Category:
Literary Fiction
ISBN-10: B01HBQOC68
Type: Fiction
‘Stories varied’ is about women's dilemmas in the Indian social milieu accompanied with unique denouements.
While 'Ilaa's Ire' contrasts woman's lot of the day with her eminence in the Vedic Age, '201' Qualms" depicts her predicament, torn between personal loyalty and citizen's responsibility.
As "?" addresses woman's marital stress in an alien land, 'Cupid's Clue' is about her acting on rebound in her native place.
Even as 'Autumn Love' lets woman discover the marital void in her life, 'A Touchy Affair' makes her amenable to her man's other woman.
Just as 'Love's How's That' inflames woman's old flame, 'A Hearty Turn' brings her innate lesbian leanings to the fore.
If 'Love Jihad' bridges lovers' religious divide with a secular plank, 'Tenth Nook' creates her marital gulf on the materialistic ground.
While 'Eleventh Hour' is about woman's lust for love, 'Twelfth Tale' underscores her zest for power.
Excerpt
Twelfth Tale
While the media was stuck up with Shibu’s suicide, Rasika stayed away from the idiot box that Xmas day. But as it went overboard the next day with Shilpa, the dalit boy’s mother, on board, she could see through the media game. That’s to antagonize dalits against the emergent rightist party that rode to power in the national election and to buttress the leftist coalition that lost its sheen. What with the election to the state assemblies round the corner, the dalit suicide seemed to be a godsend to bust the rightist dispensation. Being a dalit with political ambitions, Rasika knew that her caste mattered in the politics of the day, and so watched the non-stop Shilpa show for the next six days looking for the winning ways at the hustings.
Came Twelfth Night and Rasika was tensed up as to how her son Rohan’s suicide would be handled by the police and played up by the media. Having carpet covered Shibu’s suicide, what if the media were to conclude that there was no novelty left in her son’s case for it to milk. But then, won’t the moneybags that back the party out of power induce the media to stay focused on the common agenda to hurt the upstart rightists? Why not showcase the anti-dalit character of the central government with two dalit suicides in a row? Rasika was bogged down thus, as if her own life depended on the media coverage of her son’s death, and the arrival of the police, at dawn, to conduct an inquest provided a welcome distraction. But with the arrival of the media-wale, her apprehensions about their interest in the incident returned to the fore, and as they left she glued on to the TV to await the verdict. The idiot box began to beam the ‘breaking news’ with more manufactured outrage than before and she breathed a sigh of relief. As the victims happened to be poor and ‘promising’ students, the central government had a lot to answer for the caste discrimination on the country’s campuses, so went the ranting of the anchors.
Surfing the channels unceasingly, she began to contemplate.
Today it’s all about Rohan’s body and his suicide note but by the morrow, won’t the media-wale come back to milk the story? And her son’s youthful photogenic face should only add to the story of his hapless suicide. Also, he was a research scholar in a premier institution, a leftist bastion at that. That she was a middle-aged beauty and educated as well should help the media in making it a wholesome affair. That’s the heady mix that afforded Shilpa an unprecedented media-exposure in the wake of her son’s suicide. And why should it be any different in her case? But unlike Shilpa, who played the dalit card to no avail, won’t she cut her political suit according to the electoral cloth, and that should make a difference in the voting booths. If not, of what avail is sacrificing Rohan at the altar of opportunity.
“Being an underling to the leader is not the way to build a political career,” she thought. “Won’t my life illustrate that?”
She was poor being a dalit and spirited in spite of it. She was attractive by birth and sophisticated by education, both of which enabled her to marry Shekhar, a wheeler-dealer. With a prosperous husband and two cute children, a boy and a girl, when she thought she had nothing more to ask for, fate gave a political twist to her life. As it happened, alive to the caste arithmetic in the electoral calculus, her man reckoned that it’s only time before the middle-aged Saran of the leftist party would be catapulted to the pole position. So, he began investing in Saran. What with Saran well on course, as Shekhar began to up his stakes, she got sucked into the vortex. When Saran proposed to take her under his political wings, Shekhar had seen in that a second string to his business bow. But life seems to have had other ideas.
As her political proximity with Saran occasioned their personal intimacy, she was thrown into a dilemma at the lakshman rekha. Bogged down at the threshold, she chanced to hear a successful woman politician’s public confession that it’s a fair game for women to use their personal assets for a sexual climb on the political ladder. While men have all the means to reign in the political arena, so went the wannabe woman’s argument, only by conceding her sexual space to the powers that be that women can gain political ground. With that ‘sane’ advice putting her in the family way for the third time, though on a non-family path, she gave birth to Rohan and that changed the equation of her life and the equilibrium of her mind. What with Saran becoming fond of his only son - he had two daughters from his wife - their liaison began to acquire the colours of a union making her dread about the prospect of her man getting wind of it sooner than later. Butthat fateful day ended her torment.
-----------------
Download the ebook here
|
