KUSHAL PODDAR - SHORT-STORIES

 KUSHAL PODDAR authored ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals, Understanding The Neighborhood’, ‘Scratches Within’, ‘Kleptomaniac's Book of Unoriginal Poems’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and now ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’ (Alien Buddha Press)


Author Page  - amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

​Parallels

The couple conceptualizes the beings of another couple in the spacious blinded window facing theirs. 'The neighbors must be watching us', he says. 'Yes!' She says.

Their hairs wave along the length of their arms. They disrobe and think of the other couple watching them through their colonial blinds. Then they feel their shadows talking about them and water staring through every bead at them while they lave their skin.

They close their window, and through the blinds of their own they observe the couple on the other side. They keep watching. Sundays are the best. Warm cats asleep on the cornice, the cups of tea cooling down.

Sometimes they wish the other window opens up to show the inside.

One Monday, the third one of the month, right before the moon rises, as the couple stands near their window and peeps through the blinds the other window opens. And there stands a couple much like themselves- the girl looks like the boy here and the boy there fashions after the boy. The couple here can think of anything else but to open their own window. The moment they do so they are in the other couple's room much like theirs.

 
 

​The Silenced Hiss

​Illias sat for hours on a bench that looked dusty but the cleaning stuff did his job as per his daily schedule. When he finally met the authority, the officer took his application, written like a summer river, and said nothing.


Illias went to the forest department. Went to the Zoo authority. They all accepted his applications and paid no heed. Illias began to raise his voice, told everyone, "The snake returns every night and drinks the blood of the chickens I chop all day. Every morning I see it recede from the view, its tail rattling, its black skin glistening. I am afraid. My clients will be afraid if they come to know. My butcher's shop will die down. Please send some men and catch it away."

They all said, "Did you try carbolic acid? Is the snake for real?"

Illias could not stand the fume of carbolic. The snake was real so far his vision went.

His friend, Kishore, the fish seller, chuckled, "Its all in your head. Why didn't we see the snake? Ha! That big! Five feet! I tell you, you must marry now. When a man of your age stays unmarried he sees these things."

Illias retied the knot of his pajama, spat at the cobblestoned market, but mumbled to his mother at night, "Fish is undercooked, ammijaan. I think you should retire from the kitchen. I should marry after all."
"Did you see the snake again?" His mother asked, but she had already shortlisted the probable brides.

Illias saw the snake even the day before his wedding and sighed. He called the police, "The snake is here again." The phone was disconnected. He said, Kabool hai thrice.

It was a Sunday the day after his wedding. His right cheek still bore the print of the pillow, his left- a smeared shade of red. He came to open the shop and found no snake. He told Kishore. He smirked.

The snake did not return the day after. The day after. Months after. Illias left a bucket of blood for it. It did not return. He left milk and bananas for it as per the story goes in a Hindu mythology. Kishore laughed, "You are a Muslim. Why are you following a snake goddess? Are you missing the snake?"

Illias spat on the cobblestoned market.

​Secret Sanctuary

​He meets the cat again in the evening
He has a fish fry crumbled in a bag. The cat meows in a broken voice as if winter just touched the tip of a tree and the leaves are leaving for the following life.
‎"I think I saw my son in a stranger's face today", he says, "He smokes. Do you think he smokes nowadays? I used to." He sports a faint smile, "I remember the last cigarette. I put it out and brushed my hair with my fingers, was ready to kiss my son's mother. She said, I smelt awfully."

I I

The cat tells the wind, "This fence feels like winter." "How so?" Howls the wind.
"It runs such a short distance that goes on forever, stiff, slow, moony, broke where moonshine gushes out, sleepy and insomniac." The cat finds a leafless shrub's thorny leaflet to read. It remembers all its kittens gone into oblivion. The cat doesn't mind. It feels hungry but would have rejected anything edible. It remembers the house where it dropped the orange kitten. It lost all. It doesn't mind.