When Hamid the poor orphan is going to the Eid fair, he has only three paise. All the other boys have an enormous amount of money with which to buy toys and sweets, and cruelly tease him with their riches. But Hamid has a single goal in mind – to buy a pair of tongs so his grandmother won’t burn her fingers making roti. Will his resolve last against lollipops and gulab jamuns? Will the brilliant toy policemen and lawyers of his compatriots break his will? A heartwarming tale of generosity and kindness with a sprinkling of mischief and love by the father of modern Hindi literature – Premchand.
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
From Swami and Friends
This sweet, short story is from RK Narayan’s iconic ‘Swami and Friends’, a slice of life from a simpler time. Swami has been forced to move to a different school because of his antics, and is struggling to play cricket as much as he likes. His grandmother, his coach, his headmaster all seem to be conspiring against him to ensure that he never gets to play cricket again. Swami’s friends are outraged on his behalf and decide to help him out by going and talking to his headmaster themselves. Will it work? Or will poor impetuous Swami now be confronted with even more furious grownups? Find out in this lovely little snippet from RK Narayan’s original Swami and Friends.
Snake Trouble
Grandfather is an odd but lovely man, and one day in the market, he buys a young python that he sees from the Snake Charmer. Alas, when they bring the python home, Grandmother lets out an ungodly scream, and says it must be sent packing. Try though they might, the python keeps coming home and becomes a reluctant part of the family. But what scrapes will young Ruskin get into with a python as a pet? And how does one take care of the python when you also have a parrot and a monkey? This has Ruskin Bond at his finest, with elegant prose and effortless humour in this delightfully sweet story.
The Gold and Red Shoe
One day, Lata finds a red and gold shoe while playing on the railway track. It was a beautiful shoe, covered in velvet with a sole of felt, and Lata who had never had anything in her life, suddenly had a shoe for show. All the other children who never played with her now begged to be her friend. But her friend had always been Joseph Pinto, the little boy with polio. When they find the shoe, the two children suddenly become the most popular in the slum. How long can a little bit of magic last for two children who have nothing at all? This poignant story by Margaret Bhatty finds joy even in the darkest places.
Love in the Sky
The colours on your two wings are not the same . . . one’s a brilliant yellow and the other is just the shade of ripe jamun berries I so love! May I call you Jamuni? You are so pretty!’ And every time she would flutter her wings and fly away in one smooth move.’
Ghuggu is a crow, and Jamuni the one he loves – a love of of bright yellow and purple, who comes out every afternoon to fly in the sky, silent and lovely. Ghuggu falls in love with her, not knowing why she will never speak back to him, not knowing why she will never fly to him. He sees one day that she is tied to her owner with a thread, a sharp thread that can cut, and he mourns for her freedom. One day, a storm brews, and when the Jamuni comes out, the crow runs to her to protect her – but can he protect himself? Gulzar perfectly captures the sweetness of love in this charming, delightfully silly story of love.
Border
‘In the village below, there are a lot of men whose houses are on this side but their farms on the other,’ Majeed began to stutter in answer. ‘There are men in a similar situation in villages on the other side too whose houses and farms are thus divided. Families and relations too. So . . .’
Gulzar writes with poignant power on the horrors of Partition, exploring the lives of those who have lived on the border made heartbreakingly complex with a sudden, arbitrary line whose scar spans generations. Major Kulwant has grown up in the valley, and he now returns as a soldier to guard it. What happens when he finds out that his old childhood friend is an enemy across the line? A touching story on how friendship and hope blooms in defiance of nationalism brought to life with the joys of a childhood in Punjab.
The Rain
‘The rain was unrelenting. It had poured night and day, for five days in a row. And Damoo had been drinking relentlessly, day and night, all through those five days, competing with the downpour. Neither would the rain let up nor would Damoo let go. The steadfast rain and stubborn Damoo. Drunk, both.’
Gulzar writes a wrenching account of the Mumbai Floods – rains that laid waste to a city already bursting at the seams. He draws out the small hopes on which the people live and how easily they can flow away. How long can alcohol hold the rain at bay? A deeply moving, unsettling story on what it takes to stay alive.
The Stench
The Stench paints a poignant portrait of Mumbai’s characteristic slums in the masterful prose of Gulzar. Delicately woven stories all come together – from the bitter-gourd vine separating two shanty huts, to the camaraderie of men who’d gather together on charpoys outside their homes in the evening light. Life in the slum was hard and grim, but it was theirs. But one morning, the shanty towns are razed and the people are given neat, sterile rooms to be packed in away from sight. Where will the precious goats and chickens grow on the third floor? The concrete gathers no moss, but no green blooms within these four unyielding walls. The question remains – is a life you don’t know a life you will ever want? Gulzar draws the loneliness and chaos of the urban life with astute brilliance in this beautifully detailed insight into Mumbai slums.
Bhushan Banmali
Gulzar reminisces about an old school poet – an eccentric man named Bhushan Banmali. Bhushan had a wife and a mother but at heart he was a nomad, and one day when their tug-of-war over him got too much, he packed his bags and moved in with Gulzar himself! Suddenly Gulzar found himself at parties full of rum and fried fish and kebabs, overflowing with poetry from dawn to dusk. One day Gulzar and Bhushan pack their bags to go to the mountains, and freezing and tired, they manage to find a spark of generosity to keep their cold nights hilariously warm. Taken from Gulzar’s life, these stories will enthrall any fan with a universally heartwarming touch.
Bravely Fought The Queen
First staged in Mumbai in 1991, Bravely Fought the Queen juggles between two spaces-center stage where an empirical drama removes the mask of hypocrisy from a seemingly ‘normal’ urban household; and a small, rear backdrop from where emerges the raison d’être of each protagonist. The family in focus is that of two brothers, Jiten and Nitin, who run an advertising agency and are married to sisters: Dolly and Alka. Their mother, Baa, moves between the two households, attached more to her memories of the past than to any present reality. Marital friction, sibling rivalry, the traditional tension between mother-in-law and daughters-in-law, the darker moments of business and personal dealings, the play takes us through the entire gamut of emotional experience as it winds to a climactic finish. With its relentless pace, crisp idiom and unflinching insight into the urban milieu, this is a play that confirms Mahesh Dattani’s reputation as India’s most influential playwright.