THE FUSS ABOUT QUEEN’S AND OTHER STORIES
Author: Darius Cooper
Publisher: Om, Rs 225
This is an eclectic collection of 11 short stories narrated in a way that invokes different senses of time and place, and are about ordinary people who can narrate extraordinary tales, writes MIHIR VATSA
Darius Cooper’s The Fuss about Queens and Other Stories is an eclectic collection of 11 short stories that are narrated in a way capable of making the reader feel nostalgic about certain segments of the past. The stories appear to be based in Mumbai and the surrounding areas, and some of them were first published in 1980s and 1990s. Therefore, when read together in 2014, they emanate a concern for situations which one might recognise but no longer associate with.
The characters are nicely sketched; the plots are interesting but, with some stories, sparse. The first few stories move quickly, flirt with the idea of mixing symbolism with storytelling, and are told in good humour and sympathy. But they are mostly left unrealised. Till one reads the story titled Mouthwash.
It is one of the longer stories in the book where Cooper displays his strengths. Mouthwash has good depth, quirky characters, and a person’s struggle with odour as its premise. It is about Vinda who is convinced that his breath smells bad and it clearly frustrates him, leaving him with confidence issues. Old Padamsee lives in the same building and is sympathetic towards him. However, even if Vinda’s struggle surfaces in an interesting way towards the end when he takes his girlfriend, Anaita, out to the beach, the stories following Mouthwash are still better harvested of their plots.
Cooper’s voice is refreshing. It’s candid, direct, friendly, sympathetic, and also opinionated. His stories arouse interest, and are told by lively narrators. In dialogues, he includes vernacular words liberally for better stress. The themes these stories deal with are varied, ranging from nationalism to extramarital affairs. Cooper’s characters come from different strata of society, and with themselves, they bring a panorama of the cultures they are rooted in. There is a dancing girl in a dilemma over the future of her little daughter, and there’s a young student who is unaffected by all the fuss surrounding the arrival of the queen.
What very prominently marks this collection is the perforation of the Parsi lifestyle and culture through the written word. Balanced, but not limiting the process, Cooper puts forward some subtler aspects of human behaviour and relationships within the religious and social institutions that guard them in a community. A community in the country about which one knows very less. The introduction in the beginning puts forward Cooper’s views bluntly and without sugar-coating. The stories represent, and in doing so, they expose and defend their cultural milieus whenever necessary, without being apologetic. Cooper’s characters are the regular, middle-class Indian men and women from different time-frames. A strong sense of community binds them together. They are ordinary people with ordinary routines, but are capable of telling entertaining stories.
“It was amazing how effortlessly Jyoti had moved into the 21st century. She was already talking its language, thinking its thoughts, and feeling its feelings,” muses the omniscient narrator in the first story, The Metaphorical Spot — a story about a “passé” dad trying to come to terms with the techno-swift life in which his family seems to have assimilated rather smoothly. The protagonist can surely polarise the reader in the context of generation gap: while some may view him as a loser, others might just sympathise with his nostalgia for the past.
There is enough room for thinking and retrospection which results from the conflicts that these stories deal with. The writer is aware of the contrast in a situation and invests in understanding the realities of both sides. In the story, Says Trivikarma, “It’s All a Question of Height”, the eldest son grapples to accept the arrival of a younger stepbrother in the family, while the stepbrother strives to save a place for his mother in the house. One of the ways through which the tension is brought out is by showing the insistence of the younger brother in addressing the former as seth (master). There are some stories which leave their mark long after one has read the book. Mouthwash, 144 Tughlaq Kutir, The Fuss about Queens, and It Takes Two to Bhagdig linger because of their plots which Cooper utilises well. It Takes Two to Bhagdig is a half-detective, half-con story primarily about retaining a book stolen from a library by a retired professor. The detective Bhagdig, who knows the professor’s secret, approaches him with a curious proposal. The rest is the ride which is fairly entertaining. The friendship between the two men is warm and surfaces gradually, though with some recognisably dramatic moments.
What unsettles these favourable features of the book is the inability of the apparently simple plots to develop layers and complicate themselves to arrive at nuances richer than what’s been attained already. Some stories in the collection, instead of branching out, end abruptly when one starts warming up to them. And some seem to throw vague ideas at the reader, requiring him to drive the stories to their end, rather than putting them together into a layered narrative. This makes the collection a little inconsistent on the whole. The Fuss about Queens and Other Stories might appear a late entry, but what it focuses on remains universal. The animated voice invokes different senses of time and place with different stories, and it does so with ease.
The reviewer is the author of poetry anthology Painting That Red Circle White