Fish in a Dwindling Lake

Download or read book Fish in a Dwindling Lake written by C S Lakshmi and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The body was the only truth she knew. It was the body alone that was left, even as she went beyond the body.’ Journeys form the leitmotif of these astonishing new stories by Ambai. Sometimes culminating in an unconventional love affair, some are extraordinary tales of loyalty and integrity; others touch on the almost fantastic, absurd aspect of Mumbai. Yet others explore the notion of a wholesome self, and its tragic absence at times. These stories are illuminated by vivid and unusual characters: from an eccentric, penurious singer-couple who adopt an ape as their son, to a male prostitute, who is battered by bimbos for not giving ‘full’ satisfaction. Crucially, some of the stories, like the title one, engage uninhibitedly with a woman’s relationship to her body. For Ambai, feminist par excellence, the sensual body, experienced as a natural landscape changing with age, is at the same time, the only vehicle of life and tool for mapping the external world.