Writer's name: Abha Iyengar
Title of work: Drought Country
Genre: short story
Name of magazine/journal: Bewildering Stories
Issue: Issue 385, 24th May 2010
Author's bio: Abha Iyengar is an internationally published writer and poet. Her work has appeared in Mannequin Envy, Danse Macabre, Dead Drunk Dublin, Citizen 32, Arabesques Review, The Fabulist and others. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner. Her story, ‘The High Stool’ was nominated for the Story South Million Writers Award. She is a member of The Poetry Society of India and ‘Riyaz’ Writer’s Group at The British Council. Her flash fiction has won contests at Tattoo Highway and at Door Knobs and Body Paint. She is recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Writing Fellowship for 2009-2010.Her website: www.abhaiyengar.com. Her blog: abhaencounter.blogspot.com.
Excerpt:
"This year, after seven years, the fields are dry once again and there is no rain. Mother does not need to tell Baabul how it will affect them, he knows. After all, he is the one who does the stocktaking, the inventory control. He knows that this year, if there is no rain, they will not have much money to go around to buy anything besides the basic food, maybe some rice gruel, maybe some onions and potatoes.
They are awaiting the monsoon. The heat is unbearable, the sun a red ball of fire that promises nothing but dry fields and baked earth, a wanting and a yearning. Baabul can feel the cracked hardness of the earth slicing through his heels. Anything will harden and stiffen when deprived, he thinks. Nature makes it so.
Mother is stiff, austere; she does not speak much and her eyes soften only sometimes, when a stray thought enters her mind or she hears an old song on the radio. But these are moments so rare that he can hardly vouch for their being true."
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Continue reading here.
Title of work: Drought Country
Genre: short story
Name of magazine/journal: Bewildering Stories
Issue: Issue 385, 24th May 2010
Author's bio: Abha Iyengar is an internationally published writer and poet. Her work has appeared in Mannequin Envy, Danse Macabre, Dead Drunk Dublin, Citizen 32, Arabesques Review, The Fabulist and others. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner. Her story, ‘The High Stool’ was nominated for the Story South Million Writers Award. She is a member of The Poetry Society of India and ‘Riyaz’ Writer’s Group at The British Council. Her flash fiction has won contests at Tattoo Highway and at Door Knobs and Body Paint. She is recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Writing Fellowship for 2009-2010.Her website: www.abhaiyengar.com. Her blog: abhaencounter.blogspot.com.
Excerpt:
"This year, after seven years, the fields are dry once again and there is no rain. Mother does not need to tell Baabul how it will affect them, he knows. After all, he is the one who does the stocktaking, the inventory control. He knows that this year, if there is no rain, they will not have much money to go around to buy anything besides the basic food, maybe some rice gruel, maybe some onions and potatoes.
They are awaiting the monsoon. The heat is unbearable, the sun a red ball of fire that promises nothing but dry fields and baked earth, a wanting and a yearning. Baabul can feel the cracked hardness of the earth slicing through his heels. Anything will harden and stiffen when deprived, he thinks. Nature makes it so.
Mother is stiff, austere; she does not speak much and her eyes soften only sometimes, when a stray thought enters her mind or she hears an old song on the radio. But these are moments so rare that he can hardly vouch for their being true."
(Let us know of your publication or forthcoming publication so we can publicize it on the site. Please submit a write-up with information found above plus the link where your work appears in; or you may check the Good Reads Elsewhere guidelines found under the "Submissions" link.)
Continue reading here.
