BECOMING DICKENS – Sahil Acharya April 19, 2012

   Saahil, though a native ofCalcutta, lives inBangalore, and spends most of his time struggling with the subjects of science. His spare time he devotes to thinking about the complexities of human existence and Nature, and trivial writing. On the 24th of December, 2011, he tuned into an adult, much against his wishes.

She was pretty. And the thing that struck me most was the proud nose she had. It was defiant, almost challenging, and when she looked at me, it hit me almost as a physical blow. The nose seemed to be angry at everything she looked at, but I could imagine her smile would turn the face around altogether. I was, therefore, hesitant to approach. None of the brilliant single-sentence greetings those chaps on television keep saying seemed viable. So I kept quiet, and watched. She had the air of one who knows herself to be superior in every respect to the ordinary populace. She stared into space with resoluteness, as if she were looking for any particle brave enough to come close. I wondered how often she had intimidated males just like myself. Perhaps, I found myself thinking, she had had a tragic childhood. Perhaps she had been brought up to hate all mankind. She maintained a stony silence throughout, though the sound of the bus and the traffic outside more than made up for it. Twice I caught myself clearing my throat, and both times the noise seemed too feeble to deserve the attention of such a perfect lady. The bus ground to a halt, she threw her hair back, got up, and walked away and out. I was left alone. I could only stare at the faint depressions she had made on the seat, and yearn. Such beings are evil, I remember thinking, to make ordinary folk as us think of ourselves as unworthy. None deserve to live with such as her, I almost said aloud, but for days afterward I could not stop dreaming of just that.

That night, I wrote about her. In the world of my words, she became a glorious queen- powerful, spiteful and cruel. She ruled over the hearts of many men, and let none touch her heart. Her kingdom was rich and powerful, and one day, she married. Her husband was an unfortunate young man, so enchanted by her beauty, so enamoured by her loveliness, that he forgot all, and gave her his kingdom. The beautiful queen laughed at the poor prince afterward, as she told him of her real intentions one day as they walked in the garden. The prince was a sensitive man, and he was so “humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry”, that tears started to his eyes. He held them back, but the queen looked at him with delight for being the cause of them.

It was then, as I wrote, that I realized that in the pretty girl in the bus, I had found my Estella. And accompanying this realization was the second, more obvious one- I was Pip. In the mysterious mind, myriad tales are spun everyday, and ordinary people acquire personalities and facets more varied and exaggerated than any in real life. As I sat writing about my Estella, I understood the process by which I was, temporarily, becoming Dickens.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES – Heba Ahmed April 19, 2012

Heba Ahmed is pursuing her B.A. (Hons.) course in Political Science, at St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata. She started writing burlesques of poetry from an early age. Dickens has always been an old favourite; his characters and stories transport her to a world which is archaic, but seems evergreen with every turn of the page.

Two souls co-habit a single body,

The old city has two faces to it,

One with a proud brow, a smile of disdain,

The other, with pain, just winces a bit.

Two souls, two faces, one city, or two?

Some sigh, some sing,—its streets seem apart;

One seeks in the skies obscured by steel towers

And wonders where the city keeps its heart.

The Indians hail their ‘City ofJoy’,

Its mornings glory in their snug abodes,

And for those who sleep beneath star-strewn roofs —

A ‘home sweet home’ on the dusty roads!

Hark! The city’s music, of varied tones:

Rag picker’s raga which smells of old stains,

Does the joy lie there, or will it be found

In dizzy discotheques’ jazzy refrains?

Its gleaming towers all heavenward soar,

While shanties revel in dust and disease;

“Fairy palaces”, or “shadows of night”—

Two spirits of what seems to be two cities!

The cradle, or grave, of modernity?

And the road to progress, onward it shoots;

A lonely roadside witness sees it all—

The withered man who still polishes boots!

The pretty young woman sits all day long

In a humble corner, and there she cooks

Little meals for the busy world around,

While her children run naked with hungry looks.

Another young woman drives past this scene,

Flinging some coins from her beaded handbags,

To ensure those waifs don’t pursue her car

Or spoil the shine of its boot with their rags!

The footpaths here house the orphans of the earth,

Lisping old melodies to earn their bread;

Some get silenced under bus wheels,

And some by the whips of the world well-fed.

Then somewhere in the elitist arcade,

A crooner sings softly an old sad song

Of homeless children, of abandoned souls,

And the world in sympathy sings along.

Each visage of the city has its bloom,

One rouge-stained, the other reddened by cold;

One totters on footsteps burdened with care,

The other outruns Time, in leaps so bold!

One defies the tenets of all the earth,

Then makes the other its sole whipping-boy;

The metropolis dwells in fake concord,

And the Indians hail their ‘City ofJoy’!