nandu's writerblr

(the harem painting by juan gimenez y martin, the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde, the portrait of a lady on fire (2019))

A PORTRAIT IN RED 

oh my goddd it’s here!!! took me way longer than i expected, but here is my retelling of the picture of dorian gray (aka one of my favourite novels), where dorian is an indian princess, less of an arsehole, wlw, and treats sybil vane the way she deserves. you don’t need to have read the book to read this! 

themes: orientalism, exotification, agency.

tw: murder, blood, classism, implied sex. 

word count: 5.5k. the title is a medium link. 

As Damini kills him, Lord Henry smiles. 

The blood washes over his teeth, tingeing them pink, and for the very first time, twisting her knife between his ribs, she finds him ugly. He’d told her, once, that after suicide murder was the greatest gesture of romance, and he dies before she can correct him. The confession of hatred in her throat goes unheard. His heart sputters to halt with a final pump of blood, and he falls, heavy, in her arms. She doesn’t catch him. But that doesn’t matter. Even on the floor, he smiles eternal, still managing to get the last laugh. 

Still victorious. 

She watches the scarlet puddle spread from the sofa, at peace. Gone is the clawing desperation that had forced her to take a cab to his home in the dark hours of the morning, though her situation remains unchanged. No. Worsened. Incalculably worsened. The source of her desperation was a letter, which has now melted to pulp in the gore. News of her debauchery in London had reached her parents in Jaisalmer, who demanded her back. Damini knew what ‘back’ meant. She knew what awaited her at home. The curved edge of a sword, the heat of an anonymous funeral pyre. She had always known, from the very first moment she’d let Henry’s sweet words poison her, from the first strokes of Basil’s brush, the first sounds of worshipful praises. She had known this story ended. 

But Damini had been a fool. Too arrogant. She’d thought herself above her female ancestors, all sacrificed at the altar of honour. She had felt safe in London, amongst faces nothing like her own, in a language she hadn’t grown up with. She’d grown careless, thinking it would be alright to fall, with Henry ready to catch her. 

She didn’t realise he’d just be a voyeur from the precipice. 

BURNISH, BURN – a short story by Ari B. 

images: letters to milena, frantz kafka // masaan (dir. neeraj, ghaywan, 2013) 

so wuthering heights is one of my all-time favourite books, and i’ve always wanted to write a loose reinterpretation/retelling of the text through a postcolonial lens (like how jean rhys approached wide sargasso sea) because… well… heathcliff is Not White!! and a few days ago i figured, oh what the hell, and sat down to write it, and here it is! also, while wuthering heights is the text that’s informed this story, a prior knowledge of not necessary to read this!! click on the link above to read on medium, scroll down to read on tumblr. WARNINGS: period-typical racism, mentions of violent thoughts, explicit colonial violence 

First memories are hard to keep track of, but you think yours was of fire. 

 It comes to you in bits and pieces: the scratch of khadi cloth against your skin, the weight of a large, squarish palm bearing down your uncertain sprout of your shoulder. The hungry licks of the blaze, and the strange, pale pits that dwelled in the centre of each flame. Perhaps it was just a dream, or a twisted remnant of an old story that had wriggled its way into the fat of your mind. Still, you can’t help but think of it.  

Perhaps you need to think of it. The city you live in is cold and hard-cut, and the promise of warmth evades you. Like boxes that ring with an empty thud when struck, the scraps of cloth that you seize from a passing fair shake out damp and mould, and the crusted tureen of workhouse soup skims your teeth with an icy chill. And so you are cold, and as the chill creeps into the crevices of your flesh and forces your body to curl into itself, you are hungry. You are ravenous.  

The cook at the workhouse regards you carefully when you ask for seconds. You want to meet his eyes, to present him with the braised black of your gaze, but something in you catches and you look at the polished tack buttons of his waistcoat instead. He reaches down and places a hand against the flat of your belly, and says a thing that you cannot understand, that you later piece together to mean “hungry boy”. In an instant he moves forward, but you stand still, held by the phantom press of his palm.  

You are hungry, but which part of you hungers? The stomach, veiled and bilious, pulsating slowly in a sac of fat; or the umber skin above it, longing for the sun? You are hungry, but why do you hunger? A hungry boy is an empty boy, a void that begets sating. You finish the soup from the workhouse and sleep, a hungry boy thinking hungry thoughts: of the world around you like a slow-burning inferno; and you it’s grasping, hollow core. 

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