Stories and Novels

By Ashwin Sanghi  Osaka, Japan, 1972    Pink Floyd performed live at the Festival Hall in Osaka on 9 March. Among those in the audience was a pretty young woman, Aki Herai. She had a job in the large Daimaru store in the Shinsaibashi district of the city but was now on leave because she was eight months pregnant. The concert tickets were a present from her friends at the store. The delicate subject of the child’s father was never discussed.   Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was a big hit with the Japanese youth attending the concert. The show was reaching its finale when Aki felt her water break. Her friends rushed her to Osaka National Hospital, where the doctors performed an emergency caesarean section.   Her daughter, Swakilki, arrived six weeks short of a normal forty-week pregnancy. Luckily she weighed five pounds, was 12.6 inches tall, and had fairly well-developed lungs, enabling her to survive.   On Swakilki’s sixth birthday,...

-- Ashwin Sanghi    Srinagar, Kashmir, India, 1975    The house of Rashid-bin-Isar was overflowing with joy. His wife, Nasira, had just delivered a baby boy. The proud father had announced that he would feed all the poor and homeless in the city for a week. Large vats filled with lamb biryani, a spicy and aromatic rice pilaf, overflowed into the streets as beggars and street children flocked to Rashid’s home to feast.   Rashid cradled his firstborn in his arms as he recited the Islamic prayers, Adhan in the right ear and Iqaamah in the left ear of the child, as he awaited the Khittaan, the ritual circumcision.   Father and son appeared on the balcony a few moments later as cheers erupted from the throngs in the street. ‘I want all of you to bless my son. By the will and grace of Allah, he will be great. His name shall be Ghalib, the Victorious One!’   Gulmarg, Kashmir, India, 1985    Ten years later, the members of the Indian ...

by Ashwin Sanghi Ladakh, India, 1887   Dmitriy Novikov was tired.6 His expedition from Srinagar through the 3,500-metre-high Zoji- la Pass into Ladakh had been exhausting in spite of several men taking on the burden of luggage and equipment. The onward trek to Leh, the capital of Ladakh, and thereon to Hemis had sapped all his energy. To make matters worse, he had injured his right leg as a result of a fall from the mule that was carrying him.   Hemis was one of the most respected Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh, and their visitor was welcomed as an honoured guest. The monks quickly carried him into their simple quarters and began tending to his injury. While he was being fed a meal of apricots and walnuts washed down by hot butter tea, he met the chief Lama of the monastery.   ‘I know why you are here, my son,’ said the Lama. ‘We too honour the Christian Son of God.’   Dmitriy was dumbfounded. He had not expected such a forthright approach. ‘Would ...

--   Sarat Chandra Chatterjee  I   RAMLAL lacked age, but not the capacity for mischief. Everybody in the village feared him. No one could be sure when, where from and how his next blow would fall. Nor could Shyamlal, his step- brother, be called exactly a gentle sort either, although his chastisement of trivial lapses was never as extreme. He worked at the village landlord's estate office, and looked after his own affairs as well. They were comfortably off. Besides owning water tanks, gardens and paddy fields, he had also a few families of the bagdi caste for tenants and some savings in ready cash. Thirteen years earlier, when Shyamlal's wife, Narayani, first arrived to become the mistress of her husband's house, Ram's widowed mother was on her deathbed. Before her death, she had bequeathed her two-and-a-half year old child, Ram, and her large establishment to the care of Narayani, her daughter-in-law, then aged thirteen. One year an epidemic of fev...