English Literary Society St. Stephen's College
PostScript
Issue 2020-21
PostScript Issue 2020-21 Release Date: 16 May 2021
The English Literary Society St. Stephen's College Sudhir Bose Marg University Enclave New Delhi, Delhi- 110007
psenglishlitsoc.wordpress.com/
Cover Art by Purvi Rajpuria Layout by Nidhi Chhamb
For feedback, comment(s) or other information, write to: postscriptenglitsoc@gmail.com/ nidhichhamb@gmail.com
All Contributors retain individual copyrights to their work.
(This issue seeks to record 'those' brief moments of thought and emotion that have often gone unnoticed
alongside the larger visible sufferings of our times.)
Foreword This year has been indiscriminately different; different in the sense that the paradigm genuinely shifted some of the most stable entities off balance; and our tiny Society—in a small yet intensely highlighted College—was no exception to this transformation. As the Forewords written by previous Presidents might have stated, I would like to reiterate the truth—Litsoc has always garnered a scarce population, yet even scarcer are the volunteers and contributors for any event that it organises. Hence, many of our festive ideas and imaginations are either ‘remoulded’ or thrown into the pit to burn in our guilty conscience (maybe till the academic session expires). Just when we thought that our festive idea of releasing the postscript magazine would be brought to a halt, voila, the magic (in my sense) materialised—it appeared in the form of a short story, and then a poem, and then the mail inbox notification turned blatantly silent for a while but then it revived again, and it thrived for such a good amount of time that we finally breathed a sigh of relief at the great number of entries for our magazine!!! I sincerely wish to thank the tech team: website (postscript editor and second year postscript managers) for sustaining the energy required throughout the year, for believing that this magazine could be prioritised during such disconcerting times. I am also grateful for the postscript editorial and illustration team members (first, second and third years) for showing their interest and dedication, despite the limited resources in the online mode and otherwise. Lastly, I give my heartiest congratulations to the contributors, who through their exceptionally beautiful pieces of writing created a safe space for this small, thriving community of writers/storytellers/poets/readers.
SONAM CHHOMO President, 2020-21
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Is this some pandemic effect or just an average everyday woe? Is there more to come? Or is this it? Would we be able to emerge out of this as though becoming conversant with
Editorial
realities that were earlier only imagined or had perhaps been obliterated from our collective memory? Has something fundamentally changed or is this just a fleeting moment? We don't know yet and might perhaps even never know. Needless to say, it sure has felt like an endless loop of aaaaa'ing our way through collapsed time; as if struggling amidst a warren made of restless emotions of loss, grief, apprehension, desire, longing and craving for affection. But even under heaps of claustrophobic realities, unending touches of melancholy, online classes and webinars, protracted political and social catastrophes, bouts of brain fog as well as paranoia, anxiety-causing deadlines and a prolonged wait for some 'normalcy' that now seems to exist only in the distant past and shows no sign of return; our contributors have kept reminding us this past one year that notwithstanding all of it, 'we are very much here' (as corny as it sounds!) and that what it means to simply 'be'. An attempt to document the sensibilities of these unusual times by means of prompting writers every now and then, this anthology is a result of intermittent cries for help and long threads of discussion over WhatsApp and Gmail to which, after a ginormous amount of typing, our fingertips stand witness. As much as we would have loved to curate this edition in person, a small dauntless microbe rendered us to resort to the rather taxing cyberspace. We can now carefully vouch that after spending long hours over designing as well as editing, our only hope above everything else remains that this edition brings our readers any amount of solace such that they are able to locate comfort between the lines of the artwork or strings of words that have gone through some tumultuous rounds of vetting and scrutiny—induced by comma/indentation/em dash/spelling/typos/syntax related checks—only with the sole aim of acquiring some readership! (We would like to convey an unending amount of gratitude to our absolutely kind and encouraging Staff Advisor- Prof Hannah Varkey! Also, our deepest admiration for Purvi who agreed to design a stunning cover for this year's edition.) NIDHI CHHAMB Editor
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impressions left by a pandemic-like rift Foreword..........................................................................................................................................................................6 Editorial ...........................................................................................................................................................................7 prompt 1- fragility of existence Syed Muhammad Khalid Moths........................................................................................................................10 Sharon Sara Lines and Words.....................................................................................................11 Callistine Jude Lewis A fragile balance.................................................................................................... 12 Prachi Mahima Routine......................................................................................................................13 Aliya Khan to exist; to question.................................................................................................14 prompt 2- literary imaginations of what it means to be Human Dr Karen Gabriel To be or Zombie.....................................................................................................15 Nidhi Chhamb Precautionary Dread.............................................................................................20 Dr Giti Chandra 9 Poems for 2020.....................................................................................................21 prompt 3 - a sense of belonging John Scaria Read When Hopeless..............................................................................................29 Rayan Chakrabarti Meditations on Loneliness.....................................................................................34 Bariera Sahar A Haiku...................................................................................................................36 prompt 4- home: mercies and trials Anushka Srivastava Trifling, The Word..................................................................................................37 Priyanshi Banerjee The Urban Home called Calcutta in ‘The Home-Coming’: Site of Discipline and Confinement....................................................................................................39 prompt 5- visions of a different 2020 Kritika Ghai Sunday.....................................................................................................................44 Of finding poetry in a pandemic: The long road to healing Souls, the Self, and the System Yusra Basit and Syed Muhammad Khalid in conversation with Dr. Mohd. Talha Noor................................ 45 Contributors.....................................................................................................................................................................51 Editorial Board ...........................................................................................................................................................54 Executive Council .....................................................................................................................................................57
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Syed Muhammad Khalid
Moths
A drizzle showers lightly. Soft night stirs a cloud of moths who dance as raindrops swirl. Their thrill electrifies the atmosphere. They flood a room. Filament-filled deluge of white wings sanctifies the scraggy walls. Unfettered by the breeze, they flit towards the high refuge of naked oil-wick lamps. A rainbow saunters in their whirring trail which settles around that cosy glade of light where finally, life's constant, warm, and bright. But the flame flicks quick tricks and incinerates the insects' crinkled paper wings. Winds split the swarm. Without the others, each one's fall awaits ashtrays and drooling water bowls. In dark coves, devils smile and lick the air. Dismembered carcasses twitch on the floor and stuffed lizards rattle loudly; once more, the silent seventh drill performs in the room. Illustration by Sana Afzal Mir
Dawn grips his broom. POSTSCRIPT | 10
Everything has been so disillusioning! Moving so fast, yet so slow.
Sharon Sara Lines and words At the edge of the roof Where concrete meets air At the coast where land meets water Toeing the thin lines Between an end and a beginning A beginning and an end So are the words They cease to exist after The person who said them Ceases to exist
Days pass
For they hold a new meaning
Existence seems trivial
A meaning of newfound pain
Yet that line
That also ceases to exist
And those words seem Transient
Line of beginnings and ends
Existing
To look at that line
Just because of the ceaseless
To take a step
Beauty they exude
To feel what it would be To cease to exist To feel the rush To hear the words that Cease to exist When one leaves But that’s what makes it wonderful The new meanings Where there was a dearth Of before The line crossed And existence begins Just as it ends.
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2020 was the embodiment of being overwhelmed.
Callistine Jude Lewis (Photograph capturing a Suspended Guardian Angel)
A fragile. balance
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Felt like I'm getting choked throughout the whole year like I'm trying to survive a strangulation attempt.
Prachi Mahima
Routine
Eyes fly open, hues take oversight; Orange sky, warm drinks: black and white, And it’s time to row once again Against the tide. Inbox crashing, the boss’ barraging While you fantasise about wall-head bashing. What is this emotion taking over? March to June, August to October; Like days spent with a devil lover. Minutes blend into emptiness, Breath becomes uneven; Godot is still not here, what even! You type and type, scavenging for words, But what use is language when you lie numb; Even to the chirping of pretty birds. Colors and light dance around you, But reach faded and bland; Through the underwater blue. Gasping for breath with splitting smiles Each moment is a wish to crawl out From the crushing bricks of existence; Lying in piles. To break into pieces or to let go? To give in or to go with the flow? You no longer know. Winter creeps in, the wind pierces your soul, Not skin. As you get on with life’s monotonous din.
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I wish to flow through it, listless and unfeeling, detached from all of it.
Aliya Khan
to exist; to question
The echoes surround me, “She is just a human body embodying a soul within” Is my existence solely restricted to this description? I wake up every day to a bright sun and blue-hued sky, chirping of the birds and clatter of dishes from the neighbouring houses. I rise. Is this my existence? My body writhes for savoury dishes often, but there are days when the staple food—rice and dal, with a hint of pickle, give me an elated satisfaction, a wholeness I did not know I needed. I relish. Is this my existence? Walking along the dusty gravel road, the filtered sunlight from the tree-leaves paints itself on the otherwise dull road which brings pleasure to my soul. I am nature. Is this my existence? The rhythm of the music synchronizes with my lively heartbeat. Music, whose words purify me. I listen to them crying, wailing, cheering, spilling, sharing, screaming, jeering, squealing. I observe. I listen. Is this my existence? I talk, I share, I sing, I write and sometimes I dance. I think. I breathe. All across the world, I am a moment of movement, a moment of sound, a moment of emotion. I speak, I express. The fragilities exist within. The fragilities exist without.
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College had given me freedom from myself and my family for the first time. I could interact, explore and discover things by myself, and that was lost; being confined to four walls with people breathing down my neck became hard, and some times, it was a struggle to get through just one day.
Dr Karen Gabriel To be or Zombie
In Act III Scene i, Hamlet, thinking about the nature of human existence, about life and death, of life after death, and of being and nothingness, asks whether it is better to live or to die: To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?
And, the famous soliloquy continues. An early premiss in Hamlet’s soliloquy is that death is preferable to the theatrical “mortal coil” of life, because death is nothing more than a longed for dreamful sleep. In other words, he supposes that some form of existence or being remains in that state that we know as death. Of course, Hamlet himself soon realises that the rub is that the nature of the sleep of death and of its dreams is unknown. Given this, quite expectedly, Hamlet considers the possibility that the unknown realm of death may have horrors in store. In which case, what is to be done? How does one deal with both life and death, and the mystery of what lies beyond life? Most religious reflections on the subject, maintain that some kind of crossover takes place, and that there is a form of existence after death – whether within or outside the divine realm. Such ‘beings’, or forms of existence, or spirits if you will, may remain ethereal, or they might manifest. They may inhabit bodies and minds, they may move things or cause them to be moved, or they may simply and unnervingly, present themselves as distressed or distressing. In fact, in all events, they are unnerving. Expectedly then, in the popular cinematic imagination of life beyond death, the questionable nature of this form of existence, has had its most robust and sustained articulation in the genre of the horror film. Here, we have possessions, visitations from the spiritual world, resurrections, the revivified dead, the undead, and of course, the zombie. The zombie, which is the focus of this piece, has its origins in a specific voodoo practice which involves the actual production of the zonbi (popularly known as the zombi or zombie). Elizabeth POSTSCRIPT | 15
There were times of monotony and only rare phases of optimism.
McAlister (2012) informs us that the ‘life’ of a Haitian zonbi, emanates from ritually treated shavings of human bone (often the human skull) that are bottled along with unguents, additives, perfumes, ashes and so on. Typically this capture is executed by the witch doctor immediately after the dead have been buried, and at the site of their graves within which lingers that small portion of the spirit which has not immediately gone to God. So, the bottle contains that fragment of the now-captured spirit that can be put to work to aid or trouble the living. The zonbi bottle thus “refuses the Western ontological distinction between people and things, and between life and death, as it is a hybrid of human and spirit, living and dead…” (McAlister 2012:464). When zonbis become zombies, i.e. when they reach popular western cinematic imagination, they do so as incarnates, as bodies that vacillate between the two worlds, “mortified schizos” to use Deleuze and Guattari’s phrase, neither living nor dead. Thus, the zombie is one version of the corporeal undead. The figure of the modern zombie is a quintessentially twentieth century one, though there were folktales from other parts of the world, like Africa, that spoke of zombie-like figures called, variously, nzambi, nzumbi, nvumbi, mvumbi. The English word ‘zombi’ is recorded first in a history of Brazil written by the poet Robert Southey, in 1819. Perhaps it is no serendipitous coincidence that Mary Shelley’s zombielike creation in her novel Frankenstein came out in 1818. But it is not till more than a century passes that we see the figure entering the popular imagination through cinema. The cinematic zombie is born with Victor Haplerin’s White Zombie (1932). In that film, a young white woman is turned into a zombie by a Haitian witchdoctor’s voodoo, and becomes, like the original Haitian zonbi, a slave, the fragments of whose soul have been seized and rendered obedient to the witchdoctor. Sarah Lauro (2017: ix) reminds us that the “zombie’s lineage can be traced to African soul capture myths that were carried to the New World aboard slave ships bound for the colonial Caribbean”. The link between the zombie and slavery, Haitian and other plantation contexts, and the dependence of these economies on free labour, notate the complex relations between freedom and slavery, capitalism and labour, life and death. It is not surprising then that a zombie breakout signals the apocalyptic end of society as we know it. After all, the zombie is now rarely thought of as the original captured and bottled, fragment spirit turned worker of ethnography, but as the 20th C revenant soulless body turned infectious monster. Deprived of soul, judgement, reason and will, this 20th C monster possesses only the basest of all human faculties: a voracious, blind and cannibalistic appetite. And with that come the proliferate contemporary blood and gore zombie films that include George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the Resident Evil and Zombieland, Train to Busan series and a host of others, in which zombies quickly identify, pursue, pounce on, and rapidly infect human beings. If they labour at all now, it is to satiate their own appetites and increase their numbers. POSTSCRIPT | 16
Some fresh disaster flashes on the news everyday, and no corner of the world remains untouched by it.
One crucial and noteworthy change in the zombie film that is set in the US, is that the zombies are racially white. McAlister (2012) remarks on the possible commentary this presents about whiteness and “the nightmarish aspects of modernity. In particular, this monster refers and responds to the nexus of capitalism, race, and religion. Halperin’s film came out at a time when the European world – and by extension, the American world – was beginning to engage with anti-imperialist, anti-colonial movements around the world (in the USA, of course, this took the form of the incipient civil liberties movement). Already coloured as it were, by the terrifying imagination of the inscrutable ‘third world other’, in the work of writers like Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham and EM Forster, these nationalist movements bespoke an agency that the Other was not supposed to have – a volition that slavery and colonial conquest was supposed to have substantially depleted if not killed off. So, even if the witch doctor in White Zombie is himself white, his zombies and the power through which he enslaves them are ‘black’. It is not difficult to see in this an attempt to present slavery as justifiable in the terms of the history and culture of the slaves themselves; Michael Taussig refers to this as history as sorcery, but it is probably more accurate to describe it as sorcery as history. Lauro (2017) remarks that writing on Haiti in the USA between 1915 and 1934 displayed a fascination with the myth of the zombie. This was more often than not rendered as the barbarism of the Haitians, thereby tacitly justifying US military intervention in Haiti as a civilising mission. This modern monster then, represents a complex and polyvalent Other. There has been a whole library of zombie films produced since Halperin’s, but if one looks at the way the figure of the zombie has evolved, it is of particular interest that the horror in the zombie film shifts to hordes of zombies, rather than focussing on a single zombie. ‘From the 1940s to the 1960s, Hollywood produced a slew of “trash films” featuring a variety of mutated, radioactive, or hybrid monsters that were termed zombies.’ (McAlister, 2012) Significantly, the aetiology of the zombie is no longer sorcery and magic, but the uncontrolled excesses of science – a perspective that has remained the dominant causative factor in zombie mythology since then. More recent aetiologies present the zombie as caused by viruses that are created in laboratories (very similar to the rumours surrounding our own COVID-19 virus, which now is touted as capable of leaving severe neurological damage in its survivors). The hordes of monstrous cinematic zombies are increasingly represented, not only as voraciously hungry for human flesh, but infectious and contagious to boot. Their bite transforms the bitten into zombies themselves. This was first seen in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1969). It is significant that this particular version of the zombie emerges in the western imagination during the American misadventure in Vietnam – a point that has not often been remarked on – when upward to 500,000 US military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. Conventional left-oriented critiques of the zombie film have tended to see it mainly as a metaphor POSTSCRIPT | 17
2020 was like the prodigal son, enjoying impunity for its transgressions.
for rampant (American) consumerism, or rather, of ‘hyper-consumerism’, and the attendant culture of ‘dumbing down’ that is perceived to have – or argued as having – affected the USA as a whole. The deep theme of cannibalism is also seen as the dehumanising tendency of this culture, i.e., of its ability to commodify the human to such an extent that the human itself becomes a consumable. This is of course, possible only if the zombie is ultimately represented as itself an aberration of humanity, even sub-human – i.e., bearing the outward appearance of being human, but incapable of anything more than a voracious appetite, especially for human flesh. In this, the zombie may be read as that which seeks obsessively (if also mindlessly) to rediscover its humanity by consuming human bodies. While these are unexceptionable arguments, I believe it is possible to also see the figure of the zombie – more accurately, the hordes of zombies – as representing the starving millions of the ‘developing’ world. Obviously, it would be very politically incorrect to actually show the zombies as masses of mindless, coloured or otherwise racially and/or ethnically ‘othered’ bodies, located in ‘other’, ‘third world’ countries (especially considering a large part of Hollywood’s market is precisely in those countries). Interestingly though, one of the most successful zombie films of all time, World War Z (Marc Forster, 2013), identifies the source of a zombie plague that rapidly spreads around the world, as located in India. Nevertheless, a repeatedly singular characteristic of zombies in almost all zombie films (apart from their voracious appetite for human flesh) is their predilection to invade and transgress into spaces designed to keep them out – not unlike the tight border regulations of most ‘advanced’, ‘developed’, ‘first world’ countries, designed to keep out what are perceived to be floods of immigrants and refugees from the ‘third world’, seeking to take over and consume what ‘rightfully’ belongs to the citizens of the ‘first world’, and taint or contaminate the exceptional white subject. In this sense, the zombie film is not just a metaphor, but also an (inadvertent) warning. The warning part is in the fact that these films repeatedly and continuously locate the immediate cause (as different from the geographical source) in the excesses of science, on the one hand, and on the failure of science to correct its own excesses, on the other. In this sense, in the representation of the excesses of technological modernity in these films, we can read an awareness of the price that must be paid for it – the price that Hollywood appears to be aware is being paid for it, by the massive exploitation of the ‘developing’ world by the ‘developed’ world – and the just-below-the-surface fear of the consequences of that exploitation. Thus, from the history-as-sorcery, and sorcery-as-history, aetiology of the zombie, to the present trends in the zombie film, we see a creeping, zombie-like awareness of the ways in which exploitative conditions have themselves changed, even as the exploiters and exploited remain more or less the same, in terms of their geographical location, and in terms of the terms of the exploitation themselves. What then does the zombie film tell us of what it means to be human, in the light of the above? Most obviously perhaps, that the human is a historically determined concept – shaped by its location in social
POSTSCRIPT | 18
It took me a while to reconcile with the grim realities that surrounded us and convince myself that what I was going through was very 'real'.
hierarchies, as much as in history and geography. Most tellingly, however, perhaps it tells us that what it means to be human is ultimately a question of striving continuously not to lose one’s humanity. Perhaps it is time to tell the ‘first world’ that they have been the zombies all this time, consuming the flesh of the ‘developing world’, believing in their own humanity at the expense of that very humanity. And it is time to be and to stop replicating that model of actual zombie-ness that passes for ‘humanity', in our own societies.
References Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari (1983) Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (335) Lauro, Sarah Juliet. (2017). Zombie Theory A Reader, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press McAlister Elizabeth. (2012). ‘Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies’ Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Spring 2012), pp. 457-486
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While I was trying to be productive on a personal level, this really threw my emotions and mental state in for a loop.
Nidhi Chhamb
precautionary dread
Dr Giti Chandra Writing is so often an act of comprehension: to be able to enfold as well as to understand. Or at least to hold in until understanding comes. The past year has felt like a lifetime and the following 9 poems were some of the ways in which I personally tried to process the unthinkable suffering, the emptying of public spaces, the clearing of skies and rivers at the expense of vast death tolls, the deeply solitary and profoundly collective nature of being human. How much of that is empathy, how much the work of hands, how much a stepping back, how much the courage of resistance. I hope that these will serve as stepping stones to other responses, other empathies, other imaginations.
9 Poems for 2020
I: A Hundred and One Nights of the Falcon Where I come from, no gift comes in round numbers. No ten Rupees is ever given, it is always eleven, a token Of not finishing, not ending, the extra one a harbinger An invitation, a wish, a granting of plenty, of more To come. Auspicious, we call it. A bringing to the fore Of a promise for the years before the young. Where I come from there is a tale of a clever woman who staved Off death with a thousand tales, each one saved For another night won, a full thousand and one. Where I come from, legend has it that women sat vigil not One night or two, not a couple, a handful, a dozen, a Few. Stories are told in hushed tones of a full hundred And one, every thrower of stones has heard it, every Wielder of guns. Songs are sung of the women of the night Who spread their wings, became falcons, and took flight.
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Time now has a different meaning for me. I've realised how privileged and vulnerable I am at the same time.
II: Please state the nature of the medical emergency
I am afraid I will die. Really? Here in your lovely Voluntary exile, hibernating with Your plants and your music and your Elegant lounging style? I am afraid to die. Aren’t We all this is hardly An emergency. I am afraid to live. When everyone has died. Seriously Too many bad movies is hardly cause To summon the emergency medical Hologram please state the I am afraid to live as if everyone is dead. There was that so hard? Why not just Say so? Instead we have all this Bleating about dolphins returning and The new blue of the skies - true, some Of it, but mostly photoshop and lies
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I now feel that before the pandemic and lockdown, I had not known what sadness really is.
Illustration by Sana Afzal Mir
I'm also afraid - oh there’s more? Where Does it hurt I’m sure there’s a cure - that I’m relieved to not be able you see there Is news of thousands walking beaten Stuffed into boxes and starving and I Unable my hands are tied I’m self Isolated you see couldn’t help if I Tried but my fear is not a symptom it’s Really my relief I’m afraid to have to Add conviction to belief. There. Lie down. What you’re experiencing is grief. For all That has died around you and all You will kill there’s not much I can do but I will Say this: as much as you may say that You want this to end, get back to your Work, meet a real friend - grief will always
III: Dearly Beloved
Urge you to pretend that
(for all those who cannot attend the last rites
You got this you can do this everything’s
of their loved ones)
On the mend. This shall pass too. So lie down. Things will
We are gathered here in spirit and in
Die down. As death tends to do.
Spirit only. The body of death eludes us Now as it promises to do after the Holding close denied the heart. This
Holding apart of love and death, this Mourning denied the touch of breath, This burying of presence, this closing
Of the eyes howsoever brief, this Standing before the burning pyres Of the cleaved body of grief is gathered Here, in our empty hands, dearly beloved, Gathered here. Our empty hands.
POSTSCRIPT | 24
Everything was overwhelming— the semester was a lot, the break that only got longer was also a lot; but the eventual calm I had was also a lot.
IV: Now that our masks have revealed us
How curious, this motley masquerade To sashay forth in some carnival’s Parade as if the gold and dazzle and points Of lace could present to the crowds some Other soul, an alien head, a faerie face. What deception is left to practice now When we hide ourselves from neighbours And friends. Will we know each other, when This ends, or shall we hear each stranger ask Who are you now, without your mask?
V: A table of contents I hadn’t seen the house. He hadn’t seen The table. We were buying momentous Things for a future where we’d never Been. “Bigger,” he said, “tell them to make it Wider and longer!” “Where will we place it?”
I said, looking at the dimensions he’d sent us. But the size of a table depends on more than How many sit. My parents knew – if you
Build it they will come. And we did. That Table held more than ever lived in that House. There was always room, food, Conversation. And now we live in selfIsolation. And the too-big table draws
Together our meagre four – with our Violins, our laptops, our books, tools, papers Our cat, puzzles, painting projects – more,
In fact, a binding and gathering of ourselves To ourselves, a tabling of a core.
POSTSCRIPT | 25
Everything morphed into one big thing and I really don't remember any details.
VI: Ode to the Ordinary Hail to thee, O Ordinary Thing! Beloved Thou never wert! If of thee I must sing To the romantics I must revert. Because Seriously, who even notices a handshake, Buying bread, passing people in the hall Whose eye you avoid if you look at them at All? High fives, fist bumps, chatting with An office-mate, having to trudge to lunch Another building, same office bunch- huddle Close in the elevator discussing what you Ate. Yes, it is sublime, in its Way, the unwashed beauty of the Ordinary day, the unnoticed, unapplauded Transience of the repetitively mundane The ubiquitously profane. Say it now in romantic rhyme
The Ordinary is the Skylark of our time.
Illustration by Sana Afzal Mir
VII: The Measure of Debt How sweetly sleep the tree-lined streets That guide the city’s weary. Unbearably Light their burden tonight, the thin-soled Steps of the unchosen in flight. How sweetly Scented and cleanly airy the lone highways Under the cool moon’s light, their painted lines Barely marking the grime of thousands of
VIII: On reading that the water of the
Footprints crossing the white. How sweetly Flows the river blue through the city as it used
Ganga is clean enough to drink again
To do, rippling our endless thirst for beauty That is our civilizational right. Spilt milk shared
They say the water of the holy river
By animals and men who bend their mouths
Is clean enough now for people to drink. They
To the dark asphalt, sunrise placing of hunger’s
Would have us believe that cleansing it
Hope mark the tar six feet apart. It used to be
Is actually much more important than
That the beauty of death was that all it asked
We think. That the blood in my veins runs
Was six feet of ground. It used to be we kept
Thicker, that the life it gives burns quicker,
In sight the measure of debt owed to Beauty’s
That the trail we leave is slicker than a burst
Might.
Oil tanker, more life-giving than the bloodless Bodies that no longer feed the divine demands Of the river. Maybe it is. Maybe tributaries And streams collect our mortal remains, our Little dirty dreams, immersed in our fossil-fueled Caves, no unclogged channel that drains our Over-flowing hearts. That holy river has its own Source, it doesn’t need our bodies but it asks Them of us that it may run its course. Death and the River are reluctantly parted, the more we die, the Less we understand how all this started. And we, Who knows where hope springs, who knows What tomorrow brings. All we can see is this Water and this blood run together unconsecrated
In this unprecedented flood.
POSTSCRIPT | 27
The monotonous schedule that we followed grated on my nerves. I felt tired and broken.
IX: Not by eastern windows only I read it first when I was twelve, A poem my father remembered from His early days in school. I’m not sure What he was thinking but we spoke of it Often over the years. Battles waged and lost Wars that ended in tears, hope was always The prize. Because the quality of light Perhaps, is also twice blest, touching Those who are beaten and those who wield The batons of power with the same Vision of unrest. Every woman sitting Through the night, every student braving Authority’s might, every migrant Shouting against the roar, every Citizen courting arrest – they know Why they fight, they know what this Is for, they know why they persist. Hope
Is the only reward of all those who resist.
Illustration by Sharon Sara Alex
POSTSCRIPT | 28
Most of this year felt like my chest was weighed down by a hundred things; getting up was so difficult I nearly gave up (then and there).
John Scaria
(Trigger Warning: Mention of Suicidal thoughts)
Read When Hopeless
I think that in the strangest of ways, I am perhaps the most realistically optimistic person I know. What that means is: I have my lows, and I have them hard. I have them frequently. And it is a struggle to breathe when I feel that way. I have these thoughts so often…thoughts of how I deserve to be in pain, thoughts of deserving misery, thoughts of death, but at the same time feeling as though I don’t deserve a way out of living. I also have highs, and I have them hard. It’s so intense, the first time it happened to me, I felt like I was on top of the world. But after the first time, you find out it is not a good sign. You find out from the faces of the people who really care about you: they seem mortified. Afraid—the serious kind. Suddenly, you are told that you cannot even wholeheartedly feel happy. You will have to remain alert. Am I sure that I am normal happy… or crazy happy? Out of nowhere, my being happy became tougher to handle than my being sad. But here’s the thing. When you are queer, I suppose there is no option of not thinking about your life and your purpose. It is not: let’s do our homework first and then have an existential crisis later. It is constantly negotiating with your soul—with the one that is deep within and trying to reconcile with that personhood —so that you do not feel so foreign, so removed from reality anymore. And at a certain point, you start to see the thoughts for what they are: your thoughts. The feelings for what they are: your feelings. They are all yours. Yet at the same time, there exists something more. It is a belief so whole, so complete, that once you have begun to tap into it, you realise that while it is true you have thought about dying, you have, in equal spades, thought about living. POSTSCRIPT | 29
Everything was in disarray. There was so much happening at the same time. I couldn’t make sense of anything.
It is true that I have thought about the act of taking one’s own life. I have thought of it, I have witnessed it, I have refrained from it… but I have also stepped out and beyond it. I just needed to be able to do that; to familiarize myself with my soul. I really did, because when I was younger, I did not step into this world perceiving my body and my mind as being separate. So, I thought back to that moment: one where I felt very connected with my inner voice, my inner self. Then I could see why, back then, it never bothered me if I stood out as an odd person in a crowd or even if I was told that I was not like most other kids. But when I did begin telling my mind and body apart, even then it did not start off as painful or anything. But as the years went on, puberty happened, and suddenly I just felt… estranged. I felt foreign in my evolving body, like I was perpetually sensing the world around me from underwater. That was terrifying. I had experienced contradictory thoughts within myself before; I was familiar with the state of dissonance. But this, this was different. Suddenly I could feel my mind turning on my bodily self. Suddenly, it felt like I was fighting my own self in order to survive. Amongst all that internal-external discord, when I was finally able to tap into my soul, then it wasn’t about mind vs body anymore. Just like that, there was no longer a right or wrong way to think and feel anymore. No longer was I thinking “born in the wrong body.” No longer was I thinking: right happy, wrong sad. Suddenly, I started feeling a little at home in the vessel I had been provided with; I experienced fortitude like never before. That whole, complete belief of my soul: I could feel its radiance within me. This is what gets me through the bad days. This is what gets me through my too-good days. Lately, I do not stop myself from feeling, thinking, worrying, fearing. I do not stop myself from going through the motions of life anymore. Because I trust my radiant soul, I have faith in it. So, even on days when nothing seems to work—thinking this is it; this is how it ends—I know, deep in my soul, that what I want is to live. No matter the difficulties, no matter how hard it gets. I know, because I can finally tell how radiant my soul is. Life is tough, but it’s because it means something to
POSTSCRIPT | 30
The year was dreadful for a lot of people, but I'm fortunate mine wasn't as bad. I suppose I got off the hook, in some twisted way.
me. If it weren’t for that, I would not be here, still breathing, still struggling. That’s just how it is. I was a six-year-old first grader when my Grandpa died. I didn’t know him very well, but his accident was my first encounter with death. That was when I first thought of my mortality and had the thought that I could not see myself occupy this physical world beyond the age of eighteen. Because my soul just felt so old and weary. I truly believed that I would not be here beyond that age: but I’m still here. I’m still curious about life. I want to see my friends go to university, get jobs, get married. I want to transition. I want to stay consistent with my medication. I want to write a book someday. I want to teach. I want to rent out a studio apartment. I want to have the people I love in my life. I want to stick around for their beautiful moments in life. I suppose it's a bit tricky to categorise this in simple terms. “So, you’re saying that you are frequently moody and have experienced suicidal ideation… but you can still wait it out long enough to distinguish between those thoughts and your inner, core optimism about life?’ I don’t know, I suppose it is contradictory. But this is who I am. After all, we are each made of so many selves. It’s like watching a play: your emotions and thoughts are the characters in conflict, your mind is the narrator, your body is the stage and your soul is the audience. The fortitude of the soul comes from the knowledge that regardless of my mania or my depression, I have the tools that I need in order to ride through those episodes. The comfort lies in knowing that my condition does not define my selfhood. The confidence and acceptance come from reminding myself that no matter how gruesome the storyline on the stage gets, my soul will consistently remain as an audience member, watching as the action unfolds. My soul is nothing short of radiance, and I know this because of how they alone create the sense of harmony between my mind and body now. My soul is what gives me fortitude. That is why I know that my mind will keep thinking and feeling differently every minute. My mind will grow and then my mind will wither. And my body will keep feeling me and not me at the same time. It will keep evolving, transforming, it’ll grow and then wither too.
POSTSCRIPT | 31
I was swamped under a wave of new feelings which I had never felt before. It was too confusing to comprehend.
But through it all, my soul will shine just as bright as it always has. Like Lee Ji-an from My Mister once said—my soul feels like they’re thirty thousand years old. It feels so strange to admit that nowadays, that's not tiring at all! On days when my body feels foreign, weary and tired, and my mind feels like it has overstayed its welcome in this world: my soul will still tread on. On those days, my soul will still feel as jubilant as ever, despite being thirty thousand years old. For now, it will be enough. This will be enough for me to carry on and through the difficult days, saying it’s okay, it’s no big deal. I expect I will need a little reminder of that sometimes: so here it is. I’ve formed all these words, so that they live on and continue to be my fuel on the days when it gets hard.
Stay gold. With love, John
POSTSCRIPT | 32
A lot of new experiences happened, absolutely unforeseen. I stayed at a place which I thought I would never even visit for the longest time.
Illustration by Sharon Sara Alex
POSTSCRIPT | 33
Thoughts are foggy, so can't seem to recall anything
Rayan Chakrabarti
Meditations on Loneliness
(1) Emptiness has a mind of its own. It speaks to itself, it spreads itself out like a warm blanket, it needs someone to keep company. Love your emptiness like a friend, and you will find it climbing out of its chasm. Greet it in the morning, make it coffee, emptiness is after all you. Searching for identity, searching for love. Wear it like your skin, wear sunscreen when you go out, and when you spill coffee on your hand, wash it off tenderly. (2) We are too distanced from grief, we spit on it, we turn on the shower and do not stop scrubbing ourselves. And so, water forgets to cleanse. There is a great deluge coming and we are not prepared. This is not another apocalypse story. This will be a story about loneliness and forgiveness. The only way to cope will be to be kinder to our mornings, and kinder to our afternoons and kinder to our evenings. We are harsh enough on our nights, undoubtedly. The only way to cope will be to kiss our parents before going out to a new city and bidding goodbye to people we hurt. The only way to survive will be to change the leash we wear around our necks, every other month.
POSTSCRIPT | 34
I felt as if I were trapped inside a match-box.
3) We end up looking into the mirror and screaming our pains. We end up screaming inside us. We tell ourselves our sins and hide them from our lovers. This is not how you build a home. A home, after all, is the most effective illusion. It has worked efficiently, to not remind us of our solitude. A home is built by making breakfast and watching the eggs dance to your tunes. A home is built by turning on the television and watching cricket; forcing a laugh and an occasional tear. A home is built by cleaning the garden after a night of stolen youth. But, above all, you build a home by respecting conversations. You ask the maid if her daughter goes to school. You ask your grandfather about the scars he received from the sweat in the local train for thirty years. You ask your mother about her wounds from when she had a stillborn son. And you ask yourself, how would it have been to share your bed with your brother? How would it have been to wake up with the sunlight on your faces?
POSTSCRIPT | 35
There were times when I could have a glimpse at the sky for only once in several weeks.
Bariera Sahar
A HAIKU
“My heart stains” My bosom yearns Your kohl smudges My heart stains.
POSTSCRIPT | 36
I don't think I've ever felt this helpless and scared, and it hurts to realise that I've forgotten what it feels like to not be terrified witless.
Anushka Srivastava
Trifling, The Word.
Trifling is a twisted word to settle differences for a heart that bricked up well-spaced walls of fear and rage so childhood could commemorate a new start only to end in a chiselled smile that takes more strength than physical All it does is separate out years of love from the complex mass of nurture and exploits tipped together It does not make victims or culprits out of its fellow persons only breaks a heart or two once in a while Fragments it enough to allow abandonment to defines cores and crusts of you that sing lullabies of despair in the evening for a home doesn’t break, it only rejects pieces that are too much, too extra to manage or complete the whole By placing the triggered, and the troubled on a side, in name of mercy, it sets up a pedestal that conveniently fits the nurture of boiling pans and faded clothes for a heart or two may shatter with a loud, others only shed a tear every Friday morning
POSTSCRIPT | 37
This little bug in my brain kept saying that any day now (around the world) there will appear big banners titled, "You have been pranked!"
It becomes too much to take, going over guilt-ies of yesteryear means putting your past on trial only to reject, but not retrieve all that had exploded open, upon the flare of maybe and forever one after one They pass on a new definition of white-washed bricks cemented with everyone’s despair and differences and call it a place that sustains crumpled anxieties thrown under the bed, regular tears that dissolve unprocessed trauma and takes a bit of your dream, on accounts of misdirected frustrations until it protests, regularly for a cup of tea a different newspaper, a radical author and a voice every Saturday morning when the trifling disturbs the curtain of the drawing room They say trifling is a twisted word to settle differences For a heart that took down well-defined boundaries of Love and protest So the home regularly fetches a new vocabulary That can sustain newer mercies and trials and Dreams recovered from under the bed In a crumpled piece of paper. They say trifling is not the word to define ounces of dreams That no one dared clean out.
POSTSCRIPT | 38
a whole lotta heartbreak ¿
Priyanshi Banerjee
*In this paper, while studying Tagore’s ‘The Home-Coming’, Priyanshi Banerjee explores the presence of everyday prisons that are constructed as well as sustained by repressive and exclusionary social systems. While the immediate context she explores is that of 20th century Bengal and hegemonic Bhadralok culture, the ideas presented hauntingly mirror the contemporary realities that India’s most vulnerable communities are being confronted with in the face of the pandemic. The panoptic gaze of control that becomes a central argument of the paper transgresses merely academic relevance. The all pervasive, unchecked power of the Indian State has endlessly asserted itself throughout its history; in targeted violence towards marginalised communities, the deliberate sequestering and exploitation of resources, the ongoing colonisation of Kashmir. As the failure of State institutions and machineries reached various epitomes over the past year, the land’s very geographies were weaponised against the people. From the real prisons that snatch the freedoms of those who dissent against the government to the cities that became prisons for the mass exodus of migrant workers abandoned by the State, all wait with bated breath for a future ‘jailbreak’. As always, literature finds meaning in continued relevance and the ideas contained in this paper are no exception.
The Urban Home called Calcutta in ‘The Home-Coming’: Site of Discipline and Confinement
This paper aims to establish Tagore’s Calcutta in 'The Home-Coming' as a site of corrective space for Phatik Chakravarty under the veil of urban residence, thereby making the geography of Calcutta a citified body representing a home that facilitates discipline and corrective confinement. Simultaneously, it will derive postulations from Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to put forth the assertion that Calcutta is the metaphorical embodiment of a prison. This paper shall primarily investigate the nature of residence of the geographical terrain of Calcutta as a body that aims to make Phatik an urban Bhadralok figure. Hence, the urban dwelling of Calcutta is reduced- rather, objectified- to a metaphorical representation of the body of a prison which is stratified at domestic, social and territorial levels.
*Introduction by Shreyoshee Bandyopadhyay POSTSCRIPT | 39
Lost relationships that I thought were meant to be forever.
It is firstly important to understand the connotations attached to the term Bhadralok. During the eighteenth century, it represented the generation of urban, upper-caste Bengali gentry who set norms for the expected socio-cultural behaviour. This group definition progressed in the nineteenth century to include the influences of English education, leading to the formation of administrative and landed middle classes within the realms of the term. (Banerjee 51) The twentieth century gave way to some social mobility, defining it as an umbrella term that included the educated, wealthy, and those with some administrative powers or commercial engagements. (Ghosh 248) Thereafter, the Bhadralok ideals of civility and urban gentry outlined the normative socio-cultural behaviour, some examples of which include the quality of residence, sartorial attire, knowledge of English language and mannerisms (Banerjee 52). Additionally, Ghosh’s work aptly sets the mutual affinity between the Bhadralok and the city of Calcutta (Ghosh 248). This implies that the city becomes the locus of the normative Bhadralok lifestyle. Hence, Pathik’s metropolitan home becomes the centre of the Bhadralok ecosystem. It is the normative lifestyle in this Bhadralok ecosystem that dictates Phatik’s life, as Bhishamber attempts to introduce him to the western (Bhadralok) notion of education. Furthermore, it is this lifestyle of his residence i.e. Calcutta that makes Phatik an anomaly amid the Bhadralok conduct. This relationship between Calcutta and Phatik becomes the basis on which Foucault’s aspects of the “delinquent” and “prison” can be applied. Phatik can be read in terms of criminology. Here, in a literary discourse, “criminology” refers to Phatik’s “crime” of being unable to accommodate to the normative, urban-Bhadralok society of the twentieth century. Phatik hence becomes the embodiment of Foucault’s “delinquent” as it is “not so much a delinquent’s act as his life that is essential in characterizing him” (Foucault 251). Foucault also notes that the delinquent is not only the author of his act but also linked to his offence by a multitude of complexities, for instance, instincts, tendencies, and character (253). Foucault remarks that a delinquent’s prison becomes the “artificial and coercive theatre” wherein the delinquent’s life is examined from top to bottom (251). Here, Phatik’s new home becomes the embodiment of the delinquent’s prison wherein Phatik represents the delinquent. This is evident throughout the narrative at multiple instances, such as the narrator’s mention of Phatik’s anguish “to be the unwelcome guest in his aunt's house, despised by this elderly woman, and slighted, on every occasion.” This examination gains a visual layer in the Indian television series, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore, heightened through the instant, critical gaze of the cousins as soon as Phatik enters Bhishamber’s residence and the mockery of the mere act of his not using his towel. Another instance of such examination is seen in the stranger’s gaze of judgement when Phatik returns home. It is this constant gaze of the Bhadralok that is transfixed on the outsider (or delinquent); it manifests in the constant examination of the individual akin to a specimen, while the dwelling of Calcutta
POSTSCRIPT | 40
Most of this year felt like my chest was attached to the ground.
becomes the apparatus that catalyses the actions of the specimen. It is the urban and alien home of Phatik i.e. the city of Calcutta which is the site and witness to such behavioural scrutiny, thereby, transcending the metropolitan space of Phatik’s lodging into an object that represents the delinquent’s prison. There is a heightened representation of the citified home as a medium of corrective enclosure through Tagore’s imagery of Phatik being “surrounded on all sides by Calcutta houses and walls.” It is the geographical terrain of Calcutta as a residence or home that shoulders the responsibility of making Phatik a citified Bhadralok figure. Hence, Phatik’s Calcutta transcends merely being a residence, and further extends into a metaphorical representation of the body of a prison, thereby simultaneously locating Calcutta as a home by virtue of Phatik’s residence in the city and a prison, based on the nature of the residence and its treatment to the resident. The structure of this prison is stratified at a domestic level, social level, and territorial level. The domestic prison of Bhisambhar’s residence and the social prison of the school develop an ecosystem of isolation which resembles what Foucault mentions as the Auburn model of the prison, whereby the “prisoner” must be introduced to a “microcosm of the perfect society” (Foucault 238). The methodology involved in this model included joining together in exercises of use, forced adoption of good habits in masses and hierarchical vertical direction of communication in the absence of lateral communication. (Foucault 238) Manifestations of this model of prison are embodied in Bhishamber’s house and Phatik’s school (both falling into the gambit of the larger residence of Calcutta) as Phatik is introduced to the Bhadralok mannerisms of English language, Western education and clothing with the domestic and social spheres. The paucity of lateral communication is evident through the absence of conversation between Phatik and his coevals such as his cousins or classmates. Instead, the vertical communication of discipline surfaces through his aunt’s scoldings as Phatik loses his lesson book and physical punishment by his teacher. Anurag Basu’s Stories by Rabindranath Tagore lays due emphasis on Phatik’s forceful adaptation to the foreign Bhadrolok ecosystem through shifts in ‘etiquette', evident through subliminal instances such as his inability to use a towel or “gamcha” at home and his uncomfortable shift from dhoti to trousers on his way to school. In these ways, home and school reduce to claustrophobic spaces that represent the Auburn model of a microcosmic representation of the larger Bhadralok ecosystem of Calcutta, wherein Phatik is forced to conform. Lastly, the all-enveloping prison in the labyrinth of the hearth of Calcutta can be seen through the representation of the city as a geographical plotting of the ‘Panopticon’ (Foucault 249). Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Panopticon' or 'Inspection House’, designed in 1791, is a building in a circular form with individual cells around its perimeter whose windows and lighting are ranged such that their occupants are clearly visible to the central inspection tower even though the occupants remain unaware of the presence or absence
POSTSCRIPT | 41
It is what it is. There really is no other way to say it.
of the entity positioned at the inspection tower (Garland 860). This aspect of omnipresent supervision is employed when Phatik escapes his current home, Calcutta, to return to his former home. The panoptic gaze of control is not just limited to human intervention of the school-teacher, his aunt, or Bhadralok etiquettes and mannerisms. This ubiquitous surveillance escapes beyond human intervention and goes to the extent of natural intervention as the downpour prevents Phatik’s escape. It is as if the laws of nature are positioned at the central inspection tower that observe Phatik’s attempt of indiscipline and curtail the act through precipitation that operates in the larger Panopticon of Calcutta. Hence, the overarching territorial prison of Calcutta can be seen through the geographical plotting of the Panopticon as Phatik’s rebellion of escaping Calcutta becomes an equivalent of an attempt at jailbreak. The Panopticon embodiment of Calcutta makes the city a dwelling wherein constant surveillance operates, which curtails Phatik’s act of ‘indiscipline’ of escaping Calcutta through the obstacle of the downpour. The final argument of this paper throws light upon the period of Phatik’s residence in Calcutta that is representative of the “duration of punishment” which “makes it possible to quantify the penalties exactly.” (Foucault 244) In the text, the duration of punishment is till the holidays i.e., till November. It is to be noted that Foucault puts forth the concern of the duration not being a time measure, and instead being a time which presents the risk “of having no corrective value.” (Foucault 244) Phatik becomes a representative of this risk as November becomes an exceedingly long duration of punishment that outlives Phatik. Hence, Calcutta becomes a residence that bears the embodiment of Phatik’s prison and duration of punishment. In the aforementioned ways, the Bhadralok gaze of judgement, the Auburn model-like microcosms of the normative society evident in the domestic and social realms of Bhishamber’s home and Phatik’s school, the Panoptic resemblance that curtails Phatik’s attempt of escape and his duration of punishment culminate to present Calcutta as a (three-tier) stratified representation of the body of a prison within the realms of home that aims to correct Phatik for his inability to conform to the normative conduct formulated by the Bhadraloks. Therefore, Calcutta becomes an artistic residence that bears testimony to Phatik’s imprisonment and transcends into a metaphorical representation of David Garland’s idea of prison that “seizes the body of the inmate, exercising it, training and movement in order ultimately to transform habits. It takes hold of the individual, manipulating in a behavioristic mode, rather than just attempting thinking from the outside.” (Garland 857)
POSTSCRIPT | 42
I was constantly paranoid because I knew that I wasn't prepared for grief.
Works Cited
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www.jstor.org/stable/828299. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021. Ghosh, Parimal. “Where Have All the 'Bhadraloks' Gone?” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 39, no. 3, 2004, pp. 247–251. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4414522. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Print.
https://www.pdfdrive.com/discipline-punish-the-birth-of-the-prison-e157050811.html.
Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.
POSTSCRIPT | 43
Resentment + Disgust + Displeasure
Kritika Ghai Before the pandemic hit us all, Sunday used to be one of my favourite days to unwind, simply because after working tirelessly throughout the week, I would finally get one day to refuel my taxed out emotional and physical health. But during this past year, I started to look at things differently and this poem depicts what all went through my mind.
Sunday
I have never been a fan of Sunday while the world looks forward to this day to unwind and drink up its weekday blues the undulating dislike for this day didn't emerge until I was old enough Old enough, for my eyes to catch things that played hide and seek in plain sight But in hindsight, all I do each day is dwindle, read and pass the day writing About the first few lines. showed the first few lines to a friend who does a solid 9-5 scoffs, " What would a kid like you know about the charms of this day?" The charms of this day I noticed in the TV that blares all-day Matinee shows are running round with characters switching like days but the viewer sits stagnant, creating an unknown dent in this space The space 20 footsteps apart is heavier to push through the viewer has now shifted the gaze from the electronic to pushing pea pods apart A snap and crackle is heard around the room for 20 minutes or so for 20 years the person who indents this sofa has been making such a noise maybe within 20 feet, the bitter truth burns out
out of rays, the star sleeps due to exhaustion It can't carry the light anymore it is nearly about to burn down Nearly, I might have made all of this as I peer through a fisheye lens and my hate for Sunday still remains. POSTSCRIPT | 44
Routines had been upended.
Yusra Basit and Syed Muhammad Khalid in *conversation with Dr. Mohd. Talha Noor Dr. Mohd. Talha Noor is a consultant gastroenterologist and hepatologist with 12 years of clinical experience, currently serving as Professor and Head of the Department of Gastroenterology at the Sri Aurobindo Medical College and Postgraduate Institute, Indore. Born and brought up in the small city of Firozabad in north-western Uttar Pradesh, he obtained his degree in MBBS from the Aligarh Muslim University, his MD in Internal Medicine and a DM in Gastroenterology from the PGIMER, Chandigarh. Dr. Noor is a regular participant in medical conferences in India and overseas, having won awards for his presentations and work on multiple occasions, co-authoring research papers in medical journals, and contributing chapters to books on gastro-related subjects. In conversation with two of our journalists, Dr. Noor speaks candidly as a medical professional, a father, and an admirer of literature, assisting our efforts in trying to bridge the gap of understanding between the layperson and the frontline workers when it comes to this disconcertingly new age.
OF FINDING POETRY IN A PANDEMIC: THE LONG ROAD TO HEALING SOULS, THE SELF, AND THE SYSTEM
Yusra and Khalid: It has been over a year since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. What faults in domestic and international health systems do you believe were exposed during this time? Dr Noor: The novelty and severity of this disease has revealed multifarious inadequacies in our health system with respect to infrastructure, manpower and equipment. This has put a question on our disease-oriented approach to manage public health crises. The fractures in our system were most prominent in rural areas which not only suffer from poor access to healthcare centres but also from nonavailability of health amenities, such as oxygen cylinders, which are crucial in handling complicated cases. Chronic underinvestment in terms of money, political will, and concerted efforts plague our system, and this is further exacerbated by the huge disparity between our total GDP and health expenditure. Even developed economies with better health infrastructure, say Italy or the UK, have suffered terribly. In my opinion, our experience from the past year accentuates the necessity to focus on adopting a holistic health-oriented approach instead, which ranges from taking preemptive measures against the outbreak of a disease to providing treatment and limiting the mortality rate.
* transcribed by Yusra Basit and Syed Muhammad Khalid; interview conducted on 4 April 2021
POSTSCRIPT | 45
Strangely, it felt like an unwanted presence that felt authoritative and interfering.
Illustration by Sana Afzal Mir
Y&K: Experts had been warning us about the occurrence of a pandemic for a very long time. Do you think the experiences that we have gained from the spread of the coronavirus have equipped us adequately to battle another pandemic, or does the public health infrastructure still have a long way to go? Dr. Noor: The public health system, despite significant improvements, even now has quite a long way to go. Our over-dependence on the private sector has skewed the share of disease-burden towards private hospitals only. India's public healthcare is organised into PHCs, community health centres, district and tertiary hospitals. But at the primary healthcare level, especially in rural areas, there is still much work left that needs to be put in. Rural healthcare centres have proved ineffective to deal with advanced cases of COVID-19, even though the demand for better treatment in these places is equally high. We need to strategically build up public health institutions to ameliorate this sectoral and geographical imbalance.
Y&K: Please tell us about how the pandemic has affected your line of duty. As a doctor, you were already working long hours. What extra strain did the pandemic add to your schedule? Dr Noor: For medical professionals, the most disconcerting fear was contracting this highly contagious infection. Initially, I was not in direct contact with patients; but as I provide specialised care, I too got involved once health facilities were over-strained. Working under restrictive conditions becomes daunting and severely stressful as we need to practice precision and accuracy in our procedure while donning PPE kits and other protective gear. Having a positive mindset is of paramount importance. Although COVID-care has complicated our job further, we are continuously finding new ways to deal with patients while also ensuring our own safety.
Y&K: You had to visit the hospital every day, without fail, in this public health crisis. How did this affect your your family? Dr Noor: Healthcare professionals battled on their individual ends with the fear of contracting COVID-19 in the initial days. But with experience and the introduction of vaccines, we are slightly more surefooted now. In any pandemic, a medical professional has a twofold responsibility: to deliver care to infected patients and to ascertain the safety of their family members. Time has become a constraint in these taxing situations, so
POSTSCRIPT | 47
There is way too much happening, unbridled and excessive.
one has to make the unfortunate compromise on family life. But ultimately, it is the support of the family which helps us to maintain our fortitude. The optimism that our families imbue in us allows us to persevere for a breakthrough.
Y&K: There have been reports about people experiencing insomnia, increased panic attacks, marked changes in appetite, among other concerning psychological and physiological issues. Access to professional support and therapy is not possible in most cases. What short-term and long-term effects do you believe the pandemic might have had on mental health? Dr Noor: During the pandemic, people encountered a spate of psychological problems, such as anxiety, loneliness, fear of the disease, grief and anger, which culminated into depression and, in some cases, unfortunately, led the person to contemplate or even commit suicide. Mental health issues can also prove pernicious to our physical health by causing cardiovascular diseases; the negativity of the mind which this induces weakens our immune system as well. Vulnerable groups are particularly prone to struggling with psychological issues as they are already emotionally labile. The added disadvantage of despondency burdens their lives further. Our public health policy needs to envision a plan to address this immediately.
Y&K: What about children? We are aware of how important it is for them, especially the younger ones, to interact with other people and the world regularly to form a concrete foundation in their mental and emotional development. Do you think the pandemic’s effect is a topic of grave concern? Dr Noor: Children constitute one of the most emotionally vulnerable categories of affected people, highly susceptible to caving under the immense pressure of the present conditions. Their innocence and naïveté renders them unable to rationalise, identify or regulate their own exposure to the steady stream of negative coverage on news and media, which is where the responsibility of the adults in their lives becomes imperative in protecting their impressionable minds. Empathy and precision must be tactfully utilised in engaging with children, as is the need to maintain a veneer of positivity and optimism in helping to create an approach and outlook on the devastating effects of the pandemic.
POSTSCRIPT | 48
One year has already passed and I don't think things are turning normal anytime soon. I guess we'll have to live with it.
Y&K: During the course of your work, have you come across medical practitioners who engage with any kind of art form? Also, do you think that engaging with literature through reading, writing or reciting can provide respite and an outlet for expression from the overwhelm that medical practitioners face during these times? Dr Noor: What I’ve managed to gather from my own experience is that art is always a positive and liberally interactive medium. The medical line of work can often be exhausting; having to deal with loss, grief and anguish while soldiering on without a break drains practitioners more often than we’d like to admit. It is a comfort to seek refuge in the aesthetically reified expression of something as subtle yet unbending as solidarity during a time of chaos and uncertainty. The pandemic demonstrated the creative consonance between healthcare workers and common people through charged slogans, re-imagined songs, striking poetry, and deeply resonant Shayari. Where reality becomes cumbersome, imagination and art sweep in to take its place, helping to carry the burden for a little while longer.
Y&K: During long hours or even days of isolation from their close ones or due to the inability to meet them, have you observed any medical practitioners resorting to poetry or art in order to cope with the emotional burnout? Dr Noor: Unfortunately, in our line of work, the constraints of time severely limit the production of art and aesthetics. While art is the very agency that supplements the transformation of work into revolution, its mere consumption allows us to reinforce the rhythm of a tactical and driven existence in our individual lives. It allows us to simply be; to nourish a momentum that cannot falter, to sustain a strength that cannot shatter. Taking the time to partake in the creation of another is equally fulfilling, I would say, especially when exhaustion makes tongues too heavy to speak what the heart is weighed down with.
Y&K: Do you have a favourite author or poet, whose words have helped you stay afloat in these veritable seas of distress and duress? Dr Noor: I believe it would be a great disservice if I were to try and narrow it down to a few names, subsequently committing the fallacy of disregarding the role that common people like you and I
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We'll get through this, I know we will. I'm just scared that none of us will ever be the same again.
have played in metamorphosing all experience—bitter, aching, relieving, terrifying—into creating a language entirely our own, one unique to our existence during the horrors of the nows. Personally, I did take great comfort in reminiscing the works of Mirza Ghalib and Rahat Indori, the latter hailing from my city of Indore, whom we lost in the last year due to the coronavirus itself. The irony makes you think of the cyclical nature of being; all that was is gone one day, and all that is left is solely what you make of it.
Y&K: If you were a student experiencing the pandemic right now, what do you think your experience would have been? Do you have anything you’d like to communicate to our readers; give them a sense of comfort and a word of caution, perhaps? Dr Noor: I have nothing but utmost appreciation and regard for all students, regardless of the age bracket they fall into. It is not uncommon to hear of entire stretches of blank days that pupils have reported to have been experiencing at length, liminal in their bleakness and taciturnity. Virtual communication, while commendable, transforms into a crutch when expended for a duration as long as that of the pandemic. Nevertheless, it is now more than ever that the importance of cultivating a strong sense of self ascends to the surface of all measures taken to protect the mind from crumpling beneath all the pressure. We are always faced with the choice of meeting a challenge with either optimism or pessimism; success or failure are crossroads that lie much further down the path. The pandemic has demonstrated the ferocity and daunting rage of the human spirit; our ability to bend connotes that we do not break. I wish all readers, their families and loved ones good health, fortitude and a valorous heart and strength of mind. The road ahead might be long and tumultuous, but it has an end in sight. Perhaps, on our bad days, all we can do is keep our soul burning bright enough to illuminate the way for the rest to trudge on along.
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Asphyxiating
CONTRIBUTORS
Aliya Khan "I go by the legal name of Aliya Khan, although my friends love to call me 'Aali'. I am a first year English Honours Student, my course choice based on my habit of reading YA and Fantasy Genre, ahahaha. Everything blue and green attracts me. I wish I had the exquisite talent of writing masterpieces, but for the time being, let's satisfy ourselves with what's ready."
Anushka Srivastava Anushka is a third-year student at Miranda House, University of Delhi majoring in English Literature. For her, Creative Writing is a means to discover and protest the changing definition and context of the self.
Bariera Sahar "Hello! I am Bariera Sahar from the English Department of Daulat Ram College, Delhi University. Appurtenant Haiku has been a work of sweat and blood, which I hope shall please the reader’s taste. Happy reading!"
Callistine Jude Lewis Callistine is a student of Political Science and English Literature at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. A native of Kochi, Kerala, he is also an avid reader and can be found amidst dusty library shelves or photographing quaint cafes on artsy streets while scribbling slam poetry. Dr Giti Chandra Giti Chandra grew up and grew middle-aged in Stephen's. If it's foggy and cold you might catch a glimpse of Bhaiyan opening the Cafe early to hand her hot tea with adrak in a glass so that she can get to Room S for the 8.40 and rant about whose truths get acknowledged in which universe loudly enough for the sleepy people in the back to hear. She lives to read and write and reads and writes for a living. John Scaria John is an undergraduate student of English literature. His interests lie in literature of the 19th and 20th century, and the Restoration dramas of the 17th century. Apart from his active involvement with theatre, he likes to write in prose and is currently working on his first manuscript. Dr Karen Gabriel Karen Gabriel is the Head on the block for the Department of English at St Stephen’s College. She is an academic rolling stone who enjoys reading and writing on all manner of things. (She is also a closet creative writer). But above all, she’s a teacher who loves doing what she does, and sorely misses the warmth of the classroom.
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I had time to think about every possible consequence.
Kritika Ghai As a student of English Literature, Kritika is always lost in her own world trying to set a place for people like her who have gone through tough times but are now ready to try to find themselves. As a queer, she advocates diverse representation across the media. Her writing represents the life she has gone through or she hopes to go through someday. When not writing can be found wandering through nature, historic monuments, museums and art galleries to learn he intricacies of life. Prachi Mahima Prachi is a second year Masters student in The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. She is a 23-year-old cinephile who spends most of her leisure hours either reveling in Borges’ poetry or grooving to progressive rock. She writes poetry when she is procrastinating her assignments. Priyanshi Banerjee Priyanshi is often seen scribbing on the last page of random notebooks, nodding her head in disapproval. Her social life includes imaginary conversations with Manto and "tell-tales" with Poe. Her obsessions with prose and poetry often transcend into words and MLA Formats that she likes to call "Academic Papers". Purvi Rajpuria Purvi is a writer and illustrator, with a BA in Literary and Cultural Studies from FLAME University, Pune. Rayan Chakrabarti Rayan is an aspiring poet based in Calcutta. He is an English undergraduate student studying at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. He spends his time playing the piano and searching for the idiosyncrasies of daily existence. Sharon Sara Alex "I elope with my self to avoid life; but they chase me- the hounds of life. I return, for I know at the bottom of the Box somewhere I still remain." Syed Muhammad Khalid "I read and write as I can and not as I should. I like the Beatles and Bob Dylan. 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. I keep a diary as must be evident from the sheer number of 'I's I used here. If you were able to find any meaning in my 'poem', do feel free to tell me because I certainly couldn't. Cheers." Dr. Talha Noor Dr. Mohd. Talha Noor is a consultant gastroenterologist and hepatologist with 12 years of clinical experience, currently serving as Professor and Head of the Department of Gastroenterology at the Sri Aurobindo Medical College and Postgraduate Institute, Indore.
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There were grim realisations when everyone was homebound and we were compelled to ponder upon the harms that we have caused to the environment.
POSTSCRIPT
EDITORIAL BOARD
2020-21
Editor-in-chief
Nidhi Chhamb, BA Programme '21 A hoarder of podcasts, poetry and folk music; who constantly describes herself as the bedrock of cynicism. She’s mawkishly sentimental whenever nostalgia tends to strike her in shifty ways and is often emotionally dead otherwise.
Editorial Team Shreyoshee Bandyopadhyay (Editor) B.A. (Hons.) English '21
frequent fanfiction reader, lower case typer. still undecided on whether my passion is literature or just homoerotic subtext. i aspire to one day have cats, a flat with big windows and keep one (1) plant alive.
Chitee Paresh Lele (Editor) B.A. (Hons.) English '22
Jyotsna Iyer (Editor) B.A Programme ‘22
Almost twenty. Trying to find good poetry, and even better coffee, for keeping up with everything around me. Living in my head with an imaginary pet (preferably a dog). Terrible Twitter trends don't faze me but editing a magazine surely does.
Tried to escape the blues but I became the sea. Always found annotating everything and anything. Living with the hope that my words will outlive me.
Niangthianmuang S Ngaihte (Editor)- B.A. (Hons.) English '22 Saturn, Sleeping At Last. Everything is cake. I am a party and life is the pinãta. Chinmayee Babbal (Editor)- B.A. (Hons) English ‘22 An overthinker, who is terribly afraid of dogs. Physically I am trying to finish all my readings but mentally I am imagining a life in the Italian countryside. Sometimes I paint and read, but mostly I procrastinate and annoy the people around me. Swaswati Das (Editor)- B.A. (Hons.) History ‘23 I am a little bit of this and that. Love writing and travelling. Want to build a (huge) mini library in my house someday. I dream a lot, this is just one of them. Vanisha Meena (Editor)- B.A. (Hons.) English ‘23
How to spot me: Overdressed, with loads of junk food, quoting either Rachel, Jerry (R&M), or Michael with music playing aloud on my phone, while simultaneously wondering about why reality is not like the Starry Night full of tulips.
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ewww. it is what it is.
Yusra Basit (Journalist)- B.A. (Hons.) English ‘23 Nineteen, with the ambition of kings and the energy of the perpetually frail Victorian damsel. I write bitter prose and acerbic poetry, spend too long watching the skies, and occasionally wonder what it would feel like to consume the sun. Syed Muhammad Khalid (Journalist)- B.A. (Hons.) English ‘23 I read and write as I can and not as I should. I like the Beatles and Bob Dylan. 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. I keep a diary as must be evident from the sheer number of 'I's that I've used here. Tanisha Gupta (Editor)- B.A (Hons) History ‘23 Constant mood: white roses, Nutella croissants, sad poetry, Gone with the Wind, love letters, moonlight over sunshine, walks in cliche gardens & polaroid photographs.
Sana Afzal Mir (Illustrator)B.A Programme ‘23
Sharon Sara Alex (Illustrator)B.A Programme '22
Questioning everything. I draw when I can't write or speak. I usually tend to have the worst FOMO. Aspiring to study Philosophy with a touch of Literature.
Procrastinating is my main job after living. I often engage in writing and drawing because they help me speak more than I can ever do.
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2020 ruined my plans. It completely obliterated some of them.
Executive Council 2020-21 President: Sonam Chhomo Academic Coordinator and Vice President: Priyanka Pareek Logos Convener: Afnan SM Secretary: Arun Jose PostScript Editor: Nidhi Chhamb Treasurer: Chinmayee Babbal Joint Secretaries: Anu Lisa Alex Chitee Paresh Lele Sruthy Rose Mathew
Staff Advisor Prof Hannah Varkey (Department of English)
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I spent most of the year picking up after myself, but looking back, I'm nothing short of grateful for the support that I received throughout.
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PostScript, we had the chance of hearing from some of our audience about what struck them first when asked about describing the experiences of the past one yearthe good, the bad, and the ugly. Their responses can be viewed in the form of footnotes on each page.
PostScript, Issue 2020-21 Published by the English Literary Society of St. Stephen's College, Delhi-110007