The Four Quarters Magazine 2013

THE FOUR QUARTERS MAGAZINE
ISSN 2250 074X
TO UGLINESS
APRIL 2013
FOUNDED IN DECEMBER 2011 ISSUE V, YEAR II
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IN THIS ISSUE POETRY Anannya Dasgupta, Anindita Sengupta , Anupama Raju, Bob Bradshaw, Caroline Davies, Himali Singh Soin, Kathryn Hummel, Mitchell Grabois, Nabanita Kanungo, Nitoo Das, Rafiul Rahman, Sudeep Sen, Tabish Khair, Vanessa Gebbie, Vivek Narayanan PROSE Christina Sanders, Debjani Sen, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Kathryn A. Kopple, Miriam N Kotzin, Nury Vittachi, Nuala N Chonchir, RK Biswas, Saborna Roychowdhury, Sumana Roy, Tania Hershman, XU XI TRANSLATIONS Arjun Chaudhuri Akhil Katyal (With Muzaffar Karim) K. Satchidanandan Marc Di Saverio Sarabjeet Garcha Supriya Chaudhuri BOOK REVIEWS
Em and the Big Hoom (Jerry Pinto) The Gurkhas Daughter (Prajwal Parajuly) Wind Sketching (Smruthi Bala Kannan) Thunder Demons (Dipika Mukherjee) Blue Vessel (Nabina Das)
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THE FOUR QUARTERS MAGAZINE ISSN 2250 074X GUEST EDITOR
(For this issue)

RK Biswas GENERAL EDITORS Arjun Chaudhuri Arjun Rajendran Samyak Ghosh PEERS
(For this issue)

Ashok K. Banker Bhaswati Ghosh Nabina Das WEBSITE EDITORS Goirick Brahmachari Shuvashish Sharma COVER ART Marc Di Saverio TFQMAGAZINE.ORG
Printed by Humming Words Publishers, Faridabad, India
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Only the copyright for this collection is reserved with the editors of The Four Quarters Magazine. Individual copyright for artwork, prose, poetry, fiction and extracts of novels and other volumes published in this issue of the magazine rests solely with the authors. The magazine does not claim any of those for its own. No part of this publication may be copied without express written permission from the copyright holders in each case. The magazine is freely circulated on the World Wide Web. It may not be sold or hired out in its digital form to anybody by any agency whatsoever. All disputes are subject to jurisdiction of the courts of the Republic of India.
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EDITORIAL
RK BISWAS Ugliness saddens me. Yet this sadness, at this point, this specific point in time, also brings me a curious joy, because the word (sad) takes me back by decades, when a young sun shone above my sky. I was a school girl then, reading Merchant of Venice in class, letting the first lines of the play roll slowly like cool glass marbles in my head In sooth I know not why I am so sad: It wearies me; you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it or came by it, What stuff tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn; Those words soothed, when during angst ridden teen years, often caught in a pensive mood, it was poetry and not daffodils that provided succour. It still does. But returning to ugliness: Yes. Ugliness saddens me, but what wearies me is I never know when or where or how I come by it, find it, catch it; nor can fathom what its made of and how it happened. It further saddens me because I do not seek it. It seeks me out. I do not wish to know it. It chooses to know me. It is there all around me, and will not depart. Perhaps I will fare better if I learn about it. Maybe familiarity will breed dismissive contempt; maybe it will breed compassion, thereby making the ugly almost beautiful. I wont know until I take that journey. And, if you, dear reader are anything like me, and you feel what I feel, and are willing, please step in. Right here into The Four Quarters Magazine, here in the midst of this month of poetry, among creative thoughts and artistic journeys, towards a better understanding of ugliness. *** The April issue of The Four Quarters Magazine is not of or for, but To Ugliness. Nobody has sung any odes though, nor paeans. As I went through page after page of fiction, poetry and non fiction the words of Jelaluddin Rumi came to mind more and more often: God works in mysterious ways.
Things may look good outwardly, but there may be evil contained inside. Let no one be deluded by pride that he himself has conceived good ideas or done good deeds. If everything were as it seemed, the Prophet would not have cried out with such illuminated and illuminating perspicacity, "Show me things as they are! You make things appear beautiful when in reality they are ugly; You make things appear ugly when in reality they are beautiful. Show us therefore each thing as it is lest we fall into a snare and be ever errant.
The more I read the more convinced I became that ugliness or that which is ugly is hardly about physical appearance. It has more to do with our conditioning, centuries of conditioning, for like beauty, the ugly too lies in the eyes of the beholder; and I found myself nodding in agreement with Tabish Khair where he cries out for the plain bird in his poem Ugly Truths, and sitting quietly, mulling over Miriam Kotzins story Hag. I began to realize that ugliness is related to violence; it concerns the feared and the hated. Its face is not the toothy warty face of a hungry crocodile, but of human cruelty and avarice, and falseness. As in Hansda S Shekhars The Golden Boy, a raw story about the oppressed in a mining town, in Sudeep Sens heart breaking Domestic Violence, in Kathryn Hummels poetry and art where truth and
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beauty juxtapose with the opposite, and in Tania Hershmans flash fiction where she shows us uglinesss wry face. So often ugliness is the direct result of human destruction of beauty, be it through war that Vanessa Gebbies poem Sachsenhausen camera expresses so succinctly, or sheer callousness and disregard for human lives, which makes ugliness not just a horrible thing to behold, but a blight on humanity, a perversion of what is humane. And here I must quote a few lines from K Satchidanandans poem A Mid Indian Elegy, one of many that he generously contributed: Only the ceaseless light of tiny eyes
burning in the pyres to brighten up your cold midnights? Only the stench of rotting calves on your dawns meadows? Only the dead songs of birds that will never reach their nests to guide your ten thousand blinds?
Separation Anxiety; Saborna Roy Chowdhurys Paruls Wish an extract from her forthcoming novel, and Nuala ni Chonchuirs story From Ugly to Alice. Janus-headed, ugly can also bring forth a smile, if you
Yet, and yet, ugliness can also be tender, as tender as humans can be, as in Vivek Narayanans
And now the ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me
look at it from humorist Nury Vittachis point of view or chew on Sumana Roys essay on teeth or seek that perfect match as XU XIs protagonist does in her story Crying with Audrey Hepburn. Ugly is a motley creature; like putty in human hands it changes shape as and how we will it. Maybe we need to change so we can change the meaning of what is ugly; maybe it needs more human understanding, more compassion, to make its myriad faces more bearableAs Walt Whitman said in his poem Of The Visage of Things of ugliness To me there is just as much in it as there is in beauty
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POEMS
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ANANNYA DASGUPTA ENOUGH Would that love were enough Would that life were enough What is the content of my heart? If only contentment were enough I am washed upon a deserted shore, If only the oceans heart were enough I wouldnt search your eyes with mine If the mirror on my wall were enough I haunt every bar in town, would I be thirsty, if wine were enough? Would I search for nightingales and roses, if only candles were enough? Your greedy heart would speak ghazals Ana, if only stock images were enough.
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IF I KNEW I WOULD TELL YOU If I knew I would tell you But I didnt and, well, you were a good one, hell, the best, the most able, you were the one Id hoped would exactly quell, you see, the fear that Id find a perfect place, a dell, you called a haven, held so fast, so close a spell you cast I knew would break to a drowning swell you never dreamt to be a heart so scared I couldnt tell you. Now I speak for myself, say much and miss, well, you.
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ANINDITA SENGUPTA (POEMS FROM) BREAKING (GAUGUINS) WOMAN WITH MANGO A) She cradles it in both hands, face turned away as if its a bomb. It emanates a low buzz like a bottlebee ensnared. When you come into my lane, she says, the gate sidles from its casings. I always hated mangoes you had to suck the pulp from, disaster dripping down the chin. Defuse this complication. Its more aroma than taste, the leak of impossible nostalgia. Why must you be so unquiet? he says. She hears sun-quiet. After he leaves, she leans back against pillows, scans her flaws like theyre lines on her palm. Settling into self-flagellation is like sinking into a warm bath. Underwater, all questions are a fibrous float, pellucid, white. She wants the world to pierce her like a charge, buoy her miles from this fear hes seeded sickle-deep. She wants to surge until she breaks. Mango bile. Yellow flesh in his throat. B) note. They winced, the ladies with shopping bags, and guilt never lisped so sweet as those boys, they said. The lips, thats where it began, and those hips, those hips would be grand on someone older. Such an urge to watch them writhe. The boys must have had, such an urge that they almost peed. It couldnt be their fault, some said, as her body petrified in patches, her eye grew a macula. Things dropped right through. She must find it hard, some said, and her face is a mountain thats seen several landslides.
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C) The tap dribbles all morning and its a little matter of turning off but she keels over in splinters, a spleen of glass. The choke of urine and a doctors hands enters places she doesnt know are wrong. if only she could pin each leaf back on its branch but here again is mid-summer fucking, the stoking of fires she can neither light nor calm. a play about dancers makes her drive halfway round the city, half-mad, smoking out the window so she can feel body through wheels and wind. sometimes sleep comes as if its a kennel at a dog shelter and she inside, crouching and irretrievable.
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ANUPAMA RAJU THE ART OF BECOMING UGLY There is so much beauty in learning to be ugly in the routine of the body and its depressive needs you can no longer tell the lovely from the unsightly. Study the dimpled skin and the nightmares underneath rising from thinning hair or bloody uneven teeth There is so much beauty in the art of becoming ugly. The legend of the unattractive responds sullenly to the call of cosmetics singing so very sweetly. You can rarely tell the lovely from the unsightly. Blackheads filled with thoughts of revolution and brave warts sprouting to perfection. Embrace them for there is beauty in learning to be this ugly. Wax, trim, thread, scrub, rub till shiny in a mad tyranny over an irregular body: you cant tell the unsightly from the lovely. Then a day of clarity arrives. Vanity becomes an altered reality. Sight loses vision because there is more beauty in learning to be ugly. You desire the unsightly more than the lovely.
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BOB BRADSHAW WHEN MY GORILLA SUIT COMES OFF
I love costume parties. Put a woman behind a mask with leopard spots and suddenly shes interested in me. Will she be disappointed when I take the head off? Will she go back to rubbing shoulders with the big cats?
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CAROLINE DAVIES FERAL
Hes the only one shell come to, her territory the yard and barn, her only signs remains of mice eaten away save for the bile duct and tail, a slither of entrails on the straw. Shes never to be fed, his father says Shell stop working and grow fat. This doesnt stop Owain from filching tins from the Spar, in winter when the grounds like flint. She eats from his hand as he scoops pink jellied lumps out of the tin. Her torn ears alert for danger. His reward, her vibrating purr that she cannot keep silent.
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HIMALI SINGH SOIN ONEIRIC GARDENING [sowing sleep seeds] Carnation dinner parties. Wild goose chase Gerberas. [manure memories] Tulips spilling secrets. Loves roses, Orchestra of Jealous, dried triangles with circular tendencies. [raking unfulfilled desires] Chrysanthemums missing trains. [shoveling subconscious] Lilies cleaving a man, half-horse in the hay. Sweet peas scooping avocado from a skin of tin. [weeding words] Misplaced anemones in displaced continents. Naked daffodils on stage, lines forgotten. And Poppies flying, falling. [pruning realism] Delphiniums with no teeth uttering soundless text. [watering fantasy] Hydrangeas floating in an ocean. Dying, being born, light and wet, wave-like. [spilling over] Perhaps this garden of dreams was sown by obscure deities for forgotten lovers: Hosed hearts, winged attachments and porous perimeters of nonsense nows. [calyx dibble fallow stigma panicle phloem mottle] Our inner lives flowerbeds from some abandoned past left to their own sidelong gaze and Mysterious. Penstemon bells ringing. [carting awake]
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KATHRYN HUMMEL SUMMER SUMMER SLEEP You know because I call you when sleep neglects me the properties of this new insomnia, when the sheet cuts across my veins like a rusty nail. Eyes weighed by the suspension of my mind snap up with each intruding thought like a tightened blind. Summer has her fruit and I have mine: each overripe morning bears my wish to catch a draught of deeper sleep tonight, though sunset fires my revival. While the garden drops lower to the cooling earth on the utmost edge of the bed I lie waiting on another hit of midnight.
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DUET ONE GOOD THING One good thing about having been fat, Now contracted down to yoga-fit is the hot-wire of karmic deliverance. Your alteration strikes while those spike-eyed teengirls whove thickened old school have done your reverse. Still the compliments do their doubling-back until your shadow twin asks: Didnt we always seem pretty?
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MITCHELL GRABOIS SUICIDE DENTIST
The Rabbis teeth are like white stumps that even a suicide dentist couldnt remove As he speaks about the dangers of intermarriage I wonder if those teeth are his own or if they are dentures or expensive implants I imagine him and his wife engaged in rough sex in which biting is part of foreplay
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NABANITA KANUNGO SHIT VENDOR Kolkata collects a moment under winters tree. An old man hawks humour clay dummies of varieties of human shit. Theres this one, he sings in the unmistakable monotone of selling. Its got a red streak. So real. Take this. Ughh! Chheee!and then How much? in the air. Or this easy, painless one that does not crack the vent. No contorted face, this one. Take na. It shines. Wondrous gasps, giggles. More How much? How much? in the air. Thaaaaat one, over there..(pointing his yellow fore-finger nail), features a tomato seed. No. Chilly, a bystander corrects. Arts low and middle-class critics, we agree remembering some of our private morning burns. Some one picks a perfect Indian-Railway-tracks type. We love this blast of uncanonised genius laid out on the roadside. All buy a piece. Lump, pellets, pellety-lump, coiled, un-coiled, whichever shape bulb-light took inside his skull that lean season. A fully formed, never-before-played prank kicks within our bellies while its punch has already drawn his stomach inwards, painfully bending his ribs outwards into breaking. He may have gone home after the sale or to a sooty liquor shop with a beedi and his family throbbing in the vein of his temples, a thin roll of vague, contradictory smells of country liquor and boiled rice in his pocket. He is the same man who gives goddesses their eyes before pujas. But we do not know him.
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NITOO DAS WHEN I SING I foul the bark with sound. A calm mourning. A song: silent, unending. Listeners, awake, I say. Do your duty. Listen as I pray. Listen as I subdue the Semul leaves, floor the flowers with my clouds and polish my beak with ants. Listeners, know this: Symmetry is for the unsightly. My song: scream of oaths. Confusion in halftone. I cough and start. Cough and startle. My feathers tremble with my presence.
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CYBORG PROVERBS The woodpecker was never dumb. We were meant to fly, so was Icarus. A wire rose smells just as sweet as a real one. Midsummer will not turn to dust. The ghost in the machine is a living tree. Silence creates ears joined to music. The tragedy of grass is that it may only be green. You can get blood out of stones. Irony is a good nurse. Worship the photocopy: all dreams depend on it. These eyes are mine. They will also be yours.
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RAFIUL RAHMAN NAKEDNESS That day, I walked naked on the street Breaking free from the vaults of shame. The dish of dry fish, that I had served them in the night Rotted in their stomachs, and they sickened. Some puked on me, some spat on my face And some resented the colour of my skin. Some denounced my choice of spices, Some censured my art of cooking. Others in the street observed, as they prepared To butcher me for dishonouring a civilized race. That day, the rain lashed through the street; The fish in me revived, and I made love to myself.
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TABISH KHAIR UGLY TRUTHS
They pretend not to rhyme. In tales the ugly molt Into white swan or princess; they have gold, Mothers to wave a wand or pull the strings; Their hidden genes are just the right shoe size; Their fabled ugliness a pack of pretty lies They can discard before taking to wing Into happy ever-afters. All said And done, such highborn frauds! Give me instead A gold-uncaged bird, plain, which sings and sings and sings.
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VANESSA GEBBIE SACHSENHAUSEN CAMERA My sightline bisects Arbeit Macht Frei. Inside I place the parade ground, a wall, another wall, a roll call of birdless sky which leadens the day, weighs heavy on the flinted track where men died to test the soles of army boots. I use the gallows in the prison grounds to throw parallel shadows on walls crowned with rusting barbed wire. A sunflower dies by an oven door, reflecting in rainsoaked Station Z granite. In the heavy heave of the chamber floor I steal art where grass meets this antiperistalsis in concrete.
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VIVEK NARAYANAN AREA OF MR. S. And he hurt his way back into that mess, that black unchangingness, those trees with their khaki leaves, old slow avenues, those yellow painted squares, zebra skinned pavementshow sharp and mysterious the checkerboard of edges when the zebra of the curb pale itself and ghostly guided! and he followed his way to that old home under the coconut tree punctuating the dusty mess of a square, the underclothes of scooters parked unaware, the old woman squatting perpetual at the gate (once he almost spoke to her but for the treeless triangle between them confoundingly great) and despite the place its stress on stillness in the continually unfurling summer, the noise of the evenings he mingled with idols on their languid circular tours or those frowning improvised thickets of bulbs, the back he turned to that yellow and the face it turned to him, sharp citadels of plastic packet and silver wrapper, heaps clarifying to unembarrassed elbows, startling lack of policemen despite the police residential quarters just there that secret shortcut square, hidden idyll, its sudden conjurings of space fried likewise in recurring Saffola or zigzags of inextinguishable shops and quickly expandable multicoloured goods, overlaid self-spellings on the new tin of old sign, to walk into and in walking zippingly sense out the mess, the jest darkening under trees of ashen indeterminate age and people crooked like branches back back into an unacknowledgeable past where too someone ambledeven Thiruvalluvar a wide eyed confused young man greater than
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todays frozen plasterand in leaving to forget such that in a hardening crook of his own spine sets that un-notatable pause parsing each iteration with the lingering archaic transliteration hammered on the plate of a corner, an egress, a jumbled nook spattered on wave-lashed stone to open that packed sandwich with the grace of unmasking sun.
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SEPARATION ANXIETY, AKA FRANKENESSENCESTEIN
O how brittle the clouds above how dark the glass the sheet that covers me wired lit from under the light yellow even in shadow and in the bathroom the resident cockroach scything wings its brittle antennae heavy sagging at the tips ranging the cloud that covers us in sheets of soot-smoked glass how dark how dark this glass under our lamp behind the screen where her missing body glows and the brittle member of me inside her grows and her eyes like ecliptic moons shining behind cloud and her vein like wire and my dendrites like wire rebuilding her part by broken part recently past a glass irreplaceable a cloud and in the under-lit room under brittle sheets under dead sheets I stitch her hands those things of beauty to her arm I wire the jaw movable ventriloquising her brittle kisses for her the glass of her thighs her underlit mound the twin clouds of her breasts the crescent of her bum and from the smoke of the gone her double wrapped in sheets rises in the underlit room my shadow under her sheets brittle as the blue clouds above
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TRANSLATIONS
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ARJUN CHAUDHURI TRANSLATIONS FROM HINDVI POETRY POETRY AMIR KHUSROW DEH DEHLAWI 1. The empty bed there lies, pining for my love, day and night, no joy, no rest a moment in sight, my heart in pain cries. 2. Khusrau riverine flows this love opposite to whats known. The one who drowns rises above, the one who crosses, drowns. 3. Khusrau gambles with his love A game of love this goes. If I lose, then I will be his; and he is mine if he does. 4. Teeming blooms the mustard bud teeming grows it all, the mangoes spud, the tesu blooms, on every branch the koel sings, the fair one now to every limb adorning brings. See, the gardening women have wrought many a florid nosegay. Varied flowers the others have brought in every hand this day. I will come, said my colourful lover there at Nizamuddins door, in waiting has passed so many a year, and the mustard grows more.
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5. Spring is now, dearest one, revel, dearest, now, revel while you can; adorn yourself, dearest, go, your tresses now go dress. Why slumber now, dearest one, when your fates in ascent! Spring is now, dearest one, revel while you can. O lofty lady with lofty mien, the Lord gracious has come to see you now, dearest one, let your eyes now meet his. Spring is now, dearest one, revel while you can. 6. Mother dearest, do send Father the monsoons have arrived Daughter, but your fathers old And the monsoons have arrived Mother dearest, send my brother the monsoons have arrived Daughter, but your brothers young And the monsoons have arrived Send my uncle, your brother, then the monsoons have arrived Daughter mine, your uncles a fop And the monsoons have arrived. 7. The road to the banks is difficult so, to fill my pots there how do I go? To fill them there when I went my pots I shattered in my rant. The road to the banks is difficult so. On Nizam does lavish his life Khusro. Keep his honour, his veil to show. The road to the banks is difficult so.
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8. On your beauty, I lavish my life, I lavish my life on you, Nizam. Amongst the girls here so rife, my cloth alone is dirtied some, and they laugh at me, O Nizam, Lover, this spring do dye my cloth and restore my honour thus, Nizam, I pray to you in Ganj-shakars name, restore my honour, O Nizam. Qutab, Farid in the bridegrooms posse where Khusro is the dearly bride. Some quarrel with their in-laws, see, but I have only you for mine. I lavish my life on your beautys shine.
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AKHIL KATYAL (WITH MUZAFFAR KARIM) TRANSLATIONS FROM URDU AND HINDI POETRY
MUZAFFAR KARIM SHAHID Blank page Srinagar night thoughts captive Kashmiri children in Shergadi Police Station every letter of my heart stuck in curfew But the night passed melodiously all day in kaen-i-jung Malcolm X read Fanon and I, Agha Shahid Ali All day from the little palms stones, like bullets, kept fleeing Today it was arrested one thought hangs inverted from the ceiling of the jail they intensify the pain I, my memory I await the dawn of one thought it shouts azaadi The gun is deployed the thought is fired the blood is spilled From the tip of my pen a star rises and blots the page I fold the paper and put it inside Shahids The Country without a Post-Office.
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MANGALESH DABRAL THE PLACES THAT ARE LEFT (BACHI HUI JAGAHEIN) These days, I keep forgetting things, keep losing them, I misplace my glasses, lose my pen, a second ago, somewhere, I saw the colour blue, now I do not know where it has gone. I forget answering letters, paying my debts, I forget saying my hellos an goodbyes to friends, regretting that my hands remain full with work that has little to do with me, sometimes, having forgotten a thing, I cannot even remember forgetting it. Mother used to tell me to go to those places where I had last seen, taken off or kept those things. This way I usually found them and was thrilled. Mother used to say that these things, wherever they are, make a place of their own and do not let go easily. Now mother is no longer with me, only her place is left. Things get lost but their places remain, moving with us all our lives, We move elsewhere, leaving our homes, our people, the water, the trees, like a stone, I had washed away from a mountain, that mountain must still have a little place left. Meanwhile, my city was submerged by a big dam, they have made another city in its place but I said this is not it, my city is now an empty feeling. Things happen and then pass but where they happened, those places add up, those places move with me, reminding me of all that I have forgotten and of all that I have lost.
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ANSHU MALVIYA ALL WAS GOOD, AMMA (SAB THHIK THHA, AMMA) On the 28th of February, 2002, a violent mob attacked the Muslim residents of Naroda Patiya in Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India. Those killed included a pregnant Kausar Bibi and her unborn baby that was wrenched out from the womb and flung into the fire. All was good, amma Often, the sour pickle you ate, or the mud you tasted used to come to me The sun, filtered through your womb, used to come to me. I was so happy, amma Soon, I was to take my share of breath, Soon, I was to feel my share of hunger, I was to see my share of light. I was so happy, amma! I had once seen the shadow of abbus hand on your belly. I was to see his face, I was to see my share of abbu, I was to see my share of this world. I was so happy, amma. One day I shuddered a littletrembled like a fish in the waters of your womb, what strange shadow was this? It seemed to me, you were not walking, amma, it seemed you were pulling yourself. Then I do not know what happened, suddenly, I was out from the soft, warm darkness of your womb, and into the sun then into the fire. That was a very big operation, amma. With mine eyes, that had never opened, I saw these big doctors that were bending over you, and in their hands, there were big
three-headed knives, amma On seeing me, they yelled! Why did they yell, amma Were they happy seeing me now that I was out? They gave me fire to play with, amma! Then I got so busy playing that I did not see you. You too, with your last hiccough, must have sung the Sohar song to welcome the new born. I was never birthed, amma, and in this way, I never died, like those unborn babies kept in the hospitals in that colourful water, like them, I became immortal, amma. But here, there is no colourful water, there is only fire. For how long will I burn, amma.
(Thanks to Anshu Malviya and Saba Dewan)
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TRANSLATIONS FROM MALAYALAM POETRY
(All the following poems of K. Satchidanandan have been translated by the poet himself.)
K SATCHIDANANDAN THE CORPSE There was a bottle of holy water from the Ganga brought from Benares on my grandpas shelf. A corpse floated on the water. I tried to change the bottle to get rid of the corpse; but every time the corpse tagged along . My grandpa gasped his last before he had time to be chastised by the waterone more member in the crowded club of the unsaved. Only when the kids, merry after a shower cried, this bottle stinks and flung it away did I realise I could have done this a lot earlier: at least the corpse in the bottle would have attained moksha. We need a new route to salvation that does not reek of corpses.
2009
A MIDMID-INDIAN ELEGY* Where, Bhopal, did you bury your poor in the blinding mist of winter? Did death arrive grinning, on its soft paws, crossing the eerie silence of the December night? Did it lie down quietly between the father and the mother, tired and asleep in your slums and hovels? Did death in the guise of a cool breeze breast-feed their babies to turn their rag-cradles into graveyards?1 Implicit is the image of Pootana, the rakshasi, who, appearing as the charming Lalita tried to suckle and poison the little Krishna to death.
1
What happened to that old man with the Prophets face I had seen near Tajul Masjid last May? What about those angry young men of Shajahanbad, their Chatisgarhi speech fluent like River Indravati in the rains? What of the little girl selling gulal and camphor in front of the Durga temple in the old city? And little Manju of the Sindhi colony, who longed to write poems on leaves and clouds and birds wings? Where are Ammu,Kishan, Panna, Razia? Where is Lacchis pup, where, Roshnis parrot? What about those bats who used to fly above your blue lakes with the faces of children long ago dead? Did they wither away too, those gulmohars, raising their flags of life against the killing summer on the Shamla hills? Only the ceaseless light of tiny eyes burning in the pyres to brighten up your cold midnights? Only the stench of rotting calves on your dawns meadows? Only the dead songs of birds that will never reach their nests to guide your ten thousand blinds? Come, hapless people buried on the waysides, nameless souls trapped in mines or surprised by bursting dams! Come, arise as Sakti,2 come from the the white-hot rocks of Gondwana as old as earth, come from the savage strength of the beasts and the hunters scrawled by our fore-fathers in the caves of Bhimbedka, from the merciless yellow of the Chambal ravines zig-zag like memories, from the intense full-moons of Rewas tigers, from the arrow-like speed of the Chitals of the Sal forests, from the sharp arrow-heads of the Korba3 shooting the wild boar,
2 3
Sakti: Universal energy as also a form of Durga. Korba, Muriya,Agariya, Gond, Bhil,Mundari,Baiga: tribes of Madhya Pradesh
from the bison-horn masks of the Muriya, from the red-hot iron on the Agariyas anvil, from the tridents tower at Chowragarh, from the thundering anguish of the Gond drums, from the curses of Mahanadis fisher-folk, from the dark prophecies of the clairvoyant Joshis, from the iron-ore of Baila-Dilla, black like the Mundaris, from the burning desires of Khajuraho, from the sour-sweet impact of the mahua wine, from the drut4 singing of the summer-showers on the marble-rocks of Jabalpur, from the raging cloud flying over the Vindhyas with the panting love-message from Alakas exile, from the electric passion of poetry that leaps down now from the peaks of hymns into the vale of elegies. Come, with the agile steps of the kathak dancer Wake up, O forest-goddess tattooed on the Bhils strong forearm! Wake up, o, eight-faced Shiva of enraged Mandasor! Come, stand hand in hand, and with the wrath of the dispossessed chop down this power that refuses to melt, this dark dealing in death. Come, poor men burnt in heaps in the pyres of war and drought-hit fields, Come, arise as Suddhi5 from the violet spring of river Narmada, from the seeds sown by virgins in Baigas ploughed fields, from loves gulal exchanged by lovers in the Bhagoria fair, from the bright silk woven by black hands, from the dead gold of Tapatis wheat-fields, from the rain-bow clothes of Basthars hunger, from the quiet waves of Bundelkhandi speech, from the snow-drops of August singing in vilambit, from the serpentinemovements of khayal singing and the tender geometry of dhrupad. Come, swaying in slow-motion with the steps of the sarhul dance.
Drut and Vilambit are the fast and slow modes in Hindustani music; khayal and dhrupad are musical forms and Suddhakedar is a raga. 5 Suddhi: Absolute Purity.
Wake up, o, Shantinaths meditating Mahavir, Wake up, o, Sanchis forgotten Buddha! Come, purify our water and air, purify our hearts and minds, until once again suddhakedar rises from our sandoors, until the maize fields retrieve their crystal moonlight, until Narmadas sobbing winds fill again with the scent of soya flowers.
1984 Written in the wake of the industrial disaster-the leakage of poison-gas from the Union Carbide factoryin Bhopal, leading to the death and mutilation of thousands of people.
THE LEG Whose is this leg lying half-charredin the ashes of the Harischandra Ghat in Kashi? Which temples and ashrams did it roam in search of inner peace? How many whore-houses did it visit to get rid of its desire? Did it run behind the yoked bulls in the village fields, dreaming of harvests? Did it wander in the citys railway stations looking for a piece of stale bread? Its muscles may have ached and cursed mixing clay to make pots and pitchers. Its bones might have broken running from court to court seeking elusive justice. It might have swooned waiting before the labour room and the mortuary. Or else, this leg might have trampled several lives. Or may be this is one that adoring eyes had followed in the sports ground or the dance hall. Each mark and scar on this leg has a story to tell. Shivering in the Himalayas and scorching in the citys heat, at last it arrived where everyone arrives.
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The head and the body have attained salvation. Only this leg, straight under the sun, right between fire and water, perplexed by the distance between this birth and the next, confused, scared, panting
1995
THE HUNCH I met a hunchback in the capital yesterday. He thought he had borne the earth too long. He showed me the deep marks of longitudes and latitudes on his back. I looked around: the street was teeming with hunchbacks. The poet said he had got his hump from carrying language on his back to save it from a headlong fall. Words had scarred his shoulders. When did this become a land of hunchbacks, I wondered. Learn from Atlas, said the teacher. Turn your eyes to Notre Dame, counselled the critic. The doctor said the hunch comes from an excess of civility that stops you from telling the unpleasant truth. The priest was on his knees, let the kingdom of hunchbacks come! The leader said it had begun as a wart three decades ago and in time evolved into a hunch that hides the sun. The parliament is now Waiting for Krishna to arrive from America.
2005
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CACTUS Thorns are my language. I announce my existence with a bleeding touch. Once these thorns were flowers. I loathe lovers who betray. Poets have abandoned the deserts to go back to the gardens. Only camels remain here, and merchants, who trample my blooms to dust. One thorn for each rare drop of water. I dont tempt butterflies, no bird sings my praise. I dont yield to droughts. I create another beauty beyond the moonlight, this side of dreams, a sharp, piercing, parallel language.
2000
FACE READING A broad forehead predicts pretensions to intelligence, and wrinkled skin, pretensions to wisdom. Jonted eyebrows? Will cheat in the game; Hair on the ear lobes? Will borrow and never return. The long-lipped one is a chatterbox, and the thick-lipped one, good to bed. Blue eyes see into your future; golden ones, into your heart. The curved nose is a dictators notice; the flat one loves to renounce. Dimples? Will tell nothing but truth; square cheeks announce a glutton. The round head is deep into science; and the oval one is all for art. Wide ear-lobes are dying for gossip the slender ones , for music.
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The one with an eye on his forehead loves to dance in the funeral pyre;6 he with a single horn loves to ride a mouse. Six faces? He travels on a peacock; Just four? Sits on a lotus that grows in the most unlikely place. The monkey-faced will grow a tail and be on perilous errands, the lion-faced one will inhabit a pillar. Is the face dark like a clouds? Man enough for ten thousand women. No face at all? Fear not, he will be an immortal among immortals.
This stanza refers to Hindu gods. Shiva dances in the charnel house; Ganesha with his single horn travels on a mouse; Shanmukha or Murugan with six faces rides a peacock; the four-headed Brahma sits on a lotus born from the navel of Vishnu; Hanuman, the monkey-god jumps across the sea to reach Lanka to carry Ramas message to Sita; Narasimha, an avatar of Vishnu appears from a pillar to slay Hiranyakasipu the heretic; Krishna the dark god had sixteen thousand and eight mistresses according to a legend.
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TRANSLATIONS FROM BENGALI POETRY SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI SHAKTI CHATTOPADHYAY
(for Ayan Rashid Khan)

WHEN THE RAIN CAME (JAWKHON BRISHTI NAMLO) Rain falls in my heart, the boat is tossed about. No means at hand to leave this shore for shoreless tides. Before the rain descended, I had such means, but lack, All power of motion now: is that why I recall The ruined house in memory, my days entwined in dreams? Ive lost the power of motion, lost the power, the means. When the rain descended, I ran to the yard alone, Hoping to catch sight of you, whether in cloud and rain, Or beneath the shiuli tree, drenching your knee-length hair, With water scraped from the sky: but youre not there, Outside and clouds form in my inmost part, Heavily falls the rain, flooding all my heart. IN THE AUTUMN WOODS I HAVE SEEN THE POSTMEN (HEMONTER AWRONYE AMI POSTMAN) POSTMAN) In the autumn woods I have seen many postmen wandering Their yellow sacks filled, like sheeps bellies bulging with muddy grass. What letters have they picked up, ages gone, old and new, Those postmen in the autumn woods? I have seen them peck away incessantly, as solitary herons peck at fish, Such is their impossible, mysterious, alert concern! They are not like our postmen, In whose hands continually Our self-indulgent love-letters get lost. We are drifting apart, day by day, from each other We are drifting apart, day by day, longing for letters We receive, day by day, many letters from far away Only yesterday we moved away from you, dropping our love-laden letters into the postmans hand Thus we move far away from people like us, Thus we seek to express our arrogance, weakness, desire Standing in front of the mirror, we can no longer see ourselves
We drift continually in the loneliness of evening terraces Thus, laying our clothes aside, we drift alone in the actual moonlight For many days we have not embraced each other For many days we have not tasted a human kiss, For many days we have not heard a human sing For many days we have not seen aimless children, From the woods we drift towards still more ancient forests Where the immortal leaf-print passes into the chin of the rock To that land of unworldly relations we drift continually In the autumn woods I have seen many postmen wandering Their yellow sacks are full, like sheeps bellies bulging with muddy grass. What letters have they picked up, ages gone, old and new, Those postmen in the autumn woods? The space between one letter and another grows continually, I have not seen space grow between tree and tree. I WILL DRAW LOVE TO MY ATTENTIVE EAR (PABO PREM KAN PETE REKHE) In the huge, the highest tree you sit, my lord. I lay my ear at its roots, confused ends, night and day. Where is the root of reverence in this earths unmoving spread? Does he remember that Im lying here, does he remember? There, where you laid me down and went slowly, how far away The garden of remembrance, become a tree, is within me Only a tall dream, its flowers leaves fruits branches Are fled, leaving empty the lair you dug for them. I search for myself and for it in my spreading: Immersed in the old touch, where are you? I think youve forgotten. In the blue indifference, you do not hear the pastoral signal. God in the far-off tree, I will draw love to my attentive ear.
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TRANSLATIONS FROM FRENCH POETRY MARC DI SAVERIO
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE CORRESPONDENCES CORRESPONDENCES
Natures a temple with spirited pillars often expiring lyrics of fog. Man strolls across these forests of symbols which explore him with familiar stares. Like long and distant echoes that band in deep and gloomy unity, vast as night, vast as clarity, sounds and smells and colours understand each other. And its the fragrances fresh as babys flesh, oboe-mellow, green as meadows, and others, corrupted, rich, triumphant, with infinite expansiveness, like amber, benzoin, musk and myrrh which sing the spirits and the senses transporting. ARTHUR RIMBAUD DMOCRATIE (DEMOCRACY) The flag advances through a putrid land; the drum is hushed by our dialect. In hearts of cities we will feed the most cynical whore-mongering; well slaughter all logical uprising. Were off to spicy sodden nations! To serve the most monstrous military or industrial exploitations. See you later Here it doesnt matter where. Were the good-willed draftees of a ferocious philosophy, overlooking science its all about the comfort. So what if we poke a few holes in this world that goes. Now, the real advance Company-y-y, march!
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TRANSLATIONS FROM MARATHI POETRY SARABJEET GARCHA
HEMANT DIVATE BUTTERFLIES Ambling by in the garden of the apartment complex I casually remarked to a friend, Dont see those small deep-yellow butterflies these days He casually said, That brand has been discontinued A DEPRESSINGLY MONOTONOUS LANDSCAPE
for Hiranya
i How did the landscape in my mind flow into my daughters mind? Right here in front of me is an expanse of buildings, shopping malls, highways, factories and traffic and if I tell her to sketch a landscape she draws sunsets a flowing river, trees, fields, shrines draws birds which look like scrawled numbers in my tiny, overcast skies Never seen from the seamless forest of this city the sunset beyond the house in my mind the river, trees, paths, temples, birds, footways Yet how did these stream into her mind? ii By the time she understands this picture of my childhood which has flowed away and the answer
to Why she draws exactly like this? will all the paintings by everyone in this world have melted away? Or will they remain trapped in their silence? iii Like me, she gets nightmares of headless people carrying the corpses of orphaned villages into the cemeteries of cities or ferrying frightful landscapes of cities only to superimpose them on the erased villages The same, the very same landscape encloses within itself all the headless people All, all cities have the same name the same streets, same buildings, same shopping malls all are transfixed in the same predefined places like a regiment standing ready to march She moves along paths with the same name, same colours same smells, same forms same faces as though clones of themselves and at the same deceptive crossroads she reaches the same statue No matter where she flees the same statue confronts her again and again and she arrives at the same landscapes of the same cities with no signs or landmarks to guide her In the same places she sees the same people speaking the same language and with same shapes same gestures standing in queues of the same length in the very same manner going to the same stations driving the same vehicles at the same speed in the same direction at the same time passing by the same trees of the same height of the same kind
separated in the same way by the same dividers on the same road The same people are tattered the same way by the same bombs and lie scattered the same way petrified the same way broken the same way In the same monotonous manner on any channel on any TV flash the same misery-multiplying pictures monotonous monotonal monototal totally monotonous depressingly monotonous totally depressing dep-dep-depressing She dips, dips and collapses sees my same terrified, depressed face at the last moment, when she lets go of her tight grip on my hand in the crowd and just like me she too flows away into the gigantic, self-destructive flood of headless people I dream the very dream she is dreaming at the same moment I too see her petrified, depressed face see the terror and shudder I forget to carry village to city and city to village and reach here reach where?
(These translations from the Marathi have been taken from Hemant Divates recently published book of poems A Depressingly Monotonous Landscape.) Landscape
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PROSE
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CHRISTINA SANDERS THE CLUB The fat couple came out of the changing rooms holding hands. Sunlight bounced off their white bodies, off pockets of flesh bulging under straps and spilling over her navy polka dot costume. It shone across the puckered folds of his stomach, rippled in loose terraces over his blue Speedos and threw dimpled shadows into the hairy recesses of his thighs. Everyone turned to stare as they strolled past the changing rooms, past the palms and cane loungers where mothers lay in Boden bikinis tanning perfect sculpted bodies; past dads in their Quiksilver shorts hovering over babies in armbands and toddlers splashing in the paddling pool. At the deep end, they paused, lifting their waxen faces to the sun. He reached out to caress her shoulder then let his fingers ride down the fatted wedges of her spine until they came to rest on the bulging moons of her buttocks which he tenderly circled before giving them a playful pinch. She laughed. How she laughed. Shockwaves bounced and shimmied down the deep furrow of her cleavage. The mothers tutted. The husbands shook their heads; they were not allowed to touch their wives like that, even in private. Their wives were gorgeous and organised; they carried baby bags, bottles, life buoys, suncream, sunhats, Tupperware, babywipes; they shaved and waxed and buffed and polished; they barked orders to their husbands: Pick up the floats, take Gus to the toilets. Could you get me a juice? Hand in hand the fat couple leapt, their bodies breaking the smooth turquoise skin of water. The pool exploded. White waves ten feet high drenched the loungers and washed over the paddling pool. Children screamed. Mothers clutched them up in their arms, glaring at their husbands who couldnt take their eyes off the pool. Someone should complain, they said, someone should definitely do something.
DEBJANI SEN FLIGHT Several years ago, ugliness came across as loud and clear and wrapped in candy-floss colours, in the daily soap Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin on Sony TV. The ugly duckling in the show was Jassi with her buck teeth and oversized spectacles. Many years before that we had Rekha in Khoon Bhari Mang dumped in the river to become food for the crocodiles by the handsome villain Kabir Bedi because of her ugliness. In both cases, the production strived hard to convey the message of a noble and generous heart beneath the veneer of physical ugliness; however in both cases, that ideal was abandoned halfway through. The ugly heroines received a glossy makeover, and became strong with their new found beauty. Their erstwhile ugliness was completely forgotten, things were mended and every one lived happily, and beautifully ever after. Maybe it is not only due to this sort of popular narrative of the ugly duckling becoming a beautiful swan, but I have noticed since then, cartloads of beauty products flooding the markets in India. Moreover, every other day we have beautiful women onscreen feigning some kind of erstwhile ugliness or
the other, one that is substituted by one form or the other of newfound beauty, all thanks to the product being advertised or promoted; these products generally assure the viewer that the use of the face cream, lotion or whatever it is will be enough to turn anyone into a paragon of beauty overnight. This may appear to many for sure to be a sort of globalised fairytale, much like Cinderellas Fairy Godmother turning her into a beautiful princess. And sure enough, Mankind was never so beautiful. This vacation, I happened to be stranded at the Kolkata airport for several hours. I tried to throw off my boredom on that cold January morning by trying to read a book. But, somehow I got drawn into a conversation with a woman and her obviously unwell husband, both advanced in their years. What had actually attracted my attention was the bulk of baggage they were lugging along. Generally, for me it has always been a small piece of luggage on flights away from home, so the over laden trolleys the couple had with them caught my interest. It is usually like this that such unusual situations bring together people who would have otherwise passed each other by. I sat there waiting, along with my co-passengers in the lobby, disappointed and not just a little bit miffed at the flight delay which, as I could see, was turning quickly into a fiasco. I looked for the couple, but I could see them nowhere around. Sometime later, the old lady came and plopped herself on a chair beside me. With a hem and a haw, and then a directness that only a certain species of senior women possess in India, she started telling me about the difficult time she was having with their pile of baggage. The lady was obviously very concerned about her husband, as she herself told me that he hadnt eaten a proper meal since they had left their daughters home the previous noon. He was apparently on a semi solid diet on account of his having been ill for quite some time. I noticed the old mans drooping lower lip, but before I could surmise, she whispered to me, taking care so that her husband did not hear, that he had had a major surgery only some time back, and the cancerous growth in his lower lip had been diagnosed. I suppose she thought I was affected by the ugliness of his appearance the drooping lip and drool. So she asserted, in that selfsame soft aside, and not with a little pride evident in her voice that her husband had once been a very handsome man. Tall, fair and well built. It was his advanced age, she told me, trying hard to make me believe in her husbands erstwhile good looks, and this illness that had made him ugly. I nodded at her words, understanding her need to be believed. Meanwhile, she produced some biscuits which she had in her handbag, and with the milk she had managed to secure from the airport authorities, she served her husband a semi-solid breakfast. He, on the other hand, was distressed that with all the biscuits used up for his breakfast, she would have nothing left for her. I was moved by the couple; it was touching to see her tenderly wiping his lips with her handkerchief, taking care not to hurt the areas that had been operated on. But the entire incident left me thinking deeply about certain fixities that society, most of us at least, know and consider being intrinsically true. Finally, after watching the two people over and over again, and admiring the inherent beauty of their relationship, I stood convinced that ugliness surely is not a physical thing at all. As if in answer to the question I had posed to myself, I remembered the young pilgrims on our descent from the mountain shrine of Vaishno Devi a few months back. The dark evening on which we chose to ascend the steep path had almost hidden the faces of my many co-pilgrims. The only thing that I was aware of was that most of the pilgrims were from villages in nearby states since it was an off-season pilgrimage that we were on. The night was cool, with a drizzle beginning, and then seguing into an occasional downpour. It was only during our descent that I noticed the faces of some of the other pilgrims. I was shocked at what I saw. The married women were barely fourteen or fifteen or even younger; at least their appearance suggested so. Some of them, the ones that appeared older than their companions, but were nevertheless too young themselves, had an infant or in some cases a toddler in their arms. They looked tired and sad, lacking the enthusiasm and vigour of their older compatriots. I was saddened at how the laws governing marriage are openly flouted in this country, and all in the name of poverty and tradition.
I wondered if there could be anything uglier than that. When your life is stuffed into a boxed existence and all that you are demanded to do is to marry and breed, then what is beautiful in your life? Physical beauty doesnt matter, then. Nor does a beautiful soul, or a beautiful mind. As I sat there in one of the many uncomfortable seats in the airport lounge, I thought of how many of those women must have fallen victim to malnutrition, premature death, domestic violence and other forms of abuse; how many were made unwilling chattels in the hushed-down corridors of human trafficking in mainland India. My reverie was broken by the pitiful cries of a child in the other corner of the lobby. I turned towards the source of the cries and saw a young father holding his child enveloped in a blanket, while the mother tried her best to administer some medicine or maybe they were trying to get the baby to eat something. But the child continued to wail, and the cries were not the usual sort of cries babies cry. It was obvious that the child was in a lot of pain. And so it was, as I observed when I went nearer. I overheard some people around me discussing what had happened to the child. It seemed that the little one was one year and a half old when the parents had taken the child to Kolkata to consult the doctor, believing that their child must have had some sort of a bad fall, but they were in for a rude shock. The doctors told them something which must have been earth shattering for the young parents. They had found, on examination that the little thing had been brutally beaten by somebody and the impact of the hard beatings had been disastrous. The childs tender limbs had been broken at several places each. Many surgeries had to be performed, and both the legs and the hands would have to be kept plastered for months on after. My wonderment was in for more shock when the people around the young parents told me that they used to leave their child in the care of a stay-in-help, a young woman, who had caused those injuries by constantly hitting the child every time it refused to eat. The flight was announced at last and like all the passengers, I hurried towards the aircraft. My emotions were charged like never before. The delay and the images of the scarred gentleman, the teenage married girls and the maimed child were turning like giant wheels in my mind. The airhostess stood at the doorway, obviously a disgruntled performer of plastic roles. She allowed her disinterested eyes to stray onto my face. A smile was about to spread on her lips but she cut it short. Her eyes had caught sight of my rough calloused hands. The ugliness of my coarse hands had seemingly led her to believe that I didnt deserve the smile of her painted red lips.
HANSDA SOWVENDRA SHEKHAR THE GOLDEN BOY She looks like a dream, everybody else is just a whore. The buzzing red-light district of Lakkhipur is a distant appendage to the working-class quarters of this coal-mine town. In the somewhat respectable part of the quarters a slum nearly a third of the entire Lakkhipur town men eat and feed their families out of what they earn after labouring for hours inside the belly of the earth. Shirtless, sweaty, black with coal-dust, only their individual headlamps to guide them in the dark abysses they dig and explore. It is a routine they follow day after day, week after week, year after year. In the more notorious part of this slum, women too eat out of their sweat and labour. Only it is also mixed with the semen and sweat of men. They toil inside their own abysseseight-feet-by-eightfeet rooms; painted in garish blue and green; curtained off with old terry-cot saris; illuminated by hundred
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watt bulbs; the heat of hormones doused by delicate ceiling fans and colossal desert coolers. This routine they too follow day after day, week after week, year after year. Everything is on sale here, at this notorious appendage. Bodies, companionship. Name it, pay for it, take it. Everyone is on sale here. From the khaini-chewing, potbellied tholas outside the slum who take anything upwards of fifty rupees to license an entry; to the pimps and jelly-bellied madams who take the customers into the right room. After that, it is one journey into paradise with the houris of Lakkhipur, the nymphs of the night. But not every nymph is Sona. Sona is a dream, while everybody else is just a whore. Parboti dis girls were famous for giving full value of their clients money. Parboti di was so discerning. Years ago, she had been the mistress of a zamindar of some village near Lakkhipur. That was when there were very few mines in the area. Men worked in farms and no one left his village to relocate to the towns. It was long before the thatched huts of Lakkhipur gave way to slums and eight-by-eight cubes with tin, asbestos and plastic sheet roofs. That zamindar had a wife, who he had married with fire as the witness. She did what was ordained of her: gave him his successors, and saw and accepted meekly as he strayed. This was when he had Parboti, who came with a dancing troupe from afar, a place beyond paddy fields, marshes, and a river as broad as an entire village. There was a colony of outcasts near Lakkhipur. Zamindars from all villages went there with their cronies, smoked hookah, drank, saw the girls dancing to the beats of the dholak. The dancing girls who pleased their patrons the most were showered with wads of currency notes and given gold and silver jewellery from the personal collections of the zamindars. Parboti caught the fancy of our zamindar and it was not long before she found her way into the zamindars bed. His days and nights were spent more in Parbotis arms then at his own house. Time passed and the eyes of fortune-hunters fell over Lakkhipur and the villages around it. It didnt take a clairvoyants gaze to know what treasures were buried under the soil. Then the drought happened. Farmers began deserting their fields and moving away. The zamindars sold their properties to mining firms and shifted to apartment blocks and duplexes in cities. The colony of the outcasts lost the strains of the sarangi and the tinkle of the anklets. It became a whorehouse. The dancing troupes did not put up shows any more. Life had lost the falseness of a staged drama. Parboti, and other dancing girls like her, had to give up their lead talent and adopt a talent of other kind. What they did with just one man once a day during the days of the zamindars, they had to do with many men several times a day once mines started coming up. There were the labour, the officers, agents, guests. The musicians of the dance troupes turned into pimps, the stories of pain and pleasure they staged at one time reflecting on their own present lives. Villages fell, a town rose. Lakkhipur. The coal-mine town. Mud houses fell, concrete ones rose. Roads, police outposts, a railway station, a bus depot, shops, market, a slum, and the busiest red-light light area in the whole of the mining zone. Parboti became Parboti didi. A dainty-waisted dancer, she was now a rough-talking brothel madam. Most of her associates are dead and gone. Her tabla player, who later became her first pimp, died fifteen years ago. And with him died a part of her history: who she used to be, what she used to do, who were her benefactors. These are not to be revealed. She is not from a land beyond a river anymore, she belongs here. Lakkhipur is her home, she has always been here. Otherwise, why would she have so much clout over everyone? The DSP, the bada babu at the thana, the managers of the mines, the union leaders, the thikedaar, the big fish of the shady world of coal-mining. Just last month, three of her girls danced at a charity show organised by the police department. She was given an onion-coloured sari to wear to the function. Goons of mine-owners fired in the air when the three girls threw their tops and danced in their bodices, but dare anyone touch them. The DSP and his men had their eyes on everyone. The DSP later received his gift for the attention he had
showered over Parboti di and her girls. Sona. Sona was the gift. Parboti dis road out of any predicament. As long as Sona was there, Parboti di knew, she would keep on reaping profits. For Sona wasnt just a whore, she was a dream. The supplier had sold her cheap. He had more girls, ten to fifteen. All of them were young and raw; bright-eyed, innocent, and ill-fed. The girls were from far-off villages in Bengal and Bihar, two from the border districts of Nepal, three from Bangladesh. Most of them were fair, some honey-complexioned, all of them were on the lookout for a better future. Sona was different. She was plain dark. So dark she did not have even a mole on her skin. And she is not even a virgin, the supplier had told Parboti. Youll end up losing your money. Take these other ones. Look at this one. So fair. Parboti had looked straight through the supplier. How dare you tell me what I ought to do? she had growled. And never talk to me about money. You think fair skin and raw flesh will earn me more money? Parboti di trusted her choice. Sona wasnt fair, she wasnt fresh either, but she saw in her eyes something beyond the innocence that was there in the other girls. She saw in Sona a woman who was prepared for this profession, one who had already been through what women like Parboti went through night after night. She looked like someone who had passed through many hands, someone who didnt care anymore what was made of her, someone who enjoyed being there. Beneath Sonas dark skin, Parboti sensed unspoken secrets. Secrets about a life that no one would know, words that shed never speak, stories that shed never tell. Yet, what she didnt see in Sona was a resignation. To her fate, her situation in life. Parboti wondered where she came from or what her real name was. What she used to be before she became the famous Sona of Lakkhipur. She could guess, she never asked. Names and places were things that Parboti herself didnt like sharing with anyone. Present was what she preferred to live in. Present, always. Not the past, nor the future. Present. Sona was her present. And she was kept for the highlights of this profession. The real work. Not singing, dancing and entertaining at parties. Sonas job was with the men who mattered. VIP clients had Sona brought to their houses and hotel rooms. Cars were sent for her. They told Parboti di how much they liked being with Sona, how much they appreciated her technique. She became their lover, not someone they had paid to spend a night with. She made them hers, each one of them whether minister, policeman, businessman or goonda. When she took their bodies in her open arms, wrapped her legs around them, rode their organs, and pumped her lower body up and down, up and down, up and down, Ma kasam, Parboti maydum, I see stars, each one told Parboti. And when she makes those noises, Sonu, Sonu, Sonu, she names me, and she calls it out like this like this, ah, what a feeling! Who is Sonu? they asked Parboti. Who is Sonu? Parboti wondered. Perhaps, hes the link to Sonas past, the secret she had smelt beneath her dark skin, the man who had shown her the future, taken the resignation away from her, made her accept, one and everyone. Parboti thought so, and she knew it. Yet, she never said this to anyone. You know, saheb, our Sona is gifted. This was what Parboti di told them. She will never disappoint you. Among the regulars at Parboti dis was a young transporter called Mrinal. He was tall, dark and posh, with tastes too refined for others of his ilk. He dressed in white, ironed shirts, tight corduroy pants and big boots. A beret and Ray-Ban sunglasses completed his look. He was a bodybuilder who claimed to indulge in this hobby out of the sheer need of it than for some health consideration. His business required him to be in the company of men who dealt in arms, liquor, minerals, timber, labour, women and everything that could be sold and made profit from. Sona asked him once if he needed a good body that desperately to go and pump iron every day.
You dont know, jaanu, he told her, caressing her face after a rigorous session of lovemaking, I have to look strong. Day and night I am working with chor and goonda. You never know when a fight is going to break out. I need to keep a good body, a muscular body, he smiled at her as she stroked his bicep that he had playfully bulged for her, to keep peace at the place where I work. You have guns, Sona drew circles around his bare nipples, arousing him enough to make him hold her buttock and raise her leg over his body, dont you? Cant use guns all the time, he whispered into her face, holding her lower lip with his thumb and index finger. If I can fight a man with my arms, why do I need to shoot him? Thats risky. He brought her face closer to his and sucked her lips. In our business we need to check the risks. Otherwise were finished. Mrinal was an outlaw, albeit a sensible one. Lawmakers, law-enforcers, he had all eating out of his gigantic palms. Palms, on which Sona placed her own and told him, Look, my hand is a photo and yours is a photo frame, and they both laughed together. Mrinal was a womaniser. Even married women turned and looked in his direction as he walked past, walking his gym-goers gait. Shoulders out, chest puffed, back straight. He was bedding a few girls, he took them out on his Pulsar. Yet, he returned to Lakkhipur again and again. He timed his visits with the days (or evenings and nights) when Sona was free, and spent a nice hour or a night in her room, paying for all the lost business. Parboti di didnt mind as long as she got the money, and, knowing Sona, she didnt seem to mind the proximity between her star girl and a customer of theirs. Mrinal was first brought to Lakkhipur by a friend of his, Chandan. He was a thikedaar who never left home without a loaded pistol. He had brought Mrinal to Lakkhipur in return for a favour. Parboti di had her entire catalogue spread out before them. Pick an item, she had said. Being the guest, Mrinal was given the first turn. Wide-eyed and jaw-dropped, he had scanned each one of them. Each one dressed more garishly than the otherlipsticks that crossed out of lip-lines, kohl that smudged the eye-lines. Then he had spotted Sona, standing like a grand prize at one end of the file, mysteriously smiling at the procedure. She was in a blouse and saya, her untied hair falling over both her breasts, her face a natural dark. His eyes had stopped over hers, they had taken one another in for a second or two, then she had shifted her gaze towards Chandan and given him a smile. Good choice! Chandan had prompted. Sona had led Mrinal into her eight-by-eight cube. Your first time in Lakkhipur? she had asked. Yes, Mrinal had said, realising later on that, perhaps, he shouldnt have given himself away to a mere prostitute. First time in a brothel could also mean a mans first time. And whores have a nasty way of dealing with first-timers, he had heard. It wasnt his first time. He had taken respectable women, at hotels and lodges, at friends houses, even at the bus depot where the agent of his bus had arranged a girl for him. At a brothel, yes, it was his first time. So, what do I do for you? Sona had a mischievous glint in her eyes. Was she making fun of his first time? Madharchod! he had wanted to tell her. But she was his gift from his friend. And presents are to be valued. Dance. He had demanded. It was an unusual demand. What? Her eyes had asked him. Incredulous. Yes, you heard it right. His eyes had told her. Mischievous. He remembered the party they had had at the bus depot. The girl the agent had brought had danced before an audience of eight men. What is she going to do? Mrinal had thought, taking off his beret and reclining on the bed. She had danced to a song played on a CD player that bore a dubious brand called Pansonic.
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Munni badnaam huyi darling tere liye Le Jhandu Baam huyi darling tere liye
Mrinal had just stared. At her face, limbs, waist, backside. He was amused, aroused. Stop! he had ordered. Come to me. They had undressed, they were about to begin, when she made an unusual demand. Sir, dont ask me any question. What? No questions, whatever I say. What is she going to do? Abuse me or what? He knew how rough an audience could grow as whores performed before them. He remembered the dance at the bus depot when the agent had flung a beer bottle very close to the girls feet. But the girl had kept on dancing, smiling, secure in the knowledge that no one would dare do anything to her as long as their boss was around. She was, after all, Mrinal bosss item. Mrinal had felt very responsible then, very responsible for that mouse of a girl. He had wondered what Sona had in her mind. The alcohol he had on the way was working and Sonas naked body had given him an unbearable hard on. Usual or unusual, questions or not, the hard on had to be squirted out. No questions, he had agreed. Mrinal would agree later, it was the best sex he had ever had. Otherwise, why would he keep on returning to Lakkhipur? Again and again. Why? The why that spun around inside his head along with the exhaustion he felt after his first sex with Sona was why she kept on calling him Sonu. It hadnt mattered immediately after the session. Chandan had paid and carried him out to his car after which they had driven away. But after he had slept for six hours at a stretch, after he had bathed, after the hangover was gone, after he had taken a full meal, the question returned: Why Sonu? Sonas magic had worked. Mrinal returned to Lakkhipur. The second time, without Chandan. And he went straight to Parboti di. I want that girl, he demanded. Who is Sonu? Mrinal asked. Why do you want to know? Sona asked back. I thought I should. Do you call all your customers by that name or is it only me? I cant tell. You have to. He grabbed her wrist. She winced. Didnt I tell you, no questions? Uh-huh You didnt tell me today. How many times have I slept with you? Do I need to repeat it again and again? Certainly! If I can come to sleep with you again and again, you ought to repeat it as many times. No, thats not a part of my work. I dont answer useless questions. Dont forget, I have paid for you. Youve got what you paid for. No. Yes. You paid for my body, you got it. You didnt pay for what comes out of my mouth while youre taking me. Will you tell or not? What will you do? Sona asked and rolled over on her back, breathing heavily, her breasts going up and down. These were moments Mrinal couldnt resist. He has just been out in a condom she rolled inside a newspaper and flung under the bed and hes full again, to empty himself into her.
Where did you keep that? he asked impatiently. What? she asked, relaxed, fully aware of what he was looking for. Condom. Where? Why do you need it now? she smiled. Dont play with me! Where is it? Look, this is the second session To hell with your sessions! He grabbed her hair. Ill pay for this, you know it very well. Ill pay for each of our sessions. He nuzzled her. She groaned. He bit her on the neck. She dug her nails into his shoulder. Wait wait, she pleaded, retrieving the packet of condoms from under the mattress. They had it again, more vigorous, more satisfying. He pinned her against the wall, emptied himself inside her standing. This time she didnt call out Sonu Sonu Sonu. She dressed up as soon as it was over and ran out of the room. Mrinal felt happy, satiated, complete. He dressed up, paid Parboti, left. He had caught a strand of Sonas story; only if he could now twist the entire skein around his fingers and draw it out, slowly, slowly, gently, gently. As gently as he pushed himself inside her each time, intrigued by someone elses name for him, intrigued by her, realising it quite late that he had fallen in love with her. He wanted to know who this other man was who enabled her to make love to a different man each night. No one had taken her a second time in a row, only once. To stand this once she needed him that someone from her past to support her, to bring out those specialities she was famous for, her technique that turned every client into a lover. Did any of her clients ever had sex with her the second time, twice consecutively? Mrinal was, perhaps, the first one. And he had almost not paid. What kind of a whore sleeps with a man without money? She did. Why? Did she feel for him the way he felt for her? Did she wish to leave her Sonu behind? Was she in love as well? Kali fell in love with the riflewallah at the Mina Bazaar. It came every year, in the sacred month of Shravan, the month of Lord Shiva, to the ground outside the village where there stood an ancient Shiva temple. Kali was just seventeen or eighteen, but had grown as big as a woman. With a big body and an unsightly dark colour, she was an exact opposite of what men saw in girls. We are cursed, her mother said. Where are we going to send this Kali mai? So dark, like the goddess of destruction herself. You look like a man, everyone teased her. The riflewallah was the only one who saw some good in her. Whats your name? he asked her. Kali, she replied innocently. Why, thats a good name! She looked straight at him, not knowing what to make of what he said. Good name? she blurted out, at a loss for words, grinning. Yes, he loaded a rifle and handed it to her, a good name. You want to try a shot? Me? she hesitated, I dont have money. Try it out, Im giving it to you. She took the rifle and wasted a shot. I cant do this. Sure, you can. He gave her another shot. She took one balloon. She giggled. He gave her a toffee. What is this? For you.
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He nodded, smiled and nodded again. He was so delicate, so courteous, she had to take the gift. With her eyes on him, she took the toffee from his hand, their fingers touching. She felt a jolt. Something happened. They began meeting everyday. In the mornings, when the Mina Bazaar was closed. He came to the riverbank for a swim, she went there with her flock of goats. Behind omori and bigna shrubs, on the gritty riverbank, they lay close to one another. He would be in his briefs, tugging at her skirt and blouse, urging her to let go of her clothes. She didnt. She ran away. At midday, she would be among the first ones to reach the Mina Bazaar. Slyly, shyly, she tiptoed away from her friends, and came to the rifle stall and stood away from the crowd. He spotted her, smiled at her, offered her a turn, she missed one, got another, he gave her a toffee. The next day, they met at the riverbank again. He brought her a gift. A pair of rolled gold earrings. This time he succeeded in inserting his palms inside her blouse. He felt her breasts; she went cold; he told her to relax; It happens, it happens, he told her, to all of us,; he kissed her on the lips. She got up and ran away. They met again, kissed, and he progressed further: into her skirt. She had begun enjoying his touch. She allowed him all over herself. But the word had spread. The riflewallah was playing with a girl from the village. He fled. She was seized. The villagers and the Mina Bazaar people came to an understanding: the riflewallah was not to be taken back. He returned after a week, early in the morning. She had been waiting. She had been beaten black and blue. Take me away, she cried before him. I have come to take you, he whispered. She tied her clothes into an old sari and, before the village could arise and know of this escape, she was sitting with him in a bus, far, far away from home, to a destination she had not been told about. On the way, she realised, she didnt even know the name of the man she had given herself up to. Whats your name? she asked him, amidst the din of the vehicle and the noise of the monsoon shower lashing against the tightly shut windows. Sonu, he said, not as delicately as before, a web of thoughtfulness hung over his face. What does it mean? She was so happy she could speak anything. She was so happy the web escaped her view. What? He sounded annoyed. That too escaped her view. I asked what your name means. Oh! Oh! He turned like how he was before. Delicate, playful. Sonu means gold. Sona. That is Sonu. Oh! she laughed. That means you are gold? Yes, and you are my golden girl, he touched her cheeks. My Sona. I am Kali, she placed her head on his shoulder. No, youre not. You are Sona. My Sona. She lost herself in dreams of her golden life with her Golden Boy. She was his Golden Girl, he was her Golden Boy. Sonu and Sona. alleys. The Golden Girls training began in a small rented room in a town she knew only by its lanes and
was far more special than a palace. She felt homesickness overcome her the first few days, but Sonu handled it well. All for that training.
That street crosses this one here, and you have this paan gumti here. Turn right here, and this is our house. Our House, the house of the Golden Couple: a cramped room with a low ceiling, but to Kali it
Sonu trained Kali in the business of intimacy. He began with her feet. Tickling it, licking it, as he went upwards, her calves, thighs, upwards. All the while she called out his name. Sonu, Sonu, Sonu! She shrieked at times, laughed, begged for more. She got used to the routine. She looked forward to it each day, each evening. He went out during the mornings, she never asked where. He came in the evenings and they started. Pleasure, pain, and amidst all of it, there was his name. The name of the Golden Boy. Sonu Sonu Sonu. After some time, other people started coming. He introduced them as his friends and told her they would do with her what he did with her each night. She was shocked, she refused. He hit her. The friends forced themselves upon her. She had to do it with them. But it wasnt good. Not like how they used to do, the Golden Boy and the Golden Girl, together. If you dont do this work we wont be able to live, he told her after the friends were gone. We wont have food to eat, there wont be house to live in. She wept. What? he asked. Why are you crying? I will go back, she said. Take me home. Home? he sat before her. Are you mad? You ran away from home to live with me. You think they are going to take you back? You have to live with me, you have to do what I tell you to do. She cried, she turned her face away and cried. He held her face and turned it towards him. Listen to me, he told her and kissed her on the cheeks, sucked the tears into his mouth, ran his tongue over her face, held her waist, squeezed it, kissed her neck, breasts, and made her squeal his name, again. Sonu Sonu Sonu She was helpless in his arms, against his force. Just a moment back she was weeping to be let free; now she was weeping to be held, to be used and abused. Sonu Sonu Sonu Sonu was an expert. He did his part well, heated her up, till she was a marionette in his able fingers. Ill do whatever you ask me to do, she said. What? he whispered amidst an impending orgasm. Ill do whatever you ask me to do. Goodah! Sonu ejaculated to the good news. Kali had sold herself. She had become Sona. Sona was used to having Sonu over her, his fingers, his tongue, his expertise working on her body. The friends who came to visit her were not like Sonu. They were rough and quick, ignorant to the treatment she was used to. It was hard for her. How could she bring herself to enjoy it? She asked Sonu. How do I have them? They are not like you. He laughed. You think you are going to find me everywhere? She stared at him blankly. Look, he touched her chin, imagine that I am with you. Imagine that those men are me. Me. Your Sonu. Your Golden Boy. The idea clicked. But imagining was difficult. So she started saying his name. Sonu Sonu Sonu The men laughed. But they also admitted that it was better that way. She never let me go, one friend reported happily to Sonu, husband-turned-pimp. What a great time I had! You are one lucky man. You dont have to pay for her. Then one day, Sonu met this supplier and sold Sona. Sona now normal with what was happening to her was brought to Lakkhipur and resold to Parboti. Sonu had instructed the supplier not to let out his name.
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Kali was now gone. No one knew Sonas real name. She told no one about it or about the man she had once eloped with. Her Sonu, her Golden Man, was a past better forgotten. But Sonu and his technique stayed. Like dirt, like mud thrown on ones clean clothes. But whos clean now? She had to live with this dirt. The dirt of her first love. This dirt was now raked up by her present love. No one asked her anything about Sonu, they were all interested in her body. Why did Mrinal ask? And why didnt she call out Sonus name when Mrinal made love to her? Was Sonu not needed now? Could she make love without him? Was Mrinal all that mattered now? Was she in love again? It was a VIP night again. The customer was a young minister from a neighbouring state. Sona was to be served at the Circuit House. Parboti di was given the money and clothes for Sona to wear. A car would come to pick her up. Mrinal had told her about this evening much earlier. Theyll come for you, hed said, lying on her bed, naked, watching her clothe herself after their session, their Sonu-less session. Mantri ji is coming. Even I have a meeting with him. In the morning. Hell need you in the evening. Let him come, shed said, tying the drawstring of her saya. Am I afraid of him or what? Why not? Hes a minister. A VIP. Why? Even you are a VIP. Am I afraid of you? Mrinal couldnt think up of an answer. Why, arent you a VIP? she teased him. You have so much money. You pay for two sessions, three sessions. Look, dont talk to me like that. Why? What will you do? I do two sessions three sessions because you need those sessions, he grabbed her arm and said. I know you need those sessions. You need me! Sona had no rejoinder to this accusation. Tell me, will you go Sonu Sonu Sonu again? Mrinal teased her now. Or will you do it silently, like you do with me? This minister fellow is also very handsome, very fair. What? Youre not saying anything. She ran away. They were naked on the bed, the minister and Sona. He was taking her from behind. Her techniques were already known to him. He was liking her. The minister was drunk. He burped as he kissed Sonas cheeks. When she turned towards him he released an alcohol breath on her nose. She nearly retched. She wasnt drunk. She only wanted to get over this and run. Run away. She was on all fours, he was behind her, squeezing her breasts and finding a way to enter her. So drunk he was he wasnt even holding her strongly. Ill have to finish this fast, Sona thought. Who is it going to be tonight? The man who had taught her this business and abandoned her? Or the man who released her of that past of hers? Who is it going to be? Sonu Sonu Sonu Sonu She began concentrating. Sonu Sonu Sonu Sonu She closed her eyes, guiding her client into her. Mrinal. It was her bodybuilding VIP client who surfaced behind her lids. She opened them. What was happening? She closed her eyes again and it was Mrinal, and their second sessions, the Sonuless sessions. When she didnt need the memories of a previous lover to make love. When she made love for herself. For herself alone. Mrinal? Let it be Mrinal. She guided the minister successfully inside her and pumped back as he began pumping. Haha he panted.
No Sonu Sonu Sonu. Only the sounds of their breaths and responses to each other, sounds that ought to be there. And no Mrinal Mrinal Mrinal either. That was in her mind. Mrinal was in her mind.
Ahah she winced.
KATHRYN A. KOPPLE A FAREWELL TO THE GREYBEARDS7 Maldoror Such a strange word to the English eye, ear. The first syllable followed by a fullstopthe tongue then forced to retreat, confusion ensuing: is the vowel open or closed, long or short? The rs that follow cause the jaw to clenchan impossible word to get off the tongue. To appreciate its beauty, as word and namefor it is a nameonly French will do. Then the combination of consonants and vowels flow, with no stammeringthere is music therebut only in the original French. In English, Maldoror becomes a moan followed by a growl. It reverberates with a grimness you dont hear in French; the ear takes pleasure in it; the sounds blend melodiously, touched by but not drowned in melancholy. Where does this word originate? No one knows. Its a made-up name, by an author unheard of today by the general public; a name that, if it comes up at all, is touted by academics, or found in articles written by a handful of intellectual curiosity seekers. Maldoror! A case study in pathologyhe is scarcely human, a golem lacking soul or moral compass. And yet the soul exists for Maldorormust existor he would be robbed of his powers of torment. What good would it do Maldoror, a son of Lucifer, should the soul turn out to be simply a myth, figment, or fable? The soul must be concrete, real, palpable, so that Maldoror, in his rampages, can gloat over his victims, satisfied that he has snuffed out any hint of their divinity. Hence the litany of curses, dark meditations, gloomy poetic passage, hideous crimesall compiled into six infamous cantos, which the author titled Les Chants de Maldoror. But I get ahead of myself. If I speak in riddles, it is because I am dealing in riddles; in dozens of paradoxes, inversions, acrosticsall said to be the invention of a peculiar mind, the author of a subversive book. We can be certain that there were those who hoped that it would be lost in the dustbins of history. Damn Breton and his coterie! They fished Les Chants out of obscurity. As for public opinion, the surrealists were a bunch of trouble makers. It would be said of them that they engaged in scandal for scandals sake, and Maldoror was precisely the madman for the job. No matter that Maldoror was a character, an invention. He represented all that was (and still is) distasteful, sadistic, and shameless. Still, the work is not only the stuff of mayhem and horror; not merely a literary experiment in thrall to the grotesque. The author was not, as Breton might have said, ahead of his time, but belonged stylistically to the 17th century. His baroque imagery gives him away. His passion for long, intricate sentences, replete with archaic phrasing, resulted in an ornate if irregular pearl of a book. For this reason, the fiery poet Antonin Artaud dismissed Les Chants as dishonest, the product of a snob, scarcely worthy of attention.
Sources:
Artaud, Antonin, Artaud Anthology, City Lights Book, San Francisco, 1965. Lykiard, Alexis, Maldoror & The Complete Works of the Comte de Lautramont, Exact Change, Cambridge, 1994. Wohl, Robert, The Generation of 1914, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1979.
Before we dismiss the author of Les Chants, a word might be in order regarding the writer who created Maldoror: Isidore Ducasse. Given that so many voices curse, shout, quarrel, and compete in Les Chants, it striking to find this passage at the end of the first canto: The end of the nineteenth century shall see its poet (though at the outset he shall not begin with a masterpiece, but follow the law of nature.) He was born on South American shores, at the mouth of the River Plate, where two peoples once enemies now struggle to outdo each other in material progress. Buenos Aires, queen of the south, and Montevideo, the coquette, extend friendly hands across the argentine waters of the great estuary. But everlasting war has imposed its destructive rule upon the fields, and joyfully reaps countless victims. Greybeard, farewell, and if you have read this, think of me. Apart from a few letters to family, printers, and bill collectors, this may be the only authentically autobiographical statement we have from Isidore Ducassea young man who adopted the penname that Artaud so loathed for its presumptuous claim to aristocracy: the Comte de Lautramont. Artaud knew full well that Ducasse had cribbed his nom de plume from a best-selling Gothic novel by Eugne Sue. An opening gambit in a literary game in which Ducasse, born in a foreign country, must have felt at a disadvantagealways destined to be the outsider among the native-born Parisians, and certainly burdened with a sense of unbearable displacement. Uruguay, where Ducasse was born, was a country under siege. Ducasse was French on both his fathers and mothers side; they had immigrated to Uruguay in 1840; his father served the French Consulate. His mother died soon after Ducasse was born. At the age of thirteen, Ducasses father sent him to France. It would be many years before he would return to Uruguay, and then for a short visit only. At the age of twenty-four, his body was discovered by the owner of a modest hotel in Paris. It would be several years before his father claimed his sons body. No reason was given for his deathand to this day, we have no way of knowing where Ducasses final resting place lies. And so the myth of Ducasse continues. Anointed by Breton (what self-respecting surrealist could resist the often quoted line: the chance meeting on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella) as the precursor to the influence of the unconscious in art, a master at automatic writing, and an iconoclast. Lautramont soon came to overshadow Ducasse, but not completely. A lack of facts gives speculation free reigncomplete with reports of Ducasse as a loner, a hothead, an eccentric, who spent the night long at the piano, declaiming his verses as he pounded at the instrument, much to the dismay of his neighbors. Let us, for the moment, put aside the myth and place Les Chants in its historical context. The quote above, while not much to go on, offers us another way of looking at Ducasses work. References to the wars that tore his country apart, followed by rhetorical eye-roll at the mention of progress, and again back to the warthe lingering stench, and the adieu to the Greybeard(s) require our attention. Why is it that Les Chants is taken seriously as a statement about the limits of language? Ask the aestheticists. Disgusted with bourgeois values? You have the perfect antidote in Les Chants. Religious hypocrisy a problem? You will find numerous passages in Les Chants railing against the God and Church. What is lacking in what Alexis Lykiard calls the Lautreamont industry (odd as that seems) is the idea that Les Chants is a generational book. Ducasse must have been aware of the Zeitgeist that began in mid-1800s, in Europe, and Britain, from which a new sort of generational conflict emerged, one that pitted youth against established authority. This conflict gained in currencyand would become the subject of young authors, who felt betrayed morally and worse yet, spiritually by their elders. Perhaps the time has come to stop gaping at Les Chants as a curious artifactto understand that Ducasse may have attempted something more ambitious than a Gothic novel encased in baroque fireworksand recognize all the ways it reads as an indictment of war and progress. War was always in the air during his short lifetime. Many of European writers of the Generation of 1914 would later embrace war on the grounds that it was the only means to rid humanity of a soulless civilization that had gone to the dogs and to start anew. In contrast, Ducasse offers an indictment of any joy one might take
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in war as a solution to spiritual bankruptcy and vulgar materialism. Read in this light, Maldoror is a pitiful figure: monstrous, alienated, and a complete stranger to human affection; he begs our compassion. As for Ducasses hyperbolic style, he wrote like a young man who believed no one cared to listen to what he had to say. Aspirations to literary glory aside, Les Chants is not a precursor to the following generation of war poets; it is an early warning call to all those young men who would be slaughtered on the battlefields of Somme and Verdun. Isidore Ducasse himself died the year the Franco-Prussian war broke out (1870)a conflict sparked by a power vacuum on the Spanish throne, the major European powers all too eager for the sort of bloodbath described by Ducasse, whose lifefrom start to untimely finishwas marked by war. In that sense, he is no apologist. Yes, Ducasse no doubt had literary ambitions, but heor his workwas not merely anomalous, queer, or off-kilter. What makes Ducasse different from, say, the writers later associated with the World War I Jugendgemeinschaften (youth movements) is clearly stated in Les Chants, which is too often and too blithely attributed to a feverish imagination. War, Ducasse warns us, is not beautiful, nor does it lead to spiritual renewal. War is ugly, the joy in war uglier still, and war makes ethical beggars of us all; a lesson that the following generation would learn to its dismay in the trenches.
MIRIAM N KOTZIN HAG8 The day Sean told her that he was moving out was the day he dug his video camera out of the box of stuff that hed kept in the back of the closet. Theyd never set it up on a tripod and aimed it at the bed. Theyd never taken it to the shore or anywhere else. It had always stayed in the box, loaded. Now he aims it at Anna as she paces around what had just become her bedroom again. Shes crying, and shes been crying off and on for hours while Sean packed. Her face is red and swollen with grief and anger. Her long, gray hair falls into her face and sticks where her face is wet with tears and snot. The bed is a staging area between them. Seans belongings and clothes cover the bed in heaps. He hasnt started putting things into suitcases yet. A six-pack of cartons from Staples leans up against the bed. The kleenex is on the same side of the bed as Sean, and Anna wont go there. She wants him to stop the camera. She grabs a shirt from the pile of clothes and holds it up, open like a curtain in front of her face. Stop, she says, from behind the shirt, and then says it again, Stop it. Shes sobbing, Dont. You have no right. She lowers the shirt and hes still filming. No. her voice trails into a whimper. She hates melodrama, hates being out of control. Erase it! Erase it now! Shes begging though the words are commands. Later she will not remember what else she said. Look, he says. He presses some buttons, watching the monitor, and then he turns the screen towards her. She sees herself reduced, holding up the shirt and hears herself say it in a tinny voice, again and again. Stop, Stop it. Dont. You have no right. NoErase it. Erase it now. She sees herself, diminished, lower the shirt, and the zoom-in close up of her face. She sees herself as he will remember her and as she will remember herself, like this: her hair wild, her face puffy and streaked, the bags under her tiny red-rimmed eyes. Annas mouth opens and closes like a ventriloquists dummy when Sean turns off the sound.
8
Hag was previously published in Salome (http://www.salomemagazine.com/chamber.php?id=97) and also in Just Desserts.
NURY VITTACHI9 Ugly people really are nicer, scientists say *** Unattractive folk work harder to be liked, reports Nury Vittachi *** ONE OF THE HARDEST jobs in the world is Beauty Queen, they say. To succeed in this challenging profession, you have to do three things. 1) Be born beautiful. 2) Er, can anyone think of a second thing? 3) Or a third? Actually, maybe you only have to do one thing, but it IS a tough one. I mean, you have to be born beautifulhow does one actually arrange that? Id have to start by cutting off my head at birth. Beauty queens have been on my mind recently, which explains the drool marks on my shirt front. Your humble narrator was invited to share a stage with a beauty pageant winner at a bookshop event. Her job was to read out some of my writing, and mine was to stand around being a celebrity author. Unfortunately, being an author doesnt really qualify one as a celebrity: you have to be famous for something AND be beautiful. The media arrived at the bookshop, called Bookazine, and stampeded over to me en masse in their desperation to photograph my companion, a lovely woman named Winnie Yeung. It is clear that journalists God-given mission to uphold the principles of free speech actually means to take as many pictures of babes as possible. *** I eventually retired to the bookshops periodical corner and picked up a newspaper which contained pictures of a rival beauty queen, a woman named Edelweiss Cheung. Miss Cheung claimed to be too ill to do her normal duties but photographers spotted her out shopping. Pageant organizers were outraged. I dont see why. I know many women who wouldnt let a small thing like being ill, comatose or dead curtail their shopping plans. You have to take your hobbies seriously. Picking up a UK newspaper, I found that it ALSO featured a mold-breaking beauty pageant winner, Miss England finalist Katrina Hodge. One expects beauty queens to have hobbies like shopping or hoping for world peace. But Katrina is a professional soldier and spends her time running around Iraq with large weapons blowing up men. If you ever meet her, DO NOT pinch her bottom. ***
First published in the anthology Manhattan Noir, ed. Lawrence Block, Akashic Books, New York, 2006; it was later published in Asia Literary Review, Hong Kong, Vol. 2, 2006. Included in the story collection by the author ACCESS THIRTEEN TALES, Signal 8 Press, Hong Kong, 2011. Signal 8 Press website link: http://typhoonmedia.com/access/
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Talking of wars and women, did anyone else find it hard to get used to the fact that one of the top army leaders in the Iraq wars was Deputy Commander General Heidi Brown? Im all in favour of equal opportunities, but the name Heidi brings to mind a pigtailed girl in a white frock skipping around an Alpine peak. If I was a soldier and someone said to me: Your survival depends on this master battle plan, prepared by Heidi, I would just surrender on the spot. *** But the best beauty/ ugliness item I read that week came from a science magazine. Its now been scientifically proved that gorgeous people with supermodel faces are inevitably evil, poisonous hags, while plain folks are funny, clever, charming people with the saintliness of Mother Teresa. This has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the fact that on the Perfect Ten scale, the present writer scores minus 20. Thats my interpretation of the facts, anyway. This issue was being hotly debated in the media after the ejection of 5,000 people from a web-based dating club called Beautiful People. The club refused to renew the memberships of anyone who had put on a few pounds over the holidays. To join this international club, you post your photo on www.beautifulpeople.com and members vote you on or off in 48 hours. Most are instantly voted off. Some Asian countries have a high rejection rate: 90 per cent of applicants get the thumbs down in Japan and 85 per cent in China. Its so shallow, one reader wrote to me. Surveys prove that ugly people are more beautiful inside, surely? I hoped he was right, but decided I had to look for evidence. I plundered the psychology reports in the university libraries. To my horror, I found that psychologists have for years believed in a direct correspondence between levels of beauty and levels of goodness. The prettier you are, the more virtuous you are. The theory is that attractive people end up with sunnier, more positive personalities, because they go through life receiving better treatment than the rest of us. And studies show children always connect beauty with goodness, having been brainwashed with thousands of fairy tales in which pretty blond princesses triumph over black-haired, hook-nosed witches. But heres the aforementioned good news. More recent studies suggest the opposite is true. Ugly people work harder at relationships and at life in general, and thus develop more character. We actually may be nicer human beings, on average, than beautiful people. One up for the uglies! Yet the most compelling evidence on this subject came not from reading the papers, but from talking to a gentleman (actually, thats probably the wrong word) that night: a man who spends a lot of time buying companionship in bars in various cities in Asia. He claims to have surveyed hundreds of women over a long, sleazy lifetime. Never choose the prettiest girl in the bar, he told me. They have the world at their feet and are curt, rushed and unfriendly. The least attractive girls in the bar are a much better choice. They are inevitably nice women who appreciate a bit of attention. *** The following week, I stumbled on a further possibly significant factoid: in the comedy business, its a given that attractive people cant tell jokes. Successful comedians are almost always grotesque. Standup comedian Jim Norton told an interviewer that if youre cute, youre probably not funny. You dont have to develop the other side of your personality, he said. Carol Burnett is a comic genius, but she has a horse head. The most interesting reaction came from a tech-headed reader named Sandy, who wrote to me as I was mulling over these issues live on my website. Dating websites like beautifulpeople claim to have hundreds of thousands of gorgeous men and women as members. I suspect many of the hunky guys are
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actually short, fat, bald men with a talent for Photoshop. But you know the really scary thing? I suspect many of the beautiful women are also short, fat, bald men with a talent for Photoshop. Well, in that case, I hope they will all be very happy together. Because thats what its all about, isnt it? Pairing off with someone who is more attractive than you, thus raising your own score. *** But how can you do this when there is no standard rating system for looks? Consider this. The last time I was in South India, someone tried to sell me an aunt. Ive been offered all sorts of things by shifty-eyed men at street corners but elderly relatives? This was a first. No thanks, I replied. I already have WAY too many aunts. You have no idea. Mentioning this curious approach to a friend some weeks later, I was told I was probably being offered a hot aunty. He explained: In parts of India, the phrase hot aunty is a buxom woman who will offer you, er, comfort, know what I mean? Back at my office in Hong Kong, I typed hot aunty into Google. It produced a list of 374,000 references, all featuring well-fed women in saris. Its hard to find a more dramatic example of how standards differ across geographical distances. To me, the words hot aunty bring to mind my Great Aunt Seema, a large, sweaty, upholstered creature the size, shape and weight of a three-seater sofa, but possibly less mobile and definitely less interesting in conversation. Yet in other parts of the world, those words get young men so over-excited they fall over, frothing at the mouth and other parts. Discussing this over a Malay fish-head curry at the night market later that evening, a scheme evolved. Why not use cultural differences to find partners for unloved people? In the US, three out of four people are overweight, and many feel unattractive. All we have to do is find a place where excess flab is considered a turn-on, and Bobs your customer, said one of my dining companions, a brilliant innovator who would be highly successful if not for the fact that he, like most businessmen, is insane. *** The following day, another diner present at that meal put me in touch with a travel writer who told me that in Mauritania, West Africa, obesity is hot. Women are miserable unless they are overweight and go to special eating camps to pack on the pounds, the writer said. Cellulite is no problem and local men consider stretch marks a sign of beauty. A quick internet search confirmed that she was right. It was astonishing. In Mauritania, the bigger you are, the cuter you are. It struck me that if slim, tall, Western supermodels turned up in Mauritania, everyone would think they were hideous, revolting women suffering from eating disorders. Wait. They ARE hideous, revolting women suffering from eating disorders. My businessman friend was interested to hear this news, but raised a practical problem: How do we go about exporting three-quarters of the population of the US to Mauritania? Emergency airlift? Could we get finance from Obamas new health-care plan? No need for that, I told him. The tricky thing will be to find a few million bucks for the advertising campaign. Once you spread the word that there is a place on earth where cellulite is considered sexy, you just have to stand well back. There will be a stampede. And thus we have potentially solved one of the worlds most intractable problems. Now all we have to do is find a country full of lonely uncles and send them to south India to meet the hot aunties. I just feel sorry for whoever ends up with my Great Aunt Seema.
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NUALA N CHONCHIR FROM UGLY TO ALICE My face, of course, was an accident of birth. You are born here or there. You look like this or that. That I look like my father is unfortunate girls should not be so much like their fathers. Especially when their fathers are terrible looking. I have his bulbous head, his flat nose, his skewed eyes. The simian down on my cheeks belongs to him too. And, the problem is, ugly is difficult to ignore. My pretty friends say they love to go to the pub with me because I am no competition. I am their unobtrusive wing-woman. Men treat me as a buddy, a pal, a mate. I am one of the lads. It would be some sort of joke if I aroused my buddies, my pals, my mates; if one of the lads wanted me. My less-than-pretty friends, I can tell, are just relieved that they are not as ugly as me. Then I make a new friend. Alice. She divines beauty everywhere. Your hands are the hands in an El Greco painting, Alice says, dancing my palms against hers. They are like flames that plead and pity. She puts my hand to her breast, to her thigh, between her folds. Your fingers ask all the right questions, she says. Alices face is well-made; her blue eyes glow and her lips drip honeyed words. But her hands have their own sound. They flicker and speak in unconscious tongues; touch is always her first resort. I kiss Alice. I hold Alice. I mean never to let her go. She caresses me and I say to her: Alice, I will listen to your fingers. I will take heed of your palms. Alice runs her eyes over my bulbous head and my flat nose. She thumbs my skewed eyes closed. She rubs her milk-soft skin across the down on my cheeks. She takes my hands in hers. The beautiful are not made, Alice says. They just are.
SUMANA ROY ON TEETH AND DANTE On New Years day this year, a text message arrived on my husbands phone. It was from a colleague. Beauty is Tooth, Tooth Beauty. Happy New Year, it said. My husband, always uneasy with messages that wish him anything Happy, was left clueless by this one. He read it out to me. Busy with planning the dinner menu, I almost did not hear what he said. Why invoke Keats on the first day of the year? Is he teaching Ode on a Grecian Urn this semester? I asked him without interest. The choice of dessert on the first day of the year was far more important to me than a poem, any poem. Beauty is Tooth, Tooth Beauty, he repeated, this time the words arriving clearer to my ears. Id removed my woollen scarf to be able to hear better. I had nothing to say in response to this. Nothing except tears of course. My husband, poor man, moved by my tears at what he considered an atrocious joke, began laughing, all the while teasing me about how tears suited me better than laughter.
DaaNt bhengey debo is a common Bangla colloquial for showing ones anger. Ill break your teeth in other words, Ill break the strongest part of your body. At that moment, I wanted to break three sets of teeth my husbands, his colleagues, and mine. Especially the last, for that is where all the trouble came from. I promised never to read Keats again. * Raju, tumharey daaNt toh moti jaise chamak rahey hain, a scrawny looking teacher would tell a small boy in an advert for toothpaste. These words would immediately earn me a nudge or a poke in my stomach from my brother. Id scream in anger, at the twin insults, from the schoolmaster inside the television and my brothers elbownudge annotation. My mother would call out, most often from the kitchen. Raja! That is my brothers nickname, and her calling out would make him laugh harder while Id wait, in anger and agony, for more insult and hurt to come my way. Raju ke didi, tumharey daaNt . The rest of the sentence was unnecessary, my brothers laughter standing in for the ellipses. I have never watched an advert for toothpaste without feelings of self-pity, anger, hurt and envy. Toothpastes used to taste good when I had milk teeth, I still remember. * A la dente. That is how the world is supposed to eat most of its pasta. And so we order it from time to time, my mispronunciation competing with the waiters. My husband or my mother, whoever is with me, will repeat the order with the correct pronunciation. I dont care for the sound, it is the taste that matters, I say. Its almost never the way we like it being either over boiled, a mushy heap on our plates, or too hard, in need of some softening. We are always dissatisfied, at least one of us, because when Stanley Fish said that there are as many texts as there are readers, what he actually meant was that there are as many kinds of a la dente as there are pasta eaters in this world. Its all our fault and we struggle with that bit of self-knowledge as our teeth do with the pasta, until one day a Nepali chef in a Chinese restaurant (which also serves Italian, we discover) comes over to our table and tells my husband, Your teeth weak teeth. Her teeth strong teeth. I make medium a la dente. In his formula of the golden mean in our marriage or the marriage of our teeth there is a factor I find missing. When the bill arrives and we are asked for the excellent-good-satisfactory assessment of the restaurant, I feel the urge to write this in the Any comments? section: Dear Pasta, does my ugly teeth hurt you more than the beautiful teeth of other women? * A Professor of Environmental Economics once informed me that hed got braces at 37, exactly the age-station I was waiting at when I was having this Facebook conversation with him. Not until he moved to the United States did he feel the need to wear braces, he said. It was disarming, his easy confiding in me. Of course it was I who had provided him with the propellant: whenever anyone pays me a compliment about my Facebook profile photo, I take it upon myself to make that person aware of what he hasnt noticed my ugly set of teeth. For in all my photos, my lips are sealed, protecting my poor teeth from the criticism of the world. I can make out second generation immigrants in the US from those who grew up in India, the Professor offers an explanation.
I look at my Facebook inbox, expecting a graph to arrive, when his words appear in the message box. Its an epiphany: The children who were born and grew up here went to orthodontists. They have similar looking sets of teeth unlike their parents who grew up in socialist India where the shape of your smile did not matter. I curse socialism, my parents, and nonexistent orthodontists in my small town, all co-conspirators in this Teeth Massacre. By way of consolation, he offers a feel-better polysyllabic word: Your teeth give your face an individualism . My teeth smile. * My teeths provided much chewing material to the literary enthusiasts in my family. Since it is the religion of brothers to be their sisters unpaid cartoonists, I do not mind the drawings that remain of my childhood: in them Im always Dracula, my mouth, with peculiarly sharp white teeth protruded over the lips. Bengali custom demands that the child sows her milk teeth in the soft earth around a banana tree, with a plea to the mouse, asking for its tiny teeth. Quite clearly, my prayers were re-directed to an elephant. Why else would I suddenly transmogrify to buck teethed Big Ethel in school? Studying literature at university added to the pile of easy references: in the first year, I was Chaucers Wife of Bath, gap toothed; in the second, T. S. Eliot would hold a mirror to me in his poem Hysteria: until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. And then, of course, Zadie Smith colonised my teeth-watching career with White Teeth. I would look at animals and wonder whether they found my teeth ugly like humans did, or was their interest in these eating tools governed by functionality alone? Dental, my brother teased me once. Better than Mental? I asked. An uglier repartee hasnt come out of my mouth since. * My husband is an undemonstrative kind of person, by which I mean that he will buy a cake for me and then eat it on my behalf. Having invested his life in the humanities, it is with words than actions that he does the hearts business. His sense of humour, the deciding factor in my decision to marry him, is wicked, and his endearments, about which he is rarely miserly, are laced with what the best kind of laughter derives from: facts exaggerated to the point where the truth is so bitter that you spit it out laughing. I had just joined college when I first met him. He was fresh out of university and had already developed a reputation for being a diligent scholar. I did not know Shakespeares Quarto from Eliots Four Quartets. What did I think of Beatrice? hed ask one day, and even before I could ask who that was, hed begin to tell me about Petrarchs Laura. I would stare at the floor while the names of all these women competed for space amidst the whirr of the ceiling fan, all the while promising to myself that I would never marry a poet. I managed to keep that resolution. (Who knows whether my husband had made a similar resolution? And if he had, I wonder what he feels about not having been able to keep his.) Suddenly one fine day (Im no longer sure whether it was really a fine day), he began calling me Dante. At nineteen, surrounded by young men who wrote jaan and love and sweetheart and darling on Archies cards to my friends and me, Dante seemed more beautiful than Bonolata Sen and Neera put together. It did not matter that Dante was the name of a male poet, it didnt matter that he was Italian, it didnt matter that I hadnt, until then, read a word by him (Who knew that his poetry might have seemed similar to the sky-is-blue-I-love-you kind that my classmates wrote?).
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I held on to that name for a few moments, taking it as a name for his emotional interest in me. All this until he, in the wicked humour that has been our marriages EMI, explained why I had been gifted with that pet name. Dante. Dawnto, the Bangla word for teeth. Humour has found an address in ugliness. * My 18 month old nephew, a quiet fellow who doesnt like me very much (Who would, after the squishing he gets from me?), sometimes shows his emotions for me by reaching his left hand out to my face, and once having reached his target, sets out to demolish it. His real target is however not the entire surface area of my face but my mouth. Holding my fat lips like a child would a tap, he tries to turn it clockwise. Soon there are baby scratches near my mouth and on the underside of my lips, and when I begin resisting at last, realising that the childs put all his fierce energy into this operation, he squeals out an Ei, a victory shout. I stand there, my mouth open in defeat and pain, but the child will not let go so easily. This is, as I soon realise, only Act One, the lifting of the curtain as it were. The prosceniums laid bare. He then begins to put his baby fingers inside my mouth, and with the same energy that he presses buttons on the TV remote control, begins pushing and pulling at my teeth. But no scenes change, as they do on the television screen, nothing except the scenery on my face. It escapes the childs observation. He pulls with all his Cerelac-fed might. Nothing is displaced, of course, nothing except my confidence, again: this is reaffirmation of the rejection of my teeth, its setting, the stalactites inside my mouth. This little boy, still without language and literature, finds my teeth worth his little finger grasp. In that gesture is an attestation of their ugliness. But ugliness need not be uninteresting, I am consoled. Of the half a hundred faces that this child has felt and touched, this action has been reserved only for me. If the reward for ugliness is love, who cares whether one is ugly? TANIA HERSHMAN DANGEROUS SHOES10
If you were a shoe youd be designer, he said, drawing out the last word as if it would never end. Youd be Manolo, darling, on the catwalk, teeny skinny models teetering on your precious spiky heels. She liked this image, Amazonian skeletal girls slipping Amazonian skeletal feet into her luxurious leather. Herself squat and bush-like, round-hipped and underattended, she desired someone to saute and pour off her fat to reveal the real goddess underneath. Manolo, she breathed and her eyes were more glassy and lush than he had seen them since in that entire first hour of acquaintance. She reached out a squat pink finger and he wondered for a moment whether she was going to touch him and in that instant he craved her touch and also it made him feel ridiculous. What was he doing here with this pygmy woman, whose grin was a rope he wanted to tie around his slanted neck and hang. Why did they think she would suit him in any way, she who barely reaches his kneecaps, for whom he is having to utter moronic statements regarding footwear?
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Piano, and was previously published in the LA Review.

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Tania Hershman. Dangerous Shoes is from Tania Hershmans new collection, My Mother was an Upright
Ugliness,
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My life is the sum total of the aim of my mistakes, he had told his friends, a couple fascinated by his inability to hook himself to any female for longer than it took them to decide what brand of organic coffee beans to order for the month. He expects to hate them all, the couple had said to each other behind his back, and so he prepares for it and torpedoes any potential. Lets give him something truly grotesque, they agreed, and dispatched a colleague from a neighbouring cubicle, four-foot nothing without her old-lady shoes. See how he takes this one and destroys! they laughed. He sat opposite her and her finger was moving towards him and he did feel hate and he did feel revulsion, and he felt utter puzzlement when he leaned towards the digit and took it in his mouth and as he began to suck on it she breathed harder and harder, all four-foot-nothing of her, ecstasy fizzing through her veins like Coca Cola. XU XI CRYING WITH AUDREY HEPBURN11
(for William Warren)

Yeah the rings for real. Why would I pretend about that? So what is it you want to know, kid? That I wouldnt be dancing if not for Ron? That things might be different if he hadnt pulled his vanishing act? Ron never introduced me to his family. Said they didnt give two shits about him after his mom re-married, so why stay in touch? Guess I cant blame him. Of course, Im hardly one to talk. Still, though. Might have been nice to have some American in-laws even if theyd never come to Manhattan. Okay kid, write this down.
Mother cried over Audrey Hepburn movies.
Shes so elegant, she sniffed, and helpless. No wonder men look after her. On television, Sabrina was approaching its illogical conclusion. It was Saturday, February 29, 1964, the night of my fathers fifty-ninth birthday. I was fourteen. A-Ba was at a dinner hosted by my three older brothers. We didnt go because of Audrey, but also because Mother said fifty-nine wasnt a big deal, and that my brothers and their wives were wasting time sucking up to A-Ba, hoping to get his money. I dont know what youre crying about, I said. Its just a movie. It isnt real. My mother dried her eyes with a silk handkerchief. It wouldnt hurt you to soften up a bit and be a little more elegant. Mothers Eurasian, but if you look at her face front, she passes for Chinese. Exotic perhaps, but Chinese. Her mother was an American missionarys daughter who married a wealthy Cantonese trader against her parents wishes. My father is a Cantonese businessman who makes and sells soy sauceYangtze Soywhen hes not boozing. Whenever his commercial airs, the one where sauce cascades down cleavage to the opening of Griegs piano concerto, Mother switches off the television in disgust.
First published in the anthology Manhattan Noir, ed. Lawrence Block, Akashic Books, New York, 2006; it was later published in Asia Literary Review, Hong Kong, Vol. 2, 2006. Included in the story collection by the author ACCESS THIRTEEN TALES, Signal 8 Press, Hong Kong, 2011. Signal 8 Press website link: http://typhoonmedia.com/access/
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Here, she said, handing me her crochet work. Put this away, please. I complied and escaped to my bedroom, grateful to surface above the vale of tears. Elegance. Facing the mirror in third position, I studied my feet. Six and a half and still growing; already, it was hard finding shoes my size. Mother would die if she knew I danced all the boys parts. Ballet will help you be more graceful, she insisted when she started me up nine years earlier. Its important for young ladies to be graceful because gentlemen like that. Mothers graceful. She has jetblack hair, large eyes, high cheekbones and a figure like Audreys. I could imagine her in Humphrey Bogarts arms, dancing to Isnt It Romantic. Mother loves to dance, but A-Ba cant foxtrot to save his life. Sabrina is such a silly story. Bogart and Holden are these unlikely brothers of a wealthy Long Island family. Audreys the chauffeurs daughter who has a crush on Holden. She disappears off to cooking school in Paris, returns grown up and sophisticated, which is when he finally notices her. But the family doesnt want her marrying Holden, so Bogart turns on the charm, intending to pay Audrey off. Instead, he falls for her, and they end up getting married. The End. My hairs limp, and a faded mousy brown. I have Mothers height and A-Bas frazzled eyebrows, beady eyes, and ugly mouth. I look pathetically Eurasian. My brothers inherited the best of my parents: they pass for Chinese and all made it over five foot eight, a real asset among Hong Kong men. Leftover blood coursed through me, the accident, seventeen years after the last boy. Good thing I was a girl. That way, Mother fussed over me in her old age, and didnt even mind the way I looked. In the living room, Bogart and Audrey were sailing off to their Parisian honeymoon in black and white. Personally, I couldnt see what she saw in him. I would have taken Holden any day, philanderer though he was. After all, there was no guarantee what Bogart would be like after Paris. But kid, Im getting too old for this. What? You think Ron happened yesterday? Audrey Hepburn died; thats what happened yesterday. Papers said cancer. Too bad Rons not here. Wed have honored her passing together. So you want to hear the rest of this story or not?
On her way home from lunch with friends the next afternoon, my mother was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
She was running across the street again, my father shouted. Always running! He had seldom been as angry. A-Bas an ugly man who was once better looking. Smashed his face against a cracked toilet bowl when he was drunk one night, and emergency did a lousy job on his jowl. In his fury, his gnarled, contorted face resembled a lions head in the dancea shiny redand-gold mask with fierce eyes. It was an accident, I said. The police said so. Besides, the driver should have stopped. Always running, he muttered. Cant recall much about the funeral. My three brothers did the adult things and said very little to me. Were virtually strangers, since they were gone by the time I was born. I wanted to scream at everyone to shut up and stop crying. I didnt cry. My thoughts zigzagged from the driver who left my mother on the road to die; to my father, who never spent time with her; to Audrey, dancing in the moonlight in the arms of Bogart, the ugly industrialist, the man who would look after her for the rest of her life as Sabrina. Only in celluloid, not in Hong Kong. Hey kid, Im on. We do five shows Friday night. Youre going to wait? Suit yourself. Back in fifteen, max. How did he get me started? Asked about the ring, thats how. This ones different. Got a little class. Been in a few times, always buys me a drink. Looks at me when he speaks. Most guys cant.
All they see is... well, you know. Ron couldnt even watch me dance, never mind this act. But if it werent for my little specialty, I couldnt keep this job, not now. Occasionally, hed wait outside, even in the snow, before things got bad. Time Squares no place for a girl after dark, hed say, whenever he walked me home. Afterwards, wed watch movies together till sunrise. I miss that. Vegetables? Funny? I suppose they are. There was the cigar, until some joker lit it. Scorched thighs hurt. Like the boss says, every act needs to change. Cucumbers taste better anyway. Oh so now you want to know what happened next? Youre the funny one, kid.
Six months later, A-Ba sent me away to an all-girl boarding school in Connecticut.
Youve been begging to go to the States, he said over my protests. Ive made all the arrangements. Besides, I cant look after you. He hadnt touched any of Mothers stuff since the funeral. I wanted to find a keepsake among her silks and jewelry, but didnt dare without his permission. Being the only girl, it was my right to have the first go. Once I was gone, my sisters-in-law would ransack all her beautiful things, and thered be nothing left for me. I sulked my way to Connecticut. Didnt like the school. We werent allowed late-night TV. Despite the rules, we sneaked out after dark to meet boys. My classmates were in competition to lose their virginity. I won on my sixteenth birthday, easy. You dont have to be either graceful or beautiful in the back seat of a car. Being the only foreigner added to the freak factor. Anyway, its not like those boys would bring me home. I wrote home, dutifully, once a month. My brothers I never heard from. A-Ba only wrote brief notes with money, once each semester. Mother would have written me long, gossipy letters, full of movies and news of society friends. If shed seen an Audrey, her words might have flown. Mother survived on sentiment. She used to say, One day, Im taking you to New York where well do breakfast at Tiffanys. Well buy the diamonds for your wedding there. When it all got too much, Id shout, Mother, dont be silly! Whod marry me? And she would hold me tight, tears rolling down her cheeks, promising, Trust me, my darling, someone will. Someone will. I never wasted time crying. Fantasy home. Thats what this club is. Guys come in for escape or relief because they cant make it. A-Ba wasnt like them. He had Mother because he was successful. Problem was, she needed someone classier. Wasnt his fault. Other than his temper, he wasnt all bad. Its just that you cant manufacture class the way you can soy sauce. Maybe I came along too late and caught a dismal closing act. They must have had a better life once. I didnt talk about family to anyone. Summer after graduation, I finally was allowed home. In Connecticut, it was possible not to think about her or her miserable life with A-Ba. But home, without Mother, was worse than being kept away at school. In late August, Wait Until Dark made it to Hong Kongs cinemas. It was petrifying, watching a blind Audrey stumble around, stalked and terrorized like prey. Im glad Mother didnt have to watch. Fear isnt romantic. Listen kid, you want to tell this story? Im getting to the Ron part. Didnt you learn in your writing school that stories need history, plot, suspense? Character flaws? Otherwise the beginning muddles to the middle and you thank god its The End.
Southern Connecticut State was a bore, but it was better than high school.
The boys were less frantic. I majored in something. All I cared about was dance. My feet though! They felt way too big, having ballooned to a seven and a half. Fall of sophomore year, Ron Andrews danced into my life. His troupe was performing Dance Nostalgia. Astaire routines. Porter, Kern, Gershwin. Ron did this solo soft shoe number. The grand finale was him leaping onto a straight-back chair, tipping it over, and sliding towards the aprons edge on his knees. I jumped up, shouted bravo, not caring what anyone thought. Maybe I started something, or maybe he was just that good, because the whole audience rose in a swell, cheering. Later, backstage, Ron stood there, a towel round his neck. In his T-shirt and tights, one leg cocked on a stool, he looked like a blond William Holden. People congratulated; voices rose in a frenzy. He wasnt very tall, but there in the center of all that adulation, he was a giant. When we were introduced, I couldnt help gushing. You were incredible. Absolutely, amazingly marvelous! He smiled, nodded in acknowledgement, and that was that. Back at the dorm that night, I cried myself silly. It was such a weird sensation. I mean, I didnt know the guy to save my life, and crying wasnt my thing. The next day, I went along to audition for their troupes summer stock. I was a good, but not brilliant, dancer. The point was, it didnt matter a whole lot whether or not I performed. Other students had rehearsed for weeks, desperate to make the cut. My friend Sara co-opted me as her male partner. Id agreed, but that was before Ron. Of course, I couldnt very well back out now, not when the show had to go on. Smile, will you? Sara hissed, just before we made our entrance. Dont be such a dog face. Think Astaire. We did Dancing in the Dark. Saras this tiny brunette, graceful as sin. In her white ball gown, fitted to her gorgeous figure, she was stunning. I was in tux tails, my hair pinned tightly in a net, a moustache pasted on for effect, feeling absurd. Saras a strong dancer, but she hams things up too much. Every dip swooped a bit too low; every turn was overdone. Friends applauded, but I knew we werent much above passable. Later, while removing makeup, I looked up in the mirror and saw him. He wasnt as young as he appeared on stage. He pressed both hands down on my shoulders and studied my face. Do you ever dance the ladys part? His voice resonated. Baritone. Nodding and shaking my head simultaneously, I stammered, Sometimes. Come on then. Taking my hand, he led me on stage. In my tux shirt and tights, I looked ridiculous, but Ron didnt seem to care as we stood side by side, arms outstretched, my hand in his. I was the taller, and nervous. Dancing in the Dark came on. Follow me, he commanded. My feet flowed. It was better than magic, because all of me danced, guided by heaven and his lead. When the music faded, it segued to In the Mood. His hands gripped my waist and he swung me in the air. A perfect partner, confident without being bossy, leading without stifling my movements. When we finished, the applause went on for a long, long time. On stage, I smiled at him, exhilarated, my heart pounding from exhaustion. Ron had barely broken a sweat. He pulled me towards him in a final twirl. Whats your name? he asked. His eyes were a deep blue-green, as deep as the ocean, only deeper. I quit school and followed him to New York. He was thirty, the senior member in the troupe. A dancer?! My father screamed over intercontinental telephone wires. Youre living with a baak gwai dancer? What are you, crazy?
But you married one. Or at least, a half baak gwai. I just wanted you to know. Youll get no more money from me. I dont need your money. I can work. Doing what? Shining his shoes? What do you expect to make without a college degree? I hung up. Ron never got to speak to him. That was the last time I communicated with my family. What do you suppose Mother would have said? I remind you of your sister? Another funny face, huh? Everything comes back to family, kid. We all start there, even if we end up someplace remote. Like Ron. Despite his stepdad, who beat him up and hadnt a clue, calling him a fag and all, he still thought about his mom. Oh, hed never admit it, but I knew. Every Mothers Day, he used to cry in his sleep, like clockwork.
Ron and I got married six months later.
Life was great. He scored tickets to Broadway shows because he knew people in the business. Ron had tons of friends. He was like the sun in this solar system, burning bright, in whose orbit everyone sparkled and spun. He found places to perform, way off Broadway, all across the country, even in Alaska, while other dancers waited tables or collected welfare. Ive got to dance, he said. Doesnt matter how or where. We did dance contests and exhibitions for money whenever he was in between real gigs. Other than that, we didnt work together much. His act, the dance of his heart, was solo. Money was tight, but that never mattered because I loved him and we were rent controlled. He used to work a lot then, going to every audition, trying for the big break. Such energy! Disco wont last, he predicted. Itll bore itself to death. You wait and see. We talked. I told him all about my mother, about my Tiffanys wedding, about her crying with Audrey Hepburn. Sometimes, talking made me weepy. Hed hold me until I calmed. Blood talk, he called it. Healing that scabs the pain. After two years in New York, I took a job as a typist and filing clerk. It was way more lucrative than dancing and had health insurance. Ron didnt want me to do it. What about your career? Youre a good dancer when you try. You dance, I replied. Ill feed us. Anyway, well still do the contests. He picked me up, effortlessly. Lazybones. Always wanting the easy way. Up in the air, I laughed. Life doesnt have to be tough all the time. Then, what would you say if I tossed you out the window? He swung me horizontal and held me there. Dont you dare. He gave up when he saw I wouldnt budge. That was Ron: never made me do anything against my will. As long as he was our star, I was happy. Besides, I liked shining his tap shoes. His feet were small and elegant, as if theyd been bound and sculpted to dance from the womb. After I heard about Audrey yesterday, I hauled myself up to Tiffanys. Some things you just do. Colorless things, diamonds. Dont know what Mother saw in them. At least she loved me in her own silly way. Ron was right about that. He was right about a lot, especially love. He said deep down, my father loved me because I was his flesh and blood. His own father had been a dancer, but died when Ron was eight. So he knew all about what he called the empty spaces of the heart. But Ron was wrong about A-Ba. All these years and hes never once tried to find me, I dont think.
This rock? Its fake. You think Id be dancing if it wasnt?
When Audrey Hepburn made her comeback in 76, it was all Ron and I talked about.
Wed missed her. Id seen every one of her movies, in memory of Mother, but Ron liked her too. She looked pretty good for her age. You know, if you look at her face front, she could almost pass for Eurasian. That year, I dyed my hair and eyebrows coal black, and cut a young-Audrey bob. Ron said it made me look exotic. All the guys at work noticed. That was also when I started wearing makeup every day. Funny stuff, makeup. One reason I never took performing too seriously was because I didnt like all that stage goo. Ron was tireless and careful about his; he needed to hide the lines. Mother wore makeup like it wasnt there, long before the natural look. Her foundation and powder blended into the skin tones of her neck, unlike women who didnt match their complexion properly, and looked as if theyd severed and re-attached their heads. She painted on eyeliner with a brush, rapidly, expertly, like an artist, but never used eye shadow. Women with blue lids, she declared disdainfully, look frostbitten. Letting Ron pluck my eyebrows was a revelation. You see, you do have eyes, he said. They were hidden by all that bushy fuzz. With a little eyeliner, my eyes became wider, brighter, more open. I smiled at people now, instead of looking down all the time. I even admitted my feet were not too big. As Ron said, seven and a half is an average size in America. I began wearing stylishly nostalgic dresses from secondhand stores. Ron loved my quirky new look. Lady fair, he declaimed, you put the stars and models to shame! That was the happiest time of my entire life. I felt elegant, even graceful. Trust me, I dont talk to just anyone. Its not like I tell every writer who asks. What, you didnt think you were the first, did you? I started dancing here because welfare ran out. After getting laid off, it was great not working for awhile. Like vacation. I loved playing housewife and not having to answer to anyone. Ron said not to worry about getting another job, something would turn up. He even suggested auditioning. But at twenty-eight, I felt silly competing with the kids. Wouldnt say that to him though. Why hurt his feelings? In the beginning, I just used to dance. I tried a strip tease, but it wasnt a success. As the boss says, you have to have tits for that, and I wasnt about to go silicon. So I stuck to the cage, or pole, because gams Ive got. Id come up with costumes for variety, like a see-through cheongsam with the waist-high slit, the Suzie Wong look? Oh, well, I guess you are too young. Anyway, that was a big favorite. The act didnt come about till much later. I dont remember exactly when Ron and I stopped dancing together. What is it you want to know, kid?
Shortly after Audreys comeback, things started going badly for Ron.
He didnt let on at first, laughing off problems and carrying on as if he were eternally on stage. First year, his agent was slow about returning calls. He talked about getting another. Then, even friends in the business stopped returning calls, and his agent only had truly awful gigs, like the commercial where he had to wear a cow costume and tap dance around these giant milk bottles. I told him it was just the times, that the economy sucked and things were bound to get better. There were still occasional road shows in Alabama or someplace. Wed saved a little money, which was enough to live on because I was a careful housekeeper, although Ron teased, calling me stingy. Then I lost my job, it was tough finding another, and yadda yadda, you know the rest. But back then on 42nd Street, they always needed fresh girls. By daylight, Times Square was seedy, but not awful. Reminded me of Wanchai back
home. When I was thirteen, I used to hang around Lockhart Road after school. The mama-sans would stand around posing, fat old broads with painted masks and too-tight cheongsams. Theyd cat call passing American sailors, pointing at the curtained doorways. It was like watching a show, somewhere very far off Broadway, right at the edge of the grid. I gawked and giggled with my friends until they shooed us away. Dont know where I found the guts to walk into the biggest joint that day. Looking good helped, and I could still dance. They hired me right off. I was nervous the first night. It was a Tuesday. Place was dead except for a bunch of geezers in the corner. Pretend youre in a movie, one of the girls told me. That way, youre not flesh. Ron was mad, but kept quiet because we needed the cash. After the first three months or so, he relaxed when he saw I always came straight home. Just a job, I guess, hed say. I never expected him to dance, never breathed even the slightest hint though he would have been terrific. He was way too fine for all this. If only hed kept going. The kid. He looks a little like Ron. Youre leaving town tomorrow? Getting married? Ron went away, oh, ages ago. Before he left home that winter afternoon, he claimed he was tired of the whole damned thing, said I would have been better off with Bogart. I didnt get what he meant because I was running, late for work. In the morning, they found his tap shoes on the Brooklyn Bridge, his wallet and wedding band inside them. All I remember is, it was the day before he turned forty. See you, kid. Good luck with the writing and all. Hey, whats your name? Ill look for your book some day. So thats the end. No one listens after the storys over. I cried myself to sleep for months afterwards. Ron kept me going, gave me hope, made me feel I was as good as any star despite my life. Audrey Hepburn doesnt hold a candle to you, hed say. He filled up my heart with so much love I thought it would burst. What more could a girl want? Crying over Ron made me remember Mother. They would have adored each other. There were days I thought about going to join them both. Every night, Id get up on stage and dance to whistles and catcalls, or the dead space of labored breathing, and Id be okay. But away from here, alone in daylight, the space in my heart became immensely empty and bare. Tears cascaded from some mysterious source, against my will, until the day ended and night returned again. And then one day, Im not sure when or why, I just stopped crying. Dancings been a kind of life. You get used to it. Its better than hammering away at a noisy electric, mucking with carbons, hoping the cartridge wont run out halfway. Plus no office politics. Girls who dance, theyll be friends or leave you alone, whatever you want. Independent types. I like that. The boss was good about things. Kept me on after Ron died, mostly because he felt bad for me. But business is business, and lets face it, I was over thirty and this place is about fresh girls. So I came up with the cigar. He was skeptical, but gave it a whirl. I was a big draw. After the lighting incident, we moved on to vegetables. These were fine except for daikons because those taste bad raw. But the boss was right. Variety is spice, so out I strutted on spikes, hiked up the skirt, sucked in, spat out, and caught each tubular from between the legs, shoved each one between the lips, and crunched, hard, the pale, peeled daikon being the finale. Like juggling, with dance. When I turned forty a few years back, the boss and girls gave me this big party. I look pretty good for my age. You cant see the lines unless you look close. Makeup works. The girls come and go while I hang on. You have to keep going. The act keeps me going. These days, we need to be careful. Theres less you can get away
with. Mood of the times; a conservative feels in the air. Thatll blow over, like disco. Besides, its time to think about retiring. Economys improving. Ballrooms hot again and there are gigs at shopping malls or the Y. I could do those. You dont need to be either young or brilliant to fox trot or jitterbug. All you need is a partner. It was a silly way for Ron to exit. I would have supported us forever. He was all the home I wanted, even on those days when he couldnt get out of bed. If only he hadnt given up. He would always have been my star. Show time. Feet hurt.
Funny Face is on later. Thats my favorite. Yes it is just an earlier Fair Lady, except she does the actual singing. Astaires supposed to be this famous fashion photographer who turns plain-Jane bookworm Audrey into a top model. Naturally, they fall in love, and their wedding day is the grand finale. Astaire dances delightfully, and Audrey wears the most delicious dresses. Storys hilarious. I love it where shes all in black, among the Parisian pseudo-intellectuals, dancing past their stony faces. And the corny ending makes me laugh. Freds way too old for her, of course, and the plots quite impossible. But in the movies, none of this matters, because its always a perfect match, made only the way those can be, in heaven, and never on earth.
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BOOK REVIEWS
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SAMYAK GHOSH EM AND THE BIG HOOM
Jerry Pinto, Aleph Books (2013)

You have played, (I think) And broke the toys you were fondest of, And are a little tired now; Tired of things that break, and Just tired. So am I. E. E. Cummings To love is to play and to play is to risk. Jerry Pintos debut novel EM and the big HOOM is hinged on the risks of loving, of breaking and belonging. The impeccable narrative that flows like a rivulet making its way to join the river is interspersed with a stoicism that sheathes the denizens of Pintos world. One fundamental question that the author posits, while writing at a time when urban life is threatened by a fragmentation of the human psyche, is that of collective happiness and its efficacy in fostering individual well-being. The primacy of wholeness in the scheme of individual contentment concerns Pinto. The speaker says, I could have prayed to any god, any god at all, if I could have been handed a miracle, a whole mother, a complete family, and with it, the ability to turn and look away. Are complete and whole two necessary constituents of happiness? Can one derive happiness from fragmented lives? Is the incomplete capable of loving? Pintos novel tells the story of a Goan family residing in a 450 square foot home in Bombay. Wait? Did I say, family? But it is the very idea of a family that Pinto very succinctly plays on. What does it take to build one and what it takes to sustain one are the questions that are brought to the fore in the novel. Does a family constituted out of shards of broken lives still remain a family? Pintos dysfunctional family laughs while the wound that is there all the time festers and swells. The pivotal member, Em aka Imelda aka Mambo, the mother, lives life while battling with her manic depressive conditions. With her Angel ears aka the big Hoom she continues struggling with her failing body and mind while life becomes a series of travails for them all. The son and the daughter cling to her, attending her through fits of depression and madness. She smokes and laughs when the pain increases numbing her frail body and fragile mind. For Imelda, dreams and aspirations are just petty interludes in a life gone all awry. She abjures all aspirations of a better life welcoming grief and pain with a stoic stiffness while silent erosion takes place in her mind. The little laughs that accelerate the narrative pace in the novel appear as the authors response to life that threatens human existence. As Imelda jokes away her pains, as the narrator partakes in the bizarre conversations where the apparently serious and grave is reduced to little blocks of a humorous edifice, the figure of the Em grows in the mind of all around her until she makes an indelible influence on them. For Susan, the daughter and the narrator Em become necessary despite all her off the rockers stunts. It is only after her death in the last two chapters of the novel we find the narration making space for emptiness, a gap to take-over the towering presence of madness that kept the dysfunctional family together in an indissoluble bond. Pinto in his novel looks at life through the comedians lens. Fear inherent in human heart for him is a reality but not something that is capable of causing ruptures in human relationships. The
narrators fear that he might someday end up like Em and that the man of the family, the big Hoom might just not be there asphyxiates him as grows in the close company of madness. He frets throughout the novel trying to allay his fears which sits on him like a choking presence. Only in his big Hoom he attains some solace, some relief. With Ems death the fear of the future, of the uncertain, the undecided takes over his psyche. The certainty which, to use an expression from Gertrude Stein, is akin to there is no there there haunts him every moment in its absence from their lives. Fear is a continuous presence working like a network that draws all the characters in the novel to its vortex. Only the Big Hoom appears to have overcome it. But for him life has remained one long ordeal in fulfilling the responsibilities that come with being in love. In recent years, there have been many sparkling debuts in Indian English writing which have left an indelible mark on their own. Arundhati Roys The God of Small Things comes closest to the sheer brilliance with which Jerry locates his characters in the postcolonial urban landscape. The myth of the nation which somehow figured its road to prosperity through a series of negotiations and chance occurrences is something that the author implicates through the story of the Big Hooms rise in life, from a destitute to a an able, responsible man. The rise of the post-colonial nation-state and its creation of a narrative of self-myth based on the tenets of individual effort and confidence work as the sub-text for the story of the big Hoom. At a time when the Indian English novel is enjoying readership and acceptance like never before, Jerry Pintos Em and the Big Hoom is yet another immensely enjoyable book for anyone who believes the necessity of love and togetherness. This is a riveting read that announces the arrival of an author who is a master craftsman with language, moulding and wielding it to his purpose and an able weaver of narratives, creating a text that opens up at various levels of introspection. Jerry Pinto promises, amuses and surprises in writing what can be undoubtedly called one of the best books in Indian writing in English since Arundhati Roys The God of Small Things. THE GURKHAS DAUGHTER
Prajwal Parajuly, Quercus, London (2013)

Since Narayan Wagles Palpasa Caf the Nepalese community hasnt had much representation in South Asian writing in English. Remaining at the fringe, located through the journalistic accounts of insurgency, political turmoil or travel accounts replete with welcoming, rosycheeked, ever-smiling little hill people, the Nepalese have been misrepresented in most accounts. Kiran Desais long, dragging narrative The Inheritance of Loss appears to me as the last significant novel to have a Nepali romantic hero in the character of Gyan, a struggling, first-generation literate Nepali boy battling with poverty, scattered households and chicken coops. Desais portrayal of the Nepalese community re-affirms the racial stereotypes through which the mainstream identifies them. To break from this almost essentialist account of a community and represent them not as obvious others in itself is a brave and novel attempt. Prajwal Parajuly succeeds in this rather difficult ordeal in his debut collection of short stories, The Gurkhas Daughter. Parajulys Nepali people speak for themselves, often grappling with the challenges of living in a post-colonial nation dismembered by its many knives of aspirations. Parajuly deftly locates his characters against political upheavals to bring out the futility of their dreams drawn on a pattern of losses. For the first time in an anthology of stories on India, Nepal and Bhutan do we have such a wide range of characters. Gurkha officers of the British Army, refugees who belong to no land, immigrant Nepali-Indian men living decent lives in Manhattan, young children who believe in togetherness until life separates them, women who drink down their sorrows and solitude amidst their uncertain futures. Parajulys sentences are evocative of the passion with which every character, be it the five-year-old Gurkhas daughter or the middle-aged refugee Anamika Chettri, struggles in asserting their oneness with the land. Parajuly dedicates this book to one Shivabhakta
Sharma (1918-2009) of Chiuribotey Busty, Kalimpong, the best storyteller of them all. The lilting tone of Parajulys narrative buttressed by the simplicity of his language adds to the unpretentious beauty of tales that trace their origin in oral accounts. Parajulys characters are denizens of a world in which they are pushed to the brink of loneliness, where they fret until they realize the futility of such an existence. In a story like The Cleft, the protagonist Sabitri, the conservative and headstrong Nepali widow, and Kaali, the ugly servant-girl who aspires to get her cleft operated encounter alienation that leaves them broken. Sabitri fails to accommodate herself within a fast-changing culture while Kaali struggles with the betrayal of a future that only promises but never delivers. Prabins loneliness as his daughter grows in A Fathers Journey and the narrators in The Gurkhas Daughter is due to the loss of companionship as life progresses. Loneliness binds these characters in a string of concordant gloom that spreads over the misty landscape of stories recollected from memories of a distant, yet distinct, past. The globalised, urban Nepali who in search of a better future journeys miles forms a major part of Parajulys representation. The Nepali diaspora in the United States has never found a voice in any significant narrative written in English. Desais novel tells the story of the ageing Nepali manservants son who fails to cope with the fast, scheming big bad western world and returns sans fortune, sans dignity, sans future. But in Parajulys book we have the confident Nepali immigrant who braves the foreign land to script his own narrative of materialistic success. The lure of the west as the promised land of happiness and equality is something that Parajuly presents both as a real aspiration and one that is enmeshed in extreme futility in his story No Land is Her Land. Most stories in the anthology are wonderfully crafted with a near perfect sense of the art of brevity, but the stories at times become a little inconsistent. Stories like Passing Fancy and The Immigrants are somewhat predictable and lack the brilliance with which Parajuly draws the final stroke in the earlier stories of the anthology. As a debut author Parajulys work is commendable in its politics and rhetoric of creating identity for the marginalized. If not for his delectably composed prose, Parajuly demands reading for the manner in which his work engages in a dialogue with the mainstream subverting all standard measures of representing the Nepali community.
AKSHI SINGH WIND SKETCHING
Smruthi Bala Kannan, Writers Workshop, 2012.

Perhaps each poet must necessarily be faced with the task of defining what poetry is. This question has its own history of elaboration, some responses imbued with authority, others angry or irreverent. Nicanor Parra, in a poem titled Young Poets writes what may just be one of the most intimidating and liberating accounts of poetry: Write as you will In whatever style you like Too much blood has run under the bridge To go on believing That only one road is right. In poetry everything is permitted.
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2013
With only this condition of course, You have to improve the blank page. Parra allows the poet the radical freedom of setting up poetry on her own terms, and burdens her with decision of what an improved page might be. Bala Kannans poem titled To poetry provides the reader with a way of thinking of both that is promising and dissatisfying about her writing. The lines with which the poem begins To be inspired/ to yearn to ink/ all thats around give an indication of the poets interest in recovering quotidian objects and experiences (stationery, petroleum jelly, people passed in the street) from banality. Bala Kannan has a well developed instinct for the arresting image. Judgements are described as wood apples/that evade/ being eaten. Another poem titled Complex involves an identification of the self with an everyday culinary act to remarkable effect - Like cucumber/sliced,/rubbing/slices of me/against myself,/ To remove bitterness. Her poetry is at its best when she deals with concrete images in concise formulations. The comparatively longer poems suffer from a lack of attention to grammar, punctuation and structuring. This may be attributed to what seems to be the sole reliance on inspiration in the writing of these poems, at the expense of an attention to form and its constitution of meaning. This somewhat dilutes the effects of the democratic impulse of Bala Kannans poetry, as form is in no way separable from politics. History has a confused status in these poems. The book begins with an epigraph that says Let people be unnamed, ahistorical and legendless and pronounced. Let them hover around, over words, like disposable plastic covers and language. However, the more interesting of her poems are the ones that speak to history, create a history for twice dyed/ military uniform shirts. Despite her opening statement, at times her poems seem to know acutely that neither language nor plastic bags, and certainly not people, are outside of history. Indeed this history may just serve to help her develop her writing, if she chooses to engage with the history of poetic form. In her words, To suddenly stumble,/over dusty pale pages,/to run a widening eye,/on fading letters. An engagement with history need not be the same as being fettered in an authoritative tradition, if that is the fear that keeps away so many present day poets from a rigorous training in the established conventions of poetry. It takes courage to publish, and one hopes that Bala Kannan will continue to write, revise and share her poetry with us. R. K. BISWAS THUNDER DEMONS
Dipika Mukherjee, Gyaana Books, 2011

Beneath the joyous faces of models against the backdrop of drop dead natural beauty and the signature line of the ad campaign - Malaysia. Truly Asia. is a nation that has perhaps not entirely been able to grasp its own catchphrase. After all who has not heard of the bumiputras vs. nonbumiputras political rabble rousing that took place not too long ago, and continues in less noticeable but cruel ways even now. Beneath the faade of progressiveness and prosperity runs a parallel history that most find either too unimportant for the world at large or too pointlessly troublesome to bother with. But it exists nevertheless. And sometimes finds its way into literature, even if it is only the canvas upon which the writer plays out her scenes, the progress of the characters in her story, such as Dipika Mukherjees novel Thunder Demons, published by Gyaana Books, India. The story begins violently, with the mysterious Colonel S strapping explosives on a beautiful interpreter, who knew too much, had loved too many, and is actually a literary recasting of real
life events. As the field lit up with a burst of thunder, spraying gristle and bone as a human being exploded into hundreds of pieces we will ourselves to look back to the quotation from Rehman Rashid at the beginning of the book: Malaysias politics were divisive, its economy exploitative, its pillars of authority buttressed by an impenetrable scaffolding of draconian laws upheld by a parliament in which dominance seemed to matter far more than debate. There was no reason for Malaysia to have survived this far But Malaysia had. It is this skein of hope and love that weaves together all the events in Thunder Demons, which is at once a colourful social drama, much like a television sitcom with a large cast of characters, a political satire and a thriller as well. The story revolves around the members of a community that is a minority among minority communities in multi-ethnic Malaysia the Malaysian Bengali community. The principal characters are Agni a young woman who is far more Malaysian than her ethnic Bengali roots, but must find someway to meld the two parts of herself; then there is her sweetheart Abhik, fiercely patriotic, a fighter for Malaysias secular ethos; other equally important characters are Jay Ghosh, the exile now returned and carrying in his heart secrets that could do more harm than good, Agnis paralysed grandmother Shapna who knows those terrible secrets but can do nothing, and Zainal, Shanti and Siti, all of them from Agnis past and participants of a tragedy that can only be a metaphor, and then there is of course Colonel S, ruthless and vicious, because every romantic tragedy needs its villains. Mukherjee handles her large retinue of characters deftly. She etches them against Malaysian and Bengali folklore and traditions, combining a politically sensitive situation to bring them to life, and unroll the events that wreck such havoc on innocent lives, and yet in the end she lets a rainbow shimmer, even if faintly in the horizon, because Perhaps the way to right the wrongs was to start from within. BLUE VESSEL
Nabina Das, Les Editions du Zaporogue, Denmark.

Water is not the same everywhere, either in taste or form. Waters very nature demands that it absorb the essences of the sky and land where it comes from. Yet, this quality is not obvious in the first instance, for water is after all always represented by the colour blue, watery shades of blue. In Assam, water is not mere rain and river. Water is a spirit, a presence that pervades the lives of those who have been nourished there, where the soil is so fertile you can plant a branch and watch it flower within days. Little surprise then, that Nabina Das, who grew up in Assam, carries this element, this quintessential Assamese element within her no matter where she is, in India or abroad. And in her poetry, water marks its indelible print. You may either hear it roar or murmur or fall with near invisible sound, but make no mistake, Nabinas is a voice from the Brahmaputra, a voice you can hear in her poetry collection Blue Vessel. The Blue Vessel, the receptacle for thirty six poems, or a blue vessel/ Of forgotten strife, a chipped wall/ Of rose petal and lime spits on/ A summer night when the river/ Comes home all austere is a chapbook divided into two sections. The first is Water on Ink, and here the poem of the same name follows after the apparently disjointed but layered like debris after a storm poem called Jeanne Moreaus Song, but Ill return to that later. Water on Ink, the poem in this section, pours out with sharp images literally cut out from water, and sets the tone of the chapbook with these lines: All sketches on water by ink/ All words on lines by language/ All these un-fairy faces are I. Me. This is Nabina Das in her element. Calling to Othello whose path is White of course/ Black with guile. To a sense of alienation, where reaching for her, miles away from home in a cold place, are always words from far beyond So she turns to the music of The tin-band men from my past. And then with the dexterity of an old river that knows all the paths it
can course through, she submerges us into notes that play only under/ waters roll. Where You or I etched on the body/ Of our resident island. In the second section, Still Lives Dass poems talk of what homes mean, where she is among presences./ And yet a lot is not, and Sounds and words flow like a river. In the title poem of this section, Das takes four objects, a lamp, a chair, a candle and a Lucky bamboo plant, much like the impressionists selecting the subjects for their still life paintings, and in words she brush-strokes the meanings they have in her life. Still, this is just the surface level. You the reader have to be the bridge shouting, how deep, how deep? Because Das wears her Monday like a sheet or dresses like a proverb; where she discovers that You were not there/ So more it seemed/ The dreams were truer/ Than their interpretations/ You are back, a watermark on my waiting And then, in a love poem she confesses I had a home like that far awaybut she has grown branches now the way it/ happened in a Bollywood tale once upon/ a time! Im a message tree, my twigs just/ hang where white post-its make a beeline/ at the flat-screen TV that belches out a/ song. Das straddles the two worlds that divide her heart, and the bridge is the poetry she creates. The rhythm-structure of her poems often sounds like the drumbeats of a Bihu dance, and at other times they flow with the cadence of waterfall. There are poems from Dass diaspora days, from days separated from the waters of her childhood, poems from times of love and longing, of nostalgia, poems where she lets you watch her curled before her window a sleepy acre that rolls She lets you into the secret, how cracks in the walls stack up their days stories for another moon. And then there are poetic observations that set a snaking path of wet chill down your back, echoing a rhythm that beseeches, Take this ten-feet-by-ten-feet life away, among others. Lyrical as a Jal Tarang, that releases its liquid notes like poetry into the air, Blue Vessel is a collection of fruity poetry/ Growing off the dusky bark of Dass variegated experiences, her slant-rain observations of the minutiae of life; things that you dont give a name to, rather sing to (in Dass words, written in prose) because she remains a poet from the land of the Brahmaputra. And then, returning to the poem Jean Moreaus Song, you finally understand why after songs are sung we separate and forget, yet reunite why we dont go home while we still remain friends under a vanilla sky.
85 | T F Q M ,
To
Ugliness,
April
2013

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THE FOUR QUARTERS MAGAZINE

ISSN 2250 074X

THE FOUR QUARTERS MAGAZINE ISSN 2250 074X GUEST EDITOR

(For this issue)

(For this issue)

Printed by Humming Words Publishers, Faridabad, India

And now the ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me

BOB BRADSHAW WHEN MY GORILLA SUIT COMES OFF

CAROLINE DAVIES FERAL

MITCHELL GRABOIS SUICIDE DENTIST

TABISH KHAIR UGLY TRUTHS

SEPARATION ANXIETY, AKA FRANKENESSENCESTEIN

(Thanks to Anshu Malviya and Saba Dewan)

TRANSLATIONS FROM MALAYALAM POETRY

TRANSLATIONS FROM BENGALI POETRY SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI SHAKTI CHATTOPADHYAY

(for Ayan Rashid Khan)

TRANSLATIONS FROM FRENCH POETRY MARC DI SAVERIO

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE CORRESPONDENCES CORRESPONDENCES

TRANSLATIONS FROM MARATHI POETRY SARABJEET GARCHA

Ahah she winced.

Piano, and was previously published in the LA Review.

(for William Warren)

Mother cried over Audrey Hepburn movies.

Ron and I got married six months later.

This rock? Its fake. You think Id be dancing if it wasnt?

SAMYAK GHOSH EM AND THE BIG HOOM

Jerry Pinto, Aleph Books (2013)

Prajwal Parajuly, Quercus, London (2013)

AKSHI SINGH WIND SKETCHING

Smruthi Bala Kannan, Writers Workshop, 2012.

Dipika Mukherjee, Gyaana Books, 2011

Nabina Das, Les Editions du Zaporogue, Denmark.

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