Dear Readers,

Welcome to the seventeenth edition of LiteraryVibes, in the backdrop of a country-wide collective relief over the successful completion of the Electoral process. The size of the Indian electorate at 830 million is way above the population of the European continent and slightly less than the combined population of North and South America. Conducting polls for such a mammoth electorate is a Herculean task. Yet, year after year the Election Commission of India has been achieving this feat as the world looks on in breathless wonder. Personally, the success stories of  elections bring a lot of proud memories to me, as I was part of the Election Commission of India for eight years, first as Chief Electoral Officer and then as Deputy Election Commissioner.

We are privileged to get some excellent short stories from three new writers this time: Ms. Chithra Ramachandran, Mr. Poochasannyasi, and Mr. Shaji Eruvatti. They are all popular and acclaimed writers in Malayalam literature. We welcome them to the family of LiteraryVibes and wish them lots of success in their literary career. We thank Mr. Sreekumar for translating their stories from Malayalam and introducing them to LiteraryVibes.

Please continue to write for LiteraryVibes and do ask your friends and contacts to send their literary creations to us.

 

Happy Reading!

Warm Regards,

Mrutyunjay Sarangi

 

 

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THE LOST BEADS

Prabhanjan K. Mishra

A promise peeps out of the sky,

the sun is to shake its mane yet.

Under the Mahua tree

an emptiness stands alone

by the path to  the house.

Where are the patient mud walls,

the somnolent hay thatch?

Why is this crouching bungalow

blocks my way?

 

In bed, my straying hand

gropes beyond my wife’s form,

waiting for the old coy sighs.

She turns naughty,

“Ram, don’t be a monkey,

why search an entire jungle,

Sita here, is hot and fuming.”

My apologies make her aghast,

exacerbates her wounded pride.

 

Hastening to the temple yard

my ears search for whispers

I left there years behind,

they seem lurking around the corners;

find a female devotee receiving

her sacrament from the priest;

both devoutly busy

at their multi-course buffet

spanning from lips to loins

with missionary zeal.

 

My despondence whetting my hunger

I go searching for my lost beads

by the old pond behind the house,

find a naked little boy frolicking

with his marbles in the sands,

a glistening dark fish of the pond

pares the midday sun like onion layers,

at the core the onion shift beads

of a white-purple  fire.

 

Before long, my wife’s long face

frowns from a back window.

With downcast eyes I mumble,

“Looking for my beads

I lost here…”

She is in splits and mocks,

“Not beads, naughty boy, your balls,

you lost last night..”

My gloom settles down thicker.

 

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SITA, THE QUINTESSENCE

Prabhanjan K. Mishra

What a pity, this Ravan

guised as a hermit

kidnapped me, a poor housewife!

Would one ever trust ascetics?

 

He adored me, solicited my favours,

outdid himself in valour,

ordered for my welfare, gave me space,

the brave heart never touched my flesh.

 

Rumour of a myth alerted me:

he could be my sire. Was it a canard?

Not written on my face, nor his;

nor his continence was a fear of incest.

 

Ram, my husband, my god,

proved himself a bungler, a fumbler;

puzzled me no end; blind to

the smell of loyalty in my flesh.

 

Lankan War won,

we returned home happy;

but he from his throne

fire-tested my purity !

 

Never would I know

whose sleight of hands

saved me from that terrible fire-test.

Ah, the labyrinthine palace intrigues!

 

Again Ram behaved spineless:

overheard a foolish dhobi’s blabber,

dumped me undefended,

in a forest by deceit;

 

the poor pregnant ‘me’,

had craved for a breath of forest air,

a fancy from my days

in forest over long fourteen years.

 

I pity the congenital cowards!

His sibling Lakhan left me in the forest

by design when my tired flesh

was having its forty winks.

 

Unarmed, without food or water,

predators lurking around;

by sheer luck, seer Valmiki

salvaged me to his hermitage.

 

Later, the great seer

rehabilitated me to my home,

but again my sissy Ram

wished to burnish me by fire.

 

I preferred death to that ignominy,

plunged down an abyss;

for there might not be an angel

this time to save me from inferno.

 

Deifying me in households

as icon of chastity, do they know

my heart in its dark hours

remains unsure of a choice?

Prabhanjan K. Mishra writes poems, stories, critiques and translates, works in two languages – English and Odia. Three of his collected poems in English have been published into books – VIGIL (1993), Lips of a Canyon (2000), and LITMUS (2005).His Odia poems have appeared in Odia literary journals. His English poems poems have been widely anthologized and published in literary journals. He has translated Bhakti poems (Odia) of Salabaga that have been anthologized into Eating God by Arundhathi Subramaniam and also translated Odia stories of the famous author Fakirmohan Senapati for the book FROM THE MASTER’s LOOM (VINTAGE STORIES OF FAKIRMOHAN SENAPATI). He has also edited the book. He has presided over the POETRY CIRCLE (Mumbai), a poets’ group, and was the editor (1986-96) of the group’s poetry magazine POIESIS. He has won Vineet Gupta Memorial Poetry Award and JIWE Poetry Award for his English poems.He welcomes readers' feedback at his email - prabhanjan.db@gmail.com

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JESUS CHRIST (YISHUKRISTA)

Haraprasad Das

Translated by Prabhanjan K. Mishra

Where are you, little darling ?

I can hear you breathe

when the wind rustles

along our bereft verandah.

 

Be happy, wherever you are, child;

allow my conscience,

that had moved heaven and earth

in exchange of few drops of blood,

to bear the burden of its cross

for a while more.

 

I dream of the day

I may pass the litmus test,

to be with you, across the high wall

of your moral benchmark.

 

I know,

you will be the chosen one

to get the Lord’s Shroud

even if the history

wraps its mystery differently

and paints the Lord’s immortal coffin

with a different hue.

 

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HUMAYUN’S MAUSOLEUM AT DELHI (HUMAYUN’NKA QABAR: DILLI)

Haraprasad Das

Translated by Prabhanjan K. Mishra

The dew sparkling blood-red

on grass blades

evaporates away in the morning sun,

so do erode away happy memories

carved on your tomb.

 

Don’t bask so smugly,

you poor king,

the history of your good rule

like these lush bushes

in lawns behind the tomb

may wither away before long…!

 

The documented facts

will be buried on history’s walk;

before the dust settles

over the quarrel

between facts and fiction,

the last remains be sealed

beneath marble slabs.

 

The history will be wrapped

with layers of riddles,

the happy memories

of you as a just ruler

will rot and stink

in vermin infested necrotic dark,

its stench attracting only flies.

Mr. Hara Prasad Das is one of the greatest poets in Odiya literature. He is also an essayist and columnist. Mr. Das, has twelve works of poetry, four of prose, three translations and one piece of fiction to his credit. He is a retired civil servant and has served various UN bodies as an expert.

He is a recipient of numerous awards and recognitions including Kalinga Literary Award (2017), Moortidevi Award(2013), Gangadhar Meher Award (2008), Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award (1999) and Sarala Award (2008)”

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VIJAYA

Geetha Nair G

That afternoon, the students had been given forms to fill in for some survey or the other. I asked them to hurry up and submit them to me. It was irritating, the way such things ate into my lecture time. They lingered over it as students always do; anything to put off the lecture. They were forty one in number, twenty one boys and twenty girls. My class. I collected the forms and took a quick look at them. "Number of family members" had elicited "1" and "2" in a couple of forms. I called out their names and they came up to correct their error: they had mistaken the instruction for number of children in the family!

As I was arranging the forms swiftly, my eye fell on yet another form. "Vijaya!" I thundered and up jumped the culprit. She was one of the few good students in the class. Yet, she had made this stupid mistake. She came up to my table and stood looking at me with big, over- bright eyes. "Two? Only two family members?" I scowled, thrusting her form into her hand. “Can't you read?”. Her eyes filled with tears and she sobbed, stammering, “ Sir, Madhav Sir,yes; my brother, my mother.. .”She broke down. I was aghast. "Its OK. Go back to your seat." I told her, confusedly, snatching the form from her hand. Something was wrong. Very wrong. I didn't lecture too well that day, faced with accusing eyes from all sides. Vijaya’s eyes were cast down all the time.

Back in the staffroom, I was told her story. The previous year, her brother had died in a bike accident. The news had killed her mother who had been a heart patient. So now the number of family members was two- she and her father. I wished the clouds would hide me in their wombs. I would have to atone for this.

I wrote her a brief letter explaining it was my ignorance and impatience that had caused her pain. I apologised and quoted a beautiful poem that fitted the occasion. I just couldn’t manage a verbal apology. I put the letter into a book and sent for her the next morning before class. When she came, I handed her the book half-open at the place where the note lay. Her eyes were beginning to brim again ; I hastily got up and made for my first class of the day. But it did not end there.

That had been my first job -a lecturer in St Ambrose College, not far from my hometown. Three months earlier, I had journeyed with a bogeyful of young men and women to write the Great Indian Exam. A handful had cleared that first obstacle. I was one among the lucky ones and was waiting for the interview. My mind was not on teaching; I was just a bird of passage. I had this unreal feeling that I wasn't fully there in those classrooms where I lectured. I was busy cleaning the Indian Stables with both hands.

The students were a motley crowd. The girls were on the whole docile. The boys ranged from super-studious wimps to downright goondas. They addressed me as Madhav Sir to my face. But behind my back I was called Porky. Porky was a ferocious porcupine who lived in a spacious cage near the College office. Occasionally, he let fly his sharp quills. Objectively speaking, it was a suitable name for me. You can guess what sort of figure I cut, from that. I had at that time about as many chips on my shoulder as you would find in a woodcutter’s shed.

I had joined just a month back. I had been given the charge of a final year B. A. class as I was in the leave vacancy of their tutor who had taken a year off to complete his PhD. thesis. The forty one students in the class were barely three years younger than me. My rough,unkempt look,heavy build, searing language and permanent scowl helped to keep them in check.

And now, Vijaya. The next day, she was at the door of the staffroom, book in hand. There were two pages of closely-written script within it. In ink as black as her eyes. I read what she had to say.  At the end was a poem she had written, mirroring her life, her plight. I was deeply moved by it. And by her. Thus began our secret correspondence. As the college authorities encouraged the writing of notes and assignments by students and their correction by teachers-in-charge, our arrangement went without a hitch. I enjoyed being her mentor, guide, teacher, leading her sensitive and questing mind to the starry skies of literature and to the not-so-starry ones of life. My favorite books became hers. She absorbed Kalidasa with as much delight as she did Dante; she wrote that Shakuntala and Beatrice had become a part of her.I knew in which direction she was heading. In class, it was difficult not to let my eyes dwell on her pretty, dark face crowned with black curls. She was always the soul of attention. Her adoration was palpable. I drank it in, savouring every mouthful.When she occupied my thoughts, I was no longer Porky. Yet, I was not sure about my feelings for her. I was not in love. In fact, I did not credit the existence of such a state. . Affection, admiration, regard, lust- these I understood. But “in love’ - that I held to be an illusion, an asinine creation of writers and subsequently, movie-makers.

The interview came and went. I was on the list.

The day after I told her I was quitting to leave for my brave new world, the letter confessing her love for me reached my hands, I was not surprised. I reassessed my feelings for her. Sympathy ? Certainly . Affection? Yes. Love? Not sure; that, I associated with my dead mother. No one else had created that feeling in me. Lust ? No, oddly enough. Though I was as ready as the next man, she did not bring out of me the lava that simmered just below the surface. What then? I placed her against the liberated classmate who had shared my notes and bed and the stunning young teacher who sat next to me and obviously shared my desire to be closer still. It was confusing indeed.

I had to join in a few days. I bid goodbye to everyone, managed to hold my neighbour’s hand in a hungry grasp and to give to Vijaya a long and gentle letter wishing her everything good in her future life.

Once again, there were tears in her eyes. That was the last time I saw her or communicated with her.

Of course she lingered in my mind . She was a dark cloud on my horizon, a question mark in my mind. But my days and nights buried her by and by.

Several years later, I was the guest of honour at a function at St Ambrose. As my car entered the gates, Vijaya entered my mind. I fancied I saw her slight figure moving up the path to the classroom, her curls lifted by the breeze. As I was welcomed into the Principal’s room, I was taken aback to see poor Porky still ruffling his quills inside the cage nearby. Mine, I had more or less shed. I altered my talk to focus on Porky as a symbol for youth and its frustrations. It went down well. The stunning teacher, though considerably older, was still a stunner. I pressed her hand again in a handshake and asked her what was suddenly uppermost in my mind - whether she knew what had become of Vijaya.

“She went on to do her post graduation ; became a lecturer in a college in Hospur. She came here to invite us to her wedding. But, Madhav, can you believe this? She died in childbirth a couple of years later. Poor kid. What a fate!”she said, her face soft with sadness.

When I retired, I was felicitated as an exemplary civil servant, a clean, bold achiever. Soon, I moved to my cottage in the hills, to live there as a clean, old bachelor. I had never found the time for marriage, wife and children.Now, I had plenty of time for reflection.The past to me had turned into a vast mural painting seen from the entrance to the gallery. The swirls and whirls had become patterns. The daubs had turned into shapes.

Sometimes, as I sit nursing a nightcap and gazing at the cloudy, dark, night sky, I yearn to gather an armful of it and hold it against me and say : "Vijaya, come back. I love you. I always did."

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BENEATH IT ALL…

Geetha Nair G

The body breathes, speaks, walks;

A second heart

Moves apart

Thudding, hurting in another cage.

Did ever we learn this in primary school -

Hearts of the Body ?

 

Silence and tears

Silence folding in fog

That melts as tears

Tears rising as mist

To thicken silence.

Did ever we learn this in primary school-

The Pain Cycle ?

 

“Beneath it all, desire for oblivion runs”

 

Chopping greens is pain;

Greens , sticky-sharp

 Drawing heart’s blood;

Hot oil spills

Pattern the forearm

Searing golden-brown.

 

“Beneath it all, desire for oblivion runs”

 

Break the egg

Paint the deep pan white and yellow -

Bull’s eye !

Ms. Geetha Nair G is a retired Professor of English,  settled in Trivandrum, Kerala. She has been a teacher and critic of English literature  for more than 30 years. Poetry is her first love and continues to be her passion. A collection of her poems,  "SHORED FRAGMENTS " was published in January' 2019. She welcomes readers' feedback at her email - geenagster@gmail.com 

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Tell Tales

Sreekumar K

Once upon a time in a faraway land, there was a King. He was very interested in listening to stories. The whole day he was busy doing a lot of things for his subjects. Thus he would be very busy the whole day and by night time he would finish his work and ask others to tell him stories.

You know, the King had so many wise people around him, and they were very good storytellers. Some were good at telling stories about snakes and birds and other animals and some were good at telling stories about lakes and rivers and oceans and hills. There were also other people who told stories about kings and queens and princes and princesses. Then there were those who had funny stories of buffoons and fools.

But, you know, the king didn’t like these stories. He sent all those storytellers away. He couldn’t stand them or their stories. He wanted to hear a story which he used to hear when he was young, when he was a very young baby. Who knows what story the King used to hear when he was young? The King's mother and father had died a long time ago and so had many aged people. There was no way of knowing what story the king used to listen to as a baby. Many people tried to tell him various stories. No, No, No. He only wanted to hear that story he used to hear when he was very young.

People went around the kingdom, asking about the story the king used to hear when he was young. Nobody even knew who had been with the King when he was young. Actually, even the King himself had no idea.

Then, one day, the King's men found a very old man who used to be in the palace when the King was a very young prince. They brought him to the palace and asked him whether he knew the story the King used to hear when he was very young. The old man had gone deaf and they had to shout the question into his ears. It took some time. When he finally heard the question, he started laughing. "O, my children," he told the King's men, "when the King was very young he didn't let anybody tell him anything, not even stories."

The King's men were shocked to hear this. They thought that the King had been trying to trick them. They didn't try to tell him any stories after that. When the time for storytelling came, they all had a headache or a toothache or a backache and disappeared from the palace. Some people even stopped going near the King after supper.

The King now really wanted to hear the story that he used to hear when he was young. He became sleepless. He lost his appetite. His hair became grey. His eyes sank into deep pits. He didn't care about the people and one night he ran away from the palace.

He crossed seven mountains and seven rivers and seven deserts and came to a forest. He was so tired that he slept there. He hadn't eaten anything for days. He slept for a long time. Then it drizzled. He woke up and saw some monkeys around him. They all ran away and climbed the nearby trees. The birds began to talk about him among themselves. When he went to the stream to drink water the stream started giggling. The wind blasted at him and the thunder roared at him. The breeze whispered about him to the flowers and the flowers nodded their heads as if they understood. Seeing this, the King smiled. The flowers suddenly stopped nodding their heads and went to sleep. In fact, they went to sleep because the sun had set in the west.

Then it was night and it was time for the fireflies to visit the glowworms. The King was sure that they were talking about him that night. The Owl kept hooting, "whoooo? whoooo? whooo?" And our King replied, "King, King, I am the King." A bat came flying by and slapped the King on the cheek with its skinny wings for saying that and flew away. That whole night the king stayed awake listening to the millions of sounds around him. You know, the forest is full of songs and chattering and snorting and hooting and roaring and babbling at night. It was early morning when the king had some sleep, but he woke up early to listen to the birds. The King was very happy. Here was a story, a very long one, a very mysterious one, a very interesting one, a very happy one, a very enchanting one, a very fresh one. Fresh? No, he had heard it somewhere before. He had heard it when he was very young, when he used to wander in the palace garden all by himself early in the morning and at night after his dinner.

He hadn’t understood it so well when he had first heard it. Now, in the evening of his life, he understood every bit of it and most of the time could guess what was coming. All the stories were in one way or another about rivers and how they flowed. A river seemed to flow through everything, big and small. It sucked everything up on its way and left them wherever it fancied.

The king thought that he himself had come floating into the forest. He sensed that it was time for him to go back. But he was in no hurry and stayed for a few more days and returned only when he thought he had had enough of it.

Most people at the palace was very happy to see their king returning to them. They hoped that he would have got cured of his hunger for stories. Or, some he would have found his own storyteller.

But now the king knew better. He knew where to go to listen to the best stories. He grew more trees in the garden and invited all the birds and flies and small animals to come and stay there. The whole day he worked for the people. He was changing their lives. He was making their lives better. It was like telling them a good story. In the evening, with his people, he came to the garden and listened to the story, the story the sunset told him and the wind told him and the evening flies told him. The mosquito too had a story in the form of a song.

Later the King found that even if he goes nowhere and stays in his bed he could hear the story. In fact, when he became too old to go out he enjoyed listening to the story he heard when he closed his eyes. And his last words when he died were, “and so he lay dead happy ever after.”

Sreekumar K, known to his students and friends more as SK, was born in Punalur, a small town in south India, and has been teaching and writing for three decades. He has tried his hand at various genres, from poems to novels, both in English and in Malayalam, his mother tongue. He also translates books into and from these two languages. At present he is a facilitator in English literature at L’ école Chempaka, an international school in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. He is married to Sreekala and has a daughter, Lekshmi S K. He is one of the partners of Fifth Element Films, a production house for art movies.

He writes regularly and considers writing mainly as a livelihood within the compass of social responsibility. Teaching apart, art has the highest potential to bring in social changes as well as to ennoble the individual, he argues. He says he is blessed with many students who eventually became writers. Asked to suggest his favourite quote, he quickly came up with one from Hamlet: What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba/That he should weep for her?

Sreekumar K welcomes readers' feedback on his poems at sreekumarteacher@gmail.com

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CLOUDS

Dr. Ajaya Upadhyaya

Clouds,

with a potpourri

of patterns,

like jumbled angst

of adolescence.

 

A melange of

colours

engaged in

embrace,

hard to tell:

Are they

lovers departing

or just met.

 

As a child,

they felt

like soft cushions,

so fluffy

I wished,

I could plump on them.

 

As I grew up,

and began to think,

asking myself,

what kind is it,

cumulus or nimbus?

 

And now,

can’t hide

a tinge of envy.

Watching them

floating effortlessly,

I wish,

I could be free!

 

Dr. Ajaya Upadhyaya from Hertfordshire, England. A Retired Consultant Psychiatrist from the British National Health Service and Honorary Senior Lecturer in University College, London.

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EPIPHANY

Dilip Mohapatra

When the rarefied daylight

diffuses and dreams into 

the dense darkness of the night

and I take refuge

in the shadows of my

corruptible dreams

away from the scrutiny

of your absent eyes 

and can't even remember

when the last kiss

evaporated from my lips

or when was it last

I clasped your hands

when you could not feel

your fingers.

 

How long will I hide

and be scared

to defrost my frozen feet

and won't have the guts

to resurrect the light

that died young in my 

untamed shadows

again and again?

I know 

that day will surely come

when I shall see

the light of the day uninterrupted 

and when my bereaved

shadow would lament for my

body's warmth.

 

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ONCE AGAIN

Dilip Mohapatra

I am sure that

I shall rise from 

my tremulous ashes one day

and shall be resurrected

to walk the earth

once again

perhaps with a new name

and new blood in my veins

to play a new game

to make the wrongs right

and paint the blacks white

and to win once again

but ensuring that

you don't lose either.

 

I have seen

people dying

without ever having lived

never to be reborn

never again to get

a second chance

to do and undo

things they did and did not

and perhaps to

live a life 

and an uncorrupted dream

that eluded them

all along.

 

As of now as I trudge along

sometimes on track

and sometimes off

I feel that I cease to exist

having lost my being

in so many beings

and having seen

light dying young

in my ominous shadow

while I leave behind 

in my wake

heaps of dried up leaves

voiceless flowers

and mutilated butterfly wings.

 

I am sure that

the end would end one day

and there would be

the dawn of

another beginning

may be at another place

another time.

 

Once again.

 

Dilip Mohapatra (b.1950), a decorated Navy Veteran is a well acclaimed poet in contemporary English and his poems appear in many literary journals of repute and multiple anthologies  worldwide. He has six poetry collections to his credit so far published by Authorspress, India. He has also authored a Career Navigation Manual for students seeking a corporate career. This book C2C nee Campus to Corporate had been a best seller in the category of Management Education. He lives with his wife in Pune, India.

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KILLING BUDDHA ON THE WAY

Dr. Bichitra Kumar Behura 

The moon is descending down

With soothing silvery rays

Spreading the wings

Across the grassy land

With soft wind blowing

On the full moon night ,

As He is looking up

Opening the sleepy eyes

To get enlightened

Under the lusty banyan tree

For the first time

In His long arduous life.

 

I happen to pass by

Fully engrossed

In worldly affairs

My ego is sky high

I am not at all shy

To boast of my pseudo pride.

The sight is quite electrifying,

Intensely pleasing and satisfying

Now, I am slowly getting realized

That life needs to be lived without frills.

 

Let me hold your hand ,

I have to cross the hot sands.

I am ready to part with

All that I think I have.

The moonlight makes me bare

Which I don’t bother to care .

The rays of wisdom

Slowly opening the door

To free the bird from the prison.

 

He guides me to get across the river

And is admonishing strongly

To be attentive and remember

That He may be spared

Not to be made a prisoner

Inside a temple of any manner ,

Rather, He should be obliterated

As time comes for me to replicate

A buddha, so that I crossover

Holding the rays of the full moon ,

In this beautiful summer.

"Dr. Bichitra Kumar Behura passed out from BITS, Pilani as a Mechanical Engineer and is serving in a PSU, Oil Marketing Company for last 3 decades. He has done his MBA in Marketing from IGNOU and subsequently the PhD from Sagaur Central University in Marketing. In spite of his official engagements, he writes both in Odia and English and follows his passion in singing and music. He has already published two books on collections of poems in Odia i.e. “Ananta Sparsa” & “Lagna Deha” , and a collection of  English poems titled “The Mystic in the Land of Love”. His poems have been published in many national/ international magazines and in on-line publications. He has also published a non-fiction titled “Walking with Baba, the Mystic”. His books are available both in Amazon & Flipkart.". Dr Behura welcomes readers' feedback on his email - bkbehura@gmail.com.

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THE 'WRONG' STORIES

Ananya Priyadarshini

"... The beast had imprisoned her father. He offered to release him only if Belle agreed to stay with him, in his prison. Forever. Belle loved books. The beast offered her an entire library to lure her into the prison. Also, talked to her of love. But, Belle refused. She went right to the village officials. She sought help from the village head. Even some kind hearted villagers came to her help. Together, they all went to fight the beast. The beast was very mighty and powerful. Still, he had to give up before the unity and courage of such a big mass of people. Also, he agreed to make the library open for all so all can be benefited", my mom had told me this story when I was just four. When I recited the same story at my school, I lost the competition because that's not how the original 'The Beauty and The Beast' was written! My mother had manipulated the story.

That day, I went home crying and complained to my mom. Even, blamed her for my defeat. She offered to talk to my teacher the next day and thus, I finally calmed down.

"Ma'am, do you really think we should feed our children a story that encourages them to 'offer' themselves in exchange of anything or anyone?", The next day, she was talking to my teacher. 

"I understand what you mean but only reciting the story that's printed in books can get her grades.", My teacher was saying, not slightly impressed with mom's logic.

My mom wasn't one of those who would raise their voices or attack personally. If she saw the argument going nowhere, she used to simply quit. She valued time and peace more than anything else.

Ten years later, a friend of mine found a crying toddler on her way back home from school and upon being asked, the kid somehow conveyed that he's lost. And, additionally, he told her about his home. She was more than confident about finding his home because she was well versed with the locality and its roads. So, instead of calling the police or helpline she went to drop the kid at his place. All by herself. Luckily, she found the right place and unluckily, she also found out that the entire thing was a trap. 

It was, in the harsh reality, a racket that used to lure girls through crying children. The children were misused to ultimately bring the girls to a location where the criminals would be waiting for them like eagles waiting for preys. There, they would be molested, raped, filmed, blackmailed and extorted for months. This kept on happening until a girl, who was probably not brainwashed by 'Beauty and Beast' concept grabbed the hand of a crying child and took him right to the police.

That's how, many girls were saved from falling into the trap in future because the trap makers were behind the bars and the truth of the trap was revealed by media. Many videos were deleted, freeing the blackmail victims and many children who were kidnapped to serve the purpose of 'bait' were handed over back to their parents or some children's homes.

That's when I realised why my mom hadn't told me the story wherein Belle offers the beast to imprison her and let her father go. Because in the story, Beast and Beauty eventually fall in love with each other. But in the world I was supposed to face after growing up, beasts used to rape and kill.

Years later, the chain of memories are flying to me as my own four year old little girl is sleeping in my arms urging me to narrate her 'The Snow White and Seven Dwarfs'.

"She was disowned by her step mom. She decided to move out and find herself some work and accommodation. She made friends- seven of them who were quite shorter than her. But more than looks, they were all nice people.", I'm framing a fake story.

"Just like Dua. She limps but she's my best friend!", My girl interrupts. Dua has spinal problems that has left her crippled since birth. Nobody made friends with her at the play school. But my daughter has chosen her as her best friend! A week back, Dua, who was otherwise never invited to anyone's birthday party because of her disability, was the chief guest at my daughter's. Indeed a sweet girl and sings really well!

"Yes, exactly the same way! After some time, she moved in with them. She was still in search of work that'd pay her well. Her stepmom sent a fraud man with a lucrative job offer so as to trap her. She didn't accept because it looked fishy to her. She chose to work harder herself to earn all that she deserved."

"Just like I declined the ice cream that Uncle was offering me in mall that day. And later, when I scored an A+ in drawing, you rewarded me with two of them!"

"Yes, you're my princess!", I felt a little lump in my throat as I heard that. The world has gone worse but at least, my daughter is learning how to deal with it.

My daughter's teacher is an amazing lady. She had made the entire class give my daughter a standing ovation when she had narrated the manipulated version of Cinderella wherein the protagonist had left her home after turning into an adult annoyed with her stepmom's tortures. Gradually, she faced her prince in an archery competition and the prince falls for her skills unlike the real story where the character ran into a ball wearing borrowed gown so she gets to dance with a handsome man. The man, falls for her appearance and marries her after she manages to fit into some glass shoes.

"We need to tell our children stories that grounds them firmly to reality and not give them false impressions!", The teacher had called to convey me her 'kudos'.

"But they ain't written books."

"Books were written a century ago- for those who lived then. A lot has changed, you see. These stories too need an upgradation."

"But won't these affect her grades, ma'am", I care for my daughter's grades, amidst breaking stereotypes.

"It's not wrong, but the new right. And she's just setting the new right at place in a creative way. Her grades won't suffer, I guess. And if at all they do, don't go back to telling her the same old stories. Because that's how she'll suffer", she was making sense. 

I'm going to narrate my girl a new story today, with a whole new twist. If things go right, I'll tell you the story too- a wrong story in the right way!

 

Ananya Priyadarshini, Final year student, MBBS, SCB Medical College, Cuttack. Passionate about writing in English, Hindi and especially, Odia (her mother tongue).

Beginner, been recognised by Kadambini, reputed Odia magazibe. Awarded its 'Galpa Unmesha' prize for 2017. Ananya Priyadarshini, welcomes readers' feedback on her article at apriyadarshini315@gmail.com.

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THE TENTH GAZE

Dr. Nikhil M Kurien

Men have gazes to dwell upon.

Upward gaze to  God in need

And downwards in fear,

Laterally they gaze enviously

And medially to frown.

 

In the upward medial angle

They gaze to think,

To upward  lateral angle in dream.

In the downward medial angle

They gaze to regret,

To downward  lateral angle in sorrow.

 

Into oblivion they look straight

And no gaze in anger, he is blind.

Together nine gazes have many

But the tenth, only few.

 

It’s the  in-gaze,

Gaze which get reflected

So deep in mind

 To beam forth out

As fore – gaze; wisdom.

Dr. Nikhil M Kurien is a professor in maxillofacial surgery working  in a reputed dental college in Trivandrum. He has published 2 books.  A novel , "the scarecrow" in 2002  and "miracle mix - a repository of poems" in 2016 under the pen name of nmk. Dr. Kurien welcomes readers' feedback on his email - nikhilmkurien@gmail.com.

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DID I TELL YOU?
Latha Prem Sakhya

Did I tell you
The moment I saw you
My heart missing a beat
Sank to the pit of my being
Painting me blue and pink?

Did I tell you
How my heart was whispering
Your name with every beat
How I yearned for your nearness
While pretending that you did not exist?

Did I tell you
Even as I watched someone else
My inner eyes were on you
Capturing stills of your movements
To be encased in the album of my heart?

Did I tell you
When you called my name
Ever so softly like the whisper
Of the falling leaves
  My heart flew out to you?       

Did I tell you
I trapped it
And caged it securely
For no one to spy it
In my naked eyes?

Did I tell you
That I dare not look at you.
For you would glimpse the truth
I never wanted to share with any one
Not even with you?
                                                          

Did I tell you
That I smiled and smiled
While all the while my ego
Urged me to run away
So that I would save my self respect?

Yes, did I tell you
While acting out my meagre role
I was running inside wildly
Searching for nooks and crannies
To hide and lick my bleeding heart?   

Did I tell you?
It was to save the last
Vestige of womanly dignity
Before being stoned to death
By the eyes of self-styled Puritans?

Did I tell you
That I loved you -
A love doomed to death
Like a still-born babe
In the womb?

No, I couldn’t tell you.
They are the primitive urges
Of the wild self residing in me
Trapped within my conscious self
Leading a custom-bound conventional life.

But let me tell you now
My love, Phoenix-like,
Resurrecting in a friendship perennial -
Is watered by unconditional love,
And sustained by the Almighty   sun.                                                                      

Prof. Latha Prem Sakhya, a  poet, painter and a retired Professor  of English, has  published three books of poetry.  MEMORY RAIN (2008), NATURE  AT MY DOOR STEP (2011) - an experimental blend, of poems, reflections and paintings ,VERNAL STROKE (2015 ) a collection of? all her poems.

Her poems were published in journals like IJPCL, Quest, and in e magazines like Indian Rumination, Spark, Muse India, Enchanting Verses international, Spill words etc. She has been anthologized in Roots and Wings (2011), Ripples of Peace ( 2018), Complexion Based Discrimination ( 2018), Tranquil Muse (2018) and The Current (2019). She is member of various poetic groups like Poetry Chain, India poetry Circle  and Aksharasthree - The Literary woman, World Peace and Harmony

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SHADOW

Sruthy S. Menon 

The silent nights 

The shadows ...

Curling,

Twisting,

And,

Swirling

As a whirlpool

of darkest secrets. 

Unmasking,

the masked selves.

Like a glass,

Breaking,

its multiple reflections of reality.

Sruthy S. Menon is a postgraduate student in MA English Literature from St.Teresas College ,Kochi, Kerala. A few of her poems have been published in Deccan Chronicle, also in anthologies such as “Amaranthine: My Poetic Abode”, a collection of English poems and quotes compiled and edited by Divya Rawat. An Anthology by Khushi Verma titled “Nostalgia: Story of Past”, a collection of English poems, stories, quotes. 

She is a winner of several literary and non- literary competitions including art and painting as inspired by her mother, the recipient  of Kerala Lalitha Kala Akademy Awrard. Her poetry reveals the strikingly realistic and fictional nature of writing on the themes of love, rejuvenation of life in contrast with death, portraying human emotions as a juxtaposition of lightness and darkness, the use of alliteration on natural elements of nature, etc.

She is a blogger at Mirakee Writers community and Fuzia ,a platform for women writers, receiving International Certificates for contests on Poetry and Art. She welcomes reader’s feedback  in Instagram (username ) @alluring_poetess .

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AT THE END OF THE DAY

Gopika Hari

At the end of the day, it is you I seek-
Those shoulders-the coat-hangers where I can hang
my world-wet, dripping raincoat
Those eyes, which calm my stormy eyes,
Telling the clashing factions in them
To calm down, and rest until dawn.
Those coarse fingers, drawing blinds
Over the worries peeping through forehead frowns.
And your breath, that self-content tide,
Cushioning my fall down your dream's soft slide.

 

Gopika Hari, third year BA English literature student at University college TVM. Poetry is her passion and has published her first anthology under the title "The Golden Feathers". She started writing poems from the age of ten, love poetry and poetic prose. She welcomes readers' feedback on her email - gopikameeratvm@gmail.com

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THE BURKHA

Kabyatara Kar (Nobela) 

To surprise you all, 
A few words on the drape.
The black coloured clad symbolizing the holiness of women
Enveloping their dignity..
Concealing their beauty
Exposing the cute feet. 

Ah! This is not the burkha I have in mind. 
It is the black clad Auto' 
I am talking about. 

I feel choked constantly pressing my clutch
With its hideous appearance.
It is so smothered that it does not
Allow even the slightest to be seen ahead of it
What's ahead of this 'auto'
So gallantly it strides on road
That doesn't allow anyone to overtake it
Its twists and turns have put wrinkles of irritation on my face
Oh Lord! Its so hard to manage behind the steering
When will i get the freedom from this Burkha, 'the auto'

 

Kabyatara Kar (Nobela) 

M.B.A and P.G in Nutrition and Dietetic, Member of All India Human Rights Activists

Passion: Writing poems,  social work

Strength:  Determination and her family

Vision: Endeavour of life is to fill happiness in life of others

---

 

LONE BIRD

Ibrahim Anas Sakaba (BlackPoet) 

 

A lone bird stares 

with so much tears 

for Eros ordain his fierce;

deep down its heart he spears.

 

A lone bird stares

for no one cares 

to take his fears 

down down the stairs.

 

A lone bird stare,

with that urge to dare 

and no song to fare 

for hopes go all bare.

 

A lone bird stares 

with so much tears 

for Eros ordain his fierce;

deep down its heart he spears.

 

Lone bird stares,

as its dreams walk-pass

with aids of undertakers,

they felicitate dance-pass

alas! it goes

into the stomach of earth.

 

Oh! the lone bird stares

up up the roof

down to his buried desires

with no condition, he retires.

Ibraheem Anas Sakaba is  a young Nigerian poet and writer with the pen name Black. He hails from the North-western part of Nigeria (Kebbi State). He earned his Bachelor of Art degree in English Language in 2017. He has written many poems, which are on crises around Africa and political issues.

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The Eggs 

Chithra Ramachandran

(Translated by Sreekumar K)

 

I was making an omelette, sprinkling it with pepper and salt when the sparrow came and knocked at my window.

It was no bigger than a nut. But, wait, how loud!

"What is it this time?" I asked turning over the omelette.

"Hey, guess what I am building a nest in that tree there. Gonna lay eggs too."

"So, what? Do whatever you want. You can nest or breed without telling me. Do you know that?" I broke a bit of the omelette and tasted it. Good. Creamy.

"That stupid bird is hovering around, that uppan, pretending to hunt for worms. Keep an eye on my nest, OK?" She looked at me like Meera at the Krishna idol.

"You just lay eggs, I will handle that croucal," I assured her.

Hearing that the poor uppan looked at me pitifully.

I sat in the veranda, munching the omelette and watching the sparrows put together a nest, strand by strand.

In the chicken coup, the hen cackled.

I wiped the plate,  licked smack my fingers, went to the chicken coup and put my head in.

I dragged out the protesting lady.

I grabbed the egg and strode back to the kitchen.

 The hen went on cackling. Who cares!

This one I should eat boiled tomorrow. I stashed it in the fridge.

 "This is the fifteenth egg that bitch is stealing," the hen complained to her a sympathising neighbour whose fate was no different from hers.

 "How much I dreamed of feeding at least two chicks this season. I don't think that glutton will ever let me. Next season, I am planning to fly away and lay my eggs in some forest."

 Her eyes were still shining bright as she went around scratching the dirt to ferret out farm fresh wrigglers.

Days later, the sparrow as the nest was finished, the little lady began to lay eggs in there. The couple took turns at going out to shop.

 My eyes were on the uppan.  Even the crow which was gorging on a squishy piece of papaya, pranced closer to the nest, its one eye fixes on it and the other on me whichever way it turned. I chased it away.

 One of those days when I went into the chicken coup the feathered lady went wild. I flung her out and grabbed the egg.

There was something odd about her. Soon I figured it out.

She was planning to roost without eggs. Bloody cheater.

I chased her around the yard and caught hold of her.

I dipped her in a bucket of water.

 I spat at her, "You bird brain, you dare to play games with me. I know how to handle such brats."

 I tethered her close to the coup and gave her only the government ration. 

"If you are not giving me eggs, that is all you get," I snapped at her.

 Days flew by and the little thorny bush near my window began to tweet without wi-fi.

The eggs had hatched. I another four days there were some free aerobatic shows before an uninvited audience.

 I watched with pride.

"Thank you for guarding us against the evil." the whole family demonstrated a special loop in the low sky for me to thank me in unison.

 The hen, perhaps overhearing them, sneered at me and spat hard on the ground.

Chithra Ramachandran was born at Muvattupuzha and educated at Trivandrum, Kerala. She regularly contributes to Malayalam e-magazines. This story is a good piece of literature. In a very subtle way, it pokes fun at our racism deep in us. We hold one caste, one religion, one race, one species, one skin colour above another. The speaker happily munches on an omelette made from the egg of hen and then guards the sparrow's eggs fo keenly. She has no respect for the rights of one species but adores another species. She fails to see her double standards.

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A CAKE OF INNOCENCE 

Poochasannyasi

(Translated by Sreekumar K)

For bachelors, weekend cleaning and laundry is the main headache. Sundays wake up at 10 o' clock and the first thing one does is cleaning all the laundry left in Surf the previous night.

Denny, entered the bathroom as usual and emptied the bucket onto the floor. The froth made the bathroom floor looked like a five-star bathroom. Very narrow, plaster coming off the walls, badly lit, stinking, roof very low; but, five-star when one looked only down at the trillions of white winking bubbles, breathing their last.  He grabbed some lather and held it under the CFL bulb which was glowing bright. 

No rainbows appeared, and that was odd.

When he was young and held on his hands only a single bubble made from the bath soap with hands wet from the canal where he had come to bathe, a crisp rainbow would show up. 

Invariably some friend would blow on it and burst it. Then another bubble with a new rainbow on it.

As he dived deep into those days, Seban called out to him. 

"Hey, Dennee, finish it fast, we have to go to church today.”

  True, they had planned it the previous day to go to a famous church. It was ten thirty. Not just Seban, Adarsh also had to use the bathroom.

Denny looked at the lather on the floor. It might stay unless he took off the filter on the drainage pipe. He removed it with his toes. The water and lather waited for a second unbelieving, went around the small non-stellar black hole a full round and then whoosh! It all disappeared into the septic tank.

As the water drained out, the bathroom tiles surfaced like a sick person on a sick bed letting his white bed sheet slowly pulled off. 

Denny took a shirt from the bucket. He stayed in an air-conditioned room the whole day. No sweat or dust. His shirts were rather clean.

He only had to rub the collar with a cake of bath soap and rinse it well in a bucket of water repeatedly a few times. 

Wow, what a fragrance? The charm of Pears soap rose up in the air like a genie from a magic lamp.

He had never seen Pears in his younger days. His father used to buy only Chandrika, Rexona or Lifebuoy. And that too only once in two months. He would dictate that one cake should stand for two months. So, when he bathed at the canal or streams with his friends, he would use only their soap.

When he went with his mother, there might be several ladies there. Those who grabbed a stone slab first could finish their laundry first. Or, one has to wait for one's turn. If it is really crowded he could avail of the soap which those ladies had brought. Most of them brought only Rexona or Lifebuoy. His mother used to use it on him. He was too young to be ashamed of anything. 

If Santha Chechi was there, he would be able to use the see-through soap that she brought.

It looked like tinted glass. One can see a coloured version of the beautiful landscape when one looked through it. It is very slippery. So, he had to take extra care to hold it with the right strength neither to let it slide down my hands because he was holding it too lightly nor to let it slip out because he held it too tightly. Every time its oily affection was on  his  skin, he would close  his eyes and see the beautiful model who, in a husky voice, whispered, "Pure pure pears.."

It was one of his childhood dreams to "own" a cake of pears when he grew up. He could fulfil his dreams only when he got a job at the Technopark and had a moderately fat paycheck. 

From that day onwards, with a vengeance, he used only Pears, the heroine of his childhood, to clean himself and his laundry. 

"Dennee, aren't you done with your laundry yet?" Seban called out from the room.

"Wait, just now. Four more shirts and two pairs of pants" yelled out Dennie

Saying that he stood up to ease his back.

The cake of soap found its way into the other universe through the black-hole. 

"O, my God! Seban, I lost the soap" Dennie was on the verge of tears.

Seban came over, took a look at Dennie's sad face and commented, "Do one thing. Use that shampoo over there to finish your bath. Forget the laundry for now. We can buy a cake of your glass soap on our way back and then you can finish your laundry.”

His pure, pure virgin heroine, untouched by another hand, buried deep in her disgraceful sepulchre. 

That day at the church, as he prayed to the Lord to absolve him of all the impurities in his heart and soul, he set aside a few words for the peaceful rest of the acme of purity too.

Poochasannyasi is a computer teacher at L' ecole Chempaka International. He regularly writes short stories and memoirs in Malayalam.  His stories have been included in two anthologies. He lives at Ranny, a hill station in Kerala.

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BOUNDLESS BENEVOLENCE

Shaji Eruvatti

(Translated by Sreekumar K)

 

The house stood high up and noticeable with its long walkway and high compound walls.

Where the plaster on the walls had come off, cute moss had settled, its stems and leaves looking like kings and soldiers. Walking down the cobbled path, I pulled off some, rubbed one piece against another, making the king behead the soldiers.

I slipped.

The kings and soldiers flew from my hand. But I didn't fall down. My initial shock having waned away into milder tremours, I looked down at the treacherous ground that cheated me of my strategic interventions in the muddled politics of a war-ridden nation.

By then I had reached the courtyard of that big house.
I looked around.
The whole courtyard was tiled like the indoors of most homes. The decaying leaves from the big mango tree, the water dripping from a tap near the house for people to cleanse themselves and the rain that graced the earth the previous night had conspired together to make me slip and lose my balance.

Various ways to make the ground less slippery had been tried. Obviously, nothing worked. Those who walked that way had to fend for themselves.
The compound extended to acres. In the middle was this two-storeyed house. The verandas on both floors were protected with iron grilling. At the very entrance to the house were two holy spots set aside for prayers.

On one side of the courtyard was a half covered urinal facility. Near the kitchen, close to where the firewood was kept, there stood an outhouse. The servants were served there. Beyond it were the large kitchen, the stand aloof bathroom and a well.
I inched toward the kitchen and asked out loud whether my grandma was there.

The rhythmic sound of coconut fronds getting chopped coming from the coconut groves near the kitchen, was suddenly cut short. In that silence, I repeated my query.

Two heads popped up inside the window near the kitchen.
"Umma, that is our amma's son!"
My first response was an attempted scream "O, my God." But it didn't make its way beyond my dry throat.
In response to the noises from me or from the two heads beyond the kitchen window, my grandma appeared in tattered clothes, holding a hefty machete knife, her body drenched in sweat. Had it been blood, I would have taken her for a war hero.
"I am here. What is it this time?"

The question was absolutely unnecessary. So, it only meant if there was anything unusual.

I shrugged my shoulders, winked my eyes, pouted hard and said, "Nothing."

On days when there was no school, the sole intent and purpose of such a desperate mission was the lure of food coming from the big kitchen there and it was no secret.

Food appeared before me as a goddess holding a large cup of rice gruel. Like all goddesses I had seen, really speaking only heard about, she too wore a glittering top with sleeves reaching all the way to and beyond her pearly wrists, and a dhoti of the same glittery material draped around her waist down. A large bunch of tinkling keys hung from her waist. She had more than enough bangles around her wrists worn over her sleeves, several huge earrings all over her ears and a shawl that she was forever dragging over her forehead. Her lips were red from chewing pan.

"O, amma's son is here?"

My grandma took the cup from her and was about to offer it to me when the goddess stopped her, spitting out her pan which made a red puddle on the earth.

"Hey, that is for you. For him, we have some tea," she said, offering the box of pan to my grandma.

The lady of the house took me in and even before I entered, I spied through the window that the owners of the heads which had popped up near the window were now sitting on top of the big wooden granary in a room next to the kitchen.
Seeing them I cursed my hunger which had dragged me here.

They were her daughters. They usually tend to stay somewhere in some cosy core of the big house and came out only when their husbands were not there. I was sure those disagreeable men were not there that day.
The tea was thick milk with a dab of the colour of tea to do justice to its name. I loved twirling my tongue in it as it warmed my mouth before I gulped it.

I was slowly enjoying my tea when one of the girls took the cup of tea from my hand, and the other girl, as if by a secret agreement between them, lifted me up and planted me on the wooden plank of the granary
"OK, continue with the temple tale."

There was nothing to continue about any of the stories, but they just wanted to hear me babble on and on. I was unaware of their intentions back then.

Granted I had some starting trouble, I went non stop once I started and overflowed the banks of gratitude to be shown for the generous supply of goodies that poured in from their kitchen.
"They fire three huge firecrackers for the temple festival every year."

"O, really? Why would they do that?"

"To let the people even beyond the town that the festival is on," I explained.

Next was a description of how Choppan wielded his sword and finally wounded himself and how the turmeric powder and blood streamed down his head like scary little snakes.

‌ "It doesn't hurt?"
A look of heroism would appear on my face as I claimed that Choppan never felt any pain since his body was possessed by the deity of the temple."
I would fill them with tales of how offering at the temple made people fortunate. I would end with a dance making the sound of the wild drums with my mouth. At times Umma, the lady of the house would also stand near the door smiling at me.

Umma would have come with a real meal of coarse rotti and fish curry and then it was time for a break. But sometimes the storytelling session went with the meal, stories about how at an auspicious time in the evening I took home some fish breaking a taboo and how the deity came in my dream and chased me around the house, ending with how listening to my grandmas' prayers she left me and went back to the temple. Such stories, for some strange reason, made everyone wipe tears from their eyes.

I also told them stories about how benevolent the deity at the temple was with examples like how I could recover a pencil I had lost, how my father had bought a brand new pair of slippers for me after I had prayed to the deity that I too wanted chappals like all the other kids at school,how I dreamed about finding twenty paise on the way and how it became true. I told them that I gave it to grandma to keep lest I should have to give it back to the deity if she demanded it back. I also told them how I bought my first candy with it, took it home and enjoyed it with my younger sister.

By the time, I was more rotti than myself and had to be helped up.

Getting up, that day, I told them of an unfulfilled dream.

"I had a dream of getting a wristwatch just like my father's and I am sure the deity will make it happen."

The sound of a glass tumbler falling on the kitchen floor and breaking into a hundred pieces took the girls there and in that instance, I wiped my eyes which were streaming with the hot spice in the curry and ran out.

I washed my hands at the pipe outside, wiped my hands on my trousers and went to say bye to my grandma.

There I pretended to do some hard work and then asked her, "May I go now?"

"You look like you are filled to your nose."

With no intention to listen to more, I ran away.

"Hey, amma's son!"

I had reached on the other side of the compound wall.

Were they calling me or their own son? I wondered.

I looked back.

Behind me, there was a gap in the compound wall and through that the lady of the house was calling out to me.

I went back, my heart thumping hard.

She too had a look of fear in her eyes as she produced a little watch from the corner of her dhothi. She handed it to me.

My eyes shone with surprise and joy.

She whispered to me," Don't show this to anyone and don't wear this when you come here."

"Mm, umma." I had no words for that occasion.

She took it from my hand and deposited it in my shirt pocket. Then she patted me on my back and with a flutter of her eyes told me I could leave.

My legs had become wings.

My hands were pressing the watch close to my heart lest I should drop it as I flew over the high flying clouds.

Looking down, at the earth far below, I saw that every wall down there had disappeared. 

Shaji Eruvatty is from Pinarayi, Kannur in north Kerala. He writes stories regularly for Nallezhuthth, an e-magazine in Malayalam. His stories are poignant portrayal of the life he has experienced in his birth place, though he has been mostly abroad on job. 

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THE GOLDFISH

Mrutyunjay Sarangi

 

The goldfish will dress itself

In transparent polythene

Its colour will still shine,

It will preen and pirouette in the glass bowl.

 

It will try to amuse you

Hoping you will take it to the dance carnival.

We will be staring at it with phoney smiles,

Afraid to break its dream.

 

Our pretence fixed on our face,

We will see the night slowly marching

Like tired soldiers in a rugged land

The fading light apologetic on their bent silhouettes.

 

As the night will sink

Like fog-clad hills into the horizon,

The goldfish will still be dancing its heart away,

Looking at us with tired smiles.

 

Ah, the half-paid artists will be yet to return home,

Still immersed in their dreams of stardom.

---

 

MEETING YOU ROUND THE CORNER

Mrutyunjay Sarangi

I knew I would meet you round the corner

Where the letter box stands in solitary grief

Like a tombstone on a grassy patch

Sans the flowers and the tragic epitaph.

 

We smiled at each other,

And took a couple of steps to hug

And to walk away hand in hand

On a long journey to the unknown land.

 

To the letter box I gave a wistful look

Remembering the many messages I sent

It just buried them inside

And made you wait.

 

The letter box rose like a huge wall to keep us apart

And filled my heart with deep sobs,

Your time is yet to come and I have to go back

To wait for you in my tomb.

Dr. Mrutyunjay Sarangi is a retired civil servant and a former Judge in a Tribunal. Currently his time is divided between writing short stories and managing the website PositiveVibes.Today. He has published eight books of short stories in Odiya and has won a couple of awards, notably the Fakir Mohan Senapati Award for Short Stories from the Utkal Sahitya Samaj. The ninth collection of his short stories in Odiya will come out soon.

 

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Critic's Corner

 

A STUDY ON THE SIXTEENTH ISSUE OF LV:

Prabhanjan K. Mishra

 

               I am profusely thankful to Dr. Mrutyunjay Sarangi for standing with me in my hour of personal grief (Ref. his opening editorial address to the readers and contributors). I also express my solidarity with him and all our Odia friends staying in the Zero-Zone for the resilience and courage that they devoted and are engaging in to fight the calamity called FANI that just devastated the central-east coastal belt of Odisha. I also express my gratitude to all non-Odia friends and readers to stand by us in our hour of need to rebuild the Eden, our Odisha.

                Before getting down into the churn of poems and stories in the sixteenth issue I would like to say a word or two. A poem stands on two legs. One gains its strength from its structural excellence, acceptable syntax, diction, and grammar within permissible poetic licence, and a thought that drives it. The other leg stands on poetic persona’s involvement and detachment in a balanced see-saw and harmoniously governed subtle nuances and flexibility. A prose piece, on the other hand, may it be a story or an article, is governed by using the language keeping an eye to the domain, clarity, and usage. Any of these factors going askew mars the piece. Stories in genres of great story-tellers, may start at the end and retrace back to the starting revealing a climax like a trickle all along as in Marquez’s ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’; or it may jump back and forth in time as in Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’, and it can say it in plain chronology as did Vikram Seth in his best seller ‘A Suitable Boy’, but they all equally grip the reader by the power of its communication. Allegorical stories like ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell, or magical realisms like ‘The Brave New World’ of Aldous Huxley exhibit excellent techniques for an author that communicate ideas from the creator to the reader or listener. Such styles and techniques make the communication more intense than plain narration. With this broad and general ideas, I proceed to read this excellent collection in Literary Vibe’s sixteenth issue –

              Discussing the stories first, the story, Scent of Roses, by Geetha Nair pales before her own earlier contributions to LV. It has evolved as a simple and plain tale about the psyche of an over-stressed teacher suffering from delusion, and hallucinating things and situations that assume new dimensions in her mind. In her earlier stories I have found a fire that seems quite cold in this one. At some places she is poetic in her application but the imbalance in her construct stands out with the convoluted language-scape. She can make it more gripping surely with her hold on the rich language and she can do wonders. The intense theme of the story has its rightful demand on her and I think she won’t disappoint it and would do justice with it, her own child.

              Sreekumar K.’s story  The Ant and Grasshopper Reloaded is an allegorical satire in the genre of famed novel Animal Farm. It is a black satire. It starts excellently and progresses into philosophical explorations of the meaning of life, love, ambition, and control. It explores the ensuing chaos in faith, in political outlook, in ethics and ethos. Daring experiments are conducted without bothering about the fallouts. The allegory touches the Ant-Grasshopper parable-like myth too closely for comfort but at the end the connect is lost. The story has a relevance to the current chaotic situation in India’s socio-political life.

              In her story White Raven author Ananya Priyadarshini wraps a social message ‘all that glitters is not gold’ or vice versa, meaning gold needs not glitter all the time. In her well narrated story she bares our Aryan, Pathan, Mughal, and the colonial luggage of blind love for fair skin in India. Even well-endowed members of society are looked down upon as ugly, unclean, uncouth, and unreliable if they are not fair skinned. The author’s under-lined message is a reformer’s zeal to confront the problem like a butting ram, to fight with one’s back to the wall.

              The following four stories are translated from Malayalam into English by Sreekumar K. (known to his friends and literary colleagues as SK, an excellent story teller-poet-critic-and-English teacher himself). The story of Unnimaya told by writer Shreedhar R. N. in his The Fragrance of Darkness narrates an offbeat, unconventional situation. The story deals with a family’s selfish victimization of their own daughter, young Unnimaya, who has been sacrificed at the family’s chopping block to save family reputation. She never had consummated her marriage with her sickly husband and was widowed in her youth. Most of her husband’s family aldo passed away leaving her desolate. She lived in the large homestead surrounded by paddy fields that turned eerily magical during her insomniac nights. Another unfortunate woman’s unconventional life style in her neighbourhood fascinated her, including the latter’s mysterious nocturnal lover from unknown sources described in the neighbourhood as ‘her celestial lover’ and the lonely weird unmarried woman’s life style that ended in a pool by her house. Her body found floating in a pool one morning caught Unnimaya’s morbid fancy. She is haunted by the fragrance of white lily permeating the night air of the farmland where she lives with her sickly mother. One late night she went out into that dark pool as if attracted by unknown powers. The story ends there dramatically hanging the readers in suspence. The haunted story is told in a gripping style and is narrated in third person. The second is Seasons by the Malayalam writer Jayan Thaliradi. It narrates the car journey of four young Malayali friends working in the Gulf States; they ride by a desert-road in a rainy day to see their friend lying in the ICU of a hospital. The story reveals human nature and mutual social behavior through interactions between friends, nurses, a cleaning woman, and the sick man’s wife. The story reveals certain inevitability in human nature that can be distilled down to – a human being of any age (even an old toothless sweeper lady of the hospital) thinks very high of him/herself, especially his/her sex appeal. A human brain is never free from sexual thoughts and his search for a partner (even extramarital) in all circumstances, even during a hospital visit to see a sick friend. The interactions also reveal that in serious relationships (marriage or otherwise) no one remains faithful to their his/her partner in thoughts, and other such outweighing profound associations. Remnant, a story from Malayalam writer Lincy Varkey, is a surreal one about a woman perhaps suffering from delusion and the burden of her own and borrowed memories. When her baggage is checked at an airport, jumps out her fears personified. She finds in her boxes - a man with fear in eyes, a house about to cave in on three children, a wounded lady lying at the man’s feet, a little school-returning girl standing by the deep gorge created by a landslide who is hugging her books over her chest and screaming out in fear, some naked men women shedding tears and other strange things. With instructions from airport authorities she discards these baggage items from her boxes into a waste-bins when she feels the little girl’s hold on her fingers. She even shakes off that memory and wipes a tear from eyes recalling the tragedy. In its own right it is a haunting story, stylistic in format, an experiment in psyche-scape mixing memories with live world realities.             Author Binitha Sain’s  Malayalam story Ant Face is an engrossing and mysterious one, that mixes myths with reality leading to a goose-bump-rise-finish. A pubescent girl Kunjani is nicknamed by her classmates as Urumpi, meaning a girl with an ant-like face, for her narrow and long facial features and her strange affinity to and association with ants, anthills, and love for those little creatures. It is even rumoured that her foster mother Thanki picked her up when she was an almost newborn baby lying abandoned by an anthill. She is believed to have magical powers to trace out lost valuables using her ant couriers. But everyone knows, her powers have failed in her own quest, she had failed finding her mother, her most coveted thing in her life. A new lady teacher from the city comes to this sylvan idyllic remote village and is curious about this Urumpi. She recalls her tragic past and a thread from the past to the present. Finally the ant-faced girl finds her mother when her courier ant climbs up the teacher’s foot; a magical end, uncanny enough to give goose-bumps to readers.

           The portrayal of the plots and characters has been well-captured by the translator and his trans-created language often rises like a glorious phoenix from ashes of weakness noticed here and there. Literal translation and lurching usage of English, spoken as well as written in some places indicate the necessity of close attention and editting.

             Let’s go to the poems in the issue. Shrungaara (Making Love) of Haraprasad Das speaks for itself like a self-driven perpetual engine; the poetic persona being a man of artistic temperament but with normal human drives starts his earthy programme with the base elements of passion, but at the end rises above himself like the rise of Jesus to his Christ-hood from his last temptation (Ref. The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis), it is story of the rise of man from hearts basement to spirit’s sublime heights. The poem deftly balances the deep involvement of the lovers and the detachment as observers or as partners who repose in the after-effect of the holy function. The metaphors like peahen, king cobra, cold hail, chhatra and chaamar etc. pack volumes to excite the passionate state and glorify the sublime. Lines representing the earthy human needs are redolent with sleazy nuances, “…I hear the peahen/ calling to my king cobra/ coiled up in its cloistered den.// I eagerly step inside/ her inviting portal;…”. In contrast sublime lines, “a drop of shimmering tear/ shying away, faltering and inarticulate;/ a few words - / archaic and grand, yet primal;/ antiquated heirlooms – / chhatra and chaamar;/ a dab of coy blush,/ the field of half-bloomed Haragauraa?” then the poet unite the base with the apex deftly in “No, none of these beauties/ measure to her earthy grandeur.” The lines etch unforgettable impressions in a reader/critic’s mind.

               Gote Dhaana Paain (A Grain of Paddy) of Arupananda Panigrahi is another poetic excellence. The poem has in fact two contrasting parts, one at the starting and the other at the end of his Book of Odia Poems of the same title Gote Dhaana Paain. The first poem is sung by a farmhand child and reflects the heart and mind of an Odia farmer (the feeling could be universal for all poor farmers around the globe) and his dreams around and about the food grain, say a grain of paddy, that gives him his food bowl, the essence of his sustenance and living. He sings, “Each grain of paddy/ contained a microcosm of dreams/ of ours, we the dreamers,/we the farmhand children;..// the dreams repose in reality,/ in morsels of steaming rice;..” in a farmer’s family the most precious person is the breadwinner father and he keeps the dreams and fears of his children on tender hooks, “but the day/ an eerie drone of cicadas/ bothered us, the children,/ with a sense of foreboding,/ father had left the house/ with a basket of paddy…..//Would he reach/ the field for showing, or end up/ at the cremation ground?”. In the poem the poet highlights the importance of the rice grain to a farmer’s family by citing a few traditional Odia customs, like mother collecting each grain that falls from a sheaf reserved for God fondly in her sari corner, or she picking up a symbolic grain from the stock sold to a paddy-merchant for adding to the remaining stock like a hedging move in investment market.

              In contrast, the second part of the poem with identical title, has a definite departure/ transition/ evolvement in situation. The farmhand children have grown up, are doing jobs/business, and earn their bread from other sources. There is a shift in their mindset. The diffident dreamer child of the same farmer evolves into a confident real-world man of the house and finds fault with his father, mother, and wife when there is none worth mentioning. While having his rice meal, he finds an uncooked paddy like a sinner among pristine characters, the heap of fine steamed rice. The old parents believing in their old school of thought accept the slip and blame one another for their apparent slips, but his wife of his same brave new age takes the slip in her stride and declares the slip as insignificant, not worth glossing over. She goes ballistic, “What’s the big deal, man? Hush!/…./ why make a fuss?” The poet cleverly again uses a single grain of paddy as his central metaphor in this end game to so the evolved new generation vis a vis the old, for, good, bad, or whatever. A very evocative and well-crafted poem in two parts with a touch of rustic truth amalgamated with urban philosophy.

              The poem Cinderella Goes to the Elite Meet of Geetha Nair, is a piece of amazing work built with bricks of three colours – realism, allegory, and magical realism. She borrows Cinderella motif from the fairytales, juxtaposes it with stilts from our present art world composed of the glitterati and the literati, and using a technique of magical realism as did Rushdie in his ‘Shame’ and ‘The Midnight’s Children’, she cooks her poem.  Her Cinderella images - pumpkin, cat, sandals, witching hour etc. are condiments to taste and discern the present time’s accessories - dream sari, gossamer blouse, literati, glitterati, high-voltage words to electrify etc. and then starts poet’s game “….. my garments drop down like illusions/ And I run unclaimed down the dark road/ Leaving a startled cat, a sullen pumpkin,/ while all clocks stop ticking/ And smile their lewd smiles…”. This seems a tragic end to a cinder-girl’s dreams in the garb of the poet persona draped in a dream-sari and gossamer blouse making the enchanting entry like the enchantress Cinderella into the exalted presence of the prince charming and his acolytes in the garb of the literati and glitterati and then… “I don’t want to be caught/ Showing my skin to the literati among those glitterati;/ Let them believe I am one among them,/ Preening and throwing high-voltage words/ To electrify.” How pathetic it sounds when a genuine poet persona is persecuted by apparent art-full artificial circumstances and compulsion to pretend and to show off an affected personality to match the straw men, hollow men ! In the original Cinder-girl’s story it is a happy ending but in this poem, modern age Cinderella runs into a bleak future, unknown fate in hands of gropers, and may be, metoo type men. It appears the poet persona does not find the razzle-dazzle of the present literati scenario comfortable and she finds it even unsafe to escape from its lewd clutch. She feels bare before the x-ray eyes of the lewd spectators, the listeners and critics, the mentors, and the prince charming himself. This poet persona can be any of the most deserving female artist/ writers/ poets/ actors who is judged not by her creative power but rather by her feminine assets. In this powerful metaphorical poem Ms Nair brilliantly portrays her angst and the angst of her fellow travellers in a sea controlled by male sharks.  

             Poet Dilip Mohapatra, a fine and established voice, has contributed two excellent poems Take Your Pick and Option. To me the two poems appear connected cousins. The first one speaks of lost dreams, diffidence, insecurities, suffocating situations, Hobson’s choices, and life’s offering in binary terms of black or white, yes or no, but nothing like the subtle ‘perhaps’ from the grey area. But the poet persona consoles himself why not to pick a middle course, a mild and little out of focus choice? What I hazard as a guess, the poem urges to take a middle ground, to dismount from the high horse or rise from crawling and take a brave and sedate walk. The second poem is about offers to choose and pick an option from this ‘perhaps or grey zone’ of life, when rolls in paranoia, persecution complex, malevolence, acid tongue, and a desire to destroy and annihilate. Very violent and unnerving thoughts of a macho poet persona (I always associate finer passions with the more refined half of the humanity, the feminine half) may worry the readers but there is a silver lining blinking in that threatening dark cloud beckoning to accept it as the option, a possibility of awakening. I once read that a hypnotized person, who is commanded by his hypnotist to walk straight ahead into a cliff edge, wakes up from his trance just in time to stay away from the danger. So the poetic persona finds choices to choose from at the most turbulent time, “Or I could distill my thoughts/ both loving and loathing/ and pick up the pure distillate/ in a crucible/ after the vile/ and vituperative volatiles/ evaporate/ and then allow it to sublimate/  into…zero mass…that perhaps is transcendental.” The second poem ends with these profound and lovely lines. Generally Dilip uses metaphors as his tools to convey lofty ideas. But here he rises to readers’ expectations without much metaphorical fireworks.

              The poem Back to the Beginning by Bichitra Kumar Behura is redolent with the sweet-sour convoluted landscape of married life through the stalemates of familiarity and the sweet flavours of intimacy, both being the transient and alternating phases. The marriage of two who turn into soul-mates that starts bang on with romantic showers may run later into seasons of drought or squalls. Being together, the partners feel miles apart. Touching one another they can’t sense each other’s essence and throbs. But the resilient couple doesn’t admit defeat, rather they fight back to stay together, tries to cross the gulf separating them by building bridges. To find hope in desperate dark hours is the spirit that permeates the poem like a sweet scent, “Now it makes all the sense/ Collaborating for the old times’ sake/ To complete rest of the journey/ Again in each other’s company/ Walking hand in hand to bridge the gulf/ That ruthlessly separated both of us.” A simple evocative poem, it catches reader’s fancy, in its unique style. An incident in the life of the great painter Picasso has relevance here - a story about the woman who approached Picasso in a restaurant, asked him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, “That will be $10,000.”

“But you did that in thirty seconds,” the astonished woman replied.

“No,” Picasso said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”

                To evolve a style of writing poems of impressive credentials often takes years of hard work and practice.

                  Nikhil M Kurien’s poem Trimitri Coast is written apparently in footsteps of Robert Southey’s ballad ‘The Inchcape Rock’ but in reverse gear highlighting with a message of hope rather than the curse that ruins everything in Southey’s poem. It is all about a light house that fails to signal in a stormy night but the situation is salvaged by the old guard by collecting glowworms in the glass globe of a lantern and with the thousand-glowworm’s florescent light warns ships of the danger in the dark stormy night. A narrative-poem, in certain stanzas taking a bit of too much liberty of poetic licence; but otherwise the poem is a fine landscape poem on Trimitri Coast.

              The poem Woman by Latha Prem Sakhya sags under the weight of womanhood, its inner and outer beauty, but often subservient to male dominance in family and outside. The free persona of a woman in shackles, empowered or otherwise, cries out in anguish for her freedom, even freedom from loving bonds like with father, husband, or son. Perhaps she is tired of her chameleon appearance, affected role-modeling as the daughter, lover/wife, and mother. She does not shirk away from her feminine responsibilities but wishes to fulfill them in her own terms. Latha Sakhya is a lover of plants and animals, and I have read many of her tender poems for these angelic beings. In this poem of a different but mostly feminine empowerment theme, she has not forgotten her sweet cherubs, animals, birds, and plants. Her last lines are a proclamation, “A free spirit, living joyfully, expressing naked truth,/ Celebrating womanhood in all its celestial glory,/ A real woman! A worthy human being.” This proclamation is an anguished cry from even an empowered socially privileged woman poet-painter that reveals a truth – women in India are in bonds, often not of their choice.

              Defined, a poem by Ragasudha, in fact reads like definitions of seven elements of life in her poetic expressions. The elements are Mind, Body, Soul, Words, Feelings, Emotions, and Vengeance. The first three appear to be in one league and the next three in another, but ‘Vengeance” being the odd man out. Except this I could not connect them, couldn’t run a thread that interweaves them to present a poetic epicenter. The aim of this collage is a mystery known to the poet alone as they don’t coalesce into any sort of central vibes.

              The poem Nature by the poet Samrat Shah intrigues the reader in me. His poem starts with a feeling of boredom and ennui to see refreshing mornings in his life every day, a sort of boredom of a person who finds on his table his/her most lovable single dish day in and day out. He feels the nature is compelled to be that beautiful and in itself it is a bondage from which the nature needs to be unshackled. The he has his explanation. Natue does these boring things for a harmony in the universe. He finds virtue in the beautiful nature and finds power and pelf as unnecessary and bad accessories of life. He does not offer a convincing transit. The poem is didactic and philosophic, and would succeed with a bit of reworking on its construct.

              A Place To Call Home, the poem by Disha Prateechee is a flow of emotions, rather a torrent of sentiments streaming down about a dream home; what I really gather from her effusive word flow is what she would find homely would be her chosen home…. say, a tender word, a kind smile, an appreciation from unexpected quarters… they make her feel at home. Finally she goes one step further - her stories, her fantasies become her home. A very interesting poem but why has she presented it as it has poured down on her keypad from her heart. She has not bothered about choosing a format, the right words, to avoid repetitions, and wiping out common errors. The poem cries out to be edited like a child after enjoying playing in mud but wanting a cleansing bath before bed.

               Just Give It a Try is Sruthy S. Menon’s philosophy of life and living in her poetic venture. She believes “Honesty is the best policy” and her lines go around this fulcrum unabashedly without bothering about frills and embellishments to present a fair façade. In her world even an honest ugliness may contain the highest virtues, offering peace, poise, and happiness. So she begs you to listen to someone unimportant, unworthy, unattractive, and insignificant by your first impression; just give him/her a try, you may get repaid for your time and energy, you won’t repent your attention. A beautiful poem on a lovely thought.

              Dr. Arun Babu Zacharia is blessing this issue of the web-journal with four of his poems on the contemporary issues. The first two ‘Post 23rd May, 2019….’ and ‘Leaders’ Semantics’ are outpouring of a heart for his nation’s anguish, a patriotic outcry in a time other poets dwell on fancy topics like love, tears, loss, or twinkling stars. His is a stentorian voice, using mild satire, that reads like statements, but that is the way Dalit and Naxal poets write, so do the black poets, throwing the rule books to dustbin and expressing their unbridled angst, loud and clear. I don’t know his ilk. He writes about the present day leaders leading us to hell and stooping to levels that do not behove them their dignified position as nation builders. His poem ‘Beware of Rebirth’, is perhaps a caution to the wrongdoers to fear their afterlife, the ultimate disposition by karma, the divine justice. In his poem of a dark prognosis titled ‘Don’t Worry We the 1% Are Safe’, poet Zachariah presents a Brave New World with offbeat situations. The system serves the elite 1% and the rest ordinary 99% are going to be extinct by causing a holocaust. It all apparently leads to a catastrophic size problem, a sort of apocalypse. His writes sort of prophetic word like an oracle.

            In Kabyatara Kar’s ‘Friends’ she finds friends as best assets in life. Relatives and acolytes may come as a package deal at our birth, but friends are chosen and earned with trust, love, and care. It is our ultimate wealth, undying and eternal. A beautiful thought in a lovely poem is here to entertain our nobler tooth.

              The concluding work of this literary feast called the Sixteenth Issue of Literary Vibes, as always is a piece of dessert in our plate from the editor/compiler Dr. Mrutyunjay Sarangi himself (MS to his friends and LV colleagues), this time of course two pieces of desserts, a special treat.

               Getting down to brass tacks – Mrutyunjay Sarangi’s nostalgic song Lost in Time is sort of allege, his search with a heavy heart for his youth’s humble home, his narrow familiar lanes, and the pastoral small-town peace. Instead his eyes meet high-rises, roads flanked with clinics and chemists hinting at sickness hunting all around, soulless concrete jungles. The shopkeepers, the neighbourhood, and men in the streets, even the beggars have lost their friendly bonhomie and smiles. His lines chalk the difficult rite of passage – “The roads were lanes/ The trees were a canopy”, “The chai wallah offered tea in a big glass/….The big tea glasses were replaced by tiny plastic cups,” and “But I saw only high rise apartments/ Which had trampled my humble abode/ And my innocent child hood.”

            In his second poem Moving Away, MS shows the decadence in relationship, friendship, and kinship. All closeness is a far cry in new age rat race. In spite of best intentions, friends don’t find time to meet and the appointed place and time is kept waiting indefinitely. The core of is poem is ‘loss’, loss of time, space, and commitment. Not only that, but in the process of finding excuses for our absence from serious intent, we cause wounds, cause deep hurt to our kin, our loved ones. He sings, “We move further away,/ Bent upon digging up fresh wounds/ To bleed our love to tragic death.”

             I humbly submit, the above views are personal and not the feelings of the editor or other participants of Literary Vibes.

 

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