“Foxtrot in Fulham” - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney - - published in the Hyderabad Review —October 2020

 

“Foxtrot in Fulham” - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney - - published in the Hyderabad Review —October 2020

You may read today’s story here

Gateway to Janet H Swinney on The Reading Life 

Website of Janet H Swinney

“Foxtrot in Fulham” is the eighth  story by Janet H Swinney to be featured on The Reading Life in addition to her marvelous debut collection, The Map of Bihar and other stories.

  I find her stories a consistent delight, elegantly developed with very credible characters in interesting situations.  She skillfully makes use of small details to draw us into the lives of her characters.

 Following a contemporary short story writers work closely is my strongest form of endorsement, which I give to Janet H  Swinney without the slightest qualification.

“Foxtrot in Fulham”,set in London in 1967, follows Perm, from The Punjabi State in  India, as he tries to adjust to Life in London. Upon arrival he is shocked by how clean and orderly London was:

“Of all the things that could have caught his attention on arrival in his new country, the one that had mesmerised him was the state of the streets. The earth between the interminable rows of houses was tamped down with tarmac and sealed along the edges with paving stones. The Mother Country’s filthy underwear was firmly under wraps. You could walk along the pavements without risk of breaking a leg, the traffic stayed on the allocated side of the road and behaved itself, and there were signs telling you what to do and lights telling you when to do it. There were no bullock carts, and no dogs with mange and the only animal that left ordure in the streets was the milkman’s horse. He liked it. He felt he could certainly get along here.”

He has a enough  money from family to get a shared room with snother  recent Indian emigrant.  Perm has a College degree as an engineer.  I had an embarrassed laugh when a government eployment office clerk listed him as “laborer, unskilled”.

He secures a job as a mess hall helper for an army unit.  It is not what he wanted of course but he thinks he can at least tell his 

family that he was working for the British Army which he figures they would accept.

He ends up getting fired, he was such a perfectionist his work was to slow.

Then he moves up through a bit of luck to head of a lost and found office for the Railroad. He does a very good job and secures a raise.  He gets a better residence.

He has a cousin and a friend who invite him to a Dance type event where they tell him he can meet English women.   At first he is reluctant but then he says “why not?”  They tell him just ask one you fancy to Dance then out for coffee and “who knows what might happen”.

He ends up liking the lessons and he does meet an English woman, 23, single living with her parents.

Now the story draws us into Perm’s slowly developing relatiinship.

We have already see the prejudice Indian men face from White Brits they Face.

  But now John Bull rears his  very ugly face.

I enjoyed this story very much, just  like I thought I would.

Janet was born and grew up in a mining area in the North East of England and was the first member of her family to go to university. She got her political education in Scotland where she lived and worked for thirteen years and now lives in London where she has lived and worked for considerably longer. She shared her life for forty-five years with the Indian-born composer, Naresh Sohal. Her longstanding connections with India have deeply influenced her writing. She worked for many years in post-16 education, ultimately as a government inspector. During this period, she produced a wide range of teaching and training materials, often commissioned by government departments. She also wrote features articles for national newspapers and journals including Observer Scotland, The Times and The Guardian. In 2008, she was a runner-up in The Guardian’s International Development Journalism competition in the professional class. From 2009, she turned her attention exclusively to fiction. Since then, her stories have appeared in print anthologies and online journals across the UK, India and America. Earlyworks Press have published much of her work in the UK, while in India, it has appeared in a number of online literary journals, including the Bombay Review, Out of Print and the Lakeside International Review of Literature and Arts as well as in the academic journal Postcolonial Text. Her story The Map of Bihar was nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose 2012 and was published in Best New Writing 2013 (USA). In 2014 she was a runner-up for the London Short Story Prize. She has had work listed in many competitions. Her story The House with Two Letter-Boxes was longlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2019. In 2020 she was a guest of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai, with a specific remit to talk about India as seen through the lens of the short story. Her first collection of short fiction, The Map of Bihar and Other Stories, was published in 2019 by Circaidy Gregory Press and was well reviewed by the Irish Times. She has just completed her second collection, from which Foxtrot in Fulham is the title story, and a play based on the short stories and vignettes of Saadat Hasan Manto.

A Room in the South - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney, Feb 13, 2020 from the JOAO Rogue Literary Journal

A Room in the South - A Short Story by Janet  H Swinney, Feb 13, 2020 from the JOAO Rogue Literary Journal

You may read today’s store here

Website of Janet H Swinney

The opening paragraph of “A Room in the South” would make Khushwant Singh blush.  From the initial  sentence “Navneen loved everything there was to love about women” we are given a very adult account of just how far his love for women goes. 

Nanveen arrived from India and took a simple starter job in London. When we meet him he has become rich enough 

To stay with his girlfriends in chic London hotels and take them to top end resorts in Europe. 

“He was naturally good-looking. Newly-arrived from India, he had cultivated a pencil-thin moustache in the manner of Raj Kapoor with an eye to Errol Flynn, and had combed his hair back in a quiff. He had also changed his name to Eddy. The girls in the production department had fallen for the rebrand hook, line and sinker. 

Now, he was less of a showman, relying more on expensive woody aftershaves, bespoke suits from a Kowloon tailor and the ministrations of a barber in Covent Garden.  But he was no snob. His rise from rock bottom had given him no reason to be so. He was a keen observer of social niceties and a pretty shrewd judge of character. He had learned how to approach women of every class. And this was remarkably easy. Most women would respond to an open-ended question about themselves – some, it seemed, never had enough opportunity to talk in this way – and before they knew it, whatever their station in life, he’d be leaning in, doing those things that made them feel they were worthy of attention.”

Much of the story is taken up with his relationship with

“And where had he met Milena? Ah yes, at a function at the exhibition centre in Milton Keynes on the future of plastic foam in the robotics industry. There were lectures, demonstrations and displays, but mainly, as far as he was concerned, it was an opportunity to hand his card around to the movers and shakers in the business. Because that was his line. He’d started off as a lowly foam-cutter in the early days, risen to become a star salesman for someone else and now he had a company worth millions with investments overseas.  

Apart from the exhibition stands and demonstration areas, there was food, a huge buffet arranged by the sponsors, and Milena was supervising the staff on the line. What struck him was how much in control she was, both of herself and of the situation. She had a trim figure and wore a snug, figure-flattering uniform. Her hair was immaculately rolled, her complexion flawless and her cosmetics painstakingly applied. Even though she was supervising a team of ten, it was clear that she was under-employed. She rejected his opening gambit, but agreed to talk to him at the end of her shift.”

The relationship takes an interesting turn.  I came 

 to see he was very aware that women were attracted by his ability to take them to  posh places.  He begins to give Milena money, he does it in such way that she does not feel like a mistress or expensive prostitute. Both do understand the economics behind their relationship.  We see Naveen cares about women for their bodies and their value as status symbols.

Like all Swinney’s stories, she develops the characters as arising from their life history.

I highly endorse her first collection The Map of Bihar and other stories and look Forward to reading her work for many years.

Janet H. Swinney’s writing straddles Britain and India. Widely anthologised, her story The Map of Bihar was first published in the UK (Earlyworks Press) and in the USA (Hopewell Publications), where it appeared in Best New Writing 2013 and was nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose 2012. She has been placed in numerous national and international competitions, and in 2014, was runner-up in the London Short Story Competition. Her debut collection of short stories titled, Map of Bihar and Other Stories was published in 2019 by Circaidy Gregory Press, UK. She is currently working on her second collection, and has recently returned from the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai, where she presented her work. You can purchase Map of Bihar here.

Her comprehensive website has further biographical information and a list of her works.

Mel u

A Tadge to Your Left - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney- 2019

You may read the story here

Janet H Swinney on The Reading Life



Website of Janet H Swinney

“A Tadge to Your Left” is the sixth short story by Janet H Swinney to be featured on The Reading Life.  My posting on so many stories is the result of the high esteem I hold for her work.  Her stories range in setting from Indian to England.  (All of the stories I have featured can be read online, just go to my link above.)

“A Tadge to Your Left” tells two stories, in alternating paragraphs, a very interesting technique.  We first meet Hooter, a man teaching biology in an English High School. Here is our introduction to him:

“He wasn’t an old man, but he wasn’t fanciable either. There wasn’t one of them who would have volunteered to have anything to do with him. Chalky, the Maths teacher, on the other hand, or Blinker who taught music…

he was about thirty or forty. Neat, innocuous, straight up and down. Shit coloured trousers and a snot-green shirt. Spectacles that sat at the top of a long nose that he blew frequently on a khaki handkerchief. A wide, formless mouth with a moist lower lip. Straps of oily, no-colour hair plastered across the top of his head. Sometimes he wore a lab coat that made him look like a storeman in the Co-op. He’d only been there a couple of weeks when he got his nickname – Hooter.”

Our second character is Derek, a factory worker:

“She stirred in her bed. It was only Derek. Home late after a long shift at the Caterpillar factory.”

We learn a lot about their very different sex lives.  

I really do not want to give much detail of the plot involving Hooter.  He is a thoroughly nasty man who preys on his female students.  Once you realize what the title denotes you will feel a mixture of laughter and disgust.  Swinney does a great job presenting him and the atmosphere of the school.

In the thread of narrative on Derek we see a young couple in a financial struggle, wondering if they should have their first baby.

For sure “A tadge to Your Left” was a lot of fun to read.  

Maybe the common thread is both men are frustrated sexually, maybe Derek will remain a wage slave and Hooter wind up in prison.  Their

 lives are dominated by their feelings toward women. I can see a connection to the kind of schooling they probably had.

I look forward to following Janet H Swinney for many years.

About the author

Janet H Swinney was born and grew up in the North East of England, got her political education in Scotland and now lives in London. She also has roots in India, and her experience of life there has influenced her work.

Ten of her stories have appeared in print anthologies. The Map of Bihar was published both in the UK (Earlyworks Press) and in the USA (Hopewell Publications), where it appeared in ‘Best New Writing 2013’ and was nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose. The Work of Lesser-Known Artists was a runner-up in the London Short Story Competition 2014, and appeared in ‘Flamingo Land’ (Flight Press, 2015). The Queen of Campbeltown appeared in ‘The Ball of the Future’ (Earlyworks Press 2016).

Several of her stories have been published by online literary journals, including the Bombay Literary Magazine, Out of Print, Joao Roque and the Indian Review.

Janet has had commendations and listings in the Fish International and Fabula Press Nivalis competitions, among others. A Tadge to Your Left was shortlisted in the Ilkley Literature Festival 2017. She is currently working on a play based on the stories of the Indo-Pakistani author, Saadat Hasan Manto. When she isn’t writing, she teaches yoga.

Mel u

“Where is Chandernagore” - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney - 2018

You can read “Where is Chandernagore” here

Janet H Swinney on The Reading Life

Website of Janet H Swinney

“Where is Chandernagore” is the fifth story by Janet H Swinney to be featured on The Reading Life.  I find her stories a consistent delight, elegantly developed with very credible characters in interesting situations.  She skillfully makes use of small details to draw us into her stories.  Following a contemporary short story writers work closely is my strongest form of endorsement, which I give to Janet H  Swinney without the slightest qualification.

The four prior featured by Swinney stories were all set on The Indian Subcontinent.  “Where is Chandernagore” is set in London.  The locale is a newspaper editorial office.  Here is how Mr Peabody, the paper’s owner and editor describes it:

.

“There were other publications with far larger circulations in the city. They had reporters to send hither and yon. ‘Let them focus on the big news,’ Mr. Peabody said. ‘At the Examiner, we deal with the significant detail, the family, the community.’ “

There are two women employed in the editorial office.  One is given assignments to cover murder trials and such, the other does recipes and housekeeping articles.  The women want to cover a big rally where Churchill will be confronting advocates for the vote for women. The time is not spelled out but from the details involving Churchill’s opposition to giving women the right to vote (which occured in 1918) I am guessing 1910 or so.  The editor of paper, a lower circulation publication which prides itself on quality journalism and supports The Conservative Party overall, wants an article written on a community in India, Chandernagore, near Calcutta.  Here is how the trouble starts:

“The following morning, Mr. Peabody allocated Enid the task of drafting something about an impending spat between the French and the British somewhere west of Calcutta. ‘Come on strong about the Empire quashing any interference from Johnny Foreigner,’ he said. ‘We can’t have these Frenchies getting above themselves.’ To Hattie, he allocated a feature about the history of milk puddings. ‘You can link it nicely to Enid’s piece about the Empire,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing like a good rice pudding with the skin on, topped with a sprinkle of nutmeg.’ George, on the other hand, was given the job of covering the two-day visit of the President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Winston Churchill, who would be speaking at the Assembly Rooms that very evening”

Enid is infuriated, she tries to talk Hattie into jointly demanding Mr. Peabody allow them to jointly cover the rally.  Swinney does a marvelous job showing us what happens at the rally.  

The story takes a very interesting direction.  I will not say more of the plot so you can enjoy it, as did I.

Swinney brought Mr. Peabody, Edith, Hattie as well as the rally and news paper office very much to life.  For me, this story was a mini-history lesson!

I look forward to reading more stories by Janet H Swinney, especially her first collection.

Below is a good balanced article on Churchill’s evolving views on Women’s Suffrage

https://richardlangworth.com/nashville-3-rights-women

From the author’s website 

Janet was born and grew up in the North East of England in a time of soot, formica, and winkle pickers; when it was actually compulsory to smoke on buses and packets of crsips used to have blue twists of salt inside them.

Her education was something she can’t talk about without getting variously annoyed, upset and outraged.

She spent many years oscillating between Scotland, where she felt more comfortable culturally and politically, and the South East of England where there were better employment opportunities. She now lives in London.

She worked for many years in post-16 education as a practitioner, manager, trainer, inspector and consultant, but has always felt compelled to write. Now, writing is her top priority, and she has just completed her first anthology of short fiction.

She has travelled widely in India, and is a long-standing practitioner of yoga. She advocates on behalf of women’s rights worldwide via the international development organisation ‘Womankind Worldwide

Mel u

“The Trouble with Mangoes” - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney - July 20, 2018

“The Trouble With Mangoes” by Janet H Swinney - Indian Review

Janet H Swinney on The Reading Life

“The Trouble with Mangoes” is the fourth Short Story by Janet H Swinney which I have had the great pleasure of reading.  Obviously I would not make a point of reading all her work did I not hold it in high esteem.

The title intrigued me for personal reasons.  Our family owns a  propery in rural Phillippines in a small town of five thousand people.  The town claims to be “The Mangoe Capital of The World”.  There are several giant very old mango trees on the estate, both apple and my favourite carabao mangoes. In season the area produces so many mangoes they are used to feed pigs!  My wife gives away lots of big boxes of mangoes.  In season there is annual mango festival culimated by the selection of The Mango Queen.  Mangoes are used in lots of ways in the cuisine of the Phillipines.  By contrast in The United States and the UK mangoes are seen as exotic fruit and are relatively expensive.

There are two groups of characters in the novel, very different from each other.

Charanjit is an older man, his son recently died and he stays with his daughter in law and her young son:

“Charanjit would have liked nothing better at his time of life than to take things easy, but his daughter-in-law’s dilemma meant that he had to reconsider the situation. Everything had been turned upside down the night his elder son had been killed.

The very next day, they got the news that his small grandson had passed the entrance test for one of the most prestigious private schools in the district (English medium), and was due to be admitted in the monsoon semester. The question was how to get him there. The school was on the far side of town, the boy was obviously too young to travel on his own and his daughter-in-law now had other matters to attend to. The easiest thing would have been to turn the place down. But his grandson was the eldest son of the eldest son. When he grew up, he would be the head of the family, and would definitely need to know his prick from a broom handle. ‘No’, Charanjit concluded, ‘the boy must go to school and I am the one to take him…’

The first morning, after he had delivered his grandson to the school gate, he spent some time poking around, looking for somewhere suitable to sit. Eventually, he found a spot outside the Hindu temple, shaded by a peepul tree, where he felt he would not be disturbed. He had sat in many worse places in his youth, as a cobbler.

On the days that followed, he brought with him a piece of sacking which he carefully set out at the base of the wall, and an umbrella with a broken spoke and the handle missing. For hours at a time, he sat contemplating the starlings strutting about with their yellow beaks gaping, or a woman from a scheduled caste involved in some desultory sweeping. And when sitting got too much, he stretched himself out along the sacking, propping his head up on one arm, and keeping his rheumatic knee pointed at the sky.”

I love this beautiful evocative description.  Charanjit is so devoted to his grandson that he waits outside the school all day to escort him home.

Near the school lives and upper class family, consisting of a married couple being visited by the husband’s brother and his English wife.  It is her first visit to India.  Swinney lets us see the the two women struggle to bond.  The wife from Indian wants to open a beauty parlour but her very dominant husband says her doing this would shame him as unable to support his family on his own.  You won’t like him!

The English woman notices that everyday an old man waits outside in the heat for his grandson.  She suggests to her sister in law they give him some drinks and a snack.  The other woman sees the man as obviously very lower class and not worth bother with.  

I don’t want to tell to much, you should read this story to learn how mangoes cause trouble.

Swinney in prior stories I have read deals with former caste distinctions and the huge gap in perceptions from Indians to most from Europe, the UK, and such. 

This is acutely dealt with in “The Trouble with Mangoes”

I highly recommend this this story to all lovers of the form.

Author data

“Janet is a repentant education inspector who grew up in the North East of England, gained her political education in Scotland and now lives in London. For over forty years, she shared her life with the composer, Naresh Sohal. Her experience of life in India has influenced her work.

Eleven of her stories have appeared in print anthologies. The most recent of these is ‘Political Events Have Taken a Turn,’ which appeared in the 2018 anthology of Earlyworks Press. ‘The Map of Bihar’ was published both in the UK (Earlyworks Press) and in the USA (Hopewell Publications), where it was included in ‘Best New Writing 2013’ and was nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose. ‘The Work of Lesser-Known Artists’ was a runner-up in the London Short Story Competition 2014, and appeared in ‘Flamingo Land’ (Flight Press, 2015).

Other stories have been published by online literary journals based in India, including the Bombay Literary Magazine, Out of Print, Joao Roque and the Indian Review.

Janet has had commendations and listings in a number of competitions including the Fish International short story competition. ‘A Tadge to Your Left’ was shortlisted in the Ilkley Festival competition in 2017, and was selected by Cathy Galvin for publication on the website of London’s ‘The Word Factory.’

Janet’s first collection of stories will be published shortly by Circaidy Gregory Press.”

Her website

http://janethswinney.com/

I am very much looking forward to reading her forthcoming collection of short stories.  She also will soon publish a story in the highly regarded Lakeview Journal of Literature and the Arts.

Mel u

“The Menace at The Gate”. - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney, 2016

Click Here to Read The Story

Janet H Swinney on The Reading Life

“The Menace at the Gate” is the third marvelous set in India short story by Janet H Swinney which I have had the great pleasure of reading. I would not repeatedly read stories by an author if I did not find their work intriguing, interesting and insightful.  

Swinney has the gifts of a first rate writer of historic fiction.  Using background details derivitive from reality, she creates characters in and of their time, persons  with a strong feel of vermisilitude and settings with near cinematic  vividness. I can feel the heat, the sensual overloading, the political chaos and clash of cultures that are her the daily life of those in her stories, whether it be on a beach in Goa, the birthday observation of a venerated guru or, as in “The Menace at The Gate” the coming of age of a young woman in violent times.

As the story opens a young woman, maybe 18, is trying to sleep but the sweltering heat and the swarms of mosquitoes that won’t leave her alone keep sleep away.  We are in a violent place, learning of acts of terrorism and political kilings.  She lives with her parents, her aunt and uncle from England are visiting.  As she tries to sleep, problems treated in her classes run through her mind.  To make it worse, her period is late.

In opening of the story you can see the skill of a serious artist:

“Her period refused to come. She lay in turmoil beneath the ineffectual ceiling fan. No position brought relief from the heat. After days of tossing and turning and lying in limp sheets, her shoulders and her buttocks were disfigured by the blemishes served up by prickly heat, and the monsoon was still an age away.

Clans of mosquitoes infested the room, convening under the bed, as well as in the adjoining bathroom, where you took your pants down at your peril. Every night, before coming to bed, she fumigated the entire place with Deet, and plastered herself with Odomos. It made no difference. The evil empire persisted in rude good health, while she lay upon the bed like a living sacrifice. Despite a monstrous nightgown and cotton socks that came up almost to her knees, her ankles, wrists and toes were swollen with multiple bites, the flesh ripped raw with scratching.

Her mind was in no better state. Her head was filled with equations that she could not solve. The reek of formaldehyde from the lab was still in her nostrils. She had never guessed when she chose her subjects for Ten Plus, that even Biology, which was her favourite subject, would involve so much chemistry. She thrashed about the bed, struggling with valencies that were at odds with one another, and the chemical description of photosynthesis that she could not complete.”

We learn of terrible violence.  In a very vivid scene the woman tries to relieve her stress through a casual sexual encounter, one that would horrify her conservative parents.

I dont want reveal too much of the exciting story line.  The conclusion was very unexpected, dramatic and perfectly wrought.

I endorse this story to all lovers of form.  It can serve as an object less about to write historical Short fiction.

I look forward to following the work of Janet H Swinney for many years.

Author supplied data

Repentant education inspector, based in London but with ties in India.

Eleven of her stories have appeared in print. The most recent of these, 'Political Events Have Taken a Turn,' appears in ‘The Sorcery of Smog.’ (Earlyworks Press 2018). Other stories have appeared online in ‘The Bombay Literary Magazine’, ‘Out of Print’, ‘Joao Roque’ and the ‘Indian Review’.

She was a runner-up in the London Short Story competition 2014, and nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose 2012. Her first collection of stories will be published shortly by Circaidy Gregory Press. She is currently working on a play based on stories by Manto.

Find her on Facebook at Janet H Swinney – Addicted to Fiction, or at www.janethswinney.com

Mel u

“The Wrong Question” - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney - from The Bombay Review - 2017

“The Wrong Question” by Janet H Swinney - From The Bombay Review

My Post Upon “Drishti” A Short Story by Janet H Swinney

Last month “Drishti” by Janet H Swinney impressed and delighted me so much I asked the author if she had other stories online that I could read and post about.  Happily she sent me links to two of her stories.

“Drishti” centers on a Life Guard working the beach at a resort in Goa.  In just a few pages she opened up the world of the life guard.  

 “The Wrong Question” is set in a Yoga Shala, a long standing famous center for spiritual teaching.   Today is the Guru’s 95th birthday and a massive celebration is getting started.  One of things I liked a lot about “Drishti” was the very knowing way Swinney contrasted the western tourists drawn by the hedonistic reputation of Goa with Indians who work and visit the resorts.  In “The Wrong Question” she shows western    seekers of wisdom who have traveled from afar to listen to the Guru speak.  Swinney made me feel like I was part of the event in these wonderful lines:

“It feels like a public holiday, the sort of day when everyone heads for the ghat. Long before one gets to the yoga shala, one can tell who’s heading there. Groups of five and six thread their way through the town’s back lanes, dressed in their best. The Western men wear shorts with multiple pockets and sandals that bristle with straps, while the women have been shopping in some over-priced emporium and have chosen cotton kurtas with crude, block printed patterns and over-generous pants. This is their take on authenticity. The locals have a different view. The men are dressed like bank managers in stiffened shirts, and well-pressed trousers; a daughter or a servant has polished their shoes vigorously for them before they left the house. The women are cocooned in silken saris that are as tightly coiled as croissants from the German bakery. Sleek plaits, as thick as tyre tread, hang down their backs and wag across their backsides. On street corners, the fruit and vegetable vendors uncloak their barrows, wondering what trade they might attract at this early hour of the morning.”

The Guru has developed a fondness for sweets and it seems every devotee wants to place a garland on his shoulders.  People have come from all over the world to hear him speak.  I really like the brief vignettes of several western, they seem English, letting us see how the teachings of the Guru impact them:

“The guru begins to recite. They all press their hands together in prayer and look sternly into their chests, joining in dutifully.

‘Yogena cittasya padena vacam…Malam sarirasya ca vaidyakena….’

With the culminating ‘Om,’ they breathe a collective sigh and look up at him expectantly.

‘You see,’ he says, settling himself to the task in hand. ‘What is yoga? This is what I want to say. Yoga is the controlling of the activity of the mind. Only if the mind still does your true nature emerge. No matter where you come from, whether East or West, your mind is full of this and that. Taking your children to school every day; doing your job at the office; worrying about your promotion; cooking your husband’s dinner. So many things are there. So many small decisions also: rice or naan; paneer or gobi; trousers or pyjamas. But while your mind is busy over there, there is no peace, there is no stillness. It’s like the machine, so many of you Westerners use in the gym, or like the buffalo grinding corn in the village. People are thinking: how can I stop this treadmill? How can I get off? Am I right?’

Members of his audience acknowledge that he is.

‘So what to do?’ He pauses for effect. ‘First, we must know that the mind can be managed. There are so many managers these days.”

Swinney is a very talented artist with a deep feel for her subjects.

Next month I will post on a third of her stories.  In August The Lakeview Journal of Literature and The Arts,  I am an Advisory Director, publish one of her stories.

I hope to read many more of her works

I greatly enjoyed this story and endorse it to all lovers of the form.

Author supplied data

Repentant education inspector, based in London but with ties in India.

Eleven of her stories have appeared in print. The most recent of these, 'Political Events Have Taken a Turn,' appears in ‘The Sorcery of Smog.’ (Earlyworks Press 2018). Other stories have appeared online in ‘The Bombay Literary Magazine’, ‘Out of Print’, ‘Joao Roque’ and the ‘Indian Review’.

She was a runner-up in the London Short Story competition 2014, and nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose 2012. Her first collection of stories will be published shortly by Circaidy Gregory Press. She is currently working on a play based on stories by Manto.

Find her on Facebook at Janet H Swinney – Addicted to Fiction, or at www.janethswinney.com

Mel u