Moushumi Kandali is a dear friend. As is her husband, Dhruvarka Deka, who was a classmate (in passing, I note that he is a renowned quizmaster).
So I am predisposed to like her collection of short stories, A Tale of Thirdness and Other Stories, that has just been published. A few of the stories have been translated by Dhruvarka. I have read a few stories before, I read them again – each rereading after all gives a new perspective. My only regret is that I cannot read it in the original Assamese (though the translators have done a good job). It is also a bit sad that so much literature published in India remains inaccessible – unless the work gets translated.
Moushumi’s work has a number of themes but her strong narrative voice runs through all the stories. Feminism, displacement, the effects of modern culture as also the milieu of the academic world all find a place in the stories. In spite of a number of strong segments that deal with tribal life (e.g. The Crossroads of Mukindon) and a number of references to the Assamese natural world and culture, the stories are not specifically rooted in the region. The juxtaposition in some stories, for e.g. a culture in transition in The Crossroads of Mukindon or the similar predicament of two women across decades in Eternal is familiar in literature per se. Similarly the effect of modern media on ordinary lives (That Eye) or terrorism in the modern world (In Search of a Vanishing God). There is also a futuristic tone in some stories (specifically in Ravan_1020), this didn’t always work for me - but that may be a personal disengagement with the subject matter. In all the stories, there is also another kind of juxtaposition – quotidian detail admixed with the surreal and the absurd. Somehow the mixture and the abrupt shifts of tone work very well in all the stories.
Two stories stood out for me, A Tale of Thirdness and An Arty or Nonsense Kind of Story. Both deal with gender roles but the elliptical nature of the former and a hint of the absurd in the latter lift it far above the genre. Just the catalogue of the days in An Arty or Nonsense Kind of Story makes it stand out. Two others were however my favourites – Anirvan: the Unquenched and Ferns in the Moonlight. There are no discursions and nothing overt in these simple, elegant stories and they bring out Moushumi’s strong, lyrical voice.
The book traveled all the way from Assam to Australia so is quite precious. The accompanying book was Listen my Flowerbud, which is an English translation of Mising poetry from Assam (collated by Jiban Narah and translated by Moushumi). There is a lovely foreword on Mising culture. The poems have a simple charm with an awareness of life in parts – it reminded me a bit of Randhir Khare’s The Singing Bow. A few are elegant and concise in the manner of old Chinese poetry.
So I am predisposed to like her collection of short stories, A Tale of Thirdness and Other Stories, that has just been published. A few of the stories have been translated by Dhruvarka. I have read a few stories before, I read them again – each rereading after all gives a new perspective. My only regret is that I cannot read it in the original Assamese (though the translators have done a good job). It is also a bit sad that so much literature published in India remains inaccessible – unless the work gets translated.
Moushumi’s work has a number of themes but her strong narrative voice runs through all the stories. Feminism, displacement, the effects of modern culture as also the milieu of the academic world all find a place in the stories. In spite of a number of strong segments that deal with tribal life (e.g. The Crossroads of Mukindon) and a number of references to the Assamese natural world and culture, the stories are not specifically rooted in the region. The juxtaposition in some stories, for e.g. a culture in transition in The Crossroads of Mukindon or the similar predicament of two women across decades in Eternal is familiar in literature per se. Similarly the effect of modern media on ordinary lives (That Eye) or terrorism in the modern world (In Search of a Vanishing God). There is also a futuristic tone in some stories (specifically in Ravan_1020), this didn’t always work for me - but that may be a personal disengagement with the subject matter. In all the stories, there is also another kind of juxtaposition – quotidian detail admixed with the surreal and the absurd. Somehow the mixture and the abrupt shifts of tone work very well in all the stories.Two stories stood out for me, A Tale of Thirdness and An Arty or Nonsense Kind of Story. Both deal with gender roles but the elliptical nature of the former and a hint of the absurd in the latter lift it far above the genre. Just the catalogue of the days in An Arty or Nonsense Kind of Story makes it stand out. Two others were however my favourites – Anirvan: the Unquenched and Ferns in the Moonlight. There are no discursions and nothing overt in these simple, elegant stories and they bring out Moushumi’s strong, lyrical voice.
The book traveled all the way from Assam to Australia so is quite precious. The accompanying book was Listen my Flowerbud, which is an English translation of Mising poetry from Assam (collated by Jiban Narah and translated by Moushumi). There is a lovely foreword on Mising culture. The poems have a simple charm with an awareness of life in parts – it reminded me a bit of Randhir Khare’s The Singing Bow. A few are elegant and concise in the manner of old Chinese poetry.
No comments:
Post a Comment