I was tremendously excited by a letter I received a
few weeks ago from the Aschehoug Publishing House in Norway. Here is what it
said:
Our education department is currently working on a new edition
of REFLECTIONS, which is a textbook for learners of English in Norwegian upper
secondary schools who are taking an in-depth course in English language studies and key issues related to
culture and society in the English-speaking world. English-language literature forms part of the curriculum
requirements for this course, and in addition to text written by the authors
themselves, the book will also serve as an anthology of English-language
literature. The authors of the book are Hellevi Haugen, Julia Kagge, Jan Erik
Mustad, Nora Nordan, Ulla Rahbek, Audun Rugset, and Sigrid Brevik Wangsness.
REFLECTIONS was published in 2008 and needs to be revised and
updated. We would like to include the short story Mischief In Neta Nagar by Altaf Tyrewala in the new edition, which will be called NEW REFLECTIONS. We
found the short story here:
I put Altaf in touch with them immediately – which was a
minorly thrilling adventure in itself. The Norwegians needed a response urgently
and Altaf’s internet was being gimpy so he hadn’t responded. I had to send
urgent messages to lovely friends of Out of Print, Chandrahas Choudhury and
Annie Zaidi for alternate ways to get the message across, and – I’d like to
throw in a car chase or a shady alleyway scene, but – it was all quite
straightforward after that.
Altaf tells me that everything has gone smoothly and he only
awaits the delivery of New Reflections.
I put Altaf in touch with them immediately – which was a
minorly thrilling adventure in itself. The Norwegians needed a response urgently
and Altaf’s internet was being gimpy so he hadn’t responded. I had to send
urgent messages to lovely friends of Out of Print, Chandrahas Choudhury and
Annie Zaidi for alternate ways to get the message across, and – I’d like to
throw in a car chase or a shady alleyway scene, but – it was all quite
straightforward after that.
This December, Out of Print features 6 stories that explore the complex, multi-layered aspects of the region in ways that rise beyond the cultural context. Altaf Tyrewala’s Mischief in Netanagar is a chilling commentary on urban ennui, where the protagonist feels so disempowered that he comments, ‘To belong to the community, to the land or to the nation, a man must first be in possession of himself.’ Lucinda Nelson Dhavan’s Boys And Girls Together leads us through what happens when a refuge for battered women and a lodge for young men are next door to each other in a ‘middle-sized, middle-class, sleepy city’ in India. Dipika Mukherjee’s Patriots Of The Will, is a fictional rendition of the Indian National Army’s presence in what was then Malaya: a Bengali woman, a sweet maker, makes mishti and much more for Bose. Meenakshi Jauhari Chawla's tale reveals the fallibility of Lakhi Parshad, Member of Parliament and the wiliness of the human mind in negotiating survival. Drawing on her scientific background, and her theoretical perspective on the ways in which molecules interact, our editor, Indira Chandrasekhar, examines the thought processes of a girl who struggles to make sense of her family and her relationships in Lennard-Jones Potentials. In Tashan Mehta’s Erasure, which begins, ‘When I left home, I came back to find they had erased me,’ a young woman, desperate to find herself searches among her family and friends but learns that they no longer see her. 