Parallel dark strands of caste discrimination and bureaucratic indifference run through the stories
Pink Floyd described it best, in the number ‘Time’, with the phrase, “Hanging on in quiet desperation...” Floyd said it’s the English way, but it’s also the way of Sattari, the setting of these 13 short stories.
Sattari is a secluded fragment of Goa, a taluk of North Goa district, with its headquarters in the city of Valpoy. It nestles in the forested foothills of the Western Ghats, a part of the state that progress has passed by. Inhabitants are only dimly aware of development elsewhere, and tigers still haunt their memories, if not the forests. While most of the stories were first published in the 1990s and the noughties, even the most recent, the title story, first published in 2021, talks of medical facilities in Bambolim, some forty kilometres away.
Intriguingly enough, there’s no mention of the award-winning Konkani movie Kaajro, based on the title story, in any part of the book. Did the author disown the movie because it wasn’t true to his vision of the story? There’s some confusion here, because the movie came out in 2019, while the story appeared only in 2021.
Parallel dark strands of caste discrimination and bureaucratic indifference run through the stories. The Trap, for example, is built around a low caste family that lives off the income from selling the fat of otters it traps in the river. A bull belonging to a farmer — a higher caste, naturally — bumbles into one of these traps and breaks its leg. The trapper, for no fault of his own, is held responsible for the injury, and told to pay half the value of the bull in recompense. He has no chance of paying up without trapping otters, but the angry village headman confiscates his traps in lieu of payment, depriving the trapper of his livelihood. And the trapper, of course, has no recourse to the law, for that, like progress, has passed Sattari by...
Some of the stories bear a touch of the preternatural. Avdu, widowed, lives in her late husband’s ancestral house at the edge of the forest, the only house in the area. When her son suggests they shift to a village where they’ll have neighbours, she rejects the idea outright. The son wants to get married, but can’t persuade a girl to live in the forest. Meanwhile, the government is acquiring all the land in the area for a sanctuary but will compensate only those who have valid papers. Avdu has none, and is told by the forest department that she has to leave her house, and will get no compensation for it. The son gets married without telling her, and comes to see his mother with his bride afterwards, but Avdu has disappeared... No one ever finds a trace of her ever after. Here, then, are thirteen glimpses of an India we are in danger of forgetting, that is being bypassed by progress and brushed aside by an indifferent government.
Finally, a word on the translation: It’s patchy. Some words indicate that the translator relied on a thesaurus rather than a hard-won knowledge of the language. This occasional ineptitude detracts from the starkness of the stories. Barring that, it’s a must-read.
The Bitter Fruit Tree
By Prakash Parienkar
Tr. Vidya Pai
Niyogi
pp. 191; Rs 350/-
