Editor’s Note
The movie critic Roger Ebert wrote in more than one of his reviews that he wasn’t so much interested in what a movie was about as how it went about what it was about. There is nothing particularly superior or moral about such a view. It is simply an aesthetic attitude, but one which informs much editorial decision-making. Prahi’s ‘Simple Exhumation’ deals with break-ups, and as a topic, it as old as the meet-up and the make-up and next-up. What struck us as different and fresh was her treatment of the subject. The images and the text–especially the text– give the sense of a consciousness that sees the world at a slant. A literary consciousness, one might say, remembering Emily Dickinson’s famous instruction to “tell all the truth but tell it slant”.
In graphic fiction, the slant isn’t always easy to do because images are so shamelessly gossipy and tell-all. But when Prahi draws a couple fighting–the woman is being choked– and writes: “The conflict underneath these things makes for aggressive attempts,” one isn’t entirely sure why the subject and object of the conflict aren’t identified. Or in the next panel, she has a woman lying next to a corpse with the words “Co-relations give plainness a phenomenal quality,” what is one to conclude?
Well, that’s simple. One concludes one is in for a complex and satisfyingly frustrating story. I invite to tilt your head, lean your consciousness just so, and enjoy the ride.
—Anil Menon
The Bombay Literary Magazine
Author | Prahi Rajput
Prahi Rajput lives in Lucknow, India. Their work appears in a handful of places like Muse India, Voidspace Zine, Don’t Submit, Blood+Honey, Gulmohur Quarterly and elsewhere. This remains their bounty (if frisked) apart from a background in Gender Studies from a super forgettable time ago, summoned now mainly for conversational posture and the well-timed theoretical quirk. They are leashed by a cat committed to white fur and hygiene, who routinely licks their brain to such a squeaky-clean degree that they keep no memory of ever having understood anything profound, or of ever having kept their own furs. They are, thus, always in the middle of erasing. [Text source: Prahi Rajput]
