As India continues to reel under the wave of a devastating second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, people across the country are experiencing unprecedented, limitless suffering as they grapple with a collapsing health system marked by lack of oxygen, lack of beds, lack of medicines and lack of vaccines. Images of endless funeral pyres, reports of struggles over cremation plots and screams of people dying at hospital gates must traumatise anyone with a sensitive heart. At this tragic juncture, we request our readers to offer financial donations to various NGOs and foundations which have been trying their best to offer assistance to people in desperate needs of assistance. Please help if you can, A little assistance will go a long way towards mitigating the misery of multitudes.
If you are interested in finding out real time availability of beds in West Bengal, click on the following link:
P.S. Members of Plato’s Caves are not directly associated with any of these organisations. We are showcasing these information because these organisations have a credible track record of offering urgent assistance of which many people are now in dire need.
India is going through the worst socio medical crisis since the birth of the nation. Keeping these trying times in mind, we at Plato’s Caves have decided to temporarily suspend all publications. Rather, it has been decided upon that we are going to use this forum to spread information regarding all covid related emergencies, availability of hospital beds, oxygen supplies, (mostly in and around West Bengal) etc. We urge the readers to spread and amplify the posts as much as possible.
We start by providing you with a list of the suppliers of Oxygen, food items and essential Supplies.
Suchita Parikh-Mundul is a freelance writer, copy editor, and poet. She has worked with magazines and websites. Her poetry has appeared in Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, online literary magazines Muse India, Cerebration, Hakara, The Pine Cone Review, and in international anthologies. A collection of poems, Liquid Apnea, was published by Sampark, Kolkata in 2005.
Now that I am an adult, all those voices preach me at times of dearth.
Ages passes and still the story looms around
Never does a flying mind be caught with string of words
I believe and now I know it’s not the note for posterity to count.
Momentary indiscretion and unworthy I settled then with them
Harassed, sad and cursed my birth
Now that those voices are left as mere voices in void
Long to hear them in person, like how thirsty would crave for fluid.
Experience taught and caught be right for I heard not those voices right
Filial sounds when there, seldom accounts when not, heavily recounts!
An Ode to April
April is as diverse month
For some it’s a moth that make silk
For some it’s a froth like any other month
For most it’s a loth to despair and displease
Culture fall as it’s a month to speak up
Joy is the tail of the full length snake
Be it jovial or making a foolery light
Marks the beginning of a new dawn
Amidst the scorching heat many rituals are performed.
Flowers with fragrance burst out and bloom
Butterflies and humming birds delightfully zoom.
Glorious flowers are kept and glared
Believed to bring luck, charm and to be flared.
The new beginning is marked with morning sight
Filled with gold, idols, flowers bright.
Mothers usually hold the eyes tight close of her child
Brings near the decorated space to worship in traditional style.
New day new look dress cool stand bare foot take blessings of elders
Along gets much awaited monetary bewilderment.
Are as youngsters we celebrating it right I think with a sigh
Or are we only waiting for the last and desired papers that cost high!
The day is relished with aim to be with the same all year long
The very next day seems nothing but forlorn.
Deepened worries stack is put back
Which is as coated as plaque!
Despair, gloom smack hard
Be brave and bloom is the best hack!
April is a diverse month
Amidst the scorching heat it teaches to be glittery along the runs.
Anila Pillai is a poet, writer and essayist. She has published her creative and scholastic works in National and International anthologies, journals and periodicals. She can be reached via mail @ anilapillai.gems@gmail.com.
infection? Ants, many believe, are medical prodigies.
An ant colony once helped detecting
diabetes and early childhood blindness
in a friend who couldn’t understand
why ants bit him, every time he peed.
When he mentioned it to me, I suggested he pray
to the ant god, Nyonye-Ngana,
whose name we didn’t know then,
but even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.
My hypothesis was that he had
disrespected the humble, hard working ants,
and had left them with no choice.
But what if his susu is delicious, suggested another friend.
What if they are trying to crawl inside his nunu?
Shouldn’t he taste his susu before summoning the ant god?
Why waste his time if a simple taste test can solve our problems?
Or we could just offer ants our susu and see, if they like it just as much.
So in empty bottles of Vaseline petroleum jelly
we offered ants our urine,
but only his was the crowd pleaser.
We informed everyone of our
discovery, and they were pleased.
Because, ants are wise, and attracted to wisdom.
Ask anyone.
Funereal Stories
Aai talks about death again.
All the good swimmers we know
are drowning themselves in water.
Acche tairaak ki maut paani mein hoti hai,
she reminds me, when we find out
Baba’s friend’s son drowned in the Narmada.
He was a national swimmer, the newspapers
said, but Aai already knew that, not
because someone told her,
but because she is exceptional at this guessing game.
We aren’t in mourning, but we are creatures of habit
so we talk of each one who died of drowning,
and I listen to her stories with the patience
of a chronicler. A father and son duo,
died in Omkareshwar, a few years back.
The man’s wife still believes, they might come
back. The son was playing and accidentally
pushed the father, and they both fell into
the water, the current dragging them away.
Another father son duo drowned in a well
in their own front yard. The son drowned first,
the father drowned because he jumped in
to save the son. Expert swimmers,
all the these people.
My mother remembers the son who
drowned in the well, as the boy who
ate salt, when there was nothing else
to eat. He never complained. As if it’s a virtue
that should have given him a longer life,
but the grim reaper only knows how to kill.
Your virtues aren’t of any use to him,
nor are your talents. It’s why swimmers
also drown and die. Swimming is not
a survival skill, after all.
Just when you think that we are done
with all the drowning stories, and are
ready to move on from another death
that did not happen to us, Aai comes up
with a new one. A relative who was part
of a big circus crew in the ‘60s, once
drowned in the Arabian Sea. Now,
don’t ask me if he was good at swimming
or not, I don’t want to spoil the story.
He drowned and the family looked for him,
waited for the sea to throw him back,
the sea always gives back, whatever it takes,
Aai said. But the sea seemed to have eaten him.
And digested his bones.
Twenty five years later, when his mom was
visiting the city of his drowning,
she saw a shop, named after her son.
So, she went to the shop, and there he was,
her drowned son, who the sea did not return,
selling groceries like it is the most obvious thing.
Once you drown and come back, how else do
you survive, if not by selling survival itself?
So there he was, reunited with his family again.
People do come back, says Aai thoughtfully.
Why didn’t he get in touch or try to find them
for twenty five years, I ask. But the story time
is over now. All questions can wait till the
next funeral arrives.
Manjiri Indurkar writes from Jabalpur. She is the author of It’s All in Your Head, M published by Tranquebar, Westland. She is one of the founders of the Bookshelf Writing Workshop. Her chapbook of poetry Dental Hygiene is Very Important was published in 2017. Her debut poetry collection entitled ‘Origami Aai’ will be published in 2021 by Westland. Her works have appeared in places like the Indian Quarterly, Cha: Asian Literary Journal, Scroll, Indian Express, Poetry at Sangam, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Himal, Skin Stories, Indian Cultural Forum, and elsewhere
Judy DeCroce is a poet/flash fiction writer and educator who has been a frequent contributor to many journals and anthologies.Judy is a professional storyteller and teacher of that genre. She lives and works in upstate New York.
Ken Cathers has been published in numerous periodicals, anthologies as well as seven books of poetry, most recently Letters From the Old Country with Ekstasis Press. He lives on Vancouver Island with his family in a small colony of trees.
In the midst of a city of unmet desires Being thankful for the roof over my head For the ever receding ground beneath the feet Once in a while, a stranger or two walks past the window Stopping by to exchange a bit of warmth I bottle the moments in perforated glass Like fireflies, to cast their glow In half – hearted winters When the smoggy sun sets to make way for a grey moon.. And the city descends to a drowsy slumber.. Or rises as blurry waves from the heated roads of an ever unquenched earth
I wonder and wait for the air to turn sooty enough
For a lone spark to erupt the city in flames
A Warning
Someday I am going to rip the throats Not of those who bulldozed our possibilities Through policies and bills, Who profited from our blood Spilling onto the oceans Snuffing out millions of habitats,
But of those Who derived no gain, Who did not just stand and watch Yet acquired a pleasure by scraping Us layer by layer In doses of everyday matters
Who deliberately ignored small requests To heed which they were paid In the first place
It is such bricks That make those pillars stand Over us.
Frightening Possibilities
I saw it crawl toward me Bit by bit Eating my insides out raw The loneliness approached As darkness grips On the palling twilight Falling falling falling Gaping as a howl That devours the sunshine To nothing
Creeping around you As phantoms of a presence That once was Loneliness arrives As you try to busy yourself To distraction
But the porcelain vase rolls Striking the ground with a shatter that breaks the silence To reveal the emptiness it held.
Sreejata Roy is a PhD research scholar (2017-) at the Department of English, Rabindra Bharati University. She is also a lecturer at Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College, University of Calcutta. Her research interests include the postcolonial city, Indian English novels, Gender studies and cultural studies. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on friendship networks in the urban context of Bombay.
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