As the name suggests, the book under review is about short stories written in English by Indian authors. Murli Melwani has traced the growth of the short story in its historical and cultural context. He feels this genre has been treated as a side activity by novelists and hence neglected by critics. Melwani examines how much of the traditional story telling is preserved and how much of the form, refined in the West, has been accepted. According to him, this genre enjoys a few advantages over the novel.
The intellectual, isolated from the life of the masses, can record his isolation and unrelatedness better. A view, that may not be shared by others. While documenting the short story from early beginnings to post-modern times, Melwani's treatise features writers, inconsequential to the ordinary reader, but, who perhaps could throw some light on anecdotes of Indian life for students of literature and sociology. Thus, apart from a few others, Cornelia Sorabjee's The Love and Life behind the Purdah finds a place in the early section.
Translated stories have been excluded, so Tagore's work doesn't feature here, but Melwani pays obeisance to him, admitting his influence on Indian writers to be all-pervasive'. The freedom struggle, Gandhi and Gandhian way of life, fables, beliefs, the middle class, the rich and the poor, the Bengal famine form the backdrop for the stories, so, Melwani is perhaps right when he says this genre shows India in all its entirety.
The founders, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao are dealt with in some detail. He is frank in appreciating as well as disapproving. He condemns Anand's verbosity and pompous diction. Of adapting English to express vernacular idioms, he says, it is a successful means of conveying the flavour of regional speech when used moderately. R.K. Narayan's repeating situations and characters in different combinations, irksome to some, is appreciated by Melwani. He also praises Narayan for remaining detached in all his stories. Raja Rao's experiments with form interest him.Numerous writers, both men and women from the South, whom one doesn't normally encounter, are covered by Melwani.
One agrees with this author when he says, more women are writing short stories now, than at any other time. He features a great many of them. Ruth Prawar Jhabavala, Attia Hossain, Ela Sen, Padma Hejmadi, Kamala Das, Sujatha Bala Subramanian, Raji Narisimhan, Juliette Banerjee, Nergis Dalal, Susan Viswanathan, Shashi Deshpande, Jai Nimbkar, Anita Desai and a host of others are presented by Melwani. He shows us how these writers brought renewed life and extended subject matter to the Indian English story. Their work is of a remarkable standard and variety, and they contribute to the modern consciousness, both Indian experience of a changing social structure and the pattern of daily living. Both exotic and common place.This study of women writers provides a useful guidance to further reading.
Melwani is among those very few who realise the importance of anthologies. This is the only way little known writers, whose stories may not be inferior in any way to that of their better known counter parts, can draw the attention of readers. Along with popular writers, lesser known, too, find a place in this treatise which is in keeping with the true spirit of a historical survey. Writers of Indian origin who live abroad are mentioned in passing, for this book deals only with Indian writers of this subcontinent, both living and dead. In the closing chapters of this book, Melwani seems to be in a mighty hurry.—
Reviewed by Neeta Sen Samarth The Stateman.
(The reviewer is a freelance contributor)
Along tradition of educational excellence, a salubrious climate, and a relaxed pace of life make Shillong a nursery of literary culture. I was witness to the growth of this culture from the fifties till the late seventies. It was my good fortune to know most of the writers personally. The contact with literary figures happened, less because I was a lecturer at Sankardev College, more because I gave time in the evenings to the bookshop I owned, Ratna’s Mascot.
Dr Verrier Elwin, a world-renowned anthropologist and ethnologist, who had donned khadi and worked with Gandhiji during the freedom movement, made Shillong his home. He was an impressive personality, with back-brushed collar-length hair and a perpetual cigar in his mouth. He wrote his autobiography, The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin, in Shillong.
EP Gee, renowned for his 1953 discovery of Gee’s golden langur (Trachypithecus geei), was a member of Wildlife Board of India, along with well-known figures like Salim Ali and M Krishnan. He wrote the authoritative The Wild Life of India during his retirement in Upper Shillong. AL Basham, author of The Wonder That was India, married Catherine Sen (Shadap), who taught history at St. Mary’s College, Shillong. Basham travelled between Australia, his native country, and Shillong. He was buried in Shillong.
Nari Rustomji, former chief secretary, Government of Meghalaya, recorded his experiences in the Northeast in Enchanted Frontiers.
JN Chowdury, author of The Tribal Culture and History of Arunachal Pradesh, The Khasi Canvas and Arunachal Panorama: A Study in Profile, would spend time at the Rabindra Library, from 7 pm till 9 pm, after a full day in government office. Everyone knew him as Mukul Chowdhury, not as Jyotindra Nath Chowdhury.
JD Baveja served as the director of All India Radio, Shillong for a number of years. A heavy-set man with casually combed hair, he had the look of an artiste. He wrote Across the Golden Heights of Assam and NEFA and The New Horizons of the North East, and collaborated with two others in writing The Land where the Bamboo Blooms.
DD Mali taught economics in the college where I taught English. My evenings in the bookshop taught me that there was a need for a book on the economy of Meghalaya. I persuaded Mali to write such a book; Ratna’s Mascot published it. Shortly after the publication of the book, Mali applied for the position of the director of the small-scale industries institute that was being set up. What secured Mali the job was the fact that he had published a book.
Mali subsequently wrote books like Economic Problems and Planning in Assam and Small Industry Development in North East India.
Radhon Singh Lyngdoh, who went on to become speaker of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, was connected from the beginning with the movement for the creation of a separate hill state. He wrote a history of the movement. The manuscript was not published and is presumed lost. Efforts should be made to find out the manuscript and publish it, since it records an important phase of Meghalaya’s history by a person who was a lecturer in history at St. Anthony’s College, Shillong.
Chronicles of an Impossible Election by James Michael Lyngdoh gives the reader an insight into the functioning of the Election Commission. Lyngdoh, a winner of the prestigious Magsaysay Award, retired as the Chief Election Commissioner of India.
Mona Melwani won the first prize in the non-fiction category, for her entry, Tipu Sultan, in the Competition for Writers of Children’s Books, 1980, organised by Children’s Book Trust. The iconic Nirad C Chaudhuri, who completed a book at the age of 100, has written in some detail about Shillong, a city he was connected with, in The Autobiography of An Unknown Indian. Sanjoy Hazarika, author of Rites of Passage, Strangers in the Mist and Writing on the Wall, needs no introduction.
Non-fiction is often the precursor of fiction and poetry. Famous anthropologist Verrier Elwin was a poet too; a collection of 28 of his poems has been recently published by North East Zonal Cultural Centre. Jyoti Jafa, wife of VS Jafa, an IAS officer, is the author of a historical novel,NurJahan. Since Jyoti Jafa was connected to one of the royal families of
Rajasthan, she recreates the Mughal court in the novel in meticulous detail. Shillong is the background for most of the stories in Murli Melwani’s collection, Stories of a Salesman. William H Archer, who reviewed it in Books Abroad, wrote, “(these)…are not stories with complex plots so much as sketches after the manner of Lafcadio Hearn, sharp vignettes of the daily round of East Indian people”.
In the early sixties, three young men and two women, who had just graduated from college, started a literary magazine, Forward. It carried poems, short stories and articles. Forward died a quiet unannounced death after three issues. Reason: the obvious one, lack of funds.
I am tempted to include writers like Mitra Phukan, who went to school or college in Shillong, but I would be straying from my turf, because other cities nurtured their talent.
Preetika Venkatakrishnan, in a recent article in Seven Sisters Post, Guwahati, brought the literary narrative of Shillong up to date by focusing on contemporary writers and poets.I would like to add a few names to her list. The story of Ankush Saikia’s debut novel, Jet City Woman, alternates between New Delhi and Shillong. The short stories in Saikia’s recent collection,Spotting Veron and Other Stories, move closer to Shillong. RG Lyngdoh, former home minister of Meghalaya, brought out a novel, Who the Cap Fits, that deals with the ethnic tensions in the Shillong of the seventies and eighties. Bikika Laloo Tariang, in her collection of short stories, Dad and The Salesman, presents both sides of the coin; she conveys the ignorance of fellow Indians about the people of the Northeast as well as the prejudices and insecurities of the locals.
The literary narrative of Shillong will move forward as more poets, novelists and short story writers draw on a tradition going back to the fifties and build on the groundwork done by the contemporary poets and writers. We look forward to more voices from the the Northeast presenting the unique points of view and sensibilities of seven fascinating cultures
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