Editor's Note
BACKWe have a diverse and beautiful edition of Out of Print to offer our readers this December. The eight stories featured range from the deeply personal to the detached, the style from one of self-examination to that of the distanced observer. We are proud of this compilation, a subtle, nuanced, layered reflection of big themes: heroes and villains, attack and rescue, family and survival, love and greed – and panacea.
A Defender of Humanity, Mohinder Singh Sarna’s story of Partition, translated with the utmost sensibility by his son, Navtej Sarna, is a moving reminder of the violence that lurks below society’s veneers of civilisation. The elegant pace of the story and the sense of the narrator’s fine personality are in stark contrast to the terrifying narrative.
Violence is more graphic, and wildly transforming in Philip John’s Change is Too Benign a Word. The main character in the story must deal with fantastical super-human changes that are triggered by violation. The ordinary, the quotidian, the familiar in which the story is set only serve to emphasise the brutality.
Nighat Gandhi’s Water of Life or Aab-e-Hayaat as the author alternately titles it, is an entry into the life and mind of a woman conflicted between her creativity and her duty, between her apparent selfishness and her absolute need for her own mental space. The resolution of these schisms is, for her, private and profound.
Two of the stories are set in road journeys. Shweta Sharan’s She Takes The Bus follows a young woman ‘in a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend’ whose weekly trips to visit him begin to take on a meaning of their own. Her thinking as an artist and a person is cleverly developed in the context of her bus journeys, even as ‘romantic notions … are beginning to crack’. Farah Ghuznavi’s Getting There takes place on a car ride from Chittagong to Dhaka. Despite the flavour of ‘improbably bright pink and green sweets’ along the way, the story examines the often dark compromises in the relationships of three generations of a family with one of their own, and is pivoted in their reactions to her art. The complex evolution of societal and individual norms is laid out as she finally begins to feel their understanding.
The sparsely told and finely controlled The Table by Ila also spans multiple generations. The distance with which the tale is told belies both the levels of greed and dissolution that can drive a family, as also the irony of the narrative.
The Same Story through the Theoretical Framework of a Grand Kaleidoscope, is a structured series of interwoven examinations of parents, sibling and lover from the focal point of a young man. Tanuj Solanki frames the deeply observed pieces in the context of optical complexity, an experiment that layers the story with interest and intricacy.
Finally, Paul Zacharia’s The Bar translated by Anupama Raju leaves one with a disturbing sense of fatalism. The local joint inexplicably closes down and the regulars are perturbed, but when one of them plays with the switch of the neon hoarding, it blazes alive like ‘a sacred sign’. The visual of the setting is conceivable, the narrative is linear, but the story is placed in a sort of eternal, irredeemable emptiness.
We bid farewell to editor Mira Brunner. The singular strength of her literary vision was critical in creating the editorial viewpoint, and in a sense, the courage of Out of Print, and we are grateful. At the same time, we welcome Leela Levitt to the editorial team. She worked with us as an intern on the previous issue and played a key role in putting it together. We are extremely pleased that she has consented to continue with us and will bring to Out of Print, her ability to see a story, and lift it to a better level. Also joining us is Washington DC based writer and musician Ram Sadasiv.
We continue to post updates on the Out of Print Blog, and on Facebook, and Twitter.
The cover design by Yamuna Mukherjee contains images from a piece of Kalamkari or crafted-by-pen fabric depicting stories from Indian mythology. We are very pleased that this time the artwork, titled Searching for Rousseau is also by Yamuna Mukherjee.
Bangalore based graphic designer Yamuna Mukherjee, a graduate of The National Institute of Design, has been freelancing under the name Kiri Design for the last twenty years. Over this period, she has worked on countless print related projects such as corporate identity design, package design, posters, brochures, signage and digital art for both the corporate
and NGO sectors.
Yamuna's love for animals has translated into a digital art series titled On the Road. On the Road celebrates the spirit and resilience of the Indian street dog through surreal, often humorous narratives. Work from this series was selected by Digital Arts: California to appear online in the True Colors 2 show.