Note 36
The release of this edition of Out of Print has been delayed by our quest to find balance and coherence in the works we are presenting. When we received the profound ‘The Princesses of Kashi’ by Shashi Deshpande, a retelling of the familiar tale of Amba, Ambika and Ambalika from the point of a view of Ambika who lived it and is yet marginalised, we recognised that this release of Out of Print would be about those singular pivotal moments that deeply impact the path of the protagonist’s journey. In the case of Ambika, when Bhishma abducts her with her sisters at the moment when they believe they can make their own choices, or when Vyasa visits her bedroom at night. We had to find stories that would somehow fit the theme that was emerging.
When we asked translator Keerti Ramachandra to suggest one of her recent translations for the issue, she sent us a story after careful consideration. It could not have been more appropriate. Saniya’s ‘Bequest’, written in Marathi enters the trajectory of a man at the edge of a very big betrayal. The enormity of the moment is even more strongly felt because the quiet everyday nature of the story where gentle, quotidian activity weaves in and out of the surprise of the man’s unexpected visit.
Susheela Menon’s ‘The Mating Habits of Dolphins’ is a love story. It addresses, fear, insecurity and threat that have been held back and buried, and comes to the fore, in a moment, with a closed door separating the central characters. The pivotal moment, however, occurs a short while later, in a taxi, where a single statement changes everything. In ‘The Flood’ by Rebecca Winslow-Pandey the moment that affects the narrator occurs at the beginning of the story when his father and uncle first encounter the magic of Begum Fasi. The choices the family makes and the behaviour of father, uncle and protagonist is formed by that meeting.
Translator, Raza Naeem, wrote to us offering his translation of Krishan Chander’s ‘Jamun ka Ped’ (The Jamun Tree). His urgency was driven by the fact that in November 2019, the story was dropped from the ICSE Hindi syllabus (The Wire], The Scroll]). Why was the story deemed ‘unsuitable’ for students from standard X? Any answers to this unfathomable question that the translation might provide are more than sufficient reason to publish the work. As regards our theme, the story, in all its brilliant absurdity, epitomises that pivotal moment when the tree falls and pins the man down on the Secretariat lawn and the path of his life is changed forever.
The art on the cover of Out of Print 36 is by Rekha Rodwittiya.