SAMYUKTA FICTION

Issue 7

The Shoes

Ranjita Biswas

Malti saw her from a distance but recognised her instantly. Her malkin in whose house she used to work as a domestic help until some years ago. But this area was not where they used to live, was it? Had they changed their house? Should she go and greet her, folding her hands with a ‘Namaste, Ruma-didi?’ Malti wondered. Would she recognise Malti in her new look? After all, it was more than six years since she had left the job to return to her village. At the time, she was much younger too.

Malti looked down at her shoes, smart and bright in a combination of pink and white. The logo ‘Nike’ was clearly visible. She was dressed in a pair of Levi jeans and a cropped top in bright pink with flowers all over and her hair was tied in a ponytail. Her eyebrows were nicely threaded to make a perfect arch and her lips were coloured in a light shade of pink to match the blouse. Her young dark skin glowed with a touch of moisturiser.

Malti hesitated. Would malkin snub her or worse, ignore her? After all, you could never tell with city people. They forget people when it suited them, or when a job was done. But she scolded herself, malkin was not that bad, only a little aloof. Suddenly, a scene, and then many scenes, one after another, flashed in her mind and she closed her eyes for a moment.

Naxalite

Hindol Bhattacharjee

Translated by the author from the original Bangla story first published in Krittibas, March 2023.

On the pink wall, a square marble slab bears the inscription “Kutir.” Below it are the names Amalendu Roy, Chitra Roy, Kaushik Roy, Megha Roy, and Simli. The marble has become a bit dirty. The wall bears an iron gate that, when opened, creaks loudly, as if announcing an arrival. That’s when Simli’s barking starts.

This two-story house is home to Amalendu Babu and his wife, Chitra, on the first floor. Both are over sixty. On the second floor live Kaushik and his wife, Megha. They have no children, but they do have a young Labrador named Simli.

Houses like this are common in Kolkata, especially near the outskirts. So, why mention it? First, this is the only house of its kind in the area. The rest are all new apartment buildings. The tall buildings surrounding this pink house seem to gaze at it like giraffes. Sometimes, the house appears to be a prehistoric creature, surrounded by trimmed hedges and standing awkwardly in the midst of a concrete jungle.

The Missing Man

Original: Ghazanfar

Translated from the Urdu by Zainab Fatma

As soon as the walls of our house were painted the colour I chose, my children began to wrinkle their noses in disapproval.

My son said, “Papa! What kind of colour are you having done? Please stop this.”

“Yes, Papa! This does not look good at all. You should consider mauve or any other newer colour.” My daughter added.

“Why? What is wrong with this colour?” I asked them.

“Papa, this looks very dull and clumsy. It will ruin the beauty of our house.” My son listed the flaws.

“Yes, Papa! Sunny is right. This colour is very unpleasant.” My daughter chimed in.

“No, no. This colour is good. It will be perfect.”

“What, Papa! What kind of taste do you have? Look, this colour does not suit at all. Please stop.” My son began to insist.

“For God’s sake, Papa, do not go with this colour.” My daughter also pressed me.

“No, this will be good. I like this.” I resolved to stick to my decision.

“Papa, you are being stubborn.” My son said.

“Yes, you are being stubborn, Papa.” My daughter was one with his opinion.

“Yes, I am being stubborn; I am stubborn, and I am determined to have things my way.” My tone grew harsh.

My children turned sad and walked away.

“You are being stubborn.”

LOVE STORY?

Priyanka Sarkar

Left. Right. Oh, hard left. Right. Right. Right. Super swipe. Left.

Done with swiping for the day, Akash closed his Fumble app and went back to checking the proof corrections the freelance proofreader had marked. The work seemed to be ok, so after running some sample checks, he sent the pdf to the typesetter. He leaned back on the uncomfortable and rickety office swivel chair that had been supporting his weight for a year now. Time for his forty winks!

Unfortunately for him, just then , the department’s head barged into the hall meant for editors of academic books. Fortunately for him, she chose someone else to fire the first missives of the day at and her angry roars alerted Akash. He sat up and opened a long author mail, pretending to read it again.

‘Hey you, have you sent Sustainable Development and the Economy of India for printing?’ Veena stood behind him and demanded in her high-pitched voice that Akash thought banshees probably sounded like.

‘No, Ma’am. It has been sent to the typesetter with proof corrections.’

‘How many times have I told you to not call me Madam or Ma’am. You are not in college anymore and I sure as hell am not your teacher. Better pull up your socks and not delay the book on waste management like you have this one. And I want Sustainable Development sent to press by the end of the week. I don’t care if you have to work round the clock, just do it.’

A Death in the Forest

Paromita Goswami

“Hey there!” shouted one of the seven policemen who had just walked into the dusty Adivasi village. Katiya happened to be returning from his sister’s house and guessed that he was being yelled at. He looked down and tried to saunter on as if he had not heard them. “Hey you, are you deaf?!” This time the shouts sounded more like threats. A woman, who had just stepped out sickle in hand, quickly turned round and disappeared into her hut. Children with mud-streaked faces peeped out from behind trees. Katiya stopped as the men strode towards him.

“Ah, just the person we wanted to see,” said the Inspector, playing friendly but placing a firm hand on his shoulder, “let’s go to your house and sit for a while.” Most unwillingly, Katiya led the group to his hut right at the end of the village. The dense, hilly Koparshi forest seemed to come right up to his little backyard. The village dogs ran around yapping; the hens stopped pecking at worms in the soil and flapping their wings vigorously, hid the chicks swiftly underneath.

The policemen settled on the string cots in Katiya’s outer courtyard; the red plastic chair was reserved for the Inspector. Katiya fetched water for them to drink and splash on their faces. Then he slaughtered four chickens and his wife made red hot chicken curry and rice. Katiya watched from a distance as the police chewed and sucked, licking their fingers clean, making noises of satisfaction at the curry’s spiciness and tang. Their rifles stood delicately balanced against their knees.

BALLAL’S BOTHER

Nalini Bera (orig. Bengali) (trans. by. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar)

Putus, that is, the lantana flower. His daak naam or nickname was Putus, named after the lantana flower. His bhalo naam or good name was Ballal Murmu. His father’s nickname was Balka. The names of the father and the son were almost similar.

His house was in the village; not in the middle of it, but right at the place where one entered that village. His house was a usual Santal village house. There were several groves of bamboo around the house. There were both varieties of bamboo there: the plain bamboo and the spiny bamboo. As it is said in Bangla, “Benu bone mormore dokkhina baay”—the balmy southerly breeze blew through the bamboo clumps.

The leaves of the bamboo shook and murmured in the southerly breeze. Sometimes, venomous snakes too appeared, hissing. Snakeskin was often entangled in the bamboo and swayed in the wind like pennants.

One could see Putus alias Ballal Murmu’s one-storied mud house, through the gaps in the bamboo clumps, with its roof thatched with paddy straw. Nearby was a shelter for ghusur, that is, pigs. Ballal’s pigs grunted around and dug the ground with their snouts or loitered through the bamboos, chomping noisily on bamboo shoots, making a rot rot rot rot sound.

Baansh kawrole, that is what the bamboo shoots are called. Why only pigs, even humans cooked the bamboo shoots and ate those as a delicacy. Elephants too feasted on bamboo shoots. New bamboo grew from those bamboo shoots.

The Mudpie

Rimi B. Chatterjee

From the air, the Mudpie looked like an ordinary mangrove forest. You’d never guess it was the grave of one of the foremost cities of the modern era. Carlton Caron looked at the aerial photographs on the wall display in the Vijaya Base briefing room. The Mudpie sloped upwards to the north, a relic of how the monster tsunami of 2023 had scooped up the city’s giant corpse and danced a furious death-stomp all over Singapore Island. Carlton had been in first year at Naval School when it happened. It had felt like a bad omen for the days to come.

In the eighteen years since then, Nature had built a memorial to Old Singapore, made of mangroves and sea turtles and dolphins and fish and birds. Reef sharks, thought to be extinct in this part of the world, had returned, and it was thought there were saltwater crocodiles too, though no sightings had been confirmed.

The main reason for the growth of this popup natural paradise was the Glitch. The Glitch was a killer. It had claimed five lives in the months following the death of Old Singapore: two divers, one pilot and two fishermen who’d been part of the doomed rescue mission. There was nothing to rescue anyway: the Wave, generated by the sudden collapse of the undersea thorium mines around Rangsang Island, had towered above Singapore’s highest skyscrapers before falling on Marina Bay at a third of the speed of sound. In a matter of hours, a once-flourishing nation had turned into a an alien hellscape, buried in eternal night.

Waldeinsamkeit

Chitra Gopalakrishnan

A mild June sun sprawls outward in a pale yellow fan of light against the sky in the village of Satoli in the Kumaon hills of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

Now and then, liquid sunshine casts a translucent light on the elevated, snow-clad, Himalayan mountain ranges and lingers over the peaks of Chaukhamba, Trishul, Nanda Devi, Sunanda Devi, and Panchachuli and then abruptly plays truant. When it does, these giants turn, within moments, into shadowy, grim sentinels guarding the horizon. Then just as suddenly when the sunbeams open out again, this time shining through marshmallow clouds, they distract these flinty mountains out of their cold, stony disposition.

The effect of this manoeuvre on me is magical: a floating sky with drifting peaks of silver gleams its way right into my heart.