Death, but with a light touch

In this collection of short stories, Gokhale writes about grief with a sensitivity that never degenerates into sentimentality, says Chintan Girish Modi

Death is the reigning theme of Namita Gokhale’s new short story collection titled Life on Mars. In the 16 stories presented here, the reader encounters multiple reminders of this humbling reality that spares no one; be it a princess or a liftman, a prime minister or a hairstylist, a khabari with the Intelligence Bureau or a fly drowning in coffee.

In this book, people die of a heart attack, in a plane crash, as a result of war, by suicide, and from inexplicable causes. Fortunately, the author treats the heavy subject of mortality with a light hand, creating moments of laughter and respite. This is a difficult thing to do; it requires a generous measure of confidence in one’s writing abilities and a profound grasp of life itself.

The Habit of Love, which is one of the most poignant stories in this anthology, features a grieving narrator whose husband’s death leaves her feeling “sick, nauseous, raw and corroded”. She keeps up the pretence of composure, especially for her young daughters’ sake and takes them to Nepal on a holiday. While the other passengers on the flight are busy taking photographs of snow-clad mountain peaks, the narrator’s eyes “hurt from the glow and the burden of unshed tears”. She adds, “…the white spread of the Himalayan ranges seemed to reflect the cold expanse of pain within me”. Gokhale’s skill as a writer lies in making the reader feel the emotion with a few words instead of overwhelming the page with excess.

Amidst this gloomy picture, she manages to bring a ray of sunshine through a brief conversation between the narrator and one of her daughters. “Does a mountain know its name, Mama?” she asks, following it up with “Mama, how does a mountain know it is a mountain?” The narrator recalls that her husband would have found the questions original; she, however, finds them exasperating. Her true feelings are masked with a patient smile.

Gokhale writes about grief with a sensitivity that never degenerates into sentimentality. The stories titled, The Day Princess Diana Died and The Day Chacha Nehru Died deserve a special mention. They explore what collective grief looks and feels like when much-loved public figures meet their end. They make the reader reflect on their projections and fantasies that compound the experience of loss. “The liftman in our building had died, but that didn’t seem to bother anybody. And when I suggested we take out a collection for his family, the idea was met with frosty silence,” says a woman who is shamed by her colleagues for being heartless because she is the only person in the office who is not mourning for the princess.

There is no dearth of sassy and entertaining characters in this book. In another story titled GIGALIBB, which is short for “God is Great and Love is Bloody Blind”, the narrator speaks of her aunt Bindu, who looked like an “inexplicable mixture of the actress Geeta Dutt and the venerable vamp Helen”.

In the prime of her youth, Bindu used to look up at the sky, let out a sighing sound, and make her sari pallav drop — a trick that, according to her niece, “drove men mad”. Her charm withers away with age and illness, and one day her lifeless body is found in a lake. If there is one thing to take away from this book, it is impermanence.

Her characters find unique ways of dealing with their grief so that it does not consume them. In the story Whatever is Found in the World, a woman named Cutie Tripathi finds “rigour and discipline” in translating the Mahabharata while the whole of India is under lockdown. She confides in the reader that Sanskrit grammar has been her most dependable friend through all the confusion, hurts and betrayals that life has thrown at her. She says, “I find shelter and the coherence and precision of Sanskrit grammar. Sanskrit has eight cases — nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive and locative.”

Such reflections on language, literature and the creative process are scattered across the book. They do not seem forced or intrusive. Gokhale weaves them seamlessly into her stories, which makes them a pleasure to read.