The body was the only truth she knew. It was the body alone that was left, even as she went beyond the body. Journeys form the leitmotif of these astonishing new stories by Ambai. Sometimes culminating in an unconventional love affair, some are extraordinary tales of loyalty and integrity; others touch on the almost fantastic, absurd aspect of Mumbai. Yet others explore the notion of a wholesome self, and its tragic absence at times. These stories are illuminated by vivid and unusual characters: from an eccentric, penurious singer couple who adopt an ape as their son, to a male prostitute, who is battered by bimbos for not giving full satisfaction. Crucially, some of the stories, like the title one, engage uninhibitedly with a woman’s relationship to her body. For Ambai, feminist par excellence, the sensual body, experienced as a natural landscape changing with age, is at the same time, the only vehicle of life and tool for mapping the external world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lakshmi Holmstrom
Lakshmi Holmstromis a writer and tranlator, who studied at Madras and Oxford. She is the author of Indian Fiction in English: the Novels of R.K. Narayan (Calcutta: Writers' Workshop, 1973), editor of The Inner Courtyard: Short Stories by Indian Women (London: Virga, 1990), and co-editor of Writing from India (Cambridge University Press, 1994), a collection of stories from India for readers aged 14-16. Her retelling of the fifth-century Tamil narrative poems Silappadikaram and Manimekalai was published in 1996 (Madras: Orient Longman). Her main work has been translating the short stories and novels of the major contemporary writers in Tamil: Mauni, Pudumaippittan, Ashokamitran, Sundara Ramaswamy, Ambai, Baama and Imayam. In 2000 she received the Crossword Book Award in India, for her translation of Karukku by Bama. Founder-Trustee of Salidaa (South Asian Diaspora Literature and Arts Archive). Royal Literary Fund writing fellow, University of East Anglia, 2003-5.
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