Lines

Here is a poem 

by  

Jude Gerald Lopez 

of  

3rd Year BA English Copy Editor

Is it greener on the other side?

Or does the same dust rise

If I wanted to find out,

Would man’s imagination stop me?

His world with tri coloured yet wrinkled pieces of cloth,

His world condensed within delusional lines

For me just as for a lake, it seems absurd

And so I ask

Just as the blind that has never seen the sun rise,

Rise into all this chaos,

And so I ask

Is it greener on the other side?

I vowed to stay true to You

Yet those curled up lines above an indigo stamp

Has made me find new soil for my potted plants

And the memory of drier soil

Quenches an age old thirst

That dies in drought, and revives itself in this purchased bliss

Forget the greenness or the bareness

I found something when I left

And in finding a dime I did lose all else

So I decide on my death bed

That as soon as I am liberated

I will come back

Beyond man’s lines of insecurity

Like the river I would like to be

With wind in my hair and lost dreams in my head

I will come

And as I run maybe, just maybe

Lead will meet a ghost’s flesh

And the green may turn red

But all the while, I will remain content

Knowing or not knowing

The manipulativeness of these curvy lines

That names us, who used to name all else.

LET IT RAIN

Collins Justine Peter of II BA English Copy Editor

is back with another work of short fiction 

She stands by the window and  breathes the dark night. Wind blew unusually strong. All I can see are two things; the lady’s long hair and the window curtains, waving in the dark wind. I go near the lady and my footsteps signal to her my approach. 

She asked, “why are these clouds dark and heavy like never before?”.

Now I have her tremulous arms on mine. I reply, “Let it rain”. 

She looks at me and asks, “Did that hurt you?” 

This time the drizzles begin to touch us and spread a cold through our cloudy minds. I gently close the windows and make the lady lie on bed. I hide her under the blanket and thus from the lightening night. Her eyes weigh in tiredness and she slips into sleep repeating, “did that hurt….did that hurt….did that……."

I lock the door, separating me and the lady for a while and come to my office cabin. I take a patient’s record from among many others and enter the name of a hypnotic drug which I administered on the lady. I have three fresh bloody scars on my neck which had just ceased its cry. She lost her six year old daughter six months before and I failed to notice my daughter climbing the parapet while we were playing on the terrace. Guilt and pain woke me up when I saw height consume her body.

Now all I need is my sun to rise and to see my wife out of the clutches of drug. I am all alone without her. Let it rain inside her in this dark night.

Welcome Sunandan Roy Chowdhury - Talk And Creative Writing Workshop

Sunandan Roy Chowdhury, Editor-Publisher, 
Sampark Publications, Kolkata will deliver a talk on  
Continent of Love and Pain: 
Jibanananda Das and Post-Coloniality 
and lead a  Creative Writing Workshop 
on 4th February 2012 at the Postgraduate Library, 
Department of English, Sacred Heart College, Thevara. 
Registration is free, and it starts at 9.30 a.m. 
The programme will be from 10 a.m. to 1.30/2.00 p.m. 
Tea and light refreshments will be provided.

Sunandan Roy Chowdhury

And Then A Pilgrimage

Collins J Peter of II BA English Copy Editor 
asks what a pilgrimage means. 

Read and reflect!

                                                     

The train was moving from trashy scenes to surprises. I was in it. My mind moved much faster than the train. In the midst of fiction readers, I made a quick search in my pocket dictionary. My intention was to find the exact meaning of the word ‘pilgrim’ and an answer to the question whether I am on a pilgrimage.

The dictionary defines a pilgrim as a person who travels to a holy place for religious reasons. Life reveals its meaning through the course of one’s own lifetime, which is sometimes a matter of his/her meaningful existence in society. At certain phases of life we live to generate wealth, popularity, and self esteem. At certain other phases we live in order to dump those possessions which make for nothing but a barren life.

The probability for human beings to create unique spheres of life is higher than in other animals. Spheres of acquaintances are what we create mostly. It includes family, friends, colleagues, and all those intimate relationships. These spheres are a necessity because they produce meaning and worth to our social living. In families we share duties, love, bonds and friendships, where the exchange of our experiences become colourful and lively. But there is a strict law for all this to take place. If that law is violated, those social spheres get converted into a hellhole towards which we drag ourselves and stop living. The law is - never allow the worldly pursuits to creep into your intimate social spheres. If it does, families will have to move to family courts and friendships to break-up parties.

Now, where does the pilgrimage begin and where does it end? It begins when all our ignorance, mistakes, negligence, wrong choices evolve into deadly weapons against us and when refuge and shelter become mere question marks. We begin to reach out to where we went wrong, to the people to whom we did wrong , to the memories to which we were unfaithful ….all by ourselves. Reaching out in order to rectify and cleanse in places where we were mistaken and wasted; to live the rest of our life with the happiness of a thousand sunrises. And now, where does the pilgrimage end? Is there a clear answer to this question?

The happiness of a thousand sunrises never comes as a whole and thus we have to pursue it, through a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage that never ends.

The train is heading towards Maharashtra where I must go and reach out my hands to a destitute centre. A centre where I left my parents ten years ago just to cherish my marital life, which breathes no longer.

Janush Promo Video, Brochure, Poster

Click on the pictures for an enlarged view