The book is a compilation of short stories. The first story is about a little girl Gayathri and her brother Ramu whose mother hires Kumaran with muscles “bulged and glistened beneath his black skin and his buttocks were fair under his lungi” to milk their cows. Next door lives Mallika, a eunuch. Mallika falls in love with Kumaran and the day the eunuch hears that Kumaran is about to get married, she howls and howls. Time passes. Gayathri grows into an 18-year old and Kumaran has a son who suffers from Down’s syndrome. The son goes missing, probably stolen by the eunuchs.
In another story, 12-year old Hari visits his father in Ramnagaram. He tries to speak Hindi but has a thick Tamil accent. His appa (father) tells him, “Don’t ever bother Hari. Impossible language to learn; totally impossible. And the script like chicken scratching in the mud.”
Hari meets Rita and Gita, the two daughters of their neighbour, Mr Malhotra. Mrs Malhota hates Ramnagaram but learns to tolerate it. One day, Hari finds Rita and Gita visit him at his house while his father is away. The girls had been told to stay away from their house till 6.30 p.m. Every day his father would disappear and return at 6.45 pm. One day Hari sees Mrs Malhotra at the wheel of a white Fiat and his own father sitting next to her, “his arm flung casually around her shoulders, smiling too, until he saw me.” Hari returns home knowing well that his father had seen him. Mrs Malhotra is bored with her silly fat husband but “what a big, big, big, stupid fool” is his appa, Hari laments.
‘The Secret’ is the story of the escapades of a middle-aged bachelor who yearns for some excitement in his life and finds it in marriage.
In the story, ‘First Love’, a 12-year old girl watches a big girl named Mridula stand opposite her window. She looks dull and friendless. Ma would often warn the 12-year old, “You are going to end up like her if you don’t smile more often.”
One day, Mridula’s cousin comes to spend a part of the summer vacation at her house. He is a student of IIT at Bombay. The two cousins start spending time together while the 12-year old watches them. Once all the of them go to a park. On seeing the two cousins engrossed in each other, the 12-year old slips away to return home.
‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ is an unusual tale on the popular folktale. There are other stories too which make for some good reading.
-MG
(HarperCollins Publishers India, A-53 Sector 57, Noida-201301.)
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