And we thought...

We thought that certain things like numbers, tangible recognition and accolades matter not. We found great peace and happiness in the passion we poured into Alvibest. It is amazing how pouring out can fill one with such joy and bliss.

But then came along a day when we crossed the 10 subscribers mark. Hmmm
Then the 20 subscribers mark...
For strange historic reasons the 25 subscriber mark was more thrilling than the 24, 26, and 29 subscriber marks.
30 and 40 came and went by unnoticed. Well, not entirely...
And then we crossed the 50 subscriber mark last night, and we were happier than seeing the SENSEX soar. Honestly, a 50 has no significance greater than a 49, but we were simply overjoyed and were busy shooting out mails to friends and telling them about this achievement. And I would call it just that. It really is an achievement. Not for the people involved but for Alvibest. Alvibest's subscription base seems to be entirely filled with people who enjoy English literature and this has been achieved without any publicity per se. By sheer word of mouth from one aficionado to another, Alvibest is where it is.
We are still taking our first few steps and this isn't hubris that laces our joy today. We are humbled by the sheer Force that brought Alvibest to 50 subscribers in about half a year and 3 issues. We doubled in 3 months. So many good things happened in the past few months...

But one thing remains. We love what we are building. We love what is getting built. We love the way it is transforming us...

Do stay with us on this journey...

Me

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How I love your praise
And still yearn for more-
As you smile at me
For wanting to be you.
And my eagerness
To know you from within;
It all began one fine day,
When you lent me your soul-
Just for a day, you said,
You can be me.
As I wore your thoughts
They made a rusty fit;
Your nuances I could feel
And the intricacies of your being.
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Thus I start my day

The Sea by John Banville

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The narrative moves back and forth in time, from the near past to the very distant past as Morden picks on selective threads of memory to ruminate at length, drawing astonishing conclusions at times. He realizes that his parents were mere fixtures in the scene of his growth:

Their unhappiness was one of the constants of my earliest years, a high, unceasing buzz just beyond hearing. I did not hate them. I loved them, probably. Only they were in my way, obscuring my view of the future. In time I would be able to see right through them, my transparent parents.

Oh, Ma, how little I understood you, thinking how little you understood.

Morden, though seemingly well on appearance, suffers from intense internal conflict as he tries to understand, perhaps review, life and its meaning for him.

But then, at what moment, of all our moments, is life not utterly, utterly changed, until the final, most momentous change of all?

As a little boy, that eventful summer in Ballyless, Max develops a strong crush for the alluring Mrs.Grace, but discovers a few weeks later that his love has swiftly shifted from mother to daughter:

Love, as we call it, has a fickle tendency to transfer itself, by a heartless, sidewise shift, from one bright object to a brighter, in the most inappropriate of circumstances.

Morden is supposed to be spending his time in Ballyless coping with loss as well as working on a monograph of the painter Pierre Bonnard. On his reflective journey, Morden draws in segments of Bonnard's life and compares it to his last few months with Anna.
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Bridging heaven and earth

All she had...

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She used to look stunning at sixteen, the age when she married. A broad forehead that in a man would have been called a receding hairline gave her a regal countenance, one that was designed for nethi chutti[1] and red full-moon pottu[2]. She also had large eyes set wide apart, which in her youth must have been twin black and white expressions of inner poetry. In fact, if it is fact, an artist in her husband's family was charmed enough to paint her portrait soon after her wedding. Funny are the testimonies of fact – so much of it is created by deft flourishes of imagination. The selective colouring of a restored past, the exaggerated assumptions of an evolving present.
I could not gather much about the husband. After all, imagination cannot resurrect angles and curves on a barely visible fragment; for that was what he had faded into. She bore three children in quick succession, each birth lining her face with its intimate details. At twenty, she must have been an experienced mother, adept at handling sleep deprivation and childish tantrums.
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[1] Nethi chutti is an ornament that is worn on the hair parting and decorates the forehead.
[2] Pottu is the Tamil word for the vermilion dot that adorns the forehead of Indian women
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Kaustubha Vaatika

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Upon a branch two parakeets lustily grabbed the other's beak and brought their breasts together amidst flaps of wings. As I watched, the redness of their beaks deepened, reflecting the passion in their eyes and all I could do was recall the time when Radha and I sat near the Yamuna one warm noon. I had insisted on lying down on her lap and she hadn’t resisted. She never hesitated to give me what I asked of her. How could she be thus? Always giving and never asking me for anything? How could she be the love I am supposed to embody? And while I lay down on her lap soaking in her ever-present love I rolled my head such that my face sank into the upper recesses of her thigh. Then I realized the depth of her offering to me. Instinctively she covered me with her flowing upper garment and bent towards me. As I watched her face glow and blush, I knew love like I had never known it before. Ayana could never make her respond with the tenderness that our love stoked. Ayana could never make her nostrils flare with the passion of absolute love. Ayana could never make her close her eyes and bite her lower lip till it reddened with passion and the blood of all consuming love. Ayana could merely tend the cows and bring home some food like a good husband. Radha consumed me in her love and Ayana in her complete sense of duty. But I am God, and her love for me was inevitable.
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Writer of the issue: Oscar Wilde

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Wilde maintained that 'to reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim'; yet, traces of his own life and his times always coloured his writing. His words in The Picture of Dorian Gray proved to be very damaging to him as they were used as evidence to incriminate him and sentence him to prison in his later years. His sharpness of wit cleverly concealed his intrusive opinions in his works. Oscar Wilde was not just a writer par excellence, he was also a man who lived life as he chose and paid a hefty price for it.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde – the man with three middle names – was born on 16 October 1854 to exceptionally talented and unconventional Anglo-Irish, Protestant parents: Sir William Wilde, renowned ear and eye surgeon, philanthropist, and a gifted writer and Jane Francesca Elgee, linguist, talented writer and Irish Nationalist. Wilde had a comfortable childhood and he went on to study Classics at Trinity College, Oxford where he won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award for Classics for his poem Ravenna. Wilde's fond memories of a sojourn in Ravenna, Italy are captured touchingly in the eponymous long poem.
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Finality

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Suddenly he got up and rushed to grab a metal pot. “I will get you water from the Sutlej everyday and we can throw it on each other.”
He dropped it with a loud noise and yanked his harmonica from his bag. “I will play all those Rajesh Khanna tunes for you”, and he started blowing into it but his breath caught in his throat.
He rushed out and jumped up and grabbed a few pods of tamarind. He ran in and tripped on the threshold. “These, these tangy stalks I will save for you”, he said as he rubbed his bruised knee. He dropped them and frantically looked around searching for something else to assure her of her safety and comfort, only if she decided to stay longer with him – if she could decide.

Then he jerked his head back and saw something leaning against the door. He kept looking at it for a long time and at length, silently walked towards his sister.

“Don’t worry Shruti, everything will be fine.” He wiped the wet line on her cheek and went out to sit under the shade of the tree.
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Wish I could

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Wish I could be a feather that lands on your lap when you are reading a book – to be touched by you, before you send me drifting back into a cloudy breezy land of dreams…

Wish I could be a vibrant quivering bubble in your vicinity, bringing back to you colours of a long-forgotten rainbow – before I dissolve into the elements again.

Wish I could be your past, which would make you die with longing for me every new day, when you relive me... while your reality passes by... unnoticed.
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Sundara Kandam

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Her eyes did not waver for a second from that blade of grass, which whispered words privy to her trembling eyes, which were shut to all these loud sights and bright noises. They held their gaze even as her tears blurred the blade before drying on her burning cheeks. Not once did she raise them to look at the hideous form now threatening her with death. Her fury and disgust lay restrained between her clenched fists. She sat there like the unwavering flame of a lamp. Her eyes blazed, yes, but her mind suffered with the silent pain of the lamp’s wick.
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Another issue is out of the press...

It is such a dizzy feeling when we watched Alvibest Feb 2006 leave the press. The Editorial Board enjoyed preparing this issue for all the subscribers and more so for their personal sense of satisfaction. It is without exaggerations a note that we were moved to meet the release date that we had scheduled. A lot of effort went into this issue and we hope the subscribers enjoy it. To prospective subscribers: please send a blank mail to subscribe[dot]alvibest[at]gmail[dot]com

We will shortly include snippets from various pieces and invite discussions about the same. Once again, it was a pleasure (which hasn't yet abated) working on this issue.

Subscribers are requested to notify Alvibest about non-receipt of this issue.