Reading a short story anthology can be a risky foray producing mixed results, perhaps a bit like picking a chit. Even if you don’t connect to one story, the one right after might perfectly hit the spot. For the timebound reader, it might be tempting to pick the authors you trust or whimsically choose a few that sound promising, but for an anthology like Aleph’s The Greatest Gujarati Stories Ever Told, I would recommend devouring the full course. Because although I obviously can’t guarantee that every single story in the book will speak to you, the real joy is in the way the stories speak to one another.
A fine balance
Rita Kothari, who curated the collection and also translated a majority of the stories to English, openly acknowledges the subjective standards that surround the term “greatest” which illuminates the book’s title. She is transparent about her approach to curation, writing in the foreword, “the stories in this volume are not a product of a pre-conceived framework to include the most known or the lesser known. It is their relationship with each other, despite their differences, that may perhaps be an explanation of what was essentially an intuitive choice.”
The book performs a delicate balancing act – for each perspective afforded exists another one to contrast it. In “Saubhagyavati: The Fortunate Wife” by Dwiref, we see a wife pressured into sex, trapped by the binds of marriage, while in Bhupen Khakhar’s hilarious “Vaadki” a husband limits physical intimacy with his wife to twice a week and dismisses her request to increase this number.
“Jumo Bhishti”, “The Black Horse” and “Chunni” give us three stories where humans are brought together with animals in a world where, in Kothari’s words, “some days, being human is an aspiration, not a fact.” One of these relationships is of deep affection, one of hostility, and one too ambiguous to slot comfortably into a single descriptor.
Then there are stories that contain conflicting elements within themselves, which could today be regarded through the lens of empowering or problematic. In “The Bilge Water” by Nazir Mansuri we are introduced to the striking figure of Raji, a fierce and beautiful woman who exceeds men in terms of strength. She is violent in a well-justified moment of self-defence, but also in a moment of simple outrage. After her husband leaves, she builds a relationship with a young boy named Uko that takes on a flirty, sexual tenor as he grows older. It is difficult to assess a story like this through the metrics I’m familiar with – and the frustration and unease this story produced in me made it an unforgettable read.
Time machine
With authors ranging from the legendary KM Munshi, who served as a member of the Constitutional Committee of India, to twenty-seven-year-old emerging star Abhimanyu Acharya, the book wades through the decades. This journey is reflected in the language and analogies employed. “A Letter” by Munshi is written from the perspective of a child bride who moved into her husband’s house at the age of thirteen. Her letter outlines her suffering, but also what was once complete devotion to her husband in evocative prose.
Meanwhile, Acharya’s “Chunni” is set in the age of Instagram and Tinder, written in more simple and straightforward language. It features another female protagonist whose suffering is more subdued but familiar. What is as interesting as the changes in the writing over time is the elements that remain the same. “If inequality of caste and gender remains a recurring phenomenon, it is a reflection of how, as a society, we continue to be assailed by this reality,” writes Kothari.
“Doors” and “Maajo” are written by women authors, Himanshi Shelat and Panna Trivedi, who possess both sensitive and unsettling voices. Both stories also feature a desire for upward mobility manifesting itself through a yearning for a clean, safe bathroom. This desire paradoxically leads the protagonists into danger.
Many of the stories exist in a transitional period, featuring a rupture of tradition while still being tethered to it. In one of my favourites, “Nandu” by Dashrath Parmar, we see the narrator befriend a young, chatty servant named Nandu at a dilapidated guest house in the hills. After discovering that they’re from the same village, the narrator becomes reluctant to share anything more about himself in case he reveals his caste. He wants to be believe the best of Nandu, but previous experiences of discrimination play through his mind, infecting his optimism.
It is not a story of overt violence, but rather an inner battle waging in the protagonist’s head. The power positions are also complex, with the narrator questioning himself and why he is so afraid of a hotel employee’s opinion.
While “Nandu” features a protagonist who finds himself unable to escape his identity despite the distance between his village and him, “Creamy Layer” traverses a similar course from a different direction. Neerav Patel provides another example of social mobility producing confused and displaced identities from the perspective of a couple visiting their village to distribute invitations for their daughter’s wedding in Mumbai.
The journey is deeply uncomfortable, with Mr and Mrs Vaghela feeling embarrassed by the illiteracy and relative poverty of their family, as well as guilt for abandoning and neglecting them. “Had they not left the village to go to the city, had they not abandoned their traditional occupation for their white collar jobs, had they not left the cattle sheds to live in an apartment would they have been able to foster these relationships? Perhaps.”
Kothari notes that “not unlike many other literary traditions in India, the genesis of the short story in Gujarat also owes its origins to both folk/lok stories as well as colonial modernity.” Many of the stories exist somewhere in between a collectivist culture and the individualism which dominates the western novel. Unlike many of the contemporary novels I’ve read, the politics are not immediately legible, but baked into the story though surnames and subtle details.
Although the book is bound together by the label of “Gujarati stories”, it is a collection that is coordinated without an agenda to be cohesive. If you think you know Gujarat, it promises to expand and confuse your understanding. And if, like me, you only know the surface – it will provide a jigsaw puzzle answer with a constantly shifting picture on the box.
The Greatest Gujarati Stories Ever Told, Selected & Edited by Rita Kothari, Aleph Book Company.