Post-modernist kitsch

The Indian short story in translation suffers from a malady of sorts. The language of its borrowed parentage is almost always at odds with the tone and tenor of its vernacular intent.

The book in question, Jayant Kaikini's Dots and Lines, translated from Kannada, is a ripe candidate for being consigned to the back shelves of the Indian writing section for precisely this reason and more.

Kaikini's relentless commentary on urban mish-mash and his imperative on poignancy leave one feeling cheated of the tragic-comic struggle of marginal lives""having had intimation of it (in his prose) to being with.

As with other Indian writings from the vernacular, the problem is not always that of being straddled with bad translation. Sometimes, as Kaikini's prose shows us, meaning making and interpretation into an alien tongue make for a befuddlingly simplified experience.

The first story in the collection, "A Delivery at Diamond Circus," presents Dumpy, an aging trapeze queen. Her universe is that of the circus and its interplay of real life and stage management. When Dumpy is about to have her child, it strikes her that if it is born in the circus, the child will be claimed as one of the circus's own.

Just as Dumpy is about to give birth at daybreak, we are told, "As dawn crept silently over the sky, Dumpy, without letting go of the clown's hand despite his squirming, gave birth.

As the clown held the glistening infant up to the shimmering light, it wriggled. It had four hands instead of two. The night overtook Dumpy's eyes as she kept muttering, 'Pat it on the head. Pat it on the head.'"

This climactic moment in the story's development falls flat not only because of the translation bungles. Portrayed in English, the coming of this child with four hands, born to an aging mother in a ditch by the road, reminds one of mythology read in "Aamr Chitra Katha" comics.

Arguably, it is postmodern kitsch that Kaikini has attempted to paint. His last lines convey a fractured beginning"""The infant was crying softly beside the mother, who seemed to have fallen asleep. The clown caressed each of the four pink hands absently." But what is missing is that quite a sliver of wonder following the pangs of birth.

Kaikini's works fall in the category of post-modern Kannada fiction. His emphasis on culling out daily life experiences and organising into a mosaic of meaning is evident in the 14 stories in this collection.

Considered important among the young Kannada writers of the day, Kaikini has been published under the aegis of a special project undertaken by Sahitya Goshti, an organisation seeking to promote active literary interest in Kannada literature.

His stories fall in two broad categories as C N Ramachandran's introduction rightly points out: Those dealing with young people and the epiphanic moments in their lives that usher them into adulthood; and stories of adults constantly striving to gain a measure of understanding over the circumstances of their lives.

Take, for instance, a paragraph from "Mithun Number Two," a story in the first category depicting the loneliness and displacement of a young man from Karad. He comes to Bombay's dream-factory with hopes of making it big as the next "Mithun".

"Mithun now became one of the many bodies on the footpath as he lay on the ground, under the vast open sky. If he opened his eyes he saw countless stars: if he closed them, he heard the relentless clatter of the local trains. With an acute tension in his backside, he had a strange feeling of being afloat, and could not sleep. Factory workers kept going back for their shifts and food vendors on the footpath were busy serving food through the night."

The lines are reminiscent of other lines, in books of translated Indian short stories, chucked aside. The sense of cliche is immense. This could be a non-nondescript writer from any region of the country describing the city from the fringes of the small town.

Intriguingly enough, in English they all end up sounding like one another. The problem then is surely not that of translation alone but also that of subject matter.

The one story in the collection that provides some reprieve from foreboding of this genre""the Indian short story in translation""is the "The Unclaimed Portrait."

In a refreshingly simple story about a photo-frame maker, his unconventional mother Maayi and young man from the slums, Kaikini demonstrates his skills in weaving the ordinariness of experience with the mystery of the preordained.

The story unfolds on two levels""one line etches the peculiar kindness of Maayi, who is capable of spending all her time nursing the victims of a communal riot in the city, without either being able to understand or change her behaviour.

On other level, it takes us into the life of an orphan who approaches the photo-frame maker, Gangadhar, to give him an unclaimed picture of an old couple. The story begins with Ganagadhar's indecision regarding some unclaimed photographs, and it is this thread that is picked up in the young man's story.

We are told the young man has told his prospective in-laws that his parents are dead. He needs the picture of an old couple to convince them of his story, without which he can't get married to their daughter.

It is here that Gangadhar and Maayi come into play. Maayi's compassion and her response to people in pain move Gangadhar to give up a portrait of his dead father hung in the shop.

This portrait, which Gangadhar treasures greatly, is received with gratitude by the young man, thereby completing the matrix of "dots and lines" that is begun much before the story starts and will end long after the people have gone, much like wizening photographs.

It is this story rather than Dots and Lines""a tale of train journeys and lessons from strangers""that captures the interrelatedness of people, events, and experiences in this book.

Dots and Lines is a book you must pick up if you want same of the more; though being pleasantly surprised at Maayi and her life at the end of the book is indeed small mercy.

Jayant Kaikini Translated from Kannada and edited by Vishvanath Hulikal Indialog Publishers Price: Rs 295 Pages: 242

DOTS AND LINES