SHORT FICTION
Sweet and sour, with pepper as garnish
|
`Kankana Basu offers positive clues to the future of the Indian short story in English.'
|
THE short story is a deceptively tough literary taskmaster. Masters like Anton Chekov, Guy de Maupassant, Ernest Hemingway and O. Henry made it seem easy, but that's a tribute to their finely honed writing skills. More recently, Jhumpa Lahiri, in The Interpreter of Maladies, proved consummately how the vernacular world of the Bengali psyche can find a homing space in English writing.
Within the little-explored realm of the Indian short story in English, far too often misshapen, expanded anecdotes or self-indulgent, quizzical jottings, or even tales adapted from other popular media, masquerade as this literary form. In other instances, hand-me-down tales or family lore are served up without any additional garnishing from the individual imagination or technical virtuosity.
Unexplored form
Kankana Basu, in this debut collection of short stories, ventures into this rather unexplored terrain with verve, treading cautiously among the pitfalls and traps awaiting her. At first reading, she has so much going for her. Basu has a sharp eye for telling everyday details and the resonances of Bengali life away from Kolkata. Her ear for colloquial phrases and conversational interplay is equally impressive. Her capturing of significant tableaux and shifting equations between families and neighbours resonates with life. Her delving into situational comedy and emotion underlay is dexterous.
Set in Halfway House, an imaginary Mumbai apartment block, these 13 interlinked stories unfold to an everyday rhythm that masks their dramatic potential under minutiae. The basic premise holds infinite promise, while the author has a distinctive, ironic voice that is very Indian and contemporary.
Basu's assortment of characters are easy to recall, even to identify with — especially for close observers of the probasi Bengali mindset. We encounter Khokan, the pampered apple of his joint family's collective eye, pampered with preferential slices of fish and the cream off the milk, and follow his life to its cadenced finale. And share asthmatic Bubla Basu's vicarious pleasures in an existence governed by her dominating, opinionated mother, including a short-lived brush with romance. And giggle over Malaika Mukherjee's lust for a retrousse nose and a spanking new flat.
A varied world
Other characters we make a closer acquaintance with include a well-known writer who is kidnapped in a style seldom rendered in his books, a ship-bound, voluntary counsellor at sea who finds himself foxed by signals from real life, the victim of a flight disaster who undergoes a spiritual awakening, a family faced with a final prognosis who react in unusual ways, a schizophrenic who plans a murder, and so on. Basu packs a varied, scintillating galaxy of life into her pages.
Despite all these positive inputs, Basu's tone varies so startlingly that it often catches the unwary reader off guard. The colloquial and the narrative intermingle in a not quite harmonious way, as if a letter or a diary (or an email?) had strayed into short fiction. Take this instance from page 34:
Mukul's Mejo Mama and Mamima were descending on them next week besides. Now where on earth was she going to do her late night ironing for school? The ironing table would be chockfull of bottles of Homeopathy pills, antacids, laxatives, and a hundred other bottles that the mamas carted around with them. Mama and Mamima would get up at the crack of dawn and station themselves in the living room sofa to watch the early-morning school-leaving proceedings. And her children would sprout ten thumbs in place of two. They would expect early morning tea and biscuits (only Marie, nothing greasy at their age, thank you), empty bathrooms (bladder control was slightly poor at their age, heh heh heh).
A little casual
But one wondered at the overuse of casual brackets, the plethora of connected dots to shape disconnected thoughts. Did Basu want to use stream of consciousness as her literary métier? Or was the casual touch just the result of under-editing?
No matter what the answer is, Basu is distinctly a voice of promise. For, she is unafraid to explore a situational and emotional range without pyrotechnics. For, she consciously evokes the milieu of her background with ease and candour. For, she identifies with the strengths and frailties of the Bengali psyche within the Indian urban milieu with maturity. For, she tucks a twist into her tales without being heavy-handed.
This classily produced book, with its eye-catching layout and dramatic cover, is definitely worth a read. Because Kankana Basu offers positive clues to the future of the Indian short story in English. Her literary palate mingles sweet and sour flavours, with a surprise sprinkling of pepper.
ADITI DE
Vinegar Sunday, Kankana Basu, Indialog Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2004, p.135, paperback. Rs. 195.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
