Lockdown Longings: 10 Stories of Love and Recollections

Ajay Patri, Purva Grover, Amit Singh, Pragya Bhagat, Rajni Mishra, Kanishq Banka, Malini Gupta, Lawrence Houldsworth, Gargi Mehra, Sucharita Dutta-Asane

Description

The recent lockdown has our imaginations spinning new futures – for the world, for our nation, for us – as humankind waits, restlessly, at the cusp, unable to move forward, and thus, visiting the only place that can be explored with certainty: within.

Within days of the countrywide lockdown, we announced a short story contest inviting writers to share stories from self-isolation. The ten stories in this collection are a result of things they discovered within – comfort in old memories, new perspectives for old relationships, a sense of humour in the face of crushing uncertainty, courage to make peace with oneself and an unwavering faith in humanity.

Sucharita Dutta-Asane is an award-winning writer and independent books’ editor based in Pune. She has been editing manuscripts for publishing houses and for individual writers for more than a decade. She teaches a course in Writing and Editing at Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce and at Flame Liberal Arts University, Pune.

Gargi Mehra is a software professional by day, a writer by night and a mother of two at all times. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous online and print literary magazines.

Lawrence Houldsworth is a trained mathematics teacher and now works in teacher education and training.

Malini Gupta has spent nearly three decades as a development worker. She has experienced an upheaval of her attitudes, values and beliefs in her journey from a student of geography and rural development to a seasoned and well-travelled practitioner of her craft, and she writes of this personal perspective of change.

Kanishq Banka is a Mumbai-based writer and traveller. He has finished his double master’s degree in Sociology and Journalism & Mass Communication. He is presently working on a couple of scripts and on his next novel about a poet from Kashmir.

Rajni Mishra has been writing verses and cooking up stories for as long as she can remember. She has been a patent expert, an innovation strategist and a café floor manager in the past. At present, she works as a product marketer and copywriter to support her writing habit.

Pragya Bhagat is a spoken word poet, an award-winning essayist and author of two books. Her work examines the intersections between mental health, body image and belonging.

Amit Singh studied print journalism at Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. He has worked with the Star Network as a writer. Taking cue from the twin peaks of Neil Gaiman and Varun Grover, he wants to explore all kinds of writing, from short stories to scripts, comic books and novels.

Purva Grover is a journalist, poet, playwright and stage director. She made her debut as an author with The Trees Told Me So, is the founder-editor of The Indian Trumpet, a quarterly digital magazine for Indian expats, and works as assistant editor with a UAE national daily.

Ajay Patri is a graduate of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, and has experience working in a corporate law firm and a think tank. His works of short fiction have appeared in several journals and short presses in the past, and have been nominated and long-listed for many awards and prizes. He is currently working on his first novel.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)
• Pain
• Fiction
• Death
• PET
• Family
• Lockdown
• Relationship
• Science fiction
• Short story
• Loneliness
• Longing
• Libro electrónico
• Anthologies

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9788194643302
• Langue: English

Extrait

OTHER INDIAINK TITLES Anjana Basu Black Tongue Anjana Basu Chinku and the Wolfboy Anuradha Majumdar Infinity Paper: A Mysterious Quest, an Unforgettable Adventure Boman Desai Servant, Master, Mistress Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Shadowland Claudine Le Tourneur d’lson Hira Mandi C.P. Surendran An Iron Harvest I. Allan Sealy The Everest Hotel I. Allan Sealy Trotternama Indrajit Hazra The Garden of Earthly Delights Jaspreet Singh 17 Tomatoes: Tales from Kashmir Jawahara Saidullah The Burden of Foreknowledge John MacLithon Hindutva, Sex & Adventure Kalpana Swaminathan The Page 3 Murders Kalpana Swaminathan The Gardener’s Song Kamalini Sengupta The Top of the Raintree Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind The Heavens We Chase Madhavan Kutty The Village Before Time Pankaj Mishra The Romantics Paro Anand I’m Not Butter Chicken Paro Anand No Guns at My Son’s Funeral Paro Anand Pure Sequence Paro Anand Wingless Paro Anand Weed Rakesh Satyal Blue Boy Ranjit Lal Bambi Chops and Wags Ranjit Lal The Life & Times of Altu-Faltu Ranjit Lal The Small Tigers of Shergarh Ranjit Lal The Simians of South Block and Yumyum Piglets Sanjay Bahadur The Sound of Water Sanjay Bahadur Hul: Cry Rebel! Selina Sen A Mirror Greens in Spring Shandana Minhas Tunnel Vision Sharmistha Mohanty New Life Shree Ghatage Brahma’s Dream Sudhir Thapliyal Crossing the Road Susan Visvanathan Nelycinda and Other Stories Susan Visvanathan The Visiting Moon Susan Visvanathan The Seine at Noon Tanushree Podder Boots Belts Berets: A Novel about Pranks, Parades and Love set in the National Defence Academy Tanushree Podder Escape from Harem: A Mughal Saga of Romance, Revenge and Retribution Tanushree Podder On the Double: Drills, Drama and Dare-Devilry at The Indian Military Academy
 

 
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This digital edition published in 2020
First published in 2020 by
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© of all the stories lies with the respective writers, 2020
Interlude © Sucharita Dutta-Asane; Lovin’ Lockdown © Gargi Mehra; Air 3.0 © Lawrence Houldsworth; Benedict © Malini Gupta; Mitică © Kanishq Banka; The Prognosis © Rajni Mishra; Your Love Affair with Grief © Pragya Bhagat; Gumsum-nag © Amit Singh; The Sparkle, of the Girl, with Tiny Feet and Petite Shoes © Purva Grover; Rose © Ajay Patri
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eISBN: 978-81-946433-0-2
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Contents

1. Interlude by Sucharita Dutta-Asane
2. Lovin’ Lockdown by Gargi Mehra
3. Air 3.0 by Lawrence Houldsworth
4. Benedict by Malini Gupta
5. Mitică by Kanishq Banka
6. The Prognosis by Rajni Mishra
7. Your Love Affair with Grief by Pragya Bhagat
8. Gumsum-nag by Amit Singh
9. The Sparkle, of the Girl, with Tiny Feet and Petite Shoes by Purva Grover
10. Rose by Ajay Patri
About the Contributors
 
1
Interlude
SUCHARITA DUTTA-ASANE

A t seventy-two, life changes suddenly and dramatically for Martin D’Mello. Changes are perhaps thus – swift, unexpected, for the change is actually fractured time. D’Mello, as his friends call him, or Uncle D’Mello to younger customers, is not new to disruptions. This though, is unprecedented. To be stumped by a virus did not feature in his meticulously drawn up list of expectations and anxieties for his advanced age. And so, standing on the long veranda of the house his father had built, he watches traffic dwindle on the street, sound give way to silence, human hubbub replaced by a kind of imposed stupor, as of children forcibly put to bed on holiday afternoons.
A kilometre and a half along the road, on the other edge, stands an old cemetery, its gate-arms wide open. There is nothing in between. The gateways of the two establishments look askance at each other, as if that is the only way left to communicate.
During the day, he feels as if the hush of the cemetery has entered his house. Those who managed his home for him cannot come to work. All he has in the spacious rooms and outside is himself, time immeasurable and a few passing vehicles.
Evenings look different. A car, or two, streaks past, chromium wheels lucent in the falling light, leaving silence in its wake. To Martin, it looks as if the road catches hold of this silence and pulls it to tautness, stretching till it snaps. He doesn’t hear the twang of the breakage, only the lack of all sound. It keeps him awake at nights.
He learnt of a new word in his bookshop the other day. When he thinks of his city as it is these days, suspended in time, in space, in its potential for life, he thinks of the word. He thinks of it as the dusk deepens, turning the trees into amorphous shades. Kenopsia.
Behind the house, a truck rumbles down the flyover. Below, a tiny garage trembles in its aftermath. Its bright blue shutter, painted only a month ago, comes down.
The garage is on its own.

D’Mello reaches the crossing for his weekly vegetables. Across the roundabout, on the left of the road, there used to be a handcart selling evening snacks to software professionals returning home from work. Young men and women, laptop bags slung over their shoulders or hunkering on their backs, would step off their company shuttles and wolf down the savouries as if their life depended on it. The vegetable vendor with her stall behind the handcart would wait for the men and women to eventually saunter into her shop for their daily needs. The city was slowly turning into a ‘readymade’ paradise, he’d noticed: chopped vegetables, pouches of oil, cleaned coriander, methi, spinach, peeled pomegranate, garlic cloves…the list was endless and grew every week.
He stands outside the sparsely stocked vegetable shop and waits for the familiar sight of the buses. At the spot where the snacks’ vendor once sold his ware is a big black patch of dried up oil, water, sweat, spit and animal waste – individually indistinguishable. A bus comes to its usual halt in front of the empty juice bar. It’ll wait for exactly three minutes, he knows – enough time for the men and women to step out of the bus and on to the pavement. Usually there are a dozen getting off at this busy junction. Today, only two women. Perhaps he’s wrong to call them so, they look too young. His mother had a theory for the term ‘woman’: girls turned into women only after they had babies, she would say. It was a term laden with responsibility, with patience and a feeling for which she said she could think of no word…a feeling of losing the ego but also gaining so much more.
The girls are moving silhouettes in the distance. There is nobody else on the road. On either side of the road, trees cut off light from the street lamps, plunging it into discordant shadows. Here, the residential colonies seem to huddle, their gates almost touching, separating walls close together, perimeter trees bunching into one another, gates shut. No one comes out. Watchmen stare at him from their cabins. He wants to stop and tell them that he’s too old to be anything but respectable, the owner of two bookshops. All he wants is to talk with somebody. Where are your children? He asks the vegetable seller. She’s packing up the meagre remnants of her supplies and doesn’t respond.
He decides to discontinue his walks, stay at home. Had his wife been alive, she would have scolded him for stepping out at such a time. He is past his prime, susceptible to all kinds of virus, not just this raging one that nobody seems able to control. But who will get him his weekly necessities? That is just another argument, she would have told him, would have found a way to keep him at home.
Somewhere, a scooter starts. Idles. Accelerates. Stops. Starts again. Each sound amplified.
Up the road, an empty handcart trundles towards the crossing.

Sunlight leaches through the curtains on to the bed – king size with a single occupant. He breathes in the cool breeze from the window, the sun-warmth, the mustiness of the bedsheet, the stickiness under his armpits, then gets out of bed, slowly. At this age, doctors warn against sudden movement, especially when the mind and body are still foggy from sleep, but he hasn’t been sleeping well. Lack of noise, he has come to realize, is not conducive to restful sleep.
In the store room, paint cans stand in a neat row, left behind by the painters. He should complete what they started. As he bends to check the cans, he hears a van speed past the house and stands still, listening to the screech of tyres, the whoosh of its exhaust, the dust and dry leaves ruffling the still air.
Somewhere, a tap drips water. He hurries into the kitchen. Dry. The bathrooms, perhaps, or the veranda. Dry. The first floor balcony has a tap with a long hosepipe to water the plants. When he steps out on to this balcony, he remembers: the hosepipe had cracked from age and the tap stopped working long ago. The terrace. He stops to catch his breath, then climbs the remaining steps to the terrace, unlocks its door and stands still in the white light, blinded by its suddenness, its completeness, its everywhere-ness. The drip is faint here, the vista clear, all the way to the cemetery and beyond, to the lake. For the time being, everything is a white swathe till his eyes adjust to it. The lake is still. Nobody on the road. Between