Deep journeys into the psyche with Chaya Bhuvaneswar

Debut short story collection “White Dancing Elephants” by Chaya Bhuvaneswar (Dzanc Books, forthcoming October 2018 and winner of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize) plunges readers deep into the psyche of women—largely South Asian women.

Characters have the darkest corners of their minds exposed (through their own admissions or by omniscient narrators) and what comes forth is usually disagreeable. At the same time, well-trodden narratives about immigration are upended regularly.

The main character in “Jagatishwaran” is a woman who refuses to feel gratitude for or awe of a sister who has emigrated to the U.S. “But it’s my sister who’s the smart one, the doctor lady,” she rants to the reader.

“She thinks of us as dull-witted rice eaters waiting for her borrowed Anglo china plates and blue jeans, silk ties and pantyhose, perfume in fish shaped bottles, white linen napkins and forks so we won’t eat with our hands, expensive bolts of brilliant cloth—smelling slightly of glue, precious…”

This character has holed herself up behind screened partitions on her family’s property where she covertly smokes cigarettes, listens to news programs from the West, and grows increasingly paranoid. It’s as if “Notes from the Underground” was written by a South Asian woman instead of a preachy-Christian Russian man. Safe to say this story is not like anything I’d ever read and I liked being jolted awake by something fresh.

The collection opens with the titular story, on a disorienting note: a woman walks out into London rain. London isn’t quaint—it’s confusing:

“Things are never named reliably, I understand. Boots is not a shop where shoes are sold; Monsoon has nothing to do with India. W.H. Smith isn’t a person but a generic chain of newsstands selling cheap sandwiches and tabloid rags and things called “health foods” like tiger balm, which isn’t made from tigers at all.”

This narrator is just as unreliable, eventually revealing that she is having a miscarriage. She also shares her denial of this fact, by trying to imagine herself still pregnant. The narrator is addressing the fetus lost, with the same raw emotion of Diane di Prima’s “Brass Furnace Going Out.”

One thread that connects each story in this collection is women in pain, South Asian women in the Global North in particular. No matter their particular ailment, characters are flesh and blood and unmistakably human—never fantastical or exotic. Their bodies are real. Their pain feels real.

There are no easy outs here and magical realism won’t save us. “The Story of the Woman Who Fell in Love with Death” starts off written like a myth. Then a modern day reader inside a Starbucks comes into focus. This precocious young man has an older sister—often a victim of violence inside their family home—who has disappeared. The brutalities of life are not glossed over or redeemed by surreal elements or pretty language.

One of Bhuvaneswar’s strengths is developing emotional connections between characters that are clever and subtle. “A Shaker Chair” is narrated by psychoanalyst Sylvia, who at once disdains her patient Maya for paying for her sessions with “bedraggled wads of cash that looked like the contents of the cash register at some filthy curry restaurant,” but also knows that this money can fuel Sylvia’s penchant for rosewood, teak or bamboo furniture—luxuries from Asian culture. Sylvia herself is biracial and surprised at the ugly stereotypes of Asian women she has absorbed and must unpack outside of her sessions with Maya.

These are complex scenarios, to be sure. Each character has a rich and vast inner life, making them seem real. Still, diving into these lives can be overwhelming, especially when Bhuvaneswar delivers lots of information and it all feels emotionally charged.

From “Shaker Chair” again, consider this one paragraph:

“Sylvia’s mother hadn’t grown up hearing language like that about Indians. Sylvia’s grandmother was an old white Democratic fundraiser. Sylvia’s Virginia-born grandfather, the descendant of slaves who’d escaped. Sylvia’s mother listened carefully to Sylvia’s uncharacteristic condemnation of affluent, educated Maya with her Indian doctor parents, listened to Sylvia say ‘this patient’ in an irritated tone of voice—complaining about how offensive it was to have cash dumped on the table every session. About how Maya must think of Sylvia as being a black cleaning lady.”

Those are five densely packed sentences. It can feel like information overload, or like reading a psychoanalyst’s patient chart. Indeed, this story in particular lists all the ways the interactions between these two women are complicated and uncomfortable.

The unspoken rivalry between these two characters does escalate into a disturbing conflict. I believe the 30 pages of exposition leading to this action pays off—but other readers may not hang on throughout all of the psychological profiles to make it to the climax.

I say: steel yourself to go to those deep, dark parts of the internal lives of South Asian women, and let Bhuvaneswar’s emotional subtleties fascinate and challenge you.

 

Laura Eppinger is a Pushcart-nominated writer of fiction, poetry and essay. Her work has appeared at the Rumpus, the Toast, and elsewhere. She the blog editor here at Newfound Journal.