Turtle Dove: Six Simple Tales by Divya Dubey (Gyaana Books, 2010); 232 pp, Price : Rs 195.
Review by Abhirami Sriram:
Darkly original and deliciously decadent, Turtle Dove: Six Simple Tales marks the literary debut of a writer-publisher determined to fresh-mint fiction on her own terms. If the title conjures up a cloud of fuzzy feel-good candyfloss, rest assured that the book is anything but! Instead, here are whole slices of life etched in unsparing detail — “about people anywhere, any-when; about people like you and I, and the eccentric world we live in”— that snap open trapdoors to the infinitely complicated worlds of friendship, love, lust, and intrigue, and brace the reader for angles of the world that she may simply not have stopped to acknowledge before.
What I find most compelling about these stories is their ability to exude the intimate feel of a first-person voice even when the narrative is often in the third person. Some of the stories fairly drip with detail, and while this can get occasionally overwhelming, they are also a hint to the reader to read between the lines and decode the various clues that are layered within deceptively simple storylines.
Take for instance, “Best Friend”, a story that traces the natural twists and turns of a diehard childhood friendship and discovers how even that thick-as-thieves ardour of the growing-up years can gradually cool off into cautious reserve over time. Even as it appears to dwell heavy on both the obvious details of Sonali’s garish “post-marital gear and distemper makeup” and the not-so-obvious minutiae of the ambience at Dilli Haat where Shailja and Sonali meet up after years, the story simmers with dense bittersweet vibes that most of us are not only too familiar with but never quite learnt how to deal with, either. I particularly liked the metaphor of the sponge that one friend is inevitably resigned to being in an unequal friendship — “absorbing everything: [the other’s] bickering, her anger, her anxiety, her misery, her tears … [but] perhaps the sponge was saturated now. Perhaps it had suffered too much wear and tear over time.” The author soaks in all this emotional sap and marrow, not unlike a sponge herself, and then releases it into her narrative with admirable assurance and abandon.
Moralities mingle and blur frenetically in these half-dozen long stories, and often it seems that the darker side is the more alluring. If “The Science Wizard” expands the oft-heard thumbnail sketch of a bright middle-class student unwittingly drawn into a deadly Bermuda’s triangle of fast cars, drugs and debauchery in his attempts to be seen as part of the ‘cool’ brat pack, “Arnab” festers with the anguish of a dreamy, sensitive young man unable to either toe the parental line or come to terms with his ‘deviant’ sexuality, while the title story “Turtle Dove” is an elaborate frieze-frame of disturbing memories, with intimations of a dysfunctional childhood, and much else besides.
On balance, each story in Turtle Dove is at once an intense admission of emotion and a reflection on the impossibility of human relationships; each also ends on a note of limbo, firmly resisting the convenience of the ‘ok-now-let’s-tie-up-all-those-loose-ends’ conclusion. And for all their layering, the stories never fail to wrench the reader out of her comfort zone and provoke an honest emotional response — which I believe is the cornerstone of all good writing.
Praise for the book:
‘These stories are so well crafted [...] that it is difficult to choose a favourite from among them. It is not often that one comes across quality read as far as Indian fiction, especially short stories, in English, is concerned.’ – The Tribune
‘…in Dubey’s writing, it [the darkness] takes on a directness, a horror that is hard to look away from or put down midway.’ – The Book Review
‘Turtle Dove is a different book. There is enough promise in the storyteller and her craft.’ – Indo-Asian News service
‘Makes for a heart-warming read.’ – Mail Today.
