Kalpana Swaminathan
These 12 stories "in transit" last August won the Vodafone Crossword Book Award .
E 'right on that occasion, in Bombay, I met the author and I liked it immediately, incredulous that he won, even if called multiple times to collect the prize, humble and modest, yet full of determination.
These 12 stories, for the moment not yet translated into Italian, Indian fiction are far from coming to our shores, completely devoid of "Indianness" or a particular Indian or exotic (which are old saris and spices or the new stories of Bollywood and slums), so that could be set anywhere in the world rather than in Bombay. Yet indianissimi soul.
The title refers to the transit of Venus between the Earth and the Sun, in which the planet appears as a black dot against the solar circle, rare event of a transit that symbolizes the crossing of more lives and small revelations that change subtly the course of events.
are difficult stories, stories of hospitals and illness, and train stations, doctors and patients, people full of sorrow, with a premonition of death that often leaves its mark. Stories high density of misfortunes, from suicide to "female circumcision", but without being morbid or moral, always fair because all real, sometimes sweetened with only a thin veil of irony.
His writing is always open, honest, sometimes it soars only in a few poignant metaphor, always gracefully, without overdoing it, as if to slow down at the right time to read, and to linger without tripping over a detail.
Swaminatha Kalpana, who works in life as a surgeon, cut with the scalpel of compassion the many colors of pain, managing to make it light and deep.
He speaks of death, but rebirth, but of despair also of hope, but also the healing of disease, as two sides of same coin.
and leaves you there, always a bit 'first glimpse of the revival, and without offering no denying that.
With brutal honesty and never blatant.
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