Mallika Hazarika’s Ekshallish: A Variety of Her Musings on Life

Mallika takes each fiction as an experimental ground but her narrative is so graceful that the poetic lyricism is never lost for a moment. The story moves on fast to the climax and this singleness is the essence of a short story. Her art of characterisation is superb. Some minor memories are arranged as a block for playing the game of life.

When she was a student of Class IV, Mallika Hazarika wrote her first story in Mouchak in 1995 as a child prodigy. It was her fictional debut.Her first publication inspired in her a desire to write more. Her borma(aunt) Dipika Hazarika (late)also encouraged her to keep on writing.

Born in 1986 in Dergaon , she grew up as a lonely child. But this loneliness was a blessing in disguise for her.She searched for her companion in books. She studied in DergaonTown Senior Basic School. She passed HS from Dergaon Girl’s Higher Secondary School. Later she graduated from Dergaon Kamal Dowerah College. She did her Masters from IGNOU. Professionally she is a bank official and at present is basedas a Branch Manager of Gramin Vikash Bank,Howly . But herbusy and to some extent monotonous schedule has not been able to dampen her enthusiasm for creativewriting.

In 2017 Mallika Hazarika published her first story collection Nakshatra.Since then,she has been conferred several awards for her writings. She has excelled in story writing competition and bagged a lot of prizes and in such competitions -- almost a passionate pastime in which she can take creative challenges.

Ekshallish (41) is her latest 117 page book of short stories containing 16 stories published towards the end of 2022.

‘Financial stability is the need for every woman. Financial stability and education are primary needs for every woman.”Purbayan published this book from Guwahati in which Mallika created an imaginary world of her own collecting materials from her personal perceptions of reality. In this fictional world things are circumstantial and all the actions of the characters are based on the situational necessity. Sometimescharacters look unusually unconventional although they never imagine the change they will undergo. But when the situation arises, they respond freely without caring much for the social restrictions. This is the logical world of fiction and the logic of reality does not work much here.The titular story ‘41’ or’ Ekshallish’ presents such a situation where the male and femaleprotagonists havean age difference of 41 years -- but age is a concept -- not much of a concrete obstacle if two minds melt in one cauldron of genuine passion. Mallika takes each fiction as an experimental ground but her narrative is so graceful that the poetic lyricism is never lost for a moment. The story moves on fast to the climax and this singleness is the essence of a short story. Her art of characterisation is superb. Some minor memories are arranged as a block for playing the game of life. Apparently, it seems that Archita Bora is a normal studious girl and, in her attentiveness, she drew the attention of all her teachers. Evenher rich classmate girl Mitali could not create the same impact on her teacher Budhin Baruah’s mind. But this attention gradually turned to a deeper passion which Architarealised as something stronger than so called love. The soft passionate mind of Archita is wonderfully suggested by Mallika Hazarika in the story. The society cannot accept it but in this fictional milieu there is nothing unusual and Archita responded in a to be or not to be way and so she is lost. Reality and fiction are after all poles apart .

The other stories in the volume are also no less intriguing and mysterious. There is a philosophic edge in the story ‘XareThoka Ghori’ ( TheAwake Wall Clock) in which the clock on the wall is humanised and it behaves like a human being. Time moves in the surrounding but time is immovable on the wall where the clock is located. The customs, the gadgets , the everyday life pattern, beliefs, all are changing. Only the wall clock remains the same defying time as it ticks off time at the same pace. Many customs and conventions are dead but the only living thing seems to be the wall clock. The narrative style of Mallika is wonderful…,it is deceptively simple but full of connotative imageries. The suggestiveness is found in other stories of the volume as in Kuhipa , Jon, KahinirBinoni, Bebilon , Ballam, Smriti Haladhiya, Surjyo, SamayarAxukh where each story gives us a picture of life in its infinite variety. In the story Adha Gotha Sweater tu the character of Mili is interesting. The generation gap is beautifully portrayed in the story. What is more important in the collection is the art of expression. Mallika knows how to weave the fabric of a tale adroitly. She is realistic and each of the stories tells us facts we earlier knew and did not know. Mallika herself told about the stories in the introduction to the book: The stories belong to our contemporary time.The stories are about life.May be the stories are yours. This intelligent objectivity gives the stories a profound sensitivity and the detached observation lends a veracity to the narrative. As in Jane Austen’s fiction, there is some detachment and love for realistic presentation of the two inches ivory of life. The factuality is fictionalised in such a way that a semblance of truth moves the reader to delve deeper into the meaning of the stories. Sometimes she is nostalgic passionate and full of musings on life, at other times she looks calm and serene in her observation of the smaller facts of life. Literature is the mirror to life and it is also a reflection of life’s happenings. Mallika focuses on the struggles of life and the earlier five years are fossilised in the narratives. The earlier five years saw big changes in the pattern of life lived by people. Mallika tried to catch the pulsation of these fleeting five years in the stories. She depicted the struggles that she saw around her in the life of the people in urban life. But what she ponders upon most is the struggle within our mind. This psychological element is abundantly found in the portrayal of the characters. The complexities of the urban life are well known to Mallika and she takes keen interest in them. Her characters are like her experiments in the laboratory of life and she takes care to note how they react and respond to a given situation. This observation is dispassionate. The printing of the book is perfect and error free proof-reading makes the reading comfortable. But the cover of the book is not satisfactory,it does not fully depictthe content of the book. Jyoti Khataniyar’s Preface to the stories is profoundly written and the correct analysis is provided in the brief space. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes,“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” We may hope to discover such truth in this wonderful collection of short stories.

Dr Ratan Bhattacharjee a Senior Academician and trilingual poet is an International Visiting Professor, USA.