Poet, Author, Editor, Creative Writing Consultant

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

The Woman on the Red Oxide FloorThe Woman on the Red Oxide Floor by Shikhandin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Woman whom we meet on the red oxide floor is perhaps every woman’s agonized self as she tries to rebel against the incomprehensible societal forces that remove her sense of self as an individual and relegate her to the status of a ‘housewife’ whose views do not matter. She has become trivialized, she is now ‘nothing’.

Yet her imagination is in her control, and this is what sends her into dream like spaces where she thinks and questions and enters other worlds through her mind space.

She is also the mother of Blue, her son, and we see and understand this world largely through his eyes, as he slowly leaves the cosmos to which he once belonged and becomes more and more a part of this world where he is born as Mamma’s and Baba’s baby. Mamma, who loves him, but also resents him at times, for he has ensnared her into the trappings of motherhood. Mamma, who takes care of him unconditionally as a child, but whom he leaves later to chart his own path in the world.

This book works with the mundane and the extraordinary and takes us in and out of several worlds; making the reader feel as if she has entered a dream world, but also a world where reality comes and goes with all its beauty and bitterness. There is also a future time we enter with this woman who once lay on the red oxide floor, but what she thinks and does at this time, I will let you discover for yourself.

The prose is an exquisite web woven by Shikhandin’s magic fingers, and it leaves us in a dream-like state. There are indeed worlds other than ours, ‘real worlds’— if we only choose to believe.

***

View all my reviews

Friday, March 26, 2021

A Reminder-poem

My love is a wound on your left thigh It will not fade with time The wound on the heart does But I have left a reminder. ~Abha Iyengar, March 25, 2011. (Upal Deb compared this to Lorca’s poetry!)

Monday, December 7, 2020

 #Editing #Appreciation

"I gave two of my short stories for editing to Abha, and I'm really glad I did that. Her edits were thorough and meticulous yet they didn't alter the flow and idea of my writing.
Moreover, she returned the edits much before the deadline. Every writer needs an editor like Abha to bring more finesse into their work."

~Ramya Srinivasan

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Testimonial for my editing

'Mrs Abha Iyengar is a professional and dedicated editor. Her dedication and efforts are quite praiseworthy especially because the quality of the manuscript is enhanced after her editing. She is soft spoken and handles the work assigned in a very sincere and professional manner. She is one of the best editors one can find online. Her evaluation is thorough and comprehensive. I wish her all the best.'

Ankush Kumar, author of a self-help book. (June 23, 2020)

More Praise for My Editing from an Indian Doctor in Australia- Dr. G.S. Oberoi

During this pandemic lockdown I found myself staring at a heap of papers (short stories) stowed away over last so many years in various dark corners. The challenge was - ‘where from here’. Then appears Abha Iyengar – like a light in the darkness. Soon those scribbles start to look like distinct characters forming a tellable story. Result- ten stories and a  collection (Stories- that remained untold).  Thanks Abha! 
Gajinder Oberoi

Abha Iyengar’s Shrayan is an Indian fantasy novel that explores the individual’s struggle for both social and self-acceptance--- Review by Smita Sahay at Women’s Web

Abha Iyengar’s Shrayan is an Indian fantasy novel that explores the individual’s struggle for both social and self-acceptance.

Review by Smita Sahay at Women’s Web

All of us have a hidden place within ourselves, the place of longing and of escape from the dissatisfactions of life. But is it as easy as it sounds? Abha Iyengar’s first novel, Shrayan, is the journey of a creature, half human, half animal, through rejection and self-awareness to self-acceptance. He seeks and struggles to be understood in a world where he does not belong. 

Iyengar liberally dips her quill into mythology and magic. The book is a fable of sorts; it brings to us a world of dissatisfied, imperfect characters, humans, semi-humans, or fantastical, fighting their own battles. Through these characters and their struggles, the reader learns something about herself too, for instance, learning to make peace with her unfulfilled desires.

Shrayan, a dweller of the underground, finds his first friends in snakes and Sapera and discovers dance, which gives him strength and solace throughout his life. Sapera’s brother Vishwasghat murders him and sells Shrayan like an animal. Fate rescues him and he reaches a school. This is where he discovers beauty and love for the first time. He learns Kshatriyam, a martial arts dance form, and he learns to read and write. However, due to certain unfortunate circumstances, he is forced to run away and he battles with his own bestiality. Eventually, he reaches a place where he finds food, shelter and a job with a baba and his hunchback companion. But will this last or will Life continue to test him?
Iyengar has brought magic realism and fantasy together. Shrayan has hooves and fur, but speaks, walks, eats and dances like a human. He reaches the fantastical land of happiness, where he meets Nordic beauties, snake-dragon women and a giant named Trishna, which means hunger. Iyengar brings in Indian arts, in Kshatriyam, mythology, in the dance drama unfolding the love story between Krishna and Rukmini, philosophy, in conversations Shrayan has with Lotus, Madira and Manila, and Indian culture, in kundalini. 

The narrative is conversational and engaging and lots of unexpected plot turns and character appearances keep the reader immersed. Love takes myriad shapes, and so does sexuality. Fatherhood recurs in the many relationships that are formed and lost. Most of the characters are silent and complex with histories, strengths and failings.
However, sometimes the conversational, chatty narrative takes away from the magic, and some motifs, such as that of the recurring snake, probably symbolic of something, could be more plausibly accommodated in the plot. Some character appearances and plot turns would have been more impactful with a deeper treatment. One also wishes that some other characters whom Shrayan meets through his journey, show up later and have more role in the story and his life. A clearer sense of the passage of time would avoid confusion and make Shrayan more concrete in the reader’s psyche – his is called “…the body of a young man‘s” at the beginning of the story, and he is in his early twenties towards the end of it.

Short chapters, easy language and a dramatic narrative make the book a light read. The speculative fiction and magic take one to far away journeys. Speculative fiction is an evolving genre in Indian literature in English. In this book magic, relationships, fate and a semi-human character come together in a contemporary Indian context, to make you reach into your own insecurities and imperfections. The next time you worry about your own hooves, think about how far Shrayan walked on them.

*****

Thanks, Smita Sahay.

Friday, January 17, 2020

Words Matter: The Lateral Learnings of a Writer




As a writer and editor and sometimes book reviewer, I pick up some nuggets through casual conversations, some word that flies in the air, or a work I suddenly stumble upon.  I shall give you some instances to illustrate what I am talking about.

In 2013, Sudeep Sen invited me to review the Harper Collins Book of Poetry edited by him, and the review appeared in Cha (http://www.asiancha.com/content/view/1424/394/).  While reviewing the collection, I was introduced to the work of several new poets, one of them, John Siddique, whose poems really resonate with me. This is one of the unexpected throwbacks of doing voluntary work; you gather your diamonds on the way. And later, I found in John Siddique’s collection of poems titled ‘Full Blood’ which I bought, that he actually has a very beautiful poem in there (among so many others) which is titled ‘Abha’. I posted this on my blog:
http://poetryilove-abhaiyengar.blogspot.in/2016/06/abha-by-john-siddique-in-his-collection.html!

I recently participated in the Seemanchal International Literature Festival in Bihar where I met a young Bengaluru writer, whose body is home to several tattoos. I admired a few and she gave the reason or occasion that made her get them one by one. There was one on her forearm, however, which she said she had got done ‘just chumma’.


“Just chumma?” I raised an eyebrow. “You mean, for a chumma? A kiss?” for that is what chumma means in the general understanding of the term.



She laughed. “No, chumma is a Bengaluru word, meaning ‘just like that’.”

“Oh”, I grinned, “you mean ‘aiwein’, which is what is used in Delhi to denote the same thing?”

We began to laugh. But for me, this was a delightful term which I would make a part of my arsenal. When I say arsenal, I mean I would use it sometime somewhere in my writing or one of my talks.

I was also introduced to some poet hitherto unknown to me like Abdul Ahad Saaz, whose poem finds its mark in me:

मैं बढ़ते बढ़ते किसी रोज तुझको छू लेता
कि गिन  कर रख दिये तू ने मेरी मजाल के दिन

~ अब्दुल अहद साज़

which translated reads:
I would slowly move forward and touch you some day
But you have counted out the days of my impertinence

Another word making the rounds sometime in Darjeeling post the festival was the word ‘itemgiri’. It was a Mumbai phrase, and one I thought had to do with Bollywood item numbers (raunchy songs), but it turned out that this phrase is for boys who hang around outside college gates eyeing girls. So they do ’itemgiri’, and it is supposed to be an inherently youth-centric pastime.

At a recent gathering at Habitat Centre where the discussion was on women at the work place and how an environment could be created there for their safety and wellbeing, a word that cropped up was ‘mamitsu’, which is an Italian term that translates into ‘being soft inside’. It was a term used in the discussion to ask for a certain degree of vulnerability and understanding to occur in the workplace. This was another word that has uniquely found its way into my arsenal of words and expressions.

And so this carries on, people and places and the words they carry with them that add dimensions to my life. Words and expressions fall upon you indirectly and get imbibed into your system for further thought and action. Or you let them lie within you to just nourish you on your journey as a writer.

*****


© Abha Iyengar, 12th February 2017. First published in Different Truths.