Manjula
Padmanbhan
New Delhi, India
Most days, I spend all my time indoors, either working at my computer or playing
at my computer or communicating via my computer. The main point here is: I
REALLY DON’T go out much.
Today, however, I had planned an expedition to Connaught Place, a circular plaza,
once gracious and colonial in flavour, with white-colonnaded arcades and elegant
shops. Nowadays, it is hardly distinguishable from any other crowded commercial
complex, with shops growing out like crooked teeth in a jaw too small to contain
them, with roadside vendors encroaching on the pavements, with tourists,
shoppers and office workers drifting slowly along in a dreamlike parade of human
shapes, costumes and types.
Okay. So there I was, in a place very different to my daily norm. I had just
been to a shop the size of a walk-in closet at which shoes and other leather
goods can be custom ordered. The owner is a Chinese man. We are probably around
the same age, the late forties. I had ordered a little leather pouch with hooks
that would clip directly to the belt loops on my pants. I am forever hankering
for something with the capacity of a steamer-trunk and the size of a spectacle
case, so that I can walk around with all my worldly possessions and still have
my hands free. I had just exited the shop, feeling disappointed because only one
pouch out of the three I had ordered had been finished, when I heard my name
being called. Looking around I saw two men, sitting on the low wall by the side
of the pavement. Both were well-known professional photographers working for a
famous newsmagazine, whose office was just around the corner. Ten years ago, I
had worked in that office, as an illustrator and cartoonist. It was almost that
long since I had met either of them.
Just to see them was to be reminded of a whole chunk of life, like a slice of
tobacco, aromatic and dark, part of an addiction I no longer even remotely had.
I earn my living from writing now, not drawing. I am financially secure and no
longer live from pay-day to pay-day. We greeted one another with smiles and
gladness. We exchanged the news that we were, all three of us, happy with where
we were in our lives. We remembered those times as good ones.
Then we said goodbye and I went my way. When I looked at my watch, it was
exactly six o’clock. I remembered the commitment to “Storie”. I smiled to
think that I would, after all, have something interesting to share!
Githa
Hariharan
New Delhi, India
(About
30 degrees and cloudy, overcast skies wind: an occasional gentle breeze - rare
by Delhi standards)
Minute one: My car makes a furtive, steady sound as if
humming under its breath. I ease
the pressure of my foot on the accelerator and crawl to a halt at the
intersection.
Minute
two: The traffic lights are not working. All around me, cars, buses, autos,
scooters and cycles compete with each other, determined to go ahead before the
traffic on the other side gets there first. The air fills with impatient honking.
I will myself to wait. To remain the rule-following person I think I am.
Minute three: I wait. I shut out the noise around me by pretending I am in the
middle of a silent movie. Chaos in silence, chaos more easily managed.
Minute four: Luckily it rained today and it is much cooler than Delhi usually is
in the third week of April. When I watched the rain in my backyard earlier in
the afternoon, the world was heady with the smell of wet earth. Even here, stuck
in my car at the crossroads, the air seems almost fresh. But the city, unlike my backyard, looks squalid after the
rains. Potholes filled with dirty water, open, pus-filled wounds; mud-streaked
buildings sitting huddled like wet, unhappy birds.
Minute five: Then I see the woman and her companion. The young woman is hugely
pregnant; her upper midriff is bare between her blouse and skirt. The companion
is an old woman wizened with worry. Together they dodge their way between the
restless cars as they try one driver after the other.
Minute six: Even before they come closer I can see their taut, desperate faces.
I saw them a month back with exactly the same expression. Then, as I waited at
these same traffic lights, the two women went begging for help from car to car.
The young woman moaned, her face contorted with pain. Her hands held the
dangerously low bulge in such a way that my own stomach lurched with sympathy.
The light turned green. I opened my purse quickly and gave a note to the older
woman with an apologetic look as I put my car into gear.
Minute seven: Now, a month later, still at the same place, the two women are
working their way towards me. The young one is still pregnant. She moves slowly
as if her baby will be born any minute now. They have reached the car to my left.
I can’t believe I am seeing the same scene again; but I also feel my muscles
tense as if I am watching a tightrope act.
Minute eight: The man in the car to the left stares ahead as if intent on the
traffic. But there is a bus before him and he cannot pretend to inch forward. He
looks at the women sheepishly, then pulls out his wallet.
Minute nine: I want to switch off the engine, get out of my car and say to them
as if I have gone backstage after a performance, Bravo! The women turn towards
my car. Our eyes meet; in a matter of seconds, we have stripped each other to
the bone. Then the women scuttle away.
Minute ten: The honking reaches a frenzied pitch. The lights are back; the
traffic is moving with a vengeance to make up for lost time. A truck snorts as
it rushes past me. Its exhaust smoke hangs in the air for a moment as if it does
not know where to go.
Alamgir
Hashmi
Islamabad,
Pakistan
[Suggestion]
Everyone knows
—the old gardener posts
Keep Off—
here
love-lies-bleeding.
The
sun sets
in the wisteria,
a hundred points of light
within, before the gray descends,
birdsounds take over.
Late,
though not too late,
about forms of such love
to hand; grateful.
May as well sublimate
with the lady-of-the-night.
James Penha
Jakarta,
Indonesia
(Outside
my home. Beginning of a thunder storm. Wind: light to gusty. (approximately) 32 degree celsius
dropping to 28. Java Sea)
Just
as the wind winds up from breeze to gust, the sate seller’s voiced
alarm precedes his carted kababs round toward my corner: “’te . . .’Te . .
.
‘TE
. . . SATE!”. But I’m writing fast--fasting--not eating. “’TE . . .‘Te
.
. . 'te:" the seller’s sales into the wind. Soon he shall be on his knees.
Muhammed
ordained fifteen hundred years ago that half of these Jakarta
minutes
would resound in a pelting rain the call to evening prayer . . .
mari kita mendrikan sholat
kita
mendrikan sholat
mendrikan sholat
sholat . . .
so
goes my Indonesian transcription from a quartet of asynchronously
amplified mosques cornering my home, their familiar Islamic melody played
atop a thunderous rhythm God Himself has composed for the moment-- does it
only seem his1812th overture in a row enlightening equatorial darkness?
A
dozen years ago when first I saw Jakarta, the mother of this archipelago
reclined back from the Java Sea and claimed title as the biggest
in
the world, but at these minutes, her head and career turned
by international monetary men, she stands tall enough to scrape the sky with
clawed fingers and shake in the storm of her fear for the future.
The
dampened air cools now; it refreshes me, who adores these islands every
minute every day. The ozone is electric, but the houselights have been lost.
All that runs, on a AA battery, is the clock behind me. The twilight hour
looms: does this democratic babe in arms have time still to cherish its
selves?
Lois
Michal Unger
Tel Aviv, Israel
(thoughts
5:50 - 6:00 p.m.)
Holocaust Memorial
Day. Children swinging, my blonde bright-eyed grandson. Only answer to the
Holocaust - the beautiful children of Israel. Hevron protest tent - a long
tiring bus ride alone and sign a petition for Shelhavet Pass.
Thomas
Heffernan
Kagoshima,
South Kyushu, Japan
A student comes in, smiling, with a poem she worked on after today's writing
seminar. It is penciled on the back of Chuang Tzu's "The Woodcutter,"
a handout we used in the seminar. Later we moved the class outside, to
gardens on campus. Her poem has
brought back the four o'clock light we saw illuminating a Japanese red maple,
filtering through layers of tiny, delicate leaves.
She calls her poem "Aka-chan",
"Baby" in English. Literally, "Dear
Little Red" keeps in mind how babies are so often red at birth: "aka"
is "red"; "-chan" an
affectionate diminutive.
"The maple is red. / A maple leaf is like a baby's hand...," she
began. Remembering the tree, I decide the image is not far-fetched.
Image of one leaf and of countless leaves, images that suggest lives of thousands, billions; of hands,
of people, grown from the ground of planet Earth.
Now, two or three hours later, Hiromi-san's poem makes it easy for me to
remember those mid-afternoon leaves, their translucence, their shade, in that
light--and somehow prompts me to let my mind's eye follow the sun, from Japan go
west in an Eastern way, in tanka stanzas.
Westering
sunlight
deepens the red azalea;
a neon line stripes
a roof red this interval
before dark falls, and sun will
start
setting an hour,
hours, from now, elsewhere: the East
China Sea west of
our nearby coast; Fes, Charleston
far west of panes we look through:--
windows
we can not
see through while they grant this room
a look at itself,
this evening, where we give thanks
for fish and rice and green tea.
Simple
experience, simple knowledge are, no doubt, universal. Miguel
de Unamuno, I think it is, compares art and reality (compares what we may see by
means of each of them) to the two ways we can look with a window, either at the
pane or through it. For with bodily eye we cannot look through a window pane and
focus on the window pane at the same time.
But now and then, as in a double exposure, looking at one image we can
glimpse the other, and imagine the many
more, as Hiromi-san's red maple leaf like an infant's hand suggests many more,
many more babies, even all babies, the
wonder we feel when we see an infant's tiny hand; suggests even the baby each of
us was, that we cannot actually remember.
Drinking my green tea, I remember the poem we had read by China's great Chuang
Tzu is a translation by Thomas Merton, Trappist friend of the Zen scholar D. T.
Suzuki. In their exchanges, rather than a confrontation of dilemmas,
east and west may be supposed a special sort of double exposure. Contrasts;
shades: complements; simplicities. Reciprocal understandings. Often, are these
not matters of the heart, seeing with eyes of the heart?
Tony
Levin
Tokyo,
Japan
In the Kudanshita
section of Tokyo the rush hour traffic, both pedestrian and motor, has increased
to a frenzy. I wait in a crowd, then cross Mejiro dori – the traffic light has
a speaker which blares a cheap rendition of Comin’ Thru the Rye as throngs
scurry across the street. Odd choice of music! I’m heading up the road to a
section of the Imperial Palace grounds, near my hotel, that has some exquisite
secluded gardens. I happened on them early this morning, (jet lag – first
morning in Japan you always wake up by dawn, like it or not) and having no show
today, I made a note to return at sunset. Chilly this morning, the day has now
warmed up to a perfect 70 (Farenheit). Pollution’s not too bad; even now at
rush hour there’s a bit of a breeze, and the air feels fresh. I pass the
subway entrance – even more people here, of course – now up the hill toward
the park entrance. I’m surprised that a lot of the crowd is heading this way
too - the park was so empty this morning. Japan is always surprising me. Into
the park, through huge centuries-old gates with massive timbers, there are
hundreds of people coming along with me. I turn a corner and find thousands more
– almost all, I now notice, are teenage girls, many in school outfits, others
in faux nurses uniforms. This is bizarre. Soon the reason becomes apparent; I
reach a large building inside the park, called the Bodohkan. It’s got a
concert tonight at 6pm and they’re here for that, and dressed to look the
part. I gaze around – so many teens, all abuzz, and no men here except for a
few scalping tickets and some policemen barking megaphone orders. I feel so out
of place, towering above everyone, not oriental,
not a teen, not a girl – and certainly not in a nurses uniform! This is not
the quiet interlude I was expecting. I skirt the edges of the crowd and slowly
work past the venue, deeper into the park. Groups of people are arriving from this side too.
The noise of megaphones and excited teens filters through the trees. It is now
6pm – in the distance a huge Shinto symbol glows fiery red in the sunset. It
marks a shrine - perhaps I should have gone there for my quiet moment. Too late
now, this is my moment. A few
cherry trees still hold their petals, though most dropped their
beautiful pink blossoms last week, after the height of the season. How
different it must have been here last week. How different it was this morning.
How different tomorrow.
Suzanne
Kamata
Tokushima, Japan
Ping...ping...ping. That’s
the sound of a patient’s monitor beeping for attention in the HCU (High Care
Unit) of Tokushima University Hospital. I am sitting by my one and a half year
old daughter’s bed, commiserating with her as she claws at the oxygen tent, a
vinyl box that covers her torso, making it difficult for me to hold and comfort
her. She is recovering from her
second bout of bronchitis in as many months.
She picks up her Ernie (from Sesame Street) rattle and shakes it.
Nurses in peach-colored smocks and bonnets medicate and soothe.
Through the venetian blinds, I can see the pale bricks of the hospital
building turning grey in the fading light. It
is warm outside. Almost balmy.
There is a slight breeze, enough to inflate the red, black, and white
carp streamers hanging from poles everywhere in anticipation of Boy’s Day.
When the wind blows, the nylon fish become fat and swim in the sky.
Back in the HCU, I hear the electronic strains of Fur Elise: someone has
pushed the “nurse call” button. Beyond
the thin green divider curtain, someone is watching sports.
Soccer, maybe. Families
chatter. The young doctor comes to
me in his white coat, smelling of antiseptic soap and tobacco.
He brings print-outs of the day’s data. He explains the results of my
daughter’s blood test, and I pretend to understand. (Although I have been speaking Japanese for more or less
thirteen years, my medical vocabulary is limited.)
The doctor tells me that my daughter is getting better; that is all that
I really need to know. I reach into
the oxygen tent and fit my finger into her small fist. Somewhere my husband is drinking beer and my son is
tormenting his grandmother’s dog. Here, in Tokushima Prefecture, on the
Japanese island of Shikoku on the evening of April 19, 2001.
Paul
Horsfall
Sydney, Australia
(Fine,
warm - 24 degrees C -, wind freshening. Tomorrow it will rain all day)
On
the bus I hear only fragments of conversation. There isn’t much talk anyway.
My fellow travellers look tired and surly. They seem almost shellshocked after a
day at work. No-one is smiling. Every so often a mobile phone trills
unpleasantly and I listen to the one-way traffic of the resulting exchange. I’m
on the bus. Mobile phones have reduced us to this banal condition, forever
describing where we are. I’m on the bus.
I’ll be home soon.
It is time. I close the book I am reading. Irvine Welsh stops shouting at me in
his skittish vernacular. His words continue to buzz in my ears for a few seconds
until they merge with the dull roar of the moving vehicle. The sun has only just
gone down; the sky is not yet fully dark.
It is time. I look at each of my fellow passengers in turn. I am sitting at the
front of the bus with my back to the driver so that I can see everyone inside.
Some of the commuters stare back at me as I catch their eye, others consciously
evade my gaze. I try to concentrate my thoughts and project them towards the
other passengers. I wonder if I can make them understand what I am about to
commemorate.
For this is our moment in time. We are together for this moment. Soon it will
move past us and leave us behind, but not before I have described it and marked
its passage.
I suddenly find myself thinking what a literary impulse this is. Is it not the
nature of literature to mark the passage of a moment by stopping it in its
tracks, fixing it with a cool stare and then seeking to preserve it like some
insect in amber? I am always running up against this paradox. The prescribed
moment has no reality of its own, and yet by the artifice of a literary device I
seek to make it real. Even if I succeed, whatever I create cannot be like the
illusion it seeks to describe at all.
And as I unthinkingly pass on this despairing message to my fellow passengers I
begin to feel as if I am on the wrong end of an all-too-familiar telephone
conversation. The bus lurches to a squealing stop and the doors hiss as they
open. I realise with a start that by asking them to mark the passage of this
moment I may as well be dialling up each passenger and asking him or her to tell
me where he or she is.
I’m
on the bus.
Somewhere
at the rear of the vehicle a mobile phone plays its little tune…
Jeri
Kroll
Adelaide, Australia
(Cool,
about 17 degrees Centigrade. It’s autumn. Slight breeze. Sea: Not too far away
- about twenty minutes by car. I expect there would be some surf. The perennial
themes are supposed to be death, birth, love and taxes. Today I have been doing
my tax for the past fiscal year)
[Doing
My Tax Towards Evening]
Cool skin, cool head, cool screen –
humming the cyberspace blues.
Cool bills, paid long ago,
rustling in piles, tempting me to burn.
My back’s stiff as an accountant’s tool.
He
riseth up in the morning,
cracks the whip and black-clad numbers obey.
I sin the sin of envy.
I
can’t remember if there was a sky
last time I looked. I look.
It’s the slack-jawed grey
of an idiot fog that remembers nothing.
That’s
autumn all over today.
I wish for the release of smoke,
slips of paper hissing goodbye to ink,
a vandal wind with no respect for law
to
whip up flames and cauterise
me as well as the sky.
Ashes - many happy returns
of the end of the day.