An Ocean in a Well - Book Review

 

An Ocean in a Well, a collection of 10 stories by D Ravikumar, translated from Tamil by V Ramakrishnan dwells on the personal and political, emotional and practical, straightforward and symbolic, ethereal and real with equal rigour. The opening story Thambi is about a young, homeless man who bites the hand that feeds him. Stories ‘Fact Finding’ and ‘A Death and Some More’ portray how caste-based violence is rife even today when ‘development’ is the loudest mantra. ‘Zha, the Unique letter’, a satirical take on today’s language wars shows how the state alters the definition of ‘sedition’ to further its agenda. The usage of Tamil letter ‘zha’ is banned in this story and the author subtly shows how this seemingly innocuous step thwarts the language itself.

Stories ‘An Ocean in a Well’, ‘Untimely’, ‘The Moon Pond’ that delve into man-woman relationship - of a mother who speaks to her son with her eyes, of lovers who meet briefly one last time before going opposite ways, of a man & a woman who share dreams and exchange poems are top favorites. The emotions in here wring your heart and the evocative descriptions of land, air and water elevate the reading experience. ‘The Word’, more like an essay, went over my head. On writers, avid readers, biblioklepts, the story ‘The Theory Concerning Theft’, pretty interesting, made me look up details of author Jean Genet.

Be it in dealing with a cultural innuendo in the story ‘Kulfi’ or in rendering a natural or emotional scape, the translation is excellent giving us readers pellucid prose. Just a comparison, a line and a poem from ‘The Moon Pond’ would suffice as proof -

“Hearing him speak always felt like reading a translated novel. The foreignness of his language was enchanting. It was impossible to fix his locale from his speech. It was a fusion of various dialects.

‘.. do not try to recollect, for you are your memory’.

‘All inventions have their origin in words;

We are but their tributaries.

They label us firmly as we label them.

Words of joy, words of misery,

Words of rejection, words of hope,

words for things, words for people,

Words for the universe, and words for nothing.

And behind it all, there is life, tranquil or tough,

with death waiting to spring on you anytime….’

Writing, both an act of resistance and catharsis, can assuage strong emotions on one hand & keep the inner fire burning on the other. That the written word can break boundaries and tackle reductionist ideas is what the author D Ravikumar firmly believes in. In his note at the start of this collection of ten of his stories, he writes ‘The stereotypes created about a race on social, political and cultural levels play an important role in keeping that race enslaved.’ He shares that the notion that Dalits couldn't create complex creative works and had only their life stories to tell, reinforced by what was written, translated and published until then, irked him and gave birth to these stories. The book, published under the aegis of TNTB & ESC, attempts to highlight voices and literary contributions of writers from Adi Dravidar & tribal communities. 

(Thanks to the publishers for providing a review copy in return for an honest opinion)

Books Read in Nov-Dec 2025

Here are the books I read during the months of November and December 2025. 

 

Books Read in Aug-Oct 2025

Books I read in the months of August, September and October 2025 - 

Favourite Stories (Part 3)

 

Sharing a few thoughts on a favorite story from this book. The story's titled Birdsong at Twilight. 

“I have never heard of this odd hobby for women. Do embroidery or baking, not this silly bird-watching. People will think you are strange. Don't start bird watching and forget about the children.”

Naina, mother to nine-year old twins Radha and Ravi, gets scolded by her mother as she tries hard to catch a glimpse of a verditer flycatcher. Naina loves to watch birds, and is always armed with a pair of binoculars. The orchards with plum and peach trees washed clean by the rain, the dense forest of deodars and pine beyond her home in the mountains are very inviting, so unlike their tiny apartment in Delhi. Naina decides to take her children for a walk into the forest before it gets dark. She hopes to spot a kalij pheasant that has constantly eluded her. Her friend, single and carefree, had managed to not only spot one but capture photographs of so many other birds. Oh! how she wished she had just a day for herself, all the time bird watching and doing nothing else!

Naina turns lucky that day for she spots a kalij pheasant. But as she turns around to share her excitement with her children who had been following her, she finds herself alone. Her children are missing. Where could they go when they were behind her all along whispering things to each other? Suddenly, the emerald fortress of the forest feels incarcerating. Did the kids fall in the ravine, was there a leopard or a bear around? Extremely anxious and drenched by a wave of panic, Naina sees a male kalij pheasant walking with a female and little chicks behind him in front of her, in her full view. It feels like the bird family was mocking her.

The Himalayan barbet and whistling thrush too make an appearance before her, the bird song gets louder. All this that would have given immense joy to Naina, only feel intimidating now. She wants her children safe and back, nothing else. Of course, she spots them after a few minutes, a period that feels like a lifetime,  eating juicy wild plums merrily by the stream. And, everything ends well.

How many times have we moms wanted to have some time for ourselves, yearned for it with all our heart to do something we like? And yet when stars align or luck favours, we wish against it and want nothing of that sort. We try to cling to our interests carefully as we know how difficult the path is that separates it from our responsibilities. How hard it is, to master this act of jugglery, right ?

Favourite Stories (Part 2)

 

Have you ever made a wish while blowing away a stray, fallen eyelash?

In Swimmer Among The Stars, a collection of stories by Kanishk Tharoor, the story ‘The Fall of an Eyelash’ has a protagonist Forough who leaves her country while she is a college student and reaches a foreign nation, her place of refuge, after a long journey of crossing many borders. 

“Most people were kind to Forough, but kindness is sometimes easier to give than to receive. They found the story of her voyage so courageous that they insisted she tell it over and over again. This exhausted her and offered further proof, as if she needed it, that while an exile can escape her country, she can never escape her exile.”

She studies and later teaches medieval poetry of her homeland, this makes her miss her home every single day until she marries Jonas and settles down to a predictable, comfortable and a nearly ‘no-complaints’ life in the foreign nation that embraces her. Going back to her homeland to visit her family wasn't just a distant dream but an impossible one, and she knew it. 

One day Jonas teaches her a little superstition - make a wish and blow away an eyelash when you spot a fallen one. Forough’s big dreams of seeing her family and homeland couldn't obviously rest upon an inconspicuously tiny, thin eyelash. But one day, after the superstition becomes a casual and routine affair, she wishes to meet her brother. And the next day she receives news that her younger brother would be sent by the desert route across the border and reach her eventually after a week's time. 

Can a small eyelash have so much power? Why didn't she realise this before, why did she waste many an eyelash wishing for insignificant things like a cloudless sky or a favourite football club win. Can the country that offered her asylum be her brother's too? Can wishes riding on fallen eyelashes unite families displaced and distanced by war and political turmoil? 

The Fall of an Eyelash is probably one of the most ordinary/very plain stories one would have read, nothing clearly gut wrenching or supremely tender about it that leaves a lasting impact. But as a person who practices this little superstition of blowing away fallen eyelashes and making wishes with closed eyes, convincing even family members to do the same, this story has stayed with me since I read it years back. 

Swimmer Among The Stars is a bundle of stories that boasts of elegant writing. At places, it runs the risk of getting tedious too. But what's undoubtedly impressive is the sheer range of topics/themes the collection encompasses, with each story offering something very different.