February didn’t start on a good note. Or so I thought. As dawn broke over Indrakeeladri and the city yawned awake, I writhed and twisted as pain wracked my body. It was Omicron of a harsher kind striking down with force without any advance notice. Apparently, Omicron doesn’t think much of Cleopatra’s advice: "Though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news; Give to a gracious message an host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt."
Well, it was evening, I had still been down with the infection and barely got out of bed, when the phone rang.
‘Dr Parthasarathy?’
‘Yes, this is Ramanujam.’
‘I’m Anatara Dev Sen.’ The accent was unmistakably British.
‘You mean, Prof. Amartya Sen’s daughter and the founding editor of TLM?... Ms Sen, this is a privilege.’
‘Call me Antara, please.’
‘If you could call me Ramanujam.’
‘I would. I hope you read Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature. I am the editor of the journal.’
I had last read an issue of this journal some fifteen years ago. When I said that – how I wish I hadn’t! – she sounded disappointed.
As it turned out, Indian Literature wants to carry an English translation of one of my Tamil stories published over three decades ago in a literary magazine called Kanaiyazhi, which was a little magazine devoted to serious and even avant-garde writings in Tamil when Mr Asokamitran and Dr Indira Parthasarathi were the editors, and Mr K Kasturirangan, a veteran journalist and a former correspondent of The New York Times, was the publisher. The story was re-published as a special story in a webzine just three months ago.
Good tidings indeed – amid the clouds of the Omicron gloom.
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