Note 16
Seven 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 and disaster, and a sad sense of hope.
The art on the cover of Out of Print 16 is by Heraa Khan.