Celebrating 15 Years
From Eidolon
April 1, 2015
Issue 09, Issue 09 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry
The Sense in Turning Away
April 1, 2015
Issue 09, Issue 09 Art
By TEJU COLE
She wrote: color is the sound an object makes in response to light. Objects don’t speak unless spoken to. An object does not have a color—it makes a color (the way a bell makes a sound).
Bhel Puri
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
From the kitchen of Chef Jehangir Mehta
Bhel puri, a savory Indian snack or chaat, is a Bombay original.
Serves 15 people.
Pomfret Chutney Masala
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
From the kitchen of Bijoya Chaudhuri
Handed down to her son, Amit Chaudhuri
Author’s note: I grew up in Bombay on my mother’s magnificent
version of East Bengali food, a cuisine reinterpreted and perfected—and often
added to with original recipes—by my grandmother in Sylhet and then my
mother in her decades in Bombay. The recipe below is included in my mother’s
Bengali cookbook, published in Calcutta in 2010, and translated recently by
Chitralekha Basu. But this is not a dish that represents East Bengali food; it
comes out of our contact with Bombay, and is not only my mother’s version of
a well-known Parsi dish: it is her response to my craving for it. Its main feature
is the chutney in its name, made with coriander and mint leaves and coconut
pulp: the seaweed-green condiment is one of the most delicious to be found in
the Konkan region, imported, here by the Parsis, and then by an East Bengali.
Mom’s Dal
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
From the kitchen of Nirmala Swamidoss McConigley
Handed down to her daughter, Nina McConigley
Dal
1 cup of red lentils (washed well)
3–4 cups water
2 tbsp oil
1 onion
6–7 cloves garlic (cut in two)
1/4 tsp asafetida (sometimes called hing), you get this at Indian stores
1/4 tsp turmeric
Jalapeño
1 tomato (add at the end)
Salt to taste
Fresh cilantro for garnish
I Went Sick as a Child
April 1, 2015
Issue 09, Issue 09 Poetry, Poetry, Translation
Translated by VALZHYNA MORT
I went sick as a child
with hunger and fear. I’d rip the crust
of my lips—and lick my lips; I recall
the fresh and salty taste.
And I’m walking, I’m walking, walking,
I sit on the steps by the door, I bask,
I walk delirious, as if a rat catcher led me
by my nose into the river, I sit and bask
on the steps; I shiver this way and that.
Papad
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
By SUKETU MEHTA
Papad was the bard of the masses. He sat during the endless school classes
on the bench next to me, composing rhymes which could be appreciated by
all for their elemental simplicity. Thus:
O dear
Come near
Don’t fear
Have cheer
Beer is here
The Kindness of Strangers
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
By NONITA KALRA
I am constantly asked why I persist in calling my city Bombay when it has long been renamed Mumbai. A rather articulate but annoying French academic even attributed inherent anarchy to my dissension. “If everyone called cities by the names they preferred, how would anyone know where they are?” I opted out of the argument. I would know. I would always know. With my eyes wide shut. Mumbai may be a zip code, but Bombay is my home.
The Electric City
April 1, 2015
Fiction, Issue 09, Issue 09 Fiction
We bought Detroit because even after buying ourselves new houses and cars, $253 million in lottery winnings left the four of us with a ton of leftover cash. Why specifically? One of our daughters found the ad on Craigslist: One city for sale or rent—slightly used; a fixer-upper; free from most city noise; lots of pretty, healthy trees and grass. The asking price wasn’t ridiculous.The mayor took personal checks. We wanted to be the first people who’d ever bought a city. Sure, important people sometimes got keys to them, but that’s not the same thing.
Leaving Walter
April 1, 2015
Fiction, Issue 09, Issue 09 Fiction
By LORI OSTLUND
“Tell me what you want, Aaron,” Walter had periodically insisted, the words no longer an invitation but a way of chiding Aaron, suggesting that he wanted too much—or worse, that he had no idea what he wanted. In the beginning of their lives together, when they were two discrete people, Walter’s motives felt easy to read.
: Tell me who you are, he seemed to be saying. Tell me what you want from this life. Only later had Aaron understood that his real motive in asking was to discover how he might serve as benefactor to Aaron’s wishes and ambitions and, in doing so, bind Aaron to him.
