Poles Apart on the Same Bed: Twenty-Nine Selected Short Stories

Here’s a fine selection of Alexander Raju’s stories written over thirty years—ranging between the stories of a tyro giving expression to his idealistic perspective of the world and the society he lives in and intensely feels about, and those of a cynical angry man in quarrel with the world and its ways. They are poles apart also in the sense that the stories do not belong to any particular school: they range from humorous musings on the stupidity of men and women of his social milieu to harsh diatribes against the many evils rampant in his society. The most emotionally appealing are the author’s renditions of the plight of the helpless female, sexually exploited by the male-dominated society. They are particul-arly poignant since they fictionalize not any feminist idea, but everyday reality we witness in our quotidian existence. Despite the universality of their themes, these stories falling under different heads have one binding chord: they relate to the social realities of Kerala, the south Indian state.