US-India Writing Station

My Soul Is on Fire

Hello Everyone.

November 4, 2008 was my happiest day

in 32 years as an American citizen.

I'm still savoring the results.

My friend David says, "My soul is on fire."

My friend Gary asks,

"Can you share why Nov. 4th was

the happiest day in the last 32 years?"

I reply,

"The son of a Kenyan Muslim man was elected

to the presidency of the United States."

I was in Berkeley on the Friday 

after Christmas, about 30 years

after I first connected with

the Center for Independent Living (CIL)

on Telegraph Ave as a

Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA)

with the single-minded objective of

building ramps for wheelchair users

for a year. Little did I know

how long my work would be connected

to Telegraph Ave!

 

In the clear, cool afternoon,

Telegraph Ave still seemed as if

it were opening windows to many universes. 

The past year has been kind to me:

Several of my short stories were published,

plus this month a poem, the second

published in the United States since 2005.

Here's my latest success with a story

that I've been working on for years and years:

Naga in the Negev

After repeatedly dreaming that centuries ago he was a famous Bedouin healer in the Negev, Abdoul, son of Cochin Cohn, saw himself living in the Negev and nowhere else, if he were to remain in the land of Israel.  So, on his thirtieth birthday, this descendent of an ancient line of South Indian Jews, collected a few personal items from his parents’ Jerusalem home and walked toward the Negev on his powerful little legs until an immigrant from Chicago gave him a ride. . . .

Read on @  

http://www.hackwriters.com/Negevstories.htm

It's free!

The italics got stripped and the paragraphs got

changed in the conversion process at Hackwriters.

And here's the link to my poem

The Flea-Driven Traveler

which appeared in Quicksilver

http://academics.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=56347

Quicksilver is a literary magazine published by students

in the University of Texas at El Paso's online MFA program.

My best wishes for an exciting year.

Michael Chacko Daniels 

PS: Feel free to pass my story and poem forward.

About the Author,

Michael Chacko Daniels

I was born in Aden when it was under the British, grew up in Bombay, came to the United States in 1967, studied at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism for a year, worked for The Asia Foundation for four years, and became a Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA) in the 1970s.

As a community worker in and out of  VISTA, I got to work with and for poor American communities in Michigan and Central and Northern California, and to discover the America hidden from the mass media of the period. For most of the decade, I organized people around housing issues, including fair housing; later, I built wheelchair ramps for persons with disabilities. In the late 1980s, I began helping homeless people find jobs in Berkeley and Oakland and helped organize the Jobs for Homeless Consortium.

Retired from community work since 2005,

I live and write in San Francisco.

My works have appeared in Apollo's Lyre, Cricket Online Review, Denver Syntax, dragonfire, Hackwriters, Indelible Kitchen, and SHALLA Magazine. Books:  Split in Two (Poetry, 2004), Anything Out of Place Is Dirt (Novel, 2004), and That Damn Romantic Fool (Novel, 2005); all three are from Writers Workshop, Kolkata.

Website: http://indiawritingstation.com/

Visions From Far And Near  

Since January 7, 2005, my daily travel has been chiefly up and down the information superhighway, a magical, hypnotic dream path, which has turned up for me--a childhood pal from Bombay, the Urbs Prima in Indis, and a couple of relatives from my parents' birthplace--Kerala, India's fabled God's Own Country, all of whom I'd lost contact with in the 1950s after they set out on their long, exciting, challenging, migratory journeys; plus the wonderful people from two continents who have taken time from their exciting work remaking our small planet to share their visions through the medium of--

US-India Writing Station

Valerie Street

Hong Hunt 

Ian Moore

Peter Kline

Ralph Dranow 

Joseph Kaval 

Quentine Acharya

Amanda Gerrie

Brenda L. Coleman

Edathil Prabhakar Menon

Tricia Holloway 

Judith Anne Buchman 

Richa

Mona Lee

Prakash Joshi

Neil Marcus

Marisa Fernando 

Blair R. Williams

Rev. Carol Estes

Gary Ivanek

Dr. Tezuka Osamu

Read More @

http://indiawritingstation.com/visions-for-today/