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July 22, 2007
REVIEWS: Melancholy parables
Vilas Sarang is undeniably a highly imaginative writer; his creative imagination tinted with morbid haunting colours. His latest book leaves the readers with a gloomy and poignant aftertaste. Most of his short stories deal with social paradoxes of the subconscious mind, highlighting supernatural realities.
The book does not make for pleasant reading but it will be unjust to regard Vilas as a non-talented writer and his stories as lifeless meaningless tales. The book has been authored with a distinct style and its underlying themes make one think and ponder. Some of the short stories included in the book leave a strong impression on the reader’s mind. They paint a wide variety of landscapes from the brilliant skylines of New York to the grey streets of London, the remote picturesque villages of Nepal, to the mysterious lands south of the Indian Ocean.
Vilas’s stories are mostly surreal, where relatively mundane daily routines suddenly take on symbolic meanings, often religious ones, as the writer indiscernibly pulls away the invisible divide between the natural and the supernatural. One of the more interesting short story, ‘Flies’ has been crafted in the form of precise notes written by a man who spends his time killing flies and reading in bed. After killing a fly, he reflects on the specifics of the act, and then looks for his next prey. The writer’s obsession with details is most apparent in tales such as this, making one wonder whether there is more to the tale than what they have been able to grasp.
While Vilas’s style of writing may indulge some, it just might not be easy to swallow for the more contemporary conventional readers, for this kind of pop, psycho-analytical writings may leave them disturbed.
In his story ‘The phone mate’, the author explores how a sickening experience can sometimes give one a kind of morbid pleasure. An Indian in an American hostel shares a phone box on the wall with the person in the next room. One day he peeps into the next room and finds his phone mate lying unresponsive on his bed. Even after realising that the guy is dead, he chooses to do nothing about it. He makes it his daily routine to peek on the dead body for the next few days, anxiously waiting for the cleaner to make her weekly round and get a horrific shock upon discovering a rotten corpse. Nothing much happens when the discovery is made but thinking about the shock in store for the cleaner gives the guy a morbid high. And the tales get weirder.
‘An interview with Mr Chakko’ is yet another one of those about a Mr Chakko who has lived a very interesting life having been marooned on an island where the resident women have bizarre bodies — they have either the upper half of their bodies or the lower half. These stories appear in the section ‘Libido Zones’, as does ‘The women in cages’ on which the title of the book is based. ‘The women in cages’, like several others in the section, is about the life of women in brothels.
Her mother explains to her that Rumi has gone to Swarg — a paradise on earth where all the girls of her village go when they turn 14 or 15.
Among these is ‘The missing link’ the most heart-wrenching tale in the collection that really chokes you up each time you read it. While many stories are first person accounts, none touch you the way this one does, making the central character the most real and unforgettable images of the collection.
Ratna, a 14-year-old Nepali girl, is curious about her sister’s departure from their village. Extremely poor, like most families in their village, Ratna’s parents have sent away her elder sister Rumi. She puts endless questions before her mother who explains to her expressionlessly that Rumi has gone to Swarg — a paradise on earth where all the girls of her village go when they turn 14 or 15. She is told that they live a comfortable life in luxury with plenty to eat, nice clothes to wear and finally return at 35. Some don’t. Some die because of illnesses. The boys of the village including Ratna’s younger brother however, will not go away to Swarg.
The little girl being a simple soul, who has not seen life beyond the boundaries of her village, is fascinated by these explanations. Her imagination runs wild, forming pictures of a blissful life led by the girls of her village who have gone to paradise. Though brief in her explanations, her mother makes this inevitable fate that awaits her appear in a. exceptionally positive light. When “the day of reckoning” arrives, Patel, the man who takes away all the girls, comes to their house to inspect Ratna, who’s bathed and dressed in her best rags and told to put on her best behaviour. He thinks she will be stunning in a couple of years and all is settled for Ratna to leave the next morning.
When it’s her turn to go to Swarg, Ratna finds she isn’t so thrilled. Ratna tells her mother she doesn’t want to leave her home and family. Her mother hugs her tight and then firmly pushes her away and tells Ratna she will be comfortable there. When Ratna hears her parents talking in hushed tones late in the night — with her mother showing her fear for Ratna’s welfare for the first time and her father confessing that Patel will simply kill him and take away Ratna — the girl is too scared to sleep and hugs her doll tightly.The tale ends here, leaving it to our imagination to figure out what happens to her when she leaves with the pimp to start her life in the brothels of Mumbai.
Sarang is clearly a writer who is preoccupied with the human mind, be it of the characters or of the readers. We find him dwelling more on the thoughts of the characters than their emotions, but he surprisingly succeeds in presenting them rounded most of the time.
The Women in Cages: Collected Stories
By Vilas Sarang
Penguin India
www.penguinbooksindia.com
ISBN 0-14-306184-4
283pp. Indian Rs275
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