Collected Short Stories of Gopal Baratham

Gopal Baratham

Description

This exciting collection brings together thirty-nine of the late Dr. Gopal Baratham's characteristic and revered pieces. In his usual blunt, strong and controversial style, Baratham's socio-political critiques are 'peopled' by characters from virtually every background and class-with their frustrated hopes, wild illusions and excesses. Paired with a stylistic and evolving narrative voice, as seen in dialogue that fluctuates from poetic to quirky, this writer's ambivalent medium is also his message. Readers are drawn into the depth of his work, and left with a sympathetic, sensitive understanding of events, people, actions and the complexities of relationships.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814634816
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Gopal Baratham s writing:
The writer possesses a technically excellent prose style, so smooth that it slips down the reader s throat like a well-made Singapore Sling.
- T HE H INDU
Most of Baratham s peers admire his boldness.
- R OBERT Y EO
Baratham s talent as a writer has been undisputed. So has his moral courage.
- T HE I NDIAN E XPRESS
One of your finest writers, Gopal Baratham, has written the best Singaporean novel I have read so far.
- F. S IONIL J OS
I feel he is Singapore s most acclaimed writer.
- D R E ARL L U
A Candle or the Sun ... picks up where George Orwell s 1984 left off.
- T IME
a genuine ability to tell a story.
- C OMMENTARY
Singapore s literary enfant terrible
- T HE W ESTERN A USTRALIA
Baratham s controversial - has always been
- A SIA T IMES
The absence of jargon and pretentiousness lends a special charm to the low-key stories that explore the emotions of the locals
- A SIAWEEK
Each of the stories, in diverse themes and techniques, is so superbly written that one wishes one would never finish reading it. I should think that we ought not regard and judge Gopal Baratham s work within the confines of so-called Singapore literature. Nationality is such a limiting concept.
- H AJIME K IJIME

Stories 2001 Gopal Baratham
Interview 2001 Ban Kah Choon
2014 Gopal Baratham
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196
Figments of Experience and Other Stories first published 1982; People Make You Cry and Other Stories first published 1988; Memories that Glow in the Dark and Other Stories first published 1995; and The City of Forgetting first published 2001 by Times Editions Pte Ltd.
Cover design by Sarah and Schooling
All rights reserved
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The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no events be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Baratham, Gopal, 1935-2002.
Collected short stories / Gopal Baratham. - Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2014
pages cm
ISBN : 978-981-4351-14-0 (paperback) eISBN: 978 981 4634 81 6
I. Title.
PR9570.S53
S823 -- dc23
OCN891325371
Printed in Singapore by NPE Pte Ltd

Contents
INTRODUCTION: THE POIGNANT MAVERICK (by Kirpal Singh)
Figments of Experience and other stories (1982)
Welcome
Vocation
Love Letter
The Experiment
The Wafer
Wedding Night
Tomorrow s Brother
The Interview
Island
Figment of Experience
Confidence Trick
Ghost
Sundowner
Ultimate Commodity
Cliseemah Caloh
People Make You Cry and other stories (1988)
Gretchen s Choice
Roses in December
Double Exposure
The Gift of Sarah Richardson
Character Study
Homecoming
Kissful of Tears
Living Memory
Dutch Courage
People Make You Cry
Memories that Glow in the Dark and other stories (1995)
The Personal History of an Island
Oh
Japanese Girl
Providence
Korean Agate
A Non
Karma
Mandarin
The Leg Glance
Memories That Glow in the Dark
Main-main
Last Word
The City of Forgetting (2001)
Small Change
Shelter
AN INTERVIEW WITH GOPAL BARATHAM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Poignant Maverick
Reading Gopal Baratham
It was in 1973 that I first met Gopal Baratham. He was relatively young and looked like the kind of guy who could make the life adventure of a young university graduate interesting, exciting and sufficiently on-the-edge! For he himself led such a life, full of colour and vigour, zest and vim. The well-known Edwin Thumboo, who introduced us, said, Kirpal, Gopal will introduce you to people you will find interesting. Gopal himself is interesting beyond compare! There was plenty that Thumboo didn t tell me about this young neurosurgeon whose fame preceded him. Being the son of the Dr B.R. Sreenivasan who had had the gall to speak out against Singapore s formidable Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, over the issue of suitability certificates for those applying to enter the then University of Singapore (now National University of Singapore) and where Dr Sreenivasan had been appointed the first Asian Vice-Chancellor! Surely the son must inherit some of his father s resistance to authority, I thought. And, as I was to find out, I was not wrong in my supposition.
From the very first Gopal proved to be provocative. His conversations were always laced with wit, often sardonic and sometimes sarcastic, and the subject of many a conversation was: how is Singapore shaping politically. Gopal was my senior by fourteen years, but mentally and most definitely politically, he was my senior by decades! He was also a highly respected medical personality, having established himself as a leading neurosurgeon in our part of the world. If truth were known, it was Gopal the doctor that Thumboo wanted me to first meet so that my late uncle, who brought me up and who shared Gopal s distrust of authority, would have a good doctor to call should the need arise. Singapore was very different then, and knowing a good doctor meant cutting a lot of waiting time and also having the personal assurance of care and concern.
I have narrated the above to make a serious point about reading Gopal s wonderful stories: we must get personally involved. Gopal always emphasised how he loved readers who took the (emotional) trouble to engage with his writings. He always used to say, Kirpal, there are essentially two kinds of readers: those who love you and those who don t. Simple. If they love you, they will feel what you write. If they don t, they will not.
So for him the act of reading was the act of feeling. As a doctor he knew only too well how clinical we humans can be when we want to be detached. But our writings, our poems, our stories, our plays (Gopal had tried all genres, even while still at school where he was academically just outstanding!) need attachment , not detachment. And yet, some say with rueful irony, Gopal s own writings reveal the deft touch of the detached author writing with surgical clarity. Gopal writes, first and foremost, as a Singaporean - his characters are mostly Singaporeans: Indians, Malays, Chinese, Eurasians, Europeans the multifaceted mix which constitutes the Singapore that he knew so well and loved intensely. Just as Frost wrote for his epitaph, Gopal too had a lover s quarrel with his country; a quarrel which he was proud to take ownership of and a quarrel which, he felt, was long overdue in terms of Singapore becoming a mature society in the Aristotelian sense. Never one to worry about ramifications and consequences, Gopal wrote with an honesty which many find troubling - just as he said, in a letter to The Straits Times Forum, that old surgeons should give up operating admitting that their fingers were no longer firm. (Gopal himself gave up his practice in 1999.) I believe that Gopal was, at heart, a humanist with a high level of moral sense and sensitivity.
But he did have a lot of fun presenting himself as a maverick . Once he told me just how boring Singaporeans could be because they felt that trying to be funny or cracking a joke or even telling a corny story would be a sure way of being marked down by those around. And so often Gopal would deliberately pretend to be other than what he truly was. It was amusing for someone like myself to watch his numerous shenanigans and to realise that here was a human being who, given his sharpness of perception and his daring to articulate what he felt and thought, would frequently be finding himself in a rather sorry state. Gopal s famed drinking was an aspect of his personality which I attributed - and still do - to his inability to transcend boredom and find a meaningful existence despite and in spite of all that he saw as debilitating. I remember he drove to my home one evening at about 10pm and asked me out. We had some drinks and he didn t drop me back till the wee hours of the morning. Later that day, in the afternoon, I called his wife Pauline and asked after him only to be told he was in the operating theatre! Such was his capacity to have fun and to be conscientiously responsible when it came to work. Brain operations those days were marathon affairs, often taking more than ten hours.
What many also found uncomfortable about Gopal and his writings (and I believe many still do!) was his candour. Whether it was sex and sexuality, whether it was politics and politicians, whether it was race and racism - whatever arena Gopal entered, he entered it full score knowing that many would find this disturbing. Take, for instance, the following from one of his earliest published short stori