S&S India, 440 pages, Rs 599

 

‘The View from Here’ is an eclectic bouquet of a variety of short stories and poems, in many Indian languages and in English translations, offering so many snapshots of India today. The works here were compiled from an online journal, ‘Guftagu’, which was launched in October 2015 and ceased publication in 2022. Its aim was, in the words of co-editor Githa Hariharan, “to feature counter-cultural expressions in poetry, prose and images; to reveal and critique various forms of aggression against a diverse culture; and to articulate creative resistance against the degeneration of democratic values and institutions”.  

 

During the seven years, ‘Guftagu’ resolutely asserted India's diversity against the attempt to force fit the country into a single mould. Selected from its twenty-two published issues, the works in ‘The View from Here’ bear powerful witness to the many Indias, past and present. Twenty stunning stories and more than fifty memorable poems are, together, unflinching in their insistence on diversity, dissent and, most of all, equality. 

 

The stories include ‘The Holy Cow’ by Madhavikutty (Kamala Das), translated from the Malayalam by co-editor K. Satchidanandan, ‘The Visiting Card’ by Dalpat Chauhan, translated from the Gujarati by Hemang Ashwinkumar, ‘The Verdict’ by Bama, translated from the Tamil by Malini Seshadri, ‘I Am a Hindu’ by Asghar Wajahat, translated from the Hindu by Alok Bhalla, and more. The authors include Keki Daruawala, Jayant Kaikini, M. Mukundan, Uday Prakash, N.S. Madhavan, Janice Pariat, Zai Whitaker, Vaasanthi and Ambai, among others.

 

In the second section, ‘Survival Lyrics’, we have poems by Labhshankar Thakar, Mangalesh Dabral, Perumal Murugan, Adil Jassawala, Pash (Avtar Singh Sandhu), Arundhati Subramaniam, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, Kanji Patel, Meena Kandasamy and others.

 

Hariharan, in her Introduction, quotes Kannada scholar and critic D. R. Nagaraj who wrote, “To read fiction is to know the fate of a society through its metaphors. But quite often literature consciously takes upon itself the responsibility of exploring the state and fate of this society…” She adds, “This is precisely what the stories in this collection do: they may speak of past and present, but really it is the future—that we fear and dream of and hope for—that we want to speak and hear about. And these stories we share, most through the gift of translation, live through their metaphors; the metaphors the writers and translators hold in their hands like blessings—or timely curses…’

 

In his Introduction, Satchidanandan raises the question, ‘Can poetry be political?’. His answer: “The poems in this anthology tell us without doubt or apprehension: ‘Yes, poetically political if not politically political.’ And as we finish reading these poems, we realize that politics and poetry, in their real spirit, are two ways of telling the truth, and have been engaged—and continue to engage—in an endless conversation.”

 

Apart from the gesture of social responsibility, the collection here stands on its own for its purely literary merit – even if it is a contested notion.