There is a God, but…
Yes, there is a God, but… the creator of stories is man. So, while we have an entire universe of raw material thrown at us, it is only the human mind that twists it all into a million different shapes. Manu Bhattathiri is one such human who has done a neat job of twisting innocuous...
A cocktail of stories that charm the mind
I love reading short stories because they resemble a couple on a park bench watching an ephemeral sunset (or a sunrise, if you prefer) waiting eagerly to discover at least one startling moment every time they are there. ‘It happens’ is a collection of short stories written by Bhaswar Mukherjee that I have just finished...
Stories from Uttarakhand
Stories are good when they connect with readers and thus to say that some are only for children can sometimes lead us to miss out those that have been written well. ‘Tales from the Himalayas’ is a collection of 17 stories by Priyanka Pradhan that many may miss if they assume the volume is for...
Unforgettable tales by Ruskin Bond
The first time that the name Ruskin Bond mysteriously entered my psyche was not when I first read his book, but during a discussion with my home tutor a while after I must have read one of his first publications. This happened sometime before my ICSE exams and in the early seventies. Rai Sahib, as...
Where shadows are swallowed by the sky
Imagine a black & white world where each shadow struts like it is the only shadow in the world and refuses to be one with any other. There is a great shadow animosity reigning all over. Then there is another world where the sky is dark enough to make the shadows disappear into each other...
A story in an anthology
One story A part of many others Is different and lives a life of its own So does mine And yet as you will read them You’ll see links popping up Connecting one with the other Making this anthology Not just a study in intrigue But also a composite novel The first That India gives...
The side effect of an itch. Review of ‘Chronicles of Urban Nomads’
I remember asking my drawing teacher one day after school, ‘Sir, what should I do to improve my drawing skills?’ He answered, ‘Learn to look at everything from multiple perspectives.’ He then asked me to look at the empty classroom from where I was standing and then wanted me to lie down flat on the...
A spoonula of creativity
Some books that one gets to read are like a spoonula of creative thought and expression and then there are a whole lot of others that make the critics say that we ‘have turned literature into a cesspool of mediocrity’. Well, the PR and marketing games fill up the virtual and the real spaces...
I preserve. I nurture. I elevate. Review of ‘My lawfully wedded husband’
I was helplessly spell-bound and I’m sure, like the author, ‘I loved it all. I love travelling, so I was happy just’ reading and ‘drinking it all in.’ The stories in the collection took me into little nooks and corners of strange minds and unknown perceptions and I loved going there. From the unlawfully wedded...
The love of strangers. Review of ‘Winter Evenings’
Short stories have a strange way of bonding with strangers. They create a set of images that go deep into the database of your mind and then are able to search out some distant cousin of theirs who is uncannily similar to what they look like. You immediately mutter, ‘Hmmm… I know a bit of...
