No Presents Please

May 11, 2020
In Kaikini’s tender collection, strangers encounter one another with indelible consequences in Mumbai, a city “like a mother watching wakefully over all the children asleep on her lap.” Kaikini’s talent lies in his ability to simultaneously capture the humdrum routine of his characters’ lives and plumb the depths of their desires. The opening story, “Interval,” follows two strangers seduced by their love of movies, who dream of running away together in search of their happy ending. As their plans take shape, each realizes the fantasy of their adventure would be “filled with a pleasure that the actual meeting did not have,” and in the end, the fantasy itself is enough to push them toward brave, new lives on their own. Other standouts include “Inside the Inner Room,” in which a wife helps her husband’s girlfriend through an operation and recovery, and “Toofan Mail,” where an uninsured stuntman explains why he named himself after a train. In “Crescent Moon,” a disgruntled bus driver steals a double-decker bus and drives it to his village for the annual Ganesh festival. The story brilliantly captures the “battle for dignity” faced by many of Kaikini’s characters. These stories poignantly express the characters’ feelings of triumph amid the limitations of circumstance.

Starred review from May 15, 2020
A sampler of work by a veteran Indian writer with a talent for exposing the irony and humor in everyday lives. All of these stories, culled from Kaikini's work between 1986 and 2006, are set in Mumbai, but the breadth of their subject matter speaks both to the diversity of the metropolis and his reach as a writer. He can be intimate, as with the young man in "Interval" planning to run away with his girlfriend or the man in "Partner" thrust into caring for his suddenly ill roommate. He has a fine grasp of twists and comedy: The picture framer in "Unframed" is torn over whether he should lend abandoned family portraits ("like prisoners no one comes to visit") to a theater that wants them as props while the steed in "Dagadu Parab's Wedding Horse" has gone loose, calamitously unraveling the relationship between two brothers and the man who loaned the animal. And he can tell sweeping stories within tight confines: In "Water," two men at personal crossroads spend the night together in a taxi when a massive storm drenches the city, and the young woman in "Mogri's World" gets a crash course in city life while working at a restaurant. Kaikini's heroes are usually stymied in their efforts to improve their stations. Still, the mood he conjures is often on the optimistic side of ambiguity, exemplified by the poor couple in the closing title story that strives to select the best invitations for their wedding. Niranjana's translation from the Kannada thoughtfully weaves native phrases with their translations, removing the need for a glossary and immersing readers in Kaikini's world. His style and themes will have a familiar ring for Western audiences; there are echoes of Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders. But his vision of a bustling city, his sense of its drama and magical moments, is his own. A welcome introduction of a commanding writer to a wider audience.

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June 1, 2020
Seemingly quotidian lives centered in Mumbai fill Kaikini's second translated collection, the first book in translation to win the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. These 16 stories, written from 1986 to 2006, were selected and translated by the award-winning Niranjana, who in her enhancing translator's note writes of Kaikini's gentle narrative trick of turning the extremely ?ordinary' person or situation into something surreal. Standouts include Inside the Inner Room, which is about a man, his wife, his lover, and their unexpected re-pairings; Dagadu Parab's Wedding Horse, in which a bridegroom on a rented horse gets dragged (rescued?) away to a whole different life; Toofan Mail, about a film stunt artist recalling childhood glimpses of her father throwing a package to her mother from a moving train before disappearing; and Tick Tock Friend, in which a hospital runs a television studio in its basement. Most affecting are A Pair of Spare Legs, which portrays an incorrigible six-year-old, and the title story about young lovers in the midst of wedding plans. Intriguing, albeit somewhat uneven multiculti fare for the internationally inclined.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)