Catagory: Fiction

Gujarat, 1964. The agrarian system of renewable annual contract mandates fulltime labour on the houses and farms of landlords. In these bleak circumstances, Iso, a tanner by birth, graduates from being a child labourer to an adult serf on the estate of Mavaji. His life is one of humiliation, hunger and drudgery, and the only respite comes in the form of Diwali, Mavaji’s daughter. Between them exists a physical relationship that is shrouded in secrecy, shame and fear. Even as Iso creates distance between them, a chance encounter turns to violence and tragedy, and he faces the brutal sword of caste patriarchy.
Based on the blood-curdling murder of a Dalit boy by Rajput landlords in Kodaram village in 1964, Vultures portrays a feudal society structured around caste-based relations and social segregation, in which Dalit lives and livelihoods are torn to pieces by upper-caste vultures. The deft use of dialect, graphic descriptions and translator Hemang Ashwinkumar’s lucid telling throw sharp focus on the fragmented world of a mofussil village in Gujarat, much of which remains unchanged even today.

Ganesan returns, after four decades, to the town of his childhood, filled with memories of love and loneliness, of youthful beauty and the ravages of age and misfortune, of the promise of talent and its slow destruction. Seeking treatment for leprosy, he must also come to terms with his past: his exploitation at the hands of older men, his growing consciousness of desire and his own sexual identity, his steady disavowal of Brahminical morality and his slowly degenerating body. He longs for liberation-sexual, social and spiritual-but finally finds peace only in self-acceptance.

This translation of the groundbreaking Tamil novel Pasitha Manidam, first published in 1978, offers deep insight into the conservative and caste-conscious temple town of Kumbakonam, viewed here with dispassionately cold clarity as a society that utterly fails its own. Sudha G. Tilak deftly builds upon Karichan Kunju’s prose to expose this world, raw, real, without frills or artifice. The themes of masculinity, desire and sexuality, caged within caste and repression, all combine to give readers front-row seats to the many acts we put on for and as a community.

Humankind’s unrelenting mistreatment of our planet has finally led to a seemingly futile awareness of our acute shortage of time. What separates us from an oblivion preceded by excruciating pain and strife? The characters of this unique book, inspired by legends from lore and literature alike, pursue paths they believe are best for them and for their world. They are unaware of the flaws that distort their dreams. Divided into three parts, Suniti Namjoshi’s Dangerous Pursuits turns righteousness and virtue upon their heads, making for an irreverent and ruminative exploration of the beginning of the end of the world.

In “Bad People”, Ravana, Shupi and Kumbh deflect the world from its destructive course, but perfection remains a distant dream. Ravana, of course, belongs to epic; but how does he fit into the twenty-first century? With the help of Grandma Ketumati’s balm, these three ‘bad’ people outwit our contemporary villains. In “Heart’s Desire”, an old woman seeks to make a bargain with the devil, but the devil isn’t interested, and she finds herself stuck with two angels instead. She and the angels do their best, but the old woman learns that the heart’s desires aren’t all that she had expected. And in “The Dream Book”, based on The Tempest, Caliban, Miranda, Prospero and the rest find that their dreams clash and are as pretty and pitiless as glass shards. Yet, each time their dreams crack, they dream again, reckless in this dangerous pursuit.