The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories Edited by Stephen Alter and Wimal Dissanayake Contents About the Authors Introduction Premendra Mitra: The Discovery of Telenapota Amrita Pritam: The Weed Bharati Mukherjee: Nostalgia Gangadhar Gadgil: The Dog that Ran in Circles U.R. Anantha Murthy: The Sky and the Cat Gopinath Mohanty: The Somersault R.K. Narayan: Another Community Raja Rao: Companions S. Mani ‘Mowni’: A Loss of Identity Anita Desai: A Devoted Son Chunilal Madia: The Snake Charmer P.S. Rege: Savitri Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai: A Blind Man’s Contentment Ismat Chughtai: The Wedding Shroud O.V. Vijayan: The Wart Bhisham Sahni: We Have Arrived in Amritsar Sunil Gangopadhyay: Shah Jahan and His Private Army Avinash Dolas: The Victim Nirmal Verma: Deliverance Devanuru Mahadeva: Amasa A Note on the Authors Acknowledgements Follow Penguin Copyright About the Authors Stephen Alter is the author of the novels Neglected Lives, Silk and Steel, The Godchild and Renuka, and two works of non-fiction, All the Way to Heaven and Amritsar to Lahore. He lives in Reading, Massachusetts with his wife and two children and teaches Creative Writing at MIT. * Wimal Dissanayake is a professor in Cultural Studies at the University of Hong Kong and an Adjunct Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He received his doctorate from Cambridge University and has published over thirty books on literature, film and communication. He is an award-winning broadcaster and poet and is the founding editor of the East-West Film Journal. Introduction Twelve years have passed since the first edition of The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories was published, long enough for the selected stories to withstand the test of time. This new edition adds three important authors who were not included in the original table of contents: Ismat Chughtai, Avinash Dolas and R.K. Narayan. The primary objective of this anthology is to offer some of the best examples of Indian short stories written in the last fifty years. It should be admitted that not all of these stories are the most contemporary examples of Indian fiction. Some were written several decades ago and one or two are now considered ‘classics’. Younger writers certainly need to be translated and collected but the purpose of this anthology is to present a general selection of writers, old and new. To anyone who is familiar with modern Indian literature, the three most glaring omissions would be Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand and Saadat Hasan Manto. We have chosen not to include their works because they have been widely published and would seem to represent a distinctly separate generation from the authors in this collection. These twenty writers were all born within this century and the bulk of their work comes from the period following Independence. Though several of these stories have been anthologized before, to the best of our knowledge, none have shared the covers of the same book. We chose these stories for their literary merits alone and were gratified to find that the final list of authors reflects a diversity of languages and regions. Several well-known authors have not been included. This is not because we judge their work inferior but because their strengths may lie in other genres, such as the novel, or because the existing translations of their stories were unsatisfactory. The fiftieth anniversary of Independence generated an outpouring of literary analysis and criticism on the subject of Indian literature. Both at home and abroad a variety of journals devoted special issues to the subject, compiling lists abroad a variety of journals devoted special issues to the subject, compiling lists of ‘promising’ contemporary writers and making optimistic predictions about the future of fiction in India. It would be fair to say that more than ever before the subcontinent is enjoying a resurgence of interest in its writing and its writers. The international success of novelists such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Gita Mehta, Jhumpa Lahiri and Arundhati Roy, has led to a renewed focus on Indian prose, even amongst the generally Eurocentric ranks of multinational publishers. In the course of the jubilee celebrations, a number of questions arose regarding post-colonial writing in India. For anyone who has read even a sampling of the literature, most of these are familiar issues which have been part of literary discourse since 1947. However, with the perspective of fifty years, these questions have acquired a contemporary resonance and immediacy. The first question that presents itself is whether a national identity can be asserted through literature and how various Indian writers compose their own visions of nationhood. Unlike British authors such as Rudyard Kipling or E.M. Forster, who had a penchant for Indian exoticism, the challenge for writers of the subcontinent is to create a known and familiar landscape that does not perpetuate orientalist imagery and myths. The second question is a persistent one, centered on the issue of language. Writers invariably select and limit their audience through the language they employ and in India, more than any other nation, this is a crucial problem, with sixteen major languages from which to choose. English, first introduced to the subcontinent by colonizers, has been adapted and assimilated into Indian culture and many writers have succeeded in making it uniquely their own. At the same time there is an active and ongoing literature in each of the regional languages. The third question involves the use of fiction as a medium of social protest. In the decades following 1947, as India exercised its independence and established its institutions, a chorus of voices was raised in opposition to the political and social structures that were created. Just as they had earlier joined in the protests against British rule, many writers were quick to criticize political oppression, the existence of widespread poverty, and the exploitation of lower castes, women and minorities. These three questions are by no means the only important issues relating to post-colonial literature in India, but they are significant catalysts for debate. Asserting a national identity Long before India gained independence from Britain many South Asian writers had already freed themselves from the shackles of colonialism. It is, of course, absurd to assume that with the handover of political power at midnight on 15 August 1947, Indian literature also experienced a synchronous moment of freedom. Writers seldom march in lock-step with the nation and the term ‘post- colonial’ must therefore be flexible enough to include those writers who had the foresight to anticipate, and in some cases precipitate, the demise of British rule in India. By the same token, however, it must be recognized that when we speak of post-colonial literature, this does not automatically imply liberation from all forms of exploitation and oppression. Literature, and the writers who make it, often labour under a variety of political, social, linguistic and critical constraints. Simply because a nation is free doesn’t mean that words begin to flow unabated. Yet India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ does have momentous significance for literature. Of the twentieth century fiction writers who were involved in the Indian freedom struggle, Rabindranath Tagore is perhaps the best known. His short stories and novels, as well as his poetry and plays, gained a worldwide audience. After he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 he came to represent India’s literary voice abroad. Tagore wrote in both Bengali and in English, often translating his own work. With a prose style full of scriptural cadences, he affected an idyllic classicism that is often assumed to be a distilled vision of India, informed by an aesthetic sensibility rooted in upper middle-class Bengali culture. Early twentieth century writing in India soon gave way to a more restless and politically charged form of fiction. The Progressive Writers Movement was inspired by a Marxist world view and a belief in class conflict. Unfortunately these writers were often didactic and only a few of them were able to turn political rhetoric into genuine literature. In this regard the poets amongst them were more successful than the fiction writers, though Bhisham Sahni and Ismat Chughtai stand out as exceptions. Many of the Progressive Writers were involved in the freedom struggle but they also recognized a further need for revolution throughout Indian society and felt a kinship to leftist writers around the globe. Independence also brought with it Partition and the division of India and Pakistan cast a tragic shadow over the subcontinent. Even as they shared in the Pakistan cast a tragic shadow over the subcontinent. Even as they shared in the elation of their countrymen, many writers turned their attention to the violence and turmoil that accompanied mass migrations across the newly demarcated borders in Punjab and Bengal. Sectarian riots, looting, rape and bloodshed tainted the newfound sense of freedom and stained the fabric of the nation. Saadat Hasan Manto is the writer most often associated with the literature of Partition. His Urdu short stories catalogued the horrors of Partition but also searched beneath the surface of this violence, dredging the murkiest depths of human nature for answers to the bloodshed which occurred in 1947. Though he died soon after Independence, Manto is clearly one of the first and foremost writers of the post-colonial generation. In his fiction and in his life he embodied the darkest side of this experience. As a Muslim, forced to move from Bombay to Karachi and Lahore, he lived as an exile in Pakistan and died a broken and dispirited man, not unlike some of the characters in his stories. During the immediate aftermath of Independence many Indian writers felt obliged to define and articulate a national identity. Literature, like everything else in the country, was seen as a means towards achieving success as a nation- state. The belief that India was a homogenous culture led to efforts at blending the literatures of India into a unified whole. The Sahitya Akademi, a governmental institution that was established to promote Indian literature, through annual awards, translations and publications, attempted to bring together India’s regional writers under a common umbrella of nationhood. Whereas the politicians were still basking in the afterglow of freedom, a younger generation of fiction writers in the early fifties began to question many of these national myths. Hindi writers of the Nayi Kahani (new story) movement veered away from self-conscious efforts at creating national stereotypes. Inspired, in part, by the writings of European existentialists, they rejected the misty idealism and rural landscapes of their predecessors, pursuing the issues of alienation that existed in the rapidly expanding cities of India. Nayi Kahani writers such as Nirmal Verma carefully dissected the anxieties and ambivalence of individual identity in the face of anonymity and change. The authenticity of language The freedom movement in India, with its slogans of national unity and integration, inspired proponents of a single national language. Amongst writers