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Satyr of the Subway: Urban Tales.
Sex and sensuality have become handy tools by which an audience can be captivated, and Nair resorts to this ploy in the very first story that shares the title of the book:Satyr of the Subway. Apparently, "urban tales" cannot be rendered without throwing in shady liaisons, sexual adventure and morbid escapades. That was my first impression as I picked up the book and read a few pages. Another regular feature of short stories today is their open endedness. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned plot, characters, stories and, most of all, focus. I do appreciate how contemporary experience translates into a Proustian landscape of uncertainty and indefinite geography, but the mind still hankers after a well-made story. Blame it on conditioning and convention. Nair’s second tale, To touch a Rainbow introduces us to two nameless couples making love. One of the men has a blocked nasal passage. How is this relevant? I read on and begin to doubt my own powers of comprehension as I go through The Witch’s Wife’s Tale, a story about a woman dissatisfied with the usual "husbandly" fare so that she turns to a blonde god and traps him into loving her by administering a magical pill dissolved in his coffee. She then leaves her husband and follows the other man to Washington DC and spends some exquisite time with him until his wife returns. The story ends with the forlorn woman on her way back, gifting one pellet to an old woman who is out to ensnare a young boy, but making sure she saves one last pellet for her cuckolded husband in case he finds out about her lover. Despite the annoying lack of focus, I must admit that I found myself engrossed in one of Nair’s stories—The Heart of a Gerund. An exceptional tale, rich in symbolic detail, it charts the dignity of a woman in an old age home. Believing herself to be unlike the other "slobbering", "dribbling" and "splattering" inmates, she is shocked when faced with her own photograph: "Straggly hair. Wrinkles. Lines and blotches. Eyes vacant. . . . It is the portrait of an old woman. The study of a destitute old woman with no place to go and nothing to do." This is a surprise to the reader who, thus far, has believed the protagonist to be a young girl. Mistress of the Night is almost poetic in conception with echoes of Eliot: "6 p.m. When cars sprout eyes and angular structures contort into softened shadows. When faces become mysterious and open tableaux of content. . . . Don’t gasp in shock when you see the clouds smeared with bruises. It’s the aftermath of having survived the day." This, again, is a poignant story about the gradual disciplining of one’s free spirit, the nightly round of switching TV channels and settling for the least challenging one, the planning and charting of dinner parties and vacations and the resulting slow alienation between life partners. What underscores most of
these narratives is the common experience of the void. Perhaps it is a
sense of isolation faced by an Indian diaspora in New York or an inner
exile of the mind? Nothing is clear cut and fixed. All the characters
are unhappy under their skins, seeking pleasure elsewhere. Might I add
that Nair is somewhat uneasy in relating to her own characters? She
evokes the feeling of neglect at home, of seeking solace always in the
arms of a stranger, a sentiment encapsulated best in The Karmic Cat: "To
exist is to suffer. Suffering has its roots in desire. Suffering can be
escaped by elimination of desire and the need to possess. After all, we
are all just passing through."
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A
startling and bold book, perhaps even shocking. More and more, writers
of short story are becoming adept at the art of scandalous writing. The
bomb has to drop within the span of a few, short pages; the reader’s
senses have to be captured immediately.