Diwali in Muzaffarnagar
Page 20
‘What do you mean, Uncle?’ Gunjan asked.
‘I’d told your uncle about it,’ the director said. ‘He told me that you wouldn’t want the job.’
‘If it’s being a peon …’ Gunjan shrugged.
‘Sit down,’ the director said, pointing towards the chair Gunjan had just vacated. ‘You’ve a masters’ degree, right?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Gunjan said, sitting down.
‘Then, by very precedent, you can’t be a peon,’ he said. ‘You’ll start a grade higher. And your degree is in marketing, right?’
‘Umm … mass communications.’ Gunjan said.
‘And years of experience?’
‘Almost six.’
The director took a deep breath and leaned back on his chair. ‘I could make a case for your inclusion in a high grade. No marketing talent wants to work in government jobs. But we too have our events, our outreach campaigns with farmers in the community.’
‘What would it mean? Salary? Housing?’ Gunjan asked.
‘You’ll have to leave the bungalow. But you can retain a two-bedroom flat here. I can push for that. A promotion would take a long time, though.’
‘Salary?’
‘Umm …’ he went into thought. ‘I think all combined it’ll be around forty thousand in your hand. But, as I said, there’s a pay commission due.’
Sixty thousand in Delhi versus forty thousand in Muzaffarnagar – this was Gunjan’s first thought. She didn’t want to say yes or no right now. ‘I’ll … I’ll tell you whatever we decide, Uncle. I’ll talk to my mother.’
‘And, yes, half of your father’s pension will reach you each month.’
Adding the pension, their total income would be close to sixty thousand. Gunjan got up from the seat and, after a few moments in which her mind considered that option and what it could mean, found herself outside the director’s bungalow. It took her a whole minute to find her cycle. As she took it out of the bush, the lawns where her father’s and grandfather’s terahvi had taken place appeared before her eyes. And then, on the road between her and the lawns, she saw the stooped figure of her grandfather. He was on a slow walk, the kind he would take even two winters back. She remembered how her mother had told her that till the time the old man walked, death couldn’t touch him. Slowly, her grandfather passed her by, without looking at her. Behind him, turning from the perpendicular road that led to their bungalow, came her father, sitting atop the same cycle whose handle she was holding in her hands. He was in his trademark attire – a chequered shirt with its sleeves folded, untucked above black trousers. He pedalled slowly, as if he had something on his mind. Just when he was crossing her, he looked in her direction and smiled.
It was as if he approved of the idea.
Gunjan started walking homeward, pulling the cycle beside her. As she turned towards the bungalow, the parked Jetta came into sight. She came close to it and saw the obscenity scrawled on its bonnet. This town is shit, she thought, and smiled.
Acknowledgements
I thank my wife, Nikita Gupta, for being the difficult-to-please reader, and for having great patience for the cantankerous husband that I sometimes became as I grappled with these stories. To my mother and my brother, I always feel your encouragement with me.
I thank Manasi Subramaniam, my last editor, who believed in this book at the concept stage. I thank Prema Govindan, my current editor at HarperCollins India, who midwifed it. I thank everyone else at my publishers’ who helped the book acquire the form that you readers see it in.
Some of the stories here were first published – in different forms and with different names – in various magazines and journals in India. ‘Diwali in Muzaffarnagar’ was first published as ‘Muzaffarnagar Diwali’ in the March 2015 issue of The Caravan. I thank Chandrahas Choudhury, the magazine’s fiction editor at that time, for it. ‘The Sad Unknowability of Dilip Singh’ and ‘Reasonable Limits’ were runners-up in consecutive years in the DNA–Out of Print Short Fiction contest. I thank Indira Chandrasekhar of Out of Print magazine for giving those stories their first light of recognition. ‘The Sad Unknowability of Dilip Singh’ was published in DNA on 27 July 2014; ‘Reasonable Limits’ was published in the same paper on 22 November 2015. ‘B’s First Solo Trip’ was first published as ‘Diu Is a Dead End’ in a now-lapsed online magazine, The Affair. ‘The Mechanics of Silence’ was first published in the Monsoon 2015 issue of Vayavya, an online poetry magazine. I thank Vayavya’s editor Mihir Vatsa for seeing poetry in that short story.
About the Book
Muzaffarnagar, the infamous north Indian town that’s a byword for unrest, and where skirmishes are prone to break out ever so often. This is a place where teenage love and friendships are tested by the violence that threatens to erupt at the slightest provocation. A town that always pulls you back into its ways, no matter how cosmopolitan the city has made you.
In Diwali in Muzaffarnagar – Tanuj Solanki’s new book of short stories after Neon Noon – young men and women straddle the past and the present, the metropolis and the small town, and also the parallel needs of life: solitude and family.
About the Author
Tanuj Solanki’s first novel, Neon Noon, received critical acclaim post its release in 2016, and was shortlisted for the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award. His short fiction has been published in the Caravan, Hindu Business Line, DNA, Out of Print, and several other publications. He lives in Mumbai with his wife.
Advance Praise for Diwali in Muzaffarnagar
Intimacy and inevitable grief collide often in these haunting stories of kinship and frayed ties. Solanki writes with great sensitivity about women and men who circle around their roles in families and society, seeking identities that free them from the past, even as its hold on them remains insoluble. These are stories that ache with love, and brave the knowledge that only rarely does love transcend its attendant pain.
– Sharanya Manivannan
Solanki not only surprises me with his craft and voice but also revives my interest in short stories. His observations are precise, his language lyrical and his style extremely pleasing. Diwali in Muzaffarnagar is not just another collection of well-written stories. It is a reminder that we have a goldmine of tales from which gifted writers like Solanki can bring us dazzling pieces.
– Anees Salim
Solanki gradually opens a door into a fascinating world, puts to the sword the patronizing myths about small-town India.
– Prayaag Akbar
Solanki’s stories are brilliantly nuanced, that quintessential mofussil north Indian town – Muzaffarnagar, in this case – reflected in them with all its intimacy and prejudices. The small town is never romanticized, though, and there is an admirable matter-of-fact quality to how the stories progress and end.
– Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
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First published in India in 2018 by Harper Business
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
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Copyright © Tanuj Solanki 2018
P-ISBN: 978-93-5277-593-4
Epub Edition © December 2017 ISBN: 978-93-5277-594-1
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Tanuj Solanki assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of th
e required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.
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