Chaicopy When Pigs Fly Issue Vol.2 Feb 2018

Chaicopy Vol.2, When Pigs Fly Isuue February, 2018 Published by MCPH Literary Club Manipal Centre of Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal, Karnataka-576104 Only the copyright for this collection is reserved with the Chaicopy.

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. Š Chaicopy, 2018 Graphic Design and Page Settings - Mariam Henna Cover Artwork - Manasvini S N

Editorial Board Editor-in-chief : Mariam Henna Senior Poetry Editor: Abhimanyu Acharya Senior Fiction Editor: Michael Ampat Varghese Assistant Poetry and Fiction Editors: Tanushree Baijal,Tanvi Deshmukh, Amulya Raghavan, Dipto Roop Banerjee, Kartik Mathur, Krutika Patel Senior Non-Fiction Editors: Abbas Bagwala, Tanima Nigam Assistant Non-Fiction Editors: Arush Kalra, Ashwini Hegde, Bidisha Mitra, Komal Arcot Senior Visual Art Editor: Srividya Devadas Assistant Visual Art Editor: Pavithra S Kumar Senior Design Editor: Maithilee Sagara Assistant Design Editor: Nikhil Ravishanker Associate Editors: Malavika Lobo, S Srinath, Akanksha Majumder, Laya Kumar, Sania Chand

Editorial On a warm Manipal evening, a few of us sat in Lecture Hall 1 and discussed what the focus of the next issue of Chaicopy should be. With the lake on one side and the lawns on the other, we brainstormed possible themes for the upcoming issue. We knew that we wanted to see strange narratives in the forthcoming issue and the team gravitated to the thought of ‘When Pigs Fly.’ The idea with ‘When Pigs Fly’ was to see how far this phrase could be pushed by artists and writers alike. We wanted contributions that mirrored the sense of surrealism and that sense of the fantastic that emerges when we hear the phrase. I am overjoyed to say that our contributors have been both generous and inventive in their interpretation of the theme.

For this issue of Chaicopy, we received a tremendous response; writers, artists and creative minds from all over India sent in their work and some of it is just stunning. In particular, I would like to mention Manasvini S N and the gorgeous piece of art that we have featured on the cover of this issue (and you can see more of her work in Kaapi Sessions). I would like to thank each of our contributors for their work and their patience with us.

Over the past few months, our Centre has been home to several artists and writers and the students had the opportunity to interact and bond with them. I thank Kiran Nagarkar and Shanthamani Muddaiah for indulging in our questions and for repeatedly taking time out of their busy schedules to talk to and encourage students to pursue writing and arts. I am extremely grateful to K R Meera (who is currently writer-in-residence at Manipal Academy of Higher Education) for honouring us by agreeing to release this issue. I thank the MCPH community for their continued support and the entire team of Chaicopy for their enthusiasm and their willingness to learn.

This is our third issue of Chaicopy, and it has been a joy to work on and watch the journal grow over the past year. Unfortunately, this would be the last issue for both myself and several of the founding members of Chaicopy. I would like to take a moment to thank each one of them, Abbas, Abhimanyu, Maithilee, Malvika, Michael, Srinath, Srividya and

Tanima, for their contributions to the magazine; without the work of each of these individuals, Chaicopy would probably not exist as it does now.

We hope you enjoy reading ‘When Pigs Fly’.

Mariam Henna February 2018

Ingredients Chai Expressions My Life after Squid | Fiction | 11-12 Amritha Dinesh And so it is | Poetry | 13 After sending Baba away | Poetry | 14 Sahana Mukherjee "I will certainly write my memoirs the moment you flying pigs learn to read the alphabet," says Kiran Nagarkar | Interview | 15-18 Nikhil Ravishanker 140762 | Fiction | 19-32 Rhea Iyer Timelines | Poetry | 33 Tanushree Baijal Homecoming | Fiction | 34-40 Shreeamey A. Phadnis

Grannie Latrine | Fiction | 41-42 Natasha Suvarna dreamscape | Poetry | 43-44 Tanvi Mona Deshmukh Why Marigolds? (an extract) | Fiction | 45-49 Shreya Srivastava

Kaapi Sessions Visual Art | 53-56 Manasvini S N Cult Leader 1 | Digital Collage | 57 Cult Leader 2 | Digital Collage | 58 Cult Leader 3 | Digital Collage | 59 Sarah Kaushik Nature, Body, and Art: In Conversation with artist Shanthamani Muddaiah | Interview | 60-71 Srividya Devadas Weavers of Phulia: The Fight to Survive | Photo-Story | 72-81 Abhishek Kumar When Pigs Fly/They Fly Business Class | Illustration | 82 Prasanna Chafekar Crushed Boats | Sculpture | 83 Crushed Papers | Sculpture | 84-85 Documents | Sculpture | 86 Pradeep Kumar SSRIs| Non-Fiction | 87-90 Michael Varghese Chirp | Visual Poetry | 91 Streetlamp | Visual Poetry | 92 Imon Raza

Ode | Visual Art | 93 Ujjwal Sharma The Press that Stood the Test of Time | Photo-Story | 94-102 Abhishek Kumar Over a cup of tea | Painting | 103-106 Shaifali Johar

Contributors | 108-115 The Teatotallers |116-123

My Life after Squid

Amritha Dinesh

‘Please let go of the Cinnamon stick.’

My voice wasn’t as steady as I wanted it to be, but looking back, it is a great ‘first dialogue hook’ for the rest of the story. The squid blinked at me with its translucent eyelids. ‘It is an essential ingredient in your dish,’ I continued.

The cookbook had suggested a firm but gentle approach.

It wasn’t working.

The squid gave me another imploring look. He had been sentenced to rings for loving-outside-species and eve-teasing according to the three layers of highly designed, brightly coloured packaging that he came in. I did not want to use the ring cutting machine, because I would have to then wash its hundred blades and forty-six attachments, so I had put the squid directly into the pot.

I tried to pry the cinnamon stick out with a fork. The squid gave another tight squeeze and winked. I know he did, even though he had almost transparent eyelids. He obviously deserved his sentence; those tentacles were rather handy for groping. I decided enough was enough and put my fingers in. He let go of the cinnamon stick and wrapped his slimy, sticky, grope-y, sucky arms around my fingers. I tried shaking him off, flipping the cookbook pages for guidance but seeing too late the large words at the end of the recipe: ‘DO NOT TOUCH SQUID.’ Who places the most important instructions at the end of the recipe!

It is outrageous.

My husband came home and asked me how much the new piece of jewellery had cost him. I informed him that it was his dinner. The outsidespecies-loving squid had wrapped himself completely around my wrist and was making vulgar smooching noises. The husband called the police station to complain. The policeman said that it was out of his jurisdiction and that the squid squad had to be approached. He gave us a toll-free 11

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number. Apparently, there were many squid related incidents happening at that moment, because we were kept on hold for a long time.

The husband’s stomach started growling. His stomach hadn’t passed obedience school and would growl randomly. The squid looked at it with growing alarm and finally after a lot more of the smooching sounds, wrote on my hand, ‘Will it bite?’ In the beautiful ‘New Baskerville’ font.

‘How did you do that?’ the husband asked the squid. The squid pointed to its ink sack with one of its tentacles and winked again. The husband slammed the phone down, grabbed me and the squid and dragged us to the best tattoo studio on the planet. The squid got a job.

It was only later that I discovered the particular tentacle he had modified to use on me. By then, he had become a very famous tattoo artist and during some of his infamous parties, he would point me out and call me his first. I didn’t mind at all since it often resulted in free drinks in exchange for my story. He also starred in some porn films where he called himself Squid BoneTentaClimax. He had a cult following and I made a lot of money appearing at conferences. With the money I bought a studio on Marine Drive and became a stomach trainer. I called my studio – ‘Will It Bite?’ I did not have to pay for the logo. I am still running it.

My husband (I trained him and then realised I could run a business with the same techniques) discovered he was a perfect middle manwheeler-dealer-arranger, so he quit his job and is doing very well. Though he has become very famous and busy, Squid comes to visit once in a while (we were even featured on one of his lifestyle shows) and often brings bay leaves for the cinnamon stick that saved his life. The bay leaves don’t last but keep the cinnamon fresh. They all starred together in a porn flick directed by my husband. I wrote the story. It was called BayCinn InSquid.

It did very well on the pay per view website before a pirated version was released on PornHub. All in all, it has been an eventful ride and I have more than enough material for the book titled – My Life after Squid* *Film and distribution rights reserved.

12

When Pigs Fly

And so it is

Sahana Mukherjee

A web of cobs carries the ashes of my cigarettes.

I think of you mostly through a blue screen translucent as a frosted window glass.

But, you are in water, and me, I’ll never come close to such wealth.

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After sending Baba away

Sahana Mukherjee

Sometimes to the sound of creaking doors, you can mix the desolation of what has been said to you one and many tireless nights about leaving unknowingly and never slipping off laughter.

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"I will certainly write my memoirs the moment you flying pigs learn to read the alphabet," says Kiran Nagarkar

Nikhil Ravishanker

Kiran Nagarkar came to MCPH in September of 2017 and spent a little over a month with us here under the Dr. TMA Pai Chair in Literature’s Writer-inResidence programme. During his time at MCPH, he bonded with several of the faculty and students of the centre, at the canteen, over conversation, during his public lecture sessions and between rehearsals for a reading of his own play Bedtime Story. During his time here, we would like to think that he bonded with the students and enjoyed his stay. He was often seen in our hallways or in his office talking to the recent entrants to MCPH’s first BA programme. The interview below is a cumulation of happiness of reunion and the bitterness of being apart from both the side of our student interviewer Nikhil Ravishankar (NR) and Mr. Kiran Nargarkar (KN).

NR: Dear Mr. Nagarkar, thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview with us. Before we move on to questions of a more profound nature, I would like to solicit a response to a few allegations that have been levelled against you by members of the MCPH community. It is believed that you overstayed your welcome at MCPH, and it was as a consequence of this that you were asked to leave (read evicted). In addition, it is also believed that you were guilty of abusing the generous reception you garnered from the doting, dreamy-eyed students, using every opportunity to instill them with dangerous ideas. How do you respond to these allegations?

KN: Let me first state in the most unambiguous terms possible that I deeply resent the insinuation that I was forced to depart. All it took to get me to leave was to bring a monster earth-mover up to the 16th floor of the hostel where I was staying, break the door of my room and drag me out 15

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with a fork lift. It was a disgrace that the students and professors of this institution called MCPH threw me out when I had come with the intention of being there permanently and being fed at least five times a day. Soon, very soon, you will be hearing from my lawyers in the Supreme Court. The suit I have filed against MCPH is for three trillion and a half dollars for breaking my contract and for doing unconscionable damage to my reputation and person.

Pay heed to my words. By the end of March, the Supreme Court will throw all you ingrates out and install me. So make sure that MCPH pays me damages worth seven zillion for having me thrown out. For if there is a next time, be warned that I intend to evict every one of you and rent out every single hostel in Manipal for nefarious activities best left unmentioned.

NR: The theme of this issue of ‘Chaicopy’—of which you released the previous edition, as all our attempts to get somebody (read anybody) else failed—is ‘When Pigs Fly’. If you were to begin a story with ‘When Pigs Fly’, what would the opening paragraph look like?

KN: What's with you guys? I just told you that if this MCPH could fly back, all of you so-called students will be dumped into the Arabian Sea next door and good riddance too.

NR: You have said in one of your interviews that your grandfather was asking for Indian independence even in 1893, and that he wrote an entire book on the Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khaiyyam.

Something terrible must have occurred in the interim, for him to have begotten you—“useless”, to quote you from the same interview—as a grandson. Could you put forth an educated guess, as to what might have gone wrong?

KN: As you must have guessed from my brother's name ( Jyotee) and mine, my parents, contra-suggestible freaks that they were, wanted daughters and 16

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not sons. My conjecture is that since there was no ultrasound around in those days, they could not guess that fate was against them and failed to commit two foeticides. Well, I can assure you that the good believers that my parents were, they tried various ghastly methods to rid the world of these two plagues but unfortunately they did not succeed. The world will never forgive them for this failure.

NR: I am only joking, of course. You are indisputably one of the most important writers in post-colonial India, and have written prolifically, tackling different themes in different styles. Nayantara Sahgal has described the ‘Ravan and Eddie’ trilogy as India’s fourth epic, after the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and India’s freedom struggle. You have been awarded Germany’s highest civilian honour, among other innumerable literary accolades.

But the real question I want to ask you, Mr. Nagarkar, is this: Have you at any point considered doing something useful in life? Perhaps work at a bank, or fix broken television sets?

KN: I did try against my soundest instincts to do something useful and hugely beneficial for Manipal society. I regret saying that I failed miserably and the world has never forgiven me nor have your parents or professors.

You see, as one of the most effective exterminators in the world, I was asked to bump off not just the entire first year batch, but everybody including the entire faculty. I had got a fresh and extremely expensive king-size bottle of Botulinum to wipe not just all of you toddlers but all the adults, male and female, at MCPH. But unfortunately, the pharmacist cheated me and even the dog I fed it to did not die.

Incidentally, make up your mind, young man- Am I not the greatest gift to mankind?

NR: In one of your interviews, in response to being asked if it’s important for a writer to have empathy, you said, “We know lots of horrible guys who write damn good stories”. Were you referring to yourself ? And if so, is that 17

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the only honest statement you have ever made in your life?

KN: How ill-informed can you pathetic students be? Every newspaper, Facebook, Twitter, and the New York Times have been covering my exploits. I trust you do know that I am also known as Nira. Need I say more? See you at St. Kitts.

NR: You are an old man—the sexiest alive, to quote Jerry Pinto, but old nevertheless—and fans expect you to write an autobiography, as is standard practice. If so, would ‘When Pigs Fly’ be the best title you could possibly use, taking all the above mentioned into consideration?

KN: I will certainly write my memoirs the moment you flying pigs learn to read the alphabet.

Kiran Nagarkar with students at MCPH

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140762

Rhea Iyer

Behind me, the wizened little astrologer was waffling with a measure of superiority that belied his diminutive size, which was wearing on the room’s collective grasp of its patience.

Miscellaneous reactions could be observed from all the faces that dotted his immediate vicinity; scrunched up eyes and delicate, wrinkled foreheads, chewed lips that failed to swallow several exasperated sighs and disapproving clicks of the tongue, an odd smattering of malevolent mutters under the breath and, in the particular case of the disillusioned young girl seething right behind him, the visible stifling of an exceptionally violent disposition that terrified everyone in the room with the slightest sense of self-preservation. Other notable mentions included a pursed mouth for the dignified English professor, a pulsing jaw for the irritable fellow standing way at the back, an unimpressed, quirked eyebrow for the smart policeman peeping from the side and, for a healthy contrast, the curl of an adoring smile from the deferential believer at the head of the line.

I, the only other schmuck with the privilege of rubbing personal bubbles with this magnanimous dictator of the fates, settled for platitudinous sounds of agreement and various other non-confrontational rejoinders that required minimal active participation. A safe approach, because what if he sneezed and inflicted me with a cursed destiny or something. Who knew what otherworldly germs he was carrying in those drapes of his, or how much he’d managed to weaponize them?

The astrologer in question was rather impressed with the extent of his abilities. With a saffron turban perched atop a head of unwashed white hair that smelled like coconut oil and the head wounds that followed several bad predictions, and with the trails of his orange robes crusted over with mud and various other brown-coloured samplings, the man was a walking parody and readily facilitated it. ‘I knew it would be exactly like this,’ he claimed for probably the hundredth time, with a smug undertone that did not show signs of diminishing, but also with a hint of outright shock that 19

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implied he was rather appalling at his job. Astrologers weren’t supposed to be able to surprise themselves.

‘As you have previously mentioned,’ I agreed for probably the ninetyninth time, thinking an unkind word and then feeling bad for thinking it.

The kind-hearted clergyman in front of me nodded in concurrence and I was grateful for the encouragement.

‘It is just as I had imagined,’ he continued, the predictable follow-up to his unsubstantiated claim to omniscience that most people had given up on questioning, and his scraggly moustache twitched with knowingness: ‘Down to the letters.’

‘What letters?’ demanded the disillusioned young miss, the only one left with any energy to argue with this man whose skin reacted to scepticism like it was the floor when the floor was lava. The hermit at the desk called ‘Next!’, and the believer in the front gave him one more nod of devotion before approaching it with earnest eyes. The queue moved to cover the resultant gap, I casually sidestepped a paan stain, and the girl continued, ‘Nowhere do I see letters. There are no letters.’

I regarded the application form in my hand and knew that wasn’t true at all, for it was littered with many letters in various permutations and combinations—some of which didn’t technically make enough sense to merit being called ‘words’—but who was I to argue with the terrifying child that could very well be a little murderer.

‘Uncle,’ said the little murderer. ‘You are a sham.’

The astrologer looked ruffled at being called a sham. ‘Young lady,’ he said, giving the rest of us a side-eye to check if we were buying into her scathing words before turning his nose up at the child’s blatant lack of respect for her elders.

‘You must learn to respect your elders.’ He casually brushed his drapes and a cloud of dust emerged: it smelled like bodily fluids and I coughed.

‘I can predict the future; did you not know? Yours, especially, is a train wreck.’

My jaw dislodged at the utterance of this pot shot, for the girl was five.

‘What future?’ said the girl, rather miffed but nowhere as close to 20

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tears as most five-year-olds would ordinarily have been, which was admirable.

‘There is no future. We are all dead.’

‘Bite your tongue!’ scolded the astrologer, now very shocked. ‘How pessimistic!’

At this point, I switched off my hearing and nibbled on my pencil as I contemplated the last few questions on the form with wary eyes. ‘There are three bags,’ began question forty-seven in a reasonable tone as the queue inched forward again. I took an absent step.

‘One has a shining golden key. Another has a gun with many bullets.

The last one, a cow. How will you pick? Divine properties apply.’

The heading for the subsection was ‘worldly philosophies’, and there were right answers for each question, which I knew because the form also said that the wrong ones would be marked in negatives. Clearly, they were pragmatic and accepting of all perspectives. I considered the current climate and figured, it was probably the cow. One could never go wrong with choosing the cow. I chose bag number three and moved to question number forty-eight.

‘There is a cow on the road, and it is sleeping. How will you navigate?’

Mother of god.

The astrologer had apparently produced an incense stick and was currently attempting to ‘ward off evil spirits’, the kind soul that he was.

A burst of fragrance wafted through to my nostrils and I greedily took reprieve from his overwhelming stink. Apparently, evil was repulsed by the soothing smell of sandalwood. While it was appreciated, it did not seem to be working; the little murderer still looked to be relatively unaffected, bar the alarming scowl.

The fellow before me moved up to the desk. I was pleased to finally find myself at the head of the line. It had been a small eternity. I pencilled in the last few answers, signed my name in with a scrunchy little flourish, and folded the pages back to the front and waited.

‘You see this?’ asked the astrologer as he shoved a star chart under my nose. The sandalwood dispersed to make way for his unique odour, which 21

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my sense of smell did not appreciate. ‘It says I am right. I am always right, and the stars know it.’ I didn’t know how to read a star chart but my mother hadn’t raised a savage, so I held my breath and took his relatively defensive word for it.

The girl threatened to set the chart on fire. Behind her, the English professor attempted to curb her violence, but to no avail. Behind the professor, the smart policemen debated on whether or not to intervene, but then decided it was probably best for everyone if he didn’t. ‘Next,’ said the old hermit, and I seamlessly dodged a small pile of garbage before sidling up to the desk with a smile.

‘Good day,’ I politely greeted.

‘Is it?’ grunted the bitter hermit. ‘Form.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, handing him the hefty sheaf of papers and watching as he squinted at the little details.

His hair was white and rested in a thick coil atop his wrinkly head. The aesthetically pulsing cloud of disenchantment gelled well with his imitation of a man who had attained enlightenment and was now struggling to keep it. After a few seconds of silence, he snorted in derision and broke the visual. ‘You choose cow?’

I felt a flash of bemusement. ‘Is that not the right answer?’

The hermit-man regarded me and found me lacking. ‘Smart people choose bullet. You are not smart.’

‘I’m a pacifist,’ I explained, taken aback by this startling turn of events.

‘I don’t like guns.’

‘What will you do with cow?’ he asked, giving me a judging look.

‘Throw? Milk? Worship?’

‘Well,’ I began with uncertainty. ‘I didn’t quite think that far ahead—’ ‘Bah,’ he said. ‘You are not smart. How will cow save your life? Cow is not hero. Cow is cow. Identification.’

‘Now, wait just a moment,’ I said with a frown. ‘The question said nothing about my life being in danger—’ ‘Identification.’

‘Oh,’ I said, realizing he wasn’t waiting for an answer. ‘Right.’ I felt through my pockets to pull out my passport.

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The passport emerged. ‘Not that one,’ he clicked his tongue scornfully.

I felt embarrassed.

‘Of course, of course,’ I said, patting my pockets again to produce my death certificate, my embarrassment heightening. It was folded into a paper plane and its tip was bent. Also, it had a coffee stain, and my name was misspelled. His face grew stormier and I did not feel proud.

A tiny, apathetic clatter sounded. I looked down to find that a halfeaten chocolate bar had wiggled out of my pocket in the process. Furtively, I bent down to grab it before the astrologer behind me decided to get handsy — the man was starved for sustenance but I wasn’t about to sacrifice a snack for a sham and get mauled by the little murderer for ‘rewarding’ him — and then looked up to realize that the hermit-man was regarding me with extreme distaste. I was still holding the certificate. Somewhat perturbed, I tucked the passport under my armpit before delicately unfolding it and smoothing out the creases. ‘Here.’

‘Hm,’ he hummed, daintily holding it with the tips of his fingers and running a cursory glance over the indecipherable details. ‘Hm, yes, I see,’ he made several acknowledging noises. He peered at the tiny, grimacing version of me in the photograph and snorted again. ‘Not very photogenic, are you?’

‘It was a bad day for pictures,’ I attempted to explain. For a hermitman, he sure wasn’t matching up to the usual expectations that came with the label. Not even a hint of aged knowingness or sagely understanding or discomfiting foresight or any other variation of a superfluous, hermitrelated adjective.

‘Bah,’ he said, making numerous unimpressed notations and stapling the certificate to the form without matching the corners even a little bit.

‘Every day is bad day for you,’ he insulted me, and it was rude.

‘That is rude,’ I told him. He did not care very much. Instead, he slapped the form onto the desk and handed me a blue ballpoint pen.

‘Sign here,’ he said, tapping a bulging finger against an empty box. I signed there.

He flipped the page and tapped against two more empty boxes. ‘Sign 23

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here and here.’ I signed there and there.

He flipped the page and tapped another box. ‘Sign here.’ I signed there as well.

‘You have terrible signature,’ he told me as he flipped more pages and tapped at more boxes. Unfortunately, I was getting acquainted with his unpleasant temperament and chose not to let it affect me this time.

Looking disappointed at my lack of reaction, he dampened a finger with his saliva and flipped the pages with greater dexterity. I signed ten more empty boxes, suffered through ten more shots at my self- esteem and then pressed a stained thumb onto the sheet for the last bit.

‘Okay,’ he said, and spiritedly stamped the certificate in red ink before sliding the whole sheaf back in my direction. ‘You are cleared for further processes.’

I stared at the red sign of approval splattered across the photograph; it looked like someone had slit my throat. A strange whiff emanated from it and I took a second to place it. Blood. All right. I could deal.

He cleared his throat. ‘Take a number,’ he said, pointing at the big red button on his desk. It was a big button. Almost the size of my head, come to think of it.

‘That is a big button,’ I couldn’t help but say.

‘Yes,’ he agreed sinisterly, and I peered even closer. It actually was the size of my head. In fact, it was a head. It was a painted human skull with dentures and googly sticker eyes; what a nice surprise for the unprepared button-presser.

I was never one to pass an opportunity to press big red buttons, even if they were human heads, so I shrugged and pressed it. A circular token spat out of the dentures and smacked me in the gut, which hurt, and hermitman clearly revelled in causing me unwarranted discomfort. Somehow managing to grab hold of it and then feeling somewhat surprised because I usually had abysmal reflexes, I gave it a curious glance. PE 140762. ‘PE?’ ‘Performance Evaluation,’ he responded, twirling his unkempt beard with the ballpoint pen while giving me a look of loathing. The beard, now that he’d brought my attention to it, appeared to be stained with red and 24

When Pigs Fly Issue

I suddenly understood where all the paan stains were coming from; the revelation was not a welcome one. He chewed abhorrently and I leaned back in faint revulsion. ‘Please take a seat and wait for your turn.’

‘Thank you very much,’ I said eager to leave, but a small question popped into my head and I paused hesitantly. ‘Er. How do I know when it’s my turn?’

He sighed, for he had been just as eager to see me leave, and pointed at a flashing blue sign installed at the front of the hall. It was two hundred feet wide and covered in nonsensical graffiti, but the gigantic lettering was relatively discernible. ‘SILENCE ZONE.’ It also wasn’t very effective, considering the astrologer behind me was still yapping away about his magic powers and the little murderer was on the verge of screaming in rage.

‘I understand,’ I said, unable to understand how it helped. ‘But my question?’

He pointed harder, which was useful. I followed his quivering finger more attentively the second time and found my gaze resting on a tiny, two-foot, misshapen looking chalkboard resting against the ‘L’ of the blue monstrosity. At the moment, it read ‘PE 139641’ in chicken scratch, and there was a small crowd hanging around it as if the concentrate of their sweat would magically make it morph into the numbers on their tokens.

Classic.

‘Thank you very much,’ I said, returning my gaze to him.

‘Yes,’ he grumbled; gratitude was hard to come by these days and he would take what he got, even if it was from people he appeared to dislike.

‘Please take a seat and wait for your turn.’

I stepped away from the desk and the queue moved a step. I smiled weakly at the astrologer who had shuffled up behind me. He greeted the hermit-man with a jolly little ‘Pranaam’ and I gave the rest of the queuers a commiserating nod; who knew how many brain cells that conversation was going to kill. Then a voice said ‘Ahem.’ I was nonplussed.

'Here,’ the voice continued, and I took a few steps to find a bored looking security lady sitting in the cubicle beyond the hermit-man’s desk.

‘Please do security check,’ she said patiently, and I approached her with a 25

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polite smile. She did not return it.

‘Good day,’ I said.

‘Any metal, contraband and/or dangerous weapons?’ she responded. I shook my head.

‘Please step through the metal detectors,’ she requested and I did so, feeling that surge of misplaced guilt one ordinarily does when stepping through metal detectors. Token in hand and the name of god on my lips, I walked through the hulking panels and it did not beep-beep, which was a relief. In light of my successes, I gave the bored-looking security lady a victorious smile, but she did not return it. Instead, she half-heartedly patted my body for the shortest possible second before placing a piece of paper on top of the counter. I studied it.

It read ‘tax, &! benefits’ in a terrible swirly font. I gave her a questioning glance.

‘Obligatory check to ensure you are not a robot,’ she said unblinkingly, and I leaned back slightly. She handed me a really sharp pencil. ‘Please write down what this says in block letters and tick-mark the box to certify that you are human.’

‘Okay,’ I said. Slowly, I did exactly as she said because I did not want to be mistaken for a robot, and then gave her another questioning glance.

‘Anything else?’

‘No,’ she said, and held her hand out for the pencil. I gave her two, because I was still holding the one I’d used to fill out the form, and she frowned at the dulled nib.

‘Have a day,’ she said, because she did not want it to be good.

‘Thank you very much,’ I gave her a parting smile that she did not return, and then proceeded through to the waiting room. It was actually the same room, just the other side of it. To ensure that the distinction was made, however, a small, greasy looking banner hung above my head that proclaimed ‘waiting room’ and it left no doubt.

The air was moist, and also like how the word ‘moist’ sounded.

My struggle to find an empty seat began and I scanned the room with a disapproving noise. The lighting was dim, but not tastefully so. Excepting 26

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the pulsating blue monstrosity that cast the entire space in a haze of pained blinking and resentful muttering, there were only a few sputtering torches lining the distant walls in sporadic intervals. Peculiarly, there was also a flamboyant disco-light-chandelier-thing sticking out from the centre with a few half-hearted streamers and an old sock dangling lifelessly from the edge for good measure. It wasn’t on, which was a small miracle, but the fact that it even existed was starting to rub uncomfortably against my aesthetic.

Somewhere, at the edge of my hearing, elevator music played. From the looks on people’s faces, it appeared to be on loop.

Finally stumbling upon an unoccupied spot, I slumped down onto the unclean plastic and regarded the odd man sitting next to me with caution. He donned week-old stubble, a brown Nehru jacket with the collar buttoned up into a mild chokehold, a wilting champa in his shirt pocket and a chocolate-y dessert spoon sticking out of his left eye. He smiled affably and I nodded at it. ‘That looks painful.’

‘I will take your word for it,’ he said with a wink. With the eye that had a spoon in it. What a pleasure to make his acquaintance.

The puttering crowd of several hundred idlers weren’t making too much of a noise, excepting the usual restless uproar at the inconvenience of having to wait for things to happen. Some kids were playing cricket and yelling cricket words at each other for no particular reason, but with enough harmonic effect that it made up for the pointlessness. A woman with meaty jowls was haggling with the T-shirt seller who clearly regretted his professional decisions. A handless beggar was bristling at being offered a bite of food instead of coinage to squander away in endeavours of the alcoholic variety. Some hipsters were singing chart music in ironic appreciation, an inebriated fellow was engaging in public urination, a welldressed gentleman was complaining and demanding to see the manager of the establishment, and a politician was supposedly attempting to rally the crowds in light of the injustices they were facing, but was really just throwing a hissy fit because he couldn’t throw his money into getting first preference as a very important person. The rest of the room was simply muttering piquedly, throwing intent glances at the chalkboard every second 27

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moment, taking a nap or picking their teeth with a bejewelled safety pin.

I shifted in my seat like an oscillating quack in a vain effort to find a comfortable position. A few seconds passed. Then, a series of slow, listless footsteps sounded. A tired looking man in a black cap and overalls rolled up to the chalkboard. With a sluggish hand, he rubbed at the last digit and then changed the number on call to ‘PE 139642’.

Five minutes passed.

Nobody paid much attention except for the people who glared at the board, realized the number did not match theirs and then kept glaring at it because they were upset about this unsurprising circumstance. The guy with the black cap and overalls frowned and wrote over the numbers again, but this time with pronounced force. The painful scraping sound echoed across the room and the napping folk awoke in varying states of indolence.

The man tapped at the board with a definitive finger. They all squinted.

PE 139642 stood. She was a short old lady with a snazzy perm, a glittering pink sari and a toothless grin. She tottered forward in one-inch kitten heels and simultaneously pulled a pair of crusting dentures out of her blouse.

The tired man waited patiently. From her dentures, she produced the token and wiped it before holding it out to the poor guy while giving him a toothless smile. Then, as if suddenly remembering, she popped the dentures straight in so that the smile was no longer toothless—just crusty.

People behind me cringed audibly. Somewhere in the back, a germophobe all but asphyxiated in her seat. We came to a consensus in that we preferred the toothless grin.

The man, however, accepted the token with startling unflappability and went on to offer her an arm, which made us admire him. She tucked an arthritic elbow around it and was guided through a creaking door I hadn’t previously noticed. A small thud echoed as the door closed behind them and I mentally applauded. What a polite fellow.

My soring bum protested and I shifted. Then— ‘Ah, yes, I foresaw finding this empty seat,’ said a voice I had hoped to never hear again, and I found my eyes landing upon the astrologer, who 28

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proceeded to settle into the aforementioned empty seat that just so happened to be right next to mine.

I did not say a word because I was polite, but man-impaled-withsilverware did because he was polite and also blissfully unaware of what he was stepping into. ‘Hello,’ he said jovially, holding out a hand to shake. I put my hand on top of his and gently pushed it back.

‘Pranaam, and good blessings to you, my friend,’ declared the astrologer with great zeal. His disagreeable mix of odours began to tickle my nose and I immediately held my breath.

‘To you as well,’ he responded, and I felt that it probably wasn’t a great idea to be an active contributor to this exchange—or in fact, any exchange involving the astrologer—so I tore two pieces of paper from the form sitting on my lap, rolled them up into small, nostril-sized bundles, plugged up my sense of smell and closed my eyes to take a nap.

I took a nap. The experience was nice. The room went dark for perhaps a short second, and the sound receded. The astrologer’s voice sounded far away, which I appreciated. Seconds ticked, but I wasn’t conscious of the ticking—perhaps they did not, in fact, tick. Perhaps I only assumed they did.

Then, the lack of neck support began to bother me and I frowned.

Then, someone began to poke my shoulder with a sandalwood incense stick and I frowned harder. Then, the sounds returned because my nap was ending. Consequentially irritated, I blinked and opened my eyes.

‘Wake up,’ a voice was saying, and I blinked again with a slight frown.

‘It has been two hours.’

Man-masquerading-as-pincushion was peering down at me with one good eye and one bloody utensil, and it was not a healthy sight to wake to.

‘I am next,’ he pointed at his token, which read PE 140757, and then at the chalkboard, which read PE 140756. As if on cue, the footsteps resounded.

He dusted off his clothes and shifted the spoon out of the part of his field of vision that still functioned. ‘Good blessings to you,’ he said with another wink, and the astrologer gave him an approving smile as he shuffled out of the row and abandoned me to terrible company. I followed 29

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him with a half-lidded glare as he approached the tired man with the black cap and overalls. Like the woman in the sari, he handed over his token and was guided through the wooden door. After a few long moments, the tired man returned and changed the number again.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and waited. PE 140758.

As I shuffled in my seat, I heard a crinkle. With a small noise, I fished out the half-eaten chocolate bar from my pocket, felt grateful to have remembered it and then nibbled on it until it disappeared.

Across the room, the hipsters had advanced to blowing smoke rings and emanating low-key angst. One of the women had taken to braiding the smart policeman’s hair. You would assume they’d have already passed through. Perhaps they had. Perhaps they were just different hipsters. PE 140759.

The kids had given up on playing cricket and were currently trying to catch the streamers draped across the chandelier, and if they had any luck, they’d successfully avoid the sock. Given the grime I could see from all the way over here, it had been stuck there for a while. PE 140760.

The astrologer told me that he’d somehow managed to read the star charts of everybody in the room, matched seven couples according to their compatibilities and planned to officiate all their marriage ceremonies despite lacking a single qualification to do so; it was difficult to believe, but I tried. PE 140761.

After a few minutes, I drummed my fingers against the plastic and stood. With a quick search through my trousers, I fished out my token and slowly ambled through the rows and rows of resentful token-holders. The man in the black cap and the drooping overalls came through the door and rubbed at the chalkboard. PE 140762. I gave the astrologer a barely noticeable nod, prayed that I would never see him again, passed on the token and accepted the arm I was offered with a genial smile.

He opened the wooden door and guided me through a narrow, dimly lit hallway. It was chilly, and the walls were damp. Our footsteps thudded against mud flooring. The sound of a falling drop reverberated, and its origin could not be pinpointed to a specific spot.

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We reached the end of the hallway and stopped in front of two doors. ‘Form,’ he grunted, and I gave him the sheaf I’d forgotten I was still clutching. He flipped through it with nimble fingers, and an array of reactions flitted across his face in diminished levels: A slight frown, the barest hint of a smile, an imperceptible flick of the eyebrow. I watched him.

He looked up at me and handed back the form before waving a hand at the two doors. ‘Left,’ he asked seriously. ‘Or right?’

‘Hm,’ I thought about it, and made to open my mouth.

‘Agreed,’ he nodded, and opened the left door.

‘But I —’ My eyes adjusted. It was a large, busy room.

‘Please join any of these queues to be further instructed,’ he said and then retreated. In the light of some sporadically sputtering torches sat five paan-chewing hermit men on identical desks, and in front of each of them, about a-few-hundred-long, yawning, groaning, barely inching queues.

One looked to be more two-ninety than three hundred, so I joined it.

To my surprise, I found man-skewered-like-a-shish-kebab standing two spots in front of me, and we exchanged greetings across heads.

‘Not bad, huh,’ I said agreeably, and he nodded. ‘Quite.’

I inched on my tippy-toes to get a better look. Beyond the hermit man at the desk and his adjoining security checkpoint, in large, flashing blue lettering, a two-hundred-foot sign read ‘SILENCE ZONE’. Beyond that, a large group of resentful, waiting people. And beyond them, a chalkboard and a wooden door, diligently manned by a man in a black cap and drooping overalls.

‘Next,’ the hermit man said, and we all moved a step. In the queue next to me, the astrologer appeared and I withheld a sigh.

‘Next,’ the hermit man said, and we all moved a step. A fight broke out between two bearded men when one accidentally ran into the other.

It rapidly devolved into name calling and then pettily imitating what the other one said in increasingly weirder tones of voice.

‘Next,’ the hermit man said, and we all moved a step. Somewhere at the edge of my hearing, elevator music played. From the looks on people’s faces, it appeared to be on loop.

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‘Next,’ the hermit man said, and we all moved a step. I fished through my pockets and found a half-eaten chocolate bar.

Nice.

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Timelines

Tanushree Baijal

How there was no space for us in history Until we got our hands dirty In gravel, in mud, in blood.

How this birth, this death has been the strangest thing, Both becoming and undoing: A swansong from the beginning of time unto its infinite ending.

What we have fought for is the queerest thing, A performance we are not quite part of.

Perhaps when the dust settles, Time will become an empty loop again, Perhaps when the dust settles, We can claim clean hands again.

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Homecoming

Shreeamey A. Phadnis

In the eighteenth century, it was a ritual with most soldiers in the Maratha army to infuse themselves heavily with the strongest opiates before they fought a battle. That was a different time in history, of course, when the Sino-British trade of opium had gripped even the Central Indian agrarian economy and Malwa Opium was as much in demand as the ‘Black Gold’ of Kochi. It would be much later, that Madhya Bharat would be exploited for its teak, the famous C.P (Central Provinces) teak. This was also the high point of the Maratha Confederacy in India. Guerrilla skirmishes had matured into full-fledged battles, culminating ignominiously in the Third Battle of Panipat, that bloody fourteenth day of January, in 1761 CE. It was the Maratha Infantry and the Cavalry, the Paga, that were especially infamous for their opium using practices. The Artillery or the Jinsi, were instead a disciplined and organized lot, under the hired services of Dutch or French commanders. Soldiers would also mix poppy seeds with the horse gram meant for their steed, rendering them incapable of sensing fear or pain. Such foolhardy and stubborn armies had been successful in exacting tribute from Attock in the West to Cuttack in the East, and Delhi in the North to Tanjore in the South. These raiding armies from Deccan were the terror of Hindoostantoppling dynasties, playing king-maker and extracting Sardeshmukhi & Chauth wherever they went. Like all other dynasties, the Marathas failed for reasons that went beyond the military and administrative. And, like all other dynasties, it also left a veritable aftertaste in later social, political and cultural proceedings across pockets in India.

Sardar Swamirao Mujumdar was about to progress from these thoughts, to the battle strategy of the Marathas at the Battle of Rakshasbhuvan, when he noticed the low dangling bulb flicker in his line of sight. Swamirao did not like being addressed by his epithet. It had been two years now since India won her independence; so out with the old titles and in with the new duties. India was a Democracy now and was soon to become a Republic.

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Coming back to his physical surroundings, he wondered how long it must have been since this room was occupied — this dusty haven, lined with cupboards choking on books; a massive work-desk in the middle of the room's hollow vastness. He had seated himself on a small ottoman in a corner of the room under the solitary bulb — silently listening to the train of thought in his head. That’s when the bulb had flickered.

Before this room was retrofitted to become a library on his express demand, it had always been a guest bedroom. The only bedroom in the entire wada to have had an attached bathroom. At that time, this room was meant for the Gora Sahibs — the Englishmen. Their retinue were routinely entertained in the Huzur Darbar below. When an Englishman was completely inebriated, he would be deposited safely into this room.

Often with the woman of his choice.

That disturbing mental image jarred Swamirao's train of thought again. He noticed that the bulb was still flickering. In a low but authoritative tone he called out 'Chhotu Chacha'. A true testimony to his class, the timid Chhotu Tiwari appeared in a few seconds as if he were hovering around in anticipation of being summoned. He was Swamirao's butler.

Swamirao would have to pay steeply now, if he were to get back his entire former domestic staff. In his childhood, his personal staff alone numbered close to twenty. At the time, Chhotu Tiwari was appointed to solely look after Swamirao's wardrobe.

Swamirao in turn, had a special place in his heart for Chhotu Chacha.

Chhotu Tiwari had himself volunteered to become Swamirao's taster in addition to his regular duty. Which meant, that he ate a morsel or drank a sip of whatever was cooked for Swamirao — to make sure it wasn't poisoned. Twice the food had been poisoned and Tiwari would have been dead, had it not been for an antidote, the secret of which only he knew.

Datura poisoning was common in those days, to get rid of wards and claimants to estates and Samsthans.

Presently, Chhotu Tiwari walked up to his young master, who had returned as a 'Vakil Saab' and said 'Ji Huzur', bowing with extra courtesy.

Swamirao replied with slight annoyance 'Chacha, please do away with the 35

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Huzur-giri. Call me anything except for Huzur. The Huzuriyat is dead and long retired... now come here and take a look at this bulb. I wonder what is wrong with it...' his voice trailed off into the darkness emanating from the dead bulb. He then sensed Tiwari toying with the bulb in its socket, as if he had an inkling of what needed to be done.

In India, one always convinced oneself fraudulently that one knew what one was up to. The truth would always be the same — Kuch toh jugaad kar lenge.

Bored with Tiwari's tinkering, Swamirao once more occupied his mind with the past. The past is safer to engage with than the future.

Currently, India was all about the future. She wanted to discard her past, shrug it off. In his mind, Swamirao travelled back to the past, to the day of his adoption. He remembered that day with the vision of an eight-year-old child: In the assembled Durbar, the Maharaj eyed him with reserved appreciation.

Swamirao had answered politely to questions fielded to him, did as was told and displayed an acute sense of courtesy in the Court. He stood his ground, though slightly unnerved — a specimen under examination. Inside his calm exterior, his innards were squeamish and he was sweating profusely under the Achkan.

He looked at his younger brother by his side and was moved with pity. This chap was completely unaware of the gravity of this Durbar. He felt reassured by his brother’s utter inability in grasping the situation and the blank look on his face.

It was soon decided. Kumar Swamirao was to be known, from that day, as Shrimant Sardar Swamirao Ramrao Mujumdar, for all means and purposes of address. He was placed on the lap of his new father and announced as successor to the Mujumdari of the State by the Maharaj himself; him and his generations to come, as long as the sun and the moon played their cosmic game.

He remembered certain passages clearly from those pages of his personal history. Other memories were mere phantoms of faces, shadows of events and unfamiliar voices. The one thing he remembered as clear as his grey-green eyes was this wada. He knew it like the back of his hand, even though he had only stayed here for a little more than a year. He felt strangely comfortable and at home here, as if he had lived here all his 36

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childhood. Ordinarily, it took more than an hour to go through the entire house — bedrooms, living rooms, durbar hall, Nagar khana, Farrash khana, Jamdaar khana, Kothi and all the other khanas and kamras. All those spaces, now obsolete. Yet, even now he could cover the expanse of the wada in one fluid, unbroken stroll.

After spending a year in that magnificent splendour manifested in Maratha timber architecture, he was packed off and sent for his education to Nutan Boarding School. He studied Arts and was now completing his Baccalaureate in Law. His estate, with all rights of administration and inami was turned over to him by the Court of Wards when he had turned eighteen. But now, he had returned for good. After fifteen years. He had returned now to this crumbling sanctuary that once used to be the crown jewel of the city’s residential architecture.

Here it was, a slow decaying witness to its regal past — a most generous offering to the goddess of Time.

'Babuji...' a slight and shrivelled voice from the slight and shrivelled Tiwari pulled Swamirao out from the recesses of his thoughts. 'Babuji, the khaana is ready. I will change the bulb when you are having your khaana.

Don't worry.'

'Much better, Chacha. Babuji is much better than Huzur. And don't worry about the bulb. We are fortunate that the electric fan is working and only one bulb has conked off. There is hope for this place after all. Come.

Join me while I eat.'

Swamirao led the duo, as Tiwari slowly closed the heavy wooden doors while exiting the room. The old-world kerosene lamps placed in the niches along the passage, showed them the way; casting long shadows on the floor that crossed each other. In the rasoi, Swamirao removed his coat and hurriedly kept it on the ground in the corner. He was home, and he did not need to be excessively tidy — the strange logic that differed in the conception of homeliness in an English home and an Indian home. Tiwari skilfully served Swamirao just the right amount of helpings of piping hot food, and stood attentively in the corner.

The ghar ka chulha had been warmed after fifteen years. The entire house was filled with empty corners. A lot of work would have to be done.

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There was only one helper left in the wada, apart from Chhotu Chacha.

For fifteen years, this section of the wada lay abandoned. But Swamirao had big plans now for this place.

Even Tiwari was sure that his Babuji would change this place for better. He looked at Swamirao again, with a tinge of devotion. Little Swami, all grown up and with a moustache. How handsome he looks! He had not recognised Swamirao at first, when he saw him after many years.

He still remembered that evening vividly: The air of Malwa is crisp. If it were any crispier, one would be able to bite into it with some cheese, like a cracker. Good health and a healthy amount of goodness are inherent in the air of Malwa. The virulent strain of a large appetite is bred in this very air. The most defining quality of this air, however, is its lightness. It is ethereally light. Not for naught is it said 'Subah-e-Benaras, Sham-e-Awadh, Shab-e-Malwa.'

When the constellations of stars initiate their play in the dark field of the sky, under the auspices of the luminescent moon, Malwa verily becomes a daughter of the night. She slows time to just the right rhythm of life and lulls to deep sleep those who embrace her cloak of black. In the Queendom of Malwa is the feast of senses and the pleasures of heaven. Her messenger, the mist, ever so light-footed, draws her skin over yours and embraces you with a faint feather touch. And soon you forget yourself, forget all intrigue and politics, surrendering your soul to the plains.

To these plains, on a deep evening, Swamirao was returning to Malwa. The local gossip doing the rounds was that he was coming back home to get married.

Oh marriage! That strange transaction of relations. That obligation when a father, both joyously and sadly, hands over his 'possession' to another.

His Amaanat. The woman, born to belong to others and not to her own people, the patriarchal amaanat. Symbol of Indian Parampara. For in the exchange of marital vows is bound the order and harmony of society. Upholding these vows is societal Dharma. And to uphold Dharma is the greatest Karma one can perform. Such is the dark jest of Samaj in the court of Neeti. What a heady dose of orthodoxy and nonsensicality.

He had just begun lamenting the caste structure and cursing social norms, 38

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when he saw the train approach the railway station. He could smell malpuas being freshly fried somewhere in the station. He wondered how Swamirao must be in person. This boy he had last seen ten years ago. A person he had spent constructing in his mind over the past month. Soon, the train entered the station and his eyes scanned the platform beseechingly for an answer to that question.

He found the answer in the eyes of a grown man, staring right back at him with a kind but steady gaze. Unblinking. He felt his anxiety melting away in those dark eyes. It almost felt like he was the one coming back home.

And it was with simple but profound insight, that Tiwari Chacha had gleaned the truth from Swamirao’s eyes at that time itself — Swamirao had ceased being a child when he was adopted.

Swamirao's father had passed away just five years after his adoption, when Swami had only entered his teens. The first decision Swamirao took after the Antim-Kriya of his father was to order the tearing down of the long line of stables in front of the wada, adjacent to the wide road. There was a lot of ruckus over this decision at that time, since Gandhiji had recently visited the wada and even rested there for a couple of hours. People had come to associate the wada with the Mahatma’s visit, and considered it with a sense of public ownership. He had the stables razed, nonetheless and had new single room blocks constructed in their place. Swamirao had seen a wonderful system of housing called 'chawls' during one of his visits to Bombay. His town was often compared to Bombay, with its textile mills, booming industries and contributions to the Song and Dance hoopla of cinema in its own small way. He decided to construct 'chawl' like spaces for workers-housing in the wada. With one single decision, he had ensured a continual source of income for himself, for the rest of his life. Additionally, at least some portions of the large house would be lived-in, until he returned from school.

Even Tiwari had understood the importance of that decision at the time. When Swamirao left to continue his secondary school that summer, Tiwari knew that the young lad would not return now for a long time. For, Swami had effectively deposited the last strands of his childhood memories within the safe vaults of those four walls of the wada.

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And now, Swamirao had come back to reclaim the fragments of his innocence that had been ensconced in this residence. He had deposited his memories at the time with the strange wisdom that children sometimes possess, nascent in nature, and had now returned as a master of his own choices. Tiwari wondered whether it was within the realms of his duty to inform his master that this arrangement may not work now, as this isn't how reality always functions. For, even though wounds heal with time and care, innocence once lost can never be regained. Especially when a person destroys his or her own inner child. Such a wound, often self-inflicted, is always permanent. There can be no return to innocence. After this, the only way to connect with one's innocence is to access it through somebody else's memories. Which is what lovers do — return to that blissful state by living in a haunting dream and fulfilling the other's wishes as a means of gaining validation from their own sub-conscience; living that dream in the wakeful eye of the other, and yet losing all sense of belonging and individuality.

It was at this moment when Tiwari was going to graduate to the various stages of love, that a rat brushed his foot.

Swamirao was in the middle of his meal, after his recitation of 'Vadani kaval gheta, naam ghya Shri Harichey. Sahaj havan hotey...' Without looking up, he simply said to Tiwari, 'Chacha make sure that the kitchen, my bedroom, bathroom, Diwan khana and my study are clean by tomorrow.

Kill all the rats,' and then continued eating with his back bent double.

Swamirao usually ate vociferously, just like he debated a legal case; and with gusto, just like he boxed in the ring. Today, however, Chhotu Tiwari noticed that he ate with a slow rhythm. Perhaps he was hungry for much more than food. Maybe even he was in the throes of self-exploratory ecstasy. After all they were both the same. Human, with an inner hunger to locate themselves in the grand order of things.

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When Pigs Fly Issue

Grannie Latrine

Natasha Suvarna

She arrived at the water closet. Its walls were smooth and icing-like. Flat, intricate flowers surrounded her, making Jumba think of a manicured forest. She slammed the flimsy door shut and began the moulting. Her outer fabric slipped off before letting the brown baggage spill over from her skull. Sensing suffocation and the rotten egg smell, Grandmother Bathroom donned her gelatinous spectacles. She peered through the tile crack at the crumpling kid who had just arrived. All the metal and polish reflected Jumba’s feeble mouth and melting eyes. She looked at her swollen face rendered as a jack-fruit by the curved taps. Finally, the familiar wise eyes and shiny face lined by toothpaste-green wisps of hair bubbled from the wall. Relief floated forward from Jumba, to be firmly clasped by the Quiet Understanding from Grandmother Bathroom.

A water-streak lined smile dropped onto Jumba’s face and shimmered across it as the fountains began spurting up. Grandmother whirred open the nozzles under each of her fingernails. Faucets burst, cracks in the ceiling leaked, vessel and bucket water surged upwards and formed swirling cyclones that got wider and spun around inside the whole closet.

Geysermaali collected all his heated flatulence and began its injection into the streams. In this entire ruckus, Grandmother let Jeebu loose and he leapt, heaving his jiggling body onto the shifting floor. He landed on Jumba, roller-painting a thick film of his saliva across her face. Even Toiletmaster began precariously shifting his weight on either foot, ready to stick his tongue out and let some giant gushes slush forward.

“Oye, easy!” Grandmother warned, shaking her cream bun face that had creases along the center. That would have sounded very formidable, had it not been garbled and curdled into indistinct echoes by the mischievous Water Sheets who were cascading down her face.

A bendy and confused girl keeps returning to this closet. She would let her insides leak into this mighty drainage, and had been assured by it right from the start that she would be taken care of. All the faucets and 41

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pipes and showers and floor and plastic chapped mugs asserted that loyally in unison. Grandmother would sit and flick big drops onto every part of Jumba’s skin and soak her like a drenched napkin. She felt that she had more water hanging from her than the boulders that lay nose-to-nose with waterfalls. Grandmother snapped her fingers like that and ensured that her fluids kept Jumba’s secret habit safe. The salt from Jumba’s ducts would be lost in the streams and after the whole wet ordeal, there wasn’t a single thing not red with impact or blurred with water. Even her pain stains and teabag eyelids had their thunder stolen by her steamed up face, which would resemble the crossbreed of a momo and a pimple by the end of the ordeal. Geysermaali was to thank for this, but no one could bother to stop and coo at each other’s accomplishments amidst the flurry. So he would dust off his puffy sweat-lined palms as he himself had to smile satisfactorily at his craft.

Grandmother Bathroom would wrap Jumba up neatly with refreshing soap scents and give her the ‘fresh-bathed-look.’ No one noticed the tear water and its damage amidst all the bathroom water and its damage. On days that were heavier than the rest of them with solutions more elusive than the rest of them, Jumba had this. Her tears would get lost in the sanitation ocean to let her return to The-Rest-Of-Her-Life outside the closet unnoticed. Thus, she offloaded her dirty baggage now and then, and its soiled waters ran and left her, with Grandmother B there to calmly swish the silly tears away. The bathroom let her perform the harmless offload without it being picked up and painfully picked at by the dramatic crowd outside, horrified by people who chose to frequently leak saltwater.

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dreamscape

Tanvi Mona Deshmukh

There is a song my grandmother hums while she puts me to sleep.

I cannot sing, she insists, my voice is too Ungentle, too hard for a lullaby. She rubs patient circles Into my hair, her slender fingers curling in and out Like ribbons dancing in the wind. I wake up hours later With a catch in my breath, a silvery wedge of ice lodged Deep inside my chest. I try to think only of her fingers Twirling in endless circles, even as I will the dream To go away. But cities burn; people stand with their Fingers splayed wide, as though reaching for invisible Butterflies through thousands and thousands of Colourless dream-walls; their palms bleed orange Onto the bruised purples of the earth, ooze sticky dark Life-juice as their own strength wanes; their screams ring Thrice like well-scripted reverbs and echo in my head Until I know they're in my head until I know they're in My head until I know, I know, I know, and I wake again.

Isn't it bad luck to dream the same dream twice in a day?

I scream in answer to their screams anyway. Then, With the practiced ease of a stamped-and-signed diagnosis 43

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(Anxiety) I walk with awkward slipperless feet to wake my Mother, yet again (twice in the day, I remind myself ).

My mother is calm but I see the butterflies from my dream Floating slowly up her throat. They gather, hushed in her Eyes, overflow on silent wings when she thinks I'm not looking.

Are you still scared? Is there even an answer?

I settle for silence, and curl in on myself, legs against My breasts; an adult-sized child drawing comfort From the shape of her own knees in the dark. I think of My mother watching me quietly, I think of bleeding hands.

And my grandmother's fingers in my hair. The next day There is sunshine and an inch-thick layer of dust On last night. Or so I tell myself. We sit in a circle And laugh at words on the game-board. Keen, my Grandmother makes, a double-word mark under the K. Try, My mother makes elsewhere. No special bonus this time.

Somewhere in the distance, a leaf floats to the ground.

I take a shallow breath as a butterfly lands on a purple Flower. I look at my fingers and rub them in circles.

I hum a dirge but it sounds like a prayer. I win that game.

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Why Marigolds?

Shreya Srivastava

Miss Jojo owned a small flat in the wailing city of Bombay. It disregarded the sea with the kind of utter contempt large-bellied, Convent school nuns hold for stick thin daughters of Punjabi Hindu business men.

Tiny villages of blossoming fungi wrapped the walls of her house like pious flakes of dandruff resting on the heads of bank clerks posted in crumbling state banks. An eerie smell of coffee, detergent and dirty panties emanated from the only bathroom cum potty of her flat. It was a beautiful smell. A lonely smell. A rich-aromatic-flavourful smell.

Miss Jojo was somewhat not-thin. Her skin was dark as chocolate and her eyes were very tiny. Her face was covered with boils and oxidised tips of sebaceous secretions. Through the deep backs of her flowery blouses, one could see yellowed bra straps hiding plenty of beauty moles. Her hair was long, lush and reeked of Rajnigandha scented hair oil.

Had Miss Jojo married a rich man in her youth, she would have lived in Kerala, in a massive green bungalow by the sea. And she would have had cows, servants, aayas, gleaming golden utensils, cars, decks of jewellery, children with scrubbed faces and shiny teeth, coconut trees and rose gardens in her estate. This was all Miss Maria Jonathan Joseph had ever dreamt of.

When she had passed school, the young Maria had been nicknamed Jojo for the double jo(s) in her full name. And then she had been sent to college to learn English. English: a common tongue in Kerala but a celebrated language in the rest of the country. She had been beautiful then.

Not that she was ugly now.

But she had looked serene, in spectacles and with excess Ponds powder collecting in dregs around her neck in the summer. Her saris had swayed marvellously around her hips and had attracted many handsome suitors.

But her fate had left her to end up here in this wailing, stomping, quaintly roaring overlooked part of the lovely, bustling and jostling city of Bombay.

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In fact, her fate had been ruined with the birth of her brother Anthony Jonathan Joseph who had grown up to become a P.O.L.I.T.I.C.I.A.N – A Politician, an Ogler, a Lighter of cigarettes, an Ill-bred fellow, a Thug, an Ire in the eye of fire, a Cunning clammy fish of a man, an Indecent babbler, an Anarchist and a Nuisance.

He had wanted her to marry Joseph Janardan Joseph of Dubai. Not that Jo-Ja-Jo wasn’t pretty. He was awfully good looking with a broad square face, aching black skin, bushy eye brows, golden brown eyes, a mellow smile and a decent accent. Not that he couldn’t buy a green bungalow by the sea.

He had several of those, but they were pink. Not that they couldn’t paint them green. He manufactured green paint in one of his factories. But the green paint was pistachio green and Maria wanted parakeet green. It was however irrelevant because in tropical India nobody could tell Pistachio from Parakeet.

The only problem with Jo-Ja-Jo was that he was a Don and Maria wanted a History Professor for some ghastly reason.

“A History Professor? He is a Don. A man respected and admired by all!” Everyone including her parents, who were short-heighted and skeletal, had told her quite beseechingly.

Jo-Ja-Jo upon seeing the lovely Maria had immediately abandoned his string of size 4 blonde girlfriends and begged for her hand. Only in India is size 16 better than size 4.

Size 16 is about better food, coconut oil in curry, lack of housework which means presence of servants which means good breeding, golden jewellery around the neck, better taste of saris and understanding of languages, arts and culture. And a handsome dowry.

Maria had shown some attitude then. Some reckless attitude, to be exact. She had refused to accept the clammy palms of Joseph Janardan Joseph.

And that had left her with nothing but the small flat in Bombay her parents had purchased for her when she was a child and the place was cheap, hoping to give it away for her handsome dowry. Maria was declared an outsider and Jo-Ja-Jo was patted on the back and kissed on the forehead.

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Jo-Ja-Jo then returned to Dubai with Maria’s best friend Georgina as his wife. Georgina was a size 4 which spoke of ill breeding but nothing could be done about that. And in Dubai, Georgina lived in a pink bungalow repainted Parakeet green by the sea. She had two square faced children with bushy eye brows and a lot of gleaming golden jewellery.

Maria, now twenty-six to be exact, lived in Bombay all alone. Nobody visited her and nobody called. A cold, clammy fish of a woman. All her good breeding, her pronunciation, her grammar, her verb, adverb, noun and the look of her silent, gentle eyes had gone down the drain and into the sea

by Juhu beach.

Even the sea looked green now. Sick and miserable in the stark Bombay lights.

Maria was now Miss Jojo of the St. Mary’s Co-ed Senior Secondary School. To her students, she was simply the Fat-South-Indian teacher who was overly sensitive about English. To her colleagues, she was a young girl too lost to be found, both in her life and her skin.

Miss Jojo taught English at the Ghosh English Tutors on weekends.

She drove up to the little by-the-beach building that belonged to the daughter-in-law of the great Mr. Ghosh, a politician-cum-freedomfighter-cum-MA-in-English, and sat on the wobbly teacher’s desk to wait for a handful of North Indian hoodlums who desired to speak Inglisss aka Angreji like the Britons aka Angrej.

She received one thousand five hundred rupees for every hour of constant babbling in English and so she managed to earn fifteen thousand rupees every Sunday by teaching from nine o’ clock in the morning to eight o’ clock in the PM. That added to her meagre monthly thirty thousand rupees offered by the St. Mary School and became a good ninety thousand, which is almost as good as the salary of a 23-year-old, well-placed, deeply cherished, onlyson-type-IIT-educated-engineer in India.

But Bombay is an expensive place to live in. You cannot get the interiors of your shabby house decorated even on this salary especially if you are into investing. Miss Jojo was a great paragon of investment. In fact, 47

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the only thing that had prevented her from dangling by the neck on her rusty bedroom ceiling fan was the promise of future money. And loads of it. Miss Jojo knew she was going to be achingly rich and within a year, that too.

Every Sunday for Miss Jojo was a journey through hell. Her class comprised of North Indian hoodlums whom the other pretty and young teachers could not handle, and every session was a feminist battle fought on male grounds.

However, Miss Jojo was a rough and tough lady. She had never been groped, catcalled or whistled at and that was a record. She had brutally escaped teaching Anna Karenina, the Russian book which was a part of the English syllabus, to very crookedly arouse the interest of the North Indian men who were so deeply intimidated by English.

But now the dirty minded daughter-in-law of Mr. Ghosh, who now lived in Vienna, had inculcated EL James into the New and Modified English syllabus.

“Come on Maria! The men will take to English like it’s their mother tongue with Fifty Shades!” She had claimed. She was herself a writer of terrific porn involving carnal Arabs and bosomy blonde babes. In fact, Mrs. Lolita Ghosh was an Indian Bestseller in that category.

“But Mrs. Ghosh, the book is terrible! It’s just commercial fiction. No depth, no meaning but plenty of double meaning and not of a good kind.

Why can’t we just stick to Shakespeare?”

“I have other teachers you know.”

And so, Maria had to teach Anastasia meets Mr. Grey with an actual mask on her face. To Miss Jojo’s dismay and Mrs. Ghosh’s delight, the men took to English like fire. In no time, the shady students were speaking like the people of America and flaunting spellings of difficult words like erogenous.

One of them even wrote a story titled Bihari Babe after attending just two lectures. Miss Jojo gave him an A+ because the English was good and she was no one to judge the story, which involved a curvy Bihari farm girl making love to the writer himself in a field dotted with aquatic snakes that 48

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only added to the lust-worthiness of the babe.

Soon the North Indians started their own ‘Gupt Rog Clinics’ and became world famous because of their English-speaking abilities. Some of them became famous bloggers too. One wrote a book about the art of Kama.

One acquired professorship at Harvard University as a noted scholar on all matters sexual. To think he had migrated from Bihar to find a living in Bombay!

These experiences left Miss Jojo shattered. Anything is possible in this world. A lecherous Bihari, whose English was as good as the VFX of Hindi films in the 90s, went on to become a professor at an Ivy League institute, all his groping habits paused in suspended animation at the back of his electrified brain.

Anything. If only.

This piece is an excerpt from a larger project that Shreya is working on titled 'Why Marigolds?'

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Visual Art

Manasvini S N

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Visual Art

Manasvini S N

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Visual Art

Manasvini S N

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Visual Art

Manasvini S N

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Cult Leader 1

Sarah Kaushik

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Cult Leader 2

Sarah Kaushik

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Cult Leader 3

Sarah Kaushik

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Nature, Body, and Art: In Conversation with artist Shanthamani Muddaiah

Srividya Devadas

Shanthamani Muddaiah was the artist-in-residence ( January 2018) at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities as part of the K K Hebbar Gallery and Art Centre in Manipal Academy of Higher Education. Over a cup of coffee at the canteen, Srividya Devadas (SD) had the opportunity to chat with artist Shanthamani Muddhaiah (SM) and discover some insight into the thought processes of a practicing artist and about the art world.

SD: Your work reflects on the relation between nature and culture, between body and environment. Is there a particular reason you gravitate to these ideas?

SM: When we study art, we are very aware of the articulation of the definitions of nature and culture, and the whole debate on nature and culture has been going on for a few decades now.

As a woman specifically growing up in this environment, the articulation of body and the self within this specific culture is very important. Secondly, the issues that we are heavily concentrated on are that of nature. It has become a subject today because of what we did to it. From the 1980s, there is this whole movement that talks about environmental issues. There are artists that have rejected the location of art in the gallery space and have talked about the aesthetic that can exist in the nature.

When you look at the entire range of artists during the British reign, there are artists who have walked out of the gallery and walked into nature to create art which they allow to even decay or to let it kind of dissolve into the nature in its own way.

Personally, I became aware of the issues in the environment and what happened in the name of modernity because I witnessed what happened 60

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to Bangalore. Bangalore as a city became very dense in the exchange for growth and money, and the speed in which it grew, what happened to the city was never taken into account because we think of Bangalore as a global city. But, what we lost in exchange is something else.

I’ve done an exclusive documentation on it from 2006 to 2008, documenting what it means to be in the middle of this fast growth, trying to understand the psyche of the people, what they lose, and what they feel insecure about. Instead of randomly speaking to people who I think would give a general response, I decided to speak to people who were traditionally involved in terms of craft or things that very much associates with the identity of the city. For instance, Bangalore is known for weavers weaving silk sarees and crafting products with jasmine flowers. There are also these festivals where they create this architectural kind of space where that becomes a kind of a tabloid and goes around the city. There is a kind of cultural intervention that happens. I spoke, mostly, to people who are associated with crafts to know what it means for them to live in that kind of a growth. I realized that all of these would be very quickly vanishing because they cannot sustain it. They cannot really supply and challenge the prices that machines can produce. It kind of withers away and vanishes even though it is identified with the city. What does their next generation do? Where does this knowledge go? These are very interesting.

There is nobody interested in grasping this knowledge because their children are very happy to work as drivers or at call centers to earn money and sustain themselves. One is to produce and the other is to market and neither of these tasks is easy. This is how the rapid growth affects culture in a way. It’s very interesting that we don’t take this as an account even if anybody asks you. Suppose someone asks you ‘where are you from’, and you say you are from India, and someone asks ‘what is India like’, what do you say? Do you talk about your car or things, or do you talk about Taj Mahal and about festivities or about what is culturally significant. If you look at your own self, you associate with these things as cultural aspects, and this is something you carry no matter where you go, isn’t it? That thing that you have grown up with and this culture is something that settles you and 61

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also kind of allows you to grow, creating a kind of a space for you to be culturally inclined. And it is important. Imagine you don’t have anything that is you or yours; it is quite chaotic when that happens. This belonging is such a big issue today and the conflict is about that belonging, because of what, politically, you want and don’t want to be identified with.

Despite all that, we don’t think of cultural issues; we consider economics as development. We don’t take culture as a development module. That is where the whole problem lies, in terms of making of a city or in terms of development. Despite all the growth and money, we are in such conflict today. And conflict is not money-oriented; it is culture-oriented. Unless we continue to create a dialogue around it and find common ground, it is going to collapse. That danger, somehow, we as a society don’t see.

That reflects in my work and my work generates from what I understand of what makes a city. I locate myself as an individual, as a woman, as an artist within that culture and simultaneously, within that complexity. In a way, art becomes that space where I understand and each work is a way of learning.

SD: Your artworks such as “Home”, “Cloud” feature historical civilizations or portray a social and political message. What, according to you, is the role of an artist in the society?

SM: I know that we have a problem in this country. I may have learned certain techniques in the way of academics, but then, I’ve been trained to be a contemporary artist.

In a society that ardently believes that culture is 2000 to 3000 years old, a society that believes in the importance of heritage, we tend to believe that keeping that practice authentic to its origin is the only way of being in the culture. But, that is stagnation and that is a problem. Evolving within that or in a newer way is a way of being able to articulate the present.

My work, therefore, is about articulating the present and I am very much aware of things that happen around me, whether it is science or political or socio political or any other cultural aspect. It’s the space for 62

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information, so I do react to things. ‘Home’ and, especially, ‘Cloud’ was very much to do with the present.

When I started working with charcoal, I really knew that it allows me to talk about today because it is something we are discussing; carbon is all we are talking about. I am also kind of fascinated about the time I made that work because there was so much talk about science that is going beyond boundaries and genetic engineering and newer innovations. I felt that we were talking about being capable of manipulating even before it manifests. You make sure you seed the cloud so there is rain in a specific space, so you are actually manipulating something before it actually takes form. It’s playing God. So I was very interested in this aspect but, at the same time, my challenges were that the present state is also about the inability to receive whatever is present in the nature. In the process of altering with nature, we are also polluting it, and that can turn around someday. Innovations are not a problem; what we do with it is a problem.

There is a certain kind of responsibility that we are unable to carry.

This is where I wanted to play and locate my work. ‘Home’ depicts a pregnant woman, which is about hope. You generate a being, but you burn her even before the birth. You are born halfway dead, so this situation, this uncomfortable in-between situation, is something present in big cities where you are neither here nor there. This is what we have made ourselves to become.

SD: Where do you think an artwork belongs most? In a studio, at a gallery or with a connoisseur? And why?

SM: That is a challenge that most contemporary artists are struggling with because what is the utmost desire of any creative person is that you want somebody to see what you have done. Even when you write a personal diary, there is an invisible reader for you. There is always somebody who you are communicating to and it is not only about appreciation, it is also about how it gets layered and grows. Sometimes the art grows beyond the artist, the way people associate with it or connect other meanings to it or 63

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Backbone

Medium : Cotton Rag Pulp with Wood Charcoal.

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the way somebody uses it in their own way. It leaves the artist and takes its own journey. That journey is also a process of learning for you.

There is this space that is multidimensional. Even if you approach it as an artist in a single dimension, after the work is born, and the minute it connects with the people, it has multiple dimensions to it and it grows beyond the artist – that is very rich even to receive as a person who created it. This association is very interesting.

In Kochi Muziris, I realized that when you display your art outdoor in a public space, the public will use it the way they want it – sometimes in a very meaningful manner and sometimes very casually – and we feel that the casual interaction is something that is not so important or did not really make much difference. But we only know the conscious part; the other part of understanding, of relating, we don’t really know. Therefore, I feel that putting it out there in a democratic space, no matter what kind of conflicts or problem you face, is much more challenging and it is worth going through. But unfortunately, sometimes, your survival is stuck between the commerce and the creation. That is a part of negotiation that allows you to pursue it. When you work with physical matter, you need all kinds of things – material, commerce, and people – around it as you cannot produce that kind of work of that scale by yourself.

Apart from that, your true journey is in the part of creating in that studio. It inhabits that space very beautifully, and often when you take that out of the studio, many of its associations get removed; but when you actually take it out in the public space, it has different dynamics to it. So I would love to see these two aspects of it, the space that it is born in and the space that it lives in than the in between space – that’s very interesting.

SD: In one of your previous interviews, you said that you think like a painter. Could you give us some insight about it?

SM: I have trained seven years in painting.

I believe that we have evolved as human beings for many centuries where our hand has become an extension of our mind. For others, writing 65

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down their thoughts might seem easy, and for me, it’s very easy to put my thought into drawing. I am not imagining three-dimensional forms as an artwork. For me, the layers and the meanings that I built are building on the two dimensional to achieve that complexity that an installation or sculpture needs. This is challenging to arrive to as it lends itself in a much more dynamic space than painting that actually sits on the wall. I feel that for centuries we have done that so our hand has become an extension of our thinking process. So I draw and I write something about the work to show the many ways of looking at it. It’s not only a thought that is fascinating, it is also about what happens to the thought in that particular location, what kind of meanings that it associates with and what happens to it. All these things somewhere, for me, have to be structured before I make a work. Then I know that I can make that sculptural work. So I still think through painting.

SD: In your opinion, how important is a viewer’s engagement with your art, if at all?

SM: It is very important. I believe that as an artist who creates an artwork I have a responsibility. Painting for oneself, bringing out your own thoughts, building your own character is one part. But what you do with all that you know is something that you play out there, and there is a certain amount of responsibility when you actually play with so many people who are going to view your work. The viewers engage with your artwork and, for me, witnessing that process is important. If, at any time, even if one person says that ‘I want to see your work’, it is my duty to open up my work, and to be able to explain it to them. That is my commitment.

The interpretation and the reaction that a viewer gives is a great wealth. I have different layers of viewership. One is within my circle in the studio that is very important – that is, within the group of people that includes artists or masons or carpenters; the next level is among very close friends who are creative people but not necessarily artists. They are the true viewers of my work at some level because they are critical, very articulate 66

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Backbone

Medium : Cotton Rag Pulp with Wood Charcoal.

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and they will say what they really want to say, which probably a large collective in the society may not say. Then there is the other layer of the exhibition space and the community. I don’t see them as somebody completely detached from the process or as somebody who would come and walk away that I have no responsibility to.

I really believe in the structure that art is complete when somebody views it. So the viewing is very important, and what they give back is very important, be it a positive or a negative note.

SD: What are your thoughts on the misinterpretation of art? Is there a right or a wrong way to interpret art?

SM: All interpretations are the best interpretations. If somebody says its rubbish, then it can really transform you in few years, isn’t it? You may go back to your table and think, ‘Okay, that guy misjudged you’ or even you did not think like that, that in itself can also transform you. Either it can change you if it is right or it can allow you to reconfirm that you are in the right path, but all reactions are important.

There is no misinterpretation. Basically there is nothing like bad interpretation. Every layer is important and we think we are the only ones in a complex space. There were so many people, few centuries ago, who were also in these conflicts, but they managed. Today if you look at those works on culture practices, the conflict does not exist anymore but the articulation around it is very much alive. That is more interesting than not allowing anybody to interpret they way they wish to interpret.

SD: How do you know when a work of art is complete?

SM: Earlier, this would have been a very difficult question to answer, but at this point of time, after 25 years of practicing art, for me, when your mind stops thinking – that’s where it stops. When it’s no longer a thinking process or alive in your mind, then you start decorating or you start pleasing it.

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For me, it does not matter if the artwork is dripping or getting dirty.

The idea has to translate into this space. The minute you feel that that’s come true and it is communicating, that is the minute it stops. And I am okay to stop there, and I know few people who are around my work, whether they are critics or people who appreciate my work or people who are thinking along with me, they have come to accept that – that language, that rugged roughness in my work. It is not a space of comfort or a space of pleasing. It is a space of thinking. The minute it communicates, the journey stops.

SD: One of your artwork’s that reflected from your journey to the Ganges is the “Backbone”. Could you elaborate on how the use of charcoal and ash as materials for this work adds depth to this piece?

The Ganges silts a lot. There is this high bank where the river flows in the middle, and it looks like this solid space even though it is moving. It looks like meat; it feels like that. And there is the reference of any river being the backbone of a culture, and there is so much literature around it. I did not want to get overridden by our emotions towards the Ganges or the rituals around it. I really wanted to witness it, as a woman today, and most of us witness the Ganges from the banks when you dip yourself. One never witnesses the Ganges from the middle. Flowing with her and witnessing was human centric in that sense. It is not the land point of view, but the water point of view that we wanted to bring in.

How do we actually bring in today’s problem in today’s context was challenging. We associate the Ganges today with pollution. Ganges may not survive very long because of the kind of high pollution that exists there. We think that people are dipping themselves there and that’s how it’s getting polluted. What I witnessed during my journey to the Ganges is that, at every smallest town that arises when you are in the middle of the river, there is a pipe sucking the water at the beginning of that town, and when you are at the end of that town, there is a big gutter flowing out the waste. Who is making this decision? The people who are propagating? The 69

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government body is supposed to clean sewage, but they are not cleaning, they are dumping it there.

Do we really blame people to be mindless about polluting it? In general, people, including you and me, are sensitive and why would we think that others are not sensitive because everybody is sensitive, in fact they worship the river. What makes them pollute is the mindless detachment.

They really don’t know. Even I don’t know where the sewage goes when we flush the tank. Is it being properly treated or not? But if you know that you are polluting that much, will you do it? Because in the earlier system, they all went to the back of the Ganges body and kept the bank clean and useable. Until the 20th century, the Ganges was not being polluted. It is only recently that the pollution has increased, and the problem exists due to the detached way of consuming and not being aware of what happens to the end part.

This is what I realized and I thought the best way was to make it in charcoal because it brings a new meaning, the new problems that it can incorporate. The challenge for me was not to use any material that is from outside when you are working around the Ganges. I wanted to use the material that was available and which is familiar to the river and it is usually flower, ash, camphor and charcoal and to turn them around to create a meaning.

SD: What is your current source of inspiration?

SM: I did one whole month of research on fiber optics and then being in Manipal was fantastic. Interacting with few of the people here opened up another universe of possibilities.

I have made five to six drawings of possibilities of using fiber optics and visual interpretative narrations. At the moment, that is my source of inspiration and I am unable to move beyond it and I am constructing them at my studio. I know that this will consume six to seven months of my time. But, this is the amazing part; every time something inspires you and you talk about it, another world opens up.

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SD: How do you feel when you are parted from your artwork?

SM: The work on an idea, which manifests, which allows you to become something, is a very interesting process and it makes you somebody from the day you start till the end. You become somebody along the way, and the day you finish that, it is over. It is no longer about watching it and appreciating it further.

There is something you gain even at the end of the work, and then you have to start that journey to the next work. For me as an artist, it actually ends there. It ends where you finish the work, and then you become the viewer. You become another viewer who has a distance to watch it.

Inhibiting another space wherever it goes where it becomes something else is another challenge. But, as a practicing artist, in my studio, it is important that I move on because the end is not the end at any point because it’s also a new beginning.

There is an idea that is already born from this work, so you carry that on to the other work. You cannot fill your studio with all your work, and that is why you make space for new work. It has to go, and I don’t have problems for moving on or parting from the work.

SD: It was a pleasure to have you for this interview. Thank you very much.

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Weavers of Phulia: The Fight to Survive a Photo Story

Abhishek Kumar

Phulia, District – Nadia, West Bengal, India, 2017 The handloom weavers of Phulia in West Bengal are either leaving the looms or are in constant debts as they have been pushed aside by the rapid growth of power looms.

A Tangail sari workshop at Basak Para in Phulia of West Bengal, India.

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The artisans work and stay in houses made of tin.

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Making of a Tangail sari is quite a slow process and it usually takes the weaver around two to two and half days to complete one sari, which fetches him something around Rs.400-500 while the same saree is sold for around Rs.2000 by the shopkeeper who purchased it from him.

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Tools used by the artisans.

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The Tangail sarees are similar to the Dhaka Jamdani sarees in technique, but softer in feel, with the motifs spaced out. The Phulia Tangail is woven in silk as well as cotton.

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Power-loom poses a tough competition for the handlooms made by these gifted artisans, as one power-loom produces around ten sarees a day. It is quite difficult to differentiate between the two fabrics with naked eye, as the market is flooded with power loom fabrics posing as handloom.

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The click-clack of multiple looms mixing with Bengali songs is music to the ears, but frequent power cuts make it difficult for weavers to carry on their work.

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Discussion in progress between a middle man and a weaver. The weavers receive their pay of Rs.400-500 per saree from these middle men.

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Kishan Chander, the sole employee of the shop, opens it every morning around 10 am.

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And the final product is up for sale here at a shop.

The power loom saris will survive for sure, but the question here is, will the art and artisans of Phulia have a future?

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When Pigs Fly / They Fly Business class

Prasanna Chafekar

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Crushed Boats

Pradeep Kumar

Medium: Ceramics 20 x 30 x 25 cms 2017

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Crushed Papers

Iron Shutters 12' x 6' x 10' 2016.

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Pradeep Kumar

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Documents

Pradeep Kumar

Medium: Ceramics 2 x 4 x 1 feet 2017

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SSRIs

Michael Varghese

50 mg.

This is your dosage. We’ll start with this and see how it goes. It should help with the anxiety and the depression, and, hopefully, with your thoughts and images too.

It sounds magical. Doesn’t it? A pill to make all my problems go away.

My psychiatrist is careful to explain that the pill is not magic. Not that the mechanism of it can be fully explained, but rather, I’ll still have all my problems; it’s just going to dim the lights, metaphorically.

Try not to miss your medicine. Get someone to remind you if you can.

Set an alarm. It’s very important that you don’t miss them.

It sounds so foreboding. My medicines work on the principle that certain things are out of balance in my head; they work out the kinks and let me function on a day-to-day basis. And also, they make me sleepy; they make me nauseous; they make it really, really difficult to masturbate. Also, I still get depressed; I still get anxious.

When I was thirteen years old, I was laying down on a sunshade in the dark. It was a thin bit of concrete meant to keep leaves and sunlight out of our windows. Lying there, I felt, for the first time, the weight on my chest. The air smelt of bleach and dead moss, and I wanted to cry. I called it my sadness. When I was eighteen, I felt it again and called it depression.

My first therapist diagnosed me with episodic depression, which I thought was bullshit. This isn’t episodic. I feel this shit on a day-to-day basis. Three years later, I would see her name on a plaque; she was a topper from the medical college where I was meeting my new therapist.

I’m still not okay though 100 mg.

I lose control of my rationality when I’m under a lot of emotional distress. I suppose everyone does. However, I tend toward self-mutilation.

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have a wound I can tend to, a burn, a bruise, helps me keep things even.

If I can just nurse this bit of blood and scabs, it’ll get better. I recognized this as a fallacy of my thought when I was younger, but it helped, so I kept doing it. A pattern built on false assumptions. On sad days, I can still feel my wounds like they are fresh; it could just be the cold though. Also, my mind turns on me.

I suffer, to use an inadequate word, from intrusive thoughts. They’re like worms in my skull. You’re worthless. You’ll never be a good person.

You’ll never be a good writer. Hit that man. Hit that child. Hit the wall.

Drink this. Smoke this. Run. Drown it all out. Liquor and cigarettes and love and video games. Clichés. A mix of learned responses and shared dread.

On bad days, my mind bleeds into my eyes. I see myself die in front of a truck. I see blades rip through my skin like paper. I feel the impact of bone and wall, of bone against bone, of bone against face. I see my fists covered in blood. Shame radiates down to my very soul. I don’t know these people. I don’t really think these thoughts. I don’t want to hurt myself, but my mind tells me that I do.

My psychologist tells me that it’s okay to have these thoughts. The first time, I looked at her like she was insane. Do you ever act on them? No. Well, except for the ones that involve hurting myself. Conditional, I can’t be an inconvenience to others because of it. So, why does it matter that you have these thoughts? They make me a bad person. Do you judge people for their thoughts? No. I judge them for their actions. It’s not the same thing.

She tells me that it is, and it takes me a long time to accept this.

150 mg.

I wake up sleepy every day. I spend approximately two hours every day trying to go to sleep. Under extreme emotional stress, my psychiatrist increases my dosage, just to be sure that I don’t flip. I’ve shown a lot of potential to flip. The meds make me ravenous. I eat because I absolutely cannot stop. Am I coping with stress or am I experiencing a side effect? I don’t know. I bloat. There’s one thing that absolutely nobody tells you about 88

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antidepressants; I’m telling you now. They destroy your stomach. For me, they make me nauseous and I fart, a lot. It’s annoying. It would probably help if I ate a more balanced diet though.

A friend asks me about antidepressants. His doctor recommended him some for his anxiety. He worries because one of the side effects is sexual dysfunction. I ask him how much he is taking and for how long: 5 mg for a week. Miniscule, in comparison. I laugh and tell him that there’s no reason to worry at his dosage and that I haven’t experienced much of a change. I worry.

I tell myself that my dosage is just a precaution; I tell myself that mental health isn’t measured in degrees or dosages; I tell myself that I’m okay with my meds.

In reality, I want to stop though.

100 mg.

The higher dosages tide over my moods. As I spiral, we work on breathing techniques. As I spiral, we talk about emotional regulation. As I spiral, we are taught how to use our wise mind. It seemed trivial. It still seems trivial, but it helps. We sit in a room and call it Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. We call it group therapy and share our feelings. We are strangers with open minds and closed hearts.

The regular dosage maintains my emotions at a manageable level. It blinds me to my thoughts for the most part. It slows things down for me so that I can manage to think things through and just stop myself for a moment. It’s a pain. Medication helps but it is medication. I feel robbed of my ability to be a functional adult. It’s a false argument though. I’m taking medication because I failed to be a functional adult. I’m sure my psychologist would not appreciate my thinking that though. The fact that it helps is just that, a fact.

On some days, I forget. I’ve starved myself. I’ve dehydrated myself.

I’ve kept myself awake for days. I’ve assaulted my body in many ways just to know all the different parts of it, all the different feelings. But, nothing compares to forgetting my meds. I wake up to a haze. My body is exhausted; 89

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I assume from adjusting to the change. My eyes can hardly stay open. Each movement blurs my vision and I can never move and think at the same time. It’s a pretty good method of self-correction for my oversight though.

My therapist tells me that I have to be regular. That these medicines need time. Forgetting to take them once undoes a month of punctuality.

She tells me that a colleague of hers was surprised that I was coming for group therapy. She saw me as empathetic, understanding and calm. She was surprised I needed therapy. I am happy, at first. Maybe I am a functional adult. Perhaps I am getting better. I think I might be pretending. I think that I am an imposter, a mimic of an ideal. Should I not be coming? Have I been wasting everyone’s time? Or what if I’ve been pretending to have problems all this time? I spiral. I stop.

It is a lot easier to recognize the patterns now.

75 mg.

The world seems rather grand when you’re sad. It shatters around you, scatters in near infinite fragments. The scale of your thoughts seems incomparable. The depth of your own intrusion into your mind, unparalleled.

Happiness is in little things, minutia—a message from a lost friend; A single memory; The feeling of your feet under you. The feeling of your own mind in your own body, a little bit at a time.

I’m getting better.

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Chirp

Imon Raza

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Streetlamp

Imon Raza

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Ode

Ujjwal Sharma

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The Press that Stood the Test of Time: a Photo Story

Abhishek Kumar

Gurgaon, India - 2017 Shri Shyam Sunder Press, established in early 1940s in Gurgaon has stood the test of time over these years.

The building that houses the printing press in old Gurgaon is in a very poor condition. It is the only active business in this double storied building.

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Kishan Chander, the sole employee of the shop, opens it every morning around 10 am.

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The shop is at a level lower than the road; hence he has to take care of things that could be easily stolen. He removes the bulb every night while closing the shop and puts it back in morning.

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We can find countless papers stacked together in the shelves which look like trash but aren’t. Kishan Chander says “These papers are what the shop sells. This ‘trash’ is what has kept the shop alive over these 70 years”

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Kishan sharing some lighter moments in the cramped space with a customer visiting his shop to buy papers required for his business.

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Due to space crunch, customers who are waiting in queue have to wait out of the shop. ‘One at a time’ is what he keeps on telling customers when it gets too crowded.

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Kishan Chander also takes orders over phone and keeps the papers ready by the time customer comes to pick it.

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An old fan that was functional till last month but needs repair now.

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Being the sole employee of the shop, he has to take care of everything alone. “If I keep the road clean then my shop will stay clean� says Kishan Chander.

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Over a cup of tea

Shaifali Johar

As I saw the theme of this issue of the journal, my imagination took flight.

Through my paintings, I wanted to illustrate how an artist can 'make pigs fly' even with a simple image of a stimulating cup of tea. Imagination flies with even the very first sip. The conversation over tea spurs imagination; the chatter can relax and leave out of the box.

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Over a cup of tea #1

Shaifali Johar

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Over a cup of tea #2

Shaifali Johar

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Over a cup of tea #3

Shaifali Johar

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Contributors Abhishek Kumar Abhishek is an independent travel and documentary photographer based in New Delhi, India. A computer engineer and an alumnus of IIMCalcutta by education, he worked with a major IT firm for 6 and a half years as a Mainframe developer. He is presently working on a personal project on sustainable development aimed to minimize the impact of plastic waste on our environment. Also, he is the co-founder of Fotoplane.com, a company dedicated towards bringing positive change in the society through visual content creation and its communication.

Amritha Dinesh Amritha Dinesh is a freelance writer based out of Chennai. She loves cooking, especially the challenging squid.

Imon Raza Imon Raza is a communication design graduate from NID, Ahmedabad.

He specialises in Films and Video communication.

His works have been curated at festivals like DIFF (Dharamshala International Film Festival). He originally hails from Assam. He believes that visuals and poetry are an interesting combination to communicate and he has been experimenting with visual poetry for quite some time now.

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Kandula Pradeep Kumar Kandula Pradeep Kumar completed his Master’s in Fine Arts in Sculpture from Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. He works freelance in Garhi regional center from Lalithkal Akademi in New Delhi. He primarily works with ceramics, terracotta, stone, wood, and waste material from his surroundings. He is attracted to observing waste materials and thinking about how he would use them in his work. He is captivated by the paper form, by the way that a gesture can speak to us. While his sculpted forms convey authentic paper crush feelings, they serve as archetypes that transcend the context of their naturality. Through contemplation of his imagination and contemporary presentation, he creates sculptures that explore spiritual truth through simplicity and beauty. He wrestles with paradoxical themes of suffering and redemption.

Kiran Nagarkar Kiran Nagarkar is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Ravan and Eddie, Cuckold (for which he won the Sahitya Akademi Award), God’s Little Soldier and The Extras, a sequel to Ravan and Eddie. His first book, Saat Sakkam Trechalis, written in Marathi and translated into English as Seven Sixes are Forty-three, is considered a landmark in post-Independence Indian literature. His play Bedtime Story and the screenplay Black Tulip were published in 2015. His novels have been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Marathi. Nagarkar has also written several plays and screenplays in Marathi and English.

Manasvini S N Having Art as one of her subjects in school, Manasvini gets to use her love for painting and sketching on a daily basis. Avid-reader and painter, she 109

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loves to people-watch and sublime the ordinary creating abstractions of reality through her art, with the help of a pan of watercolour and a sketchbook. She is a collector (of notebooks, art supplies, and literature), an ocean lover, and a music-junkie- who is always willing to exchange her extremely confused and varied recommendations in English music for yours.

Michael Varghese Refer to the Teatotallers.

Natasha Suvarna Sunlight fuels her daily movement. She likes making things out of scrap and hearing everyone's stories. She hates and fears small talk, so that leads to a bit of jhamela between the making friends with everyone and then running away from them habit. You can own her in exchange for Nutella, tiny creatures or Blue Lays. She wants to travel even more than she has using less and less to do so each time. Communities and living amidst them can make you understand and connect this whole world so much more, and she would love to keep doing that. The planet is packed with way too much to learn about, it's freakin great.

Nikhil Ravishanker Refer to the Teatotallers.

Prasanna Chafekar

This is Prasanna, and Art is his pursuit of existentialism. His day job is that of an architect, but his evenings are dedicated to making illustrations. He hopes to squeeze out the twistedness in our everyday lives through his meditations with Illustrations.

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Rhea Iyer Rhea Iyer is a writer and visual artist based in Mumbai. Likes to draw. Write.

Nitpick. Sing her hellos. Cocoons into blankets and retreats from the world on a sporadic basis. Is somewhat floaty. Slightly disillusioned. All dogs are good dogs. All cats are snarly and relatable.

Has no prior publishing credits.

Sahana Mukherjee Sahana is a final year PG student at the Department of English, Jadavpur University. Her poems have previously been published in Economic and Political Weekly, The Sunflower Collective, Northern Light, The Galway Review, etc. She was a Charles Wallace fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh in 2017.

Michael Varghese Refer to the Teatotallers.

Sarah Kaushik Sarah's current practice, as a Scenographer, allows her to constantly indulge in narratives and story-telling, the basis to every thematic exercise. She began working with digital montages, applying the same knowledge of building narratives, only in a two-dimensional space creating provocative juxtapositions to explore the concepts of Feminism, power, the country and the mysterious in single, yet powerful frames.

Sarah extensively use vintage imagery from India and beyond to create scenarios of the current times. These unexpected compositions address the boundaries between various social, political and cultural stigmas concerning our society, eventually hoping to achieve a tolerance for this complexity and diversity. For Sarah, the vintage finds are like chancing upon a rare gem in a forest - beautiful and priceless, holding stories within themselves, frozen in time and space. The color tones of vintage images, the slight 111

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blurry-ness and grains add a lot of texture and depth to an otherwise twodimensional graphic. The characters in her work take on lives of their own and she follows them, chancing upon varied topographies allowing wealth of diversity of meanings.

The collage of pictures arise through, what Sarah calls an “automated process”, presenting itself like serendipity, letting the thought and the visual find each other. She, has to be ready to capture the dialogue and create the spectacle. Ultimately, they represent a visual diary of her beliefs; the past and the present of her life. The Big Eyed Collagist is not just a mere stage name, it is an indeterminable identity to contradict the gender biased society, almost a rebellion. Her figures are dressed androgynously to transcend any gender expectations and stigmas attached to a specific gender. Sarah's idea is to bridge the distinction between a man and a woman, through the way we dress/look, as a satirical, punintended idea of portraying the very sad, abusive state of women, all across the globe. Ultimately, these compositions are to stir, evoke, provoke, to set on fire, to catch fire and to question the issues, order and disorder, politics and patriarchy and mull over them, awakening the society, but first, our individual selves.

Shaifali Johar Shaifali is working as an Associate Professor in Fine Arts at BBKDAV College for Women, Amritsar since 1999. She belongs to the city of the Golden Temple and has completed her formal and professional education from there only. She has completed her post graduation in Fine Arts from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, with Painting as her specialisation.

She has successfully completed online course “Modern Art & Ideas” by The Museum of Modern Art on Coursera and is now a certified Mentor for the same course. She is an avid researcher and is continuously engaged in the research on Mughal Monuments in Punjab.

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She has also completed a UGC sponsored Minor Research Project titled ‘A Critical Study of Motifs on the Western Gateway of NurMahal Serai (A Mughal Monument in Eastern Punjab)’. She is a spontaneous and intuitive painter who loves to play with colours in floral compositions and a photographer who loves visiting new exciting places to pursue her passion.

She is a trained jewellery designer from ‘Jewellery Product Development Centre, New Delhi’. She has published many research papers in national and international research journals and presented papers in many national and international conferences and seminars. She has been regularly attending various art and research workshops and courses as a participant and a resource person at places like Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Allahabad and Sri Lanka etc. She has been judging the fine arts competitions of different universities and has acted as curator of art exhibitions by private as well as government authorities. Her works are parts of many private collections.

Shanthamani Muddaiah Shanthamani Muddaiah currently lives and works from Bangalore, India.

She has obtained her MFA in Painting (1983-1991) from the M.S University, Baroda, and her Bachelor's degree in Painting (1983-1988) from CAVA Mysore University, Mysore. In 2004, she went on to learn paper-making in Glasgow under graphic and paper-making artist Ms. Jacki Parry under Charles Wallace Fellowship. She has exhibited her works in many museums, Biennales and galleries across the globe.

Shreeamey A. Phadnis Shreeamey is a heritage practitioner, currently working from PuneMumbai-Indore. He is an Architect and Urban Conservationist by training, and a founder associate of the design firm ‘Studio Gestalt’. He used to work as Conservation Planner for Mumbai Metropolitan Region – Heritage Conservation Society (MMR-HCS), set up by the MMRDA. He was Programme Coordinator for the Capacity Development Programme 113

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in Built Heritage Studies & Conservation (BHSC) at CSMVS, Mumbai; preceded by a brief stint with Theatre and Conservation Architect Ved Segan. He has also worked as Research Assistant for University of Toronto & National Film Board of Canada and interned with Cultural Resources Conservation Initiative (CRCI), Delhi. He has an M.Arch in Urban Conservation from University of Mumbai, and a B.Arch in General Architecture from University of Pune.

Shreya Srivastava Shreya is a nineteen year old medical student at KMC Mangalore and when she is not studying (which is most of the time) she likes to write satirical stories and poetry. She believes that there is a seriously hilarious and comically grim aspect to everything. In her writing, she likes to pin what lies in the peripheral vision and is often not extraordinarily spoken of.

She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the Billabong High School, the St. Joseph Convent School and has achieved a score of 4.5 A on the BMAT exam for her scientific essay in 2016.

Currently, she is in the futile process of making comics on Medical Subjects which require great observational skills and a terrific ability to crack bad anatomy jokes.

Srividya Devadas Refer to the Teatotallers.

Tanushree Baijal Refer to the Teatotallers.

Tanvi Mona Deshmukh Refer to the Teatotallers.

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Ujjwal Sharma Ujjwal likes to carry sketchbooks wherever she goes. She stocks up on pens and new art supplies in excess. Deadlines and she aren’t a good match.

Presently, she dislikes the hot weather in Manipal.

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The Teatotallers Editor-in-chief Mariam Henna Mariam Henna is pursuing her Masters in English at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities. Her works of fiction and travel have been published in Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, Children’s Magazine and Trip Designers. She is currently working as the Design Editor of Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, and an Associate and Design Editor at Strands Publishers.

She hopes to become a teacher someday and inspire a curiosity for learning.

Senior Poetry Editor Abhimanyu Acharya Abhimanyu Acharya writes as well as translates in both English and Gujarati. Several of his stories, plays and translations have been published in reputed Magazines, including Sahitya Akademi’s ‘Indian Literature’.He is a recipient of ‘Travel grant to young authors for cultural and linguistic exchange’ by the National Akademi of letters, and was an invited speaker, again by Sahitya Akademi, in the program ‘North East and Western Young writers meet’ in 2012. His story is included in an anthology published by National Book Trust. He is currently pursuing his Masters in Literature at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Karnataka.

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Senior Fiction Editor Michael Varghese Michael Varghese is a writer and poet. He has nurtured a passion for writing from his teen years. He has been featured in The Poetry of War & Peace, compiled by Brain Wrixon, and has self-published an anthology of poetry called The Abyss that Flinched. He attempts to grasp within language, ideas and thoughts that seem to be ephemeral and fleeting—emotions, static noise and introspective gaze. He aims to push the boundaries of his own ability to write. He worked as a Copy Editor at ansrsource India for a year. He finished his Bachelor’s degree from Christ University and is currently pursuing his Master’s degree at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities.

Assistant Poetry and Fiction Editors Tanushree Baijal Tanushree lives for poetry, books, peach tea, sunsets and Frank Ocean's music. Someday she would like to own Studio Ghibli socks.

Tanvi Mona Deshmukh Tanvi Mona Deshmukh is a part time writer and full time cat. She always has a book (or two) in her bag, and never says no to tea, puns, and fighting the patriarchy. Her work has been published by Berlin ArtParasites and Thought Catalog. She also worked as a journalist with the Times Group while pursuing her undergraduate degree in Pune.She currently studies English at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities.

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Amulya Raghavan Amulya is an avid reader of books, and reads anything she can lay her hands on. She spends most of her time contemplating ways to twist characters into her own world of fantasies and more often than not, pondering over life while wolfing down a jar of Nutella.

Dipto Roop Banerjee Dipto Roop Banerjee is pursuing his BA in Humanities at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities. He hails from Patna and has a keen interest in Literature.

He is a big time movie buff and also has a love for debating.

Kartik Mathur Kartik Mathur is pursuing his BA in Humanities at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities. His eclectic reading ranges from viking warfare to Greek mythology. he also enjoys discussing and debating on philosophical and social issues.

His Sundays are spent volunteering at local orphanages and old age homes.

Krutika Patel Krutika exists on coffee and books. Ironically, writing sad poetry makes her happy. She loves watching drama films and sitcoms.

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Senior Non-Fiction Editors Abbas Bagwala Abbas grew up in a small town. As he grew, the town grew. After growing up, he meddled with physics for a bit. Now he says he loves philosophy (and that he always has). Therefore, he is currently a philosophy student at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities. He also loves chess, and big ideas, and the ukulele.

Tanima Nigam Tanima Nigam was born and brought up in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh.

After completing an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, Tanima Nigam chose to pursue her fascination with Philosophy at MCPH. As an enthusiastic thinker and observer, she choses to philosophize in isolation. Being selectively social, she prefers not to disclose her academic writings to others.

As a student of philosophy, she aspires to discover a new branch of philosophy, which has not been discussed before by any theorist or philosopher.

Assistant Non-Fiction Editors Arush Kalra Arush studied Psychology, Philosophy and Anthropology at Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, and graduated in 2016. He took a year to backpack across the Himalayas and worked temporary jobs, and is currently pursuing a Masters in Philosophy from Manipal Center for Philosophy and Humanities.

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recently, Hindustani poetry. Having moved around a lot, he likes to call himself a "Cosmopolitan Punjabi." He believes he will be a good teacher, and hopes to become one soon. Finally, Arush deeply wishes that one day, he can fulfill his secret dream of opening a bookstore cafe somewhere in the Himalayas, and retiring to a quiet, peaceful, small town life, The Good Life.

Ashwini Hegde Ashwini’s dreams were stolen by the enchanting beauty of the tides on the sea shore beside her house in childhood days. Her glee towards meeting new people and learning new things has always kept her refreshing and alive.

Bidisha Mitra Bidisha Mitra has always had a keen interest in literature, languages, politics and music. As a result, she knows seven languages, including her mother tongue, Bengali, and plays several instruments for no reason at all. Her favourite book is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

Komal Arcot Komal lacks directional awareness and reverts to kindergarten level intelligence when doing maths. Her favorite flowers are marigolds and one time, she met a rather friendly sparrow. At this point, she should probably mention some of her more agreeable interests to make her seem distinguished, but is that really something she would do?

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Senior Visual Art Editor Srividya Devadas Srividya Devadas is currently pursuing her Masters in Philosophy at Manipal Centre of Philosophy and Humanities.

She did her Bachelors in Craft Design from Indian Institute of Crafts and Design. She was exposed to photography during these four years at Jaipur and eventually developed a passion towards it. She likes to capture the essence of the everyday and to pause that moment in time.

Assistant Visual Art Editor Pavithra S Kumar Huge dance enthusiast, and a lover of all things pretty. She usually spends away her time watching slam poetries and movie trailers.

Senior Design Editor Maithilee Sagara Maithilee Sagara is interested in Indian and Western mythology, Anime, Japanese Culture and minority studies, especially feminist and gender studies. She has been a part of AFS intercultural programs as a volunteer and a returnee since her exchange to Japan in 2011.She is fascinated by visual culture, and is learning art. She is a foodoholic and wishes 121

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to travel the world. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Literature at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Karnataka.

Assistant Design Editor Nikhil Ravishanker Nikhil Ravishanker is equally drawn towards music, art and literature. He enjoys talking obsessively about the anthropocene, and the current state of domestic cricket in India. He hopes to someday tie up all of his interests into a funny novel.

Associate Editors Malvika Lobo Malvika Lobo has a bachelor's degree in chemistry, physics and math. She loves reading and observing people. She'll read anything and everything. She's currently pursuing a masters degree in English literature at the MCPH. S Srinath S. Srinath is obsessed with unnecessary arguments which will neverbenefit anyone. A fat ass who loves watching and playing sports. And finally would help annoy his colleagues to the point of breakdown.

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Akanksha Majumder A crazy girl from northeast who is quite unpredictable.

Playing with colours and creative ideas could be said to be her domain. Unusual to find but freaks on pastel shades and red velvet flavour, at the same time an avid trekker and angler.

Laya Kumar Laya is a first year undergraduate student and is trying to explore the various realms of human expression.

Sania Chand Sania is pursuing her undergraduate degree in Humanities at MCPH and she has a fervent passion for Elizabethan literature.

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