The morning light arrives sudden as a chambermaid upon my door, knocks lightly begging intrusion, twin straps of twisted suspenders coiled around an elevated hook, and across the floor a carpet to warm the feet in curled gesture, swearing by its blue and white nautical pattern that makes you think of the sea when you are nowhere near the sequestering salt, the old-time fisherman at their cages and manning the boning stations at the end of the pier.
I am balled up under covers many miles away, smacking mouth of dehydration, quizzical morning breath and prying fingers gingerly pulling sleep from the corners of early eyes. When I roll over, a veritable avalanche of: skin, bone, cartilage tumble with me – and yes, muscle even though the newly awakened untensed loosey-goosy can hardly feel it, that charmless escape of such things before I am again fossil-still; the womb of the mattress carrying my thoughtless weight. Between sleep and wake – magician and mime. A slack-jawed float of apparitional silences.
From Public Domain
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
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A curious duck disguised itself as a human and went off to the big city to see what life was like there. He nodded politely at everyone he passed in the street and said, “Good morning.” And the people always responded to him as if he was a real human being.
The duck knew that his disguise was effective, and he felt pleased with himself. In the afternoon he went to the park to feed the ducks, which was very ironic and thus amusing. Then in the early evening he visited a pub and drank several pints of strong beer.
“Pretending to be human is easy. No one suspects the truth!” he said to himself in glee as he waddled out of the pub. Next he went to the nearest fashionable theatre, bought a ticket and saw a play. The play was about a goat that was stuck at the top of a cliff.
The actor who played the goat was a sheep and wasn’t much good, so the duck left the theatre early and strolled casually down the alleyways. In a shadowy doorway directly ahead was a woman wearing a very short skirt. “What can I do for you, ducky?” she lisped at him.
The duck was so shocked he quacked.
It was now too late to keep up the pretence. So he turned and waddled away as fast as he could. “Of all of them in this vast metropolis,” he told himself, “only she is smart. But why?”
THE BOMB SCARE
A man wanted to go to his favourite coffee shop during his lunch hour but the police had sealed off the street.
“What’s going on?” he asked a nearby officer.
“There’s been a bomb scare!” came the reply.
The man tried to peer through the cordon to see for himself. “But how did that happen?” he asked nervously, because he realised that the bomb must be right outside his coffee shop.
The policeman answered, “The bomb was sauntering along innocently enough when suddenly a ghost jumped out from nowhere and frightened it. The poor thing’s a nervous wreck.”
The man stood on tiptoes and now he could see the bomb shaking and sobbing in the street. A man in a padded camouflage jacket was patting it gently and offering it a cup of sweet tea.
“Luckily the bomb squad got here quickly,” the policeman said, “and I am confident they’ll soon calm it down.”
The man snorted in anger. “What’s the world coming to? Those ghosts ought to be ashamed of themselves, scaring a harmless bomb like that for no reason. They should be locked up!”
“We tried that a few times, but they just float out through the walls,” said the policeman.
THE FRUITY ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE
A polecat decided to throw a party for all his friends. On the morning of the occasion, he went into the forest and gathered as many kinds of fruit as he could, including apples, pears, plums, peaches, kumquats, bananas and pineapples. Then he chopped them up, threw them into an enormous bowl and poured in bottles of rum and brandy.
When the first guests arrived, he ladled some of this brew into glasses for them. It was powerful stuff and they were soon rather tipsy. More and more guests arrived and everyone had a really enjoyable time. There was music and laughter and dancing, and even, for those who like that kind of thing, plenty of howling at the full moon.
But things got out of hand when one of the drunken squirrels snatched a lighted candelabrum and ran with it up a tree. The wax dripped down on the heads of some of the other animals. “Stop that!” cried the polecat who was the host, but the squirrel ignored him.
“Let me try!” suggested a bear, and he roared up at the squirrel: “What are you doing? You’ll set the tree on fire!”
But the squirrel gave an incomprehensible reply.
This made the bear angry. “Come down here at once or I’ll punch your lights out!” he bellowed in a fierce voice.
The squirrel blew a slobbery kiss and giggled.
“I warned you!” cried the bear.
“Are you really going to punch his lights out?” gasped a worried raven who was a close friend of the squirrel.
“Too right I am! Watch this!” growled the bear as he stormed over to the table where the bowl was located.
With the polecat’s ladle he filled his glass to the brim with the fruity alcoholic beverage and then he came back and flicked his paw so that the contents were flung upwards into the tree.
The liquid splashed over the squirrel and the candelabrum but instead of extinguishing the flames it made them flare up as the rum and brandy in the mixture ignited.
The raven said: “Oh no! You punched his lights up by mistake!”
THE MAGICAL EYE
There was a magical eye that didn’t belong to any head. It just rolled over the ground and played tricks. “I bet I’m more magical than you,” it said to a genie it met on a beach one morning.
The tide had washed the bottle containing the genie onto the sands and left it there. The genie was willing to accept the eye’s challenge. “I am an outstanding genie and I’m able to transform myself into any object just by thinking about it. Can you do that too?”
“Yes, I can,” said the eye. “Watch this!” And it changed itself into one of those mechanical devices that lift heavy weights into the air. The genie scowled and copied him. “That’s very simple!” he chortled. So now there were two of those devices on the beach.
“Well then,” said the eye. “Try this for size!” And it turned into one of those tools with teeth that are used to cut through wood. The genie wasn’t impressed and he too became an identical copy of the same tool. “Child’s play!” he rasped in considerable derision.
“How about this?” cried the eye. And it transformed itself into a horse chestnut minus the spiky casing, but not an ordinary chestnut of that type. No, it had a hole drilled through it and it dangled from a string. The genie had to admit defeat. “I can’t match that.”
The magical eye was triumphant. “Then I am the best, I am the king, I am the Caesar of shapeshifters, yes I am!”
The genie was confused. “Why the Caesar?” he asked.
The answer was as follows:
“Eye crane, eye saw, eye conker!”
The genie glared at him
The magical eye said, “I’ll get my quote and leave…”
AN ANGRY CONDIMENT
A bell pepper went on holiday with a pinch of salt. After they settled into the hotel, they began unpacking. “I don’t believe this!” cried the pinch of salt. “You forgot the toothpaste!”
“I didn’t forget. I deliberately neglected to bring it.”
“But why? Are you an idiot?”
The bell pepper said, “We don’t have any teeth, so what’s the point of taking along tubes of toothpaste?”
The pinch of salt wasn’t pacified and roared: “When normal couples go on vacation they always pack hygiene items in their luggage! You bulbous lout!”
“But we’re not a couple, just good friends.”
“So you don’t fancy me?”
The bell pepper said, “Not really, no.”
There was a tense pause.
Then the pinch of salt flung itself in the bell pepper’s face. It was very lucky the pepper didn’t have eyes, otherwise they would have stung quite a bit and the salt would have dissolved in the resulting tears. Nonetheless, the bell pepper screamed loudly.
And the manager of the hotel burst into the room.
“What’s going on here then?”
He studied the situation and came to a sudden decision. Pointing at the open door he remarked coldly, “Assault and pepper, eh? Well, the holiday seasoning is over now, so get out!”
THE SHORT SENTENCE
A short sentence said, “Wait!”
“What for?” wondered a pendulum clock.
“For just a minute!”
“Which minute? I have lots!”
“Any you can spare,” said the short sentence.
“Well, I suppose you can have this one, but it’s second hand,” offered the pendulum clock as it ticked.
“I thought the second hand was the minute hand?”
“The little hand is the minute hand,” explained the clock. “The second hand is the third hand. Get it?”
“Not really, but thanks,” said the short sentence.
The pendulum clock asked meekly, “Are you entirely certain you’re a short sentence? It’s just that sometimes I can’t see your full stop. I know I’m a bit shortsighted and yet—”
“I must confess that I am mildly insulted by your remark, which tends to suggest that I have been deceiving you and the readers of this fable for reasons that probably are dubious and possibly felonious, and I wish most strongly to stress that I am now, always have been, and certainly intend to remain, to the utmost of my ability, for the entire duration of my lifespan, however long that may be, a very short sentence, and I will regard anyone who insinuates that the contrary is true with enormous rancour and I may even resort to legal proceedings to restore my tarnished reputation, so let this be a warning,” said the short sentence.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” sincerely apologised the pendulum clock.
BRASSED OFF
“I’m really rather good at my job,” said a wolf, but a wise sage overheard him and wagged a finger. “Never blow your own trumpet,” he quoted. He then went back to meditating and levitating.
The wolf frowned and thought deeply about this advice. “He’s right. I won’t forget his words in a hurry!”
Talking about a hurry, the wolf was late for work.
He turned up at the concert hall with just a few minutes to spare. Then he took his position on the stage. The conductor, who was a pine marten, used his tail as a baton to keep time.
The music burst from the orchestra like an exploding simile!
It was Honey Empathy’s Sympathy in Bee.
Are you familiar with that piece?
I’m not either. Anyway… Now was the exact moment when the brass section had to join in the music with their own instruments. But the wolf remembered what the sage had told him and he leaned quickly across to his nearest neighbour, who happened to be a rabbit. The rabbit saw what the wolf intended and tried to stop him.
“What are you doing? Get your paws off that!”
“Sorry,” said the wolf, “but I’ve been told by a reliable source that to blow my own trumpet is wrong. So I intend to blow yours instead. If you like, you can play mine on my behalf.”
“You buffoon!” wailed the rabbit. “I don’t play the trumpet. I play the trombone. They sound utterly different!”
SLEEPY UPRISING
The squirrel roared, “When are the people of Hiber going to wake up and become a nation?” His tone was passionate and his audience agreed that it was a dramatic speech. They applauded with their paws and hooves or whistled with their beaks. The squirrel acknowledged the reaction with a wave and dismounted the platform.
But an alligator approached him and said shyly, “I like the sentiments you expressed, but there’s a flaw in your reasoning. You want the people of the province of Hiber to wake up?”
“Yes, yes, it’s about time,” replied the squirrel.
“Why is that?” asked the alligator.
“Because they’ve been oppressed for generations and only when they win independence for themselves will they be free to embrace the liberty that is the birthright of all beings.”
The alligator cleared its throat and remarked, “If the people of Hiber wake up and become a nation, they will automatically be in Hiber Nation and therefore unable to wake up…”
The squirrel frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that!”
CLOUD DISCO
A buttercup said to a fox, “Isn’t it weird how the clouds seem to gather on the horizon at sunset? The sky above us is mostly clear but in the far west there are many clouds packed tight.”
“The twilight sky is a disco, that’s why,” replied the fox.
“What do you mean?” asked the buttercup.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” said the fox. “Clouds often like to go dancing in the summer evenings. The dome of the sky is the dancefloor but only a few clouds are confident enough to go to the middle and strut their stuff. The others tend to linger on the edges.”
“I wonder what music they dance to? Do you suppose it might be the music of the spheres?” cried the buttercup.
“That’s classical music. I already told you that the sky at this time of day is a disco. It must be disco music.”
“Name me some examples,” pleaded the buttercup.
“I can’t,” admitted the fox sadly. “I can’t think of any puns involving clouds and disco music, sorry. Maybe the reader can do that for you. I’m off to my own dance class now. Bye!”
“Really? Are you learning disco dancing too?”
“Nope, the foxtrot,” said the fox.
From Public Domain
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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Gowher Bhat mulls over his conversation with Nazir Ahmed Khan, who published his first book at ninety-three
Nazir Ahmed Khan, the man who published his first book at ninety-three. Photo by Gowher Bhat
“Before Partition, people entered each other’s homes without hesitation,” says Nazir Ahmad Khan. “Life moved together.”
Born in 1933, Nazir Ahmad Khan belongs to a generation that witnessed significant social and cultural changes in Kashmir over many decades. His memoir, Biscoe Boy’s Echoes of Time, written in his nineties, is shaped by long memory and lived experience. Through personal recollections and reflections, the book presents glimpses of everyday life, education, work, sports, and social transformation across different periods of time.
Nazir Ahmad Khan explains that the purpose of writing the memoir was not to analyse events or offer commentary. Instead, he wished to preserve memories that might otherwise disappear with time. “I did not write to explain events,” he says. “I wrote to record what I actually witnessed over time.”
Recalling his early days in Kashmir, Nazir Ahmad Khan has memories in which people interacted freely and naturally. Homes remained open to relatives, friends, and neighbours, and social interaction formed an essential part of daily life. Families shared happiness and hardship together, and community bonds were maintained through constant communication and mutual familiarity.
According to Nazir Ahmad Khan, life during those years moved with simplicity and closeness to local surroundings. Most people depended on small businesses, agriculture, trade, and traditional crafts. Daily routines were modest, and relationships were shaped more by personal connection rather than by formality.
Education also had a deep impact and was viewed as very important. Although opportunities and resources were limited compared to today, learning was regarded as a source of discipline and personal growth. Schools played an important role in shaping character and responsibility among young students.
As years passed, society gradually changed. Expanding educational institutions, professional opportunities, and administrative systems introduced new ways of life. Traditional occupations continued, but they increasingly existed alongside modern professions and growing public institutions.
Nazir Ahmad Khan describes these changes as gradual adjustments that influenced everyday experience. Familiar neighbourhood patterns slowly evolved, and people adapted to changing social and professional environments. Yet many older values, particularly discipline, simplicity, and respect for community life, continued to remain important.
Traditional crafts such as weaving, carpet-making, woodwork, and papier-mâché also gained wider recognition over time. These crafts connected local skill and artistry with larger markets while preserving traditions rooted in Kashmiri life.
The life of Nazir Ahmad Khan itself reflects this period of transition and development.
He studied at the Tyndale Biscoe School, which he describes as one of the most influential institutions in shaping his outlook and discipline. According to Nazir Ahmad Khan, the school focused not only on academics but also on physical activity, service, courage, and responsibility.
“It was not about comfort,” he says. “It was about preparation for life outside school.”
The school encouraged students to develop confidence and resilience through activities such as swimming, sports, outdoor exercises, and teamwork. Students were expected to learn discipline through action and responsibility rather than produce grand results based on classroom instruction alone.
For Nazir Ahmad Khan, the values taught at the school remained meaningful throughout his life. Many students from that generation later entered different professional fields, including administration, engineering, medicine, education, business, policing, and sports. He believes that the school’s emphasis on discipline and commitment helped shape their future journeys.
Nazir Ahmad Khan explains that the title Biscoe Boy’s Echoes of Time itself comes from his years as a student at the Tyndale Biscoe School. Since the institution played a central role in shaping his personality, discipline, and outlook on life, he chose the title Biscoe Boy as a reflection of that lifelong connection and identity.
The professional life of Nazir Ahmad Khan moved through several important departments and institutions. Over the years, he worked in transport administration, food supply systems, youth development, and sports administration, eventually serving as Director General of Youth Services and Sports.
When speaking about his career, Nazir Ahmad Khan describes his work in practical and modest terms. His responsibilities often involved coordination, management, organisation, and public service.
“My work required patience and responsibility,” he said.
Alongside his professional life, football remained an important part of his identity. His long association with the sport continued across many decades. For Nazir Ahmad Khan, football represented discipline, teamwork, dedication, and collective participation.
He recalls local football culture with warmth and clarity, remembering tournaments, playgrounds, and the enthusiasm people once carried for the game. Sports, according to him, brought people together and encouraged qualities such as cooperation, endurance, and mutual respect.
Even in old age, many of these memories remain vivid in his mind.
When discussing his memoir, Nazir Ahmad Khan explains that the book developed slowly over time through recollections, notes, and reflections gathered across many years. The writing process itself became an exercise in revisiting moments that had quietly remained preserved in memory.
“It came in fragments,” he says. “Not in order.”
The memoir therefore does not follow a strictly linear structure. Instead, it moves through scenes, experiences, observations, and remembered moments that together form a portrait of a long and eventful life.
Nazir Ahmad Khan notes that writing in old age changed the nature of memory itself. Certain major events became distant, while small ordinary moments returned with surprising clarity. A classroom, a road, a conversation, a sports ground, or a familiar face often remained more vivid than larger public developments.
“At this stage,” he reflects, “you do not arrange life. Life arranges itself in memory.”
This observation perhaps captures the spirit of the memoir. Rather than focusing on grand conclusions, the book remains attentive to everyday experiences that quietly shape a person’s understanding of life over time.
At its core, the narrative suggests that memory is built not only through achievements or milestones but also through ordinary moments that remain connected to place, relationships, education, work, and routine life.
Throughout the memoir, Nazir Ahmad Khan repeatedly returns to the idea of documentation rather than interpretation. He views writing as a way of preserving lived experience honestly and simply.
“What I have written is not the story of everything,” he says. “It is what remains when everything else has settled.”
Seen in this way, the book becomes more than a personal memoir. It serves as a reflective record of changing times, social life, education, sports culture, and everyday experience across generations in Kashmir.
Through these recollections, Nazir Ahmad Khan preserves glimpses of a world shaped by simplicity, discipline, community life, and gradual social change. His memories remind readers that the essence of history often survives not only in official records or major events, but also in classrooms, neighbourhoods, friendships, routines, and the quiet persistence of memory itself.
Gowher Bhat is a columnist, freelance journalist, beta reader, book reviewer, avid reader, and educator from Kashmir, and a published author of both fiction and nonfiction. He serves as a senior columnist for several local newspapers across the Kashmir Valley.
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The stars wander in the sky, like lost children, not sure where to go, as time flows like water, not to the sea, but to infinity. That has nothing to do with me. I inch my way towards death, like a blind mole. I wonder if I’m observed by God for his pleasure, the way I find pleasure, observing animals in nature. Or else no God is there. But I don’t think God worries too much about me. I’m part of this universe, an insignificant part, that will soon vanish, and thinking of that is what ends my brief reverie.
THE MOON IN HER NATURE
Swallows rise in the air, circling here and there drifting off to somewhere. I don’t know where, and then they disappear, like things that were never here. Falling onto the dying leaves, rain whispers a sad song. Do leaves sigh before they die? But no. They’re only leaves, as the moon is only a stone, and it can give neither hope nor mercy. It’s only there for its beauty. When I gaze at it, on a thoughtful night, it’s not even capable of returning that look to me, so if I were wise, I would simply let it be.
ME AND MY CAT
My cat crouches in tulips, watching a robin eye a worm, but as a wind comes up, as fast as a tuba blast, my cat loses his chance. A starling steals the worm, and so the robin gets nothing in his turn. My cat turns away with disconsolate eyes. He suddenly senses what it means to grow old. As the night arrives in creaking shoes, I stare at my garden, full of dying flowers, and crumbling stones. That is where my aging cat finds the comfort of repose.
From Public Domain
George Freek’s poetry has recently appeared in The Ottawa Arts Review, Acumen, The Lake, The Whimsical Poet, Triggerfish and Torrid Literature.
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The Cold War of Sadanand Borse, translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto, was originally published as Sheetyuddha Sadanand in the 1980s. Written by Shyam Manohar, the work is considered writer’s noteworthy contribution to modern Marathi literature. A deceptively slim novel, it packs much in its exploration of ordinary lives of ordinary people. Comic yet unsettling, the novel, set within the world of Maharashtrian middle-class, deals with the ‘cold war’ of everyday existence, their struggles, ambitions and anxieties.
Most of Shyam Manohar’s writing deals with the theme of ordinary existence. He is an author two collections of short stories, eight plays, nine novels, and a collection of speeches and critical articles. He has received numerous national and state awards for his works, including the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2010.
The novel begins with a scooter colliding with a funeral procession of a child on a sweltering afternoon. The chance incident results in an absurdly comic encounter. It triggers a chain of events which not only bewilders but keeps the reader on tenterhooks with its acute observations on the tensions which ripple through the aspirations of middle-class. Sadanand collides with Govind and Shrirang, who are the friends of the bereaved father and part of the young son’s funeral procession. As they try to extract an apology from Sadanand, the subsequent events turn his world upside down.
Although the book centres around Sadanand Borse, whose recent one lakh lottery win has made him both suspicious and nervous, the author explores the anxieties of middle-class respectability through the reactions of his pregnant wife Urmila and his immediate neighbours in the aftermath of the incident. With Govind and Shrirang constantly at their door, an atmosphere of latent conflict (as suggested by the title) sets in, and Sadanand’s wife, his neighbours and acquaintances all become participants in a discreet struggle for recognition and influence. The subtle shifts in behaviour reflected in small acts of envy, admiration, cooperation, resentment and suspicion, which emerge when social hierarchies are disrupted, are captured effectively in the seemingly simple prose. The visual imagery of the prose takes the reader into a world echoing Sai Paranjype’s comedy movie ‘Katha’ (Story, 1982). The book revolves arounda similar satire on middle-class aspirations.
Neighbours watch each other closely, interpreting every gesture and decision as confirmation of success, failure, arrogance, or insecurity. Their discussions often seem harmless, yet underlying their narratives is the continuous evaluation of social norms, niceties and hierarchies. Through these characters, the author illustrates how middle-class communities function under companionable scrutiny. The characters aren’t reduced to moral categories. There are no villains in the usual sense. Even the most petty and self serving characters are portrayed perceptively.
The spare yet evocative prose also takes the reader into routine spaces like streets, hospitals, and neighbourhood gatherings where broader questions of morality are enacted. Satire also hinges around the ethics of institutions like hospitals and police stations, where greed or power takes precedence over morality.
The Cold War of Sadanand Borse is a work of remarkable intelligence and restraint. Shyam Manohar brilliantly captures the quiet conflicts that shape ordinary lives. The Cold War thus becomes a condition of social existence itself—a state of constant, low-intensity conflict hidden under outward courtesy.
Jerry Pinto’s brilliant translation of this Marathi work by Shyam Manohar succeeds in capturing the quiet comic energy and perhaps even the tone and precision of the original work. This novel is a must read for its sheer energy, fun and its precise portrayal of the middle-class.
Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .
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As one grows older, there is a growing concern about failing health even if no major health issues are detected. Anything that causes a minor aggravation calls for a timely consultation to prevent complications later. Driven by the lure of prevention benefits, I chose to visit a general physician for the comforting thought that a medical practitioner was checking my pulse, monitoring my blood pressure and oxygen levels, pricking my finger for sugar spike, and noting the abnormalities on the electronic gadgets under his control. While he carried out the standard procedural check-ups for deviations, I was finding it difficult to trust these devices just like the opposition political parties cannot trust the EVM for accurate polling results. Since the readings confirmed my overall good health, I ruled out the need to worry about the hidden, undetected alarms ticking away like a time bomb in my system.
I cannot keep my mouth shut when I am in the presence of a doctor – I end up sharing minor details that do not add up to anything significant. My talkative disposition irritates the doctor as he is bombarded with piles of information that prevents him from completing a quick diagnosis. He gets mired in the sea of irrelevant information so most of the medical practitioners, including my dentist, prefer specific, short answers instead of long, rambling inputs.
There is a sense of healing in opening up ones heart in front of doctors but, unfortunately, they do not understand this angle. The catharsis of sorts soothes the mind and the patient feels relieved much before popping the prescribed pills. In one such case, I observed the doctor threatened that he would refer me to the couch of a psychiatrist if I was so fond of conversing. It was a brazen attempt to silence my voice inside his chamber and meekly accept the prescription and walk out.
My attempt to praise his handwriting – even though it was a classic example of illegible scrawl – did not bring a smile on the doctor’s face that resembled the dull visage of a chronic depression patient battling negative thoughts. I had noted the model of the car with doctor’s sign parked outside the chamber and admired his choice in terms of mileage and pickup. Whenever a patient tries to cheer up and behave like a normal person, perhaps the doctor feels a sense of creeping discomfort that he is examining someone who looks healthier than him.
Taking off the shirt in front of a male doctor and his assistant feels like performing in a stripper’s club. Usually, I oppose this assault on my dignity but when there is a need to test or inject, I have to expose. I prefer to be properly clothed with protective innerwear since I do not have a gym-trained body to stoke envy in any gender.
The sagging flesh around the waist and the bulging tummy reminds me of the need to land up on the weighing machine that moves rapidly before stabilizing itself to indicate I am overweight by twenty kilos at least. Wearing a smart watch that calculates the heart rate while a doctor feels my pulse seems like a gross distrust of his expertise. While the doctor writes the pulse rate is normal, the smart watch reads it as elevated. Finally, reposing full faith in what the doctor records, I choose to consider the smart watch as a fun object which you use when you feel something throbbing within all of a sudden.
During a recent visit to a general practitioner who had never set up a private clinic practice before his retirement as a doctor in the railways, I finally woke up to his operational modesty inside a non-airconditioned cubicle sliced off from a chemist store and separated by a curtain. That the medical store hoped to sell more medicines based on his prescriptions was obvious.
This doctor was also known to generally avoid antibiotics and write mild, affordable medicines to prevent side-effects on health and monthly budget. His low consultation fees made him affordable for the middle-class patients. Earlier, he was entitled to a fixed monthly income but now he was enjoying the daily inflow of money to buy fuel and fruits. Even though he did not attract more than twenty patients in a day, he was punctual in attending the chamber in the morning and the evening for six days in a week. This availability of a doctor every day in the same location improved his connection with the local people. He was initially recommended by a friend of mine who said he was dependable for common ailments like seasonal cold and cough, gastric problems, and viral fever. I wanted to promote him as my family doctor but the plan was put on hold. My association with him began for a minor complication that did not resolve with self-medication with over-the-counter drugs.
My visit did not go down well as it appeared I had irritated him by showering fake praises on his line of treatment. He asked me to stick to my problem. I began by clarifying I did not suffer from constipation throughout my life, that the frequent trips to the loo made me think I suffered from irritable bowel syndrome. This was a medical term I had picked up from online medical sites after matching the syndromes. I was under the impression that his irritation peaked with my self-diagnosis and he was going to throw me out of his chamber where I was seated on a wobbly wooden stool. His own hearing was low as he lowered his left ear to bring it closer to my mouth to follow me clearly. I noticed a fancy aid much smaller than an ear-pod tucked behind to amplify his hearing.
My quick clearance update had no effect on him as he broke his silence with a different query related to bloating. He simplified it by using the word gas though I had already gathered its meaning. I needed time to decide whether I was bloated. He asked for my full name and age and began to write the prescription. I disturbed his thought process by adding another complication related to blood pressure. I told him I also thought that my BP became high when I am stressed or anxious. I clarified my diet was low on salt. I began to explain what I ate every day, the butter intake and caffeine intake, adding unhealthy snack items from my menu.
The patients waiting outside must have heard the loud listing of samosas, chops, and oily chips and imagined my current situation. Caring two hoots for my narrative, he resumed writing the prescription while I played a bit of tabla on my tummy to show him whether it was making any sort of sound that he could identify with a medical condition in case he heard it properly. But it was nothing more than a case of empty vessels sounding much. While the doctor ignored it, this was my playful attempt to stay relaxed in front of him. He wrote three medicines and started to explain in his soft voice how I should take them. It was hard to understand what he said in his low voice and that made me doubt my own hearing capacity. I noticed he did not prescribe any test at this stage. I wondered if he should have sent me for ultrasound. This fear was grounded when he ignored my crazy musical indulgence and signed off the prescription, asking me to report after a month again. I took a detailed look at it, understanding it was mentioned as a confirmed case of fatty liver. I wanted to opt for google pay but he insisted on cash, unwilling to share his scanner in the fear of being scammed. Since I had consumed a lot of his valuable time, he pressed the calling bell to ask for the next patient.
As I stomped out of the chamber, the chemist grabbed the prescription from my hand. He fished out those prescribed pills from the plastic boxes placed on the lower shelves and calculated the total payable price after a nominal discount. Since it was relatively low, I managed to buy the stock for the entire month. He specified the time for the medication and there were also ‘after-food’ and ‘before-food’ labels on the packets. When I came home and tried to google their composition, I found the doctor had added a psychiatric pill that is common in treating bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. I wanted to grab him by the collar to ask him why he put me on brain-related drugs as it could slow down my creativity and ruin my fledgling business by keeping me asleep most of my time.
The chemist explained that brain-gut health is interlinked and any disturbance in the gut could generate a counter-effect on the brain. Since they could not be discontinued as per my will and required medical guidance in lowering the dosage first, I dumped the entire pack in the dustbin when he refused to give me a refund. I had annoyed this doctor so much that he thought the best way to punish me was to give me a strong mental dose to contain my erratic mood swings and sudden bursts of laughter noted down as the key symptoms of an unsound mind that mirrored emotional upheaval inside.
Thirty days later I went again but this time I began with a fresh complaint of worms, those small intestinal worms causing embarrassing itching in public spaces after consuming sweets and chocolates. I showed him graphically using my index finger the approximate size of the ultra slim white worms I had seen moving gently in the mound of poop. Such a vivid description made the doctor feel outraged and he stopped my narrative by writing down a pill for use for two consecutive days and then repeating the same dosage after three weeks.
He wrote this medicine on the reverse side of the old prescription and then proceeded to ask me if I had seen any improvement in my previous complication. I said I could not confirm much improvement, but there was no deterioration either. The status quo prevailed and I laughed out loud which offended him again, making him infer once again I was a mentally deranged fellow who needed psychiatric help.
I paid him with a soiled note and spoiled his mood. He said I could safely continue the pills for another month but I need not return since I had no faith on him. I thought I should have confessed I did not consume his mental health pills even for a day. And the ones for fatty liver were herbal supplements that I was willing to donate to the pharmacy. Why did I make him write prescriptions when I had no intention of consuming his pills and capsules? Was that a practice exercise for him or a test of his competence?
His clients included older adults who felt comfortable discussing their hernia and bladder health. He wanted to test the strength of his diagnosis without relying on medical tests. Although he failed in this objective, he seemed to have made this a habit. He sounded eager to confirm a disease before the report confirmed it. Many other patients were caught in this trap as his diagnosis did not always match with the test reports conducted late after his experimentation had ended in a fiasco.
Some months later, I went to consult him again since he was easily available without a long wait. I told him about my neck problem due to improper sitting posture and he wrote some herbal pills and asked me to go for an x-ray as it was a clear case of spondylosis. I shared a few symptoms but he said I did not need a collar yet. When the x-ray econfirmed there was a mild lordosis, he looked happy as he had guessed it right after a long time. A clear case of hitting the bull’s eye on the basis of his medical instinct developed over the decades!
He directed me to consult a physiotherapist and undergo sessions of neck movement exercises for long-term relief and suggested ergonomic back support for better cervical alignment. He advised I should cut down on cold items like sherbet and ice cream. I was asked not to carry heavy objects. But I needed to handwash two buckets of clothes every day for my daily exercise and carry large bags of fruits and vegetables every week. He warned me to cross streets carefully and avoid sudden turning of the neck, to reduce strain and contain the symptoms of vertigo in this ailment. But the sudden appearance of beautiful women on the roads made me forget this alert.
I applied almond oil to relax my muscles and made it a habit to take slow turns like a robot. Much of this was not documented but doled out as verbal advice from a senior doctor who seemed to regret his past misdemeanor.
I chose to exit before he could press the bell this time as I heard the voice of a woman patient waiting outside with a bawling baby to seek urgent consultation. I gave a fake smile and stood up to leave, not ready to wait for his reaction. I came out and told the chemist to give me something for stress and he suggested meditation as the best antidote. Chemists love to supply drugs of their choice and they feel good as compounders consulted for free medical advice.
When I chose to meditate, I could not find peace. But when I wrote a story, I got peace. I liked this trick and wrote many stories following the same process, ready with an eclectic collection worth publishing. The next visit to the doctor’s chamber was decided after the self-test reports for B12 and Vitamin D3 confirmed a minor decline. Trying to appear fit, I climbed the comfy sponge bed after placing the reports on the doctor’s glass-topped desk. He was basking in the winter sun in the balcony. As I called out to him, he stared at me as if wondering if I were playing the fool again.
My frankness peeved the doctor who was convinced after this episode that I was a hypochondriac obsessed with health hazards all the time. Before he could prescribe anything for it, I mentioned whether there was any possibility of memory loss that could worsen into dementia in the middle years. I wanted to know from him if there was an urgent need to undergo a complete body check-up including CT scan and MRI. It was a pleasure to be diagnosed as a serious patient when he quietly wrote down all that I wanted him to write. The best testing lab and diagnostic centre was giving a mega discount for the first time and I wanted to grab this lifetime offer available for two days!
Devraj Singh Kalsiworks as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short stories and essays have been published in Deccan Herald, Tehelka, Kitaab, Earthen Lamp Journal, Assam Tribune, and The Statesman. Pal Motors is his first novel.
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The pages are dotted by camouflaged confessions in black ink like blackened darkness, past the reaches of quieted streetlamps and the empty calls from birds in the moment, yet oddly settling the mind, flipped through with snippets of light caught in each instant— past tense becoming present language combining with softer music, air exhaled with each turned page, and when each page settles, it’s as if a leaf floating to rest, its jagged edges smoothed to finish a dream or relive a past— as if reading what’s written could now speak to the rest of my life. But once a certain word count is passed, there’s so little it can do, reading about who I was then and in a second, gone-on to now often with empty hands: moments I’d take back, the light I thought I saw yet remains unseen, the whitened pages of nothing left, the aches in the lost print, the fear of what will be replayed or come next isolated exhausted but curiously jumping ahead in the light in another early morning.
From Public Domain
SR (Salvatore Richard) Inciardi was born in New York City and attended Brooklyn College and New York University. SR Inciardi’s poetry has appeared in in various online and print magazines including Green Ink Poetry, Harrow House Journal, Front Porch Review, Grey-Sparrow Journal, Borderless Journal, Written Tales among others. He was a contributor to Green Ink Poetry for their publication on Kennings: Equinox Collections: Autumn released on Amazon in October 2024. SR Inciardi currently has two books of poetry on Amazon that speak to loss and navigating grief.
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They found him wandering, kilometres away from where he was lost. Starving, malnourished, dehydrated. Hair, like straws, rising in all directions. Unkempt. Untidy. But with stars in his eyes, and head in the clouds.
To their questions as to what had happened, where he had been all these years, he only pointed backwards to the forbidding mountains. His replies didn’t make any sense. There’s a world out there, he said. People. Lots of people. A community. Life was such a dream. A fantasy. Perfect. Ideal.
Expedition after expedition set out into the deep dark jungle, which, generations ago had been explored and abandoned as uninhabitable, unattainable. They sent their best women and men. They found nothing, no one could pass, climb or survive; nor did they see anything when they flew over, but thick green canopy.
The mountains and the forest stood firm like a wall, unnatural. Yet he persisted, and his words were met with scorn. Because, as he spoke, he giggled like a child and said, of course you will never understand. You’ll never see. You’ll never find it. That’s its beauty. That’s how it’s designed. Life is not what you think it is. You live in a fool’s paradise. They’ll never let you in. Actually, you’re in and they are out. You just don’t get it.And never will.
Everything you see is an illusion.
He was the only one to ever slip out of the Valley. That had been an accident too. He would never have returned of his own accord.
*
Months would pass before his delirium came down. He woke up gradually to the reality of who he was, where he was. As time passed, he grew more and more confused as to the time he spent in the Valley. He always called it the Valley, because that’s what the people over there did. The Silent Valley or the Shielded Valley, he couldn’t recall which.
“Do they exist, these people?” they asked.
“I—I think they do.”
He would try to explain it with theories, the well-wishers convinced him he was hallucinating, but no one could explain how he survived fifteen years in the wild. Least of all, himself.
Five years after his return, with the memory of the Valley but a dream, he set out himself to find it again, if only to satisfy his curiosity. He remembered people working, living, with animals and birds, peacefully and collaboratively. A world more naturally advanced, without the technology of this side. There was something otherworldly about it. Almost magical.
Now, back home, in control of his senses, he could feel it. He flew once again into the woods and parachuted roughly where he had crashed the last time, though the wreckage was never found. He had his gadgets, recording devices, tools, everything a human could think of. All he had to guide him was the memory of a tunnel he had passed through. He believed he could find it again.
He wandered, lost his way. When he slept, his stock of food was taken away, stolen. The bag was ripped open and the food was gone. None of the equipment was touched, they were only discarded in the search for food; some were damaged. It must have been a monkey, he concluded, although he could see none. But now he had a new problem—food.
He looked around and sensed a familiar aroma, so strong that it dislodged memories which then fought for his attention. He walked towards it. The mountain approached. Ominous, grim, hostile.
He was hit again by images, one after the other, by déjà vu, everything spiralling inside his head. He knew he was on the right track, and the reason why the others before him could not find it. Abruptly, he came across a clearing, where a shrub grew in large numbers, not exactly by happenstance, but cultivated.
He remembered this. He remembered its roots: fresh, juicy, nourishing. And the cool, low shade it provided. This—this was why he had left the Valley in the first place.
At that moment, he also realised that the Shielded Valley or the Silent People were closed to him forever. He opened his backpack and pinged his location for the pilot of the helicopter to find him and made his way to the centre of the clearing.
*
Back home, to the eagerly awaiting community—his family, well-wishers, scientists, health care professionals, and curious onlookers—he said that he had found nothing. He had lost his way, his food was stolen, and he wandered for a while and came back.
He had been gone one whole week.
Everyone was disappointed. They had been looking forward to the solution to the baffling mystery. No one noticed the same starry-eyed, head-in-the-clouds look he wore. He returned to the routine he had created for himself in this new, post-disappearance life, happier than he had ever been.
He turned down book and movie offers, interviews, documentaries, and invitations to study the forest and the mountain. He declined everything. When new expeditions were proposed, he refused to assist or guide. Leave them alone, he said. Nothing could entice him.
“Do they exist, the people?” they asked again.
“Yes, they do,” he would say with a smile, no longer any doubt in his eyes.
Every once in a while, a group would set out to find the silent, shielded Valley. They would battle the wild, and most of them would return, drained, spent, disheartened, injured. Some died. He never showed any interest whatsoever in those missions.
The unsolved mystery—and the fact that one person knew the answer and refused to divulge it—disturbed the collective human mind.
Sometimes, when alone, he would bring out the ripped backpack and settle back in his armchair. And his heart would return once again to the peace of the Valley and its People, float to the stars and kiss the clouds.
I’m not the one hallucinating. You are. All of you.
Jeena R. Papaadi is a writer based in Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram, with six published books. Her work has appeared in several publications including The Hindu, Borderless Journal, The Hemlock Journal, Dissent Dispatch, The Wise Owl, Kitaab, European Association of Palliative Care and Aksharasthree. Jeena’s published work is listed at: https://linktr.ee/jeenapapaadi
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There is a cartographic trick that India plays on the careless observer. Place a finger on Goa, cradled in the lap of the Western Ghats where the Mandovi meets the Arabian Sea. Now drag that finger clean across the peninsula — past the Deccan plateau, past the red laterite and the black cotton soil — until it arrives at Odisha, where the Mahanadi fans into the Bay of Bengal. The distance is vast. The terrain changes several times over. And yet, when you finally arrive, you feel, inexplicably, that you have not travelled at all. You have merely walked from one room of the same house into another.
Goa and Odisha are India’s fraternal twins, stationed like sentinels on opposite coasts, facing outward toward different oceans but turning inward toward an almost identical soul. They share no border, no common neighbour, no obvious historical corridor. And yet their resemblances are so startling, so layered, that they make a quiet mockery of the assumption that east and west shall never meet. In this country, at least, they have been meeting all along.
The Plate That Speaks First
Begin where all honest cultural inquiry must begin — at the table. In both Goa and Odisha, the grammar of a meal is written in two words: rice and fish. The xitt-kodi of a Goan Catholic household — rice with fish curry — is a mirror image of the bhata-machha that anchors every Odia thali. The curry leaves may change, the tamarind may yield to kokum, but the fundamental covenant between grain and sea remains unbroken.
Both states worship the coconut with equal fervour. It thickens their gravies, sweetens their desserts, oils their hair, and thatches their roofs. And in both places, the humble samosa — that deep-fried triangle of spiced potato — enjoys a curious and disproportionate celebrity, sold at every bus stand, every temple gate, every rain-drenched evening stall, as if it were the official snack of the coastline itself.
Weavers of Light
If food is the first language, cloth is the second. Odisha’s handloom tradition is among the most sophisticated in the world. The Sambalpuri ikat, with its geometric precision born of a tie-and-dye technique older than memory, is a textile that calculates like mathematics and sings like poetry. The Bomkai of Ganjam, the Kotpad of Koraput — each weave carries a district’s autobiography in its warp and weft.
Goa’s handloom heritage is no less poignant. The Kunbi saree, woven by the indigenous Kunbi community in checks of red and maroon, is a garment of earthy defiance — a refusal to vanish beneath the weight of colonial and commercial textile culture. In both states, the handloom is not an industry. It is an act of inheritance.
The handicraft traditions run parallel with uncanny symmetry. Odisha’s Pattachitra — those luminous scroll paintings rendered on cloth with pigments drawn from stone, earth, and lamp-black — find a philosophical cousin in Goa’s azulejos-inspired tile art and the painted terracotta work of its hinterlands. Odisha’s silver filigree from Cuttack, those impossibly intricate webs of metal that seem to have been spun by patient spiders, speak the same aesthetic dialect as the filigree and brass work of Goan artisans.
Temples, Tides, and the Slow Pulse
Both states are drenched in divinity. Odisha shelters the Jagannath Temple of Puri, whose Rath Yatra rolls through the world’s imagination every year, and the Konark Sun Temple, a stone chariot frozen mid-gallop toward the dawn. The Lingaraj Temple of Bhubaneswar presides over a city that was once a forest of a thousand shrines. Goa, often misread as merely a beach destination, guards some of the oldest Hindu temples in western India — the Mangeshi Temple, the Shanta Durga Temple, the Mahalasa Narayani, the Tambdi Surla — alongside the Basilica of Bom Jesus, where the remains of St. Francis Xavier lie in baroque silence. In both states, the sacred is not a Sunday affair. It is the air.
And then there is the pace. Both Goa and Odisha move at a tempo that the hyperventilating metros of India find baffling. The Goan susegad — that philosophy of contented ease — is a first cousin of the unhurried dignity with which Odisha conducts its daily life. Long before the global “slow living” movement became a wellness-industry buzzword, these two states had been practising it for centuries, not as aspiration but as instinct.
Songs in Different Scales
The musical traditions reveal yet another layer of kinship. Odisha gave the world Odissi — both the dance and the music — a classical tradition of astonishing fluidity, shaped by poets like Jayadeva, whose Gita Govinda remains one of the supreme lyric achievements in any language. The folk traditions — Dalkhai, Gotipua, the tribal Dhemsa — pulse with a rhythmic vitality that no concert hall can contain.
Goa’s musical soul lives in the Mando, a slow, swaying ballad of love and longing born from the encounter between Konkani sensibility and Portuguese fado. The Dulpod, faster and more festive, is its playful sibling. And beneath the tourist-facing trance and EDM, Goa’s folk traditions — Fugdi, Dhalo, Dekhni — carry the same rooted, communal energy that Odisha’s village squares have known for generations.
Goa’s Tiatr and Odisha’s Jatra are born of the same impulse — raucous, deeply local theatre traditions that turn village squares into stages, blend music with social satire, and have for generations served as the people’s newspaper, courtroom, and concert hall rolled into one.
The Literary Mirror
The literary parallels are quietly profound. Fakir Mohan Senapati, the father of modern Odia literature, wrote Chha Mana Atha Guntha — a searing, ironic novella about land, power, and peasant dispossession — in the 1890s. Across the map, Goa’s literary tradition in Konkani, shaped by figures like Bakibab Borkar (the poet-laureate of Konkani verse), Ravindra Kelekar, and Damodar Mauzo, has grappled with similar themes of identity, colonial memory, and the tension between tradition and modernity. Odisha’s Pratibha Ray and Goa’s Mauzo — both Jnanpith laureates — wrote in languages the literary mainstream often overlooks, yet carved from Odia and Konkani respectively a body of work so luminous that the nation’s highest literary honour had no choice but to find its way to their doors. Both literatures are enormous in depth and criminally under-read outside their states.
Even the economies rhyme. Both states sit on vast mineral wealth — iron ore in Goa, iron ore, bauxite and coal in Odisha — and both have built significant chapters of their economic story on extraction. Mining has been, for decades, a genuine engine of revenue and employment. But prosperity extracted from the earth exacts its own price. Both states have watched hills reshaped and rivers thickened with slurry, and both have grappled with the same difficult question that every resource-rich society must eventually face: where does sustainable use end and irreversible damage begin? The Dongria Kondh resistance in Odisha’s Niyamgiri hills and Goa’s prolonged civic movement against unregulated mining are stories of communities recognising that the wealth beneath their feet should not come at the cost of the world above it. In both states, the mandate is the same: to mine responsibly, restore what can be restored, and find an economic imagination that honours both the ledger and the landscape.
Stone, Laterite, and the Architecture of Belonging
The buildings of Goa and Odisha could not, at first glance, look more different. Odisha’s architectural glory resides in the Kalinga style of temple building — a tradition that flowered between the sixth and thirteenth centuries and produced some of the most breathtaking sacred structures on the subcontinent. The Rekha Deula, with its curvilinear tower soaring heavenward, the Pidha Deula, with its stepped pyramid, and the barrel-vaulted Khakhara Deula — each is a masterclass in proportion, carved from sandstone and laterite without a drop of mortar, held together by iron dowels and the sheer precision of stone cut to stone. The Lingaraj Temple rises a hundred and eighty feet; the Sun Temple at Konark was conceived as a stone chariot for Surya himself.
Goa’s architectural signature, meanwhile, is the Indo-Portuguese house — the balcão-fronted villa with its oyster-shell windows, its Baroque churches, its colour-washed facades in ochre and cerulean and terracotta. Where Odisha built upward in devotion, Goa built outward in conviviality.
And yet the kinship runs deeper than surface style. Both traditions are rooted in laterite — that rust-red, iron-rich stone quarried from the earth itself — and in an instinctive dialogue between structure and climate. Goan houses, whether Hindu or Catholic, were designed around the monsoon: thick laterite walls to absorb the heat, sloping roofs of Mangalore tile to shed the deluge, courtyards to channel light and air. The traditional Hindu house in Goa, with its rajangan (courtyard) and its Tulasi Vrindavan (holy basil) at its centre, is an inward-looking sanctuary not unlike the courtyard homes of rural Odisha, where domestic life orbits an open-air heart and thatched or tiled roofs slope against the same seasonal fury. In both states, the house is not merely shelter. It is a cosmology — oriented by Vastu[1], shaped by rain, and built from the very ground on which it stands.
The Sacred as Daily Bread
Spirituality in Goa and Odisha is not a compartment of life; it is the wallpaper. In Odisha, they say Bara Masa re Tera Parba — thirteen festivals in twelve months — and this is not hyperbole but arithmetic. From Rath Yatra to Raja Parba, from Nuakhai to Kumar Purnima, the Odia calendar is a procession of devotion, agriculture, and communal joy so tightly woven that one cannot tell where worship ends and daily life begins. The festivals are tied to the rice cycle — seeding, sowing, harvesting — so that the act of farming itself becomes a prayer. Odisha is a land where Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism have coexisted and cross-pollinated for millennia, leaving behind the cave monasteries of Udayagiri and Khandagiri, the Buddhist stupas of Ratnagiri and Lalitgiri, and the Shakti temples that dot the landscape like exclamation marks of feminine divinity.
Goa answers with its own brand of sacred pluralism. Here, Hindus light candles at the Basilica of Bom Jesus, and Catholics offer prayers at the Shantadurga temple at Fatorpa. The feast of Our Lady of Miracles gathers both communities under the same roof, exchanging oil and candles between church and temple as naturally as neighbours exchange sugar. The Zagor celebrations and the Shigmo festival are not Hindu events attended by Christians out of politeness; they are Goan events, full stop. In both states, religion is not a doctrine to be debated but a rhythm to be lived — embedded in the morning’s first lamp, the evening’s last bell, and every meal served between.
The Farmer and the Monsoon
Rice is not merely the staple food of Goa and Odisha; it is the organising principle of their rural civilisations. In Odisha, paddy covers nearly seventy per cent of cultivated land, and the entire social calendar revolves around its seasons — Akshaya Tritiya marks the seeding, Raja Sankranti the completion of sowing, Nuakhai the first tasting of the new harvest. The traditional beushening method — broadcasting seed and then tilling post-emergence — speaks of a farming intelligence shaped by centuries of reading the monsoon, the soil, and the floodplain.
In Goa, the ingenuity takes another form: the Khazan system, an ancient network of bunds and sluice gates that reclaim low-lying coastal land from the tides, allowing farmers to cultivate salt-tolerant rice varieties and rear fish and prawns in the same fields. It is an act of ecological engineering so elegant that modern agronomists study it as a model of sustainable land use.
Both states grow coconut, cashew, and areca nut alongside their paddy. Both rely overwhelmingly on the monsoon — Odisha’s irrigation covers barely a third of its cultivable land, and much of Goa’s paddy is rainfed. Both are lands of small and marginal farmers, where the average holding is modest and the relationship between cultivator and earth is intimate, personal, and unmediated by large-scale mechanisation. And in both states, a quiet revolution is underway: Odisha’s Millets Mission and Goa’s growing organic farming movement are attempts to reclaim indigenous crop diversity from the grip of high-yield monoculture — to remember that the land, like the people, thrives best when it is allowed its full vocabulary.
The Playing Field
In a nation drunk on cricket, Goa and Odisha are the two states that have had the audacity to fall in love with other sports. Goa is India’s football heartland. The game arrived with an Irish priest in 1883 and never left. Clubs like Salgaocar, Dempo, and Churchill Brothers have won national titles; six Goans have captained the Indian football team. During the FIFA World Cup, Goan streets erupt into a carnival of flags and giant screens, and the village tournament — barefoot boys on a laterite pitch — remains as sacred as Sunday Mass. Football in Goa is not a sport. It is an identity.
Odisha’s sporting soul beats to a different drum — the hockey stick. The state has produced legends like Dilip Tirkey, Amit Rohidas, Sunita Lakra, and Deep Grace Ekka, and became the first state government in India to sponsor the national hockey team. The Birsa Munda International Hockey Stadium in Rourkela, which hosted the 2023 World Cup, is a monument to Odisha’s commitment. But what unites both states is not the particular sport but the underlying defiance: a refusal to accept cricket’s monopoly on the Indian sporting imagination.
Both states also share a love for traditional and community games — Kho Kho and Kabaddi[2] are played at village festivals in both, and both have ISL football franchises (FC Goa and Odisha FC) that draw passionate, roaring crowds. The playing field, it turns out, is yet another room in the same house.
Rivers, Mangroves, and the Shared Ecology
The ecological parallels between these two states are no less striking. Both are coastal, riverine, and monsoon-fed. Both shelter significant mangrove ecosystems — the Khazan mangroves along Goa’s estuaries and the Bhitarkanika mangrove forests of Odisha, one of the largest in India. Both are biodiversity hotspots: Goa’s Western Ghats forests are a UNESCO heritage site, while Odisha’s Simlipal and Satkosia reserves harbour tiger, elephant, and crocodile populations of national importance. The Olive Ridley sea turtles that nest on Odisha’s Gahirmatha beach have cousins that occasionally visit Goa’s Morjim. Both states understand, in their bones, that the sea is not merely a border but a livelihood, a deity, and a defining force — and that the mangrove, the estuary, and the fishing village are not the periphery of civilisation but its very foundation.
And then there is the matter of diaspora. Both Goa and Odisha are states whose people have scattered across the world yet remain fiercely tethered to home. The Goan communities of Bombay, the Gulf, the UK and Lisbon mirror the Odia communities of US, Europe, Surat, Hyderabad, and beyond. In both cases, the expatriate carries the cuisine, the festival calendar, and the mother tongue like a portable homeland — and returns, without fail, for the annual feast or the harvest celebration, as though the umbilical cord to the village were made not of flesh but of something altogether more durable.
Goa and Odisha do not need a bridge between them. They already are the bridge — two ends of a single cultural arc that bends across the Indian landmass, proving that civilisational kinship does not require geographical proximity. They are proof that identity in India is not merely a function of latitude and longitude but of something deeper: a shared covenant with the sea, with rice, with the loom, with the slow and sacred act of living.
If India is a house with many rooms, these two states are the twin balconies — one facing the sunset, the other the sunrise — built from the same stone, painted in the same light, listening to the same tide.
East and West do not merely meet here. They embrace.
[1] science of architecture in alignment with natural forces
Look not for me in the sunlit path. Look for me In a honey-hued forest Where I gather the pieces of my soul Fallen apart under clouds Hanging from an ash-painted sky, Where the chill flutters and flits On the dead wings of a butterfly.
Look not for me in the Glimmering morning meadow But by the crumpled ribbon Of a starlit river That has lost its way to the sea, Where the wind like a wayward spirit Whispers to the tired trees.
I do not move in the sunlit path Circling the castle coated in ancient clime, I saunter along its crooked corridors Where the echo of a strangled melody Settles firm on the walls of old time.
Look not for me by a pleasant door Opening to the sunlit lane, I am a misbegotten shadow, Waiting to crawl into the purple twilight On the cracked window pane.
From Public Domain
Snehaprava Das is an academic, translator and writer. She has multiple translations, three collections of stories and five anthologies of poetry to her credit. She has been published in Indian Literature, Oxford University Press, Speaking Tiger, Penguin and Black Eagle Books.
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