Futehally's stories and essays

MUST-READS

Shama Futehally (1952""2004) was born in Bombay, and studied English at the universities of Bombay and Leeds. For more than three decades she combined a career in teaching with writing and translation.

Her short stories appeared in several anthologies, and her numerous book reviews and essays were published in all the major Indian newspapers and journals.

Now, two years after her untimely death, Penguin Books India has published new editions of her novels Tara Lane and Reaching Bombay Central, as well as "" for the first time "" Frontiers: Collected Stories and The Right Words: Selected Essays, 1967-2004.

Frontiers: Collected Stories
203 pages
Rs 250

This posthumous collection brings together all Futehally's short stories, written over two decades. The title story was the last she wrote and was intended to be a novella, a fictionalised account of the tragic fire in Delhi's Uphaar Cinema.

Yet, even in its present form we see the exceptional skill with which Futehally presents people and events "" whether it is the wealth of intimate details that make up individual lives, or the subtle but always effective awareness of larger social realities.

Such skill, and the ability to lay open new worlds of experience in spare prose, is evident in all the other stories, where we enter the lives of maidservants and memsaabs, riot victims and victims of fate, wives and husbands, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.

These deeply felt stories demonstrate Futehally's command over her craft, and her sensitive understanding of the politics of class and gender, and of human nature itself.

The Right Words: Selected Essays, 1967-2004
301 pages
RS 275

This collection of Futehally's non-fiction writing provides a rare and rewarding insight into the literary life; into the art of observation and creation.

In these essays, she writes on a variety of subjects, ranging from the complexities of translation and her discovery of Meera, Premchand and Naguib Mahfouz, among others, to her early experiences as a teacher and the pleasures of bird watching.

Apparent in each essay is her effortless scholarship, refined sensibility and craftsmanship of the highest order.

The many highlights include her essay on the problems of translating Rabindranath Tagore's work from the original Bengali to English.

Futehally notes: "The Bengali language itself contains the assumption that 'poeticality' is a valid way of looking at the world. Modern English contains the opposite assumption, implied in its tone, pace and vocabulary "" the assumption that an intelligent view of anything can hardly be anything other than detached and ironical...The success of the English would consist in being able to reduce, or bank down the sensuality of the verse to manageable proportions in English.

It is only when the syrup in the language is reduced that the English version will mean in English what the Bengali means in Bengali!"

Reaching Bombay Central
160 PAGES
Rs 195

This elegant novella is about Ayesha Jamal, travelling by train to Bombay, on a mission to resolve an unpleasant complication in her husband's professional life that threatens to destroy everything.

Uncertain, on edge, she responds to the passing world around her, to the realities of present-day India and her domestic life with a mixture of helpless anger and desperate hope.

Then, just hours before Bombay Central station, news of a wholly unexpected event, as simple and apposite as a miracle, delivers Ayesha of her burdens.