efiction india sample issue

Editor-in-Chief Doug Lance

India Editor Nikhil Sharda

Copy Editor Richa Mehta

Ass. Copy Editor Namitha Varma Rajesh

Poetry Editor Ananya Guha

Story Editor Shifani Reffai

Field Editorial Ananya Dhawan

PR Manager Kaumudi Tiwari

Readers Pallavi, Michelle, Sheikha, Ananya D

Surbhi, Siddhath and Ayushi

Cover Illustration Bijay Biswaal

eFiction India is a monthly fiction publication. The editors accept manuscripts online. To review our guidelines or submit a manuscript, please visit http://www.efictionmag.com/efiction-india/. Correspondence may be sent to [email protected].

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FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

If you try to recall your earliest memory, what comes to mind? For me, it’s a recollection of sitting atop a washing machine of my family’s first home as my parents painted the walls a pale yellow to the sound of Elvis Presley’s My Way. To this day, I can’t listen to Elvis without recalling the smell of fresh paint and the image of my chubby toddler legs banging away against sheet metal in time with the music. The triggers, purely sensory, never fail to make me smile. No matter what your earliest recollection is, chances are it’s not a memory that’s tied to language. We’re wired to recognise movement and sound before we ever start to process language. Anyone who watches an infant’s interactions with the world can see they are guided largely by embedded behaviours and sensory inputs, which in turn become part of an individual’s embodied cognition. Embodied cognition is the idea that the body influences the mind. It’s essentially the belief that our ability to gain knowledge, comprehend concepts, remember, judge, and problem solve are not confined to the brain. In this framework, cognition then is influenced, if not determined, by our experiences with the physical world. This is why we say something is ‘beyond us’ when we want to express something we don’t understand; we connect the physical nature of distance with the mental feeling of uncertainty to illustrate our point. The ways in which we express ourselves via language provide insights about the associations we make between physical sensations and mental experience – for example, when we’ve had a ‘heavy day’, or when someone is being ‘soft’ while delivering punishment to someone for whom they care deeply. In this light, metaphors are not simply a matter of language; they are literally the vehicle by which we understand the physical world around us. This has led many to deduce that cognition through experience is a far greater and better learning experience than the seemingly acquired skill of popular education. But how can these concepts help further writing and fiction? As children, we repeatedly link bodily experiences with abstract concepts. This leads to embodied knowledge because our motor functions develop first, resulting in an implicit understanding of something that would normally be difficult to comprehend. Here’s an example. My ten-month-old nephew spends a great deal of time crawling toward the things he wants (a squeaking giraffe, my phone or food). His early experiences of reaching a goal through movement is paving the way for his later understanding of how to reach a more abstract goal. He’ll come to understand that he can reach his destination through the metaphorical movement along a path. One day he may complete his first surgery and recall his time at school, thinking ‘Look, how far I’ve come.’ We create systems of understanding that are grounded in physical experiences.


This is where it gets interesting for us – the people who develop content and stories. If we understand how the process of embodiment occurs, we can begin to adapt the systems, content, and digital (or physical) environments we create to either support the construction of meaning or tap into embodied knowledge. One of the biggest challenges in understanding user behaviour is that so much of their decision making happens before they even stop to think about the choice. Research in embodied cognition is encouraging in that it offers us a look behind the curtain at what began in the limbic system and grew into drivers that influence judgment, decision making, and human emotion. When we realize that ideas are, at least in part, shaped by the body and its interaction with the world, we’ve found the sweet spot for content work. We also open worlds of opportunity for creating work that can resonate, educate, and engage with audiences that we may never otherwise reach. These findings are both wonderful and scary: embodied cognition implies that if we’re truly interested in changing someone’s behaviours or capacity to learn, we don’t need users to consciously change their attitudes. We need only make a change to their environment, via music, imagery, or just colour variation. This means that the work we do, the things we make, and all the choices that lead to a system’s creation are far from neutral. As we pioneer new techniques in publishing, those who understand the ways in which cognition is rooted in embodied actions can achieve greater understanding from their audiences. As an online editor, I sometimes feel like my job is to make something beautiful, only to subsequently hack it apart for kindling. Here’s the way I (mostly) think about it instead: any link to a fragment of eFiction India is a breadcrumb that can bring you back to the whole. Every magazine wants to lead you back to the mother ship, but when you finally pick up an issue of eFiction India, what you have isn’t the end of your own creation and the beginning of our vision. It is the start of a new reading in a closed-off sphere that also resembles the web you came from: a rabbit hole of thought that you’ll gladly fall into.

Nikhil Sharda Managing Editor


Meet Me at Mary’s Place Sreejita Biswas

He always had three legs, none shorter than the other two. In a corner of the room, he stood in silence, year after year, gathering dust, like most of the other furniture in the old bookstore. Nestled in a quiet, dark alley, not too far from the bright lights of the main city, the little old store remained forgotten. Overwhelmed by the newer, brighter and bigger aisles of the glossy books of fiction and non-fiction, no one knew when the shop faded into the background. No one knew when it shut down, no one knew how many days, months or years passed by and no one knew of the worn leather-bound books lying around there in silence, gathering dust… the pages yellowing as days went by and some, crumbling to dust. No one knew, apart from little old Tom who lived across the street. Little old Tom, as old as the store, as wise as the books, with eyes that saw perfectly and teeth that gleamed when he smiled. Little old Tom and his little old toys. With the crooked legs and the bells, with the handmade clothes and the paint that never could be worn out. Little old Tom, who sat in his oversized chair each night and smoked his well-worn pipe. Like the book store, little old Tom lived in a world that was forgotten in the city of lights and life. Every night, little old Tom would sit in the chair, next to his window and watch the yellow lights cast their shadows everywhere. He would see cars and bikes zooming past the house and he would see drunks spray paint messages on walls. He would see young people in love walk by, hand in hand, occasionally stopping to peer through the rusting bars of the bookstore and sometimes, to share a kiss. This one night, Tom sat and looked at the yellow light spill through the rusty bars that closed off that little haven of stories from the world. He peered at the dusty glass windows and wondered why no drunk had ever stoned it to bits. He could see the street lamp light up the little three-legged table he had once, rather long ago, made for Mary, and he wondered what happened to her. Mary was, Tom still would admit sheepishly, the first woman he had ever fallen in love with. He was twenty, a rather impressionable age, and she, the daughter of Mister D, who owned the little old bookstore. Some sixty odd years ago, Tom was not the little old wizened man as we know him now. He was the young man women turned to smile at. The man who smiled back at them, the man who helped the little old ladies cross roads; the man, whose eyes twinkled as he played with the neighbourhood dogs; and of course, the man, who could make bits of wood come to life with minor movements of his fingers. And Mary was the girl he knew he would love forever. It was a cloudy morning when she had first come to his workshop. It had been raining till just a few moments before she arrived, and Tom was lost in painting a puppet for the five-year-old down the street. He whistled while he worked and sang tunelessly and well, rather loudly. Unsurprisingly, he missed the first few soft knocks on the door and even the polite cough. He dipped his brush into a tin of red paint and was about to start painting the puppet’s mouth when he felt the light tap on his back. Startled, he looked at the messed up mouth of the puppet, and turned around, hoping to give the irresponsible nincompoop a good piece of his mind. Seeing her, however, he inevitably was at a loss for words. As he stared into her wide green eyes and her wet, stringy hair, he could feel himself smile a rather foolish smile and mumble things about wood and paint, which were rather incomprehensible and unnecessary. Something he never could imagine doing around a girl.


Mister D needed a carpenter. He needed shelves and counters to line up his shop, and Tom was the man for the job. Over the next year, working in the bare shop with closed boxes all around became a routine for Tom. He would sing tunelessly, whistle and sometimes entertain Mary’s five-year-old sister May with stories about knights and dragons, fairies and kings. He would occasionally drink a bourbon or two with Mister D and would flatter the Missus rather shamelessly. But every time he saw Mary, he would turn into a puddle of mush that never had anything very sensible to say. And Tom had no intentions of declaring his steadily increasing love for her. He knew Mary was the girl all men loved. She was not exquisite to look at, yet her firm chin, twinkling eyes and red nails made all men behave in a rather juvenile manner around her. It was a shame. The year saw Mary fall in and out of love. Quite a few times. It saw her walk down the street with quite a few men and it saw her kiss a few more under the birch tree that then stood in front of the book store. It saw Mary run to Tom and cry over heartbreaks and it saw Tom look horrified as she cruelly rejected men for fun. Yet he loved her. Her laughter, her ridiculous sense of imagination and her wicked sense of justice. It was her birthday when Tom was working on the three legged table. It was for Mrs Cooper, who lived next door. It was an ornate little thing. With carvings that told stories and polish that made them come to life. How Mary managed to convince him to gift it to her is something he still doesn’t remember too clearly. It was perhaps the smile, or maybe, the red nails. *** Tom stared at the window as the yellow light flickered, his mind bringing back to him memories both painful and pleasant. He remembered Mary’s wedding and then, the kids. He remembered the war and her mourning for her husband. He remembered spending hours in that little bookstore playing with the kids and he remembered little May growing up to be a nurse. He remembered Mister D’s death and the Missus leaving the town and going away. He remembered Mary remarrying a rather pompous fat man with a truckload of money. He remembered the town growing up to become a city and he remembered newer roads and brighter lights. But he did not remember how the street turned into the little old lane with the yellow lights. He did not remember when the store shut down and he really could not remember when Mary left. But she did, and with her, gone were the neighbours and the laughter and the things that made Tom smile. As the years passed, he continued to make toys and tell stories to the little ones who came in from time to time with their parents, who had once been little, eager and hung on to each word that Tom said. He did not realize when the other little houses on the street started to look different – larger and less human. He did not realize that with the years, even fewer young ones came to his workshop. He did not realize that the puppets and toys that lined all the shelves, lay there, gathering dust. What he did realize was how empty life was without Mary. And he realized, over and over again, that he possibly did truly love her. Never mind her flaws. It was around five in the morning and little old Tom had just nodded off to sleep. He did not know when the shiny black car pulled into the little old alley, he didn’t know when the young woman with light hair got off and he didn’t know when the Movers came along. He did not know when the mailman rang his bell; he did not know how long he slept. The loud clangs and crashes did not disturb him, the sirens remained unheard and he slept peacefully. He dreamt of Japan and cherry blossoms, of princesses and demons, of stories that would forever remain unheard and he dreamt of Mary. As he slept peacefully, he did not realize that the last memory from what he thought to be home, was being reduced to dust.


*** A year passed and Mary’s place stood proud. A swank new coffee house with lights that lit up the entire alley filled it with music and dragged it away to be a part of the city it had so long remained alienated from. Steel, glass and bling defined it and the wee hours of the mornings no longer remained calm. What happened to little old Tom and his little old workshop, no one knows. But once in a while a couple stops inside the coffee shop to stare at the little wooden table with the three legs. The one, that has stories carved on it, the light reflecting off the carvings and making them come to life. The one where the little hand painted puppet sits proud. Head bobbing up and down, smiling and evidently ignoring the careless smear of red paint on its otherwise perfect face.


Furry Fuss Nirupama Sudarsh

Mrs Nair smiled coquettishly at her ostentatious reflection in the mirror, her chin pressed forward by her thumb and buttressed by the index finger, in sloppy imitation of heroines from the Hindi movies of the 60s and 70s. Her face was decked up in a combination of cosmetic floridity- eyes done heavily, lips painted a fiery red against wax-like skin that diffused an orange glow. Adjusting her necklace and the pallu of her deep green silk saree, she straightened up and smiled radiantly at herself once again before answering the shrill cries of her 12-year-old daughter Lulu. “Amma… will you hurry up? We are already behind schedule by 20 minutes. If we don’t make a move now, we may have to give up all hopes of at least savouring some delightful paalada, let alone reaching on time for the muhurtham!” Raghavan, the dull driver from Kasargod snickered at the adolescent’s food fetish that often turned out to be unintended hilarity. Mr Nair sitting to the left of the rural, dark, short, strongly communist driver, whom the polished Mrs Nair addressed as ‘Chauffeur’ and sometimes as ‘Raghav’ in mock sophistication, glared at him. Raghavan hastily looked away in an unsuccessful attempt at covering up for his breach of ‘propriety’ that was often advocated by the lady of the house. “Amma iss heerrre achaaa...” mumbled Lallu, the younger of the two siblings, slobbering over a toffee in his mouth, when he saw his mother finally come out of the house locking the door. Fruity saliva trickled down his cheek and then on to his chin. “Eeww...!” yowled his sister just like she had seen the English lady on television squeal upon discovering a creepy centipede crawling up her skirt. “Acchhaaa... Lulu is making fun of mmeee!!” whimpered 6 year old Lallu. “For heaven’s sake will you two stop eating up my head? I’ve grown sick of this. I can no longer handle this. Dare utter one more word and I’m sending you both to boarding school...” hollered a ruffled Mrs Nair as she carefully got into the car, taking special care to avoid creasing her saree. Once inside, she slammed the door shut causing the frail Mr Nair to flutter. Raghavan keyed the engine to life and soon the car was out of the stoned pathway of their house. “What do you mean ‘I have grown sick of this’? I have been the victim of this bickering over the last almost one hour. And how many times have I told you not to be so hard on the door. I don’t have to remind you every single day of my weak nerves, do I?” barked Mr Nair now turning back to face his wife expecting to elicit an apology from her. Mrs Nair was paying little attention. She was deeply absorbed in touching up her already madeup face with tools from her mini makeup kit. Poor Mr Nair let out a sigh of hopelessness and turning forward, focused his attention on the swiftly moving trees, buses, shops, billboards and electric posts outside. “Raghav, the gift has been put on board, hasn’t it?” enquired Mrs Nair slipping her makeup kit into her vanity bag. “Yes, madam. It’s been safely put away in the boot. Pardon me for asking, madam, but are you gifting them a painting? It was painfully heavy loading it. Certainly must be a grandiose object worth thousands of rupees. My guess is that it is one from your fine collection of Ravi Varma paintings. Is that so, madam?” pried the inquisitive driver who liked to poke his nose into the domestic affairs of the


Nairs. Vishu was not far off. He knew how to work his way up to win an extra few rupees for vishukainetam this year. “I don’t see how it matters to you, Raghav, but since you ask, well, a painting it is indeed! Not a Ravi Varma work though. Every ragtag and bobtail in this state can think of no other artist but Ravi Varma. These people could do with some out-of-the-box thinking. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was told that these country bumpkins haven’t even heard of the artistic movement called Renaissance which introduced inimitable greats like Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo to the world, revolutionizing Europe in the 14th century,” prattled Mrs Nair. Raghavan felt sorry for himself for having pried. All this was drivel to his ears. But he knew better than to interrupt his employer. So he feigned interest. “So that means the painting has been done by one of the great men you just mentioned?” “No, Raghu. Those priceless objects are locked up in museums spread across Europe. Can you imagine that Malayalam artist, uh what’s his name? Ezhu… Ezhu… ah Ezhuthachan! Can you imagine the great Ezhuthachan’s painting falling into private hands? Be careful before you make such blunders.” “But, madam, Ezhuthachan was a poet, not an artist,” blurted out Raghavan, immediately regretting he had said that much to irk Mrs Nair. “Well, maybe. But there was an artist too I’m sure. Doesn’t matter anyway. Coming back to the gift, I am giving them a Van Gogh painting. ‘Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear’. Not the original of course. But almost equally priceless I would say. I picked it up from Holland last summer. Cost me a small fortune. Never mind. It will serve as a symbol of my family’s affluence. Vincent Van Gogh! I’m sure Lily’s eyes would pop once she sees it,” chuckled an overwhelmed Mrs Nair, little discouraged by her own ignorance. A cow suddenly strayed into the middle of the road. Raghavan swerved the steering vehemently to avoid ramming it. The passengers lunged forward as he turned the steering a full 90 degrees. “Road rash,” muttered an annoyed Mr Nair who woke up with a start from a disrupted afternoon siesta. Mrs Nair thought she heard a whine from behind. It sounded like an animal. But she brushed the thought away. “Sorry sir, if I had not manoeuvred the car that way, that cow would have been 10 beef by now.” Lallu broke into a peal of hearty laughter. “Cow into beef, he he hee… beef,” giggled Lallu, fascinated by the driver’s timely wittiness. He whooped with such belly-aching laughter that he soon began to choke and cough violently. Lulu patted him hard on the back and Mrs Nair made him drink some water from the bottle she was carrying. This went on for a minute or two. In a while the cough subsided and he was once again breathing normally but a film of tears was visible in the his swollen eyes. “It’s ok, Lallu kutta. Come to achan. It’s nothing. Stop crying monae,” saying so, Mr Nair held out his hands towards his sobbing son. “Achaa... achaa… I, I.. want to hug… Meow. I want to hug… meooww,” he said, snivelling, referring to his kitten. He was leaning against his father’s chest. But the warmth barely comforted him.


“Do you want him now? Can’t you wait till we reach Lily aunt’s house?” “What do you mean you want him now, Lallu? You know he’s at home now. You’ll have to wait till we get back. Now be a good boy and go to sleep. Mamma will wake you up when we reach,” said Mrs Nair. “Achaa, you said Meow is coming with us. I want him now.” “Of course. He is here with us. Raghavan pull the car along the roadside.” Raghavan did as he was told and parked the car under the arching bows of a peepal tree on the left side of the road. “What is happening here? Quit playing around with the kid. We don’t have all day to waste,” said an annoyed and puzzled Mrs Nair. Mr Nair flung the door open and walked to the boot of the car not listening to his agitated wife. He lifted open the door and was greeted by the desperate cry of an overwhelmed kitten which at once pounced onto the bare ground. “Meow!” cried out Lallu, running out of the car equally overwrought as his feline friend, and bending down on the ground to cuddle the furry mass. Baffled by what was going on, Mrs Nair followed by her daughter and Raghavan got down from the car and walked to her husband. Seeing her son play with the kitten that was supposed to be at home now, she started yelling at her husband whom she held responsible for pampering the children. “What in the world were you thinking when you put that wretched cat in the boot? It could have suffocated to death in there and imagine the racket Lallu would create at home or much worse what if it had laid its accursed paws on my paint...?” She fell short of the remaining sentence as her eyes fell on her painting, now a lacerated canvas hanging in shreds of pastel gold and green. The colour drained from Mrs Nair’s face as she looked at the disturbingly distorted version of ‘Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear’. There was acute silence for some time as father, mother, daughter and driver looked on in disbelief until Lallu spoke. “Achaa, let’s not waste any more time. We need to get some milk for Meow. She is very tired. Paayasam will also do if we can’t find any milk.”


special feature with lal singh dil

Social injustice, mental agony and physical torture have all become part of my poetry. In spite of this my friend and contemporary poet, Nikhil Sharda, wants me to write my story. So let it be written.

The atmosphere in school was not very congenial. I was kept away from sports and cultural activities. Some teachers would treat me as an equal, but by and large, I was made to feel like an out- cast. I belonged to a caste which evoked hatred in both teachers and students.

Then I graduated to the higher classes, I started picking up some skills which thrilled me. I especially liked to trace out a picture and then shade it. I traced a picture of Ravidas Bhagat which showed him standing. Below the image was a pair of shoes and some cobbler’s tools. The teacher in charge of the class looked at the drawing strangely and then laughed at it with some hatred, which was shared by the students. I brought the picture home with me from school.

In the lower classes, students would stage skits in which they played the part of upper-caste Jats. I, too, longed to do those roles, and once I got a chance. I just had to be on stage as one of three policemen who drag a person from one side to the other. But the day the play was to be staged, I was thrown out of the cast. It was felt that two policemen would suffice. There was no need for a third.

I never won a prize for cleanliness, though I would go to school on inspection day after scrubbing my face hard with laundry soap and tucking my kurta neatly into my khaki shorts. Never did I, or any other boy from a lower caste, get a chance to lead the prayers at the morning assembly. We went to a school meant for all, but students from the lower castes were always made to feel inferior.

The poet at the right in his teashop


Once, a teacher was preparing three or four of us for a poetry recitation. I still remember the poem, Kangali deshon kadhni hai; Bekari di jadh wadhani hai (‘We have to drive poverty from our country; We have to cut at the roots of unemployment’). But finally, the teacher said: “Not this boy. His voice breaks.” A healthy, good-looking boy was taken in my place.

I found the Raasdhariyas (itinerant folk theatre artistes) most interesting. The characters seemed to be real sadhus, carrying their strange world with them. The dance by the boys would create a fine mood for the performance. The plays that were staged included Roop Basant, Kiranmayi, Puran Bhagat and Harish Chandar. One had heard all these stories, but there was something different about drama. One day, commenting on the role of Harish Chandar, a boy from my mohalla said “You have become a choorha(sweeper), so must you weep? Those who are sweepers…”

No other play had depicted the lives of the sweepers so well. Watching it, I felt that the

saga was set in the present. Harish Chandar was shown tending the pigs, working with a basket and broom, cremating corpses for a fee, and finally breaking down when his wife would not let him touch her for fear of being defiled. The play succeeded in conveying the sorrows of the worker and the wife was a symbol of a culture of hatred. The play even had a love-duet by a dandy sweeper couple, singing and playing hide- and-seek, basket, broom and all. These Rasdhariyas became my subject of study. I would watch them rehearsing and going about their chores all day. At night, when they put on their make-up for the performance, I would join the crowds that gathered around them.

I was very keen to go to college, though everyone was against it. What use would it be to send a chamarboy to college? The money-lender refused to give money for my admission fees. But my mother was determined to send me to college. She sold her ear-rings, paid my fees and even bought me a bicycle. I started attending classes.

I used to be good-looking. One day, a girl studying for the BA placed her hand on her heart on seeing me and said to her friends, “I think something’s dropped out of here.” Another day, I found another girl of the BA course staring at me. She wore her hair in two plaits. In those days, girls wore their hair like that. She had a very sharp, very pretty nose. One day, I was cycling to my friend Charan Singh’s village when I saw the lovely girl with two plaits cycling the other way. Two girls working in the fields stopped her. She got off her bicycle and started laughing and talking with them. She was a daughter of the sardars of Charan’s village.

Then one day, the college seemed to be in mourning. Charan told me that she had died. The lovely girl with two plaits was no more. She had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. “She was studying when it happened, up on the terrace. She died at the hospital.”

I started taking my writing more seriously. I wrote a rubai on the uncertainty of life and read it at the weekly meeting of the college’s literary club. I did not think it was much of a poem, but it became very popular and led to much jealousy.

Before that, my experience of college had been very different from that of the school. I found that the professors teaching me English, Punjabi and economics treated me just as they did anyone else. They did not belittle me in any way. Our English professor used to say that even if his students did not pass the examination, they would definitely learn the English language. He used to be very particular about the pronunciation of the letter ‘H’. I did well in the tests. But


the success of my rubai annoyed other students, and after that I was excluded from poets’ meets.

There was a turning point in my life when I started tutoring a young boy studying in class eight. A cup of tea every day and a rupee every third day was my remuneration. But I was happy teaching Sitha, and really worked hard. In turn, he paid heed to everything I said and had a lot of regard for me.

But my classmates had not quite forgiven me that rubai, written to that lovely girl with two plaits. They could not bring her back from the dead so that she might mock me. Instead, there came another Sikh girl with two plaits. Her face was pockmarked, but to me she looked just a wee bit like the girl I had fancied in college. One day, while I was teaching Sitha, she came in with her notebook and started drawing attention to herself. While she was there, the electricity failed. It was dark, and I had a radium ring on my finger. “What a beautiful ring,” she said and leaned over me. I could smell the pungent mustard oil in her hair. She asked me to come to her house to teach her. Since I was already a Marxist by ideology, I thought it my responsibility to teach. So I went there.

Then came the terrible insult. She gave me tea in a steel tumbler. After I had finished, her mother picked it up with a pair of tongs and threw it into the stove to purify it by fire. Then she picked it up with the tongs again and dipped it into water. The clatter of the tumbler being thrown about echoed in my ears. About that time, I recall having lost my mental balance somewhat. My parents had found a girl from my caste for me in Bahilolpur and an engagement was agreed upon, but the girl’s family broke it off later.

My poems made me many friends; Harjit Mangat was one of them. He was very attached to me but would often run me down. But when Preetlarhi, a leading literary Punjabi journal of those times, published my poem, he was silenced. He would often say: “No matter how hard we try, we can never be Lal Singh Dil.” He would try very hard to purge my mind of my romantic stories about upper-caste girls. And it was on his suggestion that I went to Bahilolpur to do my Basic Teacher’s Training course. It was there that I wrote the poems on the wretched of the earth amidst whom I had grown up — the bonded labourers, the daily-wagers, the roving tribes and the poorest of the poor. In my poem Evening Tide, they seem to be Indian martyrs who refused to be crushed by the Aryans and continue their struggle even today.

In Bahilolpur, I had to read a lot of rubbish. Thousands of pages on Leninist thought. And an equal weight of And quiet flows the Don, which ran into four thick volumes. It was literary, but I couldn’t quite comprehend the writer’s philosophy. I had read many such books; the Russians had found a fine way of selling their scrap paper to Indian buyers. But I kept writing poetry and became active at literary meetings. I remember a rather influential member of the Likhari Sabha, Pandit Om Prakash, who was also a member of the Communist Party of India. He wanted a resolution passed against the events in China. “All that is happening there is wrong. They are evacuating all religious buildings.” I said, “Let them.” Anyway, no meeting was called and no resolution passed by the Likhari Sabha.


At that time, I had written a poem called Pests in which I compared Mao’s chairmanship — without naming him, of course — to a weeding tool in the hands of a gardener in the rainy season. I was happy when Lakeer published this poem. Mao was then the subject of hot debate on campus.

I was invited to read my poems at Gurusar Sudhar College. The mood was charged, like at a wrestling match. When my name was announced, I got up and said that I would read my poem, Evening Tide. The students in the audience laughed affectionately. I told them that Evening Tide could well be read in the afternoon. Afterwards, everyone turned serious. The principal gave a little speech on creating the right mood for serious poetry. The hottest question of the period was whether the Cultural Revolution would precede the political revolution, or vice versa.

News of Naxalbari spread like wildfire. I was working as a daily-wage labourer then. Carrying loads up and down the stairs, I felt strangely energised. It was like a great opportunity. What I had not been able to go and do in Vietnam, I would achieve here.


Evening tide Lal Singh Dil

The evening wears its familiar colours

The foothpaths are walking to the basti

The lake is returning from the office

after being shunted out of work

The lake is quenching its thirst for water

The city is walking towards the villages

Someone has lost all his wages

Another is wiping with his dhoti the

blood off the whip-marks

on weak animals

The evening wears its familiar colours…

They are walking away from land

That belongs to another

carrying their straw baskets

The long caravan is moving on

carrying the burden of rebukes

Along the long shadows

children are riding donkeys

Their fathers have dogs in their arms

Pans hang on the backs of their mothers

Babies are sleeping in these pans


On their shoulders are the bamboos of their shacks

Who are these Aryans, so starved?

Which India’s land are they

going to conquer?


The young men love the dogs

They know not how to love palaces?

Long starved, they are leaving the

land that belongs to another


What do they know?

How many are tied to posts

How many burned alive at the stake

Those who cannot leave the basti

The shadows of the basti trees move on

Someone is holding the legs of tired animals

Of tired loves


The brave tillers of the land walk away

With the burden of shovels on their shoulders

On the wild paths

The love of the fields was murdered last night

Flames rose from the shacks last night

The caravan moves on.


I Want to be Your Story Sheikha A

The footsteps that you heard, Although tiptoed ever so softly, Had been not faint to your ears. The sound for which you probed, In land, water, air; in every form, Whether now, here, or then, However hush, petite on soil, Your eyes still opened to them; In that while when you grew alert, I awakened to the being in me. Tell me what it would take: A walk of test on ice or fire, or To pledge my being to yours? For I would my life and soul, Mind and whole, bound to yours. This is me: the cloud to the moon. I wane by you, see me, once, In that I’d live a thousand lives, At your side invisible and true; That’s the story of us I want to be.


For Sale Shifani Reffai

Rudraksha beads In a glass display case In a store. Dried Spherical Brown Nuts from a tree Strung in a loop. Wear this, said the label To increase your inner freedom And purity. Store Manager gave me a sage nod – I bowed myself right out of his shop. Did you know, You can buy Freedom and purity For 4000 rupees At the Duty Free?


A Silence of ‘un’s Namitha Varma

Every unspoken word rings in my mind like the echo of silence along the valleys. In the resonances of its penetrating voice, I drive into myself, deeper and deeper. Is it calm? Is it eerie? or, is it a vacuum? Deep within me, I find, fragments of unvoiced thoughts. I do not know how to reconstruct them. I do not know their shapes.


You And I Vineet Mittal

Give me your love Without troubled waters, Give me a moment I’ll tell you what I see.

Give me your hand Walk on my troubled waters, Give me a moment I will sing you a song.

Give me your love Let me into your life It’s all about you and I. Making it work out right.

If I had a wish I’d wish for you a kingdom I will give you everything If you let me into your heart. And I only need is your Words of Wisdom Maybe I will let you in Closer to my heart.

At the break of dawn, When the rooster crows If I should be gone You’d know where I’d be heading to. I found Heaven, Here with you.

You know I am not the one To tell you it’s alright Cause you’d know I Would just be telling you lies.


You know you’re the only one That can make a change, Take a little chance, Have a little faith. It’s all about love, It’s all about life, It’s all about You and I.

Note: This poem has been made into a song without changing the content of the poem.

Lead Guitar and Vocals – Deevesh Sinha Rhythm Guitar and Playback – Nikhil Sharda.

You can find the song on YouTube


http://youtu.be/wuiDytTxHtw

©Illustrations by V

ISHW

AJYOTI G

HO

SH

Musings A Play by Satish Alekar

Darkness on stage. Slowly, objects be-come visible. On one side of the stage are two ‘regal chairs’, with high backs. In the two chairs are seated a Woman and a Man. The woman is thirty-five and the man forty.

The opposite side of the stage is lit by aspotlight. The Woman gets up, crosses over and stands under the light. The Man sits very still, like a statue. The intensity of the light on the chairs remains unchanged.

The Woman starts speaking, addressing both the Man and the audience.

Woman: There on the couch — not a regular, but a high-backed couch sits a stone. No… he hasn’t entirely turned to stone yet. (Changing the subject) I’m from a former princely state… no… no… I’m a noblewoman of a royal family and a lover of the man sitting over there…? ‘Royal family’ sounds so dignified, no? But actually, I’m from a poor family and… forget it. I won’t bore you with the details. (Suddenly) This palace of ours, isn’t it huge? As big as the sky! Just the four or five of us live like ghosts in this mansion. Over there is our royal garden… but the gulmohar[1] has never really blossomed there. (Turns serious) The ratrani[2] has no fragrance, the Chapha[3] has no fragrance. The scent of the chapha is just too strong; it stings the nostrils. Sometimes… it can knock you out. Only the terda[4] flowers here. But its colour lasts for how many — five… four… no, three. Only three days, and looks at me bitterly, as though it’s my rival in love. Hmm! The pining chapha! (Laughs loudly) Did I just say ‘rival in love’? No, this is getting just too serious… There stands our temple. Yes, our own private temple. Because our family’s the royal family. And the usual vrin- davan[5] in the front. Of tulsi[6]! This is my mansion — isn’t it gorgeous! The illustrious stones in these walls have started betraying their layers of cement. (Suddenly, innocently, like a little child) You know, I water only that chapha right there, every day, with a little brass kettle — exactly like the one we use to sprinkle water on the gods. (Again, in her usual voice) … You know how many days the colour of theterda lasts? Three… No, not three… Perhaps only two days. The colour of my life… forget it… My life is bleached. It has no colour whatsoever and I’ve turned into a blanched gecko. (Addressing the Man) The man over there — he’s come today after many days. Hey, you, did you hear what I said just now? I wasn’t reciting a monologue.

The Man doesn’t react. He sits there like a statue.


But who’s he to me? And I to him… his brother was my… no… nothing. If I say a word

more to you, I would burst out crying… loudly. Break into — what do you call it? — a wail or

something. And I…

Suddenly, the light changes to the usual. The Woman goes back to her chair and sits beside the Man. Silence for approximately three seconds. Then, the floodlight falls on the spot where the Woman had stood. This time, the Man goes and stands under it. The Woman sits still as a statue.

Man: I’ve loved her, that’s what……..

To Read this play please get the March Issue of eFiction India


Contributors

Sreejita Biswas is writer (for hire). Her relationship with words can only be defined as dysfunctional. There are times when they can be woven beautifully into tales of wonder and times, when it can only be defined as a hapless dyslexic disarray. Nirupama Sudarsh is a second-year student at the Symbiosis School of Economics in Pune. She grew up in the Trichur district in Kerala. Her writing has been previously published in the Indus Woman Writing and Spark. Apart from reading and writing, she enjoys singing. Sheikha A is a writer based in Pakistan. She loves to write and voice her opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. Shifani Reffai is a twenty-two-year-old Sri Lankan undergraduate in Delhi University, studying the love of her life: literature. Before university, she worked as a writer, subeditor and photographer for several Sri Lankan newspapers and magazines (including The Daily Mirror, The Sunday Leader, Chokolaate, Leisure Times, Ink and Finesse). Since, she has done a little bit of this and a little bit of that – architecture, wedding photography, film production, and theatre – because she always has her fingers in a lot of pies due to a severe case of ADD (or so she hypothesizes). She is also an astronaut. But that’s a secret, sshhh. Namitha Varma is a media professional and a self-proclaimed narcissist based in Mangalore. She has been reading and writing poetry since she can remember. Being a part of three different cultures – Malayali, Gujarati and Kannada – constantly broadens her outlook of arts, life and humanity. When not attempting to write, she is pointing out editing errors to her teammates, reading, listening to music and finding new ways to irritate her husband. She blogs at www.narcissistwrites.blogspot.com. An eminent Marathi playwright, Satish Alekar has been active on the theatre scene since the early seventies. A founder member of the Theatre Academy of Pune, his best-known works are ‘Mahanirvan’ (1974) and ‘Begum Barve’ (1979) Lal Dil was the first member of his low-caste family to finish school. At university, he turned activist and joined the far left Naxalite movement. He now runs a highway tea-stall in Gurgaon, Haryana, and writes one-line poems to be painted on the back of long-haul trucks Vineet Mittal is based in Meerut, India. This is the first time he has sent his work to a publication. He is shy and considers himself socially handicapped. He spends his time writing his journal not because he likes to write but because he forgets the things he felt the previous day and fears the day when all that he has felt would be forgotten.


http://www.narcissistwrites.blogspot.com/

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