A Review on Dangling Gandhi

- by   Valerie Dümpelmann, Germany

        These twelve short stories are always interesting and entertaining and with their frequent twists and turns grip your attention. Although complete in themselves they leave me, as the reader, curious, wanting to know more, my feelings touched and sometimes tantalized. The stories reference events from the mid 19th century to the present age of What’s Up, Facebook, questions of gender, etc. Consequently the background to these stories takes in the colonial masters, the Fall of Singapore, Indian Partition, Burmese Wars and the highly developed, prosperous Republic of Singapore of today. They also show the ethnic diversity - Malay, Chinese, Tamil, British, Japanese.

       

        Conversations which occur in a social context also fill you in on the politics and local situation of the time; as do a letter written by a protagonist or a newspaper article. The structure of a story is often quite complex, and this method, or ruse even, contributes to the development and understanding of developments.

       

        The stories are also often concerned with the difficulties of immigration and touch on assimilation, maintaining identity, identifying with your mother tongue. They have a great variety. We, the readers, for example, are either taken along in a taxi, observing a family in domestic surroundings, are on a bus journey, searching for a book in a library, in a school, or the midst of power politics in a newspaper office. Readers are confronted with the dramas and tragedies caused by humans themselves, by natural disasters such as flood and earthquakes, and by international politics and wars beyond the control of the individual. The cultural diversity, different religions, inheritances, beliefs, and customs open our eyes and make us think. Personally, I found the story ‘Mobile Dictionary’  the most affecting from the information and the way it was conveyed and from its infinite sadness.

       

        But each story has its surprises, whether it is the kindness shown by a little insect-loving boy to an elderly foreign couple, or why there is a dangling Gandhi in a taxi or the use of a peacock feather fan. I am still puzzling over who wrote the diary entry at the end of the story ‘Mother’ which begins with a letter written in 1866 and ends with this diary entry in 1980 and were as a sign of hope the globe has survived.

       

        I hope lots of readers will receive as much enjoyment and food for thought as I have.

(Read and review sent by email during May 2019, pre publication)