The Equator Line Magazine - October - December 2016

In this issue

A RIVER’S NAME

A robust young man bathing in the river is swept away by the tides. Such an incident anywhere in peninsular India is forgotten even before the rains are over. But the old woman remembers the loss of her man to the river decades later:
It happened years ago, in the month of Midhunam. Father had gone to bathe in the overflowing river at the peak of the monsoon fury. Amma had warned him many times, but to no avail. He had only smiled and said that he had known the river like the back of his hand since childhood. The river, even when in spate, could not trick him.
But it did. The boatmen said that the river was sharp, flowing with a rare rage that day. Father’s friends swam to the bank and escaped. But the river snatched Father from us. Only days later did the bloated body float out on the beach.
In the distant voice of the narrator, the man’s son, the tragedy comes alive in all its poignancy and atmosphere. The fatedness of coastal life has rarely been portrayed with such finesse. A leading writer in Malayalam, Sethu’s mastery in drawing a slice of life with a whole lot of cultural nuances is evident in ‘Her Corner of Earth,’ included in his latest collection of short fiction, A Guest for Arundhathi and Other Stories. The river here is like a capricious, vengeful goddess, snatching away not just a man, but a woman’s happiness as well.

The Equator Line Magazine Description:

The Equator Line is to India what The New Yorker is to America, Cicero to Germany and Granta to England: cerebral, incisive and entertaining as well. TEL revives an old tradition of journalism which combines new writing with a close account of the fresh developments in areas like business, culture, cinema and lifestyle.
The great periodicals of the past threw up new writers and triggered fresh debates about many issues. With the advent of 24x7 television periodicals lost their predominant position in intellectual discourse, in benchmarking our culture. A ‘breaking-news’ fever swept through India. The beauty of good writing was no longer recommendation enough. Newspapers carried more pictures and less copy. News magazines readjusted themselves to the television era with a new snappy, sharp look. And in the deluge of visual news the sensitive, sharp, upwardly mobile man seemed lost. Nothing was put into perspective for him. Nothing really tested his intelligence. The delight of surveying an altogether new horizon across the serried lines of good prose was missing!
The Equator Line is a journey to rediscover the glory of the written word. Promoted by Palimpsest Publishing House, the monthly magazine offers a brilliant spread – clinical analysis of trends, new fiction, deep examination of political events, latest in diplomacy, spirituality, diaspora, the remote and exotic captured through a sensitive camera, news from the world of books, all that and much more. When repetitive surface news grates on your nerves The Equator Line takes you on a trip to the land of good writing with an impressive line-up of well-known writers.
Waiting for your flight at the airport or in a hotel room in an unfamiliar city, the latest issue of TEL will help you rediscover your world in a new light.