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Venus Crossing Kalpana Swaminathan’s Venus Crossing stands tall in the genre of short story in English. It is a masterpiece of craftsmanship of story writing that brings forth very artistically the deep complexities of human relationships. She focuses on "the instant of transit, that moment when the impossible—the unthinkable—is absorbed into the fabric of life so that life can be lived again. That moment is everything; revelation, challenge existence". The stories are a fine study of female psyche in the context of various situations.
A Prostitute’s Tale wins over us with the protagonist’s peculiar habit of showing emotional generosity like scooping up the child from the edge of the railway platform or shouting for ambulance when a school boy falls off the train are ironically repaid by being labelled as an emotional prostitute. What did you do to me?, a fine example of writer’s workmanship, is the tale of a medical trainee Tahera who is shocked at finding herself extirpated. At home, to her surprise, she gets a nice gift from her father, while mother dabs eau de cologne on her face "as she lies cradled in the wide womb of her grandmother’s lap". Here is the moment when the impossible happens, and the story ends beautifully, "How can Tahera ask them that question? How can she cry out in anger?" The writer is quite an expert in handling satire. With a rich sprinkling of wit and satire, she evolves an interesting tale of male indecency in the story Acts of Aggression that has become "a recurrent motif in the familiar fabric of our lives". The professor of philosophy (with a cultivated stoop), popularly known to be above vice, makes very obscene remarks at a woman in the ladies’ compartment of a train. His sister-in-law’s words "Did not I see you on the 7.50 today?" straightway make him conscious of his misbehaviour. Incident At Abu Ghraib is a meaningful take on human relationships which get spoiled in an "instant" between mother and daughter and between husband and wife. The moral depravity that has crept into the medical profession is also brought out well in the story. Fly Away, Peter depicts how two young girls rejected in love come over their grief and move on with their lives. Swaminathan’s expertise as a short story writer is best evident in Shame and Yellow Dupatta, the two most poignant stories. The characters of old patients in Shame are a fine stroke of the author’s pen, especially the old Freny treating her carefully folded handkerchief as a precious possession. Stella frowns at the pimp’s disentangling the tubes from the old thin lady’s hands but the latter’s instant death holding his hands creates a sense of shame in Stella. This makes her realise her mistake. "She wants to run after him and cry out her shame, but he is gone. Yellow Dupatta is a sad story, with the dead body of the child in the backdrop. A sheer coincidence is that the mother has brought a yellow dupatta with ‘gota’ at the edges, not knowing she would cover her son’s dead body with the same. The practical compulsions demand that the dead body is taken home on a train. The stark reality of how casually things take place in a mortuary is an eye-opener. With consummate skill,
the author gives striking beginning to her stories as in Eclipse,
"Somewhere there is a moon. There must be a moon somewhere, but I
dare not took". Short crisp one-line sentences are remarkable,
while the rich flow in the narrative carries us along with it. Complex
imageries, like the description of lips in Euthanasia,
"blue-red split of ripeness, a tear in honeyed fig?" or
"I ran through the black-feathered rain `85" in Eclipse,
have a magical effect. Enduring impression of the book is the
cinematic appeal of the description that stays with the reader long
after having laid it. The collection is virtually a unique
contribution to this genre and makes a good read, poignant and
unpretentiously profound.
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Swaminathan’s
stories display a mind that is very sensitive to the ordinary people
around her. The characters are ordinary people, and it is the ordinary
circumstances around which her stories are woven. Their lives undergo
a change when "some moment, some instant" occurs. Herself
being a surgeon she brings alive hospital wards, ICUs and the medicos
with a masterly stroke. She gives a deep insight into her characters
and has the knack of getting under their skin. For example, Sister
Thomas and Mister Gomes is a very sensitive and poignant portrayal
of human relationships. Sister Thomas has witnessed thousands of
deaths in the hospital, but has failed to capture the instant of
death. It was her moment of challenge that she appeared in a sari
rather than in uniform and signed the mortuary register as Judy Gomes.