Love Story of the Oysters

By Lopa Ghosh

An employee's roving eye leads to an exotic offsite gender-sensitivity workshop that throbs with lust in this dystopian tale about the corporate world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper XXI
• Release date: Dec 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9789351362340

Lopa Ghosh

Lopa Ghosh has meandered through literature, journalism, street theatre, a London stint seeking causality and Sylvia Plath's house, severe delusion and serious feminism. Revolt of the Fish Eaters is her first book. Ghosh now lives and works in Delhi.

Book preview

Love Story of the Oysters

Lopa Ghosh

Contents

Title Page

Love Story of the Oysters

About the Author

Copyright

Love Story of the Oysters

An oyster is an object of great danger and slipperiness. When it is served to you cold, on its own half shells and a bed of ice, possible death by asphyxiation adds to the thrill of spearing through the blanched, barely cooked, deep sea-grey flesh. As you hurtle inwardly to your death (definitely so if the month is one without an R in it, like a July or a May), people turn and look at you, the oyster-eater, with reverence. You are transformed into someone who knows a thing or two about ancient brain food and does not deter to call for an aphrodisiac at a company meeting.

I eat them unsalted and succulent with some nervousness, occasionally gulping down white wine. Ram is sitting on the other side of the table, his eyes never leaving me.

‘Will you give yourself to me tonight?’ they keep saying.

A question I am not prepared to answer yet. Not a no, nor a yes. I am content this autumn in Noosa, to slip in and out of ayes and nayes, of giving and taking, of doing and being done.

The oyster, a shellfish of changeable gender, should have been the mascot for our company meeting. I share my observation with Twisha, who is sitting on my right and tackling a mass of over-saucy bolognese. In my opinion, it is a sad thing to order in an exotic seaside town and defeats the whole point of coming down this far.

She gives a tired sigh and says, ‘How does this tiny gooey blind mass manage to go through being a man and a woman? Just being reminded of our sex has been so exhausting lately. You know, it’s probably not the right thing to say, but I have been feeling sorry for the men. I swear I heard tears in Adnan’s voice today, you know, when he was asked to testify...’

Adnan is sitting in one corner of the large table with a glass of