Rights Information

Published in English (Speaking Tiger).

*English rights other than Indian sub-continent open.

Reviews

There was something comforting and familiar in all of them — maybe because most of us living in India, belonging to a certain generation, have travelled by train. And train journeys have inspired so many tales. I was reminded of my own experiences when I have watched fellow travellers and wondered, who are these people? Where do they come from? Where are they going? Are they happy?

Railway stations, bus stations and airports bring together a sea of humans. There’s the jostle, the shove, the cursing. But though we are strangers, we offer one another an occasional smile or greeting. When on the same train or plane, we are all headed for the same destination. We are all united by that journey.

In one such story of a journey, the main character is shaken by the death of a fellow passenger and comforted by a complete stranger. In another, we see how a child takes to an elderly woman on a bus in Mumbai. In yet another, a group of travellers has lost a suitcase of jewellery and money.

Food is central to many stories. The colour, taste and fragrance of a dish trigger nostalgia. Tamil culture and notions about it also recur in some stories. Torchbearers of so-called tradition make for interesting characters in stories like ‘Burdensome Days’. Bhramara, the lead character, and his world of music and freedom are overshadowed by culture politics and hypocrisy. We come across a song she refuses to sing for a movie produced by her husband. The lyrics are hilarious. The black humour works well, even in translation.

Male: Sweetly, sweetly, you talk to me

Here’s the price for the pleasure.

Sing until I melt with you

Dance until you are disrobed.

Female: Sweetly, sweetly, while you talk

Shivers of pleasure I will give you.

Meltingly, meltingly, when you sing.

I will dance, my clothes falling.

Moon to devour

Women are evidently and expectedly the pivot around which the entire collection works. Stereotypes concerned with marriage, feminine identity, love, career, are all broken as in most of Ambai’s work. In ‘Moon to Devour’, Suguna goes through an abortion because the father (an artist) refuses to stand by her. One day, she receives a compelling letter from the same man’s mother.

“… please separate these things from each other: art-artist, night-moon, day-sun, sound-music… Tease out even woman-motherhood. Yes, that too. It is a hallucination that makes them appear inseparable.” It is a stirring passage in many ways.

I read somewhere recently that writing has no gender. True in many ways. When a piece of fiction or a poem makes you think, your or the writer’s gender ceases to matter because the writing has succeeded. In that sense, this collection belongs in your bookshelf.

Anupama Raju.

Author Biography

For over four decades, Ambai (b.1944), pseudonym for C.S LAKSHMI, has written fiction that reverberates with the ideals of feminism and a sensitive grasp of socio-cultural realities. She has also authored a pioneering research monograph, The Face Behind the Mask: Women in Tamil Literature (1984).
Many collections of her Tamil short stories have been published in English to international acclaim. She won the Crossword award for the collection In a Forest, A Deer.