Winner
of the MILKWEED AWARD
Congratulations
to Shireen Joanna for her story "Mr.
Gurupadam's Affair" (Winter 2004) which has been selected as a "Notable
Story" of 2004 in the storySouth
Million Writers Award 2005. The list of the
top ten stories
of the year will be published on March
1, 2005 at which
time public voting on the best story
will also begin.
Winter
2005
Back Issues
The
Black Tongue
Excerpt
from a Novel
By
Anjana Basu
(India)
Women
are not born witches. Life makes them turn that way. If you want the truth
of what I say, look at the facts: there are no young witches, no child
witches. All the women torn or hacked to pieces in the columns of the newspapers
are old. Some of them are not even witches at all. Perhaps just women like
me who discovered the gift of a black tongue when everything else had failed
them.
A
Family Business
By
Padma Prasad
(India/USA)
The young man--Guru--came to work
punctually on Wednesday morning and set up his drafting table, brushes
and other materials with a rhythmic but studied care. When Kim first saw
him, his shirtsleeves were tightly rolled up, his face purposeful, his
fingers already moving like precision instruments.
The
Stowaway
A
Poem
By
Amari
Hamadene
(Algeria)
Someone came here while I slept,
Entered the room, slipped into my
slumber,
Watched me sleeping, slept with
me.
His breath was my breath, his silence
my own.
Fly
the Nest
By
Nandini Seshadri
(India)
And then there his grandfather was,
rubbing oil onto his bare, spindly legs. Bhaskar came to a halt as if he'd
just been slapped.
Heat
Wave
An
Essay
By
Lila Rajiva
"Monsoons Delayed," announced the
newspapers unnecessarily, since now in the second week of June, even a
jackass would know something was wrong. In fact, the jackass tethered at
the corner of the road was rolling its limpid eyes at us as though to ask
what we had done to make the weather so insufferable.
Democracy's
9/11 in Pakistan
&
Haikus
from Borneo
By
Abbas Zaidi
In Pakistan democracy has always
been a weak institution. The role politicians have played in its poor maintenance
is certainly blameworthy, but it is the army, in collusion with the bureaucracy,
that has always ultimately undermined democratic rule.
Milne
in Toronto
From
a Journal
Your average Toronto security guard
is big, paunchy, short-haired, in his twenties or thirties, and has the
overweening impression that the whole world looks up to him or should if
it knows what's good for it.
Anando
Bhairavi
(Joy
Destroyed)
A
Poem
By
Shakti Chattopadhyay (1933-1995)
Translated
by Anjana Basu
Today, in the same room, the picture’s
tilted
Unlike that lost monsoon’s last
hours
There were rain-drenched flowers
in the garden
Morning glory showers
The
High Stool
By
Abha
Iyengar
In my village one learned the art
of keeping one's sari in place, or the men would call out, "Look at that
girl. She does not know how to conduct herself in the presence of men.
See how her
pallav is falling. Her mother needs to teach her a few
things."
Two
Reviews
By
Anjana Basu
(India)
PARADISE
AND OTHER STORIES
by Khushwant Singh
At the heart of the book is a preoccupation
with Indian hypocrisies – Singh has always maintained that as a race Indians
are sexually repressed. Sex, of the untie-the-pyjama-string-and-let’s-get-down-to-it
variety is central to every story, beginning with the Pahari miniature
on the cover.
A
WOMAN MADLY IN LOVE
by Boman Desai
Apart from Farida’s talents, Desai
describes her to us in terms of her shapely legs, her bosom and the short
skits she wears in Mumbai. Perversely, in Chicago, she drapes herself in
saris.
Back
Issues
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