Monologues, sex, drinking, smoking and angst, and resentments and such figure in the short stories. Read on what else...
Monologues, sex, drinking, smoking and angst, and resentments and such figure in the short stories. Read on what else...
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s ‘reputation’ precedes her; she of the blogger-whose-blog-was-picked-up-for-publishing fame! After You are Here; The Life and Times of Layla the Ordinary and Cold Feet, this is the fourth book, this time a collection of eleven short stories. Right from the contents page where the titles of the stories are listed — ‘It is two in the morning, and I’m writing to you’; ‘Except for the sound of your feet’; ‘Insert a carrot’; ‘Before, and then after’ — there is a conversational tone which carries on through the collection.
The second line of the opening story — the irrepressible memory of silence- goes, ‘oh, you know the kind I mean,’ as if expecting a nod from the reader!
However, one is never sure exactly what ‘kind’ the author means because many a times it’s like a monologue, a one sided conversation where, before the reader can even formulate a reaction, she has moved on wrapping up one further and farther in what she has to say, which unfortunately is not able to grasp your attention and hold it there all the time.
And she says it without any attempt to camouflage it in pretentious drivel; the language is the language of today’s generation, no frills and no coatings. It cannot be more direct and stark then the line ‘I would have gone with him to another room and let him put his fingers in my mouth. And other things,’ in ‘the irrepressible memory of silence’, the opening story itself!
Yes, (it is only given) there is sex, plenty of it with masturbation thrown in, but don’t expect the erotica or even the voyeuristic, it’s just there like a biological need and so matter-of-fact. Then there is drinking, smoking and angst, and resentments and such.
This is not to play moral police or a prude but just to say that the activities seem to be primary requisite to be today’s urban, independent woman! Above all, there are relationships that leave one wondering if all relationships come with angles and triangles, each and every one. Interestingly, the only relationships that seem convey genuine warmth and sense of reality are those where the other is not human, but a cat and dog.
The second story ‘The man who refused to grow up’ is a bit baffling. We all know Michael Jackson, know of Michael Jackson and the incongruity of the Indianised dressed up version from the perception of the daughter, here named Baarish, whose superstar father had been dead for a week only, hits you few lines into the story itself. It, however, evokes no empathy, curiosity of even a sense of relating to it. To the writer of the email in ‘It is two in the morning, and I’m writing to you’ one is tempted to say the rambling stretching over 21 pages is too long to keep one engaged especially when it is not engaging enough. Thankfully, after that comes ‘Cat of the night’, a story with meat and heart and though you know the clichés, you can’t help getting a tad emotive.
With ‘Insert a carrot’ it’s like being privy to a private conversation between two young women, today’s women, something not meant for eavesdropping ears or at least that’s the feel. What starts out as interesting peters out and eventually the misspelled carrot and caret humour and everything else including the overload of penis size, period sex, toothpaste ads — full of contoured bendy tops and flexible heads — seem almost contrived. Somewhere in the story, one of the two conversationalists mentions her age as 26 years and one is not sure if that is a relief or cause for worry because of the banality of it all!
It is back to a male bartender protagonist in ‘One Plus One’ and back to a monologue of sorts. The beginning is touching, the invisible silver threads connecting the bartender to everyone he loves makes you spin them in your mind to your loved ones. But somewhere the grip slackens and much before the end it is easy to visualise that the thread to Lucy/Lucinda in London will unhook and probably hook up with Mridula/M. Ramaswamy, except that one doesn’t feel any connect to it.
With ‘Death friends forever’ it is difficult to say whether it is intended to be tongue-in-cheek or metaphysical, either way it is not exactly on the target. The ones that follow, ‘The biggest night of the year and ‘Except for the sound of your feet’, come and go creating no ripples either.
It is the story, after which the book is named, ‘Before, and then after’ that strikes the right chord with a tender feel about this young girl, her mom who has moved on, her dad who doesn’t seem appropriately engineered to be the father of a teenager and her dog Poppy, whom she finally loses. The events, the language, everything comes together and fits perfectly.
A mermaid among humans — short excerpts from ‘My life as a mermaid’ by Undine Subramaniam’ — might sound like a misfit but as one reads on, somewhat disbelievingly initially, one gets pulled in literally below the waters into a world imaginatively conceived and described and one that could easily be developed into a full blown book. If only! The mermaid story all the more accentuates the feeling that ‘Before, and then after’ can be likened to a work in progress, much work is required before any further progress.
