Chaicopy RIPPLES Vol. 4 Issue 2 Nov. 2020

An MCH Literary Journal

RIPPLES RIP PLES

Vol. IV | Issue II | November 2020

An MCH Literary Journal

RIPPLES RIP PLES

Vol. IV | Issue II | November 2020

Chaicopy Vol. IV | Issue II | November 2020 Published by MCH Literary Club Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal, Karnataka-576104 Only the copyright for this collection is reserved with 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, 2020 Cover Art: Madhura Kar Cover Design: Samara Chandavarkar Layout and Page Setting: Samara Chandavarkar Team Members: Editors-in-Chief: Aditi Paul and Sre Ratha Fiction: Madhura Kar, Bhanusri Palle, Deepthi Priyanka, Madhumitha Arivu Chelvan, Sailza Kumari, Serene George, Shreya Jauhari, Shriya Adhikari, Sonia Sali, Uma Padmasola Nonfiction: Ajantha Rao, Divya KB, Jayaditya Vittal, Jishnu Goswami, Komal Badve, Sarah Hussain Visual Arts: Aparna Manoj, Lavya Joshi Illustration and Graphic Design: Jaqueline Williams, Udhisha Vijay, Aparna Manoj, Madhumitha Arivu Chelvan, Samara Chandavarkar PR: Francesca Fowler, Aashna Vishwanathan, Arpita Reddy, Eman Siddiq, Rhea Sakhardande, Sadhvi Hegde, Shriya Adhikari

Editorial In introducing this issue of Chaicopy, we also need to ‘introduce’ the year that has been: 2020.

The shape that our days, our lives, and our lived histories have taken this year has been something that has, in differing measures, confounded and amazed us. As students at the Manipal Center for Humanities, as a team at Chaicopy, and as citizens of the current global world, we have striven to understand how our actions affect those around us, how they bring about change, and for that matter, how change is shaped, defined and understood in itself. Change, after all, has been what 2020 can unequivocally be defined as.

It is this attempt to understand the world as it is that we found echoed in the works of our contributors. In accordance with what Chaicopy has always represented, we have tried, with this issue, to provide a space for writers to express themselves in a world that has been, for the past year, so chaotic and challenging. Thus, we present RIPPLES: an issue of Chaicopy dedicated to the small acts of resistance that invariably and crucially shape us, as well as the world we live in today.

Among the myriad of changes is one we are particularly excited about: this issue of Chaicopy presents for the first time a section dedicated to the story behind the cover art.

We hope the cover story acts as a gentle segue into the journal, and helps our reader engage with the questions this issue asks in a manner meaningful to them.

While the issue itself will cover this theme in its varied

connotations, we would like to take this space to address the changes we have experienced as students this semester. To that extent, this issue would be remiss without mentioning our dear faculty, who have consistently checked up on us, and have mentored us through an undoubtedly difficult semester for them as well. We would especially like to mention our Head of Institution, Dr Nikhil Govind and our faculty guide Dr Ashokan Nambiar. We would also like to express immense gratitude to Dr Elika Assumi for delivering a talk on ‘Writing as Resistance in Nagaland’ at the launch of RIPPLES and Dr Mohammed Shafeeq K for facilitating it.

Furthermore, this issue would never have been possible without the relentless support of the administrative staff at the Manipal Centre for Humanities who have been there to assist us at every turn, especially during any and all technical difficulties and issues we ran into while adapting to an online semester. From outreach to technical support, they have been there every step of the way and we would like to extend our deepest gratitude. So, we dedicate this issue to all those at MCH who have been tireless in the endeavours to ensure we have as smooth a semester as possible.

To our contributors, we would like to thank you for your cooperation and enthusiasm during the editing process. We are indeed overwhelmed by the amount of support that we have received. Chaicopy has always aimed to be a safe space which fosters communication and collaboration among people working in every aspect of the publishing world. This would, definitely, not be possible without you.

To our team: you have all been absolutely wonderful to work with. When we began ideating in the early days of June,

we were daunted by the size our team seemed to take the shape of. However, the perils of the year 2020 have also shown us the importance of teamwork. Without you, this issue would not have come to fruition. We only hope your experience was as enriching and fruitful as ours.

It is indeed a bizarre affair when we work with words all day long yet words themselves fail to convey the magnitude of our gratitude towards everyone who has been a part of this journey.

Dear reader, we now hand over this issue to you for your perusal. We sincerely hope you find within these pages a resonance that stays with you.

Warmly, Aditi Paul and Sre Ratha November 2020

Ingredients Fight or Flight | Cover Story | 12 Madhura Kar The Umbrella | Short Story | 14 Laya Satyamoorthy the token | Poem | 18 Abhiram Kuchibhotla Friday I’m in Love | Poem | 20 Arul Kirubakaran Different | Poem | 22 Mohaddesah Ladiwala Pause | Creative Nonfiction | 23 Madhumita G 'Fighting' for Our Rights | Digital Art | 25 Jacqueline Williams Battles | Flash Fiction | 26 Aashvi Shah Pushing Daisies or the Infinite Nature of a Shadowed Existence | Poem | 28 on visiting Drass to see war memorialized to weaponise trauma | Nonfictive Poem | 30 Malaifly

The Winter Congregations of Kolkata | Photo Essay | 31

Anamika Das and Ayush Ray Mother | Poem | 38 Language | Poem | 39 Nehla Salil

The Last Piece | Memoir | 40 Sonia Sali Leitmotif | Short Story | 42 Serene George Debi | Soft Pastel and Digital Art | 46 Anamika Das Hathras | Nonfictive Poem | 47 Raseela P A To be the perfect woman | Nonfictive Poem | 48 Anaga Sivaramakrishnan Bhagyalakshmi’s Maid | Short Story | 49 Uma Padmasola We Shall See | Short Story | 58 Sragdharamalini Das Hum Agar Nahi Utthe Toh | Typography | 65 Jai Bhim, Azaad | Typography | 66 Malaifly

Looking for Breadcrumbs | Journalistic Essay | 67 Arka Mukhopadhyay ecstasy – anaestheticized | Poem | 71 Malaifly Pink | Short Story | 73 Madhumitha A Chelvan Rigamarole of Resistance | Nonfictive Poem | 82 Ekasmayi Naresh Against the Tide | Acrylic on Canvas | 84 Madhura Kar brick by brick | Poem | 85 ember | Nonfictive Poem | 88 Harshita Kale Funeral Metals | Flash Fiction | 91 Roshni Raheja Playhouse | Short Story | 93 Niranjana H This is What History Will Look Like | Digital Art | 101 Jacqueline Williams

For Frida | Essay | 102 Jayaditya Vittal Dear Sylvia | Essay Letter | 105 Jhanavi Purohit Killing A Superhero | Short Story | 108 Ranju Mamachan ennui | Acrylic on Canvas | 115 Nidhin Joseph Service Lift: Out of Order | Nonfictive Poem | 116 Malaifly Bailed Trails | Poem | 118 Serene George On the Fence | Nonfictive Poem | 119 Vishakha Mandrawadkar losing lavender | Poem | 120 Madhura Kar Ecosystem | Digital Art | 122 Meghana Injeti The Contributors | 123 The Teatotallers | 130

Fight or Flight Madhura Kar “We are here but for a second, but our impact ripples through time.” ~Neetal Parekh Choosing to resist, through even the subtlest of actions, comes with a high price. One no longer gets to dwell in the comfort of one’s privilege and feign ignorance. More often than not, it is far easier to blend in than be the deviation. I was inspired to create a visual representation of the tension between these juxtaposing forces, and that is how Fight or Flight came to be.

The act of choosing between fight or flight rests in one’s hands. The tipping point between the self that fights and the self in flight often hinges upon the littlest of acts. There are days where I have chosen the latter. Having to incessantly stand your ground comes with its fair share of challenges.

However, each second of each new day brings in its wake a point where the choice waits to be made.

A choice also has been made on the medium. I have always loved working with acrylic on canvas. I find that the medium itself bears a striking resemblance to my life. It is through both that I encounter, time and time again, the chance to reinvent myself through my mistakes. And what better way to resist the voice in our head that craves perfection, than to accept that a work in progress is bound to be speckled with mistakes.

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The Umbrella Laya Satyamoorthy As I stood under the awning of a large historical hotel waiting for the rain to stop, I could feel the doorman staring at me, clearly a few minutes away from telling me to leave. On a regular day, I would’ve walked through the rain, and let myself get drenched to the bone because it wouldn’t have mattered.

I was pacing around, getting mud on a damp burgundy carpet that I’m sure has been cleaned and dried by now, praying for the rain to stop. I had an important appointment, and I tend not to have too many of those, so I usually try to be on time for them.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted an umbrella stand, with one red umbrella in it. Then the thought entered my mind – it would be so simple, almost too easy. I could take three steps towards it, grab it, and run. ‘The doorman wouldn’t care,’ I told myself. The big hotel probably doesn’t pay him enough to care. Maybe stealing this umbrella would be a small blow to them, maybe it would make him happy and he wouldn’t chase me.

This is when my mind began running. What if I steal the umbrella and a minute later an oil baron comes out, a real cartoon villain, also running late for a meeting, a far more important meeting than mine. What if he runs to his car, and in the two-foot gap between the awning and the street, his very expensive grey suit gets drenched. He doesn’t go back 14

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and get changed because, remember, he’s running late, and punctuality is very important to this oil baron who is probably also fracking in impoverished nations. What if he walks into his meeting, and the person he’s meeting with is another oil baron who also dabbles in fashion and cosmetics. The second oil baron is so put off by his shabby appearance that the deal falls through, and the evil oil baron loses millions of dollars. That would be justice, and I could make that happen so effortlessly, with one small act.

The clock was ticking, and the rain showed no sign of letting up. I was staring at my boots, and I noticed that the faux leather at the toe had started to flake. The doorman had taken a few steps forward and was now standing right next to me. My heart was beating faster, the rain seemed to be getting more forceful, and a light breeze was now in the picture. I was growing desperate, and my prayer clearly wasn’t working.

My mind started to run again – what if I steal the umbrella and a woman walks out, intending to go on a date with a person that she would’ve married. They would’ve gone on to purchase a nice house, far away from the city (even though they held great respect for the place where they fell in love).

Then the house catches fire, and the fire engines wouldn’t be able to reach them in time, and the house burns down.

What if she saw the pouring rain and no way to protect herself and cancelled the date? I could save her life, and the lives of her would-be spouse and that of their little dog. I could do that, with just three steps.

What if the hotel was owned by a corrupt corporate con conglomerate that underpaid its employees, flouted 15 Ripples

employee safety guidelines, and regularly attacked unions.

I could affect their bottom line. It would probably be inconsequential to them, but ‘a dent is a dent, regardless of how small it is,’ I told myself. A hotel this big had to be under the control of an unethical company. I tried to take out my phone and look it up to see if I was right, but I remembered that I hadn’t paid my phone bill in a while.

What if I made it to my appointment on time, what if I made a good impression, and what if I would be able to pay my phone bill this month, or buy some new boots? Doing this one small thing could change my life, it could change everyone’s lives.

Why shouldn’t I? Yes, stealing is wrong, and I could get in trouble, but at that moment I felt powerless, desperate, and tired. I didn’t want to be one of the dominos anymore, I wanted to be the person who pushed the first one, just this once. I felt every moment in my life where I was helpless, all at once, and I was angry. I was bargaining with myself and with my Gods – it could be a beautiful act; it could be the first domino in a wonderful sequence of events.

I was trying so hard to tell myself that it would be alright and that it was an act of resistance against the random acts of fate that had been pushing me around. I was trying to justify it because maybe it could be justice. I knew I was coming from a place of emotion, and that made me second-guess myself because I’d been taught that emotions encourage irrationality. I now recognize that while emotions do sometimes encourage irrationality, almost any significant action taken by a person is not just logical, or rational, it is largely emotional. Any step really worth taking will make you 16

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feel like you are on the precipice of diving into a completely different world, and you will feel scared or sad or excited.

Whatever you feel, you will feel it deeply and you can do nothing else but jump, land in your new world, and change it forever.

In the end, I waited for a few minutes. Sure enough, a couple of guests ran up to the hotel, luggage in hand, completely soaked. They stood a few feet in front of me, paused to look at each other for a second and burst out laughing.

The doorman rushed to help them with their bags and they exchanged pleasantries. They all walked inside. I walked three steps to my left, took a deep breath, grasped the thick curved handle, pulled it out of its stand, popped it open, and ran.

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the token Abhiram Kuchibhotla Rejoice! Tomorrow ends an era With the voyage of the millennium When the boat I sent from the gully As a child drenched from the rain Delivers the token of faith in its prow I see its journey in my dreams Tuned in, episode-by-episode Wondering where its destination lies Why I was terrified when I sent it I saw in the sewers, those stalagmite-filled tunnels Them accept our refuse, the balance of life at work Everyone sees the bizarre emblem of my naivetÊ sail by Take a look at the token inside and smile wide-eyed Plop! It goes into the lake, surrounded by plastic Idols and pictures divine, never-rotting corpses Drained by the pipes, it washes into a dry river Filled by the fervid quintessence of damned souls Those given obsolete ignominious funerals It passes seas and oceans as the victims of holy plagues Gaze from the depths with eyeless pitch-black sockets Going tangent straight as the planet’s horizon falls away Floating away into the aether, passing satellite-debris To the hidden moon-portal port of the civilized ancients

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An insect amongst the ships Coming from non-milky ways Aliens smirk at the paper boat But let it pass, after all Theirs carry tokens too To the colossal corpse in a faraway system A Vantablack painting bursting with light-pins Its neon-blue silhouette bearded, barefoot Adorned with wondrous flora of every kind Eclipsing every mighty mysterious mast Made from unseen brilliant materials My vessel drops a white jasmine Fresh, blooming and turns to ashes We know God died some time ago My condolences

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Friday I’m in Love Arul Kirubakaran I don’t always wear eyeliner (and a bit of lipstick) But when I do it’s on Friday nights, No one cares underneath neon lights, Strangers too busy dancing with me To say the c-word.

I don’t exactly feel like What the doctor said I was in 2001.

Beyond male, midnight tides under a rainbow moon.

I liked more than girls too.

Landing on foreign shores, My friends liked to ask if I was the c-word.

The question was sneered.

When I went to prom night Teenage promise unfulfilled, My friend asked me if I wanted To look pretty.

Being ‘pretty’ meant so much to me.

Her makeup experiments gave the finger to the binary.

She just thought I wanted to play David Bowie; Grinning into my phone camera I saw myself turned from lead to gold.

More than a boy.

And I pretended not to see The Cheshire Cat disgust 20

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In the table next to us The mascara in my eyes was a beacon, A torch to my mother’s tears and fears, Of erasing everything ‘normal’ before this.

My coral lips were a little handcuff for the boys Mockingly searching for one-rupee coins.

I soared above the blue and pink.

And now I’m in love with Friday.

No one cares underneath neon lights; Strangers too busy dancing with me.

Letting me be a little closer to myself.

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Different Mohaddesah Ladiwala There is a world around me Whose voice has gone from soft to loud – From whisper to shout, And incessantly, all this time, They kept telling me, “Why don’t you just accept and do What the rest of us do?

We promise it will make life easier for you.”

I grimace as I look down At the cuts and scars Of trial and error on my hands, But I look up – And smile at them, “Maybe you haven’t considered the possibility That I enjoy the pain Of being different.”

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Pause Madhumita G Those eyes, all of them, look straight at me. There are too many to say if they are cheerful, cynical or ordinary, but they seem to make me more queasy than earlier. The edge of my sight catches the ends of a dazzling blue-green saree...is that my mother? The face smudged behind her mask as the blazing lights and bright colours dawdled in the background, but I could hear the faint words slip through her mask and it inexplicably put me at ease. So yes, it must be my mother.

The fire is kindled opposite us. It is getting hotter by the minute and my legs are crying for a walk. The blaring music, the smoke, the heat, and the hovering embers are rushing me into a perplexed state of mind; but the fire, oh the fire! Fires never fail to enchant me and I can stare right into them for hours without noticing the time going by. I needed this today.

I gaped at the fire as it flickered through every unburnt piece of wood and charcoal – that right there – that is perfection.

“Time is up, is everything ready?” The priest yelled through my early morning trance and I have to confess, I am a tadbit irked (don’t let anyone know)! He is seated overlooking the fire and we are seated at a level lower than him. The rest of the guests are accommodated below the stage; there are groups of people standing at the doors on either side – why? Perhaps because they were not let in? Sigh! Some things just don’t change.

“The two of you should stand now”. I can feel my legs beading 23 Ripples

tears of relief or maybe it’s just the sweat. This is it. The man beside me would be declared my husband in a few minutes.

How am I feeling at this moment? No. No! Let’s not open that faucet. Red garlands were handed to us and here comes the cute (it actually is) feud I’ve watched in all my two-am movies. Amidst the hoaxed feud, adorable glances, laughs and smirks, an unidentified voice proclaimed proudly, “The bride should be the one to bend down anyway”. I twitched and looked around. Everyone around us, men, women, children and the elders – all of them stood six feet apart.

Their faces were secured behind their fancy masks and sanitiser bottles were hastily shared all over. The world has halted, humans are forced to stay indoors, life has become a battle of life and death, and yet, patriarchy finds its way in.

Hey patriarchy, it might have been your year or even your millennium, but today is just not your day.

Not today.

I looked straight up at all those eyes.

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‘Fighting’ for Our Rights Jacqueline Williams

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Battles Aashvi Shah

(Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence)

Gathering all her stuff, she packed her bags. She slid the shining red bracelet her late father had given her onto her wrist. “This will make you feel closer to me,” he’d told her, before he left for the battle. The battle that took his life.

Leaving was difficult. She’d stopped herself from doing it several times in the past. She didn’t have anywhere to go.

Having lost her parents years ago, she didn’t really have a place to call ‘home’. But she had made up her mind and there was no looking back. She had suffered enough of her husband’s abuse.

She left him a note, informing that she was leaving. Nothing else had to be said – he knew exactly how he’d tormented her. Her hands trembled as she shut the door behind her.

She knew she had to get out of there quickly. He was a smart man. If he set out to find her, he probably would be successful.

She pondered over whether she should go to the police or not. After a lot of contemplation, she went ahead and filed a complaint. She had nothing to lose, did she? The cops assured her that her husband would be punished for his sins.

She heaved a sigh of relief. Her father would be proud. He’d always taught her to be brave.

The onset of dawn the next morning brought along with it a stroke of tragedy. A person’s body was found at an 26

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abandoned site on the outskirts of the city. It was impossible to identify who it was, and the wounds and scars didn’t make it easier. All that was found was a shining red bracelet on the wrist of the corpse. Her father was right. The bracelet had brought her closer to him.

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Pushing Daisies or the Infinite Nature of a Shadowed Existence

Malaifly

grey. an interpretation of supposed lack of colour. a thought derived from the unseen vibrancy. a distinction made by a solitary stroke that really does matter. effort. being appreciated. being ignored. being allowed to assert its tone in a world dictated by colour. monotone is a judgement call. for hues aren’t what is seen but what was felt by the one adorning with grey. life. held captive by a muted expression. lost in the seemingly similar yet never the familiar. every shade is new. every stroke a nouveau attempt. fade to black. so scornfully said nonetheless, dismissed by a persistent shade of the 28

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undertone that is trivialized by the attribution of its existence to the monotony of black. yet, it strives to convey its unique tint. to make irrelevant the opinion of its nature as nothing more than a tarnished silver. until smudged into alleged insignificance by that callous hand. dissipating. yet lingering. stubborn shades of grey that fail to falter, flee or fade.

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on visiting Drass to see war memorialized to weaponise trauma

Malaifly

not to undermine the decisively final sentence of death nevertheless sacrifice extends beyond its grip the martyrdom of a mind of sanity of a full night’s sleep of security of trust of faith of the very will to live that was fought for but failed to be protected and cannot be seen in the victory portrayed in the bigger picture placed in the pages of history displayed 30

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The Winter Congregations of Kolkata Anamika Das and Ayush Ray The Shaheen Bagh protests spearheaded by women, began in New Delhi, on December 15, 2019. These were primarily organised against activities related to the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the National Population Register (NPR), and the then Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), which became an Act soon after. Characterised by collective energy and spirit, the sit-in demonstration stayed relentlessly alive till March, after which it was suspended due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the Shaheen Bagh protest was ongoing, a planned attack on the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University took place in December. A housewife residing in Park Circus, Kolkata, was one of the many who were left shaken after witnessing the brutality enforced by the police on the students.

Along with 60 other housewives of her locality, she started the sit-in demonstration at the Park Circus Maidan, January 7th onwards. The residents of the Park Circus neighbourhoods volunteered as the news of the demonstration spread via word-of-mouth and social media. Soon, women, children, men, students and others joined from areas as far away as Hooghly and Madhyamgram. Just like the Shaheen Bagh protest, the people who thus congregated ensured that despite police officials disallowing vendors from selling chai and snacks, and putting up shamianas during the cold January nights, the spirit and numbers did not drop. This is our attempt to capture this congregation through a series of photographs.

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Asmat Jamil on the left, participating in the sloganeering of the Park Circus maidan

The months of January and February in 2020, had been colder than the previous years in Kolkata. Students like myself got a call for congregating at the Park Circus maidan by a trail of other students, and the women and children we spoke to had arrived after receiving an invitation by friends or family – they knew the cause and they knew it was of utmost importance to congregate, so they did. Hardly anyone knew who initiated the sit-in demonstration, except for the volunteers. In my conversation with Asmat Jamil, who was the faceless initiator of these protests, she claimed that she did not begin or partake in it alone. “Without the women of my muhalla, my brother and the students, we would not have been able to voice our solidarity resting with the women of Shaheen Bagh or the students attacked at Jamia, AMU and JNU.”

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A young participant initiating sloganeering for one of the evenings

Children often accompanied their parents and older siblings on a regular basis and stayed overnight at the maidan

Children and young adults of all ages attended the protests, raised slogans and were informed about what might happen to them if their citizenship were taken away. Upon conversing with Zainab who attended the protest every day with her 6-month-old daughter, she said “I am here for her (pointing at her infant). I must answer her questions when she is older.

At least I can say I fought.�

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The demonstration participants demonstrated with Indian Nationalist symbols and named the gathering – Swadheenta Andolan 2.0

Songs that provoked memories of the Indian nationalist struggle were sung by women, men, children during the early months of 2020. Various symbols were invoked by the protesters to reclaim being a part of the nation that promised to function based on a secular democratic constitution, recognising that no individual shall be discriminated on the basis of religion. On December 21, 2019, Dr B R Ambedkar’s photo and the Indian Constitution were invoked at Lucknow’s Jama Masjid by Bheem Army Chief Chandrashekhar Azad, supported by the Muslim communities who were gathered for their prayers at the mosque. This incident was invoked regularly at the maidan as well.

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A student group gathered at the maidan. Students made the sit-in demonstrations witness widespread and enthusiastic participation in the months of January and February, 2020

A large number of students visited and spent their nights at the Park Circus maidan regularly. They helped with adorning the space with posters and banners, volunteered to help organise the crowd and also sang with the protestors. The poster held in the above photo says – Amra kagoj chaai (with a cross on the letter ‘ga’ in Bangla), which means “We want papers” and with the cross mark, it becomes Amra kaaj chaai, which translates into “We want work.”

A Park circus demonstration participant speaking about the identical sit-in demonstrations across the country to express solidarity

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In my visits, I was asked to either raise slogans or speak on the microphone about my views on NRC, CAA, NPR, assaults on women as well as on students, solely as a student. Anyone and everyone could take hold of the mike to speak, perform, interact etc. The facelessness of the demonstration was very new and radical for students and young activists, who quite often experience hierarchy in expressing their opinions and taking action in events of protests. The sheer lack of hierarchy in the maidan was reflected in the way in which men and women were seen taking care of each other’s needs and ensuring a safe and comfortable stay for each other, especially during the nights. The Maidan did witness performances and speeches by Moushumi Bhowmick, Kabir Suman, and former student leaders like Umar Khalid (currently, one among the 13 people who are forced in custody under the draconian UAPA). However, for the significant part of the day, women, children, and students attending the protests were in charge of conducting performances, speeches and sloganeering.

Women singing songs to invoke the spirit of the ongoing struggle

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Sit-in demonstrations similar to that of the Shaheen Bagh Movement in New Delhi were being organised across the country. Every day, at least twice or thrice, similar sit-in demonstrations by women that were taking place across the country were invoked and remembered with pride and joy, reasserting the expression of solidarity and of being part of a national movement. The demonstration in Kolkata – as that of other regions in the sub-continent – got suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many who opposed the demonstration expressed scepticism towards the reclaiming of the maidan. But, in the month of October this year, the same group of women once again reclaimed the streets of Kolkata to raise their voices against the damaging effects of the National Education Policy 2020 in support of students, the judicial custody of Umar Khalid along with others, and the central issue for which the congregations took place in the first place – the terror of the temporarily suspended process of the National Population Register (NPR) entries, eventually giving rise to the publication of the National Register of Indian Citizen (NRIC), fraught with dangerous and unconstitutional consequences, with the State’s free hand in marginalizing and excluding several minority communities in India.

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Mother Nehla Salil (Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence) Mother, You carry in you a weight Passed down to you from your mother, Passed down to her from her mother, That stretches and mutates into countless ugly shapes – Always kicking in your stomach Far after the ten little toes are removed Ten little toes that have to step into a world You see through pitchforks, hurdles, and flames Standing before it naked and petrified Thin lens of scrutiny Veiled questions that scratch into your skin, Leaving you raw with open wounds That never heal That never heal Will there ever be safety?

Shadowy figures that slink about in the night In the day, in our homes, At mall parking lots, You only hope and pray I never have to endure On my soft and milky skin blows and kicks that forever leave me observed in tones of black and blue You wish that my hair, soft and silky, Belongs firmly attached to my scalp Than tugged around mercilessly by the hands of those Who demand I perform silent servitude God forbid, my body be violated the way yours has been But it will...

But it will...

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Language Nehla Salil My tongue, like a river, snakes between two borders Spilling over clashing territories Each with their own customs, hopes, and illusions One tributary flows hesitantly Lulling over each syllable of her mother tongue Pausing over deep riverbeds, almost stagnant Each layer thick with the deposits of the past – Of sorrow, of aspiration, Of love Another rages endlessly Forging her way through foreign lands Acquiring alien ideas that feed multiple Streams of thought; she never dwells.

On her bank, I build settlements, On her bank, I raise my children.

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The Last Piece (For Adarsh)

Sonia Sali I am that last little piece in the jigsaw puzzle that finally makes sense.

If it weren’t for me, the picture you behold would definitely be a picture. But would you live up to see or make sense of the whole? Even if your imagination has given me away, pulling you to a side, to show you the complete picture without my presence being fitted into my place? I am that last piece that makes sense and over the years I have been told to fit in, curve myself, lean forward, submit a little, stoop very low and let the rest of the pieces take control over my sides so we could all fit rather well in unison and stay put for a long time at least for a while. For the longest time in my entire life I was submissive, let the picture oppress me, to stay, to make sense and be the final one that brought the “Whoa” in people.

Didn’t I like all that attention when people picked me to fit me in? Didn’t I possibly enjoy those moments when I and only I could finally make sense? Didn’t I enjoy the privileges I was offered, the fact that looking at myself for the first time, I didn’t make sense as to where exactly I could be placed but only could when everyone else was finally placed, smoothed and settled in? Didn’t I come to relish that ultimate moment when I was scrambled for and fitted in with all pride and dignity? I did. I did a million times. It’s been so long, 22 years to be precise and I am bored, I wanted some spice, some aroma, some mystery, something different. I wanted to be that piece that went missing under the table, that caused 40

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all the trouble, that was the sole reason the puzzle was left incomplete and the piece that had broken sides so as to be replaced, changed and maybe even thrown away so I could somehow see the backyard, lie in the pile of junk that went to the junkyard to be recycled, smashed and transformed to something else- maybe a flat piece of plastic or just a stupid piece so I could lie there in the yard and watch the world go by. If I had bad sides, too obstinate to fit in with the rest, the picture on my face faded and insipid I would be the change won’t I? I would probably be the reason why “they” thought it was high time for a change of jigsaw puzzle and tried a hand at scrabble or chess or simply gone to get a life outside of jigsaws, puzzles and pieces.

I was told to fit in but what if I pushed myself to the edge of the table to fall down and roll under the table to lie there dusty and unpicked for a long time – I would be the resistance that brought change, won’t I? I could give jigsaw some time alone, I could be the reason why jigsaw had to be locked again in little Joe’s cupboard for a long time, maybe for another 22 years. Maybe I could lie beneath here, swept out very soon into the backyard and be gone for good – for ‘Resistance and Change’. Just a little Resistance and Change’ from my rather boring fitting-into-the-jigsaw-puzzle life. And to simply be gone to get a better life. Something a little better.

41 Ripples

Leitmotif Serene George The first time I saw her was not memorable. It was early, the smog post for the day unusually high, the sun almost moonlike in casting, pale and flat. She was with the new batch of workers heading for the farms, another white-capped head checking into audio ports. Just another voice. It was only into noon that her bleached hair caught my eye. Her form blurred through the windows of the inspection desk I never bother to clean, white and lump-like with soft edges. Like how father said marshmallows used to look like. “When we get to the outskirts and camp out, I’ll show you,” he used to say. When we get to the outskirts.

Perhaps that’s why I never checked her recordings. Travis cleared her and did for months till she started singing. I remember that day so brightly, so definitely clear that it leaves me dizzy, like a sudden blinding flash of white that for that moment disturbs your perception, disorients it. It was not a pleasant feeling. In fact, in hindsight it was terrifying. But all I thought then was that it was so exhilarating, that I would do anything to keep feeling that way. It was nearing the log check and Travis had asked for an early night. He had worn a yellow hat, slowly waving it around before snugly fitting it back onto his head. “Mami got it on a sale. Two for one,” he grinned, whooshing it around, “Two for one!” I had nodded good-naturedly and felt better about staying back. It was at the blur of yellow, her voice flooded in.

“Has the flower I sowed in your living room started to grow?

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Those petals I imagined would remind you of the blushing red Of your babe’s ears on cold nights” My heart had clenched, the roving warning lights beeping on my monitor. Travis’s worried face hovered over me. Wear your hat, I remember thinking, wear your hat.

“Your general vitals have been regular for months now.

Even the complications we expected from your legs never happened but this is... Do you know of any of your blood relatives having heart problems?” The automated voice of the health inspector is monotonous but I can hear his consternation. After all, I was his miracle survivor. Not many come back after losing two legs and everyone they knew and loved turning to ashes in front of them. “It shows resilience,” his voice would state at the launch of his specialized hover chairs. “And that is what it takes to be compatible with my device in the long term,” he declared while spinning me at centre stage to blue floodlights. I would always be given a small section of time for Q&A and the several other automated voice students of his would turn their audio probes towards me, eagerly fascinated. The session always ended up about the end of it all and like always, I would offer to read my aunt’s log of the week of the Last Felling.

It is Day Three, I read. I woke up to the steady revving of the chainsaw. Powerful. Unstoppable. I lay still, refusing to let my body show wakefulness. The women were working alone in the kitchen, the sound of clanging metal muffled by the roaring of the machine. My legs tingled with a rush of blood, fear, and awareness, prickled like micro-sized ant bites. When did it start? How long have I been asleep? I was 43 Ripples

bites. When did it start? How long have I been asleep? I was supposed to be awake before it started. Casually linger around the old wall, black and crumbling with dead moss, catch their attention and try to make it stop. Shouts of “Wake up! Wake up now! It’s too late!” stubbornly screeched to be heard, pushing out insistently above the background of the constant buzz.

I peered through the top row of windows left open last evening. My blurry eyes went in and out of focus, the rising film of translucent white a shrouding veil. There were two more of them today. My mouth was sour; parched and sticky with the white gas that slowly rose from the forest. The green was clearing. The realization was a lurch of shock. The skyline to the left, plain and white with cursory blotches of blue was now visible. The sun streaked in through the gaping crack, boisterous and brash, a prompt usurper extending his empire, the beams of heat piercing straight into the room. I now felt the heat, radiating in waves from the corner of the room; saw the bright specks of lightening white light reflected in the mirror dancing rampant, drunk and high, on the walls of the room. I kicked off the sheets tangled like ivy, rushed forth at the rising smoke. Bellows of bulbous, mushroom clouds rose from heaps of scratchy shrubs, hacked into a hill. I was distraught. I am distraught. I did not think of fire.

The desperate pity choked me like smog rising in my chest; guilt a heavy rock beneath my lungs. The smoke drifted to my window. My eyes stung with irritation, eyelids refusing to open. Pathetic tears rushed in. It was the smoke.

That is when I heard it.

It was a majestic groan, the cry of a thousand wood splinters, the wail of a lion struck down, the pain and sorrow 44

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of a thousand souls. A flurry of murmurations rose to the insipid sky; ungeometric, unaesthetic, and without grace.

I watched motionlessly, glaring against the pillars of light shooting through the smoke, with pulsing eyeballs. I stayed still until the smoke cleared. I then saw the felled corpses.

The trees that lay still as the men molest. Pulling, hacking, sinking their axes in, moulding and shaping as they pleased.

The field laid still, eerily silent with its guts pulled out, vines and roots like gnarled intestines recklessly raked with blunt blades. All that remained, all that remains is a harvested corpse, a bloodbath of excavated dirt, a gaping mouth of red straining to hold itself open, jaws unhinged.

They never speak after I read and I can barely sit straight.

There would be few who recognize the words of the writer, the poet, the singer who lit herself in flames. Others who just look confused and appalled. That was the only page of her writing I could ever bring myself to read. Her very last entry.

I hear the whispers of how could she? Why not something else? All I could think about is how could I read anything else but this? I survived. I needed to read this and not words that were written when the world was green and full.

When I go to the inspection centre the next day, Travis is waiting for me. “That was her song wasn’t it?” he asks outright.

I nod. We don’t speak for the rest of the day. But when he’s dispatched to the next booth, three walls away, he whispers through the audio probes, “She’s from the outskirts. They call her Blueberry because she had the Version 1 body probes.”

And for the rest of the day, I imagine her skin – a soft, sinking mass of white with pert purple blotches of bruise dotted across her spine.

45 Ripples

Debi Anamika Das

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Hathras Raseela P A ‘Put on the mask. The thick layered one,’ mumbled someone from the dark.

‘Oh yeah. The virus. I am sorry.’ (a laughter...)

‘No, the smoke. The skull will explode soon; the odour will suffocate you. The watchful eyes are fuelling it.’

‘The what?’

‘The pyre...the lone pyre, in the field.’

‘I can’t see you.’ ‘What are you?’ (a sigh...)

‘The daughter; I’m the latest of India’s daughters.’ (a lullaby heard from a distance) (‘Hush, little baby don’t say a word... Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.’)

‘Where am I?’ ‘Hathras.’

‘Shall I get you flowers?’ (silence...)

‘Write me an epitaph. Mark me on the land.’ (a breeze drifts...)

47 Ripples

To be the perfect woman Anaga Sivaramakrishnan Tie them up, fine and tight, no, that’s shabby, Look at those strands out of place, oh my!

Clip them up, don’t let them escape Better, now wear these flowers and smile.

A string of orders is let out by them Why? To ensure that my hair is in place And I play my part as the good woman well.

It seems insane, doesn’t it? Hilarious even?

They look at my loose locks as a threat They don’t like it flowing down my back.

No, my beautiful curls are asked to be tied up So, they lose themselves in those braids, Oiled to perfection, decked with too many flowers With clips and bands holding them back I feel imprisoned, my beauty lost to norms Where they decide if my character is good, If I’m homely and sweet, diligent and graceful.

A good woman doesn’t do that, they say, Doesn’t let her tresses out, free and flowing.

But they never expected me to put up a fight To ignore their constant jibes and be myself To let my hair down, curly and bouncing along.

Maybe I don’t fit in as the perfect woman But my curls do give me a unique charm.

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Bhagyalakshmi’s Maid Uma Padmasola I take my evening walk, a shawl around my shoulders.

Carefully, sedately. I can see what everyone sees when they see me. The children ignore me. Some adults give me respectful nods, as do the old men, and the old women smile sorority smiles. It’s not that I know all of them. I don’t even know all the neighbours on my floor, some of them I rarely see. There’s that young couple in 512 who probably wouldn’t interest themselves in the people here even if they didn’t work late every day. Although, I heard the girl is part of a kitty party; likely one that Tarini Agarwal is in. Take any kitty around and it’s likelier that Tarini Agarwal is part of it than not. She hankers after investment jewellery.

There aren’t many families here, not when you hear of those complexes with three hundred plus families. But it doesn’t matter how small the place is, or how few the families. They won’t know each other or what goes on in each other’s lives, each other’s houses, regardless. The apartments are like those American suburbs where people are kidnapped and kept in basements and nobody gets to know. Now they’re making horror movies set in American suburbs, except here it’s not as bad. But people don’t know half the things that happen behind closed doors. Families are not extended beyond the duplex penthouses of the top floors. There are no courtyards, only the sandpit for the children, the basketball court for the young, and the unkempt lawn edged with benches for the old.

49 Ripples

I draw my shawl across my chest and put a finger to the bench before sitting. I hate how slick the varnish makes the slats of the bench look. Once, they had been rained on and I couldn’t tell until I’d already sat – although it’s partly my fault because the ground had dried only in patches and it should’ve occurred to me to check. Now it’s a habit to check, even on days that it didn’t rain.

Sunitha is on the other end of the bench, reading Aadivaram.

She glances up briefly with a smile and shifts closer. There’s a heroine on the cover; I look at her – all blouse and midriff and straight hair in a step-cut – and feel self-conscious.

“I’ve had enough of this maid, I tell you,” says Sunitha. “She said she’ll show her face this morning and I waited until the afternoon. She can call, no, and tell she won’t come? I would’ve at least washed the dishes then. She can send her friend, the one who does Sharada’s house, for one day no?

All the work is left like that only, I did some dusting, that’s it.”

She pauses expectantly. I wonder if I’m supposed to offer to send my maid over, but realise she wants me to complain too. “She won’t overturn the clothes when she dries them, and now all my dark colours have faded.”

Sunitha tuts sympathetically. “They’re useless, these people.”

There’s silence for a while. A toddler toddles for toddling’s sake and keeps falling harmlessly. A moment of surprise, of admiring the grass stains on his dimpled knees, and he’s up and toddling again. Every squeak of his boots has his mother turning to look at him, hands folded, standing to the side.

She starts forward when he falls but ultimately, he gets back up on his own.

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“Mrs. Peri’s younger son has come home for the holidays,” I say eventually.

“Mrs. Peri,” mocks Sunitha.

“Arey, what do you want me to call her? I don’t know her first name.”

“What kind of a woman introduces herself as Mrs. Surname?

I bet you she accompanied her husband on a work trip to America for a few months and now she’s got airs. Mrs. Peri it seems. Well she doesn’t put sindoor, very modern she is, so maybe it’s just as well she calls herself Mrs.” I shrug, annoyed. I don’t feel like talking about Mrs. Peri.

“Engineering, no? I thought he already finished.”

“No, that’s the older one,” I say.

“Aha. What’s this one doing?”

“Engineering only. But here, in Hyderabad.”

“Which college?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Enough, okay.” I pat her shoulder. “I wonder who he takes after.”

51 Ripples

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Sunitha isn’t impatient anymore; she’s hunched, her cheekbones tightened. She’s excited.

“What?” I say, uneasy.

“He’s chinki, ra.”

“Pfft, no.”

“He is. He’s her nephew. Her brother married a foreign woman when he went to do his Ph.D. What the family went through, I can’t tell you. Only son of his parents. Total nonveg, what all they’d eat. I can’t even tell you.” She shudders to emphasise the point. “And she used to wear such short dresses! You’ll never see anyone dress like that here!” She shakes her head, widening her eyes, cheekbones twitching. “If they were going to live like that, better stay there only no, why come here. Anyway, they both died. Accident, car crash. He was driving. I’m sure she led him into drinking…” She continues dreamily, “Then the kid went to the Peris as near family, but she won’t tell anyone. Of course, why will she go around announcing such a story? Why will she want to remember also, paapam. So, she calls him her son.”

“He’s an orphan?” I don’t want to believe her. But I know her; some substantial part of the stuff she relays is truth.

“Half Chinese,” she says, wanting to elicit more shock from me.

“How do you know?” I’m defensive on his behalf, I don’t know what for. That boy doesn’t even greet me when he 52

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sees me, and we’re on the same floor.

“How do you not know? He’s on your floor no?”

I just shake my head. He doesn’t look chinki. He’s quite fair, of course, but that’s expected of Brahmin boys. A pall steals over me. It feels late even though the evening is still bright. I wish I knew… something of it. “He’s on my floor only, but still.

Nothing, okay. Do you think his mother talks to me? She’s in her own world.”

Sunitha purses her lips and pushes them to the side, creasing one cheek. She dislikes Mrs. Peri heartily.

“Nobody knows anybody here,” I continue, “People don’t talk to each other, you don’t even see them sometimes.”

“You don’t get to know the neighbours by talking to them,” says Sunitha, “but by talking about them.”

We cackle good-naturedly.

“Maybe it’s because the chinki one is so fair,” she continues, “that she puts on so much powder. She wants to look like his mother.”

“Arey she just can’t judge the right amount of powder.”

“She sheds powder from her face like dandruff,” scoffs Sunitha. “That too she’ll put on so much just to come look at the vegetables.”

I think for a moment. “If not then, when will she wear? She 53 Ripples

doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Both her kids are off to college. What is she doing, sitting and laying eggs at home?”

I tell her I don’t want to talk about Mrs. Peri, and she good humouredly begins talking about Bhagyalakshmi’s maid.

I already know about Bhagyalakshmi’s maid. I often see her, very small for an eleven-year-old, peeking over the counter with apprehensive eyes, hair shorn close to her head (because children like her get lice easier than normal children, Bhagyalakshmi claims). She periodically gets sick of being stuck in the house doing housework and runs away for a while, never further than the downstairs grocery store. She hides under the counter and watches for Bhagyalakshmi.

The countertop is marble but the sides are wood, and she claws the sides idly with one hand, fingernails scrabbling that edge until tiny wood shavings curl out. Once, I was waiting in line and when my turn came at the cashier’s, I saw scattered wood shavings in front of my feet, and I kicked lightly at them, scattering them further.

Everyone knows that’s where she goes except Bhagyalakshmi; it reminds me of Uttara who didn’t know her husband was cheating on her but everyone else knew and that’s mostly why it was so embarrassing for her. Anyway, nobody tells Bhagyalakshmi where she is, they all pretend not to know and say “Arey, kids are always running around, who’ll notice?”

The cashier feeds her and occasionally pats her on the head.

I’ve never patted her even though her head might be fuzzy and she might not mind. When Bhagyalakshmi says, “But she’s not like other kids, why don’t you notice?”, they all use the excuse of children who’ve been to Tirupathi. This is very 54

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tenuous because children offer their hair at Tirupathi when they’re much smaller than Bhagyalakshmi’s maid. Some of them use the better excuse of children whose heads are shaved every summer. Once I asked Veda (who is Ramani’s daughter, Ramani of A block seventh floor who is pregnant again): Gundu papa va nuvvu? Are you a bald girl? Veda is only two and she’d had her head shaved, so putting on the voice I use to talk to babies I asked. Veda shook her head and said “Veda.” I am Veda, not a bald girl.

Sunitha says someone finally complained.

“Good, good.”

The child protection people came and told Bhagyalakshmi she can’t keep her. Bhagyalakshmi said the child was one too many mouths to feed for her parents, who gladly left her with Bhagyalakshmi knowing she’d have food and a roof over her head. And it’s only right she earns her keep. The child protection people said, nothing doing, child labour is against the law and so is not sending her to school.

“So now the child is gone.”

Yes, gone to social services.

“Doesn’t that mean an orphanage?”

It does.

“Is that really better?”

Sunitha shrugs.

55 Ripples

Today morning they sent a circular with the newspapers, saying not to employ children and report if we see anyone making children work.

“Who is the one who complained, by the way?”

Vasanthi. And Sunitha knows because she was with her at the mall that day. There was a woman, with her child, and the other child. The other child was pushing the pram and window-shopping while they shopped. She had to lift her arms to push the pram because she was shorter than it.

Seeing that, Vasanthi said, “Her arms must hurt,” and Sunitha said, “Definitely, lifting your arms makes them hurt after a while even if you’re not pushing anything. And if you’re also pushing something, well.” And there was a moment when the other child lifted her arms and looked away from the display cases to the ceiling, several escalators high. When she looked down, her gaze settled on them. Sunitha glanced at Vasanthi, who looked at the child, who looked back at Vasanthi.

Then Vasanthi pushed her chunni up on either shoulder and strode up to that woman and said, “You know you can’t” – and pointed to the other child, who didn’t point at anything to say she wanted it. She only took the chance to cross her arms and press them to herself as though squeezing a pillow, or a doll. Crossing aching arms makes them feel better. “It’s illegal,” Vasanthi said.

The woman said, “Who are you to tell me, I am the DSP’s daughter.”

Vasanthi said, “Then all the more you should be responsible.”

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But the woman had already turned her back, clacking away without a care, with her child in a handhold. The other child followed her after one last squeeze of her arms, stealing a glance at the flowers in Vasanthi’s hair – fresh jasmine brushing the nape of her neck.

That woman might have been the DSP’s daughter, but she wasn’t like Bhagyalakshmi and did not live in the same apartment complex. Vasanthi wouldn’t have to face her again and that’s why she confronted her. But she was so angry after how it went, after not making a whit of difference, that she came home and immediately phoned the child protection people about Bhagyalakshmi’s maid. “And that’s how come she complained,” concludes Sunitha. “Googled which number to call and all.”

I say it’s getting late. The pall has spread from me to the sky around me, darkening. I walk back, carefully, sedately, pulling my shawl tight around me. I wonder whether Mrs. Peri’s son is chinki. A pity if he is. Tall, fair and slim like he is, he’d make a good groom, but not if he’s chinki, of course.

The Peris could hide his blood. Yes, I thought, lamenting that I wasn’t close enough to Mrs. Peri to suggest it to her; they could say his mother had been North Indian. Put that in Telugu Matrimony instead of getting matches through family circles where the word would have already spread.

57 Ripples

We Shall See Sragdharamalini Das Lazim hai ke hum bhi dekhenge… drifts from someone’s earphones.

I sit here, waiting. Ma used to sing, hum this song. You know… just like that. I don’t think she knew what it meant. What it really meant. I look around. Sometimes, it just seems all the same. The spacious room, sprawling under pendulous orbs and spider plants. Hanging, never swinging. Still. Focal points – firm restraints – of lavish simplicity. It’s all there and yet, there’s nothing. These gambits of minimalism! Only ONE stupendous centrepiece is allowed. The rest must dissolve into welcoming space, and warmth, and care. Poised, and pretty. So calm, it almost feels tyrannizing. They seem all the same.

Yet, I quite like this restaurant. But that’s only because, this is where he touched my hand for the first time. It’s curiously inane, but I had always imagined fingers burn – they melt and fuse, at the first touch. But he’s very composed and that is something I really admire. I wish… I could be more like him.

It’s a five-minute walk from his office. So, he likes it here.

“Hi!” I’m smiling. Hi’s and smiles go well together. So do the two us. I think we go well together. He says, he understands the world and I understand him. Fair enough. Mostly.

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He’s wearing that shirt again. He loves wearing it – maroon red with these tiny white anchors printed all over. I can’t say I am particularly fond of it but – “No. I’ll just have French fries.”

“Yes, I’m sure. How was your day?”

He speaks and I know he was waiting for this question.

“I understand…”

Sometimes, I feel… we don’t talk about ourselves enough.

Anymore. You know, us… But then again, all these troubling and serious things keep happening to him. He looks so tired.

“You know, today –” “Yeah, yeah, say…”

Sometimes I feel unsure whether I’m listening to him or to the voiceless thoughts that pound their way through my mind. There’s no certainty in what my mind is weaving. But something there is that refuses to stop at times.

He is admiring the vase before us. He thinks the fuchsia pink asters are quite striking. I stare at him in disbelief. Does he not remember?

“Yeah, they are. I think so too.”

I really do. It’s not like I’m overly fond of this shade but I did own a shirt of this colour once. Ah! He had just returned from Pune and I was seeing him after almost a month. He saw my shirt and said it’s too loud. Well, I knew that and I usually don’t wear such shades. But I don’t know… I just somehow 59 Ripples

happened to really like that shirt. I shrugged his comment off, but he kept bringing it up. After a point I told him that I like wearing this shirt and I will and made a funny face. I was sure that would make him laugh! He didn’t laugh. Neither did he talk much for the rest of the time. Must be feeling exhausted, I thought. But he called me quite late that night and told me I had hurt him. That I didn’t care about how he felt. But I did! I did! I loved him! I loved him. I liked my shirt. But I loved him. Of course, I never wore it after that. Ah! He doesn’t remember, I see. The food’s here.

“No, nothing else. Thank you.”

Mmm… I totally love this garlic aioli sauce. I really love garlic, to be honest. Take the worst dish ever and infuse the aroma of garlic – two girls move past us. Giggling. One of them looks quite stunning. Well, I love sharis and she… is wearing a white hajar buti Jamdani – her sun-skimmed, coir skin, gazing from a misty-black blouse with a deep, rounded back. My eyes glide downwards – the two of them are holding hands.

Probably not for the first time. Yet, I sense a cinder glittering, glazing, smouldering, somewhere between the folds of her shari; the silent promise of charring the floor, these walls, that roof, and all that’s around – burning in the Shauntali beats of crimson blossoms, blooming against the Stygian curtain of forgetfulness. What happens when – HUH! SLEEVELESS! His words jar me back to our table, ring in my ears. I look at him. I am looking at him. He speaks. Of promiscuity and what… I forget. I look at the empty walls – pale smoke paint all around. These minimalists… they keep sermonizing about decluttering. I wonder what it would mean for me... What will I throw out? Wh– SHAME! He’s still muttering. But I’m far away and can’t help 60

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but smile. Sleeveless was what I was wearing when Pablo whispered to me on our school farewell, “Mishtee lagchhe.”

You’re looking so sweet. Did I blush? Can’t recall. I must have!

Photos from that day used to be on my Facebook Timeline. He didn’t use Facebook because you know… he was different.

But someone showed him my profile. He had called me. I removed them. He was shocked that I, of all women, could have worn a sleeveless kurta. Did I know the winding path of men’s gaze when women, wearing sleeveless clothes, get up on the bus? He goes out on the street and seldom sees men donning sleeveless. Did I think men didn’t sweat? Does removing a small sleeve really help under the scorching sun? I agree. The removal of a small sleeve doesn’t change much. Then why did its absence bother him so? I wondered.

But back then, I had never travelled alone. Not even to buy a packet of garlic paste from the mudikhana opposite to my house. He understood the world and I tried understanding him. He never demands anything. He doesn’t have to, for I give it anyway. Give in and give up. I gave up wearing sleeveless.

It was noon. I was about to take my shower when my phone had started ringing that day. After he disconnected the call, I kept staring at the pale smoke grilles of my balcony. On the other side of the street, there was a Radhachura, laden with bright yellow flowers. It had been there since I moved into our neighbourhood. As a child, I would fleet around all afternoon but once in a while, I would go into the balcony and stare at that tree. There also used to be a pink Bougainvillea beside it, which they would later maul down. I anyway loved the Radhachura more. Sunny clusters, bowing in mirth. Bowing in mirth? That’s what I saw. But then my eyes fell on the sooty remnants of wax on the grilles from last Kalipujo. I’ll clean 61 Ripples

them someday. I still haven’t.

My eyes fall over his shirt again. Red, and all anchor. I can’t say I am particularly fond of it but I guess I have never known how to express myself fully. And how can I when – YOU’RE DIFFERENT. BETTER THAN THEM ALL. JUST LOOK AT THE WAY YOU DRESS. I FEEL LIKE BRINGING THEM ALL TO YOU AND – his voice rises up, it’s everywhere – marching along the footsteps of the waiters pacing up! And down! And right!

And left! Everywhere! His voice – thumping with the glasses against the table, the feet against the floor. Loud. So loud. His voice looms everywhere! Louder against these muted walls.

His voice rumbles everywhere. High, throned there, with the centrepiece. All the time. Everywhere. Everywhere? But now, his voice is… dimming? Dimming, yes, dimming. And what is this that’s left speaking? Me? Since that incident, whenever I went shopping and suppose a sleeveless garment caught my eyes, I would check if they came with attachable sleeves. Some would. Some wouldn’t. Sometimes, I would buy the latter. They didn’t provide sleeves. What could I do? Not my fault. But the very next moment these illogical excuses, which I had rolled out in my mind, would make me feel pathetic. I didn’t know why I was buying them. By now, I owned six of those. All new.

Untouched. Lying in my almirah… forgotten. No, maybe not forgotten but… sometimes I wear them and stand before the mirror. My heart beats. I sense a smile hooking its way to my lips but… its deception. I am deceiving… I am deceiving him.

He is taking out his wallet. Oh! I take out mine. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DON’T MAKE A SCENE HERE. PUT IT INSIDE. He 62

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speaks in a muffled voice but still so loud. So loud.

“If neither is my own money, why can’t I use my father’s to pa—” PUT IT IN. I repeat.

“If neither is my own money, why can’t I pay with my—” DO YOU REALLY HAVE TO EXERCISE YOUR FEMINIST HOBBIES HERE AND NOW? “My what?”

He has already made the payment. I stare at him. It’s useless arguing. My eyes bobble and float to the table near the door. I see the two girls leaving. They fade into the evening as though they were never here at all. Maybe this place can never be for the likes of them.

YOU ANGRY? I DIDN’T MEAN TO SCOLD YOU. My eyes anchor back to him.

“No, I’m not angry.”

Besides, what’s the point?

GOOD GIRL. He smiles. I smile. My eyes hover around the décor. We start getting up. Minimalism is an exercise in restraint. A single centrepiece. The rest must dissolve into welcoming space and warmth and care. Things were falling apart elsewhere, I thought, this one thing in my life will be… has to be… perfect…? Poised, and pretty. So calm, it almost feels tyrannizing. Sometimes he feels so tyrannizing. They seem all the same. We get up. We get out.

The street is steeped in headlights and horns and chaos. To 63 Ripples

refuse chaos is to abandon words. He looks out, at the swarm of streetcars. He is a good man. A man who measures his days on the buttons of an fx-82MS. But a good man, nonetheless. A man who understands the world. A man whom I understand.

But who understands me?

“Next week? Okay… where?”

“Okay… fine with me.”

HEY, WHAT WILL YOU WEAR? What will I wear? What will I wear? I want to wear that white flowing kurta where birds fly free. Or maybe the black one with those abstract patterns woven all over? Or maybe… that lime green rayon shirt? I love that one. They’re all sleeveless though, I’m reminded. Oh… (huh).

But… it’ll be another day. A new day. Maybe I’ll be a new me too? Maybe it’s okay to be a bit less me and become a bit more… me?

WHAT WILL YOU WEAR? I need to answer now. I need an answer now.

“We shall see.”

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Hum Agar Nahi Utthe Toh Malaifly

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Jai Bhim, Azaad Malaifly

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Looking for Breadcrumbs Arka Mukhopadhyay Is the world too old for a revolution? It would be safe to assume so, considering the dominant Euro-Western perspective, and the myopic view of history that they have. The Cartesian mind looks at history with a telos of progress, where the dialectic potential of revolution is embedded. But what is progress, one might ask. Is it a complete reconciliation of the world to the virtual, technocratic civilisation? Is it environmental activism preached by the privileged at the cost of displacement of the poor? Is it the lure of the neoliberal utopia where one plays God in a Godless world? While a dominant male perspective permeates the idea of progress, we should begin by looking for breadcrumbs.

The French Revolution, principally defined as the ‘epitome of all revolutionary paradigms’, ended with the warning of Robespierre’s sporadic violence, which gives us a plausible framework to work around. This framework emphasises the abundant possibilities of revolution, which are ultimately appropriated and imbibed into the hegemonic structure of the state – the provenance of its strength. Moreover, in a world where parochial evil is systematized through neoliberal capitalism, where dissent is in vogue, can one ultimately hope for revolution?

If we look towards the East, in the aftermath of Mao’s Cultural Revolution of 1966, where he declared that “to rebel is just,” one arrives at a grave humanitarian crisis – the death toll ranging from a few thousand to almost twenty million. In India, 67 Ripples

around the same time, the state encountered an uprising by the left-wing peasants at Naxalbari in Bengal. This uprising, as a result, provided notability to the category of “Naxalite” correlating it with a series of insurgency operations spread across the subcontinent that had manifested into covert terrorism amidst the mass media in the late 2000s. These were indigenous guerrilla operations trying to overthrow the State, but compared to the coercive machinery owned by the latter, they were weak and shall inevitably remain so.

However, if they ever assume power, the Naxalites would be integrated into the hierarchical structure and follow the logic of the oppressor that oppressed them in the first place.

There is no way out, it seems, from the clutches of the hierarchical colonial order that holds on to power through alienation, subordination, and domination over the marginalised. The possibility of a paradigm shift is successfully averted by assigning empty signifiers to movements that are personalised as an indication of solidarity. In media across the globe, categories such as ‘Antifa’ and ‘Urban Naxals’ are conjured up to move the ‘dissenter-activist’ into a dogmatic corner of social taboos. They are considered bad seeds of the nation.

Amidst the cultural climate that distorts truths, appropriates corruption as the norm, and rationalises deviance in positions of political authority as the result of a rise in the extreme Right-Wing ideology in transnational politics, should the dissenter-activist feel dejected? It may seem, with an ecological collapse looming on the horizon, that it is too late for a reversal, a paradigm shift. In the technocratic dystopia of the post-postmodern, Leonard Cohen’s words resonate deep within as the prophetic voice utters, ‘I am the Kanye 68

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West of the Kanye West’, and Truth is irrevocably obscured in a world of billboards and empty signifiers. All is lost.

But hold on to that thought. We are still creatures of Earth, composed of clay and water. Hold on to the thought and be mindful. What is the wind reciting? What are the bees buzzing about? What did the Great Auk, a bird from the North Atlantic, say before it became extinct? Listen to the rivers. What are the melting glaciers orating? What would a child dying from a respiratory illness in Ulaanbaatar say to you if she could speak? Let’s not bask in the serenity of the pastoral in the fashion of a romantic but be realistic.

Val Plumwood portrays the animating potential of being open to experiences of nature, which are potentially creative as well as reactionary. The nature/nurture dualism that lies at the heart of Enlightenment philosophy is deemed accountable for the ecological failings of Western civilizations. There is inherently no scope for such binaries in indigenous societies since nurture is considered only as the manifestation of nature. Thus, the indigenous ears are more attuned to the utterances of nature – they have been listening to the trees and animals for centuries. While to the Euro-Western mind, inter-species communication may seem impossible, listening, guided by the ancient intelligence of the granite rocks, can be an illuminating experience for the dissenter-activist.

To speak is a human prerogative since we have language.

Listening, on the other hand, is considered passive since the person carries it out at the recipient position. There is a power hierarchy in the dialogic mode. What I am saying is, listening is also an active process where you pay attention and exercise intelligence. It is through the act of listening, 69 Ripples

that a subjective dissenter position can be transformed into a more profoundly collaborative framework for justiceoriented activism.

In the present era, colonialism, guided by the global capital, takes many forms. Tar sands colonialism and bauxite colonialism are two instances of this. However, the peak oil days are over, and we are heading full-throttle towards the iceberg for a collapse. The dominant white male, analysed outside his natural context, has assumed that he is the centre of the universe – patriarchal capitalism is feeding his delusional grandeur.

I’m proposing a way out by acknowledging the fact that the spheres of ecology, economy and society are deeply embedded in the post humanitarian and the postcolonial framework. The dissenter of the twenty-first century rejects the truth claims of patriarchal capitalisms, attempting to create a just environment based on a moral economy of subsistence rather than a surplus. However, this is a distant possibility unless the value of the diverse species inhabiting Earth are weighed for who they are and not cultivated into something artificial.

The civilization project brought us this far, and now it’s time to go back. So, let us begin by looking for the breadcrumbs.

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ecstasy – anaestheticized Malaifly this ecstasy found a change in me it couldn’t change me i am not immune just highly intolerant to being altered without this mind’s permission strength doesn’t mean control over the thing being asserted upon force feels fed into when the thrill of being in power doesn’t take over but swells pulsating this mind won’t be taken over not by these measly tricks of power-play of dominating something broken into already show me the manner the way in which you seek to exhilarate because these inebriants can’t claw at steel the weapons of thought forged won’t falter at protection when assaulted by the paltry seduction of being transformed because that altercation 71 Ripples

between this mind and being swayed isn’t ongoing or unchangeable but feels fixed into a decision already made.

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Pink Madhumitha A Chelvan It was on a Wednesday when Adora realised that she couldn’t take it anymore and dyed a streak of her hair pink in colour. Having to look the exact same every damn day – same hair, same clothes, same everything – was taking a toll on her. Breathing out a deep sigh, she fixed her hair to make sure the streak was hidden and left for work.

Where she was from, it was compulsory to dress only in black or white. Men in all white, women in all black. She had multiple sets of a full-black suit that she wore to her work every day, and when she had days off, she had a black dress. Other women had the exact clothes as her. Adora remembered how, one time, one of her colleagues had a button slightly out of place; she was suspended for a week for the same.

Why was this implemented so strictly? Adora didn’t know.

The government said it was because a uniform society built a feeling of community, but her gut told her it was deeper than that.

Of course, she hadn’t done anything unseemly until now.

She had heard (and seen) enough horror stories of what happened to people if they didn’t follow these rules. As a child, her mother told her that if she ever stepped out of line, the government would come and snatch her away.

She didn’t believe her until she saw it happen to her own neighbour. It had been stuck in her mind ever since.

These days however, what had been on Adora’s mind even 73 Ripples

more was the tiny thrift shop on the outskirts of the city that people refused to acknowledge. When she was a teenager (and a mildly rebellious one too), her secret boyfriend had taken her to these outskirts. It had been wild; the streets were vibrant with colour, and the people there were a sea of rainbows. She saw colours that day that she didn’t realise could be put on clothes. Her favourite memory from that night was the little thrift shop hidden in an alley that had the most vivid clothes ever. They were simple in style – just shirts and pants and skirts and more – but oh, the colours they had. Adora hadn’t seen that much diversity in colour since… since forever.

They didn’t just have clothes either – there were accessories of all sorts; hats and jewellery, shoes, and even coloured hair dye! She had never seen someone with pink hair until that day, but she fell in love with the idea instantly. She walked away with a packet of that same pink hair dye and a light blue jacket. Who could have imagined that you could wear the sky on your back?

Sadly, when she got back home, her mother found out.

She screamed up a storm, called her a disappointment, threatened to disown her, and then burned the jacket.

Adora was reminded of the laws once more and was made to promise to never do such a thing again. She cried herself to sleep that night, but not before hiding away the packet of hair dye. Her mother hadn’t noticed that, and seventeenyear-old Adora swore to herself that she’d die before letting anyone take that away from her.

Ten years later, Adora still had it, having held onto it for all these years. As she got older, she adhered to the laws as she 74

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knew she should but couldn’t find it in herself to throw out the hair dye. She knew that she would be in a ton of trouble if it was ever found, so she hid it in the deepest part of her closet.

She started working when she turned nineteen, and she fell into the routine.

Lately, however, the memories of that night as a teenager had started haunting her again: crystal-clear memories of when she revelled in the beauty of the outskirts. They resurfaced in her dreams at night; instead of forgetting over time, Adora seemed to remember that day clearer than ever now. Even after waking up, it stayed with her through the day as she worked, and she could never shake the feeling that she was missing something from her life. She wasn’t exactly lacking anything in her life – she had a good job, good family, and everything worked like clockwork. But maybe the fact that it was all a bit too much like clockwork was what was ticking her off. She had tried different government-suggested hobbies to keep herself occupied, but the feeling remained.

It didn’t help that she found the packet of hair dye while cleaning one day. It tumbled out of the back of her closet, lying on the floor next to gloves, a ball, and other miscellaneous items. Adora stared at it for the longest time, as if just staring at it could take her back to that night in her teenage years, as if it could help her break out of this prison she felt like she was in. She knew she should throw it away, dispose of it so that no one ever found it, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. In a dazed state, she left it on her sink.

It taunted her every day after that, but she never moved it.

It stayed there for an entire month, and somehow no one ever came to visit her at her home in that time. She never 75 Ripples

touched it, but it would be a lie if she claimed that it wasn’t on her mind all the time. She was so drawn to it, but she was scared of the consequences, of breaking the rules. The hair dye and the thrift shop and the utterly vibrant outskirts of the city filled her thoughts every second of every day until she snapped. On that fateful Wednesday, she coloured a portion of her hair using that pink hair dye.

Adora was smart about which portion she coloured, choosing a part that was hidden by more layers of hair. She was lucky that she had genetically thick hair. Actually, dyeing the hair was pretty simple. Most hair colouring products these days came with built-in bleach and didn’t expire for a long time.

Even though the legal hair dye products only had black and platinum blonde as available colours, illegal ones like this fluorescent pink dye also had these features, thankfully. They also stayed for a long time, not fading for an entire year.

She worked continuously for an hour, and by the end of it, she was done. She tied the top layers of her hair into a tiny ponytail, so that the pink streak was exposed, and examined herself in the mirror.

For the first time in twenty-seven years, Adora felt like herself.

She felt like she would explode from the joy that looking at the streak gave her; the thought that this colour was on her hair, hair that belonged to her, and that was what she looked like now… she couldn’t stop grinning. A quick glance at the clock, however, brought her world crashing around her – if she didn’t hurry, she would be late for work.

She rushed to clean up the mess that the dyeing process had made, changed into her monochrome work outfit, and 76

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let her hair down. She placed every strand carefully such that the pink streak was fully hidden.

Even at work, however, her joy was palpable to those around her, because they asked her what had happened.

Adora shrugged it off and merely told them that she was having a good day because she knew that mentioning the actual reason would have dire consequences for her.

She went about her work with extra vigour, actually feeling comfortable in her own skin for once. Of course, no one could really see the pink-dyed hair. As the days passed, as she realised that she was pulling this off and hadn’t been caught, her confidence only grew. She had never felt this bold before, and the feeling was intoxicating.

But after a month, she may have gotten too overconfident.

She stopped being as careful with her hair, even sometimes forgetting that she had that pink streak underneath all those layers. And then one day while at work, a month after she first coloured her hair, she accidentally revealed it.

She was careless; it was a hot summer day, and it was especially hot in her workplace, and Adora absentmindedly grabbed a bit of her hair to tie into a ponytail. It had completely slipped her mind that that pink streak of hair was there, and it didn’t hit her until she noticed her co-worker sat a few feet away from her, staring at her hair with a gaping mouth. She instantly realised what she had done, and let her hair down, and fixed it so that the streak was hidden again.

Her heart was pounding in her throat; she had really messed up this time. The male co-worker had gone back to his work, seemingly not caring anymore. She covertly glanced 77 Ripples

around – no one else seemed to have noticed her blatant rule-breaking. Adora quickly got up from her desk, and politely asked for the rest of the day off due to a headache, her heart still pounding.

Once back at home (her boss had been nice enough to let her go since she had been a perfect employee so far), she hid in her bedroom, her head buried in her hands. She couldn’t believe that she had let herself make such a silly mistake like that. And someone had seen it! Even after all these years, the government was still incredibly strict with its rules, and Adora still heard whispers of rumours of people being whisked away by the government for flouting the laws. Now she had flouted these laws too, and someone had spotted her, and oh god she was in so much trouble…

She sat in that same position for hours, stewing in her anxious thoughts. The idea of cutting the coloured hair off crossed her mind so that she would have some form of deniability, but something in her told her to leave it as it was. Maybe, if she were going to get taken away to prison or whatever over this, at least she could go out with a bang. At least she could go out feeling like herself.

In the morning, she called in sick and asked for the next two days off. If she could have it her way, she would take an entire month off to just run away, but her work permitted leave of absence for only two days. The vague conclusion she had reached the previous night didn’t make her feel better in the morning. All she could do was wait – wait for someone to come knocking on her door.

In the next two days holed up in her house, she did the bare 78

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minimum of eating and sleeping, the anxiety of whatever consequences were coming numbing her completely. She waited, but nothing really happened. It made her slightly hopeful that maybe her co-worker hadn’t seen what she thought he had, after all; but she didn’t let her expectations get too high. Nevertheless, the end of her anxiety-filled leave of absence came around, and Adora had to return to work.

She knew she had to be extra careful since she hadn’t even chopped off that pink streak of hair.

Adora walked into work with bated breath, expecting a negative reaction to her entrance, but her co-workers smiled politely and greeted her as they normally did. Was… was she not in any trouble? Her boss even asked her how she was doing. She was surprised because she couldn’t help but anticipate something bad happening. But everything seemed normal. Even the co-worker that had seen her didn’t seem to be paying attention to her. He was minding his own business, it seemed. Adora just couldn’t believe that she was going to be okay.

She began her work for the day, feeling a lot better. She wasn’t in any trouble, AND she still had the pink streak in her hair. She had played with fire and gotten out without getting burnt. However, she still couldn’t figure out why her co-worker hadn’t reported her. What did he have to benefit from this?

Maybe he was just a nice person? Maybe he hadn’t seen her hair at all, and she had gotten all scared for no reason?

During the ten-minute break that they got in the middle of the day, Adora found herself alone in the break room, along with the co-worker that may or may not have seen her hair.

He made eye contact, and she shot him a polite smile. She 79 Ripples

was about to look away, but he looked like he was going to say something to her. Her heart stopped; she held her breath as he glanced around, and then slowly rolled up the sleeve of his white shirt. She was about to protest when she noticed a flash of colour.

Under his sleeve, on his arm, he had a bright pink cloth tied around his hand. The colour itself was quite close to the colour she had dyed her hair – a dazzling, fluorescent pink.

She couldn’t look away, and a soft gasp left her mouth.

Before she knew it, he was rolling his sleeve back down and buttoning it up. She hadn’t seen that much colour on someone else since her teenage years.

When she glanced back up at her co-worker, he had a timid smile on his face. Nodding, he mouthed what seemed like a ‘thank you’ to her and left the room. Adora was left wondering whether she had imagined this entire interaction.

But before she could process it completely, she realised her break had come to an end and returned to her desk.

Once at her desk, however, she replayed the entire scene in her head. Why did he say thank you to her? What had she even done? He had had a cloth tied around his arm, a very pink cloth that he shouldn’t have had in his possession, let alone tied around his arm. Just like her, with her pink hair dye… had he seen her and decided that he needed to do this too? That could explain why he said thank you, maybe her pink streak of hair had given him the idea. But she didn’t want to give herself too much credit.

Nevertheless, when she glanced over at that same coworker, he seemed more content. Even though she had 80

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barely spoken to him during their years working together, Adora could tell that something had changed; he seemed to carry himself differently, the same way she did after colouring her hair. She had no way of confirming whether her deduction was correct – after all, she was still too scared to have an open conversation about such a thing – but the idea that she could have had any kind of positive influence at all on someone and made them slightly more themself, made her smile. Truly, it’s the smallest things that have the biggest impacts.

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Rigamarole of Resistance Ekasmayi Naresh The winter winds heralded the hurricane of reconning, that for the weeks to follow, would rage on.

From festering wounds of forgotten fires, they blazed forth into a fight concerning many a Right – for it, on the side of it and against the one desecrating it.

They sat through the tumult of troupes trying to tear them apart, of torrents of sticks and stones, and the death of a democratic spirit that the indifferent country refused to bemoan.

The calendar changed but not their steely resolve, the vitriol seeking to sweep them into submission grew, so they doubled down and watched as the polarized parties, their passionate poisons spew.

Support came from unlikely quarters as did the opposition, from ones constituted to serve and protect – 82

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the latter let their lathis speak as the former fortified their fellowship with their fame and following.

The cantankerous cronies disguised as unbiased critiques but serving as chamberlains for those in control denied any wrongdoing except for that which they generously attributed to the ones they held to be the trolls.

With the coming of the storm of maladies they cleared the streets and receded to their homes but the fire their fortitude housed crackles still; even by the corrupt concoctions it could not be doused.

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Against the Tide Madhura Kar

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brick by brick Harshita Kale i’m curious to know what makes a home, a home of hearts and so, i’ll start building mine by pulling out those weeds rooted in insecurity growing in abundance in my backyard and rake my little piece of land, i’ll will those dried leaves whispering of lonely hearts to run far, far away with sprightly winds and seal the cracks in my foundation with the solid warmth of mountaintops, cradling my home in their sturdy arms. the gabled tiles i’ll fill in with mosaiced emotion, and the roof i’ll weave of ocean waves strong and reassuring, they’ll coalesce into a cloak around me as i sit amidst worry. like the oceans, my roof will allow light to penetrate to the rooms underneath, i’ll return downstairs with only calm. my walls, i will splash in colour and compassion and on my coatrack, my wearied travellers will hang their exhaustion only to find feathers threaded through its buttons when they return.

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i’ll be brave and grow a garden too; plant carnations and rosebushes that scent the air with fragrant, inviting warmth. i’ll embed sorrows in the soil that peek above the ground as flowers of the wild. stringed paper lanterns on the path leading home – mine, yours, of us all a reminder that light sways gently in the most impenetrable darkness too. my doorbell will ring with laughter carried away on Night’s shoulders, chiming across seas and dreamcatchers will hang along the porch stitching together broken dreams. my home will demand that i plaster its every surface with art and words and memories on whose floors i’ll create without hesitation, and perfection will be out of breath before it can climb my walls and i, a romantic will dance within, still building a home that brings people to my hearth and embraces them as its own. a home that holds pain close to its chest 86

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and grieves with it, a home crafted of wit and wisdom, a home that sings of me. i dream that it will be a place where i find the keys to all the shackles that bind my limbs – in pockets weighed down by lost love and secrets, hidden in journals where i quote freedom and courage, atop dusty mirrors that call upon forgotten memories, amongst books that remind me of me. a home through whose windows i see storms but feel only safety, where tears feel comfortable and being different, is being yourself. i’m beginning to put together brick by brick from thought’s vast expanse of sea, my dwelling of dreams dreamt over a million lifetimes, a home that inspires me to be free.

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ember Harshita Kale as a pebble skips across the water, the ripples of voices spread, patterns emerge. the cold wind makes the flames along the temple rail dance in wild fervor. the night shivers. in every breath, a deep desire to live which combusts with those dancing fires of hope, of resistance igniting torches passed from hand to hand, they reflect in the deep blue stilling for the slightest of moments. then a small voice begins to colour a new pattern unfurling in the petals of the mind, they lap at the shore. the whispers multiply tautening the tension then spreading, loosening, they grow louder, and then diffuse. penetrating the darkest corners of night. waters part, an ember blazes within. my eyes fly open.

****

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is this bravery? i wonder to lift the black cloak the tiniest inch, step inside, and just be. as this ripple washes over you in waves embracing you then, letting you go. is this bravery? i wonder when a yes slips past all the no-s that swim uneasily in the brine of your mouth yes, to throwing back your hood so that you may pierce the eyes of demons within and without. to bending down and touching the water gently the impression of your hand pressing against it, merging with voices – the beginnings of new dreams and new changes. letting this ripple take you under its wing, continuing to cut through the waters even as the salt it holds seeps into the lashes across your skin. to drown somewhere in between, and allow your bruises to point northwards to the shore. stand on the other side cold and dripping exhaustion yet lie down on the hard bank for the feeblest ray of sunshine 89 Ripples

you’re too weak to pray for. continuing to live, choosing to live even when you don’t know which cliff you’ll next scale neither fearlessness, nor that fictional sense of assured victory. choosing to live on, to dream on, even if they might not all come true. to pulse insistently in this throbbing pattern of life to rhythms of your own making, and recognising the battles waged in the in-betweens perhaps, weaving a strand or two of your own. this is courage, if there ever was.

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Funeral Metals Roshni Raheja Once upon a time, there was a woman so terrified of her own existence, that she dug up the ground around her cottage to bury it – furiously shovelling dirt and stones into the grasses every night, until she laid her fears to rest, six feet under. This was not unnatural for a woman to do in the days of witch hunts and burnings and drownings, which is to say this could have happened a century ago or just last weekend. When they dug up the grave, they found that she had been solidified – crushed into a lump of iron, by the dirt and stones both on top of her and within – proof of witchcraft, of course, they insisted, dropping the lump into the ocean for good measure. Her daughters, and their daughters, carry the weight of the iron with them to this day, thrumming in their veins with every heartbeat, clanging in the heels of their shoes, resting under their tongues before they lash out. Lately, some of them have begun to wear it with pride, even – around their ankles, hung in pendants from their necks, hooped through their skirts and their ears alike, almost beaming as they disappear in and out of existence in the sunlight.

Men flocked to them, naturally, ready to leave behind their lives of sin, arriving with promises of comfort and fidelity, security, and love. They hide the evidence of the dozens of other women they’ve strung along and bled dry like needles in haystacks, forgotten as they chase dreams of settled suburbia. This is not to say I think they are bad men, necessarily; perhaps some of them truly did repent and 91 Ripples

wanted to change their ways. This is just to say that I could never live out the escapist cottagecore fantasy – how could I? What they didn’t know is that when metal lies six feet under, it is acted upon by the forces of nature, becoming polarized.

When they said I was magnetic, little did they know it was in more ways than one.

He tries to convince me – convince himself, even – that his days of sharp edges and barbed wire fences are long gone.

He offers me fresh cotton kisses and platitudes gift-wrapped in flowers, strawberries and cream to soothe the pinpricks, but it doesn’t matter. All I can see when we frolic in the barn are the imminent needles that make up the haystacks, my dresses constantly catch on the doorknobs, and every night I pace the halls while he sleeps, wondering if the humming within me is from his razors in the bathroom or if I might have accidentally tasted a lie on his lips if something was off about the knife we diced tomatoes with, or if the keys in his pocket have been used on another door – it’s maddening.

His hands sliding down my back reek of the blood of ghostly women past, and I cannot help but see them, hovering in the doorways or flickering in the candlelight over our dinner table, until our arguments drown out their voices, night after night.

One misty morning, after yet another night of pacing, I arrive at the misshapen mound of earth behind our cottage. As if in a trance, I begin to shovel, unearthing stones and dirt for what feels like minutes, but the sun tells me it has been hours. Drawn downwards for reasons I cannot quite put a finger on, I climb into the ground, and the soil swallows me like a familiar friend, almost as if I have been here before. For the first time in months, the screams that ring in my head go quiet. I rather like it.

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Playhouse Niranjana H For the last fifty years that Nilofar had lived, she had never quite felt at home. Not here, not at home, not anywhere.

What was home anyway – home meant different things to different people. For Nilo, it had always meant a house with a lawn she could call hers. A house-home. With a lush lawn.

She walked from room to room surveying the progress. It all seemed to be coming along well – the walls almost painted a deep creamy ivory, and the wooden tiling polished to an almost shining amber. Amber, the split ends on Ammi’s curly grey-brown hair. She opened her newly painted windows, breathing in the scent of turpentine and salt. It was almost hard to believe that the house would be ready soon. A house her Nana built, a house that Papa built, a house she built.

Build – building – built.

Nilo’s first home was built on the same ground she stood on – her Nana’s gingerbread home, done up in shades of biscuit, mauve, and spotted mosaic with bright orange flowers on her window. She used to have corners in them she called hers – momentarily. Proprietarily. A hidey-hole for her barbie dolls and a lone Christmas star in December. Of reading with Ammi at the dining table weighed down with fried fish and faith. Of a guava tree she could climb midway, right up to a point where her scabbed knees would touch the low hanging bruised fruit. She had belonged there; the taste of salt on her upper lip and a borne song in her heart.

Nana was a good man, he carried her on his broad hips and let her braid his wisps of hair. He sang her songs and 93 Ripples

snuck her sticky nibbles she would eat in her hidey-hole. And he always smelt the same. Of pine wood, cough syrup, and cinnamon. Always. Home smelt good. Tasted good too. And then suddenly it wasn’t home anymore. Nana stood smiling with his mouth as he supervised the cutting of her guava tree. Soon the movers arrived, and she was sandwiched into the middle berth of a train. She never saw her dining table again. Longing for Nana, belonging for Nana. Extra salt on her fried fish. Always.

Blink.

The workers downstairs are on their final coat of paint. A sweaty sheen of ivory met the salty air. Who didn’t love the smell of turpentine? Turpentine, and petrol, and the aroma of flowing blue ink. The waft of desire.

Blink.

Someone brought her a cup of coffee – ‘Madam ko kursi le aana (get a chair for ma’am)’. She was a madam now, a momentary burst of belonging, sitting with the workers as they sipped hot coffee. She was one of them now, at least until the coffee turned cold, spiritedly discussing shades of ivory and how the tiles complimented them. Of how ‘we’ nearly decided to go with mauve before. We, us, ours. Fleetingly, the lines blurred.

Ammi, we are not alone. Blink.

Tap. Tap. Tap pointy heels on the new wooden stairs, skidding a little on the landing – the last step was always a snare. Her next house did not have stairs. It didn’t even have space for 94

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a dining table, so they had had to buy floor mats instead.

Nana wouldn’t have liked that, but Nana was now gone.

The middle berth of the train carried her into a new town and a new house. A bigger city with twinkling lights and a tall building with grey sullen doors. Their house lay behind a door. No garden? No porch? How’s this home? House, not home Papa called it – three rooms, a tiny kitchenette with a lone bulb that made Ammi sigh, and a strip for a balcony – no guava tree in sight, just lots of bikes lined up on the side.

But she soon found her guava tree in them – climbing on them until her scabby feet (almost) touched the ground.

Then there were the strange kids behind the other doors who spoke a different tongue and laughed at her bangs.

‘Madrasi tu kaha se hai? (Where are you from? South Indian!)’. A language that was foreign. But that stopped when she showed them the new dollhouse Ammi got her.

Wide, white and red with its eighteen Russian dolls. As time went by, the neighbours swapped their stares with smiles. Tiny ones to which Ammi responded with bowls of rice pudding.

Nilo had to take it up to their houses. Houses without lawns or smell of fried fish wafting through the cracks, but with numbers on them. Almost like jail, but she didn’t mind it so much when they smiled at her and (or) the pudding. Ammi stocked her kitchenette and filled the makeshift table with fish nuggets instead. Heart-shaped ones brushed with salt and sauce. Ammi didn’t like salt. But she liked Nana so there was always salt. Her non-Madrasi friends liked nuggets too, so they stayed back longer. House almost began to feel like home. She almost liked being the Madrasi who came to this new home sandwiched in the middle berth of a train.

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Tap tap Ammi, open the door.

A middle berth Madrasi. Hanging in the middle, confused which side was home. House. Briefly home. House again.

Long. Belong. Blink.

The workers had left for the day. Hailed goodbyes and workworn smiles behind their backs. Her. Them. We and us. She was left by herself standing by the door of her almost finished house-home. A house without Nana or fish nuggets. A house that smelt of turpentine. Turpentine felt like home now. Like a shot of caffeine on a whiskey-laced mind. Electrifying. She liked turpentine. Turpentine didn’t sugarcoat. Turpentine didn’t lie. Turpentine was what turpentine did. Matter of fact, her house-home, needed some more turpentine.

Blink.

The flight back to Mumbai was at 2 pm. Did she just call another city that wasn’t Kochi home? Her fully furnished studio in a city on the left axis of Mumbai. A home on loan until the 30th of every month. Rented couches that frowned when she put her green throws on them. A rickety sellotaped table that stood on three, and a patch of warmth where the mattress lay – her embroidered mattress. Hers. A belonging.

Home is now 8x14 inches, and bright red, purchased from a shop across the train station. A little worn and weary, sleepier than before. Just like her. It was time to return. Weary. Worn.

Wacked.

Ammi, I’m coming home. Ting.

Nilo’s homecoming. Short bursts of excited breath as she got 96

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off the platform, with her suitcase for one all of twenty-five years packed into it – a wary vulnerable warrior returning home. But something was off, there was a nip in the air that didn’t have anything to do with the tropics. It had all changed. Not quite, but very quietly. Home looked the same.

Still gingerbread, but gone a little stale. Nana’s smell lingered in the corridor, but he was gone. Ammi wasn’t to be seen.

But she was long gone now. Living inside a piece of Nilo’s nugget shaped heart. Everything looked the same but smelt different. A new house stood where the guava tree did, and the new residents smiled with their mouth, arms outstretched welcoming her into the house. They called her in for tea and cake and stared her down from behind the floral teacups.

A little shuffling, and whispers laced with sugared breaths. A little after twenty, the penny drops. Why are you here?

A scratchy twitch. An urge to flee, but the fragrant feel of home made her stay. She reminded them over the sugar bowl that they were related. Oh, they’d forgotten. How was she? What happened to her, such dark skin, and is that a nose pin? How Madrasi! But she was back, wasn’t she?

Home where the heart lies and all that sugared crap. But why? She wouldn’t fit in here, would she? Go back to the city Nilo. There isn’t enough room here anyway, the painters are here, you know how that gets. Have you booked yourself a room for the night? Some more sugar in your tea? Syrupy tea down the throat, as the bitter truth, sank in. Short bursts of pain seeped with the last dregs of tea. That was the last time she took sugar with her tea. Or coffee. Or anything.

Bittersweet had a new meaning. Bitter. Bit. By. Bit. Blink.

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Nilo returns. An extra shot of espresso in her hipflask and she was set to move. Through the big grey door, tap, tap, Nilo is home. Decorate. Décor. Or. To Rate. Who’s rating her?

Room by room she walks, heels on her kittens going taptap-tap. Hopped across the last stair quite easily this time.

Almost feels like home doesn’t it? Just requires its people now. Eighteen in all. Her dolls. Just like her Barbie house. She reaches the sacks lined at the end of the last room. Cuts open the twine on the largest one. Yum, the old, smell of pinewood and cough syrup. Nana was home. An odd flutter.

A racing heart. Out came the dolls, One. By. One. Oneness – solidarity. One. The mightiest number. Her favourite.

Blink.

She tried again, very hard to belong. To understand where her piece of the puzzle fit. She liked to fly although the anonymity that distant places gave her. Where there was no love nor loath for thy neighbour. Did she even have a neighbour?

She liked the almost turpentine touch of transactional relationships – no free lunches. Dinner bills split sixteen ways, bring her own alcohol, uber pool – friends for thirty-seven minutes, and then never to meet again. A different date every Christmas. A sense of spontaneous anonymity. But then she spent New Years’ alone. Just that once. Joel had moved to another end of the axis, and she waited by the window, for the spontaneous phone call of another Joel, Rahul, or Mohammed – offering plum cake, mulled wine, and warmth. But none came that New Years’ Eve and Nilo who woke up alone on her 8x14, wished she were back home. A safe space. A rush of elation. Transitorily. Until the saccharine sweetness filled her soul and she slumped back into the darkness.

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Ammi, I’m lost. Fumble. Flick.

Homecoming day. Bright as a bulb, the salty winds grazing her cheeks as she tapped around one last time. Nana’s gingerbread house, beamed down kindly at her, ushering her in. House-home looked ready to live in.

Two summers ago, when the wind blew south, a year after Papa fled town to find himself a new Ammi and a Nilo to boot. A year before the turpentine had mixed with the salt.

Nilo found herself at the sugared doorstep again. Tap Tap. He opened the door and surveyed her frame. A lone woman with a bag for one. Unlike his parents, he didn’t smile with his mouth. He smiled with his eyes- a cousin’s smile. Fleeting.

Recognizing. But still a smile. Nilo’s (cousin) brother who had shared her nook in the gingerbread house. Her only living relative. He hugged her briefly and showed her to a room and served her syrupy tea. sugary broth. It must run in the family. Her family – her identity. He told her about his brand-new family and twin boys. Brothers they were. Not cousins like them. But a cousin brother was still a brother wasn’t he. My bhai, she’d told her friends. They’d nodded in relief. She wasn’t so alone after all. She told him about her house-home. On the land that their Nana built his. About plans for the ivory walls and wooden floors. He listened passively stroking his stubble. Asked her the right questions, her caring (cousin) brother. She shyly mentioned the idea of a nook. Overlooking a guava tree, she planned to plant. A conspiring smile seeking reminiscence. Even a flicker would do. Of acceptance. Please say, Oh! Our hole. He nodded slowly and took his time. Each moment cost her a thumping heart. But you’re alone Nilo, do you really need a house?

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Kochi has lots of bachelor pads you could rent out for half the cost. Nooks are for people like us with brats for children.

The smile comes. Wrongly placed, rightly timed. Houses are not for bachelors like Nilo. Houses are not shared dreams (cousin) brothers can share. Nilo’s last standing (cousin) relative didn’t care. She left the next morning, didn’t leave a note. He didn’t call either. She finally realized her home wasn’t her identity.

Blink.

Housewarming. Nilo’s homecoming. A home for eighteen. A home of one.

Lined up against the ivory walls, the last set of dolls slumped to the wooden floor – she’d arranged them alphabetically.

A flip, a yank and the lights came on and Nilofar Saleem’s house-home beamed with light. She clapped with joy as she surveyed the sight of a guava shrub sprouting out the backyard. Overlooking a hidey-hole, she had built for herself.

Not for cousins or Papas who left. The smell of fried fish wafted through the rooms, as they met with the turpentine finish of the dining wood. Ammi beamed with pride from the nugget shaped home in her heart. Tea-time – eighteen cups of tea came into sight, an empty sugar bowl perched daintily by the side. Nuggets for all, even the vegetarians. She surveyed her dolls as they sampled unsweetened tea, a look of longing and pride. Her only tribe. This house will soon become home.

When eighteen became one, over a cup of tea. Hers. Not just momentarily.

Ammi, look I’m finally home. Slurp.

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This is What History Will Look Like Jacqueline Williams

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For Frida Jayaditya Vittal It is a striking and unexpected image: Frida Kahlo in a sari. It is unlike almost every other portrait or photograph of Frida wandering around. It isn’t a self-portrait; she isn’t in one of her famous Tijuana dresses. Her hair, instead of being cut short (as in many early photographs) or coiled on top of her head in the trademark style, frames her face in a mid-length bob.

The great artist is shown flanked not by symbols or animals, but by two laughing Indian girls. They are, according to Vijay Prashad on Scroll, the writer Nayantara Sehgal, and her sister, Rita Dar. She looks for all the world like a quintessential 1940’s Indian school girl, straight out of a Bimal Roy production.

A careful observer might notice, in her posture, an unexpected expression of frailty. Frida, all her life, often put her pain graphically on display. In Frida in Henry Ford Hospital (1932) – perhaps her most famous painting of this type – she depicts herself curled up, nude, on a hospital bed, her heart torn out and bleeding. In Self-Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940), the viewer confronts her head-on gaze before wandering to the cat – scratching her shoulder – and the monkey, pulling a thorn necklace tight into her throat, even as a hummingbird stabs her chest with its rapierlike beak. This photograph is nothing like those. Her posture – leaning to one side, her back literally ramrod straight (she had a rod inserted into her spine) – makes the display of her discomfort seem almost accidental.

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discomfiting – image. It is also why we, as viewers, need to confront it seriously. Frida lived in an age when film was expensive and difficult to come by; she also carefully cultivated the images of herself. It is difficult to imagine anything about that picture being accidental. It seems, rather, to remind us that Frida Kahlo was not just a comfortably faraway figure of aesthetically pleasing Mexicanidad. Frida was a radical, a revolutionary who lived in a connected age and recognised the way in which a number of ideas – womanhood, patriotism, anti-colonialism, capitalism – were undergoing new and exciting changes. Across the Atlantic, the freedom movement was at its apogee in India, even as the Chinese battened their hatches for the ongoing civil war between Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Communist Party. The British had settled into Southern Rhodesia – what is now Zimbabwe. Closer home, Henry Ford was publishing his first openly anti-semitic newspapers and radically changing the automobile industry.

She would go on to watch as the Holocaust nearly wiped out European Jews – whom she believed were her father’s people – and then went on to witness the State of Israel move from defending its borders to expanding them. When Gannit Ankori, lecturer in Art Studies at Hebrew University, studied her in 2003, she was stunned to find stacks of poetry in Hebrew and Yiddish, in Frida’s possession: Frida had been excavating a fraught personal history. In spite of this, so much of the discourse surrounding her work has returned to the tried and tested formula: “Poor Frida! Diego was philandering, and so she painted this,” or, “Poor Frida! She had a miscarriage, and so she painted this.”

This photograph – its seeming oddness, its indubitable 103 Ripples

uniqueness – serves to remind us that her life and her (certainly international) politics were gleefully entangled with each other. She was never comfortable with oppression, regardless of whether it oppressed her or someone else. We cannot disentangle the revolutionary from the bisexual girl who painted her leg-brace even as her friends called her, “peg-leg.� We have much to learn from her still, and, it often seems, so little time to do it in.

Frida in a Sari Source: scroll.in

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Dear Sylvia Jhanavi Purohit Dear Sylvia, Oh, how I wish you could read this letter, had you not left for your heavenly abode by sticking your head in the oven.

Quite un-ladylike, they had said, but in my opinion, it was quite cool. I’d like to leave an impact too, even if I do not live to see it. If you didn’t know already, your psychiatrist followed your footsteps too. How original, I must say. I mentioned this to my father once, and now I do not have an oven in my house, so to speak.

As I write this, I wish to break free of the chains of lethargy, as you did with your Daddy’s influence. Teach me your ways, Madame Plath. “What a thrill, isn’t it?” you said when you wrote “Cut”. I crave to know what was so thrilling about the fact that blood was gushing out of your thumb. You know what, keep it to yourself. Curiosity killed the cat, but I hope the cat died a much more peaceful death compared to your self-inflicted agony. Just so you know, I don’t idolise you.

When you said that you “blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion”, I was quite inspired for a long, long time. Not in a very good way, which, again, reminds me not to idolise you. But I did end up writing a poem titled “I’ve Tasted Black”. It is horrific, and it may or may not make you rethink what I quoted.

Nevertheless, it remains one of the best works I’ve ever written. So thank you, I can’t believe I said that out loud.

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What made you so angry and brutal, to resort to morbidity, I can hardly imagine. The number of corpses “Lady Lazarus” involves is indeed very petrifying. Quite biblical, milady. I assure you, I’m not the stalker that I seem to be by this point, bringing out your life’s tiny insignificantly significant details that even you might not remember. My apologies; I call myself an ardent researcher. Today, the psychology department of whoever writes our university curriculum defines your words – “joyous positive and despairing negative” – as manicdepression.

I empathise with you, Sylvia. I hope you don’t mind me calling you that. My life is very similar to yours, except, I’m not as talented as you were. You see, I lost my mother when I was eight, the same age as you when you lost your father.

We even share a similar rage for empowerment. Your works in Ariel lighten one speck of hope that might be invisible to a naked eye. Even today, in the twenty-first century, people are as blind. They call you ‘God’s Lioness’, for evolving from a precocious girl, to the disturbed modern woman, to the vengeful magician. I’m your prey.

Your poetry resonates with adolescents, which is primarily why I am absolutely against the idea of anyone idolising you and your work. Oh, the irony! I am a teenager. You romanticise self-injury and death, which ruined two entire years of my life, you madwoman. Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. (To others who read this letter, I definitely meant to do so, but don’t tell Ms. Plath.)

I wish I could be a post-war poet like you, but, given the current world situation – which you, of course, can’t experience – I’m a mid-pandemic poet. Not very impressive, huh? I wasn’t 106

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looking to impress you anyway.

With love and a glare, Jhanavi.

Note from the editors: Plath’s work is often accused of being antisemitic as she compares her suffering to the Holocaust. She is also considered more than a little racist: the only black character in The Bell Jar is an orderly who is kicked and scolded by the protagonist, referred to as “the Negro”, and described using racist stereotypes. Her narratives have also been adopted by some Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, notably Germaine Greer.

However, male authors of the same demographic and era aren’t held to similar standards by any means. There is inherent misogyny involved in levelling accusations against Plath but infrequently against, say, Robert Lowell or Ezra Pound.

In any case, this piece does not fail to acknowledge that Sylvia was problematic. Ultimately, we saw no reason to reject it on these grounds.

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Killing A Superhero Ranju Mamachan I “Target is in range,” Comrade Tahir said, as he looked through the scope of his gun at Superman pulling civilians out of the Bezos building on fire.

Comrade Radha hung onto Superman’s biceps and asked, “Is it true that you are not afraid of heights, Superman?”

Superman smirked and said nothing. However, some of the people he was saving had an intractable fear of the heights and were in no mood to glide serenely over the skyscrapers.

They tugged and pulled at Superman and made a fuss, ruining the view for the people watching from the windows and the streets. Superman lost his balance a few times and took out a few towers and water tanks and helipads on the way. Radha used the opportunity to press a small shard of kryptonite into the crease of his pants. The effect was instantaneous.

Superman, having lost his superpowers, dropped like a bullet from the sky. Comrade Tahir saw Comrade Radha’s body tracing a vertical line about to become a smear on the pavement. Her voice, however, came through clearly with no static, “Take the shot. Make sure.” Comrade Tahir took aim and put three bullets in Superman’s head. He watched, and the people in the streets watched with him. Superman’s head exploded, and brain matter flew in all directions.

“I made sure,” he replied and began dismantling the gun.

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II The murder of Superman was mythical, like swallowing a sun or imagining a god above the Pharaoh. In the weeks following Superman’s death, humans walked the streets of the earth with a renewed appreciation for each other.

Magnificent things awaited them all in the future, which they thought would shine down upon them like the sun, eternal and happy.

“They will have to remember us now,” Tahir thought as he shaved the next morning, holding the mirror in one hand and the blade in another. The Party forced him to take a month off after every mission. By the end of the month, he would have to go into the dark bunker and be tested by seven comrades from the Party before another mission was assigned to him.

Radha’s death had been absolutely unnecessary. He could have put the kryptonite inside the bullet. But she had refused to even hear of the plan. She wanted a zero margin of error.

She would pin the kryptonite on the target herself. Her last words to Tahir had been: Take the shot.

Tahir winced.

After that, she had dropped on the street, where a car had run her over. The more Tahir tried not to think about her death, the more the image of the car driving over her body kept coming back to him.

He wiped his face with a towel and turned to find a strange creature staring at him from Radha’s bed. It was like a giant ball that had a hundred carnivorous mouths and blood-red tongues shooting in and out of those mouths.

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“What the fuck?”

He rubbed his eyes and looked again. The creature was still there, refusing to be erased from existence.

III Needless to say, Tahir failed to impress his comrades in the bunker because he kept railing about a nightmarish creature that was drinking his blood.

“Where is this vampire?”

“It is stuck on my neck. Can’t you see it?”

IV The Party treated him as a casualty of violence and retired him. He was given a small lodge to operate in a bleak corner of the city. Twenty years passed. The creature fed on his blood and grew in size until the only way he could manage to walk around was with his face to the ground, like a hunchback.

Sometimes the creature would deride him with visions of impossible happiness. Radha, in a wooden cabin facing the sea, kissing his cheeks and running off to dash around in the waves, under a starlit sky.

V The only thing he really envied in Superman was his power of flight, and whenever he met Superman in his dreams, he would ask him, “What did you think of us when you looked down from the clouds?”

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“Magnificent,” Superman would say, turning his blown-out face towards Tahir like an old friend, “I thought you were magnificent.”

VI Sometimes the creature retracted its teeth only to dig into his flesh with another one of its mouths. After the death of Superman, a fearlessness had come upon the criminal element of the city. With every armed criminal trying to become famous by killing a superhero, the body count of superheroes being picked out of the gutters started climbing.

The city came under the thumb of criminal syndicates. Sex workers plied their trade behind most of the doors of his lodge. But once in a while, the Party would send one of their guerrilla units on suicide missions in the city. The young fighters wouldn’t let him handle any menial tasks around their rooms.

They insisted on cleaning the rooms themselves and to send one of their own into the city to buy dosas and cigarettes.

Even though the city police had been unable to identify who was responsible for the killing of Superman, there was a silent admiration in these young rebels’ eyes. Some nights Tahir entreated the vampire to leave him and latch onto one of these young men destined to die.

VII He would send missives to the Party representatives complaining about the rise in murders and rapes in the city.

“Had it really been a good idea to kill the dude in the sky?” he asked in the last letter he sent, which like all his letters, did not receive a reply.

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VIII He was setting flame to the passports that a rebel had carelessly left behind on the shelf when he saw her pass the window. He called out to her, but she was too far away, and she was carrying a child in her arms. He threw the burning passport on the table and chased after her screaming through the streets, “Radha. Radha.”

IX He awoke perspiring in the middle of the night with the full realisation that he would die. He dug himself a hole in the middle of the lobby, large enough to accommodate both the bulbous creature and him. He threw the shovel out, and it landed on one of the sofas. He lay down in the hole and closed his eyes.

“And now my curse ends,” he smiled.

There was a knock on the door. Closing the business to anyone willing to pay good cash was against Party principles, and there was yet some distance between him and death. He climbed back out of the hole with great difficulty.

X Outside the door was a little girl, barely six in blood-stained clothes. “Where are your parents?” he shouted, but he already knew. The girl pointed west. He made the girl wait in the lobby. She sat on a sofa overseeing the grave he had dug out for himself, while he searched the streets for the bodies of the two civilians. He found the father in the alley, 112

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dead from a stab wound, a trail of blood behind him. He followed the direction the father had been advancing in and discovered the corpse of the mother in the trash bin.

“There was no need for any of this,” he shouted to no one in particular, “They all needed to pay, but not like this.”

He limped back to the lodge and found the girl sitting in the lobby. The creature, now almost the size of a large mammal’s heart, flitted around on her neck, which is when Tahir noticed that his spine was straight.

XI Tahir called a woman who had been trying to conceive for ten years to drive down there and rescue the child. As they waited for her to arrive, he coaxed the creature off the child and clenched his fists as it bit into his flesh again. In his last moments, he whispered into the child’s ears: “Forgive them.

They understand nothing.”

XII When he opened his eyes, he was looking through the scope of his gun at the roofline of the city. He should have been dead.

The voice came through, clear, without static, “Are you alright, Tahir?”

“Radha?”

“Yes. Yes. I need to say something.”

“I have something to say too.”

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today. Then, Superman sees your sniper rifle and then accidentally kills you. And then this creature finds me, and it hurts me, and it hurts a lot, Tahir, I…” Tahir could see her on the roof of the Bezos building. She hadn’t triggered the bomb yet.

“I lived a long time, and,” she is saying, “every day I would see the life you could have lived, had you not died. And maybe we could even have been... I can’t do that to you.

We need to take this motherfucker down.” She triggered the bomb and three floors blew up. The glass and the debris began raining down on the pedestrians.

“I had a vision too.”

They both saw Superman appear in the sky.

“Don’t do it, Radha. I can’t live without you.”

“You can. You should. Find a way.”

“I will throw the gun out right now. Let someone else kill him.

Let’s leave this city. Let’s save each other.”

“They have to pay for what they did to us, Comrade Tahir,” she said, jumping onto Superman’s biceps.

“Is it true that you are not afraid of heights, Superman?”

Tahir watched with bated breath, and when he saw Superman drop like a bullet, his fingers automatically reached for the trigger. But he stopped himself in time. And then the voice came through, “Take the shot. Make sure.”

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ennui Nidhin Joseph

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Service Lift: Out of Order Malaifly the service lift serves to sever speculated suppositions of sharing a sameness, substituting with schisms via sinister separation of the servant from those being served. the deverbal noun formed, scaling the shift with superiority sanctioned by simply letting privilege speak for the systematic stratification seen, in side-exits in special elevators to be used by those who do not reside, in the buildings they traverse for salary and

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subsistence. as if to screen staff from society to spare spectators the unsightly scene of social segregation in 20-20.

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Bailed Trails Serene George We meet at crooks On asphalt roads Those smell of mossy walls, Sail in boats made Of curd clouds and September rains.

You squeeze out flower buds to cricket wails In every shade of lavender and pale.

And when vexed sunbirds fade into Hibiscus streaks on azure plains You twist your wreath eighteen ways, Leave And render asunder your lovely cage.

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On the Fence Vishakha Mandrawadkar There are battles meant to be fought At every turn.

You tread each corner, without the slightest clue.

There are choices to be made.

Pros and cons to be weighed.

To the cadence of morals, if not gold.

There are voices meant to be heard.

Opinions to be garnered.

On the wrong and right, about consequences.

There is a choice to be made.

Courage to be garnered.

To only listen to a voice so lone, one that is often your own.

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losing lavender Madhura Kar The other day, I cut out a piece of myself, Once again. Jagged edges and all, Scribbled on it, a crooked smile in lavender And right in the closet it went A fading speck on a dark ocean.

In a dark, dark world, So dark, rock-bottom ceases to exist.

Entire worlds apart from light, The bright, bright light.

So bright, it swallows any trace of lavender.

Now remain the blue and the pink, Incomplete brushstrokes that I can’t reconcile, Swirling to make a murky grey.

Gone is the lavender that used to lace my being.

I’m nothing but a mass of misplaced blues and pinks, Strung together with the grey that giggles as I squirm.

Once again, I fall apart at the seams, As flinching hands smear abrupt brushstrokes Of ashen misadventures instead of The lost lavender smile.

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Perhaps I’m yet to realize my frail bones Make up the dark walls of that closet More so than the time I came to know that a pansy Wasn’t just a fragrant flower.

After all, it is rather difficult To sew together the many bits and pieces That have been cut off year after year.

And now, I’m stuck with a grey rock in my gut, A damned eternity of ephemeral drowning Where grey is the new lavender.

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Ecosystem Meghana Injeti

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The Contributors Aashvi Shah Aashvi Shah is a 20-year-old media student from Mumbai.

Writing has always been a passion for her, and the older she grows, the more she tries to explore different writing genres and formats. Being an MBA aspirant, writing is her escape from the chaotic world.

Abhiram Kuchibhotla Abhiram Kuchibhotla is a final year student at the Manipal Center for Humanities. He enjoys writing short stories drawn from his experiences and thinks they tiptoe the line between fiction and non-fiction.

Anaga Sivaramakrishnan Anaga is a dutiful bookworm, a writer, a dancer and an occasional moody cook. She loves dipping her fingers into different pies to try which go the best together. Coming from a mixed background, she claims this is her way of carving her identity.

Anamika Das Anamika Das, a research student at Kolkata, inculcated visual art as a hobby and attended training workshops throughout her school life, but lost touch with it soon after.

The disorientation felt during the Covid-19 pandemic encouraged her to get back to it, and run an Instagram handle for her amateur artworks which can be found on: @amaya_with_colours.

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Arka Mukhopadhyay Arka Mukhopadhyay is an independent scholar and occasional scribbler who finds solace in the margins. He wanted to become a truck driver when he was very little, but ended up studying literature instead. Some of the things that interest him are broken mirrors, fallen leaves, merging rail tracks, moving images and black cats.

Arul Kirubakaran Arul Kirubakaran is a medical student and upstart neoModernist poet and staff writer for the Manipal Digest. While not on Tumblr or reading Austen and parodying Camus, they indulge in linguistics (knowing 5 languages and counting), Asian history, and analyzing queer theory and metaphysical surrealism in contemporary media.

Ayush Ray Ayush Ray is an ex-engineer, present film student and future globe trotter. He pursues cinematography as a career and photography as a hobby. He attempts to witness and document human interest stories to create non fiction narratives with a personal reflection.

Ekasmayi Naresh Ekasmayi Naresh is a psychology graduate and is currently working as a researcher at the IMHO. She is fascinated by the power of words to create and dispel confusion. Ekasmayi is also an inveterate lover of stories and poetry.

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Harshita Kale Harshita is a peculiar blend of romantic and realist, but those who know her say there’s an attractive order to her chaos.

In the rare case you don’t catch her engrossed in a book, you’ll likely find her binging whichever new show has caught her fancy or listening to her favourite music, lost in dreams.

She spends her time weaving words and finding magic in the mundane.

Jacqueline Williams Refer to The Teatotallers section.

Jayaditya Vittal Refer to The Teatotallers section.

Jhanavi Purohit Jhanavi Purohit is an articulate individual with a critic's eye, an artist's heart, a reader's intellect and a virtuoso's fondness for everything creative. Writing and painting is her way of expression and she does so with vehemence. She wants to innovate and modify the ‘everyday’ as insanely as possible while breaking the stereotypes of the society, designing a lifestyle that does not allow any kind of physical or mental discrimination.

Laya Satyamoorthy Laya Satyamoorthy is a 2nd-year student of Filmmaking at St. Joseph's College. She loves television more than most things and thinks stories are very important. Describing herself further makes her nauseous, so she chooses to stop here.

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Madhumita G Madhumita describes herself as partly curious, mostly bored.

She is an enthusiast of short sentences, real frames and funny politics. Oh and if you hear a good story, she requests you to send it her way!

Madhumitha A Chelvan Refer to The Teatotallers section.

Madhura Kar Refer to The Teatotallers section.

Malaifly Malaifly is an Indian artist and poetess. Malaifly has been writing all her life and knows she couldn't stop even if she tried. She expresses herself both in her words as well as their presentation, from hand-lettering to accompanying with photography and illustration.

Meghana Injeti Meghana is a student of Psychology and a part-time amateur freelancer juggling between visual art, digital art and creative writing. She loves exploring quirky themes and art mediums, mostly for self-expression. You can catch more of her artwork on her Projectile Instagram art page @hue.due

Mohaddesah Riyaz Ladiwala Mohaddesah Riyaz Ladiwala is a student, poet, and aspiring author from Bombay. She enjoys reading and binging series.

She is currently studying at Sophia College for Women and hopes to graduate in history.

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Nehla Salil Nehla is a humanities student. She is very active in the writing community and is constantly learning new styles of writing.

She focuses on issues pertaining to literature and their impact and tackles it with a unique perspective. Moreover, she is a self-taught graphic designer and illustrator and loves to doodle constantly. You can say hi to her and check out her work at @cellsuicide on Instagram!

Nidhin Joseph A 17-year old NID aspirant, Nidhin draws to express the lost idiosyncrasy in humanity. He wants his works to express the inchoate society through metaphors and symbolism. He has a penchant for different movements in art and is not limited to a specific period. Apart from finding ways to stay away from societal paradigms, he is an avid foodie and a jazz lover.

Niranjana H Niranjana Hariharanandanan is a writer/documentary filmmaker and works as Executive Producer with Discovery Networks Asia Pacific. Niranjana is a scuba diving enthusiast, a Murakami maniac, and loves all things Japanese. Her work has been published by JaggeryLit, The Punch Magazine, DLG Publications, The Book Smugglers Den, and Chaicopy.

She is an alumnus of the Dum Pukht Writers' Workshop and is working on her first novel. Niranjana is currently working out of her homestay in Kerala, with her family and dog Hachiko.

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Ranju Mamachan Ranju Mamachan has never used a pseudonym. This is an act of courage considering he comes from an illustrious family of tailors, notorious for having put pleats on the favorite jeans of their local supervillain.

Raseela P A Raseela P A is a native of Lakshadweep. She is presently an MA 2nd year student at the Centre for English Studies in JNU. Her interests are travelling, writing and photography.

Roshni Raheja Roshni Raheja is a poet, culture nerd, and tropical fruit enthusiast. She writes across genre and style, usually exploring stories at the intersections of technology, language, and human interaction.

Serene George Refer to The Teatotallers section.

Sonia Sali Refer to The Teatotallers section.

Sragdharamalini Das Sragdharamalini Das studied Mathematics at the undergraduate level at St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata and is currently pursuing her Masters in English from Manipal Centre for Humanities. Ever-immersed in amateurish philosophising, she divides her time between the realm of algorithmic formulations and the amorphous world of creative meanderings.

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Uma Padmasola Refer to The Teatotallers section.

Vishakha Madrawadkar Vishakha is a lover of books, memes and all that exists in between.

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The Teatotallers Editors-in-Chief Aditi Paul Aditi is a final year Masters' student pursuing her degree in English. She enjoys spending her days either binge watching absurd shows or at art galleries. She can usually be found ranting, a steaming cup of tea by her side.

Sre Ratha A raging feminist and a consummate fangirl, Sre can be found jamming out to rock music and occasionally One Direction.

Or she is found making herself a strong cup of coffee. She is currently pursuing her Masters’ degree in Sociology in MCH. She loves reading and enjoys watching rom-coms and sitcoms as well.

Fiction Madhura Kar Madhura is a third year Bachelors' student in Manipal Centre for Humanities. She is constantly in awe of the magnanimous cosmos and when it comes to her own little one, she prefers to curl up in the corner of a large library; mostly with green tea and Murakami.

Bhanusri Palle Bhanusri tries her best. She loves dogs, cats and music, and is uncomfortable talking about herself in third-person.

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Deepthi Priyanka C An enthusiast of zodiacs, maps, crayons and caterpillars who is constantly dreaming up names, places, animals and things.

Madhumitha Arivu Chelvan Madhumitha is a second year BA student at MCH. She loves pop culture and television, and apologises too much. You’ll probably find her with a brand new interest every week that she simply won’t shut up about.

Sailza Kumari Sailza is a final year MA student pursuing her degree in English.

She enjoys binge watching on Netflix, wearing fandom related t-shirts and drinking copious amounts of coffee.

Serene George Serene George is a MA 1st year student at the Manipal Centre for Humanities. She is bad at writing bios.

Shreya Jauhari Shreya is unable to find neat categories to present her personality aptly in, but resonates most with reading feminist literature, taking theatre courses and writing poetry in Oxford looking notepads. She is currently doing her Bachelors' in liberal arts, and hopes to have a life in studying Sociology, and helping India’s current dysphoria towards activism.

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Shriya Adhikari Shriya Adhikari is currently a second-year BA student at MCH. She loves Sociology, History, K-pop and 90% dark chocolate.

Her favourite pastimes include leaving half-read books for already-read books, reading fanfiction and crying over K-dramas.

Sonia Sali Sonia is a freelancer and a masters student. She is a horrible introvert who has her best friend in herself and quite often lost in the blue skies. Well, she is often lost yet a deep thinker.

She likes anything deep and out of this world. Quite strange.

Uma Padmasola Uma is a final year student of MA English at Manipal Centre for Humanities. She studied liberal arts at Azim Premji University.

She writes fiction and fangirls over Barbara Comyns, but only when she has the time, even though that’s all she wants to do.

Nonfiction Ajantha Rao Ajantha is a sarcastic Potterhead, who is perpetually sleepy.

Divya K. B Divya is a second year MA student, pursuing her degree in literature. She can be bribed with anything and everything horror, decadent desserts, angst-heavy rock music and good company.

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Jayaditya Vittal Jay, in MA 2. He enjoys reading and editing, and is deeply passionate about his tea, his dog, his lorikeet, and his snails.

Jishnu Goswami Jishnu Goswami is a second year student of Manipal Center for Humanities.

Komal Badve Currently pursuing an MA in English, Komal loves cats, coffee, and being left alone. Thank you for coming to her Ted Talk.

Sarah Hussain Sarah Hussain is a third year Bachelors's student majoring in Literature. A bundle of emotions and simplicity, she loves to read novels that are raw and creative. Sarah also enjoys journaling and penning down poems on longing and love, in her past time.

Visual Arts Aparna Manoj Aparna Manoj is a second year BA student at MCH. She loves making origami, reading, and plants.

Lavya Joshi Lavya is a socially awkward human, who is a very annoying friend because she randomly zones out mid-conversation thinking about stars, books and weird physics facts.

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Illustration and Graphic Design Jacqueline Williams Jacqueline Williams likes dogs, books, balconies and perforated notebooks.

Udhisha Vijay Udhisha loves travelling, reading and Performing Arts. She won’t talk much and might just pretend you can hear her.

Aparna Manoj Refer to The Teatotallers: Visual Arts.

Madhumitha Arivu Chelvan Refer to The Teatotallers: Fiction.

Samara Chandavarkar Samara is a second year student at MCH. She's incredibly passionate about dogs, the environment, trashy reality TV, and art that impacts and engages.

Public Relations Francesca Fowler Francesca says eccentricity is an understatement when it comes to her – one man’s sanity is another’s insanity. She is passionate, hopeful, and curious.

Aashna Viswanathan Aashna is a second year MA student pursuing her degree in English. She loves Indian Folk dance and finds writing her own bio insanely difficult.

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Arpita Reddy Arpita is a second year Bachelors' student, studying at the Manipal Centre for Humanities. She is an insomniac bibliophile and an expert binge watcher!

Eman Siddiq Eman Siddiq is a BA second year student at MCH. She loves the world of theatre, musical instruments, basketball, books, animals and enjoys learning languages. She plays a little bit of the guitar and is highly addicted to coffee and tea.

Rhea Sakhardande Rhea is a final year Masters' student. She likes to watch suspense thrillers and loves sending weird GIFs and ideas to her friends post midnight.

Sadhvi Hegde Sadhvi is a second year BA student who cannot find anything interesting to say about her. She can be found either watching air crash documentaries or complaining about the Manipal weather.

Shriya Adhikari Refer to The Teatotallers: Fiction.

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