Notes from the Hinterland: Stories and Essays PDF
Preview Notes from the Hinterland: Stories and Essays
One of the meanings of the word ‘olio’ is ‘a miscellany’. The books in the Aleph Olio series contain a selection of the finest writing to be had on a variety of Indian themes—the great cities, aspects of culture and civilization, and other uniquely Indian phenomena. Filled with insights and haunting evocations of a country of unrivalled complexity, beauty, tragedy and mystery, each Aleph Olio book presents India in ways that it has seldom been seen before. Also in Aleph Olio The Essence of Delhi In a Violent Land Love and Lust Forthcoming in Aleph Olio Ways of Dying The Book of Kings ALEPH BOOK COMPANY An independent publishing firm promoted by Rupa Publications India First published in India in 2019 by Aleph Book Company 7/16 Ansari Road, Daryaganj New Delhi 110 002 Anthology copyright © Aleph Book Company 2019 Cover image copyright © designer_an/Shutterstock p. 139 (Acknowledgements) is an extension of the copyright page. Copyright for the individual pieces and translations vests in the respective authors and translators. All rights reserved. While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission, this has not been possible in all cases; any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions. In the works of fiction in this anthology, names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. In the works of non-fiction, the views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors’ own and the facts are as reported by them, which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are in no way liable for the same. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from Aleph Book Company. ISBN: 978-93-88292-55-9 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 For sale in the Indian subcontinent only. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. Small towns always remind me of death. My hometown lies calmly amidst the trees, it is always the same, in the summer or winter, with the dust flying, or the wind howling down the gorge. —From ‘Small Towns and the River’ by Mamang Dai A NOTE ON STYLE As the various stories and essays in this book have been excerpted from books that have their own styles of spelling Indian words and proper nouns, no attempt has been made to standardize the text according to the Aleph house style. The only stylistic rules that have been observed throughout the book are that British spellings have been used and Indian words have not been italicized. CONTENTS 1. SHASHI THAROOR Scheduled Castes, Unscheduled Change 2. RUSKIN BOND The Night Train at Deoli 3. R. K. NARAYAN An Astrologer’s Day 4. D. B. G. TILAK The Man Who Saw God Translated from the Telugu by Ranga Rao 5. RAHI MASOOM REZA A Village Divided Translated from the Hindi by Gillian Wright 6. SHRILAL SHUKLA Raag Darbari Translated from the Hindi by Gillian Wright 7. MADHURI VIJAY Lorry Raja 8. ABHIMANYU KUMAR The Lynching That Changed India 9. SNIGDHA POONAM The Man Who Lived 10. P. SAINATH Ganpati Yadav’s Gripping Life Cycle Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors one ~ SCHEDULED CASTES, UNSCHEDULED CHANGE* SHASHI THAROOR I was about eight or nine when I first came across Charlis. A few of us children were kicking a ball around the dusty courtyard of my grandmother’s house in rural Kerala, where my parents took me annually on what they called a holiday and I regarded as a cross between a penance and a pilgrimage. (Their pilgrimage, my penance.) Balettan, my oldest cousin, who was all of thirteen and had a bobbing Adam’s apple to prove it, had just streaked across me and kicked the ball with more force than he realized he possessed. It soared upwards like a startled bird, curved perversely away from us, and disappeared over our high brick wall into the rubbish heap at the back of the neighbour’s house. ‘Damn,’ I said. I had grown up in Bombay where one said things like that. ‘Go and get it, da,’ Balettan commanded one of the younger cousins. Da was a term of great familiarity, used especially when ordering young boys around. A couple of the kids, stifling groans, dutifully set off toward the wall. But before they could reach it the ball came sailing back over their heads towards us, soon followed over the wall by a skinny, sallow youth with a pockmarked face and an anxious grin. He seemed vaguely familiar, someone I’d seen in the background on previous holidays but not really noticed, though I wasn’t sure why. ‘Charlis!’ a couple of the kids called out. ‘Charlis got the ball!’
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