Short and searing
R. KRITHIKA
|
Like his novels, Mulk Raj Anand's short stories too focus on the plight of the marginalised and the downtrodden.
|
Selected Short Stories, Mulk Raj Anand, Penguin, Rs. 250.
WHILE his novels, Coolie and Untouchable, are considered classics of Indian writing in English, Mulk Raj Anand's short stories are not so well known — a fact that Saros Cowasjee refers to in his Introduction. "Mulk Raj Anandhas long lamented to his friends and literary critics that little or no attention has been paid to his short stories."
While a couple like "The Lost Child" and "The Terrorist" made their appearances in English textbooks in high school, the majority languished in obscurity. Penguin's Modern Classics series has now brought out Selected Short Stories — stories that bear Anand's trademark ironic and humorous stamp.
Like his novels, the short stories too focus on the plight of the marginalised and the downtrodden. Anand's upper classes, whether the bania or the Brahmin, are cunning and on the make, whereas his royalty and nobility live in a dream world of their own — clearly seen in "The King and the Tortoise" and "A Pair of Mustachios". The description of the king's fecklessness leaves no doubt of where the author's sympathies lie. The second story leaves the reader in a halfway world. You can't help sympathising with the bania nor can you deny a feeling of pity for the Khan.
Familiar faces
Many of these stories portray life in the early 20th century but they still show familiar faces — grinding poverty and exploitation. The narrator in "The Cobbler and the Machine" is a child who thinks he is helping the cobbler by encouraging him to buy a machine. But the sequence of events puts the old man in bondage to a merchant and ultimately leads to his death. The description of the old man working on the machine leads to reflections of modern day sweatshops.
Again mirroring our times is "The Beggar Woman". A jobless middle-class man has been long watching a beggar woman on the road. He cannot understand how he can have sexual fantasies about the woman, dirty as she is. Realising that she has no milk to feed her child, he steals from his home to give her food. When the servant is blamed and thrown out, he keeps quiet.
Possibly the most haunting story is "Lullaby". Her baby is very ill but the worker in a jute factory cannot afford to stop working, even to take the child to a doctor. The lullaby she sings is juxtaposed against the machine's noise as the child dies.
"The Barber's Trade Union" is probably the lightest story in this collection. Taunted and abused by the higher caste people for daring to dress differently, Chandu the barber goes on a strike. And when the village elders threaten to bring in a barber from a nearby village, he strikes first — forming a union of barbers from all the nearby villages thus forcing the villagers to take back their words. Anand makes his point — about the importance of trade unions — without hitting the reader over the head with it. In fact, apart from the title, the word `trade union' is mentioned only in the last line.
Anand's characteristic pungent gaalis can be seen liberally sprinkled over many of the stories. But translated into staid English, it just doesn't sound as shocking.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
