A Fallen Leaf: review

Fall is an integral part of human life. There is the natural season of fall (autumn) and there are the human falls of errors and misfortunes. There is also the sweet falling in love. Falling out of love is also a part of life. A Fallen Leaf is an anthology of 15 short stories written by 15 different writers but blend together coherently like the warp and woof of an elegant fabric. These stories revolve around the various falls in human lives.

 All the stories are written in the conventional method of plot development. There is a problem which grows complex towards a denouement and the final resolution. Sharanya Mishra’s ‘A Mosaic on the Garden Floor’ is an exception insofar as it melds a couple of subplots and builds up a mosaic instead of a single picture. Each story has its own conventional lesson to teach too. Even Olinda Braganza’s ‘A Tryst with a Twist’ which has the trappings of science fiction ends with a blushing hint of a moral lesson. In short, here are 15 stories that will gratify lovers of conventional literature.

 They sustain the reader’s interest invariably. Each one is a delight in its own right. None of them relies on any stilted technical scaffolding or linguistic garnishing to add high heels or glittering feathers to the body of the story. The story is narrated forthrightly. Once again, Sharanya Mishra’s ‘Mosaic’ may be a whiff of an exception, but she is offering a mosaic after all.

The similarities notwithstanding, these stories are all unique. We are told in the Foreword that the volume is an outcome of a contest organised by a writer’s collective known as Penmancy. The writers emerge from different walks of life and different parts of the planet and consequently the stories carry much diversity.

 Rianka Saha’s protagonist in the very first story of the anthology is a strong woman caught up in a patriarchal trap, though a royal one, but redeems herself with a bold assertion of her individuality. The story is very contemporary in spite of the archaic setting in a palace. The depth of the protagonist’s character is treated with subtle irony and remarkable sensitivity.

 Physical appearance matters much in today’s world especially for women. Saravjot Hansrao’s ‘The (Mis)fit’ present a 30-year-old woman who is “the proud owner of everything magnanimous” from “physical stature to attitude”. She longs for a fall, “a fall in her weight”, which never happens. But she is lucky to have a dad who counsels her not to drink and drive. And eventually to be fit enough for a place where she really longed to be.

 Shailaja Pai traces a similar theme in ‘Useless’. Her protagonist ejects herself from her workplace which makes her feel terrible and self-hating. The real question is whether you are really useless or you happen to be in the wrong place.

 Srikanth Singha Ray’s story ‘Hope’ shows that you can overcome a deep-rooted fear by choosing to plunge into a risky uncertainty for the sake of another person.

 Koushik Majumder’s ‘Refugee’ is an exception in the collection in a way because it is the only one that treats a socio-political theme: refugees. The author succeeds eminently in portraying the helplessness, longings, and existential agonies of people who have been ejected from their countries by political violence of the sort that is becoming increasingly common in our world.

 Love is the most universal theme in literature and it has infinite shades. Sitharaam Jayakumar offers a prismatic view of the ‘Varied Moods and Seasons’ of love with his romantic tragedy that brings a Hindu-Muslim couple together before destiny hits their idyllic romance too cruelly. But there is also a redemptive aspect to this tragedy.

 ‘Second Chances’ by Kavitha Kandaswamy heals a broken relationship with a new one that emerges rather unexpectedly in a café. Sometimes clichés work, the story shows pretty neatly.

 Love is not all romance. There are family relationships. Chandrika R Krishnan’s ‘House’ takes a classical look at those with the help of a huge joint family that is broken up because of the mother’s insensitivity but is brought together another sensitive soul in the family. Sensitivity is the soul of human relationships, Krishnan teaches us.

 The grandmother in Em Kay’s ‘All for the Blossoms’ is an epitome of family bonds which need not always end with people but can extend to places like one’s ancestral home. Em Kay’s story has a unique evocative power in a world that is fast losing touch with ancestry.

 Like love, guilt and redemption is another universal theme and Kajal Kapur does justice to it with her story ‘Behind the Bars’. Not all criminals are wicked people. Kapur explores the shades of goodness in two convicts with a good measure of subtlety.

 Nilutpal Gohain’s ‘The Funeral’ stands out in this volume because of the dark comedy it oozes. The occasion of a funeral becomes hilariously comic in Gohain’s dexterous approach to the theme of the essential absurdity of human life and death. It is a remarkably brilliant story that serves as much more than a comic relief in this serious anthology.

 ‘The Torchbearer’ by Sreemati Sen Karmakar and Olinda Braganza’s ‘A Tryst with a Twist’ float on the ethereal wings of the supernatural or the paranormal though the latter reads more like sci-fi. Karmakar liberates her ghosts in the conventional way while Braganza leaves us with a question about a rather intimidating possibility.

 The anthology ends with the religious allegory of Rham Dhel. Her ‘Two Pilgrims’ will remind the reader of certain biblical characters and themes which are as relevant today as ever. What is the essence of spirituality? That is what she makes us ponder on.

 

PS. The book was an eminent weekend entertainment and I am grateful to Sitharaam Jayakumar, one of the authors in the anthology, for gifting me a copy. Copies are available at Amazon.