|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Betrayal and Other
Stories THE proud recipient of the Woman of the Year 2000 award by the International Woman's Association, Sivanskari portrays true-to-life domestic scenes and situations in her book, which is an anthology of simple, sharp and conclusive short stories. Irony is her sine quo non. She seems to have a great predilection for insects and animals, the downtrodden, helpless and hapless womenfolk. Interestingly, it is a bull with a pierced nose being pulled by a woman that first meets the eye on the cover of the book that evokes sympathy for a prey and hatred for a predator. In Sleepless—on a Butterfly's Wings, the narrator, a sensitive young man, observes antics of a brown butterfly and recollects the legend that the butterfly was originally a washerwoman who is "still even today flitting restlessly among bushes and trees, here, there everywhere, looking for her man. In attempting to save the butterfly's life, he willy-nilly switches the fan off, fearing that the small creature does not get hurt by the blades of the fan and spends restless nights. He sleeps quietly only after the butterfly falls prey to a lizard. In Boredom, the spectacle of male and female lizard's instinctual love making, "entwined with each other", shames the newly married wife, coping with boredom, in the absence of her husband. Shame is a human duality. What is natural with lizards/animals, becomes obnoxious at human level. The female narrator in Squirrels and the Guava Fruit glorifies small squirrels. She feels hurt when the she-devil landlady makes the gardener poison the squirrels just for the ripened guavas. Ironically, the helpless narrator shouts at her husband: "Allahabad guavas my foot! Will the heaven come down if you do not eat them? You people are such gluttons. All you think of is food and your own well-being." The Flow and The Ebb depicts the gap between perception and implementation. The protagonist, a middle class woman, is deeply affected by a poor woman's desperate appeal for money for the treatment of her critically sick husband. She earnestly asks her husband to send Rs 250. After much mutual discussion, the amount comes to Rs 50 and ultimately not a penny is sent. She comforts herself with the thought: "There is always a next time." The Big Fight ironically captures marriage breakdown in the contemporary urban metropolitan society. The couples fight over trifles and refuse to adjust to foster harmony to their relationship: "Me, a she-devil? How dare you call me names! And we have been married only three months? You want me to go away? Don't worry. I will! I believed you were a perfect gentleman. But you are not. You are a brute!" Discrepancy between dreams and reality is the theme of A Big Dream and a Small Chisel. The bride’s frank confession, "I am in love with someone else. The marriage has no meaning for me", shatters the protagonist's long-cherished hope and dream of a wonderful conjugal relationship. In Stillborn, Sarsu, an older daughter, fails to outgrow her parental home, in a remote countryside. She is condemned to the life of a maid. "Appa and Amma look upon her as a burden" and "direct their anger" at her. Finally, they find a man "older than fifty`85fifty-five to be exact" to dissolve their responsibility. The hapless Sarsu is shocked to find that her long awaited "Prince Charming" is an old man. A deeply disturbing story, Septic, delineates the clumsy process of giving birth to a baby. Thorn in Bed draws our attention to humiliation and suffering the old woman is made to experience by her nagging and combative daughter-in-law. Me and Mommy is a mother-daughter story. Madam Clean is an engaging story of how the maid Mary outsmarts the mistress Pretty, who is obsessed with cleanliness. Betrayal, the lead story rather a novella, is the narrative of an upper class Chandra and a low class Nalini. Chandra suffers a mental agony for her promiscuous husband, Murthy. Nalini is used by her own father as a "golden goose". The conspicuous titles, ironic mode of perception, feminine point of view and lyrical language add to the beauty of the stories. As a matter of fact, the two translators have done a fine job of rendering the stories in English, all the while retaining their characteristic regional flavour.
|
