CITYSCAPES
Talent still in waiting
ADITI DE
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The Red Carpet, Lavanya Sankaran, Review/ Headline Book Publishing, 2005, pRs. 295.
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Tame endings: Lavanya Sankaran.
BANGALORE has morphed beyond recognition into an IT-propelled metropolis within a laidback city that once was. Its new avatar is so dramatic, so alien, so radical, that it has left old-timers breathless. If they hadn't witnessed the transformation for themselves, its cantonment pensioners would have probably put it all down to new-fangled hype. Or possibly fiction.
That's why debutant Lavanya Sankaran has found the perfect location for the eight short stories in The Red Carpet in today's Bangalore. A city of glass and metal-fronted technology parks, where youthful software geniuses deal with global problems with an ιlan puzzling to their parents and grandparents. Its cultural conflicts are in-your-face, pulsing beneath a deceptively placid surface — often unvoiced dissent between madi-practioners and their guitar-strumming, pub-hopping, mega-label jeans-clad offspring, between US-returned academic brilliance and home grown, class-construed attitudes ossified by generations.
Bangalore-based Sankaran, once a US-based investment banker, captures a city in flux with sure fire strokes. Her characters wind their way in and out of varied stories, yet her collection does not masquerade as a wannabe novel. For, as the book's far too visually obvious cover declares, "Every family has a story."
Exploring a city
Whose stories are these? Those of regular guys like Ramu, a "simple saaru-soru rasam-and-rice guy at heart," who's in the thick of a bride hunt, with a little help from his Ma. And pursuers of the U.S. academic seal of excellence like Tara, ill at ease within her parent's upper crust circuit, yet intuitively connecting with her Paati's world. Or US-born Priyamvada, seeking her identity on a visit to Malleswaram, trapped by the city's conflicting signals. Or Murthy and Swamy, as their big idea meets global venture capitalism, graduating from grunge jeans and rubber chappals to corporate gear and stilted small talk.
Sankaran's other stories explore a parallel lode. As a neighbourhood elder meets a yuppie couple, in a happening world he cannot quite fathom. As a number-cruncher comes to terms with her father's suicide in the balance sheet of life. As a convent-groomed schoolgirl settles scores with the conniving ayah at home. As a chauffeur figures out where he fits into the larger picture of his employer's life.
Her language is right on, much like snatches overhead on the streets or in restaurants. Sample this: "Bangalore was a strange city, a potpourri of beggars and billionaires and determinedly laid-back ways. People dressed down here, not just on Fridays, but every day, and more so on occasions — nd gently derided those who didn't. They spoke of their city's attractions to visitors in tones of disparaging surprise. Oh. You like the weather? Yeah, it's okay. I guess. Cool. Blue skies and all. Cosmopolitan people, you think? Yeah, they're a mixed bag. Different, one-tharah types. Not so hard-and-fast. A chill crowd, like. Doing ultra-cool things, chumma, simply, for no reason other than to do it." But despite Sankaran's distinctive though self-conscious voice, at ease within her chosen milieu and its select characters, this collection does not make the grade for the short story buff. While her tone and theme are well-pitched, her literary craftsmanship lets her down.
Could it be because Sankaran's plots dwell on the momentary more than the meaningful, the anecdotal approach rather than narrative tautness? Could it be because her characters largely remain ciphers, like strangers glimpsed on Commercial Street? Or could it be the tame endings to each of her vignette-like stories, a fizzling out of events, rather than a turn that lingers in memory? The Red Carpet brings to the fore a talent still in waiting. A skilled raconteur whose instincts are sharply honed. A keen-eyed observer of a city in transit. A quick fire interpreter of recognisable stereotypes from the Bangalore yellow pages.
But is that enough? Not quite. Where's the consummate mastery of an O. Henry, the raw sensitivity of a Mahasweta Devi, the essential humaneness of a Maupassant, the impressionistic everydayness of a Jhumpa Lahiri, the startling, amoral twists of a Roald Dahl?
A debut collection should not ask readers to make major concessions. Even in the spirit of laid-back Bangalore's eternal fallback line — swalpa adjust maadi. Or in Sankaran's rephrasing: "Please-kindly-adjust." That doesn't work with a tough taskmaster like the short story.
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