IndiaStar: A Literary-Art Magazine     The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, 1947-1997 Edited by Salman Rushdie and Elisabeth West First published in Great Britain by Vintage, 1997 ISBN 0099731010   Reviewed by Manjeet Singh (Editor's intro: Manjeet Singh is a Paris-based writer.)   With this book, Salman Rushdie and Elisabeth West set themselves the difficult task of chronicling fifty years of Indian writing. However, they achieve this only partially because the collection almost totally ignores Indian writing in Indian languages. A more appropriate name for this anthology would be "Indian writing in English." Rushdie explains the omission by arguing that there are no decent translations in English of Indian authors writing in their native languages. Also, he and West only considered material in English because they could not commission translations. One wonders whether an anthology that ignores writers of the caliber of Nirmal Verma, O.V. Vijayan, V.R. Ananthamurthy, Amrita Pritam, Surya Kaul et al, can at all pretend to represent Indian writing. Another glaring omission is that of the distinguished novelist, short-story writer, historian, and columnist Khuswant Singh. Here Rushdie has no excuse: Singh writes in English and has most significantly contributed to both Indian writing in English and translations from Indian languages such as Punjabi and Urdu. In his introdutory essay, Rushdie lashes out at his critics and understates his immense debt to G.V.Desani, the master innovator. Rushdie laments Naipaul's refusal to be included in the selection (Naipaul, Rushdie later explained in an interview, dislikes "tags"). Naipaul's decision prompts Rushdie to indulge in comments on certain excerpts of Naipaul's work. Reading his essay, one feels compelled to conclude that just as in his novels, Rushdie seeks in his non-fiction work to intentionally provoke in order to generate controversy. Several of my non-Indian friends have asked me what has happened to the native languages in India! Such deliberate disinformation (for non-Indians) and provocation (for Indians) is vintage Rushdie. The only work written in an Indian language included in this anthology is Saadat Hasan Manto's short story "Toba Tek Singh." This story focuses on the turbulence generated by the announcement in a Lahore lunatic asylum of the upcoming transfer of Sikh and Hindu inmates to India. The distress of the inmates is skillfully shown by Manto and higlights the absurdity of the partition. The following paragraph perfectly illustrates this: "One inmate had got so badly caught up in this India-Pakistan-Pakistan-India rigmarole that one day, while sweeping the floor, he dropped everything, climbed the nearest tree and installed himself on a branch, from which vantage point he spoke for two hours on the delicate problem of India and Pakistan. The guards asked him to get down; instead he went a branch higher, and when threatened with punishment, declared: "I wish to live neither in India nor in Pakistan. I wish to live in this tree." The predicament of Bishan Singh, a Sikh inmate, who has been confined to the asylum for the last fifteen years is particularly poignant. Informed of the planned exchange of inmates, Bishan Singh begins to ask everyone whether Toba Tek Singh, his ancestral village, is in Pakistan or India. This great story is a touching account of brutal happenings during the partitioning of India. The extract from Kamala Markandaya's novel "Nectar in a Sieve" is a cruel, heart- wrenching tale of desperation and hunger intertwined with cheating spouses and blackmail. Rukmani, is the wife of Nathan, a peasant whose paddy is wilting away because of the lack of rain. Swaji, the landlord's agent comes to collect his master's dues. Seeing the predicament of the peasant couple, he agrees to accept only half of the dues that Nathan and Swaji manage to pay by virtually selling all their belongings. When the peasant couple runs out of food, Rukmani draws upon her secret hoard of a small quantity of rice. Enter Kunthi, the blackmailer, who demands Rukmani to feed her with a portion of this precious rice everyday otherwise she'd report Rukmani's infidelity to her husband Nathan. Markandaya shows the plight of the Indian peasant, and his overdependence on the climate to ensure a good harvest. Unfortunately, this continues to be a crucial problem in most of India except in the Punjab. However, despite its powerful depiction of the Indian peasant's lot, Markandaya's writing suffers from the boombastic English that afflicts many Indians writing in English. Her main characters, most of whom are simple, illiterate peasants, use sophisticated words and phrases such as gleanings, meagre, bereft, festering in idleness, etc. Anjana Appachana's short story "Sharmaji' is a delightful and at the same time moving account of the inefficiency that plagues many Indian companies. The central character Sharma, is a clerk who has been working in the company for the last 25 years and has never been promoted since he entered the company. Sharma's superiors are far younger than him, which he resents. Anjana Appachana skillfully shows Sharma's psyche and attitude toward his superiors. This fine story along with Saadat Hasan Manto's "Toba Tek Singh" are the two most memorable short stories in this anthology, even though Satayajit Ray's "Bill" is quite engrossing too. Despite its glaring shortcomings, this anthology of 32 authors, whose common theme is that huge, magic mosiac of emotions, colors and culture -- the Indian sub-continent -- is a good introduction.