Rucksacks and Awkward Bodies - by Nazneen Ahmed

by Amita Murray

The lobby is a faded olive green with chilled terracotta coloured linoleum on the floor. Stacks of shoes – including my DMs – line the shelves on the walls and lie scattered about. Some pairs look like they’re about to make off in different directions where they’ve been knocked or kicked around. I’m the last one into the main hall because as usual I’m fumbling with my laces. I really don’t know why Velcro is seen as an unacceptable footwear fastening choice for adults.

I catch up with the others, overtaking families and spindly elderly women, careful not to step on the hems of the flower-bright saris. Entering the main hall, I’m hit by a heavy, almost-familiar scent of Indian food. Not the sharp, onion-heavy cooking of the North, but a softer, rounder smell. Steam from huge vats wafts across the doorway. A long queue awaits patiently, very British-like, as food is served on bendy paper plates by men and women standing in a military line behind tables.

We’re here to find Mr Samaddar. Apparently he’s here… somewhere. I don’t even know what he looks like, but I find myself searching nevertheless. Maybe he’ll have something specifically Samaddar-y about him that’ll single him out from all the other South Indian elderly menfolk here, dressed in their thick woolly jumpers and chinos and sport socks.

It’s us who really stick out here, in our sombre academic tones of blue and black and grey, with our rucksacks and awkward bodies. My feet, benumbed from walking about stone cold stone churches all morning, begin to tingle back to life because this place has the miracle of underfloor heating. I reflect that churches could learn a thing or two about design from mandirs. We make a space on the floor and sit down, creaking our legs crossed, and await the appearance of Mr Samaddar.

One, Burgundy. Two, Plum - by Nazneen Ahmed

by Amita Murray

She walks up and down Whitechapel High Street going from stall to stall with her list. She settles on one. The scarf seller eyes her up with the predatory interest that comes with brand new, lost-looking customers. But her stiffness, her concentration upon her list, don’t make her seem lost. He continues to observe her, biding his time to intervene with the “sell”, but curious too. She’s different.

She pulls out scarves, one by one, inspecting the colours and patterns. She carefully pushes them back, not quite satisfied, sometimes glancing back down at the list. She pulls out a couple more and he decides it’s time. “6 for 10, sister, 6 for 10” he encourages. She nods dismissively, going back to inspecting the scarves.

He wonders briefly if he should try some Sylheti on her, on the offchance it might bring down that wall and he could begin what he did best, selling those things no one really needs but buys and wonders about afterwards. But maybe not Sylheti… Somali? Should he whip out some Arabic? She’s hard to place. Facially, there’s something different about her that he can’t quite identify. Her scarf is different to his regular Bangladeshi customers’ hijabs. She wears it high, two layers, with a thick braid to one side, like hair. How strange, to cover hair with something that looks like hair.

She begins to collect scarves that meet her approval, checking them against her list. One, burgundy. Two, plum. A couple of patterned ones. She pauses between a deep blue and a slighter greener shade, opting for the greener one. A final one, black with a multi-coloured pattern. She looks up and speaks in a stumbling posh Bangla, clipped with British edges, as she hands over a crisp £10 note, folded into three.

Yeah, not from here. He turns to put her scarves in a bag, feeling strangely vindicated.

Of Bikinis and Spiced Chai - by Amita Murray

Detail of a photo by Ray Moller

Bollywood dance video director Rohit Roy is sitting in his Mumbai office, chain-smoking his way through a medium-sized Guatemalan tobacco plantation, alternating between yelling into his shiny iPhone, and answering my carefully non-threatening research questions. 

"Fuck man! People want to see a girl in a bikini, I'll show them a girl in a bikini! What's the big deal, man? I'm liberated. We're all fucking liberated. It's modern day India, man. When is the last time you had a hair cut?"

I hit the pause button on my cassette player and clear my throat. "I, uh..." I splutter.

"You're doing a PhD in California? You can make so much more dancing in my music videos. Why are you doing a fucking PhD?"

This is an excellent question, one I ask myself nearly every morning, at lunch time, and then again before bed. I think it is a rhetorical one, but I try to compose a suitably cheery answer in my head. His phone interrupts again, and he loses interest in the question. His hand apologizes to me. I beam reassuringly. My smile says that I don't mind that he's kept me waiting for three hours for this interview, that this is the seventh call he's taken in the last twenty minutes, and that his second-hand smoke is reducing my life span, as we speak. 

I stare at the peeling paint on the lower third of the office walls, from when the monsoon floods hit Mumbai in the summer, at Rahul's ray-bans branded on to his forehead, his Lacoste t-shirt and the cardamom-spiced chai in his hands. His phone conversation finally comes to an end. 

"So," I say, "tell me more about this woman in a bikini."

Journal Beauty Pageant - by RCJ

Bus Meet, by Amita Murray

The journals sit side by side, each separate from the others, with covers facing outwards. There’s something oddly vulnerable about them, as if the fully visible front of each says ‘I’m here! This is what I have to offer - take me or leave me!’. On the left there is ‘CITY’, title in all caps, with black and pink, a bold look. The covers of some are peeling outwards a little, whether because of use, or condensation, or just cheap material I’m not sure. It gives this journal a trashy vibe - as if it’s the good time gal wearing high heels and slightly too much make up on a night out. This is especially true compared to the ‘Transactions’ and ‘Area’ next door: staid and sober Transactions with its classy green on white, and Area channelling a severe hipster monochrome look. ‘Talk of the Thames’’ look is just all over the place, multiple fonts, clashing colours and overlaid panels crammed together, jostling for attention. This one certainly needs a makeover before any prizes will be won.

At the Traffic Light - by RCJ

by RCJ

It’s a lovely sunny day, crisp air and blue skies. Not much traffic either. There’s a faint rattle in the distance, getting louder, and louder still, then screechy brakes, and then the noise stops. She is breathing hard, but perhaps trying to hide it a little from the guy next to her, who has a fixed wheel, a beard, and wears a beanie hat rather than a helmet. Her own helmet is a garish fluorescent yellow number. She drags the right pedal upwards with her scruffy trainer and steps her foot down onto it with a determined little clunk. She stares straight ahead at the lights, jaw set, steely-eyed. Though just for a fraction of a second her eyes dart to the woman in front, clad in head to toe lycra, and her eyes narrow just a tiny bit. There’s that strange quiet now, silent but full, where several people have kept their bodies still all at once, poised on the edge of movement for just a bit too long. 

Frictions/Pace - by RCJ

Detail of 'M however measured', Sister Corita, Kent 1968, by RCJ

I was almost late. Checking and re-checking the time as I disembarked the train, then nervously scanning the street names as the bus puttered down the road, pausing for what seemed like an age at each of the traffic lights. Then I hopped off, staring down at my smartphone as I walked. On the corner there was a Ladbrokes with a couple of middle aged blokes outside. Next door a jumble of mismatched furniture and a bargain bin sat on the pavement outside a charity shop. The sight of the glaring green and yellow of Subway competed with the guilty pleasure of the smell of sausage rolls wafting out from Greggs. An older lady shuffled along the pavement and I stepped out into the road to pass her. As I walked along, the blocks seemed to loom taller on each side, grey and tall and faceless. I really was almost late now. Two minutes until the meeting, and it still looked like it was a way down the road. I was breezing down the pavement in a real power walk when I saw the blockage ahead. A lady pushing a pram loaded with shopping bags, and two policemen strolling with that slow, confident gait a few yards ahead of her. There was a railing to her right, and so I took a few jogging steps squeezing past to the left, bumping very her slightly with my handbag as I passed. ‘OI! Fuckin’ well look where you’re GOIN!’ - I jumped, slightly shocked. The policemen immediately rounded and barked out a deep voiced ‘alright, now’. Red faced, I continued along without looking back.  

Telling the Truth/Making Stories

by Amita Murray

In the third workshop, the group practiced writing the "truth", using elements of storytelling. The idea was to draw an experience like a scene, instead of a summary. Some fabulous, moving, mesmerizing, evocative, tasty pieces of writing came out of this workshop. It was thrilling and humbling to hear the experiences that people had had in their travels, relationships, research explorations, and forays into the past. The pieces were at once dramatic and easy to relate to.