Short Fiction
Riham Adly 

Franco closed his eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath. He tried to calm down the storm that bullied its way into his mind. When he finally exhaled, he opened his glazed blue eyes, and looked outside at the Mediterranean waves. They clashed over and over with the solid rocks at the bayside. He pulled at the sleeves of his jacket and looked up at the makeshift clouds.
His gaze combed the mosaic floor of the open court. Today he and his beloved Saphiya are to perform a live musical recital in the grandiose Citadel of Qaitbay in front of thousands of devoted music lovers. All the profits will be donated to the ‘Misr El Kheir’ Foundation and to the Syria refugee’s fund.
With his hands in his pockets, and his feet tapping nervously at the floor, he muttered under his breath.
“What a charade! I stand here and perform to raise money for Syria, while my father issues his consent for the bombing of Syria.”
You leave Egypt and come back to the U.S, and you do it, NOW, or else!
His father’s angry threats still echoed in his head.
Or else.
What would the colonel do, when he learns that his only son has converted to another religion, fell in love with a girl from Syria, and was not coming back? 
Franco absently dragged his fingers through a thick hank of brown hair while waiting backstage.
Saphiya why on earth are you late? Musicians should never be late. He thought.
Agitation built up and gnawed at his insides as he checked his watch one more time.
They were supposed to rehearse the piece together. The show will start in mere minutes with no time for rehearsal, but that was really the least of his worries.
How am I going  to look in her eyes, and smile? How am I to perform with her in front of this crowd, when a massacre is about to take place tomorrow? And how am I going to perform here of all places.
His eyes roamed the limestone brick walls of the ancient citadel. Sheer wind from the open window hit his face like a slap.
Was it a reprimand? A reproach from the world for his hypocrisy?
He could see his long shadow in the trembling lamp light. He was pacing back and forth when he tripped over something on the floor. He recovered slowly from the fall and stood up, tracing with his finger the small scratch on his lips. Frustration welled inside him.  He bit at this scratch so hard, it started bleeding. The universe was angry with him, and the century old citadel was angry with him as well. The spirits of the ancients abhorred him as they looked down at him.
Thoughts played back and forth in his head. World peace was a relentless lie. He couldn’t believe the insatiable greed of his people. It was mere chance that allowed him to find out the painful truth. They were starting a war, a vicious war, breaking with it all treaties and all the rules, simply to dominate and conquer, regardless of the consequences. His father’s plans with his uncle still resonated in his ears.
Franco was the son of General Montgomery, General of American Air forces, and Senator Celia Montgomery. He came from a long line of army generals, and was lucky to escape into music. He was raised all his life to love, to respect, and to never judge. What happened to all those principles?
 What am I supposed to do? Should I elope with her, and leave everything behind? But who could run away from destiny?
Franco turned his head to the direction of the familiar flowery scent, that very scent that always managed to take hold of his senses. Saphiya had arrived. He watched as she walked towards him in confident strides.
“I know I’m late. Don’t look at me like that. We’ve rehearsed this piece many times before. Trust me we don’t need any more rehearsals.”
For a moment, Franco allowed his eyes to linger on the beautiful dark heart-shaped face, the long chestnut brown hair that cascaded behind her back, and the unsuspecting amber-colored eyes that smiled at him. That smile, that enamoring smile caused every coherent thought to flee his mind.
“Monsieur, Mademoiselle. It is time. The curtains will be drawn shortly.” The Chairman of the ‘Misr el Khier’ foundation announced. He gave them a thumb up sign, and then stepped across the curtain to the dedicated crowd to give his opening speech.
Saphiya gave an excited, light laugh.
He watched as she turned to him, her smile slowly fading only to be replaced with a look of concern. She took his hand and said nothing. She must have noticed the anxious look on his face.
They waited shortly before the soft velvet curtains brushed against their bodies, unveiling their presence and exposing them to the enthusiastic crowd.
Franco walked along the stage to where the piano was positioned. He sat down, and took a deep breath. For an instant, his eyes caught the luminous moon as it escaped the misty clouds. He adjusted the Piano bench, and assumed a proper posture, with his back straight but not rigid.
His gaze travelled to Saphiya as she rested her violin on her collarbone fully supporting it with her arm and holding it in place by her jaw. She placed her bow between the bridge and the fingerboard and on his cue, they commenced.
They were to play Beethoven’s moonlight sonata, which was their favorite song.
Franco started the first movement of the sonata with the famous “Lamentation” melody. He opened with an octave in the left hand and a figuration in the right.
The strident, brooding rhythm accentuated his pain, and with every press and every touch, his heart soared.
How could he possibly stop what is to happen. His people were to bomb Saphyia’s land; they were going to fabricate a situation that could allow them to proceed with their plans. Should he just stand witness to it all and keep his mouth shut. Should he alert Saphyia? Nobody knew yet. The U.S. plans were still unannounced, but then what difference would it make? Perhaps she could alert the Syrian authorities, but then he would be considered a traitor. How could he betray the trust of his nation, his family and most painfully of all, his father; the man who supported him indefinitely, who allowed him to take music as a career rather than join the army, who raised him on honesty and principles? It would be a shameful disgrace, but then this war stands against everything he was taught and everything he believed in.
Franco finished the profound, tragic tones of the first movement, and started the relatively calm second movement. He closed his eyes and desperately remembered the echo of happiness and hopes he once had. He remembered the first time he found true love with Saphiya. He remembered the first time they strolled the beach at night, barefoot, with the frothy seawater splashing at them. It felt back then as though nature had celebrated their love outside this very citadel, this massive fort withstanding through time, witnessing the changing world.
His eyes were closed, but he could still see her young, poignant face with his heart. He heard her melodies that united with his tones, and with all this came the familiar helplessness and guilt. Was it possible to escape the inevitable? Was it possible to change the heraldic nature of humanity?
Their shadows danced on the walls, emerging separately but meeting at one point.
The calm second movement transcended into the stormy final movement, with its fast, and strongly accented notes. His fingers traveled with astounding ferocity as he pressed the keys. The powerful, unbridled melodies knifed through him. He had to make up his mind. Should he choose Saphiya, and become a fugitive or should he remain loyal to his people and his country?
Hot tears pushed their way down his cheeks. He looked in her direction one more time before he pedaled cleanly allowing the vibration of the low bass strings to provide the desired “blur” and with it the end of the Sonata.
There was a short silence before the crowd went wild with applause.
Franco and Saphiya stood up and bowed to the crowd before the velvet curtains fell once and for all. This concert was the very last event to take place in the name of peace, love and unison.
They walk past the large stones that formed the lintel and doorway of the entrance hall to the outside world, leaving behind the wondrous Citadel, that fort that existed on the ruins of the legendary Pharos Lighthouse. They sauntered along the peninsula, that thin arm of land that extended out into Alexandria’s harbor.
The sea waves pirouetted and pummeled behind them, and the breeze danced in the air like a melody from Apollo’s lyre.
There was a moment of perpetual calm before the hail of the growling wind vibrated with remorseful resentment, and the mournful moon disappeared behind the clouds, leaving the couple to their unknown fate.
Franco and Saphiya stood on the brink of dawn, hand in hand, armed only with their love.
****

​This was honourably one of the winning short stories in the MAKAN Writing Award 2013 that was organized by The Forgotten Writers Foundation, Kayan Publishing House, and Diwan Book stores. The story was published in 2014 among the other winning ones in the MAKAN book by Kayan Publishing House.

​Riham Adly is a mother, ex-dentist, and is trying to be a full time fiction writer/ blogger. She is also first reader in Vestal Review Magazine and has worked as a volunteer editor in 101 words magazine. Her fiction has appeared in journals such Bending Genres, Connotation Press, Spelk, and The Cabinet of Heed, Vestal Review, SoftCartel, Brilliant Flash, Five:2: One, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Ekphrastic Review, Cafelit, FictionalCafe.com, FridayFlashFiction, Flash Boulevard, and Page &Spine among, Odd magazine, and Sonic Boom among others. She was recently short-listed in the Arablit Translation Prize.

​You can visit Riham’s website: www.rihamadly.com
And find her on twitter : @roseinink

Short Fiction
~ C.J. Anderson-Wu

​The draft of the book Youth Taiwan has laid on my desk for more than a week now. I shouldn’t have promised the publishing house to write the introduction for it, I have no idea how to start. Youth Taiwan contains the stories of three young singers in the 60s in Taiwan, they performed in cheap underground shows, singing banned Japanese songs for the elderly who grew up during Japanese colonial rule. A romantic plot, but it could be read critically.
 
This is a reprint, the original book was published in the 70s. The author Jaddy Fu had very few literary works but in recent years they unexpectedly became a hot target of academic research. Many said his literature had been underrated, quite a few scholars analyzed his style as modernism that blended realistic incidents with fictional scenes, or vice versa.  They praised him as a pioneer of Taiwanese-style modernist literature, but one who was unfortunately overlooked because of the isolation of Taiwan’s literary society during his time. Over the past two decades, as more and more writers throughout the world were introduced to Taiwan, Jaddy Fu’s books had become surprisingly acclaimed among young readers who could access world literature easily. Publishers competed for the copyright to reprint Jaddy Fu’s works, some of them had become best sellers for weeks.
 
My memory of Jaddy Fu who died in 1998 was not his literary achievement, but the brief speech he had made in the ceremony of the Golden Leaf Film Awards in 1982, of which I was one of the judges. He was given the award of Best Screenplay. I remember when his name was announced, he walked to the stage, smoothed his jacket placidly before taking over the golden leaf trophy from the presenter and the microphone from the hostess, and said, “I’ve written a nearly perfect screenplay, but to be perfect, any limitation on speech and creation should be removed.” He held the trophy to the air and lifted up his voice, “Say NO to censorship!” The ceremony froze for several seconds, until the hostess got her composure back and said in an obviously fake cheerful voice, “Congratulations. And let’s go to the next program.”  The audience applauded when the lighting on the stage blinked twice to suggest the coming show, a folk dance celebrating harvest. Girls hardly having any experience of farming jumped in to the stage with bright clothes and bamboo hats. They wore exaggerated smiles on their faces.
 
The next day the three major newspapers reported the news of the awards with much less  coverage compared to the previous years. Of course Jaddy Fu’s demand on the termination of censorship was not mentioned at all. A picture of the winning drama movie A Battle for the Republic of China was the only image published about the ceremony. In the late afternoon, the Independent  Evening News had a small block on Jaddy Fu’s speech and a brief introduction of his award winning screenplay. There was not a picture of Jaddy Fu or the film based on his work.
 
The speech Jaddy Fu made did not change anything about the control over speeches and publications in Taiwan, instead, it ended his writing career. The publishing industry stopped contacting him, and of course no film producer would engage him again.
 
But, honestly, what had happened to Jaddy Fu was never my concern. At that time I wasn’t even aware of how it impacted him. Almost 40 years later,  Jaddy Fu’s posthumous success reminds me of what had happened to me and I feel a little bit ashamed. I am ashamed of myself that I only thought about myself at that time, like, when someone gives your boat a push to the ocean and you’re totally unaware of the effort, ignoring the expansiveness of the unusual scenes.
 
I was in my early thirties, and just finished my doctoral degree of literature and started teaching in two colleges as a part-time lecturer. I published several papers, gave speeches about movies based on novels to student clubs or reading groups of engineers. I dressed like a British literary professor—tweed blazer with elbow patches that usually was too hot to wear in this subtropical island. In today’s terms, I would certainly be called a hipster. I did not want to be seen belonging to my peers, a group of hardworking researchers without imagination, without  ambition, and without personal taste.
 
I was the only one without a film background in the jury of the 1982 Golden Leaf Film Awards because the award organizers thought they needed to have a more diversity on the jury board and a scholar of literature could tell them more about screenplays. I sat with the other 14 judges for three days, watching all the 35 nominated films. I had no idea about film making, but contributed as much as I could by providing some opinions about the narrative structures, such as how the scenarios unfolded along or against time axises. I did not know how much of my opinions had influenced the final decisions, but was thrilled to be with famous directors, critics, actors and actresses who were also judges because they had won the awards in previous years. I couldn’t help but comparing the images of them I saw from mass media and in person. But at that time I never admitted that I was excited. I told myself that I was the only judge from the academic world and my value in being with the rest of them was my identity as an outsider. So a lot of time I just paid no heed who they were. . .uh, I should say I tried hard to pay no heed who they were. A lot of times I pretended I even did not know who they were. I imagined that they would know me after the ceremony, after all I provided my academic perspective.
 
The annual Golden Leaf Film Festival probably was the largest event of the entire cultural industry in Taiwan at that time, given that no new TV channel or newspaper could be established due to martial law. At that time the largest film producer in Taiwan was a state-own company, few other businesses had capital enough to make movies.  Each year before the ceremony, the three TV channels and four newspapers would report on the festival daily, accompanied with an introduction of blockbuster American films of the year. In 1982 the most popular movies were E.T., Star Trek, and An Officer and A Gentleman. But I focused on Sophie’s Choice, which was adapted from William Styron’s novel.
 
Looking back, if I don’t be honest with myself I would fall into the same feeling of shame again. My service in the board of judges did bring me illusions that I might step into a new phase of my career, making me different from my fellow scholars who knew nothing but their own professions, who knew nobody but their own kind.
 
Vanity, yes. And vanity is very much about illusion. How come I believed an event like this could bring me to another place, another status? But at that time I did eagerly expect to turn a new page of my life. I told myself perhaps I did not have to find a full-time professorship in a college, I might become a columnist, an author of fiction and cinema, a critic, and a popular speaker. I should write more about Sophie’s Choice, I told myself, and I should also look into earlier movies, such as the French Lieutenant’s Woman. I really liked Meryl Streep, although I found the movies totally deviated from the novels.
 
But I never became a movie critic, or a columnist, or a popular speaker. It took me another two years to get a full-time teaching position in a polytech, and another five years to transfer to a university. I earned my professorship by publishing papers on Taiwanese literature in the 1930s, nothing to do with cinema at all. I am the author of two books of early modern Taiwanese literature, the kind of publications that no one would read except a few graduate students. I hardly made speeches outside of my classrooms and hung out with researchers who were as boring as I was. I advised students who needed to get degrees as soon as possible, and helped them to see the reality in academic society. I have an average marriage, I raised two normal children, provided them standard education. Now I am even a grandfather of three kids who I still have problem remembering what grades they are at in school. Before I retired, I completed task after task and dragged on my long teaching occupation day by day without dreaming to have a life different to what I was having. I was content with what I had, although from time to time I had to appear like I was going to accomplish more if the conditions for research were better, if  there were more grants for my projects, or if students worked harder, or the administration of the university was less bureaucratic. But if one really wants to criticise me, he or she certainly would say I never ever stepped out of my comfort zone. You know the largest comfort zone is called “mainstream”, right?
 
And this is not what I feel ashamed of, no one should be ashamed of his or her unambitious career or unimaginative life. What I am feeling ashamed of is a combination of many things, but mostly how I first felt about Jaddy Fu’s shouting words in the Golden Leaf Awards ceremony 37 years ago. For a period of time, two years I think, because I couldn’t land a full-time job for two years, I believed that my plan to be a movie expert was grounded because of Jaddy Fu. Because of his unaligned performance during the ceremony, the government shrunk its support of the event in the following years in order to penalize the event organizers’ failure to control the situation. The cinema industry had been quiet for several years, big investment like The Battle for the Republic of China hadn’t happened again. Less grants were awarded for filmmaking, fewer foreign movies were imported, especially those touching on political issues. Cinemas  suffered from low incomes, many of them eventually were out of business. All these gave me reasons to suspect that my difficulties in establishing a career in the cinema industry were the consequence of Jaddy Fu’s rebellious speech. It made my inclusion of my contribution as a judge of the 1982 Golden Leaf Film Festival in my CV insignificant. It made my connection with people with big names in the cinema industry useless. My secretive celebration was aborted, my stories about those celebrities I encountered and worked together never got chance to be told. My hope to be engaged as the consultant of film producers never substantiated.
 
But I was only thirty-two or thirty-three years old when that happened. Any illusion or naivety or stupidity would be normal for any person in that age. My real regret is, it took me decades to understand that my obstacle toward a more celebrational lifestyle was not Jaddy Fu, but my own rejection of a broader view of reality, even years after my burst daydream. Five years after the film festival I participated in, martial law was abolished, thanks to the risky protest made one-after-another by people I did not know, and in another five years the censorship of all cultural products was lifted. I called myself lucky that my own research never triggered the alarm of  governmental control, but was that purely luck? A cow can stay one hundred percent safe from an electric fence without even acknowledging it exists. 
 
What would happen if Jaddy Fu never had had the speech? Would I become a film expert and have a lot of job engagements? The government wouldn’t decrease its investment in this industry, and I might be commissioned to take on some exciting projects. But this assumption is valueless today. In the early 80s even if the resources from the public sector to the film industry had not been withdrawn, it would have been for nothing but stronger propaganda. Even if my career dream was not damaged by Jaddy Fu’s unwelcomed talk, I might have found myself unfit to Taiwan’s market after all..  
 
The real question that I really should have asked but never asked until recently was, what would happen if the rest of the audience in the 1982 ceremony did not respond to Jaddy Fu’s talk with silence? When everyone maintained silence for fearing the situation might turn ugly, the boat sank slowly.
 
I sit down on my desk and type, “Jaddy Fu’s Youth Taiwan implied the infantile society of Taiwan.” Even today, few see the paradox that resistance against Japanese colonial rule was encouraged, resistance against the repression over free speech of the Republic of China was a taboo.
 
I know the editor asked me to write something about this book not because she knew I had contributed Jaddy Fu’s winning of the Golden Leaf, it was simply because I have more time to write in my retired life. She probably had inquired to other scholars with no avail. Can I write something smart, smart enough to be my small, secretive redemption?
 
I decide to get some fresh air first, perhaps I should take a walk to the grocery at the street corner to buy myself some beer for my writing. I grab a jacket from my wardrobe, a corduroy blazer with elbow patches, to put on. It is so worn out now, perfectly suits a retired literature professor well, totally out of fashion, and totally oblivious to his unknown guilt.  
 

Short Fiction
~ Murali Kamma

​On the day Neel returned to his apartment, he discovered that Sai had stopped talking—and eating. Moreover, having retreated to the little shed behind the apartment building, Sai was refusing to leave what had been his home for several months. Summer hadn’t arrived, so it probably wasn’t sweltering in the tin-roofed shed; still, as Neel remembered from his only look inside, it was a dingy, barely furnished room that felt like a prison cell. Apart from the weak glow of a single bare bulb, the only illumination in the cramped space came from the sunlight trickling in through a small barred window. Sai was the day watchman, hired after a couple of burglaries nearby had rattled the building’s residents. Since there was already a night watchman for the neighborhood, Sai’s job was to stay vigilant during the day and be a handyman who could run errands.    
            Neel had just returned from a trip to the country he’d migrated to with his family as a teenager. Now, odd though it seemed, he was an expat in the land of his birth. While waiting to catch his connecting flight, he’d texted Murti to inform him that Sai could resume delivering the newspaper and milk to his apartment. “Sai fried will do,” read Murti’s response, baffling Neel momentarily. Then, boarding the plane, he wondered why Sai had been fired. But instead of texting again, Neel switched off his phone, letting the thought hang in the air. Not unlike an airport announcement that sounds garbled initially, the text’s meaning would become clear in due course.
            It was early morning, the city still unburdened by heavy traffic or pollution, when a cab deposited Neel at the front gate of the apartment building. The tawny sky was just beginning to brighten when Neel got out and saw that the gate was already unlocked. The man from the dairy would have brought the milk packets by now. Neel paid the driver and started rolling his suitcase on the gravelly lane, setting off a grating sound. A stray dog skulking by the compound wall approached cautiously and barked in displeasure, though the protest seemed half-hearted more than threatening. Earlier, such encounters used to unsettle him—but he’d realized that the best way to deal with it was to look away and keep walking nonchalantly.
            Neel’s attitude of disregarding anything upsetting, he discovered, had the curious effect of making him indifferent to his surroundings. “Desensitized” was the word in vogue. In this sprawling metropolis, you became desensitized after a while.        
            Neel recalled how, on his first visit to the area where his apartment was located, it had been jarring to see a long row of flimsy, primitive-looking tents crowded together near a busy intersection, barely a stone’s throw from a swanky mall. These makeshift tents were homes for construction workers, whose scruffy children played on the abutting road while their mothers cooked on the sidewalks. The building craze had converted what used to be uninhabited land into a bustling township, pockmarked by big ditches that sent up clouds of dust. Many high-rises had sprung up, seemingly overnight, to house the hordes of technology workers drawn like moths to the many new jobs in the gleaming Info Tech City close by. And the boom had also attracted migrant laborers from the countryside.
            The words ‘Sixten Tower’ appeared on the gate. A typo, he’d thought at first, but it actually stood for 610, the number of the building, which was five stories high and had ten apartments. Going up in the small elevator, Neel heard sounds—running water, voices, footsteps—that announced the start of another day. Stepping out on the fourth floor, he was cheered by the sight of a milk packet near his apartment door. Yes, he could make coffee now! In the kitchen, Neel took a few refreshing sips of his hot brew and walked up to the window for a look at the little shed in the back.
            Earlier, just as the cab was about to turn onto the street leading to Sixten Tower, Neel saw the night watchman waiting at a bus stop on the main road. Asking the driver to pull over for a minute, Neel rolled down the window and said, “Going home after the night shift?”
            Looking up in surprise, the watchman, a Gurkha immigrant, smiled when he recognized Neel. “Yes,” he said. “A lot happened while you were gone. I’m not covering Sixten anymore. They don’t want me to enter the compound.”
            “Why not?”
            “Because of Sai. He’s on a hunger strike and is refusing to talk or leave the shed. He had a fight—”
            A horn blared, startling them, and when Neel turned around, he saw a bus approaching the stop. As the cab driver quickly pulled away, the watchman waved and said, “I’m sure you’ll find out more soon.”
Holding his coffee mug, Neel gazed at the shed and wondered if he’d be able to see Sai. But the door was closed and the light didn’t appear to be on. Surrounded by weeds and overgrown grass, the ramshackle shed looked abandoned. He found it hard to believe that the usually voluble and cheerful Sai was in there, observing a silent fast and refusing to move out. But why had he been fired? People liked him, as far as Neel could tell, and he seemed capable. Sure, he had a few quirks—such as his tendency to ask for ‘phoren’ T-shirts, or bang rather than knock on the door—but then again, who wasn’t quirky?  To Sai’s credit, he’d been eager to be helpful around the building.
            The doorbell rang, surprising Neel. It was early for visitors. When he opened the door, Murti greeted him but didn’t smile. “May I speak to you?”
            “Of course. Please come in, Murti. Would you like some coffee?”
            Short and slender, his thinning hair generously streaked with grey, and wearing glasses that were a little big for his face, the middle-aged visitor appeared mild-mannered—but Neel knew that Murti, as the resident manager, controlled Sixten Tower’s affairs with an iron fist. Declining Neel’s offer, he sat upright on the sofa and, adjusting his checked bush shirt, said, “I just wanted to update you on what happened.”
            “Appreciate it. I was surprised by the turn of events, because I thought Sai was a good worker and well liked by people in the building. Is he fasting to protest?”
            Murti pursed his lips, looking peeved. He didn’t look at Neel. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but he’s a troublemaker. He’s like an illegal migrant who’s crossed the border and refuses to leave. The shed is not his territory.”
            Neel thought he was being unnecessarily dramatic, and the analogy didn’t make sense—but there was no point in arguing and riling him up even more. Better to keep the tone neutral. “So what happened, Murti?” he said casually.
            “What happened was he thought he was a big shot. Instead of being grateful, he became bold and arrogant. He began plotting against me. The shed was a temporary place for him to stay until he found his own accommodation. When I found out that he was making improvements, I told him to move out. He refused, so I fired him. And now we have a problem on our hands. You know how these people are—you give them an inch, they take a mile!”
            Neel shifted uncomfortably, crossing and uncrossing his legs. He didn’t like Murti’s tone and the direction in which this was going, dragging him into an unpleasant swamp. Neel was about to speak, but he didn’t get a chance.
            “Think he can blackmail us?” Murti said, his voice rising. “Rascal! It’s outrageous. Tomorrow I’m having a meeting for everybody in the building. I’d like for us to find a way to get rid of him.”
            Murti appeared so agitated by now, with a trembling hand and flushed face, that Neel thought it best to end the visit. Saying that he’d be glad to attend the meeting and help in any way he could, Neel quickly ushered him out. Walking back to the kitchen, Neel looked down again at the ground extending to the compound wall. A lone guava tree, bent and swaying gently in the breeze, stood like a weathered old sentinel next to the shed. A couple of trees on the property had been knocked down in recent months, and Neel wondered if this remaining guava tree—which had no fruit, as if it had already given up hope—was next.
            Was it true, then, that Murti & Co. were planning to erect another building? Would there really be enough space, even after tearing down the shed and perhaps the compound wall, to build anything here, adding to the congestion and putting a further strain on the water supply, which was running low and being rationed? What if the rains failed again? That wasn’t going to stop them, according to Rahman, Neel’s neighbor in the building. They’d be willing to dig deeper to reach the aquifer, just as they’d be willing to encroach on the neighboring land to accommodate their building. “They’ll do anything to get their way,” Rahman had said. “It’s all about the money, my friend. Greed is great, not God.”
            That seemed the most likely explanation for why Sai was being forced out. A jet-lagged Neel sat up for a long time that night, reading. Feeling restless, he rose from the sofa a few times and walked up to the kitchen window. No light came on in the shed even after darkness fell, and it was hard to believe that Sai was in there. How did he manage? Maybe Neel should have tried to contact him. But what about the others—why hadn’t anybody else been able to reach out to Sai? He should have made inquiries earlier.
            Rahman hadn’t been in when he got back from his trip, and now everybody in the building except Neel was asleep. Perhaps Sai was sleeping, too, despite his fast. Well, Neel would have to wait till the next day. Something was bound to happen soon. The meeting, he hoped, would end the impasse. How long had it been going on, anyway?            
            Around three or four o’clock, he fell into a deep slumber and had a dream. A stray dog began barking loudly. It was joined by another dog, then two more, and soon the noise reached a crescendo. Neel wasn’t scared because, though he was standing nearby, the dogs were not threatening him. Instead, they were barking—on and on—at the little shed, as if a burglar lurked inside. But the door remained closed and there was no response even after the dogs began scratching on it furiously.
            When Neel opened his eyes, sunlight poured in through the window, warming his face, and he found himself slouching in the sofa, his book still resting on his chest. He had barely fifteen minutes for the meeting on the terrace. Getting ready quickly and swallowing his coffee, he took a quick peek at the shed. It still looked unoccupied, but in the daylight he noticed a few covered bowls—had he missed them yesterday?—near the door. Food, perhaps? They seemed untouched. And then, with a shock, he noticed a lock on the door. How could that be? Tearing himself away from the window, he hurried to the meeting, with questions swirling in his mind.  
            For a Saturday morning, the building was strangely quiet—which meant that all the residents were on the terrace, waiting for the meeting to start. The canvas-covered section of the terrace, carpeted and sparely furnished with metal chairs, acted as the building’s gathering place for events. Almost everybody was there. Neel found an unoccupied chair next to Rahman, who greeted him brightly. The meeting proved to be short.   
            Clearing his throat, Murti said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have an unexpected announcement.” He appeared uncharacteristically nervous and was perspiring, although it was pleasant at this hour. “Sai is not in the shed,” he continued. “It’s empty…I don’t know when he left. As far as I’m concerned, this is over and we can move on.”
            There was a stunned silence, followed by a flurry of questions. Any idea where he went? Did he leave a note or contact anybody? Is he okay? What happened?
            Murti’s terse answers were “No” or “I don’t know.” There were no immediate plans to build another building, he added, but the shed would be demolished soon. When the meeting moved on to other matters involving the residents, Neel and Rahman drifted away, as did a few others.
            “So what do you think?” Rahman said when they reached their floor.
            “Puzzling. I don’t know what to make of it.”
            “Fishy is what I’d say.” Opening his door, Rahman invited Neel in for a cup of tea.
            Widowed and solitary, Rahman was always friendly, often giving him news about his children and grandchildren, who had settled abroad and didn’t visit him much.
            “What do you mean?” Neel said, entering the modestly furnished living room.       “I’ll be back,” Rahman replied mysteriously, heading to the kitchen, while Neel sat on a chair by the window and looked around. A small, ancient-looking television set was perched on a cardboard box, and Neel wondered if it still worked.
            Emerging from the kitchen, Rahman handed him a steaming cup. “Didn’t you hear the dogs barking last night?” he said. “They were loud, and it didn’t stop for a while. Unusual…don’t you think?”
            Neel’s heart began racing, as if a treadmill he was walking on had skipped to a higher speed. Taking a sip to calm himself, he said, “The dogs around here bark, don’t they?”
            “Yes, but not like this, especially at night. Nobody investigated because it was not their problem and they didn’t want to be bothered. Look, I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but how did the lock appear on the door? I didn’t see it before. Let’s just say that force can be used to get rid of unwanted people. It happens, I’ve heard, more often than we realize.”
His face flushing as he swallowed some hot tea, Neel tried to absorb all this. “What can we do about it?” he said.
            “Nothing much, I’m afraid,” Rahman said. “But I’m going to call a reporter I know at the local Daily News & Views. Whether he’s interested or not, we should let him know.”
            “Good idea. You know, I still cannot figure out what happened, why Sai was fired. He was pleasant and a good worker, available at all hours. Wasn’t he entitled to sleep on the property? Murti’s reasoning was ridiculous. So what if Sai was making some minor improvements? The shed is dilapidated—”
            “Indeed. Unfortunately, people like Sai don’t have many options in the city. You see, his community is involved in the tanning business. Not wanting to do that kind of work, he left his hometown and came here.”
A clatter outside Rahman’s apartment stopped their conversation. The meeting having ended, some people were coming down the stairs instead of waiting for the building’s only elevator, which could be temperamental.
            Neel soon got busy at work with a new project. Later that week, returning late to his apartment, he saw that the shed was no longer there. Murti hadn’t wasted any time in tearing it down. Neel didn’t speak to Rahman that night, and the following morning he left fairly early to catch a flight—although this time he was making a domestic trip to see his client. Work kept him away, and it was another week before he saw Rahman again. Neel was opening his door, after a trip to the local supermarket for groceries, when he appeared next to him, smiling.
            “Hello, Neel, I see that you were gone for a few days,” he said. “Well, I have some news.” Although nobody else was around, Rahman seemed skittish. Dropping his voice, he added:  “I called the reporter. He said something interesting. They’re investigating the building.”
            “Because of Sai?”
            “No, not because of him. There wasn’t enough information, he said. There have been other such cases, with people vanishing or leaving abruptly. But unless there’s solid evidence, it’s hard to prove anything. He said that we should file a ‘Missing Person’ report with the police if we suspected anything. I said that we didn’t have anything solid.”
             “Then why is the building being investigated?”
             “Aha.” There was a gleam in Rahman’s eyes, and Neel could see that he was enjoying the drama, the telling of the story. “There’s a corruption scandal involving properties in this area,” Rahman continued. “It’s the Wild West, my friend. Bribes were paid to acquire land and illegal boundaries were drawn to increase the size of plots.”
            “Shocking! So, perhaps, the shed was built on somebody else’s property? How ironic—because it was Sai who was accused of being an illegal occupant.”
            “Exactly, Neel. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen Murti lately. He’s hunkering down, I’m sure, and busy talking to his lawyers. I can’t wait to see how all this unfolds.”
            “Indeed, Rahman. It’ll be very interesting. Would you like some tea?”
            Shutting the door once Rahman entered the apartment, Neel began to tell him what he’d seen on his last trip to the airport. He hadn’t stopped thinking about it. Neel was in a cab, approaching a shantytown crowded with the kind of tents he’d noticed on his first visit, when there was a sudden diversion in the traffic. People holding placards were protesting loudly, but Neel couldn’t get a closer look because the cab had to take a detour. He asked the driver what was going on.
            “Agitation, sir,” the driver said, as the cab slowed and took a sharp turn. “Labor people asking for better living conditions.”
            Craning his neck, Neel looked past the policemen at the demonstrators behind the barricade—and turned around only when they were out of sight. For a moment, though it was a long moment, one protester looked like Sai. He was shouting and waving a sign. Then the moment passed, and Neel wondered if he’d just imagined it. Maybe he wanted him to be Sai. Getting off to check wasn’t an option. Besides, he had a plane to catch. 

​

Murali Kamma is the managing editor of Khabar, a monthly magazine. His debut collection of short fiction, Not Native: Immigrant Stories of an In-between World, will be published in 2019 by Atlanta-based Wising Up Press. Most of these stories first appeared in various journals, including The Apple Valley Review, Rosebud and South Asian Review. He has interviewed Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, William Dalrymple, Amitav Ghosh and Pico Iyer, among other authors.

Poetry
~ ​Anthony Wade
​

​The stream rises in the south
and carries some driven by war and famine,
rape and torture, others with no work and
bellies endlessly empty, and snakes a long line
devoutly following the beckoning north star that,
they are told, will bestow safety and comfort,
and so it piously advances, an undamnable stream,
desperate for succour, determined in hope,
a fluctuating flow of children, grandparents, nursing mothers,
the sick and the lame, and some young men
with charged cell phones.
 
Like thistledown blown
on an erratic summer breeze,
orphans are indifferently scattered
along this shifting stream
which struggles onwards in the need for sanctuary
but fearing the small welcome of inhospitable inhabitants
once themselves migrants safely swirled ashore
out of the violent maelstrom of their times
but now firmly rooted in a survivors’ stony world
and facing the question,
will we suffer the little children to come unto us?

​Anthony Wade, a graduate lawyer with a Master’s Degree, is an Irish national educated in England who also worked in The Netherlands. An emerging poet, he has in this his first year published two poems in Ariel Chart, a poem in MonthsToYears, a poem in Boyne Berries Issue 24, three poems in Scrittura Magazine, with two poems accepted for future issues of The Dawntreader. An active member of the Midleton Writers’ Group, he now lives by the sea in East Cork with Pamela, with whom he is married, and a very dim and loved marmalade cat, Basil.

Short Fiction
~ Niles Reddick

            The Kool 100 Oldies Concert began at 6:00pm at the Civic Center, but for an extra five dollars, the geriatric crowd could come an hour early and get to meet the stars, get autographs, and take photos; the VIP upgrade also gave them seats in the stands closest to the stage. I bought the tickets for Evelyn’s birthday and it was the first time we’d been.  We’d even invited our daughter, in her twenties, to come and she’d thought it would be “retro.”
            There had been thirty concerts through the years, and we met one fellow who had attended all thirty and had a notebook, with tabs, alphabetized by author, with autographs to himself he showed us. Some people had their 45s or album covers for autographs, and the six stars sat at tables with pens in hand ready to meet another wave of fans that must’ve seemed somewhat depressing, like a zombie scene from the twilight zone. Several had canes, a few had walkers with hollowed out green tennis balls on the front legs, most were overweight, men were bald or had hair slicked with products one could only purchase at a drugstore, and women wore slacks or tights with long shirts and clanky jewelry.
            We only made it half way through the stars long lines before the call to begin the concert. We had taken the photos with my daughter’s new i-phone. My flip phone didn’t have a camera feature, and our daughter had gone to find our seats, and we had to get strangers to take the photos and then check them to make sure they turned out alright before giving up our place in line. One lady had taken a photo of the stage and we could only see the tops of our heads and had to get her to retake it.
            I hadn’t wanted to stand in lines for photos with male singers I hadn’t really listened to, except random songs I heard on the Oldies station when I was in the car with Evelyn. She knew the songs and the words. She even told John Ford Coley all her friends thought the lyrics in his song “I’d Really Love to see you Tonight” said something like “I’m not talking about a millennium,” when she knew the words were “moving in”. He’d laughed and told her he’d heard that before. When Mr. Coley mentioned this before he sang that song, Ev grabbed my hand. That meant the world to her, but what impressed me about John Ford Coley was his down to earth attitude and his talent---playing both the keyboard and the guitar.
            John Ford Coley did several hits and was followed by Johnny Tillotson who did “Earth Angel”, “Send Me the Pillow You Dream on”, and “Poetry in Motion.” While Tillotson was eighty, his voice sounded strong. He didn’t move around much on the stage, however, and I wondered if he had arthritis and if he took any fish oil. It seemed to help mine. I thought if we got the chance to get his photo at the break, I’d mention it to him.
The last act before the break was Rex Smith who’d had a big hit with “You take my Breath Away” and shared he’d sung a duet with Rachel Sweet titled “Everlasting Love” and had been in the Broadway production of Grease. I had seen the movie, enjoyed it, and when he did a couple of songs from that film, he was really all over the stage and seemed in pretty good shape. He even had a group of women who were apparently in his fan club and wore special lanyards to the concert. He dedicated one to them and they all stood up, fanning themselves and screaming out, like they were still teenagers. I rolled my eyes at Evelyn and she laughed. She pointed to another group of women a couple of rows in front of us who kept pulling up photos of the stars when they were young and comparing them to how they looked now, and while Rex Smith looked like one of the brothers Gibb when he was younger with long hair, he didn’t seem to look much different to me, but then I often imagine myself to look the same as I always have, too, when in reality, I don’t. At my last high school reunion, I kept driving through the parking lot at the football tail gate because I couldn’t find my group when Evelyn finally said, “That’s them over there.” I’d said, “That can’t be them. Those people look old.” She said, “Well, what in the world do you expect? It has been forty years.”
            At the break, we met Tom Garrett from The Classics IV, Pepe Cardona from Alive and Kickin’, and Denis Tufano from the Buckinghams and had our photos taken with our daughter’s phone. I noted the fan club of women hovering around Rex Smith, one of them lingering after the singer had signed, taken photos, and hugged each. She eased up to him and said something and I noticed she whispered in his ear. I nudged Evelyn to watch and she looked that way. He shook his head back and forth, whispered something to her, and tears came in her eyes, causing her mascara to run black down her face.
She wiped with a tissue and moved away into the crowd. I wondered if she’d invited him for coffee and desert after the show, maybe asked about breakfast the next morning. I wondered if she’d even tried to get him to go out with her, maybe go home with her. I wondered if she’d been with him when she was younger, maybe that was her reason for still being a fan. Whatever she’d said, he turned her down or didn’t remember, and it must have hurt her. I felt a little bad for her, but knew that just because the singers can be with fans in their homes, cars, and showers through their music doesn’t mean they want to be there in person.
            The rest of the performances went off without a hitch, even though one of them wasn’t sure which song was after his first one and someone had to remind him. He’d made a joke about it, and I felt like the audience could relate and appreciate his lapse of memory. In fact, near the end of the show after the three of us had split a box of popcorn, I remembered I’d forgotten to tell Mr. Tillotson about the fish oil, but I figured he had his own Earth angel to tell him.
​

Poetry
~ Dr. Jim Brosnan

​

1. Unanticipated
 
On a winter evening
sleet switches
to whirling flakes
of heavy snow as I
approach Davenport.
Barely visible
in the swirling blanket,
colorful neon signs glow
from roadside hotels
and an endless stretch
of chain restaurants.
I pass Thunder Bay Grill,
turn into the parking lot
of the Hotel Blackhawk,
the Impala’s headlights
caked in an icy mask,
the windshield frozen
in the shape of a half-moon.
Over mounds of drifted snow
I retreat inside the lobby
to escape darkness on I-80.

2. I Can’t Explain
 
Past midnight
the pale porchlight
still flickers
as my imagination
listens to our chatter--
the metallic echo
of falling coins
tumbling on cobblestone.
I watch our shadows
on a starlit avenue
in a Davenport suburb
until the vowels
dissolve in the dusk
under the same gray sky
where talk and dreams
disappear daily.

​Dr. Jim Brosnan, full professor of English at Johnson & Wales University, Providence, RI, placed second in NEATE’s 2010 Poet of the Year competition. Jim has published four chapbooks of poetry and over 450 poems which have appeared in the Aurorean, Mad Poet’s Review, The Leaflet, The Bridge, The Teacher As Writer, and Voices of the Poppies Anthology (UK). Jim has won five awards in the National Federation of Poetry Societies competition. His first poetry collection, Nameless Roads, received a silver medal in a national contest. Jim was awarded a university fellowship for his second collection, West of the Mississippi.

Previous Chapters
Novel
Anna Sujatha Mathai

Chapter 26
Mystery and Fright

"Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright." - W.B. Yeats

​Between sleeping and waking, between night and dawn, a dream possessed Shueli.  Graany was talking to her.  “You know that I never had much happiness in my life, don’t you? “ She embraced Shueli, holding her very tight. Clear, fine bells were ringing, almost like tinkling glass. Shueli was able to tune in to the happiness that surrounded them. “Can you feel how happy I am now?” Graany asked Shueli, who was drenched in this utter joy. Yes, Shueli breathed, Yes.  When, rather reluctantly, she woke up, she continued to feel the tight embrace that had held her. The sense of joy, of a perfect world followed her through the day.
Graany was alive and well when she had the dream. When they received the telegram. Shueli did not need to open it. Nor did she feel grief when the news came that Graany had fallen down while having a cup of tea, and had died soon after. The link with her beloved Tiruvella was broken, but would remain, as fresh as a flower, on the altar of her memory for ever.
 
*****
 
The incongruities of life are many; birth and death are imbedded in each other.
Shueli’s black kitten, her companion, to whom she confided many of her lonely thoughts, was now a full grown cat, and was going to have her first litter. She was in great pain, almost panic, mewing piteously, and running here and there, as if to find the right spot. Perhaps she knew that Shueli alone could comfort her in her hour of travail. Who but the human being she loved and trusted most could or would  support and comfort her more? She jumped up onto the bed where Shueli lay, and got hold of the gold bangle on her hand. With that clenched between her teeth, she delivered her first litter of kittens!.
Outside, the hibiscus tree by the door, was aflame with red blossoms. It made Shueli feel there was hope for her, too.
                                                    
*****
 
Her friend, Elvira, sent her a message. “Our paper, CRISIS, is getting read more and more widely. People are discussing it even in the Capital. We’re having a small party to meet some people who’ve shown an interest in it. We’d very much like you and  Dr. Kuri to join us  for supper on Thursday.”
 Shueli was excited. It would be such a change from the lonely walk with the dog. She barely saw Paul these days. He seemed very secretive, wrapped up in his own life. It would be a change for them to spend an evening together, especially after the long silences, and occasional bitter words.
 There would be some interesting conversation, and the dinner would be  excellent. She would enjoy wearing the lovely white sari with blue motifs that Ammy had sent her a while ago. She had put it away, thinking  there would be nowhere she could wear it, unless to one of the huge Kavipuram weddings.. Now she could flaunt it a bit!
The Kamath Mendoncas were seated in the spacious balcony, overlooking the Arabian Sea, and the white lighthouse, standing guard on the rocks.
“Dr. Kuruvilla and his wife Shueli – and this is  Chloris and Reggie Sequeira – he’s our architect, you know; Shyamala and Anand Shetty, the well known sociologist; and this is our young journalist friend, from Delhi – Mitran, Ravi Mitran.  He’s with The Times, and is currently writing a series for The Kavipur Times on social and human rights issues. We’re hoping he’ll do some articles for our Crisis.”
 Shueli took Mitran’s hand, and felt as if there was no one else in the room. Only the two of them. As he looked into her eyes, still holding her hand, she felt a current of electrical energy  connecting them both. She experienced a strange kind of recognition – as if she had known him for years . It was just a minute, but it seemed like several life times!
They did not get very much chance to talk to each other for the rest of the evening. She did tell him that she had been at College in Delhi, and missed it a great deal. He told her he was looking at some of the caste and other social inequalities that made progress in the country impossible. He hoped to turn it into a book, at some later date. Shueli was so interested, and mentioned her Social Studies at Edinburgh. There was so much for them to talk about, but they had to yield to Elvira’s commands to “sit at this end of the table,” or “Come and talk to Shyamala, Kuri. She was a physiotherapist in England, but gave up her career after coming here.. Besides, they have three lovely children”  And so on and on. She could feel the dark intensity of his eyes upon her. He was intrigued. She seemed a misfit here. There was something archaic and slightly pompous about the gathering. She seemed so very much a person of Today, even Tomorrow! He had an urge to take her hand, and run out into the  street below. She caught his eye, and they smiled at each other, conspirators who did not even know one another. She only heard fragments of the conversation. Paul was telling them about the poor, landless labourers and their families, who attended his village clinic. “Small things, - like a leg or arm operation, can make it possible for them to get work and change their own, and their families’ lives. “
Ravi said : “Years of injustice have made these villagers helpless and mute. It’s still a feudal society, especially in the villages. .”
“Democracy implies and requires  participation by reasonably educated and informed citizens..”
“It is painful to realise that bonded labour still exists in India, though it’s more than twenty  years since we got our Independence..
“Unless the population is kept under control, little progress can be hoped for..”
“We have never realised what a privilege it is to live in a society where others, too, have opportunities, and where no one starves …” Shueli’s idealism spilled over, and her eyes shone with that vision.
“Mitran is travelling all over the South, collecting material on – “
“Yes, I’m off to  Madras and  Bangalore tomorrow” he said.
Shueli thought, I shall never see him again.
*****
 
  Tragedy sometimes lurks, just around the corner of an ordinary day. Strikes when you least expect it. Shueli had a sixth sense for it. But even she could not have imagined the blow that was to strike her family. She did have an uneasy feeling, though, through the day. At night she even got up, unable to sleep. She sat on the stairs, gripped by a vague feeling of terror. The phone rang. She rushed to get it. A voice said: “Sorry to have to convey bad news.” She sat down on the steps, her legs weak and drained. “Your sister Gaya’s husband, - I’m sorry, - is dead. Please come at once.”  How? What? Why? He is only thirty-five , in perfect health. She could not bring herself to ask, instead, called faintly to Paul to “please come at once – take the phone…” and sat there, trembling and sobbing. She could hear snatches of the conversation. “Overseer.. workers.. Fell,.. back. Hit head. Hospital...Couldn’t save..” What on earth was this nightmare that had seized them? Dazed, she sat and listened to Paul calling Ammy and Papa to inform them. There was a terrible confusion, surely, some wires crossed, messages for the wrong people. Something like this, -yes,, one read about things like this, in the papers. It happened to other people, never to you, or your family. Gaya and Sheel, who’d been so happy, why had Fate struck at them?  Sheel was the one who’d come in, full of joie de vivre, saying “Where are the  car keys? Come on. Let’s go.” And he was the one who’d dreamed of beating the unjust, still lingering, feudal system in his own village, some day. Already, he’d challenged some of the traditional authoritarianism, which kept some people down, crushed families for generations, -  a perennial source of injustice. When a young man was arrested for a crime he had clearly not committed, Sheel insisted on interfering, forcing the issue with Church authorities who were conveniently turning a blind eye to the situation.  The young man was freed.
Once, when they were all out on a trip in the car, They heard a woman screaming.: “Let me die! I don’t want to live. You drink up everything. Go ahead. Kill me and the children.”  Despite Paul’s hesitation, “The man might have a knife or something –“ Sheel had jumped out of the car, dragged the man out of the hut, given him one strong blow, which seemed to sober him down.
“Don’t you ever try that again, hitting someone weaker. Come on. Try me if you like!” .“No Saar. I just lost my temper because she keeps nagging me…I won’t do it again!”
“Be careful, in future. Or I’ll be back – with the police!”
Paul had said then, and the two sisters had agreed, Sheel had taken a big risk. “It could have turned much uglier, Sheel. You really must avoid jumping into the fray like this,” they had cautioned.  Now , Sheel, who couldn’t bear injustice, and had intervened between overseer and workers, lay dead in that far away Estate.
Paul and Shueli packed a few things hurriedly, and set off in the car, driving all through the night. When they arrived, they found Gaya sitting in a dazed state on the bed, , her husband’s head upon her lap.
“ The statement has been given. She insisted on sitting up with him all night.” 
Her long hair was loose, and fell across his face. It was only when Shueli  went and put her arms around her sister, that Gaya began to weep uncontrollably.
Sheel had entered the scuffle between the overseer and the workers. In the struggle, he had fallen backwards, hitting his head against a rock.
“He was never one to just stand back, when people were in trouble. It was an accident, but what a price to pay, - what a price!” moaned Gaya.
Sheel’s parents would be waiting in the village, in Kerala, for their son’s body to be brought, for the burial ceremony.
“Ammy and Papa will come to the village. I’ve arranged a van to take Sheel’s body” said Paul.
Like a sleep walker, Gaya allowed them to take Sheel’s lifeless body into the van. Gaya and Shueli followed, with Paul driving the car. Some others, friends, family, joined the slow procession of cars. At one of the check points, - they were always looking out for smugglers at the borders, - the sentries would not take their word for it. “How do we know it’s a dead body?”  asked the crude, paan-spitting fellow on duty. ”You’d better open up, and show us. A lot of arrack and gold and such stuff gets across the border.” So they had to open the van door. Sheel lay there, like one sleeping peacefully, who might just jump up, and say,  “What is all this charade? Come on. Let’s go.” How often they had all raced along together in a car, singing, laughing, enjoying themselves. Now they had to make this infinitely sad journey, with that boy’s immense vitality packed into a wooden hold. Gaya never said a word the entire way, after her ordeal of the night before. She was no more than a lifeless creature herself. There was great wailing and weeping when they arrived at the village. Sheel’s grandfather, over ninety years old, came and looked at his young grandson, asleep in the dark embrace of death. “I think they made a mistake. The call was for me. He got taken by mistake.”  .They laid the body out, draped in the purest white, on the bed inside the room. Shueli noticed a slight trickle of blood from Sheel’s mouth. She could not bear to look. Outside, on the verandah, Sheel’s father was pacing up and down, with someone else.  Shueli heard him say, “What will happen, about the  property?”  How could he, at such a time, be thinking of such a thing? True, agricultural families were always concerned about their land., and later, that whole question of a young man dying without a will, was bound to come up.. But - now – with Sheel still lying there, the blood oozing from his mouth?
  Ammy and Papa were devastated, and wept like children. The funeral was simple. The family promised that a marble headstone would be erected later, as it was a family grave.
  Shueli helped Gaya to pack up her household things. “We asked for so little, and even that has been taken from us,” said Gaya brokenly. Is life ever just, or fair? We live by purposes hidden from us.
  When Shueli had  had her final operation, she had lain, broken in spirit, wishing she could die, her English friend, Sylvia, had come to visit her. She had grown up without a family herself. Her father, a psychotic, had put her gentle mother and herself, through a good deal of torture, before he died. Considering her circumstances, Sylvia was amazingly without bitterness. She had sat by Shueli’s bed, and spoken in a matter of fact way. No high sounding words of comfort. “You have two choices” she had said.
“ You can choose to live. Or you can choose to die.” It had sounded so indifferent and passive to Shueli at that time. But, suddenly, she had been flooded with the  energy of making that simple choice. “To choose to live, requires all our human courage.”
That was the choice given to Gaya too.
  What shocked and hurt Gaya, though, was the way Sheel’s family changed towards her. Letters from the father-in-law became legalistic in tone. She was asked to make an inventory “of all household furniture and possessions”  and send a copy to the family. As she grieved for her young husband’s death, she could barely comprehend that they were asking her to sign papers, giving up all claims to her husband’s property. It became very unpleasant when Papa insisted on her rights to her husband’s Provident Fund at least. A year or two later, when they were in Kerala, Shueli accompanied Gaya on a visit to her former in-laws. Gaya said she would like to visit Sheel’s grave, and  they were told, rather reluctantly, by the family how to locate it on their way back to the car. They searched and searched, but the grave site, among those green paddy fields, unmarked by even a simple cross, just could not be found. Gaya wept silently, while Shueli raged. Later, Gaya wrote to the family, saying she  would like to send some money for a marble headstone and cross to be placed over Sheel’s grave. The answer was: “WE will see to it. It is not your problem.” In other words, she had no rights.
  Gaya never smiled again, until  Shueli put the baby Kartik into her arms.