A P R I L 2 5 T H , F R I D A Y , 2 0 1 4 V O L U M E 1 , I S S U E 3

TODAY’S INKER

Club Ink presents yet

another phenomenal

inker for April 25, 2014 a t Swami

Vivekananda Library,

Bhopal from 5pm IST.

Join Club Ink for ‘Spin

A Yarn’- a unique

story weaving session

as each Club Inker

binds the threads to

create a masterpiece.

I N K L E T T E ’ S

special issue on

THE BARD OF

AVON– William

Shakespeare

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Page 2

On Shakespeare (1630) by John Milton

A Silly Poem by Spike Milligan

Editor’s Bottle Of Ink

Page 3

NY Times Bestsellers– April 20, 2014

The Late Mr. Shakespeare: An Excerpt

Page 4

Photograph by Claire Mason

If World Was A Stage by Noorjahan Khan

Page 5

Survivor by Vijay Seshadri

Remembering Gabo (1927-2014)

Page 6

Photograph by Jyothi Vallurupalli

Submission Guidelines

Club Ink organized its

stimulating event con-

sisting of POETAIN-

MENT, an ORIEN-

TATION CUM AC-

TIVITY SESSION

ON HAIKU and an

INKERS’ DISCUS-

SION ON TEARING

T H E

BIND:CENSORSHIP

IN THE LITERARY

WORLD on April 6,

Sunday, 2014 at

Swami Vivekananda

Library. A heartfelt

thanks to all the Club Inkers who attended.

Club Ink also launched

the second issue of its

i n t e r n a t i on a l e -

newsletter– Inklette.

June 2012- The sun had soaked me in its fe-ver. My skin had crisped and crumbled be-

neath my netted stockings. On that sweltering

day in Stratford-Upon-Avon, I walked under-

neath thatched roofs and wooden floor-boards clamoring under my flats. All the

while, I successfully guised myself as a pil-

grim treating Bill’s birthplace as if it con-tained all the sacrosanct elements of the

world within its contours. Yes, Bill was a

demigod.

William Shakespeare is regarded to be the

greatest playwright in English Literature.

And I do not find myself in that divine dis-position to refute that claim or deny it, in the

least.

Shakespeare’s elevation to immortality may

be justified by stating the undeniable univer-

sality of his themes that has ensured his place in the literary pantheon throughout the rav-

ages of time.

However, the mystery that lingers over Shakespeare concerning his life and work

make studies and analysis of Shakespearean

texts all the more beckoning.

I would remark, however, that Shakespeare

drove literature into a different dimension.

One can verily justify that Shakespeare was the first to provide enough power to the

‘classic’ that it beat the arenas of the

‘classical’- which was the cardinal pillar in the very manifestation of the ‘classic’ itself.

To turn the father into an adjective associated

with his offspring, is indeed, a herculean task to perform. William did succeed and pro-

vided enough aspiration for generations to

come.

WS, in my opinion, did have a penchant for

making the stage experience truly memorable

underneath those boastful, emotional words.

I am a bardolator to the core. I think Shake-speare is the master, he’s the one who has

determined the masking and unmasking of

literature in a raw finesse that extends be-

yond the continents of our race’s erstwhile thoughts and the many more that are to blos-

som.

On that midsummer night’s dream, Bill

penned that billet-doux shining like the luster

in his eyes that brought me back to that land of reverie and admiration for him. He was

the one and only. He was the Romeo sitting

beside his chimney and sipping his holy ale,

talking in the saccharine tones that embraced my soul and the darkness within. Those ver-

bal duties he did fulfill and on the Twelfth

night that brought the end to this winter’s tale, Bill arose once again.

Devanshi Khetarpal

Why do I love thee?

INKLETTE The Club Inkers’ Newsletter

P A G E 2

I N K L E T T E

On Shakespeare (1630) by John Milton

What needs my Shakespear for his honour’d bones,

The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst to th’ shame of slow endeavouring art,

Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu’d book,

Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,

Then thou, our fancy of it self bereaving,

Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving;

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,

That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.

John Milton (1608-1674) is one of

the greatest poets in English Lit-

erature. He is best known for his

epic Paradise Lost.

A Silly Poem

by Spike Milligan Said Hamlet to Ophelia,

“I’ll draw a sketch of thee,

What kind of pencil shall I use?

2B or not 2B?”

Editor’s Bottle Of Ink Dear Club Inkers,

Welcome to the pages of the third issue of Inklette– Club Ink’s official

newsletter. This is Inklette’s special issue in order to honour the Bard Of Avon –William Shakespeare on the occasion of his 450th birth an-

niversary.

The world’s perception of Shakespeare’s life and work have changed over the years. His enduring works and their doubtless universality

coupled with the implications, complications, interpretations and the

several aspects conjoined to them have enthralled readers for ages.

Club Ink takes this opportunity to organise a newly conceptualised

story and innovative story weaving session called ‘Spin A Yarn’ on April 25, 2014 at Swami Vivekananda Library and launch the much

awaited special issue of Inklette for all the bardolators waiting out

there. Special thanks to our immensely talented contributors– Noorja-

han Khan, Claire Mason and Jyothi Vallurupalli.

Enjoy reading!

Devanshi Khetarpal

Editor-Ink-Chief

Inklette

P A G E 3 V O L U M E 1 , I S S U E 3

Best Sellers @ NY Times: April 20, 2014

Paperback Fiction Mass-Market

Never Go Back by Lee Child (Dell.)

Starting Now by Debbie Macomber

(Ballantine)

Daddy’s Gone A Hunting by Mary Higgins

Clark (Pocket Books)

A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

(Bantam)

Alex, Cross, Run by James Patterson

(Vision)

Paperback Non-fiction

Heaven Is For Real by Todd Burpo with

Lynn Vincent (Thomas Nelson)

Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and Pat-

rick Robinson (Back Bay/Little, Brown)

Proof Of Heaven by Eben Alexander (Simon

& Schuster)

The Monument’s Men by Robert M. Edsel

with Bret Witter (Little, Brown)

Brain On Fire by Susannah Cahalan (Simon

& Schuster)

The Late Mr. Shakespeare by Robert Nye An Excerpt

There are those who say that William Shakespeare never sold fireworks, and so he was never in Warwick Jail with a phantom flute. Mr. John Aubrey, for instance, will have it that when Shake-

speare was a boy he exercised his father’s trade of butcher, but that when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style and make a speech. Now, there is some truth in this, but like all the things that Mr. Aubrey tells his friends it is spoilt by carelessness, as well as by a complete failure to give any tangible examples in proof of what he says. It could not have been for his father, in fact that young William

ever worked as a butcher’s apprentice. By the time that he had to leave the grammar school to earn his living, his father’s butchery business was forspent. It was probably to his neighbour, Thomas Giles, established as a butcher in Sheep Street, or perhaps to Ralph Cowdrey similarly established in Bridge Street, that jolly Jack Shakespeare offered his son’s services. The families of Giles, Cowdrey, and Shake-speare were already linked by the skin and leather trade. And

when Jack stopped butchering he didn’t stop drinking with other butchers. So when William came back from Warwick and returned home like a prodigal son, it was a neighbour’s fatted calf that he had to kill. And it would have been either in Giles’s butcher shop, or (at a pinch) Cowdrey’s, that he made that high style speech still remembered in Stratford. But what was that speech?

You might well ask, sir. What did Shakespeare actually say? That, my dear madam, is a very good question. Mr. Aubrey does not tell us. Mr Aubrey may not know, indeed. But Mr Robert Reynolds does. Here then, gentle reader, from Pickleherring’s 43rd box, care-fully copied down nearly half a century ago after Mr. Shake-speare’s funeral from the tear-oiled lips of a fellow mourner

(Lucy Hornby, widow of the blacksmith Richard Hornby) is the speech that Shakespeare made when he killed a calf.

The bard’s famous calf-killing speech, never before published. Mrs. Hornby told me she heard it twice. She had never been able to forget the boy William standing there in the sawdust, cleaver in hand, eyes rolling, apron cross-hatched and boltered

with blood, nor the words that came pouring forth in a red tor-rent as she waited with some impatience for her joint. This is what Shakespeare said: I am the butcher takes away the calf And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays And bears it to bloody slaughter-house. Hark how this dam runs lowing up and down,

Looking the way her harmless young one went! She can do not but wail her darling’s loss… I am the butcher, &. etc., &. etc, &. etc. That is, Old Mrs. Hornby claimed that Shakespeare repeated what he had said. He would say the lines over and over, she insisted, rather than get on with the job in hand and actually cut up the calf.

(I must say that I doubt this repetition. Mr. Shakespeare in my experience never repeated himself. More likely that my infor-mant was disguising her own failure to remember more.) Some of the other customers, the widow Hornby told me, made complaints to the management. They appreciated neither the tenderness of the sentiments expressed in the verse nor the toughness of the steaks carved out by Shakespeare. The way in which the apprentice reminded his audience just

what the meat on the end of their forks really is cannot have been much good for business either. But I think it took more than a few dissatisfied customers to put an end to William Shakespeare’s too brilliant career as a butcher, and to drive him forth again from the bounds of Stratford. It took, my dears, a death, and a birth, and an earthquake.

Robert Nye was born in London in 1939. He currently

resides near Cork, in Ireland. His works include Fal-

staff, Mrs Shakespeare, The Memoirs of Lord Byron

and Merlin.

P A G E 4

I N K L E T T E

PHOTO BY: Claire

Mason

Claire Mason is a talented

photographer from Las Vegas. She is an attendee

of the Oxford Prep Ex-

perience at Corpus Christi

College, University of

Oxford where she majored

in Photography. Her work

encompasses a depth of

emotion and her photo-

graphs are enchanting

and their quality is nonpa-

reil.

If World Was A Stage by Noorjahan Khan

World’s stage

One like thou, Shakespeare

Told stories

For ages thou write

Plays, poems, ballads,

And winding tales

Thou art not keen

Plotting scenes, characters;

As narrating life

For if Shakespeare

Says it all ‘er again

It wouldn’t be same

Tempest might be

Holding more blow this time

To wreck it all up

Julius has more

Valour or gallantry

Or Brutus more brute

Time has long held

Glorious theatre

To refine drama.

POEM BY: Noorjahan

Khan

Noorjahan Khan is a very

esteemed member of Club Ink. Her interdisciplinary

knowledge and multi-

faceted personality has

allowed her to explore the

arenas of psychology,

science, poetry, multime-

dia and much more.

P A G E 5 V O L U M E 1 , I S S U E 3

Survivor by Vijay Seshadri

We hold it against you that you survived.

People better than you are dead,

but you still punch the clock.

Your body has wizened but has not bled

its substance out on the killing floor

or flatlined in intensive care

or vanished after school

or stepped off the ledge in despair.

Of all those you started with,

only you are still around;

only you have not been listed with

the defeated and the drowned.

So how could you ever win our respect?--

you, who had the sense to duck,

you, with your strength almost intact

Remembering Gabo (1927-2014)

I remember stumbling down an archaic staircase, squirm-ing my eyes along the tender curves of subtle and arcane

phrases. I couldn’t stop reading those pages over and

over again. The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

– I kept reading that short story until midnight drew close onto the hori-

zon. The next day, I rushed to the

bookstore and bought Love In The

Time Of Cholera. The more I read Gabo, the more he enchanted me.

His magical realism pierced through

my heart, making it burst into a mil-

lion shards like the stars that hover overhead.

There was no lexical magnificence,

no high and mighty words etched to

his prose. There was a humility, a talent and a will. One Hundred Years of Solitude and The General In His Laby-

rinth are still conspicuous among the mammoth book-

shelf, full of books that I have hoarded all these years.

I recall slipping into numbness among a debris of artistic maturity that upheld Gabo’s works and enriched

them, making them sumptuous to read all the while. His unobscured brilliance radiated beyond the realms of cul-

ture and this terra firma and the unseen as well. What

Gabo has taught me as a writer, is to weave a story that is

entirely my own no matter how much I may have to find it

amongst the devastations of a

storm or a jejune debris.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was one of the most deserving Nobel lau-

reates of all time. He is one of

those writers that seem to narrate

stories that connect to you emo-tionally in such brilliance, that

you can not help but slip into

them and make your creation out

of it. Some writers awaken lost cultures and histories and Gabo has done the same. Not only did he show the world

the lesser-seen face of Latin American literature but glo-

rified it in a way that was succinct, independent and abo-

riginal. RIP Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

DEVANSHI KHETARPAL

Vijay Seshadri (1954– ) is an In-

dian born poet who recently won

the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

for his collection 3 Sections

(Graywolf Press).

P A G E 6

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Thank you for showing interest in Inklette. We are currently publishing short stories, poems, essays, book reviews

and art work, which includes photographs or paintings. Inklette intends to publish the best examples of art and writing

from established and emerging artists from all over.

Each piece should be single spaced and typed in Times New Roman Font 10 on either side of the page. Please include your piece and a short bio (about 50 words) separately as .doc attachments to club.ink13@gmail.com. Photos and

artwork should be scanned and sent as .jpg or .gif file to club.ink13@gmail.com The subject of the email should be:

First name_Last Name_Type of Submission (For eg: Casey_McCormick_Poetry). Simultaneous submissions are dis-

couraged. Please send us your submission in any one category. Do not send us more than 5 poems, 5 photographs or 5

paintings or 2 short prose pieces at a time. Multiple submissions are not accepted.

Inklette accepts submissions on a rolling basis, i.e. all year round. However, we do keep fixed deadlines for each is-

sue. Submissions received after the deadline of a particular issue will be considered for the next issue. We would re-

quest you to go through our previous issues to get acquainted with the quality of work that we seek. We have no defi-

nite time period for sending a response to your submission. However, you may send us an email regarding the status

of your submission after the termination of a month.

Inklette is an e-newsletter which has an extensive circulation through Club Ink’s facebook group as well as through

www.issuu.com. For more information, feel free to contact us at club.ink13@gmail.com. We look forward to reading

your work!

Devanshi Khetarpal

Editor-In-Chief

Inklette

I N K L E T T E

PHOTO BY: Jyothi

Vallurupalli

Jyothi Vallurupalli is a high

school senior from Hydera-bad, India. She will be

studying at The Wharton

School, University of Penn-

sylvania starting this fall.

She is an amateur photog-

rapher with a penchant for

light painting and motion

blur techniques. This photo-

graph portrays a glimpse of

her wanderlust.