![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eventmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Reviews-543_Matin.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSumaiya Matin Reviews:<\/h2>\n
Rabindranath Maharaj<\/strong>, A Quiet Disappearance<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Mawenzi House, 2025 Rabindranath Maharaj\u2019s collection A Quiet Disappearance <\/em>includes 17 stories centred on characters of Caribbean descent who have migrated from or returned to Trinidad. The first story, \u2018A Quiet Disappearance,\u2019 is told from the perspective of a young man witnessing his father\u2019s eventual return to the island. He describes his father as a watchman, with \u2018a wary look pinched into his slim face, his jaw set, and his nostrils seeming to tremble as if he was sniffing out danger or defiance.\u2019 In the last story, \u2018Jahaji Bundle,\u2019 we gain insight into the father\u2019s journey to that decision as well as his feelings of estrangement toward his own family members after migrating:<\/p>\n Raj\u2026viewed his family as ungrateful, not towards him but to their island. He noted how swiftly they had adopted other ways of speaking and dressing, and if he were not so tightened with dismay during these early months, he might have realized that he was angered less by these acts of assimilation than by the conviction that his family had refused to suffer with him\u2026he felt as if he was talking to strangers and he stumbled\u2026He became a watchman. A silent witness to the daily transgressions.<\/p>\n While Raj, the father, sees himself \u2018growing smaller and more irrelevant with each observation,\u2019 his son reflects on \u2018never [having had] time to grow scales\u2019 because his parents were \u2018too consumed by their own struggles.\u2019 The placement of these two stories creates a bookending effect. The ending returns to the beginning, and while closure remains elusive, each offers a view of the tensions that arise from generational differences in the migrant family.<\/p>\n Maharaj plays on a double meaning of \u2018a quiet disappearance,\u2019 which, for the son, speaks to \u2018a blank slate where there should have been joy.\u2019 For the father, these words connote comfort. When he returns to Trinidad, he describes himself \u2018disappearing quietly into an old [life].\u2019 The images are evocative\u2014both father and son do not know each other\u2019s truth as they slowly disappear from the other\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Maharaj acknowledges cultural dislocation and the pressure to assimilate, but his collection deviates from the traditional migrant narrative, which tends to depict a newcomer finding self-acceptance and\/or conventional success. Instead, it offers a meditative unfolding, where family dynamics and characters themselves undergo subtle and emphatic shifts. Maharaj delves into the margins where older migrants are also grappling with deeper questions about purpose, meaning and death alongside their quest for belonging in a new place. His exploration of aging is striking, particularly the shifts in self-perception that come with changes in memory. In \u2018Decades,\u2019 the unnamed protagonist prepares for each upcoming decade of his life by purchasing items he anticipates needing, the thought behind each acquisition extensive. His children, preoccupied with their own lives, \u2018assumed his hoarding was emblematic of all the old men who lived alone. They showed no signs of curiosity in any case.\u2019 During the protagonist\u2019s final moments hooked up on a hospital bed, his consciousness travels to various memories. As his physical brain changes (\u2018perhaps because of the anesthesia or because his syn-apses had begun to misfire\u2019), his consciousness redirects from usual recollections of events to \u2018a crowd lurching from a foggy valley\u2019 and the unpleasant faces of his \u2018former family,\u2019 \u2018 segments of the past\u2026[that he had] learned to forget.\u2019 As he does this, his children at his bedside look at him as \u2018a stranger, and they [wish] they could be somewhere else.\u2019 When the nurse utters \u2018Thukdam<\/em>,\u2019 which is a state in Tibetan Buddhism when consciousness remains in meditation even after clinical death (a high level of spiritual attainment), his daughter only hears a sound like an \u2018impatient drip of water in a tubular cave.\u2019 In the final moment of the protagonist\u2019s departure from the world, I, too, could not help feeling some relief, except only from his growing isolation in a material world. He describes this isolation at the start of his fifth decade of life as \u2018tiny pebbles bubbling close to his skin\u2019 that \u2018fitted him like a threadbare jacket.\u2019<\/p>\n The departures of Maharaj\u2019s protagonists\u2014whether from lands, homes, relationships or the world itself\u2014are haunting. In fact, at times, living feels like a slow process of dying. Portrayals of final departures stir questions about imprints of the soul post death. In \u2018The Teak Toy Trunk,\u2019 a woman who made a \u2018hasty and unplanned escape from the island\u2019 grapples with the loss of her daughter to a shooting outside a club. When her daughter\u2019s father, presumably her former partner, visits from the island to reconnect, she\u2019s prompted to reflect on her decision to leave years earlier. What would have happened if she had chosen to remain? Death and grief ignite private assessments of the self: who one was and has been, relations that could have been, regrets.<\/p>\n In \u2018Senor Sewerpuss and Glamourgoat,\u2019 Mr. Wardle, a recently fired newspaper writer, interviews a grieving mother for an online article. After learning how she lost her influencer daughter to suicide, he notices changes in her and himself. He concludes, \u2018 The departed never really disappear. They hang around as imagined spirits, constantly reanimated by what they have left behind, their lives extended by our grief and desperation\u2026\u2019 Whereas death is a continuation of sorts\u2014a comma\u2014in this story, it is a period in \u2018The Halfway Indian,\u2019 in which Mitra, an elderly relative of the protagonist, struggles with an internalized sense of inadequacy. Despite all his education and his previous privileged position as a government statistician, he airs his prejudices about racial groups and the migrant struggle like a \u2018jaded philosopher.\u2019 It is only in death that his lifelong battle comes to a stop: \u2018Migrants never decloak themselves of their anxieties\u2026They believe they can swing, like on a hammock, between two places. Everything must come to a stop, you see.\u2019<\/p>\n In Maharaj\u2019s collection, departures such as death are not just literal or physical. They also represent dislocation and disconnection from identities, other people or the land; in some cases, they also mark a return. Cumulative losses in the undercurrents of life float into view for characters as they reckon with mortality. Silence or the unsaid symbolize the death of possibilities and connections.<\/p>\n The emotional texture of Pratap Reddy\u2019s 15 short stories in Remaindered People & Other Stories <\/em>recalls van Gogh\u2019s impasto technique: he paints the emotional world of his characters with distinct brushstrokes. Separations, cultural dissonance, discord between generations, unmet expectations and personal loss lead to emotional ruptures. Characters\u2019 experiences are contextualized in the larger migrant struggle against systemic and cultural barriers.<\/p>\n In \u2018Sweet Memories,\u2019 a woman is brought to Canada on a long-term visitor\u2019s visa by her son after he suspects she is in the early stages of dementia. Locked in a basement for safety reasons, she recalls her past life:<\/p>\n She chuckled at the old photographs\u2026There were so many pictures, so many faces with smiles frozen on them. It was as if there was no place for grief in her album\u2026Then she stopped turning the pages and frowned. There was something she was supposed to do\u2026 She groped in her mind but couldn\u2019t put a finger to it.<\/p>\n Like Raj in \u2018A Quiet Disappearance,\u2019 our elderly protagonist looks at photographs as an anchor for self-perception. She looks backward when struggling to look forward, due to her eroding memory but also a sense of meaninglessness. Just as Raj does, she begins to vanish, both literally and physically, from her children and those taking care of her. Reddy grounds this growing distance in a systemic reality: his protagonist doesn\u2019t qualify for state medical insurance, which limits her freedom. The claws of time and disease spare no one, and our material realities complicate matters.<\/p>\n Reddy\u2019s humour differs from Maharaj\u2019s, as it\u2019s more direct, playing on irony and subverting expectations. In \u2018Remaindered People,\u2019 an unemployed man agrees to live with his friend\u2019s father who lives in Hyderabad, India. He plans to write a blog about his time in the house, particularly the gradual decline (and eventual death) of the old man, only to have his own brush against mortality.<\/p>\n Reddy\u2019s exploration of death is rooted in religious and cultural practices, adding layers to the protagonists\u2019 experiences and symbolism to the narrative. In \u2018Carrion Birds,\u2019 relatives of a deceased woman await news of potential inheritances after a cremation. Meanwhile, offerings are made to crows, a Hindu ritual for honouring ancestors and cleansing karma to bring prosperity and blessings into the household. The guests are tortured by the news that most of the inheritance is going to servants, and tortured too by their own hunger\u2014they cannot eat until the crows have.<\/p>\n As in Maharaj\u2019s collection, the characters in Remaindered People <\/em>are grieving loss\u2014of their cultural practices, social roles, expectations or personal agency. They, too, are moved to reassess or change their trajectories, even if the endings to their stories are often open-ended. Both collections offer poignant meditations on overlooked lives, such as those of the elderly, and explore the many nuances of the migrant experience.<\/p>\n \u2014 Sumaiya Matin<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n <\/div>\n
Pratap Reddy<\/strong>, Remaindered People & Other Stories<\/em><\/a>, Guernica Editions, 2025<\/p>\n