Chandra Prasad > Chandra's Quotes

“Desperately, I looked in all directions. What struck me immediately was the violence. Everything seemed to be choking something else: Creepers twisted around brambles, brambles around vines, vines around trees. Every plant vied for space and the thin shafts of light that pushed through the greenery overhead. But there wasn’t enough space for all of them.

“Mel,” I screamed again, my throat scratchy and raw. My brown school oxfords made sucking sounds as I walked. I felt as if I were being pulled down, like the jungle might consume me.

From DAMSELFLY”
― Chandra Prasad

“The scents bring us back. That’s what Mr. Agrawal says. He says the scents of summer are the most potent, the most enduring.

The sun beats hard in Duxton, Massachusetts, in late July. It shrivels soft things: flower petals, the worms that struggle up through the ground after a midday shower. The sun here cares nothing for exteriors. It is interested only in essences, the soft middles. Mr. Agrawal doesn’t bother to pick the ripening tomatoes in the garden, infested with rangy weeds and fat iridescent beetles. He says he likes the smell of the flesh once the heat has sizzled the peel.


--from "Wayward," a short story by Chandra Prasad in MIXED: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience”
― Chandra Prasad