Was it not said, in a tone of levity, that Hardy the novelist was hardly a poet? Writers who work in one genre do not generally feel quite at home in a different genre. But there are exceptions.
Samuel Beckett, the most influential playwright of the last century, was also a poet and an avant-garde novelist. Daruwalla belongs to this breed. He is essentially a poet, justly regarded a major voice in the contemporary poetic scene. Noticing his growing body of writings, Nissim Ezekiel paid encomiums to his “mature poetic talent, literary stamina, intellectual strength and social awareness.”
Love Across the Salt Desert is a collection of 20 short stories selected from three different anthologies, previously published. Daruwalla took to writing short fiction some 10 years after he published his poems by which time his reputation had been well established. On his switching genres, he says in his preface, “Critics said some of my poems could be read as short stories and vice versa.” How true! The sheer poetry of the narration illuminates the mysteries of private obsessions. As prose narration, it is full of unexpected riches with incisive, dramatic evocations and observations.
Retold
The title story “Love across the Salt Desert”— the inspirational source for the Bollywood movie “Refugee” and a much anthologised piece, now prescribed by NCERT for Std. XII, English — is a suspenseful and meticulously observed tale which recounts the desperate journey of young Najab, the son of the smuggler Aftab who, braving the salt desert of the Rann of Kutch, crosses the international border between India and Pakistan and carries back home his sweet fair Fatima “whose laughter had the timbre of ankle-bells.”
The evocation of the drought in Kutch is presented with utmost precision in recording details. “The Rann lay like a paralysed monster, its back covered with scab and scar tissue and dried blister-skin. The earth had cracked and it looked as if chunks of it had been baked in a kiln and then embedded in the soil-crust.”
Makara Sankranti is the day when the sun enters the zodiac Capricorn that marks the movement to winter solstice. “The Day of the Winter Solstice” is a gripping story of forbidden love. Rich in all its associative details, it relates the misfortunes of old Govardhan who recurrently dreams of his death and his young wife Janaki's widowhood. His astrologer had predicted long life for him, thus appeasing him of his emotional qualms. But the end proves otherwise.
Overcome by the bearing and charms of the cavalry trooper Ram Khilwan who is a regular vistor to the household, Janaki cuckolds her husband and willingly submits herself, body and soul, to this intruder who, during the course of a battle with the infantry, gets gored to death.
Plunged into the abyss of darkness, Janaki wails inconsolably, effectively widowed. The climax of the story, with its reversal of fortunes, renders it an emotionally devastating tragedy.
More drama
“The Jogger” narrates the story of Dr. Ranjit Singh Kumpawat, the Indian doctor who being prevented from using the newly laid athletic track in East Anglia, leaves the place and becomes a regular jogger running along the sidewalks and pathways in his newly settled town. His fantasising winning the marathon at the Olympics ends in a freak accident in which he loses his leg. The track where he was once forbidden to run is all his now for the asking, but alas, he is a cripple unable to use this privilege.
Invariably Daruwalla's stories conclude in a pretty dramatic finish; he is adept at structuring stories with an unpredictable ending. The serious stories contain a parade of betrayals, sacrifices, suicides, displaying fierce emotions, while the humorous ones never fail to exhibit life's little ironies. His exceptional poetic imagination records everything that goes on in the rough and tumble of everyday life. He takes us through crowded, noisy streets, the familiar lie of the land, the disordered splendour of nature, and yet all these are fully realised and quite beguiling. Using the conventional third person narrative mode, Daruwalla succeeds in making his stories work wondrously. And that, in effect, is winsome story telling!
