Although nothing is common in 22 stories of Biopeculiar by Gigi Ganguly, a speculative twist of the sub-genre of cli-fi (climate fiction), they are united by a strong undercurrent of empathy for the life around us. Life, not life. These stories carry a grain of empathy; Ganguly has embossed it into every word, every paragraph that these stories carry. Apart from empathy, two sentiments vein through the entire collective: melancholy and chaos.
There is a sense of loss in Ganguly’s world she weaves in Biopeculiar. A sense of loss for lives gone by, a sense of loss for things going haywire in the now and a sense of loss for the lives that will be lost, the ones that are doomed anyway.
This loss is reflected in the thread of each of her stories. She has flicked a little bit of soul into her words, sending them out to distribute it to generate more kindness, to pull more empathy out of the world that is more stone and less tears.
In a short story ‘Talkers’ by Manjula Padmanabhan’s ‘Stolen Hours and Other Curiosities’, she writes about two aliens who visit Earth for the second time to give all non-human entities the power of speech. Ganguly has done the same in Biopeculiar: give a power of expression to the ones who can’t speak, right from birds to silkworms, otters to tigers, trees to sea and polar bears and whatnot. Here you meet tigers who take you on time travel, leotard wearing superhumans who tame you, birds inspecting an avian murder, a man metamorphosing into an insect and on and on.
The story that kickstarts the collection, ‘Head in the Clouds’ is about a cloud-herder on the verge of retirement. He is trying to locate a missing cloud, fearing theft by cloud seeding companies. When I read this story, it somehow evoked nostalgia in me for a thing I haven’t even experienced and will never will. That’s the power of speculative fiction. It tugs at your heartstrings with a rope of inks and words.
In ‘Call for Kelp’, a scientist finds her consciousness trapped in an otter and wishes to eat oysters. In ‘Toothache’, an old man gets a chance at redemption through a most curious time travelling machine ever. Sort sol begins with something as innocuous as bird watching and ends up at something completely otherworldly, making an ordinary housewife its hero.
‘Ceaselessly Sea Follows’ is one of the shortest but most powerful and poetic stories of all. It talks about ceaseless hunger of sea. It’s the story of the sea which flows on overpopulated lands, gobbling up not just sand and trash but ‘hopes and griefs’ too. Yet, the sea is never satiated and hungers for more.
Read on.
“One day, it knows, the balance will tip over… And the sea will finally be able to gulp down cars, plants, restaurants, elephants, bridges, eggs, cushions, tails, clowns, wings, fans, whiskers, hair, skin, eat the Earth whole. And then finally, it will be full.”
In one of my favourite stories ‘Cocoon’, a group of friends spend a night at a silkworm farm and one of them comes out different. Although a review of Hindustan times describes this story as something malevolent, decrying it as an example of endless human appetite for resources, I feel my interpretation is quite different. Ganguly gave an empathetic twist to the narrative and even a group of good-for-nothing bong boys came out shining in empathy and compassion. At least lots of silkworms were saved from a horrific boiling death!
In ‘The Corvid inspector’, the longest of the collection, a crow investigates the death of a haughty, raven restauranteur. Told from multiple POVs, I thought this was the weakest of the lot. The story has novelty indeed, but it felt dragging.
In ‘Losing’, Ganguly has put a twist on Taansen. The weather department is losing their shit because their malhar singer is retiring. Even though she could lose her voice, she is made to sing and bring rain again and again. Weird and melancholic, this story is one of the most effective of the lot.
One of the good things about short stories is that you can finish them quickly. It’s a blessing if a story is a drag, but a loss if the story is a banger. There are all kinds of stories here, something for everyone. Don’t forget to pick it up.
In a world marred by so much change, Ganguly does well to capture the emotional turmoil that natural change brings with it.
