1Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

2Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

short fiction essays verse reviews

Reading HourEditorial

What is this thing called love, wrote Cole Porter. Indeed various people might, at various points of time have raised the question. Some others might have asked, disappointed, ‘What? Is this thing called love?’ or puzzled, ‘What is this thing called? Love?’ Whatever form it may take, few will deny that love is as necessary to life as air. And since this issue coincides with the all too brief ‘Indian Spring’, we invited writers to submit love stories.

The popular notion of love nowadays is a precarious affair conducted via cell phones, and walls and apps and what-not… one would think love is no longer possible without technology! But there was a simplicity to the love stories of our grandparents’ time and In Those Days is one such love-at-first-sight story whose course, needless to say, did not run smooth. Partition divided our country and separated lives, but An Inconvenient Arrangement is the story of a coming together occasioned by the partition. Still Life brings out how having someone to love becomes a reason to live even in the face of overwhelming difficulties. Another story explores how Simrit deals with a secret love that starts as a flutter in the stomach, and goes on to be quite The Stomach Ache. Set in north-east India, Someone to Call Home is the story of those who wander away regularly, like migratory birds, and those who wait for them to return.

Among the essays, an Air Force Officer reminisces about a colourful journey to Namibia, a young writer is arrested by the fiery verses of 12th century mystic poet Mahadeviyakka, and a globe-trotting researcher finds his camera straying to the symbols of importance in various cultures.

Jerry Pinto, who recently won The Hindu Literary Prize for his first novel, Em and the Big Hoom, discusses the book, and much more.

Happy reading.Editors

Published, owned, and printed by Vaishali Khandekar, and printed at National Printing Press, 580, KR Garden, Koramangala, Bangalore-560095Published at 177-B Classic Orchards, Bannerghatta Rd, Bangalore-560076Editor: Vaishali KhandekarEditing Support: Arun Kumar, Manjushree Hegde

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Disclaimer: Matter published in Reading Hour magazine is the work of individual writers who guarantee it to be entirely their own, and original work. Contributions to Reading Hour are largely creative, while certain articles are the writer’s own experiences or observations. The publishers accept no liability for them. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily represent the policies or positions of the publisher. The publishers intend no factual miscommunication, disrespect to, or incitement of any individual, community or enterprise through this publication.

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Mar-Apr 2013Vol 3 Issue 260 pages

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3 Reading Hour

Fiction 3 The Stomach Ache rajani rajamani

9 Someone to Call Home jim wungramyao kasom

20 The Golden Trousseau aseem jha

25 Spitting Image shruti rao

33 In Those Days padma prasad

46 Our Love tanuj khosla

49 Still Life somnath mukherji57 An Inconvenient Arrangement anjali bhatia

Interview 28 Jerry Pinto

Essays16 Namibian Journey arjun subramaniam

39 Mystic Poet Mahadeviyakka manjushree hegde

42 Stumbling Into Iconography arul chib

Contents

Poetry 8 Two Poems niels hav

13 Invisible Woman adreyo sen

13 A Plea to Shakuntala n g satish

15 Remembering kalpana r j

24 Things Remain the Same (on Holi) abha iyengar

26 Of a Lesser Love shruti rao

45 Backward Steps mihir chitre

56 Mine tejaswini kale

56 Take My Hand snehith kumbla

First Person14 Shadows rinkoo wadhera

27 Light Stuff

47 Are you reading this?

60 Last Page

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Cover Design: Sandhya Prabhat (sandhyaprabhat.com)

Inside Cover: Pencil on paper by Prasad Natarajan, wildlife artist

Errata: [Vol 3 issue 1] The author of The Geometry of Escape was incorrectly named. the correct name is Rajani Rajamani. In The Moor’s Last Bastion, we had wrongly printed ‘That Alhambra had been the capital of a powerful moorish Caliphate’ which should have been ‘That Alhambra was the seat’.

4Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

...Squatting, she pulled out a small potli from

under her shawl, and set it down in the centre of

the chulha. In her other hand Simrit held a small

bottle of kerosene and a matchbox. She carefully

placed the two beside her, and proceeded to open the

potli.

The contents of the bag, like jewels of every size, caught

the dew and shimmered like cooling embers.

Fiction

The Stomach Acherajani rajamani

Film-maker, illustrator and lazy mum with more than a passing interest in all things food, when not in the kitchen Rajani spends her time spinning yarn in her tiny sun-fed home in Dubai.

5 Reading Hour

Poetry Excerpts

A Terrible Happinessniels hav

Loveniels hav

Invisible Womanadreyo sen

A Plea to Shakuntalan g satishTell me ShakuntalaDid you write to Anasuya and PriyamvadaOf all that happened to you?…

…I love you. And you tear out the plug.I love you. And you fling my bookat the back of my head…

…But she had never knownHow it wasTo not existTo enjoy a garishInvisibility…

… My birthday I refuse to rememberSince you can’t recall yours anymore …

Rememberingkalpana r j

…If you will come out of your den todayThen I will anoint you with colours, for it is Spring…

Things Remain the Same (On Holi)abha iyengar

Of a Lesser Loveshruti raoIf need be, if such a time arisesI have to love some otherI would wish it be of a lesser concentration–in a much more diluted form– …

Backward stepsmihir chitre

Minetejaswini kale… The lies I tell youare like bladesin my stomachcutting furiously,tirelessly …

… the first mud brownrush, thenthe crystal force of acascadea pool where we float aboverocks…

Take My Handsnehith kumbla

6Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

The unassuming romance

picked up from where

they’d left it the previous year, when Thot pulled up his truck near the old hog pen where

Wonya’s father kept the un-split oaks. There was a certain precision to his comings and

goings. He showed up in winter like a migratory bird and vanished in summer. No

one knew where he went and he didn’t keep track of his sojourns either. There were no

stories or anecdotes from his trips to bridge the chasms of life that he’d lived elsewhere.

Things remained unspoken.

jim wungramyao kasomSomeone to Call Home

fiction

7 Reading Hour

…dance this way and that to watch how my blue polka-dotted

frock flaps and twirls. My shadow does the same, only it is much

more flamboyant. At dusk, the wind finally gusts the heat away and

most of the light too – the scarecrow is reduced to a shaggy dwarf.

The frock hangs limp. The next afternoon, the wind wakes again,

and the handkerchief and the polka-dotted frock fan the breeze into

a gentle rolling wave of pure joy…

First person

Shadowsrinkoo wadhera

Rinkoo has been a freelance writer, painter and teacher-lecturer for over a decade. At present, she is posted at Secunderabad.

…I chose Namibia

for its diversity –

game parks, seal

colonies, whale

sightings and the

splendidly stark

Namib Desert with

its towering sand

dunes, all within a

radius of 400 kms.

from the capital, Windhoek. With good roads and tourist infrastructure, Namibia

makes an exceptional tourist destination for the discerning traveller.

On a cold June morning (after all, it is the southern hemisphere), I bundled my family

into the SUV and set off on the long road from Lusaka, capital of Zambia…

8 Reading Hour

arjun subramaniamNamibian Journey

Essay

Arjun is a senior officer in the Indian Air Force. He is a fighter pilot and a Ph.D., who has written extensively in national newspapers and magazines.

9 Reading Hour

There was a pattern to his visits. He never came

unannounced.

A pall would settle over our house the day the postman

slipped in the letter heralding Sunil babu’s visit, through the

front door. Father would meticulously scan the envelope to

ascertain the sender’s name. If the letter bore the name of Sunil

babu, he would look at it

again, circumspectly. He

would adjust his spectacles,

and then hand the letter over

to Didi2, in some mysterious

apprehension.

Fiction

The Golden Trousseauaseem jha

Aseem is a free lance writer and translator (English/Hindi) who writes on literary and career issues. Short fiction is a favourite genre. He has been published in frontline national dailies.

10Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

… Even during the happiest phases of his life, Bhargava wasn’t

exactly happy. He was the sort of man who put everything

into seeing each day through, as it came, leaving little time

to contemplate things like happiness. Indifferent to expressive

family members, a silent, kind, but formidable man to reckon

with, he was what others would rather generously call ‘noble’.

Everything he did was painted in a top coat of Honorable

Intentions …

Fiction

Spitting Imageshruti rao

A 24-year-old literature postgraduate from JNU, Shruti works as an editor in book publishing. A poet and reviewer, she has been published in various international and national literary journals.

11 Reading Hour

interview: jerry pintoJerry Pinto lives and works in Mumbai. He has been a mathematics

tutor, school librarian, journalist and columnist. He is associated now with MelJol, an NGO that works in the area of child rights. His

published works include a book of poems, Asylum, and Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, which won the National Award for the Best

Book on Cinema in 2007. His first novel Em and the big Hoom (2012) recently won The Hindu Literary Prize.

Reading Hour interviews Jerry Pinto on his writing, and much more.

RH: In a recent book (Why We Write) several leading American authors share their motivations to write. Why do you write?JP: I write because I like to. I write because I

want to. I write because I have to. I write because that’s what I know to do. I write because I have opinions and ideas and I want to broadcast them to as many people as I can. I write because, I suppose, I have been encouraged to by my first agent, Rashmi Palkhivala; by my first newspaper editor, Hutokshi Doctor; by my first publisher Ravi Singh.

So would I still be writing if, like Emily Dickinson, I had met with almost nothing but

rejection? I don’t know. I like to think so, but I can’t be sure. Therefore, all my first reasons may simply be the exudates of a successful writing career. They may not represent the motivations of someone who has had only rejections and a growing pile of unpublished manuscripts.

This makes me wonder. All those authors in Why We Write… those would have been big names, published authors, I suppose. Did anyone think to ask the unpublished writer: so what keeps you at it? The answer there would, I suspect be a lot more interesting, a lot more anguished.…

Phot

ogra

ph co

urtes

y Anm

ol Ve

llani

12Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

It was a warm, late March evening. The Neem

tree in front of the house was ready to flower, its

branches elegant with little clumps of white. Down

in the street, a woman was selling flowers, her

voice carrying on the breeze and blending with

the children’s voices as they played with marbles

and stones. I bent over the parapet wall to see if

the flowers were good. Ethi, our rickshaw-man was

pulling his rickshaw which was piled with three

suitcases. A man walked behind him with one hand

on the back of the rickshaw. I could not see his face clearly. His hair was black and

shined down, with the wind making a curl on his forehead. He was tall, and wore

a full sleeved white shirt and elegant loose flowing trousers. That was the style in

those days. I felt awkward, staring at a man like that, but still I leaned forward. If

only I could see his face properly.

“Bend any further and you are going to land in

the street,” Bama commented.

Fiction

In Those Dayspadma prasad

Padma is a writer and painter. She lives in Northern Virginia and is working on a collection of short stories.

13Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

I lie awake in the small, thin-lit hours of the morning

absorbed in the poetry of the 12th century Veerashaivas.

From nowhere, a line of Dorianne Laux’s Mugged by Poetry

comes to me. “…(When I read a poem) I end up like I always

do, flat on my back like a drunk in the grass, loving the

world…” Sigh. What would Laux say if she chanced upon the

couplets of these poet-saints? Or, in particular, the vachanas

of Mahadeviyakka?

essay

Mystic Poet Mahadeviyakkamanjushree hegde

Manjushree reads a lot, and firmly believes in the transformative, explanatory and healing power of a good story.

14 Reading Hour

photo-essay

Stumbling Into Iconographyarul chib

Being a communication scholar by training, and a researcher in developing countries

by choice, I’ve had the opportunity to travel deeply, immersing myself into community life across the planet. Different lives being played out in communities remain a constant source of fascination, but my camera finds itself straying to the symbols these communities create to make sense of their worlds…

The Boddhisatva, ensconced in the infinity of the hills lining Borobodur, Indonesia, gazes out over the expanse of humanity toiling in yonder fields.

A multitude of rock faces of Lokeswara reach out to the heavens at the Bayon

Temple, Angkor, Cambodia.

Arul is a professor at Nanyang Technological University, lucky enough to have found coinciding trajectories in work and play.

Photographs: Copyright Arul Chib

15Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

Poet Francois Rabelais’ last words were, “I go to seek a Great Perhaps”. The idea of a ‘Great Perhaps’ forms an important theme in John Green’s debut novel, Looking for Alaska, a splendid coming-of-age tale.

Reviewed by Manjushree Hegde

review

Are you reading this?

In his wonderful book, The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman introduces us to five distinct ways in which love is spoken and heard within a marriage. He calls these the five love languages and divides them into Acts of Service, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Quality Time and Physical Touch.

Reviewed by Ritu Kaushal

16Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

Buri had nothing – no family,

no address, hardly any

possessions and not even a name.

People called her Buri, or old woman.

She had her man Buro. Both of them

had practically forgotten each other’s

original names. Nobody had called

them by name in decades.

Buro and Buri had been living

in the heart of the metropolis for

the last three decades. They had

witnessed the growing traffic, the rising prices, and the increasing crowds of people.

High-rise buildings had shot up like coconut trees on fertilisers, except that they never

dropped their ripened fruits for Buri to gather.

Fiction

Still Lifesomnath mukherji

Somnath Mukherji is a social activist who writes about the lives of the underprivileged in India and other social issues.

17Mar-Apr 2013 Vol 3 Issue 2

…

On that sultry summer afternoon, someone came running to say that

Santo and Khurram had been seen flying at each other by the village

well. Slaps and scratches, and abuses in Pashto and Punjabi had flown

freely. This was shocking enough, but the reason behind it was even more

astonishing.

“You refused to marry him?” I demanded that evening, following a

sullen Santo as she went outside to milk the cows.

Who can blame me? Even her parents couldn’t figure out whether to

be dismayed or relieved. Her mother raved, “As if disgracing herself for

four years with that meat-eater wasn’t bad enough, she had to show the

whole village what a wild-cat she is! Do you” – turning to Santo’s father –

“expect any boy from our caste to marry her now?” …

Fiction

An Inconvenient Arrangementanjali bhatia

Anjali, a freelance writer, is a Lecturer by profession. Her articles on the arts, culture and environmental issues have been published in newspapers, and her debut novel is set for publication this year.

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