The Indian Short Story in English
Reviews of short stories written in English by Indian authors
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Author Archive for Murli Melwani

Posted by Murli Melwani 
· February 20, 2016 
· No Comments

U. Subramaniam: The Short Story Writer Who Nurtured His Passion

“His face may have remained hidden behind shelves and files but his mind floated in a world of words”

U Subramaniam

U.Subramaniam

Written by Soma Basu

After listening to his story, I am forced to presume U. Subramaniam was never the typical Government servant. He may have retired from the State Department of Cooperatives in 1992, but from three decades before that and two after, his heart always remained elsewhere.

His face may have remained hidden behind shelves and files but his mind floated in a world of words. And he never gave up the pursuit of his literary or journalistic calling.

“It was that inner voice constantly pushing me to make up my mind and start writing,” he asserts.

Well, you may think there is no dearth of writers these days. So what is so special about lean and petite Subramaniam? Not only has he authored 130 short stories and over 200 essays and articles in English but he has voluntarily undertaken an additional job of distributing his books free of cost.

During the last two decades post- retirement, Subramaniam has derived immense joy and honour in traversing the city by bus notwithstanding the crushing summer days or rain filled roads and giving away copies of his compilation of short stories to schools and public libraries. He doesn’t bother about the physical strain and the holes the exercise leaves in his pocket. “I have a supporting wife and son, who are also my best critics,” he smiles.

“Majority of the city schools will have at least two of my anthologies in their libraries,” shares the author of six volumes of short stories with a tint of pride.

“So many factors can easily deflate the drive, self-esteem and spirit of aspiring writers of any age. I have had my share too. But once a written piece is published, it sustains the writer’s spirit running in the vein,” he says.

First piece

His brush with the pen began when he was posted in Ooty. “I got my first piece ever on tribals of Nilgiris published in an English daily in 1967. Ever since there has been no stopping, despite rejection from several publishers.” His ‘Middles’ on edit pages, short essays on contemporary issues, simple stories about life, book reviews have been in circulation in various publications.

As a little boy, temple festivals and caparisoned elephants fascinated him. “Now I like to observe people. I started reading fairly young to learn new things and writing a lot in the school’s literary magazine,” recalls the Kerala born and bred boy. Even as he read different genre of authors in his growing years, he had his favourites from Ernest Hemingway and Somerset Maugham to Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, Irish Murdoch and R.K.Narayan, from John Updike and Nadine Gordimer to Shashi Deshpande and Kamala Das, Vivekananda, Sarat Chandra and Tagore to Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth and Anita Desai. His personal collection exceeds 3,000 titles. While his articles appeared in a wide range of publications including The Mail, The Mirror, The Tort, Nilgiri Herald, Kochin Window, The Afternoon, Alive, Caravan, he feels the turning point came when M.J,Akbar changed the face of journalism as Editor of the erstwhile weekly magazine “Sunday” inviting commissioned writers.

“I switched to short stories. I always look around myself to draw inspiration. I feel you should always write about what you know. Even though much of Indian English literature is soaked in Indian myths and traditions, it is more comfortable to be rooted in the present than writing about the past.”

Personal perception

To convey his personal perception of the world, Subramaniam employs lot of capturing examples and draws parallels from daily life. His six compilations of two dozen short stories each are an interesting combination of light-hearted, nostalgic, enjoyable, and even not-so- terribly important matters.

With a good narrative flow and randomly but well-chosen themes, he relates his life experiences and influences in succinct language and delivers the impact. His first compilation “Vimala is willing” was published by Kolkata-based father of short stories R.Lal in 1996. “It was like a project. I sent him my manuscript and he printed it at a nominal cost. Then it was my job to sell the first print order of 150 copies priced at Rs.120 each. All were sold to colleges and Universities in and around Madurai and the District Library in Chennai.”

Just two years before his retirement, he was transferred to Madurai in 1990 and ever since made the city his home. As short story writing remained his pre-occupation, he came out with his second compilation in 1999 titled “In the Afternoon of Life.” Thereafter, followed “The Committed Official”, “When Pandavas Lost”, “The Enemy of Life” and the last one in 2008 “As Dusk Falls”.

In each of his work not only has Subramaniam remained essentially Indian in terms of story telling but also displayed his brilliant ability to laugh at the system with his self-deprecating style of humour. For instance, he takes on the bureaucrat in The Committed Official or his favourite story is “The Visit” about a family which sits and chats through the night when a relative comes. “The essence here is in the genuine and simple conversation of any ordinary family which is easy to relate to and not merely one woven and crafted with beautiful words for the business of writing.”

True, Subramaniam’s works are mostly spontaneous creations which come out of his inner being. Just the way he says, “I stick to life”, pure Indianness mediated through the English language makes the charm of his works. And because he wants the young people to “know, experience and feel the different emotions and expressions of life” that he goes about distributing free copies of his books after printing them at his own cost.

This article first appeared in The Hindu

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/musings-of-a-writer/article1712102.ece

Editor’s Note. U. Subramaniam’s new collection, Selected Stories, was published in Feb 2016.

This is what the author writes in the Preface to the collection: “six short story collections have appeared in less than two decades. Now it is time for a selection of them and here it is. In my stories there is no attempt to dazzle the reader with plot. They are the fruits of an attempt to understand life.”

 

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Categories : blog article
Posted by Murli Melwani 
· January 31, 2015 
· 6 Comments

The Indian Short Story in the Time of Twitter

A Possible Trajectory of the future

A time came when all the venues of Literary Fests in India were booked up years in advance. Always in step with the times, Kulpreet Yadav @Kulpreetyadav, best-selling author and editor of the Open Road Review decided to host a lit fest in the Cloud and made arrangements with Time-Travel Agency to invite the participants. The fest was #Tweet- sized. He invited just 5 writers: R.K. Narayan, Khushwant Singh, Ruskin Bond, Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande, authors who had published a fair number of collections of stories. The theme of the fest was #TheIndianShortStoryinEnglish in the Time of Twitter

KY: As we all know, the short story is constantly evolving. We are here to discuss the direction in which it is now heading.

R.K.Narayan(RKN): And what is that direction?

Khushwant Singh(KS): What, you haven’t been following the trends?

Shashi Deshpande(SD) with a woman’s instinct to avoid confrontation: Short stories are being built up 140 characters at a time.

Anita Desai(AD): who types the next 140 characters?

SD : some stranger who gets the first tweet. The receiving tweeter adds his two cents, I mean his 140, characters and send them out

AD: with a sigh, in a soft voice: 140 characters. What will happen to the cadences and rhythms, to onomatopoeia and alliteration….

KS:Baas kar kuriae. The world will continue

Ruskin Bond(RB): Where are the 140 characters stored?

KY: They are stored in the vitual world. It’s called Twitosphere.

RKN: gulping down his coffee. What does all this meam?

AD: I don’t know. I’m not a Twiteratti.

KS: pouring out his chota peg of scotch. A sort of relay race. After 140 characters, the banda goes out of breath and hands the baton to the next Milkha. Looks at AD and gives a fruity chuckle

R.B: I can see the advantage. Different personalities adding twists to the tweeted thread.

KS: Who chooses the theme?

KY: The first tweeter. Say the theme is # Love at Second Sight

RKN: What is this clone of a “short story” called?

KY: A CloudRead

AD: So MetroReads are old hat?

RB: After say the 100 tweeters have gone through the turns and twists of Love at Second Sight who strings the tweets together?

SD: The first tweeter

RB: Where does he store them?

SD: In the Twitosphere

KY: The Twitosphere becomes a social reading platform.

SD: CloudReads are converted into a mobile-friendly format and streamed to smart phones and other devices. Then under her breath: about time women got to have a say!

RKN: So who gets the credit as the author? Of the strung-together tweets?

AD: No one.

KS:Kuriae, it is the age of literary socialism!

AD: Sighs. What happens to individual brilliance? No more Tolstoys, no more Tagores.

RKN: turning up his nose. Conveyor belt assembly!

RB: What will happen to anthologies?

RKN: As we know them –they will cease to exist.

RB: Why?

RKN: Because I suppose each Twitter-assembled package is an anthology.

KY: Welcome to the new avatar of the #IndianShortStoryinEnglish

READERS ARE INVITED TO POST THEIR COMMENTS

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