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by Shashi Deshpande
Penguin Books, 1993, |
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Shashi Deshpande started her literary career writing short stories. Her earlier stories were published in Indian magazines like Femina, Eve's Weekly and The Illustrated Weekly of India. Her first books were all collections of short stories. Published in 1993, "The Intrusion and Other Stories" is the latest of such collection. The 19 stories in " The Intrusion and Other Stories" prove once again that Deshpande is a master story teller. The stories are marked by clear insight and are full of compassion and understanding for the human situation. Though true to her line of writing, women form the foundation of the stories, Deshpande's women in these stories encompass all ages and all social levels and contexts. Indian classical literature as well as history are rejuvenated here in two stories: "Hear me Sanjaya" and "The Stone Women". To show what kind of a treat awaits the readers of this book, I have decided to restrict my detailed analysis to two of the stories only. My choice falls upon, "Why a Robin?" and "Hear me Sanjaya". "Why a Robin" is the story in which a mother and daughter re-establish their links. When the story starts, there is nothing common between the two. The mother is justified in thinking that her 12 year old daughter rejects her, that she has nothing that she can offer her young daughter. Even physically there is little link between them. The mother asks herself, " How did I, so plain, so common, get a daughter like her?" The bird, robin, stands for the child, for an unfamiliar, untreadable ground, and is counterbalanced by the peacock, a symbol for something familiar, comfortable, for a world that the mother hankers after, a world that is no longer there. It is the robin which is the exotic/strange bird not the peacock. The story starts with a confrontation between the daughter and the mother. The daughter comes home from school and wants the mother to give her ideas for a two page essay on robins. The mother stammers, "I don't know ... I know nothing about it. Except that it's a pretty bird. With a red breast...? And it comes in winter ...?" She understands as much about robins as she understands her own child. The daughter makes it quite clear that the mother has again failed her. On being offered information, irrelevantly as it appears, on sparrows, mynas, and finally peacocks, the daughter stamps out of the room, saying, "I will ask Papa. He's sure to know, he'll help me." The mother's utterly helpless situation is summarised by Deshpande in these heart wrenching words, "It is as if I am, in my own house, confronted with two closed rooms. I am condemned to sit outside and gaze helplessly at the closed doors." |