SHORT STORIES
Arrivals and departures
S. SIVADAS
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The impact of displacements and the constant pull of the countries abandoned form the leitmotif of most stories.
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Elvis, Raja; M.G.Vassanji, Penguin, Rs.250.
DAR is the place they all start from. And Ontario is where they finally arrive. Nagji, for example, arrives in Jamnagar and straightway runs into a snake charmer. After initial repulsion in holding the slithering thing, he gets into the spirit of the dusty place. After all there is the snake that is embedded deep in the consciousness of the sceptic even if we have not changed the faith and gone places, says the village elder at the mosque.
Miracle man
He goes to his ancestor's village and is welcomed as a miracle man who has come to rescue them from misery and stark poverty. He is invited to bless a couple, cure an ailment, and resolve disputes. He works some sort of miracle and as his reputation spreads, as he has more complicated problems to handle, he is troubled and thinks of escaping from this trap. But after living here for a couple of years where could he take refuge?
The people who collect around him also want to hear from him about East Africa and the condition of the Indians living there. "The villagers had little idea of the world, except that everything was wonderful elsewhere, while they had been forgotten," says the narrator. People from these areas had left the village and crossed oceans to settle in Burma, Oman, Zanzibar and Singapore. Often they returned to take a bride but these visits stopped after a while.
Those who remained faced the periodic droughts and floods and this increased their hopelessness. While the visitor told them of the hardships they had to face abroad, about the discrimination and the alienation, the listeners compared their own part of the world where things had only degenerated.
He walks deeper into the trap when another visitor from Dar lands there and seems to recognise him. Simultaneously, a villager invites him to cure his wife of her disturbed condition and bless them with a child. He works a miracle and finally escapes to Toronto, where years later the villager's child (his child) joins him. Meanwhile the visitor is also in the city and — how the wheels of time grind — they meet. Nag cannot recognise the old and ailing tormentor now.
Miscegenation is a constant refrain, and constant arrivals and departures in these finely crafted stories spanning a half-century and across three continents. Kay Boyle commented once that there are only two plots in any piece of fiction: a stranger arrives in town and a stranger leaves the town. Here the departures are, mostly, from Dar and the arrivals, mostly, at Ontario.
Chance discoveries
In another story, "Dear Khatija", written in the epistolatory style — unfashionable with post-modern writers but once a favourite and frequently resorted to device — the chance discovery of a bunch of letters in a chest of drawers leads to the unfolding of a Partition story and a friendship between Khatija and her neighbour Lakshmi. During Partition they are separated and Lakshmi keeps writing to her friend hoping there would be a reply some day.
The impact of displacements, from Gujarat to East Africa, and later from East Africa to Canada and the United States, and the constant pull of the countries they abandon form the leitmotif of most stories, and indeed of Vassanji's writings as a whole.
In "When she was Queen", the expatriates — now old and rich — settle down in Canada and are playing a game of cards. At some point they get so involved that the stakes are raised and, in an enactment of the Draupadi scene, the wife is gambled away against the opponent's dream house. Much later when the narrator, determined to find out if the taunts he has been subjected to are true, confronts the card player, he tells him, "It was only a game. She left my house unmolested. Dr. Singh, her physician, took her away." The story is left tantalisingly suspended. Displacements can disorient not only people but memories as well.
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