Short Story 2011 Second Prize, Purnendu Chatterjee

The Picture

Reba, Ambarish Sengupta’s wife, passed away in the evening. Forty years of conjugal life, brought to a sudden end. And yet, Ambarish did not feel sad. He was simply surprised by the suddenness of the occurrence. Ambarish’s surprise was accompanied by a feeling of unfulfilled anticipation, for he had felt he was sicklier than his wife, having developed numerous ailments after his retirement. Therefore, it was only natural that she would out live him In fact, only nine months ago, after returning home from the hospital, he had handed her all the insurance policies and the several securities. He took pains, to write in a notebook, the procedures to claim the money after his death. He had felt satisfied that he had done his duty. 

But, that was it. Returning home from the evening walk, he found the door of his room unlocked. He felt irritated and thought of rebuking her for her callousness. As he stepped in, he saw her lying on the cot, her face as pale as the moonlight that was coming down like a pall from above and covering the yellow-coloured, one-storeyed house that he had built with loans from the Government. He called her twice, ‘Reba! Reba’. She did not respond. He felt her left cheek with the back of his palm. He shrank at the touch. It was unnaturally cold. Her mouth was dribbling. He cleaned it with his handkerchief. He did not exactly remember how long ago he had touched her cheeks, her lips. Looking round the room, he saw the empty frying pan on the unlighted stove. The picture of Ganesha that she had cut from a calendar, years ago, was still firmly stuck on the wall. 

The first death in his home and it appeared to Ambarish to be unnatural, mysterious. He had left her alright and returned to find her turned to a corpse. It seemed strange to him that he was now sharing the room with a dead body. Or was it the dead body that was sharing the room with him? He tried to get hold of himself, control his thoughts. There was no point in losing himself for someone whom he had never loved. Her only noteworthy contribution to his life was that she had borne him a son. That was the only time Ambarish had felt grateful to his wife.

His son — that was how he thought of him — was his gateway to renown. It was through his son that he came in contact with a world that was glorious and golden, a world that was physically beyond his reach. The son’s career, from his early days at school to his journey across the ocean, was one streak of glory. And this petty clerk of a small Government office became known as the father who had begot such a genius. That was how he left his mark on the world, he thought. While he had lain on the hospital bed thinking he would die, he felt satisfied with the thought that if, after his death, God asked him about his contribution to the world, he would put his hand into his heart and proudly bring out his son’s picture.   

That was Ambarish’s favourite diversion. Whenever he felt depressed and frustrated, whenever his little world did not revolve to his favour, he would put his hand into his heart, bring out the son’s picture, look at it and all his frustrations and sadness would vanish. When he was rebuked by his boss for arriving late at the office and Ambarish wanted to twist his neck, he would put his hand into his heart, instead, and bring out the picture. The shower of scolding would fall upon him without making the least impression, for he was covered by the coat of invulnerable happiness that the picture provided. He would repeat the same actions when Reba brought him a steaming piece of fried fish as he hurriedly ate his meal before leaving for office. 

It was quite another matter that he had not seen his son for the last five years and not even heard his voice for the past eighteen months. Eighteen months ago he had informed his father that he would be changing his phone number. Since then he had never contacted him. Not that it was impossible for Ambarish to trace his famous son. A bleeding vein in his heart stopped Ambarish from making the effort. 

Yet he knew that the picture was in his heart, ready for use, though he had not used it since returning from the hospital nine months ago. The picture had not changed with time, he thought. It had always remained the same, the picture of his son lying on the cradle, greeting him with his toothless, innocent smile.

Now, standing in front of Reba’s corpse, Ambarish felt a desire to put his hand into his heart. But before his fingers touched the picture, he thought that he would first attend the dead. He telephoned the doctor for the formalities and informed his neighbours. Time passed in a whirl. Wreaths, garlands, boxes of perfumes, incense sticks materialized out of nowhere. Ambarish sat on a chair in a corner of the room thinking, as he had never done before, about this illiterate cook who had passed forty years with him like a shadow, unobtrusively present.

Various incidents moved across his mind at random: her shyness on the wedding night, her fear during a solar eclipse, her foolish anxiety when the doctor said that his blood pressure was on the rise. He smiled to himself as he remembered how she brought sacred flowers from the temple last week, deeply believing that those flowers would cure him of his joint pains. And then he remembered those days when she was with child. 

It was the custom that during the birth of the first child, a woman would go and live with her parents. But, he had not allowed Reba to do so. Instead, he had brought her mother to stay with her. He wanted to bask in the pleasure of fatherhood, while at the same time perform his duty to his wife. However, God knew that had a son not been born, or had the foetus met with some tragedies before its passage to the world, his sense of duty towards his wife would have been seriously tested. He had never thought of a second issue. He could not think of gambling with fate. A daughter after a son was unthinkable, a son after a daughter was always redeeming. 

Big with child she moved about noiselessly, as patient as a cow. She still brought his morning tea and arranged the clothes that he would wear for office. Ambarish saw to it, as far as he could, that his wife was comfortable. He did not keep any domestic help, because he expected the two women in the house to fend for the three of them. And then the son was born. He clearly remembered the first time he saw his son, covered in a pink towel in the nurse’s arms. 

His son. Sitting on the chair, he put his hand into his heart, but could not touch the picture. He pushed his hand deeper, but the honk of a horn made him take out his hand and walk to the door. The glass covered vehicle that would carry Reba in her last journey had arrived. He walked to it and looked inside. A cool blast of air greeted his face. The car was air-conditioned. He could hardly hide a smile thinking how nervously she had behaved when he had taken her to an air-conditioned theatre-hall, a few weeks after their marriage. Having stayed at a remote village all her life before she was married, an air-condition machine was, obviously, enough to take her by surprise. Ambarish tried to remember how long ago they had watched a movie together, only she and he. 

Five years ago that evening, when his son rang up to inform about scaling another peak of success, he had expressed his desire to celebrate the news with his wife. He planned to take her to dinner and later watch a movie together. Reba had rejected the offer outright. She had suggested that old men did not need to dance to the tune of their children; they must take care of their own health. 

A neighbour called him from inside the house. He walked in and saw in amazement how beautiful Reba was looking. She was draped in a new off-white, red-bordered saree, her forehead painted with vermillion. She had never appeared so beautiful. Ambarish sat on the chair. Was it for her that his son is so handsome? He had never thought like this before. He is her son too. Of course, she never gloated over his son’s success. She never revealed that she was proud of him. As far as his son was concerned, to her he was simply like any other child. Poor women, he thought, she had never understood that his son was extraordinary.

The moon was standing on the street when they carried her into the car. She was laid on the long seat and Ambarish along with two other younger neighbours sat opposite her. Ambarish asked the driver to switch off the air-condition machine. The two neighbours were surprised at his decision, for they felt that the closed car would become too stuffy if the machine was turned off. However, they said nothing. They thought that old uncle was finding himself uncomfortable with the machine turned on. Little did they understand that Ambarish was trying to make his wife comfortable in this last journey that she was taking with him.    

At the cemetery, it was all over in less than three hours. While Ambarish and his neighbours returned, he could instinctively feel that they were waxing inquisitive about his son. How could these people, he thought, understand what his son was doing? How could he make them understand that his son has very time for terrestrial matters, he was busy searching life in outer space. However, none of his neighbours asked him if he had informed his son. It was not that they were generously losing a chance of juicy gossip; such a question had never occurred to them.

It was late in the night that Ambarish entered the empty house. He sat on the cot on which Reba had breathed her last. A terrible feeling of discomfort gripped him. The loneliness around was choking his breath, almost strangling him. Desperate situations entail desperate measures. Ambarish put his hand into his heart. His fingers touched nothing. He pushed his hand deeper, but still could not touch the picture. Nine months of disuse, he thought, had sent the picture in some untouched niche of his heart. He pushed his hand further and as the fingers touched the bottom of his heart, he found the picture. He brought out his hand, firmly holding the picture. 

He looked at the picture and immediately felt relieved. He was not lonely, anymore. He stood up and went to the cupboard. After eating a few biscuits, he took the prescribed medicine that he had been taking for the last nine months and went to bed. He was holding Reba’s picture in his hand. Before he fell asleep, he carefully put the picture back into his heart. 

Short Story 2011 First Prize, Rajat Chaudhuri

The Longest Night

It was still early evening when I had sat down to write. The sun had just set, and the gas-lights on the street below had been lit by the lamplighter. The glow from their orange flames caught on the metal-bodywork of a landau, as it rolled past our house. I could hear the carriage for a while – the clip-clop of the horses on the cobbled street and the rattle of its wheels – till it took the turn near the Army and Navy store. Then it was quiet again.

The story was about a young girl travelling with her blind mother in a city. It was a big city, and there were soldiers in the city. Hundreds of them. They were in Brodie helmets or peaked caps and they rode handsome horses. Some of them would be in uniform; riding wide carriages. There was a war in the east and everyday new faces would be seen on the streets, in the bars and the theatres. 

The story was revealing itself, and I had to take little care of it. Near the beginning; when the girl –  her name was Carol  –  had taken her mother’s hand and walked into the shop to meet the seamstress, I had been distracted by my mother.

She was in the next room labouring away at the sewing machine. I hated this. Her eyes were bad, and I had told her she need not trouble herself making all those dresses for the rich. I knew she enjoyed it and that there were stiff-necked ladies with houses around the park, who drooled over her designs. What I didn't say was that the noise of the Singer machine was spoiling my story.

She was a dear old woman just like Carol’s mother in the story. Father had been in the army and didn’t return from the war. So it was with Carol and her mother but in a different sort of way. Carol was much younger to me; she was only fifteen. My mother turned sixty this April.
           
Carol had arrived with her mother in this eastern city looking for an uncle who, someone had told them, was a businessman. That was why they were there right in the middle of the war. Their home, back in the garrison town, had been flattened by a squadron of Nakajima bombers that haunted the skies of the east.

I was not sure what sort of business her uncle was in, when the war reached this country, but soon I discovered. He had been fleecing the soldiers of their pay. He had bet on the fighting man’s thirst for fun, and had leased all the theatre halls in town – where his raunchy shows ran to full houses. Then he had graduated to the striptease and peep boxes.  

Mother and daughter were in trouble. Carol's uncle was not the kind of person they had expected him to be. He was sneaky and wicked, but he was their only hope. The money was running out, and the lodging house would not give them any more credit. 

I couldn't yet see what was going to happen to them. Then the seamstress, who lived next door to the lodging house, took kindly to the poor lady and the girl – sweet as honey, with her ponytail and stars in her eyes. She gave them tea and cakes and wondered what she could do to help them. They hadn’t told her about the uncle yet.

I wrote with my head low over my desk, and the hiss of the pen filled the room. Far away, beyond a yawning chasm, the Singer machine was clattering away. My back was bent double, my legs in the maw of some hungry beast. I laboured; slowly at times, sometimes going faster than the train of thoughts could handle. I was in a death embrace with my desk, and the only signs of life were the blue veins on my wrist – jiving and twisting away like Satan's tail. The world was slipping into a frost-glass fade.   

The seamstress had a spare room and put them up in that room. Till they could manage on their own. Till someone, she knew that they were expecting someone, came with an offer to help.

He did come one day. He had a thick-set face with dull grey eyes and big hairy hands. He looked greedily at Carol, licked his fat lips and made a proposal that was wicked as he was. The blind lady threw him out, and the seamstress bolted the door with trembling hands.

It must have been late evening, when I was thus far with the tale. But there was something odd happening. Now that I flounder in these shadows, breathless, it gets even harder for me to retell what was so unusual about that evening. Horse-buggies rattled down the gas lit street, church bells rang; but they all seemed to be in another world. They could have been noises inside my head. The brain makes a lot of noises when you write. The sewing machine had fallen silent.

The sheet of paper was my only doorway to this world. It was the only slice of now that mattered. Between it and myself, a wonderful game was on. Going on for who knows how long, carrying me over great distances. I floated, I sailed, I dreamt, I tumbled – I thought.  I heard mother speaking to me. I waved her off. She came back again. I didn’t bother to answer. She went away. I heard other voices.

There were voices down there on the street below. Someone called out for another inside the house. There was laughter, screams, cheering and wails. There was the sound of men marching and drumrolls. The noises snagged in the random cobwebs of time, for unsure moments, before fading away. The pen danced on the vellum sheets. All the energy of the universe throbbing in that little instrument as it told the story of Carol and her mother.   

Once I felt I was in a different part of town, but then looked up and saw the familiar window with the white roses in the window boxes. Yet, the flowers were not as white as they should have been. They were in fact dry, shriveled and rotting. A shriek rang out in the street below, a sputtering noise followed and then the monotonous roar of an unknown machine. Through slivers of consciousness I heard the roar of the machine rise, up to a crescendo and then it slowly died. Then there were more of them.

I was inside a funnel of light; at the centre of an orb of bright white energy. The light enveloped me and my desk, but it did not touch me. It was all around me, but it could not find me. Only I could see it and feel it though I could no more peer and see what was beyond it. My pen sprinted along the ruled lines.

Carol was learning needlework. She quickly picked up the tacked herringbone and the coral, the Chinese knot and the Lazy Daisy and many a more trick of needle and string. She learnt to use the tipsy dance of the feather stitch to create eye-catching embroidery and the use of buttonhole stitching in the Broderie Anglaise. She was a good apprentice no doubt, and the lady liked her work. Her mother had begun giving lessons to blind children at the school run by Carmelite nuns. It seemed that peace had found them again. The wicked uncle was all but forgotten.

Carol had taken the delivery box of embroidered pieces and stepped out of the house in the early evening. The gas lights had been lit a while ago, and they looked like trembling stars waiting to fall from the sky. She walked straight, past the Army and Navy store, and into the wider street where all the auction-houses were. The lights here looked suddenly bright and different, and they were fixed to taller posts. They did not flicker like gas lamps but shone cold like the heartless stare of time.

Inside the shop windows; the mannequins stood wearing clothes of a cut and fashion, she couldn’t recognise. Did she take a wrong turn? Where had all the horse carriages at the corner of Bristol Hotel gone? She looked up and down the street, but there was no sign of the friendly coachman who would always wave at her when she passed by. She hurried on towards the mansion-house of Lady Impey their longtime patron.

A bulging, noisy carriage packed with strangers roared past, belching smoke into the night. She had never seen such a monster machine. Twisted tubes of light glowed over doorways, and oddly dressed people brushed past without taking notice. Carol shivered under her coat and pressed the cardboard box of embroidered dresses close to her bosom...

I finished the story and rose, pushing my chair back. It fell to pieces. The candle stands were buried under mounds of yellow wax, and the floors creaked as I moved. Odd horse-less carriages sped along the road, lined with buildings I had never seen before. A musty smell hung in the air.

I surveyed the room, my heart thumping. Everywhere the walls were crumbling. The ceiling was a forest of cobwebs, termites gnawed away at the doors. There were pigeon droppings all over the frayed carpets, and the skeleton of some bird was perched on the edge of the window box; where the roses had been when I had begun to write.

I walked into the dark corridor and was greeted by the stillness of a catacomb; the silence of far away lives turned to stone by something that lurked in the shadows of the enormous rooms; something that had till then dared not touch me. Through the broken skylight, pale sunbeams had let themselves in, pushing back the walls of darkness. By that light I saw – the chimney had caved in, and the sofas buried in the dust of many decades. Their exposed springs mocked me with a grim laughter. Somehow the warmth of the living was missing from this house where summer evenings had been full of friendly banter, a neighbour played the piano upstairs, and mother in her room worked away on her sewing machine. Where had all those folks gone?

I rushed into mother's room. Perhaps she could tell me what had happened? There was no candle on her table so I scrambled up to the windows and threw them open with a mighty push. As if it had been waiting, sunlight found her immediately; lighting up the corner where she was. The rusted sewing machine on the table in front of her was a skeleton of its former self with no more grease in its decaying bones. It need not stitch any more dresses for anyone ever again. I could see her clearly now: hunched in her wicker chair, a pretty knitted muffler around her bony head, mother had been waiting for me to finish my story and join her for dinner. For how long? Strangely her clothes still looked fresh, and in fifty years time the chair hadn’t sagged with the icy burden of death.

Short Story 2011 Winners

First Prize	Second Prize	Third Prize
Rajat Chaudhuri	Purnendu Chatterjee	None Declared
Shortlist	Longlist

Short Story 2011 Longlist

Winners	Longlist	Shortlist
Rajat Chaudhuri	Purnendu Chatterjee

Flash Fiction 2011 Third Prize, Natasha Puri

The Boy Who Lived

"There was a death that day, wasn't there?"

She asked. Who had died that night? Did I die alone? Did I suffer alone? It's a funny kind of feeling, the pain. The irony: sharing the hurt with the one who hurt you. While one lives, the other is merely in exile, for they can't exist together. And yet, as queer as it may sound, they become companions in pain. No one chose to, the suffering came to them both. As guilt, to one, and as pain to the other.

"Must I share this with you?" she asked. "Anything, if it makes it go away, my dear." and he shed a little tear for her. Was that salt water the medicine to her wound?
My mind is yours, my love. The thoughts, you've taken them with you. It runs through the meadow, while I lay here, hoping, and wanting.

A moment's folly? Or was it an intentional crime?

It left me wounded, my love. And my heart still lies with you. In the wilderness, where you buried it.

Somebody did die that night.

While my thoughts still wander in the meadows, and with lips that can taste your tears, I yearn. To say goodbye. To the boy, that died.

Flash Fiction 2011 Second Prize, Asavari Singh

A Bargain

Everything is so bright, so clean, it hurts my eyes. I think it hurts her eyes too because she won’t stop crying. But she cried all of last night too, even when it was dark and dirty. I don’t like the mall. It makes me feel shabby and ugly. I’d rather have gone to the open-air market next to my home, but my husband insists I do my weekly shopping here. He says the department store in this mall has wonderful bargains on Wednesdays and that and that people of our status shouldn’t be seen haggling in the company of drivers and maids.

So every Wednesday, I come to the Great City Mall. I hurry, my head always down, across the marble expanse between the designer boutiques to get to the Big Bargain department store, but the sounds still remind me of what I have become. Click click click go the high heels around me. Thock slap thock go my rubber-soled flats. Once I did try to wear my nice shoes but I ended up falling because I couldn’t manage the pram and the bags and all the lumpy fat around my middle. “With birth comes girth,” jokes my poet-husband but I don’t even pretend to laugh.

Today we need to buy toilet cleaner, cornflakes, rice, dal, winter socks, juice, washing powder and Cerelac. A mountain of Cerelac. It’s amazing how much she can put away. It all comes out too, of course, and I have to clean up the reeking, milky mess. I’m just shit cleaner extraordinaire. The greedy little monster almost gave me a double mastectomy too, but I’ve stopped breastfeeding her. My mother says it’s too early, but I cannot bear that terrible intimacy anymore.

The aisles are packed today. Housewives trying to save a few miserable rupees because most other things in their lives are beyond saving. Every Wednesday, it’s Festival of the Frumps at Big Bargain. They do have some interesting offers today on cereals. I think about switching brands when I notice that she’s quiet. Too quiet. I turn back to look at the pram. She’s not in it.

I feel fear. My husband will never forgive me. I look around everywhere as I rush towards the checkout counter to ask them to make an announcement. Then I see her. She’s crying. A woman with long, curly hair is holding her and walking slowly out of the store. She hasn’t done any shopping. My heart isn’t beating so fast now. Two Scotch Brites for the price of one. I put them in the cart before running to the checkout counter. I’m crying. I hardly feel anything, but the tears won’t stop.

The policemen come half an hour later. “Did you see someone take her?” they ask. I tell them the truth. Yes. Yes, I did. They ask me for a description. “He was tall,” I say. “A tall, bald man with glasses.”

Flash Fiction 2011 First Prize, Madhavi Vaidya

Dada

He sat in a perfect squat, with a distinct arch in his back. He bent over the variety of vegetables spread in front of him as he gently sliced them all with his heavily wrinkled fingers. Chop, chop, chop he went on stupendously, even with the teary onions. As his misty eyes spilled onion tears not once did he look up or wait to take a deep breath unless to wipe off the watery eyes at his sleeves occasionally.

I was fervently attracted to observe the way he moved frenzied, his frowned forehead under his half bald head and the ease with which he managed cooking for a family of eleven. 

This old man all of seventy five whom we fondly called Dada, cooked our meals day in and day out and he more than fascinated me over playing a game of marbles with the other boys of the neighborhood. He was accompanied by his grandson who would do nothing but wait near the kitchen entrance. No signs of restlessness that was expected of a four year old. His head slightly slumped to his right; his face carried a blank expression which made him (look) almost non-existent.

Each morning Dada rode all his way to our bungalow on a rusty, dingy bicycle, managing to balance himself on that mean machine with his grandson tucked behind. 

The next three hours then filled the kitchen with the noisy cutting, chopping and grinding, as he would put heavy vessels on the stove for various seasonings. Roaring fumes and smoke from the vessels would almost make him invisible for some time. Then with all his strength he churned and tossed the vegetables with large spatulas, spoons and ladles that created the kind of sounds that would make anyone go deaf for a few seconds.

One of the ladies of the house would then offer him a cup of tea, the only time when he spoke a few words. After my mother once asked him why he worked so hard at this age, he calmly replied that he would die if he stopped working. All his life he had worked very hard and didn’t know any other meaning out of life and that he would want to die working, the last words echoed in my mind like the temple bells did long after they had been swung.

Once in a while he started inviting me inside the kitchen to taste various dishes and I had by now become his little sample taster. He then narrated stories about his childhood, his family, in between the gasps that interrupted his words. By now I had managed to pull his grandson inside near the shelf but his expressionless face still refused to emote.

After I had befriended Dada, I often offered him a glass of water as he tried several failed attempts to whiz out the cough straight from his lungs.

One May afternoon for the first time after the seasoning ritual and after the fumes and smoke disappeared slowly, I saw Dada not so frenzied. After the initial chores he seemed weak, his pace was not the usual and his gasps more frequent and intense. By mid morning he had slumped in a corner as his grandson had moved a little closer.

But by the time I had returned with my mother and father in the kitchen he laid still on the floor where he once did the rounds like a 25 year old. My mother quickly put off the stoves as I was instructed to leave the kitchen immediately. 

That was the last time I saw Dada, he had indeed died working. No one ever heard of his grandson or his family after that. Many a cooks replaced him, but the kitchen never roared like it did when Dada ruled it and never once did I feel like giving up a game of marbles again to become a spectator of an ordinary routine chore of a cook.

Flash Fiction 2011 Longlist

Winners	Longlist	Shortlist
Madhavi Vaidya	Asavari Singh	Natasha Puri

Poetry 2011 Third Prize, Shantam Goyal

War By My Window

A Transparent stretch within the wall,
and a grey sky peering through it,
the window calls me, I obey.

Never have the walls seemed so rough, the glass so stained,
Sitting near the window pane, never has it so pained.

The sky roars in agony, as the sword of light cuts across its skin,
the world shudder, for its bearers are fighting it in.

Grass forms pools, and the soil concocts mud,
a realization grabs me, the sky is losing blood.

I want to run, I want to help, but my brevity dies,
the blood runs down the window, staring at me like countless shining eyes.

Most meet the ground, some stain the distant tree,
all in one echoed tap, breaking up with glee.

Why are they happy, why do they cheer,
when they always know while falling, that their end is near.

The understanding dawns upon me, the sky still roaring,
its is why they're there, and will always keep going.

The chatter stops, the war has come to an end,
the blood departs, I have lost a friend.

They show me, though, the ray of a new dawn,
Anything may end, but life goes on.

Never have the walls seemed so guiltless, the glass so clear,
Sitting near the window pane, never, to me, has it been so dear.

Poetry 2011 Second Prize, Purnendu Chatterjee

My Easy Chair

I stretch my back on the easy chair
Of earth, sprawling wherever I will,
A water bead on a lotus petal
That would fall when it is meet to fall
Into the cup of infinity.

The wisdom of watching the blue sky
Turn into a blue bird, skimming
The bare, billowing breast of the bluer ocean
Is mine; while men, feverish, foolish
And gray, a nameless shadow, stalk by me.

The pomp of pelf, the glory of power,
Withered leaves in the vortex of a cyclone,
a bubble on the ocean of time,
Make shadows rue and pine, while I sleep
Serene on my easy chair.

Worrying is giving, and I have nothing to give.
I take everything from the feast of being,  
Both the petals and the thorns.
The linnets lull me to sleep,
The sparrows wake me to life.

My Maker is merry with me,
For I can see the weeping
Of the moon, crystal drops on a liquid sky,
And the laughter of the lightening,
Water-snakes darting across a watery heaven.

I push neither button nor syringe,
Raise no hecatomb of smoke, create
No image of life-in-death, as
The shadows do. I lie, content and
Tranquil, on my easy chair. 

Poetry 2011 First Prize, Amit Shankar Saha

Dream College

Dearest love - we did not
Go to Presidency
But who were those,
Who sat in our places,
Waited for each other,
Took notes, argued,
Appeared in the exams,
And then passed out?
Did they feel our absence?
The things we did not do.
The enormity of it all!

Weren't we intensely absent
That the intensity of it
Made us present,
Just as an absent lover is
Present inside the heart.
Otherwise, in that other place,
Why ghostly we did walk?

Other place: Once a mate,
Cleared the dust from a bench,
So that I may sit beside her.
And I sat, leaving the
Dusted space, in between,
Vacant for you.
And I believe,
You did the same for me.
Two vacant seats!
But where were the truant duo,
If not in dream college.

Poetry 2011 Longlist, Arpita Ramachandra

Plea of A Foetus

I was barely blessed with life
A labour of love, a moment of triumph
Well hidden underneath the angel’s wings
Unknowing of the morbid songs Man sings.

An inch to an inch
In the measure of a pinch
Of all eclectic shades
The palette of colours before me laid.

With starry awe-struck eyes
I soaked in everything with never a ‘why’
With each unending passage of time
Could be heard my rhythmic heartbeats’ chimes.

Blissfully unaware of the ‘Judgement Day’
I never knew that later I’d never have a say
“A Girl! We refuse!” was my only acknowledgement
never did I dream to be trapped in this predicament.

Had destiny erred?
All my effulgence blurred
How wrong was I, I dwelled
Not to have recognized fate’s knell.

My eyes were to be shut
even before my first breath
Weighing a mere few kilograms, an encumbrance I was
And preferred was my death.

Don’t I have a heart,
A mind, a soul?
What was so wrong with me
That made you cry so foul?

Can’t I grow up to dance,
To sing, to play?
Or was my gender enough
To make my life a throw-away?

Even the twinkling stars in the night
Is each unique in its sight
So does every spike of grass
Have its own pride, its own class.

Breathe life into me
Don’t snatch my soul from me
Let me see the rainbow, the sunshine and twilight
Give life a chance, it’s a forever delight.

Poetry 2011 Longlist, Nithin Francis

An Ode

To the challenges and Miseries of life, I write.
At the point where struggles become a part of you,
Eventually the breath of life, It begins to be.
Into your bloodstreams it runs.

This stage of life I mark,
Where your shadow leaves you lonely.
When rejection becomes your refuge,
And ignorance your companion.

To my Enemies I ode,
For they strive to seize me down.
For they not only live to see my die,
But dream to see my destruction.

To them my heart goes,
For they are the only ones who think of me.
Be it in adversary,
But their thoughts are the only ones I visit.

Poetry 2011 Longlist, Supriya MS

Can I Go Get, Mommy?

Can I go get it, Mommy?
I see it through the window
I want it so much, so badly
Can I go get it, Mommy?

The walls of my room
So brightly colored, just for me
The roof of my room
With twinkling stars, just for me

But I don’t want these, Mommy!
Can’t you see what I want?
Can’t you see on what my heart is set?
Can I go get it, Mommy?

Now someone else wants it too, Mommy
It’s so shiny and brilliant
They will take it away from me
Can I please go get it, Mommy?