Catagory: Fiction

Ever since Sultana had moved to Delhi, business had slowed down. Unlike her time in Ambala, not a single gora had visited her so far. Even Khuda Bakhsh, her lucky charm wasn’t bringing her any luck. Times were so bad that she didn’t even have any money to buy black mourning clothes for Muharram.

Lonely and idle, Sultana felt as if she was wasting her days away. Until she met Shankar. Confusing, intriguing and unlike any other man she’d ever met—and she’d met more than her share of men—Shankar was just like her and yet nothing like her. What she didn’t realize though was that with a curious exchange and the promise of a black salwar, hers and Shankar’s lives were about to be entangled in ways she could never have imagined.

Written in Manto’s typically engaging style, The Black Shalwarand its surprising twist at the end is as bewitching as Sultana and as unexpected as Shankar.

When a movie is being made, there is usually more drama happening behind the scenes than on screen. And Manto got to experience this first hand when he was employed with a film company whose current production was Ban Ki Sundri. While Raj Kishore, the hunk from Rawalpindi, was cast as the hero—a man Manto had had long-standing reservations about—there were rumours about getting a new girl for the part of the vamp. As if on cue, in walked Miss Neelam, a charming new face.

As a writer with not much to do on a film set and as an actor who has to wait for long hours, Manto and young Neelam developed an instant friendship, talking about everything and nothing. Things, however, took an intriguing turn when Neelam confessed to the ‘silliness’ she seemed to be developing for her very married, very chaste co-star Raj Kishore.

The women in Manto’s stories have always been fascinatingly complex and Neelam is no different. Charming, entertaining, and way ahead of its times—as most of Manto’s stories are—My Name is Radha is a classic Manto.

Manjula Padmanathan often gets asked to write short pieces for different publications around the country. This means, working with different kinds of people for different kinds of readers, an altogether enriching experience. However, when the brief is to write “something upbeat” in an almost impossible period of time for a publication that doesn’t quite lend itself to Padmanabhan’s typically macabre themes, her tongue-in-cheek humour takes the form of An Upbeat Story.

A dark yet touching story about a man with Down Syndrome and a woman confined to a wheelchair, told within an imagined conversation between a ‘writer’ and an ‘editor’, and written in Padmanabhan’s impeccable style. Funny, audacious, and tender, An Upbeat Story makes writing under duress seem effortless.

“When she looked into his eyes, she could see every thought of his, strung out like washed shirts flapping on a line.”

Gautam is already a little high-strung because of his sister’s wedding when he meets Bahaar, the groom’s cousin, who claims to have “arranged” this meeting of theirs. Gautam, who is struggling with his possessive feelings for his sister and his doubts over the suitor, who in his opinion isn’t all that suitable, gets increasingly peeved with every sentence that Bahaar utters. Not only does she seem to possess supernatural powers, the likes of which he has never experienced before, but she also seems to be weirdly obsessed with him. After all, it isn’t everyday that a weird girl with superpowers asks you to have sex with her while their families are socializing with each other.

Needless to say, Gautam is speechless. But Bahaar still has one more trick up her sleeve. Can Gautam handle it?

Originally written to appear in a magazine, The Girl Who Could Make People Naked is in the author’s view, a cheeky look at Delhi’s strait-laced, uptight social milieu that sometimes takes itself a little too seriously. Weird, wonderful, and almost absurd, this is Manjula Padmanabhan at her finest.

Since the discovery of a decaying corpse in their backyard, the members of the Bajaj family have experienced a host of emotions from shock to disgust to exasperation to fury. But when the young CID officer Vasant arrives at the crime scene, he can immediately tell that the Bajaj family may not be as innocent as they seem.

However, seeing as Mr Bajaj is the additional secretary to revenue and has a meeting with the prime minister in a couple of hours, Vasant has no option but to speed up his investigation. But he is not worried. The “still alive” corpse has just started talking and Vasant is all ears.

Subversive, exciting, and revealing, with a twist you actually won’t be ready for, Manjula Padmanathan’s Body in the Backyard is as compelling as it is well-written.

Farida, all of sixteen, has recently taken over her father’s tailoring business and has been working for two English memsahibs in their home for intricate embroidery work on a few pieces. She is extremely talented, and Jenny and Mary are quite impressed. In fact, they’re considering hiring her for a much larger order for their boutique back home. Really, Farida couldn’t have asked for better employers.

The only thing that seems to be bothering Farida, however, is Mickey, Jenny’s teenage daughter, whose blouse she’s currently working on. She dresses funny, looks funny—almost like a boy—and everyone, even the cook, has asked her to stay away from Mickey. But all Mickey wants is to have Farida work in her room—away from the heat in the verandah and maybe even have her food with the rest of them. In Mickey’s opinion, that’s the least they could do for the prices they are paying Farida!

It is strange how issues of race and bias are sometimes so ingrained in us that even as victims we don’t realize something that is so obvious to someone else. Originally written for an anthology of short fiction for teenagers, Beads is a powerful story about the voices that often go unheard in the discourse about racism and privilege.

In 1981, Manjula Padmanabhan spent a month in Delhi, living in a barsati in East-of-Kailash in what can only be described as surreal circumstances. As Padmanabhan was about to learn, living with two gay men (one of them, a fellow artist and alcoholic), their (unofficially) adopted Nepali son, a transvestite (bordering on perverse) cook, two spaniels and a Chihuahua (in heat) is far from standard.

The house that had so far been an all-male ménage soon shifts in varying degrees in the presence of an unambiguous, ‘normal’ female. But there is and always has been a deep undercurrent of pathos constantly fed by the recurring characters making an appearance upon the barsati’s peculiar stage. It is a month that doesn’t go by as quickly as a month normally does but it is one full of revelations—for Padmanabhan and her housemates.

Morning Glory in East-of-Kailash is Manjula Padmanabhan’s most non-fictional fiction piece. Almost a semi-fictional essay, this short but poignant read is as rewarding as it is beautifully written.