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Mumbai Stories
by Jayant Kaikini
Book Reviewed by:For readers of Jhumpa Lahiri and Rohinton Mistry, as well as Lorrie Moore and George Saunders, here are stories on the pathos and comedy of small-town migrants struggling to build a life in the big city, with the dream world of Bollywood never far away.
Jayant Kaikini's gaze takes in the people in the corners of Mumbai―a bus driver who, denied vacation time, steals the bus to travel home; a slum dweller who catches cats and sells them for pharmaceutical testing; a father at his wit's end who takes his mischievous son to a reform institution.
In this metropolis, those who seek find epiphanies in dark movie theaters, the jostle of local trains, and even in roadside keychains and lost thermos flasks. Here, in the shade of an unfinished overpass, a factory-worker and her boyfriend browse wedding invitations bearing wealthy couples' affectations―"no presents please"―and look once more at what they own.
Translated from the Kannada by Tejaswini Niranjana, these resonant stories, recently awarded the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, take us to photo framers, flower markets, and Irani cafes, revealing a city trading in fantasies while its strivers, eating once a day and sleeping ten to a room, hold secret ambitions close.
With an empathetic eye and evocative language trained on the ubiquitous qualities of the human experience, Kaikini guides readers to a sense of community and connection with his characters. Beyond its attention to class and gender dynamics, one of the most striking features of the collection is the author's use of seemingly recurring characters. On a first read, these stories are engaging, yet entirely discrete slices of life. However, Kaikini draws the collection together, heightening the sense of connection and community with the reemergence of approximate characters across stories...continued
Full Review
(797 words)
(Reviewed by Debbie Morrison).
Jayant Kaikini's short story collection, No Presents Please, does some of its best work exploring Mumbai's marginalized communities, including the prominently featured community of the city's street children, many of whom roam the streets alone, neglected, undernourished and with few prospects for the future. Stories like "A Spare Pair of Legs" and "City Without Mirrors" address this pressing social issue.
In countries like India and cities like New Delhi and Mumbai in particular, this is a problem of enormous proportions. According to statistics by Homeless World Cup, India has approximately 1.8 million homeless people with the majority residing in major cities like Mumbai. These homeless rates can be attributed to exploding populations...
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A startlingly imaginative exploration of the African diaspora in Europe, by one of our most acclaimed international writers.
Akil Kumarasamy, author of Half Gods
Jayant Kaikini's stories are like portals opening from the routines of our lives into the unusual and mysterious, where everything contains unseen possibilities. For the outsiders in these stories, even the act of dreaming feels rebellious. A wonderful, and wonderfully translated, collection of stories.
