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by: Sanjula Sharma
Publisher: Ambience Publishing, New Delhi, 2002
Reviewed by: Antony Johae Sharma pens fiction New stories depict India By Antony Johae Special to the Arab Times Sanjula Sharma, author of published collection of short stories, The Cameo Sheaves (New Delhi: Ambience Publishing, 2002; sold in Kuwait by the Kuwait Bookshop Company) has recently moved with her family to Kuwait, where she now practices freelance journalism. She has worked for The Telegraph in Calcutta and has published numerous articles in Indian newspapers and magazines covering current events, art, music, culture, women´s issues, fashion, travel, and corporate affairs. She has also written for Zee TV in Delhi. Sanjula Sharma is also an active member of the Kuwait Writers Workshop where she is able to share her creative work with other practicing writers. In 1992, she published a collection of poems and was short-listed twice in the All India´ Annual Poetry Competition. The Cameo Sheaves is her first publication in fiction. All the stories are set in India with the exception of One ("Matters of the Heart") which takes place in the United States (where the author also lived for a year), all of them reflect the central preoccupations of twenty-first century Indian men and women both at a public and private level. The first, "One More in the Train," is an up-to-date story of a woman´s private encounter with terrorism, while the last ("Hero at Last") involves a young army officer who is heroically killed in the Indo-Pakistan conflict in Kashmir. Here, the theme of war is cleverly juxtaposed with India´s achievements as a cricketing nation and, for me, the underlying message is the hope that all future conflicts in the Indian sub-continent may be channelled into the game of cricket. "Love Requited," the second story in the volume, relates the private dilemmas of a young couple coming from, different religious traditions to the revenge attacks between Sikhs and Hindus precipitated by the assassination of prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in 1984. It is significant that Simran, the female protagonist, who comes from a Sikh family, ultimately seeks refuge in London leaving Vivek, a Hindu, to wait for her to return -or never to return. This conveniently leads on to "Matters of the Heart." In this story , an Indian studying in Boston, Massachusetts, tells his friend of a girl he saw at a party back home with whom he fell in love. It turns out, by a coincidence, that his brother in India plans on marrying the same girl. What comes over in the story is that family loyalty and solidarity prove to be stronger than individual personal longings. This is true also of "The Prize" in which the rivalry between two sisters is overcome by a selfless act of sibling generosity. Not to give the impression that all families in Indian society remain, or even start, solidly, "The Aftermath" is a poignant tale of the breakup of a loveless marriage, and the sense of insecurity felt by the abandoned wife . which this incurs. "To actually miss the physical presence of a man who had given her so much pain, to feel an insecurity now when he had never given her any protection. ..," these are the ironies of being set free from a failed marriage. Again, in "To Be Freed," a hypochondriac bedridden mother-in- law threatens to destroy family unity until the husband´s younger brother, a medical doctor, returns to India from the United States; it is he who is able to diagnose the woman´s compliant as hysteria -and to mobilize her again. "The Visit" also has a medical theme and is set in a leprosy hospital. The simplicity with which the story is told, and the sharp moral point with which it ends, is reminiscent of a parable, the lesson here being that we should have faith in the good works of others. "The Homecoming" and "Just Another Song" in their different ways deal with the experience of illusion, and in the latter case, disillusion as well. In "The Homecoming," the husband of a childless marriage imagines so strongly what it is to have a daughter that he can live happily as though she actually existed, and in "Just Another Song," a young man´s infatuation with a girl at college is shattered by the realization that connections in high places have corrupted her. In reading these stories, one becomes very conscious of a prosperous middle-class India which enjoys all the technological amenities of the modern world: television, computers, walkmans, and airline travel. This provides a welcome counterbalance to the "Third World" impression of India frequently conveyed in today´s mass media. In The Cameo Sheaves, the author has opened the door to an India whose normal everyday life looks much more like that of the so-called First World, it is, one suspects, what it will increasingly become in the future. |
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