Farewell, Mahatma

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One day before he is assassinated, Gandhi steps out of Birla House into newly independent Delhi, wanting his approaching death to be a final, redemptive message; Sasi begins to clean up the crime scene after her lover leaves to arrange for the disposal of her husband's body, but suddenly the wall clock begins to tick backwards, setting off a dramatic reversal of events; resurrected from death by her brother, Nallathangaal roams the forests with her seven children for decades until the love of a carousel man frees her from the curse; Cheenu returns to his beloved wife to find that the years of warped urges in jail have changed him irrevocably.

Farewell, Mahatma brings together ten tales that introduce us to the brilliance and distinctiveness of Devibharathi's imagination and craft. These stories explore the dark and dichotomous realities of our history and present, our social and individual lives, probing themes such as freedom, need, desire and the volatile spaces between man and woman. At once unnerving and illuminating, this is short fiction at its best.

Devibharathi was born and raised in a small village in western Tamilnadu, the second of five children in a schoolmaster's family. He has worked as a political activist, government employee, journalist, managing editor of a leading literary magazine and script-writer for television programmes. During a writing career spanning more than thirty-five years, Devibharathi has published two collections of short stories, a novel, a play, and two non-fiction anthologies containing essays and memoirs. He is currently at work on his second novel. Farewell, Mahatma is his first work of fiction in English translation.

N Kalyan Raman is a well-known translator of contemporary Tamil fiction and poetry. He has so far published six books of Tamil fiction in English translation. His translation of Tamil poetry has been published widely in literary journals and anthologies of Indian poetry. He also contributes book reviews and essays regularly to leading magazines and journals. He lives and works in Chennai.