“I don’t want to get married, Mama.” This, from Kutty Malu a college student, incensed Paru Amma. Just when marriage proposals were streaming in for Kutty Malu, this whine from her! She knew it was not old times. All the…
Many, many arguments later, I decided I had to leave the place. I set out the most essential clothes, books and writing materials, and sent a telegram to Aunt Mabel about my arrival. On my way back after sending the…
The festival on Thirumandham Hill was at its peak. The sacred deity was being ceremoniously carried forth. Seven elephants, a traditional orchestra of five types of instruments, and a milling crowd. The sun blazed off the gilded head dresses of…
“Like a spider caught in its own web.” She stepped out of the door and down the steps into the garden. A little frog came out from under and shot through between her feet. “She was plunging into that death…
Mr. Mitra woke up at 5: 30 a.m. that morning, only because he was in the habit of waking up early. The street outside was coming to life. The first bus coughed its way out of the bus station. The…
“Not yet time for coffee?” He came in from his afternoon nap, yawning repeatedly, and called out: “Three o’clock already and coffee not ready yet?…“ It was only then that she laid down the ‘Social Welfare’ newspaper in her hand,…
“Two people in one person”, said Charu to her husband Jayan. In the few days of his acquaintance with his wife, Jayan recognised this for the start of a long harangue. But he did not express his confusion. Jayan was…
Her voice was like the scrape of rusted steel. A dark purple vein on her withered neck stood out as if to brandish a war cry. The old lady adjusted her glasses and with no particular introduction, asked: Do you…
He had only removed the bolt on the huge iron gates. It parted in two with a strange noise – much like the tortured sob of an assaulted woman, he thought. In the large front yard laid in concrete were…
As in the novel The Legends of Khasak, the youth addressed the old man as ‘the father of the artist’. Okay, let that be the title of this story. The old man was resting in the canvas chair with his…
Brought in from the ambulance into the house on a softly padded stretcher, it was Seethalakshmi herself who saw the dolls. They sat swinging their legs on the branches of the mango tree. One of them looked at her and…
SREEDEVI K. NAIR Abstract: Words create worlds – real and imagined. The present issue of Samyukta offers tales of women on women writers, their lives and their writings, of reality and of dreams, through a past and the present, unraveling…
