MADTROTTER

  In the train, Keimoni preferred to read a book to a newspaper, and not only because the size was practical. The paper didn’t hold her attention enough, and above all, it didn’t take her out of the present. The ride every day to work let her do the amount of reading she liked to take in at one time. She liked to read at home, at night, but other things. Keimoni read several books at once, each with a time and place, taking her out of the place and time in which she lived. She disappeared into books like someone running into the forest, emerging from the other side, always a bit changed from the experience of crossing over. These vanishing acts were a staple for all periods of waiting. In trains, busses, cabs, restaurants, park benches, offices. It did not matter if she was sloshed between sweaty arms of strangers in the train whose faces were less than two inches from hers. It did not matter if the light was too low or the seat already taken or if a hundred infants were screaming at t

The rain pelted incessantly for six years and five months and twenty-two days over the city of Someplace. There were periods of drizzle when people stepped out but soon, they began to realise that the respite was only a forecast for more rain. At first life came to a standstill and then boredom set in. People stopped going out altogether so establishments had no reason to stay open. The public gardens were flooded and turned into veritable marshlands with crocodiles and snakes which put an end to walking. A thick layer of moss covered the asphalt under the waterlogged streets that made cars and motorbikes skid off their paths and often into death. People received their weekly supplies of grains from a government helicopter that came twice a week to drop sealed packets onto the terraces. Time stretched into infinite seconds over Someplace and its people came to be characterised by their glassy eyes, wet yellowish skin and a perennial dry crust around their mouths. Kaamkar Das was one of

  It was nine o’clock, while Aul Singh was having breakfast on the terrace of The Kumaon hotel under a bright sun, a large fold of the glacier in the Himalayas of the western Kuman region broke free and rolled down the mountainside, raising a white cloud of ice and rubble that blew across the valley where the hotel was located, with such force that it turned the great entrance window to dust. It was like dynamite exploding. Panic spread across all five floors of The Kumaon hotel. No one was seriously hurt except a few guests in the lobby who were cut by the hailstorm of glass. But when the crane picked through the rubble at a road nearby, they uncovered a curious object. It was a seven metre long tear-shaped block of ice. When Aul Singh first saw the black and white grainy picture in the newspaper, he sensed a dark form inside. He had no doubt that it was protecting something inside. Since the beginning of adolescence when Aul Singh had begun to be aware of his premonitions, they woul

Kasar Devi, near Almora I must not look at the mountains, the white snow-clad Himalayas perched atop the clouds. I must not look at the rolling Sivaliks at my feet or the endless layer behind layer of misty mountains blurring into the sky. I must not look at the stars or think about the solar system – of giant suns spanned by countless light years, all that light turned to a speck of sparkle in the sky. I must not look at a tree for longer than a minute, so my eyes won't trace patterns in the leaves. I must never look at the time for then it passes either too slow or too fast but never as I please.     I must not do all those things so I can get some work done.  

She sat on a wooden bench facing an empty communal pool, contemplating its green chlorinated waters, with her hand resting on the silver handle of her cane and thinking about death. The first time Mrs. Ghosh had visited Dolphin Square, she was no more than five herself. Her father, a district magistrate in the Calcutta high court and a skilled swimmer himself had unceremoniously doused her in the pool. It was the first of many days that would become her entire adolescent years. The pool was emptied and cleaned once every year in the winter. There had been numerous deaths at the bottom of the diving board but all of Calcutta’s best swimmers frolicked to the murky green pools to compete with children from nearby slums who inevitably turned out to be stronger and swifter in the district championships. Every second Sunday of the month, young people who couldn’t afford the membership fee of the government run swim club, competed against each other to earn their place by merit. It afforded t