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Chief Editor’s Note

Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into an ‘ungeheures Ungeziefer’. What’s that? Well, it depends on the translator. In English, ‘ungeheures’ has been translated to enormous, monstrous, large, big, or gigantic. None of them are entirely satisfactory, and therefore, as Fanny Hill amiably remarked, any size will do. Similarly, ‘Ungeziefer’ woke up in English and found itself transformed into insect, vermin, or bug. What about the “un” sound in ‘ungeheures’ and ‘Ungeziefer’? Kafka didn’t slyly style syllables together just for jollies. At this point, a mediocre language like English can only throw up its arms in surrender. Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a rather unpleasant insect. Entirely different story, old girl.

Transformations are equally complicated across societies. People transform into insects, vermin, and bugs not just in fiction, but also in real life. Sometimes this transformation is voluntary, and sometimes it is the old self that appears to have been false or a tragic compromise. Also, sometimes an insect isn’t that bad a thing to be. For example, the legends speak of a class of insects, the Lepidoptera, who crawl around half their life, go to sleep, and then wake up with iridescent wings and capable of flight. But of course such beautiful lies can only be stories.

Why do I have insects on the brain? Perhaps it’s because cockroaches were on the march recently in India. Or perhaps it is because August 15 is Independence Day for many of us in this part of the world. For any nation, it is on such days that the disparity between footslog and flight is most evident. Then what can one do but recommit to commitment?

The Bombay Literary Magazine has recommitted, once again, to publishing works of fiction, poetry, translations and essays. What about the content? What are our commitments therein? Here, I must resort to two stories. Françoise Gilot, Picasso’s muse, that is, lover, reports her Pablito as saying: “God is really another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style.” On the other hand, when J. B. S. Haldane was asked what his long study of biology had revealed about the Creator, Haldane replied that the Creator seemed to have “an inordinate fondness for beetles”.

So too for us at TBLM. We publish giraffes, elephants and cats. We are also inordinately fond of beetles. We call the first set by its true name: variety. We call the second set by its possible name: quality. With this issue, as always, we recommit to both words.

The cover image, derived from Escher’s woodcut Flight of the Butterflies, captures both aspects. In this issue, the stories, poems, essays, visual narratives, and translations range over everything from lost manuscripts, unrecordable morphemes, forbidden love, new metaphors for hope, Nigerian growing pains, dream narratives, Dal Lake nocturnes, what the nose knows, the monstrous things hunger, fear and love make us do…. No two butterflies are the same and they all reach for the light.

Welcome to Issue 64 of The Bombay Literary Magazine.