Sari of the Gods: Stories. . - Reviews - book review

SARI OF THE GODS: STORIES by G. S. Sharat Chandra. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1998. 237 pages. $13.95 cloth.

Sari of the Gods is a generous collection of 19 stories that have appeared in American, English, Australian, and Singaporean periodicals and anthologies. Like Sharat Chandra's reputation as an award-winning poet, these stories range far and wide. The first five focus on Indian immigrants to the United States. A harassed woman cuts a "Dot Buster"'s penis with a metal claw "similar to the one the warrior-king Shivaji used against a Moghul invader to escape treachery." Eccentric, reclusive men act out their loneliness in strong, surprising plots. Ten stories are set "There," a la R. K. Narayan, in a fictional Nangangud in Karnataka state. An opportunistic orphan perpetuates a ruse to get himself well fed and has a formerly English restaurant blessed in order to bring back customers. A train singer becomes a politician. Money lenders compete for business. Four final stories illustrate intermarried Indians-"Neither Here Nor There," in Sharat Chandra's section title. An Indian dentist runs off with the English wife of one of his patients; an Indian wife goes mad when she kills a stray dog with her American car.

More like tales than fully developed fiction, these stories tend to build quickly to the twists and shockers of their strong endings. They are more clever than moving. Character development and drama are at a minimum in most of the stories, as in the tradition of Scheherezade. They are told, not shown. Some are so full of potential that they read like studies for novels--"Maya," an intriguing, clever story, illustrates how illusion works to deceive man, how duality, in the form of a pretty sister who becomes her brother-in-law's lover, helps man to see beyond illusion; "Bhat's Return" might be a Ruth Prawer Jhabvala novel, in which an American wife runs off with a guru. And yet these stories are memorable. The strongest of them are the first-person narratives that convey drama and emotion in their distinctive voices. In "Extraneous Details" a poetic narrative reproduces the disturbed mind of an immigrant who returns to India to exact revenge. In "The Lady Chieftain" the estrangement of a prepubescent boy's perspective on a "loose" tribal woman is amusing and moving--she grabs hold of his "government" in a funny tease. In "Jamal the Constable," a naive policeman is shocked by the behavior of his upper-class employer. And the last story, "Encounter," ends the book on a strong emotional note with a story about an immigrant visiting India and speculating on what might have been had he stayed and married an Indian woman. In these first-person stories, Sharat Chandra's method of tale telling works. The persona that has served him well in his poetry conveys character, emotion, and drama in these clever tales of India and Indians.

ROBBIE CLIPPER SETHI Rider University

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