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THE WOMEN IN CAGES Vilas Sarang was educated in Mumbai, and at Indiana University. He has taught English Literature in Mumbai, Kuwait and Iraq. Sarang’s stories have appeared in India, UK, USA and Canada in journals such as Encounter, The London Magazine, Triquarterly, The Malahat Review, and in the anthologies New Writing in India (Penguin), The Penguin Book of Horror Stories and New Directions No. 41. His published books in English include a collection of stories, Fair Tree of the Void, and two novels, In the Land of Enki and The Dinosaur Ship.

T h e Wo m e n i n C a g e s Collected Stories

VILAS SARANG

PENGUIN BOOKS USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia New Zealand | India | South Africa | China Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com Published by Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd 4th Floor, Capital Tower 1, MG Road, Gurugram 122 002, Haryana, India

First published by Penguin Books India 2006 Copyright © Vilas Sarang 2006 All rights reserved 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of an author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. ISBN 9780143061847 Typeset in Sabon by Mantra Virtual Services, New Delhi

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CONTENTS vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PREFACE

ix

I. The City by the Sea 3

AN EVENING AT THE BEACH

10

AN AFTERNOON AMONG THE ROCKS MUSK DEER

22 39

AN EXCURSION

47

ON THE STONE STEPS A REVOLT OF THE GODS

56

II. Libido Zones THE MISSING LINK THE WOMEN IN CAGES

71 79

THE ODOUR OF IMMORTALITY OM PHALLUS

89

99

AN INTERVIEW WITH M. CHAKKO B A R R E L A N D B O M B I L: A L O V E S T O R Y

112 123

III.

Small Creatures FLIES

135 141

SPIDER IN THE CLOCK RABBIT

148 155

THE END OF HISTORY

169

TESTIMONY OF AN INDIAN VULTURE

IV. The Shadow of the Gulag RETURN

177

KALLURI’S ESCAPADE THE TERRORIST

190

201

A TALE OF TWO GENERALS TREE OF DEATH

215

227

V. Visions of Nirvana THE PHONEMATE

243

LETTERS FROM NIKHIL

250

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MANU THE DEPARTURE

261

268

NOTES OF A WORKING WRITER

277

acknowledgements Many of the stories in this volume were initially translated from the Marathi by the author. Breon Mitchell also worked on the translations. (See ‘The Making of the Text’ on page 277.) The stories in the present volume have appeared in the following journals and anthologies: Encounter : ‘Musk Deer’ ‘Return’ ‘The Terrorist’ London Magazine : ‘Flies’ ‘An Interview with M. Chakko’ The Malahat Review : ‘An Evening at the Beach’ ‘On the Stone Steps’ ‘Kalluri’s Escapade’ New Orleans Review : ‘A Revolt of the Gods’ ‘Tree of Death’ ‘The Departure’ Tri-Quarterly : ‘Letter from Nikhil’ Mundus Artium : ‘Spider in the Clock’ Prism International : ‘An Excursion’ The Red Rock Review : ‘An Afternoon Among the Rocks’ Debonair : ‘Om Phallus’ ‘The Phonemate’ Indian Horizons : ‘Testimony of an Indian Vulture’ New Quest : ‘The Life and Death of Manu’

New Writing in India (Penguin, 1974) New Directions; No. 41 (1990) Man’s World Post-Post Review

: ‘Rabbit’ : ‘The End of History’ : ‘The Women in Cages’ : ‘A Tale of Two Generals’

Some of the stories were reprinted in The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (UK, 1984), Short Story International (1983), Keynote and Goa Today. A number of the stories have been translated in French, by Alain Nadaud, under the title Le Terroriste el Autre Recits (Denoel, 1989). Individual stories have appeared in Le Monde, 40 Nouvelles du Monde (1986), L’Infini, Nouvelles Nouvelles, Quai Voltaire, and in the German magazines Der Monat and Meine Welt. The translation of the Sanskrit verses in ‘Tree of Death’ is by Daniel Ingatts.

viii

Acknowledgements

preface A collection of my stories under the title Fair Tree of the Void was published by Penguin Books India in 1990. It is now out of print. The present collection includes the substance of the earlier one; in addition, six of the stories in the present collection are previously uncollected. I have made some alterations in most of the stories included in Fair Tree of the Void. The stories have been regrouped, with a heading for each section, which, I hope will make the collection more reader-friendly. The section headings loosely point to the subject of the stories, and are not taken as ‘defining’ something. Needless to say, the stories—materializing several years apart in some cases—were not written to a plan. The grouping is only an afterthought. Perhaps a brief explanatory note regarding Section IV (The Shadow of the Gulag) is in order. The three stories at the head of this section were written as the result (along with my novel, In the Land of Enki) of my five-year stay in Iraq. In none of the stories is Iraq mentioned, though ‘The Terrorist’ is vaguely set in Basra, without mentioning town or country. During the time I was in Iraq, the Emergency of 1975 ran its course in India. On my annual vacation to India, I took in the developments. All stories in this section refract my Iraqi experience as well as that of the Emergency, and also my growing awareness of the realities of what has been called the Third World. As a practising writer of fiction for many years, I have tried to formulate my views on the state and status of the art of fiction. The Elephant and the Maruti

{ix}

Some notes pertaining to the issue are appended to the present volume, which may be of interest to those who are interested in literature per se. February 2006

x

Vilas Sarang

Preface

. . . his power is the will to create and he is impelled by the powers of the things to be created. —From the Vishnu Purana

The Elephant and the Maruti

{xi}

I The City by the Sea

love in mumbai I

an evening at the beach 1

B

ajrang arrived at the beach with Shalini. Winter in Bombay is seldom very severe, but it happend to be rather cold this year. A chill wind blew in from the Arabian Sea. Bajrang and Shalini walked along the beach, lifting heavy legs in the sand. Since it wasn’t a Sunday the beach wasn’t crowded. The sun had just set, and the sky was still bright. They made a round of the small strip of beach. On this beach near Shivaji Park there is a huge gutter pipe which pours out the filth of Bombay into the sea. The gutter’s giant mouth has a small dome-shaped structure of concrete to let out gases. Bajrang told Shalini how a man, obviously a visitor from some small town, had once approached him and asked solemnly: ‘To which god was this temple built?’ Shalini laughed, and Bajrang put his arm around her shoulder. Bajrang started looking about for a place to sit near the walls by the beach. It wasn’t dark yet, but later the walls would become crowded with couples and it would not be easy to find a secluded spot. Bajrang wanted to settle down in a good place while there was still time. Few people chose to sit beside the cemetery wall, so Bajrang selected a spot there. Bajrang liked to sit by this wall partly because it reminded him of a passage by Albert Camus, in which he spoke of Algerian boys and girls having assignations under the cemetery walls. It was thrilling to know that Bombay, together with a distant city like Algiers, contributed towards love’s triumph over death. Bajrang saw a vision of cemeteries all over

Cover photograph by Amit Khullar Cover design by Bena Sareen

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