The book is called
Excess but one can’t say that it is excessively interesting. It’s a mixed collection of a few very touching stories, some pedestrian and some plain banal.
Manjula Padmanabhan’s blood-curdling story,
Feast, about a vampire that has a free run of bodies to feast upon, stands apart from the above. Masquerading as Andrew Morton, a vampire from Europe who lands in Delhi finds he can drink to his heart’s content from Indian bodies without ever getting caught. In fact, nobody ever misses the dead bodies which he cuts up and dumps in garbage bins after he has sucked out all the blood from their passive bodies. “It’s a system based on infinite abundance, in which nothing and no one matters because there is always more where it came from,” explains Cindy, another vampire. “They don’t fear us,” she continues, “because they know in their deepest hearts that their sheer numbers will prevail.”
Is this story about the ease with which invaders, down the years, have looted India’s riches? Or is it about India’s spiritual triumph over all marauders? Indians, they say, never die completely. They get reborn. And with each re-birth hope springs afresh. ‘Feast’ is an intriguing story that gives you goose bumps.
Full review
here DNA
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