Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Sudha Balagopal. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Sudha Balagopal. Sort by date Show all posts

Saturday, 14 June 2025

'Tongue' by Sudha Balagopal

Father's tongue falls out of his mouth during Sunday dinner. One moment he is spewing a hail-storm of hateful, hurtful words, next moment, the muscle lands from his mouth onto a half-eaten bun.
 
Mother crushes the napkin in her fists, quakes in her chair. My fork and knife clang-clatter onto the tiled floor.

Father's vast, toothy mouth drops wide open, revealing bits of food stuck in his molars. He lunges after the slimy pink organ with his meaty fingers, scattering the bread and tipping the soup tureen. The quick tongue, moist with a coating of spittle, slip-slithers away from him.

Father is particular about taking care of his sinful tongue. He scrapes the three-inch length with a stainless steel, U-shaped tongue cleaner every morning and every night, over and over. He has grated, and grated, and flattened his taste buds. Now, he cannot taste the tomato sauce in a lasagna or the brown sugar mother adds to the apple pie.

Today, he screamed at Mother for her muddy soup, for the chalky bread, for the salt-less vegetables. His tongue, that soft body part, hit her harder than a baseball bat.

She's learned to tuck the injuries under a soft voice, inside her soundless movements, behind her lowered gaze.

Father swings across the table making guttural sounds, gasping, grasping for his tongue which has flipped upside down in the oven-roasted vegetables. Faint blue lines mark the organ, veins maybe.

The muscle leaps onto Mother's plate. In two breaths, she places the tines of her fork on Father's tongue, holds her knife poised over the flesh.

He waves his arms up and down, up and down, stamps his feet, thud-thud-thud.

Mother pins her gaze on him. It's as steady as her fork on his passive tongue.

 

First published in Stanchion Zine, October, 2022. 

Sudha Balagopal work appears or is forthcoming in Banshee, Doric Literary and Fictive Dream among other journals. Her novella-in-flash, Nose Ornaments, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction, UK, in 2024. She has had stories included in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top50.

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Saturday, 15 June 2024

'November, 1971' by Sudha Balagopal

In the evening, Kaku pasts thick-brown paper on grimy windows to prepare for blackout. He switches off all lights because, “Airplanes can't drop bombs when they can't see houses.” Outside, the moon looks ghostly. Streetlamps don't come on and we eat by candlelight.

When air-raid sirens blast, I scream, dropping rice on the floor. Kaku hugs me, says “They're only practicing.” His tight smile worries me.

My parents sent me from Dhaka to Calcutta so I'd be safer with Kaku. They promised to join me later. I write a long letter to Ma and Baba in the dim light, ask Kaku if we can mail it. He tells me,  “The post office is slow these days.” I slide the envelope under my pillow imagine my parents reading my words on our verandah, surrounded by sweet-smelling roses.   

In the morning, Kaku says I must go to school to keep things, “normal.”

At this school Sister Flavian doesn't read from Robinson Crusoe. A voice inside my head shouts, “Danger, danger!” when she teaches us to shelter under desks. The girls slam desk-lids shut, slide squeaky chairs against tiles before folding themselves into tiny spaces. Sister reminds everyone to adjust their skirts. I freeze.

Sister marches me to the principal's office for being “recalcitrant.” I receive a knuckle-rap after which the principal places me in detention. The room has three desks, one dangling bulb, no windows. When a siren pierces, my heart flaps the way our Pupul flaps inside his cage when I pop a balloon. No one assures me this siren is for practice. I lay my head on the desk, imagine I'm on our verandah smelling roses. After the bell rings, the principal opens the door, says, “You can go home now. “

I wish-wish-wish I could. 

 

 

Sudha Balagopal's writing appears in CRAFT, swamp pink and Vast Chasm among other journals. Her novella-in-flash, Things I Can't Tell Amma, was published by Ad Hoc fiction in 2021. Most recently, her novella in flash, Nose Ornaments was runner up in the Bath contest. She has had stories included in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top 50.

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Saturday, 13 June 2026

'Lost Connection' by Sudha Balagopal

When Mother calls, Sonia itches to extricate from the repeated grievances: lazy nurse-attendant, unsympathetic doctor, thieving pharmacist, yet listens, therapist-like, although she, too, has problems she can't share―husband unemployed, leaky roof―because Mother'll remind her she could've married Jay, her choice, until Sonia's daughter interrupts and Mother calls the child disrespectful, demanding, at which Sonia grits her teeth, hangs up, only to berate herself: Mother's starved, memories her sole company, once-agile body gone, the inevitable looming, so hand over heart where aggravation and love tussle, she calls back, says cell phones are unreliable, somewhere, somehow, they lost their connection. 


Sudha Balagopal has had two novellas-in-flash published by Ad Hoc Fiction, UK: Nose Ornaments and Things I Can't Tell Amma. Most recently, her collection, Family Matters, won the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award. Her stories have been included in Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions.

 

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Sunday, 14 June 2026

2026 FlashFlood: The Complete List

In case you missed any of the pieces we appeared during the 2026 FlashFlood, here's an index to everything.  Sadly, the 'Blog Archive' sidebar list maxes out at 100 titles per day, so use this as your guide to the complete 2026 Flood....

Happy Reading!

 

2026 FlashFlood

 

 

 

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Friday, 13 December 2024

Congratulations to our 2024 Award Nominees!

Huge congratulations to FlashFlood's 2024 nominees for the following awards.  We wish them well in the selection process!

 

Best of the Net

Best Microfiction

Best Small Fictions

 Pushcart Prize

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Saturday, 6 June 2020

'The Prospective or What I Tell the Man in the Cafe' by Sudha Balagopal

My parents sent me to the movie theater with a man they found in the matrimonial columns of a Bombay newspaper.

They made concessions for this prospective from America. I went out with a man, alone, for the first time, at twenty-one.

My eyebrows stung—they'd been threaded and shaped into perfect crescents. The crimson on my nails and lips felt vulgar. I wanted to pull out the pins in my French braid, let my hair loose.

They told me he was a romantic, a Bollywood aficionado. Perfect for someone like me who read  Austen.

*

You ask to meet with me and you stare at your potato chips as if you don't recall 1989. The bag of chips has spilt its contents on the cafe table and over the check. Your hair is gray and the glasses outsize, your shirt's cuff folded to the elbow. You still wear a gold wristwatch.

*

Inside the movie hall, The Prospective snacked from a theater-sized sack of red chile flavored potato wafers―which I declined―his bony shoulder a jostle away, his elbow solidly on the armrest between us as we watched trailers for yet-to-be released movies and product advertisements.

A condom ad appeared on-screen.

I studied the glint of his wristwatch, counted the shiny buttons embedded on the seams
of his jeans, observed his sneakers―ghostly gray in the theater's light―while an actress sang, “Two children is enough.”

*

At the end of the feature film, the hired car that brought us to the theater took us back.

Questions thrummed in my head.    

The Prospective, in a post-celluloid trance, asked to be dropped off before me. “It's the jetlag,” he said.

When I got home, I thanked the driver, offered him a tip.

“The girl yesterday wasn't as polite or as generous,” he said.

*

You ask to meet with me and you pulverize the chips with your fingers.

*

My family pounced on the phone, they shed tears and laughed. The Prospective's parents said he'd agreed to marry me before he returned to America.

“Why would someone eight years older choose me,” I asked my parents. “What criteria did he use?

Shouldn't he have asked me what I wanted? I don't know what I want, how could anyone else?”

They said,”You ask too many questions.” They made wedding arrangements.

Six days later The Prospective's parents called to say he'd locked eyes with this girl on a bus, “in true Bollywood style.” He married bus-girl on our wedding date.

*

You ask to meet with me. Yes, my son's twenty-two, in college, and your daughter's a high-maintenance twenty-eight with a four-year-old child.  You fold and unfold the check, leave greasy marks on the paper. What did you think I'll say?


---
'The Prospective or What I Tell the Man in the Cafe' was first published in X-r-a-y Literary Magazine, February 12, 2020.
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Saturday, 26 June 2021

'A Hundred Years of Promises: 1900 - 2000' by Sudha Balagopal

My great-grandmother, born at the turn of the century in British India, is wedded at twelve to a man from faraway lands in exchange for two cows. Reviled by her in-laws for bearing five daughters, she's helpless—unable to read, write, or contact home. It'll be different for my girls, she vows.

At sixteen, my grandmother's hand is given in marriage to a catch—a man employed in the big city. She's blessed with female children, a philandering husband, and little money to call her own. It'll be different for my girls, she vows.

My mother finishes school, elopes with a smooth-talker, ends up emigrating to the States. She has one child, a daughter, divorces my abusive father, supports herself as an office drudge. It'll be different for my girl, she vows.

I go to college, break many rules, marry outside my race, study law and enter politics. It's not for women, my mother warns. I'll make it different for my girl, I vow.

Despite tireless door-to-door campaigning, national television appearances and ardent supporters, I lose my bid for high office. My daughter's hope for women is shattered. It'll be different, I vow. Some day.

 

---

First published in Bangor Literary on May 29, 2020.

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Saturday, 24 June 2023

'Penance and Philanthropy' by Sudha Balagopal

A boy is born.

A boy is born after six years of prayers. A boy is born after six years of penance. A boy is born after six years of  pilgrimages to holy ashrams from the summit of the Himalayas to the shores of Kanya Kumari.

A boy is born after six years of philanthropy that emptied the savings account. A boy is born after desperate offerings of coconuts and flowers at temples. A boy is born after contributions to charities in cash and kind.

A boy is born after six years so he must receive a new toy every day, he must wear pure silk and fine linen, he must be fed the choicest of sweets and delicacies, he must be cuddled and coddled and cossetted.

A boy is born after six years so he should never hear a harsh word, never be disciplined, never be punished, never be reproved.

A boy is born after six years of trying and crying.

A boy is born after his sisters make way.

A boy is born.

 

 

---

First published in Mythic Picnic Tweet Story Contest V7, May, 2021.

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Saturday, 15 June 2019

'Shikakai and Sambrani' by Sudha Balagopal

The day after she turns eighteen, Prema's husband, Jeet, falls off his prized horse. He lies in the hot sun for hours before passers-by find him, body stiffened with rigor mortis.   

Stunned, she retreats into a silent prison; not a moan or a wail escapes. Not when his sisters throw out her colorful sarees, and replace them with white ones. Not when they use a wet rag to wipe the bindi—a sign of marriage—off her forehead. Not when his aunt uses a rock to shatter the vividly colored glass bangles around her wrist.

“You must grieve,” the in-laws urge, not comprehending her silence.

Prema stares at her bleeding palms where bangle fragments have cut into skin.



Until a man with a wide-blade razor enters. Then, she releases a guttural scream, flings herself on the floor, writhing, clutching her long, thick braid.

 “Be thankful it's 1930 and Sati is banned. Or, like your grandmother, you could have burned in Jeet's funeral pyre,” the aunt says.

The women pin her into a chair. The barber lops off the top of her braid. It falls in a serpent-like coil.

     

Growing up, her mother warmed coconut oil and massaged her head. “Hair is beauty,” she said as she washed Prema's hair with shikakai paste, and dried it using fragrant sambrani smoke.

Now, Prema closes her eyes against the sharp edge of the blade on her scalp, against the relatives holding her down as if for an execution. When she opens her eyes, the barber's gathering debris off the floor.

She lunges for her braid. The in-laws try to wrest it from her, lift her gripping fingers one by one.

She holds on, gritting her teeth.

The barber says he has another appointment, requests payment, asks when he should return for the next shave.

     

She wraps the lustrous black braid around her arm, inhales the hint of shikakai and roses. Every Friday, Jeet bought her venis strung with red button-roses to decorate her hair. At night, he loosened the plait, ran his fingers through the curtain, and in whispers told her he could lose himself in the silken abundance.

She holds the hair against her baldness. Her fingers tremble as they encounter the skin of her scalp, feeling an itchiness here, a remnant of stubble there. She places the braid in her cupboard. It looks forlorn as she shuts the door; a few reluctant petals cling to the strands.

---

First published in Wigleaf on 16 December 2018.
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Saturday, 18 June 2022

'Fresh-Green Saplings' by Sudha Balagopal

This much I know about dismemberment. It's an absence, and a presence at the same time—a shadow-ghost, a persistent haunting, and a piercing pain.

Serrated knife poised over the hefty papaya, I read your text, “She's pregnant.” Next thing I know, I've sliced off the tip of my index finger.  

That papaya. Such a duplicitous fruit, the skin a deceptive shade of yellow, the flesh raw-solid, the seeds clustered like black pearls. Hard to judge from the appearance whether the fruit is sweet or tasteless, succulent or squishy.

I lose not just my finger-print whorl, I lose the most sensitive part of my digit, the one with which I've learned to feel: for skin, for beard, for jaw, for lips.

I discard that bloody fruit.

In the past, I've saved papaya seeds, dried them in the sun, sowed them into soil in pretty pots, and transplanted them into the ground where they grew into fresh-green saplings with wide leaves.

Every year, a crazed wind arrives in April and I fret and fuss with the foot-high slender stems as they bend and buckle in the gusts. I've tried covering the small plants with cages, with sheets, with  buckets; my papaya plants give up against the gale's force.

But you implanted a seed in her that grew.

Now, my four fingers must work extra hard, labor over the burden shifted to them, while the tipless finger points in the direction where you live with her and the child. 


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Saturday, 16 June 2018

'How Mom Became Immortal' by Sudha Balagopal

Dad calls on Sunday morning. “Come have lunch with me.”
His ebullience alarms me. I can't decline. “I'll bring something. Or, we can go out.”
“I'm cooking,” he says.
“You don't know how.” I'm gentle, wary of his emotions.
“No problem. I'll ask Mom.”
My breath canters through me.
“What's our son's favorite lunch?” I hear.
Mom answers, “Lasagna.”
“What ingredients do I need?” He asks.
“Lasagna noodles, spaghetti sauce, spinach, ricotta cheese, mozzarella . . .” she continues.
Mom had a booming voice. Now, it comes across the line with a tonal quality I wish would be poorer.
“Are you ready for this?” I ask Dad.
I mean his new life.
“Mom will guide me. Just come. Noon?”

When I ring Dad's doorbell, he doesn't answer immediately.
“Sorry, I was talking to Mom.”
He hasn't run out of questions—yet.
The rich aroma of tomato sauce and garlic bread fills the apartment. Pain knots my intestines, I want to double over. Instead, I breathe, swallow.
There's nobody. No body.
Her voice issues from the Mombot, a machine disguised as a ceramic woman in pink, the hair dark like mom's used to be. No higher than a six-inch vase, the machine sits in the middle of the dining table.
No sooner does Mom finish her long-drawn-out answer than Dad asks the machine another question. While the ten-minute response continues, Dad takes the lasagna out of the oven. When he straightens, I notice the buttons on his shirt are misaligned.
Superior electronics are faithful to the timbre of Mom's voice. There's no hint of the illness she endured. She narrates the story of her high school graduation, how she nearly missed it. “Never should have kissed that silly Roy who gave me mono. Thank God I recovered, and thank God I met you that first day of college.”
When she was alive and healthy, Dad wanted peace and quiet. “Allow me to read,” he'd grumble. Or, he'd snap, “Will you let me balance the checkbook in peace? Go water your flowers or something.”
She'd walk away in a huff and complain to her plants.
“Can we turn this off ?” I suggest.
He bristles.
I want to say, it's a machine to record personal history for posterity. Someday, my children will know their grandmother.
Dad spent days asking her questions, recording the answers into the machine. The engineer who created the marvel said Dad could ask a thousand questions. He did.
“What's the best dessert to serve after lasagna, ice-cream or chocolate cake?” he asks Mom.
The lasagna tastes like Mom's; I cannot swallow more than a few morsels. I don't want dessert.

“The machine needs a break,” I say.
He glares.
I decide he cannot be well.
I look at the balcony. The plants need sustenance. I pick up the watering can and sprinkle like Mom used to.
When I walk back inside, I notice the flowers are facing indoors, toward the Mombot.
Mom believed in talking to her plants.
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Saturday, 24 June 2017

Visa Temple by Sudha Balagopal

I lose Mother in the throng outside Visa Temple. A river of humanity walks around the shrine, singing, chanting. “Come, son,” Mother said a moment ago. Before I can protest, she's gone, borne on the tide of temple-goers.
Mother believes circumambulating the temple eleven times will make my brother's US visa come through. My engineer's mind protests, but I indulge my widowed mother's request and drive her here.
“Move,” a young woman orders. She stands so close, I smell the jasmine flowers in her hair.
“I'm not participating,” I tell Jasmine girl.
“Then, you shouldn't have come. You're in the way. Walk!”
Jasmine gives me a gentle shove. In moments, I'm swallowed by the crowd and walking alongside her.
As for Mother, only the residing deity holds the secret to her whereabouts.
My bare feet encounter warm stones worn smooth by thousands of devotees. The air heavy with incense and flowers, I hear coconuts thrown, cracked and offered in front of the sanctum.
Jasmine sets up a communal chant. Her bangles tinkle as she raises a shapely arm.
“Jai bolo, Govinda.” Her voice is deep, strong, earnest in supplication.
Responses reverberate from all four corners, “Jai bolo, Gopala.”
Echoes ricochet off the temple's walls.
I cannot accept any connection between a 500-year-old place of worship in an Indian town and the granting of US visas. Yet, hundreds visit each day.
I surrender to the collective pace.
When Jasmine falls silent, I ask, “How many more cycles?”
“Why do you care, non-believer?”
Curiosity. Are these her preliminary eleven rounds of praying for the visa, or the 108 thank-you circles after?
“So I know when to get off. I can't keep count.”
A woman extends a silver tray with flaming camphor, the aroma sharp, medicinal.
“Not telling. You don't believe.” Jasmine waves her palms above the flame, presses them to her eyes, embracing the energy.
“I don't wish to go to the US.”
As a heavy-set man jostles me, I teeter. Jasmine crashes against my body and I hold her up. She feels strong, sinuous.
“Sorry!” I;m apologizing for acknowledging sensation.
The light from the temple's oil lamps reflects in her eyes. The combination of camphor, coconuts, incense, flowers and history plant a curious yearning. I believe the guilt of losing Mother makes me breathless.
“I must go. Bye, Jasmine!”
“Who?” She reaches for her braid, scattering some of the flowers.
“Never mind. Good luck, although I don't understand why anyone does this.”
“Are you married?” she pushes back her hair, a challenge in her question.
Nervous, I laugh. “No.”
“You'll understand when you're separated from your spouse because of a piece of paper. I'll do a thousand rounds of this temple to be with my husband.”
Someone shouts my name.
“Mother!” I wave. When I turn around, Jasmine has disappeared.
In the car, Mother asks if I'll bring her back when my brother receives his visa.
I ponder before I answer.



(This story first appeared in Right Hand Pointing.)
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Sunday, 25 June 2023

2023 FlashFlood: The Complete List

In case you missed any of the pieces we appeared during the 2023 FlashFlood, here's an index to everything.  Happy Reading!


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2026 FlashFlood: The Complete List

In case you missed any of the pieces we appeared during the 2026 FlashFlood, here's an index to everything.  Sadly, the 'Blog Archiv...