Wave of emotions
Sheila Kumar, May 22, 2016
An interesting debut from a promising new writer
Swimmer Among the Stars by Kanishk Tharoor
Aleph Publications/Rs
499/Pages 188.
Kanishk
Tharoor`s intriguingly titled book is a slim volume consisting of a dozen short
stories. These stories span continents, oceans, they go underwater at times, they swim among
the stars at other times, and once, even descend into the hellish pits of a coal
mine. It’s an interesting cross-section of people and situations, mostly
presented to the reader in impassive but well-detailed fashion. The hand that
crafted these stories is a sure one, the delineation is impeccable and the
phrases turned most delectably. Irony is ever present, human foibles are
captured neatly and wryly, and some passages are beautifully descriptive.
The reader meets
strange and not- so- strange people in Tharoor`s book, people who ghost away in
the wee hours of a morning; people who speak only whorehouse French; people who
live in dignified thrift; people who make a pogrom of glass, and then, a kettle-voiced
man. An elephant wears `an anklet that, wrapped around a man, would have had
all the thickness of chains. Its every step tinkled with the jewellery of
another land.` Elsewhere, while a city
tenses up for the oncoming assault, a woman beats the dust from her oblivious
quilts. A captain marooned in a strange land where the very air seems heavy
with threat, feels like Sinbad, `condemned to soliloquize on driftwood.`
Tharoor
has said that some of the stories were sparked by observations, sometimes just a line or an image, and in a
couple of stories, the
effort to flesh out these observations shows;
they seem rather pointless, told
merely for the sake of telling. Then again, the very act of reading is a deeply
subjective one: what reads well for one person may well be a painful telling
for another. However, a couple of tales are real gems, standing out in the
crowd. One such is `Portrait with Coal Fire` where irony laces itself so strongly through
the story, the reader can practically taste it.
The story is basically a Skype conversation
between a Western photojournalist and his most recent subject, an unnamed coal miner from India. Gently but
insistently, the coal miner asks that he be named in the next issue of the
magazine, and furthermore, be accorded the dignity he deserves with the publishing
of his family portrait. For the photojournalist, of course, the miner is a job
done and dusted, if you`ll excuse the pun, and the conversation is beginning to
take an unwelcome turn. Then, the Iskandar
romances, brief passages detailing a feat or experience of Alexander, are
delightful. In one such fable, the conqueror directs his men to build a sort of
Hadrian`s wall: `Each stone had to be cut to fit the next, since too much
mortar in a defensive wall made its collapse more likely. All the iron bolts
that joined the stones were coated din molten lead. If they weren’t, exposed iron
would rust, the bolts would fray, then the stones would gradually slip out of
joint, and soon, invisible from the outside, cracks would spread like spider
webs within the edifice. `
This
reviewer found that the tales all had a diffused quality to them, as if playing
out behind a gossamer veil. There is style, there is elegance of language, this
is an author who has things to say and
says it well for the most part but here and there, the reader`s attention does
begin to flag at times. There`s no denying though, that one awaits Tharoor`s
next with happy anticipation.
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