Of crocodile men and metal eaters

This book turned out to be a surprising treat. Each of its 18 stories, all written in verse, are about people who are different. Not just different but significantly so, some quite peculiar, and the stories deal with different aspects of how the difference arose, how it was dealt with, and what happened in the end. Along the way, each story has earthy overtones. It starts quite naturally – I was surprised at first and then admiring, but as it went on and the bonking got more intense, I wondered whether it wasn’t just to say that people who are different are actually like everyone else – or that by virtue of their difference they are more highly sexed.

During a discussion, the author said she wrote the stories over three weeks, waking every morning with new circus people and village freaks performing various antics through which they conveyed meaningful messages about human beings and the way we lead our lives. These characters included Subramaniam a ‘Crocodile Man’ with a source of income but unable to gratify his wife, who had to make her own arrangements; Pablo the Clown with a ‘foot-long schlong’ which women thronged to view and engage with; Vishu, the Village Exterminator, who came between a husband and wife in an unusual way; Urvasi, the Devadasi, who developed culinary skills that threatened to make the entire village and its surroundings obese; and Miss Rita, born a bonny, baby girl, who developed a ‘fertile chinny-chin-chin’ which sprouted a thick crop of hair. Then there is Murali, the Metal Eater, a reverse Midas, who eats and coolly digests metal: Sweet Murali, with a whistling throat and surreal digestion within –/Never ate a bit of meat or grain, but gorged himself on mountains of tin

Twisted passions, lustful charity, drunken brutality, servitude and fawning delight, accommodating girl, dumbstruck wife, furiously praying, gilded cage – these are a few themes. They are also phrases picked at random from these