These English translations from the Gujarati bring Saroj Pathak’s work to a wider audience, giving it the greater attention it deserves. Delving deep into the human mind, the stories depict the pitfalls of communication, the infinite possibilities of misunderstanding, of doubt and despair. At the same time they celebrate the human psyche’s ability to bridge these chasms and make connections, of love, understanding, and friendship. Pathak considers the predicaments of both women and men as they grapple with the modernity that has been thrust upon them. Indeed, Pathak’s interest in men as well as women characters distinguishes her from many other women novelists. In her stories love and cruelty are closely intertwined, whether between a young loafer who tries to befriend a crippled girl with devastating results, or between an old couple, where the husband sends the wife away on a fool’s errand through a misplaced concern for her. In ‘The Vicious Round’, a ladies tailor becomes obsessed with one of his young clients, who in turn is single-mindedly involved with a trousseau, while in ‘The Ace of Trumps’, a single, middle-aged working woman plots to escape from her servitude to her brother’s family. One of Gujarat’s leading women writers, when Saroj Pathak died in 1989 at the age of sixty, she had published seven collections of stories and six novels. Her columns in Samachar and Gujarat Mitra aroused violently mixed reactions. She was keenly interested in theatre and dance productions.
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