{"id":1082,"date":"2011-05-10T23:23:18","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T23:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/?p=1082"},"modified":"2017-10-23T23:02:24","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T23:02:24","slug":"my-soul-by-rumjhum-biswas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/my-soul-by-rumjhum-biswas\/","title":{"rendered":"My Soul by Rumjhum Biswas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Girl<\/a><\/h1>\n

My Soul<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

by Rumjhum Biswas<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My soul is going to walk out on me one of these days. I\u2019m sure of it. That damn soul is going to walk out of me, and go some place else. It\u2019s going to shrug me off the way we shrug off our rain coats, overcoats and Ulster coats. Ah the Ulster, such an elegant garment. I remember my mom owned one. Hers was a black velvet thing cinched at the waist. She had inherited it from her mother. She called it allester. She also called cheese cheech. Her rustic Indian English used to get on my nerves. I didn\u2019t know then she\u2019d pawned her jewelry to put me in the Convent school.<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother was beautiful and carried a scent around her that only someone from an old family could possess. She had many old things; stuff she\u2019d inherited and which were still around, not sold or pawned. That Ulster Coat was one. I wanted it. I wanted my mom\u2019s smell too, and her thick long black hair, her soft belly, her sheer marble-like skin. But I could hardly get near her. And because I couldn\u2019t get near her I foraged among her clothes. I once slyly and hurriedly wore an English lace blouse she used to wear before she became a married woman and put on weight. She used to be slim hipped as a girl, but had boobs. I thought I was old enough to fit into the spaces where her boobs went in.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange feeling: me looking back at her to a time when I didn\u2019t even exist. My soul wrenches when I do that, much like the raw chicken leg you twist and turn and finally wrench free of the carcass. And I am sure my soul will walk out one of these days. I won\u2019t be dead after that. I\u2019ll look at the back of my soul walking away. I\u2019ll feel empty in a place, the way, I assume, an apple feels after it has been cored. And I\u2019ll keep thinking of my mother and how she lived. Always thinking of dying, and wanting it so desperately, but always condemning suicide as the worst sin a soul could commit. Poor thing. She should have gotten rid of her soul instead.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

Rumjhum Biswas<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Rumjhum Biswas<\/span>\u00a0has been published in countries in all the five continents in both online and print journals and anthologies. One of her poems was long listed in the Bridport Poetry Prize 2006 and is also a finalist in the 2010 Aesthetica Creative Arts Contest.\u00a0She\u00a0has won prizes in poetry contests in India. Her poem \u201cMarch\u201d was commended in the Writelinks\u2019 Spring Fever Competition, 2008. Her story -\u201dAhalya\u2019s Valhalla\u201d \u2013 was among Story South\u2019s Million Writers\u2019 notable stories of 2007. Her poem \u201cBones\u201d has been nominated for a 2010 Pushcart by Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.\u00a0 She was a participating poet in the 2008 Prakriti Foundation Poetry Festival in Chennai. She was a featured poet during the Poetry Slam organized jointly by the US Consul General, Chennai and The Prakriti Foundation in December 2009. In December 2010 she was a participating poet at the first Hyderabad Literary Festival organized by Osmania University and Muse India. She is one among ten Indian poets to feature in an exclusive forthcoming anthology edited by Jayant Mahapatra along with Yuyutsu RD Sharma.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0She blogs at: http:\/\/rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com\/<\/span><\/a>, http:\/\/polyphagous.wordpress.com<\/span><\/a> And has a monthly column (Rumjhum’s Ruminations)at Flash Fiction Chronicles -? http:\/\/www.everydayfiction.com\/flashfictionblog\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

We are are taking submissions of short stories every day. For details: click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Soul by Rumjhum Biswas My soul is going to walk out on me one of these days. I\u2019m sure of it. That damn soul is going to walk out of me, and go some place else. It\u2019s going to shrug me off the way we shrug off our rain coats, overcoats and Ulster coats….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[366,273],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychological-stories","category-short-short"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3552,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/3552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}