In Arunava Sinha’s captivating compendium of stories, the reader embarks on a journey across the vast tapestry of the Indian subcontinent, where the heartbeat of myriad beings resonates through plains and valleys. This anthology, titled with a nod to the Barnum & Bailey Circus, offers a unique perspective on the Indian identity through “Fifty Masterpieces From The Nineteenth Century To The Present.”
Sinha, wearing his editor’s hat, summons Kalidasa’s roving cloud messenger at times, creating a literary magic carpet to weave together events and stories from the past. The subtitle reveals the anthology’s essence, emphasizing that while all fifty stories are presented in English, the majority are translations from the diverse languages of India. Sinha’s succinct introduction sets the stage, asserting that this collection is not just a representation of Indian multiplicity but a portal to the universes that the “Indian” identity can inhabit.
Amidst households cherishing the memories of storytelling grandmothers, Sinha’s anthology makes a tall claim, backed by the magical transition achieved by an array of superb translators. Magic realism, a trait inherent to Indian storytelling, takes center stage, with the curtain of reality twitching tangentially. The stories delve into the complexities of Indian life, exploring themes of love, betrayal, Partition’s tragic realism, and the haunting aftermath.
Desire, in all its forms, masquerades through the evocations of Indian life, from the strident cawing of a crow in Subramania Bharati’s ‘The Story of a Crow Learning Prosody’ to the lascivious clerk in Chalam’s ‘The Madiga Girl.’ The backdrop of rain, in all its manifestations, adds depth to these narratives, suggesting that the very essence of our lives is a result of the earth’s constant churning.
Sinha wisely refrains from being a tour guide through this literary terrain, allowing readers to discover openings in a crowded field that includes cherished stories like Tagore’s ‘Kabuliwallah’ and Khushwant Singh’s ‘Portrait of a Lady.’ The anthology encompasses the tender engagement between a Pashtun dry-fruits seller and a Bengali girl, the bold brushstrokes of a latter-day Ravana in a forested Karnataka, and the enchanting tenderness of Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s ‘The Blue Light.’
In Sinha’s anthology, for those attuned to the search through the primeval forests of the Indian imagination, there will be the flickers of a blue light shining in the darkness—a unique and captivating exploration of India’s rich literary landscape.
