I think this is the second time I’ve had to reach beyond my treasured, “120 Minutes”-era musical fetish to find a tune which fits a Flash Fiction Friday. I blame Siddhartha, for the Parisian prose in his post, since it reopened that festering debate about how cringe-inducing cliches which brown writers seem to sweat (henna, silk, spices, MANGOES) make us all want to vomit…curry. Or something. I’m not too broken up about this, though; if I had to use something other than excellent alternative music for our theme song, ain’t no shame in my Nina Simone-soundtracked game.
It’s the second time for something else, as well. Today, I invite you to create 55-word stories which sound like they were taken from “The Arranged Marriage of Crazy Curry-lovers in Marin” or whatever disposable lit you care to mock mercilessly. The December 16th, 2005 “Why Can’t I Be You?”-edition of 55Friday nominally used a similar theme, though what I really asked for then was for you to borrow the voice of someone famous for us to later guess…Sajit made a special request for some tamarind-flavored 55age and you came through like champions. My favorite two from that edition are below.
The Ill Hindu himself contributed this miniature masterpiece, before he was a Mutineer:
His tigress.
Desire crowded his mind like pilgrims at Benares. Her silken lips, cinnamon eyes, lashes like Assam tea. Her breasts, twin Taj Mahals at sunset.
How exquisitely she played his shehnai. The taste of her mango lassi.
A monsoon of sadness flooded him.
“ItÂ’s been fun,” sheÂ’d said. “But IÂ’m having an arranged marriage.”
GENIUS. After that, Badmash dropped the J-bomb (sorry, Saheli):
The elephant in the newsroom was her use of cheap metaphors in foreign assignment pieces from exotic locations. The juggernaut of letters to the editor from offended Sepia readers concerned him enough to call her in for a meeting. How would he ask her to tone down the spice without invoking the wrath of Kali
Weren’t those fab? I expect no less from all you ardent members of the Anti-Mango Brigade. I know that Red Snapper may not forgive me for exhorting you to do this, but cliche away!
In the face of such brilliance, I lose my will for creative work. Sorry. Kobayashi, out.
The humid air made me beads of sweat drip down my back. Like a ripe mango, my skin was moist and mushy. “If only he would peel me and find my sweetness,” I thought.
But it was not to be that day–or ever. He, a Calcutta native, was full of cumin; and, I, raised in New Jersey, of black pepper; some things just don’t mix.
GODDMAN f@#$k@#n typos. I would love anyone who would be willing to fix that 🙂
-s
In the moonlight his skin emanated a blue glow, giving her visions of the Lord Krishna. He paused, and then asked his question again. His words seemed to percolate through his chai-flavoured accent.
“Ma’am, vich vay to go please?”
“Oh, 34th street. Thanks.”
The taxi driver nodded, turned around, and put the car into gear.
120 Minutes – now those were the days! And coincidentally enough, I was listening to Kiss Me^3 this morning. And, I too bow down to the Ill Hindu… fantastic, yar!
In the mango-tinged morning light, his skin seemed more chai than sandalwood. He spoke, lovely and lilting, like sitar strings plucked softly, so sweetly. Her cheeks burned bright as sindhoor. When their eyes met, the air crackled like black mustard seeds popping in hot oil. She tucked her sari pleats as she ran home.
As I made love to Gary, it was like making a good curry. Spicy, hot, with lots of flavours and juices infusing into each other.
If only he could rescue me from my arranged marriage. He kissed my mangoes, they were ripe and symbolic.
‘What a pickle we’re in’ I said.
He stopped ravishing my lychees and cardoman pods and said, ‘Yes, but Sunita, always remember, a pickle always needs poppadoms, which are white and crunchy, like me.Â’ I cried with joy like a guava coloured parakeet in a banyan tree. Outside, London continued it’s busy multiculturalism, and India was so far away. Ironic, isnÂ’t it? He would rescue me from my heartbreaking culture clash.
That was like two 55’s joined together 😀
Red Snapper,
Excellent, excellent stuff 😉
Just for the record (since you seem to be a relatively new arrival on SM), are you a man or a woman ?
(So the rest of us know where you’re coming from w.r.t future posts here).
I’m not sure.
laughing What ?!
I was just wondering if your 55 was from a genuinely female perspective or if you were just speculating about what the experience would be like “in the other party’s shoes”.
Also, judging by your personality and style of writing, I’d suspected that you were SM’s Missing-In-Action hero Punjabi Boy in disguise, but that’s probably not the case since you mentioned you were a Hindu (not Sikh), unless the guy came back from his trip to the Far East not only believing in a different religion but belonging to a different gender now too.
Anyway, very good 55. Raised a chortle. Keep ’em coming paaji/bahenji.
Well, I am a very androgynous person so I can stand in everybody’s shoes 😉
Everyone should try to do that.
Haha, I love this.
I was contemplating an attempt at this week’s 55. No, I will not participate this week as I am too busy laughing. These posts are friggin’ hysterical. I bow in your virtual presence.
“How exquisitely she played his shehnai. The taste of her mango lassi. A monsoon of sadness flooded him.” Lots of mistakes in that one…should read “How exquisitely she played with his shehnai. The taste of his mango lassi. A monsoon of sadness flooded out of him.”
Extending the brownsploitation theme @sepia – here’s my 55 on how the 2 halves of india view each other-
Gulbadan Singh Randhawa stepped down from the train and hungrily gulped the hot, tangy dravidian air at Madras Central. His eyes shined with curiousity and excitement, he was finally getting to see how the other half of the country really really lived.
As he made his way down the platform, blue silk turban bobbing through a sea of black heads, and apologizing for his kirpan that struck unwary sacred brahmin kundis at his side, he smiled knowingly as he walked past a trio of fat aging south indian film stars eating paapad and curd rice out of lime-green banana leaves. At the end of the platform, he saw a sleazy sweaty khaki clad ruffian walk directly towards him- the dreaded tamil-rickshaw-caranus, top cat of the chennai concrete jungle, he had been warned about these creatures up north, he thought, and steeled himself.
!Sardarji- Top Sucker! Thought the auto driver…
I strongly disagree; the correct version should be: A monsoon of sadness flooded out of him like commuters out of Dadar station;)
The communists did not stop torturing me with their cabal inspired clichés of Hinduism. They squeezed my mangoes but I would not submit to Islam or Christianity. Minorities were raping me. One of the commies, a homosexual, said, ‘These mangoes are saffron!”. Horror filled the cowards at the sight of saffron mangoes and I escaped my chains and reclaimed India and became assertive.
Hail Mango-bo!
The heated-dust swirled and assaulted with 55 varieties-of-shit flavors, and crowds pressed and barely parted, physical avatars of the thick air. Finally the real India, thought Greg, winding his way through the colorful Paharganj Market, dodging rickshaws, cows, and dogs, not that fancy hotel where Anjali still lay sleeping in indolent 1st class AC splendor.
“I just LOVE your outfit! It’s so sumptuous. It’s Indian, right? Gawd, I’ll bet your whole closet is full of those glorious silks.
I look down at my sundress, which is polyester and something I picked up at StrawberryÂ’s not because it looked like knock-off kanjeevaram, but because it was cheap and fit surprisingly well.
“And your perfume! Like spicy incense…sigh. It must be so easy when you have a culture like yours, so ornate and vibrant…and I’ll bet your skin is clear because you don’t use these terrible western chemicals…everything organic and ayurvedic, right?”
Internally, I shake my head and steel myself.
“Chanel and Neutrogena,” I shrug apologetically, smiling.
Princess Roopkumari gazed out of the latticed window of her far pavilion. The desert wind of exotic Rajasthan ruffled her hair, black as the Eastern night, as her mysterious kohl-rimmed eyes spied the Taj Mahal looming on the distant horizon. Below the Maharajah’s palace, a bejewelled bride became Sati on her husband’s flaming funeral pyre.
Caparisoned elephants swayed down the cobbled streets, jostling with the turbaned men and ladies being carried in their palanquins, the ever-present snake-charmers’ music vying with the whoop of the Hanuman monkeys.
“I can’t wait for my East India Company hero to come and take me away from all this”, mused Roopkumari.
“Aaaaaaaaaand cut !”, shouted Gurinder.
Since there are already stories about arranged marriage, romance and office politics, the staples of our brown existence, I leave you a story about the other constant of our diaspora. The vacation in India.
I lay on a straw mat wearing a banyan and shorts, slightly sweaty, under a fan whirring in slow-motion. I shut Nabokov’s now humidity-soaked pages. I closed my eyes and imagined my own niece, Lalitha, her black shiny hair in a waist-long plat, reciting over and over, a sloka to Vinayaka, the elephant god.
Sinister. I know.
dingchak in Post 16:
Very nice turn of phrase here.
That’s what Im talking about. Everyone bloody going against me.
She wrapped her hennaed fingers around its considerable girth. “Put it in your mouth,” he said. She obeyed, gently holding down the flesh with her teeth while she licked and sucked on it, careful that none dripped on her sari.
The director nodded. At last, the Food Network had a show dedicated to Indian food.
To the commenter whose long, obscure and off-topic rant was deleted:
If you “know this is bad” and you “hate to do this” and by “this” you mean, THREADJACKING then don’t. We understand that you are frustrated and your opinion that “it’s not nice” for us to close threads, that “really, it’s very disrespectful” has been duly noted. However, it behooves you to understand that if we tried to take in to account every “wronged” person who potentially didn’t get to
flamerespond back, we’d NEVER close threads and that would decrease the quality of this site. It’s your right to consider this policy of ours “cowardly”, it’s our right to shake our heads sadly.Finally, if you don’t want to be attacked as superficial or otherwise, then you might want to reconsider statements like the ones below:
Thank you for reading this, we hope you will stop dragging the conversation back to a place the rest of us don’t care to go.
Speaking of which: Debbie does Salad.
Um, I was referring to my post #27, not the Intern’s post #28. Though, I guess, it sorta applies too.
This is more like 55 x 2.
She raised her intricately henna-ed hands above her and clapped along with the bhangra beat while her delicate bangles jangled on her wrists. The circle of bindi-ed ladies around her displayed their finest Banarasi silk in emerald and sapphire while she stood center stage, their Hope diamond. Her cardamom pod-shaped eyes filled with icy pools, and kajal-stained tears created their own Brahmaputras down her haldi-treated skin. The necklace he had given her, encrusted in rubies the size of pomegranate seeds, grew tighter, as if choking her. She looked up to stop her tear and saw her auntsÂ’ saffron and vermillion dupattas undulating above her like the waves of the Arabian Sea – were they protecting her or ensnaring her within her own Red Fort?
She wanted to be the mortar to his pestle, to have him grind in to her with all of his obvious potency. Precious and electric like saffron, majestic and rare as a white tiger, he was the only one for whom she yearned.
“Oh, Spoor Lam…will you ever notice me?” she murmured, her love unrequited.
Requests for celebrities’ contact info or homework assistance; racist, abusive, illiterate, content-free or commercial comments; personal, non-issue-focused flames; intolerant or anti-secular comments; and long, obscure rants may be deleted.
Unless your comment contains a 55-word story, a link to one somewhere else or a comment about one which has been posted, it WILL be deleted.
Yo\’ peeps, I\’m posting through an anonymizer again to share this 55 with you, that\’s how crazy I am.
The incense caressed her, recalling Sanjeev. Dutifully she lit the flame and recited prayers. Far from her ancestral homeland, it fell upon her to preserve the traditions. Her ancestors would have arranged her marriage; now, like the rest of the diaspora, she was considering other options.
But marry Sanjeev? She was a nice Jewish girl!
On a thread as endless As a snake charmers rope She got no respect Like an IIT reject Soiled by Dert Hurt, sheÂ’d flirt About a stellar butt Hard as a coconut Even Sanjay Dutt Could not rebut But a quick triggered Keralaite Bought on the night So she’d crash another party Like a proud Tiger Bengali The braggart would give her shirt just to roll in the Dert
Manju, I’m not the one who cut that “rope”, though that’s not to say I didn’t dream of doing so. 😉 I actually stayed out of that…quagmire, which is why it’s amusing that I’m getting
blamedcredit forconnected to certain things, by you and the real um, “she”. 🙂Nice nanofiction, btw.
They hadnÂ’t seen each other for months. She still yearned to drink from his lips the way the Ganga drinks from the Jamuna, to coax his cobra into ravishing her under a sun radiating haldi-colored heat.
“How’s Prem?” he asked. His eyes pierced her soul like one of Arjuna’s arrows. She bit her tamarind lips.
—
“He’s fine,” she lowered her blooming lashes like an umbrella offset by winds from the Indian Ocean. “Rinku and Binku are also doing well in school.”
She couldnÂ’t tell him that he was her Prem, her love, the incense of her agarbathi, the flame of her diya, the words of the mantras she chanted daily.
—
His eyes admired her hair glistening with coconut oil. Her insides melted into ghee which then spilled out and adorned her cheeks.
He was tinged with the scent of brandy like a monkey guiltily sporting the scent of stolen mangoes. He was drunk with the sight of her, swooning under the spell of his Lakshmi.
It was yet another of those perfect days in Northern Cali. Clear blue sky and a hint of the lovely pine-scented breeze. Arunachalam Mandram relaxed in his lungi reading the Sunday edition of the San Jose Mercury news. Inside the 2 bedroom condo in Sunnyvale, son A. Ramesh worked on his laptop and daughter-in-law Parvathi cooked Rasam in the kitchen. From next door came pressure cooker noises and the unmistakable smell of Uthapams. Just then one of the apartment complex’s maintenance men stopped and drawled at Arunachalam-“Have ya seen John around here”…After a few moments of silence Arunachalam repliede-” Saar they are no foreigners here saar”.
As I browse I see my name printed, in somewhat interesting way thatÂ’s hinted
Ah, itÂ’s Manju, whose words are precise like a surgeon, who before wasted no time stating IÂ’m aÂ….. engineer.
But bad things happen when people speak too damn fast, because he overlooked I received top marks in this very important class
Apologia
Though countless times impersonated, I did not like, in fact I hated, The long obscure rant left on this thread, Which supposedly came from my own head. As for my oft noted vanity, I admit false modesty is not for me. Yet the stellar ass was for argument’s sake Cyberpersonae – with a grain of salt take. Behind these masks we say what we will, To provoke, to annoy, to enrage, to thrill. I cast no blame for the abundant abuse, (And Anna, don’t worry, I know it weren’t youse) Say what you will, even holler and hoot, My last words are to Manju: Et tu brute?
Guess who:
“For Sale: North Indian wedding pagri. Never used.”
Link