Monday, April 15 2002
After Dinner Conversation
- Maya Khankhoje Maya Khankhoje is one of the talented new voices in the evolving literature
of science fiction and fantasy. Long dominated by Western-centric
technological positivists, speculative fiction has become more complex
today --- it asks more difficult questions, takes less for granted and
includes more diverse voices than ever before. However the so-called Third
World is still under-represented in speculative fiction, not only in terms
of setting and subject matter, but also in terms of writers and points of
view that are unique to its many cultures. Maya Khankhoje's writings help
fill a great void.
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It was a mild Autumn night. The silver ray of a round moon pierced the glass square of a box within a box full of boxes and dwelt there. Inside this box were one man , two women, one manandwoman. They sat on wooden squares in front of a long wooden rectangle. They played with warm soft fragrant morsels. They poured molten rubies or liquid gold into hollow transparent cones. The cones held the molten rubies and the liquid gold and became one with them. The man, the two women and the manandwoman poured the contents of those magic vials through red slits into invisible pipes running down the centreline of their torsos. The molten rubies swirled through the music boxes of the manandwoman crashing against gleaming white coral reefs called teeth. The manandwoman’s music boxes were still. The man next to the manandwoman clutched a golden vial in one of his five-pronged appendages. The red slit on this balloon looked like a letter C lying on its side. The woman next to him had a music box that spouted and raged like a stormy sea. The notes were sour. The man uncoiled his long frame from a letter h into a letter I. Liquid molten notes gushed forth from his music box and hung in the air. The other woman held warm soft fragrant morsels over the long rectangle. The glass marbles in her balloon darted back and forth. Her music box sprang into action, her red slit formed a round letter O and notes poured forth like a water spout at high seas. The silver ray of the round moon shattered and flew out the glass square into the night.
Darkness fell. Three figures exited. Two remained.
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