The play of language with a distinct literary flourish makes any fiction come alive. And Renée Ranchan’s To Each With love: A Satiric Rendition is a promising debut spanning a variant strata of society with the class hierarchy well in place.
This collection of short stories renders a fascinating study of the relational script of people with a tongue-in-cheek emotive feel that makes us look at the foibles and follies of human nature with a touch of empathy than mere deprecation. A true-to-bone depiction of diverse characters in a varied social milieu is almost a psychic exercise that attempts to delve deep into the minds of these protagonists, a replica of our inner selves.
The class contrast that graphically displays the mental tension and turmoil makes for a gripping narrative. Subterfuge, subversion, chicanery are dealt with engaging humour and comic subtlety, be it the desperate urge of a matriarch of a family for a grandson, the manoeuvres of domestic aides, the snobbish overtures of a lady-of-the-Manor, or the vanity of an octogenarian who still cherishes her Kashmiri complexion — each emotion is depicted flawlessly on a vibrant literary canvas with ample panache and effortless sweep.
The book has been endorsed by renowned poet-writer Reginald Massey, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, london, who states in the Foreword: “Ranchan’s stories have a strange charisma about them, and that is what seduced me to read them with pleasure and immense interest... Do read this amazing collection of stories; some quite short and some quite long. I wholly recommend all of them.”
Satire underscores the thematic plot of each story and makes you titter and chortle at ironic situations exhibiting human nature at its ultimate perfection.
There is vivid description of a rustic lad, “Chander belonged to a village balanced on a concrete mass of dust. The pounding sun fell feeble…the hillock of dust, sometimes grey, sometimes burnt teak, remained resolute. Un-melting. Growing only in like-minded cohesion. Unlit, un-watered and with footprints of dust trails. These non-roads deemed as Roads.”
Or how a sophisticated Andrea views her maid Pinky, “The girl made an uneven movement with her thin lips that was supposed to pass off as a smile, showing much to Andrea’s surprise mouse-like teeth, all of which looked like worn out canines, and bore an anxious, crackly effect to them…the small gaps seeming to have made space for them to crumble comfortably...
Another critic has drawn an analogy of Ranchan’s stories with the early works of Alice Munro, the Nobel laureate commended for “exploring human complexities in an uncomplicated prose style”. Ranchan’s collection of short stories is indeed a remarkable attempt at portraying the contemporary India — be it the feudal class, the lower or upper middle class, or for that matter the snobbish elite.
The experiential reality of the varied social milieu grips you, as whiffs of Ranchan’s memories of everyday life find a ‘tangible form’. The author’s insightful grasp of the human psyche amid distraught situations, with an inimitable light-heartedness is truly engaging.