E-Paper
Review: Essential Items and Other Tales from a Land in Lockdown by Udayan Mukherjee
Short stories that present the lockdown journeys of individuals from different financial and cultural backgrounds
The government of India imposed the first nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic on March 23, last year. With that, our lives changed. As it turned out, the mysterious virus continued to find unsuspecting victims even after people stayed in their homes, stepping out only when necessary. Millions lost their jobs and the economy hurtled towards a crash.
Living in such momentous times, it was natural that writers would be inspired by the reality of a disturbing new normal. Udayan Mukherjee’s latest work, a collection of tales titled Essential Items and Other Tales from a Land in Lockdown, takes us through the journey of individuals from different financial and cultural backgrounds. The lockdown has altered the course of their lives, and they must coexist with the changes around them.
The theme of the collection is predictable, but what sets it apart are the characters who inhabit the stories and their experiences. All this is described in simple and evocative prose.
In A Life or Death Situation, quite easily the best story that begins the collection, income for the Doms (men belonging to the caste that supervises cremation at burning ghats) has declined after the imposition of the lockdown.
The number of dead bodies arriving to be cremated has fallen dramatically because there are no rail and road accidents and no murders either. What happens after an elderly couple dies in an ashram at the same time, allowing the doms to convert it into a business opportunity and make a neat sum of money, shows how a tragedy for one family can be a blessing for someone else.
The biggest challenge for any author writing lockdown-related stories lies in how he or she can portray unusual moments that have escaped the attention of the average observer. Mukherjee attempts to do this and succeeds. Some of these tales make the reader wonder at the previously unimaginable ways in which the lockdown impacted lives.
In The Party, a group of affluent people fed up with ‘house arrest’, come together for a terrace party. During conversation, the idea of doing their bit for the poor and the affected comes up. This is followed by a bigger question: how much, in monetary terms, is enough?
The stories in this collection are diverse. The titular one is about a misunderstanding over a piece of cake, which has an impact on the friendly relationship between an elderly lady and a young volunteer who delivers essential items to her doorstep.
The Stroll takes the reader on a journey through the mostly barren city streets with the protagonist, a writer, who has stepped out of his home after a long time. It is also about an opportunity that presents itself to a few men, who snatch the writer’s wallet, leaving him injured as they run away from the scene.
The strength of Essential Items is that it does not get repetitive and keeps the reader engaged until the end.
Biswadeep Ghosh is a journalist, author, and teacher. Among his books is MSD: The Man, The Leader, the biography of former Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni.
