A Break in the Circle by Sharmila Kantha I Devoid of humour, full of mistakes I

In the heart of “small town” India is an unexplored world of stories. Sharmila Kantha at best reminds us of that treasure in the backyard. It’s a pity however that she stands in the midst of a ready field that she is unable to harvest.

Based in Patna, the story of A Break in the Circle focuses on the life of a middle-class family. Anuradha is a housewife whose days revolve around her children, husband and parents. House maid, visiting relatives, weddings and TV serials are the other elements that claim her. The news of a visit by a professor who had left the town years ago sends ripples across her placid life. She is strangely worried about the “requirements” of one who has lived in America for 20 years, and establishes an online contact with him. The professor’s past, a topic of common discussion in the town, is spiced with stories of an affair with a student, Manvi Prasad. Close on the heels of the professor’s visit, Kallu Chacha comes visiting with his family. His groom-hunting mission disrupts Anuradha’s plans to shop and prepare for the professor’s visit, as does the arrival of a troubled couple from Delhi. The couple is in Patna to find a solution to their problems and it falls on Anuradha and her husband to help them out too. In the midst of this, Anuradha must also dissuade a cousin from pursuing a modeling career in Delhi as it will bring bad name to the family. The different strains of the story begin to climax as the date of the professors arrival draws close. So while Kallu Chacha must find a suitable son-in-law, the Delhi couple a solution to its childlessness and the maid must marry off her daughter. A dramatic end takes shape as Anuradha and her husband are going to pick the professor from the airport. Veil falls off the face of an arrogant Manvi Prasad and the truth behind the professor’s past is revealed.
Wife of an Indian diplomat, Kantha has her roots in Patna. Clearly here she bites off much more than she can chew in 195 pages of A Break in the Circle. Her earlier works include a novel, Just the Facts, and two picture books for children. Even as the author struggles to place the characters in their social settings, time remains blurred. While the story attempts to be contemporary, the characters lack the ambition of today’s middle-class, particularly in small towns. They resemble more the frugal and inhibited class of 70s and 80s. The author hops from one character to the other attempting to grab it all in one sweep. As the story ends Anuradha see all of her life’s episode winding up like one of her TV serials. For the reader, on the other hand the climax is a shrill screech, just the way they do it in the soaps: “Nahiiiii”! To make matters worse, the text is rant with errors which the editors should have seen and fixed. There is excessive use of qualifiers: “Then she poured out drinking water from the large earthenware pot with a long stainless-steel ladle into oversized stainless-steel glasses and set them in front of the men sitting at the pockmarked table”; and rather banal insights: “Sadly there is no incentive in our system for such people to stay if there are better opportunities”.
Television appears as a node around which the family gathers. The story itself is deeply inspired by the spate of small town soaps. However, Kantha is unable to spark similar humour or debate. The story of the average family life is never simple to tell and Kantha under-evaluates her subject. She gives in to the first temptation to tell-it-all. While the writer commits the most probable mistakes it is even more surprising that the reputed publisher chose to put its stamp on the book in its present form.

Diasporic Indian writers move over nostalgia, loss

Maya has only three days left to live. She has important decisions at hand: dividing her sarees and her coveted jewelery among daughters and daughter-in-law, cleaning the house, placing order for her coffin, ensuring she is looking good at the time of her death and the like. As she goes about in a mechanical way preparing for her death she learns to live again.
Maya is the central character in British writer Divya Mathur’s story Antim Teen Din (Last Three Days). While the story breathes of Indian culture, the character is European in its bearing.
Nostalgia and loss no longer define the experience of the green card holder. The Indian diaspora has stepped into a far more complex jumble of existence. This was also the dominant opinion at the recently concluded three-day seminar in Toronto, organised to bring together the Hindi diasporic writers of Canada and Britain.
Organised by Katha UK and Hindi Writers’ Guild, the Toronto event discussed approaches to story writing and the modern idiom. Speaking at the event, noted writer and general secretary of Katha U.K. Tejinder Sharma, stressed on the need for the writers of the diaspora to emerge from the morass of nostalgia and assimilate the local concerns.
In an email interview, Sharma explained that the workshop discussed aspects of writing in view of the writer of a changing social setup. "Today’s writer does not just reveal what happened after. He justifies whatever happened, why did it happen? He works hard to show the story rather than narrate it," Sharma says.Till the turn of the century no writer of Indian origin had any Hindi work of fiction published in UK. Over the decade the growth has been tremendous with the Hindi diasporic writings boasting of writers like Tejinder Sharma (UK), Deepti Achla Kumar (Canada), Archana Pennuily (Denmark), and Krishna Bihari (UAE).
But it is a tough road for the writers of this literature. While most of the writers and readers are first-generation immigrants, the second and third generation immigrants merely have a working knowledge of the language. So the writer looks towards the reader and critics back home in India and the Indian diaspora abroad for readership.
"Procuring Hindi books abroad is not easy. Mostly the writer gives free copies to his friends and readers. There are hardly any outlets for Hindi Books. In London we have one store run by India’s Star Books," says Sharma. The first edition of most of the Hindi books is only 350 copies. These books are dumped in the government purchases or the writers are forced to buy their own books.
In UK, the Indian high commission started a scheme about four years ago to provide assistance to the upcoming Hindi writers in UK. Organisations like Geetanjali Bahubhashi Samaj, Asian Community Arts and Katha UK sponsor collections of poetry and short stories from time to time.
"Otherwise, the exploitation of the author by the publisher is complete and absolute.
Barring a few established names, every writer has to pay money to the publisher for getting his/her book published. Royalty is a distant dream for immigrant writers," Sharma adds.
Aren’t the writers put off by the bleak situation? Isn’t the lure to move into English too hard to resist? Sharma doesn’t think so. Some of the stories of Usha Priyamvada, Susham Bedi, Shail Agrawal, Ila Prasad, Archana Pennuily, Krishna Bihari, Divya Mathur, Gautam Sachdev, Usha Verma, Zakia Zubairi can compete with the best written in India. Tejinder Sharma’s story Qabra ka Munafa has been cited among the 20 best short stories in Hindi in the past 25 years.
With over 80 per cent of Indians who cannot speak English and the continuous stream of immigrants, Hindi diasporic literature is only beginning to find it voice. Sample The Colour of my Passport by Tejinder Sharma:

Meri chamdi ka rang aaj bhi wahi hai
Mere seene mein wahi dil dhadakta hai
Jann gan man ki awaz, aaj bhi
Kar deti hai muje sawdhan!
Aur mein, aram se, ek bar phir
Bith jata hun, sochna jaise tal jata hai
Ki passport ka rang kaise badal jata hai

(My skin has the same colour
The same heart still beats in my body
The sound of the National Anthem
Still alerts me to attention
And I pause for a while
At ease, and I postpone the quest to find an answer
Why does passport change colour?)

To My Daughter

“How the stars made?

nd how grass grows

so tall? Tell me papa

Cause u ave lived

nd u know all.”

“It’s a funny world Navvya

For years we live

Knowing nothing at all

Neither today

Nor years hence

I can tell you, how

grass shoots up straight

Story of how stars

were made and trivia

around us sprayed…

But I do not know

The truth and

live years in

the loop of

honourable dark.

Do not learn

from me doll.

Weave your own truth

And maybe at the end

You will have lived.”

सपने का जन्म

वो अन्दर था 

जब हम पत्थर

बजा रहे थे

त्रिश्नाएं वो  

बटोर रहा था

जब घास हम 

सुलगा रहे थे 

विछेद रहा था

असंभव, वो  

जोड़ रहा था

अद्भुत

कई साल तक

हम आग 

सुलगते रहे

वो रहा

अन्दर गुम

फिर एकदिन

उसकी रचना,

थी तैयार

सपना उसदिन

हमने देखा

जो कुछ भी

हाथ में था

गिर गया

जो बरसों से

नहीं जली थी

उसदिन

वो आग

भभक उठी 

January 32

‘Why this date?'

‘You won’t understand’

says your smile

‘That’s my day, or

will be…,’ you add

with stylish silence.

With him the jazz

doesn’t help,

‘Whaayyy?’ he’s earnest.

‘We all do it,

Mine is a date.’

‘But its never coming!’

‘It always is,

wooling winters

with anticipation

then summers silently

sweltering in disappointment.’

He throws up his hands.

He won’t last long.

‘But you see,’

you tell him,

‘Jan 33 will last forever.’

‘What is forever?

…,’ you miss the rest

then something

you let slip

is not heard either.

Pathetic fallacy?

Clap and snap,

then countless snaps

Snaps, dampening

the clothes she

set out to dry,

she thinks they

don’t mind though.

Another day

The snaps would

have annoyed,

but not today.

They always

mess the doorbell

but today, it’s

a naughty tickle,

‘What a pathetic

laugh’, she giggles .

Its all different,

They would’ve

snaked through

her skin and

sickened her soul

but not today.

‘There is no reason

for most of the

things in life,’

she says,

‘We just invent it.’

हममे कुछ नया नहीं

और ना ही हो सकता है

उस आदम से

इस मानुस तक

हमने यही किया है

और ताज्जुब है

हरबार सोचा की

कुछ नया किया है

फिर एक दिन

उस सच से

होता है साक्षात्कार

की ये तो नया

है ही नहीं

और तब होती है

जंग शुरू,

सच बनाम विश्वास.

उस संकट में

काम आते है

बड़े बड़े नाम

बताइए एइन्स्तिएन

ने नया नहीं किया?

बताइए जो पहले

चाँद पे गया, क्या

उसने भी नया नहीं किया.

पर सच

जवाब नहीं देता

सच तो बस

होता है

आप खुद ही

वितर्क खोजते हैं

जो खोजते है तो

तर्क को भी

आस पास ही पाते हैं

अंततः अपनी जिरह में

आप हरा देते हैं

खुद को

और वो सच

भाग निकलता है

छुपता फिरता है

सालों तक

तर्कों की पुलिस से

फिर होता है प्रदर्पित

जब आप किसी

चोटी पे खड़े

कर रहे होते है

सीना चौड़ा

और दोहराता है

वही सालों पुरानी बात

'इसमें नया क्या है'?

कैसा हो अगर

खो जाये

हम सबकी याददाश्त?

हर किताब जल जाये

हर अक्षर मिट जाये?

तब सब नया लगेगा

शायद.

इसीलिए मैं

मंदबुद्धि होना चाहती हूँ

सब हो चूका है

इस निष्कर्ष को

खोना चाहती हूँ.