Boy meets girl, and love blossoms across borders. Parents won’t agree, but love must prevail. So, the boy must undertake an arduous journey with his camel across the desert, dodge border security and battle the harshness of the terrain. He manages to reach his beloved’s doorstep and they elope. And, it’s happily ever after. Sounds like a corny Bollywood film story? In fact it is the title story of author Keki N Daruwalla’s latest offering, a collection of his selected short stories, Love across the Salt Desert.
Why a talented writer like Mr Daruwalla would choose a story with such a hackneyed theme to begin his book may be questionable. But there could be several advantages to this choice from a purely strategic viewpoint. It’s a theme most readers, at least Indian ones, have encountered at some point and are comfortable with. So, what better way, then, of easing one’s readers into the book.
That said, this story does not serve as a benchmark for Mr Daruwalla’s work. For, in this compilation of his selected works, he has managed to put together writings that are representative of his immense versatility as a writer, displaying the full range of his talent.
The subjects and locales of the 20 short stories that constitute the book are far ranging. He tells modern urban stories like that of a woman’s discovery of her husband’s infidelity and a father’s struggle to get his daughter married within the community with its dwindling numbers just as easily as he recounts ones seeped in history like the failure of a Persian emperor to honour the talent of the “king of poets” in his kingdom and the onset of the Alexander versus Porus war. As for the geographical spread, be ready to commute across the border and back to the villages in pre-Independence India, moving on to Tibet and Ghazni and East Anglia.
This wide range of setting provides a certain degree of freshness in each story, leaving no room for repetition. That does not mean that the author hasn’t faltered. You may wonder on occasion whether the author has made choices that are terribly wrong in his bid to maintain diversity in the tales he has chosen. For hidden among some absolute gems are some stories that almost border on absurdity. Like “The Tree”, about how a man-turned-sage turned into a tree. It may be argued that the story can be perceived as being inspired from mythical tales and so expectations of a logical chain of events may be unjustified. The only problem: most of the stories, even the ones with a period setting, are realistic and therefore an occasional supernatural story like this seems to disrupt the journey. “The Case of the Black Ambassador” provokes a similar reaction. It begins with a journalist concocting imaginative stories for his newspaper and ends on a note that seems befitting of another tale altogether.
Barring these hiccups, Mr Daruwalla plays the part of a master story teller with élan. He uses the tools of his trade, words and phrases, with consummate skill. Another strength that the author has played by quite well is his comfort with history as a subject and setting for his stories. He often banks on it to take even the ones with a more contemporary setting forward. He relies on his ability to interpret the presence of history even in mundane day-to-day activities or objects. So when he writes about a Parsi man praying, he does not stop at the description of the ritual, as most would do. Instead, he focuses on the picture on the wall and, in a few lines, recounts the journey of the image with the times: “Over it loomed the stylised portrait of the prophet, his muslin garments fluttering as if he was standing in front of a pedestal fan, a trident in his left hand and the forefinger of the right hand held aloft… Those folds of gauzelike muslin in which Zoroaster was wrapped came in obviously after the eight century migration to India. The forefinger came in after the passionate monotheism of Islam. And that blond beard obviously after the English had conquered India.”
By focusing on such details, Mr Daruwalla lends each story authenticity. In fact, in some cases, the entire story is in the details. “In a High Wind” is a case in point. It is the story of Khurram Bakht, a Muslim living in Lucknow during Partition. The story spans a single evening during which Bakht decides whether to leave India or not. The author writes about the kite flying and the quail and rooster fights and carrier pigeons and the nuances and superiority of Lucknowi Urdu. He recounts each of these traditions so vividly that it is almost impossible not be transported back in time.
All in all, this is a complete package, at least thematically. There is humour, wit, valour, honour, betrayal, love, loss. So, as you race from story to story, be ready to traverse an emotional minefield and to change your mindset as rapidly as autumn colours. But then, that is the beauty of short stories. You can choose to let it stay with you awhile or let it go instantaneously, the second you flip the page.
LOVE ACROSS THE SALT DESERT
Keki N Daruwalla
Penguin Books India, 2011
230 pages; Rs 299
