Travelling Together (poem) (Priyanka Joseph)

Thursday night here in the new world,
and outside this train's window
the blinking lights of a city rolling past
is the sky we're staring into.
if I could rewire an entire power grid
right now, before the cops came,

continued..




Its playful tone is very appealing. I hear the love in it.
Great images.
Aparna

Mercurial (Ravishankar C)

Mercurial :
Solar flare one moment,
cozy warmth in the next...

Mercurial :
Dont let me touch you,
golden haired girl,
mercury and gold amalgams
have the shine of neither...
continued..


"Mercury and gold amalgams have the shine of neither" - the best line.

For whatever reason, it reminded me of Gibran's,
"And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow"

Aparna

Borewell (Poem)

Lying in wait in broad daylight
Gaps in the earth
Like meaningless words
Of a news hound
Tapping soundless tears
Will the funeral be delayed?

Walking the same way as yesterday,
but somehow foosteps sense tragedy
And the sky is shrunk to a moon
A circle of light far above
No homework for me
Today or any other day.

Caferati link..

Sandeep, 9 years old, died trapped in an abandoned borewell for 57 hrs, RIP.
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr262007/update028442007427.asp

Listen (Rohinton Daruwala)

Listen*


Listen
tea, rhymes with gold,
or better still,
sunlight breaking through
the trees,

continued..

So lovely until the last para - a bit of a cliché.
Aparna

Medusa (Anindita Sengupta)

Did you look in the mirror one day and
find that you had grown used to it? The hair -
gleaming, little coils, each one tensile
as rope; the tongue quick and sharp as sunlight;
eyes vast in that thin face, deeper than earth.
continued..

I liked everything except the line "the girl walking calmly to meet the sea" and the word "rainsoaked".
Love the last 2 stanzas.
Aparna -milika

Bad Writing (Writing Exercise)

Praise the all-cognizant celestial divinity that I am not a defective correspondent. I apperceive that I am not abhorrent in my contributions, considering the actuality that my spelling is predominantly gratifying, my cognition of the principles of linguistic structure is substantial, and my excessive adoption of multi-syllabic idiom is congenital.

I formulate entire communications, merely to emblazon my acquaintance with an acclaimed scribe of current vogue whose actual works I am entirely free of comprehension (as I extolled in my essay on Kundera's alleged remarks on the lastability of prejudiced identities).

I often give impulse to fatuous verse..(can you attend the thunderous applause I hear in my cerebellum as I commit this)

Ode to Thee, my Reader, in Thy solitude
A plea! - Why Thou art not mine
Thine loneliness art thy escape
As thou gracefully spurn thy love
to those who still 'thee, thine, thou'

Thus I stand perfectly equipped by power of education and an eminently accessible thesaurus to effectuate upon the universe my meritorious and laudable efforts, bar the fact that I possess no cogitations to express. I however do not restrain myself on such barren occasions, as being mostly anthropomorphic, I am not wholly against self-titillation.

Caferati Link..

The Island of Lost Ideas (Ramasubramanian G S)

(unfortunately, the original seems to have disappeared off Caferati)

Are you planning to post more chapters? Very engaging writing. Especially the part in the first chapter where he backtracks to ask why they think he is impartial - that he doesn't ask the question right away, but thinks of it as an afterthought. Small fact, but what a huge difference it made - being lifelike, instead of logical made everything that followed it look real as well. We try to order events logically, and it seems stagey, and not natural.

Reading your first chapter, somewhere in the middle, my mind started to go off tangent trying to finish that Chapter as a different kind of story. I don't usually ask this, but would you mind if I tried that and posted it?

Aparna

poem-This Moment Etched (Abha Iyengar)

THIS MOMENT ETCHED

Can I place this moment
In your hand
And ask you to gulp it down
So that it sears your throat
Leaving a furrow
within
Your skin
so smooth and clear

continued..


"Right there
At the base of your throat
Where your pulse quickens
at the sight of me
This moment."

Beautiful, forceful.

The ESL test (Caferati)

You've heard of Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves, right? Have you tried The Punctuation Game on the book's site? No? Hie thee thither post-haste. And if you get much less than 100 per cent, reconsider your writing career. Seriously.

~peter

Link..

Fictional Guides to Travel: Mma Ramotswe’s Botswana (Book Review) (Aparna Singh)

Sometimes the best writing about a place comes not from focused travel writing, but from fiction that lays no claim to being any sort of guide to travel. These places could be in a time long gone by, like the post-war Britain of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, or contemporary, like the desolate Sundarbans of Amitava Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.
continued..

I think I would have read this anyway as a travel bug- Though you don't say it right away, the name of Madame Ramotswe immediately connected me to McCall-Smith's sharply observed and simply unique characters. This is a good reminder to catch up with his latest book.

Pico Iyer is another unique travel writer setting himself apart in the melee of adventure based travel writing, with the way he connects a state of mind to a place. And I would say Alain De Botton's The Art of Travel is one of the most elegant books on the questions of why we travel, how we travel and what we get out of it.

Here's a financial year end/beginning poem (Nupur Chaturvedi)

Signing away my fate

It came to me one day,
That I sign my fate away,
Because I spend way too much time,
In the art of perfecting my sign.

continue...

Funny poem, Nupur. The topic was unexpected - I'm looking forward to more such. It would also work well in prose.

Aparna - milika

What if these movies were made ..

I was looking at an HBO schedule, and I think Hollywood is running out of ideas. I think they need a new way to freshen up tired old plots. And the thought crossed me, as I read the names adjacent to one another, that individually they all stink, but some of them might make original movies when thematically paired with the next in the list.

Conspiracy Theory+ Vanity Fair
Tagline: All is fair in love, war and conspiracies.
Mel Gibson runs paranoid through stiff-upper lip Victorian society.

Vanity Fair+ Troy
Tagline: All is fair in love, war and ancient Greece.
Brad Pitt is a spirited social climber in ancient Greece, way too obsessed with his looks.

Troy+ Bad Boys
Tagline: Watcha gonna do in ancient Greece?
Two guys, one a henpecked family man, the other a dashing ladies man, combine forces and shoot it up among ancient Greeks.

Bad Boyz+ Inside I'm Dancing
Tagline: Watcha gonna do, except live life like you mean it.
Two guys, one a henpecked family man, the other a dashing ladies man, shake up a condescending Home for the Disabled.

A Match Made in Heaven+ Seed of Chucky
Tagline: Deliver us from evil matchmakers
Olympia Dukakis is an evil doll who tries to matchmake her son into marrying her nurse, so more Chucky movies can be made.

Men In Black+ Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
Tagline: The last (swim)suit you'll ever wear
Sandra Bullock goes undercover to find out why aliens from Third World are winning so many beauty titles.

Miss Congeniality+ Twelve Monkeys
Tagline: The future is history. So is Sandra Bullock's career.
Sandra Bullock must stop the The Twelve Monkeys who are time-traveling terrorists from unleashing a deadly virus, which will put a stop to beauty pageants once for all.

Farenheit 9/11+Tales from the crypt
Mike Moore makes Tales from the White House of Horrors.

The Last Samurai+ An Officer and a Gentleman
Tagline: It will lift you up where you belong. (That's in Japan)
A wayward Tom Cruise goes to Japan, to become a man, with the help of a Geisha girl, and some ass-whupping Samurais.

Man-Thing+ Rambo
Tagline: When nature fights back, its fighting for it's life.
An unstable Swamp monster begins a one-man war with a small town

Rambo + Mean Girls
Tagline: This time he's really fighting for the right to sit in the cafeteria without getting bitchslapped
An unstable Vietnam vet must must use all his skills when starting a one-man war with a bunch of mean A-list high school prom queens.

Catwoman+ Romeo must die
An avenging cop falls for the Catwoman, a drug baron's daughter who is a cat-loving lesbian. Now he must die for it.

Coming to America + Batman
Batman is a masked Third World superhero trying to use his superpowers to sneak past immigration without a visa.

Batman+ Disturbing Behavior
Well, we've already got the Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Batman, who is disturbing enough. No need to make this movie.

The School of Rock+ Exorcist
Jack Blacka is a teach who tries to get Linda Blair to sing, but her voice sounds uncannily like a hoarse man, and now an exorcist must cure her in time for the school rock concert.

Enter the dragon+ Something's gotta give
Diane 'the dragon' Keaton and Jack 'I'm never giving up acting" Nicholson are maritalarts ..oops martial-arts experts.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason + Bourne Supremacy
Bridget and her diary must find out if the man she married is really a trained CIA operative with amnesia, or simply a husband who's come up with the ultimate excuse for forgetting their anniversary.

Barb Wire + The Spongebob Squarepants movie
Tagline: Dont call me babe! Dont call me Bob, either. Its Spongebob.
Kiddies will love this. Pamela Anderson as bikini-bottom clad mercenary in Bikini Bottom, hometown of SpongeBob, helping him track down ...whatever. With Pam in bikinis, no one will remember the plot.

Rambo III + A cinderella story
Rambo - the chickflick. What more can I say?

Join the Feminists (Aparna Singh)

I often meet people whom I would call feminist - they respect women and their choices, they treat women as people with independent minds, accept equal pay, question traditional norms of how women are supposed to be and so on. But many such people shy away from calling themselves feminist because they think the term is somehow equivalent to hating men, or bra-burning. Well, some news. Its not. Bra-burning for instance was a symbolic act performed by some women in a particular context. That doesn’t mean it represents all things feminist, or is equal to feminism. continue... Anil, The article writer is very confused. He thinks modern women should jump into bed the minute a guy buys them a coffee. If that doesn't happen, his hormones are frustrated and wants to blame women's equal rights movement for it. Not surprising, I find lots of young men, including my nephews also in the same boat. This is nothing to do with women asking to be paid the same as a male employee at work, etc. Does he think women who don't ask for equal rights are more easily convinced to have sex with him on the first date? That's a silly idea.

The Jet Lagged Parrot (Smitha Bhat )

We were one of those typical , so often caricatured apartment complexes – full of stolidly middle class families, energetically involved in each other’s lives, extremely right wing and righteous. Then how, how did we get drawn in to a web of attempted homicide, adultery and gang wars? It all started with the parrot. continue... Loved the jetlagged parrot. Some of the phrasing had me laughing out loud. "Slinking sideways like an embarrassed crab". I can relate to the names - lived a few years in Chennai. In fact, it added to the characterization for me, as certain names echo some physical attribute or personality trait, but I think that layer of fun is generally lost on non-regional audience. It is upto you, if you want to keep it that way, or not. On the other hand, I wouldn't ask R.K.Narayan to update 'Swami and Friends' to 'Nitin and Buddies', or 'Ricky and his homies'. Jugal is right about quoted dialogue needing to appear on separate lines, in a single para containing the conversation. The story slowed because of digressions at 8th-9th para ("Usha's son is visiting", and "killer exams"), and 19th para ("crush on maths teacher"), didn't contribute directly to the storyline. You don't need a background story on every character - that works better in a longer story, but tends to slow the pace in a short piece. I liked the seduction/adultery theme related to the parrot's singing (rock music's effect? nice commentary), the building society meet, and the last para's return to Rajashekar's attempted seduction. Humor flowed, Aparna

The Outcaste II (Kavisha Pinto)

What are you waiting for, The Godfather theme to play?
Let me make this clear, I have no money, no Italian children and I did not gift a guy a severed horse head as an early morning surprise.

The girl who sits next to me, well I still don’t know her name; she does not have a name plate at her desk and her neighbour calls her “excuse-me”, if she was Chinese I would’ve assumed that it is in fact her name.

continue...

(Aparna Singh, from the OK-la and stapler effects I'd say its an office in Singapore/Hong Kong.)

A fun piece Kavisha. Laughed hard at shaving the back of her head to find her name/number. The right evil touch. Wish you'd continued with that neighbor.
The stapler stuff was funny, but I think getting the chain was not the stopping point, could take the story up to the next (and final?) encounter with the stapler borrower after that.

Spik to you sun - ("shits of pepper", hahaha)
Aparna

Grim(m) Fairy Tales

In a land of green fields bordered by dark forests, there lived a farmer. He owned a buffalo named Dreamie, who had three young daughters. The farmer named the first one Cinderella, the second Miss Muffet, and the third was called Red Riding Hood. They led a pleasant life, going out to graze all day in green hills, and returning home at sunset, and settling down to chat around their mother before falling asleep.

The farmer was an unusual man. Something of a loner, he had never taken a family, nor did he spend much time in the village pubs. The other villagers made no effort to befriend him, whispers having gone around that the farmer had some strange qualities. In particular, it was said that he could understand the voices of the animals.

They were not wrong. The farmer (though not very often, being the silent type), spoke to his little herd and understood them when they replied to them. He would sometimes come into the stables silently, and sit a little away from them, listening to the girls chatting to each other. Once in a while, he told them stories of his life, the village and the world beyond. They listened, chewed the cud, and fell asleep dreaming of the things they heard.
As days passed, the three little ones grew up into young buffaloes. They were each different from the other. Cinderella the eldest was sensitive and artistic, and prettier than the others. She had dark eyes that often stared long into the distance, daydreaming. Many things interested Cinderella, the world, its people and their ways. The farmer always got a lot of questions from her. Her taste for finer things led her to usually venture out further than the others in search of places where the grass tasted better, the water was sweeter, and the tree that had the coolest shade. To herself, she sometimes silently admitted that she preferred people to buffaloes, and the farmer to her own two sisters.

Miss Muffet was more conventional. She had neither the imagination of Cinderella nor the spirit of Red Riding Hood. In fact, the other two called her dull. But she was practical, kind and down-to-earth. Tales of far-away lands did not interest her as much as did cares of her little household. She gave the farmer no trouble, and was her mother's favorite.

Whereas Red Riding Hood was something of a daredevil. She liked breaking the rules to see if she could get away with it, and though she had not as much artistic temper or imagination as Cinderella, she was curious about the outside world. Her greatest dream was to wander in the mysterious cool forests bordering the town. But all the buffaloes were strictly forbidden by the farmer from entering the forests, and they obeyed him, willing or not.

One gloomy winter evening, the farmer sat in the warm cattle shed, smoking his pipe, and listening to the chatter of the three, and the rain in the trees. The young buffaloes, having exhausted their meal and their usual topics, turned to the question of the forbidden forests. Why were they forbidden? asked Cinderella turning to the farmer. Then the three heard of the ancient great tiger that roamed the forests and its ferocious temper and deadly jaws. The forest is a wonderful place, said the farmer, but it is also the home of the malignant tiger. No cattle who had ever set foot in the forests had been seen alive again. From time to time, he said, with a shake of his head, scavenging eagles had carried out bones and bits from the forest, which spoke of the fate of those misguided adventurers. They must never, never, he said, think of entering the forests, not as long as they valued their lives. How horrible, shuddered Cinderella, as the other two stared open mouthed. As they settled down to sleep, the farmer smiled to himself. He knew their time together was soon coming to an end.

As that winter passed, and spring arrived, a new excitement began to stir the village. Strange people were seen all day long, up and down the main street, and there was a carnival air about town. The young buffaloes noted it as they passed the town on their way to the hills to graze, and asked themselves what it could be. When they got home that night, they waited for the farmer to come in for their night feed, and eagerly questioned him. But all he would say was, You'll see very soon.

One day, they finally got their answer. They had not been sent to the hills that day, and after his breakfast, the farmer in his church clothes led all three into the town's main street. There they saw an astonishing sight. Everywhere they looked, from one end of the street all the way to the other, there were horns and hooves and dust and uproar. Cattle of all shapes and sizes filled the place. It was the spring cattle fair.

The three stuck close to the farmer, for fear of getting lost. The farmer led them to a large shed near the dry goods store. Here he sat down to wait for buyers, while he explained what was happening to the awestruck three. It is time, he said, for you three to find homes of your own. You will each be purchased by another farmer, like I once purchased your mother Dreamie, hopefully for a good sum, and he will take you with him to his home in another village, where you will find green grass, fresh water and a good life. You must be good, and do as he says, for he will be your family. Only the best cattle were sold, he said, so it was an honor to get a good buyer.

As they waited about, and munched the dry hay lying around, people came up and made various offers for them, all of which the farmer refused. Miss Muffet worried that he would find no buyers, but it was still noon, and the fair would continue until an hour before sunset. Finally, a wealthy farmer from the neighbouring village purchased Cinderella for a very good sum, and a smaller farmer bought Miss Muffet for a lesser, but still satisfactory amount. While they were congratulating each other, and the farmer was not paying attention, Red Riding Hood had quietly run away.

Red Riding Hood had not said anything since the farmer brought them to the fair, but she had been in a quiet panic. She did not want to go away with a new owner. All she had wanted was to explore the forest, and now it seemed her chance would slip away forever. Her new owner, whoever he might be turn out to be, would never allow her to enter the forest, after paying so much money to purchase her. She would live all her life in another village, and dream of the forest, and die never knowing what was in it. She got more and more agitated, and spotting her chance, she made a break for the forests. It was now or never. If she didn't do it now, she never again would. Off she ran, moving away from the crowds, to the little path that ran by the stream emerging from the forest.

It was a while before she was missed. It had taken the farmer a lot of tough haggling to settle the final prices for the other two, and to celebrate the purchase with the new owners over a glass of village brewed ale. But when her absence was realized, the other two had no time to talk about it. They were led off in different directions by their new owners, and the farmer, having looked everywhere for Red Riding Hood, gave up and went back to his home alone. Cattle often went missing in the fair, sometimes stolen, sometimes lost. She may turn up eventually, he told himself, or she may not. There was nothing he could do.

Miss Muffet's new home turned out to be not too different from her first. The new owner sent her out to graze all day, and treated her fairly. There were other cattle as well. She adjusted to the new routine of calving and milking without too much fuss, as she had seen her mother do the very same things. There was always something to be done, and Miss Muffet never had a chance to reflect or look around her. One day was like the next.

Sometimes she said to herself, I shall go see my sisters one of these days. And the old farmer, before he dies. There must be a lot to talk about. Maybe even see the forest one day. But there was no time now. Maybe when her owner was richer, and she had more time, and the tiger in the forest was dead, then she will go, she thought. Days passed quickly into years, she soon forgot her first owner, the village, the forest and hardly ever remembered her two sisters anymore.

Whereas, things did not go very well for Cinderella. Her owner was wealthier than Miss Muffet's, but also a busy man who had many businesses to run, and was rarely seen around his large cattleshed, except to inspect newborn calves and decide on the fate of the sickly ones. He employed a brace of cowhands, who fed and washed and cleaned and milked. But Cinderella missed her old farmer's company. No one talked to her anymore, and when she tried to ask questions, the people simply ignored her or threw her some hay. They did not understand her talk, and Cinderella couldn't understand why. The other buffaloes thought her strange for trying to talk to people and ignored her. They were only interested in hay and grass and calves.

Cinderella sulked in a corner, hoping someone would notice. She waited for a long time. No one noticed. The next day, she refused to eat, and kicked over her meal bucket. She grew hungry, but no reaction came from the cowhands or the cattle. She starved all day long. Her stomach burned and head spun, and she tried not to think of it. She ate nothing for three whole days but no one said anything. On the fourth day, in agony from hunger, she ate her entire meal in one gulp and gave up her fasting. She continued to be ignored.

One day, out of misery, she ate some funny grass so she could throw up her food. That should give them something to think about, she thought. Her farmer had always been extra considerate whenever one of the three sisters were ill, sitting up all night, talking to them gently. But all she got was some foul-tasting medicine in her food the next day. Still no one came to talk, no one cared. Cinderella grew more and more wretched and lonely. She lost her appetite. She lost weight, and cried herself to sleep every night.

And then one night, after many weeks, the owner appeared in the shed. He was looking at a couple of newborns. Cinderella decided to be bold and ask him why she was treated so badly. But he ignored her as always, and shouted at the cowhands to tie her up. As she was being pulled back roughly to her stall, the rope burned her neck, and desperation overcame her. She pulled away from the cowhand, and once free, headed for her old home. She ran all the way, weeping, not stopping to drink or eat, and by early dawn, she reached her old cowshed.

The farmer, hearing her hoofs, came out to see. He stared, shocked. Her eyes were dull, her skin hung loose, and she had lost a shoe on the way. Cinderella sobbed out her miseries to him. Why were they so bad to her? What had she done wrong?

The farmer smiled with sadness. He stood silent for a long long time before he spoke. Poor Cinderella, he said. You are different. You can think and feel and imagine, but you are not human. You are and will always be a buffalo. You cannot talk to people, people will not understand you. You must live as God intended all buffaloes shall live. You must go back to your new owner. I cannot help you. You can stay with me today, but tomorrow you must go.

Cinderella listened to his words with terrible anger and confusion. To the farmer, she wailed: Why did you speak to me, and tell me all those stories of the wonderful world, if I am just a buffalo? Why did you let me dream and think and imagine ? The farmer was silent. He knew he had no answer.

Meanwhile, Red Riding Hood, running away, had entered the forest with as much excitement as fear. She found the forest to be immense and grand and wild. There were strange things there, trees and birds and insects she had never seen before, waterfalls and caves. Lush grass grew under trees, the water was sweet, and there was no sign anywhere of the tiger. I knew it, she rejoiced, there is no tiger. It was all just a fairy tale to keep everyone away from this wonderful forest. She wandered through it, trying different paths, exploring new areas. Once or twice, she wandered close to the forest edge, and was tempted to return to the farmer's shed, but the thought of leaving this amazing forest was too hard. She wished her sisters could see her now, eating whatever she liked, sleeping wherever she liked, with no one to tell her otherwise. But if she went back to talk to them, she could never return to the forest. Here there was no one to talk to, but she soon missed no one.

Thus she wandered and explored for a long time. Many years went by, and one day, she lay down for a nap after a good meal. She slept for many hours. Waking up from deep sleep, she sensed a silence in the forest around her. And then, straight ahead, looking at her evilly, she saw an immense tiger, ready to spring. She stirred, and the tiger pounced. As it came down on her neck, she thought, I thought the tiger was a fairy tale, but it is real. It doesn't matter now. Though the ending is abrupt and violent, I cannot complain, it has been a good life. The forest, once a dream and now her reality, was fading away from consciousness. Life is a dream, she thought one last time, before it all slipped away.

One evening, the farmer went into the forest edge to collect firewood, and came across Red Riding Hood's cowbell, lying in the grass. So that's where she went, he smiled. He looked around for her remains, but found none. He came home, hung the cowbell from the roof, and stretched out on his bed. He thought of the three sisters. He said aloud, to himself: "One lived waiting to die, one died waiting to live. Only one lived until she died, and no one can ask for more than that."

The cowbell tinkled in the slight breeze. In the shed, he could hear his three brand new calves. I wonder what I shall name them, he thought. And he slept.


( This was for Women's Day - Apu)