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Edited by Amita Mukerjee Gopal Mukerjee
Revenge Ink anthologiebw.indd 3
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The editors wish to thank Shobhaa De for her continued support of Revenge Ink and her expression of that support in the Foreword of this book. They would also like to thank all the participants in Revenge Ink’s 2008 All-India Writing Competition, the folks at ALC Mumbai (Divya and Faarah especially) for their enthusiastic assistance, as well as Jobina and Mary Ann for their editing/proof-reading efforts.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Revenge Ink Unit 13 Newby Road, Hazel Grove, Stockport, Cheshire, SK7 5DA, UK
www.revengeink.com
ISBN 978-0-9558078-4-8 Copyright © Revenge Ink 2009 Cover illustration copyright © Sylvain Garms Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Typeset in France by Sylvain Garms
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Contents
Foreword Introduction Editor’s Note Hema Koppikar, Smiling at Life Ketan Joshi, Classifieds Varsha Pillai, Party Rochelle Potkar, The Point of Irish Coffee Rohit Bhatia, Dude Kinjal Banerjee, A Train Story Eva Bell, Rebel with a Cause Sandeep Shete, Spaced Out Pranab Mazumdar, Diner’s Dilemma Chandrima Pal, Billy and his Bass Shireen Bharucha, Not Another Daughter Gautam Mirchandani, 24 Hours Akanksha Aurora, Razorblade Romance Neil Fernandes, From a Distance Ashley Suvarna, Ashley’s Prologue
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Foreword It started with a hesitant phone call. Then a meeting. Finally, the decision. Yes! I liked the idea. ‘Revenge Ink’ had a marvellous ring to it. Defiant. Rebellious. Angry. Everything that young publishing ought to be, but sadly isn’t these days. Amita and Gopal ... how should I describe them? The two renegades behind this imprint? Musketeers in search of print adventure? God knows. But I suddenly found myself zooming back into nostalgia and the forgotten promises of youth at its rawest. In a way, I yearned for my own lost idealism and simultaneously rejoiced at seeing the same spirit in someone else. Talking to the brother-sister duo about their dreams and aspirations, I rediscovered personal fires and relit them. Good publishing is about courage. At least, it ought to strive for that. It is about putting one’s money where the mouth is and backing those writers whose voices deserve to be heard. It is about boldness and the faith in one’s own judgement. It is about telling an unknown author, ‘I believe in you’. Somewhere down the line, established publishers forget this aspect of the business a bit too soon. And turn their backs on those who bring nothing more to the table than sheer talent. A rare gift. By publishing this volume, ‘Revenge Ink’ has lived up to its original pledge, which was to showcase the writings of first timers – a tribe that is often ignored and eventually snuffed out. I congratulate Amita and Gopal, plus, all the contributors who have enriched The Revenge Ink Anthology of Real Indian Writing with their sensitive depictions of our crazy world. Success, as the cliché goes, is still the best revenge. May this be the first of many exciting journeys.
Shobhaa De anthologiebw.indd 7
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Introduction In 2008, Revenge Ink launched an all-India writing competition in the presence of celebrated novelist Shobhaa De. Our target audience? Indian writers in English. Our immediate goal? To locate a random sample of contemporary Indian fiction in its full actuality. Our larger purpose? To demonstrate that real ‘Indian writing in English’ is far more heterogenous and distinctive than the officially celebrated products of Western and elite Indian publishing. We at Revenge Ink believe that mainstream publishing (Western and elite Indian) imprisons individual creativity through marketing labels that are nothing but old race and class-based categories reified for contemporary use. Our AllIndia writing competition set out to prove: that mainstream publishing is a West-centered, elitist and atavistic industry, and that mainstream publishers no longer represent ‘Indian writing’ in any real sense. It is our view that publishing categories as they exist in the mainstream are a vital part of Western discourse as it relates to art and literature. Race and class categories dominate that discourse. What does this mean for India? It means that the well-established literary conventions and narratives thought to represent ‘India’ or ‘Indian’ aren’t in fact ‘Indian’ at all, but belong within a Western fantasyconstruct of what constitutes India. This fantasy-construct is by no means unique to India. It is in fact a descendant of the great narratives of race, class and colonialism that once formed the core of Western
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discourse about itself and the world, as Europe set about imposing its own visions of history and culture on societies it colonized. This fantasy perspective ignores India’s historical reality. It assumes that India has been kept outside history by a set of cultural attitudes that oppose modernity (caste being a key component of these attitudes). Indian history, then, is not history at all, but a set of imprisoning cultural attitudes that block history, that prevent India from participating in the global march towards modernity. In establishing the myth of Western uniqueness, this fantasy perspective creates false dichotomies. Myth, poetry and religious consciousness are seen to form the basis of language and culture in the East, whereas history or a historical (rational) self-consciousness is considered a foundational trait of Western civilization. It is historical/rational consciousness that supposedly distinguishes the West from the rest of the world. Social reportage in this context is regarded as the first evidence of historical consciousness. Herodotus, Homer and even later writer-travelers like Marco Polo are thus seen as vanguards of Europe’s penchant for history. History is intimately related to literature because in this view, literature is reportage first and art second, educational first and pleasurable second, intellectual first and emotional/ spiritual second. Thus, even if Western writers (as diverse as Oscar Wilde and the Beats) have occasionally rebeled against this view, literature as social reportage and therefore ‘educational’ remains a key aspect of how the West judges literature in terms of its ‘importance.’
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India fares poorly in this reduction of literature to history. In comparison with Greece and pre-modern Europe particularly, it is believed that India’s lack of social reportage indicates its absence of historical awareness. Thus India’s ahistoricity occurs on two levels: first, through its ‘backward’ and anti-modern cultural attitudes, second, through its rejection of history in the form of zero social reportage. Mainstream publishing nourishes and perpetuates the fantasy view of India in all its aspects. Stories from and by ‘Indian writers in English’ place these authors in the role of pioneers of ‘Indian history’ in the sense that they are seen to ‘report’ on India to the more enlightened, historypossessing West (and to Westernized elites in India). The authors in question are thus considered to be conferring a historical consciousness on Indians as well as enabling the West to better ‘understand’ India, since fiction equals historical reality. Simply put, Indian writers in English are expected to play a clear role: uphold the Western fantasy construct and embrace its assumptions; report on India by asserting its fundamental backwardness; play a clearly educational role instead of attempting a more universal approach to esthetics. More subtly, this means the Indian writer is imprisoned in history and can only attempt art or entertainment if they remain within the constraints that the fantasy-construct defines as ‘Indian.’ It follows that ‘Indian writing in English’ must possess certain characteristics: first, it must contain language that is ‘highbrow’ and basically educational; second, its settings and
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narratives must exclude images of an India the writer has actually known and reflect instead the ‘eternal’ India of the Western fantasy, where little has changed despite centuries of invasion and colonization; third, it must be informative and edifying, rather than pleasurable and entertaining. Thus mainstream publishing reduces Indian writing in English to mere reportage, keeps many excellent writers outside the boundaries of what is ‘publishable,’ and perpetuates an unabashedly Eurocentric view of India. In so doing, it prevents a complete picture of Indian writing from actually emerging. Of course, India isn’t alone in suffering this fate at the hands of the industry. Mainstream publishing stifles creativity worldwide by imposing strict class and racebased categories that determine who should write what, and what constitutes ‘important’ writing. Even in the West, ‘entertaining’ writing is devalued in favor of writing that is intellectual, social and philosophical. Bourgeois narratives, themes and language are deemed ‘literary’ while popular stories are deemed ‘low-market’ and for more general distribution. This, it is believed, is the necessary marketingbased delimitation of culture in the capitalistic free market, the so-called ‘global village.’ But we at Revenge Ink do not believe in the ‘global village.’ The globe is no more a village today than it was five hundred years ago, when Europeans first set out to ‘conquer’ and ‘discover’ it. Western discovery might have made us dress the same way and forget our histories, but it has not fully effaced diversity, individuality and creativity. We at Revenge Ink are committed to nurturing
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genuine individuality and creativity in the face of Western/ technological/capitalist efforts to deny it. This Anthology is part of that effort. In it, you will find Indian writing as it came to us in 2008: fresh, raw and absolutely contemporary. The authors featured here are diverse in their backgrounds, professions, genders and ages. Their stories are distinctive and free (for the most part) of the literary affectations that plague Indian writing in English. The language indicates a mix of Victorian English and Hollywood/Internet American, both of which indicate the primary sources of English for Indians: school and entertainment. There is also a healthy borrowing from Indian languages. But arguably, this is the real Indian voice in English, so why deny it? The result is a unique and diverse collection of stories authored by writers who have followed their own impulses and told their stories as they see fit. The stories stand apart as ‘actual’ and serve to demonstrate that India is as diverse, individualized and ‘modern’ as any other society in the world.
Amita and Gopal Mukerjee
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Editor’s Note As mentioned in the Introduction to this book, this Anthology features a hybrid of language types: British and American English, along with specifically Indian usages and Hindi language words that are borrowed in everyday spoken English in India. We have tried as far as possible, in editing these stories, to keep that ‘typically Indian’ mix while attempting some degree of consistency for editorial purposes. Our goal in so doing has been to highlight the contemporary and ‘actual’ nature of written English in India in contrast with the more highbrow and stilted styles found in ‘bourgeois’ (award-winning) Indian writing. Therefore, in some stories, you will find Indian words such as ‘almirah’ and ‘khari biscuits’ alongside ‘movie’ and ‘truck’ which are American (Hema Koppikar, Smiling at Life); Indian words mixed with British usages: ‘tiffin box’ (Indian) with ‘fellow’ and ‘the cinema’ (Pranab Mazumdar, Diner’s Dilemma); and sentences that sound wrong but are in fact common in Indian English such as: ‘She should understand, no? ... What all can a person pay for?’(Ketan Joshi, Classifieds). There is also a mixing of old and new, slang and posh, American, British and Indian in a single story such as: ‘duped’ ‘availed of ’ ‘fleeced ... eh?’ ‘pillion’ ‘pot’ ‘sucks’ ‘cop’ ‘spliff ’ ‘chill’ (as a verb) and ‘rookie’ along with ‘chowky’ ‘BPO’s’ and ‘rupees’ referred to as ‘bucks’ (Rohit Bhatia, Dude). Grammar and spelling are also a mixed bag, but have been standardized to British usage since this is
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most prevalent in India (however, the Editors of this book write in American English, further proving the point that writers of Indian origin don’t all write the same way!). Registers are also mixed from one story to the next, with some stories written in a more traditional ‘literary’ style (Shireen Bharucha, Not Another Daughter), others in spoken Indian English, still others in slang. A few stories involve original attempts to write in different points of view: that of a dog (Rochelle Potkar, The Smell of Irish Coffee), a child (Varsha Pillai, Party), and a guitar-playing AngloAmerican teenage boy (Akanksha Aurora, Razorblade Romance). There is even one where the famous ‘third wall’ is broken and the reader is directly addressed (Spaced Out, Sandeep Shete). All these attempts, even where borderline clumsy or kitsch, have been retained, our goal being to stick as closely as possible to the stories as they were sent in to us, and to highlight variety and creativity. Punctuation and paragraphing have been hardest to deal with, but here too, we have made the same compromise between editorial consistency and authorial prerogative, since these are stories written by amateur writers for a competition and not by professionals for an Anthology. This is why some stories feature larger paragraphs and little dialog while others are rich in direct speech and contain smaller paragraphs, why some favor ellipses and others are written in neat, well-crafted sentences.
All in all, we have attempted to provide as faithful
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a tableau of ‘real’ (albeit amateur) Indian writing today as possible, with interference only where essential. It is our hope that this attempt will usher in more of its kind, giving rise to an actual body of language and grammar for India that can be self-consciously and correctly used by its exponents.
Important note: Revenge Ink does not represent, endorse or in any way support the political statements or assumptions contained in the stories of this Anthology. The authors guarantee that all the stories are original and fictional.
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Hema Koppikar: Smiling at Life Hema Koppikar, 32, lives in Mumbai and is a teacher, writer and artist. She is married and has ‘an angel for a son’. She hopes to ‘write forever’ because ‘writing is life’. The story that follows is her first published work. ‘I entered the Revenge Ink competition because of my love for writing. I will treasure the anthology.’
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Smiling at Life As Persis Lakdawala rocked to and fro in her old rocking chair, the only sound to accompany her was its regular squeak. As she rocked, she peered intently at the letter in front of her. The envelope lying on the little table beside her had a US stamp on it. Persis adjusted her glasses and went back to trying to decipher the tiny handwriting. Her daughter and son, both happily settled abroad, wrote to their parents regularly, updating them about their happy and fulfilled lives. After a few minutes, Persis neatly folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. She looked at the grandfather clock, placed between their Godrej almirah and a glass showcase crowded with little mementos. The time read 3:55, five minutes to relax before she had to start preparing evening tea for Roshu, short for Mehernosh, her husband. As she rested her head, her dress for that evening, draped on the back of a chair caught her attention. It was a sleeveless knee-length dress with light green flowers and a low neckline. She smiled as she thought of the first time she had worn that dress. Roshu and she were due to get married in a few weeks and one weekend Roshu had invited her to a movie. She was only twenty-five then. She remembered how awkward they had felt in each other’s company, how, during the movie, Roshu had suddenly clamped her tiny hand in his big sweaty one and had held it like that till the end.
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