Note 14
There were moments during the curating of Out of Print 14 that we contemplated imposing a theme on the issue. We might have been able to focus on stories that offer a view of paper-laden structures of power and bureaucracy. Alternatively the issue could have featured stories of murder and detection alongside chilling tales of terror and of the supernatural. But, however seductive the idea of a subject-driven edition, in the end we chose works with no specific coherence other than that they represent a sample of bold and well-structured writing.
There is some similarity in the way our stories play with the balance between the character’s perceptions of their place in a narrative and the reality of the emotional landscape that drives the work. In Death of a Clerk by Tulsi Charan Bisht, the illusion is vindicated; convinced he is capable of extraordinary things, Manohar Pandit, strives to rise above his position as an upper division clerk in the Post Office. Ultimately he proves himself by correctly predicting the date and time of his death. The grand old man of the village in Sashikanta Mishra’s The Prop cannot conceive of letting go of his place of power even when incapacitated by a fall. When he must eventually abdicate, he justifies it to himself by emphasising his importance in his own mind. Sheila Kumar’s Tryst is set at a lake in the Nilgiris where a young couple are on a romantic picnic. They are attacked by machete wielding men, and in the fear and violence that follows, their relationship with their attackers, with each other, and with their potential romance is thrown open. In Boby Mohan’s Babu, the straightforward viewpoint of the protagonist gives him a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that his years of hard work in Jeddah, far away from his native Kozhikode are justified. There is no hint of how he will handle the perturbation of that equilibrium except through his resilience in the face of earlier adversity.
Our two other stories draw the reader into the emotional landscapes of the respective pieces. It is Khilawan Singh’s first homicide in Anjali Deshpande’s The Post Modern Murder. And he solves it with a brilliant stroke that defies the imagination and rises above the obfuscations of the University in which it is set. Rohini Manyam Seshasayee’s Canonball is about a young woman who metamorphoses when watching a sports game. The reader is pulled into the strong edgy tale when she literally ‘becomes the ball’ at Wimbledon.
Ram Sadasiv, who joined us at the end of the last issue, will now be part of the editorial team. A writer and a musician, he brings a keen sharp style of cutting to the core of a story. We are glad to welcome him.
The art on the cover of Out of Print 14 is by Yamini Nayyar.