Of ‘Other’ Childhoods

Much ink has flowed in the academic debates about Indian writing in English and translations from Indian languages into English, the respective merits and demerits of each, their importance or lack of it, and the over-privileging of one at the cost of the other. As both categories of writing have found their way into English Studies curricula in universities all over the country, it is to be expected that much of the publishing of translations into English focus on this niche market where a certain kind of readership is guaranteed and a certain level of awareness can be expected. It is in this category that the current book is slotted. Edited, keeping in mind ‘students of literature’ which seems to signify in India automatically only students reading English literature, Short Fiction is a slim volume with three stories from each of the South Indian languages—Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. Many of the stories chosen have children as the protagonist or the narrator and attempt to show a child’s point of view, or what adults think is a child’s point of view!

Many of the stories chosen have children as the protagonist or the narrator and attempt to show a child’s point of view, or what adults think is a child’s point of view! The themes are wide-ranging and the styles varied and treatment diverse. ‘A Sweet Dish’ by Kum. Veerabhadrappa (or Kum. Vee) from Kannada, opens the collection. It is an extremely sensitive handling of the issue of poverty and child bonded labour that reduces the reader to tears more in the suggestive treatment of the subject than any loud condemnation. Gut-wrenching to the extreme, it is too sad