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Literary Review
SHORT FICTION
Pulse of urban India
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`Her stories, set firmly in Mumbai and New Delhi, are genuine contemporary India, with not even a glance over the shoulder at the West!'
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BRILLIANT, insightful, unpredictable, these 10 stories give you the very pulse and heart of urban India today, as few other writers have done so far. Manjula Padmanabhan employs not only the skills of the scalpel and the cartoonist's pen, but also a dramatist's feel for the current, spoken language. Her revelations about human character are often as devastating as they are in real life. The final twist of her stories is no sentimental turn-around. It's a sharp jab that swings the picture around. Her stories, set firmly in Mumbai and New Delhi, are genuine contemporary India, with not even a glance over the shoulder at the West!
The first story, "Kleptomania", is one of the most unforgettable and brilliant of these stories. Six guests at a dinner table, with the host and hostess Sheila, and her fine-looking 14-year-old son. The conversation turns to kleptomania or compulsive stealing. Not only of material things, but also the kleptomania of writers, who steal from real life, from their families and friends: "..they can't stop themselves. They take the most painful, the most tender memories — knowing that the thrill lies in the taking... " One of the guests, Russi Billimoria is described with a cartoonist's satirical skill. "His eyebrows were like twin caterpillars, black and woolly, perched on the faintly sweating expanse of his forehead. His full lips looked as if they would deflate if pricked by a thorn, say, from a rose held in his teeth. He had a theatrical bent, presenting his remarks in a sly, knowing manner, as if secret messages were folded into every syllable. He was smiling at Sheila. She noticed, with some distaste, the light flickering along the edges of his teeth. It accentuated the long, narrow incisors, rodent-like." The stage is set, for further exploration of what kleptomania is. As we find out, kleptomania can also mean worse kinds of plunder. After Russi has taken what he wants, in a scene described with aching clarity, an image that may well haunt one for life, we are led to ponder on the nature of loss: "...the thing that is chiefly removed is the owner's complacence. The belief that life is an impregnable fortress from which nothing of real value can be taken."
Padmanabhan is one of the few women writers (in India) who can describe sex and sexuality truthfully, insightfully, and in a manner that is revelatory, but never exhibitionist.
The story "Beads" is a fine vignette of the complex relationship between foreigners and a poor, young seamstress in Delhi.
Another exceptional story is "Betrayal", in which human emotions are minutely examined, and the element of the unpredictable, which rules so much of our lives, is focused, like a floodlight, on a seemingly simple situation; a young woman undergoing an abortion. Again, it is revelatory about the nature of passion and sexuality. As well as the changeability of some human beings! Padmanabhan shows a great deal of versatility in these stories. There is a murder story, titled "The Body in the Backyard". Apparently, she wrote it for a special issue of The Indian Review of Books. Again, it shows a quirky sense of the way people are, in deceptive situations. It has a thoroughly Indian detective, and a very possible motive for crime.
"The Girl who could Make People Naked" is slightly confusing. It veers between a young man's strong feelings for his sister, and the temptation to conform, which blights our inner power. The character, Bahaar, who embodies the spirit that urges us to break away, is rather enigmatic. Was she the Good Fairy or the Bad?
I found the science stories clever and imaginative, but generally, it's not a genre I enjoy, though the writer tells us it offers an "opportunity to go directly to the heart of an ironical or thought-provoking situation, by setting up a theoretical world." With Padmanabhan's keen sense of the telling detail in human situations, that theoretical world seems too unreal and far-fetched.
"Morning Glory in East of Kailash" had this reviewer in splits of laughter. She herself had lived in this salubrious location in the 1980s. A friend, David Horsburgh, one of the writers of the English Language series, took her along to this same barsaati, to meet the same remarkable characters: Alice and Praveen, and their young adopted Nepali son. "Morning Glory" is a euphemism for a part of the male anatomy, apart from which, "East of Kailash" was devoid of any glory!
The author of the prize-winning plays, "Harvest", and "Hot Death, Cold Soup" (Kali Press, 1996), Padmanabhan has welded the skills of cartoon, drama and satire into a fine, "Must-Read" collection of short stories.
Kleptomania: Ten Stories, Manjula Padmanabhan, Penguin India, Rs. 250.
ANNA SUJATHA MATHAI
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