Out of Print 34

Out of Print 34 has been released, and it’s a great issue – a translation, an excerpt, returning authors, authors new to Out of Print and one author publishing for the very first time. We are honoured!

Zui Kumar Reddy’s ‘Oranges’, an excerpt from her forthcoming novel, The Generation of Light, brings alight the passion that arises in a young woman, ‘a quadruple dose of imploding and exploding galaxies’, when she encounters the ‘sexy, terrifying, mystery thing’ of man whose being hints at a god-like magic from beyond.

Equally laden with hints of the unattainable is Ila Ananya’s ‘If I Remember Correctly’, which takes us into a strangely distanced, yet intimate relationship. They meet and talk every Friday. She does not know him, does not know if she can trust him, is displaced and in a new place where her instincts have been ‘swallowed whole’ and she struggles to know who she is. And he is one of the few with whom she can share this.

Swetha S publishes her first short story, ‘My Old Hometown’ with Out of Print. Gauri is taking Isha to meet her family in her hometown. The landscape is familiar, the traditional house unchanged, and Gauri is delighted to feel Isha’s presence in her childhood house, the only place she has not shared with her so far. Yet, Gauri is torn, will her parents be able to accept the fact that she has a girlfriend? Will she be able to cause them pain when a family crisis shakes the household?

Saumya Singh’s ‘New Paint’ is also set in an old house, one that has been demolished and is in the process of being reconstructed. A visit to the site throws up memories of a hidden family tragedy that impacts generations. Love between sisters, and between mother and daughter come into play as the family home and all it represents is transformed. Yet, these transformations into the new cannot overcome social barriers, and even she acknowledges  the initial spark of interest and attraction, the protagonist flees from them.

In this psychological thriller, ‘Smoke Rings’ by Neena Macheel that is set in an old crumbling mansion in Kochi, a woman’s instincts, obscured and suppressed by both illness and the cultural norms that govern her family life, sharpen when her son appears to be at threat. Her maternal protective instinct rises to fore, and the truth no longer seems the most important thing to adhere to.

 In ‘Electric Kettles Don’t Always Sing’, Barnali Ray Shukla takes the schisms of love, rationality and tenderness to a wholly other, wilder level. What happens when he, overcome by the romanticism of love, wants ‘the maple syrup [to] enter every pore of the crepe in an embrace that was sweet. But Seema insists on parathas’?’

Finally, we acknowledge the passing of an important writer from the subcontinent, Enver Sajjad, who died in Lahore on June 6 by publishing a story by him entitled ‘The Cow’. The story, like the famed eponymous film by Iranian director Dariush Mehjui, explores the intensity of the ‘near-mythical relationship’ the animal has with the human, as the story’s translator, Raza Naeem elaborates.

Nilima Sheikh’s exquisitely detailed ‘Departure’ brings depth and fragility to the issue.