'His Majesty's sebum was quite like a liege subject. And his foreskin was almost perversely surplus. To rid himself of the yeast, he held the foreskin closed at the instant of micturition till it bloated like a frog's airbag and then let it all fly out all over the Rotterdam vitreous china water closet. His Majesty's urine cleaned His Majesty's yeast.'
In Perineum Ambarish Satwik blends surrealistic metaphor and surgical precision to concoct a Borgesian fictional labyrinth that thrusts the reader deep into the private parts of the Empire and its subjects, liege or otherwise. This irreverent collection of stories quite literally takes the pants off the venerable organs of the British Empire and lays bare a murky underbelly of oozing flesh, putrid excretions and raw brutality.
From Baker's scrotum to Bobby Clive's circumcision, from Madan Lai Dhingra's haemorrhoid to Jinnah's last ejaculation, nothing escapes the author's deliberately prurient eye and darkly satirical wit. Defdy orchestrating a medley of quasi-authentic colonial voices Satwik creates a quirky, cunningly layered narrative that is both very funny and very disturbing.