A despondent non-resident Indian moved by the pathos of a little girl selling mangoes, a psychoanalyst falling in love with his patient, or a middle-aged man stuck in mid-life crisis and falling in love with a prostitute are hardly plots of stories that you can say range from the unexpected to the bizarre. Anirban Bose’s second book – the first was the best-selling Bombay Rains, Bombay Girls – is disappointing precisely because you keep waiting for “the unexpected and the bizarre”, but all you get is the predictable and the mundane instead.
The book is Bose’s first attempt at short-story writing. Being a doctor by profession (currently in the US as an assistant professor of medicine and nephrology at the University of Rochester), Bose, sets most of his stories against a medical background. He uses his knowledge generously by either placing the action of the stories in a hospital or by afflicting his characters with some medical condition. The narratives of most of the ten stories, however, read like a badly-scripted Bollywood movie, with insipid characters and hackneyed plots.
The first story, “The New Job”, introduces us to Rizwan Sheikh, a 65-year-old driver for “a very important man in some company”. Rizwan comes from a lower middle-class background and is baffled by the lack of scruples of his philandering employer. He goes on to lament the loss of morals of “this generation” and glorifies the values of his “simple” life. There’s also Rizwan’s wife, on whom he dotes but to whom he has never expressed his love in as many words. Typically, Rizwan, disgusted by his two-timing employer, goes on to realise the importance of expressing his love to his wife — of course by uttering the three magical words, since popular culture tells us there’s no other way of doing it.
In most of the stories, Bose goes on to create this archetypal world where the “have-nots” are naïve, simple folk putting up a brave front in the face of hardships that life deals them and the “haves” are self-obsessed and materialistic, insensitive to the world around them. Moreover, he sprinkles each story with clichéd characters — the heartless pimp, the abusive police officer, the powerful Bollywood film producer and the self-respecting poor girl who doesn’t want a rich man’s pity, and so on.
Such over-simplified character sketches seem amateurish. The predicament in which the characters find themselves, even if they are overdone, is not the problem, however. It’s the superficial understanding that the author seems to have of his characters and the world they inhabit reflected. It’s clear that the book is meant to be a light-read and probably should be taken in that spirit. But even simple tales of love and human emotions can do with a little imagination and better writing.
Given the constraints on the length of short stories, American writer Kurt Vonnegut had famously said every sentence in a good short story should do two things — reveal a character or advance the action. The stories in Mice in Men lack both aspects since the author chooses to indulge in unnecessary detail. This could have been overlooked had the writing style been powerful enough to create gripping imagery; but since it is not, these digressions neither add to the story nor to the over-all atmosphere.
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However, when he is not trying hard to capture the “ordinary” man, Bose gives you some stories that interest you. “The World’s Greatest Oiban”, for example, about an aspiring writer who is clouded with self-doubt as he receives one rejection letter after the other from publishing houses is well-written. He portrays an endearing character and captures well the conflict we all have felt when faced with rejection: should you believe the world when it says you are not good enough or believe in yourself and not give up? The “Magic in Medicine” about a young doctor discovering the “magic” in his profession is also well-written. “The Temptation of Fate” and “Mice in Men” shine in parts.
“The Temptation of Fate” is about Ashwini, a young man, who works as a security guard at an upscale apartment complex in Mumbai. When he is born his mother is told by an astrologer that he would grow up to do “something really, really great”. The prophecy is etched into his mind as he waits for fate to give him the opportunity to do something big. As the story progresses he falls in love with a maid Radha, who is supposed to “marry someone great” and gets a break in the film industry thanks to a famous producer living in the complex he guards. But it’s not a break in the movies that finally decide his greatness; instead it’s his choice to side with what’s right at the cost of his career. Ashwini in a classic way realises that it is good deeds and not fame or money that makes a man great. Bose gets it somewhat right with this one. He keeps the narrative simple, and manages to make you smile by the end of it.
“Mice in Men” tells the story of Bansuri Lal. A government clerk, his life is a repetition of a series of mundane acts, till he discovers a mouse in his office and decides to protect it from his colleagues who want to kill it. “Mice”, perhaps, here is a metaphor for the hidden dreams and desires residing timidly in men, refusing to come out for fear of ridicule. The “mice” in Bansuri come out by the end with a little help from the mouse and a girl he loves. The story holds your attention in parts. Like in the others, however, you can almost sense the end from the beginning — a big drawback in short stories.
MICE IN MEN
Anirban Bose
HarperCollins
212 pages; Rs 199