Diamond Dust: Stories - Softcover

Desai, Anita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 061804213X ISBN 13: 9780618042135

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2000

Synopsis

Upon the recent publication of Fasting, Feasting, critics raved about Anita Desai: "Desai is more than smart; she's an undeniable genius" (Washington Post Book World). The Wall Street Journal called Fasting, Feasting "poignant, penetrating . . . a splendid novel, " while the Boston Globe celebrated Desai's "beautiful literary universe." Now, in this richly diverse collection, Desai trains her luminous spotlight on private universes, stretching from India to New England, from Cornwall to Mexico. Skillfully navigating the fault lines between social obligation and personal loyalties, the men and women in these nine tales set out on journeys that suddenly go beyond the pale -- or surprisingly lead them back to where they started from. In the mischievous title story, a beloved dog brings nothing but disaster to his obsessed master; in other tales, old friendships and family ties stir up buried feelings, demanding either renewed commitment or escape. And in the final exquisite story, a young woman discovers a new kind of freedom in Delhi's rooftop community.
With her trademark "perceptiveness, delicacy of language, and sharp wit" (Salman Rushdie) in full evidence here, Anita Desai once again gloriously confirms that she is "India's finest writer in English" (Independent).

About this title

About the Author:

ANITA DESAI is the author of Fasting, Feasting, Baumgartner’s Bombay, Clear Light of Day, and Diamond Dust, among other works. Three of her books have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Desai was born and educated in India and now lives in the New York City area.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Royalty

All was prepared for the summer exodus: the trunks packed, the
household wound down, wound up, ready to be abandoned to three months
of withering heat and engulfing dust while its owners withdrew to
their retreat in the mountains. The last few days were a little
uncomfortable - so many of their clothes already packed away, so many
of their books and papers bundled up and ready for the move. The
house looked stark, with the silver put away, the vases emptied of
flowers, the rugs and carpets rolled up; it was difficult to get
through this stretch, delayed by one thing or another - a final visit
to the dentist, last instructions to the stockbrokers, a nephew to be
entertained on his way to Oxford. It was only the prospect of escape
from the blinding heat that already hammered at the closed doors and
windows, poured down on the roof and verandas, and withdrawal to the
freshness and cool of the mountains which helped them to bear it.
Sinking down on veranda chairs to sip lemonade from tall glasses,
they sighed, 'Well, we'll soon be out of it.'
In that uncomfortable interlude, a postcard arrived - a
cheap, yellow printed postcard that for some reason to do with his
age, his generation, Raja still used. Sarla's hands began to tremble:
news from Raja. In a quivering voice she asked for her spectacles.
Ravi passed them to her and she peered through them to decipher the
words as if they were a flight of migrating birds in the distance:
Raja was in India, at his ashram in the south, Raja was going to be
in Delhi next week, Raja expected to find her there. She would be
there, wouldn't she? 'You won't desert me?'
After Ravi made several appeals to her for information, for a
sharing of the news, she lifted her face to him, grey and mottled,
and said in a broken voice, 'Oh Ravi, Raja has come. He is in the
south. He wants to visit us - next week.'
It was only to be expected that Ravi's hands would fall upon
the table, fall onto china and silverware, with a crash, making all
rattle and jar. Raja was coming! Raja was to be amongst them again!
A great shiver ran through the house like a wind blowing that
was not a wind so much as a stream of shining light, shimmering and
undulating through the still, shadowy house, a radiant serpent, not
without menace, some threat of danger. Whether it liked it or not,
the house became the one chosen by Raja for a visitation, a house in
waiting.
With her sari wrapped around her shoulders tightly, as if she were
cold, Sarla went about unlocking the cupboards, taking out sheets,
silver, table linen. Her own trunks, and Ravi's, had to be thrown
open. What had been put away was taken out again. Ravi sat
uncomfortably in the darkened drawing room, watching her go back and
forth, his lips thin and tight, but his expression one of
helplessness. Sometimes he dared to make things difficult for her,
demanding a book or a file he knew was at the very bottom of the
trunk, pretending that it was indispensable, but when she performed
the difficult task with every expression of weary martyrdom, he
relented and asked, 'Are you all right? Sarla?' She refused to
answer, her face was clenched in a tightly contained storm of
emotion. Despondently, he groaned, 'Oh, aren't we too old - ?' Then
she turned to look at him, and even spoke: 'What do you mean?' Ravi
shook his head helplessly. Was there any need to explain?

Raja arrived on an early morning train. Another sign of his
generation: he did not fly when he was in India. Perhaps he had not
taken in the fact that one could fly in India too, or else he
preferred the trains, no matter how long they took, crawling over the
endless, arid plains in the parched heat before the rains. At dawn,
no sun yet visible, the sky was already white with heat; crows rose
from dust-laden trees, cawing, then dropped to the ground, sun-
struck. Sweepers with great brooms made desultory swipes at the
streets, their mouths covered with a strip of turban, or sari,
against the dust they raised. Motor rickshaws and taxis were being
washed, lovingly, tenderly, by drivers in striped underpants. The
city stank of somnolence, of dejection, like sweat-stained clothes.
Sarla and Ravi stood on the railway platform, waiting, and when Sarla
seemed to waver, Ravi put out a gentlemanly hand to steady her. When
she turned her face to him in something like gratitude or pleading, a
look passed between them as can only pass between two people married
to each other through the droughts and hurricanes of thirty years.
Then the train arrived, with a great blowing of triumphant whistles:
it had completed its long journey from the south, it had achieved its
destination, hadn't it said it would? Magnificently, it was a promise
kept. Immediately, coolies in red shirts and turbans, with legs like
ancient tree roots, sprang at the compartments, leaping onto the
steps before the train had even halted or its doors opened, and the
families and friends waiting on the platform began to run with the
train, waving, calling to the passengers who leaned out of the
windows. Sarla and Ravi stood rooted to one place, clinging to each
other in order not to be torn apart or pushed aside by the crowd in
its excitement.
The pandemonium only grew worse when the doors were unlatched and the
passengers began to dismount at the same time as the coolies forced
their way in, creating human gridlock. Sighting their friends and
relatives, the crowds on the platform began to wave and scream. Till
coolies were matched with baggage, passengers with reception parties,
utter chaos ruled. Sarla and Ravi peered through it, turning their
heads in apprehension. Where was Raja? Only after united families
began to leave, exhorting coolies to bring up the rear with assorted
trunks, bedding rolls and baskets balanced on their heads and held
against their hips, and the railway platform had emerged from the
scramble, did they hear the high-pitched, wavering warble of the
voice they recognized: 'Sar-la! Ra-vi! My dears, how good of you to
come! How good to see you! If you only knew what I've been through,
about the man who insisted on telling me about his alligator farm,
describing at length how they are turned into handbags, as though I
were a leather merchant . . .' and they turned to see Raja stepping
out of one of the coaches, clutching his silk dhoti with one hand,
waving elegantly with the other, a silver lock of hair rising from
his wide forehead as he landed on the platform in his slippered feet.
And then the three of them were embracing each other, all at once,
and it might have been Oxford, it might have been thirty years ago,
it might even have been that lustrous morning in May emerging from
dew-drenched meadows and the boat-crowded Isis, with ringing out of
the skies and towers above them - bells, bells, bells, bells . . . .

Copyright (c) 2000 by Anita Desai. Reprinted by permission of
Houghton Mifflin Company. First published in Great Britain in 2000 by
Chatto & Windus.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 061804213X
• ISBN 13: 9780618042135
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224