Murli Das Melwani: Themes in the Indian Limited Tale in English: An Historic and A Vital Study. Bareilly: Prakash E-book Depot, 2009. Web pages 207. Selling price: Rs. 175/-, ISBN-978-81-7977-323-9.
As Murli Das Melwani states in the Preface, the intention of the e book is to attract awareness to the genre of Indian Brief Tales in English by critically surveying its historical progress from 1835 to the present. He delineates the characteristic thematic features of several authors in 7 sections divided into numerous sub-sections. Nevertheless, as the author states in the Preface, “The scope of this e book is minimal to tales collected and revealed in the ebook type.” Neither the e-book features uncollected released limited tales, retold stories, fairytales and extensive shorter stories, nor does it include things like translated limited tales.
In the ‘Introduction’, Melwani traces the growth of quick tale from Kathasaritsagar to Raja Rao without having excluding its progress as a sort in the West. He takes into account early practitioners this kind of as E.T.W. Hoffman, N. V. Gogol, Merimee, Balzac, Gautier, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, O’Henry, and H. G. Wells etc in the West and Sudhin Ghosh, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao and some others in India.
The first portion entitled ‘The Beginnings:1835-1935’ involves authors these kinds of as Pallab Sengupta, Soshee Chunder Dutt, Cornelia Sorabjee, S. B. Banerjea, Dhan Gopal Mukerji, A. S. Panchpakesa Ayyar, C. T. Ramabhai etcetera. These early Indian writers in English paved the way for the fantastic trio of Indian English Fiction, namely Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan, and Raja Rao who are all mentioned separately in Part II of the guide. In ‘The Initial Flowering: 1935-1945’ Melwani consists of this sort of other writers as Manjeri S. Isvaran, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Ela Sen, and Louis Gracious who enriched the nationalist movement of the period with their crafting.
Segment III specials with several celebrated authors of 1950s these types of as Attia Hossain, Khushwant Singh, G. D. Khosla, and some others who mirrored on human figures vis-à-vis financial enhancement in the early stage of Article-Independence India.
Portion IV, ‘The Second Flowering: 1960-1970’ offers with some perfectly recognized writers these as R. P. Jhabvala, Bunny Reuben, Ruskin Bond, Bhabani Bhattacharya who are significantly less moral but a lot more satirical and paradoxical in their remedy of themes.
Area V is aptly titled as ‘The Blossoming’ simply because it handles the plethora of short tale writers these as Padma Hejmadi, Keki N. Daruwalla, Anita Desai, Hamdi Bey, Kamala Das, Arun Joshi, Manohar Malgaonkar, and other folks who flourished throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
They deal with a selection of themes these kinds of as shifting approaches of modest town Indian life, human psyche, parables, politics, the military etc.
The following chapter, Portion VI ‘An Prolonged Spring’ takes into account up to date writers this kind of as Vikram Chandra, Amit Chaudhuri, Githa Hariharan, Anita Nair, Uma Parameswaran, Meher Pestonji, and many others who ponder on themes this sort of as thriller, fantasy, migration, homosexuality, tradition as opposed to modernity and many others.
The last segment ‘The Prospect’ presents information about the heritage of publishing houses. It also mentions the neglected women publishers such as Kali, Katha, Stree, Tara, Tulika, Yoda, Karadi, Zubaan, Girls Endless, and Biblio. It also talks about the long term of Indian Shorter Tale in English. The segment demonstrates on absence of literary prizes in India and mentions constructive developments these types of as Vodaphone Crossword E book Award, Indiaplaza Golden Reserve Awards, Readerr’s Decision award and many others for promoting brief story writing and looking at.
Just one of the sizeable features of the ebook is that it involves facts about the lesser recognized writers alongside with perfectly recognised writers. Critical surveys commonly protect only the nicely acknowledged names.
The Bibliography can be of great aid to scientists since it supplies detailed data about anthologies of limited tales from the time as early as 1908.
On the detrimental aspect, having said that, the reserve excludes point out of some well recognized modern day writers these kinds of as Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Farrukh Dhondy, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Rohinton Mistry and so on. The e-book would have been strengthened with their dialogue even if the motive of the writer may perhaps have been to acquaint the visitors to lesser acknowledged names which most guides tend to dismiss. But, it is a significant publication, practical to each researcher and college students of Indian English Producing.
(jointly with Sudeshna Pandey, M.Phil Researcher)
