Well, so much for the I could just keep going in this collection sentiment of last weekend. I could just keep going if I didn't have to do laundry, or cook, or go grocery shopping and all the other mindless tasks that take up so much time on the weekend. I know you know all about that, but it means reading time is at a premium and being a slow reader I have to pick and chose and keep an eye on those due dates. This coming week should be much better.
I can at least tell you about a couple of stories I managed to squeeze in. I've decided to stick with The Lotus Singers, but there is no need to read straight through. The nice thing about short stories is being able to move about in a book and read the chapters out of order, which is what I did this weekend. And short stories, particularly the shorter stories can be worked in when there isn't as much free time for reading--everyone should keep a book of short stories by their bedside for just such moments I'm beginning to think.
I can now add Tamil to the languages I've read in translation. "The Disposessed" by Kunthavai is a grim, eye opening story about what ordinary people have had to endure in northern Sri Lanka as they get caught up in a civil war. Kunthavai is the pen name of Era Sadadcharadevi, a well known and well respected Sri Lankan author who writes in Tamil. "She is noted for her politically charged fiction, particularly her short stories." One family must leave everything behind rather than risk the army overtaking their village.
"They had to flee, leaving everything as it lay. They had hired a tractor to plough the land, bought manure, planted the crop, hired a water pump every three days to irrigate the plots and frequently sprayed pesticides. Twenty-five plots of farmland planted with onions had all gone to waste! The more they thought about it, the more unbearable it felt. If only they had sold the onions to the carters, even at their prices. At least they would have got their money back. They would have lost just their sweat and toil."
Grim though the story may be, it's easy to get caught up in this one family's escape, mirrored by so many other refugees. The reader is just left wondering how their story really ends.
Niaz Zaman has a number of published works to her name including a few books on Kantha embroidery. According to the biographical information in the collection, she is "one of South Asia's, and the Islamic world's, most esteemed writers." She has written and edited short story collections as well as an autobiographical novel and critical works. Her story "The Daily Woman" is quite sad, though it is also very illuminating in portraying the lives of poor people in Bangladesh.
An unnamed narrator tells the story of her life as a servant to a wealthy family. She cooks and cleans and wonders at the lifestyle of her employers, which seems so frivolous in comparison to her own. Every year for the last five years she has given birth and each child has died within days. Now she has twins and how will they ever survive, so small and helpless--the girl so much smaller than the boy. She has little food and lives in a hovel in the slums. When white men come to take one of the children away she doesn't resist--telling herself she cannot care for the child and it will be better off somewhere else. But what is the cost and how can a small Bangladeshi child be worth so little?
The stories in this collection are often bleak or deal with difficult questions, and don't always offer answers. Really they are little slices of life and show some of the problems--sometimes similar but also very different than those experienced in the western world. It offers a new perspective and in some ways a first look at a world so far away from my own. Have I mentioned how much I am enjoying this book?