These stunning stories entice us into the dark, wild, seedy corners of urban India. This world of drug addicts, cross-dressers, prostitutes and other wayward creatures can shock, frighten or touch a raw nerve. Yet, despite their individual quirks and perversions, a thread of shared sorrows and aspirations binds these floundering souls. ‘With no girls around, the men have nothing to fight over.’ These men dancing with men in perfect harmony on a lonely night in a Dehra Dun disco, make the best of what they have been given; a floor, a DJ, each other. A hidden violent streak binds Chottu, the rustic servant boy, Sadiq the rickshaw puller, and the better heeled ‘online journalist’ narrator in ‘Fit of Rage.’ Angad, ‘twenty six years old, of medium build and receding hairline, a middle-level techie in a sinking dot com’ seeks solace from lost love among the drug peddling, squabbling Bangladeshi refugees of Okhla Basti. In the title story, innocent young lovers are hounded out by a harsh, authoritarian world. Seeking a few moments of tender privacy behind the bushes of ‘Eunuch Park’, the lovers escape draconian parents and greedy, cursing eunuchs only to fall prey to feral college deans. These beautifully crafted stories are dark, edgy, grotesque and traumatic. Yet they are full of life and energy, redeemed by surprising flashes of tenderness and humanity.

Monideepa Sahu

Against
the tide

The man who swam the Amazon
Martin Strel and Matthew Mohike
Jaico Books,
Rs 295

You have Olympians like Phelps and then there are those like Martin Strel, the first man who swam from Africa and Europe in 1997, the Danube from source to estuary in 2000 and the entire Mississippi in 2002. At the age of 52, in 2007, he became the first human being to swim the Amazon, 3274 miles from the Peruvian Andes to the Atlantic shores of Brazil in 66 days. The book is the story of a man who, when he gets into his wetsuit, no longer remains an ordinary one but becomes a superhero challenging us not to be bogged down by the feeling that one is too old or fat to attempt the impossible. Strel’s bravery and determination is an inspirational story for all those who nurse the desire to do things which are considered unachievable.

Hiren Kumar Bose