Of love, death, and garbage
A tiger in love with its keeper and an unemployed man impersonating a doctor are among the many mesmerizing and mysterious characters that populate Rajesh Parameswaran’s first collection of short stories, titled “I Am an Executioner: Love Stories.” The soft-spoken author kicked off this year’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s series of fellow presentations Monday with a program that included readings from his well-received debut work that merges themes of love and death, as well as from his work in progress. In his story “The Infamous Bengal Ming,” Parameswaran’s protagonist is a giant cat that has hopelessly fallen for his human captor “Kitch.” The animal describes its love to the reader with heart-wrenching depth before the tale veers in a darker direction. “The pain in my head melted into some pink loving bliss. Where was my hunger?” read Parameswaran. “Where was all the gloom and trouble of the day? It was all gone....