There are 10 stories in this collection. The common thread that runs through them is the writer’s fascination for change, and how it alters simple ordinary lives that are not really prepared for it. Change brings in mysteries, widens gaps and, though the purpose of such change coming on fast is not readily understood, it must be necessarily met.
The simplest form of change is rendered in ‘The City’, where a family prepares for a job transfer from Mumbai. The story probes hidden veils in the form of the secret diaries kept by the children as they grow in the city, the attraction to the forbidden by the wife, all unknown to the protagonist who readies himself for another city, preoccupied with his office chores.
In ‘Password’, new-generation whizkids reverse the roles of parents altogether. The children decide their own names and give universal names, addresses, and passwords to their parents. It is time for the older generation to learn from the young. It is time for the postman to stop bringing in the quaint blue aerogramme. It is time for handwriting to be forgotten once and for all. Parents and the elderly get into an Internet café imagining steaming kettles, biscuits and tea, to be met with PCs staring at them from among glass panels and cubicles. In ‘Initiation’, the protagonist finds himself unable to meet or come to terms with realities. The old teacher who is a terror in the classroom is a meek weakling before his own family. Each new generation in the form of son and grandson will have its way. Time held traditions and customs lose sanctity and are thrown to the winds. The character of Achuthan master is a moving portrayal.
‘Onam market’ brings home the truth that even small children are taught to lie by their own parents. The story speaks of how ethics and traditions vanish in business where the human being becomes nothing more than a selling and profit making machine, with the new MBA kids from abroad taking over family business. But the story ends on a note of hope, where all is not lost, and human worth endures. In ‘Shades of blue’, the protagonist has a failed relationship in the U.S. The human body is mysterious in its reactions to relationships just as relationships are also complex. All is not what it appears to be in the exterior. There are wounds and scars of even your thoughts ingrained in others that you may not yourself see, but which yet others sense. In the same sky, there are different shades of blue. ‘Shades of Blue’ shows Sethu’s writing attempting a different reach, a scary mode.
‘A Guest for Arundhathi’, the title story, makes compelling reading. Sethu’s abilities to portray inner conflicts of loneliness and isolation, pangs of loss, or the combating urges of the suppressed body, emerge effectively nuanced. Love and its temptations will run us over and make imps of us all at one time or the other. The stark vision of the middle-aged secretary in her red sari waiting in the dark near Khalaghoda for her unknown lover is poignant. ‘The baby sitter’ portrays the story of a middle-aged Indian migrant working as a babysitter in the U.S. to make money for her ungrateful children. This is another of Sethu’s victories. King Lear at least had Cordelia to fall back on. But the fate of Manju Auntie, whom one of her sons abandons in the icy snowing night on a lonely American road, sends chills down the spine of any sensitive reader.
‘Ammalu, the Eligible Girl’, is Sethu at his witty best. The story is about three village men going to ‘see a girl’ and has 20 pages of rocking laughter. ‘Her Corner of Earth’ and ‘Family Tree’ appear predictable.
K. Kunhikrishnan’s translation brings out the flavour of the original. If he has taken some contextual liberties, it has blended remarkably. The cover could have been made more impressive.
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A Guest For Arundhathi and Other Stories;Sethu; translated by K. Kunhikrishnan, Palimpsest, Rs.250.
