I am moving to another genre today - short stories. My biggest complaint about airports in this country is the lack of good book stores in any of them. More about that later. I was almost in panic, I had miscalculated the amount of reading material I had packed. I felt that since it was a short journey I needed only one book. The one I had, ‘My God Died Young’, I had already devoured. So the book store at the Thiruvananthapuram Airport looked like a frosty beer mug on a summer afternoon. The mirage didn’t last long, there were hardly a hundred books which were hidden among those tacky wooden kathakali masks (which the tourists buy by the dozens) sandalwood garlands and those irritating noisy strings made of sea shells. And in the true spirit of ‘lets hook the firang’s hunger for Indian spirituality’ there were rows of books on Osho, yoga and ayurveda. Let me add that there were a couple of books by Khushwanth Singh and Shobha De and obviously I was not in the mood for any of them. I was looking for something light and easy. I saw this oddly colored book with an even odder name - Elvis, Raja Stories.
This is a delightful collection of short stories that had me hooked long after my journey had ended. I sat up and finished it that night. Largely set in Africa and Canada, the stories are brilliantly crafted. They are humorous, witty and ’slice-of-life’. The first story ‘When She Was Queen’ gets you hooked. Despite the limitation of the novella medium, Mr. Vassanji has complete control over the narrative. The story is a study in the art of keeping the reader hooked and socking him with the proverbial twist in the tale. Watch out for it. ‘The Girl on A Bicycle’ is another one that kind of shocks you right in the beginning and then develops into a tale of betrayal. ‘The Expected One’ is funny and entertaining. I also liked the conflict that Yasmin is confronted with in ‘Her Two Husbands’. ‘Last Rites’ is again about conflict. Shamshu is caught between tradition and his friend’s dying wish.
Most of the stories are entertaining, some I admit didn’t appeal to me as much. I did skip a few like ‘Is it Still October’, ‘The Trouble with Tea’ and ‘She, With Bill and George’.
Mr. Vassanji is a highly impressive writer who was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania before moving to Canada. He describes himself as an “IndoAfrican Canadian writer”. Vassanji is the author of six novels and two collections of short stories.
Funny, especially the part about the airport.