o hai

[shweta_narayan]

I am back.  With signal boosts!

1) My flash fic piece, Kohl-lined, is live! In Issue 20 of Three-lobed Burning Eye :)

It's... um, a bit of a push at boundaries, for me *nervous grin*

2) And!  Here's the official press release for the CBS prize drawing (where you can win an ereader with stories on it!):

The Carl Brandon Society announces a prize

Comments

[cucumberseed]

I love your story.

[shweta_narayan]

*squees*

[keyan_bowes]

Brilliant. Daring. Loved Kohl-lined.

[shweta_narayan]

Thank you! :)
Also, *relief*!

[art_ungulate]

Lovely! I'm going to have a hard time getting the band's name out of my head ;-) but the story is wonderful. Sets me in the same mood as [info]tithenai's The Honey Month: wanting to write (more) poetry to Allat.

I'm curious: why / how is this story a boundary push for you? If you'd rather not answer, that's OK--I'll just enjoy the story itself. :-) But I'm curious, now.

[shweta_narayan]

Thank you!
The band's name is an in-joke of sorts; I asked several of my friends "who's blue & plays flute", trying to get a sense of how inaccessible references to Krishna were, and one (dear friend who's always really funny) replied, "Kali? A backup smurf?"

A bunch of us decided that was a band name.

I'm curious: why / how is this story a boundary push for you?For one thing it's skiffy. The main reason I don't write SF is that shifts in tech are easy, shifts in culture are hard. And I have come to hate all-white futures. But I'm not exactly qualified to write this one; it's (in my head anyway) set in Mumbai, a city I haven't been in for 15-ish years on account of the pollution. Only slight hints of that, and near-future enough that I didn't make sweeping changes, but it unnerved me to write it

[art_ungulate]

*facepalm* I'd forgotten about Krishna (and other Hindu deities?) being blue. Now the name is much more amusing--and yet poignant.

Thank you for sharing more about how you wrote the story! Being unnerved and nervous about it makes perfect sense. And I can relate to the uneasiness around the question of belonging and the right to speak.

Yes, Siva and Kali are definitely not safe to be cheeky at! But I felt the story was respectful--intimately respectful, but respectful.

I love re-reading it. In those final sentences, it so utterly captures the... {struggling for words}... bond? connection? essence? truth? that-which-is-always? ... between them (interpreting 'them' loosely to include the crowd).

[shweta_narayan]

I'd forgotten about Krishna (and other Hindu deities?) being blue.

The "other hindu deities" is complicated. Rama is often drawn blue, but afaict that's an allergorical nod to his being an Avatar of Vishnu, who is blue. And sometimes Siva is drawn more blue than purple/grey, but I dunno what's up with that.

Actually Krishna's complicated too. Because as I understand he's named after the evening sky because he was dark; but (again the Vishnu link) that was taken literally in art & originally he was painted with indigo (?).
But then that got lightened, and lightened, to (now) sky blue. Which I suspect has its roots in the racism/colorism within India.

So there's a mess of sociopolitical factors underlying who's depicted how, and really the only definite blue-guy is Vishnu, and the "real color" of any of his Avatars is up for discussion.

(Also! Thank you again :) This comment made me smile).

[pameladean]

Wow, Shweta, that is really compressed and awesome. The band name cracked me up at the beginning, but by the end, things were not funny.

P.

[shweta_narayan]

Yay!
I was going for that combination of ludicrous and painful that real life often hits, and was not at all confident about getting them to work together.
thankyou :)

[skogkatt]

What a gorgeous piece of prose. It reads like poetry, and is so full of nuance. I love it.

[shweta_narayan]

Yay! Thank you :)