And the biggest thank-you to my husband, Chad, who was totally cool with me obsessively trying to write a book for more than a year, reads every word of every draft with academic levels of concentration, thinks all my characters are secretly based on him, and says I’m his second favourite writer after JK Rowling. Thanks for loving my stories like I do.
A note on “Tenali Raman Redux”: this story is based on the folktale “Tenali Raman and the Thieves”, one of the tales of Tenali Raman, a court jester-poet from 16th century India. Many tales are still told of his legendary cleverness and wit. One day, he spied some thieves lurking in his garden, waiting for him to go to sleep so that they could break into the house. He thought about how he could use it to his advantage and called out loudly to his wife that due to a spate of recent house break-ins, they should hide all their valuables deep inside the well. He then brought a box from inside the house and made a great show of lowering it into the well. When he went to bed that night, the thieves ran into the garden and began drawing water out of the well, pitying Raman for his stupidity and rejoicing that he had made their job so much easier. The thieves spent the entire night drawing water from the well, which they then poured into the garden, watering the plants in the process. When dawn was about to break, the thieves were still working tirelessly and the well was almost empty. Raman came out of the house and called out cheerfully to the thieves that they could stop now, as the whole garden was quite well irrigated by that point. The thieves heard this and ran away.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennani Durai is a former journalist, a VONA/Voices fiction fellow for 2016, and a co-author of the official commemorative book of Singapore’s 50th birthday, Living the Singapore Story (2015). She was selected for the Ceriph Mentorship Programme (Prose) in 2014, and won both third prize and an honourable mention in the 2015 Golden Point Awards. Regrettable Things That Happened Yesterday, her debut collection of short fiction, was shortlisted for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize. Durai currently lives in Guatemala with her husband.
Regrettable Things That Happened Yesterday Page 14
