Prakash Kona writes about...

The Narrator in Bombay

Don my dear friend...

Thanks for the mail. Please cancel the “Dreamer” piece that I sent you because an ezine that I had sent to long ago agreed to publish it. Sorry for the inconvenience.

“Nameless” is a dark, pessimistic piece that I wrote in a bad mood. My usual self is very optimistic, upbeat and direct. I never liked the city of Bombay or Bombayites — the typical coldness, indifference and killing inhumanity of big city dwellers towards the poor and the outsiders. So I created this bitter, angry narrator in “Nameless” to bring out that kind of horrible alienation.

I was reading Kaabata’s “House of the Sleeping Beauties“ at that time. He deals with the same kind of a character as my narrator in a profoundly masterly way that I’m incapable of. However, though art demands freedom of mood and it’s unfair to direct the stream of words the way for example Tolstoy does (though it is easier to excuse Tolstoy than any much lesser writer like myself), nevertheless coming from a country like India where we’re caught in transitions at every level — historical and personal — as a writer I try to capture something of that complex vicinity in which I live. Sorry if I sound like a boring scholar which I am more often than not.

Surely I would like to involve myself in critical discussions of what others have written as long as I’m not missing the cultural context in which the work is born. For example I could never talk about rap music except in the most abstract fashion. But writers, writing and politics — more than welcome. I’ve no interest in talking of my own work though. I would die of boredom in all honesty.

Affectionately,

Prakash

Copyright © 2005 by Prakash Kona

Thank you for casting light on the background of “Nameless in a Faceless City,” Prakash. As I may have said, I think our readers will appreciate it, but I doubt they’ll be surprised. Part 3, in this issue, strikes me as being full of mordant humor, comparing as it does the relations between Britain and India with those of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza.

We respect your disinclination to talk about your own work. Authors and readers seldom look at a text from the same perspective or in the same focus. But we’d welcome your thoughts about anything in Bewildering Stories. I’ve already mentioned Saurbh Katyal’s “The Colors of Time,” which is set in India at the end of the colonial era. And you might also enjoy one of our “flagship” stories, Kate Bachus’ “Twenty Views of Tanforan,” which deals with colonialism in another form.

Bewildering Stories accepts simultaneous submissions. If we can possibly publish “Dreamer of the Other World” despite its appearance elsewhere, we would like to do so.

Kindest regards,

Don