This guest post by SHRIMOYEE NANDINI GHOSH is based on two essays about the men and women of Kunan Poshpora, that appeared in the Kashmir Reader dated 1 September 2013, and 13 January 2014.

Beneath the horrors of the mass rape committed by Indian troops in the twin villages that night in February 1991, lies the untold story of systematic torture of men, carried out by the same forces with the precision and deliberation of a planned military operation.
In June 2013, a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, by fifty Srinagar based women, supported by human rights group Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil society (JKCCS) had resulted in a Magisterial order for the further investigations of the mass and gang rape by Indian army personnel of the women of Kunan, and neighbouring hamlet Poshpora, in Kupwara District of North Kashmir on the night of February 23rd-24th 1991. The police, it appears from the lack of any remotely investigative activities in the villages to have done little if anything, by way of following the court order in the last six months. On 14 September, 2013 they asked for and were granted an additional three months time for further investigations, without notice to the survivors who are legally represented in the case.
However, the closure report, which police had failed to file for twenty – two years, and which had been presented before the Magistrate of Kupwara just weeks before the Public Interest Litigation, in March 2013, had yielded several important previously unavailable official documents. These included a hand drawn police map, a nominal roll of 125 army personnel (including several officers) who were admittedly part of the operation and in Kunan-Poshpora that night, statements from victims, witnesses and army men mentioning specific locations, times and incidents, and the official medical reports of some of the rape victims. JKCCS had decided after some deliberation that if the police did not appear to be doing any investigations, they would themselves, aided by the new documents, attempt to rescue from oblivion the events of that night. Over the last three months, they have been engaged in a process of interviewing villagers, explaining to them what the police papers say, seeking clarifications, and attempting to piece together as coherent a narrative as possible given the constraints of resources, the lapses of memory, the reticence of rage, grief and repeated recounting, and the deaths of crucial witnesses. On 24th August 2013, I accompanied a team of human rights lawyers and researchers from JKCCS to the village of Kunan, on one of their visits. I was told that their interviews with those of the women who wished to speak was almost complete, and the day’s planned interviews were mostly with men from the village. Previous conversations, as well as police statements showed that interrogation centres had been set up in the village during the operation, and witnesses referred to extreme and extensive torture of men, but this was not specifically recorded in the First Information Report, and formed no part of the official list of crimes that occurred that night, which consists of rape, house trespass and illegal confinement.
As in the police documents, Kunan Poshpora has become inscribed as a story of rape in Kashmir’s public memory. But something else also happened that night. A crime so commonplace in that age of cordons and crackdowns that even the men who were its victims, barely thought to mention it, attending instead like the rest of us to the outrage of the raped women. As Ahmad Ameen put it, ‘They let us go home after the crackdown, in the morning at about 9 am.’ [Some men were bleeding; others were barely conscious and had to be carried. One man told us he crawled home on all fours].‘That’s when we realised what had happened. What they had done in every house. Then all hell broke lose.’ Several of the men were somewhat laconic when the interviews began. ‘Joh karte hai, wahi kiya’, Rahim Dar said. ‘They did what they do.’ And indeed they had– with wood, water, electricity–those universal implements for the infliction of finely calibrated pain. JKCCS believes on the basis of preliminary conversations that between hundred to a hundred and twenty men from the two villages were tortured that night. A total of twelve men were interviewed during the course of the day I visited, by three teams of researchers. I think it was after the fourth time I heard mention of medical treatments for sexual dysfunction, that the true irony of the ‘emasculation’ metaphors that are so abundant in talk about the Kunan-Poshpora rapes dawned on me. What I often dismiss as misplaced patriarchal indignation had been repeatedly made flesh that night. ‘Oh! Come on’ I want to say aloud, every time I hear or read the words ‘rape’ ‘our women’ and ‘impotency’ in close proximity–‘It’s NOT about you!’, but this time it was. And it involved wires, needles and a portable DC battery.
A kind of unmooring from the realms of human language has characterised the description of the Kunan Poshpora rapes. District Magistrate S.M Yasin’s report speaks of being unable to put down in ‘black and white’ the acts committed by the ‘beasts’ for instance, and the rape survivors themselves talk of the chaos of a toofaan, of foul smelling shaitaans apparating through their black-outs and disassociated states as they lay in the dark . But, as I listened to the men, ranging in age from 90-year-old Lal Dar (68 at the time of the torture) to 40 year old Manzoor (18 in 1991) their torture seemed to bear a somewhat different relationship to language and the world. What happened to them was nailed to a scaffolding of banal bureaucratic and military terms—interrogation, information, identification, search, cordon, crackdown—and tethered to mundane physical objects and familiar places–-buckets, logs and planks of wood, helmets, torchlights, batteries, wood sheds, barns, streams and trees. As the men spoke I began to picture that night, not as an endless orgy of a horde of rampaging beasts, but as a quiet and efficient military operation, carried out by trained men. Four companies of men from the 4th Rajputana Rifles, 68th Mountain Brigade commanded by a Colonel K.S. Dalal, in fact, as the army itself admits in police statements. Alpha and Delta Companies were deployed in the outer cordon, Bravo and Charlie in the search and interrogation. While teams of ten to twenty soldiers, sometimes headed by an officer who they were heard referring to as ‘Sir’, went on a systematic house to house search, rooting men out of their beds, demanding to be taken immediately to militants or hidden weapons, strip searching them and burying them in the snow, their comrades were otherwise engaged. Most of the commissioned officers were deployed at the ‘interrogation centres’ according to the army. Two kuthars (large barn like outbuildings for storing grain, fodder and cattle) within yards of each other, belonging to Asad Dar and the village numberdar (revenue official) Aziz Shah, and Abli Dar’s home, on the main lane of Kunan’s maze of winding alleys, were quickly commandeered and their lofts or rooms converted into make shift ‘interrogation centers’, while their compounds formed a holding space for the men. All three were provided with the same basic equipment – a bench fashioned out of planks of wood, a large wooden log, a bucket of chilli water, a couple of wires connected to a radio battery forming a crude live-circuit, assorted sticks and ropes, a few chairs, and somewhere to suspend the men from–but adaptations were made according to available resources and geography. For instance, in Asad Dar’s yard through which the village stream ran, repeated dunking in its icy depths formed part of the standard procedure. At two of the compounds, Aziz Shah’s and Abli Dar’s where firewood was stored in the wood-shed a bonfire was lit, around which parka-clad soldiers chatted and drank, and villagers recovered from their water treatments. At Asad Dar’s kuthar a tall, fair and somewhat chubby faced officer sat on a chair before a wireless set, giving orders and flashing his torchlight. Downstairs, in all three yards, men squatted or stood in the snow waiting for their possible turns on the equipment. Occasionally when they went up, they saw a neighbour or brother who was before them in line, slumped on the floor at the head of the stairs. Some like Salim Dar, whose brother was a surrendered militant, paid a visit to two of the three centers. He still walks on crutches as a result.
The village of Kunan has changed in twenty-two years. It is no longer ‘the huddle of thatched and wooden houses’ that journalists described in 1991 (‘Indian Villagers Tell of Mass Rape by Soldiers’, The Independent, March 19, 1991). Buildings have been torn down, and rebuilt in brick, cement and tin. The chashma (natural spring) that emerged from the earth behind Aziz Shah’s kuthar has dried up, and only a muddy depression now marks the spot. Ghulam Afzal walked with us around the hamlet amidst squawking chickens and curious children, pointing out the sights– ‘this is where the Abli Dar’s old kuthar stood, that there- is his new house…this is the wood shed in which I hid, this is the nallah along which Naba ran, this used to all be clear ground then…’ For some reason, seeing those buildings brought home to me an intimation of what it was like to be a man from Kunan-Poshpora on that night, in a way even their words hadn’t.
What was it like, I found myself imagining, to be squatting in your own snowy barn yard, drowning in your tin bucket, broken and blubbering on your hard granary floor, blinded by chillies from your own store? And then all the hypotheticals began, as my mind ran on and on. How did it feel I wondered to hear the sounds coming from the village? Yah Khudaiyo! Yah Khudaiyo! Could you hear them over the sounds of the interrogation? Pakistan, Militants, Samaan, Information, Bol Saala! Could you hear them over the groans of your neighbours? Could you hear them over your own yells? Which was worse–to definitely identify the scream of a loved one, or merely contemplate if it was them, through the fog of your insensibility? What was it like to be told you could leave in the morning, to be given painkillers by the army doctor, (Capt. Dr Shyam Sundar accompanied the unit according to his own police statement), to come home and realise what had seemed so far like a recurring nightmare—another crackdown, agonising but vaguely familiar –had been another kind of visitation altogether? And then, to unable to leave or get help for two days, because of the army siege around the village? To have no family or neighbours to turn to, because everyone you knew, was in precisely the same state as you? What kind of courage did it take to be Abdullah the compounder, from neighbouring Trehgam who snuck into the village using the back route through Chopan Mohalla, to deliver what analgesics and first-aid he could knowing it to be hopelessly inadequate? Or most unimaginably of all, to be Abdul Wani. To return from an over night business trip to Srinagar and find your front door broken, your two sons in bed electrocuted, your wife and three daughters raped, and your family’s barn turned into the village torture chamber? How does one live with such knowledge? And having held one’s peace for twenty two years, how does one begin to tell a stranger with a note book, not about what was done to the women, not about what was done to the never to be named teenaged girls, but what was done to you, to your own aging and scarred body, all those many years ago?
That night is full of other kinds of silences, not as innocent but just as tortured. What can one say of Abdul Ghani, the police constable who was related to several families in the village who accompanied the soldiers on their rounds, and signed a ‘No Objection Certificate’ (NOC) the next morning stating that the villagers had no complaints? He appears in many accounts like some kind of will o’ the wisp with a torch light— relaying messages between houses and family members; accompanying one man back to his home to fetch more firewood, allowing him to peep in through the windows and see his wife on the kitchen floor but not to enter; giving water to a woman with a broken spine; getting locked in a cow shed for remonstrating with soldiers; carrying a cousin home on his back in the morning, weeping as he related what he had witnessed. How do we begin to disentangle the betrayal, the subversion, the unlooked for kindness of it all? Constable Abdul Ghani Dar’s statement of what he heard, saw, and did that night, would have formed a crucial part of the prosecution evidence, if the case ever comes to be tried in a court of law. But ‘unidentified gunmen’ murdered Abdul Ghani in his bed in 1993, pumping thirty bullets into his gut, rendering his words hearsay, and obliterating them from the legal record.
Several other critical eyewitnesses have died in twenty two years, including Sharif-ud-din Sheikh who led the fight to get the police report registered and the case heard in the State Human Rights Commission. Some have died as a result of their rape or torture that night, others from age, bullets or disease. By some estimates from villagers, fifteen of the rape survivors have had hysterectomies. Along the way I lost count of the many other surgeries, unsuccessful treatments, chronic aches, intolerable pains and nameless ailments I heard described. One, however stood out. Lal Dar, whose knee was shattered by a rifle-butt early in the proceedings, and who spent most of the night sprawled in the snow outside his home watching the comings and goings of the men, said that he subsequently had two surgeries, the second to remove his knee cap. He said he could not bend his left leg any longer. He finds it hard to pray.

A Meeting in the Park
Impressions and reflections on meeting the survivors of the mass rape at Kunan Poshpora, at the Sher- e-Kashmir Park in Srinagar on Human Rights Day, 2013

It came as a surprise. I don’t think any one, even amongst the organisers of the event at Sher- e Kashmir Park, on December 10th, had expected that women from the two villages would come. It was assumed that the survivors would be represented by members of the Village Committee, elderly men folk from Kunan and Poshpora, themselves survivors of the mass torture that took place on the night of February 23rd-24th, 1991. But the women had come, almost thirty of them. They had arrived in Srinagar by Matador van, leaving their homes in Kunan and Poshpora at seven in the morning, when the frost was still hard on their windows. I had met some of them before, but it was different seeing them here in Srinagar. I couldn’t remember all their names; their biographies had come detached from their faces. Many of them hugged me.
I remembered S. though, one of the more outspoken survivors I had met— her sharp, twinkly eyes behind thick, black rimmed granny glasses, her wide smile full of crooked teeth, in a face wrinkled and brown like a walnut. We had met at Kunan, in August 2013, when I accompanied a legal research team, from Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) who was representing them in their recently renewed litigation against the Indian army. She had spoken fiercely about the injustice of it all; the many outrages that she read about everyday in the papers, her desire to see such criminals behind bars for life. Her anger was loud and visceral. But when it came to the actual events of that night, she had refused to answer any questions. She had a terrible headache, she said. She could not wait, she had blood pressure, she was dizzy—she had to leave, she always felt like this when she thought of that night, she would not talk to us anymore. It was the only interview that had to be abandoned half way. Today, she was complaining about the long journey, ‘bumping-bumping-bumping all the way.’ ‘We should have come by Sumo’, she grumbled. But, it seemed to me that despite this, she couldn’t quite mask her delight at being out in the sunshine. In the open, amidst the falling leaves, outside the shadows of their men folk, their kitchens, their village, the women grew garrulous. S. told me of her daughters, one married to a doctor, the other working at the Social Welfare Department. At one point, Gul Fatima, from the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, wife to a disappeared man, came over to the group of Kunan Poshpora’s women. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked them. ‘From Kupwara’ S. replied, naming the district. Then, a shadow seemed to cross her face. ‘Kunan – Poshpora’ she said. We’re here from Kunan Poshpora.’
Many of the women from Kunan Poshpora, did not wish to be photographed. The cameras made them uneasy. Some of their children, and grand children they said, did not know their stories. They huddled together and covered their faces with scarves, but the photographers persisted. It felt undignified– cringing behind shawls, cowering under ‘We Demand Justice for Kunan Poshpora’ posters, being asked to join the circle and sit in the appropriate place like an errant schoolgirl, when one had wandered away to avoid the cameras. In 2004, Manipuri women activists protesting the rape and killing of Thangjam Manorama had shocked us by their dramatic inversion of the figure of the cowering and shamed raped woman. Stark naked, they had stood in front of the Assam Rifles Base at Imphal, holding a banner that read ‘Indian Army Rape Us’. The photograph had made headlines across the world. I thought of it as I pleaded with a particularly intrusive photographer on behalf of the women to ‘please respect their privacy’. At this, he turned around and asked me, ‘Why have they been asked to come here, then?’ .I didn’t really have a good answer. It is true. We do need them. We want to have their pictures. We want to put faces to their tragedies, to commemorate their losses and violations. We need them to remind us that we remember, that we have not lost the battle against forgetting yet.
After I got home, the women of Kunan Poshpora, and their attitude to the news-cameras, made me think of a question. Would the agitations against the Shopian rapes in 2009, have been so angry, so volatile, so strong, if Asiya and Neelofar had lived? If they had survived, would we have heard of them at all? And if we had, what particular stories would we hear? Perhaps their rapes would have been covered up, as so many have been in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora, in the name of marriages, families, reputations, futures, for the sake of preserving innocence. A raped dead body makes for an uncomplicated heroine– worthy of both victimhood, and martyrdom. But a living rape survivor is a different being altogether. Her speech and her silences are more fraught. The women of Kunan Poshpora have been voices, not victims through these twenty three years. They have spoken back to the forces of occupation, before media crews, independent fact finders, the police, the state human rights commission and the courts of law. But, they constantly remind us– by covering up before our cameras, by getting dizzy, by blanking out, by her reticence before our questions, that we are all incriminated in her secret yet public shame.

https://kafila.online/2014/01/20/kunan-poshpora-the-other-story-shrimoyee-nandini-ghosh/

11/1/2022
After being accused of squirreling away money last night, today I took out $400 out of my checking account and deposited it in our joint account. I also changed my direct deposit to put $100 into my account and the balance into our joint account. This left me with $60 to my sole name. I told my wife what I did. When she got home she didn't say anything. I had already cooked supper (in the oven) by the time they made it inside. When ochild asked what we were having and I told him (made from scratch chicken pot pie) he said he didn't like it and my wife said to him “I feel your pain.” It hurt. I cannot help but think what would have been had I said something similar to what she cooked (if she ever cooks again.) Children fell asleep shortly after supper. Wife spent the evening on her computer and phone (tik tok) while I did 2 loads of laundry right in front of her. She eventually left to go take a bath. It really doesn't feel very good to be completely unappreciated.
11/5/2022
Today we decided to clean the house.My wife spent literally the entire day cleaning ochilds room and didn't even finish because we went and unexpectedly visited my cousin. In the same amount of time. I cleaned the living room including the walls and vacuumed, swept and mopped the kitchen, hallways, doorway,and bathroom. Cleaned the bathroom and toilet, cleaned the washedryer area (absolutely disgusting) and cooked supper. While doing all of this my wife said something along the lines of it takes her so long because she deep cleans, implying I only superficially clean. I would rather have a superficially clean looking house than an obviously trashy, cluttered, disgusting house because she never has time to deep clean. I tried to put the kids to bed at 10:30 and they fought and argued. I eventually got them down but my wife was saying that they are allowed to stay up late on the weekends. Ridiculous that 10:30 is too early to put the kids to bed on a weekend.
11/6/2022
I woke up this morning after the time change and thought we were already late for church so I decided to make banana bread. Turns out I forgot about the time change and I had to stay home to make sure it didn't burn. After my wife got back home we decided to continue cleaning the house. My wife once again spent the rest of the day cleaning ochilds room. While I did the dishes and then completely cleaned the fronts of all the cabinets (disgusting caked on things) and cleaned inside out the fridge. I also did 4 loads of laundry later in front of the kids watching a movie and my wife while she was working on her computer. Wife actually said thank you for helping. Wasn't wanting a thank you. I just want her to stop saying I never help.
11/7/2022
After all the cleaning this weekend I woke up to a busy wife. She eventually got upset because I did the dishes but didn't wash her coffee cup that was sitting in the middle of the cluttered table where she put it and not in the sink. After work we ate at Sonic on the way to scouts. I made the kids go to bed at a decent hour but they refused to stay in bed. I eventually went to bed a little early and heard the kids bother their mother. I have no authority to make them go to bed because I cannot overrule their mommy like she can me.
11/8/2022
I tried to wake the kids up. I was not mean. Ochild kept crying that he wanted his mom to come wake him up. I told him she was busy but he insisted. She came in while i was dressing ychild. She got hm dressed and he went back to sleep while I brushed ychilds teeth and combed her hair. I caught ochild back in bed and told him to go brush his teeth. He got mad and started stomping his feet and slamming doors on his way to the bathroom. My wife,as usual,asked me what I had done. She just assumes that I piss off the kids on purpose, not that their lack of discipline is responsible for their poor behavior when I have done nothing wrong.
11/10/2022
Day started off not too terrible. My wife and kids came home a little late because they stopped at Walmart on the way home. The kids came in carrying sonic ice cream and “I mentioned oh nothing for me?” Wife looked annoyed that I said that and I said I was surprised she did that right before supper because now they aren't going to be hungry. We had leftovers a little while later when ychild said she was hungry, so I let her choose what dish she wanted to eat. She chose chicken enchilada casserole. I made it for her and let her sit on the couch while I made mine. When I came into the living room she was sitting next to my wife with the bowl on the couch and her phone on her lap. We have a rule that the bowl must be in her lap to reduce messiness because she is inattentive. I made her put her phone next to her and eat her food from the bowl in her lap. She started crying (I wasn't being mean) and I could tell my wife was getting annoyed because I made her cry (she hears crying all day long and doesn't want to hear it when she gets home.) She continued to cry and the wife went to the bathroom. I kept trying to convince her to eat and she was being difficult and wouldn't talk to me barely. I discovered that she didn't want to eat the green chiles so I moved them to the side of the bowl so she could eat the rest. She started screaming that she wanted mommy to do it. I told her mommy was in the bathroom and asked her again why she didn't want to eat. I eventually told her that if she didn't eat I was going to clean off a section of the table and she would eat in the kitchen with me. She still wouldn't stop crying or eat and I took her to the kitchen. The wife eventually came out of the bathroom and asked what all the commotion was and why was I getting on to ychild. When she saw her mother come into the kitchen she fell backwards out of the chair and hit the floor. The wife started berating me that ychild would not eat so long as she is crying and kept talking down to me about trying to take care of the situation. She said I shouldn’t have kept talking to her and just let her cry. Once again she has countermanded me in front of the children. I believe this is why ychild started crying so that mommy would get onto daddy and she would her her way. I eventually left the room because I couldn't stand her about me like that. Eventually they make it back into the living room. A few minutes later I noticed the dog was eating the food leftover from her bowl. I asked how she ate and my wife answered more than half and was upset that I asked. About 30 minutes later ychild said she was hungry again and my wife made her spaghettios. I dont think this is a good lesson to teach ychild. That she can just cry to get her way and then later eat whatever she wants.
11/11/2022
Today is veterans day and I had the day off work. I woke up to help get the kids ready. My wife said she was surprised I was up. I felt I had to because in the past she would always complain if on a day off I slept in. I heard her complain that her clothes were always put in a pile and were wrinkled. I stopped putting up her laundry a long time ago. I am still the only one that puts up laundry 9 out of 10 times. This is just proof of the pudding that she doesn't even put up her own laundry let alone help out with the household laundry. This is after watching me put up 4 loads of laundry in front of her the previous weekend. After she got home from work she asked me what I had done all day. This is something she used to do all the time when she worked a 9-5 job and I worked 4-10s having an extra day off a week. She used to demand that I spent my extra day cleaning the house and doing chores. This is despite the fact that we both still worked 40 hours a week, mine was just convenient in that I had more consecutive time off. She used to always say that if she had that much time off the house would be spotless. Then when she got layed off or got the summer off once she became a teacher nothing would be done, much less housework.
11/12/22
My wife spent all morning taking a test for school and then went and spent the day volunteering for a local church woman to sit with her while her husband was gone due to her just having had given birth. I had the kids all day to myself with minimal fussing and did the dishes and cooked supper. They started to fuss once she came back home. yChild began to uncontrollably cry and scream over some issue after I went to bed. I have learned from experience not to try and parent at night when my wife is in control from the number of times I've been snapped at that she is taking care of it, so I stayed in bed. She ended up calling her sister to deal with her and I heard her ask where I was and my wife gave her a sarcastic response about me being in bed. She later got the kids in bed with much fussing and came home back into the bedroom to change and bitched me out for not coming in there to help. It's another case of damned if you do and damned if you don't.
11/13
My wife spent the morning again taking a test. I got the kids up and dressed and fed. She then came home from the test, ate lunch, and headed back to her school at around 11:30. Ychild wanted to go with her. I spent all day with my son watching our favorite anime. It was a fun day. I also did 3 loads of laundry and cooked supper for us. My wife and ychild did not get home till 11:00 pm and ychild has surgery tomorrow.
11/14
Ychild’s surgery went well. No issues other than a lethargic child.
11/15
ychild refuses to take her pain medicine from the surgery. My wife suggested she take the medicine with her and get her to take it while waiting for school to start. ychild ended up staying in my wifes classroom all day sleeping and developed a rash where the tube was put in. I stayed a little later than I normally would and got home around 4:45. My wife was already home and I walked into the kitchen and saw that the dishes were done. I had told my wife I would do them later today. I talked to her and asked her how long she had been home to already have done the dishes cause she usually gets home after 5. She told me it only took 15 minutes to do the dishes and she didn't understand why it takes me hours(it doesn't take me that long.). I then realized that what I thought was a nice gesture was just another way for her to put me down. Later she started telling me about ychild’s day and started to talk about how she should have stayed home. She started to berate me for not taking the day off and staying with her. I told her we had talked about it but had decided to try for school anyway. I guess I am supposed to overrule her, that will never happen, or volunteer to stay instead of having a healthy discussion and decision, she just blames me for everything that ends up not going the way she decides.
11/16/22
I worked from home today to stay with ychild.
11/23/22
It's my birthday today. Heard from some family and friends. Arrived at inlaws house for Thanksgiving. I decided to, without being asked, help trim trees and clean up the pasture. Mil and fil praised me in front of my wife, that wasn't my intention.
11/24/22
Thanksgiving day. My wife has made several comments today about me sitting around not doing anything. It has rained the whole day and there is literally nothing for me to do. We were watching McClintock today. It came to the end where John Wayne spanked his wife and my wife asked if they really did that back then. I commented probably not they most likely did a lot worse, she made a comment about being sure because I lived back then. Once again I forgot to just keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself.
11/26/22
It's official. One year without sex. Today we drive back home from the in-laws. Today has been a constant barrage of bs from my wife. Fortunately my in-laws heard some of it. My SIL told me she was sorry.
Next Entry Dec 2022

What are your recommendations for best prepared dishes available from The Butchery (Bells Corners) and Farm Boy (Barrhaven)?
ETA: there seems to be general consensus against Farm Boy, although some people cited a few gems. In the end, my family tried The Butchery (ribs, bean salad, pasta salad, chicken cordon bleu, cannelloni)—and it’s all delicious. Will aim to try Farm Boy soups, burgers and the edamame kale dip one day (along with Vera’s burgers). Many thanks!

I took the time to find Pioneer Woman's recipe, tripled the measurements and compared to Lush. My God.
10 lbs of chicken vs. 4.5 lbs (could it have been more pulverized?); 4 cups heavy cream vs. 1 1/2 cups; 15 oz frozen corn vs. 30 oz; 1 tbsp cumin vs. 2 tbsp; 4 tsp kosher salt vs. 3 tsp.
Curry powder as a substitute for coriander, really? I'm no chef nor big curry fan so that's probably the last thing I'd use in chili. Also, it looks like there's a difference between Masa Harina (cooked & soaked in lime water) and the Masarica she used (instant corn flour). Anyone?

Tour

A woman has a business driving tour busses through an old people's quarter. The tour is mandatory for all persons reaching the age of forty-five.
The bus is clean, air-conditioned; the seats are upholstered and every seat is always filled. It passes through a ten mile strip of shopping malls before turning into a maze of side streets. Here old people are housed in crowded trailers.
The tour guide speaks to her passengers through a headset. Her voice is stern, matter-of-fact. When she's not speaking, a subdued version of Beethoven's Fifth kicks in.
She points out the sights. This man here, she says, indicating a man staring out a window, once wrote a seven-hundred-and-fifty-page book. And this woman, the one sitting backwards in her rocker, once had a life filled with children and love. This one, she says, indicating a tiny woman in a wheelchair, was called The Woman Who Spreads Her Legs. On motel beds, standing before fireplaces, any time attention was given. In her day she made it a point to select complicated video games for her children so she'd be free of them for a while. The children attacking the games like professional technicians. Where are they now? Never forget, she tells her passengers. This is what some of us come to ...
Not every passenger takes pictures. Some record their impressions on hand-held recorders; some give running commentary on their cells; some wear sunglasses and refuse a window seat; some drop acid and attempt to describe their visions; some take refuge in sleeping pills; some hide small dogs in their jackets though this is not allowed; some sit wide-eyed in the front rows; some lie drunk in the back ...
During my tour I cracked quotes to the comatose. I said, "On the bottom of the sky is a man standing on earth, flapping his arms." I said, "Seven billion years before my birth I was an Iris." I said, "You're all assholes—God love ya!"

Message from the Milkman

Since the milkman handles your account we will not be calling upon you to speak before the Assembly. If the Assembly was once interested in what you had to say, this is no longer the case. Your petition for a new mindset has been declined. The Assembly has decided that Loafing, your brand of illuminated living, as you call it—of Buddhist-envy married to brash Western temperaments—is not a feasible mindset for the twenty-first century. The twenty-first century will be dominated, like all the other centuries, by a mindset of doom.
Furthermore, the milkman has filed his report and it is not favourable. You have been pink-slipped as a cultural entrepreneur. The milkman knows all your vices and your needs and will be able to give us an up-to-the-minute accounting of your condition on your behalf. Not that it will be of any help to you. As far as the Assembly is concerned you are a shut book. Do not consider an appeal. Your personal example of illuminated living has tipped the scales against you.
The milkman believes he understands your condition better than anyone and is naturally concerned at your declining milk consumption. He is also concerned about the pile of vomit that has been appearing on your doorstep each and every morning of late. He fails to understand the message contained therein. About the quarrelsome bull tethered to the side of your house, the milkman has lost all patience.

The Expedition

Decked out in khaki shorts and pith helmets and carrying butterfly nets, they have mounted an expedition. They are curious: Where do all the lost minds go? Lost minds, they believe, are like butterflies disconnected from flowers.
Marching behind a flag that says Reunion, the expedition heads towards the local dump and the mountain there of kitchen sinks, TV sets, wet mattresses, and car parts. They expect to find lost minds blowing about the garbage—broken bits of memory, the odd disintegrating word.
En route, they pass an insane asylum. Behind barred windows black eyes stare at them from the mindless skulls of inmates. The expedition leader waves, calling, "Hold on! Won't be long now!"
The mouths of the inmates open. "Mama," they cry.

Happy Birthday

For George Bowering

I had a baby but it refused me, was not interested in nursing, made no demands. I put it in a closet, in its carrying cot, and when I went to get it, it was gone. The baby was a girl. Briefly, I was upset, panicked, ran looking for help, someone to report to. Ultimately it was to my sister-in-law. She'd moved the baby to another cupboard. "I need that cupboard for towels," she said. It was her cupboard, her towels. Soon after I left my sister-in-law's house. Put the baby into the back seat of the station wagon. Even though the baby still made no demands, I worried she might be hungry and stopped to nurse. She turned her head away. Clearly we were not bonding though I had tried. At home my husband said, "It's hormones, or you're a klutz, or who knows?" Then he lit my right nipple. My right nipple was a candle wick. In fact, I had five nipples located down my right front like a dog's. My husband lit all five. "Got to celebrate something," he said. But what? Then I remembered. Your birthday! Now I am back in the station wagon driving around with five burning nipples, your Happy Birthday song still sweet on my lips, and a baby who won't give me the time of day. But here's the thing: because of those nipples you get to make one birthday wish.

Thanks to George Inkwell

I have a conversation with George Inkwell, the famous breast historian. The occasion is a reception in his honour.
George Inkwell is tall, cadaverous-looking, and has a prominent nose. During our conversation he leans forward and strokes my breasts, all the while lamenting, "It's a shame the breast has become so hidden during this age. We've had thousands of years of civilized breasts nourishing the species in all and every manner, and now the practice is to hide them away. Breasts should be served on a plate and celebrated."
He sighs. It's difficult for him to properly stroke my breasts because, as usual, they're encased—first in a sheath of elastic, then in layers of cotton and wool. To please George Inkwell, I unbind them and arrange them on a dinner plate that also acts as a tray for my glass of wine. Soon other women do the same thing—breasts of all sizes are served up for George Inkwell's historic appreciation.
He roams the reception room gawking and smiling ...
Thanks to George Inkwell I've discovered my life's work. I will become a pioneer—a penis historian. Even though I am small, anonymous-looking, and unlikely to command attention—which incidentally is the description of many pioneers—I will visit public gatherings with my bullhorn and holler, "You men might like to untangle your penises from the bowels of your boxers!"
I may be carted away as a maniac, but I won't be deterred. Following George Inkwell's lead, I will compile a scholarly work on my subject. Eventually there will be acclaim and parties in my honour.
"Penises could do with some fresh air after all the centuries they've been hidden away like worms!" I'll tell my audiences jovially. At which point penises of all sizes will swing free through trouser fronts. Penis Flopping will become the fashion craze that culminates my life's work and ...
Women and children, dogs and forgotten grannies, will roam the streets of our cities gawking and smiling ...

The Poet's Wife

The poet's wife is a saintly person. To keep body and soul together—to allow the poet to write his scintillating poems— she gives piano lessons to hemophiliacs. They love her instruction because she allows them to dispense with the pounding, fortissimo movements, allows them to brush the keys ever so slightly. And what results is a delicate, whispery music, bloodless, divine.

Inside the Bus Station

There was a slaughterhouse inside the bus station. Waiting for my bus I watched a group of children playing tag amongst the hung carcasses, running with meat cleavers in their hands, slipping in the blood, and laughing. When a small girl flung a chicken at a boy's head, knocking him to the ground, I rushed over. "Go play somewhere else," I yelled. Eighty-five chickens a minute were having their throats slashed by a mechanical arm, each chicken hanging from hooks that whizzed past the seated people waiting for the bus. "Go find something else to do," I told the children, parting the line of chickens like a bloody curtain to reveal the splendid cityscape that the bus would soon take us through ...

Our Hero

Mooly Banks, that woman over there in the white apron, is our hero. She's the one who climbs the cliff each morning to the very top. Climbs over craggy rock with her baby strapped to her chest. From down here we watch through binoculars as she picks her way over the mouths, noses, and foreheads of our ancestors, the men and women whose likenesses are carved into the cliff side. No one except Mooly Banks ever reaches the top, or even tries, because the top is miles up there. We know she's finally reached her destination when the sky starts to lower towards us. This is because Mooly Banks has grabbed the thick rope that dangles between the stars and is pulling and pulling on it. When she pulls the rope the cliff descends too, eventually to flatten out like squished clay. Soon enough we can look at the faces of our ancestors up close like they were intricately designed paving stones. Tracing our hands over their softened features gives us pleasure and is more intimate than gazing at them from afar.

-- M.A.C. Farrant. Collected in The Breakdown so Far (Talonbooks, 2007). Previously: Twenty Stories