‘Chardi Kala for the Modern Dirtbag’ by Kiran K Basra

Back to Reality

From Pulp Literature Issue 46, enter the mind and hopefully come out the other side with ‘Chardi Kala for the Modern Dirtbag’ by Kiran K Basra. Enjoy an excerpt of this story below and be sure to read the rest in Issue 46, Spring 2025.

Chardi Kala for the Modern Dirtbag

by Kiran K Basra

Veer comes into the seniors’ centre half an hour late, completely unprepared and suspecting she might still be a little high. She regrets it when she sees the pretty Filipina girl behind the desk: a ring on every finger, a patterned button-down, short hair dyed blue. There’s a ninety-percent chance she’s bisexual, and Veer’s blown her chance before she even realized she had one. She resigns herself to a night on Hinge, leans her elbows on the counter, glances at the girl’s name tag (and her tits) and says, “Hey, Reyna, I’m the mind-reader here for Roop Grewal.”

“You’re half an hour late. We assumed the province was just lying when they said they sent someone,” Reyna says, searching for a file on her desk. She freezes. “Wait, how did you know my name? Did you—”

“Relax, gorgeous,” Veer says, plucking the file out of her grasp. “It’s on your name tag.”

“Oh,” Reyna says, as Veer strides past the desk towards room 115—the number is Sharpied onto the cover of Mrs Grewal’s file. “Wait, don’t we have to brief you or something? Sorry, I’ve never had to deal with an Eclipsed coming to work on a patient before. I don’t really know how this works. Should I be saying ‘someone Eclipsed’ instead? I heard it’s an adjective not a noun these days …”

“You’re doing great,” Veer says, both because the aforementioned tits are really nice and because she’s trying to charm Reyna into not reporting her late and unprepared. “What happens is I go sit in Mrs Grewal’s room, I hold her hand and see what I can find out about why …” She takes a moment to look at the file and see what she was supposed to do. “She stopped responding to nurses. Damn, six months ago? And the province hasn’t sent anyone?”

“You didn’t read the file before coming?” Reyna says. “Her brain scans are normal besides the Parkinson’s, and she eats what we put in front of her and pees when we walk her to the washroom, but she doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t even look at you, just through you.”

“Huh,” Veer says, because most of her job is finding out whether people having psychotic breaks have families to go back to, or communicating for people incapable of speech or signing. She’s got no idea how to approach this. “Well, I’ll take a look, see what she’s dreaming about and if she remembers what triggered this.”

“I heard some Eclipsed see everything you’ve ever thought. Can you do that?”

Read the rest in Pulp Literature Issue 46, Spring 2025!

Kiran K Basra is a neuroscience student at the University of Toronto and is a creative director at the Innis Herald. When she isn’t reading and writing about children of immigrants, mean lesbians, or portals to other worlds, she is napping on the subway.