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| Sunday, March 7, 2004 |
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| Sunday, March 7, 2004 |
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On the Rocks and Other Stories
The first story On the Rocks has been woven around a couple living through a dead marriage. The passion that is essential for the sustenance of a relationship has long gone, leaving behind traces of antagonism. Other stories like Perfect Balance and The Artist’s Wife explore the relationship between spouses, which is far from ideal. Through these stories the author seeks to convey the need of the woman for emancipation. The female protagonist in The Artist’s Wife struggles to launch the career of her artist husband in a new place. She totally submits herself to the needs and demands of her man. On the contrary the woman in Perfect Balance says, "My aim is to pursue my own course of life. Nothing more, nothing less!" She believes that only ample money can facilitate complete independence. She is the prototype of the modern woman who tries to successfully balance the roles of a perfect wife and a working woman. The story drives home the point that it is very difficult to get rid of the stereotypes associated with the two. Interestingly, the question of reaching an equilibrium, both in the outside world and within oneself, is always lost in the game of power. Destiny changes the course of many lives. For instance, in Lost Souls, the poverty that Gautam faces during the early years of his life transforms him into a mechanical human being who is only concerned about earning money. The two women colleagues in Enough have contrasting characters and diverging attitudes to life, yet they manage to unshackle each other from the tedium of their jobs. Each story examines the question of reality and illusion, life and death and explores the perplexity of belonging and non-belonging to a place, a relationship or even to a particular way of life. The final story, Floored Goddesses, brings together hope, rejection, deception, escapism and adaptation when a German migrant to India is acquainted with the fact that preachers are often the last practitioners of their own philosophy. The reader is bpund to be enriched by the insight of the writer into the complexity of human relationships. The writer is a German married to an Indian. She was a journalist but resigned her post in the German Embassy to become a full-time writer. Her earlier book, Life is Peculiar, was a collection of anecdotes narrating incidents of humour and absurdity. In an earlier interview Roswitha justifies her inclination towards writing fiction based on real life, " I have a keen desire to enjoy. This might be born out of a strong consciousness that death and destruction might be lurking just around the corner. That is probably why I look for the jewel, even if it lies in dustbin. I also feel that actual life is mundane and that only people’s desire to aggrandise themselves by aggrandising their life and its players creates the illusion that it is otherwise." Regarding her new collection Roswitha explains that it "deals with various relationships which had taken an odd turn. I try to step into the shoes of all protagonists and imagine how they might have got involved in the events and developments life dished out to them." |
IN this collection, Roswitha Joshi explores the
myriad colours of human life. Each of the ten stories problematises the
very universal, though mundane, situations of life to which people have
grown indifferent. Although the stories at times seem to be lacking in
optimism, yet these offer a different perspective on life.
