Alphabets floated as if from aladdin’s lamp. Letters into words and words into sentences. Whispered by the nameless people, packed tightly into ill fitting, square shaped containers. Where are they headed to? Are they travellers? Well, perhaps. Travelling in neat, straight lines, they whisper, softly. That’s when letters, words, sentences begin to float around. Jumbled sentences -‘Who-me-free-should-you-I-teller-stories-hear-think.’ As I struggle to piece it together some more whispered words, sentences spread their wings, flying haphazardly. More jumbled sentences giggle into my ears ‘Hear’, ‘Our Stories’. I stop re-arranging them listening instead to the stories told in jumbled sentences.
Bhumika R completed her PhD from the Special Centre for the Study of Northeast India, Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU), New Delhi in 2019 and has worked as an Assistant Professor of English in the School of Humanities & Sciences at Shiv Nadar University Chennai, Jain(deemed to be) University, Bangalore and as a language instructor in the Department of Humanities & Social Science, IIT Jammu. Currently she is teaching at the Shri Mata Vaishnodevi University in Kakryal, J&K. Besides her academic publications in various reputed journals and edited volumes, she has contributed articles to Cafe Dissensus Everyday, The Hindu and Deccan Herald. She also writes poetry and short fiction in English. Some of her poems have been published in the Visual Verse and platocavesonline. Her short stories have been published in the borderlessjournal and eastindiastory. She also translates poetry and fiction from Kannada into English.
The Pine Cone Review 