Editor's Note
BACKSeven stories are presented in this issue, seven stories with no apparent common thread, but all, in some manner, about connections.
In Inverter by Annie Zaidi the narrator establishes a silent connection with a person who lives across the street, a delicious, seductive connection. Layers of social norms come in to play here as the protagonist’s communications weave in and out of the darkness of summer power outages in Kanpur.
Jyotsna Kapur utilises a distinctive meta-fictive style in The Song to examine lost connections. It places the beginning of the story about a woman who is driven to a lonely solitude by a profoundly negative relationship, and interprets the implications of different endings.
Another story about solitude, and disconnection is Nabina Das’ Decoded. Set in the conflict of north-east India, it tears at the reader’s perceptions as one wanders with the protagonist through a maze of terrifying thoughts and realities.
Perhaps the most literal interpretation of the theme of connections in this issue is Ananth Aravamudan’s The Real Connect, a science fiction piece. Based in the idea that human beings like other creatures can connect and read each other’s thoughts and emotions, it examines, both with hope and despair, how society responds to the power of such an ability.
Meenakshi Jauhai Chawla’s piece, whose writing style in this story reflects the somewhat distanced view of the narrator, is about a hospital, a mother, a child and about a deeply embedded need for a connection. Not for Real is Meenakshi’s third story with Out of Print.
Tanuj Solanki continues, in his characteristic writing mode, to study the trajectory of a writer’s life-story, previous pieces of which work have appeared in earlier issues of Out of Print. Love, love for a woman whose life has diverged from his onto a different mountain path is the narrative thread that frames The Same Experiment, Again.
Another story set in the north-east of India is Prasanta Das’ Moina. An explosion takes place in the town, and a connection made when a young man flirts with Moina in the corridor of the house where she works leaves the reader with a disquieting sense of violence, disaster and a sad hope.
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The artwork by Heraa Khan adheres in extraordinary serendipity to the thread of connection that runs through the stories in the issue. The cover design by Yamuna Mukherjee contains images from a piece of Kalamkari or crafted-by-pen fabric depicting stories from Indian mythology.
Heraa Khan lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. She received her BFA in 2012 from the National College of Arts, Lahore. She has studied the techniques of the traditional Persian and Mughal miniature painting, which requires discipline, attention to detail and a careful layering of colour. Her work is a tale of absurd, frivolous indulgences as well as limitations and loneliness. It is an attempt to personalise and transform the traditional art form into a contemporary one.
Khan has shown her work in several group shows across the country, with a solo show in 2012 titled, Together Alone. She has assisted the renowned miniature painter Aisha Khalid in her solo show at the Corvi Mora gallery London, the Sharjah Biennale 2011, Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester, a solo show at Isabelle Gallery Dubai, Art Basel Hong Kong, and the Moscow Biennale, Moscow.
Khan's work is also part of The Written Diaries, a film based project in UK.