Note 29
Out of Print is privileged to have two stories translated from Kannada in the December 2017 issue, one by the remarkable writer and activist P Lankesh and the other by the distinct urban voice of Jayant Kaikini. The issue also features three works by women writing in English, each distinct and bold.
At once deeply moving, profoundly tragic, yet ultimately transcendental in its sense of hope, Jayant Kaikini’s story, ‘The Threshold’, beautifully translated by Pratibha Umashankar-Nadiger transports the reader into Mucchi Mian’s cramped makeshift shop of discarded wares that is touched, one afternoon, by magic.
On her first day at work, the protagonist struggles to meet her target at garment factory described with an almost stylised chillingness by Kavya Sharma. As ominous whispers from the other women workers urge her to hurry, in a terrifying echo of the title ‘Mr Patted My Back’, the young woman encounters their supervisor’s seemingly concerned presence.
The particular sharp observations of the writer who now uses the pseudonym Shikhandin are featured in Out of Print once again. In ‘Taste’, conversations bordering on the ridiculous around foreign holidays and stinky cheeses including a ‘half blue, half white, smelling-so-bad fungus-walla’ one take the reader into the life and hopes of Dimple as she negotiates independence and aspiration.
Sudha G Tilak’s ‘The Missing’ is set in a refugee camp for Sri Lankan Tamils. Through the voice of a young girl, we are taken into the realities of the survival and existence of the girl and her mother as she is interviewed by a journalist whose perceptions are completely disparate with those realities. Although particular to the Sri Lankan struggle that has lasted over generations, the story echoes those we hear about refugee camps all over the world.
We close the issue at the end of this calendar year with Lankesh’s work jointly translated by Narayan Hegde and Chandan Gowda. Set in the fresh, open air of the beautiful Lalbagh gardens, a writer who is passing the time in observation, is confronted by the disintegrating, or more precisely, the unrealised friendship between two retired gentlemen who have known each other for many years. Through the harsh ugliness that underlines their relationship, the writer is driven to contemplate pain; the story ends with the line that resonates: Why can’t we, like these trees, give shade and let flowers blossom dispassionately and magnanimously?
The art on the cover of Out of Print 29 is by Neha Choksi.