Yesterday I visited the sky, and found stars suspended in space. All of them emitted sparkles like diamonds. Some sparkles were so intense that I couldn't keep looking at them. Yet, all of them were immaculate. After all, those were not mine. I am not the owner of those– the starry sky or its stars. I turned to my side and recalled– There are many potholes in the sky. How would I get back home?
I was made to travel back home. Then I looked at the sky again through the transparent window-pane, and saw countless traversable paths.
Ayesha Binte Islam writes as a hobby, and is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering.
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“Keep off my emotional lawn,” young Dorothy Carmody snapped, fourteen years young. “You’re trampling on my rhododendrons.”
“Geez, Dory.”
“Adventure. Need some ASAP, you know how it is.”
“Sure.”
And then a new girl, a transfer, came sashaying along the school corridor, her skirt whipping up a storm of self-assurance — Constance Harrington, known to the hoi polloi simply as Connie. And the moment Dory laid eyes on her, she knew. Here was a partner in crime. Here was a throw caution to the wind cohort, someone who wouldn’t back down from the prospect of adventure.
It was the very same week she had met Connie that she discovered a pack of cards buried in a pile of leaves beside her verandah. In the smoky autumn air, choked with swirling leaves, on her way up the walk she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye. She thought it was a discarded pack of cigarettes, but the colour of it seemed odd. It was a deck of cards, and hardly your run of the mill playing cards. These cards were mini works of medieval art, in vivid colours.
“What’s that?” her mother asked. “My guess, tarot cards.”
She thumbed through the cards and found herself in a strange world populated by cups and knights, pages, swords, pentacles, and collapsing towers. What in the world, she wondered, or perhaps out of it. Here were unusual cards that seemed culled from the mists of time. Runes from the leaf piles of autumn.
As she fingered each card, it seemed to speak of faraway places. The meanings, she felt, would instinctively reveal themselves to her. She would look them up on her laptop, but she knew no amount of research was a substitute for what she might intuit and how she might construe the meanings for herself. Spunky was funky that way.
Now young mistress Carmody needed to share her newfound treasure, even before absorbing the meanings of these odd cards. She retreated to her room and called Connie. “You know anything about the tarot?” she asked.
“Oh! billy clubs and chopsticks,” Connie retorted.
“Come on, Connie, don’t give me the stonewall treatment. I’m staring right here at a pack of tarot cards — they’re shaking in my hands, as though they want to speak.”
“I’m tone deaf, Dory, tired and tone deaf. Too many idiots got on my nerves today,” Connie said.
“Connie, I’m serious. These are hot, and there’s adventure here. Emergency confab — third period study hall. Tomorrow. In the stacks.”
“If you insist,” Connie sighed.
The study hall was sprinkled largely with numbskulls or brainy types toiling quietly in their heads. But there were tall metal racks of books, a modest library. And you could enjoy a bit of secrecy there. Dory slyly slipped the pack of tarot cards into Connie’s hands.
“Rider deck,” Connie said, to inquisitive eyes. “Yup.” “Well?”
Connie plucked a card at random from the deck. Wheel of Fortune.
Suspicious looks were exchanged and shoulders shrugged. “So?” Dory said.
And suddenly the room began to spin, and her eyes were tiny pinwheels. She felt a whirlwind coming on, a sweeping blur. “Con — ?”
“Grab my hand,” Connie said, and they were both caught up, heads spinning in a kind of wild vertigo.
When they regained their composure and the seeming gale had subsided, they were no longer in the school library. They were on some deserted beach in the tropics, complete with palm trees, and water as pale green, clear and pristine as all of creation. Waves rolled and crested, lapping the sands, and they were shoeless, and the heat stung their toes. They looked left, they looked right. The beach was deserted. Sure enough, they were alone.
“Our own private Idaho,” Connie joked. “Spunky Dory, what have you done?”
“No,” Dory said. “We’re dreaming. Snap your fingers, come on.”
Thumb and fingers snapped, but the portrait of paradise did not morph one iota.
“Now, Miss Thirst-For-Adventure, how do you propose we get back?”
“Who needs back? We’ve hit it, Con. Paradise. Park ourselves down in the palm shade and chill, Con, chill. Unless you’d prefer our private limousine.”
Dory pointed. There was a leaky old wooden rowboat at water’s edge tethered by a long rope that extended around the trunk of one of the palm trees.
“No,” Connie said. “We’re in Never Never Land, and that old boat is going to take us where?”
“Over the rainbow, beyond the blue horizon, take your pick.”
“And here they come,” Connie said, as out of the trees poured what appeared to be natives of some sort, and their cries shattered the bliss, not to mention the spears they were jostling in their hands. Had Connie’s imagination done a back flip?
“The cards, the cards,” she said, and she rubbed the Wheel of Fortune card, frantically rubbed and rubbed.
“Dor– ?” she said, terrified, and just as grass skirts, spears and painted warrior faces were all but upon them, angry ones at that, they felt their heads begin to spin dizzily again, and trees and sand and ocean swirl madly around them and they clung to each other and in what seemed like hours but was only an instant, they were back among the library stacks.
“No,” Connie shook her head. “No way.”
“Yeah,” Dory said. “Oh yeah. And we chickened out.”
“We sure as suds did, and not a moment too soon. What did we have for lunch today anyway, was it spiked? I mean, did we just — “
“Yeah, we just…”
“And you wanted us to, well, indulge our just, is that the just of it?”
“Where is your sense of adventure?”
“I think I left it in algebra class. Assuming we weren’t having one big hallucination, what just happened?”
“That’s what we’re gonna to find out.”
“Look, we are gonna be late for fourth period.”
“Saturday, Connie. My basement. Word of honour?”
“Dory, you’re crazy. No way.”
“Come on — besties?”
Reluctantly, Connie nodded: “Okay, besties. As in, it was the bestie of times, it was the worstie of times. You’re gonna get us in a mess, Dory, I just know it.”
Had they imagined this? Had the cards transported them to a temporary Shangri-la, an island paradise, or had too much cramming for school fried their innocent, developing, and surely hyperactive brains?
Those cards had some very strange pictures, and paradise island may or may not have been a figment of their imaginations run wild. But what if they dared investigate the rest of those cards, because Connie suspected that was the plan. She shuddered to think.
Saturday came, as it always does, with its wonderful sense of liberation and kick around freedom, and after lunch in the kitchen of Dory’s home, with the two girls munching on sandwiches, Dory gave the nod.
Connie was apprehensive, but down into the darkened depths of the cellar they went. The air was cool and a bit stale, and small windows didn’t admit much outside light. There was an old workbench there, and a cold room where her father stored paints and tools. They sat side by side on the workbench, and Dory fanned out the pack of tarot cards in front of them.
“Here’s the deal,” Dory told her friend. “There are twenty-two major arcana and fifty-six minor arcana cards. Fifty added to six reduces to eleven. That led me to eleven minor cards and twenty-two major.”
“I think you’re confusing me with key signatures.”
“Well, those are supposedly special numbers. You’ll have to do your own research there. Eleven and twenty-two. Back to the main game. The major arcana — that’s the twenty-two — are sort of major changes in your life, and the minor ones are day to day activity. Still with me?”
Connie was growing impatient.
“The cards with pictures of cups — well, the cups represent feelings. The swords represent actions. The pentacles, those gold coins, the five- figured ones, represent the material aspects of life — like work and business. And finally, there are wands, and those express action, passion and energy. Get the picture?”
“Pictures, Dory dearest. A passel of confusion. And what about that wheel card?”
“The Wheel of Fortune, the destiny card. There are also court cards — king, queen, knight and page.”
“Couldn’t we try something less precarious, like say gin rummy or hearts or something? Dory, lead us not into temptation.”
“I’ll shuffle, you get to make the pick.”
How lucky could a girl get, Connie thought to herself. Oh boy, here we go again.
Dory worked the deck, the cards crunching as she shuffled and cut, shuffled and cut. She was waiting perhaps for one of the cards to spring unbidden from the pack, for fate to play its hand. And wouldn’t you know, a card flopped out.
“Kismet, Connie.”
“Yep, that’s what my friends call me, good old ‘Kismet Connie.’ Never met a kiss I didn’t like. Or was that kiss, bat my eyes.”
The card that had flopped out was in fact the eight of pentacles, depicting a relatively young fellow in Renaissance squire’s costume seated at a workbench, wearing what appeared to be a doublet and red tights. He was intently using a mallet and chisel to hammer gold coins. There were five-pointed pentacles stamped on the coins, eight in all. He seemed amiable enough.
“Everything up to date in Kansas City?” Connie kidded. “Watcha got there, pentacle fellow?”
Just as quickly, the card seemed to respond, and Connie and Dory felt the whirlwind coming, the dizziness, and the wild spinning sensation. The room was going round and round, and where it’d stop nobody knew — like some kind roulette wheel spun by the hand of fate.
“Me and my big mouth,” Connie said, as the girls sought refuge by clinging to each other. “And to think, instead of this I could have been out there shopping for basics.”
Fate seemed to murmur: Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars. . . Their heads spun and spun, the girls clung and clung, you really had to be there, and the scene around them was changing, and as they became lucid again, the spinning sensation had stopped. Lucid, in point of fact, now in a medieval workshop, just like the one depicted in the tarot card, as before them a lad was busy with hammer, chiselling away at his coins.
Connie leaned to her friend — “Thanks, pal. Thanks a ham sandwich.”
“Look at this, we’re in a medieval workroom or something. Come on, tell me you’re not digging this.”
“You want the long version or the short? Dory, you’ve done it again, and dragged me in a windstorm with you. When oh when will I ever learn?”
Dory gestured her friend in the direction of the busily hammering boy.
“You first,” Connie said. “Con?”
“I get it. I get the dirty assignments. Okay, little miss wizardry, I shall be so bold. As always, you are pushing the envelope. I won’t even ask where we are, but I’m guessing we made a wrong turn somewhere at Camelot.”
The young man seemed oblivious to their presence, as though they weren’t even there.
“Uh, excuse us, medieval person,” Connie said, “I believe we took a wrong turn at a traffic stop in the village. Yes, we are obviously from another time warp and out of our depth, so to speak. Think fish out of water. Twenty-first century hussies. Whatever you want but get us back to where we once belonged. You get the gist, even if gist wasn’t even a word that had been invented during the Middle Ages, Renaissance, what have you.”
“I like that,” Dory said. “Middle Ages!”
“Hey, I’m cutting edge,” came the sarcastic tone of Connie’s voice.
“Are you here for the coins?” he asked. Yes, the ‘he’ at the workbench who was pounding away at just such coins.
“No, we’re here to pick up the laundry,” Connie joked. “Actually, we’re sort of not here at all, imagine us as shadows, will-o’-the-wisps, ghosts. What we really could use is a lift somewhere, preferably back to the twenty-first century. I hear the distinct sound of reality calling. You got a spare oxcart or something?”
“One,” he said. “I will part with but one.”
“Oxcart or coin?” Connie couldn’t resist.
“Here, take it.” He handed them a gold coin.
“For good fortune.”
“Good fortune we could use,” Connie said. “And a couple of airline tickets outta here fast.”
Let’s face it, who could look a gift coin in the mouth, even if it was a medieval mouth?
Dory appropriated the coin, and the moment she touched it — uh-oh, spinning heads and flying saucers, whipping winds and wildebeests, and in what seemed two shakes of a lamb’s tail, they found themselves back in Le Present Age, also known as the here and now — yes, down in Dory’s dank basement.
It was still there in the palm of her hand, the gold coin, albeit it had somehow dwindled in size. It was now the regular size coin rather than the giant medieval family variety. But it did glitter and come to tell it was actually made of gold, as Dory found out later when she consulted a local precious metals dealer.
“And now,” Connie said, “can we do some clothes shopping and give that pack of cards a big hearty heave-ho where it belongs?”
“Aw Con.”
“Aw nothing. Ditch them. Dory, forgive me, but time machines are sooo yesterday.”
“Connie, Connie, Connie,” Dory muttered, shaking her head. She knew she could pretend to accede to Connie’s wishes, but she also knew she was going to hide that magical little deck of cards somewhere in her bureau drawer, for another day. If you couldn’t look a gift coin in the mouth, you sure couldn’t look a gift adventure, not with life being as humdrum as it was.
“Loosen up, Con,” she winked. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t say it.”
Dory smiled ear to ear. “Girls just wanna have fun.”
Ronald V. Micci, a native New Yorker, is a prolific author of plays, screenplays, novels, and short stories, both comedic and serious, many available for perusal on the Booksie, Simply Scripts and Amazon websites. A published playwright (Brooklyn/Heuer Publishers), former magazine editor and advertising proof reader, his one-act plays have been staged in Manhattan and throughout the country.
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Title: Maya Nagari: Bombay-Mumbai A City in Stories
Editors: Shanta Gokhale, Jerry Pinto
Publisher:Speaking Tiger Books
The very mention of the name Mumbai (or Bombay) brings to our minds a great city in India where the thriving metropolis grows at a rapid speed because people not only flock here from different parts of the country to make quick bucks and survive against all odds, but also because the film industry of Bollywood has also established it as a city of dreams, one that never sleeps and instead creates a mirage-of-sorts — an illusion, rightly labelled by the editors of this anthology as ‘Maya Nagari’. Edited by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto, this book, comprising twenty-one short stories about Mumbai takes the road less taken to create a non-uniform image of the metropolis. In tune with its multicultural and multilingual nature, we have stories about the city that is a sea of people and speaks at least a dozen languages. There are stories translated from Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, and stories written originally in English. Among the writers are legends and new voices—Baburao Bagul, Ismat Chughtai, Pu La Deshpande, Ambai,Urmila Pawar, Mohan Rakesh, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ambai, Jayant Kaikini, Bhupen Khakhar,Shripad Narayan Pendse, Manasi, Krishan Chander, Udayan Thakker, Cyrus Mistry, Vilas Sarang, Jayant Pawar, Tejaswini Apte-Rahm and Anuradha Kumar.
As Jerry Pinto clearly states in the introduction, the stories can be read as we like, we can begin with the first story or the last, or any story in between. The observant reader might notice that he and the other editor Shanta Gokhale have deliberately chosen not to organise the material according to chronology, or geography. This is partly because they believe that the city lives in several time zones and spaces at once, as does India, but also because there is something essentially chaotic about its nature. So, he says, “the stories echo and bounce off each other, they do not collide, but there is a Brownian motion to these patterns” and he hopes to let the readers find it. Here, Mumbai is stripped of its twinkle; it is deglamourised to reveal how it’s the quotidian that lends the city its character—warmth and hostility alike and as inhabitants of the city the editors call ‘home,’ they hope a narrative will emerge.
In the twenty-one stories of this collection, there is the city that labours in the mills and streets, and the city that sips and nibbles in five-star lounges, the city of Ganapati, Haji Malang and the Virgin Mary. What binds the stories together is ‘human muscle’ – the desperate attempts of men and women of all classes and castes to survive in this heartless city amid all odds.
The stories are of different lengths and written in different narrative styles. Of the five or six stories translated by Shanta Gokhale herself from Marathi, one is struck by the excessive length of the so called ‘short’ stories. The very first one “Oh! The Joy of Devotion” by Jayant Pawar, forty-five pages in length, narrates in detail about the Ganapati festival and how it is related to the fate of the local people. Pu La Deshpande’s story “A Cultural Moment is Born”, set in the 1940s, tells stories of people living in chawls [slums] and how they spend their cultural days. Another very long story translated by Gokhale called “The Ramsharan Story” tells us about the rise and fall of a bus conductor by the name of Ramsharan who turns out to become a union leader. Baburao Bagul’s “Woman of the Street”, written originally in Marathi and translated by Gokhale again, tells the story of Girija, a sex-worker trying to collect money to cure her son in the village. The story ends on a disturbing note, as it reaffirms the relativity of success.
Once again, Krishan Chander’s story “The Children of Dadar Bridge” translated from Hindustani by Jerry Pinto is so long that it qualifies to be called a sort of novella. In this powerful story God comes to earth to a chawl and offers food to the first-person narrator. Then, impersonating as a small and innocent child, and along with the child narrator, he moves around different places in the city to witness its activities firsthand — we get to know about behind the scene affairs that take place in the film studios, about satta[1] dens, about bribery, local dons who arm-twist every new hawker to carry on their business after receiving their weekly cut money and more. In “Civic Duty and Physics Practicals”, Malayalam writer Manasi reveals the different experiences one comes across living in a society defined by power equations. Issues of hooliganism, superstition, illegal colonies, corruption, intimidation and violence are explored in a single story where the narrator is struggling, for days, with blaring speakers at a wedding nearby, even as her son tries hard to prepare for his upcoming exams. The story soon takes a dark turn where power trumps over consideration for fellow human beings.
A very powerful story written by Ambai in Tamil called “Kala Ghora Chowk” deals with issues of Marxist ideology, trade unions and the fate of a raped woman called Rosa. Anuradha Kumar’s “Neera Joshi’s Unfinished Book” tells us the life story of one woman who “made the city” and the perennial problems of displaced mill workers when the closed mills give way to high-rise buildings. Some of the stories are of course written in a lighter vein, though they also depict different problems related to city life. As the title of Vilas Sarang’s story “An Afternoon Among the Rocks” suggests, it narrates the plight of a couple trying to make love in the deserted seashore and how they get hijacked by a smuggler! In “The Flat on the Fifth Floor”, Mohan Rakesh writes about two sisters who meet the narrator after one failed love affair. A moving picture of the closing down of cinema halls in Mumbai comes out very beautifully in the Kannada story “Opera House” by Jayant Kaikini, especially narrating the plight of one of the sweepers working there when the declaration of permanent closure is pasted everywhere. Tejaswini Apte-Rahm’s “Mili” tells the story of a man who meets his ex-girlfriend after five years.
Though it is not possible to give the details of each and every story included in this anthology in this review, one must mention some of the stories that were originally written in English. Cyrus Mistry’s “Percy” about a young and lonely Parsi boy is so compelling that it was even made into a Gujarati motion-picture. “House Cleaning” by Jerry Pinto tells the story of a woman cleaner and his son, who talks about the reality of street dwellers. Eunice de Souza’s “Rina of Queen’s Diamonds” is not a straightforward narration at all but offers a collage of different vignettes of life in Bombay.
Though most of the stories portray the seamier side of life and in some ways de-glamourise Mumbai, at the same time they also portray how human resilience can combat all sorts of odds, and the city can be revealed only through shared experiences. Thus, each of the twenty-one stories in this collection tells a different tale of Mumbai, Bombay, Momoi, Bambai, Manbai and many others. As the editors have rightly pointed out at the beginning of their introduction, “You cannot catch a city in words. You cannot catch a city at all.” They felt that “it is not meant to be caught…this city resists even more because it was not designed at all; it just happened and it keeps on happening.” Thus, the four-hundred plus pages of this anthology Maya-Nagari remains a book to be treasured and read now at leisure and also at any time in the future.
Abelard & Heloise, a French painting between 1425-1450
Love affairs are usually secret, But some must be kept especially hidden. In the case of Abelard and Heloise*, it had to be secret, Though no matter how flawless a love affair may be, it is best hidden. Because even then, it was not declared that God is dead. Daytime words were heard by birds, and night-time words by rats. Lotte and Werther*, Caused turmoil before the expiration date, Romeo and Juliet*, Were talked of by people. A love that has passed its expiration date should blend into the myriad of green like a flowering tree, But being left desolate like the back of a sandcastle by the sea Or an empty reed warbler nest in a field Is a lonely affair. Though a story ascends high into the peaks of immortality And a spectacular scene tempered by fiery flames may remain, In the case of Abelard and Heloise, who heated the Middle Ages, It was an age-old battle between God and mortals.
*The names of a high-ranking cleric and a young nun in medieval France. *Lotte and Werther from Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s 1774 novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther *Romoeo & Juliet (1597, play by William Shakespeare)
Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Color of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.
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Formative years can imply simply a growing body or the development of a complex outlook on life. My mother, born Mary Ann Hostetler in Pontiac, Illinois, lived her formative years in colonial India. Here is what I know about two formative migrations that made her who she was. She was a quick study, a keen photographer, and resourceful traveler, but she also had an uncanny sensitivity to the need of people to feel welcome anyplace.
She had a deeply fond memory of arriving with her family in West Bengal when she was a mere 2 years old. On the dock of Calcutta, waiting to greet the Hostetlers, was another Mennonite missionary, a man who would escort the family to the mission compound. Dispatched aloft by her mother, little Mary Ann absolutely “sailed into his arms”, feeling sincere love and comfort from this steady and attentive new man. He would sometimes take her for walks in the farms and villages, letting her reach out safely. There was nothing to fear in this new place, and she was allowed to build her confidence.
Crates and luggage would have been handled by porters, a first lesson in India’s system of echelons, privileges and defenses, which even Anabaptists would adopt. India would embrace Mary Ann with her cacophony and vibrancy. There was always the conservative life at home and in the classroom, but she could escape into the chowrasta[1], eat street food, and read the discarded letters such food was wrapped in.
From the age of 5, she boarded at a dreary school in the extraordinary altitude of Darjeeling, wintered in the rural outskirts of Calcutta, spoke street dialect like an urchin, and learned to draw from memory a Mercator map of the world showing the borders of all the British colonies. During school break back in her parents’ mission compound, she and her brother might pass time picking fat ticks from the tender hide of a little bullock her parents kept, but her favourite activity in those warm days was to climb an old mango tree which stood just out of range of her mother’s call and read a book. Any book. She was never without one.
She and her family made two returns to the US, the first in 1936 for a Mission Board furlough, and again in 1944, when she had graduated from high school and the war, closing in first on the Straits Settlements, and soon after striking the Calcutta docks, was too close for comfort.
For that 1936 furlough, the family stayed a few days in Calcutta’s Salvation Army hotel while her mother shopped for items to bring back with them to the States. Her list would have included a tablecloth and sheeting, cotton yardage, British wool, perhaps a few sandalwood items. These things would not have been exotic souvenirs but rather, practical items for their year ahead enduring America’s Great Depression. They were, after all, the family of a pastor, disinclined to appear exceptional or proud.
Through their Salvation Army hotel window, my mother gazed down at the Fairlawn Hotel next door, where well-heeled families relaxed with tea service on white rattan furniture, children scattered gleefully on the vast greensward, late afternoon birdsong above, and a distant Victrola warbling from inside the forbidden edifice. She longed to experience such pleasures, and decades later, she did finally stay a few nights at the Fairlawn in 1992, with me, as I had chosen the hotel without knowing its gnawing maneuvers deep in my mother’s soul.
Checking in, we met the flamboyant and zaftig British redhead in charge of the place, my mother’s very age, daughter of the owner from those last days of the Raj. That woman could scream gutter Bengali at the top of her lungs, and the next moment turn to my mother and politely ask about some little thing important only to little girls from a faraway garden city. I watched as these two disparate women embraced and laughed together.
The day she and her own mother arrived in the Los Angeles port of San Pedro, she was astonished to disembark and hear sweaty stevedores yelling and chattering in English. This told her more about America and what was purportedly its classless society, than any adult’s own description could have. She thrilled at this discovery. She was unconcerned about fitting in with new school mates, got along well with them, even though they whispered amongst themselves about “her brogue.”
She never told me anything about her trip back to India, a year later. But she would have sailed again, stuffed into Second Class. I imagine her trying to lose her parents, availing herself of the ship’s library. But I don’t know.
She graduated from Mount Hermon School as the “Best Girl,” although if you visit there, you can discover that the clueless new headmaster from her graduation year neglected to have the big silver trophy emblazoned with her name for the class of 1944. Her brother’s is there with the year 1943 on the school’s “Best Boy” cup. But he simply forgot to put in the engraving order when it was Mary Ann Hostetler’s honor. My mother harbored few resentments, but this was a sore point, as she had worked very hard at academics.
I have never seen Bombay Harbour, where she finally left India as a young woman, but this is what she has told me. It was wartime, 1944, but she was full of hope and thrilled to be out of that grim and cold school in the clouds.
Mary Ann and her family boarded a passenger liner repurposed to carry a large number of troops. A little sister had been born in India, making the family five, now billeted in what was once a First Class cabin, as were other American families leaving India. Of course, no monogrammed towels or French milled soaps awaited them, but she relished the luxury of portholes and her own bunk.
The ship left Victoria Dock in April of 1944, mere days before the catastrophic accident of the munitions-laden SS Fort Stikine accidental fire and explosion, which destroyed every vessel in the harbor. Wartime secrecy held successfully for decades, and my mother never learned of the near miss until many years after the war was over.
All kinds of security measures were taken, even though the atmosphere on the crowded ship was convivial and relaxed. No flags flew. And they sailed a zigzag course as a precaution against torpedoes. They were in a convoy with two other soldier and civilian transports, but never saw the other ships except when in harbour. One of those harbours was Melbourne, where boarded dozens of Australian war brides, and every last one of those young women, my mother said, had a screaming infant. Those women shared second class cabins. Two mother/baby pairs had bunks and one pair slept on their cabin floor.
Everyone aboard seemed to be flirting with the soldiers and welcoming distraction. My mother and her new girlfriends, and even a few of the young Australian mothers, were nurturing chaste romances and enjoying their youth. It was so much fun, and so stress-free, that my mother looked down at her wrist one day, where there had flourished for many months a large filiform wart, resembling some sort of fleshy agave plant; it had vanished.
They went through the Panama Canal, a surprise for everyone aboard as well as for their stateside families. All had been told by the war department that the convoy would land in San Francisco. Instead, they went to Boston. Plans were upset, lives were disrupted, and thousands of families who had made their way to California were now faced with crossing the wide country to meet their loved ones. Typical instance, my mother said, of the war and the US government inflicting the population with whimsy, wasted efforts, or red tape in the name of national security.
To glimpse at last the American flag flying in Boston harbour gave my mother an indescribable feeling of safety and delight. Worries carefully buried were truly gone. The war would end in a little over a year’s time. She had the rest of her life ahead of her.
The USA was a safe harbour for a few years of university before she was off again, this time to Japan. Decades later, with an empty nest, she and my father chose Italy. Migrations were just part of living, and wherever she went, if she met another person displaced by whatever reason, she had a new best friend. I knew them, too. The Finnish dry cleaner, the Salvadorian woman who answered the phone at the Honda repair shop, or the Japanese lady who ran an art supply store: these people came from away, and so had she.
Fleeting images jostling for a permanent place in the hallowed halls of my mind, can't help drowning in my nostalgia.
I hold her within the sweaty palm of my hand, the soul of this candle trembling in the gentle springtime breeze.
The river continues its journey effortlessly, lost in the haze of millennia gone; I can see her in dark shadows, her ghost drifting
in the abstract of life death and everything else in-between.
Wayne Russell is a creative jack of all trades, master of none. Poet, rhythm guitar player, singer, artist, photographer, and author of the poetry books “Where Angels Fear” via Guerilla Genius Press, and the newly released “Splinter of the Moon” via Silver Bow Publishing, they are both available for purchase on Amazon.
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As a traveller, I always try to zero in on destinations that are less frequented and hence, more likely to retain their pristine touch. We applied the same thumb rule during our recent ten-day visit to Himachal Pradesh. Leaving the more popular venues to backpackers and robust tourists, my husband and I reached Sangla Valley to savour three days of undiluted peace and unsullied natural beauty at Batseri.
Situated at a height of 2700 metres (8530 feet) above sea level, Batseri is a postcard-pretty village in Sangla, in the Kinnaur district of Himachal. Our hotel was located right in the middle of an apple orchard – an embodiment of luxury and modern engineering juxtaposed against a backdrop of idyllic charm, antiquated structures and time-worn practices. As we stepped into our spacious room and attached balcony, the sight that greeted us was nothing short of amazing!
Apple orchard
Just outside the hotel boundary lay an enormous stretch of ivory, grey and beige – rocks, pebbles and shingles, accumulated through centuries of weathering and deposition – through which, gently meandered the Baspa with its wealth of shimmering emerald waters. This breath-taking layout was hemmed in by the giant deodar, fir and spruce trees on one hand, and the glistening snow-capped peaks of the gigantic Kinnar Kailash range on the other. The picture was enhanced by a common sit-out area in the patio, where one could plonk down on the quaint, low seats crafted out of timber and have a leisurely breakfast, while the whispering conifers hummed a ditty. Or simply, choose a vantage log-seat at a shadowy spot and catch up on some reading over caffein. The possibilities were endless and we were already rueing the prospect of our departure after a fleeting three days.
At Batseri, our bedside morning alarm was replaced by the natural birdsong. Relaxing in the balcony with a piping hot cuppa and waiting for the sun to peek from behind the peaks was an experience to cherish. We watched in awe as the sky metamorphosed into a fast-changing palette of peach, pink and gold, steeping the entire valley in a warm glow. Men and women, flora and fauna, welcomed yet another chance at renewal and opportunity.
One morning, we set off for a village walkthrough, after polishing off a hearty breakfast. The hotel exit was located about half a kilometre away from the building. The connecting pathway was smooth though quite steep, and was flanked by apple orchards on both sides.
Summer is the time when the trees bear white-and-pink papery flowers, which are eventually blown off by the winds, leaving behind the core, which, subsequently bears fruit. The flower-laden trees, against a backdrop of green grass and snow-capped mountains, were a splendid vision in white. The women working in the orchards seemed a cheerful, gregarious lot who either tended to the apple trees, or prepared the soil for a crop of green peas, red beans and buck wheat – cash crops which can withstand the extremities of nature in these parts. During their break, I found them sitting, sharing tea and chatting animatedly with the owner of the property. Class barriers and alienation of the non-privileged had clearly not tainted this picturesque hamlet, I mused happily.
The same camaraderie and co-existence marked even the simple, day-to-day interactions of the villagers, as we observed later. The highlight of the village was the hallowed temple of Badri Narayan Ji[1], an intricately carved wooden temple which sported a very neat, well-maintained premise. The original temple was destroyed in a fire in 1998 and it was rebuilt with the collective effort of the villagers. The young priest shared a familial bond with the local residents, who, in turn, helped uphold the sanctity and cleanliness of the temple and the shrine. No visitor is allowed to climb up the three steps leading to the sanctum sanctorum – the offerings are collected by the priest and offered to the deity. Nobody — young or old, rich or ordinary — challenges or questions. We had earlier observed a similar austerity in other temples of Kinnaur, as well. In fact, some mandate the wearing of the colourful, traditional Himachali cap for men inside the premise. Women usually have stoles, scarves and dupattas[2] to cover their heads with.
Baspa RiverQuaint village
From the temple, a single path led us forward to the village. We met and spoke to the local store-keepers, animal herders, agriculturists, home-makers – everyone greeted us affably and spoke about their lifestyle and community. Their pride in their village and its traditions, along with their warmth and hospitality, left an imprint on my heart. We observed the houses which were a complete and welcome departure from the glass-and-metal structures that we usually see. They were all built of sturdy wood collected from the nearby deodar forests and burnished well to display a sheen. Each house had ample open area where they stowed away firewood and other essentials. There were no fences or barbed wires to demarcate properties. Piles of stones collected from the Baspa riverbank were stashed neatly to make a low boundary between two houses. I remembered noticing a similar demarcation among the orchards outside our hotel, too. Here was a community where people thrived on an innate sense of trust and fraternity; scaling of boundaries, literal or otherwise, was something unheard of.
Motor vehicles were not allowed inside the village, barring a rare two-wheeler, though we did see a couple of cars parked at the entrance. Fluffy, pampered street dogs dotted the paths and slept on the stairways of homes – they formed the extended family of the entire village. Just like the adorable Sheroo, a Bhutiya furry who ruled over our hotel like a boss!
The entire Sangla Valley is on the path to accelerated development with multiple road and hydel power projects being executed at regular intervals. The strong currents of the voluminous Baspa are harnessed for this purpose. These projects form an important source of livelihood for the local residents who cannot engage in extensive cultivation because of the inclement weather and soil conditions.
Enroute to Chitkul
The next to-do on our itinerary was a visit to Chitkul, the last village on the Indo-Tibet border. Perched at an elevation of 3450 metres (11,320 feet), this charming village with its panoramic view of the majestic Kinnar Kailash range and the verdant vistas, is often considered the ‘Jewel of the Baspa Valley’. Our cab took us to the last motorable spot beyond which were located the Army and the ITBP camps. As we stepped out of the vehicle and looked around, we were left agape by the ethereal splendour of the place! The snow-kissed peaks alternated with rugged mountain faces and together, they stood like silent sentinels towering over the sprawling alpine meadows, pockets of dense green woods, and the gurgling, meandering Baspa. The Baspa is fed by the perennial Himalayan glaciers and shares a common catchment basin with the Ganga. Fifty shades of green, all in one canvas, I thought to myself!
Scenic Chitkul
Far away, we spied the Chitkul village, conspicuous by its symmetrical hutments and their colourful roofs. We walked around the undulating meadows with cautious steps – a reminder for us to embrace the various ups and downs of life with grace and equanimity. The place abounded in rocks, boulders and pebbles of all sizes and shapes which prompted me to make a humble cairn of my own – a modest attempt at preserving my footfall on this slice of heaven!
At a distance, we saw defence personnel going about their duty in a brisk, professional manner, unfazed by the grandeur of their surroundings. As the clock ticked by and the shadows lengthened, we knew it was time to turn back. We drove into the small hub of activity in the village which housed the last Post Office of India and also, its last dhaba[3]. Rows of colourful prayer flags strung alongside the road seemed to whisper prayers for our well-being and safety. Multiple pictures and a hearty meal of rajma-chawal[4]later, we headed back to our hotel in Batseri.
As we approached the premises, our driver pulled up on the side and switched off the engine. There was a pile-up of men and machine, and all vehicular movement was halted. We alighted and ambled forward to probe the matter. The sharp slope leading up to our property had been completely blocked by the sudden uprooting of an ancient tree around noon, its gnarled branches reaching up ominously towards the twilight sky. The administration had swung into action, aided generously by the villagers. The monotonous whirr of the giant chainsaw cutter axing down the tree into large chunks, and the occasional thud of the felled logs, reminded us, yet again, of the unpredictability and difficulty of life in the remote mountains. We strolled around the nearby areas for about half-an-hour before a narrow tract was created on one side for us to walk through. The stranded people — visitors and villagers alike — trundled out.
After spending three memorable days at Sangla, we headed out to our next destination. I spent the last few minutes on our balcony, listening to the gentle susurration that seemed to whisper ancient secrets of the mountains. I admired the patterns created by the play of sunlight through the leaves –- that gave me life lessons in gratitude for these fleeting, beauteous moments of life. As we drove away, I cast one last lingering look at beautiful Batseri –- a fascinating story of life carved in wood, snow, and stone.
Urmi Chakravorty is a former educator and presently, a freelance writer and editor. She has been published by The Hindu, The Times of India, TMYS Reviews, Indian Review, Mean Pepper Vine, eShe, The Chakkar, Kitaab International and The Wise Owl, among others.
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Beneath a Baobab tree a black and white cat, body tense,
Black tail straight as a shotgun, legs spring loaded,
Delicate left paw lifted
Claws flashing in the morning sun,
A bushy tailed red squirrel her target,
Ancient instincts at play.
The red squirrel’s companion hidden until now behind the Baobab tree,
Hears the silent warning, leaps over the black and white cat,
His bushy tail waving, his chatter a laugh or a taunt,
A black and white cat and bushy-tailed red squirrels
Playing life and death games
Beneath a Baobab Tree in Long Beach, California.
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R. L. ‘Pete’ Peterson’s award-winning fiction has graced many publications over the years. His After Midnight – A Short Story Collection, (Pallamary Publishing), debuted in 2019. His novel, Leave the Night to God (Pact Press), is available wherever books are sold. Hisshort story workshops are popular for their practical content andhumorous delivery. As a Marine, Pete served at American Embassies inthree foreign countries. Reach him at petersonwriter9391@gmail.com.
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Musical instruments were dusted and tuned, particularly the most used harmonium and tablas. The living room was rearranged. Chairs were pushed against the walls. Centre and side tables were removed, creating space for floor seating. Durries were laid over the carpet. All the pash balish — bolsters — in the house with freshly laundered covers, placed haphazardly for those wanting to recline. A space earmarked for the performers, usually against the room’s longest wall. On this wall hung a fairly large black and white framed photo of Tagore, garlanded with freshly picked jasmine flowers. Not the fully bloomed one. White buds with short green stems. We girls were given the responsibility of making smaller wristbands from the jasmine buds, presented to the visitors. Stalks of rajanigandha (tuberoses) stood erect in tall vases placed on either side of the photo.
The overpowering smell of jasmine and tuberoses drowned other smells floating in from the kitchen. A hands-full kitchen as no jalsa[2] is complete without serving the guests chai and piping hot assortment of pakoras — onions, potatoes, brinjal, pumpkin flowers, battered fried crispy brown. Poppy seed-sprinkled vegetable chops, cylindrically shaped, were polished off as fast as they were made and served. The service continued till the guests left, mouths sweetened with the dessert — usually rossogollas, delivered by the sweet-meat dhoti-clad guy, arriving on foot, carrying gigantic-sized aluminium dekchis[3]balanced on two ends of a pole, hoisted on his shoulder.
It was an open house event for those interested and wanting to join. There were the regulars and walk-ins as well. Performers and audience. A manageable crowd most years. Rarely spilling out into the adjacent veranda. Cane chairs were lined up to accommodate the latecomers. Ma, a gifted and trained singer had the honour of opening the ceremony with the song “Hey Nutan, Dekha dik aar-baar janmero prothamo shubhokhan…”[4]. On popular demand, she went on to sing a couple of Tagore’s songs not omitting the song dedicated to Boishakh“esho hey boishak, esho…esho. Taposniswasbaye mumushure dao uraye, botsorer aborjona dur hoye jak…”.[5]A song that has been on our minds, with the current heat wave raging throughout the country.
As the evening progressed there were recitations from Tagore’s poetry collection. A young couple, Soumenda and Rinadi, our neighbours, had the gathering spellbound with their singing and poetry recitation. Close neighbourhood friends of ‘Puluda’, the affectionate nickname of the famed actor, the Late Soumitra Chatterjee, the talented couple were in demand at many such musical soirees held on Vijaya Doushami[6] in community clubs. And through them, we met the greatest Bengali screen actor of all time, on many occasions, when he visited after the day’s outdoor shooting in the picturesque surrounding in Maithon and Panchayat, way back in the 1960s.
With our leaving the gated community complex in 1968, ended the annual Rabindra Jayanti home celebrations. A not-forgotten era. Rabindranath Tagore lives on. These days, I listen to Rabindrasangeet on YouTube, remembering the days of youth, Ma’s full-throated voice, and Somenda, and Rinadi regaling us with their practised/professional voices. Pakoras are replaced now with sushi. God rest their souls.
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[1] The 25th day of the Bengali month of Boishakh, recorded as the official date of birth of the Rabindranath Tagore in 1861. As per the Gregorian calendar, the date falls between the 7th or 8th of May.
[5] Hail O boisakh! Welcome./ Blow away deadly diseases with your ascetic breath./May the debris from the old year disappear. – Translation from Borderless Journal
Snigdha Agrawal (nee Banerjee) has published four books and is a regular contributor to anthologies. A septuagenarian, she writes in all genres of poetry, prose, short stories and travelogues.
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She drops words, like tears, Into the urn of our silence.
“Look!” she thrusts forward a tattooed wrist, “In exile, you are a ghost tree: No cicadas mating on your bark. No birds nesting, No birdlings vying to fly. No squirrels scurrying.
No soil.
Hugging your roots, no solacing Moisture.”
“In exile, you are a fish flung from water,” She rolls up her sleeve and reveals A tattoo of a fish, its skeleton.
“In exile, you have been picked to the bone By Grief -- Grief has gouged out your pink flesh. You have no skin. You are left with spare spine And bones; Bones, hanging from your backbone.”
Turning, she pulls up her shirt: “But see! Here’s my real secret.”
Nestling in the curve of her back, Another tattooed fish; A whole fish this one, shimmering silver. “See! She’s alive! She’s swimming up the river.” Says Hanan (whose name means the warm-hearted one) “Like salmon, She’s battling upstream. She’ll return one day to her spawning ground. Trust me. She will. Never doubt that. Ever.”
Rinku Dutta is an educator writing about her experiences. Exploring the Roots of Harmony: India and Pakistan Conflict Transformation is a monograph of a selection of her essays. Her poems have been published in RIC Journal.
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Borderless 