Pointless and TrivialAnita Desai BEYOND LOVE AND OTHER STORIES By Shiv K. Kumar Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1980, pp. 127, Rs. 45.00 VOLUME V NUMBER 2 September/October 1980 Shiv K. Kumar made his name in the Indian literary world as a
poet. He is also a highly successful member of academe as can be seen from the
impressive string of appointments listed in the biographical note on the back
jacket of his collection of short stories. From a professor with such a
distinguished career and a poet who has won respect for his clear and distinct
voice, one expects to find a certain literary standards upheld even when he
turns his hand to prose and to fiction. On reading these nineteen brief
stories, however, one is not merely disappointed but appalled at the plummeting
of all literary standards.
In story after story Professor Kumar betrays his intention to
titillate rather than stimulate or engage his readers. They deal with sex and marital relationships in a way
that is not explicit so much as bedizened with tinsel and sequins borrowed from
the Bombay cinema. Their titles give them away by their vulgarity and coy
plagiarism: One, entitled 'To Nun, With Love' (connotations of To Sir with
Love? But in that case Professor Kumar has missed the point of both the title
and the film altogether) tells of a Sister Jasmina receiving love letters and ‘vermilion
roses’ from the father of one of her pupils who has heard her play 'My Darling
Clementine' on the school piano: 'yet the story is neither hilarious nor
pathetic but merely pointless and trivial. The flirtatiously titled 'Two Buds
And a Stem' describes a menage a trois each member of which is so nasty
that one can hardly sympathize with their situation. 'Eclipse at Noon' is the
unforgivably crass title of a story dealing with a bridegroom's humiliating
experience of impotence on his honeymoon. The Secretary is of course no more
than a sex object ogled by her crude employer. In those stories in which
foreign women figure, they are invariably portrayed as depraved, lascivious
and immoral. When drama is attempted as in a story of the rape of East Bengali
women by Pakistani soldiers, the jejune handling of the theme fails utterly to
convince or to move. None of the stories has any more depth, maturity or
complexity than the average Bombay cinema entertainment.
What passes understanding is how a poet who
must surely be hypersensitive to the finer nuances of language and trained to
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