Rebecca Lloyd, World Fantasy Award nominee and winner of the New Fictions Prize 2016, speaks on Wrinkles in Memory

I came to know Debalina Haldar, the author of this book, when I was employed by Thames River Press, to be the developmental editor of her novel, The Female Ward. I had been involved with the publisher through my editing work with Indira Chandrasekhar on our anthology, Pangea, an Anthology of Stories from Around the Globe. Both of these books are now with Thames River Press’s sister imprint, Union Bridge Books. 

The early version of The Female Ward was certainly intriguing, but the book had quite a way to go before it could be considered a finished and publishable manuscript. So we worked on it with gusto, and once we came to know each other’s methods and ways of thinking, we worked very well together. When we had completed the project, I know I missed working with Ms Haldar, and I remember that time now with fondness. We never met in person; everything we achieved took place online, and we didn’t communicate through Skype. So it was a tremendous pleasure for me to be able to meet her in Mumbai in January of 2013.

I read the stories in Wrinkles in Memory with great interest, as writing the short story is a very different craft to that of writing novels, and being a short story writer myself, I have a critical eye for the quality of short stories. Although no two stories in this collection are alike — each can stand alone— they are bound together through the theme of reminiscence. Perhaps for that very reason, the collection includes many fond stories, some stories of regret, and some of loss. One of the writing skills Ms Haldar shows in this collection is that she can create a smooth transition from past events or memories back into the present time — a very necessary skill in a set of stories based around the theme of memory.

Overall, this is a balanced collection and one in which the author’s compassion and well as her ability to acutely observe is well demonstrated. Some of the stories are sentimental, and often Ms Haldar’s strong feeling against injustice and inequality in her society is clearly shown. One of the characteristics of her writing is that she can write about sad or unfortunate situations but very often ends a story on a note of hope. She is not afraid to tackle serious issues directly, as in the poignant, prize-winning story, Shackles of the Night Sky, which was her response to learning about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Or, The Empty Title, in which a beggar child and a wealthy young woman have in common the fact that they both have hard finger tips, the beggar child from a life of poverty, and the young woman because she is a musician who plays a guitar.

Although the stories themselves are not over-burdened with extraneous matter, Ms Haldar has a fine eye for small detail. I was particularly struck by a line about Mumbai in The Blue Sky Steps in which Mumbai is ‘a land with hidden sky, detached moon and aloof trees.’ Not only is the sentence succinct, but it is arrestingly memorable and shows her grasp of things poetic. This particular story is one of several sweet and sad tales of loss and growing up. Another such is, The Old Giant, which although a sad story, has a terrific ending. And again, I was in admiration of this passage: ‘The part of the sari was a beautiful maze of golden threads, little glass pieces and sequins. There was a very narrow space between the threads and sequins for the cloth to breathe. It was his mother’s, he recalled.’

Another element of Ms Haldar’s work that I am drawn to is her descriptive writing. Most, if not all of these stories have, even if only in a handful of words, passages about the sun, the colours in nature, the effects of wind — and her descriptions of the natural world often lends atmosphere and sometimes drama to her stories. So in The Old Giant: ‘Sunlight seeped diamond-shaped through the leaves of the trees that lined the Thakurnagar Hospital.’

As well as beauty and gentleness, Ms Haldar can turn her hand to sinister stories such as When the Trunk Creaks which has tantalisingly little backstory within it, but it is this very fact, I think, that lends weight to its darkness. The story is told in the first person through the eyes of a male character and is testimony to the fact that Ms Haldar is able to write male as well as female characters convincingly. Indeed, part of a writer’s work is to become practised in writing from the point-of-view of the other gender so that the reader believes in the character. Again, in Stubborn, another story with a good ending, the main character is a man struggling with his broken marriage.  In this story, it would seem that the couple did not heed the advice of her mother who said: ‘‘… that little things in relationships fuse into one another, and form something like huge, big boulders that can no longer be removed.’’

I see Ms Haldar as a true romantic writer in the old sense of that word where ‘romantic’ does not relate only to lovers. A number of her characters, the very poor ones most particularly, have some of the heroic qualities found in old romances. By-lane Dreamers, another award-winning story, is about two boys from the slums who work to make enough money to go to Nicco leisure park. But as no one else will get into the toy boat they are in on the lake— to complete the set of four passengers needed— the manager, not believing they have legitimate tickets, gets a guard to throw them out of the park.

Perhaps the most heroic of Ms Haldar’s characters living in poverty are to be found in Little Crayons at the Black Gate in which Raju and her older sister, Deepali, who live in a roadside shack made from sheets of plastic, do not feel they are entitled to new crayons: ‘…children in school have better bigger newer crayons. We can have the smaller used ones.’

As if to throw into relief the stories about poor people, this collection includes The All-Rounder, about how being rich doesn’t necessarily make you happy— how obsession with money, or ‘financial intoxication’ can make you forget what your children need from you. In conclusion, there is much in this collection to stir the reader into thoughtfulness, and I hope to see Ms Haldar go from strength to strength in her writing over the years.

(From left to right: Alokananda Roy, Raja Sen, Debalina Haldar)