THE GUILTY AND OTHER STORIES By Vaasanthi Indialog Publications Price: Rs 195 Pages: 196

For all those who believe that contemporary Tamil writings could never break free from traditions, Vaasanthi's collection, The Guilty and Other Stories, comes as a surprise. It has flaws but its merits are overriding. The stories are set in as diverse milieus as the Tamil villages of Brahminic fantasies and the American cities of loneliness.

"The Guilty" eats into you. Though past 25, Uma does not menstruate. The clogged menstruation drives her to desperation, to the point that she pleads to her friend Mira: "Do something: heat an iron rod and rupture the thing for me." Uma's inner chaos is not just a hormonal putsch. Her birth was the result of her father's "fierce onslaught" on her mother at night. A remote village inhabited by Brahmins and ghosts alike. The father Balasubramaniam teaches Vedic scriptures and rites in the local patasalai. Mother Parvati, who is as seductive as Lord Shiva's Parvati herself, cheats on her husband. Old, buxom Athai hardly tasted the flavours of conjugal life before she became a widow at the age of 15.

The village is steeped in superstitions and its inhabitants spend their time in rituals and in guarding their souls from pollution. Sex is a contagious metaphor of violence. It spares no one. When in the pre-dawn light, the Vedic teacher sees his daughter Uma returning from her bath in drenched clothes, she resembles her mother, and he feels "an aching knot in his groin". After racing through the story with bated breath, you reach the catharsis-"She looked behind her shoulder. A large patch of blood stained her sari. In the sunlight, it seemed to spread." With the onset of delayed menarche, is Uma liberated? Has women's emancipation finally arrived?

Vaasanthi

What about the other stories? Anu ("What She Said") is Uma in a reduced scale. Topical themes like solitude of old age are touched upon ("Prison"). However interesting these stories may be, having read "The Guilty", you don't feel like going through more stories, even Vaasanthi's own tales.

South Indian story writers can hardly get away from Kalki's "Once upon a time there lived" kind of narrative. This book is no exception. And too much of a tear-jerker, what with even the Vedic teacher shedding copious tears at the slightest provocation.

All said, this book is the lonely voice of a writer of dissent from the South. A good read.

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