Before I read this anthology of Gujarati pulp fiction, I had read very little of Gujarati literature in translation, and none of that belonged to the category of pulp fiction. As a first-time reader of Gujarati pulp fiction, I was pleasantly surprised by the length, breadth, and variety of works that have been produced in the genre in Gujarati over the decades.
The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction is one of the latest entries in Blaft Publications’ fiction anthology series, which includes the previously published three volumes of Tamil pulp fiction and the more recent The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF. This particular volume is clearly a labour of love and ambition. The anthology covers a considerable time span and includes works in the genre that were written as early as 1924 and as recently as 2023. In covering this period of almost a century, Vishwambhari S. Parmar, who has translated the works into English, has chosen writings by various authors, of various lengths, and belonging to different sub-genres. This gives readers a detailed picture of the pulp writing scene, both as it was and as it has grown and changed to date.
No review of the book can be complete without a mention of that jazzy, zany cover that so innovatively uses elements close to Gujarati culture and blends them seamlessly with science fiction and pulp tropes. The cover itself is bound to draw a large number of readers to this book, which has been beautifully produced and curated. The anthology consists of short stories as well as three novella-length works. One of these three was serialised in a popular magazine during its original publication, while another is a novelisation of a radio play. Besides these, the book is enriched by the inclusion of jokelets, book covers, blurbs, and, in one case, the reproduction of the original sketches that had accompanied a work upon its initial serialisation. The works featured in the anthology mostly belong to the genres of science fiction, horror, and the uncanny, but there are also tales of revenge, along with stories that simply pack a twist in the tail, delighting and surprising readers with their unexpected resolutions.
The oldest story, published in 1924, titled “A Message from the Stars,” is by an author named Narad about whom nothing is known except his name. The story is a science fiction romantic tale that begins with a young professor’s attempt to establish communication with other worlds and ends in matrimony. Another older story, titled “The Invisible Enemy,” by Kalidas Jadav, is about an alien spaceship that has landed on earth and the havoc that is caused by the organism found inside. The introduction to the story points out how “The Invisible Enemy” seems to be inspired by “Invisible Monsters” by John Benyon Harris, but is far from being an exact copy. One of the longer works included in the book, Bansidhar Shukla’s “Varunlok: The Undersea Realm” is part science fiction, part adventure story, and has at its centre the sighting of mermaid-like creatures, which leads to an investigation by a group of scientists—who are then captured by the creatures of the Varunlok, or the undersea realm, and kept imprisoned. The tale contains all the elements needed to thrill its readers, including people in distress, monsters, threats to life and freedom, and, finally, a heroic rescue. My favourite piece in the entire collection, however, was Viru Purohit’s short story “Hello.” This is a story of alienation, of being increasingly cut off from human touch and human contact—and, ultimately, of even forgetting what it means to be a human in a world that has come to be dominated increasingly by machines. In a certain way, the story seems to echo the current preoccupation with AI overtaking the world and rendering humans adrift and alone.
While science fiction finds ample representation through these stories, the uncanny also comes into play, and most prominently in H. N. Golibar’s “The Coils of Fate.” This is the longest entry in the anthology, and is accompanied by the original illustrations that were published alongside the work upon its initial serialisation. The story revolves around an otherwise ordinary man, Nilesh, who realises that his dreams about people getting murdered have begun turning into reality. As the story progresses, his attempts to stop these killings from happening make the plot even knottier and lead Nilesh and his family into more and more complicated and complex situations. “The Coils of Fate” is also a work that reveals the weakness of the genre, however, primarily because of its length. While the work might have read well in a serialised format where more and more “events” had to be added to it to keep the story going and readers hooked, when read in one go the story begins to feel repetitive, and the events cyclical and recurrent. This dilutes the reader’s enjoyment of the story after a few initial pages. However, this is not the case with shorter and crisper pieces here, like stories by Ekta Nirav Doshi, Kanu Bhagdev, and Varsha Adalja that cover genres like horror, crime, the uncanny, or a mixture of these.
Vibhavari Verma’s “Bar Dancer” is another of the longer pieces, and the only one that is set in contemporary times. It is a love story and a revenge story rolled into one. Featuring a woman who was once a bar dancer in Mumbai (that is, before the bars were shut down)—and who now works as a maid trying to make ends meet—“Bar Dancer” reminded me of a typical Bollywood film, in which twists and turns abound, the good are rewarded and the bad punished, and the ending is essentially a happy one with love just around the corner. “Bar Dancer” is also the only piece here that features a woman protagonist and can be read as a story where the companionship and friendship between women help the characters triumph over their troubles. In most of the collection’s other works, women tend to play second fiddle at best. Often, they are conspicuous by their absence, either throughout entire works or during key points on which the plots depend. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by “A Message from the Stars”—again, the oldest story included here—in this respect. This is not just because a woman character plays a key role in playing a successful prank on a physics professor who she feels has become more interested in his experiments than teaching his classes; but also because the woman in question is a master’s student in science, something not very common in that era—and, according to the rest of these stories, also rare in every period following.
A greater sense of inclusivity along the lines of class, caste, and religion also feels necessary, although the latter-day pieces do seem to improve in that regard, which is a welcome change. Indeed, reading the works included here also gives an idea of cultural values and mores changing alongside questions and fears that plague a community through the ages. While the earlier works might sometimes display a propensity to be inspired by their Western counterparts, one detects a vein of originality in even those—and this sense of inventiveness seems to be getting only stronger with the passage of time.
In her translator’s note, Vishwambhari S. Parmar talks about Gujarati reading culture and informs her readers that, despite some sixty million Gujaratis worldwide, the number of readers who read in their mother-tongue is constantly shrinking as more and more people turn to English as the means of teaching for their children, with Hindi becoming their second language. In such a scenario, an anthology like this plays an important role in bringing more readers to the rich and varied world of purely entertaining, juicy pulp fiction that doesn’t find much place or acceptance in mainstream literary and cultural narratives. As Parmar tells her readers, when people learnt of her undertaking, the most often-asked question was “why I was wasting time on pulp instead of ‘proper’ literature,” a fact that makes clear there exists a sense of demarcation between what is considered good and what is considered (and a very Indian concept, here) “time-pass” literature. The question also seems to determine in the mind of the majority that which deserves translation and that which does not. One hopes that, despite this majoritarian view, we shall see more pulp fiction anthologies by Blaft Publications.