How is Meera Nair`s debut collection of short stories, Video, comparable to the medium? They are straightforward in language, but not simplistic. They are accessible. There is use for such beautiful clarity. In their most burnishing scenes, these tales carry the sublime tableau of a film, like Satyajit Ray`s Pather Panchali (Song of theRoad, 1955), with human characters, at once, earth-bound and heavenly. Yet, more often, Ray`s style of intimate mystery is set aside for inclusion into the minds of characters who think linear thoughts for memories. Nair`s mastery of narrative travels from the page to my mind as lucid visual imagery I can digest, comprehend, and appreciate, while other tales, such as, A Certain Sense of Place, left me impatient with the predictable outline of plot.

When Meera Nair`s stories, all set in South Asia or the South Asian Diaspora, do capture a tale from its outline to a dreamscape, her work ranges from reveling in ironic humor to revealing the terrible. The story I most enjoyed was the very first titled, Video about a Muslim man who bupon watching an American porn video showing a woman giving fellatio, is obsessed with the desire that his wife do the same to him. In this first tale, Nair has imagined what the sex life of a traditional Muslim couple would be like, and gives creative voice to something that is unspoken and taboo in conservative elements of South Asian culture.

Yet, Nair transcends simply making stereotype figurines out of these characters behind bedroom doors. While Nair presents her characters as amusing, she does not allow them to be puppets. They are active participants and aggressors. Here Nair describes a scene of forced oral sex, but from the point of view of the husband: I could have touched her brain if I`d wanted to, he thought. I was so close to where she lives. Nor does Rasheeda, the wife, become a passive object in turn. In Nair`s style ofironic twists, Rasheeda rejects her husband`s bed and retreats daily to the bathroom, where young wives wait on a long line to hear her dole out advice about how to deal with their husbands. By making Naseer and Rasheeda`s marital life visceral and yet ordinary, the author gives us more than a fairy tale about forbidden fruit, but also gives us the gift of knowledge of what drives human beings.

The subsequent tales are unique and credible in character development, although My Grandfather Dreams of Fences, about a prominent landowner`s inability to share his property is a bit stifled, as if it were carried on the back of that stubborn, patriarchic man who won`t change. A Warm Welcome to the President, Insh‚Allah! takes the news of President Clinton planning to visit Bangladesh — and then not going because the CIA thought it was too dangerous — and creates a playful story from the perspective of the Bangladeshi villagers who build a new toilet for the President, in hopes of his visit. `The Curry Leaf Tree involves an Indian man whose most prized talent is the ability to sniff and determine each and every spice within a dish. Sixteen Days in December is told from the viewpoint of the daughter who attends her father`s funeral and lives through Hindu-Muslim riots in India (and vengeful violence against Muslim women, raped, and families murdered in their homes).

Cinema produces icons such as Bollywood hero, Amitabh Bachchan, a combination of Sean Connery and Harrison Ford in star durability. Video brings Amitabh down to scale in one`s living room. Video can also bring the god Krishna to one`s own room and incite a demanding grandmother to list her complaints to the TV set, as depicted in the Canadian film Masala. Meera Nair`s Video attempts to capture for the eye`s mind, not the heroics of an icon on the big screen, but instead imperfect humans, and she succeeds, in the least, revealing their topography, and at the most, their very personas.