Mem-Sahib's Vision

MOOLTIKI: STORIES AND POEMS FROM INDIA (151 pp.)--Rumer Godden--Viking ($3.50).

This charming book consists of impressionistic sketches of the sprawling Asian subcontinent done in the pale pastel shades of life rather than its raw primary colors. Filtered through Author (Black Narcissus) Godden's genteel mem-sahib vision, India becomes a setting instead of a place, Hindus and Moslems become figures in a tapestry instead of people, and life moves to the lute strings of poetry instead of the purse strings of necessity. As a free versifier, Author Godden ranks somewhat below another run-of-the-pagoda poet, Emperor Hirohito:

In the meadow it is spring;

the sun warms and, from the softening snowfields, the avalanches fall and the rocky gorges thunder with their slips.

Her stories are far more effective, and they vibrate with the fragile melancholy of tinkling temple bells. A Hindu youth claims his veiled bride, and in the first flush of passion feels a hot tear on his hand as the girl trembles beside him, fearful and liquid-eyed as a doe he once killed. A simple, doting peasant couple lose their only son to the mysterious war of the white men's raj and begin to lose their health, sanity and land as well. Then they are told to apply for equally mysterious pension checks, thus making their son the poignantly ironic staff of their old age. The title tale Mooltiki has a hint of Disney. Mooltiki is a kind of reluctant dragon among lady elephants. She rumbles and grumbles audibly while stoking the mighty campfire with logs. She would rather blow bubbles in the river or clutch a flower in her trunk than be a proper beast of burden. Around Mooltiki's plotless existence revolve a skin-prickling tiger hunt and Author Godden's evocations of the lush tropical fecundities of Indian jungle country. Rumer Godden is a fastidious craftsman but a trifle hammy. Some of her sentences preen themselves so long before the mirror of sensibility that, like Mooltiki, they never quite carry their weight in sense.

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