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Sunday, December 1, 2013

CLRI November 2013

Contemporary Literary Review India
November 2013

CONTENTS
Poems
Book Length Poetry Collection
CLRI will publish an author’s book length collection of poems each month from now. CLRI November 2013 presents by Dr Dalip Khetarpal in its November 2013.
Regular Poems
Pistachios
The Human Monument of Pain
Love and Sacrifice
No Men’s Land
Fantasy
The Travelers
I Think of You…
Love Songs for You
Safety Pin
Sludge of Politics
Arts
Stories
Lower East Side Love Story
Future Memories
Choices
Footprints of Nature
Interviews
Criticism
De-Stereotyping Ex-Centric Identities in a Few of Mahesh Dattani’s Plays in the Light of Performativity
Book Reviews
DR I. Venkateswarlu review Karanam Rao’s anthology of poems titled So Many Freedoms
CLRI Nominates its writers to Lit Awards 2013
Dear readers, we’re ready with the list of those writers published with Contemporary Literary Review India (CLRI) during July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013, who we are going to nominate to the Best of the Net run by the Sundress   Publications, USA. So keep your fingers crossed and see the best writers from us.
Next we’ll move to Pushcart Award.
For details, check at Announcement.
CLRI Digital Edition
The CLRI issues are available in electronic medium.
To read the materials, download the PDF of CLRI November 2013.
CLRI 2013 Print Edition
CLRI 2013 Annul print edition is available from us now. Place an order to enjoy the creative pieces.
Buy digital editions with: SmashwordsAmazon, and Pothi.
CLRI Back Issues
Dear writers, we value your writings. Do you value yours? Read and enjoy our back issues:
CLRI August 2013
CLRI July 2013
CLRI May 2013
CLRI April 2013
CLRI February 2013
CLRI December 2012
Call for Submission
Submission to CLRI is open year-round. CLRI seeks onlpreviously unpublished submission in poetry, stories, arts, photography, designing, modeling, film reviews, book reviews, essays, criticism etc. For details, check at: CLRI Submission.
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You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI

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CLRI 2013 Annual Print Edition ISSN  2250-3366
We encourage all the readers to buy the print issue which will help you undertsand what standard we follow for the print edition. So you can submit your best pieces in future.
Have a look at the preview of the print copy at: CLRI Annual 2013.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Poems by Dr. Dalip Khetarpal - Book Length Poetry Section

Dr Dalip Khetarpal features in the CLRI November 2013 Book Length Poetry Section



Poems by Dr.Dalip Khetarpal

Masked Sans Mask
In this vast cosmos
Of masquerading fair,
I often intuit faces
Wearing a cold blank mask
Thinner than air.
Even my keenest vision
Fails to rip open
This impenetrably transparent mask--
---A primary defense,
A fortified safeguard,
Enforced by overriding social norms
To facilitate one’s survival.

The masks of identity
Forced upon by society
And human psychology
Generates self-alienation
And a strange feeling
Of estrangement.
But self- revelation
Is also, and always
A cruel painful process
Shunned only by a social animal
And not by a real primeval animal.
For, if human skin is stripped,
There’s excruciating pain
But if mask is stripped,
There could be death.

In this masked fair
Of simulacrum
A man intimate
Sometimes appear unknown
And sometimes, intimate strangers,
While even some strangers
Sometimes appear intimate friends.
But strangest it becomes
When even kith and kin
Appear strangers,
When even a wife
And a husband
Appear masked
Before each other__
---Becoming a traitor
Not only to oneself
But also to each other.
So, whither goes
Real open ended human relations!

And concepts of wholeness
Of ecology, divinity
And even science
Are imperceptible

Interrelatedness among humans
Whose further relatedness
To vaster cosmos  then becomes
Naturally inconceivable.

Like thunder
That tears up the clouds
And reveals the sky,
Eruption of plethora
Of pent up feelings
At times suddenly teas up the mask
And in a flash
Reveals the real man….
----but only momentarily.
For, the incredible power
Of re silence of the mask,
It’s inbuilt dynamism
For constructiveness
Quickly repairs itself
And restores it’s original form.

When the real man
Never or seldom surfaces,
Different people
And different mirrors
Would show different pseudo- faces
Of one’s ever changing
Surface of the face
Wherefrom multiple crises
Of personality
Also springs.

A mask that is blended
With the face
Is also an impenetrable fence
To observation and perception
To the fluid interchange
Of thoughts, of feelings
Of emotions.
Love & hate, so,
Affect me not
Camouflage sex and kiss
Give no sensation
A stroke or caress is nothing
But a brush past
Over my insensate skin
Into which warm waves
And vibrations of feelings
Flow not.

I often look over the sky
And see how the invisible God
Is also masked
With an invisible mask
That doubles his invisibility
And sustains His mystery.
I also know that
No one can ever strip
This mask
Nor ever see
His mystique form,
So, can never
Also ever
Improvise any ontological specifications
For Him.
But  cannot and should not
There be any such specifications
For the at least  feeling, thinking, breathing,
Visual and geometrically designed humans?

Paying huge medical bills?
Waste away your scarce savings. Through
These rivers all polluting.

Illusion Turned Real
Their wildest attempt
To merge into each other
Made them so fiercely locked
In the tightest of embrace
That the two
Appear one,
Proving lust so intra-somatic.

When one flesh
Attempted to forcibly blend
With the other flesh
I thought the two thick flesh
Between them hindered
The union of two souls.
But they could not break
The barrier of flesh
For, in just a few minutes
They voluntarily separated
With an abrupt jerk
The face of the one
That exuded intense attraction
Minutes ago
Now, incredibly, exudes
Deep repulsion for the other
Whose earlier heavenly beauty
Turns repulsively ugly now.
The perfect merger minutes ago
Has led to perfect separation now.
Startled, I rubbed my eyes
To ascertain the facts…….
Perhaps, it was an optical illusion
But surely
There was a great lull
After a great storm.

Mutual Exploitation
A woman enters
Into man’s desert
Thinking that
It is a fertile land.
But the water & greenery
Showed by man
Is not to slake her thirst
Nor to provide her comfort
And joy
But to devour her flesh.

The woman on her part
Bears all pangs----physical and mental
As long as she gets shelter,
Protection, commitment (though false)
And sex satisfaction
Or dissatisfaction.
For all these
She has to go to man
And only man.
Though most wise woman
Can foresee this
They still willingly dwell
In the carnal life of man
For they have nowhere else
To go.
Exploitation & greed thus
Come to assume
A universal form
At both ends
And brings man-woman relationship
On equal footing
Resulting in
An equal duping
Though discontentment
Still spurs feminist movement.

Inevitability of Sin
One remains
A psychological sinner
Until he accepts & does
What the scriptures say.
So, if scriptures are
To make one
Sinner or virtuous
All have to be priests or nuns
To lead a sinless life
And be sacred
But, if this be so
The world would cease
To exist normally
While it still exists normally
When thought blasphemous
Also simmer in the minds
Of most revered
Priests & saints
As they do
In the minds of sinners……
With varying degree.

The Paradox of Love & Sex
More than successful love
Successful sex
Raises man’s esteem
In the eyes of a woman.
It also breeds confidence
In him
As pride
In her.
Sadly, it is man
Who needs to inculcate
Strength & esteem
Even in sex
To be esteemed
And considered a man
By his partner.
Sadder still is the fate
Of faithful & devoted woman
Who though even unquenched
Is still too forgiving.
She will not expose
Her counterpart’s inefficiency
And will also seldom
Look for greener pastures
Even when unslaked.
Despite man’s impoverished virility
A woman’s reverence for her mate
Seldom wanes_______
Just to keep man in high spirits.
Sex, so, is only an adjustment
For her
While it is a means
Of attaining heavenly bliss
For him.
Strange that
Sex is a passion
For man brutal
And compassion
For woman ideal.







Dr Dalip Khetarpal launched into teaching career way back in 1983 by working as a Lecturer in English at Manchanda Delhi Public College, Delhi. Then he joined Technical Education Department of Haryana, and worked in various capacities, as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and H .O. D (English) in various institutes of Haryana. He worked as Dy. Registrar and then as Joint Director with the Directorate of Technical Education, Haryana, Chandigarh. Thereafter, he was posted as Training & Placement Officer. Presently, he is working as Director Principal with Jat Group of Colleges, Kaithal.
Dr Dalip has also started a new genre in the field of poetry which he would like to call ‘psycho-psychic flints’. His poems are flints because they emit spark when they hit the readers’ mind. All these flints can be vividly seen in this book. He has won laurels for pioneering this new genre in poetry writing. His criticism and poems are often reflected both in national and international magazines and journals.
 



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Poems by Ramona L. Ceciu


Poems by Ramona L. Ceciu


Pistachios

If people were as good as pistachios
They would be under threat…
That is why people are not as good as pistachios…
So that no one and nothing would digest them…
Like pistachios…
Cats might want to eat them pistachios, or people…
Throwing them at your window would make no sense,
Pistachios would break
but the window closed would remain …
for there are millions of windows
within the same windowpane…
shut… you do not need to see the world anymore,
for you have decided that you know it all…
Assumptions totemised as truths
scribbled on the window towards world…
and you, with your pistachios, only yours,
stuck away from all because you know
the other cats don’t like pistachios…
you know them all…
When you have finished, you may ask them stupid cats –
yet cats that you KNOW:
“I HOPE YOU DIDN’T WANT ANY PISTACHIOS!”…
(read: I know you didn’t want any pistachios)
and throw the empty shells by the window
to those who don’t want to be as good as pistachios…


The Human Monument of Pain

The seconds of love get entangled
Timidly within the whirlpool of infinity…
The echoes of life resound shyly
Within the chasm of ethereal existence...
From all the shattered loves of flesh
Some ashes, left in Time’s fireplace,
Were dispelled by ‘S/HE’ while angry
To see so many fecund creatures
Lurking around with a choked soul –
Metamorphoses of some naked dreams,
Devoid of reason or feelings,
Only abandoned to passion…
They fall into oblivion – the seconds of love –
Like white magnolias dying
At the hand of a jealous gale…
Only death turns the saddening passion
In bliss and freedom from the worldly dungeon…
The vain loves of the body
Are carved in the Monument of Pain…








Ramona L. Ceciu (Romanian) has been Indian resident for about eight and a half years now. She is a PhD researcher in Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, undertaking an interdisciplinary research in contemporary Indian literature and visual arts. Up to present she has published writings in Romanian and English languages. Apart from writing, she is involved in different projects as a freelance translator, independent filmmaker, photographer, music composer and vocalist trained in varied music styles (Indian and Western). In all creative projects, she explores different styles, genres and ideas in an experimental fashion and multicultural–multilingual dynamic.



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Poems by Subhasish Das

Poems by Subhasish Das


Love and Sacrifice

Stretch arms in the air, set foot in the water
Lie down and kiss the earth; romance near fire
She in frock and me in half trouser
Cared not what world called Love
We had our own definition, an innocent play of life
Happy to have her but where? Time is shrewd.
Night passes in dark; day travels body without soul
Six strings displeasure the ear; fear to knot the future
Memories drown the brain; winter kills the heart
Once was a tale-honey, you have nothing to fear.
Gulf of years past as I mast by ocean of loneliness  
Heaven or hell on earth, I am ignorant
Tears or smile, I stand foolish
Her nameplate is craved in intricate beauty
Not wedding, but for her grave’s identity
Little pet of the mother, fumbles her cold forehead
I stand and stare, and remain only to wonder-
Dear She belongs to none, but four elements of nature
I am justified to stretch arms in the air, set foot in the water
Lie down and kiss the earth and romance near fire.


No Men’s Land

Lay stretch brother! The soul's your entity
When mingles with a place, division writes in your fate
Middle the borders welcomes your home
Safest you are! Until pointed wires curse your little life
Foot prints of those penetrate the land of one's own
or bite master's apple; sure bullets shows thy path
And hell scratch thy back.
Peace after havoc, havoc after peace...
Mine earth beneath me, your's there
As seems one's own monarch; why lay
in state of play and be a domestic frog of its well?
Retreat to your's, the neutral heavenly home.
Albeit civil race seeks joys of generation
But seven colors leap your fastened heart,
and you only a gender; no name neither shame
Like a whitish beard soul, in loss of kith and ladybird
Afar top snowy hills, lost somewhere
beyond the world.
Bury in your lease, the golden treasure
of scaleless pleasure; hide until
the aged greats discover
out the sand belong to no men
An antidote against one's own.


 
Subhasish Das, a graduate in English literature with honors, hails from Assam presently resides in New Delhi. He holds a diploma in Fine Arts specializing in Painting and a diploma in animation and graphics designing. He is also an indie filmmaker.

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— journal that brings articulate writing for articulate readers.
CLRI is published online per month, in digital versions occasionally, and in print edition (planned to be quarterly), its print edition has ISSN 2250-3366.
Subscribe to our CLRI online edition. Our subscribers receive CLRI digital copies directly into their Inbox, get print copies free of cost whenever they come out during the subscription period, and are waived off any reading fee towards our print editions.
You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI


Poems by Mihaela Tudor

Poems by Mihaela Tudor

Fantasy
Return thy hand from going far…
Wished to run;
Sounds snorkel in the Neverland
Bang! The desert cut through the door,
“It's not a giving life party, you hear me?
The ones who come here are sold… ”
Wished to run; his hand was far;
Sounds alighting flashes in my mind;
Lights out; none, just scented air,
When door opens, next,
This will be an Indian shrine;
This blended silence with the smell of hair
Damp on his chest,
This hidden interface of the divine,
Where have you been?
This flowing tremor of memories that never sleep
Sipping with me uneven cups
of fantasy…paid for everything.
Wished to run…barefooted,
His hand was too far;
Where have you been?
Flashes,
Dashing sands on the wall,
“You're sold….”
Scented hair,
Damp on his chest,
One night, here,
 in the desert…no one…gone,
Jailed as an expat.

The Travelers
We used to walk together,
There were empty rounds within secluded hearts,
It was like building bridges made of fire
between nameless shapes.
We used to call the night a traveler
And play hide-and-seek among worlds
So far sometimes as he could get,
Estranged in wanderings while arms held closer
His scent,
his laughter.
He made a boat of a palm tree leaf
To carry me into his morrow,
Eyes closed at dreams,
Dispersed harmonies through endless hours,
“But what if it rains?” ” We'll hide under the rainbow.”
We used to walk together,
There were secluded rounds within atomic hearts
One to another,
In hide-and-seek and worlds
That used to carry us
into the morrow.



Mihaela Tudor is from Romania, but currently she works as an English lecturer at the University of Hail in Saudi Arabia. She previously published flash fiction The Rhapsody of Thoughts, November, 2010 (www.orionheadless.com) and Les Reveries d' un Promeneur Plus Solitaire, Spring 2011, with The Battered Suitcase (www.vagabondagepress.com). Many other poems have been published with other journals including The Faircloth Review (April, 2013). There is also forthcoming work appearing soon in Word Riot.
 

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Contemporary Literary Review India
— journal that brings articulate writing for articulate readers.
CLRI prides itself to have a good number of review writers. We have different review writers for books of different genres. Our reviews are gaining recognition among the publishers, journals and academia for fair and high quality reviews.

I Think of You… by Parneet Jaggi


I Think of You… by Parneet Jaggi


When hands tremble
And refuse to lift the requisite loads of life,
When legs shiver
And refuse to take me to places,
When eyes feel the pain
Due to the dust of life-
Invisible yet irking,
When brain is clouded with a grey haze
Not letting light inside,
I think of you
Who will adore me without these too,
Embrace me in the dark of my life,
Hold my finger to help me tread
The remaining path of my life.



 
Dr. Mrs. Parneet Jaggi is a lecturer in English teaching in Dr. B. R.A. Government College, Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan. She is a published author with a collection of poems "Euphonies of Heart and Soul" to her credit. Her poems have been published in the journals such as The enchanting Verses and Taj Mahal Review.



Subscribe to
— journal that brings articulate writing for articulate readers.
CLRI is published online per month, in digital versions occasionally, and in print edition (planned to be quarterly), its print edition has ISSN 2250-3366.
Subscribe to our CLRI online edition. Our subscribers receive CLRI digital copies directly into their Inbox, get print copies free of cost whenever they come out during the subscription period, and are waived off any reading fee towards our print editions.
You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI

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