Krishnan Varma's short story 'The Grass-Eaters'

'The Grass-Eaters' by Krishnan Varma is a distinctive short-story. 

It's a simple humanistic tale of a poor couple who live in a pipe. I describe it as 'a simple humanistic tale' because the purpose seems to be provocation of our compassionate understanding. However, it is Varma's technique that intrigued me. The poor man narrates his and his wife's story in an icy way as though he is pleading coolly and rationally for the validity of their lifestyle. That's a chilling experience. This-is-not-a-pipe experience in a fundamentally different, scary sense.

I tried to know more about the author through Google, but couldn't find much. I found the story posted here. I read the story first in a high-school textbook, The International Story by Ruth Spack (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Krishnan Varma, according to the author introduction in the textbook, "was born in Kerala, a southwestern state of India. He writes in English as well as in Malayalam. In many of his stories, Varma shares his observations of the life of the poorest people in his country."

The story is quite unlike most of the recent unimaginative 'Indian Writing in English' that pretends to be about the poor.