Gauri Shankar Raina’s slim collection of twelve short stories translated from Kashmiri by Pankaj Bhan is a gem of a good read. If one were to judge a book by its cover, that too would get my vote. Evocative of the Kashidakari embroidery, the floral motif on a cream background is tempting enough to want to open and read on.
The author is a well-known writer and broadcaster who worked as a Senior Producer with Doordarshan. This collection has come together from three decades of writing short fiction. Pankaj Bhan, the translator, has made these stories appear as a seamless thread from a single pen. There is the occasional duff note but nothing too extreme to detract from the reading experience. Every tale in U-Turn and Other Stories manages to capture a tangible moment of life in Kashmir and gives us a glimpse into a society that has experienced years of tumult. Many of the characters and their experiences stay in the mind a long while after the story is finished.
The themes of displacement, youngish people seeking love, grief, and mortality are all explored through the lives of Kashmiris who are mostly Hindus but some Muslims too. The characters are well-defined and relatable. Take for example the pipe-smoking semi-retired Professor Abdul Rasheed Bhat in the title story ‘U-Turn’. Where else would we find a character whose wife was born on a houseboat on Dal Lake? Heaven was here, the much-travelled professor thinks, as he stands facing the Zabarwan range behind the water. His efforts at highlighting the importance of preserving its ecology to growth-hungry politicians keen on building malls and other developments on its shores are worthy subject matter. The ending of this narrative is not so much a U-Turn but a lateral move, nonetheless, elegantly done.
In ‘Journey by Bus’, Mohd. Ameen, the bus conductor, is in turn laconic and brusque as he herds his passengers in a stern and efficient manner. We are introduced to many of the travellers on the journey from Jammu to Srinagar, initially bickering but later on settling into a familiar rhythm of many an Indian trip. We witness some charming encounters in the wistfulness of Swaroop Nath, a recently retired government employee, who eavesdrops on a burgeoning romance between a young footballer Ashfaq Dar and a girl visiting her maternal uncle and his wife on her own for the first time. Swaroop Nath, clearly a romantic, moves to a seat behind his allocated one to allow both to talk freely. He wonders if they will end up together. She reads a magazine with Dharmendra and Hema Malini in its centrefold which dates the story well into the late 70s or 80s. When the bus finally stops and the people wend their way to their eventual destinations, our bus conductor recites a verse:
Tum se chalti rahe ye rah, yun hi acha hai
Usne mudkar bhi na dekha to koi baat nahi
It is good that there is a path for you to move ahead,
It does not matter that she did not care to look back.
A masterful and sophisticated end to a story.
The weightier themes of communal tensions are featured in the second half of the book. ‘Homecoming’ is about the sheer terror of a missing adult son when he and his father, Kashinath, make a trip to their old hometown where their old house lies empty. Aftab Mir and his family, their old neighbours who host the Pandit, are generous in their hospitality and concern for the missing boy. In the ‘Shroud-Maker’, Qadiri, the tailor of women’s clothes, gets asked by the local community worker, a Pandit, to stitch shrouds. That is the death-knell for the man’s once thriving livelihood.
The story ‘He and She’ captures the shock of recognizing someone from a previous life in Kashmir before they are exiled to Delhi and Mumbai respectively. He and she knew each other well, both working in theatre. He senses that she is keen on self-promotion rather than championing a good script. He is now based in Delhi, his memories of being in a migrant’s camp in Lodhi Road still fresh. The line, ‘He recalled many opportunities in life that he had let go of on moral grounds while others, latching onto them, had moved ahead in life,’ is a sentiment highly relatable. The ending to this story is quietly cinematic, fading into the wintry haze.
‘Babuji’s Miracle’ is another vignette describing the trials of a man building a house. The jealous emotions of his beloved wife over his feeding milk to a dog every morning is a playful mix of familial affection, superstition, ghosts and their exorcism. Again, the lightness of touch in the writing style is very appealing.
In ‘Boarding Card’, Lora, a Bollywood hopeful, meets Rajesh who works at the boarding gate at the airport. The tragic tale of her life felt a little contrived.
A notable aspect of this collection is the deft way in which each tale ends. Gauri Shankar Raina has the skill of leaving things at the cusp of a turning point, just hinting at happy ever afters. These stories are full of human endeavour in the face of strife, the intense detail of the quotidian and a window into a world we hear about but know so little of.
Maithreyi Nandakumar is a writer of fact, fiction and poetry. Having worked as an award-winning presenter for the BBC, she has also been a Tamil interpreter for refugees from Sri Lanka in the UK.