Anjum Hasan’s insightful book deals with spaces, inter-personal relations

Some stories in Anjum Hasan’s new collection, ‘A Day in the Life’, are set in small, confined spaces. The characters live within these confined spaces and they try to reach out to others outside these spaces even as many of those others themselves live within their own confined spaces.

Stories like ‘Sisters’, ‘Godsend’, and ‘I Am Very Angry’ are set in apartment blocks, while ‘Bird Love’ is set in a small, rented accommodation. The action in ‘Elite’ takes place in a crowded bar, while the action in ‘Little Granny’s Song’ takes place in a house in a suburban locality where the space is shrinking. The stories become as much about spaces as the people in the stories.

‘Sisters’ is a touching tale of two women from disparate backgrounds coming closer in one confined space and one of those two women understanding the other in a another smaller, confined space. Jaan lies sick in her bed in her flat “on the fourth floor of Peaceville, a giant apartment complex of twenty featureless pink-and-cream towers” in Bangalore, “her teeth chattering under the quilt, while outside the sun burns the small, brave leaves off the potted chrysanthemums and softens the tar in cracked roads.” “On [Jaan’s] nightstand is a sedimented history of her sickness: pills for her present condition, for the earlier one, and more underneath for the one before that; medical reports and doctors’ prescriptions…She does not know what is wrong with her.” Jamini, a migrant from Andhra Pradesh who “came to Bangalore on the promise of making more money than the pittance she earned” back home, “[working] barefoot on the earth…helping her husband push reluctant bullocks over the soil, laying out rice saplings, walking through the slush of rain-irrigated fields and wielding the sickle during harvest time with those feet squarely planted on the ground”, comes to work at Jaan’s apartment as the domestic help. Jamini starts the day by “inquiring into the details of Jaan’s health” and soon starts watering the plants in Jaan’s apartment; cooking for Jaan and her husband, Javed; and buying their vegetable and grocery. Jamini’s care helps improve Jaan’s health and Jaan resumes going to her office. Such strong bond develops between Jaan and Jamini that when Jamini does not report for work one morning, Jaan grows restless. Perhaps it was Jaan’s dependence on Jamini. But maybe not, for Jaan actually misses office that day and goes looking for Jamini. She gets Jamini’s address from another domestic help working in the same apartment complex and lands up in the place where Jamini lived, a place where “[people] lived half indoors and half out; everywhere are pushcarts of wilting vegetables, water pitchers and bicycles, women in nightgowns and children with screechy commanding voices.” It is in this slum, far removed from her own quiet apartment in a high-rise, that Jaan comes to know of Jamini’s tragedy.

The difference between the lives of Jaan and Jamini are definitely striking. Jaan, with her privileged life, does not seem to know what ails her despite a battery of prescriptions and medicines; while Jamini, busy in survival, does not have the leisure to find out what has gone wrong with her body. It is perhaps natural that while the two women meet in Jaan’s apartment, the reality about Jamini is revealed to Jaan in Jamini’s quarter in a slum.

‘Godsend’ too is set in an apartment complex and is about the bonding between two women living in adjacent apartments even as some differences crop up between them. Kalpana and the narrator are neighbours. Both are feeding their children on their respective balconies. While the narrator’s daughter, Alu, readily eats the food that she is given and also demands more food, Kalpana’s three-year-old son, Monu, is refusing the morsels that his mother is feeding him. Kalpana is observing a ritual in which she is trying to feed crows the food her dead grandfather used to like in the belief that her grandfather might return in crow incarnation and eat the food she is offering. Despite waiting for too long, no crow appears on Kalpana’s balcony. This, along with her son refusing his food, is making Kalpana restless. She tries asking the narrator if she observes this ritual, to which the narrator says, “My dead are dead…They don’t come back.” This puts off Kalpana, but both Kalpana and the narrator realise that “[they] need each other as [they] live [their] exhausting, parallel, matching lives on these facing balconies.” Finally, the appearance of a crow on Kalpana’s balcony clears the air between the two women alongside making their little children happy.

‘Little Granny’s Song’ is about characters who are related to one another. The protagonist is an elderly woman named Sarita who has seen abundant days in her past though, at present, she is living in a joint family in the village Okhla which is expanding in such a way that if their neighbours “parked their car in the lane…[it] made it impossible for anyone to either get into or out of [Sarita’s family’s] house.” In this cloistered and patriarchal set-up, Sarita embroiders a handkerchief for her son, Krishna, and requests Krishna and his wife to let their daughter-in-law, Aarti, who is also Sarita’s companion in the house, return to her parents’ house to have her baby.

Nur, the protagonist of ‘Nur’, is seen scouring a wide space in Bangalore, the city in which she lives, with her friend, Rebeka. They are looking for Salim, Nur’s husband, who has disappeared with all her money. Though Nur and Rebeka are inhabiting several wide, public spaces in this story – including, the dargah of Mastani Amma on Tannery Road, the dargah on Jayamahal Road, and an Eidgah from where Rebeka steals tamarind – these two women are constrained by the fact that they are poor and work as domestic help in richer households and do not have enough money to even travel by an auto rickshaw or a bus. Their poverty does not really hamper their mobility, but it does stop them from doing several other things they wish to do. For example, Nur is stricken when she learns that she would need money – something she does not have – to rescue Salim from something he has gotten himself into.

Another aspect of Hasan’s collection that I appreciated was stories that seem like personal anecdotes. There is ‘The Question of Style’ in which the narrator remembers her childhood and how she chopped off most of her younger sister Daisy’s hair to make her look stylish. The mention of “old copies of Seventeen magazine…brought in by [the] foreign relatives” of a neighbour; and trends from a bygone era, like, low wedge heels, and bellbottoms, give this engrossing story a personal essay-ish feel.

Another story which has a personal essay-ish feel is ‘A Short History of Eating’ in which the narrator writes about her encounter with food in different places and different literary works. My most favourite story in this collection, ‘The Legend of Lutfan Mian’, is set in the year 1872 and is about a young man, Lutfan Mian, his wrestler friend, Gopal Singh, their journey to Benares from their hometown Rasra, and “a sari the colour of a ravishing sunset on a winter’s evening.”

Hasan’s writing is elegant. There are several passages in this book which stand out on their own. I quote two passages here: “What can better aid coming down to earth than half-forgotten small town: that stained suburban air, the permanent emanations of open sewers and busy bakeries?” from ‘The Stranger’ and “Pain is not the fault of the person suffering it” from ‘Little Granny’s Song’. Anjum Hasan’s ‘A Day in the Life’ is a collection of remarkable and insightful works of fiction.

A Day in the Life Stories; Publisher: Penguin Random House; Price: Rs 599