- Where Not To Have a Miscarriage — Short Story by KATHRYN BOCKINO
- Dust and Other Poems (Ghazals) — by SHAHNAZ BASHIR
Tag: storytelling
A Night Where I Abandoned Giving Pleasure To My Mind
I’m on a streak — to meditate everyday and to go running every morning, thanks to my mother’s constant disappointment in me, I decided to give her two less reasons to scold me, which otherwise would have contined — to not wake up in the morning and waste half of the day, to not live up to what I believe in.
Right from the day when I got slapped by my KG class teacher, for singing Tu cheese badi hai mast mast for her in the class without any prompt, without any solicitation, I remember I’ve always fantasized about girls — about spooning with them, cuddling them, kissing them, and when I got to know what sex was (whole different funny story), having stupendous sex with them.
This habit had stayed with me. Until, I started being up at very late hours, and slept only when I couldn’t take wakefulness any longer. Fantasies had no time anymore. But only in the night, for they continued if and when I had time in the morning, in the half wakefulness on the cozy bed and duvets / sheets.
A week ago, it stopped. Because I couldn’t get a line I read in Yoga Vashitha out of my system (it was not like I was trying to, the line is so addictive of sorts, that it killed a habit a lifetime long. Imagine the power!). It was like it became a part of me, and that part of me is trying to live up to something it has learnt anew. The text said —
Moksha or liberation is the total abandonment of all vāsanā or mental conditioning, without the least reserve. Mental conditioning is of two types — the pure and the impure. The impure is the cause of birth; the pure liberates one from birth. The impure is of the nature of nescience and ego-sense; these are the seeds, as it were, for the tree of re-birth. On the other hand, when these seeds are abandoned, the mental conditioning that merely sustains the body, is of a pure nature. Such mental conditioning exists even in those who have been liberated while living: it doesn’t lead to re-birth as it is sustained only by past momentum and not by present motivation.
Every time I was tempted to fantasize before sleeping (now that I’m sleeping early to get up early), the bold styled line above automatically came all over me and inside me (no pun intended). And I’ve been having the most peaceful sleep I’ve ever had. Breaking old habits through ancient knowledge, when things make more sense, as if we always have had subsets of knowledge, it is liberating already.
When The 🌬️ blows 🎐
I picked up guitar after a really long time, after half a year. Today the wind blows hard, so much I want to surrender to its wavefronts, stand so still that it feels I’m flying. Sit so still, that my fingers and hands feel missing. Today, there is this light orange shade all around, like the bad crayons during school time — orange would turn out very light, so you’d colour by pressing the crayon candle really hard, before giving up.
Fast blowing winds are like a slap to me — they order me to wake up and slow down. Unlike the breath of a person, this wind doesn’t know how to negotiate for which spaces to touch, the wind has no hole source, it’s created as if by magic, out of nowhere, only if science was not there to explain it.
Don’t you feel so? Things keep getting explained, either by demands of the world, or one’s emotions, or by loose motion like persistence to name things, know them. Know them. Why?…Why? Know them.
The wind’s music, amidst the thunderstorms and the light all around which would make just woken up person confused — what time of the day is it?, shuns everything down — people’s chatter, my mind, the road beneath the landslides somewhere, water pipes blocked because of it, time. Yes time. The winds blows at a time akin to the shedding of the scab over the wound — things are okay, finally, totally, before they are no longer. Before the sun will steam us mid air, before the winds would have no control over their temperature. But what a wind it was, and it will be, ah… the wind that places cherry on top of the mountains, the wind that takes you places, with your feet at a standstill.
Sanjay Uncle’s Ignorant Bald Face
Song to listen to while reading this — Society by Eddie Vedder
Being unemployed, especially when you are ‘educated’ and living in a society could be a nightmare. Not as much because of the lack of salary, but because of how people start seeing you suddenly — Loser oozing out of their eyes and head bobs and false nods.
Sanjay uncle is father’s old colleague. They used to work together at a different place from where father is now. I had to give father’s left over clothes to him, because Sanjay Uncle was going where he is now — in Shimla. As soon as he saw my face, my grown unkempt beard, my long scrubby hair, he scrunched his nose almost automatically, I can only guess, in disgust.
I only smiled and answered the same question over again, when someone at the back seat of the car Sanjay Uncle was sitting in the front of, asked me —
Beta, what you are you doing these days (which implicitly means, where’s your job at?)
Where The Leaves 🍃 Shimmered ✨, Waved 👋, Smiled 😊 And Said Hi 🌻
As always, I was reluctant to go. Mother wanted to get out and go to a different hill town. Last time mother had such outing was last year, when me, my brother and mum went to a 10 day trip to Leh, Ladakh. It’s an awfully long gap to not have a getaway in. I mean, we did keep going to Chandigarh (closest city) to see movies and meet our relatives and eat junk and stuff. But nothing beats the whiff of cold mountain air in tropical June’s summer heat.
Not that it matters to anybody, but it’s fun to see the route, so here it is —
A perk of being a kid of a seemingly high ranked government official (especially of the one who works in Public Works Department, which has rest houses at every place in the state), accommodation is never a problem. We got a room better than the most 3-4 star hotels, and that too in a small town in Himachal Pradesh, whose population couldn’t be more than 3000 max.
We unloaded, and went for a long walk. Upon reaching the end of the first half of our walk, we saw a flattened cricket pitch, a bunch of people playing enthusiastically. My mother said —
Only if I knew how to play cricket, and only if I wasn’t tired from yesterday’s playing hockey mistake…
We went up to a helipad that was nearby and saw tiny kids playing. Mum couldn’t control it any further. If it wasn’t going to be cricket, it was going to be corner corner, dun dun and race. So it was! While she played, I overlooked at a stretch of the mountains at the far side of the helipad. At the near side of the helipad were those cricket children seen playing from the top. I kept staring at mountain peaks and deodar trees in front of me, like they were having an acoustic concert.
When mum got tired we started our walk back. We kept fooling around singing parody songs. Mum kept showing me how good the photographs were that she was clicking (they weren’t 😛). I kept requesting her to stop talking for a while to enjoy the lovely breeze that was flowing. She wouldn’t shut up because she was happy, which was good. She forced me to take photographs —
Then over one particular turn, we saw the sun setting. The sun was in front of us, with a complete panorama angle vacant from its sight to our right. To our left were mountains’ ridges. Mum shut up. We both stopped talking and walking, and stood there. Mum’s initial instinct was to keep clicking photographs of the sun, but it would come very bright in the mediocre camera mobile phone. So she stopped and joined in silence together, watching the sun, going down and down and down. The tranquility that it gave us setting down is beyond words. It’s funny, we keep trying to explain which is inexplicable. I think that is something that makes us human — to continue to keep striving for perfection, inching bit by bit, even after knowing that there is no absolute perfection.
After a while, some thoughts started popping in my head, more like questions — how come a burning star is giving me such peace? Should I not long for more such evenings and instead serve people? Am I selfish? And then such questions faded away again, as a dark orange streak of dying light embellished the clouds. That is when I knew a decent photograph could be taken.
I looked down, after having looked at the sun for a long time, and saw a man giving manure to his crops, one of them was Pea —
We started walking again, this time not talking, as the hangover of the setting sun was still grappling. Walking some yards, I looked towards the right and a tree with really short and light green leaves took my attention. I stopped. The now all pervading reddish orange light reflecting from the fluttering leaves, like the leaves were water droplets straight out of a big lake, was so ethereal, I was fixed, couldn’t move as if I was in sleep paralysis, but without any fear or irritation. They were swaying and dancing so effortlessly it felt like it wasn’t the air that was stroking them, but as if they were waving voluntarily. Imagine waving hands in a European football match, or in a Coldplay concert, the leaves were waving and dancing like that.
We came back to the rest house and kept looking at the mountains as if they were going to go extinct soon. For the first time in a long time, I felt like clicking a picture of myself for no reason —
and then I looked across the horizon to this pink horizontal line made, a silver lining turned upside down —
We came back to our room, with the intent to still become more intoxicated with even cooler air that swept the valley in the night. That is what I did all night. I sat and stared at the nothingness, and wondered… nothing.
Lassoing The Truth Out Of Difficult And Or Sad Times
Title partially stolen from Kacey Musgraves’s Song Wonder Woman.
I almost wrote Sad as Sand in the heading 😁, which would have made sense as well. These days I’m inadvertently thinking about the girl in this blog post. It is almost unbelievable — I can’t remember any reason for any and every time we fought or something wrong happened. That doesn’t mean that I don’t realise that most of those times were because of either my lack of action, or my mistake — which was mostly taking for granted things that I couldn’t have put more effort in, given how I’m, how I want things.
Like I said in the last post, there are always middle ways to take, tradeoffs to make. Life is not binary, least of the choices, no matter if in dire times, it might seem that there are only two choices to choose from. This is my trade off. I can’t love a person to commit myself to a lifetime together as formally as the world wants, or they want, but I can’t seem to not love a person either. It’s funny how this tradeoff description and behaviour, matches with what I wrote in the last post When writing has to be done for the sake of it.
In end, given that we don’t hold onto our past, especially the bad parts, like a leech, or to put the perspective into focus and to put it more precisely, like a person holding onto his shit in their hand and showing it to everybody and smelling it every 2 minutes, we don’t remember the sad / frustrated / depressed parts of our past life at all, at least I don’t.
But I’m a little biased here in taking the pride of not remembering the bad parts, because I’m generally very forgetful person, which I’m very grateful for to be honest. But well, that’s that, what can you do about it ☮️
When Writing Has To Be Done For The Sake Of It
My parents are not particularly readers. My father reads an occasional book once in a while. My mother seldom reads. Neither does my brother. I’m the odd one out in the family, who spends time reading poems and stories before bedtime. Neither do I have many friends (like at all, except one at this point of time) who read and write, consuming themselves in the process. Consuming so much that they are no longer attached to the impressions that come from the world, only to the ones that come out of the story — meaning that, they are not able to focus on anything else. It’s like they lose their minds while reading. We. This is why reading is called an escape. You can’t do anything else but read when you do. Otherwise you can’t read.
I mostly write to show to myself, with occasional generous people who find time to read stories and give their feedback. But that is rare, because most of my poems and stories are kept to myself. Why? Because I want to constantly improve them and publish them. Sharing them up with online acquaintances and people on social media is a dead end, at least for me. For starters, my Facebook activity is so dead, that every time I’m tempted to open Facebook out of habit of doing it every 2 minutes, I’m reminded that there is not going to be anything there anyway. So why even do it?
And also because if I post anything online, I stop working on it, because social media gives me this false proof of validation that people read it, liked it, and that that should be it, the work is done. This happens even when I’m aware of it. That is what addiction is. So nowadays, I don’t publish on social platforms, I write everything in my notebooks. I’ve tons of them. First I was crazy about notebooks which had hand made recycled paper. Then I started feeling impractical, because it was very difficult to find good pens to write in them with. Nowadays, I’m crazy about the composition notebooks like the one that is an amazon product. Really pretty, hard bound, and cheap. Of course there are downsides of writing things on paper – you can’t redo undo with a couple of keyboard keystrokes, and there is always the risk of losing it, or it getting damaged. But just like the taste of food differs when you eat with a spoon as compared to when you eat with your hands, my writing does too. I write rough drafts in the notebooks, take notes in them, but ultimately I improve them online on google docs.
When writing has to be done for the sake of it, it’s hard to do, especially when you have this constant nag of the world moving on, while you are still stuck with yourself. But there is always that innate want to share your work with others. I don’t know why sharing has always come as a given. Most writers write for readers. It’s hard to not to. When you write for the sake of it, the temptation to make other people read it is always, always active. So what do I do with that temptation? I’ve started submitting to online journals and lit magazines. They are a dead end in a way. You submit now, and wait for 8 months, most probably only to find that you’ve been rejected, again. The only smart thing that you can do is to keep submitting the same story(ies) or poem(s) to multiple places. Of course, it’s a lonely path without people. But that is how the things are, what can be done? Submitting to publications is tradeoff made, that keeps the hopes high only if in delusion.
Sometimes I get frustrated because I can’t make myself stand up to give all my time to writing and reading. It’s too risky. And I’m not confident enough to take that risk. I’ve never taken risks. I’ve always cowered. I don’t write well. It’s a long shot anyway, so why do it?
Still I keep writing, it’s like one of those unexplained things that get explained through the most pathetic imaginations possible — like miracles were sourced to Gods. But I’m okay with not able to find any reason. Writing too, takes away all botheration and thoughts and impressions. It’s an escape route. And I kinda traipse on it, because I don’t have a good imagination. All that I’ve ever written has been felt and experienced. I’ve not done a good job (yet) to imagine worlds independent of ours. I’ve tried though. I’ll continue to keep trying. Why? Probably because I’m stupid. Or perhaps because I’m stubborn enough to dream constantly. It’s hard not to, so stubbornness comes easily, but its consequences are tough on the shoulders. Once in a while you slouch and shriek, but then you get back, probably because you are stupid. But stupid is fine, I guess.
When writing has to done for the sake of it, you do not have a lot of options. You can either do it, or not do it. Either way you are going to regret something like all other tradeoffs in the world. Point is, if the suffering is going to be optional and independent of those regrets. If it is going to be, then suffering is going to be a choice rather than consequence. It’s the basis of Buddhism and Sanatan Dharma — you feel things, but your mind can have the power to choose to not be effected by them. I’m up for it. Always have been. What I’ve not ever expected is not having many friends. I guess I’ll just have to be stubborn enough to accept that as well.
It’s okay if no one calls in years, and by no one, I mean many people. Because I know there is going to be one reading this blogpost, and I don’t want to be called for this omission of the fact.
☮️
The Sunlight Plane — A Novel By Damini Kane — Chapter Notes For Final Review — Chapter 3
The Sunlight Plane — A Novel By Damini Kane — Chapter Notes For Final Review — Chapter 2
This is the second in series of the blog posts cum notes that I’m writing while reading Damini Kane‘s debut novel The Sunlight Plane. I took notes about the first chapter in the last blogpost.
The want to start with an observation
Damini’s book feels like a super hero story, in that usually, the world of two 9 years old children — what they think, how they feel — is often not known to adults upfront. It’s like Matrix’s code, one has to develop an intuition to see what might be happening in their minds and hearts. The super power Damini gives the readers through her story, is that everybody has a direct access to the lives of these children.
ABOUT CHAPTER 2
I scribbled about in the book like a mad man. I’ll only be able to jot down a subset of everything in this blogpost. Reminder to self — while writing the final review, consult the scribblings as well.
Oh, where do I even begin. Let’s start with an example of the observation I made above. Tharush’s father says “I think it’s worse for a child to live with two people who are always fighting each other. It doesn’t create a good home environment, you know?“
to which follows the following text —
“Home environment”, Tharush repeated, because he had never heard those two words together, and they combined to form a concept he had even considered. Homes had environments?
He thought back to all he’d learnt in school about the environment. That it was polluted, that there was acid rain, that a healthy environment was important for life. The implications for that inside a home… For him, home was where it was safe and cool, where there was food and love and his toy fighter jets.
“Do we have a healthy home environment?” Tharush asked suddenly.
See what I mean? This automagically allows humour to jump right in. Honesty precedes humour (I think?)
I’ve observed a writing style pattern that Damini uses to cut out the need for adverbial dialogue attribution (as Stephen King so suggests),
and I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere else. It could be because I have not read many books altogether, but whatever the reason, I’ll explain the writing pattern with the help of an example of an excerpt from her book itself —
(Tharush asks this in the middle of a conversation he has initiated with his father, to know what a divorce is) —
“So what happens to the children?” Tharush asked, and his father gave him this look, as though saying, NOW you’re thinking.
The this in the above sentence is a solid placeholder and escape hatch from the temptation of using an adverb. This pattern, of placing placeholders and actually showing the reader exactly how a person might be thinking or what they might be doing, instead of redirecting that work to adverbs which would, in most cases, only be able to give a hint of that action or feeling is amazing. Adverbs are indirect, one step farther in trying to give an adjoining and explanatory hint about the verb they are trying to embellish, if that makes sense. I’m going to try this writing style in my writing, everywhere that I can. Another example of an adverb saved (without the placeholder) —
“No!” he cried, his voice high and panicked. “I didn’t do anything! I found it like this!”
Another one(without the placeholder) —
“Don’t be silly”, his father replied, prompt and warm.
Another one, and this one is the most genius of all —
Tharush let out a noise he didn’t even know he could produce. Some combination of an explanation and a wail. His fingers dug through his sweaty hair to somehow contain his excitement…
Another one?(without the placeholder) 😁 —
He lowered his eyes in some mixture of shyness and guilt as he awkwardly kicked the floor.
Hence less is not always more, especially in writing long form fiction.
The part of a dialogue that comes between the the words of the dialogue —
“Okay.” Tharush let out a breath of air he didn’t know he’d been holding. “Good”
I can practically see the breath gushing out while he said Good.
Deferring what happened to the latter part of a fragmented sentence, instead of writing it as a description in the beginning —
“Freak!”, Vikram suddenly shouted, and all at once, Tharush felt the wind expel from his body as the football collided brutally with his ribs.
A bad sentence (that in all likelihood I would have written) would have been a descriptive sentence that Vikram threw a ball towards Tharush immediately before where the bold part of the sentence above starts. But deferring it til the consequence of that action makes the reader excited and gets on reader’s nerve to rush to the end of the sentence. Talk about sentence turners (analogy to “page turners”). Another one —
“You can’t just cower before him because of what he might do, you know,” his mother replied, but her tone was appeasing.
The bold part keeps the reader up on his seat, still, looking for the behaviour of her tone, because she had shown, in the sentences previous to the above (not written here), irritation and annoyance towards the bully who had bullied her son, and her mother. So it was likely at the start of the sentence above, that she might have said this in an irritated, or angry tone, but the tone of the sentence was left hanging in surprise well up until the end.
Emotionally Charged Sentences —
“It’s…” Tharush began, his voice sounding raw and scratchy. His throat hurt. He wanted to curl up and cry, but he wasn’t going to give Vikram that power over him. Taking a brave little breath, he finished, “They’re idiots”
This complemented one thing so nicely — Tharush’s will to become strong and willed, because he wanted to fly fighter planes, and how could he fly them if he was expelled because he was weak. Another one —
…”Now why would you lie about that”?
He blinked, blinked, blinked, but that was useless against the burn in his throat and the sting in his eyes. “Vikram did it,” he muttered, wiping away before they got any worse.
The bold sentence could have been poorly written as a description, premeditating the fact that his eyes were becoming watery and stingy and his throat was burning. But instead Damini showed what was happening as the consequence of that. We all try to hide our tears from anybody present in the room directly looking at us, by trying to constantly and repeatedly blink in a futile attempt to not let tears fall down. He blinked, blinked, blinked. Again, PURE GENUIS! Another one (a person who has unexpectedly been caught doing something he was not supposed to be doing) —
Aakash jumped violently and turned, shoving (I’d have used a weak ‘hiding‘) one of his hands behind his back as his wide, terror-stricken eyes locked onto Tharush and his lips parted to form barely intelligible stutters.
In the first glance, one might think that a fragmented dialogue showing Aakash stuttering would have added upto this. But the fact that it is so detailed testifies that, that could have been an overkill.
Playing with colours —
His red shirt looked almost orange in the yellow light of the building’s lobby.
The Sunlight Plane — A Novel By Damini Kane — Chapter Wise Review — Chapter 1
This is not a critical review of the book by chapter. This is an attempt to write a good review on good reads about the book at the end of my reading. It happens almost every time, with me at least, that when the book gets finished, I get this automatic feeling to write something about the book, but I’m almost never able to (unless I take notes along the way). These are the notes for the final review.
About the book’s looks —
The book is so pretty! I love the cover art. It was designed by Nivedita Sekhar, Damini Kane’s best friend —
And the font is pretty too! (one of the things that terribly puts me off from reading a book is a bad font. Good that it has a good one!).
I think the price is little high, but I don’t mind spending to read something so fresh and good.
The book has 21 chapters. I intend to read one everyday and write about each one of them.
About the Author
I have only followed Damini from the time she came into the radar of spoken word poetry scene in India. She performed a couple of poems which got uploaded on youtube after which I started following her on Instagram (where she is as active as a radioactive element). All I know about her is that she loves building and poring over characters, and she hates writing academic essays. She aims at acing winged eye line some day. And she has been reading and writing from as long as she can remember. She loves her notebooks in which she takes notes for stories, books, novels.
I talked to her after reading some of the chapters of the (now defunct) project called Cor Corand. She wrote a mammoth length series about a nation in conflict. And very exciting and unusual one at that. Unfortunately that didn’t get too much attention and she had to stop writing it. Good thing, she got her first book published!
She has also given me wonderful feedback for the only two short stories I’ve ever written, and patiently answered all my questions about writing good stories and fiction and more. I’m immensely grateful for that, more than she might know.
Damini is like a dreamy person for me. And I consider myself a big fan of her writing, opinions and honesty. I’ve never met her.
Chapter 1
I like to write down the first lines of novels in my blogposts and reviews because I like to come back to read the first line again after I finish the book, just to be able to check if the initial instinct, that comes automagically after advancing a few sentences of the book, was correct. The first sentences of The Sunlight Plane goes —
The summertime sky in Mumbai was usually white, because the sun glared at it until it went pale with fear, and the blue it was supposed to be dripped off the surface of the atmosphere and fell into the Arabian Sea.
I don’t know about you, but I was immediately hooked at because the sun glared at it until it went pale with fear.
The book is about two 9 years olds Tharush and Aakash (both names’ meaning translates to sky). As soon as I realised this in the first paragraph, I was like woah! How could she go back to imagining things from the perspective of 9 years olds ? I could not do it, at least right now. Who knows I get ideas after reading this book. Anyways.
I absolutely ❤️ed the development of Tharush’s mom’s character, particularly her teasing Tharush as casually as walking.
After mom had told him to stop daydreaming and to hurry up, and after he looked off, she asked
“Are you still angry with me?” she asked, lilting laughter coating her firmness.
.
“Numbers don’t win wars”, his mother replied, her tone mockingly cheerful.
.
She gasped. “Really?” Tell me more, Oh Wise One.”. The metallic lift doors opened and she stepped inside with all the grace of someone used to winning verbal battles.
.
“I am in the middle of an extremely important battle,” Tharush replied, using the same formal flair his father had when Tharush interruped him when he was on the phone.
“Oh, my”, his mother teased. “Well, if you can take a break from your destruction and carnage, dinner’s on the table”.
Not to even mention because Tharush is nine years old, he battles with things he doesn’t know by guessing about them, or simply asking about them forthright.
“What does ‘carnage’ mean?” he called after his mother, turning off the lights and fan as he darted out of the room.
.
Tharush had never understood what stock of what his father wanted from the market, and why he didn’t just go get it. He could, alternatively, put it on the grocery list. But he didn’t. Why?
As amusing and real these blockquote scenes and dialogues look, trust me, they are hard to make right. I couldn’t have possibly imagined from a 9 years old point of view as I said before as well.
Some of the phrases / sentences / words were so fresh, I had to highlight them with a pretty light highlighter (because I don’t like bright colour highlighters, I use a fax paper highlighter, which is… much lighter) and read them over and over again, because once is never enough.
- Tharush thought the sky was of burns and bruises, white hot like that one time he accidentally put his hand over a candle flame, then pink, blue and black, like when he tripped on the stairs and smashed his knees.
- Tree-bark brown eyes
- Frayed, purée, moat, bristle (v), kooky, poring, likened, pressed, posse, cliques, chital.
- Tharush made a nasally whine.
- The whole character introduction of Tharush’s father which included bespectacled man with slanting shoulders and sharp nose, weighed down by his black office suits and navy blue laptop bag.
- With words too big to want to pronounce.
- …using the same formal flair his father had when Tharush interruped him when he was on the phone. (Show not tell)
- He didn’t even want to (see the tv), it just somehow happened. Something to distract his mind. (Show not tell)
- “What about his mom?” Tharush asked, because that was a question hanging over the table with the same overbearing presence of a twenty-foot tall bear (GENIUS!)
- The most hilarious thing of all were the descriptions made to decry Eggplants. I won’t jot them down here, lest you not enjoy it.
- I learnt that okra is ladies finger.
What I Learnt From Chapter 1 —
- Dialogue placements — When Damini gave feedback on a story I wrote titled For No Reason, she suggested to me read more about dialogue placements — when to put a newline, when not to, whether to follow descriptive or follow up fragmented text immediately after the dialogue or in a new line and the like. I gave a lot of attention to how she has done it, and will continue to do it for every fiction book I read from now on.
- Show not tell — In the two short stories that I’ve written so far, I’ve struggled with following this rule. I often end up writing a lot of descriptive boring text explaining something rather than using the power of metaphors, dialogues, narration, fragmented sentences, building images to actually show what is happening / has happened. There were so many examples of this from the first chapter itself, I can’t wait to read more.
Journey My Brain 