kriticulture

Summer and Fall 2013 Vol 5 No. 3 & 4 Editorial The unprofitable work of literature Rajesh Sharma     The oldest memories with me include a balding and bespectacled old head reading a book held up by a hairy hand with cracked brown skin. A reflective grin spreads or shrinks, prompted by mysterious proceedings in the magic mirror in front. Memory’s selection tool functions strangely.             Sood Uncle. He ran a shop that never had more than… ten books? A banyan had grown in the shop’s forehead, hanging down like hair from aging eyebrows. Seven steps into the shop you faced darkness that tasted damp with the odor of rats’ droppings. I bought my first books, on credit to be paid by my mother’s brother, from Sood Uncle. My mother’s mother once confided to me that this Sood Uncle was a legendary kanjoos . Unlimitedly kanjoos , she said.        ...

An extract from Sasenarine Persaud's review of South Asian Ensemble : "Stories, excerpts, poems, essays, photography, paintings, reviews and interviews all go into making this eclectic publication. The contributions are not only by, or about, South Asians. The great strength of South Asian Ensemble is the translations from Indian languages." - Sasenarine Persaud's Complete review here: http://poets-and-co.blogspot.in/

By Rajesh Sharma 'Complete Mukti' - Prime Minister Singh's hybrid phrase delivered from the Red Fort today, on 15 August 2013.  Is it a symptom of neoliberal pathologies of exclusive developmentalism transplanted on the Indian soil from abroad?  Does it say, despite 'their' silence, that we must now pick up a redesigned outfit of freedom - of freedom defined in and qualified by Western(ized) corporate terms?  At the same time, the brand new Manmohanism validates the operations of the native religious-corporate complex - by reimagining 'Mukti' in terms of the entertainment and fashion ideology of completism.  Recall Raymond's ad campaign: T he Complete Man.

Badri Raina Bradley Snowden Assange, I say, for You are one—born to protect What was once proudly American; Selfless beyond our tutored   Incomprehension. Even as all around us, the “best” hoard Their lives and open their abuse On behalf of the “patriotic” gun, The corporate board, and the politics That “god-fearing” red-necks use To trample the world beneath The ordained boot, romping from One massacre to the other Like proverbial bandicoot, Snooping among “unalienable” Privacies not just of those without “manifest destiny,” but of those That inhabit the “land of the free,” You fling your soul like streak Of light across the Satanic gloom, thinking nothing Of losing your life if, courting death, You may illume to common sight And knowledge the perfidies of those That, pretending to maim and disfigure On our behalf, fatten on the ruse. Bradl...

By Badri Raina badri.raina@gmail.com Y ou forgot your Biblical lessons, Dear boy; God being Light, all Good things are white; And Satan being the prince Of darkness, being born black Is a hopeless mess. Against such black vicissitudes Was a just law found that said To the white killer, “stand your ground.” Only some sixty million of your forefathers Were  murdered in the slave trade; Too many more are still left To be made dead. Sinners are those That think racism is bad. Only when non-white trash gathers Into a common cause is racism racism; Zimmerman is merely God’s own prism. From the Fuhrer he remembered how The Swastika was not racist emblem, But Zarathustra’s  declaration That only a chosen some Had right over life, death, and the fun Born of  extermination; thus Zimmerman was only furthering The  pure Aryan nation. Watch Obama hold his thinking head, ...

By Badri Raina badri.raina@gmail.com They had great faith in the gods Dotting the hills and dales— Those men and women who Are now corpses. Yet, not one among those that Survived was heard to say “The gods govern our conditions; Not the government, not the builders, Not the hoteliers, not the miners— None of these are responsible, since God willed it so.” All of their moaning suggested How unstuck they were with the gods They believed in. Of all the tangled flesh and bone That lay mangled among the rubble, One corpse stood out: Bang in the sanctum sanctorum, This young man, dead and askew, Had open eyes full of consternation Fixed searingly upon the god-in-chief. It was as though in his moment Of dying, his amazement at the deity’s Uncaring repose was too much to hide. He might have been thinking, “H...