India, Aug. 30 -- After another winter spent wheezing, in 2023, I decided to leave smoggy Delhi after 22 years there. I consulted a few friends about where I could sustain myself professionally as a freelancer. Two suggestions came up: Bengaluru and Goa. I checked with a Goan friend living in Bengaluru. He told me to opt for Bengaluru because "Goa has too many outsiders already". I didn't say anything to him then but I did give him some grief after moving to Bengaluru. Thanks to this book, I now know what to call him: titeev, the word for "uncle" among Konkani Christians. After all, this sentiment of not letting outsiders in is something we see globally too; titeevs all of them. The Bitter Fruit Tree and Other Stories by Prakash Parienkar reflects on this xenophobic attitude. It is evident in The Crescent Moon or The Trap, which explores the treatment in Goa of ghatis or those from across the ghats / hills. In one story, a family's very means of subsistence is taken away. What makes the story more effective is how the perspective shifts from an injured bull that can cause economic setbacks to a hungry man who had perhaps accidentally caused the injury. By the end of the story, the accidental perpetrator and his family run the risk of starvation. The titular story examines caste discrimination by showing how some gaonkars, who are the original inhabitants of these villages, refuse to allow the burial of the dead from certain other castes within village boundaries. Caste-based violence is the subject of The Sacrifice and The Beat of the Drum, in that these stories belong to the Premchandesque tradition in which social evils are delineated in a simple, linear, straightforward way, with no solutions offered. The solution perhaps is to move out of the village, either to take up employment outside the diktats of caste as in The Beat of the Drum and The Old Man of the Hills, or to live in a more "developed" area as in A Forest Sanctuary, which with its open ending explores the complexities of such a move. Hope comes from the possibility of finding employment in the hotels in the city, reminding the reader that Goa relies heavily on tourism, which is about welcoming outsiders. Will all those who need them find such jobs, an urban reader might wonder. The stories in this collection are set in Sattari, "a forested region in north-east Goa in the foothills of the Western Ghats" and are hence about the agrarian, rural experience, about the connection with animals, one's land and trees, and about a life lived precariously. The clash of religious beliefs, with humanity and nature eventually paying the price, is explored in The Sacrifice, The Sacred Cow and to an extent The Crucifix on a Chain. That story explores conversion, from Christianity to Hinduism, and the conflict it can cause within a family and an individual. Fruits of Labour explores the immediate dangers of the climate crisis, especially for farmers for whom unseasonal rains aren't just an inconvenience. My friend said he dissuaded me from moving to Goa partly also because of the strain on natural resources caused by the sudden influx of "outsiders". Bengaluru faces a similar issue, particularly when it comes to water. The story Water shows that such shortages are caused more by short-sighted, unsustainable practices at the systemic level than a real lack of the resource. Perhaps in our haste to progress and urbanise, we are dooming ourselves and generations to come. The well served the village until taps came along; then it was paved over to build a road that allowed cars to drive up to a temple. Embraced as a symbol of modernity, the taps soon run dry. Only one villager, Goklem, understands that it was the well that had sustained the village. At the end of the story, we see her trying to dig it back into existence. Will she succeed? And how long before another road blocks another source? Goklem is an exception in terms of the depiction of women. Rural Goa doesn't seem to treat its women any better than the rest of India does. They are vilified, even if they were the ones supposedly violated, as in The Crescent Moon; they are left to manage all care-giving; the birth of a girl is deemed eminently undesirable, as is clear in Silent Affection. For the most part, Pai's translation is smooth, with some beautiful lines that offer the reader a flavour of the land. While I think there is no need to italicise non-English words in 2025, the glossary provided is useful. It's how I learnt what titeev means. However, I couldn't find the meaning of vanarmaryakooykooy, bhoukatgelimooymooy though I can wager a guess. Or look it up online....