Literary Vibes - Edition XXV
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the Twenty Fifth edition of LiteraryVibes.
I am happy to inform you LiteraryVibes continues to attract more and more eminent poets and writers. This time we are fortunate to host Shri Prados Mishra, a highly acclaimed literary figure, whose short stories regularly appear in all the reputed journals of Odisha. Smt. Sumitra Mishra, a retired Professor of English from Bhubaneswar, is another accomplished poet and writer who has contributed a beautiful poem for the present edition of LiteraryVibes. And as the poem of the young poet Mehwish Ummer from Perumbavoor, Kerala, shows, she has a lot of potential and will soon blossom into a promising poet with a great future. We at LiteraryVibes welcome the three new contributors and wish them loads of success and glory in their literary career.
And while we are at a wishing spree, let us wish our Technical Consultant Shri Sivasenthil Kumaran many Happy Returns of his forthcoming Birthday on 24th July. May God give him a happy and contented life.
After a promising start, the monsoons are playing truant in Odisha. The hot and sultry weather is adding insult to injury. Let's hope the farmers won't get cheated by the rain Gods. We can only pray!
Please forward the link to all your friends and contacts. And do send your poems and stories to LiteraryVibes at mrutyunjays@gmail.com
Wish you happy weekend reading of LiteraryVibes.
With warm regards
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
THE QUESTION
Prabhanjan K. Mishra
Thrown between us
it sulks on the makeshift table of the train
by side of the sandwiches and water bottle;
after seeing us off, friends are walking back.
The train takes a breather
on the outskirts of the city
in absolute silence,
like sensing premonitions.
At intervals, the train’s hydraulics
keep sighing into the desolate day.
A yellow sun smoulders atop
with sweltering hot breaths.
Half-built unoccupied structures
oppress us from all sides.
I open a gift pack: find a double bed-sheet,
another disgorges packets of condoms;
I feel a taste of rusted iron
wrapping biliously around my tongue.
You look like an unfocused mask,
your nose, an inscrutable Cleopatra,
in my imagination an asp coils in
and out of your lovely hair.
I want to shift and nudge
the question but it looks
swollen and sullen.
I decide to let it be on its own.
The sun moves down the sky, the afternoon
blushes with a baby-pink rouge,
the train’s hydraulics have stopped sighing
and appear to have released their strangle hold.
Behind a window of an empty block,
a monstrous scaffolding
of concrete, steel and glass;
flashes a vivid featured face.
Is it the deity of the land-kelp jungle,
or the spirit of the concrete mammoth?
Your face is still an ominous blur,
uncertain like our future years.
The question still sulks on the table,
asking, “Should we or shouldn’t we?”
I feel tired like the train,
lethargic and hot, sighing often,
going through a faceless landscape,
oppressed at times by an abandon;
ready to throw in the towel, but -
waiting to see the question’s underbelly.
TO REINCARNATE?
Prabhanjan K. Mishra
The chain of births,
a ridiculous rosary;
should I count Lord’s name,
or count my own?
From untenable extremes
vanish like a fog
my efforts. I don’t trace myself,
my doubts ticking like a clock.
On my fingers, gemstones
throw up colours of occult and magic;
in my refrain, my Hindu
heirloom’s footfalls.
I consign my parents’ ashes
lovingly at holy Prayag, knowing well
water is cosmic in Ganga
and in cities’ gutters as well.
Dialectics loom
like dark crow-wings,
garbed in oracular overtones,
hard nuts resisting the cracker.
Would I die, or superannuate as in Huxley’s
‘Brave New World’, or suddenly call it a day
amid serene shadows, or violently
betraying a white lie, or admitting the dark truth?
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
THE MARRIAGE NIGHT (MADHUSHAJYAA)
Haraprasad Das
Translated by Prabhanjan K. Mishra
The auspicious fish-amulet
blazes on the groom’s headgear
to usher in good luck
to the solemn union,
as does the motif of golden pitchers
embroidered into the bride’s sari.
The man’s headgear slips
as does the helm of bride’s sari
that cover their heads;
so do they both slip -
the man stares
into an uncertain future;
the bride looks for her identity,
changing into the marital wrap
shedding the parental plumes;
she flounders
in uncharted waters,
“Who am I?”
She sprawls, weighed under
her bridal splendour,
on her opulent honeymoon bed,
where open-secrets cloister
under a dark net,
with the excuse of mosquitos.
She stoically resents
her husband’s impromptu moves –
his hands groping under her robe,
his nose sniffing the undone hair,
fingers touching her softest secrets;
as if he is searching
a prominent site
to fly his flag of ownership.
But, will he ever find
his bride?
Will he find
even himself?
She won’t be there
on the opulent bed,
in aroma of undone hair;
or in her softest spaces.
He would never find the site
to post his flag of ownership.
She would leave
to an unknown address,
despite the solemn rituals
to bind her to a stranger
for seven births and deaths.
Neither would help the good omens,
the mark of fish on headgear,
or golden pitchers on sari border.
His search would also
lead him to some alien land.
The honeymoon bed would wait,
its bleached bones as well,
also the dark net,
so would wait
the hungry mosquitoes
for the promised union
of the man, an exile,
and the bride, a fugitive!
THE BRILLIANCE (SURYA)
Haraprasad Das
Translated by Prabhanjan K. Mishra
The dense foliage has no room
for even a lance to penetrate,
what of the sunshine!
Sweat glands do not ooze a drop,
keep their alchemy insular!
Blood’s colour not known: blue or red
as the veins don’t bleed!
The elite is insulated
from the sea of humanity!
The famed teacher of archery
even in sleep
on his austere grass bed,
keeps hidden his esoteric art
in the crook of his thumb
like his ancestors over generations.
A pair of curious eyes,
lusting after the art of archery,
furtively peeps from behind foliage
at the great teacher
training his royal pupils.
The boy is hardly aware,
he will strike a landmark rift
in the glorious lute,
the lore of his land, Bharat.
A dozing leaf in the foliage
asks its neighbor,
“Has a sunshine
penetrated our insularity?”
A sweat gland asks another,
“Of late, has any of us
oozed a giveaway drop ?”
A vein enquires
of a neighbouring vein,
“What goes on, brother;
will our blood ever join
the red-sea of humanity?”
The intuitive teacher,
senses the boy’s intense eyes;
he crooks his right index
with a ‘come hither’ signal.
The rest is history -
the boy’s brilliance
blazes like the sun.
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)”
WINTER NIGHT (SHITARAATI)
Arupananda Panigrahi
Translated by Prabhanjan K. Mishra
In a small town,
a winter night stands tall
dwarfing all other elements.
You hire a rickshaw
knowing well the fare is unfairly high,
but its driver your bonus, a relief,
when you go home alone in cold nights.
You bargain with the driver over the fare,
a routine practice in small towns.
Of course, if you take to jogging home,
you may reach warm despite the biting cold,
why then oblige the winter night
by hiring a rickshaw? Is it to serenade
the lonely shivering night, or yourself
with the rickshaw’s rattle;
entertain it with the bargain,
and haggling over the unjust fare?
But there lies a catch,
your camaraderie with the rickshaw-driver
may give you a friend to gossip with
the tidbits of your busy day
that lie behind - over a bidi
and a shared lighter.
Would others ever know
these secret pleasures
of a cold lonely night ?
They would take for real the cold night,
the rickshaw, and the haggling
with its driver over the fare;
but the camaraderie, or
a shared smoke over small talk,
the joy of the short journey with a friend
would carry little meaning for them.
(From the poet’s book “GOTE DHAANA PAIN”, 1999)
Arupananda Panigrahi is a senior Odia poet, his poems mostly rooted in Odisha’s native soil; has four collections to his credit; he writes his poems in a spoken tradition in an idiom unique to his poetry. Sprinkled with mild irony, his poems subtly closet at their cores the message of hope even at the moment of proverbial last straw of despair. (email add – arupanadi.panigrahi@gmail.com)
GAME OF SKILL
Geetha Nair G
They had warned me ;
A game of skill
To be learnt with care,
Played with finesse-
Cat's Cradle.
But I never could pattern the cords
Stretched between your fingers
And mine.
Such a distance!
Such variants in size !
When I curled my ringfinger
You would jerk it tight;
When you stretched your thumbs
It was a painful fight.
Such tangles, such snarls,
I couldn't get it right.
The cords are wound around my heart now.
No more games of kill.
Our fingers interlinked,
We totter down the hill.
KANYAKUMARI
Geetha Nair G
As you walk down the narrow, windy street lined with curio shops, shell sellers, chain vendors and turn the corner, the sea greets you. It shifts colour, appearing blue or aquamarine at times, nearly green at others. Silhouetted against the blue sky is the imposing Vivekananda Rock Memorial. It is a short boat ride away.
On this side, close to the beach, sits Vivekananda. His ochre robes and turban draw curious glances from the crowds that pass the spot. Some linger. Others stop. He is keen to read your palm for a few rupees.
If you have the time, he has the inclination to narrate stories to you . There is the legend of the maiden goddess and of the trick played to prevent her wedding to Shiva. There is the tale of the kumkum and other powders she flung in despair that coloured the sands of Kanyakumari for ever. A favourite story is that of the unopened southern door of the Devi's temple. This door faces the sea. Long, long back it used to be kept open all night. Once the captain of a ship that was coasting the Cape, a white man, noticed a brilliant, starry light streaming from the dark shore. He got himself rowed closer in the ship's boat and landed on the beach. From a fisherman there, he learned that it was no light but the diamond in the Devi's nose ring that shone so lustrously.
He clambered over slippery rocks and managed to enter the sanctum. He plucked the diamond nose ring off Her face and pocketed it. The next moment he turned blind. Hearing his howls, the frightened crew rowed back to the ship, leaving their captain alone in the dark temple. The next morning, the priest opening the eastern entrance found a blind white man cowering near the Goddess. The nose ring was retrieved , the Goddess was adorned with it once more. The blind man prayed for forgiveness and he got back his sight. But from that day onwards, the southern door has never been opened.
Sometimes, he stands up and startles the strollers by breaking into the Chicago Address: "Brothers and Sisters of America... ."
It was this impressive rendering in impeccable English that first drew me to him. I own a small-scale unit that makes and sells palm fibre articles. One of my shops is at Kanyakumari. On a visit here in connection with this, I took a short walk to the beach. It was then I stopped in my tracks hearing that sonorous address. The attire ! The stance ! For a moment I thought the great man had come back to the present !
I made it a point to spend time with Vivekananda as he was called, on every visit. I pieced together his strange life from what he let fall now and then. His name, he told me, was Satish. He had been born into an affluent family, sent to one of the most expensive boarding schools in India and learnt riding, swimming and the guitar in addition to many other things. Indian spirituality -the school had stressed that- had been his earliest addiction. Drugs came later. After Class XI, he had dropped out, gone home and had a quiet nervous breakdown. When he recovered, his father tried to persuade him to join the family business and learn the ropes. He refused and left home soon afterwards. For more than fifteen years he had wandered from holy town to holy town finally ending at Land's End.
"What were you searching for?" I asked him.
"Truth, of course," he replied with an ironic smile.
"And did you find it?" I asked, matching his smile with mine.
He shook his head in reply.
I felt a strange bonding with this man of my own age who led a life so different from mine. I thought of my ties -parents, wife, child, work; did I envy him his lack of them? Or was it pity I felt for him? I swung between the two like the proverbial pendulum.
He had hardly any money. He ate once or twice a day from the kitchen of the sprawling campus of a religious order close by. He slept under an awning there. What little he earned from his palm- reading he spent on tickets to Vivekananda Rock. I took him along a couple of times; he was a fine guide and opened my eyes to much I had missed there.
One October afternoon, I missed him at his usual spot. I waited awhile and then a shopkeeper hailed me.
"Looking for Vivekananda ?" he shouted. Everyone called him that; no one, I think , knew his real name.
He told me what had happened a few days back. My friend had been on the boat to Vivekananda Rock. The October sea was rough. Midway, a restless little boy on the boat over balanced as he was looking for fish in the sea and fell into the water. Vivekananda jumped in, managed to grab hold of the drowning boy and swam with him, holding his head above water for several minutes. Just when both were on the point of drowning, they were rescued. Both the rescuer and rescued were now hospitalised in the next town.
I drove to the hospital. The boy had been discharged. His father had paid a large amount to the hospital towards settling Satish's bills and left.
I found my friend lying with on the hospital bed. He smiled at me but did not speak. I sat awhile by his bedside. He had closed his eyes. I thought of another who had swum in that stretch of water more than a hundred years ago and whose meditation on the rock had led to his resolve to serve humanity... .
Then I got up and moved towards the nurse's station.
This happened a year ago. Satish is now my employee. He manages the accounts of my shop at Kanyakumari. He still wears ochre robes but the head dress is gone. So are his orations. His larynx got damaged the day of the rescue. He cannot speak above a whisper. Last week when I paid my customary visit, he pushed the accounts book towards me. I asked him, "Accounts and Truth; do they jell well?"
He whispered , "All roads lead to Truth." There was a smile on his face.
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
GRANDMOTHER’S SOLILOQUY
Bibhu Padhi
Now, within me, the blood moves
into the heart my years,
where memory is so alive,
so persistent and alert.
Now it seems as though I might not know
the shape of tomorrow’s wind
through the coconut tree I planted
with loving care not long ago.
Although, during the sluggish first hours
of every morning, a hope is quietly born—
that I might live on to name your
unborn child, hold its small voice is mine.
But your private and abstract faces
seem to believe in different things,
as if this last breathing minute weren’t
really mine, but somebody else’s.
A Pushcart nominee, Bibhu Padhi has published twelve books of poetry. His poems have been published in distinguished magazines throughout the English-speaking world, such as The Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Stand, The American Scholar, Colorado Review, Confrontation, New Letters, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, Southwest Review, The Literary Review, TriQuarterly, Tulane Review, Xavier Review, Antigonish Review, Queen’s Quarterly, The Illustrated Weekly of India and Indian Literature. They have been included in numerous anthologies and textbooks. Three of the most recent are Language for a New Century (Norton) 60 Indian Poets (Penguin) and The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (HarperCollins). He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Bihu Padhi welcomes readers' feedback on his poems at padhi.bibhu@gmail.com
PASSWORD
Sreekumar K.
There was nothing that you didn’t know about Mishra, I mean Praveen Mishra, and most of it you learned well before seeing him. He himself talked a lot about his personal life, his view of life and his way of life. He was a programmer, an atheist and a rich leftist.
But then there was one thing which not many people knew. Where did all his money come from? He had a sizeable income and he paid his taxes religiously. What was his real source of income? He hardly worked for companies and had no one working under him. He was free most of the time. His software called e-vaccine from which he was officially earning all his money was not selling at all. No one had found it useful.
I knew how he got all that money because I was the one who gave him most of it. None of his customers were on record. Not even me.
Mishra, as you would have suspected by now, was a professional hacker.
I met him years ago through a friend. His wasn’t such a known name among the e-circles in those days. I was doing market research for an about-to-abort software company and I badly needed some reliable data. Gone are the days when market researchers walk around or make other people walk around with checklists and pencils. Most of it is available on the net, or you can get it done over the net. If nothing works you can approach a hacker to download chunks of business e-mails and rummage through them and get what you want.
I was told that Mishra could help me in downloading and sorting any amount of mails.
It was true. He was amazing. Punctual and business-like. I got what I wanted. Later when I started my own firm he was my main resource person. With his help, I was able to prepare readymade profiles of any market segment of almost any given population. Companies paid me well. 75% of it went to Mishra. Still, I was left with more than what I needed. We never had a written agreement. But we agreed strongly with each other on a lot of things. We disagreed more strongly with each other on a lot of other things.
One thing we differed strongly with each other was in the arrangement of our offices. Mishra’s office, a small room, on the third floor overlooking a busy street, was always neat and tidy. It was literally paper-free. He had the same wallpaper on all his computers and he used blow-ups of the same as real wallpapers. It was an aerial view of a metropolis at night. He would have been trying to state that the world inside a chip is like a metropolis with its traffic, junctions, blocks, gates, bad sectors, good sectors and areas affected by cancer or whatever new atrophy was there.
Mine was different. Totally different. Except that it was also on the third floor of a building. Oh! Sorry, mine was on the fourth floor.
We also had different political views, loved different movies, music, food and vehicles. This made our conversation possible. Otherwise, he would have been quite reticent. I had no idea what all things he could do. Being with him was like being with a sage whose powers were unknown to us, but who could scare us all the same. I knew that he set goals for himself and work hard towards attaining them. I don’t even play football.
His wife had left him for a dear friend of his a few years ago.
Though I was a trained social psychologist, I was no match for Mishra when it came to insight and acumen. All I could do was to give him more and more raw information from the field. I could never satisfactorily answer all his questions. But I enjoyed all our discussions.
Recently I have observed a certain slant in his interest to human relationships. He started talking about romance, a subject he had always avoided. He never told me the background of his doubts on the subject. First I thought that he had fallen in love or was about to.
The first time I noticed it was when he asked me whether I had read Erich Fromm on Love. I had.
He borrowed the book from me and after that every now and then he would bring up the subject of romance. Most of the time, he would wait for an appropriate opportunity to talk about it. I knew this from his body language. He behaved like a five-year-old boy who had just played ‘house’ with a younger girl. Sometimes he would not find a proper context to talk about love. Then he would bring it up abruptly and then feel nervous about it. I noticed that he had downloaded from the net so much about love.
I knew I was right. If this man was not in love no one was.
I watched him in parties, sneaked into his mails (using his own software), and monitored his movements. Before this he had kept no secrets about his personal life. His ex-wife had become a widow. Was he patching up with her? Or else who would take a fancy on this 58-year-old recluse whose only interests were computers, money and charity?
Yes, that is one thing I haven’t mentioned. Most of the money he made went into charity. There were always letters addressed to this perennial Santa Claus thanking him for the help rendered or gifts received. He was not so anonymous in his charity work. As his philanthropy became more known, he was more and more pestered by those in need. He had no difficulty in saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and it was his final word in either case.
Now why would such a person hide his affair? Is it an undesirable one? Perhaps a very young girl? Some orphan he had helped? I had enough of it and I decided to confront him openly.
But I didn’t have to. He would have sensed something, for he himself brought it up.
“Gautam, you may think I am an eavesdropper, or even worse, a peeping Tom. True, that is how I make my money and I cannot afford to have any respect for other people’s secrecy or privacy. I myself don’t keep many secrets. The only secrets I keep back from you and others are the professional ones and secrecy is the very nature of those things. If I don’t keep them to myself, then they won’t be worth keeping at all. And I am willing to sell all my hacking secrets and the tools for a handsome amount. But those who are interested can’t afford it”
“Is this what you wanted to tell me?”
“No, it is something else. Generally, I don’t read other people’s e-mails, though I do download them for others. But I chanced to come across this one. A string of mails between an unmarried young couple. I have the whole correspondence in one folder here. It is very large. Too long and too frequent. The boy’s name is Chandra and the girl’s is Padma. There isn’t much about them in their profiles. Only that both of them are still students, their hobbies are reading and music and that they have part-time jobs. They are from different cities. They met each other once or twice, but the romance started very slowly, only after they had exchanged a lot of e-mails.”
“Mishra, you are not saying anything exceptional or even interesting.”
“I am not, I know. But there is something unusual here, at least for you and me.”
“What is it?”
“Gautam, they are not real people,” he made it sound like science fiction.
“Mishra, I am sick of this. There is nothing unusual here. None of them on the net are real people. Nobody reveals his identity. Cyber criminals like you and me get away because of that.”
“Oh, you got me wrong. They are real people.”
“Now that could be unusual. How do you know they are real people?”
“Gautam, it is hard to explain anything to you. You should read these mails.”
“I am not interested.”
“But this is an assignment. And you can charge me anything.”
What is this? Has he gone mad? Is he drunk? Does he regret having taken from me the whole three-fourths of my earnings and wants to give back some of it?
“Gautam, I want you to prepare a psychoanalytical profile or whatever you call it on this couple. I find this quite interesting.”
Oh! My God, what is wrong with him? He has been reading the e-mails of this couple for almost a year and now he wants me to read them. As if it is not enough, I am to prepare their personality profiles for him so that he can enjoy his peeping better.
“Are you planning to blackmail or nail them for something?”
“Come on, I am not that dry. And even if I wanted to, these people are not real.”
“Mishra….”
“OK, I will explain. How do you know you are real?”
“Bye Mishra…. I haven’t done my day’s crossword yet…”
“OK, I won’t ask you any more questions. Now listen. You are real because I can touch you and feel you with all my senses.’
“Thank you. It’s the nicest comment anyone made on my body odour”
“Now, if we met only on the net, I can still send you a hard mail in your address and find out whether you are really Dr. Gautam, Research psychologist…”
“Of course there are ways of circumventing that. I can employ a secretary and pose as Brad Pitt or Britney Spears. Or even Obama. No, I don’t like him after he returned.”
“But still there is always an address and I can track you down in most of the cases. However, the relevant point here is that you will let me know your postal address after a few e-mails or I will ask you for the same.”
“Yes, now you are interesting...”
“We exchange the postal address because, though we are netizens and eke out a living by being like that, we have depended on our hard mails and identified with our postal address for too long to be perfect netizens.”
“Double Jeopardy, habits Die Hard, Matrix Reloaded …”
Both of us had this habit of quipping with movie titles when conversations got boring.
“Sort of. But a postal address refers to a geographical area, a place you can visit and live in. It exists even when you are not there.”
“But Adi Sankara says…”
“Sankara is dead. You can visit his tomb if you have his address. I am talking of real life.”
“Quite interesting. Are you planning to visit Chandra and Padma and be the best man at their marriage? That is really nice of you.”
“I may, but for now let’s think about ourselves. We still value the patch of earth we stand on. We have come a long way from the territorial behaviour of the primates and the settlement instinct of the ‘gatherers’. But we still love our good earth, so to speak.”
“Pearl S. Beck, right?”
“OK, you’re well read. Gautam, listen. They say only very few people can afford to have a piece of land in the days to come. We will all be Jews. Migrating birds. By 2050 there will not be enough space for all of us on this earth.”
“Are we migrating to cyberspace?”
“Yes, in a few light years. What? You nitwit, if cyberspace is space light years should be time. See Gautam, my point is the reciprocal of that. Did we invent the cyberspace to prepare ourselves for this emerging situation? Is it a kind of terminal we ourselves created to stay in before we figure out which way to go?”
“Like that one at JFK? Tom Hanks was wonderful.”
“Stop it. You don’t realize the seriousness of the situation. I suspect that we were becoming territorial in a different way. Living in flats was our first step in this direction. Everyone living above the ground floor has actually built his castle in the air. Now we are taking a quantum leap. In a knowledge-based world like today’s, your mind counts more than your limbs. So all you want is an abode for your mind, a domain if you prefer. And an e-mail address serves just that purpose. My suspicions are confirmed by the e-mails between Chandra and Padma.”
“They haven’t told you where they are from?”
“Worse, they haven’t told each other where they are at present. But I am sure they are real people. This is an entirely new generation. They take the cyberspace for real and their e-mail address for a real address.”
Now I had a doubt. Was he pulling my leg? Did he cook up all these e-mails to sell me his new philosophy about virtual reality? He had a criminal mind. Criminals always loot their own house before they go for their neighbour’s. Did he read all those books on love to write these mails?
“But, Mishra, it is real.”
“How?”
“See, when you talk about a postal address, you call it real because you are talking about the macrocosm. An e-mail address is also real. Only that it is at a microcosmic level. You can zero it down to a few gates or whatever you call it.”
“But actually you can’t. Assigning a material existence in the microcosmic level to an e-mail address is next to impossible. And then it is not a tangible entity like a grain of sand in your courtyard. It is only the programmed behaviour of a few chips.”
“So is your postal address. Tomorrow someone else will live there and your letterbox will behave differently.”
“Still….. I don’t know. I don’t want to force my ideas on you. But the way these young people take things for granted and the infinite capacity within ourselves to adapt to new realities surprise me. Now ‘new realities’ is a funny phrase in itself. What do I mean by new realities? Are there old ones? Are there many? Is it possible?”
“Mishra, I share your anxieties regarding the way these fools rush in where we angels fear to tread. I am as old as you. But other people always have a sense of reality different from ours. It’s hard to put up with the fact that we are living in different worlds. But we are.”
“That is nothing new to me. My wife and I slept on the same bed but we lived in two different worlds. Proper communication happened only after she married someone else. But this is a different situation altogether. Chandra and Padma are living in the same world, but it is different from the world shared by you and me. Cyberspace has come to dominate so much the way we think and finally, here we have a young man and a girl passionately in love with each other, sharing their worries, their dreams and their hopes and not wanting to know or letting the other know anything about their real whereabouts. They just don’t see that their world is unreal and fragile.”
“I think it is an unnecessary worry. Our world also is unreal. Moreover, see how we take our own reality for granted. I know my wife is at home now. My sense of reality tells me that she is in the kitchen, cooking for the kids. But she may be practicing her guitar lessons. Many of the stars we see died a long time ago. And officially your money and mine come from programming but actually, it comes from hacking. As for the fragility of the cyberspace, we depend so much on their world that if theirs is fragile ours is equally fragile. Cyberspace can be rebuilt, but not our world.”
“But Gautam, it is not about the end of the world that I am talking. I am talking about the transition that happens to the sense of the reality of the entire humanity.”
“I understand. My question is: what is new?”
“What’s new! I can’t explain further. Read these emails. They may tell you something. And I would like to have the profile by next Tuesday. Can you do it?”
“In four days? I won’t even finish reading them in four days.”
“OK, take your time. But keep me posted.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Mishra was very keen about my progress. He asked me to explain my strategy the very next day.
Four days later Mishra came to see me. I showed him the progress of my work and he was happy about its reliability.
I was planning to use a double simulation. This is usually used in cases where only the conversations between the subjects are the only available data.
First, I deconstructed the mails into factoids. Then, sorted them out as stimuli and responses. The responses were further earmarked as male and female. At this stage, there were a lot of neutral ones. These would be used as concurrent items. All stimuli are, by hypothesis, questions from the analyst. The male responses were chartered out and a rough profile was prepared. This was bridged using neutral responses. The same was done for the female subject also. The rhetoric questions were mostly considered as both stimuli and responses and were used to clarify doubtful points.
Then an internal duplication was done. Each profile which was written in the words of the patient was interpreted using psychological tools for analysis and reconstruction. This is a creative phase. Most of it is based on intuition rather than logic. With known subjects, you can extrapolate the results with further evidence. In this case, it was not possible. It was a very engaging work. At times I wished I had the intuition and the insight that Mishra had. But then, he was not trained to do this kind of work. More than training it needs a thorough awareness of ‘types’ and other practical knowledge which is possible only through long-term fieldwork. Mishra was a klutz when it came to working with people.
Mishra was very happy to receive the final picture. He said it was a portrait. We went out and dined well. He paid me handsomely. In fact, it was the biggest cheque I had that year.
He never bothered me with Chandra and Padma for over a month.
I was starting to wonder whether he helped them get married.
What was he doing with the profiles I supplied? Was he still reading their e-mails?
Hence, it was a surprise for me when he told me that he had rerouted their mails. Each person’s mails came directly to him. It would not reach the other person.
Mails began to pour in from both sides and Mishra sought my help in analyzing them. They were all too predictable for me. A strong and passionate one, potential virals if posted on a Facebook page. Both of them were wheezing and gasping for breath. Each word had a strength of passion, the like of which I had never heard or read anywhere before. What do they read nowadays? Back to Shakespeare and Byron? Their names appeared on other sites too, on bulletin boards on the net, and on all kinds of search devices.
Mishra was not very happy about what he was doing. Often he looked very tired and guilty. I had never suspected he could have a sense of guilt in him. He wasn’t punctual anymore in his work. His eyes were sunk, his face was taut and drawn and he stayed up late and he drank more and more. Talked less and less. Yet he was very systematic. He documented all our discussions on how the lovers were behaving as they groped for each other in the big bad dark digital world. They were waiting for the other’s response like people outside operation theatres waiting for news from within.
In fact, one attachment of a mail showed a moving ECG. The next day Mishra also went for his routine ECG. He said it was disappointing. No luck, he said. He said he wished he had a bad report.
Was Mishra waiting for their passion to drain away and their love to wane? If that was the case, he was thoroughly disappointed there too. They were much more passionate than ever. Was he trying to teach them a lesson about the fragile and the illusory nature of their world? Then they were bad students and not learning any lessons. Instead, they used every measure and device and strategy they could to trace each other. Neither of them expressed any regret that they were not careful enough to get the other person’s address or even the phone number. They were sure that they could turn the net inside out like a shopping bag and find their partner somewhere in there.
Mishra would have thought he was losing the battle. He was looking very sick and impatient.
“This is a match, Gautam. They only have to give up their hope for them to win each other. The moment it dawns on them that they had made a conceptual error about their existence, I am going to link their mails again and give their world back to them. It will be a story they tell their friends, their children, and their children’s children. It will be a case in evidence for others like them.”
No such nonsense. They didn’t give up and one night Mishra rang me up.
“Gautam, I have got cancer.”
“What, Mishra? What are you talking about?”
“Mishra, it is true. I have got cancer on my hard disc.”
“Oh, Mishra, you scared me.”
“I know what you mean. But this is worse than that. A lot of data is missing. Most of them are damn confidential and I don’t have any backup.”
True. Cancer could be more fatal than a virus.
“Do you know where I can get a new disc? I want a replacement tonight.”
I told him to wait and rang up a supplier and demanded a spot delivery right then.
The phone rang again in twenty minutes.
“Thank you Gautam,” Mishra rang off. He should be hard at work, racing against time. Usually, he never puts his phone down when he calls. I do that, though hours after I wanted to.
I called him back after two hours. He was very busy. He had replaced the disc. He was trying to reclaim the data from the old one. He was also searching through all his CDs and piecing them together.
After an hour he called me.
His voice was low and I had to ask him to speak louder. I thought he was sleepy. No, it was his remorse.
“Gautam, I think I had done a horrible mistake in rerouting their e-mails. I am talking about Chandra and Padma. I can’t link them back. I have my old hard disc in my hand. Their world is tucked in somewhere there. Too tiny for anyone or anything to reach. Or maybe, it has already been eroded by cancer. Unless I can transfer the information on this one to the new one, I can’t re-establish their link. What should I do?”
“Mishra, go to bed. It is too late. Nothing can happen in one night. Take rest and work on it tomorrow morning. I am sure you can do it and these things always take their own time, no matter what we do.”
By 11:30 I had another phone call.
“Obviously, I couldn’t go to sleep. I am still working on it. We are very old people, Gautam. Sitting up all day has given me some pain all over my back. I wish I had remarried after she left me. It is very hard to massage your own back. Now I will have a bath, take a cup of tea and go back to work. See you in the morning. You know it is very frustrating to work without the right tools.”
The phone rang again at 1:30. I didn’t pick it up.
Nothing happens in one night.
* * * * * * * * *
It has been a week since Mishra died. That phone call at 1:30 was not from him. It was his servant trying to get more help. It was a coronary attack, from overwork. He had had a bad report and like a typical school kid, he never showed it to anyone.
Today, looking down from this balcony, the city looks just like the wallpapers Mishra loved so much. A blown-up microchip.
On the streets, impulsive vehicles are racing and overtaking, colourful lights are coming on and going off.
Blocks and blocks of dark buildings encasing darker secrets. Traffic jams holding sequences of impulses. Gates, junctions, half adders, full adders.
Layers and layers of existence.
The traffic came to a standstill. People crossed from either side.
A young man, weaving through the crowd, crossed the road, met a girl on the other side, held her hand and crossed the road back bringing her to the other side.
Now they are walking hand in hand along the pavement.
Chandra and Padma.
It is easy to see they are Chandra and Padma.
The evidence is clear and unmistakable - they are lovers.
Sreekumar K, known more as SK, writes in English and Malayalam. He also translates into both languages and works as a facilitator at L' ecole Chempaka International, a school in Trivandrum, Kerala.
WONDER
Dr. Ajaya Upadhyaya
Dr. Ajaya Upadhyaya from Hertfordshire, England. A Retired Consultant Psychiatrist from the British National Health Service and Honorary Senior Lecturer in University College, London.
MATHS OF AN ALIEN'S LIFE
Dr. (Major) B. C. Nayak
That is the day one,
The birthday.
The Alien
gets detached from his only
means of communication,
The placenta
between him
and his mother
like radio communication
with astronauts
ceases on entry into the earth.
And Lands on earth
Can never return
To mother planet.
But explore others.
Maths and time
Arrive in the scene.
Only plus symbol
No minus, no definite" equal".
Comes biennium (2 years), triennium (3 years),
Quadrennial (4 years), lustrum (5 years),
And Decades,
All fly soon.
Sweet sixteen
Good bye to teen.
And the "Roaring Twenties".
Refreshing the memory.
At forty
Gets naughty.
The "Warring Forties"
"Swinging Sixties"
The "Gay Nineties" or "Naughty Nineties”
So named
The decades.
They come and go,
Leaving behind
Trails of sojourn
In this planet.
Comes century (100 years),
For the lucky ones.
Millennium (1000 years) !!??
Never,
Except for the
Methuselah, the biblical patriarch
Grandfather of Noah
That too 969 years !!
The time span
Totals and
"equals to" only once .
And that is the final,
Which the alien
Un ware of..
[Dr. (Major) B. C. Nayak is an Anaesthetist who did his MBBS from MKCG Medical College, Berhampur, Odisha. He is an MD from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune and an FCCP from the College of Chest Physicians New Delhi. He served in Indian Army for ten years (1975-1985) and had a stint of five years in the Royal Army of Muscat. Since 1993 he is working as the Chief Consultant Anaesthetist, Emergency and Critical Care Medicine at the Indira Gandhi Cooperative Hospital, Cochin]
THE BROKEN MIRROR
By Dilip Mohapatra
A grotesque face
peers at you
with multiple eyes
and a crooked jaw
and you wonder
if it’s your hideous side
the Hyde hiding within
and that was hibernating
all these years
and now
has come out in the open
staring at you
and daring you.
Or is it just
the fragmented mirror
mirrored on your retinae
playing tricks on you
prodding you
taunting you
pushing you
into the wilderness
of doubts and dubiousness
and the twilights
of incertitude ?
You need not light
the seven white candles
at the midnight
or pick up the shards
and pound them to a fine dust
just look within
find your soul
that no one can stone
that no gravity can pull down
and that suffers no aberration.
Frame it with
your conscience
and look into it
and there you are
in your true colours
and real self
no longer enslaved to
nor tormented by
a fragile
fractious
and fractured mirror.
MIRROR MIRROR
Dilip Mohapatra
How I adored you
in my heydays
when I looked into you
the silent question in my mind
mirror mirror on the wall
who’s the handsomest man of all?
And you looked back with
so much adoration
or perhaps I thought so
and when I winked
you promptly winked back
massaging my ego
and making me feel
at the top of the world.
Meanwhile lot of water
has flowed under the bridge
but you stand steadfast
though the mercury coating
beneath your shining face
has started showing blotches
here and there
but you have been still faithful
to yourself
though with a little
perverse pleasure
you throw back at me
a face that looks almost alien
hardened with time
with my crowning glory
blown away strand by strand
gone with the wind
and with dark freckles
nesting on my once upon a time
radiant cheeks
while deep furrowed crow’s feet diverge
from the corners of my eyes
and as I look into those
translucent eyes
and enter the narrow corridors
of my memory lane
sometimes I find walking
the red carpet and
sometimes I find myself
sunk upto my chin in
the quagmire of shame
holding on to the feeble creepers
of my reputation
that perhaps keep me afloat
and then I extricate
myself and start chipping away
the damning decadence with
a blunt chisel
bit by bit
till the sympathetic impact
cracks you to pieces
for the good old question
has lost its relevance
and you exist no more
to taunt me
to scare me
or to remind me
what I was
what I am
and perhaps what I will be.
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.
MYNA
Dr. Molly Joseph M
Silhouetted against
the pale white sky
the tree stands
with shed leaves
the phantom of
a once upon a time
rich spring
which invited
many a bird, squirrel
into its green abode..
beneath..
the earth
perspires..
hot breath
exudes..
is it the
end of an era?
No..
hope springs
eternal...
there is the raven
building nest
even
on the barren..
new life
will flourish
out living all..
with a spirit
indefatigable
we can build
anew
shoring up
against
the ruins...
Dr. Molly Joseph, (M.A., M.Phil., PGDTE, EFLU,Hyderabad) had her Doctorate in post war American poetry. She retired as the H.O.D., Department of English, St.Xavier's College, Aluva, Kerala, and now works as Professor, Communicative English at FISAT, Kerala. She is an active member of GIEWEC (Guild of English writers Editors and Critics) She writes travelogues, poems and short stories. She has published five books of poems - Aching Melodies, December Dews, and Autumn Leaves, Myna's Musings and Firefly Flickers and a translation of a Malayalam novel Hidumbi. She is a poet columnist in Spill Words, the international Online Journal.
She has been awarded Pratibha Samarppanam by Kerala State Pensioners Union, Kala Prathibha by Chithrasala Film Society, Kerala and Prathibha Puraskaram by Aksharasthree, Malayalam group of poets, Kerala, in 2018. Dr.Molly Joseph has been conferred Poiesis Award of Honour as one of the International Juries in the international award ceremonies conducted by Poiesis Online.com at Bangalore on May 20th, 2018. Her two new books were released at the reputed KISTRECH international Festival of Poetry in Kenya conducted at KISII University by the Deputy Ambassador of Israel His Excellency Eyal David. Dr. Molly Joseph has been honoured at various literary fest held at Guntur, Amaravathi, Mumbai and Chennai. Her latest books of 2018 are “Pokkuveyil Vettangal” (Malayalam Poems), The Bird With Wings of Fire (English), It Rains (English).
ANOTHER
Anwesha Mishra
Mid-Summer, when the bakery was on sale,
The frenzied flock made it impossible to nap.
Some came from far, perhaps o'er the dale.
A boy sucked his thumb in his mother's lap.
Grimacing, I stood by the window sill,
Wiping sweat beads before they'd trickle.
Saw this lassie in line to pay the bill,
Bickering 'bout the heat, frivolous, fickle,
Turned to the kid sucking his thumb,
Stuck her tongue out, chuckled at him.
Cute enough, but, 'know I wouldn't succumb.
Not indulging in some senseless whim.
Thinking so, I was gon' pull the blinds,
Paused to consider-"Pretty dress though"
A stalker in action-"What if she finds?"
(Anaware that the glass ain't see-through.)
Perfunctorily then, looking closely now,
A teeny bit hurt, didn't stick to my word.
A mole sat gracefully at the edge of her brow.
Her blouse all tucked in, how neatly clad.
Dusk was falling, like the queue ahead of her.
Unsettled terribly, I was trying to buy time.
Behold the wind strum Für Elise on her hair,
I was slipping for her, like wet feet on slime.
.
Yet I undid my wishes, threw myself to bed.
"An outsider", consoling, shakin' her vague.
Tired already of the tryst I never made,
Havin' saved the tears, I reached for my drag.
Anwesha Mishra is a first year medical student at Pandit Raghunath Murmu Medical College, Baripada, Odisha, India. Hailing from Bhadrak, Odisha, Anwesha's interests include singing, dancing, sketching, poetry writing, learning French and Astronomy.
WINTER QUEEN
Prados Mishra
Translated by Durgaprasad Mishra
Unlike the city, there was no playful wickedness in the aging night of the place. Devoid of all complexities it was charmingly attractive like a calm, innocent, sweet destitute girl. It was only seven O’ clock in the evening but the eerie silence of the midnight had already descended all over the area. Sanat earnestly wished to enjoy the milieu of the guileless half asleep young night of the forest. He went up to the window and slowly opened it. A gust of cold wind dashed inside the room uninvited. He stood shivering by its blow. He didn’t have any option left, but to close the window forcefully. While trying to wrap the Kashmiri shawl over his entire body and also adjust the monkey cap on his head, couldn’t help shaking underneath the cover. He then dragged the blanket from the bed and exclaimed, “Oh, what severe cold”!
The dimly lit lamp on the table started shaking. Probably the oil in the lamp was fast drying up. Sanat thought that if the lamp would stop flickering, he could thoroughly enjoy the cold winter night undisturbed. He could drench himself in the pitch darkness of the night and feel the touch of the pleasant wintry chill of the jungle. The impregnable night, motionless jungle, voice of the blue river waters and the intimate throbbing silence would make him ecstatic. But, on the other hand a sense of uncalled for fear gripped him in place of the joyous feeling.
‘Should I call Kalua?’ – thought Sanat. The lamp may burn out any moment. Sanat peeped out from behind the blanket. He thought to himself that should he go through once again the official order instructions received from his superior for tomorrow’s engagements or should he start composing a poem then and there. But why did Kalu fill up so little oil in such a big lamp? Sanat stretched his legs on the bed. He was feeling tired after a long journey by bus throughout the day. Only a short while back he got down from the bus and checked-in to the Government Guest House. The purpose of his tour was to inspect the progress of crocodile farming in deep river. He only had a hurried glance over the place in the evening. Could hardly notice anything other than the jungle and the Guest House inside the forest. May be he could have seen a little more than that, but for such enveloping darkness along with unbearable cold. He didn’t have any other choice before him.
Who knows where did Kalu go? May be busy in the kitchen. Sanat had ordered to cook jungle bred chicken curry along with paratha. He did not feel like calling him out. His thoughts also got intermingled like a jumbled up thread. He got up from bed leaving the cozy confines of the blanket. Covered himself with a long overcoat and put on his shoes. Moved out of the room by opening the door.He had gone a small distance to one corner of the Guest House when he saw that a bonfire was lit at a distance. Sanat proceeded slowly. The cold wind was making its way inside his covered body through some openings to chill his spine. He marched ahead with the shoes producing knocking sound. Kaluaand another man were warming themselves near the bonfire. Whatever they might be gossiping, they stopped talking altogether on noticing Sanat there near them. Sanat took out his hands from his pocket and extended both the palms to the fire. Tried to bring warmth to his body through the warmth of the palms.
Kalua shifted a little to give space to Sanat. He felt a little awkward and asked, “Do you need something sir? Since it was unbearable cold inside……….
The black granite like body of Kalua was shaking in the severe cold.
--No; it’s nothing. Saw the bonfire and came here.
Kalu further shifted a little out of respect for Sanat.
--Are there villages nearby?
--Yes sir; at some distance away.
--What do the villagers do in these jungle areas? What sort of people live there?
While controlling his laugh Kalua was about to speak out something; but he stopped short of opening out. Yes. They just carry on. They are indeed very poor people, but sir, they are never mean-minded. They always try to make the people from the city feel contended and happy. Being a veteran in his profession, Kalua was trying to search and read some unspoken inner voice from Sanat.
--The place is extremely charming, it seems.
--Yes sir, it’s beautiful, but people from the city often make it soiled, while coming in search of beauty.
--What do you mean?
Kalua didn’t give any reply
Sanat moved a little closer to the fire and felt more comfortable in its warmth. He noticed that the other man had been keeping quiet all through. He didn’t have any warm clothes on his body even in this extreme cold. Had covered his body by dragging a portion of the dhoti he was wearing. Silently he was smoking a bidi and had been releasing thick smoke in the direction of the fire. Deep dark complexion body with thick ripe grey coloured moustaches was sufficient enough to bring fear in anybody unaccustomed to such an environment.
Kalua suggested, “Sir, please do come. I will serve you dinner. It’s getting late. The night arrives here too soon in this jungle”.
Sanat was also feeling hungry. He got up. "There is nothing to fear sir at this place. The only disadvantage here is that you may feel lonely. If you need anything, you may call me. There is no fear of any jungle animals here."
Kalua went away keeping the door ajar. Sanat stretched himself on the bed to relax.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door and Sanat woke up from sleep. It seemed that somebody was knocking on the door slowly. Sanat opened the door and found that the same dark-complexioned old man was standing with his shivering body.
--What happened? Who are you?
The old man came inside the room without uttering a word. Along with him there was a girl wearing a white saree. The old man closed the door from inside without any reply. The girl by that time had positioned herself to a corner. Sanat just swiped a glance at the girl in that dim light. A very fair complexioned girl with uncombed hair. She had fixed her gaze on Sanat without battling any of her eye lidand had crossed both of her hands on her chest. The colour of her saree was matching with the colour of her skin. She was giving a pseudo impression of a female figure standing there without any of her robes. But why this girl has come here with this old man at such hour of the night? Before Sanat could understand anything the old man closed up and whispered, “Are you new to this place sir? There is nothing to fear. The city people come here being too tired. You also must have been feeling tired. Therefore I am leaving my daughter here. She would remove all your pains. You may offer her whatever you feel like out of your pleasure. She won’t refuse. You shouldn’t feel scared. She would leave before dawn to the river to wash up."
Without any further dialogue the old man went out of the room. The lamp had been flickering continuously. From time to time the flickering lamp had been flashing bright light on the face of the girl to swiftly vanish to put her into a dark cover. Now, that girl slowly removed her hands from her chest and proceeded towards Sanat. She then took a pause to change the direction and went towards the door and bolted it from inside. Unpretentiously and uninvited she then comfortably couched herself on the cot. Before Sanat could utter anything, she flashed a short sweet smile and told, “Why are you so scared sir? Probably you have come here for the first time. Now that my father has gone back home, I don’t have any option left, but to stay here for the night. My father was telling that you have been feeling tired. All the Babus of the city get tired. Should I massage your head?”
The girl moved towards Sanat.
Sanat took a stride back with this sudden move from the girl.
But…….
No if and but, sir. We are born to serve you.
Sanat opened the window. The late night crescent moon threw a basket full of soothing light inside the room. A gust of cold wind blew out the quivering light of the lamp. Sanat cast a quick glance over the girl in that half dark and half lighted room when the girl released an enticing smile opening up her lips.
It does not make any difference sir, if the window is kept open or is shut. But your city bred body can’t tolerate the cold wind; rather you better close the window.
The girl got up and closed the window. The room plunged into darkness. Who is where now became difficult to make out. Sanat sat to one side of the bed. Should he call Kalua? His shouts from inside the room may not reach him. What should he do now? Its better, he thought, he should spend some time gossiping with that girl.
Before Sanat could feel the warm breath of the girl who was trying to come closer to him, he asked, “What is your name?”
Once again the girl released a sweet giggle and replied, ‘Winter Queen’.
--Winter Queen?
--Yah, if it is not Winter Queen, then who else would come in this spine chilling cold?
--Well, quite an interesting name! Where do you live? Who else are there in your house?
--Ha! Does anybody ask such questions? Don’t you know who all are there in the house? My father, mother, brother and sister; everybody. Like whosoever relations normally stay in the house, are all there.
--Well, who did christen your name; such a romantic one?
--Who else could have given the name; those winter guests from the city. Besides, once it would be spring and the cuckoo would start singing, the name would change appropriately. But, what is there in the name, my religion would remain the same all through my life.
--Religion? What is your religion Winter Queen? Now it was a modulated voice from Sanat. The sense of initial fear has given way to a sense of sympathetic feeling. What is the harm in carrying on with conversation with the Winter Queen in this winter night? Well, ‘winter night’ and ‘Winter Queen’ – what a coincidence! Outside it was slow breathing sound of the dew drenched lazy world and inside it was the swift flow of the warm breathing with the overtly excited feelings of the Winter Queen – Sanat could feel both of them in equal measure. The warm breathing air from Winter Queen was dashing against his chest. He felt as if the warm air after penetrating through the warm clothes was able to pierce through his body. Should he throw away all those artificial covers from his body? Could he be able to contain all the warmth inside him without feeling agitated? How could Winter Queen keep all those heat inside her in this chilling night? All those thoughts made Sanat restless.
The breathing of Winter Queen was still coming closer and closer. Before Sanat could feel the turmoil of the romantic warmth within him, the Winter Queen suddenly picked the thread of conversation and in a mocking voice told, “I have seen so many Babus from the city, but haven’t seen such a fool like you. Many Babus fail to speak coherently in a chilly winter night in such an environment and start stammering. They never spoil the opportunity and its moment. But you are going on chattering. Hallo sir, what are you going to get from religion? Ultimately it would be the end of the affair for the night between us. Without experiencing what is there in this darkness, some people indulge in unnecessary surmises. It is like the blind man describing the beauty of nature. What is so important about these discussions at this point of time in this dark room? If I tell you that my religion is to give you pleasure in exchange of some money, what is so wrong about it? No other religion holds any meaning for us. Some people offer us money in the name of religion. But that one act is the religion; what we are destined to do is nothing but religion”.
The Winter Queen burst out laughing. While continuing her giggle, she tried to push her head inside the blanket without any provocation from Sanat. He became too conscious. Sanat then tried to remove her face through his shaking hand and in the process touched her bare back. A sudden amorous vibration passed through from his head to toe. What warmth the Winter Queen holds in her body in this chilling night!
--Well, tell me Winter Queen, can you not engage yourself in some other respectable jobs keeping yourself away from all these?
--At this the Winter Queen moved a little away. Even if she couldn’t be seen in the darkness, her distance could well be understood from her voice. Suddenly she came up with a strange counter question. She asked, “Will you marry me, sir? Look at me under the moonlight; see me and feel me by touching my body. Am I not beautiful? Am I not worth entering into wedlock? Don’t you think that I also nurture fanciful dreams deep inside my heart? Am I any different from other girls?”
Sanat got startled and started shaking. An uncalled for, out of the blue question from Winter Queen! What could be told in reply?
Winter Queen continued, “Well, it is you and city people like you who are unethical and of evil character. You don’t have any religion or any morality. But you preach religion to us. You have not understood what is meant by religion. Do you know who has brought me – a girl like Winter Queen who is trying to uphold her religion by offering herself to a stranger in this dark room and chilly night – to this world? Do you know that you are only creating an atmosphere of distrust and embarrassment by asking such questions about religion? Don’t you know that people like you only have shown the Winter Queen the path to hell? You people can lose all morality and ethics for the night and simply wash up all sins to walk into the religion of civilized society. Then why are you shutting down all paths of morality for so many young girls like Winter Queen of this area? Why don’t you allow us to turn holy and civilized? Willingly you tread upon the path of nails and throw all the dirt away soon enough to come clean to the civilized world. But you never feel any compunction to leave the innocent girls in the jungle of nails to suffer from the curse of the so called elite world throughout their life. Why don’t you come forward to save these girls from their life long ignominy?”
Sanat covered the mouth of Winter Queen by putting his palm across. He stated, “Well, I do understand you Winter Queen. But the sad story is that I am only a cog in the wheel of this pseudo, showy, outwardly glittering, selfish society. Besides, I don’t have that strength of character to rise in revolt against the establishment. I can only sympathize with you; can feel your inner pains. Further, the best I can do for you is to bring your plight to the notice of the social workers and social reformers.”
The Winter Queen laughed sarcastically. She stated, “Yes, often the so called social workers and social reformers have also come here. They also have sought for our services. The only exception being that they ask strange questions to us. But, the Winter Queen remains there from where she had started. We all are treated as if we are not human beings. That forsaken path is our daily routine path. That uncivilized act is our religion. Often I also feel like running away from that religion of uncivilized society. But, how come it could be achieved? God has given us such an ill fate that our existence is traced back to a heap of garbage lying by the side of an insignificant path”.
Who knows, what then was the time of the night? The night deepens quickly in these jungles, but shows no signs of tapering away so soon. Apart from that, the touch of such a soft cold encompassing stroke of the night along with the sudden unexpected discovery of Winter Queen, were sufficient enough to soothe the entire body and mind. At regular intervals the thin end of the saree was brushing against Sanat’s body. For once Sanat tried to see Winter Queen in all her ecstatic grandeur by piercing through the deep dark surroundings. With the thought that he may unintentionally dash against any of her uncovered body portions, Sanat retreated a few steps back to once again remind himself the dictates of his conscience.
But Winter Queen – an adept as she is in this art - moved forward once again. “Are you going to deprive me of my earnings for tonight?” she murmured. “Why are you cracking such cruel jokes at an innocent, uneducated and insignificant Winter Queen?”
--You need not worry. I will certainly take care of you. I am not going to block your income. But, tell me Winter Queen, “What is your relation with that old man who had come along with you?”
--He is my father.
--Father !!
--What is so surprising about it? Is it that the sons only will take care of their fathers? Do the daughters have no right to manage the affairs of their fathers at their old age?
No; the daughters also have equal rights. But what I was telling was…….
What was that you were telling? Is it that, how a father could be so shameless to ask his daughter to do such dirty and despicable act? Further, how could it be a source of earning for the father? You are not able to understand that; isn’t it?
She then did something surprising. Brought the match box from the table and lighted the lamp. Thereafter she started to throw away her clothes one by one by disrobing herself.
Sanat was taken aback and couldn’t remove her eyes off her. Winter Queen raised the wick of the lamp which lighted the entire room. She then stood before Sanat in the bright lamp light exposing her naked body. Her fair complexion bare body reflected in the bright light gave an exalted, lustful and enamored sight. At the prime of her youth with fluffy and supple skin, fully grown up bust she was giving an impression of a stone statue created by a reputed artist. What an exquisite beauty! Who says that she is an unknown villager from a nondescript taluka and a woman of easy virtue, professionally a prostitute? Sanat couldn’t remove his eyes from such glorious beauty; continued to gaze at her without batting an eyelid.
Winter Queen grinned aloud. She taunted, “Did you see sir; did you have an eyeful? Now recall that old man. Do you think that I am the daughter of that dark complexioned old man? Well sir, there are many a father available in this world other than one’s own. Who knows who is the father of which child in this village? The Winter Queen was getting sentimental.
--But whatever it is, he is your…….
Winter Queen now came closer and asked, “out of all the visitors coming to this Bungalow someone might be my real father and someone else might be my real brother. Can you identify sir, who is who? It might sound unpleasant, but can you tell with certainty that none of them had not slept with me for the night in their subsequent visits? Who knows the identity of such an unknown father? Therefore, what is so great that this make-believe father left me here to spend the night with you?
“All of you, the so called gentlemen of the society, dump those unknown, unwanted children born out of your immoral pleasure in this village. Why do you then once again rush to those same women throwing all your conscience to winds? Just try to give a sympathetic thought over the whole issue. Don’t you agree that the so called bigwigs are sinful, wicked and uncultured under the cover of high culture and civilization?”
Winter Queen was shaking all through with agitated excitement. Like that of a pre-historic woman, she was spewing venom on all those lascivious, perverse and immoral individuals of the society.
Sanat had lost his speech on hearing such deep philosophical truths from Winter Queen. The nervous system of his research oriented brain, it seemed, was showing signs of breaking into smithereens.
After a brief pause, Winter Queen collected her clothes which she had thrown away and wrapping them to cover her body opened the door. Sanat called her from behind, “Will you not take your due earning?”
Winter Queen smiled. ‘Beggars only accept the offer without any justified reason. I don’t accept alms. It’s far better to live even without food.’
Winter Queen was slowly descending down the stairs of the Dak Bungalow. She was fast disappearing like a shadow under the cover of the dew drenched moonlit night.
Sanat continued to watch the wonderful sight of the exquisite beauty of a formless figurine till his vision could retain. What a profoundly truthful and tasteful inner soul! But, as ill luck would have it, she undertakes a journey on a despicable, disgraceful and ignominious path finding no way out to escape. Can she not attain freedom; freedom from the shackles of lascivious humans? Who is going to give girls like Winter Queen their freedom? Will the heart-wrenching sighs coming out of intense pain on the one hand and high ambitions in life on the other hand vanish into oblivion inside the deep forest? Is it going to be confined to their limited sphere of life and cannot merge with the main stream of civilization? How long such real and unreal fathers and brothers would continue to torture their body and mind? How long such Winter Queens continue to be outraged and oppressed in this heartless society? When is the time, the end of their ‘winter’ would arrive; nobody knows.
The moonlight was turning gloomy and lusterless. The distant river was gradually coming to sight through the onset of the dawn. How beautiful and glorious are these rivers, this earth and the bright green forest! How much soft and understanding are their inner voice! Exactly like that of the tender feelings of the Winter Queen. What great truth is hidden behind the veil of darkness of the night!!
Sanat felt exciting warmth within him. He started slowly descending down the steps of the Guest House to ultimately loose himself and merge within that sleeping beauty of the surroundings.
A brightly lit red ray from the Eastern Horizon could be seen reflecting in the river waters.
Shri Prados Mishra is a highly respected name and much-talked-about personality in Odia literary circles. He has already created a special niche for himself among the readers of Odia literature, through his writings of more than two hundred short stories, a number of novels and a few travelogues. Many of his short stories are highly acclaimed, fondly remembered and also translated into various other Indian languages.
Sri Prados Mishra has been honoured with a number of literary prizes and awards such as Sankalpa Siromani(Hindi), Jibana ranga ,Sauravashri, Pustakamela Rourkela ,Adikabi Sarala,Amrutayana, Byasha kabi ,Baisakhi, Swasti Jhankara, Sahayogi, Bedabyasha, Nilachakra etc. Shri Mishra has published 14 collections of short stories, 7 novels and 1 travelogue.
Translator: Shri Durgaprasad Mishra enjoys translating good writing materials, educative articles written in Odia into English language, more for the fun of translation than anything else. During his professional life as a Human Resource Manager, he published a number of translated articles in the house journal of his organisation.
*MIHIDANA BABA*
Ananya Priyadarshini
I could hear those bells, the ones that remind me of my childhood.. I didn't turn back to see though children in the park flocked and rushed along the direction of the sound.
Few minutes later, I smelled something familiar, very familiar in the air. It took me back to the streets on which I'd run all my childhood. I was in deep shock and before I could decide if it's a good one or not- I had reflexly turned back. I felt as if I was under some spell.
It wasn't kulfi, not those pink, fluffy sugar candies either. It was 'mihidana'. Yes, Mihidana. Tiny, orange-red colored rounded grains of flour deep fried in oil and then soaked in sugar syrup. Each one of it like a grain of 'motichoor laddoo'. It was the dream-food for me back when I was a child. What kept me further glued to Mihidana, was Mihidana baba.
A man in his 60s, chest showcasing ribs, silver locks on head, bronze complexion and a voice that could act like a magnet to draw children out of their homes.
We gathered around him with coins in palms and howling for Mihidana like we're hungry for at least a year. But in Summers, parents won't allow their children to go out to the streets. That's when Mihidana baba would come to every door. I remember, whenever he used to come to my courtyard, my grandma would chat a lot with him. She'd offer him chilled water and at times, he had lunch at our place too. Baba would tell about his village, children, deceased wife and newborn grandchildren.
I couldn't get much from their conversations but kept sitting their, putting Mihidana into my mouth- grain by grain. I laughed along them. I loved the afternoons spent with Mihidana baba.
Grandma would buy extra Mihidana and keep giving me during the days he didn't come to our colony.
"When had baba come?", I'd ask unaware of the secret storage scheme.
"When you were sleeping. I shouted but you didn't bother to open your eyes. Mihidana baba returned, disappointed", Grandma would fool me.
But the tears that baba's disappointment brought into my eyes, were real. One day, it was no more a joke. Baba came after weeks but he wasn't the happy old Uncle anymore. He looked as if he'd aged years within few weeks.
"Baba, why were you not coming for so long?", I asked in a complaining tone.
"You go inside. I need to talk to Mihidana baba", granny commanded before baba could answer.
"But...."
"GO!"
I was astounded by Granny's unusually loud voice. Anticipating tears rolling down my lashes, baba handed me extra Mihidana, placed his old, wrinkled hand on my head and uttered- "long live my child. Be a very big person in life and drive away all our sorrows."
"Didi, should I give you some Mihidana as well?", I was brought back to senses after this new Mihidana seller asked me. "You've been standing here since so long!", He added.
"No, bhaiya. Some other day, maybe!", I said and headed for home. At night, I paid my sleep off for the second installment of baba's memories.
He never came back after that day.
I kept asking about him. I was more worried about Mihidana baba than Mihidana. But I never got my answers.
Months later, I heard the same tinkles, at the same hour of the day, coming from the same streets. I ran. Madly. It was his orange cycle! But it wasn't him on the cycle. It was someone very younger to him, having a lot of resemblance to his looks.
He parked his cycle in our courtyard. Grandma bought Mihidana for five rupees and gave him a hundred bucks.
"But Grandma, I want Mihidana only for five rupees", I protested.
Grandma looked at me as if she was saying 'you're going to be thrashed, little urchin!'.
The young man smiled, like he was left with no option but take a bullet on his self esteem. He handed me over some extra Mihidana and left. He didn't wait for water or tea to arrive.
I tasted the Mihidana for one last time and said, "Grandma, don't buy Mihidana for me anymore. I don't like it."
That was the last time I'd tasted my favorite sweet.
The young man kept coming. My Grandma would buy Mihidana from him for our maid's kids, just to have a reason to help him financially. Gradually, I came to know that Mihidana baba was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He didn't go to hospital to get himself treated fearing his family would be isolated from the rest of the village if they came to know of his contagious disease. The very curable disease, had thus claimed his life much earlier than destined. That was his son selling Mihidana after him.
The next morning, I called my Grandma. A minute into regular talks and I asked, "what about Mihidana Baba's son? Is he still hawking on streets?"
"Yes, absolutely. He's selling biscuits, homemade cakes, pickles alongside Mihidana. His son is also accompanying him."
"Son? How old is his son?"
"Seven. Or maybe, eight. But why are you interrogating me all of a sudden?"
"Listen, the next time he comes, ask for his contact number. I need that."
"What are you up to this time, little urchin?"
"Your little urchin is all grown up granny! Just that, she's still an urchin! Trust me and give me his number."
That evening, I was ringing Mihidana Baba's son.
"Hello", he said.
"Namaskar Bhaina. This is kunmun. Remember?"
"Yes, Didi. How will I not? Ma (Granny) had told me you want my number. I was expecting your call. What happened, Didi? What made you call me?"
"Granny told me about your son. Why is he hawking around with you? Isn't he going to school?"
"No, didi. Mihidana business doesn't pay me well enough to afford my children's education."
"Children?"
"I've a daughter too. She's four."
"Do you really want them to have an education and be 'big men'?"
"Which father doesn't want that, Didi? Also, had baba been alive, he too would've wanted the same."
"Okay, then. Note the address and come there tomorrow with both your kids. We shall get them enrolled in school. And don't worry about the fees."
"Are you kidding, Didi?", He asked, choked half with pleasure, half with disbelief.
"No! And bring along some Mihidana for me too. It's been years since I'd last tasted them."
"You know Didi, baba loved you a lot. Now I know why."
I smiled and thought to myself, I too loved baba a lot. And I still don't know why!
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.
IF YOU WERE MY BELOVED
Sumitra Mishra
If you were my beloved, dear,
I would never seduce you the way you did!
Everyday sending a gift or a love letter,
Every day waiting on the terrace for a flash visit,
Every day singing songs under my window sill
Every day reciting poems that made my nerves chill
Every day romancing in my dream after midnight
Every day asking for a smile or a confession
As I bow my head like a drooping bud in confusion.
I would rather wear a puzzling expression on my face
Wear a shirt that needed washing or ironing seven days ago
When you fall sick I would not bring you a bunch of roses with an ILU card
Or Let you beam smelling the aroma, and smile at me with reddish cheeks
I would prefer to pour you into a cup of tea I drink
After seducing your brain with my funky humour
Get drunk and pester you with pranks till my voice gets hoarse.
When you would send a code by winking at me
I would jump high and yell to let all know,
When you ask me to a movie or for an ice cream
I would love to yank your braids or box your ears
Till you appeal or complain to your dad,
And when you expect me to declare my love
I would love to take the name of your best friend
Till you cry and hug me tight, and smear me with kisses!
Romancing or sweet-chatting are passé, my dear
I would surely bug your heart with feverish messages
Mid-night chats, obscene posts and sudden dates
You may throw my diamond ring at the cats or rats!!!
I am not one of those guys who show off their love
Nor am I the Square or Knight to use swords for a dove!
Smt. Sumitra Mishra is a retired Professor Engish from Bhuvaneshwar, Odhisha. She is an accomplished poet and writer of short stories. She is passionate about Literature and spends her time in reading & writing.
LUST
Alhassan Ibrahim
lemme come and swim
in your river. Lemme sink
in it and see. Is the river not
gonna swallow me up?
She waved her head
North to west.
How many inches deep?
She said " I don't know"
Don't let me drown,
Go and measure it
What about the tropical
rain forest? Hope they
won't injured my rod?
She said " the field is
now cleared and freed
from harm and you
Can cast your rod in
the shrine"
Alhassan Ibrahim Babangida has B.A in English Language from one of the Universities in Nigeria. He is a teacher who is also a poet and a writer.
WALKING WITH MY EYES CLOSED
Ms Mehwish Ummer
Life has set me free finally.
With my eyes closed and walking free.
Why it happened so late, I wonder,
To master the art called artifice.
Pain, torture and tears,
Were my only companions those days.
I was living for THEM,
Thinking, What they will be thinking?
Should I do this or not?
Should I ask them or not?
Will they like it or not?
Will they love me or not?
But all of a sudden it occurred to me that
No one really thinks the same for me,
And then I learned to close my eyes.
And shut the door at those non- deserving.
I woke up to a world beyond,
A world which is my own,
Towards truth, happiness and respect,
Love, faith and God.
Now I am happy with my blindness,
In this world of deception,
Soon getting ready to master,
The art of being deaf and dumb.
Ms. Mehwish Ummer lives in Kerala and is working as an English teacher for High School students.
SPRING
Sruthy S.Menon
Oh Spring!!
I was waiting for you
Ardently...
My love
Sprinkle me with your blossoms
On my Attire
And let me just lie there
Forever...
In your everlasting beauty.
The only thing I’ve ever asked for!
I remember you,
Every passing of time
And right now,
Thinking...
when will you return?
Never to leave again
When am alive
To take in your breath
Oh Spring !
Will you stay?
The only thing I’ve ever asked for!
SRUTHY.S.MENON is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Swamy Saswathikanda college, Poothotta , Kerala. She is a postgraduate (2019) in MA English from St.Teresas College,Ernakulam. Her poems and articles have been published in “Deccan Chronicle”. She has also published a few of her poems in anthologies such as “Amaranthine: My Poetic Abode”, a collection of English poems and quotes compiled and edited by Divya Rawat and in an Anthology titled “Nostalgia: Story of Past” edited by Khushi Verma. Her recent publications are in an anthology compiled by Miss Suman Mishra titled “ Crimson, the Genius Poesy” and in an anthology titled “ Wildflowers Rising” compiled by Aarthi Sampath , presented by Reasons and Laughter. She has also contributed her quotes in the book titled “1000 Women Quotes” compiled by D.Krishna Prasad.
She is the recipient of several literary and non- literary competitions including art and painting as inspired by her mother, winner of Kerala Lalitha Kala Akademy.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 blogger at Mirakee Writers community. She welcomes readers feedback at Instagram (username) @alluring_poetess .
BELLS
Kabyatara Kar (Nobela)
I added to my collections recently
A huge bell,
It sends a sonorous 'Om'
And adds to the holiness of my home .
It has letters encrypted on it
Which I do not understand
But I know they are profound
My faith in the divine power is bottomless.
May be one day I will try to decode those signs and symbols
But I know my ignorance adds to my bell’s mystery
The holy Om from the bell moves me as nothing else does.
The other day my neighbor asked me what is the price of the bell
I just laughed
How can I put a price on my priceless bell!
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
BEFORE THE BEGINNING
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Before the beginning began,
All was as it was,
The Gulmohar played through the window,
The sky offered a canopy to manifold dreams,
Shadows hid behind the opaque trees,
The air was silhouetted by a pretty face, that was yours.
Then the beginning began
Of a thousand desires,
To get you, to look into your eyes.
The flowers, the sky, the trees all changed their colours,
The mind surrendered to a single thought
And refused to see all that was before the beginning began.
You never came to me,
But the pretty face never left me
The blood of the Gulmohar spilled into my heart.
Neither I nor you remained the same
But the sky, the air and the flowers went back to as they were
Before the beginning began.
THE STALKER
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Unlike other days Abdul Mian woke up as late as nine this morning. His eyelids were heavy, face a mask of deep worries when he came up and stood near the door waiting for his cup of tea. Ruksana saw her husband from the kitchen and came running.
"What happened today? Don't you have to go to work this morning? I have been waiting since six o' clock with your tea and breakfast. I have packed your lunch also. How come you kept on sleeping?"
Abdul just shook his head,
"Don't feel like going to work today. I have a splitting headache."
Ruksana's face darkened,
"Hai Allah! That's why you were tossing restlessly last night. I heard some whimpering and some incoherent words. Once you also cried out in pain. I tried to wake you up, but you just turned over and kept sleeping. What happened to you? Did you have a bad dream?"
Abdul winced at her words. Bad dream? Yes, he had a bad dream last night. Except that it was not a dream, it happened with him in the darkness of the road abutting the maidan. On the way to his basti. Last night a little after nine. In a matter of few minutes, a man turned into a monster.
Ruksana touched his forehead with her work-worn calloused hands. There was no fever. Yet Abdul was sweating like a sick, feverish man in this cold November morning. The poor chap must be ill, otherwise who sweats like this on a winter morning?
Ruksana had wormed up his tea by now and handed it to him. He looked at his wife,
"Where is Zeenat? Has she left for college?"
"No, she is taking a bath. Her friend Ameena is coming in ten minutes. Ameena has to take the bus to college today. It seems her scooty broke down last evening in the market."
Abdul had lifted the cup for a sip of the tea. For a moment it remained frozen in mid-air. His heart started pounding. He turned back to his room and wearily lowered himself to the bed. Ameena is coming in a few minutes! Does she know Abdul is at home? What if................
The pounding of his heart almost sounded like the thumping of the lathe machine in the factory where Abdul worked. Like it had done a hundred times after he returned home, his mind went back to last night. A dark night, turned muggy with intermittent drizzles. Abdul had got down from the bus and started walking for home in his basti half a kilometre away. The road was deserted. Almost all the street lights were out.
Abdul saw someone walking a few steps ahead of him. He peered into the darkness and could make out it was a lady with a burkha draped on her. A lady! At this time of the night? She was almost running. The dark night, the lonely road and the slight drizzle must have put some fear in her. Abdul quickened his pace. He looked at her from behind, a sudden hunger rising deep in his stomach - a primordial hunger which knows no conscience and is unfettered by any qualms. For a moment he tried to guess if the woman was young or old, but decided it doesn't matter any more. Her walk was swift and lively, probably a young girl hurrying home. The hunger in his body grew, a silent growl seizing him like a coiling rope out to choke him in an insane desire.
Abdul started creeping up quickly, but silently. The woman should not know she was being followed. She had looked back only once, but luckily Abdul was under a thick tree at the time and she could not see him.
A dark night, a deserted road, a slight, shivering cold, and a frightened, lonely woman - what else one needs to warm up the night with some hot pleasure? For a fleeting moment he thought of his frustration at home - Ruksana was no longer the desirable woman she used to be, and for the last couple of years she has spurned his advances all the time, reminding him of the grown up daughter of marriageable age at home.
"Tobah, Tobah, what will Zeenat think if she gets the slightest hint of your insatiable appetite? Her Abba is a lecherous old man? Chhi Chhi, control yourself Zeenat ke Abba! Do your Namaz and read Quran for two hours everyday."
Namaz? Of course he does his Namaz five times a day, but at night his frustration becomes unbearable. Abdul tried to remember when was the last he had touched a woman's body. May be three months back. He had gone to the red light area one evening on the way back from office. But the woman who had charged him five hundred rupees for half an hour was not even worth a fifty. She had just lain on the dirty bed like a corpse when Abdul was humping all his passions into her. It was all over in ten minutes and she had kicked him out.
Abdul remained frustrated, the invisible hunger gnawing at his body all the time. The few women at the packing section in the factory flirted with him once in a while, but whenever he made a pass at anyone of them, they would roll in laughter, leaving him more frustrated and in nagging humiliation.
Abdul shivered with anticipation. Tonight he will not be kicked out. The woman under the Burkha will be at his command once he drags her into a bench in the park. She will do whatever he wants her to do. Abdul was only a few steps behind her now. Looks like a slim body, probably a young woman, he thought. Ah, let this be a night of intense pleasure, a compensation for months of frustration and deprivation!
Abdul looked to all sides. Nobody was in sight. The area outside the maidan was very very dark, the lights at the entrance were not working, thanks to the incompetence of the municipal staff of the small town. A slight drizzle had started falling. The night was getting colder.
With stealthy footsteps he came behind the woman. She must have sensed his presence. She tried to turn but Abdul gave her no chance. He pounced on her, put a hand on her mouth ad gripped her firmly. She started exerting to escape, but Abdul was too strong for her.
He started dragging her towards the entrance of the maidan. The body was light, and slim. Abdul's excitement was growing.
Suddenly he stumbled on the broken pavement near the entrance and his foot slipped. But he kept a firm grip on the woman. For a moment his hand slipped from her mouth and she started screaming,
"Please leave me, let me go, in the name of Allah have mercy on me".
Suddenly Abdul stood still! The voice sounded familiar! Is it some one he knows? Seizing the brief interlude of dilemma the girl looked back at the precise moment when there was a big lightning, the first lightning of the evening. She saw his face and shrieked,
"Chachajaan, I am Ameena, please let me go, please!"
Abdul winced as if a snake from the maidan had bitten his leg. Ammena? Zeenat's friend, who lives in the same street five houses away! Ya Allah!
Abdul's grip loosened and before he could recover, Ameena freed herself and ran away into the dark night towards their basti.
Abdul sat down on the pavement leading to the gate of the maidan. His mind was in a turmoil. Ya Allah, what did he do? How could he fall so low? How will he show his face to Ruksana and Zeenat when Ameena tells them about this?
With his head bent with worry, Abdul came home at midnight. Ruksana was waiting for him with dinner. He just shook his head and went to the bathroom to change his soggy dress. When he came to bed, sleep eluded him. In the longest night of his life, he tossed and turned and had recurring nightmares. Once he saw Zeenat falling at his feet and begging him, Abba, let me go, please leave me. Another time he saw in his dreams a police man coming to his house and arresting him, telling everyone, this old man is a pervert, a criminal, and Ruksana falling at the policeman's feet, saying, do whatever you want with me but.please spare him. Every time Abdul closed his eyes, Ameena's shriek came back to haunt him. He would get up as if an electric current had passed through him. He desperately wanted to drink a glass of water but his limbs felt lifeless, refusing to carry him to the kitchen.
Remembering all these dreams brought tears to Abdul's eyes, Will Allah forgive him?
Abdul woke up from his reverie. Bits of conversation were wafting from the entrance room. Ameena must have come! Abdul broke into a sweat. He started shivering. His throat felt constricted as if a big ball had got stuck there. With leaden feet he dragged himself to the connecting door and stood there. Ruksana and Zeenat were sitting at the small dining table facing the main entrance door, with their back to Abdul's room. They could not see him standing at the door. But Ameena could, she was facing the connecting door.
Ruksana was asking Ameena,
"Hai Allah, how could you leave your scooty in the market? What if somebody steals it?"
"Chachijaan, how can someone steal the scooty? It refuses to start!"
Zeenat looked at her,
"So you came by bus from the market?"
"Yes, but you know what happened to me when I was walking down from the bus stop? I had the most horrible experience of my life. You won't believe if I tell you!"
Zeenat could not wait to hear what was the most horrible experience of her friend.
"What happened?"
Suddenly Ameena's eyes were drawn to a slight movement at the connecting door. Abdul Mian was standing there, like a forlorn, fallen ghost, with tears in his eyes and hands folded in a prayer for mercy.
It was just a fleeting glance, lasting fraction of a second and Ameena continued her tale.
"It was dark last night, almost all the street lights were out. The roads were deserted, thanks to the drizzle. I was scared, walking alone. Near the gate of the maidan someone pounced on me from behind. I almost died at the spot. I wanted to shout for help, but could not. The man held me in a tight grip and closed my mouth with his hand...
Ruksana jumped up,
"What? What are you saying?"
"Yes, Chachijaan, I felt as if my limbs were going limp. He started dragging me towards the park"
"Hai Allah, what kind of sick people are there, jumping on a young girl?"
"Chachijaan, I was in a burkha, he had no way of knowing whether it was a young girl or an old woman under the burkha"
Zeenat shouted,
"Even then the pervert had no business to pounce on you. How did you escape?"
"He stumbled on the pavement near the gate and I freed myself. i kept running till I reached home. I was so scared, I was shivering on the bed throughout the night. My Abbu had already gone to sleep, and you know Ammijaan has gone to Khala's place. I felt shy to tell Abbu, Anyway he would have scolded me for going to the market in the evening. So I am waiting for Ammijaan to return tomorrow. I will tell her".
Zeenat was seething with anger,
"What kind of horrible demon would do a despicable thing like that? Was he someone from our basti? Did you see his face?"
Ameena shook her head, with a deliberate, painful slowness.
"No, I told you it was pitch dark. I could not see his face."
"So, what are you going to do? Will you file a complaint with the police? May be the wretch had also got down from a bus and was following you. The police will find out in no time. He should be caught and sent to jail."
Ameena sat with her head bent for a few seconds, then she looked up. There was no anger in her eyes, only the hint of an infinite sadness.
"You know last night when I was shivering on bed out of fear, I was thinking on that line. but now I have changed my mind."
"Changed your mind? Are you crazy?", Zeenat shrieked.
Ameena shook her head,
"No, I am not crazy. May be the man has a family to support and his going to jail will devastate them. May be at this moment he is standing somewhere, with tears in his eyes and with folded hands begging for mercy and forgiveness. I want to give him a chance to reform."
Before a stunned Zeenat could recover, Ameena got up,
"Come, let's leave. We are getting late. With some luck we will still be able to catch the college bus".
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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