampat uncle in a hurt tone. With the corner of her saree dabbing her left eye, Nani gave out a wail of emotions. “I am sorry, I was being selfish. I should not put your future at stake. I will live only for few more days, why should I put your entire life at stake for the happiness of these few days. You go son, I will manage.” Now she

was crying loudly and her whole body was shaking as she tried to gulp huge volume of air intermittently. Sampat uncle was struck. He didn’t expect this. He expected his mother to cry and ask him to stay back… not willingly send him. He didn’t know what to do. Suddenly he dropped his luggage and held Nani tightly to stop her from shaking. “I will see to it that I don’t spoil the rest of your life. Don’t cry. I will not go.” I don’t remember exactly what egged me and Vinni to stamp out of Nani’s house immediately. We lost. Not only was our chance of getting books from Delhi wasted but these grannies also managed to establish their superiority over us again. All our efforts were washed away in Nani’s tears. Later in the day, Vinni and I were sifting rice grains when a waft of laughter attracted our attention. It was coming forth from both the grannies who were chatting together in the other corner of the courtyard. “You are very smart! I told you to hide his train ticket but you hid the certificates as well!” said my Dadi. “I couldn’t find the train ticket; I searched his entire paraphernalia at night but couldn’t locate it. Probably he knew that I can attempt something like this.” “So you decided to hide the certificates?” “Well… It’s more of a mistake, I didn’t intend it. You see the other day during power cut; I took the blue folder to fan myself without realizing what it contained. I fell asleep and dropped the folder over the sheets of newspaper kept beside me. I guess somebody just dumped the newspaper in the store room without noticing the folder. I would not have known of this error had Sampat not told me about it before leaving for station.” Dadi smiled crookedly before saying, “God helps those who help themselves!”

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

STORIES

MORSELS OF FAINT RECOLLECTION – THE SUNDAY BATHS OMAR SHARIF Omar Sharif writes short stories dealing with relationships, environs and behaviour that are bound together in a web of subtle humour and sense of loss that is as personal as universal. At the same time, through his writings he tries to celebrate the human element and its doughty spirit. Also a freelance photographer, he loves to combine stories of his photographs with his imagination. He writes under the pen name Sigrid Rahn and currently lives in Mumbai, India.

S A KID, there was one thing that I abhorred the most – the Sunday baths. And the villain in all its episodes happened to be my mother. The Sunday winter mornings would always have the unremitting lazy feeling that threatens to encroach into the afternoons. And in them I always had the pleasure of sleeping well past my usual school time, with black tea and thin-arrowroot biscuits served at my bedside, and some oranges or olives warming in the thatched roof on a dola. But then there would always be something or the other that would ruin the wellcrafted dreams created by my conscious mind in my pleasure sleep’s realm. My craft at carving out stories in this realm was immaculate and engaging. Like the game where I’d win back my lucky peagreen marble from Aseem and then with it deplete the pouch that he carefully strung to his waist. Or laying my hands on the guavas at the topmost branches of Hifzoor Mama’s five-tree orchard. My catapult would find the scarecrow’s cap from every angle of release. Not the scarecrow alone, from a distance I could hit the middle of O of the “VOTE for AGP” sign painted on the rusty electricity pole many moons ago by the political campaigners. So much that my art would defy the science of trajectory and gravity and I would be able

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

to shoot down Munaf ’s kite and hunt wild ducks in the mire by the paddy fields. These perfectly written early-morning-softsunlight dreams would never be driven to culmination where I could end up gifting a guava to the girl in pink frock, counting countless times my hoard of marbles, and be worshipped by the kids of the neighbourhood for my catapult skills. The disruptions could be anything – from the blaring stereo of some Jhankar Beats songs played by our neighbour to the weekly cleaning activities of my mother that would involve, besides others, a lot of movements of objects that make noise, like the brass vessels and the Singer stitching machine. Even the crow at times would find the glass panes of my bedside window to clean its beak. And on the scantily spaced days when none of these disruptions led their charges, I’d suddenly get the urge to relieve myself. Feeling my way to the bathroom by making the least use of my vision lest the daylight ruin the half knit dream that I was weaving, I’d hardly bother to aim at the hole. When I was done, I’d feel my way back only to find my mother folding the blanket and replacing the warm bed-sheet with a cold and fresh one. And so, although I had no upper-timelimit on my Sunday morning sleep, I always ended up on a cold stool at the backverandah, with my knees folded to rest my hanging chin on. I’d carelessly tug at the combs of oranges peeled by my sister sitting

STORIES

beside me while letting the sun warm my back. Near the tube-well, mother would be busy washing the clothes while having a conversation with Sumira Mahi. Everytime she’d pitch up her voice I’d look at her in a lazy daze and would find her reproachfully smashing the wet clothes on the stone slab without any rhythm. At times when she’d be in the midst of a happy conversation, the wet clothes under her clutches would feel the soft scrub of her hands. So much for the poor clothes, everytime they were soaked in the detergent powder they must have prayed that old Sumira Mahi had something amusing and agreeable to share in her tube-well conversations with mother. The tube-well would soon be the silent witness of my mother’s next play, the unwilling and helpless protagonist of which would be a long-legged sleepy boy bathing himself in the flimsy chrome sunshine by the verandah. Mother would pull out water from the tube-well into two steel buckets by the stone slab. And before I’d realise, she’d pull me by my hand towards the butchering arena. I have made copious attempts to flee, from running around the house to the age-old I-feel-feverish drama, but all roads would eventually end up near the tube-well. Mother would fling my shirt and half-pants to a corner. She’d then pull off my vest and underwear and keep it on the stone slab. When it comes to bathing on a cold day with cold water, one always proceeds on an unwritten step-by-step protocol. First the limbs go for the soak, then the head and finally after many doses of you-cando-it, the body is soaked in a barrage of a few quick mugs of water. To my mother, this protocol did not exist. With a wave of her hand she’d pull out mugs of water and soak me, head to toe, all in a matter of a few milliseconds. And while I’d be shivering in the cold waiting for the entire ordeal to get over as soon as possible, old Sumira Mahi will have her spiciest story lined up for the occasion. Her narration would slow mother down, and the cold wave in my chest would force me to clamp my wet forearms and let out a shivering huuhuuuhooo huuu uuuuhhhh… That won’t bother my dear mother

though. From the soap case, she’d pick a pink Lux soap and daub it on me. She’d use the same soap to froth my hair too. The real drama would start when she’d pick my vest from the slab and use it like a scrubber to cleanse me. She’d scour me vigorously without any compassion like she usually did when she’s cleaning the soot off the aluminum rice pot. The pot gets back to some shade of aluminum, but my mortified body turns pink in patches and if not for the mugs of water that mother keeps putting on me while scrubbing, those pink patches would have surely caught fire. I’d scream, cry, dig my nails into her skin, but the scrub-work would continue. Then with one move, she’d lift the bucket and spill the water on me. Sumira Mahi’s prattle would echo in my ears as the water cleansed me.

That was 25 years ago.

As I run for a bath in my apartment today, I think about the small puddle of frothy water accumulating near my feet and the face of my mother wrapping me in a thin towel. Putting my ear to the music of the FM station playing in my living room, I wait in anticipation for the radio jockey’s crisp voice to break my morning trance. A body scrub, a liquid soap, a shampoo and a conditioner, and a make-me-fair face wash – I look at it all in the bathroom and still do not find one single thing that could bring me the smell of my palm after my mother had bathed me. The RJ’s prattle echoes in the distance. Switching on the geyser, I wait for a few seconds, and then step into the shower.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

STORIES

THE DAILY FORECAST PRIYAA TRIPPAYAAR

Priyaa Trippayar is a software engineer who has harboured a long-term relationship with writing. Her stories draw their essence from her experiences in life and social issues.

S THE FENG shui chimes swayed in the waves of air, the morning was accosted with genuflection to the deity of intellect symbolised by the elephant. This is almost the daily ritual in Hindu families of India – the families who believed in the positive vibe created by the chime of the bells synchronous with the mantras, the philosophy of ethereal genesis and the science of astrology. In our home, to complement this vibe, the television was turned on to check out the spin of the wheel of fortune for the day. The gifted man, Pandit Murugappan, was on with his daily dose of predictions and amma was glued to the sofa in front of him. “Mesha will have a great day with success in work life, yet might have family disputes today,” he said as amma screamed out, “Ennanga, your day is going to be good, but be careful if you talk to anyone from the family.” Dad smiled and nodded his head; I could see mom’s warning exiting his head

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

through his other ear. Auguries for me and akka were in queue. We were accustomed to this. It had become a part of our circadian rhythm since the previous month. The prayers of the dusk commenced as the sun bid adieu to the sky. Akka was busy rehearsing cooking – the art which comes in handy for the daily episode after marriage. Dad came in and washed his hands and feet. The prayers were over. Amma’s face lit up. “How was your day?” she asked him. “Not bad. Just work and nothing else,” he said. “How was the lunch?” amma continued.

“They fight everyday,” akka whispered in my ear. “What are you telling her?” amma chided her in a loud voice frowning. “Nothing ma, the dinner isn’t as good as lunch because I cooked it,” akka told her with a concocted smile of sphinx. Both of us smiled to each other. I had big shoes to fill in the short run as the hunt for akka’s groom was on. I wondered how I was going to replace the pacifier.

And that unleashed a frantic battle of words between the two parties. Family wars were brought up, the dirty history was retold. After an hour, when the battle seemed to lead nowhere, the pacifier (akka) had to intervene and drill the final nail in the coffin. Soon, the iciness thawed and we were all sitting together at the dining table having supper.

It had been a week since the channel graced by the gifted man’s appearance had disappeared, and amma had already started to worry. There was something missing every morning, the positive vibe no longer reached its usual summit. My eyes and ears subconsciously searched for the man in the rudraksh maala and yellow silk dhoti whenever I turned on the TV. Being a student of science I didn’t believe much in his forecast, but there were times when his predictions came true and freaked me out. However, when the middle-class life has few ebbs and a steady flow, nothing can exalt to really good nor plummet to really bad. So any forecast would seem to come true.

Suddenly mom’s face lit up. “I know why we fought today,” she said and dad gave her the “please-don’t- bring-it-up-again” look. “Pandit Murugappan was right, his predictions are so correct. He is ingenious,” she went on and on.

Amma was hit by the loss the most. I could feel her mind fidgeting without the morning forecast show and ripples in her thoughts reflected in her behaviour. Things took a bad turn as her investments sunk when the chit fund shut down. On another

“Hmm, okay,” said dad. His face looked like he was chewing on some thought. “What do you mean ‘okay’?” mom gasped furiously.

STORIES

day, the LPG leaked out and almost suffocated her. She was broken. Akka told me that she said that she wanted something that could give her portents. Her confidence had plunged down a dark abysmal well for no reason.

every day,” I told him.

She hesitated to invest in gold and apprehended the gas stove like never before. She bought astrology booklets on a weekly basis to read the forecast. Yet nothing seemed to work. When your mind believes something it becomes the law; be it truth or not. She believed the Pandit, and had chosen to blindfold herself in his words.

“Okay,” I said with the smile of Cheshire cat. I could now breathe a sigh of relief when I thought about amma.

A few days later a few more channels went missing. “Why do we pay four fifty per month for the cable! You should talk to that guy tomorrow,” papa told me as he fervently switched through the TV channels that night. The cable operator was out busy and he had left the technical person in charge of his work. “Hi Shekar, could you please fix up my problem, we suddenly don’t have MTV, CNBC, Sun TV and one local channel I don’t know the name of,” I said with a frown on my face as I tried hard to recall the name of amma’s favourite channel. “Hmm yes, I think there has been some problem because of the rain. I can fix it up, but first let me check the number of channels you have paid for,” said Shekar as his eyes ran through the light blue card in his hand. “Yes, you should get MTV, CNBC and Sun TV,” he said. I smiled. ”Thanks, what about the local channel where there is astrology and all that,” I asked him. “Hmmm, I’m not sure. On that local channel, owner plays some tapes, old and new every day and sometimes new movies too. Sometimes he just uses fillers between the movies. I don’t know who shoots for all of them and when,” he said. “No, I’m sure that the daily forecast is shot

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. I am more into the technical side of it, so I might be wrong. Anyway, I think I can get you that channel, it’s free,” said Shekar.

At home mornings were back to normal with a tinge of astrology and a blend of devotion. Horoscopes kept pouring in for akka’s match-making. Akka’s faced turned pink each time either of us spoke about marriage. She had found a couple of guys compatible but nothing could be finalised without amma’s nod. She left it to the stars to decide. Of course a good astrologer would be the third umpire! “I have noted down Pandit Murugappan’s address from the show,” she said to me. “We will go there with the horoscopes and find out the right match for Padma tomorrow. He is the best astrologer in this state and his predictions have been so correct for the last one year. I have booked a bus to Thiruvanmayur and from there we can take an auto. So be ready by six in the morning.” Nobody nixes the decision of higher ones and so I nodded in affirmation. By six the next morning, we set out to Thiruvanmayur on a journey to follow the stars in bright daylight. Never had amma been so punctual for any journey. Her eyes grew bigger as the bus proceeded towards the destination. I could feel her heart racing with the ticks of her watch as we approached Thiruvanmayur. The road was uneven and the smell of wet mud filled the air. The chirps and coos seemed to take us back to the lap of nature. As we got down and walked into a small lane with houses of mud, women in sarees cleaned up their porches drawing beautiful designs of rangoli on the ground. Amma smiled. Her eyes were brimming with life. “I am going to find the best groom for my little girl,” she said as her voice cracked a little due to the dryness of the journey.

The search for the right guy for akka was going to come to an end within a few hours. As we reached the house of Pandit, which had a mango-leaf garland hung at the entrance, my eyes caught a younger version Pandit Murugappan. He joined his hands then walked towards us. As he approached I stared at his nose which was not as pointed as the Pandit’s. “Namaskaram, how can I help you,” said Panditji’s look alike. “Namaskaram, we are looking for Pandit Murugappan. We want to match the horoscopes of our daughter with one of these horoscopes,” said amma. “Panditji’s predictions are always the best. I have been listening to his shows for the last one year,” she continued. Panditji’s look-alike raised his eyebrows. His mouth opened and he stared wideeyed at amma. He held this pose for a few seconds as the colour drained from his face. He then wiped his forehead with his hands and resumed talking. “Appa died three years ago and I don’t know how you watched his live telecast for the last one year. He used to do daily forecast up to a month before he was elevated to heaven. As far as the horoscopes are concerned I can do the match-making.” I remembered Shekar.

Glossary Mesha: Hindu astrology: sign corresponding to Aries Ennanga:(Tamil) a respectful “you” Akka: elder sister rudraksh maala: rosary made of holy beads generally worn by Shiva’s devotees rangoli: Designs drawn on the ground out of powdered rice/chalk powder to symbolise human spirit and joy of giving (as ants would eat the rice powder) Namaskaram: a greeting or salutation

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

STORIES

THE NIGHT GONE BY DEEPTI RAZDAN

Deepti Razdan is a PhD Scholar at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia. She completed her MPhil in English Literature from the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia and M.A (English) from Delhi University. She has taught English language and literature to undergraduates at Delhi University and Jamia Millia Islamia. She is currently based in Toronto.

HE PRESENT IS a gift they say, just like its name. But why didn’t she feel that way, she wondered, as she sat behind the bar once again, staring at the glass of whiskey in her hand, stealing occasional glances at the charming man preparing to approach her. For her, the present had been just a ride, a ride between the past trying to catch up with her and the future she was trying to catch up with all the time. She had left her parents’ home again tonight, an act she had been trying to muster up the courage for, since that fateful night she first tried it. *** It had been six years since then. But the picture was as clear in her head, as if it happened just yesterday. She was 24, had a stable job, and she finally knew what she wanted from life. Leaving her parents’ home and getting a place of her own was obviously the first step towards achieving it. She had never been spontaneous in life. Quite the opposite, in fact! She liked everything planned in life. No surprises. So, when she got that long-awaited (and well-deserved) promotion with increment, she decided she would surprise herself and everyone around her. Just like that, without telling anyone, she packed her bags, and in the middle of the night, sneaked out of the front door of her parents’ apartment, ready to embrace a whole new chapter in her life. She was, however, new to this entire business

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

of being spontaneous. The moment she stepped out of the house, she felt completely clueless. She had absolutely no idea where she could go at that time of the night. Taking her cue from the tons of romantic movies she had watched on Star Movies and HBO, she decided to hit the bar, hoping a glass or two of whiskey would give her the answer like a clairvoyant’s crystal ball. Satisfied with the newfound adventurer inside her, she headed to the closest bar in a cab, and indulged in a hearty tête-à-tête with her best friend. After gulping down just three pegs, she could feel the happiness blooming inside her. She felt liberated, as if she had been reborn (something that whiskey always made her feel, but never in such gigantic proportions). For the first time, however, it also made her hungry. Hungry for more adventure, for doing something she had never done before, had never even dreamt of doing before. So when she looked around and saw a fairly handsome man, looking at her in a way that could turn water to steam, she felt a slight kick inside her heart. She couldn’t help looking back at him, with inviting eyes, hoping he would approach her first. Even though she was new at this, the trick worked. The man strode towards her moments later; making her feel excited, ready for another escapade that she was sure would change her life. They hit it together instantly, talking casually over the next couple of drinks, about

STORIES

everything there was to talk about, unravelling themselves gradually in front of the other, knowing each other, until there was nothing more to know, and until the bar finally closed. Through the layers of alcohol she had devoured that night, she could feel a warm chemistry with him, nagging her to believe she had finally met the One. She wasn’t surprised, then, when he offered to take her to a motel close to the bar, giving life to her deepest dream that night. She was just a few minutes away from making it the perfect night; the night that gave her everything she never had before; the night she did everything she hadn’t done before; and once again, she felt the rush inside her that she felt while stepping out of the front door. Nervous, yet excited, she sat still in the car, waiting for him to open her door when they reached the motel. She closed her eyes, letting the magic of the moment seep in, knowing she would never feel that way again. She was disappointed, therefore, when the spell broke abruptly and she was snapped out of the dream, by the man’s voice asking her to get off the car. Before the sheer cruelty of the moment could sink in her disillusioned mind, the man asked her to get off again, saying he was getting late

for an important appointment. Thoroughly disenchanted, she got off, took her stuff out of the car and saw the man drive away, just like that, without as much as a kiss, a number, or a promise to see her again. Thankfully, however, the effect of the drinks started kicking in the moment she entered her room at the motel, and she dozed off before the tears started flowing. She was woken up next morning by noises in the corridor, screams in fact, which sounded like Independence Day celebrations. She heard someone asking someone to switch on the T.V, and out of the hungover numbness of her mind (which was too drunk even to feel curious), she switched hers on too. Her eyes popped out of their sockets and the hangover leapt out of her head the moment she saw the image of her dream man flashing on the screen, handcuffed, and surrounded by hundreds of policemen and myriads of people shooting hateful glances at him. Her shock was unmatchable, when she read the letters that spelled out the words ‘Serial Killer Caught’ at the bottom of the screen. She couldn’t believe that the gentlest man she had ever met in her life was a brutish murderer; that the Harry Potter of her dreams turned out

to be a darn Voldemort. After brooding over the horrific tragedy for an hour, she got out of the bed, took a bath and went back to her parents’ place, making peace with the realisation that perhaps she wasn’t ready to start her own life, just yet. *** Tonight, years later, she felt ready to take the plunge again. The excitement of the first night had been replaced by nervousness, so strong that she felt it difficult to breathe. But how long could she let her past affect the Present and the Future. She had to create a new path for herself, that could lead her to a new life, away from the fears of the Past. As she sat at the bar once again, and saw the charming man approach her, a zillion thoughts ran across her scared mind. She wondered why it’s always the night gone by that came back to haunt her when she least expected, when she least wanted it to. She looked at the man closely, and made the toughest decision of her life. To finally let the night gone by, go by, and see if the night to come was any different. She was anxious and scared, more than she had ever been. But she knew it was worth a try...

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

STORIES

THE BOY WHO WISHED FOR WAR KAARTIKEYA BAJPAI

Kaartikeya Bajpai is a freelance writer, whose first book Before I Switched To Pens was published in October 2013. He has been published in Hindustan Times, Navbharat Times and Outloud Magazine, among others. He is currently working on his second novel.

“

WHAT ARE THEY playing today?”

“Full Metal Jacket.” “War?”

“You wish.” He said, a little out of breath. The 6:40 local had passed by, around five minutes ago. Men hung onto it. “So what’s your problem?” His shirt was a mess, and it stank. It was from the fall yesterday. No one had really noticed my bruised shins and elbows back at home. It’s almost as if they know we are all going to fall down one day. Apparently the day wasn’t right for a bath. “I have school, and I can’t miss it today. We have a new volunteer who would go to any lengths to make sure we attend school. He even drops by at all students’ just to make sure and talk.” Sumit was not as passionate about our gang as I was, and it showed. Now, let me tell you all about our gang. Membership stands closed as of now, and we are the only two members, so any queries will fall on deaf ears. I started working with The Gymkhana about a year ago. I wait tables, clean up, make sure the shoes are in the rack, arrange the newspapers on all tables, and occasionally act as our gang’s official think tank regarding war, cinema, and our country. Yes, the three are connected. The Gymkhana is owned by Gupta saab, an old bald man in his late

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

fifties, who as it turned out has worked in a newspaper for many years. I love such people. He took me in for a princely pay of a thousand rupees a month. Chat House gave me half of that for twice as much the work. And the work was pointless. I don’t think I would have become a fraction of what I am now, had I kept working there. The Gymkhana had a pool, many halls for indoor games, and a cafeteria where most of my time was spent. Every Monday, the students of Vidyavihar College booked the TV for three hours as they watched Hollywood movies. And that is how it all began. Sumit joined in a month or two after me, and I can proudly say that it was because of my recommendation to Gupta saab. For half the pay, he had to work mornings, when there was all the rush and it was very difficult for me to handle it alone. Over time, even though I didn’t understand the language, Hollywood movies started to have a huge impact on me. Their heroes were far more brutal and handsome than ours. They had a raw manly charisma, which somehow, was always missing from Amitabh Bachchan. And their wars, were plain beautiful. An American national would go to great lengths to protect his motherland, to fight for his motherland and to be proud of his motherland. One might counter this with the fact that their government equips them with superior technology, but they have style. They are for real.

STORIES

My father says it is all fake. But what does he know? He has never seen their movies. He has not seen Saving Private Ryan. Ah, that movie. The way the hero and his gang sweep across enemy territory and kill, and fight, and win, always makes me get up at the end and look for a war. What wouldn’t I give for a war, here in our country? A war, where I would kill hundreds, maybe thousands of enemy jawans and save the country from falling into their hands. I will not be wearing the dark glasses they wear. It would look too big on my face. I would have an AK-47 that was never out of bullets. I know the enemy will definitely kidnap Sana, and hide her deep inside their camps. I will have to break through lines of security check points and finally save her, alone, with a gun, a strong determination, and top class planning. One should always plan. Americans do it all the time. I will be Rambo. Nobody would be able to touch me. War is beautiful. For a very long time, I have wished for war here. I founded the “Asli Sainik Gang” with Sumit. We have meetings almost every day, whereby we have discussions on our ideology, our maksad. Mostly we give each other a situation, and we have to then come up with a plan. A plan about the mission and how Rambo and a random soldier (Sumit) would fight for their honour. Kalua might corner you and tell you we make stories, and you would believe him. You see, only a member of the Asli Sainik Gang will know that they are not stories, they are plans, and they are missions. If you be a part of our discussion, you will know that I always come up on top. I defeat the enemy in unique ways, I always kill more people than Sumit does, and I do it in spite of being severely wounded. Sumit never gets hurt; he says he has a stronger reflex and that he can dodge bullets. Mondays are our days, when we are allowed to watch the movies in brief spells with the students. I cannot imagine how beautiful the movies must be if I understood the dialogues. Nevertheless, this is when we learn new strategies, about new weapons and new missiles. We have started planning too. Sumit had stolen Kalua’s notebook a long while back.

It was a hardbound costly notebook, and this is where we draw houses and buildings just like the Americans do. I have to mention here, I am better at planning too. Sumit takes the roads when he tells me about his escape plan, but I always plan a helicopter pick-up after my mission is successful. I think I am just more intelligent than Sumit. He goes to school, so he thinks he can claim to understand the angrezi dialogues. “You think I am not a true Sainik, don’t you?” I looked at him. “Not really. I just can’t digest the fact that you think school is more important than our gang.” “Would you think differently if I had a real mission for you?” “A real mission?” “War.” “I don’t know. Tell me more.” “The mission details will be given after you have accepted the assignment. That’s how it works, you know.” “Is it dangerous?” “Very. You sure are Rambo, but the Enemy is strong. I will do the planning, you can be the Agent.” “Tell me more.” I pressed. “Kalua has been making passes on my sister. I would have let that go, if it didn’t bother Deepti so much. It’s a long story, one that shouldn’t be discussed here. It is not safe.” “I am with you. Just tell me what we have to do.” “Kill him.”

Glossary: Maksad: aim Angrezi: English

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

STORIES

RESCUE OPERATION RITTVIKA SINGH

Rittvika Singh lives in Varanasi – the city she believes is the soul of her being – with her parents and a street-cat named Tolstoy. Wandering in the academic world of Banaras Hindu University she intends to finish her Ph.D. without being lost. She habitually scribbles poems and weaves stories. In her leisure time, she quaffs coffee and reads Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Agha Shahid Ali, Pablo Neruda and many other masters with openmouthed wonder, over and over again.

T WAS ONE of those moments again when he wished to slap everybody around and run away. Instead he sat there like a lump watching a pale woman in a paler sari saying palest things about another pale man called Ranade. Everything around seemed to be cemented to their proper position. It was the place where one could actually feel that the earth is rotating. Ding! Ray sir came in, Bhasin ma’am went out and Shashank Shekhar Sahai woke up from a dream. Slapping the pages of his history book instead, he eyed Anubhav Kumar Singh across the row, who was busy crafting his clay dough into something obscene. He always did that in the history class. Behind him, Ujjawal Garg was diligently copying the missed words of Bhasin ma’am’s dictation from someone’s notebook. “Pssst...Aks!” Shashank whispered carefully. Aks looked in his direction with a twinkle of a victory in his eyes. He gestured him to wait and tore a chit-size paper from his bonded Classmate register. “Pull up this hat to see the heaven.” He wrote and passed it on with his ‘exquisite piece of art’ as he called it. With one eye on the podium where a tall figure stood reciting Shelly, and another on the exotic object handed over to him, Shashank finally was wide awake. Breathing, perspiring and alive. He crushed the chit in his fist and pulled up the long hat-like thing as instructed. The heaven consisted of a buxom top-less alienwoman with disproportionate legs and no

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

arms. At her feet was engraved “Goddess of Virility”. Shashank pulled the clay-hat down and tore another chit. “You should handle the Goddess with love” he scribbled hurriedly and furtively handed the heaven back to the proud creator. Aks nodded and winked. For the next thirty minutes few words floated in the air of the classroom and some finally entered Shashank’s head. “O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” In Ray sir’s dramatically painful voice, these lines travelled inside his veins and settled in the heart as if they always belonged there. ‘How could this Percy Shelly know?’ ‘I too wanted to fly and disappear if only I knew where I would finally land!’ Shashank was lost in his thoughts again, oblivious of what Percy had to say further. He felt dizzy and dropped his head on the desk. “Hey Triple S! Hey Triple S!” Aks was shaking him now. “What happened? Where…um hum… huh.. the class is over?” Shashank rubbed his eyes in disbelief as he looked around in an empty classroom. “You should be glad that you weren’t spotted out and punished,” Aks said astutely and sat beside him to tie his loosened shoe lace. “Dude, you could have thrown a paper-ball

STORIES

at me …I can’t bel—” “And get caught and punished with you…” Aks said and fished out a small comb from his satchel. He had a point so Shashank had to let it go. He remained dazed while Aks kept primping his hair in a window pane. “Well…tell me now what is it? Why do you look so dead?” Aks waved his comb at him. “Huh…Umm…YOU tell me… what is it? Why do you look so tidy?” Shashank shrugged and rested his head on the desk again. Aks had taken out a tiny face-wipe, a tube of hair gel and was busy with his make-up. “Oh… this? Niks asked me to meet her behind the Kindergarten section. She said she wants to show me something. I know she is going to let me hug her.” He sounded so foolish that Shashank couldn’t help laughing. “I hope you have a lipstick as well!” Aks tore open a pack of polo-mint and popped it in his mouth. “Laugh...laugh you moron! Are you waiting outside the bike stand or not?” Aks stuffed his kit back in the bag and headed towards the door.

bag and stood to leave. It appeared that gravity doubled its force and was pulling him down. He held the edge of his desk firmly lest he fell down. He stood resolutely this time and walked towards the door. The red building of the school looked like an ageing mausoleum without students around. The pinklavender bougainvillea on the boundary walls pricked his eyes like a sudden flash of light. He saw Ray sir again, chatting enthusiastically with Alexander Lewis – the librarian. They both turned around to notice a student walking out so late. “Have a nice day sirs,” he said, smiling uncomfortably at the attention. They smiled back and resumed their conversation. Bike stand seemed miles away. Past the Lotus fountain, past Bahadur’s cabin and then he saw Aks riding his shiny motorcycle towards him. “Shashank!” he seemed irritated and restless as those were the only moods when Aks called him by his name and not ‘triple S’. “What is up with you today? I have been waiting for you.” He had come close now. “It didn’t take you long…huh!” Shashank winked at him.

“How long will this hhhugg of yours last?” Shashank asked mockingly.

“Shut up and hop on! And now tell me what’s wrong?” Aks yelled at him.

Aks picked up a piece of chalk from the floor and threw it at him. “Wait there for ten minutes, you jerk! She has to get back home and rush to her painting class. I won’t be long.”

“How was it?” Shashank returned his question again and hopped on the back seat. He was just thankful to him this moment. Had he not come to him, it would have taken ages to reach the stand. “It’s nothing like you think. She showed me a painting she made. It was for me...actually it was my picture.” Aks had a broad grin on his face as their bike left the school gate behind.

***

He disappeared and for a while Shashank kept staring at the world map on the wall. Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland…“I bleed… I bleed”. He flipped through his Winged Word to read these words again. He picked up a pencil and wrote there – “I swab thou blood, look here! O Percy!/ My hands are stained while you bleed.” He closed his book with a thud, picked up his

“So… did it happen?” Shashank wasn’t much eager to know but he had to ask something to keep Aks away from asking “What’s wrong?” again. “It wasn’t anything …ok! I held her hands today…those beautiful white soft hands with which she drew my face…” He was dreaming with his eyes wide open in the middle of the Tilak

road traffic. “How corny! Look at the road, idiot!” Shashank fell on his dreamy driver’s back when he pulled the brake. “Dude… you are so hot. What ….Wha…oye! You have a fever.” Aks had stopped his engine and parked the bike in front of Soda Junction. That was their usual hangout after the school. They would meet other batch mates there, chat, laugh, ogle at pretty girls around and then finally head towards their home. “Not today, Anubhav!” Shashank called Aks by his name when something was seriously wrong. “Aisa hai….ki that’s enough now. You have to tell me, what’s it?” Aks said. He was worried for his future Best-man. He had decided he will marry Niks in a church which would permit him to kiss her right after their wedding. He touched Shashank’s forehead, which was burning like a furnace. “You moron! You didn’t even bother tell. We’ve got to go to your Dad’s,” Aks started his bike again and waited for Shashank to sit behind him. “Drop me home, Aks,” Shashank was feeling very sick now and just wanted to sleep. “You are sick and sick people should shut up so that they can look terribly sick and that’s how they will be attended and cured.” Aks was capable of many such mindless logic at times. Shashank said nothing and took the backseat, and for the rest of their ride he didn’t know where he was going. When he became aware of his surroundings he found himself reading on a big wooden board – “Dr. P.S. Sahai.” His father was a man of strong convictions and ideals and all that ‘blah’, as Aks referred to it. People worshipped him as a doctor, his hospital-staff adored him as a boss and his child detested him as a father. Aks wanted to go in his chamber straightaway but Shashank stopped him. They sat outside. “When you are in my hospital you are either a patient or a staff. You have to abide by the rules,” Shashank remembered his father admonishing him when he had called him to attend his friend’s cousin over other patients who had been patiently waiting for hours. eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

“Get the prescription letterhead and a call-number from her,” Shashank pointed towards a fat middle-aged lady in a beige dress sitting behind the reception counter. “Why…? Why do we need to do that?” Aks said trying hard to speak in the low-voice as he glanced at the huge “Silence” embossed on the wall across. “Do you know him since yesterday?” Shashank said dryly fearing his temple would burst open any moment now. Aks got up and walked towards the counter. “Triple S” he was about to say when asked for the patient’s name. “Sasank Sekhar Sahai” – the receptionist repeated after him to confirm. “Age?” “Seventeen” Aks was answering her curtly because he knew it was unnecessary. “Done?” He asked the lady. “You will be in after that gentleman.” There was a fat bald man sitting in the corner of the waiting room. Aks lost his patience, “Look…don’t you know that ‘Sasank Sekhar Sahai’ is your doc’s son?” “I know it very well beta, but Dr...” “Aks….!” Shashank seemed to be in pain. Aks turned back and left the counter and the lady with her senseless arguments. “Are you ok dude?” He was very worried now and not only for his best man but also for his best friend. “I don’t know. I feel like I am chained!” Shashank was not trying to be cheerful anymore. He was seriously sick. His head dropped and there was a trail of saliva dribbling down from the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. Aks became numb at this sudden transformation of a jovial boy into a sagging body of painful nerves. “I am barging in his chamber. I don’t care!” Aks rushed in Dr. P.S. Sahai’s room like a lightning. A lanky man stood examining a patient and didn’t look pleased with his impudence. “Uncle, please attend to Shashank first! He is dying outside.” He knew he exaggerated a bit but that was the only thing that could have made this man of strong principles and convictions get up eFiction India | October November2013 2013

and come out. Dr. Sahai was astonished. He left his patient immediately and headed outside. “You could have knocked Anubhav!” said Dr. Sahai in the tone of a very strict teacher. They saw Shashank lying flat on the bench now. Aks ran towards him. He was cursing himself for saying something like that inside. He picked him up by his shoulders. Shashank was unconscious. “What on earth you guys were doing? Nobody saw?” Aks looked around and screamed. Dr. Sahai waved at his helpers who brought a stretcher to carry Shashank inside. “You stay here, Anubhav! I will call you,” he said and checked for Shashank’s wrist. Aks was too upset to argue with him. He sat there on the bench outside, gripping Shashank’s bagful of books in his lap and waited in silence. Lost in the fear and uneasiness, suddenly he remembered an evening. “Oh...god! No...no...it can’t be because of that” – a part him wanted to believe that but on the other hand he knew that was the only reason.

***

A couple of month back it was in Shashank’s room where they both sat lazily discussing their future plans after school. Aks vaguely remembered that Shashank was reading some book titled Rye Catcher or something. He had been reading too much lately; it was one way he thought he can ‘fill up the blanks’ of his life. Like – ‘Ma isn’t__ because__’, ‘Daddy couldn’t __ her__’ ‘I __ away after__’ ‘Daddy is ___’. And it was also a way he thought, he can love his Ma back for she has taught him to read and love literature. He had bestowed Aks with a new title – “Aks, you are a ‘catcher’ in this world full of rye.’ Aks had snatched his book and threatened to tear it off thinking he was insulting him again. Shashank had explained what it meant but he wasn’t convinced. ‘Why do you need a catcher, anyway? We all can be our own catchers. Isn’t that common

sense, you moron?’ He had retorted. ‘We all need catchers, Anubhav! We all need a rescue operation at some or the other point and yes, very few of us can be our own catchers. Well…at least Ma thought so.’ Shashank had told him in his usual pensive-thoughtful voice. Aks had refused to listen any more, declaring ‘Triple S, May you rot in hell for boring me with this utter filth.’ It was then that Shashank had confided all his ‘plans’ to him. ‘One day I am going to be very sick Aks, and that would be a very happy day. I know one day I will be in Dr. P.S. Sahai’s hospital and he will be helpless and aggrieved. I want you to take his picture then and send it to Ma.’ As these words echoed out from Aks’ memory, he ran inside like a madman. He couldn’t find Shashank there. “He has been admitted to I.C.U.,” a nurse informed him. His heart skipped a beat. “Why…what …what happened?” He asked with a choked throat. “His pulse-rate kept falling; he wasn’t able to breathe even. What went wrong with him all of the sudden? Do you know?” She is just some gossipy staff trying to get some spicy news of her boss’s personal life, Aks thought. “No. I don’t. Where’s the I.C.U.?” he asked her. “You won’t be allowed to enter,” she said and showed him upstairs. Aks couldn’t wait for the elevator and climbed up the stairs – three steps at a time. Shashank’s words were ringing in his head and this certainly wasn’t a happy day. “Get well you moron… Get well please,” he whispered when he saw a bed surrounded by doctors in the I.C.U. This was the first time he realised ephemeralness of life; he always thought life as an incongruous mass of time which is far away from him, waiting to happen. “I assume you don’t even have a license to ride that motorcycle. What have you two been up to? Dope? Alcohol? What else?” Aks turned around to see Dr. Sahai staring at him. His voice could be very threatening sometimes. “Sir…?” Aks said realising

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

he was sir-ing this hypocrite, haughty, horrible person. He was taken aback by this reproachful question. “I mean… what do you mean sir?” “I mean…get ready to face the music, son! His blood samples are being taken and so will be yours. Your parents would be here soon so tell me honestly what happened?” Dr. Sahai said. He seemed to be very angry. Aks was looking for some signs of pain and concern on his face but there were none. Besides, Aks became restless at the thought of his parents in this hospital asking him thousands of questions when he was trying to be with his friend. “I am asking you something Anubhav. How did this happen?” Dr. Sahai asked again. Aks gathered up the courage to talk to him finally. “You shouldn’t be asking this question, sir. You should know the answer… all the answers…!” Aks said, wiping off his blurring vision. “What brazenness! What do you think of yourself to answer me back like that? What have you done to him?” Dr. Sahai was fuming. His mouth contorted and sprayed the spit every time his voice went louder. “Sir…errr… Are you trying to find a scapegoat? One should accept his fault, that’s what my father taught me, sir,” Aks said shivering with the fright. Dr. Sahai was about to lose more temper when a nurse called him in the I.C.U. “You still have to learn a lot, son!” Dr. Sahai said politely. Aks was startled at this change and thought that perhaps it was the presence of this nurse that softened him. “Is he going to be fine, sir?” Aks hurriedly ran and stood between of Dr. Sahai and the I.C.U. door. His eyes were red and that moment Dr. Sahai saw so much compassion in them that he leapt up and embraced him. “He will be perfectly fine, son. I assure you,” he said. Aks stood bewildered and Dr. Sahai went in with the nurse. Was it again because of the nurse’s presence? “No… it couldn’t be. There was love in his hug. There was warmth…how can he feign that?” He was arguing with himself. He sat there on the floor waiting for Shashank to come out.

“We all need catchers, Anubhav! We all need a rescue operation at some or the other point and yes, very few of us can be our own catchers.” These words came back to Aks and he realised what Shashank meant after all. If only he knew Shashank was seeking comfort then…If only he had understood everything Shashank ever said... He knew he would regret this till he lived. He was still clueless about things Shashank had been doing to be in this condition. He should have known. How couldn’t he detect it? He was to be blamed. Indeed, he was the ‘catcher’ in the world full of rye, of course for Shashank. He let his friend down. He dozed off with his head pinned to the wall and saw himself at Shashank’s home. It looked like a Sunday morning as there was a chess board spread out on the coffee-table. “Ma is calling us for breakfast,” Shashank was chirping when someone shoved Aks. “Let’s go home.” He saw his father stroking his head. “There was no need to come, papa?” Aks wasn’t expecting his father to look so calm. It was dark outside and he looked at his watch – 8.30. He stood up and saw Shashank through the glass door. He was asleep. Dr. Sahai was sitting beside him. He knocked the door disobeying his father, but it wasn’t the first time so he left the guilt behind. “Can I come in sir?” he asked Dr. Sahai. He nodded in approval. He didn’t notice that his father too had followed him inside. “You should go home with your dad now!” Dr. Sahai said. He looked very tired and not ‘aggrieved’ as Shashank had anticipated. “Can I stay here, sir? I will go tomorrow.” “Don’t you have school?” Aks chose to not to answer anything now. He sat in a chair lying beside Shashank’s bed. He heard his father saying, “Let him. He is living the age when friendships mean over...” His father’s voice melted in the noise inside his head: “We all need catchers, Anubhav! We all need a rescue operation…”

***

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

POETRY

MY OLD HOUSE SURBHI THUKRAL

Often I look at the photographs of my old house, my heart forever yellow and red; it was the colour of the walls in my old house – would they have survived the hammer of time? The fluffy bear that was seated by my bedside in the small room that flaunted my name filled with delight when I clasped him tight – would he still be there, waiting for my embrace? The tiny corridor that echoed the pleasant voice of enthusiasm amongst cousins and companions – would it be happy to see me another time? The small pink mirror upon the plastered wall of that same hall that captured many innocent tales – would it remember me after so many years? The eerie silhouette on the wall next to my bed, my younger sister’s shenanigans, I feigned a tinge of dread – would I get another chance to pretend? The manner in which one of my friends

Surbhi Thukral is a marketing professional turned writer. She has worked with corporations in India and the UK. After gaining success in business writing, she is determined to make a mark in the field of fiction writing. She has become a compulsive writer who dedicates many hours a day to fulfil her passion for creative writing. She holds Masters in Business & Management from the University of Strathclyde, UK. Her work has been published in the Harvests of New Millennium, EWR: Short Stories, Taj Mahal Review, A World Rediscovered (An Anthology of Contemporary Verse), and eFiction India. eFiction India | October November2013 2013

served faux tea in plastic cups to privileged guests, ensconced on the black chaise longue – would I drink tea like that again? Often I look at the photographs of my old house, reminisce about the gleams and glooms of childhood days lost somewhere in the shimmer of this dazzling city where they told me years back a bright future would spring.

POETRY

LAMPOONS OF GOD BHADAURIA MANISH SINGH

A seedless plant; gets rooted in grounds of desire to produce a lampoon of god, in a faulty code of hormones. Her existence hangs on the doors of society, like threaded piece of lemon, fighting evil out of the house. Her infertile ground, lies equally divided between a goddess and a prostitute, in this belief-bound society. Her doomed palms clap hard, to sell her insurance of blessings. She charges high returns, threatening to display incompleteness, lifting her shameless nudity. She talks aloud to hide her own desires and thoughts, under the heap of powder, lying on her shaved cheeks.

She changes her armour, in transforming nights, and swings her silicon breast, and waxed thighs in private show. She absorbs ugliness of life, and mocks at normalcy, through her castrated presence in imposed corners of society.

Bhadauria Manish Singh is a poet and short story writer. He is frequently published in various National and International Magazines and Literary Journals like Indian Ruminations, Criterion, Nazar Look, Galaxy, Research Scholar, Harvest of New Millenium, Tajmahal Review, etc. He has contributed to recent poetry and short story anthologies like Metric Conversions and Looking Back. He is currently pursuing his doctorate on the Indian English Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. He published his first poetry collection called World: Inner and Outer in 2012 through Cyberwit.net. eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

POETRY

MOVE ON MICHELLE D’COSTA

Boredom never Imprisoned me For long As Perwyn My imaginary friend Would break in Soon On the magic carpet She would sing ‘A whole new world’ On our way To our palace Where treasure boxes Greeted me In three sizes Small Medium Large A mere press of an imaginary button On the wall Beside my bed Would retrieve any treasure I desired A small screen would be conjured From thin air And it would read my mind Then in no time, in my palm Would be my thought

Perwyn Abandoned me When my brother was born I thought I heard Her whisper ‘You’re the loser’ Before walking away Now her words sag On my shoulders Like wet clothes on a clothesline As I realise Along with all the treasures That are beyond my reach So is she

Michelle D’costa is an Indian writer/editor born and raised in Bahrain. She loves to write as much as she loves to breathe. She blogs at http://pikoomish.wordpress.com. eFiction India | October November2013 2013

POETRY

STORMS STHITAPRAGYA RAY

A bolt of lightning in the distance lights up the cloudy night with the memory of ancient fires, and the scarlet memories of ancient agony dim and fade suddenly awake. The lightning, a giant crack in the floodgate that holds back time. And time, like a loose gown slips off her body and the memories of her savage beauty ignite the ancient pine, leaving behind charred wood dark like the scars on her wrinkled skin and the imaginary warmth melts into the night.

And she cries out in craving memory of the withered giants who in times long before civilization stood amidst the molten rocks and tamed her fire down with their strength and their flutes. And her cry shatters the lullabies and runs through the night like a beast in searing pain. And the wind runs wild through the woods like the hands that once stroked her hair and a sudden serenity wraps her aged soul.

Sthitapragya Ray is a physics student from Madras Christian College and a part-time teacher skipping from one under-paid job to another. Among his hobbies are poetry, photography, debating and travelling. eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

POETRY

THIS LAND IS FOR NO MAN SHEIKHA A

Once upon a thousand nights in a faraway glutton’s land, by the king’s death bed, sorcery was buried within his sand. When the night was a darkened mile, smoke rose up to the unclothed skies. His soul corroded the heavens chaste; a death wish scaled the dilapidating nest Of coldness and apathy the settler’s reared, vice, at gaol’d virtue, it leered. Shambled innocence fostered into shameless grandeur; by fire and desire lay the mortality tattered and torn. Awakened is the king with a scepter he holds, a flick of an eye does his damned soul. By the throne he seats, his ministers circle to chant the victorious release; embarking upon an era of sticks and stones, a law for no man with its land is reborn.

Sheikha A. is a writer based in Pakistan. She loves to write and voice her opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. eFiction India | October November2013 2013

INTERVIEW

OPEN YOUR MIND TO THE WORLD: SUBHADRA SEN GUPTA ANANYA DHAWAN

Ultimately it’s the simple things that stay – a quiet morning writing a story; a gossipy lunch with good friends; sitting in the sun in winter reading; a package with copies of my new book; mails from readers; cats, dogs, music, theatre, the first rains, travelling and watching people…”

ANANYA DHAWAN: HOW DID YOU GET INTO WRITING FOR CHILDREN? Subhadra Sen Gupta: When I began in college, there were children’s and youth magazines like Target, Youth Times and Junior Statesman where I could learn the craft though I never wrote exclusively for children. I have short story collections and travel books for adults. Now I focus more on children because I enjoy the challenge of writing for them and children make wonderful readers. My inbox is always full of their mails. Then once I began penning historical fiction it became a niche and books with a theme of history began to be commissioned by publishers. Also I love doing comic strips with the illustrator Tapas Guha. AD: WHAT MADE YOU CHOOSE HISTORY AS YOUR MAJOR? SSG: I always loved the subject, then got very good marks in the school leaving exam and got an honours course in a good college. AD: HOW AND WHERE DO YOU MINGLE FICTION WITH HISTORICAL FACTS TO MAKE THE STORY MORE INTERESTING? SSG: The story is always imaginary but the historical details are always facts. So in a fictional story if I have a historical character appearing – say Ashoka or Akbar – then his actions will be facts. Sometimes I weave in a real episode. Also details about the life of the people, clothes, food, houses will be facts. AD: YOUR FIRST COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES, ‘GOOD GIRLS ARE BAD NEWS’ WAS PUBLISHED WAY BACK IN 1992. WHAT TRANSITIONS HAVE YOU SEEN IN THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY SINCE THEN?

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

Photo: Supplied

ORN AND BROUGHT up in Delhi, Subhadra Sen Gupta loves to write, travel, flirt with cats, chat with auto-rickshaw drivers and sit and watch people. She has been writing since her college days and has published over twenty-five books for children and adults, with Puffin, Rupa, Scholastic, HarperCollins, Pratham, India Book House and Ratna Sagar. Three of her books—A Clown for Tenali Rama, Jodh Bai and Twelve O’Clock Ghost Stories (Scholastic) – have won the White Raven Award at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. She now works as a freelance editor and conducts writing workshops in schools and colleges.

INTERVIEW

SSG: Oh it’s a very different world! In those days I was a copywriter in advertising and when I approached publishers saying I’d like to write for children they wouldn’t even meet me. Also commissioning books was not even considered. So it’s better now but even today children’s writers are not given the same respect as writers of adult books, even though children’s books are the fastest growing segment in the industry. AD: DO YOU ATTEMPT TO CHANGE A SOCIETY’S PERCEPTION AND ERADICATE THE ORTHODOX WAYS OF THINKING THROUGH YOUR WRITING? SSG: It is always at the back of my mind as I write. I like weaving in gender issues and also talk about equality, religious tolerance but it is done with a very light hand and only when it can be woven into a story smoothly. I do not do moral stories as kids hate them. AD: IN CONTEXT WITH ONE OF YOUR SHORT STORIES, THE FOURTH DAUGHTER DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE, TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, CHANGED THE THOUGHT PROCESS OF THE ORTHODOX PEOPLE, THE ONES WHO STILL PREFER SONS OVER DAUGHTERS? SSG: I doubt if a story can change such deeply ingrained feelings but even if it makes a reader think a little that is good enough for me. AD: DOES THE STORY RELATE TO SOMEONE YOU KNOW? SSG: Yes. It happened in our locality in Old Delhi. A Bengali lady heard a baby crying and discovered a new born girl in a businessman’s family that lived on the floor below her. Then she realised that the girl was not being fed and she just picked up the baby and took her home. I lost touch with them and many years later found out that the girl is grown up and married and best of all, alive.

Ananya Dhawan is the staff reviewer, interviewer and feature editor. She is an avid reader and writes poetry and stories in her spare time. She has a cheerful disposition, believes in living each moment to the fullest and shows keen interest in the sensitive side of life. Her other interests include art, dancing and travelling. She is a die-hard optimist and a hopeless romantic. eFiction India | October November2013 2013

AD: IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU THINK IS THE LITERARY WORLD CHANGING? SSG: In India it has become much more professional. We now have very good editors who know how to nurture writers. Also there are publishers like Pratham who are looking at publishing as a nonprofit effort to improve literacy. I love that. My books for Pratham get translated into all Indian languages and reach kids who would otherwise never see them. I was never very interested in becoming rich or famous. I just wanted to be able to make a living as a writer and being read, and Pratham makes that possible. Also recently I have seen a growth in translations and that makes me very happy. We have such rich literature in Indian languages that needs to reach a wide range of readers. AD: WHAT MINUTE THINGS IN LIFE DO YOU CHERISH? SSG: Ultimately it’s the simple things that stay – a quiet morning writing a story; a gossipy lunch with good friends; sitting in the sun in winter reading; a package with copies of my new book; mails from readers; cats, dogs, music, theatre, the first rains, travelling and watching people… if you open your mind to the world, the joys come rushing in. AD: THREE TIPS FOR NEWBIE WRITERS. SSG: One, be prepared for rejection. It is part of the process of learning. Two, write every day. Being a writer is hard work and you can’t wait for inspiration. The more you write the better your language gets. Also experiment until you discover what you write well. I tried travel writing, historical fiction and writing scripts for comics and now they have become a source of regular work. The next adventure will be a graphic novel. Three, listen to editors. Some of my best friends are editors who still guide me. So take their criticism very seriously, it will improve your material. And of course read, read, read!

INTERVIEW

MASTER OF THE INDIAN COMIC INDUSTRY ANANYA DHAWAN

OMIC BOOK ARTIST and writer Anupam Sinha is the creator of the popular Raj Comics superhero Super Commando Dhruva. He gave the Indian comic industry a brand new direction with his work at Raj Comics. He has till date, sketched over 600 comics. While at Chitra Bharti comics, he created characters like Space Star and Private Detective Kapil. He is also a prolific writer and his debut novel The Virtuals continues to create ripples among the readers. He is the founder of the webbased ‘Anupam Academy of Art’ for training people in comic arts. For his exemplary and fantastical creations, he has been rightly tagged the ‘Master of Indian Fantasy’.

ANANYA DHAWAN: FROM WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE INSPIRATION TO SKETCH CARTOONS? Anupam Sinha: My inspiration is my mind. Since a very young age, I have had images floating in my mind which I always wanted to share with others. Being a comic buff, I tried to do this through pictures. But the images I had were not just of one particular scenario, but an event, part of a bigger story. This was another reason to opt for sequential art format and bring freaks out of my mind if not in flesh and blood, then in lines and shadows. I don’t prefer veering away much from reality, therefore most of my creations roam on the fringes of the present world. So, I can say, my surroundings provide me the raw material and zest to convert them into a not-so-different fantasy format. This can be seen in all my comics and in my maiden novel The Virtuals too. AD: WHICH WAS THE FIRST CARTOON CHARACTER YOU EVER CREATED? AS: I started my amateurish career as a cartoonist and my first published cartoon was a three-panelled joke which I tried to position as a series but that did not happen. Post

[on advice to other aspiring authors trying to get

Photo: Supplied

published] I would give the same advice I received: ‘Be Yourself!’ People get influenced by bestsellers so much that they try aping the author’s style, but fail miserably. Not all bestsellers are good; some are made by sheer luck!”

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

INTERVIEW

that, for almost seven years I worked just as an artist. It was when I realised that the scripts I was getting were not exactly comic material, that I started writing my own scripts. The first series I scripted and drew was the Space Star series, similar to Star Trek. It was not based on one character but on a group so I cannot really call it a ‘character’. Soon enough, I realised that I should work on another series and then I created Private Detective Kapil, a runaway success (though not commercially) in the time of Jasoos Karamchand. This was my first official creation. AD: WHAT LIES BEHIND THE NOTION OF A ‘COMICS’? ARE THEY JUST FOR FUN OR IS THERE SOMETHING MORE TO IT? AS: A comic in general is a story illustrated in a sequential art format (where drawn panels relate to each other showing a sequence). This is slightly different from an illustrated story where drawings are linked to respective text and panels are not required to show a sequence, though even this format is also used in comics heavily, especially when narrating History, Mythology or Biography. This way, comics are a tool like movies are an Audio Visual tool. They are very much comparable to movies. It has as many different genres as movies, maybe more!

AD: IS CARTOONING A LUCRATIVE CAREER ? AS: I earn just enough to keep me hanging from the platform of respectability. My passion and satisfaction keep me going. But for the budding ones who are reading this; don’t be scared, when I say enough, it IS enough! AD: HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA OF CREATING ‘SUPER COMMANDO DHRUV’ FOR RAJ COMICS?

Photo: Supplied

AD: WHAT IMPACT DO YOU THINK A COMIC BOOK OR A CARTOON HAS ON THE MINDS OF READERS/ VIEWERS?

AS: An ultimate impact, I’d say: for two reasons. First, a reader reads cartoons/comics in his or her teen/pre-teen years. This is the time which has a maximum impact on anyone’s life. Secondly, and more importantly, pictures have a more lasting impact on the mind and memory than a series of fleeting images, called a video. To compound the impact, comics are in a fantasy format, which is liked by most. But that’s just the beginning. When I decided on Dhruv, my vision was to give my readers a character which could guide them in positive character building. That is the reason I presented the character with buttoned collars and pleated, well kept hair. It was a decent look with nothing scruffy. He was kept gentle in manners but unmoved in his resolves. The thought worked, and I succeeded in impacting the minds of the readers in a positive way. Even to this day, I keep getting endorsements. Comics, if handled well, can undoubtedly change the world.

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

INTERVIEW

Photo: Supplied

AS: There were times when the term Superhero was synonymous to a person having paranormal powers, hiding behind an alter ego and in the age-range of 25. My thinking disagreed with these set norms. I had and still have a belief that a logical thinking brain is the greatest power in the world. For the second point of alter ego, I kept on reading excuses that it was to strike fear in the hearts of criminals and to protect those around her. The funny thing I found was, they had no one to protect! They were essentially orphans with no wife and kids. The only thing they could protect was they themselves. And a scared person himself cannot logically save others who are afraid. I was young then, few could disagree with me, but this is how I proceeded. My third point was the age factor. I decided that kids could relate better with a hero in their own age group. And thus a hero got created having no freak superpowers, very young and with no alter ego. I took care to keep him lively with a very proper Indian family built on fun and respect! And thus, I presented Super Commando Dhruv to the masses. AD: WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTER FROM AMONGST THE ONES YOU HAVE CREATED? AS: Of course, Dhruv. The Cyber Kid, which was published as weekly page in a newspaper is the second on my list.

RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS

AD: WHAT ARE YOUR PASSIONS BESIDES DRAWING?

MUSIC OR DRAWING: Listening to music while drawing!

AS: Writing is my passion, and I wish to write everything that hits my imagination. I just finished a novel, I want to do poetry, plays, essays, columns - the wish list of my passions is endless!

READING OR TRAVELLING: Love both: but for reading, no time and for travelling, no funds!

AD: WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?

FAVOURITE GADGET: Tab

AS: I am currently working on a re-launch of Dhruva (no changes), my second novel ‘The Omni’ and a novel series for the ‘The Second Coming Of Pandavas.’ AD: ANY WORDS OF INSPIRATION FOR BUDDING ARTISTS? AS: Yes and very serious words. Give what you have! Do not ape the established ones and compete with them. Prepare to face a lot of depressing criticism and hear them closely. These are the ‘selfless’ ones telling you your shortcomings without any payments. The road is long and tough, but the destination is ‘glory’!

FAVOURITE CUISINE: Gobhi ke stuffed ‘paranthe’ (Stuffed cauliflower paranthas) ONE PERSON YOU COULD GIVE UP YOUR LIFE FOR: Please, I’m a married man!...Ha, ha!

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

REVIEW

A CANVAS OF ORIGINALITY ANANYA DHAWAN

N HIS DEBUT novel The Virtuals, Anupam Sinha takes you through a mystical and a magical ride into a completely different world. The book is a complete page-turner. The novel’s tagline – “They are everywhere and nowhere” – is extremely appealing and makes the reader want to delve into the text right away. I was hooked to the content from the very first chapter. I will not deny that I was a little confused in the beginning, but that confusion eventually paved way for more curiosity, and as I gradually got comfortable with the content, I realised that I had almost never read a book like this. I found the story to be written in a very believable manner and couldn’t help admiring the intellect of the author.

I like Sonya’s character the most and I like how the story shaped up. The author is very well able to paint a picture for the readers’ imagination with strokes of maniacal magic. That said, I resist the urge to give away the entire story as I do not want to steal the charm out of a thrilling first read for you. The work is totally unique and original – a one-of-a-kind read which will definitely give you the chills!

Albeit there have been too many details provided, some of which could have been omitted and the story does get monotonous at times, the author has been successful in establishing a connection with the readers. The prologue shows a group of drunken friends raping a girl in a moving car – a shocking introduction as it were – and then the story moves on with unanswered questions. Did it happen for real or were they hallucinating? How was it a case virtually solved?

The story also has mythological tinges to it and showcases the conflicts between man and God. Kish’s character had various sides to him and I liked how he surprisingly appears and disappears. The Monk is implied to be a god, but has been portrayed to be evil, which made me contemplate over the pros and cons, over the rights and wrongs and over the ongoing war between man and the gods.

eFiction India | November 2013

Photo: Supplied

The main character Peat is relentlessly harassed by ‘the virtuals’ who are ‘everywhere and nowhere’. Peat, who had been deserted on a railway station at the age of three, is now seventeen and desperately tries to cling onto life. He, however, knows he has done something terribly wrong and ‘the virtuals’ are not easily forgiving. He experiences weird dreams, and the author, with his narrative has tried to decipher the intricacies of a troubled mind quite successfully.

REVIEW

AN ABSORBING AND UNAMBIGUOUS READ: ‘SALE OF SOULS’ ANANYA DHAWAN

ALE OF SOULS by Vidyadhur Durgekar – with its relevant tagline “Love in difficult times” – is quite deep and pregnant with meaning and capable of grabbing a reader’s attention. It is a story that portrays the immense attachment credulous villagers have with the place they have been living in for years and the difficulties they face when a higher authority forces them to evacuate it for commercial reasons. The story begins interestingly with the protagonist Samar, a young professor, realising that his wallet has been stolen in an overcrowded Alige Junction bound bus. However, his childhood friend Roshni who is also travelling in the same bus, buys him the much-needed bus ticket. Both Roshni and he belong to the same village; Roshni is the daughter of the village headman. She is an advocate in training – a bold, forward and outgoing girl who knows how to fight for herself.

The language used is easily comprehensible. Most of the sentences, however, are too long and there are a number of typographical errors. Also, the conversations in a few places is stilted and might seem a tad boring. I, however, applaud the author’s ability to carve a story as thoughtful and significant as this one. Read on to find out the events that take place and their consequences, how the villager conflicts are resolved, and whether the protagonists’ love triumphs in the face of adversity.

Photo: Supplied

The story is set in Alige in Canara district in the state of Karnataka in southern India with a picturesque description of the village beautifully bound by water bodies and forests. The villagers are worried and upset because the village is being considered as prime land for industrial purpose. Samar and Roshni decide to help the distressed villagers to stop the government from acquiring their land for commercial ventures. The concept is interesting and unique in itself. The story is well-equipped with meaning and seems very real. It is based on the problems faced by many villagers in India today. There is an extraordinary environmental message behind it in the form of sustainable development suggested by Samar, who thinks of it as an apt method to disentangle the issues being faced by the vulnerable villagers. During the entire upheaval faced by the villagers, Samar and Roshni find comfort and happiness in each other’s company and fall in love. Roshni is bold in her moves and doesn’t care to hide her feelings, whereas Samar is reserved and worries about the consequences if the people around them become aware of their affair. I like how the author has mingled elements of love and passion with the original concept to make it an interesting read.

eFiction India | november 2013

EXCLUSIVE

FOR PRINT READERS! AS A THANK YOU, FOR BEING SUCH WONDERFUL SUPPORTERS, WE BRING YOU OUR VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1 CONTENT, ABSOLUTELY FREE! HAPPY READING, DEAR READERS!

F E AT U R E

FLASHBACK URVASHI BUTALIA

OME WEEKS AGO I was at Delhi airport waiting to board a flight to Nepal. Seated next to me in the lounge was a group of soldiers dressed in battle fatigues. Each one wore epaulettes on his shoulders that said simply: INDIA. Both our flights were late and after a while we got talking. Where were they going, I asked them. To Africa, on a peace-keeping mission. One was from Bihar, another from Punjab and a third was from Tamil Nadu. At some point I asked them how they felt about being part of a peacekeeping force. Were they proud to be part of such an ‘honourable’ activity? Did the fact that they were representing India make them in any way feel nationalistic? Did they feel they were doing something to serve the nation? I admit that my questions were loaded. I knew what I wanted to find out. But they replied readily enough. We’re in the kind of job, they said, where you have to follow orders and we’ve been ordered to go, so we are going. They weren’t particularly happy about being sent to Africa. It was the land of ‘habshis’, it didn’t have much to offer, and who knew what fate awaited them there? (The next week I learnt that 500 Indian soldiers were trapped in Sierra Leone and wondered if my airport companions were among them). The man from Punjab had fought in the Kargil war (1998-99) with Pakistan. “We faced very tough conditions over there,” he told me, “but even though we knew we

were fighting the enemy, we didn’t really feel any sense of national honour. All we wanted was warm clothes and reasonable food, and some strategising so that we were not turned into guinea pigs for our two governments.” Instead, they said, it was their wives who felt more nationalistic back in their villages — their homes were looked upon rather differently because they were homes whose men were out fighting for the country. As I left to board my flight two seemingly unconnected thoughts passed through my mind: I realised that this was the second or third time in recent months that I had seen soldiers on their way to or from somewhere. They were getting to be a much more familiar sight in our lives than before: evidence of the greater closeness of war and conflict perhaps. I realised too that in the old days we believed that wars and battles were the domain of men. They went out to fight, to conquer or to protect the interests of the nation, and women stayed home, looking after the family, taking care of the home and hearth and occasionally providing backup services for the sick and wounded. This rather simple picture has become much more complex today. Unless they’re really driven by some strong nationalistic feeling – and this is increasingly difficult in this day and age, except in rare cases – men don’t really want to play the role of fighting for the motherland. And women are much more deeply implicated in wars

Illustration courtesy: Sebastian Nabel

and political conflicts than just as wives and mothers and nurturers of the sick and wounded. It was what the soldiers at the airport said about their wives that set me thinking about this. Until now, the narratives of war and conflict we have had construct all women as innocent civilians and all men as combatants, with little exception. And yet, as we see all around us today, between these two binaries lies a whole complex reality, which shows how women and men are touched by war and conflict in different ways. We don’t need to look very far to see this.

eFiction India | november 2013

F E AT U R E

Our own, supposedly peaceable country provides enough examples. Traditionally, India has not been seen as a region of conflict, and there is, of course, a fair amount of truth in this for India has not been driven by conflict in the way that Rwanda, Guatemela, Cambodia or Eritrea (to name just a few) have. But you only need to scratch the surface and this façade of peacefulness very quickly disappears. In the last several years we have seen the escalation of different kinds of political conflict all over the country: war at one international border, continuing tension at others, military, ethnic, communal, caste and other sorts of conflicts within; the growth of militancy and sub-nationalist movements, increases in weaponisation, the greater visibility of the armed forces and, most recently, the dangerous posturing over nuclear power. The danger signals are clear to those who care to see.

and waste that war brings. In a similar vein, On the Abyss: Pakistan After the Coup, a collection of essays (once again journalistic) examines the recent past and the possible future of Pakistan, with one essay making a plea for India to be more tolerant because of its larger size and strength. Then there is Raj Chengappa’s book, mysteriously called Weapons of Peace in which he recreates the steps that led to India’s nuclear tests in May 1999 and you see how politics and political balancing acts enter the picture. In a densely argued book George Perkovich makes an analysis of the global impact of India’s nuclearisation (India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation). These are supplemented by Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik’s masterly work, South Asia on a Short Fuse, which makes an impassioned plea for sense, and lays bare the dangerous consequences of nuclearisation not only for India and Pakistan but for all of South Asia.

War and conflict are everywhere: in newspapers and magazines, in films, in shops which sell ‘Kargil suits’ for young boys, in books and essays and even in weddings with thermocol cut-outs celebrating the Kargil victory forming the setting for tent-house marriages and even birthday parties! Not a day passes without reports of insurgency, police ‘encounters’, violations of human rights, abductions and rapes – all in the context of increasing conflict. Films about conflict (such as Border) draw huge crowds. Even publishers – usually a bit slow to rise to the occasion – have not lagged behind and there are a number of new books that deal with war and conflict in India in recent years. These are important in what they tell us, and in the possible solutions they suggest. It’s clear that conflicts today are very modern conflicts, fought not only with an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry, but also with words and pictures, using the media, with arguments and discussions. They’re battles over territory, sovereignty, homeland, power and above all, control, not only of resources, but also of that age-old thing, the mind.

But, with a few exceptions (notably Bidwai and Vanaik’s book, and Muzamil Jaleel’s work in Guns and Yellow Roses) there are things about war and conflict that this body of writing has not addressed; important things that remain hidden under the overwhelmingly masculine and nationalistic rhetoric that always accompanies such discussions, things we need to turn our attention to. How do war and conflict affect the lives of women and children, for example? What do they mean in terms of the increasing insecurity and violence that they bring into society? How do people who have to live in situations of continuing conflict cope with them? What happens to families in such situations? What sort of system does the State have to deal with the problems war and conflicts raise? What happens when the violence of conflict enters the home? What is it about conflict, about war, about the violence that they bring with them that some women are drawn to? What can we do to prevent such violence?

These realities emerge very clearly in a recent spate of books on war and conflict. The first of these, Guns and Yellow Roses, has journalists reporting on the Kargil war, and we see here the terrible pointlessness eFiction India | November 2013

Take Kashmir, for example. So many families have lost young children to the continuing conflict in the state. As happens in such situations, much of what we take to be ‘normal’ life is at a standstill: educational institutions are barely functioning, hospitals run at less than half strength, as do the courts; there are virtually no jobs to be had.

Young people are frustrated and have little to do. For those who are out of work, or whose schools and colleges have been shut down, militancy exercises a powerful attraction. The moment they are able to hold a gun in their hands, and to use it, they feel the heady pull of power and in this way, the ranks of the militants continue to swell. For their part, the Army and security forces are suspicious of every male youngster who is in the likely age group to become a militant. And there are thus false arrests, long periods of unjustified detention, and a growing number of unexplained deaths. What we’ve seldom asked, though, is how the parents of these young men (and now increasingly, young women) cope with their loss and disappearance. Parveen Ahangar runs an association called the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Persons in Kashmir. In 1990, she lost her son to the security forces. Under the aegis of an Oxfam related project to collect testimonies of women in conflict situations, Pamela Bhagat spoke to her. “My problems started in 1990,” Parveen said, “when there was a raid on our house by the security forces. On 2 June my 14-yearold son, Mohammed, was taken away. There was a curfew so we couldn’t follow him.” When they could get out, Parveen and her husband ran from pillar to post trying to find their son. It took them a year to get him released. During this time, their other son, 16-year-old Javed, got picked up, probably in a case of mistaken identity. Nine years later Javed has still not appeared. As a result, Parveen’s family has fallen apart. Her husband is dogged by illness and is unable to work; her daughter has been taken away by Parveen’s parents, and most of their relatives have abandoned the family because they do not want to be associated with a family ‘under a cloud’. And Parveen has not been able to mourn, to grieve for her lost son – for she continues to believe (and how can she believe otherwise?) that the boy is still alive somewhere, in detention. “Since Javed was taken away nine years ago, I am obsessed with finding him. I have had no time for the rest of the family or to be bothered about the house which needs serious repair work.

F E AT U R E

I just don’t have the will to involve myself in these things – they seem so unimportant and futile.” Parveen is not the only one to face such problems. Mahbooba Bhat lost a young son to the militants. Two years after he left, they brought his body home. Fearful of what this might do to her other children, Mahbooba pulled them out of school and kept them at home. The son’s loss hit the father hard: gradually he stopped working and the entire burden of running the home fell on Mahbooba. The ‘compensation’ she was given by the militants turned out to be a bagful of paper with a few currency notes on top. Thrown on her resources, she put her children to work within the home, thereby adding to the numbers of child labourers in the country. Rajai Zameen’s 18-year-old son Nazeer joined the militants because he was upset when the security forces took away his uncle, Farooq. Nazeer became a committed and hardcore militant and, when his parents tried to advise him to turn away from the path of violence, he threatened to kill them first. “It is commonly believed,” Rajai says, “that the families of militants have flourished because of huge monetary compensation. No such thing happened in our case. Whatever money he used to bring, he distributed it among locals to buy their support or to convert youngsters.” Some years after he had joined the militants, Nazeer was killed in an ‘encounter’.

Even though we knew we were fighting the enemy, we didn’t really feel any sense of national honour. All we wanted was warm clothes and reasonable food, and some strategising so that we were not turned into guinea pigs for our two governments” - Soldier, Kargil War

His mother said: “We have never mourned his death. He was better dead than alive because he brought only pain and suffering to the family.” Rajai may not have wanted to mourn her son’s death, but many other mothers who have lost their children, have been denied even this ‘luxury’ – for grief is a luxury in situations of war and conflict. Some do not have the time to mourn or grieve, others like Parveen Ahangar will not — cannot — do so. How do they put a closure on something when they have no proof that it can be closed? To put it more crudely, how can they mourn without a body? A little over 2,78,000 people were displaced as a result of the Kargil war. The majority of these were women and children. Forced to leave their homes and their belongings, they had nowhere to go. The burden of the displacement caused by conflict is usually borne by women. All the Kashmiri pandits who have been forced to leave Kashmir now live in small, tenement type, refugee camps in different places. The men can at least have access to the public world – they may be able to go out to work, to walk across to the local tea shop. But it’s the women and young girls who have to stay at home in tight, cramped spaces leading constricted lives. Wars and conflicts create their own myths. One of them is that the violence is always located somewhere ‘outside’ because that is where the ‘enemy’ or the ‘other’ is. The home, the family, for so many women the site of continuing violence, cannot now be questioned for it is the violence outside that must be fought. So, women not only have to deal with losses of the kind described above, but they continue to face violence at home, which they cannot now talk about. Should the conflict end and things go back to ‘normal’, the normalcy is seen as a state of peacefulness. Yet, what is normal when set against the context of war and conflict, may be a situation of considerable violence in less ‘normal’ times. The same logic applies in the wider world: wars and battles are often fought over control of homelands and territories. Yet, in protecting the ‘homeland’ or fighting for it, we forget to pose the question: was the homeland ever such

a peaceful place? How do we address the lack of peace within the home? The violence of war and conflict creates a powerful iconography. Kargil has already come to be known by the picture of the poor soldier, freezing at inhospitable heights and it is forever marked by that image. For many years feminists have argued that the pictures they saw of war and conflict were purely male ones, pictures that were not sex differentiated. Where were the women? Today, we can no longer make such arguments: we do see both men and women, and also children, when we see images of people affected by conflict. But not only do we learn very little about women, but it’s the kinds of pictures of women that we see that are questionable. For example, Kashmiri women, whether Muslim women or Kashmiri pandits, are known to be strong, secular, outspoken, confident women. They’ve never allowed themselves to be shut up inside the home, they’ve never allowed the public space to be claimed only by men. How, we might ask, do war and continuing conflict transform these women into the weeping, oppressed victims clad in burkha or locked up inside refugee tenements? Where did these strong, modern women go? And it takes time to realise that it’s in the interest of conflict to project women as ‘out there’ now and again (as fundamentalists and communalists, particularly the proponents of the Hindu right do), but at the same time reinforce their place within the home and family. It’s in this sense that wars and conflicts are also about male control over women. The same iconography makes it impossible for those men who might want to, to opt out of battle. Immediately, they are labelled ‘cowards’ or ‘deserters’ – yet why should we expect that men have some kind of stake in war and battle and that they should be willing to go into the battlefield, knowing that they might be killed, but happy that they are doing so in the interests of the nation. Why should the nation mean any more to men than it does to women? Indeed, the entire rhetoric and vocabulary of war is a masculinist one. How far can you penetrate into enemy territory? eFiction India | november 2013

F E AT U R E

Don’t allow yourself to be emasculated by the enemy. Show your virility in conquest. No wonder that raping women becomes so much a part of war and battle. And no wonder that armies do not prosecute their men for this crime – for after all, in their vocabulary, it is very much part of proving your manhood.

home? Clearly the women. They are the ones who know how war and conflict enters and affects their daily lives, and the lives of those close to them. They are the ones who need to be brought in when discussions about a ‘return to normalcy’ are taking place. Yet, hardly anywhere in the world has this been done.

Yet, while we may be increasingly aware of the fact that men and women are touched by war and conflict in different ways, what is clear is that while women have to work hard to retain peace within the home and family in times of conflict, when it actually comes to peace making, they have little involvement in it. Political organisations, no matter which side of the picture they represent, never think of involving women in peace processes. Here’s where they don’t count. But here’s where they should count, for who builds and sustains peace in the

This is not to say that women are always victims of war. We have enough evidence to show that in certain situations of conflict, women do participate in the violence of war and conflict. But, for the most part, narratives of war and conflict represent a rather one-sided reality – as if only men are affected or concerned, as if, because the language of war is a male one, the reality of war touches only men, and that too in very specific ways. But here, it might be worth recalling a story that is sometimes told about war situations.

eFiction India | November 2013

When a warring army goes into a village or a town to conquer, one of the first things they do is to rape the women of that place. While we recognise rape as a weapon of power and control perpetrated by men, over other men through the bodies of ‘their’ women, we’ve never asked why it is that invading armies rape women. The answer is simple: because of course, once they know about the possibility of invasion, the men run away. But the women stay, for they are the ones who have to protect the children, the old and infirm, the wounded. While men leave the battlefield to the ‘other’, the women stay to protect the bedroom. And for this they are raped. After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Urvashi Butalia is co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house.

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

C U R TA I N CA L L ALDEENA RAJU

Aldeena Raju was born in an obscure town in an obscure state somewhere near the southern tip of India. She studied English Literature at the University of Delhi, India and currently works with an international publishing house in New Delhi. She is also a poet in hibernation who writes short stories as she waits for inspiration to rhyme. She hopes to complete a novel someday and meanwhile makes a living out of editing the words of others and getting cheap thrills out of missing hyphens and misplaced alphabets.

F YOU WANT it, come and get it. Nanananana nananananana. Rishabh wanted to punch his fist through the car stereo and grab at the singer’s throat. Her nasal twang was scratching at his eardrums. If it wasn’t for the fact that Nini would kill him when he got back home, he would have ditched her pendrive in one of those corners that dropped into the valley below. Some little boy might find it someday and tie it around his neck or a tyre, or throw it into the stream, like pebbles. Rishabh chuckled at the thought. He almost felt like calling Nini and telling her. He was supposed to have reached this morning and checked in. But Prashant had called him a week back and said that he wanted to go to the wedding planner today. Of all days, today! So Rishabh cancelled his reservation and went with him. He left Delhi after lunch time. It didn’t make sense to check in at night and pay thirteen thousand for a bed to sleep in so he had decided he’d check in to a cheap hotel for the night and leave for the resort tomorrow. Now he was speeding on the highway, through spiralling twists towards the town. He stopped at a shack for a cup of tea and a smoke. He wasn’t a chainsmoker. In fact, he couldn’t stand the smell. But he smoked on his writing trips. He wasn’t sure why he did. But every time he packed his bags for the hills there were five packs of Marlboro in the front pocket of his backpack. Nini was the only one who knew. She called him a facade. A face without a soul. He

didn’t mind it much. Professional hazards. Sometimes you need to drown your soul and paint it in new ink. He reached Parwanoo at nine in the night. Most of the hotels in town looked a little shady. He drove into one that didn’t look as creepy. The parking was in the basement. He locked his car and walked towards the elevator with his luggage. The reception was on the second floor, the notice said. He pressed ‘2’ and looked out from the glass panel. He could see the resort from here. There he would be writing the remaining chapters of his next book. He had written just one, but he liked the sound of ‘next book’. It sounded like he had arrived. It had rained all day. Throughout the drive he had been greeted with pitter patter on the windshield. Now he walked into the reception with a splish splosh. He finished the formalities and was led to his room. He would wake up at ten and have breakfast and leave for the resort. *** If you want it come and get it nananananana nanananana. Shit! The damn song was in his head! Firm and rooted. Traversing through the channels in his brain and sprouting out of his lips. Nananananana. Fucking song! The wall behind the bed was the most hideous shade of pink he had seen. Metallic

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

pink with waves of metallic blue. And of course there was a painting. There always was. Women, flowers, streets, beaches, deserts, rivers, cottages, faces. This one was acrylic. A café near a beach. Looked like Italy. Could have been France too. There was the token sofa, the TV, a little fridge, a coffee table, a wardrobe, two little bedside tables, lamps, a tray full of tea and coffee paraphernalia, the water heating thing (he just couldn’t remember what it was called for the life of him!), a phone, the room service menu, a dustbin and a large study table. Hotels across the world, beyond geographical and star barriers, mostly had a variation of the same items. The painting might be a Monet in some, while a local Rajasthani artist in others. But a painting above the bed nevertheless. Rishabh had always found it fascinating. This playing around with the same elements to create something new. He took out his laptop and plugged in the dongle. He had to write an email to his editor. She had asked him for a timeline. He wanted to write. Whenever the fuck I wish to. He typed. Dear Ms Dey, I hope to submit the next few chapters by the end of next week. I won’t have

access to the internet for the next couple of days so I’ll call you with an update soon. Thank you for the cover photograph you chose. It’s lovely! Warm regards, Rishabh It sucked. He wanted to send a string of abuses. But the photographer was the publisher’s brother-in-law. He had to get the damn thing printed. His story was about an HIV positive man and his journeys towards the end of his life. It must make your reader weep and howl, Rishabh. It must make them break down and cry. The editor’s instructions. He had never met a dying man. *** Rishabh loved the ritual of pulling open the curtains in a hotel room. It felt like the lifting of the ghoongat of a new bride. There was an expectation, an excitement and breathless anxiety regarding the view. Only once had he been disappointed. His room in Jaipur had opened into a wall. A dirty, yellow one. This one had a red and green one. He walked towards it in anticipation. Maybe he’d have a splendid view of the mountains. A cheaper version of the

one promised by the resort. He drew the curtains apart and then drew back in surprise. It was a ramshackle building. The windows were caked with dust, accumulated over a long time. So were the white walls. So caked that even the rains couldn’t wash them clean. The light was on. There were rows of beds. It was a hospital. There was an array of injured people on the beds, both men and women. Rishabh hated hospitals. The smell of medicine, the blood, the paan-stained corners of staircases. He shut the curtains in horror. His hands were shivering. She had seen him. The one in the last bed, near the door. She had a bandage across one eye. And all around her head. It was yellow. The dressing. Her left hand was bandaged too. The bedsheet covered her body so he couldn’t see if there were more marks. She had looked at him with the eye that was not bandaged. He sat back on the sofa. The rain got stronger. The pitter patter sounded like that of his beating heart. Strong, swift, scared. *** Nini had read all his stories. Before anyone else did. And she hadn’t liked a single one. She called them pretentious. That he wasn’t honest. He had written many more, he had tried hard. But every time he got the same response. Dishonest. He could never figure out what was wrong. He had tried getting into the skin of the characters, chosen the kind of people she liked, the kind of settings she would have enjoyed. Nothing worked. He drew a zero every time. And he never admitted it but it gnawed at his gut.

Picture Courtesy: Alibaba.com

She had laughed when he had told her what he was writing about next. ‘Yes, another weepy bestseller coming your way! Congrats!’ she had said. Sarcasm dripped from every word she uttered. Each alphabet was like an arrow into his heart. He had read up on HIV positive people’s experiences on the internet. Tried to imagine himself dying. And started the tale. He wanted to complete it in the hills. In isolation. To feel the pain. Loneliness, he felt, was the closest we get to death alive. He eFiction India | October November2013 2013

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

could crack this one, he believed. The publishers had approved. They loved his story. *** The song had vanished from Rishabh’s head. All he could think of was that one eye. He didn’t have the guts to open the curtain again. The rain pounded at the glass, like a desperate cry for help. He just sat there, death still. He found it funny, ironic. Morbid, even. But he couldn’t move. Not a limb. The sight of hospital beds had him paralysed. And here he had been planning to chart the roadmap of a dying man. He sat there for a long time. Hours, perhaps. Or days. At least it felt like days. It was like he had stopped breathing. There was no feeling that he could point at, no emotion he could put his finger on. A thunderstrike brought him back. Almost as if back from the dead. He got up and walked to the window. The curtains stared back. And another pair of eyes from beyond. Red and green. The colours of life. A curtain call away from a step closer to death. He didn’t know how he knew. Maybe her eyes. He drew the left side a little apart and peeked. She was still there. She wore a blue kameez. He could see the sleeves. She was looking at the ceiling. He wondered what ran through her mind. He didn’t have the guts to open the curtain any further. It was almost like the story of his life. Nini’s words echoed in his head. His eyes filled with tears. But he couldn’t stop looking. The girl must have been twenty-five. Not more. Not less. He imagined she had long, flowing locks once. Or short, cropped. A rebel. With dreams. And hopes. A step closer to the end. He wondered what made her laugh. Or sad. Or angry. What had been. And what would be. He dared to open the curtain a little more. And a little more. She looked at him with the one eye. Cyclops. Not the Greek one though. The one with the fiery gaze. He held her gaze for a few moments. Then quickly shut the curtains and stepped back. *** The sun came up, staining the blue with a crimson smear. Like a bleeding wound.

Like her kameez. He sat down to write. In another five hours he had to check out and move to the resort. He had time. He hadn’t slept a wink. But he had never felt more awake. His fingers danced across the keyboard. Then rushed. Like a raging flood. Like he would burst open if he didn’t write. The white document was soon stained black. Like his soul. He could still feel her gaze. His Cyclops. Yes, he felt like he was hers now. Somehow. He wrote for hours. Like decades. His stomach signalled that he was hungry. But his mind was racing far ahead. Not ready to look back or stop. *** The manager came knocking. ‘Sir, will you be staying another day?’ he asked. Rishabh stared at him. His mind was elsewhere. He looked at the curtain. ‘Yes, I am. I’ll tell you when I am leaving. Just send my meals to my room. I don’t want to be disturbed.’ The manager nodded and left. He called Nini and asked her to cancel the reservation at the resort. ‘But where the heck are you?’ she asked. ‘I’ll tell you when I get back. I need to go now,’ he said and hung up. *** It was not hard to find a flower shop. Himachal was known for it. He bought a bunch of yellow roses. Then walked back towards the hotel. On the right was the hospital. The board was faded. Blue. It could almost be mistaken for an abandoned one. He walked in. He knew his window. Scanning the building he located hers. It took him a lot of manoeuvring to locate the ward. After an hour of staircase mazes and elevator puzzles, he found it at last. He froze outside, unable to move in. Yet not able to walk away. He stood there not moving. A nurse came to him and asked if she could help him. He handed over the bouquet and said they were for the girl. He

pointed to the bed and walked away. He came back to his room and peeked. The roses sat on the table next to her bed. There was a hint of a smile on her face. She held a rose in her good hand. She was looking towards his window. He knew she knew. *** He wrote like a man on fire. He laughed at the thought. How was he to know what that felt like. Scratch that. He wrote like a man whose soul was on fire. He knew what that was like. Knew it all too well. For days he wrote. Every morning he would stand outside her ward with a bunch of roses. Yellow, pink, red roses. Then hand it to the nurse and leave. Coming back to his room, he would write. His phone had run out of battery and switched off long back. He never bothered to turn it back on. He didn’t check emails. All he did was write. And every evening he would look at her. The smile on her lips. The soft hint of one. And he felt warmth within. He could have asked the nurse for her name. He never did. She was his Cyclops. *** He tried every day to summon the courage to throw the curtain open. But never could. He just kept writing. And writing more. Words, roses, glances and then more words. He lost count of the days. *** The curtains lay wide open. At last. He felt like the life had been sucked out of him. He had just typed the last words of his story. His insides felt empty. Drained out. The closest to death that he had come. This is what it was. He sat staring at the laptop. It was over. He wanted to scream and shout or do something. But he had not an ounce of life left within. So he just sat there. And at some point he slept off. *** eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

When he woke up, it was late evening. He felt different. He wanted to see her. Tell her what she did to him. Read his story to her. He ran out of the room and down the stairs. Around the path and out of the gate. The puddles splashed as he ran. But he kept running. Up the stairs and turned left. There it was. The ward. He stood there for a few minutes, a little hesitant, a little scared. Then walked right in.

pages that they wrote the diagnosis on. There was something written on it. Hastily scribbled. Blue ink.

know for sure. But there was a chance.

Shukriya – Prerna

He walked into his room and opened the curtains. Prerna. She had given him both life and death. In a matter of days. She was Cyclops no more. His Prerna. Inspiration.

Her bed was empty. A wilted rose lay on the table. But she was gone. He stood there motionless. Confused. Suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see who it was. It was the nurse who used to give her the flowers he sent.

***

‘She’s gone. Last night. I’m sorry,’ she said. Gone. The words echoed in his head. He felt like he would collapse. His Cyclops. The nurse placed something in his hand. ‘She left this for you,’ she said and walked away. It was a piece of paper. Torn from those

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

Thank you. Prerna. Inspiration.

His story had changed somewhere along the way. It might never get published. It had no heart-wrenching sadness. It had no melodrama. It was him. Naked. It was about a writer. His self-discovery. His realisation that he was nothing but a coward. Who just stood behind curtains and wrote. Never ventured out and embraced the red. And how the curtains finally were drawn. Exposing him. The truth. Nini had been right. He knew now what she meant. She might even like this one. Might. He didn’t

***

He sat there for a long time. The curtains lay wide open. At last. He plugged in the charger and switched on his phone. There were hundreds of missed calls and messages. He didn’t check any. Just dialled one number. “Nini, I have a story for you,” he said and smiled. It was time to go home. A story is not a story until the writer and the written become one body, mind and soul until their smiles glow on the writer’s face and their wounds bleed from his body.

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

MY OPTIONS ARE OPEN DIVYA SESHAGIRI

Divya Seshagiri is in her mid-thirties and happily married. She likes to dabble in fiction and poetry.

“

RANI, RANI, GET up! My God, are you still sleeping? Do you know it’s four-thirty already? They’ll be coming at six and you still haven’t decided what you will wear! I told you to keep it ready yesterday, but you never listen. Always wait until the last minute to do things…. Have you got up yet?” I opened my eyes to the smell of my mother and the sound of her panicking voice. I had not heard it sound so authoritative in a long time. I sat up and tried to orient myself. Mmm, Friday evening. Time to get ready… Will have to be ‘seen’ by them in an hour or so. “Rani, did you get up?” My mom again. She sounded ominous. I suddenly jumped out of bed and folded my blanket. I found the jasmine flowers that I had worn in the morning. They had withered and fallen on my pillow. I picked them up and put them away. I quickly made a paste of turmeric, gram flour and yoghurt to apply on my face. I could hear Amma’s voice from the kitchen, calling on my sister

to help me get ready and choose a respectable outfit. “She will wear one of her old salwars, go before she starts…” I could hear my cupboard opening. That must be Veda. Hangers clanging – she was trying to choose something respectable from my ratty wardrobe. I entered, wiping my freshly washed face on a towel. She had laid out two sarees. One that I’d received as a present on my eighteenth birthday from Amma. “You are a woman now, stop wearing those jeans and khakis,” she had said. It was a beautiful shade of green with a single line of gold running around the edge. The other one was what I had worn for Veda’s wedding reception. I hated that one – a saffron-coloured heavy silk saree with a big broad gold border. I made a face at that one. She justified herself, “You don’t have to wear it if you hate it so much. Just keep your options open.” Hmm, wasn’t that what I had done from the beginning? In school, “Don’t commit to anything, keep your options open.” I had ended up being a jack of all trades and a master of none. I always did a bit of everything. In high school, “Don’t take up computer science – take chemistry. That way if you want to take up engineering or medicine, you can.” And so it went. My life was like that… no risk, no commitment. No passion. “OK, which one?” Veda was asking. Amma

was asking. There are five proposals. “He is a dentist, earns fourty to sixty lakhs per month. No siblings, looks good too… This one is a doctor doing his PG in Mysore. You can find a job there, no? This one is a software engineer settled abroad… This one is an MBA, good salary, works for an MNC...” And so it was. I had to just choose and they would take care of the rest. “No problem, no? Which one?” The one who will love me the most, Amma… The one who I want to get up with every morning, the one who lights me up when I see him, the one who brings me my favourite flowers for no other reason than to see me smile, the one who kisses me softly when he thinks I’m asleep, that’s the one. “This one?” Veda asks me. I say, “Yes, the green one.” She gives me a look that says what-elsecould-I expect-from-you and starts searching for the matching blouse and underskirt. I start to loosen my hair. Amma’s voice is back. “Did she get up yet? Did she select what to wear?” Veda says, “Yes, Amma she is getting ready now,” as though it didn’t matter that I could hear them. I ran my fingers through my unbraided hair to untangle it. I can remember Naren saying – I can never forget your hair, it’s so beautiful, so black and long and thick. Your hair is your signature. People can recognise it from afar.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

“Will you wear the diamond or the pearl earrings?” Veda again. Pearls I think. I hear Naren saying, “I love the way your eyes sparkle, you know I always think that you are up to some mischief or other. Otherwise, why does it keep tinkling like a diamond in the sun?”

to boys.” Don’t be close to boys? But I sit with Rahul in class, who else can I talk to? Roshni is taller so she sits way back. “You will have to use these, see? OK?”

“The diamond ones will be too much, no? Yeah, I think the pearls will match well. Yeah, suits your face too.” Veda’s face was thoughtful. She was concentrating all her energies into fashioning me to look the best that I could look, for my prospective husband and his family… Sunil’s family. Sunil, hmm, I tried to imagine his voice, his look, his laugh. No, I couldn’t. How could I? All I had done was look at his photo. I knew he was a software engineer, no siblings, settled abroad, good family. I had seen his photo when Appa was downloading it to the computer. One by one, the pixels took shape, first some hair, then some skin, a forehead, two lines, eyebrows, eyes, a mouth… Somehow, I didn’t have the desire to see the whole face after I had seen the parts separately; seemed like such a letdown after the whole suspense.

I tied my saree around carefully, making sure I was as neat as possible. My eyes fell on the blouse and the way they highlighted my bosom. I used to be so conscious. Naren saying, “You look so different now from when I saw you three years ago! Now look at you, all shapely and womanly.” I remember how he smiled at me; it was warmth in the form of a smile. It seeped through me and made me feel so good.

Naren smiling, two dimples showing on his cheeks, laughter in his eyes; it was contagious the way he smiled, he could light up a whole room with his smile, my Naren could. My Naren? When did he become that? My Naren, hmm. As though I could keep him in my arms the whole time like I kept my Gowri doll. God! How I used to fight with Veda for that doll! My Gowri, my Gowri. No one else should touch her. “OK, will you wear the saree or do you need my help with the pleats?” Veda’s voice brought me back. “No, I’ll do it.” Lots of practice now, I have been a woman since eighteen, no? See, Amma, I can wear a saree all by myself now. I’m a woman now, Amma. I had come home during my high school exams with my first period. When I told my mother, she sighed. “Now don’t panic, it’s not a wound. You are a big girl now. It’s something that happens to everyone.” Why was she avoiding my eyes? “Only for a few days every month. You will have to be cautious from now on. Don’t be very close eFiction India | October November2013 2013

And that’s how I had become a big girl then and now I’m a woman.

I quickly shook my head as if it could also shake away my thoughts of Naren and covered myself with the pallu and pinned it to the blouse so it stayed in place. I turned to check if everything was proper. Naren used to say, “You know, I think the saree is the sexiest dress a woman can wear, highlights all the curves and tantalises you with a midriff here, a back there. It must be the reason why we Indians are so populous,” and I’d retort, saying, “Oh please, that is not because of the saree! It’s because no one uses contraceptives properly.” Ha-ha, I smiled and shook my head at the reflection in my mirror. Poor Rani, expressing her views as if they meant anything to anyone. Time to go. I went to the kitchen to see what was on offer, Amma looked up from the pot, “Oh God, your pleats are all uneven! Veda, go take her and straighten them up. Rani, put some makeup on. Veda give her some lipstick and eyeliner, make sure she darkens her brow.” I recalled Amma saying, “Oh God, why did you have to get your father’s brow? It is so sparse. Come let’s put some oil and massage it. Maybe it will grow.” But Amma’s ministrations had been in vain and I let Veda hand me an eyebrow pencil. God forbid if the boy’s family see any defect on my face! *** It was one of those holidays I think. I was

lying in the river, fully clothed, making a pillow of a round stone; the river was flowing all around me, the sun warming my skin and the water cooling it. It was like a luxurious beauty treatment in a spa. Naren lying next to me in his shorts; he whispered in my ears, “You look like a Rani, a queen in her palace, bathing in a tub full of milk and honey.” I opened my eyes. He was so close I could see each hair on his face, a delicate brown today from the sun. He moved so that he was lying on his side and looked at me, observing my face as if for the first time. He lifted a finger and dipped it in the water, drew a line from my forehead, between my brows, down along my nose, outlining my lips and finally down my throat. A marker for the path his lips would follow. I was very still. That was my first kiss with the water cooling my back and the sun warming my chest. I looked into his eyes and saw pure curiosity there to taste me, and I felt an equal need to taste him. Afterwards, we lay side by side, just two people who had not a care in the world, free as birds or free as the fish that were nibbling at my heels. How wrong I was… Doesn’t the bird have to mate, make a nest, hatch eggs? Free? Doesn’t the fish have to clean the river and move miles to give birth to its little ones? How wrong we were, Naren and I! We thought we could live in a river, sleeping side by side. How foolish! We didn’t realise that the sun would set and the water, a dark world after sunset, would no longer be a welcome sight. We never thought about that, Naren and I. We were always so immersed in the present; we never looked at a future. That evening among many more, are enough for me. I made a bagful of memories, one that can last a lifetime for me. Whenever I need a little peace, some solace, I just go to the garden, lay in the sun and close my eyes, pretending it’s the same riverbed and the warm blanket of the sun and a warmer presence beside me… My Naren whispering in my ear. *** Amma’s excited voice is on a new high, “On they have come! Five minutes early too… Oh somebody tell Rani, get her ready fast. They have come already!”

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

DEADLINE MICHELLE D’COSTA

Michelle D’costa is an Indian writer/ editor born and raised in Bahrain. She loves to write as much as she loves to breathe. She blogs at pikoomish. wordpress.com/about.

You say you can’t write? You can’t? Just because you are intimidated by a cup of coffee on your desk that manages to leave its mark behind while you are yet thinking of a word that sounds right, you say you can’t write? How about being held hostage in the middle of the road and a pen in your hand? Would you be able to write then? I was kidnapped at gunpoint and placed in the middle of the road with my writing desk. I wasn’t worried about being shot, I was more worried about a truck running me down. My kidnapper was a paranoid wannabe writer who had been following my work for years. He said he was unable to write anything that didn’t mirror my work and that frustrated him. He held me at gunpoint in the middle of the road so that I could come up with something totally different from my usual style. Because I had once mentioned, ‘I cannot write under pressure.’

He said the only way I could produce something different was under pressure. Okay, so there I was trembling in the middle of the road, wondering how to write differently, when I realised the reason I was trembling was because I was afraid to die… I had never written about death! I know death inspires many writers as it adds an element of tragedy to their story. But until now I had never thought it was necessary for me to write on the subject. And what was I worried about? That a truck would run me over? That he would shoot me if I spent another minute without writing something, anything? No. I began to imagine all the other ways I could have died before my kidnapping. If I happen to be somebody’s breakfast and then digested and excreted, I could have been flushed in the toilet only to be regurgitated for being nothing close to crap. If I was myself, seeing how dreamy I am always, I could have slipped into a manhole while walking only to be rescued by my fans who would recognise me even amidst the sewage. If I was a fly, I could have been swatted in a jiffy, only that the swatter misses me by a millimeter.

If I was a cockroach I could have been stomped on, only that I remember my ancestors had survived lava so then I scurry away to safety and maintain my dignity. Somehow I see myself survive in every situation then why shouldn’t I now? I hear him pull the trigger. I hear a truck’s rumbling wheels too. I look down at my sheet. Have I written a word or was it all daydreaming? I snap out of my reverie. The sheet is blank. I had imagined it all. The kidnapper. Everything. But the deadline lurks in front of my eyes. Real, Very real. I hoped I had imagined that too. I miss the days when I wasn’t obligated to write. I wrote like a maniac out of passion. But now it’s like I’m writing for someone else. I cannot take it anymore. I want to be free. I look down at my paper. And then look up at the approaching truck. I hear the gun go off and the truck screech simultaneously. I am finally free.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

THE LAZARUS BOND DEBIROOPA BANERJEE

Debiroopa Banerjee is a writer who believes the written word is powerful enough that it crosses the threshold of imaginations and creativity running amok. In her words, “the written word lives”.

The girl screamed. It was a cold rainy night like stuff from ghost tales, and the icy chill made it worse. The leaves from the nearby trees hung themselves in solidarity; the solitary black cat roaming about made its quiet exit too. Nothing disturbed this abundance of dampness. The silence amidst the noise was bad and could only be described as a hollow feeling. The scream shattered it all. It came out as a quiet wail which grew louder. The girl was locked in a glass cabinet. Her hair was long and limp, her dress was new and her eyes shone with the deepest black. The streaks on her chin reminded her of the endless hours that she cried. She looked around desolately and found drag marks on the glass pane. The slow fluttering inside her chest sealed her despair. The box was suffocating and elusive. A boy of few summers walked by, stopped and stared with unseeing eyes and moved away. The reality of it made her scream more and more; her voice became hoarse and the only sound was that of the rain. The streets once empty suddenly started filling up with people. Scores of strangers

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

Photo Courtesy: Author

started trickling in. The girl waited with bated breath but nobody noticed her or the agony. She understood. The look of vacancy was replaced with effusive calm. As the glass hearse pulled away with the girl, the visible metronome of life was stretched to the lone cat that came out of hiding.

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

A WALK WITH GUSTAV SUGANDHA DAS

Sugandha Das is a writer and poet by passion, and an executive by need. City life does not sit very well with her and the mountains are her first love, followed by sports. She publishes sporadically and also writes a blog called Nameless Verses, where she likes to vent spurs of wisdom and futility.

The silence of the mountains at night can instill one with a sense of unnerving purity. Even at day time, the birds, bees and an occasional dog barking in a distant village are the only sounds one hears. The sheer lack of any noise somehow tends to refresh my memory. I am here, in the only place that offers a surreal calmness, and yet, I am torn up to sighs within, behind this façade of normalcy. I think this is the true definition of ‘life’. I can keenly feel the transition into adulthood, into boredom, into mental stress that presses upon you, creeps into the crevices of your soul, as eerily as mists and clouds passing across hills. A slow yet steady and dampening catharsis – of impact, ideas and irony. Gustav too, does not understand my pain. He’s always had a cheering effect on me, helping me alleviate sorrow, blocking away the memories that come as suddenly and as heavily as cloud bursts.

He looks away when tears fall helplessly from my eyes, onto the rock-table below. He tugs at my hand and pulls me toward the local tea-shop, silently saying, ‘Time to eat’. While I peck at a plate of noodles and milky, sweet tea, Gustav regards a group of young men with caution. With a slight hint of aggression. He ignores their bickering and maintains his poise, waiting for me to finish my typical hill station meal. Gustav and I are more than friends, in one short walk. It is a love that, unspoken, says everything. Gustav is a white mountain dog. And I am a dusky city girl. The universe works in unusual ways – I learnt and experienced love most keenly, not from or with another human being, but from man’s best and perhaps oldest friend – a dog.

I decide to walk with him amidst the lonely mountains, free birds and a humming breeze drenched in pure snow. The silence deafens me to a numbness of the mind that veers close to abysmal insanity. I am lost – in every definition of the phrase. Gustav, however, is rock solid by my side.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

A GOOD MAN AT HEART BARNALI SAHA

Barnali Saha is a creative writer from Gurgaon, India. She enjoys writing short stories, articles and travelogues. Her works have been published in several newspapers and magazines in India and in several e-magazines in USA. One of her short stories has also been featured in A Rainbow Feast, an anthology of new Asian short stories published by Marshal Cavendish, Singapore. Apart from writing, she is interested in painting and photography.

R BASU RAY had been twisting the channel knob of the nineteen-inch blackand-white television set in his living room, when his eye fell on the little patch of green outside his house. A stray dog had walked into the premises and was now sniffing at the bed of roses he had painstakingly brought to life with ample doses of tea leaves and long hours of garden toil in the sun. Gnashing his false set of teeth, Mr Basu Ray grabbed hold of his late father’s walking stick and rushed out of the house to tackle the unruly quadruped. The animal – being well-equipped with that strong sense of premonition that comes from a lifelong practice of evacuating its presence in quicksteps when confronting little boys armed with bricks and stones – knew that danger lurked on the horizon as soon as it saw Mr Basu Ray’s rotund figure, equipped with a walking stick, coming in its direction. It wasted no time sniffing at the juicy pink roses anymore, and took its exit as fast as it could.

May you fall asleep in the arms of a dream so beautiful, you’ll wake up crying!” - Michel Faudet

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

This untimely exertion of chasing dogs out of his grounds got Mr Basu Ray puffing; so, after latching the iron-gate in the garden that the stupid maid had as usual forgot to fasten when she left, Mr Basu Ray stood for a minute wiping the sweat that had gathered on his forehead with a cotton handkerchief. Still breathing heavily, he then turned in the direction of the house; and having caught sight of a yellow-beaked

Shalik pakhi perching atop the television antenna, he stood for a moment wondering if the bird was in any way responsible for the bad signal his television set received. Exculpating the bird with a sigh, he turned his attention to the house with a paintcrumbling exterior and grimacing brickteethed visage that stood before him. Under the dusk-laden sky which seemed to be a blotchy canvas of some withering talentless abstract artist, the house looked more weather-beaten than usual. Its once yellow-ochre facade seemed to scream in piteous tone for a lick of paint. The bastard plants born in its many cracks and crevices that adorned the house had disgorged their weedy heads out of their germinating corners and were now in the process of slowly and lingeringly throttling the grey, two-storied citadel. As Mr Basu Ray stood inspecting the house, his double-chinned, round, dark face with its little black eyes under bushy eyebrows looked even darker in the shadows. He was a middle-aged man, sporting a rotund paunch, common among rice-eating Bengali men, and a receding hairline. A stale scent of pedestrianism wafted from him like the stench of sudoriferous vegetable-peels, egg-shells and fish bones marinating in their own juice in the incarceration of a garbage bag. He wore a pair of ill-fitting trousers and a blue and white striped shirt, which showed off his bulges in his upper and middle frame. His feet encased

FS ITCOTRI O I ENS

in heel-holed navy-blue socks were thrust into a pair of once-brown shoes that – like the house he beheld – too, seemed to cry for a lick of shoe-paint preceded by a thorough brushing off of dirt and grime. The tinkling of a cycle bell behind him followed by a sharp pain in his left calf brought him out of his contemplation. Rubbing the pained spot, Mr Basu Ray saw the little pebble that had hit him. He picked it up and threw it in the direction of the empty street, turned, said “hatochhara bandor!” in a loud voice, and went inside the house. “Shall I bring you your tea?” Mrs Basu Ray asked her husband when she saw him coming in. The clock had just struck seven and without answering his wife, Mr Basu Ray rushed to the television set and turned the channel knob to DD Bangla to watch the evening news bulletin. “Ki go, shall I bring you your tea?” asked Nirupama Basu Ray once again. “It’s terribly warm today,” she continued rubbing the sweat from her dry-skinned, wrinkled, oval-face of liver patches, with the edge of her red and blue floral-patterned cotton sari. “I wish we could install an AC like the Mukherjees.” “Why do you always keep talking about others,” yelled Mr Basu Ray momentarily turning to his wife and then turning to the television set once again and slapping its back a couple of times to adjust the picture. “Can’t you be happy with what you have, woman? Always talking about others, always. The Mukherjees have money and we don’t.” “They also have two daughters and a son, and still they could afford an air condition,” said his wife, scratching a mosquito-bitten spot on her unshaven arm. “Well, it seems that they can but I cannot; and I can’t help it,” retorted Mr Basu Ray, retiring to the sofa covered with an old green towel, when the TV screen after numerous slaps finally displayed a wellbred sumptuous Bengali woman in spectacles speaking in a somber tone the bisesh, bisesh khobor of the day. “Get me my tea,” he said with his eyes fixed on the television set. His wife sighed and

turned to the kitchen. “And, oh, yes,” she heard her husband add, “Don’t put any milk and sugar in it.” His wife smiled. The weather bulletin announced a chance of heavy rainfall in Kolkata and its neighbouring areas. The weatherman at the meteorological department in Kolkata was a person whose climate-clairvoyance generally vacillated between two sharp binary boundaries: correct and incorrect. Were you a betting person, and had wagered a considerable sum in favour of his prophesy, the chance of your losing the cash-slab would be gravely affirmative; but today, unlike other days, his crystal ball had prophesied the weather conditions absolutely correctly. Around nine in the evening when Mr Basu Ray was kneading the chapatti dough, he heard the thunder grumbling outside his kitchen window. By this time, coiling, grey, intestinal cloud had started to gather in ample profusion in the abstract artist’s canvas abaft. It wasn’t raining yet, but Mr Basu Ray sensed a refreshing smell of wet grass in the air. Seeing the milk saucer containing the refreshment he had offered to the cat in the afternoon still untouched, he craned his neck and spoke to his wife who had been sitting in the towel-covered sofa reading Sukhi Grihokon, “Have you seen Neelkomol?” “No,” she replied. “Are you done? It’s getting late.” “Wait for another ten minutes,” Mr Basu Ray said, rolling out the dough. A homeopathic doctor, he thought, I will show her! In exactly ten minutes he finished cooking his chapattis, and though none of them puffed the way his wife’s chapattis did, he thought he was doing a great job. Indeed, he was willing to make some concession for his own safety. Boiled milk and chapattis cooked by himself seemed to be the safest bet. Discarding the edges of his chapattis and pouring a dollop of jaggery in his milk he came out of the kitchen. “I am done,” he said to his wife, placing his food on the plastic covered table. ***

At around midnight, the rain came down noisily in torrents. It was as if a million angry gods were micturating on a city they despised. Thunder, like the malicious eructation of some sky-dwelling monster, created an awful syncopation along with the rain and the frequent ianthine luminescence of lightening that Mr Basu Ray hardly found somniferous. The figure next to him sleeping with her mouth open seemed to be unperturbed by the weather outside; and so was the cat lying curled up at Mr Basu Ray’s feet. He picked it up and it gave out a sleepy meow. “Are you sleepy, Neelkomol, are you sleepy,” he said, tickling its tummy. The cat gave out another sleepy meow and Mr Basu Ray let it rest. A strong urge to hug the woman sleeping beside him arose, but he dismissed it as a reckless desire of a sleepless night. He tried to remember those sudden stomach aches. Oh, yes, those stomach aches; it was that, together with the muffled hints and warnings the doctor issued, that had alerted him. He had tried to reason with himself, he could not believe his own suspicions. But there was no other way; he never ate anything apart from her cooking. And she was a doctor too, more a quack to Mr Basu Ray, actually; nevertheless, a doctor, be it a quack Homeopathic physician who gave up her practice upon marrying him because he didn’t like his wife touching and checking random male patients. Mr Basu Ray wondered if she remembered the names of the medicines she used to prescribe to her patients; but people don’t forget such things as medicine names crammed assiduously into the system by endless hours of memory and recall. No, he was sure, she remembered them all. And even though Mr Basu Ray had always been dubious about the efficacy of homeopathic sugar globules dipped in spirit, he knew that a large dose of some vitriol that they use, or, say, a small dose of the same administered daily could produce the desired results. He knew it was a smart move on his behalf never to confide in her and declare – like the other wife-hugging pansies he knew – his actual salary or his cash savings in the bank. But he was sure that she could guess. She was a smart woman, an ingenious one actually. Why did she have a locker to store eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

her wedding jewellery in that same bank? And the idiot of a manager, how friendly he was to his boudi; asun boudi, bosun boudi… huh, that fool! He was sure he had told her. And what a lot of jewellery she possessed, and never did she give one of those tokens, not even one nose pin, to her husband. She had even hid the keys to the locker. A sudden thunderous belch startled him out of his contemplation. His heart had begun to beat. His mind was telling him that he must not delay, he must not delay. He must get it over and done with quickly. The house that evening had looked more awful than before. It was a sign to hurry things up. Vacillating won’t help, he had to be a man, and a man he was. Another thunderous clap issued from the sky and Mr Basu Ray got up from his bed and started pacing up and down the dark room. Mr Basu Ray’s mind was a cesspool of thoughts each erumpent with unheeded possibility. Like the holy Ganga that night – which was acting as the jorum to the regurgitated slime of the city, holding in her bosom its dead dogs and cats, its plastic packets and discarded mineral water bottles crushed by unknown feet, its excrement laden street grime, and other quisquilie that had danced their way into its watery womb under the force of the rainwater – Mr Basu Ray’s mind, too, was a grime-thick chamber heavy with obnoxious fumes. He was still finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that he, Mr

Basu Ray, a gentleman, a true-blue bhodrolok, if there was one, could have such an idea. It just shows you how utterly and inexplicably complex the human mind is. When he was little, his grandmother, a widowed octogenarian with almost opaque spectacles, used to tell him about the story of the goddess Durga slaying the green demon, Mahisasura. When narrating that tale over and over again, his grandmother would talk more about the slain demon and how he was avenging the death of his father, Rambhasura, the erstwhile king of the demons, at the hands of Indra, the king of the gods. The more Mr Basu Ray would ask her to talk about the goddess and how she had slain the asura, the more his grandmother would digress and talk about the poor Mahisasura and his piteous plight. She used to say to him that nothing in the world is good or evil; it is just a point of view. Thinking about his grandmother now assuring him with a toothless smile that it was all right to think the way he did, Mr Basu Ray felt composure dawning on him. Of course, he thought, his slippers flip-flopping as he moved up and down the room, it was the only logical thing to do after all. Therefore, pulling out the thought he had been hiding from himself by shoving it behind the dump of forgotten faces of acquaintances, incidents of youthful sexual deviancy that now embarrassed him, unfulfilled dreams and career aspirations, and many more memories he had hoarded over

the years in his mental chamber, he decided to face it squarely. The hands on his steel-band Citizen watch with glow-in-the-dark stickers on them announced that it was nearly two in the morning; nevertheless, Mr Basu Ray found it impossible to get back to bed. The spirit of the stormy night was up and about in him. He continued pacing up and down the room and gazing at his wife’s sleeping frame from time to time. It was just like that stormy night when the plan first came to his mind. He was suffering from one of his temperamental stomach aching fits and writhing with pain. He remembered she was sitting in the living room at the time watching an Uttam-Suchitra flick. The hero with smartly brushed air had been singing Ei poth jodi na sesh hoy, tobe kamon hoto tumi bolo to? Listening to that famous tune in conjunction with the noise of the rain, Mr Basu Ray had felt the pangs of pain hitting him more strongly than ever. It was at that moment, at precisely that moment, when he was throwing his limbs about in pain and cursing the doctor when the idea manifested in his mind. The unrelated spark of that idea had illuminated his musty interior. And, quite rashly, he now felt, no sooner had he thought of it, he had shoved it, like a dog hiding its bone, beneath blankets of past regrets too ashamed to even consider its efficacy before jettisoning it for good, only to retrieve it the following day when the light of dawn had clarified his boggled mind. ***

Photo Courtesy: Carol Martin, The Low Down Online

A fortnight had now elapsed between the inception of the idea and Mr Basu Ray’s ultimate approval of it. Right now, the movie of the mind was starting once again to feature itself like every other day on the silver screen of his mind. By now, he had grown accustomed to the thought being there, inside him, gradually inflating with purpose everyday like a child in a mother’s womb. He did not dismiss it any longer as an aberration of the brain caused by the pangs of pain. And tonight, when he unhesitatingly acknowledged its presence, he knew he wasn’t ashamed of it anymore. Dipped into the chemical bath of the stormy, stolid night, the photograph of eFiction India | October November2013 2013

F ST I COTRI IOE N S

the mind came into being. As he watched the feature film playing on his mind, Mr Basu Ray thought, it was a great move of his, barring the house to the chatty Mrs Mukherjee and Mrs Biswas; what gossips they spread! She had shown her wound marks to them and they had the audacity to come to ask him to control his temper or else they said they would call the police. Control his temper, dash it! He had ticked them off quite well, declaring it was his house and what he did inside his premises was his own business. It rarely happened nowadays, but that didn’t stop the stupid woman from going about the neighbourhood complaining about him like a child. Now, she couldn’t communicate with anybody even if she wanted to. No gossip for you, madam. The phone connection was out of order too, and he had meant it to remain that way until he was ready to put his plan to test. You can’t be too careful after all. For the next few days Mr Basu Ray played and replayed the plan in his head. Sitting at his office desk and nibbling at his pencil, he thought how good the idea looked. He would tell his wife that an emergency telegram had arrived beckoning him to the village. Perhaps old Pisomosai would be ill; he would possibly be on his death bed. He would then pack his things and leave the house in the evening. Of course, the timing should be right; the maid must see him leave, or, better still, he must leave just before she left. He would then go to the railway station. It would be great if he could meet some of the local nibs on his way; perhaps, he could greet Mr Biswas or Mr Mukherjee; but he wasn’t sure if they would entertain him considering he had insulted their wives. Mr Basu Ray clicked his tongue. Anyway, he continued, he would procure a couple of tickets for Shantinagar passenger. The station would be crowded and nobody would notice if he at all boarded the train. He would then choose a corner in the station, preferably near the loo where nobody went, and wait. Around midnight he would come back home through the backdoor in the bathroom and switch on the gas. He would then pour the kerosene on the shabby sofa and the other furniture — he had two full jars of the blue liquid

issued from the ration shop nestling in the house — and then it would take just a flick of the match to do the trick. He would light it just before closing the back door and leaving the house. If it rained, he must be cautious about the footprints; but he couldn’t predict that now. All he could see was her engulfed by the flames. A fit justice, Mr Basu Ray thought, for a woman poisoning her husband. Of course, before anything was done, he would have to administer the sleeping draught. It would be easy; it would just take a sleight of hand to add the potion to her sugared evening tea. After he had performed his final task that night, he would take the back alley and go back to the station and wait there among the sleeping beggars and the fruit-vendors for the first train. He must be in the village home before morning so that everybody would think he had come the day before. That wouldn’t be difficult considering the village was just a few hours from Kolkata. He must walk from the station, too, through the bamboo forest lest somebody should see him coming. He would talk to Pisomohai early in the morning, and that would give him a nice alibi when the news arrived. He would of course play the role of a bereaving husband on hearing the news that his wife had decided to end her life. He still retained some of those amateur theatrical skills he had learned as a young man. Finally, after a month’s hiatus, when all the dust would settle, he would visit the city and approach the bank with a request to empty the jewellery locker. The gold rate being still very steep, he would probably make a packet. In an effort to make the last few days of his wife’s life happy, Mr Basu Ray got her the air condition, although a third-hand one, she had always wanted. Twice, he took her to the movies too; and, on the day before his plan would be set to action, which was their twenty-fourth anniversary, he let her feed him too. It was all he could do to make her happy before he ended her life. To celebrate their anniversary, he got her twelve sticks of Rajnigandha and a Hilsa fish for dinner. She cooked the fish in a savoury mustard sauce and served it with warm Basmati rice. She dressed up too for him that evening, wearing the teal-coloured

boubhat Banarasi sari with her gold choker necklace. Mr Basu Ray eyed the choker for sometime; he had no idea she had jewellery kept in the house. He decided to make a thorough search when she went for her bath the following morning. Who would guess, Mr Basu Ray thought, looking at her as she placed the warm plate of rice and fish before him, that she wished her husband’s death. When Mr Basu Ray retired for the night after his sumptuous anniversary meal, he felt both tired and relieved. A new thought now played in his mind. It came as he was eating the Hilsa, the first time in the season actually. Savouring the fish with closed eyes, Mr Basu Ray felt that he ought to stretch a point. “The fish tasted magnificent,” he said to his wife as she was clearing the table. “You really think so?” she asked. “Yes, shotti, it was very good. I didn’t believe the fishmonger when he said it came from the Padma; but I think it did. I haven’t had such a good Hilsa in a long time,” he said with a sigh. “Aren’t you going to have any?” he asked, seeing his wife was eating a plate of rice with milk. “Oh, I can’t have Hilsa in the night; it’s too heavy. I will have it tomorrow for lunch. I saved another piece for you too,” she said with a smile. Poor woman, Mr Basu Ray thought, looking at his wife’s face, perhaps he had been a little too hard on her. The benevolence that had manifested on the surface of his mind, like a corpse rising up on the face of a pond where it had drowned several days back, asked him to reconsider his decision. He knew he was a good man at heart; after all he belonged to a spiritual family, where from childhood up he had been taught to respect and follow the ideals of ahimsa and forgiveness. He murmured to himself his grandfather’s favourite lines by Swami Vivekananda: “Bahuruphe sammukhe tomar chari kotha khujisho Iswara, Jibe prem kore jei jon sei jon shebiche iswara.” His stomach didn’t ache that night after the meal; rather, he felt unusually fit after the hearty after dinner. In any case, as he eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

rested his head on the pillow and looked at his wife undressing before him, he felt he needed some more time before he reached a final decision. Mr Basu Ray did not know how long he had slept before waking up with a start, feeling suddenly very warm and thirsty. A horrid sweltering stench from the twisting and coiling miasma, that had filled the room as he slept, burned his nostrils and made him cough violently. Smoke danced before him like ectoplasm gathering form and shutting-close all view. For a few seconds, Mr Basu Ray sat on his bed coughing, his sleep-fogged brain unable to register what was happening around him. A loud crash sounded downstairs. Mr Basu Ray shot out of his bed, his mouth a desert, his chest abluted with sweat. “Nirupama,” he cried out, “Nirupama… Nirupama,” No answer came for him. The radiant heat coming from the steadily spreading orange-yellow flames downstairs was unbearable. Another crash sounded downstairs followed by a loud thud. Mr Basu Ray rushed to the bathroom. The faucet issued a hissing sound and no water dropped from its spout; the aluminum pail and the mug that rested there had been removed too. His flesh seemed to sizzle in that blazing warmth coming from downstairs. A dizzying vibration sounded in his ear; the booming lub-dub of his cardiac organ was deafening too. Covering his mouth and nostrils, he ran out of the bathroom and observed that tall, fierce, fiery flames had now engulfed the wooden rails of the stairs. Their strange yellow-orange luminescence charged with boiling wrath was spreading about the house with feral fury and seemed to be pulling him to some smoky labyrinth with coiled entails and no exit. Trembling, Mr Basu Ray thought about the telephone, yes, the telephone, he must get to it. But he hadn’t had it repaired. Mr Basu Ray gave out a loud cry, and then another, and another. Smoke and bits of ash

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

burned his eyes. Coughing, he rushed to the windows in his room, but they were latched. Little travel locks descended from them. He had himself had the latches installed. It was just another safety measure he would take to bar her from communicating with strangers. The travel locks were his idea too. He rushed to the dressing table to find the keys, but all the drawers were empty. He shouted as loudly as he could, “Bachao, amae bachao, somebody save me, please.” The Biswas family, next door to him, Mr Basu Ray remembered, was out on their annual holiday. But, why can’t the Mukherjees hear him? He gave out another yell, but a deafening crash that shook the house muffled his voice. Mr Basu Ray’s eyes felt heavy, his nostrils burned from the putrid smell of the black sooty smoke. He sat with a thud on the floor. A heavy, murky stifling sensation seemed to be throttling him in that opaque room with its numerous thin, bony fingers. A lump had materialised in his throat. He knew he couldn’t crawl away. He opened his mouth to let out another cry, but his sore and dried throat couldn’t produce any sound. He sat huddled up on the floor in a pool of urine, sweat, saliva and tears, listening to the dizzying cricketnoise in his ears together with the crackling, crashing and blistering sound that surrounded him. Placing his cold sweaty palm on his chest to stop the heart from beating so loud, he began to count multiplication tables in his head. Two one is two, two into two is four… Just before losing consciousness, Mr Basu Ray remembered seeing through the smoke the obese golden-orange flames closing in on him like a million army men on a single enemy. The heat didn’t bother him anymore, and neither did the sight of the blazing flames or the crashing or splintering, and sizzling noise about him. He felt utterly relaxed and calm. A sigh of relief escaped him. A moment before the wild snaky flames of fire could reach him, Mr Basu Ray breathed his last breath.

Glossary Shalik pakhi: Common Myna/Indian Myna hatochhara: A common swearing word among Bengalis, equivalent to a rascal or a loafer. Bandor: Monkey; used as a swearing word here. Ki go: An informal way Bengali a wife calls her husband. Bisesh, bisesh khobor : The headlines of the day Sukhi grihokon: Literally, Happy Household; it’s the name of a Bengali magazine for women. boudi; asun, boudi, bosun, boudi… Literally meaning: Please come and a have a seat, boudi. Boudi means sister-in-law; it’s a common way of addressing married women in Bengal. Bhodrolok: Literally ‘gentleman’ in Bengali. Asura: Demon Ee poth jodi na sesh hoy, tobe kamon hoto tumi bolo to? : Lyrics of a famous Bengali song from the movie Saptapadi starring Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. The song was performed by Hemanta Mukherjee and Sandhya Mukherjee. Pisomohai: Uncle; husband of father’s sister. Boubhat: Wedding reception Hilsa: A tropical fish especially popular among Bengalis, also known as ‘ilish’ Shotti: Truth “Bahuruphe Sammukhe tomar Chari Khotha Khujisho Iswara, Jibe Prem Kore Jei Jon Sei Jon Shebiche Iswara.”: A famous quotation by Swami Vivekananda meaning One who have the love and care for all, not only animal but all creature. Bachao, amae bachao: Save me, save me

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

THE MARGARITA MAN ADIANA RAY

Adiana Ray believes the human mind has to be the most intriguing thing in the world. Our genetic and environmental effect on it and the resulting affect being the inspiration for her stories and character development. She likes to read, write, cook and enjoys outdoor sports. She also likes to sing and dance which she is told by her family she is particularly bad at. Her previous works include a romance novella Rapid Fall published through indireads.com and a contribution to an anthology Love Across Borders brought out by Indireads on Independence Day (2013).

IFE WAS CRAZY and I loved every minute of it. It was the end of the month and work was more demanding than usual. I was mulling over some design issues in my head as I walked down to the sea-face for some ‘me’ time. I badly needed to recharge my batteries; the evening had all the makings of an all-nighter. The promenade in front of the Taj Hotel had to be just about my favourite place in Mumbai. I sat on the parapet, staring out over the water as the evening sun turned the sea into a sheet of gold. The gentle feel of the salty spray on my face never failed to release me and send me soaring up on a carpet of bliss. Evening was always such a beautiful time; the trials of the day were over and you had the thought of relaxing in your mind’s eye as you hurried home. Tomorrow was another day, this evening was yours. Mumbai has millions living together and for many of these millions the Gateway was a wonderful spot to visit. Young couples surreptitiously saying goodbye before having to head off home, others just sitting and unwinding; glad to be together. Children running around, not sure if they would rather look out longingly at the mysteries of the water or at the monolithic Gateway and all the hustle and bustle around it. It was my favourite time of the day and I was in my favourite place. The world was good and there was a God up there who was looking down on me.

That was when I met Mario. Did I say met? Let me amend that: at that moment it was more of a rude intrusion. There I was floating along on my velvet cushion of wellbeing when I suddenly heard this gratingly, jovial voice beside me, “Hi! My name is Mario.” “‘Eh!” I said, none too politely. Couldn’t this guy see I wanted to be alone? I gave him a sideways glance and then went back to contemplating the scenery in front of me. Hopefully he would get the hint and carry on walking. My response or rather the lack of it did not seem to faze Mario one bit. “I work as a barkeeper at Red Earth… Sorry, make that the bar-master. I really am an absolute whiz at what I do.” I didn’t even bother to look at him this time. “Have you ever been to Red Earth?” “What in the world are you talking about?” I asked sharply. “Are you selling something?” By now I was really annoyed. “What is Red Earth? C’mon don’t tell me you haven’t heard about us, we are just about the hottest night club in SOBO [South Bombay]. I think we get more mentions on Page Three than all the other restaurants in SOBO combined. But then again that is just me talking... and as you might have guessed I do have a healthy opinion of myself,” he

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

said in a bright voice. OMG! He was like a steam engine. It didn’t matter what I said or did. He just carried on. I looked away and rolled my eyes in disgust. That should hopefully do the trick. Beep! Wrong again. “Would you like to know how I do it? Hmmm? Well why don’t you come with me and see for yourself, how the… ehm… ’master’ works”, he offered enigmatically. Then he looked around conspiratorially. “Shhhh”, he said, his finger on his lips, “can’t let all these others know what is happening.” So what was happening, that he was acting so cagey? Not that I really wanted to know anything about it. I was totally exasperated and obviously not on the same page as him. Why couldn’t this guy just leave me alone? I was seething. My lack of response did not deter him one bit; on the contrary, it seemed to make him more determined to get me to respond to him. For the first time I looked at him, as he stood there beside me, his hands in his pockets. I saw a rotund figure in a flowery beach shirt, Bermudas and flipflops, a Buddha-like smile on his face. I just sat there staring at him, dumbstruck. How completely thick could a person be…

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

Didn’t he get it? I didn’t want to talk to him. Was he trying to promote that night club? Who was he and why did he pick on me specifically from all the hundreds who were wandering around in front of the Taj Hotel that evening? On a scale of one to ten for weird experiences, this had to be an eleven. “Well, are you coming or not?” he persisted. I couldn’t believe it but I actually found myself getting up to follow Mario. That is after the sum total of my contribution to the conversation (if you could call it that) was “eh”, and “what are you talking about”. Why? I don’t know why. Maybe it was just to get rid of him, which sounds really odd, as you don’t follow someone to get rid of them. The only thing that I can come up with is that as it was such a puzzling experience I felt I had to see it to the end. As we made our way to Red Earth, I could see that Mario had not been bragging. It was just 7 PM and already people were making their way in, and this is in a city which doesn’t come alive till past eleven. As we entered through the massive brassstudded doors, I looked down into a huge dimly lit space with red velvet banquettes arranged around the edges. The walls had looped red velvet drapes hanging from them, interspersed with gigantic mirrors. A shiny black floor in the middle made

of what looked like under-lit glass completed this designer’s nightmare. Red Earth? This looked like something from Dante’s Inferno. People were definitely not coming here for the décor. “What do you think, man?” asked Mario, all bounce and swagger. I did not have the heart to tell him what I did think, so I just grunted in response, hoping against hope that he would let it pass. To my relief he did. He promptly gave me a knuckle bump. “Good! Eh? Good!” he asked rhetorically in an enthusiastic voice, fairly dancing on his toes. He then lowered his tone mysteriously and leaned over towards me. “Ready to learn?” He hissed the question into my ears. I had absolutely no idea what great knowledge he was planning to impart to me but I nodded vigorously nevertheless. This was beginning to look more and more interesting. He raised his hands in the air as if he were Zubin Mehta about to start conducting. The ‘bar-master’ had arrived. “Look at all these people,” he gestured grandly. “They are all here for me. They want to taste what I mix for them. You know how I do it? It’s just a case of psychology,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “I look at them and I know what they

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

will like from the way they behave. It is my system,” he beamed proudly at me. I must have been looking a bit dubious at his claim as he pointed at a couple that was seated to the right of us and said, sotto voice: “See that couple over there… Her, I would give the Absolut Lemonade: vodka, lemon, almond liqueur and sprite. She is cute, bubbly, loving life and all that it is giving her right now. For him... Salty Dog… He loves it too but he is going to take what he gets and then walk away. I feel sad for her, I really do,” he voiced with emotion, his hand theatrically planted on his chest. “But who is to tell her? Eh! Who is to tell her?” He questioned with feeling. We made our way to an empty table. Once we were seated there, he glanced around. He pointed out to a lady sitting and texting on her phone, every inch corporate. “See that one, she has to be a Margarita. Not flavoured or frozen but the absolute original one with the salt around the rim and a bit of lime. All “no fuss” but she likes to break out once in a while. Am I right or am I right?” he quizzed me, his eyebrow was raised and he had a slight smile on his lips. At that moment one of the waiters came up and put a Margarita in front of her. I was completely astounded.

He had hit it spot on.

I could feel my head nod like an automaton.

“What about me?” I was eager to hear what he said.

“I threw myself under the table. I should have tried to pull him down with me but I left him slumped on the table.”

“Beer,” he replied. “Not the very strong ones but the SAB Miller type.” My jaw dropped. “How do you do it? You just met me fifteen minutes ago!” Mario gazed at me with an odd look of compassion in his eyes. It was as if I hadn’t spoken. “That is what you were drinking that day, weren’t you? You had decided to meet your old college buddy at Leopold. He was just in town for the day and it was perfect – near your office and great ambience. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. You can’t blame yourself for it.” I looked down at the crisp white tablecloth, my fingers knotted together so tight that my knuckles were white. There was a lump in my throat. I looked up at him, anguish written all over my face. “His back was to the door, he didn’t even see them come in.” “Did you?” countered Mario.

I could still see the scene as if it were yesterday. The noise, the sickening sound of bullets thudding all over and the screaming. The screaming that just wouldn’t stop. Funnily enough… All I remember thinking at that moment as I lay on the ground was, why was Leopold letting off fireworks at this time of the year? That too indoors? Then everything had gone blank and I slipped into a warm, welcoming cocoon of silence. Mario was still staring at me waiting for me to come to terms with what had happened. “You do know you have to face it,” he said, gently patting my hand. “You have to move on.” Suddenly he stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Dude, at least you went with a bullet. Fucker that I am, I heard the gunshots and died of a heart attack. Can you beat that?” he guffawed. A small chortle escaped my lips. It felt good to be able to laugh again. Now I knew why I was the one he had chosen to talk to that evening.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

S TA F F P I C K

SELAT RORRIM MIRROR TALES

DIWAKAR RALPH

Photo Courtesy: Dennis Brekke (flickr.com/peopledbrekke)

Diwakar Ralph has written a few other short stories. Writers whose work he holds in great esteem include Maupassant, Hector Hugh Monroe, Rushdie, Thomas Hardy, Wodehouse and Charles Dickens, among many others. Diwakar is eFiction India’s Wordsmith of the Month for October 2013.

eFiction India | November 2013

“

LOOK, THIS HAD to happen someday or the other; I’m just glad we had all the time we could together,” said Zameer in a tremulous voice. “Even an eternity with you would not suffice,” said Sheila, tears streaming down her face in mad torrents. Zameer looked out at the blue grey horizon of sea and sky, watching the waves roll in inexorably toward the shore with easy, powerful confidence of the kind that accrues from deep unshakeable conviction; conviction that manifests itself in the form of insouciance, bordering on the annoying. Dark tenebrous clouds loomed in the horizon – they just hung there, as if for artistic relief. A streak of dazzling lightning lit up the beach for a moment, rendering the

scene frighteningly beautiful. The strong sea breeze which blew in ruffled Sheila’s hair boisterously, sending a lock down her forehead, across her face, making her look breathtakingly beautiful, notwithstanding her teary eyes.

know very well there’s no one else for me.”

“Hah, isn’t that a wish! But I really think you’d be bored of my company. Imagine having to bear the discourses I torture you with, for ‘eternity’!” said Zameer, smiling. “Variety is the veritable spice of life, my love. You should try someone else - someone more interesting than me.”

Sheila nuzzled up to Zameer, and he took her in his arms and held her tight.

“Must you always talk that way?” retorted Sheila, querulously. “You

“Aw, poor, poor girl! No one else at all… no one except uninteresting old Zameer.”

“You’re the most interesting person I’ve had the good fortune of ever meeting,” she said. “I love you so Zameer! Now don’t start off with that - not today. Don’t ask me the meaning of love. Don’t ask me to ‘explain’ to you what love feels like.”

eFiction India | november 2013

S TA F F P I C K

“Did I ask you? Hmm, but now that you’ve brought it up, do tell me Sheila, what do you really imply by that four-lettered word?” said Zameer, with a twinkle in his eye. Sheila and he had in the past had several discussions on this most all encompassing of emotions. She thought she knew the meaning and context in which she viewed it; he on the other hand, was quite aware of the impossibility of defining the term. Did it mean sacrifice? Empathy? Sympathy? Revenge? Vengeance? Hatred? Or was it a combination of all this and much more? But he knew for sure what Sheila meant when she said she loved him – for it was precisely the same way he felt about her. It was only his wont to launch into philosophical discussions with her. And he got a kick out of seeing her agitated, trying hard to justify her stand in their arguments – the sweet innocence of her beliefs and her eagerness to provide him with an answer. *** Two boys, one chasing the other, wove their way through the crowd of people perambulating on the beach. This had been one of Sheila and Zameer’s favourite spots, and they often sat here for hours on end, lost in each other’s love. Zameer’s Rolex, which he wore on his right wrist, showed seven-thirty, which was actually four-thirty in the real world. “It breaks my heart so Zameer! I don’t think I’ll be able to go on without you,” said Sheila. “Oh yeah? And what other option, might I ask, do you happen to have at your disposal, my queen?” retorted Zameer. “I mean, it’s not like we’ve got the freedom to end our own lives, do we? And even if we did, I’d hate it, if I could, to see you take a step in that direction.” Sheila laughed out bitterly. Wiping her tears away, she said, “I know… we don’t have that other alternative available to us. We’re brought into existence through their inception, and we’re summarily obliterated when they die. We don’t have the liberty to end our own existence, like they do.” Another streak of lightening illuminated the surroundings, and for a brief moment, everything took on a purplish hue. Sheila’s utter despondency and despair were on account of the simple fact that she and Zameer and countless others along with them were residents, rather inmates, of that other world so often and so widely taken for granted as a mere reflection of the real world – a world separated from the quotidian by a slip of a plane glass coated on one side with Silver Nitrate. They were privileged as well as accursed in being the residents of the mirror world. They were privileged in that they were not subject to the strife of survival – they required no food for their sustenance, no shelter for their protection. Also, apart from the desultory appearances that they had to make from time to time – when their counterparts from the real world were taken up by the urge to examine themselves in the mirror – they were quite free to do as they pleased. eFiction India | November 2013

“There’s no point mulling over such sordid thoughts,” said Zameer. “Have I told you, you look more beautiful than ever?” “Yes, as a matter of fact, you have. You told me this morning, by which do you mean to imply that I wasn’t as good looking as I am now when we first met?” said Sheila. “Now, don’t try to put me in a spot,” replied Zameer. “You know you’re quite a looker, don’t you?” Sheila and Zameer had met at this very same beach, five years ago. Zameer had been flying a kite on a lonely stretch of the beach and when he had seen Sheila, he – taken in by her exquisite beauty – released the kite from its stringed attachment while his heart was captivated. And when he smiled his dazzling, enchanted smile, she was done for. They knew that they were meant to be together, as if by design, some incomprehensible divine diktat. But theirs, as was the case with all residents of the mirror world, was a transcendental love, an attachment not bound to culminate in carnal gratification, a love so elevated that they felt as if each had found self in the other. They had been together ever since, revelling in each other’s company. It was the kind of love that folks from the real world could not even contemplate; a transcendental emotion so intense and so pure that it bordered on the divine. In this particular feature, they were superior to their counterparts from the real world. The term ‘unconditional’, though engineered in the real world, found its true significance in the mirror world. In the mirror world, there was no crime, no good or evil, no wars, no virtuous or corrupted people. The mirror world was the land of the IS – everything just as is. It was an enchanted place in which the reflected counterpart of the most ruthless criminal was an innocent saint; in which the members of the Congress party canvassed for the BJP; in which the Crusade had happened only as long as glimpses of it were to be seen in the reflection of shields; in which India was never partitioned; in which there was no religion; in which deer fawn were kept company by lionesses; in which crime was never known due to the lack of strife; in which the carnal gave way to the transcendental; in which Israel was Palestine, and Palestine Israel; in which right was left and left was right; in which white was black and black was white; in which Korea remained intact; in which Genghis Khan was a Buddhist monk; in which Julius Caesar’s only love was astronomy; in which Alexander and Darius used to meet at Gaugamela only to ascertain which one of them could throw the discus farther – the wager being an Isfahani rug; in which Hitler was a celebrated painter and the Jews didn’t know the odour of hydrogen cyanide. In which… in which… in which. “I wonder what it is that’s made him take this drastic decision,” said Zameer. “Why didn’t you ask him that?” retorted Sheila, the bitterness quite palpable in her voice. “At least he’s got the privilege to take that decision. What about us?”

S TA F F P I C K

“Ending one’s life is no privilege.” “Maybe you should’ve told him that, too,” said Sheila, knowing full well the futility and impracticality of her suggestion, for reflections could not converse with their progenitors across the mirror. “I don’t know him well at all,” said Zameer. “In fact, it’s only recently that he’s started talking into the mirror. I didn’t even know his name until recently. He’s in a bad shape, I can tell you that. He’s going through such emotional turmoil as you’d never know! It must be pretty bad if he’s decided to commit suicide.” The ‘him’ that Zameer referred to was none other than his counterpart from the real world, one Mr Deepak Chopra, thirty three years of age – tall, lean, exceptionally wide in the shoulders and pinched at the waist, with a jaw line as sharp as a sabre, and a natural fold of the left cheek, which began near his left nostril and went down to just below his lip, which had driven and continued to drive many a woman crazy as she set eyes upon him, and, which gave him a perpetually bemused expression, as if he were all the time amused at the goings on of this world. *** Deepak had been quite indifferent to girls, forging relationships with them only of the physical kind, until after a while he got bored of even that. He had never been emotionally involved with women, for he never could experience that emotion that most of his friends seemed to be preoccupied with most of the time – the emotion that went by the popular name of ‘love’. He laughed at his friends when they confided their innermost feelings in him, with that expression on their faces that invariably gives the confessor an inexplicably stupid appearance. It was as if the person declaring their love for his beloved was not quite sure of its veracity, and yet would like to persist with that belief, for the heck of it. He would ridicule them and call them fools. For a while, people surmised that he’d been disappointed in love at some point in his life, but they soon realised the fact that he’d never been in any sort of emotional relationship. So as a natural consequence, his friends stopped sharing this aspect of their lives with him, though they still maintained their association, for he was a fine person indeed – easy to get along with, honest to a fault, altruistically selfless, the heart of every party he attended. And it was at one of these parties that he laid eyes on the one woman who could stir those inexplicable feelings aforementioned – ones that make one look like a fool, an imbecile, an idiot – it was as if love had taken it upon itself not only to enter his life and make its presence felt, but to also proselytise this once-hardened cynic into one of its most ardent disciples who begin to worship the object of their love. The party was thrown by his best friend and business partner, that self-made renowned businessman, Rohit Fernandez. Rohit had made his initial fortune in the transport business, getting together just enough capital to buy his maiden truck – which he at times

drove himself – and through his shrewd business sense and willingness and ability to use unorthodox methods to get ahead, he had in no time amassed himself a veritable fortune. As is quite often the case, the bitterest rivalries unexpectedly transform into lasting friendships – friendships that stand the test of time and human fickleness. Rohit and Deepak had been to school together, and the antagonism between the two was mutual; they just couldn’t stand the sight of each other. Things soon came to a head and the huge magnitude of their hatred culminated in a painful fight, which both fought admirably, valiantly even, and at the end of it found that each had inflicted as much pain as the other. And all of a sudden they both had simultaneously realised their mutual admiration for each other, as they lay there battered and bruised, and no words of reconciliation were spoken; it was as if they’d been as thick as thieves all their lives. Friendships and associations which germinate out of such contradictory and antagonistic beginnings go a long, long way, because each has shown the other their worst, which upon retrospection doesn’t seem to the other that bad at all. These days Rohit was into producing Bollywood movies, with the leading directors of the industry at his beck and call. He’d wanted Deepak to come on board, but the latter had refused the offer, very graciously, citing a total lack of interest in the movie business. Another venture that the two had lined up was the furniture market, and they’d managed to collaborate with one of the world’s leading furniture manufacturers, the Swedish giant IKEA, in their foreign direct investment in India. If everything went according to plan, they stood to gain a windfall and augment their already burgeoning bank balance. Life was indeed looking good for the two of them. That is, until the night of the party. The evening had begun to warm up, and a convivial atmosphere was spreading its warm charm all over. It was the stellar success of the latest movie that had been financed by Rohit Fernandez that was being celebrated. All the bigwigs from the movie world had been invited. “Hey Mr De Niro!” shouted Deepak Chopra across the hall, as he caught sight of Rohit. “Congratulations, buddy. That’s the way to go!” Deepak always referred to Rohit as either ‘Mr De Niro’ or ‘Bobby’ on account of the strong resemblance that Rohit Fernandez bore to the great Hollywood actor. He even had the same build. Rohit always protested, but Deepak knew he secretly liked the comparison. “Thank you so much, brother!” said Rohit. “Listen, there’s this movie that’s in the pipeline…” “Not for me, Bobby,” retorted Deepak, cutting him off mid-sentence. “This movie business is for shrewd Mangaloreans such as you who’ve got the head for the stuff. It’s in your blood!” eFiction India | november 2013

S TPAOF EF TPRIYC K

“All right, all right, have it your own way, but don’t tell me I didn’t offer you a partnership,” said Rohit. “By the way, Shalini Mehta’s coming to the party.” “So?” “So? So indeed! She’s a dream isn’t she? The movie did well only because of those swimsuit scenes, I can tell you that much,” said Rohit. “You know very well I’m not into women anymore,” said Deepak, making a bored face. “Ha! You will want to get ‘into’ women after you’ve seen her,” said Rohit, as he made a lewd gesture with his hand depicting the reciprocating motion that is instrumental in the propagation of any species. “Khanna sahib, where have you been all these days?” shouted Rohit across the room, as he spotted a corpulent man making his way toward the bar. “Deepak, I’ll be back with you in a minute. Fatso Khanna is going to be instrumental in my next project,” he whispered to Deepak in conspiratorial tones. “Take your time, Bobby. Just tell him you’re Veto Andolini from the town of Corleone, and that you’re going to make him an offer he’s not going to be able to refuse!” said Deepak with a twinkle in his eye. He walked over to the balcony, with the intention of lighting up a soothing cigarette. As he leaned over, blowing the smoke out into the still night air his gaze took in the depth of twentythree stories. He laughed to himself, as if at an inside joke. Rohit was such a prurient bastard, he said to himself – always chasing skirt, but a gem of a chap nevertheless. Just then his phone rang, and as he took it out of his pocket he turned around to face the room and his world turned upside down. The voice on the phone made useless enquiries, “Sir, can you hear me? The money transfer was confirmed this afternoon. I tried to reach you earlier, but couldn’t get through. Sir? Hello? Sir, are you there?” But as mentioned earlier, all these questions were doomed to go unanswered because what Deepak Chopra beheld, was, to him, the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. His heart raced like a cornered gazelle – prancing hitherto in its green pastures, picking a mouthful here and there – but which now found its throat in the vice-like grip of the lioness, with its life slowly but surely ebbing away, and there was a certain resigned look in its eyes, saying, “It’s over now, finally. It wasn’t that bad after all, was it? We’ve been captured and done to death, that’s all.” But the object of Deepak’s observation was as far away in resemblance from a lioness as possible. She was the epitome of gentleness; her beauty had none of that garish harshness which is so often to be encountered, rather, it was soft and gentle and diffused. She stood there for a minute, looking around, obviously not accustomed to the opulence of the surroundings, but confidently graceful in her curiosity, quite oblivious to Deepak’s transfixed gaze. She wore an eFiction India | October November2013 2013

off-white coloured gown which shimmered in the light, and her throat was adorned by simple pearl necklace. A steward happened by and she picked a glass of pomegranate juice off the tray, and brought it to her full red lips. She had a full figure – a figure that promised stability. Deepak stood almost lifeless on that balcony, quite unable to move as he looked at this veritable goddess. For the first time in his life the emotions that he had ridiculed others for having evinced were stirring in him. His mouth was quite dry and there was a painful lump in his throat as he tried to swallow. He was filled with veneration as he looked at this unearthly, unsurpassed beauty. And what stirred in him was not the urge for carnal gratification, consummation of lust; it was rather the devotion of a worshipper; of a mendicant driven insane by his devotion for the divine; all he wanted to do was lay his head before her feet and worship her. Love had after all proved to be too superior a force to make an adversary of. True to symptoms, his first reaction was denial. He dared not acknowledge it to even himself - how could he be such a weakened sissy? Love? Bah! Well ok, maybe she was pretty; so what? You don’t even know her, you fool! Have you heard her speak, have you spoken to her? And after two weeks of further denial in soliloquy - ok, just this once, but you mustn’t make a habit of stopping by at her office in the evening. What if you’re found out? Could you really be this pathetic? – Two months on – you let Bobby in on it; now why, I wonder, should you do such a thing? You should’ve kept your weakness, your failing under wraps. Do us a favour, will you? Don’t go bandying your tale about town. You’ve got to get yourself together; what if she’s already noticed you stalking her? – Six months on – why the hell did we have to be at that party in the first place, Deepak sahib? If only we’d skipped Bobby’s party and gone to watch Federer beat Nadal, our path wouldn’t have crossed with that beautiful, delectable angel. Ah! Such exquisite beauty! Such perfection; such grace! To see her smile is a veritable privilege. How could one be so beautiful? Eight months on – Deepak sahib, I’m in the death throes of despair! Why did it have to be so? I thought I’d collapse when we saw her at the park. She was with her son, you remember? And she looked up straight at us and smiled and waved in our direction? Our fist, which had hitherto been clenched tightly, had begun to unfurl to acknowledge that salutation when we checked ourselves. We turned around ever so slightly and beheld a pleasant looking young man walking jauntily toward her. It was only so much I could do to drag us back home. Fortunate man, her husband, undoubtedly! *** And so it was that Mr Deepak Chopra, successful entrepreneur, who had hitherto been living life to the lees, who was reduced to a mere vassal – a helpless slave. It seemed all those authors and poets who wrote odes to lovers and their ardours – whom Deepak used to scoff at – were vindicated – they had got it right on the money – the sleepless nights, the loss of appetite; the inability to concentrate, the sinking feeling that renders one disconsolate; the living nightmare of unrequited love, the cruel games played by

S TA F F P I C K

the gentlemen above; the vacillation between hopeless hope and despair, the excruciating pain that proves impossible to bear; etc etc. And after he’d confided his feelings in Rohit Fernandez aka Bobby aka Mr De Niro, he didn’t feel much better for it, for Rohit belonged to the school of thought whose motto was ‘slam bam, thank you ma’am’, and he was quite unable to comprehend Deepak’s predicament. “Dude,” he had exclaimed in absolute incredulity, as he turned away from the French window looking out onto the lawn. “Why you would reduce yourself to this miserable state is more than I can understand. I mean, granted she’s pretty – though personally I think she’s way too old – it’s not as if there ain’t any other fish in the sea!” Daylight was fast diminishing, and a strong yet pleasant breeze blew into the room. This was the day after Deepak Chopra had all but made up his mind to end his life; after he had looked into the mirror at his dresser and declared to his unsuspecting reflection, Zameer, across the silver nitrate coated sheet of glass, his plans of committing suicide. Rohit Fernandez had that excited, passionate gleam in his eyes. James, Deepak’s major domo stepped in, “Would you like anything else, sir?” “No, thank you, James, not at the moment. I’ll ring for you in some time. Bobby will be dining here tonight.” “Very well, sir. I’ll get things ready.” “Do you think this is easy for me Bobby?” said Deepak. “Do you think I’m enjoying being enslaved by this emotion? And please! Don’t even for a moment think I’m in it for the physical gratification – I don’t even want to touch her! All I want to do is worship her! Sometimes I feel I’m sullying her angelic countenance by my gaze! I feel miserable, but try as I might, there’s just no help for it!” “That’s where you’re wrong, buddy boy!” exclaimed Rohit. “There is after all remedy for this malady. History will bear testimony to its palliative effects – it soothed all – from pauper to prince; from emperor to philosopher. It’s called ‘therapeutic debauchery,’ and I, Rohit Walter Fernandez, happen to hold a doctorate in the field. It’s quite simple, really – all you’ve got to do is just relax, and let your dear friend work the magic of this exquisite science. I’m going to get in touch with my man and we’re going to line up seven beauties – one for each day of the week. Ha-ha! We’ll see if you’ll still be able to mull on this, this – what did you say her name was? Ah! Supriya Nath. We’ll see if you’ll still be singing paeans to Supriyaji after you’ve allowed yourself to be treated by Dr Fernandez! Bye, Supriya Nath! You will soon be forgotten!” “Damn it, Rohit!” shouted Deepak; Rohit was stunned, because this had been the first time in several years that he had called Rohit by his actual name. “Don’t you get it? I love this woman! Much as I would like to, I just can’t get her out of my head. And keep one more thing in mind,” he went on in the same tone, “I will not let

you defile her by taking her name.” Recovering his equanimity, and trying to assume a humorous tone – which wasn’t at all convincing – Rohit said, “Look, buddy boy, here I am, trying to line up Bar Rafaelis for you, and you refuse to get over a local Chameli...” At this comparison Deepak looked at Rohit in an openly incredulous way. He was subjected to a tussle between two very strong emotions – rage and despair. He just kept looking at Rohit, not being able to decide which emotion to give expression to. And after a few interminable minutes, despair won over. Deepak broke down in tears, silently at first, looking down at the marbled floor, trying to trace familiar patterns on it. And then all the pent up despair came gushing out in unrestrained fashion. He began to sob uncontrollably – the harder he tried to restrain himself, the more helplessly he cried. He couldn’t remember the last time he had given vent to his emotions in this manner – probably never. He covered his face with his hands in order to hide what he felt was his shame. A low howl emanated from near the bar, interrupted by the sound of ice clanking against glass. The howl turned into a mirthful fit of laughter. Rohit was barely able to control himself as he made his way from the bar to where Deepak was seated. He split some of the whisky on the floor in traversing the distance, on account of the paroxysms of laughter that went like waves through his body. “Hahaha! Could it be true...” Rohit exclaimed, “that the great Deepak Chopra is actually howling like a little girl does when her pet dies! Look at yourself! Aren’t you ashamed of your behaviour? I mean, it wasn’t enough for you to wreak the IKEA deal on account of your Romeo mode, you’ve also got to display your emasculated state with such openness. When was the last time you went to the office, you fool? Do you know the extent of the loss you’ve caused to yourself? And all for what – some old dame who’s married and has a kid, who catches your fancy? You crazy, man?” “Please stop, Bobby,” begged Deepak. “Don’t go on in the same vein. Can’t you see I’m dying from the inside?” “Oh man!” said Rohit mockingly. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you Mr Deepak Chopra, Romeo of Romeos.” And as he said this, he addressed an imaginary audience and waved his hand in a theatrical gesture toward Deepak. “‘Dying from the inside’ indeed! Where did you learn such pretty words, buddy? Don’t tell me you’ve been reading Somesh Agarwal! Hahaha! Have you, have you, really?” Somesh Agarwal was the latest sensation on the Indian literary scene on account of the unprecedented success of his books. An engineer by qualification, he began writing love stories which had managed to enrapture all ages of women – right from school girls to middle-aged housewives. He had them misty-eyed by the time they reached the blurb, and several of them had confessed to have eFiction India | november 2013

S TA F F P I C K

read his books multiple times. Perhaps his stories reminded them of their own magical moments – moments which stood out in the path traced by time, but the potential of which remained unfulfilled; the promise concealed in them condemned to remain unrealised, the reminiscing of which elicited excitement at first and invariably culminated in sorrow; the unrequited gratification which the moment carried reminding the reader of ‘things that could have been’. Somesh Agarwal was known to both Deepak and Rohit, the three of them having gone to school together. When Somesh’s books had first hit the stalls, and people were going gaga over his work, Deepak and Rohit used to read excerpts from his books and laugh at what they found to have been juvenile. Somesh’s stories had provided them with constant entertainment when they were not busy chasing money. Somesh’s popularity had scaled such unimaginable summits that even men began reading his books and confessed to having done so, unabashedly. People used to camp outside book stores on the eve of his latest release, just to ensure that they were the first few who got to lay hands on his story. Deepak continued to sob, the tears which fell off his face making insignificant stains on the floor. His eyes had been rendered red. He didn’t answer Rohit’s query if he had been guilty of having been a sissy. “You want to do her, don’t you?” Rohit went on, with a gleam in his eyes. “Do you want me to try and arrange it for you? I know her husband – what’s his name now, ah! Anand Nath! He’s a very ambitious man; I knew the day I hired him. He’d do anything to get ahead.” “No,” Deepak said, as he wiped the tears off his face, making an attempt at a jovial, devil-may-care smile, but being successful only in painting a really painful picture. “Now that I’ve been treated by doctor De Niro himself, I think I’ve gotten over her. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve known her for years! Hell, I haven’t even spoken to her once! Hahaha! And to think I told you I was in love with her! What unsurpassable stupidity!” Rohit Fernandez was a little surprised at this sudden change in Deepak’s demeanour. After all, here he was sobbing inconsolably, lamenting the fact that his love would always remain unrequited, and the next moment he changed tack and was subscribing to views which were diametrically opposite. Deepak went on, “What an ass I’ve been making of myself all this while. You remember that great debate we had the other night, when we speculated on the existence of unconditional love, and you said that it was all a pack of lies? That no matter how transcendental one may think one’s affection for the other might be, there’s always a contract involved...that one must ‘read the offer document carefully before investing’ and like a fool I kept insisting that there could be the possibility of someone evincing such eFiction India | November 2013

an affection... You were bang on target, Bobby! There is no such unconditional love; it’s all a heap of crap! I mean, I surely wouldn’t want to go out with Supriya – assuming the hypothetical possibility of her being unmarried, if she were to be badly disfigured in an acid attack! Or a car crash!” “The Gods must be praised!” shouted Rohit, with an exalted air, and his arms outstretched with face upward toward the ceiling. “Finally...finally old buddy boy has come back to his senses. Hahaha! Here’s another psychological twister for you: if you got to know that Supriya Nath had a twin sister, identical to her in every respect, you would go out with her, wouldn’t you? And in the bargain, forsake poor Supriyaji, without whom, might I remind you, just a moment ago, you said you couldn’t go on!” “Hm, Bobby, it’s very difficult to argue with you,” said Deepak, wiping away the tears from his face. “That’s a very difficult question to answer indeed!” “Difficult my foot!” retorted Rohit Fernandez. “It’s the easiest question to answer, buddy boy! And the answer is an emphatic yes! And would you like to know why? It’s because at the end of the day you’re still a man, and all you’re in it for is the action you can get! It’s got to be physical in the end! And if I were to be asked that question, I’d go in for both – twins can be great fun. Believe me, I’m speaking from experience!” “Right you are, sir! Right you are!” said Deepak Chopra. “Now, how about that ‘therapeutic debauchery’ you were planning on treating me with?” Rohit jumped up on the sofa in his excitement. He said, “I can see you’re already on your way to making a speedy recovery! Buddy boy, you just wait until tomorrow! I’m going to get things ready. I want them to be absolutely perfect. Wait till you see this one; is she a specialist, or is she a specialist!” and as he said this, he puckered his lips and kissed his fingers with a loud smack, after which he traced an imaginary figure in the air with his hands. “This calls for a drink, Mr De Niro!” said Deepak. “I’ll ring for James!” *** “Wipe those tear off your face missy Sheils, lest them wonderfully red apples be stained permanently!” said Zameer, holding Sheila close, with his right arm around her shoulder. He rubbed her right arm. They were still at the beach – their favourite stretch of land. “I don’t think these tears will ever stop, Zameer,” said Sheila, looking up at him. Their eyes remained locked for what seemed an eternity, each trying to make the moment last forever, absorbing visually as much of the other as possible, being most aware of the limited time left. Zameer gently moved the strand of silky black hair that fell across Sheila’s face and tucked it behind her ear.

S TA F F P I C K

“Everything’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” said Zameer, casting a glance filled with wonder. It was as if he were taking in his surroundings for the first time. They were sitting on an elevated rock outcrop, which through the effect of various agents of denudation over interminable years had been shaped in the form of a basket. Sheila didn’t reply to Zameer’s observational question. An involuntary spasm of grief passed over her. “So tell me something about your counterpart from that other world,” said Zameer. “I know she looks absolutely, divinely beautiful; and that she could easily be mistaken for an angel upon earth; and that all she ever needed to do was just be, because she would be perfection itself….” “Seems to me,” Sheila protested through her tears, trying to make light of her protest by forcing a smile, “As if you like her more than you do me. The compliments you’re paying her!” “Hahaha! Could it ever be possible Sheils? Could it ever?” replied Zameer. “The compliments were directed at you, really. She may resemble you in appearance, but you’re the transcendental; the essence of her being; the superior other! We are all the better of ourselves from the other world. We’re their conscience. But anyway, tell me about her, do you know her name?” “No, can’t say I do. She does like observing herself in the mirror from time to time, but she’s not obsessed like some other people that we’ve heard of, which is just as well, cause I get to spend that much more time with you,” said Sheila. “Hm. What about men...do you think she’s in a relationship?” queried Zameer. “I don’t know if she’s in a relationship or if she’s ever been in one, but once, well, the guy she was with, he wanted to do it in front of the mirror so he could watch them both while they were at it; seemed to give him immense satisfaction,” said Sheila. “Hahaha! I wonder what’s up with our counterparts from the other side!” said Zameer. “They seem always to be so obsessed with gratifying their carnal impulses. What do you think they get out of it?” “I wouldn’t know,” replied Sheila. “Your guess is as good mine. I guess it’s all about the physical being as far as they’re concerned.” “What about this chap you had to do it with, what did he have to say?” said Zameer. “Nothing really,” said Sheila. “He began by tickling me, so I had to laugh even though I didn’t want to, and then all I did was make funny noises, while he was compelled to grunt. We were locked in some weird positions for a while, and when I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, I was compelled to whine and moan because she was doing so. They moved away after they were done, so we were free to go our separate ways. Never saw the chap since.”

“Hm. Funny people these counterparts of ours. But, that’s just the way things are. There’s not much anybody can do about it,” said Zameer. They looked out onto the horizon. The sea had turned quite boisterous now, and the waves quite forceful as they rolled to the shore. Bluish grey light pervaded the entire landscape, rendering it awe inspiringly beautiful. “So, why do you think Deepak would want to end his life,” said Sheila, the tremor stealing back into her voice. She was on the verge of breaking down again. “Like I told you earlier, Sheils, I have no clear idea at all,” said Zameer. “But during one of his recent soliloquies in the mirror with me, he did happen to mention the fact that he was miserable on account of the irredeemable nature of his situation. If I remember correctly, one of the things he said was ‘What can I do, my love? I can’t attain you, and I can’t live without you! Why did I ever have to see you! Why did you have to come into my life to wreak havoc?’” “Oh! Seems to me your counterpart from the real world is madly in love with someone!” said Sheila. “What else has he spoken into the mirror?” “Well, this and that. I hadn’t really paid much attention until he spoke of that ultimatum. And he seems determined to carry it out,” said Zameer. “I too, like him, wish that he’d never laid eyes on whomever he seems to be so troubled about. We’d have had a lot more time together.” “How do you know he’s going to go through with it? How can you be so sure?” asked Sheila. “Wiser counsel may still prevail and he might after all refrain from taking that step.” “How I wish he would!” said Zameer. “How I really wish he would!” and no sooner did he finish the sentence than he vanished all of a sudden, just like that! On any other occasion, this disappearance of Zameer’s wouldn’t have perturbed Sheila in the least, for all the residents of the mirror world were quite accustomed to being called summarily, without having any inkling whatsoever, to the performance of their duties of portraying their counterparts from the real world across the mirror. But this time, being aware of what she and Zameer were talking about – his counterpart Deepak Chopra and his unfortunate decision to take his own life – she was overcome with profound despair. She just stared vacantly by her side, at the space which but a moment earlier had been occupied by her beloved Zameer. She found she couldn’t cry; there was no lachrymal response. She felt as if this great force were wrenching her apart. And then, just as suddenly as he had vanished, Zameer manifested himself before her. He seemed visibly happy. He held Sheila’s exquisitely shaped chin ever so slightly and raised it. “I think we have reason to hope,” he told her. “He seemed visibly buoyed when I just saw him. He wanted to shave, which is just as well, since I was growing quite tired of that thick stubble I was eFiction India | november 2013

S TA F F P I C K

compelled to bear.” And as he said this, he ran his palm over his freshly shaved face, and then went on,“He actually smiled and laughed as he shaved – something I haven’t seen him doing too often in the recent past. There was another man, though. He just kept flitting in and out of view. At one point he came and put his arm around my counterpart, and shook him by the neck and they got into a friendly tussle. They seemed pretty thick by the looks of it. I wonder if this other person’s got anything to do with the improvement.”

into spasms of laughter at short intervals.

“Oh really?” cried Sheila. “You mean he’s not going to be foolish enough to commit suicide? And you say it’s on account of this friend of his that this transformation has occurred?”

***

“Now, I really don’t know for sure, but his mood certainly seemed elevated,” replied Zameer. “They spoke about some party or the other that they were heading to. Also, the other man – my counterpart kept calling him Bobby – was really excited about something that he’s planned for tomorrow, though I couldn’t at all decipher what it was.” “Oh Zameer! I’m so relieved!” said Sheila. “I just hope it turns out to be true; that whatever happens, this person, Deepak – he refrains from taking that horrible step. Zameer? Zameer?” Sheila called out in alarm as Zameer yet again disappeared, but this time, having being given some succour to grasp, she wasn’t as apprehensive as she was at Zameer’s earlier disappearance a short while back. She waited with pitiable patience and anticipation. Zameer had been called to the mirror again – this time Deepak Chopra wanted to put the finishing touches to his already carefully arranged hair. Rohit Fernandez was doing some grooming of his own in the other mirror at the cupboard. “All right already, Mr De Niro! You look presentable enough!” said Deepak. “Are we going or what?” “Yup! It’s time to head out and get inebriated, buddy boy!” said Rohit. “And what a night we have ahead of us! And tomorrow – you’d better be ready for it tomorrow – your treatment begins. I’ve spoken to my man; he’s working overtime to get things ready at such short notice. But anything for my buddy boy, anything!” Rohit’s chauffeur had the car ready, waiting at the porch. And he drove them to different destinations- all the hot spots in town, where the rich and beautiful conglomerate. They revelled in their wealth – at the ease with which they could consummate their desires. But they were also left with that most terrible and unforgiving questions of all – what next? So they found new ways to amuse themselves and when they ran out of alternatives, they entered sanatoriums to get treated for depression. After a while Rohit Fernandez got so drunk that he had to be dragged out by Deepak with the aid of the chauffeur. On the way back to Deepak’s home, Rohit kept mumbling something inaudible, which he found irresistibly hilarious, for he kept breaking eFiction India | November 2013

The car pulled up at Deepak’s porch, and after having given instructions to the chauffeur to make sure that Rohit didn’t drink anymore that night, no matter how much he insisted, Deepak got off and waved him by. He stood there till he saw the lights disappear beyond the bend, and then uttered into the still night air, “Goodbye, my friend. Do forgive me if possible.” And he turned and climbed the steps to the front door.

“So I guess that’s it, Sheila,” said Zameer, trying to put up a brave face and control his wavering voice. “It’s curtains. I just want you to know that I’ve loved you with all my being. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me.” Sheila looked up at him, tears streaming down her face. Both felt almost numb with pain, and at the same time they were awake to every possible perception. The proximity of the dreaded end made them experience emotions at break neck speed. They knew the end was near, on account of the fact that Deepak – who had only been feigning gaiety to lull Rohit into believing that all was well with him, that he’d recovered completely from his juvenile infatuation with a married woman, that he was ready to put this minor disappointment behind him and start fresh – had actually never really changed his mind about Supriya Nath. He was still quite hopelessly, irredeemably in love with her. Despite Rohit’s lengthy discourse on the virtues of never getting ‘emotionally entangled’ with women, he remained faithfully devoted to that goddess of his. And throughout the evening he made pretence of subscribing to Rohit’s views, doing a convincing job of it, for the latter had not an iota of suspicion. After having seen Rohit’s chauffeur drive away after dropping him off, he climbed the steps to his front door and let himself quietly in. A resolute calmness had permeated his countenance. He went about in a clinical manner. After having taken a shower, he sat down in his study, and stared for a while at the wall before him. An innocent smile played upon his lips as he seemed lost in reverie. Apparently his thoughts pleased him. After a while, he got up and walked up to his desk and pulled out from the drawer an exquisitely ornate, bejewelled dagger. It was an heirloom that had been in his family for four generations. His great-grandfather, the story went, had been gifted this dagger by a soldier from the Ottoman army while he had served the British army during the First World War. Having spotted the grievously injured Turk, his great-grandfather ran across the trenches, thinking nothing at all of the bullet that grazed his right shoulder –all that evinced was a mere wince. He hoisted the dying man on his shoulders and ran back to his own side. The doctor at the camp shook his head straight away when he saw the injured man. A table was cleared on which he was laid as delicately as one would a newborn. Everybody around was aghast and taken aback when the Turk took out this very dagger from his inside his jacket as Deepak Chopra’s great-grandfather bent lower to be able to better discern what was being said by the

S TA F F P I C K

Turk. But the Turk turned the dagger around so the hilt was away from him – which was just as well, since one lieutenant standing by had already pulled out his service pistol. In broken English he expressed his thanks and offered the dagger as a token of gratitude to the ancestor, and passed on. Deepak pulled the dagger out of its sheath and examined the beauty of the weapon. How could something so deadly exhibit such beauty, he thought. He ran his thumb along the blade and smiled as he examined the skin – it was decorated by a red line. He got up, took off all his clothes and walked to the mirror at the dresser and examined himself. It was as if he wanted to know himself completely – to establish a connection with the self before he finally pulled the plug. He raised his right wrist, with the fist clenched tight, and was just about slash across it violently when the phone rang. He was tempted to let it go on ringing and die in due course, but then the thought struck him that it would be advisable to project things to be as normal as possible. So he reached out and answered it. It was Rohit. “Buddy boy,” his voice screamed at Rohit through the phone, “you best be getting some sleep for you’ve got to be rested for… Hahaha! You know what?” and he abruptly broke off. He was still in a drunken stupor. It was in this interim that Zameer had seen a chance to rush back to Sheila and apprise her of the imminent end. He hugged her tight and wanted just a moment longer but that wish of his was doomed to remain unfulfilled as he was summoned to the mirror, Deepak Chopra having hung up the phone with Rohit. They both stood there – Zameer and Rohit – separated by a sheet of glass coated with silver nitrate, the former compelled to ape the latter when found in such a position, and they both once again raised their wrist – Deepak his right, Zameer his left – fists clenched so hard that their knuckles turned white, and with a decisive stroke made a deep gash where but a short while back healthy prominent veins had run. Blood welled from the wound and oozed out all over the floor, but they didn’t notice it – they just kept looking at each other, at life slowly ebbing away from the other. *** Anand Nath, that ‘ambitious’ employee who worked at one of Rohit Fernandez’s establishments, devoured his wife Supriya with his eyes as he looked at her bending over to untie her shoes – she had just come in after her morning walk. She wore tight black slacks and a blue check full shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Anand always found his wife irresistible when she wore checks – he called her his chick-in-check.

“So I thought we could get some exercise. You’ve got your morning walk; what about the poor husband?” “Oh, so is that it? All that Mr Anand Nath is concerned about is his health!” said Supriya, pushing him away, feigning displeasure by evincing a pout. Anand chased her. “Oh! You know how irresistible you are in checks, don’t you?” said Anand. “Come on already! We’re running out of time!” Supriya laughed at his desperation as she led him upstairs. “Tell me one thing, dear husband,” she said, “Why do you like to do it in front of the mirror?” “I don’t know,” stammered Anand. “But it really turns me on! Oh, o look at you in the mirror while we’re at it!” Supriya giggled and pranced upstairs into their bedroom. Anand followed her in to find her standing before their big wall-to-wall mirror, looking at herself with deep concentration. *** Though Sheila had known that those precious moments were her last with Zameer – she had traced the cut that the dagger’s edge had left on Zameer’s thumb as he broke the terrible news to her – she somehow hoped against hope that Zameer’s counterpart from the real world would reconsider his decision. One moment she was overcome with despair, while the very next she allowed herself to hope – albeit just a little – that any moment now Zameer would be by her side again. She was being subjected to this alternating wave of emotions, when all of a sudden she too was summoned. Sheila found herself staring at her other self, while she felt someone steal up behind her. Hands which felt alien to her began to unbutton the blue check shirt that she’d been wearing. Then Anand’s reflection disrobed her completely and began tickling her. All she wanted to do was to collapse on to the floor and cry her heart out at having lost her soul mate – her beloved Zameer – but she was compelled to giggle and writhe, because her counterpart from the real world, Supriya Nath, giggled and writhed as her husband tickled her.

Walking up to her he put his arms around her waist and whispered in her ear, “Sohan’s gone to school, darling.” “So?” Supriya turned around and asked him, with a mischievous smile on her lips. He pulled her closer. eFiction India | november 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

A TRYST WITH VAGARY SOHNI CHAKRABARTI

Sohni Chakrabarty has been writing for as long as she can possible remember. It is perhaps the only thing that comes naturally to her and hence she uses it as her form of expression. Her style of writing is mostly introspective, whereby, she ponders over her own subjective reality. She likes to leave her words floating to let the readers interpret her work in any way they like. Her strong inclination towards existentialism is very prevalent in her work

HE RAIN KNEW no respite; it lashed mercilessly on this forest. The strong winds rattled ferociously against the trees, almost shrouding the entire forest into mystery. Everything around her was blurry, and the gritty smell of the earth mixed with drenched pine trees made her nauseous. Strange, she thought, as it is this very smell of the wet earth that made her brim with happiness. She had always loved the rains but something had changed now. Nothing seemed to bring her joy any more. She walked on, shattered or bewildered, she didn’t know. All she knew was that her heart ached – as if someone had stabbed it with a knife. The pain was excruciating as though someone was slowly twisting the sharp edge of the knife around her heart. The tyranny of emotions tore into her flesh and ravaged every inch of her being. It was like living a nightmare that was never going to end. She tried to walk as fast as she could, hoping that all of this would go away. But, we seldom escape the demons of our past – they engulf us like this storm. She wondered if this storm was any different from the turmoil she felt inside her. Yet she walked on through this rain that pierced her skin like tiny shards of glass. She did not mind it so much for it did not hurt as much as this fierce, piercing pain she felt inside her. The road was lined with pine trees standing tall and pristine in a bid to reach as close to the sun as possible. The majestic mountains that encompassed the forest were now smothered by

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

the rain. This road was desolate much like her life, she thought. Not a soul in sight, no one she could reach out to. The forest looked very bleak with thick black clouds that blotted out the sun. The darkness of her life had consumed this forest – she thought, not a ray of hope. Everything around her stood obscured as if something had just sucked the life out of this forest. She remembered the lush greenery of her village and the cherry trees that were left pregnant by the spring. How she loved the spring! Her life once was just like spring time – warm, radiant and vibrant. She never realised that her life could ever transform into a cold, blistering winter in an impulse of a moment. There was no point in thinking of the past now – nothing was going to change. There was no way that she could retrace her steps, back to the robust river that cut through the lush greens of her village. Nothing could take her back into the arms of her mother who sang her lullabies and told her stories of kings and queens as a child. She was never going to be able to go picking fruits with her sister in the heights of the summer. No matter how much she missed lying on the soft green grass by the riverside, dreaming of a beautiful tomorrow, she was never going to get them back. She thought of Adrian and how beautifully he sang her love songs on those quiet nights on the hill. She relived the moments of her first kiss and how she felt ripples of sensation cruising down her body. She never cared

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

so much about him, she just enjoyed the attention. After all, he was the first boy who took notice of her like that and claimed to love her. And how she was fascinated with the idea of being in love with someone! But none of that mattered anymore; nothing could be that wonderful ever again.

I must have imagined it... who would call out to me in this lonely forest? The voice called out to her again. She looked around, perplexed; she could not fathom what was happening to her. “Where are you going, Elena?” the voice asked her. “I don’t know!” Elena replied. “What brought you here?” she asked. “I don’t know, I was walking through the forest and reached here.” Her thoughts began to wander once again and she looked ahead at the mountains,

listlessly. “Tell me your story, Elena.” “Why do you want to know my story? How does it even matter?” Elena stammered as she spoke, trying to fight back her tears. “Perhaps it doesn’t matter but I still want to know.” This was the first time in months or maybe even years, someone had shown interest in her. Someone wanted to know her story and how she ended up here. For others she was just a listless vagabond, a destitute, a gypsy who didn’t belong to any place or any person. And thus Elena began her story… *** “I met a magician, not so long ago. He had arrived with a troupe of gypsies to our village. I was never really very religious or spiritual and did not really have much interest in occult or magic. However, I went to see his show since all my friends were going. I was drawn to him from the very first time I set my eyes on him. It was like

Photo Courtesy: Social Wallpapering

She noticed a tree that had fallen – perhaps defeated by the magnitude of the storm. She quickly moved towards it and sat down. She could not take it any longer; she just wanted her mind to stop. The storm was over and it wasn’t raining all that hard now but the storm inside her refused to recede. She started crying inconsolably – distraught. What have I done? How could I have been so stupid? she thought. Something deep inside told her that this pain was never going to cease; it shall always remain no matter how hard she tried. Her mind raced back and forth and yet she remained clueless. Life’s doors seemed to have shut on her and she felt as though she was merely drifting into a different realm. She looked up and noticed that the clouds had cleared just a little. She caught a glimpse of the beautiful snow-capped mountains at a distance and wondered how these mountains

basked in sheer timelessness. “Time is the greatest curse of mankind” – she thought. It is time alone that has the power to snatch a moment’s magic and replace it with a lifetime of pain. She was lost in thoughts when she suddenly heard a voice call out to her: Elena! She looked around but could not see any one. It was the voice of a woman and the tone was gentle and reassuring.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

some magnetic pull that drew me to him without me even realising what was happening. There was something about his eyes – a delirious sort of power that I had never seen before. I just couldn’t stop thinking about him even after I went home. I went again for his show the next evening and continued going every single evening that week. I was intoxicated by his performances; he did things that I thought were only possible in dreams. I was spellbound as if this was the only thing in this world that was worth living for. After a week, when the gypsies were ready to leave, I chased after them. I needed to meet the magician and tell him how he had moved me. When I walked up to him he said, ‘Come with me and I shall show you what dreams are made of.’ It was almost as if he already knew why I had come to see him. And thus, I left everything I knew, in search of an enchanting new world.

of life that was dictated to us by others. We were never told to believe in ourselves. We were never taught that there is a soul beyond this body. His words impacted me in ways that I cannot even describe and yet I did not know how to find my soul. I looked for answers through him, hoping that one day I too will hear the call of my soul. And then one day he disappeared, leaving behind only a trail of words and fragmentary wisdom. I have been looking for him since…

I followed my magician around like a lost little girl everywhere he went. Days, months, years passed by travelling to faraway lands with the gypsies. This had become my life and I began to enjoy this nomadic existence and became rootless more than I had ever imagined. Every day was a brand new adventure – every moment, unpredictable. I don’t know what captivated me so much about the magician; all I knew was that this was the only thing that mattered and nothing else. He taught me that we could transform anything that we liked into something else. He said, ‘Magic is not done with trickery; it is done from the soul. If you believe that you have the power to alter everything around you, you will soon see the change. Everything is in your mind.’ These were things that nobody had ever told me. In my village we were all used to a way

“Why do you think this magician had so much of a hold on you?” the voice asked gently.

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

*** She felt exhausted after she had finished and a whole vortex of emotions surged over her. She started crying again in despair and slowly this dull, wearisome pain started taking over. She was empty – there was a huge void deep inside her that she couldn’t fill.

“I don’t know; all I know is that I just couldn’t help myself. I wish I wasn’t so stupid. I wish I never left. Now I feel like he was just a mere figment of my imagination, he wasn’t real. Everything feels like a dream right now – I don’t know what is true and what is not anymore.” “Well then you have a powerful imagination, I must say! Look deep within you – you will find your answers.” There was a sudden silence, almost as if the entire forest was still, frozen in that moment. Who was this voice and what was she asking of me, she wondered. She

pondered over everything that happened, trying to piece everything together. Look within you, the voice had told her but how could she ever find answers in a place that is left barren. And yet she tried, for she realised that she had nothing to lose any more. It had stopped raining now, she noticed. The sky had cleared up and streams of light poured in through the forest. The leaves of the trees glistened under the rays of the sun. Much like rays of hope, she thought. She sat for hours admiring the mountains and the forest – all at once everything around her was thriving with life. And then she realised, what the magician had said to her once: it is all in the mind. She understood that only she could control her happiness and her pain. Only she had the power to feel or believe in someone or something. No magician could make her believe in something that she was not ready for. She knew now that she had found her answers – just as the voice had told her. The sunshine drifted in through the windows. The bunch of roses by the window sill shimmered joyously in the light. It was already morning, I noticed. The fresh of the morning air permeated through the room. I felt good, perhaps, after a long time. For a while, I had sunk deep into an abyss. It seemed all too hard, to put into words what would mask the grotesque, in order to create something ethereal. After all, art must be beautiful at any cost! The writing desk was scattered with papers with scribbles on them and a mug of coffee gone cold. My diary lay open with a half written poem as I mused over my thoughts in an exhilarating stupor. I reminisced over the journey I had just taken in my mind and smiled. Maybe now, I have yet another story to tell.

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

JOBA’S JOURNEY ANDY PAULA

Anindita Sarkar writes under the pseudonym Andy Paula. She is a voracious reader, an ardent thinker and an avid blogger. A corporate trainer by profession, her power and passion of gambling with words drove her to write her first novel Love’s Labor.

“

MA, GIVE HIM money!”

“How many people do I give to? Give to one, ten others come by!”

“No, GIVE! Give this one at least.” And Mother yet again took out her purse to give the beggar woman a coin. She was a single parent, and was prudent with money. Her husband had died of a cardiac arrest last summer and it was left to her to raise their three children. Three fatherless teenagers under one roof! the world clucked in sympathy. One unsuspecting moment had conferred their flourishing home a broken epithet. She collected the pieces with a stoic dignity and went about giving her children the best. Her boisterous boys mellowed overnight and her daughter displayed a maturity beyond her years. Mother only hoped Joba had cried more openly at her father’s death. She wore a composed air like all was under control, that no storm had blown over their head and taken the roof with it. “My bag is jangling with change, let’s hope some more beggars come by,” Mother smiled. “Are you making fun of me?” “Joba phool, do I ever do that, darling?” Joba smiled and her eyes lit up. “I love Joba phool.” She looked at Mother. She

had grown as tall as her. “Did I tell you about Collin, the exchange student from Nebraska?” “Yes, that he’ll stay in India and finish his Class XII with you all.” “Collin asked me what my name meant, I told him China Rose, the flower. And in Bio practicals when we were dissecting a china rose he said, ‘Joba that’s you under the scalpel!’” Mother laughed. These were moments Joba lived for. *** After the Class 12 boards, her classmates went away to colleges in different cities and Joba was left alone. Mother insisted she go to Banasthali Vidyapeeth and stay in the hostel. She could complete her B.Sc., learn horse-riding, participate in college activities and come back as a confident graduate. “I want to stay at home and do my BSc,” she declared. Something about this child made further discussion unnecessary. She had inherited her father’s resoluteness. So when the rest of her batch saw the world, Joba stayed in her cocoon. Rocco and Mithun, her brothers, one and two years her senior, were at home too, completing their education. The family followed an unspoken ethic of never leaving Mother

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

alone. Baba had bonded them in death. When her peers lamented about their empty nest, Ma sent a silent prayer about her nearfull house. Her children were her anchor, and while her husband was irreplaceable, she was grateful for what was still hers. “Ma, I want to be a research scholar,” Joba told her family in the second year of college. “I thought you wanted a career, Joba?” “I’ll get a good stipend during my research years, don’t worry,” she assured. “I’m not worried about money,” Ma was emphatic. “Just voicing what you’d always said you wanted.” “Oh, Ma! Joba came and hugged mother. Demonstrations of affection were rare for her. Ma held her back tightly, her eyes moist. “Do whatever makes you happy, darling.” “I’m taking up microbiology and my research topic is decided. You remember Collin?” Mother nodded. “He’s helped me with it, Ma, he’s taking up a related topic in the US and if our research gets patented, nothing like it. But that’s only after I complete my final year here in India.” Mother was jolted when she heard the last sentence. She had almost thought her children would stay home forever. And for a

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

girl who did not want to leave her side to go to another town, the mention of another country spoken decisively reminded Mother of a palpable void. Not the one to clip her children’s wings, she put up a brave façade and urged Joba to tell her more. The daughter confided in her closest aide about her dreams, her career and her fears. “We’ll talk on Skype every day, Ma. You’ll not feel that I’m away. When Collin was in India, he spoke to his parents daily. ” *** It was for a year that Joba was in the US. She had been well-received at the university and her professors declared her a promising student. Having a friend there helped her adjust faster and his friends became hers. Mother’s only fear was a well-guarded secret, one that she did not share even with her children. Such is the fear of ridicule. “Ma, please, she’s gone there to study, don’t you trust her?” Rocco said, when Ma wondered who the other friends were, because Collin was the one she had heard Joba talk about. “And you are asking this for the third time this week!” These were times a wife needed her husband the most. Who else could she talk to about her fears, about her concerns for her children, about how she wanted them to be close to her and yet be independent? Such paradoxes from a mother were not acceptable. For the children, she was a brave,

sorted-out woman who would stand by them throughout their life. Only with a husband could she discuss her insecurities and be pacified in his warm embrace. “Hello, Joba, can you hear me?” Despite the time zones, she called mother at a time that suited the latter. “Yes, Ma. Can you?” “Yes. You sound low, are you alright?” “Yes, Ma, just a little tired. I’ve been feeling nauseous since this morning. ” Mother froze. Early morning nausea? This was a nightmare. Just then there was a call for alms from outside and Mother excused herself. “How many people will you give money to? Give to one and ten more will come,” Joba said from her research scholar’s studio apartment. “I’ll give to just this one and come back in a minute.” She came back to see Joba reclining on her couch, looking pale. “Joba, are you…err… what exactly are you feeling?” “Over-ate at the party last night, I guess. Collin and his partner, David, moved in together so they threw a party for friends. I’ll talk to you later, Ma, I feel like puking...”

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

COMPLIMENTARY COCKTAILS SAYANTAN GHOSH

Sayantan Ghosh was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India in 1986 and studied Economics at the University of Calcutta. He also has a management degree in marketing and has worked in the consumer electronics and real estate markets in India. He is an avid traveler, photographer and a writer who believes in living out of a suitcase. He currently lives in New Delhi and works as an editor for a prestigious publishing house and is also working on his first book.

T WAS THEIR first time on a holiday together. Several months of contemplations and many rounds of planning, pre-planning and post-planning later the two extremely-busy-with-their-jobs lovers finally managed to sneak out of New Delhi for a weekend rendezvous. She wanted the hills; she had already handpicked the three cardigans she would wear on their three-day stay at Kasauli. But Kasauli was a seven-hour drive and he wasn’t in the mood to spend so much time on the road. Besides, the roads were in a terrible condition after the landslide disaster that had happened only a couple of months earlier. He thought it wouldn’t be safe. Safety was the first thing on his mind every time he went on a trip with someone other than himself; even as a child, with his parents around, he would always make sure they were wearing their seatbelts when they checked into their family car. She was Reiki…a painter; art school, half-a-dozen internships and sixteen drawing awards later, she was planning her own big soloexhibition at the India Habitat Centre in early October. He was a professor, a TamBrahm who had grown up in the comforts of his Tamil Nadu household and under the strict vigilance of his IAS father. He had a name but in the past seven years in Delhi, not one person had been able to pronounce it right. He was fifteen and a half when he had decided that he wanted to grow old to become a teacher, which he did. Now he

was an assistant lecturer at one of the lesserknown Delhi University colleges. Hence, the name. Two contemporary, educated people who believed in the importance of companionship over love, in the modern globalised environment that made up their lives; different cities, different people, different food, they had grown up as distinctly differently from each other as two people possibly could. And it was a matter of chance that they happened to meet, nothing fancy – one of those everyday “common friend” encounters at a local city pub. When one morning he woke up in his apartment to find her making breakfast wearing his oversized shirt, he had thrown the question at her. She was a woman after all, and women often get involved without knowing or even wanting to. “We are not thinking of a future, are we?” She had casually looked up as she poured the fresh orange juice in two porcelain glasses with her characteristic effervescent smile in place and said, “We are each other’s convenience, Prof. Respite, at best; nothing more or less. This shirt looks better on you any way.” Three hours of air-conditioned blasts and manmade scenery later, they entered Agra, the city of the royals. She was a person as unplanned as winter rains. It was only two

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

hours before leaving town that the professor was alerted that they were going off for the weekend. He usually never refused her. She was probably the only person in his life he didn’t like to say no to. Her overall haphazardness allowed his extreme sense of order to stay relevant in some way. There were hardly any words spoken during the entire drive. He had been busy worrying all day if finding a decent place to stay on an extended holiday at such a popular destination would be easy. She had been busy humming her Joni Mitchell. They finally broke into an argument when even checking every possible hotel in the most populated areas around the Taj proved futile. The sun burnt down on them with the intention of melting their insides, creating a paste of the liver, the intestines and all the digestive and hormonal juices that may have been any practiced chef ’s dark fantasy. Then a young boy in a scruffy shirt who was sitting at the other end of the road on a taanga – the local horse-carriage that still worked as a medium of transport here – watching them carefully, ran up to them and handed them a dirty yellow piece of paper, then quickly walked away and disappeared into the crowd. It was the advertisement pamphlet of a new luxury hotel that had recently opened its gates for business. All the facilities that were on offer had been listed in nicely bulleted letters. A lot of blah really, she thought. But what caught her attention instantly were the two words in a font unknown to her that shone on the bottom left corner of the paper in bright crimson… Complimentary Cocktails. He found it shady and was about to throw it in the bin next to them on the street, when she said she wanted to stay there. He looked at her with the intention of saying something but realised that he would only be fighting a losing battle. “What’s the name of the place again?” she asked as they got back inside their car. “Taj Watching”, he replied, with disapproval of the absurd name evident on his face. And hers simply screamed, free booze! As soon as he entered the little lobby he eFiction India | October November2013 2013

felt a certain stillness inside his gut; as if something had stopped functioning in there, something relevant and important. As if it was traded off for something that the place could have done without. It was small but a beautifully designed hotel with stairs that looked like mazes and a brightly lit chandelier that adorned the waiting area. She guffawed when they were welcomed with garlands. He felt uncomfortable when he noticed that they had the same smile pasted on all their faces, like parts of the same mechanical design that has been disjointed for sadistic pleasures.

on their queen-size bed festooned with the costliest satin she could imagine. He was standing by the window and watching the sleeping city in the neon lights. The Taj lay somewhere in the distance, he thought to himself; a monument that did not belong to the one who built it any longer. Each person in the city owned it, they were all shareholders to that bejewelled spectacle of wonder; one that not only provided them with popularity and employment for all these years, but also a sense of ownership and pride. It was never just the Taj for any of them, it was always humara Taj.

All of that day and the next, they did their regular rounds around Agra. Like every other tourist they, of course, visited the Taj and the adjacent Agra Fort and absorbed more history in those five hours than either of them had in their combined hours of schooling; the mystic, the romance, the deaths, the architecture, the spirituality and the all-encompassing violence ingrained in each piece of stone that was laid around the place. The quintessential lunches at Moti Mahal, the vintage carriage rides wounding the tired city streets, the usual unnecessary banter with the young guides who literally latched themselves onto the tourists; things seemed all in place. But that’s how most things in life are. Just when you think they are in place because you have thought out everything in your mind and laid down your plan to the minutest detail, you tend to miss the little mistakes that were always there right in front of your eyes… the dangers of the obvious.

Then he turned around and looked at Reiki. He had always wondered why such an attractive young woman had decided to be with him. He was not a bad-looking fellow himself, but didn’t stand a chance with her in a fair competition. She was wearing a slip that was bright red in colour and nothing but her laced panties underneath. The light that pierced through the curtains by the window shone on her velvety white legs. She had lost one of her earrings somewhere possibly when she angrily fought back when he said that jazz was the best form of music ever invented. Some people talk in their sleep. Reiki used to sing. Her soft luscious lips trembled at instances, perhaps she was humming something in her daze. She had burdened them with a shade of sharp red lipstick. He recalled how he had seen the colour red a lot since coming here — the colour of love, lust, desire and blood.

They were to leave the next afternoon and reach Delhi by evening. They were tired but they had bought freshly baked pastries from a neighbourhood bakery that promised for a perfect ending to the day. As he unlocked the door and switched on the lights, she noticed the sparkling flute glasses that were cautiously laid down on their dining table. The long stem of the glass like the tail of a venomous serpent, the cup-like saucers that were used to deliver poison to ancient prisoners, and the glowing green bottle that held the ravenous juice of alcohol. Complimentary cocktails. After gulping down the major share of the contents of the bottle she retired peacefully

He felt his erection. Three strokes, at best four before he could bathe her in cum. She was a dream in bed. When they had just started going out, one of his friends had confessed during a game of Truth that he wanted to make Reiki strip in front of all his friends, from her hairband down to the high heels he imagined her wearing, and then when each of them were erect and wanted to have a go at her he would drag her to the next room and enter her so hard that her screams could be heard by everyone. He kept his eyes on the contours of her swiveling body as he undressed himself slowly. Then he made his way into her arms without waking her up. As her warm skin touched his stiff shaft he could bear

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

the pain no longer. Like a flesh-eating carnivore on the prowl he ripped her top off and began sucking her left nipple with force. She moaned a little. He wanted her to respond so he pressed her other tit with all the power that he could derive out of his fist. She felt the pain as the breast turned red and wobbled with both ache and excitement. Then he entered her and eased her soul with pleasure. He had never made love as satisfying with her in the past even when she had been in her complete senses. So does the sleeping body energise the internal passion further by adding the reticent fuel that would otherwise be wasted in running her limbs? As he splashed water on his face from the sink and looked at his own reflection in the mirror he saw the tinge of a smile on his face, one of victory and one-upmanship. The headlines in his patriarchal brain read ‘Brainy boring professor brings the free-spirit to her knees, yet again’. Everything had gone according to plan. He was charged up for another week of brushing up on history with his students at the university. He knew this woman was not for keeps and that some day she would leave him and move on. But he had willingly taken this chance and left the job of separating them to the universe. That made it even more exciting as they both lived each moment with each other like it was their last. He turned off the bathroom light and walked out. But remembered that he had left his wristwatch inside. So he instantly turned around and opened the door again, not switching the bulb back on this time; he knew exactly where the watch was kept and the amount of light that entered from the lamp in the room was sufficient for him to find it. It was then, in the darkness that he saw the camera, hidden vigilantly on top of the shower-head. Its smooth steel body was what reflected the thin beam of radiance back into his eyes. The professor rushed back inside the room to check if there were more placed around the room… their room. He found six. Bed, wardrobe, windowseal, centre-table, the mirror and the ceiling fan. Everything they had done in the last

three days had been filmed. Each of their private moments, the random kisses they exchanged, the petite quarrels, the uncertainties, the debates, the sex. The hotel had promised they would look after them. They had kept their word.

The manager smiled at him again. One of the staff members brought him a lime soda and kept it in front of him on the table.

For a few seconds his head started spinning wildly, his body became colder than dead fish at the market; shame, rage and disbelief filled the inside of his heart. The professor decided not to wake her up. He put on his jacket, pocketed the room keys and left for the reception. Before that, he covered Reiki with a blanket and destroyed the camera that had looked right at her all this while. As he walked down the spiraling staircase, he saw the manager with his characteristic smile in place, waiting for him with three of his staff members.

“I am going to kill you, you bastard. All of you.”

“We saw what you did to that camera, sir. These are expensive equipments we have here, you could have just rung the bell and informed us,” were his words. They sat down at the now-shut restaurant on the southern end of the ground floor. “You know I can sue you for this, right?” “Do you love her?” The professor was startled hearing that question come out of the manager’s filthy mouth. “What the fuck are you talking about?” “You two aren’t married, are you? I know you are not. So the important question here is do you love her? Do you intend to marry her sometime in the near future?” “How does that even…” “I need a yes or a no answer, Mr Iyer. Do you?” “I don’t know,” he was fuming with wrath but he was used to years of staying calm. “Yes or no, Mr Iyer? We don’t have all night.” “NO,” he screamed.

“Well then,” said the manager. “That settles it.”

“That you cannot, sir. There are too many of us and you are too weak in comparison. Besides that won’t be the sensible thing to do. The truth is we have everything on tape. There’s an old German saying, the devil is in the detail. We follow that down to the last word, Mr Iyer. And like an arrow out of its quiver, we can’t undo it anymore. In case you are thinking of getting hold of the tapes and destroying them, then I can tell you that they are lying right there in the drawer of the reception table. “But that too shall be an exercise in futility because all your recordings, including the one that ended about thirty minutes ago have been sent online to our partners in Singapore. They handle the distribution part of the business while we are majorly responsible for production. So the wiser thing for you to do right now is to get back inside your room and go off to sleep. I promise you, no more filming shall take place in room number 243 till the time you check-out. “I could offer you some cash but you don’t look the kind in need or one who’ll accept such gestures wholeheartedly. Instead I shall serve you with complimentary breakfast and lunch tomorrow and a three-days-twonights package at our hotel in Singapore about which I have already mentioned. They only distribute, so you can stay there without any trouble. You’d also be happy to know that this video is only meant for the South American market, hence chances of anyone familiar to you coming across it is extremely low. And you are not marrying her anyway. So just find another girl and be slightly more cautious the next time. It’s that simple, Mr Iyer. Now tell me, what do you have to say?” The professor was shaken from within. The toughest and rowdiest of his students could eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

never even force him to twitch an eyebrow but tonight he was flustered, the new headlines inside his head read ‘Nerdy professor at the receiving end, learning new lessons one at a time’.

say a thing. He parked the car outside the hotel exactly where it had been parked for the past three days. He was glad he was back in time and someone else had not taken his place as yet. The professor got out and went to the back of the car. From his set of equipHe somehow pulled himself together and ment he chose the spanner and asked Reiki walked back to the room. As he opened the to wait in the car. door he saw her from a distance. She was awake now and smiled reassuringly at him There was a look of surprise and anguish on and asked him to come closer. He did. She her face now and on another day she would planted a peck on his face. He said, “Would have simply bullied him into getting back you agree without asking any questions, if I in the car. But today was different. For the made a request?” first time in all these years he made her feel like a woman who needed care, protection She nodded. She was still smiling. The and nurturing. And as much as she hated blanket was gone, she was sitting in the it otherwise, she felt safe in that moment. nude. He trusted them. They were not supposed to film anymore. Then she saw him walking inside the hotel, pushing the revolving glass door on his way “Let’s pack and leave, right now.” in with a jolt. The staff member who had brought him that unfinished glass of lime She didn’t hesitate even for a moment. She water noticed the spanner first. He walked had committed to it before he had even said up to the professor and tried asking him to it, and she knew she would stand by it. So back off. He landed on the ground in less why waste time? Also, it was the kind of than two seconds with a thump. His head action that suited her randomness. was split open from the middle, the colour of the floor around where he fell changed They were about twenty kilometers away too quickly. Then a few more charged in. from the city on the highway when she Someone hit the professor with a rod but first said something since he had made that he wasn’t the same man anymore. He was request. all of five feet and eight inches but suddenly in front of all their eyes he became a “I don’t know what it is, but I see you are mammoth, like a giant straight out of the nervous. Prof, if something is bothering you fables we have grown up listening to. then let it be. And if you think someone can scare you then remember I chose you out of The manager didn’t try leaving his seat at all the doctors and the sportsmen and the the reception. He was still smiling. soldiers who vied for my undue attention. I wouldn’t have if I didn’t believe in your The professor pulled the teak wood lid of courage. You have lived your life underes- the reception table upwards and entered timating yourself, like an unsung hero. But the arena. The manager said, “What do you a hero nonetheless. My hero. And you can want?” kick anybody’s ass, any given day. Yo!” she lovingly punched him on his shoulder. The professor did not say a word. The first blow landed on his neck. It broke instantly The tears had left a bitter taste in his mouth. and the manager fell on the shiny white But it felt sweet as the tires of his blue sedan marble. Then the professor opened the made a deafening screeching sound on the drawer and took out all the tapes that he empty highway ground as it turned itself found there, not just his own. They were around at over a hundred miles an hour. all numbered with the room numbers of the And then he pressed the gas. She still didn’t guests they had filmed. Along with the tapes

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

he found a pair of original Fiskars scissors. He took it out and forced the manager to open his mouth with his left hand. He was turning blue but he could still feel pain. Then the professor diligently placed the cold metal blade on his tiny tongue and slashed it with finesse. One of the guests on the first floor indistinctly heard a man scream, but he was too tired to get up so he didn’t bother. Every time any of the professor’s work got published, he would always keep a cut-out of the same and file them. He liked going back to them, muse over and reminisce. This time he kept the severed tongue inside the pocket of his long jacket. Then he threw the tapes on the ground and lit them on fire. The blaze from the flames reflected on the grand chandelier above his head and lit up the whole place. Then he slowly walked out and didn’t look back. Reiki was standing outside the car and waiting for him. There was a hint of chill in the air. “Get back in the car,” he said. She did. “We are going back home, right, Professor?” He looked at her and replied, “Yes, but don’t unpack as yet.” “Why, Professor? Are we going somewhere again?” “Yes”, he said. “Where?” He took out the crumpled card of the hotel from his purse, the one that he had received on his arrival, where the contact information of all the hotels in different countries under the same owner were listed at the back, and replied with a grin, “Singapore.”

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

A RENDEZVOUS WITH THE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS PRIYAA TRIPPAYAR

Priyaa Trippayar is a software engineer who has harboured a long-term relationship with writing. Her stories draw their essence from her experiences in life and social issues.

HE LAST TIME we spotted the rupee, she looked really thin and aggravated. We decided to ask her a few things about her well being and what she thinks about her sudden downfall.

DO YOU THINK IT IS FAIR THAT YOU HAVE TUMBLED DOWN THE CURRENCY LADDER? WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE REASON BEHIND THIS ORDEAL AND CHASE TO THE BOTTOM? There is nothing fair about economics. There is only wisdom and ignorance that can make my value fluctuate. Well, there are a couple of reasons behind the atrocities done to me, and they are done at different levels. Let me start with the global foremost one: a lot of money has been converted into dollars and locked up in Swiss banks. If this money was circulated in the Indian market, it would have given rise to so much economic generation. People believe that charity begins at home, but they do not realise that their home is only a part of the bigger picture. When the world collapses, their home will, as well. DO YOU THINK THAT THE MASSIVE WORK OF THE ECONOMIC GIANT – THE IT INDUSTRY – CAN SAVE YOU A PLACE A LITTLE HIGHER THAN WHAT YOU HAVE NOW? Well, what I told you about the global foremost reason penetrates down to the citizen level in a different way. The professionals of the IT industry earn a sufficient amount beyond what they need to make ends meet. But what goes wrong is their ignorance in spending the excess money. Much of the money is wasted on enjoyment, booze, pizzas, burgers, buying cars and phones, etc. which is not wrong, but my position would have been much better off, had this money gone into the market as investments, or even fixed deposits. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THOSE WHO IMPERSONATE YOU – THE BODY DOUBLES? It is sad that there is so much of fake note in the market as of now. I heard that the underworld don Dawood Ibrahim injected a lot of fake currency into the economy, so foreign investors fear to invest here.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

F I COTRI IOE N ST S

But, there is one more dimension to the fake note topic that you brought up. A couple of people mar my face by writing silly jokes or love letters on notes. You wouldn’t believe, because of this, the government loses 2,638 crores approximately each year as they cannot be used for STD transactions. Again, that affects my worth. DO YOU THINK THAT THE FOOD SECURITY BILL IS GOING TO ASSUAGE THE HARM DONE TO YOU? I only hope so and I’m keeping my fingers crossed at the moment. But honestly speaking, I don’t think so. There are two aspects to this. First of all it will raise government spending on food subsidies to about 1.2% of GDP per year from an estimated current 0.8%, exacerbating the government’s weak finances. This will in turn affect the economy as a whole. Another thing is that there may be people faking their status to avail the scheme. This may have detrimental effects on the economy. I however think that the whole notion behind the Food Security Bill is noble, as it aims at providing food to the people, and I hope that it is not misused. WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT? (chuckles) Well, what can I say? The 3G scam and the coal scam are the first few things that come to my mind, as they have acted as a tumour and poisoned the last ounce of healthy blood in me. However, the present government has three of the best economists in India and I am happy that now it is trying hard to reinstate my former position. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT BRIBES? Hmm, I know that it is impossible to get anything done without paying bribes these days as life has become a struggle. But one thing that people can do is avoid giving and taking bribes as far as possible. IT WAS GREAT MEETING WITH YOU AND REALLY NICE OF YOU TO SHARE YOUR OPINIONS WITH US. BUT LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST, ARE THERE ANY WORDS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE INDIAN CITIZENS? (nods) Of course, there are a lot of requests that I have for them. My position is in their hands. Firstly, invest and spend wisely. Let your money circulate in the market and generate economy. Secondly, use Facebook and Twitter for your silly jokes. Please don’t write on notes. Thirdly, please vote for the right government, these scams have taken the life out of me. Fourthly, please pay your taxes and don’t save your money as black. Though you may save now, you will be affected in the long run. Fifthly, avoid paying or taking bribes and do not fake your financial status to avail schemes like the ones in the Food Security Bill. These little drops of water make a mighty ocean and would definitely help me and, of course, you! I don’t want to rely any longer on the L’Oreal ad to hear that I’m worth it!

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

POETRY

WE ARE WEAVERS STHITAPRAGYA RAY

There are strings that run through my mind and yours Amidst the routine cacophony of the suburban trains, as I see half your face through a sweaty crowd At the end of a long and tiring journey. These strings, they are made of sorrow, of joy and love and our dreams and pain. They stretch through time; weaving through the bright blue winter afternoons of my childhood that smell like orange peels And the dreary orange of the halogen lamp in purple daybreak beside a train-shed in absolute solitude. They run through our minds and twist and turn and weave our reality. They weave the spirit of my mother into the sea water that washes my feet and washes up the bodies of broken turtles to the shore where they were born a hundred years ago staring at the saffron moon.

They weave and weave and make up the clumsy vibrating fabric of human reality; The idea of eternal love, eternal life, monuments and empires and when all fails, They weave little red flowers on top of our rotting carcasses that we nourish in death and we live in them and their children for thousands of years.[1] And in death the strings are torn away in clusters out of the fabric in one violent sweep. In birth, they flow out again diverging from a mind like a fresh mountain spring running wild through the woods.

[1] Inspired by and closely resembles an idea in the works of Edvard Munch.

Sthitapragya Ray is a 20-year-old physics student from Kolkata. He is currently studying in Madras Christian College. He loves photography, travelling and poetry. eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

POETRY

OPIUM

THE SOUND OF TOMORROW

SOHNI CHAKRABARTI

Free me – From that touch, That melts my reasons. Free me – From that moment, That dissolves my reality. Free me – From that desire, That feasts on this soul. Free me – From that love, That chains my thought. Free me – From that dream, That tells me of magic. Free me – From that you, That holds me back. Free me – From this pain, That cages my spirit. So, free me – For I want to live again.

Sohni Chakrabarty has been writing for as long as she can possibly remember. It is perhaps the only thing that comes naturally to her and hence she uses it as her form of expression. Her style of writing is mostly introspective, whereby, she ponders over her own subjective reality. She likes to leave her words floating to let the readers interpret her work in any way they like. Her strong inclination towards existentialism is very prevalent in her work. eFiction India | October November2013 2013

SHEIKHA A

Me and myself walking up the road, It was a night so chilly and old, The stars in the sky, shiny and bright, Fell to the earth as rain at twilight. The time was not perfect unquiet, Not a cricket or owl in near sight, Sprinkled softly they unto my eyes, The moon obscured and night shied. An infant close by sweetly asleep, And the elves from trees did creep, Fairy wands and melodies came alive, Fire-flies in clusters began to arrive. Pranced, hopped; they made merry, The night turned deep and feet weary, Gay was the night, the stars falling, Mystic night had the wind fondling. Aside I stood, as the rain fell heavy, Wonder struck by nature’s bounty, Flitted elves and fairies into tiny abodes, The revelry dispersed as storms arose.

Sheikha A is a writer based in Pakistan. She loves to write and voice her opinion. Nothing more, nothing less.

POETRY

A THOUSAND EYES SIDDHARTH YADAV

I take the stage, shuffle my papers One, two, three, I look at the crowd Eyes, a thousand eyes Crawling on my skin Glaring deep inside Hostile, hurting me Frozen in fear, I stand The papers clutched tight In my hands Losing the will to stand I shudder and shake As they clutch at my Mind and heart Draining all my strength Steely black eyes right ahead Soften just a touch Forming a faint Whisper of a smile

I catch myself as I fall Rise back up and see All the eyes watching me Not in hate but in curiosity And I tell myself They wish to know What I know, waiting For my words As I speak, the eyes They show wonder And faces start to form Smiling as I conquer my demons

Siddharth Yadav is an MBA student studying in Dubai and writing is his hobby. eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

PP OO EE TT RR YY

MY GOAL SURBHI THUKRAL

A deserted alley, dressed in rusty gold, echoed the sound of hope. A few weeks passed, the sky began turning a greenish-grey upon the sight of my shattering faith. No, the proud trees asserted, along with the sun and moon, whenever the thoughts of retreat raced with my blackened feet. Tonight, such bliss embraces my soul; behold, the promised goal is disclosed, drenched in shades of gold, perched upon a writing desk at the far end. “This is my destiny,” I cry in disbelief and breathe in the reality of dreams that eluded me for what seemed an eternity. A rainbow of thoughts emerge upon the canvas of blazed up hope. This journey, I smile, will now be known to other wandering souls. I walk towards my goal.

Surbhi Thukral is a marketing professional turned writer. She has worked with corporations in India and the UK. After gaining success in business writing, she is determined to make a mark in the field of fiction writing. She has become a compulsive writer who dedicates many hours a day to fulfil her passion for creative writing. She holds a Masters in Business and Management from the University of Strathclyde, UK. Her work has been published in the Harvests of New Millennium, EWR: Short Stories, Taj Mahal Review, A World Rediscovered (An Anthology of Contemporary Verse), and eFiction India. eFiction India | October November2013 2013

BOTTLED UP BAYAAR SHARMA

The window of the mind Witnessed the frothy glitter Of waves crashing in on the shore. Breeze forced its shutters Too close, blinded from further hope. Hard luck, I told myself Trying to stop my eyes from leaking. My confidante, the breeze, Its receptionist reeking. What the eyes sought Did never appear My chance to prance lost too. The others would have it, I wouldn’t. The fact weighed in, drowned me deeper. Rage for nothing bottled up and died, unheard.

Bayaar Sharma is a student of literature at the Women’s Christian College, Chennai. She is an active participant in the local theatre and a trained Bharatnatyam dancer. She stumbled upon eFiction India while eavesdropping on a conversation between two of her friends.

POETRY

NAMELESS VERSE SUGANDHA DAS

Before the first prestige is born, The magician is dead. Before the daughter is born, The son is mutilated. Usual by all means. Standard, statutory and daily. The screams are muffled. I am a handful of Lego blocks. Sculpt me, as you please. After all, there is no muscle on me. I am just a girl. But what then of Your pens of power When the rapes happen Within my own courtyard? Your ink cannot stain further The bloodiness on my thighs. I ask of you Where are the subalterns? Where is my history? I am a puppet to your theories. Decorated as an ‘ethnograph’ On those studies you call MINE. Marginalised? Yes. By your pens of power.

PAIN

SHRUTI SAREEN

It is wrenched out of one, moment by slow torturous moment, hanging heavy as dread, as one day becomes the next and flows into the stream of months and years. Tear by tear, drop of blood by drop of sweat, it oozes out Pain makes you yearn. Pain Then proceeds to teach you the supreme arts of patience and control. This suffering is extraordinary. It is the lowest and it is the highest too. This exquisite hurt that howls, shrieks, torments and ravages and ultimately becomes the two syllables of your name. But it never goes away. It never quite lets you forget. It makes you learn to submit. There is no other way.

Shruti Sareen, from Varanasi, studied in Rajghat Besant School, a Krishnamurti Foundation Institution. After completing her Master of Philosophy degree in English literature, she is currently looking at Emerging Feminist Trends in Indian Poetry in English as part of her PhD thesis with the University of Delhi. Her works have appeared in several publications such as The Little Magazine, Reading Hour and The Seven Sisters Post. An avid poetry lover, she blogs at www.shrutanne-heartstrings.blogspot. com. eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

INTERVIEW

MEHEK BASSI: UNCHAINED ANANYA DHAWAN

[on advice to other aspiring authors trying to get published] I would give the same advice I received: ‘Be Yourself!’ People get influenced by bestsellers so much that they try aping the author’s style, but fail miserably. Not all bestsellers are good; some are made by sheer luck!”

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

ANANYA DHAWAN: DESCRIBE ‘CHAINED’ IN ONE SENTENCE. Mehek Bassi: Chained is my first novel defining my last love. AD: ARE THERE ANY LIFE INCIDENTS WHICH INSPIRED YOU TO PEN THE NOVEL? MB: Many, the biggest one being dropping out of college and losing all friends! But still the book is fictitious in many ways; after all, I’m not a superstar as the protagonist is portrayed in Chained.

Photo: Supplied

EHEK BASSI, THE 19-year old author of Chained: Can you escape fate?, is a Computer Engineering student from Ludhiana, Punjab. She loves writing fiction and blogging. She manages a Facebook page and a blog where she uploads her short stories that have won the hearts of many readers. A daring Punjabi, she is always ready to take risks. Chained is her first novel.

INTERVIEW

AD: HAS WRITING ALWAYS BEEN A PART OF YOUR LIFE? MB: Indeed! I started writing when I was twelve, and since then it hasn’t stopped. AD: DID YOU RIGHT AWAY KNOW THAT THIS WAS YOUR STORY OR DID IT EVOLVE IN THE PROCESS OF BEING WRITTEN? MB: I started writing it as a diary, and subsequently it took the shape of a short story with some editing, of course, which I thought to share on my website. But then, in a few more months, it was a full-fledged novel, which demanded to be published! AD: DO YOU RELATE TO ANY PARTICULAR CHARACTER IN THE NOVEL? IF YES, THEN IN WHAT ASPECTS? MB: Yes, I relate myself to Shiya Mathur (the lead character) greatly. Shiya is a die-hard lover who, despite being famous, sticks to her college-time boyfriend and marries him, which is something that even I would do if life gave me a chance, because fame can’t make you change your choices! Moreover, she’s depicted as a free-spirited, independent and kind hearted soul, who loves her husband, family and friends selflessly, without caring about her public image. AD: ARE YOU WORKING ON ANYTHING RIGHT NOW?

RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS PARIS OR VENICE? Paris READING OR TRAVELLING? Travelling VANILLA ICE CREAM OR HOT CHOCOLATE FUDGE? Hot Chocolate Fudge PETS – YES OR NO? A big YES! ONE HOLLYWOOD STAR YOU WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO ON A DATE WITH? Can’t choose one, but if I had to it would be Brad Pitt!

MB: Yes, I’m working on multiple short stories right now, but as far as a novel is concerned, there is still time. AD: WHAT ARE YOU PASSIONS IN LIFE, APART FROM WRITING? MB: Apart from writing, singing is what lures me the most, maybe that’s why Shiya Mathur is a singer in the book! I also love spending time in kitchen – doesn’t matter if I’m cooking or eating! AD: WHAT IS THE BEST WRITING ADVICE YOU HAVE EVER RECEIVED? MB: ‘Be yourself’. This is something that encouraged me to write in my own signature-way! AD: WHAT THAT’S ONE BAD HABIT IN YOU WHICH YOU HAVE NO INTENTION OF BREAKING? MB: Haha, there are many bad habits, and one of them is insomnia! I hardly sleep, and waste my time on movies, TV-shows, books et cetera willingly, even when I know I should be asleep! But this is something I don’t want to break, although it has affected my health greatly, but it has provided me a lot of knowledge as well! AD: WHAT’S YOUR ADVICE FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS AND ANYONE TRYING TO GET THEIR FIRST BOOK PUBLISHED? MB: I would give the same advice I received: ‘Be Yourself!’ People get influenced by bestsellers so much that they try aping the author’s style, but fail miserably. Not all bestsellers are good; some are made by sheer luck!

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

REVIEW

CHAINED: CAN YOU ESCAPE FATE? ANANYA DHAWAN

EHEK BASSI’S NOVEL Chained is an extremely gripping one. I was hooked to it from the very beginning. It might not be something you haven’t read or seen before, but the plot is compelling and the story is all innocence coupled with deception. The story begins in 2015 as we see Arjun mourning the loss of his beloved wife Shiya. He still loves her immensely and doesn’t want to remarry in spite of pressure from his family. Shiya had been the only one for him – his heart, his body, his soul. The rest of the story takes place as a flashback and the readers are taken to 2006, when Shiya had been an aspiring singer.

a hint of sensitivity and poignancy, which keep it from turning into a dull, flat read. I also thought the book’s title was quite mature. It drew me in and made me want to scratch the surface and take a dip into the book. Chained makes us realise that how bound we are by the games of fate. It is a good description of the meaning behind the story. Mehek Bassi has done a good job with this novel, and we hope to see even better work from her in the future.

The daughter of a rich industrialist, she is an extremely simple girl, not very fond of pomp and splendor and showing off and believes in simplicity. She meets Arjun and slowly their friendship develops into a deeper relationship. They are immensely in love, but when Shiya starts gaining fame as a singer we see the possessive side of Arjun, who most of the time behaves like an insecure boyfriend. But their love keeps them going, and though they encounter a number of difficulties, they do not lose sight of their love.

The themes in focus are love, relationships and ambition. In my opinion, it is a combination of the romance and thriller genres, which makes it all the more enjoyable. The language is simple and easily understandable. The story has been told in a clear, well-written way, enough to hook the reader’s attention. However, the novel does have several typos and grammatical errors which take away from its appeal as a package. Mehek Bassi, however, is a promising writer and seems to be a poet as well, evidenced by the poems that she has aptly chosen to include within the text of the novel. The poems add to the story

eFiction India | November 2013

Photo: Supplied

The novel focuses on their lives and the lives of the people around them. Shiya’s dad Shekhar is also a significant character in the book. How every person’s stories connect makes for a fascinating read.

REVIEW

CHERISHING INDIA SAVOURING DUBAI ANANYA DHAWAN

The Indian Trumpet is one among many such digital magazines which reach readers beyond regional boundaries, but the difference lies in the fact that with just two issues, The Indian Trumpet has already captivated a billion hearts around the globe. This bimonthly e-zine is an outstanding blend of anything and everything you can possibly think of! Right from the inevitable charm of the Arab Emirates, to the impeccable culture of India, from the bright sunlit Dubai sky to the wintry chills of Delhi, from the Burj Khalifa to the Taj Mahal , from festivals to travel, from food to fashion, from old movies to the latest blockbusters, from books to music, from writings to art, from home décor to the weather, from sports to politics, The Indian Trumpet serves it all on a single platter. The Indian Trumpet is Purva Grover’s brainchild. An NRI currently living in Dubai, she is a chirpy, fun-loving soul, who believes in relishing each moment to the max. Words, and words alone are her first love. It is no wonder then that her friends call her MS Word with spell-check, rhyme and feelings! She, someday wants to pen not a novel, but a dictionary. She holds a Master’s degree in Mass Communication and Literature and has the powerful experience of over seven years of working in the publishing industry. She has previously worked as an associate editor for luxury magazines in India and continues to work as a freelance editorial consultant and writer for Indian and international magazines. Being the founder and editor of The Indian Trumpet is like a dream come true. Through her magazine, she feels more than connected to her home country India, while exploring and enjoying what the city of Dubai has in store for her. This bi-monthly digital magazine features writers not only from India and Dubai, but from across the world. The writing featured

is not genre-specific, but diverse, catering to writers and readers of every breed. The editorial team comprises professional writers, artists and photographers both from India as well as the Middle East. The free-to-read e-zine released its debut issue on the first of July this year. The e-zine can aptly be categorized under infotainment – a perfect fusion of information and entertainment – and the content boasts of nothing less than the best. The magazine has its own appeal through its design and layout and is a feast for readers’ eyes.

For more information about The Indian Trumpet, visit www. theindiantrumpet.com. You can also visit the Trumpet Blog at the www.theindiantrumpet.blogspot.com.

eFiction India | november 2013

Photo: Supplied

NDUSTRIALISATION HAS BROUGHT about a massive shift from the traditional age to the digital age. The economy now is necessarily based on information computerization. Electronic publishing is the talk of the town. Digital magazines and e-books are taking over the regular paperback editions.

INTERVIEW

PURVA GROVER: THE INDIAN TRUMPET’S SWEET MUSIC ANANYA DHAWAN

We are a magazine that aspires to connect Indians across the world with one another and give them a chance to read about and indulge in all things Indian. Though we’re a magazine for the NRIs in Dubai, we’re loved by not just the NRIs in Dubai but NRIs across the globe.

eFiction India | October November2013 2013

ANANYA DHAWAN: HOW CONNECTED DO YOU FEEL TO YOUR HOMELAND THROUGH THE INDIAN TRUMPET? Purva Grover: This is a question that I am asked often and find the most difficult to answer. Can you describe in words the pleasure of eating the creamy-rich butter chicken gravy? Can the emotion of hearing and singing the National Anthem be described in phrases? Or for that matter, can you measure the decibels of excitement when you watch Sholay for the thousandth time? No. It’s emotions like these that make it tough to describe the ‘connect’ I feel with India through The Indian Trumpet. Starting and running the magazine has given me a chance

Photo: Supplied

Purva Grover is the founder-editor of The Indian Trumpet. An NRI currently living in Dubai, she is a chirpy, fun-loving soul, who her friends call MS Word with spellcheck, rhyme and feelings! She holds a Master’s degree in Mass Communication and Literature and has the powerful experience of over seven years of working in the publishing industry. She continues to work as a freelance editorial consultant and writer for Indian and international magazines.

INTERVIEW

to meet lovely and new people every single day, who share their stories of leaving homes and starting life afresh in Dubai (and even those who were born and brought up here), and connect with people back home too. It has given me a chance to re-learn the history and geography of the country through such interactions. It has given me a chance to talk about all those elements that make India and Indians so wonderful and unique. It has given me a chance to talk of the past, present and future of our country. It has given me a chance to be in touch with India, every waking moment! It has filled my hours with nostalgic, encouraging and exciting Indian stories. It has given me a chance to celebrate the colour, culture and chaos of India in words and visuals, and above all share ‘it’ all with all of you! AD: WHY AN EZINE AND NOT REGULAR PAPERBACK EDITIONS? PG: The ideal answer to this question would be the fact that we’re living in the digital world; however, in this case the very nature of the magazine demanded so. We are a magazine that aspires to connect Indians across the world with one another and give them a chance to read about and indulge in all things Indian. Though we’re a magazine for the NRIs in Dubai, we’re loved by not just the NRIs in Dubai but NRIs across the globe. Needless to say the Indians back home clearly love what we are serving in our pages. Were we not an ezine we would have been unable to connect with such a huge bunch of people in such a short time! Today, we are just two issues old and have over 16,500 followers, and this has been possible not only because we’re an ezine but also because we’re available free of cost to our readers. Having said that, the old-fashioned editor in me would love to have a print edition of the magazine someday – an edition that is as widely circulated and loved as our ezine.

The only way an editor can draft and work on an ideal pitch is by following the commands of its readers! There are temptations to fill up the pages with things that the editor likes the most, talk of trends that its writers follow or simply copy-paste press releases to make the job easier. If one can resist these temptations, then one would be on the right track to creating a perfect magazine for the readers. I would say our strength is interaction with our readers.

AD: HOW AND WHAT KIND OF RESEARCH DO YOU DO? WHO ARE THE READERS IN FOCUS? PG: There is no research team that did the homework for me to start this magazine. When I landed in Dubai I started blogging about my experiences in Dubai (http://theindiantrumpet.blogspot.ae/) and about the things I craved and missed about India. Soon, that became a talking point among the huge Indian diaspora in DXB and people demanded that I do something more and the magazine was born. Here’s a little note for you on the same, which talks about the work that happened behind-the-scenes for the magazine to take shape (see inset on next page). We started off with the intention of reaching out to the NRIs in Dubai but the overwhelming response from the NRIs across the world as well as the Indians back home has increased its reach beyond the shores of Dubai. We continue focusing on the Indians in Dubai and are planning to reach out to the Indians in the other Middle Eastern nations. AD: WHAT IS YOUR MODUS OPERANDI (IN TERMS OF THE MAGAZINE)? PG: The method of work at most magazines is essentially the same drill of ideation, morning meetings (we do ours via Skype at times, since our writers are spread across the world!), drafting edit lists, assigning articles and photo jobs, editing pieces, correcting pictures, designing pages, chasing deadlines… and both smiling and stressing at the end of the day! What’s different in our ‘method in madness’ is that we encourage even nonwriters and photographers to contribute, including our readers, for this is their space. Also, we treat each of our members as a celeb. No matter how small or large his/her role is in the magazine, we consider all as members of this expanding Trumpet family.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

INTERVIEW

“To all the people I knew, got to know and will know through this magazine. Big fat Indian wedding. Friends, food, family. Tears and happy tears. Heena and happiness. NRI husband. Packing bags. Saying good bye to home. Big fat Indian magazine. Supporters, critics and stress. Enthusiasm and challenges. Dreams and deadlines. NRI readers. Proofreading. Uploading the magazine. The last few weeks have been exciting, tiring, fascinating and challenging. I lived through moments that made me smile and scream at the same time. There were times when the laptop misbehaved, fonts got mixed up and writers and photographers missed deadlines, but then these were complemented with times when my inbox got flooded with encouraging words, download speeds improved and colours and words just fell into place. And while the ‘new’ bride in me had made me believe that planning an Indian wedding was perhaps the toughest thing to do in the world, I realised that it was easier than living the dream of starting a magazine on your own. (Honestly, my mom-dad and sister were the real wedding planners and I was just the showstopper, but even watching them do it all was exhausting. And yes, they were patient with me both when I chattered about the wedding or mag! ) I also learnt that a husband could be a perfect roommate and be as supportive as a 4-am friend in the hostel room. (I was happy to watch the NRI husband switch roles between being a business development manager and a web-designer and proofreader.) I even accepted that while I couldn’t do it all in one issue, each day would bring me one step closer than I was the day before to achieving my dream of starting my own magazine. I began to smile at the thought that as an NRI, I was getting a chance to love, miss and appreciate the ‘home’ as well as greet, explore and admire the ‘new home’. And honestly, even if someone had told me that this is how the journey would be from Delhi, India to Dubai, UAE, I would have still done exactly the same thing and with the same enthusiasm. Yes, when this Indian girl landed in Dubai she felt she couldn’t leave behind her passion for journalism and love for home. At the same time, she couldn’t help but play with fonts, colours and words to create something for the fellow NRIs here. Little did she know that hearts and minds from all communities would greet her dream with the same passion and love.” AD: WHAT IS THE IDEAL PITCH PACKET THAT A (MAGAZINE) EDITOR SHOULD HAVE? WHAT DO YOU THINK IS TOO MUCH AND WHAT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BE SERVED TO THE READERS?

stays here, and that’s the most fetching aspect of the place. Also, the fact that it welcomes people from each and every community is another charmer! When Dubai builds the world’s largest and tallest this and that it lets you grow bigger, taller and larger with it too!

PG: The only way an editor can draft and work on an ideal pitch is by following the commands of its readers! There are temptations to fill up the pages with things that the editor likes the most, talk of trends that its writers follow or simply copy-paste press releases to make the job easier. If one can resist these temptations, then one would be on the right track to creating a perfect magazine for the readers. I would say our strength is interaction with our readers. We’re constantly in touch with them through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, events, contests, meet-ups and a lot more. We exchange e-mails with them, share our plans with them and more. They help us decide what is too much or what is too less.

AD: WHAT IS THE BEST MEAL YOU HAVE EATEN IN DUBAI?

AD: WHAT, ACCORDING TO YOU, IS THE MOST FETCHING ASPECT OF DUBAI? PG: Dubai is a city where big dreams get wings, ambitions challenge the high-rise buildings, sun shines as bright as the jewels and the sea casts its spell. And behind all the glitter, glamour and gold are actually the dreams of people. Those wanting to make a better life, those wanting to earn a little more, those wanting to dress up in a designer wear, those wanting to drive a better car… and more! Dubai puts its faith in the dream of each person who eFiction India | October November2013 2013

PG: A tough one! Dubai spoils with you lip-smacking choices like Delhi (I belong to Delhi) does! A few of my favourite joints here are Trader Vic’s, Karma Kafe, Carluccio’s, Belgian Beer Café, The Noodle House… and the list goes on! AD: WHAT DO YOU LIKE LEAST ABOUT LIVING IN DUBAI? PG: There is absolutely nothing I dislike about living in Dubai. As is often said, “Dubai is the best place to stay in India!” Yes, I would have loved it if Dubai had winter and rains! Delhi winters are what I miss the most. AD: WHAT HAVE YOU FELT WERE YOUR ‘GREATEST MOMENTS’ IN YOUR WORK? PG: This magazine is less of work and more of a passion and desire to give the NRIs (as well as Indians back home) a chance to connect with each other through the common thread, their love for ‘home’.

INTERVIEW

We don’t aim to be patriots but just aspire to be a platform where we can share anecdotes, get nostalgic, take pride, and express emotions… all things Indian. When I decided to start this magazine on my own in an alien land, I didn’t look at it as a task/work to be accomplished but simply a dream to fulfill. Every moment on this journey has been worthwhile. It’s been tiring and exciting at the same time. And most beautiful were the moments when my inbox got flooded with words of encouragement, appreciation and love from readers/fans from not just in Dubai and India but even from NRIs in Turkey, the US, Canada and more! Be it the sleepless nights, the proofreading, the colour correction, the edit list drafts, or the insane deadlines… I love every moment. AD: A FEW WORDS FOR ASPIRING EDITORS… AND FOR EFICTION INDIA. PG: Before I decided to start my own magazine I was working as an editor of luxury and lifestyle magazines in India. Things have surely changed from that role to this role of being the founder and editor of a magazine. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the thoughts that push me to work harder, each day. As an editor, it is always scary to put your work out there for the world to see and

judge. It’s like what filmmakers say about how they dread Fridays! Even after being a journalist for more than seven years now, I still dread the first of the month! I still sleep with a notepad on my bedside table, just in case an idea pops in the middle of the night and I want to scribble it down. I still draft and re-draft headlines in my head even when the issue is released. I still stress over proofreading a copy, even after I have done so a million times. I still personally sit down and ensure each picture is properly colour-corrected and each writer/artist/photographer is given credit for his/ her work. I still answer every letter that comes to me from a reader, personally. And I still find inspiration in each of these tasks. To all the editors out there, consider each issue as your first one and you would never fall short of inspirations or fail to aspire! I got to know about eFiction India through Nikhil Sharda via LinkedIn. I have to say that you guys are doing a great job when it comes to keeping alive a form of writing that is often ignored. It is brilliant to come across a bunch of people dedicated passionately to a literary cause like this one. It is a wonderful platform to bring together all those who still romance fiction and poetry, and give them a chance to help each other survive, grow and flourish.

eFiction eFictionIndia India| |november October 2013

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re interested in what you think of the maga zi ne and wo uld love to s e e a rev i ew of e Fi c t i on India on www.efictionindia.in. Positive, negative, or neutral â&#x20AC;&#x201C; let us know. We want your feedback s o we can cont i nu e i m p rov i ng. Yo u can a l s o f i n d u s on :

face b ook .com /e Fi c t i on In d i a

t wit te r.com /e Fi c t i on In d i a

Thank you for reading!

eFi cti onI ndi ai saprof essi onal l yproducedi ndependent magazi nedevotedtoessays,f i cti on,poetry,artand cri ti ci sm.Themagazi nei sconcei vedasadi al ogue— a pl atf orm whi chcarri esthebestofcontemporarywri ti ng f rom theI ndi ansubconti nentandaddressesacommuni tywhi chi smoreeasi l ydef i nedi ntermsofmi ndspaceratherthanpurel ygeographi calterms. I neachi ssueyouwi l lf i ndstori esyouwi l lenj oy,meet new authorsyouwi l lgrow tol ove,andcatchagl i mpse ofthegoi ngsoni nthel i teraryworl d. Ourreadershaveonl yonecommondenomi nator:they aresensi ti veandarel ooki ngf orsomethi ngmorethan whatmai nstream publ i shi ngcanprovi dethem. You’ veneverreadamagazi nel i kethi s.

ht t p: / / www. e f i ct i oni ndi a. i n