An Understanding of the Short Story Interval by Jayanth Kaykini.
Raghavendra H M1
1Assistant Professor of English,
Government First Grade College
Tumkur-572102, Karnataka, India
Mail: raghhm@gmail.com
Abstract
The story, “Interval,” follows two strangers, seduced by their love of movies, who dream of running away together in search of a happy future life. As their plans take shape, each realises that the fantasy of their adventure would be “filled with a pleasure that the actual meeting did not have,” and in the end, the fantasy itself is enough to push them toward brave, new lives on their own. Two strangers encounter one another in Mumbai, a city “like a mother watching wakefully over all the children asleep on her lap.” The humdrum routine of their lives and the depths of their desires are presented in the story. It may be read as an open-ended storey in which the reader is left to draw her/his conclusions from what is presented to her/him. It lacks a clear-cut ending.
Keywords: Dream, Reality, Happiness, Love, Emptiness, Open Ending.
Introduction
No Presents, Please: Mumbai Stories are not about what Mumbai is, but what it enables. Here is a city where two young people decide to elope and then start nursingdreams of different futures; where film posters start talking to each other; where epiphanies are found in keychains and thermos-flasks. From Irani cafes to chawls, old cinema houses to reform homes, Jayant Kaikini seeks out and illuminates moments of existential anxiety and tenderness. In these sixteen stories, gaps in the curtains of the ordinary open up possibilities that might not have existed but for this city where the surreal meets the everyday.
Jayant Kaikini is the recipient of many awards, including four Karnataka Sahitya Academy awards and the Atta Galatta Prize for Fiction. He is a three-time recipient of the Filmfare Award for best lyrics in Kannada. Tejaswini Niranjana received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1989 for her translations.
The Uniqueness
This short storey is taken from the collection of short stories titled "No Presents Please" by Jayanth Kaykini. It is originally written in Kannada and titled "Madhyantara". Tejaswini Niranjana has translated it into English recently. It won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Mumbai is the central, beloved character of Jayant Kaikini’s storey collection, yet plenty of space remains to fall in love with the protagonists of each story. In No Presents Please, the stories are drawn from Kaikini’s vast oeuvre, spanning the early 1980s to the 2000s, and translated from Kannada, consciously as a body of work, by Tejaswini Niranjana.
In the first story, ‘Interval’, the reader is dropped into a small vignette, as narrated by two characters who only acknowledge each other through the language of Bollywood films. In wonderful shorthand, as in a script, we scroll through a series of encounters that set each character on a path that they assume is shared, while each is actually caught entirely in their own narrative, the star of their own movie.
The ease with which Kaikini seems to pluck individuals out of the vast city of Mumbai and follow them along for a little while brings an intimacy to each and every storey while retaining the sense of a city that seems to grow and grow.
A reader can't forget the three men in a taxi during a meal, drawn together as strangers by small acts of kindness, and all distracted still by what they will need to return to in their individual lives after this moment out of time.
No Presents Please won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the first book in translation to do so. It is a wonderful opportunity for English-language readers to experience some of Kaikini’s beautiful writing for the first time.
The Analysis
The story, “Interval,” follows two strangers, seduced by their love of movies, who dream of running away together in search of a happy future life. As their plans take shape, each realises that the fantasy of their adventure would be “filled with a pleasure that the actual meeting did not have,” and in the end, the fantasy itself is enough to push them toward brave, new lives on their own. Two strangers encounter one another in Mumbai, a city “like a mother watching wakefully over all the children asleep on her lap.” The humdrum routine of their lives and the depths of their desires are presented in the story. It may be read as an open-ended storey in which the reader is left to draw her/his conclusions from what is presented to her/him. It lacks a clear-cut ending.
It is a strange love storey between Manjari and Nandu. Nandu is an attendant at Malhar Cinema Theater. Manjari is a lower middle class girl living in Mahindrakar Chawl in Thane, Mumbai. Manjari and Nandu notice each other often at the theatre and feel attracted to each other. They happen to speak when he finds her lost purse in the theater. They exchange glances whenever she comes to watch a movie. He gets a ticket for her on the first day of the film's release. His friends tease him by calling her his Maal or Piece. He eagerly waits for her. but never dares to speak a word when she comes. Manjari also never thinks of speaking with him. Nandu dreams of her as one of the heroines of innumerable movies he has watched, and himself a hero, singing and dancing with the heroine.
Once a film runs into Jubilee week. The film stars visit the theater for celebration. Nandu manages to get a pass for Manjari. She comes eagerly to have a look at her favourite actors. In the interval he brings a cup of ice cream for her. He expects her to give him a spoon. But she just neglects him. He is upset. Yet their dumb love story continues.
Nandu, lost in the posters of heroes and heroines in the theater, finds an impulse in Manjari to get away from this unsatisfactory life. On the other hand, she finds a freshness in Nandu's eyes. She hopes he may liberate her from her wretched life. She is fed-up with her home in Mahindrakar Chawl and the smelly mori, her poor father, desperate mother, washing clothes, cleaning vessels, and the kerosene stove. She finds Nandu as a liberator from this life.
They suddenly decide to run away together. Yet they could not decide where to go. Manjari packs her clothes in a bag the previous night, wakes up very early in the morning, and goes to meet Nandu. They meet at Jambali Naka. Without any hurry, they eat their sumptuous breakfast-Vada sambar, masala dosa, upma, and tea. When Nandu asks her if she loves him, she just moves her head as if to say, "This is not needed now in between eating." Manjari asks him to buy a rose for her. But he ignores it.
They reach the railway station. Nandu gets two tickets to Victoria Terminus. Then he puts a ticket and some money in her hand and goes inside the station. He gets into the VT train alone. As soon as he has gone, Manjari buys a rose for her and boards a bus bound for the industrial estate. They give each other the stimulus to start a new life. They take their own path. They realise that there is no love between them. Thus, the storey concludes open-ended.
Conclusion
There’s a glaring unfamiliarity between the two of them. They seem to hardly know each other, and once they make their escape, a startling twist disrupts the story’s expected ending. Kaikini signals from the start that these stories will rarely go in the directions the reader anticipates.
References