Celebration
By Murali Kamma
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The road thronged with revellers
when our car stopped, stuck in a river
whose current couldn’t carry it forward.
Opening the window, I said, Who died?
A man walking close by stared,
while my wife, turning to me, glared.
It’s a festival, babu, the man said,
waving the big stick with which he led.
Rolling up the window
as the drumming reached a crescendo,
I noted, Belief is like a roadblock
and you can’t argue your way past it.
My wife, shaking her head, said,
Why do you have to be an Intellectual
with a capital I? Just go with the flow.
We didn’t have to wait long or look far—
for soon the crowd parted, letting us pass.
Slow, my wife said, as I stepped on the gas
and heard a stick bluntly strike the car.
Memories
By Murali Kamma
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Like a shadow, as they drove through the night,
the car passed a dense forest and an inky lake
and silent country homes with people asleep,
until it got to a winding road that became steep.
A mountain, they realized, as the mist cleared
and dabs of light brightened the domed sky.
When they reached the top to see it clearly,
the shimmering canvas was finished, barely.
Red, purple, orange and pink evoked memories
of childhood paintings, and they recalled how,
despite their differences and communal strife,
they’d found pleasure in the same things in life.
Years later, this sunrise moment too is a picture,
still vivid in his mind, and he remembers how,
as they quietly stood outside, hugging in the cold,
he wondered how long this happiness would hold.
Murali Kamma is the author of Not Native: Short Stories of Immigrant Life in an In-Between World (Wising Up Press), which won a 2020 Independent Publisher Book Award. His stories have appeared in Havik 2021, Evening Street Review, Rosebud, Cooweescoowee, The Wild Word, indicia and The Apple Valley Review, among other journals. One of his stories won second place in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition. He's a contributor to New York Journal of Books, and his fiction has also appeared in The Best Asian Short Stories 2020 and Wising Up Press anthologies. He's the managing editor of Atlanta-based Khabar magazine.