Premise: 'Chennai Summer' by Natasha Gayari, reviewed by Michelle D'costa

Chennai Summer by Natasha Gayari

Reviewed by Michelle D’costa

The title signifies the loss of control we have over seasons. 'Chennai' makes it specific and memorable to the narrator. She knows it is not here to stay and will change soon, out of her control.

Natasha's story has two characters, a guy and a girl. It is narrated from the girl's point of view. What the writer conveys through this story about relationships, identity, conversation, acceptance, denial etc. is thought- provoking. In the simplest of language, she conveys so much. The story begins as a conversation she is having with her boyfriend. Inserted amidst the bits of dialogues on the phone, Natasha gives us background info on their relationship. What is it? Can you categorise their relation? Is it love? When is it casual? When is it serious?

Her boyfriend was with her in Bangalore and is now in Chennai. Before leaving, he confessed that he loves her, and it surprised her. The girl remembers her past relationships when she was 'crazy in love'. Here are a few lines from the story:

‘I have set off on such trips before, years ago, I don’t remember exactly how many. Booked a plane ticket that had cost me half of my salary from my first job to meet a guy across the country. They don’t take up much space in my memory now. My heart was in a frenzy throughout the flight. The date of that journey had become my default password to many of my login ids, until I changed all of them a couple of years later.’

Now, the girl is realistic and wary of a possibility with her present partner. She wonders if his parents would accept her, she imagines visiting Chennai, but we know that she's not as invested in the relationship as he is. By the end the reader knows that the girl doesn't see a future  with the guy as he's going to leave for the US.

She is in a low phase in her life, bored with her job and knows the relationship will end soon but can't end it. This feeling of helplessness, not able to change things or do anything about it leaves the reader feeling they can relate and empathise with the narrator. A wonderful story. Highly recommend.

Read Natasha Gayari's Chennai Summer on Out of Print 27, June 2017.

Michelle D’costa is a writer and the editor and runs the literary journal Kaani. She was long listed in the DNA-OUT of PRINT short story contest in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Her story, 'The Guy Who Could Dance' appeared in Out of Print 39, June 2020.

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Premise: 'The Threshold' by Jayant Kaikini, translated from Kannada by Pratibha Umashankar-Nadiger, reviewed by Brinda S Narayan

The Threshold by Jayant Kaikini

Translated from Kannada by Pratibha Umashankar-Nadiger

Reviewed by Brinda S Narayan

George Seurat, the founder of Pointillism, was a ‘shy, reclusive’ man who died at the young age of 31. In his Pointillist works, Seurat daubed tiny dots of color, one dot at a time. The eye in turn optically mixes the colors to create a sort of ‘luminous yet harmonious intensity’.

In ‘The Threshold’, the Kannada writer Jayant Kaikini creates a painstakingly constructed short story that shimmers with the luminosity of a Pointillist painting. As the critic C N Ramachandran writes in the introduction to Dots and Lines^*, Kaikini belongs to the breed of Kannada writers that picks ‘precise and authentic details of daily life’, organising them to culminate in a particular type of experience. ‘The Threshold’ infuses the squalor and sordidness of Mumbai’s streets with a magical realist quality. It centres around Muchchi Mian’s modka dukaan, ‘a shop dealing in discarded body parts of dilapidated houses and old furniture’.

Into his broken-parts shop, an old wooden dressing table ushers in a ‘celestial being,’ ‘engrossed in her own reflection’. She flits in and out of his shop, sometimes evaporating behind curtains of dust, sometimes just leaving traces of her scent behind. Inside his shop, between a door-less fridge and over a rusty stove, Mian starts seeing glimmers of domestic bliss and romance, the illusory woman ‘anchoring Mian’s makeshift life’. Even when the municipal truck carries his stuff away, the fact that she heard him scream ‘was the only reality that mattered’.

Reading ‘The Threshold’ forces us to look more mindfully at the discarded lives that inhabit the city’s nooks and crannies, to pay attention to the poetic details that may elude the rushing commuter or scurrying pedestrian.

^*Dots and Lines by Jayant Kaikini, Indialog Publications, New Delhi, 2004, translated from the original Kannada Amritaballi Kashaaya, edited by Vishvanath Hulikal. 

Reviewer Brinda S Narayan's story @ The Shanghai Tea House appeared in Out of Print June 2013.

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Premise: 'The Issue' by Tanuj Solanki reviewed by Michelle D’costa

The Issue by Tanuj Solanki

Reviewed by Michelle D’costa

The title is apt for the plot of the story. It ‘promises’ an issue. Issue between? Two characters, a man and a woman, that we later learn are husband and wife. We are introduced to the characters immediately after the lizard. The ‘fat’ lizard which contrasts well with their ‘narrow’ mattress shows just how overbearing the presence of the lizard is in their lives. But is the ‘lizard’ the issue here or is it something else? Is it symbolic? This story reminded me of Chekhov’s ‘One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off.’Here, the lizard is the gun and the curtain on the story is opened by the entrance of the lizard and it ends with the lizard too. Also, the story is packed with only relevant details like making a case to the reader to understand what exactly the ‘issue’ is here. We are now a part of an intense discussion, the lizard’s presence bringing them closer. Here, both are equally daunted by the lizard’s presence and it’s a somber atmosphere. Also, if you think of it, why lizard? Lizards are pretty tough to kill.

Halfway into the story we know ‘the issue’ is important because it threatens to ‘unsettle’ their lives. The issue is the wife’s departure to study further. We get to see the room a little. It’s dark. So silent they can hear each other breathe and the recurrent gleam on a blade of the ceiling fan. The stakes have been raised when we know the couple is ‘married’. This is serious. The decision of one will affect another completely. The man has more say definitely because he’s her husband than if he wasn’t. They’re legally bound and the husband puts forward all this to his wife but all this logic is only a way to shield his brimming emotions. And the wife sees through his ‘insecurity’. The reader gets to see that they are finally discussing the matter at hand openly that had been ballooning for a long time.  

When the man rises to switch on the light, it’s his way of confronting the problem, a small step at a time. The light would make the conversation more real. Also, now that he’s starting to accept it, he wants to see her because she would be leaving soon. But he can’t look at her face, it would make it too real. We see that the light makes him admit to being worried about her feelings if she didn’t go and the dent it could cause their marriage, this gives the reader the impression that he doesn’t want to be just married to her but happily married. The lizard is right beside them now.

The proximity of the lizard is the proximity of the problem, it’s right there and the whole story about the man’s denial of her leaving, him not ready for it, is now right there. A do or die situation. He had never experienced before – is the courage he finally musters to deal with the problem. The tail still alive is little hope in his heart that she won’t go. Also, that the problem couldn’t really be solved or arrived at a satisfactory conclusion.

His inability to confront the issue previously had made him retreat to the darkness, and by killing the lizard in the end he is confronting it. His denial of it all shows the readers just how difficult her departure is to him and how difficult it is to talk about it. The inability to talk about difficult emotions doesn’t hint at a macho personality because he is not the typical ‘macho’ type that men are pressured with being. He doesn’t think women shouldn’t study further or be ambitious. In the beginning of the story itself we get to know that he is ‘afraid’ of the lizard and his lying on the mattress proves it and when he kills the insect in the end he is trying to be a little like his wife and not like the adage goes – Be a man.

Scenes from movies come to mind when the male actor kills an insect in the presence of a squealing actress. In this story, the woman isn’t squealing, she’s ambitious, not afraid to take leaps and he envies her for it in a way, her courage. She’s the one who asks what he really felt about her leaving.  She asks. To ask is to be prepared for any answer. And ‘really’ also signifies about how considerate she is towards his feelings which I saw as feminist- that she does think of family when pursuing her career/dreams.

I read Alan Rossi’s story and thought Tanuj’s rendition was brilliantly done. Highly recommended. 

Reviewer Michelle D’costa is a writer and the editor and runs the literary journal Kaani. She was long listed in the DNA-OUT of PRINT short story contest in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

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Premise: 'Supplication' by Neera Kashyap, a Response by Rebecca Lloyd

Supplication by Neera Kashyap

A Response by Rebecca Lloyd

I very much liked the descriptive passages in this story because they allowed me to accompany the narrator on the journey even though it is not an environment or culture I am familiar with therefore I was able to develop a feeling of closeness to the main character in so doing, which in turn gave me empathy for her situation when it is revealed. The difference between the shrine enclosed by the silver pillars with a chandelier above the grave and the simple prayer room at the back of the shrine is striking, and the juxtaposition of these two scenes allows the reader to reflect on the different values they represent.

Reviewer Rebecca Lloyd's 'Finger Buffet' appeared in Out of Print December 2010. 

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