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Under the Cover: “Lives entwined” – the migration stories in Remaindered People
Pratap Reddy shares how immigrating to Canada fuelled his writing, especially of his collection about immigrant experiences Weather Permitting & Other Stories. He walks us through the stories in its companion, Remaindered People & Other Stories (Guernica Editions), which looks at the lives of those left in home countries.
Remaindered People & Other Stories is the companion piece to my earlier collection Weather Permitting & Other Stories. Remaindered is my fourth book, and in between these two collections, I have published a novel and a book of poems.
My childhood dream of becoming a writer came true after I migrated to Canada from India. The unimagined and unexpected barriers faced by newcomers to Canada stimulated my creative side. I wove tales of fiction about these challenges – stuff like not finding employment in your line of work, hirers’ insistence on Canadian experience, one’s credentials not getting recognized, the astronomical cost of daycare – to say nothing of culture shock.
Even then, I knew that this was only half the story. The immigrant’s journey starts long before they set foot in a new country. And the immigrant’s story is not solely about the person who migrates: there are tales of other lives entwined with theirs. In my new collection, I train my sights on the other side of immigration – aspects which never get talked about or written about.
‘Remaindered People’ is about an empty-nester who has to spend the remaining part of his life in loneliness after his children have flown the coop – one leaving for Canada and the other to Norway. In ‘Sweet Memories,’ an older woman is compelled to leave India and move to Canada on a temporary long-term visa because of her failing health. In ‘Finding Kitty,’ a family returns to India because the father is unsuccessful in finding suitable employment even after years of trying, making his young daughter, who spent most of her growing years in Canada, a stranger in her own land. In ‘A Portrait of My Mother,’ a widow and a victim of terrorism in India bundles off her only daughter to Canada – a relatively safe haven, but the threat of international terrorism still haunts the young woman. In ‘Storm in a Teacup,’ a young man of Indian origin who moves to India on a work assignment discovers that age-old superstitions and modern India go hand in hand. In ‘The Dreams of Gods and Men,’ an impoverished orphan yearns to immigrate to Canada, but fate has other plans in store for him.
On another note, while all the stories in the collections strictly conform to the theme of migration, I have attempted to introduce variety by trying out genres other than literary fiction. “Nachurees Tenrupees” is a detective story about an unnatural death during Diwali celebrations. “Asita’s Valentine” is speculative fiction inspired by the Indian epic Ramayana. “Carrion Birds” is a satire on age-old Indian customs and age-old avarice. “The Lime Tree”, a tale about unidentical twins separated by migration, is part prose, part poem. There’s even a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes in “A Mouthful of Sherry”.
Overall, in these stories I explore the concerns of people whose lives are affected by their family members leaving for foreign shores. Though they are not central to the saga of immigration, they are impacted by the phenomenon, nevertheless.
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An underwriter by day and a writer by night, Pratap Reddy writes about the angst and the agonies (on occasion the ecstasies) of newly arrived immigrants. Ramya’s Treasure is his first novel, having previously published the short story collection Weather Permitting & Other Stories with Guernica. He lives in Mississauga with his wife and son.
