Sahil Sood's Blog

My interview with Miss Maini Reads (@missmainireads) on Instagram Live, on 25 June 2020. I talked about my literary work, upcoming book project, and challenges of finding a publisher and the audience for Queer Literature in India. Link: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CB3Ek6aAt1p/…

There, he saw it again, like he did the first time. Many years ago, driving back home in the silence of the night, in the backseat of his father’s car, nose pressed flat against the cold window, he, then a child, saw a giant ball of still ice, following him everywhere in the darkness. Skirting past the silver edges of dark clouds, gliding across the sky, soon it came into full view. The child closed his eyes, waiting for it to disappear. But when he opened them, he saw it again, towering in the sky, beyond his reach, a mystery, like life itself. That’s heaven, he thought. His ears pricked at the sound of a soft knock at the door. It was the light from the object in the sky. It cast a pale glow against the mist on the window. Trembling with curiosity, he lowered the window slightly, at first. The night air, like cold steel, bruised the skin under his eyes. The light clambered in, dropping and sinking into his lap, and then quickly spread itself inside the car. Why have you opened the window? It’s cold outside; you will get sick. Sorry, Dad. He rolled up the window, closing the tiny opening. Amused, the child then lifted his hand, now bathed in a pale silver light, and brought it closer to his face. He saw it then. The object in the sky had cleverly invaded his body. He had been fooled. Made part of a rude prank. Miffed, he tried to shun it away, wringing his hands on the seat. But he couldn’t. The light had sought a new home for itself. The betrayal of that night would weigh on his mind for days to come. One night, gazing into the darkness from his window, he took out an empty glass bottle and placed it near the base of the table opposite the window. When the object came up in the sky again that night, he opened the window and let the light come inside. As it hit the bottle, filling inside its empty walls, he quickly got up and put a cork on the bottle, trapping the light inside. The light exploded brightly. Screeching at the glass surface, it burst into tiny bolts, shooting upwards, struggling to break past the barrier. The boy became still, his rage now quieted. Something yet nameless inside his chest stirred. That night, he realized what very few people did – the glowing object in the night-sky was a friend, not an enemy. Embarrassed at his mistake, he uncorked the bottle and released the light into the room. From there on, wherever he went, the object travelled with him, like a faithful companion. Neither its beauty nor its light faded with time. And there certainly appeared nothing different about it when he saw it tonight in the street, the child now a grown man, older and drunk and tired, returning from work. Why after all, it was his life, the silent witness, the record of the endless distance between him and the darkness above, between life and death. It was his beloved, the Moon.

Next: Moonstruck ‘1 (https://sahilsood.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/moonstruck-1/)

In Remembrance: Miguel Rosado Rivas (1942 – 2002)

Born in 1942 in rural Mexico in a family of six brothers, Miguel Rosado Rivas was the youngest child of Pablo Rosado Varela and Maria Rivas Hernandez. He had soft features – a large forehead, round eyes and a happy, smiling face. A precocious child, he taught himself to read and write by the age of five. Not much is known about his early years, except he loved to talk and ask endless questions, a quality which grated on the nerves of other family members. By the goodwill of a close relative, who recognized Miguel’s special talent and saved him from the fate of hard labor, he was admitted into the local Catholic school – the only child in the family of Pablo Varela to have received any kind of formal education. In winters, when the rest of the family toiled in factories, Miguel spent his time in the parish library, memorizing verses from the Bible and scribbling notes in his black diary – the contents of which were never discovered. In the evening hours, he could always be spotted sitting quietly in the library along a trail of potted poinsettias on the windowsill, waiting patiently for the red star-shaped leaves to bloom from the darkness and greet the winter light outside.

In 1965, as a young man of twenty-three, Miguel left Mexico for Dallas, Texas, United States, to take up the position of a teaching assistant at a missionary school. He tried his luck at several jobs after that: from carpentry to writing for Catholic journals, driving cargo trucks to arranging flowers at funerals, instructing choir groups to maintaining the library. But as much as his heart craved for the life of the mind and the spirit, he was attracted to the noise and glamour from the faraway, a world of limitless possibilities, hidden from his view, in which could slip in as easily and subtly as a shadow and become anything he wanted. So in 1971, he stunned everyone when he left Texas and moved to Los Angeles, California, working full-time as a bartender at a popular discotheque – a decision which upset many back at the Order.

As the business of the club grew in the late 1970s, Miguel’s popularity increased by the day. Handsome, quick-witted, and sharp, he earned the secret admiration of men and women alike. He was a trusted friend to many and was fiercely loyal to them. His jovial personality and unique sense of humor caught the attention of some Hollywood executives who regularly invited him to serve at many high-profile parties. He entertained packed rooms with lively anecdotes from his growing up days in old Mexico – people often reeled with laughter, he was instantly likeable.

But as Miguel matured with age, he became a deeply private person, increasingly drawn to silence, both within and outside him. In the late, busy hours at the club, lit by a haze of flashing pink neon lights, he could hear shadows on the wall speak; he could hear what people, lounging at the counter, said in their minds when they quietly stared past each other. On rainy days when he walked home, the humming chorus of some of those quiet notes, would rise in the air and whistle past his ears, swiftly pouring down the drain in front of the building where he lived.

In 2000, having worked and lived in several countries since his time in Los Angeles, Miguel moved to Berlin, Germany, and started working as a cabaret manager at a nightclub. It was only then he began complaining of a sharp pain in his lower abdomen. As the pain grew severe with time, it was followed by intermittent bouts of retching, fever, and nausea. He visited many clinics in the city for check-up, but no one could accurately diagnose the problem and instead put him on high dosages of various prescription drugs, to relieve him from the pain. An unexplained illness had taken hold over his body by then – and he suffered greatly for it. In his final years, as his body rapidly declined and he became thin and frail, he developed a soft, penetrating gaze. Once a lively, handsome man who always had a ready audience, he had no one left to tend to him and his needs.

Although raised as a Catholic, Miguel believed in reincarnation. And over the years, even through his inner struggles, he remained steadfast in his belief in Christianity and God. He read the Bible every night before going to bed and continued scribbling thoughts in his black diary, which he took along wherever he went. Each day as life ebbed from his body, his inner gaze became wider. He looked at the world outside from his window with renewed clarity – birds, trees, snow, people – the nature in its full glory – and desperately longed to be a part of it once more, just like the child who waited patiently for poinsettias to open their eyes from the darkness and see the light.

Miguel Rosado Rivas passed in 2002 after a long and debilitating illness. The cause of his death may not be as necessary to probe today as the manner of his death. He died under mysterious circumstances. His body was never discovered. The nurse who looked after him at the clinic said that she put him to bed the night before he disappeared, only to find a pot of full-grown poinsettias in his place in the morning when she came to give him his daily medicine. It is her professional belief that his body was too weak to carry itself and therefore, he could not have walked out of the bed on his own. And all through his stay, he never once received a visitor – family, friend, or relative – who could have done that for him either. For administrative reasons, the date and time of his death was recorded as 25 December 2002, 2 a.m.

(Continued from Moonstruck ‘1)

When Mahen opened his eyes, he felt an insidious chill mounting at the top of his nose and slowly beginning to grip his whole body. A dull, grey sky, like a timeworn rag-paper, spread evenly above him. As he turned his body, he saw heaps of fresh snow lay still around the empty pathways. Light poured down from the sky in large conical beams and lit up the colorless surroundings. As he held his stomach and pulled his knees closer to his face, shivering in the cold, he heard a sharp cry from a distance. It advanced towards him slowly, and then picked up the pace as it drew closer, like hurried footsteps of a shifty person.

‘Here, cover yourself with this – quickly!’ As Mahen lifted his head in puzzlement to inquire the source of the voice, he saw a tall woman, in mid-age, with olive skin and deep-set eyes, handing him a thick warm blanket. She wore a black robe, with her hair tied firmly in a bun behind her head.

‘You must never step outside without proper clothes. You could easily catch frostbite.’ She looked at him in earnest, with her thin brown lips slightly parted in concern.

Thank you, Mahen replied, as he took the blanket and got himself up from the ground. He noticed that the woman had soft features; wrinkles patterned her forehead like waves on sand.

‘Come with me. It’s no good staying out in this cold.’ As he finished wrapping the blanket around his body, the woman started walking ahead, beckoning him to follow her. The floor around them lay sprinkled with snow. As Mahen started following her, he noticed that her walk was smooth, as if she was gliding on the snow with her feet invisible under the long robe. Her head looked like an open wound, with a large scarlet rose staking through her hair bun.

Everything around looked deserted. Scraps of grey metal and plastic cups lay encrusted with snow around the overfilled wastebaskets, writhing in the cold breeze. The streets were empty; there were no cars or creatures in sight. Leafless trees with crooked branches spotted the side streets, like cadavers hanging out of graves. Wide shafts of light escaped from the narrow spaces between the tall, closely constructed buildings and beamed across the streets. The woman appeared in stark contrast from her colorless surroundings, a looming shadow of black and red, moving alone in a grey desert.

She stopped at the entrance of a small square building with a gabled roof and a tall black chimney. The building stood alone along the street; the area around lay covered with frosted vegetation and chopped pieces of wooden logs.

‘Do you mind removing your shoes outside? My house is already a mess. I don’t like to get it anymore dirty.’ As she moved inside the house, Mahen quickly removed his shoes and put them outside the door, on the snow-covered ground.

As he stepped through the door, he felt a warm rush of air instantly tug at his body. ‘You can keep the blanket on the floor – it’s quite messy anyway. I haven’t found time to do the laundry yet. I will do everything at once, perhaps tonight.’ The wooden floor creaked as he moved across the house. It was littered with clothes—dirty socks, handkerchiefs, kids’ pajamas, and other pieces of apparel tossed casually everywhere. He removed the blanket and hanged it on the arm of the sofa in the middle of the living room. In the kitchen right across from where he stood, the woman put a metal pot on the stove and beamed at him. She looked tired—perhaps more than that.

‘Do you like tea?’ she asked. Sure, I don’t mind, he replied.

He walked across the living room and found two large curtains covering the wall behind the sofa. It was unclear what the curtains were put for, since there appeared no window or an entrance to a room or a passageway that the curtains might obstruct. Yet they seemed to be guarding something. There was an unmistakable figure, a presence he could trace from the vague silhouette against the fabric, a mid-sized piece of furniture, perhaps, like a frozen blob of air, that seemed carelessly shifted behind the curtains.

As he scanned the room further, he noticed that the walls around lay almost bare. There were a few wooden frames that hung picture-less, slightly askew. On one of the walls, a large part of the yellow wallpaper was left undone, revealing the charred surface beneath it. Mahen felt a twitch in his left eye; the place seemed oddly familiar—distant, yet familiar. A strange silence lurked around in the room, like an invisible presence carefully avoiding to be felt or heard.

Where am I? he asked the lady, staring in confusion, as she poured tea into two large metal mugs and walked towards him, smiling bleakly. She beckoned him to sit on the sofa and then gently put the mugs on the small table at the centre. Mahen sat on the sofa urgently, directing his attention towards her.

‘I wanted to tell you…but…it is all so difficult, please…’ as she collapsed and broke into hysterical sobs, her whole body first quivered and then shook uncontrollably, revealing how frail she was underneath her loose robes. Mahen put his right arm around her sympathetically and then held her shoulders with both his hands, urging her to stop and calm down. ‘The kids…they cannot know…you have to make sure they never hear of it, oh they are so young, it is so, so unfair…’ the lady said, loosening herself from Mahen’s grip and regaining her composure.

You have kids? Mahen asked.

‘Yes. But surely, you must have seen them. You walked right past them’, she replied.

What do you mean?

‘I meant, they have been standing right behind you the whole time.’

Mahen felt a chill sweep through his nape. He turned his head behind and saw the two large curtains he had noticed earlier, standing tall, unwaveringly, in absolute stillness. As he stared in shock and terror, the contours grew more vivid, pressing against the fabric with a contained force, ready to leap forward.

But I don’t understand… he said, bewildered.

‘Don’t look at them. You might wake them otherwise. It is very difficult putting them to sleep,’ she replied, worriedly, bending forward, urging Mahen to avert his glance. As she spoke, the color of her skin drained and, suddenly, she appeared older, now visibly exhausted. ‘I understand your confusion. I would know… I have had visitors before.’

But where am I? I have this strange feeling I’ve seen this place before. I don’t know when, but I think I have… Mahen said.

‘Of course you’ve seen it before. When you were young. Very young, I’m afraid. This place isn’t the same anymore, now, not since…’ she paused and shut her eyes, trembling with clenched fists.

‘Look at you’, she smiled, relaxing her fists. She reached over Mahen’s face and caressed it with her warm hand. ‘You’ve grown older. Luck you.’ Mahen felt a familiar warmth rise in his chest. ‘You used to bring me flowers. Do you remember? Lovely, fresh tulips. Pink roses. Scented jasmine. Look at me now… You’ve gone for a long time. No one brings me flowers anymore,’ her eyes clouded with tears, as she smiled, gently stroking his grey beard.

I remember this place. Something bad happened here, a horrible tragedy. My mother refused to talk about it. There were murmurs in the town, of course. A young widow, living with her two kids, all by herself… What happened to her?

‘When I first came here in 1965, I was a shy, young bride. My husband Atif had got a promotion at his workplace. We bought this house on loan. Those were happy years, blissful. But then… this is the only place where we lived together. Where I live now… Alone.’

The police sealed this place. Did they not?

As he spoke, Mahen’s ears picked on a sound from across the room, near the kitchen. There was a door; a closed room, it appeared. Behind the door, there was a sound of footsteps pacing the area, softly landing on the floor.

‘Atif and I had two children, Rukhsana and Ali. May Allah bless their gentle souls! They brought us so much joy and love. Atif doted on them. They were his jaan…’ she replied, relieved. As she extended her right hand to reach for the cup of tea on the table, her long sleeve slightly slid over her bare arm, exposing the sight of burnt flesh.

‘I have been trying to keep this house clean and tidy. There is hardly any time these days. The kids are always running around, dropping their mess all over. I have been meaning to put up the wallpaper again—as you can see, it has come out at a few places’, she said, sipping her tea. The metal cup from which she was drinking was slightly discolored by black rust. In the tiny storage below the surface of the table, stacks of papers lay forcibly stuffed, along with yellowed envelopes, a few postcards, and thick, dusty albums covered in golden gloss paper.

‘I see what you’re looking at. Wait, here, let me show you something’, she said, with a dim smile, now relaxed. She got up and stooped below the glass panel of the table, and after rummaging for about a full minute, produced a dusty album, covered with little soiled stickers of plastic butterflies and caterpillars. ‘Ah, don’t mind those. Rukhsana puts them wherever she likes.’ She sat down on the couch and started turning the pages of the album, her eyes widening with excitement. ‘This is from my Nikaah—my wedding day. I hate how much lipstick they force you to put. So garish!’

Mahen looked at her picture with a newfound curiosity. She was dressed in a bright magenta robe, with a matching headscarf covering her head and ears, revealing her moon-like face for the picture. She wore little jewelry, except for a big circular silver nose-ring that was hooked by a small chain to the back of her ears, disappearing behind the scarf. Appearing to smile inwardly, not betraying any of the joy she felt to the camera, she looked younger, radiant, and assured.

As he was about to flip the page, she hastily placed her hand over his, pleading him not to turn over. Mahen felt an icy numbness launch at the top of his hand. Her hands felt strangely frigid, even though she had been sipping warm tea from her mug for some time. ‘We were together for ten years’, she said, taking the album back and putting it on the table. ‘Seems like a lifetime ago… Yet, I can feel him around me, sometimes. His scent lingers on everything in this house.’ She turned her face to the door that stood ajar, near the kitchen, where the sound of footsteps had earlier distracted Mahen. ‘I know he is out there somewhere, waiting for me. And I must journey alone, but now…’ she looked at Mahen, with a desperate look in her eyes. ‘I must ask you a favor.’

She cupped his right hand in both her hands and gently raised them to her chin. Mahen felt the warmth from his body suddenly leaving and getting transferred to her cold hands. ‘You have a beating heart, a warm one. I want to be free now. I want—’

Mahen withdrew his hands immediately, jolted by sudden fear and confusion. This is a strange house, he thought. Nothing moves here. Not even air. What am I doing here? He looked at the cupboards and cabinets on the walls again, now more clearly. They looked ashen, covered in metallic rust. Suddenly it all came back to him. Suddenly everything made sense.

You burnt this place down! Didn’t you? He screamed at her. You were the woman my mother refused to talk about! You killed your children in this house and burnt it down! Why? Why did you do that?

The lady was calm, as if she had anticipated his outrage sooner and seemed only mildly disappointed at the delay.

‘Atif hanged himself. I don’t know why, I will never know…I was a good wife; I didn’t deserve the pain. What do you think I would have done alone? My heart, my gentle heart stopped beating one day. There was no one in the house. I spent evenings staring into the darkness, despairing at the thought of never being enough for anyone—Atif, my children, not anyone! It was best for the children… For all of us…

I have waited for decades here, alone, in this winter… Kept my heart alive in this cold. I want to be free now. Take my heart with you. Please.’

You are Ami Azaan. I used to offer prayers and flowers at your grave every Friday. Why?

She looked at him searchingly, tilting her head slightly, in amusement. ‘I will never know why. You always looked at me with your big, eager eyes every time I stepped out of the house to run some errands. And then quickly hide yourself whenever I caught you staring!’ she chuckled.

She paused and placed the palm of her hand gently against his chest. ‘Your heart is beating. Take mine with you. I have suffered enough. I beg you,’ she said, solemnly.

Mahen stared at her as she got up and walked to the kitchen. Tiny globes of light, filtering from the window blinds, plucked at her long robe, as she moved across the hallway. The wooden floor gleamed, covered by a wet, misty sheen. She returned with a small casket, encrusted with ice. ‘My heart is in this. I have kept it safe in ice for years. This has been a long winter. Once you take my heart with you, it will be summer again. Flowers will bloom here once again. And I will be forgiven for my sins,’ she said, her face wet, as fresh tears rolled down from the corner of her eyes.

She gave him a small brown bag and inserted the box safely inside.

As he stood at the door, fastening the straps of the bag over his shoulders, he paused to look at her for one last time.

I have a question for you. Where am I? And where do I go from here?

‘How can I know that? I have always lived inside you. Only you can tell where you are and where you want to be.’

As she parted her lips to bid goodbye, Mahen saw her features softening, new wrinkles appeared on her forehead and hands, as she slowly dissolved in a thick gleam of one last brilliant white, winter light.

(To be continued…)

The man was woken by a loud noise outside. It was an infernal nuisance, he grumbled, to be bothered by the street dogs at night, when all one wanted was some quiet time to forget the world outside. He lowered his quilt and put on his spectacles. The mattress squeaked as he shifted in his single-bed to draw the curtains from the bedside window. This is odd, he thought. He had never seen a moon so plump and shiny in the sky. It was immaculate. The moonlight dusted its way across the street and into his room. It felt like chalk powder, only unreal. He could not fathom why the dogs were baying at it. Perhaps it seemed strange to them, too, very strange.

He wondered what time it was. He checked his watch. It was 2 a.m. He pulled his woollen stockings above his knees and got up from the bed to pour himself a small glass of bourbon. The old devil whispered to him from a distance. He rubbed his dry eyes and looked at the bottle with bemused regret. Like everything else in life, it reminded him of age, slowing down, a slackening feeling in his limbs, looseness of mouth.

So much time has passed for me, he thought, as he swirled the glass in his hand. Life is still the same. He looked around his room, trying to make out the objects in the pewter light that streamed from the window. His mirror had fogged. I was a beloved professor once, and now I am cleaning old vinyl records at a radio station. Everyone asks the same question—aren’t you too old? I am a lucky dog, I guess. I have done everything to destroy myself. Two nights ago, I crossed the international border twice, drank gallons of cheap whiskey while listening to poetry, doing other activities which people at the age of fifty wouldn’t even think, and now it is past midnight and I am here. But life is not leaving me yet. Why? What more do I have to see?

He took a long sigh and stationed himself in the cheap padded chair near his cramped desk. Dog-eared files, stacks of yellowing crisp sheets, soggy, empty packets of cigarettes, a dusting cloth, scratched LP records, and piles of books that had been read too many times lay huddled on a large rusty metal trunk against the wall, from where they spilled on to his desk. Both my parents are dead, he thought, gulping down a large sip, looking into the glass. There are times I wonder what I am doing in a world that has ceased to exist for me. I think about it while shaving my face every morning, trying to look young to compete with people one-third my age. I think about my father. I find it peculiar to remember him, lying in a bed, his face turned away from me, muttering, groaning, always away, always distant. The world is a cruel place, he said once, in half-sleep, his lips buttered with thin saliva that frothed near the seam of his mouth. No one lives for anyone, he moaned. You have to make it on your own, on your own two goddamn feet! Remember me, if you must. But forgive me, he sighed and fell into a stupor, in a sleep where he fought with his demons alone. I recall the sight of his face with surprising clarity. He had deep lines with puffed up cheeks and heavy bags under his eyes, a sign of excessive drinking and lack of sleep—or bad sleep—who could tell? He wrestled too much.

But father I must leave, I remember saying to him, through my sad eyes. We never exchanged words. You don’t understand me, I said. I am not like other boys. I have secrets that embarrass me. My future is in America. People like me can live their lives there, do you understand? I think he does. I think he always did, he always knew. It occurred to me one night, as I lay quartered in bed under the weight of a stranger in a foreign land, who, like most, could never love me, that how much I missed my father. How I longed for love, his precious, difficult love. I feel a stab of sharp pain in a hollow pit under my stomach every time I remember him. I wish he had more time.

The mother always prayed for her child. She knew he was different. She could tell. All mothers can. It fills me with a wonder too deep to express that how, with passing time, as I struggle to form a vision of my life ahead, the distant, the bygone, seems so near and the near seems so far away, like an impossible dream. She comes to me in perfect visions, at times only sights and whispers. I feared losing her. As a child I followed the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she slept soundly, lest her heart stopped beating. Her flatulence was reassuring, along with all the scents she guarded under her nightgown. She and father made love every weekend. I would pause at the doorstep, listening to their every sound, as they heaved and sighed. It was love, I believed. It filled me with intense j0y. Love.

The early days were rough. The man poured himself another glass of drink. I took to drinking too often, he remembered. Lovelorn. Lovesick. Too disappointed, too disillusioned. Like everyone else I drank to drown my sorrows. Soon it became a habit, and then a chronic need. Urban middle-aged men, swollen eyes and tired expressions, angry, belligerent, like phantoms hanging in darkness, populated the bars in those days. Their shadows greeted each other on the grimy discoloured walls, always talking, deliriously busy, lamenting the inability to fulfil the promise of their youth, ordinary men in their ordinary grief. The sympathetic aged barman watched me with his weary eyes. He too was young once. Look at me now, he said. The poison gurgled near the back of my tongue, spreading like fire inside. He left me, I cried, wriggling my wrist and throwing my head on the counter, the boy with the brown eyes left me. I will take you, the jinn in the bottle whispered. And so it did. One by one, they all did.

The man chugged the last sip down and looked at his watch. Have I drunk too much? He stared at the watch foolishly. The time was still 2 a.m. Has it stopped working? He got up from the chair scratching his forehead, and then gently put the watch down on the table desk.

Dreams, thoughts, and the stark reality all hit very close. Flashbacks, whispers, not too far from where I am living, he thought. ‘Do you see it, Mahen?’ He knocked his head on the hard upper shelf of the cave, while crouching on the soggy ground beneath. I don’t see it yet, Mahen replied. The boy leading Mahen stepped out of the cave and onto the edge of the cliff. The sky had acquired a deep rustic sheen, with rifts of white clouds popping in sporadic bursts. Dusting the dry mud off his trousers, Mahen came panting behind the boy and stood near the cliff. In the ground beneath him, raised by a dome shaped rocky mountain, he saw a giant crater like opening, steadily spouting streams of vast silver smoke. ‘It is a volcano. You know what that is?’ the boy asked Mahen, outlining the edge of the crater with his sturdy but slightly crooked wooden stick. ‘This is what we came here for,’ his dove shaped eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘That crater you are looking at over there,’ he tapped his stick in thin air, ‘is one of the three mouths of the volcano. It gushes at the periodicity of once in every five or ten years.’ How do you know all this stuff? Mahen asked, confounded. The air around him was dense with the odor of burnt wood and something akin to rotten eggs. ‘Unlike you, I always do my research,’ the boy replied, with a sharp conceit. He crouched on his knees and started circling the air in loops with his stick. ‘Do you see that smoke?’ he asked. Of course I do, that’s the only thing I can see, Mahen replied. The smoke grew rapidly from the crater and covered the nearby rocks and trees in a thick coat of fog. ‘Well, that swirling column of smoke you see is not actually smoke,’ the boy explained. ‘It is actually a mass of water vapor and sulfur-rich gases, something called as fumarole activity.’ Mahen felt his lungs tighten. Can we go back now? I am feeling choked! he groaned. ‘That’s because these gases are highly poisonous. I got to know from the locals that the volcano erupted just a few months ago. I am not surprised it’s still simmering,’ the boy put his stick on the ground and got up, angling his body towards Mahen, with a mischievous smile on his face. Mahen drew a step back, realizing that the time had come, the time to make it happen, the reason why they sailed across the sea to the island. Balancing carefully on his heels, he quickly bent and uprooted some dry vegetation from the ground and flung it across the boy’s face, laughing uproariously.

The man paused to check his watch again, it was still 2 a.m. The moonlight shone brightly and filtered in fine stalks of silver from the window, suspending the room in a grey watery mist. It has definitely stopped working, he reasoned. Mahen, it had been years since anyone called him by that name. He imagined his mother’s thin lips parting, first stretching gently across her face and then coming together in a small oval, to expel a short burst of air, calling him lovingly and fondly, by his name. Mahen. Was it before the war? My memory is failing me; he carefully glanced at the empty glass on the small table, studying his cracked reflection in the diamond shaped crystals of the glass, gazing silently. How many years have passed?

He slumped his back into the chair, closing his eyes, as the spirit finally started to numb his nerves. I have plenty to drink and enough pills to pop, his upper lip twitched, as the room came to be flooded in a pool of white light. Everyone can just dream, I am living through this life. Alone. Luck dog. He bounced his head back, as the light started crawling up his legs. He shook his leg, bemused, trying to dust off the light. Am I dreaming? He noticed his hand turn silver as it touched the light. What is happening? In half-drunkenness, he squinted his eyes around the room and found its corners and spaces dissolving into a thick gleam of white liquid. The moon slowly turned and stretched its way into the room, its bright surface peeling and drooping on the floor, as it squeezed through the tiny window. But I don’t understand. And before Mahen could stare in disbelief at his body, which had just turned silver, he saw the moon dwarf into a small bright ball that had successfully shaped its way through the window. His whole body tensed as the ball started nearing him. But only if I could end this nightmare… Jerking his body forward, he lunged at the ball, trying to clasp it between his hands. As his hands touched the ball, he lost his balance and landed with a splashing thud on the floor. Suddenly, he felt a tight pull from under the floor and then quickly held his breath as his whole body got sucked down into a whirlpool of shimmering liquid.

Dear Dad,

There are times when I find writing a largely unproductive and tiresome exercise. For much of what is intended is often lost in translation from memory to text. And then there is always the nagging fear of words being misconstrued, blocked by prejudices, lack of knowledge, and often, the language barrier itself. Unfortunately, it is the only medium through which I have learned to speak and express myself. So I have to perfect the art of writing, more than anything.

Congratulations on your birthday. I know we haven’t spoken in years—at least not in words. Someone once told me that the most unendurably painful distance between two people who share the same flesh, love each other, see each other every day, eat at the same table, have a fondness for same things, is when they stop sharing and start hiding things from each other. I hope with this letter I am able to bridge the divide that has separated us for the last twenty years.

Being born into an upper caste, upper middle class Hindu family, groomed by heterosexual family ideals and values, in a country where Hinduism is a dominant religion, and Hindutva—the ideology of Hindu nationalism—a popular moral force, I am in a position of extreme privilege—both economically and socially—to examine my thoughts and feelings, and write; whereas, for most religious and lower caste minorities, life is an act of constant survival—to attain and exercise free thoughts, free ideas, and free life choices. We are all products of this perverse social order, and all our social inheritance and endowments and other achievements are nothing but gains extracted at the cost of the social capital of the less privileged.

We also live in times where the idea of home is no longer the same. There are countries swollen with refugees, people who are regularly displaced, forced to flee their homeland to escape threat, violence, or persecution by the state; and some with immigrants who abandon their families in search of better opportunities abroad, to build a life in a foreign land with its foreign elements and foreign people. We struggle every day, sometimes more with ourselves than with other things.

In an unjust world that profits from our silence, and where the majority uses fear as a tool of manipulation, we all must dare to be our true selves. We must have the moral courage to be who we are, stand up for what we believe in. And here I want to say something that everyone knows about me, which I suspect you already know, but I will say it for once and all: I am gay. It essentially means that only a man—and not a woman—can fulfill my emotional and physical needs.

It has taken me years to come to terms with my sexuality—years fraught with confusion, denial, pain, despair, and loneliness. In the process I have not only suffered from tremendous anxiety and recurrent bouts of fever and panic attacks, but had also ruined my mental self-image by indulging in sexual promiscuity with reckless self-abandon—an outlet I indiscriminately used in my late adolescence and early adulthood to validate myself. My childhood was anything but happy. I dreaded going to school, because children made my life unbearable: the constant sniggering, unprovoked attacks, rude and mean gestures—all made me retreat into my own private solitude, within the narrow enclosures of books and crammed chambers of libraries. Subconsciously, I compensated for the shame by performing exceedingly well in academics and co-curricular activities, but from inside, I was screaming.

My fear of coming out during childhood was the same fear that everyone faces: of being rejected, abandoned, locked in one’s body and mind, denied love, and even life. It is true that our desire for validation makes us weak, but it is also true that sometimes our desires are stronger than who we are. I have reached a station in life where I no longer seek acceptance or validation from society or friends. I understand that love means unconditional acceptance; and those who truly love will always find their way back, no matter how far they stray. I also believe that the true purpose of life is not to be happy. Happiness is only a means to an end. Therefore, we must celebrate small victories, learn to live in the moment, trust against our better judgment, and love against all hope. We all have a greater purpose in life, which, like truth, is never revealed to us all at once, but in flashes, whispers, and insights.

It is true that there can be no growth in life without learning. For it is through learning we uncover new realities and expand our mental horizons. One should take time out to read, travel, and educate oneself in different languages and disciplines. And when one has acquired sufficiently, one must give it back to those who desperately need it; everyone is a student and teacher in essence. The true spirit of being a teacher—and its greatest consolation—lies not so much in its perceived nobility as much in the knowledge that despite the ordinariness of everyday life, in its wear and tear, its fortunes and misfortunes, the everyday struggles of the lonely and miserable, the frustrated and misunderstood, some find the power to care and better something beyond themselves, despite being—and remaining—their most ordinary selves.

The world doubles in size when we meet someone we love. We are profoundly changed, unsettled; a moment becomes a lifetime. Unfortunately, too often people mistake romance for love. Most romantic relationships end, not because two people are unable make it work anymore, but most of the time we keep pining over the initial thrill and excitement that falling in love provides; and when after a while things grow less intense and become increasingly quiescent, the heart, forever raging with a lust for unknown pleasures, rebels. People keep falling in and out of love all the time. Those who stick together know that loving can be hard. For love grows in countless disagreements, fights, moments of shared laughter, silences, small acts of kindness and empathy, and mostly, in absence.

Sex can be a great glue when two people start off together. To embrace the body of the lover, in its nakedness, its flaws and perfection, is one of the great joys of falling in love and being with your lover. The intensity would dampen with time; but this is where the learning begins: Once you know about each other’s weaknesses and strengths, and have been exposed to your own vulnerable side, love making is more tender, more gentle, and probably more routine; it will lack the thrill of discovery and excitement, but for those who wait and survive the period of confusion and frustration, it can be a rewarding experience; for learning is a life-long process, and love will peak when you least expect it to.

Like any other institution forged on mutual love and trust, marriage, is a sacred institution, but should not be held as the ideal for two people in a personal relationship to co-exist. A marriage is a social and legal contract that recognizes an intimate union between two people—two men, two women, or a man and a woman—and grants them certain exclusive rights and privileges. People in same-sex marriages (or relationships) cannot procreate with their partners, and if they desire to expand their families by having children, they either seek to adopt kids, or hire the services of a surrogate mother—a female who bears the child of a couple in her womb throughout the reproductive stage in return for monetary compensation. More and more countries in the world are amending their laws to legally recognize same-sex relationships and child surrogacy.

Meanwhile, in India, any sexual act that does not result in procreation (i.e. peno-vaginal intercourse), is a legal offence, and punishable with both fine and imprisonment of up to ten years. As a consequence, homosexuality continues to be both a taboo and a crime, forcing many gay men and women to lead their lives in shame and secrecy. Over the years, people have worked their way around to leading double lives—one in public and the other in private—but the mental, physical, emotional, and economic violence wrought by this can be devastating for some. Any country or state that punishes its people from expressing their identity and leading their lives with dignity is culpable of inhuman torture of its citizens. I hope we live to see better times in India and rest of the world when homosexuality is no longer considered a criminal offence and people are free to choose their partners and lead a life of their own making.

I see that my letter has run longer than I intended it to be. If you have made it so far, I want to close by saying that some of us will have to fight all our lives; and that for many, having a partner or a family is only a distant dream. I have personally witnessed tragic accounts of many gay men and women who commit suicide at an early age, or take to alcohol and other forms of substance abuse to kill their loneliness and die a slow and painful death. Sadness can be overwhelming—of never being understood, loved, touched, and fully expressed.

In the midst of where we are—globally and locally—I want to thank you for teaching me how to be strong and courageous, and for showing that money is one the most important things in life, for it can buy time, happiness, and even life. Staying away from family for long periods of time in hostile lands to ensure a privileged living for them is an act of greater love and selflessness that will never be written or talked about, for its harshness is hard to imagine and romanticise. I hope that one day I grow large enough to fill in your shoes. Till then, I am nothing but a tragically young man in a tragically vast world, with only truth and honesty and sincerity to claim as my virtues. I hope that someday my life is of value to someone. I hope that someday, in a world where love is a much coveted—but more likely elusive—ideal, I find someone I love, and who loves me, and we both build a small life and a family of our own. I hope, dearly.

I wish you good luck, happiness, and a healthy life ahead.

Yours lovingly,

Son

(An edited version of this article appeared in TARSHI, a digital magazine on sexuality in Global South: http://www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/fr...)

Dear Dad,

There are times when I find writing a largely unproductive and tiresome exercise. For much of what is intended is often lost in translation from memory to text. And then there is always the nagging fear of words being misconstrued, blocked by prejudices, lack of knowledge, and often, the language barrier itself. Unfortunately, it is the only medium through which I have learned to speak and express myself. So I have to perfect the art of writing, more than anything.

Congratulations on your birthday. I know we haven’t spoken in years—at least not in words. Someone once told me that the most unendurably painful distance between two people who share the same flesh, love each other, see each other every day, eat at the same table, have a fondness for same things, is when they stop sharing and start hiding things from each other. I hope with this letter I am able to bridge the divide that has separated us for the last twenty years.

Being born into an upper caste, upper middle class Hindu family, groomed by heterosexual family ideals and values, in a country where Hinduism is a dominant religion, and Hindutva—the ideology of Hindu nationalism—a popular moral force, I am in a position of extreme privilege—both economically and socially—to examine my thoughts and feelings, and write; whereas, for most religious and lower caste minorities, life is an act of constant survival—to attain and exercise free thoughts, free ideas, and free life choices. We are all products of this perverse social order, and all our social inheritance and endowments and other achievements are nothing but gains extracted at the cost of the social capital of the less privileged. The moment we recognize this truth, all our pursuits seem like an unending chorus, a desperate attempt to subjugate and suppress the voices of the less privileged, in our bid to fabricate and claim the narrative of History.

We live in times where success is only defined in material terms; where the weak-versus-strong, loser-versus-winner narrative is largely invoked in contempt and spite, for people who, despite their best efforts and intentions, could not rise beyond their social, economic, mental, and physical limitations—people who, if known better, got better, cared for better, would have certainly done better. We live in times where the idea of home is no longer the same. There are countries swollen with refugees, people who are regularly displaced, forced to flee their homeland to escape threat, violence, or persecution by the state; and some with immigrants who abandon their families in search of better opportunities abroad, to build a life in a foreign land with its foreign elements and foreign people. We struggle every day, sometimes more with ourselves than with other things.

But very few understand that the struggle for life is a struggle for persistence—for truth, integrity, courage, compassion, and benevolence. Truth is not always pleasant; it is what makes dreamers disenchanted with life, tears families apart, gets honest people killed, workers fired from jobs, and subject to threats and other forms of harassment that cause a great psychological harm. But in an unjust world that profits from our silence, and where the majority uses fear as a tool of manipulation, we all must dare to be our true selves. We must have the moral courage to be who we are, stand up for what we believe in. And here I want to say something that everyone knows about me, which I suspect you already know, but I will say it for once and all: I am gay. It essentially means that only a man—and not a woman—can fulfill my emotional and physical needs.

It has taken me years to come to terms with my sexuality—years fraught with confusion, denial, pain, despair, and loneliness. In the process I have not only suffered from tremendous anxiety and recurrent bouts of fever and panic attacks, but had also ruined my mental self-image by indulging in sexual promiscuity with reckless self-abandon—an outlet I indiscriminately used in my late adolescence and early adulthood to validate myself. My childhood was anything but happy. I dreaded going to school, because children made my life unbearable: the constant sniggering, unprovoked attacks, rude and mean gestures—all made me retreat into my own private solitude, within the narrow enclosures of books and crammed chambers of libraries. Subconsciously, I compensated for the shame by performing exceedingly well in academics and co-curricular activities, but from inside, I was screaming.

My fear of coming out during childhood was the same fear that everyone faces: of being rejected, abandoned, locked in one’s body and mind, denied love, and even life. It is true that our desire for validation makes us weak, but it is also true that sometimes are desires are stronger than who we are. I have reached a station in life where I no longer seek acceptance or validation from society or friends. I understand that love means unconditional acceptance; and those who truly love will always find their way back, no matter how far they stray. I also believe that the true purpose of life is not to be happy. Happiness is only a means to an end. Therefore, we must celebrate small victories, learn to live in the moment, trust against our better judgment, and love against all hope. We all have a greater purpose in life, which, like truth, is never revealed to us all at once, but in flashes, whispers, and insights.

It is true that there can be no growth in life without learning. For it is through learning we uncover new realities and expand our mental horizons. One should take time out to read, travel, and educate oneself in different languages and disciplines. And when one has acquired sufficiently, one must give it back to those who desperately need it; everyone is a student and teacher in essence. The true spirit of being a teacher—and its greatest consolation—lies not so much in its perceived nobility as much in the knowledge that despite the ordinariness of everyday life, in its wear and tear, its fortunes and misfortunes, the everyday struggles of the lonely and miserable, the frustrated and misunderstood, some find the power to care and better something beyond themselves, despite being—and remaining—their most ordinary selves.

The world doubles in size when we meet someone we love. We are profoundly changed, unsettled; a moment becomes a lifetime. Unfortunately, too often people mistake romance for love. Most romantic relationships end, not because two people are unable make it work anymore, but most of the time we keep pining over the initial thrill and excitement that falling in love provides; and when after a while things grow less intense and become increasingly quiescent, the heart, forever raging with a lust for unknown pleasures, rebels. People keep falling in and out of love all the time. Those who stick together know that loving can be hard. For love grows in countless disagreements, fights, moments of shared laughter, silences, small acts of kindness and empathy, and mostly, in absence.

Sex can be a great glue when two people start off together. To embrace the body of the lover, in its nakedness, its flaws and perfection, is one of the great joys of falling in love and being with your lover. The intensity would dampen with time; but this is where the learning begins: Once you know about each other’s weaknesses and strengths, and have been exposed to your own vulnerable side, love making is more tender, more gentle, and probably more routine; it will lack the thrill of discovery and excitement, but for those who wait and survive the period of confusion and frustration, it can be a rewarding experience; for learning is a life-long process, and love will peak when you least expect it to.

Like any other institution forged on mutual love and trust, marriage, is a sacred institution, but should not be held as the ideal for two people in a personal relationship to co-exist. A marriage is a social and legal contract that recognizes an intimate union between two people—two men, two women, or a man and a woman—and grants them certain exclusive rights and privileges. People in same-sex marriages (or relationships) cannot procreate with their partners, and if they desire to expand their families by having children, they either seek to adopt kids, or hire the services of a surrogate mother—a female who bears the child of a couple in her womb throughout the reproductive stage in return for monetary compensation. More and more countries in the world are amending their laws to legally recognize same-sex relationships and child surrogacy.

Meanwhile, in India, any sexual act that does not result in procreation (i.e. peno-vaginal intercourse), is a legal offence, and punishable with both fine and imprisonment of up to ten years. As a consequence, homosexuality continues to be both a taboo and a crime, forcing many gay men and women to lead their lives in shame and secrecy. Over the years, people have worked their way around to leading double lives—one in public and the other in private—but the mental, physical, emotional, and economic violence wrought by this can be devastating for some. Any country or state that punishes its people from expressing their identity and leading their lives with dignity is culpable of inhuman torture of its citizens. I hope we live to see better times in India and rest of the world when homosexuality is no longer considered a criminal offence and people are free to choose their partners and lead a life of their own making.

I see that my letter has run longer than I intended it to be. If you have made it so far, I want to close by saying that some of us will have to fight all our lives; and that for many, having a partner or a family is only a distant dream. I have personally witnessed tragic accounts of many gay men and women who commit suicide at an early age, or take to alcohol and other forms of substance abuse to kill their loneliness and die a slow and painful death. Sadness can be overwhelming—of never being understood, loved, touched, and fully expressed.

In the midst of where we are—globally and locally—I want to thank you for teaching me how to be strong and courageous, and for showing that money is one the most important things in life, for it can buy time, happiness, and even life. Staying away from family for long periods of time in hostile lands to ensure a privileged living for them is an act of greater love and selflessness that will never be written or talked about, for its harshness is hard to imagine and romanticise. I hope that one day I grow large enough to fill in your shoes. Till then, I am nothing but a tragically young man in a tragically vast world, with only truth and honesty and sincerity to claim as my virtues. I hope that someday my life is of value to someone. I hope that someday, in a world where love is a much coveted—but more likely elusive—ideal, I find someone I love, and who loves me, and we both build a small life and a family of our own. I hope, dearly.

I wish you good luck, happiness, and a healthy life ahead.

Yours lovingly,

Son

The ginger haired man saw her from the window, as she passed by his house in the early morning of autumn. Her nimble feet made splashing noises in the little puddles of rainwater that had formed in the ruptured tar of the grey road. He spat a fine thread of saliva on his fingers, and then gently rubbing it between his fingertips, slicked his hair back from the forehead. His thinning hair betrayed the naked patches on his head. He rushed out of the door and caught her in time, just as she was about to cross the road and move to the opposite end.

“Hello!” he greeted her enthusiastically, as she paused her steps and turned around to see him.

“Hello. Do I know you?” she asked, perplexed.

“No, I don’t think so. You see, it might rain anytime, and a young girl like you ought to be careful. You don’t want to miss school because of pneumonia. Here, take it.” He produced a small pink umbrella from the back of his hand and handed it over to her.

“Thank you, uncle. But I don’t think I need it…It’s not raining anymore, and I doubt if it would rain today…”

“Oh! It just might. Here, don’t be shy…” He thrust the umbrella into her hand. A sly smile broke at the corner of his thin, wide lips.

“Thank you, uncle. I pass by your house every day. My friend and I sometimes stop near your verandah to see your dog…” The girl began, smilingly, as she fidgeted with the umbrella in her hand.

“She is my bitch,” he replied.

The violence in his words startled her. He looked at her with keen eyes. She dropped her eyes evasively, and from the periphery of her eyes, checked to see any sign of the oncoming school bus.

“I am sorry…Perhaps you don’t know what a bitch is. A female dog is called a bitch. But a male dog is a dog.” He felt her shifting uncomfortably in her shoes. Her white stockings covered her smooth-shaven legs to her knees.

“I think I should go now…My mother has asked me to be wary of strangers…I am sorry…”

“We are no strangers now. You can come and play with my bitch anytime you like. I see you come back from school at two in the afternoon.”

“Yeah. The school bus drops at two-thirty sometimes…”

“I fill her pail at around quarter to two. Perhaps…you and I, both, could feed her…”

Their conversation was disturbed by a screeching noise of the breaks skidding on a wet floor. The girl turned around and saw the driver honking at her impatiently.

“I need to go now. Bye!” She left hastily and started running towards the bus.

“Will you come in the noon, then?” he shouted at her as she boarded the bus and drove away.

The man entered his house and locked the door silently. He heard his dog bawling in the other room. He picked up the newspaper from the front table, and then rolling it firmly, started walking towards the other room.

The room reeked of urine and milk. He saw her trying to escape from the leash tied around her neck. She jumped at him, with her front legs raised in protest. Her eyes conveyed both anger and fear, with a deep subservience, at the same time. Squatting down on the floor, he edged his hand closer to her face, and then cupping it gently, jabbed her head with the tightly coiled newspaper. He hit her repeatedly, till her bawling turned into a low muttering sound. Wiping the tiny beads of sweat on his forehead, he pushed his hair back, and stood up, sighing from exertion. With the tip of his toe, he gently pushed the plastic pail near her foaming mouth. He emptied a quarter carton of milk into the pail, and then seeing her splayed on the floor with her pink tongue sticking out, drew the curtains back on the window, and left the room in stilted darkness.

The man always felt the tightness in his oversized pants while eating at the table. His crotch bulged outwards as he drew in his legs and sat in an upright position. But today, he felt his organ firmly jutting against the zipper. He opened the zipper and let his swollen pride breathe openly between his legs. He swallowed a spoonful of milk and cereal, when the image of a pair of white stockings, neatly laid down on wet mud, came to him in a flashing instant. He gulped down another spoonful, and then slowly started circling the rim around the head of his organ.

He liked reading The Economic Times. It gave him terms he could speak to himself and no one else—relishing the different sounds as they escaped from his tongue. The newspaper, earlier coiled tightly, now laid spread on the table, with at least a thousand striations running through it. He was a fine economist. The world is in a mess—he conceded. He made the new stocks bleed and inflation run contagious, at his will. He used his knowledge of the economy as a tumor to oppress the world. He wanted the world to suffer for what it has done to him. Dirty and disgusting. His hands quivered, as a stream of fresh semen poured out from his vessel. He took the last spoonful from the bowl, and then wiping his hands against the upholstery of the chair, put his limp organ back into the pants, and got up from the table.

The girl peeked into the house from the crevice of neatly drawn curtains, in front of the window adjacent to the main door. She longed to see the dog that was usually chained outside in the verandah. She dropped on her heels as she heard the main door open with a clicking noise.

“So you came,” the man replied, as he proudly beamed at her.

“I…actually—your umbrella—I had to return it!” she fumbled.

“You came to see my bitch, didn’t you?”

“Yes…”

“Why did you lie to me then? We are friends, and friends share each other’s secrets. They don’t tell lies to each other.”

“I am sorry…”

“That’s okay. Come inside.” He held the door for her as she nervously tiptoed her way into the hall.

The house seemed oddly vacant. There was a large oak table at the center with only two chairs at its opposite ends. A glass bookcase ran along a full wall of the room, which seemed strangely awkward in the whole setting. The house smelled of burnt wood and limestone shavings.

“Make yourself comfortable,” the man said, as he closed the door behind her.

The girl moved to a padded chair near the hearth and seated herself comfortably. The man came along and sat opposite to her at the divan. He pushed his feet up in the air and moved back on the divan, resting his back against the wall.

“You’re terribly thin for a girl of your age!”

The girl giggled. Her initial nervousness was starting to melt away.

“I am the tallest in my class!” She squeaked, with bright eyes.

“I am sure you must be. You…you are a wonderful creature, I hope you know that…Nature has made a boy and a girl differently.”

“Nature? Like, plants and animals?” she expressed dubiously.

“Yes. You know, like I told you the difference between a dog and a bitch…remember?”

“Yeah…Where is your—bitch?” she gulped as she said the last word.

“My bitch is here only. So, tell me, what do you know about a boy?”

“My mom tells me that boys are rude. Although, my best friend is a boy, and he is never rude to me.”

“Very good! What else do you know?”

“Boys act tough, but they cry too. Once I saw my father crying…and I started crying too. Mom came and hugged him, and told him not to worry too much. And then when he saw me crying, he hugged me tight and promised me he would never cry.”

“How does it feel when your father hugs you…?”

“His beard…it feels stingy.”

“Men, umm, sorry, boys…have hair on their body…and even their face.”

“When can I see her?” she asked impatiently, with her lower lip jutting out. She was getting weary of the conversation. She couldn’t understand why the man would take so long to introduce her to his dog.

The man drew his gaze over her long pale legs. He seemed unconcerned of her persistent querying. He wished to wrap her legs with the loose sheets of his newspaper, and read out the news from her legs.

“My bitch is sleeping. She had a heavy breakfast in the morning. You can see her tomorrow. I will wash and dress her up for you to see her. How about that?”

“You will do that?” she looked at him with widened eyes, skipping with excitement and curiosity.

“I can do anything…for you.”

“Thank you!”

“What can you do for me?” he asked, with a startling urgency in his voice.

The girl looked at him doubtfully. There was an awkward silence that ensued.

“I am sorry. You are too young to do anything for me. Although…if you like, you can hug me…”

The girl stood up from the chair and walked up to him. She drew her arms around him and gave him a warm hug. Then, she withdrew abruptly.

“What’s the matter?”

“I am sorry…your beard, it hurts…”

The man quickly ran his hand on his cheek and felt the stubble a little prickly.

“I promise I will shave them off when you come tomorrow.” He looked down at her and gave an encouraging nod.

She smiled at him.

“I need to go now. My mom gets worried if I reach home late.”

“Yes, by all means, you must leave. However, do not mention this to your mother or father. They…are not like us…they wouldn’t understand…I hope you’re getting what I’m trying to tell you.”

The girl felt a chill run down in her body. The man’s eyes seemed both menacing and re-assuring, at the same time. She felt a recoiling sensation in her belly.

“Alright. I will see you tomorrow.”

The man saw her shadow leap outside the door, as she passed away swiftly, dancing on her nimble feet into the pewter light of the day.

The man lathered his face with thick foam, and with scientific precision, ran a silver razor across his face. He put the razor back on the sink and carefully noticed his tiny hairs sticking to the foam on the blade. He was happy to part with them at last. He cupped his hands and splashed water on his face repeatedly until the foam washed away. He then took a dry hand towel from the holder near the washbasin and dabbed his face dry. The man who looked back at him in the mirror was no longer the man he knew. He appeared fresh and youthful. The washbasin smelled of soap and old age. He felt the tightness around his nose and smiled at himself.

He put his dog into the washbasin and cleaned her bruised body with special care. She rested her head peacefully over the edge of the basin and closed her eyes as the water streamed around their corners. Her body quivered when the water touched the spots where the hair had been pulled out. He lowered his hands onto her abdomen and then her genitals. He looked at her with wistful eyes and found it re-assuring to own her body safely intact.

The boy and the girl stood eagerly waiting outside the door after ringing the doorbell twice.

“We shouldn’t be doing this!” The boy nervously tugged at her frock.

“Shhh…He is my new friend! I told you!” she hissed.

“Your mom will not like this when she knows–” he was cut short as the door swung open. He saw an old man with a tanned, clean-shaven face glaring at him. The man had an unsettling look on his face.

“Good evening!” the girl chirped. “I brought my best friend to see her. I told him that you had invited me.”

“Hello, sir. I hope we are not bothering you…” the boy began cautiously.

The man took a moment to consider.

“No. You both can see her.” He stepped away from the entrance as they both proceeded inside the house.

The girl found the dog tied on a leash to the wooden post near the dining table. She ran towards her excitedly and started stroking her fur with both her hands. The boy paused to look at the man and then went on to join her.

The man eyed the boy with livid disgust. He was shocked at the girl’s betrayal. The boy’s youth posed an immediate threat to his own. He observed them petting his dog with lovable strokes, amidst incoherent chatter.

“Sir, does she generally snort when you feed her something?” the boy asked.

“All bitches do…you need to calm them down, first. But I wouldn’t expect a young man such as you to know that. It takes time…and experience.”

The boy was puzzled. He couldn’t comprehend what the man meant. He quickly glanced at the girl, and then, like some implacable urge he couldn’t tame for long, he bent over and whispered into her ears, “I think we should leave now. This is not a nice place.”

The girl was agitated. She elbowed his face away angrily, and replied, “I am not bringing you with me again! Why can’t you just sit quietly and play with her?”

“If you fight me on this…I swear I am not talking to you again. I will tell your mom everything.”

“You won’t–”

“Yes, I would! Now, just get up and come with me. Don’t question me!”

“But…”

“Now.”

The girl got up unwillingly. The boy held her hand and motioned her behind him. The man was stung.

“We are getting late. Her mother…she has asked us to be home on time.”

“I wouldn’t hold you back. She knows where I live…she can come and see me anytime she likes,” he replied, with his gaze intent on the girl who was slowly disappearing behind the boy.

“Thank you,” the boy replied, with a grim determination in his face.

The man saw them as they walked out from the door. He looked at his dog and found her shrunken into a warped ball on the floor. She lay on her back with her paws raised in the air. He took out his unclean razor from the washbasin and silently walked to where she lay.

The dog eyed him with fear and subservience. She knew the horror that he had prepared to unleash on her. He knew that, too. Her helpless cries would be drowned by the nightfall. And again she would have to rely on her master for her daily fill.

“A well crafted story embedded with the richness and essence of the classics. Revealing to the reader the metamorphosis of the character and his journey till he is at peace with himself and the world around him.”

— Syeda F.R., author of Love & Pain: in verses (Source: A Thousand Dreams Within Me Softly Burn by Sahil Sood – ARC/Book Review)

“I found this book to be thought-provoking. Not only did it make you evaluate literature and art, but it gave a unique perspective from the mind of a homosexual India man. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy stories containing writing styles that flourish with poetic imagery, LGBT romances, or soulful self-discovery!”

— J. M. Northup, author of The Wounded Warrior series (Source: http://jmnorthup.blogspot.in/2017/02/...)

The evening sun casts a reddish loom over the deserted blocks. Its light falls off the slanting sheds on to the pavement in slit-like bars. One can hear the faint noise of city traffic streaming from a distance. I pull the sling of the briefcase impatiently, fastening it on my shoulder. I can hardly bear its weight anymore. I walk with quick steps.

Familiar sounds greet me as I approach the metropolitan. The surly crowd knocks me out of my composure. A fevered rush of voices runs an assault on the senses. The bodies writhe in the commerce of everyday life. Corpulent and stout, firm and twisted—all participate on the pockmarked streets. They voice their laments in sobering overtones.

I stop at a hawker to buy a cigarette. He grins at me with his tobacco stained teeth. I see my reflection in the mirror hanging by his shed. My face looks tarnished by age and hunger. I am losing my appetite—I concede. My cheekbones have become hollow. The hawker nudges me to make the payment. I dive my hands into the pockets of my trousers and give him a few pennies. Keep the change.

The pavement feels hard against the sole of my shoes. I hear a body falling to the ground. A virgin lies on the floor with her head split into two unequal halves. Her fingers are knotted in a promise. The blood gushes from her skull. A crowd mulls over her body. Their faces are animated with gasps of horror and shock. I check my watch. I have to be somewhere in fifteen minutes. I pray over her body and leave in silence.

I will fuck your sister. Someone shouts from behind. I turn around and see a group of rowdy teenagers sniggering at each other. They hold a body in their tight grip. One of them stokes the body from behind. Muffled cries escape the mouth of the victim. His whole body convulses with a violent retort. They take turns pushing into him. Their mouths foam with ecstasy and belligerence.

I reach the train platform in time and stand to gaze at the lamppost. A grey pall of fog dulls my vision. The train rattles from a distance. I hear the sound of footsteps approaching the platform. I feel my anxieties rushing to the gut. A familiar pair of dreamlike eyes greets me. I hear a footfall of hundreds of passengers climbing the train. The eyes beckon to me. They lead me into the solitary chambers of my heart. A thousand dreams within me softly burn. I stand motionless beside the lamppost. The train leaves the station quietly.