Collected Stories

Shashi Deshpande

Description

Story-writing is, to me, a way of exploring the world,' says best-selling novelist and short-story writer Shashi Deshpande. In this, the second volume of her collected short fiction, we travel with her into a world of characters and situations that are identifiable, and experience emotions that are at once complex and cathartic. Intensely felt and beautifully rendered, these are stories that will stay with you a long, long time.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 10 février 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351182467
• Langue: English

Extrait

Shashi Deshpande
Collected Stories Volume II
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Introduction
Retrospective
The Last Enemy
Lucid Moments
The Pawn
Travel Plans
The Dim Corridor
Death of a Child
Lost Springs
Hear me, Sanjaya . . .
Madhu
Memorabilia
The Window
It Was Dark
The Day of the Golden Deer
I Want . . .
Ghosts
The Story
And Then . . .?
A Day Like Any Other
The Miracle
A Man and a Woman
The Cruelty Game
Rain
And What Has Been Decided?
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Author
Shashi Deshpande, daughter of the renowned Kannada dramatist and Sanskrit scholar Shriranga, was born in Dharwad. At the age of fifteen she went to Mumbai, graduated in economics, then moved to Bangalore, where she gained a degree in law. The early years of her marriage were largely given over to the care of her two young sons, but she took a course in journalism and for a time worked on a magazine. Her writing career began in earnest only in 1970, initially with short stories, of which several volumes have been published. She is the author of four children s books and seven previous novels, the best known of which are The Dark Holds No Terrors, That Long Silence, which won the Sahitya Akademi award, and Small Remedies. Shashi Deshpande lives in Bangalore with her pathologist husband.
By the Same Author
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Dark Holds No Terrors
That Long Silence
The Binding Vine
The Narayanpur Incident
A Matter of Time
Small Remedies
The Intrusion and Other Stories
Collected Stories, Volume I
Writing from the Margin and Other Essays
Introduction
This, the second volume of my stories, once again spans three decades. Most of the stories were, however, written in the seventies and early eighties. Of these, The Dim Corridor , Ghosts , Rain and Death of a Child are some of the earliest, while The Pawn was my first Bangalore story. The Window , a story with lesbian undertones, went unnoticed and unremarked upon, which confirms my belief that to write in English is to be armoured against social criticism. The Miracle remains in my mind because of a comment made by a male reader: What do you mean by the last line? and Death of a Child for the feminist criticism that a woman s agonizing over her decision to abort her child vitiates the feminist argument! It Was Dark was one of the most difficult stories to write; I find it hard to read even today. Retrospective , Memorabilia , Lost Springs and Travel Plans belong to the nineties, a time when my story writing dwindled because of a preoccupation with my novels. But this was also the period when I found myself exploring the Puranas and the epics more and more in the few stories that I wrote. My exploration began, predictably, with Sita in The Day of the Golden Deer and went on to characters like Draupadi and Kunti. My heart rebels against it, Rajaji said, speaking about Ram s abandonment of Sita in his emotional rewriting of the Ramayana in English. So it is with most Indians. Nevertheless, I saw in Sita a dignity and courage that saved her from becoming a passive victim. It was no blade of grass, I thought, but her strength that kept the infatuated Ravana at bay. So, too, Draupadi. It is very often said that she was the cause of the Mahabharata war. Was she? And Kunti? What lay behind that strong mother-figure? The original title of the Kunti story, Hear Me, Sanjaya , was Kunti Uvaacha (Kunti Speaks)-a much truer and more evocative title.
But it was not just the women, the stories too lent themselves to different interpretations. When I came across jottings in my father s copy of the Bhagvad Purana, I read with great interest the verses in the Kurma Avatara chapter that spoke of Laxmi rising from the sea, so resplendent that everyone desired her- gods, demons and men . Out of this The Story was born; herstory indeed!
It surprises me today that Duryodhana, the villain of the Mahabharata, insinuated himself among all these women characters. The Last Enemy remains a story that I confess a partiality for, because of the way it wrote itself-almost-in the course of an evening. Words and sentences came into my mind with such clarity that I scarcely had to change anything in the later draft, which for me is a rare occurrence. And in the story that emerged, Duryodhana was no longer a villain, but a tragic figure- cold, lonely and alone .
Recently I heard Jnanpith winner Prof. Ananthamurthy say that these old stories, whatever they may be, allow you to intervene. They certainly do. They give you the space to search for your own meanings; therefore the possibility of rewriting, the re-visioning, the recreating. But the way I see it, whether you write about yesterday or about today, writing is always about looking for your own truths. Once asked, like all writers are, why I write, I said: Not to change the world. I wish I could, but I know I can t. So, instead, I tell it as it is, rejecting all that has been said, written and told to me about people, specially about women who have always been spoken for, discarding images, stereotypes, re-questioning myths and starting afresh, crawling into the minds of people, painting their inner landscapes.
This is how and why these stories were written.
Shashi Deshpande Bangalore 5 October 2003 (Vijayadashami day)
Retrospective
I VE BEEN WONDERING all day how it will be to meet him after so many years. What will I do? How will I feel? Now when I see him, the first thought that comes to my mind is-he s aged gracefully! His hair, grey-streaked now, is still unruly and bushy, giving him the look of a furry animal. A cuddly one, I have to admit. I also notice, with a touch of resentment, that he s put on just enough weight to give him the dignity he needs. But aged? -what am I thinking of? That s scarcely the right word for a man in his forties, is it?
He is the first to speak. How many years has it been . . .? No, don t let s count.
Sixteen years and three months.
If he s surprised by my exact statement, he doesn t show it. Carefully closing the door behind him, he hands me the parcel he has with him. And then smiles-perhaps at the look on my face when I feel the unexpected weight of the parcel and hear the clink of the bottles inside.
I wondered what to get for you. I didn t know what you would like. Then I thought I d give you what I like. We can enjoy the wine together. I don t know much about wines, but I ve tasted this-it s good.
It hasn t been easy for me to connect the person I knew to the celebrity writer I kept hearing and reading about. He hasn t changed at all, a common friend had said in a kind of amazed admiration. Really? But could the man, the person I had known, a small-town man, have brought me such a gift? And the truth is, it s not the weight he s put on that has given him dignity; it s an air of confidence. No, a sense of self-worth, really. He hadn t had this then, no, not at all.
You look different, he says to me. And I don t mean what the years-sixteen years and three months, he smiles, -have done. You remember my mother used to call you the soda-water-bottle girl? Her feelings are always ready to come out with a pop and a fizz, she used to say. Now . . . he seems to consider me thoughtfully, you look as if the bottle has been sealed. Hasn t it?
That s called maturity.
If you say so. He looks around. And so this is your home. I ve thought of you often, but I ve never been able to imagine you anywhere but in your old home. Tell me, who lives there now? Do you ever go there?
I go in abruptly, mumbling something, but once inside the kitchen I can do nothing but stand still while a savage anger runs through my body, flooding it, making it throb and pulsate. Doesn t he know? Doesn t he know that I sold the house, that I sold it to go to him? Didn t I tell him that as soon as we met? Is he pretending? Or, worse thought, did it mean so little to him that he s forgotten? I lean my head against the door, the musty smell of the kitchen towel in my nose, while the questions beat in my mind. I hear his voice calling out to me and make an effort to recover myself before going out. Obviously, I ve succeeded, for he only says, Can you get me an opener? And glasses?
I stare at him while he opens the bottle and pours the wine into the glasses as if I can see the answers to my questions on his face. But there s nothing else on it but an intense concentration on the task. He opens the bottle swiftly and efficiently.
There we are! Now sit down and relax. He gives me a glass. Here s to our old friendship.
Our friendship. He s spelled it out and the openness of his tone, the words themselves, make me wonder: Does he truly believe that there was never anything more, or is he trying to block out the rest? If that is what he s doing, he s so successful that I am forced into playing the game with him. I join him in speaking of family and old friends, as if there is nothing else in common between us. I think ruefully of how I d planned the evening. I ll tackle it at last, I d thought, the unfinished business of my life, the shadow that has dogged me for so many years. Past shadows should be behind you, visible only when you turn back. But mine have always been ahead, lying in my path, waiting to trip me at each step I take.
Today I had thought to put an end to it, but the control has already slipped out of my hands; it s he who s setting the pace for the evening and I can do nothing but follow. He s so easy and comfortable with the reminiscences that all the questions which have haunted me for so many years come back: Is it possible that I was mistaken? Did I misunderstand him and imagine more in his letters than there was? Isolated as I was at home, confined within it by my invalid mother, had I made it all up?
Cloistered like a nun -that was how he d described me in one of his letters. But certainly there had been nothing nun-like in my res