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Editorial
“If the 20th Century taught us
anything, it is to be cautious about the word impossible”.
A wise man once commented, over a hearty
meal of champagne, truffles and cumbersome. We agree, and this
is why. Under our illustrious predecessor, this magazine saw the
light of the day and greater glory followed. One day we shall
certainly sit down to recount the enchanting tales of those good
ol’ days of yore, the deadlines that kept whizzing by , those
victory clinching deals with celebrated writers, the great finds
of budding talents who went on to become legends by themselves.
We, as the young contenders of the post, may fall short at very
many places, but we have made a sincere effort to keep this
literary revolution upbeat by finding the subdued pulse of the
Undertones and henceforth building a claim that encompasses the
eccentric and heretic, sheer impossibilities, socialists,
dreamers, planners, viewers, et al.
We have felt the undercurrent of a new
stream of literature, hosted on a medium that we ourselves are
learning and getting accustomed to, of blogs and e-news, of a
renaissance of the personal, of prose and poetry of the
reclusive diffident being, now finding its own space and
expression in virtual realms. And more of it all is possible,
through an online magazine such as ours, for its existence
reaffirms an 'Ess muss sein' for a unifying theme that
has been pursued from the beginning.
After a prolonged hiatus, the rusty looms
fall back into action.
A
Life Most Ordinary.
A
joint editorial
of several thoughts,
several origins of
those thoughts,
of several tints of the
primary colour,
several non-adjacent
sides of the geometrical solidity,
of many a randomness
seemingly disjoint, seamlessly connected.
A
conversation of three ensued;
words hurtling in and out
of
ears, of mouths
-
unfolding an unconscious abandonment of the agenda at hand.
To
break free from structure or to be an inherent part of one.
Where to stand when looking back at Linnaeus and his celebrated
clan of classifiers,
finding similarities,
distinguishing divergences,
appreciating concealed connectedness?
A
unified theory of everything or dictum minutiae of the
unpredictable.
Predictable meanderings
of
the mind into the mystic recesses of mankind’s mental manoeuvers
into metaphysics and music and a movie on one’s life.
A
sudden enquiry on Pink Floyd and the revelation of the
mysterious disappearances of their albums from people’s hard
disks, a phenomenon worth tabulating, some think, others dismiss
it for its lack of concordant readings, but promise nonetheless
to replenish each other’s cache.
Other people’s playlists and the boundless joy of borrowing
them.
Silence.
Silence.
A
little more.
Follows then its destruction by the discussion of its comfort or
the lack of it in discussions.
All crash and cymbals
cacophony or calm
in
compositions of words and notes.
Joyce and his mental jottings,
of a regular day in
Bloom’s-land.
Authors trying varied footwear
And walking a mile or so
in
the gait most apt.
A man heaving as a
woman.
A woman calculating as
a man.
For fantasy fiction freedom, three cheers.
Zappa’s muffin man, Dylan’s tambourine man
and the imagery in books,
fluid and infinite in
the mind that reads it
bound yet bewildering
in the mind that sees it,
through a filmmaker’s
eye,
of a fantasy framed,
edited, distributed.
A
chance entry of an angel
and a memory unleashed of a game once played by one.
When did I first meet you? Saw you? Heard about you?
Congenial conversation for both involved
(while the third thinks of this congeniality)
Love, a habit or divine intervention?
Too many questions and three answers, drafted in words,
incoherent or inspired?
And we present before you -a lush fabric
of words. We
call it 'The Undertones'.
Dipti Nayak and Mohini Verma
Editors
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