Six years after othe publication of her memoir, One Foot on the Ground: A Life Told Through the Body, award-winning author Shanta Gokhale is back with a collection of short stories. The Way Home, which has 12 stories, continues Gokhale’s piercing probe into the vulnerabilities of life. Narrated in her style infused with an abundance of wit and allure, as witnessed in the engaging episodes of her memoir that dealt with the travails and tensions of the human body, The Way Home expands the aches and elements that run the mills of human spirit.
The collection is a wide canvas of stories, each illuminating the volatility and enigma that define and disrupt human lives and conditions. Gokhale’s chorus of characters imbibe the unpredictability of the present and a longing for the past in such stories as that of a theatre group in the middle of preparations for their next play, a doctor who retires to care for his dying wife, a company executive finding a new way forward through an old incident, a young man caught between his caste and commitments, and a couple of septuagenarians musing on Mohammed Rafi and the lost beats of love.
Two Men, one of the early stories in the collection, is more about one woman, who represents the modern Indian woman. In the story, Ashwini and Jaydeep see their married life withering away in the middle of preparations for the next play by their theatre group. Ashwini is the playwright, Jaydeep is the theatre director. As the story of Bheja Fry—the title of the new play—is being read out, the faces around them are slowly tending towards the roles each of them are going to perform soon. Ashwini and Jaydeep’s voices, however, betray the chasm between their own personal and professional lives.
Jaydeep, who has had a run of successes on stage, is not happy with the name of the protagonist. “Why Sita? There are many other names,” he complains. While Ashwini explains her Sita has nothing to do with the powerful character from the epic, The Mahabharata, and it is a modern-day story of a husband who is cheating on his wife, it emerges her own husband has problems living with a modern woman. “Don’t you think we could discuss this in private, Ashwini?” he asks. “This is a play. Not a pregnancy,” deadpans Ashwini.
Stitching Memories
In Quilt, another short story that is part of the collection, Gokhale focuses on a young woman in Mumbai inspired by a visit with her mother to a faraway village of women artisans. Mugdha was approving of Janakibai, one of the artisans, when she refused to sell her multi-coloured quilt to her mother, the founder of an NGO, who wanted to promote their craft by introducing new patterns. Now, sitting in her city home, Mugdha is sewing a quilt with the sari she wore on her first date with Vijay, her lover who abandons her as he succumbs to his mother’s wishes to marry from an upper caste family like their own.
In Remembrance of Times Past, the first story in the collection, takes place in a golf club and moves on to a concert hall where old Hindi songs are sung by a middle-aged singer from the South. Accompanied by her husband, a septuagenarian woman is joined by her college mate who is showing them her skills on the golf course. The golf session is followed by songs of Mohammed Rafi at a nearby cultural venue. The songs bring back memories, which have kept at least one of them tethered to feelings experienced 40 years before.
The book ends with The Way Home, the titular story, which links memories of the past with the present-day struggles of a doctor caring for his dying wife. Shrikant, the doctor, retires from his medical practice to look after Usha, his ailing wife. He often talks to his wife, who is unable to speak or maybe hear about the recollection of events that brought them and kept them together for many decades.