"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
First, a word about Kiklos. A variant spelling of Greek word Kyklos meaning cycle or circle, it is, in the present context – to quote Nevil Coghill, President, The Poetry Society, which first published the Gavin Bantock poem in question, namely Ichor – the‘circle-city of person itself.’
This My Body Is Kiklos – a quote from Ichor – retraces Parminder Singh’s journey into the dim and distant past, another inwards. In the course of his journey, he encounters the girl he broke faith with; the wife he couldn’t quite convince of his love; the aged parents he let down; violent death meted out to his cousins in the aftermath of the assassination of the Prime Minister by two Sikh bodyguards.
Parminder’s is a journey in quest of the songbird where it nests in a stilled heart.
Kuldip Singh
Kuldip Singh (b. 1938) is a former teacher of physiology. His poems have appeared in magazines and literary journals including the Poetry Review (Vol 69, No 3, March 1980). He has also published short stories in a number of magazines. At the request of a writer friend, he translated Weekend, a Nirmal Verma short story, which was published in The Illustrated Weekly of India. He then turned to doing more of his stories. Soon he got to translating some of the other Hindi and Punjabi short story writers. Deliverance, included in The Crows of Deliverance, first appeared in Bahuvachan (Ed: Krishna Baldev Vaid, J. Swaminathan, and Ashok Vajpeyi, 1988), then in Tradition, Modernity & Svaraj (Ed: K.J. Shah, Amrit Srinivasan, 1990). The Gossamer, another short story from it, was republished in London Magazine (October/November, 1990). Kaya, the first chapter of The Red Tin Roof by Nirmal Verma, was first published in Temenos 11 (London, 1990). Stories from India, an earlier collection brought out by Sterling Publishers (Ed: Khushwant Singh, Qurratulain Hyder, 1974) carried Nirmal Verma’s Weekend, also Gurdial Singh’s The Widow, a Punjabi short story. Preface: An Intervention, an excerpt from Dastan-e-Lapata, a critically acclaimed novel by Manzoor Ahtesham was first published in Living Literature (Ed: Barbara Lotz, Vishnu Khare, 1998). Hour of Father, Hour of Death, by Gagan Gill, first appeared in Hindi: Language, Discourse, Writing (Ed: Ashok Vajpeyi, Rustam Singh, and Suman Arora, 2001) and subsequently in South Asian Ensemble (Ed: Gurdev Chauhan, Rajesh Sharma, 2013). Novels (Translations) 1. An Island of Sal by Shaani, National Publishing House, Delhi, 1981.
