Thwarted Escape

By Lopa Banerjee
All these years I have worked to make Omaha my home with its long, tiring winter days of endless snowfall and mist, its sunlit days of solitude, its dark clouded summer evenings breaking out into violent storms and tornadoes. It is nowhere near the grandeur of experience of friends, who have been lured by the luxury and ambiance of big American cities and the dreams fostered there.

The Tanpura

By Lopa Banerjee
The summer I turned ten, I knew my mother, too, craved to sing these songs and wanted to teach me, so I could sing in the choir. Her voice ached to traverse the vast terrain of sounds between the high and low notes of the harmonium. I could not see then the atoms of the dozens of glittering particles inside her neck that toiled to spell the musical notes.