In Elizabeth Kottarem's story, "A Bucket of Hot Water", ( Mehbub Gulley, Partridge 2014), Fatima, on her wedding night pleaded aheadache and asked to be left alone. "Fatima spent the night sobbing silently in the dark. The next morning she sat on the bed, huddled in a corner, still crying...Rashid was distraught." He asks their host's wife Nina to find out what was happening. "At last Fatima answered. Her friend Mariam had married a college professor a few months earlier. On the first night of their marriage, he went into the kitchen and heated a tub of water for Mariam. Rashid had not done this." When Rashid heard the reason for the tears, he was dumbfounded."The story has a happy ending, and why not. We've spent a century avoiding happy endings. But Elizabeth Kottarem is no sentimentalist. And though she worked primarily in the area of gender and development in the civil service in India, she never rams her preoccupations down our throats. At least one of her women characters is a con woman. Infidelity is not confined to men. Kottarem's style is simple yet she keeps one absorbed in the fate of her characters through observation, insight, and a sense of humour.In the title story "Mehbub Gulley," Stefan, a tourist from Vienna walks into a book shop swearing because he had stepped into horse dung as he alighted from the rickshaw. "Blasted, dirty city," he muttered. A young girl looked up sharply-..."What do you mean dirty city?" she demanded. When she discovered he had no friends in the city "she decided she needed to take charge of this bleating lamb. She volunteered to take him around the city..." Stefan enjoys riding pillion on Qudsiya's scooter. But he is also nervous about the moral policing he has read about: "Hockey sticks seemed to be rated as the favourite article of accoutrement for men having a higher-than-the average sense of moral outrage in India."On his return to Vienna, Stefan writes a formal letter to Qudsiya's father asking for her hand in marriage. Qudsiya's father had liberal views, but relatives insist on a family council. "In the end it was decided that a team of uncles and aunts and Qudsiya's parents would visit Vienna," and see for themselves whether Stefan's claims about his large house and garden, large income, and large art collection were true. Discreet enquiries would be made about his character. One of the swashbuckling uncles "ordered a dozen hockey sticks...for their use (if the opportunity arose) when they visited the suitor in Vienna. Stefan received the delegation with warmth and hospitality. He was a little alarmed to see that each of the male members of the team carried a hockey stick..."In "Untouched by Hand," "young Doctor Innocent was not so very innocent." It was when he was posted as an intern in a Bangalore hospital, that Casanova Innocent "began skirt chasing in earnest." One of his efforts is directed to a nurse called Shaila. "A small curl had escaped her cap and hung tantalizingly on her cheek. Dr Innocent passed by and pulled the curl." Shaila, of the "young and trusting heart" is so flattered by his attentions that she disregards the warnings of her work-mates. Seduced in a one-hour motel where Innocent appears to be well-known, Shaila discovers she is pregnant. Desperate, she takes an overdose of sleeping tablets. Her parents claim the body, but "the coffin was not placed in the church-...because it had been a suicide...The body was buried...outside the main cemetery, marked for those who had lead sinful and debauched lives."
