Postscript Journal 2021 - 2022

THE ENGLISH LITERARY SOCIETY, ST. STEPHEN'S COLLEGE

identity POSTSCRIPT 2021 - 2022

THE ENGLISH LITERARY SOCIETY, ST. STEPHEN'S COLLEGE

Cover Art: Daniel Zokhumsanga, B.A (H) Philosophy, II Year, St. Stephen's College All contributors retain complete rights of their work

Postscript Jyotsna Iyer

Yusra Basit

Editorial

1

Khudgarzi

2

(or, I wept, the world turned, and so, I did not) Rayan Chakrabarti

On Loving

4

Ribcages and Despair

5

Ammi

6

Upoma Ganguly

A Women in a Foreign Land

10

Anushka Pragya

Suppressed Freedom

12

Milee Jangid Charvi Bhatnagar

in Kari and Persepolis Tasneem Khan

Abba What Will Unfold When We

19

Meet and Other Poems Anannya Chakra

Chitee Lele

Joie De Vivre

22

Afterword

26

Editorial Board

27

Executive Council

28

Meditation of the self often involves an exploration of vulnerabilities. This act of conscious self-reflection affects our perspectives and relationship with the world.

In this edition of Postscript, we bring to you an experimentation of ideas, narrative and language through a thoughtfully curated collection of literary writings. As a team, we endeavored to weave conversations about identity with socio-political dimensions like gender, culture, sexuality, religion, language and nationality. While thinking about the direction of this edition, we chose to focus on narrative as a literary space to re-negotiate one's identity.

The construction of an identity has been discussed in postmodern literature and philosophy of the 20th century. Drawing from these two disciplines, our writers present to us writings that investigate tensions and frays within the self and the society. The writings are intimate and personal while challenging existing literary conventions.

In an era of polarization, sensationalism and censorship of the identity, our edition must be read keeping in mind the varied personal contexts of the writers. Labels that are used to transform identities in current times are not binary in nature. As a literary magazine we're conscious of the voices of our writers and are committed to being a platform that bolsters creative freedom and expression.

Editor in Chief Jyotsna Iyer B.A Programme, Third Year, St. Stephen's College

1

Khudgarzi (or, I wept, the world turned, and so, I did not)

(There is a deep absence within me. I fear nothing shall ever complete it.)

My morning does not stop. It dawns pale and ghastly, a spectre of a subah, a vision of nothing and nowhere: here one second, gone before the next. There thunders an echo of a great beast in the distance; it is hurrying and rushing, creeping up on soft padded paws, claws tucked away within the folds of a yielding flesh, closer and closer as I breathe. In-out, in-out. What was I dreaming of? (I have not seen a khwāb in years.)

They say, hopes have wings of their own. They say, clip them before they take you off the edge. Not one is a stranger to taqlīf: what is a bit of blood and rot, anyway? Lady Macbeth, I would proclaim myself, only I do not know which knife I have handed over in my smiling acquiescence. All I can tell is the delightful red crusting and oozing on and from my blistered palms looks awfully familiar, shimmers khoobsūrat in the dusk. Water burns like hellfire.

(Where am I headed now?)

There sits something in my throat, you see. Fanciful reminiscence, moments where I do not clasp my hands to my neck to soothe away swift-welling drops of blood invisible to every eye but mine, tells me that it is something just a little bit wicked, something that earnestly and clumsily tries to kiss away the dard it leaves behind, only its teeth clamp into my bone and suck dry the marrow from me. Does a life flow, or does it amble? I wish the answers came in a whisper. (Aawāz has left my side like a war-weary traitor. My ears do not stop ringing.)

Home does not fit like ghar any longer; it heaves and groans, walls crumbling away like giggling sleep beneath my touch. Sunlight feels like the hazy disorienting patches of dhoop no more, love now does not reek of the cloying crooning temptations of mohabbat. My fingers collect dust, and I seat myself quietly upon a mantelpiece, a floral porcelain plate saved for celebrations, a timepiece that saw the sun set on laughter of reckless abandon, a dupatta that once settled on the ledge and waits limply for a recognition that will never come again. I watch through veils and continue to weave more. Sweet Aphrodite, my hands are restless. (I believe I have forgotten what sukūn tastes like.)

2

I wander, trance-like, through the maws of a new sheher each day, and I trade my soul to be told of my long-lost heart, tales of valour to make the pitiful ends of a curious tragedy be relayed in fits and starts over sobbing albums cracked open on proffered knees. The clamour of the duniya I wrench open, the waltz to my promised dance. The breeze titters into a fizā some days; and on others, intezār sings for me snatches from home-spun lullabies. I warble mutely from the night. I think I have walked into the beyond. (I wish I could find a way to come back.)

Sadness churns in the caverns of my chest, far more coarse than gham dare be, greasy and burnt and acrid, a cloud of dilapidated bus stops and lopsided swing-sets coughed away with each ashen spell. The foundations shake, shake, shake around me. A toy loses his eye, my friend sits with a noose around her neck, steel teases at the lip of my scream, my memorised paths home are trodden beneath hundreds of frenzied bulls. I call and I cry, and not one of them stops. (They will run me over. They will crumble me to dust.

I want to run. I cannot stand.)

Some days, I think I should rip my tongue free from my gullet, lay it out slippery and writhing, slice it into ribbons and arrange a bouquet. Small, not big. Slender, not strong. Funeral, not celebration. My zabān is whimsy, and I cannot pin it down. (My mouth cannot form verse anymore. I am a kāfir to my own. I cannot go back.)

Yusra Basit B.A. (Hons.) English, Second Year, St. Stephen's College

3

On Loving (1) In an attempt to understand his rhythm, I settled into the home of his neck. It tasted like pink, or a blossom during a year when everything else was still. We were creating music from this scent, sheet after sheet of piloo and khamaj, accidentals and augmentations.

The violin was melting into my chords, trying to show them their place in the world, trying to discipline them. What I would not give to hold this print again, even this tattered remnant, so scattered like the leaves that cannot rustle. What would I not give to settle into his neck and understand the lilt of his veins.

(2) The towel still smells of you. You wiped your arms in it, then your hair, your thighs, your flaking lips. The running water had created rain, a simulation to be trusted. Your torso had reached for the showerhead, twisting and turning it, and with some expectation, you had turned around to kiss me. The floor had started to move, first with devotion, but it didn't take long to turn into possession. A vile, archaic dance, challenging me to keep pace with it. Where did we fall? Where did we fall through the cracks? How did it happen? Teach my mind to remember, because it drifts to the day the air was so full of you.

(3) I don't want you to touch me today. Your hands are like a forest, whispering, like a labyrinth in season. You are pregnant with ideas, touching the shorelines of my palm, dotted with shaving blades and affection. The index points towards a catalogue of our dreams, now horridly imbalanced, a ledge with no mercy. Yet, you will leave. Your hands will touch the bus steps, your tiffin carrier dangling like a child gnawing at our threads. You will look around, stupefied, as face after face makes an appearance, scheduled and colloquial. Yet, you will stay. This is where you will try to make a home. Like a pickpocket, you will search for the silence within the crowd, almost stealing it in a rare, mystic lunge. Almost.

Rayan Chakrabarti B.A (Hons.) English, Second Year, St. Stephen's College

4

Ribcages and Despair 1. I take a scoop of despair circling my family’s heads like halos of misplaced browns amongst an ocean of whites. I pour the despair into learning how to pronounce r without the slur of my grandmother’s accent and I think I can't say your name without lies gilding my tongue with a language so foreign it leaves a metallic taste in my nicotine filled teeth. When does the war end?

You write in your letters and I want to say that these gunshots and grenades have become my religion, maybe their fall on the centre of the earth will end us, the war because no messiah is kind enough to cup his snow hands in our cupper cheeks. It's been three years since I left home and grief keeps her running shoes behind me. Did I tell you that grief is a person standing between the curbs of a crooked road and the staring hall and there's a hymn of song hidden in her mouth and she waits for me to slip into her skin and sing about my gods, my lands and the footnotes of my house I know as well as the palm of my hand and the back of yours. She asks me to come home to her every day and I tell her this is home. My heart cracks like the bricks of my school and I stitch it with my shaky nimble fingers unused to curves of English and my mother tells me to let go of the ravine let it crush your ribcages and divide them into two of you that's what I did that's what your father did and that's what you will do- being split into two bodies, slipping from carcasses of one to other.

2. The newspaper reads in its nebulae ink The world is ending and I go to school with the words sticking to the surface of my mouth like bubblegum.

My friend tells me that all I have been and all that I ever will be is my brown skin and an accent of ancient bizarre tombs, that I will go to my grave with this in the laces of my silk sarees, my being reduced to my earthly texture and golden hues. The words on the newspaper bubble on my tongue with an acid that can’t swallow the foreign food and my father cries bloody tears and swallows a will to go back to his homeland and pockets that can't afford a cab to our relatives next town. The newspaper reads The world is ending but it starts for me when the sun casts its golden bricks on my sorrow-filled eye bags and ends with bruises littering my hands; mine and the people who hate my kind.

3. I hold your hands in mine when you visit my dreamland and grow roots of love and kindness and belonging and my heart gets wrenched like my homeland’s flag of others. I put courage and seal my ribcage with flowers and my letters to my grandma with fractional hope that lights the catacomb of my empty soul.

Milee Jangid B.A. (Hons.) English, First Year, Ramjas College

5

Ammi Ammi spoke a lot. Gagged white hair on her head, swollen body draped in red sarees, she looked like a hounded dog. I used to giggle when I saw Ramkumar, the dog outside our dimly-lit one-room flat on the outskirts of Chawri Bazaar. He looked like her. Ammi, Ammi, Ammi – I used to call him, and surprisingly he always came in want of food; Ammi had that same habit, tailing after every caller. When she got to know about this, her hands slapped me in the middle of the old busy roads of the Bazaar, and everyone stared at me. I didn’t cry, because I knew they weren’t watching in sympathy, in urge to slowly blow my red cheeks, but it was only to protest our frail existence.

They never stop glaring, anyway. Chawri Bazaar was rich with stalls and stalls of people who sell and sell, copper, brass, any metal you can name. I told Ammi that when I grow up, I want to be a person inside these shops, for their hustle and bustle.

“So, you want to be like Ammi.”

“No, far from that, I want to be a seller.”

“But that’s what your Ammi does. Our house is just like a Darbar, don’t you see people coming to buy entertainment? They love me. I am a tradition.”

“Ammi, I don’t want to sell what you do.”

“You’re young, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But our house wasn’t like those shops in the lanes of Chawri Bazaar, it wasn’t even a lavish Darbar. We lived in a concealed lane, hidden from the protests of society. Our buyers were drunkards who with their cheap gazes harmed Ammi every day. I don’t want to be Ammi, I say to her, as she slaps me again.

There’s no one to see this time, as I break in tears, begging to be seen and helped.

There’s a drunkard in our seclusion now. He desires to stay and build a home. A father, Ammi says, and he nudges his head in preliminary dejection as he continues to ignore my haughty existence every day. Ammi sees that but like every seller in the Bazaar, she becomes their blind eyes who refuse to see us if it isn’t to protest us. Years later, I believe her to be right. Our living is a commodity, which wastes in anticipation of callers, who, like the roads of Chawri Bazaar, are disgusted to call upon our feet.

6

Months ago, Ramkumar had passed away in a difficult winter, his body seemed too small a thing. I remember Ammi being delighted, as she had remarked that nobody would be outside our home now, pestering us, barking at us.

"But isn’t that what we want, how we survive?”

“You think you are so smart, don’t you?”

“Ammi, everybody spits even on our shadows out in the Bazaar.”

“We are tawaifs, the highest courtesans of this Darbar. Our art makes them jealous, amirti.”

“What art Ammi, we just wait on drunken men.

At this point, she had gotten agitated from the bundling questions about her life from the life she birthed. “You need a father figure”, she decided ultimately. Yet, hearing that, I chocked my own spit and cried in fear.

In retrospect, Ammi’s wishes did come true. All of them. The man slept all day. He drooled, with lust, and used to beat Ammi when she awakened him with a chaukha from her chuhla’s smoke, which made his drunk, red eyes puff up and his croaky throat cough. Every night, in the four walls that surrounded our prison, the crimes I used to hear from the darkened corner where Ammi laid, stole my sleep away. She used to be covered in scabs and scars the next morning, but I was too afraid to police and question her deeds.

“You old white hag”, the drunkard only spoke in repulsion and hatred of her.

One evening, Ammi had gone away to Chawri Bazaar, where she felt more exposed than in the bloody mounting of the callers. Even her own draped red sarees weren’t enough to bear the anguish of her bare skin. The man, left alone with me, was sleeping on the khat as he did all day. I prayed he wouldn’t be awakened while Ammi was gone as I was too scared of his bulky body and his stooping stature. Before, I had even begged Ammi to take me with her. “You aren’t ready for the public yet. When you turn eighteen, you can expose all parts of you in the Bazaar, amirti, I wouldn’t stop. You’re even so beautiful, I’ll not have to work and be long retired, in your wake.” My tears were long dried, and upon hearing this, I only wished it would never be true.

Yet, I wasn’t Ammi, was I? – my wishes and prayers were never fulfilled. In a jerk, the drunkard drooped his sleekish eyes over me, empty as the house was, empty as I was. He began to notice me as if for the first time, coming

7

closer and closer, instilling in me a tinge of fear I never wanted to feel.

“Ammi!” I wailed as he pushed my hands over my dejected head and weighed his body over me onto the khat. The khat had swung, kheechak-peechak, making noises as Ammi had made every night. I became an accomplice in crimes that weren’t mine to begin with, or even Ammi’s, that I had come to realize. His bearded chin on my neck, his arms around the parts I had never given a moment’s attention to, swinging his thing and huffing all over me in a growl and in a sting of an old-man smell. I, numb, just waited for it to pass, my tears were long dried now. After he was done with me, he immediately stooped in rejection of me, again.

“Babibty, you are a prostitute now, just like your Ammi.” My tongue which worked like scissors, as Ammi used to say, did not have any words or questions left. I found myself as concealed as the lanes that ran outside the four walls, and as dim as the inside of the house with a lavish Darbar. I, fell immortal, in the tradition of a Tawaif of the 1970s.

Ammi, when she came back, felt a familiarity with me, an agreement she had never agreed her daughter to. She returned exposed from the streets, when I had been too, just in seclusion. I knew she knew, she just knew. It was a sense of sisterhood, a shared grief that all the women of the society are somehow vulnerable to – it has no words to record it, no dialogues to squall in, just the realization of the ambiguous identity that becomes ours now. Nothing will ever be the same – my sister knew that our chained existence had been chained together now in the same prison, with the same crimes, bringing a life of unfortunes.

The drunkard stayed where he was, a criminal deprived as a vegetative body on the khat of his thievery; thievery of my precious flower. Ammi and I succumbed to silence in our own desolation. Things returned to normal, in the concealed lanes of numerous tawaifs. _ Ammi didn’t get a chance to retire. Months ago, she had passed away in a difficult winter, her character seemed too small a thing. Chawri Bazaar doesn’t remember her, when all her life she was stripped on its roads. The sellers who sold metal, had destroyed a life they didn’t even bother to see for what she was, those metal-hearted sellers. The Bazaar was as if it had been a reflection of the society, and Ammi and I were considered the ones who were concealed off as a mark of shame and humiliation in it.

Ironically, I did become the part of Chawri Bazaar I so wanted to be in my childhood, as every caller that sought me, came from the same hustle and

8

bustle, the same guddle - bubble. I had loved it with my heart, but it had never seen me more than a body to be sexualized. Even the dogs that had replaced Ramkumar, pestered me, barked at me, waiting for their inhumane desires to be satiated.

“Babibty, you’re so beautiful.”

“Where do you work, sahib?”

“I own a shop right in the center of Chawri Bazaar. I sell brass utensils, sometimes copper too, whatever has value.”

“My art has value. It is a tradition.”

“What art, Babibty?”

“I am a tawaif, and this house is my Darbar, sahib.”

Charvi Bhatnagar B.A (Hons.) English, Second Year, Hansraj College

9

A Woman In A Foreign Land my body is a mystery to me it is a mystery to everyone else the dark skin and the scars running like rivulets i'm not pale or rosy or peachy most days i feel like an alien walking amidst fallen angels - light-eyed, light-haired, lithe-bodied and i feel estranged i take up too much space my nose isn't quite as straight this place, this isn't home and i'm not myself here either i am but a caricature exhausted from screaming on a hoarse throat blistered feet and sore shoulders from the miles i've covered brushing up against people at rallies a rallying cry "We Exist!" and many more follow "Notice Us!" "Respect Existence Or Expect Resistance!" i'm tired tonight take me home, hold me close please i'm larger than life, i'm larger than them i can't fit into brandy melville even if i tried i'm larger than me i'm representing all the women today, those who are here and those from back home i'm tired tonight on sundays i want to pick up a wicker basket and adorn myself with a pretty bow and go on a picnic at the riverside

10

but on sundays i march up to the town hall with my sisters in arms demanding respect, demanding they let us breathe in peace i'm tired tonight i will be tired tomorrow i'm tired everyday i'm a walking revolution, but not by choice let me rest for a while, i'll sing you warsongs about my existence for the rest of the year for the rest of my life.

Upoma Ganguly B.A Political Science, Second Year, Gokhale Memorial Girls College

11

Suppressed Freedom in Kari and Persepolis Realist narration chooses to focus on the everyday, banal realities of life, without involving what can be called supernatural and fantastical elements, to conform to the rising influence of empiricism and the need to make characters and events believable. Taking a step in a different direction, trans realists have tried to say that representation of reality is not achieved through the mere depiction of everyday lives. Transrealism goes on to incorporate elements of science fiction, magic or fantasy to overcome the boundaries of realism. A medium of expression like the graphic novel that brings together both verbal and artistic depictions has been able to give birth to twenty-firstcentury realism and transrealism. Through the use of the written as well as the visual, graphic novels are able to create multiple layers of reality which assist us in the journey of imagination. .

Moving away from, while also retaining the structure of comic strips, graphic novels, with their mature panels, have opened up the artform to some serious themes and discussions. Realism is a very visible feature of a lot of graphic novels, as they have tried to show the realities of everyday life, while also paving the way for some difficult questions, including those related to class, religion, and now even caste structures. The novels that this paper will focus on are Kari by Amruta Patil (2012) and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000). A common theme binding the two is the question of female identities stuck amidst intersectional barriers. In the chaotic times of today, identities have become threatened to an unanticipated extent, in a way continuing the older forms of oppression, while also witnessing the forging of newer methods of attack. This paper aims to show how in such regressive times, graphic novels, like Kari and Persepolis, with the combined use of words and sketched panels, are able to bring out the shifting and conflicted identities of the female protagonists with great clarity, even through moments of visual disarray.

Kari is the story of a twenty-one-year-old queer woman paving her way, literally, through the drains of Smog City, presumably Bombay, after having gone through a double-suicide attempt by Kari and her beloved, Ruth, from which the latter is saved and flies away, while Kari herself falls into the deep, dirty drains of the city. The protagonist takes us through the life of a nonconforming woman who has to face constant backlash from society for notadhering to its principles of life and sexuality. We come across many female characters who are trying to deal with social expectations, personal

12

tornadoes, gruelling lives and restrictions in many other spaces. In such an atmosphere, Kari struggles to be able to freely express her own sexual identity and freedom, and to survive in the “Ruth”less Smog City.

In Persepolis, Marjani Satrapi shows us the life she led in Iran and Austria, during and after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, being the daughter of radical Marxists, but the citizen of a country deeply embroiled in religious extremism and destructive wars. One can notice the polarised atmosphere between inside the household that gave Marji a life of freedom, and out in the open where a repressive atmosphere stifled any expression of free will.

We see how freedom means different things for a girl from Iran, not wanting to submit to religious practices like wearing a veil, and the same girl going to a foreign land, wanting to not be discriminated against because of her religion and nationality. Using simple graphics and language, Persepolis is able to give a cross-cultural representation, bringing forth the deep-rooted problems with the hypermasculine institution of war, propagation of religious dogmatism through various social institutions, as well as lack of adequate support for the re-assimilation of, particularly, female victims of such ill-treatment in the society.

The most striking thing in Kari is the visual bleakness, created through constant use of grey and very slight green colours, almost giving us the feel of being amidst the drains that clog Smog City. The lines in the panels blur into each other, sometimes even making it difficult to make out different images, representing the dysphoria and lack of clarity that Kari faces with respect to her own identity in the heteronormative culture, something that we will come back to later in this paper. On the other hand, in Persepolis, we see very clear and literally black-and-white panels, and we can notice the polarisation in the different domains that Marji describes through the sketched boxes themselves. In these novels, like in the very genre of graphic novels, not much is left for the reader to create by themselves, as the narration is assisted by the graphics to show us exactly what we are supposed to see. Both the books are very bold and unfettered in the graphics of body politics that they represent, whether it has to do with physical control over people’s lives, activities and appearances in Persepolis, or a slower, indoctrinating procedure of control over sexuality and preferences in Kari.

There is a clear distinction of the public and the private in both these novels.

Marji sees how differently she must behave inside and out of the protection of her home, where she can be who she wants, even a prophet if that’s what

13

she prefers. In Kari we can see the contradiction between what goes on in Kari’s mind and what the world wants her to be. Amongst the various women that form the backbone of this exterior world, the city of Bombay itself is an important one. Bombay is personified as a friend with whom Kari has a relationship of mutual dependence, someone who saves her when she jumps off a building, but also whose sewers are unclogged by Kari when Bombay really needs her help, which represents the solidarity within the space of the novel, sometimes vocal, but more often, silent and subtle. For Marji, the city, for the most part, is a hostile space, where having sustained relationships is very difficult for her due to the volatile and charged nature of the atmosphere as well as her own life. This public space still remains one that Marji has to continuously interact with. In both the books, we see the protagonists fighting with their own selves due to pressures from society to be something they are not and something they cannot imagine themselves as. Perhaps that is the reason for the strips being loaded with Kari talking about and to herself. The constant inward fight is very visible and goes to shape the narratives, making the characters resonate with the readers.

Another important aspect of both these novels is the class distinction which is very apparent and ominously present. When Marji flies off to Vienna to escape orthodox authoritarianism, we can see that it is something that only people with a certain economic privilege can afford to do. At the same time, because of the education and upbringing she has received from her family, she is aware of the stark class distinctions in the society of Iran and other countries since childhood, which, at many points in her life, gives her the zeal to go against what state machineries have been training them to do. In Kari, right in the beginning, Ruth is saved by her safety nets, and moves away from the city, while Kari is left trying to deal with her memories on her own, because she could not afford to get away from Bombay. In Kari we also see the three flatmates struggling with jobs they didn’t really like for the sake of living a decent life in Bombay, with the backdrop of the Great Recession of 2008. The two books show us the two aspects of being lost in a city with such varied yet apathetic masses: it becomes a silent annihilator through anonymity for some, while also becoming a source of freedom for a lot of other people.

One might be tempted to ask what is new in these struggles of identity in such societies in the 21st century. For one, identities today are marked with fluidity, far from being unitary or stable. The very medium of the graphic

14

novel expresses this fluidity with the visual and verbal elements that communicate the unsettled nature of the self in crisis. So, the lines blurring into each other in the graphics of Kari are representative of the merging and branching of identities that happen simultaneously. Kari is not fixed or stable in her identity, her frequent conversations with herself bringing out her confusion and lack of surety, the most prominent moment being when she is unable to answer if she is “a proper lesbian”. In Persepolis, Marji’s perception of the veil and other religious practices changes with time, her movement across countries, her exposure to new knowledge. She goes through multiple changes in how she looks as well as how she feels in these looks. When the novelist shows Marji tripping, we can feel ourselves getting trapped in a whole new world, completely different from the one we are comfortable in.

It is this flux that makes the concept of identity, particularly that of subjugated women, very dynamic and constantly moving. This is where the transrealist characteristics of these books become important, since, through their unclear images, they throw light upon the unknown and undiscovered territory that one jumps into because of the identities not given to us readymade, or because of our rejection of the identities that are thrust upon us. In this panel from Kari, we see her at the award ceremony for the brilliant ad that she has created. In the midst of a public celebration, she is wearing a very feminine outfit, but sporting a conventionally masculine haircut, and more importantly, surrounded by figures that cannot be depicted with clear lines. Patil chooses to create a sense of the chaos that goes on in her head, thinking about which labels she conforms to, through the use of visual jargon, and images that cannot even be differentiated from each other. We must remember that the politics of surviving with today’s identities demands going away from the normative, well-built structures, towards a place where you can never be sure enough of stability and absence of doubt.

Politics and the state play a vital role in Persepolis. Just like the lives of all people living in countries with political upheavals, Marji’s life is set upside down when the Shah is overthrown and the radical Islamic regime takes over.

The state controls the lives of the people, even when their own ruler, not a puppet apparently, is put in power. This time, it is the wars that the country gets involved in, which create the horrific violence. So, in a way, the very institution of the state becomes unreliable, the social contract exposing itself to be a farce. In addition to this, the state itself has been called the epitome of masculine imagination by many theorists and social scientists. By

15

econtrast, Kari does not have to face such a direct involvement with politics.

But, when we get close to Kari, we realise that she is living her own politics, trying to exist as her independent self, fighting her family, the people she lives and works with, and is struggling to a much more suffocating extent, at times even questioning the physicality of who and what she is, when she is expected to put on kohl though she feels like Sean Penn.

Something very important in these novels are the relationships of the protagonists with the other female characters. Kari’s interaction with characters like the Airlines lady who has a black eye on one of their train journeys, as well as with the city of Bombay, as mentioned earlier, are examples of a bond whose existence is vital to Kari's life and narrative.

Persepolis, on the other hand, shows us a darker set of feminine interactions due to the conditioning of a patriarchal society, coming out through literal policing by older women and bitter fights between Marji and the girls in Austria. But also, we see many great friendships between Marji and her childhood friends, between her and her roommate in Vienna and a very close camaraderie between the three generations of women in her family.

Kari, India’s first gay graphic novel, written by India’s first female graphic novelist, manages to leave the readers feeling stronger and more confident, with the protagonist sporting a 2-mm buzzcut instead of a “lady’s boycut” and a PVC suit that does itch but at least makes her realise that she does not need to jump off buildings for people she loves. In the end, all the nuanced relationships and the extremely meaningful sensuality and sexuality come together to give our Boatman a lot of layers worth exploring, as she emerges a superwoman even in her normal, ad-agency-drain-unclogging life. Marji goes through a lot of trouble in a foreign land, trying to adjust with people who always see her as an outsider, particularly from an Islamic country. Her little love stories get her to drink, smoke, sleep on the streets, have nothing to eat, and end up in the hospital, saved from the brink of death. The important thing at the end of Persepolis is that it does not conclude with a happy ending. It ends in the middle of a journey, with the ordinariness of life in the middle-east. It ends with the same lack of hope that threatened the people of Iran in times of conflict of ideas and principles, rights and freedoms. But it also leaves us angry at the injustice that women, especially of certain identities, have been subjected to, through a number of institutions that have been given popular acceptance.

16

These two novels bring up a number of major feminist issues that women across the globe have been grappling with. These stories continue to give strength to women as well as the feminist movement at large. The intersectional identities invoked in such stories make us realise the importance of inclusivity and the power of sisterhood even on days when we are locked up in our homes, with nothing but art and our mobile phones by our side.

Anushka Pragya B.A. (Hons.) English, Second Year, Ramjas College

17

Abba, What Will Unfold When We Meet For everything that began with Fa you said Pha, I correct your savage tongue I offer punctuations to distill the gaucheness of your language, forgetting that in your vocabulary, Fa does not exist that a nukta, for you, becomes a ravenous black hole engulfing your being into alien territories, forgetting that I have neither, I sit here with my English equivalents— you soar towards me, led by the doves of Awadhi, I limp towards you, a two-tongued demon I fear myself, I fear what tragedy may unfold when we meet.

Forgive Me, for I Have Betrayed I must forget my God I must call him god, & not God I must reduce him to anonymity I must chew his name, but not spit it I must let it sediment, and if the vast space between my mouth and my throat were to turn to stone, I must let it, I must let it become a gravestone my god is faultless, but when they surround us, outnumber us, lynch us, my god will be of less utility, I must remember him when alone, or no, forgive me, I must forget my god I must forget his name I must forget it all, to survive, so here, today, I will it say once—like an elegy, and then I will forget.

18

The Myth of the Ominous Bird My people speak of a myth long believed— ‘An owl’s call is an omen of death.’

It is intriguing, this bird, the messenger of misfortune, the kin to a silent night, I wonder, is it noble in its act, or is it wicked in its wisdom?

My people say, if you hear very closely, in our language, the bird echoes the words: ‘dig and bury, dig and bury!’

My people say, but, The Wise rejects them, The Wise calls them the fabled Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Wise suggest all myths are born out of a lone man’s fancy.

I think I understand it, after all, The Wise is not one of my people, because everyday, when night falls and The Wise sleeps warmly, an owl visits our neighbourhood, each call brings a new doom, revives an old myth, sleep is lost to the bottomless chasm of dreadful thoughts.

I think I understand it, because, to those who sleep warm, wisdom is only natural.

Saffron Shawls Chase the Burqa (Karnataka, 2022) Write it down, just as it is.

Ugly. Rhythm less. Repulsive. True.

I will not offer metaphors to your saffron hands.

I will not sing a song. I will not plant flowers.

I will uproot. I will destroy. I will howl.

Write it down, just as it is.

Coarse. Cold. Seething. True.

I will not offer parallels to your monstrosity.

I will not be a slave of allegories, of metre or music or coherence.

I will dissect. I will dismember. I will rage.

19

Write it down, just as it is.

Flaming. Damned. True.

I will not dress it pretty, for their nods and critique.

I will not make it defensive. I will not make it resistance.

I will rage. I will rebel. I will rise.

Come with your flags, and chants and weapons, and profanities.

I will write it all, just as it is.

Bigoted. Bitter. Murderous. Malicious.

Hateful. Evil. Cruel. Bigoted.

I will not spare. I will write it all, just as it is.

Hate Obeys Names

The minister cannot tolerate the sight of devotees in the open.

Take your god to your homes, veil them, your god is controversial your god incites confrontation your god enrages law-abiding citizens.

A dove tells me, the minister sent back all the namazis.

A dove tells me, only one devotee remained a malang, a nameless lover of a nameless god all wasteland, his shrine he walks the wilderness, a nomad, a wilful slave to an eternal home he lives inside himself, he exists beyond himself he is a river he is naked, shameful, fluid, cursive his god leaps through his porous skin; controversial, vast, wild.

20

A dove tells me, hate obeys names and all of minister’s edicts couldn’t contain that nameless lover of a nameless god.

Tasneem Khan B. A. (Hons.) History, First Year, St. Stephen's College

21

Joie de vivre Annie's adventures in Little London

In a rather startling fashion, in ways rattlingly unfamiliar, I drift farther and farther away from everything I've ever known as home, Past pungent smoke coursing through the chilly wind, Nauseating smells and sickeningly verdant fields, With lone trees, bereft of leaves, standing tall like veteran guards, As a molten sun shines through the mist, I am inching away from everything that's ever sculpted me as I am, Shaken by every jolt of the rusty engine, I can only picture cogs in the wheel- turning and turning Till it makes me dizzy and then I can only think of The horror, the horror if I were to be just another replaceable cog seamlessly fitting in, And not this girl who would bend over backwards to be the whole wheel That my father and the Penguins have raised me to be.

As borders fade into shadow lines for want of better barriers than few barbed wires and picket fences, Newer ones emerge in the cacophonous crowds Possessing a stranger script I squint to make sense of Through faint resemblances with familiarity, Like a young child learning to read, Keeping me on the outside.

Packed like a needle in a haystack in clanging buses crammed with an indistinguishable corpus of citizens In rickety yellow taxis zooming on roads-pockmarked for that ancient caterpillar to make its way across ,making my ribs hurt, I float past scores of Oliver Twists on cheapside and Little Match Girls dancing to hateful propagandist tunes in raggedy frocks to fill their begging bowls, Having clearly escaped notice of this so- called grandmotherly government Of the ubiquitous posters, Hold up a mirror to my privileged, clearly queasy face, Shocking my gentility, And as I make my way to Curzon's remembrance of Europe's Grandmother, 278 miles from my own rather governmental grandmother And her reluctant, quasi-acceptance of the fact that

22

I'm the pearl broken free from her necklace which even the best goldsmith cannot mount back into fixity, I feel a sense of freedom I've never felt before in just bobbing away, Unshackled from definitions and labels that had hitherto been swiftly handed out and tacked onto my self.

I wander down roads slowly waking up in the nebulous morning, Gazing at the majestic maroon Writer's Building with its many chipped glass windows and balconies boarded shut, A budding writer myself, fortunate enough to have escaped such a clerical fate, Courtesy of my father and his insistence on an identity most unique.

I try to finger the palimpsest in quest what once was a beautiful metropolis But now has been gobbled up by abandoned haunted mansions and squatter colonies, Strangely inhabited by people, surviving unfazed by the vicissitudes of life.

Half satiating my longing for another world I'm yet to fly to, In my multihued London skyline skirt and puff sleeved blouse with its lace and ruffles, ribbons and bows in my hairA picture of modestyagainst the serenity of the white marble in what once had been India's Little London, I can't help but wonder if from her throne, discerning all, she'd consider me a good little girl, Yet having had my voice quelled till I learnt to turn to pen and paper to let out silent screams For children were still supposed to be only seen and not heard And in that light, with all my little ideas and questions people scarcely had patience for, I was a poster child for infantile wickedness, I'm not really sure I want to be called good if it means having to be mute.

Meeting lambs, goats, puppies and knock-kneed Nicholas Nyes, caressing equine beauties mottled, black and brown with their cropped manes and moist noses,

23

A part of me, despite chafing against the larger unfamiliarity, feels at home And I can feel the fractured pieces within drift closer As I go up and down on the ornamented horses in my princess dress For time did stand still for a moment, The carousel did stop turning to give me a most coveted ride With the one true friend I'd eternally yearned for as a rather blue little girl, Alone in the living room amidst a pile of toys.

Exploring ancient menageries and a panoply of all the dolls I'd ever imagined, Riding in a chariot around the Circus Wondering at statues of poets and angels and leaden princes, having given up their gilding, Losing myself in giant canvases with their significant strokes and daubs of paint in re-imagination, I begin to feel a kinship in those painstakingly blunt figures In their gowns and hats and parasols.

Maybe I've felt always this pull of belonging since my armchair travelling days to fair shores, for in another life, centuries ago, I was one of those ladies alighting on this foreign gangetic shore, Looking out from tiny jharokhas of resplendently red forts of sandstone, at durbar processions of regal horses and festooned elephants bearing kings, princes and their veiled consorts with their never-ending trains In feathers and finery, oceans away from Britannia, Trying to make a semblance of home through nostalgic names and pastiches.

But then, my numbered days draw to a close, I've seen most of the Little Ben and his other dummy friends To put sufficient ticks on my bucket list Yet not enough for this city to come to be my Narnia, Oz or Wonderland .

And as the wheels chug homeward, I look back at my unlikely sojourn beyond the confines of my fledgling mother's nest That I thought would never materialize, With two most unlikely companions And it is with a sigh that I realise how I was too hasty

24

In proclaiming how there was no joy to be found in the City of Joy When we found ourselves led astray and stranded, For in my brief tumble into this looking glass world Of jarring sights and jolting rides Of a language so like the one I've grown up hearing yet not quite, I may not have felt much joy, But I've certainly felt that joie de vivre that I'd lost ages ago restore itself When the child they had almost killed and I had drugged and lulled to a limbo With hopeful verses and fairy tales Came to life once again , and for once, as Annie returned to me, more corporeal than ever She smiled a smile that didn't chill my insides, And I no longer was just that Little Princess in the comfortable cocoon spun by parental protection, Kept in ignorance from the ways of the wide, wide world But coming of age together with her as the bluestocking I'd always wanted to be, Experiencing Life in voyages through trial and error in tests of faith and patience, Bearing memories like postcard stamps and souvenirs in the treasure chest of my heart, Having followed directions of a new map To chart a new courseA little woman afterall.

Anannya Chakra Hansraj College

.

25

Afterword Complex negotiations with the self, presenting a submerged existential conflict permeate the texts in this edition of Postscript. These texts are a testament to a time that is deeply fraught with a kind of intrinsic violence as the self grows into adulthood and as the self grows into and comes into conflict with the world. Identity defying and defining seems to be a certain hallmark of this experimentation, expressed vividly through the inventive use of language, style and metaphor by the various individual contributors.

Their work calls for a questioning that the reader makes into herself while reading texts that challenge stable ground and instead showcase identity as akin to a churning within the bowels of the earth, regurgitating something new and novel and presenting it for examination. This issue begs the question -what does it mean to feel different, disparate and dissimilar in a world that is keen on assimilation…

President of English Literary Society, St. Stephen's College Chitee Paresh Lele, B.A English Honours, III Year

26

Editorial Board Ishita Agarwal | Editor Ishita Agarwal is an Undergraduate student in English Literature at St. Stephen's College, Delhi University. An average pop culture enthusiast, Ishita is interested in various forms of art and expression. You will find her reading feminist literature, watching Wes Anderson movies or arguing with strangers on the road asking them to pick up their litter after themselves; all of this while wearing a flower in her hair.

Yusra Basit | Editor Twenty, she/her, already five years too early for a quarter-life crisis, struggling between tongues and identities, most passionate about adding colour to her words other than the bleakness and inevitability of red.

Khalid | Editor Avid fan of the Beatles and Bob Dylan. I believe that writing is less inspired than learned. I have no favourite poets or writers because to make that claim I must be well-read, which I am not. But formal poets are very close to my heart.

Jyotsna Iyer | Editor Always wishes she is by the sea. mostly studying about technology, politics and culture but thinking about language and literature. proponent of interdisciplinary studies and pushing oneself to play with dirt.

27

Executive Council

President

Chitee Lele

Academic Coordinator

Chinmayee Babbal

Logos Coordinator

Anu Lisa Alex

General Secretary

Sruthy Rose Mathew

Postscript Coordinator

Jyotsna Iyer

Treasurer

Syed Muhammad Khalid

Second Year Members

Callistine J. Lewis Ishita Agarwal Purva Dua Saumya Chandra Yusra Basit

28

We thank our Staff Advisor Dr. Smita Gandotra for her guidance, support and patience throughout the making of this journal.

Postscript 2021-2022