Out of Print 57 is the first edition in our fifteenth year of publishing the magazine.
We asked our readers to tell us how they responded to any of the fifteen featured stories published in September 2025.
- Six-anna Ticket by Bhagwati Charan Verma, translated from Hindi by Ankita Gupta
Wonderfully narrated incident. So relatable. Many have had an uninvited guest foisted on them, who simply don't go away. And then there's the middle-class mentality that wants to maximize every drop from a lemon. Two beautiful truths, wonderfully spun together to form an entertaining story.
- Anonymous
- The Smoky World of Aravamuthan by Ramanujam Parthasarathy
The story ‘The Smoky World of Aravamuthan’ made excellent reading. The description of Vijayawada environs, the Nature surrounding Aravamuthan's house (before he chose to move) are very convincing. One could almost smell the fresh air of the morning and its fragrance, along with the acrid cigarette smoke radiating from the neighbouring Professor's balcony. The story moved with a sedate pace which helped the author as it provided a complete contrast to the finale – which made Aravamuthan's heart to beat faster than ever.
On the whole, the story evoked R K Narayan's vivid descriptions and sudden endings which leave the readers and the characters surprised or sometimes shocked.
Sri Ramanujan Parthasarathy is known for his racy narrations which appear sometimes in Facebook in his timeline. I have grown fond of his writings. I thank Out of Print for publishing this story.
- D S Kesava Rao
We had strong responses to the story 'Unborn' by Smita Sahya that appeared in the ISSUE 56, that readers might have assumed apperaed in the fifteenth year - it appeared in the fourteenth. Our reckoning begins in September, which is confusing.
We have decided to publish what people wrote in about Unborn.
-Unborn by Smita Sahay
Stories are mediums to probe both the inner and outer world from a personal periphery of our minds. They are buried deep inside and there is a certain yearning in them for the teller to vent them out. It needs courage for storytellers to exhibit a reality through a story. Unborn by Smita Sahay is an exploration of the internal and external turmoil of human beings during the pandemic, especially the period of lockdown.
The characters of the stories have their own choices, lifestyle, sexual orientation and class difference. The writer, even in the tempestuous and sensuous moments of the story, does not move away from addressing the complexity that their choices bring. Rui, the protagonist, is an independent and liberal woman, but her liberty is a consequence of the battles she fights in her own life. It can be easy for a reader to feel sympathetic about her condition, but what the writer keeps before us is a woman who wants a little time for her own ‘self’. Sympathy is not the intent of the writer. It is the realization of a woman’s needs and wishes.
Smita also makes a statement on how class played an important role in survival during lockdown. A stratum of the population enjoyed the luxury of being at home whereas the other strata had to hold themselves to move out and gather resources by any means possible. The writer blends desire with necessity and desperation for a woman who knows that her destiny does not carry love, but is ogled and desired by men.
In the story, the writer also tells us that in weary times, we all need someone to keep our words safe. Here, through Rui’s friend Asha, the writer leads us to the meaning of a companion and also, makes us experience the life of a queer who is not privileged. The story flows smoothly on the back of intricate moments, intimate instances, and regular but less visible images. We get to smell the flesh of the characters, the gush of breath can be felt on the skin, and the food, sweat and morbid air gathers neatly to solidify the freshness of these images.
The characters are not glorious. They are flawed but both Rui and Asha have the understanding of their own limitations and possibilities. The men, however, are exploiters and, we all know, sexual exploitation had a spike during the lockdown. Smita Sahay subtly brings out this important context without being overdramatic or preachy. Every story has a politics of its own. The politics of this story is against everything that’s oppressive and diabolical. Smita criticizes the actions of the government during the lockdown and how it diverted people’s rationality through absurd theories.
Many workers weren’t paid by their owners during the lockdown. This situation has been beautifully projected using an image where the owner’s boyfriend buys the nicotine Rui smokes due to unavailability of cigarettes leaving the latter empty handed. Smita does not veil the hatred in Rui for her madam’s boyfriend. Rather, she puts intensity in Rui to magnify the thoughts which do not percolate off her mouth before the man who holds a position of power but they also do not go quiet in times of rage. The writer, through Rui’s loud anger, puts before us the cruelty of our heads without dehumanizing it. Similarly, Smita also dissects the politics around motherhood.
Our society isolates women who become mothers without husbands. Even the strongest women grow up with this stigma in their heads. Smita addresses this stigma and how it breaks when we come across certain situations. In this story, it happens when her home becomes claustrophobic for her because of bearing a child without marriage. Her mother’s cruelty is driven by her son’s death and an inequality is established. A pregnant woman is seen with raised eyebrows in India since it is still not normal for her to have freedom with a protruded belly. Independency, that is a result of isolation, teaches us to accept what we are not conditioned of processing. Unborn by Smita Sahay is a raw, fresh and sharp insight into the lives of women who carry heavy bags of their own needs and desires by withstanding cracks on their soul.
-Kabir Deb
It is rare to find stories with woman protagonists in which the woman is alive in all her complexity. In Unborn, the writer quickly kills the clichés of 'strong' and 'beautiful' women. She lets Rui take over the page with the full force of her sexual self. There are no pedestals here for the hero, the woman. She is thoughtful and tender, rude and violent. I was struck by the use of spaces in the story. Rui and Asha share a cupboard-size space. They also have the employer's kitchen. But Rui's life seems expansive, taking in two lovers, a job, and all of her fears and wiles and dreams. She must respond with clarity to liquor-filled plastic bottles, to men with and without power, to tiny viruses outside in the world, to the hundred things quivering inside her.
-Suchi Govindarajan
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