Gopal reviews Amita Ray’s book of short stories, Trail of Love & Longing. An exclusive for Different Truths.

Short stories can also be a welcome diversion from the barrage of images we’re often submitted to the long narratives. The writers feel sometimes it’s worth showing less and hiding more and that is the essence of the short story.

In her fascinating collection of short stories titled, The Trail of Love & Longings, Amita Ray explores the surroundings and builds a riveting image of the society and brings the shades and tones of the characters in her stories with skill and precision. The present collection includes several of these snapshot stories in which less is intended as more than enough.

She has selected stories that cover a wide trajectory, and she describes all the attendant emotions – love, desire, dream, grief, anger, guilt, even something approaching unreal – with clarity and feeling. Compassion is not thin here but it is substantial in many layers of the stories.

Professor Bashabi Fraser, the eminent writer and academician, has rightly said, in her Foreword, ‘Amita Ray is a rollicking storyteller as her collection of short stories, Trail of Love and Longing proves.’ and then adds, ‘She holds reader attention from her opening lines, her plots are cannily structured to reveal the past which is relevant to the present and she manages to clinch the narrative with the little twist in the tale that leaves the reader aesthetically satisfied but not unduly shocked. Her minimalism is her greatest weapon.’

The author has exhibited both wisdom and receptivity in her stories with a sense of awe and anxiety. Through the power of observation, Amita Ray takes hold of the essence of the stories. The fifteen stories in this collection are appealing in their richness and variety, in the keenness of their insights and the clarity of even their complex emotional undoing and above all in their literary forms. It is an account of the emotionally charged life that gets decanted in her work and has the appearance of effortlessness.

Amita Ray is a wonderful narrator. She is introducing characters and showing them love or in conflict.  In this gracefully written and passionate book, the writer reveals herself to be a good raconteur of involvement and offers at times a sharply perceptive and thoughtfully precise portrayal of life’s twists and turns, distinctiveness and self-realisation, complex roots and culture. In these stories, one isn’t invited to make individual connections with any of the characters, just to be splendidly enriched.

Her lucid narrative leaps narrow boundaries and speaks straight to the heart. Every page shines with simplicity, sometimes acerbic, sometimes wise, and always growing naturally out of the situations it illuminates as evident in the story ‘A Monsoon Dream’. The love, dream and friendship, between Rupa, Shamu Utpal and her lover Mala addresses the hopes and deceptions of life with startling openness and the love and falsehood are triggered by a numbing distraction. One of the more critical aspects of this story is that it maintains its opacities and there is unfulfilled love somewhere in the relations along with other awful, murkier things.

As Rupa gazed at Utpal melting away in the diverging crowd she bitterly contemplated on why his dreams had turned out to be empty nothings. An incessant stream of office-goers, daily wage earners poured out of the station. Suddenly she confronted an epiphanic moment realising that dreams could be cherished if they were chased like monsoon clouds bringing the rain. (A Monsoon Dream)

Ray excavates the flaws and examines the truth to heal wounds in ‘Promita’s Lover’ and to reward thereafter. The settings feel fresh because the author refuses to drift from reality and the characters are vivid in love, betrayal and humanity. ‘Inheritance’ records a world where love, compassion and kindness are not a rarity. ‘Amma’ is a household help but her gift (earrings) of love to ‘Didimoni’s darling’ and one can feel the delight she takes in being unbound by her affection and warmth.

For readers looking for a more interesting story with a twist at the end, ‘All for a Gift’ is most suitable and it’s a captivating investigation of life. Aruna and Sudeep’s uneventful life has taken a delicate turn only because of a gift. The author depicts human fallibility and the beautiful ending indicates the intricacies of the human mind.

‘Aruna marvelled at Sudip’s beautiful gesture. The incident gave her an insight into her husband’s mind. Togetherness meant discovering each other in myriad ways. Sudip who had initially wanted to discard the art object as ‘trash’ took the trouble to fetch it for her. This indeed was his appreciation of the beautiful subtleties of life.’ (All for a Gift)

The writer expertly deploys some of supernatural elements in ‘The Grey Lady’ and is unfailingly deft in her handling of trauma and deceit. The three stories Taming of the Cat, A Chance Encounter, Namesake centre on the beliefs and variances in life laced with humour and warmth, faith and humanity. Sometimes lives are shaped by ordinary neglect: of spouses, of children and of selves. Her stories are delicate, unfixed and evanescent and those qualities also render it an essential place of the narratives and a way to attain a life without boundaries.

Mr. and Mrs. Chatterjee, is all about the power of life sketches, their lightness, and complexities as well. Families dissolve through wandering desire and inner connection. Relations between husband and wife become insensitive and fail to cohere at times but love and light always shine at the end.

In the intensely moving story, ‘The Longing’, the mother and daughter relationship being at once compulsive and embryonic, and the close bondage is described in riveting details. The dead as if, are not gone and the relationship is not over. After her mother’s death Sangeeta was shattered but the death of a loved one resisted meaning and it played havoc in Sangeeta’s mind. The writer is especially good at capturing its longings and here actually Sangeeta’s mother is the past, present and future and the ending is sweet as Sangeeta is able to visit mother’s childhood place in Bangladesh which her mother always talked about glowingly to Sangeeta and her sister.

‘She suddenly visualised the aquarium of her childhood days; the angelfish in it gasping almost choked within the confines, trying to reach out to a nebulous haze.’

 Sangeeta whispered under her breath, “So be it Ma….as you wish!” (The Longing)

Like so many of her protagonists, the writer speaks directly to the reader, telling us what’s going on, sometimes reminding us of things we might have missed. In ‘Gitanjali, the author, conjures a natural chemistry between Sachindranath and her granddaughter Ishani and the subsequent events keeps the dramatic tension till the end.

‘Excellent! Said Sachindranath, “Well, this was a gift to your grandmother Sailable from me on her birthday. As long as I live, this book will be with me. After my death you will be the owner of this book. Read this book written by Rabindranath Tagore when you grow up.!’(Gitanjali)

The book ‘Gitanjali’ echoes through the story and Ishani could get the book, fuelled by circumstance, after her Dadu’s death because of her differently abled cousin Chhottu. He kept aside the book for her ‘Ishu di’as she was away at Paris when her grandfather died. Between despair and love, the author unravels observed knots within the daily turn of life.

Amita Ray’s ‘Trail of Love & Longings’ is arresting, perceptive, playful and of meaning and resolution. It is a book to dip into rather than absorb in one sitting. Here is a writer who manages both, threading places and emotions alike as if through her own experience of them and addresses the whims and fancies of life with fierceness and delicacy. She pivots from one kind of story to another with profound effect and some of them end up living in the mind of the readers.

The cover page is striking. This immensely readable book is a must for every bookshelf.

Visual sourced by the reviewer