I was apprehensive. I had spent time in New Delhi when I was very young. But after that, I had never travelled to the north of India. I was traveling by chair car on the Rajdhani Express to Delhi and from there, by bus to Chandigarh. Sleeping on a chair is difficult though the coach offers enough legroom, and the seats are wide. The time was December, and the weather would be cold. The bus journey to Chandigarh from New Delhi took a long time. I was moving through the flat plains of Haryana with fields on both sides of the road. The sun set early during winter in the north. By 5 pm, it was beginning to get dark. The sun had truly set by the time I reached Chandigarh.
The cold was a de novo experience. Using a quilt was something new though later I began the appreciate the gentle warmth provided using the body’s own heat. Coming from the claustrophobic confines of Mumbai, the wide-open spaces of Chandigarh were a welcome change. Some of the traffic circled the roundabouts that were larger in this city than apartment complexes in Mumbai. Space, space, and plenty of space was my first impression of the city.
Chandigarh is believed to have been named after the Goddess Chandi whose temple is located near the city. Garh means a fort. This was India’s first planned city. Various teams of architects had been commissioned and the Swiss-French artist, Le Corbusier was the last in the series. Le Corbusier designed several buildings in Chandigarh including the secretariat, the high court, and the Palace of Assembly. He created an open-hand sculpture like he had done in the other cities designed by him. He designed many structures at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) where I was a resident doctor. His influence was also seen in Panjab University across the road in Sector 14. One of the challenges with a sprawling low-density design was services were located far away and you required a vehicle to access services and go to different areas. In high-density areas like Mumbai, you can just step down to access shops and services. This was in the days before online ordering and e-commerce platforms.
The city is divided into sectors. I settled in the Old Doctor’s Hostel or ODH in Sector 12, where the institute was located. I eventually shifted to the D block of ODH, the newest to be constructed. This had the benefit of a wash basin within the room reducing your trips to the shared restrooms. The research blocks and the college canteens had the trademarks of Le Corbusier’s design. He was fond of using primary colours like blue, yellow, and red as evidenced in the bright hues of the doors and windows of the hostel. The original structure was good but was constructed in the 1960s. By the late 1990s, living standards had improved and the rooms began to feel inadequate. He was also fond of using curves in his buildings and each room had a curve and there was a specially made wooden table to fit into the curve. Most of these had been destroyed over the years. The hostel rooms were single occupancy. This was especially important for the residents in clinical departments as it allowed them to rest after long hours of duty.
Sector 17 was the main commercial hub of the town and had several high-end restaurants and shops. People were fashionably dressed though the cold weather during winter required a lot of clothing. Winter mornings could get very foggy. In those days air pollution levels were still low and winters were generally pleasant. The food was good — ranging from aloo parathas (Indian flatbread stuffed with a spicy potato mix), gobi parathas (made with a stuffing of cauliflower), mooli parathas (Indian flatbread stuffed with a spicy radish mix), tandoori chicken (chicken grilled in a clay oven called the tandoor), tikkis (a small cutlet made of potatoes, chickpeas and different spices), chole bhature (a type of chana masala and puris) and samosas (triangular fried pastry with a savoury filling). Punjabis love their food. The food is wholesome but may be high in saturated fats. There were several tandoori chicken restaurants and chicken was a perennial favourite. The tandoor is a great invention though it may be difficult for the person making rotis in the heat of peak summer. But tandoori rotis eaten piping hot dipped in a spicy gravy on a cold night are a pure delight.
The sector 11 market was the nearest to PGI and there were two or three dhabas (roadside eateries) serving Punjabi delicacies. There was also a more upscale restaurant serving variations of the dosa. These had been modified to north Indian tastes and this was my first introduction to chicken dosa. The taste was good, but the stuffing was very unconventional. The buses were old and had seen better days. I usually took the bus to Sector 17 and to The Tribune colony in Sector 29. Started in 1881, The Tribune is one of the oldest newspapers in North India and one of my father’s acquaintances worked at the newspaper.
The Panjab University had a sprawling campus just across the road at Sector 14. I loved to roam through the beautiful campus. The market at the university had shops selling delightful Punjabi samosas. These were large, the covering was crisp, and the stuffing of potatoes and chickpeas was spicy and tasty. Those days a samosa cost around one rupee and fifty paisa — light on the pocket though wages were lower those days.
The northern sectors of the city including 12 where PGI was located were the older ones and more prosperous. The Zakir Hussain Rose Garden in sector 16 was named after India’s former president and had over 1600 species of roses. I used to visit occasionally, especially during the winters when the roses were in bloom. Summers in Chandigarh are hot but less than in many other places in the plains due to the closeness to the hills.
Zakir Hussain Rose GardenThe Rock Garden Courtesy: Creative Commons
The Rock Garden is a major attraction. The garden was begun to be built by Nek Chand in 1957. The garden was built illegally but later became world famous. It is built entirely from discarded household and industrial waste. There is also a doll’s museum inside the garden. One of my fellow residents knew Nek Chand very well and he used to play with his son when he was young. Models of rock gardens have since been built in several Indian cities.
Summers in Chandigarh are difficult. The sun is relentless. The institution timings change. Before the onset of summer, one visits the desert cooler shops to buy new grass screens for the coolers. The cooler is a great invention with a water pump and screens moistened by water through which air is drawn to cool the room. They work well but when there were power outages in summer, they stopped functioning. The onset of the monsoon in late July makes things difficult. The humidity is high, and the temperature is still above 35 degrees celsius. October to December and March to April are usually pleasant. Late December, January, and February are cold and there is a threat of western disturbances that bring rain and cold damp weather. The city has two satellite townships, one in Punjab (Mohali) and the other in Haryana (Panchkula).
Chandigarh has one of the highest human development indicators in India. I enjoyed my three years in this planned city at the foothills of the Himalayas and I look forward to a visit in the future!
Dr. P Ravi Shankar is a faculty member at the IMU Centre for Education (ICE), International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He enjoys traveling and is a creative writer and photographer.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
It is the beginning of a saffron day.
She tinges her white salwar with colour.
The walls are thin and we listen,
Offered prayers to Sikh Saints,
Inside a room of crippled faith.
We wait,
We wait for the devotion to finish,
For her to step out,
To tsk at our negligence,
To sigh at us heretics…
Chiffon is what covers her head,
Falls over so elegantly onto her shoulders,
Only to be quickly put back to its position.
She bends over in much pain.
‘Nanak’ she says is the medicine --
Handing out the sacred sweet.
We roll our eyes but stretch our hands,
Whilst scuffling her salwar,
Remembering the sun of 1947
She’d narrate,
In silent murmurs and naked
Soles,
She had covered miles to feel
Uninhabited,
She remembered intervals
On makeshift mornings,
Toppling over bodies with
No sound,
On footpaths familiar she remembered
Runnels painted with blood,
Leaving behind dupattas* and flags,
Flying spirits in the sky,
She was certain she’d return,
To unlocked doors,
To obscure meanderings
To Bitter-sweet memories
Of abandoned and burnt
Homes,
Rest assured,
She never did
She found refuge in language.
*Veils or Scarves that are almost the size of stoles
This poem is about the journey made by the late Kuldeep Kaur (seated on the left). She was originally from Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan). As a child, she had to travel on foot, stepping over heaps of dead bodies from Rawalpindi to an army base camp and finally settled in New Delhi, Patel Nagar. This photograph was taken in 1993. She is seated next to her daughter, both of who also witnessed the 1984 Sikh-Hindu riots, another face of fundamentalism. Photo provided by Masha Hassan.
Masha Hassan is a PhD student at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her research entails identity constructions at the margins, the ‘liminal identities’, focusing on the South Asian diaspora. You would occasionally find her wandering in Kebab shops in Italy talking in Urdu, Hindi or Punjabi with the shop owners, listening to their journeys. Her articles have been published in The Speaking Tree, Times of India, Jamhoor Magazine, and online Italian magazines such as OgZero and connessioneprecarie. Her first poem, ‘Main, Junaid’, (dedicated to Hafiz Junaid who was lynched on a moving train on the suspicion of carrying beef) was published on the cover of a local Marathi magazine called Purogrami Jangarjana, Mumbai, India in June 2017.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Shadows, a poem in Korean, has been translated by the poet himself, Ihlwha Choi. Click hereto read.
Pranor Lifeby Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click hereto read.
Conversations
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri converses withVinta Nanda about the Shout, a documentary by Vinta Nanda that documents the position of women in Indian society against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and centuries of oppression and injustice. Click here to read.
With its four-storey outlet in GK-2, Ajay Jain has made Kunzum the new happening place for book lovers in Delhi-NCR. He converses with Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri about his journey and about making brick and mortar stores viable in the era of Amazon as the writer browses through the different sections of the bookstore.
Book event with actor, Kabir BediBook event with Booker winner, Geetanjali ShreeIn Kunzum Bookstore. Photos provided by Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri
It is a bookstore unlike any I have been to, and that’s saying a lot. I visited it first sometime in December 2022, when it was still a work in progress, and even then it was stunning enough for me to get my aged parents, who need walking sticks, and my wife, who at the time was nursing a broken ankle, to visit this as a new year outing on 1 January 2023. Since then Kunzum at M Block Market, Greater Kailash 2, New Delhi, has grown to four floors spread over 10,000 square feet. The first floor is the regular bookstore, the second the Penguin bookstore. The third the ‘Theatre Kunzum’ – a 125-seater events hall – and the fourth an eighty-seater theatre, with plans for a café. There are other Kunzum bookstores which are a more modest 2500 square feet each. The original Kunzum Travel Café is approximately 500 square feet.
I enter it and am transported to a book lover’s paradise. Its very affable owner, Ajay Jain, and brilliant curator, Subir Dey – who generates in me a huge complex with his awareness of books and a hole in my pocket with his recommendations for the same – have time and again asked me to work out of the store. Which I would have gladly done, but for the fact that, one, it is impossible to get any work done once you enter its precincts (the only work it allows is browsing its shelves), and, two, I fear that I will end up spending all my salary at the store.
What makes it remarkable is that Ajay can visualise a store chain like this in this day and age where we hear a constant refrain of brick and mortar stores closing down. Of how difficult it is to sustain one in the age of Amazon. Most of the major bookstores across the country have devoted a large part of the space to stationery and toys. Ajay is determined not to do that. As far as he is concerned, a bookstore is a bookstore. And there will be no dilution of the space. As Ajay says, “I was very clear from day one. We will not sell teddy bears, stationary, croissants (chuckles). It might be a slightly steeper learning curve, but we want to learn how to sell more books. If I’m not selling enough books, why am I in this business? I could have invested this money somewhere else. For me, it’s a social mission to push more people to read. If everyone, every human being on this planet, reads books, it would be a much better place to live in. When we read books, we also challenge rampant consumerism – we are taking the money away from buying other stuff to buy books.”
Given the quite extraordinary range of books, including rare and collectors’ editions – I picked myself a mind-blowing one on iconic book covers, The Look of the Book, by Peter Mendelsund and David Alworth – Subir Dey, the curator, is the backroom star of the show. A quiet, self-effacing book lover, Subir says, “I have been doing this for myself, at home, before Ajay started the bookshops. One day, I just picked up the phone and asked him, how can I help? Then, there is the community angle. I talk to fellow bibliophiles both online and offline who point out all the amazing editions of great books. The curation team at Kunzum is indispensable. Everyone has their favourite genre and we all diligently keep track. The classics and graphic novels are an easy target because of their popularity. Then there are collected works and anniversary/commemorative editions that we try to keep track of. Publishers help us with that too. For example, the Dune series picked up when the new movie came out. There are so many beautiful editions of the book that it is hard to choose. There are graphic adaptations of long-form novels like 1984, Animal Farm, The Kite Runner that we tracked down and have in stock. These are great books for someone who is intimidated by the traditional long-form novel format. This could be their gateway drug into reading and Kunzum would love to get them addicted. Special editions are a brilliant gifting idea. Books are the best gift you can give to people. Most of us have friends who are avid readers. These special editions are a very thoughtful gift. We tell our customers to bring a book to a party full of people who are bringing bottles of wine. We all used to give and receive books as gifts, growing up. Those books shaped our worldview. We are rolling out ads on social media to highlight the special editions available with us and pretty soon you will see more of these titles highlighted not just online but in our stores too. There is a demand for it, we have seen an uptick in the interest among buyers who are looking for specific edition of their favourite books and our team is happy to track them down.”
The Beginnings
Ajay Jain: I have a background in engineering and management, so I worked in the IT industry for five years. Then I got into sports management, and did that for five years. At the age of 31, I dropped everything and moved to the UK to study journalism. I did my master’s in journalism there. I came back in 2002, worked for the Express group, started a youth newspaper, got into blogging and freelance writing – mostly business and tech writing – which I did till about 2006–07. I was one of the earliest professional bloggers in the world. As a journalist/blogger/ influencer (the word wasn’t there at the time), and as somebody who wanted to write books, I figured I wanted to do something where I could create more of a legacy.
Early Reading
Ajay Jain: Growing up, I read the usual staple. You had your Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Famous Five. Unlike my classmates, I never read Agatha Christie or PG Wodehouse, but I had read all of James Hadley Chase by the time I was in Class 8. My headmaster used to ask me why I was borrowing these books from the library. I did so because they were there! I read a whole mixed bag of books in middle school and high school, even in college. I read Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, Ayn Rand – a mixed bag. Anything that caught my fancy.
Travel Writing
Ajay Jain: Around 2007, at a personal and professional crossroads and unable to relocate from Delhi, I said to myself, ‘Okay, let me do the next best thing,’ and I became a travel writer. I’d done a few short road trips around India, and I was really enjoying travelling. Since I’d also learnt photography, I was doing a lot of that. I thought, why not make it a profession? So I hit the road.
I didn’t want to write a Lonely Planet kind of book, and I also didn’t want it to be a literary piece. I was thinking of my own format. The first trip I actually went on was to this place called Spiti in Himachal. I spent a night in Manali, and then headed for Spiti. I crossed the Rohtang Pass. Till then, it was fine because there were other people. I’d never done that kind of terrain ever. I drove for hours in a high-altitude desert area with no road signs, no mobile signals, nothing! Just a track where you followed earlier track marks. After a while I realised I was lost!
The Defining Moment – the Birth of Kunzum
Ajay Jain: I just kept driving, not coming across another human being for hours. Imagine not seeing another human being for hours in a country like India. Suddenly I came upon a plateau, upon a sign that said ‘Kaza’, which was where I was headed! That spot, where I stood, was the most astounding place. As I looked around, the only thing I saw was snow peaks, Buddhist flags flying, complete silence. It was breath-taking. I thought to myself, if this is what the planet is, if this is what India is, I want to be a travel writer. In that moment, not only did I find my direction to Kaza, I found my direction in life as well. The spot where I stood was Kunzum-La.
After I returned, I called my blog Kunzum.com. A little accident in technology worked in my favour. I had reserved the domain called traveltattoo.com as my travel blog. For some reason, the registrar didn’t inform me that my domain was up for renewal. It got taken by someone else. In losing traveltattoo.com, I got Kunzum.com. That’s how the name Kunzum came up.
Kunzum Gallery, Hauz Khas Village
Ajay Jain: I did a few shows for my photography at places like Habitat Centre and got a decent response. I was encouraged to open a place of my own and came across a place in Hauz Khas Village. I picked it up in 2009 and opened up a gallery there. On the first day I sold a print, and then for the next year or so I didn’t sell a single thing! So, I was just sitting there with some friends, mulling over what to do, and we realised that all the people who bought my prints in Habitat just happened to be passing by. They saw the prints, they liked it, and bought it on the spot because the prints weren’t very expensive. I decided to do something there (in the gallery in Hauz Khas) that would get people in. That’s when we decided to offer seating in the gallery- let people come in, enjoy free WiFi, etc.
We set up a small library so that people could borrow books, and decided to serve up tea, coffee and cookies. We thought we could pay for all of this. When we looked at the numbers (and crunched them), we realised that if we pay for everything and a certain number of people come, and nobody pays, we will be out of pocket by so much, but will have acquired some customers for that price of coffee and cookies and all.
Funding the Enterprise
Ajay Jain: I was still freelancing, and had been investing over the years with whatever I’d saved from my various ventures. I was just getting by. We decided to rebrand the place in Hauz Khas from Kunzum Gallery to Kunzum Travel Café. The place took a life of its own. A few days after we opened, someone came in asking if we could do a poetry reading, to which I agreed. Before we knew it, we had over 200 events happening in the café every year. There were all sorts of events – book launches, film screenings, poetry events, talks, etc.
We were clear about the financials. If you benefited commercially from it, you pay us. If there was nothing commercial, if you didn’t have the budget, okay, you could use the space anyway (if the event was suitable). We kept it flexible. My main motivation was to get people in, to see my photography and my books, which were sold at the café.
Bookstore Chain in the Time of Amazon
Ajay Jain: During the pandemic, I was reassessing a lot of things. I have always believed that just because we are doing something well, we should not be doing it all our lives. With the pandemic, I had to shut Kunzum Café for over two years, making do with a skeletal staff throughout. I wrote my first novel. I kept wondering: how do I find an audience for my books? No matter how big your publishers are, or how big you are as an author, you still need to find your own readership. Then I thought, why don’t I set up a book club? A national book club, something that would have many people. The response came in quickly as well. I enrolled a couple of thousand members.
That’s when I thought, why don’t I turn Kunzum Travel Café into a chain of reading rooms? Build a model where we create reading rooms across the country, where people come and sit and read. The numbers didn’t add up though. There was no model that would make this sustainable for me. Enough people wouldn’t pay enough money to make this a library-type of model. It wouldn’t work in this climate, especially when real-estate had become so expensive. I had learnt how to build a community, how to bring people together through Kunzum Travel Café, but I didn’t know how to monetise it.
People had asked me, will there be more Kunzum Travel Cafes? Will there be a Kunzum Travel Café franchise? For me, Kunzum Travel Café was more of an exercise in personal branding. For the external investor, there would be no ROI since the only one benefiting from Kunzum Café was one Ajay Jain. In the process, I started making money doing brand endorsements through Kunzum Travel Café. It was more like a PR agency, so the only guy benefiting would have been me.
That is when I realised I should open a chain of bookshops! The model would be Kunzum Travel Café, but with a bookshop added to it. I did some back-of-the-envelope market research. There were people buying books, publishers doing business. In absolute numbers, there were more books being sold than ever before. I went to the bookshops which had good business – like Bahrisons, Faqir Chand, Midlands, etc. They had a huge legacy and were located in prime locations. I figured that I’d learnt how to make Kunzum Café in Hauz Khas a destination, and that I’d make this new venture a destination also. I didn’t really feel too daunted by this, I knew we’d figure things out as we went along. If I started asking too many questions, I would have been dissuaded immediately, so I thought that I’d figure it out on the road.
We have five locations. The GK one has four floors, so you can consider them either four stores or just one. At the core, the business model is simple – sell books, and sell enough books to make a profit. It’s still early days for us, we are on the way as we speak. I know that trends are right, and within this year we will be operationally profitable, so I’m not too worried about that.
I did a bit of reading, given that stores were closing all over the world, and the rise of Amazon. If Amazon did not exist, or if Amazon did not offer such discounts, many more bookshops would be open today. People would still prefer to walk into a bookstore for the experience of buying a book over buying it online. Because Amazon offers such discounts, most people think books are easier to buy online. I blame publishers squarely for this, not Amazon.
The Irony of Publishers Killing Bookstores
Ajay Jain: If books and readership are being challenged by other forms of entertainment, and readers are distracted, one needs to look at this as something cultural. That’s why experiences become important. Experiences are connected to physical spaces. That’s how you expand readership. Unfortunately, when I started interacting with publishers, I noticed that they show little intent to expand readership in society. They are making enough money not to think about expanding readership. It’s not enough for publishers to tell me, “Hey, I love what you’re doing at Kunzum Café.” They need to plug the discounting at Amazon, and the piracy of books. More than piracy, I think the discounting is a problem, which publishers can solve partly through lobbying, and partly through curtailing supply, if they want to. They own the product, and if they say no, that can change things.
The publishers’ argument is that they give the books to distributors to be sold, and these distributors are not within their control. The fact is, everyone is traceable. Publishers know who is selling their books, and can plug supply. If a reseller picked up a book on Amazon to resell, the publisher could tell Amazon to stop them. It could get into a cat-and-mouse game but eventually, it would dissuade them so much that the incentive to play this game would go down.
France Shows the Way
Ajay Jain: Look at what happened in France. The government in France forbade Amazon from offering discounts of more than 5 per cent on books. The French government realised bookshops were a national cultural asset. Because of this, bookshops that were struggling are now flourishing, and new bookshops are opening. This change came through legislation.
In India, if publishers want, they can move the Competition Commission, and say that discounting on Amazon is an unfair trade practice. In a country like India, where you have the MRP [Maximum Retail Price], if you can’t sell above MRP, how can you sell below MRP? Especially because all governments in India have the same stated position on FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] in retail, which is to ‘protect the small trader’. So, Competition Commission could look at how these discounting practices are putting businesses in such a precarious situation. If the publishers make enough of a song-and-dance about it, if they lobbied, if they took legal recourse, I think this issue can be resolved. We have a precedent in France now.
Financial Viability
Ajay Jain: When I was doing research, I wasn’t researching into whether I could open bookshops or not. I was researching how to make it viable. I had already decided I was going to commit to this venture. I’d started acquiring the real estate for it. I read someplace, “Bookshops don’t fail. Bookshops run by lazy booksellers fail.” In today’s day and age, not just books, you have to sell every commodity as an experience. You could be selling shirts, shoes, books, anything, because everything you want is available online. But if you want people to come to the stores, shopping malls, markets, you need to create that experience for people.
The Four Cs of Bookshop Design and Marketing
Ajay Jain: I have formulated what I call ‘The Four Cs of Bookshop Design and Marketing’. First is Configuration, which is basically the way you design the stores. If you look around, we’ve designed them in a way that the shelves don’t overwhelm you. There is enough space to move around, to sit down, to go through the books. You have browsing space and you can maintain a distance between yourself and the shelves. Not only is the vibe inviting, the design also allows you to discover books which you may not have discovered in an overstocked bookstore. The whole mood of being inside a bookstore is extremely important.
The second C is Curation. The kind of titles we select, the way we display them, and the way we help customers discover new material. Finding books customers were not looking for makes for a delightful experience. That is what will bring them back. These customers will say, “Hey, you know what? I went to Kunzum and found this great book! I loved it. It was money well-spent and time well-spent.” This is where Subir and his team come in.
The third C is Community, which we were doing at Kunzum Travel Café. We wanted to build a community of not just readers, but creators – writers, artists, designers, editors, everyone involved in creating books. Again, like Kunzum Travel Café, look at it like a larger cultural thing. So, bring in musicians, film-makers, puppeteers! We wanted to bring these people together to create a community.
The fourth C, Convene, aims to bring these people together for events. Ever since we’ve been fully operational, we’ve already hosted over 500 authors. We’re adding many more events, more programming, more partnerships, so that people can come and use our spaces. We make sure that there is enough space for people at our events, and that people don’t have to push bookshelves in order to be able to participate. We have dedicated spaces for events.
Since many people in my team come from the book retail industry, when the first store opened, the first question they asked was, “Sir, haven’t you wasted a lot of space?” The event space is going to be your brand ambassadors, your marketing agents. People will want to come for these events. We built the whole model on these four Cs. The signs are positive. People will come and talk about you, and be here, and will want to buy books from you. It’s just a matter of time before enough people will buy these books.
The Penguin Floor and Other Initiatives
The Penguin floor
Ajay Jain: In GK 2 we had just one floor, the first floor, a general bookstore, to begin with. Then an opportunity came to acquire the rest of the building above. Because the terms were attractive, I agreed. Then I thought, why not have thematic floors? One thought was that half of the second floor could be a graphic comic and art store, and the other half would be for children’s books, with the rest of the spaces above being dedicated to events. I was in the Penguin office having a general talk about multiple things. I really loved their office, so I said, “Look, it’s like a bookstore in itself.” I proposed that we should have an exclusive Penguin store. Penguin is one publisher with such range and distribution in books, no other publisher has ever come close. Their international collection is only increasing, and they have so much to offer. I don’t think the exclusive floor in our bookshop would have worked with any other publisher, just because no other publisher can offer the range Penguin has. They have graphic novels and comics – an important genre for us.
Then we got an offer from the top management, and I got excited. Like everything else in life, I ran with the idea, and decided to work out the viability later. The idea is that our bookshop showcases the best Penguin has to offer, incentivising Penguin to bring in their best in terms of their programming, their authors, and their events. It technically becomes a Penguin showcase. For us, it’s an opportunity to work closer with the world’s biggest publishing house. A few weeks ago, the UK Penguin team confirmed to me that this (the floor of the bookshop) was the only exclusive Penguin store in the world.
As part of a community, we’ve actually taken a lot of initiatives. One of them is called Book Bees, which is a book club for children, for kids up to twelve. Our children’s book section is called Kunzum Book Bees now. We also have a general book club called the Kunzum Book Club. Anyone can become a member for free. If you become a member, you get priority invites to events, we will give you first access to signed editions, which are always in limited supply; we will give you a little discount on our books, stuff like that. That’s part of the community-building exercise.
We launched the Kunzum CEO Book Club, where we’re getting corporates to come on board to encourage the culture of reading. The proposition being that all leaders are readers. If you want to nurture leadership within your organisation, you need to promote readership. We’re reaching out to them, asking them to buy books on a structured basis to distribute them amongst their employees, and maybe go even beyond that, by distributing them amongst their vendors, their customers, to spread the culture of reading.
We launched this programme called ‘Kunzum Key’ which is open to everyone, but primarily for creators of all kinds. You could be an actor, a dancer, a film-maker, a producer, an event-manager, a musician, anything! We give a free membership card that allows them to create at Kunzum – keep their own sort-of-office as long as they follow a fair-use policy. These creators can come, sit here, do their work, hold meetings, have interactions, brainstorm, showcase their work in some way. They will be offered free WiFi, which we don’t offer our regular customers. Every time these creators come they will be given a no-questions-asked complimentary cup of coffee or tea, and the bookstore will give them a very hefty 20 per cent discount on all the books they buy at the store.
Then there are the lit-fests. We are reaching out to every possible event where there are likely to be people who will buy books. We are asking them to make us their official bookstore partner.
Reaching Out to the Underprivileged
There’s a limitation to how many bookstores we can set up and how much we can do in each store. We don’t want to expand our physical spaces indiscriminately because we want to stay true to the culture we are trying to create. If we expand too much, or thin ourselves out, even if we get funding, which comes with its own pressures, we don’t want to lose our essence.
Our idea of expansion is to take Kunzum to potential readers. The corporate sector is a very obvious one. We’ve started doing small book fairs and events at different localities to promote the culture of books and reading at your doorstep. Schools and colleges are important to us. The intent is there. We’ve already reached out to a few schools, some of the DAV schools, where we did some events. There’s around a thousand schools there. Each school in the DAV chain cuts across all segments of society. We’ve also been approached by a few universities and colleges. We have a limitation of manpower. We want to make sure our manpower can pay for itself. We want to reach out to schools to, again, promote this culture of reading. If schools start buying at an institutional level from us, they can make books available for students who are not able to afford books. That’s where, again, we go back to the whole ethos of ‘Curation’ we are trying to create. Don’t just buy books that you think everyone is reading for the sake of being like everyone else. We’ll help you select books that you may not have thought of. I have been thinking of a programme where enthusiastic readers who are unable to afford books can be matched with someone who could fund their books. Of course, we will have to do it in a slightly more structured way. When I meet anyone from above a certain economic stratum, I see how privileged they are because they can afford to buy books but they are not reading books. There are people out there who want to read books…
At an LGTBQIA event that we had done, a guest who loves books said she couldn’t read anymore because of an eyesight problem. There was another young person there who wanted to read books but could not afford to buy. They just got chatting, they’d never met each other, and the former bought the book for the latter. She said, “I can’t read, but you can, so here’s the book for you.” How do we kind of institutionalise this programme? We’ll have to figure it out.
Regional Language Library
There are a couple of issues here. We will have a space constraint – where do we store it? Number two, how would we curate it? Because every language would require a different curator. In a city like Delhi, there would be enough Telugu readers, Bengali readers. But then, Bengali readers may want something other than the popular titles we might store. They might be looking for a larger collection. A lot of vernacular readers invest a lot in their respective languages. We might not be able to build depth to cater to that audience, so that’s a challenging situation to be in.
Going Ahead
We want to be present in every community – corporates, residential neighbourhoods, schools and colleges, etc. In a small way, we are sending books to rural areas too. For that to pick up pace, we need to look at it slightly differently. For now, we’re doing it in our small capacity. The whole idea is, irrespective of how many stores we have, we just want to go out there and get more people to read. Whether they borrow books and read, or buy books from Kunzum or not, let that be secondary. It falls upon every book lover to spread the good word, and encourage other people to read. Once you overcome that inertia and start reading, you stay with it.
Ajay Jain in Kunzum Bookstore
(Published in multiple sites)
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuriis a film buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer. Books commissioned and edited by him have won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema twice and the inaugural MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images) Award for Best Writing on Cinema. In 2017, he was named Editor of the Year by the apex publishing body, Publishing Next. He has contributed to a number of magazines and websites like The Daily Eye, Cinemaazi, Film Companion, The Wire, Outlook, The Taj, and others. He is the author of two books: Whims – A Book of Poems(published by Writers Workshop) and Icons from Bollywood (published by Penguin/Puffin).
The laptop glows, as Ruby gazes at the email sent by an author. Her bespectacled, middle-aged eyes are like two ignited blocks of coal, burning with irritation from the constant stare at the computer and the revelation that the message has brought.
Dear Editor Ruby,
Please reinsert the word “effigy” in the following sentence as the author himself wasn’t burnt down. Probably the word had been inadvertently missed out at the time of typesetting.
Typeset sentence: “Mr White was burnt down by a group of agitators who thought that his book dealt with controversial topics.”
Original sentence: “Mr White’s effigy was burnt down by a group of agitators who thought that his book dealt with controversial topics.”
Comparing the original manuscript with that of the copyedited version, Ruby calls Victor to her desk.
“Tell me the meaning of the word ‘effigy’?” She asks with an air of seriousness about her, adjusting her glasses which have almost reached the tip of her nose.
The frivolous young lad, in his early twenties, keeps quiet, toys with his mobile, while his eyes waver around the books, clutter of files, papers on her table. He notices the page tugged onto the clipboard in front of her table where he reads the well-known lines once again: “When I take a long time to finish, I’m slow, but when my boss takes a long time, he is thorough.”
Victor usually takes a long time to edit the manuscripts and the end result is mostly devastating, though he always makes a point to look everything up in the dictionary as well as do an online search on the internet. What he is unable to understand is that despite all his efforts, things don’t turn up the way they should have been and lead to fresh miseries. He stares at the clipboard and thinks of inserting another line there which he mumbles under his breath with a supercilious smile:“When you take a long time to discuss about something, then you are wasting your time, but when your boss takes a long time to discusses it, then it’s a serious matter that needs attention.”
He keeps his head obstinately lowered, determined that he will not look up.
Ruby squirms in her chair, observing his quivering lips. Is he muttering abuses? Or, calling her a devil (as they do behind her back)?
“Look at me, look into my eyes. Last time you’d queried an author about ellipsis points at several quoted instances in his article and asked him what he intended by that. Don’t you know what they are meant for?”
Victor winces as his face twists, struggling hard to appear unmoved. Impatiently, he wriggles his right toe on the floor as if he’ll create holes in it or trample her down.
“A copyeditor needs to be hawk-eyed. Use your damn eyes. The editing eyes reach the desired perfection based on their use and cultivation. Last time you misspelt the word ‘snacks’ in the sentence and it read: ‘Tea, coffee, and sacks served here.’ And you didn’t correct the word ‘molest’ to ‘mullet’—‘His eyes sparkled like the shiny skin of the molest.’ The words ‘soul’ and ‘peace’ were replaced by some ridiculous words in the sentence: ‘May his sole rest in piece. Can you bake a cake with flowers as was mentioned in the sentence—‘The main ingredient of the cake was flower.’”
In response to Ruby’s usual mocking harangue, he recalls a famous quote on shame and vulnerability:“Grace means that all of your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame.”
His sun sign is Cancer and he believes in the prophecies made by a Panditji every morning on a popular TV channel. Though he didn’t quite understand what Panditji’s astrological predictions for the day indicated when he watched the show early in the morning, but now it feels somewhat relevant in the present context:“Remember, the things that are occurring today are not happening ‘to’ you. You need to have a greater perspective in mind to understand that the so-called challenges you are facing at the moment aren’t what they appear to be. Turn your experience into wisdom and you’ll find the way ahead.”
That morning when he was stuck at the traffic signal, he recalled having seen a truck on which it was written “Sunil Treaders”. People often say that they write wrong spellings to attract attention, then why is it that editors are blamed for all the spelling errors that the authors make.
“When an editor makes a mistake, he is an idiot, but when an author makes a mistake, he is only human.” He utters in a low voice so that it doesn’t reach Ruby.
“Why don’t you look at me?” she yells.
Victor still keeps his eyes lowered or rather fixed on to the ground. Are those eyes loaded with tears?
Suddenly, he recalls that Panditji had mentioned something important and he totally forgot about it. He mumbles what Panditji repeated again and again today morning, “All Cancerians should be cautious about their position today. They should be standing on the left side of all their senior officials to avoid any sort of conflict.” But he is standing in front of his boss. How will he change his position now? That’s why things are not going in his favour. Absentmindedly, he moves towards the nearby wall.
Immediately, Ruby says testily, “Where are you going? Come closer.” After a brief pause, she resumes watching him through the edge of her eyes, “Look into my eyes. It’s where the truth lies.”
In an instant he is strangely reminded of the phrase that he has mostly seen painted on the rear side of trucks, lorries:“Dekho magar pyaar se.” (“Look but with love.”)
At last he raises his head, his cheeks flushed red, sweaty, tense-limbed, and says, wide-eyed, showing his tobacco-stained blackish teeth, “I’ve never looked into the eyes of my wife, how can I look into yours?”
Sreelekha Chatterjee lives in New Delhi, India. Her short stories have been published in various national, international magazines, journals, and have been included in numerous print and online anthologies.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Munni kept playing with the tap water until Malti came running into the bathroom, closed the tap, and smacked Munni on the back of her head. “As if we have a well full of water, you spoiled brat!” Malti yelled and pinched her daughter’s ear. “Now gargle your mouth and hurry up.” Munni made a little grunt and frowned at her mother. “Go and get ready,” Malti said as she wiped her thirteen-year daughter’s face with the end of her saree. Before Munni could ask why she had to be getting ready, Malti had already rushed out of their little, dilapidated, untended bathroom.
From where she stood, the little girl could see her mother straighten out one of her not-yet-tattered Kurtis and pajamas. Munni watched as Malti struggled to find a suitable dupatta to go with the outfit until she found one that had not gone colourless or wasn’t oil-stained.
“Are you going somewhere?” Munni asked as she walked near to her mother. Malti sighed and continued to straighten the kurti which would not straighten at all. “Maa, are you going somewhere?” she persisted. Her mother ignored and measured the clothes on Munni, clicking her tongue upon seeing how loose the pajama was. “Maaaa,” Munni nagged and Malti cut her off. “Not me,” she replied sternly,”you –”
“Me?” Munni interrupted, excited. “Are we going to the park? Oh – you are taking me to that town fair, aren’t you? Okay, so I will get ice cream, um… a cotton candy, and yes, a doll, and…,” she paused. “Oh, but it will cost us a lot of money, won’t it, maa? Then maybe I will just get a doll. This one is jaded anyway.”Munni coiled the one-eyed doll’s hair around her thumb.
“A doll, eh?” Malti laughed a bit then. “You are thirteen years of age now. It’s time to act like a woman, hmm?”
Munni could not understand her mother’s implication, so she just shrugged and braided one-half of her hair, while Malti did the other half. Then she took a bath, got dressed in oversized clothes without questioning why she was wearing her mother’s clothes all of a sudden instead of her frocks, and sat on her tiny, red, plastic chair.
Sitting on her red chair, Munni looked in the mirror and patted some talcum on her face, rubbed kohl under the eyes, and tied ribbons to her braids. She did not yet know where she was going or if she was really even going somewhere. Still, she had seen her mother do these things to herself every evening, when she wore her red sarees and lots of bangles to go and stand on the road outside with several other women who lived nearby, calling and talking to the men who passed by them. Along with the accessories, she also used to wear a big, wooden smile, which Munni had noticed, got bigger in front of these men. Looking at her from the window, Munni was always mesmerised by her mother’s beauty. Maybe that’s the reason a man or two was always by her side when she returned home every night.
Putting on some pink tint on her chapped lips, Munni rested her palms on her lap, looking at her mother cracking her knuckles in visible worry. Outside, the noise of a jeep was heard. She knew it was Gopal dada. But it was not the 1st of next month yet, why had he come then? “Maa, why has Gopal da…” before Munni could finish asking, Malti spoke, “Only come out when I ask you to, okay? And sit with your head down. Don’t play with your braids as you do. And hide that hideous doll you always play with. Be a woman now, will you?”And then she rushed out, wearing the same big, wooden smile.
Munni peeped through the curtain and saw her mother standing near the main gate, her hands folded in a habitual namaste, the kind she had come to know one used to beg and not to greet. Munni tried to get a glimpse of her face, but Malti’s head was covered with her saree.
“Is she ready?” Munni heard Gopal dada say. A strange feeling tugged at her wits. “Run,” a voice whispered inside her head.
Run! Run! Run!
“Munni?” Malti called for her just then. Startled for a bit, Munni went out anyway. Gopal dada was there. Also, another man. Munni did not know this other man. She looked at her mother and saw her eyes glistening. It took her a second to realise she was crying. “Maa,” Munni said faintly, tugging at Malti’s saree. Malti said nothing, just turned her head away.
Munni looked at Gopal dada. He was whispering something in the man’s ear. Then the man gave Munni a look up and down and walked inside the house as if it was his own. Malti put a hand on her grown-up daughter’s shoulder, without having the courage to meet her eyes, and pushed her gently toward their home.
Munni looked at her mother’s eyes shedding silent tears, the grip of her hand firm like a tree holding onto its dear leaves in the wild winds of autumn.“Eh, let her go already!”Gopal dada pushed Malti’s hand away, and a choked, silenced, burdened sob escaped from the mother’s lips.
Munni began to walk towards the cave of her childhood, unknowing that it would soon become the cage of her womanhood. But she did touch her braids, her face, her chest, her stomach — to lock a memory of her body as if she knew something was about to change about it. Reaching the doorstep, she consumed a huge breath, as if trying to store the old air around her in the helpless palate of her mouth. She looked back at her mother, who collapsed on the ground, wailing soundlessly. Munni felt an uncomfortable tremble in her legs, but she didn’t run. She knew she couldn’t. So, she just closed her eyes, exhaled the air she had previously stored inside her mouth, and mimicked her mother’s wooden smile. Then she walked inside.
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Shubhangi is pursuing her Master’s degree in English literature from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Passionate about reading and writing, her poems have been published in publications such as The Indian Review and The Indian Periodical
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
The atmosphere was stiflingly hot. A sense of infinite void prevailed amongst impenetrable darkness; its strange tranquillity was disturbed by a sudden intrusion of a speeding car’s headlight. I was blindfolded, struggling hard to keep my eyes open. The deafening sound of the accelerating engine kept increasing as the car drew nearer and nearer, escalating my wild heartbeat and an uninviting dread. There was no escape. I needed to react, but my limbs wouldn’t move; a sense of fatality gripped me as my reflexes resigned. An instant of acute tension and then there was quiet. I opened my eyes to the brilliance of the table lamp spreading over my desk. It was the usual vision—which kept haunting me for the past six months—all over again while at work.
I concentrated on the sheets of papers that lay before me. The edits marked on them seemed like worms wriggling about. My nerves were screaming in my head. I looked up. The chairs of the office hall were empty. It was always the same every single day. The whole day I would dig my head into work partly due to the necessity to cope with the work pressure and partly to hide my embarrassment. I only looked up when everyone left. After hours was the time for me to finish any pending work along with my search.
It all started about six months ago when the only copy of the manuscript of a book being edited by me had disappeared from my desk—lost forever and never to be found. I couldn’t forget the harsh words that my supervisor uttered for me, questioning my loyalty and emphasising on how irresponsible I’d been. The edited papers vanished a day before it had to be sent for typesetting. Being a fast-track project, the book had to be published within a month’s time. It wasn’t a feasible proposition for me to re-edit the entire book within a day’s time. To save our publishing firm’s reputation, the work was outsourced to freelance editors on urgent basis so that we could still be on track.
Who had stolen it from my table? What was the motive for the theft? During the past six months I had searched every table, every drawer, every cupboard, except the ones that were in our senior managers’ cabins on the first floor, but the manuscript was nowhere to be found. It could be possible that the culprit had removed the manuscript from office. Wearied and assailed by hopelessness of my never-ending search, I surveyed the semi-dark hall. My eyes stuck at the glow of light coming from the farthest corner. I checked my watch. It was almost 8 o’clock. Who could be there at this time? I felt my hair rise with alarm. Someone was working late or spying on me.
On reaching the end of the hall, I found a young lady with spectacles concentrating on something that was open on her computer. I felt a pang of anger, a sting of possessiveness on seeing her use my computer. But I had stopped working on it for the past six months and had no reason to entertain jealousy. After the manuscript theft, there was a significant change in my job pattern, and I had been assigned the role of quality checking instead of editing. I had myself volunteered for that, as I was losing my eyesight due to long work hours without any break in front of the computer—an unacceptable professional hazard in late-twenties.
I leaned forward, peering closely at her file that was displayed on the computer. I coughed aloud but she didn’t stir a bit, oblivious of my presence. She seemed to be unusually engrossed in chatting with a friend on a social networking site open on her system.
Perhaps she was a new employee as I hadn’t seen her before. She seemed to ignore me. Being reticent by nature, I didn’t have the courage to ask her name or to initiate a conversation. Just as I turned to go away, her mobile rang.
“I’m working late… nothing urgent, just needed to impress my boss…after all the appraisal time is drawing near…” I heard snippets of a brief conversation before she hung up.
There was some movement outside and a human shadow appeared on the frosted glass door. I quickly concealed myself behind a nearby table, as I didn’t want anybody to know that I was there. Someone moved inside. As the light from the computer lit the man, I could recognise him. It was the security guard.
“Will you be late, ma’am?”
“Ah…probably by an hour or so.”
“In that case, inform the duty officer at the watch room as I’ll be leaving now.”
“Okay.”
He sauntered away and the lady once again concentrated on the computer.
Those who worked till late hours had to enter their names in the register at the watch room outside office. I could go and check her name there. I followed the security guard outside. The night watchman was already there. While the two men were chatting, I quickly turned the pages of the register and to my utter disbelief, no name had been entered. Had the rules changed?
As I was going inside, I found the security guard loading something in his car.
“You might get caught.” I heard the night watchman say.
“Don’t worry. Nobody cares to notice what happens to an old computer.”
Bewildered at the contrast between their outward pretension of duty-bound appearance and the reality, I moved inside the office. I needed to get away from the web of bitterness and keep focused. As I approached the coffeemaker which lay at a distance, the machine started automatically all of a sudden startling me. I found a cup placed near the pipe from which coffee poured out. Suddenly the lady whom I had seen earlier came from nowhere. I heard the sound of the printer working somewhere. The lady turned towards me, shook violently with a start as she huddled together. She shot a terrifying glance at me and then averted her eyes as if I didn’t exist. Some people exhibited arrogance to an extent that was disgusting.
I walked unmindfully and reached the printer. Pages were coming out like a fountain, flying in all directions. Some of the pages fell on the floor and the rest inside the wastepaper bin that was kept beside the printer. I bent down to pick up the papers when the lady reappeared. The very thought that the lady was following me everywhere scared me. A few days ago, I heard people saying that our office was haunted, and the mysterious lady triggered my suspicion about her possible supernatural connection.
*
I strolled randomly from one desk to another. Something inside me felt strongly that the stolen manuscript was somewhere in the office, and I had to look for it. But the lady in the office was a big hindrance to my mission. I tampered with the main telephone operating box, removing all the cables. I checked the phones kept at the reception—all of them were dead. Next, I locked the hall door from outside to make sure that the lady couldn’t come out. I’d already stolen her mobile phone from her desk. Satisfied with the initial execution of my plan, I went tiptoed to the first floor.
The entire office seemed like a graveyard of computers. It felt as if I was walking on a dark, lonely road faintly lit by streetlights. Suddenly a car came from nowhere, its dazzling headlights blinding my eyesight, my ability to search. A momentary loud explosion followed by suffocating silence. I opened my eyes to the stillness of the dark office corridor where I had ventured to find a closure to my search. A strange numbness overpowered me, and I feared betraying the purpose of my visit. I had to continue with my search even if it went on forever. Although aware of the consequences if I got caught while checking the senior managers’ cabins, I couldn’t rest until and unless I figured out what was haunting me.
As I collected myself and groped my way through the impenetrable darkness of the corridor, I heard footsteps coming from behind accompanied by a faint, persistent knock on the floor, perhaps with a stick. Was it the night watchman? What if it was the CEO? I heard on innumerable occasions that the CEO visited our office late at night to work on important projects. I had hardly seen the middle-aged guy once or twice during my 6-year-long service and vaguely remembered his face. To my surprise, I found myself outside his cabin door. A faint suspicion about his involvement in the theft lurked in my mind. My body trembled with nervous agitation and the burden of wrong doings as I tried the door handle.
It opened. The large, spacious room had a single closed window with blinds raised, allowing a faint light to penetrate from outside. I switched on the lady’s mobile torch to discern my way as I progressed from one cupboard to another. A subconscious uneasiness loomed as I checked all the drawers except one which was locked. I looked for the keys and found a bunch of them in a side table drawer. In spite of all my efforts, none of them worked. Suddenly, I recalled having seen a key inside one of the drawers of the computer table placed at the centre of the room. I went back to fetch it. The drawer opened as I turned the key which fitted perfectly. A foul smell of old papers wafted in the air. I checked the papers inside but none of them were related to the manuscript.
After locking the drawer, I was about to leave, relieved of the guilt that I had wrongly accused a respectable man, when slow footsteps were audible outside the room. I hid behind the computer table and waited with bated breath. The shadow of a man fell on the floor near the open door. It seemed to be that of a tall man. My faint recollections hinted that our CEO was a tall man. Was it him? The shadow gradually became elongated and moved towards the wall indicating that he was walking away. Perhaps there were dead souls other than me looking for something or the other—our missions were different but our search had become closely intertwined. Suddenly the shadow stopped as if it had become a statue and the sound of footsteps ceased. I glanced at the glass window visible from my hiding place. The sky seemed to brighten up with a faint glow of light trickling down. My search had to be stalled, as there wasn’t much time to look into other senior managers’ cabins. I had to leave before the next security guard came in at 4 o’clock in the morning.
I heard footsteps all of a sudden and this time those were quick and faster than before. I could hardly comprehend further, as a tall fellow with scarcely perceptible features and hunched back entered hurriedly. Positioning a torch with his right hand and a file beneath his left elbow, he cautiously unlocked the same cupboard drawer which I had opened earlier. He slid a file and locked it. In the middle of the room near the computer table, he paused to respond to a phone that vibrated in his pocket. He answered it while turning his back towards the door. It was the perfect instance when I could easily slip out of the door. Endeavouring to leave, I crawled up to the door but my curiosity about the hidden object in the drawer got the better of me. I couldn’t afford to get caught, and the dull blue sky outside was brightening up bit by bit.
“Yes. I’ve removed the manuscript. Now they’ll have no other option but to give it to the freelancers.” His words drew my attention while I shifted behind the open door.
He kept quiet for a while as if listening to the person at the other end and then blurted out angrily, “Yes, yes, have faith in me.”
“Do remember my commission.” He disconnected the phone and turned towards the side where I was hiding. Heedless of the fear that paralysed my faculties, I looked up to find that he was staring at me—his eyes gleaming with unearthly lustre, focused on mine; his expression changing from triumph to that of horror. A few seconds elapsed before he stooped to pick up something from the floor.
Was there a chance of survival? Did he see me? Random thoughts kept crowding in my head. Realising the need for instant action, I attempted to plan out my next move. I wished that he left the room without seeing me. I observed him carefully as he walked towards the door. I knew that time was running out but suppressed the urge to check my watch. I took a deep breath and started counting in reverse under my breath. “Ten, nine, eight, seven…” I closed my eyes and after what seemed like a second. When I looked up, there was nobody around. Was it a dream that I was witnessing all the while? I had actually seen the man enter the room…
I walked up to the drawer where the man had concealed something. I unlocked the drawer once again but couldn’t open as it had got stuck. On pulling the drawer with all my strength, it came off, throwing me off my balance, I fell with arms flailing wildly and landed on the ground with it. As I dusted myself, I found my lost manuscript lying among the heap of papers that had fallen off the drawer. I didn’t experience any pleasure on finding my culprit at last. Nauseated by an oppressed dread mingled with disgust, I decided to quit that life and moving out.
I managed to reach the front door where I observed the CEO, the lady and the security guard talking amongst themselves.
“How come you were in office the entire night?” CEO asked the lady.
“Someone had locked me from outside. The whole evening, I experienced such weird things. My phone was stolen, and I couldn’t contact anybody outside as the landline wasn’t working.”
“Is this your mobile phone?” CEO asked while taking out something from his pocket.
“Yes! Where did you find it?”
“In my cabin… why did you go there?”
“I swear! I’ve never been to your cabin…”
The security guard interrupted with an impatient eye roll, “This place is haunted. Strange things have been happening ever since the senior editor’s accident…”
I sensed freedom as the truth finally unfolded before me. I walked past the trio while they were trying to figure out a logical explanation to what had happened with them. I knew that they wouldn’t notice me anymore, after all I didn’t belong to their world.
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Sreelekha Chatterjee lives in New Delhi. Her short stories have been published in various national, international magazines, journals, and have been included in numerous print and online anthologies.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
WHIR IN THE ORBIT
The fans' blades are still.
They sense they will swing
only when I want to warm up,
be ready to set about my day.
When still they look like Yogis,
In evanescent reverie,
unblemished lotuses in the pond,
Untroubled or undismayed by
the coagulating dust on their frame,
Any more than shrivelled leaves
Eviscerate the lotus in the pond.
Time breathes on them,
leaves no moss on their being.
The day comes alive only
when they set on their toes.
Else they are as just vivacious
as the whir in the orbit.
K.S.Subramanian, a retired Senior Asst. Editor from The Hindu, has published two volumes of poetry titled Ragpickers and Treading on Gnarled Sand through the Writers Workshop, Kolkata, India. His poem “Dreams” won the cash award in Asian Age, a daily published from New Delhi. His essays and blogs can be found under his name in http://www.boloji.com.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Painting by Abraham Rattner(1895-1978). Courtesy: Creative Commons
“HUNTERS”
On our way to the first picnic of Spring,
my daughter points her index finger to the uniformed crowd,
shouts “hunters”.
I did not teach her that.
She must have gathered some idea from the stories of those around her
and some from the pictures while ravaging through my laptop.
My daughter does not understand the news;
I think mistrust for the television was innate in her;
In that moment, I decided I’d tell her in bits and pieces truth and lived realities,
ones they ask us to keep away from the reach of younger children --
Shows with visuals of Violence flash warnings too --
Content warning: Violence. . . 16+ only.
But the world tends to ignore that our children live in the wretched embrace of shrouded stories.
So, the next time my daughter shouts “Hunters”,
I will not give in to my fears and paranoia,
And while protecting her remains my first priority, I will nod my head in affirmative- “Hunters!”
Quratulain Qureshi is a Kashmiri native, who is currently pursuing her Masters in English Literature from New Delhi. She has published poems with journals such as Livewire, Wande Magazine, Inverse Journal and more.
I AM FORGETTING YOU
I am forgetting you
Not immediately
It’s not like a quick crossing of the road
When the traffic signal is a pedestrian green
I haven’t crossed over as yet
The process has started
Perhaps the traffic is distracting me
I am driving
Without visions of you in the rear view mirror
The chances of an accident
Are visibly less
I am listening to new songs
Experimenting with form
There aren’t new scratches
On my ancient vinyl grooves
You are being erased
Like a country’s past
For a new generation
I don’t wish the forgetting
It’s happening, all the same
I am reading new History books
Day is becoming night
A little more every time
These days
I address the white flowers of the season
By their botanical name
Their blossoming no longer synonymous
With your smile
Vandana Kumar is a French teacher, recruitment consultant and poet in New Delhi, India. Her poems have been published in several national and international websites, anthologies and journals of repute.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Borderless 