Ahmed looked at the battered sign above the shop window. His pride and joy, the first restaurant in the road to have neon lights. But these days not all the lights worked, his once prized possession now read “TANDOO BATI HOSE”. He put his key in the door and opened the rickety door, a waft of stale curry greeted him. He trudged through the rotting carpet and set his keys down on the bar. Ahmed was a man on the edge, he was about to lose …

Trundling up in this chairlift
Hunching into my collar
Higher and higher
Colder and colder
Leaving behind the clamour
Of those who, ant-like
Follow each other
Down the lower slopes
I am first
To reach the top
Lifting the safety bar
Sliding on to the waiting piste
A crown of peaks all around
Sharp, snow covered
Under the blue sky
They watch me
I am centre stage
Racing down the mountain
Hearing the sliding of my skis
On the new snow
And there, I heard that voice say
Play on, little one, this is your day.

The shortlists for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book and Best First Book from Europe and South Asia were announced this month (February 18, 2009).
The full shortlists are:
Best Book Award
Chris Cleave    The Other Hand
Shashi Deshpande     The Country of Deceit
Philip Hensher     The Northern Clemency
Jhumpa Lahiri     Unaccustomed Earth
David Lodge     Deaf Sentence
Salman Rushdie     The Enchantress of Florence
Best First Book Award
Sulaiman Addonia     The Consequences of Love
Daniel Clay     Broken
Joe Dunthorne     Submarine
Mohammed Hanif    A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Murzaban F. Shroff      Breathless in Bombay
Professor Paranjape commented: …

“Please, sir, can I have a break?”
I looked up from the photocopier-cum-printer. Who said that? Everyone was either on the telephone, tapping away at their keyboards or reading through some legal document. I didn’t recognise the voice. “Angela, did you ask me something just now?” I asked the lawyer whose desk was the closest to the photocopier.
“Er no,” replied Angela.
“Oh, ok, I thought I heard something.” I carried on loading the rest of the documentation into the feeder tray of the photocopier. One of the partners, Mr Whitmore, had asked …

1) I first heard about you when I was on toowrite.com where you’d just been named the winner of their short story competition…what impact did that have on you as a writer?
Well, writing is one of the most solitary arts, you sort of scribble away in your room, regardless of whether you are going to get published or not, because that’s how you need to express yourself. And you hope some day to have an audience for your work, because it’s not like acting, where the audience is intrinsic to …

The Asian Writer catches up with Shelina Janmohammed to find out more about why she felt compelled to write her first book, Love in a Headscarf…

Followers of your blog will see you as a serious writer, who likes to address the issues about British Islam and the muslim struggle, did you feel that you were straying from those serious issues when you wrote Love in a Headscarf?
As Muslims I think we often focus more on themes such as peace and justice, and forget that the root of all faith …

Sunshine sparkled through the grey afternoon. I sat in on the bench, wrapped in my own obliqueness. I was lost. I looked up at the clouds, at the tiny tapering ends, almost invisible. Was it an infinite haze of vapour droplets? I mused, watching as the black birds circled the pale billows. Suddenly the sun was gone; a cold hand on the shoulder of the transient warmth. I looked up pondering on how moistness in its most ethereal form could become so dull: how the radiance of the rivers, the …

Coloured fabrics flew through the wind,
Like flags upon a ship,
Music flowed through her body,
Occasionally she’d take a sip,
And if she liked the taste,
She’d hold the music,
For a little longer in her hips,
Now and then she’d tease it out,
Through her fingertips,
Bodies reacting like electricity,
While the music played,
Through the speakers,
Heaving,
Blasting out Punjabi beats,
The D.J caught up in the moment,
Drugged up in the ecstasy,
Of the majesty of what he’s created,
For in this time and place,
He is a God amongst Gods,
A conductor conducting his orchestra,
The vinyls and compact discs,
Create the illusion,
That they cannot resist,
Like …

My dream, I live it
in a paper
coated with crème caramel.
I frolic in words
of my shadow
with the seas, the skies and the lands
and tread the dunes
of time, touching all the things around me;
then settle down over a midnight coffee
in the silence of night.
Oh, I do attend the Sunday mass
but don’t know why I always find myself
skipping the communion–
perhaps, to end the raging war
‘tween the “I” and “Me” in my thoughts
for them not to walk alone.