‘100 Indian Stories’ is a celebration of the short story

Then a book of this sort arrives, it is time to celebrate our diversity, to appreciate our writers, to ponder over the shared and unshared histories of our languages, and to reflect on how translation helps us in our always unfinished journey to imagine, to envision our nation in all this complexity. And the editor, AJ Thomas, is best qualified for taking us on this journey, having served as editor of Indian Literature, the Sahitya Akademi journal, for nearly two decades.

Fortunately, the title of this book eschews terms like ‘best’ or ‘greatest’, claiming only that they are a hundred Indian stories and that they are remarkable. As the editor says in his Preface, this collection is ‘a wide selection of stories’ that he admires. The volume doesn’t claim to include all great short stories written in India, nor does it aim to showcase stories from every language recognised by the Indian Constitution or the Sahitya Akademi (the latter recognising 24, two more than the former).

Significantly, the book includes two stories from a language that isn’t in either of the two lists — Portuguese! The counter-intuitive inclusion of Portuguese makes so much sense on further reflection and begs us to think about the accidents of history, and what language choices mean in postcolonial India — Laxmanrao Sardessai is a well-known writer in Marathi, who also wrote in Konkani. Famously, he wrote poetry in Portuguese only after Goa won its freedom from Portugal. And the other writer in Portuguese included in this volume is Vimala Devi, a pseudonym assumed by Teresa da Piedade de Baptista Almeida, who was born in Portuguese Goa but has settled down in Europe, living for a long time in Portugal. In her case, what is of interest is the pseudonym, which displays her position vis a vis mainstream Portuguese writers. With Vimala Rani, you get to a debate on who qualifies to be called an Indian writer. Sahitya Akademi goes by citizenship for its awards. You may beg to differ. But, whether you include only first-generation migrants from India, or if you include all writers of Indian origin, you will have to take into account writers who write in Indian languages (those who write in English make the cut very often). And one does wonder whether no Indian has written remarkable stories in French.

The critic in me started checking which language was represented by the most stories and which the least. It was interesting to note that AJ Thomas has included 22 stories from English (nearly a quarter of the book!), with Hindi (10) and Bengali (9) coming a distant second and third. Malayalam is represented by 7, Telugu by 6, Tamil by 5, and Kannada by 4. The least represented languages are Gujarati (2), Konkani (2), and Rajasthani (1). Needless to say, many languages don’t find any representation here though the region might find place because of its writers in English. Is this because of the lack of translations or is it because many of us in our land are invisible to others? And is English the preferred medium for more and more writers in this century? Or are more remarkable stories written only in English now rather than in other Indian languages (12 out of the last 15 stories are written originally in English)?

All this is not to take away from the joy of holding and reading this book. As a reader, you will first look to see if your favourite stories/writers have been included. Each one will have a different view. I spotted many of my favourite writers and translators. The book is organised chronologically based on the birth year of the writer, since (as Thomas says) it is difficult in many cases to ascertain when the stories were actually first published. As you glance down the ‘Contents’, you will see many familiar names till you hit the latest century! It is such a pleasure to read your favourites even if in new translations. For instance, I was glad to read a new translation of Tagore’s ‘The Kabuliwallah’ (by Arunava Sinha).

The book takes you through many phases of literary history from the 19th to the 21st century, as Thomas points out. The stories become more and more representative of our demography as time goes on and various centres lose their strangleholds on cultural production and circulation.

This is a book to savour, to read at leisure, to dip into now and then as you read, re-read, and re-discover your favourite short stories and discover new ones. It is a massive work, and one that will encourage readers to read more Indian fiction, more translations. I cannot but end with the words of Ruskin Bond, who has written the Foreword: ‘Honour the writers. Salute the translators! Celebrate the short story.’

— The writer is a former professor of English