Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, but…

Gogu Shyamala’s stories dissolve borders as they work their magic on orthodox forms of realism, psychic allegory and political fable. Whether she is describing the setting sun or the way people are gathered at a village Council like ‘thickly strewn grain on the threshing floor’, the varied rhythms of a Dalit drum or a young woman astride her favorite buffalo, Shyamala walks us through a world that is at once particular and universal. Set in the madiga quarter of a Telangana village, the stories offer new Propositions on how to see, think and be touched by life in that world. These stories overturn the usual agendas of exit—from the village, from madiga culture, from these little communities—to hold this life up as one of promise for everyone. With her intensely beautiful and sharply political writing, Shyamala makes a clean break with the tales of oppression and misery decreed the true subject of Dalit writing.