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She: Ekla Cholo Re

Book Review info@hoffen.in Identity quest is one of the classical themes in literature.  However, gender identity quest is relatively new.  It is also one of the most painful quests, perhaps, because not belonging to either of the most natural genders can be an excruciating experience psychologically.  The agony is aggravated by the attitudes of the ignorant and insensitive general society towards transgender people.  The authors of the book under review approach the theme in the simplest manner possible: by presenting a trans-woman and her problems.  Kusum was born a male who was very uncomfortable with that gender.  It’s only the body that is masculine.  The spirit is feminine.  The father is unable to accept that reality.  Hence the offspring is abandoned.  But (s)he is happy to get the support of a friend who eventually becomes a surgeon and will perform the sex-changing surgery.  The love between Kusum and her doctor-friend was not merely friendship.  The emotions

Keeper of Corpses

Fiction He was the Corpse Man.  Savakkaran , they called him in his and their language.  Some refined it to Mortuary Man.  Those who knew him personally and did not want to equate him with his job called him Balan.  Balan kept corpses frozen in arrays of drawers.  Until somebody came to claim them.  Or until nobody claimed and order was given to dispose off the body in the nearby electric crematorium which was operated by his wife, Latika.  Death was their family business.  He, Balagangadharan, was the keeper of corpses and Latika, his wife, was the disposer of corpses.   Both the mortuary and the crematorium belonged to the government.  While the crematorium seldom experienced any discrimination between rich corpses and poor corpses, the mortuary often did.  Rich corpses preferred private mortuaries, those in the hospitals meant for the rich.  Government mortuaries received poor corpses.  Or corpses of criminals.  Or anonymous corpses.  Abandoned corpses.  Who said dea

Mosquito

Source As soon as the power fails, the mosquitoes fly in from God-knows-where.  The mosquito repellent is the fortress which they cannot penetrate.  Blessed be the man who invented it.  Blessed is the man who does not suck others’ blood and prevents others from doing it. Mosquitoes are born to suck blood.  Even at the milk-swollen breasts, they will suck only blood.  The very purpose of their existence is to suck blood and to blast our eardrums with their buzz.  They think they are entertaining us with their music.  And they put up their daises where three or four creatures gather innocuously, for purchasing the provisions for the body or for their tête-à-tête with their god, food for the soul.  All around the dais they will erect monstrous loud speakers.  And the buzz will begin.  Ear-splitting buzz.  The buzz will lull us to sleep.  And then they suck our blood.  Giving our blood, we attain our orgasms.  Most mosquitoes move through twilights and moonlights.  But they

A few blogs that caught my attention

Reviewing another person’s writing is not an easy job especially in a society that promotes the mutual back-scratching policy.  That’s perhaps the reason why the latest Indispire theme [#BlogReview] has not got any takers so far with a singular exception (until this post is being written). I wonder why the theme got the most votes if Indibloggers didn’t want to review blogs.  The answer may lie in the writer’s subconscious longing for adulation from others.  Every writer is a thoroughgoing egoist as George Orwell said.  I’m no exception. However, I have to write this since I’m the one who suggested the Indispire theme.  If I let down my own suggestion, I wouldn’t be egoistic enough to be a writer! Rajesh Prabhu’s blog carries the charm of India through delightful photographs .  What’s best about the blog is that it is diametrically opposed to mine: it is full of beauty and optimism, elegance and grace.  Rajesh helps me bounce back from the cynicism that overtakes me against my

As flies to wanton boys

When a fugitive said, “Let me go over,” the men of Gilead said to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?”  When he said, “No,” they said to him, “Say shibboleth.”  And he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it right.  Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. And there fell at that time 42,000 Ephraimites.  [The Bible, Judges 12: 5-6] When I read the above extract as the preface to an essay on the importance of right pronunciation, my first response was a laugh.  As a teacher of English language and literature, I was struck by the deep irony as well as dark humour in the Biblical episode.  Language became a tool for identifying the enemy.  And the word used for the identification test is “shibboleth” which means ‘a password, phrase, custom, or usage that reliably distinguishes the members of one group or class from another.’  The author of the Book of Judges revealed a profound sense of black humour by slitting 42,000 throats with the word ‘shibboleth.’  The

Rain

I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry. Thinking I myself was weeping, I felt my face and it was dry. Ray Bradbury’s words came to me as the rain battered my window last night.  I had taken the picture of the clouds in the evening while I waited at the bus stop for someone to arrive.  Rain is nothing new in Kerala where I have found my current shelter.  From the time I came here four months ago, it has been raining almost every day for some time at least.  There was a time when the rain was romantic for me.  The rain has a music that enters your very being and pervades it like an exquisite flavour.  While in Delhi, I used to long for the rain. To drench the desert of Delhi with heavenly flavours.  To quench the thirst that runs through Delhi’s veins like a paranoid monster.  To soften the fossilised souls of the deities that grab Delhi square foot by square foot.  To wash clean the insensate idols that encroach upon the rights of

Love and some Hungers

Historical Fiction I have to go, Appai said to Isabel.  In Malayalam.  That was the only language Appai knew.  Isabel knew only Portuguese.  But their hearts had been entwined with a language that only hearts knew.  Isabel was one of the many thousands of the Portuguese people who crowded in the Port of Lisbon to see Ana, the little elephant, that was shipped from Kerala.  Vasco da Gama had inflicted all the brutality of civilisation on the coasts of Kappad and around in Kerala for almost two decades.  The Zamorin of Kozhikode was not incapable of comprehending the brutality.  It was not only greed that motivated people like Vasco da Gama to push their ships into stormy seas.  It was not even merely love of adventure.  Conquest was the motive.  Brutality added intoxication to conquests.  Every ruler knew that.  The Zamorin was no exception.  But how could the Zamorin forgive this man who massacred the Haj pilgrims from his country to the holy city of Mecca?  Eyewitness