Book Review : Ticket to the Moon

By Radha Naresh

160 pages, Rs 1339.87

Writing for scientific journals is Dr Uthaya Kumar's regular bailiwick. Still his first foray into short story writing has resulted in an eminently readable treasure.

Ticket to the Moon, a collection of short stories is that maiden effort. Episodes in the stories are not all fiction. They are inspired by Uthaya Kumar's own life and times in a remote little village in India where he once lived, and the people he once knew intimately. He has since migrated to America, and through these stories he has recreated the larger than life personalities who profoundly influenced and moulded him in in his growing years and to whom he continued to be drawn inexorably. 

The author assumes the role of the village vet as the narrator of the stories. The vet in any village has a vital role to play in the wellbeing of livestock which is the precious asset of each homestead. Here in the village of Muvirundali, he also doubles as family physician, thereby making him privy to their most intimate secrets, which form the fabric of the stories.

As each story unfolds you get the sense of the extraordinary lives of these deceptively simple folk From the rural canvas emerge a protagonist for each story; the vegetable vendor, the child born into wealth, the forlorn widow, the brave wife of a soldier, the new bride and her borrowed jewellery, or the beggar with a mysterious past who can give Boo of To Kill a mockingbird a run for his money. Each story revolves around one such individual and their secret stories can warm the cockles of your heart.

The anonymity that one enjoys in cities is not present in villages. Nobody is a stranger to anyone else and anything that needs attention in one family is the concern of the rest of the village. There is the barber whose duty it is to play MC at funerals. The postman not only delivers letters but also reads them aloud to the recipient and writes out the replies as well. There is Natarajan, the man for all seasons.  A Good Samaritan and a guardian angel, he surfaces whenever there is a serious problem to be solved.

The characters are ordinary people whom we come across, whose simple faith, quiet courage and fortitude, and unswerving devotion to their principles is not only endearing but worthy of praise.

 A humble vegetable seller in Debt, clings on to her life for three years braving old age and illness, determined to repay a debt of forty rupees and forty paise.”I would rather die of hunger than have a debt on (sic) my life” she says, a day before she has finally paid her dues and bid adieu to life.

The Necklace is about the new bride in the village and how her integrity is put to the test when accused of stealing a necklace.

Legends of Veeran describes a heroic act of supreme sacrifice. Heir is the story of a person tormented with questions of his parentage.

The March is about the triumph of a woman who sends her husband to the warfront and waits stoically for his return..

Silence is paradoxically about the constant and loud repetitive jabbering by Murmurer who is an embarrassment to the village. However, it is Murmurer the seeming village idiot who saves them from being struck down by lightning and when illness threatens to silence Murmurer forever, the whole village rises as one to pay for his treatment.

Untouchability harks back to the days when this pernicious social system was practised and about one villager who bravely decided to defy the rules nobody dare challenge or violate.

My personal favourite story is The Postman’s Dilemma which amply describes the plight of postmen who have to bear bad tidings in a telegram. There are some interesting twists in the tale which is about a girl whose horoscope is supposed to have caused her own father’s death just one week after she is born.

The Gooseberry tree captures the pangs of separation that parents feel when their young ones leave the nest to seek better fortunes in foreign lands, as well as the distress of such children who cannot visit their parents at will.

All the stories end on a happy note. Woven into each story are nuggets of wisdom and amusing tidbits about customs, rituals, superstitions, deeply entrenched values, attitudes and practices. You also get to relive the celebratory mood of a newly independent nation and get glimpses of those heady times and to sense the impact of man’s stupendous leap into the future resulting from America’s Moon walk.

With the progress of each narrative, you are treated to a lot of interesting   village trivia. In Debt, there is mention of the ‘good death’ that comes from having lived a fulfilled life. The village barber taking charge as master of ceremonies at the funeral, placing of a coin on the forehead of the departed person who rides to his grave in a sitting position and never taking leave when departing from a funeral home.

In Santhosam’s riddles and Untouchability, the child of the town gets to experience the immeasurable fun to be had in watching birds or laying traps to catch them, listening to tales of the intrepid, riding a bull to cross a fjord, playing gilli in the wild open fields and coming home to a refreshing potful of millet gruel with a dab of pickle to go with it.

In the end, you realise that this is no second hand NRI experience. The good vet has not only tended to ailing animals, but also listened to many a human heart and checked many a human pulse.

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Radha Naresh is a traveller who spent time in Switzerland. She has chosen to settle in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India. She is now a book reviewer.